DLNarshen

While I love FE4 in its current state and don’t consider many of its “outdated” gameplay elements to be issues (supposed weapon and skill imbalance, for one), I think there is a lot of room for improvement in the pairing/inheritance system. It always bothered me that despite a great number of possible pairings, only a small handful of them are worth anyone’s while. Lewyn has seven options for a bride, but four of them might as well not exist due to the resulting children not being able to wield Forseti, or any of his tomes/staves for that matter. I believe a great deal of useless pairings could be given life by loosening the rigidity of the childrens’ classes and promotion paths. Promotions are not tied necessarily to what a unit’s base class is, and so the infrastructure is already there. For example, imagine Lewyn x Ayra. In vanilla FE4 there is no reason to even consider this pairing because statistically it is nothing special, and more importantly means Forseti will be sitting uselessly in Ulster’s inventory forever. What if with Lewyn as the father, Ulster promotes to a Mage Fighter instead of his usual Forrest/Hero? It doesn’t only have to happen to ensure holy weapon inheritance either – Diarmud for example could benefit by a Mage Knight promotion with Azel as his father. Larcei could promote to an updated Hero class that can use Axes like in Thracia if she has Neir blood, etc. Lots of fun possibilities. Unfortunately, some pairings don’t lend themselves to such simple solutions. Lewyn x Aideen or Briggid, or example. One could swap the inheritance of Aideen’s kids so that Lana gets Lewyn’s stuff, but then that ruins Lester. Lester could promote to a unique bow knight class that can also use wind magic, but I don’t think that’s ideal. Same deal with Patty. I don’t know of an elegant solution to make the Forseti (or Valkyrie Staff, in the case of Claud) more than just wasted space in her inventory. Of course, there is also the issue of how pairings are made in the first place, but I haven’t given much thought to how this could be improved without significant changes to the way the game is played. TLDR; Give me more incentive to try what would normally be considered off-kilter pairings beyond a novelty that wears off after one chapter.

For me, tier 21 was a significant step-up in difficulty in terms of the defenses I encountered, but that was back when tier 21+ was almost exclusively populated by the more hardcore crowd. It's gotten easier, and I would be very surprised if there's still a big skill gap between the tiers.

I Guess we'll have to wait for Arione to get the three-headed dragon attack and hopefully some reinforcements. Because of the relatively easy nature of this GHB and just wanting to mix it up a little, Julia is going to sit this one out. Instead Julius will be joined by none other than Ishtar, who may make more regular appearances especially if I can get some merges for her whenever she shows up on another focus. In an alternative timeline where Seliph is defeated early in his rebellion, Julius and Ishtar have to put their Miletos getaway on hold while they put down Thracia's army once and for all.

I pulled every red stone on my free/ticket summons, and was super fortunate to pull Larcei (with a pretty good +atk/-hp nature to boot) without having to spend many orbs. I'd really like Shannon, but I'm not going to push my luck. Better to just wait until he inevitably shows up on a 3-unit banner in the future.

(Travant skills)

There are worse fates for a unit than being grail-locked. For one, it's a guaranteed path to +10. It might take a while, but no slower than the gacha outside of extraordinary instances of luck and/or many months of orb saving. Even if the unit demotes, the chances of pulling that particular unit on any given banner are lower than getting a focus 5*.

No insta-demote is a bit disappointing, but either way Genealogy banners always put a smile on my face. That being said...I'm so conflicted. I would very much like to pull for Shannon and Larcei, but I got to be ready for whenever Ishtar gets another banner. Guess I'll see what pulling red on the tickets gets me for now. It's also worth pointing out that the "Skill cannot be inherited" on Regnal Astra has always been there, and is not at all indicative of the new Imperial Astra being inheritable. The skill descriptions are not always consistent with this sort of thing (in English, at least).

It is. Robin wasn't skipped either - she was the second strike.

Thus far I had been able to climb the max amount of ranks each strike, but it looks like that comes to an end now. A score of 750 isn't enough to climb to even climb to tier 11, so I'll be staying put this time around.

It's certainly good enough to stand on its own, but almost every time it's stacked on a bonus. The Falchions have all been like this since the beginning - while every other Prf Sword had only one effect, they got dragon effectiveness + Renewal 2. Or more recently with Phina getting effective damage against two unit types + two additional effects. Compare that to Sirius (who debuted on the same banner) only getting the standard two effects. I think it should count, and it does for non-Prfs and unrefined Prfs for older units, but generally this is not the case.

As silly as it is, Heroes doesn't seem to count effective damage as an "effect".

Started off with Julius/Lethe/Selkie/Ranulf, but TT never fails to remind me why I tend not to run melee cavalry in this mode. Lethe and Ranulf constantly ran into crowds of enemies to get killed early. Now I'm running Julius/NY!Eir/Selkie/Nagi and seem to be doing a bit better now.

Well, maybe instead of true damage they can double down on the whole "requiring specials for damage" thing. Corvus Tome: Accelerates Special trigger (cooldown count-1) Grants weapon-triangle advantage against colorless foes, and inflicts weapon-triangle disadvantage on colorless foes during combat. [Refine] If Special triggers before or during combat, grants Special cooldown count-2 after combat. After the first combat, enemies will require the Guard effect to not get smacked by Ignis on the counter.

I'm happiest about Lief, but I'm most curious to see what they do with Henry. Outside of some the launch healers, I'm having a hard time thinking of any unit with worse offensive prospects (Spring Xander maybe?). Right now he is entirely dependent on special procs to do any meaningful damage. Someone mentioned a +7 true damage effect, but I don't think that's enough. On most units that is sufficiently strong, but Henry just goes from doing 0 damage, to 7 at best. He's going to need something truly ridiculous to be worth anyone's time.

@Zeo I got to admit, that triple Distant Guard Rinea build looks fun - I may have to steal that one day. You have good taste with that Ross x Lute support I see there. ; ) Happy new year to you too!

Man I've only fought these characters in the Paralogue so far and I'm already sick of 'em. Normally I cheese these things with Ares, but watching Lethe tank a fully buffed + Brazen Bonfire, and one-rounding in return, was...something. Had to cheese the final map with Seliph instead - the only red unit I have who can survive a round against her (and not by merit of his stats). Thankfully as a seasonal she won't be too common, but...

I can see them being used to unlock new skills on units - with the number corresponding to the book the unit belongs to. Using divine codes on everyone's favorite red summon Raigh, for example, would unlock something like Res Tactic or Res Opening in his open C-slot, fully unlocked at 4* rarity. More premium options like Lv. 4 skills and meta/newer skills could be saved for the 5* exclusives, such as Eldigan unlocking the fourth level Fury, or Karel getting Sudden Panic as an alternative B-passive. It keeps the older 5*s desirable (or at least to serve as greater consolation as pity breakers), and the usual 3-4* riff-raff become (slightly) less disappointing summons.

@Zeo Congrats! For some reason I thought your Amelia already had a merge, but I guess now she'll see an even bigger jump in performance especially with that Atk boon!

I can't remember the last time I've been able to run a full team of bonus units - once I get Eir, I'll have the entire bottom row. It has good color balance, but healing might be a problem...

I would love an option to change the music that plays during non-story/event maps, similar to how recent mainline FE games have allowed the player to toggle the music that plays during skirmishes and auxiliary maps. It couldn't be that hard to implement, and it would go a long way to making modes like Arena even slightly more enjoyable for me.

Eir apparently gets Spd Tactic, which is easily the best part of this update for me. I've been wanting this on an easily accessible unit for what seems like ages now.

@Zeo Big time congrats on the CC pull! Maybe you can't give anyone the cool dagger, but if you feed your Serra a 4* Subaki, and a 3* Haar first, you could potentially inherit CC, QR3, and Odd Defense Wave 3 all at once. I don't know if she'd get much use out of those, or if saccing the prerequisite units is a possibility for you, but more options can't hurt right? Normally I don't have much to contribute in this thread, but my free summon on the Weekly Revival actually gave me something of note today:

Hey, running away is a legit strategy! Don't sweat feeling like you had to break the theme a little to include a dancer - the number is candidates is very limited, and it's hard enough to beat some of these with a team of +0s with little investment. The result is still a very satisfying display of splash damage! Hell, you barely had to engage Kempf at all with all the outside damage he took. Geez, there's almost as much splash damage here as in the poison clear! Good for Nanna. I love how Osian plays very similarly to how he did in Thracia itself, proccing his special after each of the enemy's attacks. Even though he couldn't quite get the kill, his engagement with the blue armor was super satisfying! Not only is Reinhardt a better combatant, but probably has better dance moves as well...how frustrating for Kempf. x)

Alternate strat: 1. No Duma on enemy defense - bring team well-suited for a Bolt Tower clear 2. Watch the Lv. 5 Catapult I somehow missed destroy my Bolt Tower Today I also had the great "privilege" of encountering my first highly optimized Cav-line defense team. S!Linde, Veronica, Firesweep B!Lyn, NY!Laevatein, Reinhardt, and Duma, all +10 with super premium builds, including the relevant AR-D skills. First two turns went surprisingly ok, but ultimately I couldn't stop Lyn, Veronica, and Laevatein from maneuvering around my tank and picking off my dancer and Fjorm...

@SatsumaFSoysoy Ask and ye shall receive. The green mage at the end went for Julia - and killed her - in my first attempt. I had to switch to Atk Smoke on Julius to debuff him enough so he does 0 damage to both. That's one impressive Eirika! With Null C-Disrupt she sweeps this map so easily, I can see why Alexmender didn't bother recording a clear. x) Best part was when Kempf applied the Flash effect, but she totally ignores it.