Xane spec

[Jotari]

So according to this post

Xane is now the most wanted Archanea character going by the Choose Your Legend poll. So there's a decent chance we'll see him sometime in the nearish future. So the question is, how would Xane work? Do you think they could port his gimmick whole sale from his own games? Would he copy allies skills as well thus making equipping any skill to him pointless? Or would he retain his own skills and just take stats from allies giving us the chance to use infantry skills on cavalry and flying allies? Or would they try to implement his gimmick in a less direct way, maybe by making him a regular (uh) sword infantry unit and just having his sprite look like a random ally whenever you  fight? What do you think? How do you think Xane will be implemented and also how do you think he should be implemented?

You know canonically he can't turn into a dragon anymore, but given how few beasts units there are I could see him turning into a random animal.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Jotari

[King Marth 64]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

So according to this post

Xane is now the most wanted Archanea character going by the Choose Your Legend poll. So there's a decent chance we'll see him sometime in the nearish future. So the question is, how would Xane work? Do you think they could port his gimmick whole sale from his own games? Would he copy allies skills as well thus making equipping any skill to him pointless? Or would he retain his own skills and just take stats from allies giving us the chance to use infantry skills on cavalry and flying allies? Or would they try to implement his gimmick in a less direct way, maybe by making him a regular (uh) sword infantry unit and just having his sprite look like a random ally whenever you  fight? What do you think? How do you think Xane will be implemented and also how do you think he should be implemented?

I think Xane could be used as a Sword Unit only. I don't think his signature transformation would work in Heroes unless if the developers and programmers managed to find a way to get Xane to transform into other characters.

[Jotari]

21 minutes ago, King Marth 64 said:

I think Xane could be used as a Sword Unit only. I don't think his signature transformation would work in Heroes unless if the developers and programmers managed to find a way to get Xane to transform into other characters.

That wouldn't be difficult. They were able to do it 1990. The issues more would be in what effect it would have on the game. Heroes is quite different game in that it's all about building your units in a way regular Fire Emblem games aren't. In Shadow Dragon if you want two Marths you use Xane, in Heroes if you want two Marth's you can just train a second Marth. So all Xane does is cut out the time/money/feathers it costs to train up a second unit you want to use at the cost of a turn to transform at the start of the battle. Moreever, there would be very little customer incentive to pull any more than a single Xane if merging him has no effect at all on his utility as a unit.

[Benice]

Maybe he could have a prf Assist skill which allows him to take the A-skill of an ally for two turns or something like that? That's kinda broken, but maybe something among the lines of that.

Or he could straight up be OG Xane and totally copy another unit. That would also work.

[Humanoid]

I can think of two options at the moment. One would be to repurpose the Duo Skill button to enable transformation, with a short cooldown like Duo Palla. To avoid too much insanity, he is by default some sort of melee infantry. Every time you hit the button, a random chibi of any other melee infantry in the game is selected and in terms of gameplay, you gain the weapon triangle (dis)advantage based on whoever you transformed into. It should probably pick a colour first before picking a unit because otherwise you'd just keep transforming into different sword infantries. All skills are retained since all melee infantry skills are cross-compatible. It could be a little cheaty on the weapon as you could, for example, have a dirt-cheap Firesweep Lance equipped on him and suddenly have it transformed into a rare-as-hen's-teeth Firesweep Axe for a couple turns, but whatever.

The other is to implement it as an assist skill like Legendary Lucina's Future Vision. Xane swaps with someone, regains his move for the turn, but transforms into the target character for the rest of the turn. If this sounds familiar, it should: in essence, it'd just be Dance. A little stronger than dance in that you can transform into a fragile unit such as Nino, attack as "her", then automatically turn back into the (presumably bulkier) base Xane after attacking. The only difference from having used a normal Dance on Nino is therefore that once the turn ends, the real Nino is in a relatively safer position while Xane ends up in the exposed position. (The auto transformation back is necessary to ensure Xane's own skills and stats remain important. Yes, this pigeonholes his base form into being a defensive unit but I think that's fine)

Edited July 23, 2020 by Humanoid

[whase]

Thinking back to New Mystery, I recall he doesn't copy weapons when transforming. Perhaps he could have an assist skill called copy, that copies sprite, stats, move type, A, B, C and special of an adjacent ally or enemy, except for prf skills. But then he still attacks with whatever sword you gave him, meaning regardless of whom he copied, he's always a red sword unit.

[Othin]

I think if Xane gets in as a proper "chameleon", it'd be as a New Hero, so probably on the next FE3 banner - most likely next year. I'd expect it to be some sort of assist, but it's hard to say what kind. Future Vision as a basis could work, maybe inflict self-Isolation like Chrom's version while copying all non-HP/duo traits? Maybe not the special either, since the charges would get weird. So just weapon, stats, and passives, and movement type?

Edited July 23, 2020 by Othin

[Landmaster]

I don't know how they'll handle Xane, and to be frank, I don't really care, I just want him in the game.

[SirErrant]

11 hours ago, Humanoid said:

The other is to implement it as an assist skill like Legendary Lucina's Future Vision. Xane swaps with someone, regains his move for the turn, but transforms into the target character for the rest of the turn. If this sounds familiar, it should: in essence, it'd just be Dance. A little stronger than dance in that you can transform into a fragile unit such as Nino, attack as "her", then automatically turn back into the (presumably bulkier) base Xane after attacking. The only difference from having used a normal Dance on Nino is therefore that once the turn ends, the real Nino is in a relatively safer position while Xane ends up in the exposed position. (The auto transformation back is necessary to ensure Xane's own skills and stats remain important. Yes, this pigeonholes his base form into being a defensive unit but I think that's fine)

I know nothing about this character, but that would be totally cool.

[Othin]

5 hours ago, Othin said:

I think if Xane gets in as a proper "chameleon", it'd be as a New Hero, so probably on the next FE3 banner - most likely next year. I'd expect it to be some sort of assist, but it's hard to say what kind. Future Vision as a basis could work, maybe inflict self-Isolation like Chrom's version while copying all non-HP/duo traits? Maybe not the special either, since the charges would get weird. So just weapon, stats, and passives, and movement type?

On second thought, not copying special could mean mixing specials with the wrong unit types. So maybe just change the special charge in accordance with any changes to the maximum. 

[DefyingFates]

15 hours ago, Humanoid said:

The other is to implement it as an assist skill like Legendary Lucina's Future Vision. Xane swaps with someone, regains his move for the turn, but transforms into the target character for the rest of the turn. If this sounds familiar, it should: in essence, it'd just be Dance. A little stronger than dance in that you can transform into a fragile unit such as Nino, attack as "her", then automatically turn back into the (presumably bulkier) base Xane after attacking. The only difference from having used a normal Dance on Nino is therefore that once the turn ends, the real Nino is in a relatively safer position while Xane ends up in the exposed position. (The auto transformation back is necessary to ensure Xane's own skills and stats remain important. Yes, this pigeonholes his base form into being a defensive unit but I think that's fine)

This is what I was thinking too. Maybe he'd only change back at the start of your next turn? That way you still need to be careful not to leave your "Nino" somewhere dangerous. Of course, the problem here is the matter of special cooldowns, especially if he turns into Ophelia or someone else whose Special is recharged as soon as she ends a round of combat. Maybe he'd retain his own Special cooldown in the background?

[Nym]

Another thing that could be possible is Xane copying the weapon, special, skills and seal of that ally and move again.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

This is what I was thinking too. Maybe he'd only change back at the start of your next turn? That way you still need to be careful not to leave your "Nino" somewhere dangerous. Of course, the problem here is the matter of special cooldowns, especially if he turns into Ophelia or someone else whose Special is recharged as soon as she ends a round of combat. Maybe he'd retain his own Special cooldown in the background?

Maybe his special cooldown could be the counter for him to transform back.

[LoneStar]

Maybe he will have something like: if ally within 2 spaces has a stat greater than his then he gains +5 to that stat during combat. And if an ally has triangle advantage against the foe he's in combat with, he'll gain the boost from WTA. I don't know much about him, but if he's a sword and there is green ally near him then he gains the +20% attack bonus and inflicts the -20% attack penalty against a blue foe. Effectively making it a neutral match-up with his already existing disadvantage. So:

Xane + Green ally = neutral against blue

Xane + Blue ally = advantage against red

Xane + Red ally = triangle adept against green

Then he takes the appearance of the ally giving him the bonus during combat. Maybe to balance it out he's forced to take the appearance of an ally near him, but the game will prioritize giving him the advantage if possible. So he could get screwed if only a red ally is near him and he's in combat with a blue foe.