"Ask Fire Emblem Heroes Questions and Get Them Answered Here" Thread

[Hasechi]

thank @Xenomata  for giving me the video about forma soul, I think I just waste it on Spring Veronica. I had spent it before you gave me advice

Edited February 17, 2021 by Hasechi

[Othin]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

That's not 0 orbs though. It's, the orbs you otherwise spend only the chances of you ever getting the unit with the skill you might want is far lower. Why even pull for some other unit you might want when you could just never spend any orbs and only ever pull free summons? Sounds, silly, but it's the natural extension of your logic. If you want good units, you're going to have to pull for them, likewise, if you want good skills on your good units, you're going to have to pull for them. You can happen to pick up some good units when pulling for good skills and vice versa, but the end result is that you will need to pull, and if a banner is guaranteeing you a unit, well then that's a pretty great way to get the thing you want. In other words, if you want Spurn on your B!ke (a really good combination), it's best to pull for it now while it's guaranteed you can get it. Aside from the downside of just plain not having it now to play around with, it might not even be all that good a skill any more by the time you do manage to get it through happenstance. Your logic of "Well I'll probably get it some day anyway" even applies here, because in pulling forty times for that guaranteed Kris, you have a better than average chance of picking up a second Kris (and thus a second Spurn) along the way (or potentially a Spurn by luck and then the liberty to choose some other unit that looks appealing). I've happened to pick up plenty of premium fodder via luck over the years, but the best skills on my best units are there because I intentionally sniped units I knew would leave a good inheritance.

Orbs only benefit you if you use them eventually, but you can use them on things that are less likely to be redundant. Seasonal and legendary units have much lower odds of showing up as duplicates than main-pool units, and a specific main-pool unit has much lower odds of showing up as a duplicate than a skill category that shows up on 6 main-pool units (and will probably be added to more in the future).

A second Spurn has very diminished returns relative to the first. The whole point of caring about Spurn is that it lets you build the best tank in the game. Once you've already done that, a second one can only let you build a redundant or inferior one. Using a spark banner to get both a Spurn and a unit you want for their own sake is more reasonable, but you have to make sure there's a unit you actually want. And you're more likely to get "Spurn and a good unit" from the New Heroes rerun, where a higher fraction of the 5* pool is actually good.

[jameslove001]

10 hours ago, XRay said:

Sara and Sephiran deserve special mention for the skills they provide. Sara has Return which is basically Reposition for staff units, so this is a pretty big deal for staff units who can function as Firesweepers. Sephrian's Tannenbaton and Odd Recovery are great for supporting supertanks; compared to Yato, Geirskögul, and Caduceus Staff, while Tannenbaton does not quite rank up there with those three, it is just shy of being top tier.

Thanks again (I condensed your response for brevity). That was such a great comprehensive evaluation of my ranks. One of the coolest was figuring out how to use Mordecai who is one of my favorite characters in the whole set of games. Now, maybe, he can become one of my favorite units. I think my learning curve is going to be figuring out teams and how to use them. I think in my limited experience I haven't really figured out how to run specific teams (galeforce/firesweep/whatever kind of teams there are). I think it is time to figure out how to run teams to be more efficient and overcome my Level 19 Aether Raids/Arena.

[Jotari]

45 minutes ago, Othin said:

Orbs only benefit you if you use them eventually, but you can use them on things that are less likely to be redundant. Seasonal and legendary units have much lower odds of showing up as duplicates than main-pool units, and a specific main-pool unit has much lower odds of showing up as a duplicate than a skill category that shows up on 6 main-pool units (and will probably be added to more in the future).

A second Spurn has very diminished returns relative to the first. The whole point of caring about Spurn is that it lets you build the best tank in the game. Once you've already done that, a second one can only let you build a redundant or inferior one. Using a spark banner to get both a Spurn and a unit you want for their own sake is more reasonable, but you have to make sure there's a unit you actually want. And you're more likely to get "Spurn and a good unit" from the New Heroes rerun, where a higher fraction of the 5* pool is actually good.

Well we're getting into specifics of Spurn territory there (which I do think is good enough to carry around two of, especially when it comes with a unit that also has Joint Drive Attack, another pretty useful skill). But the actual specifics aren't really relevant as how useful it is an individual skill will be up for everyone to determine. I was more arguing against the point that "No skill is worth 200 orbs" which I disagree with. If you want a skill then 200 orbs for a guarantee pull (along with a statistically high chance of another 1 to 2, or even 3 other 5* unitsof decentish quality) for it seems reasonable to me. And any argument against it to the effect of "Well you might pick it up later any way on other random pulls looking for other things" doesn't have much weight. As I could easily say that about a unit. No unit is worth 200 orbs as you could eventually pick them up on random pull when you're trying to get skills. The bottom line is that if you want something, pull for it, and pull for it in a way that conserves as many orbs as you can. And the guaranteed units after 40 pulls are usually pretty good deals. Now if they just so happen to run the same character two months in a row, which seems to be the case here, then that's just bizarre planning on their part and someone other than Kris should have gone on that legendary banner. Of course go for it in the manner that would conserve the most orbs, which in a two Kris banner would statistically be by pulling all reds and blues. But again that's getting into the specifics of the general case when my overall point is that, yes, pulling for high quality fodder is absolutely worth it and a banner that can give it to you as a guarantee is a good deal.

[XRay]

14 minutes ago, jameslove001 said:

Thanks again (I condensed your response for brevity). That was such a great comprehensive evaluation of my ranks. One of the coolest was figuring out how to use Mordecai who is one of my favorite characters in the whole set of games. Now, maybe, he can become one of my favorite units. I think my learning curve is going to be figuring out teams and how to use them. I think in my limited experience I haven't really figured out how to run specific teams (galeforce/firesweep/whatever kind of teams there are). I think it is time to figure out how to run teams to be more efficient and overcome my Level 19 Aether Raids/Arena.

There are two main types of teams in the meta: player phase and enemy phase.

— — — — — — —

A general purpose player phase team consists of one nuke or two different types of nukes, along with two or three Dancers/Singers. In Aether Raids, due to increased team slots, player phase teams generally run two or three different types of nukes, along with two to four Dancers/Singers. A Galeforce team is a specific type of player phase team that runs mostly Galeforcers as their nukes.

There are three main types of nukes: raw damage nukes, Firesweepers, and Galeforcers.

Raw damage nukes are just your regular nukes that specializes in damage output. One shot nukes, Blazing nukes, slow Brave nukes, fast Brave nukes, tank busters, Blade mages, etc. are all different subtypes of regular nukes.

Firesweepers are a type of nuke used to take down problematic enemies that other types of nukes have difficulty handling, such as Counter-Vantage units and ultra bulky tanks (Seliph, BH!Ike, etc.; tanks that are highly resistant to being killed in one round of combat).

Galeforcers are a type of nuke that are used to take down multiple enemies in a single turn. Galeforcers essentially come with their own "Dancer/Singer" due to the Galeforce effect.

— — — — — — —

An enemy phase team generally consists of two to three tanks and one to two support units, usually with one of the support units being a healer.

A super tank team runs one tank with the rest being support units; super tanking as a strategy works best when there are a lot team slots to offload stats and skill effects too, and foes are only coming at you in one direction, so this team is great for Aether Raids, but it is pretty bad on a lot of PvE maps due to enemy reinforcements spawning from all sides.

Some super tank team do use two super tanks, but that is a bit less common and it makes the first tank slightly weaker as the second tank could have been another support unit to beef up the first tank. Running two super tanks is a bit more difficult in my opinion, but with Save skills being a thing, that might change. From my experience so far, a double super tank team is possible in at least the lower difficulty PvE content if you have both Near Save and Far Save (I am running LOAK!Gustav, LOAK!Henriette, and two Flayns), since it addresses the weakness of super tank teams being vulnerable to flanking, although I have not tried it in Abyssal maps yet.

— — — — — — —

Dual phase units are units that can work in both player phase and enemy phase. The two most common types are Counter-Vantage units and units with guaranteed follow up attacks on both phases. Counter-Vantage units rely on high Atk to function well, although some do get by with lower Atk in exchange for more versatility. Blade mages, Ares, Altina, and Kronya are the most iconic examples. Dual phase armor units, Hríd, LL!Ephraim, Yune, etc. are some examples of dual phase units with dual phase guaranteed follow up attacks. Unlike Counter-Vantage units, these units are a lot bulkier, although not as bulky as enemy phase tanks.

I do not think having a team with all their combat units consisting entirely of dual phase units is a thing, but it is common to incorporate dual phase units into both player phase and enemy phase teams to provide more tactical flexibility. I personally run Laevatein in my Aether Raids player phase team when I first started out in case I need to enemy phase certain units.

[Othin]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Well we're getting into specifics of Spurn territory there (which I do think is good enough to carry around two of, especially when it comes with a unit that also has Joint Drive Attack, another pretty useful skill). But the actual specifics aren't really relevant as how useful it is an individual skill will be up for everyone to determine. I was more arguing against the point that "No skill is worth 200 orbs" which I disagree with. If you want a skill then 200 orbs for a guarantee pull (along with a statistically high chance of another 1 to 2, or even 3 other 5* unitsof decentish quality) for it seems reasonable to me. And any argument against it to the effect of "Well you might pick it up later any way on other random pulls looking for other things" doesn't have much weight. As I could easily say that about a unit. No unit is worth 200 orbs as you could eventually pick them up on random pull when you're trying to get skills. The bottom line is that if you want something, pull for it, and pull for it in a way that conserves as many orbs as you can. And the guaranteed units after 40 pulls are usually pretty good deals. Now if they just so happen to run the same character two months in a row, which seems to be the case here, then that's just bizarre planning on their part and someone other than Kris should have gone on that legendary banner. Of course go for it in the manner that would conserve the most orbs, which in a two Kris banner would statistically be by pulling all reds and blues. But again that's getting into the specifics of the general case when my overall point is that, yes, pulling for high quality fodder is absolutely worth it and a banner that can give it to you as a guarantee is a good deal.

I think you've made a reasonable argument for Spurn on Brave Ike being the one exception to that rule. However, I maintain that the rule holds in literally every other circumstance so far, and I'm still skeptical of the argument since it isn't "you need this for the best build in the game", it's "you need this to get the best build in the game a bit faster than if you just waited for an evasion skill to show up on its own".

I already explained why individual units are much less likely to show up on their own.

[Hasechi]

How to beat panalogue P55-3 Lunatic without losing any unit ?

[Humanoid]

2 minutes ago, Hasechi said:

How to beat panalogue P55-3 Lunatic without losing any unit ?

Weeeelllll, one way would be to just use a Light's Blessing. They really have no real use outside of just making these quests easier because they can't be used in most modes.

[TheSilentChloey]

18 hours ago, XRay said:

Far Save is far better on an enemy phase armor unit. I do not see any point in giving it to a player phase armor unit since they will just die attempting to Save an ally. If you are turning LOAK!Alfonse into an enemy phase unit though, then giving him Far Save is fine.

Slick Fighter is definitely good, but Save skills have the potential to be far more valuable.

Personally, I would just hold onto the Save manuals for now for at least the next three months to half a year. You want to know how common they will be so you are not wasting valuable Orbs just to give away the cheaper of the two premium skills. If Save skills are really common, then I would pass on Slick Fighter since you can always get another copy of Save skills later. If Save skills turn out to be rare, then I would pass on Save skills instead.

I would save it for now until you get a +Atk Trait. You can decide then whether you want to merge or fodder. As for AOTB!Veronica, staff units cannot inherit Fatal Smoke (or any kind of Smoke for that matter), which is unfortunate. The best candidates for Fatal Smoke would be Blazing nukes or Firesweep nukes in my opinion, but honestly any nuke can use it.

Fatal Smoke is a bit better on defense than offense in my opinion, but unless you are playing Aether Raids really competitively, I would not bother too much with Aether Raids defense. Your offensive performance contributes to your score far more than your defensive performance.

Fatal Smoke is especially good on offense when used by Kronya, but she gets harder to use in higher tiers due to better defense teams. Other Counter-Vantage units can use Fatal Smoke as well, but they do not need it and can stick with Savage Blow, Def Smoke, and Res Smoke; and similar to issues faced by Kronya, higher tier defense teams are much more resilient against Counter-Vantage strategies. As noted above, any player phase nuke can use Fatal Smoke as well, but if you are using it to replace Savage Blow, Def Smoke, or Res Smoke on an existing nuke, it might not make much of a noticeable difference.

 

Grima is a pure enemy phase unit.  I was asking about if he wants the skills Valentine's Alfonse only has a PP skill set at the moment but that's the thing, I wanted to give him an enemy phase kit as well since that's what I like to do with my units.  They sometimes need both imo.

 

Also please stop with your alphabet soup, it's annoying.  We're not going to get another Brave Veronica or version of any cyl brave unit for that matter, so it makes sense to simply refer to her as Brave Veronica rather than alphabet soup Veronica 1.0 and her alts as aphabet soup Veronica x.0 etc.  Every hero pretty much only has one kind of alt for each character, so I really don't see the point of alphabet soup when we only essentially have one version of an alt save for Tiki.  Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but otherwise it's annoying to read, very annoying to read especially when not everyone pays attention to the banners the alts come from.  Have a little decency and use their more common names please.

 

I probably should have checked a bit more carefully about who can inherit Fatal Smoke.  My issue stems from the fact I don't use Kronya so she'd be a waste as would pretty much any unit I don't use more than maybe once or twice in the five years I've been playing heroes.  Which leaves either Lucy, Regal or male Morgan (I think off the top of my head).  Or even Chrom, since he has savage blow which probably isn't the best play for him.

[XRay]

11 minutes ago, TheSilentChloey said:

Grima is a pure enemy phase unit.  I was asking about if he wants the skills Valentine's Alfonse only has a PP skill set at the moment but that's the thing, I wanted to give him an enemy phase kit as well since that's what I like to do with my units.  They sometimes need both imo.

I would prioritize Robin: Fell Reincarnation then. He is a better unit overall in my opinion, and he comes with Distant Counter. I would still wait a bit before giving him those skills though to be sure which skill is more valuable.

26 minutes ago, TheSilentChloey said:

I probably should have checked a bit more carefully about who can inherit Fatal Smoke.  My issue stems from the fact I don't use Kronya so she'd be a waste as would pretty much any unit I don't use more than maybe once or twice in the five years I've been playing heroes.  Which leaves either Lucy, Regal or male Morgan (I think off the top of my head).  Or even Chrom, since he has savage blow which probably isn't the best play for him.

I lean towards M!Morgan.

Lucina is not bad either, but I would prioritize ranged units over melee units. Chrom is more suited to be a tank in my opinion, and they are better off with Atk Smoke or Pulse Smoke in my opinion. Chrom: Crowned Exalt could use Fatal Smoke though since it does not disable Randgríđr.

[Hasechi]

@Humanoid i see. thanks !

[Hasechi]

Do we need to train both copies to lv40 to merge ?

[Humanoid]

20 minutes ago, Hasechi said:

Do we need to train both copies to lv40 to merge ?

Nope, the only requirement is that they be the same rarity*. The base unit keeps their level, gains +1 merge, and and gains the skills, blessings, and dragonflowers of the unit that's lost. Their XP and SP are both lost, though the base unit gains a trivially small, flat amount of SP for the merge.

If you're unsure, you can preview what the resulting unit will when you try to set up the merge, before confirming it.

 

________

* Technically you can merge a higher rarity unit into a lower rarity one, but this is only good to use if you do an old-school "4-star +10" unit. They're a bit less popular these days since people have so many resources, but can be done to good effect for specialist counter units. That is, units that are a specific counter pick against something that's otherwise hard to kill on the enemy team, usually in Arena Assault.

The idea is that you take a common unit that's available at 3-to-4 star, and instead of merging them fully at 5-star which would cost 220k-242k feathers, do it at 4-star at a cost of 22-42k feathers. The difference between the end results will be approximately 2 points in each stat (varies by specific unit). Examples of good units to do this for are units that come with armour-effective unique weapons like Hana and Bartre.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Humanoid

[Hasechi]

I see. thank @Humanoid !

[Othin]

2 hours ago, Hasechi said:

I see. thank @Humanoid !

Bear in mind that while the sacrificed unit's SP is lost, any skills they've learned carry over. So if you have the sacrificed unit learn some of their skills, the base unit won't have to spend their own SP on them.

[Hasechi]

@Othin thank ! I asked that because I summoned 2 Fjorm (5stars). After a while of searching, she's like a female version of Brave Dimitri but weaker/

[Othin]

10 minutes ago, Hasechi said:

@Othin thank ! I asked that because I summoned 2 Fjorm (5stars). After a while of searching, she's like a female version of Brave Dimitri but weaker/

Yeah. She's a much older unit, so her stats and skills aren't as good. She does have a cool special skill, though, as well as a legendary effect. But Dimitri is better.

[Hasechi]

@Othin i see thanks !

[jameslove001]

Thanks again to @XRay and @Humanoid for your evaluations of my 5* ranks. I do have a follow-up, but will not list all of my units. From the general pool (3 and 4 star, not 5* exclusives) are there any units worth developing? I, like all of you, get a ton of copies of say Chrom, Seliph, Effie, Ilyana, Hawkeye, etc. I obviously would be able to quickly plus ten some of the units, but as a F2P player I want to invest my time and resources wisely. So, in short, are there any of those lower tier units that are worth investing in, besides making manuals and giving away skills?

[Hasechi]

dithorba is a girl ? To me she look 100% like a man in female outfit

[Othin]

3 minutes ago, Hasechi said:

dithorba is a girl ? To me she look 100% like a man in female outfit

She's a girl. I don't think she looks like a guy, but there's nothing wrong with girls who look like guys, anyway.

[jameslove001]

4 minutes ago, Othin said:

She's a girl. I don't think she looks like a guy, but there's nothing wrong with girls who look like guys, anyway.

I appreciate you expressing this.

 

[Humanoid]

23 minutes ago, jameslove001 said:

Thanks again to @XRay and @Humanoid for your evaluations of my 5* ranks. I do have a follow-up, but will not list all of my units. From the general pool (3 and 4 star, not 5* exclusives) are there any units worth developing? I, like all of you, get a ton of copies of say Chrom, Seliph, Effie, Ilyana, Hawkeye, etc. I obviously would be able to quickly plus ten some of the units, but as a F2P player I want to invest my time and resources wisely. So, in short, are there any of those lower tier units that are worth investing in, besides making manuals and giving away skills?

Oh boy, there are a lot of great candidates. Eliwood and Raven are Galeforce gods. Ares, if you have DC fodder, can spam Vantage Bonfire all day. There's Reyson as a dancer in a niche subclass. Cordelia, Cherche and Gordin as Brave weapon nukes. Nino and Tharja Bladetome destroyers. And of course The Reinhardt.

[jameslove001]

2 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Oh boy, there are a lot of great candidates. Eliwood and Raven are Galeforce gods. Ares, if you have DC fodder, can spam Vantage Bonfire all day. There's Reyson as a dancer in a niche subclass. Cordelia, Cherche and Gordin as Brave weapon nukes. Nino and Tharja Bladetome destroyers. And of course The Reinhardt.

That is a great starting place - and I have already started a Reyson project because of everyone talking about his usefulness. Raven is someone with a ton of units I have so that could be great too. Much appreciated.

[Hasechi]

Edited February 18, 2021 by Hasechi