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The Asgardr Report - 4th Edition: November 2021

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Introduction

The Asgardr Report aims to provide high-level Fire Emblem Heroes content on a regular basis. Each article will contain 3-4 topics related to the end-game content of the game; Aether Raids (Offense & Defense) and Arena. 

In it's-still-totally-November's edition of the Asgardr’s report, we would first have a quick discussion on one of the most popular maps on Aether Raids; Lost Castle. We will then proceed to provide a quick overview of the current state of the game in Arena. We will then round up the article by analyzing the new developments within the game, be it refinements, skills, etc. 

Aether Raids Map Overview: Lost Castle

During the first inception of the mode, Lost Castle is widely laughed at due to the defensive tile placement which is highly beneficial to the attacker rather than the defender, and the existence of better maps that allows for walling one whole side of the defense, such as pre-adjusted Spring Breeze, Lava Floes and Abandoned Castle. Not long after, all the maps mentioned are adjusted to no longer allow the defender to do so, making Lost Castle the only map that allows the defender to wall off 2 of the 6 columns of the map.

This creates an interesting dynamic; while walling off 2 columns is highly beneficial for the defender, the defensive tile placement not only provides the attacker a space to bait out foes in an advantageous position, the tiles also meant that the defender could also not use the space for trap placements. This meant that the benefits of the tile benefits both player and enemy phase strategies alike. The defense tile being this deep into the defense also meant that chances are all the units would have overlapping range on the tiles, which could be both a good or bad thing depending on the context.

By understanding the above logic, it is possible for the defender to either mitigate or even eliminate the woes of the defense tile, albeit with opportunity costs. 

The most simple solution to the “bait on the defense tile” problem is to amp up the defense team’s firepower. This is probably the main reason why Bridal Catria clusters are fairly successful in using the map, as they usually have enough damage potential to potentially scare off any baiting attempts even on the defense tiles. Outside of this specific team composition, the defense could also utilize extra Drive ATK for all the units surrounding the defense tile, which allows the nukes to compensate for the damage output lost through the defense tile. While this can be done for pretty much any team, this also comes at the opportunity cost of potentially using other C skills, such as Distant Guard for increased durability.

Using Savior skills is potentially a solution to the issue of the opponent attacking the defense team. As the angle of approach is much more predictable due to walling off the columns on the right, the save unit need not cover all the units; rather they simply have to cover the units that are potentially exposed when attacking from the front or the left side. This flexible position will also apply to the damage-dealers as well.

Lastly, extending the threat range is an indirect way of addressing the defensive tile, as the attacker could no longer walk into the defense tile as freely as before. However, with the advent of Saviors being used in the offense, it boils down to being able to do sufficient damage onto the tanks with a higher threat range. 

At the end of the day, the usual mantra of defense building applies even for Lost Castle; observe what is common on offense, and make use of that knowledge to your advantage. While blocking the right side is useful, taking into account the defense tile is imperative to create a formidable defense on the map.

drive_atk_example

Using Drive ATK near the defense tile might give your defense the offensive push needed to defeat any tanking attempts on the tile. 

Using Savior skills is potentially a solution to the issue of the opponent attacking the defense team. As the angle of approach is much more predictable due to walling off the columns on the right, the save unit need not cover all the units; rather they simply have to cover the units that are potentially exposed when attacking from the front or the left side. This flexible position will also apply to the damage-dealers as well.

Lastly, extending the threat range is an indirect way of addressing the defensive tile, as the attacker could no longer walk into the defense tile as freely as before. However, with the advent of Saviors being used in the offense, it boils down to being able to do sufficient damage onto the tanks with a higher threat range. 

At the end of the day, the usual mantra of defense building applies even for Lost Castle; observe what is common on offense, and make use of that knowledge to your advantage. While blocking the right side is useful, taking into account the defense tile is imperative to create a formidable defense on the map.

Asgardr Hall of Fame (November)

The Asgardr’s Hall of Fame is a form of recognition for units that fulfills either of the following 2 requirements.

  1. The unit is sufficiently common in Aether Raids Offense strategies and performs at a sufficiently high level.
  2. The unit performs at an exceptional level even if they are less accessible without a steep learning curve. 

Updates

Ascended Fjorm has now superseded Henriette as the go-to Far Save probably due to the increased accessibility with the guaranteed 40 pull rather than seasonal locked. As such, Henriette is removed in place of Ascended Fjorm.

Ninja Corrin is added due to remarkable similarities with Ninja Lyn. Scion Leif is also added due to similarities with his Legendary self. 

Summer Hilda is removed due to Thorr also providing the cooldown acceleration for all unit types, and she is not sufficiently common enough either. Brave Lucina remains in the Hall of Fame due to the latter. 

Enemy Phase
Player Phase

Arena; The End Game Overview

In Asgardr report, the main discussion had always been about Aether Raids due to the options available for both the offensive and the defensive end of the mode. There is, however, another mode that veterans in the game had to take into consideration; Arena. In this section, we would provide a brief overview of the competitive landscape of Arena, and also discuss some of the potential foes you would face in the mode. 

Minimum scoring requirements

Right now for many veterans, arena scoring splits into 2 groups of players.

  • Players who enter Tier 21 every other week. This is commonly known as T20.5.
  • Players who could successfully stay in Tier 21, also known as T21.

In order to understand the thresholds required for each group, we would need a brief summary of how arena scoring works. You could refer to a full guide here, but here are the basic things to keep in mind:

  • Base Stat Total (BST) is likely in multiples of 5 (also known as a scoring bin) is the main determining factor with arena scoring, this meant that a unit with 180 BST would score the same as a unit with 184 BST.
  • If a unit has a personal weapon, having a 300 SP B passive or 500 SP assist has the net effect of adding 5 BST to the stat total assuming we have the highest SP cost skills for each slot.
sample_arena_unit

Despite Brave Lyn being a unit that is released in the first year, with the C Duel Cavalry 4 and exclusive Passive B, she keeps up with scoring pretty well at effectively 185 BST. 

Every year in August for the past 3 years as of the time of writing, the game would also increase the BST of modern units. Score bonuses from Legendaries and Duo units are also adjusted regularly on an annual basis. This meant that players should not expect an arena core unit to last forever due to the score creep attributed to these increases.

At least for now, the likely threshold for a unit to be considered competitive scoring-wise is 180 BST. Modern units could most of the time exceed this threshold, and older units could use the Duel Skills to reach this amount. As Legendaries and Mythics only could get 175 BST from the Duel skill, they would likely need an additional skill as mentioned above to ensure that their scoring is sufficient. The difference between the 2 groups (T20.5 and T21) is the use of blessings and the corresponding Legendary Units in the matching seasons which follows the same rules as above. For a mathematical guarantee to meet this requirement, players would at the minimum need 3 teams of 3 (excluding bonus unit) for their matching Legendary seasons.

Lastly, the utilization of Mythics in the arena cores could simplify creating teams, as the units can be used with no expense to the blessings as long as the Mythic blessings lined up for the week with the corresponding Legendary Blessings.  Should your team be made up of purely Mythics, you can get away with using 3 Legendaries, 2 Light / Dark Mythics, and 2 Anima / Astra Mythics.

Understanding AI

Aether Raids is not the only place which a player could extensively apply their AI knowledge, as there are distinct advantages to be had. There are 2 basic tricks that any player could use so long as they have the right units for it. 

5-damage-rule on Dancers

Refreshers are of a relatively common sight in the arena nowadays, such as the likes of Legendary Azura and New Year Peony. Similar to Aether Raids, it is ideal for an AI refresher to not refresh (duh). One solution would be to exploit the 5 damage rule, as any combat would precede any form of assists such as Dance / Sing / Gentle Dream so long as the unit does 5 or more damage to the target excluding damage reduction. This is ideally done in Turn 1 where the formation is largely predictable, and usually, there is an obvious baiting spot that could be used to get only the dancer to attack your units.

The difficulty of this strategy is the mobility, as sometimes the space is either too far away, or there is some terrain that you could not use such as the likes of water and lava. While this probably could not be pulled off every game, this could provide the player a slight competitive advantage in some of the maps in the arena rotation.

Exploiting Rally AI

While the above could not be performed in every game, Rally AI is something that could possibly be done. This is because of the relative sparsity of non-rally high-scoring assist skills. 

The trick is to ensure that one of your unit’s attack range covers only 1 unit of the opponent team. The AI would then proceed to rally the target, as the target would walk forward to its inevitable death in the player phase. Players should watch out for sources of other buffs as well to ensure that the rally goes off.

In order to exploit this, however, you need to be able to be out of the enemy’s range while ensuring that the unit is in attack range of the target. The higher the attack range (which includes movement and whether the unit is ranged or melee), the more likely it is that this could be performed. 4 attack range (such as the likes of Ranged Cavalries and the cheater known as Legendary Sigurd) is ideal, but 3 attack range (melee cavalry, ranged infantry/fliers) could work to some extent against melee foes that are not on a horse.

Arena Season Legendary Analysis

In this section, we will be breaking down each Legendary Season as we briefly highlight some of the common threats that you might face in the season. This is useful whenever a player needs to plan out their corresponding arena core for each corresponding season, which is relevant when s/he wishes to attempt to stay in Grand Summoner. 

We would also assign give a Top 5 of each season based on the threat level of the said Legendary unit. The higher the score, the more care you probably would need when either designing teams, or executing the strategy. Naturally, the threats are usually based on the amount of hurt they could inflict on the player phase.

Wind Season

The wind season is usually the land of Legendary Sigurd, as his Holy Knight Aura with the movement extension could spell death for your tanks should you not take that into consideration. Fortunately, due to the scoring restrictions, most Legendary Sigurd you face in the arena are probably running Crusader’s Ward as it increases his scoring, which does not contribute to his player phase. Furthermore, most do not run Quickened Pulse as a seal as they opt for something that’s more useful under player control such as ATK DEF Solo. The 4 movements however do mean that there is no room for AI manipulation in terms of rallies. However, if his teammates do not have the same movement, he will tend to move ahead of his allies relatively quickly, which could mean an easy kill for your bonus unit. 

As for the rest, Micaiah and Gunnthra are rather potent damage dealers; Micaiah has the double effectiveness alongside a guaranteed follow-up attack, while Gunnthra could straight up take your units out in a single hit if you are affected by too many debuffs. Lastly, although not as common, Lucina could occasionally spook the player with Future Vision, although her combat is pretty weak which meant that she could be walled off pretty easily with some preparations. 

Earth

Most of the Legendary units in Earth season, such as Fae and Tiki, are enemy-phase focused, with the only notable ones that perform in the player phase being Claude, Alm, and Julia. Out of the 3, Claude is probably the most infuriating to battle due to his Fallen Star providing 80% damage reduction on the first hit, forcing you to over-commit with multiple units. This is a problem if Claude is not the last unit you takedown, as his allies could potentially back him up. 

The best bet against Claude, of course, is to attack them before they could hit you. Should that not be possible, the other solution would be to attack him twice in the same combat. As Claude does have Null Follow-Up embedded in his weapon and his speed is rather high, the main solution would be to have a unit capable of attacking twice, such as the likes of Legendary Leif and Brave Celica. Otherwise, a physically bulky Far Save unit should stall Claude out fairly easily, as it limits the damage output should Claude runs Deadeye as his special.

As for Alm and Julia, while both does somewhat hits hard, they are extremely squishy, so they usually only land 1 hit before they get taken out by a counterattack. Using Aether and some form of acceleration on your tanks should provide the healing you need to survive multiple engagements. 

Fire

The main threat of Fire Season is probably Lilina due to a combination of her large attack range and her turn 1 AoE special even if the multiplier is low. It might be beneficial for a player to opt for a tank with higher RES specifically in the fire season as the player phase units are largely magic based in this season, and it also helps with dealing with Lilina as the damage output is based on the tank’s visible RES stat.

While both Ephraim with his remix and the newly released Eitri thrives under player control, they become a non-issue once rally comes into the picture, as the unit would have the tendency to rally a target and move backward. This severely bricks the formation, for the most part, making them easy to be dealt with when this happens. 

In fact, the next scariest unit after Lilina is probably Marth, as Exalted Falchion does provide him with a huge stat boost which makes player-phasing him rather difficult on some occasions. Panic is also not a valid counterplay due to the embedded Unity effect, making him rather difficult to take out at the start if he’s with his teammates and benefiting from Shining Emblem’s visible buffs. Fortunately, for Marth to be competitive in scoring, he would need to run R Duel Infantry 4, which does mean that his stats are not as ridiculous as opposed to using a competitive passive A. Nevertheless players should probably take him into account when creating a team for Fire Season.

Water

The Water season for Legendaries is definitely the most overloaded in terms of pure degeneracy, as it has many units that could potentially end your run. Unit-wise, it can be rather difficult to prepare for this season, as the threats are extremely diverse compared to the other seasons. 

The first problem that a player might face is Azura, which is the only Legendary Dancer as of the time of writing. Despite scoring only 175 BST with B Duel Flying 4 (Gray Waves SP cost matches Rally + at 400), she is still relatively common due to her sheer utility on the arena team. Using the 5 damage rule does make dealing with her significantly easier, but should it not be possible to do, it could be a huge headache due to the rally shenanigans and the potential movement extension. 

There is also the one-two punch of Byleth and Leif. Leif could attack twice to punish any unit that has a low physical bulk with a very wide range, while Byleth gets to charge his personal special on Turn 1 which would hurt quite a bit. This meant that no matter what, there is bound to be a nuke that could punish your tank and either put it out of commission for the rest of the arena match, or the tank straight up dies and forces a reset.

Even Dimitri could be a problem as Atrocity does significant damage due to its true damage component. While range wise he is just a melee infantry, which does leave him susceptible to be manipulated with Rallies, he does come with Odd Tempest as his base kit. Some of the lazy users of Dimitri might just stick with it, which could cause an issue for the arena player should he lack prudence.

But by far, the unit that ends the most arena runs is probably Chrom. As To Change Fate is a self-refresh on top of a Reposition, Chrom is very likely to attack your team. His weapon and statline meant that he is sufficiently bulky and quick to take a hit while ensuring that he can outspeed the slower units. Toxic players further compound the misery by giving Chrom even more speed and giving Chrom Time’s Pulse and Deadeye to increase the chances of him activating the special to further punish some attempts at taking a hit from Chrom. Armors also take a sizeable chunk due to his armor effectiveness. 

The unfortunate reality with Chrom is that usually, a player that uses him in any capacity on defense has a good chance of being a degenerate and equipping him with a kit that inflicts the most pain for the arena player (if you are doing this, shame on you!). This is in contrast with other Legendaries who have the tendency of gravitating towards the maximum scoring kit. Should a player see a Chrom on the opponent team, be extremely careful; look at his kit, and always take into account Chrom’s assist, and hope that he does not end your run.

This month in Fire Emblem Heroes

In this segment, we would focus on units or skills that the author thinks are new and going to be meta-relevant moving forward due to the updates introduced in the game. For this month, this segment would cover all the content introduced for the month. 

Ninja Corrin

Ninja Corrin is essentially a sidegrade Ninja Lyn; trades cooldown -1 for true damage per hit, trades a winged horse for a hose, and Disarm Trap for Trace. The main difference however is Corrin’s lower HP value compared to Ninja Lyn. When used with a flaw on HP, Corrin’s maximum HP value is at 35 when Dragonflowers are considered. 

Competitive Ninja Lyn compositions tend to keep her HP to be below 48 to ideally allow for 3 hits with Fury recoil to get into the Wings of Mercy range for her allies. With the release of ATK DEF Push 3 as a seal, that number can potentially increase to 50. Corrin with 35 HP meant that players could use up to 3 Mythics in their team composition and still pull off the strategy. This is big for players with more than 1 merged Mythic, as they now are more likely to squeeze those in for a higher score ceiling compared to using Ninja Lyn. Furthermore, Ninja Corrin’s cavalry movement lands her to be a good defense unit with her extended range and decent damage output. 

The lack of Disarm Trap does mean that on offense, it is technically possible to protect against Corrin using the traps. Nevertheless, the similarities to Ninja Lyn meant that she definitely would have a lasting impact on the Aether Raid metagame for the most part. 

Mythic Thorr

Thorr’s main niche is that her personal skill, Worldbreaker, grants special acceleration with the only condition being that she is within 2 spaces of the ally. While the application to enemy phase teams (including Save Ball) is clear, this also has a solid application in Galeforce strategies. This is because, unlike most cooldown skills which only work in the enemy phase (Steady Breath, Geirskogul, Sunshade Staff), this weapon also works in the player phase. The only exception to this is New Year Velouria, and even her weapon only grants the said acceleration on herself and her support ally. 

The largely unconditional nature of Worldbreaker on top of being a Mythic meant that she is incredibly versatile; enemy phase, player phase, or even simply as a backup nuke just in case a Near Save Brave Hector is causing problems. While Reginn poses competition with her one-time nuke and the ease of getting pots with her superb mobility, Thorr in general provides more combat utility for her allies. The queen of utility for Astra season is probably still Plumeria simply for the fact that she’s a refresher, but Thorr definitely has a place in the current competitive landscape. 

Other news

  • Ninja Naginata and Shuriken Cleaver can be useful in Galeforce strategies, sacrificing a bit of speed for some more firepower. If you do not need the extra speed for Flashing Blade checks, these weapons are a good option.
  • Lethality is released as a skill from Volke. High ATK daggers would love this skill due to the piercing properties. However, it can also be blocked by defensive specials such as the likes of Ice Mirror. This is a great alternative to AoE for the likes of aggressive dagger units such as Kaze and Yuri.
  • Legendary Eitri thrives under player control due to the Canto 2 effect. However, as mentioned in the Legendary season analysis, her AI performance leaves a lot to be desired due to Canto’s defensive tendencies. This does mean that she is unlikely to cause many problems in the arena, and Aether Raids’ application on defense is dodgy at best.
  • I did not get Legendary Fae :(

Final Remarks

We hope you enjoyed this month’s edition of Asgardr’s Report. As we draw this year to a close, we will take a trip down memory lane for 2021 and discuss the winners and losers for the year in terms of the competitive scene. We hope to see you again for the next edition. 

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About the Author(s)

Maskilraid is a writer specialising in Fire Emblem Heroes. He situates in the tiny island of Singapore, and is a fanatic in crafting Aether Raids Defence teams. He also has academic background in Statistics, providing statistical analysis of the pull rates in Fire Emblem Heroes.

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