Sias

I might have derped for a second and completely forgot about the existence of Tiki while suggesting TA on Julia. Whoops. Anyways, I'm going to opt for Fury in that case - and considering that I have a merge bonus of +1, it's even enough to OHKO Reinhardt, which is pretty nice as well. I've also decided to use Lancebreaker for now, as Nino/Cecilia aren't much of an issue for me while I've literally only met Bunnymilla twice ever. Watch as that changes as soon as I've equipped the other breaker though. Now I've only to decide on a C slot skill to take. I'm tempted to throw Atk/Spd buffs on everyone, but there's always this nagging feeling that Spur Def on Robin might have saved me once or twice so far, so I'm still not all that sure about it. And yes, your advice definitely was useful. I'm finding my way back into theorycrafting again after having very little time for that during the exam period, so it's nice to have someone to bounce ideas off for cases like the one with Tiki above. And ofc I'm asking nicely, it's because I'm a very lovely person in general. For real though, I guess I could offer you advice for Awakening's postgame optimizing or something like that in return?

Well, first of all: Base stats > Growths for most FE games. I'm also terribly sorry to break this to you, but peronal experience isn't a valid basis for judging characters. It's definitely nice that you enjoy using Edward so much, but it also sounds like you're dumping a ton of favouritism at him, so of course he will perfom well given the circumstances. If we take a look a the newest tier list for Radiant Dawn however, we get the following ratings: Zihark 7.86 > Mia 7.74 > Edward 6 > Stefan 5.14 > Lucia 3.82. As you see, the common opinion on SF seems to be that Edward and Stefan are in fact not the best swordmasters in the game, and if you want to continue this discussion, I'd honestly advise you to do some fact-checking before stating simply incorrect things like your claims regarding the possible usage of Alondite.

Thank you for your advice. :) I already assumed that +Atk Hana would be better with a Brave, but wanted some reassurance in case I was totally missing some popular skill inheritance build I'm not really up to date with. Anyways, things are going along smoothly with her, although it's kind of terrifying how many skill points she still needs to learn all of her abilities. Oh well. Further on: Sorry for the confusion regarding the Robin/Daraen issue. I still tend to mix both names up from time to time, especially considering how Robin was still Robin during Awakening but suddenly turned into Daraen for Fates/Smash/Heroes. I believe they're going to stick to the latter now though. Finally I'd like to ask you for your opinion on Julia if possible? I'm currently doing a lot of skill inheritance due to being close to the character limit, so she's my next "project". Lancebreaker in her B slot seems to be nice as I don't see enough axes for Axebreaker. Green Tomebreaker probably would be another option, but I usually have no issues with Nino and pretty much never meet Bunnymilla, so I don't really know. On the other side I'm really rather uncertain about her A skill. She seems to be too slow for Life and Death (mine is +Res/-Def btw, should that matter) and too fragile for Fury. Maybe Triangle Adept? It would allow her to just oneshot the lancers, meaning she could take another skill instead of Lancebreaker; on the defense however not all that much should change because well, here Defense ist still horrible. For the C slot another buff skill is likely. Even though I like Breath of Life, it's probably easier to just kill everything and I haven't found myself in all that many situations where the healing was really impactful. Finally, considering her skill proc: I kind of like the 4 turn charge skills on her at at the moment because Dragon Fang is just nicely charged after killing Reinhardt/being attacked by Linde and then landing the finishing blow the turn afterwards - with Tringle Adept however those kills would become OHKOs, so a 3 turn proc might be better. Probably Iceberg > Draconic Aura as her Res is so high. Also, I feel like a horrible person for throwing this wall of text at you, so if it bothers you, just say something and I'll stop.

Not trying to be rude here, but are those three really all that underrated? I think it's kind of understandable how they didn't score in the top ranks of the heroes poll, considering they are neither 3DS characters nor Smash representatives, but when we take a look at the fanbase that has actually played the Teliius games? Jill seems to be a favourite due to being both a great unit and a well-developed character. Elinicia's part of RD is generally known as piece of high quality writing (and Amiti is pretty nice as well), whereas Marcia is just absurdly good in PoR while still being solid in RD.

Nah, I'm happy for him, but still slightly salty that he got three Takumis while I totally failed to get a second one that isn't -Spd. My luck in the Hero Fest Banner has been really weird in general. I used up my last 180 orbs yesterday in the hopes of getting either Takumi or Azura, but instead didn't even manage to summon any of the focus characters at all. I'm not complaining though, because I nevertheless managed to gather a nice amount of eight non-focus five stars while my Ninian can replace Azura perfectly well now. And honestly, you should have seen my face after I pulled a +Spd/-Atk Effie directly followed by her +Atk/-Spd version. :)

I realize this is a few day old already, but I still wanted to reply: Are you against any form of tax money going towards abortion in general or do you just have a problem with women getting pregnant on accident and then deciding against having a child (and therefore an abortion)? If it's just the latter, you really shouldn't have anything to worry about regarding government funds going towards causes you disapprove off. I know that the government "wasting" its money on rectifying other people's "mistakes" is one of the Republicans' most favourite talking points (besides "But think of the children!!!" ofc), but even though they like to make you believe that you're paying for other people's abortions, you really aren't. There does exist a law called Hyde Amendment which is in effect since 1976 already and prohibits " the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except to save the life of the woman, or if the pregnancy arises from incest or rape". And because those three reasons for abortion are the ones that even pro-lifers commonly enough agree with, I really don't get why some people are still so much in arms about Planned Parenthood and such?

Sometimes I wish I had just half as much luck as my brother. He installed the game on Sunday, did six pulls so far and got three Takumis, two Azuras, one Hector and Hawkeye out of it. Why.

Considering that Hana is going to be an arena bonus character for the next weeks, I'm tempted to throw some feathers at her in order to get a 5 star. I'd like to get some second thoughts on how to build her however, so I'm just going to outline what I had in mind: First of all, I have three versions of her so far. +Def/-Spd is obviously horrible, but would +Spd/-HP or +Atk/-Def better for the following build? I intend to pass my Ogma's Brave Sword+ to her because he's +Res/-Atk and just disappoints me whenever I see him. The rest is probably pretty standard for a brave build: Life and Death + Desperation, with Ardent Sacrifice to activate the latter. I'm not so sure about the remaining skills though. For the C slot, it's probably going to be Threaten Def/Spd as I don't think that a Hone Whatever would be all that effective on such an offensive character. Threaten Spd might be better because it enables more Desperation quadruples, I believe? Finally, regarding her proc skill: I've seen people using standard extra damage stuff like Draconic Aura on her, others seem to favour defensive abilities. Does this actually help her to survive something important (possibly after an Ardent Sacrifice) or is full offense preferred? Oh, and one last thing: Is Draw Back still all the hype or did that spot get repositioned? Looking for an assist to give to my Daraen.

Best: Awakening - 3 Points Radiant Dawn - 2 Points Binding Blade - 1 Point Worst: Conquest - 3 Points Path of Radiance - 2 Points Mytery of the Emblem - 1 Point

Voting for FE4 again.

Best: Awakening - 3 Points Radiant Dawn - 2 Points Genealogy of the Holy War - 1 Point Worst: Conquest - 3 Points Shadow Dragon - 2 Points Path of Radiance - 1 Point

I also did the GHB yesterday and managed to beat it with a team of M!Robin/Eirika/Lissa/Olivia. Robin probably needs to be 5 star for my strategy (though 4 star with Triangle Adept possibly works as well?), while Eirika can be replaced by pretty much anyone who 2RKO's the fighter and Lissa/Olivia are only there for Rehabilitate/Dance. If anyone wants to use a similar team and needs the detailed strategy, just ask. :)

Regarding the general thread question: "Shipping Emblem" sells, so they're going to do their best to appeal to the crowd that gets drawn towards the game by this feature, and I think that the Avatar is probably the least problematic part of that. I'd rather keep some form of player immersion than the almost limitless supports or the wonky child implementation, because honestly, those could have been... better executed in Fates. I hope I'm not being rude by just interfering in your discussion, but I agree that the relationship between the protagonist/avatar and the surrounding world/cast is likely the thing they've got to put the most work into. The best basis for a future avatar (assuming they're going to work off what they already have) is imo Robin, simply because I feel that the praise they get is at least mostly deserved? I still would have cut it down a little, but I feel that Kris and Corrin were far worse off nevertheless. The former mainly suffers form the fact that they hijacked someone else's story after the original was finished and well established already, so they appear like they get credit for the achievement's of other people constantly . Also I feel like Kris' role in the plot wasn't all that well done in general: On the one side they're just some humble normal soldier, but on the other one also Marth's bff and constant advisor? Meh. Corrin's main problem meanwhile is being praised too much, though not necessarily the way that it happened to other FE protagonists (being an amazing fighter, having the best battle plans, the usual jazz) - the issue is more what I'd like to call indirect praise. We have some across-the-board morality issues in Conquest, where everyone still loves Corrin and his group and treats them as heroes even when they do the most villianous things. More importantly however there's an awful, awful lot of characters whose live almost entirely revolves around Corrin or whose personality is at least majorly influenced by them. Not only do they have more retainers than anyone else, their siblings are also completely obsessed with them - most notably is the obvious Camilla, but we have Hinoka as well, who dedicated her life to fighting and winning back Corrin, and Ryoma, who was jealous of them even when they were toddlers, Elise, whose adores them and wants to play together all the time, and even Takumi, the only one who doesn't instantly love Corrin, is majorly defined by their relationship nevertheless. Other people like Silas, Kaze or Rhajat happily add themselves to the pile, and it goes on and on. Sure, Corrin is supposed to be this super charismatic guy that everyone likes, but the game doesn't show this, and the divergence between what we're told and what we see is one of Fates' major problems in general. In regards to Robin I don't really have all that much more to say, they're not some kind of amazingly well written character or anything like that, but they're solid and pretty consistant and that's rather good already imo? Sure, it's questionable if the last story arc bringing the focus to them was really necessary, but I mainly chalk that up to Awakening rushing it's plot down in the last two arcs - it would have worked out better had they added a few extra chapters. I'm not sure whether I agree with the sentiment that people are too trusting and accepting towards Robin initially however. When I just go and take a look at the shepherds (the rest of the characters join the army later on anyways and are therefore kind of irrelevant in regards to their feelings about Robin), I see the following: Frederick is the obvious example for someone who's mistrusting at first, and that's fine. Chrom and Lissa do warm up more quickly, but let's not forget that their initial plan is just to cart Robin to the capital and sort the amnesia business out there/determine whether they're dealing with an ally or foe. The attitude change only appears after battles against the bandits/Risen, and the whole deal about Robin fighting with them, giving strategic advice and risking their life for the cause is sort of justified. Emmeryn fits in here as well, she's the trustworthy type anyways and just accepts Chrom's judgement. During the shepherd reception scene, Vaike quickly befriends Robin, and Sumia is welcomig in the same manner (even though she's mostly occupied with Chrom). This fits their personalities in both cases however, so I see no issue here. Kellam doesn't really do anything besides trying to get noticed, but Maribelle is interesting because she has an initially low opinion of Robin after they goof around with Vaike - not really inherent distrust, but at least dislike. Stahl arrives a bit later and greets them friendly, but on the other side he's supposed to be the friendly average guy, and their conversation isn't much more than "Hi, I'm Stahl, nice to see you, we have to hurry now" regardless. Sully, Virion or Miriel get literally no story dialogue with Robin, so we see no possible interaction. Sure, it may not be an overwhelming initial front of distrust, but it's not really blind acceptance either, but mostly fitting for the relative characters and sort of deserved after how promptly Robin establishes themselves as an invaluable member to the shepherds.

I think the main problem with healers in the arena is that their healing just doesn't scale up with everyone else's damage progression (with the exception of Rehabilitate and maybe Martyr, but that's risky). Recover, for example, might be a full heal for most level 1 characters, but is decidedly less impressive when you try to heal up your level 40 Hector that had to take a hard hit from an enemy Lucina. And then there's stuff like Physic with its amazing base heal of 8. Yeah. It's made even more difficult by the fact that many healers have to choose between decent healing (Imbue) and team utility (Balm skills). Maybe they could try to stuff more supporting skills into the ABC slots? Because honestly, abilities like HP+5 on Lucius and Res+3 on Clarine are just vastly inferior when compared to other options like Serra's Hone Attack.

https://rocketmo.github.io/feh-damage-calc/ This is a damage calculator that could potentially help you out, but the maths behind it is rather simple most of the time, so that it's definitely possible to do some useful damage estimations in your head while fighting in the arena. Normal damage is just Atk minus Def or Res, though you potentially need to multiply the attack with 1.5 (for effective damage), 1.2 (for weapon triangle advantage) or 0.8 (for weapon triangle disadvantage) before doing the subtraction. The doubling threshold is also just like in the normal games (5 speed). The tricky part however is keeping an eye on the influence that skills might have on the result, with stuff like Death Blow increasing Effie's attack on enemy phase or your Frederick's damage being lowered due to a Robin with Spur Defense standing next to your opponent.

I agree that Fates' Lunatic is all in all more balanced, just like how Fates in general has refined a lot of the gameplay features that Awakening had used before. On the other side however, I still do believe that random skill distribution in a future FE is possible without becoming too difficult and could be nice for potential replay value. Awakening's problem was that it started with extremely high enemy stats and incredibly strong skills a the same time, even though a more gradual increase in difficulty would've probably been the better idea. Chapter 2 for example would be far easier if they had switched the introduction time of Counter with that of PavGis+, and the earlygame in general should be far more bearable without Luna+ appearing as early as in the prologue. If you had a little more time to train your characters up and to prepare for impeding doom, it would feel far less "unfair" to the people who struggle with it (and let's be honest, that's almost everyone). The only part of Lunatic+ that I really never want to see again is Counter, because seriously, this skill alone invalidates a sizable amount of your usable characters.

It's certainly unfortunate that some skill combinations make a win close to impossible, but from my experience there's generally very few of those. What's probably more dangerous is the chance to miss an important hit or suffer from an unfortunate crit, but imo that's more in line with the stuff Fire Emblem usually throws at you on higher difficulties. Anyways, something similar is alo mentioned in this guide ( https://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?/topic/52170-resetless-lunatic-run-completed-deathless-with-complete-guide/ ), relevant qote below:

I know I'm kind of late to the party because I burnt all my stamina on quests before tackling the GHB, but I thought I'd still share a relatively simple way to beat the map without a trained Narcian/a lancebraker flier. What you need is... a dancer/singer (I like Olivia here as she's free and supports with Hone Attack) someone who can dispose of the sword units quickly (Subaki is pretty nice as he additionally flies, but Abel and Sully have the advantage of higher mobility) a magical nuker that can dispose of Michalis, possibly with dancer help (Pretty much any red mage/green mage with high attack works for this, which should be anyone except Henry/RobinF/Cecilia/Merric, I believe? Anyways, the Tikis are also viable as alternatives, but I generally prefer someone green like Julia/Nino because it helps with nuking the lancer later on) a bow user who can oneround the fliers and survives an axe to the face (This one's the most difficult generally. Takumi and Jeorge work always at 5 stars, but +Spd!Klein, +Att!Virion and +Att!Rebecca suffice just as well. You could also experiment with buffs/skills on other archers; the goal is to hit at least 45 attack and 29 speed) The concrete action order now looks like this: Do some setup and line your units up right at the edge of the lance pegasus' attack range. First your bow user, then the lancer, the dancer and the mage. Move the archer in and kill the pegasus. Place the lancer above the archer (move, dance, move again). Put the mage down next to the dancer. During enemy phase the red cavalier runs into your sword counter while Michalis chunks your archer and gets chipped a little in return. Finish the cavalier if he isn't already dead, then move your mage up and blast Michalis. Dance if needed. The lancer and the sword pegasus should've moved closer. The latter is now easy prey for your archer, even though it's also possible to kill him on enemy phase when you use Subaki and fly him into the space where Michalis used to be. Gang up on your last remaining opponent and murder him gruesomely. Anyways, I hope I was still able to help someone out. :)

I don't know for sure, but I always thought the semi-random distribution of extremely powerful skills was the whole point of Awakening's Lunatic+? Like, they wanted to create a difficulty mode that couldn't be solved by the standard "move character X to attack enemy Y on turn Z" - and they succeeded in doing that due to the randomness. It's probably to encourage the player to create new tactics and to adapt to each new scenario you might get. And even then, aren't there nevertheless Lunatic+ guides floating around somewhere on the forums that still managed to do walkthroughs no matter the skill distribution? I'm pretty sure. Regardless of what their original intention for Lunatic+ was, I agree that it's absolutely brutal sometimes and very restricting on your team composition, but I still wouldn't describe it as "unbalanced", just heavily weighed in the enemy's favor. Personally I do enjoy standard Lunatic far more though, mainly because it allows me to use whomever I want while still doing some really stupid stuff like soloing Gangrel with Maribelle.

I'm honestly not sure if Sol is all that good on him. I think it's a pretty mediocre skill in general, mainly because the effect is often not worth the high charge time imo. Other procs with a cooldown of 4 like Ignus/Glacies/Dragon Fang usually power your next move up immensely, while Sol heals only 50% of your usual damage. Combining this with the facts that Abel's base attack isn't all that high, that Brave Weapons have low might and that Sol has the obnoxious tendency to activate just when you want to finish a ~10 HP enemy off, the healing likely is not going to be as high as you'd want it to be. Personally I'd take a something with a charge time of only 3 (maybe Luna?). This would allow you to activate your skill on the the second turn he's attacking, even when he neither had to eat a counter before (pretty easy to do against swordies) nor was hit by some ranged guy on the enmy's turn (which you obviously also want to avoid anyways).

Maybe you could actually help moving the discussion along through explaining to us what exactly it is that makes all these localizations so insufferable? I don't really recall seeing much from you about that topic besides claiming that Nyx had a support with <unspecified person> behaving like a "SJW cuck". Also, which studio should do the localisations in your opinion? You seem to be satisfied with neither Treehouse nor 8-4, and I'm afraid that those two are the only ones that have been translating FE games unless I'm mistaken right now. I don't think that anyone is really trying to force tons of minorities into every possible setting, just those where it's kind of realistic? Like, I won't expect women in leading positions in a game about some templar stuff or lots of openly gay relationships during a medieval Japanese setting, but that's an entirely different thing for fantasy worlds like Fates imo. I still do remember the debates about whether homosexual marriage options should be added for Fates, and even then most arguments against it just boiled down to "not possible because of being unrealistic in a scenario similar to the middle ages". In cases like these, I'm 100% for minority inclusion, as nobody is trying to replicate some sort of accurate historical setting here, but it's simply a fantasy game, even more so when your avatar's relationships should normally represent you, the potentially LGBT player. Even then, that didn't stop them from putting the obviously black Basilio and the somewhat darker-skinned Flavia into the cold and snowy Ferox, while a good bunch of people from the desert nation Plegia are actually totally pale.

Have you been experiencing such an influx of blue mages in the arena recently as well? Maybe it's just me, but every single match I did since Friday contained Linde/Olwen/Reinhardt or a combination thereof. It's not necessarily a bad thing since my Julia eats those for breakfast, but still... kind of weird. Anyways, I just did another pull and got even more Takumis, so I wanted to ask about some opinions on which to keep and which to merge. It basically boils down to +Att/-HP versus +Spd/-Res, and I tend to lean towards the latter one. +Att might be nice for OHKOing standard Linde, but does it really do anything else noteworthy? +Spd on the other side probably doesn't give me many new offensive options, but helps defensively against sword lords with speed boons themselves or against Tharja, who my team tends to struggle against a little. I also use Eirika for potential further buffing, so I could bump his speed up to 40 occassionally, which sounds pretty neat imo.

Didn't Dorcas place really really high in the character polls for Heroes? I think he actually appeared in the male top 20 when they released their preliminary results - and outranked poor Eliwood. No idea why he's so popular though. Also, I watched the video with the voice clips, but still... I'm just going to continue mispronouncing Michalis. Keeping the "ch" as "ch" instead of "k/ck/c/whatever" just sounds way more elegeant imo.

Is there any particular reason why you're not using Donnel? If not, I'd probably use the standard pairings for Galeforce daughters (Tharja/Gaius and Sully/Donnel), though you can also switch those around if you wish. Your fathers for Severa and Brady generally work pretty well, but both would prefer someone with higher speed (Lon'qu or Virion). The latter could be taken away from Olivia because Inigo ideally wants to inherit a proc skill besides Astra/Lethality - and Virion doesn't give anything like that. Viable alternatives are people like Stahl, Ricken or Libra, depending on whether you want to go physical or magical. I'd also remove Kellam from Nowi, he's imo the worst dad around and not really optimal for anyone. Nah is usually played as hard support unit, Vaike (or Henry) are good fathers for the physical version, but literally anyone who has positive magic also works because she has inherent Tomefaire from her mother. Similarly to Inigo the ideal father depends on her partner and what role you want to use her in. So finally, there's Cherche/Frederick. Gerome really wants Axefaire (and ideally some neat support skills on top of that), but Frederick doesn't have any of this. Henry would be his optimal replacement, but Vaike or Gregor work as well. I honestly wouldn't give Fred to Noire. He's just not all that good as father in general due to destroying the speed of pretty much any potential child. As you're not using Donnel, Noire sadly can't get Galeforce (unless you want to move Gaius over from Sully), so I'd recommend alternative fathers like Ricken, Gregor or Vaike. Regarding Nah, imo Stahl is kind of wasted on her, so I'll just copy my advice for her from above: Nah is usually played as hard support unit, Vaike (or Henry) are good fathers for the physical version, but literally anyone who has positive magic also works because she has inherent Tomefaire from her mother. Similarly to Inigo the ideal father depends on her partner and what role you want to use her in. Also... Could it be that you forgot Olivia on your pairing list? ;)

After having quite some problems against a matchup of Takumi/Kagero/Linde/Ryoma on that damned team splitting arena map today, I thought I'd maybe ask for some advice on here. Until now I've been exchanging my arena characters rather frequently because I managed to get a lot of good ones in the five pulls I did so far, but I'd like to try optimizing a bit to have a better time against difficult matchups like this one. The five star units I got so far are Robin (+Spd/-Res), Camilla (+Def/-Att), Ogma (+Res/-Def), Takumi (+HP/-Spd), Julia (+HP/-Att), Eirika (+Att/-HP) and Ephraim (+Res/-HP). I could also bump up one of my 4 stars if necessary, which would add Nino (+Def/-HP), Odin (+Spd/-Res), Serra (+Spd/-Att) or Olivia (+HP/-Res) to the pool. Regarding the concrete teambuilding: The only thing I'm pretty sure about is that I want to keep Robin around - he's not only my best red/grey counter, but also the only character that doesn't get completely demolished by Kagero. +Spd nature is also hilarious because it means that he can actually tank all these fast sword wielders for quite some time. Eirika also seems to be a good fit as she grants the new arena bonus and has a lot of utility, Ogma however is probably outclassed rather hard by her. I'm not too fond of Camilla as well (has too low attack to quickly dispatch anyone not named Linde or Azura and loses hard to common units), so Julia should presumably be a good alternative green anti-mage. Takumi is still Takumi (low speed kind of hurts him though) and Ephraim wavers between pretty great and horrible depending on matchup, so I'm not sure what to do with him. I've also considered using Olivia for her dancer abilities or bumping Nino and replacing Julia with her in order to get some extra offensive power. The added synergy with Eirika would also be nice, I guess. Anyways, I'd be thankful for anyone else's thoughts on this matter. :)