Xenomata

I'll be honest and say that I don't think about the power creep a whole lot, at least from the perspective of what it seems they want enemy units to get away with. After a while it just becomes extreme cases of that thing in the main FE games where the enemy has weapons and/or skills that your army can never use without hacking (Helswath, Bolverk, or Grima's Truth for instance) and that you just have to fight through because otherwise you can't win the fight. In fairness I could technically have them if I just summon for them, but not with my luck...

@Some Jerk Yeah I've been feeling pretty much the same thing. Really the only thing tethering me to the game at this point is all of the units that I've built over the years and wanting to improve them... which feels more and more pointless to do as we keep getting new units who keep overshadowing every other released unit just by existing. It doesn't help that Heroes has actively made me despise the Fodlan games and characters, yet doesn't want to stop throwing explicit favoritism at them...

Actually just thought of it, but if you want to run Cath with SS4/TP4 Lethality triggers, there is one unit who might be able to enable her offense without forcing her to run Quick Dagger: Gerik. His new weapon triggers a support effect that grants Atk/Spd +6, unit penalty neutralization, and Null Panic to ALL allies whose HP is lower than his own. No positioning requirements, no move type limitations, but what's more notable is that on Turn 1 he will also trigger a Quickened Pulse effect to all those same allies, and when combined with his native Infantry Pulse you basically make him into a Quickened Pulse 2 for all Infantry units as long as their HP is lower than his own (not that hard to do for Cath specifically either, unless you pump merges and dragonflowers into her and give no stat boosts to Gerik) That in mind, you can enable Cath to wield any weapon other than Quick Dagger, letting her get stat boosts, while still running the SS4/TP4 Lethality build. You could also let her use a Barb Shuriken (from Kaze, has the Slaying effect) to ensure she always has Lethality triggers prepared. Of course, this requires you actually HAVE Gerik and be willing to use him...

...

Historically each Ninja banner has been hosted in the month of November.

Gonna be honest. I completely forgot about her. I honestly don't see Gullveig changing her tune much. Even though she ends this chapter on the note of reflection that she once had the hope Seidr has/had, she seems pretty deadset on the inevitability of Gullveig regardless, as in she's simply doing what she was made to do and there is no other path. Not necessarily locked into their evil beliefs like Surtr or Hel, and not exactly trapped in an endless cycle of evil by an outside source ala Veronica/Bruno and eventually Fafnir, just someone so utterly jaded she's doing what's asked of her by "fate" because there isn't anything else for her otherwise. I don't see Njordr being cooperative either, or the heroes being cooperative with someone they know has a low opinion of them as-is... so yeah, probably Nerbuz saves the day with Nerbuz power. Or Kvasir does something drastic, which itself would require her to pull a heel-face turn in the next 2 chapters or be killed by the end of the final chapter.

Well, that's one pureed goldfish. Can't help but feel not a whole lot happened this chapter. The old man's motives are revealed and shown to be pretty selfish, only for Gullveig to go and kill him off first. She then has a small recollection of her Seidr life... And we still have three chapters to go. If any deus ex machinas wanna show their face, nows about the time to do so and I have doubts Gullveig is gonna be the one to end things willingly...

I think one of the better inheritable non-Arcane daggers is the Bunny's Egg, released on Spring Ashe this year. It grants Atk/Spd +5 and reduces damage from the enemies first attack by 30%, basically Remote Sparrow-lite. There was also Florid Knife from last years Thief banner, held by Thief Sothe, which granted Atk/Spd +5 and triggered a Canto 1 effect. And you can never go wrong with Vicious Dagger/Courtly Fan, which both grant Atk/Spd +5 and Null Follow-up. There's actually a very interesting Green Tome in the current Teatime banner that you can get from 4* demote Teatime Ferdinand called Teatime Set, which grants Atk/Spd +5, enables a Canto 1 effect, and enables offensive-NFU if the wielders Spd is higher than the foes. Nino can technically get NFU normally, but besides the semi-recent Escape Route 4 she can't normally get a Canto effect without support. And having all 3 at once is pretty neat. Besides that though, I still personally use Nino's bladetome on occasion. Paired with Bonus Doubler and LegEliwood's support, she can actually be pretty strong. Arcane Devourer is the better of the two, since Lif's sword was more built for slower units in mind. Arcane Devourer, Vital Astra, ASfinish 4 or DistantASsolo, a Dodge 4 skill (you probably missed the window to get Spurn 4 from Summer Fjorm), and either Spd Smoke 4 or Time's Pulse 4 I think is what you need to make an incredibly fast/bulky Guy. TP4 technically makes Vital Astra permanent, while Spd Smoke 4 enables a 4th layer of damage reduction. ...that's about all I can help with. Not even sure how much of the above you can use, since a lot of it depends on the presence of limited-time units.

...I swear to god if next month has even ONE Fodlan character in it AT ALL I'm uninstalling the game and deleting my Serenes Forest account, but not before uploading a video of me smashing my copy of Three Houses with a hammer. Can't have been enough to hijack an entire Summer banner, nope also have to hijack an entire seasonal banner with a theme that can ONLY have had Fodlan inspirations, but can't even stop there because now the GHB has to be from Fodlan as well? Oh and what is this, the annoying little shit comes with a Prf bow, and somehow it is giving him +10 to all stats, on top of having an offensive statline almost on-par with freaking Alcryst? Wow, I am absolutely triggered right now. Fine sure the choose your legend people this time round all look good, obviously they do, and of course they all have new toys to play with. I dunno who I'll be free summoning, can't go wrong with any of them. But you cannot expect me to ignore this. ...obviously I'm joking by the way. I'll only uninstall the game and exchange my copy of TH for Gamestop credit. I don't even go to Gamestop anymore, not since they went into NFT's...

Nope, that doesn't help at all sorry. I don't tend to go for sparks from revival banners since they don't usually last long enough for me to have the orbs for them, especially if a more ideal banner is going on (which they usually have been what with powercreep being in full effect lately) You'd think I'd have known this considering I recently summoned Anankos, but that totally slipped my mind... Again I don't tend to go for Revival banners since they tend not to last long enough for me to have all the orbs needed for a full spark. The one thing I can say in regards to your leaning toward Re.Grima is that the note of merging her is kind of moot if I'm not able to actually use her skill fodder beforehand, so in my case I probably wouldn't have that extra merge on her for a while... I don't imply that Ideal 4 is the best, but I do tend to just use whatever is most easily accessible at the time (I'd gladly give more of my units skills like Flash Sparrow or ASfinish4 if I had more than one copy of the units who have them as fodder...), and in Alear's case it's not that hard to set up the chain inheritance required to have all 3 of her notable skill fodder ready (Mareeta being the hardest, but she's a 4* special pool summon and I have 3 manuals of her) On the note of Close Call 4, I don't honestly consider the movement effect that notable, as there's often some sort of obstruction that prevents it from triggering anyway (for me at least). And until Velocity 4 exists/Spurn 4 is available on more than Summer Fjorm, I don't mind using the technically "worse" Dodge skills. I think I will just go for Re.Grima though. Reminding me that Alear has a Revival banner coming just kind of makes me remember that she'll probably be available far more often than Grima, not to mention there's technically two of her in the 5* pool...

I'm kind of running into a Free Summon conundrum and would like a little feedback. I'm debating between Rearmed Grima and FemAlear on the Hero Fest banner. On the one hand with Grima, she's not in the regular summoning pool, has Arcane Grima for a weapon, and even if I don't use her for it she still has Hardy Fighter and the otherwise exclusive A/S Near Save. As a Rearmed unit, she'd also be contributing a Merge to my main Grima once she's been used as skill fodder. On the other, I currently have no dragons who I want to give Arcane Grima to, I'm not working on any Armors who want Hardy Fighter, and ASnear save is a very specific skill that very few armors want, which again I'm not working on any Armor units right now. Basically, I'd be summoning her and having her sit in my coma barracks until I'm ready to use her for... something. Alear has three Tier 4 skills perfectly fit for any Phys.Melee Infantry, specifically a Tier 4 Dodge skill. There are many units who would want her skills, none of which are that hard to chain inherit skills to (Chad, Miriel, and Mareeta cover all 3 skills) and honestly the number of my units that I could upgrade right now with her skills are quite high. The big stopper here is the fact that unlike Grima, Alear is still in the regular summoning pool, ergo even if she'd technically be a pity breaker she can still be summoned at any time.

...eh, this one's just fine. Not mind-blowing or gotta-get-it like Nina was for me, but just okay. I don't use Morgan, so I can skip renewing my Feh Pass this time.

You might wanna edit those skill descriptions, I don't think AScatch and Bold Fighter are carbon copies of ARrein in all but names and skill icons 😛 So the story this time has Mirabilis and Triandra traveling together, and approached by an unknown foe... the destroyer of dreams, the ruin of hope... the one who rules nothingness... I guess that means they're Eitr's master.

So in wanting to prove a point to all like 3 of you who even know I exist, I spent orbs to get a copy of Ferdinand to get his tome for Tailtiu. I also happened to get Teatime Sigurd as well, so orbs well spent. +Atk -Res too.

I know the banner is public now and we can see the stats for ourselves anyway... ...which is why I don't need to spoiler the following image :3 Superboons/banes Ayra: 40-/44+/46/32/17- Lysithea: 38-/46/46+/20/22+ Sigurd: 40-/46+/31/35+/16- Ferdinand: 40-/42+/45-/21/25- Tailtiu: 39-/42+/44/21/31-

I wonder if Arcane skills will be a thing? Very clearly just about every Assist, Special, and Passive can be given ludicrous effects for the sake of spreading out all of a given unit's desired effects across multiple skill slots, and by putting certain skills in certain slots it inhibits the ability to put other skills in said slot. Say, for instance, Power of Nihility were an Arcane skill, you wouldn't be able to equip Distant Counter or a Finish skill, but you'd still be getting +9 all stat, accelerated special charge, and the Surge effect with the only condition being that your unit be alone or only next to 1 ally. Inheritable weapons have been getting better lately even outside of Arcane weapons, so I don't know if it'd be a necessarily wasted effort making Arcane skills...

Pfft, remember Daring Fighter? I'll bet you don't because it's only ever been given to Winter Marth, and the only reason I even remember is because I pulled him twice from the daily free 4* special seasonals. And they even gave him a completely EP refine... no love for PP armors at all. I'll bet a Daring Fighter SS will come soon enough as well, when they need some low-tier garbage to fill a slot with.

The seals for this upcoming Tempest Trial will be Atk/Spd Catch and Bold Fighter. Very interesting... the first finally adds another Atk/Spd booster option for offensive Cavlary and Flier units, and the other guarantees a follow-up to any Armor unit initiating combat along with accelerated Special Charge. AScatch is of course great to have as an option that more or less guarantees it'll be always active with no drawbacks. I think ASsolo will technically be better for Cavs since it's so much easier for them to meet the Solo requirement, though in fairness not by much. Unfortunately I don't believe there will be many chances for Bold Fighter to be relevant, as the Armor meta doesn't involve player-phase attacking at all and Armor units do not have access to many of the good B passives that would otherwise justify giving up stat-boosting seals for the sake of PP GFU's. One unit comes to mind however: Summer Edelgard. With Bold Fighter in the SS slot, she can keep Raging Storm equipped in the B slot to keep her Galeforce effect intact, get a guaranteed follow-up allowing for 4 straight attacks on all enemies (as opposed to just Dragon units), and have an unconditional accelerated Special Charge as opposed to needing to rely on Bonus effects or the Heavy Blade skill/sacred seal. Tailtiu's weapon, by the way, has the same effect as Wedding Robin and Wedding Flavia's weapons, granting the wielder all stat +4 and inflicting a pseudo-Panic effect onto the enemy during combat, with a Blow/Unity trigger. That pisses me off, not gonna lie. Ferdinand gets a weapon with Canto [1], Atk/Spd +5, AND offensive NFU with a Spd-check trigger while Tailtiu doesn't? There's no reason for her not to have. Is it because those effects were too good to give to a Grail unit, I doubt it because we have Grail units with Canto weapons and NFU weapons already... I'd blame blatant Fodlan bias, but I predict somebody will try to give me a logical explanation for justifying this when I'm already mad that this entire banner exists at all...

If they wanted to do something marginally interesting with Ced, he could be a unit who stacks on effects dependent on the number of adjacent allies when he enters combat, getting more the fewer allies are nearby, in exchange for being a unit purely dependent on being isolated. Maybe like damage reduction for no allies, ignore enemy DR with one ally, additional damage with two or fewer, and so on. Because honestly if they just go with giving him the Blow and Hp above 25% conditions like they usually do, I can't see him getting any interesting effects otherwise...

I could see them maybe upgrading the Solo effect to the variant that's been given to recent skills, see Alarm skills, Freya's Binding Necklace II, and Eitr's Power of Nihility, and then maybe doubling down on giving him similar pseudo-Solo triggers. Heck, they could just outright give him Alarm Atk/Spd built into his weapon.

A good few Jugdralians in this batch of refines: Virtuous Tyrfing, as part of the Remix for Legendary Sword Cav Seliph: Scion of Light Mareeta's Sword, for Sword Infantry Mareeta: Sword of Stars Thracia Kinglance, a new weapon for Lance Flier Travant: King of Thracia Eagle's Egg, for Blue Tome Flier Est: Springtime Flier Western Axe, a new weapon for Axe Infantry Echidna: Unyielding Idealist Winds of Silesse, for Green Tome Infantry Ced: Hero on the Wind Nightmare Horn, as part of the Remix for Green Beast Cav Freya: Lady of Nightmares ...so even for his weapon refinery update, Travant still isn't allowed to use Gungnir...

Wow, I never thought I'd become completely and utterly unexcited for a seasonal banner just by the THEME ALONE before a single unit on it could even be teased, but they did it! Well the most notable part of this Feh Channel for me was the additions to the 4* special pool. Unfortunately I don't believe many of these guys are offering too much in the way of notable inheritable skill additions, mainly just Shinon's Deadeye and the Duel 4 skills offered by Erinys and Azelle (B Duel Flying and R Duel Infantry respectively), otherwise it's just a bunch of units who are now waiting for refines to make them relevant again. Otherwise this is just announcing a bunch of events for cool free stuff, a banner I immediately hated, and some miscellaneous small changes plus the next remix info.

Wait you're telling me people still play summoner duels? Damnit... I was hoping if I ignored it enough, all versions of the mode would just quietly disappear...

Of course the one Special quote Freyr gives out is about how he loves humans on the clear I decide to use all beasts... In this All-Beast run, I needed to give my beasts a slight edge in exchange for the inability to inflict magic damage, and that came in the form of Reyson's omnibeast boosts, passive but appreciated healing, and permanent 3-movement. Selkie winds up being the odd-one out because she's not from Tellius, but that's not important here. She was able to tank magical damage fairly well, all things considered. Once I realized I was going in with an all-beast team (purely on accident I swear) I slotted in Tibarn because why not. That wasn't a bad move all things considered, he took down a few enemies and was able to Canto/Galeforce away afterwards. Heck, if I wanted to I could have had him fly next to Freyr and weaken him a little bit for the final confrontation. And then there was New Years Lethe, who I consider the "hero" of this battle. Yes, she is capable of running 4 stacks of damage reduction between her weapon, the new Beast Cav transformation effect, Beast Sense 4, and Spd Smoke 4. Yes, such is normally only accessible to Melee Infantry. Yes, she became an absolute tank between all that AND Surge Sparrow w/Luna. Hell, even if she didn't outspeed the enemy for a double, she still has +17 Phantom Spd to cripple all incoming damage. She should have died like 5 times over with how low her defenses are, but she broke through them all, completely no-sold Freyr's Ignis trigger, and got the kill. I'd like to thank the recently-released Eitr for giving Beast Cavs a new lease on life AND giving Beast Cavs the ability to get damage reduction. I'd love to get some of that for Selkie...