Fire Emblem Heroes Topic: You knew this was coming!

[Meiousei]

I still want Soren or Kat to win. But clearly Ryoma or Takumi will. -_-****

[Luther Lansfeld]

where's pumpkin spice xander???

[Hunter Sopko]

where's pumpkin spice xander???

Saving it for a surprise Thanksgiving event clearly.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Just a note to folks doing the voting gauntlet: it is considered courteous to switch your front character to someone of a different colour from the character whose team you are on.

It helps your teammates (both your friends and random others you get assigned to) build to the achievements for using different colours in gauntlet matches more quickly, and also helps them win their voting gauntlet fights more easily if they aren't cheaping them out with a low-level character.

[Hunter Sopko]

Listen up, fuckstains. I'm getting sick of this shit where people have no fucking clue whay they're doing and can't even figure out a simple concept like not having your fucking leader be the same color (or person) as your character team. Its making all the shit I have to do twice as hard. Be fucking helpful or kthxdie

Well said, NEB

[Meiousei]

I normally keep dancers in front for most of mines. I don't swap until needed.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I ended up siding with Takumi in the final.  #makehoshidogreatagain, build a wall and make Nohr pay for it, etc, etc

[Hunter Sopko]

Literally the best of all possible outcomes. Thanks Twil and Laggy for helping my Level 1 Shanna cheap out the event (in NEB's parlance). And Gate, latecomer though he was.

Shanna had 1.15 BILLION points in the last hour, which might be the highest ever for a non-bonus hour?

[metroid composite]

Just a note to folks doing the voting gauntlet: it is considered courteous to switch your front character to someone of a different colour from the character whose team you are on.

It helps your teammates (both your friends and random others you get assigned to) build to the achievements for using different colours in gauntlet matches more quickly, and also helps them win their voting gauntlet fights more easily if they aren't cheaping them out with a low-level character.

Also, specifically, friend characters ignore difficulty scaling.  So like...put your +10 merge level 40 full SI character with your best seal in your front spot.  (Your best seal is probably Distant Def 3, Attack Smoke 3, Quickened Pulse, or Attack+3).  Also unlike Arena which is the opposite, I recommend general-purpose units that can win even with triangle disadvantage.  I do not recommend triangle adept units.

For quest purposes, green and colourless are usually the hardest to fill, so these are preferred (unless they match the army or you notice everyone on your friends list is already green/colourless).

(For all the above reasons, I use my +9 Nino.  Green, +9, can often double and kill red sword users).

[Luther Lansfeld]

Donald Trump defeated by a loli, just like god intended

i just use reinhardt because everyone loves reinhardt

[Hunter Sopko]

So I actually went and researched the top non-bonus time hours because the salt level on GameFAQs had risen to an appropriate level to pique my curiosity, and...


1. Ninian: 1,251 million (Dragon Gauntlet, Round 3 vs FCorrin, Day 2,10PM)
2. Ninian: 1,201 million (Dragon Gauntlet, Round 3 vs FCorrin, Day 2, 11PM)
3. Shanna: 1,157 million (SHL vs LHG Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Takumi, Day 2 10PM)
4. Camilla: 1,094 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 3AM)
5. Camilla: 1,026 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 10AM)
6. Camilla: 1,018 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 9AM)
7. Camilla: 981 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 8AM)
8. Takumi: 955 million (SHL vs LHG Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Shanna, Day 2 10PM)
9. Camilla: 950 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 4AM)
10. Camilla: 940 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 11AM)

11. Ike: 934 million (Choose Your Legend Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Camilla, Day 2 11PM)
12. Camilla: 914 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 8AM)
13. Camilla: 894 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 5AM)
14. Camilla: 864 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 6AM)
15. Camilla: 837 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 12PM)
16.. Shanna: 830 million (SHL vs LHG Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Takumi, Day 2 9PM)
17. Ike: 812 million (Choose Your Legend Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Camilla, Day 2 10PM)
18. Summer FCorrin: 769 million (Battle at the Beach Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Summer Gaius, Day 2 11PM)
19. Camilla: 762 million (WR vs PK Gauntlet, Round 3 vs Minerva, Day 1 6PM)
20. Tharja: 756 million (Mage Gauntlet, Round 3 vs FRobin, Day 2 10AM)


Shanna ends up at #3 overall. Pretty impressive. She needed to make up a 63 million gap in the last hour to win, and as you can see she got 201 million over Takumi's points that hour. Takumi just wasn't as heavily supported as say, Ninian or Summer Corrin where he could win despite Bonus Time. (Note: Summer Corrin never once got a BT in her entire third round win).

Also, we can be thankful for our bonus time, which prevents another Camilla in a lot of ways. (Lucina was held back by the first gauntlet only getting one set of flags for the whole thing, rather than per round. She still maxed out at 602 million for her best hour, which is still pretty impressive considering.)

From the way things were pre-bonus, people were holding all their flags until Round 3 and blowing them out immediately as soon as they could. The first half of the day for the first three Gauntlets reflects this.  I know the Bonus Time started in the Third Gauntlet (Mage Gauntlet) but I think it was more because people hadn't changed their strategy yet, and there were less bonus times overall. It just led to silly, lopsided victories that were boring for all involved (except fans of the characters I guess?)

Bonus time really does seem to
1) Spread out peoples' flag usage throughout the rounds, rather than hoarding for Round 3. Though this still happens to a smaller degree.
2) Spreads the teams out more. People have more incentive to join a possible loser- even in Round 3- since bonus time can improve your later rewards. The Per-Round incentive to join a low-population team was still there before, but the averages support that the "Feather Mercenaries" as people seem to be calling us now (hehe) preferred to support the winners rather than the losers in the early gauntlets. It was more viable back then, but once the Bonus Time started as we know it, the dynamic completely changed. I know backing the losers these days has been way more lucrative overall.
3) Believe it or not, it really does seem to support a team strategy. With resources like Oreo's Score Predictor people can more easily see when bonus times are or are not coming and adjust their output accordingly, and do. It seems that why Team Shanna had that many flags to blow in the last two hours to begin with- since as of even 4PM of Day 2 it was predicting a last minute bonus hour (which never materialized).

Weird that THIS is the thing that gets me into heavily digging into stats and theorycraft. Being lazy is really exhausting...

[Dark Holy Elf]

I think Team Shanna had a lot of extra feathers at the end because they were expecting more bonus hours. Some use score predictors, to be sure (I do too), but I don't think that's enough to explain it, since it's a pretty hardcore thing to look up. However, since Shanna was perceived as being the underdog and the multiplier increases throughout, a lot of Team Shanna was incentivised to hoard flags for the final day expecting some multipliers then, while Team Takumi supporters were incentivised to burn flags ASAP whenever he got a multiplier because he wasn't going to get many. Hence what happened at the end. Interesting anyway!


I think the gauntlet has amazingly failed at being a popularity contest and that kinda annoys me; we had four out of seven matches go against popularity this time (including all three of Shanna's wins) which is just bizarre; this gauntlet was won by a character that hardly anyone cares about.

Also, specifically, friend characters ignore difficulty scaling.  So like...put your +10 merge level 40 full SI character with your best seal in your front spot.  (Your best seal is probably Distant Def 3, Attack Smoke 3, Quickened Pulse, or Attack+3).  Also unlike Arena which is the opposite, I recommend general-purpose units that can win even with triangle disadvantage.  I do not recommend triangle adept units.

For quest purposes, green and colourless are usually the hardest to fill, so these are preferred (unless they match the army or you notice everyone on your friends list is already green/colourless).

(For all the above reasons, I use my +9 Nino.  Green, +9, can often double and kill red sword users).

Mmm, I don't think killing people with WTD is particularly valuable. Either your unit will be going to a team with a low-level main (at which point they'll stomp regardless of who you send), or they'll be going to a team with a well-built Level 40 who, since they are a different colour than you, will almost always be better at handling the colour you have WTD against. The only slight exception I will make is that if, for instance, you were on Team Chrom, then yeah Nino might actually kill some high-def sword-users better than he does. But if you were on, say, Team Katarina (or any blue team), that would virtually never be the case. So arguably there's a perk in hitting a different defence stat and/or range than the team you're on, too, though I dunno that this is significant enough to influence one's choice here.

I'll disagree with you slightly on Triangle Adept; I like getting Triangle Adept Raven users because they cover two colours. I suppose pure Raven would do that to some degree too, but hardly anyone runs that.

But it really must be emphasised that the most important advice is to avoid a colour match. Beyond that I would just recommend sending one of your best units, as you note (merges and seals are nice but general goodness takes precedence; I'd rather get a Reinhardt than a Gwendolyn, no matter how many merges and seals the latter has received).

[Meiousei]

I'm curious though. Notice that the last two VGs had characters from Elibe win. Maybe we can see more seasonal outfits with Elibean characters. I hope.

[Luther Lansfeld]

pumpkin spice xander or bust

[Dark Holy Elf]

Based on the actual votes (not the multipliers), the Elibean characters were the two least popular characters in the most recent voting gauntlet, so I wouldn't hold your breath or take this as some sort of sign.

(Ninian's popularity seems to be legit, to my disappointment surprise. She does have a nice design I guess.)

[Hunter Sopko]

On the flipside, the pure popularity contests were just boring. It's possible there is still some tweaking to do to the bonus formula. People will find the ways to maximize their gain, and it happens to coincide with the way to make upsets happen. So maybe something to do there while still allowing the possibility of the upset (again, Ninian, Summer Corrin, and to a lesser extent Ike still won), but I think Bonus Time is mostly working as intended. While I'll admit Shanna's first two rounds were more luck based, her win over Takumi was much more because people wanted to see her win/wanted to see Takumi lose. You don't just win on luck after 8 hours of non-bonus time.

And again, I guess it doesn't bother me as much since I'm not that attached to FE characters or the franchise. (Although I guess I'm a Shanna fan NOW ) I blame you people for getting me hooked. I have an odd habit of sticking with things sometimes...

Also I'm sticking my Gwen in front next time, just for NEB.

[Meiousei]

I will keep my dancers in front unless you want something else ^_^ also got a H.Henry with +Spd, -Def. So I'm ready FEH channel! Gimme what bait you got!

[SnowFire]

Sopko and NEB are both right.  Takumi still "fake" lost I believe because Shanna got more bonus time early?  The only thing that matters is total points gained ignoring the bonus.  Plenty of speculation for how that could happen, but the most obvious is that Takumi, being the favorite, had his supporters spend their flags instantly on "earlier" bonus times, knowing they wouldn't be frequent, while Shanna supporters ignored earlier bonuses expecting better later bonuses to spend banners on.  Individual incentives didn't line up with group incentives.

That said, even if NEB is right that the VG is terrible at being a popularity contest, who cares, Sopko is right that a crazy unpredictable event is more fun.  IS already DID the huge popularity contest to start FE Heroes off.  Not much to be gained from doing it again.

--
Also, not sure if humble brag or system change, but...  I'm getting WAY more Arena Defense wins lately.  Like.  Way more.  (Not that it matters, since they aren't cumulative.)  It used to be that I got a single Arena Defense win every blue moon, and for two weeks in a row I've racked up 8-10 Defense victories.  Am I just That Awesome?  Or are they counting, like, got 2+ kills as a moral defense victory or some such?  (I guess Arena Assault helps now too?  But that shouldn't matter THAT much...)

[Hunter Sopko]

IS has admitted that over the summer large portions of the playerbase would often get left out of the pool that pulled for Arena Defense. It was fixed sometime in September or October, though 8-10 is still pretty impressive. I usually just get 1, maybe 2

[SnowFire]

I was reminded why gacha sucks when I was foolishly tempted to waste real money and my orb stash on attempting to get a sacrifice for either Swift Sparrow or Steady Breath - the Short Haired Ladies banner for Katarina, or the Tempest Trials neo Brave Heroes banner for either Brave Ike or Brave Lyn.  Well, I have a 5* Sanaki, Lachesis, and Boey now.  Hooray.  (Okay, I actually like Sanaki...  except I did the math, and even with TA3 RaourRaven, some Brave Lyn builds can kill her through this, since mine is +Spd, -HP.  And the Cancel Affinity builds obviously wreck.  Alas.  And Cymbeline is weirdly bad.)  Well, expensive lesson learned.

I remember getting totally wrecked by the Michalis GHB when I tried it before (grumble grumble Lunge Cavalry units), but it completely sucked now - won first time on Infernal.  Flier emblem seemingly wins for free, Palla/Subaki/Tana/Minerva without Seals totally wrecked.

[Shale]

I used my free pull on the new banner and got Nephenee, then I went back to the mercenaries banner and got Lute. Huzzah!

[DjinnAndTonic]

Got my second off-banner Takumi.

Who should I give Close Counter to? Which kind of build benefits from it the most?

[Dark Holy Elf]

High-defence mages such as Merric, Boey, Sophia, Robin (either), or Spring Camilla are all good choices, though it does compete with Triangle Adept for raven builds.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Michalis strategy for giving low-level scrubs kills on the Level 40 version.

Team:
Xander (Quick Riposte and Swap)
Reinhardt
Bow Lyn
Anna/Michalis

Position Reinhardt and Lyn just out of enemy range on the right, in that order, with Xander and the fourth right behind. Reinhardt kills the zanbato cav, Lyn kills the rightmost flier, Xander swaps with Lyn, Anna/Michalis moves up two squares. My Xander is S supported with Reinhardt, and once I unequipped his A skill, he left enemy Michalis at 4 HP on the counter.  Xander then retreats, leaving Anna/Michalis to finish off enemy Michalis for the dual quest rewards.

This team also took down the Infernal version of the fight without too much incident, swapping a dancer in to replace the scrub.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Okay, so all my saved orbs are spent and now I need to figure out what to start doing to make a properly competitive team. I have two Takumi (the good one is L1, while the crap nature one is L40 w investments so that is fun decision I get to make now). To avoid making more trash units, I was hoping the DL metagaming crew would give some advice. In particular, who to my extra Takumi and Hector to. And also perhaps some advice on what low-rarity units I should focus on to supplement my decent 5* guys.

The List:

Red:

Black Knight
Arden
Joshua
Masked Marth
Lyn+ (Atk+)
Ryoma (Atk+)
Eldigan (Atk+, hp-)
Eirika
Roy
Caeda
CorrinM
Seliph(4*)

ATiki(4*)
Olivia(4*)

Tharja (Atk-, fully SI'd, sigh)
H!Nowi (Atk+, but is Nowi)
Celica (hp+,def-)
Celica (Atk-, hp+, sigh)
Arvis(4*)

Blue:
Ephraim(Res+,HP-, full SI'd buffer)
Nephenee
Effie (Atk+, Brave+)
Fjorm
Fjorm (res+,spd-)
Catria (4*,Atk+)

Ninian
Shigure (hp+,def-)

Lute (spd+,res-)
Reinhardt
BrideCaeda (spd+,res-)
RobinM
Ursula(4*)

Green:

Brave Ike(fully SI'd)
SummerXander
Amelia (spd+,Atk-,some SI)
Amelia (Atk+, spd-,new)
Hector (res+,spd-)
Hector (Atk-)
Cherche (Atk+, Brave+)
Camilla (spd+,def-)
Michalis (4*)

Fae (4*)

H!Henry (Atk-,Res+)
Julia (def-,res+,fully SI'd)
Deirdre (Atk+,def-)
Nino (4*, a couple good nature ones)
Cecelia (4*)


Colorless:

Takumi (Atk-,Res+, fully SI'd sadly)
Takumi (spd+,hp-, new)
Brave Lyn (Atk+,hp-!!!)
H!Jakob (Atk-, sigh)
Kagero (Atk-, Def+, sigh)
H!Sakura (not Atk-)

PA!Olivia (Atk-, sigh)

Genny (def+,res-, L40)
Genny (spd+, hp-, new)
Sakura (some SI, L40)
Lachesis (lol)
Clarine (4*, with lots of SI)


I have a host of good swordsmen and a dearth of everything else. My Horse Emblem game is particularly weak, but Brave Lyn is a new addition that should help. Armor Emblem is in good shape, to the point I'm not sure who to use. My Dragon game doesn't exist except for Ninian.  My options for Flier Emblem are three axes and Nowi. Ew. I really love Blade tomes so I am looking at replacing Tharja, but my other two Red Mages have prf weapons so it feels like a waste to use them. Maybe I should just feather up another Tharja? Alternately, maybe I should power up an Eirika/Nino pair for Green Blade? (Or feed Nino to a mounted green mage?)

Any advice is solicited and welcome. I'd much rather ask the DL instead of Reddit.