Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links

[Ice Dragon]

I'm predicting Delthea + Nino.

[Tybrosion]

8 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Palla and Est have both already gotten alts in that theme. 

I legitimately forgot this fact while writing that previous post. How unfortunate that IS can't meme on us again like with Valentian Catria.

So, yeah just disregard them in that list.

[XRay]

4 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Even on a "normal" unit, it's still the best skill series for the A slot as far as pure stats are concerned. Getting only one stack of the skill is extremely easy and already equals the stat boosts from other skills competing for the slot (with only Impact skills granting higher stats, but there is no Impact for Atk/Spd).

For pure stats, there is Brazen Atk/Spd that gives +7 with a pretty easy HP condition in my opinion, and the tier 4 version gives Atk+9 and Spd+10. Only AR-O and AR-D skills give higher boosts, but it is limited to just Aether Raids.

[Othin]

I could also see something involving Sonya, although she feels like less clean of a fit for spring.

[Ice Dragon]

10 hours ago, XRay said:

For pure stats, there is Brazen Atk/Spd that gives +7 with a pretty easy HP condition in my opinion, and the tier 4 version gives Atk+9 and Spd+10.

And does jack squat during your first round of combat.

 

10 hours ago, XRay said:

Only AR-O and AR-D skills give higher boosts, but it is limited to just Aether Raids.

AR-D is never active while the unit is under the control of the player, and the condition for AR-O to reach even +7 is too difficult to attain consistently.

I've also ignored Blade Session for the same reason. The condition is far too unreliable.

 

7 hours ago, Othin said:

I could also see something involving Sonya, although she feels like less clean of a fit for spring.

*points at Loki*

[Rinco]

Is it just me or is this update coming in a different time than usual?

For me it says in the notification that the update launches at the reset time (with the "or later") while usually it was 7 or 8 hours before the reset.

[Diovani Bressan]

1 hour ago, Rinco said:

Is it just me or is this update coming in a different time than usual?

For me it says in the notification that the update launches at the reset time (with the "or later") while usually it was 7 or 8 hours before the reset.

Yeah. For some reason, the update is at the Monday's reset this month.

I don't know why, though... At least players will be able to use Refined an Remixed Azura in Arena before the season ends.

[XRay]

6 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

And does jack squat during your first round of combat.

Doing nothing for one round of combat for massive stat boosts is a small price to pay compared to requiring constant buff set ups and/or HP maintenance, and having high HP limits your mobility quite a bit without access to Wings of Mercy. It might not be ideal for Aether Raids where the enemy formation is built like a porcupine and you cannot take a counterattack at all with a time limit on top, but for every other game mode, you generally can pick apart the enemy team at your leisure, or even just let your nuke take an enemy phase hit for easy modes like Tempest Trials.

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

Doing nothing for one round of combat for massive stat boosts is a small price to pay compared to requiring constant buff set ups and/or HP maintenance, and having high HP limits your mobility quite a bit without access to Wings of Mercy. It might not be ideal for Aether Raids where the enemy formation is built like a porcupine and you cannot take a counterattack at all with a time limit on top, but for every other game mode, you generally can pick apart the enemy team at your leisure, or even just let your nuke take an enemy phase hit for easy modes like Tempest Trials.

Getting +2/3 at best is not a "massive stat boost", especially when the trade is being down -9/-9 for the first round of combat. Additionally, you're not even guaranteed to lose enough HP on the first round of combat to activate the skill, such as when attacking a unit that is unable to counterattack or when your unit has above average bulk.

Setting up buffs is trivial with Menace or Rouse (assuming again that you have the resources since I'm already making the same assumption for Ideal), and maintaining full HP is largely unnecessary unless you absolutely need to have the extra +2/+2. Buffs also don't have to be stat-based buffs, and you can get them from plenty of other sources such as Guidance from Orders skills or Harmonized Catria, Null Panic from Ashera, Tempest from Armor March, etc., in case you're running something like Time's Pulse that doesn't buff yourself. And unlike losing HP, setting up buffs is something that is entirely under the player's control.

In high-tier Arena, a single unit typically only fights two rounds of combat at the maximum, so having a non-functional A skill for the first round of combat is just not good. It's only in longer maps with reinforcements where Brazen skills are active long enough to make up for doing nothing for the first round of combat.

In easy game modes, two or three points of Atk and Spd don't matter for fast attackers. Heck, you can get away with running Swift Sparrow 2 just fine. The argument between Ideal and Brazen or anything else is entirely moot in easy game modes.

[XRay]

30 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Getting +2/3 at best is not a "massive stat boost", especially when the trade is being down -9/-9 for the first round of combat. Additionally, you're not even guaranteed to lose enough HP on the first round of combat to activate the skill, such as when attacking a unit that is unable to counterattack or when your unit has above average bulk.

Setting up buffs is trivial with Menace or Rouse (assuming again that you have the resources since I'm already making the same assumption for Ideal), and maintaining full HP is largely unnecessary unless you absolutely need to have the extra +2/+2. Buffs also don't have to be stat-based buffs, and you can get them from plenty of other sources such as Guidance from Orders skills or Harmonized Catria, Null Panic from Ashera, Tempest from Armor March, etc., in case you're running something like Time's Pulse that doesn't buff yourself. And unlike losing HP, setting up buffs is something that is entirely under the player's control.

In high-tier Arena, a single unit typically only fights two rounds of combat at the maximum, so having a non-functional A skill for the first round of combat is just not good. It's only in longer maps with reinforcements where Brazen skills are active long enough to make up for doing nothing for the first round of combat.

In easy game modes, two or three points of Atk and Spd don't matter for fast attackers. Heck, you can get away with running Swift Sparrow 2 just fine. The argument between Ideal and Brazen or anything else is entirely moot in easy game modes.

Rouse has positioning requirements, and that is not ideal in a player phase team when you want to have as much flexibility as possible when you position your team after extracting nukes from enemy range, especially on more terrain restricted maps. And having positioning requirements that requires no adjacency is not great in my opinion because of Dancers/Singers having a high chance of being next to nukes.

As for Menace, it is fine in most maps, but against some maps or team compositions, it is not great. Some maps start you off really far from the enemy team, so you might as well run Savage Blow or Smoke and pick an enemy that can trigger Brazen and Wings of Mercy. Menace is risky to use against cav line and high mobility teams who can quickly cover that distance.

In high tier competitive Arena, depending on who you use, you may have to use a non functioning Duel skill in the A slot anyways, so it does not matter how good a skill is performance wise if you cannot pick it because you will drop a tier. In less competitive tiers where scoring is less of a factor, I can see Ideal being used there, but that is just for ranged units, as melee units are better off running Surge Sparrow for healing so they get enough bulk to continue with further rounds of combat if necessary.

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

Rouse has positioning requirements, and that is not ideal in a player phase team when you want to have as much flexibility as possible when you position your team after extracting nukes from enemy range, especially on more terrain restricted maps. And having positioning requirements that requires no adjacency is not great in my opinion because of Dancers/Singers having a high chance of being next to nukes.

As for Menace, it is fine in most maps, but against some maps or team compositions, it is not great. Some maps start you off really far from the enemy team, so you might as well run Savage Blow or Smoke and pick an enemy that can trigger Brazen and Wings of Mercy. Menace is risky to use against cav line and high mobility teams who can quickly cover that distance.

Then use any of the other methods I listed to get a buff on your unit. It's really not that hard, especially now that we're getting status effects for literally everything.

 

1 hour ago, XRay said:

In high tier competitive Arena, depending on who you use, you may have to use a non functioning Duel skill in the A slot anyways, so it does not matter how good a skill is performance wise if you cannot pick it because you will drop a tier.

That's great, but we're comparing Ideal to Brazen here. But I'll pretend that wasn't the case.

If you're playing competitively in the Arena and have the resources to be giving out Ideal skills, you're likely capable of running a team with two Pair Up Legendary Heroes who definitely won't be running Duel skills and therefore could potentially be running Ideal (or Catch). Of the currently existing Pair Up Legendary Heroes, the only ones who don't optimally run an Ideal or Catch skill are Corrin, Seliph, and Fae, who run a Distant Counter skill, Julia and Lilina, who run Life and Death, and potentially Caeda and Chrom, who have the option to run Ideal/Catch or a Counter skill. That leaves 13 of the 20 Pair Up Legendary Heroes who definitely should run Ideal/Catch and the aforementioned 2 that have the option to do so optimally.

If you're in Tier 20.5, there is zero reason to need to run Duel unless your team core is undermerged.

If you're in Tier 21, you're probably spending enough money on this game to afford a +10 Duo Hero as your third team slot, which lets you run a skill set focused around performance instead of score. Or you're just using an armor.

Unless you're playing favorites, there is little reason to run Duel at the top of the Arena. If you're using current-generation units, anything other than ranged cavalry is no more than one scoring bucket below the Duel 4 bucket anyways (physical ranged cavalry is two buckets below and magic ranged cavalry is three) and has too little to gain from running Duel. Even as far back as CYL 3, melee infantry are only one bucket below the Duel 4 bucket.

The units that Duel is useful on are already numbered.

 

1 hour ago, XRay said:

In less competitive tiers where scoring is less of a factor, I can see Ideal being used there, but that is just for ranged units, as melee units are better off running Surge Sparrow for healing so they get enough bulk to continue with further rounds of combat if necessary.

Surge Sparrow is inferior to Atk/Spd Ideal on Sweep (don't take damage), high-HP Desperation (usually don't take damage), and Galeforce units (don't have a damaging Special). It's also generally inferior on dual-phase units and units that occasionally engage in combat on enemy phase, as Ideal is active on enemy phase whereas Surge Sparrow is not. Also on some of the frailer units that are actually at risk of dying to units with more middling Atk stats and would prefer not to heal out of Desperation range.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Ice Dragon

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Delthea + Maria Harmonic unit? Everyone has been speculating for a year now that Maria and/or Michalis will be on the next bunny/spring banner. And if a Valentia character is also on it and is part of the Harmonic, pairing Delthea with Maria makes some degree of sense. It's a very loose connection but they could bond over their older brothers. I think it's just as strong (or, weak) of a connection as Ninian + Tiki and Myrrh + Nah with their "we're dragons!" connections.

Edited March 3, 2022 by Fire Emblem Fan

[Naoshi]

the last two spring banners had dragons so might as well add that.

[Tybrosion]

52 minutes ago, Naoshi said:

the last two spring banners had dragons so might as well add that.

At the risk of this aging horribly by the end of the week (it wouldn't be the first time anyways), Spring Nowi is almost completely inevitable. In fact, I could see her and Delthea being the Harmonic.

If the banner lineup looked something like this, I'd be pretty happy (minus the part where Faye gets another alt):

Nowi & Delthea (Green Breath Armored)
Soleil (Red Bow Cavalry)
Faye (Blue Tome Flying)
Kliff (Colorless Tome Cavalry; 4* Focus)
Caeldori (Blue Bow Flying; TT)

Fun fact about Valentia: all of its tome units are infantry. Besides the game that has just five units total, Shadows of Valentia is the only game with no tome cavs, tome fliers or tome armors.

[XRay]

3 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Then use any of the other methods I listed to get a buff on your unit. It's really not that hard, especially now that we're getting status effects for literally everything.

Catria: Azure Wing Pair and Ashera take up an entire team slot, and they are also not the best support units to lug around in my opinion, as player phase teams want as much Dancers/Singers as possible, and enemy phase teams prefer Drive supports offering damage reduction or Breath/Guard.

If you can afford to run Mythics in Arena, you are better off just running Mythic Dancers/Singers with Duel skills for ease and convenience.

6 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Surge Sparrow is inferior to Atk/Spd Ideal on Sweep (don't take damage), high-HP Desperation (usually don't take damage), and Galeforce units (don't have a damaging Special). It's also generally inferior on dual-phase units and units that occasionally engage in combat on enemy phase, as Ideal is active on enemy phase whereas Surge Sparrow is not. Also on some of the frailer units that are actually at risk of dying to units with more middling Atk stats and would prefer not to heal out of Desperation range.

Unless you are using Firesweep (which only a few units have on their exclusive Weapons), Sweepers only receive partial protection (which also only a few units have on their Weapon), and dragons are not uncommon, so having Surge Sparrow to regain HP is a good idea.

High-HP Desperation should still run Surge Sparrow to maintain their Desperation just in case something happens and they take a hit. Units with non-HP-dependent Desperation can probably go without, but the only units I recall that has it are Tsubasa, Jill, and Naesala: Sea's Shadow, and out of those three, only Jill's is unconditional.

In Arena, I would not run Desperation. Frenzy and Dive Bomb score better; the former's damage reduction significantly increases bulk and the HP range gels better with Wings of Mercy, and the latter wants high HP that Surge Sparrow will help ensure stays topped up. Cavalry do not have access to any kind of high scoring Desperation, but they do have access to Flow Guard, and that helps them avoid some Ruptured Sky and Blue Flame exploding into their face.

[Ice Dragon]

4 hours ago, XRay said:

Catria: Azure Wing Pair and Ashera take up an entire team slot, and they are also not the best support units to lug around in my opinion, as player phase teams want as much Dancers/Singers as possible, and enemy phase teams prefer Drive supports offering damage reduction or Breath/Guard.

If you can afford to run Mythics in Arena, you are better off just running Mythic Dancers/Singers with Duel skills for ease and convenience.

You say this as if dancers can't run things like Ground Orders or Tactic skills. Legendary Azura typically should run a Tactic skill to help grab an extra point of buffs after she dances. Also, you literally can't fit more than one dancer on an Arena team if you're running two Legendary Heroes except during Water season.

Also, this is the Arena where Rally+ skills are commonly used for scoring. And unlike your argument to use Frenzy or Dive-Bomb over Desperation for scoring, Rally+ skills are actually a significant score boost over movement Assist skills (worth 1.25 points per match over Resposition compared to 0.2 points per match for Frenzy/Dive-Bomb over Desperation).

Additionally, if you're running Duo Heroes (since they have built-in Duel effects, especially with recent ones reaching a massive 195), a large number of them apply a Bonus of some kind with their Duo skill.

And finally, as a reminder, these situations are only for the cases where you aren't already running Menace or Rouse. And as a further reminder, Smoke skills are rather underwhelming when compared to Menace and Rouse in the Arena outside of Galeforce teams (which have no use for Surge Sparrow).

 

Also, Ashera was obviously an Aether Raids suggestion, as that post was from before the topic focused in on the Arena.

 

4 hours ago, XRay said:

Unless you are using Firesweep (which only a few units have on their exclusive Weapons), Sweepers only receive partial protection (which also only a few units have on their Weapon), and dragons are not uncommon, so having Surge Sparrow to regain HP is a good idea.

Dragons are not uncommon, but there are better ways to deal with dragons than to just throw your Windsweep unit at it. Taking out dragons is literally not their job (yes, even for Brave Alm). You have three other team slots in the Arena, and a significant portion of Legendary Heroes are kitted out to have favorable match-ups against dragons.

 

4 hours ago, XRay said:

High-HP Desperation should still run Surge Sparrow to maintain their Desperation just in case something happens and they take a hit. Units with non-HP-dependent Desperation can probably go without, but the only units I recall that has it are Tsubasa, Jill, and Naesala: Sea's Shadow, and out of those three, only Jill's is unconditional.

Other than Dive-Bomb units, the only other melee units that have high-HP Desperation are Fallen Mareeta and Catherine, who can both run Frenzy to have unconditional Desperation, as Spurn doesn't work well with their weapons' effects.

 

4 hours ago, XRay said:

In Arena, I would not run Desperation. Frenzy and Dive Bomb score better; the former's damage reduction significantly increases bulk and the HP range gels better with Wings of Mercy, and the latter wants high HP that Surge Sparrow will help ensure stays topped up. Cavalry do not have access to any kind of high scoring Desperation, but they do have access to Flow Guard, and that helps them avoid some Ruptured Sky and Blue Flame exploding into their face.

I can grant Surge Sparrow for Dive-Bomb, but the stronger the unit is, the less likely they'll fail to kill in one round of combat and the more they'd prefer the extra 2 Atk and Spd from Catch.

Units running Frenzy for Wings of Mercy shouldn't be running Surge Sparrow to begin with. Additionally, units running any Dodge skill have a better argument for being left to take a round of combat on enemy phase, where Surge Sparrow has no effect. Even if it means losing the extra 2 Atk and Spd afterwards, Ideal is still even on stats compared to Surge Sparrow. And as alluded to earlier, the scoring benefit of Frenzy over Desperation is minimal, being 0.2 points per match or 1 point over an entire run, which is less than the score resolution (as you only gain points in multiples of 2).

I can maybe grant Flow Guard, but not letting the opponent attack at all is typically a better way to deal with enemy Special skills. I'm still not completely sold on Flow Guard for faster units, who can still be vulnerable to dying to normal attacks from stronger opponents. I don't have as much of a problem with Flow Guard on slower units, though it then has competition with Lull Atk/Def, where buff nullification is rather valuable in the Arena.

[Naoshi]

Spoiler

Silhouette for spring banner

She does look like Delthea.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Naoshi

[XRay]

32 minutes ago, Naoshi said:

  Hide contents

Silhouette for spring banner

She does look like Delthea.

I assume that is a lance unit.

I know there are two heads due to the bunny ears, but there also seems like a third head without bunny ears in the middle. If it is a head, I guess this will be a Duo unit like Palla: Sisterly Trio, unless they allow a Harmonized Hero to represent three games or something. If it is not a head, I am not sure what it could be, so I will just throw a random guess and say it could be a really oblong egg.

[Tybrosion]

22 minutes ago, XRay said:

I assume that is a lance unit.

I know there are two heads due to the bunny ears, but there also seems like a third head without bunny ears in the middle. If it is a head, I guess this will be a Duo unit like Palla: Sisterly Trio, unless they allow a Harmonized Hero to represent three games or something. If it is not a head, I am not sure what it could be, so I will just throw a random guess and say it could be a really oblong egg.

The silhouettes aren't that close to each other in the in-game notification:

Spoiler

As for me, I'm very confident in guessing that this is Delthea and Luthier.

[Ice Dragon]

Is it weird that the first thing I thought of looking at the silhouette was G-Max Garbodor?

[Xenomata]

9 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Is it weird that the first thing I thought of looking at the silhouette was G-Max Garbodor?

I-uh-um-hm... let's just hope that doesn't become a commentary on the units themselves... (control the pokenerd... control the pokenerd...)

The image that Naoshi posted looks different from the one in-game, which is throwing me off. In fact I want to say that Naoshi's image is fake because of how much cleaner the thrid head is in comparison to the other two... but anyway, the two bodies who are consistent between the two images are most definitely Delthea and Luthier. Which worries me, because Lutheir is Luthier, and Delthea... is also Delthea. Both of whom are on a spring banner. With bunnies.

...I'm starting to think maybe asking for Nowi was asking for too much...

Edited March 5, 2022 by Xenomata

[XRay]

30 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

The silhouettes aren't that close to each other in the in-game notification:

 

In the in game picture though, there is no third head. In my opinion, the distance between Delthea and Lutheir seems to be the same in both pictures, but the third head in the middle in the other picture makes them all to seem closer.

[Tybrosion]

13 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

...I'm starting to think maybe asking for Nowi was asking for too much...

Don't worry, she'll be the lead of the Harmonic. 

Maybe that'll come true if I keep saying it. That's how it works, right?

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I'm confident that Delthea is gonna be on this banner, but that silhouette looks like it has pointy ears? Are we sure that isn't Nowi?

[Humanoid]

So, um... I assumed Heroes Journey was just like Lost Lore and I sent off a couple of heroes and waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing happened for a full day.

Yeah I missed that gigantic Select Stage button at the bottom of the screen. Guess those orbs are gone forever.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Humanoid