Fire Emblem Heroes

Anything with ~40 in a defensive stat or Firesweep because that made baiting them ill-advised. This was mostly an issue when they were the closest spawn or overlapping range with the closest spawn.

I didn't run fliers until very late in the Tempest (like, around the 130k mark when I peaked at ~141k), but since most of my teams tended to run a stupid amount of mobility skills, I didn't find the valley that bad. It was mostly only an issue when what's normally infantry there got replaced by cavalry mages. This wasn't a problem solely applicable to that map, however. All of Alm's maps were really obnoxious if multiple cavalry spawned in place of the infantry, because the maps have such tight spawn points for both teams.

Running Reinhardt/Xander/Boey/Olivia, the most problems I had were with high res blue cavs like Jagen and Peri. Special mention also goes to Genny and Lucius, those two with Wrathful Staff were a pain to deal with. Always needed to have Olivia dance Rein or Xander or their special to be up to kill them in one turn.

My biggest problems were dancers on the last map. They killed more perfect runs than I care to remember. I also hated units with Panic Ploy and Matthew's stupid Poison Strike making my units lose their QR/-Breaker skills and leaving them ready for the kill.

Honorable mention to Boeys with inflated resistance. When those appeared I always ended up losing at least an unit, but what stats become unfairly high seems random, so his threat level wasn't consistent.

Yeah, Dancers on the final made it a pain. Didn't help my most consistent team was full of infantry units.

So, on a lighter note, who was your MVP during this round of TT? Mine was Nowi, if solely because she can one-round Celica on Lunatic. It was downright cathartic to see, one time, I had a final map full of red units.

"Who do you think I am?!"

As usual:

• Nino for my Arena core/infantry team plus HM slave (medic Alm, then medic Boey); Nowi was easily a very close second, though, thanks to being able to enemy phase an entire map full of reds without breaking a sweat.
• My "weaker" Reinhardt who didn't have the Quickened Pulse Seal or Death Blow 3 for my horse team (2x Rein, Xander and HM slave medic Mae). He had Luna and R Tomebreaker to compensate for his lower base damage, but he ended up getting way more clutch kills because even with a bit less base Atk, Luna secured one-rounds that my Rein with Death Blow 3 and Moonbow couldn't.
• Cherche for my flier team (Cherche, Cordelia, Palla, medic Alm), because even with enemies sporting stats that verged on +10 merges, she just loled for the most part and smushed their faces anyway.

I made 1 perfect run to say I did, and then I decided only to use units who hadn't maxed HM yet. Which means no blade tomes, no Hinoka/Palla, no dancer, no Eirika/Sharena, no best healers (Sakura/Lyn) and only a handful of DC users to pick from - basically, Ryoma, Ike and Nowi. I also used Mae all along because -atk Faye is dead weight, so Nowi wasn't optimized at all.

Ryoma probably was my MVP overall, despite being +Def which is hardly his best nature. The team that most consistently succeeded was Mae, Ryoma, S!Tiki and Wrys. I managed a couple of perfects with it. Hardly optimized but it did the job, and now I have maxed out HM on 25 units, with 2 being over 1900 and soon joining them.

Edit: 26, Anna just reached 2000.

edited 23rd Jul '17 12:46:26 PM by Julep

Really funny thing I noticed about Tobin: his stat spread and skill set are really good for leveling up, since he actually hits reasonably hard and has the mixed bulk to tank anything. And then that's where his life cycle kinda ends, because being good at leveling doesn't really do jack when you're level capped. I guess at least he's around in case I hit that one possible really niche Squad Assault instance where I want to call him in to gank an inflated axe armour.

God I hate Lunatic Chain Challenges, especially the 10 map ones. The Marathon Level format is hard enough without the stupidly inflated stats (shout-outs to stuff like 72 HP Hinata).

What are the Squad Assault maps? I know they're fixed, but don't know what they are and I need to plan.

The wiki has which maps are involved, but apparently not the stats. They're very high, though, so look for units that super hard-counter the enemies (TA usually does the trick). I do recall that the Thieves in the final map have something stupid like 45 Spd and Res. Don't even bother with mages there.

I can't wait for the eventual GHB Squad Assault.

They are story maps 1-1, 2-1, 3-1, 4-1 and 5-1. 1-1 is the easiest since the only big threat is Jagen being a magic wall. Most difficult (for me) is 2-1, since it has the Nohr siblings with their rediculous movement and their 5* weapons.

Oh, and my star unit in TT was Reinhardt. Quickened Pulse+Draconic Aura killed almost anything, and Lancebreaker took care of most Pegasus knights and Jagen. Other star units in backup/alternate teams were Spring Lucina, Camus and Tiki.

Lunatic Chain Challenges suck. I guess they wanted you to earn those 2/4 Orbs per go.

edited 23rd Jul '17 3:36:55 PM by erazor0707

Jagen still isn't too terrible there, though, since the inflation hasn't kicked into high gear yet. My really scrubby -Spd Soren would have been able to one-round him if I hadn't forgotten to take Watersweep off (had to finagle things a bit to get around that, making it way harder than it should have been).

Lunatic CC 11-12 is the hardest right now methinks. The combination of map 3 (where your team is split), 5 (where you have 6 turns to defeat three mages on defense tiles while the enemy AI loves to waste turns by using Draw Back and healing), 7-8 (4 turns to win) and 9 (5 turns to win but a really annoying map where you have to pull while two powerful ranged units start on defensive tiles). The tenth map is almost a breather compared to what comes before.

I eventually managed the challenge mostly thanks to flier emblem (to circumvent the third map) that carried me until map 9, at which point I had two teams to clear two maps.

9-10 is a challenge but you get more opportunities to abuse the enemy AI, such as the 3rd and 4th maps where you can easily bodyblock respectively invincible Titania and invincible Ike with a good defensive unit.

edited 23rd Jul '17 4:30:05 PM by Julep

Quick Riposte banner now, Lloyd rerun tomorrow. I think they are adding Infernal mode to him this time.

edited 24th Jul '17 12:29:32 AM by TPPR10

Tried pulling the QR banner in hopes of More Kleins...instead I got a bunch of other SI fodder and my third Reinhardt(4*).

I still have the 5* one I pulled a while back, I dunno what to even do with this one. Probably gonna use it as Vantage fodder since I really don't think I need 3 Reinhardt and I don't want to blow 20000 feathers to promote this guy. Especially since my current one needed promotion as well

edited 24th Jul '17 6:09:28 AM by strawberryflavored

Are there any characters that appreciate any skills from Titania?

Emerald Axe and Reciprocal Aid are her openly good SI skills, so maybe Camilla might want her axe? Reciprocal aid has better, less rare sources. That's about it, Guard is niche and probably not worth it for many units.

Though, Titania can be a solid unit on her own, especially with horse buffs.

edited 24th Jul '17 9:05:42 AM by strawberryflavored

Titania certainly seems like she'd be a nice character to use, unfortunately the 4 star I pulled is +spd/-atk.

Damn. I don't want to whale anytime soon, but far too many of my units need QR that don't have it...

Oh, the temptation.

Heh, managed to pull Tikini some time ago, and now I got beach Robin as well.

I find I'm more of a collector with my draws. I'd like one of each unit, which means I'm more interested in the theme banners, since those characters don't get added to the general draw pile after the banner is through.

Still, I'd like a Summer Fred before the banner expires.

Normal CC 9-10 is great to grind SP & HM. For 30 stamina, you can expect to defeat 29 enemies in normal stages (9-1 to 5 & 10-2) which makes for 87 SP at worst - and then you have to factor the enemies from defence stages. With an average of 4 kills per defence stage, you reach 123 SP, along with 122 HM.

So 30 stamina, 123 SP (more than 4 SP/stamina), 122 HM (also 4 HM/stamina).

In comparison, an ideal L10 of the TT with five enemies is 9 stamina, 15 SP (so 1.7 SP/stamina), 20 HM (2.2 HM/stamina).

You just have to abandon at the start of chapter 10 - but on the other hand, you have three teams to make it up to that chapter, and the enemies are really manageable (like, a 5* Caeda can tank most Archer hits without any defensive buff...).

And before you ask, chapter 11-12 in normal aren't as interesting because A) no defense maps (where with the proper setup you can kill way more than 5 enemies and increase your SP gain) aside from the extremely annoying 11-3 where your team is split on both sides of a mountain and B) turn limit maps make grinding more difficult when you bring "weak" units, even though the countdown is nicer on normal.

edited 24th Jul '17 1:31:37 PM by Julep

Shout-outs to Reddit for reminding me how amazing Cherche is when I was doubting her.

In short, I was, for shits and giggles, theorycrafting a team that might be able to tackle all of Chain C11 + C12 on Lunatic without ever needing to move on to the second team. My initial idea was hilariously dumb, but almost viable if not for the sheer amount of bulk on mages like Boey or Mae (who survive Reinbow Pulse shenanigans with ~3 HP thanks to no Hone Cavalry) and Fear Mountain (11-3) being awful—Rein plus triple refresher. Second iteration: double Rein and double refresher. Better, but still unlikely to be able to survive Fear Mountain's bulk spam. Then, Rein, double refresher and Cherche, since when I did the map in the story, I used Reposition shenanigans to avoid getting wrecked (my only other option being Cordelia, who shares a colour with Rein, is weaker than him and has no clear advantages over Cherche). I was skeptical because of the amount of enemies with obscene bulk (such that Cherche doesn't actually one-round the lance armours...) and bulky overlapping ranged spam. Well, after seeing her shilled on Reddit, I decided to give her a go. It's not like any other comp looked like it had a better chance (barring maybe some crazy shit like full Flier Emblem running ~80-Atk Spring Camilla, but I don't have any of that).

The end result... TIL that Reinbow Pulse + Brave Axe+ Cherche + 2x 4* Olivias can not only do Chain C11 + C12 without ever needing pass the baton on to Team 2, but can tackle it deathless.

edited 24th Jul '17 1:59:44 PM by KuroiTsubasaTenshi

Cherche is underused. Such a beast.

I went deathless with Flier Emblem + refresher up to map 9 of the CC, so I assume a perfect run is possible, but you probably have to time specials to ensure the enemies get OS.