Revision 2

Combat Arts in Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave are attacks unleashed at the expense of weapon durability. Nintendo describes them as offering greater power, longer range or other advantageous effects, and advises saving them for decisive moments. They sit alongside Blaze Arts in the Combat System, and the two should not be confused: a Combat Art spends the weapon, a Blaze Art spends the user's health.

The Durability Rule

Every weapon carries a finite number of Uses, and those Uses decrease only when you use a Combat Art. Ordinary attacks cost nothing. That single rule reframes durability from a running tax on every swing into a budget you draw on deliberately, and it is why weapons with very low Uses, such as the five-Use Zerberus, are still practical to carry.

A weapon's remaining durability is not shown on the field until you hover over it. One further wrinkle has been observed in pre-launch footage: when an attack produces a follow-up, only the first strike is the Combat Art, and the second is a standard attack.

Named Combat Arts

Most Combat Arts are attached to a specific weapon and become available once that weapon is equipped. The list below covers every art documented ahead of launch. Effects are read from interface captures and flavour text, and most stat lines have not been published.

Full stat lines for the weapons themselves, including the Uses column those arts draw down, are on the Weapons page.

The Full Roster by Weapon Type

The published art listing sorts every named combat art in this game by the weapon that swings it. Twenty-one names sit across five groups. Two further groups, one for movement arts and one catch-all, are present in the listing and empty. Most of these names carry nothing beyond the group they sit in.

The listing labels the last two groups Lance and Brawling, using older series names for what this game calls spears and gauntlets. Compressed Laser sitting in the brawling group follows from where firearms live: this game files guns as gauntlets, so a gun's art lands in the fist column.

Published Stat Lines

Ten arts have a full line ahead of launch. Might, Hit, Critical and Avoid are modifiers laid on top of whatever the unit is holding rather than absolute values, which is why they are written with a sign. Cost is the durability the swing takes out of the weapon.

Every cost in that table is a durability figure, which settles something the series has answered differently before: in this game the art draws on the weapon, never on the wielder's health. Blaze Arts are the ones priced in HP. Discerning Blow is the odd one out on effect, giving up half its damage for a +50 swing in accuracy, and Raging Tempest is the odd one out on price at four times the going rate.

Learning and Improving Arts

Training at the arena plaza during Between-Match Preparation teaches units new moves and raises the weapon tiers they can wield, and weapon proficiency ranks unlock named skills at set letter grades. Several Advanced classes, including the Bardinger and the Dreadnought, carry an innate Combat Arts +2 class skill. At least one personal skill interacts with the system directly: Peter's Sharpshooter extends the range of his Combat Arts.

One hands-on account describes a route-specific layer as well, in which Dietrich can challenge Fierce Warriors to duels to win secret Combat Arts, then enhance those arts and teach them to allies. That has appeared in only one preview, so treat it as unconfirmed until launch.

Related Pages

The other special-move system, paid for in the user's health rather than in durability, is Blaze Arts. Two of the weapons in the table above have pages of their own: Killing Edge, whose Deadly Blade any wielder can use, and Answerer, whose Bloodletting is restricted to Dietrich.