LogFAQs > #896668366

1. Range was incredibly dominant until recently, yes. It's why IS spent like half a year releasing dedicated range counter abilities/units/seals. Now they aren't.
2. Raven mages are still good but not nearly as good as they used to be. They can still do their job but the chance of them getting slapped in the face instead is very real. Tharja probably does hold up better than most due to having mixed defensive stats, meaning dragonbreath doesn't hit her as hard.
3. You won't see weapons preying on melee types, cause they're not the meta. They're the counter-meta. And it could easily change again, but at the moment, they make for very good additions to your team.
4. I should've phrased it differently - essentially Lon'qu has a very good enemy phase upon the first combat, upon which he takes damage, goes into Desperation range, and transforms into a very good player phase character. I like using him to bait in both dragons and other melee types because his defensive stat being HP instead of Def or Res means he can tank a hit from all types.
6. Reinhardt has a ton of counters these days and every arena team runs them. Adding to that, his usage has dropped off thanks to the existence of those counters and other units getting buffed and/or powercreeped to his level. The meta has shifted and Reinhardt is no longer overcentralizing or even the biggest part of it. Dragons and Armor is the new hotness.
7. I haven't seen Swordbreaker in like 40 matches. The B slot is way too valuable for something like that.
8. Mia is better than all those dudes - also I personally take 4 speed over 9 attack for the kind of unit Soleil and Lon'qu are. Regardless, I've said this like five times, but there being a lot of very good red swords doesn't mean that each individual red sword is suddenly going to be unusuable. It just means you have options. Lots of very strong options, actually.
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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.