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

[XRay]

3 hours ago, daisy jane said:

I got NY!Gunnthra today. She's minus speed but with her weapon she's 37 (which is one more than Elincia neutral). so basically i can't do anything cool with her (like quad etc,) but for the most part there's no point trying to fix that bane right?

I would not worry about natures too much unless you plan to use them for Infernal/Abyssal content, Aether Raids, or at an Arena score range where you need optimal performance. She should still work fine as a Chill bot, and with her debuffs, she can double most enemies anyways.

22 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

With NY Laegjarn’s 32/35 and 35 Def, what could be a good and fun build for her?

Her default kit is pretty fun, but I assume you might want something different from her base kit.

If you want her to go into combat instead of being a cheerleader, she is basically a neutral Nephenee on a pony or a slightly worse +Spd Peri. Whatever builds those two can run, NYOFAI!Laegjarn can pretty much run the same.

If you like her default kit, the only thing I recommend swapping out is Def Tactic for Atk Tactic and Pivot for Rally Spd/Def. Combined with her Chills, she is basically massively debuffing those enemies with Def/Res-13 or buffing your allies with a massive Atk+13, depending on how you want to see it. The Rally Spd helps her allies double those poor chaps and translate that Atk+13 into 26 points of additional damage. With Res Tactic Sacred Seal, she can buff an ally with 6/4/4/6, or 26/4/4/6 if her ally is Laevatein or a Blade mage.

Edited January 3, 2019 by XRay

[Vaximillian]

32 minutes ago, XRay said:

If you want her to go into combat instead of being a cheerleader, she is basically a neutral Nephenee on a pony or a slightly worse +Spd Peri. Whatever builds those two can run, NYOFAI!Laegjarn can pretty much run the same.

Yeah, I do want her to go into combat. How does L&D Slaying Galeforce sound? Or is she better suited for a mixed phase unit akin to Nephenee?

[XRay]

15 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

Yeah, I do want her to go into combat. How does L&D Slaying Galeforce sound?

Sounds good. Her Atk is a bit low though, so make sure she got some allies with Hone Cavalry or Atk Tactic.

15 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

Or is she better suited for a mixed phase unit akin to Nephenee?

That is also an option. I personally prefer dedicated Player Phase/Enemy Phase builds over mixed phase builds, but that is mostly up to taste and play style. For a mixed phase build, maybe something like:

Slaying Lance [Spd]
Reposition — (Any Assist)
Moonbow — Luna
Fury — Life and Death
Desperation — Renewal
(Any C)
Quick Riposte — Atk/Spd — Darting Stance

Moonbow-Desperation gives her an option during her first round of combat before being fully Player Phase, while Luna-Renewal lets her do more than one round of Enemy Phase (and since she is not running Desperation, you can utilize the enemy's counterattack to charge Luna on Player Phase). The Atk/Spd and Darting Stance are there if Quick Riposte is already on another team mate or if she does not need too much help doubling enemies.

Edited January 3, 2019 by XRay

[mcsilas]

9 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Would the Juicy Wave weapon be a good one for Valentine Lyn to use? The built-in Desperation seems like it'd be very handy, but I'm not 100% sure it's worth it over her native Blue Gift.

Blue Lyn likes Blarowl over Blue Gift anyway.

But if you want Juicy Wave and have access to Bold Fighter, it could be a fun, guaranteed double with faster special charge.

[DehNutCase]

Does anyone know if AI considers AoE specials for damage calculation when deciding who to attack first?

i.e. if an Ophelia gets Vantage OHKO'd but does 40 damage with Blazing Light does she go before Micaiah with a Dawn Suzu hitting for 20 damage (and then getting regular OHKO'd back).

It kind of feels like the AI treats the Ophelia as doing 0 damage in this case, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Xenomata]

I have 4 Lewyn Combat Manuals, which equals 4 Special Spirals. I also have a +2 merge +Spd -HP Lewyn.

If I got Lewyn up to +6, he'd be a decent scoring ally to have, and also would work with my +10 Ophelia, letting her reach 0 cooldown if I take him and another Tome user to the Arena.

On the other hand, Special Spiral is a powerful skill, and I recognize that. Though I already gave it to Ophelia, the one who probably wanted it most, I'm sure there's plenty of other units who would like it.

So... what seems the best course of action to take? Power up Lewyn for the Arena, or keep the books for Special Spiral? And if the latter, what other units besides Ophelia would want Special Spiral, and what builds?

[Ice Dragon]

35 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

So... what seems the best course of action to take? Power up Lewyn for the Arena, or keep the books for Special Spiral? And if the latter, what other units besides Ophelia would want Special Spiral, and what builds?

Wrath is almost always better on units that can use it, so that pretty much just limits you to ranged infantry for Special Spiral.

The units that use Special Spiral best are running some skill or team support that give them access to a first-round Special (Infantry Pulse, Quickened Pulse, Slaying weapon, etc.) where Special Spiral would allow them to continue spamming the Special on every round after that.

That said, Ophelia is still the best user of Special Spiral by an absolutely massive margin (since she has a Slaying weapon with built-in multiple stacks of Quickened Pulse) whereas all other units only see a small improvement over cheaper alternatives, if at all.

[daisy jane]

8 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

That said, Ophelia is still the best user of Special Spiral by an absolutely massive margin (since she has a Slaying weapon with built-in multiple stacks of Quickened Pulse) whereas all other units only see a small improvement over cheaper alternatives, if at all.

 

oh so Lilina won't benefit from it?

[Vaximillian]

4 minutes ago, daisy jane said:

oh so Lilina won't benefit from it?

She will. Her huge Atk stat is a big bonus because she can activate Heavy Blade more reliably to help her get started. If you go with Glimmer, Death Blow would be the preferred A, if with an AoE, then L&D because DB doesn’t count for the AoE damage.

[daisy jane]

9 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

She will. Her huge Atk stat is a big bonus because she can activate Heavy Blade more reliably to help her get started. If you go with Glimmer, Death Blow would be the preferred A, if with an AoE, then L&D because DB doesn’t count for the AoE damage.

ahhhh that's good to know. thanks!! (people have been asking what to do with extra Lewyns  and i've always said, Ophelia and Lilina so good that i was steering them right). 

Here's a question

+def/-hp gunnthra.
+def/-spd gunnthra

or

merge gunnthra? (and lose out on an extra joint hone spd?)

i'm thinking because she is +def, being -hp here is good because she'll be able to trigger desperation faster?) 
if i merge her she gets 40 spd. which makes her.... stupid fast 

Edited January 4, 2019 by daisy jane

[XRay]

1 hour ago, daisy jane said:

 

oh so Lilina won't benefit from it?

Lilina can benefit, but not to the same degree of synergy. Ophelia got multiple Quickened Pulses and Slaying effect built in, so she is ready right from the get go as well as being able to run Hardy Bearing.

Lilina, Celica, Odin, Sonya, and Lewyn can all spam area Specials too, but are more vulnerable to Vantage enemies as they cannot run Hardy Bearing since they need Heavy Blade/Flashing Blade on their Sacred Seal slot. They can still spam regular 2 cool down Specials.

The closest competitors to Ophelia would be Ishtar and Flora. For Ishtar, she got Slaying effect from Mjölnir, but it is more difficult to get her going as Mjölnir does not have Quickened Pulses. Flora also got the Slaying effect and is a bit easier to get her going (Hoarfrost Knife got a Brash Assault-esque effect to fully charge her area Special against Distant Counter melee units), but since she targets Def instead of Res, she will have trouble with bulky units and tanks as they tend to have higher Def than Res. I guess you can also try Merric who is similar to Ishtar, but his Atk is shit so I would not bother with him unless you like him. You can also try high Atk archers and dagger users with Slaying Bow and Barb Shuriken but they have trouble to get things going and they target Def rather than Res.

 

Edited January 4, 2019 by XRay

[Xenomata]

@Ice Dragon , @daisy jane, @Vaximillian , @XRay so... what I'm getting from this is that the best users of Special Spiral need to run Heavy or Flashing Blade to get their AoE special trigger quickly, and can't run Hardy Bearing at the same time as a result. But they CAN still run 2 cooldown Specials for weaker but less Vantage-counterable results.

Hrm... the problem I'm seeing is that Ophelia can just have her Special ready on turn 1 for immediate results, whereas any other unit would need to initiate at least one turn of combat before they can start triggering their Special. And there are very few ranged units with good Slaying effect weapons, or any that are good are on weak units who can't get good results in combat anyways. Assuming I'd want to run an AoE special anyways.

...maybe I should just go for the merges on Lewyn. At least then I wouldn't run the risk of investing in a unit I wind up never using...

Edited January 4, 2019 by Xenomata

[Ice Dragon]

24 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

Hrm... the problem I'm seeing is that Ophelia can just have her Special ready on turn 1 for immediate results, whereas any other unit would need to initiate at least one turn of combat before they can start triggering their Special. And there are very few ranged units with good Slaying effect weapons, or any that are good are on weak units who can't get good results in combat anyways. Assuming I'd want to run an AoE special anyways.

...maybe I should just go for the merges on Lewyn. At least then I wouldn't run the risk of investing in a unit I wind up never using...

I'd probably merge all but one copy of Lewyn unless you're planning on using one of the few other options.

Ophelia's the only real stand-out user, though Lilina and Odin are decent choices for Glimmer spam. Aether Raids, in particular, give you more team slots to add the necessary support skills to run the builds.

[daisy jane]

question. 
Would NY!Gunnthra benefit from Luna (being +defense?)

[XRay]

15 hours ago, daisy jane said:

merge gunnthra? (and lose out on an extra joint hone spd?)

Both are fine. I personally lean towards merging since good skills like that are usually added into the summoning pool eventually. Foddering her off is good too if you do not plan to use NYOFAI!Gunnthrá much; if you have VS!Azura, I would give it to her so she can give 7/7/7/7 buffs to her Sing target.

15 hours ago, daisy jane said:

i'm thinking because she is +def, being -hp here is good because she'll be able to trigger desperation faster?) 

Yeah. You primarily want to keep her Spd at neutral or better.

55 minutes ago, daisy jane said:

question. 
Would NY!Gunnthra benefit from Luna (being +defense?)

I would stick with Glimmer or swap it for Moonbow so she can trigger a Special during her first round of combat. I would only go Luna if you are running Slaying Edge and/or Heavy Blade.

[Zeo]

@mcsilas @mampfoid @Alexmender @NegativeExponents- @Ice Dragon @XRay @Astellius @Hawk King

Hey, remember Bartre's +ATK/-RES or +SPD/-HP problem? Well, the sins problems of the father are visited upon the children.

Fir's got the same issue. I've got her  *4 supermerged to +9 and I can go +ATK/-RES or +SPD/-HP.

+ATK/-RES gives her a much needed offensive boost up to 30/38 for offense which is decent. At the cost however of some of her heralded RES leaving her at a paltry 30 RES.

+SPD/-HP on the other hand, frees up her RES to a superior 33, boosts her SPD to 37 which is a massive 41 natural SPD, but her ATK takes a nosedive down to 27. 27/41 offenses are pretty pitiful in my opinion. Both Wo Dao and Slaying effect are stellar but the lack of killing power hurts.

Which nature is better? Especially factoring in that the upcoming update gets rid of banes.

[XRay]

27 minutes ago, Zeo said:

+ATK/-RES gives her a much needed offensive boost up to 30/38 for offense which is decent. At the cost however of some of her heralded RES leaving her at a paltry 30 RES.

I would take more Atk. The -Res is not a big deal in my opinion since they are going to get rid of Flaws.

Having really high Spd is nice, but without the Atk to back it up, it would be as threatening as Olwen's 0x4.

Edited January 5, 2019 by XRay

[Ice Dragon]

14 minutes ago, Zeo said:

@mcsilas @mampfoid @Alexmender @NegativeExponents- @Ice Dragon @XRay @Astellius @Hawk King

Hey, remember Bartre's +ATK/-RES or +SPD/-HP problem? Well, the sins problems of the father are visited upon the children.

Fir's got the same issue. I've got her  *4 supermerged to +9 and I can go +ATK/-RES or +SPD/-HP.

+ATK/-RES gives her a much needed offensive boost up to 30/38 for offense which is decent. At the cost however of some of her heralded RES leaving her at a paltry 30 RES.

+SPD/-HP on the other hand, frees up her RES to a superior 33, boosts her SPD to 37 which is a massive 41 natural SPD, but her ATK takes a nosedive down to 27. 27/41 offenses are pretty pitiful in my opinion. Both Wo Dao and Slaying effect are stellar but the lack of killing power hurts.

Which nature is better? Especially factoring in that the upcoming update gets rid of banes.

Fir really, really, really, really, really wants the extra Atk. It's pretty much the same situation as Caeda and Clair where fixing a severe case of noodle arm is generally more important than anything else (unless you are Odin or have a staff).

[Alexmender]

9 minutes ago, Zeo said:

@mcsilas @mampfoid @Alexmender @NegativeExponents- @Ice Dragon @XRay @Astellius @Hawk King

Hey, remember Bartre's +ATK/-RES or +SPD/-HP problem? Well, the sins problems of the father are visited upon the children.

Fir's got the same issue. I've got her  *4 supermerged to +9 and I can go +ATK/-RES or +SPD/-HP.

+ATK/-RES gives her a much needed offensive boost up to 30/38 for offense which is decent. At the cost however of some of her heralded RES leaving her at a paltry 30 RES.

+SPD/-HP on the other hand, frees up her RES to a superior 33, boosts her SPD to 37 which is a massive 41 natural SPD, but her ATK takes a nosedive down to 27. 27/41 offenses are pretty pitiful in my opinion. Both Wo Dao and Slaying effect are stellar but the lack of killing power hurts.

Which nature is better? Especially factoring in that the upcoming update gets rid of banes.

I'll use Hone Atk 3 in this calcs because it is the most accessible attack buff and Legault isn't that easy to obtain despite being a 4* unit.

+Spd Fir has a 43/41 spread with her weapon equipped. With a Hone Atk 3 this becomes 47/41. 

+Atk Fir has 46/38. Hone Atk 3 amps this to 50/38. 

50 Atk seems to be the bare minimum a physical unit needs to reach in order to be considered a passable attacker (lower Atk stats work for units that target the usually lower Res stat and for supports that aren't meant to fight). 

I regard Spd very highly because it's not too uncommon to find 40+ Spd fliers in -HB maps or the stray Ayra/Mia in AA but for Fir she really needs to be +Atk in order to work well, otherwise she'll be completely forced to rely on special procs and those are hard to achieve without Wrath/Special Spiral which certainly is asking too much for a 4*+10 unit.

[Baldrick]

@Zeo I would definitely recommend +Spd for Fir. Even with +atk, she still has noodle arms, she’d rather have more speed to more reliably activate her special twice in one turn.

 

[Hilda]

9 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

@Zeo I would definitely recommend +Spd for Fir. Even with +atk, she still has noodle arms, she’d rather have more speed to more reliably activate her special twice in one turn.

 

too mich speed can become detrimental at some point, whereas there is never too much attack. At some point if you outspeed your opponent by 5 or 10 spd doesnt matter. You will double for the same amount of dmg. now with higher atk you get guaranteed more dmg out of it. even more if you double!

[Baldrick]

10 minutes ago, Hilda said:

too mich speed can become detrimental at some point, whereas there is never too much attack. At some point if you outspeed your opponent by 5 or 10 spd doesnt matter. You will double for the same amount of dmg. now with higher atk you get guaranteed more dmg out of it. even more if you double!

Once you have enough attack to KO, more attack doesn’t matter. Not having enough speed to double hurts your damage output significantly, especially for a unit with a Wo Dao Slaying weapon.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Baldrick

[XRay]

22 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

 I would definitely recommend +Spd for Fir. Even with +atk, she still has noodle arms, she’d rather have more speed to more reliably activate her special twice in one turn.

That depends on the enemies Fir has to face. While there is a case for going with +Spd at a certain score range in Arena to double fast units (and assuming the player is not prioritizing bonus kills), a simple Hone Spd buff is generally enough to allow neutral Fir to double them, or at least prevent enemies from doubling back. Once a player reaches the 720+ range, formerly fast enemy units like Ayra and Karla slow down significantly due to running SP builds like Distant Counter-Close Def instead of performance builds like Life and Death-Atk/Spd.

In PvE content, outside of enemy Heroes, generic enemies rarely reach 40 Spd. Even in Abyssal difficulty, most units are still below 40 Spd with only a tiny handful approaching 50 Spd. With Fury and Atk/Spd, neutral Fir can reach 41 Spd, and with a Hone Spd buff, she can double the vast majority of generic enemy units.

[Baldrick]

55 minutes ago, XRay said:

That depends on the enemies Fir has to face.  

 And that depends on what enemies you deploy her against. If you want her to face a variety of enemies it’s good to patch up her weaknesses, but even with +atk, Fir is still pretty weak, so I’d rather use a sword unit that’s stronger and also has “good enough” speed. I think Fir is best as a speed specialist who can double even the fastest enemies.

[mampfoid]

@Zeo I still haven't decided which boon is best for mine, but shouldn't the bane be gone with the update for 4* merged units as well?