Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links

[Ice Dragon]

22 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Tethys has never used magic.

Tethys and all other characters in The Sacred Stones has access to dark magic using the old Mine glitch.

[Silverly]

2 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Tethys has never used magic.

Because she couldn’t attack to begin with. I think it’s fine to take creative liberties with the GBA dancers due to them normally being passive. We haven’t had a red tome dancer either, so that would make Tethys unique instead of giving her a lame ass dagger.

[XRay]

12 hours ago, silverserpent said:

Her heal assist also refreshes unit. The penalty is that she has abysmal Atk so the heal is worth pants.

I hope she would still have the regular Dance though since not all units want to be healed.

[Interdimensional Observer]

3 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

and the last of which is "Devdan is really scary".

And really bizarre, the Largo is just out there. His Tormod is his only good support, the one where he is the most normal, if "motherly".

 

3 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

I'm a bit disappointed with Nephenee's tap quotes. They're all about how she talks. I may not remember any other character trait about Nephenee from those games, but surely there was something else to this character from her supports or something? Waifu Watchers, care to enlighten me?

One, expect philanderization in FEH. Two, if you want to go the source itself all three of her supports (aka not that much reading) are here.

Third, here is something of an analysis of Neph of mine from a different topic, that discusses her ending in RD.:

"And of course I was being superficial with the Brom criticism. Of him and Nephenee, the two country bumpkins of Tellius, I'm not sure who I like more. Nephenee isn't bad, she isn't overly shy, she isn't in any way particularly bad or good, and neither is Brom, both are, appropriately, ordinary characters.

Neph does certainly rise to the occasion though when she preps herself for battle at the start of 2-1 and brings Brom with her, I appreciate her proactiveness and foresight here. Her ending of moving to Melior to be a guard was unexpected, I would have expected her like Brom to continue being a farmer. That she sees soldiery as her profession (or at least is sometime militiawoman) would suggest to me she has become self-confident in her abilities in what she never thought she had any talent at before. Melior being the capital of Crimea makes it also urban, so I'd expect she overcame her shyness caused by her country accent, and maybe Calill and her maintained their friendship.

Nephenee being massively more popular than Brom isn't all sex appeal/beauty though. Being the first playable Solder/Halberdier and having Wrath too has something to do with it as well. I have to admit this. These are still surface traits though. I just wish she wasn't massively more popular, since it seems she is that way for the wrong reasons."

 

41 minutes ago, SilvertheShadow said:

Because she couldn’t attack to begin with. I think it’s fine to take creative liberties with the GBA dancers due to them normally being passive. We haven’t had a red tome dancer either, so that would make Tethys unique instead of giving her a lame ass dagger.

And furthering this notion of Red Tome, I wouldn't want her to have a personal, but I'd like a direct reference to the enemy control glitch by having the tome called something like Crimson Eyes- a monster weapon that is dark magic, and having "Crimson" in there would work well with her very red color scheme, and the "Eyes" part fits well with the allure of a Dancer.

[Othin]

I think Tethys's best shot at getting in is Performing Arts, and in that case, she can have whatever weapon she wants.

[mampfoid]

I'm missing so many units from the current banners:

Spoiler

Nephenee & Katarina

Linde & Camilla

Xander, Leo & Elise

Robin, Tiki & Gaius

Innes & Noire

While I don't need any of them, I'm very tempted to throw my collected orbs on these banners. Especially because most of the units are seasonal and there is nothing else left to do (except to gain the last 8k points in TTs). 

I should save orbs, since I still want a grey Robin (darn legendary banners!), new heroes come on Friday and Veronica should arrive in 1-2 months. 

 

[Hawk King]

31 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

I'm missing so many units from the current banners:

while pulling for Summer Tana, I just got Swordhardt and Katarina on the same circle...

So far on that banner I am 1 of 4 for focus 5* units.

 

I don't think there are any units not in the game that I would need to insta-pull. I would like to see Ross, Gilliam, Ewan, Gerik, and Tethys though.

The more trainees the better.

[bethany81707]

1 hour ago, mampfoid said:

I'm missing so many units from the current banners:

  Hide contents

Nephenee & Katarina

Linde & Camilla

Xander, Leo & Elise

Robin, Tiki & Gaius

Innes & Noire

While I don't need any of them, I'm very tempted to throw my collected orbs on these banners. Especially because most of the units are seasonal and there is nothing else left to do (except to gain the last 8k points in TTs). 

I should save orbs, since I still want a grey Robin (darn legendary banners!), new heroes come on Friday and Veronica should arrive in 1-2 months. 

 

I still want to try again for Nephenee, and to some extent Katarina, but I'm not sure on it. It's something to keep in mind before it expires.

Edited July 18, 2018 by bethany81707

[Tybrosion]

21 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

while pulling for Summer Tana, I just got Swordhardt and Katarina on the same circle...

And similarly, I got this on my first circle of Sketchy Summer:

Spoiler

[insert joke about how the Odin was actually what I valued the most here]

Naturally, Camilla is still playing hard-to-get thanks to the desire sensor being in full effect. I'm also missing Gaius (don't care about), Innes (only halfway care about) and Linde (would care more about if she wasn't holding that dagger), but all three are secondary to Camilla.

Oh, and if Friday's banner is a Conquest one that has a Leo alt, I'm requesting for help to be sent in advance because I know my self-control will buckle and break instantly if that comes to pass.

1 hour ago, mampfoid said:

I should save orbs, since I still want a grey Robin (darn legendary banners!)

Which is also exactly what I should be doing too, but I know I won't because I'm me.

[DehNutCase]

Moving the armor stuff over here so we don't flood a non-related thread. (Suddenly got busy due to personal issues, so my replies will be slower than usual.)

 

17 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

A team with a cavalry unit in it certainly appreciates a second cavalry unit both to match the first cavalry unit's movement range and to apply superior buff options for both units.

I don't see why that logic should be any different with armors. If you've already chosen to put an armor in your team, your best option for a teammate is a second armor because it can supply better buffs and more efficiently than any other unit type.

This is why almost all of my team compositions are 2 pairs or 4 of a kind.

That's... sort of right.

I won't mind a 3 move flier being paired with a cavalry, if you understand me. For the record, I definitely won't mind pairing a 3 move armor with cavalry.

 

It's not so much that you want to 'match movement type.' A horse easily matches infantry movement, and flier with armor---you can always go 'down' in movement if you wanted to. The second horse is to let you 'get' movement compared to running someone with less mobility than a horse. It just happens to cost less, stats-wise, than the first horse because Type Buffs are so strong.

With Tactics buffs, the buff ability of Combined Arms improved to the point where 2 pairs isn't that much better than a single pair and 2 randoms or even 4 randoms. (I'll almost never run a team with 4 randoms, but that's because one movement type is armor, not because it's hard to buff 4 randoms.) Two pairs is still better, mind, Type Buffs are god damn strong, but it's no longer at the point where you either run Type Buffs or your C-slots are shit. 3 + 1 is inexcusable unless the 1 is a dancer or an armor, though. Dancer if the 3 doesn't have dancer access, armor if the 3 does, but happened to have a huge weakness in terms of combat, somehow. (It's actually a bit hard to think of a situation where a full emblem team would have less combat than 3 + 1, when 1 is an armor.)

Regarding 4 of a kind---there are only two teams I can stand that in, Infantry and Fliers, because of dancer access. And there's no reason to run 4x Infantry because their C-slots are so bad. (I rarely run 'pure' Horse Emblem because, like I've mentioned, there's such a thing as too much mobility. Besides, a dancer is +2 move for the team compared to a horse's +1. A single unit never has the problem of too much mobility, but certain team comps can achieve it from a team standpoint. 2x dancer + 2x horse or 2x flier is the best mobility in the game, but it sacrifices so much for it that it's only barely functional by my standards. It's basically the 5 move Reinhardt problem, if you already have enormous amounts of mobility, more mobility isn't going to fix your actual viability problems.)

 

Regarding adding a second Armor for better buffs. Does it actually do that? Bearing in mind that you have to choose between getting 'normal' movement or getting a pair of Type Buffs. Horse + Horse is a easy double Hone. Armor + Armor is either double buff or single buff and armor march. Yeah, it'll let you add more armors---once you have 2 armors already other units lose ground because they want stronger buffs than the drives and whatnot armors are fine with working with, and you have more overall benefit from armor march---but that's just doubling down on your weaknesses from a unit evaluation standpoint.

I don't mind adding a random Horse to some other team, because a lot of horses do exactly what they need to do with either basic buffs or a +6 in a single stat. (Reinhardt is the premier example in everything because he does everything---but in this case it's because his cookie cutter Dire Thunder set needs only minimal support, and he provides 3 move buffing and repo abilities as well as his player phase combat.)

You can choose to add more horses than just 1, but they don't limit team building by making adding more horses, and only more horses, the optimal play.

 

It's similar to Waver vs. Tamamo in FGO. They're around the same level in their own niches, but Tamamo has a very limited niche, whereas Waver's niche is almost every single team that can be built.

Except I don't consider armors at Reinhardt's level even in their best teams. Just because you don't need to do something doesn't mean the guy who can do that thing isn't better than you. Like, yeah, armors don't need to do things like split up the enemy team, or repo their allies, or provide dance support in teams that can deal with those limitations, but that doesn't mean those weaknesses just disappear.

The fact that armors have those weaknesses means that teams that want the ability to Divide and Conquer, or Hit and Run, or have a dancer utility don't like them very much.

 

Flying Ninian + Spring Camilla are a 20/20 pair because they have combat that's nearly as good as it gets* on top of support nearly as good as it gets and mobility nearly as good as it gets.

*The build will still have a slight weakness to certain Bow users, just like how armor teams will have a slight weakness to certain tomes or staff users or whatever.

An armor duo just gets combat that's basically as good as it gets.

17 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

As a reminder, an armor has at least 17 more points of stats than a comparable unit (i.e. all other stat modifiers the same) in a different movement type, which means losing one of the two units' C slots still puts both units approximately 9-11 points ahead of comparable units in different movement types.

You're thinking in terms of unit pair buffing. Tactic buffs buff 3 people.

A C-slot is worth 18 stat points in a team with just Tactics. (It's theoretically worth 24 if you have enough mobility to Atk or Spd wave reliably, but Wave skills have their own issues. You also can't get 24 on all wave skills because of positioning.)

 

Type Buffs are the lazy and very strong option, but they're not always the best buff skill. (Sort of like how Dire Thunder is Reinhardt's lazy but strong option, but it's not always his best set, depending on the rest of the team.)

17 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Armors run Swap, which is the superior mobility skill for a bulky team. It allows for more flexible positioning of units in exchange for less mobility of the death ball as a whole. What I mean is that unlike Reposition, which requires empty pathable tiles and therefore has its positioning restricted by terrain for non-fliers, Swap continues to work in cramped spaces. Furthermore, because Reposition necessarily moves a unit 2 squares, it is noticeably hampered on waffle-shaped maps.

...

High mobility teams don't need assist skills to reorganize. They just use their movement turns. There are some edge cases like trying to get onto a trench as a horse, but that just puts you on par.

Note: I consistently rate infantry low precisely because their mobility isn't good enough, I'm mostly talking about fliers and horses here.

 

And regarding 'cramped spaces.' You know why space gets cramped on an arena map? It's because you let your enemy team get a positioning advantage. Run some mobility and be the guy with the positioning advantage. (And it has to be really bloody cramped for a high mobility team to not be able to reorganize. 1 free square is enough.)

 

It's similar to how wizards heal damage and pigs fly. They don't get into those situations in the first place. Like, there're misplays I can forgive people for, not knowing AI manipulation or being careless occasionally, but it's another thing entirely if the mistake is consistent and clearly avoidable. Knowing that you should run forward to give you more map behind you should be on the level of knowing that you might want to deploy your rooks and bishops and knights in chess because they're better than pawns.

17 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Due to the high natural defensive stats of armors, Ward Armor benefits armors more than Ward Cavalry and Ward Fliers benefit their respective movement types (reducing damage taken from 30 to 22 is less powerful than reducing damage taken from 8 to zero, and fortification tiles give an additional boost to the strength of defensive buffs). The fact that they naturally clump together means that you easily give the team +0/0/8/8 from Ward Armor alone in addition to any Drive skills that are in the units' Sacred Seal slots.

A complete lack of boosts to offenses is actually completely compensated for by the fact that armors have access to superior Special cooldown reduction skills. Effectively, armors can afford to run fewer numeric points of buffs because (1) they have roughly three Tactic skills' worth of a head start from stats alone, (2) buffs to defensive stats on units with already high defensive stats are worth more than buffs to defensive stats on units with lower defensive stats even when numerically equal, and (3) they have access to superior skill options that are capable of compensating for their running fewer stat buffs.

That's only the case if we're fighting a significant amount of enemies. The reason Odin's defensive spread is so good for an offensive mage is because he's very bulky for the only combat he's expected to take damage in. (The fact that he had to wait until -blade caught up to his good bulk is a different issue.)

If you're strong enough to avoid the 4RKO then you're practically indestructible no matter if you end up at 1 hp or 100 hp at the end. In fact, it's better than that, because it's kind of bloody rare to fight all four units in one turn, particularly with one unit, meaning the problem changes from durability to sustain. Team sustain problems can be solved with a single unit, and unit sustain problems can be solved with a single skill-slot.

The fact that you take 0 damage even from 100 enemies hitting you in one turn doesn't matter if 100 enemies don't hit you in one turn. It's a feature you have but don't use. Min-maxing is all about having weaknesses you don't use in exchange for strengths you do use, this is the bloody opposite of min-maxing. You're using up multiple skill-slots, multiple unit-slots, to solve a problem where you could've gotten away with using only one unit-slot or one skill-slot for, because you're building the team to counter a problem that never comes up.

 

Does Reinhardt always use his 3 mobility and his buffing abilities versus every single team? No. Does Reinhardt at least have a chance of running into teams that require his 3 mobility and buffing abilities? Yes.

You don't have to use every advantage of your unit in every match, but you do have to use them in at least some matches, or else you might as well not have that advantage.

 

And combat will only ever get as good as 'ORKO the dude who fought you,' sustain might improve if you take less damage, but raw combat doesn't care as long as you had at least 1 hp at the end. Like, it doesn't matter if you overkilled by 100 or by 0 if the guy's dead at the end and you're alive. This is why horse teams are so strong---they have less BST than every other unit type, but they have enough that they can consistently ORKO with proper setup. They got just enough combat to function and then dumped everything else into mobility and utility.

(This is very much stat distribution related---if -blade didn't exist, if Reinhardt didn't exist, and, most importantly, if Type Buffs didn't exist, horses might've lost enough consistency that you'd rather pay the raw mobility to go fliers or infantry or armor instead. It's a balancing issue and not a theoretical issue. Horses don't just straight up go 'I have 3 more therefore I'm better,' it's just that right now they get their mobility cheaper than how much mobility is worth.)

Yeah, buff stacking armor teams on fort tiles might be a problem---we're assuming this is a problem because we're discounting AI manipulation to split up the enemy team---but you don't go 'well, I better spent all my resources to counter this one threat.' You go, 'how little resources can I get away with using to counter this threat'?

It better not be more than 1 unit-slot, because Dazzle Gravity+ counters the hell out of that. Most of the time, it's just 1 skill-slot, particularly if you're fine with it being inconsistent. I run Sacae's because it costs the least---one B-slot, which is far less useful than the weapon slot---and it covers enough armors that even without AI manipulation it's fairly reliable. (If I didn't have AI manipulation I might sacrifice the weapon slot instead---someone needs either a dazzling staff or a Firesweep weapon.)

Which, mind, is a huge sacrifice. Firesweep and Dazzling both share the issue of dropping combat to the point where ORKOs are unreliable. Dazzling fixes it with Gravity access (you don't need ORKOs with all the time in the world), but Firesweep needs significant team mobility advantage to be worth it. This is fairly simple versus armors, okayish versus dragons, decent vs. fliers due to effectiveness, and will probably get you killed versus horses.

Which, mind, means that Firesweep is the 6/10 or 7/10 of weapons. It has one job, and it does it damn well, but it really only does that one job. There are times where you'd run it over higher scoring options like Braves or -Blades, but it takes a fairly specific team for that to happen.

17 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

"Armors have to death ball" is irrelevant when they are just so damned good at it. Being forced to play optimally because that's "all you can do" is not really a disadvantage.

Cavalry do not have a better death ball than armor because player-phase death balls are simply not effective. You typically need to move out of your death ball to attack, which defeats the entire purpose of being in a death ball. A cavalry enemy-phase death ball is similarly less effective than an armor enemy-phase death ball because cavalry have fewer points of stats to put into defenses, meaning you either have units that have armor-like defenses and shit offenses, or you have units with simply not enough defenses to effectively death ball.

Horses don't have to play optimally to crush teams.

I probably play offensive teams fairly well with my understanding of AI manipulation and team building, but I'd be surprised if I was getting more than 70% efficiency out of my lineups. There's always the feeling of 'my team could've won this even easier' when I won.

 

Like I've said at the start of my unit ratings. 20 points is when you have a arena team that I'd be... not willing, exactly, to use, but good enough. Basically reasonably consistent to the point that I wouldn't drop more than, say, 2 or 3 games on the way to 5 wins in a row. (A perfect player might even be able to always win with just a 20 point team, the 2 or 3 games that're dropped is because 20 point teams are pretty unforgiving when I mess up.)

After I reevaluated my willingness to give people like Saber and Gray ultra-expensive stuff like DC, refined Slaying, and Wrath, I actually haven't ran into a single unit that scored less than 5.5. (That is, even Saber would get 5.5, provided you dump enough resources into him to make two 10/10s)

4 * 6 = 24. You might note that four 6 point armors actually score 4 points more than the minimum to consistently 5 win in a row. And that's only if you decided, for some reason, not to bring people like W!Tharja or H!Jakob into the team. (I'd honestly rate H!Jakob pretty highly, he's definitely better than a generic Infantry Brave Bow user off the back of Armored Boots and Bold Fighter. It's really his sustain and utility issues that keeps him down. I'd need to actually do some research, but he's definitely at least 7.5 points.)

 

 

[The serious stuff is over by now, by the way.]

 

Cavalry deathballs are based on the idea that you don't need all your buffs to win all your combats, you don't even need all your unit-turns to wipe a team in one turn. It actually took me playing grand conquests a few times with a friend's +0, default kitted Brave Roy to understand why. (This understanding is also why my Cordelia is running Galeforce rather than a damaging special.) The guy is basically minimally invested and more than a little sub-optimal and he was still more useful than my Brave Lyn in GC, versus Inferno enemies which are all merged and well min-maxed and more than capable of threatening ORKOs on defense.

It's fine to drop a guy to half hp in a single combat when you get 2 unit-turns a turn, and even 'sub-optimal' units get ORKOs occasionally, and it's kind of absurdly difficult to make sure everyone on a defense team ORKOs everyone on the offense team, particularly after the defense team lost some units---due to the loss of wards and goads and whatnot. The problem is that this kind of team composition is very unforgiving towards imperfect play: it'll be melee heavy because it's hard to give everyone a fight if you have different combat ranges, Galeforce means that you can't just brute-force past checks with damaging specials*, and you don't get a dancer unless you bring in a non-cavalry.

*You'll probably still carry at least 1 damaging special, probably on the guy who leads the charge to apply Savage Blow and remove the most relevant ward/goad/whatever.

Mind, the cavalry deathball won't be a 40 point team, it might not even be a 30 point team, it's just best team in terms of, well, stomping an enemy team into the ground with nothing with ramming straight into the enemy as quickly as humanly possible. It's the best team for killing the entire enemy team as quickly as possible, which is usually late turn 1 or early turn 2. (My lineups often render a team non-functional by turn 1 or turn 2, but a cavalry deathball would straight up wipe the enemy by then.)

This is the offensive version of a team that forces you to play optimally. If you don't wipe the team by turn 2, turn 3 armors reach fort tiles with all their buffs up. (Armor march teams can reach fort tiles by turn 2, but they won't have enough wards armor to prevent an all out offense team from killing them piecemeal.)

 

 

Regarding the idea of deathballs itself...

Grab everything you have and ram it everything the other team has, which is basically what deathball is, is the most basic possible tactic for a reason. Anything worse than deathballs has to be either worse results wise, or less obvious. (Walking in one by one is probably even more obvious than deathball, but that's suicide, not tactics, not until we get some 100 Atk Vantage monster.)

 

Divide and Conquer has 2 traits: It's almost as obvious as deathballs, and it's a lot better than deathball from a tactical standpoint. A 4v2 isn't half as hard as 4v4, it's usually completely trivial. 4v1 is almost impossible to lose.

It just has one requirement: You need to be more mobile than the enemy team.

This is actually trivial for player controlled teams because we get to reposition aggressively and we start with the first move. It takes a lot to be out-maneuvered by AI.

 

Like, the best tactic the AI ever uses is deathball---their default strategy is to run straight at you until they die. And it's pretty easy to get them to use worse tactics than that, like running in 1 by 1 or trying to fight an entrenched enemy (fort tile units).

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Think we'll get a reveal trailer or silhouettes for the New Heroes banner tonight?

[C. Turtle]

4 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Think we'll get a reveal trailer or silhouettes for the New Heroes banner tonight?

New Heroes banners don't get silhouettes. That's a Special Heroes thing.

[Rezzy]

32 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Think we'll get a reveal trailer or silhouettes for the New Heroes banner tonight?

It's probably a bit early to expect a trailer tonight, maybe tomorrow.  I'm definitely feeling the short banner duration on this one, since it feels like we just got the second summer banner.

 

It looks like the banner after this one is yet another special banner.  I hope it's not yet another swimsuit banner, since I'm starting to get a bit burnt out on those.  No pun intended.

[silverserpent]

L!Lyn should be ready to sack tomorrow. Sitting at 4k HM on her, so just another couple hours of grind.

[Rezzy]

7 minutes ago, silverserpent said:

L!Lyn should be ready to sack tomorrow. Sitting at 4k HM on her, so just another couple hours of grind.

It's awfully cruel to kill her after building her up so much.

[Tybrosion]

Oh cool, we won't know what's on the banner until Thursday night. I always love it when they do this...... 

Guess it's back to N. Sane Trilogy for me until then.

[Rezzy]

3 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

Oh cool, we won't know what's on the banner until Thursday night. I always love it when they do this...... 

Guess it's back to N. Sane Trilogy for me until then.

We could get a trailer tomorrow.  The pattern seems a bit random.  I've seen speculation that it's going to be a Fates banner, but who knows.  We've already got most of Gen 1, with Silas being the most glaring omission currently.

They might do another Gen 2 banner.  Forrest and Kiragi seem like natural options, and I would love to get those two.  Selkie is popular, but Heroes has a strict policy of no beast units, but maybe they'll add both her and Velouria as the introductory Beast units.

We still need Daddy Garon, and it would be nice to have him as a GHB.  Since they've really been loving the manaketes lately, maybe they'll go with his Dragon Form.  They could even have Draconic Hex as a Seal Everything personal skill for him.

[Venmi]

Maybe there's hope they could announce beast/bird units in the FEH channel?  And the new units could be the long awaited laguz?  A girl can dream...  the top laguz are in the top four of beast units in popularity (when you add RD and PR scores).  So, maybe we could get a beast banner with the top four laguz by total votes, which would be two laguz and two from other games?  Maybe?  That'd be worthy of a FEH channel, and I'd be thrilled with that banner (especially, if I remember correctly, because it would give me Tibarn and Reyson!)

[Rezzy]

2 minutes ago, Venmi said:

Maybe there's hope they could announce beast/bird units in the FEH channel?  And the new units could be the long awaited laguz?  A girl can dream...  the top laguz are in the top four of beast units in popularity (when you add RD and PR scores).  So, maybe we could get a beast banner with the top four laguz by total votes, which would be two laguz and two from other games?  Maybe?  That'd be worthy of a FEH channel, and I'd be thrilled with that banner (especially, if I remember correctly, because it would give me Tibarn and Reyson!)

Oh, I completely missed that there's a FEH channel.

I really hope they announce a Barracks size increase.  I'm at 1095/1100 and I hate sending home useful fodder.

More Tellius units would always be welcome, and that's the biggest source of transforming units that hasn't been tapped yet.  I wonder what they'd do as a weapon for Reyson.  It would be funny if it was a Green Fist weapon that counted as an Axe, so he'd be effective against Oliver.

[Humanoid]

The original FEH channel gave us free summons on every banner. I want something at least as generous. How about a free unit from the actual banner, every banner. I can dream right? ;)

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 minute ago, Rezzy said:

More Tellius units would always be welcome, and that's the biggest source of transforming units that hasn't been tapped yet.  I wonder what they'd do as a weapon for Reyson.  It would be funny if it was a Green Fist weapon that counted as an Axe, so he'd be effective against Oliver.

With Fury XV (because Roman Numerals look so much fancier), Reyson broke every bone in his hand he said when he did that. Nonetheless, apparently it felt good.

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

It's not so much that you want to 'match movement type.'

No, I really do want to match movement type. Downgrading to accommodate for the rest of your team is an actual decreasing marginal benefit.

A team of 3 infantry and 1 cavalry prevents the cavalry from running ahead to make the greatest use of its movement advantage partly because it needs to stay behind to acquire buffs and partly because it can't reach as far and still expect to be in range of being Repositioned back.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

With Tactics buffs, the buff ability of Combined Arms improved to the point where 2 pairs isn't that much better than a single pair and 2 randoms or even 4 randoms.

The numeric amount of buffs is not very different, but the positioning requirements are.

A Tactic team cannot run two squads of +6/6/0/0 like a 2 pairs team or 4 of a kind team can. The team is forced to stay together to collect those buffs.

In exchange, a Tactic team has more lenient positioning within their death ball as they can collect buffs from allies 2 squares away and have an easier time granting the full +6/6/6/6, even if that's usually unnecessary.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

Besides, a dancer is +2 move for the team compared to a horse's +1.

A dancer is +2 movement for one unit on the team each turn, which is different from +1 movement all the time and not directly comparable.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

Regarding adding a second Armor for better buffs. Does it actually do that? Bearing in mind that you have to choose between getting 'normal' movement or getting a pair of Type Buffs. Horse + Horse is a easy double Hone. Armor + Armor is either double buff or single buff and armor march. Yeah, it'll let you add more armors---once you have 2 armors already other units lose ground because they want stronger buffs than the drives and whatnot armors are fine with working with, and you have more overall benefit from armor march---but that's just doubling down on your weaknesses from a unit evaluation standpoint.

I'm just going to reverse this line back at you:

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

You're thinking in terms of unit pair buffing. Tactic buffs buff 3 people.

A 2 pairs team with one armor pair still runs a maximum of 7 stat buffs. It's not 8, but that's hardly a difference. If you're running Tactic skills, you're going to have redundant buffs for all but one stat, and you can easily make an armor take that hit (because the unpaired Tactic skill won't apply its buff to its only user) or run your sole Spd Tactic on a unit that intends to be doubled.

Furthermore, it doesn't at all hinder a 2 pairs team running movement type buffs. The other pair should be self-sufficient, leaving your two armors similarly self-sufficient. Fewer buffs on your armors, sure, but player-phase armors don't really need buffs to begin with to achieve superlative combat performance.

There is nothing about an armor pair that forces you to play additional armors, but any additional armors you do play have virtually zero barrier to entry.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

Except I don't consider armors at Reinhardt's level even in their best teams. Just because you don't need to do something doesn't mean the guy who can do that thing isn't better than you. Like, yeah, armors don't need to do things like split up the enemy team, or repo their allies, or provide dance support in teams that can deal with those limitations, but that doesn't mean those weaknesses just disappear.

If you don't need to do something, then not being able to do so isn't a weakness. It doesn't make you worse or better than anyone who can do that something. It changes the criteria by which you are rated, and that means you are rated based on the things you need to do and they are rated based on the things they need to do. A one-size-fits-all set of rating criteria simply doesn't work in the same way that using the a rubric for hiring a mechanic when trying to hire a lawyer is simply not going to work (and there is no one rubric that would simultaneously work for both hiring a mechanic and hiring a lawyer).

If an enemy-phase blue unit is unable to tank specific green threats, that's of zero consequence. It doesn't reduce their worth. However, being able to tank that threat is a small benefit. It won't be a particularly large benefit because most likely the unit will be out of commission for the remainder of the map for doing so.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

Type Buffs are the lazy and very strong option, but they're not always the best buff skill. (Sort of like how Dire Thunder is Reinhardt's lazy but strong option, but it's not always his best set, depending on the rest of the team.)

The thing is that the lazy option is more than good enough and is almost 100% reliable.

Gluing two units together is by far the easiest way to work with support options and is also the most flexible in terms of mobility. While it is not the strongest option, it is applicable to more situations and has fewer restrictions.

This is exactly why I don't like the Wave skills. While they apply a powerful buff that includes the user, it is not at all reliable.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

High mobility teams don't need assist skills to reorganize. They just use their movement turns. There are some edge cases like trying to get onto a trench as a horse, but that just puts you on par.

High-mobility player-phase teams need Assist skills to reorganize because unless you are in a situation to sweep the opposing team in a single turn or you have successfully split the enemy team so that the survivors cannot reach you, you need Assist skills to move back out of enemy range.

Cavalry have the issue where they have fewer squares on the map that they can physically stand on and therefore cannot engage in combat in many areas on maps with large numbers of trees, which can force you to delay action by a turn, costing you movement turns and map space.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

(And it has to be really bloody cramped for a high mobility team to not be able to reorganize. 1 free square is enough.)

The indoor offset-waffle map is the map where Reposition is at its absolute weakest without a flier due to the fact that all of its straight avenues are horizontal with none of the long vertical avenues of the waffle bridge map and parallel bridge map..

Furthermore, the design of the map is such that an enemy team with similar mobility as your own has the upper hand in positioning due to the fact that they can easily double up on attack ranges.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

If you're strong enough to avoid the 4RKO then you're practically indestructible no matter if you end up at 1 hp or 100 hp at the end. In fact, it's better than that, because it's kind of bloody rare to fight all four units in one turn, particularly with one unit, meaning the problem changes from durability to sustain. Team sustain problems can be solved with a single unit, and unit sustain problems can be solved with a single skill-slot.

If you're strong enough to avoid the 4-round kill, then you're definitely not Odin.

There are very few units in the game that have the sustain for more than even 2 rounds of combat against the color they are effective against. This is why Desperation and Triangle Adept are so good.

I assume by "a single skill slot", you mean Renewal, which is a terrible skill for solving sustain problems (when not paired with Falchion). The rate at which it heals is good for sustain on units that already take little damage, but is abysmal for units that die in two rounds of combat because you are forced to wait multiple turns for the skill to actually bring your bulk high enough for another round of combat. The units that Renewal are good for are precisely the opposite of the units that already have trouble with sustain.

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

Horses don't have to play optimally to crush teams.

Neither does any other well-built team, but you seem to have missed my point.

Armors don't have to play optimally. A well-built armor team plays optimally of its own accord. Armors not only have fewer choices than other units do, but have a smaller penalty for making a less than optimal choice (even the penalty for making a dumb move is smaller than for other units).

 

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

Like I've said at the start of my unit ratings. 20 points is when you have a arena team that I'd be... not willing, exactly, to use, but good enough.

Which is an extremely shallow way of thinking, applying a one-dimensional measure to a multi-dimensional problem.

To quote Atul Gawande, "What if you build a car from the very best car parts? Well, it would lead you to put in Porsche brakes, a Ferrari engine, a Volvo body, a BMW chassis, and you put it all together and what do you get? A very expensive pile of junk that does not go anywhere." While this is by no means a perfect metaphor, it gets to the heart of what I think you're doing wrong. The sum of the parts of a multi-dimensional problem is not always (in fact, it rarely is) the value of the whole.

When I recommend a player peruse a Tier list for ideas, I never tell them just that. I always add that they should read the details. Figure out what makes the unit tick. A simple summation of ratings won't account for synergistic compositions, like running Gunnthra on a team full of Ploy or Smoke skills, and won't account for compositions with high overlap and low aggregate coverage, like running four infantry lances.

 

And really, when you're arguing using these points, you're using the rating system you've created to justify the team compositions you find adequate and using the team compositions you find adequate to define the rating criteria of the rating system you've created.

 

2 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

Regarding the idea of deathballs itself...

Grab everything you have and ram it everything the other team has, which is basically what deathball is,

No, that's not a death ball. That may be true in other games, but that is nowhere near true in Heroes.

Heroes forces you to move units one at a time, and that is what makes the biggest difference when comparing to MOBAs or RTSs. Moving your units one at a time forces them to move out of the death ball until the rest of your units catch up, which defeats the entire purpose of a death ball.

An armor death ball is powerful because enemy mobility is powerless against it. As long as you can control who attacks which of your units on any given turn, you've won. This is also why Swap is the optimal Assist skill for armors. What a death ball needs is not the ability to move far with a single action, but to move to a very specific square, and that is what Swap achieves. You don't need the mobility to flank or separate your opponent, you need the granularity of movement to rearrange your own units' formation.

You mentioned that mobility allows you to divide enemy forces to turn battles into 4v3, 4v2, or 4v1 situations to grant you an advantage, but that is exactly what a death ball does in reverse. By exploiting the fact that units are forced to move one at a time and the fact that units are (almost always) forced to attack you when baited, you can turn every individual turn into a 4v1 or 4v2 situation because the opponent is forced to split (in both a logical and physical sense) into a group of units that will attack you on this turn and a group of units that will not attack you on this turn.

[Rezzy]

9 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

The original FEH channel gave us free summons on every banner. I want something at least as generous. How about a free unit from the actual banner, every banner. I can dream right? ;)

Wasn't the free summon not until the second or third FEH Channel?

It would be nice if the stacking pity rate only reset if you pulled a Banner character.

@Vaximillian The next FEH channel will announce that all future additions to the Heroes roster will be alts.

Edited July 18, 2018 by Rezzy

[Tybrosion]

10 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

Oh, I completely missed that there's a FEH channel.

Yeah, that was what prompted my unnecessarily salty comment.

[Humanoid]

6 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

Wasn't the free summon not until the second or third FEH Channel?

It would be nice if the stacking pity rate only reset if you pulled a Banner character.

Oh, I thought for some reason the original FEH channel was the one that announced the CYL heroes, and that this one would be the one-year anniversary of it. Didn't realise there was one back in April last year, so the CYL one was the second, yeah.