Fire Emblem Heroes Topic: You knew this was coming!

[Captain K]

* Gunter??: Captain K fanboyism.  With Eliwood, could do a Ward Cavalry / Hone Cavalry team, and throw in Carrot Xander as well for coverage.  Needs a Reinhardt/Olwen/Priscilla/Clarine ideally too so that DEF tanks don't totally own them.  (Also Clarine's eyes are creepily large, Captain K.  Just sayin'.)

Yeah but have you seen her horse-riding hips?  She is T H I C C.

Tharja's high on the tier lists for some reason (she doesn't seem THAT good).

She's got good speed and built-in Darting Blow 3.  Think she hits 39, which doubles 99% of the game.  She's probably less good in the context of skill inheritance, but she requires little work out of the box.

My Horse Emblem team is currently:

Eliwood 39/47/33/20/32 with Durandal, Moonbow, Darting Blow 3, Axebreaker 3, Ward Cavalry.  Smashes things on attack.  Might replace axebreaker with swordbreaker since the few things he doesn't double are red swords.

Jagen 40/45/27/25/38 with Silver Lance+, Iceberg, Fury 3, Desperation 1 (Filler), Fortify Cavalry.  Laughs off all magic damage, then kills damn near anything in the game with Iceberg.  Not sure what to put in slot B, he's pretty effective as-is.

Clarine 35/27/33/22/35 with Fear, Mend, Heavenly Light, Resistance+3, Live to Serve 2, Ward Cavalry.  Just fast enough and tanky enough to survive a hit from most anyone, then reduces their attack for her allies to follow up with.

Frederick (4-star still, fuck you feather system) 37/42/27/35/14 with Hammer (will be Hammer+), Luna, Fury 1 (will be 3), Wings of Mercy 2, Ward Cavalry.  Hits hard, laughs at physical damage, destroys any armor that isn't Draug (and who runs Draug?).  Hates magic, but we have Jagen to deal with those.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I agree that I wish the game had more content, although I'm a big enough FE fan that I enjoy the random(ish) tough fights like 10th stratum and arena can provide. Definitely wish there were more story/paralogue maps. Agreed that Lunatic Chapter 9 was a lot of fun, in particular!


Tharja is good because -blade tomes are excellent with the right support, and she has an excellent stat build (Atk and Spd are more important than the other stats). I don't use her mostly because I have Eirika (who is great at buffing them) and thus if I'm going to use a -blade tome, it won't be one that occupies the same spot on the weapon triangle as her. Darting Blow is one of the best A skills, too.

Triangle Adept is pretty excellent on a lot of people since you should be fighting your strengths much more often than your weaknesses assuming you use a balanced team. It's extra good on anyone with a -raven tome (Henry, Robin-M, Cecilia) since it works with them. Vantage... I dunno. In theory it's good on people who hit once really hard. I haven't played with it much. Characters with 1-2 obviously make great use of it.

You could run a dragon team with a non-dragon green troubleshooter just in case. You could also give your blue dragon(s) Lancebreaker and/or B Tomebreaker to help you cover that weak spot. EDIT: Though honestly dragon teams are in a worse place than cavalry teams or flier teams because there's only one dragon-themed buff and all dragons hit res, leaving you with limits as your only way to deal effectively with res tanks.

[Meeplelard]

FEH feels like it needs to implement the general weekly events the same way other Gachas do, which has just enough content to last you at least a few days, and rewards you for doing that.

Grand Hero Battles are fine and all, but they're only 2 fights, and only come up every other week. 


That said, did another pull on the Easter Banner.  Nabbed me a 4* Camilla (normal variant) which was unexpected!

[Fenrir]

Yeah I noticed the harder difficulties but that's honestly not enough! Especially since i can already jump to like Lunatic chapter 6?
I expected the FTP FE to have worse gameplay than mainline FE but more content, but in fact it has worse gameplay and less content

[Grefter]

Hard and Lunatic very much are not scaled to finish one then start another.  Lunatic is like, 6 chapters behind Hard or something lake that off the top of my head.

And yeah you pretty much need to be okay with random enemy trash on fixed maps and Arena to be digging it.  It isn't very Fenrir.

[SnowFire]

No more Arena quests?  I sure hope they get replaced with something, as the feather intake rate was already very slow.  If they aren't replaced, it's gonna get even slower, and the Orb uptake rate is gonna take a big hit too.

Anyway, before I knew Arena quests were going away, I decided to whale it up in hopes of spending money now to see what 5*s I got naturally.  Winner is...  Laggy Emblem.  Got a natural 5* Palla off the Peg Knights banner.  No Hinoka, but I did get PERFECTION for my blue...  sheesh, weapon-triangle-the-team with both Ruby & Sapphire weapons.  No Eggmilia for a mage, but I guess running Ninian for magic damage + coverage + dance dance revolution is still not horrible?  So Palla/Subaki/Minerva/Ninian?

Looking at CaptainK's team...  hrmm.  Having a Resistance tank DOES seem like a very smart idea to bait out Reinhardts and the like, so upgrading Gunter probably not so wise when I can just steal his cavalry buff, so Horse Emblem may have to wait.  Specifically...  dang, I could REALLY use Cecilia or Priscilla.  Cecilia would offer green coverage and with Roy's Weapon Triangle, she'd also be a Kagero hard-counter and Takumi soft-counter, as Elf noted.  Priscilla would have sustain and better RES (although still not quite Captain K's Jagen's).  Sadly, good luck at guaranteeably drawing them.  I think this is punishment for nominating Cecilia in a CKDL awhile back to laugh at her.  Now I need her, and she's still insulted and ignoring me.  Alas.  (Hell, I could even break theme and take, say, a Felicia or something instead for the purpose.  Which I don't have either.  Although maybe sticking with the default "just throw in Ninian as a 4th" works too.)

As for Dragon Emblem, the whaling (and general good luck) got me 5* Young Tiki and...  Nowi...  as well.  (Read: I can have Young Tiki steal Nowi's Lightning Breath+ if I want, because haha no to using Nowi.)  Still want Fae though.  Problem with a green non-dragon trouble-shooter is that some of the trouble that needs shooting by a Dragon team are Red Falchion users, who mess up your average green anyway for free.  Suspect that if Fae still never shows, overloading on Blues with some Lancebreakers or the like is the way to go, and maybe running a colorless non-dragon - certainly Dancehax on my 4* Jeogre has served me well for dealing with problematic Lucinas and the like even in my current team that isn't Dragon Emblem.  So Y. Tiki / Ninian / Corrin-F / (Jeogre or Klein) or something.

[Meiousei]

I guess with the random luck the F2P Hector account got (a 2nd Spring Xander with +HP, -RES which is better then +RES, -SPD, and a +SPD, -ATK Ninian) I could go along and put the ID up for that account: 1779250665 (Tehiri).

[VySaika]

Decided to draw a bit more on the spring banner in hopes of Xander, Camilla or Lucina. Instead I gota second spring chrom. Well, +1 to my existing one I guess?

On the subject of green, the vote gauntlet left me with enough feathers to promote another unit to 5, and I went with my Hp-/Def+ Camilla. Gets me a 5* flier, and I may enjoy brave blitzing just a liiiiitle too much so she got the promote over my Res-/Def+ Subaki. He mangles reds well enough at 4 anyway to cover her.

[Captain K]

Not enough room left on my phone to download the new update, so this is a good time for me to cut the umbilicial and delete this.

[Laggy]

The arena changes seem to have flattened BST out almost completely for matchmaking. The criteria, in order of impact, seems to be now:

1. Level+rarity (no shock, you want 5* and Lv40 units)
2. Merge bonuses
3. BST (except that they seem to be applying a penalty to armored units and a bonus to all non-melee infantry units in the calculation, so everyone ends up roughly the same value; only exceptions are outliers like Donnel, and the three divine dragons Y. Tiki/Nowi/Fae. Even then their advantage doesn't seem to be much.)
4. Skill inheritance (seems to be very minor. Like ~6 points total difference from a team with no SI to a team with full SI on every slot)

The gap between 3 and 4 is much smaller than the others. Full +10 merge teams see scores of about 770 at Advanced with no deaths. No merge, 5* Lv40 teams seem to clock in around 650.

The arena quests are gone (boo, I liked them) but they implemented another 2 daily orbs event running till the 17th. Like every gacha game ever they seem to be following the model of having SOME sort of currently running event to add F2P orb gain, whether it be a daily quest thing or daily login bonuses, so I expect this trend to continue.

Snowfire: Your biggest consistent feather gain is absolutely clearing the 4k point threshold on arena every week. This basically means "use the bonus hero, always, and have as close to a Lv40 5* team as possible, then try for a deathless 7-win streak on Advanced." You definitely don't need 5* across the board either, I think just one and 4* everything else still gets over 4000 with a perfect run. The bonus hero is mandatory though, as it doubles your score.

That's 2500 a week. Earn a defense for 500 more. Any ranking bonus atop of that is gravy. There are random ass handouts (to the tune of 5k feathers) and stuff like the Voting Gauntlet that'll supplement it. It's slow, yeah, but it's way better than it was at the start of the game.

[SnowFire]

Fair enough.  I basically don't play the game enough, because I don't have any L40 characters, so the Arena bonuses are a bit less.  Although...  I actually *do* have an L40 character now, but not one I use in Arena!  (4* Sakura.  I use her for "Jagen"ing up lowbies, as she easily outtanks less-than-level-30 enemies and heals trainees, but her offense is bad enough she won't steal kills and can soften up enemies.  And she gets actual XP from healing, unlike an overleveled unit getting practically nothing from low-level kills.)  Also, at higher levels, my team has gotten worse, perhaps because of better comps / use of skill inheritance?  Like.  I could clear a mix of Advanceds / Intermediates, no big deal, from level 25-34 or so.  Now that my team is L35-37 or thereabouts, they get their ass kicked by Advanced a lot more, and even sometimes lose Intermediates.  Well, hopefully that'll be fixed once I train up my new 5*s.

Anyway, convenient I scored a 5* Subaki before, as the Speed Rune quest requires a ground-up Subaki.  (Just not like meat.)  Also, the orbs quest involves...  Cecilia?!  And I can get a free neutral one if I grind up freaking Niles?  Sigh.  Well, since Captain K is leaving, it seems the game might be telling me to do Cavalry Souls after all.  So weird to spend 22k feathers on a character I don't even care that much about, but I think she might still be what the doctor ordered, if the game isn't gonna give me my preferred option of a Priscilla...

[Laggy]

Yeah, there's basically no avoiding that arena matchmaking is a lottery and lacks consistency (plus also you don't get a lot of points) until you get a level capped team first. But if you do want dem feathers that should be your goal pretty much.

I would not blow feathers on a team/char comp you don't actually like, for the record. <_< It's not like you need 5* across the board to get things done. People have cleared all content using only the free units on rotation and from GBH, literally never doing a single pull.

[SnowFire]

Using a good Green will make Carrot Xander good indirectly, which is the important thing.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Sounds like the new matchmaking algorithm makes my 5* Level 40+1 death god Olwen go from liability for scoring to an active benefit. Well, I'll be enjoying this.

Is there a bonus to cavalry (that is, one to offset their slightly lower stats) or are they still marginally worse?

[Grefter]

Sounds like that Mounted Armored Dragon unit they inevitably release is going to be good for Defense points as all the BST penalties keep them in much lower star range in solo maps than most.

[Laggy]

The current theory is:

For BST arena calculations: All Tome Users, Bow/Shuriken/Healers and Dancers receive +10, while Melee Cavalry receives +5, and Armoured units receive -10, all lining up with infantry stats

Cavalry tome users fall under tome users. They have similar BST to tome users anyway (very slightly worse, Nino/Linde is 147 while Olwen is like 145 IIRC, and a difference of 2 BST can be observed within other tiers as well.)

Cavalry definitely came out as the winner here.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I messed around with things today and confirmed that Sheena is no longer worth any more than my other 5*. Welp, never using her in the arena again (unless she's a bonus character). Life's good man.

[Meiousei]

Well...that was some interesting rolls.

• +Atk -Res M Corrin
• +HP -Atk Lyn
• +SPD -DEF Clair

No Faye. No Alm

On the other hand, my Corrin is now useful so YAY. I'll probably level Clair and Corrin to the normal levels.

[Meeplelard]

Did another 5 pull on the Echoes banner because I'm swimming in orbs and just keep getting more.

Got a 4* Hawkeye, which is nice for Skill Inheritance, and 5* Ryoma who unfortunately is +HP, -Atk.  Still, gimped Ryoma sounds good enough to be worth using anyway.

[Meiousei]

So we have our next set of arena: https://twitter.com/FE_Heroes_JP/status/853529266620776448

Sorta explains why they are using Cecilla in the challenges.

[Laggy]

Heads up: for the current set of quests with F. Robin and Navarre re-runs, you don't have to do the GBH fights for the quests involving killing them, at least the low level ones.

Navarre is in main story 5-1 and F. Robin is in 4-4/4-5. If you didn't bother leveling either of them up even level 1 F. Robin/Navarre can kill these story mode versions.

No such luck for the level 35+ F. Robin and level 40+ Navarre kills though (Lunatic doesn't get that high so you have to tackle the actual GBH fights for those).

Arena is brutal nowadays. I'm getting 688-690s scoring possibilities (usually around 690) which means teams of +merge bonuses around +8 total (although my own team is +3 which means the matchmaking throws you up higher than your actual team) and they're usually fully decked out skill inheritance comps meant for defense (ranged unit dominance, breaker skills all over the place, etc.) Horse Emblem in particular is terrifying and really hard to avoid a unit death on. I'm pretty convinced it's the all-around best comp at the moment, Reinhardt and to a lesser extent Olwen are just really rough units to deal with.

Ended up replacing Lucina for Olivia just because I badly needed a dancer to get more consistent runs, and managed to pull off a 4832 deathless run last night after blowing a dueling crest. Rank 1299 at time of writing. Considering that I barely broke 4k in my last best streak this week because of constant deaths/giving up streaks to try for better ones, I'm pretty happy with that.

[Meiousei]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P8JIATdJoM Welp. Who was saving for Ike again? Cause the one that made me go EEEEEEEEEE was Soren (Senerio). So yea...green orb madness.

Edit: The reddit has the datamine. https://www.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemHeroes/comments/67gwmu/world_of_radiance_datamine_25_april_2017/

[metroid composite]

So...I decided I wanted a triangle adept character specifically with raven tomes as they are asymetrically very good with the weapon triangle.  Searched around, found a near perfect IVs Robin (+ATK -HP.  I also had the option of +ATK -RES, but after discussions with Laggy we decided RES/DEF matter more on triangle adept users for making things tink).  Promoted him to 5 star.



I already had a 5-starred +SPD -HP Olivia (who has Fury and Renewal).  I decided I needed a green.  Nino was the only good green I had as an option.  I could go either +ATK -HP or +SPD -HP.  Speed is more useful when taking down red sword lords, as many of them are fast.  But I decided that was Robin's job.  Speaking with Laggy as he already runs Nino, he said she always one-shots blue, so I wasn't worried about that.  The thing I really needed her to deal with things that threaten Robin such as greens (Julia in particular is a big problem).  We ended up deciding that +ATK was actually better for that.  There was actually quite a bit of discussion over the special, but once we had settled on +ATK, it made it so that Moonbow was enough to one-shot almost any Julia.  (And for the most part, Nino having a weapon that slows down specials, and just a ton of damage, her super usually won't matter, so Julia was the test case we focused on as her counter hurts).



Techically among greens this actually leaves me somewhat vulnerable to Anna, as Anna has potentially 41 speed with an A skill, and quite a bit of res.  I'm still running a dancer, though, who as a red could also just fight Anna, so I'm not too concerned.  The other fast green is like...Minerva, and RES is her low stat so she gets one-shotted.

[Shale]

40 orbs on the Radiance banner: One off-banner Lyn.
20 orbs on the Heroes banner: Ryoma and +ATK Hector.

Fair enough.

[Meeplelard]

60 Orbs on the Tellius Banner: Soren and Off-banner 5* Karel.  Can't really complain.  Got a 4* Florina and 4*...something else.
20 Orbs on the Heroes banner: Takumi and off-banner 5* Reinhardt.  I cannot complain about this one!
20 Orbs on the Xander Banner: Jack and shit.  Bah I say!


Oh and of course, a crap ton of Odins along the way.  Everyone has that one troll summon that always shows up that you never use, and in my case, it's Odin.