Xenomata

So for Cav units, which tends to be more preferred over the other when they are considered the best choice, Lulls or Trace skills? Side question, is having a Trace skill at all more important than having the "right" Trace skill? Like, LegSigurd for instance would gain more from Atk/Def Near Trace, but would just having access to Canto Rem. be more important, ergo he could safely take Spd/Def Near Trace without losing out?

Summoning up to the freebie. 4* Special Azura appeared, bringing her to +9 merge. She also happens to be +Spd, which apparently my base Azura was completely neutral, so... out the window with you Neutral. Petra and Hapi appeared in the same session. Petra was +Atk -HP, Hapi was +Spd -Res... kinda thinking I summoned them in the wrong order... Constance appeared +Atk -Res. Pretty good. As for the free summon, I'm taking Muspell. Even if I wanted to freebie Yuri, I think it'd be far easier to just snipe for him. I'll still summon Blue though since Hapi could actually be quite useful... ...well, as long as Farina isn't appearing and trying to rob me... wait shit she's right there MY WALLET NO- EDIT: And the rest of summoning went... well, coulda gone better. I did get Yuri... +Res -Spd though, and I actually wanna summon two of him so that I can have some C Duel Infantry 4 fodder on hand. So... unfortunately the night was not over. And he did NOT make it easy to summon him again. -Did get +Def -Res Muspell, which... was kinda embarrassing after what I said earlier. -Got another Hapi... +Def -HP though... -Brave Eliwood, Caineghis, Julian, and Larum all crashed my summons. Larum I actually forgot had Disarm Trap, which I want to give to my Ninja Lyn, so I kinda appreciate summoning her. The others... not exactly enthused... -Only other 4* Special summon was Hardin. I did eventually get Yuri +Atk -Def. That's good. Hapi I'm not a fan of her assets, but maybe I can make at least +Spd work. Just hoping this months Mythic isn't too enticing, or at least is easy to summon. I need to save some orb money if I wanna +10 merge Halloween Grima when her banner is revived, and tonight didn't necessarily help matters...

My thoughts: Yuri's Foul Play opens up a number of new strategies, for as simple a skill as it is. Between that and his expanded move range AND Canto, I'd daresay he has more use as a utility unit than a combat unit... except he totally has the offensive stats to be a solid combat unit as well. Great stuff all around. Well that's... one way to reference Constance's Prf skill? She will inevitably draw comparisons to Summer Byleth... unfavorable comparisons, I might predict... Hapi enters the ring with dragon/beast effectiveness, and between that, built-in Time's Pulse along with a slaying effect, and as many Atk mods she has even just by default, she's looking to be a solid combat unit. Of course the question, as always, will be how she does against Hegemon, but honestly she looks good anyway. Glimmer though... pfffft, that girl is just ASKING for Ruptured Sky. Welp, so much for brawling. Muspell. Domain of Flame's effect is... interesting. I think this is the first time a support effect boosts damage by so much as 30% of (units Atk -foes Res). Muspell himself coming with built-in Fatal Smoke is good as well. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, can we talk about Fafnir for a moment? Cause what in the goddamn happens next???

Not in his Crest, but his crests Heroes Relic. The Fetters of Dromi grant Movement +1 and enable Canto to the unit who holds them, which are both effects his weapon Grant's him. Foul Play, meanwhile, is the class-exclusive ability of Tricksters in TH. Course the range of it was 5, not 3, but that's just condensing the skill for Heroes purposes ...so yeah, nothing of his Crest itself. It occasionally prevented the counterattacks of the enemy when Yuri attacked, which... give him Windsweep I guess?

Seriously Reginn and Fafnir's video was so dumb I loved it. On another note, seriously if we don't get singer Fjorm and DJ Reginn at the next dancers banner, someone's gonna get a big ol Seidðr Shell right up their- ahem... I mean, I'll send a very properly worded complaint to Intsys... INSIDE A SHELL THAT GETS SHOVED RIGHT UP-

Aaand I summoned both Leif and Larcei. Like, super duper easily, sure their assets are kinda meh, but they were the only units I really "wanted," and the only orbs i bought were the September promo orbs that i was gonna buy anyway. Props where props are due to this game, this banner was really bleh to me, and the game pretty much gave me the bare minimum of my wants. Why can't more banners be this halfway decent all the time...?

Honestly might be a little too soon to make judgement on Muspell as a villain. He doesn't even appear in the opening dialogue, so making judgements on someone based solely on appearance and quotes made in the heat of battle feels hasty (without looking at datamined info at least)

+Res -HP on Harmonic Leif. ...oh right, I summoned a bit more off the Brave banner before it ended, and got a few extra copies of Gatekeeper (none with an ideal asset though) and Brave Eirika with +Atk. That's good. I also summoned off the Moonbow banner for one last copy of Lethe to get mine to +10. It took... a while... but I did eventually get her.

...ah man, I just realized Fjorm and Nifl should have been bonus units for the F&I tempest trials. It's so obvious, especially now that Muspell is fielded for battle... The seals are neat I guess. ARsolo is appreciated, still waiting on like 10 other skills to become seals (Desperation should have been a candidate long ago...)

My thoughts: Alm: Hm... didn't think they'd give base Dracofalchion the movement +1 effect by default, but neat. The refine however... they straightup gave him Windsweep. That's awesome, so many refines we're like "that can work with Windsweep!", but here they just gave him Windsweep. Very cool. Ephraims: Both Dracofalchion and Flame Siegmund, as hoped, have dropped the pseudo-Solo effect in favor of straightup Solo. Appreciated. Anyway... Very straightforward weapon and refine. Eph now has sped-up special cooldown without the need for Heavy Blade, which means one of his skill slots has been opened up for use. Both Ephs have benefited very greatly, especially LegEphraim with his upgraded Solar Brace. Eliwood: Refine effect works in tandem with the base effect (which now also triggers on EP if Eliwood is within 2 spaces of an ally) and now grants +10 Atk/Spd/Def/Res, self NFU, and Dodge effect. Straight upgrades are always welcome, and this should help make Eliwood an effective Hegemon killer. Kana: well that's just straight better than what FemKana has, what the hell. Lyn: That refine is... hm. I don't know why she still has to be within 3 spaces of an ally, and I do not approve of her still having a Res +3 boost, but everything else about the refine is good... is it good enough to make LegLyn meta, I dunno but if that refine were put on Brave Lyn... ho boy. Camilla: Straight upgrade. That's an effective +17 Atk she gets from her refined weapon, up from the original +4. Micaiah: Hm... well it's not disappointing, makes Micaiah stronger and grants her an automatic follow-up, but after Gunnthra's upgrade straightup murders anyone who dares to have a debuffed stat, I was kinda hoping Micaiah would get... a little more. I mean, she was the girls winner of CYL3, and Alm up there gets Movement +1 just for existing. So yeah, not disappointing itself, disappointing compared to what everyone else got in comparison.

And the update has dropped. The name is cut off, but this is Micaiah's prf weapon.

Yes, but - and I'm kinda spitballing here - what if the Helswath was just a replica? There's a series of weapons in Fire Emblem Fates that can only be obtained through the use of the four FE amiibo released at the time, that is SSB Marth/Ike/Robin/Lucina. They are exact replicas of the personal weapons tied to each character, though weaker than the originals, called Marth's Sparta (Falchion), Ike's Backup (Ragnell), Lucina's Estoc (Parallel Falchion) and Robin's Primer (Thoron). That could easily be applied to one of these seasonal banners: something like, for instance, Toyswath+ that provides +5 Def/Res and Guard if the enemy initiates combat and can be forged, and its appearance can be that of a duller Helswath. That would probably be weaker than the actual Helswath if it ever makes it into the game, but it would let any unit wield "Helswath" without actually having major Nal blood, which would have opened the door to a unit such as Iuchar/Iucharba coming in representing Nal and wielding not-Helswath. It would also open the door for many other seasonal units to be allowed to wield a weakened version of other Prf weapons, almost purely novelty but still letting normal litle Ogma know the power of wielding "Omega Yato" or "Creator Sword" It also seems like the kind of scheme Anna would come up with, selling replicas of legendary weapons...

You know what? This banner would have been a great chance to bring in someone wielding Helswath, somehow. The two units from GotHW who wield it do not seem likely to appear as GHBs anytime soon compared to other more "popular" (read: sexy) enemy units.

Just gonna copy-paste don't mind me...

So... I guess this is just the banner discussion thread as well? Larcei's axe looks like an upgraded Creator Sword. Or at least a Creator Sword who has a trigger condition to enable an extra stat boost. Seems perfectly suited to counter against popular armors and their popular effects, especially with a Sweep skill. Gonna be honest, Julia and Lewyn are letdowns. Neither one of them feel necessary to summon, their weapons are alright but just as good weapons already exist and their "fodder" is kinda bleh. Leif... eh. Not that exciting, to be honest. The bow is good not gonna lie, but I don't feel like I need to summon for him. The Harmonic effect is good, but they're all good that's not a very high bar to surpass. The fact that this isn't a Dancer banner is extremely disappointing. Nanna would have made history as the first Staff dancer, and a freebie unit at that, but nope she'll probably be pretty standard as a staff flier... ...I know I say it about a lot of banners, but this one... man, it's kind of a letdown overall. The only thing notable about this banner is that it will be accompanied by the Ice and Flames 3 Tempest Trial.

Day of the Twelve festival... given what we know about the upcoming Duo hero, I guess this means it's a festival that celebrates the Twelve Crusaders? What kind of festival is it though? The all-dancers banner has been this month the last few years, so they will be dancers, but these outfit silhouettes don't really have the same look as the more regal Dancers outfits of past years... are they maybe going to take a slightly different approach to the outfits compared to past dancer seasonal banners? ...what, the heroes? Uh... the right really does look like Nanna (if this is the Dancer banner, are we finally getting a Staff Dancer???), left... he has what looks like a crown on his head and a tome in his arm, sheathed sword on his lower back... he is probably a noble of some sort, maybe a more Emperor-y figure during the story of GotHW. So... Arvis maybe? Julius does not seem the type to attend a festival unless they pull a Zephiel and revert him to an age before being corrupted, and as far as I know there are very few other characters from Jugdral who attained such status who also happen to be prominent enough to be focused on a seasonal banner, not including post-war status.

Sigh... just a few more months to get that last merge on Leonie via manuals instead of grails...

Maybe also with Iotes Shield built in as well? It would do about jack crap for her, since she'd still take a lot of damage from one Bow attack if not outright die even if she can offset a load of damage, but if they give her %damage reduction on ranged attacks it would still leave a giant weakness that could still be exploited by the foe.

Kinda hoping this is the time they begin removing the pseudo-Solo effect (comparing the number of enemies nearby to number of allies nearby) in favor of just giving us a Solo effect. Both Dracofalchion and Flame Siegmund have this effect, and honestly I don't think pseudo-solo actually adds anything when most of the units with it want to be completely alone anyway (usually since they wind up with a Solo skill anyway, as is the case with LegEphraim's upgrade)

Quickie clear.

What... I summoned 2 Elises from my first session. TWO 4* special summons of the SAME unit. By the way, my Elise is already +10 and I don't believe I need 2 of her. What...? Ah whatever, I got Leg Micaiah (neutral) pretty easily... what a waste of two perfectly good 4* special summons though...

In fairness, Micaiah has never been a unit blessed with super-high BST. Normal Micaiah, who was released near the beginning of Book II (after units began to receive higher BST than Book I units), has a BST of 151, with a spread of 35/35/28/18/35 no Resplendent bonus. Summer's Dawn Micaiah, who is a ranged Dancer, has a BST of 139, spread of 33/34/20/18/34 Brave Micaiah and Bridal Micaiah both have BST of 155. Brave has a spread of 36/37/28/17/37. Bridal has a spread of 39/39/20/19/38 We have here a Legendary Micaiah who will have Ranged Infantry post-CYL5 growths (if that matters, otherwise just book V bonuses), of which Brave Marianne has a BST of 171, and she has it spread between her Atk/Spd/Res. Micaiah is very likely to break at least 45 in Atk and Res, so her Spd at the very least should be salvagable. Her Defense meanwhile... it might break 20 this time?

Nothing we haven't seen before on Micaiah. High Atk/Res between her base stats and Prf skills, probably gonna have shit Hp/Spd/Def, and Armor/Cav effectiveness cause I guess all of Micaiah's tomes have been plagiarizing off Thani. Neat that she has two brand new Prf skills instead of having Sacrifice again. Joint Distant Guard is indeed a thing, but it is not anything I think I'll be caring about anytime soon. In the first place it takes up the C slot, so already every unit who wants it can't take it and Far Save. There are currently VERY few units who are dedicated Ranged tanks without packing Far Save otherwise. All in all, not a skill I think is worth summoning Micaiah just to use her as SI for. Now does Micaiah herself look good? Yes of course she does, but the Colorless offerings are overall great even without her. Ashera is a solid enough unit who also has the Null Panic buff to support the newly released Brave Marth, and Hegemon is... well, Hegemon. In comparison, Blue is outright pathetic (nothing against Ingrid, but she can be randomly summoned on most any banner), Red is alright but somewhat meh with Sothis in the mix, and Green is... pretty good not gonna lie, but it's not Colorless.

If you want Micaiah to have the highest Atk she can get, you'd usually take a +Atk asset. As-is, I don't think the one point of Atk she'd get is justifiable enough to keep her neutral. +Res at least has the tanking/skill trigger benefits. So yeah, +Res is great for now, but if you ever want Micaiah to become a menace to Blue Cav/Armor units, change over to +Atk.