[New Heroes: Princess of Bern]

16 minutes ago, Othin said:

I don't think it's that simple. Guinevere is a whole separate unit, which matters to a lot of people. Personally I spend orbs for new units, never for skill fodder.

If you’re a collector, sure. But for people who would pull for fodder, whether she’s worth using as fodder depends on her unique utility.

[New Heroes: Princess of Bern]

21 minutes ago, Othin said:

Premium starting skills absolutely matter. They aren't relevant to players who can replace them easily, but most players have at least some limitations on access to them. It makes no sense to throw in a "assuming you're willing to spend infinite cash to get optimal builds on everyone" in a discussion with people who, for the most part, are probably not willing to do so.

Death Blow 3 is a budget skill, and as for the Lull, it costs the same amount of orbs to pull Guinevere as it does to obtain a copy of Atk/Res Lull. The question of whether it's worth using Guinevere or foddering her to your budget mage of choice depends on how good Aureola is, since that's the only part of her default kit that can't be foddered.

[New Heroes: Princess of Bern]

2 hours ago, Xenomata said:

@XRay @Baldrick Why are the two of you ONLY looking at Aureola.

Because you said Aureola was meant to be "Weapons meant to be One-Hit Wonders without being Bladetomes" and compared it to Hades. Hades is far more optimised to compete with Blade Tomes for raw damage.

2 hours ago, Xenomata said:

You know as well as I do no one's replacing her default kit outside of narwhales, and by default she gets Atk/Res Push 4 and Lull Atk/Res. Maybe it's not the +21 Atk Lysithea gets, but she's still effectively getting +15 Atk from initiating combat or being near allies, and against tomes she has an extra 50% damage, which Tomes make up the vast majority of offensive threats. (any team with Ophelia has at least 3 tomes on it, any Dark AR-D team has Brammimond and Yune, Lysithea and LegAzura are some of the other most used Tomes in AR-D, and I'm sure Xane would go up in usage if people figure out how to get him the highest stats on AR-D) She gets the OHKO because of the environment she is used in, not necessarily because she gets a lot of Atk and endless Special Triggers.

+21 Atk plus 30% of the opponent's resistance. For reference, if you gave Guinevere a Blarblade she'd get +11 Atk plus the sum of her buffs (up to 24 damage). Aureola may suck, but she's got excellent fodder.

If you don't have the luxury of seeing the kinds of units the enemy is using, you don't know if they're even using mages so relying on effective damage boost is a crapshoot.

2 hours ago, Xenomata said:

As for countering... I assume you mean Evasion skills, I don't use the term Damage Reduction... she would do it with raw Spd.

Aureola only gives +5 to speed, and neither of her default skills help the speed check. To be able to match the average Evasion tank, she'll need at least 50 base speed.

2 hours ago, Xenomata said:

Gunievere has effective damage against 4 kinds of enemy units that will not be able to do anything about it outside of exceeding whatever her Res is in Blazing Special damage.

4 kinds out of 24 total. Or 119 out of 576 units.

[Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links]

2 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I thought Thany was Thea. Whatever. All the blue haired pegasus sisters look the same to me.

If you can't tell the difference, then Farina is still available.

[Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

You cannot have fun if you do not have the resources to build or do what you want.

The more rewards you get, the more fun you have. But to get more rewards, you need to put in more effort, which might result in you having less fun. So the point at which a player no longer considers putting in extra effort to be worth the extra rewards, is the point where the player is having the most fun.

There are no resources that you NEED to reach the top rank to get (you need to reach the highest ranks to get thrones/crowns, but they have no practical value so I don't consider them a resource).

[Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

Ranking high gives better rewards. While not every player cares about ranking in the top most tier, most players still want to rank well at a reasonably high tier with minimal effort. For example, I do not care about ranking in the top 1,000 in Aether Raids, but I still want to rank well in the top 10,000 or 20,000.

Am I correct in thinking the reason you don’t care about ranking in the top 1000 is that you don’t think the extra effort is worth the extra resources?

I think most people who play Heroes want to have fun, they don’t want the rewards so much as they want more resources or trophies. In that case, it makes more sense to prioritise having fun over trying to get as many rewards as you can.

Also, I think to what extent the player cares about rank is their decision and not that of IS, even if they use gacha mechanics to try and influence the player.

 

[New Heroes: Princess of Bern]

5 hours ago, Xenomata said:

Aureola falls into the category of "Weapons meant to be One-Hit Wonders without being Bladetomes" see Lysithea, 

?

Guinevere has five effects on her weapon. Three are purely defensive, one gives only 5 attack out of 15 stat points, the other is effective damage against mages only. Compared to Hades, that’s hardly a weapon designed to compete with Bladetomes for raw damage.

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And while Aureola might not be THE shift in that direction, it does begin to inch that way in its effects alone,

Auréola doesn’t even have any effects, such as Deadeye, that counter DR. I’m not sure how it has any relevance to the arms race between DR and DR negation.

[Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links]

8 hours ago, Javi Blizz said:

Wow, so they basically destroyed their new game mode’s fun by having to fight other player’s army of L!Edelgards...or at least if you want to be competitive rewards-wise. It was too kind to expect an actually fun mode 😕

Why do you want to be competitive rewards-wise? Personally, ever since I stopped worrying about my rank I’ve enjoyed the game more.

[New Heroes: Princess of Bern]

3 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

 But Guinevere's mystic boost + granting healing to allies within two spaces is better than 30% DR against only ranged units IMO. 

Mystic boost is only useful against adaptive damage, which no mages have afaik. Breath of life is decent but not that great. DR against ranged units is great against lots of meta threats like Reinhardt, BLyn, staff cavs etc.

[New Heroes: Princess of Bern]

36 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

What other blue tomes were released this month?

You’ll be happy when you hear the news.

22 minutes ago, daisy jane said:

thank you i was like.... what blue mage got added this month?

The question is, what blue tomes have been added this month?

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I think Guenievere will be for the Nukes (Ophelia, Maybe Nino, Celica).

Those units all stack a ridiculous amount of offense through their other effects Aureola only has a stat boost that stacks Guinevere’s offense. 
 

Emmeryn got a better deal than Guinevere. Being easily mergable is much more useful than being a mediocre flavor-of-the-month exclusive unit.

[New Heroes: Princess of Bern]

25 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

Yikes, that's right. Halloween Sakura's Kitty Paddle didn't get a refine because apparently it was too strong but Guinevere gets to have a stronger weapon with magic effectiveness and all these other effects tacked on it?

Heroes is so full of shit.

The effects aren’t that great. The extra might is nice, but being a tome rather than an inheritable dagger is a pretty big disadvantage for a mage-killer.

IMO Aureola isn’t even the best blue tome released this month.

[Pawns of Loki!]

I switched from tomes to beast weapons, and I did a little better, but trying to work out how to position my units is hard enough without adding transformation effects as well. Not to mention deciding whether to aim for merges or new characters... this is the most complex mode by far. I still haven't worked out a consistent strategy.

[Pawns of Loki!]

My teambuilding strategy:

- For weapon types, you can only get two three-of-a-kind bonuses so I chose to focus on sword/lance/axe and tomes. For move types, the best team to aim for is two of each type, so I tried to get five of each type in the brigade.

-Since melee weapons are the bonus weapon type, I went with 12 melee because I could have one of each weapon/move combination. The other 8 are tomes; apart from colourless and armoured, it's fairly easy to get a variety there.

-The frontline should be competent in both phases, especially enemy phase. Self-sustain is quite valuable for this mode since every point of HP you have left increases your score. Ideally, your frontline takes all the enemy phase combat so your backline can focus on player phase.

- Because you get units at random, and the AI doesn't use assists, I didn't worry too much about team synergy. I just made each unit as self-sufficient as possible.

 

[Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links]

I don’t think there’s any merit in declaring an art style “not Fire Emblem”. You could say that about anything that doesn’t look like the NES games.

Critiquing Lucina drawn in EO style is one thing. But it’s simply wrong to say it doesn’t look like Lucina.

[November/December 2020 Event Calendar]

Thracia and Binding Blade actually have the highest representation, relative to their popularity (such that it can be measured). Thracia has 3 characters in the top 200 of CYL4, and 17 reps. Binding Blade is 6-38 (7, including Roy)

[November/December 2020 Event Calendar]

2 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

There was no cushion for that simple fact alone.

I used the term cushion to differentiate between the games/continents with some units at launch, and those with no units at launch. Binding Blade falls into the former category, so it had a cushion.

Binding Blade did not any blankets put on top of the cushion for a long time. Nevertheless, it had a cushion.

[November/December 2020 Event Calendar]

4 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

I'd definitely prefer this didn't happen. It took so long before Binding Blade got even one New Heroes banner. Now that we're finally getting them, I'd hate to see it hijacked by a lame OC.

Binding Blade has had two banners with no hijack, no alts. Their selection of launch units cushioned the relative lack of banners.

Thracia has also had two banners with no cushion. One was hijacked by Peony and had a Mareeta alt, the other you were expecting Finn but it was me, Reinhardt (and Olwen).

I think you can deal with one hijack. Especially if a unit gets the Kaze treatment.

 

["Ask Fire Emblem Heroes Questions and Get Them Answered Here" Thread]

4 hours ago, Sil/phire said:

How often do units or banners roll around again? I would like to try for a Sacred and Fallen Julia, and I would like a shot at some of the Tokyo Mirage units.

If Sacred Julia is the blue tome one, she will next be available on the Legendary/Mythic banner at the end of January. The other units I’m not sure of, they will probably be rerun some time in the next few months.

4 hours ago, Sil/phire said:

Another question, what are differences between the blessings you can give to your units? I noticed that the Eir, Ike, and Fjorn units you get from the story have this big emblems on their pictures but are the fire, wind, water, etc. blessings I get give the same benefits as those?

Those units are Legendary/Mythic. If you give a unit a water blessing and deploy them with a water Legendary like Fjorm, they will gain a stat boost and other benefits depending on the mode. Xenomata covers the details well.

3 hours ago, Silver Lightning said:

2. While summoning for said L!Dimitri, I summoned a boatload of Fallen Corrins. I don't really need another blue dragon, i already have an invested refined female corrin, but i hear he's also really good. Should I merge him all up or just hang onto the fodder?

He’s good fodder. Any fast PP unit would like Atk/Spd Solo. For an infantry unit that already has Atk/Spd Solo 3, you can give them both Atk/Spd Solo 4 and Null Followup 3.

3 hours ago, Silver Lightning said:

3. I got the forma summer micaiah with some nice premium skills, but I cant decide what to bless her and where I want to use her.

Do you have Yune? If so, give her a Dark blessing.

3 hours ago, Silver Lightning said:

Bonus question: are the original blessings good for anything nowadays outside of arena cores or should i just replace them all with mythic blessings?

Aesthetic.

I would only replace an element blessing with a mythic blessing if you want to use that unit in Aether Raids.

["Ask Fire Emblem Heroes Questions and Get Them Answered Here" Thread]

8 hours ago, Sil/phire said:

will the low lvl 1 units give my lvl 40 the same stat bonuses that merging multiple lvl 40s would?

Yes, the level doesn't matter, but make sure they're all 5* because that does matter.

8 hours ago, Sil/phire said:

2 - What's the best way to get trait fruit? I just found out the other day that it can change the traits of your units. And how does it work? See i pulled Flayn with a resistance boon, and after raising her to 40 i realized her resistence is +5 instead of +3 over the neutral resistance stat at lvl 40, which i think is what you call a super boon? if i use trait fruit to change her boon from resistance to attack, will she lose 5 points to resistance or 3? Or will she gain +5 to her attack stat? right now her attack is 53, so 56 or 58? please tell me 58, i'll like that very much!

If you change Flayn's boon to attack, she should gain 3 attack and lose 3 resistance, so she would only have 56 attack. The good news is that maxing out her summoner support (if that's why she has extra res) would give her 58 attack.

8 hours ago, Sil/phire said:

5 - are healers any good? how do you use them in your teams? I understand interactions in this game are pretty one-sided, so i guess using a healer on my team when I play is very different than having one on my "defense" team that i have no control over, right? you don't use healing to win games after all. On that topic, from what i can tell from the current summoning banners, Flayn is a very recent healer, how would you say she stacks up on current environment? I also pulled a Silque but her stats so far have been very underwhelming.

Flayn and Silque both have effects that makes them quite useful. Flayn gives nearby allies damage reduction and is the only unit (so far) with an assist that both heals and retreats at the same time. When Silque attacks, she can prevent the enemy from activating their special. In general, staff units are best used as support units that heal, buff and debuff, rather than pure damage dealers. They can't use offensive specials, but once you unlock the weapon refinery, they have easy access to Dazzling Staff, which allows them to attack most enemies without being countered.

[Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links]

Depending on what the artist intended, IMO either her legs are too long, or her torso is too short. Perhaps she's meant to be a hobbit?

[Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links]

 

11 hours ago, Tybrosion said:

Yeah....except nearly 78% of those characters were 2017 - 2018 releases. In other words, most of Awakening's characters have since been hopelessly outclassed / powercrept and aren't worth anything in FEH's current meta.

So Tharja is useless, and Petrine is meta?

Even if a unit gets powercrept over time, all things being equal, it's better to be released earlier than later. Say a 2017 unit scores 10 points for usability in 2017, 9 points in 2018, 8 points in 2019 etc, while a 2018 unit scores 0 points (they don't exist) in 2017, 10 points in 2018, 9 points in 2019 etc. The 2017 unit will always be ahead.

To have a good sense of perspective, you need to consider the big picture. Unless you think the 2020 meta is the only meta worth considering for whatever reason

7 hours ago, Othin said:

I feel like you're cherry-picking numbers. Tellius has gotten more recent attention, but that's in part because it's been so much further behind on its overall roster, something that's still the case. And there are plenty of other possible dates to count from than the start of 2019.

For reference, I counted the trend of Tellius vs Awakening, going both forwards and backwards. The roster in brackets excludes alts and cases like Black Knight/Zelgius and M/F Morgan.

                T Units (Roster)   A Units (Roster)
At Launch       0 (0)		   18 (18)
End of 2017	11 (10)		   36 (18)
End of 2018	20 (13)		   53 (28)
End of 2019	44 (30)		   60 (35)
TODAY		62 (41)		   68 (40)

Added in 2020	18 (11)		     8 (5)
Since 2019	42 (28)		   15 (12)
Since 2018      51 (31)		   32 (22)
Since Launch    62 (41)		   50 (22)
TOTAL		62 (41)		   68 (40)

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

24 minutes ago, joevar said:

oh thats true, rogue and rogue-like that inspired by it have permadeath, but i guess the reasoning and situation different. because the game designet to feel fresh and challenging even after a couple restart by changing things each playthru. But in FE or similar games tho? you're basically treading the same ground again, thats just punishing without incentive for the general audience

 

Yeah, roguelikes don't really have mainstream appeal.

But I think the inability to reset doesn't necessarily have to be punishing like roguelikes are - you'd just need to provide more options to deal with permadeath. For example, in FE4 you can revive dead units for as long as you have access to Valkyrie and enough gold to repair it. You could also treat the lord like Julia in FE4 - she doesn't die when she's killed, she effectively has Casual mode enabled.

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

1 minute ago, Sooks1016 said:

That’s a little far; I feel like some people just didn’t know.

That’s fair, I tend to be a little harsh in my posts.

But I provided interviews with Kaga in order to justify what I think he intended, and that person is just ignoring it and reiterating his opinion that contradicts the views Kaga expresses in his interview.

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

9 hours ago, joevar said:

the question would be, why would he prevent people from resetting? is iron-manning even a thing back then?

Rogue, a game from 1980, had per madeath that explicitly prevents players from reloading after dying.

8 hours ago, Axie said:

who's even talking about preventing resetting by force?

You claimed Kaga was not smart because he didn’t apparently didn’t account for people being able to reset. I admit, I don’t know what that is implying.

Edit: A direct quote from you is “i will reset and you can't stop me, sir.” So I maintain that you definitely did.

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the point is simple: kaga didn't want people to worry about deaths so much, but the very design of it (likeable characters) makes us worry far more than he intended us to.

Did you read the interview? Kaga said that strategy games are dry because you only care about winning, and don’t have any empathy for whether your units survive. He added RPG elements to make players emotionally invested in their units.
Incidentally, I don’t know who “us” is referring to so I’m not sure exactly what point you’re making.

Kaga repeatedly asserts there’s no one correct strategy to Fire Emblem. So when he says not to worry about characters dying so much, he means you don’t need to keep everyone alive to beat the game. Nevertheless, keeping everyone alive is one way to beat the game, and Kaga wants everyone to have the freedom to beat the game in whatever way that want. He absolutely intended for some players to try to keep everyone alive.

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we don't need to trip over other people's words just to defend kaga)

We don’t need to misrepresent Kaga’s intentions to attack him, either.
 

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

18 hours ago, Axie said:

yes, that's why i said he wasn't the smartest lol.

Do you really think Kaga couldn't have thought of a way to prevent resetting, if that was his intention?

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his intentions are entirely at odds with how it was executed,

Based off these interviews, Kaga's intention was to create an RPG that wasn't linear and allowed for many different approaches, by adding strategy elements. Permadeath is something to increase the tension, but it doesn't mean he wanted to force everyone to handle it any one way. That's entirely at odds with Kaga's philosophy.

17 hours ago, twilitfalchion said:

Fair enough. Although I would still contend that his design philosophies would have hindered FE's progression and appeal as a series going forward had he remained with IS.

"But for Nintendo-made products, the baseline for the development is always that it be easy to play to the end, something “anyone can pick up and enjoy.” And I think that is a perfectly fine approach in its own right. Even if the strategy mechanics are lacking some depth, the important thing is its overall balance as a game, after all.

Actually, the first person to beat the game was a graphic designer at Nintendo, someone completely unrelated to the development. I think the selling point of Fire Emblem is that anyone, even non-gamers, can enjoy the strategy, so that made me really happy."