A beginner's guide to arena

Yesterday a posted a question asking about people's experience with arena and requesting some advice for more consistent wins. Today I want to offer a bit of advice after doing arena constantly since yesterday. I've separated the "guide" into multiple sections to make it easier to read. The sections include The Kill List, the order you should focus on taking out enemy units, The Team, a miniguide on team composition, The Runes, a miniguide on arena specific rune setups, The Battle, a step-by-step for how the battle should go if you follow The Kill List and The Team, and The Champions, a table of notable heroes that stand above the rest for arena. (Formatting is still a WIP)

 

The Kill List

• Scout the opposing teams skills. It'll help you kill off units in the correct order.
• Focus on the damage dealer(s) first. They tend to have very low health, and fighting only 3 units is way, way easier than fighting 4.
• After you take out the damage dealer(s) focus on the healer(s). They also tend to have pretty low health.
• After the healers focus on the tank(s). If you get to the point where only tank(s) are left you have basically won.
• Ignore useless skills like "add an ace" or "change your hand". Always save them for last because, unless they are a VERY strong 4* or 5*+ they aren't really a threat.
• If the team has a countdown decreaser and you KNOW you can kill it before he goes off (they tend to use their skill after only a few turns) then take him out first. Otherwise it makes the battle much harder. If you can't kill it then take out the damage dealers FIRST.

 

The Team

• Team composition is pretty important here. A good leader is someone that either buffs your health or attack. If you only have element specific leader skills then try your best to make a solid team of that element. If not, it's not really a big deal.
• If you have a universal leader, or a good mix of elements, try to stick 4 different elements on your team. This decreases your chances of getting a dead hand.
• Pick your team based on their skills rather than rarity. A 3* unit with a useful skill is better than a 4* unit with a crappy skill.
• For skill composition I recommend a competent healer, an aoe skill x2, and a nuker or buffer (nuker being a unit that buffs your attack that you can pop when you get a 21 for at least one kill).
• As an example of a team, I'm using Henrich, Eldric (who I want to swap out for Adela when she's leveled), Tyron (who will soon be swapped out for Wilfred when I level him up), and Eir.
• Level up your skills as much as you can (as a bonus tip don't blow all of your scrolls in one day. Save them for when you have a level up skill quest, because they are quite common).
• Try to have a balance of high multiplier skills and low cooldown skills. Your buffer and healer should have lower cooldowns for harder fights, and you should have one low cooldown aoe and one high multiplier aoe.

 

The Runes

• Runes can be tricky to use properly. In my opinion they are totally different when used for arena as opposed to story. In story you only have to really focus on dps and occasionally heal. You have to think differently for arena.
• Give your healer your best REC runes you have, and if you don't have enough then give her some DEF/HP runes.
• Your aoe units should get runes for whatever their aoe is based on (either ATK or REC). If you don't have enough slap some DEF/HP on them.
• Whichever unit you have the least applicable runes for should get loaded with DEF/ATK runes.
• For rune sets I would say don't focus on getting a full set. It's not worth it to give one unit a +20HP rune just to finish the DEF set rather than a decent 3* rune.
• My priority is to get a vitalize set for my healer, a leech for my biggest damage dealer, a life for whoever, and a thorn if I can. However, only the vitalize is really that important, the rest can be filled in as you get more runes.
• Level up your runes as much as you can. 1* runes can be leveled up more without shards and give more, albeit weaker, passive bonuses, while higher quality runes can be leveled up fewer times and give less, albeit stronger, passive bonuses.
• Quality doesn't matter so much in the beginning. Don't break a set for a higher quality rune if that rune has terrible passives.
• Try not to be wasteful with binding runes. Gold is free but it takes 100k to evolve a 3* hero, and acquiring a lot of gold takes quite a bit of time (if you don't care about wasting chests).

 

The Battle

• Finally we get to the meat and potatoes of this guide. The battle is actually one of the least important parts behind team composition. If you have a good team the battles should be easy. If you have a crappy team the battles will be hard even if you are fighting 4 2* units.
• Use the first hand to get a grasp of how much shield each unit has. Shield appears to be determined by HP (correct me if I'm wrong).
• Once you know how much shield each unit has focus on taking out as many shields as possible. Start with the lowest shield and work your way up. If a shield on one or two units take a long time to wear away skip them.
• It's worth noting that shields do not carry over damage. A unit with a sliver of a shield left taking 100k damage will only lose the shield and not take any health damage (Thanks to /U/BOBUSISALIVE)
• Once you have at least one shield down then pop your aoe. Odds are very high it will kill any unit that isn't 5*+. If you have multiple shields down, that's multiple units down.
• Units that weren't killed either have very low shield or no shield at all. If one or more units have no shield then pop your second aoe for another kill.
• After your second aoe the enemy team should (hopefully) have no shields left and at least one unit killed.
• Since you've probably taken quite a bit of damage by now use your healer as soon as you can. I don't think there is a healer in the game that doesn't heal over time, so you have a couple of turns of safety.
• If you have a nuker wait until you get either a 21 or a really good hand full of low cards (the more cards you have the higher your damage multiplier; 5 low cards is better than 2 high cards) to pop him. You can wait to use skills until after you have drawn your hand, so use your best judgement on when to use it.
• If you have a buffer than use her as soon as you use your healer to get the most out of healing. If you can afford to wait a little bit (no big damage left) then try to save it until your aoe is back, just don't put yourself in the danger zone. If I use a buffer I tend to pop it at ~35% health left.
• Once you get to two units without shields you've basically won (unless they are both damage dealers, in which case you are probably in trouble). If you followed the order they should be either healers, buffers, or useless "ace" units.
• Try to get a kill streak going, but don't wrestle above your weight. ALWAYS scout out the enemy teams, and use your refresh if you aren't confident. Around rank 15 is when trouble starts brewing and you hit people who have leveled up their heroes either to max or relatively high.

 

The Champions
(WIP)

 

And finally, some general advice. You will lose battles unless you have pretty intense luck with chests/pulls. Don't get discouraged by losing your win streak, because arena is HARD. Even following this little guide you will likely continue to lose. This isn't a fool-proof method, and I don't think there is one for arena. This is what has gotten me from constantly losing to winning about 6/10 matches. Arena is simply unbalanced the way it currently is, and it's something the devs need to address. I would encourage everyone to submit a well-thought out constructive ticket and request (read: don't demand) for some balance in the arena.

 

Additionally, if you have any advice or corrections please let me know in a comment. I'm not an expert at this game by any means so there is likely some information I got wrong. I want this guide to be as helpful as possible, and I will continue to update it with suggestions and corrections both from other users and my own experience in the game. Also, please let me know if this guide helps you in any way. Don't be afraid to comment, I want this thread to be as constructive and positive as possible!

 

Bonus! I have a made my own guild in the game! I named it JattleBack!. It is currently open, but will likely fill up with randos very quickly (like my last guild), and I won't be kicking people until after the next titan battle (since the guild is brand new). If you get in just post a message in saying "great arena guide!" or something else complimentary. Once the devs update guilds and allow them to be closed (unless they can already be closed and I can't find the option anywhere) I will close off the guild and make a thread for letting people in.