In Part 2, I concluded that the new mix-and-match general alliance mechanics make elemental pierce generals much more interesting. I don't understand exactly how elemental resist factors work in PvP, but the way I read the Wikia description, they are useless unless you are defending against the matching element. Unless Castle Age truly is your life, I can't see crafting high-end resist builds to fend off specific ele offenses.

So my hanging question from Part 2 was "what's the ultimate pierce alliance, excluding Arena generals and Kraxus", and the sort-of solution - assuming all L80 generals - is to line up your best physical pierce general (Annika or Aesir, the answer may surprise you!), followed by Aravoss or Gale (Gale has a very marginal eAtt advantage), followed by Kitsune.

Annika or Aesir... Before the recalibration of general abilities, Annika was clearly preferable to Aesir. As it stands now, though, at L80 Annika has 10 more Physical Pierce than Aesir, but Aesir has a 64.8 eAtt lead over Annika. 10 pierce is 1% eAtt, so your raw Att from stats would have to be 6480+ for Annika to really be the more effective general! At L800ish with a competent PvP raw BSI of 7.4, my base att is only ~4650. But then, my Annika is only L40, which is less than 25% of the way through her XP curve to L80. By the time I crank her up to L80, my raw Att may well be 6480+. So I think no matter where you are in the game, it makes more sense to invest in Annika over Aesir.

Why just Gale or Aravoss in that second slot? Why not Brakus with his outstanding 78 physical pierce and 48 fire pierce? Because in the third slot, the physical pierce bonus passed through to the primary general is only going to be 1/3, but the ele component will be 100%, and Kitsune is far and away the best ele pierce general with 44 fire + 44 water = 88 total ele pierce. BUT, only the highest factor in a special ability category counts from the secondary and tertiary general slots, so a fire or water pierce general in the secondary slot would negate the value of that component of Kitsune's ele pierces.

I say "sort-of solution" because most CA players have better things to do with their money than "Collect ALL The Generals!" and level them all to 80. If you didn't want to plow FP into chest gambles for Gale and Kitsune, then Brakus in the secondary slot and Kanbe tertiary would be a much cheaper alternative.

How much more pierce power do you get from the Annika-Gale-Kitsune build? Annika at L80 gets 88 physical pierce, Gale in the secondary slot gives 23 (50% of 46) physical and 100% of 63 wind offense, and Kitsune gives 14.5 (33% of 44) physical and 100% of her 88 fire+water offense. If that all stacks up the way I think it does, that's (88 + 23 + 63 + 14.5 + 88) = 276.5 total pierce, or 27.65% bonus to att in PvP.

The cheap-and-sure alternative, Annika-Brakus-Kanbe, gets Annika's 88 physical, Brakus's 36.5 (50% of 73) physical and 48 fire, and Kanbe's 19.1 (33% of 58) physical and 48 earth, for a total of (88 + 36.5 + 48 + 19.1 + 48) = 239.6 pierce factor. So the difference is about 39.6 pierce factor points, or just under 4% att bonus.

With my stats, that difference translates to less than 200 att. For perspective, my Item Archive att bonus is 1083 and my att rune bonus is 330. Even if you have infinite real money to gamble on chest rolls until The Oracle spits out the ultimate generals, you still have to level them. For the amount of stam/energy it takes to level up generals past level 25 or so, there is vastly more return-on-investment in IA and runes. (...which is why att essence trade space is always so hard to find.)

I happen to have Gale available, so unless I win the lottery and can gamble until I get Kitsune, my best-available alliance works out as Annika-Brakus-Gale.