Post by Buttersheep on Jan 22, 2016 3:11:52 GMT 1
Overview:
Sky Arena is a series of 10 opponents per day. You are permitted to reuse any hero that has survived the previous battles. HP and Energy is retained. Success in Sky Arena is definitely achievable but requires upgrading your heroes specifically with Sky Arena in mind. Heroes with Stun, Sleep, Petrify and Heal are required to make it into the later rounds without significant casualties.
Sky Arena Difficulty:
Sky arena selects your 10 opponents based on the strength of your 5 highest rated heroes. <Need official formula>
Castle 1 will be approximately 25%-50% below this rating
Castle 10 will be approximately 25%-50% above this rating
Higher level ratings can be much more unpredictable due to the low number of opponents available.
Sky Arena Team Building: Crowd-Control & Healing
Ideal heroes will be able to heal or incapacitate your opponents. Remember, the objective is to never take damage. Don't rely on healers that only heal themselves or team members that cannot be healed. You need healers to top you off at the later rounds of every stage.
Design your team with the following guidelines:
2x Melee Utility: Pixie/Centaur/Gable
Healer/Utility: Trinity/Aqua/Alexander
Primary Healer: Helena
Damage Dealer: Use a different damage dealer each early round to generate energy. Aerial or ranged heroes are preferred. (Gable/Pyre/Merlin/Pei)
Often times my party of Pixie/Trinity/Alexander/Helena/Cyclops will finish castles 1-10 without needing to substitute in fresh heroes. At the time this guide was written they were all a rating of ~2850.
Poor Sky Arena Heroes:
Some heroes do not perform well in Sky Arena or are only useful for 1 stage / earlier stages:
Undead: Not being able to be healed essentially dooms undead heroes to single stage utility (Exception: Dracula & Hyperia can heal themselves sufficiently)
Low Mobility Melee: Closing down your opponents rangers is critical for avoiding damage.
Keep your Hero ratings low!
In order to ensure that you are assigned easier opponents, it is critical to keep all of your preferred heroes at a similar rating, including heroes that are not used for Sky Arena.
Do not upgrade any specific hero higher than the rest. Keep track of who are your highest 5 heroes and don't upgrade them. When you do need to promote or equip items, make sure all 5 heroes can be upgraded at the same time.
Don't upgrade all 4 skills on a single hero unless it directly helps sky arena. For Example, Cooperation is rarely useful and only inflates your hero rating, leading to stronger opponents
Always Hire a Hero from Hero Exchange
Hiring a high rated hero from Hero exchange does not count towards your 5 highest rated heroes. This helps overpower your opponents by hiring a hero with more stars, more equipment and max skills. The ideal hero to hire is a LIVING damage dealer that can avoid injury, such as Pixie.
Avoid Damage in battles
The goal for every battle is to neutralize your opponents early, not to kill them quickly! If you have Pixie, Trinity and Centaur in your party with full energy, they can incapacitate up to 4 opposing heroes on the first turn.
Use Sky Arena Undos - VIP level 2+
There is a small "Undo" button next to the Round & Hero attack order bar in the bottom left of the screen. It looks like the Microsoft Office "Undo" button you would see in word or excel. You can click this up to your maximum # of Sky Arena Undos to unwind the battle to a previous point. It is one of the most powerful tools for efficiently succeeding at sky arena against much stronger opponents.
Here are some tips for Undo usage:
Generate Energy for all Sky Arena Heroes
During the earlier stages of Sky Arena the objective is to max out energy for your heroes without taking any damage. Each Stage select one new ranged/melee to accompany your healers with the objective of leaving that hero full health and full energy. You can save this hero for stages 8-10 against much stronger opponents. Being able to use their special attack in round 1 is the key to succeeding against superior opponents.
Recharging Damaged Heroes:
So there is a strategy to heal heroes that have been sufficiently damaged during past rounds. If you have 2-3 heroes that are very badly damaged and can no longer be used in Sky Arena, you still have a way to heal them by repeating one of the stages against a single opponent. Here is the step-by-step strategy:
Sky Arena is a series of 10 opponents per day. You are permitted to reuse any hero that has survived the previous battles. HP and Energy is retained. Success in Sky Arena is definitely achievable but requires upgrading your heroes specifically with Sky Arena in mind. Heroes with Stun, Sleep, Petrify and Heal are required to make it into the later rounds without significant casualties.
Sky Arena Difficulty:
Sky arena selects your 10 opponents based on the strength of your 5 highest rated heroes. <Need official formula>
Castle 1 will be approximately 25%-50% below this rating
Castle 10 will be approximately 25%-50% above this rating
Higher level ratings can be much more unpredictable due to the low number of opponents available.
Sky Arena Team Building: Crowd-Control & Healing
Ideal heroes will be able to heal or incapacitate your opponents. Remember, the objective is to never take damage. Don't rely on healers that only heal themselves or team members that cannot be healed. You need healers to top you off at the later rounds of every stage.
Design your team with the following guidelines:
2x Melee Utility: Pixie/Centaur/Gable
Healer/Utility: Trinity/Aqua/Alexander
Primary Healer: Helena
Damage Dealer: Use a different damage dealer each early round to generate energy. Aerial or ranged heroes are preferred. (Gable/Pyre/Merlin/Pei)
Often times my party of Pixie/Trinity/Alexander/Helena/Cyclops will finish castles 1-10 without needing to substitute in fresh heroes. At the time this guide was written they were all a rating of ~2850.
Poor Sky Arena Heroes:
Some heroes do not perform well in Sky Arena or are only useful for 1 stage / earlier stages:
Undead: Not being able to be healed essentially dooms undead heroes to single stage utility (Exception: Dracula & Hyperia can heal themselves sufficiently)
Low Mobility Melee: Closing down your opponents rangers is critical for avoiding damage.
Keep your Hero ratings low!
In order to ensure that you are assigned easier opponents, it is critical to keep all of your preferred heroes at a similar rating, including heroes that are not used for Sky Arena.
Do not upgrade any specific hero higher than the rest. Keep track of who are your highest 5 heroes and don't upgrade them. When you do need to promote or equip items, make sure all 5 heroes can be upgraded at the same time.
Don't upgrade all 4 skills on a single hero unless it directly helps sky arena. For Example, Cooperation is rarely useful and only inflates your hero rating, leading to stronger opponents
Always Hire a Hero from Hero Exchange
Hiring a high rated hero from Hero exchange does not count towards your 5 highest rated heroes. This helps overpower your opponents by hiring a hero with more stars, more equipment and max skills. The ideal hero to hire is a LIVING damage dealer that can avoid injury, such as Pixie.
Avoid Damage in battles
The goal for every battle is to neutralize your opponents early, not to kill them quickly! If you have Pixie, Trinity and Centaur in your party with full energy, they can incapacitate up to 4 opposing heroes on the first turn.
- Have all 5 heroes wait the first round if Helena is on the opponents team. This will render her round 1 heal useless
- Fly your aerial damage dealers next to opposing rangers in round 2 or 3 to prevent ranged attacks
- Stunlock & kill the high damage opponents during the early battle rounds
- Sleep & ignore tanks during early battle rounds. Focus your damage on damage dealers & range
- Sleep your opponents during later rounds and use this time to heal. End every battle with full health and energy
- Use Helena's 2nd heal! Circle a sleeping opponent with your damaged melee heroes. Use holy strike to top them off before the battle ends.
- Retry a stage if a critical hero dies or excessive damage is taken.
Use Sky Arena Undos - VIP level 2+
There is a small "Undo" button next to the Round & Hero attack order bar in the bottom left of the screen. It looks like the Microsoft Office "Undo" button you would see in word or excel. You can click this up to your maximum # of Sky Arena Undos to unwind the battle to a previous point. It is one of the most powerful tools for efficiently succeeding at sky arena against much stronger opponents.
Here are some tips for Undo usage:
- Undo all misses. Attack a different opponent, use a special instead or simply defend.
- Using an undo will not reset the Random Number Generator. Repeating the exact same action will have the exact same result.
- Pass the miss to your opponent. If you wait instead of attacking and your opponent follows, he will miss his attack.
- Using an undo will also undo your opponents attacks with a single use. IE: If one of your heroes attacks, and then three opponents attack, you only need 1 undo rather than 4.
- Undo attacks that cause an opponent to fill up on energy and retaliate with a special. Try waiting instead.
- If one of your key heroes dies in an early round, use enough undos so that he can be in a better position to avoid damage.
- Don't use Undos in the first round. Use the Reset button instead. Reset also allows you to change positions.
Generate Energy for all Sky Arena Heroes
During the earlier stages of Sky Arena the objective is to max out energy for your heroes without taking any damage. Each Stage select one new ranged/melee to accompany your healers with the objective of leaving that hero full health and full energy. You can save this hero for stages 8-10 against much stronger opponents. Being able to use their special attack in round 1 is the key to succeeding against superior opponents.
Recharging Damaged Heroes:
So there is a strategy to heal heroes that have been sufficiently damaged during past rounds. If you have 2-3 heroes that are very badly damaged and can no longer be used in Sky Arena, you still have a way to heal them by repeating one of the stages against a single opponent. Here is the step-by-step strategy:
- Start any Round without using your damaged heroes.
- Kill 4/5 opponents, leaving one low DPS healing unit remaining. (Alex/Helena)
- Backoff your heroes and Defend until Round 10 expires. You will lose this battle, save the results.
- On the next attempt you will only face a single opponent, select 3 of your damaged heroes and at least 2 healers. (Helena + Trinity/Alex)
- Defend until all heroes are full health & kill the remaining opponent.