MaskedAmpharos

Easily Cordelia. Quadsuna doesn't even come close to being as good as Quadelia. Quadsuna's best set and nature can't even match up to a -Atk or -Spd Quadelia. There is absolutely no competition. Quadsuna isn't bad by any means, but Quadelia is just that good. I'm honestly really surprised more people haven't caught on to how OP she is. She has a better matchup spread than a +Atk Reinhardt with full SI for godssake. That's absolutely ridiculous.

Idk man if Reinhardt so much as sneezes Ike gets blown back

@Sire Doubling both stamina costs and points per run to retain the stamina: point ratio but also reduce tedium is such a simple solution that I'm amazed I didn't think of it sooner.

Just chiming in to confirm that @Ice Dragon is correct. Yes, seriously.

Yes, they do. That's the reason Brave Bow Cordelia is so good with Desperation. It basically allows her to attack 4 times before enemies get to counterattack (which they won't because they'll be dead).

Couple of other people have answered this, but basically: kill enemies before they can kill you. Once Nino and/or Tharja are in Desperation range, they can proceed to eliminate basically any enemy before the enemy gets a chance to attack.

Competition in its purest form isn't about winning by tearing down others or by keeping your own cards close. It's doing your best to bring others up too and then winning when you are both playing to your fullest potential.

The builds online are usually meant to be interpreted "this build is best with this nature but still usable with others" rather than "you have to have this nature for this build to work" (there are a handful like that, but most are not). In any case, the most basic cookie-cutter build for "Marth" is Fury + Swordbreaker. Either Luna or Draconic Aura work best as the special, and the assist and C slots are mostly up to personal preference. I personally favor a movement assist like Reposition and a team aura for the C like Hone Atk/Spd, but again it's up to you. You could also opt for a more Tempest-oriented pseudo-healer build with Renewal and Ardent Sacrifice/Reciprocal Aid as the B and Assist skills. The rest stay the same as before. Both of these builds work well regardless of boon/bane (the only Lucina build reliant on boon/bane is her Life and Death + Desperation glass cannon build, which wants +Spd to work properly).

Well gosh, I don't think I'm nearly as knowledgeable as you make me sound. Certainly not on Ice's level anyways. But thank you. I was trying to figure out exactly what was bothering me so much, and I think you put it into words. People are getting upset over something they're directly responsible for (burning themselves out on spending all your stamina ceaselessly grinding for the rewards) when they don't need to, but their psychology influences them to. That's all well and good, but what I have an issue with is when people begin blaming the game or its developers for something that I don't think is the developers' fault. In fact, I personally think they did a great job with the Tempest Trials and that even if the trials aren't perfect, they're a step in the right direction. What we've needed (or at least what I've been wanting since I cannot speak for anyone but myself) have been something to use stamina on besides just grinding levels/SP/HM, something more difficult than the content thus far for players like myself and Ice to challenge ourselves on (because there really isn't any reason to continue building a solid team of units anymore besides Arena), and a reason to build up many units and not just a small core Arena team (of course, some players can make do even in Lunatic Tempest with a small core team, but the majority of players need to use multiple teams to get through). This event addresses every one of those concerns and even goes above and beyond by offering amazing rewards (a free 5* unit with amazing base stats for a relatively low score goal is really, really nice) and also by making the event itself incredibly efficient for grinding SP/HM, neither of which they had to do. This is only the first event of its kind, so Nintendo may make tweaks to it in the future. But the very fact that they gave us an event like this means that they are likely doing their best to listen to player feedback and address player concerns with the game. I think that deserves acknowledgement.

Perhaps so. I also don't want to burn myself out though as playing through the day with the natural regen is already sufficient for me. I'm willing to grind if I have to, but I see no reason to subject myself to it if there's no need.

With the exception of a handful of powerhouses (namely Blade tome users), you don't really want a unit taking on all colors. Hyper specialization is the name of the game, which is why super frail but fast/strong glass cannons like Nino dominate while more balanced units like Soren and Merric see considerably less use. You don't want a unit that can do everything because chances are they won't be able to do anything as well as the specialists. You just want units that do one or two jobs really well, with the other 3 units covering for the rest of the team. Hawkeye, for example, may be shit against reds, but you shouldn't try to compensate and make him slightly better at reds because at the end of the day no matter what you do with him he's not going to have a good time against reds. Instead, just focus on making him really good against blues and maybe green/colorless and just make sure that a unit on your team is really good at dealing with reds.

Hmm, you do have a point. Perhaps I'll grind extra on Tempest once I've reached I've secured all the rewards I want, but for the time being I just want to focus on maximizing points, which I have difficulties doing with units I haven't already gotten max HM and more than enough SP on. I'll also admit that another reason is bragging rights. It makes me feel good to say that I've gotten 40k or 50k or whatever even without spending stamina potions because that carries with it the implication that I'm able to consistently run Lunatic and do well, perfectly even. Is it a foolish and vain motivation? Perhaps. But then humans are often vain creatures.

@Refa Differences of opinion aside, I would like to say that I appreciate how you seem to be reacting maturely and are open to discussion on points of disagreement. That's a trait that's a lot rarer than it should be.

Someone who understands! Not about to waste stamina potions when I can get all of the 100k rewards without spending any

While this may very well be a unique exception, Heroes has set a precedent for giving us a banner of new heroes every time immediately after the previous banner of new heroes has passed. I see no reason for them to break the trend now.

Looks good to me.

Congrats :D I'm trying to not spend any stamina potions unless I start slipping out of top 5k near the end, but at my current pace I should also get the seal by the end of the day.

I agree with some of your points but not others. Perhaps I am simply numb to the experience from the other gacha games I've played, but the whole "hours of repetitive grinding on just a handful of maps/options" part is not only no different from a standard gacha event (though it's the first of its kind for Heroes specifically, which is why I imagine people who are playing this as their first gacha are turned off from it) but is in fact more lenient than a standard gacha event since it's entirely possible to get the best rewards without having to play the highest difficulty or spending premium currency on refills. In addition to that, Heroes is being extremely lenient by not hard capping the rewards (only the top 10k players in terms of score can get the seal or something along those lines), allowing everyone to at least have a shot. I think the main problem is one of expectations. A standard gacha event does not expect everyone to be able to get the good rewards, only the people willing to put in ridiculous amounts of time and/or money. However, up until now in Heroes, the best rewards have been pretty accessible to everyone. As such, the average player still expects the good rewards to be within their reach and become frustrated when they turn out not to be (or at least not without hefty grinding). However, as said before, I will grant that my difference in perspective may simply be from me being numbed to the experience as a result of other games. If this is a player's first event of this type, then the frustration may be more understandable because of how different it is compared to prior experiences. Moving on from that, I actually disagree with the power creep complaint. I think it's a good thing that this mode is a step up in difficulty, and inflated stats are the most direct way to do that, especially if you also want to keep the enemy units random for the sake of variety. GHBs do a good job of adding difficulty through specific unit and skill combinations and lowered skill cooldowns in addition to the inflated stats, but that is balanced around the player knowing exactly what units to expect and being able to prepare for it. Because the enemy composition is shuffled, it's much more difficult to replicate the increased difficulty of GHB maps without resorting to inflated stats. As an aside, I also appreciate that some of the later enemies have high enough stats to discourage the glass cannon meta that's been so dominant in Arena, allowing for things like Seal, Sweep, and Poison Strike/Savage Blow skills to be more useful since it often takes more than one unit to take down Veronica or some of the other later enemies. It's not perfect of course: a moderately buffed Tharja can still ORKO Veronica with no issues, but it's a step in the right direction. Additionally, added map variety a la defensive tiles and defense maps, as you suggested, would be counterintuitive for the LTC playstyle the trials are trying to encourage since those favor turtling and would completely tank your time score. Of course, you could alleviate that by getting rid of the time multiplier altogether, but I do like the idea of a secondary measure of skill to further separate the better players from the average ones besides simply keeping your team alive. If you have an alternative suggestion besides low turn count, I'd love to hear it. That said, I would appreciate greater map variety just in terms of, well, more maps. I don't want defensive tiles or defense maps, but I will agree that having more maps in the pool would be nice. Also, as @Ice Dragon stated, if you know enough about AI manipulation, it is entirely possible to know how the enemy AI will move 100% of the time, making it easy to exploit. Bad AI is certainly annoying in situations where they get stuck in a Reposition or Draw Back loop instead of moving forward to attack you, but that can be chalked up more to overall game design than the Tempest Trials specifically, since they're a problem elsewhere. I'm not sure what to say about counter teaming, really. Sure, there's no such thing as a team that has 100% coverage, but it is reasonable to have a team diverse enough to cover enough scenarios to where you would only run into a team that truly "hard counters" yours once every 10 runs or less. If you're being counter-teamed every run or every other run, then the problem is your team composition and not the game. I will agree with your point about Focus Heroes though as I don't think they're necessary for single player modes like this since their primary purpose is to encourage playstyle shifts in a PVP setting. Overall, I don't think the Tempest Trials are nearly as bad as you make them out to be, and I'm glad Nintendo is giving us a new mode like this. Is it perfect? No, nothing is. But the difficulty is reasonable, the grind isn't as bad as most other games, and the rewards are both incredibly great and accessible.

I can already imagine how indignant he'd be at a one-stat level up lmao

We should, uh, probably keep that to PMs Tbh Echoes has spoiled me with its voice acting. I was actually taken back a bit when I was training Camus last week in Heroes when his level up lines weren't fully voice acted.

I'd love to see them, but they may be difficult to implement since the developers would have to develop a new weapon class for them. The dragon laguz could at least fit in with the current dragons we have, but the beast and bird laguz wouldn't fit with the Breath weapon type.

Bruh. She is not only easily the best archer but also one of the best ranged units in the game, period. Brave Bow Cordelia has a better matchup spread than Reinhardt with Death Blow for goddssake.

Bridal Cordelia says hi

I'm really hoping for Magvel or Tellius, but I'd be pretty happy with most anything. I've found something to like about every banner since the game's release; I guess I'm easy to please haha Also Berkut GHB when

I take those on a case-by-case basis. For example, I have several armored units that I want to put Distant Counter on, so I would prioritize inheritance over merging in those cases. However, with something like Close Counter, where there aren't any immediate units that I want to put it on, I would merge. Another factor I take into consideration is how often I actually use those units in Arena. I suppose that sounds like a no-brainer, but basically I really only see merging as a method of boosting Arena score since the stat increase usually doesn't make a significant difference in single player (such as GHBs and Tempest) unless you have a bunch of merge levels. If I barely even use Hector in Arena, then I would much rather have the option of running both Hector and Zephiel with Distant Counter for monthly Armor quests or for Tempest than just a +1 Hector. If, however, Hector is a unit that regularly sees use on my Arena team, then I would consider merging for points if I'm close to the promotion cutoff.