Fire Emblem Heroes

Infernal Lloyd was surprisingly easy. Added an axe infantry with a hammer just to screw over Hector but it's otherwise what's to be expected of an Infernal map. Would actually have made things harder if they took Reposition off that Lance Cavalier.

Killing Lloyd with Lloyd was also easy, though that's to be expected considering his high attack and low defense.

Also, a silly Training Tower formation I encountered a while back: [1]◊

edited 25th Jul '17 12:43:27 AM by 1337x

Brought in a Lunatic-slaying team of Xander, M!Robin, Cordelia and Hector to Infernal. Saw the Windsweep and Cancel Affinity (among other things), laughed and immediately left to change my team.

Ended up bringing Xander, Reinbow Pulse, Cherche and Olivia (considered Ninian, but Olivia has Ruby Sword, so she could at least barely emergency tank the greens if something went weird, whereas Lloyd or any of the blues would explode Ninian). Weakened the axe infantry with Rein, then fall back with dance-Reposition shenanigans. Finished the axe infantry off with Cherche, killed the BK with Rein. Fell back again. Because of the enemy shifting and Repositioning, they were all clumped together. This looked gross at first, but because of the way the lone mountain and river as placed and Cherche having Drag Back, I was able to get super easy picks on the lance cav and axe flier with her. With only Lloyd and the blue mage left, they were Rein food.

I wonder if there's some correlation between full sets and getting at least one hero that's not in your roster...

I don't think so, it's just perceived bias from personal experience.

Tried to pull one more time on Alm's army, to not avail, so I really hope next TT doesn't require one of those characters because I utterly failed at getting them (on the other hand, if that is the case, then there will be a new banner, but I prefer to pull on new characters) and would probably be stucked with whoever-the-new-gift-unit-is for 20% only. On the bright side I got 4* Caïn for Wings of Mercy, Lissa for Rehabilitate, and 4* Camilla, which means that with 40k feathers I could now get a good Cherche.

But there is no rush as for the first time I managed to clear Infernal with a flying team & Azura (although any refresher would do, she did not attack). It wouldn't have been possible if my Bunnylla wasn't +SPD as she needs 29 base + SPD seal + Hinoka +6 + Darting Blow to double and one-round the axe user. I really appreciate Reposition on the blue cavalry as it kept using it on the mage which delayed the moment he became dangerous.

Also, the Arena is getting more and more filled with Death Blow Reinhardt- G Tomebreaker Cecilia combos, they are absolutely everywhere (and most of the time, without even a bonus unit, which means half defense score). Julia-Sanaki-Azura is probably one of the best teams there is right now. Not that I care too much because I don't have the score to stay in tier 20 (and this week's map selection is by far the worst of the bunch) but IS should really think about adding some abilities to counter horse emblem, it is becoming absolutely ridiculous. Like B-skill "Bravebreaker" where Brave weapons only hit once, or "Sturdiness" where bonus from blade tomes are ignored as long as this unit is > xx% HP. And I say that as someone who uses blade tomes.

Welp, easiest Infernal ever. It still took me 3 tries, but that was because even Cavalry buffed QR Xander still took 21 damage from the Bow Knight (who survived with 1 HP), which left him unable to tank Lloyd when it was needed. I got around it with Draw Back shenanigans by charging up Ignis on the hammer user and letting him unload it on the Bow knight. After that, it was just Cecilia and Lancebreaker Rein taking care of the blues, Xander finishing off the Pegasus Knight and Camus Tanking/Damaging Lloyd so Rein could finish him off.

Sharena won't have any trouble in Lunatic for the quest, but I haven't trained any of my Lloyds beyond level 12... I better get to it (too bad Lloyd is GHB exclusive and has never been on a story map).

Eirika/Tharja/Hector/Reinhardt made Infernal pretty easy.

Did the Sharena/Lloyd missions with the same team and a twist: Nino, Eirika, Azura.

The twist being that Eirika needed the Spur Def 1 Seal when doing the Lloyd one so that Nino (+Spd -Res) could bait & kill the Archer. With Sharena, Fortify Def 3 was enough for her to survive (the HP+3 seal was unnecessary) but without it HP+3 and Spur Def gave the extra 4 HP she required to tank the 59 Atk hit (49 + Death Blow 3 + Hone Atk 3 from the mage).

After that, Nino took care of the flier and the horse and hurt Lloyd enough so that mine could finish him off (Sharena didn't even need help, obviously).

Sharena, Titania, Xander, and Cecilia. Titania and Cecilia take care of the blues. Xander gets the archer and greens. Sharena gets Lloyd.

I'll probably use the same team with my Lloyd to get the other Orbs.

Lloyd killing himself was tough for me. Ephraim/Tharja/Reinhardt/Lloyd. It was really tricky to weaken Lloyd enough that Lloyd could kill him, but not over kill him. I could get Tharja to bring him down to 3 HP, but Rein had to be boosted at the same time in order to take out the mage.

Enemy G Tomebreaker constantly makes me wonder if I need to consider bringing it myself. Problem is, Desperation is just so good that I don't think it's worth the trade-off. The other option is to run that really janky Distant Counter build on Eirika, but that would require killing Hector... I guess I also have a trained Sanaki now, but losing the Eirika-Nino synergy would defeat the whole point of my core. Oh, well, I guess I'll just have to continue trying to finagle around it by tossing Eirika around via Reposition and counting on Drag Back and/or my other Repositioner to allow her to get back to safety.

Oh, and for anyone wondering about the threshold for staying in Tier 20 last week, 4886 was extremely borderline. As in, I was a mere 100 places (out of 2300ish) from dropping out. 4884 might have been able to also stay, but it's really hard to say.

My Ephraim/Tharja/Hector core has worked out surprisingly well. Hector can take on Rein/Linde/Delthea/Kagero/Bride Cordelia with ease while Tharja wipes out Nino/Julia/Cecilia/Spring Camilla that Nino may hate while doing standard blade shenanigans.

Thanks for telling me that. I reached Tier 20 for the first time since the update that brought it in.

Is this week one of those wave periods that kicked out people who barely miss the benchmark?

edited 25th Jul '17 9:28:42 AM by erazor0707

If by that, you mean the previous season was one of the stricter thresholds that kicked out some of the lesser whales, yeah. This week is the laxer wave where someone previously reported being able to stay in with this wave at 4860. As the two waves merge together, I'm not sure how much that's going to adjust down (or possibly up). If you're aiming to stay, though, 4860 is gonna be the bare minimum target (no guarantees, though).

That's going to be difficult in my case. I either...

A) Have a really efficient team for deathless runs, but they aren't merged or have full skillsets so that bumps my score down.

B) Have merged units that don't get the job done half of the time.

Looks like I'll be experimenting with team synergy now more than ever.

edited 25th Jul '17 10:22:05 AM by erazor0707

Well, if you can get into 20 once, then you probably shouldn't have too much trouble getting back, so even if you drop out of 20 every other week, bouncing 19 to 20 and back still has pretty good payout. The threshold will also continue to drop overall, even if the two waves are going to muddle things a fair bit by causing buoyant fluctuations. It's still definitely worth trying to see (I mean, we do get free swords, after all), but I'd also say that it's not worth burning a ton of crests if things look really iffy.

Btw, going 19-20-19-20 instead of staying at 20 costs you 1000 feathers every two weeks (and with 4824 I easily went back up from 19 to 20). So 500 feathers a week. You don't even lose orbs - still get 4 when you go 20 -> 19.

Hence why I won't lose any sleep about my inability to stay at 20 - nowadays, we get 1505 feathers a week from dailies & hearts, plus 3400 for score + defense, plus a large number whenever a TT or a VG pops up. Basically, you lose on 1.2 4 to 5 stars promotions a year.

Yeah, Arena is kind of one of those things that (at least at the moment; I still expect the threshold to drop enough to let low 48xx in after a couple months) requires more feather investment than payout to stay anywhere vaguely in the top. Basically, unless you enjoy competing in the Arena, I wouldn't recommend going too hard at it.

Like, my Nino +6 has pretty much eaten 75% of my feather income and I've thrown in a good portion of the rest getting the Akrs to 5* to always have a 5* bonus. I'd say I have a pretty big deficit overall, but Arena's kind of my thing, so it's worth it. Granted, having an insane Nino has perks like being able to run roughshod over 90% of the other content. Plus, the Askr trio are generally pretty competent at 5*, so they're their for GHBs and Chain/Squad where I may require their more niche applications. Even Cherche, who seemed unnecessary overkill and like me being a step behind, since I only really got her rolling after the matchmaking update stopped me from being forced to fight triple +10 enemies in the Arena, has suddenly made a comeback in trivializing some of the more difficult non-Arena content (and that's all even without Hinoka back-up!).

OK.That reassures me.

Feathers are becoming less and less of a needed resources for me since almost all of the units I want promoted ARE promoted or are at least 4* +6 merged (some even have their 5* weapon like my M!Robin and M!Corrin — their 4* selves have great I Vs, but their 5* selves DIDN'T), which becomes wasteful to promote at that point.

Sure, I'll need them for promoting fodder for skills and weapons, but other than that...

It's pretty much all about them Orbs now.

edited 25th Jul '17 10:53:39 AM by erazor0707

Do you guys think Darting Blow or Fury would be better for Mae?

Does she still have her owl tome? If so I'd say Fury.

Just drew a Delthea, which makes her my 30th 5*! And of those 30 5*s, a full ten are swords, and I still don't have a good source of red magic damage besides Tharja.

Well, it's kind of expected, sadly. Out of the 42 available red units in the summoning pool (ie, not seasonal, GHB or Askr trio), 11 are magic attackers (mages/dragons). To contrast, magic units make up 11 out of the 31 blues and 8 out of the 23 Greens.

Meaning, Reds have the worst magic-to-physical ratio when summoning, and that's before taking into account how 5 of those units are 5* only, and the "common" 3* are adult Tiki and the rather dissapointing Sophia, Henry and Raigh. Green meanwhile has Nino and Cecilia (who has her niche and benefits from Horse Emblem) at 3* and only 1 5* exclusive unit. Blue is trickier, it has F!Corrin, but Robin is situational and Odin is SI fodder, however only 3 units are 5* exclusive, meaning it's still easier to pull and build good blue mages than red.

I also have only Tharja as a 5* red mage. Then again, pulling mages has always been something of an issue for me. On the other hand I have zero problem getting fliers - I think I have them all so far.

I have a Celica, a 4* Lilina, a Tharja, and a promoted 5* Sophia because it just felt right to promote Est archetype characters. Honestly I'm kind of overloaded on red mages.

I used to be on a red mage drought (as in, only having Lilina and Sophia) until around this month. That's when I started puling Tharja, Sanaki, Celica, and Katarina. Still searching for Leo, but you know...

Takes time, guys. Have faith.

edited 26th Jul '17 11:26:09 AM by erazor0707

Yeah, promotability is a big part of it. I have a couple Lilinas, but they both have crap I Vs so I don't want to spend 20k feathers on either of them. Meanwhile, it was much easier to find a serviceable Nino and Cecilia. Heck, I've only ever drawn a single 5* lance but drew a decent Cordelia to upgrade, and the free Camus and Sharena, whereas none of the free red magic units are exactly great.

Meh, I'm going to be pulling reds until Ike happens anyway.

edited 26th Jul '17 11:31:36 AM by IniuriaTalis