In this guide, we are now going to cover what exactly makes emblem teams so powerful, the class buffs. As the various name suggests these buffs are really strong but only apply to one type of unit at a time. We have ones for each class Cavalry, Fliers, and Armor. There is one buff for dragons but at the time this guide is being made there has only been this one skill for dragons and because of that, I don’t think dragon emblem will be fully operational for a while. Of course, things can change in the future.
Emblem Team Buffs
So there are four types of emblem buffs you need to know and understand.
Hone
Hone class buffs are similar to the regular hone attack and hone speed buffs. Saying any unit can use however they work differently for emblem teams because they combine the two and grant adjacent allies attack and speed +6 through their unit’s actions at the start of each turn. +6 attacking speed from one buff is insane and grants so much power too compared to a single hone attack or hone speed buff.
Fortify
The fortify class buff is similar and it combines the fortified defense and fortified resistance buffs. It grants adjacent allies defense/resistance +6 through the next actions at the start of each turn. If you want a defensive team then you can’t ask for much more than this. Combine a whole class buff and a fortified class buff and you have a unit with +6 to all stats at once. But we aren’t done yet.
Goad
Goad class buffs are a spur type effect and have the range of drive skills and that they are effective within two spaces of an ally. If you’re not familiar with spur type skills then you can check out a guide I’ve made covering that topic.
Spurs work differently than hone and fortify skills so it’s best you understand what you need to do to activate each of them. Goad skills grant allies of the same class within two spaces attack and speed +4 during combat. As powerful as a hone buff but you have the flexibility of not having to be adjacent to an ally on combat starts.
Ward
Ward class buffs are the defensive version of Goad and grants + for defense and resistance instead. Now one thing to remember about these buffs is that hone and fortify type buffs do not stack. These will appear as blue numbers on your units and applying to hone cavalry buffs to a cavalry unit will not double the effects. However, Goad and Ward’s skills do stack because they are spur type skills.
They only work in combat and you can think of them as invisible buff since they won’t show up on your unit stats but they will be applied once a fight begins and within their range. Also to make things easier, you can remember that Hone and Goad are offensive buffs and fortifying wards are the defensive buffs.
Emblem Team Buff Skill Icon
If you don’t want to check each and every individual enemy unit then you should remember the slight differences between each buff icon.
Next, we’re going to cover where you can find each and every emblem team buff. By doing this I can explain why some emblem teams are maybe easier or harder to build depending on your gut.
Where To Find Cavalry Buffs
Let’s start with cavalry because if you remember what I said from the last emblem team basic guide. It was that horse emblem is the easiest to build because you can get all the class buff relatively easily.
Keep in mind that for all the emblem team buffs you will need the four-star version of the character if you want to learn the skill or inherit it onto someone else. However, my graphics will showcase what level you can summon these characters from.
Three stars mean they’re available in the summoning pool at three or four stars, four stars mean they’re available at either four or five stars, and five stars means they are exclusively only obtained as five stars.
Cavalry Buffs
So starting my Calvary you can see that there are a lot of three-star available units. Hone Calvary comes from Gunther and fortified Calvary comes from Jagen who are both easily obtained as 3 to 4-star units. In fact, Gunther can be obtained for free by completing his special map when he comes around in the rotation.
In the bottom right where cavalry can be Goad and Eliwood at 3 or 4 stars and also from Berkut. Now Berkut is a grand hero battle unit means you will only get a limited amount of copies of him so you may not want to sacrifice him as skill.
Goad Calvary is probably the hardest to obtain as it comes from Camus who is also a grand hero battle unit. And Reinhardt who can be summoned at 4 to 5 stars. The odd thing is that Reinhardt only learns Goad calvary when he becomes a 5-star unit and do not believe any other non-5-star exclusive class buffs that require us.
For my own horse team experience, Goad Calvary is pretty darn good. However, the most important skills are definitely Hone and fortify Calvary. Because cavalry units can move up to 3 spaces. There are many times when they will not be close enough to allies to receive the benefits from goad or ward cavalry.
Before I move on to the other classes I want to again state that horse emblem is much easier to customize to your liking. We have a ton of cavalry units in the game and Hone and Fortify Calvary are not that difficult to get and pass along to whoever you need upon.
Those are the clear the reasons why I think you see so many horse teams compared to say flier emblem teams.
Where To Find Flier Buffs
Speaking of flier emblem just from a quick glance. You will notice a huge amount of five stars in the chart. On my horse emblem, if you wanted to build a flier team and be able to customize who you give each buff to while you’re gonna have to work for it and get pretty lucky.
Flier Buffs
Hone flier is probably one of the hardest class buffs to get in the game. Only coming from Hinoka who is a five-star exclusive. Holloween Hinowi and New Year’s Azura also have the skill but they are limited time special event units. So once they are gone you only have Camilla left.
A reminder that limited does not mean gone forever and intelligent systems have already brought back a few of the seasonal units on special banners.
Moving on to fortify flier, it’s slightly more common since Caeda can be summoned at four or five stars. Summer Corrin also has it but is also a limited unit.
Fortify flier isn’t a bad skill but most flier teams go for Hone flier or Goad flier from what I’ve seen.
Goad flier is also one of the easiest flier buffs to get and you can get it from Palla who can be summoned at three to four stars. This is a decent alternative to hone flier because the flier teams can stick together much easier. So staying information to pass Goad fliers to each other is a very viable strategy.
You can also use Ward flier also like hone fliers you can only get it from Minerva who is a 5-star exclusive. And from the news, Camilla who is in a limited time unit.
I don’t see flyer emblem teams a lot and I believe that does have to come from how hard it is to get most of the skills.
Flier emblem is also my least built-up team personally. So I don’t really have that great of a grasp of what skill combinations work best. However, from facing teams in the arena I can say that Hone and Fortify Fliers can make a scary Flying fortress of a team.
If you are lucky enough to have the flying mages then consider giving them blade tomes and running hone and fortify flier buffs. I’ve encountered spring Camilla’s and Summer Corrin who not only dish tons of damage but are incredibly hard to take down too. Be careful if you went into a well-built flier emblem team.
Where To Find Amor Buffs
I would say armor emblem is not that bad to customize regarding your buff choice. Hone armor comes from Gwendolyn who is a 3 to 4 star summon.
Armor Buffs
Fortify armor can be gotten from Sheena who can be summoned at 4 to 5 stars as well as Wilissa who is a limited time unit. Goad armor comes from Hector who is a 5 star exclusive. However, I would say you definitely do not need it if for a functioning armor team.
Last is Ward Armor who comes from Draug who can be summoned at 3 to 4 stars as well. For armor units hone and fortify are definitely nice. +6 to any stat is incredible and since armor units already have high base stats they can start to reach some insane numbers.
Having both are definitely useful if you use armor march since the team can become separated. However, without armor march, your units will most likely be sticking together. And Goad and Ward are perfect for that.
While Goad is a bit rare most armors won’t mind missing it out on the extra attack and speed. Instead, one strategy is to use 4 Ward armors and stack the buffs. I will elaborate a little more on this in a bit.
How Many Of Each Buff Do I Need?
We’ve covered what each buff does and where we can get them but now let’s talk about how many you should use on a team. Here are some simple guidelines that you can follow so you don’t make any decisions you’ll regret later.
First off you’ll probably not want to have multiple Hone or Fortify buffs on one team. Two hone class buff will not stack so to avoid overlapping buffs. Try to stick to one on a team. If you have one hone and fortify buff and you can think about filling the last two spots with Goad or Ward buffs.
Next, you should know that Goad and Ward’s skills do stack so it’s okay to have multiple copies on one team. Sometimes having two Goad skills may be more useful than having one Hone skill. It will mainly depend on what type of units you use when you decide which buffs you want to take. Which brings me to my last point.
What buffs you choose will depend on your play style availability of what buffs you even have access to and then the unit choice for your team. Every Emblem team has a variety of successful buff combinations and I can’t say you will succeed with the same setup if you swap out different units.
You also will just have to work with what you have sometimes. An important lesson in fire emblem heroes is that most times you won’t have the exact skills or units you want but you can make the best out of what you have. You may have to shift your play style but there are tons of different ways to build an emblem team.
Different units may also benefit more from certain buffs so that is another factor you need to take into account.
Who Do I Give Each Kind Of Buff To?
So what units do you give each buff to? As I mentioned there is no clear-cut answer but here are some guidelines I like to follow when changing up my emblem teams.
For the offensive buffs Hone and Goad, you want to put them on tanky units. For the defensive buffs fortify and Ward, you want those on your offensive units. The reason for this is that each team member should carry a buff that they do not necessarily need. Of course, if you are stacking Goads or Wards then those can go on anybody who is aren’t holding the Hone and Fortify buffs.
To further explain this I’ll use my own horse emblem team and explain what each unit has a certain buff. My main cavalry team for the longest time has consisted of Frederick, Zander, Lionheart, and Chemist.
Frederick uses a Brave Axe built so he’s my go-to physical damage dealer. By having Fortify cavalry he can pass the defensive buffs to Zander and Kamas to help them tank better.
I am not using Frederick to tank because even though his defense is pretty solid his low speed makes him vulnerable. Zander is my main tank on this team thanks to his distant counter weapon and by giving him quick riposte he can dish out some good damage with two attacks.
Xander has hone cavalry because he doesn’t exactly need the extra attack or speed to do his job. He can then power up my main sweepers to help them power through tough enemies. It’s extra effective on brave weapons because they essentially get to use that bonus attacked by you twice.
Reinhardt is my magic damage counterpart to Frederick and his job is to also delete the enemy forces. Reinhardt has Goad cavalry by default and I never felt the need to swap it out to Ward cavalry.
Meanwhile, Camus is all my all-around generalist and you can either defend what is distant counter Lance or dish out good damage with his decent speed. And a hone cavalry buff he is a good example of a unit who actually benefits really well from both hone and fortify cavalry.
Camus also comes with Goad cavalry by default and he can help both Frederick and Reinhardt to dish out even more damage. This team is geared mostly toward an offensive play style and double Goad cavalry buffs help that a lot.
If I were to use units with more defensive stats then maybe I would go with double ward cavalry or maybe one of each. It all comes down to what units you use and how they work together as a team.
I have another team example to talk about and I want to emphasize just how varied your buff combinations can be depending on your play style.
Playstyle Is Important
Here is an armor emblem team that I don’t have but for the sake of example is what I’m going to use a talk about. We have four armor units with either close Counter or dis encounter abilities so they can all counter-attack at any range. With this, we want to take on a defensive playstyle and let the enemy come to us.
A very popular army emblem strategy as I mentioned is to stack 4 Ward armor buffs. If you can stay within the correct formation then each army unit will receive the effects of three other ward armor buffs totaling for a +12 to defense and resistance. This is disgusting and most army units already have high defense or resistance stats so trying to break this team down is going to be a challenge.
However, this is not the only way to play armor emblem. With the introduction of armor march, armor teams have the option to go for a much more offensive playstyle. If you don’t know what armor much does then I have made a guide about it.
Basically, armor march lets your army units move two spaces and this makes a huge difference when trying to make offensive moves during the player phase. In this team, Hone armor and Fortify armor are great because the team may not stick together to receive the benefits from Ward or Goad armor. Of course, skill choice still depends on the type of units you use and this team is a good example of a situation where maybe I do want to run to hone armors.
Let’s say I swap out Black Knights Ward armor for a Hone armor buffs. This can now buff up Holloween Jakob and if the team gets separated due to armor march and there’s a chance that most everyone can still get a boost to their attack speed.
If your team benefits heavily from a Hone or Fortify skill then maybe do think about running two copies on one team. It may not be as efficient but it could be the better choice for your specific team or maybe that’s all you got and that is perfectly fine.
To help my examples give me a better understanding of how you can build your emblem teams and decide on who gets which type of buff. There really is no single answer since every team is different and people have different play styles and units obtained.
Overall the class buffs already really make emblem team super powerful. If you have not tried building one then I suggest starting with horse emblem and there are many guys out there that even go through individual units.
For newer players building emblem teams are a great way to get better at team running in general and it will make you realize that is synergistic team can be a lot better than just a team of just strong individual units.
This guide and the last have gone through a lot of changes. But I hope you guys learned something useful. Where in the last month of the game’s first year since launch so I’m really excited what the one-year anniversary will change.
I still have tutorial ideas I want to create but if any big updates get announced I’ll be sure to cover any major changes that occur.
