Xenomata

Bit sooner than expected, but whatever, the only reason I'm surprised is because it took Hel a while. Triandra having a means of inflicting Guard on the enemy from far away is nice for AR-O, but the fact that she's Dark element means she probably won't be used in AR-O anyway. Good offensive stats, but I don't use dancers in combat so it feels a little wasted. I guess it's more appreciated than Mirabilis having such trash Spd that she dies in just a few hits despite her better Defenses... Freya has quite the goodie bag... we all know she'll be quite fast just based off her appearances throughout Book 4, and having an Evasion effect is always a boon. Solos are fairly easy to trigger on Cavs, and her B passive stealing Field Buffs is just mean (also gives Light and Dark a run for its money as a powerful B passive). I could see her with Galeforce and being a general nuisance. Hel is still good, always has been and probably will remain that way. That really just means Green is loaded down with powerful units. Colorless is all-around good, Red could be slightly better (if you ask me, Sothis is showing some age) but still good, and Blue... uh... hm, Blue is always a tricky customer for me specifically, isn't it... I'm sure Blue is fine for others, and Anna would be a good unit to get some more of, but I +10ed both Azura and Tiki a long time ago, and neither of them are offering any particularly good fodder as it stands, so... I'll just pray I don't get an all-blue session.

...yeah I was banking my FEH Pass purchase on who would come directly after Lucina, and... sorry, as much as I like Lucy and her art, I think I'll be skipping again. I don't use Niles. I don't care that much about Niles. He was never even a unit on my "maybe consider +10ing someday" list unlike the other units I got FEH Pass for, and honestly I feel like I'm being cheated out of getting Resplendent Lucina just because he's next. Sure his art is good, but so what?

(Huh... kinda forgot about the Feh manga with the lack of update on here.) Ilyana may be the bane of most seasonal units, considering a lot of them use some sort of food as weapons. As for the trait fruits, there is only one solution to this problem: tie the Grimas down and apply force.

@Fire Emblem Fan Not to dissuade you, but I think it's alright to consider using Trait Fruits on units you know you won't ever summon again, mostly units in limited time banners. There's a number of reasons why you might not want to summon off a limited time banner even if it has a unit you want to summon for, such as overall poor odds to get the unit you want, and you may consider it smarter to just save your orbs. Trait Fruits are slow but guaranteed to give you a satisfied result, Orbs... you could spend thousands of orbs, get a 5* +10 unit, and still never get the desired Asset. I speak from experience. The first unit I used fruit on was Harmonic Tiki (she used to be +HP -Atk, now she is +Atk -HP) simply because I knew I was probably not going to summon her again and I knew I would use her a lot more often than most of my grail units, even among the ones I +10ed. As for who to give the trait fruits to, Black Knight would appreciate a +Atk asset for general needs. If you can speed stack him for a Special Fighter build, then +Spd would help in that matter as well. Brunnya might be able to make use of a +Res asset to improve her defensive ability. She could theoretically also pack +Def, but I don't know if her Def is worth building up on. +Atk is a good all-around asset. And as Othin said, Heath and Galle aren't notable units and could be easily replicated via Altena.

You'll probably see detailed builds and combat numbers from Xray, but generally speaking Melee Armors don't do all that amazing with Player Phase builds. The Armor Edelgards can do well with such builds, but LegEdelgard only because she gets 2 Galeforces in a single turn along with potential permanent Move+1 status, and Bravelgard because her Prf gives her Move+1 and Guidance status. Even then, Greil does NOT have salvagable Spd at only 18 base, and you would be better off giving him a normal Brave Axe+ and Bold Fighter. Annette I feel wants her Prf axe when possible both because of the adeptive damage it provides and support role, while Hilda I'm not entirely sure since she does have a good amount of power with Freikugel and also has a level of supportive ability... As for Phina, you aren't just sacrificing opportunities against mages by dropping DC, but also Bows, Daggers, and some staves who don't carry Dazzling Staff. The power of most Special triggers is also not worth passing over for maximum Spd investment, which doesn't actually impact damage and in some cases won't even help survivability enough without an Evasion skill. Lastly, a Othin said, most Dancers will want Wings of Mercy over any other B passive, though maybe Escape Route could work in Phinas case since she does have the Rapier to work with. Vantage carriers lose way more matchups than you think simply by dropping Distant/Close Counter. Even switching from a Foil or Ward skill can boost matchups, and if you ask me you don't really do Phina any favors by not taking DC.

Five free summons, 16 orbs, Blue and Green focus. 3 sessions where not a single orb was used, the other 2 only 4 was spent each. Final session was another 1 orby, but SUDDEN TWIST the hero I get from Double Special Heroes AKA Black Friday in the Sunshine is +Atk -Res Sandbar Fluorspar Selena. ...pretty good result if I do say so myself. This should especially help when I need a Green Sacred Stones hero and Amelia won't cut it.

Can never go wrong with Desperation. With her default skillset Byleth would outspeed most all units while still having a way to reach under 75% hp, and as long as she gets kills she won't be wanting for a sweep.

I'm in 19.5 these days, since the investment being demanded to remain in 20.5 is too high for me to be able to keep up. Theoretically I could enter tier 21 if the bonus unit were LegTiki, but not when LegJulia and LegChrom still exist. I aim for no deaths in my runs, so it's not like I don't do just 5 arena battles per week.

I can see myself getting Claude, but only because the Claude I have is +HP -Res and I've not summoned any other Claudes since. Plus, unlike my Dimitri and Edelgard who have good default skillsets, I think Claude could maybe appreciate some other skills. Could there be a Firesweep Bow in his future I wonder...

The daily one? Does difficulty matter then? Cause I really don't wanna spend more time in the Arena than I need to for feathers and medals that I thought would never run out. Eesh... wonder what it would take to make all the badges run out...

Basically just the 5 battles required of me every week, but it's not like I'm refining weapons all the time.

...hm. I... have run out of Arena medals... ...huh. I did not think this would happen... at all.

I think even a veteran with multiple high-investment units can attest there's always that one unit you wind up relying on. ...it's Brave Ike. Combined with Spurn, high Spd investment, Flayn, and a good ol Sabotage Atk for good measure, there's often little that can take him down outside of AoE damage, which turns out isn't that common outside of Aether Raids. Ike singlehandedly made the game very boring for me when I began to over rely on him. I now actively try not to use him outside of AR-O if I can help it, which thankfully I usually can.

I summoned Merlinus +Spd -Atk. I wanna give him two Fortress skills and a Poison Dagger+ so badly, but... no. ...oh yeah got Melady too, +Def -Res, that's something I suppose... get the two units I specifically DID NOT want...

I mean every offense when I say I hope we never get another Three Houses banner until they start giving TH chars actual FB convos. Merlinus would NOT be tolerable if he were talking to just Alfonse about how to be a proper prince or some bologna.

...wait I never looked at the units skills, shoot. ~I'll be honest, you can't make me be excited for Melady. I never liked the idea of Pegasus Flight (it doesn't even look like it works all that well outside of a select few units), and I really don't think a Def-based version will make me change my mind when most units these days average 40 Def. Her lance also just underwhelms me. ~So this is how we finally get Close Def 4... I'm sure Dieck will be perfectly fine, though I personally have no investment in him. I think the defensive nature he has set up by his skills will be decided purely based on how defensive Dieck himself is. ~...still not excited for Merlinus... ~Despite anything I say about Guinevere, I don't actually want her that much... under other circumstances maybe, but the other 3 units on the banner underwhelm me so much that I can't be excited about tome effectiveness and Res stacking. I'm not sure I even want to sparking, I'll just do whatever pulls for Blue I can and then maybe Guin will be on a skill focus banner for Joint Drives or something. ...I know they're probably perfectly good, but I remember not being that excited about Binding Blade units before as well... which is bad, considering not liking a series means you may not have that many units from the series for Allegiance Battles and Limited HB's.

I have a system in place where I keep 5 of every 4* summon I make with exceptions: Any unit I already +10ed and has less than desired fodder skills (Gordin, Oboro, Wrys make perfect examples) Any unit whose fodder skills are FREAKING useless, not counting assist (again, Oboro makes a perfect example) I keep all Assist fodder at 3*, and since those units tend to not have good skills otherwise they'll get binned too (Oboro...) Any unit whose fodder skills are not that high in demand and I do not have plans to ever get to 5* +10. For 3 star units, the only units I keep are Assist fodder and Grail units. All others get binned. This way, when the time comes that I need a skill, usually Galeforce, I do usually have the fodder unit in question plus enough grindable fodder to get the feathers together without having to wait. The only issue with my system is that it becomes quickly obsolete when I begin merging up a 4* unit, since then I extract every possible feather out of my books, which usually begins to dig into my Special skill fodder... but hey, hasn't been too big an issue so far. I still usually have the fodder I need and the feathers in an emergency.

@XRay @Baldrick Why are the two of you ONLY looking at Aureola. You know as well as I do no one's replacing her default kit outside of narwhales, and by default she gets Atk/Res Push 4 and Lull Atk/Res. Maybe it's not the +21 Atk Lysithea gets, but she's still effectively getting +15 Atk from initiating combat or being near allies, and against tomes she has an extra 50% damage, which Tomes make up the vast majority of offensive threats. (any team with Ophelia has at least 3 tomes on it, any Dark AR-D team has Brammimond and Yune, Lysithea and LegAzura are some of the other most used Tomes in AR-D, and I'm sure Xane would go up in usage if people figure out how to get him the highest stats on AR-D) She gets the OHKO because of the environment she is used in, not necessarily because she gets a lot of Atk and endless Special Triggers. As for countering... I assume you mean Evasion skills, I don't use the term Damage Reduction... she would do it with raw Spd. If she were going to be a slow but powerful mage who could double attack anyway like Brammimond, she wouldn't have the Spd bonus she gets. But as it stands, she has the potential to build up Spd to either completely nullify the Evasion bonus or at least mitigate it, depending on her actual base Spd of course. Yes I know it doesn't counter damage reduction from Urvan, Caduceas Staff, or Blue Lion Rule (she is NOT gonna have any Def), but countering the commonly available Evasion skills is a step in the direction. You mention that the units I mentioned besides Lysithea aren't true OHKO units if you use the right unit. We both know that's bullcrap in AR-O, you don't have the luxury of seeing the kinds of units the enemy is using and then picking the right counters unless you have multiple AR-O teams set up. I may have picked somewhat bad examples in mostly Arena units (there's a lot of heroes to remember, sue me), but the fact remains: Gunievere has effective damage against 4 kinds of enemy units that will not be able to do anything about it outside of exceeding whatever her Res is in Blazing Special damage. ...also the only reason I counted Legendary Edelgard as a OHKO is because she doesn't actually have a reliable automatic follow-up, so she's doing a lot of her damage all at once per combat.

Aureola falls into the category of "Weapons meant to be One-Hit Wonders without being Bladetomes" see Lysithea, Legendary Chrom, maybe Surtr if taking the weapon effect into account, Legendary Edelgard, etc. Those kinds of units don't care about being within HP thresholds unless they're carrying a Brazen skill or Vantage. As more and more units gain effects that disable follow-up attacks or cancel out entire percentages of damage, it becomes more and more important for a unit to be able to deal a ton of damage in one attack, lest they risk leaving a very alive tank who also opens up WoM on the enemy side. And while Aureola might not be THE shift in that direction, it does begin to inch that way in its effects alone, no comment on if Guinevere will also follow suit. Book V may see the release of more units who make all the damage reduction% introduced in the past year meaningless.

...all I know about Merlinus is that he's a merchant and he has a convoy, so it's kinda disappointing that he's just on a horse and not in a big-ass horse-drawn carriage or something. I ALSO know that he doesn't even fight in the first place, and I'm disappointed that the first normal summoning pool Colorless Dagger Cav has to be... this guy... I mean... the others exist to I guess... but I never played past the first few chapters of Binding Blade, so I really don't have an opinion on anyone here...

I'll be honest: that really isn't proof. It takes more than two odd ribbons to prove a hack. If you want proof of an illegal pokemon, try receiving via Wonder Box 3 of the exact same shiny Lugia who came from gen 3 with an Emerald default moveset, meaning the only way it could exist was if someone caught it in Emerald through the limited-time event to get the event item necessary to be allowed to battle Lugia in the first place, THEN getting it shiny, THEN THEN cloning it at least 3 times and sending them out willy nilly.

I like the units that I +10... generally speaking, naming no Summer Micaiahs... so generally I like to give them the best skills they can possibly ask for. That includes Julia, who after careful observation would appreciate Mirror Stance 3 most. And fortunately, todays banner had Osian on it. ...getting him could have been worse, yeah still traumatized from trying to summon Pirate Tibarn thanks for asking, but in the process I did wind up summoning Keaton, merge fodder, and in the last session I got a normal Dimitri, DB3/Lull AD fodder. So... you know. The things I do for my units, eh...?

Okay so... this mode went from perfectly alright, a fair bit grindy but then it happens to every game... now... if I gave my full opinion, I might get a number of warnings from mods for... language, so let's just say that it now sucks ass x100. 100 asses.

...just saying, coming to this forum became a lot less fun when everyone began hating on Resplendent Lucina and/or her artist.

...huh. Thrasir, Mirabilis, and Pirate Veronica I expected to use, but... Ylgr not only participated, but also landed the killing blow on Eirika. I'm actually kinda surprised this time. I didn't record cause I honestly can't be bothered to do it more than once a month, even though clearing a Limited Hero Battle using just Heroes OCs might actually be slightly more impressive than clearing using 2 speed-charge Galeforcers, LegAzura, and one of the strongest Bladetome users in the game (half-Bladetome if we're talking Harmony Tiki), all +10 (except Tiki) What I will say is that Thrasir had to tank a few hits from the Watersweep Thief, Veronica walled off the entire of Eirika's chamber, and Ylgr camped in the starting area. Mirabilis... did her thing.