Fire Emblem Heroes

[Hathen]

I've been playing around with Alfonse with Brashperation ever since I upgraded the seal, and it's nice to have him at least pull his weight as well as Sharena or Anna when he comes up in Arena, instead of just being a score stick. The only annoying thing is like how with so many other seals, there's like 5 other common units who have it as their only viable build and only one of them can use it at once.

And yeah, Corrin is probably the weakest of the New Years units. He's basically just a +DEF Leon with a crappier bow. I might just eat that 4* copy of him for that shiny Spur DEF/RES though, it'd probably fit in nicely on the Mae/Boey tag team I'm thinking of making.

I really don't care about optimum builds that much since I don't whale for that kind of nonsense (or at all for that matter). Besides, the real reason is to have another Dragon to throw at those fucking AA Bowlins because two isn't enough.

Oh yeah, I hear you on that. Lucky enough to have one BIke here and I'm not going to sacrifice him. The annoying thing is that so many of the tanky builds people come up with basically require Steady Breath to work properly. But apparently Adult Tiki's statline is basically right on that line to make her a perfect Ballin' counter if that's all you want her to do. If you go -HP +ATK all you'll need is DEF+ Lightning Breath, DEF+3 from Stahl and QR1 to make her survive and kill basically any Lyn. I plugged in the numbers and apparently it still works on a Honed +10 BLyn as long as she's not +ATK, and that's assuming Tiki's getting no buffs of her own. Guess I should upgrade her and Fae and make my own Dragon Emblem.

EDIT: Also apparently Quick Riposte stacks with itself, meaning Hector can run Wary Fighter with the seal and have essentially everything-breaker if you try to attack him. That'll be fun.

[Tomara]

Got my 5 star NYCorrin and he wants all of Leons skills and he wants them badly. Seriously, it's as if he was designed to clear out a Leon or two from your barracks. Dunno if I want to go that far. I like Leon better than Corrin.

Edit: just got my QR seal. I'm way ahead of schedule. I love this t_t so much. Also, I realised NYTakumi is great counter for boss Takumi. That is... sort of depressing? I mean, imagine there's this other you and he's more awesome than you who spend countless hours perfecting your skills, because he throws food at people really well. That's just... wrong.

[Aeolus]

Guess my +Atk Tiki gets to dine on a Tiki Sandwich followed by a promotion then.

Also, lolololol wrt QR5 (I wonder what QR8 looks like on Hector; guess there's only one way to find out ). Thank god actual Breaker skills still have priority over QR (in fact, this might have just made my Eliwood even more valuable).

And yeah, New York Corrin doesn't really bring anything new to the table, but this really isn't any surprise (its been more odd to have units like not-Zelgius, Arden and Joshua join the party due to them bringing things to the table). I'm going to either promote then feed the 5 star one to him or just take the one I'm using now and feed to the incoming 5 star version, but I'm not letting him eat a 5 star Leon to make him into Leon-lite (especially since I already have a 5 star Leon, and a good one at that).

[Hathen]

I also got my shiny QR seal and immediately upgraded it. Honestly as nice as it is to have it I doubt Subaki will lose much value as QR fodder, too many units benefit from QR for constantly shifting the seal around to be a viable option (even putting aside general laziness and hating needing to micromanage seals all the time). Just amongst the 5*s I have I think like 10 units who would make good use of the skill, and probably at least half of them would make good use of the lower HP threshold on QR3.

For now I'll probably stick it on New Year Corn to make him useful through the Tempest. If I ever bother building him I'll probably make him into a Bonfire/Ignis tank like Leon is intended to be, but since the Leon I have ate a Klein it's not like it'd be redundant for me.

Also interesting new banner. I hope in the future they refine the idea and instead make a banner without 5*s and only 4* focuses, but at a cheaper orb cost. Nevertheless I dropped 15 orbs into it and came out with 4* Frederick, 4* Reinhardt (-ATK of course), 3* Wrys, 3* Subaki, and a surprise 5* Laslow. A random 5* is nice even though he sucks, but I got the few Focus units I didn't really want. Would've liked Roy/Hinata/Abel/Barst/Fae/Klein for their skills, or Oscar because I still haven't pulled him once.

Honestly I don't even know why Laslow and Rebecca are even on this banner. Silver Weapons suck, nobody cares about Axebreaker and Darting Blow is one of those skills you only use if you nothing else but a flood of Florinas.

Oh well, I might drop more orbs on this banner if whatever comes on the anniversary is uninteresting (though I doubt they won't go crazy and give us OP Brave versions of Marth and Hector or something).

[Aeolus]

So they've posted the calender for the next month or so and to nobody's surprise, its pretty damn packed. The good news is that the next GHeB will be for Lyon (followed by a rehash of Valter) which probably means that SS is getting another banner within the month (it wasn't stated as such, but there's one late in January that looks to fit the bill), the not-as-good news is that another SS banner probably means we won't be seeing Thracia or Genealogy Gen 2 for a while yet (don't worry Lief, you'll get yours eventually).

More importantly though is that they're holding another goddamn t_t right after this one (and considering how generous the devs are with these compared to their bigger siblings, we're going to be swimming in loot for the next while). Chances are that the fourth added SS character (fifth? nah, not after the Ayra burn) will be the bonus unit (although I wouldn't be surprised if its another chance for Joshua).

More important still is that the next Legendary Banner is set for the 30th. Hopefully those of us who got screwed over by bad luck/timing will get a second chance at Gunnthra.

They're also planning a new CYL poll (great news for Gaiden/Echoes characters since people know about them now, Thracia might even clean up a bit (or at least Reinhardt is going to fucking spike the thing), Lyn's either going to clean up again or take it in the bicycle shorts, and Fates will hopefully begin to fade away), which, no matter how it slices, is going to show a stark difference in characters who made an impact in Heroes compared to those who didn't.

And then there's the next round of Weapon Forge quests (as well as quests for Chain Challenges/Squad Assault ) and a planned update (readjusted draw pool perhaps?).


Pull Edit: Got bored with cleaning house so I dumped two Orbs into my Barracks and pulled from a couple of banners. First up was the t_t banner and got a whole heap of nothing (freebie was a 3 star Gaius). Second was from Radiant Dawn and the freebie there was a +Spd/-Res Micaiah (would've liked to have kept the natural 38 Res but taking the hit there to help a salvageable Spd score is also acceptable), then proceeded to waste 15 Orbs in the pursuit of Zelgius. Finally hit up NY again and got nothing but a 4 star Gwendolyn to show for it (even if her Traits suck, I'm in desperate need for her Hone Armor to gas up my Armor Emblem mkIII). At the very least, I'm glad to have finally caught up with these banners.

[Hathen]

I'll be happy to be wrong, but I seriously doubt we'll see any rate adjusting anytime soon, especially not on the anniversary with 3 major banners dropping soon to drain our orbs (New SS probably, legendary, and probably-valentines for February event).

I was planning on saving for the legendary banner but I might once again get baited by new characters. Lyon for free will be nice (red tome I'm guessing, given Raigh's place). I'll agree the tt will probably give more Joshua since its probably a bad idea to set a precedent of more than one potential Tempest reward character per game unless they start running micro TTs or something. Good luck getting extra copies of whoever ends up being Thracia's TT character (bets are on Eyvel so she won't overlap Leif's red slot on the banner when it comes).

Anyway I'm confident we'll be getting L'arachel and Myrrh on the banner. Guessing the third will be Marisa or Cormag.

I somewhat hope the new CYL will remove previous winners myself, although that wouldn't stop us from having a chance at a 15th Event Camilla or whatever. Reinhardt and Bartre are our local memes now but I don't know if that can overcome regular old popularity.

Also I'm going a bit nuts with my Hero Merit grinding this tt since I have a full team of bonus units. I might actually make it into the top 1000 if I keep it up. Totally worth that extra 4* promotion.

[Tomara]

I just reached 50000 points and I doubt it'll end there, because there isn't that much else to spend stamina on anyway. Having a full team of bonus units makes things pretty easy. Who new Sakura on T_T steroids is practically immortal?

(But she reached 4000HM now, so I switched her out for Maria the Pity Breaker.)

I'm saving up my orbs for I dunno what yet - maybe some cool seasonal unit or a particularly good Legendary banner - but yesterday I completed a bunch of Lunatic maps and quests for someone else so she could try for Ryoma. I warned her I was bad luck, but she didn't listen and ended up with a 5* Caeda.

[Aeolus]

Belated, but the voting has started (as of Sunday night, my internet was of a down for most of Monday). And yes, they totally retired Lyn, Ike, Lucina, Roy, Masked Marth and the other Ike so no new non-seasonal outfits for them again (and no, the Heroes selection doesn't include seasonal variants, so no voting on Bunny Lucina or Bride Lyn either). You can vote for the Runners Up club in case you didn't get enough Lute, Joshua, Mia's fashion sense, or Poisoned Mutton Wife Beater (although, if you are going to vote for Dorcas, be a pal and also vote for his good buddy Arden; don't be like that Sigurd jerk who doesn't vote for his good buddies, that guy can go die in a fire).

Ended up with 52k by the end of the t_t, but didn't make it up to the 4k mark (again because of that internet outage, at least I didn't leave any Orbs lying on the table again).

And of course, they've started offering quests for the CC/SAs. Ick.

Upgraded some weapons while I was at it. Now Frederick has 43 Def before buffs (but after Fury 2) to help him punch out Red Armors, Effie has a much more respectable 37 Def to actually tank with, and Sanaki now has a Prf with a non-redundant effect on it and wants to suddenly hang out with Tana or whomever has the Guiding Seal.

And finally pulled for some New Years luck and found another goddamn Gaiden pitybreaker (Leon, whom I already have at +Atk/-HP, didn't even have the decency to be Faye).

I'll be happy to be wrong, but I seriously doubt we'll see any rate adjusting anytime soon, especially not on the anniversary with 3 major banners dropping soon to drain our orbs (New SS probably, legendary, and probably-valentines for February event).

I was planning on saving for the legendary banner but I might once again get baited by new characters. Lyon for free will be nice (red tome I'm guessing, given Raigh's place). I'll agree the tt will probably give more Joshua since its probably a bad idea to set a precedent of more than one potential Tempest reward character per game unless they start running micro TTs or something. Good luck getting extra copies of whoever ends up being Thracia's TT character (bets are on Eyvel so she won't overlap Leif's red slot on the banner when it comes).

Anyway I'm confident we'll be getting L'arachel and Myrrh on the banner. Guessing the third will be Marisa or Cormag.

I somewhat hope the new CYL will remove previous winners myself, although that wouldn't stop us from having a chance at a 15th Event Camilla or whatever. Reinhardt and Bartre are our local memes now but I don't know if that can overcome regular old popularity.

Also I'm going a bit nuts with my Hero Merit grinding this tt since I have a full team of bonus units. I might actually make it into the top 1000 if I keep it up. Totally worth that extra 4* promotion.

I wouldn't worry about T_T reward unit precedent. Gaiden/Echoes already got two with Tobin and Clive, and the Ayra thing punking the other expectations. The only expectation now is to pull like a bitch for a 40% unit or suffer the added grind of being locked to a 20%/no bonus characters.

That said, I'd be down for an Eyvel T_T reward unit. She's both cool and good and would avoid making the rest of Thracia's banner 3 Reds and a Colorless (you know its going to be Leif, Nanna, and Mareeta, Finn will end up showing up alongside his Leonster buddies Cuan and Ethlyn or his Gen 2 Babysitter's Club members Oifey and Shannan). But alas, there's a good chance that the Marty Party will roll into town one of these days.

[Hathen]

Oh yeah, dunno how I forgot about Tobin/Clive. I mean, I guess there's always the possibility they'd just add certain Tempest units onto banners in the future, it wouldn't really be that different from how they add the seal rewards onto the Forge so they don't have to repeatedly introduce them.

Quests for CC/SA today but they're pretty easy, restricted to the early ones as far as I can tell (and even if it was the later ones, you can "solve" those two modes so if you've beaten it once before it's only a matter of figuring it out again). Kinda funny they're forcing everyone to clear the Lunatic mode for Chapter 1&2 though since that's a lot of peoples' favorite place to grind HM in between events. Personally I just go for the Training Tower since Grand Seals actually have a use now.

Anyway more looking forward to tomorrow's reset because we'll probably get info on the new character banner. Place your bets on who's going to show up.

As for CYL2 Electric Boogaloo, I think I'll be splitting my votes between Gonzales and Merlinus. I guess you can say they're throwaway votes but as far as I recall we haven't had a single new FE6 character since the game started outside of Zephiel, so I'm hoping I can up the chances of quasimodo making it in whenever it happens (Niime would be kinda cool too, how many cool witch grandmas do we have in the series?). Merlinus is probably just a meme vote, but I really wonder what they'd do if someone like him won.

So for any of you who ever even thought of getting to top 1k in TT- don't. This is probably the first and last time I'll actually aim for doing this. By the end I did maintain rank 500 or so but it was pretty annoying to stay there and my score was up to about 170k. My rank was dropping at a non-insignificant pace near the end too. A single stamina potion might make you jump several thousand ranks when you're down at rank 20000 or whatever, but by the time you make it to around the top 5k you climb slower and slower and by the end one potion might take you from rank 1500 or 1300 or something like that (I still have a stockpile of like 300 of the damn things though). More importantly if you want a safe bet at holding onto your rank you pretty much have to play up till the daily reset.

This reset I once again dropped below rank 5k on Arena Assault despite getting perfect wins still. I 5*'d a Sheena and I'm pondering if I should upgrade a bunch of her now to merge up to set my Arena score higher. There's not much else I can do to increase my score without magically pulling multiple copies of some good 5*. The best FTP choice for Arena scoring will probably remain Draug/Wendy or Effie/Sheena for the foreseeable future, and I already have one of that trio at 5*+5. It just that it continues to suck using melee armors without Distant Counter when horses run wild. All the buffs they keep giving to armors won't do shit for FTPs if they constantly wall it behind limited time 5* units or PRF weapons on 5* exclusives.

Also since I merged all my Effies it means my Sheena doesn't have access to Wary Fighter at the moment. Though I could make her eat a Zephiel maybe. Hate killing limited units though.

[Aeolus]

This is why I hate the AA so much. You really can't compete with full blown whales without becoming one and the gap only grows wider with the powercreep. I've also never made it into Rank 20 in the Arena for that same reason (but then, I'm fine with hanging out at Ranks 18 & 19 since I still get the 4 Orbs per season; it sucks that I miss out on a bunch of Feathers per week but there's really nothing to be done for it by now).

As for the T_T Feather Rank thing, the only time that was ever feasible was during the first or second T_T after they introduced the multiplier bonus and hadn't locked down the 40% bonus units to Banner units only. Since then, it became a total rat race and will never get better. Its why I've stopped placing in the 6k to 8k range for 3k to 4k since its only the offered rewards that are still still worth playing for (and why t_t's are just straight up superior experiences anyways, you get all the offered rewards for investing only half of the time/stamina into the mode).

As for SS bets (because there's almost no chance that this isn't going to be a SS themed banner), I'm going the contrary route and pick Fado, Ismaire and Hayden.

For cool witch grandmas, sadly Niime is currently the only one in the series. The closest alternatives are Genealogy's Hilda and Fate's Areta (neither of whom are cool or playable, plus one's only a grandma on a massive technicality on top of being a water zombie). SS has one, but is an NPC and the rest are all thousand year old prepubescent anime dragon girls. I guess you could make one out of Lissa, Sakura, Elise or any other Gen 1 pairable Kozaki female given the multi-generation mechanics and the Avatar of both games having no reservations in regards to robbing the Hyperbolic Time Chamber cradle (with a bonus of making Fates ladies into actual Witches), but that practice is strictly forbidden.

But yeah, FE6 has been ignored for far too long despite having one of the largest and most diverse rosters in the series (not including multiple generation shenanigans or stupidity like Radiant Dawn or New Mystery). Sadly, I can't see Merlinus winning, if, for no other reason, than because of suffering from Split Vote issues (same reason why Marth and Corrin aren't going to win either despite being the only Smash Represented characters left).


New Banner Edit: Hoo boy. I'm glad I didn't make a serious bet because I would've busted hard. The good news is that we're getting Myrrh to finally join poor lonely Fae on the Green Dragon isle. L'Arachel is here of course as is Eirika (wait a tick, isn't she already in? this isn't even a seasonal thing; GODSDAMMIT DEVS!), and finally will be Marisa eventually when they pull an Ayra/Rhajat with her too (GODSDAMMIT DEVS! AGAIN!!). Wait. Did they just give us a female's only banner (again; aside from the Wedding Banner)? Is this supposed to be Lyon's Harem or something (and why the hell did they repeat Eirika instead of giving us Vanessa, or hell Natasha, Tethys or Syrene)?

Correction: Apparently Marisa is in the same boat as NYCorrin. So false alarm? Still doesn't justify giving us two goddamn Horse Tomes and a Flying Dragon with a Legendary Banner in the wake.

[Hathen]

I wouldn't feel bad about losing out on some chump change feather from not maintaining rank 20 all the time. It's only a bit over 1000 feathers or something, so you get an extra 4* promotion every month or whatever. Regardless it's the only real "meta" in the game at the moment, seeing if you can get a high arena rank. I decided against merging a bunch of Sheenas since I don't want the headache of playing melee armor emblem sans Distant counter, but I did gave my Reinhardt 2 more merges so he's at +8 now (Still neutral ATK so if I merge any more of him it'll have to wait for one of those). We'll see if that gives me the edge needed to get over rank 5000 again- I was like rank 5100 this reset so it probably all depends on the score ranges I roll.

Anyway, new banner...Myrrh looks stupidly broken because she has boosted BST on top of trainee bonus, making her BST close to armor levels. Plus Dragon Emblem is going to become even more ridiculous now. Nowi was already one of the biggest threats in Arena because of the variety of builds she can run and with Hone Dragons she can shoot up to like 45 speed or some shit. Good to see L'Arachel in the game but she seems to be just good but not game changing, so she's a prime candidate for demotion. To be honest I would prefer most units added to the game to get about this treatment rather than the insane power creep that started post Genealogy banner, but gacha's gonna gacha.

The unit I truly don't like as a precedent is this new Eirika though. I think a comment I read said it pretty well- "I like everything about this Eirika except for the fact that she exists". I like Eirika and the artwork is really nice, but it's kind of annoying that we got an alternate version of a popular character instead of the numerous characters they could've added from Sacred Stones. It creates a pretty bad precedent for people waiting for some C-list character to make it in. Also I feel like they kinda copped out with her stat/skill spread too, ensuring her place in the meta as another annoying unit we'll have to check- she's another horse unit with lopsided offensive spread complete with the perfect skills to go with it (Swift Sparrow/Desperation).

Lyon is Sophia with slightly less DEF but with a legendary Raventome. Decent enough, but Sophia's absurdly easy to merge up. Also sidenote- kinda weird how his art appears to just be normal Lyon rather than possessed Lyon since he's using Naglfar. Marisa gets no PRFs and she's a crappier Joshua, so I guess you can say they were faithful to the original game. She'll probably be a free Wo Dao!

Anyway I'll probably hold off on pulling until we get some details on the Legendary banner. Just gotta control myself for 2 days or whatever.

[Tomara]

My current Eirika has a very specific niche: Sieglinde. As in: support Linde and make sure she's victorious. Eirika does this job very well.

New Eirika? I have like a bazillion good red horse units. And okay, none of them are mages, but I have good mage options for the other colours. Reinhardt is a thing. Not to mention Blarblade Ursula and whatever you decide to do with Cecilia. Also, razzle and/or dazzle healers.

Anyway, I am looking forward to Lyon. I have a half-build Sophia, but this one is going to be pretty good right out of the box.

Now all we need is a blue seasonal Leo. Why blue seasonal Leo? But because I now want a team that's drawn by Miyajima Haru, has full colour coverage and consists of nothing but people with names that sound like or contain 'rio'.

[Aeolus]

At least Dark Eirika (I was going to make a Send MKII joke here but I would've gotten No Reply; also she feels a whole lot more like an alternate timeline variant because she heard that Celica stepped up her game in the bad decision making department, or alternatively the kind of variant you meet at the heart of the Great Temple after vanquishing the Thunderbird; wait, that last one could better describe FEH's Ayra), has the decency of being a different class than Mr "we couldn't even get you your normal in-game pallet, so have your super spoiler one instead" Zelgius (plus they were nice enough to give us her horse this time). But yeah, Selena could've filled the role just as easily and not be all 'recycled in SPACE!' (although it would be funny if Eirika won the CYL mk II ballot and we got a Brave version of her coming as well; get a seasonal after that and she can join Lucina/MM, Lyn, Chrom, Corrin, Azura, Camilla and Xander in having her own Emblem team).

Also, Sothe is the designated 4 star unit from the RD banner so there's that.

That said, I went and pulled and the game just apologized for my Gaiden-centric luck with the seasonal banner pity breakers. I now have both Horse Mages on 15 Orbs, Dark Eirika as my freebie pull at +Atk/-HP and L'Arachel as +Atk/-Res. You may commence the hatedown.

[Tomara]

It's all right. All my pity breakers end up having perfect IV's and to be honest, the red mage on a horse I really want is Leo.

Anyway, this is my catch:
- Roy's twelfth dad
- One of those green units that starts with a B but doesn't give Reposition
- Desperation 3
- Another Tharja and this one is like +def. Why? Now I have six freakin' Tharja's and aside from the one I build and the two spare tome fodders, I don't know what to do with them.

[Aeolus]

So taking a look at datamined Marisa, it was a really nice touch to have her use her left hand for her special artwork. That said, her stats are your typical Swordfighter spread, except that she kinda dumped her highest growth into HP at the expense of a little off of everything else, kinda wasting her BST. She's also a source of Infantry Pulse 2 or 3 if nothing else.

Lyon's not really doing it for me though. Yeah, he has Raudrraven++ for his Prf, but until Triangle Adept becomes a Sacred Seal, he's not going to be able to fully leverage his default kit. It doesn't help that he's slow as balls and not Def heavy enough to get away with it. Still, I've seen worse come out of GHeBs.

And of course, somebody went and checked and yes, Myrrh can totally run either Dragon or Flier Emblem buffs.


And thinking on it, of the Female Swordfighters/Samercidons of the series we so far have:
Ayra, Fir, Lyn, Eirika, Marisa, Mia, Athena, Lucina, Masked Marth (I guess), Hana, Selena and Soliel.

And are missing:
Lamia, Larcei, Creidne, Drei (or whichever Deadlord ends up as the female Swordmaster), Malice, Eyvel, Machyua, Mareeta, Echidna, Karla, Ismire, Lucia x2, Altina, Female Myrmidon Kris, Maris (i.e. Myrm Malice), Say'ri, Flavia, Severa, Yuzu, Lianna and Laevatein (so far as being playable).

We're over a third of the way there (which would be impressive if not for the fact that I'm listing one of the series staple classes; there's distressingly few examples of villainous female swordfighters that never turn good, and most of the exceptions are in FE4 alone), and if I were to pare it down to characters with realistic chances of getting into FEH, we'd be at about the halfway mark.


Grand Hero Edit Battle: And upon thinking on the other part, Infernal Lyon might have been more challenging if I didn't have a fully kitted out Horse Emblem team. I didn't even need Olivia beyond her presence making the AI move the enemies into easier to defeat positions. Its also gotten me to rethink my position on stuffing Tharja with 20k feathers to feed to Full Armor Eirika (I've decided to go with this giant robot anime term since the Ayra = Dark Eirika thing works too goddamn well; although given Neue Eirika's defensive stats are kinda in the shitter, it might behoove me to go with something like Victory Eirika, but then I don't think she can jettison her horse every couple of episodes either; frankly, she's like the exact opposite of SRW's Alteisen midseason upgrade, I guess Nu Eirika it is) since Ursula can still wreck people with a simple Mounted Emblem buffed Blarblade Tome.

Update Edit: So the February update includes more Weapon Refinery options including updates to Falchion users everywhere (even neater is that Marth and Alm get their own variants while the Ylisse crowd scores a third version) as well as Zephiel's lancesword (keeping him relevant to the runaway Red Armor powercreep, maybe), while Raven, Felicia, Caeda and Hinoka are scoring Prfs (Caeda getting a Wing Sword because whoops, they made her a Red unit with a shitty weapon and poor Atk, Raven's getting Basilikos, because Dorcas has the Tomahawk and Hawkeye continues to get ignored, Hinoka's getting her FEW Prf, or really any kind of Prf given how male dominated Prfs were in Fates, and Felicia's getting Silverware because why the fuck not).