Fire Emblem Heroes: Like Pokemon But People

[Jill]

i think the majority of the fanbase at this point has only played the 3DS games so it's not the least bit surprising

and let's be honest here, her competition was really not that strong

[Jill]

also

I'm told Nowi is actually a pretty good character, shame I just hate everything she represents and refuse to acknowledge her existence as a unit out of sheer principle. Luckily Deirdre and Julia kicked her out of the meta in this game at least.

i don't think that's actually true considering the weapon forge bumped her up to S tier she is now one of those units that warrants having a specific counter for, and you can only pull the aforementioned green mages at 5*

[sharkmafia]

I recommend wrath brave ike to smash nowis if you aren't running julia

also re: tharja winning just remember, sigurd can still kill her ass in actual battles

[Jill]

...in fact, the only dragon-effective unit you can get without spending orbs is "Marth" and the only ones that can show up at 4* are Chrom and Marth

so in many cases the best method anyone will have to deal with Nowi is Brave Ike. if they decided to pick him over Lyn. otherwise they're probably gonna need a TA green or some good RNG because Nowi now has more ATK/HP and counters against ranged units based on their lower defensive stat

[Jill]

if there's one 4* unit whose base kit and stats are equipped to deal with Nowi it's probably Titania. she has an emerald axe and good RES and the dragon breath forge effect won't take effect because she's melee

[Ninetails]

also


i don't think that's actually true considering the weapon forge bumped her up to S tier she is now one of those units that warrants having a specific counter for, and you can only pull the aforementioned green mages at 5*

nah Julia and Deirdre can still kill Nowi, since Naga tomes straight-up one-shot her. Nowi can put a significant dent in them if she *does* get a chance to attack, though, for whatever reason, but Julia and Deirdre have a better chance of initiating on her than the other way round.

I just have goth Azura who has triangle adept and high res so Nowi's never been a problem for me. In fact Nowi's the only dragon I usually see in the arena, and I only see her very rarely; normally if a dragon's causing trouble, it's my own adult Tiki crushing every archer and non-blue melee unit with ease

Nowi's not very fast, so a decently bulky axe user with Quick Riposte or some speed can beat her if they let her initiate, though they'll take a nasty (though not fatal) hit doing so. Folks who are fast enough or use brave axes can even just straight-up kill her, without ever getting hit. Camilla's actually good at this too if you get her up to 5* - her default Brave Axe+ can one-round Nowi, and giving her an Emerald Axe lets her do the same thing Titania does. Titania's probably the better option though as she comes with Emerald Axe+ and her speed is slightly higher (both can double Nowi but Titania has 2 more speed so buffs won't be as hard to deal with).

Ironically Brave Ike is one of the ones who cannot one-round Nowi, but he'll win on the second round and can heal up with Aether so that's not a problem.

As for mages, KageroChart tells me that a 5* unbuffed Nino with zero inherited skills and neutral nature can one-round Nowi with Gronnblade+, because even with the refining buff, Lightning Breath+ can't overcome the weapon triangle (a +res Nowi with Fury 3 can survive, but again, this is assuming Nino has literally nothing - even just an atk+1 seal will guarantee Nino's victory, and with Gronnblade, it is very easy to give Nino much more than +1 attack).

Basically things that beat Nowi:

• Letting her initiate so she doesn't get Quick Riposte
• Weapon Triangle advantage
• High resistance axe users
• High damage green magic

...Or you could run Watersweep Brave Lyn (note: do not run Watersweep Brave Lyn it's a stupid build)

[Jill]

nah Julia and Deirdre can still kill Nowi, since Naga tomes straight-up one-shot her. Nowi can put a significant dent in them if she *does* get a chance to attack, though, for whatever reason, but Julia and Deirdre have a better chance of initiating on her than the other way round.

I just have goth Azura who has triangle adept and high res so Nowi's never been a problem for me. In fact Nowi's the only dragon I usually see in the arena, and I only see her very rarely; normally if a dragon's causing trouble, it's my own adult Tiki crushing every archer and non-blue melee unit with ease

my point was that the green units you just mentioned are all 5* pulls and not exactly easy to get

[Ninetails]

The latest Bound Hero Battle on Infernal difficulty was an absolute poop to do but I did it

I did it with a team in which the average defense was 19, and the average speed was 30, relying almost entirely on weaponbreaker skills and a brave weapon to double since almost everything either had Wary Fighter or just flat-out outsped my team. The best defense is a good offense, I suppose

Brave Lyn held off the pegasus knights, Sanaki took out Amelia and the axe knight with Axebreaker, Camilla took out the green mage cavalier (and lost most of her health doing so) and then went around ferrying people with Reposition, and Delthea, using Lancebreaker, took out Tana and nearly every single red/blue knight.

Basically since Tiki and Fjorm's bulk proved lackluster, I opted for high-damage -breaker mages to hit things fast and hard. I tossed Sanaki down the bottom left to take out Amelia on the second turn, then turtled at the north until Sanaki and Delthea whittled the enemies down enough for one final rush.

[Jill]

easily the most bullshit map in the game but i did it

[sharkmafia]

Yeah I did this too, and yeah its one of the harder ones although I don't know about the hardest. Certainly it feels very overwhelming at first, but I didn't have to switch my team around like I did for some of the other infernals.


I started the map by killing two units first turn with reinhardt and arvis, then moving them back and having most of the rest of the units break themselves upon the defensive monstrosity that is brave ike on a defense tile. The main thing I had to figure out was how to get reinhardt to snipe the red mage without taking an axe to the face immediately afterward. Reinhardt was, of course, key, since at full health he can oneshot almost every red and blue unit on the map.

[Fontra]

And here are the Christmas units:



Lissa: Looks cool, probably best unit at least skill/type-wise combination from this banner

Chrom: Actually has good art now. Okay-ish skills + typing.

Robin: Lance infantry armor. Skills + type kinda eh?

Tharja: please delete her and her stupid fucking clones from this series Jesus Christ. Annoyingly, she actually has good skills + typing based on this. (Also lol that she's literally an armor unit in a fucking bikini.)

[Jill]

Lissa and Tharja have the most insane B skills yet, but they are no-doubt armor exclusives

Bold Fighter is better than Arden's exclusive kit because it allows you to initiate with Ignis or Aether or whatever if you have a brave weapon, and you can also use Bonfire or Ignis (if the foe can counter) with a slaying weapon

if you gave Vengeful Fighter to Black Knight he would be able to respond to anything that doesn't one-shot him with Black Luna. this is without steady breath, which my BK already has, so i could opt for Ignis or QP Aether or something

[sharkmafia]

Those skills are likely armor exclusives, yes.

If they aren't, then I will be adding bold fighter and death blow to firesweep/galeforce soleil to create the most overpowered unit, perhaps, ever? The build would be

firesweep sword
galeforce
death blow
bold fighter
threaten defense? literally doesnt matter
quickened pulse seal

59 attack unbuffed with a neutral nature, always doubles (so always activates galeforce turn 1, since bold fighter just has heavy blade thrown in there for free), and no counters allowed. I could also throw brazen atk/speed on there but 35 speed is enough when you double anyway and death blow is more reliable

[sharkmafia]

Anyway that build is likely not possible but you know what is?? This, which i just finished today



And i just needed to kill ike and also upgrade and kill a spare cordelia. Totally worth it

[Perrydotto]

This is good

[sharkmafia]

Okay I just finished the last squad assault and it was pretty hard so im gonna post about it

SQUAD ASSAULT 4, THE WORST ONE

MAP ONE

Okay, this one is actually pretty easy. I beat it first try and never changed out my team because none of the units I used were particularly valuable other than julia. Julia moves forward, tanks bridal caeda, and blows her up with QR-counter, then next turn kills bridal lyn with a dance from ninian. Then everyone forms up behind fjorm and, with a rally defense from eirika, she tanks and kills both fliers.

MAP TWO

This was the first roadblock because I didn't want to use reinhardt. Just like on every other version of this fucking map, roderick will yoink you down to get destroyed by katarina. Also, with squad assault stats, luke's brave sword is extremely deadly. The only unit I could find that could tank both him and the archer effectively was brave ike, since urvan is bullshit and effectively almost halves the damage of brave weapons. Plus wrath aether causes brave ike to do more than half luke's hp back. So brave ike does that, and that causes roderick and katarina to move forward towards the other three. Then Jaffar attacks roderick, chipping both him and katarina.

Then soleil goes ham on their entire team:
-Kill Roderick, get danced
-Kill Katarina, galeforce activates
-Kill Luke
-Team up with brave ike to beat down the archer next turn

MAP THREE

This one is kind of a pain in the ass (also ignore that joshua doesn't have a c skill or a seal, lol), although mainly because I needed halloween henry for the next map and so couldn't use the armor team. Instead I had to use this semi-random agglomeration of units. I lost a lot on this map because moving incorrectly would cause the enemy moves to respond in a way that I couldn't effectively deal with. Eventually I worked out a way to do it consistently, though.

Everyone moves right while Joshua baits summer tiki, reducing her to low hp before she gets repositioned back by summer robin. Then cordelia oneshots the thief, and everyone pulls back out of range. Then it gets kind of fuzzy but usually I could exploit the AI to split off the tiki by moving cordelia left, and then deal with robin and the sword flier together.

MAP FOUR

The most key thing here is having a way to oneshot summer corrin with a counterattack, because if you don't, she'll get repositioned back out by the sword flier and everything will be terrible. So after I got everyone in a nice little triangle for armor march, I moved henry into range of corrin and he annihilated her. Then Effie baited and killed the sword flier, and arden oneshotted the archer, survived elise's attack (barely) and killed her too. Jakob kind of just watched.

MAP FIVE

A survival map in squad assault, oh boy. So I was pretty sure that reinhardt could do most of the work on this map if I got to it with him still in the pool (along with a dancer) and I was right. Here is a rough list of the kills on the map, which I like to call 'reinhardt kills x':

Turn 1: Reinhardt kills top archer.
Turn 2: Reinhardt moves back, kills seth, gets repositioned down through the forest by katarina, gets danced, kills bottom archer.
Turn 3: Reinhardt kills sword knight and bottom lancer that spawned.
Turn 4: Reinhardt kills another sword knight. Meanwhile, Katarina and emphraim kill the green mage that spawned at the top.
Turn 5: Reinhardt takes a short break from killing and retreats. The rest get ready to kill the jerks who will spawn on top of you next turn.
Turn 6: Reinhardt kills the sword cavalier that spawned. Azura attacks(and traps in a corner) the blue mage that spawned, and Katarina kills the axe flier that's still hanging around from a turn or two previously.
Turn 7: Reinhardt kills the blue mage. Amelia, who has been moving one square a turn because I keep killing her armor march buddies, does nothing. The map ends.

The main difficulty here was killing the FIFTY FIVE HP FORTY THREE RES axe flier, who resisted being oneshotted by katarina even with fully buffed rauorblade. Eventually I worked out that if i positioned so I could stack spur attack and drive attack on her for the attack, she could just barely do it. Fuck that guy though.

[Fontra]

Any Parks n Recs reference gets a thumbs-up from me

[Perrydotto]

[Perrydotto]

Whose incredible idea was it to make the Legendary Heroes banner 4 days long? When the Fjorm banner was what, 2 weeks? That has to be the most blatant whaling bait in this game I've seen so far.

[Jill]

if you're wondering which units on this banner might be worth it

Gunnthrá: no
Ryoma: if you don't have joshua, black knight, ike, sigurd, etc.
Elise: yes
Spring Chrom: no, unless you want to run some absurd sheena build with his axe
Spring Lucina: no, unless you want swift sparrow
Bridal Charlotte: if you don't have nephenee or cordelia, or you're insanely desperate for threaten atk 3 or wind boost
Bridal Lyn: if you would like a staff with an insanely good debuff
Brave Roy: yes
Innes: if you have absolutely no other bow user or mage counter
Amelia: yes
Sigurd: yes
Fjorm: no, unless you want any of her skills without losing your free copy

[MetalSonic]

Haha the new banner is so dumb, I mean I can barely get the orbs for one pull together in those 4 days.

[Fontra]

And they're doing new Seasonal units already:



Boy we sure don't have enough fucking Fates and Awakening characters I don't give a shit about getting even more fucking seasonal skins.

[Fontra]

This is the third iteration of both princess incests right there by the way

[Perrydotto]

I mean great for Camilla fans but holy crud this is getting ridiculous

[Perrydotto]

Also her boobs are somehow bigger in that art than usual

[Vivianinatoga]

Hi yes all of the special exclusive units have been Fates and Awakening characters also flying dancer potential yes I'll take three please

[Fontra]

I knew IntSys was creatively bankrupt, but this is a new low and just immediately after they added Original Character donut steel to a banner you can pull from for four days rather than being free. We now have: 3 Azuras, 3 Xanders, 3 Chroms, 3 Camillas, 3 Tharjas, 4 Robins, and now 4 Corrins.

Fuck this I'm saving my orbs and putting the game away until they add literally anything that isn't from Fates or Awakening in this game. I've also had it with limited seasonal units contributing to the power creep too.

[sharkmafia]

Whose incredible idea was it to make the Legendary Heroes banner 4 days long? When the Fjorm banner was what, 2 weeks? That has to be the most blatant whaling bait in this game I've seen so far.

Actually iirc the fjorm banner was like 5 days

The increased hero rates do mean you're likely to pull SOMETHING in time

[sharkmafia]

Also what jill said re: innes is somewhat deceptive, innes is actually the best bow user in the game outside of seasonal units and brave lyn. He's worth it imo

I'll be pulling colorless and blue units from this banner personally

[sharkmafia]

Anyway imo relax fontra. This game throws out a shitload of content and actually has dudes from every fire emblem game, including the unpopular ancient ones. I don't think you can really blame them for dragging their feet on more thracia 776 characters

if azura is a flying dancer that would be sick

[MetalSonic]

But I want an seasonal flavor Marty!

But yeah, 4 days is still a bit low, even if the chars aren't that great.

[Perrydotto]

I think it's fine they're not digging deep to get really unpopular characters from very obscure games added, but I will say that while it's understandable they are focusing on Fates & Awakening, the most recent stuff, it does feel lopsided. I have no pony in this race either way because I'm not super into Fire Emblem and thus lack the investment to really care one way or the other, but it does feel kinda annoying that a game supposed to cover the spectrum of such a long-running franchise keeps giving the spotlight to the same few people. Seasonal units, voting gauntlets, etc. have kinda shown me that I need to get used to seeing the same few faces promoted over and over simply because $$$. It's understandable, but boring.

Also yeah maybe I was way off on the Fjorm banner, but it felt way longer than 4 days.

[Fontra]

I don't care that they aren't moving heaven and earth to give us Glade from Thracia 776 right the hell now. What I do mind is, not just using only Fates and Awakening characters for seasonal units, but using the exact same set of characters from those games each time now. Boy I wonder who is going to be on the Valentines seasonal unit? Want to bet it's a Fates royal and/or Tharja because we sure as shit don't have enough of her creepy ass yet?

[Fontra]

And yeah the power creep being from season exclusive units is just terrible.

[W.T. Fits]

Predictions for Valentine's day units are Hinoka, F. Corrin, Cordelia and F. Robin.

Male units won't be available until March because of White Day.

[Jill]

Also what jill said re: innes is somewhat deceptive, innes is actually the best bow user in the game outside of seasonal units and brave lyn. He's worth it imo

you're better off using: Jeorge, Klein, Leon, or Takumi as the first three have merging potential and the last three have base kits that are actually good

innes is theoretically a good mage counter but at the end of the day he still can't stand up to reinhardt or nino without a shitload of investment

[sharkmafia]

innes has higher offensive stats than all of those. base kits don't matter all that much if we're talking 'best options' and anyway I would strongly disagree with the assertion that takumi's base kit is 'actually good.' Maybe it was once, but not anymore. And if you're merging any of those guys enough that they have more stats than a regular 5* innes then you're easily investing far more effort than 'just using innes.'

[Jill]

innes has higher offensive stats than all of those. base kits don't matter all that much if we're talking 'best options' and anyway I would strongly disagree with the assertion that takumi's base kit is 'actually good.' Maybe it was once, but not anymore. And if you're merging any of those guys enough that they have more stats than a regular 5* innes then you're easily investing far more effort than 'just using innes.'

i'm saying that deliberately shooting for a < 8% pull with a good chance of having a bad nature is just not worth it short term or long term. innes is firmly a "good if you happen to get him, but don't go out of your way for him" in my book because there's less bad-nature risk associated with using a bow unit that can be pulled at 3* or 4*, and unlike many units in the other banners (lucina/nowi/jaffar/minerva/eldigan/anything christmas) he doesn't have any particularly good skills to inherit if the RNG decides to give you -ATK +DEF or something

that said, i don't disagree that pulling gray orbs on that banner is a good idea because Elise and Bride Lyn are superb

[sharkmafia]

Yeah ok that's fair.

Anyway new bound hero battle! I was hoping they'd squeeze in a new source of orbs. Unfortunately the map is straightforward as all hell and leaves little room for nuance, but they at least don't attack until you do so you might be able to work out some tricky unit placement.

I beat the infernal via brave ike taking zero (0) damage from raven and so living through his attack despite being fucked up by that troubadour. Any unit with at least 45 defense after buffs/debuffs should be able to do this, he has a brave axe so his attack isn't terribly high

[Perrydotto]

Any tips for how to do the Bound Hero Battle? I'm a dumb noob and struggle with the AoE shit.