December's Legendary Hero: Azura Vallite Songstress

[redlight]

Oh boy. At least Rip CYL Azura

[Dandy Druid]

2 minutes ago, silveraura25 said:

Oh boy. At least Rip CYL Azura

Makes me wonder if someone at IS hates Azura and didn't want her to win CYL so now they're sabotaging her.

[redlight]

Anyways, supposedly there's a crazy Azura as well according to her VA from the Extra Life interview

[Some Jerk]

Holy hell, that kit looks absolutely disgusting. The fact that she comes pre-packaged with the Arena Score Hax skill just makes it worse. Hope you guys have been investing in your Surtrs or Faes, because she's probably going to be freaking everywhere during bonus seasons.

Meanwhile, I'll be preparing my anus for the new layer of Hell that will inevitably be her Abyssal Legendary Hero Battle.

[Kaden]

Azura's outfit, especially the plume on her headdress, makes me think of Carnival in Brazil. It was probably mentioned already, but Azura herself looks older. So, we have regular Azura, mysterious dancer Azura, kid Azura, and now post-Fates Azura. So, when can we get grandmother Azura? :p

Edited December 27, 2018 by Kaden

[Silent shifter]

I cant believe that 90% (estimated value) of my favourite FE unit appears in blue. 

At this rate, I am falling behind everyone as I am bad in building up units and old build got powercreep by newer ones. Gonna focus on F2P units to carry me.

[ArgentSable]

1 hour ago, Mackc2 said:

Ah yes I too remember that time that Ryoma, Azura, Tiki and Grima were protagonists 

They're extremely important characters to the story.

Azura and Corrin are the twin protags of Fates, with Ryoma and Xander being the faction leaders for the sides. Tiki is one of the reasons why Marth won if I recall. Grima is one part of Robin (we're still missing the human part), and so on and so forth.

[Lord-Zero]

42 minutes ago, Troykv said:

Well; that is pretty much Micaiah-only thing XDU

There have been instances of possession and similar scenarios by other characters like...

- Eliwood being possessed by Roland briefly which led to a certain character’s death

- Roy getting Hartmut’s memories upon releasing the Binding Blade

- Lewyn in Gen2

I doubt we’d ever get actual “gods” as summonable characters at the moment. Grima is an artificial being. It’s the result of alchemic research gone wrong so it can bypass that issue. Which could also explain why the Falchion can’t really kill it. 

Since most of the “godly” characters such as Anri, the Crusaders and most of those spoken in legends have no real personalities at all (not to mention, far too obscure), the most cost-effective way to bring them is to have them possess existing characters as those have base designs and voice actors already set. This means we could get stuff like Duma (Alm), Mila (Celica), Anri (Marth), Hartmut (Roy), Roland (Eliwood), Yune (Micaiah), Naga (Tiki, if they don’t ever add Nagi), Anankos (Corrin), among others. This is also a way to put in “literal who” tier characters under far more recognizable faces which could then lead to the casual audience rolling for these characters. 

It’s just baseless speculation for now. 

Edited December 27, 2018 by Lord-Zero

[ZeManaphy]

52 minutes ago, XRay said:

Prayer Wheel buffs ALL the stats of the target if the target already has a buff. It takes the highest buff on the target and it applies it to the rest of the target's stats. A flying Blade team can essentially skip Hone Fliers and run exclusively on Fortify Fliers.

Aah, Ok, thanks for explaining.

[TheWill]

3 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

I don't even know why the developers have such a hard on for Fates specifically. Isn't Awakening technically more beloved than Fates?

Wait, was it? I always thought Fates was more successful. It gets so much pandering in Cipher and Heroes, so I'm surprised that Awakening is more beloved than Fates to Intelligent Systems. 

Maybe it has to do with the seasonal alts from year 1. The Ylissian alts were underwhelming except Bride Cordelia. Like, you'd only pull for Summer Gaius if you were a Gaius fan... and his honey moon popularity was over by his release. Then Christmas hit with insane powercreep. 

[Lewyn]

Gray waves a complete and utter power creep of the already excellent dance skill, that is my biggest problem with this hero.  Oh and she is a flier the best movement type as well.  God like Surtr wasn't annoying enough in Aether raids, now we will have 3 move Ophelias and Lewyns and flying blade mages.  I guess it is a good strategy just release an absurdly power creeped and thus 'must have' unit to draw in the big spenders, we also have another duel skill as added incentive.  Wonder where that leaves us in a couple years.  Maybe a support skill that refreshes and bestows teleport to anywhere on the map and buffs all stats by 25.

 

Edited December 27, 2018 by Lewyn

[redlight]

So stupid. Dance and dance weapons were already powerful. Some stupid powercreep for that was unnecessary

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

The dislike bar in the video made me laugh.

As uncreative the Legendary Hero is (I didn't expect anything interesting and new anyways), as decent is the pool this time.

Flying Nino and Marth as new unit and more Hector and Veronica merges would be nice.

And hey, and the Hero has some nice fodder.

I will do more than one circle this time unlike in former months.

 

Also I hope Rena won't return to this forum soon to read this...

Edited December 27, 2018 by Necrofantasia

[Sentinel07]

1 hour ago, silveraura25 said:

Anyways, supposedly there's a crazy Azura as well according to her VA from the Extra Life interview

So.....Fallen Heroes 2?

I wouldn't mind that, as long as Berkut with Kriemhild is on it. 

[Sunwoo]

37 minutes ago, TheWill said:

Wait, was it? I always thought Fates was more successful. It gets so much pandering in Cipher and Heroes, so I'm surprised that Awakening is more beloved than Fates to Intelligent Systems. 

Maybe it has to do with the seasonal alts from year 1. The Ylissian alts were underwhelming except Bride Cordelia. Like, you'd only pull for Summer Gaius if you were a Gaius fan... and his honey moon popularity was over by his release. Then Christmas hit with insane powercreep. 

Well, I meant the fanbase. I was under the impression that fans in general liked Awakening (or at least felt that it was overall stronger as a game) more than Fates.

[mewyeon]

Another Azura...

Tbh, I'm not really that disappointed in Legendary Banners like some ppl can be.  At least it's an excuse not to spend orbs on it, so I can focus my orb spending elsewhere! I will still pull on this banner though :D Aiming for Summer Camilla, Summer Takumi, and Legendary Marth.

[Garlyle]

Looks like it's time to review another Legendary banner video. Legendary Azura is not very exciting for me, B Duel Flying makes it even worse. I do have Bride Ninian, and I like her better because of her focus on speed, and I think she's still going to be viable - making Xth version of Azura less interesting for me. Honestly, Azura feels like the next Camilla, but to be fair, Fates only had Ryoma as legendary character so far, while some games already had 2. If you don't have Bride Ninian, you'll defineately see some use for Azura.

Now for the colors - 

• Red looks neat with Marth, Summer Tiki and Flora. I don't have any of these, so this could be my potential free pull before I skip the banner
• Blue with Fjorm and Summer Camilla is not very exciting, but if you really want Azura, go for it.
• Green with Hector, PegaNino and Helbindi is another strong pick, but I already have Hector and Nino
• Colorless surprisingly doesn't have Grima, instead Eir, Veronica and Takumi. Could be another strong color if you don't have them.

Red > Green > Colorless > Blue - this is personal opinion, your choice could be different based on the units you have. If you don't have Veronica, go for colorless, otherwise go for Green.

[Cute Chao]

Fifth Azura alt. Not even the slightest bit surprised. Who needs Alm, Seliph or Roy legendaries, right?

Such an easy skip. No one I particularly want in the banner, although wouldn't mind Marth joining me at some point.

[redlight]

I might be able to hit 1000 orbs at this rate

[Troykv]

Since the moment I noticed this was a Water Legendary (because the last Wind Season it's also Water); I was sure it was going to be either Corrin or Azura... So I'm not surprised, dissapointed or salty.

[Mau]

Top female contenders for CYL 3: Camilla, Eirika, Azura, Nino, Micaiah, F!Corrin

Female units that got alts in the last two months: Camilla, Eirika, Azura, F!Corrin. And they all have 2-4 alts total too.

Either IS really wants Nino or Micaiah to win, or there isn't gonna be a CYL 3 so they just give the top contenders regular alts. Meanwhile the top male contenders are Marth, Alm, Reinhardt, Chrom en M!Robin who all mostly have 0 or 1 alt (2 if you count Grima for Robin).

I don't care much for Azura and I sure as hell don't care for her having 5 versions now of which the most recent one was only a month ago. And did we really need two Vallite versions? Or two flying dancer versions? Also did we really need more flying dancers that aren't in the regular pool? Literally can't say anything good about this one.

Green has L!Hector and Helbindi though, and wouldn't mind Flying Nino either so that's the color I'd pull for. If Winter Fae had already come to me that is :(

[Sasori]

I don't think Azura is techincally a bad candidate for a legendary hero. She has an important role in the story of fates and she is relatively unique. The main problem is that they've chosen to include her now not even two months after her loli form. We had the not so interesting adrift banner, the boring Original characters and we are back at fates again with only a short break during the christmas banner.

I haven't really felt like there where much characters that I wanted to pull  for ever since the adrift banner and right now this Azura just bores me.

[Alkaid]

I feel a little silly now for putting a light blessing on bride Ninian (since she's on every AR team I make). Her unique ability to buff fliers for +4/4/6/6 by herself has been invaluable for me, but Azura's going to be insane. Only dropping one stat boost, she can buff +4/6/6 or something like that initially then add +6/6/6/6 in addition after the dance? That's gonna be broken good.

I like the alt, but powercreep-wise IS has gone nuts.

[Zangetsu]

1 hour ago, silveraura25 said:

I might be able to hit 1000 orbs at this rate

How do you not have that much? There wasn't any banner worth spending on for the last 6 months.

[DehNutCase]

Odd as it might seem, but I don't think Azura actually changes the top-level meta all that much. (Flier Emblem becomes enormously more consistent, though, since you wouldn't need horses to repo fliers forward during setup anymore---a dance horse and a danced flier has the same reach.)

 

The Offensive v. Offensive matchup stays about the same for arena (the fact that the enemy's threat range is huge is mitigated by the fact that your threat range is also huge), and probably gets a bit easier for AR, since the defense team can't take advantage of dance if everyone relevant is dead turn 1.

Defensive v. Offensive gets a bit harder, since you have to be a bit more careful about unit placement, but +6 all stats simply isn't enough fight through the sheer amount of stats a player can pack into a single unit.

The Offensive v. Defensive matchup already had the offensive team with a hilarious mobility advantage---don't need any more if the enemy team was never hitting you in the first place. But strictly speaking it does get a bit easier since Azura reduces the need to run combined arms with horses for their superior reach.

 

But this is only under the assumption that both the attacker and the defender has access to Azura, defensive teams don't care too much about her, but the Offensive v. Offensive matchup heavily favors the side that has Azura over the side that doesn't. That is, while the meta doesn't change, Azura nonetheless makes all the older dancers obsolete (she's even a tome, so there isn't a weapon selection gap between her and Ninian).

 

That said, I'm probably going to switch to playing a lot more casually now---might even start dropping tiers in AR. The one thing a game like FEH shouldn't do is completely obsolete old units with new ones. If I have to spend resources to run more or less the exact same team I'm already running, except with different, newer, powercrept faces, then investing more than the bare minimum in any unit is just stupid. I'm not that much of an emotionless power-gamer.