Ether

The hurried return of Raz could only be fortuitous. There would have been no such haste were nothing there... and while perhaps some of the Falcons held reservations about turning their blades on Royalty, Willow held no such quarrels. The royals, the nobles... they were responsible for their country falling to ruin, for forcing savages onto the outskirts, into the forests that they would ravage. Plus, if they pulled this off, there was a large payout waiting for them. Of this, Rivane had been sure, and she trusted the lead Falcon's judgment. To both strike a blow to the callous nobility and secure such a high-value "package", this would truly be a fortuitous day. They need only stick the landing. "Is it time then, Rivane?" The dryad asked, approaching their leader with a subdued, yet hopeful look. Tightening the wraps on her hands and wrists and rolling her shoulders, the young woman looked up at Rivane expectantly. "How do you feel we should deploy?"

If you have the right to complain about something unrelated to the banner at hand, I have just as much right to say that I think those complaints are past the point of being useful and that honestly, seeing them here too when they already come up so often in the refine threads is getting stale. But whatever, I'm not wasting anymore time on this.

Okay...? Feel free to keep working yourself up over it then, I guess? It just seems silly to harp on about something that is clearly settled by this point, especially on a banner that's entirely unrelated to them aside from the weapons sharing a single mechanic. It's something I see a lot of all over the place so I commented on it. And Heather is a fine choice, who fits the banner. It's crazy to me that people will get upset at unrepresented characters getting something, because it's "the wrong one".

Folk need to get over the gen 1 refine skips already. If they had any intention of going back to them, they would have by now. Give Hector the weapon refine he did get, or give them arcanes and stop giving yourselves an aneurism already. Anyway, banner looks neat. Hopefully I get one of Heather and Sisters duo along the way to spark, though the latter is priority if I don't. Zelgius looks annoying so I hope he's flavour of the month so I don't need to see him for too long.

So what happens is, because the calendar is based on PST(since NoA is headquartered on the US west coast), the update time during the Summer months is 12 AM PST. So the update would drop at 12 AM on say, the 6th. So the Calendar says the event or banner or whatever is on the 6th. But when DST changes, the update now happens at 11 PM on the 5th PST. So despite happening at the end of the day on the 5th, in one of the only timezones where it is still the 5th when the update drops, the calendar, because it's based on when the update drops in PST, says that it's scheduled for the 5th, even though it is functionally on the 6th.

I mean, there's Triandra's death blow echo but we'll likely get more echo options coming up. As for seals, the general options of blade session, as solo, as catch etc all apply, although hopefully you'll manage to hit alarm before we run the event out.

Hoping for Spurn 4. Since she seemed fairly likely to be on this hall I haven't prioritized her for skill upgrades so my few dodge 4 fodders went elsewhere. If I get a Peony I'll hold on to her, otherwise just make sure to pair her with someone who can give a proper field buff.

She's +9 so the banner colorshare isn't a concern, I just need her to be on the Hall so I can deck her out with Prime 4 and Pledge. At least up until now we've not had duos in HoF so I don't think I need to worry about Young Ike, but if Leg takes the slot I will be very upset.

The timing of the PoR hall would be perfect to fully kit out YMia with all of the cracked stuff from the last few months and get her +10, and if she gets booted out for fucking useless LIke from the wrong bloody game, I'm going to scream.

Flow N trace would work, but since he doesn't want to swap from his Prf to Qiang, it's a bit of an unfortunate inherit, Gambit or GB4 are probably his best B slot options but both are pretty rare. Yeah, young Becca is still the only Finish 3, hopefully we get a mainpool or at least a grail option soon. At least Finish 4 is dropped on enough units that it's not too unreasonable to hope to snag it off of new folk dropping or reruns of recent units.

Remote Sparrow or AS Finish are probably your best bets for general use A skills. If you don't have them, anything that boosts Attack and Speed will generally work, each has their own caveats. Swift sparrow gives slightly less Atk, Solo requires solo condition, Unity is weaker unless you're being hit with debuffs, Push can turn itself off if you get hit hard(Flare lessens this a bit, but you can still potentially get into less than ideal situations), Ideal works fine but maintaining 9/9 won't always be feasible, 7/7 still compares well enough to most second tier choices. As for Arion, taking a look at him, he already gives himself field buffs in Atk/Def and charge, so waiting for something like AD Oath to exist or giving him AD menace isn't as obvious a choice as it would normally be. Maybe Atk smoke from Gustav instead of the trace? I don't know too much about Arion myself so I can't say too much aside from theorycraft.

Febail is still good fodder for PNFU alone. Spd/Res Hexblade is... it's fine as a filler t4 skill, it just isn't ideal. The way to look at it is, in order for the hexblade effect to do more for you than having another skill in A that has +7 atk, then the enemy needs to have 7 or higher excess defense compared to their res. There are plenty of enemies that this will apply to, and some it will apply to in excess, but the problem is... that just brings s/r hexblade up to par with skills like Swift Sparrow 3 or Solo 4, which aren't really considered more than filler if you have nothing better at this point in time. In order to match damage with, say, Finish, the enemy needs to have 12 more defense, and you still have no answer for the healing from Finish. Sure the +7 res lets you take less damage from magic foes, but finish will heal you vs every enemy type. As for menaces vs Oaths, Oaths are generally better. Menaces don't let you do super long dancer/warp engagements due to the range on the debuffs, and oaths have a higher floor(+9 pretty much always vs +6, and potential +6/-6 if you specifically attack the debuffed target), not to mention the warp utility. Menaces are still fine, and more accessible, but I would pick Oath over Menace most of the time. Distant solo does lessen the impact of the warp a bit for player phase engagements, but keeping within 2 to satisfy both oath and solo is pretty easy for EP.

CC4 is a very strong skill, so you should definitely grab and use both. As for AS Oath vs Spd Smoke... I prefer Oath quite a bit myself, but it's a preference thing. AS Oath will be active for all combats, while Smoke does nothing for your first combat in a phase, and especially in arena where it's only 4v4 that first combat can matter quite a bit. Additionally, while Spd Smoke offers a higher potential speed swing, it's easier to... disrupt, for lack of a better term? If you use Oath, the only thing that will really prevent you from gaining your boosts is debuffs and panic(something easily fixed with unity, or null panic support) or dulls/lulls while Smoke debuffing the enemy can be bad in some circumstances, such as vs unity units, or LRobin teams if you aren't running a Ploy 3, and it's visible speed buffs are just as vulnerable to the above. I also typically find that most dodgestack builds don't necessarily need the extra layer from smoke, but again, preference. As for Nino, Oath 4 is pretty much always a solid choice, yeah. Especially if you're using Flare, the utility from Time's pulse is limited(if you were using a 2CD like Ruptured, you could precharge with Time Pulse 4 and then the acceleration would let you recharge on the opponent's counter even if they have guard, for double RS procs). AR Ploy comes with Arcane Caliburn and as I noted above, can be a decent choice to hit lower Res targets if you don't want to invest another t4 Oath worth of fodder, but she'll miss out on hefty res targets.

The problem with the Atk Oath echo on godswords specifically is that it doesn't give the speed. You get the warp and most of the atk, but you lose 9 speed, which is going to swing so many matchups out of your favour. You could use the Atk oath alongside another spd boosting C like spd smoke 4 if you wanted to double dip, but Oath 4 is still a premier godsword C slot, and on Lumera I still wouldn't bother with time pulse. AS Unity over Distant solo is fine, but you commit her to melee matchups(Ideally with a far save ally) as opposed to all-range. The effects of Arcane Caliburn are pretty generic, so they should work just fine on just about anyway. As for Ploy Nino... I wouldn't use it if you have a premium C on her already. She has 26 base res, + 10 from 30df and +10 stats, and a potential +2 from Resp stats puts her at 38. She'll hit a decent amount of heroes with it, but anything with high res she's gonna miss, and her statline is going to be more effective stacking speed than trying to boost res to make ploy work. Inherit it alongside the arcane still, obviously, it'll be nice to have as a flex pick for stuff like limited hero battles, but I wouldn't use it as a primary skill. Lumera has neither slaying, nor special acceleration, making her an awful user of godlike reflexes. Even using vital astra on her is more for the damage, that you'll occasionally pop the DR is just a nice bonus

The main advantage of Vital Astra over Ruptured Sky on Lumera is that you have greater control over it's damage. Ruptured depends on enemy stats whereas you know Lumera's speed. Plus sometimes she'll get the bonus damage reduction depending on how the procs wind up falling. Infantry pulse support plus time pulse 4(even 3 would work for this purpose) guaranteed she will have a precharged Vital Astra for her first phase of the combat, but she can't loop it without slaying. TP4 will be enough to make sure she procs her 2cd special of choice in any combat where she can double and doesn't face guard effects, so trying to optimize the special isn't strictly necessary. A dodge 4 skill + an unsupported VA is going to give you more defensive value than SS4 having it always up once you get it looping. SS4 provides greater offensive power since it pierces DR, but at that point you want to lean into that aspect with stuff like AS Finish rather than DC Solo. Possibly? AS Ideal isn't ideal, typically. It's fine for what it is, especially if you can ensure to feed him bonuses to make sure he at least has 1 layer active always, but he'll miss out on bonus effects granted by better A slot options. Spiral 4 + Infantry Pulse 4 is decent. It'll support his infantry allies and pulse a 2cd special down to 1cd on turn 1, letting him loop after his first combat so long as he isn't staunched by a guard effect. Ruptured Sky will be the best special for this build. Not sure whether the PNFU build with a better A slot, or this build is better on him. How much losing ploy will effect him mostly depends on your matchups. It's debuffs are always going to be appreciated, but you'll really miss it vs LRobin teams in particular. Considering that you're trying to boost score and thus don't want to run the full suite of support to fully precharge an AoE(in this case, TP4 + QP seal + IP4 support would instantly charge his AoE turn 1) it might be best to pivot to a different build. If nothing else the AoE build is pretty cheap to try out and see if you feel like a weaker first combat really hinders him. Edit: Iirc, when we get seasonals early in the month, we typically see NH around the 15th to the 17th. Could be misremembering on this, but we should get a calendar within a few days.

Lumera looks solid. Vital astra will likely give you higher performance than RS, but do note that since Lumera doesn't have slaying, TP4 only allows you to retaliate with your chosen special on your first counter on EP and does little for PP initiation. She'll want NFU seal or some sort of NFU support for sure. Cyril is... tricky. Spd/Res hexblade isn't an ideal skill, really. It scores well, the Spd is nice, and the hexblade effect is good, but he really wants atk, and if you're not running him with a mage, it's really bad. The res isn't useless but in terms of offensive stats he'd get more from even darting blow 4 without the adaptive damage, which is widely considered an awful skill. As a filler scorestick it... functions, but I would make sure to run him with a mage until you can get him a proper A skill. He might prefer RS over deadeye just because he can fire it off more often, and already half-pierces DR because of PNFU, I can't say I know all of the calculus there. Soren is a pretty typical support/AoE nuke, the build itself is perfectly functional. It's worth noting that without outside support, you need to fight without his AoE at least once, and while he stacks enough res that he can probably lure a weaker mage to get charge, it's important to remember that he does need to unlock his power so to speak. AoE obviously scores less than all gold border, but if it isn't bringing you down a bin, you don't need to be concerned about that. One thing to note is that Lumera and Cyril both being red could potentially hurt in some matchups if you have, say, a red bonus hero that you're saddled with. Strong blue heroes that KSoren doesn't deal with well could mulch your team in instances like that.

AoE specials still hit hard, but notably do not benefit from spiral 4's Dr piercing. As such, you're better off just giving your AoE user spiral 3 for accessibility purposes unless you're flush with fodder. Do note that if you want to run still water and ploy, you'll need outside pulse support in order to get your first AoE going to start the loop if you intend to have it for your first combat. Don't know enough about cyril to comment on him, but I know some folk were grabbing ruptured sky on their LLyn forma for ease of use purposes. You can probably brute force deadeye with spiral 3 and tp4(again spiral 3 is just easier to get ahold of when your special already pierces dr) but I would imagine a phys nfu build would be better. Duels are useless on modern units, at least the duel effect itself is. If you really want to bring an old merge project to arena, they will still increase your score, but you're generally better off just making a new arena core with modern demotes especially since arcane will score worse than prf weapons, most of which on those old units will not perform as well, doubly so when saddled with Duel in the A slot. For scoring purposes, they're still optimal for the units that have less bst than their threshold, but they have a lot of drawbacks.

If they do Timerra now, and considering Ivy was the sole engage summer, they may just be trying to get the 4 main royals in at an increased pace to check those boxes before we roll around to engage banners 3 and 4 like early and mid-late next year if they retain a 6 month rotation.

Gauntlet? What's a... gauntlet? Oh did you mean dragon? Gotcha, I'm picking up what you're putting down, friend.

While the aversion to staff legendaries is certainly odd(recently at least, up until earlier this year when Duo Elise? released staves were pretty feelsbad as a class), I do think that ascended Elincia being staff so that Legendary can be sword works well enough. RD Elincia's arc is defined by her willingness to take up the sword and do what needs to be done, even if it comes at great self-sacrifice. With that being the case, leg Elincia being sword feels fitting.

+Atk will be better unless you intend to speed stack on her A/B/S slots. She's in that awkward mid-speed tier where if you go all in she can smoke other guys in that tier, but beats the slow ones either way. How viable speedy Ilyana is depends on what you want to use her in. She's probably pretty bad in high tier AR/SD etc but I can't speak for those modes. As for her skills, it's all about tradeoffs. Finish is superior to Still water in combat by a wide margin, but Still water gives visible stats. How much do you care about winning Ploy checks vs super high res foes specifically? Ilyana's naturally high res with a superboon is already going to hit every "normal" target pretty easily(+10/20DF +Res Res Refine hits 55 visible Res on it's own, so anything with 60 or less visible res gets hit without any of the still waters). Do note that vs LRobin, targets will have debuffed visible res to boot, which they don't get to benefit from if you Ploy away their grand strategy. WoM4 in itself is useful, although not a combat skill. Both MNFU and Spiral 4 are better for combat(I wouldn't bother replacing it for spiral 3). As for the first Iceberg(or Flare as a shoutout if you source MNFU from Brave Soren)on a spiral build, you either need allies with pulse support, or to get it the old fashioned way by attacking into a mage that can't do much back to her if you intent to run Ploy on every build. As for the seal slot, I wouldn't use heavy blade. It's hard to proc consistently these days, and vs things without guard that she doubles, she'll pop special on her second hit vs things that counter anyway. Still water is fine if you wanna go really hard on Ploying, otherwise whatever good stat-granting seal you have floating around or whatever effect makes sense for the content at hand.

GFU stands for guaranteed follow-up. And the arena stuff makes sense, I don't really bother with arena scoring and just coast around t18-20 but I know that bst plays a big role, and as a newer unit in a heftier move type I'm not surprised Soren would get higher base stats.

It's pretty good for fast or slow units. Offensive NFU would be better vs things that have followup denial AND defensive nfu(such as hardy fighter, arcane downfall with nfu etc) where a gfu is better vs things faster than you without defensive nfu or followup denial(think a lot of offensive units with only offensive nfu on their prfs). That said, Khadein Soren is likely to be one of the best Euphoria users, especially since he has the statspread to use Plumeria's Ploy skill, and Plumeria's own skills map better to res focused mages rather than speed focused ones, even if the weapon itself works for both.

And now the banner lineup makes sense.

Ploy 4 cancels out Grand Strategy. Good riddance to bad garbage. Fee is nice to see, but where's Patty?