"Ask Fire Emblem Heroes Questions and Get Them Answered Here" Thread

[MaskedAmpharos]

3 minutes ago, DraceEmpressa said:

Is +def -res Soren worth raising ?

It's a decent enough nature for a Gronnraven/T-Adept set

[Astellius]

4 minutes ago, Rosetta said:

Is -atk/+def Reinhardt worth using, and worth sacrificing a 5-star unit for Death Blow 3? I have Hone Cavalry characters to support him.

I already have a +atk Bunny Lucina with BlarBlade+, but sometimes she just can't reach far enough and she can't deal with high speed bow units.

Yes, I have a -Atk Reinhardt, I use him with Death Blow 3, and he's incredible, absolutely one of my best units. Unbuffed, with Death Blow 2, he kills 50 characters, but DB3 lets him kill 66. With Hone Cav, it rises to 87 and 103 respectively. So DB3 + Hone Cav allows him to kill a huge majority of the cast, from a distance. His coverage is amazing. With a dancer, he can kill 2 people, or attack and retreat, with the dancer left in a position of safety. Reposition and Draw Back also help him kill a character while everyone remains out of range of the enemy. It's a noble cause to sacrifice a 5* Hawkeye for.

[Zeo]

On 6/2/2017 at 7:19 AM, Rafiel's Aria said:

@ZeoNaw. It's cool, bro. I ask a lot of questions too. I can't answer all of yours because I don't have the right experience. But I'll see what I can do. 

1.) For Horse Emblem, I would say keep Xander because distant counter rocks. I'd work on getting Camus to 4 stars because he'll give you a horse buff without inheritance and distant counter! Next, you need a good green unit. I saw work on Cecilia. See if you can get her Gronblade+ because she'll eat up those buffs and nuke everything. (At least that's what I've been told. Right now, Ursula does that with Barblade+ and it's LOVELY.) I'd say Ursula could also fill the last spot on your team. 

For buffs, I gave Xander Fortify Cavalry because he doesn't REALLY need the extra DEF. And I gave Hone Cavalry to both Peri and Titania who switch out. You could probably give both Cecilia and Ursula Hone Cavalry so they buff each other as well as Xander. I haven't used Ward Cavalry however, so I can't say much about it. And like I said, Camus comes with Goad, so you won't need to change that! 

Also, if you're really hurting for a "healer," Ardent Sacrifice isn't bad. If you have Desperation on Ursula, she can use Ardent Sacrifice to heal an ally and get herself down into Desperation range. 

I'm going to take your advice on this. I might have to sacrifice some feathers to get Gunter to 4 stars but my Cecilia is neutral like my Ursula. I don't know if that hurts her, I have other Cecilias, she's only good in Cavalry emblem but this is the point. Xander's getting Fortify and I'll give hone to the mages and Camus gets goad. If I find an opening then maybe I'll give someone ward like my 5 star Cain or Frederick but I don't see him replacing Xander or Frederick Replacing Cecilia if she gets Nino's tome, that's a pretty big investment though so Fred may stand in for her.

5.) This may very well be your only chance to pull for Bride Lyn. This is a seasonal banner, so she may show up again next year or not at all, but these characters likely won't be added into the main pool. Consider how much you want her. You could always wait until they announce the next banner. That will give you about 24 hours to pull for her. It'll also give you about a week and a half to think about how much you want her. 

Then I'm going to reach for the sky, whatever happens happens.

6.) I love making healer builds. :3 Is your Wrys the free one or a pulled one? If he's pulled, what's his boon/bane? Wrys gets kind of shafted in terms of stats. He's painfully slow with low ATK and meh defense. But his HP and RES are kind of ridiculous. Healers are really limited in terms of what they can inherit. You're left with the +3 skills and defiant skills mostly. I say play on his strengths. Give him RES+3. If he's +SPD, he may benefit a little bit from SPD+3, but honestly, he shouldn't be seeing battle. (I haven't run the calculations, so I may need to double check that.) For C skill, it really depends on what your team needs. You can't go wrong with Hone skills, but if your team already has enough of those, Fortify DEF isn't bad choice. However, I'm wary of Fortify because it means he needs to be closer to battle. Giving him a Threaten skill might be fun as well if you're into debuffs. 

As far as Wrys goes, his kit is great but his stats are not. As a healer, he gets the job done. He's also not a bad mage tank. I really like how his staff messes with SPD as well. But in combat, he's questionable. If I may ask, what other healers do you have? 

*4

+atk/-hp Maria
+hp/-def Sakura
+res/-hp Lucius
+spd/-atk Wrys

*3
+res/-atk Serra
+def/-res Lissa
+def/-hp Lissa
+spd/-def Azama
+hp/-atk Azama

Serra was my first healer and probably my favorite. I was going to use her and stick with her but Wrys was my first 4 star healer so I thought that would be a wiser choise and it did because rehabilitate is far better than anything Serra has. As far as stat spread goes Sakura and Maria's spreads are pretty great but the -def and -hp banes kill it for me as one hit is all it takes to take them out and Wrys typically survives at least one hit and I'm used to that luxury. Serra's spread is pretty nice but feathers are needed for so many other things so 4 starring her is hard to imagine. Plus I'm used to Wrys skills so any healer I swapped out for him would have to get his skills, which means I'm sacrificing slow or live to serve which I use frequently at this point.

Responses in red bold.

On 6/2/2017 at 0:20 PM, Bartozio said:

1) I pretty much agree with Rafiel's Aria, Xander, Camus, Ursula and Cecelia should be a great team. If you can't get Gronblade for Cecilia, she can work pretty well with TA and raven as well.

Agreed, I may do blades for them both but that's a ways off. I only have one Odin anyways.

2) Bride Cordelia has a much better offence spread then Takumi, especially if she's +atk. Get a brave bow and either death blow or Life and death on her and you have an incredible nuke. There's absolutly no reason to merge both her and Takumi, you should pick one (preferebly Cordelia, but her personal skill is pretty nice), and use the other for skill inheritance. Rally attack speed is a great skill, but there's no particular character who is best with it. You can give it to anyone, give them fortify defence and the fortify res seal, and they become the perfect buffbot. B!Cordelia could even do this herself, but every turn you're boosting someone, you're not nuking something with her. It could be nice for one of the askr trio, so they can be usefull as a bonus unit in the arena.

B!Cordelia is likely the better merge choice, that kind of is bittersweet though as if I were to make a blade emblem team then Rally ATK/SPD is pretty mandatory, but who's so say something like B!Cordelia/Nino/Tharja/Linde couldn't be a thing? In the meantime I have a great nuke so I'll merge her. I may just merge Takumi as well though as I can't think of a single character that wants close counter over something else. Though maybe I could play around with something like 2 Takumi's on an arena defense team.

3) The only thing I can think of is a -raven + TA build. In mage land one usually becomes either a nuke (but pretty much any set you try is something Nino can do better if you go this route) or uses a raven build. Soren's defence is pretty bad, but fury gives him at least 20 defence, and TA will just hae to carry him from there. I know some people who didn't want to turn their Soren into a Nino light used a similar set, but I don't know whether it would work great for your nature. I figured I'd at least share it though.

I temporarily have Lancebreaker on him which is nice but it probably only really matters vs Effie. Green Tomebreaker seems like a pretty nice choice form something different as he can handle Linde for the mose part but Nino and Julia give him issues. I'll figure something out for him. But it doesn't seem like a point to a Raven build if you do the same thing for Cecilia. I'll make him unique some kind of way, even if he's not as good as Nino he's still +ATK and +1 with an unusual 34 speed. Something can be done to make him special, if nothing else he could be superior to say, any Nino that's not +ATK or +SPD if you were to give him her tome.

I don't have much to add for the other questions, so I'll leave it at that.

 

[Rafiel's Aria]

@Zeo

1.) Neutral's not bad. Like a lot of units, Cecilia likes +ATK and +SPD, but she's not unusable without it. I've been warned before about -SPD on her because she is INCREDIBLY slow. I have a lot of trouble using her without horse buffs simply because she really relies on destroying things in one shot.The biggest reason I prefer her over someone like Frederick is her high RES. A lot of the "great" cavs have non-existent RES. I try to balance my team with two units with nice RES and two units with nice DEF. Both mages have excellent RES. Xander has some insane DEF, and Camus's isn't anything to turn your nose up at either. Cain's more balanced in terms of both. I recently got a 5 star one, and he has served me well. ^^ Frederick has nice DEF and ATK, but he's so painfully slow and his RES is just abysmal, so I can normally just use my healer to take him out in battle. 

I don't see anything wrong with spreading out your horse buffs. ^^ It gives you some variety to work with. 

 

6.) Of your 4 star healers, I would say that's a good Maria. She's a VERY fast healer which means she likely won't get doubled...ever. A +ATK boon is kind of useless without Wrathful Staff, but she could potentially be very useful as a "grey mage" if you were to ever get that skill. Unfortunately right now it's 5* exclusive on Genny. And Genny is kind of an awesome healer, so I wouldn't sacrifice my only Genny for Maria. I've also found that Lucius is a great healer, but I've got some major bias... Once again, he can function as a "grey mage" with Wrathful Staff. He's got decent speed. His attack is nice too even without an ATK boon. But +RES gives him some ridiculously high RES. Not as high as some other healers, but he likely won't take much damage from mages. (However, he has the absolute worst defense out of all of the healers. XD) Serra's not bad either, and if you like her enough as a character, bringing her to four stars isn't a bad idea. Her stats are pretty adequate across the board. +RES gives her a good chance to survive against mages, but I think for an optimal build, Serra really wants +SPD. 

[AuraGuardianR]

I'm having a tough time deciding what set to run on my Bridelia, because as powerful as the LaD set is, the -Spd really hinders her effectiveness compared to the Death Blow set. Both sets lose to -raven TA units, so I'm not really looking at those, but these calcs all have the Fury 3 override.

I'm leaning towards the Death Blow set because it means all I have to do is pull a Klein and I can get Brave Bow+ and Death Blow 3, as opposed to 5*ing my Gordin and Effie separately. Both of these are with the offensive buffs from my Ephraim (+3Atk/+4Spd), who will pretty much always be on my team anyway, so I'm not worried about that. The LaD set is assuming Desperation is active (26HP), though looking now it doesn't seem to change her matchups much, losing a win against Xander, and the loss with RobinM becomes a draw (Though this is without TA3, so it would still be a loss against standard RobinM anyway).

I seem to have actually convinced myself that the DB3 set is better while writing this, but second opinions are still appreciated.

(I don't have any of the fodder required for these builds yet anyway other than Luna which she's already learned, so it's not like there's a rush.)

[Marcodian_Elite]

I was looking through some of my recent pulls and I missed that I got a -hp +spd Setsuna, am I right in thinking it would be worth my while to level here to 5* and kit her out with a decent S.I.build ( I see there are 3 recommended ones - "quadsuna", "brave'swordbreaker" and "brave/lnd") with quadsuna having the recommended IV of -hp/def +spd, if I level her up she should be better than my current best colourless which is a 5* klein -spd,+hp, which would work well for S.I because I could pass Brave bow+ down.

the next recommended is luna for her special which I can get from my -hp fredrick I got yesterday

 

I cant get Life or death just yet - I do have the units for it but they are 4* and not 5* yet (working on getting the feathers for it)

 

and then desperation 

So in your opinion would you recommend doing this? atm I pretty much just use one of each of the strongest colour I have and looks like Setsuna would be a good upgrade over Klein.

 

[MrSmokestack]

@Marcodian_Elite If you're only other archer is Klein, then that's all the more reason to not build up Setsuna. Takumi and Jeorge also run a Brave Bow set better than her simply because their base Atk is much higher. Setsuna is also almost completely neutered by Fury and defensive buffs, which can make her performance fluctuate greatly. I wouldn't recommend it.

[Marcodian_Elite]

Just now, MrSmokestack said:

@Marcodian_Elite If you're only other archer is Klein, then that's all the more reason to not build up Setsuna. Takumi and Jeorge also run a Brave Bow set better than her simply because their base Atk is much higher. Setsuna is also almost completely neutered by Fury and defensive buffs, which can make her performance fluctuate greatly. I wouldn't recommend it.

Well damn it lol I thought here having a favourable IV would have made her better than what I'm using - see this is why I ask for opinions before I go and do something stupid lol thanks.

[Carter]

Do the Wind Boost skills only activate when the unit initiates combat, or will at always be active as long as you have at least 3 more HP?

[MrSmokestack]

31 minutes ago, Carter said:

Do the Wind Boost skills only activate when the unit initiates combat, or will at always be active as long as you have at least 3 more HP?

"At the start of combat" is the only check the skill does before applying its effect; whether or not said unit takes damage during combat that would cause their HP to not be 3 more than the opponent during combat makes no difference.

[Rezzy]

I'm thinking of how to build my Camus for my Horse Emblem Team. @Arcanite @MaskedAmpharos @MrSmokestack

So far, I've just settled on Bonfire for his special and likely Swap, because I love Swap.

 

For A: I'm not too sure, maybe Vanilla +Atk or Fury.

For B: I think Quick Riposte would be unnecessary, since he'll be sitting on 39 Speed with Hone Cavalry, or even 42, if I give him Fury.  I was thinking of Vantage.

For C: He does already come with Goad Cavalry, which I may very well keep.  The only thing I might change it to would be Hone Cavalry, instead, because I run Blade Ursula.

[MrSmokestack]

@Rezzy Looks pretty good so far. Mine went with Fury / Vantage also, mostly because my Xander has QR already and is better suited to tanking anyway.

My Camus runs Reposition as his assist since Xander already has Swap. Different assists give your team more flexibility.

As for the C Passive, I don't particularly like Goad / Ward on cavalry, though it does work much better with armor teams. My Camus tends to stick next to Xander for his Hone Cavalry buffs, so Fortify Cavalry on Camus completes the symbiosis. How are your buffs distributed on Ursula and Titania? 2 Hone on the "tank" units / 2 Fort on the "offensive" units is the most optimal.

[Arcanite]

9 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

For A: I'm not too sure, maybe Vanilla +Atk or Fury.

For B: I think Quick Riposte would be unnecessary, since he'll be sitting on 39 Speed with Hone Cavalry, or even 42, if I give him Fury.  I was thinking of Vantage.

For C: He does already come with Goad Cavalry, which I may very well keep.  The only thing I might change it to would be Hone Cavalry, instead, because I run Blade Ursula.

I'm not as much an expert on cavalry as the others, but for the B the general consensus is that QR is better. For the A skill, he benefits A LOT from Fury, since he's getting 36 speed as well as some extra bulk for Bonfire. So if you have the fury fodder, you'll want fury.

The C is where it gets more complicated though. It depends in what your other cavalry members have, but just remember that the Hone and fortify skills are pretty busted and if you're going to have ward or goad, it's either one or the other.

[Rezzy]

11 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

@Rezzy Looks pretty good so far. Mine went with Fury / Vantage also, mostly because my Xander has QR already and is better suited to tanking anyway.

My Camus runs Reposition as his assist since Xander already has Swap. Different assists give your team more flexibility.

As for the C Passive, I don't particularly like Goad / Ward on cavalry, though it does work much better with armor teams. My Camus tends to stick next to Xander for his Hone Cavalry buffs, so Fortify Cavalry on Camus completes the symbiosis. How are your buffs distributed on Ursula and Titania? 2 Hone on the "tank" units / 2 Fort on the "offensive" units is the most optimal.

Right now, I have Hone on Titania and Abel, and Fortify on Ursula and Xander.  I like having 2 of each, so everybody can get both buffs, so that would mean Camus would get Hone to replace Abel.

8 minutes ago, Arcanite said:

I'm not as much an expert on cavalry as the others, but for the B the general consensus is that QR is better. For the A skill, he benefits A LOT from Fury, since he's getting 36 speed as well as some extra bulk for Bonfire. So if you have the fury fodder, you'll want fury.

The C is where it gets more complicated though. It depends in what your other cavalry members have, but just remember that the Hone and fortify skills are pretty busted and if you're going to have ward or goad, it's either one or the other.

I generally prefer Hone/Fortify over Goad/Ward, in part because they help Blade, but I like getting the buffs at the beginning of the turn, too.

[LuxSpes]

Wanted to ask, which nature is better for a young Tiki: +HP/-Def or +Atk/-Spd?

I'm personally leaning towards the second one, but I wanted more input before merging them.

[MrSmokestack]

2 minutes ago, LuxSpes said:

Wanted to ask, which nature is better for a young Tiki: +HP/-Def or +Atk/-Spd?

I'm personally leaning towards the second one, but I wanted more input before merging them.

I'm thinking +HP -Def actually, since her bulk with that spread is more comparable to neutral. Young Tiki's Spd is also one of her main niches as a breath unit, having the highest after Ninian and Corrin (F). With -Spd she can't even double neutral Hector.

[LuxSpes]

1 minute ago, MrSmokestack said:

I'm thinking +HP -Def actually, since her bulk with that spread is more comparable to neutral. Young Tiki's Spd is also one of her main niches as a breath unit, having the highest after Ninian and Corrin (F). With -Spd she can't even double neutral Hector.

How would you recommend I build her? Because with a Fury/QR build, the +Atk/-Spd performs better than the +HP/-Def and I haven't seen other builds for her.

And now that I think of it, Tiki!A pulls off the Fury/QR build better anyway, so it would be interesting to build Tiki!Y a different way.

[MrSmokestack]

12 minutes ago, LuxSpes said:

How would you recommend I build her? Because with a Fury/QR build, the +Atk/-Spd performs better than the +HP/-Def and I haven't seen other builds for her.

And now that I think of it, Tiki!A pulls off the Fury/QR build better anyway, so it would be interesting to build Tiki!Y a different way.

That was pretty much the reason I didn't suggest +Atk -Spd.

As for Tiki-Young, she has a considerable +5 Res lead over Tiki-Adult aside from the aforementioned Spd. With Triangle Adept and either QR / G Tomebreaker, she makes a solid Julia check for Dragon Emblem teams. Other than that, I'm not very familiar with either Tiki so that's all I can suggest.

EDIT: Also, Lightning Breath.

Edited June 4, 2017 by MrSmokestack

[Astellius]

1 hour ago, Rezzy said:

I'm thinking of how to build my Camus for my Horse Emblem Team. @Arcanite @MaskedAmpharos @MrSmokestack

So far, I've just settled on Bonfire for his special and likely Swap, because I love Swap.

 

For A: I'm not too sure, maybe Vanilla +Atk or Fury.

For B: I think Quick Riposte would be unnecessary, since he'll be sitting on 39 Speed with Hone Cavalry, or even 42, if I give him Fury.  I was thinking of Vantage.

For C: He does already come with Goad Cavalry, which I may very well keep.  The only thing I might change it to would be Hone Cavalry, instead, because I run Blade Ursula.

I'm running Fury, Vantage, and Goad Cavalry on my Camus, and I think it's a great build. Fury is really good on him, and it makes QR pretty pointless for him. There's not too much he's not doubling with 42 speed. I find Vantage to be really nice on him, since he can one shot a lot of mages, and Fury helps put him in Vantage range. His Res is pretty low, so Vantage really helps him against mages.

As for Goad vs. Hone, I personally like having Goad available. My Horse Emblem team has a Gronnblade Cecilia, and I use 2 Hones, 1 Fortify, and 1 Goad. I don't have much difficulty keeping Cecilia fully buffed when she needs to be, and I rarely find myself needing everyone to have the Fortify buffs on at all points in time. Xander's def is super high as it is, and Reinhardt shouldn't be sucking up hits. It might be different for you, since you have Titania instead of Reinhardt, making your team more geared towards physical hits. Having Goad increases my offensive potential and flexibility by allowing everyone (except Camus) to reach +10 Atk/Spd, and thus they can ORKO more people, and it's useful if someone had to break from the team for a turn. Of course, with that said, I don't see how you really could go wrong either way, all these pony tricks are broken. Most of it comes down to preference for the sort of set-ups you like.

[MaskedAmpharos]

@Rezzy I'm personally running my Camus with Fury/Vantage/Fortify 

[MaskedAmpharos]

@Rezzy I'm personally running my Camus with Fury/Vantage/Fortify 

[GaleforceAbuse]

For Bride!Cordelia, is +ATK/-HP or +SPD/-RES better for a Brave Bow/LaD build? I'm personally leaning towards the +ATK, but the -HP means that she absolutely cannot take a hit (33 HP and 14 DEF is awful) and has to rely on Reciprocal Aid/Ardent Sacrifice to get into Desperation range. I could run a breaker in place of desperation, but there's not much she really needs on that front (DC units she doesn't kill in two hits will generally kill her back; Swordbreaker doesn't really help since they generally OHKO her, etc.) Might as well take the Desperation (if using +ATK) and pair it with some hone speed. Looking at matchups (neutral IVs/with Fury/with +SPD/with both/with DC), it seems like ATK is generally better (except against DC units, but you can play around that with Threaten Defense, for example.) Still, any other advice/considerations?

[Hawk King]

24 minutes ago, GaleforceAbuse said:

For Bride!Cordelia, is +ATK/-HP or +SPD/-RES better for a Brave Bow/LaD build? I'm personally leaning towards the +ATK, but the -HP means that she absolutely cannot take a hit (33 HP and 14 DEF is awful) and has to rely on Reciprocal Aid/Ardent Sacrifice to get into Desperation range. I could run a breaker in place of desperation, but there's not much she really needs on that front (DC units she doesn't kill in two hits will generally kill her back; Swordbreaker doesn't really help since they generally OHKO her, etc.) Might as well take the Desperation (if using +ATK) and pair it with some hone speed. Looking at matchups (neutral IVs/with Fury/with +SPD/with both/with DC), it seems like ATK is generally better (except against DC units, but you can play around that with Threaten Defense, for example.) Still, any other advice/considerations?

+Atk is typically better for her in most scenarios. She can't really take a hit either way, but you shouldn't need to expose her to taking any hits.

The nice thing about having -HP is that her first merge will give her +1 to Atk and Spd.

 

Personally, I think that her best nature is +Atk/-HP and her 2nd best is +Spd/-HP.

[Rezzy]

46 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

+Atk is typically better for her in most scenarios. She can't really take a hit either way, but you shouldn't need to expose her to taking any hits.

The nice thing about having -HP is that her first merge will give her +1 to Atk and Spd.

 

Personally, I think that her best nature is +Atk/-HP and her 2nd best is +Spd/-HP.

My Bridelia is -HP, and I think her merger gave her +1 to HP and Spd.

[MaskedAmpharos]

2 hours ago, GaleforceAbuse said:

For Bride!Cordelia, is +ATK/-HP or +SPD/-RES better for a Brave Bow/LaD build? I'm personally leaning towards the +ATK, but the -HP means that she absolutely cannot take a hit (33 HP and 14 DEF is awful) and has to rely on Reciprocal Aid/Ardent Sacrifice to get into Desperation range. I could run a breaker in place of desperation, but there's not much she really needs on that front (DC units she doesn't kill in two hits will generally kill her back; Swordbreaker doesn't really help since they generally OHKO her, etc.) Might as well take the Desperation (if using +ATK) and pair it with some hone speed. Looking at matchups (neutral IVs/with Fury/with +SPD/with both/with DC), it seems like ATK is generally better (except against DC units, but you can play around that with Threaten Defense, for example.) Still, any other advice/considerations?

I would go with +Atk