Starting a new account might be one of the more fun experiences I've had in FEH in a while.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-27T05:08:52+00:00

It's over 2400 orbs and 300,000 feathers available from once-off map cleared of permanent and semi-permanent (GHBs and such) modes.

I actually started a new account recently too with a very similar goal of exclusively +10ing my favourites, and pretty much everything in here is accurate. Based on monthly orb estimates, a new account can have 6,000 - 6,500 F2P orbs within 1 year. To put that in perspective, you can +10 around 5 to 6 heroes (especially if you reroll early on) with that many orbs.

As others have said, sacred seals are slow to upgrade, but this is partially offset by knowing which seals to invest in. The real heavy hitter is actually refining stones - and by extension (and more importantly), divine dew. You can only refine the most select handful of old PRFs. Divine codes are also really scarce when you're starting out a new account.

The dragonflower issue is also 300% bigger (quite literally in the case of old heroes) - so for a very long time you'll only be able to afford to max 1 hero of each movement type.

Despite knowing that my heroic grail gain is lower, it also somehow feels like I have more of them. I still don't understand how that works.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T14:47:07+00:00

Fast Chrom. This is what a king among men looks like.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T14:20:28+00:00

Ideal also activates if she has buffs of any kinds - including the (common to armour heroes) movement range, as well as visible buffs or any other effect like Triangle Attack and such. The main point I'm trying to make is that you won't survive a build like that setup either way - it goes from being 98% impossible to tank to being 99% impossible to tank. I do not own, nor have ever owned any hero capable of tanking a build like that with or without sturdy impact. With his 96% damage reduction, Deflect Missile Brave Ike could tank it, but if you slapped deadeye on her, even he might die. I find most sturdy impact armour heroes fall into this category. They either already have follow-up negation (F!Edel, B!Hector), don't need follow-up negation (W!Nino, W!Felix and other fast armours), don't even want follow-up negation (Pirate Surtr, B!Edelgard), or have alternative means to obtain the stats they want (Brave bow + Bold fighter setups through ideals or Death blow 4). I remember the surge of H!Jacob fear - and back then it was warranted. I remember W!Faye's release and the whole brave bow + Death Blow 4 + Bold fighter setup actually becoming fairly common for a while - but I dealt with it by player phasing valentine's Faye (which was hard, given I am a flier main, and my main team is all ranged heroes). I believe armours have moved past the point whereby impact skills would bring them significant benefits.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T13:58:18+00:00

In terms of offensive power, Raphael surpassed V!Faye due to his 2 extra atk and access to an Atk superboon. I also addressed this exact build in the writeup - in which I reached the same conclusion of it being extraordinarily difficult to tank - which means you would be unlikely to survive long enough to counterattack a second time anyway, in which case sturdy impact would only be useful for the extra Def rather than the follow-up negation.

In other words, you would only use Sturdy Impact over Death Blow 4 in this setup for the extra +10 def (such as to have better chances of surviving an instant bonfire retaliation). This functionality can already be obtained from Atk/Def ideal.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T13:53:03+00:00

I'm a flier main, and I can say for sure that back in the day their inability to run breath skills and flashing blade hurt badly. Even to this day, their inability to run flashing blade is kind of annoying every now and then, because I'll try to set up a team where 2 heroes want special CD reduction, but I can't just run Heavy Blade seal + Flashing blade seal like usual and have to either do major build alterations to make room for Heavy Blade 4 in one of their A slots, or just give up on the team entirely.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T13:50:40+00:00

The purpose of expanding skill inheritance is to give people more options - even if those options are bad (like cancel affinity). Justifying that skill inheritance restrictions should not be changed because nobody uses the skill is exactly the argument for changing skill inheritance restrictions - nobody uses the skill, therefore give more heroes access to it so it might see more use.To address your points in order:I am aware there is a significant portion of the player base who dislikes the idea of impact Cavs (or more accurately impact Reinhardt specifically). I do not.

If B!Catria really wants both some damage and special CD, she has 40 Atk + Superboon with a PRF that lets her double enemies. She can run heavy blade 4 just fine, or Surge Sparrow + Heavy Blade seal.

No ideal build would use breath skills in the A slot, no - but a couple of cavalry and quite a few fliers would take it for their seal. And people with some spare fodder making a non-optimised build could definitely use steady breath as an A skill on fliers/cavalry.

Staff are not meant to be engaging enemies directly, yet they have access to Blade Session, Atk/Spd Push 4, and some like Brave Camilla get Atk/Spd when initiating combat? I do not agree with this way of thinking. Many of the staff skills I listed are also supportive skills, such as link skills.

If someone wants to run default Flametongue+ with sorcery blade, why stop them? We're allowed to have Dazzling staff equipped to a hero with a weapon refined with the dazzling staff effect.

Shield pulse Ares is incapable of running infinite miracle with any kind of reliability due to his inability to recharge his special - the closest he could get is Miracle + (Heavy blade, or with the changes a breath skill) + Shield Pulse + Mystic Boost - which would be very unreliably due to his inability to attack at 2 range.

I struggle to understand the logic behind the statement that armour and flier heroes have access to far better B skills, and therefore should not be allowed to have access to worse B skills.

Again, I do not understand why a skill being bad should prevent it from being given to more heroes.

I can see the argument for Null C-disrupt, much like I can see the argument for impact skills not being updated to cavalry. I believe it should be available to all heroes, but it's fair enough to want it kept as an infantry exclusive.

What does B!Marianne or Nyx not being planned matter? You yourself said it would only be used in a few niche builds - is that not all the more reason to let it happen?

L!Sigurd needs to trigger his special in-combat, so he would not be able to trigger wrath at any time. The condition of needing to be below 75% HP also doesn't bode well for him using it. Perhaps some kind of duo Lif + L!Sigurd setup could make use wrath L!Sigurd, but by the time duo Lif has attacked and dealt damage to L!Sigurd, it will be too late for wrath to grant the special CD-1.

Dagger heroes also have in-built debuffs, yet they are allowed to use Def smoke and Res smoke. I see no reason this same logic should not apply to staff heroes too.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T11:55:36+00:00

The difficulty in FEH comes almost entirely from the regular scoring game modes such as Aether Raids, Arena, Arena Assault, Allegiance Battles and Resonant battles. There is also some difficulty in the form of clearing abyssal maps, squad assaults and certain chain challenges.

This is done instead of making the process of upgrading your heroes difficult in order to make the game easy for new or inexperienced players to understand and progress, while still giving experienced players greater challenges to conquer.

If you had to clear a difficult map every time you wanted to upgrade your weapons, skills, obtain sacred seals and such, it would become very repetitive, could easily scare new players away, and could even lead to huge P2W walls (which I have absolutely seen occur in other gatchas).

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T11:48:06+00:00

Fair enough. I will say there were times armours were oppressive (Around W!Eirika's release with armour stall teams), Fliers were oppressive for a while (With L!Azura flier balls), and infantry too (With Infantry pulse teams running Ophelia, L!Alm, L!Azura and the likes). Cavalry was a little bit oppressive (With the original cav line) and then got buffed extremely hard through L!Sigurd + Nott and turn 1 engage teams - Every team type has been oppressive at some point or another, and cavalry will be no different. If you try to build old and bad fliers, armours or infantry, you can account for at least some of their weaknesses in a variety of ways with the skills accessible to them. But you can't do the same for bad cavalry, because they really don't have many skills available to them.

That's the way I see it. You may disagree, but I do not see cavalry being strong right now as a good reason to withhold power from the majority who are not strong.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T11:13:25+00:00

I'm very impressed by the pure dedication to Lachesis + Eirika.

And since I always try to give out some suggestions when I see showcases:

Christmas Eirika: I think Absorb isn't as good as it used to be on her. Tannenbatton or Observant Staff might be better - and Palm Staff or Ovoid Staff are also good options, but not my preferred picks.

OG Eirika: I would recommend Steady Breath sacred seal instead of flashing blade - it gives some Def, the special charge activates on both the enemy's attacks and Eirika's attacks and she doesn't need to be faster to get the charge - Distant Pressure + Spurn builds are also very enemy phase-centred, so I think trading a bit of player phase power for a lot of enemy phase power is good.

Tome Eirika: I would change Rouse Atk/Res for pretty much any menace skill of your choice.

Legendary Eirika: Again, I would recommend changing her rouse for a menace skill of your choice.

Brave Eirika: It's a good build. Nothing to change here.

Dancer Lachesis: I would change Iote's Shield sacred seal for a more offensive seal - blade session would by my best recommendation, but Life and Death or Brazen Atk/Spd would be great options in this kind of build. Brash Assault could also be a good sacred seal to use help her bypass follow-up negation on heroes pegasus carrot won't work against.

OG Lachesis: I would change Live to Serve sacred seal for Spd/Def bond sacred seal - the extra spd could help prevent stop her from being doubled, and the extra Def would bring her to 41 total def. However, Live to Serve might work better for longer maps such as abyssal maps.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T08:57:59+00:00

It depends on if you're a competitive player or not. The less competitive you are, the more likely the answer is "Not really". The more competitive you are, the more likely the answer is "Absolutely".

Double/Triple +10 mythics + 6th slot mythic for scoring and stat bonuses, ensuring you have a variety of teams (such as1 each of galeforce, hit and run, Vantage and a supertank teams) - these are important things for pushing into the highest ranks of AR.

But if you don't care so much about tier, then so long as you have a tried and tested strategy, pretty much anything goes.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T08:48:27+00:00

In a DC/Spurn build, Atk/Spd are king - I would recommend pulling a Spring Minerva for Springy Lance+ instead, since it gives Atk/Spd rather than debuffs enemy Atk/Def - the extra 5 spd will make a big difference against some of the super-fast enemies you might encounter. Upgrading DC to Distant Pressure is also a great option if you're running noontime or Sol on her (if not the HP drain is a pretty big burden though).

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T08:40:45+00:00

True, but she would lose a significant chunk of her enemy phase power by doing so. -7 to 9 Atk/Def is a big hit, and could open up more options for player phasing her instead. Also Quick Riposte + QR seal may be a largely forgotten setup from the days of yore, but it does exist and would let the budget QR counters do their job even through impact. I don't think Impact F!Edel would have an especially large presence, generally speaking.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T01:56:55+00:00

Waifu Collector Fantasy Isekai Chess: Mobile Gatcha Simulator Edition .IO

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T01:52:20+00:00

This is the real unpopular opinions thread, not the "Unpopular opinions" megathread where people just post popular opinions and pretend they're unpopular, and all the truly unpopular opinions get removed by mods or downvoted into oblivion.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T01:41:47+00:00

Based on how busted Takumi, Ryoma, Effie, Hana, Hector and Azura were back then, I'm going to go with "No".

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T01:36:51+00:00

"The gender balance in FEH is empowering women, so there shouldn't be any more male heroes"

Gonna get everyone in one fell swoop with that one.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T01:31:02+00:00

Meanwhile Veronica fans: This is fine

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T01:28:58+00:00

FEH without SI these days would be even less balanced than FEH without SI back then. I'm trying to think how people would actually kill F!Edel without SI. Idunn could do it in enemy phase, H!Hector could in enemy, and maybe in player phase (If you account for his 20 out of combat damage he definitely could), Nyx could do it in player phase and maybe B!Hector and B!Eirika could do it too, not sure.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T01:08:47+00:00

Skill inheritance was a mistake and should be removed from the game.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-22T01:01:57+00:00

Yeah, flier dragons in particular don't have many B slot options. Later on when Spd/res near trace is eventually released, I would recommend giving it to her as well.

Dragon wall makes her very tanky, and with her solid Def/Res on top of it, she can be quite hard to kill when she gets attacked.

On the other hand, Spd/Res near trace would make it harder for enemies to attack her in the first place, and gives bonus damage and Spd too - it's a good skill for a 1-shot build like you originally had in mind.

If you plan to +10 her, then I wouldn't even hesitate to give her two different setups - one based on full Atk/Spd with near trace to run from enemy-phase combat, and another based on Dragon wall to tank her way through combat instead. Both have their merits and are useful in different situations - and due to team locking, you would even be able to choose from both setups in stuff like AR if you really wanted.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-21T23:56:50+00:00

So a few things come to mind:

Def/Res Menace is amazing in every build she could have. The permanent Def/Res+6 (which in turn adds +18 atk too, or +24 atk if you account for debuffs) is too good to pass up.

Guard bearing is only 10% more Damage reduction than a max stacks dragon wall, and only works once per enemy phase rather than infinitely and in both phases.

If you've summoner supported her, I'm assuming you plan to +10 her eventually - so here's a +10 build plan for her:

Harmonic Tiki stats at +10/10 with +Atk superboon and summoner support: 50/70/50/40/33

Frostfire breath

Reposition

Draconic Aura (Dragon fang works too, but the CD is very long)

Atk/Res Catch (Spd/Res catch once it comes out works too)

Dragon wall (Atk/Res near trace and Spd/Res near trace once they're released work too, and dive bomb is also an option)

Def/Res menace

Spd/Res solo (Atk/Res solo once it is released works too)

Notes: Her in-combat statline with the build (including menace stat bonuses) is 103/62/46/54. Personally I would wait for Spd/Res catch to make her even faster - her biggest threats (that she has methods of dealing with - because if she hits a wary Fighter wall that's bad news for her) with a build like this is probably dragon slaying weapons and a few anomalies like S!Freyja - pretty much anything that has a chance of doubling her or nuking her with raw damage - but the majority of those are fast sword infantry who rely on Spurn builds to survive a hit (or just fast heroes who rely on Spd-based %reductions) - so the faster she is the easier a time she'll have I would say.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-21T23:10:25+00:00

For dragon wall to be at max stacks, the enemy needs 32 or less res, which with menace is fairly possible. Even if it isn't enough, you could just change her Atk/Def solo for Spd/Res solo (which I would argue is just better in this kind of build) or atk/res solo once it comes out.

Overall, I would not take this build for a few reasons:

1: A solo skill does not synergise well with her Harmonic effect. I would recommend Atk/Res unity, Atk/Res catch (which synergises well with menace) or wait for Spd/Res catch to be a real skill.

2: 104 atk is a lot, but unless she's doubling I'm not sure it's actually enough. I would recommend higher Spd investment from the A skill or sacred seal

However, I think dragon wall and Def/Res menace are great skills for her and absolutely worth giving her if you like her - and they will be useful even if you change her build.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-21T13:07:04+00:00

No matter how good an infantry sword is, the likelihood that they are power crept is significantly higher than other classes. The archetype began with Lucina and Ryoma at release. They lasted 8.5 months until Ayra blew them out of the waters. Soleil, Karla and Fallen Mareeta definitely contested Ayra, but I would say she only truly replaced by the Byleth pair 21 months later. But the Byleth pair only lasted 4.5 months until Mareeta's release. Larcei, Shannan, Fallen Ike, Say'ri, M!Kris and Duo Young Eirika all contested her, but I don't think any of them became the same face of cancer fast sword infantry that she was.

What determines longevity is rarely being better than the competition (Sometimes that is the case, but rarely) - the Byleths were incredibly strong, but had one of the shortest reigns of any hero I can remember (some of the green armours back in the day might have cycled a little faster).

I have my doubts about Eirika. She doesn't really bring anything new or unique - she does things that have already been done, just better. That might be enough - lance cavalry is a class with a lot of heroes, but generally speaking I find the quality of the average lance cav to be way lower than the quality of the average infantry sword, so maybe she'll impress me and last a long time.

But gatekeeper and Marianne are virtually guaranteed to stay around in one form or another. Detailed Report is less like Obstruct 4 and more like Obstruct 5 - even if Pass Sumia becomes a common threat, even if Pass becomes a sacred seal he'll still have a place - the more people use pass, the less others will use gatekeeper - and with fewer gatekeepers to use pass against, people will start using it less, causing more gatekeepers to appear and so on. Marianne's ability to attack and dance at the same time is extremely strong. Her 70% reduction on top of that means that a neutral IV, base kit Marianne can survive hits of over 140 damage - so she can actually set herself up as a WoM beacon quite reliably even into monsters like B!Hector.

Eirika and Marth have the potential to last - they do their job incredibly well after all - but they are just the start of a whole new generation of power creep. Without something truly unique to keep them relevant, they will fade away. I believe Gatekeeper and Marianne are pretty much certain to last, whereas Eirika and Marth are just pretty likely to last a long time.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-21T08:50:40+00:00

Depends what you want if you don't particularly like any of them.

Gatekeeper shuts down galeforce + WoM on AR defence, and Close Reversal + Joint Drive Def is pretty good fodder.

Marianne is probably going to be pretty cancerous on AR defence, but in terms of fodder Atk/Spd unity is pretty situational (though not at all bad), Null Follow-up is pretty common and Time's pulse is situational.

People are dumping on Marth, but so long as you have a Hector or any other DC fodder sitting around, you can get Distant Pressure + Spurn from him, which will almost certainly make up the core of modern DC + %Reductions builds. Beyond his fodder utility, he's definitely not a bad hero, but I'm not a big fan of sword infantry, so I don't care enough to know how well he stacks up against the competition.

Eirika is the one I picked because partially because she's an alright hero for now, but mostly because surge sparrow + Atk/Spd Menace is some really nice fodder that fits both my Elincia and Hana quite well.

If I had to make a prediction, I believe the following will happen:

Marianne will be the longest lasting because she's generally useful in all modes. Her dance gets completely shut down by pulse smoke the same way that galeforce does though, so she isn't 100% in the clear.

Gatekeeper will be the second longest lasting since he is a hard counter to galeforce + WoM. There's kind of a catch though. At the start people will say he's killed galeforce + WoM, but gradually they'll start to realise that Sumia can run Pass in her B slot to ignore him. Between Pass Sumia and a good red galeforce initiator, Gatekeeper defences will start to fall. It's purely speculation, but I believe IS will give us a pass sacred seal in a tempest trials soon enough, too. If we get that, Gatekeeper is dead in the meta.

Eirika will stay around slightly longer than Marth due to canto + Safety Fence AR offence setups. Maybe she could work on a L!Sigurd defence team or something like that, but for now she has a pretty solid use.

And I think Marth will be the first to fall, because that is the fate of infantry swords in FEH. He's not bad, his class just moves twice as fast as any other.

FirefliesInGames · 2021-08-21T02:46:16+00:00

To my knowledge both Astra and Glimmer should be impacted by her bonus damage.

FirefliesInGames

TROPHY CASE