About an hour ago, the FEH twitter released the top 20 most-voted heroes for this year’s A Hero Rises event.
Let’s take a look at the results:
Link to the tweet: https://twitter.com/FE_Heroes_EN/status/1624966596329623552
If someone or some group of players were trolling by voting in Fallen Edelgard into the top 8, then they did a good job, since if she wasn’t in the top 8, then Embla (Red) would have been in the top 8.
Here’s who I voted for in this event:
I forgot to vote on the last day unfortunately.
Duo Duma and Embla didn’t make it onto the top 8, which I am quite sad about. Also Alear didn’t make it, despite being a very popular unit. I’m thinking that a lot of players didn’t vote due to the restriction requiring a Nintendo Account to vote.
Who’s on the voting gauntlet?
This year, these are the heroes that are going to be on the voting gauntlet.
- Summer Edelgard (Red)
- Fomortiis (Colorless)
- Duo Chrom (Red)
- Ninja Camilla (Red)
- Fallen Edelgard (Colorless)
- Rearmed Ophelia (Red)
- Rearmed Robin (Colorless)
- Veronica (Red)
There are 5 Red units and 3 Colorless units, so an all-colorless banner is out of the question. I am really hoping for an all-red banner, but it may not be the case due to who Intelligent Systems decides to pair up.
Since the 2021 AHR, Intelligent Systems have put 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, and so on. Using the last couple years’ pair-ups as a guide for this year, it seems like Fomortiis is up against Rearmed Robin, meaning one of the top 4 slots is guaranteed to be a Colorless, so having all 4 banner units being red is not looking good. If you’re curious to know about the AHR match-up patterns, check out the other article here.
Here’s a graphic by Phoenixmaster1 showing off the “predicted” voting gauntlet matchups. Intelligent Systems is most likely not going to change the assignment strategy as they’ve been using it consistently for the past 2 years. It’s pretty much guaranteed to be this way.
I’m not happy about having Duo Chrom and Rearmed Ophelia against each other, as we can only have one of them win. Summer Edelgard and Veronica too. I really wanted all 4 of them to win.
The only worrying match is Ninja Camilla vs Fallen Edelgard, because Fallen Edelgard winning would greatly decrease the overall value of this banner.
I’m guessing that one of the reasons that Fomortiis won despite being on a recent banner is because a lot of players failed to get him due to the lack of a spark on the Legendary banner. It’s only accessible to players with the FEH Pass. So, players are able to get a guaranteed copy of Fomortiis on this AHR banner.
Thoughts on the Summer Edelgard vs Legendary Veronica matchup
Really unfortunate that these units are up against each other, as I would have liked both of them to win.
- I want Summer Edelgard to win because she is a really good unit, similar in function actually to Reginn, where you can go in, defeat an enemy unit, then retreat. The thing is, that Summer Edelgard’s movement isn’t stopped by Forests, Canto Control, and she can also defeat up to 3 enemies in the same turn, unlike Reginn.
- I’d like Legendary Veronica to win because I don’t have a Wind Legendary unit. I have Azura and M!Byleth for Water, and I also have Julia for Earth. Veronica is also one of the best player-phase units at the moment, as her special allows her to pierce through the damage reduction, and her weapon grants her full-hp desperation if she initiates combat.
Thoughts on the Duo Chrom vs Rearmed Ophelia Matchup
- I’d like Duo Chrom to win as he is pretty much the most annoying unit to face in Arena, and Aether raids. His weapon has armor effectiveness and grants him a guaranteed follow-up attack. His assist skill reduces the special cooldown of both him and the unit he repositions -1 special cooldown, allowing him to get his Deadeye (which pierces damage reduction) instantly charged.
- I’d like Rearmed Ophelia to win as she can provide Special Spiral 4, which allows units’ specials to pierce through damage reduction. One caveat is that Special Spiral 4 is locked to infantry units (and armor, but that’s extremely niche), so fliers, and cavalry units (like Ninja Corrin) can’t use it. But, she does allow for the skill duplication, so you can give her Ruptured Sky and then she can duplicate it through merges. Important skills she can’t duplicate are Close Call 4, Godlike Reflexes, Vital Astra, and the Trace skills.
My ideal winners
Given the current matchups, I would really like Summer Edelgard, Ninja Camilla, Rearmed Robin, and Duo Chrom to make it to the top 4 and get on the banner. I think that set of units would benefit my account the most.
- Summer Edelgard because I want a melee unit. We’ve had all ranged/magical units for the past AHR and now this one. All of my +10 5-star-locked exclusive units are ranged magical units. Ranged nukes do fall off over time. I haven’t really been using my Young Innes or Reinhardt at all recently, and my Legendary M!Byleth is struggling to defeat Fomortiis. A lot of recent units also came out that Ninja Corrin can’t defeat. And my two Azuras aren’t that great in combat. I really want at least one +10 5-star-exclusive, good player-phase melee unit, not just some melee armor with a save skill that’s really tanky and does nothing on player-phase. I’m fine either way, as Legendary Veronica’s weapon disallows counterattacks if the enemy unit has allies nearby, so unlike all my other glass cannons, Veronica can avoid counterattacks.
- Ninja Camilla is better than Fallen Edelgard because Fallen Edelgard struggles to defeat units in one round. She needs to waste her Raging Storm and/or Galeforce actions on attacking the same enemy. For Ninja Camilla, if any unit has more Res than her, and is able to bypass the vantage, chances are is that the enemy is also a mage, and won’t defeat Camilla in one-round either. Eventually Ninja Camilla will fall off but definitely not for a while.
- Rearmed Robin because she’s an armor that allows for skill duplication. She’s also not a defense mythic. Having more Hardy Fighter available sounds really good, much better fodder than Fomortiis. Even though Fomortiis has Beast Follow-Up 3, I have not merged or built any beast unit that needs this skill. The only beast units I have built and have at decent merges are Leanne and Reyson, and they do not need this skill.
- I think Duo Chrom is a better unit than Rearmed Ophelia. Rearmed Ophelia does not stand out in any way combat-wise. I imagine she’s only used for her fodder and skill-duplication ability. I would rather get a super-powerful unit than a unit with a lot of fodder. Sure, skills can make other units better, but if a unit is not very good in the first place, skills won’t turn a not very good unit into an amazing top-tier unit.
Thoughts on Fomortiis
I would not recommend investing into a defensive mythic unit, as they do not provide as much account value as the other units. This is because their usage is primarily locked to Aether Raids defense and occasionally in Summoner Duels. He does have 195 BST, but at that point, he scores the same as Ninja Corrin that we got from last year’s AHR due to her Duo Skill.
Keep in mind that Fomortiis is heavily-reliant on two things: damage reduction and survivability.
Later down the road, once more nukes that ignore damage reduction come out, Fomortiis is no longer as good as he needs to survive in order to inflict the stop effect on the enemy units. He also won’t have the bonus stats from being a bonus ally, or the mythic blessing boosts outside of Aether Raids, so his survivability goes down even further, as damage reduction heavily utilizes HP, Defense, and Resistance, which you can get 5 of each depending on Mythic blessings (like Arval).
He’s also a beast unit, though seeing as the units with beast-effective units are not very good or able to take him on, he’s safe on that front.
What if Fallen Edelgard didn’t get voted for?
If she didn’t make it to the top 8, then we would have had the following matchups:
- Summer Edelgard vs Embla
- Ninja Camilla vs Rearmed Ophelia
- Fomortiis vs Legendary Veronica
- Duo Chrom vs Rearmed Robin
I think I would have preferred these matchups better as there is a possibility of an all-red banner. There is also the downside of additional risk. If the Colorless team was able to pull through and make it 3 Colorless and 1 Red, then the current matchups would at least guarantee that it’s in the worst case 2-2 (and most likely 3-1).
What if the matchups are different?
As mentioned in my AHR matchups article, Intelligent Systems used a slightly different way of organizing the matchups on the first AHR voting gauntlet. If they used that one instead of the current one, the matchups would be instead:
- Summer Edelgard vs Fallen Edelgard
- Fomortiis vs Rearmed Ophelia
- Duo Chrom vs Fallen Grima
- Ninja Camilla vs Legendary Veronica
I think I would actually prefer this set of matchups compared to the current one.
At least this way we have a chance of getting an all-red banner, rather than the guaranteed Colorless. Again though, there’s the same downside of the possibility of the Colorless team winning their matchups and making the banner 3 Colorless and 1 Red.
What’s the optimal summoning strategy on the AHR banner?
It depends on your FEH account goal.
If your goal is to obtain 5-star-exclusive +10 units (which my goal currently is), it would be better to snipe only Red orbs. I would not recommend spending any orbs on Colorless, because as we looked into in this article, the amount of orbs you would need to spend choosing both Colorless orbs in addition to Red bumps up the median orbs to get any +10 unit from about 1200 orbs all the way to 1900 orbs. You can still obtain one copy of the Colorless unit from the spark, which is fine by me, since I will be spending at least 1200+ orbs on this banner, which is more than enough to get all 4 sparks.
If you really want +10 of the colorless unit, then feel free to choose both red and colorless. You should definitely not choose any Blue or Green orbs, as there are no focus units to be obtained.