Echidna

The recommended build’s glaring lack of being good is disturbing, so here I am back at it to make a better set, albeit mostly for Arena rather than Aether raids. No offence, but why the hell am I using a rating juggernaut in Aether Raids rather than someone with a good prf who can fall back on fort bonuses for stats? Anyway, Deck swabber far outshines slaying axe in the context of Arena, as due to fights being much shorter, the need to heal is far less in demand, and you can rely on damage specials which don’t really matter when they activate, unlike Noontime or Sol which really want to hit full hp foes. The damage reduc keeps her alive rather than heals, and she not only reduces enemy atk by 5, but negates bonuses to atk, and raises res by 6 on her own, so mages are lucky to do meaningful damage to her. The choice of ruptured sky, Rally up, and joint drive atk really boil down to arena scoring, but they do offer bonuses Echidna can make use of. In particular, adding 4 atk to Echidna’s at times shaky atk is useful. Overall, Echidna is a clearcut arena unit, having easy access to merges and a clean 172 bst, like a certain fellow axe infantry kid people tend to notice far more. Gamepress’ choice to focus only on Aether Raids screws over many units who absolutely shine in Arena, like Echidna herself, but also the aforementioned Ross and others, like duos.

I can’t even describe how absurd this build is. +10 is highly recommended to make proper use of the skills but she is capable of soloing infernal maps with support units such as astram backing her.

This is probably Echidna's best bait build for arena that also has some game on the player phase. For most foes, Rallying atk onto her is what you want to do, and against Chrom, you want to Rally spd in a spot where you predict Chrom will attack given Azura's dance.

The way the build works is that she will take 1 hit from the enemy, and will almost always double in response, triggering Blue Flame for massive damage on the second hit. There is probably no meta unit that will double her except for Duo Byleth, but what f2p/budget unit does not die to Duo Byleth?

I do not think there is any non-red arena meta unit that can kill her using this build in 1 round of combat, and she absolutely destroys a huge amount of meta threats all over the color pie. It is a given that she is great against B!Hector, but she always beats L!Chrom and L!Julia as well as non-blue threats like L!Corrin, L!Alm, L!Micaiah as well as a bunch of other green threats. She can even beat Surtr in 1-round of combat.

I think she is the best budget green unit to use in arena right now.

Instead of Joint Drive Spd, she can also use Joint Drive Atk to good effect.

Make sure to take advantage of Atk/Spd Bond 3 in her seal slot.

"Have you been tired of fighting Surtr's in every gamemode in this game? Well i have the perfect solution for you! Introducing wogùn, bonus doubler, wrath Echidna! This monster can hit your lokal Surtr with a 50+ damage luna! For the lowlow price of 22000 feathers and 11 Echidna (skills like Wogùn, bonus doubler, wrath and rouse not included in this package)"

In all seiriousness tho, she hits like a truck! If you really are tired of Surt'r this will help you alot (or any broken armored unit)
Flashing blade is there for consistent luna and rouse for bounus doubler, you can always replace the rouse with a smite bot if you want but yeah. That is about it
Hope the 1 person who might try this will have fun!

This is an expensive enemy phase unit that tries to tank to her best. Using her would be best with some support in the back just in case.

Rearguard+ (+Res) makes her be able to have more resistance than she already has, and with the added defense when an enemy attacks can be great.

Everyone can be great with Reposition, so it’s just nice to have.

Aether is meant to have her be healing without any help to back her up.

Steady Posture 3 is to cover her okay speed stat, and hit her with more defense. With the guard effect already on the skill makes it very convenient to go at it with a scary enemy unit.

Repel is a very hard to come by: however if you do manage to get it using it on her will be great. With her nice speed and decent defensives this makes her a good candidate for using the skill. This skill also sinks well with any kind of healing specials; getting low damage then hitting back to full health.

Rouse Spd/Def is to make her feel more durable during combat, and be able to have buffed up stats. Since most units are getting scary with their speed, having that extra bit will help a lot to make sure she isn’t doubled.

Mirror Stance is here just to make sure she has more attack when fighting in the enemy phase, along with the +4 to resistance, this will make her feel more like a mixed tank.