XRay

Having high stats is definitely nice, especially for Galeforce Dancers/Singers, but they do not need combat performance. Old Dancers/Singers might not have the stats, but they still got the slots to run modern skills. Personally, I value skill slots a little more than stats since providing support is their main job. I want all Dancers/Singers to be in the game. I want all games to have at least three Dancers/Singers. Makes it easier to tackle PvE content, and gives people more options in PvP content too. My dream unit would be a Dancer/Singer with Galeforce on all their skill slots.

Awakening already got four Dancers. I mean, more is always nice, but she is pretty normal, compared to the Dancers from Heroes. I do not think any game is lacking Dancers/Singers right now except TMS who got none. Shadow Dragon, Sacred Stones, and Engage only got one Dancer/Sing each, so they need a Dancer/Singer more than Awakening does. Echoes, Binding Blade, and Path of Radiance got only two Dancers/Singers, so they should get another one too.

Olivia: Wavecrest Dancer seems pretty tame. She does not have an exclusive Weapon, and as a colorless tome unit, she does not have a lot of options for Inheritance either. She is kind of gimped in that regard. Gullveig: Glittering Sunlight is a nice triple Galeforce queen.

I was browsing Reddit yesterday and I thought I came across leaked screenshots of a new Fire Emblem game. My excitement quickly died a little when I looked closer and realized it is anime movie about the Lord of the Rings. I am still excited since Lord of the Rings is cool and the art looks really nice, but yeah, I would have been more excited if it was a movie about Fire Emblem. Haha. But seriously, the art style is so remininscent of Fire Emblem it is uncanny. https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/1ddhw8w/three_images_from_the_war_of_the_rohirrim/

It is a bit of a stretch, but it would be nice if they can do some re-Refines too. Oboro's Spear is not going to make a dent in armor units these days with armor effectiveness alone, and that Close Def is not going to save her either; unconditional all stat+6 and flat damage reduction will help with survivability in general, and armor effectiveness with Scowl should help her deal damage against them. Stahl's Panther Sword and Sully's Bull Spear could definitely be upgraded, like having Cancel Affinity, inflict Triangle Adept on foe before combat, and Meister effect if there is any ally within two spaces.

Sharena: Pillars of Peace and Lapis: Mighty Bride are great for Galeforce teams and compliment Galeforcing Edelgards very well. I think Sharena: Pillars of Peace is the undisputed Galeforce queen now, since she got two non-Special Galeforces on C and Duo, more than the one non-Special Galeforce that Edelgards' typically have. Edelgards' Galeforces are a little easier to trigger though, since they do not have any conditions.

With the recent release of Gambit, Magic Gambit, and Laguz Friend, while you still ideally want to trigger Specials as often as possible, these new skills allow your units to be less reliant on Special triggers for performance. Gambit and Magic Gambit work best with high cooldown Specials, and ideally, you do not want the unit to have Slaying effect on their Weapon since it reduces the effect of those two skills. Even better, or at least alternatively, you want the unit to have Blade tome's and Lightning Breath's effect that slows Special trigger, so instead of Aether, you can run Ignis or Glacies that can deal more damage when they do trigger (and also assuming the unit has enough Def/Res for that). However, the main issue with that is that those are the only two categories of Weapons that slows Special triggers, and both are quite outdated now. Blade tomes are nice, but raw power alone is not enough these days, and units with exclusive Blade tomes lost the effect that slows Special trigger, and their Def/Res are not particularly high either to take full advantage of Ignis and Glacies. I think Nowi is the only Hero with an exclusive Weapon that slows Special trigger, but there is no Dragon Gambit yet for her yet, and even if there is, her exclusive Weapon is pretty dated by now, and she will probably be better off running an Arcane Weapon with Dragon Wrath to simulate Gambit.

Holy Ash (she is a divine cow). Nergal: Traiter to Nabata is like Tina on steroids. Tina steals all the Bonuses of just one foe at the start of turn and gives them to her allies. Nergal: Traitor to Nabata needs to attack, but he takes all the Bonuses of the foe AND foes around the target and gives them to his allies wherever they are on the map (as long as they were near each other at the start of turn). And with Dancers/Singers, he can can hit the entire opponent's team and take everything. I think this is the first time that a normal focus gave two free summons? I can see the obvious free summon as usual, but is there a reason for two in this case? I do not see a second Hero type. No Legendary, Mythic, Duo, Harmonized, Ascended, Attuned, nor Emblem. Nergal: Traitor to Nagata is a really strong meta unit, but I am not sure if Intelligent Systems gives an extra free summon for meta units.

Ah shoot. I will edit.

PvE builds generally follow the same principles as PvP, and the differences in most cases are relatively minor. If your main focus is PvE and you do not really care about PvP, Spd is not as competitive in PvE as PvP (at least from what I remember when I quit; there are a few Spd demons in PvE, but those foes are few and far between), so most units with high Spd can afford to run +Atk instead for more damage. In Thórr: Sun Kissed Gods' case, this is not really relevant since she is a slow nuke, so she wants +Atk regardless. In PvE, most maps can be cleared with two types of brain-dead teams. The more brain-dead team involves running a Save tank team with two Save tanks and two supports, and you just spam end turn until foes finish suiciding into your units. The less brain-dead team involves running a Player Phase team with a nuke and three Dancers/Singers, and you defeat up to four foes every turn (or five or six foes with Galeforcers) until you beat the map. Some maps may shut down one of those teams really hard (usually due to the boss being an extremely powerful nuke or tank), but I do not recall any map being able to shut down both team types. If you want to play certain repetitive PvE modes with Auto Battle on, that is when you would build your units significantly different. In repetitive modes where you would use Auto Battle, enemies are on the weaker side and you have to treat the AI running your units to be a dumbass, so you want all your units to be selfsufficient dual phase units. In this case, I would run something like the following: +Atk/Res Divine Whimsy (Any Rally) Noontime — Sol — Aether Marth: Of Beginnings Close Foil — (Any A with Close Counter) Mystic Boost — Guard — Seal Atk (Any Crux) Iote's Shield Guard I recommend running Rallies over positioning Assists, since there is a tiny chance that the AI might get itself stuck in a positioning Assist loop. I personally lean towards Noontime for the Special, but any healing Special is honestly fine. If you Engage her with Marth: Of Beginnings, then run Sol or Aether instead. The A slot can be any type of Close Counter, and I lean towards Close Foil; if you are worried about getting stuck due to not being able to counterattack against dragons, then Close Reversal is the next best option. I would avoid Close Salvo though due to it inflicting recoil damage. Also, do not stack Guard, so if you are able to afford Guard Echo on the X slot, do not run Guard or Seal Atk on the B slot. I highly recommend running Iote's Shield. Keep in mind you do not need to give her Emblem and Attuned Heroes, they are just nice to have. If you like to gamble and not run Iote's Shield, or if you know for sure a series of maps does not have an archer, you can run the following instead: +Atk/Res Divine Whimsy (Any Rally) Aether Close Foil — (Any A with Close Counter) Brash Assault World Breaker Quick Riposte Brash Assault on B and Quick Riposte on S would give her dual phase guaranteed follow-ups. Slaying, Aether, and Worldbreaker on top of dual phase guaranteed follow-ups ensure she gets healed in almost every round of combat. While you can Engage her with an Emblem Hero, in my opinion, the current two options are not that great with this setup, so I would Engage them with someone else on the team instead.

802,701 Just kidding. 79,480 How do we know if our post count is accurate?

Yes. I remember you. Damn, I feel old.

For me personally, it was the severe restriction of the petting game, removal of a few of the accessories, and Saizo's and Beruka's lack of C support. Not a fan of Treehouse ever since then. To me, the localization was the biggest disappointment. My main gripe with Fates unrelated to the localization is that I could not get everyone in Revelations, missing Izana, missing Yukimura, Scarlet dying, and Gunter leaving. But other than that, I was pretty happy with Fates. I was also disappointed to learn that Treehouse handles Heroes too, but thankfully, they did not botch Heroes that much compared to what they did to Fates. Supports and romance scream Fire Emblem as much as the weapon triangle. Engage still did pretty well considering it lacked romance, but I hope that Intelligent System brings back romance in the future. On the other hand, I do not mind them dropping the weapon triangle and durability, or even better, just turn them into optional mechanics like permadeath so everyone can be happy. I also really love dress up and accessories, so I hope they further expand on that in future titles; it would be nice if they can make it as in-depth as Pokémon X and Y's character customization. Fates' base building is also really cool, but outside of Fates and Heroes (Aether Raids), I do not think that will be a consistent feature they can just slap onto any game, unlike romance and costumes.

If? EDIT: Uhh, that wasn't supposed to be a pun. Well, Fates was a huge fuck up in terms of localization in my opinion, but it did financially well. I think Awakening and every game after did well too. Engage is no Three Houses, but it still sold plenty, around the level of Shadows of Valentia. Like Shadows of Valentia, and unlike most of its modern peers, Engage stimulated our brains, but it did not titillate our hearts, and I think the lack of romance hurts it quite a bit. Hell, although Heroes does not have much romance either, we still got Summoner Support and the S rank music sounds close enough marriage for players to pretend they are romancing their favorite waifus and husbandos (and the gacha and collecting aspect certainly helps).

I think the fog of war makes her more risqué. Haha. As for the greedy thing, this is not about food nor water, nor is it a charity, so I think being greedy is fine. Just like everyone else here, developers got bills to pay and mouths to feed. And think of it another way, having Heroes around gives more financial leeway to the main series. If they accidentally fucked up and made a doodoo main game, they can point to strong interest and sales in Heroes to avoid axing the series. Just look at Advance Wars, it is still in a ditch, barely crawling around. At least it is not in the grave anymore, but it pales in comparison to its glory days, and it certainly pales in comparison to Fire Emblem. It also does not seem like they are removing Dragonflowers from those Heroes' regular Ordeals either, so Merge Ordeals is just extra rewards on top for whales who help keep the lights on.

If the nuke does not use Desperation, there is not much point in putting Wings of Mercy on the Dancer/Singer. If the nuke does use Desperation, then the Dancer/Singer should run Wings of Mercy on their B or X slot depending on if they have an exclusive Assist. Skills with close range warping and Pathfinder are nice, but they cannot compete with Wings of Mercy in terms of sheer mobility. We do not really need that mobility in PvP since enemies just comes at you in one direction, and Pathfinder is really good at paving the road for your Dancers/Singers to follow the nukes. But in PvE, it feels like Wings of Mercy is vital since the nuke is likely to zoom all around the map. Do not a lot of dual phase units have damage reduction mitigation or nullification now? Besides Save tanks, it seems like top-tier tanks these days are more dual phase units rather than Enemy Phase units.

With modern skills, it is viable to go without Desperation, but you are also missing out on the teleportation that Wings of Mercy provides. At least in PvE, I think Wings of Mercy is still very valuable to allow extra mobility since reinforcements spawn all around the map. With all the damage reduction mitigation or nullification though, it feels a little risky to rely on damage reduction to eat hits, or at least, that is what every other Focus seems like it got.

Another Dancer/Singer! Nice! Oof! That is a sobering reminder. At least it helps reduce the gap a bit between old Dancers/Singers and new ones. I do not think the B slot is competitive enough yet to warrant Wings of Mercy on the X slot. I think [exclusive Dance/Sing (Assist)+Wings of Mercy (B)] is better than [Dance/Sing (Assist)+Dance (B)+Wings of Mercy (X)]. The main issue with Dance (B) is that the exclusive Dance/Sing and C skills are better at giving bonus buffs and status effects, and Desperation as an effect is absolutely critical for nukes who rely on it to use it. Offloading Desperation to a support unit can create issues, such as when a turn starts and a nuke needs to make an attack, but it does not make sense for a nuke to waste an action to do nothing, just so the Dancer/Singer can Dance/Sing the nuke just to provide Desperation. And for nukes who are not reliant Desperation, you cannot really use them with Wings of Mercy anyways.

Oh! Nice! We are getting there slowly! I think we have more Heroes than the total number of Pokémon for a while now. I feel we might surpass Digimon numbers before we finish giving Resplendents to all the launch Heroes.

Have they even finished half of all the launch day Heroes yet? I am pretty sure they do not even have half the first year Heroes. Out of the popular waifus off the top of my head, Camilla and Tharja still have not gotten theirs yet.

I guess for somewhat cheaper and universal skills in general, there are modern updates of old classic skills. You can wait for Brash Assault to pity break you. Desperation 4 (Special Hero) and Quick Riposte 4 (Rearmed Hero) are not cheap, but its lower tiers are. Desperation is nice if you like to use Wings of Mercy Dancers/Singers. Brash Assault and Quick Riposte helps you bypass Spd checks depending on the phase. If you plan to get Alfred or Ingrid: Beacon of Hope, they would be better candidates to pass off skills since they can pass the Rearmed Weapon too. If you do not really use beasts, then you can give Eitr now for Alarm Atk/Spd. You are not losing Eitr either since she is Rearmed, so you can still use her later. It is just that Alarm Atk/Spd is not as rare as her Arcane Weapon, so you can always rely on Special Hero Focus to get it again, whereas who knows when we will get Eitr again. But if you do not use beasts that much, then her Arcane Weapon does not really matter. If she was not Rearmed or Attuned, then yeah, I will be a bit more hesitant to use her since you will lose the unit.

Do not forget Potent! That skill seems pretty rare right now. For Specials and Assists, there is not any, but there are a decent chunk of B and C skills worth duplicating. Most units come with decent A skills for combat performance already, so I would not use her to inherit A skills for that purpose, but Duel skills are a consideration if you change your Arena core from time to time, and you do not want to spend Orbs specifically for scoring every time you do so. If the target unit for inheritance is a nuke and you want to change them to be more dual phase-ish, you can consider giving them Primes or any other Counters as well; and vice versa for dual phase units with Counters that you want to change to be more nuke-ish with Clashes or Flares. I would focus on B and C skills more, since the inheriting unit is less likely to have the desired skill you want, and B skills in particular affect game play a lot. For B skills of note, besides what @Ice Dragon already mentioned, there is also Spd/Def Snag if you utilize debuffs a lot, although their holders are Rearmed Heroes who can pass them down as well. Atk/Spd Link also seems pretty good with lots of extra damage, although its tier 4 version is relatively new so it might or might not be rare later, so I would hold off on that; worst case scenario, you can just wait and plan for its annual Special Heroes Focus rerun. For C skills, Fatal Smoke is relatively rare and only guaranteed available around Christmas so far, but it has a decent niche in preventing or significantly mitigate foe's healing. Def/Res Smoke is also pretty fun, but it is available through out the year on Special Heroes Foci. If you plan to inherit to a support unit, there are Still Water, Dances, Ruses, Links, and Ploys. Rafiel: Blessed Wings, Leanne, Vika, Freyr, Kaden, and Ranulf got at least decent Res and/or movement type to inherit a lot of those skills, in addition to whatever beast skills you want on them.

There are three types of stat buffs (permanent, in-combat buffs, and visible buffs), and each got their own pros and cons. — — — — — — — Permanent stat buffs are, well, permanent, for a lack of a better word. You want to use permanent stat buffs when you need to rely on stat comparisons out-of-combat. The primary drawback of permanent buffs is that certain skills inflict debuffs on units with the highest stats, but this is not really much of an issue in most cases. Life and Death is for player phase units the specializes in area-of-effect Specials (usually Blazing Wind and Blazing Light; sometimes Growing Wind or whatever their exclusive area-of-effect Special is). On the other hand, Fort. Def/Res and is for support units that utilizes their Def/Res to debuff enemies. Off the top of my head, I think Mila is the only unit that can utilize both Def/Res to inflict debuffs. Most support units only use one of their stats for stat comparisons, so while Fort. Def/Res works, it is not the most effective one. Most support units run Still Water since Res is the most frequent stat used for stat comparisons. The next most common stat used is HP, so you will want some kind of Duel skill on the A slot and a modern Squad Ace skill on the Sacred Seal slot (if you are low on resources, HP+5 will work just fine). I cannot think of any support unit that uses Def for support except Mila, so if you are not using her Res, you can slap Solid Earth on her. Still Water and Solid Earth can also be used on units that does both combat (often, but not always, Blazing nukes) and support. For example, Lilina: Firelight Leader can run Still Water on both her A and S slot to enhance the power of her Gifted Magic II Special, and help her activate whatever Sabotages and Ploys you put on her B and C slot. Only player phase units use Fury. Fury is desired for its after combat damage that inflicts onto its user, so you can use Dancers/Singers with Wings of Mercy to teleport to them. Fury's permanent stat buff is not its main selling point, since the buffs are low compared to other A skills. A secondary use of permanent stat buffs is to put them on support units so they will be less likely affected by crippling debuffs from the opponent's support units. The most popular skill for this role would be Fort. Def/Res, Duels, and Squad Ace BX. A tertiary use of permanent stat buffs is to put them on support units so they will draw debuff to themselves rather than have it inflicted on the rest of your team. — — — — — — — Skills with in combat stat buffs are the most common, varied, and (usually) reliable. With the exception of Blazing nukes mentioned above, most combat units want to utilize skills with in combat buffs, such as Flash Sparrow, Atk/Spd Prime, and Bracing Stance, since those skills often come with secondary effects on top of regular stat boosts. Flash Sparrow makes it easier to activate Specials, Atk/Spd Prime allows the unit to counter attack from any distance during enemy phase, and Bracing Stance makes it mroe difficult for the foe to activate their Specials. There are many, many, many more skills with in combat stat buffs, so which ones you use depends a lot on how you plan to use a unit. In combat stat buffs cannot be affected by the enemy in most cases, hence their reliablity. At the same time, however, the combat unit will be more vulnerable to debuffs from enemy support units, but in most cases, this is not a huge deal. And depending on your team composition and play style, you want to have as much debuffs on your team as possible, since certain Heroes and team compositions get stronger the more stat debuffs they have. — — — — — — — Skills that provide visible stat buffs are good, but only if they are not in the A slot. As far as I am aware, the only A skills that provide visible stat buffs are Defiant skills, and they suck. Visible stat buffs also do not stack, so generally speaking, you want to offload skills that provide visible stat buffs to support units, since they can often buff the whole team at once with one of their skill slots, so you can run more skills with in combat stat buffs on your combat units. Visible stat buffs are good in that they help with stat comparisons outside of combat. However, these buffs are also the most easily affected by enemy skill effects, which either renders them useless at best or detrimental at worst. In most cases though, you want to use visible stat buffs; it is pretty rare for visible stat buffs to be detrimental to you, and it is pretty easy to disable those stat buffs when you do encounter a situation where it is detrimental.

Does Pegasus Flight 4 have any niche at all? I think it is still useless against fast foes due to the lack of Spd boost. Against slow units, it feels a little weak, since all it has is just follow-up denial. It is a nice defensive effect, but it feels pretty underwhelming by itself. I think if they add guaranteed follow-up or offensive Null Follow-Up, it would be more competitive.

Hm... I remember Weapon Refine updates usually include Legendary and/or Mythic Heroes too. Are they spacing it out more and slowing that down?