Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links

[redlight]

Anyone else annoyed how Dauntless Lance does more unrefined than Basilikos and Nameless Blade?

[DehNutCase]

Ah yes, flashing blade. That skill that will make everyone go:

Huh? What do you mean it's not inheritable on fliers? Both Caeda and Clair have it on their Prfs!?

[Rafiel's Aria]

I was wondering if someone had posted up the datamined TT stuff.... 

Spoiler

At this rate, Masked Marth's going to be the only free unit we can +10... I guess they like to rerun her because she doesn't come with anything for skill inheritence, but still... It'd be nice to get another copy of literally anyone else. I imagine that it's frustrating for newer players who will likely NEVER get copies of units like Joshua.... Maybe they're not great, but the holes in my Herodex would haunt my dreams... 

SPD Ploy though...and Flashing Blade. Those are cool.

 

[redlight]

Spoiler

Yes. Speed ploy. Finally. Flashing blade as well.

 

[Troykv]

22 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Ah yes, flashing blade. That skill that will make everyone go:

Huh? What do you mean it's not inheritable on fliers? Both Caeda and Clair have it on their Prfs!?

It's their only way to don't be completely inferior to Elincia/Cordelia.

And well.. I'm happy I'll get another merge for M!Lucina; she is one of my members of my Water Team xD

[Humanoid]

 

In the very recent past, I'd have been very disappointed by the reward unit. However if I do indeed decide to go down the HM farming path, it becomes a very good thing. She goes to +7 which is 7 merges more than her alter ego, and she should be a cornerstone of any mixed-movement team I end up building. If only I got Legendary Hector, I'd have gone for something like him, Marthed Mask, Lilina, and, uh, Galeforce Oscar maybe? Johann's Cain pretty much carries my GC teams so I'd like something similar for myself.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Humanoid

[Ice Dragon]

I apologize for not being able to get around to this until now. I've been visiting family over the weekend and then the update hit.

And I apologize for continuing this argument.

 

On 7/7/2018 at 3:13 PM, DehNutCase said:

That's armors as a team, though. Armors as a unit might not necessarily be in a team that can afford to do that.

Armors play virtually no differently from other units after reaching the front lines.

With Armored Boots, you can get them to the enemy and initiate combat if necessary or position them for baiting on enemy phase. Afterwards, a player-phase armor can be Repositioned back like with any other unit, and an enemy-phase armor still has Swap (or Pivot) to do the same. I think you're severely overestimating the amount of support that an armor needs.

If you have more than one armor on your team, the two armors can keep themselves moving without any trouble, and you still have three of the four passive support skill slots available to use, which is hardly a loss considering most players don't have both the passive C slot and the Sacred Seal slot set with support skills on all four of their units.

 

On 7/7/2018 at 3:13 PM, DehNutCase said:

If dancers had no combat at all, I'd compare armors to them because then we'd have a class of units with no combat, but the best possible support, and a class with no support, but the best possible combat.

AHEM.

Armors have an Assist slot just like all other units. Armors have a passive C slot just like all other units. Armors have a Sacred Seal slot just like all other units. Only one of those three needs to be sacrificed for mobility and, as mentioned above, only one slot across every two units needs to be sacrificed when multiple armors are fielded.

You have no justification for saying that an armor has no support capabilities whatsoever. Worse than average, yes. None, no. In fact, with the exception of Litrblade dancers, I would personally argue that armors have more support capabilities than dancers have combat capabilities.

 

On 7/7/2018 at 3:13 PM, DehNutCase said:

The best offensive units has about 80-90% coverage on offense, and, sure, armors can reach near 100% coverage, but that's more like being 25% better than how dancers are incomparably better than other support effects.

No, no they don't.

Vanilla units or basic mass adjustments are fine to use when comparing the performance of two builds, but not when determining how much coverage a unit actually has. The best units in the game including armors only have about 70%-80% coverage.

 

Furthermore, dancing is not incomparably better than other support effects. Better, but not incomparably better.

Player-phase teams have more use for Dance because being able to push units further into enemy lines is highly beneficial (because units have limited movement ranges). That's the one thing that Dance does so much better than Reposition that it's worth mentioning.

However, enemy-phase teams have literally zero use for Dance. It doesn't do anything that actually helps an enemy-phase team perform its job. An enemy-phase team doesn't need additional unit-turns because it functions by using some of the opponent's unit-turns against it.

 

On 7/7/2018 at 3:13 PM, DehNutCase said:

Regarding PA!Azura, is she the only one you see or do you see the ranged ones as well? She has a Prf, but +3 all stats is strictly worse than Hone Type even if you ignore the fact that you have to dance to get those stats. In fact, the most important one to see is Flying Azura, but... I doubt pure flying teams make it up there.

I saw a team running Helpful Chrom, Legendary Hector, Celica, and Reinhardt earlier today with a score of 736 (Reinhardt even had Moonbow, Reposition, Death Blow, and Quickened Pulse).

Pure flying teams are actually reasonably common (especially on weeks with Ryoma or Grima granting extra points), as is pure infantry.

Note that I'm speaking for the 735-750 range where my Arena offense team lives and not the 745-755 range that my Arena Assault team lives.

 

On 7/7/2018 at 3:13 PM, DehNutCase said:

To be fair, you don't have to kill all the enemy units in one turn, just do enough damage that they're non-functional. Mobility decreases as a team loses units because of losing people like the armor march carrier or the team's dancer. Even their combat performance decreases because you're killing their buffers.

Most units are pretty damned functional as long as they have more than 1 HP, and damaged units with Desperation, Vantage, or allies with Wings of Mercy are more functional at low health. Losing a unit here or there will cost mobility and buffs, but those are usually not critical to the team's performance (because the AI is kind of dumb).

The number of female Grimas I run into running Vantage is actually kind of annoying.

 

On 7/7/2018 at 3:13 PM, DehNutCase said:

And the best offensive units tend to have ridiculous coverage even if we ignore Bold Fighter, a quick look at KageroChart says Neutral Cordelia with L&D 3, Slaying Lance speed refine, Galeforce, Heavy Blade, and no buffs nabs 172 wins out of 243, or 70%, and that's her worst case scenario, pretty much. No buffs and no combat relevant special.

And gets 44 out of 197 with my standard measurements at +10 (Arcticsilverfox's Hard List with +10 merge and +3/3/3/3 buffs), which is only 18% coverage. With a favorable nature and Hone Fliers, she's still sitting at 53%.

Sure, this metric is definitely underestimating actual coverage, but it gives a far better look at just how well a unit performs against the things that can actually give a player legitimate trouble (which matters more than all of the cannon fodder that is easy to handle by most players).

[DehNutCase]

Hmm, just did the grand master 1. It was a lot 'nicer' than what I expected.

 

The obvious way to do a hard tactical challenge is to make sure there's as few correct 'paths' as possible, and then make a bunch of nearly-correct paths that lead you down the wrong road. At least this one, though, it leads you in the right direction turn by turn, making it fairly clear whether something should've been killed last turn or not.

[mampfoid]

40 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Ah yes, flashing blade. That skill that will make everyone go:

Huh? What do you mean it's not inheritable on fliers? Both Caeda and Clair have it on their Prfs!?

I know the chance is practically nonexistent, but I really hope the seal doesn't have this restriction. The update didn't change anything to the restriction of the skill though ...

[DehNutCase]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Most units are pretty damned functional as long as they have more than 1 HP, and damaged units with Desperation, Vantage, or allies with Wings of Mercy are more functional at low health. Losing a unit here or there will cost mobility and buffs, but those are usually not critical to the team's performance (because the AI is kind of dumb).

The number of female Grimas I run into running Vantage is actually kind of annoying.

Sorry, I should've been clearer in my wording. By 'damage' I meant, kill enough units that the team is non-functional, i.e. damage in terms of the team rather than hp. (I agree that simply damaging a unit probably helps the enemy team, since it unlocks hp based mobility skills and random Vantages and such.)

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

I apologize for not being able to get around to this until now. I've been visiting family over the weekend and then the update hit.

And I apologize for continuing this argument.

Hah. (Honestly, we're probably built to argue---our play styles are sufficiently different that we actually learn things when we do page long essays at each other.)

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Armors play virtually no differently from other units after reaching the front lines.

With Armored Boots, you can get them to the enemy and initiate combat if necessary or position them for baiting on enemy phase. Afterwards, a player-phase armor can be Repositioned back like with any other unit, and an enemy-phase armor still has Swap (or Pivot) to do the same. I think you're severely overestimating the amount of support that an armor needs.

If you have more than one armor on your team, the two armors can keep themselves moving without any trouble, and you still have three of the four passive support skill slots available to use, which is hardly a loss considering most players don't have both the passive C slot and the Sacred Seal slot set with support skills on all four of their units.

They can't be danced like any other unit, though. Dance straight up adds mobility to the team because it costs an action turn but not a movement turn, meaning you can do dance into reposition and move 2 squares back rather than the effective 1 from just reposition. (Since the repo guy is still near the line of fire.) An armor is sufficiently unreliable at getting 2 move that it doesn't really have much business having reposition. Every other unit type is guaranteed at least 2 move after a dance (since dance clears gravity) for a fall-back reposition.

 

And, tactically, they make spreading the team harder. Splitting up two pairs that normally go together costs combat for normal unit classes---having Flying Azura go with Reinhardt and Cordelia go with Bow Lyn costs class buffs---but it costs mobility for armor duos.

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

AHEM.

Armors have an Assist slot just like all other units. Armors have a passive C slot just like all other units. Armors have a Sacred Seal slot just like all other units. Only one of those three needs to be sacrificed for mobility and, as mentioned above, only one slot across every two units needs to be sacrificed when multiple armors are fielded.

You have no justification for saying that an armor has no support capabilities whatsoever. Worse than average, yes. None, no. In fact, with the exception of Litrblade dancers, I would personally argue that armors have more support capabilities than dancers have combat capabilities.

Armors do not have an assist slot just like everyone else does. Reposition is an unreliable option for armors without another slot devoted to mobility as well---warp powder, armored boots, or whatever.

Armors have the worst C-slot of all units. Stat buff C-slot skills depend on positioning, and armors have the worst mobility. Even if you have Armor March to patchup both armor's mobility, armor march itself imposes a positioning requirement, both armors need to be next to each other at start of turn to get marched, and then you have to figure out where to place the armor that's running the other buff skill.

 

Pre-combat positioning is like a jigsaw puzzle that horses get to cheat at, because their mobility is so high anywhere reasonably close to the enemy is a good enough place to plop them. They'll get their buffs, they'll give their buffs, and they can 'give' their mobility to other units because, hey, if Cordelia needs to be in front of Reinhardt, he doesn't care. His threat range is half the map.

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

No, no they don't.

Vanilla units or basic mass adjustments are fine to use when comparing the performance of two builds, but not when determining how much coverage a unit actually has. The best units in the game including armors only have about 70%-80% coverage.

Fair. I mostly use them as an ballpark estimate anyway. (Hence why I've been basically using Neutral IVs with only the important skill slots filled when simulating units, nowadays.)

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Furthermore, dancing is not incomparably better than other support effects. Better, but not incomparably better.

Player-phase teams have more use for Dance because being able to push units further into enemy lines is highly beneficial (because units have limited movement ranges). That's the one thing that Dance does so much better than Reposition that it's worth mentioning.

However, enemy-phase teams have literally zero use for Dance. It doesn't do anything that actually helps an enemy-phase team perform its job. An enemy-phase team doesn't need additional unit-turns because it functions by using some of the opponent's unit-turns against it.

Dancers give skill slots to other units. They're the one unit type in the game that can use up all their skill-slots to buff everyone else and not lower the team's average combat performance with their hilariously empty skill-slots. Hone/Earth Dance/S-seal tactics etc. they're basically empty slots as far as the dancer's own combat is concerned.

Dance gives 2 free move to a team because it costs a action-turn but not a movement-turn, if horse dancers existed it's 3 free move. This is on top of everything else it does like clearing debuffs or adding a tad more stats from Earth Dance or whatever.

 

Even enemy-phase teams want mobility, if only to setup for the enemy-phase turn. They don't need it as much, sure----although certain variants still want it, a CC Reinhardt set lives and dies on the fact that it can use its superior mobility to clear that one douche who won't die on EP but explodes on PP. And even an enemy phase team would appreciate having that 'one unit' to dump all the support skills onto while everyone else went greedy stuff.

 

And dance doesn't make unit-turns, it makes movement-turns, which is quite a lot worse. You basically 'traded' your action-turn for the unit your dancing's, but you kept your own movement turn for free.

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

I saw a team running Helpful Chrom, Legendary Hector, Celica, and Reinhardt earlier today with a score of 736 (Reinhardt even had Moonbow, Reposition, Death Blow, and Quickened Pulse).

Pure flying teams are actually reasonably common (especially on weeks with Ryoma or Grima granting extra points), as is pure infantry.

Note that I'm speaking for the 735-750 range where my Arena offense team lives and not the 745-755 range that my Arena Assault team lives.

Off-topic, I kind of wish they tied the point bonus to just the blessing, but you had to have the legendary for the stats. Legendary unit bonus points means that team-building is heavily centralized towards certain units.

Although that was probably the point. Arena's a lot easier if team comps are more predictable

Edited July 9, 2018 by DehNutCase

[Xenomata]

Not sure if it's been brought up, but can I say that it is so pleasing to never have to listen to that somewhat jarring battle music and keep listening to the usually superior BGM?

Feel like I'd want to start making videos with the battle animations on now.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Xenomata

[Humanoid]

Just went back and looked at the datamined TT bonus units since I only looked at the seal on first pass, and they make no sense whatsoever. Just...what?

[Javi Blizz]

Yay! This game loves to make me crazy xD

So, the other day I got a new 4* Roy for give my 5* another merge (would be +2). With his expensive skills (Aether, DC...) he would score the same as my +4 M!Marth (selene, 200Sp skills). At least, my score is going to increase anyway xD

 

Also, I’ve realized something. I’ve been upset for a long time since I couldn’t get one of the 2 first copies of M!Marth, but I still can +10 her, since with 2 copies per TT that means 12 copies, and a 5*+10 means 11 copies :O

[Ice Dragon]

From Summer Linde's bio:

Quote

She's a bit flustered, since she's not wearing her usual robe.

I'm going to have to punch someone really hard for that comma. You DO NOT put a comma in front of a subordinating conjunction.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[Humanoid]

Maybe it's a Walken comma.

[mampfoid]

Now that I think about it, MM seems an odd choice. A reward of summer themed TTs should be ... summer themed?  

[redlight]

2 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

Now that I think about it, MM seems an odd choice. A reward of summer themed TTs should be ... summer themed?  

IS didn't want to give a seasonal for free perhaps. Or maybe they didn't have any summer unit lying around with finished art and assets that was disposable

[Vaximillian]

5 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

Now that I think about it, MM seems an odd choice. A reward of summer themed TTs should be ... summer themed?  

Intsys is just reminding me that I still need to merge my own Martha up. She is still +2.

[mampfoid]

2 minutes ago, silveraura25 said:

IS didn't want to give a seasonal for free perhaps. Or maybe they didn't have any summer unit lying around with finished art and assets that was disposable

That would be a pity since all seasonal TTs had an seasonal reward unit. But it seems true, since there was no additional sprite in the banner teaser. 

[mcsilas]

8 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

Now that I think about it, MM seems an odd choice. A reward of summer themed TTs should be ... summer themed?  

To explain Marth's disappearance from recent TTs- she's on vacation?

I should probably upgrade and merge the 4 star M!Marths. They're just taking up space.

[Cute Chao]

Masked Lcuina as a reward...

Sure, it's not like there are any other TT units in the slightest that they could repeat if they didn't want to give a new unit out. It's not like anyone else has been requested at all...

Honestly, I was really hopeful she'd stay out of the TT stories for a while. I liked the other characters interacting.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Cute Chao

[Alkaid]

I might just go ahead and actually merge up Marthcina now that we're getting even more copies. I'm never going to get a regular Lucina at this rate anyway, and even a perfect IV one wouldn't compete with a +7 neutral. (and surely I'll get a shit IV if I ever do get her)

Maybe I'll try out a full meme build of Sealed Falchion + Brazen atk/spd, though maybe that's not actually good in practice.. I already have a Chrom that does the Falchion/Renewal healer build, so might as well build her offensive instead.

[Vaximillian]

8 minutes ago, mcsilas said:

I should probably upgrade and merge the 4 star M!Marths. They're just taking up space.

I’m running out of Cecilias:

I’ve only got enough for +9. Martha can be the next one to merge up.

8 minutes ago, Cute Chao said:

Honestly, I was really hopeful she'd stay out of the TT stories for a while. I liked the other characters interacting.

Unpopular opinion time: I found the Black Fang tempest “story” unexciting exactly because there was no overarching narrative of Martha travelling around the worlds, and the hostile OCs getting in her way. For the Black Fang, I can just play FE7. For Loki and the rest, I can only play Heroes whose story is proceeding slower than the number representing Res in FE3 Ogma.

[Humanoid]

The Black Fang one was just a recap of the FE7 story with one tiny adjustment at the end. I wondered what the point was.

[Cute Chao]

7 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

 

Unpopular opinion time: I found the Black Fang tempest “story” unexciting exactly because there was no overarching narrative of Martha travelling around the worlds, and the hostile OCs getting in her way. For the Black Fang, I can just play FE7. For Loki and the rest, I can only play Heroes whose story is proceeding slower than the number representing Res in FE3 Ogma.

It might not be the unpopular opinion - others might agree. I do understand that but just seeing everyone interacting with Masked Lucina is dull to me. I'd really like if they spiced it up a bit and had characters from different games so we could see them interacting. That's my eventual hope. I did like the FE7 snippets, though, since we only see bits of every character from there and I did like to see Nino, Lloyd and Legault together again, so the extra little bits of characters I already know and like (compared to Masked Lucina, who annoys me) made me happier to see.

If they could have other OCs interacting with each other, and not Masked Lucina... I might change my mind.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Cute Chao