New Heroes - New Heroes & Ascended Joshua

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Neimi (red infantry bow), Colm (blue infantry dagger), Rennac (green infantry dagger), and Ascended Joshua (colorless infantry dagger), with a Riev (blue infantry tome) GHB. Guess Dozla was left out in the cold, darn.

 

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by Fire Emblem Fan

[Sentinel07]

Ah, Neimi. One of my last few favourites that wasn't in the game yet.

Aso very happy that they're not just spamming the Lord's again for Ascended Heroes.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Sentinel07

[Use the Falchion]

I'm always happy to see more FE8 characters, even if they aren't my favorite. (Although Neimi always did good by me, so I may keep an eye out for her in the future.) If I'm going for a unit, it'll be Ascended Joshua, partially because I really like the character and partially because I have a team I'm building that could use him. (The team is all sword users at the moment, and a dagger would break up the monotony...but it would also ruin the theming.) 

Also, does this mean Joshua will play a part in the next TT+ story, assuming there is one?

[Sunwoo]

Did not expect Joshua to get an ascended hero (or to be the first non-OC ascended). I suppose non-OC ascended characters will at least be plot-relevant and not lord-locked. It's a bummer that this means we do get one less new character. Wish they would give us GHBs of more desired characters though. Who the fuck wants Riev? I'm sure somebody does but still.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

1 minute ago, Sunwoo said:

Wish they would give us GHBs of more desired characters though. Who the fuck wants Riev? I'm sure somebody does but still.

Honestly, I kinda wish Dozla was on the banner and Rennac was the GHB. Or that they'd made Glen the GHB. Riev is a semi-important character, but, eh...just eh.

[Sunwoo]

1 minute ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Honestly, I kinda wish Dozla was on the banner and Rennac was the GHB. Or that they'd made Glen the GHB. Riev is a semi-important character, but, eh...just eh.

His sprite also makes him look like a literal zombie/revenant.

Glen would've been okay, because if I recall correctly Glen is decently liked. Riev is, uh ... he's basically Veld or Validar without the same amount of plot relevance and I can't imagine most people were itching to get him in? Or remembered he existed, tbh? I forgot he existed.

[Othin]

Ugh, no insta-demote. That means we're now losing actual new unit slots to the Ascendants - at the current rate, that'll be 8 per year.

I do like the unit choices otherwise, though. Colm, Neimi, and Rennac had all seemed likely, while Riev is quite a welcome surprise. I'd been expecting Glen first, but Riev is a penultimate boss and the other missing one of the six generals, and I've always liked his whole monster commander deal. That makes two consecutive January banners where the GHB is an old man boss I'd wanted but thought was too unpopular to have a real shot.

Joshua is a surprise, but the logic makes sense. The anniversary banner had the other six royals not too long ago, while Joshua had the smallest alt lineup of the seven. Wonder who else we'll get in the future.

Edit: Ooh, and it's an 80% male banner. That'll help with the disparities in missing characters.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Othin

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I'll predict it now: On a future Blazing Blade banner, we're gonna get either Ascended Lyn or Ascended Florina, with Kent, Sain, and Wil filling out the banner. People will lose their minds over another Lyn, but part of me kinda wants it purely for the chance of the Mani Katti finally being added to the game. I feel like that's incredibly overdue for how many alts Lyn has.

[Diovani Bressan]

31 minutes ago, Use the Falchion said:

Also, does this mean Joshua will play a part in the next TT+ story, assuming there is one?

I dont think so. I dont believe that Ascended Heroes are obrigatory to be featured in TT+ Stories. I will guess that IS dont plan to make a new TT+ story anytime soon, so they dont want to not release Ascended Heroes until there.

You need to remember that Fjorm was released on part 4 of the story. If we get Ascended Eir, for example, doesnt mean she has to appear in her Ascended form in the first or second part of the TT+ story.

Outside the first 2 cases and future OCs getting that, Ascended Heroes can be units that are not strong candidates for Legendary Heroes but still deserve some attention.

I really hope they dont give Ascended Alts for characters that are main characters and/or have Legendary Alts already.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Diovani Bressan

[Florete]

Looks like Ascended Heroes will be characters deemed not quite important enough to be legendary, so (with the exception of Heroes OCs) we probably won't have characters who get both an ascended and legendary.

This banner is kind of depressing, though. Demote Colm has garbage fodder, Rennac is clearly intended as pure fodder, even Neimi doesn't look all that special, and the entire thing doesn't have any really noteworthy new skills. It's also rather disappointing that we're only getting 4 new SS units with this.

[Othin]

3 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

I'll predict it now: On a future Blazing Blade banner, we're gonna get either Ascended Lyn or Ascended Florina, with Kent, Sain, and Wil filling out the banner. People will lose their minds over another Lyn, but part of me kinda wants it purely for the chance of the Mani Katti finally being added to the game. I feel like that's incredibly overdue for how many alts Lyn has.

Mani Katti is what it would take for me to get on board with an Ascended Lyn.

If they want to avoid overlapping with other non-seasonal alts, Ninian is the first that comes to mind for me, although she's also a common legendary guess. Past Ninian and Nino, the highest-voted FE7 units on CYL5 that were in the game as of CYL5 are... Florina, Lloyd, and Lucius. Huh.

[Sentinel07]

2 minutes ago, Florete said:

Looks like Ascended Heroes will be characters deemed not quite important enough to be legendary, so (with the exception of Heroes OCs) we probably won't have characters who get both an ascended and legendary.

This banner is kind of depressing, though. Demote Colm has garbage fodder, Rennac is clearly intended as pure fodder, even Neimi doesn't look all that special, and the entire thing doesn't have any really noteworthy new skills. It's also rather disappointing that we're only getting 4 new SS units with this.

We would have gotten 4 no matter what.

The only reason Ascended Fjorm and Laegjarn had 5 units was because an OC took a slot, so it was always going to be 4 characters from the main games per banner.

[Lemmy]

I might have pulled for Colm if they didn't give him such outdated skills, still might pull for ascended flowers

I imagine this makes the other farfetched heroes good candidates,  and the choose your legends candidates; I think they are all lumped among brave heroes.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

6 minutes ago, Othin said:

Mani Katti is what it would take for me to get on board with an Ascended Lyn.

If they want to avoid overlapping with other non-seasonal alts, Ninian is the first that comes to mind for me, although she's also a common legendary guess. Past Ninian and Nino, the highest-voted FE7 units on CYL5 that were in the game as of CYL5 are... Florina, Lloyd, and Lucius. Huh.

Oh shoot, I completely forgot about Nino. I'd say she's very likely as a Blazing Blade Ascended hero.

[Florete]

5 minutes ago, Sentinel07 said:

We would have gotten 4 no matter what.

The only reason Ascended Fjorm and Laegjarn had 5 units was because an OC took a slot, so it was always going to be 4 characters from the main games per banner.

Uhh no. If Ascended Joshua had been someone else like Gilliam we would have gotten 5. Most of the banners from the past couple years have added 5 (or even 6) new characters from the represented game.

Ascended Fjorm and Laegjarn came with a 6th unit (as did Nifl and Muspell) so that we still got 5 new characters from those games, but Joshua is already from Sacred Stones so they didn't bother to throw anyone else in.

[MagicCanonBalls]

I like these characters in their original game but the design here is a bit off, except for Rennac.

I do not know what Joshua deal is, with the look and that weapon ("but otherwise" broke me). I hope we get some sort of chapter or Tempest story to explain that, since he is the 1st non-oc ascended. 

Colm is from 2019 with that skillset.

I have been dumping all my orbs lately so might have to skip this one entirely. I would have just hoard those floret anyway.

[Othin]

13 minutes ago, Sentinel07 said:

We would have gotten 4 no matter what.

The only reason Ascended Fjorm and Laegjarn had 5 units was because an OC took a slot, so it was always going to be 4 characters from the main games per banner.

There was no reason to assume that. We'd never had a non-OC Ascendant before, so there was no indication of whether or not the policy would change compared to the OC Ascendants. There wasn't even a reason to assume we were about to start non-OC Ascendants.

Mind, none of that is particularly surprising, but it was still things we couldn't assume.

[Some Jerk]

Well, Joshua as our first non-OC Ascended Hero sure is A Choice.

----------

Neimi has a cool gimmick. Atk/Spd Opening that she also benefits from is pretty powerful, but the rest of her kit feels really janky; while she's apparently supposed to be a Res tank, Bond skills on a Ranged unit are really awkward.

Rennac and Colm are both fodder delivery services aside from being Green and Blue daggers respectively. I was interested in seeing the new daggers are first, only to realize they're reskins of seasonal weapons (Vicious Dagger = Courtly Fan / Quick Dagger = Ouch Pouch). They otherwise don't bring anything new; even Disarm Trap has been in the general pool for a while thanks to Larum.

Joshua is... strange. If attacking cardinally, the enemy can't counterattack. If attacking diagonally, his damage is buffed by 15% of the enemy's Atk. And Green Feud exists because Caellach, I guess. He's still going to be something people will have to prepare for though, since some players will be sparking for him just to get his Ascendant Floret.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Some Jerk

[Dylan Corona]

Yeah, I'm a bit shocked that it's Joshua as the first, but maybe they'll be more common now. I need the ascend flower thing, so I'll be going for him. At worst I guess I'll do the 40 so I can pull him for sure. Unless I get lucky. I do love some of the other characters, but I'm not sure I'd use them for anything. So I'm just sniping for Josh.

[Ice Dragon]

Neimi is super cute. She and Amelia were my favorites among the Sacred Stones girls, and I'm glad she's finally in.

Her weapon looks interesting. It has Atk/Spd Gap for 6 points of each stat instead of 5 and has Ashera's Litrblade variant, but only counts Atk and Spd buffs in exchange for having a search radius of 3. A bit disappointing that it grants a stat boost instead of having the Slaying effect, as it makes it harder to use Deadeye. Spd/Res Bond 4 is crap for a ranged unit, though, but it looks like she's intended to be a dual-phase unit that can tank magic. Even then, Spd/Res Unity would have been better and would also be a new skill.

Rennac comes with a standard version of the Courtly Fan, and Colm comes with a standard version of the Ouch Pouch. Vicious Dagger is still the best inheritable dagger for offensive dagger units, which is good. Quick Dagger is rather niche, but it's nice that it's on a 4-star unit.

Not much to say about Rennac's base skills. It's kind of annoying that the two 5-star units only have 4 skills when Colm gets 5. There are definitely skills in need of more distribution that they could have given to Neimi and Rennac.

Colm is pretty. He and Neimi make a cute couple. His base skills outside of his weapon are complete shit, though.

Ascended Joshua is an interesting concept. First, he looks hilarious in his King of Jehanna outfit. It looks so unlike him and reminds me of Chrom running around in his Exalt cape. His weapon has a pretty cool secondary effect, splitting its effect by whether he's attacking orthogonally or diagonally and feels very in-character for him. Also a bit disappointed he doesn't have Lethality.

It looks like they're going to be using the Ascended status for the same sort of alts that Legendary Heroes get, but with a larger pool of characters. I would love to get a dual-wielding Ascended Lyn and a dual-wielding Ascended Zephiel.

 

As for another matter, they're being ridiculously lazy with the banner names as of late. I mean, seriously?

I'll pull for Neimi and spark for Joshua.

 

11 minutes ago, MagicCanonBalls said:

I like these characters in their original game but the design here is a bit off, except for Rennac.

They're more in line with their official art than their in-game sprites.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Ice Dragon

[Tybrosion]

18 minutes ago, Florete said:

Ascended Fjorm and Laegjarn came with a 6th unit (as did Nifl and Muspell) so that we still got 5 new characters from those games, but Joshua is already from Sacred Stones so they didn't bother to throw anyone else in.

There's also just eight playable characters left from Sacred Stones (Franz, Gilliam, Vanessa, Moulder, Garcia, Kyle, Forde, Syrene) with no presence in this game now.

I'd say it's ultimately for the better that they're not blowing through what few characters certain games have left at this point.

[Florete]

4 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

There's also just eight playable characters left from Sacred Stones (Franz, Gilliam, Vanessa, Moulder, Garcia, Kyle, Forde, Syrene) with no presence in this game now.

I'd say it's ultimately for the better that they're not blowing through what few characters certain games have left at this point.

I'd rather they just blow through. The sooner everyone is in the better, after which they can have more freedom to make unique alts.

[Acacia Sgt]

That spread looks perfect for a Renais-themed banner and a Freila-themed banner to include them all.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Acacia Sgt

[UNLEASH IT]

No insta demote makes Arena much easier though, since that unit tends to take up the bonus slot that's usually reserved for random GHBs

[XRay]

Neimi is not great in my opinion. On Aether Raids defense, Astrid is not great either, but she can buff movement and have better coverage, so she is at least more relevant than Neimi. In player hands, I do not really see her being relevant. I am not thrilled by her skill selection either. I do not look forward to being pity broken by her. 

Viscious Dagger also comes with Disarm Trap.

Quick Dagger is nice.

Joshua: Resolute Tempest is okay. I think he could be decent on defense with Firesweep hitting directly south against super tanks. In player hands, he just feels like one of those a-dime-a-dozen nukes. He can also run Blazing builds if you need a more reliable way to land "two" hits. He is not bad by any means, but I find it difficult to be excited and impressed. I guess what I am looking for these days is less raw damage output and more mobility, like Leif: Destined Scion, Yuri, Reginn: Bearind Dawn, and Fáfnir: Fresh Ambition who are all pretty exciting. Lyn: Ninja-Friend Duo too was also freaking super exciting when she first came out, although I am not thrilled about her anymore these days.