Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links

[Ice Dragon]

46 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

The vast majority seem to think DC is better than CC for some god forsaken reason, because I guess the fact that -blade gives about 40 Atk in a slot that usually gives around 13 doesn't occur to them

No, it's because the vast majority of ranged units have complete shit for a Def stat, and there are very few melee-ranged units that target Res. This means a unit using Close Counter is either expended after one round of combat or needs to be able to Vantage sweep.

In order to Vantage sweep, the unit needs to be able to get somewhere around 70 effective Atk, which is difficult for infantry units to pull off because they have a harder time getting buffs to power up Litrblade to the same levels as cavalry, fliers, or armors, and they don't have access to Triangle Adept because no ranged weapons have Triangle Adept or Close Counter built in.

Distant Counter is valuable because it works well if at least one of Def or Res is high, which is a reasonably large pool of units. Close Counter is not valuable because it is only useful on non-infantry units and infantry units with high Def, both of which are very small pools of units.

 

There's also the fact that Takumi is part of colorless hell, whereas Hector's color is the best color to snipe for 5-star units from a raw percentages standpoint.

[DehNutCase]

Just now, Hilda said:

I still dont see the issue with Tactic skills. Reinhardt + Dancer is nothing new and a Close Counter Vantage Reinhardt is just beging to get killed more easy. Again no issue in Tactic skills.

I actually welcome those new Skills because it makes mixed Teams better.

CC Rein + Dancer is new, is the thing. Before that if you ran CC Rein + Dancer it meant one of the bonus units had to be a horse---because Rein needs both horse buffs.

 

Why is Rein hard to deal with:

Long reach.

Near perfect offenses.

Fairly bulky. (38/27/25 is passable even for a melee infantry, much less range cavalry. His main issue is that he gets doubled, so usually, only people he's packing -breaker against has issue with him).

Occasionally has Dancers to slingshot.

 

Why is CC Rein hard to deal with:

Long reach.

Near perfect offenses. (He goes from 2HKO to OHKOs, meaning now deflect magic doesn't even work on him. Mind, he does lose some KOs from the trade, but offenses stay pretty much as good as it gets)

Near perfect defenses (if you don't OHKO he OHKOs back).

His support units are other copies of himself. (This means you need counters, not checks, to deal with him. If there's enough units like CC Rein teambuilding becomes literally impossible, because units can check a lot, but usually only counter a very small subset. Fortunately this kind of Rein is rare enough that you can just tank the loss the redo a run, because you don't run into teams that demand hard-counters often enough.)

 

CC Rein doesn't lose regular Rein's offenses in a proper team while also gaining a ridiculous amount of bulk. But, whereas before he can only be seen on all cav teams (which pops up maybe 2 weeks out of 7 or so in an arena rotation), now he also gets that dancer slingshot and all his buffs in regular arena seasons. (Since even Askr can provide half the needed buffs).

This makes CC Rein both more common (you can see him outside Horse emblem seasons) and harder to deal with (because now he gets dancer slingshots).

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

I find Fjorn funny

 

She's LITERALLY Roy with Distant Counter, even to the point of having exact same stats spread

[Hilda]

@DehNutCase I might maybe be in the minority but when i see a Team of Reinhardt i rejoice, because my DC BIke and DC Axezura will kill him regardless especially with Azama backing them up. + Axezura and Azama run drive Res 3. I have literally 0 issues encountering Reinhardt, either BIke or Axezura are allways in the Team. And Rein is usually the one dieing first BECAUSE of his long reach.

[DehNutCase]

2 minutes ago, Hilda said:

@DehNutCase I might maybe be in the minority but when i see a Team of Reinhardt i rejoice, because my DC BIke and DC Axezura will kill him regardless especially with Azama backing them up. + Axezura and Azama run drive Res 3. I have literally 0 issues encountering Reinhardt, either BIke or Axezura are allways in the Team. And Rein is usually the one dieing first BECAUSE of his long reach.

That's a case of running hard counters, is the thing. Like, yeah, you have no problem with Rein, in particular, but what would happen if there ended up being Reinhardt level units in every color, and ones that hit Def rather than Res on top of it?

 

For example, give Leo Dire Thunder and Reinhardt spread, would you be able to deal with Leo teams?

Edited November 29, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Hilda]

6 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

That's a care of running hard counters, is the thing. Like, yeah, you have no problem with Rein, in particular, but what would happen if there ended up being Reinhardt level units in every color, and ones that hit Def rather than Res on top of it?

 

For example, give Leo Dire Thunder and Reinhardt spread, would you be able to deal with Leo teams?

why should i care about that when its not even in the game yet. Theorizing about setups that arent even there doesnt help.

2. I can take on any Red unit with BIke Axezura and Azama, more so now. Do have any Idea how monsteriously BIke can be with a Healer backing him up? And now that Azama can basicly safely chip away for 24/10 dmg its even less an issue. Of course i dont bait Red mages with BIke because i know very well that Celica/Tharja and even some green nukes can ORKO him. This is where I run Sigurd instead of Axezura!
 

My current Team allways consists fo BIke Azama Sigurd + Bonus unit. I rarely use Axezura anymore (sometimes i do but hardly).

[DehNutCase]

17 minutes ago, Hilda said:

why should i care about that when its not even in the game yet. Theorizing about setups that arent even there doesnt help.

2. I can take on any Red unit with BIke Axezura and Azama, more so now. Do have any Idea how monsteriously BIke can be with a Healer backing him up? And now that Azama can basicly safely chip away for 24/10 dmg its even less an issue. Of course i dont bait Red mages with BIke because i know very well that Celica/Tharja and even some green nukes can ORKO him. This is where I run Sigurd instead of Axezura!
 

My current Team allways consists fo BIke Azama Sigurd + Bonus unit. I rarely use Axezura anymore (sometimes i do but hardly).

The problem is that, the more a unit needs hard counters to, well, beat, the more of a problem it becomes once other units reach that level.

Like, if over the course of an arena run you'd need, on average, to beat 5 different overpowered units all with vastly different hard-counters, then you just flat out can't do an arena run. Because if you cover 1-4 with your units slots 1-4 then 5 will just solo sweep your team.

You don't have a problem with Rein because you happen to like running the units that he forces you to run, which is fine. But the problem with units on his level is that they force you to run certain units, whether or not you want to run them.

 

Further, the problem is already here because Reinhardt is, it doesn't magically only become an issue once arena is unplayable (I don't actually expect we'll ever get to that point, IS has a fair amount of rebalancing tools), the problem is here even when there's only Rein, or only Rein +1, or Rein +2, or Rein +3. It's just that, for all values up to Rein +4, you actually can run teams that can beat an arena run---by devoting slots 1-whatever to their hard counters. The problem with people on Reinhardt's level is that they centralize the meta. The teams that can beat 4 Reins consistently have to devote one unit slot to a hard-counter, because checks don't work.

 

It's not the straw that breaks the camel's back that's the problem, it's all that other shit that you had the camel carrying already that's the problem, even if it didn't kill the camel yet.

Edited November 29, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Zeo]

@Kaden Remember that convo we had about Edward and his potential 38/35 offenses?

We've got our moldbreaker. Soleil's offense spread is 38/35. And her bulk is solid. There's no doubt in my mind now that Edward's going to be a meta unit when he drops and that he's going to have a prf just like Mia.

Edited November 29, 2017 by Zeo

[DehNutCase]

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

There's also the fact that Takumi is part of colorless hell, whereas Hector's color is the best color to snipe for 5-star units from a raw percentages standpoint.

Takumi was on a 5% focus banner. The fact that he's a part of colorless hell doesn't change that he's actually one of the easiest 5* units to pull if you knew to value him. (People don't have him because he's undervalued, not because he's rare.) Yeah, he's marginally rarer than Hector, but he's still more command than Neph, B!Ike, and so on.

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

No, it's because the vast majority of ranged units have complete shit for a Def stat, and there are very few melee-ranged units that target Res. This means a unit using Close Counter is either expended after one round of combat or needs to be able to Vantage sweep.

Uh, no, the vast majority of currently 'meta' ranged units have shit Def. Merric, Odin, Henry, all of those mages that are 'bad' tend to have great bulk. (Even the Robins fall into the 'bulky mage' category.) In non-infantries we have S!Camilla, Rein, Leo, and Henry. Even Celica and Tharja have 39/22 and 39/23, not too great, barely above 60, but it's still passable.

We don't see bulky mages because everyone favors mages with high speed, and high atk. (Barring Reinhardt, who happens to be absurd outside of -blade CC builds.)

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

In order to Vantage sweep, the unit needs to be able to get somewhere around 70 effective Atk, which is difficult for infantry units to pull off because they have a harder time getting buffs to power up Litrblade to the same levels as cavalry, fliers, or armors, and they don't have access to Triangle Adept because no ranged weapons have Triangle Adept or Close Counter built in.

Infantry can get---ignoring tactics---+16 from -blade fairly consistently now. (I count it as +16 rather than +20 because technically every infantry gets the Hone Atk buff.) Thanks to all our S-seals.

Sophia has 40/33/19/28/29. That's 33 + 13 + 16 + 4 = 66 Atk. Yeah, a mite low compared to Rein who's pushing 80s, but Rein's a freak, and she gets a couple points of bulk in exchange.

Moreover, the important part of Infantry doing Vantage sweeps is that they don't need to fight their color disadvantage (whereas Rein, for example, needs to be able to OHKO at least some greens in order to reliably sweep, since Leo can't always cover for him---having the weaker spread---and there isn't a bulky green horse mage to round out the color triangle).

Bring Tactics into the equation and it gets even better, letting you mix infantry and fliers/horse/armor, while also increasing the max 'cap' of buffs on the Infantry unit. (Only by 2, mind, since it's the infantry carrying the Tactics, so it'd be like a +6/+4/+4/+4, but that's still pretty good---good enough to push Sophia into exactly 70 Atk.)

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

Distant Counter is valuable because it works well if at least one of Def or Res is high, which is a reasonably large pool of units. Close Counter is not valuable because it is only useful on non-infantry units and infantry units with high Def, both of which are very small pools of units.

The effect of a counter-skill is to force a BST vs. BST fight. (Because the unit gets to counter in pretty much every matchup, barring things like Sacae or Sweeps).

-Blade gives the most BST out of any weapon.

 

Like, if there's a physical weapon that gave +30 BST (Say, Eldigan's Fury 3 sword at 16 + 3 + 12 = 29 BST), then yeah, DC is kind of absurd on him, but most units don't get weapons that strong. (And Eldigan's stats are spread out rather than dumping everything into Atk like -blade does, which leads to more min-maxed spreads). Like, even my Steady + Wrath + Bonfire + Quick Pulse combo works off of giving units BST it has no rights to have, thanks to grabbing stats from non-A slots:

Steady is 4, Wrath is 10, Bonfire + Quick Pulse + Steady is about, what, 10 or 15 more damage than something like Moonbow Atk 3 seal? That's 4 + 10 + 10 = 24 BST extra. (I'm trading 1 damage for 1 BST here. I know Bonfire isn't always up, and the build's spent after one combat round, at least for counter-killing.)

 

Moreover, Close Counter also allows people with absurd Atk stats to ignore Spd as a stat. You can't doubled when you OHKO everything. This means that you don't, in fact, need high Def to run CC properly, high Atk and high Hp is more than enough. Def is only better than hp when tanking 2 hits is a problem. (Brave weapons are still a problem, sort of---I honestly can't imagine a team with CC mages ever getting out maneuvered by a team with melee range, it's not like mages stop being mages just because you gave them CC. Dire Thunder and Brave Bows are still an issue, of course, but those are easily countered by using Deflect and Vantage.)

[Hilda]

28 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

The problem is that, the more a unit needs hard counters to, well, beat, the more of a problem it becomes once other units reach that level.

Like, if over the course of an arena run you'd need, on average, to beat 5 different overpowered units all with vastly different hard-counters, then you just flat out can't do an arena run. Because if you cover 1-4 with your units slots 1-4 then 5 will just solo sweep your team.

You don't have a problem with Rein because you happen to like running the units that he forces you to run, which is fine. But the problem with units on his level is that they force you to run certain units, whether or not you want to run them.

 

Further, the problem is already here because Reinhardt is, it doesn't magically only become an issue once arena is unplayable (I don't actually expect we'll ever get to that point, IS has a fair amount of rebalancing tools), the problem is here even when there's only Rein, or only Rein +1, or Rein +2, or Rein +3. It's just that, for all values up to Rein +4, you actually can run teams that can beat an arena run---by devoting slots 1-whatever to their hard counters. The problem with people on Reinhardt's level is that they centralize the meta. The teams that can beat 4 Reins consistently have to devote one unit slot to a hard-counter, because checks don't work.

 

It's not the straw that breaks the camel's back that's the problem, it's all that other shit that you had the camel carrying already that's the problem, even if it didn't kill the camel yet.

excuse me but BIke is not a hard counter only for Reinhardt. He does extremly well against alot of other units. He just happens to be naturally also a Reinhardt counter.
Axezura is also not purely only a Reinhardt counter, but a fantastic support unit (otherwise i would run Inigo).
and Azama is definitly not a reinhardt counter but an excellent healer/support/chipdmg unit that goes very well with BIke and Sigurd.

I would agree with you if i would run a Julia or some other green mage with triangle adept in my Team that only fairs well against Reinhardt and only a handfull of other units.

you are overexagerating things and make it sound like Reinhardt is an unstopable force, which is not the case.

But again this depends on the Team composition you run. For example i dont fear Blue or Green units. But Celica/Tiki/Tharja are the equivalent of Red Sword Team facing Reinhardt prolly, for me.

Edited November 29, 2017 by Hilda

[DehNutCase]

2 minutes ago, Hilda said:

excuse me but BIke is not a hard counter only for Reinhardt. He does extremly well against alot of other units. He just happens to be naturally also a Reinhardt counter.
Axezura is also not purely only a Reinhardt counter, but a fantastic support unit (otherwise i would run Inigo).
and Azama is definitly not a reinhardt counter but an excellent healer/support/chipdmg unit that goes very well with BIke and Sigurd.

I would agree with you if i would run a Julia or some other green mage with triangle adept in my Team that only fairs well against Reinhardt and only a handfull of other units.

Every 'hard-counter' also works vs. other units, it's how checks and counters work.

 

A typical unit has:

Loads of checks.

Few counters.

 

Conversely, a typical unit:

Checks a load of other units.

Counters a couple other units.

 

A healthy meta game is one where checks are far more important than counters---that is, units should be designed so that, for example, a 4 Rein team can be handled by a team with only checks of Rein, but no counters. The problem with Rein is that he can brute force past his checks (thanks to a combination of mobility and offenses---it's hard to check a unit who gets to hit you multiple times, which is, in effect, what horse cav reach lets him do, since it lets multiple Reins dogpile the same unit), meaning the strongest builds involving him needs to be countered rather than checked. (It's somewhat fortunate that Rein actually has a good amount of hard-counters, thanks to TA-3 being readily available, but that doesn't solve the problem where his checks are very shaky.)

You can, of course, design a unit so that it counters a lot of other units (some theoretical low support needed DC user that obliterates 2-range units---dragons are approaching this point, but @Ice Dragon would know more than me on that department), but that just dips into another---possibly even worse---problem. A unit that counters a lot of units is a unit with very few checks and very few counters, which is a nightmare.

[Tybrosion]

I love it when the Training Tower gets drunk off its ass and gives me gems like this. Bonus points for giving me this while I was leveling my own Deirdre.

[Ice Dragon]

19 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Takumi was on a 5% focus banner. The fact that he's a part of colorless hell doesn't change that he's actually one of the easiest 5* units to pull if you knew to value him. (People don't have him because he's undervalued, not because he's rare.) Yeah, he's marginally rarer than Hector, but he's still more command than Neph, B!Ike, and so on.

Hector was on that same banner.

Takumi was on 1 5% banner and 4 3% banners (2 of which had color overlap). Hector was on 1 8% banner (color overlap with 2 others), 1 5% banner, and 2 3% banners.

 

31 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Thanks to all our S-seals.

You're ignoring the fact that upgraded Sacred Seals are still limited, and most players have other seals that they will prioritize, like Deflect Magic and Distant Def. Hell, I have the maximum number of Sacred Coins physically possible in the game at this point (enough to have 8 level-3 Sacred Seals) and haven't even touched the Hone and Fortify seals.

You're also ignoring the fact that Panic Ploy and Dazzling Panic+ are a thing now, not to mention Firesweep weapons and Dazzling Staff refines in general, which put a wrench in Vantage and Distant/Close Counter. (There's even a Mist with Dazzling Gravity+ on a 746-point team right now thanks to Fjorm.)

 

The quick summary of my argument is that right now:

• Close Counter is usable on very few units. The unit needs to either have high Def or high enough Atk to Vantage sweep at neutral weapon triangle.
  • High Def is rare on ranged units.
  • High Atk is limited to Litrblade users, who have increasingly more potent counter-options.
  • Close Counter is mutually exclusive with Triangle Adept at this time.
• Distant Counter is usable on many units. The unit needs to either have high Def to counter bows or have high Res to counter tomes.
  • High Def is common on melee units.
  • High Res is somewhat common on melee units.
  • Distant Counter is not mutually exclusive with Triangle Adept.
  • Distant Counter is not mutually exclusive with special cooldown reduction.

[ZeManaphy]

So the new book features children of fate. Soleil, Tharja, Shiro and Siegbert are confirmed. Here's hopes to Shigure, Nina and Forrest are in as well. Hopefully I'll get Spring Camilla or Bride Cordelia before the summoning ends. Tips on how to maximize chances of summons? Because I spent countless orbs and didn't get any H!Sakura.....

[Cute Chao]

9 minutes ago, ZeManaphy said:

So the new book features children of fate. Soleil, Tharja, Shiro and Siegbert are confirmed. Here's hopes to Shigure, Nina and Forrest are in as well. Hopefully I'll get Spring Camilla or Bride Cordelia before the summoning ends. Tips on how to maximize chances of summons? Because I spent countless orbs and didn't get any H!Sakura.....

I think there are tips on yt for just when to start sniping, but honestly, I find I have more luck just purely going for the colours of the units I want. Other than that... pray to the RNG. 

I wish you luck!

Edited November 30, 2017 by Cute Chao

[XRay]

18 minutes ago, ZeManaphy said:

Tips on how to maximize chances of summons?

If you are only going for a specific unit, sniping a only that color helps. If you are aiming for multiple units on a banner, then just snipe all the relevant colors. For example, I ignored blue orbs on the Trick or Defeat banner but pulled everything else.

Bribing Anna also helps a lot.

Edited November 30, 2017 by XRay

[Ice Dragon]

33 minutes ago, ZeManaphy said:

Tips on how to maximize chances of summons? Because I spent countless orbs and didn't get any H!Sakura.....

If you're looking for one specific character, pull only that color. Any umbrella you pick that isn't that color is a 0% chance of getting the character you want.

If you're looking for any 5-star character and don't care who it is as long as they're 5-star,

• If there is no tie for the color with the most focus characters, pick that color.
• If there is a tie for the color with the most focus characters and one of those colors is green, pick green.
• If there is a tie for the color with the most focus characters and none of those colors is green, pick all colors in the tie.
  • The rates on red, blue, and colorless are close enough that I think the discount for pulling multiple times from one session beats the rate advantage of pulling only one color.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Ice Dragon

[bethany81707]

She's now a fairly high-scoring machine. She also has an AoE inherited if I need the bump.

[DehNutCase]

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

Hector was on that same banner.

Takumi was on 1 5% banner and 4 3% banners (2 of which had color overlap). Hector was on 1 8% banner (color overlap with 2 others), 1 5% banner, and 2 3% banners.

The 8% banner is actually worse than a non-overlap 3% banner. (For the simple reason that 8/3 = 2.67, which is less than 3, meaning it's worse than a 4 unit banner with 3% odds. Yeah, it's better than the color overlap 3% banners---when sniping, in terms of Takumi/pulls, in terms of Takumi/orbs even shared banner are better---but it's actually worse than average. Edit: Actually, I'm pretty sure the 8% banner is just flat out shit. Hell, most banners, when sniping, give around 8% focus unit odds, on top of the 3% or so non-focus odds.

The point is:

Hector isn't sufficiently more common for limited availability to be an argument. You can argue that for some of the newer skills like Breath and Wrath, but CC and DC have been on enough banners, and been around for long enough time, that the reason you have one or not is budget related rather than availability related. That is, if you don't have one it's because you budgeted for other things, rather than because it's difficult to get one.

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

You're ignoring the fact that upgraded Sacred Seals are still limited, and most players have other seals that they will prioritize, like Deflect Magic and Distant Def. Hell, I have the maximum number of Sacred Coins physically possible in the game at this point (enough to have 8 level-3 Sacred Seals) and haven't even touched the Hone and Fortify seals.

Limited resource availability only matters if some other build somehow benefits from it more cost effectively.

Vantage -blade builds naturally solve the Deflect Magic issue---for the simple reason that, once in Vantage range, -blade Reinhardt OHKOs opposing Reinhardts. Limited sacred coins is an argument for -blade CC, not against, because they use coins more effectively as a resource. HP +5 on a CC -blade is cheaper than Distant Defense 3 for better returns (1 less bulk vs. ranged, 5 more vs. melee). Edit: Actually, I think we got DD from a tempest trial, didn't we? The cost's the same then. It's just that the return's a bit better. Deflects are 20 coins more expensive than other skills that need to be forged (since they're 50 to forge rather than 30), and 50 more expensive than skills that don't, like Hp, Atk, Def, Hone, Fort, etc. Because we got those from quests and TT.

 

'Players might not have this resource because they're budgeting badly' is actually an argument for using -blade CC sets, because it actually takes less sacred coins to fully max out such a team. 150/seal for things like Hp +, Atk+, Fort, Hone, compared to deflect's 200/seal, or some other stuff's 180/seal.

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

You're also ignoring the fact that Panic Ploy and Dazzling Panic+ are a thing now, not to mention Firesweep weapons and Dazzling Staff refines in general, which put a wrench in Vantage and Distant/Close Counter. (There's even a Mist with Dazzling Gravity+ on a 746-point team right now thanks to Fjorm.)

Firesweep and dazzling make all counter builds worse, and, oddly enough, mages are least affected by this. Why? Because mages have a stellar player phase thanks to +1 range and stacking Atk like it's going out of style.

The reason CC Reinhardt is scary isn't that he turned into 'rich man's Hector' or whatever, it's that he's 'rich man's Hector' while still being Reinhardt. With Reinhardt's ridiculous player phase. (3 move, 2 range, i.e. best reach in the game combined with some of the best matchups.) In essence, the problem with Hector isn't that he's Hector, it's that, no matter how much work you put into him, he's never going to be Reinhardt---it's kind of hard to get +3 range---whereas Reinhardt can be Hector pretty damn easily.

This is another argument for CC over DC, because DC units, by definition, have 1 less range than CC units.

 

Panic Ploy and Dazzling Panic are concerns, of course, but they're effects, like before, that affect all buff based builds. Ironically, again, mages are one of the least affected classes by panic ploy---despite how it might seem---because it's easier to pay the 1 movement cost to step out of the way when you have +1 range then when you're melee. Yeah, it hurts mages more, because they got more out of their buffs, but it costs them less to keep their buffs. (More mobility gives so much benefits that it's not even funny.)

An AoE panic is a real issue, but, again, mages are the least affected of counter builds by this, thanks to their stellar player phase---i.e. they can just drop a nuke the problem unit and then Vantage sweep the rest.

 

That's for the player side of things, on the AI side:

DC units are melee. (This alone means that they're basically never a threat, since you can just slowly hobble away and chip a team into oblivion.) The only actually dangerous DC units are horses, because they actually have the mobility to pressure you.

CC units are ranged. (This means you have less places to stand safely, and it's harder to setup close to them.)

 

The problem here is that DC units are just as easy to deal with as CC units during player phase (you can debuff them into oblivion and send someone in), but CC units are far better during their turn to act because they're mages.

Yes, if you panic ploy -blade Leo or whatever he's trivial to tank, but that happens if you panic ploy B!Roy too, except Leo has 1 more range, meaning you have to be more careful how you setup.

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

The quick summary of my argument is that right now:

• Close Counter is usable on very few units. The unit needs to either have high Def or high enough Atk to Vantage sweep at neutral weapon triangle.
  • High Def is rare on ranged units.
  • High Atk is limited to Litrblade users, who have increasingly more potent counter-options.
  • Close Counter is mutually exclusive with Triangle Adept at this time.
• Distant Counter is usable on many units. The unit needs to either have high Def to counter bows or have high Res to counter tomes.
  • High Def is common on melee units.
  • High Res is somewhat common on melee units.
  • Distant Counter is not mutually exclusive with Triangle Adept.
  • Distant Counter is not mutually exclusive with special cooldown reduction.

My point is that:

CC users are naturally better units than DC users---mostly due to range and tome access. This isn't just because of CC, it's because being ranged costs too little and gives too much. You pay like 8 BST to be ranged and 2 more in weapons, except -blade gives you 24 BST back, all stacked into attack. (TA-3 only gives around 20 effective BST, because you only ever use defense or res in a given fight, whereas you always use Atk. -blade access is far more important than TA-3 access.)

High Def being rare isn't actually a problem, because: Melee units have melee range. It's a lot easier for Reinhardt to dogpile a unit than Ayra or Camus. It's easier to choke point melee units, and, even on open maps, melee units need to move more than ranged do to dogpile someone. Further, any melee unit with strong enough Atk to be an issue can be taken care of on player phase---CC Reinhardt can still do classic horse mage hit and run plays, that didn't stop being a thing just because he sacrificed DB or L&D or whatever.

TA-3 doesn't matter because holy shit -blade is overpowered, TA-3 is amazing, sure, but -blade is even more so. (Note, I'm not advocating CC on Archers and Shruiken users---they, unlike mages, actually did pay a fair BST cost for being ranged.)

 

Basically:

 

CC:

Users are better units in general. (That is, without CC, they're already damn good.)

Ranged unit traits compensate for the skill's disadvantages. (People that can't be tanked on enemy phase can be KOd on player phase. Ranged units have more mobility to spare to avoid ploys.)

 

DC:

Units are often below average without DC. (Hector is not getting more than 4/10 in my ratings because he doesn't have a player phase, he doesn't have mobility---to help reposition people around, and he doesn't even have an amazing enemy phase before or after DC---dogpiles still kill him, sweeps still ruin him, mages can still OHKO or ORKO. Ryoma, Ike, Dorcas and the like suffer less from this, because they have 3 range to Hector's 2, but Odin has 4 to their 3, and Reinhardt 5 to their 3. Not to mention ranged units basically have honorary flying unit hit n' run due to standing 1 square away when attacking.)

Difficult for the unit to compensate for their own disadvantages. (Hector can't try to walk up and OHKO Celica on player phase, because he's a god damn slow ass molasses armor unit, but Reinhardt could nuke, say, Brave Axe Frederick to oblivion before Frederick can axe his face out of existence. Ryoma and Ike has this a bit better, because it's at least possible to position Reinhardt where they can reach them, but just because it's possible doesn't mean it's easy, or reliable.)

 

It's not so much that CC > DC. (The skills actually have identical effects, depending on how you want to look at it). It's that ranged units > melee units, so the skill that ranged units can use is the one that makes for stronger units. Sure, grafting DC onto Hector bumps him up from B/B/C/E/A to, say, B/B/A/E/A, but grafting -blade CC onto Reinhardt bumps him from A/B/C/A/A to A/A/A/A/C. [Offense/Bulk/Counter-kill/Mobility/Support]

Like, DC could be free, and I might only have one single copy of CC, but it'd still be more likely that CC is the skill I'd have on my team, because the units that make use of it started better and ended better.

Edited November 30, 2017 by DehNutCase

[Othin]

I'm pretty sure Hector is overall less common than Takumi, not more.

[MrSmokestack]

1 hour ago, Othin said:

I'm pretty sure Hector is overall less common than Takumi, not more.

Not possible when green has the highest 5* rate while colorless has the worst. Takumi has only had one more banner compared to Hector, which doesn’t close the gap especially when colorless is so frequently avoided.

[Ice Dragon]

28 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

The 8% banner is actually worse than a non-overlap 3% banner. (For the simple reason that 8/3 = 2.67, which is less than 3, meaning it's worse than a 4 unit banner with 3% odds. Yeah, it's better than the color overlap 3% banners---when sniping, in terms of Takumi/pulls, in terms of Takumi/orbs even shared banner are better---but it's actually worse than average. Edit: Actually, I'm pretty sure the 8% banner is just flat out shit. Hell, most banners, when sniping, give around 8% focus unit odds, on top of the 3% or so non-focus odds.

The point is:

Hector isn't sufficiently more common for limited availability to be an argument. You can argue that for some of the newer skills like Breath and Wrath, but CC and DC have been on enough banners, and been around for long enough time, that the reason you have one or not is budget related rather than availability related. That is, if you don't have one it's because you budgeted for other things, rather than because it's difficult to get one.

1 hour ago, Othin said:

I'm pretty sure Hector is overall less common than Takumi, not more.

Hector has a 3.49% base rate from the Legendary Heroes banner.

With the current standard summoning pool (too lazy to work out historical summoning pools, but that should not change things up too much) and using the actual banner situations,

• Takumi on a 3% 4-character banner with no shared color is 3.08%. (2 times)
• Hector on an 8% 12-character banner with 2 sharing a color is 3.49%. (1 time)
• Takumi on a 3% 3-character banner with 1 sharing a color is 3.87%. (2 times)
• Hector on a 3% 4-character banner with no shared color is 4.17%. (2 times)
• Takumi on a 5% 4-character banner with no shared color is 5.05%. (1 time)
• Hector on a 5% 4-character banner with no shared color is 6.79%. (1 time)

So actually, they have about the same availability despite Hector being on one fewer banner, assuming the player pulls an equal number of times from every banner, specifically aiming for each character. The fact that green is so lucrative to begin with, though, due to having higher 5-star rates overall still weights things in Hector's favor.

 

47 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Hell, most banners, when sniping, give around 8% focus unit odds, on top of the 3% or so non-focus odds.

What the hell are you smoking to get those numbers?

 

48 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

'Players might not have this resource because they're budgeting badly' is actually an argument for using -blade CC sets, because it actually takes less sacred coins to fully max out such a team. 150/seal for things like Hp +, Atk+, Fort, Hone, compared to deflect's 200/seal, or some other stuff's 180/seal.

Every seal does not need to be forged to be obtained costs 150 Sacred Coins per seal. This includes things like Distant Def, Close Def, Atk Smoke, Panic Ploy, Atk Ploy.

You're basically telling me that budgeting all of my resources to support one very specific, but powerful, build (that is slowing being nerfed) is a better use of my resources than budgeting my resources to support a broad variety of slightly less powerful builds.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

(TA-3 only gives around 20 effective BST, because you only ever use defense or res in a given fight, whereas you always use Atk. -blade access is far more important than TA-3 access.)

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

TA-3 doesn't matter because holy shit -blade is overpowered, TA-3 is amazing, sure, but -blade is even more so.

Litrblade is +10 to 30 Atk depending on your buffing situation.

Triangle Adept is about +20 to Atk, Def, and Res against a single color all the time. That's +40 stat total to Litrblade's "+24".

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

CC units are ranged. (This means you have less places to stand safely, and it's harder to setup close to them.)

Close Counter units having more range also make them far easier to bait, and you seem to be conveniently ignoring that.

You forget that the AI is incredibly stupid once the player understands how it works and that baiting puts the game in the player's hands possibly even more so than going on the offensive because the AI is purely reactionary.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

It's not so much that CC > DC.

No, it's the fact that Close Counter simply doesn't bring much to the table. Bringing a unit up from 9.5/10 to 10/10 that requires specific support is simply less valuable than bringing a unit up from 4/10 to 9/10 that uses generic support.

 

 

You also seem to be forgetting the fact that each ranged unit you bring to the Arena decreases your final score by an average of 7 points (compared to a melee unit with the same SP cost), which does matter for players that are at the edge of a cutoff.

 

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

@Ice Dragon How is TA3 averages to 40 bst? The number marks for offensive stats is around 50. 20% of that is 10. You at best get 30+ and realistically its only 20+ with 30 ceiling because no unit in this planet attack with both Physical and Magical at the same time

[Ice Dragon]

9 minutes ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

@Ice Dragon How is TA3 averages to 40 bst? The number marks for offensive stats is around 50. 20% of that is 10. You at best get 30+ and realistically its only 20+ with 30 ceiling because no unit in this planet attack with both Physical and Magical at the same time

Right. I dumb and can't do arithmetic without a calculator. (This is what happens when you're a math major.)

 

That said, I really should stop being so conservative with my numbers since buffs are a thing and so are enemy merges and all of the new fancy things we've gotten recently. 50 Atk really isn't all that accurate of a benchmark anymore.

 

@DehNutCase

Also, on thinking it over a bit more, I don't think it's actually accurate to consider only one of Def and Res and not both. Even if in any one given round of combat you only use one of the two, the other one still influences who you can safely engage into combat with.

Sheena (and Sophia to a lesser extent) having both high Def and Res to her name is a boon for her because it lets her wall just about everything that isn't red, not a detriment due to "effectively losing 30 points of her stat total to the defensive stat that doesn't matter in each individual round of combat".

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

@Ice Dragon huh is Math Majors actually did most stuff calced lol

 

Also whats the proper marks for now again? 58?(standard 56 attack Hector at +5, standard buffed LnD Ayra at +0)

Also the point about TA def and res is fair