DefyingFates

I'm not technical minded enough to be able to give her a proper rating, but I think Nel's in a weird position. Her class has good stats and obviously the Dragon typing is always a big plus, but her Personal Skill is useless when deployed without Nil and her Class skill is completely useless unless you get her early in a playthrough (and even then Engaged Attacks are only used by a few bosses). If she got blanket protection from all Corrupted units or something instead, then she'd at least have some lasting value. I wish her version of Fell Child was good for more than just replaying Divine Paralogues/ Fell Xenologues, because not only is the design cool, Nel herself is a really good character too (at least in my opinion). Nil's Fell Child is far better. P.S. I'd like DLC Emblems to be added to the discussion now that we've started discussing the DLC characters too, please!

Thanks! I guess we're getting the trailer (if not a Feh Channel) tomorrow then. i really hope Peony's gimmick helps older units...

No Feh Channel or even a banner trailer today, weird. What timezone does your chart use @Diovani Bressan? Should the rest of the world be adding a day to each event?

But Rearmed Heroes were, I believe. So it's possible this new Hero type will be as well (especially if the speculation about them letting you buff old Heroes is true). We have gotten Feh Channels on Saturday before, right? Sunday's definitely off the table and the banner drops on Monday, so unless Peony's being held back until November...

@Ether Thank you for all the feedback! I'd only run one of them at a time. Brave Tiki will still be on my Arena team for at least another year I think, unless we get another F2P unit with a trainee bonus or something. I chose Ruptured Sky because then I could feed her a M!Byleth followed by a F!F!Byleth for Distant A/S Solo but I'll see if I can get Vital Astra off of the Divine Codes or something, thank you! What would you suggest to fix her Special activation troubles? I mentioned earlier that I have a spare Ced, would Special Spiral 4 and/ or Infantry Pulse 4 help her? Yeah, even when I wrote that build idea I figured he'd be put on the backburner for a while. I'll come back to him once I get some better fodder. Would he be a better recipient of Ced's kit instead for the other slots? Thank you for the warning! If only Quickened Pulse didn't score so low. Even if it doesn't change his score in Arena, I may go back to my original plan of hoping I get another B!Soren. I considered Time's Pulse for a moment, but losing the Ploy would be a big deal, wouldn't it? --- P.S. We don't have a new event calendar yet, but does anyone have any safe predictions for when we'll get our next New Heroes? I'm curious about the Feh Channel we'll likely get beforehand to explain what's going on with Peony.

Following @Ice Dragon's advice I've been tinkering with this Arena Score calculator with possible unit builds based on which units/ fodder I currently have: Lumera: Cyril: (Hexblade is only there because it's easy to get from Febail. Even if I don't use Cyril with a mage, the +7 from the Oath bonus is good... right?) Khadein Soren: I put two of these along with my already built B!Tiki and one of the Askr Trio and they don't reduce my Arena score (as Ice said, Soren scores the same even if he has Flare and Mag NFU). Are they good units to have? I'm only going up one bin at best when I change out my existing core, but some recent units have been giving me trouble from time to time, so I thought I could at least consider making some changes. Thank you for your input, everyone!

But keep in mind that we only meet Randolph and the others after choosing to side with Edelgard. In the other routes we only see them as generic generals. With the exception of Fleche trying to avenge her brother in AM, they don't get any character development outside of CF (and even there we only learn enough to know they're well-meaning people). There's still a hard pivot from Edelgard being willing to kill her friends (after a token "I didn't want to do this, but oh well" beforehand) and work with a sociopath in Chapter 11 to doing a full 180 and surrounding herself with good guys in Chapter 12. I see you're using Hopes as a basis for a bunch of arguments here, but I don't think it's right to use that as justification for events in Three Houses since it was written a few years after Houses came out. Hopes threw in a bunch of extra exposition just to plug holes in Three Houses' world building, but with the exception of Claude's real name none of it was even so much as hinted at in either Three Houses or the interviews about it. On the other hand, while CS itself is non-canon, I'll grant you that it's harder to tell how much of the lore there was written alongside the main campaigns and how much was done afterwards, Metodey's cameo included. For example, it's possible that he is a part of the Imperial Army and just does mercenary work for a secondary income (the game and DLC came out in 2019 and 2020 after all, what millennial wouldn't relate to someone having to work two jobs?) Heck, just look at real world militaries/ police, there are corrupt people everywhere.

I think the point of having an over-the-top villain like Metodey was just a cheap way to make Edelgard/ the Flame Emperor seem even more evil by comparison, which is why nothing about him makes sense (and another reason Crimson Flower's Edelgard acting like she's always doing the best with what she has feels so odd).

Thank you very much, I'll try to remember this! I should have paid more attention during the Plumeria + Ced banner...

Does the current Engage rerun banner have 2 sparks or just 1? Thanks as always!!

This thread's been dead for almost a month so I hope double posting is okay for the sake of defibrillating it. Anyway: I got a spare A!Ced wanted to know if this build but with SS4 and an AoE Special would be a good meta choice too? Ced's putting in some good work in Arena for me, but I was curious if the same would hold true for K!Soren. And to repeat my previous question, what are some good build options for Cyril? As I said before, he doesn't have Slaying and I don't know how much that hampers his ability to run the usual candidates for Specials/ if it means stuff like SS4 become more important for him. As for my newest question, are Duel skills still worth using in Arena these days? Current F2P units hit 180 naturally and that's not even getting into premium ones and outliers like Cyril scoring 205. I have a og!Pent and og!Marianne to spare and was wondering if they would be good fodder for someone. I'm already crossing my fingers for a good Arcane tome for Nino, for example.

So you mean each Emblem would get a small arc with their corresponding character instead of just their one chapter together as Engage does right now?

But Edelgard flat out says Nemesis was a freedom fighter and Rhea only wanted to control Fodlan. The only concession she makes is saying that the Agarthans are also evil. I think the other three routes do a much better job of portraying Rhea as a morally grey figure despite her being one of the "good guys" in them. To an extent, and while I do kinda get the reasoning in CF of Rhea being desperate and Edelgard not, their moralities there definitely feel off when Edelgard is the one trying to a score a full house's worth of war crimes in the other routes. Look at the use off Demonic Beasts for example; Rhea in CF only deploys those robots and when Dedue and the other people of Faerghus use Crest Stones it's treated as a tragic act of desperation, but no one on Edelgard's side seems to feel any remorse over deploying wave after wave of them outside of CF.

Exactly. I think what makes Rhea so interesting is that she genuinely meant well and was just too grief-stricken to adapt with the times. That makes her a far more complex character than people who are just evil for the sake of it (and again, part of the reason Crimson Flower's version of the backstory feels so bland and full of holes when it tries to say "Nemesis was a good guy actually" without giving us much more information than that).

But that description even says Nemesis acting "under the pretense" of liberating Fodlan. So even his bio admits he was just a warmonger, right?

If Brave Gullveig is any indication, Gullveig seems to be a nihilist who's just going through the motions. While it doesn't explain her attitude in the reveal trailer (unless the curse is forcing her to act that way), I wouldn't be surprised if she brought Breidablik with her because she wants to be defeated/ put out of her misery. I was surprised by that reveal for Brave Gullveig so I'm hoping they'll do something with it for "canon" Gullveig too.

Thanks! The first skill in the B row I have is Mag NFU, so I guess that's what I'll go with if I end up committing to this build idea. I hope we get new sources of Flare and/ or Mag NFU soon... EDIT: I don't know if the double posting rule applies when a topic stagnates, but just in case it does, what should I do if I want to build Cyril? He doesn't have the Slaying effect and I'm not sure if that means he's not good at running Deadeye. I was thinking something along the lines of: Would that work or is he better with Ruptured Sky or some other 2-turn CD skill? Thanks as always, everyone!

Have you listed those skills in order of preference? For example, I don't have Sabotage A/ 3. Thank you for the build idea!

Oh, so Arcane Euphoria is the better choice for him over a speed oriented tome? Thanks for the information! Also, Def/Res Ploy 3 CAN be inherited straight from either Res or Def Ploy 3 on their own, this isn't a Fort Def/ Res situation. Finally! By the way, does K!Soren use her C Skill well too, if you inherit it alongside Still Water? Combine that with Mag NFU and Flare and he'd be a good unit, right? I wish I'd gotten a third copy of Brave Soren then, but at the same time that banner took so many Orbs from me as is...

What does this mean? That's what I thought too. It's pretty cool and if Def/Res Ploy really can be inherited off of regular Def or Res Ploy 3, that makes her incredibly inheritance friendly for any mage (and great for any dancer thanks to WoM4). Now if only she was an infantry unit to give Flare to... P.S. I'm tempted to turn Soren into an Arena core unit if this weapon works well with him, since he earns the same score as my +10 Brave Eirika without D Duel Cav 4 and is easier to merge. Crazy, huh? Of course we have a new Blue GHB unit complete with Prf coming tomorrow too...

Ah... yeah, I don't blame Nintendo US for changing that. By the way, Arcane Euphoria is better for slower units, right? Would it be good for someone like Khadein Soren or would he rather wait for the speedy Arcane Blue Tome?

I... don't get it? But Plumeria got a new Dream skill just as you said, that's awesome! I'm going to try and get a copy, but I'm more blown away by IS remembering guys can be Ascended too. Congratulations to all the Ced fans out there!

Secret ending unlocked! But in all seriousness, if this were a feature, I'm sure in a mock battle/ casual mode the unit would just say they felt sick and retreat when their HP hit 0.

I'd love this myself. I kinda get why Lords always have the same role - they need to be on every map (and thus survive them all) and IS probably thinks it'd be more satisfying if they were on the front lines - but at the very least it would be nice to have multiple Lords at once with only one of them being an infantry melee unit... and not a sword unit for once! But again, while I get the reasoning I would love at least one game where the main Lord is designed to be a support unit and it's the supporting cast (or at least the main royals) who do the actual fighting. I'd like them to be a peace-lover too, but I'm sure players would accuse them of being weak or naive or something if they were 😕 P.S. While he's not a pacifist, Shiroe from Log Horizon strikes me as a good example of this idea: he's the main character but his powers are based on buffing allies, so he uses the fact that he's always on the backlines to pull double duty as the party's tactician. And hey, that would make sense in an FE game too! I'd like this too. Or at the very least, let the base game be a free for all and establish canon couples in spin-offs or alternate media like a manga adaptation. Just so we have a concrete idea of who ends up with who. At the same time, this runs the risk of enraging people based on whether their ships became canon or not 😛 Yes, please! Especially after FEH showed us how cool flying refreshers can be after the brief taste we got with the herons!

I know we're a lot better as a whole than we were before, but I feel like the past few years have gotten worse the few before it. The uptick in targeted transphobia for example - even if it's just a bunch of existing transphobes being more publicized, as you say. But now we're going far off-topic. Are there any character archetypes you'd like to see return, either as is or deconstructed?