Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links

[GinRei]

24 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

The lolicon trio do decent with Lightning Breath, but get locked into using things like T-Adept and QR to make up for the lowered damage (and their own low speed)---this means their viable builds aren't that many.

Having a niche that's really good and highly useful in many teams, but not being able to do much else, isn't really much of a negative.  In fact, you can kind of say this about a LOT of the more highly used units.

[MaskedAmpharos]

1 minute ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Just Swift Sparrow Renewal. L&D is probably optimal or something, but screw that.

Tsk tsk. Not willing to offer Celica the very best? Your devotion is lacking. 

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

Just now, MaskedAmpharos said:

Tsk tsk. Not willing to offer Celica the very best? Your devotion is lacking. 

I'm not settling for some cookie cutter offensive skill. I'm getting her the exotic stuff.

[MaskedAmpharos]

1 minute ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I'm not settling for some cookie cutter offensive skill. I'm getting her the exotic stuff.

It's a common misconception that exotic is inherently better. It's not.

[Arcanite]

1 minute ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I'm not settling for some cookie cutter offensive skill. I'm getting her the exotic stuff.

Lol the exotic stuff still isn't the best though.

I promoted a unit just to give her the best, and you're out here giving her "exotic stuff"

Face it kid, you're a flake

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

1 minute ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

It's a common misconception that exotic is inherently better. It's not.

 

Just now, Arcanite said:

Lol the exotic stuff still isn't the best though.

I promoted a unit just to give her the best, and you're out here giving her "exotic stuff"

Face it kid, you're a flake

I'm willing to pay and get a seasonal unit. Your virtual feathers mean nothing.

[MaskedAmpharos]

Just now, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I'm willing to pay and get a seasonal unit. Your virtual feathers mean nothing.

I'm willing to pay too. What's the problem?

[Kaden]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Sophia is a total boss at tanking greens, though. (Admittedly, you do have to feed her 2 Henrys.) If Sophia were a bonus character every season, she would probably never leave my team.

That's the problem. They're good red mages, but I don't have much to improve them, especially when it comes to giving them different tomes or G Tomebreaker since I have never summoned a different red mage. Watching 3* Sophia lose to Julia and other green mages faster that her is annoying. The best I can do is give either of them T-Adept 2 -- never summoned a Roy -- or Quick Riposte 2 to Sophia. Everything else would be general stuff like Raigh doesn't have a special or Sophia doesn't have an assist? Give them something to fill in a slot.

At least I like Virion as a character, so being stuck with him as my only archer for a while wasn't that bad.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

Just now, MaskedAmpharos said:

I'm willing to pay too. What's the problem?

The problem is that my Celica is so much better, I can't stop her.

[DehNutCase]

24 minutes ago, GinRei said:

Having a niche that's really good and highly useful in many teams, but not being able to do much else, isn't really much of a negative.  In fact, you can kind of say this about a LOT of the more highly used units.

It's a good build for them, but it's not their niche. It's cheaper to grab Lightning+ & TA than Gem Weapon and DC, but every single melee unit can do their build---better, actually, since they have 1 more MT and 1 less special CD. Not to mention the fact that Naga and Falchion exists. (TA 3, Swordbreaker Nowi being able to beat Lucina isn't a win for Nowi, because Lucina is red, and should have been beaten without needing skill slots. Kind of like how Lucina doesn't need anything to smack Hector to death.)

Furthermore... -bladetome close counter can be even more absurd than that: Reinahrdt sports over 110 1HKOs with full cav buffs, and only 4 or so units manage to 1HKO 1RKO him from full hp, this means, unlike dragons, he can cover all 4 colors, and has the Vantage sweep option available, which the dragons don't, because they have to run QR to kill things.

1-2 range counter-kill is simply better done by units other than dragons. They're cheaper, sure, but not better. (And I'd honestly have liked A!Tiki a lot more if she just had Y!Tiki's Silver Breath instead.)

Edited May 29, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Arcanite]

9 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I'm willing to pay and get a seasonal unit. Your virtual feathers mean nothing.

Whatever you need to say to comfort yourself dude ;)

You should change your name to "SatsumaFFlakeflake". 

What if Ragnarok could give Satsuma's Celica a better A skill?

Edited May 29, 2017 by Arcanite

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

1 minute ago, Arcanite said:

Whatever you need to say to comfort yourself dude ;)

You should change your name to "SatsumaFFlakeflake". 

What if Ragnarok could give Satsuma's Celica a better A skill?

What if you could go play with your budget Ephraim when the men are talking

[Ice Dragon]

30 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

The lolicon trio do decent with Lightning Breath, but get locked into using things like T-Adept and QR to make up for the lowered damage (and their own low speed)---this means their viable builds aren't that many.

With the exception of Corrin and Ninian who have extremely low Atk, the other dragons don't need Triangle Adept to deal damage with Lightning Breath+ and use Quick Riposte to offset their low or middling Spd. For example, +Atk Nowi has no trouble killing the common -Res Fury 3 Azura (even with both at +10), and only needs S Atk +1 or a common Hone Atk buff to one-round kill neutral Fury 3 Azura.

Triangle Adept is more there to help them tank hits (specifically for blue dragons to be able to tank Falchions and one-hit kill them back to mitigate a possible follow-up attack), not so much to secure kills.

[Arcanite]

1 minute ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

What if you could go play with your budget Ephraim when the men are talking

What if you could go play with your budget Celica while the robots are talking?

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

Just now, Arcanite said:

What if you could go play with your budget Celica while the robots are talking?

What if you could be a real boy

[Arcanite]

Just now, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

What if you could be a real boy

Awwww, now you're trying to deflect this onto me

You're so cute ;)

[DehNutCase]

11 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

With the exception of Corrin and Ninian who have extremely low Atk, the other dragons don't need Triangle Adept to deal damage with Lightning Breath+ and use Quick Riposte to offset their low or middling Spd. For example, +Atk Nowi has no trouble killing the common -Res Fury 3 Azura (even with both at +10), and only needs S Atk +1 or a common Hone Atk buff to one-round kill neutral Fury 3 Azura.

Triangle Adept is more there to help them tank hits (specifically for blue dragons to be able to tank Falchions and one-hit kill them back to mitigate a possible follow-up attack), not so much to secure kills.

Fair enough---TA does actually reduce amount of wins compared to Fury 3 etc., in exchange for keeping QR up for longer vs. people you counter. (TA tends to be better than empty A-slot, though.)

 

That said, Nowi is in a very good color, so her performance isn't really indicative of the other dragons---Fae and Y!Tiki don't perform on her level because their counters get more numerous (green is the smallest color), and the people they counter decrease (red is the biggest color).

[Birdy]

@Arcanite & @SatsumaFSoysoy I'm sure you guys are just joking and just having fun, but should we just end this before things are going to get out of hand and someone will get hurt/sad? Sorry to be  a spoilsport ;_;.

 

Anyway, I agree with @Ice Dragon for the Dragon Trio. I think having stuff like Triangle adept on them makes them really tanky. Ofcourse Nowi should deal with red units, but being able to take 0 (or close to) damage from them and being able to fight multiple of them and some blues with it while having 1-2 counterattack ranges is really good. 

[GinRei]

21 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

It's a good build for them, but it's not their niche. It's cheaper to grab Lightning+ & TA than Gem Weapon and DC, but every single melee unit can do their build---better, actually, since they have 1 more MT and 1 less special CD.

So 1 might and 1 lower special cooldown trumps any amount of stat differences between them?

 

25 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Not to mention the fact that Naga and Falchion exists. (TA 3, Swordbreaker Nowi being able to beat Lucina isn't a win for Nowi, because Lucina is red, and should have been beaten without needing skill slots. Kind of like how Lucina doesn't need anything to smack Hector to death.)

It's not a win to beat a counter?  You also don't need Swordbreaker at all unless you're trying to mitigate as much damage as possible, but then you're giving up your ability to reliably beat other units via QR just for... bragging rights?  And Lucina does not guarantee a kill on Hector.  She needs +3 attack if he has neutral HP/Def and no HP Sacred Seal.  In fact, if he's +Def with the HP Sacred Seal, then she has to have +7 attack to not be killed herself when she initiates.

 

32 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Furthermore... -bladetome close counter can be even more absurd than that: Reinahrdt sports over 110 1HKOs with full cav buffs, and only 4 or so units manage to 1HKO 1RKO him from full hp, this means, unlike dragons, he can cover all 4 colors, and has the Vantage sweep option available, which the dragons don't, because they have to run QR to kill things.

1-2 range counter-kill is simply better done by units other than dragons. They're cheaper, sure, but not better. (And I'd honestly have liked A!Tiki a lot more if she just had Y!Tiki's Silver Breath instead.)

So your argument for dragons being meh basically boils down to "the best unit in the game is better"?

[MaskedAmpharos]

27 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

What if you could go play with your budget Ephraim when the men are talking

First you come after my Celica and now you come after my robot.

You really wanna go, huh?

[DehNutCase]

11 minutes ago, GinRei said:

So 1 might and 1 lower special cooldown trumps any amount of stat differences between them?

'Every melee unit in the game' is such a broad pool that, not only are some of them min-maxed better, some of them actually exceed dragons in all relevant parameters. (Armors). Stat differences is a win for the nearly 100 melee units, not the 6 dragons you get to choose from.

11 minutes ago, GinRei said:

t's not a win to beat a counter?  You also don't need Swordbreaker at all unless you're trying to mitigate as much damage as possible, but then you're giving up your ability to reliably beat other units via QR just for... bragging rights?  And Lucina does not guarantee a kill on Hector.  She needs +3 attack if he has neutral HP/Def and no HP Sacred Seal.  In fact, if he's +Def with the HP Sacred Seal, then she has to have +7 attack to not be killed herself when she initiates.

If a blue unit is being countered by a red unit, the blue unit has problems. Hector is countered by Lucina because Lucina can just sit and let him initiate---kind of like how Nowi needs to fight everything, or Lucina can be +Atk and run a good A-skill, and 2HKO (possibly with desperation to prevent all damage).

And, even with her default kit, Lucina can run away to heal up fully between every Hector engagement.

11 minutes ago, GinRei said:

So your argument for dragons being meh basically boils down to "the best unit in the game is better"?

My argument against dragons is basically 'better units than dragons are better' and there are a lot of better units out there. Every single -blade tomer functions better in the 1-2 range counter department because blade-tome is ridiculous (at the high cost of Close Counter), every single melee unit gets +1 MT, -1 CD relative to dragons, and some of them actually have stat advantages compared to dragons as well (again at the high cost of Distant Counter).

Edited May 29, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Ice Dragon]

18 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

It's a good build for them, but it's not their niche. It's cheaper to grab Lightning+ & TA than Gem Weapon and DC, but every single melee unit can do their build---better, actually, since they have 1 more MT and 1 less special CD. Not to mention the fact that Naga and Falchion exists. (TA 3, Swordbreaker Nowi being able to beat Lucina isn't a win for Nowi, because Lucina is red, and should have been beaten without needing skill slots. Kind of like how Lucina doesn't need anything to smack Hector to death.)

Triangle Adept and Quick Riposte (screw Swordbreaker, it's too specific for my purposes), however, have general utility beyond being able to beat Lucina.

As for Gem weapons with Distant Counter, only the special skill cooldown is relevant due to the fact that far more characters in the game have lower Res than Def than the reverse, most physical units opt for -Res natures, and the few units that have higher Res still die to Lightning Breath+ from the offensively oriented dragons.

And honestly, I'm seriously considering replacing my Nowi's Moonbow with Aether for the arena score boost (if grinding the SP weren't such a pain and if I had spare Aether sources) because Nowi simply doesn't need a special skill at all to do her job.

 

Also, it doesn't hurt that Nowi, Tiki, and Fae have higher stats than most other units. Even if their stats have a more balanced distribution, it actually helps their role as a Triangle Adept counter killer.

 

30 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Furthermore... -bladetome close counter can be even more absurd than that: Reinahrdt sports over 110 1HKOs with full cav buffs, and only 4 or so units manage to 1HKO him from full hp, this means, unlike dragons, he can cover all 4 colors, and has the Vantage sweep option available, which the dragons don't, because they have to run QR to kill things.

I'm assuming you're using vanilla opponents (or vanilla + Fury 3) for your match-up numbers, which becomes less relevant at higher arena scores. That said, I won't deny that Blarblade Reinhardt is pretty ridiculous.

 

Also, it's kind of amusing that even if you wanted to perform a Vantage sweep with Nowi, if all your opponent has left are red units (which is the only way she can perform the Vantage sweep in the first place), they typically can't even do enough damage to drop Nowi into Vantage range anyways without a Falchion or prior damage from another color.

 

6 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

That said, Nowi is in a very good color, so her performance isn't really indicative of the other dragons---Fae and Y!Tiki don't perform on her level because their counters get more numerous (green is the smallest color), and the people they counter decrease (red is the biggest color).

Fae is still a solid contender due to blue being both common and powerful, boasting the very common threats of Reinhardt, Olwen, Ursula, Azura, Ephraim, Sharena, Effie, Linde, and a host of Brave fliers. Fae has obvious weaknesses to the numerous reds in the game, but the same could be said of any green unit (Fae just attracts Falchions more strongly).

Tiki definitely has a harder time, though.

[GinRei]

2 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

'Every melee unit in the game' is such a broad pool that, not only are some of them min-maxed better, some of them actually exceed dragons in all relevant parameters. (Armors). Stat differences is a win for the nearly 100 melee units, not the 6 dragons you get to choose from.

"Some exceed them" doesn't mean every single one exceeds them.  Come on now.

 

3 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

If a blue unit is being countered by a red unit, the blue unit has problems.

Countering dragons is part of why the Falchion users are so highly rated in the first place.

 

5 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Lucina can be +Atk and run a good A-skill

Implying Triangle Adept isn't a good A-skill?

 

5 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

My argument against dragons is basically 'better units than dragons are better' and there are a lot of better units out there. Every single -blade tomer functions better in the 1-2 range counter department because blade-tome is ridiculous (at the high cost of Close Counter), every single melee unit gets +1 MT, -1 CD relative to dragons, and some of them actually have stat advantages compared to dragons as well (again at the high cost of Distant Counter).

How many blade tome users can actually take a physical hit to actually USE close counter?

I feel like you're lumping every dragon's usefulness into the median usefulness of dragons.  So you're lumping Nowi and Fae's usefulness as being "just as good" as Tiki or Corrin, when that just simply isn't the case.  You also seem to be talking only about the absolute 0.01% of instances where you need the absolute best of the best and anything less than the absolute best is trash, which is simply not an argument to make here.  Otherwise Ice Dragon already covered the other points that I was going to cover.

[DehNutCase]

22 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Triangle Adept and Quick Riposte (screw Swordbreaker, it's too specific for my purposes), however, have general utility beyond being able to beat Lucina.

As for Gem weapons with Distant Counter, only the special skill cooldown is relevant due to the fact that far more characters in the game have lower Res than Def than the reverse, most physical units opt for -Res natures, and the few units that have higher Res still die to Lightning Breath+ from the offensively oriented dragons.

And honestly, I'm seriously considering replacing my Nowi's Moonbow with Aether for the arena score boost (if grinding the SP weren't such a pain and if I had spare Aether sources) because Nowi simply doesn't need a special skill at all to do her job.

The reason more characters have lower res than def is more because physical is the dominant damage type---if dragons ever start to overtake, we'll probably see more Sanaki, Fir, etc. over Lukas, Hector, etc. That said, I really can't imagine res ever becoming that dominant---if only because -blade tomes are so ridiculous that they don't care how much Res you have, only if you have TA3 and weapon advantage or not.

And yeah, the -1cd is probably more relevant, since it lets specials actually do things. (To be fair, I'd probably just run Aether on Reinhardt for arena points too, if I ever get the pieces for the build.)

22 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I'm assuming you're using vanilla opponents (or vanilla + Fury 3) for your match-up numbers, which becomes less relevant at higher arena scores. That said, I won't deny that Blarblade Reinhardt is pretty ridiculous.

I pretty much always use Vanilla opponents: the numbers look better, but they look better for everyone, so comparing two sets in the vs. vanilla state is actually fairly accurate. Not to mention that Vanilla sets have a nice amount of different builds, meaning your unit would get tested vs. Braves, vs. TA 3, vs. QR, etc. etc. None of the vanilla builds are optimal, of course, so performance look better, but a 'ballpark' estimate is usually good enough when it comes to designing and comparing builds.

That said, I usually don't use buffs during the 'vanilla test,' since not using buffs means that, vs decked out opponents, buffs can often make up the damage/defense difference. You can't really test -blade tomes without using buffs, though, so they have inflated scores compared to everything else I test.

 

Edit:

14 minutes ago, GinRei said:

"Some exceed them" doesn't mean every single one exceeds them.  Come on now.

14 minutes ago, GinRei said:

I feel like you're lumping every dragon's usefulness into the median usefulness of dragons.  So you're lumping Nowi and Fae's usefulness as being "just as good" as Tiki or Corrin, when that just simply isn't the case.  You also seem to be talking only about the absolute 0.01% of instances where you need the absolute best of the best and anything less than the absolute best is trash, which is simply not an argument to make here.  Otherwise Ice Dragon already covered the other points that I was going to cover.

The reason lots of units are mediocre isn't because they're bad, it's because better units exist. Strictly speaking, just because of the fact Chrom exists, Alfonse should not have a team slot in any team ever. (Alfonse being a bonus unit, oddly enough, now means Chrom would very rarely have a teamslot, since their builds overlap a lot.)

14 minutes ago, GinRei said:

How many blade tome users can actually take a physical hit to actually USE close counter?

There are lots of tanky mages out there---most of them are just bad because, to be tanky, you sacrifice offenses. So you don't see them much in arena. Also: Even Tharja, one of the more offensively inclined mages, has a similar defensive spread to Takumi.

That said, you don't need every mage to have the bulk to use close counter, even one is enough, and there's usually a mage in every single color with the bulk needed to run close counter. Leo for Red, S!Camilla and Cecilia for green, and, of course, Reinhardt for blue. (Blue also has Odin, but Reinhardt, sadly, outperforms him in basically everything.)

Double Edit: There's also the Robins, Merric, etc. etc. Lots of mages have bulk.

Edited May 29, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Ice Dragon]

16 minutes ago, GinRei said:

How many blade tome users can actually take a physical hit to actually USE close counter?

Life and Death 3 Linde has 46 physical bulk (yes, I know you can't use Life and Death with Close Counter), which means any sword with 57 or less Atk will fail to kill her in one hit, and she has more than enough Spd to avoid a double attack (from most things).

After that, Vantage is active and you can sit back and Vantage sweep your opponents.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Ice Dragon