New Heroes & Attuned Azura

[XRay]

13 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Desperation has been an outdated skill for a long time now. Damage reduction effects are good enough that most units can rely on that instead and run a B skill that deals more damage or grants more mobility.

Desperation itself has the issue that you can't use the opponent's counterattack to charge a stronger Special, which is a problem now that we have premium Specials with higher cooldowns that can't be activated when running Desperation without at least 2 sources of Special acceleration.

If you're in a situation where you actually need Desperation, you're better off using a unit that already has it on their weapon than to waste the B or Sacred Seal slot on Desperation. Desperation is a purely defensive effect, which means it has a particularly high opportunity cost in both the B and Sacred Seal slots.

With modern skills, it is viable to go without Desperation, but you are also missing out on the teleportation that Wings of Mercy provides. At least in PvE, I think Wings of Mercy is still very valuable to allow extra mobility since reinforcements spawn all around the map.

With all the damage reduction mitigation or nullification though, it feels a little risky to rely on damage reduction to eat hits, or at least, that is what every other Focus seems like it got.

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

With modern skills, it is viable to go without Desperation, but you are also missing out on the teleportation that Wings of Mercy provides. At least in PvE, I think Wings of Mercy is still very valuable to allow extra mobility since reinforcements spawn all around the map.

Then run Wings of Mercy in the B slot instead of Mercy-Wing Echo in the X slot. Now that you don't need to run Desperation, you have a whole B slot that's open for Wings of Mercy if that's the effect that you really think you need.

But, you say Wings of Mercy is not the highest priority for the B slot because it's currently the most competitive skill slot? That would indeed be a problem if we didn't have so many other sources of mobility available. Infantry and fliers have access to Oath 4 in the C slot. Fliers have Orders, Rein Snap, and several different variations of Guidance in the C and X slots. Pathfinder is now more widely available, usable by all units other than staves, and is in the C slot. Several units have skills in not-the-B-slot that grant Charge to at least one ally. We're also getting more units with Galeforce effects after performing specific actions.

Wings of Mercy used to be the only source of semi-consistent additional mobility, but that is simply no longer the case anymore.

 

1 hour ago, XRay said:

With all the damage reduction mitigation or nullification though, it feels a little risky to rely on damage reduction to eat hits, or at least, that is what every other Focus seems like it got.

Due to the amount of stat optimization we've gotten, most offensive units these days have lopsided defenses, which means you're typically able to tank a single attack on the side with the higher stat even with your damage reduction mitigated. For example, I'm running a standard Sabotage-Ploy build on my Bride Cecilia with no damage reduction skills at all, and she's able to tank Abyssal Veyle's Iceberg with just stats and debuffs alone.

It's also notable that the most common source of percentage damage reduction nullification is limited to Special activations and most offensive units in PvP modes are built so that their Special activates on their follow-up on player phase. This means that on their enemy phase, they usually won't be activating their Special on their counterattack, which allows you to get around the nullification effect (and the extra Special damage).

The units that are actually threatening to offensive units are the current state-of-the-art tanks that simply don't die. Desperation doesn't help against them because they're not dead after you finish attacking them.

[Flying Shogi]

I was hoping Lucrative Bow would come on a normal pool unit. Oh well. 

I wonder if Echo WoM means we're not getting it as a seal. If we had the choice between the B and S slot for WoM, I'd personally opt for the B slot when clearing PvE content. I find myself needing the extra stats more. 

[Diovani Bressan]

Hmm... I wonder if this banner has a chance of winning a future revival poll.

It having only an Attuned Hero makes it less interesting than the two previous banners, that had both an Attuned and a Rearmed or Ascended Hero.

Also, when this Fates banner gets added to the poll, it will be alongside with the May's New Heroes banner, which we all predict to be Fallen Heroes. And we all know that those Fallen Heroes banners are usually very popular.

Of course, this will only happen way later this year, so we still have time.

[XRay]

4 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Then run Wings of Mercy in the B slot instead of Mercy-Wing Echo in the X slot. Now that you don't need to run Desperation, you have a whole B slot that's open for Wings of Mercy if that's the effect that you really think you need.

But, you say Wings of Mercy is not the highest priority for the B slot because it's currently the most competitive skill slot? That would indeed be a problem if we didn't have so many other sources of mobility available. Infantry and fliers have access to Oath 4 in the C slot. Fliers have Orders, Rein Snap, and several different variations of Guidance in the C and X slots. Pathfinder is now more widely available, usable by all units other than staves, and is in the C slot. Several units have skills in not-the-B-slot that grant Charge to at least one ally. We're also getting more units with Galeforce effects after performing specific actions.

Wings of Mercy used to be the only source of semi-consistent additional mobility, but that is simply no longer the case anymore.

If the nuke does not use Desperation, there is not much point in putting Wings of Mercy on the Dancer/Singer.

If the nuke does use Desperation, then the Dancer/Singer should run Wings of Mercy on their B or X slot depending on if they have an exclusive Assist. Skills with close range warping and Pathfinder are nice, but they cannot compete with Wings of Mercy in terms of sheer mobility. We do not really need that mobility in PvP since enemies just comes at you in one direction, and Pathfinder is really good at paving the road for your Dancers/Singers to follow the nukes. But in PvE, it feels like Wings of Mercy is vital since the nuke is likely to zoom all around the map.

5 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Due to the amount of stat optimization we've gotten, most offensive units these days have lopsided defenses, which means you're typically able to tank a single attack on the side with the higher stat even with your damage reduction mitigated. For example, I'm running a standard Sabotage-Ploy build on my Bride Cecilia with no damage reduction skills at all, and she's able to tank Abyssal Veyle's Iceberg with just stats and debuffs alone.

It's also notable that the most common source of percentage damage reduction nullification is limited to Special activations and most offensive units in PvP modes are built so that their Special activates on their follow-up on player phase. This means that on their enemy phase, they usually won't be activating their Special on their counterattack, which allows you to get around the nullification effect (and the extra Special damage).

The units that are actually threatening to offensive units are the current state-of-the-art tanks that simply don't die. Desperation doesn't help against them because they're not dead after you finish attacking them.

Do not a lot of dual phase units have damage reduction mitigation or nullification now? Besides Save tanks, it seems like top-tier tanks these days are more dual phase units rather than Enemy Phase units.

[Ice Dragon]

5 hours ago, XRay said:

But in PvE, it feels like Wings of Mercy is vital since the nuke is likely to zoom all around the map.

Given that I don't use dancers at all in PvE, I don't think dancers, much less Wings of Mercy on dancers, is at all vital.

The other nail in the coffin for Wings of Mercy is the fact that unlike in PvP, enemies in PvE don't run Distant Counter, and so you simply aren't taking counterattack damage on your ranged units consistently enough to make Wings of Mercy useful. Melee units also aren't commonly taking a large amount of damage from generic enemies due to the fact that they typically have damage reduction and high Def, and dual-phase units nowadays have passive healing.

 

5 hours ago, XRay said:

Do not a lot of dual phase units have damage reduction mitigation or nullification now? Besides Save tanks, it seems like top-tier tanks these days are more dual phase units rather than Enemy Phase units.

Most dual-phase units at best have 50% percentage damage reduction nullification when not activating their Special. The ones that do run Specials that activate on the first counterattack typically aren't able to run a skill that gives the Special full damage reduction nullification and so are also typically only able to have half nullification.

If they aren't activating their Special and don't have a Brave effect on their counterattack, they typically aren't able to kill the attacker with their first counterattack. Units that activate a fast Special might not be able to be handled with a ranged attacker due to them typically having low Def, but offensive melee units don't have that problem.

Outside of a handful of extremely bulky units (like Legendary Male Alear and Emblem Ike), dual-phase units are more effective when piloted by the player where you can pick and choose which enemy attackers to fight on enemy phase and how. Dual-phase units that are controlled by the AI can be manipulated into taking combat at a disadvantage.

 

Even if your team's wall breaker is running Desperation for the job, you're still going to want to have it active at 100% HP (or 99% HP if the unit inflicts damage on themselves at the start of the turn). Desperation 3 is completely outdated at this point in PvP modes.

[Ice Dragon]

On 4/14/2024 at 12:43 AM, Ice Dragon said:

Lucrative Bow is "有利状態の弓" (yūri jōtai no yumi), "Advantageous-Condition Bow". "有利状態" (yūri jōtai), "advantageous condition" (as a compound word), is a contraction of "有利な状態" (yūri na jōtai), "advantageous condition" (as an adjective modifying a noun), which is the term used for Bonus in Heroes.

Added Candace's weapon to the translation notes. It's identical to Whitewind Bow.

[Magenta Fantasies]

On 4/14/2024 at 11:34 AM, Florete said:

With Mozu, my favorite characters from each game all now have at least 1 version in FEH. Now my most-wanted character would probably be Volug, who legit may never get in unless he gets a lucky seasonal, but I can live with that.

All of my favorite characters from each game are in Heroes in some form at this point as well. Some are main characters (Marth, Eirika, Corrin,) some were major characters who were guaranteed to be added (Soren, Camilla, Jakob, Faye,) and others were minor characters who were luckily added at or around the beginning (Fir, Karel.) Panne was added a couple years later, but that was still before I started playing in 2020.

Ashe has had two alts and him appearing on a New Heroes banner is a matter of when rather than if. Unfortunately, I doubt it will be this year since last April’s Three Houses banner featured the Blue Lions and based on the remaining Three Houses characters not in Heroes, this year’s will probably feature the Golden Deer. I’m much less confident about Rickard being added on a New Heroes banner. He has some vague chance, since he is the only dagger option remaining for Archanea, but if he is never on a New Heroes banner, I’d at least be content with his wonderful alt.