Katrisa

Interesting tactics. I also keep my hector in slot 3 as it does keep him central and up near the front of the pack better. I'd like to get a smite on my team to shove his ass up front (I just drew a Roy and may end up making use of him). As others have mentioned you do have to balance between clearing and having stats high enough to rank and get feathers. Even if you only place in the bottom rank its worth it for the feathers. So the question is what would you do to your composition to compensate. First I think carrying a healer with Hector early on is fairly smart. As you can lean on Hector harder while you learn compositions, counters etc better. And some folks have shown that using 5 star healers in a well balanced semi-tank composition can net you some seriously awesome scores. Now with a 5 star Julia and Hector what I would be looking for is a hard Red counter. You're going to be destroying blues and greens with those two together. But as you said reds are going to be terrible. So you need to drop Narcian and pickup a blue unit who is fast and agile and independent handle reds that will cause problems to your remaining team. Sharena could easily do this for your team and would be the first person I would look to. Leveling her up to 5 star with your current comp would be fantastic. She would likewise add to your defenses, offensive boosting options and she is highly independent with her +Speed, high attack and attack reduction. The question and problem I'm seeing is how you fit in your bonus unit. Please note you only need ONE unit for the full benefits. So this week you can use your Julia and there is no need for Narcian. Beyond this week its hard to say. You'll often be forced with the decision of dropping your healer or one of your greens (Julia). Since Julia can partially heal Hector I think I would drop your healer on weeks where fitting in someone odd is going to be necessary, but that's a rough prediction since bonus units could be anyone.

Congratz Raven! That first 7 win no death streak was sickly sweet for me, it felt so good. I've been pushed back some but I think I'll hold in the top 5000 again this week. Offense ~ Rank4550 ~ 387 (Day 1) 4550 ~ 1,772 (Day 3) My defense is still struggling, I usually get one or two clears at the end of the week but my current composition is just too easy to clear. Cordelia is easily baited and two reds gets squashed. I'm thinking about moving to Cordelia, Nino, F-Corrin, and Hector. That would put my composition as double blue/double green, and hopefully Nino would pull Cordelia back allowing Corrin to engage first with Hector and Cordelia following near the same time.

I have Drag Back on Eirika and it is seriously disappointing with my current composition. I think the problem there though is color counter. A red unit with drag back is most likely only facing Hector, Nino, Camilla, Minerva, or Julia. Hector you'll kill last (with a counter attack) so no need to drag back. Camilla and Minerva will most likely be baited and counter killed (so again no need to drag back). For Nino and Julia Eirkia will oneshot them... and you'll drag yourself back which is the one time its not terrible. You would think I would use it on red units but in my comp I almost always let red units attack first so drag back again never activates. For Sharena Drag back might not be as terrible though since she will be facing red/blue matchups and she's fairly tanky against both That's actually a really good idea for turning someone into a debuff unit without suffering the horrible fate of current debuff units (nooooodamagee) I also super love theory crafting and its the reason I'm drawn to this game. Even when you can't adjust characters changes in your groups composition has huge impacts when you only have four people. Personally I'm eyeing two characters that I love but am having trouble justifying in an endgroup: Adult Tiki and Setsuna Setsuna is someone I just absolutely love since I'm a lot like her absentminded personality IRL. But unfortunately she's just terrible for some really silly reasons. She would have been great except for her moderate attack vs Takumi's high defense and her weapon sports -3 less damage than his making her non competitive even against her primary counter likewise dagger users are extremely rare. So If I had full control over her: Setsuna: Parthia 14Mt and + 4 Res Iceburg damage based of 50% Res, Reciprocal Aid A: Death Blow +6 on attack B: Bow Breaker C: Spur Spd or Spur Res This would keep Setsuna close to home, keeping her nice assisting with Reciprocal aid to dump her HP into someone else and bow breaker to laugh at the other archers. But with Parthia and Death blow she would seriously threaten other archers and mages, likewise this would give her access to an amplified Iceburg attack Adult Tiki is someone I absolutely love because she's so lovely and graceful. While she is ranked high at A+ I think she's a bit less useful than indicated. For one she really TERRIBLE speed and two she's a dragon (causing many top reds to decimate her). Likewise lightning breath with a ranged counter is nice but with her middling speed she will usually get hit twice and only counter once. She's ok if you back her with a healer, but someone like Hector fairs much better. So if I had control over Tiki I would probably do the following. Adult Tiki: Lightning Breath+ 11Mt and Counter (though stealing Ryoma's 16Mt counter weapon would be perfect) Bonfire damage based of 50% Def, Pivot or Swap A: Defiant Defense +7 if under 50% B: Brash Assault Auto followup if under 50% C: Threaten Attack -5 Attack This would would make Tiki a super fun physical tank They can double her all they want but after dropping her to 50% her Def would jump up 7 points, she would threaten everyones attack by 5... making her average defense 47. Likewise following hitting 50% she would double people when attacking with Brash assault making her a little monster stomping around all angry for having torn her cute outfit.

THAT's why Fae looks so familiar. I love the Etrian Odyssey artist's style and design. I'm really glad they did some of the pictures. I absolutely love Lissa's weird expression and annoying voice. They fit her fiery attitude so well IMO. I'm not a big fan of Cordelia's art. Which is a shame since she has so much good artwork out in the wild. And she's probably my best character with +Attack and her brave weapon (unfortunately she has - Def... which would have only been better if it was - Res or -Health)

Thanks for posting this, it was great to read! I was really surprised at Lyn's popularity. Honestly I was surprised so many people remembered Lyn period. I figured the number of folks that played the games when she was around was much smaller than some of the newer games.

One thing which bothers me about this all is the stat gaps in some characters and weapon gaps. Some characters are just super terrible because of poor base stats. Makes me kind of cranky because the skill swaps are going to make me want to try and buff some of my favorite characters into something usable... but the current arena stat problems make it so no amount of skill tinkering will fix the issue. May have some characters just for flavor and fun at this rate. I'm curious if we'll be able to do any weapon swapping but I strongly doubt it.

DRAGON LADIES!!! Seriously I would drop some money for a dragon lady focus group. That would make me super happy. If my draws went bad I would rage so hard though... and the cost for the draws vs the range right now is too high... =-(

Fun read, thanks for posting this! Hopefully I can pickup some of this months fun cavalry units!

Good to know... I'll have to level my armored units and hope for one more this month. I concur sometimes these are tough or unfeasible. Last months mounted carvery kills was pretty tough for me because my only non two star mount was two Abels with - Attack. Bravelance users with - Attack are so terrible.

I run one four star person on my defense team right now Corrin. With this said I'm not getting many defense clears each week but I do get one or two at max points. I'm starting to think stacking up all blue/green/neutral units would be ideal right now as there seem to be a lack of popular green units. This would mean you would autoloose any Hector matches, but you would stand a fair chance at causing problems for other comps.

Same here. I looked at things closer last night and then realized that Vantage is a "B Slot" ability... and that not so useful Axe user has the skill. And that Hector has an open B Slot. If Anna + Hector = Vantage Hector I'm not sure if I should cry or rejoyce. It would mean killing Hector would be much more painful for everyone, but it would also make Hector a super awesome offensive character especially if he can pickup pivot or swap so he can get himself up to the front faster. I also noticed that Chrom's defiant Defense is an A Slot ability... which I will almost certainly pass to Eirika so she can grant buffs and take frontline hits like no tomorrow. What are your guys thoughts on Sing being passed? I'm really hopping it can be. But it begs the question who the heck I'd put the ability on. If I could put the ability on F Corrin I would probably explode with happiness. Then I could run F Corrin + Nino as a super nasty buff debuff pair.

Interesting they didn't change the Bonus heroes at all this week. I clubbed in a solid score this morning while I couldn't sleep: Offense ~ Rank4550 ~ 387 (Day 1)

I absolutely love this idea. It would be much more balanced but still rewarding. And trivial to implement.

I'm envious of your draw. My Nino had +HP and -Res (YUCK). None the less in your case I would definently push her to +5 if you run any buffers. She is super awesome at blowing stuff up and very satisfying to play with.

I agree there are some notable problems. Being able to stack characters to +10 is ridiculous. I also strongly disagree with being able to stack identical units. Unfortunately both of these interlink with their gacha financial design so I don't expect either to be tamed down much. I agree the ranking system has some flaws. Having the system based around pure party stat points is crappy. Basing your core score on clearing X times and having Y deaths was fairly clever though. If you think about what's going on from say ranks 100,000 to 10,000 they are measuring clears where the party level/stats are compared along with the number of deaths. So folks with one death are bunched ahead of the folks with two deaths, who are ahead of folks with three deaths, etc. Its actually rather nicely aligned with their performance. The problem occurs at around rank 10,000 to 1 where basically all the clears are 7 in a row with no deaths. At this point it becomes really tricky... because what do you rank each other against? Personally I would try to design a system where the number of PvP matches each day was increased and competition would occur directly against defense teams at or above your current rank. I think something like this would drive a better layer of competition and ranking among folks in the top rankings. Also I do like the bonus character mechanic to a degree. I enjoy that it shuffles the offensive teams for everyone. Keep in mind it doesn't necessarily change defensive teams... so you are having to offensively try and dismantle defensive teams you've seen but with a new factor on your own team.

I currently am eyeballing Female Corrin and Nino for a 5 star upgrade. They're both currently 4 star. I think Nino has a better chance at Improving my current composition, while Corrin will improve my defense. My problem with both is their point totals both lower my current composition or cause composition problems with my team. Considering all of these factors its likely I'll pick out a 5 star upgrade which is fun. Probably the toughest issue will be waiting for a good roll. My Nino is weird with +HP and -Res (not ideal) while Corrin has a weird -Def and +Res Allowing her to take middling hits from most things. Still I'd like to spend my 5 star on a better roll.

That's actually a rather funny theory. If Nintendo had some arena bots. They had similar things in Mario Kart though they were traditionally labeled as such... none the less it wouldn't surprise me. We've had quite a few folks note there are most definitely some serious hacks running rampant. I think given draw rates many of these full +10 teams are likely nothing more than hacked accounts. Which is really unfortunate. Why spend a bunch of money only to have to deal with people who have unlimited money. It will be interesting to see how Nintendo handles this accounts. I would think it would be in there best interest to integrate a funds purchase check with the number of draws to determine if accounts are woefully out of line and ban them accordingly.

This week was good: Offense ~ Rank4325 ~ 4,595 (Day 1)4552 ~ 565 (Day 1) 4552 ~ 2,642 (Day 7 - 7 hours left) I'm happy with where I ended. I'm still having the same issue that Cordelia is pulling my score down while Hector is pulling my score up. I suspect that next week I will NOT have a 5 star matching the lineup. So we'll see how that goes. I'll likely have to dynamically level someone up to four star to deal with the competition.

Honestly I'm surprised they're delivering something like this so soon. It tells me they are likely getting so much cash up front from the game that they're looking to be proactive and strike hard and while the irons hot. I think its probably a smart decision and its good to see the game so well supported. I just hope things don't get too wacky. As others have mentioned at a glance there are some really undesirable issues that could come out of this. None the less I look forward to tinkering with my characters. Eirika's flowery ultimate needs to live <3

I just wish a developer would look at the market, be brave and attempt to produce a gacha style game with a better design model. I absolutely love the game right now, I likewise am sporting a very high arena score so functionally I'm doing fine right now. I believe the game as whole is well designed. I just feel like it could have been designed better and that doing such would have opened more avenues in the future. I totally should have opened this up with a different title as it sounds super negative. My opinion of the game isn't super negative =-) I just frown a bit from gacha cash grabs in good games. I honestly hope as whale spending dips over the next few months they'll take some stabs at updating the pricing, having a decent monthly package etc. I would totally buy a monthly package for this game...

I was just wondering what score was at the bottom but the upper 3000's sounds about what I would have guessed. I'm also highly curious if the top 100000 is of all people or just in your current tier. My ranking was very similar last tier as this tier so that makes me lean to the tier list being global. But if I assume all of the top X move up a tier... then I would be ranked against the same people the next week anyway. So that would put everything back up in the air again.

Upgrading your castle to 100% is one of the best things you can do ASAP. Its an absolute treasure. I <3 my castle XP I want MORE!

It sounds that way but I've played quite a few gacha games. I absolutely loved Chain Chronicle till its global/English version went offline. I also recognize this game is relatively well designed for a gacha game (and fairly giving). I just really hate the fundamental root of pay to win. I want to spend my money on a game I enjoy. I want to spend a reasonable amount and get something reasonable in return. The problem is even in FEHeros you get very very little from spending a reasonable amount of money on the game. My last five 20 orb pulls have netted zero 5 star characters. So I could very easily blow 50 dollars on the game and not get a single arena worthy character. Now with this said I can't complain much as I had some very lucky rolls before this drought. None the less my point is spending $50.00 on this game is nothing. You can easily spend hundreds to thousands and still not have access to all of this games content. But that's the problem gacha is a terrible model to begin with. The reason it "works" is because the model itself exploits a weak part of human nature. The urge to gamble. It pokes at our desire to have something "rare" we don't have or might not be able to get later. When I play FEHeros I absolutely enojoy the tactical aspects and complexity of dismantling a random arena team... but I think the gacha model is a terrible shame. They could have been innovative in the phone/andriod market and moved forward for a much better design IMO. Ultimately I fear this game could suffer Chain Chronicles fate and loose US financial support (and possibly loose an English version of the game). I've read gacha games often don't survive Western markets as well because Westerners on average have proved to want more for their money in comparison to the Eastern gambling blitz. Only time will tell if this turns out to be true but, its on my mind. Also... can't spell today omg can't believe I botched that title... cold medicine for the win.

I'm really hopping starting off characters can only fill in their empty slots. That would make for less game breaking combinations IMO.

<Blinks> Ouch comes to mind. I hadn't considered they could do this. If I'm not mistaken this would make four hectors more problematic than anticipated. I guess at this point the map would have serious impacts on the strategy. I think many folks here are right... that due to the sluggishness dismantling 4 Hectors without the buff is doable... But with that buff, if they stack. Suddenly red "counters" aren't so sane anymore. Likewise most folks aren't sporting a healer at top level... interesting interesting.