Alkaid

Managed to finish my last 2 fights safely, so with 14 hours left and 130 lift I can afford to lose I think I'm actually safe for tier 20. I expected to get hit again earlier tonight so I could get hit a second time just before the season closes, but I think I somehow made it. Every fight was 120 lift besides a couple at just 100, so I pulled it off despite only having the free Eir. Some surprisingly decent defense luck was the key, though. That initial success I got was crucial, and then I only got hit 4 times for -80 so far. I got hit bad the last few days, but a better time earlier in the week saved me. I was also very surprised I managed to get every single aether pot this time. For somebody with no horses and just 1 dancer I didn't think I'd get to reach the tucked away ones every time, but I guess I got lucky. Maybe with the fountain upgrade and slightly-extended AR week coming up I might actually have a shot at 21, but I dunno. Going from 1200 points to 1600 to advance is still steep. If many people buy the NY bundle with AR stones we could see more lvl 3+1 defense and/or offense forts and that may make consistent offense matches and occasional defenses harder. But on the up side, Eir as the bonus unit(I assume she still will be during that week) means my team flexibility will be up some, so I can bring better teams. Things have been stiff with only 1 slot really having wiggle room for me this past season. Being able to have a team with both Loki + Aversa again will be very helpful.

And/or they can increase their fountain level earlier to get more aether regen too. They've really gone above and beyond to allow p2w for AR.

I guess I was dead on when I imagined that "other sources of grails" would mean buying them. (I expected them to get into monthly packs, but this is even bigger)

I started getting surgically hit for -80 lift at the earliest times possible over the last 2 days, so by getting hit early today it's possible I could get hit twice before the season ends tomorrow. If I get 2 more losses, I'm screwed out of tier 20. If I play my last 2 offense runs well and only get -80 one more time, I'll just barely manage to move up. Still hate this new blessing system. Doing just as well as anyone else but I may still be left out due to "only" 120 lift a match. Had I not gotten lucky with that first defense of the week I'd already be barred from tier 20 despite almost perfect offense all week.

To a degree it actually is, yes. Gachas in general almost always have some kind of fanservice and for male-dominated fanbases like FE it's kind of to be expected for it to lean the way it does. There's plenty of female fanservice-focused games out there too, though. (like that one Ryo is the artist for about school boy husbandos) I really assume the 1/4 or 1/3 male/female ratios we see on seasonals and stuff must be due to whatever data IS has collected on what performs best. We did have pretty even gender splits in the first year, after all. Maybe they decided the guys didn't seem to pull sales as well. Despite community complaints I've seen from people like Cute Chao about the increase in female-dominated banners, it's only gotten worse, not better. I checked my barracks out of curiosity and of my unique 5*s I have 101 females and 56 males. That was actually a higher male ratio than I was expecting. There's more female FE characters I like than male ones (both character-wise and design-wise) so I guess I benefit, but I can understand those feeling the opposite being frustrated.

-OG Charlotte, Christmas Camilla and Halloween Peri are my big character hopes for the year. Realistically Charlotte has the best chance of those. -A skill shop would be excellent but I'm not placing any bets on IS really making one. I think the tier 4 skills and such will remain premium whale bait. -A good new event mode. As usual, lack of content to use all these units we keep accumulating is one of the game's main flaws. The cycle of TT/GC/VG is really played out and needs something new and fun(unlike Relay Defense). -More banners like the Adrift one (I already see the recoil from everyone reading). I liked they ran with a theme and it was one of the few banners + paralogues that felt like some actual effort went into it. It got dumped on for being "more Fates/alts," but it was one of the more interesting and unique normal banners we've gotten. I liked seeing them do something a bit different and surprising. -More 2 unit banners. Only for reruns, of course. Stuff like that Laegjarn/Helbindi banner would be great. Exellent rates for if you really want merges/fodder from units. It's way better than the X-skill banners with 3 units we got most of this year. Even if you don't care about them your chance at a free full 5* is boosted too. -Bring back 4* focus banners. Those were amazing for trying to merge up lower rarity units that keep evading you. I guess maybe too amazing, since IS dropped them so quick. -Kagero and Beruka refines. Yeah, this will happen eventually I'm sure, but I'm waiting IS. More dagger refines in general, too. I want to see them get more help.

I think he's just so sick of the community's whining that he's become Punished Zangetsu, letting himself be brought down to their level and embracing the dark side of the force. His posts weren't always this way, but war.. war has changed him.

It does seem a bit odd how they're implementing like this, but I mean overall I can't complain. It's still totally worth it to fix some of my crappy IV units, that's for sure. Plus merged neutral freebie units get a little stat boost too, which is sweet. Merging up units like Aversa is just made even more worthwhile now. And making a TT unit +1 with the initial copies doesn't feel like as much of a waste this way either. (I wouldn't have bothered to +1 our upcoming NY TT unit, but now that she'll get even more extra stats I think I will)

I'm really excited to fix some of my crippled units like +1 +spd -atk FGrima. I don't have too many that are bad IV'd AND have a merge, but still a welcome change. I guess there's a couple losers from this change too, though. Like back when I did calculations for Beruka builds I think she actually lost some kill potential due to merges upping her speed. She was one of the few who really did want that lower speed and now that'll be taken away. I guess with everyone else that drops speed gaining it back as well it might not matter. Not a big deal either way, but it was just something I was thinking about. I guess some units wanting -hp for precise Desperation activation may be put off a little too.

I've been enjoying all this "Fates crap." Lots of nice alts and new units. My only disappointment was the Wings of Fate banner since I personally don't care much about Shigure or Kana, male or female. I was super happy with the Hinoka alt though, I love her. At least a couple of the remaining kids I DO want got in, with Ophelia and Nina. I'm still waiting for regular Charlotte, Benny, Nyx and others, but I still like all these alts. The Adrift banner was great, even though I only got Camilla off it, but she was the most important one of course. I love her and baby Azura. Hopefully I get the others in the future. I like most of the royals so I don't mind if they keep getting alts, but I'd be down with some fresh ones like Beruka, Peri, Oboro, etc. too. I'm praying for Halloween vampire Peri this year. I didn't expect to see one, let alone two Kagero alts this year either, but I like her so that was pretty cool. I expect Fates to be toned down a bit for 2019, but not for the sake of more older games' characters. Three Houses will probably get more than Echoes did, since it's a bigger release. Watch us get summer Edelgard 2 months after we get a debut banner for her.

Well I got trashed. 2 Fjorms and 2 Camillas (all bad IVs) for all my 130 saved orbs + more paid ones than I'd care to admit.(figured I didn't do much for Christmas so I could spend a little more for this, but bad idea I guess) Sitting at an 11% pity right now too. I'll have to wait and hope the TT orbs pull through, or it looks like I won't be getting Azura. Camilla merges are nice, but not something I wanted to spend actual money on. The Fjorms are pretty worthless to me since +2 won't change my arena scoring enough anyway.

Just found out aether cost does not cap at 100. 101 for my next match.

I'm glad we're getting really nice seals and great TT units lately. I want to do 4/6 of the new seals so I'm finally hurting on coins again.

Yeah, even if there's not a lot of them I still enjoy them. On top of that they made this banner another flier-heavy one and I'm always interested in more fliers. I've done that with a few units too and never thought I'd come to regret it. Also my Loki makes me a little sad now, who I got a +hp -atk one of and continued pulling(with actually spending some money) to get a better one. I just ended up with an even worse +res -spd one, which I foddered off for her Duel skill since why waste the fodder just to +1 her, right? Now I could have had her atk bane be fixed if I'd actually merged her. I've got 400k saved right now, but that's since the game won't give me the copies of the units I want to merge, as usual. I'll stop trying if I get to tier 20. I feel like with enough defense luck I can make it there one of these weeks, despite no extra Eirs. After that, I'm not giving IS my orbs for multiples Eirs or merges to play their new system to hit 21. I'd rather get to blow off half my AR matches and just maintain rank at that point.

Yeah, they're really hammering us with stuff in quick succession to make people have to keep spending if they want to keep up with it all. Hone Atk 4 on top of Azura's release is sly timing. Now she can give +7 to all stats after a dance.

Wow, double galeforce, huh.

-Galeforce-

One again I am the only one not salty about a new banner.

And he's gonna share red. I would like the other red, but shared colors on 4 unit banners hurt my physically.

IS is fucking crazy, I like the new units. Wish Maeshima did the art for them all again, though.

I was about to agree that's true, but it looks like IS literally just nixed that blessing advantage with the new update announcement. At least Ninian still gets the advantage of +4/4/6/6 buffs at the start of the turn without needing to dance first. But man, they just made Azura a even more appealing than she already was, now that she'll both be great in AR use-wise and give lift and blessing boosts on top of it.

@Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi Damn, so we share the burden of erratic defense timing then. And I definitely agree on Aversa as the next best blessing pick. First I did my Camilla then my B Ninian, since they're both on every team I make. I don't put Aversa on every single team, but she'll still be the best candidate since she benefits so much from the +5 hp too. She'll be able to debuff bonus stat Hrids and such that otherwise can be a bit problematic for me. (L Ephraim was the same last week, since even Camilla didn't want to bait one with both bonus stats and buffs)

God a defense match right after I did my battles for today, -80. Then within an hour I got 2 more defenses, 1 full success and 1 with 2 kills. BOTH were rematches from the people I'd just beaten either this morning or yesterday. I'm kinda salty I got smacked for -80 when 2 good ones came immediately after, but it was kind of satisfying to see those rematches, at least. I'd even gotten a 4 kill failure last night, but I guess the 20 hours timer hadn't quite ended yet..

Now I wonder what poor legendary/mythic might get that underwhelming skill to destroy buildings in AR. If they all happen to end up on legendary/mythics, whoever gets anti-dazzle is going to be huge bait. They could make pretty much any character a legendary with that and people would still pull for it with how annoyed everyone's gotten by healers.