Emblem Inheritable Skill Tier List now that SP is easier to get?

[DefyingFates]

With the new well handing out SP Books at a decently fast pace even at the lowest tiers of investment I wondered if this was worth revisiting. I also saw a post much like this on Reddit which also got the gears turning. What Skills would you recommend for different archetypes of unit? Which are good regardless of how that unit functions?

Discuss away!

Also, I hit the SP cap with my Avo +30/ Pair Up dodge tank Divine Dragon!Alear and am looking for suggestions for them too.

Edit: DLC Emblem skills are also open to discussion for those that have them.

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by DefyingFates

[Armchair General]

You can't really go wrong with Divine Pulse+ or just max out Byleth and have Resolve+

[Technoweirdo]

Not gonna make a whole tier list at this time 'cause that'd take a while, but I'll comment on a few.

Canter's definitely shot up in value for pre-Ch. 10 units. Even Jade can theoretically inherit it now despite having no chance to get SP before then.  
I'd still say Build+3's worth a look given its 500 SP cost and ability to stack with Speed+3. Extra Spd's never unappreciated by the weaker characters. Personally, I like not having to run away from my problems because my problems are now dead.  
Marth's Avoid and Sword Avoid skills are nice for one or two characters you want dodge-tanking.
Actually inherited Perceptive early on because Alear couldn't inherit Sword Avoid at the time but figured I could transition a few chapters later (A few, I thought...). It's obviously not as nice, but it helped. Sadly, you probably won't have SP issues getting the more passive +Avo skills this time; Think it's awful now for inheritance.

[DefyingFates]

49 minutes ago, Technoweirdo said:

Marth's Avoid and Sword Avoid skills are nice for one or two characters you want dodge-tanking.

Is it worth putting both on the same unit or is that overkill? Thanks for the detailed answer!

1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

You can't really go wrong with Divine Pulse+ or just max out Byleth and have Resolve+

My Ivy has fewer problems with accuracy now, but this is definitely one I'll keep in mind if I build someone with similar issues in the future.

P.S. Just updated the OP with this, but feel free to discuss the DLC Skills too!

Edited March 10, 2023 by DefyingFates

[Technoweirdo]

21 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Is it worth putting both on the same unit or is that overkill? Thanks for the detailed answer!

Both at their final forms? *Super* overkill. Up to Ch. 22 where you probably don't have them in their final forms nor Engage+? I think they're fine together. Don't recall a time Alear got ignored by Berserkers before then.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Technoweirdo

[samthedigital]

It's probably the skills that hover around 2K that end up becoming better relative to before. I didn't find many of them to be terribly worth it before now given that Canter costs 1k and it doesn't leave a lot of SP for anything expensive unless I really want to hoard and make things harder now for questionable benefit late into the game.

[Shadow Mir]

I dunno... I'd still find myself trying for Canter and Dual Assist mostly.

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

It's probably the skills that hover around 2K that end up becoming better relative to before. I didn't find many of them to be terribly worth it before now given that Canter costs 1k and it doesn't leave a lot of SP for anything expensive unless I really want to hoard and make things harder now for questionable benefit late into the game.

Except Momentum+. That's still pointless to inherit. Unless it happens to work with Warp Ragnarok, but...

[FashionEmblem]

Lunar Brace is the big shift for me. The good 2000 SP skills were affordable enough to obtain eventually (though often quite late, especially if you set aside an additional 1000 SP for Canter), but at 3000 Lunar Brace was pretty much exclusive to the Eirika wielder. My team composition ended up tilting towards low strength speedier characters and those characters would've performed so much better with Lunar Brace, but they literally never got enough SP to inherit it.

There's also the SP economy trade-offs between Speed +4 and Speedtaker, which I think now tilt more towards Speedtaker. Speedtaker was generally the better investment in the long-run, but was not necessarily worth waiting to accumulate enough SP for it (and locking all that SP into a single skill, instead of having 2 cheaper skills such as Speed +4 and Canter). Now you can short-circuit the path to Speedtaker, which makes it much more appealing.

Some upgrade skills are also now on the table where they weren't before. For example, Vantage++ and Canter+ are now more likely to come online for me.

I think in general starting a build without having to commit to it as much adds a lot of flexibility. For example, Successor!Diamant is an awkward character that I find isn't fast/strong enough to work as a player-phase attacker in the long-run for Maddening but also isn't bulky enough to be your primary tank. Both paths tend to tug him towards divergent skillsets (e.g., Canter, Speedtaker vs. Resolve, Pair-Up, Wrath, Vantage), and you have to make a choice pretty early on after getting him about whether to slap on Canter or save SP for those eventual tanking skills. Now you can more easily have him transition roles later on without sacrificing short-term performance.

A lot of the cheaper utility skills such as Reposition I think also go up in value since there isn't this same opportunity cost of potentially forgoing an eventually better skill.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Do we know yet how much, specifically, extra SP you can get?

[FashionEmblem]

42 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Do we know yet how much, specifically, extra SP you can get?

It's mostly RNG based on the rewards from the well which include skill books. I'm not really sure how the RNG works since the percentages add up to more than 100% (but you also get more than 1 item at a time, so that's probably part of how it should be normalized). Still, the Tier 2 rewards for 1000G worth of items seems like a good way to get a bunch of 100-500 SP books, which you can attempt every map.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qFcABi455ZzLh0Drz1yZAxat5i_GWxIv3SPEDdlcZRE/edit#gid=1480084607

On top of that Veronica has the skill that gives +20SP on kill and is inheritable for cheap. However, despite costing low SP it does require a high bond level, so I'm not sure how widely useful it really is. The trade-off is that bond fragments eventually end up being quite abundant, but you want to inherit the skill ASAP to start reaping the SP. It probably does make Veronica the best bracelet to get after Tiki's paralogue so you can start gunning for it sooner.

[DefyingFates]

6 hours ago, FashionEmblem said:

but at 3000 Lunar Brace was pretty much exclusive to the Eirika wielder.

I imagine Lunar Brace+ is still off-limits though, huh? I think I'm still in the FEH/ 3H mindset of "every fight needs to be a ORKO"; Lunar Brace doesn't seem enough to do that for me so I guess I never valued it that highly.

Anyway, for now it seems like the best skills to get are still Canter and Dual Assist (for Backup units), only now getting the + variants is more viable for each?

[samthedigital]

8 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

I imagine Lunar Brace+ is still off-limits though, huh? I think I'm still in the FEH/ 3H mindset of "every fight needs to be a ORKO"; Lunar Brace doesn't seem enough to do that for me so I guess I never valued it that highly.

Anyway, for now it seems like the best skills to get are still Canter and Dual Assist (for Backup units), only now getting the + variants is more viable for each?

Lunar Brace can work pretty well with a Martial Master and Flashing Fist art. It can probably help some other kinds of units one round more cleanly too. I'm not sure exactly how much SP the well can expect to give over the course of a playthrough though. As for the + variants... With DLC and a lot of minigames maybe you can get a lot of units with the upgraded variants, but I would instead opt to give more units things like Speedtaker, Wrath, or Dual Support; skills that are pretty good but aren't really worth waiting until the end of the game to get in my opinion.

You can definitely do meme runs with a lot Heroes and Dual Support; I've seen it done, but to me it seems less effective than using a more mobile team.

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 3/10/2023 at 1:08 AM, DefyingFates said:

I imagine Lunar Brace+ is still off-limits though, huh? I think I'm still in the FEH/ 3H mindset of "every fight needs to be a ORKO"; Lunar Brace doesn't seem enough to do that for me so I guess I never valued it that highly.

 

I wouldn't say that mindset fits with 3H at all! 3H is a game you can easily take apart with long-range 2HKOs. (Not to say ORKOs aren't also good in that game, but they're definitely not the only way to play.)

That said Lunar Brace is definitely a skill that can help you toward ORKOs. Never inherited it (obviously) but on Eirika herself it has pretty obvious applications especially with attacks which hit lots of times, like brave weapon quads, in terms of netting ORKOs. In principle, inheriting it lets you stack it with an emblem which gives stronger offensive boosts than Eirika does (e.g. Roy, Marth) making ORKOs even more attainable.

[DaveCozy]

That list putting Str+2 and Mag+2 in F is whack as F lol.

Specially when the weapon power 1 skills have identical costs for the same atk boost, and yet only work on one weapon type.

Imo. Str+2 and Mag+2 are well worth inheriting for units that want an immediate offensive boost. Beyond that they get overpriced, so stopping at +2 is fine.

[DefyingFates]

5 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I wouldn't say that mindset fits with 3H at all! 3H is a game you can easily take apart with long-range 2HKOs. (Not to say ORKOs aren't also good in that game, but they're definitely not the only way to play.)

That's fair. I guess I just got used to being able to do OHKO in Three Houses that I took it for granted. My bad!

Quote

That list putting Str+2 and Mag+2 in F is whack as F lol.

As someone who got Resonance+ for a unit and has regretted it since, I agree that the stat boosting skills are pretty underrated when you just want a flat power boost. Thanks for calling that to our attention, @DaveCozy!

Edited March 12, 2023 by DefyingFates

[Barren]

Strength/Magic +2 costing 1,000 sp is rather pushing it for me in terms of price. but at the same time I can see why anyone would go as far as that.

Definitely when I go a maddening run one day I’ll have at least a couple of units (probably Alear and Chloe) snag canter. Healing Light deserves a worthy mention to give to your healer. 200 sp is very very cheap and can be helpful I find.

On my hard mode run I gave Alear Avoid +10 which is a nice upgrade for the short and mid term of the game.

[DaveCozy]

3 hours ago, Barren said:

Strength/Magic +2 costing 1,000 sp is rather pushing it for me in terms of price. but at the same time I can see why anyone would go as far as that.

Both each are the same price as the Sword/Lance/Axe Power 1 skills (1000 SP), which also offer +2 damage but with that specific weapon instead. In general, a +2 boost to your damage translates to +4 if doubling and +8 if quadding, so it's quite impactful on fast units in particular.

The avo drop I don't consider a disadvantage necessarily, I think that's something you can work around. The main disadvantage of the Power skills imo is that they only work with a specific weapon. Whereas Str+2/Mag+2 work with any applicable weapon, including Knives and Bows which don't otherwise have a Power skill available. Tomes too in the case of Mag+2.

The main difference is how they scale. Sword/Lance/Axe Power 2 costs 2000 SP (1k if upgrading from Power 1) and boosts damage by 4. While with Strength+3 and Magic+3, you're instead looking at 3000 SP instead (2k SP if upgrading from Str+2/Mag+2). So the costs after +2 get more lopsided, and I'm guessing that's why the author of the Reddit thread ranked them at the bottom.

Still, I don't see why you should limit your units to a single Power skill due to that. Aside Bow and Knife users, there's also several classes and units that want to be using more than just one weapon type. Emblems also grant access to other useful weapons too which might be out of the class weapon ranks but can use anyways thanks to the emblem; the Mulagir Bow from Lyn on a Wyvern being a great example. And nothing says you have to commit to inheriting the +3 versions either, you can simply stop at +2. After all you have another skill slot too that you can use SP to inherit something else.

Of course. I'm also not saying the Power skills are bad. They're useful for units who just want to use one weapon type. What I'm getting at instead is that the Str+2 and Mag+2 skills are and should be considered similarly valuable.

Edited March 12, 2023 by DaveCozy

[Dark Holy Elf]

1000 SP is definitely a lot for Str+2/Mag+2. That's the same as Canter and I would consider Canter far more useful. I don't understand why Str+2/Mag+2 cost 1000 when Speed+2 is only 300.

F is probably going too far but I would not rank those skills very highly. They're probably somewhat better now that SP is more available but still not great.

[Shadow Mir]

29 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

1000 SP is definitely a lot for Str+2/Mag+2. That's the same as Canter and I would consider Canter far more useful. I don't understand why Str+2/Mag+2 cost 1000 when Speed+2 is only 300.

Weird. I'd expect Speed+ whatever to be more expensive...

[Barren]

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Weird. I'd expect Speed+ whatever to be more expensive...

You would think it’d be so since speed is such a valuable stat. But getting speed +3 for 500 SP for instance is very generous and can help make anyone at least viable out of the gate.

[DaveCozy]

4 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

1000 SP is definitely a lot for Str+2/Mag+2. That's the same as Canter and I would consider Canter far more useful. I don't understand why Str+2/Mag+2 cost 1000 when Speed+2 is only 300.

F is probably going too far but I would not rank those skills very highly. They're probably somewhat better now that SP is more available but still not great.

In that Reddit list specifically, which I have a lot more issues with btw, I would personally say Str+2 and Mag+2 should be at B max. I agree with you on Canter, as all of your longterm offensive units should be inheriting it. I personally aim to have at least all my units who get danced regularly have Canter so that it makes the Goddess Dance setup much less cumbersome.

A few of the other issues I have being:

• The weapon power 1 and 2 skills, which should be all at B max as well, while the rest should be lower too.
• Some + versions of skills being above their cheaper and earlier counterparts... I don't understand why Alacrity++ is higher than regular and + versions for e.g... if this is an inheritance list, then they should be really at the same tier, since it's better to inherit them first and build up to the + versions.
• All the Speed+ should be at A, or at least up to speed+3 given how cheap it is as you've pointed out.
• Speedtaker being higher than Speed+ is very questionable too given it requires setup and having multiple units with it means they step on each other's toes getting kills to snowball with it.
• Demolish... wtf is it doing at C lol. I can see it being helpful in a few maps with doors, but that should put it just above F imo.

Just off the top of my head.

Anyways, I know it's no one on this thread who made that list, just wanted to put that out there.

Actually... The more I look at that Reddit list, the more it looks like it's an endgame list. It explains why they put some + versions higher too. Which is also another issue altogether, as it's ignoring immediate usefulness of what you can get to help you right then.

Edited March 12, 2023 by DaveCozy

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, DaveCozy said:

Demolish... wtf is it doing at C lol. I can see it being helpful in a few maps with doors, but that should put it just above F imo.

Are there even any maps with breakables after you get Ike? Only one I can think of is his paralogue.

1 hour ago, DaveCozy said:

Speedtaker being higher than Speed+ is very questionable too given it requires setup and having multiple units with it means they step on each other's toes getting kills to snowball with it.

Agreed.

Edited March 12, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[DefyingFates]

1 hour ago, DaveCozy said:

I agree with you on Canter, as all of your longterm offensive units should be inheriting it.

Would they all be able to use it though? Panette for example may prefer Vantage/ Wrath, and I'm sure there are some units who'd need more specialized builds too. Canter seems (at least to me) more like a skill you use when you don't have something more specific planned for a unit.

To use my Alear example aagin, mine is a avoid-tank with Avo +30 and Pair Up to block chain attacks. I have Canter at the moment to help with farming, but I don't know how useful it'd be in TT or more serious maps.

Then again, you guys have put way more empirical thought into this so I really want to hear what you have to say!

[Alear]

I'd put Rally Spectrum near the top of A tier and move quality time to the bottom of A tier. 2000 SP to put these two skills on a support unit is pretty nuts.

[Shadow Mir]

55 minutes ago, Alear said:

I'd put Rally Spectrum near the top of A tier and move quality time to the bottom of A tier. 2000 SP to put these two skills on a support unit is pretty nuts.

Um, no. Rally Spectrum ain't in the game; the closest you get in Instruct with Dragon, which only one character can do for the majority of the game (and even then, it's only usable while engaged). Also, to be blunt, you are overrating Quality Time.

Edited March 13, 2023 by Shadow Mir