Halloween Jakob armor centerpiece with Monstrous bow+ /CloseC /WaryF/ ArmMarch/ Ignis/ Atk Smoke seal is pretty much all you need to deal with gimmicky mount teams nowadays. Not even a heavily merged rein/blyn/dancer team can deal with him.

 

Him, no (and man do I regret not rolling for Jakob), but what i mean is, with dancers and unlucky positioning, they'll bypass him entirely. Especially on crappy maps.

But yeah, armour emblem teams bypass the cheese generally, they're also not easy to make though. The best armour units (enemy phase) are seasonal.

 

Don't suppose you'd have any quick advice based on a glance at my heroes? Anything jump out as "Oh, you can make this stupidly strong thing?"

https://imgur.com/a/AoDnZ

 

You have Tharja and HJakob. Focus on ascending an Effie and make an armour emblem. Sheena can round it out for balance if you don't have Hector or Amelia.

 

So create a team consisting of Tharja (not holiday), HJakob, Effie, and Hector? Cause I have all those available. I assume there's deeper inheritance and Seals I should delve into to optimize it?

 

Winter Tharja.

 

Generic armor emblem rule: you should have 3 ward armor / pivots on your attackers, and then an armor march/swap on your centerpiece

WTharja, Hector, Effie, HJakob is exactly what I'm running right now. Flipping unstoppable really.

For winter tharja: vengeful and close counter are innate. She needs a good special too. Ignis and Bonfire are both good choices. If she's your centerpiece, she'll need march/swap. Pivot and ward if not. Distant def seal makes her a solid wall.

Effie: is pretty damn good on a budget, and is probably the best unit in game apart from blyn if you can get her merged up and kitted out. Minimum inheritance - she'll need a good special and a slaying lance or a brave lance. I would do slaying if you can. It hits like a truck, can be enhanced for more res, and if you give her the new heavy blade seal, she'll be able to pull off the slower more powerful specials like aether every other turn for never ending health. She can also obviously use quicker specials with a distant counter or brave lance build. Effie benefits from distant counter, but she doesn't actually NEED it. All the wary fighter melee units should be able to last 2-3 rounds of assault without having to move, therefore Effie's innate death blow skill is a fine substitute. She'll need ward armor and a pivot.

HJakob: Needs attack smoke seal. Although he has wary fighter innate, he needs Close Counter for his debuffs to be applied consistently. Attack smoke 2/3 seal and monstrous bow will flat out destroy flier and horse teams. Special doesnt really matter. Bonfire or Ignis works, so does moonbow. Needs swap/march if centerpiece, pivot ward if not.

Hector: has DC and a built in quick reposte, so give him a good b slot skill to guarantee counters in most situations. Desperation or Vantage. Keep the defensive special so hector can be your anti blue mage if HJakob goes down. Give him the magic defense seal. Needs ward and pivot.

 

Ugh, I hate Pivot unless I'm running armour units on non armour teams (like Ardyn with 3 infantry, for instance). I prefer swap on everyone, if I'm focused on enemy phase. It makes re-positioning for baiting much easier.

If you can get a Katarina btw, Owl tome on Winter Tharja in armour emblem is absolutely the best weapon for her. If you're positioning your team in a T formation with her in the centre, nothing will kill her.

Nothing.

Obligatory Ignis/Glacies use based on whichever is highest for her. My Tharja has a Res Boon so I'm running Glacies.

Ward Armour comes from 4* Draug, so that shouldn't be too hard to get 3 of. Armour March is a little more tricky. My W Tharja has it because I'm often putting her in the centre of the T formation (not super important until I get Owl tome on her), giving everyone boosted movement.

 

Hah! 20 orbs, got Azura. Sometimes lucky.

 

Sure but the thing is, you are rarely going to be in a situation where you can have Tharja as the centerpiece, since it also means whoever is on top/bottom is vulnerable to attacks on EP. It doesn't matter that your Tharja can't be killed when the AI will prioritize whoever is on top/bottom of her anyway.

You're better off going Blade Bold Fighter Tharja or just sticking with her base kit and upgrading Candelabra+.

Ok, how much desire do you have to go far in arena? I'll start off with that. If you have no desire to either hit 19.5 or stay in tier 20, then my advice changes.

 

Being adjacent to all 3 allies? Far less rare than you think, and it's not like her adjacent allies are snowflakes that'll get spanked, it's armour emblem.

With 2 adjacent allies, which is the most common, it's all stats +4, which is great. Bonus Fury 4 with no downside.

With only 1, it's Candelabra with 1 less might with an affect that works on initiating too on the rare occasion that's a thing.

It's what I'll be running def.

 

I feel like we have different experiences running in different arena spheres. I'm regularly facing +10 fully merged enemies that are optimized. Even with the stats that armors have, armors aren't invulnerable and they can be killed quite easily. Add in the fact that unless you're running full DC (which you should if you're running armor emblem), you're just asking for excess chip damage from ranged enemies, since they can very easily move out of your range.

I'll even give an example. For W!Tharja, even with triple ward, she loses to the following enemies:

Kagero, Mia, Elincia, Lancina, Ephraim, Delthea, Tana, Cordelia, Robin(W), Effie, Black Knight, and Azura. She's not invincible and neither are her allies, even through triple ward.

 

First, no, I'm not facing full +10 because my units aren't highly merged - there's some justice in that. The higher you merge the harder the game is for you apparently, lol.

And of those units mentioned, wut? Kagero? Weird. I'm assuming with Kitty Paddle? I'm not sure how else she's relevant. Never even seen her.

I'm not sure what unfavourable situations you're going up against that lets her die, but she literally tanks everything, and when I say that, I'm including Rein btw - though after killing him, she's often donezo for the round, leaving her at really low health, but I've only been forced to have her tank him once - usually, I position for W!Chrom/Hector to deal with him...

I can see if maybe you let enemies special you that strips your armor, she'll die, but even that's rare when you're an enemy phase team - that's the only explanation I can see for Lancine/Azura and the like.

I've been telling you arena has been easy for me wince W!Tharja, that's because it is... and the few matchups that concerns me? If I see an Ephraim or Cordelia with armour stripping specials? That's what Hector/W!Chrom is for.

 

It seems I've run straight in the middle of horse emblem zone this season. It's either +10 Little hands or firesweep B!Lyn with dancer support. I think I lost the first encounter 5 times before I managed getting past that hurdle lol. Did get 4922 in the end, so let's hope that's enough to slip into tier 20 and I don't have to endure more of it.

 

This must be region based. By the names of the people I'm going up against, I'm clearly in the Japanese region for arena (almost never are the names of my opponents not in kanji). I'm also almost exclusively getting armour right now, barely got horses.

 

It's not enough to escape horses. Your opponents aren't determined by your tier ranking, it's determined by your score.

The higher your score, the higher the defense team you see.

4922 is enough to go into t20 but not enough to stay, btw.

Unfortunately, I was theorycrafting with a friend today and he showed me this:

That's a horse mage and a horse melee at 748 score. That is legitimately ridiculous.

 

I know how it works, just bemoaned the fact I got stuck in it. Did a merge or 2 and got out of it into the 4950 range or would have, if a guidance seal didn't screw me over. Teleporting Nino hitting a Brave Axe Cherche ain't funny... Also not a fan of this new blessing thing. Locking it behind a paywall makes it even worse, though we'll probably get it in the next TT, that doesn't help now.

 

Man, I really hate Voting Gauntlets, but if this one has taught me anything, it's to be super jealous of the Kitty Paddle, Atk/Res bond/Guard Felicias out there.

 

I really enjoyed the first round with Chrom. Multipliers for days lol. Now that I'm on board of AirZura, not as much, but as I had some really good luck (got 4 of them while sniping green, mostly trying to get more Cherches for my +10 project) at least the fights with a lvl 1 are easy. Not really sure what to do with the AirZuras. Fodder for hone is something I'm really not too hot on doing and merging them I suppose isn't all that good either as I'll never get her to +10.

 

I dunno, fodder for hones sounds pretty good? lol