I'm a bit worried of the direction this game is taking...

[Nanima]

Just now, silveraura25 said:

He just means that Takumi isn't as threatening as before since he was the only one who cold use CC before SI

Um the statement I was responding to was essentially "We'll never see a fall like Takumi's again." that came right after "PP teams still perform well". What other meaning to that message is there besides "Takumi's fall made him completely unusable in high tier arena, and will never be replicated in it's badness."?

[KMT4ever]

3 hours ago, Humanoid said:

I have the choice of Darting Blow 3 or Death Blow 2 for player phase builds, or Fury 2 for enemy phase builds. Such interesting choices.

Skill exclusivity is the direction that worries me. What's been making the game rather stale for me lately isn't that I can't get the units I want, but rather that I can't affordably build those units. I know, I know, I can 5-star the likes of Hana, Bartre and Hawkeye for skills, but that's something I choose not to do. People talk about how much more generous FEH is with its 5-star rate, but are any of its competitors as heavily reliant gameplay-wise on getting 5-stars in the first place in order to get the full experience?

That's not to say I'm unhappy with the state of my barracks. Quite the opposite, I have pretty much all the parts I need, and therefore precious little incentive to go with expensive new unit inheritance, and also no incentive to ever buy orbs again, really. The net effect though is that I simply continue to do the same old content with the same old units and that surely isn't healthy in terms of long term prospects of playing. All I'm here for these days is the primitive thrill of summoning to get new novelty units that I'll likely never seriously use.

I'm in a similar state, although I do find it enjoyable to see how far I can go with only budget builds. I haven't used a single 5* for SI and I can still manage Infernal GHBs without resorting to Reinhardt, dancers, or other crutch characters. I have sort fallen into a rut when it comes to trying new teams though, since my normal mainstay of Lucina+Julia+B!Lucina+spare works so well on practically everything that I don't feel much motivation to switch it up. It is kind of off-putting seeing all of these "optimal" builds for characters that basically involve ripping off all of their natural equipment and covering them in golden 5*-exclusive skills.

As for the meta, I haven't really noticed much of an increase in difficulty. If anything arena's gotten easier for me since Julia and Lucina annihilate dragon teams with ease. M!Grima isn't so hot when Falchion is cutting him in half, and Nowi gets vaporized by Divine Naga. Reinhardt is irrelevant; half the time Fury knockback does more damage to Julia than he does. Armors are a little more problematic, but then I tend to exploit the AI's stupidity and use Reposition shenanigans to just wear them out. I jump between Tiers 18 and 19 because I can't be arsed to chase score with blessings and such, but as far as I can tell the meta isn't a problem for me at all.

[redlight]

2 minutes ago, Nanima said:

Um the statement I was responding to was essentially "We'll never see a fall like Takumi's again." that came right after "PP teams still perform well". What other meaning to that message is there besides "Takumi's fall made him completely unusable in high tier arena, and will never be replicated in it's badness."?

His CC build isn't as reliable anymore for arena defense and is no longer a threat. Might score well with Fujin Yumi, but his defense and speed are not that good as well as Fujin Yumi being a gimmicky weapon. He's just not that much of threat anymore. Doesn't do much to set himself apart from other units. It's like going from "oh wow, he's so amazing, best unit in the game" to 'what can he do to set himself apart from other archers"

[Alexmender]

52 minutes ago, Nanima said:

You make him sound like he's reached Odin tier badness or something. He is still perfectly fine as a unit, just overshadowed (as well as the meta turning against both infantry and archers), which can happen to any other top tier meme unit given time. I almost wish it will happen, just so that people can have some other example to drag out at every opportunity.

He's nowhere near close to being Odin bad but he certainly fell hard from being Public threat No.1. Not only the meta turned against Brave Bow archers (H!Jakob aside) but the game hasn't been very kind to Takumi.

I'll be fair here and will compare him only to infantry archers because H!Jakob, Hinoka, B!Lyn and LA!Roy are on a league of their own. His refine is a gimmick and doesn't improve his combat capabilities. Offensively he does his work fine but Innes and B!Cordelia plainly outclass him due to higher Atk and Spd which lets them use the Firesweep Bow better. I can only think of Klein as the only other viable archer that is inferior to Takumi, Jeorge is in a similar spot but Parthia's refine gave him a niche so he has something relatively unique going for him. Defensively he's outclassed by Faye as she holds the best mixed bulk for infantry archers. The likes of Virion, Rebecca and Gordin are totally inferior due to their spreads and F!Takumi and Clarisse don't count due to their lack of merges.

[Nanima]

6 minutes ago, silveraura25 said:

His CC build isn't as reliable anymore for arena defense and is no longer a threat. Might score well with Fujin Yumi, but his defense and speed are not that good as well as Fujin Yumi being a gimmicky weapon. He's just not that much of threat anymore. Doesn't do much to set himself apart from other units. It's like going from "oh wow, he's so amazing, best unit in the game" to 'what can he do to set himself apart from other archers"

I never disagreed about him dropping in usefulness. I disagree that there is no way other units can drop in a similar fashion.

1 minute ago, Alexmender said:

He's nowhere near close to being Odin bad but he certainly fell hard from being Public threat No.1. Not only the meta turned against Brave Bow archers (H!Jakob aside) but the game hasn't been very kind to Takumi.

I'll be fair here and will compare him only to infantry archers because H!Jakob, Hinoka, B!Lyn and LA!Roy are on a league of their own. His refine is a gimmick and doesn't improve his combat capabilities. Offensively he does his work fine but Innes and B!Cordelia plainly outclass him due to higher Atk and Spd which lets them use the Firesweep Bow better. I can only think of Klein as the only other viable archer that is inferior to Takumi, Jeorge is in a similar spot but Parthia's refine gave him a niche so he has something relatively unique going for him. Defensively he's outclassed by Faye as she holds the best mixed bulk for infantry archers. The likes of Virion, Rebecca and Gordin are totally inferior due to their spreads and F!Takumi and Clarisse don't count due to their lack of merges.

I will agree that the game hasn't been kind to him, and the devs dropped the ball on giving him a good refine to give him a fighting chance in the meta. Seeing as Ephraim got access to more refines, I'm hoping Takumi will get soemthing similar at some point. (preferably from his own LG version)

Agreed with most everything here, although I will say that Faye's bulk doesn't really matter for her since Firesweep is still her recommended build, which means she should never even be hit. Takumi makes for a better Firesweep user than her. And yeah, I never said Takumi wasn't outclassed, "Never see a fall like Takumi's again" just made me think you thought that much more negatively of him. Top units becoming merely average with time is something that can always happen again though. SI didn't immediately sink Takumi after all. It took several months, the addition of several better units and a changing meta before he truly dropped off. It can always happen again.

[Dandy Druid]

5 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Eldigan, Ares, Sigurd, Ike, Sophia, Leo, Tiki, Lukas, Shiro, Nowi, Kana, Ike, Hawkeye, Fae, Myrrh, and Kana would all like to have a word with you.

Sophia is considered defense-oriented?

5 hours ago, Othin said:

There are now four units with Armor March. It's pretty easy to have at least one by now, if you've been pulling for it.

I'm crying over my horrid luck.

 

4 hours ago, Zeo said:

@Dandy Druid Armor boots seal is also a thing, especially if you have a ranged armor who can potentially strike without taking damage.

Crying even more over my horrid luck.

[Humanoid]

Sophia's great! She's pretty much min-maxed defensively, the only "defensive" mage who also has good attack and resistance. Her competition, being Henry, Merric, Boey and the Robins all miss one or more of those things.

[XRay]

21 minutes ago, Dandy Druid said:

Sophia is considered defense-oriented?

I think she is the only non armor mage with mixed bulk that is similar to armor mages.

[Dandy Druid]

2 minutes ago, XRay said:

I think she is the only non armor mage with mixed bulk that is similar to armor mages.

Oh cool. I didn't know that because I never bothered to train my Sophias up.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

2 hours ago, Nanima said:

Agreed with most everything here, although I will say that Faye's bulk doesn't really matter for her since Firesweep is still her recommended build, which means she should never even be hit. Takumi makes for a better Firesweep user than her. And yeah, I never said Takumi wasn't outclassed, "Never see a fall like Takumi's again" just made me think you thought that much more negatively of him. Top units becoming merely average with time is something that can always happen again though. SI didn't immediately sink Takumi after all. It took several months, the addition of several better units and a changing meta before he truly dropped off. It can always happen again.

Faye doesn't have the Speed to actually use Firesweep Bow properly, so it's hardly her recommended build. Her best build at the moment is to stack Def with a +Def nature and Def refine Guard Bow and drop her already shit Speed, and either focus on DD9 QR or CC CD3 + DD3 QR (or Guard QR I guess, but she needs the padding a lot).

[Ice Dragon]

6 hours ago, Humanoid said:

People talk about how much more generous FEH is with its 5-star rate, but are any of its competitors as heavily reliant gameplay-wise on getting 5-stars in the first place in order to get the full experience?

The other games I am aware of (Fate/Grand Order and Puzzles and Dragons) have rarity fully tied to the character (e.g. character version X only exists at rarity Y and never at any other rarity), and as far as I am aware, this is the more common format.

F/GO's pull rates are 40% for 3-star characters, 3% for 4-star characters, and 1% for 5-star characters. The remaining 56% is effectively equippable items that give stat boosts and whatnot. The banner "focus" rate is built into those numbers and depends on the number of banner characters. For example, a banner with a single 5-star focus has a 0.7% chance of the focus character and a 0.3% chance of an off-banner 5-star. A banner with two 5-star focus characters has a 0.4% chance for each of the two focus characters and a 0.2% chance of an off-banner 5-star. And there is no equivalent to sniping colors.

F/GO currently has 207 total characters (including alts). 64 of those are 5-star characters, and 1 is a zero-star character that is significantly rarer than any 5-star character for whatever reason (despite being only as strong as a 2-star), making a total of 31% of the game's characters locked to 5-star rarity or worse.

But, since 4-star characters also have an abysmal pull rate lower than Heroes's 5-star rate, you can probably include those, too. There are 63 4-star characters that are not free (i.e. excluding Mashu and the guaranteed random 4-star from your first pull) or event rewards, making another 30% of the game's characters locked to 4-star rarity.

This means 61% of the game's characters are locked behind a 4% pull rate, and most of them aren't even in the pool at any given time because the game makes a large number of its character limited, which helps keeps the summoning pool dilution in check.

So yes, it's a lot worse in other games.

 

2 hours ago, Dandy Druid said:

Sophia is considered defense-oriented?

With her optimal Raudhrowl build [+Def, -Spd] (Raudhrowl+ [Def], Bonfire, Close Counter, Guard 3, Quick Riposte 3), she has a very respectable 42/48/20/38/33 stat spread with 2 stacks of Raudhrowl active. She's pretty much a lite version of Winter Tharja trading a bit of her bulk and damage for more mobility.

She can also run Candelabra+, which is identical to Raudhrowl+ with 1 stack (on enemy phase only) with an additional +1 Atk. This makes her less reliant on positioning, but sacrifices the few points of bulk and power she could have from a second or third stack of Raudhrowl.

[Humanoid]

@Ice DragonI don't know the FGO universe at all but yeah, that'd suck for fans of any particular character. In terms of gameplay though, is it balanced like FEH with "Infernal" type content being tuned around teams of 5-star units which many people might not even be able to field? Or maybe 4-star units given the comparative rarity?

I suppose the broader question is how big the power gulf is between FGO rarities compared to FEH rarities? Trying to do stuff with just 4-star units in FEH feels bad, but doing FGO content with 4-star units is surely the norm.

Edited May 16, 2018 by Humanoid

[Shiki]

@Ice Dragon @Humanoid

FGO doesn't really require you to pull a 5* (SSR) or even 4* (SR). In fact the game is still very enjoyable even if you only use 3* or lower Servants which are all obtainable in a separate F2P-exclusively pool. They are merges in form of NP level as well but you only require 4 more copies of a Servant rather than having to pull for 10 more like in FEH.

Like FEH there are free units from events but they are significantly better than whatever you get from TT and GHB because the event give you the chance to get them all the way to NP5. Heck some of the best 4* Servants are welfare Servants and the starter gacha has the best 4* Servant in the regular pool.

However comparing the experience between them is comparing an apple with an orange.
FGO is designed as a mobile VN with more heavy emphasis on its story and events. Its contents are pretty much set in stone and do not require the best Servants and Craft Essences to beat it (not even the current event which is probably the most challenging one so far in NA).
FEH on the other hand has the aspect of pseudo PvP in form of the Arena in which you absolutely need fully-built characters with the best skills and highest merges to reap the best rewards. Sure, units like Nino and Olivia are quite accessible and do the job but it still requires you to spend Orbs for them to get the merges and potential skill fodder.

[XRay]

4 hours ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Faye doesn't have the Speed to actually use Firesweep Bow properly, so it's hardly her recommended build. Her best build at the moment is to stack Def with a +Def nature and Def refine Guard Bow and drop her already shit Speed, and either focus on DD9 QR or CC CD3 + DD3 QR (or Guard QR I guess, but she needs the padding a lot).

With Dancer/Singer support, Firesweep archers do not need Spd either. Two rounds of combat on top of Poison Strike-Poison Strike is enough to kill most units. Spd helps, but it is not necessary.

[Ice Dragon]

4 hours ago, Humanoid said:

I don't know the FGO universe at all but yeah, that'd suck for fans of any particular character. In terms of gameplay though, is it balanced like FEH with "Infernal" type content being tuned around teams of 5-star units which many people might not even be able to field? Or maybe 4-star units given the comparative rarity?

I suppose the broader question is how big the power gulf is between FGO rarities compared to FEH rarities? Trying to do stuff with just 4-star units in FEH feels bad, but doing FGO content with 4-star units is surely the norm.

In the same way that Heroes's Infernal content is doable with a combination of 4-star pulls and free 5-star units, FGO's hardest challenge content is doable with just 3-star pulls and free 4-star characters.

Note that in terms of actual rarity, a 4-star in Heroes is roughly equivalent to a 3-star in FGO.

In terms of power gulf, a 3-star in FGO typically has an attack value of 6-8k compared to a 5-star at 10-13k. Part of that is due to the fact that 3-stars have a max level of 70 compared to 5-stars with a max level of 90, but even if you break the level cap on a 3-star to get them to level 100 (which can be done with a very limited resource), a level-100 3-star only has about the same stats as a level-80 4-star. The attack-defense mechanism in FGO is divisive (not subtractive), so 60% more attack almost always translates to 60% more damage.

On the other hand, while a 3-star character's normal attacks will be weaker than a 5-star's, their super attack will be roughly on par. Merging extra copies can be done for up to 5 copies of the character, and merging only increases the power of the super attack. At max merge, most offensive supers have their power increased by 67% (regardless of rarity), which makes them very much on par to the power of an unmerged 5-star's super.

 

Still, I think Heroes has a more friendly system for free-to-players. A larger portion of the cast is more readily available for players who are looking for specific characters that they like, and for performance, 4-star merges are a very viable means of having a strong character that doesn't break the bank, at least for PvE content, and a +10 4-star is typically equivalent in power to a +4 or +5 5-star as long as you inherit a 5-star weapon, which completely closes the power gulf between 4-star and 5-star characters.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

4 hours ago, XRay said:

With Dancer/Singer support, Firesweep archers do not need Spd either. Two rounds of combat on top of Poison Strike-Poison Strike is enough to kill most units. Spd helps, but it is not necessary.

Two rounds of combat is pretty inefficient compared to one. Her Guard Bow set kills things in one.

Speed is actually still kinda important for Firesweep archers to kill general infantry enemies. There's just no point in running Firesweep Faye for two rounds of combat when you can pick Jeorge to do better in one and even better in two, or Bridelia who cracks armors in one round with Firesweep.

Edited May 16, 2018 by SatsumaFSoysoy

[XRay]

6 hours ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Two rounds of combat is pretty inefficient compared to one. Her Guard Bow set kills things in one.

Speed is actually still kinda important for Firesweep archers to kill general infantry enemies. There's just no point in running Firesweep Faye for two rounds of combat when you can pick Jeorge to do better in one and even better in two, or Bridelia who cracks armors in one round with Firesweep.

It is inefficient, but Firesweep is much safer than Blade tomes and Brave Bows. When ponies appear less often and lolis more common the higher the tier you go, completely shutting down counterattacks is more appealing than raw performance.

[Ice Dragon]

59 minutes ago, XRay said:

It is inefficient, but Firesweep is much safer than Blade tomes and Brave Bows. When ponies appear less often and lolis more common the higher the tier you go, completely shutting down counterattacks is more appealing than raw performance.

Or, you know, you can just stop using ranged units and just use plain old color advantage against them with melee units. Counterattacks that hit for zero damage are just free Special charge.

[XRay]

5 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Or, you know, you can just stop using ranged units and just use plain old color advantage against them with melee units. Counterattacks that hit for zero damage are just free Special charge.

I like the safety of ranged units, but that is just me, so other players more open to melee combat can use melee units.

[Dandy Druid]

17 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

 

With her optimal Raudhrowl build [+Def, -Spd] (Raudhrowl+ [Def], Bonfire, Close Counter, Guard 3, Quick Riposte 3), she has a very respectable 42/48/20/38/33 stat spread with 2 stacks of Raudhrowl active. She's pretty much a lite version of Winter Tharja trading a bit of her bulk and damage for more mobility.

She can also run Candelabra+, which is identical to Raudhrowl+ with 1 stack (on enemy phase only) with an additional +1 Atk. This makes her less reliant on positioning, but sacrifices the few points of bulk and power she could have from a second or third stack of Raudhrowl.

Oh that's pretty cool. Thanks for the tip!

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

20 hours ago, Humanoid said:

@Ice DragonI don't know the FGO universe at all but yeah, that'd suck for fans of any particular character. In terms of gameplay though, is it balanced like FEH with "Infernal" type content being tuned around teams of 5-star units which many people might not even be able to field? Or maybe 4-star units given the comparative rarity?

I suppose the broader question is how big the power gulf is between FGO rarities compared to FEH rarities? Trying to do stuff with just 4-star units in FEH feels bad, but doing FGO content with 4-star units is surely the norm.

The problem here is the wrong way of comparison

In FGO 4* is a rarity while FEH 4* is very much more of a developmental tier. Obviously using 4* in FEH is worse they are not meant to be the intended power level of a given unit and is basically gimped 

The better comparison for them is actually 4* and 5* in FGO vs 1st gen units and non 5* exclusive units in FEH.

 

Tha main thing that carried FGO is their implementation of support system basically. While their gacha is like bad, the fact that you can borrow 1 unit from a friend goes a long way. 

That being said notions like how "Saint George a 2 star is one of the best unit in the game while other games 2* suck" is rather unfair because its a wrong comparison that is often used unfairly to defend the game. The more apt comparison is more along the lines of St George vs 5* Lukas e.g. dirt cheap units that is easy to make use of

[TheWill]

Isn't the meta entirely dragons and Vengeful/Bold Fighter armours? All of these use speed as their dump stat unless you're one of the dragons never used (Kana, Corrin, F!Grima) or speed-based Nowi (the easiest to deal with). 

[redlight]

1 hour ago, SlipperySlippy said:

Isn't the meta entirely dragons and Vengeful/Bold Fighter armours? All of these use speed as their dump stat unless you're one of the dragons never used (Kana, Corrin, F!Grima) or speed-based Nowi (the easiest to deal with). 

Speed is sometimes a super bane that lowers a unit to a lower BST bracket as well as some builds try to raise speed up to the level where they can cancel opponent doubles

Edited May 17, 2018 by silveraura25

[Ice Dragon]

9 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

In FGO 4* is a rarity while FEH 4* is very much more of a developmental tier. Obviously using 4* in FEH is worse they are not meant to be the intended power level of a given unit and is basically gimped 

The better comparison for them is actually 4* and 5* in FGO vs 1st gen units and non 5* exclusive units in FEH.

In both FGO and Heroes, it is actually both.

FGO has exactly one character that can have their rarity upgraded, and it does exactly what one would expect. It increases the character's stats (both base stats and final stats) among other things. In effect, every character in the game has their rarity as a development tier with zero mobility. If you look at characters of different rarities, their stats at the same levels are going to be higher for higher-rarity characters (after accounting for character variation), which is no different from how Heroes works.

Rarity in Heroes does serve as a form of rarity in terms of summoning. Just like how 4-star and 5-star characters in FGO are considered "rare characters" (not going by the R/SR/SSR terminology which is dumb and meaningless), 5-star-exclusive characters in Heroes are also "rare characters".

Basically, if you assume that rarity promotion exists in FGO (because it technically does), but is simply severely locked down, the two games' rarity systems are not very different.

 

Also as a reminder, 3-star characters in FGO are comparable to 3- and 4-star characters in Heroes in terms of rarity. Both 4- and 5-star characters in FGO are rarer than 5-star characters in Heroes.

 

7 hours ago, SlipperySlippy said:

Isn't the meta entirely dragons and Vengeful/Bold Fighter armours? All of these use speed as their dump stat unless you're one of the dragons never used (Kana, Corrin, F!Grima) or speed-based Nowi (the easiest to deal with). 

Wrath and Windsweep show up very often at the top of the Arena (most commonly seen on Ayra, Zelgius, and Amelia, but I've seen Hardin and others running them, too). Zelgius also often runs Warp Powder.

None of the Legendary Heroes can run Vengeful Fighter or Bold Fighter, and only one of them is a dragon and is a naturally fast one at that.

The 744-750 range where my Arena Assault team lands is actually rather diverse in terms of skill builds.

[Nowi's Husband]

I just use Drive Speed on everyone so my dragon lolis can avoid getting doubled by these fast new units.  Then with their QR b skill they can counter back.  Bold Fighters are a bummer to deal with though.