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Does Special Spiral Hurt FEH?

We all know how busted specials can be and with the introduction of Special Spiral, certain units can have specials on deck permanently which can't be healthy for the game imo. Arya is the most obvious example.

Arya with Slaying Blade, Quickened Pulse and Special Spiral can have Regnal Astra charged permanently.

Even worse than that, with only one Infantry Pulse support, she can swap Slaying Blade for Wo Dao, giving her an extra +10 damage on every Regnal Astra. Regal Astra with 10 extra damage kills around 90% of the cast in FEH.... We're talking unmerged as well.

Guard can't negate it as the specials are charged without the need to enter combat.

Is this skill gonna make or break FEH or will it be seen as just another minor powercreep?

Asked by Way2much3 months 2 weeks ago

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Not really. Most 2 cooldown specials are bad for arena weight, so it would be inefficient to use Special Spiral with them. Trust me; it’s a lot more dangerous to use Vengeful Fighter/Bold Fighter and get guaranteed doubles.

Talking mainly for Arena Defense and Tier 20 arena. Naturally, it wouldn't be an issue in Tier 21. Also, Vengeful Fighter and Bold Fighter can be negated with Guard while this cannot.

Well, compared to wrath special spiral is less desirable, not to mention out of all movement types infantry has it worse than others.
What i do not like is focus on armors and those new crazy b slot skills for them, if anything will break Feh its armors.

Possibly. Brave Ephraim is possibly the most crazy unit yet, possessing everything you would want in an armoured unit and more and its only gonna get worse.

Still I don't think SS should be underestimated as it allows a unit with a slaying weapon and a breath skill to proc Aether on every return hit. Something that Wrath does not allow if I'm not mistaken.

Only thing B!Eiphraim lacks is DC.

SS is good but overrated, wrath is much more flexiable, thus can be used by many, whereas SS kinda needs low colldown special to work, high spd and atk is needed for said skill to be used at full it's potential.

Not necessarily as a breath skill and SS can have Aether ready after ever hit.

Hehe my question seem to have reached you xD #inception

Having pre-charged specials was always an infantry specialty. It began with infantry pulse, and now we have another skill that helps it.

In arena I don't think special spiral actually makes that much difference unless you're trying to use it for bonus unit kills, in which case I think wrath might actually be better. Special spiral doesn't matter during the first combat, and with such a strong ORKO meta, if your opponent actually manages to activate special spiral you've probably lost a unit already.

In Grand Conquests, you're not going to see it on every single unit, and it doesn't combo with vantage (at least not yet) so I think it's actually going to be easier to deal with than Veronica.

On the positive side, I think it gives infantry a way to compete with the ridiculous amount of free special charges armours can get. Now infantry might be firing off ignis every round. Armours have some pretty broken B-skills; fliers have goad fliers and the mobility to stack tons of it so that they can pull off galeforce relatively easily; cavaliers have hone cavalry and ranged units with devastating reach if terrain doesn't get in the way. It's good to give infantry a way to compete.

What's more, with the absolutely ludicrous amount of bulk abyssal maps are throwing at us and the hordes of reinforcements in relay defense, which takes "mob" to levels even LHBs never saw, the extra firepower is probably necessary, and AoE specials are better than ever before.

I think it's a reasonable addition to the game.

As mentioned before, with Slaying Weapons, Quickened Pulse and/or Infantry Pulse support, units (namely Ayra) CAN have their specials charged on turn 1 and subsequently, every turn after that and there is no counter to it unlike Vengeful and Bold Fighter.

Also unlike Wrath, you don't need to take a hit for this to work.

Infantry DEFINITELY needed a leg up but was this the right way to go about it? I dunni.

Ayra was doing this with slaying edge + wrath long before special spiral, and if she was fighting a melee unit chances were pretty good that she would get hit back.

As I said, I don't think this does anything to the meta because if you couldn't survive one pre-charged special, it doesn't matter anyways; you've already lost one unit.

Just to be extra-clear, there has never been a counter to infantry pulse up to this point. You have to be able to tank the special, or you need a player phase strategy to take out the unit with the pre-charged special before they could attack (could be some brave weapon or firesweep or OHKO), and that was always the main threat in arena, not the potential for a unit to spam their special on subsequent engagements. If you couldn't tank the special and you couldn't avoid getting hit by it, you were screwed whether or not they would be able to activate the special on subsequent fights. Special spiral therefore changes nothing. It's actually irrelevant unless for some reason you care whether you will lose a second unit.

True. The difference is with Infantry Pulse, once that one special was gone, she would no longer have a special and things would be okay. With Special Spiral, Regnal Astra is charged PERMANENTLY.

So if by some miracle she doesn't kill you with the first one, she has another one to use right after. And that's the dangerous part. Not that she can have her special on Round 1, its that she can have her special on every other round prior to that too.

As I previously mentioned before as well, Wrath requires Arya to survive a round of combat while Special Spiral can do everything that Wrath does but on turn 1.

Are we both missing each other's points?

I'm saying that when the infantry pulse special is gone, someone is dead. Either you tanked it and killed them, or you died. If you lost a unit, you need to restart your arena run. If you didn't, they don't have a special anymore because you killed them. If they're using special spiral, they still don't have a special anymore because they're not on the map anymore.

Special spiral does not do what wrath does on turn 1. Ayra started with 2CD (or 1 using slaying edge) unless she had QP or IP support. She will start with that number whether she uses wrath, special spiral, or neither unless she has QP or IP support. Why are you trying to make it look like special spiral means she has a pre-charged RA? That's infantry pulse / quickened pulse (or even Ostia's Pulse), not special spiral. If she busts you using the pulsed Regnal Astra, she doesn't even need special spiral; in fact, she was better using slaying edge + wrath because after you hit her back, her second one has +10 on it which special spiral won't grant.

Possibly. My point revolved around the unit not killing Ayra and thus leading to her having another special. If you kill her, nothing has changed but if you don't then its a different story.

I have to disagree, Ayra still prefers Wrath as special, being able to activate 2 times and dealing 26 dmg each time is much better and she will still have it at the start of every turn.
With that even if she would even be able to ko when she would deal 0 dmg.
I feel like Special spiral is too overrated, it has it's pro and cons, with that being the fact that you have to give up the B slot and it won't be that good in arena since Aether doesn't work well with Special spiral

Wrath is definitely a terrifying skill for sure but it requires Ayra to take a hit and survive, which is highly unlikely nowadays. You would need to invest into her defenses to ensure that she even survives the first turn of combat.

With SS, Quickened Pulse, a Slaying Blade or Infantry Pulse support, Ayra has her special permanently meaning that she has no need to take damage and rely heavily on getting to that 75% threshold, which can be iffy.

Wrath may be slightly better overall but SS is far more reliable.

Have you actually fought Ayra? Her physical bulk is normally 70 or higher. Even her magical bulk is at least 60-ish. That's not an easy unit to OHKO. What do you mean, unlikely that she can survive a hit?

By the way, wo dao is much scarier if we're going to talk spamming RA using special spiral. She doesn't need to reduce the cooldown to 1; she just needs an extra infantry pulse, which isn't too hard because her HP isn't in the upper 40s. She should just take the extra +10 damage.

Of course, I've fought Ayra lol. She's not the hardest to ORKO. Most top blue units can take out her out in a single round. Lilina takes her out in one shot. Most Swordbreaker units etc.

And I mentioned the Wo Dao in my initial post, which I'm guessing you skimmed lol (which is fine as it is kinda long, should have done a TL:DR)

ORKO is very different from OHKO when we're dealing with Ayra. Stuff like swordbreaker Delthea won't work against DC Ayra for precisely this reason. There are, in fact, not many units that will effectively OHKO her; most other units would need to prepare to take a wrath RA (or sometimes two if you're trying to take her on enemy phase). Special spiral did not change this in any way.

I mentioned wo dao because in that reply you said slaying edge, when in fact it might not be the deadliest combo with special spiral.

I mentioned Slaying Edge as it was the first thing that would probably come to most people's mind but highlighted Wo Dao right after it in the initial post.

Either way, I hope you guys are right lol.

Nah, if we survived the fighter skills, we'll survive this.

Remember that super offence units can deal all the damage they want, they'll still can be stopped by a good wall with TA advantage or another super offence unit.

Besides, it's not even really better than wrath.

True to some extent. Although skills like Regnal Astra completely ignore the TA advantage and with +10 damage (not including any buffs) Ayra could tear through all but the most sturdiest walls.

I'm not sure its better than wrath but its definitely more consistent, which means it can be valued higher in many instances.

BK/Zelgius Slaying Sword, Speical Spiral, Black Luna

LMAO how about Atk-boosted Wo Dao, Ostia Pulse, Special Spiral, Black Luna. With Goad Buffs.

Perma-+10 boosted Black Luna. Good luck surviving that xD

It's not any worse than Veronica's new dumbass staff that's for sure. I like Peshkatz's effect but making a Dazzling Peshkatz staff I think was too much and not a good design.

Veronica is the new bane of my life. An exaggeration yes....but only a slight one xD

They both worry me tbh. The Powercreep is real.

Same I already prefer dealing with B!Lyn over her, everyone's old bane.

LMAO that's because B!Lyn had a counter in Tanky Gronnraven-Bowbreaker Mages and Dragons while Veronica has NONE xD Just gotta kill her first.

I second this. Dazzling Peshkatz is much more troublesome if I encounter it in arena.

Yup I already had to switch Micaiah into my Arena core just so I could guarantee oneshotting her. Now it helps that Micaiah is my favorite main character in the series so I never mind using her but still. Plus I like ranged units, wish arena scoring wasn't so slighted against them though.

I don't even see it as a powercreep, just a fun way to use Lethal Carrot+Blazing Wind.+Flashing Blade. If it were an A or C slot skill, then yeah because Special Spiral+Vantage would be broken.

Incoming Vantage seal xD But seriously, does Permanent +10 damage boosted Regnal Astra and Black Luna's or potentially having an enemy fire an Aether back at you after every hit sound fun?

I don't think they do lool.

That's exactly the point I wanted to make here.. when I finally got to the end of those 30 comments I wanted to say "imagine a wrath seal with special spiral" the thank you Glowchu for taking this from me ;)

A-Just finished Jack the Giant Slayer, good movie.
B-The relevant thing that came to my mind: I think this is a huge buff to bulky units if anything. Other than QR and Guard, they can quickly charge Ignis, Glacies, and Aether which is much more viable. I don't think Special Spiral is a good choice on "Sweeper/Offensive units" as Wrath, Desperation, Vantage, and Swordbreaker are much better on them, whereas Bulky units with low damage output can now quickly fire skills off without the rare breath skills. Though ofc you could combine the two, but again that's much better for BULKY units that are going to stay around and can abuse this skill numerous times. I mean, l'd run Special Spiral Ignis/Aether on Sharena if l had Lewyn but saving orbs for halloween banner. That said, great addition to the game because it gives defensive units more power.