Special Heroes - Winter Dreamland

[GrandeRampel]

I'm very very happy with this banner. Not only we get another Lute alt, but we also get three more characters added to the game (Manuela, Ignatz, Artur) I said it before and I will say it again, this game will never have the entire FE cast unless they add a large number of units as seasonals and leave them in seasonal hell forever. I already made my peace with it and I honestly don't mind, because the most important thing is that all FE characters get a voice actor and modern art. Everything else is not that important (including good stats/skills).

[Othin]

25 minutes ago, GrandeRampel said:

I'm very very happy with this banner. Not only we get another Lute alt, but we also get three more characters added to the game (Manuela, Ignatz, Artur) I said it before and I will say it again, this game will never have the entire FE cast unless they add a large number of units as seasonals and leave them in seasonal hell forever. I already made my peace with it and I honestly don't mind, because the most important thing is that all FE characters get a voice actor and modern art. Everything else is not that important (including good stats/skills).

Yeah, this is pretty much my thinking. Regular versions are even better, and seasonal introductions feel a lot less significant if the character in question gets a regular version later, but they're still doing a great job of padding out the roster regardless. And these are also all solid picks. Ignatz seemed likely to get introduced through a seasonal and he'd been an odd one out for a while, while Manuela was another notable 3H omission and arguably the only other big Academy omission so maybe now War Arc will become the standard for future 3H banners. Artur was a surprise but a welcome one, I love FE8 and I'm always a fan of rounding out early casts since the characters feel so fundamental to the game.

[FailWood]

Ignatz joining means all of Three Houses's students are in Heroes, and Manuela joining means all of Three Houses's (playable) women are in Heroes.  The only playable characters from Three Houses remaining who aren't yet in Heroes are Hanneman, Alois, Gilbert, and Cyril.  I think it's safe to say that none of them are getting in (aside from some of them being part of Gatekeeper's attack animation), as none of them are largely popular, and 3 of them are older men.

[Tybrosion]

1 hour ago, GrandeRampel said:

I said it before and I will say it again, this game will never have the entire FE cast unless they add a large number of units as seasonals and leave them in seasonal hell forever.

This game was never going to have the full roster regardless because that was never one of IS's goals here.

If it was truly a goal, then IS wouldn't have added 30 Three Houses units just this year while leaving Thracia with just 25 units overall (and that just accounts for 17 different characters after factoring alts, pirate Lifis not included, out).

[GrandeRampel]

2 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

This game was never going to have the full roster regardless because that was never one of IS's goals here.

If it was truly a goal, then IS wouldn't have added 30 Three Houses units just this year while leaving Thracia with just 25 units overall (and that just accounts for 17 different characters after factoring alts, pirate Lifis not included, out).

That's true but what I meant was that the game would have ended with less of the overall roster represented if not for this trick. If Winter Artur was Winter Seth or something it is very likely that we would have never gotten a single Artur in the entire lifespan of this game.

[FailWood]

39 minutes ago, Othin said:

And these are also all solid picks. Ignatz seemed likely to get introduced through a seasonal and he'd been an odd one out for a while, while Manuela was another notable 3H omission and arguably the only other big Academy omission

Manuela isn't that popular though, right?  Only thing she had going for her was that she was the only playable woman from Three Houses who wasn't in yet, and the same can be said for Ignatz being the last student, cause he's not popular either.  So I wouldn't say that these two were solid picks, they feel more like obligations.

Edited December 14, 2021 by FailWood

[Xenomata]

9 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

The extra Spd from a Spd Trace is actually not that useful to her as long as she already out-speeds her opponent by at least 5 points to get a natural follow-up.

She is clearly designed to two-hit kill most enemies, so against faster, frailer enemies, getting the Desperation effect and getting the Brave effect are functionally identical; the enemy is still dead after the second hit.

The only time the 10-point threshold is designed to matter is against slow, bulky units that won't die in two hits. Against these opponents, the difference in Spd is going to be so much higher than 10 that the extra 3 points from a Spd Trace simply won't matter, whereas the extra 3 bulk from an Atk Trace might make a difference.

 

EDIT: At +10+5, Lysithea has 70 physical bulk with her base kit, which is not unsalvageable, and is in the range where that 3 bulk from an Atk Trace could very much be enough to keep her alive after a counterattack from a bulkier unit (at least for units that don't fully charge their Specials after two hits).

My main concern there is that even at +10+5 and with her entire base kit triggered, she hits 58 Spd on colored foes and 62 Spd on Colorless foes. Throw in A/S Solo SS and it goes up to 64/68, but even still I don't know if that would be enough for the Desperation effect to remain effective compared to the Brave effect when going against fast foes.

Ishtar for instance, who will soon be a relevant example at +10+20 and post Resplendent boost, will have 60 Spd with just her base stats and refined Mjolnir triggered on EP (assuming she is alone), and she still has her A/B/SS slots to boost her Spd further. Most melee units with Spd-based EP sets will also be very likely to outspeed Lysithea completely.

I dunno, maybe I'm missing something, but if the goal for her is to 2 hit her enemies, then I would much rather build her Spd up to get the Brave effect instead of the Desperation effect. Something like...

• Festive Yule Log (+6 Spd)
• Ruptured Sky
• Atk/Spd Catch 4 (+9 with both effects triggered)
• Lull Spd/Res (effective +3 Spd and disables enemy Spd buffs)
• C Feud (+4 Spd on colorless foes)
• Phantom Spd SS (+10 effective Spd when performing Spd checks)

And assuming she has a superasset in Spd (which seems likely if they are building her up to be a Spd-checking nuke), at +10+5 she will have 77 effective Spd against colored enemies and 81 on colorless enemies, and the foe will lose their Spd buffs in the process. The only wrench in the above build would be that Phantom Spd does not work with Festive Yule Log.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Xenomata

[Ice Dragon]

17 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

I dunno, maybe I'm missing something, but if the goal for her is to 2 hit her enemies, then I would much rather build her Spd up to get the Brave effect instead of the Desperation effect. Something like...

There is literally no difference between Desperation and the Brave effect if you are killing the opponent in two hits and already get a natural follow-up.

[Diovani Bressan]

21 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

I dunno, maybe I'm missing something, but if the goal for her is to 2 hit her enemies, then I would much rather build her Spd up to get the Brave effect instead of the Desperation effect. Something like...

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

There is literally no difference between Desperation and the Brave effect if you are killing the opponent in two hits and already get a natural follow-up.

It's pretty much what Ice Dragon said. If she can double, then doesn't matter in the end. She is pretty frail, so if she doesn't kill her opponent with 2 hits, she will probably die to a counterattack (counting that the foe can counterattack her).

Brave effect will only matter if foe has a skills that grants "foe cannot make a follow-up attack", like Wary Fighter. However, most of the heroes with that effect are very slow so the Brave Effect will trigger and she will attack twice.

[Ice Dragon]

26 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

Phantom Spd SS (+10 effective Spd when performing Spd checks)

One more thing: Phantom Spd is actually worse than Atk/Spd Solo.

Using her stats at +0+0 with no Asset and no passive skills equipped for math convenience, she has 46 Spd when initiating with no Sacred Seal.

• With Atk/Spd Solo 3 in the Sacred Seal slot, she has 52 Spd. She gets 1× against opponents with 48 Spd or more, 2× (Desperation) against opponents with 43-47 Spd, and 4× against opponents with 0-42 Spd.
• With Phantom Spd 3 in the Sacred Seal slot, she has 46 Spd. She gets 1× against opponents with 47 Spd or more, 2× (Brave) against opponents with 42-46 Spd, and 4× against opponents with 0-41 Spd.

Atk/Spd Solo gives Lysithea 1 more point of effective Spd.

[Tybrosion]

57 minutes ago, FailWood said:

Manuela isn't that popular though, right?  Only thing she had going for her was that she was the only playable woman from Three Houses who wasn't in yet, and the same can be said for Ignatz being the last student, cause he's not popular either.  So I wouldn't say that these two were solid picks, they feel more like obligations.

Manuela made it 100th place exactly in CYL5 while Ignatz wasn't that much further down at 108th (Artur was just 210th for reference, which he tied for with Farina).

That still puts the both of them higher than most of the new characters added to FEH this year. The ones that were higher than them were that weren't from Three Houses as well were Henriette (19th), Severa (42nd), Charlotte (72nd), Luthier (82nd), Nyx (88th), Sonia (90th), Erk (92nd), Volke (98th) and Pelleas (99th).

[Xenomata]

2 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

It's pretty much what Ice Dragon said. If she can double, then doesn't matter in the end. She is pretty frail, so if she doesn't kill her opponent with 2 hits, she will probably die to a counterattack (counting that the foe can counterattack her).

Brave effect will only matter if foe has a skills that grants "foe cannot make a follow-up attack", like Wary Fighter. However, most of the heroes with that effect are very slow so the Brave Effect will trigger and she will attack twice.

8 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

There is literally no difference between Desperation and the Brave effect if you are killing the opponent in two hits and already get a natural follow-up.

It's not the slow enemies I'm concerned about though, it's the fast ones who would prevent her from getting any kind of follow-up attack by virtue of being as fast as her, if not faster. Two hits of Desperation and two hits of Brave are indeed not at all different, I never held that in dispute (could have worded my argument better on reflection though)

As the original point was though, her default A/R Far Trace doesn't help her outspeed the enemy at all. If she wants to 2-hit the enemy before they can hit once (which at +10+5 with just her base kit minus C Feud and with ASsolo SS she has 82 Atk, two hits of that plus a special trigger it seems likely she can get the kill), then the Atk debuff does nothing. Even overspeeding the enemy would be better than an Atk debuff that didn't do anything outside of Heavy Blade builds.

20 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

One more thing: Phantom Spd is actually worse than Atk/Spd Solo.

Atk/Spd Solo gives Lysithea 1 more point of effective Spd.

Fair.

[Othin]

20 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

Manuela made it 100th place exactly in CYL5 while Ignatz wasn't that much further down at 108th (Artur was just 210th for reference, which he tied for with Farina).

That still puts the both of them higher than most of the new characters added to FEH this year. The ones that were higher than them were that weren't from Three Houses as well were Henriette (19th), Severa (42nd), Charlotte (72nd), Luthier (82nd), Nyx (88th), Sonia (90th), Erk (92nd), Volke (98th) and Pelleas (99th).

Yeah, Manuela's 100th place finish is what I was going off of as well. In particular, it meant she was the most popular missing 3H unit for a bit until now.

1 hour ago, FailWood said:

Ignatz joining means all of Three Houses's students are in Heroes, and Manuela joining means all of Three Houses's (playable) women are in Heroes.  The only playable characters from Three Houses remaining who aren't yet in Heroes are Hanneman, Alois, Gilbert, and Cyril.  I think it's safe to say that none of them are getting in (aside from some of them being part of Gatekeeper's attack animation), as none of them are largely popular, and 3 of them are older men.

Being unpopular and/or an old man doesn't mean a character is off the table, just that IS considers them a lower priority. Considering 3H's popularity, I expect some or all of them to get added eventually, but not necessarily soon or on New Heroes banners.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I'm safe, I won't be spending any orbs on this banner. This is the weakest lineup of characters on a winter/Christmas banner so far, in my opinion. I'd be most interested in Artur, but feel no need to put orbs into getting him.

Still waiting for a winter/Christmas banner that brings us something like...Cain and Abel, the original Christmas Cavalier Duo. Santa Brom. Reindeer Claude.

[FailWood]

47 minutes ago, Othin said:

Being unpopular and/or an old man doesn't mean a character is off the table, just that IS considers them a lower priority. Considering 3H's popularity, I expect some or all of them to get added eventually, but not necessarily soon or on New Heroes banners.

Maybe, and I agree that it wouldn't be anytime soon.  What you said before about IS adding War Phase students seems more likely, especially with who's in Alt hell at the moment (Dorothea, Felix, and maybe Ashe and Leonie).

Edit:  It'd be foolish of me to not give you credit about there being surprise additions of old men like Dozla and FE6 Merlinus.

Edited December 14, 2021 by FailWood

[Xenomata]

43 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Still waiting for a winter/Christmas banner that brings us something like...Cain and Abel, the original Christmas Cavalier Duo. Santa Brom. Reindeer Claude.

That... is actually a fair point, literally the EASIEST Duo heroes to do, there's at least one Cain/Abel archtype per game, and yet nothing...

[Tybrosion]

53 minutes ago, FailWood said:

Edit:  It'd be foolish of me to not give you credit about there being surprise additions of old men like Dozla and FE6 Merlinus.

Don't forget about Zelot, who only placed higher in CYL5 (486th) than one other character that's currently in FEH (Luke, 492nd).

Also, Merlinus was actually something of a meme (or someone botted votes for him) in CYL4 since he (the FE6 version) inexplicably made it to 110th place.

[Othin]

1 hour ago, Tybrosion said:

Don't forget about Zelot, who only placed higher in CYL5 (486th) than one other character that's currently in FEH (Luke, 492nd).

Also, Merlinus was actually something of a meme (or someone botted votes for him) in CYL4 since he (the FE6 version) inexplicably made it to 110th place.

Yeah, Zelot was the main one I had in mind but Dozla is another good example. Seasonals can do some funny stuff.

Personally I don't expect all the characters to get into Heroes, particularly ones from old games like FE3 and FE5, but I do think 3H and other recent games have a good shot.

[FailWood]

4 hours ago, Tybrosion said:

Don't forget about Zelot, who only placed higher in CYL5 (486th) than one other character that's currently in FEH (Luke, 492nd).

I wasn't thinking of Zelot (he's apparently somewhere in his 30's according to the this site's Character Ages page.  While not old, that's is still above the average age of playable characters), and the tempest trials he was in was alongside a wedding banner that had his wife Juno in, so him joining there made sense.

[SockPuppet]

I am so excited for Artur!

[Etrurian emperor]

I'm happy with Ignatz's art. I was a bit worried they'd screw it up. In Cipher they had this weird habbit of drawing Ignatz very moe with an extremely kiddy face and gigantic eyes. A weird decision because despite being the smoll one of the deers Ignatz typically isn't considered all that ''precious'' by the fandom at large. His personality might also be a bit to gloomy for such an approach too.

But geeh. Put some pants on before you catch a cold, Ignatz!. 

[Lemmy]

I just noticed what Lysithea's riding has a beard. Is she riding a goat?

[Tybrosion]

Stats [SPOILERS]:

Spoiler

Lysithea & Lute
Super Asset(s): Atk, Spd, Res
Super Flaw(s): HP

Mirabilis
Super Asset(s): Res
Super Flaw(s): HP, Spd

Artur
Super Asset(s): Atk, Res
Super Flaw(s): none

Manuela
Super Asset(s): Spd
Super Flaw(s): Res
*Special Fighter 3 is the 4* unlock.

Ignatz
Super Asset(s): none
Super Flaw(s): HP
*Def Tactic 3 is the 4* unlock.

 

[Ice Dragon]

Stats response:

Spoiler

Okay. Manuela is definitely worth getting +10 with that stat spread. That's crazy fast for a 4-star summonable unit (tying Yen'fay for second fastest with Ninja Zihark being the only one faster). Still not viable as a Near Save tank for Aether Raids due to her color, but her stats are solid for pretty much everything other than Resonant Battles.

Ignatz is decent for a Grail armored bow, being faster, but a bit weaker than Felix. Not really Save Tank material, though, but we might start seeing him replace Felix in Arena defense.

Artur is bulkier than I expected him to be. His stat spread after Dragonflowers is +0/+0/+0/-1/+0 compared to Henriette (though he has a superboon in Atk where Henriette doesn't). Personally, I think he still might do better with Amity Blooms, but if you can get him to out-stat your Near Save unit in defenses to soak up Dark Shrine debuffs, his base weapon plus Atk/Def Unity in the A slot might edge that out with its sheer bulk. If you already have Henriette built up, though, there really isn't much incentive to get Artur.

Mirabilis is just Mirabilis.

And we already knew Lysithea's stat spread, so no surprises there.

 

[Diovani Bressan]

6 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Artur is bulkier than I expected him to be. His stat spread after Dragonflowers is +0/+0/+0/-1/+0 compared to Henriette (though he has a superboon in Atk where Henriette doesn't). Personally, I think he still might do better with Amity Blooms, but if you can get him to out-stat your Near Save unit in defenses to soak up Dark Shrine debuffs, his base weapon plus Atk/Def Unity in the A slot might edge that out with its sheer bulk. If you already have Henriette built up, though, there really isn't much incentive to get Artur.

Not to mention I don't know how good green is for Far Save in AR. Lif is too common there. At least Henriette is red, so has no WTD against him.

Artur can be good against Selenas and Hapis, I guess.