Kaden

*insert Takumi with 60 attack and 42 speed here* Note to self: Give M!Robin Bowbreaker. Even though Cancel Affinity can't be inherited by mages, I'm still feeling wary about giving anyone a gem weapon or T-Adept now. The fact it just exists makes me reconsider a ton of builds. T-Adept was supposed to be there for Robin or any -raven tome mage to counter archers since I still struggle with them, especially if their stats are boosted to the level of lunatic trials -- biggest offenders being Gordin and Klein -- since just a -raven tome sometimes isn't enough to give them the advantage. Well, what if an archer shows up with it? Faye, Gordin, Jeorge, Klein, and Rebecca can't because they have B-skills, but Niles, Takumi, and random or manually modified archers can. Or T-Adept and G Tomebreaker for Sophia to deal with green mages more easily, but the chance of facing axe units with it would be pretty crappy for Sophia. Ruby Sword was the sword I decided for Selena except now she can end up facing axe units who'll have that and she'll be stuck dealing neutral damage which isn't that great since it's Selena, the tank not the hard hitter. So, it's back to the drawing board again. Likewise, axe-slaying Henry with T-Adept and Axebreaker for shits and giggles doesn't seem great if he could face an axe with Cancel Adept. The ever looming fear... Cancel Adept.

Random Lunatic to Infernal Takumi on singleplayer with Cancel Affinity... Man, that's going to suck.

Right Hand of the God of Thunder sounds more authoritative than Thunder's Fist which might be more at home in a superhero comic or as a special move. Anyway, moving up from hand to arm sounds like a good deal. It'll bring attention away from his tiny hands if you focus on his arms. :P

Aw, there goes my conspiracy theory of the developers trying to find ways to buff Reinhardt to make him into the monster he was in Thracia 776 I've heard about. It just seemed so obvious. Reinhardt being 4* summonable means many players have more chances to get him, skill inheritance allowed Reinhardt access to the much coveted Death Blow, Quickened Pulse let Reinhardt have instant Moonbow, and Cancel Affinity could have let him ignore the weapon triangle even more. Perhaps another day, Reinhardt. You'll get your chance to become the God of Thunder. :P

All that matters is that she's beautiful in Waifu and Husbando Emblem. :p Also, I find it funny how Clive could be considered more beautiful than Mathilda. Leon's stat spread screams Close Counter to me. He's basically Takumi, but if Takumi traded 2 HP and 3 resistance for more defense. Also, flipped attack and speed. So, using KageroChart, a simulated +Atk, -Res Leon with Slaying Bow+, Luna, Close Counter, and Quick Riposte against everyone with Fury 3, he gets 94 wins, 28 losses, and 24 draws. On a defense tile, he gets 107 wins, 13 losses, and 26 draws. Leon actually does worse with Bonfire. With Bonfire on a regular tile, he gets 88 wins, 28 losses, and 30 draws while on a defense tile, he gets 101 wins, 13 losses, and 32 draws. Compared to Gordin, Takumi, and Virion from this post: https://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?/topic/73008-new-banners-announced-alms-armycelicas-army/&do=findComment&comment=4915004, he's the best user of this build, Bonfire or Luna, by a long shot. =Atk Leon would only trail behind these guys while they're +Atk. Neutral Leon running the same build would get 73 wins, 27 losses, and 46 draws. That's about where +Atk, -Res Gordin would be with Silver Bow+ and Moonbow, but with flipped losses and draws. On a defense tile, 88 wins, 10 losses, and 48 draws. Still all right. With similar stats offensive stats to Takumi, Brave Bow is probably on more people's minds than Close Counter and Quick Riposte. So, simulated +Atk, -Res Leon with Brave Bow+, Luna, and L&D3 against everyone with Fury 3 gets 90 wins, 6 losses, and 50 draws. +Atk, -Res Takumi gets 87 wins, 3 losses, and 56 draws. Giving Takumi an Attack +1 seal puts him at 99 wins, 3 losses, and 44 draws. Leon with an Attack +1 seal only gets 3 more wins while Speed +1 seal gives him 7 more. Dude's around where summer Gaius and Takumi are as offensive archers while also capable of being a good physically defensive archer.

But a sword will never love you like Oboro will. :p At least you can love the art and music of Muramasa: The Demon Blade and other Vanillaware works. Sonya's giant bang, forelock? Whatever, her giant hair while she's a chibi in FE Heroes makes her look so adorkable like Kagero. With a ranged Wo Dao, I wonder if it might be better for her to run a 3 or 4 charge special instead. If her offensive stats are similar to Celica, Katarina, Nino, Soren, and Tharja, then she might be able to just destroy most stuff without needing Moonbow to activate. At that point, having a massive burst of damage might be better. That's just me, though.

Plot twist: the guy everyone thinks is Clive at the end of the new banner trailers? That's actually Zacharias. Dun dun dun! :P Plot twist #2: Double post. Dun. Dun. Duuuuuuh.

Plot twist: the guy everyone thinks is Clive at the end of the new banner trailers? That's actually Zacharias. Dun dun dun! :P

Y'know, I'm starting to wish that skills were described in better detail. Like in-battle, it could be a short description, but if you go to a character's page, it'd be described more thoroughly. Or maybe the official website should have a skill guide or something. I mean, there are people who out there who don't understand exactly how Brash Assault, Brave weapons, or Desperation work. Note: I know the Japanese description of Cancel Affinity was posted and explained as, but what if both the Japanese and English descriptions were poorly worded? Anyway, what if Cancel Affinity could be interpreted as this? "Any weapon triangle affinity granted by unit's skills is negated." That's simple, it just cancels T-Adept, gem weapons, and -raven tomes because of their effects, their skills, affect the weapon triangle affinity. Moving on, "If affinity disadvantage exists, weapon triangle affinity granted by foe's skills is reversed." What if this meant that regardless of who has weapon triangle disadvantage, the effects of T-Adept or gem weapons were negated or reversed in a sense that it restores normal weapon triangle affinity? It does not explicitly state who has to be at affinity disadvantage e.g. "If affinity disadvantage exists for the user...", it just says if affinity disadvantage exists regardless of who has it. The next part is an issue because of the word "reversed", but a thing that is not stated is if it's advantage or disadvantage. If the sentence was or is supposed to mean "If affinity disadvantage exists for the user, advantageous weapon triangle affinity granted by foe's skills is reversed", then that would imply what people are thinking of a blue with Cancel Affinity fighting a green with T-Adept would result in the blue dealing neutral damage to the green aka Reinhardt's big middle finger. If, however, it is supposed to mean "If affinity disadvantage exists for either party, weapon triangle affinity granted by foe's skills is reversed/restored to normal", then it could mean what the possible interpretation I'm thinking of (and I think someone mentioned on Reddit a thread interpreted as) where if say, Stahl fighting Mathilda will not deal 0.6 damage and take 1.4 damage to Mathilda, but instead will fight it out as a normal battle of red vs. blue. He'll lose, but not to the degree of Ruby Sword vs. blue destruction. Cancel Affinity either has a really bad description that its freaking name would be better used to describe its effects or it's a terrible idea of a skill. if you go by its name alone, Cancel Affinity could imply the problematic issue of being neutral to everything. Cancel as in negating and affinity as in weapon triangle, therefore, removing the weapon triangle from play if you have this skill equipped. It would make sense since Gaiden does not have the weapon triangle and neither does Shadow Dragon, right? Anyway, it's justified from who's bringing it in: Mathilda, a Gaiden character from a game and its remake, Echoes, without the weapon triangle. But this creates an issue as a character could become colorless, but not at the same time which would remove any counter benefits by normally having weapon triangle advantage against them. It would also be worse than what people are thinking as it would not require that you fight someone with T-Adept, a gem weapon, or -raven tome. You have this skill? Cool, the weapon triangle no longer exists for you. "sounds of Dire Thunder crackle in the background* At the same time and this might be text limitation issues -- What is this? A NES game? --, Cancel Affinity could have meant Cancel Affinity Intensification which its first sentence would be enough to describe what it's meant to do: negate any skills that affect/intensify the weapon triangle. This would be much preferred as the weapon triangle is still in play where a unit cannot get hard countered because someone runs T-Adept, but at the same time, combat isn't treated as if everything was neutral. So, Hector with this could still fight and possibly overpower reds with low defense, but he doesn't get to do neutral damage to them, he's still at a disadvantage to them. Sort of kind of like how Sheena with Svalinn's Shield can still take more hits than usual against someone with Armorslayer, especially if they don't have high attack, but doesn't get obliterated if they have that and T-Adept 3.

I sided with DeRosa in Bravely Second. I wanted the Thief asterisk; I did not agree with DeRosa. This is more of a personal problem rather than an everyone's problem. There are 10 blue mages with Delthea's introduction -- would be 11 if Bruno was playable -- and 2 of whom are seasonal, bride Caeda and spring Lucina, 9 green mages with Sonya's introduction -- would be 10 if Veronica were playable -- 1 of whom is seasonal and the only flying mage, spring Camilla, and 9 red mages with everyone knowing Aversa would probably be a regular flying red mage. Seems all right at the moment even if there's only 1 green and 1 red mounted mage compared to the 2 sword fliers, 3 axe cavaliers, 1 summonable sword knight -- at least Zephiel is regularly available --, and axe knights not having a 3* to 4* summon, another 4* to 5* summon, or a GHB axe knight. For me, the only red mages I've summoned are two Raighs both being +HP, -Res for some reason -- yeah, I'll stick with starter Raigh, thank you very much --, five to six Sophias all of whom had terrible boons and banes -- many were -Atk or -Spd and with some not so great boon -- with me being stupid early on and ignoring boons and banes leaving me stuck with a -Atk 4* Sophia that I merged the special map Sophias into until a Sacred Seal? quest Sophia was available, and one 3* Henry from my 45th out of 46 total summons who's +Def, -Atk. My luck with red mages is absolutely atrocious. I have never summoned Celica, Katarina, Leo, Lilina, Sanaki, or Tharja except in re-rolls way back then. Meanwhile, MEANWHILE, two Lindes in one summon, 5* Mae, two 4* Reinhardts, a bunch of Odins, +Atk, -Res 3* M!Robin to make up for +Def, -Atk 4* M!Robin for blues and 4* Merric, +Spd, -Def being my first Nino after coming home on this file -- had her as one of my first file before I re-rolled for a Selena --, and two 5* Sorens within summons of each other with the second being +Spd, -Res for greens. I would not be surprised if I get Delthea or Sonya. I like them, but a different red mage would be useful -- having more options is never bad. Green mages with high defense and low(er) resistance like Boey, Merric, and Veronica have traumatized me. 33 speed Boey with his high defense showing up on a lunatic run was not a fun thing to deal with in this current trials. RIP using units like Lucina to brute force my way through. Just give me another Henry, game... I concede, I'll give Sophia G Tomebreaker... At least I'll have a red mage to counter green mages while being able to keep a Henry. ;_;

@Lushen, more of pointing out that not all archer builds are Brave Bow+ with the occasional Firesweep Bow+. Anyway, checking to see how much of an impact Slaying Bow would have. For the Close Counter, Quick Riposte, and *insert special here* build and against everyone with Fury 3... For the mage counter build of Killer Bow+, Fury 3, Quick Riposte, and Iceberg against all mages with Fury 3... If Leon ends up with good mixed bulk and decent attack, he could possibly run a build that covers both mages and physical units. He'd be the defensive archer if that were the case. Probably not going to happen since I there wouldn't be enough stat points to do that as a normal ranged unit.

Niles says hi and so do Faye, Rebecca, and even Gordin, Takumi, and Virion running counter builds. Niles is the safest archer for mage countering because of his high resistance followed by Faye who gets doubled, but hits harder and Rebecca who doesn't get doubled as much like Niles and hits harder, but has lower resistance. Killer Bow, Fury 3, Quick Riposte, and Iceberg. The only change now is Killer Bow is obsolete with Slaying Bow taking its place. Joining Gordin, Virion, and Takumi will probably be Leon running Close Counter, Quick Riposte physical builds. Killer Bow and Bonfire works for Gordin, but it's a bit weaker I think because of Killer Bow's pitiful MT. Silver Bow or Fujin Yumi for Takumi and Moonbow get more results if I recall correctly. The issue with this is Close Counter where Takumi already exists and is on par or better than Gordin and Virion running Silver Bow, Moonbow, Close Counter and Quick Riposte. This might change when Gordin and possibly Leon will have access to Slaying Bow+ which has 12 MT, 1 less MT than Silver Bow+ and 3 more MT than Killer Bow+, letting them use Bonfire or maybe Ignis since Gordin's pretty slow. Gordin has 32 neutral defense, but using Killer Bow means he's stuck with a weapon that caps at 9 MT, but Slaying Bow+? 12 MT bow and 16 fixed damage from Bonfire on top of his average for an archer, 31 neutral attack. Heck, even Virion and maybe Takumi could work with Slaying Bow+ and Luna better. In Virion's case, he'd trade 1 MT for Luna instead of having Moonbow. Y'know, at this point, there's almost no reason to use Silver weapons when the Slaying and anti-armor weapons exist let alone the gem weapons can just have Attack +3 or Fury 3 to make up the damage for Silver weapons.

Aww, but she's not a knight... Eh, we could have her piggyback riding the Black Knight. Charge, my steed! Charge! *Black Knight moves one tile. End turn.*

I just realized that she'd be effective against Clive. We all know who's wearing the pants in that relationship. :P Anyway, Mathilda would be helping Horse Emblem by countering enemy Horse Emblem. Fight fire with fire. Flying mage and armor mage with anti-armor magic when?

Whoa, Gray looking all confident with his hand on his hip. Sonya looks kind of dorky cute as a chibi... Must. Resist. Trying. To. Summon. You. Need. A. Red. Mage. Boy. (Go play Final Fantasy, you unlucky sap.) Well, scratch Clive off of that. Why do I get the feeling he'll be pretty mediocre? But that chin is another great wonder of the world! :P

When I saw "AC3 Virion", all I could think was "What does Assassin's Creed 3 have to do with all of this?" Would not be surprised if you could dump Virion in an Assassin's Creed game and he'd fit in. Would have been worse if I thought of Animal Crossing. :P If they continue with Slaying weapons from Echoes, Forsyth, Valbar, and Ferdinand could work. Didn't catch what Clive had in the trailer. Valbar would have been cool. Y'know, another summonable knight?

Well, something from Reddit gave me a bit of hope: what if Slaying weapons were upgrades to Killing weapons? For example, Navarre has Killing Edge and gets Killing Edge+ as a 5* while Saber has Killing Edge and gets Slaying Edge+ as a 5*. Navarre can inherit Slaying Edge+ to get a stronger Killing Edge+ while Saber bypasses that since he only has Killing Edge and Slaying Edge+. If that were to happen, then technically any character without a legendary or personal weapon can get something closer to it that isn't a Silver+ which doesn't really have an effect unless you consider them to be weapons with innate Attack +3. Could work well since outside of personal weapons, legendary weapons were usable by almost any character with the rank and other requirements to use them. In a way, it's like saying being at 5* means you have S rank for whatever weapon type while Killing Edge+ could be seen as an A rank weapon and those who have it by default weren't able to acquire the S rank version at the time. Well, whatever. Tomorrow will tell and all hopes and dreams of Killer weapons will be stomped and crushed even more when Slaying Edge and Slaying Edge+ are seen on Saber's wiki page. They could have just upped Killer weapons by 1 or 2 MT instead of introducing Slaying weapons with 10/14 MT as melee and 8/12 for bows. Edit: Words... Slaying weapons like overclass or third tier promotion, but for weapons.

The new banners are at a point where everything about them pisses me off. Power creeped Killing weapons -- now universal instead of sword and legendary weapons-only --, anti-cavalry being stronger than anti-armor despite armors having higher defense -- gee, I wonder why? --, Cancel Adept -- how was this a good idea? --, and this is more like jaywalking to arson and murder, none of these units are red mages. I swear if I summon 2 Deltheas in one summon like I did with Linde or if Julia and Sonya appear at the same time... And if freaking Clive becomes the next GHB after Berkut! Why... why can't there be a red mage GHB soon? Edit: Also, where's Valbar? Why do we not have a new knight? I don't care that he'd be another lance knight, but come on.

Wait... seriously? The anti-cavalry weapons have higher MT than the anti-armor weapons? What is this? Knights have higher defense in general -- pun not intended -- than cavalry. 10/14 MT anti-cavalry to 8/12 anti-armor. Welp, I can't wait for 5/9 anti-armor tomes or the reverse where it's 7/11, stronger than 6/10 -wolf tomes. I hope there's a stealth patch that ups the MT of anti-armor and Killing weapons, but that's not going to happen now will it?

New Mystery seems like a lesser evil when it introduces new things and expected things like more Firesweep weapons, more double rallies, and more 2 effect blows rather than making weapons obsolete with the introduction of Slaying weapons and however Cancel Adept managed to get pass Q&A. Seriously, they could have just upped every Killing weapons' MT by 1. Nope, let's make every Killing weapon inferior to Slaying weapons. If they had done that, Cancel Adept being the only problematic thing wouldn't be so bad since it's not like an entire weapon type suddenly became even crappier.

Yeah, but Leon would have even shittier offenses! :P I was actually debating if I wanted to give Leon 20 or lower attack to boost his speed and defensive stats. Speaking of Faye, part of me wants to make Brash Assault Faye because of how stupid it would be. Yay, Faye benefiting from villager BST! Also, yeah, Cancel Affinity is a B-slot. I had to pause the video when I saw that. This is why it's both good and bad since unless a unit is changed manually and not being given random skills like in trials and training tower, BS like Reinhardt with Cancel Affinity won't exist in singleplayer, but Celica and Takumi will because they don't have B-slot skills.

Well, he's another option. Before watching the video, my thoughts were Leon would have high HP and relatively high defense and resistance at the cost of terrible attack and average speed. So, I was thinking he'd be defensive in general until I saw he had Ignis which would imply he'd have higher defense that resistance. Makes sense since he's from Gaiden. Seeing Ignis made me add in physically rather than just defensive. Basically, I was thinking of something like Virion with actual resistance, but nonexistent attack or Gordin with actual speed and resistance, but nonexistent attack. Something like 42 HP, 25 Atk, 31 Spd, 28 Def, and 24 Def. I never played Gaiden or Echoes, so I'm not sure on his speed. I do know from looking up on him a while back that he was considered a more defensive archer compared to Python. Leon might end up being a reverse Felicia and Niles which isn't that great since he'd need Close Counter or else he's limited to dealing with other archers and thieves which isn't useful to dealing with mages in general.

Is this basically Power Creep the banner? For some reason I thought the Slaying weapons would have built-in Heavy Blade as their effect since I didn't remember the wording of it or the Killing weapons' descriptions. Nope, exact same wording of special cooldown. Are you kidding me? At least Saber introduces a skill that can make Pavise more useful and Leon might be the physically defensive -- if his special is any indication -- archer some are looking for. But seriously, what is the point of the Killer Bow and Killing Edge now? Killer Bow already has to compete with the fact that Brave and Firesweep Bows are the only main bows to use for offense with Killer Bow being a niche thing Niles and if you really want, Faye and Rebecca can use. Now, we have a version that is simply stronger. Killing Edge now has to compete with or rather, is a crap option to Wo Dao, Slaying Edge, and Mystletainn making any cavalier using Killing or Slaying Edge inferior to Eldigan. Worst sword in the game is now even worse. I will not speak on Cancel Affinity if it works exactly as being described and explained. That skill does not need to exist. If anything, Reverse Affinity like the -reaver and I think Dual weapons would be fine because the user would still have WTD against something. But making it so T-Adept and gem weapons become neutral to you? Thank Naga that Reinhardt has a B-skill by default, so Cancel Affinity Reinhardt can't become a thing in a future Tempest Trial, but guess who doesn't have a B-skill? A bunch of other units. There's a reason why people use T-Adept and gem weapons to deal with specific units. Great, this throws out my idea of Ruby Sword+ Selena... Oh look, a random Cherche, Hector, Merric, Sheena, and Veronica with Cancel Affinity. That ever looming fear... And while it's nice colorless units could combat -raven mages with Cancel Affinity, it's still going to piss me off fighting one with it. Takumi doesn't have a default B-skill... Cancel Affinity Takumi in a future Tempest Trials... Fun. Also, there will be 10 playable lance cavaliers with the introduction of Berkut, Mathilda, and I see you hiding there! Clive. Axe cavaliers only have 3 playable and 2 of them have basically the same stat spread. And a personal thing, none of them are red mages. To be expected since o don't think any of the mages would have made sense as being red outside of maybe Kliff and Delthea, but she has Dark Aura now instead of Ragnarok. I swear if I summon 2 Deltheas like summoned 2 Lindes in one summon. Delthea and Sonya are cool, but I need a different red mage or at least another Henry to make Sophia useful against green mages with high defense, but low(er) resistance.

Well, at the beginning, sword cavaliers had three characters with a fourth, Eldigan, being introduced fairly soon. After that, we got Xander and Luke. Lance cavaliers started out with four, then gained three more through spring Xander, Camus, and then Roderick, with the eighth being Berkut who'll be here about next week. For a while, axe cavaliers only had two, Frederick and Gunter, neither of whom have legendary weapons, neither were 4* to 5* summon units, and both have similar stat spreads which Gunter being arguably "old Frederick". Titania is the third axe cavalier and is the only axe cavalier with high resistance and speed. It's more like "Oh, there are a lot of lance and sword cavaliers and axe cavaliers still don't have a lot of people. They should probably do something about that." Kind of a similar situation for sword flyers and kind of axe -- would have been less of a problem if there was a 3* to 4* summonable axe knight -- and sword knights and red and green mounted mages who's 3* to 4* summonable. There are lot of units who who are those classes unlike flying archer and flying mage.

Yeah... I'll need it. I'm holding out for a red mage GHB. Berkut kind of ruined that by delaying my hope. You better be one damn good unit with awesome voice-acting that I keep hearing about. I just train every new unit I get. Who knows, maybe they'll be useful for something. That and back-up healers are useful in case something goes wrong, especially back-up Rehabilitate healers. Oh yeah, Clair's the other 1.2x bonus unit.