Xenomata

Also some datamined stats.

@Ice Dragon All releasing 3 seals per TT could serve to do is keep garbage like Odd Waves out of the 10k and 20k seal slots and limit them to only the 6k slot (where low-demand seals used to be rewarded, now delegated to the red Divine Codes of the month). The passives you listed could only possibly be rewarded in those two slots anyway. If I'm honest though, I'd be satisfied if they stopped with releasing seals of garbage skills like Odd Waves that have little modern application, and then not care what other seals they release. Maybe something like Infantry Pulse would make an interesting seal though...

Some of those are the dream, but unfortunately there's still quite the big pool of skills they can pull from of either mediocre or trash skills. I mentioned Defiant Res still hasn't been added, and I'm sure someone out there has Triangle Adept on their mind...

Fair is fair, I checked and all of the following are 4* fodlan units who do not have Prf weapons: Remember though, the Fodlan summer demote last year, Claude, DID have a Prf weapon ON TOP OF his Prf skill, while L'arachel this year doesn't. While I'm not going to check all of the CYL rankings, all of the above names seem pretty low-scorers compared to the likes of the house leaders, main characters, and populars like Lysithea or... freaking Bernadetta I guess... Also fun fact, I somehow managed to totally erase the existence of Winter Dorothea out of my mind, because I did NOT remember her existing before checking for Fodlan seasonals.

Let's take that a step further. Elincia was 25th in CYL6 last year, while the Shez's were not available for voting. CYL7 sees Elincia in the Top 10 of Women and 14th overall, while Male Shez placed 26th. Dunno if this technically matters, but if I know you well enough it was bound to come up. Last year, Elincia's summer alt, the TT/Grail unit of that summer banner, was the only unit of that batch of summer units to NOT have a Prf weapon. In fairness she did bring with her one of the best inheritable Bows in the game, but she was still done a disservice in a banner with 3 TH units, one RD unit, and one RD unit as the Harmonic backpack. And then there's Shez this year. Who is from Fodlan. You might begin to believe that someone at IntSys has something of a fetish for Fodlan... and you would be wrong, because they have an extreme fetish AND a wank sock for Fodlan.

Oh wow, Odd Atk Wave is finally a Sacred Seal! ...wait, read my notes wrong. That was meant to be "What do you mean Odd Atk Wave is finally a Sacred Seal?" And if my notes are further right, Odd Res Wave is also not a SS yet. Neither is Defiant Res... hm, guess we aren't gonna be short on bad sacred seals only the generic units in Abyssal Hero Battles will care about maybe... Chill Atk/Res exists. That's neat. Male Shez does not have any drawbacks to his Prf Brave weapon. I guess the drawback is that it doesn't have as many strengths, but it still has Canto Rem. +1, Spd +5, dual phase Brave, and 20% Spd as additional damage, which by my guess is still better than most of the rest of the Brave weapons that exist. Also, Male Shez the TT grail unit has a Prf weapon. Summer Elincia last year didn't even have a Prf weapon. Welp, just throw him onto the pile of Grail units I stubbornly refuse to associate with, because that's a load of bull. I've already given up on caring about this banner, so what new skills will be added to Hall of Forms in a few months...? Lull X/X 4 isn't much of an upgrade, is it? At bare minimum it's only marginally better, and at most it's more better, but it's still very lackluster as a Tier 4 passive. Sure okay keep pumping out the Alarm skills. That just means more chances for it to appear in HoF. Seaside Parasol+, correct me if I'm wrong, is the first completely battle-oriented inheritable Staff weapon... not counting that nonsense Groom Saul tried to pull off before. That's pretty neat, shame it's on a seasonal unit. And have we seriously not had a Spd/Def Balm yet...? Brash Assault 4 can more or less guarantee a follow-up, reduces incoming damage, lowers enemy stats, and boosts damage by the total of all reduced damage. That's pretty good, considering the original only worked if A. the unit was below half dead, and B. only on enemies who could counterattack. So yeah, not horrible skills I guess... mostly underwhelming if I'm honest, considering it's one T4 that's barely an upgrade, another variant of a recently new passive series, a variant of a much older skill series, one good weapon, and one good T4. SHAME IT HAS TO BE ON A BANNER I CAN'T GIVE MORE CRAPS ABOUT WITHOUT THE PRESENCE OF MULTIPLE BULLS.

As someone who just started playing Engage... where's Summer Alfred? Someone obsessed with building his body up like him, he'd be perfect for a summer banner! Instead we get another Fodlan-infested summer banner... man, Heroes really got me hating Fodlan.

Please IntSys, throw a huge curveball and make the left unit a long-haired pretty dude. Make the real world wonder if Libra or someone is prettier than any of the female summer units...

After having a chance to use Heiðr, I can say with confidence that Heiðr is pretty dang strong. If she had a prf C passive that gave her all the benefits that Gold Serpent gave, that would have made her a strong unit on its own. Instead she gives said benefits to anyone who she uses GS on. I would have classed her as a Support unit, but she's perfectly capable of being a little nuke as well, since she can use GS and then go in to attack (or use GS on two separate units, since there's nothing stopping her from giving two units A/S +8) What frightens me is the possible units who might become outright oppressive if given Atk/Spd +8, Canto, and Treachery whenever Heiðr wants to give it to them...

Hmm, that reminds me, Vantage Superunit B!Marth is kind of harder to use in Limited Battles because the one easy-to-build unit who can provide the full 5/5/5/5 bonuses needed to the team to enable Marth's Vantage effect is Fae, but she's a Binding Blade unit so can't be used in Archanea battles. ...or at least that was the case until Astram got his refine. Now there's two units perfectly capable of providing the teamwide buffs needed, and now one of them shares a title with Marth. Ugh... guess I could build Astram up, but that makes like 5 or 6 Grail units I wanna build... maybe I'll just slap the refine on him and focus him more on support without the need for +10 merge.

Always a fun reminder that X character is still in the regular summoning pool, by having them shoved in my face when I'm not expecting them. In this case, it's Duessel. At least this version of him is +Atk -Res, compared to my existing +Spd -HP copy of him, and I guess since his fodder is just kinda okay it's safe to merge him and make his stats better without feeling like I'm gonna regret not giving Lull AD to someone.

Weird thing to notice, but I just realized that FemRobin's original artwork stuck to the original depiction of Robin having a more neutral bodytype (as an Avatar character with an evil twin-thing going on with Grima, all of the canon Robins have the same body type to match the cloaked Grima bust in Awakening) and much baggier clothing that barely reveals anything (not that that stopped the two Grimas), but now her Resplendent shows much more form-fitting armor and an actual body outline. Truly made... "sexier" by the adaptation, if ever a case were to happen...

Well... she's not exactly a premium unit, given her statline only has HP above 30. Even max merges and dragonflowers and Resplendent puts her only at 51/40/40/40/33 neutral, and her prf does her no good in actually improving her combat. She kinda NEEDS an Arcane weapon to be of any serious use, but she might be screwed if the first G Tome arcane is one that wants to be on a fast unit. On the other hand, she could go big and run Fury 4, Fury 3, and Halloween Larachels wep for 50/50/50/43 shenanigans.

Yeah, unless you need a colorless Inf. Archer from every game for Limited Battles Dorothy is just flatout better than others with no Prf. Rebecca comes up barely short statwise and does have the limiter of being a limited-time unit (merges for her are harder to get, so unlike Dorothy she'll fall further behind in stats if you don't want to mass summon for her) but is saved by having a powerful Prf weapon. Also fun fact, her base Atk (46) is higher than the base Atk of Raphael (42). At base, Raphael, who is always either eating or training, is weaker than an average girl who ain't nothin special AND a little girl AND a princess AND whatever Annette is supposed to be.

Man, the statcreep is real... just look at Dorothy. Defensively she's nothing special, but 46/43 offenses, with a superboon in Spd? She's only a 4* unit with no Prf weapon, and yet her offensive stats trump a large number of other colorless Inf. Archers, ESPECIALLY the earliest ones from game launch. Takumi for instance, even with max merges and max dragonflowers, barely even compares with her at 0 merges and 0 flowers. That's pretty bonkers. Whitecap Bow on her would just be a bow-shaped nuke.

At this point the only thing that could put him on a banner is a Bound Hero Battle banner featuring him and Setsuna (with Hinoka as the 3rd focus) and I don't think that's likely to happen until they're scraping the bottom of the barrel in like a decade...

Yeah definitely didn't read it right. If previously it needed to be 1 point higher, I read it as now needing to be 7 points higher than the opponents. ...now I'm wondering how many other skills I've been misreading because I didn't realize that "unit's stat > foe's stat -X" meant the opponents Spd was being read as X points lower than visible...

Throw on a Whitecap Bow+ (from Summer Elincia in the grail shop), stack on the Atk and Spd, watch as the world is rendered asunder by the waves of summer.

Am I reading this right? They ADDED a numerical amount that Igrene's Spd needs to be greater than? I guess the condition is technically still lenient (initiate combat) but that strikes me as odd. Anyway the only thing she lacks is a NFU effect. Shame my Igrene from HoF has Tempo when she now has the effect on her weapon... oh well. Nagi looks pretty good. It's simple but it gets the job done at least. She'll be wanting a guaranteed follow-up though... Tanya getting an adaptive damage weapon I wasn't expecting. My first guess would have been True Damage like what Libra or Shigure got. Brunnya getting a guaranteed follow-up if she's near her support ally is kind of odd, but there's a few units in the game with specific benefits for support allies so it's not something I'm quite as against anymore... it's still kinda dumb in my opinion though. It also doesn't feel like she's getting quite as much added to her Prf as the other units are getting. Rudolf... is an armored lance unit. That's about all that has to be said there. Man I try to be enthusiastic about weapon refines, but these days they almost never blow minds unless it's a Remix refine... Tanya getting adaptive damage is about the most shocked I've been about a non-remix refine in a while.

Oh wow I didn't even notice him in the trailer. Because they did jackcrap to bring attention to him. Seriously I just checked everything again, and there's no mention of Saul anywhere besides the three seconds you get to see of the fifth map.

Weird character choices aside, because honestly they could have released Ascended Zephiel and I wouldn't have cared any more or less because I still haven't played this game (although I would call to question why Binding Blade now has two Ascended Heroes) Looks like Null Follow-Up is getting upgraded now. Two versions even, one for Physical and one for Magical units. That's... neat? Gonna make getting the right one a nightmare in HoF... either way, stat debuff, ignore half of any non-special damage reduction, and the standard NFU effect. Fir looks good, but nothing that stands out specifically with her. Noah brings an Alarm passive into the regular summoning pool, which is nifty. Gives the Dodge bonus to a support ally, which is great and also means not every Dodge stacker needs to bring Spd Smoke 4 as long as they're buds with Noah. Dorothy... exists. That's about all I have to say about her. Murdock? An armored grail unit who one can say more about than that one from the Radiant Dawn banner. His weapon in his sprite doesn't look like any known weapon series in existence right now, so maybe that spell of Grail armors with meh inheritable weapons is over. Heidr... ooooh boy, glad she's an Astra mythic which means I don't have to fight her in AR. She's so close to being a Support unit, but giving all those bonuses to herself, and then also getting another action, is not something I'd want to be on the receiving end of. I think she's also the first unit who can give a stat bonus higher than 7, but honestly there's so many units that I'm probably forgetting someone. Either way, Bonus Doubler ahoy! Man, having that good a support unit around makes the banner worth pulling off of, but all the other units I can't say I'm that interested in. Noah would be good to grab for his support effect. Also, don't we usually get a fourth unit added to the summoning pool when a New Hero banner is hijacked by a Mythic? Dorothy could have come alongside a regular pool version of Saul for instance.

I have a single copy of Arcane Eclipse right now, and before I use it on a unit who has been left behind by the meta so to speak (still deciding between Anamnesis Eirika, Sanaki, or Leo) I wanted to ask, what is the general consensus on Arcane Eclipse as an Arcane weapon? It honestly seems like one of the "worser" Arcane weapons given it only provides a few in-combat bonuses and one effect that's more situational, but the Quickened Pulse effect looks nice to have on any unit, it's the only inheritable tome with the Slaying effect, and there's plenty of red tome units with useless Prf weapons that Arc.Eclipse improves (Anamnesis Eirika, Leo, and Sanaki for instance...) Worth mentioning as well, I know Groom Robin would technically be the "better" choice because of his high Atk compared to many other Red Tome units and being easy to merge up in a few months... but that's the boring option, and I honestly have no strong desire to merge him up anyway.

@DefyingFates Considering Eirika's prf weapon gives at most 4-7 in each stat if her ally has sufficient stat bonuses, whereas the Arcane Devourer just gives +5 for being alive, yes Arcane Devourer is the better option. Even Eljudnir is technically better since it does more than be a flat statball. But Eirika would prefer Devourer. Vital Astra or Godlike Reflexes plus a Dodge B passive would keep her damage intake very low (obviously the Tier 4 variants of Dodge skills would be better, but I'd at least consider the one with the Tempo effect). Spd Smoke 4 can also help if she's able to trigger the Dodge effect before being attacked, though with Vital Astra she may prefer Time's Pulse 4.

@Ice Dragon That is... 10x or 11x more info than I was expecting to get. There are a few you didn't mention, but I assume that's just because they're not desired compared to those mentioned (Solo 4 only giving the +7 boost, for instance) I suppose in the context of Hexblade in HoF it'd be perfectly fine to get it as long as there is a Tome ally to actually reap its main benefit from (in 42 HoF events there's only been 3 that have not had a single Tome unit so that probably won't be an issue moving forward) but then the units who actually want to carry it out of HoF will depend on if they want the adaptive damage effect or if they need one of the other effects available (which may or may not matter once DasS is put into the pool since most units like DC, and Hexblade already competes with Remote Sparrow for ranged units) In the context of general skill inheritance... case-by-case basis.