Baldrick

From what I know of Byleth, they made their living as a mercenary and had a soldier for a father. So it makes sense for them to have combat experience and be an adept tactician (a professor, less so). Robin is an amnesiac whose sole purpose was to be a vessel for a dragon god thing. They just kind of fall into the role of tactician, and be adept at it because they’re your avatar.

That is the weakness of GBA-style support conversations. It has already been addressed; Path of Radiance had chapter-based progression (which still was dependent on how often you used those characters), Radiant Dawn instead used base conversations and had supports as a gameplay-only mechanic, Echoes had act-based progression. Why did Awakening, Fates and 3H go back to the flawed GBA style? Well, it makes implementing a marriage mechanic easier. Coincidentally, all those games had an avatar to encourage people to marry their favourite character by proxy.

That’s not actually true for most games in the series. Most characters aren’t involved in the plot much because of permadeath, but support/base/other conversations that supplement minor characters’ plot appearance have existed for a long time. I haven’t played 3H, but the avatar compromising the development of other characters does not surprise me, it’s a consistent trend whenever the avatar has more importance than FE7’s Mark.

Most staff units would want her Rescue assist. For the other skill, I think Dazzling Staff 2 would give you the most bang for your buck. The HP condition is lenient enough, and Balms aren’t very useful IMO.

Orbs and feathers too. But whether it is worth spending fruits to get them is dependent on how much you value them relative to fruits.

That’s the norm. Very few grail units have a meaningful effect on the AR meta. Being able to inherit Atk/Spd Push and something else, or stack Distant Guard effects isn’t new or particularly exciting. That’s wrong, as someone who was excited about Travant, Nemesis’s prf is very cool. It has an interesting effect which might be complementary to his character. For people who care about the “face” of units, that’s enough to satisfy them. If people were expecting Nemesis to redefine the meta, to become the new Brave Ike or whatever, they were way too optimistic. Even the Mythic fairies don’t really compare to Azura as a support unit, what chance would a GHB have?

You're not restricted at all in who you deploy, unlike Resonant battles. Without Mythics, you can easily reach tier 17 or so. Reaching up to tier 21 may be possible if you don't lose any lift from being attacked, but Mythics give you a lot more margin. In any case, the non-OC mythics would be more than enough for that. Maintaining your tier is easy even without Mythics. I would classify that as doing well. If you want to "win", reach the highest tier, you do need to use Mythics, and likely OCs. But in any competitive scene, the units that give you the best chance of winning aren't necessarily the units you like.

The solutions to Thracia is to start doing mixed games banners with demoted again. A new hero banner sells on three units, the other two units are essentially free. The perfect place to put less popular characters.

That does not mean OCs “should” take 50% of the slots. Rather, they “should” take an equal share to every other game (~7%) No type of unit is objectively better than another, so it’s fairest to consider every type of unit, as in Othin’s list. Heroes is right on its quota. Tellius collectively is above its quota. If any added units are to “blame“ for Dheginsea not debuting as a Mythic, it’s the Tellius units.

Adult Tiki has two versions, that’s more than enough. Me too. I can finally put the demons of Bride Micaih’s banner to rest.

He’s literally “have your best unit in two places at once”?

And he’s the 4-star focus. I think I also saw Ena on the map. I like Dheginsea’s battle quote.

Remember with Seth verbally bitch-slapped Veronica? When Heroes was new and exciting, back when we could still believe it wasn't just a cynical cashgrab... Forging Bonds is good for getting to know the characters, but it's all just filler. They're not using the characters to their full potential.

As I understand it, you’re saying that there are too many OCs, and that this is a problem because they’re not important to the plot. I’m going to sheep Granderampel’s case here that many characters, even if not plot-important, are beneficial for the world building. I’d really like you to respond to his post. You say if Fjorm has just one sibling, that would have been better. In what way? For me, the root of the problem is badly written characters, no matter if they’re original or not, or plot-important or not. Reducing the size of Fjorm’s family does not improve the writing, so I question what is the point of doing it.

In terms of fulfilling relative representation, that's true. But I think that's the tail wagging the dog; the quality of the characters is important, not the quantity. (One of the unique aspects of the Fire Emblem series is the huge cast of characters). More quantity of characters means more effort is needed to establish or develop them properly, but the payoff is higher. Anyway, this logic doesn't only apply to OCs. For example, would it be better if Three Houses had never been made or had been a Judgral remake, since it introduced a whole bunch of characters that reduce the relative representation of Heroes? For that matter, every game should have been a Dark Dragon remake, that way there would have been plenty of space available. This is why I prefer to consider absolute representation.

That's why your suggestion to reduce the number of OCs won't help. There's no real difference between trying to handle 690 characters instead of 700 People should stop making OCs the scapegoat for the problems with Heroes.

Well, in the mainline games, how many characters are essential to the plot? Especially in the early games, plenty of playable characters don’t even have much characterisation. Of course, the difference is this game is a crossover, so it’s trying to handle hundreds of characters. Adding OCs on top does not help, but it is not the root of the problem.

Every character added pushes back every other character not in yet. There’s no rule that says Medeus can only be added as a Mythic, or that IS can only add Mythics once every other month. The key point is, what characters can afford not to be added. Even if you’re not interested Plumeria or any other OC, some people are. It’s unfair to suggest they shouldn’t be playable. Alts, on the other hand, are inherently superfluous. More characters means more expenses for IS, so every alt “steals” assets that could have gone to a character not in yet.

My problem with alts isn’t that they steal specific slots, but that they make it take longer until every character is in in some form. Who knows how long FEH will last; if it’s discontinued before every character is added, then it’s undeniable that every alt contributed to having less than full representation.

Arvis never fights us using Recover Ring. Narcian never fights us using an axe. Linus never fights us using Basilikos. Aversa never fights us using Aversa's Night.

Looking at other characters such as Titania, I'd say she has the same differences. Of course, every character in FE10 is older, but I think the art makes most of the difference for most of the characters.

No Dawn Brigade or laguz, so I'll keep trying on the dancer banner. It's the name of a high ranking bow in the Tellius games. The RD version has 1-2 range so I guess that's why it has Solo Close Counter.

I don't think the next Tellius banner needs to be specifically branded Path of Radiance. The relevant limited battles use either filter, and resonant battles have two filters per season and only have a point penalty for using off-bonus units.

I decided to chance a few pulls on the FE4 banner before I went for the tickets, and I’m glad I did.

This banner has bad timing, Altena has priority. At least it should last a while. So there's the Bride duo I was expecting, a cavalry dancer is a neat niche. Bad luck to whoever was wondering about Ayra being on the banner because Larcei's brother got renamed. Of course, she could always be on the TT banner.