Othin

Makes sense. Whatever works.

Close Counter's advantage is being able to counter dragons, while Close Foil's advantage is better Atk/Def against any physical weapons. To my understanding, Distant Ward/Foil are considered pretty dicey relative to Distant Counter since you're giving up on a bunch of relevant ranged attacks either way, but Close Foil is actually quite good since melee attacks are skewed so heavily towards physical. And dragons are especially effective against ranged units anyway. So Close Foil is the one skill from the Foil/Ward series that seems like it might be generally preferable to its Counter counterpart.

After hitting 800 Ephemera 7 codes, is there any point in continuing the current Hall of Forms event past floor 20? (Other than using Forma Souls, which I don't have.) It seems like the only rewards are more codes that still won't be enough to hit 900, and torches which would only be useful if you have something else you want to get out of the hall.

I went in with my usual Awakening go-to of Aversa, Olivia, and Legendary Chrom+Lucina. Was able to take out Soren, Mist, and Ike, and get through the middle to take out the thieves closest to the exit, then was able to take my time with finishing off the remaining ones. The stats sure are getting high, but I didn't find this to be one of the more troublesome maps. 390 points has me on track to move up to T18.

Makes sense.

Looks like Midori has 41 Atk normally and goes up to 45 with the superboon, so with Spendthrift Bow's effect active she goes up to 64 effective Atk in combat. 69 with Close Foil in effect as well. What are you planning on doing with the extra one? Close Foil seems like pretty great fodder, and Rally Atk/Def+ and Spendthrift Bow could also be useful.

Atk is her best stat and has a superboon, while her Spd isn't great. I've never gotten Midori, but Atk sounds preferable to me.

I continue to be astounded by how many defense maps just fall apart when you throw Cecilia at them. Especially with support from Mila and L'Arachel to deal with dancers and anything red. Perfect offense score so far, with only two ladders used, although losing any points on my last defense would still be enough to kill my shot at T27. I've generally been rounding out my teams this week with Dancer Micaiah or Fallen Ike. Eir isn't nearly as good of a bonus as Peony or Mila, I've barely had her do anything, but it's still better than not having a relevant mythic bonus at all.

The recent update added icons and category names for the different banner types. I believe the breakdown is: "New Heroes", "Special Heroes", and "Hero Fest" banners exclude the heroes in that image. "Summoning Focus" and "Revival Summon" banners can have any 5* hero of the color in question (aside from Special/Legendary/Mythic Heroes), including the ones in that image. "Double Special Heroes" and "Legendary/Mythic Heroes" banners don't have any off-focus 5* units at all. "Free Summon (Random)", and "Free 5* Summon" banners are special events that just give you a single hero out of the listed ones, so they don't have any off-focus units of any rarity. You can go to "Appearance Rates" and then "Details" to see a full list of the units available on a given banner and what rarities they're available at.

Yeah, sounds like it. And thanks, got that one as well now!

Yeah, I think they edited the notification to make it clearer. It now says at the bottom that players who summoned those units before the Hero Fest ends on 8/9 will get the free units. Doesn't say anything about caring if orbs were spent. That was the perfect amount of information. Thanks!

I've been looking back over Tactics Drills and still haven't been able to figure out Skill Studies 84 or Grandmaster 29/31/32/34/36/38/40-42/44-46/48/50-55/58/61. Does anyone have any vague hints for any of those? Like, a way to get pointed in the right direction but without making it too obvious.

"Virtually no functional difference if the unit is under control of a competent player" is still different from "completely immune".

I'm not talking about using Pulse Smoke in combat with the unit in question, I'm talking about using it on a nearby unit. Like I said, it gets corrected on the unit's next phase when Time's Pulse triggers, but Pulse Smoke/Tie still make it possible to de-charge the special briefly, until that point. It may not be especially relevant, but it does still have an effect.