Xenomata

Dancer refreshing unit. Or sing, take your pick.

Not really. ~Oboro has Armor Slaying and Close Def. ~Lukas has Special Cooldown decrease and Sturdy Stance. One is geared more towards general close-range tanking and killing armors, making her a great asset for throwing against the wide spectrum of Armor units in existence (besides ranged armors at least). The other is a strict Physical Damage wall, regardless of range, and has additional strength to support him, though the defensive boost is slightly stronger.

Four this time. FOUR-tunately, only half of them were 5* breaking accidents! I fully expected to +10 her eventually. She was +8 before... the incident. I knew going in that I was not coming out with less than more copies of her than I needed for her +10. At least I have some good fodder for magic tanks, fliers, and beasts who need additional offense support though! I kinda knew he would be +10 one day, but he's not someone I ever really wanted to +10... but since I had just done some spring cleaning and had the feathers, may as well make any future 5* pitybreakers of him into a good feather mine. He... currently doesn't have a seal because I don't even know what I'd give a flying Dancer who probably won't even see that much combat, and most of my supportive seals are in use... I did not expect to +10 her... ever to be honest. But by the time I realized what had happened, it was far too late... I decided to just do it. Sigh... guess the Christmas spirit is ever strong in me. I knew I wanted to +10 him one day... seems like a nice guy who I could get along with if I ever met him, and he serves a powerful role in my army. It did, however, take a slight bit of prompting... heh, funny that of the 4* units I choose to +10, two of them are defensive lances, but of completely different caliburs. ...one of these days I'll need to compile all my +10s into one post...

@Diovani Bressan I think your image is broken or deleted. Grabbed this from Gamepress. And here are my thoughts... After looking through the artwork... goddamn, Corrin needs to put some freaking pants on.

Lukas gets pretty much exactly what we were expecting... whoda thought. It's kinda like his normal variant and his Picnic variant fused their weapons together to make this... Sully and Stahl get the exact same weapon. Sully at least can prevent certain doubles with her Speed and has... mixed enough defenses that she can take most anything Red have to throw at her. Distant Counter on her wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but... man, she has low Atk... As for Stahl... well, at least he'll be a devoted Axe killer. I could see him taking a few Green Manaketes on as well, but... hm... Faye got way more than she ever had since the release of the game. Sure she loses a little bit of ranged defensive ability, but she then gets a little more Attack as well. And me oh my Quick Riposte as the forge? So glad I invested Distant Defense 4 into her now. Glad I saved my Divine Dews to see what comes this update. I think Hana can wait a little longer for her refine to ensure Faye and Lukas get the treatment they deserve...

Even if she goes +Spd with that build, she only has 40 Speed at 0 merge, which is far below what most any unit would want to be running as an offensive Speed-based unit. She could fix some of the problem with Darting Blow SS and maybe one of the Spd Waves, but she otherwise doesn't quite match up to the speed of other Infantry Swords, even if she does have the advantage of Desperation Assault on Sol Katti.

Oh dear... a Forging Bonds based on this banner? No way this ends well...

Naturally fast units will be able to reap the benefits nicely though, and we do have Darting Blow as a Sacred Seal should they still need an extra boost. Darting Stance might be good to, as long as the Blade passives work on both phases and you're using an EP speedster... So it can work either way, really. [Attack and Speed A slot] and Flashing Blade 3 SS, Flashing Blade 4 and Darting Blow 3 SS. At that point I think the question becomes if you need the effects of Flashing Blade on more than one unit...

Huh... kinda forgot about Flashing Blade... Well anyways, Mareeta seems great. Flashing Blade 4 seems broken, given the effect and now it also grants +5 damage, so no real loss for speedy units. Wrath looks like it'll be a prime skill to throw on anyone who gets FB4, Mareeta especially, and Wo Dao users got a new toy to play with as well. Oh boy, I think I know what I'll be doing with my +10 Brave Celica now... Can't say I know much about Mareeta besides her being possessed, though I do wonder if she'll get the Hardin treatment and this'll be the only form we ever see her in... which is a shame, cause there aint much to learn about a person when they're possessed. Berkut... you got a little something in your neck there, might wanna see a doctor about that... Warding Stance 4 matches its brother, no surprise there, but I do wonder how much Res Berkut himself will have. Kriemhild doesn't even have a stat boost like most other recent Prfs do. But hey, this seems like a great boon for anyone looking for a safe way to get a unit down to below 75% HP! Corrin... needs her Smash Bros tights, I'm sorry but that's a lot of thigh. ...anyway, she looks like she'd go great with Mordecai. He can just punch her into the fray, everyone nearby will be debuffed, she'll be buffed up herself from Mordy's Link skill, and also she has +6 to all stats from being a lone wolf. Sudden Panic is pretty much what I'd expect from a skill conversion of Aversa's Night. Tiki... goddamn. First off, yay Divine Breath duplicate. Second, Dragon Armor teams just got a whole new level of nightmarish. Tiki seriously just GETS +4 to all stats AND Armor March status for either being alone or being next to a dragon??? And her Ignis trigger added 32 damage, so you know she's packing in Defense. Oh man, I should probably get my Falchions ready... Corrin does though: She (they?) was driven to activating their dragon form after the death of Mikoto in the early chapters of Fates, and they were completely uncontrollable (lore-wise, they could still be controlled in-game), even almost strangling Azura. Kana replicates this in their Paralogue. It wasn't even after the Fates three-way path split.

Depends on what you wanna use him for. +Atk would help him take out Colorless and Blue if he were to take a TA3 Raventome set, and +Def would improve his physical bulk elsewhere, especially Owltome. Mine is being used for TA3 Raventome right now.

Oh I'm sure the Queen is more than willing to hang with Bartre, Stahl, Donnel, Raigh, and Virion! (they're some of the slightly more common summons I get) I mean, apparently the Manifestation of Chaos is not enough for the Queen, so maybe some common citizens, a soldier, and some guy with a bib will be more than enough!

Golden Provolone.

I disagree. Ridiculous cosmetic accessories that have no actual impact on the gameplay of a game are ALWAYS the most important items of any video game ever made, and I will argue this point til the ends of time. And I will do it while wearing a block of cheese on my head.

...huh. I just realized that that comic where Kiran is trying to use strategies from past FE games, and Lissa (I think it was Lissa?) said that Pair Up was from Awakening... ...that comic did not age well.

Since Sully and Stahl are getting the Bull Lance and Panther Blade, I can imagine them getting similar weapons to Cain and Abel. Maybe with a different effect for the unrefined weapon. If they're boring it'll be Triangle Adept, but if they wanna be "unique" it'll be a form of Attack up and something else that the two of them can benefit from, because none of their stats synergize with the other whatsoever. Last idea for them, they'd do something to reference Pair-Up (from Awakening that is, not in Heroes) Lukas and Faye meanwhile... I can see Lukas getting a Killer Lance prf with a Sturdy Stance refine, and Faye getting a Mirror Stance prf that has an effect similar to forged Brynhildr, or what ILikeKirbys suggested, or something...

A little something I find interesting to observe is how the stat alterations affected the launch units. You have the Heavy Spear wielders being slower than their original appearances (Est, for instance, was at least on par with her sister Catria), units who compensate for having a lower stat growth with skills (Virion and Odin suffer the most from this I think), and the Avatars of Awakening and Echoes who don't have a singular core growth to take from. The Robins are the same unit different color, but Male Corrin winds up being stronger and slightly more resilient, but less defensive than Female Corrin, who also edges him out in Speed. Once they begin releasing units, it seems they were less inclined to alter their stats based on their equipment, and then later they mostly kinda sorta used their original stat spread and growths as a reference for their final goal for the unit. Well... now that Luna Arc is a weapon, Canas could get... Tome of Luna with a Res variant of Luna Ark's effect? Maybe that as the forge effect, and Owltome effect as the base? ...it'd at least let him stand out a little compared to Raigh.

...hm. So Tiki made it to the finals... Tiki is my team... ...well alright then. Works for me, that's 1k more feathers I have than if I went with Fae like I had originally thought about doing.

... ...remember that glitch from a while back, during the Raven/Lucius BHB? It was around when we were first allowed to reset a Special map in the middle of a battle, and if you did then SP multipliers would stack from previous maps, and it would stack high enough that it'd simply loop into getting like 1 or 2 SP per kill, but by that time the last battle was netting 600+ SP per kill. ...quite the times we've lived in.

5x SP is insane... a Valor skill plus a Blessing in just the ranged training maps nets at least 1,300 SP, if not more. I have to imagine that it's even more insane with a TT bonus unit bonus...

Oh I like Sully and Stahl's weapons. The looks of Faye's is a little questionable (then again I guess it's not exactly possible to make a personal out of a very barely altered Iron Bow), but Lukas... man, it doesn't even look like something a Spartan would wield.

I just saw the new weapons for the four and my god they look so... wow. I'm not sure if I'm okay with this. Why does Lukas have such a... colorful spearhead?

I checked against Odin and Tharja as well, and it affects them to. Tharja specifically only does 6 damage to Dull Range Deirdre, while dealing 13 to Guard Deirdre. I tried this out with LA!Lyn (default skillset except for Dull Range build replacing Guard with Dull Range), whose default weapon has Dull Range built into it, and it affects her as well. I tried out seeing if this affected Dull Melee as well (just a simple Sharena vs Laevatein), and it didn't. Unlike Dull Ranged, the battle analysis only showed Dull Close affecting combat, not Sharena's Fensalir unless it was the non-DC build. So... yeah it has to be a glitch. But it seems related specifically to Dull Range, not Deirdre's Divine Naga. These are the builds I used for Odin and Tharja:

My Bladetomes have more or less been relegated to Arena Assault duty and similar. Nino is probably the only one I'd be interested in +10ing later on, but they've all generally fallen in use and are no longer seen in those harder maps. It's be a more "fun" skillset than anything anyways. I've generally been of the opinion that Iris's Tomes special refine is not necessary and that Nino would benefit more from additional Speed and letting other units buff her up. Probably not a popular opinion, but then I did go all out on boosting Stahl's Resistance so probably not winning any credibility points here...

I'm done summoning from this thing... and I won't be getting Fjorm. So many sessions... I got Lily, one of the last normal summon characters I was missing, and was able to unbind like five dragons (one of them to max unbind from none prior), but not a single Fjorm... far as I'm concerned, the game is telling me I've no business summoning for her.

Brave Roy's Attack fortunately doesn't need that much help to become high enough to trigger Heavy Blade. Also, who do you need to overpower with 63 Atk? The units with that much Atk generally are Armors who sport monsterous Defense, so Roy generally isn't doing much damage anyway no matter how much Atk he has (and taking LnD3 into account, he'll probably die on counterattack). My own Brave Roy is +Atk... kinda wish I had your +Spd. As for Leanne, +Spd. Despite hurting her Defense, it makes her harder to double overall (I'm even kinda thinking my own Leanne could use some form of Spd boosting over Mirror Stance...). Small question of my own, should I give a Bladetome the Bonus Doubler skill? I know that the skill won't add even more to the damage of the tome, but since Bladetomes are expected to be running Field Buffs anyways, doesn't it make a little more sense to give them that over Fury (+3 or +4 that can be Chilled) or Life and Death (which I'm not saying is bad, but it does impact them defensively, and again Chills)? Semi-related follow-up, how does Nino with Iris's Tome special refine, Even Spd Wave C slot, and Even Def or Even Res Wave SS sound? It's not Odd and Even Atk wave together, but it does make her completely self-sufficient on even numbered turns, which Turn 2 is usually about when my units are engaging with the enemy. Lastly, @Kaden I think I'll wait and see about the Sword business for now... see if I really think she needs a new sword or not. Firesweep does seem... fun though.