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Fire Emblem Heroes |OT|Natural Selection Simulator

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Ninferno

Member
I don't know what the source for this is but a few people in arena chat including myself have just tried out unequipping our skills except the four most expensive ones and our score ranges immediately dropped.

It is from a Japanese site. After you pointed it out, I double checked their writings and found I had misinterpreted a bit due to not having perfect Japanese. During my own testing I only unequipped one skill (meaning 5 skills equipped) and tested 20 match-ups, the average is statistically identical to 6 skills equipped so I assumed I understood correctly. I didn't. My apologies.

It actually works like this:
If you have 5 or 6 skills equipped, the most expensive 4 are counted.
If you have 4 skills equipped, the most expensive 3 are counted.

So the number of skills "ignored" in the calculation varies depending on the number of skills equipped. I missed this part in my original post; I misinterpreted it as "just ignore 2 skills" because I thought it actually made sense that way as that would make pre-SI units comparable to post-SI units. I thought that was IS's intention.
 
I want to give Ninian Swordbreaker but I don't have an Abel. Is it worth me spending 20k feathers to get Sully to 5* for inheritance, or am I better off waiting? The issue is I only have 20k feathers, but I've spent most of my orbs on the last 3 or 4 banners so I won't be pulling Abel anytime soon.
I'd just use Swordbreaker 2 until you can pull again. 3 isn't worth 20k feathers IMO.
 

Mupod

Member
I want to give Ninian Swordbreaker but I don't have an Abel. Is it worth me spending 20k feathers to get Sully to 5* for inheritance, or am I better off waiting? The issue is I only have 20k feathers, but I've spent most of my orbs on the last 3 or 4 banners so I won't be pulling Abel anytime soon.

as was already said, just use rank 2 unless you are VERY desperate for a slightly higher arena score.

If it's only in regards to the skill's strength, there's little jump in effectiveness from rank 2-3 of skills like swordbreaker and quick riposte. Think about it, how many enemy swords are you going to have to go through in an arena match? And what's the likelihood of being in that 20% hp threshold where swordbreaker 2-3 would matter? Let alone on a dancer, who probably won't even fight most of the time.

It's nice to have, but 20k feathers could do a LOT more work for you. Especially with the new modes emphasizing the need for variety over strong individuals.
 

Ninferno

Member
as was already said, just use rank 2 unless you are VERY desperate for a slightly higher arena score.

Not anymore according to the latest arena scoring studies. It is perfectly fine to have a lv2 (or even lv 1 in terms of arena score) skill as long as your others skills are lv3. And if you have a Rally-Two-Stats assist (which costs 300SP), you can even afford to have 2 lv2 skills. It won't affect your score at all.

People with QR2 or L&D2 should really sit back and cut themselves some slack if they were concerned with arena scoring.
 
Finally did a clean arena run. Scored 4840 which is my best so far with a team of Alfonse, Julia, Delthea and Ryoma. I don't think it'd be too much to ask for Alfonse to have enough speed to deal with Hector. I can get really close to OHKO'ing him with Delthea buffs but not quite. Julia does a better job lol

I'm really liking this core actually. I dropped Reinhardt because I've heard "Magic is everything" one too many times. It's actually pretty novel to go back to an infantry team. Delthea can get Ryoma's attack into pretty nutty territory and in Vantage range I'd be he's a gigantic pain in the ass with 62 attack.

One thing I'm trying to figure out is when a dancer chooses whether or not to advance or dance another unit. On my last game I had a moment where I had to stick out Julia so she could eat a buffed up Nino. To Julia's left was Ryoma. On the enemy phase all that remained was a Ninian straight ahead of Ryoma (but out of range) and a brave bow Setsuna off to her right. Instead of letting Setsuna approach and dancing her to finish off Julia, Ninian moved first straight towards Ryoma and left Setsuna behind. How does that even work?
 

Mupod

Member
Not anymore according to the latest arena scoring studies. It is perfectly fine to have a lv2 (or even lv 1 in terms of arena score) skill as long as your others skills are lv3. And if you have a Rally-Two-Stats assist (which costs 300SP), you can even afford to have 2 lv2 skills. It won't affect your score at all.

People with QR2 or L&D2 should really sit back and cut themselves some slack if they were concerned with arena scoring.

Yeah, I just read through your other posts. So I'm okay with QR2 on Nowi after all, now that I gave her fury 3. Her main purpose is a score booster for arena so I was thinking of giving her something like vantage 3 even though I really like QR on her. At 34 spd she can't double that many things, but she's fairly hard to one-round so it works nicely.
 

Aesnath

Member
Delthea question: I have a +atk -hp delthea and I currently run her with DB3/Desparation3/Drive attack. I've decided that DB3 may actually be a bit redundant, but I'd like her to double more often. The support that I run her with has hone speed 3 and I have a unit with spur speed; but I can't always line it up.

So what is better?

Fury 3--means I can tank a Res hit and have desperation kick in; but only just the one hit.

Darting Blow 3--means I double on offense, which is where it matters, but lose out on damage

Life and Death 3--really good speed boost and attack boost, can no longer tank anything reliably--will have to rely on ardent sacrifice to activate desperation. I also actively have a -atk jaffar 5* to sacrifice for the endeavor.
 
Delthea question: I have a +atk -hp delthea and I currently run her with DB3/Desparation3/Drive attack. I've decided that DB3 may actually be a bit redundant, but I'd like her to double more often. The support that I run her with has hone speed 3 and I have a unit with spur speed; but I can't always line it up.

So what is better?

Fury 3--means I can tank a Res hit and have desperation kick in; but only just the one hit.

Darting Blow 3--means I double on offense, which is where it matters, but lose out on damage

Life and Death 3--really good speed boost and attack boost, can no longer tank anything reliably--will have to rely on ardent sacrifice to activate desperation. I also actively have a -atk jaffar 5* to sacrifice for the endeavor.

If your concern is doubling, Darting Blow might not be that bad of an idea (especially if you have a ton of Florinas). Since her defense is horrendous she doesn't really benefit from Fury 3 a great deal although useful for activating Desperation.

With Life and Death she still has a respectable amount of Res (about the same as Linde) so that's something to remember. Reds mages will still have trouble dealing with her although other blue mages could drop her in 1 between the reduced res and her poor HP.

I'd suggest trying out Darting Blow and Life and Death 2. If you're really, really sure you like Life and Death then eat Jaffar. Fury isn't a bad option but if you're interested in speed (which you'd need for Desperation to even be relevant) it doesn't give all that much
 

Alkez

Member
I'd just use Swordbreaker 2 until you can pull again. 3 isn't worth 20k feathers IMO.
as was already said, just use rank 2 unless you are VERY desperate for a slightly higher arena score.

If it's only in regards to the skill's strength, there's little jump in effectiveness from rank 2-3 of skills like swordbreaker and quick riposte. Think about it, how many enemy swords are you going to have to go through in an arena match? And what's the likelihood of being in that 20% hp threshold where swordbreaker 2-3 would matter? Let alone on a dancer, who probably won't even fight most of the time.

It's nice to have, but 20k feathers could do a LOT more work for you. Especially with the new modes emphasizing the need for variety over strong individuals.

Ah yeah that makes a lot of sense. Thanks guys.
 

lt519

Member
Finished CC 9&10 last night. Only the last CC 11&12 to go, may table that until I work up a Cecilia. I remember the days 6 months ago when my ragtag team of Roy, Robin, Sophia and Subaki couldn't even beat single level Chapter 10 Lunatic content.

10 more orbs down sniping for Amelia ):

Interesting stuff on the Arena scoring, really good to know you can have a couple weaker SI skills. That being said it sucks that merging gets you so little. I've been debating spending my feathers to merge up my Horse team for both arena score and story content but I think I'd be better off promoting other useful units.
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
Scraped together enough orbs to do one last pull on Hero Fest and got a Ninian. Yay! Dragon Emblem is now go, though it's probably way better suited for everything outside normal arena because I use Adult Tiki and I seriously doubt she can beat Julia. Plus I'm short on Triangle Adept.

Now to level and SP grind another dancer. Less yay.
 

PK Gaming

Member
Not anymore according to the latest arena scoring studies. It is perfectly fine to have a lv2 (or even lv 1 in terms of arena score) skill as long as your others skills are lv3. And if you have a Rally-Two-Stats assist (which costs 300SP), you can even afford to have 2 lv2 skills. It won't affect your score at all.

People with QR2 or L&D2 should really sit back and cut themselves some slack if they were concerned with arena scoring.

Wow, this is a megaton

I was planning on spending a ton of orbs to rank some of my skills up, but this changes things.

So something like Fury 3 / QR2 / Hone Speed 3 and Iceberg would work?
 

Sushen

Member
I knew the quest for S Corrin will be rough, but it's extra insulting to ruin my pity rate by atk- Sheena. Geez, she's fighting with noodle lance to begin with.
 

Aesnath

Member
If your concern is doubling, Darting Blow might not be that bad of an idea (especially if you have a ton of Florinas). Since her defense is horrendous she doesn't really benefit from Fury 3 a great deal although useful for activating Desperation.

With Life and Death she still has a respectable amount of Res (about the same as Linde) so that's something to remember. Reds mages will still have trouble dealing with her although other blue mages could drop her in 1 between the reduced res and her poor HP.

I'd suggest trying out Darting Blow and Life and Death 2. If you're really, really sure you like Life and Death then eat Jaffar. Fury isn't a bad option but if you're interested in speed (which you'd need for Desperation to even be relevant) it doesn't give all that much

Thanks--I think I'll give darting blow three a shot first, simply because I have like 4 florinas for some reason and the skill doesn't seem too relevant elsewhere. It also doesn't hurt that Delthea has like 6k SP due to TT, so I can afford to play around with things.

I thought fury wasn't the best option, as it still makes me reliant on speed buffs, but activating desperation easily sounded nice.
 

Mupod

Member
been autobattling on the sly all morning. Out of stamina now, but two runs away from the 3 orb reward which will put me at 21. 7% + 4% rate on hero fest.
Watch it be five colorless.

Despite my failure in finding Julia, the feather payouts lately have been crazy. I'm getting hero merit rewards faster than I can dole out these Gunters and Jagens to random cavalry. I'll see if I can get Clive up to 40 with some rudimentary SI, maybe the sheer stat boosts would let him/alm/genny power through 30-35 tempest on auto. Right now I rely on distant/close counter units.

I haven't even cleared normal-hard chain challenge yet. I was saving that for a new team, instead of wasting all that hero merit on my usual cavalry squad. So even if I blow all 66k I can use those promotes to get a ton of feathers anytime. I do definitely want Valter promoted though.
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
Clive is great in tempest auto. Besides the tempest buffs, his kit is actually quite good for autobattling lol.

I leveled mine a little bit manually, then he more or less ran himself to level 40 after that.
 

Sushen

Member
Clive is great in tempest auto. Besides the tempest buffs, his kit is actually quite good for autobattling lol.

I leveled mine a little bit manually, then he more or less ran himself to level 40 after that.
Clive is actually good at something?
 

Mupod

Member
Did my final pull on Hero Fest. No greens, but I got a 5* so I opened all the orbs to use the pity rate (sadly it was the only one).

Delthea.
What? That would've been useful before I farmed up 80.000 points.

+HP -SPD which sucks but I can make it work. I already have Blarblade Linde so she wouldn't be on my main team anyways, and another good blue mage is something I needed, especially one with good Res. Also I can make a hell of an autobattle squad now.
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
Clive is actually good at something?
I have no bonus units this Tempest besides Clive, so yeah. First 5* Tempest unit I took to 40.

Autobattle tends to make your units run off and get themeslves killed, but Clive's tempest buffs + defense + Hit and Run makes him less prone to AI suiciding than most units.
 
Think I am finally going to pull the trigger on Brave Lance+ to give to my +Atk/-spd Effie. Now that I have Amelia I can have Effie just go wreck shop. Because it is a terrible IV Cordelia I could take Galeforce at the same time, which would be amazing for TT and chain maps.
 
Pulling reds in hero fest has been a giant waste of orbs. Watch choose your legends Ike be buff Ike with improved art. I should have went back to hoarding as soon as I got Julia. Sitting on literally 0 orbs right now ;_;
 
With AA costing no stamina or dueling swords, people are using AA to conduct massive arena scoring research right now and I think they are now pretty close to the exact formula. Some of the findings aren't new, such as the confirmation of 1 arena point = 10 BST = 1 merge, and 1 rarity/star level = 5 points, but here is the new finding: 200SP cost = 1 point. Not just that, they have also found out that not all equipped skills are counted towards the arena score: (6 skills being weapon, assist, special, and ABC)

If you have 5 or 6 skills equipped, only the 4 skills with the highest SP cost are counted.
If you have 4 skills equipped, only the 3 skills with the highest SP cost are counted.

For example, say we have an Ike equipped with Ragnell (400SP), Reposition (150SP), Aether (500SP), Heavy Blade 3 (240SP), Sword Breaker 3 (200 SP), and Hone Def 3 (200 SP). The total arena points contributed from his skills will be (400 + 500 + 240 + 200) / 200 = 6.7. Experiment has confirmed that this fully equipped Ike and him with Hone Def 3 unequipped yield the exact same point (because only the 4 most expensive skills are counted in both cases). However, if you further unequip Reposition, you will start to see fewer points (because now only 3 are counted).

Also, sacred seals do seem to affect scoring. Experiments show that when all 4 team members are equipped with sacred seals, you get roughly one more points. Sacred seals can be considered as level 1 skills (hence 40 ~ 60 SP per seal, around 200 SP for 4 seals) so maybe it makes sense that way. Anyway, no conclusion on the exact calculation on sacred seals yet.

tl;dr:
1 merge = 10 BST. 1 rarity/star level = 50 BST. 20 SP = 1 BST.
Don't be afraid of equipping low-SP-cost skills like the movement skills (150SP) or stats + 3/5 skills (160SP). As long as your other skills are 200 SP or above, it won't affect your score at all.
Aether/Galeforce are gold mines; don't merge your Ikes/Lucinas/Lyns if you care about arena points. Even the 300SP trashes that are the AOE specials can give you +0.5 point compared to Moonbow/Luna/Bonefire.
Put on sacred seals for all your arena team members.

Edit: My original interpretation was wrong. Updated now.

So where's the link?
 

Roman

Member
It is from a Japanese site. After you pointed it out, I double checked their writings and found I had misinterpreted a bit due to not having perfect Japanese. During my own testing I only unequipped one skill (meaning 5 skills equipped) and tested 20 match-ups, the average is statistically identical to 6 skills equipped so I assumed I understood correctly. I didn't. My apologies.

It actually works like this:
If you have 5 or 6 skills equipped, the most expensive 4 are counted.
If you have 4 skills equipped, the most expensive 3 are counted.

So the number of skills "ignored" in the calculation varies depending on the number of skills equipped. I missed this part in my original post; I misinterpreted it as "just ignore 2 skills" because I thought it actually made sense that way as that would make pre-SI units comparable to post-SI units. I thought that was IS's intention.

I've just had ASFox test this, he has a composition that consistently nets him 740. If he takes the cheapest skill respectively off each of his units, he starts seeing 736.
 

Pejo

Member
I think Ninian has officially turned into my favorite unit. I put Lightning Breath+ on her for distant counter, she's got TA3, WoM3, and Hone Attack. Sealed her up with Attack Ploy. Super versatile and completely wipes out all reds now, even most Lucinas/Ikes.
 

Iryx

Member
Got Ninian at last. Blew my entire f2p orb stash of 150ish on the first Ninian banner with only Lucius to show for it. Put another 100~ in the second and this one and got lucky on the last pull available. +Res-Def
 

Sushen

Member
Depends on IV I'd imagine. Firesweep Bow would probably be the ideal bow.
I've got atk+/res- IV and with brave bow plus atk and spd buffs, he loses only to Hector, MRobin and Effie. Of course, it's against vanilla units which nobody runs nowadays. But I would definitely call him Grooness (groom+Innes) next to Bridelia.
 

Roman

Member
I've got atk+/res- IV and with brave bow plus atk and spd buffs, he loses only to Hector, MRobin and Effie. Of course, it's against vanilla units which nobody runs nowadays. But I would definitely call him Grooness (groom+Innes) next to Bridelia.

If you want to actually run calculations against real metagame opponents, use this site and import this pastebin, which I myself update.

Two days after I pull Ike I get a Tana. +spd/-def I think. Any good?

It's the best nature for her Firesweep build.
 

Sushen

Member
When I encounter a whale team, many are not necessarily optimal teams. It's amazing the one spent so much money to get +5 or more on most units but didn't bother equip them beyond default skills. I guess, it's lucky for the rest of us because if all whale teams are also super optimized, it'll be really impossible to beat them.
 
Argh Infernal Legion is annoying. Closest I've gotten is one last Legion but of course it had to be the one with Vantage.

Eldigan and Xander take too much chip damage and I don't have anything else that can one shot them.
 

spiritfox

Member
Nice, hopefully I'll pull her one of these days. I've been running Priscilla as my Horse Emblem healer.

Priscilla works too, though her attack isn't as good. I use Priscilla with WS and she kills a surprisingly lot of units with horse buffs.

Genny herself is also a good user of WS.
 

champloo

Member
Finally got a Tana after ~150 orbs, feeling pretty lucky here. Although I hated the process of squeezing orbs from every possible source, just to save up 17 balls and make a desperate pull, rinse and repeat.. all of those were worth it though.

She's +hp -res which is not bad. Just gonna slap QR2 on her for now and watch some result.
 

papasmurf1038

Neo Member
Picked up zero 5-stars off the whole dang Hero Fest banner, that's pretty frustrating. My luck has been pretty good so far as a F2P player though, so I guess it had to run out at some point.

Hopefully I'll be able to stock up a decent supply of orbs in time for the Choose Your Legends banner.
 

Sushen

Member
Follow this guide good sir:

https://youtu.be/RxFc_k2yZnA
The worst part about the Legion map is that often the guide doesn't work because the outcome you get each turn can be different than the one on the guide. I've seen extra enemy spawned that didn't show up in videos, and enemy takes different route than on videos. I have tried a few times on infernal and decided that IS can keep 2000 feathers as I'm already approaching 90k myself. Plus, the last thing I need is to add another unit in my barrack that I'm not using when I have to make room to summon every time. I have sent home some of GHB units and I don't care.
 

HawthorneKitty

Sgt. 2nd Class in the Creep Battalion, Waifu Wars
The worst part about the Legion map is that often the guide doesn't work because the outcome you get each turn can be different than the one on the guide. I've seen extra enemy spawned that didn't show up in videos, and enemy takes different route than on videos. I have tried a few times on infernal and decided that IS can keep 2000 feathers as I'm already approaching 90k myself. Plus, the last thing I need is to add another unit in my barrack that I'm not using when I have to make room to summon every time. I have sent home some of GHB units and I don't care.
I like how you're propping yourself up for not being able to clear content.
 
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