Othin

I'm on Team Sakura and have 410 flags left for the round. There's a multiplier up, but with how back-and-forth this has been, I really don't think it's the last one. Might sit this one out and wait for another. I'm at rank 880, so I'll probably need to use some flags to stay in the top 1k, but I don't think I'll need all of them.

Xander/Camus/Reinhardt/Cecilia were able to stomp this easily on Lunatic, but had more difficulty on Infernal. My strategy was to have Reinhardt break the wall, then use Reposition to get him out of the way so Camus could bait the Sword Cav with full Goad/Ward buffs and obliterate it. That left the issue of dealing with all the other enemies coming through the wall, so I had Cecilia spend two turns walling them, killing the Green Cav in the process and having Reinhardt snipe the Sword Fighter when he got close, then using Reposition to get him to safety. Dealing with the last three was tricky, though. The first time, I had Cecilia use her special to OHKO Clarisse, then moved Xander and Reinhardt to give double Goad Cavalry buffs to Camus so he could double the Blue Mage and kill it, but he got killed by the Thief because he'd lost so much HP from Deadly Breath and Windsweep meant he couldn't take it out first with Vantage. I managed to win by repeating the strategy up to killing Clarisse, then had Xander kill the Thief before having Camus kill the Mage, using Reinhardt to get Xander out of Camus's way but keeping them both close enough for Goad buffs.

I've been losing to a lot of people lately, so probably. :p Is there a maximum of 99 Dueling Crests? I've been saving up and don't seem to be able to go over that number. Which just gives me more reason to spend them and get more chances to get a deathless run and finally make it into 20, I guess.

People know the FE4 code pretty well. There are some wyverns she could potentially fight after getting Naga, I guess? But to my recollection, that would never happen naturally and it would be quite hard to have her fight them even intentionally. In any case, in FE4, wyverns are just counted as flying units; the wyvern/dragon "weakness type" doesn't exist.

Naga didn't deal effective damage to wyvern riders in FE4, actually. All it did was bypass Julius's damage reduction. And give +20 to most of Julia's stats. I think it'll be announced when the trailer goes up in like a day or two.

Threaten skills are C skills, but Seal skills are B skills.

In addition to Fred having lower total base stats due to being a ranged unit, daggers have 4 less Mt than corresponding melee weapons, so Fred having 3 less Atk than Robin in that photo actually means his base Atk is higher. In addition, Robin's stats are accounting for her A skill which gives her HP +4 and Def +2, so Fred beats her in base Def as well. Between all those factors, it probably works out to a relatively typical melee vs ranged difference.

They're not going to just skip the seasonal banners when they're appropriate, especially since it seems like they get people to spend a lot of money. I do hope they keep the future regular banners more focused on rounding out the rest of the games that don't have much representation yet, though. Katarina's banner has some cool skills, but none of the characters are ones I was particularly hoping for, and others could have used those skills just as easily.

I got curious about how the amount of new content on main banners has changed over time, particularly in terms of the number of new top-level skills per character. Sibling Bonds: 1 Each character has exactly one new skill, in the form of an ultimate weapon. Family Bonds: 0.83 This one is a bit complicated, because it's the only banner to introduce skills that had already appeared in the base game on future GHB characters but weren't available yet (Goad Cavalry and Blazing Thunder) and also the only one so far to introduce a new skill on multiple characters (Dime Thunder). Similarly, Reinhardt and Olwen are notable for being the first playable blue tome cavalry even though Ursula had already appeared as an enemy. (And Bruno, for that matter.) I also think it's worth noting that Dime Thunder is more unique than other ultimate weapons, still being the only one to break from the "Silver (or equivalent) with +1 Mt and a bonus effect" formula. (Sometimes two bonus effects if one is "kill dragons".) Between Dime Thunder, the two GHB skills, and the two other ultimate weapons, it works out to 5 skills for 6 characters. Blazing Shadows: 0.5 Here's the low point, skill-wise: just 3 skills for 6 characters. Jaffar with his Deathly Dagger, Karel with his Wo Dao, and Ninian with Fortify Dragons. Still, there's a bit more to it than that. Ninian is a pretty big deal for being the first dancing dragon, and with both dancers and dragons being so few in number, a new one of either is pretty noteworthy. In addition, the Deathly Dagger is the first ultimate dagger, while the other two are the first inheritable skills added that were entirely absent from the base game, even from enemies. Spring Festival: 2.25 At this point, the banners started guaranteeing at least one new skill per character, and being a seasonal banner, Spring Festival had a lot more than that. Each character got a new spring-themed weapon, as well as at least one new passive. The spring weapons all worked the same, and some of the passives were pretty useless, but still. In addition to the skills, Spring Camilla is particularly noteworthy as the first magic flier. World of Shadows: 1.25 World of Radiance: 1.25 These two banners, the first regular ones following the switch to emphasizing inheritable skills a lot more (particularly passives), are strikingly similar. Both have exactly one new passive on every character, plus a new weapon on one character: Firesweep Bow on Faye and Ragnell on Ike. (Does Ragnell really count as a new weapon if it's functionally identical to Raijinto? And Siegfried, although that was still enemy-only at the time.) For each banner, one of the passive skills followed up on a new type of skills started in Spring Festival: weapon-based Exp and dual stat variants of existing skills. Rite of Shadows: 1.75 Like the last two, one new passive per character, but this one also has new weapons on three of the four: all except Genny. Although Genny ended up making a big impact on the offensive capabilities of characters with her weapon type anyway through her passive. Bridal Blessings: 2 Each character has a new wedding-themed weapon and one new passive, except Cordelia who has a new assist instead of a new passive. Like with Spring Festival, there's more new skills here than in the regular banners so far, although there are some differences. The weapons have a bit more variety than the spring ones: Lyn's in particular has a completely different effect, but even among the other three, none of them are just color-swapped pairs. In addition, all the non-weapon skills are ones that would seem well enough at home in a regular banner. Echoes of Mystery: 2.25 The other regular banners so far have had fewer new skills than the seasonal ones, but Echoes of Mystery is right on par with them. All the characters have at least one new passive, half the characters have two new passives, the other half have new weapons, and Roderick even has a new assist. Also, while I didn't count it as a new skill, Katarina adds Swift Sparrow to the regular unit pool for the first time, since it had previously only been available through Spring Festival.

I got curious about how the amount of new content on main banners has changed over time, particularly in terms of the number of new top-level skills per character. Sibling Bonds: 1 Each character has exactly one new skill, in the form of an ultimate weapon. Family Bonds: 0.83 This one is a bit complicated, because it's the only banner to introduce skills that had already appeared in the base game on future GHB characters but weren't available yet (Goad Cavalry and Blazing Thunder) and also the only one so far to introduce a new skill on multiple characters (Dime Thunder). Similarly, Reinhardt and Olwen are notable for being the first playable blue tome cavalry even though Ursula had already appeared as an enemy. (And Bruno, for that matter.) I also think it's worth noting that Dime Thunder is more unique than other ultimate weapons, still being the only one to break from the "Silver (or equivalent) with +1 Mt and a bonus effect" formula. (Sometimes two bonus effects if one is "kill dragons".) Between Dime Thunder, the two GHB skills, and the two other ultimate weapons, it works out to 5 skills for 6 characters. Blazing Shadows: 0.5 Here's the low point, skill-wise: just 3 skills for 6 characters. Jaffar with his Deathly Dagger, Karel with his Wo Dao, and Ninian with Fortify Dragons. Still, there's a bit more to it than that. Ninian is a pretty big deal for being the first dancing dragon, and with both dancers and dragons being so few in number, a new one of either is pretty noteworthy. In addition, the Deathly Dagger is the first ultimate dagger, while the other two are the first inheritable skills added that were entirely absent from the base game, even from enemies. Spring Festival: 2.25 At this point, the banners started guaranteeing at least one new skill per character, and being a seasonal banner, Spring Festival had a lot more than that. Each character got a new spring-themed weapon, as well as at least one new passive. The spring weapons all worked the same, and some of the passives were pretty useless, but still. In addition to the skills, Spring Camilla is particularly noteworthy as the first magic flier. World of Shadows: 1.25 World of Radiance: 1.25 These two banners, the first regular ones following the switch to emphasizing inheritable skills a lot more (particularly passives), are strikingly similar. Both have exactly one new passive on every character, plus a new weapon on one character: Firesweep Bow on Faye and Ragnell on Ike. (Does Ragnell really count as a new weapon if it's functionally identical to Raijinto? And Siegfried, although that was still enemy-only at the time.) For each banner, one of the passive skills followed up on a new type of skills started in Spring Festival: weapon-based Exp and dual stat variants of existing skills. Rite of Shadows: 1.75 Like the last two, one new passive per character, but this one also has new weapons on three of the four: all except Genny. Although Genny ended up making a big impact on the offensive capabilities of characters with her weapon type anyway through her passive. Bridal Blessings: 2 Each character has a new wedding-themed weapon and one new passive, except Cordelia who has a new assist instead of a new passive. Like with Spring Festival, there's more new skills here than in the regular banners so far, although there are some differences. The weapons have a bit more variety than the spring ones: Lyn's in particular has a completely different effect, but even among the other three, none of them are just color-swapped pairs. In addition, all the non-weapon skills are ones that would seem well enough at home in a regular banner. Echoes of Mystery: 2.25 The other regular banners so far have had fewer new skills than the seasonal ones, but Echoes of Mystery is right on par with them. All the characters have at least one new passive, half the characters have two new passives, the other half have new weapons, and Roderick even has a new assist. Also, while I didn't count it as a new skill, Katarina adds Swift Sparrow to the regular unit pool for the first time, since it had previously only been available through Spring Festival.

Jaffar's dagger is an ultimate weapon. It can't be inherited.

Sharena's 5* weapon debuffs in the way legendary weapons debuff (by having a built-in level 2 skill), not in the way daggers debuff. I don't think it's very relevant. It's sort of like Fury, but only at 100% HP, like Ragnarok.

Cutting down on the length and decreasing the score requirements for major prizes could make it a lot less stressful.

Joined Team Sakura because I heard she was behind and wanted to finally get better rankings from a smaller team and the multiplier. Looks like the multiplier is working out, but smaller team, not so much. With so many multipliers flying around, it's hard to tell what to do. I used 400 flags on the multiplier two hours ago, but now that the multiplier is back, I'm starting to think waiting for a bigger one is the better option.

They don't have to be expecting a character to be one of the absolute most popular characters to include them in a seasonal banner. Gaius, for example, only got a fifth as many votes as Lyn in the poll (9,465 for 15th place in the male poll compared to 49,917 for 1st place in the female poll) and he got included anyway, and Frederick, Xander, Caeda, and Charlotte didn't make the Top 20 for their divisions at all.

That's neat, I hadn't seen that.

No way to know. Might be more than last week but should be less than two weeks ago.

I think it was some sort of datamine. Didn't seem to have any details but did indicate both Tharja and m!Robin showing up there. I guess that'll make a total of four Robins, huh.

Ike would certainly be a good pick for a future swimsuit banner, whether they do another one this year or wait for next year.

Once the CYL heroes get added, Lyn and Lucina will each have two special variants. Also Lucina sort of already has another one in the form of Masked Marth, even though that one is called "Marth" instead of "Lucina". No precedent for multiple seasonal variants yet, though. I think that'll probably start happening at some point, but maybe not until we've already gotten through at least the first year.

Do the others introduce new ones as well? It seems like it'd be fitting for Heroes to have future years have the old seasonal characters return on secondary banners during their season while new seasonal characters show up on main banners during that season. So you can get another chance at the old ones, but using orbs you could also be spending on the new ones.

The banner being titled "Ylissean Summer" along with it arriving earlier than expected does suggest that there might be another summer banner coming up soon with non-Awakening characters, so that's worth being aware of. I wonder if they found that the spring banner was effective at getting people to spend money and decided to increase the number of seasonal banners as a result? It's also possible that they had just already planned on having multiple summer banners for their obvious profitability.

It's because there are already so many reds the rest of the time, so they're using the banners to give support to the other colors. Lack of mounted seasonal characters is unfortunate, but I guess neither wedding dresses nor swimsuits are particularly well suited to mounts.

I'm well aware that was your intention. You may notice that what you ended up demonstrating was that "greatly harm a few people rather than slightly harm many people" is in fact a terrible response to some situations, and that whether it's worse to "greatly harm" a few people or to "slightly harm" many people depends completely on specific details of the situation. Insisting on the same answer for all situations that can be shoehorned into being represented that way is completely ridiculous.