Hello to all.
Out of all the units that I own on FEH, Hector has probably been used the most, having been in my possession since early September of last year and has consistently been a part of my arena core ever since. Now that I have recently gotten him to +10, I might as well talk about the history of Hector as a unit before we get to my experience using him.
Hector was one of the 90 or so units that was available to summon in FEH when the game first launched on February 2, 2017, as a 5* exclusive unit. At the time of the game's launch, he was a contender for strongest unit in the game, possessing some of the highest physical bulk in the game at 52 HP/37 def, while also hitting hard in return thanks to his 36 atk. However, what made him especially strong back then was the combination of Armads, which had Quick Riposte built into it (offsetting his low speed on enemy phase) and his Distant Counter A passive (this allowed him to counterattack ranged units who could otherwise take advantage of him being a melee unit). All of these things, put together, made him a monstrous enemy to face before the advent of skill inheritance. And really, his only real weaknesses, so to speak, were his low res and the fact that he was stuck with a damage reduction special.
While the addition of skill inheritance had helped a great deal of units become viable, many units such as Hector who were strong to begin with basically ran off with this feature. In Hector's case, because he had QR built into his weapon, this freed up his B slot, allowing him to run skills like Vantage or a breaker skill. SI also allowed him to swap out Pavise for a special that could take advantage of his high defense, such as Bonfire. This allowed him to maintain his dominance among melee greens for the next six months.
Starting in August, IntSys started releasing axe users that could challenge Hector's title for strongest green unit. The first of these was Brave Ike, an axe variant of Ike with attack and defense on par with Hector's as well as a prf that heavily cut the amount of damage he would receive from consecutive strikes, allowing him to tank QP Moon Reinhardt (something that Hector could only dream of doing back then). This would be followed by the release of Dorcas (an infantry axe with DC built into his weapon, allowing him to run DC alongside an A passive of his choice) and Christmas Chrom (a 174 BST armored unit with 40 atk and extremely high mixed bulk). Despite this, Hector was able to maintain his dominance thanks to Armads allowing him to run any B passive of choice. Not even the QR seal could really slow him down, as he could run it in conjunction with Wary Fighter and his prf to basically have an omnibreaker effect.
However, Hector's dominance as top green came to an end in February 2018, with the release of powercreeped armors like Valentine's Hector (a seasonal alt of himself with higher atk/def/res and a version of Armads that has a slaying effect and Wrath built in) and Fallen Robin (an armored dragon with a massive attack stat and a DC breath weapon). However, with the weapon refinery giving him access to his alt's weapon, OG Hector is still one of the strongest greens in the game.
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As for my experience using this unit, I pulled my first Hector when the CYL gauntlet banner came out. This also happened to be the banner which I stopped being an F2P player, as I had bought a pack of orbs so as to allow me to pull on the banner. However, to my dismay, the Hector I pulled on that banner that day was +spd/-atk. While I initially didn't want to use him because of that, I had also remembered that he was also relatively IV proof and that he was still stronger than basically any other green at the time, so I went ahead and trained him and gave him some skills.
Even with the attack bane, Hector was still strong enough to clear most of the PvE content that I had mostly skipped due to my lack of good units at the time, and he had certainly pulled his weight in arena as well, replacing Michalis as my main physical tank. To deal with the attack bane, I ended up fielding a Delthea (which I had conveniently gotten as a pitybreaker) and basically gluing her next to him. And this was basically Hector for the first 5 months of his existence.
The Love Abounds banner was released in early February, and I became interested in the banner once I found out that an alt of Hector was on it. So I did as I usually did and bought a whole bunch of orbs, but once I had actually got to summoning, my luck took a turn for the worse, as I spent close to 200 orbs before getting any 5* units, and 280 before I finally pulled Vector. And to make things a little better for me, I had managed to get a copy with optimal IVs (+atk/-spd). At this point, I decided to retire my old Hector and start using the new one, saving up orbs so I could get merges for him later in the month. About a week before the banner ended, I went in again, this time with more than 480 orbs. But luck was not with me that day either. I spent about 360 orbs before I gave up on that banner, only managing to pull a Julia, another Deirdre, a Vilina, and ironically enough, an OG Hector. Not one to waste resources, I merged my old -atk Hector into the new one once I saw the new copy's IVs (neutral).
At this point, I had given up on the idea of coring seasonal units (I don't have the monthly budget to do those sort of things, given how rarely past seasonals are re-run), so I continued using my now-neutral OG Hector, in the hopes that more banners featuring him as a focus would be released. About a month later, a banner featuring units with countering skills was released, so I stockpiled on orbs before that date. The night the banner dropped, I found that my luck had finally turned for the better, as I had managed to pull 4 Hectors within around 300 orbs, then YOLO'd a fifth as the banner ended, putting him at +6 (I had also pulled a copy that was +spd/-HP, which I used as the base.) This action, among others, such as getting 5 merges for Ayra in a later banner, had greatly improved my scoring situation, to the point where I could actually stay in Tier 20 (provided I sniped). Roughly three months after that, another banner with Hector came out (a banner related to his BHB with Matthew), and on the night it came out, I was finally able to finish the job using 272 orbs, putting him at +10. I had also managed to pull a Hardin on the VG banner that was running at that time, which allowed me to finally give him Bold Fighter.
So that concludes my epic tale about my Hector. Now enjoy this pic of him fucking Lyn silly.
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Fire Emblem is (c) 1990 Intelligent Systems.
All unit(s) are Lv18 and above.
This pic was made by Kuroi Hoshi. Go here to view his stuff and here to watch his livestream.
Have a nice day.
