KMT4ever

Since Julia came along so quickly, let's see if her mother will do the same. 61 orbs on hand. 3* Raven: Meh. 5* Julia: Guess she really does love me. Another merge brings her up to +3. 4* Soleil: Okay. +Spd/-Res, so definitely worth promoting. 4* Hinata: More Fury fodder. 4* Lilina: +Atk/-Def, certainly worth promoting. That was an amazing set. Another merge for Julia, two more 4*s worth promoting. One more dip for now. 41 orbs on hand. 4* Sully: Draw Back fodder. 3* Abel: Finally some Swordbreaker fodder. Alright, that's enough for now.

Well, I'm obligated to pull on any banner that has Julia, and I'm probably not going to be interested in the seasonal, so time to spend some of my 86 orbs. Going to try to focus on greens and blues since I really don't need Seliph. 4* Odin: Meh. 4* Barst: Reposition fodder. 4* Inigo: Meh. 4* Selena: The whole trio! I'm honestly tempted to train all three of them just because of how fortuitous this set is. They've even got pretty good IVs. Odin's +Spd/-Res, Laslow's +Atk/-Res, and Selena' +HP/-Res. Anyway, let's see who the last unit is. 4* Azama: Ugh. Well, not a particularly good set, but I think I'll train the Nohr trio since I am kind of bored. 71 orbs. 5* Julia: Thank you Feh, the atrocious legendary banner has been forgiven. She's +HP/-Spd, but my original Julia is perfect already, so no great loss. +2 hooray. 4* Oboro: Bleh. 4* Catria: Meh. 3* Roderick: Feathers. 4* Kaze: Iceberg fodder. 35 orbs for a Julia merge, a Barst, and a fortuitous Nohr Trio? I'll gladly take it.

A majority of my favorites are in, although certainly not most of them. I probably forgot about a few though...

Yay, last laguz ticket. 4* Roy: Bleh. And now for the sword banner of swordness. If there's no reds I'm going to be pissed. 3* Oscar: I'm pissed. My luck really has been awful lately.

That was laughably easy. I would have done it first try if I hadn't forgotten that laguz transform when alone, but I guess I have to settle for second try. Team was the typical Julia+L!Ike+B!Lucina trio, with L!Lucina as the spare of the week. Julia wrecked the blue manakete and lance cavalier, Ike the green flier and sword cavalier, L!Lucina Naesala and the fafnir. B!Lucina sat and buffed as usual.

Alright, 3 tickets for the laguz banner. 3* Lon'qu: Feathers. 4* Hinata: More Fury fodder. 4* Florina: Meh. No surprises there.

Wow, and I thought I just had some bad luck. Well, at least you got something in the end. Anyway, laguz are here at long last! Of course the legendary banner ate 150-ish of my orbs for nothing but Reposition fodder (which I admittedly burn through like candy), but I wasn't very interested in this banner anyway. Let's see if Tibarn shows up on the free pull. 4* Hana: Nope. Oh well. There are apparently tickets for this banner, so maybe I'll spend a few orbs later.

Alright, last gasp on the legendary banner with 25 orbs. 4* Selena: So much Reposition fodder from this banner. 3* Roy: Worthless. 4* Laslow: Of course...Might as well take the other two orbs so I have enough for a final pull. 4* Libra: Meh. 3* Boey: Ugh... 5 orbs left, one more unit... 4* Palla: F**k this game. Knowing my luck the other red orb had Marth in it. An 11.5% pity rate. At least 150 orbs spent for nothing more than some SI fodder.

Well, Arena brought me up to 35 orbs, so here's hoping (again) for Marth or Flora. 3* Clair: SP fodder. Not what I asked for. 30 orbs left. 3* Hinata: More Fury fodder. Okay. 25 orbs left. 4* Henry: Nope. 4* Eliwood: Also nope. What the f**k, Feh? I've still got 7 TT orbs to get, so might finish off those and a few more Chain Challenges to build up for one final attempt.

More Chain Challenges, 30 orbs...Marth, please just show up. 4* Chrom: Wrong Falchion. 4* Roy: Wrong again. 21 orbs and not much sanity left. 3* A!Tiki: Now is really not the time for the gacha to be giving me 3*s. 4* Draug: This is ridiculous... A 10.5% pity rate and over 100 orbs wasted just sniping reds. Maybe Marth is just doing what L!Lucina did and waiting for the very last moment to show himself...

Tactic banner time. I've got both L'Arachel and Shiro, so I might as well aim for Siegbert. 4* Olivia: Meh. More Chain Challenges and quests have me at 49 orbs. Marth better show up soon or I'm going to be very upset. 4* Olivia: Again? 4* Seth: Useless. 4* A!Tiki: Bonfire fodder. Come on, Feh. At this point I'd gladly take Flora if Marth really doesn't want to stop by. 36 orbs left. 3* Gordin: Feathers. 31 orbs left. 3* Tharja: Meh. Figures my luck would go south like this. 26 orbs left. 3* Hinata: Well, Fury fodder at long last is handy. Finally something useful, with a 10% pity rate to boot. 21 orbs left. 4* Gordin: Unbelievable... This banner clearly hates me. I've spent something around 100 orbs to try to get literally any red 5* and the game keeps throwing total crap at me.

Last ticket... 4* Eliwood: Damn. And since I did some Lunatic Chain Challenges for the first time in a while, I've got 43 orbs. Marth? 3* Athena: Is she my new 3* Saizo? Feh, if you're going to keep sending me 3* reds, could they at least be Selenas? 38 orbs left. 4* A!Tiki: Bonfire fodder. Marginally useful. 33 orbs left. 4* Fir: Bleh. 28 orbs left... *sob* 4* Azama: Feathers. Not even any reds this time. 23 orbs left. 4* Klein: Wrong banner. Okay, clearly this banner doesn't want me to get Marth. Going to keep trying though.

With a new BHB comes 9 orbs and a new banner. I've got everyone at 5*, so might as well aim for Clarine since she's technically at the top of my roster as my first unit to become 5* (Alfonse, Sharena, and Anna aside). 4* Matthew: Nope. There's 3 other grey orbs, which makes me apprehensive about who could be inside them, but Marth still eludes me. Another New Year's ticket... 4* Sakura: 4 greys and a blue, exactly like last set. The BHB gave me a total of 30 orbs, so more red sniping. 3* Athena: Please go away. 4* Mamui: No... 21 orbs left. 4* Olivia: What do you want from me, Feh?!

Two more New Year's tickets... 3* Athena: Nope. 4* Eliwood: Meh. And with 25 orbs, back to the legendary banner. 4* Lilina: SP fodder. So much for the flood of reds I was getting earlier. 20 orbs left. 3* A!Tiki: Grr... Marth really doesn't want to show up, does he?

Alright, welcome to the New Year, Serenes! My first pull's going to be from the old NY banner. Might as well aim for Takumi to get all of his versions. 4* Cecilia: Or not. 4 blues and 1 green... Now on to the new NY banner. One free pull, one ticket. Probably going to go red. 4* Soleil: Meh. And now for the ticket. 3* Draug: Feathers. Finally, back to the legendary banner. Various quests and such brought me back to 46 orbs and I can't be bothered to grind more right now. Marth? 3* Chrom: SP fodder. 3* Roy: No thanks. 4* Selena: More Reposition fodder? This banner's certainly been generous with them. I think that makes Reposition #5. That's almost making up for the relative dearth of 5*s. 33 orbs left. 4* Henry: Nope. 3* Stahl: Nope. 3* Chrom: Again? Why are there so many red 3*s showing up? The game's giving me tons of red orbs and putting total garbage in them. 20 orbs and a 10.5% pity rate. 5* Eir: Of course the one set with no reds ruins my pity rate...She's +Spd/-Atk, which would normally be meh, but with the upcoming merge update she'll be a fantastic master copy. Now for the rest of the set. 4* Lissa: And here I was hoping for Veronica... 4* Sheena: Meh. 4* Cecilia: More meh. 4* Oboro: Trash. Reposition fodder aside this banner's been pretty lousy so far. Hopefully I can gather enough orbs to find Marth in the end.

Okay, back up to 21 orbs. Time to take a small dip in the legendary banner again. 4* Laslow: Meh. 4* Seliph: Bleh. Then again, you're getting a refine soon. Maybe I'll keep you. 4* Selena: Reposition fodder 4 from this banner. 4* Caeda: Nope. That was immensely disappointing. Selena's nice, but now I'm up to a 10% pity rate. At least this banner's longer than normal.

A refine for Divine Naga and bane removal for merges? Julia just got so much better... *evil laugh* From the notifications I'm really going to enjoy this new update. My insistence on always merging and never using a 5* for SI is going to pay off so much. I've got 158 individual 5*s right now, and 62 of them (39.2%) have at least one merge. Bye bye banes.

Wow, Infernal was actually really easy this time, certainly much more so than Hrid. Beat it on attempt 4 with the usual team of my 3 regulars (L!Ike, B!Lucina, Julia) and the spare of the month (Sothe this time). Would have done it even sooner but I got caught out with three enemies left by a lance armor using Shove of all things on the blue manakete and trapping Julia between the two of them. Aside from the initial Firesweep pegasus nothing here was actually tricky to deal with. Sothe and Julia vaporized Azura and her mage cohorts, Ike did his usual and tanked every melee unit into oblivion, and B!Lucina buffed everyone as always.

Legendary banner time! I've got 169 orbs on hand and a hankering for L!Marth. Here we go. 3* A!Tiki: Nope. 4* Merric: Meh. 5* Giga!Nino: Yes! And she's +Atk/-Res, which is amazing compared to my +Res/-Spd copy. 3* Azama: Garbage. 3* Leon: SP fodder. No L!Marth, but a great start nonetheless. 154 orbs left. 4* Lucius: Meh. 4* Tharja: More meh. 3* Stahl: Bleh. 4* Nino: Boring. And I'll take the one blue since it's cheap. 4* Odin: Moonbow fodder. Time to keep going. 134 orbs left. 3* Lucius: :( 4* Tharja: >:( 4* Olivia: The game lagged for a bit, which got my hopes up. Nope. 5* Helbindi: Hello hello. Unfortunately he's +Spd/-Def, which is garbage for him. 4* Oboro: Bleh. Another green 5*. 114 orbs left. 4* Klein: DB fodder. 4* Palla: Goad Fliers fodder. 3* Lilina: SP fodder. 3* Henry: Bleh. 3* Seliph: So much hope, so much disappointment... I'm sad now...94 orbs left. 3* Maria: Feathers. 4* Jakob: Meh. 4* Azama: Ugh. 4* Klein: Hello again. 3* Reinhardt: What a garbage set... 74 orbs left. 5* Helbindi: Again? Well, +Res/-HP is better than +Spd/-Def. 4* Barst: Finally some Reposition fodder. 3* Eliwood: Bleh. 4* Palla: Meh. 4* Caeda: Nope. So far I've spent 115 orbs for 3 5* units. Not great, but acceptable. 54 orbs left. 4* Lissa: Feathers. 4* Selena: More Reposition fodder. 3* Seliph: More feathers. Plenty of Repo fodder today. 41 orbs left. 4* Nino: Meh. 4* Tharja: A third one?! Running low...32 orbs left. 3* Eliwood: Feathers. 3* Roy: Like father, like son. 23 orbs left, just enough for one more set. 3* Selena: Even more Reposition fodder. 4* Merric: Meh. 4* Lucius: Bleh. 4* Setsuna: Garbage. 3* Nowi: Was hoping for a last-minute 5*, but I guess not. 166 orbs for 3 5*s and three Reposition fodders. Not very good at all. If I come back I'll be sniping reds only.

*sigh* On the one hand I know Azura's very popular, but on the other hand now she has four non-CYL alts (and so does Camilla for that matter), more than literally anyone else. Meanwhile Ike and Roy still have only one, while Alm, Sigurd, Seliph, and Leif have precisely zero. I can understand the latter three since their games are old as heck by now, but Alm is effectively the newest FE lord and he has zero alts? I wonder if Azura was more just of an excuse to put in a legendary dancer for the whales to snap up. It would certainly explain why they don't care about putting her in so soon after another dancer alt. Anyway, unit-wise: Red: L!Marth makes this an automatic yes, but I'd also really like Flora. Tiki is neat, but not really important. Yes. Blue: Ironically this is the one color on the banner I don't care about. I loathe using dancers, so Azura herself is whatever. I'm not interested in Camilla, and I've got Fjorm+2 already. Pass. Green: L!Hector would finally give me a second Fire hero (although L!Marth would do as well), my current Giga!Nino is -Spd (read: crippled), and I don't like Helbindi, but he's a solid unit. Yes. Grey: I'm kind of hesitant on this one, but I'm probably going to pull here. S!Takumi merges would be nice if not necessary, more Eir merges would be awesome for those blessings and for buffing her, and while I really loathe Veronica because of how infuriating she is to fight in AR, I can't deny she'd be very useful in the same. Yes. EDIT: Seeing Azura's effect reminds me why I love Julia so much. +6 to all of your stats? Screw you, Divine Naga says no.

Well yes, but when IS was making Awakening their most recent experience was the backlash against Shadow Dragon and New Mystery. In that light, it's not surprising that they decided to go with what they did. Not to mention the older games, particularly the GBA ones, often had really obnoxious turn-counts (read: lots of wasting time) to pass in order to see any of that nuance for non-plot relevant characters.

Having relatively recently finished New Mystery, I think it's put a lot of the non-gameplay complaints about Awakening and Fates into perspective for me. Gimmick characters: In FE12 and especially FE11 most of our units were only marginally less faceless than the enemy mooks. They'd get an intro line and that's about it. FE12 at least had a few support conversations, but overall the level of character development was atrocious (FE11) or bad (FE12) for anyone who wasn't Marth. I'd rather take characters that have an actual personality and more than 5 seconds of screentime, even if it is one-note or centered around a gimmick, over "characters" whose only real distinguishing feature from replacement units is having an actual face. Shipping: This is sort of a corollary to the above point. I've never played Genealogy, but there AFAIK (if I'm wrong, please correct me) the only reason for one pairing or another is what it does for the child(ren); the parents themselves don't actually have any support-like conversations. While that's not bad in as of itself, I don't think it's some great sin against Fire Emblem that Awakening allowed us to properly ship characters we like together while still having kids. After all, what distinguishes FE from Advance Wars and other such strategy series is its focus on individual characters; turning falling in love and having children, even if it is often implemented very, very clumsily (*cough* Fates Outrealms *cough*) into min-maxing stat caps and optimizing skill inheritance always did feel kind of skeevy to me even if I occasionally did it. Of course this is Serenes, home of a lot of veterans and experts, so I imagine we lean more towards the min-maxing side of things, but I don't think it's either a good business decision or the right thing to do for IS to just ignore the people who want to treat pairing choices as more than simply crunching numbers. Avatar worship: Fates is really bad about this, but I'd have to say FE12 is at least as bad, not least because it tarnishes an existing (and very good, IMO) character in Marth. In Fates, even if the other characters endlessly praise you they're not portrayed as actually emotionally dependent on you. Camilla is an exception, but she's also like that with several others to an extent (particularly Selena and Elise). On the other hand FE12 Marth, rather than the stalwart hero of the war against the Shadow Dragon, ends up cripplingly dependent on Kris and not, you know, someone like his long-time paladin Jagen or his damn fiancee Caeda. At the end of the game he even wants to give you the credit (which you admittedly deserve) for winning the war, but noooo, the people need their glorious symbol. So it turns out the legendary Hero-King Marth that Chrom and Lucina idolize is almost a fiction while the true winner of the war (aka you) oh-so-nobly goes unrecognized. Almost letting you have your cake and eat it too. Fanservice: While I'm not keen on a lot of the things Awakening and Fates added on this front, the panty windows, thongs, etc weren't exactly possible with pre-3DS handhelds, so I think pointing to their absence in older games isn't all that relevant. Still, I do hope that IS cuts back on it, or least the most egregious stuff. Special (optional) beach paralogues and stuff like that is fine, but I really don't need a fully rendered cutscene almost literally shoving Camilla's T&A in my face. All in all, my non-gameplay gripes with Awakening and Fates are more in the execution than the idea. Support conversations could be refined more, and maybe not everyone has to be shippable with everyone else, but the core concept is strong. Hopefully Three Houses pays more attention to the writing than Fates. Now, for FE gameplay... Grinding: This strikes me as a "if you don't like it, don't play it" matter. Unless the game was actually balanced around grinding, which it certainly isn't, the obvious solution to there being grinding options is simply to not use them if you don't like the idea. Otherwise some people aren't skilled enough, some want to mess around with all of the game's features (i.e. a team fully tricked out with all of the cool skill combinations), etc. Casual: Not everyone wants to stress out over losing a unit 75% of the way through Kotaro's ninja cave (Leo, you moron...) and having to restart the whole mess. It's not like even most veterans play the way IS originally intended; they didn't give us five cavaliers in FE1 because Matthis, Roshea, and Vyland were such great characters, they gave us them because they expected us to keep trucking on if Cain or Abel died, not restart the whole level as has now become the standard for FE players. Reclassing: Yet another thing introduced by FE11/12 that people instead have a habit of blaming on Awakening, although the system did change in-between. Honestly, while I can sort of appreciate it from a gameplay standpoint, giving units a little more freedom to grow, from a story standpoint I find it ridiculous. Characters are written from the perspective of their original class, and reclassing very often makes their supports nonsensical. I'll freely admit that one of my reasons for my S-supporting Lucina in Awakening is so that Morgan comes as an actual damn Tactician and not a pegasus knight or mage or whatever silliness. Other stuff: I'm not sure what to call this point, so I'll just talk about some other topics of discussion I've seen. Map-wise I think Awakening seriously screwed up, most noticeably in objective variety, while Revelations was just ridiculous with all of its gimmicky stuff, but Birthright was solid/good and Conquest was great. Difficulty-wise I feel like FE games go up and down in difficulty so much that we can't really judge the recent entries based on that. Skills I don't feel qualified to comment on. Well, there's the first serious post I've written outside the Heroes forum for a while.

Hm, I'd prefer Kliff to Innes, but I really don't want to risk getting Lukas. Grey it is then. 3* Lissa: Bleh. Might as well get the one blue orb just because. 5* Kliff: Um...okay? I'm certainly pleased, especially since he's actually got decent IVs (full neutral), but I can't shake the icky feeling of how awfully convenient it is for my "lol whatever" pull to actually give me the guy I wanted the most from this banner. Feels like Feh is trying to trick me by rewarding my impulse spending...especially since I'm now tempted to go back to the Christmas banner. That went well...almost too well. Hopefully I haven't wasted my luck for the legendary banner.

And here I thought this was some silly Christmas jingle you came up with. Good for you, Captain.

Alright, old banner first. Aiming for Chrom/Lissa since I don't need Robin and Tharja is...ugh. 4* Soren: Meh. And now for the new banner. Don't particularly care who I get, so pulling all but red. 148 orbs on hand. 4* Jakob: Nope. 4* Catria: Luna fodder. 3* Bartre: Bleh. And now for these two reds, since I might as well get full use from the free summon. 4* Henry: Meh. 5* Karla: And the reds were worth it! Of course her IVs are terrible, +Def/-Atk, but I prefer that to +Atk/-Spd since she lives and dies by Speed. That was a very pleasant surprise! Now back to actual sniping. 133 orbs left. 4* Subaki: Okay. 3* Sheena: Meh. 3* Jeorge: SP fodder. 3* Klein: More DB fodder. 3* Kaze: Bleh. That was a trash pull. Well, balances out Karla I suppose. 113 orbs left. 5* Hardin: Okay, that's nice. And unlike Karla his IVs are actually good: +Atk/-Spd. 3* Cherche: Pivot for Hardin. 3* Lachesis: Feathers. 4* Virion: Here to join Cherche, I suppose. 3* Niles: Meh. 55 orbs for 2 5* units on a normal banner? Too lucky. But I'm here for a TT-bonus unit. 93 orbs left. 4* Nino: Draw Back fodder. 4* Kaze: Again? 4* Nanna: Good SI fodder. 3* Leon: SP fodder. Ugh, I wasn't planning on spending this much. Still, IS is sending a flood of orbs our way right now, so let's keep going. 76 orbs left. 4* Wrys: No thanks. 3* Boey: Worthless. 3* Raven: Also worthless. Just got to persist...63 orbs left. 5* Christmas!Fae: And there's my bonus unit! I was hoping for Eirika, but Fae's great too. IVs are +Spd/-Def, which definitely aren't good, but I wouldn't necessarily call them bad either. Now for the rest of the set. 4* Titania: Haven't seen you in a while. 3* Athena: Moonbow fodder. 4* Sophia: Meh. 4* Fir: Nope. And there we go.105 orbs for 3 5*s and a few SI fodder units. All in all, a good haul. Now to save for the Legendary banner.