Fire Emblem Heroes

[Aeolus]

Welp. They certainly changed the download screens to show the CYL 1 winners and round 1 Legendaries (plus Female Grima) instead of the characters offered with the very first two banners. The Askr siblings are still here though no Anna anymore.

Also, Camilla's forge is actually really good since it gives her a sudo Goad Flier/Cavalry on top of giving herself a Goad Flier effect when near other Fliers or Cavalry. Clair's meanwhile is literally Wing Spear, down to the forge effect. And M!Corrin's chainsaw sword gains +2 to everything, but also grants +4 to everything to whomever he's supporting before Support buffs (so in effect he could give +6 to everything).

Also also, your free Close Counter is totally free for the low low price of 20k Feathers (I might just promote and merge him anyways for a Taco me that doesn't suck; man remember when Tomara was desperately struggling to pull him and took literal months? those were the days).

Also also also lol, the Arena and AA are still closed despite all the updates, while Julius' has been datamined and his Red Loptous Tome granting him Dragon Weakness but also Close & Distant Defense to everyone that doesn't have Dragon Effective damage, and also has Atk Ploy and Guard just for shits and giggles, plus the

Spoiler: show

two new OCs are the Atreus BOY! to Surtr's Kratos and Nifl Silmeria.

[Hathen]

20k feathers to get Close Counter is still a pretty good deal. Right now I'm leaning towards giving it to Boey, I do use him once in a while alongside Mae. Merric's just a shittier version of him, if I ever pull Christmas Tharja she comes with CC anyway, and I doubt I'll ever build Henry.

Don't know how I forgot about that first FE7 banner. Guess it doesn't help that basically all of them are outclassed at this point- hell, most of them were outclassed when they were first released. Jaffar's the only one who has a fun gimmick to screw around with and even with that you could produce a similar effect with any Pain Staffbot (who will double as a healer).

It's funny that Ishtar is basically Linde, but better, but now I have even more reason to justify to myself not to drop Dew (or 20k feathers on an Odin) giving my Linde a better weapon and keeping her as this weird attacking healer hybrid. Julius's art is great and it captures the original character perfectly IMO, glad we're getting the guy for free. The Loptous tome is pretty crazy too, although Julius is slow so that kinda cancels out any tankiness he has, at least as far as physical attacks go.

As far the OCs go, I like the more refreshing design Helbendi has but it slightly irks me that often only male characters are "allowed" to have less immediately appealing designs (although I guess people who like bara might like Helbendi). Was hoping Nifl would get a male character too. Guess that might come later, though.

Clair gets to be Blue Caeda, but I'm guessing she won't be nearly as popular because she occupies a highly competitive slot, whereas Caeda's only competition is Palla and a 5* exclusive. Armor emblem also has a lot of power concentrated in Green, plus bonus points to Caeda having lots of RES to tank hits from Grima. Camilla forge is pretty solid, but kinda disappointed they're still going for making her yet another speedy attacker instead of expanding on the role she was doing before (mixed defenses). Corrin's reforge isn't really worth it IMO, he was already suffering from Jack of all Stats syndrome and the new sword doesn't help with that, and while it has notable supportive power, you'd probably be better off investing your Dew into Marth whose effect is so much more flexible.

[Tomara]

Normally I'd be all over a Thracia banner, but I think I'm going to skip this one. I already have characters in the same or atleast very similar niches (including a fully built +spd Linde), and while these may be slightly better, my current ones are doing a good job as they are.

As for refines, they didn't really mention it anywhere as far as I know, but Sealed Falchion is now available to the other Awakening Falchion wielders. My suicidal +spd Lucina likes her new sword very much.

(man remember when Tomara was desperately struggling to pull him and took literal months? those were the days).

My sister took less time to concieve and give birth to a child than it took me to pull a gacha character...

[DHKany]

Ishtar at base with neutral IVs can initiate with 46 speed which is almost on par with a +10 Ayra with speed boon lmao. With infantry pulse support she can easily get off double moonbow/glimmer in 1 round of combat which easily makes her first round DPS possibly higher than emblem buffed bladetomes. That's pretty crazy.

Also I think Clair's refine is pretty good regardless of blue lance fliers being a very competitive spot. She finally has her own niche now, and she can deal with the likes of Effie/Hardin and Zelgius much better than Caeda which I think is pretty fair. Different colors for different jobs.

[Andrew]

Normally I'd be all over a Thracia banner, but I think I'm going to skip this one. I already have characters in the same or atleast very similar niches (including a fully built +spd Linde), and while these may be slightly better, my current ones are doing a good job as they are.

This has been my attitude for some months now. I'm pretty much only pulling for characters I really, *really*, like now (maybe occasionally for a particular skill), because I've kind of got a unit that covers what I need gameplay wise already. Getting kind of same-old-same-old from a gameplay perspective. Hopefully more coloured bows might eventually change that up.

[Aeolus]

Up to 4.25% and have nothing to show for it (well okay, I picked up a pair of Abels, another 4 star Tailtiu (wrong Thunder Mage game), a second Morrin, two Shannas, an Athena, and some other fodder). At least the colors aren't screwing me over as much as the Legendary banner did, but I'd like to have some more of that luck that I otherwise had for said banner.

Sadly, I'm kinda in it for Lene or Ares over Ishtar because I have never seen a badly done Ishtar art....until two days ago. She looks like she's about to throw a coffee mug at a defense attorney's face rather than Thunder (and what happened to her side pony tail and her thighs? she isn't nick-named the Goddess of Thunder Thighs for nothing).

Of course I'd be better off waiting for the next calendar before dumping any more Orbs, but I kinda really would like somebody from this banner.

Also, Shigure is the winner of the Uncommon demotion. I'll suck trying for granny hair dragon, but he should hopefully show up for me eventually.


Edit: and no sooner do I post this than do I notice the new calendar, and holy crap on a crap cracker, we're getting another Tapper! immediately after the current one, with our third GCN coming in a week from now, with Julius in between, the next +_+ involving Loki, and the next banners include two with nondescript New Power, with the next Seasonal on the 21st, on top of the usual monthly Legendary in the middle of it all, and some other stuffs like Combat Boosts and whatnot. At least its fairly safe to pull (until a pitybreaking Faye with +Res/-HP shows up instead).


Double Edit: So now we get to see the 2.5.0 changes made to Tapping the Rift and RD. Man did RD get boring since its always the same team you're up against now instead of whatever random clusterfuck of characters the game decided to throw at you. It also means that if you're not winning against this particular team, then you aren't winning until you revisit your team comp. Tapping Tower seems like they're simply doing away with the actual Tapping Quests (instead of the daily Tapping Quests) with a couple of daily get done or die maps (they might not have since its not the 15th yet, but they might have).


Triple Deluxe Edit: So the changes to the Arena kinda really fucking suck for me. Whereas before I was at least doing pretty well at treading water at rank 18.5 with a 688 point average, now I've had to Merge Eliwood and Cecilia some for a 690 point average just to keep up and there's still far too much time left to wind up in rank 17. Too many players are now embolden to push harder in the Arena since there's less ground to cover, making it easier for lower performing teams to fish for better overall scores (additionally, the powercreep is real). I can still try to optimize my SI, but at this rate, I'm probably going to have to rebuild my entire Arena team from scratch.


Four Star Edit: And Flier Emblem carried me through the FE4 endgame on both Lunatic and Infernal difficulties. What's fucking dire though was all the resources I had to dump to maintain my 18.5 Arena ranking. I had to finally bench Ursula because of her limited Merge potential for Nowi and then merge her and Lilina up to +2 and Eliwood to +1 for my final score (at least I now have Forblaze on Lilina). Its gonna be worse next week due to not having a good merge project (I guess I could try for that +Atk Klein, but he and Female Robin are it and neither are particularly viable). Also, decided to say 'fuck it' and resumed pulling for a Jugdral Gen 2er, and got a 4 star Male Morgan for my troubles.


The Fifth Edit: Got Ares for my efforts finally, +Res/-HP and all that. So among the changes to GCN is now the fact that everyone's base area has only one node it connects to instead of two (why would you do this devs?), though I am changing my mind about the removal of enemy WoM since I'm actually competing on Lunatic fairly easily enough (sadly there isn't any Kaze like freebies this time). Finally made progress on my Gwendy project by 5 starring her (she fell off so hard, but considering that my Blue Armors number 3 right now, I've figured that why not up the number and make her part of a brigade). And I suspect that one of the new Brides' silhouettes belongs to Faye (unless the devs got Faye's artist to draw Ninian; also people are kicking around the idea that Tharja is the other silhouette).


Gen Sixth Edit: The latest seasonals are in and lol at all the fliers (at least they aren't all Armors this time around; and one's a dancer in case you missed Airzura). The good news is that Marth's finally getting an alt. The bad news is, so to is Sanaki...and its her FE9 version no less... D8

[Hathen]

I'm sure Snacky is there to satisfy a cuteness quotient and definitely not for the lolicon audience.

Also go figure they choose the moment I decide I should start saving to get Hector once and for all to release a seasonal version of Ninian, and a flying tome user at that. What to do.

[Tomara]

I'm sure Snacky is there to satisfy a cuteness quotient and definitely not for the lolicon audience.

Let's go with that theory for our own sanity's sake.

In any case, I don't know yet if I want to pull. I don't want or need that Tharja and Sanaki is a 'Just. No.' for me, but that Ninian would make my VA!Eliwood and atleast two of my teams very happy.

[Aeolus]

I'm sure Snacky is there to satisfy a cuteness quotient and definitely not for the lolicon audience.

Also go figure they choose the moment I decide I should start saving to get Hector once and for all to release a seasonal version of Ninian, and a flying tome user at that. What to do.

Well if it helps, her artwork is dreadfully terrible (dem broke gams). Also, its too bad she isn't also a Flying Dancing Dragon Tome user, but then neither Scummer Corn nor Nowitch are considered Dragons either (though it seems like you have to be a Dragon (or Camilla) to be a Flying Tome User to begin with).

I suppose they're going for Flower Girl (you know, for Tanith's and Sigrun's wedding; now if only they would actually include them :arghfist:) rather than Marriage Candidate for the Snacki.

Meanwhile Tharja Emblem is now a go (or it would be if we had a little more diversity than 3 Red Mages and a Green Mage; she can't even go for a Tactics or Emblem build since you're running 1 Armor and 3 Infantry).

And while completely inappropriate for Marth, at least we now have a an Axe Mount who isn't past their prime (or wielding a Spoon; its a cake cutter instead...).


Edit: Freebie pull was a 4 star Stahl, second pull was Brinian. The rest so far has been trash (mostly more Stahls). +Res/-Spd, but who cares, she's just another Dancer and thus will always have bad stats. Meanwhile, Ares is unsurprisingly the uncommon choice from the last banner while the rest remain 5 star locked because fuck you, waifus are made of unobtainium and if you want a Dancer/Singer so bad, you will take your Olivias and you will be grateful they even let you have her. As for the upcoming +_+, with the new changes, suspicions abound that our bonus roster will consist of the Seven Brides of Marth (which means that tomorrow's banner will likely consist of the old Brides; good luck on pulling a +Atk Bridelia or getting that 5th and final Lyn/Dazzle fodder). nope, we're just getting the option to run the old versions of our new Brides/Marth, so that's a far less useful banner to pull from (unless you're really hurting for Ninian or Raudrblade+). New seals though are Atk/Def 2, Flier Formation and Spd Smoke. I'm sure Airzura or Brinian would love the extra move, hell, with this, I've basically got a 3 move Flier team in Elincia, Bonkers, Nowitch and whomever gets FF.

[Hathen]

Well, to balance out your early luck, I dumped all my orbs (~250 of them) into the Bride banner sniping only Blues and came out with a pitybreaker 5* Tailtiu for my troubles. Terrible IVs too, so maybe I'll just save her for when someone wants Blarblade (I actually do want to use one of her eventually, but I've pulled about 8 Tailtius so far but none of them have been +SPD yet). It was nice of the game to give me one blue orb at a time so I had to spend 5 on about 90% of my pulls. Well, big surge of orbs coming from the TT soon so maybe that'll save me.

Softening the blow was getting a few good 3/4* pulls. I got a 3* Athena who I've been waiting for for a while. I got 2 Shigures, one of who is +SPD/-DEF so I dunno if I should keep him around (either way he's top-tier fodder). Finally I got 3 Effies, which puts me at one too many but I'm sure someone will want Wary Fighter soon. Whatever the case that allows me to show off my second shiny border unit.



She still needs DC to be complete, but she's already doing a pretty good job carrying my arena team half the time.

[Tomara]

Lucky me got a Brinian (is that what we're calling her?) from the first blue orb I spotted and I already love her so, so much, because now I get to pair her up with LA!Eliwood and it'll be sooooooo cute! I'm also looking forward to Tuxedo Marth. He'll be paired up with my B!Caeda I accidently got from some Legendary Banner. She's -atk and utterly useless, but they're going to look super cute together so whatever.

[Aeolus]

So who should I pair Brinaki up with? Miccy? Delthea? Nowi? Maybe Palla or Catria while she waits for either Sigrum or Tanith to arrive in their SUP (Sports Utility Pegasus) and pick her up after school? Or maybe Ike because almost everybody in Tellus likes Ike.


Anyways, after two mediocre rounds, Round 3 ended in a complete blowout on my team's end as apparently they changed the mechanics so that when you achieve a Knockout, you can open up formerly protected regions, which in turn can be knocked out themselves for even more territories. And provided that you have a really strong Whale team or something, are comfortable with running Inferno on Autobattle and have a shitload of Lances stashed away, you can easily and singlehandedly chain opponent territories (since newly available territories all start at their default value).

I'll admit, I didn't have someone like that on my team, but six Knockouts were had nevertheless, which kinda makes the previous strategy of being in a good position going into the last rounds somewhat less important. At any rate, I hope it'll be a long while before we get another one of these (all of my non-Cavalry Brigades kinda suck still, there just isn't enough time to train dammit).

At least my Armor Emblem is trained enough to dance through the T&A ReBHeB's Lunatic Mode. I just need to do the same with Anna and Alfonse. Edit: I have since polished off the ReBHeB, and in one go (or I would have, but I forgot to reposition Nowi at the last turn and had to redo the whole shebang; at least it doesn't cost me 15 Stamina anymore; for reference, the other character was Bow Lyn).

Double Edit: +_+ is up and while the maps aren't too difficult to play through, Auto-battle chokes hard on the final map. I might want to replace my B team with a Flier Emblem just to deal with the terrain issues. Also pulled for a Bride again and got another pity breaker Faye (+Atk/-Spd; worse than my +Res/-HP; I'd donate the Firesweep+, but none of my Archers really wants one; they either have their own nice bows that their builds rely on or not enough Spd to warrant the effort), so I'm done with the seasonal until the Legendary banner comes and either goes or disappoints.

Double Edit Plus: The Brides are back in town. Tried for Charlotte with my freebie, got 4 star M!Robin instead. :/

[Hathen]

Surprised you’d say that Faye is bad because anything -SPD on her is an ideal set IMO (with +ATK arguably being the absolute best since ATK is the stat you cant make up via Refinery). Her Speed is bad anyway so I’d build her as a guard bow defense tower with those mixed defenses on her.

Also I bumrushed all the orbs from the TT and have gotten fuck all in return aside a 4.25% pity rate.

[Aeolus]

Surprised you’d say that Faye is bad because anything -SPD on her is an ideal set IMO (with +ATK arguably being the absolute best since ATK is the stat you cant make up via Refinery). Her Speed is bad anyway so I’d build her as a guard bow defense tower with those mixed defenses on her.

Also I bumrushed all the orbs from the TT and have gotten fuck all in return aside a 4.25% pity rate.

Wasn't planning on dropping 20k Feathers to turn her around (not when there are so many other units who aren't even 5 star yet, like Marth or Caeda (Marth's either -Atk or -Def while I have at best a +Def Caeda)), but yeah, either a Guard Bow+ or Brave Bow+ would make +Atk/-Spd Faye the one worth the most to keep around (and Faye really should be alongside Mist in an Uncommon Demotion since she's still the only source for Firesweep Bows, whereas Swords and Lances launched at Uncommon rarity and Lances are now on Common).

Sucks about your 4.25% pity rate. Fortunately, the new Brides still have the better part of a month left to pull from. Unfortunately, we're sneaking up on another Legendary Banner, and last year's Bridal Repeat Banner is on now to further drain our Orbs. At this point, I'd snipe like hell and hope for the best (or a decent pity breaker if nothing else).

[Hathen]

I've been pulling nothing but blue orbs from the banner so far, and I'm going to keep doing that since stopping that now would be kinda pointless. I already decided ahead of time I probably wouldn't put anything into last year's brides or whatever the upcoming Legendary is, and since I already have one of each element anyway I'm short one huge incentive to get whoever it ends up being (plus it's probably going to be yet another sword to add onto the pile, I can't think of anyone who could be a red tome or bow unless it ends up being Ylgr who is a wildcard).

As for Faye, I wouldn't waste trying a Brave Bow build on her myself. Her ATK is actually somewhat below average amongst bows so even common archers like Virion (or perhaps more relevantly, Gordin) can outdo her with said build. Her one unique thing is running a weird mixed defenses build which is only outdone by Spooky Jakob, who on the other hand would love that Brave Bow because he can just say "fuck speed" and delete everything by running Bold Fighter. As for adding Faye to the uncommon pool- I'd like to see that happen (alongside some other unimpressive 5* exclusives like Katarina, Jaffar or Luke), but even if they demote some units eventually I won't be surprised if they leave Faye off the list. It probably wasn't the original thought behind it but I'm guessing they'd want to keep Firesweep bow a hard-to-get skill because it's far easier to abuse than the other Firesweep weapons by nature of being 2-range. The other Firesweep weapons need to run Drag Back/H&R to get a similar effect while Bows are free to run Cancel Affinity to ruin the one hard check it would otherwise have.

Also I pulled on the shiny new stances banner and got...a Free Zelgius. -ATK +DEF but regardless I really didn't want to waste my luck on something like this since I didn't even want him, he can't do anything for me unless I magically pull 10 more of him so I can replace the Draug I'm building in my Arena team. Well, he'll make my Armor Brigade better I guess.