Xenomata

I STILL don't have a copy of Brave Lysithea, so for the first time in a while there's someone who I'm not focused on by virtue of not being able to use whatever refine the unit gets... On the other hand, the unit I am interested most in is Julia. All the others could be good or could be... great I guess, but Julia is the one I am most likely to immediately refine. I would rather the world remain intact and not on fire, personally.

I'm lost : D Mininerve was always going to be the one to land the finishing blow on Deirdre. Galeforce was useful in helping her clear out the map better. Keaton was... well, Keaton. His new refine meant he could get stronger and guaranteed a special trigger every combat. Reyson was brought along as a direct result of Keaton's inclusion. Miriel was... technically a filler unit, since Mininerva and Keaton had almost everything under control and the one unit she was brought in for, the Far Save armor unit, couldn't be one-rounded by her in Abyssal, but it was pretty neat how she was able to take out that Lance Flier at the end there.

It's back to school for these Garrag Mach alumni! ...wait do they count as alumni if they technically never graduated? Anyway... Sublime Surge will be refined to go along with the remix for Sothis: Girl on the Throne (Mythic Hero Remix) Current effect: Neutralizes "effective against dragons" bonuses. Unit can counterattack regardless of foe's range. [Dragon Adaptive Damage] Dark Spikes T will be refined for Lysithea: Earnest Seeker (Brave Hero) Current effect: Effective against cavalry foes. Grants Spd+3. At the start of combat, if foe's HP ≥ 75%, grants Atk/Spd+6 during combat. If unit's HP < 100% and unit initiates combat, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack before foe can counterattack. Moon Gradivus will be refined for Dimitri: King of Faerghus (Brave Hero) Current effect: Unit can counterattack regardless of foe's range. Grants Special cooldown charge +1 per foe's attack during combat. (Only highest value applied. Does not stack. Special cooldown charge granted even if foe's attack deals 0 damage.) Virtuous Naga will be refined to go along with the remix for Julia: Crusader of Light (Legendary Hero Remix) Current effect: Effective against dragon foes. Grants Atk+3. At start of combat, if unit’s Atk > foe’s Atk, grants Atk/Res+6 during combat. Flower Hauteclere will be refined for Edelgard: Adrestian Emperor (Brave Hero) Current effect: Accelerates Special trigger (cooldown count-1). At start of turn, if unit's HP ≥ 25%, unit can move 1 extra space (that turn only; does not stack) and grants the following status to unit for 1 turn: "Unit can move to a space adjacent to any ally within 2 spaces." At the start of combat, if unit's HP ≥ 25%, inflicts Atk/Def-6 on foe during combat. Tempest's Claw is a new weapon being given to Haar: Black Tempest (Grand Hero Battle unit. Current weapon: Brave Axe (Inflicts Spd -5. If unit initiates combat, unit attacks twice.) Wind Parthia will be refined for Claude: Almyra's King (Brave Hero) Current effect: Accelerates Special trigger (cooldown count-1). Effective against flying foes. If unit initiates combat or if unit is within 2 spaces of an ally, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+5 during combat, and if unit also deals damage to foe using a Special, restores 50% of unit's maximum HP. (Triggers even if 0 damage is dealt.)

The mysterious maiden whose existence is tied to the final Holy War... Deirdre's high Atk and Res are only further improved by Spirit Forest Writ, inflicting a massive Atk and Res debuff on her enemies so long as she is within 3 spaces of an ally as well as getting a guaranteed follow-up attack. With her effectiveness against Dragons and disabling of adaptive damage in place, any Dragon units who try to face her are doomed from the start. Her special, Circlet of Balance, is a variant of Iceberg that also comes with a once-per-map Miracle effect as long as she is initiating combat/her opponents Range is 2 and someone has either a charged Special or has triggered their Special. Suffice to say, she won't be going down easily. Dragons and Julius cannot hope to compare to Deirdre's might, but she can still be defeated by other means... [map goes here]

So Deirdre is getting: A pretty hefty amount of Atk/Res debuffing, especially if her Res is higher (which let's be real here, it's gonna be higher) Dragon effectiveness, guaranteed follow-up, and disabled adaptive damage (that is to say, dragons are gonna be superduper dead) A 2-cooldown special combined with a Slaying prf weapon (okay seriously though I feel like they've been abusing the hell out of this combination) which adds 40% of her Res, which by itself would make it a noteworthy special... ...but THEN it also triggers a Miracle effect once per map if the fairly lax conditions are met. ...at least her Def doesn't look to be that amazing, if the example made out of that Bow Cav is anything to go by. The rest of the banner: Red is not looking good. LegSeliph is showing some amounts of age, Galzus is pretty much a SI fodder unit, an Hugh is... alright at best. Blue is the focus color, with Fae and Myrrh tagging along (both defensive threats, and one of whom also coming with a unique version of Miracle. Coincidence, or...?) Thorr is an Astra mythic hero, Gustav is a mobile nuke, and Triandra is a Dark mythic dancer. Green's value is pretty firmly rooted in offering Mythical heroes and also Gustav. I feel like LegCorrin is also showing a fair amount of age, Fallen Rhea is a lighter Hegemon made to be a Save tank, and Ashe is an orphan-I mean good unit whose only curse is being a freebie unit. Not gonna lie, aside from Deirdre's immense amount of perks being offered I don't feel this banner all that strongly.

I can only provide an outsiders analysis, but it seems good... however, ONLY if Seliph is able to keep his max HP under a certain threshold. If he goes to a point where 13 HP is no longer considered 25% of his HP, the setup becomes useless. This only seems like a worry if you try to use him on-season in Arena or Aether Raids however, and even then for him to hit 56 HP (the minimum I calculated for 14 to be 25% of his HP), he would need to be neutral HP +10 merge +5 dragonflower and gaining the benefit of 3 on-season Legendary/Mythic Heroes, or 2 Leg/Myth heroes and using a skill that increases his HP. Even still, you have to consider the lost stats. While B slot only really offers his default Lull Spd/Def, the SS slot can provide anywhere between 4-9 additional Atk and Spd, stats you sacrifice for the sake of 12 post-combat HP recovery. Just to make sure, when you say "as a heal battery with her refine," you specifically mean Sparkling Boost II right? If you had given her the refine for Lyfjaberg then it seems outright wasteful to fodder her away, but if it's just SBII then there shouldn't be any issue. Even still though, the only easy way to replicate SBII's healing effect is the Staff of Twelve from Scion Nanna in the Grail shop, and most other methods have some limitations behind them that make them less effective than SBII. I can't truly change your mind on the matter, but it's not like what Eir offers is regular healing, it's healing that you do not need to use unit turns to provide.

...no I'm not feeling for Eir and Ymir, SHUT UP I'M AN EMOTIONLESS TACTICIAN I SEND UNITS TO DIE FOR ME. On another note, this was actually the first time I capped out on rewards far before the end of the TT. My Feh Pass was gonna expire, but I needed orbs to get a free summon from the Thief banner and the TT basically gave all the orbs I needed so... yeah. ...no I'm not crying, someone killed a bunch of onions.

I mean, if it were any shorter we'd be staring right at manakete underwear, and while that might bring in the dough, it miiiiiiiiiiight be called into question... At least all Anna actually wanted to do was exploit Tiki's fame for cash, Lucina's brand of evil is far worse... she totally fashion-oblivious. ...nope nothing to see here.

The original run of the Pirate banner I tried to snipe for Pirate Tibarn, wound up not seeing a single 5* summon for a long time, I think it went up to 7.5% pity, and eventually got pity broken by Fallen F!Corrin. Couldn't even get Pirate Tibarn until a later run of the banner...

I seem to remember Adult Tiki being pretty against being stuffed in her younger clothes... Gonna be honest, doesn't really look like her old clothes went up that many sizes. Otherwise I'm kind of indifferent to the outfits this year. None of them really stand out as spectacular to me. But then the outfits are only half the story, so as for the units themselves... Between all the tools given to her, Byleth wants her Special to be going off every single combat, and her Special in turn is what lets her live. Seems like a very fast Bow unit could break through her very easily just by virtue of not letting her Preempt effect trigger, but then her default kit is looking at a maximum of 57 Spd with an additional +8 from debuffs, so outpacing her is gonna be pretty difficult without some help... Or just nuke her dead with a melee unit. Seliph is taking LegSigurd's original game of boosted Movement range and runs with it... literally. The new Clash effect is basically just begging for Seliph to be moving the furthest distance he can to nuke the enemy in the back, which sounds great... just need to work around the fact that nearly every map these days HATES cavalry units. He also retains the Miracle effect, but Seliph otherwise is lacking in defensive effects, so nuking him with magic should be possible. Reinhardt anyone...? Tiki is pretty loaded with good effects, notably completely disabling the opponents Special Trigger on their first attack (don't think this is prevented with Tempo either) There's really not much to say otherwise, Tiki just got loaded down with effects that intend to make her nearly impossible to kill. Which... makes it ironic that she's Green, because now she's superduper weak to Mar-mar... Chrom is in direct competition with Eirika from last year... why did they do this. Compared to her, Chrom gets a bonus to his stats equal to the number of bonuses and penalties on him (excluding stat bonuses and penalties), has higher damage reduction on the first attack, has Special Acceleration if he has a bonus, can literally borrow all of an allies bonuses, and STILL HAS THAT GODDAMN SPECIAL REPOSITION. His Atk appears to be higher than her, with equal Spd. Eirika has, over him, Cav effectiveness, unitNFU, Tempo, and deals extra Special damage based on a percentage of her enemies Def. One of these things Chrom is easily built to get himself however, thanks to Inf. Spd Tactic. ...Chrom has never been a unit I like, but this is frankly just rude to me specifically. ...so I'll be getting Tiki for free. Even if they're all meant to be overpowered as all hell, I don't care about 3 of them. Tiki is really the only one I like. ...oh man, imagine the HP recovery Valentine FemRobin could get with a Finish skill...!

Correct. Still worth holding on to, specifically for offensive Tome Fliers: their B passive options are horrendously limited otherwise.

Given the Heroes setting, I half wonder if maybe Matthew is playing the "That's not MY Leila, my Leila is dead" card.

Not technically my free summon, but I DID still get RnR Cath in just the first summoning session! Which is pretty cool. Less cool is her +HP -Atk nature...

...huh. Yep, I got them mixed up. In my (hopefully justified) defense, it's been so long since I seen the actual skill anywhere.

Rutger kind of just gets a bunch of stuff that Sword Infantries like having, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing I'm not sure that's exactly enough to make him "relevant." Keaton's transformed effect was updated, which Tempo is always appreciated. The stat debuff and enemy bonus neutralization is great, and the accelerated special charge is great, though it doesn't really synergize that well with Bonfire without some form of out-of-combat Special charging (since two hits when combined with Vantage only means Bonfire will be fully charged) Overall it's as solid as a refine being given to a Meister weapon can be, I just... don't know if they noticed that the effect doesn't synergize with Keaton's base kit all that well. Naga's base effect refine is... kinda unfortunate in my opinion. While it gives supportive effects now, the stat boost given to Naga only had it's effect trigger range increased, even though the triggers needed to trigger the effect did not change, and as for giving allies Dragon Effectiveness, that did not change at all, it's still only a 1-tile range trigger. So... I can't help but feel like the base effect didn't get any benefit at all. As for the refine, it's good. All Stat +4 and a slightly worse Dragon's Wrath 3-like effect isn't bad whatsoever. It's just... when combined with her base effect's refine and compared to past Remixes, it feels kinda meh. The supportive effects are always appreciated, but it kind of came at the expense of Naga's own powers. Laeg's base effect is essentially the same that Forseti got, not that surprising. She can get a grand total of +20 Atk/Spd if she has at least a +6 boost to all stats and the opponent has at least one stat bonus. The Spd-based NFU is also appreciated when she otherwise doesn't have many ways to get the NFU effect, though I would like to note that it's technically a worse effect than if she were to get the NFU effect from Legendary Byleth or other such supportive effects (since they only need the unit's Spd to be higher at all, rather than being a whole 10 points higher) Hilda's refine is solid. Her supportive game is actually not that bad, now that she grants enemy follow-up denial to her allies, and she gets a pretty sizable amount of damage reduction. Caineghis almost totally shuts down AoE specials and goes really well with Hardy Fighter (what a coincidence I JUST got some fodder of that skill!), though it's kind of weird that the refine effect gives him a guaranteed follow-up when he already gets that from his base kit. (not complaining) I believe, if my math is right, that for him to get the highest bonus from 25% of his foe's attack -8, the enemy needs at least 72 Atk, which might be slightly harder to achieve if he is also LOWERING their Atk by 5... would have technically been better for him to be getting Atk/Def/Res +5. Then again, the lower their Atk the more likely he is to simply nullify all incoming damage just by being that much tankier, so works out either way. Legendary Alm, in total, gets Atk/Spd +10, Tempo, the effect of Windsweep 1 minus the player follow-up denial, and continues to deal damage equal to 25% of the foes Def. Lunar Flash now also ignores non-special damage reduction, so in total his offensive game has improved. Is it just me or have the Remixes felt slightly tamer lately? What happened to Legendary Marth becoming a massive statstick with basically guaranteed counterattack denial? Or Legendary Tiki being a speedy Far Save unit? Gunnthra being able to decimate anyone who dare be debuffed by her?

Anyone willing to charge into the middle of a large group of enemies but needs that extra little bit of movement to reach them safely. Think anyone with Galeforce, such as Edelgard or... Edelgard... or Hegemon. Any units who can attack one enemy after another is generally a good option, especially if they have Canto to then immediately retreat. If you have any units who are generally bulky without being outright Save tanks, they may be an alright option too. I think the way Leila was designed was to specifically work with Matthew: Faithful Spy, as she can inflict a rather huge stat penalty on the enemy between the Dagger 7 effect and a combination of Atk Smoke and Spd Smoke, letting Matthew gain the biggest Atk-increase possible to him outside of AR Towers. Saizo would also work in this case, as would basically any other units who have effects similar to the two thief boys Refines.

Speaking as someone who has run low on premium-Distant Counter fodder, I appreciate the freely transferrable source of DC, even if it's just for dragons. Atk/Res Ideal is also being added, in case anyone cares. I know it's not necessarily an ideal skill (lol), but it's still a mostly-free Atk/Res +5.

I only use Ally Support for the units who outright require it to trigger weapon effects (Velouria, Fallen Lilith, Groom Rafiel, etc.) because there are very few units who I consistently use on the same team enough to warrant bothering with the function. The only exception is my Brave Marth and Muspell, since they are ALWAYS near each other. As for Summoner Support, it's a permanent HP +5 All Stat +2 so there's no reason not to give it to your favoritest unit. My current SS unit is Brave Marth. Neither has any effect on Arena scoring. It's also worth mentioning that Ally Support has no effect on AI-controlled teams, so maybe don't put AS-dependent units on your Arena Defense team.

The month the child banners have been in is April. Japanese Children's Day, meanwhile, is in May.

I actually wonder if they're going to delay the House Leader refines for a bit because the Brave alts of the house leaders (plus Lysithea) are already theoretically penciled in for a refine, ergo they'd be the subject of a refinery update twice in close proximity? ...which just begs to remind that oh god the Brave House Leaders are theoretically getting a refine.

Hope you fans of Three Houses are ready, because this Weapon Refinery update has the first Three Houses unit to be receiving a refine. Wanderer Blade will be given to Rutger: Lone Swordsman (Original weapon is a Slaying Sword+, with the Slaying effect) Wolfskin Fang, belonging to Keaton: Lupine Collector (weapon inflicts Spd -5 and enables the Brave effect on both phases. Also has the original transformed Infantry Beast effect of +10 special damage) Worldsea Wave, belonging to Laegjarn: Burning Sun (Grants Spd+3 and enables a Desperation effect when Laeg's HP is above 50%_ Divine Breath, which is coming alongside the remix of Naga: Dragon Divinity (Grants Atk+3, effective against Dragon foes, and boosts all of her stats by [number of units within 2 spaces that are either Dragons or have any kind of "Effective against Dragons" effect] x 3, with a maximum boost of +9) Freikugel, under the (reluctant?) ownership of Hilda: Idle Maiden (Grants Spd+3, if Hilda is within 2 spaces of an ally with Def higher than her own, grants those allies Atk/Spd +4, but if no nearby allies have more Def than her then Hilda gets Atk/Spd +6) Luna Arc, getting remixed alongside Alm: Saint-King (Grants Spd+3. If unit initiates combat, deals damage equal to 25% of foes Def (ignores reductions to Def from special skills like Lunar Flash) Lion King Fang, belonging to Caineghis: Gallia's Lion King (Grant Atk+3, if foe initiates combat, grants all stats +4 during combat. Also gains the Transformed Armor Beast effect of Distant Counter) Personally keeping an eye on... uh... all of them I guess. Every unit save Rutger is either someone I have personal interest in or is just generally someone to keep an eye on.

Free Forma Soul? Cool. Free GHB units starting from Yen'day? Nice. Bunch of other crap? Always appreciated. The Fire and Ice gang are all finally in a single banner together, and with 11 total free first summons? Hopefully I can get at least one freebie focus hero with those. ...Nina feel specifically targeted at me. Also good thing these guys aren't actually trying to be sneaky thieves, cause they would all fail IMMEDIATELY. Alm and Naga will be getting remixed next? Sweet. Duo Ephraim will finally be available for summoning again? About freaking time. All the other demoted units are actually pretty alright, if slightly dated, so this is a sound number of additions to the 4* special pool. Binding Worlds looks interesting. And we also have promise of another Feh Channel for Choose Your Legends. Overall neat. Shame Nina is coming so close to CYL... because I will be desperately needing her.

Nine times over here. Has to be 9 anyway, cause she's so useless as skill fodder that I just automerge all copies into her. Fortunately she hasn't shown up that often lately...

...huh. Askr took a lot more damage from Hapi than I thought... To be honest, it wasn't really Askr that had me worried, it was Marth: there was really no way that I would be able to do him in with just regular attacking, given his Spd would be so high that that none of my units would be able to outspeed him, so the best I could do was rely on special triggers to get my damage in... which was SUPPOSED to be what Ophelia was doing, but I guess Innes works too. Innes could probably use some skills that don't have Solo conditions... oh well, it worked out well in the end. Ophelia had no reason to not be overpowered, hell she could have even been the one to get the kill on Askr, but I did bring Hapi along specifically to be the ultimate foil to Askr's high bulk (I even gave her Ruptured Sky specifically before this map) Sometimes I feel bad for using blatantly overpowered units in my clears (which is why you will never see any version of Edelgard in my clears), but for some reason I never see Hapi... at all. So... I guess I don't need to feel quite as bad about using her? EDIT: I know this kind of thing TECHNICALLY belongs in the Official Pull Topic, but I cannot ignore this sheer coincidence: I summoned +Atk Hapi very very soon after performing this clear. Note to self: If want unit, use unit in Abyssal clear!