Ice Dragon

Given that I don't use dancers at all in PvE, I don't think dancers, much less Wings of Mercy on dancers, is at all vital. The other nail in the coffin for Wings of Mercy is the fact that unlike in PvP, enemies in PvE don't run Distant Counter, and so you simply aren't taking counterattack damage on your ranged units consistently enough to make Wings of Mercy useful. Melee units also aren't commonly taking a large amount of damage from generic enemies due to the fact that they typically have damage reduction and high Def, and dual-phase units nowadays have passive healing. Most dual-phase units at best have 50% percentage damage reduction nullification when not activating their Special. The ones that do run Specials that activate on the first counterattack typically aren't able to run a skill that gives the Special full damage reduction nullification and so are also typically only able to have half nullification. If they aren't activating their Special and don't have a Brave effect on their counterattack, they typically aren't able to kill the attacker with their first counterattack. Units that activate a fast Special might not be able to be handled with a ranged attacker due to them typically having low Def, but offensive melee units don't have that problem. Outside of a handful of extremely bulky units (like Legendary Male Alear and Emblem Ike), dual-phase units are more effective when piloted by the player where you can pick and choose which enemy attackers to fight on enemy phase and how. Dual-phase units that are controlled by the AI can be manipulated into taking combat at a disadvantage. Even if your team's wall breaker is running Desperation for the job, you're still going to want to have it active at 100% HP (or 99% HP if the unit inflicts damage on themselves at the start of the turn). Desperation 3 is completely outdated at this point in PvP modes.

Then run Wings of Mercy in the B slot instead of Mercy-Wing Echo in the X slot. Now that you don't need to run Desperation, you have a whole B slot that's open for Wings of Mercy if that's the effect that you really think you need. But, you say Wings of Mercy is not the highest priority for the B slot because it's currently the most competitive skill slot? That would indeed be a problem if we didn't have so many other sources of mobility available. Infantry and fliers have access to Oath 4 in the C slot. Fliers have Orders, Rein Snap, and several different variations of Guidance in the C and X slots. Pathfinder is now more widely available, usable by all units other than staves, and is in the C slot. Several units have skills in not-the-B-slot that grant Charge to at least one ally. We're also getting more units with Galeforce effects after performing specific actions. Wings of Mercy used to be the only source of semi-consistent additional mobility, but that is simply no longer the case anymore. Due to the amount of stat optimization we've gotten, most offensive units these days have lopsided defenses, which means you're typically able to tank a single attack on the side with the higher stat even with your damage reduction mitigated. For example, I'm running a standard Sabotage-Ploy build on my Bride Cecilia with no damage reduction skills at all, and she's able to tank Abyssal Veyle's Iceberg with just stats and debuffs alone. It's also notable that the most common source of percentage damage reduction nullification is limited to Special activations and most offensive units in PvP modes are built so that their Special activates on their follow-up on player phase. This means that on their enemy phase, they usually won't be activating their Special on their counterattack, which allows you to get around the nullification effect (and the extra Special damage). The units that are actually threatening to offensive units are the current state-of-the-art tanks that simply don't die. Desperation doesn't help against them because they're not dead after you finish attacking them.

Desperation has been an outdated skill for a long time now. Damage reduction effects are good enough that most units can rely on that instead and run a B skill that deals more damage or grants more mobility. Desperation itself has the issue that you can't use the opponent's counterattack to charge a stronger Special, which is a problem now that we have premium Specials with higher cooldowns that can't be activated when running Desperation without at least 2 sources of Special acceleration. If you're in a situation where you actually need Desperation, you're better off using a unit that already has it on their weapon than to waste the B or Sacred Seal slot on Desperation. Desperation is a purely defensive effect, which means it has a particularly high opportunity cost in both the B and Sacred Seal slots. The only ones I can really see giving up their exclusive dance skills are the fairies that still have the original versions of their dance skills. The recently released stronger versions (only relevant on Spring Mirabilis since the other 3 are Rearmed or Attuned) and the remixed versions are all strong enough that losing them is not worth running Mercy-Wing Echo. The original skills, though, have effects that can be made up for with modern support skills. Gray Waves and Call to Flame are not worth giving up because sources of +1 movement are not well distributed, and the inheritable sources of the effect don't have tier-4 versions yet and have significant competition in their skill slot. Similarly, the Galeforce effect on Dragon's Dance is way too valuable to give up. All that said, we have other teleportation skills now with more lenient conditions, so I'm still not terribly convinced of Mercy-Wing Echo's value on units with exclusive dance skills.

The skills Sing, Dance, and Play are specifically excluded from the restriction and can be used with Arcane weapons and Echo skills. Rearmed and Attuned Heroes are also fully immune to restrictions on both Arcane weapons and Echo skills (e.g. Rearmed Chrom can still equip Fate Unchanged... even if he has Arcane Eljudnir and Death Blow Echo equipped).

Instant demotes are very clearly only tied to whether or not there are Heroes characters on the banner. Out of the 26 banners that have had instant demotes, 21 of them had a Heroes unit on it. The remaining 5 banners with instant demotes and no Heroes characters are the first Engage banner and the 4 consecutive New Heroes banners immediately before Peony's banner, which was the first New Heroes banner centered around a different game to include a Heroes unit. Essentially, you can expect any banner with a Heroes unit on it to have an instant demote. You shouldn't expect any other banner to have one, but it still might happen extremely rarely. Here's every single New Heroes banner since the first instant demote along with every Heroes unit and every unit with a special unit type that appeared on those banners:

Mozu's country accent in Japanese is adorable. Yukimura's art is gorgeous. I have no idea why the Fates localization team renamed Tsukuyomi to "Hayato". Bonus Doubler 4 now being added to the standard summoning pool is pretty cool. It's also nice to finally get Sabotage A/D 3. Now to wait for Atk/Def Ploy 3. Assuming Mercy-Wing Echo has the same inheritance restrictions as Wings of Mercy (i.e. none), it looks like a funny skill to give to armors for teleportation shenanigans. Anyways, here are the usual translation notes: The banner name, "New Heroes & Attuned Azura", is "新英雄＆響心アクア" (shin eiyū & kyōshin akua), "New Heroes & Resonating Hearts Azura". As usual, "響心" (kyōshin), "resonating hearts", is the term used for Attuned Heroes. Mozu's epithet, "Tragic Start", is "悲劇にさす光明" (higeki ni sasu kōmyō), "Light That Shines Upon Tragedy". Forager Naginata is "農地の主の薙刀" (nōchi no aruji no naginata), "Naginata of the Farmland's Proprietor". A/S Bulwark is "攻撃速さの防壁" (kōgeki hayasa no bōheki), "Atk/Spd Bulwark". Yukimura's epithet, "Puppet Master", is "白夜王国の軍師" (byakuya ōkoku no gunshi), "The Kingdom of Hoshido's Tactician". Perspicacious is "軍略伝授の刃" (gunryaku denju no yaiba), "Blade of Tactics Instruction". Sabotage A/D is "攻撃守備の混乱" (kōgeki shubi no konran), "Atk/Def Confusion". Hayato's epithet, "Diviner of Reppu", is "烈風城の呪い師" (reppū-jō no majinai-shi), "Diviner of Castle Reppū". "呪い師" (majinai-shi), "spellcaster", but with "呪い" (majinai) typically referring to more traditional charms and curses rather than Western fantasy magic, is the name of the Diviner class. "烈風" (reppū) translates to "gale". Rauðrlantern is "ラウアランタン" (rauarantan), "Rauðrlantern". Azura's epithet, "Song's Reflection", is "響く絆のうた" (hibiku kizuna no uta), "Song of Resonating Bonds". Tri-Path Splitter is "三つの道歌う法具" (mittsu no michi utau hōgu), "Ritual Tool That Sings the Three Paths". Changing Waters is "つたうみなすじ" (tsutau minasuji), "The Water Vein That I Follow". This is the third line of the Japanese lyrics of the song Lost in Thoughts All Alone from Fates. A/D Cantrip is "攻撃守備の魅了" (kōgeki shubi no miryō), "Atk/Def Charm". Mercy-Wing Echo is "響・救援の行路" (kyō: kyūen no kōro), "Resonance: Path of Rescue". "救援の行路" (kyūen no kōro), "path of rescue", is the name of the Wings of Mercy skill. Candace's epithet, "Sly Snatcher", is "神出鬼没の探検家" (shinshutsu kibotsu no tankenka), "Elusive Explorer". "神出鬼没" (shishutsu kibotsu) is an idiom that literally translates as "appearing like a god and disappearing like a demon", referring to someone or something that appears at unexpected times and places.

No. Arcane weapons and Echo skills can only be inherited from the original owner of the skill. This is specifically to prevent them from being duplicated using a different unit.

I did some more pulls on Emblem Ike's banner to see if I could get another copy of Ike, and he showed up on the 38th pull. After I got yet another copy of literally everyone else. 38 pulls: 1 Ike 1 Elincia 1 Embla 1 Camilla Total 227 pulls: 2 Ike (+1 spark) 10 Elincia 7 Embla 1 Camilla 3 Seidr That's an 8.4% red focus rate and a 10.1% focus rate across all colors. Camilla is now +8. My new copy of Ike has an Atk Asset, which is good enough. And finally getting around to the AHR banner because I'm bored and I have to do this eventually anyways despite having not yet cleaned up my barracks. 179 pulls: 9 Peony (+1 spark) 4 Claude (+1 spark) 9 Dimitri (+1 spark) 6 Alear (+1 spark) 3 pity breakers: Astrid Rennac Fallen Gustav 15.6% focus rate is quite a bit above average. Even with the boosted rate due to color sharing, the average should be somewhere around 12% with a back-of-the-envelope calculation, so I'm about 5~6 pulls above average. 17.3% total 5-star rate. Unfortunately, I didn't get many copies of Claude and no copy with a Spd Asset to replace his current Atk Asset, but the skew meant that I managed to get Dimitri to +10 with a spare copy to give Atk/Spd Prime 4 to a duplicator. Ten extra copies of Peony for skill duplication is also amazing, and now I'll have to figure out exactly what I want her to duplicate. I'll probably at least toss 5 of Rearmed Chrom's most valuable skills onto her. I now have a total of 18 copies of Peony. Claude is now +5. Dimitri is now +10 with 1 spare copy. Alear was already (exactly) +10 before this banner, so I now have 7 spare copies. And this week's free Arena ticket gets me Sanaki:

The next Resplendent Hero is Muspell Black Knight: His stats with the Resplendent boost aren't awful, sitting at 55/41/41/42/25-. While his weapon is actually decent for a Distant Counter weapon due to the fact that armors don't have good Distant Counter options for the A slot and Arcane Devourer's effects overlap with most of the options for the B slot, it's also hard to justify running Distant Counter at all nowadays unless the unit's weapon and stat spread is specifically tailored for that job, and Black Knight's certainly isn't. And when it comes to builds without Distant Counter, he still falls short of Winter Manuela and Valentine Hana as a fast sword armor and Arden and Halloween Kellam as slow sword armors. But he's at least usable. The lineup so far this year has been: Nifl Ilyana Askr Brave Veronica Hel Soren Embla Brave Celica Embla Selena Nifl Brave Hector Jotunheimr Hana Muspell Black Knight

40 of the original 87 summonable units do not have a Resplendent outfit yet. So yes, they've finished half of the launch units now.

If you have no one else in line for Alarm Atk/Spd, sure. EDIT: It's worth noting that I used my first copy of Eitr to give Alarm Atk/Spd to Rearmed Chrom to duplicate, in case that's also an option for you.

If you're planning on using Lunar Brace II most of the time, it might be better to wait to get a copy of Incite Atk/Spd instead, depending on how likely you think you'll be able to get your hands on one. If you're running Gambit 4 most of the time, then getting Alarm Atk/Spd can be prioritized a bit higher. Either way, if you're not planning on building any beasts for the foreseeable future, then using Eitr for Alarm is okay. It's more of a matter of whether it's more efficient for it to go to Eirika or a different unit since your Eirika already has the Canto effect, albeit from a less optimal skill.

Arcane Nihility is stronger than almost all other beast cavalry weapons as long as the opponent has stat bonuses. The combination of Arcane Nihility and Beast Sense 4 functions almost identically to Summer Freyja's weapon and B skill, but slightly better, so it functionally just turns any other fast beast cavalry into a copy of Summer Freyja. Beast Sense 4 is at least notable for functionally being a Dodge skill that's also accessible to cavalry and fliers. Its only real competitor for percentage damage reduction is Counter Roar 4. For non-beasts, everything Eitr can duplicate can already be supplied by any of the other melee cavalry, namely Flared Sparrow, Near Trace 3, Assassin's Strike, Alarm, and Incite. If you're already using one of them to duplicate those, there's probably no need to also have Eitr do the same. The most notable skills that Eitr is the only unit that can duplicate are Atk/Spd Wild, Beast Sense 4, and Beast Agility 4. (The other Beast skills don't have tier-4 versions yet.) Counter Roar 4 is also notable for there being only 2 units that can duplicate it right now. Since we don't have any easy sources of any of the tier-3 Beast skills right now, you're currently stuck picking only 2 of Arcane Nihility, Atk/Spd Wild, or a tier-4 Beast skill when inheriting from Eitr if you want to be efficient.

It stacks with itself, but the problem is that it not only doesn't give a Spd boost at all, but also requires a Spd comparison to simply activate. The Spd comparison to activate actually isn't that difficult (unless the opponent has a source Phantom Spd) since it uses visible stats instead of in-combat stats, but the fact that it doesn't grant a Spd boost at all in combat means that it puts you at a 4-point disadvantage in Spd with the B version of the skill and a 4~9-point disadvantage with the Sacred Seal. The tier-4 version of the skill grants a maximum of +8/0/8/8, which is pretty high for a B skill, but we have other B skills that grant a Spd boost and can contribute comparable damage and defensive boosts, like Guard Bearing 4, Gambit 4, Aerial Maneuvers, and Potent 4 as well as future skills like A/S Near Trace 4. The Sacred Seal is only slightly stronger than Atk/Def Clash in that it also grants an effective Res boost, but is less reliable. The only reason to run Pegasus Flight at all for general use is if you're using the unit as a wall breaker against slower physical walls with low Res. Even then, you're not going to use the B version of the skill because Flow Feather 3 is better than Pegasus Flight 4 for the job, and the Sacred Seal is only better than Atk/Def Clash against units that target Res.

We don't get refines for LME units if there isn't a remix scheduled for the month. We normally only get those on odd-numbered months with a few additional ones each year on even-numbered months to make up for the fact that we get more than 12 LME units each year due to double banners and story LME units releasing on normal banners.