General Weapon Refinery discussion/speculation/creation thread

[Rinco]

I want to upgrade Tailtiu to 5* for her weapon, but the only copy I have not in the form of combat manual is -Spd. I'll wait a bit, since I'll summon some blue on this next banner. Maybe I can get a better one. Worst case I can get her to 5* and merge with a manual to get her +1 and negate her flaw.

[Ice Dragon]

8 minutes ago, ILikeKirbys said:

Oh, right. I forgot about Desperation + Brash Assault.

So Tailtiu + Sturdy Impact is workable. Now I just have to hope that I somehow luck into multiple Tibarns when the next banner drops so I can give his A Skill to her while also having a Tibarn to keep... Although it’s not like I especially need Sturdy Impact, Sturdy Blow 2 would probably be sufficient for what I’m thinking of trying here since she only needs to survive getting hit once.

Thanks for the response.

Just one quick correction to my previous post because I can't math. At +10 merge, Tailtiu has 74 physical bulk instead of 76... which is still plenty.

Sturdy Blow 2 gives her 70 physical bulk at +10, which is also more than enough for any enemy that doesn't have an instantly charging Special.

[Lewyn]

Yeah the whole wrathful description thing seems like a grave error, I am sending feedback on this.  

[Ice Dragon]

11 minutes ago, Lewyn said:

Yeah the whole wrathful description thing seems like a grave error, I am sending feedback on this.  

I thought "Against dragon foe, disables foe's skills that [...] "calculate damage from staff like other weapons"" made it pretty clear to me someone fucked up the translation since dragons can't equip staves.

But then again, I'm well aware (since web designer is part of my job description) that most people don't actually read or have good reading comprehension.

[Lewyn]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I thought "Against dragon foe, disables foe's skills that [...] "calculate damage from staff like other weapons"" made it pretty clear to me someone fucked up the translation since dragons can't equip staves.

But then again, I'm well aware (since web designer is part of my job description) that most people don't actually read or have good reading comprehension.

Yes everything seemed as it was related to dragons including counter any range, but then the staff description stood out.  I don't understand how this was not caught before the update was sent out.  Unless in the future there will be a staff wielding dragon (or they can also equip other non breath weapons).  

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, Lewyn said:

I don't understand how this was not caught before the update was sent out.

Incompetence.

[Corrobin]

Out of curiosity, how good would a Darting Blow 6 build be on Tailtiu?

[bottlegnomes]

52 minutes ago, Corrobin said:

Out of curiosity, how good would a Darting Blow 6 build be on Tailtiu?

I feel like it'd be unnecessary. +spd Tailtiu already hits 44 before buffs and A skills. With Fury and hone speed, AKA the most basic buffs, that's already 51 which should be enough to double just about anything at a similar merge level. It seems like she'd prefer the extra attack of a skill like L&D, Fury, or Swift Sparrow over the extra speed, but I haven't tested any of this so don't put too much stock in this.

[redlight]

3 hours ago, Corrobin said:

Out of curiosity, how good would a Darting Blow 6 build be on Tailtiu?

Frees her a-slot for sturdy impact

[Kaden]

Stupid late night thought: Tharja is given a copy of Tome of Thoron or maybe Mjolnir. Stat-wise, Tharja basically trades resistance for defense compared to Tailtiu and by default, she comes with Vengeance and Darting Blow 3, so it would synergize with a red Tome of Thoron pretty well. It could also reference Tharja's wrath in the bad future after her husband dies. That said, she has no claim to having Wrath unlike Tailtiu.

Watch this actually happen where Tharja and Nino are given copies of Tome of Thoron out of laziness. Watch their tomes be named Tome of Fenrir and Tome of Excalibur too. Watch as F!Corrin is given a personal Dark Breath with Watersweep as its unique refinement.

Edited January 11, 2019 by Kaden

[Ice Dragon]

5 hours ago, Kaden said:

Watch this actually happen where Tharja and Nino are given copies of Tome of Thoron out of laziness. Watch their tomes be named Tome of Fenrir and Tome of Excalibur too.

The reason Tome of Thoron is named as it is is due to a spelling change that exists in Japanese, but not in English.

In Japanese, Thoron is spelled トローン in Genealogy, but is spelled トロン in every game afterwards, including Heroes. Tailtiu's Tome of Thoron in Heroes uses the spelling from Genealogy in Japanese, meaning there is no need to do the silly "Tome of" prefix that exists in the English name.

[SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre]

21 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The reason Tome of Thoron is named as it is is due to a spelling change that exists in Japanese, but not in English.

In Japanese, Thoron is spelled トローン in Genealogy, but is spelled トロン in every game afterwards, including Heroes. Tailtiu's Tome of Thoron in Heroes uses the spelling from Genealogy in Japanese, meaning there is no need to do the silly "Tome of" prefix that exists in the English name.

That line is just a dash in katakana. This "spelling" difference is even more subtle in how it manifests in the spoken word. It just signifies a very subtle difference in enunciating the exact same phonetic sounds; the vowels are to be "held" longer. 

Edited January 11, 2019 by SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre said:

That line is just a dash in katakana. This "spelling" difference is even more subtle in how it manifests in the spoken word. It just signifies a very subtle difference in enunciating the exact same phonetic sounds; the vowels are to be "held" longer. 

I speak Japanese, you know.

A spelling difference with a subtle pronunciation difference is more than enough to distinguish two words from each other. Take the English Mystletainn and Missiletainn, for example.

[SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre]

12 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I speak Japanese, you know.

A spelling difference with a subtle pronunciation difference is more than enough to distinguish two words from each other. Take the English Mystletainn and Missiletainn, for example.

You speak Japanese but you didn't exactly grace us explicitly with what exactly the chōon does to the sound represented by the other kana.

It is not in dispute that in Japanese katakana written script, the inclusion of the chōon is sufficient to distinguish between the two items name Thoron for purposes of disambiguation. However, you'd be hard-pressed to find any difference in material meaning in the two varying pronunciations of the same foreign loanword. "Thor" is the part of Thoron that matters. "on" is entirely just a phonetic creation to make "Thor" roll off the tongue. If, to a Japanese person, both pronunciations register no difference in meaning to them regarding "Thor" or what Thoron is, then it is just as irrelevant in other languages as well, and hence it is entirely appropriate and not silly at all to do something like "Tome of Thoron" to differentiate between the Thorons. The name has no meaningful difference, so there must be another way to state that "this Thoron is not exactly that Thoron". 

My point was to highlight what the chōon does to the spoken word. It's more subtle that the written script suggests. The addition of a character to those not knowing the language at can suggest something of a far more pronounced difference, like an entire extra syllable with a different sound. What the inclusion of the chōon does similar to italicizing a particular part of the verb or the informal long repetition of a vowel  in a word, such as writing "look" as "looooook". Indeed, it seems that the chōon is actually a direction all incorporated into a single stroke character. 

Also, technically speaking, definitions of spelling usually involve the formation of words from letters in an alphabet. Japanese doesn't use an alphabet, that's for sure. The character itself can be the word in some cases, and "spelling" would be akin to drawing the character correctly. 

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre said:

You speak Japanese but you didn't exactly grace us explicitly with what exactly the chōon does to the sound represented by the other kana.

It's irrelevant what the actual pronunciation of it because the point is that the way the two weapons' names are differentiated from each other in Japanese is different from how they are differentiated from each other in English. In English, they are differentiated by prepending "book of" to one of the weapons' names; in Japanese, they are differentiated by the fact that Genealogy's version of the weapon inherently has a different spelling from later versions.

 

6 minutes ago, SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre said:

Also, technically speaking, definitions of spelling usually involve the formation of words from letters in an alphabet. Japanese doesn't use an alphabet, that's for sure. The character itself can be the word in some cases, and "spelling" would be akin to drawing the character correctly. 

Using characters from an alphabet is no different from using characters from a syllabet. I could have used the word "orthography" instead of "spelling". However, while "orthography" is more accurate, it is less understandable to other people, and "spelling" is sufficiently accurate for the context since it still has a naturally generalizable definition for use in writing systems that aren't a strict alphabet.

Not to mention that one of the definitions of spelling is "orthography" in full, so "spelling" and "orthography" are actually equally accurate for the situation, but "orthography" is more precise.

 

And again, I'd like to emphasize that all of this is completely irrelevant to the original point, that being that "Book of Fenrir" and "Book of Excalibur" are unlikely to be implemented because "Book of Thoron" was a naming convention used by the localization team and not the developers because there was no equivalent way to render the fact that the difference in Japanese was a difference in spelling that doesn't exist in English.

[GreatKnightEcho]

I came up with a duelist build using Seliph's new refine, which I personally think is pretty cool. Needs a ton of team support, and is pretty expensive, but once he gets going, he has 72 ATK and 63 DEF.

[Diovani Bressan]

I liked Tailtiu's new weapon (I didn't gave her refinement yet). I gave her Brazen, Vantage and Flashing Blade, and she works pretty well! Mine is +Spd -Def. She will probably enter on my list to +10 someday. She is a weaker, but easy to build and merge, version of Ishtar.

[bottlegnomes]

10 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

The reason Tome of Thoron is named as it is is due to a spelling change that exists in Japanese, but not in English.

In Japanese, Thoron is spelled トローン in Genealogy, but is spelled トロン in every game afterwards, including Heroes. Tailtiu's Tome of Thoron in Heroes uses the spelling from Genealogy in Japanese, meaning there is no need to do the silly "Tome of" prefix that exists in the English name.

In that case, the smart money would've been to go with the fan translation and have the animation be Jeff Bridges's smiling face rising from the ground over a backing of neon lines.

On a more serious note, Friegian Thoron seems like it could've been another, slightly less out-of-nowhere-seeming translation. It should fit the character count based on Dark Mystletainn being, if I counted correctly, one character longer. Based on eyeballing it, I think that extra letter should make up for any possibility of greater average character width. I guess that might raise the question of why Ishtar, princess(?*) of Friege doens't get access to it, but when has that really stopped them?

*Not sure what the official terminology is.

I really need a good Tailtiu. She looks like she's going to be fun as heck, but the best I've got is +res/-def.

Edited January 12, 2019 by bottlegnomes

[SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre]

1 hour ago, bottlegnomes said:

In that case, the smart money would've been to go with the fan translation and have the animation be Jeff Bridges's smiling face rising from the ground over a backing of neon lines.

On a more serious note, Friegian Thoron seems like it could've been another, slightly less out-of-nowhere-seeming translation. It should fit the character count based on Dark Mystletainn being, if I counted correctly, one character longer. Based on eyeballing it, I think that extra letter should make up for any possibility of greater average character width. I guess that might raise the question of why Ishtar, princess(?*) of Friege doens't get access to it, but when has that really stopped them?

*Not sure what the official terminology is.

I really need a good Tailtiu. She looks like she's going to be fun as heck, but the best I've got is +res/-def.

 

Ishtar(and Reptor/Blume) has a better "Thor" tome, so that would not be a concern. It's literally Thorhammer in the Japanese but they went with actual name of Thor's hammer by calling it Mjolnir in the English translation; those who don't google might not catch that connection. So it makes sense that Thoron is what the noble elite, including non-major Holy Blood family members, of Freige uses because they don't have the holy blood to wield the gold standard "Thor" tome to electrocute their enemies. 

Ishtar can already use Thoron. The generic one. Reinhardt and Olwen use the other "Thoron" and they come from Freige as well. Fregian Thoron is makes the tome sound way too exclusive. It's also just awkward to say, and tempting to mispronounce it as Fridge Thoron.  

If they want to keep the FE4 faithfulness up, Ishtar should get a refine that basically gives her Desperation or something while proc'ing her native Vantage like her game form. Continue+Vantage on 60 might weapon with tons of hit was just evil. 

[bottlegnomes]

6 minutes ago, SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre said:

Ishtar(and Reptor/Blume) has a better "Thor" tome, so that would not be a concern.

It's not a matter of would, but a matter of can. But like I said, Heroes doesn't seem to really care. Why can't Roy use regular Durandal? Why can't Ares use regular Mystletainn? Because fuck it.

 

9 minutes ago, SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre said:

Ishtar can already use Thoron. The generic one. Reinhardt and Olwen use the other "Thoron" and they come from Freige as well. Fregian Thoron is makes the tome sound way too exclusive. It's also just awkward to say, and tempting to mispronounce it as Fridge Thoron.

I'm gonna be honest. This really just seems to contract itself. I don't even me to be a dick; it just doesn't make sense. How is a tome intended to be limited to one character, but that makes sense for three additional characters a name that sounds too exclusive? I feel like I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.

There's also the potential intention that the tome has origins in Friege rather than is hard-bound to Friegian nobility, e.g. Damascus steel or Egyptian cotton, but that really just circles back to why can't other people use it. Non-Fregian characters have the excuse of not having training, but especially Reinhardt should really have the experience and skill to use any tome that's not explicitly bound to holy blood given his talent and status.

As far as Fridge/Friege, the word already lends itself to that if we're going down that route, and I can't say I see that as a particular concern, but to each their own I suppose. I have feelings on "Breath of Mist" vs "Mist Breath," but I'm sure a lot of people don't actually care.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

@Ice DragonSo the gist for the refine is Seliph was intended for Brash Desperation while Julia is either a dragon counter or a mage counter i assume?

 

I  can't help but feel Seliph would fare much better if he gets Brazzen(old tyrfing effect) + Bond

[Diovani Bressan]

I want to see a weapon that is the opposite of what Exalted Falchion is, but as a debuff.

After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts the following status on target and foes within 2 spaces of target through their next actions: "Inflict penalty to Atk/Spd/Def/Res during combat = current penalty on each of foe's stats. Calculates each stat penalty independently. "

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

I came up with a good bit of refines up until now, and would like to critiqued on them. Today, I am going to start with Archanean Sword people. In spoiler below.

Spoiler

-Cain: Red Bull’s Blade:

16 might

Default: Atk/Spd Solo 3

Refine: Grants +3 Spd/Def to all cavalry and infantry allies within 2 spaces.

-Draug: Draug’s Sword:

16 might

Default: Slaying effect.

Refine: Kestrel Stance 2

-Luke: “Legend’s” Blade:

11 might

Default: Brave weapon effect (Spd -5)

Refine: Magma Boost 4 (If unit’s Max HP>=foe’s current HP, grants Atk/Def +6 during combat)

-Athena: Athena’s Blade:

16 might

Default: Wo effect

Refine: If unit is in combat with a sword or axe foe, grants +4 Atk/Spd/Def during combat.

Edit: Revised some weapons:

@ILikeKirbys

Edited January 19, 2019 by Azure the Scale Tipper
Revisions to ideas.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Random idea inspired by a different game, but how would this sound? If not on a weapon, then as an independent skill:

Reblossom: If a Special triggers on the first of consecutive hits, the Special effect is carried over at half potency into the next hit. Cooldown is not reset until after the second hit.

So to explain this a little more, you can't have an enemy counterattack between your hits, or of course the round of combat ending. And when I say half potency, I mean if we used Sol for instance, the second hit would heal for 25% of damage dealt, as opposed to the usual 50%.

[ILikeKirbys]

@Azure the Scale Tipper Cain: Is the Refine effect something like Goad Cavalry but with DEF instead of ATK? Because that I could get behind, though it should be +3 instead of +4 since Camilla's Axe has a similar dual-unit-type buff and it only gives +3 ATK/SPD. Outside of that, ATK/SPD Solo would definitely make him better, so I like it.

Draug: I have exactly one problem: The Brave effect needs to be -5 SPD instead of -2. Amiti does the -2 because it gives Brave effect and SPD +3, but since this is a regular Prf weapon it needs to get the -5. Outside of that, I love the Refine effect, DEF Victory would be pretty nice on Draug since he has so much DEF.

Luke: Not sure about the Refine effect (I feel like if you're gonna give a Boost skill on a weapon, it should be at least two of them, maybe Fire Boost & Earth Boost 3 'cause his SPD probably isn't getting salvaged with +SPD & Hone Cavalry + something else and Earth Boost would boost Bonfire's damage), but outside of that I like it.

Athena: I feel like keeping track of a unit's gender probably isn't gonna happen... but if it did, that would be a nice, if perhaps situational, sword. Wouldn't complain about Athena getting a stronger Wo Dao, at any rate.

@Interdimensional Observer That could be interesting, especially if combined with Special Spiral... which is why I would expect it to be a B Skill. I'd like to see something like that happen though, if partially so it could be given to a Black Knight/Zelgius with a Brave Sword+, Death Blow 4, Bold Fighter and Black Luna that's been buffed with Hone ATK 4 so he could hit once with -80% DEF and then three more times with -40% DEF because I'd like to see if anything could survive that.

So, here are a few Prfs I've thought of:

Boey - Skillful Survivor
Survival Flame | MT 14 | During combat, grants bonus ATK/SPD/DEF/RES equal to the number of adjacent allies x2.
Skill-Refine: When unit's HP - foe's HP > 3, grants Special Charge +1 during combat.

Amelia - Rose of the War
Amelia's Axe | MT 16 | Accelerates Special Trigger (cooldown count -1).
Skill-Refine: When unit's HP - foe's HP > 3, grants ATK/SPD +6 during combat.

Peri - Playful Slayer
Peri's Lance | MT 16 | Accelerates Special Trigger (cooldown count -1).
Skill-Refine: After unit initiates combat and defeats foe, grants ATK/SPD +5 to unit and allies within 2 spaces for 1 turn and grants Special Cooldown -2 to unit.

Edited January 17, 2019 by ILikeKirbys