General Weapon Refinery discussion/speculation/creation thread

[Florete]

Yikes, why did they give Hector such craziness? You basically need Null Follow-Up to handle him now. Get out your legendary Celicas.

So Royal Sword gives Celica +1 cooldown charge per hit, then -1 after combat. With Galeforce being a 5 charge special, assuming Celica hit the opponent twice for 4 charge during combat, will that -1 after combat cause Galeforce to activate? That's the major factor for me here, because if not she'd need Quickened Pulse or some other outside effect to trigger Galeforce after one round of combat, but if it does trigger Galeforce, that's pretty good. That and the heal really fix her up well.

Hlioskjalf is basic but effective considering how good it already was. It's pretty nice that she can be behind an ally, that ally gets attacked from range, and she debuffs the attacking enemy.

Garm's special effect is nearly the same as Royal Sword's, but I don't feel like it means as much to Ephraim as it does to Celica. This seems like the weakest of the bunch as the most notable thing it does is give him the offensive side of Null Follow-Up, but you don't even need the special refine for that, and he's still stuck with the active bonus conditional.

[SuperNova125]

What are these broken refines? Also is 5 to 6 effects per weapon is legal now? Only have Hector and Veronica and I gave them the refines. 

Hector is extremely stacked. His weapon has a slaying effect, the shield, guaranteed Follow ups, follow up preventation, in combat debuffs and neutralising penalties. He also comes with a DC that gives him stats. Will slap him Special fighter in the future to make him an absolute demon. Might as well run him in AR as a tank on light seasons as Chrom can't be run always and he is unmerged with a bad nature and Hector is neutral. Unless you have Nul follow up one of his effects will ruin your day. 

Veronica seems tame to be honest, she was the Lyn of CYL2 so she got a good refine but not broken like the rest. I am running her in Anima defence and Eliwood Brunnya and Thrasir appreciate all of her buffs and debuffs a lot. I am a bit afraid about Mirabilis attacking instead of dancing, the second dancer will simply have the weapon removed. Looking forward to Loki's refine somewhere down the line and Camilla's next year. 

I don't have the rest however Celica is the winner from the women's division. She can simply initiate combat and proc Galeforce. Ephraim also got a nice buff. However, I have enough Galeforce units to build and finish that when completed would make Celica redundant also as 3 Edelgards are Axe armors this class has some of my favourite and most used units so Ephraim's competition is really big. Will skip the rerun, as even the ones I have are at neutral so merges aren't needed. 

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Diovani Bressan said:

It's like Mystic Boost, that triggers after combat

Royal Swors heals 7, Double Lion deals 1, so Celica ends healing 6 after combat and can keep the Double Lion effect.

You mean Double Lion deals 1, then Royal Sword Heals 7, right?

[Vicious Sal]

23 minutes ago, Jotari said:

You mean Double Lion deals 1, then Royal Sword Heals 7, right?

After combat effects happen at the same time so the end result is always +6.

[Humanoid]

Hector's refine sounds like something we joke about around here when two or more users keep one-upping each other by suggesting more effects to stack onto a weapon. So fess up, which of you lot works for IS?

Needless to say, I upgraded him (sadly just +1 Neutral) and Veronica (+5) straight away since I've been sitting on four digit amounts of both dew and rocks forever. Still don't think it's worth it for my -Atk Ephraim though, and I don't have Celica at all (but I will stop purposely avoiding her now I guess).

[Xenomata]

You know it's kinda bad for me cause I wanna give +Spd Celica the support she wants (and that I kinda owe her for being +10 and all), but my Hector is +Def +5 and would be awesome with the refine, but my +Atk +7 Veronica would be a generally all-around useful refine to have, and Ephraim... uh... exists somewhere I think? I dunno, I kept using him for Special Fighter fodder...

Celica? Hector? Veronica? WHO DO I REFINE???

[Othin]

I have all four, but only upgraded Veronica so far since she's the one I actually use. I'll upgrade any others if they seem relevant to something, though.

[SuperNova125]

Today I used Hector in AR as I previously said I would. He is absolutely insane, he could tank Legendary Alms with Nul follow up like it's nothing. He didn't even have any extra movement, Peony was enough. Used his base kit, noontime swap and warding stance. I haven't used Celica so I may be biased but I say he is the winner of these refines.

[Diovani Bressan]

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

You mean Double Lion deals 1, then Royal Sword Heals 7, right?

 

2 hours ago, Vicious Sal said:

After combat effects happen at the same time so the end result is always +6.

Doesnt matter the order, Jotari. Like Sal said: these effects happen at the same time.

[Jotari]

46 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

 

Doesnt matter the order, Jotari. Like Sal said: these effects happen at the same time.

Yeah I got it now.

[XRay]

8 hours ago, SuperNova125 said:

What are these broken refines? Also is 5 to 6 effects per weapon is legal now? Only have Hector and Veronica and I gave them the refines. 

Hector is extremely stacked. His weapon has a slaying effect, the shield, guaranteed Follow ups, follow up preventation, in combat debuffs and neutralising penalties. He also comes with a DC that gives him stats. Will slap him Special fighter in the future to make him an absolute demon. Might as well run him in AR as a tank on light seasons as Chrom can't be run always and he is unmerged with a bad nature and Hector is neutral. Unless you have Nul follow up one of his effects will ruin your day. 

It is not as broken as BH!Ike. AOTB!Hector can still be killed by focus fire from Infantry Pulse teams. BH!Ike on the other hand cannot be killed with focus fire, and he needs to be killed with specific hard counters.

The rest are pretty tame in my opinion.

7 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Hector's refine sounds like something we joke about around here when two or more users keep one-upping each other by suggesting more effects to stack onto a weapon. So fess up, which of you lot works for IS?

I think most people would still rather use BH!Ike though. He is still the bulkiest tank and got no mobility issues.

Edited September 7, 2020 by XRay

[SuperNova125]

19 minutes ago, XRay said:

It is not as broken as BH!Ike. AOTB!Hector can still be killed by focus fire from Infantry Pulse teams. BH!Ike on the other hand cannot be killed with focus fire, and he needs to be killed with specific hard counters.

The rest are pretty tame in my opinion.

I think most people would still rather use BH!Ike though. He is still the bulkiest tank and got no mobility issues.

B.Ike is amazing I don't disagree however, he is a unit that lacks in stats quite a lot and that makes him easy to kill especially Res and when facing all these absurd nukes that exist in AR defence that becomes a big problem. I have both Ike and Hector unmerged neutral. Ike has the popular Aether, DC, Nul C disrupt, Atk smoke, QR build and Hector what I mentioned above. Hector is able to tank lots of stuff and even some Bramimonds with the simple triple mythic support. Ike needs Lancina (meaning a mythic spot is sacrificed) and lot's of investment in terms of merges and flowers. When somehow lancina is either killed or out of range he becomes extremely weak. When +10 merges and +15 flowers is a thing not only Ike but any unit becomes crazy. But out of the box no matter how many chances I give him he always underperforms, while Hector was only killed by some Bramimonds that got danced. IP teams can be dealt with by any pulse smoke unit and when disarm trap Eir with repo and Peony's dance is a thing Hector's movement gets servicable.

Perhaps I am not doing something correctly with B.Ike but that's my experience. 

[Xenomata]

2 hours ago, SuperNova125 said:

B.Ike is amazing I don't disagree however, he is a unit that lacks in stats quite a lot and that makes him easy to kill especially Res and when facing all these absurd nukes that exist in AR defence that becomes a big problem. I have both Ike and Hector unmerged neutral. Ike has the popular Aether, DC, Nul C disrupt, Atk smoke, QR build and Hector what I mentioned above. Hector is able to tank lots of stuff and even some Bramimonds with the simple triple mythic support. Ike needs Lancina (meaning a mythic spot is sacrificed) and lot's of investment in terms of merges and flowers. When somehow lancina is either killed or out of range he becomes extremely weak. When +10 merges and +15 flowers is a thing not only Ike but any unit becomes crazy. But out of the box no matter how many chances I give him he always underperforms, while Hector was only killed by some Bramimonds that got danced. IP teams can be dealt with by any pulse smoke unit and when disarm trap Eir with repo and Peony's dance is a thing Hector's movement gets servicable.

Perhaps I am not doing something correctly with B.Ike but that's my experience. 

I think what you're doing wrong is that your BIke isn't running an Evasion skill with speed stacking. That additional level of damage reduction makes even Lysithea's hits run the risk of not getting the kill, assuming she isn't Speed invested (and in my experience she usually just packs her default skills and a Strike SS). Yes he does still want the support of Brave Lucina, in this case she's running heavy Speed support, but the biggest thing Bike has going for him is the frankly heavy amount of damage reduction available to him, which Hector, while having a large number of skills to prevent the enemy from doing a lot of potential damage, will never be able to fully replicate.

[XRay]

4 hours ago, SuperNova125 said:

Perhaps I am not doing something correctly with B.Ike but that's my experience. 

As @Xenomata says, you want heavy Spd stacking and ideally Spurn on BH!Ike's B slot. Double Peonys with Chill Atk and Chill Spd in the back giving Ployish Drive Atk/Spd, BH!Lucina with double Drive Spd, and the fifth unit can be a bonus unit for score or Eir for additional healing support. BH!Ike should be able to reduce over 60% of the damage on the first hit against most enemies, and over 90% on the second hit. With that level of percentage mitigation, having low Res is not that much of an issue.

Null C-Disrupt is not that useful on super tanks in my opinion since most Firesweepers are staff units and they do not hit as hard as Firesweep archers, so there is not much benefit in countering them. Pain and Flash are not that common and Panic can simply be ignored.

Edited September 7, 2020 by XRay

[Interdimensional Observer]

18 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

These aren't weapon effects - they're novellas.

Isn't this somewhat likely to happen as a game with many many things adds more over time? All or most of the simple effects that the developers could conceive of get used up and then they have to create more complicated ones later to stay inventive.

To use the 4X turn-based simulation game Civilization VI for a similar case, compare Germany's Leader and Civilization Unique Abilities with Canada's. Germany came in the base game, Canada got added two expansion packs later, and with that expansion the game had 42 unique Civilizations, each with two unique abilities and a unique piece of infrastructure and one or two unique combat units.

Germany:

• Leader Unique Ability- Iron Crown: "Gain an additional Military policy slot in all Governments. +7  Combat Strength for all units when fighting city-states and their units."
• Civilization Unique Ability- Free Imperial Cities: "Each city can build one more district than the population limit would normally allow."

Canada:

• Leader Unique Ability- Last Best West: "Can build Farms on Tundra tiles, and on Tundra Hills tiles with Civil Engineering. Snow, Snow Hills, Tundra Hills, and Tundra tiles cost 50% less  Gold to purchase. On those tiles, resources accumulate twice as fast, Mines and Lumber Mills receive +1  Production, and Camps receive +1  Food."
• Civilization Unique Ability- Four Faces of Peace: "Cannot declare Surprise Wars or war on City-States. Surprise Wars cannot be declared on Canada. For every 100  Tourism earned, gain 1  Diplomatic Favor. +100%  Diplomatic Favor gained from succesfully completing Emergencies and Competitions."

And yet, Canada is deemed meme-tier bad while Germany is well-rounded if not great outside of very high Production via their Hansa district.

Can I bring up Smash too? Doesn't like every new character have to have some kind of gimmick big or small to define them? Probably because Smash has such a gargantuan roster now.

Edited September 7, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Ice Dragon]

Cool. Now I have to find 16 staves to refine for more dew.

 

Celica finally has a fix for the two biggest problems with her weapon and base kit: not being able to keep Double Lion active and not being able to consistently activate Galeforce. And free stats.

What the fuck, Hector. Personally, nullifying effective damage is the most notable addition as it lets him actually properly deal with all of the annoying armor-effective red units in the game without needing to switch out his exclusive passive skill. Blocking enemy follow-ups is a nice bonus, and free stats are free stats.

Ephraim's is decent. Nothing too fancy. Unlike the two above, he didn't really have any problems he needed fixing, and effective damage is less common on blue units. He can now ignore Wary Fighter and Impact skills. And Hector's refine. And I guess Garm is now also a Runeaxe. Okay. And free stats.

And Veronica gets to be even more annoying to deal with because free stats. I'm noticing a trend.

 

Hector is my first priority since he's my most-used unit of the bunch. Celica is next, followed by Ephraim, then Veronica. But that probably doesn't matter because it's not like I won't have that much dew all at once.

[silverserpent]

Hector is getting his refine just as soon as I grind up the SP for him. Ephraim is already rocking the new Garm. Veronica...debating on putting the refine on my +Atk or my Neutral copy. Celica still needs SP as well, but she's the least used of the bunch.

[Kaden]

On 9/7/2020 at 12:40 AM, Icelerate said:

VF3 is good against impact users so I disagree with you. But I can see an argument for SF3 or BF3 as an alternative. 

I forgot about the whole Wary Fighter-like and double Quick Riposte-like effects interaction. For pure enemy phase, I can see Vengeful Fighter being used to cover all his bases, namely, follow-up denial effects, but his default Bold Fighter offering player phase performance to complement his enemy phase performance or Special Fighter seem like better options as they make him more flexible. Bonfire does less damage compared to Ignis and does not have the sustain from Aether, but Bonfire on counter with Special Fighter might be able to finish off units with Impact or some other follow-up denial effect without CYL Hector needing a follow-up attack.

Speaking of which, I read a comment saying that with unique refined Maltet, CYL Hector loses his default Ignis on either phase ignoring any Guard effects in play. On player phase, it's just the usual Killer weapon, Ignis, and Bold Fighter; Ignis becomes a 3 cooldown with Maltet, his first hit lowers it to 1 cooldown, he takes a hit charging Ignis, and then he makes a guaranteed follow-up attack due to Bold Fighter with an Ignis proc. On enemy phase, it used to be he takes a hit and Ignis is at 2 cooldown, he counters and Ignis is at 1 cooldown, his foe would likely be able to double him, so Ignis now charged, and then he makes a guaranteed follow-up due to Maltet's Quick Riposte 5 with an Ignis proc. Now with unique refined Maltet, it's he takes a hit and Ignis is at 2 cooldown, he counters and Ignis is at 1 cooldown, and he counters again due to refined Maltet's Quick Riposte 7.5 and because its unique refinement prevents his foe from making a follow-up attack which leaves Ignis charged.

By sheer coincidence, the red and blue CYL1 and CYL2 units ended up having a similar kind of upgrade to their base effects. Both CYL Roy and CYL Celica had their weapon's special charge effect improved where Blazing Durandal's Heavy Blade 3 is upgraded to simply initiating to get special cooldown charge +1 while also gaining the ability to inflict special cooldown charge -1 on his foe while refined Royal Sword's special cooldown charge +1 effect becomes more lenient by working when she initiates. Both CYL Lucina and CYL Hector involve effective damage where refined Geirskogul gains effective damage against dragons while refined Maltet gains neutralizes effective damage against armored.

[Hilda]

So when do you think will we start getting Refines for some Legendary heroes? I mean they have to think about it now or plan it, because more and more of them are getting very lackluster (some were allready lackluster before).

[Xenomata]

3 minutes ago, Hilda said:

So when do you think will we start getting Refines for some Legendary heroes? I mean they have to think about it now or plan it, because more and more of them are getting very lackluster (some were allready lackluster before).

Maybe before the end of the year. Gunnthra would be the earliest Legendary Hero with a refinable weapon following current patterns, and they're running out of early units to give refines to.

That could change if they begin giving refines to units they previously ignored (Dancers, Staff units, DC weapons, maybe even seasonals just to keep the stalling tactics intact for another year), but the banner Shiro was from (Children of Fate) was one of the last banners before the release of Gunnthra's Legbanner, and with almost every other unit prior to him being refined already it's only a matter of time before they have to begin dealing with nothing but Book 2+ units.

[SuperNova125]

On 9/10/2020 at 8:12 AM, Hilda said:

So when do you think will we start getting Refines for some Legendary heroes? I mean they have to think about it now or plan it, because more and more of them are getting very lackluster (some were allready lackluster before).

Most early ones could really use a refine and considering how good the refines for brave heroes are, Legendaries would rival this. Also they could get a rerun in a new power banner, something that would gain a lot of attention. If I am not mistaken not even many Book 2 5*s remain so they have to either move on to the second half of book 2 or give Legendaries and DC weapons refines (Ragnel, Expiration and Raijinto are shared so that's a bonus). 

[Xenomata]

27 minutes ago, SuperNova125 said:

If I am not mistaken not even many Book 2 5*s remain so they have to either move on to the second half of book 2 or give Legendaries and DC weapons refines (Ragnel, Expiration and Raijinto are shared so that's a bonus). 

The following units from the first half of book 2 (From Children of Fate to Wings of Fate) do not yet have refines, are perfectly available for refines due to not being a dancer/staff/DC weapon, and are currently 5* locked:

• Rhajat
• Micaiah
• Chrom (TBK)
• Reinhardt (WoT)
• Hinoka (WoF)

And aside from CYL2 all units from all New Hero banners after WoF do not have refines.
As for demotes, we have Soleil, Sothe, L'arachel, Male Morgan, and Shigure, but they might need to wait a little longer since there are still Book 1 units from the 4* and below pool waiting for their refines.

[Othin]

9 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

The following units from the first half of book 2 (From Children of Fate to Wings of Fate) do not yet have refines, are perfectly available for refines due to not being a dancer/staff/DC weapon, and are currently 5* locked:

• Rhajat
• Micaiah
• Chrom (TBK)
• Reinhardt (WoT)
• Hinoka (WoF)

And aside from CYL2 all units from all New Hero banners after WoF do not have refines.
As for demotes, we have Soleil, Sothe, L'arachel, Male Morgan, and Shigure, but they might need to wait a little longer since there are still Book 1 units from the 4* and below pool waiting for their refines.

And regarding Book 1, this list still holds up:

 

[Jotari]

So I've been wondering about a refine for Ninian for some time and one thing that I always wanted was for her weapon to have some sort of support basis, but everything I suggested was a bit underwhelming. But trying to beat Hero King Marth using Fates characters, specifically Lilith, has given me this idea.

Ice Breath: Mt 16: Grants Spd+3. Unit can move to a space adjacent to support partner. If a skill like Sing or Dance is used, grants bonus to target's Atk/Spd/Def/Res = 4 for 1 turn. If target ally is Support Partner, grant bonuses =6 If foe's Range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of foe's Def or Res.

So essentially she'd work like Lilith in that she can travel to her support partner no matter where they are. Only instead of Lilith being a semi competent battle unit who stacks combat bonuses, Ninan would be a support unit you can basically always dance her partner and power them up. It also relates a bit to the fact how Ninan managed to fly half way across the world to find Eliwood in the story, even if that, uh, didn't work out for her too well.

[Diovani Bressan]

On 9/19/2020 at 1:00 PM, Jotari said:

So I've been wondering about a refine for Ninian for some time and one thing that I always wanted was for her weapon to have some sort of support basis, but everything I suggested was a bit underwhelming. But trying to beat Hero King Marth using Fates characters, specifically Lilith, has given me this idea.

Ice Breath: Mt 16: Grants Spd+3. Unit can move to a space adjacent to support partner. If a skill like Sing or Dance is used, grants bonus to target's Atk/Spd/Def/Res = 4 for 1 turn. If target ally is Support Partner, grant bonuses =6 If foe's Range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of foe's Def or Res.

So essentially she'd work like Lilith in that she can travel to her support partner no matter where they are. Only instead of Lilith being a semi competent battle unit who stacks combat bonuses, Ninan would be a support unit you can basically always dance her partner and power them up. It also relates a bit to the fact how Ninan managed to fly half way across the world to find Eliwood in the story, even if that, uh, didn't work out for her too well.

That's a pretty cool idea for Ninian. Is the refinement also in this description, or it's the base effect?

Also, I don't think she will have Spd+3 in the base effect, since no one got a permanent stat boost (like Spd+3) in the base effect when they got a prf weapon in the update. All the weapon that got refined and have that type of stat boost are weapon that already had that effect when they got released.

So would be more like...

Ice Breath: Mt 16: Unit can move to a space adjacent to support partner. If Sing or Dance is used, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+4 to target. If target ally is Support Partner, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+6 instead. If foe's Range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of foe's Def or Res.

Since Ninian is very used as an Infantry Pulse unit, she could have a "at start of turn 1, grants Special cooldown count-X" effect as refinement. It could be Special cooldown count-2 to Support Partner, or a Special cooldown count-1to all allies that HP < Ninian's HP (basically. a global pulse). Or could be a debuffing effect, like Cantrip and Nil's weapon.