Xenomata

I do believe Halloween FemCorrin is the first unit to come with 3 Tier 4 passives. Honestly the worst one can say about her is that she basically needs the DC(d) seal to function at her absolute best. Even the fact she just has Shield Pulse installed in her weapon is nice. I like how Male Corrin sounds. I dunno why, he sounds almost childlike. Is he going to be a bulky/slow unit or an all-round unit? Up til now he's always leaned more toward offensive stats, so seeing him with only Atk mods is kind of... weird. So Naga is the demote...? But what's interesting to me is that she doesn't have her Prf passive. Even if it's kinda eh, they usually give a Leg/Mythic heroes passives to the unit as long as the move type matched, but here she's just a regular unit. Inheritable weapon looks good for defensive dragons, though there's more methods of obtaining NFU than there are methods of obtaining Tempo so I'd say the previous Breath weapon will still be preferred. Duma/Mila looks quite mean... and they even threw in the Savior effect just to add a candied cherry to the already stacked cake. ...I want them. ...yeah, I'd say this is a pretty good banner. I wonder if I can trade my internal organs for orbs at a good price...?

@XRay gonna be kinda weird not having... well two voices of higher-level analytics I guess, but hey if that's the choice you think is right then that's alright. Regular games at least only cost $60 new before DLC. I know I wish I didn't spend so much money on this game sometimes... I mean I guess you can still have input... but you know what I mean. ...if they released a new alt of Nowi though, I'd be spending like crazy.

If I had a nickle for every copy of Fallen Lyon I've gotten since his reveal as part of the recent Hall of Forms, I would have 3 nickles, which isn't a lot but it's really weird that it has happened 3 times now, totally off-focus. This does, on the other hand, mean that once the HoF redemption period begins, my Fallen Lyon will be +9 merge. Guess I should put a little more effort into getting him good skills now?

Some refines to keep you safe on trick-or-treating night... or to make the night one of endless terror...? Or in one case, leave you in a McDonalds parking lot by yourself because he heard a noise. Brazen Cat Fang, the Red Beast Weapon of Lethe: Gallia's Valkyrie (Grants Spd+3. If unit is not adjacent to an ally, grants Atk/Spd+6 during combat. At start of turn, if unit is adjacent to only beast or dragon allies or unit is not adjacent to any ally, unit transforms (otherwise, unit reverts). If unit transforms, grants Atk+2 and if unit initiates combat, inflicts Atk/Def-4 on foe during combat and foe cannot make a follow-up attack.) Death, the Blue Tome of Delthea: Tatarrah's Puppet (Grants Res+3. Grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+4 during combat. After combat, if unit attacked, deals 4 damage to unit. ) Deep-Blue Bow, the Blue Bow of Lyn: Lady of the Beach (Grants Spd+3. Effective against flying and armored foes. If foe's HP = 100% and unit initiates combat, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+4 during combat.) Bunny Fang, the Green Beast Weapon of Yarne: Timid Taguel (Grants Spd+3. Effective against cavalry foes. After combat, if unit's HP <=75% grants Special cooldown count-2. Effect [Beast(Cavalry)] [Beast (Cavalry)] At start of turn, if unit is adjacent to only beast or dragon allies or if unit is not adjacent to any ally, unit transforms (otherwise, unit reverts). If unit transforms, grants Atk+2, and if unit initiates combat, inflicts Atk/Def-4 on foe during combat and foe cannot make a follow-up Attack. ) Razing Breath, the Colorless Dragonstone of Tiki: Torpid Dragon (Effective against dragon foes. Unit can counterattack regardless of foe's range. If foe's Range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of foe's Def or Res. ) As an initial prediction, Yarne will get some form of Canto because the original idea of him having a full-charge Galeforce after his combat ends in order to "escape" (because we were definitely going to let him do that...) pretty much matches what Canto is capable of doing.

Welp, that is the last time I use a defensive Save unit in an Abyssal clear. Legendary Julia's new refine is great! Just having one attack be beefed up by effective damage was already good, but TWO attacks getting beefed up? Man oh man! Legenary Azura is here because... I dunno, she did tank a few blows I guess, which is probably better than can be said about most of my other dancers... Halloween Myrrh got tricked out before this fight, but... man, she kinda made it into a super-slow slog, didn't she? Probably partly the fault of that Troubadour keeping that one Blue Dragon alive for so long... but she did keep the party protected from melee attackers, which was the goal from the start. Scion Nanna's first real scuffle went well I'd say. Might have fell short a few times, thanks to Solo not always being active, but no biggie. Now if only the devs would stop being cowards and release an inheritable Staff weapon that had actual in-combat effects...

From Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword, Ninian was one of two dancers from the game and is (probably) Roy's mom, but she never really fought... until now anyway. Faithful Breath triggers a Def/Res Cantrip effect whenever she uses her Prf Dance assist, but it also enables Ninian to fight: if her HP is over 40%, she gets a power boost, and if she is initiating combat and has a Triangle Advantage (read: Blue) or if a [Penalty] is active on her target, they can't counterattack without the Null C-Disrupt skill. Dragon's Dance is just like any other dance normally, but when it's been used one turn after the battle has begun, Ninian (and her pair-up cohort) will also be given another action and an Atk/Spd bonus, as well as the Isolation debuff. While this needs a few turns to recharge, only one unit needs to be out of place for her to charge in and end the battle on the spot... She also comes with the Atk/Spd Catch 4, Spd/Res Near Trace, and B Feud passives, and Dragon Fang will scale off 50% of Ninian's Atk. On Abyssal, she is near-guaranteed to have a penalty inflicted if an enemy is left in a cardinal direction of her thanks to the Panic Ploy seal. The Oracle was felled once before by Durandal. No version of it here may be able to end her as fast as it once did, but there's more than one way to slay a dragon...

THAT was somehow read as "cannot make a follow-up attack," ala Null Follow-up, not ala Firesweep. Oops.

...they gave Multi-Monoeye Drones that fire lasers to a DANCER??? I can't help but feel like as a dancer Ninian isn't offering quite a whole lot compared to other Dancers with Prf refreshing skills, and as an offensive unit she's not exactly packing anything unique... but together on one unit, she could actually be a potentially potent unit. The only thing is that without any form of damage reduction she's not going to be able to handle more than a few combats overall, at least against melee and CC-ranged enemies. But then when her Prf refresh's unique effect only activates once before going on a 3-turn coolown, she's probably going to be a little too busy with refreshing to actually enter combat herself... as for the rest of the banner: Reginn is aight but was also free, Legendary Lilina is still a potent AoE Special spammer, and Fallen Lilith is great if you can remember to actually use the Pair Up feature (fodder for Swift Sparrow 3/Lull SpdDef, AtkRes Solo 4, and AtkSpd Catch 4/Dive Bomb/Spd Smoke 4) Nott has the Pathfinder effect by default, Legendary FemByleth can give her nearby allies the Tempo effect, and Fallen Ninian gives some extra goodies on refreshing an ally (fodder for AtkSpd Menace, Ruptured Skies/AtkSpd Ideal 4/Lull SpdRes, and B Duel Infantry 4/Odd Pulse Tie/Cross Spur Atk) Legendary MaleByleth can give his allies the Bonus variant of Null Follow-Up, while Legendary Xander is a nuke on a horse (fodder for AtkDef Ideal 4/Lull AtkRes/Times Pulse and AtkSpd Catch 4/C Feud,) on top of being the focus color with Ninian. Mila is mostly support effects for Aether Raids Light seasons, Ascended Florina enables allies to warp within 2 spaces of herself, and Tine... wants to hurt herself so she can break through enemy damage reduction... hm... (fodder for Bracing Stance 3, AtkSpd Push 4/SpdDef Far Trace/Joint Drive Spd, and Fury 4/Null Follow-Up/B Feud ...honestly I do like Ninian, but I'm calling a pass on this one. ...it's Halloween next month, my favorite banner of the year!

Technically speaking Thunderhead Olwen's refine does exactly the job it needs to do, being Spd/Res Rein 5 on a unit who has a Bladetome. The main problem is that more units have ways of either ignoring her stat bonuses (ergo losing a lot of Atk) or inflicting Panic to make said bonuses detrimental to Olwen. The existence of Lulls means for most units Olwen is only getting a +12 Atk boost instead of +24, and in the case of defensive units running Lull Atk/Def or Atk/Res she's losing even more Atk because that bonus is being ignored. It still works if you can get it to work, just keep in mind that Bladetome may not be the most overwhelming strat as it once was. Annand is... barely fodder, let's be honest. If you have a unit who already wants Sturdy Impact, or if you have a unit who wants Guard Bearing, then yes she is a fodder unit. Unbound Blade is technically a good weapon for defensive Sword units (if you don't have access to a spare copy of Rearmed Lif anyway.) But that's all circumstantial.

A unit with the first version of a given Prf skill cannot inherit the second version. They must have come with it originally in order to be able to learn it, so FluffyHat Julia and Fallen Julia cannot learn Light and Dark 2. For most units Vital Astra (which you've been calling Regnal Astra) simply offers a 2-cooldown special that provides consistent damage in the form of a percentage of the units Spd. If you don't have any plans to build a unit who would be able to use at least that much, it'd be safe to skip on Asc.Mareeta. Honestly yeah Asc.Ishtar's fodder is kind of generic. If you use her often enough then maybe merging her would be a good option? Even without the ability for other Julia's to receive Li/Da2 Julia still does offer the good ARmenace skill, so if you really want Summer Micaiah to have the skill there's no better time to grab the fodder for it.

The Resplendent after Fae will be Jeorge: Perfect Shot. Sigh... once again amazing-looking art is wasted on an unremarkable unit.

Scathach, or Ulster if you played Awakening.

I can't help but think this luxury is timed. Null C-Disrupt is still very limited in availability yes, and it is an effect that does not have a [Bonus] form, but I feel like the moment one unit gains the ability to pass it on via a skill that that'll be it, Firesweep is effectively dead now that all the high-tier players will be running said unit, Medeus, and whatever combination of Save tanks they want. Ascended Fjorm is one of the only units who has even a partial version of the effect, and she continues to be an annoyance to me when she appears.

Some of the most popular to use units are ones who has the most effects in their weapons and Prf skills, which can easily be seen in the likes of Brave units, Legendary/Mythic units, and apparently alts of units who had Prf skills on their Legendary/Brave alts, plus stacking even more bonuses onto those same units. Not to mention almost every other new unit comes with some form of Damage reduction that weapon refines available to common units don't get. It's not like it makes the base game that hard, but PvPcpu is pretty much a game of trying to break through effect after effect.

It is technically possible to catch up relatively quickly from square one. There's just enough free units available to you by now that you could scrape through the earliest levels on just them alone. However I'm not sure if the Feh experience is actually worth coming back to. It honestly feels like the longer the game goes on, the more powercreeping becomes a major issue. 1. We're just now getting skills from up to Mythic Hero Askr's release. Assuming that the skill pool is updated every month, then perhaps yes ARtempo will be in the pool by the TMS revival HoF. However since this is the first HoF Revival, we don't necessarily know what that would mean for skill pool updates in concurrence with revivals. 2. Keep in mind that without sufficient growth Kiria's defenses are not that good (38/29/34 at base) and ranged units generally do not make for good Melee walls. Slotting in Def/Res Ideal 4 or Bracing Stance 3 at least makes her Ranged tanking game better. As for Atk Smoke 4, while the follow-up denial is good to have it is only available after her first combat, something to keep in mind. 3. It was announced in the latest Feh Channel that there would be a sparkable banner with the coming revival.

On Arcane EdgelordSwordieSlashie as an inheritable weapon, its effects lean most toward units with high Atk and defensive stats but low Spd, considering fast units don't have much use for guaranteed follow-ups outside of breaking through Wary Fighter effects without NFU. Sword Armors would absolutely LOVE this weapon if their Prf sword didn't already favor heavy defensive effects, making any one them quite tricky Near Save units to break through. Even if the weapon didn't exactly fit though, it's an unarguably better Slaying Edge so if you already use that then there's literally no reason to switch over. Also 999 Divine Dews? Hot damn! Question, could a Forma unit be merged into a Forma unit? Probably not but it'd be nice if such were the case since the TMS rerun would mean a second chance at building a good Mamori without feeling like the first Mamori was wasted. This is consistent with the English version. Also worth noting that equipping the Arcane Weapon locks the unit out of using any other Prf skills, and Arcane Weapons will not be available in the Hall of Forms to anyone except the original wielder of the skill (which begs to question if a Forma Rearmed Hero can still be used for SI in the maybe 20 years it will be before any theoretical Rearmed Hero is made available in HoF?) Summoner can also use Arcane Weapons as long as anyone has the skill, whether they be Rearmed or some basic ass nobody.

New Fire Emblem game announced with the recent Nintendo Direct, titled Fire Emblem ENGAGE, which in contrary to Three Houses not really having any reference to any other titles (in fact I'm pretty sure it's just amiibo-locked songs and the names of some weapons) seems to have its whole gimmick BE referring to other titles. Their lords anyway. What'll be the name of this world, World of Engagement? Think the Three Houses takeover has finally met its match? What I find interesting is that between Heroes and Engage, Sigurd's design seems to be more or less accepted as how it was originally shown in Genealogy of the Holy War, similar to how the character designs of Shadow Dragon have mostly been given modern touchups (less cartoony at least) and most unlike how the designs of Gaiden were totally overhauled and may as well be different characters from those in Echoes.

Yes. Yes I have a MAJOR issue with it. Just look at Flame Lyn for recent example. She has four effects on her weapon not counting the slaying effect (stat boost, damage boost, Guard effect, start-of-combat Special Charge for herself and allies) and an additional 3 from her Prf A passive ALONE (another stat boost, damage boost, healing on hits.) Through her base kit she gets another two that aren't active skill effects (damage boost off Godlike Reflexes, [Dodge] bonus from Spd Smoke 4,) and she can get more through SI to her B passive and SS slots. That's just what she gets by herself though. Other units can grant her even more effects. There comes a point where the reason why I lose combats is not because my units were in bad matchups, but because the number of effects I have to deal with have become so numerous that I lose track of some and get blindsided because whoops I forgot that unit has Guard, Triangle Attack, Guidance, and Dodge in effect but only got them at the start of their turn, making it into an artificially bad matchup rather than a natural one. You cannot tell me anything that would help me overcome this. I could study every single unit I'm dealing with at the current moment for an hour, but I'll still forget something. This is a limitation of my own human mind.

I see no reason for Yune to get a disappointing refine. She already has all the tools she needs to have a strong gameplan (debuff the enemy for strong returns), those tools just need to be made better. And unlike Eir, she doesn't have a reason to have a refine that gets unfocused from her original or player-established role. Plus she's not a DC unit, so that already makes her refine 50% better than the bare minimum. ...my bias may be showing a bit, but my argument stands.

Huh. That's kinda interesting actually. Would probably screw with me trying to get used to that coming off standard FE mechanics, assuming the distinction even makes a difference for RD wyverns.

Not counting Haar, the only one who has an updated base weapon effect as far as I can tell is Julia. On the lone positive side, Brave Edelgard does not have Galeforce or Damage Reduction on her first attack. On the utter negative side, she is now a giant statball outside of Spd, gets hp recovery on attack, and has Guard. When will this game stop being plagued by the existence that is Edelgard... Dimitri looks good. Certainly... better than other DC weapon refines >.> Kinda looks like Claude got Failnaught/Falling Star lite for his refine (PLUS Tempo.) All goes good together and certainly makes up for the fact that he didn't get a Prf skill. ...ugh, Lysithea's refine is good, and makes me wish all the more that I had her... ...well... Sothis did technically get a remix? In the sense that she is now a little faster and has flat damage reduction? ...I know refines will get slightly worse over time for remixes, but this is sad even by DC refine standards... This girl seriously invoking her orginal refine so long ago, and I am LOVING IT. She certainly has the Res to be withstanding the typically meh PP attacks of dragons. I'm sure people will be comparing her to her recently released mother, but... I don't care, already refined. Only a shame that she's not able to do a whole lot about Nifls... I'm guessing that Wyvern Riders are weak to Thunder magic in the Tellius games? Are they... not weak to Bows as well? I'm not well-versed in Tellius mechanics. He probably would have been fine not slotting in one weakness for another, but he would have been dead to most Blue Magic anyway and hey he doesn't need to waste a slot on Iotes so no complaining. Refine certainly makes him more physically durable. I'm actually kinda tempted to build him up now... if only there were a Def or Atk variant of Distant Dart/Stance. Agreed, a refined Prf weapon really should not be easily outdone by a Grail units inheritable weapon...

Too... many... words... so many... conditions... Seriously these goddamn Prf skills are getting too wordy... even the inheritable passives are starting to give words some side-glances...

If Edel gets damage reduction on the first hit she takes (or first two if it's a brave weapon hitting her), then the only thing separating her from Brave Ike will be inability to use other B slots or Vital Astra and the very exploitable ability to run Save skills. And considering she'd also be getting an entire Special Trigger loaded into her first PP combat (possibly without the already lax requirements of her other alts GF requirements), that feels like it's going a little beyond flexible and going into being a VERY rude brick wall for anyone who can't ignore non-special damage reduction. It could only get worse if she's able to get Canto Control or Warp Blocker as well... Also I'm gonna need your Cali temps to not move north for... ever basically.