When it comes to skills, infantry, and especially armor, get the very best there is to offer such as breaths, special spiral, and in armors case, fighter skills. This leaves cavalry and fliers without any unique combat skills for themselves. Being considered the stronger move type for a while before armors really stepped up, it's understandable why IS would want to leave them out of the fun. Fliers on the other hand don't seem to make much sense, as I'm not sure their strengths are cause enough to keep them from accessing strong, unique skills. Perhaps down they line they will decide to give them some love (Edit: Other than more movement based skills). Do you think this is unwarranted, or do you agree with the decision?
Armors:Access to Fighter Skills, Low Movement
Cavalry: High movement, Terrain that blocks them
Fliers: Ignores Terrain, Weak to an entire weapon class AND the color advantage
Fliers are fucked to begin with because of bows. The only things that fliers are really good at is maneuverability via guidances/Aeobatics
Well, fliers are strong mostly for the fact that they completely ignore terrain (except those indestructible walls), I actually have a very competent Flier Emblem team that all use Reposition, and Reposition is the LIFEBLOOD of Fliers, since in an all flier team, one unit could attack, get repo'd out, and then repo the other unit out if it so happens to still be in danger without fear of the stupid impassable terrain like forests or water getting in the way. Hit and Run also really adds to this strategy.
Essentially you have full, free reign over the map and how to use it, where Armor and Calvary units really cant without proper, HEAVY support (Armor March, Boots, etc) or a lot of time to move (Armors) It also leads to Fliers being able to play mind games with the AI in order to either pick off or separate certain units to either ORKO them or seperate buffs / support. And since fliers CAN ignore terrain, it makes it easier to get the Hone/Fortify buffs on the whole team so the team gets +6 to everything, whereas Armors are too slow, and the terrain can screw Cavalry over.
The Flier Formation and other similar skills (Halloween Nowi's Grimoire for example) only further their maneuverability and presence on the map, and like you had said, in a non Flier Emblem team, allows other units to move with Guidance and Aerobatics. The Iote's Shield Sacred Seal is a savoir for Flying units as it completely nullifies their weaknesses to Bows and Excalibur and when put on a VERY tanky flier can prove effective since their main counters cant damage them anymore. Example, putting Iote's Shield SS is very common on Myrrh (classic) since her being a flier with a good defensive spread allows her to tank 90% of bow units taking minimal or no damage, and if Myrrh's running Distant Counter, even be able to counterattack or KO the archer. Although only having one Iote's Shield sacred seal is a pain for fliers, since aside from pawning off Michalis which people may or may not do, it means only 1 flier on your team can take advantage of it. If you're running a mixed movement team and only have one flier, there you go, problem solved; but on a full team, it can prove to be a problem.
I feel like FE:Heroes COULD throw fliers a bone with an exclusive skill like the Bold/Vengeful Fighters and Infantry Pulse as well as to cavalry so every movement type has something to exploit, but I'm not sure if they're going to do that to either. They may or may not I dunno.
For what it's worth, I read it. I agree with you in that fliers are the kings/queens of movement, and I find my flier team to be one of the most fun because of it. But I wonder if that's enough to compare to the likes of Bold Fighter, Breaths, Special Spiral, and the like. Sure they have a nice niche, but I wish they too had something to call their own that wasn't just "we can get around the map super easy".
First off thank you for reading it despite whatever the hell went on above.
Honestly in the grand scheme of things, it probably wont compare to the likes of Bold and Vengeful Fighter, Special Spiral and the ever coveted Breaths, unless FE:Heroes decides to release the Flier version or Flier equivalent to say a Breath or a Fighter. When they would do THAT, Fliers may be seen more in the meta and in higher tiers of Arena rather than having niche uses.
For example, if there was a Bold Fighter equivalent for fliers, imagine a quadruple attacking Cherche with a Brave Axe+, Hone / Fortify Support and Death Blow. That would be freaking crazy! And then the freedom to just Reposition Hell out of there not worrying about terrain restrictions.
The Fliers main weakness right now is that they're outclassed by the very VERY strong movement type specific skills from others and restrictions placed on them from those skills. (Coming from a Flier Emblem user) Once we get more flier oriented skills, they'll probably stop being niche and potentially start being meta, but only time will tell if FE:Heroes will even release such a skill(s).
That's because fliers' strengths isn't in their skills, it's in their movement. Similar to cavaliers, fliers can make devastating plays when abusing their movement, being able to reach enemies faster, and attack a unit and (most of the time) safely tread backward with the help of their allies, or other skills like Drag Back.
And I think cavaliers are way worse. IS had to literally nerf them by putting in trenches. They can be extremely crippled by maps with erratic forest placement, and have, what, 0 cavalry skills?
I agree!
Cavalry is now the worst movement type imo.
cannot use CD accelerator beside heavy blade, 3 move that "works" on certain map, but hey most maps have forest and trenches, and with that they became worst than armor movement.
and you know, that defensive tile with forest on top of it ? Cavalry unit cant even use that thing!
I dont get the idea behind cavalry cannot enter forest.
Does IS have such a rare horse in breed that run away as soon as they see trees ?
I might be a bit bias when it comes for cavaliers, but I don't think cavs are much weaker than fliers, surely, when Aversa became a GHB unit it's harder to pick horses over fliers but building blade tome mage in horse emblem is still much easier due to having hone cav at 4* versus hone flier at 5* not to mention F!Morgan and SF!Nino are the only non seasonal units we have meanwhile Cecilia, L'Arachel are awaliable at 3*-4* stars. I 'm sure blade mages is something horses/fliers have over unique skills so that additional movement advantage they have really brings more benefits it made credit for.
It's not comes down to just blade mages but nice stay increase from hone/fortify and goad/Ward buffs. Despite armors have that as well they still have more weaknesses due to having lower movement and thus relying on DC or CC to fix that. Armor March isn't doing much for them as you need them to stick together so it can be a pain to AI manipulation or infernal difficulty, armor boots isn't much better cuz of hp requirement.
Forests is probably older version of trenches to make sure horses have something obstacle preventing them crossing map in 2 turns.
I really hope stat boosting skills get buffed while being more avalable.
Fliers (and cavaliers) use skills like DB3, solo skills and fort def/res better.
Sure they're rare as hell but it does improve their max potential, while not changing as much for (melee) armor and Infantry.
But I really think we should have some more combat skills exclusive to cavalier/fliers (maybe like how some skills can be used by both infantry and armored)
No, I actually think fliers are fine as they are now because they can stack goads more easily than any other class using their mobility. Look at it this way: armours will double you on both phases by using bold fighter + QR or, more recently, weapon + bold/vengeful. (Actually, that existed from the start of bold fighter on Hector, but people tended not to do it for some reason.) Fliers will double you on both phases using spd. A lot of them are pretty fast to begin with (like, let's say 33+), and they'll easily gain +8 spd from just two goads so that's 41 spd without weapon refine, A-skill, merges, or seal, which probably means you're looking at 47+ spd on an unmerged flier, so we're into territory where Karla might get natural doubled, potentially even with spd wave.
Now let's look at damage. Armours will double you on both phases into a huge special for, let's say 35 damage on an ignis (requires 44 def, which they might well have). Behind it they have maybe 50-55 atk? So they would have 135-145 damage minus twice their target's def. Now, on a flier, let's suppose 33 atk as an IV. +14 from a weapon, and +8 from two goads, which brings the number to 55 before the A-skill gets involved, which should give 3-5 more atk. Cooldown acceleration is hard to get, so we're looking at wo dao moonbow or slaying bonfire for one-round specials. Seems like the armours have better damage, but let's raise the atk IV to...let's say 35? That's a pretty classical number. With swift sparrow and two goads, 61 atk (and you can add a seal if you want). Suppose we stick a wo dao moonbow on it and the opponent has 34 def (because any less and they're almost certainly dead in two hits, moonbow or not). It's 142 damage minus twice the opponent's def, which is right in the armour zone.
Note also that a lot of the time that much damage isn't even necessary. 55-60 atk is generally where people start recommending galeforce.
So for damage and for doubles, I don't think fliers are worse off than armours.
Now, add that dancers are not an addition but a natural part of a flier team. Cavalry and armours do not have dancers at the moment, and they probably shouldn't. NY Azura comes with hone fliers; YT Olivia has Skuld; B.Ninian comes with fresh bouquet.
As to your the Cherche example someone brought up, Cherche doesn't need bold fighter to quad units when flier buffs exist. Suppose she uses the spd superboon and swift sparrow; she's at 28 spd unbuffed without merges. Now, with two goads she gets to 36 spd which definitely doubles any slow tank, and if she really needs it, the third flier might have an offensive buff as well, or she can use a spd seal, or a spd refine on her prf, or she can even just merge to 40 spd. Anything that can avoid a double with that amount of spd, she can expect to KO with two hits using the atk boost from the goads. The bigger problem would be that she might get hit by a steady breath ignis, and if she uses guard then she can't use desperation.
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