Meta Changes and Updates 1 (09/01/2021)

This is the monthly blog about changes in the meta for Fire Emblem Heroes (FEH). To know about any units that defined this month's meta and any other game changes, read on!

New Content in August 2021

Banner

Who Should You Pull From CYL 5 - Keepers of Faith?
Brave Marth [9.0/10]	Brave Eirika [9.0/10]	Gatekeeper [9.0/10]	Brave Marianne [9.0/10]

New Mythic or Legendary

New Legendary Hero
Legendary Micaiah [9.0/10]

Are they meta defining?

Legendary Micaiah is a new Wind Legendary Hero that was introduced at the end of August 2021.

A purely damage-based unit, she will be effective against the resident hair-pulling unit, Fallen Edelgard.

However, outside of Wind season, we don't think she'll be that commonly used, mostly because she is yet another pure damage tome user and doesn't bring anything else.

She can easily be taken out by physical damage melee units as they can just get up in her face.

New Resplendents

8/25 to 9/10	9/10 to 9/25
Sonya	Tailtiu

• List of Resplendent Heroes
• Feh Pass Benefits and Special Features

New Game Mode

Heroes Journey is the new game mode introduced this month.

In this mode, you pair up two units (or Kiran!) and go battle for memories and rewards.

It's similar to Lost Lore, but with your units having to play out actual battles.

Once you've collected all the rewards, you may switch your focus to other game modes, as Heroes Journey does not offer much else after that.

Meta Changes

Seasons

With Legendary Micaiah's debut banner, we will have a few weeks of Wind season being active.

The current active seasons as of the time of this article being posted are Wind, Water, Light and Dark.

Expect another three weeks of Wind season, with the secondary season rotating between the other three each week.

The Aether Raids seasons rotate as usual every week.

Arena

Meta Units

Meta Units
Legendary Sigurd [9.0/10]	Fallen Edelgard [9.0/10]

With the approaching Wind season for the next few weeks, not only will we be seeing Legendary Micaiah, but there's also a high chance of seeing Legendary Sigurd.

Packed with insane movement due to his Holy Knight Aura, Legendary Sigurd can not only cross the map quickly, but grant this same buff to his allies.

An absolute menace since her release.

Another Arena staple is Fallen Edelgard, who since her debut has been seen everywhere from Arena to Aether Raids.

She is also a focus unit on the current Legendary Heroes banner sharing with Legendary Micaiah, which should increase her usage rate even further.

With multiple actions in a turn and good sustain, she's a difficult opponent to take down without a properly built unit.

How to Counter

Legendary Micaiah is actually a good counter to both Legendary Sigurd and Fallen Edelgard, as she has both cavalry and armor effectiveness on her weapon.

Legendary Byleth (M) is also a good counter due to his pure damage output. If it is Water season and you have a Water blessed team, he will prove beneficial.

Other options are anyone an effective weapon for Fallen Edelgard or regular Micaiah.

For more information on how to counter Fallen Edelgard, you can find out more in our article all about this!

Aether Raids Offense

Aether Raids offense still revolves around the three main strategies of Fire Emblem: Tanking, Galeforce, and Hit and Run.

These three strategies have been battle-tested time and time again and have proven to be effective methods in achieving perfect clears.

Each strategy has their own weaknesses and they won't work for every map, but having 5 team slots alleviates this problem as long as the player is adequately prepared.

Tanking

The Hero Fest banner provided players with an easy method to acquire the coveted Save skills in A/D Near Save 3 and A/R Far Save 3.

With these skills, matches become less complicated and are now answered by the simple question: Can your units beat my tank?

The most common primary tank that people use is Brave Hector, and for good reason.

His refined Maltet is absolutely stacked and it takes significant effort to bring him down.

Surrounding a Far Save Brave Hector with powerful support units is an easy method to rack up wins in Aether Raids.

Brave Hector uses A/R Far Save 3 to protect the support units from ranged attacks while the support units provide in-combat bonuses and heals to keep him alive.

How to Counter Tanking Strat

To counter this, defense teams have adapted by fielding more units that abuse Windsweep 3 such as Selena to prevent Brave Hector from counterattacking.

Cavalry staff units such as Veronica and Young L'Arachel are also good units to help wear the primary tank down.

Finally, some teams have also formed a Catria-ball with Bridal Catria providing the Triangle Attack effect to the rest of the team to help punch through the primary tank with raw damage.

Galeforce

Galeforce has always been a powerful skill in Fire Emblem games, and Heroes is no exception.

Additional actions provide more opportunities to perform strategies, whether that involves an additional attack to eliminate one more enemy, or retreating to safety after the first combat.

Common Galeforce Composition Units
Eir [8.5/10]	Ninja Lyn [9.0/10]	Fallen Edelgard [9.0/10]	New Year Peony [9.5/10]

There are powerful heroes that grant themselves additional actions such as Fallen Edelgard with her weapon Twin-Crest Power, Ninja Lyn and New Year Peony with their Duo skills.

How to Counter Galeforce Strat

To counter this, defense teams have been equipping more skills that provide a Guard effect such as Steady Posture 3.

These prevent Galeforce from triggering post-combat, negating follow-up attacks from the rest of the raiding party.

Additionally, since Ninja Lyn is one of the most common initiators due to her Duo skill and her nuking prowess, teams have been equipping the Deflect Missile 3 Sacred Seal to neutralize Ninja Lyn's damage output.

Hit and Run

The introduction of Safety Fence has breathed new life into Hit and Run strategies.

A common offense tactic is to field the Safety Fence and use units with Canto built-in to their kits such as Reginn and Brave Eirika to eliminate enemies on turn one and then retreat outside the danger area.

Safety Fence will still be active and prevent the defense team from retaliating.

The raiding party will then clean up the remainder of the map on the next few turns.

A more extreme version of this strategy exists during Earth season by using Legendary Claude to apply the Gravity effect to the opposing team and then retreating to safety with the help of other units.

How to Counter Hit and Run Strat

To counter this, defense teams have fielded their Catapults together with Duma in Astra/Anima season to destroy Safety Fences if they are placed in the same columns.

Aether Raids Defense

The Aether Raids defense metagame has remained the same since the introduction of Nótt into the game.

Light and Dark seasons will mostly have defense teams based around Nótt and Legendary Sigurd taking advantage of their movement-altering skills to catch unsuspecting raiding parties off guard.

Astra and Anima seasons, due to the lack of Pathfinder, instead rely on various traps such as Dance traps and Restore traps to activate the map and quickly get kills.

Countering Safety Fence

The introduction of Safety Fence has helped alleviate these oppressive strategies somewhat, but it is more of a band-aid instead of a permanent solution.

Safety Fence is a minor nerf to teams who run skills such as Odd Recovery and Odd Tempest.

During Anima season, these defense teams have mostly adapted by fielding both a Catapult and Duma to snipe the Safety Fence on turn one and retain their previous strategies.

Alternatively, these teams can switch over to using Even Recovery and Even Tempest instead.

However, a savvy player will simply disregard their own Safety Fence and trigger the map on turn one instead to negate the Even skills.

For more information on how to build and defeat common Aether Raids Defense maps, head over to our article about this!

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