The Ultimate Grand Hero Battle Guide – Featuring Xander
Contents
- Overview
- Team Building
- Starting the Map
- Xander Hero Battle Example
- Conclusion
Overview
In fire emblem heroes, every few weeks, a new grand hero battle event starts up. With every event, you can recruit the special hero to your unit list by beating the maps without losing a team member.
These events are often fun, strategic battles that will often have players thinking about team composition and movement to beat these maps. Many players try to solve these maps with the lowest rarity units possible, and even the official twitter recognizes these efforts.
Many players like team building and fighting on these more challenging maps. This guide will give you better understanding on how to approach these types of maps and hopefully bring greater enjoyment for a task that may seem overwhelming at first.
Note: The grand hero units hat you recruit do not get put in summoning and if you beat the map once, you cannot get the hero again, even if the map comes back on a later date. Therefore, you get limited copies of these units.
There are often times 2 versions of the grand hero battle map. One version is an easier map and will give you the lower rarity version of the hero. The other version of the map is just a copy of the same map, except with higher difficulty units. Completing the more difficult map will give you a higher rarity version of the grand hero unit. You can complete both maps for 2 copies of the grand hero battle unit, one for each map completed.
The goal of this guide is to help you beat all the grand hero battle maps with a strategy that you developed yourself!
Team Building
Team building is an aspect of hero battles that many players enjoy. Solely using top tier units may not be enough to complete the map, which makes these battles an opportunity to see some of your underused units shine.
One of the first steps is for building your team is to know the map. Unfortunately, only looking at the units on the map selection screen may not be enough for the harder version of the map. Having units that can beat the type of units seen on this screen is a great place to start though.
Often you will need to see the layout of the map and the skills the enemy units hold. For example if there are many trees, it may be more difficult to use a calvary unit. If there is a unit with a weapon effective against armored units, you will have to make sure that if you choose to include an armored unit, that unit is safe. Using units who are effective against the type of units you see is very useful.
Note: There is no way to view the enemy units unless you test the map or use an online resource.
Having buffing units and having someone who can dance or sing can be powerful as well. These things should be taken into consideration when building your team. Using positioning assist skills becomes very useful in these types of battles too.
One of the biggest hints to the type of team you can use is in the summoning hero focus for the grand hero battle. Every grand hero battle there is a summoning focus with units that should perform well on the map. You do not need these units, but based on their strengths, they are often a good source for ideas in your team composition.
Using clerics with buffs can increase you units’ ability to survive.
Using skill inheritance can greatly improve your chances of completing these maps after seeing the enemies.
Starting the map and the team building process are related. Knowing how you want to initiate the map will influence the units you may use, and the units you have access to can influence how you choose to start the map.
Knowing how and where to start is often an important step of the team building process. Try not to think of them as entirely separate. They are divided in this guide just so it is easier to understand these important components.
Starting the Map
The enemy units in these battles will not engage in combat unless you are in a danger zone at the start of their turn, or if one of the enemy units receives damage. Use this to your advantage.
This allows you to time the activation of some recovery skills, position you units for buffs, and take your time when thinking about your first move, which is often one of the more difficult steps.
In general, there are 2 ideal ways to start a map. One way is to use a unit to enter the danger zone who won’t take much damage. Preferably this unit will defeat many of the enemy units it encounters but if you are having trouble starting the map, simply taking no damage may be good.
The other way is to use a unit to hit the enemy and then take them out of the danger zone. This can be accomplished in many ways. Using draw back, reposition, or simply using a dancer to have them act again can accomplish this.
After initiating combat, it is best to try to predict the enemy movement, use color counters and effective against bonuses to beat the enemy.
Long charging skills also become more useful in these battles because there are often more enemies to fight than in arena. Positioning your units so these skills charge quickly can be useful.
If you are having a lot of trouble starting a map, try approaching it from a different way.
Xander Hero Battle Example
The current grand hero battle is Xander.
Let’s try to put everything mentioned above into practice.
The lunatic version of the map looks like this and has the following units on the map.
And the summoning focus has Linde, Cordelia, Arthur, and Chrom.
Judging from this, it is likely the Xander can be taken out quite effectively with a strong blue mage or with a brave lance user.
The green mage in the back poses a threat to these blue units but depending on your unit’s resistance and speed the green mage may not kill in one turn.
Arthur is likely a unit there to defeat the blue lance user, or give skill inheritance in case there is difficulty with him.
Chrom is a red unit who can heal, possibly finish up Xander if necessary, and deal with the mage.
Linde can also act as a support and heal as well.
When we look at the map we can see a few ways to initiate combat. One spot is more dangerous than the other. On the left side, a unit is susceptible to be hit from 3 different sources of color damage as well as physical and magic damage.
Choosing to go up this side to initiate combat would be very hard to survive. Using movement skills make it possible to initiate combat and move a unit out of the danger zone though.
This right side is safer as there are fewer enemies who can attack you. This spot seems ideal for a strong mage that can beat the red sword unit and survive a hit from the green mage.
We can combine movement options with this but it is not entirely necessary if a unit would not be defeated by the green mage.
Many units can take this role but we can use Sanaki with skill inheritance to make it easier. Sword breaker with Sanaki can accomplish beat the red sword user and deal damage to the enemy green mage.
So now we theoretically have 2 of the units taken care of. Taking out the blue lance user would be easier with a high speed mage but many green units should be able to defeat him.
All that is left is Xander and the healer. The healer has wings of mercy, therefore, he is able to teleport to a weaker unit to heal, which may be troublesome. But as long as we have a strong unit or 2 to take care of Xander, healing should not be a problem, and neither should damage from the healer as well.
Based on this these approaches, we can choose this team composition. We can also demonstrate both ways of initiating combat.
Going up the left side of the map is a skill inheritance Spring Camilla. With skill inheritance she has access to Gronnblade and Draw Back. Using buffs from Caeda, and Olivia, she can defeat the blue lance user in one hit. Olivia is then able to dance to allow Spring Camilla to act again. She can then use Draw Back to pull both Olivia and herself out of the danger area. This would be enough to initiate combat but we can do better.
Using Sanaki with sword breaker, she can defeat the red sword unit. The green mage cannot do any damage Sanaki but initiates combat anyway because she is in range. This creates enough turns to charge another skill obtained through inheritance: Glacies.
This skill has a long charge and we can use its activation to defeat Xander without worrying about his distant counter.
The other enemies do not have high enough attack to damage Sanaki and she can clear the other enemies out.
Conclusion
Developing your own strategies can be a fun and rewarding experience.
Look at the all the possible spots where you can initiate combat, and pick a unit that is able to handle the situation well.
Look at the summoning focus for ideas on how to build your team.
Skill inheritance and specials can swing the battle in your favor.
Make sure you have counters for every enemy. Viewing the map and the units’ stats and skills may be a good idea.
Movement skills can get units out of dangerous situations.
Predict how the enemy will move so that you can prepare in advance.
Trying to think of everything can be overwhelming. Start with countering the first unit you need to initiate while keeping in mind how others may follow up.
Many different types of teams can beat a grand hero battle so keep trying different ways to initiate or different team compositions.
