Baldrick

To be fair, the last few hours have been unpredictable, probably since the teams are so close in size. Seiros was pulling ahead slowly, now Lyn is gaining.

The size of the non-focus pool does not affect the probability of pulling a specific unit from the focus pool. On Sue’s banner, you have a 3% chance of a focus 5* and a 3% chance of a non-focus 5*. That roughly translates to 3% chance of Sue from a green orb (assuming a four focus unit banner, a three focus unit banner has a 4% chance), and 0.1153% chance of each of the green 26 non-focus units. Say there were 300 green units in the non-focus pool. You would have a 0.01% chance of pulling each one, but still 3% chance of Sue. The chance of Sue will always be higher than the 2.66% chance of pulling a specific legendary.

There's no point in obsessing over which continent has more or less of X or Y type of unit. Tellius can, and does imo, make up the deficit in other ways. In any case, Jugdral will easily win any underrepresentation competition so you might as well not bother complaining about any other continent's representation. Being an older unit isn't a bad thing, either. Every unit gets to be the flavour of the month when they're introduced, and Ike's lower BST is balanced out by being usable in the lower-BST metagame.

The girls are apparently from Hoshido and Nohr. Unless you were familiar with the Cipher lore, I don’t think they’d make much more sense in a Fates banner.

I actually have mixed feelings about the HM cap increasing incrementally. Not that I’ve maxed anyone, but if I did, I’d rather they be maxed permanently. Just do a one-off increase to some logical final cap (like 9999) and leave it be.

In Australia, we have preferential voting. Instead of one vote, you rank every candidate in order. So you can both vote for who you want, and vote against who you don’t want by putting them last. Realistically, only two parties can win the election, but it’s not a literal two-horse race like the US so voting for a third party actually makes a difference. The hook Fire Emblem has over other series is the large number of unique characters, and being limited to seven votes (and being able to vote for a character seven times) doesn’t really take advantage of that. So, CYL would also benefit from having a preferential voting system.

Chapter 1, Part 5 in Normal mode. @Othin you’re too fast

It could be as soon as four months, but likely six months to a year. It depends how soon it wins the poll once it’s an option for voting. If you just want to spark her, there’s no need to save at the moment. You’ll get plenty of notice to save the orbs you need.

Because superfluous TMs are a good source of money. Water Gun has a small but decisive availability advantage, and I contend you don't need Bubblebeam at all. The mandatory Cubone can be turtled/trivialised with your flying type, Water Gun should still handle that Hiker (see below) and the rival's Growlithe/Charmeleon fall to Dig. Once you reach Celadon, you can pick up Ice Beam, between that and Dig you don't need any water coverage from Game Corner and Pokemon Tower. At that point, there's no reason not to go pick up Surf I tested it using VC Red, and I found Clefable reaching level 18 was the point it started being able to one-shot the Geodudes with Water Gun. The Graveler was a comfortable two-shot, admittedly, but worst case scenario is you eat the 25% chance of Selfdestruct, and you can reach Lavender Town without having to beat any more rock-types. So I maintain the extra power on Bubblebeam is overkill. Incidentally, these are the simulation results I got:

In FE terms, it’s turtling. The more exp/levels you get, the higher your stats will be, which will increase the reliability of your strategy. So the later you fight Misty (the strongest trainer in the pre-Cut section), the less time you waste resetting for RNG. Water Gun does the job...

Bulbasaur also needs a lot of grind to beat Brock. Vine Whip is level 13. You could Leech Seed stall, but that is very inefficient. The only way to quickly get past Brock is with Squirtle. You’ll need to train a Spearow to help with the rival, training a Pikachu on top of that to beat Misty is a significant time investment. And two minutes of extra walking is supposed to be too much of a time investment. Those are hard sells without grinding. Your sleeper would need to be quite a high level to avoid being shredded by Starmie’s Bubblebeam. Charmander’s Ember is better than Tackle/Scratch, but is still inefficient. If they didn’t have terrible speed, sp def, and two x4 special-based weaknesses, they would be a threat. Yes, those fights are just as notable. Past Pokémon Tower, you can get Surf at any time. Getting it before Silph Co. isn’t difficult, and makes the fights in there much easier.

Some extra spending money from selling TM01 is also nice to have. Effectively comparable isn’t really an improvement or a notable power boost. It takes a couple of minutes. Unless you are speedrunning, it’s really not a big deal. What kind of team composition is capable of beating both the rival and Misty as soon as you reach Cerulean, without spending a lot more than a couple of minutes grinding? The mandatory Hiker in route 25. If you choose Charmander, TM12 is your only reasonable option. That Hiker isn’t infamous. He’s an exp piñata.** In any case, Water Gun will definitely be sufficient, Bubblebeam is overkill. The Tower Rival’s fire type is best dealt with Dig. Unlike Geodude, you don’t have 4x effectiveness so the power difference is not overkill. Surf is a huge upgrade, is mandatory, and unlike Bubblebeam, is not gated behind a difficult boss fight.** There’s no logical basis to suggest you would get Bubblebeam ASAP but not Surf ASAP. ** Let’s compare the Rock Tunnel Graveler to Misty’s Starmie. Note that the Graveler is apparently an infamously tough opponent, whereas Starmie apparently can easily be fought whenever you feel like it.

True, but their attack isn't great. I think their best use is taking advantage of Sing. Bubblebeam is better in a vacuum. But my argument is, Water Gun comes early enough to better help you through the awkward beginning when your options are very limited and your team isn't up and running yet.

If you feel that way, that's fair enough. It's not reasonable for me to ask everyone to vote the way I'd like them to. I can add that to my list of demands once my COVID-Blood Pact is completed. Farfetched Heroes was the designated "Popular Character not yet in FEH" banner, and that seems to be discontinued. It's obviously too late now, but the way to solve it would have been to make Farfetched the CYL banner and do something else for Ike/Roy/Lyn/Lucina. It'd be an indication that you can vote for whoever you like, but characters already in won't get an alt out of it (unless they're Owain).

I would, but 85% accuracy puts a damper on it. It's effectively 68 BP Of the eight that learn Mega Punch that you could catch before Body Slam becomes available, three have an 40 BP stab move, one has a 65 BP move, two aren't physical attackers anyway. That just leaves Nidoqueen and Geodude that get a notable boost from it. Routing is pretty important. Team composition is too, the experience you need is dependent on that, and so how many trainers you can afford to dodge. Misty's Starmie is higher level than anything on Nugget Bridge, Route 6, Route 11, and all but one trainer on the SS Anne (not the rival). So I think it's logical to tackle her after those. Route 9 and Rock Tunnel does have a lot of water-weak trainers, but a lot of them are Hikers. Geodude and Onix will be one-shot by Water Gun as well, and they make up 9 of the battles on those routes. Water Gun is good for up to 16 - 18 battles before Surf, compared to Bubblebeam being good for up to 14 with the most logical routing. Even if you only want to give it credit for 7 - 9, note that Water Gun is a tier below Submission (good for 2 parts of 1 battle), and two tiers below Fire Blast (good for up to 7 battles)

Oh yeah, that was aimed at the general tone of the thread, not you specifically. I just decided to pick on your post. Much as I'd like to believe that the other CYL winners won because they were well written, it doesn't seem that way to me. 13 of the 16 winners so far have been lords, and the other lords are consistently around the top 20. There's also a strong trend towards recency bias and quirky/meme characters; the key to getting a lot of votes is not being well written, but being memorable or a main character. Veronica and the Gatekeeper aren't anomalies in that sense. What makes a character well written is just too subjective to make an impact compared to other factors. It's true that the more popular a character is, the more they will sell and so it makes sense for them to get more versions. But popular characters will likely get lots of versions on the banner lineups that IS decides; CYL is the only banner lineup not decided by IS, so I see it as an opportunity to use a different method of picking characters.

Mimic should be situational. By the time you reach Saffron your team should be competent on its own. Mega Punch down, it's not that great. Most that can use it have decent STAB moves, Horn Attack, or aren't physical attackers. If Ice Beam's availability puts it over Blizzard, I think the same about Water Gun and Bubblebeam. Water Gun may be weak, but it helps you through Mt Moon and Nugget Bridge. (You could beat Misty as soon as you reach Cerulean but that'd require a lot of grinding.) Bubblebeam never really gets a chance to shine, and isn't a long-term prospect. Self Destruct/Explosion are usable, they can work as a finisher. You could even spam them if you buy a lot of Revives. Seismic Toss is situational. It's kind of like Dragon Rage, it's never quite good enough to use over a standard attack move.

CYL and VG have been like that since the very start, the latter with even lower stakes (only the satisfaction of one's favourite character "winning"). The harassment of Gatekeeper's VA might be new, but I vaguely recall there was some other time when a VA was harassed.

I don't think it's that important. There's a whole archetype based around a sympathetic character who doesn't join your army for tragic reasons; and they tend to be decently popular (e.g. Eldigan was the 4th highest ranked FE4 character in CYL1). Kein and Alva were playable before February 2017, but that doesn't make them interesting characters (that said, they still have the potential to be with some character development). What it comes down to is, not judging somebody's reasons for liking a character. If they want to vote for an OC villain, an NPC, or even just a cool-looking character they know absolutely nothing about, their vote is just as good as anyone else's.

Even if he wasn't popular, he is a Fire Emblem character, and so deserves one version in Fire Emblem Heroes. He even has some personality to work off of. I'm kind of concerned at the attitude that he and Veronica aren't "actual characters", that has some elitist implications. It may be tough on Chrom fans, but there's nothing wrong with the five versions you already have to play with.

No avatars as playable. The implementation of them has consistently negatively affected the gameplay balance, the characters and the plot, in order to flatter the player and make them a powerful, beloved, noble saint. In particular, the emotional impact of the Belhalla Massacre would almost certainly be undermined by the inclusion of the avatar. Awakening turned their bittersweet “sacrifice yourself to kill the bad guy permanently” into “kill the bad guy permanently with no downside because random bullshit”, because nothing bad is allowed to happen to the character who represents the player. But then again, FE4 has fanservice in it. So I guess I’m just a hypocritical elitist who hates Awakening because it is new.

Do you accept mech drafts for your pilots? I gather you can mix and match in this game.

The problem with Grima is he doesn’t have a consistent origin or characterisation. We don’t see him interact with his creator, or with anyone to see how he forms the view of the world he has in Heroes.

IMO the purpose of a tier list is to help a player make a more informed choice regarding “which unit should I (deploy, promote, give strong weapons/exp/statboosters to)”. If it’s something only one or two characters can do, the player doesn’t have much of a choice. It’s information a walkthrough should provide.

Possibly you feel they are different cases because for Matthew and Sothe, acquiring items is part of their job description, whereas Arden is (meant to be) a combat unit/castle defender who happens to have an event hard coded to him reaching a certain spot in the map. Personally, I feel a tier list has a different purpose to a walkthrough. Both thief utility and character events should be covered in the latter.