Xenomata

I will predict that the Atk variant will be Distant Force, if and only because it makes sense in my head (one is exerting Force to increase damage, and becoming exhausted after) I also predict Distant Force is gonna be SUPER expensive somehow. I mean, Distant Counter that also gives an Atk boost? What unit wouldn't want that?

I dunno... she's certainly considered a great unit, fantastic even, and continues to be used to this day (probably also on top of numerous tier lists). On the other hand, Ophelia and the Missiletainn Tome don't break any of the normal rules that say that she can't get a refine. It almost seems like Hector and the Dire Thunder twins are just about forgotten at this point (even though Hector hasn't been relevant for years)

Fair... but I'd still take Distant Stance over Pressure.

Okay but why does Distant Stance not have the post-combat damage that Distant Pressure has? It's only been like two months and Brave Marth's new A passive is already useless. ...what Fae? Neat all things considered, powerful kit and interesting upgrade to Miracle, and I like the touch quote they used in the english trailer ("Legendary Hero! That sounds like a big deal! What is it?"). I will try to summon for her a bit, but all things considered I'm not gonna cry if I don't get her.

Some thoughts... Helbindi's base weapon grants +4 to Atk/Spd/Def/Res to himself and adjacent allies at the start of odd-numbered turns. Frankly, Wave skills are outdated, so I can see them going the same route as Fae's Prf weapon and letting him get +5 to all stats as long as he is near an ally. Maybe they could just give him Fae's Prf weapon minus the 2-range adaptive damage effect? Fae's refine is already pretty good, after all... Kliff's Sagittae boosts all of his stats by +5 as long as his foe's Atk is at least 5 points higher than his own. Since his base Atk is only 30, this was not a hard stat check to pass even if his default Fortress Def/Res 3 were changed, but it also led to his combat performance to suffer. With no other effects to his name, Kliff was left behind. I wonder, then... could they maybe give him similar effects to Dragon's Wrath, and maybe let the stat boost of Sagittae go even higher? Linus's base stats total at 42/37/33/32/19, compared to Raven's non-Resplendent total coming to 41/34/35/25/22. I could see why they would want to give Linus a new take on Basilisko, since the original's Life and Death refine made more sense for Raven. That'd be one way to go about fixing Olwen, since she... frankly has no standout traits otherwise. Give her Speed Thunder, which has the Brave/Spd +4 Def/Res -4 effect from In the Moment weapons, and let that weapon have NFU as a refine effect.

Marth having two Prf skills perhaps screwed him in that minor regard, but Binding Shield II does at least give him a niche when compared to Brave Marth, who he now shares a Special with, as well as giving him at least one edge over Brave Alm, whose Sweep effect is limited to physical units. His refine will tell the rest of this redemption story. Tiki meanwhile... wow. With Everyone! didn't get roided in the way I thought it would, and that's alright. Also appreciate them going with Slick Fighter over the more popular Special Fighter. As someone who accidentally +10ed Tiki, I'm excited to see where her refine and remix will take her.

A new month is coming, as does a new batch of refines! ...wait hold up... Fanged Basilisko? Linus is getting a totally new weapon, despite already having a Prf weapon that itself can be refined! Well, you know what they say: Screw the rules, I have Grails. As for the rest of the gang, Kaze will be getting his Kaze's Needle, Legendary Heroes Marth/Hector/Tiki will be receiving refined weapons (along with Marth and Tiki receiving the Remix treatment), Summer Tana will be the seasonal getting a refine for the month, and lastly two perhaps utterly forgotten units will be getting refines: Helbindi and Kliff.

Freebie Igrene! Woo, that's some extra LnD4/Pulse Smoke fo- Wait... shoot she's +Atk -Res, that's not a bad asset/flaw combo at all... ...oh wait the Igrene I have is completely neutral and has like no SI, as in literally just Reposition. Sweet, no harm done! aside from the infinite pain I'm pretty sure the Neutral Igrene will feel when her flesh is converted into a book

...wow, they really don't want me to resub. I don't even really think Serra is bad, I just... don't care. Pretty good art though. Shame the Special art is never going to be seen in normal gameplay.

It was a super easy decision for me. Brave Marth, easily the strongest unit in my army even before the Floret, has superassets in both Atk and Spd. Mine, at +10 merge +5 dragonflower and with summoner support, now sits at 68 Atk and 54 Spd. I have to assume that they'll at least begin distributing these things in special orb packs. Assuming they release a new Ascended Hero once a month, that'd only lead to one Floret a month, and knowing the whales who dip half their salary into this game they would absolutely eat up every opportunity to power their units up even that one little extra bit.

I think a case could be made for Fury 4 if you want to set up a Wings of Mercy/Escape Route team, especially if comboed with a weapon-based Fury or other form of post-combat damage. For most units, 14 post-combat damage when combined with any damage taken in-combat can easily put them under 50% HP, especially if we ever get a Sacred Seal version of Fury. A case could also be made for Eldigan, who on top of Fury 3, Fury 4, merges, and dragonflowers can also get Resplendent bonus stats. Only issue with him is that his HP pool is high enough that one round of Fury damage couldn't possible set up WoM, but maybe with some clever skill usage and Galeforce it could be done...

From honorable mentions to newest member of the club. Alongside Grima is Azura, who was +10ed a bit ago, but I was waiting for something... a little more "exciting" With these two, my +10 army nears its 100th member. A lot of my +10 units have fallen in use, such as Celica and Oboro, while others have... um... frankly never had any time in the spotlight... not naming any Leos... and I guess that isn't really a number that many others cared much about when they hit it, but that's still something of a milestone number for me. There's a very good chance I'm gonna make a big deal out of my 100th unit, so fair warning there. Big thing is, I have no idea who the hell will be 100th. Seems like every time I +10 someone, someone else has to come in and take their spot in the +8 merge or more club. I obviously can't control who I summon next, all I can do is pick and choose banners to summon off of. Hell, 100th might not even currently be in the +8 merge or more club... I dunno, guess we'll see. 4 units to go...

Looks like Kiran has a new job.

Ugh... I've not been looking forward to this at all, yet I was still looking forward to it... currently my Halloween Female Grima sits at +7 merge, which is... you know, alright and all that. But when I have investment in a unit and the power to +10 merge them... well, my sig tells a lot of that story by itself. And so I have 107 orbs to work with at first, between what I had grinded out from the Tempest Trials and bought from the Forma Soul pack, and 15 days to try and snipe 3 dupes of Halloween Female Grima if I want to pay her the due respect she deserves after the half year she has proven herself. ...I'll just get it done now. Maybe 10 summons in at 72 orbs left, and I got the first copy of Grima. She is now +8, only 2 more merges to go. ...oh dip, next session (12 total summons) had another Grima. This is looking... hopeful? No not the right word... doable. ...well, maybe it looks possible now, but I still dumped a lot of orbs into nothing but Fredericks, Ninos, and Barsts I don't need. Time to grind some orbs from the chain challenges I didn't do yet. ...damnit, Erinys appeared... there goes the little pityrate I had... Ephraim 4* special summoned...ugh, I don't want this luck off blue orbs. Xane appeared 5*. Jokes on you joker, I didn't even have a pity rate started up. ...UGH why is Ranulf still in the pitybreaker pool. He ate the little pity I had... And... there she is, the last Grima needed. THANK GOD. I am a terrible orb saver, but at least I didn't spend more than... hm, 60$. Coulda been worse...

I interpreted that as a general blanket statement: Technically, all banners with the Seasonal, New Hero, Legendary, and Mythic labels can be considered "New Heroes summoning events" since they all introduce new heroes to the game. It could also mean that they DEFINITELY will keep up the format of "focusing on one game, plus a new Heroes OC or in this case Ascended hero, and having two demote units per banner" for the forseeable future. ...wait... are they gonna introduce "Legendary" Male Robin and Male Corrin as Ascended Heroes?

It certainly isn't, but it also isn't any more or less crazy than double Flayn. They share the exact same normal summoning pool (well... Colorless versus Red isn't a fair argument I guess, but he can still be summoned normally), so the average player can at least hope to summon a random Muspell some random day. Plus he's eligible for focus banners like Heroes with Rally Up or Heroes with AR skills, plus at least one appearance in a Legendary or Mythic hero banner.

One free summon, four tickets, only wanna summon off Green orbs. Shouldn't be that big a dea- shoot the session off the 4th ticket has no green orbs. Ugh, guess I'll take this lone Colorle- and it's Wolf. +Atk -HP. ...remind me to strangle Fjorm if I ever summon her... in the future of course, I'm not wasting orbs on this banner.

Only Dragalia Lost and Pokemon Masters (I don't play any other nintendo mobile games) were giving me launch issues at first. For some reason Feh took a bit to catch up and go down...

Uh... hm. The Ascendant Florets seem... hm... you can only get one from each Ascendant Hero the first time you summon them, so that pretty much guarantees next month we'll be getting Ascendant Laegjarn, but I wonder where else they'll go with this "Ascendant Hero" theme. Side question, does this mean all Ascendant Heroes are shoe-ins for the yearly A Hero Rises freebie? Anyway, I don't know how to feel about the stat boost overall. Reading the notification, it seems to just be a second Asset stat, so a pure offensive unit can run +Atk and +Spd, a defensive unit can go +Def and +Res (or +HP), etc. Given the current uncertain future of how these Ascendant Florets can be acquired are (can they be something like a reward from the highest tier of Arena modes?), you'd have to be exceedingly certain about how you use these things. Which... probably means everyone will use them on their Hegemons to make her even harder to kill... ...oh right the banner. Uh... frankly I don't care about any of these people, but from a purely skills and theoretical stat standpoint... Wolf looks... really simple, if I may be blunt. Fast and strong, Desperation effect, that's about all you need in most offensive units. What he needs now is a B skill and special. Malice sounds funny. From what I remember about her, she and Dice don't really have any understanding of the value of gold (as in asking for only a few hundred gold for their services at most), and that clearly shows from the fact you only need to upgrade her two times. She could have easily been a demote unit if she didn't have premium skills. Roshea on the other hand IS the demote unit. Bringing Dancer Eldigan's weapon to the regular summoning pool, alright alright. Took me a bit to understand what exactly Hardy Fighter did, but it's a roided Shield Pulse for Armor units (plus foe-NFU), got it. I dunno though, Fjorm here feels like she's doing her original forms job far better, but as a result it opens her up to be exceedingly weak to both melee attacks and being forced to initiate combat. Would she be good to summon, yeah you didn't need to try and tempt me with that Ascendant Florets stuff, but... I don't think she'll be all that scary to fight, you know? Overall, Fjorm is neat, the rest I can't say are very strong needs. Wolf looks the "best" of the Archanea characters (incluing whatshisface freebie dude) simply because he's just going straight for the throat, but I'm not feeling like I need to summon him. I'm not even tempted to try and go for Fjorm though, nothing here is really pulling me in... like at all.

Oh you silly people, obviously what is under the armor of the Flame Emperor's armor... is nothing! Flame Emperor IS the armor, that is Flame Emperor's entire identity. If you remove even so much as the mask, all you will be left with is nothingness.

You can also get Atk/Def Menace from Fallen Female Morgan. I'd save Otr for his other fodder options (G Duel Cavalry 4 and Flow Refresh) if you can help it, especially since you can randomly get FallenFemMorgan at most any time.

Woo, got another Gustav, and the best part is that he's +Spd -Res! ...wait that makes no sense without context. I wanted a fodder copy of Gustav so that I could give Def/Res Near Save to Benny, but the original copy of Gustav i summoned was +Res -Hp. Not bad, but was it truly fodder-worthy? I chose to keep summoning off the banner to see what else i could get, and behold the results of my luck! Took only 2 summons to get.

...UGH saving orbs for last years Dragon Harvest banner is IMPOSSIBLE. Now I need to summon Gustav if I want Benny to have the most "ideal" Near Save skill... which actually came fairly easy. 12 total summons (pretty much all of them were in separate sessions...), and 4 of them were Young Tana, 2 different Wedding Catrias, and Gustav himself. ...for a person who is a favorites spoiler first, top tier aimer like dead last, maybe keeping Gustav would be better overall... but on the other hand, I'd much prefer to have the best version of Benny possible, even if the only advantage Benny has over Gustav is being easier to merge (ironically I can't even fully merge Benny right now). I am at least doing better with making sure I have every unit fully recorded in the Catalog...

Why would you do this, now I can't take the outfit seriously ON TOP OF not being a huge fan of it. NOW I WANT WATERMELON WHY DO I WANT WATERMELON I DON'T EVEN LIKE WATERMELON it makes my mouth itchy.

UUUUUUUGH, why did I decide that I'd dip a little into my Halloween Grima funds to summon Duo Sothis...? I got her, but uuuuuugh. At some point I stopped buying orbs in favor of winning them from unfinished Chain Challenges, cause that was just too many bought orbs going down the drain. These sessions were... surprisingly not void of surprises. Same session as Sothis came Halloween Male Grima as well. Even more shocking though, both Sothis AND Grima has actually good assets and flaws, and they weren't even swapped like they usually are for me. Sothis came +Atk -Res, while Grima came +Def -Spd. Usually they're either both horrible or they'd have been good on the other unit summoned, so this is... shocking, to say the least. I did also get Kurthnaga... but he was 5*, so not exactly making me all that happy. +Atk -Def. Some pitybreakers in Apotheosis Anna and Dieck. Neither I appreciate at all, though Dieck might have his... uses... A lot more 4* Special summons than usual. Ephraim, Tana, and Adrift FemCorrin were... not notable in the least slightest, though I guess had I not gotten her Resplendent form this would have been the copy of Tana to get her to +10... Surprising, I snagged 2 copies of Ishtar to bring my current version of her to +9 merge. That's enough merges for her to be working at her fullest potential (before dragonflowers, which frankly I don't like to count given how many it takes...) Even more shocking to me though, was getting the final copy needed to +10 merge my Azura. I just wanted a copy of Duo Sothis, not... well, frankly not any of this... I'm gonna have a much harder time getting those 3 copies of Halloween FemGrima, I can tell... This isn't actually that amazing compared to the 11 5* units I got, but I also finally got a copy of Benny with +Def. Up til now it's mostly been... frankly bad assets or +Res. He's been on my +10 radar since his release, so I'm glad to finally have a base copy of him to work off of. That would be where Dieck comes in, being able to make my Benny into a potent Near Save tank... if I ever get another copy of Near Save anyway.