Hero Merit Grinding and Flaunting Mega Thread

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Hmmm, interesting. I do have my Tobin more or less set up similarly. Granted, I've got Dragon Fang on him over Bonfire, so I'll have to trial it and see if that messes things up at all. I'll have to check the benchmarks against my Spring Xander because, while I've got him semi-built with really budget stuff, he's -Atk, so I'm not convinced he's going to be able to kill much of anything. I guess I'll see. I guess I also have a 4* Abel I can check against their stats, but I have a sneaking suspicion he's too frail for the job.

Yeah, he's been pretty expensive to build, but he's been putting in some serious work for me. He's a +10 +Def/-Res with a Do Dao+Def, Aether, DC and VF3. Hits 50 Def before buffs of any kind. His HP pool and Spd actually makes him surprisingly okay against mages, too, despite the terrible Res (19). If he runs the DD3 Seal, he can usually keep a decent equilibrium through life drain on the mages and any melee goons (who typically plink him). He's come a long way from being a point slave that I threw Mirror Strike and Poison Strike on to minmax SP, that's for sure.

[Alkaid]

I was surprised my Xander was able to actually do it. Between badge farming and this I suppose he keeps wanting to prove his usefulness to me, despite how crappy he is normally.. I'm assuming my 4* Abel, Oscar, etc. won't be up to the job either.

Man, maybe I should have been nicer to my Draugs instead of just giving everyone Ward Armor(as needed as that was). I've only got a single 1 hanging around at the moment. I'm considering dumping some of these surplus feathers into merging up an A Tiki to be my tanky red. I've even got 1 spare Steady Breath and a spare Chrom for Aether. I just wish I had a proper +atk/def -spd IV copy of her, as my best are +atk/def -hp (and hp's a superbane). Maybe I'll just do it anyway and hope for a better one when I get to the last couple merges.

Also, I'm just wondering, what is everyone doing for Infernal Robin lately? I just throw +10 Camilla with a couple buffs at it to solo, so I don't know what people have actually been doing for normal strategies now. Robin and Xander are the only ones I really stray off from the common setups for. (for Xander my Winter Tharja can solo it)

Edited May 9, 2018 by Alkaid

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

My A!Tiki is doing just fine with +Atk/-HP. The refine and merges really help make it not too much of an issue. She's also running the TA3 set, so she's not even quite as versatile as if you ran a SB Tiki.

I'm using the Grima strat I listed before. M!Grima (+0 +Def/-HP, Fury 3) with a Fortify Armor, Spur Res 1 and B-support buddy trailing behind. The rest can be non-armour filler.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi
Forgot my own specifics. Oops.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I haven't been able to grind much HM since the GHB change. I've been doing the solo auto battle strats when I can, but my L!Ike, Black Knight, and dragons are all sitting under 1500 HM. I could have grinded more, but I guess when they made HM grinding so easy I lost interest lol

Should be finding more time to grind in the coming months though. I don't use those fancy macros but I've got a lot of units I want to promote for my collection.

[Alkaid]

I managed to finally break away from the NY Corrin/LA Eliwood duo for Lunatic Lloyd this time. I used my promoted M Kana(Def refine, Swap, QR2 added) and M Grima to duo it instead. Since M Kana is a fresh unit needing plenty of HM, it's working pretty good until he gets maxed out. if only I had a good Nowi to promote to continue with after. This is still managing to be my least efficient day for farming.

[Charmeleonbrah]

One hilarious thing about the hero merit grinding is its purpose.  Most are motivated to do this to merge their units so as to attain a higher ranking in Arena.  The end goal, of course, is making it (and staying) in Tier 20.  What is the reward for such an endeavor?  An extra 1,000 or so feathers per week.

Anyone seeing the irony here?  You figure out a method to get huge amounts of feathers in a relatively short amount of time...and your reward per week is less than what you could gain in one day of determined grinding.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Doing better in Arena Assault also means more Sacred Coins and Refining Stones. That said, that that point, it's going to be less about the 2000 feathers and 2-3 extra coins and stones, and more about the competition. Those looking for strictly efficiency farming in the Arena are going to be coasting between 18 and 19 or 19 and 20.

Also, not all +10s are going to be for Arena. I'm building a +10 Florina out of favouratism, since she won't ever head any of my Arena teams (she gets into AA to mash mages at times, though). I promoted M!Kana and Caeda from 4* to 5* out of favouratism, too (though it doesn't hurt that M!Kana is a solid unit and Caeda's Wing Sword can come in handy against the super whale armours I fight).

[Jingle Jangle]

30 minutes ago, Charmeleonbrah said:

One hilarious thing about the hero merit grinding is its purpose.  Most are motivated to do this to merge their units so as to attain a higher ranking in Arena.  The end goal, of course, is making it (and staying) in Tier 20.  What is the reward for such an endeavor?  An extra 1,000 or so feathers per week.

Anyone seeing the irony here?  You figure out a method to get huge amounts of feathers in a relatively short amount of time...and your reward per week is less than what you could gain in one day of determined grinding.

It is not just to have a higher arena score, it is also favoritism. I currently have 352 orbs, when I spurge on a upcoming banner, I will hopefully have merges for my projects. Stockpiling feathers up now saves time in the future for unlocking potential.

[Zeo]

@mampfoid Well... that escalated quickly.

Admittedly the next row is a bunch of 4000-3000 HM units I actually use and a good deal of these units here are ones that were already pretty high. I honestly need to visit some of my completely unused units like Selena, Rebecca, Seliph, Fir and the like, there's still a lot of units left. The crazy thing is that a single *5 +10 (Assuming all units are *4 to promote) is 220k feathers. The ability to take a single unit to it's fullest potential immediately is something I am really close to having which is nuts. Also the fact that I could finish Matthew and Nino and still have feathers left over.

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about this is that I'm not the least bit compelled to spend a single feather on anything right now. I'm perfectly content building my stores.

@Charmeleonbrah It's more so about favoritism as stated before. I'm far less willing to spend all these feathers on a unit I don't particularly care about. Arena Assault ranking is also a thing and Stone/Coins are currently a limited resource that, outside of events, can't be attained anywhere else and higher rankings give significantly more of these.

[Alkaid]

54 minutes ago, Charmeleonbrah said:

One hilarious thing about the hero merit grinding is its purpose.  Most are motivated to do this to merge their units so as to attain a higher ranking in Arena.  The end goal, of course, is making it (and staying) in Tier 20.  What is the reward for such an endeavor?  An extra 1,000 or so feathers per week.

Anyone seeing the irony here?  You figure out a method to get huge amounts of feathers in a relatively short amount of time...and your reward per week is less than what you could gain in one day of determined grinding.

To be fair, I assume most are merging their favorites and then also using them to/stay in tier 20 anyway.(since it's still possible to stay in t20 even with ranged units, with enough merges) The people who do just prioritize arena scoring for esports probably don't care about the resource sink, since chasing a higher score is their main goal anyway.

I'm just building more of my favorites up thanks to this, since I had to shaft some of them to prioritize my main ones first. Now I have enough feathers to actually work on Tharja, Peri, etc. too instead of just neglecting them while I work on my core team first.

[mampfoid]

@Zeo I'm currently at 62 maxed out units and 180k feathers.

I haven't stopped spending though, since copies of my merge projects stopped coming in. Recently I finished building Quatsuna (whyever), Inigo and I plan to promote a whole team to start over the story from the beginning. 

HM is finite, I don't think I can make a second +10 team. 

[Zeo]

@mampfoid Indeed it is. Still feathers are an income we're still getting every week otherwise, this is just a surplus, though a temporary one, it's a welcome boost. I'm actually at 58 so I'm a bit behind you. 

Seeing as summoning doesn't seem like it'll happen much until the end of the month, I think I'm going to work on things like properly building my Kagero, Amelia, ToD!Henry and the like. If I need to spend feathers for that I won't be frugal. 

[mampfoid]

My Micaiah was a little low on SP, so I modified my lunatic Xander strat a little: 

1. 4* Saias vanilla, full skills
2. 5* L!IIke vanilla, full skills + QR3 seal
3. 4* Kana vanilla, full skills (collects 3 SP per run)
4. 5* Micaiah vanilla, full skills (collects 6 SP per run)

Saias, Kana and Micaiah should be replaceable by similar units. 

Also the lunatic Zephiel strat (L!ike + Narcian/Arthur) can be modified to collect SP if you place a ranged unit on slot #1. 

[Jingle Jangle]

After realizing that I lacked the feathers to rapidly give merges weekly. I am back to farm hero merit, currently I maxed out 43 units already. My current goal each week to  maxed out about 3-4 characters. 

[Roflolxp54]

Here's my list:

I don't do the "autobattle Hard/Lunatic GHBs" route

[Marston]

I should probably dedicate an hour or so per week to do this. I am still only sitting at 4 maxed heroes which are my core members... xD

[Zeo]

Necro-ing this topic with useful info and tagging @eclipse so she doesn't think lolnecropostingisforscrubslemmelockthisnow.

@mampfoid Yo! I don't know if you know about this but apparently farming Rival Domains for HM is a thing? I didn't know anything about it until earlier this week when I heard it wasn't a thing anymore. Well apparently, at least for the rest of the week (which is two days now) there's a new method.

All you need is a built Cordelia (you obviously have that covered!) or galeforce flier that can proc the skill, have that flier have lunge and have 2 ranged units with WoM1. Considering you already have a Cordelia on hand it should be a cinch for you. I was actually going to ask if you could switch your rep to her, but I thought this was good motivation to finally promote my +SPD/-RES Cordelia I've been sitting on. With this in mind, you can grind 8 units for HM max with a minimum of 5 (assuming your GF flier and 2 WoM snipers are maxed, the other 5 are free.)

It took a bit of finagling to make this work for me but it seemed to work when I unequipped everyone elses weapon but the key three and made sure they couldn't attack anyone on the second turn because that would make them strike the enemy instead of the enemy fort and muck up the strat.

Anyways, currently grinding 5-8 units at once which is a heck of a lot faster than the 2-3 I'm usually grinding. This is free to do until it's changed on saturday so don't waste time!

[Astellius]

That's pretty cool. I haven't done much auto-battling to grind HM, but I tried this and it works nicely with my Est. I think I might use this to grind out some HM while it's up. Thanks for this!

[mampfoid]

1 hour ago, Zeo said:

@mampfoid Yo! I don't know if you know about this but apparently farming Rival Domains for HM is a thing? I didn't know anything about it until earlier this week when I heard it wasn't a thing anymore. Well apparently, at least for the rest of the week (which is two days now) there's a new method.

Thanks for tagging me, always good to know about the newest tweaks! 

I didn't know about the exact details of this method, but I got an idea when I was asked to change my rep to Brave/GF/lunge Cordelia. 

My stash won't profit from this though, I maxed out all my 212 units some weeks ago. All the new additions (ten so far) will gain their HM on the classic road in TTs etc, plus they will serve as my backup feather depot. 

I only can tell all the grinded feathers are spend very fast! I'm down to 300k feathers which I will keep my minimum until I get enough copies for my third +10 unit (Caeda hopefully). 

[eclipse]

OMG BAN!

Well, it makes Rival Domains even more useful!  Again, not touching it, but this time, it's due to RL things.  Have at it, everyone else?

[Humanoid]

I originally decided not to use the revamped strategy because of the WoM SI needed. Then again, from the video it's clear that Cordelia's HP is low enough that even WoM1 from a 3* Frederick would be sufficient. For all of last week and the start of this week, I used the strategies that only required melee WoM units because those units come with it natively.

Still gives me pause knowing that this is only good for two more nights though, and who knows how hard the map designers will try next week to prevent autobattle clears. That said, a couple of ranged WoM units probably couldn't hurt in the long term anyway.

I still need to level the final 10 12 with Veronica and other CYL2 freebie units to 40 before I do the final leg of my farming, ugh. Should have gotten it out of the way during double XP fortnight, oops.

[Vaximillian]

19 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Then again, from the video it's clear that Cordelia's HP is low enough that even WoM1 from a 3* Frederick would be sufficient.

For my not-minus-HP Cordelia+2 WoM1 isn’t sufficient, RIP. WoM2 is, though, and I have coincidentelly given Flying Nino it along with Goad Fliers back when I pulled her.

Edited August 23, 2018 by Vaximillian

[Humanoid]

35 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

For my not-minus-HP Cordelia+2 WoM1 isn’t sufficient, RIP. WoM2 is, though, and I have coincidentelly given Flying Nino it along with Goad Fliers back when I pulled her.

I guess Life and Death can fix that for people who want to stick with WoM1. Tested my unmerged Atk/Res Cordelia and she gets down to 10/40 hp, so good to go. At +2 she'd have been either 11/41 or 12/41 though (depending on whether the Def or Res is added first), both of which are still under 30%. She might be +HP or +Def?

Fake edit: Searching for WoM fodder through the menu and I totally forgot Bowcina has WoM. That plus a WoM ranged dancer means I can do this without WoM fodder at all, yay. Cordelia had just enough SP to learn Lunge too which was neat. And she's one of the few units I haven't capped HM on yet to boot, so I guess I'm doing this.

Real edit: It works, but Bowcina does dumb things possibly due to Future Vision, causing her to not use WoM. Just makes it take a turn longer. I don't want to unequip it because I don't have a defense win yet.

Edited August 23, 2018 by Humanoid

[Vaximillian]

30 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

I guess Life and Death can fix that for people who want to stick with WoM1. Tested my unmerged Atk/Res Cordelia and she gets down to 10/40 hp, so good to go. At +2 she'd have been either 11/41 or 12/41 though (depending on whether the Def or Res is added first), both of which are still under 30%. She might be +HP or +Def?

She’s Atk/Res and Subaki leaves her with 13/41 HP:

41 × 0.3 = 12.3 rounded to 12 which is less than 13.

[Humanoid]

3 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

She’s Atk/Res and Subaki leaves her with 13/41 HP:

41 × 0.3 = 12.3 rounded to 12 which is less than 13.

My mistake, I forgot Subaki doubles on counter (assumed he did the damage to Cordelia in one hit for some reason), so 1 extra point of defense on Cordelia reduces damage taken by 2. So yeah, the extra HP and the extra Def combine for an extra 3 points of bulk which is annoyingly one too many.

Anyway, I was stumped for a while trying to figure out why I couldn't do this in two turns. First I added Bride Sanaki as one of the WoM units - I gave her a 4* Freddy because she had no special so I figured I may as well give her Luna + WoM1. But even without her assist equipped, Cordelia still moved first into the corner and screwed up the strat. By my understanding I would have thought assist-less units go first but guess not. But then I read that your units will prioritise the fort if they have lower damage, so I changed Sanaki's weapon to Wind and Ninja Olivia's weapon to Iron Dagger and it worked, they moved before Cordelia took her Galeforce turn and the two-turn clear is now a reality.

TL;DR: If you're having trouble getting your WoM ranged units to actually teleport and attack the fort, do what you can to tank their damage. Iron weapons, and perhaps Fortress Def/Res seals if need be.