Othin

Managed to get a deathless run on my first attempt with Marth/Sharena/Hector/Anna, first time that's been that easy in a while. I wasn't expecting much out of Anna, especially on this team, but apparently she's perfectly fine. Got a score of 4,812, which I believe is my new high score, and a current rank of 2,007 which hopefully has a secure top 5k position. Still need a defense win, though.

Considering the siblings banner with random characters like Klein and Lachesis and the banner after it that just had a bunch of additional FE7 characters, I don't think they're in danger of running out of banners anytime soon. There are plenty more miscellaneous characters to add one way or another.

You can't even get 4100 without a bonus hero, since that means getting half points.

I was worried about Anna dragging down my arena team, particularly due to being another axe user on a team that already has Hector and two other melee fighters, but it's been going fine so far. I filled out her skill slots with Defiant Atk and Swap, but now she's out of SP and I want to give her a bunch of other skills. Ardent Sacrifice or Reciprocal Aid could support all the low HP skills, but also Astra and Spur Res are pretty bad and I could replace those with more effective things. Spur Spd could support Xander and Hector well if I can have her learn it before she rotates back out, but I'm not sure about the special. Something in the Vengeance tree would be appropriate, but those don't look too effective.

Beast laguz weren't affected by anti-cavalry weapons in their own games. It's just that FE13/14 re-classified cavalry as "beast" type to have them overlap with the beast shifters in those games. Heroes goes back to saying "cavalry" rather than "beast", and beast shifters are definitely not cavalry. If we do get beast shifters, they'll probably just be counted as infantry with their own (presumably colorless) weapon type. Like dragons, but physical and only vulnerable to anti-infantry weapons rather than both anti-infantry and anti-dragon.

I can't imagine any times I'd want to inherit Threaten Def or Glimmer unless I really needed filler.

I forgot about Vantage. That'd get along well with Fury, too, but unfortunately I used my last spare Lon'qu to give it to Julia. Nothing I have on hand seems great, so I might just hold off until I get more orbs and see what I pull.

Got Xander to 5*! I gave him Reposition and Bonfire, but I'm not sure about his A and B skills. For B, I plan on giving him Quick Riposte once I have a spare Subaki again, but I don't have one at the moment. Swordbreaker would be nice but I don't have that either. I could upgrade a Bartre to give him Fury 2 to help his Spd and Res a bit, but that'd turn off Quick Riposte faster. Although I'm not sure he'd be great at keeping it for long enough to matter anyway. One way to help could be to give Spur Spd to another one of my main units, since I have two spare 4* Marths. Although that doesn't answer the question of what to put on Xander himself.

Indeed, one is plenty. So if you want a high-res unit, particularly one able to take on Takumi and Reinhardt, you do have one. Up to you whether or not she's worthwhile, though.

They come up every couple of weeks. If you're not going for the free characters when they're available, that's your own choice to decline to get the characters, not the game not giving you access to them. Upgrading 2* and even 1* units to 3* is trivial.

Camus is obvious, and Linus almost as much so. I'm sure we're going to get more main antagonists like Zephiel. Lyon, Ashnard, and Arvis are the ones I'm hoping for most, but Julius, Nergal, Hardin, Lehran, and Garon would also fit well. Other enemy holy weapon users from FE4, to complete the set. Travant and Ishtar are the highest-profile users of their weapons, although I guess Helswath would have to go to Lombard? Walhart and Aversa would be cool to have, and Aversa would be particularly significant due to being a red mage flier. Being bonus playable characters from Awakening probably helps their chances. Of course, as Reinhardt and Eldigan show, even enemies can show up in regular summons, although it seems pretty limited.

Yeah, my Hector has 55 HP (with the HP +3 seal) so his QR threshold is 44 while my Julia's max HP is 38. With +HP Julia and -HP Hector, though, she has 41 HP and he has 49 so it'd work. Seals and skills and merges could also be a way to make that happen: it's definitely possible for some Julia/Hector combinations, just not most.

I had Julia use Ardent Sacrifice for that purpose. Only came up like once in the few days she could fit on my team, but it was quite handy when it worked. Thought about using Reciprocal Aid, but my Julia can't actually get Hector's HP back up to Quick Riposte range that way.

http://feheroes.gamepedia.com/Sophia Flux, Ruin, Fenrir, Fenrir+. Are they different in other versions of the game?

She's a good source of Escape Route. Can't complain about that.

None. I like the game, but I've had too many bad pulls to feel like I could expect to get my money's worth, and if I start spending money, it'll get harder to keep from spending more.

The arena thread has a lot of people posting high scores. I've been getting just sky of 4.8k while doing decently as f2p (as have several others), and that's right around the 5k threshold. Which just means there are about 5k players doing better than us, and no amount of updating should change that.

Yeah, its info is here: https://serenesforest.net/fire-emblem-heroes/skills/weapon-red/ Light Brand doesn't seem particularly compatible with how this game's mechanics work, anyway.

I think Xander's signature weapon does plenty to differentiate him. Distant Counter is a pretty big deal.

First try with Marth/Sharena/Hector/Olivia didn't work out, but swapping out Marth for Lilina on my second try worked wonders. Lilina took out the sword fighter on the right with help from Olivia to get two hits in, then Sharena used Draw Back to get Olivia to safety. On the enemy phase, the green cavalier attacked Lilina and died to a Quick Riposte counter, which also let Lilina charge her Growing Flame and use it to one-shot Xander the next turn. From there, cleaning up the last two enemies was simple.

Had some trouble with Xander's Lunatic map at first, but adding Lilina to my team solved everything. She seems very effective in GHBs. Planning on upgrading Xander to 5*, but I need him to reach 40 first for maximum SP. Fittingly, I recently pulled Peri to train alongside him, but dear god her voice is obnoxious. I remember her sounding evil in Fates, but not this much like a kid, it's really weird.

Do we know when we'll get the orbs? If it's before the end of the Hero Fest event, it'll be convenient for helping with additional pulls from that.

I'm not saying it's feasible to make a team that will do well against everything, but it's important to be accounting for all the possible matchups rather than being automatically paired away from bad ones. Especially since it's possible to use the match screen to avoid some really bad ones at a cost: it's worked well for me for avoiding cavalry teams.

I think it's reasonable to take "on a reasonably limited budget" as a typical unstated default constraint, unless people specifically say they're willing to put large amounts of cash into the game.

Red Mage with Ragnarok would definitely be the coolest way to do it. Given that other ultimate weapons include Excalibur, Aura, Parthia, and Hauteclere, just due to being ultimate weapons rather than exclusive ones, Ragnarok would fit perfectly as an ultimate weapon (upgraded from Bolganone, which is fitting).