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  1. Hey everyone, it's that time of the 3-weeks again. My old guide is pretty obsolete by now, so let's update it.
  2.  
  3. # Introduction
  4. ### What is Arena?
  5. A Soul Arena (or simply Arena) is a lengthy competitive event (about eight days) during which players have to farm mana points in dedicated stages. The event gives rewards for some mana thresholds (usually up to 600k mana points), and for ranking (at the current time, the top 500 players of a given Arena usually get the top ranking rewards).
  6.  
  7. Arenas are an excellent occasion to accumulate stones and SR armor, but the main reason to take part in Arenas is the accumulation of the famed Arte Souls (enabling the use of Mystic Arte, i.e. overpowered finisher attacks), as well as the assorted heroes (finisher units).
  8.  
  9. ### Threshold rewards / Ranking rewards
  10. The threshold rewards always include stones (usually 28 overall), lower-tier SR weapons and higher-tier SR armors. Assuming the Soul Arena is standard, threshold rewards also include three units of the Arena's hero (one 3star at 50k (1k for Alisha) mana, one 4star at 150 (50k for Alisha) mana and one 5star at 400k mana), as well as three associated Arte Souls (one R at 100k, one SR at 250k, one UR at 600k).
  11.  
  12. The ranking rewards usually consist of Arte Soul upgrade materials, higher-tier SR armors and copies of the Arena's hero (rarity and amount depends on rank). Getting to top tier will net you enough copies to max Limit Break your 5star unit.
  13.  
  14. ### Can I rank?
  15. Establishing your ability to rank (as in, get into the top tier) before rushing in can potentially save a lot of energy, so let's talk a little about this.
  16.  
  17. There are a few things that are absolutely necessary to rank. You need to be able to beat Mania (cf the game mechanics section) semi-reliably (at least 50% of the time), and you need to have time on your hands (at least a good dozen hours, potentially much more depending on your approach).
  18.  
  19. Whether you're planing on farming Mania or Heaven or Hell (HoH), you'll get 50 runs per 1000 Stamina thrown into the Arena. In Mania, this might translate into about 350k mana points; in HoH, you'd get about 450~500k mana points for the same cost.
  20.  
  21. Realistically speaking, we probably won't be getting more Arenas where the cutoff for top tier ends up being lower than 2m, and 3m is likely to become the norm sooner or later which means you're in for a few hundred runs (a few thousand points of stamina) if you're planning on ranking.
  22.  
  23. If you have these kinds of resources then ranking is definitely feasible. If you don't, maybe reconsider (or settle for a lower ranking target this time around).
  24.  
  25. ### Should I rank?
  26. Assuming you can rank, the question becomes whether it's worth it. I'm a huge hoarder, so I'd argue ranking is always going to be worth it just for the sake of increasing one's Arte Soul and Goddess' Love (Arte Soul upgrade materials) pool, but in fact this is kind of overkill.
  27.  
  28. Broadly speaking, ranking is useful if it increases the variety and/or efficiency of your finishers pool. An extremely dedicated player might want to gather one 5star max limit break finisher per type and element (which would mean thirty units total), but this is largely unnecessary for most purposes.
  29.  
  30. More reasonably, you will probably want to gather one finisher per element, and ideally have their elements match the God Eater weapons of their types when relevant (Light Slash, Dark Thrust, Earth Bash, Wind Shot and Fire Spell). This means Water is a wildcard (since there is no Water God Eater weapon), as long as you don't pick it for an Bash unit (Bash Water contradicts the God Eater Earth weapon, which is inefficient).
  31.  
  32. To say it otherwise: if you already have a 5star max limit break Wind Shot finisher, you probably don't *need* another Shot finisher and ranking will only benefit you to a tiny extent, if at all.
  33.  
  34. (That being said, make sure to grab all the threshold rewards either way! It's low-effort and pretty much always worth it.)
  35.  
  36. # Game mechanics
  37. ### Basics of Arena
  38. Arena stages usually offers five levels of difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard, Mania and Heaven or Hell (HoH).
  39.  
  40. Easy, Medium and Hard difficulties are worth 7, 10 and 15 stamina respectively, and they contain five waves (including one miniboss in third wave and one boss in fifth wave). These difficulties are usually considered wasteful (at least if you're ranking), because the amount of mana per stamina you can grab from them is ridiculously low.
  41.  
  42. Mania and HoH both require 20 stamina to enter, and they contain seven waves (including one giant eye (two in HoH) miniboss in fourth wave and one dragon boss in seventh wave). HoH is significantly harder to farm than Mania due to the second giant eye and the dragon having more HP (about 580k), but also much more rewarding (so if you can farm HoH, you definitely should).
  43.  
  44. All five difficulties may contain any amount of Mana Eaters (Rare Mana Eaters for Mania and HoH), which exhibit a range of unusual properties and are the main way to farm mana in Arena. Clearing any stage will also grant mana (roughly 2700 in Mania and 3700 in HoH; the other three difficulties drop negligible amounts).
  45.  
  46. Depending on the Arena, "Difficult" and "Extreme" may be available too. In both cases, you're mostly dealing with huge Mana Eaters, which makes these stages particularly hard and demanding to farm (if you don't have specific combinations of units, you probably won't be efficient here).
  47.  
  48. When Difficult and Extreme are available, the Stamina costs may change (Difficult is 20, Extreme is 40, and Mania/HoH are both 15 if my memory is correct).
  49.  
  50. ##### No MA in SA
  51.  
  52. Arte Souls don't enable Mystic Arte use in Soul Arena. This isn't particularly important in most cases (you will usually be able to OHKO even the HoH dragon assuming your team is well-built), but still something to know.
  53.  
  54. ### Mana Eaters
  55. ##### Species
  56.  
  57. Mana eaters are rock-like monsters with both high defense and high attack. Killing a mana eater gives mana points which is usually the main scoring source in Arena.
  58.  
  59. Mana eaters can attack on every turn (unless otherwise stated); they can target Yellow tiles, turn Pink tiles into Yellow tiles or deal relatively high-damage blows. As such, they're prime targets; they can potentially ruin your day if you're unprepared or just plain unlucky.
  60.  
  61. ###### (Normal) Mana Eater
  62.  
  63. * 6 HP, 5000 Defense.
  64. * Encountered in Easy, Normal and Hard stages.
  65. * Drops 800 mana points.
  66. * Not particularly menacing, but not particularly rewarding either.
  67.  
  68. ###### Rare Mana Eater
  69.  
  70. * 12 HP, 15000 Defense.
  71. * Encountered in Mania and HoH stages.
  72. * Drops 2000 mana points.
  73. * Both menacing and rewarding. These will be your main mana source.
  74.  
  75. ###### Prince Mana Eater
  76.  
  77. * 10 (?) HP, 10000 Defense.
  78. * Can appear in Hard, Mania and HoH stages. They're pretty rare, and occasionally won't appear at all depending on the Arena.
  79. * Drops 5000 mana points.
  80. * Has a cooldown prior to starting its one-attack-a-turn rampage. As such, they're much easier to handle than Rare Mana Eaters.
  81.  
  82. ###### Emperor Mana Eater
  83.  
  84. * (To complete when we next see Emperors.)
  85. * Appear in Difficult and Extreme stages.
  86.  
  87. ##### Tactics
  88.  
  89. Because of their huge defense, Mana Eaters are actually pretty tough to take down if you don't know what you're doing. Here are a few methods to handle them.
  90.  
  91. ###### Gardena/Micladio
  92.  
  93. The 4star units Gardena and Micladio (as well as some other units) can deal fixed damage by using their Active Skills (for instance, Gardena and Micladio both deal 7 damages to every target for 7 LC). Fixed damage skills are considered defense piercing, which means these skills will relatively effortlessly take Mana Eaters down (OHKO for Normal Mana Eaters, 2HKO for Rare Mana Eaters).
  94.  
  95. ###### Area of Effect Artes
  96.  
  97. When an Area of Effect Arte activates, the damage it deals to the current target is carried over to all the other targets as fixed damage. This means an AoE Arte activating on a target that isn't a Mana Eater will transfer to this Mana Eater potentially thousands of defense-piercing damage, immediately putting an end to it.
  98.  
  99. This works both ways: if you activate an AoE Arte on a Mana Eater, you will probably deal very low damage overall (unless the AoE is strong enough to pierce its defense). In other words, pay attention to what you're targeting when using AoE Arte characters.
  100.  
  101. ###### Brute force
  102.  
  103. In Tales of Link, Defense is an absolute value subtracted from any incoming attack (so for instance, Rare Mana Eaters remove 15000 from any incoming hit; any attack subtracted to 0 will deal 1 damage instead). Nothing's keeping you from simply using attacks able to overflow this Defense though - any hit above 15000 in raw power will deal efficient damage to Rare Mana Eaters (and 5000 is the number to overwhelm for Normal Mana Eaters).
  104.  
  105. If you use 2.0x leaders (and you probably should), any unit displaying more than 3750 attack in status screen will reach 15000 when the skills are active. Units boosted by an attack-increasing Guardian will need even less power (2500 with a 5star Guardian, 2675 with a 4star Guardian, 3260 with a 3star Guardian).
  106.  
  107. As a side-note: Defense is applied per-hit. If your unit's Arte activates and it's an Arte that deals less than 100% damage per hit, they might be reduced to 1-damage hits.
  108.  
  109. You can play around that by using units with Artes that deal strong hits (for instance, Vampires), or simply by putting them later in your links.
  110.  
  111. ###### Multi-hit
  112.  
  113. Going the opposite way from brute force, multi-hit approach aims to use Artes with a lot of hits (for instance, standard Anise's Arte hits ten times) to take Mana Eaters down without piercing their Defense.
  114.  
  115. This approach is less efficient, because it relies heavily on Arte triggers, but it can be easier to use if you don't already have enough firepower for brute force.
  116.  
  117. ###### Huge link
  118.  
  119. Defense is applied after link multipliers, which means it's pretty easy to make strong units able to pierce through it even if they aren't strong enough for brute force.
  120.  
  121. As a rule of thumb, any unit with a little over 10000 in printed attack will be able to OHKO a Rare Mana Eater from 3rd position in link onwards, and any unit with over 12500 printed attack will pierce from 2nd position onwards.
  122.  
  123. ### Game flow
  124.  
  125. Soul Arena stages will always contain one mini-boss and one boss wave (mini-boss being the halfway point, and boss being the last wave). The mini-boss usually isn't a big problem (except for the two giant eyes you get to face in HoH), but you need to keep an eye out for the boss (in Mania and HoH, it's a dragon).
  126.  
  127. After its initial cooldown (4 turns in Mania, 3 turns in HoH), the dragon will start spamming high-damage attacks (with the occasional held breath move that greatly increases its next attack's damage). Once the spamming starts, it's usually pretty hard to keep on fighting efficiently (especially if you're using 2.0x when >50% leaders), which means you want to take it out before its cooldown ends. Usually, this means entering its wave with enough LC for an OLA attack (for instance, 45 LC if you're leading with Elza).
  128.  
  129. On average, Mania will yield about 7k mana points, and HoH will yield between 9k and 10k. You will definitely get outliers runs over the course of the Arena, but these will get flattened by the amount of runs you'll do.
  130.  
  131. # The math/meta section
  132.  
  133. ### About cutoffs
  134.  
  135. For most Arenas, final cutoffs typically go way over 2m at this point, with a reasonable likelihood to go over 3m depending on the specific Arena.
  136.  
  137. Depending on your resources and determination, it's usually a better idea to focus on maintaining a certain gap with the elites rather than looking at the cutoff estimates. Cutoff estimates are typically pretty unreliable until late in the Arena, but if you decide to maintain, say, a 600k mana points lead over the 450th player in an Arena where the top 500 players get top tier rewards, you're probably going to be safe throughout the entire Arena.
  138.  
  139. ### Stamina management
  140.  
  141. Ranking without refilling your stamina gauge several dozen times is impossible. The question then becomes how to refill, and the two existing methods (rank up and gels) both have their merits.
  142.  
  143. Ranking up to refill is the cheaper and slower method. If you have time on your hands (and especially at the beginning of the Arena), you should definitely go for it as it will preserve your gel reserves for emergency use (and also increase these gels' power by increasing your stamina gauge's capacity).
  144.  
  145. Ranking up is also never going to be irrelevant in Tales of Link, due to the logarithmic experience costs curve - you will always be able to set enough stamina aside to rank up and still play competitively in the Arena.
  146.  
  147. > When going for ranking up strategy, remember to use the higher exp stages. [I've written a miniguide on the subject here](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesofLink/comments/4o8bch/miniguide_how_stamina_works_and_how_to_manipulate/), but for the short version: on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, grind on "Fighting as One" in the Corina area (1.5x experience rate), and on other days grind on "Land of Shattered Power" in Bewitched Thicket area (especially on Sunday - 2.0x experience rate on Sunday). Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday don't offer boosted experience on Land of Shattered Power, but it's still the best place to grind (baring Key of Weapon use). Both of these areas are in World 4.
  148.  
  149. Using gels is relevant if you don't have time, or if you're trying to catchup/keep up with the top tier players near the end of the Arena (it's usually not relevant if you've been keeping a 600k+ lead on the elite (450th player) throughout the Arena's duration).
  150.  
  151. If you're planning on using both ranking up and gels as refill methods, you should start with ranking up. This will increase your gels' power and thus lower the amount of gels needed to rank the Arena.
  152.  
  153. ### Actual math for a change
  154.  
  155. Let's say you're farming Mania with a 120 stamina gauge (so, 3 runs per small gel, 6 runs per large gel). Mania typically yields about 7k mana points per run on average.
  156.  
  157. To get to 2m, you'll need 285 successful runs, which is about 95 small gels or 48 large gels.
  158.  
  159. To get to 3m, you'll need 428 successful runs (142 small gels, or 71 large gels)
  160.  
  161. With the same stamina gauge, running HoH, 222 runs will suffice for 2m (74 small gels or 37 large gels), and 333 runs will get you to 3m (111 small gels or 56 large gels).
  162.  
  163. (This is excluding natural stamina recovery, which is worth about 1500 units, or 75 runs, over the course of the Arena.)
  164.  
  165. As you can see, these costs are pretty damning. Build your stamina gauge to get better results! With a 240 stamina gauge, you'll cut these costs in half (28 large gels will take you to 3m in HoH).
  166.  
  167. ### Always 600k
  168.  
  169. Whether you're ranking the Arena or not, you should always grab all the threshold rewards. 600k mana points is a very manageable amount of mana to grab in eight days, and you can't really know in advance which characters you'll get from gacha - these might turn up-to-now useless Arte Souls into game changers.
  170.  
  171. ### Stone ranking
  172.  
  173. Using stones to rank Arenas can be a viable strategy for your first couple Arenas, but I strongly recommend not doing this beyond that point. Stones are much better used in gacha (you will get bad draws, but if you never roll you won't ever get good rolls and good rolls are how you turn your pool from good to great).
  174.  
  175. ### Final rush
  176.  
  177. Every Soul Arena up to now has had crazy last-day rushes, and there's little reason to believe this won't happen again. Prepare accordingly by either having a huge mana point lead over the elite player (above 800k is a minimum) or playing during the last hours to preserve your lead.
  178.  
  179. ### A note on battle continuation
  180.  
  181. *Don't do it.* No, seriously, I don't care how much mana that run was worth, it's not worth it.
  182.  
  183. Don't believe me? One stone is usually enough to fuel more than four runs (usually much more). Four runs averages to 28k mana points in Mania, or 36~40k mana points in Heaven or Hell.
  184.  
  185. ### Mania or HoH
  186.  
  187. If you can farm HoH at over 80% efficiency (i.e. winning four out of five runs), farm HoH. Else, farm Mania. If you can't farm Mania at over 50% efficiency (one win out of two runs), you can't top tier whatever Arena is going on at the current time. Focus on second or third tier, and accumulate more power for next Arena.
  188.  
  189. # Strategy for SA
  190.  
  191. ### Multi & Single Arena
  192.  
  193. There are occasionally more than one Arena running simultaneously. When this happens, you can only choose one Arena so make sure to either pick the Arena that will benefit you the most (by filling a niche you didn't fill before) or the one where you think the competition will be the least fierce if you wanna rank.
  194.  
  195. ### Team building
  196.  
  197. Ideally, your Soul Arena team should have the firepower to easily take Rare Mana Eaters down and the resources to take a few heavy hits and still be operational. This usually means leading with a 2.0x when >50% leader, pairing with a similar leader, having vampires around, and having a healing Active Skill and a massive All>1 board shifter (for instance, Elza) in your subs. The remainder of your units should consist of heavy hitters and/or AoE Arte users.
  198.  
  199. Boosters are usually irrelevant for Arenas. The foes are too weak to require them, and you usually won't have enough LC to use them anyway.
  200.  
  201. Link Boosters (units with the Link Boost passive, which gives you LC at the beginning of the battle) are exceptionally useful here. If you have some of these, use them.
  202.  
  203. ### About elements and guardians
  204.  
  205. Element is applied *after Defense*. This means a Fire 16000 attack hitting a Water 15000 Defense will deal (16000-15000)x0.75 = 750 damage (an OHKO), instead of (16000x0.75)-15000 = 0 (1) damage.
  206.  
  207. As a consequence, it might occasionally be relevant to use a weak-element unit if their attack reaches above 15000 post-guardian boost. Make sure to keep at least one decent finisher for the dragon, though - this guy won't go down with a weak-element finisher.
  208.  
  209. # Post Arena
  210.  
  211. ### Element picking
  212.  
  213. You've ranked the last Arena and you now have five copies of whatever unit the Arena was featuring. And if you're lucky (ha.), they're not all Earth element - which means you get to pick your finisher's element.
  214.  
  215. First things first: deciding not to limit break on the spot is actually an option. You might want to hold onto your SA units over the course of a few SA before picking everyone's element (hindsight can be pretty great here).
  216.  
  217. Next: if you have the option to limit break into a God Eater finisher (Light Slash, Dark Thrust, Wind Shot, Earth Bash, Fire Spell) and you don't already have such a finisher, you should probably be picking this element (it will be the most useful in the long run).
  218.  
  219. Next: if you don't already have a Water finisher, maybe pick that (unless the unit is Bash, in which case: don't pick that). Water doesn't interact with God Eater, which makes it a wildcard.
  220.  
  221. Next: if you don't have that option, at the very least don't pick an anti God Eater element (avoid Water Bash, Fire Shot and Wind Spell at all cost).
  222.  
  223. Next: if there's a foe you want to take down and you can pick the element you got and the foe isn't staying around until next Arena (and you can't take it down with non-LB unit), maybe pick that (for instance, the God Eater event will be Water, which makes Wind a temporarily advantageous pick).
  224.  
  225. Lastly: if you already have a God Eater finisher of the unit's type and you already have a Water finisher, just pick an element you don't have in the unit's type to increase your elemental coverage for that type.
  226.  
  227. ### To UR++ or not
  228.  
  229. Another important question is whether to immediately upgrade the Mystic Arte you got. It might seem like a no-brainer, but consider this: you probably won't rank every single Arena, and it might be interesting to keep a few Goddess' Love around just in case a Soul Arte suddenly becomes relevant due to gacha.
  230.  
  231. You should probably only upgrade your UR Arte if it's useful at the current time, and save your Goddess' Loves if it's not.
  232.  
  233. # Data about the previous Arenas
  234.  
  235. Courtesy of /u/Xaedral. Arenas are listed in chronological order.
  236.  
  237. * [Bash Cress Arena](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesofLink/comments/4ibcz1/may_2016_soul_arena_stats/)
  238. * [Spell Tear Arena](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesofLink/comments/4lxwj8/tear_soul_arena_stats/)
  239. * [Barbatos Arena](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesofLink/comments/4p04at/barbatos_bf_collab_soul_arena_statistics/) (Not a standard Soul Arena.)
  240. * [Shot Mikleo Arena](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesofLink/comments/4scsku/mikleo_soul_arena_statistics_or_why_the_last_day/)
  241. * [Slash Sorey Arena](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesofLink/comments/4vsrfp/sorey_soul_arena_statistics/)
  242.  
  243. # Aaand that's it, I think.
  244.  
  245. Don't hesitate to ask questions if you have any!
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