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

[Kaden]

13 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

-Res and -Def are more or less identical for Odin, because much of his bulk is in his huge hp stat (I personally prefer higher def on everyone barring people whose def is unsalvagable regardless, mostly because res simply isn't too worthwhile as a stat---most mages have so much attack, thanks to how strong tomes are, that a point or three in res wouldn't make much of a difference---having color advantage matters far more than what your stat distribution looks like), so I'd just run whatever version you have, to be honest.

Def is especially worthwhile because Odin, as a low Atk mage, will take more physical counters from DC units than other mages, because he rarely OHKOs.

Yeah, and there's also the issue of gambling on chance to get a specific Odin when I already have a +Spd, -Res Odin who I could just promote, dump skills on him, use him for the Moment of Fate TT and whatever else I'd need him for, and call it a day.

High defense would also be a "unique" thing since most mages tend to have low defense, high resistance or if they had their stats pumped into attack and speed and have average HP like Celica and Tharja, they would end up having almost average defenses, but they're still less bulkier in the long run. -Def seems like a well, now he's kind of like the other mages instead of being like the high defense mages while still having decent resistance.

Now to figure out what C-skill to give him. Maybe different special, but Moonbow is fine.

Edited September 24, 2017 by Kaden

[Quintessence]

26 minutes ago, Kaden said:

@DehNutCase, since you've talked about Odin a lot. +Spd, -Res or +Spd, -Def Odin? I'd figure as a mage, Odin would rather have higher resistance than defense, but 25 defense after Fury 3 with -Res isn't that bad (even though that would be his neutral resistance) and there are archers, dagger users, and sword units with Distant Counter, so less damage from them would be good too. For what it's worth, if +Spd Odin with Fury 3 had to tank default everyone, -Def has 2 losses while -Res has 1 loss. Make sense considering there are more physical units that there are magical.

It's a decision of do I want better physical defense or better magical defense and either would be fine, but +Spd, -Res would be easier since almost every Odin I've summoned has been +Spd, -Res. There's still 3 of them, there used to be 4 or maybe 5 of them and those 2 were used to get Blarblade+ and R Tomebreaker on Ursula, and my first ever and in-service Odin is +Spd, -Res. Man, it's silly how he kept showing up as +Spd, -Res... Anyway, I digress.

Also, @Quintessence, what exactly is your Odin running. I remember you saying he had Fury, Desperation, and Luna.

Asking both of you since other than my perpetual problem of having too many units, the Black Knight is the TT boss, so why not promote and build my 3* Odin to 4* or maybe 5*. I'm thinking of a Fury 3, Renewal 3 build to use his high bulk and prevent any issues with Fury 3 backfiring in TT. For other use, I guess I could give him Lancebreaker or Swordbreaker. Not sure on if I should replace Moonbow or just leave it and C-skill. Savage Blow seems tempting just because, but it's probably better for him to have a buff, debuff, or maybe Panic Ploy. I guess assist should be Draw Back.

I copy pasted Nino on Odin tbh, he currently has Fury, Desperation, Hone Atk, Draw Back and Luna. I prefer running +Atk/Spd -Res because it allows him to tank reds and not getting doubled. Regarding specials, it is really a matter of preference, I gave him Luna because I feel Moonbow is pretty lackluster and doesn't add that much dmg. If you run Fury you can even use Bonfire/Iceberg depending on the bane you choose because you'll always get a fixed 14 dmg disregarding buffs and spurs while Luna/Moonbow depend on the enemy itself. For Luna, in order to equate dmg from both skills, the enemy has to have 28 res and iirc 30s res isn't that common, though be free to run calcs.

11 minutes ago, saisymbolic said:

I have both a (+Atk, -Def) and a (+Spd, -Def) Tharja but I'm not sure which one I should prioritize. Which should I use?

+Spd because buffs add dmg to blade tomes.

[Rezzy]

18 minutes ago, saisymbolic said:

Thanks.

Another question: can I get away with giving my units base brave weapons instead of the + counterparts? Or is the additional MT generally necessary for kills?

The plus can make a big difference, since it's 6 or 12 extra damage you're missing out on by not running the plus version.  It's the equivalent of running a - Atk nature on a Brave user.

[saisymbolic]

4 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

The plus can make a big difference, since it's 6 or 12 extra damage you're missing out on by not running the plus version.  It's the equivalent of running a - Atk nature on a Brave user.

Okay.

But what if I gave a +Atk unit a base brave weapon? Would it make up the difference? I have a +Atk Effie I was thinking of giving a Brave Lance to but I'm being frugal with my feathers to upgrade fodder with. 

[Kaden]

1 hour ago, Quintessence said:

I copy pasted Nino on Odin tbh, he currently has Fury, Desperation, Hone Atk, Draw Back and Luna. I prefer running +Atk/Spd -Res because it allows him to tank reds and not getting doubled. Regarding specials, it is really a matter of preference, I gave him Luna because I feel Moonbow is pretty lackluster and doesn't add that much dmg. If you run Fury you can even use Bonfire/Iceberg depending on the bane you choose because you'll always get a fixed 14 dmg disregarding buffs and spurs while Luna/Moonbow depend on the enemy itself. For Luna, in order to equate dmg from both skills, the enemy has to have 28 res and iirc 30s res isn't that common, though be free to run calcs.

Oh, okay.

Also, unmerged Odin being able to get more kills with Bonfire/Iceberg over Luna even against +10 units is a bit unsettling. Might give him Bonfire, might not. Kind of hoping that we'll be introduced speed-based specials or maybe the Night Sky specials could be revamped to use speed instead of multiplying damage. 19 fixed damage from his 38 speed with +Spd and Fury 3 would be pretty sweet.

Edit: OMG, it was all a lie. My first Odin was +Atk, -Res. I was deceived (by my poor memory)! Well, second Odin in the barracks, looks like you will gain incredible power instead. :p

Edited September 24, 2017 by Kaden

[XRay]

58 minutes ago, saisymbolic said:

Okay.

But what if I gave a +Atk unit a base brave weapon? Would it make up the difference? I have a +Atk Effie I was thinking of giving a Brave Lance to but I'm being frugal with my feathers to upgrade fodder with. 

I personally would not invest too much into armor units. However, if they are working out for you and Effie is a core unit you use every week in the Arena, then spending extra Feathers on her is not a bad idea since she can start paying for herself.

If you are only using Effie (or any unit for that matter) for Arena Assault, then I would advise against over investing in her; I definitely would not give Effie Brave Lance+ in that scenario unless you have a lot of Feathers to burn. As long as you are bringing hard counters, their skills and nature do not matter very much.

[Flying Shogi]

Looking at the green units, it seems like Camilla is the one of the 2 move units with decent bulk in both defensive stats. If I want to give her an Emerald Axe set, what natures and skills would she like? 

Edited September 24, 2017 by tobuShogi

[XRay]

2 hours ago, tobuShogi said:

Looking at the green units, it seems like Camilla is the one of the 2 move units with decent bulk in both defensive stats. If I want to give her an Emerald Axe set, what natures and skills would she like? 

I prefer her to focus on tanking magical attacks since she is the axe flier with the highest Resistance, so I would go for [+Res, -Def].

If you want her to tank both physical and magical attacks, I cannot think of any stat she would want to bane, so I would go for a neutral nature. I guess you can go for [+Spd/Def, -Res] since her Resistance is still pretty decent at 28.

[Rezzy]

Why does Virion have Defiant Res?  Going from 13 base Res to 20 isn't going to save him.

[Xenomata]

1 hour ago, Rezzy said:

Why does Virion have Defiant Res?  Going from 13 base Res to 20 isn't going to save him.

If you're being serious... well, look at it this way: he is one of the first units you summon, they have to give him something useless.

[Rezzy]

10 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

If you're being serious... well, look at it this way: he is one of the first units you summon, they have to give him something useless.

I can understand not wanting to give him ideal skills, but he's got one for the worst Res stats in the game and would be one of the last people to really be able to use that skill at all.  You have units like Oboro who also have terrible base skills, but at least you could see how they might be useful situationally.

[Xenomata]

5 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

I can understand not wanting to give him ideal skills, but he's got one for the worst Res stats in the game and would be one of the last people to really be able to use that skill at all.  You have units like Oboro who also have terrible base skills, but at least you could see how they might be useful situationally.

They might have realized that Defiant skills don't actually fix anything in fact... the only new units to get Defiant skills since launch are Spring Camilla (Defiant Speed) and Karel (Defiant Attack).

So... at least Virion's "main" passive skill is Seal Speed, which probably makes more sense for him to have than Defiant Res?

[Rezzy]

24 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

They might have realized that Defiant skills don't actually fix anything in fact... the only new units to get Defiant skills since launch are Spring Camilla (Defiant Speed) and Karel (Defiant Attack).

So... at least Virion's "main" passive skill is Seal Speed, which probably makes more sense for him to have than Defiant Res?

Defiant Attack and Speed can work to an extant with a Desperation set-up, so they aren't completely useless.

[Xenomata]

33 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

Defiant Attack and Speed can work to an extant with a Desperation set-up, so they aren't completely useless.

Or Brash Assault... if the weapon ALSO has Desperation 2 built in.

Which is to say Lyn, who has Def Attack 2 by default.

But then wouldn't that mean that Defiant Def and Res don't have good use? Thinking on it, what good will +7 Def or Res do when you are already half dead? Boosting the power of Bonfire/Ignis and Iceberg/Glacies seems niche at best, risky at worst... and actually, what good would a defensive Defiant even be on an archer?

Edited September 24, 2017 by Xenomata

[Flying Shogi]

6 hours ago, XRay said:

I prefer her to focus on tanking magical attacks since she is the axe flier with the highest Resistance, so I would go for [+Res, -Def].

If you want her to tank both physical and magical attacks, I cannot think of any stat she would want to bane, so I would go for a neutral nature. I guess you can go for [+Spd/Def, -Res] since her Resistance is still pretty decent at 28.

I think I'm just going to have her tank magic units since none of my fliers takes magic hits well. I do have Goad Fliers but I think I would like her to be +Speed/-Def since her neutral speed is a bit sub-par.

[mampfoid]

Today I tried to get a Nephenee, but ended with a 5* Cordelia. I'm not too sad, because in this way I can finish my Galeforce team. 

Current members: Cordelia, Elincia & BH!Roy.

Who should be the fourth member? Perfect would be Minerva with heavy blade, but I've never pulled her (or Ike for that matter ...). Team's missing green obviously, here some ideas:

- Cherche (4* +7 +ATK, Brave). She is green, but won't make quads without a breaker.

- BH!Ike (5* +SPD). Also green, but his special trigger acceleration works only if attacked. 

- Michalis (5* QR, bonfire) green, but like brave Ike an EP unit

- Blue brave Cav to also inherit Brave+ (I don't have any at 5*). +SPD 4* Peri, +SPD *4 Abel, +SPD 4* Roderick would fit, otherwise there are just 5* Clive and 5* Camus. 

- Green brave Cav. I've never pulled a +ATK Frederick and Titania is fine with her emerald axe. 

- BH!Lucina +SPD. She is fast, but doesn't have any special trigger acceleration. 

Any ideas/suggestions?

[eclipse]

1 hour ago, mampfoid said:

Today I tried to get a Nephenee, but ended with a 5* Cordelia. I'm not too sad, because in this way I can finish my Galeforce team. 

Current members: Cordelia, Elincia & BH!Roy.

Who should be the fourth member? Perfect would be Minerva with heavy blade, but I've never pulled her (or Ike for that matter ...). Team's missing green obviously, here some ideas:

- Cherche (4* +7 +ATK, Brave). She is green, but won't make quads without a breaker.

- BH!Ike (5* +SPD). Also green, but his special trigger acceleration works only if attacked. 

- Michalis (5* QR, bonfire) green, but like brave Ike an EP unit

- Blue brave Cav to also inherit Brave+ (I don't have any at 5*). +SPD 4* Peri, +SPD *4 Abel, +SPD 4* Roderick would fit, otherwise there are just 5* Clive and 5* Camus. 

- Green brave Cav. I've never pulled a +ATK Frederick and Titania is fine with her emerald axe. 

- BH!Lucina +SPD. She is fast, but doesn't have any special trigger acceleration. 

Any ideas/suggestions?

Legion.  Comes with Fury to boot.

[Rezzy]

Does anyone know why they decided to go with just three characters on the last banner, instead of four?  I don't know how much R&D time goes into making a single character, but using myself as an example, it seems like a missed chance to earn more money.  I was able to get all three Tellius characters using only the Orbs I had saved up.  If there had been four units, I would have shelled out money, at least a bit, trying to get everybody, since I love my Tellius.  They aren't in danger of running out of characters any time soon, so that can't be the reason.

I guess the silver lining is that it saved me money, since I didn't feel compelled to spend money on Orbs, which I haven't done since the Summer Banner.

[Ice Dragon]

On 9/23/2017 at 7:42 AM, MrSmokestack said:

I admit I’m actually not certain about the +10 damage part of the skill. The best comparison I can make with it is with Celica’s Ragnarok tome, where she suffers 5 HP recoil only if she had 100% HP before the start of combat. With that in mind, I would assume Wrath’s second effect is similarly conditional. I’d like some confirmation on that though.

If it’s conditional, Wrath will only grant both of its effects if the unit’s HP was below the threshold at the start of the turn. Healing them during the turn won’t affect anything, similar to how the bonus from Defiant skills doesn’t disappear in the middle of the turn when the unit is healed.

On 9/23/2017 at 8:25 AM, Vaximillian said:

The +10 damage part of the skill does, in fact, activate if the user drops below the threshold during the combat.

As best as I can tell from the Japanese description (I haven't trained Nephenee yet because of deadlines at work), the two effects of Wrath have separate triggers. The cooldown reduction occurs at the beginning of the turn if the unit has 75% HP or less; the +10 damage occurs on special skill activation regardless of HP. In other skills where separate sentences have the same condition (Ragnarok, Ylissean Summer weapons), the second sentence begins with "in that situation".

 

EDIT: @LordFrigid @XRay

Went back and re-did Elincia. Life and Death beats out Swift Sparrow and Death Blow when also running Escutcheon, which I somehow forgot existed.

Against opponents with +10 [+Spd] (Fury 3) +4/4/3/3:

+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Luna, Death Blow 3) +6/6: 125:26:21
+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Luna, Swift Sparrow 2) +6/6: 125:25:22
+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Luna, Life and Death 3) +6/6: 127:36:9
+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Escutcheon, Life and Death 3) +6/6: 132:11:29

Against non-blue with the same setup:

+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Luna, Death Blow 3) +6/6: 114:2:9
+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Luna, Swift Sparrow 2) +6/6: 113:2:10
+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Luna, Life and Death 3) +6/6: 117:4:4
+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Escutcheon, Life and Death 3) +6/6: 118:1:6

The moment I start removing buffs on the opponents, though, all four setups are basically the same until you start scraping the bottom of the barrel where Swift Sparrow and Life and Death + Escutcheon break away again:

Against opponents with +10 [=] (Fury 3) +0/0/0/0:

+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Luna, Death Blow 3) +6/6: 149:15:8
+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Luna, Swift Sparrow 2) +6/6: 155:15:2
+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Luna, Life and Death 3) +6/6: 149:22:1
+10 Elincia [+Atk, -Res] (Amiti, Escutcheon, Life and Death 3) +6/6: 157:4:11

I guess that means I'm promoting another Hana. Woo.

Edited September 25, 2017 by Ice Dragon

[Vaximillian]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

…the +10 damage occurs on special skill activation regardless of HP.

But it does trigger based on HP. It’s not like a wo dao that doesn’t care.

There’s no +10 if you’re over the threshold.

[LordFrigid]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

As best as I can tell from the Japanese description (I haven't trained Nephenee yet because of deadlines at work), the two effects of Wrath have separate triggers. The cooldown reduction occurs at the beginning of the turn if the unit has 75% HP or less; the +10 damage occurs on special skill activation regardless of HP. In other skills where separate sentences have the same condition (Ragnarok, Ylissean Summer weapons), the second sentence begins with "in that situation".

 

EDIT: @LordFrigid @XRay

[Elincia calcs]

Interesting on Elincia...after seeing the issue with LaD vs neutral, no-inheritance  (she either 2HKOd or got one-shot on the counter by a lance in most cases) I probably should have thought of that as well, tbh.

~

I gave Wrath a quick test. The +10 dmg does seem to be tied to the HP threshold. Edit: specifically, this is a test to see if the +10 dmg bonus is active when the unit starts the turn at full HP and activates a special.

Spoiler

 

Edit 2: Linked is an additional test which verifies that if the unit begins the turn at 75% or below, and gets healed, the +10 damage bonus does NOT apply. @MrSmokestack @Zeo

Spoiler

 

Edit 3: Given how Wrath works in the main series (or at least in FE9/10 and 13)...I can’t say I’m that surprised.

Edited September 25, 2017 by LordFrigid

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

But it does trigger based on HP. It’s not like a wo dao that doesn’t care.

There’s no +10 if you’re over the threshold.

Weird. Its wording is different from Ragnarok, etc., which specifically says "in that situation", and Shield Pulse, which specifically says "in addition".

[MrSmokestack]

@LordFrigid Thanks for the verification.

@Vaximillian Mentioned Wrath’s bonus damage also being able to trigger if the HP% falls below the threshold during combat though, which I find strange.

@Ice Dragon Why are english descriptions so useless

Edited September 25, 2017 by MrSmokestack

[Vaximillian]

3 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

@Vaximillian Mentioned Wrath’s bonus damage also being able to trigger if the HP% falls below the threshold during combat though, which I find strange.

@Ice Dragon Why are english descriptions so useless

Yes, that’s new. Before, the HP-based skills only looked at the HP before combat. Wrath’s +10 portion looks at the HP during combat. Resolve when?

Apparently, JP descriptions stepped up their game and are as useless now.

[LordFrigid]

14 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

@LordFrigid Thanks for the verification.

@Vaximillian Mentioned Wrath’s bonus damage also being able to trigger if the HP% falls below the threshold during combat though, which I find strange.

@Ice Dragon Why are english descriptions so useless

Yup, that occurred to me as I was off drinking some Mango juice. I’ll try that out in a bit. Ugh...I have it as always active in my simulator...I guess I have some work to do after all of this.

Edit: I wonder what the best way to test that would be...I'm kinda thinking have her eat a Black Luna from full HP in the TT, but I'll definitely try to get it to happen before that lol.

Edited September 25, 2017 by LordFrigid