General Weapon Refinery discussion/speculation/creation thread

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Honestly the most disappointing thing for me about Rebecca's refine is that it really just needs one more thing to make it a little better. She runs Guard Bow very well, so why not add that effect as an additional unique effect for her refine? Slaying + Guard Bow DD effect + that little stat bonus if Hone/Rally/etc. is used, would be immediately a much better refine, and it wouldn't be overpowered or anything, especially when we have units like Legendaries Alm and Leif running around. It'd at least keep her niche of being a good mage baiter intact, while adding a little more.

Edited January 8, 2020 by Fire Emblem Fan

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

She runs Guard Bow very well, so why not add that effect as an additional unique effect for her refine? Slaying + Guard + that little stat bonus if Hone/Rally/etc. is used,

Guard Bow has Distant Def, not Guard.

And since when has +4 to all stats been "little"?

[Fire Emblem Fan]

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

Guard Bow has Distant Def, not Guard.

And since when has +4 to all stats been "little"?

That's what I meant. When I said "Slaying + Guard" I meant the effects of Guard Bow, not the Guard skill. Sorry, I should have made myself much clearer on that. And +4 to all stats isn't a little in the sense of "a little." It just seems so underwhelming with what could have been done.

[XRay]

3 hours ago, Alexmender said:

I can't say I'm too happy about Cordy's refine, but at least she's not forced to run that clunky refine and can just go with +Spd to go full quad mode. I'll probably keep her Slaying build because I haven't been too keen on Brave weapons outside of Altina and a 4 CD Galeforce + Desperation combo is too nice to give up although Catria is better at this

Same. I am most likely going to keep her with Slaying Lance for Galeforce. Brave Weapons are a bit too finicky for Galeforce in my opinion. Kind of sad that they gave her a crappy Refinement option, but at least the base Weapon is decent.

3 hours ago, Roflolxp54 said:

Rebecca's base Prf and effect aren't bad in PvE. The big problem is that debuffs are common.

Debuffs are easy to Dance/Sing off, so it is not a huge deal in my opinion.

3 hours ago, Nym said:

Rebecca's bow: Base effect is generic, special refine probably works very well with Bonus Doubler. But otherwise I don't think it will be as useful, hopefully the update art will fix her bow string problem.

2 hours ago, Zeo said:

With Bonus Doubler she could be a decent archer but that means she needs premium A fodder to be as good as other units  without it and that's without any specific niche or specialization that sets her apart. Massively disappointing.

39 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Eh. It's basically asking to be run on a Bonus Doubler set

Bonus Doubler can work with Player Phase units, but there are better options in my opinion considering Swift Sparrow is about the same price and rarity and Bonus Doubler being in demand from Spd tanks.

Bonus Doubler is the least consistent compared to the highest stat boosting A skills. It has about the same performance ceiling as Swift Sparrow but with a much worse performance floor. Swift Sparrow will always provide Atk+6 Spd+7 stat boost even without buffs, and with Azura Vallite Songstress running Atk Tactic, it could take that to Atk+12 Spd+13. Bonus Doubler gives nothing without buffs, and if you are using VS!Azura, it will give Atk/Spd+12, which is about the same as Swift Sparrow. If you are running a budget Dancer/Singer with Hone Atk 3 and Hone Spd 3, then Bonus Doubler is a complete waste of Orbs as it provides Atk/Spd+8 and you might as well just run Life and Death 3 for Atk/Spd+9 or Fury 3 for Atk/Spd+7.

3 hours ago, Xenomata said:

Rebecca: Nothing special whatsoever. Hey, remember when Niles got a new weapon and he got the Lightning Weapon effect on his base new weapon? Rebecca is barely any better than him, why does she only get one base effect?
Not much to say here, I really didn't expect her to get anything that'd truly fix her problems, and this kinda just makes her... well, not bad, but it isn't anything compared to the buff that Arthur got...

2 hours ago, Zeo said:

Rebecca is the biggest loser of the group though. That hurts a lot. Niles got a Slaying Effect, True Damage and a Flashing Blade effect while Rebecca only gets +4 to all stats with a hone despite being just as weak if not weaker as a unit.

3 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Wow...as someone who +10'ed Rebecca, and has been waiting for her refine for AGES, this is a massive disappointment. She's honestly better with the Guard Bow+ I already gave her. I wasn't expecting something broken or anything like that, but this...this is lame.

Rebecca's Refine is not bad. It is no Brave Bow, but it is not that much weaker once you get them into Desperation range and provide the right buffs. It is about the same as Nile's Bow.

Challenger List: Just give everyone 6/6/0/0 bonus buffs and the Rebecca with Slaying Bow an additional 6/4/4/4 in combat buffs.

Spoiler

CHALLENGER LIST  
Rebecca (5*+10 +atk)  
Weapon: Brave Bow+  
Special: Luna  
A: Brazen Atk Spd 4  
B: Desperation 3  
S: Brazen Atk Spd 3  
  
Rebecca (5*+10 +atk)  
Weapon: Slaying Bow+  
Special: Moonbow  
A: Brazen Atk Spd 4  
B: Desperation 3  
S: Brazen Atk Spd 3  
  
Niles (5*+10 +atk)  
Weapon: Niles's Bow  
Special: Moonbow  
A: Brazen Atk Spd 4  
B: Desperation 3  
S: Brazen Atk Spd 3  
Upgrade Path: 5  

 

1 hour ago, Kaden said:

Similarly, because Brave units would prefer to not take damage, being at >= 70% HP is fine for Brave units.

Brave units would very much like to take damage. Fast Brave units absolutely need to take damage for Desperation to work optimally. Slow Brave units do not need to take damage for combat performance reasons, unless they are doing Desperation-Brash Assault, but they would still very much appreciate the extra mobility provided by Wings of Mercy Dancers/Singers.

1 hour ago, Kaden said:

Sure, Cordelia can have good attack to maybe Counter Vantage, but the health condition doesn't really mesh well with Vantage much less Brazen or Desperation.

Counter-Vantage is only good on a select few units with insanely high Atk, and Cordelia does not meet that criteria in my opinion. The only unit who can somewhat skirt the high Atk requirement is Kronnya since she can run Null C-Disrupt to take out Firesweep units.

Edited January 8, 2020 by XRay

[Ice Dragon]

24 minutes ago, XRay said:

Bonus Doubler can work with Player Phase units, but there are better options in my opinion considering Swift Sparrow is about the same price and rarity and Bonus Doubler being in demand from Spd tanks.

Bonus Doubler has more flexibility in that it can be used on both phases and also grants defensive stats.

Also, a fully buffed Rebecca has 37/58/46/33/39, which is very much in the stat range for a Spd tank.

With the build +10 Rebecca [+Spd] (Rebecca's Bow [unique], Bonus Doubler 3, Dull Ranged 3, Distant Def 3) and full +6 buffs, she has a stat spread of 41/62/53/43/49 against ranged opponents. With full Dragonflower investment, that comes out to 43/64/55/45/51.

Or with +10 Rebecca [+Spd] (Rebecca's Bow [unique], Bonus Doubler 3, Lull Atk/Spd 3, Distant Def 3) and full Dragonflower investment, you get the equivalent of 43/64/58/48/54 if the opponent has no buffs and the equivalent of 43/64/64/54/60 if the opponent has full buffs.

Edited January 8, 2020 by Ice Dragon

[Kaden]

26 minutes ago, XRay said:

Brave units would very much like to take damage. Fast Brave units absolutely need to take damage for Desperation to work optimally. Slow Brave units do not need to take damage for combat performance reasons, unless they are doing Desperation-Brash Assault, but they would still very much appreciate the extra mobility provided by Wings of Mercy Dancers/Singers.

Counter-Vantage is only good on a select few units with insanely high Atk, and Cordelia does not meet that criteria in my opinion. The only unit who can somewhat skirt the high Atk requirement is Kronnya since she can run Null C-Disrupt to take out Firesweep units.

I need to proofread more. That wall of text... For the first one, I missed "most" between "Similarly, because..." and "... Brave units..." Using "usually" would have worked too, but it slipped my mind when I was trying to articulate my thoughts.

For the second one, I missed "maybe" between "Sure, Cordelia..." "... can have good attack..." The other implied part which I mentioned earlier was Cordelia doesn't have a Brave weapon capable of Braving on both phases. I ended up rewording those sentences after seeing this post.

Edited January 8, 2020 by Kaden

[Jotari]

Some ideas for the original Fallen Heroes banner.

Skadi: Effective against flying foes.Grants Spd+3. At the start of turn 3, deals 10 damage to foes within 3 columns centered on unit, and converts bonuses on those foes into penalties through their next actions.

If after turn 3 unit's HP < 100%, deals 10 damage to foes within 3 columns centered on unit and converts bonuses on those foes into penalties through their next actions on every second turn.

Basically makes his AOE attack a repeat instead of a one trick pony. Only activates is he has less than full HP to stop spamming it before enemies are aggrod. Another possibility here is to give him a large Bond ability like Chrom and Lucina to reflect the nature of his replica Skadi provides.

 

Expiration: Unit can counterattack regardless of foe's range. If foe's Range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of foe's Def or Res.

At the start of turn 1, deals 7 damage to all foes.

Basically just adds upheaval to it, so Duma isn't uniquely doing that. Reason why is because of Grima's attack striking damage to everyone before the start of battle in Awakening. Pairing Duma and Grima(s) together can deal a pretty hefty amount of damage to the enemy before battle even begins.

 

Gradivus (Hardin version): Unit can counterattack regardless of foe's range.

Inflict Atk-6 and Special Cooldown Charge -1 per attack on foe during combat.

Was toss up between giving it renewal, but I so much more wanted the Dark Sphere to be represented on Fallen Hardin in some way so I gave it Loptous's (rather underwhelming) effect and the guard ability for extra juice.

 

Beloved Zofia: Grants Def+3. At start of combat, if unit's HP = 100%, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+4.

If unit's HP = 100%, unit can move to a space adjacent to any ally.

Because Fallen Celica is a Witch, I was deeply disappointed she didn't have any kind of movement skill to reflect that. I also removed the fact that she gets damaged after using Beloved Zofia at full HP so she has a bit of a chance of maintaining the stat boosts it provides.

 

None of these skills would really be game changers for any of these units (except maybe Fallen Takumi, but then only for the purpose of  cheesing certain maps), but I'm more interested in coming up with ways to reflect what they can do in their original game than making them top tier.

Edited January 19, 2020 by Jotari

[Ice Dragon]

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

Gradivus (Hardin version):

Hardin and Camus both have the exact same version of Gradivus. If Hardin gets a refine for his Gradivus, Camus will get the same refine and vice versa.

The reason why the Falchions were able to get different refines was because they were already 3 different skills, one for each weapon sprite, which is also why Chrom and Lucina got the same refine on their weapons.

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Hardin and Camus both have the exact same version of Gradivus. If Hardin gets a refine for his Gradivus, Camus will get the same refine and vice versa.

The reason why the Falchions were able to get different refines was because they were already 3 different skills, one for each weapon sprite, which is also why Chrom and Lucina got the same refine on their weapons.

And you think it is beyond the ability of the developers to patch that?

[Diovani Bressan]

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

And you think it is beyond the ability of the developers to patch that?

I think so... IntSys is kinda lazy about this things... And Camus would like an refinement as well.

Maybe this is an extra reason to why Camus didn't get a refinement yet: He has a DC weapon, and shares weapon with another unit.

I still hope Xander and Camus get a refinement someday soon.

[Jotari]

7 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

I think so... IntSys is kinda lazy about this things... And Camus would like an refinement as well.

Maybe this is an extra reason to why Camus didn't get a refinement yet: He has a DC weapon, and shares weapon with another unit.

I still hope Xander and Camus get a refinement someday soon.

I'm absolutely certain it's possible to seperate Camus and Hardin's weapon. Hell I'm sure if you gave me the code I could do it myself. As I said before anyway, my first thought was to give it renewal (which if I had, would have been shared with Camus), but I really wanted to represent the Dark Sphere in some way. Ideally I'd like him to get a weapon refine and a new skill explicitly identified as Dark Sphere. But IS still hasn't figured out there are more skills in the game than just weapons.

[Humanoid]

If they really wanted to separate them they'd probably just take the easy route and give him access to a brand new weapon, Sealed/Exalted/Berserk/Blazing/Thunder Gradivus.

 

[Jotari]

6 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

If they really wanted to separate them they'd probably just take the easy route and give him access to a brand new weapon, Sealed/Exalted/Berserk/Blazing/Thunder Gradivus.

 

Wouldn't be the first time.

[Ice Dragon]

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

I'm absolutely certain it's possible to seperate Camus and Hardin's weapon. Hell I'm sure if you gave me the code I could do it myself. As I said before anyway, my first thought was to give it renewal (which if I had, would have been shared with Camus), but I really wanted to represent the Dark Sphere in some way. Ideally I'd like him to get a weapon refine and a new skill explicitly identified as Dark Sphere. But IS still hasn't figured out there are more skills in the game than just weapons.

Possible? Yes. Worth spending the time to do so? No. I'm sure you could do it yourself, but you're not doing it on company time with company money.

As for how it could be done, you'd simply make a brand new skill, then run a loop over every account in the game to find every instance of Hardin (or Camus, but there are probably fewer instances of Hardin), and replace the existing skill with the new one. This would almost certainly require server downtime.

Alternatively, for a solution that doesn't require taking the servers down for maintenance, you could build the conversion into to game client to run when the game is opened for the first time after the update, but this conversion would have to stay in the client until the next server maintenance anyways to catch inactive accounts, and you could potentially have glitches occur where friend unit Hardins may be missing their weapons if the friend hasn't logged in for the conversion to happen yet (it's known that the game will delete illegal skills from units, as we've previously had a glitch involving that).

Either way, not worth it.

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Possible? Yes. Worth spending the time to do so? No. I'm sure you could do it yourself, but you're not doing it on company time with company money.

As for how it could be done, you'd simply make a brand new skill, then run a loop over every account in the game to find every instance of Hardin (or Camus, but there are probably fewer instances of Hardin), and replace the existing skill with the new one. This would almost certainly require server downtime.

Alternatively, for a solution that doesn't require taking the servers down for maintenance, you could build the conversion into to game client to run when the game is opened for the first time after the update, but this conversion would have to stay in the client until the next server maintenance anyways to catch inactive accounts, and you could potentially have glitches occur where friend unit Hardins may be missing their weapons if the friend hasn't logged in for the conversion to happen yet (it's known that the game will delete illegal skills from units, as we've previously had a glitch involving that).

Either way, not worth it.

Or this.

15 hours ago, Humanoid said:

If they really wanted to separate them they'd probably just take the easy route and give him access to a brand new weapon, Sealed/Exalted/Berserk/Blazing/Thunder Gradivus.

 

 

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Or this.

As best as I can tell, weapon evolutions are still split by skill and not by character, and we have not yet gotten a non-evolution new weapon skill for a unit that already has an exclusive weapon. If they wanted to do something like this, they already had their chance to show they'd be willing to do so with Chrom and Lucina, who have completely different play styles, but they didn't.

[Jotari]

7 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

As best as I can tell, weapon evolutions are still split by skill and not by character, and we have not yet gotten a non-evolution new weapon skill for a unit that already has an exclusive weapon. If they wanted to do something like this, they already had their chance to show they'd be willing to do so with Chrom and Lucina, who have completely different play styles, but they didn't.

It doesn't even need to be an evolution. A new skill can just pop up in a unit's skill list.

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It doesn't even need to be an evolution. A new skill can just pop up in a unit's skill list.

That's exactly what "non-evolution new weapon skill" means?

[Jotari]

Ah, yes. I see. You're right we haven't gotten one for a non exclusive weapon yet (though we're in this subject because Gradivus isn't quite exclusive, just uninheritable), but there's nothing to stop it being the case. Of course as stated my preferred scenario would be for Gradivus to get a shared Renewal refine and for the Dark Sphere to be a skill, but we've also never seen them add a new non weapon skill to an existing unit, which is a bit of a shame.

[Xenomata]

Laslow, Barst, Jakob, and Fem Morgan are getting Laslow's Blade, Devil Axe, Jakob's Tray, and Father's Tactics each, GO.

>Laslow is a bit in the air thanks to his Silver Sword base. As a reference, the original Laslow's Blade was basically a Nohrian Katana (Spd +3, Def/Res -3), and Laslow's Personal Skill gave him a Rally that boosted Str and Skl by 1 each, pretty weak but hey anything helps.

>Barst... well what I know about the Devil Axe is that while powerful it has a chance to recoil on the holder completely. I'm sure that means this thing'll inflict post-battle damage on Barst in exchange for a powerful effect... Atk/Spd +6? I'm not sure if they'll keep to the Brave weapon he has or change it up though...

>Jakob's Tray in the original was basically an augmented Silver Dagger with a decent Defense +4 effect and different debuffs, albeit slightly weaker. They could go a number of ways with this one, but it certainly won't be anything like Felicia's Plate...
His personal skill gave an adjacent Corrin some combat boosts. I can't see him getting a Support Partner skill like Corrin though... Jakob is anti-social being anti-social to anti-socialists.

>Morgan... I mean, her kit was designed with resisting incoming Magic damage, I can't imagine this thing either coming with Distant Def, Mirror Stance, or hell both why not? Maybe it'll even come with Mirror Stance 3! Either way, there's only so many ways you can go with a unit with an established role in life...

Edited January 29, 2020 by Xenomata

[SockPuppet]

OMG!! I might build Jakob my birthright husband and/or Laslow if they're good...!

[Ice Dragon]

13 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

>Barst... well what I know about the Devil Axe is that while powerful it has a chance to recoil on the holder completely. I'm sure that means this thing'll inflict post-battle damage on Barst in exchange for a powerful effect... Atk/Spd +6? I'm not sure if they'll keep to the Brave weapon he has or change it up though...

I'd say this is a similar situation as Raven's Basilikos. The Brave effect is one of the weapon effects that only gets added when there is a lore reason to do so (or the weapon is Heroes-original), so they're certainly dropping it.

Personally, I'd love to see the Devil Axe have Fury 3 as its base effect and Fury 3 as its refine. It would be absolutely perfect.

Edited January 29, 2020 by Ice Dragon

[Kaden]

2 hours ago, Xenomata said:

>Barst... well what I know about the Devil Axe is that while powerful it has a chance to recoil on the holder completely. I'm sure that means this thing'll inflict post-battle damage on Barst in exchange for a powerful effect... Atk/Spd +6? I'm not sure if they'll keep to the Brave weapon he has or change it up though...

Like the effects of refined Ragnarok's: "Grants Atk/Spd+5 during combat. After combat, if unit attacked, deals 5 damage to unit", or Death's: "Grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+4 during combat. After combat, if unit attacked, deals 4 damage to unit"?

Paired with Fury 3 or Brazen like unique refined Ragnarok as the base or unique refinement and Barst could get a lot of stats.

If not stats, then Scendscale's: "Deals damage = 25% of unit's Atk, but after combat, if unit attacked, deals 7 damage to unit", or a similar effect could work to convey the power and danger of the Devil Axe.

[Zeo]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

I'd say this is a similar situation as Raven's Basilikos. The Brave effect is one of the weapon effects that only gets added when there is a lore reason to do so (or the weapon is Heroes-original), so they're certainly dropping it.

Personally, I'd love to see the Devil Axe have Fury 3 as its base effect and Fury 3 as its refine. It would be absolutely perfect.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves... Fury will eventually become a seal. If they did what you suggest he could eventually run Fury 3 as a seal with Fury 4 in the A slot. That's +13 to all stats and 26 recoil damage per combat.

A +0 Barst would 45 ATK, 45 SPD, 43 DEF and 30 RES.

Hm... come to think of it, it's not that impressive given powercreep. Or the fact that the stat difference is not that huge and he would be virtually worthless after the first round of combat. Yeah, give it to him, it's fine.

[XRay]

25 minutes ago, Zeo said:

Or the fact that the stat difference is not that huge and he would be virtually worthless after the first round of combat.

That recoil damage is really good though. Setting up Desperation would be a breeze, so there is usually no need to maintain a high bulk for Player Phase units.