Arena of Solare forces you to address mistakes and bad habits because you really cannot afford to die without doing stuff. The feeling of responsibility for executing on what your class can do is really motivating and fun, pre-season was a blast!
Some hot takes on how to win in Solare:
1. Join comms.
- take/give criticism in real time
- east, west, north, south to coordinate beyond minimap visibility
- info about enemy buffs, map buffs, V, etc
2. Play on a wired connection
- playing on WiFi sucks
- more crashes on WiFi
3. Being alive is the meta class.
- dead classes deal 0 damage
- prioritize your health as you're mostly free at low HP
- you don't need to MVP to win, play the role you can play safely
4. Know your matchups and other classes big plays and abilities.
- do as I say, not as I do... my lack of knowledge in this area constantly costs me
- focus on the 80/20 principle, know the big grapple dives of grab classes, the FG bypassing CC skills, the iframes, and the big buffs
5. Agree on priorities at the start with your team.
- if you know who your teammates will be trying to CC or kite or grab, easier to help and prioritize your own play
- if you are planning something, let them know so they can assist
- coordinate BSR and let them know when party buffs or class buffs are up or down
- most plans do fall apart as people get caught but no plan is usually worse
6. Know the scenario, win conditions, and map mechanics.
- Watch opponents, teammates, and map mechanics, then DECIDE where you need to be rn
- example at 17:31 in this video, if I had gone to closest teammate we lose our advantage
- not every opportunity for damage or CC is a winning opportunity, some are a trap
Tamer's strengths are precise grab dashes and close range FG damage with enough protections, movement, and debuffs to pick out good opportunities to make plays. If you can just stay alive and healthy long enough you can make the difference when an enemy goes down, and that is the key Tamer strat in Solare!
1. When you don't know where they are, they are behind you.
- protect your back as priority over damage
- use ww, leaves, gust, lbp to cancel FG damage
- "keep your head on a swivel" by repositioning, checking minimap, flicking your camera around constantly to get intel
- literally stare at the minimap against sorc, kuno, hash, and if they're gone they're behind you
2. Use protection everytime.
- Celestial Slam is bad, seen multiple times in this video
- distance can be a fine protection, awareness can be fine protection, etc
- judgement of when you definitely will and definitely won't be cc'd is everything
3. Stance dance is pretty good.
- Turtle stance for HP back, it leeches quite a bit if you rotate with beast rampage
- Tiger for damage, 15% accuracy for our best float and -10dp on our biggest damage
- Dragon for movement advantage, moonlight goes 25% further and slow up to 17% with an addon
4. Mouse movement can be very effective, see 8:13
- mouse move lingering SA to avoid getting back attacked
- mouse move cloud stomping, beast claw, tree climb, air lightning, lightning burn to out position
- mouse move beast rampage and tap keybind beast rampage to finish last hit for more damage
- mouse move soaring strike and surging tide to land hits and prevent your back being taken
- tap ctrl after mouse moving a forward guard skill to rotate back to forward w.r.t. camera angle
5. Cancel stuff with iframe the moment you sense danger and try again with your short cooldowns.
- Beast Rampage again 4s later, no big deal
- cancel immediately after you are done dealing damage with an iframe
- cancel your FG damage with leaves/gust into intim Q-block
- cancel your FG damage into ww spray scratch
- cancel your FG damage into ww tree climb (mouse move?) side scratch
- cancelling your FG damage might mean a better opportunity right after
Music in the Video:
Sign - by Roosevelt
Arena - by Fabian Mazur & Snavs
Mon Cheri [Mexican Institute of Sound Remix] - by Soffi Tukker & Amadou & Mariam
When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies - by Gunship
LOVE ME HATE ME (feat. DE'WAYNE & CRAY) - by Kayzo
Through Stars - by Unleash The Archers
Sweet Dreams Seven Nation Army Mashup (feat. Sarah Dugas) - Pomplamoose
Music I tried to use but UMG/WMG blocked it:
Gold Guns Girls, by Metric
Routine, by Joris Delacroix
La vie dapres, by Bigflo and Oli
Bad Habits, by Sheeran
So Am I (Zane Lowe Remix), by Ava Max
IFTK (Vibe Chemistry Remix), by Tion Wayne & La Roux
Blood // Water [Flashing lights] Nightcore Version, by grandson (channel for the nightcore version is evercore)
Unstoppable, by The Score