Non-Seasonal Possibilities for Rare Weapon/Movement Combinations

[Rezzy]

Many have probably been noticing that many of the new weapon/movement combinations for units have been nothing but seasonal units.  Thia isn't a terrible problem to have, it would be nice to have some in the permanent pool.

The one that first came to mind for me was Tome flyers.  We now have one of each, but they're all holiday units.  The best candidates I think would be Aversa (Red) and Sumia or Cynthia (Any color).  Aversa would be a nice GHB for a F2P option for everybody.  Sumia and Cynthia might be canon Lance wielders, but do we really need our 37th Lance Peg Knight?  They went out of their way to make Raven and Axe wielder or more egregiously make Lucius a staff wielder (why?), so it's not out of the question.  They could even make Sumia or Cynthia a staff flyer, which as much as I don't like making non-canon healers into staff users a la Lucius, at least they would be unique, and Staves aren't the dead weight they used to be.  (I also think a Staff would be a superior option to yet another Lance.)

 

Any other characters that might fit into a niche that's underrepresented or even absent people can think of?

[Poimagic]

Reina from fire emblem fates could be our first bow flier. Any Archenan armored unit could use bows as well. A staff flier could be Sigurn, Tanith, or a RD Elincia.

[Rafiel's Aria]

We could easily get a flying archer out of a Fates character. There's Reina, but Shigure could work too. (I'd be in love with that actually.) Honestly, they could do special movement types for any future  CYL special costumes. If we go by the next two guys and girls, Camilla could be a mage flier. Maybe they could make Hector an armored mage as kind of an homage to his daughter. CYL character dress up as their kids. Lucina!Chrom, Lilina!Hector, Noire!Tharja...and then there's the problematic Camilla...lol

It was a missed opportunity making Elincia a sword. Sure, we needed them, but she probably would have been more unique as a staff user. 

[Humanoid]

Any unimplemented Nohrian or Awakening mage or troubadour could be made into horse mages with next to no fuss, and there are still quite a few candidates - Nyx, Ophelia, Forrest, Maribelle, Miriel, Laurent. Pick two out of that pool to turn into red ones and two into green and we're good. Older games had the more rigid promotions of course, but I'm curious to see how much backlash there'd be if they did something similar to them (Mounted Erk for instance).

The pool of believable fliers would be a bit smaller so there might be more stretches in terms of believability, but as I've said before, I prefer having the extra diversity rather than having to remain 100% faithful to the original design. Say Reina, Fiora, Mikoto as archers. Emmeryn, Sumia, Myrrh as healers. Turn every other remaining pegasus lancer in the series into a mage, I'd be down with that.

Iago blue armoured mage? Brendan or Kotaro as armoured daggers?

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Astrid can be the next canonical bow knight. I remember there's at least one of them in FE4 whose name I don't care to remember or look up. Even Gaiden could provide bow knights as that is the final class promotion for archer in that game. Bit of a stretch, but not as much as going for a character in which bow knight is just one of their promotion options like Neimi or Selena.

Reina is the obvious pick for flying archer. You might also get a "horse" dagger user out of Yukimura, but the blank look on your faces speaks miles about how little of a chance he has over other Fates characters. FE4 has a gross amount of armor units wielding weird weapons like bows and tomes, but they're enemy only classes. 

[Humanoid]

Hmm, it just occurred to me that there are a ton of units now with in-built distant counter, but zero with inbuilt close counter. Given how many lance fliers have yet to be added to the game, you could simply give them all javelins (maybe even make it a class of weapons and have Killer Javelin, Heavy Javelin, etc) that would simply be reskinned bows with close counter, lose the effectiveness vs fliers and maybe have lower attack.

[Alexmender]

Let's start with fliers. Reina is a good choice for a flying archer (unless IS goes out of it's way to make her a Lance flier...). Caeldori could always be a staff flier, although that seems a bit unlikely but having a 35/35 atk/spd healer with the Dazzling+Wrathful combo and (almost) unrestricted movement would be disgusting. For mage fliers Aversa is the obvious choice being a red flying mage with Goetia, Sumia and Cynthia can also work although they seem a bit more unlikely. 

Going into armor units. I think a few of the armor units in Shadow Dragon/New Mystery have good proficiency at using bows so there's that, sadly I don't remember which characters had that so I'm unable to give names. For mage armors the only ones that come to mind are G2 Arvis (extremely unlikely to come considering we have a G1.5 Arvis already) and Bloom who is ultra unpopular and will only come if Glade (who?) is added someday. I don't recall a staff armor ever existing in FE so that's either a seasonal or will never happen.

And to finish with the most dreaded type, horses. Green mage horse units can include Selena from FE8. For Red mage horses I can only think of Azelle from FE4 but that depends of what version IS would use. For Blue mage horse units FE4 Artur comes to mind if they choose to base him on  his promoted class. Horse archers are pretty easy to fill, we have Rath, Shin, Sue, Midir, Astrid, Wolf and Sedgar as easy choices (although I don't think I'd like seeing more horse archers after what happened with B!Lyn).

 

[Humanoid]

I don't think adding more horse archers would be a real problem at all given that Lyn's issue is a combination of her BST boost, immunity to distant counter and optimised stat spread. Surely even if they add a half dozen more horse archers to the game, none of them would have that particularly insane combination, right? Right?

[Jingle Jangle]

Well I want

• Tanith to be a sword flier, for her higher sword rank compared to her lance rank in the Tellius game. So that she's more unique among fliers.
• Yukimura for a dagger/bow user on a puppet,  what movement type does what count as? 
• Kurthnaga as armored dragon, plus having very high bst.
• Reina as mentioned in this thread
• Maybe some of the mage bosses can be considered armored, (Lyon, Nergal etc)

Edited December 16, 2017 by Jingle Jangle

[C. Turtle]

The most obvious choices for unique fliers (Aversa & Reina) have already been mentioned, so I'll just say I agree with including those.

For cavalry, bows aren't technically seasonal, but we only have one so far, and Elibe's Nomads and Tellius' Bow Knights could fill that out nicely. Yukimura could fill out a niche that seasonals haven't even touched yet, being dagger cavalry. I know his puppet isn't technically a horse, but we've gotten a flier on a broom and knights without armour through the seasonals, so I'd call it close enough to count for the sake of variety.

For armours, I know Jugdral's Barons can use magic, but having not played the games, I don't know of any except for Gen 2 Arvis (EDIT: Apparently Arvis isn't a Baron, but is still a tome armor, so close enough). As for bow armours, though, I'd be in favor of classing Archanea's Ballisticians as armours. The FE wiki claims the class is "defined by high Defense and attack range that are offset by low Movement". High defense and low movement sounds pretty armour-like to me. Bonus points if their sprite has a giant version of their bow of choice mounted on the ballista.

Edited December 16, 2017 by C. Turtle

[shiningpikablu252]

If we want to keep up the trend of red-green duos having different combinations (Cain being sword cavalry and Abel lance cavalry, Stahl being sword cavalry and Sully lance cavalry), then I say we make Kaze go dagger cavalry to make him different from Saizo (dagger infantry).  Yukimura I see being better fit as bow cavalry (given how he comes in via Apothecary)...

Edited December 16, 2017 by shiningpikablu252

[mcsilas]

Yukimura should definitely be a dagger in my opinion- either 'cavalry' dagger or armour dagger due to being the Mechanist class.

Reina would be easily unique as a bow dagger

Anyone as an armoured healer? 

Normal Shigure can be a flying staff healer, since we don't need another lance peg knight (although he'd be the second male one)

Another unit type that we technically don't have is an Axe Pegasus Knight. I'm thinking typical high Speed and Res but a pegasus knight and more specialised than say, Camilla who has the most Res of the wyvern riders. I don't think there are any canon ones though?

[Cornguy]

Flying healer, Sumia. Canon promotion, I see zero issues with this one. 

Flying mage, Aversa. She deserves it, Awakening also has no playable villains.

Flying bow, Reina. Not big on Fates characters, but I like her at least. 

Armored bow, Horace. Normally I'm kind of against adding more Archanea, but he's a good fit. Who else anyway, Dalsin?

Armored mage, Emperor Arvis. 

Armored staff? Kellam in his trickster outfit would be funny, but maybe too nonsensical. 

Cavalry bow, any nomad. Why don't we have nomads? Rath is probably my preferred pick, but honestly I'd like any of them.

Cavalry mage, since we only have five(?), how about Maribelle? Any color but blue will do.

Cavalry shuriken? Maybe a Fates mechanist, like Yukimura?

[Reality]

The only FE4 Baron's that matter are Langobolt / Reptor / Blume

The rest are basically mooks. or reflect negatively on the game 

Of these- Reptor and Blume use magic in-game. Langobolt uses an axe ingame, but has weapon ranks for magic. 

Personally I think they are too obscure to justify adding to heroes. Granted I think the same for Valter/Narcian 

Langobolt/Reptor obviously have a big story presence concerning gen1, but would be viewed as randoms by most of the heroe's audience (and we already have a pseudo battle of barhara map with the Arvis GHB which makes designing a paralouge around a banner introducing them awkward)

  Blume is overshadowed by other villians during his part of the story, and what's worse, he is mostly passive in his capacity of king(and hence villian), acting under orders from Granvalle/etc to keep his position moreso than inventing his own ways to antagonize the protagonists. 

Blume could theoretically be added to a potential banner with Leif, allthough that would be confusing, as although Leif fights against him in FE4, he is dealt with offscreen in FE5, so it wouldn't strictly be a Thracia Banner (Especially since Redrick is more central to Thracia than Blume) 

Gameplaywise, I have mixed feelings about adding non-seasonal ranged flier/armor - they would still be as much a non-entity for most players if 5star locked as the seasonals anyway, because of the nature of pulling for off-banner 5 stars. It would be far better for new ranged flier/armors to be introduced as 3-4 stars. I'm still salty about Lance Azura and Ninian never turning up in my personal experience.

 

[Rezzy]

10 hours ago, Alexmender said:

Let's start with fliers. Reina is a good choice for a flying archer (unless IS goes out of it's way to make her a Lance flier...). Caeldori could always be a staff flier, although that seems a bit unlikely but having a 35/35 atk/spd healer with the Dazzling+Wrathful combo and (almost) unrestricted movement would be disgusting. For mage fliers Aversa is the obvious choice being a red flying mage with Goetia, Sumia and Cynthia can also work although they seem a bit more unlikely. 

Going into armor units. I think a few of the armor units in Shadow Dragon/New Mystery have good proficiency at using bows so there's that, sadly I don't remember which characters had that so I'm unable to give names. For mage armors the only ones that come to mind are G2 Arvis (extremely unlikely to come considering we have a G1.5 Arvis already) and Bloom who is ultra unpopular and will only come if Glade (who?) is added someday. I don't recall a staff armor ever existing in FE so that's either a seasonal or will never happen.

And to finish with the most dreaded type, horses. Green mage horse units can include Selena from FE8. For Red mage horses I can only think of Azelle from FE4 but that depends of what version IS would use. For Blue mage horse units FE4 Artur comes to mind if they choose to base him on  his promoted class. Horse archers are pretty easy to fill, we have Rath, Shin, Sue, Midir, Astrid, Wolf and Sedgar as easy choices (although I don't think I'd like seeing more horse archers after what happened with B!Lyn).

 

 

9 hours ago, Humanoid said:

I don't think adding more horse archers would be a real problem at all given that Lyn's issue is a combination of her BST boost, immunity to distant counter and optimised stat spread. Surely even if they add a half dozen more horse archers to the game, none of them would have that particularly insane combination, right? Right?

Yeah, the problem with adding Lyn wasn't the fact that she's a mounted Archer that would have been good alone, but adding a personal weapon that neutered blade tomes, a skill that nullifies DC, and an unneeded BST boost is what made her OP.  Just bring in Astrid with normal BST and none of those skills, she'd be good, but not game-breaking.

10 hours ago, Poimagic said:

Reina from fire emblem fates could be our first bow flier. Any Archenan armored unit could use bows as well. A staff flier could be Sigurn, Tanith, or a RD Elincia.

 

10 hours ago, Rafiel's Aria said:

We could easily get a flying archer out of a Fates character. There's Reina, but Shigure could work too. (I'd be in love with that actually.) Honestly, they could do special movement types for any future  CYL special costumes. If we go by the next two guys and girls, Camilla could be a mage flier. Maybe they could make Hector an armored mage as kind of an homage to his daughter. CYL character dress up as their kids. Lucina!Chrom, Lilina!Hector, Noire!Tharja...and then there's the problematic Camilla...lol

It was a missed opportunity making Elincia a sword. Sure, we needed them, but she probably would have been more unique as a staff user. 

I'd like to see Kirage as a flying Archer.  We won't have many chances for them, and every archer save Lyn is infantry right now.

I was almost sure they were going to make Elincia a Staff Wielder, at least for her PoR version. 

[bottlegnomes]

13 hours ago, Alexmender said:

Let's start with fliers. Reina is a good choice for a flying archer (unless IS goes out of it's way to make her a Lance flier...). Caeldori could always be a staff flier, although that seems a bit unlikely but having a 35/35 atk/spd healer with the Dazzling+Wrathful combo and (almost) unrestricted movement would be disgusting. For mage fliers Aversa is the obvious choice being a red flying mage with Goetia, Sumia and Cynthia can also work although they seem a bit more unlikely. 

Going into armor units. I think a few of the armor units in Shadow Dragon/New Mystery have good proficiency at using bows so there's that, sadly I don't remember which characters had that so I'm unable to give names. For mage armors the only ones that come to mind are G2 Arvis (extremely unlikely to come considering we have a G1.5 Arvis already) and Bloom who is ultra unpopular and will only come if Glade (who?) is added someday. I don't recall a staff armor ever existing in FE so that's either a seasonal or will never happen.

And to finish with the most dreaded type, horses. Green mage horse units can include Selena from FE8. For Red mage horses I can only think of Azelle from FE4 but that depends of what version IS would use. For Blue mage horse units FE4 Artur comes to mind if they choose to base him on  his promoted class. Horse archers are pretty easy to fill, we have Rath, Shin, Sue, Midir, Astrid, Wolf and Sedgar as easy choices (although I don't think I'd like seeing more horse archers after what happened with B!Lyn).

 

1.5?

Anyway, it's not as rare anymore, but sword flier in Ashnard. He seems like he'd be fairly easy to implement as a DC sword flier with a similar baseline to like Michalis and Valter, with maybe shifting some def/speed to attack and a skill that neutralizes bonuses or something as a reference to his blessed armor. This one is rather selfish and not bloody likely, but Mahnya/Annand as another sword peggy.

Mage armors have been covered pretty extensively, so won't bother restating what others have said.

Xavier would be a good choice for bow armor since he has a fairly high rank from what I recall.

I'd prefer seeming someone like Ewan be a cav mage rather than forcing Erk into a role he never could've canonically had. But I mean if they did make Erk or Lugh or someone a cav I wouldn't be miffed or anything.

Really any peg from Jugdral would be a decent candidate for staff flier since falcos had staves. Plus Phee would look adorable with updated art I bet. If they did some kids they could do her and Arthur together and cover both staff flier and green mage cav.

[Jingle Jangle]

14 hours ago, Alexmender said:

And to finish with the most dreaded type, horses. Green mage horse units can include Selena from FE8. For Red mage horses I can only think of Azelle from FE4 but that depends of what version IS would use. For Blue mage horse units FE4 Artur comes to mind if they choose to base him on  his promoted class. Horse archers are pretty easy to fill, we have Rath, Shin, Sue, Midir, Astrid, Wolf and Sedgar as easy choices (although I don't think I'd like seeing more horse archers after what happened with B!Lyn).

 

There is also  Arete (Azura's mom) that can be pretty much any color. Maybe down the line she can be a future bound hero battle. Forrest could be a mage, not too sure what color he would be.

[Troykv]

1 hour ago, bottlegnomes said:

1.5?

This Arvis talks about stuff that the 1 Gen Arvis shouldn't known.

The existence of Julia.

[bottlegnomes]

3 minutes ago, Troykv said:

This Arvis talks about stuff that the 1 Gen Arvis shouldn't known.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

The existence of Julia.

 

Oh wow, I completely forgot about/missed that.

[Ice Dragon]

I have very little experience with Thracia 776 or the 3DS games, so I'll mostly ignore those.

Infantry

• Every infantry class is already represented.

Armor

• Reptor and Bloom are the only story-relevant Barons in FE4 that use magic. Both would be blue tome armors in Heroes's system.
• Xavier from FE5 starts with equal weapon levels in axes and bows as his highest weapon levels, giving him a possibility of being a bow armor.
• While all armors in FE11 have access to bows, I'm not expecting any of them to use bows in Heroes.

Cavalry

• Midayle from FE4 is a Bow Knight.
• Sue, Sin, and Dayan from FE6 are Nomads.
• Rath from FE7 is a nomad. Uhai is a potential GHB unit as a Nomad.
• Neimi and Gerik from FE8 have the option of promoting to Ranger, but I'd expect them to remain infantry units in Heroes. Hayden is a Ranger in as a post-game unlockable unit.
• Astrid from FE9 and FE10 is a Bow Knight. Geoffrey canonically uses bows as his second weapon, but he'll more likely use a lance in Heroes.

Pegasus fliers

• Falcon Knights in various games have access to staves.

Dragon fliers

• Axe dragons have only been a thing since Tellius, so any Dragon Knight from before FE9 has the option of using swords or lances.
• Trabant, Areone, and Altenna from FE4 have legendary lances as their personal weapons.
• Narcian from FE6 has a sword as his signature weapon.
• Ashnard from FE9 has a sword as his personal weapon.

[Jingle Jangle]

18 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Astrid from FE9 and FE10 is a Bow Knight. Geoffrey canonically uses bows as his second weapon, but he'll more likely use a lance in Heroes.

He probably will have a personal brave weapon called Geoffrey's lance.

19 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Falcon Knights in various games have access to staves.

Or swords such as Tanith and Erinys or any flier that can use them as part of their promotion.

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, Jingle Jangle said:

Or swords such as Tanith and Erinys or any flier that can use them as part of their promotion.

We already have two sword Pegasus Knights in the game. They are no longer an endangered species.

[Jingle Jangle]

29 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

We already have two sword Pegasus Knights in the game. They are no longer an endangered species.

2 characters out of currently 195 is still pretty rare,  endangered species should protected until there are lager numbers.

[Ice Dragon]

4 minutes ago, Jingle Jangle said:

2 characters out of currently 195 is still pretty rare,  endangered species should protected until there are lager numbers.

If units were evenly distributed by movement type and weapon type (excluding breath weapons), there would only be 5-6 units of each type, so 2 is still a decent number.

There are also only 2 lance armors and 3 axe cavalry in the game, but no one seems to have mentioned them yet.

 

7 hours ago, Rezzy said:

Yeah, the problem with adding Lyn wasn't the fact that she's a mounted Archer that would have been good alone, but adding a personal weapon that neutered blade tomes, a skill that nullifies DC, and an unneeded BST boost is what made her OP.  Just bring in Astrid with normal BST and none of those skills, she'd be good, but not game-breaking.

Her 33/35 base offenses on a bow cavalry is enough to be considered oppressive. Even if Lyn didn't have Mulagir, didn't have Sacae's blessing, and had her HP, Def, or Res growth reduced by 10, she'd still have been considered broken.

Even if another bow cavalry comes in with 33/33, they'd still be just as strong offensively as Bride Cordelia with more mobility and with the only downside that refined cavalry-effective weapons can negate their buffs.

[Jingle Jangle]

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

If units were evenly distributed by movement type and weapon type (excluding breath weapons), there would only be 5-6 units of each type, so 2 is still a decent number.

There are also only 2 lance armors and 3 axe cavalry in the game, but no one seems to have mentioned them yet.

Point taken, I was considering how many sword fliers are in the series, not the weapon type and color in Heroes.