New Heroes & Mythic Heiðr

[Etrurian emperor]

So that’s what a banner without any heavy hitters looks like. Seems they just dumped a few minor characters with an oc and called it a day.

And Firr continues the downward spiral of Ascended Heroes no longer being a cool concept of characters having grown is status or might, but instead just being an excuse to give a cute waifu girl an alt.

[Diovani Bressan]

I didn't expect Heidr to be green... I was expecting blue.

Heidr being green takes the 3rd slot in June's Legendary Banner, since these new Mythics added in New Heroes banners always appear in the Legendary/Mythic banner of the same month. So they delayed Céline a month because of that, which is good... because she is the only 5* Green Hero waiting for a legendary rerun. Really, they didn't release a new 5* Green Hero since January. or we had green demotes, or the banners didn't have green units at all.

So from checking the schedule, we should get Céline in July's banner, and in August looks like a Green Legendary imo because Ninian + Robin share is very good. Then September is full, so they have all this time to release a 5* green hero. We have one guaranteed in August at least, with CYL.

...

Now, we can see in the trailer that Kvasir is a red tome unit. And if we go with the mid-book trailer and consider Seidr, Kvasir and Gullveig the same person, we have 3 colors covered already. I would really enjoy if Brave Gullveig ends as a blue tome unit, so we can have Seer Emblem with all colors. lol

[Humanoid]

1 hour ago, Some Jerk said:

exact same class

She's, uh, kind of missing the horse.

[Othin]

Murdock!!! Also Dorothy is a nice addition. Fir is disappointing.

[Ice Dragon]

6 hours ago, XRay said:

I am not sure why they are splitting the Tier 4 into two versions if they could have went with Atk/Spd+4 instead. Only thing I can think of is to help with stat checks against stuff like Pastel Poleaxe and Dragon Wall.

All inheritable B skills with stat changes are in-combat penalties on the opponent and not in-combat bonuses on the unit.

I'm pretty sure the reason they continued making all inheritable B skills inflict penalties instead of bonuses even after the Lull series was to slightly curb the way that stat inflation was slowly making skills like Bonfire more and more powerful without any way to prevent it.

It's very much worth noting that every point of stat inflation in Atk can be perfectly countered by a point of stat inflation in Def and Res with the single exception of skills that base their effects on the value of the stat itself instead of on the difference between stats.

EDIT: Technically, you balance out those effects with inflation to HP, but HP is the one stat that doesn't get inflated with time in this game.

 

9 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Saul's epithet, "Loving Shepherd", is "野にある聖者" (no ni aru seija), "Saint in the Wild".

Incurable is "インキュアブル" (inkyuaburu), "Incurable". This is a transcription of the English word into Japanese, but is done a bit inaccurately as "in-" + "cure" + "-ble" instead of "-able". The transcription continues to render the "r" in "cure" as if it were a syllable-final consonant when it should actually be a syllable-initial consonant after affixing "-able".

Added Saul's epithet and weapon now that it has been officially announced.

Incurable is the non-seasonal version of Desert Cheine's Serpentine Staff.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Ice Dragon

[XRay]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

All inheritable B skills with stat changes are in-combat penalties on the opponent and not in-combat bonuses on the unit.

I'm pretty sure the reason they continued making all inheritable B skills inflict penalties instead of bonuses even after the Lull series was to slightly curb the way that stat inflation was slowly making skills like Bonfire more and more powerful without any way to prevent it.

It's very much worth noting that every point of stat inflation in Atk can be perfectly countered by a point of stat inflation in Def and Res with the single exception of skills that base their effects on the value of the stat itself instead of on the difference between stats.

EDIT: Technically, you balance out those effects with inflation to HP, but HP is the one stat that doesn't get inflated with time in this game.

Hm... Well, another thing is that they keep slapping all stat+5 on everyone and their mom's exclusive Weapons. Moving forward, they could turn that into triple/all stat-5, and that should further help tone down damage from Bonfire/Iceberg.

They could also release A skills that inflict rather than grant. With grants, some stat combinations do not feel powerful enough or are duds. On the other hand, with inflicts, every stat combination feels powerful enough. For nukes, +Atk/Spd feels about the equivalent of -Spd/Def and -Spd/Res. For Spd tanks, while +Spd/Def and +Spd/Res can be used, they are kind of duds since they do not provide enough of a defensive boost to be consistently considered (especially after the release of Dodge), so they just go with +Atk/Spd like nukes instead; on the other hand, I think -Atk/Spd is strong enough to be competitive with +Atk/Spd. For slow combat units, +Atk/Def and +Atk/Res are fine, but -Atk/Def and -Atk/Res are obviously better; +Def/Res is also fine, but only for tanks, as it is a complete dud for nukes. On the other hand, while -Def/Res might look a bit redundant, slow nukes do not mind it, especially if they have a Brave Weapon and adaptive damage/Hexblade becomes more common in the future, and tanks can utilize Vantage and Meister Weapons to bypass the need for Def/Res.

Another thing they could do is to rework Atk Specials to have a higher percentage, so they are competitive with Def/Res Specials. Instead of the current 30% and 50%, making it 40% and 70% is a lot more reasonable in my opinion. Alternatively, they can lower Def/Res Specials to be 40% and 70%, but nerfs do not look nor feel as good.

Edited June 7, 2023 by XRay

[Tybrosion]

Some of the characters to expect in the Forging Bonds (according to the FEH Twitter):

Fir: Fjorm, Bartre
Saul: Azama
Dorothy: Virion, Cherche
Noah: Eir

How nice of them to at least acknowledge Azama here. He is still the only base game character who has never appeared on a banner.

[Xenomata]

37 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

How nice of them to at least acknowledge Azama here. He is still the only base game character who has never appeared on a banner.

At this point the only thing that could put him on a banner is a Bound Hero Battle banner featuring him and Setsuna (with Hinoka as the 3rd focus) and I don't think that's likely to happen until they're scraping the bottom of the barrel in like a decade...

[Othin]

16 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

At this point the only thing that could put him on a banner is a Bound Hero Battle banner featuring him and Setsuna (with Hinoka as the 3rd focus) and I don't think that's likely to happen until they're scraping the bottom of the barrel in like a decade...

Could be a Voting Gauntlet.

[Tybrosion]

15 minutes ago, Othin said:

Could be a Voting Gauntlet.

Yeah, that's how Wrys got off of the "never been on a banner" club.

That said, I'm not sure we're likely to see a third VG dedicated solely to healers. Oh well, I'm sure there's some random theme that they could use Azama for.

[XRay]

1 hour ago, Tybrosion said:

Oh well, I'm sure there's some random theme that they could use Azama for.

Units with the lowest Atk! Definitely a pain in the ass during the actual event, but should not be too much of a problem if you have a level 1 lying around and just use your friends units to kill things.

[Some Jerk]

8 hours ago, Humanoid said:

She's, uh, kind of missing the horse.

...Yep, I had a derp moment. I was thinking of Kvasir. My mistake!

[Ice Dragon]

3 hours ago, XRay said:

Moving forward, they could turn that into triple/all stat-5, and that should further help tone down damage from Bonfire/Iceberg.

No, because +5 Spd is +1.5 damage on Vital Astra, but -5 Spd to the opponent is +0 damage on Vital Astra.

Offensive units prioritize doing more damage over taking less damage, which is why most of them get weapons that boost their own stats. Defensive units prioritize taking less damage over doing more damage, which is why most of them get weapons that reduce their opponent's stats.

The inheritable skills in the passive skill slots follow their own conventions. A skills boost stats. B skills reduce the opponent's stats. C skills and exclusive skills do whatever they fuck they want.

[Etrurian emperor]

I've heard the argument that IS being so much more cautious about Engage banners is a voice acting issues. Apparently the voice cast of Engage in Japan is much more well known and prestigious than that of other games, and that they thus are more expensive to get, and have more busy schedules to manage. Previously I heard this topic come up when it came to the Samurai Warriors and Sengoku Basara series. That the reason the later died off is because they kept getting high profile voice actors and that this just wasn't sustainable for a niche hack and slash game that was already forbidden from making it to western markets. 

On the other hand I've always found such arguments really strange. I'm sure voice actors can be expensive, but with games being so expensive to make the voice acting budget must be a complete pittance compared to all the other costs, so cutting cost on it likely won't result in a lot of money being saved either way. 

[KMT4ever]

I forgot this banner was coming, and now that it's here...I could take it or leave it. I'm a big fan of Fir, so I'm happy to see her get an Ascended, but I still would have rather seen FE6!Karel as functionally a canon and playable Ascended. Noah and Murdock are nice and it's good to see Saul and Dorothy, but I'm not really excited for them. I suppose I'll just snipe red with the tickets and hope I get lucky.

On a side note, I do not like Saul's art at all. His features look too sharp compared to in FE6, which make him come off as somewhat unsettling.

[Tybrosion]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

Units with the lowest Atk! Definitely a pain in the ass during the actual event, but should not be too much of a problem if you have a level 1 lying around and just use your friends units to kill things.

When I went to look, I was hoping that there'd be eight characters with less than 25 Atk. Unfortunately, there's only 7 that fit that (Merlinus, Azama, Odin, Felicia, Henry, Ninian, Wrys) so they'd have to use one of the eight units with 25 Atk (Caeda, Clarine, Fir, Matthew, Niles, Selena / Severa, Subaki, Spring Xander).

Personally, I'd pick Spring Xander for the meme value.

[Magenta Fantasies]

10 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

So that’s what a banner without any heavy hitters looks like. Seems they just dumped a few minor characters with an oc and called it a day.

And Firr continues the downward spiral of Ascended Heroes no longer being a cool concept of characters having grown is status or might, but instead just being an excuse to give a cute waifu girl an alt.

It kind of seems that way, and it’s even more true of Rearmed Heroes (which in 2023 thematically have more or less become the same as Ascended Heroes.) I’m beginning to doubt my dream of Master Butler/Paladin Ascended Jakob will ever happen. I’d consider myself lucky to even get Ascended Felicia.

4 hours ago, Tybrosion said:

Some of the characters to expect in the Forging Bonds (according to the FEH Twitter):

Fir: Fjorm, Bartre
Saul: Azama
Dorothy: Virion, Cherche
Noah: Eir

How nice of them to at least acknowledge Azama here. He is still the only base game character who has never appeared on a banner.

I’m looking forward to Saul and Dorothy’s Forging Bonds already.

[Sunwoo]

20 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

When I went to look, I was hoping that there'd be eight characters with less than 25 Atk. Unfortunately, there's only 7 that fit that (Merlinus, Azama, Odin, Felicia, Henry, Ninian, Wrys) so they'd have to use one of the eight units with 25 Atk (Caeda, Clarine, Fir, Matthew, Niles, Selena / Severa, Subaki, Spring Xander).

Personally, I'd pick Spring Xander for the meme value.

Spring Xander and Ninian would also be the only ones to have any actual value that might make people want to pull. Maybe. They're all still pretty outdated year 1 units, and Ninian doesn't even have a refine. EDIT: And Spring Xander's unlikely to get one.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Sunwoo

[Ice Dragon]

50 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

On the other hand I've always found such arguments really strange. I'm sure voice actors can be expensive, but with games being so expensive to make the voice acting budget must be a complete pittance compared to all the other costs, so cutting cost on it likely won't result in a lot of money being saved either way. 

Heroes is in the part of its life cycle where it shouldn't require a large number of developers to keep the stream of content running. All of the heavy lifting should have already been done before release and in the year or so after release when all of the foundational mechanics were implemented. I would not be surprised if they only have 2-4 full-time employees' worth of developers working on this game now plus a handful of QA testers that can be shared with other projects, so it's very likely that art and voice work is actually a significant portion of the game's current development and operating costs.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Ice Dragon

[Humanoid]

I'd like to see the next Engage banner have four seemingly random characters on it, only for the theme to turn out to be "we have the cheapest voice actors".

[Tybrosion]

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I've heard the argument that IS being so much more cautious about Engage banners is a voice acting issues. Apparently the voice cast of Engage in Japan is much more well known and prestigious than that of other games, and that they thus are more expensive to get, and have more busy schedules to manage. Previously I heard this topic come up when it came to the Samurai Warriors and Sengoku Basara series. That the reason the later died off is because they kept getting high profile voice actors and that this just wasn't sustainable for a niche hack and slash game that was already forbidden from making it to western markets. 

On the other hand I've always found such arguments really strange. I'm sure voice actors can be expensive, but with games being so expensive to make the voice acting budget must be a complete pittance compared to all the other costs, so cutting cost on it likely won't result in a lot of money being saved either way. 

I am aware that it's probably certain JP VAs more than others who are the expensive ones, but this very banner does happen to have an Engage JP VA.

And as it happens, it's Fir's VA (Yoko Hikasa, who also happens to voice Ivy). Anyways on a completely unrelated note, I'm off to get a nice joint of hopium.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Thinking about it, it makes more sense for Engage to be in July, or another month where we'd presumably get a Rearmed unit rather than an Ascended one.

[Humanoid]

July tends to be a real graveyard for banners given that it follows hot on the heels of both summer banners and is followed by CYL (and the accompanying next-gen BST I suppose). I guess that makes it fitting for Engage. 😛

[Othin]

26 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Thinking about it, it makes more sense for Engage to be in July, or another month where we'd presumably get a Rearmed unit rather than an Ascended one.

I think at this point they're mixing those around however they feel like. We thought they'd alternate and do an Ascended again in April, but then it was another Rearmed. June was actually the first-ever Ascended+Mythic banner: Seidr was paired with Rearmed Olivia, and while last June had Ascended Florina alongside an OC, the OC was Letizia, a regular hero.

If there's any pattern going on, it's that July will probably have both Ascended and Rearmed like the last few Book 6 banners, with one of them being a Book 4 OC tied into the next multi-part TT story. But who even knows how that'll go. Personally, I'm hoping that at some point in that story, we finally get a non-seasonal Freyr.

(Also I'm a Jugdral fan so of course I'm hoping for Thracia in July and Genealogy in September. Maybe Engage in October and Blazing Blade in November?)

[Xenomata]

Man, the statcreep is real... just look at Dorothy. Defensively she's nothing special, but 46/43 offenses, with a superboon in Spd? She's only a 4* unit with no Prf weapon, and yet her offensive stats trump a large number of other colorless Inf. Archers, ESPECIALLY the earliest ones from game launch. Takumi for instance, even with max merges and max dragonflowers, barely even compares with her at 0 merges and 0 flowers.

That's pretty bonkers. Whitecap Bow on her would just be a bow-shaped nuke.

Edited June 8, 2023 by Xenomata