Humanoid

Free summon was Lucina, my first one. These free summons have treated me well, probably my fifth or sixth 5-star freebie summon alongside Ephraim, Amelia, Dorcas and Klein at the minimum. Ike may have been an off-focus freebie, can't remember. Guess I'll hold off promoting Soleil until my next set of feathers. 5* Lucina +Def -HP 4* Chrom +Spd -Def (only my second ever) 3* Raigh +HP -Spd (I now officially have enough of him to make a 4* +10 ...someday) 3* Lon'qu +Spd -Res (He may be of increasingly little relevance these days, but the IVs are nice, joins the queue behind Soleil, Athena and Hana) Back down to 40 orbs after having saved 80+ supposedly for the Legendary Heroes, but considering the yield from those orbs I can't be disappointed.

So what you're saying is that on January the 6th, IS will arrive and give us Myrrh, right? Right?

It'll turn out that the December Legendary Heroes Banner is just Fjorm, Alfonse, Sharena and Anna.

I was dumb and decided to do a full pull on the Refinery 2 banner. 3* Eliwood +Res -Def 3* Laslow +HP -Spd 4* Hana +HP - Res 3* Lissa +Atk -Def 4* Catria +Res -HP I have nothing positive to say about any of that, so in a huff, I went to the Christmas banner. My self control is poor, I know. 4* Shanna +Spd -Res 3* Frederick +HP -Def 4* Mathilda +Res -Atk 5* Reinhardt +Spd -Def 4* Soleil +Spd -HP Okay, the game saved the best to last, I'm happy now. Rein goes to +1 and Soleil is definite promotion material. Only tricky part is that I was going to promote Tiki and Effie this weekend as soon or as I could farm up 3000 feathers. But now it's a three way battle for the two promotions.

In that case I probably wouldn't do it at all, not really an efficient use of feathers given the state of your roster. Maybe just consider forging her Silver Sword+ instead, would be worth more points too since Ruby Dao can't be forged.

Priam was conceived via IVF from an anonymous donor egg.

Yeah but it's 0 to 22000 feathers (depending on 4* rate) to make Olivia +10, who in terms of effectiveness is equivalent to somewhere between +4 and +5 at 5-star, so 100000-132000 feathers. Oof, that makes my eye water. Hero Battle bonus units also only come around half as often as the Askrian trio, being a 6-week rotation. My 4-star +10 Cecilia is the single best unit in my roster, though to be fair I should count the cost of the Gronnblade+ in terms of investment. EDIT: I prefer the Ruby Sword+, because it helps her defensively, and most of the time that's how you use an Olivia. And that's before considering the WoM3 factor, which makes the inheritance much more efficient.

The table suggests Olivia has already been 5-starred though, though she could be merged back into a 4-star later on I suppose. Either way, if you do go for the Ruby Sword+ route for Olivia, make sure to do it from a Palla so you can pass Wings of Mercy 3 at the same time. Other common picks to complement would be a Tiki, Fae, Cecilia, Kagero. Behind them maybe a Tharja or Nino.

I wish I could change mine away from Bowlyn, but I need her to counter herself in Arena and therefore needs the +2 speed (along with the speed seal) to reliably get the double. Don't have a favourite character as such so I'd probably do a rotation of some sorts if I could.

Fjorm? Isn't that the guy from ABBA?

The number of orbs going out is fair enough, but I do wish the manner in which they go out was a bit less haphazard. I mean, we don't even know what dates the TT is running this month which impacts the ability to plan out orb usage for specific banners, not that we know when the Legendary Heroes banner is going out either. Simply publishing the upcoming events calendar on the same day every month would be a relatively straightforward thing to do and solve this problem, and it's absolutely baffling why they randomly don't for some months. That said, checking the historical trend just now and you can't say it's not slightly disappointing that we've come down somewhat from the peak orb generosity of September with its 335 orbs (chiefly due to the mini TT). July technically had 312 but that's inflated by the introduction of Chain Challenges. Numbers for each month for convenience: 280, 234, 151, 171, 175, 312, 261, 335, 253, 263, 172 (ongoing).

Slightly irksome that the December monthly training stratum quests require a full party so you can't double up the 10th stratum infantry one with Sharena's one. Fortunately Shaz is 5* so it's no great inconvenience like Alfie was, I will dread doing the Anna version when it comes.

I don't think it would raise the ceiling, but it would be a big help in raising the floor. The top teams now would still be the top teams, but it'd close the gap for new players, those coming back from extended breaks, or the particularly unlucky. Evening out the power level like this would generally be beneficial in terms of balancing new content such as GHBs too. The whales would still be out in front (which is unfortunately necessary for the business model) but I think it'd be healthier for the long term future of the game by giving others more of a sniff. EDIT: I suppose the litmus test would be to see what the effects of Hector, for example, being made available as 4* now. Given the easy access to Lightning Breath+ I don't think it's gamebreaking in any way. But it'd be lovely to be able to field niche units like Hawkeye and Lloyd more effectively without the need for whaling.

I don't think it'd be unreasonable to have the demotions be automatic, and have any given unit eventually drop down to the 4-5 pool after a certain amount of time, and then later on down to 3-4 (after say a year). As a bonus, it might get the character designers to put more thought into balancing the new stuff. You'd still have power creep, and a carefully controlled degree of it is desirable, but the 5-star pool would be a lot more even in terms of quality since they will all be relatively recent units.

It finally explains Gwendy's waist too.

There's something really satisfying about it when I sort my roster by Atk and see Lilina sitting there at the top of the list, a full 5 points clear of second placed Ike and Ephraim.

Terrifying? It's beautiful. I'd be able to build a 4* +10 that I've always wanted but couldn't justify due to the fodder value. The missing link for me though is Cherche. I've probably pulled double digits of every other green 3* hero, but I've gotten only 4 or 5 Cherches ever. I look at my 40+3 one with +HP -Res and am sad. Mind you, Wrys has been even more elusive, I've seen two, maybe three of him, ever. But I'm okay with that. >.>

4878 was rank 10188 in AA, irritating to miss out on a couple of coins/stones but I was never going to attempt a second advanced score so eh.

It was due to Fjorm-led SP value inflation pretty much, suddenly everyone's teams were worth a lot more points. I'm also someone content with bouncing between 19 and 20 and while 4940ish is usually good enough, I almost didn't make it with 4880 last week. Hopefully it's less crazy next week when I need to go up again. Then again I'm a lazy bugger, I get both Arena and AA out of the way with minimum fuss with no attempt to optimise points. (AA in particular is my most disliked game mode in FEH) I could have fielded Fjorm myself to make it safe, but when the game offers me Olivia easymode week, I take Olivia easymode week. Team is essentially Blade Cecilia and her three retainers - honebot Camus, fortifybot Bowlyn and dancebot Olivia. Cecilia gets 75% of the kills.

So, having failed to get Winter Robin and ending up with Chrom instead, my armour team is looking decidedly unbalanced, with the only available units being Arden, BK, Hector, Amelia and Santa. Probably time to bite the bullet and promote my +Res -Spd Effie. Not optimal but I've only seen three Effies since launch so waiting is probably going to be a fruitless endeavour. In general I'm loathe to make big investments in any kind of unit, but I did end up with a spare neutral Hector out of the Legendary Heroes banner (identical to my built Hector). So I could inherit Distant Counter and Goad Armor, keep the Silver Lance, and maaaybe take QR since I need to get Swap anyway. Alternatively I guess I'd go the usual Brave build, keeping Death Blow. I wouldn't sacrifice two 5-stars for her, too expensive and the skills wouldn't synergise anyway. Points in favour of DC build are that it matches up well with her IVs. Downside is that in BK and Hector, it'd just add a third unit that fulfils roughly the same role in the same team (as I'd be dropping Arden out almost certainly). Brave Effie is more a direct replacement for Arden in the team role-wise, but with a more favourable colour. Downside of course is that I'd need to spend 40k feathers in total, for Effie + Donnel, and it'd suck if a +atk Effie turned up later. Thoughts?

Was planning to do one round, ended up doing two. Round 1: Green, green, red, grey, blue, I just go clockwise as usual. 4* Beruka +Atk -Spd. Well, my existing one is Def Res, not sure which to use as a base for a potential 4* +10 as a future project. 4* Cecilia +Spd -HP. Already have a 4* +10 who is +Spd -Def, so eh. 5* Elincia +HP -Atk. Identical to my existing one, arrrgh. 3* FCorrin +Atk -Spd. Fodder. Round 2: Blue, green, green, grey, grey. 5* Mathilda +Atk -HP. Not sure I have a role for her, but can't complain about this at all. Glad I did this second round on impulse. 5* Santa Chrom. +Spd -HP. It would be churlish to complain about his IVs at this point, so I won't. 4* Frederick +Def -HP. Fodder. Unless the next banner turns out to be a damp squib, I'm done for now.

We're coming from different backgrounds I suppose, so the differing philosophies are fair enough. From the perspective of the RPG side of Fire Emblem, balance isn't a big deal. From the strategy side, I find it maddening. And since Heroes pretty much drops all the RPG elements, I view it as something along the lines of XCOM, where balance is kind of a big deal. (To put things in context, I'm one of those Awakening babies with no investment in old series traditions. I also know next to nothing about Pokemon) EDIT: Ultimately I consider it a desirable change if the gulf between extreme happiness and extreme disappointment is less, well, extreme than it is now. This is but one means to that end, but a fairly obvious one. The IV system as it stands now feels like I can end up trading a hundred dollars for a hundred yen. Is that "interesting"? Well...

I guess that makes the question almost purely sentimental then. You wouldn't ideally run Catria and Hinoka in the same team so you'd want the Hone on someone else to make sure Nowi always receives full buffs. This is assuming you want just the one optimised Flier team of course. I like having two teams for the hell of it, so there's Elincia/Hinoka/SCorrin/Michalis, then Palla/Cordelia/SCamilla/Cherche. Two braves, one tank, one mage in each.

Yeah, I'm aware of the reason why it is how it is, but fundamentally there isn't a reason for it to be done that way. There's a lot about FEH that could be improved in future overhaul, and legacy cruft like this is worth reviewing. I'd have said it'd be something to look at in a hypothetical major 2.0 release but of course that number's taken now. I mean it wouldn't be a difficult undertaking to have stat gains done by hand instead of being calculated from growth rates, which would also eliminate the needless +/- 4 modifiers we sometimes see, or the 1 BST difference units of the same class can end up differing by. "Legacy cruft" in general is a problem that the FE series in general suffers from. Understandable to some extent for any series which has lasted this long, but it does feel a lot of its features are there for the sake of tradition alone. Fortunately it's not completely static, I support 100% the removal of weapon durability in Fates for instance.

I reckon Hinoka with Hone and Elincia with Fortify would work better in terms of team synergy than Elincia with Hone and Catria with Fortify. Assuming you're running Blade Nowi of course. Catria's the tankiest one in the bunch so the current setup is a bit contradictory. But yeah, I can't bring myself to sack my Def/HP Hinoka despite having both a +Atk and +Spd Cordelia, either of whom would be a superior one-for-one replacement in my Flier Emblem team. But it's not a big deal because she does well enough, plus half the time she never engages in combat anyway, and is just a buffbot for Blade Corrin.