Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links

[redlight]

1 hour ago, TheWill said:

It's no real surprise. The two new banners this month both the most hated banners in this games existence. Hopefully this means a break from 2-person banners, OCs, alts and Awakening/Fates, but Radiant Dawn isn't till January... So what's the New Heroes banner this month? I do hope it is Archanea, but I'm doubtful.

I will say that Adrift was the banner with the strongest dislike I've seen in the community, but it performed decently in both the US and Japan (mind you that's actually a bad thing as the game in it's first year performed well with almost all new heroes banners, but now Heroes can only manage to get in the top 20 for most of it's banners and this is a rather recent game that's easily accessible). Definitely better than the Conquest banner, which performed poorly, but weaker than Genealogy's banner. The banners recently that have done well from off the top of my head that I researched just now from SensorTower as a source are LB, L!Marth, L!Tiki, Genealogy for Japan (was meh in the west, but broke into the top 10 grossing apps in Japan). I can't remember brave heroes. Brave Redux was rather meh. L!Eirika, Conquest, Hrid and Muspell didn't do well

Edited December 8, 2018 by silveraura25

[Hawk King]

Just as my initial fears predicted, Surtr was a huge mistake.  Before you could buff and support any +0 bonus unit to get all 20 kills. Even my +Atk +10 Fjorm with the boosted bonus unit stats and significant Tactics/Drive support can’t do shit against Surtr... Do I need to run Trilemma on one of my +10 healers and give Fjorm Cancel Affinity?? That would work, but fuck that. 

On 12/7/2018 at 5:35 AM, Diovani Bressan said:

I used Marth with refined Falchion and double drives (Atk/Spd), Corrin with refined Yato and Support with Azama, and Titania with Triple Tactic.

Lies. That would have 3 infantry so the Tactics support wouldn’t work. 

[Diovani Bressan]

39 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

Lies. That would have 3 infantry so the Tactics support wouldn’t work. 

Oh, that's true. Sorry, I confused this team with my Summer Innes Team, which I was leveling up the one I got from the Legendary Banner. I used Veronica instead of Corrin.

[DehNutCase]

9 hours ago, XRay said:

And dual phase armors are not as dangerous? Dual phase armors are also intuitively simple to use. Based on how players describe them on this forum, you just have them simply march forward to your objective; at worst, maybe you will do a Swap or something to avoid triangle disadvantage.

It's mobility that makes a unit useful, and dangerous, on player phase.

Armors don't have mobility. (I give 2 range armors a pass because they have 2 range, but most people are talking about melee armors.)

9 hours ago, XRay said:

That is why I use kill count; it is not perfect but it gets the point across. Flashing Blade is better, but it is not so much better to the point of warranting a nerf.

There's two types of overpowered---one is where a unit is so much better than everyone else in a certain role that nothing comes close, and they're good enough outside of that role that they have no real weaknesses. This is pretty much staves in a nutshell.

The other type is when a unit is good everywhere, even if not necessarily the best in every category. I consider Reinhardt this type of overpowered---he's 3rd place in terms of mobility support (behind dancers and Bow Lucina), he's in like top 20% or so for player phase and enemy phase combat, and his initiation range is 2nd place (behind Bow Lucina again). The problem isn't that he's stellar in any category, it's that he can keep most of his strengths in one category even when focusing on another---TA Raven Rein doesn't lose his absurd initiation range, for example, nor does CC Vantage Rein lose his player phase combat.

 

Both types can be considered Pareto Optimal units---any unit that wants to outdo Reinhardt in a certain category will be weaker than Reinhardt in another category (if you want better combat you're going to sacrifice mobility, if you want better support you're going to sacrifice combat, etc.), whereas units that can outdo staves in their specialization don't exist at the moment.

 

Flashing Blade and co. would be overpowered the way Reinhardt is, not the way staves are. And Reinhardt is significantly harder to nerf than staves, make no mistake, even if staves are more 'broken' in the classic sense. If Flashing Blade and co. get broken they're a nightmare to fix, so keeping their power level low is the safe design choice.

9 hours ago, XRay said:

If we are talking about the AI, there is nothing the AI can do that can seriously pose a threat to competent players with sufficient access to resources. If the player is having trouble with Vantage-Quick Riposte units or any type of Enemy Phase unit, a Firesweep nuke shuts all of that down. Arena is stupid easy once you achieve a score past pony teams. For Arena Assault, you can pick counters; if you are a whale, you can just build performance teams and not bother with counters. For Aether Raids, you have 5 team slots, which means you have a 4 member core team like in Arena Assault. With a 4 member core team, a player with sufficient resources should have no excuse for not being able cover 100% of enemy builds.

Forcing everyone to run a bunch of hard counters is very centralizing game design, and not necessarily fun. The point of a game is to be fun, particularly a low key game like FEH. By making checks worth running a lot more teams are 'good enough' to clear all maps, but if you push units enough that only hard counters can deal with units then teams would just be filled with units that hard counter a bunch of unit types.

 

Like, just because my hyper-offensive team crushes literally every possible PvP configuration doesn't mean the game is fine if only teams like mine can crush PvP maps consistently. You sound like you'd be fine with that, since my teams are cheap as hell to build (the only 5* exclusives came with my units), meaning technically everyone has easy access to my kind of teams---but it's better to have tons of viable team archetypes than forcing everyone to run strictly defined teams.

 

This is mostly a philosophy thing, though---I prefer games balanced around checks than counters, but you sound like you don't care either way as long as counters exist.

[XRay]

15 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

It's mobility that makes a unit useful, and dangerous, on player phase.

Armors don't have mobility. (I give 2 range armors a pass because they have 2 range, but most people are talking about melee armors.)

Armor March is sufficient for most people, and with their high BST, the team can afford to lose a C slot stat buff or two and still out BST buffed units. We might not like their low mobility, but I have not heard veteran armor players complain too much about their mobility yet, so I do not think their mobility is a big deal.

15 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

There's two types of overpowered---one is where a unit is so much better than everyone else in a certain role that nothing comes close, and they're good enough outside of that role that they have no real weaknesses. This is pretty much staves in a nutshell.

And they did not restrict Atk/Spd Solo from staff units. If staff units can have their nuke and support cakes and eat them, giving fliers and ponies access to Flashing Blade is not out of line.

Instead they restrict them from running Steady Stance 4, which makes no sense in my opinion as staff tanks/walls are no where close to anything resembling broken.

25 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Flashing Blade and co. would be overpowered the way Reinhardt is, not the way staves are. And Reinhardt is significantly harder to nerf than staves, make no mistake, even if staves are more 'broken' in the classic sense. If Flashing Blade and co. get broken they're a nightmare to fix, so keeping their power level low is the safe design choice.

Reinhardt is already nerfed pretty hard, trenches ruin him in Arena and Arena Assault, and if players really have problems with him in Aether Raids, they can run Cavalry School (O) and Panic Manor (O) to blunt his Atk.

Giving Flashing Blade to fliers and ponies will not make them overwhelmingly dominant. Armors already do that by simply steamrolling enemies.

41 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

This is mostly a philosophy thing, though---I prefer games balanced around checks than counters, but you sound like you don't care either way as long as counters exist.

We have that in Arena and Arena Assault, where the best meta defense teams are unfairly discriminated against due to having low BST.

I want Aether Raids to retain the unforgiving nature that the lower tier old Arena had. I want a mode where players have to cure cancer every week to retain their position. The stakes are also pretty low, where even if you do not do too well, you are not losing out on that much Heroic Grails compared to the top players.

[DehNutCase]

6 minutes ago, XRay said:

Armor March is sufficient for most people, and with their high BST, the team can afford to lose a C slot stat buff or two and still out BST buffed units. We might not like their low mobility, but I have not heard veteran armor players complain too much about their mobility yet, so I do not think their mobility is a big deal.

There's a difference between 'usable' and broken. Armors are 'usable,' but their mobility limits them from being broken on player phase---even armor march itself is only a stopgap because it costs positioning. A marched armor is only comparable to infantry rather than strictly better, despite the ability to cross forests, because of that positioning requirement.

6 minutes ago, XRay said:

And they did not restrict Atk/Spd Solo from staff units. If staff units can have their nuke and support cakes and eat them, giving fliers and ponies access to Flashing Blade is not out of line.

Instead they restrict them from running Steady Stance 4, which makes no sense in my opinion as staff tanks/walls are no where close to anything resembling broken.

Atk/Spd solo is at most +6/+6 in ideal conditions, it'll never be more than a 12 stat A-slot. It's good, but it's not dangerous in the way Flashing Blade is.

-blade tomes are dangerous because other stuff could exist later that push them to be stronger than intended (skill inheritance, better support skills, etc. all made -blade a lot stronger than original printing). Flashing Blade is dangerous the same way---it'll always be as strong as the best special you can use with it, meaning if it's completely unrestricted its value will keep going up over time, which limits how strong you can make specials.

 

The Steady Stance restriction is odd, but also beside the point.

6 minutes ago, XRay said:

Reinhardt is already nerfed pretty hard, trenches ruin him in Arena and Arena Assault, and if players really have problems with him in Aether Raids, they can run Cavalry School (O) and Panic Manor (O) to blunt his Atk.

Trenches never nerfed ranged cavalry, only melee cavalry cared about those. The ideal case for a unit is to be right behind a trench when they're trying to advance against a ranged cav, which gets them smacked to death by ranged cav. If they're 2 squares behind then they either can't get past the trench (they'll have to end turn on the trench, which does exactly jack all vs. horses), or they're horses.

 

And you're confusing counters with checks for the second part. Dull ranged technically counters -blade tomes, dull range is also dogshit. It's the same reason G-Tomebreaker isn't a counter to Lewyn, if you run bad skills you're a bad unit---being 'cute' makes you worse, not better, when it comes to performance. Reinhardt can get away with running things like Hardy Bearing and Lancebreaker, but that's because the majority of his combat comes from his weapon slot, so he has so many free skill-slots it's not even funny.

Cavalry School and Panic Manor don't even help vs. Rein anyway, they're not consistent enough to matter in all match-ups, and it's being consistently good that matters in Aether Raids, not being able to win the match if you win a coinflip like guessing the right trap tile or having your buildings on the right side.

6 minutes ago, XRay said:

Giving Flashing Blade to fliers and ponies will not make them overwhelmingly dominant. Armors already do that by simply steamrolling enemies.

Units end up broken a long time before they reach the overwhelmingly dominant stage. And armors are only dominant if game modes cared all of jack all about mobility, which they didn't, until turn count limits came into play. First in story missions and now in Aether Raids.

 

I rated Reinhardt highly for his mobility before turn count mattered, but that's because mobility is one of those traits that are exceedingly likely to end up being a clear requirement.

 

And, if you think armors are so overwhelmingly dominant, why don't you run armor teams yourself? I don't run them because I think they're bad, not because I think they're overpowered messed nobody should touch.

6 minutes ago, XRay said:

I want Aether Raids to retain the unforgiving nature that the lower tier old Arena had. I want a mode where players have to cure cancer every week to retain their position. The stakes are also pretty low, where even if you do not do too well, you are not losing out on that much Heroic Grails compared to the top players.

I want to have fun, there are games designed around being hard---most MOBAs are like that---mobile games on the other hand, should not cater to the hardcore crowd. There should be things designed for the hardcore, like Abyssal Difficulty or Tactic Drills, but a mode where only the hardcore enjoy needs and gives actually relevant rewards (you do know a lot of whales whale to collect, right? and grails are how you collect GHB units and such) is a good way to kill the game if you make it needlessly difficult.

 

There's a time and place for a game mode to be difficult, something you're heavily incentivized to play every single day is not one of them. I personally enjoy DotA a lot---I'm Divine, which makes me like... the top 3% or something? But I enjoy DotA despite how difficult it is as a game because I choose when I want to deal with how difficult it is, not because I'm forced to play a DotA game every bloody day.

[XRay]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

There's a difference between 'usable' and broken. Armors are 'usable,' but their mobility limits them from being broken on player phase---even armor march itself is only a stopgap because it costs positioning. A marched armor is only comparable to infantry rather than strictly better, despite the ability to cross forests, because of that positioning requirement.

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

Units end up broken a long time before they reach the overwhelmingly dominant stage. And armors are only dominant if game modes cared all of jack all about mobility, which they didn't, until turn count limits came into play. First in story missions and now in Aether Raids.

 

I rated Reinhardt highly for his mobility before turn count mattered, but that's because mobility is one of those traits that are exceedingly likely to end up being a clear requirement.

 

And, if you think armors are so overwhelmingly dominant, why don't you run armor teams yourself? I don't run them because I think they're bad, not because I think they're overpowered messed nobody should touch.

Armor have enough BST to the point where it does not really matter where they are positioned because they will just kill whatever they fight. If a fight does matter and they will lose if they fight, then some Swaps are all they need to reposition themselves to have another teammate win the fight. Armor players rarely need to retreat.

I do not run them because I do not like their mobility and I do think Armor March is a hassle to use to fix their mobility issue. I also only have enough resources to build an Enemy Phase Ward Armor team for Arena Assault scoring, which I am not great at using, and I feel more comfortable using Firesweep nukes and Player Phase nukes in general. However, veteran armor players do not see Armor March positioning requirement as a huge problem, and since they have more experience than me at using armor units, I am going to hold their views and opinions in higher esteem than my own.

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

Atk/Spd solo is at most +6/+6 in ideal conditions, it'll never be more than a 12 stat A-slot. It's good, but it's not dangerous in the way Flashing Blade is.

-blade tomes are dangerous because other stuff could exist later that push them to be stronger than intended (skill inheritance, better support skills, etc. all made -blade a lot stronger than original printing). Flashing Blade is dangerous the same way---it'll always be as strong as the best special you can use with it, meaning if it's completely unrestricted its value will keep going up over time, which limits how strong you can make specials.

It will always be under ideal conditions. Player Phase nukes breaking formation and not have any adjacent allies is the norm. It makes Life and Death's no healer restriction outdated at this point.

Any Special that Flashing Blade units can abuse, other units can abuse them too. Enemy Phase armor units can freely abuse Aether, and non-armor Enemy Phase units can too if they give up Distant Counter. Releasing a strong Special is not going to magically make Flashing Blade units that much better when lots of units also have access to skills that increase the frequency of Special triggers.

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

The Steady Stance restriction is odd, but also beside the point.

That is my whole point. It is the reason why I argued with Ice Dragon in the first place. Some skill restrictions do not make sense. I think Flashing Blade's no flier and no pony restriction is just flat out dumb, and I do not like the fact that Steady Stance 4 has an equally pointless restriction.

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

I want to have fun, there are games designed around being hard---most MOBAs are like that---mobile games on the other hand, should not cater to the hardcore crowd. There should be things designed for the hardcore, like Abyssal Difficulty or Tactic Drills, but a mode where only the hardcore enjoy needs and gives actually relevant rewards (you do know a lot of whales whale to collect, right? and grails are how you collect GHB units and such) is a good way to kill the game if you make it needlessly difficult.

 

There's a time and place for a game mode to be difficult, something you're heavily incentivized to play every single day is not one of them. I personally enjoy DotA a lot---I'm Divine, which makes me like... the top 3% or something? But I enjoy DotA despite how difficult it is as a game because I choose when I want to deal with how difficult it is, not because I'm forced to play a DotA game every bloody day.

But we have those modes as Arena and Arena Assault. Having one mode catered to hardcore players is not that much to ask for. In Aether Raids, the difference in rewards between the top players and middle players are not that high either. I am in Tier 15, getting 48 (20 weekly participation + 28 weekly rank) Heroic Grails per week, and I think you are in Tier 17 getting 52 Heroic Grails per week, that is only like a difference of ~8% more than me. If I am lucky and advance to Tier 16, then it would just be 4%. In Arena, the stakes are much higher with players in Tier 21 earn 20% more Orbs than players in Tier 20 ([5+1]/[4+1]=120%).

Edited December 8, 2018 by XRay

[Vince777]

9 hours ago, TheWill said:

It's no real surprise. The two new banners this month both the most hated banners in this games existence. Hopefully this means a break from 2-person banners, OCs, alts and Awakening/Fates, but Radiant Dawn isn't till January... So what's the New Heroes banner this month? I do hope it is Archanea, but I'm doubtful.

I really doubt it's Archanea.

They would have proudly advertised that along with the revealed Radiant Dawn and Binding Blade banners a few weeks ago.

[redlight]

17 minutes ago, Vince777 said:

They would have proudly advertised that along with the revealed Radiant Dawn and Binding Blade banners a few weeks ago.

The thing with those banners is that people were vocal about those games having low representation. Archanea has a decent number of heroes in the game so there isn't any "am I a joke to you" kind of situation for Archanea. Thracia not being mentioned leads me to believe there won't be anything for it until after March

Edited December 8, 2018 by silveraura25

[Vince777]

2 minutes ago, silveraura25 said:

The thing with those banners is that people were vocal about those games having low representation. Archanea has a decent number of heroes in the game so there isn't any "am I a joke to you" kind of situation for Archanea

I don't agree with that at all. Archanea did have a bunch of units on release date but so did Elibe. Ever since the game was released, there had only been a single Archanea banner released and that's a year and a half ago.

I hope you are right, I'd love to see an Archanea banner as Heroes yet still lacks so many of it's pivotal characters. 

 

[redlight]

1 minute ago, Vince777 said:

I don't agree with that at all. Archanea did have a bunch of units on release date but so did Elibe. Ever since the game was released, there had only been a single Archanea banner released and that's a year and a half ago.

I hope you are right, I'd love to see an Archanea banner as Heroes yet still lacks so many of it's pivotal characters. 

 

Archanea had banner in Spring 2017 with 2 GHBs. It will be a little over two years for BB to get at least one banner

[DehNutCase]

41 minutes ago, XRay said:

Armor have enough BST to the point where it does not really matter where they are positioned because they will just kill whatever they fight. If a fight does matter and they will lose if they fight, then some Swaps are all they need to reposition themselves to have another teammate win the fight. Armor players rarely need to retreat.

And that's broken... how?

Being bad at running away is a disadvantage, not an advantage.

 

Offensive teams don't need to run away either, because every threat is dead after the first turn. They just run away better if you want to play that way. (Or build teams that way---I don't build teams that way because I dislike Firesweep for the same reason I dislike armors, they're slow.)

41 minutes ago, XRay said:

It will always be under ideal conditions. Player Phase nukes breaking formation and not have any adjacent allies is the norm. It makes Life and Death's no healer restriction outdated at this point.

...Breaking formation is for people who don't care enough to leverage Ally Spur or Drives. Which I do. Like, a lot of my Abyssal GHB clears use Ally Spur, player phase nukes breaking formation is only the norm if you don't care about playing optimally.

Solo has enough consistency problems that I wouldn't run them outside healers even if I had the same amount of Atk/Spd solos as Life and Death.

41 minutes ago, XRay said:

Any Special that Flashing Blade units can abuse, other units can abuse them too. Enemy Phase armor units can freely abuse Aether, and non-armor Enemy Phase units can too if they give up Distant Counter. Releasing a strong Special is not going to magically make Flashing Blade units that much better when lots of units also have access to skills that increase the frequency of Special triggers.

That is my whole point. It is the reason why I argued with Ice Dragon in the first place. Some skill restrictions do not make sense. I think Flashing Blade's no flier and no pony restriction is just flat out dumb, and I do not like the fact that Steady Stance 4 has an equally pointless restriction.

On paper, Bold Fighter Slaying Weapon Armors are better at using Galeforce than fliers or horses. I don't use Bold Fighter Slaying Weapon Galeforce because they have some pretty fucking obvious problems when it comes to consistency. Do you seriously not see how different unit types use specials differently? Ophelia would be significantly more broken as a flier or cavalry than an infantry or armor.

It takes more than skill access or BST to be good at using certain sets. Olwen isn't Reinhardt because she doesn't have the right stat spread, and armors aren't Reinhardt because they don't have his horse.

41 minutes ago, XRay said:

But we have those modes as Arena and Arena Assault. Having one mode catered to hardcore players is not that much to ask for. In Aether Raids, the difference in rewards between the top players and middle players are not that high either. I am in Tier 15, getting 48 (20 weekly participation + 28 weekly rank) Heroic Grails per week, and I think you are in Tier 17 getting 52 Heroic Grails per week, that is only like a difference of ~8% more than me. If I am lucky and advance to Tier 16, then it would just be 4%. In Arena, the stakes are much higher with players in Tier 21 earn 20% more Orbs than players in Tier 20 ([5+1]/[4+1]=120%).

You're asking for way more than one mode. You're asking for a mode where everyone except the hardcore dislikes, and you want everyone to be forced into playing that mode every day. Like, I don't mind if other people fuck horses, ideally they don't do it in front of me, but if they try to force me to fuck horses I'm going to either bury them in court or bury them in the ground.

 

The proper way to give things for hardcore players to do is with things like Abyssal GHB and Tactic Drills, which, incidentally, already fucking exist.

[Vince777]

17 minutes ago, silveraura25 said:

Archanea had banner in Spring 2017 with 2 GHBs. It will be a little over two years for BB to get at least one banner

Binding Blade also had 3 GHBs at that time. The one difference is this one banner with Katarina. Binding Blade has been deprived but Archanea had been greatly as well. Hence why it would have made sense to mention it at the same time they did the BB and RD banners. 

We'll see soon.

 

[Hawk King]

@DehNutCase Why do you hype up Reinhardt so much. He fell off his pedestal like over a year ago. DB4 might have given him a little bit of life again, but he is no where near dominant like he used to be. There are so many units who can bait and kill him with ease, and he can be killed with an offensive approach as well. And in the players hands, he needs to pick an offensive build with Dire or a defensive build with Owl or Raven. He can’t do both so he is limited to just one phase.

I use Rein on AA, if an enemy ain’t red, he dies to a counter attack unless he has Lancebreaker against a lance enemy or I have spread Pain across the map. And with the deflect magic seal there are a lot of reds who can handle him with ease as well.

Armors are the only units that even have a chance of giving me trouble in the Arena anymore. High BST, ward/tactics support with a difficulty to get them away from teammates, super broken weapons and skills. And in the players hands, they are brain dead easy to use. They can bait enemies with VF for simple kills, and they can charge with BF and galeforce. They can also run builds that perform equally well on both phases. Bait in and kill one enemy while charging galeforce and the on the player phase, kill a second enemy, activate galeforce, and kill a third enemy. 

“Awe man armors suck because they can’t  move around or use reposition effectively, they just kill all the enemies instead!” 4/10. 

I would gladly trade one enemy Surtr for 4 enemy Reinhardts every time. That would make seven enemy units and it would still be easier. 

Edited December 8, 2018 by Hawk King

[DehNutCase]

57 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

@DehNutCase Why do you hype up Reinhardt so much. He fell off his pedestal like over a year ago. DB4 might have given him a little bit of life again, but he is no where near dominant like he used to be. There are so many units who can bait and kill him with ease, and he can be killed with an offensive approach as well. And in the players hands, he needs to pick an offensive build with Dire or a defensive build with Owl or Raven. He can’t do both so he is limited to just one phase.

The way I use Reinhardt is significantly different from the way you use Reinhardt. The fact that a +1 Neutral Bow Lyn is on my main team should tell you that it's not her combat, exclusively, that makes me bring her to my main team. And Reinhardt has the exact traits outside of combat Bow Lyn has, on top of a more versatile skill selection from being a tome user rather than a bow user.

 

How do I put this, you know and I know Reinhardt doesn't have the best combat in the game, so why is it that you have problems with armors but I don't? In theory armors should crush ranged cavalry because they're strong (high BST) where ranged cavalry is weak (low as hell BST), but that never ends up happening because I don't use my horses like a chipmunk.

Edit: Sorry, that came out a bit insulting. But the thing is there's a reason I can use Ally Spurs consistently, because I actually work at using horses to their full potential. Armors are very good at giving limited amounts of good options, but horses are good at giving large amounts of options, some bad, some good, and sometimes you have to go through a lot of trouble to find the good options.

And the reason I use horses over armors is that, occasionally, they get good options armors straight up can't use. Blocking a ranged unit in is something highly mobile team finds a lot easier than an armor team, and it's a 'full solution' to Aether Raids because you have as many turns as you have left after that to break pots and finish the unit off. You don't need the option to win in Aether Raids, but horses have tons of options they don't, strictly speaking, need, and the player can pick whatever option they prefer to use.

Edited December 8, 2018 by DehNutCase

[Hawk King]

@DehNutCase wtf?

You don’t face a lot of powerful armors in the Arena because your team doesn’t score high enough, and you are able to deal with the ones you do see because you run lower scoring skills that allow you to trivialize them. For people that actually try to score as high as possible in the Arena, Reposition and 200 SP skills aren’t really in play. Otherwise I would say that a LV1 3* Olivia is the best unit in the game, because she can dance and she makes the opposing team much weaker and easier to deal with for your combat units.

The current Arena meta is to feed as many of the kills to your bonus unit/s. You clearly are not doing this so you really shouldn’t argue about how good certain units are compared to others. You are playing a completely different game.

In the hands of the AI, Cavalry are much easier to defeat than Armors. My current Arena team is literally incapable of killing Surtr right now. And I have Caeda on the team... Because of that mistake of a unit I have to drastically switch some things up to get through this Arena season. Neither Reinhardt nor Bow Lyn ever had that effect on me. 

For the record, I only have two Armors fully built up (+10) on my Arena teams. Sadly, I have to feed bonus units their kill so my Armors don’t get a chance to shine.  As far as bonus units go, the easiest season for feed bonus kills by far was when Brave Ephraim was my bonus unit. Give him some buffs, put him in range of the enemy  and they all dropped like flies, regardless of color. 

 

Aether Raids is a completely different case altogether. It allows for very flexible team building and actually requires it because of the secondary objective of breaking pots and the turn limit. 

[DehNutCase]

8 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

@DehNutCase wtf?

You don’t face a lot of powerful armors in the Arena because your team doesn’t score high enough, and you are able to deal with the ones you do see because you run lower scoring skills that allow you to trivialize them. For people that actually try to score as high as possible in the Arena, Reposition and 200 SP skills aren’t really in play. Otherwise I would say that a LV1 3* Olivia is the best unit in the game, because she can dance and she makes the opposing team much weaker and easier to deal with for your combat units.

Yes, you think that I got where I am from never running into armors. Because you can't imagine someone is good enough to deal with them without having high BST. The entire impression I got from talking to you is, frankly, that you're bad at the game.

 

You don't even bother doing the math to see if my units are capable of killing +10 armors after 1 stack of savage blow, 2 stacks, or if they took an enemy phase combat before hand.

I bet you even think I run different teams in Aether Raids specifically to deal with armors.

 

I don't. My first season of Aether Raids I used the same team for all but one match, and in that match I brought the Lyn Reinhardt combo in, not out. (The team was Cordelia, Azura, Aversa, Horse Lyn.) And the reason I don't post screenshots of my team stomping armors in Aether Raids---whereas I post them styling on horses---is because armors are fucking trivial.

[XRay]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

And that's broken... how?

Being bad at running away is a disadvantage, not an advantage.

Armors generally not needing to retreat means that they can get to point A to point B and not care about enemies on the way. The bad thing that may happen is that enemies may kill themselves before you get to the Aether Structures. Having units that can somewhat ignore the triangle, and in a way tactics, and just curb stomp enemies on either phase is sort of a problem.

2 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

...Breaking formation is for people who don't care enough to leverage Ally Spur or Drives. Which I do. Like, a lot of my Abyssal GHB clears use Ally Spur, player phase nukes breaking formation is only the norm if you don't care about playing optimally.

Solo has enough consistency problems that I wouldn't run them outside healers even if I had the same amount of Atk/Spd solos as Life and Death.

I use ranged flier nukes to clear Abyssal content and they do fine without Spurs and Drives. Nukes just need the bare minimum of support to work and Atk/Spd Solo compliments that style.

2 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

On paper, Bold Fighter Slaying Weapon Armors are better at using Galeforce than fliers or horses. I don't use Bold Fighter Slaying Weapon Galeforce because they have some pretty fucking obvious problems when it comes to consistency. Do you seriously not see how different unit types use specials differently? Ophelia would be significantly more broken as a flier or cavalry than an infantry or armor.

It takes more than skill access or BST to be good at using certain sets. Olwen isn't Reinhardt because she doesn't have the right stat spread, and armors aren't Reinhardt because they don't have his horse.

Of course she would be significantly better as a flier, but would that make fliers overall broken? I do not think so. Missiletainn is locked to her as a character but Flashing Blade is not. Flashing Blade as a skill is nowhere as powerful as Missiletainn. As a flier, she also cannot run Special Spiral-Hardy Bearing and she will have to make do with some other B slot with Heavy Blade as the Sacred Seal to continue spamming area Specials, which in turn makes her more vulnerable to Vantage.

3 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

You're asking for way more than one mode. You're asking for a mode where everyone except the hardcore dislikes, and you want everyone to be forced into playing that mode every day. Like, I don't mind if other people fuck horses, ideally they don't do it in front of me, but if they try to force me to fuck horses I'm going to either bury them in court or bury them in the ground.

 

The proper way to give things for hardcore players to do is with things like Abyssal GHB and Tactic Drills, which, incidentally, already fucking exist.

The same could be said for Arena, where the objective is scoring high rather than creating a team that performs well. I prefer competition that is based on raw performance and tactics rather than babysitting and cheer leading to obtain arbitrary points.

[DehNutCase]

29 minutes ago, XRay said:

Armors generally not needing to retreat means that they can get to point A to point B and not care about enemies on the way. The bad thing that may happen is that enemies may kill themselves before you get to the Aether Structures. Having units that can somewhat ignore the triangle, and in a way tactics, and just curb stomp enemies on either phase is sort of a problem.

It's not 'armors don't need to retreat,' it's 'armors are bad at retreating.'

Offensive teams also don't need to retreat if you build them that way---you run firesweep offensive teams designed around hit and run, so they hit and run. But there's nothing stopping an offensive team from just running in and wiping out every single threat.

That is. 'Horses don't need to retreat.' And 'Horses are good at retreating.'

29 minutes ago, XRay said:

I use ranged flier nukes to clear Abyssal content and they do fine without Spurs and Drives. Nukes just need the bare minimum of support to work and Atk/Spd Solo compliments that style.

Again, Atk/Spd solo is good enough, which is significantly different from broken. Good enough is a prerequisite to being broken, but just being good enough doesn't mean it's broken. It's a good option, and if you don't have any other ones because you're a staff, you run it.

Life and Death is significantly more consistent and just as good if you need it to be. +6/+6 and +5/+5 is identical for offensive purposes if you can get +1 all stats on demand from ally Spur rather than ally Drive, meaning the only significant difference is the bulk difference and the differing positioning requirements. And Solo has a significantly worse 'fail case' if you fail to meet its positioning requirements. L&D is +6/+6 if you don't meet the spur requirements, solo is +2/+2 if you aren't alone. L&D is +7/+7 if you meet the spur requirements, which is identical to solo's +7/+7 when you meet its requirements.

 

Like, you look at a downside and try to spin it into a upside for some reason, just like with armors and retreating.

29 minutes ago, XRay said:

Of course she would be significantly better as a flier, but would that make fliers overall broken? I do not think so. Missiletainn is locked to her as a character but Flashing Blade is not. Flashing Blade as a skill is nowhere as powerful as Missiletainn. As a flier, she also cannot run Special Spiral-Hardy Bearing and she will have to make do with some other B slot with Heavy Blade as the Sacred Seal to continue spamming area Specials, which in turn makes her more vulnerable to Vantage.

This one thing not making the whole group broken is how you add tons of barely not broken things into a group and which makes the group broken.

You also severely underestimate Flashing Blade. Galeforce is easily as good as guaranteed AoE specials---and they have to jump through similar amounts of hoops. And like I've said to Ice Dragon, you really only need to land the AoE once a match, so special spiral is redundant. (And she can run Hardy Bearing as a S-seal as a flier regardless.)

He thinks there could be problems with enemies starting split up or coming at you one by one, but honestly if the rest of your team can't deal with that kind of map the rest of your team is actual garbage.

29 minutes ago, XRay said:

The same could be said for Arena, where the objective is scoring high rather than creating a team that performs well. I prefer competition that is based on raw performance and tactics rather than babysitting and cheer leading to obtain arbitrary points.

That's fine, but only if you get nothing from it other than just competing.

 

That is, I'd be fine with Aether Raids being even more performance based as long as it rewarded literally nothing, which lets people not play the mode if they don't want to.

That's where Aether Raids has the biggest difference with things like Tactics Drills or even the Abyssal Relay Defenses. If you wanted the rewards from those, and only the rewards, you could just look up a guide and be done. Aether Raids, on the other hand, you can't do that for because PvP is hard to write guides for---and you also need to play every single day if you want to not be stuck getting significantly less than you could. The other modes are one and done if you don't like them.

 

Regarding arena, it's also an issue, but a lot less than Aether Raids because even if you didn't like the mode you only need to play once a week for max rewards, which is significantly better than once a day for people who don't like the mode.

Edited December 9, 2018 by DehNutCase

[XRay]

2 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

Like, you look at a downside and try to spin it into a upside for some reason, just like with armors and retreating.

A downside is irrelevant if the downside can be easily addressed, mitigated, or it simply is not that big of a deal.

Just as you would not use Reinhardt with Dire Thunder as an Enemy Phase unit, you do not need armor units to have 3 movement spaces if 2 movement spaces are sufficient.

For Atk/Spd Solo, the downside to not being able to utilize Spurs is hardly an issue when the nuke can still kill stuff without it. Drives and Goads can still be applied if you wish to utilize combat buffs.

2 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

This one thing not making the whole group broken is how you add tons of barely not broken things into a group and which makes the group broken.

You also severely underestimate Flashing Blade. Galeforce is easily as good as guaranteed AoE specials---and they have to jump through similar amounts of hoops. And like I've said to Ice Dragon, you really only need to land the AoE once a match, so special spiral is redundant. (And she can run Hardy Bearing as a S-seal as a flier regardless.)

He thinks there could be problems with enemies starting split up or coming at you one by one, but honestly if the rest of your team can't deal with that kind of map the rest of your team is actual garbage.

I do not think we will agree on Flashing Blade. I do not think giving fliers and cavalry access to Flashing Blade is that bad, and at best, it will bring more Galeforce units with less optimal stat lines up to par to Cordelia and players will be able to field more of them on one team.

And I do not see a reason to not run Special Spiral on Ophelia as it essentially turns her into a pseudo-Desperation nuke with "infinite Spd." With the Blazing series, Ophelia's "first hit" ignores combat buffs and the triangle while dealing 1.5 times the extra damage. With Hardy Bearing, Ophelia basically has an undeniable "Desperation" effect on her "second hit" or first actual combat hit. Her "second hit" is not as strong, but 60 Atk is generally more than sufficient to finish the job when the "first hit" wipes out most of the enemy's HP. If she is a flier running Hardy Bearing instead of Heavy Blade, Ophelia becomes dead weight after her first round of combat since she lacks the raw damage output of a one shot nuke and she will not survive a counter with her abysmal bulk.

2 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

if you want to not be stuck getting significantly less than you could.

You get less than top players, but not significantly less. The difference you and me is 4 Heroic Grails out of 52, which is like about an ~8% difference, and I play pretty sloppy. Compare that with Arena where the difference between Tier 21 and Tier 20 is 1 Orb out of 6, which is 20% more. And in Arena, I put in the effort to not play sloppy but I still get shit score because I am not running some stupid armor units as my Arena core.

2 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

Regarding arena, it's also an issue, but a lot less than Aether Raids because even if you didn't like the mode you only need to play once a week for max rewards, which is significantly better than once a day for people who don't like the mode.

I guess they should do something about that. They could give players 7 Aether potions or something every week.

Edited December 9, 2018 by XRay

[Vaximillian]

This right here is what I wouldn’t really mind seeing:

It will still be an alt, but I like her design a lot.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Vaximillian

[DehNutCase]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

And I do not see a reason to not run Special Spiral on Ophelia as it essentially turns her into a pseudo-Desperation nuke with "infinite Spd." With the Blazing series, Ophelia's "first hit" ignores combat buffs and the triangle while dealing 1.5 times the extra damage. With Hardy Bearing, Ophelia basically has an undeniable "Desperation" effect on her "second hit" or first actual combat hit. Her "second hit" is not as strong, but 60 Atk is generally more than sufficient to finish the job when the "first hit" wipes out most of the enemy's HP. If she is a flier running Hardy Bearing instead of Heavy Blade, Ophelia becomes dead weight after her first round of combat since she lacks the raw damage output of a one shot nuke and she will not survive a counter with her abysmal bulk.

Mind the reason that I don't think you need special spiral is that it's pretty easy to get the entire enemy team with the first AoE in PvP, and in PvE you can run something like Heavy Blade in the S-slot so that she has it up every other combat---meaning you only need to hit 2 people per AoE for it to be effectively up 'all the time.'

[Troykv]

2 hours ago, Vaximillian said:

This right here is what I wouldn’t really mind seeing:

It will still be an alt, but I like her design a lot.

It would be an Alt kind of; but a very special case because it gives us a "What If" instead of just a Class Change.

[Vaximillian]

12 minutes ago, Troykv said:

It would be an Alt kind of; but a very special case because it gives us a "What If" instead of just a Class Change.

Yeah, and that was why I wasn’t (and still am not) up in arms against Minizura. It’s at least creative.
(looking at you, everyone else)

[redlight]

One thing that irks me abou Minizura is how awkward her sprite looks