Is Fire Emblem Heroes the most player-phase oriented game in the series?

[UNLEASH IT]

It feels like every new PP unit FEH releases can rip through any tank that came before it. I mostly avoid EP strategies now.

Edited January 23 by UNLEASH IT

[Jotari]

Depends on when in the life span of Heroes, but, yeah, player phase nukes are definitely the way to go now. By far the Aether Raids I have the most trouble with are the ones that are set up so every enemy can attack any of my players on turn 1. Formortiis is still a decent enemy phase unit though.

[indigoasis]

I think that's a reasonable conclusion to come to what with all the nukes that have been added to the game, especially when the best strategy to deal with those nukes is to player phase them before they can attack in enemy phase. It reminds of how the best strategy in Pokémon campaigns is often to move first and take out your opponent before they can get a chance to act, thereby eliminating any kind of possibility for counterattack.

Even then, I feel that player phase doesn't always work either because the nuke you're trying to attack can tank all of your hits and kill you anyway. That's why units like Winter Edelgard are so oppressive; she can kill you quick (three times over, to boot) and tank everything you throw at her, living long enough to do it again.

Or maybe my units are just bad, idk.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

The Day One meta of Heroes (both PvP and PvE) was focused around the two units that had Distant/Close Counter, and that was really the tone setter of Heroes as I remember it. I can't speak to what Heroes has been like for the past few years, but I can only imagine that the most Player Phase friendly era was the day Reinhardt came out up until the point they started piling on Armor only skills that granted free followups (presumably in conjunction with Distant/Close Counter which was still the game's lowkey premium currency). Reinhardt democratized the gap between F2P and Whale because anyone could get him and he was just that good.

 

 

[Othin]

1 hour ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

The Day One meta of Heroes (both PvP and PvE) was focused around the two units that had Distant/Close Counter, and that was really the tone setter of Heroes as I remember it. I can't speak to what Heroes has been like for the past few years, but I can only imagine that the most Player Phase friendly era was the day Reinhardt came out up until the point they started piling on Armor only skills that granted free followups (presumably in conjunction with Distant/Close Counter which was still the game's lowkey premium currency). Reinhardt democratized the gap between F2P and Whale because anyone could get him and he was just that good.

 

 

Earlier tonight, I used Winter Edelgard with support from Desert Dorothea to take out five enemies in a single player phase.

Reinhardt was quite strong, but I don't think his era compares to the current one.

[ARMADS!!!]

5 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

The Day One meta of Heroes (both PvP and PvE) was focused around the two units that had Distant/Close Counter, and that was really the tone setter of Heroes as I remember it. I can't speak to what Heroes has been like for the past few years, but I can only imagine that the most Player Phase friendly era was the day Reinhardt came out up until the point they started piling on Armor only skills that granted free followups (presumably in conjunction with Distant/Close Counter which was still the game's lowkey premium currency). Reinhardt democratized the gap between F2P and Whale because anyone could get him and he was just that good.

 

 

Wait, the only unit with close counter was Takumi, right?? TAKUMI was meta?

 Also I remember the days Surtr was meta, while his outside of combate damage is still cool, people treated him as if he was F!Edelgard.

I also remember when my V!Hector killed everyone that attacked him first or how meta B!Hector was after his refine, there's definitively been a giantic amouny or Enemy Phase focused units on the game's meta (even Ninja Camilla, who's very recent, or at least very usable right now). I barely play PvP so maybe things are different there, but there's a notable amount enemy phase units around. Though maybe less than on the others FEs, it's a bit hard to compare I think.

 

4 hours ago, Othin said:

Earlier tonight, I used Winter Edelgard with support from Desert Dorothea to take out five enemies in a single player phase.

Reinhardt was quite strong, but I don't think his era compares to the current one.

Yeah, earlier tonight I was sweeping whole maps on forging bonds in a single player phase using a Felix with galeforce (+ Ash and Plumeria to support him, but he was the only one attacking).

[Zapp Branniglenn]

2 hours ago, ARMADS!!! said:

Wait, the only unit with close counter was Takumi, right?? TAKUMI was meta?

There was no skill inheritance. He was the only 2 range unit you couldn't bait into an ambush and then kill without taking damage on retaliation. Not unless you had a 5 charge skill activation ready to go, and that's not always feasible to plan out when you can't Reposition units on Turn 1. 

[Etrurian emperor]

Maybe. But just putting the broken Hero of the month in enemy range and ending your turn works pretty well too

[XRay]

I think Heroes as a whole is definitely the most Player Phase oriented game in the series. In my opinion, due to higher movement range relative to map size, very quick combat/killing foes in one round, access to multiple Dancers/Singers on a team, and no chance or luck/accurate combat forecast (accurate in terms of combat result), Player Phase teams give you more control and predictability compared to Enemy Phase teams. At the highest skill level where you can accurately predict AI movement, Enemy Phase teams can give you similar levels of control, but I think reaching that level of knowledge is not realistic for most players. In my opinion, while Enemy Phase teams have a lower skill floor compared to Player Phase teams, it does not take much effort and practice to get the hang of Player Phase teams, and once that minimal level of knowledge and skill is acquired, you can pretty much take on most challenges the game throws at you.

However, there was a point in time when Save skills first came out, Enemy Phase Save tank teams with double Flayns were the most brain dead and busted team for quite a while that completely trivializes PvE content. There was not really anything that can hit through two or three stacks of damage reduction at the time. On the PvP side of things, it definitely shifted the meta quite a bit, but you cannot be as reckless as you can in PvE, since some nukes can hit through multiple layers of damage reduction.

I think post-game Awakening and post-game Fates would be the next closest contenders, with more resources available to maximize stats to facilitate one round kills, and access to Galeforce to kill multiple foes in one turn or to retreat. If we narrow it down by mode though, then I think PvP in Fates is the most Player Phase dominant in the entire series, even more so than Summonder Duals in Heroes. With max stats, Galeforce, Warp, and Replicate, Enemy Phase simply is not really viable.

[Seafarer]

9 hours ago, XRay said:

I think post-game Awakening and post-game Fates would be the next closest contenders, with more resources available to maximize stats to facilitate one round kills, and access to Galeforce to kill multiple foes in one turn or to retreat. If we narrow it down by mode though, then I think PvP in Fates is the most Player Phase dominant in the entire series, even more so than Summoner Duels in Heroes. With max stats, Galeforce, Warp, and Replicate, Enemy Phase simply is not really viable.

I'm not familiar with the modern Lunatic+ strats, but Awakening is otherwise by far the most Enemy-Phase game in the series. The dominant Lunatic trivialisations are Nos- or Sol-tanking, to the point where Galeforce is more useful for getting into position to EP a bunch of enemies in a rout map than anything else, and even Apotheosis-secret is readily beaten by Vantage-Vengeance strats (that's the Limit Breaker-less strat).

***

As for Heroes, I think it's hard to say about the game as a whole. I haven't played the PvP or pseudo-PvP modes in a bit, but I had a mixed-phase build on my Nino right to the end, and she worked fine. Other parts of FEH's history have centred around EP units. Compare that to New Mystery, where there's one single way to reasonably live multiple combat rounds in a single EP, and it's locked to female mages. You just can't send a unit into a pack of enemies in New Mystery and expect them to come out alive (at least on any real difficulty mode), whereas there have been units in FEH where you could very much do exactly that. So I'd say FEH can't really claim the top place, just because it contains multitudes, not all of which are PP-focused.

I do think that XRay has the right idea that true PvP modes are always majorly skewed towards PP, because you can't rely on a human opponent to throw units away by attacking into combats they can't win. On the other hand, I find that post-game content tends towards EP strats, because the player's units continue to get stronger, while enemies don't really scale up with them, and EP focus tends to correlate with lower enemy quality compared to player units (the only exception here is Apotheosis, which scales beyond Lunatic+'s Endgame, but that can still be Enemy-Phased).

[XRay]

4 hours ago, Seafarer said:

I'm not familiar with the modern Lunatic+ strats, but Awakening is otherwise by far the most Enemy-Phase game in the series. The dominant Lunatic trivialisations are Nos- or Sol-tanking, to the point where Galeforce is more useful for getting into position to EP a bunch of enemies in a rout map than anything else, and even Apotheosis-secret is readily beaten by Vantage-Vengeance strats (that's the Limit Breaker-less strat).

If I recall, in post-game where you have access to enough resources to max stats, I think you want to tackle Apotheosis with your whole team running double Galeforce on support pairs on Player Phase as much as possible so you do not get overwhelmed on Enemy Phase. And in the off chance you cannot take out enough enemies in an area, you retreat with Galeforce.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I never really thought so in the FE Gacha.

I mean for the modes with reinforcements, yes, but against certain classes and skills it's easier to enemy phase them.

Latest version of Byleth and Altina were impossible for me to crack in player phase, at least former.

 

The most player phase oriented game for me was Three Houses on maddening to cancel all the ambush reinforcements.

[ARMADS!!!]

43 minutes ago, JulieFalcom said:

I never really thought so in the FE Gacha.

I mean for the modes with reinforcements, yes, but against certain classes and skills it's easier to enemy phase them.

Latest version of Byleth and Altina were impossible for me to crack in player phase, at least former.

 

The most player phase oriented game for me was Three Houses on maddening to cancel all the ambush reinforcements.

But wouldn't enemy phase units be better at surviving ambush reinforcements?

 Yeah, I think FEH has some very notable enemy phase units (cough! N!Camilla! Cough!), but maybe it has a bigger amount of notable player phase units, still not sure, I might agree with you that is probably not the most player phase out of every FE game around, maybe it can be a different case depending on which a or the game we're talking about though, but I'm not on the mood to think throught it right now to be sure.

 EDIT: FEH does have crazy units that have stuff such as being able to prevent countratracks of EP units + Galeforce + True damage, and now these offensive divine veins and bigger amounts of unreduceable damage, so the player phase units have been crazier than ever which might have given the impression that the game has been more player phase focused, but Enemy Phase units are not that far behind with gross amounts of autohealing and batshit crazy DR (specially DR that is a fixed number and not percentage based). It's really hard to decide on which is better or more prevalent.

Edited January 28 by ARMADS!!!

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

On 1/28/2024 at 11:15 AM, ARMADS!!! said:

But wouldn't enemy phase units be better at surviving ambush reinforcements?

If you know where they spawn, you should place your units close enough to reach and rout them in the next turn.