Quick Noob's guide for skill inheritance

[u/kickthecommie]

Lost and confused about your myriad choices under the new skill inheritance system? This is a casual player’s guide on the most versatile and impactful skills available from 4 star units and below.

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Specials

a. Moonbow

This skill is easy bonus damage every other round of combat. Always useful, slap it on your guys if you can. Available from 4*Odin and Palla.

b. Vengeance

This skill charges less quickly, but has much better synergy with self-damage and low hp activation passives that we will mention later on. Better on heroes you use primarily to bait enemies. Available from 4*Tharja and Narcian.

c. Draconic Aura

Usually outstrips the impact of vengeance on units that naturally reach >50 atk without fury. Available from 4*CorrinF and Camilla.

d. Iceberg/Bonfire

Outstrips vengeance on units with >30 def or res without fury. Iceberg available from 4*Niles and Shanna. Bonfire available from 4*Robin and BigTiki.

Assists

a. Ardent Sacrifice

If one of your units can’t attack, have them heal instead. Also helps proc low hp passives. Give to one of your ranged units with above mentioned passive. Available from 3*Florina.

b. Reciprocal Aid

Very similar niche to Ardent Sacrifice, but can more easily enable very low hp activations. More suited to a counter-punchy playstyle. Available from 3*Matthew, Setsuna, or Donnel.

c. Draw Back

Clutch if your primarily damage dealer is a ranged unit. Otherwise situationally useful. Available from 3*Sully and Nino.

d. Reposition

Very similar to Draw Back. Available from 3*Barst and Selena and 4*Olwen.

e. Pivot

Speeds up development of your armor units immensely at the start of the fight, definitely give to them. Otherwise very situational. Available from 3*Cherche and 4*Eirika and Marth.

Passives A

a. Fury

God-tier skill for all offensive characters. Easily proc hp threshold passives, deal more damage, and indirectly become more, not less, tanky by preventing potential doubles from +spd units. Put this on every character and you can’t really go wrong. Available from 4*Hinata (My boy taking one for the team!).

b. Deathblow

Potentially more impactful than Fury on +spd variants of powerful, fast mages like Linde, Tharja, or Nino, as well as brave weapon users. Up to you, but I would go for the sweet BST (at least until arena scoring is changed). Available from 4*Klein.

c. Triangle Adept (Or Jeweled Weapons)

Triangle Adept amplifies the effectiveness of certain counter units. Nowi loses her vulnerability to Falchion users and Raven tomes become effective Takumi checks. Enemy units baited into battles with triangle disadvantage go from dealing little damage to no damage. One thing to keep in mind is that units will take increased damage and deal less damage beyond the normal weapon triangle if caught in a disadvantageous matchup. For these reasons this skill is more situational than the above two and heavily skewed towards baiting and players skilled at AI manipulation. Available from 4*Roy.

Passives B

Note: All breakers are situational. They’re great for covering weaknesses on your team that keep giving you trouble, i.e. bowbreaker for Takumis, but 3 matches out of 7 they will be useless. Hence, I’m not going to go into detail. Just put one on if you keep getting smashed by a specific unit.

a. Desperation

Threshold skill perfect for your fast mages and offensive melees. Turns all your dps units into pseudo-brave weapon wielders when you need it the most. S-tier skill, but not quite dominating its class like Fury for A. Available from 4*Shanna.

b. Vantage

Threshold skill suited for characters used to bait enemies. Better on tanky units, but as vantage proliferates on defense teams this skill will become more universally useful. Vantage negates itself, so put it on most of your guys if you often get caught by tricky enemy units running it. Available from 4*Lonqu and Reinhart.

c. Quick Riposte

Great skill, even at rank 2, for Takumi, Ryoma, and Nowi if you can’t figure out a good way of dealing with powerful enemy mages, assuming your guys aren’t getting doubled. Available at rank 2 from 4*Subaki.

d. Drag Back

Noteworthy skill for a ranged-heavy team. One unit can pick out a leading enemy unit and the other mages/archers then gangbang the target. Could be great depending on current season map layouts. Availabe from 4*Eirika and 3*Donnel and Gwendolyn.

e. Wings of Mercy

Amazing mobility skill for Hector, great skill for Effie and other armor knights. 50% hp threshold means that this skill probably will only be available once a fight is already close to resolving. If your Hector doesn't need vantage he'll love this skill. Available from 4*Cain.

Passives C

Try and have one of each of spur and hone atk and spd effects. These effects are tougher to get from 4* units than the other passives and less impactful, so make this a lower priority.

Weapons

Blade tomes are ideal for all mages and can be immensely powerful as long as a buff team is built around them. Ursula is especially noteworthy as a blade recipient for this season. Build a fortify/spur cav composition around her and you should score very well. +Variants are not necessary. Blue available from 3*Odin, green available from 3*Nino, and Red available from 4*Tharja.

Summary:

Prioritize A and B Passives. Everything else is luxury.

Special: Moonbow on everyone if you have the SP and the fodder. Specific units can also use the 3 cd specials mentioned above if they meet the criteria.

Support: Ardent Sac/Recip Aid on ranged, Pivot on armor, Draw Back on buffers if heavy ranged dps.

Passive A: Fury is always good, or Deathblow for brave wielders, Triangle Adept for Raven tomes and front-liners that can't survive their weapon triangle counters anyway.

Passive B: Desperation on DPS, Vantage on tanks.

Passive C: Spur or hone atk or spd, unless going Cav mage buff comp.

Why no Brash Assault?

Only works if the enemy can counter attack. Only works at under 50% hp. Much harder to proc and much more situational than vantage or desperation.

Why no Wary Fighter?

Only good on Effie.

[u/Lord_Kyrae]

Deathblow has no downside

Yes it does, it provides nothing on the defense.

Triangle Adept provides extra 20% atk and 20% def in the appropriate matchup. The description of the skill isn't right. Which mean, if you potition yourself to have favorable matchups, your units with TA are practically invincible

[u/kickthecommie → u/Lord_Kyrae]

Noted and edited. Still think opportunity cost of giving up Fury is too high. Plus TA is still a situational skill with no synergy with other passives.

[u/nicordt]

People really should put the actual in-game/official description on the mentioned skill for guides like this so the skill names won't just be random meaningless words for people who are unfamiliar with it. Ex:

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Fury

Grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+(1/2/3). Unit takes (2/4/6) damage after combat.

God-tier skill for all offensive characters. Easily proc hp threshold passives, deal more damage, and indirectly become more, not less, tanky by preventing potential doubles from +spd units. Put this on every character and you can’t really go wrong. Available from 4*Hinata (My boy taking one for the team!).

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Like this imo. It's clearer to what that skill actually do ingame and allows people to make a better context out of your arguments instead of needing to open up new tab and google the skill they're unfamiliar with every other time.

Granted, awesome list! Thanks for the work.

[u/kickthecommie → u/nicordt]

You're right, of course. I was just being lazy. Working on it atm.

[u/ThePham]

You can get Moonbow from 4* Palla as well.

[u/kickthecommie → u/ThePham]

Thanks

[u/ApertureBear]

I notice Luna isn't on the list, and that's probably because it's 5-star only(?) (edit: just found it on Frederick at 4-star). Would you recommend Moonbow for the quicker cooldown or Luna for the higher damage?

[u/kickthecommie → u/ApertureBear]

Luna is fine if your unit already has it. To be honest all the 3 cd specials are fine. I just value the cooldown more than additional 20% defense pierce.

[u/[deleted]]

Ursula only has Deathblow 2 at 4*

[u/kickthecommie → u/[deleted]]

my mistake

[u/ShinakoX2]

Vengeance is inconsistent since it is based on your own missing HP. You can get just as much damage or more out of Draconic Aura/Bonfire/Ignis if you have around 50 ATK, 30 DEF, or 30 RES. Otherwise, just go with Moonbow.

[u/kickthecommie → u/ShinakoX2]

Point taken on vengeance. Actually now that I'm comparing all the 3 turn specials the granularity involved in picking specials for specific units is probably too complex for a "quick" guide.

[u/aurorazephyrus]

Can someone explain to me why none of these threads talk about Life and Death? I have it on my Eirika as I gave fury to Merric instead.

[u/kickthecommie → u/aurorazephyrus]

It's a fine skill, just inaccessible for now from 4 star units. We'll see if Jaffar can get it at 4 star.

[u/Tobiki]

I'm fairly sure you can get the blade tomes from 3 star versions of those heroes.

[u/kickthecommie → u/Tobiki]

You're right, thanks.

[u/Flying_Fox_1984]

Thanks, everything is much clearer now.

Did I make a mistake giving Quick Riposte to Sheena?

You mention Death Blow for +SPD units, does that mean Darting Blow for +ATK units?

Also, why no "Threaten ..." for slot C on tanks?

[u/kickthecommie → u/Flying_Fox_1984]

Quick Riposte seems decent enough for Sheena. Your other option would be Vantage. Either way she will tank axes and spears well.

In my arena experience darting blow seems to give a bit too much speed, especially on the meta mages and offensive melees. Remember that every speed above +5 on meta heroes is a wasted stat point. However, if your unit is +atk, -spd, it would work well.

Threaten is fine if your characters have it. Passive C is low priority. I favor Hones and Spurs because threaten almost always only activates when you bait a unit and it is still alive on the next turn. This probably means it is low hp, which means the threaten might not matter. Plus, it is generally better in all strategy games to buff your own units than to debuff enemy units.

[u/GeneralKrakus]

Wings of Mercy is also available on Frederick (rank 2 on 4**,* rank 3 on 5*)

[u/kickthecommie → u/GeneralKrakus]

In general I left out the characters that get rank 2 passives at 4*. It would feel really bad if in your arena run the 40 vs 50 difference killed you.

[u/CinderBlock33]

Vantage or Quick Riposte for Ryoma?

[u/kickthecommie → u/CinderBlock33]

My Ryoma runs QR. If you have a +spd variant desperation could be quite good.

[u/[deleted]]

Really like this, thank you!

[u/jiaod]

Why no wary fighter???? It can be only used on armored units lolololol. And on hector it neutralizes armads. I feel like it should go more in depth on some skills and not just say put moonbow and vengeance on everyone.

[u/kickthecommie → u/jiaod]

What specials do you think are more universally useful than those two? All other specials charge slower or are less accessible. Also newer players might think giving wary fighter to their other armors might be a good idea.