Othin

I don't think it's reasonable to assume that they're necessarily holding to such short patterns rather than mixing things up. The first Exp skill we got was Axe Exp on s!Chrom, a 5* exclusive seasonal unit, then we got Bow Exp on Faye, a 5* exclusive regular unit, then B Tome Exp on Mae, a 4*-5* unit who could learn the full B Tome Exp line at 4*. Two Owl tome users so far being 4* does not mean they're unwilling to make any Owl tome user a 5* exclusive. Firesweep Bow being 5* exclusive does not mean they're unwilling to make any Firesweep weapon user a 4*. There are plenty of factors to consider, and some of them change with time: having two Owl tome users available at 4* could mean less of a need for a third at 4*, while having the previous Firesweep weapon user a 5* exclusive could mean now it's time to have one at 4*. But really, what it comes down to is that Luke and Roderick are a pair, so they'll both get the same treatment, and they're also the most minor characters on the banner. Katarina is the most prominent character and the one appearing first in the trailer, like Alm, Ike, and Celica in their trailers. That's reason to expect her at 5*.

Like previous "new character" banners, they're currently only available through the banner and therefore at 5*, but after the banner ends, half of them will become also available at 4*. My guess is Luke and Roderick.

Apparently they're just called "Legion's Axe" and "Clarisse's Bow", despite being inheritable and having the same two "regular/plus" versions as other inheritable weapons. Wonder if we're going to keep getting more weapons with that naming structure. I'm assuming they'll show up on random enemies in the Training Tower, which will be funny. Now that we're getting two other ways of inflicting the Panic effect and we're finally getting Swift Sparrow on a non-seasonal character, I wonder how long it'll take for us to get another way of inflicting the Candlestick's no-counter status. And another ranged attacking flier, for that matter.

People have reported that it does. (I haven't tried it myself, although I expect to get it tomorrow.)

I think Quickened Pulse has a white border, like Close/Distant Counter, the "movement attack" B skills like Lunge, and the "movement type buff" C skills like Goad Cavalry. Although I don't think any of those are particularly likely to show up as a seal.

Hmm. Base game: Spur Def 1 > Spur Def 2 > Spur Def 3 Radiance banner: Spur Def 1 > Spur Def/Res 1 > Spur Def/Res 2 Mystery banner: Spur Def 1 > Drive Def 1 > Drive Def 2 Future: Spur Def 1 > Drive Def 1 > Drive Def/Res??? So many possibilities for future skills. (And yes, I know Mist's base Spur skill is Spur Res 1, not Spur Def 1, but I assume skill inheritance allows a character to go from Spur Def 1 to Spur Def/Res 1.)

Got my first perfect clear! That, too.

Is there a need for infantry? Either Xander or Tiki can do red duties just fine, although saving Xander for the end makes sense. As for handling red mages, perhaps b!Caeda or Hinoka? So my suggestion is to try one of those two over Lukas and maybe Tiki over Olivia. Using both b!Caeda and Tiki would have the issue of no physical damage, though, which could be a problem.

The Tempest Trials event is pretty big. There's still half of it left, though, if you want to get in on it. Lot of prizes and Hero Merit to get.

Are you having trouble with greens? Even with a Ruby Sword, it seems like Olivia might have trouble doing all the red combat you need, especially at 4*. I recommend replacing her with a typical 5* red, like Xander or Tiki. Personally, I save Olivia until the last trial, since I need a full-power red/blue/green core plus a healer for the earlier maps, so there's no room for her. She's useful at the end when you don't need to worry about healing anymore, though. I also like to save my best characters (particularly Xander and Reinhardt) to bring out with Olivia at the end for a really powerful team that can almost always beat the last map, although that's only feasible if you can make it to the last map while saving those characters for the end.

1:1 is definitely different from n:1; I'm just saying that if you choose to keep all your original units and not get any of the Gaiden characters, it's not that different than if you're playing FE6 and you pick the A version of both routes and skip the characters from the B versions. In this way of playing both SD and FE6, you end up recruiting all the available characters and keeping them alive; you just miss on recruiting a few because you don't play the chapters where you would recruit them. It's just that in FE6, you have equivalent other options from taking the other routes, while in SD, your other option really sucks. But you do have the option to play both games without actually sacrificing any characters, only missing the opportunity to get a few.

Thanks! Seems like a very good time to pull exclusively red.

You don't have to actively sacrifice units in SD (outside of Normal mode). You can just choose to keep your main chapter units over recruiting the Gaiden ones. Mind, that doesn't make SD's Gaidens not stupid, but I didn't say they weren't. I just said "no full recruitment" isn't a good way to look at the problem. The problem with SD is much more specific than that.

Does anyone know the 5* rates for the different orb colors for this banner?

Are you getting good speed scores as well?

SD's Gaiden chapters are basically consolation prizes to help you recover if you lost a bunch of characters earlier on, not something to aim for. But it ends up feeling very weird and off-putting. I don't think "no full recruitment" is a particularly good basis for criticizing SD, though. To my understanding, FE3 was the first game where "full recruitment" was possible, and the second was FE8. That's a lot of games where it wasn't possible.

I'm not sure what you mean by "not supposed to be letting them get hit in the first place". You don't want to let your characters take more damage than they can handle. In a single battle, you can take plenty of damage and still be fine at the end. In a 7-battle chain, you can't be taking much damage per battle if you're not healing, but if you're healing, you're fine taking lots of damage because you're often able to heal it all off. A level 25 healer isn't as sturdy as a level 40 one, but if he has a decent healing skill, he should do fine.

You don't need to avoid letting your characters take damage if you have a healer. If you bring in a team just for the Veronica battle, it's like any other single-map battle: healers aren't necessary and aren't even particularly good, while dancers are a far better support unit type.

It's worth bearing in mind that for the last new banner, there was a similar conflict, where Eclipse locked the new thread and insisted that discussion be moved to the old one, despite it having previously only been for speculation about the bride banner rather than for discussion of the revealed banner itself. I do still think that was an extremely strange judgment call that accomplished nothing other than disrupting discussion in a pair of perfectly functional threads, but regardless, that's established as the policy we're dealing with. That said, there's no need for posting in a thread to tell the people there how unnecessary it is and to call a mod over when the report button functions just fine. Ana, if this sort of situation happens again, you may find that to be a more peaceful way to address it.

It wouldn't be the first time having four simultaneous banners. During the first Voting Gauntlet, we had two banners for that (one for princes, one for princesses) at the same time as the Battling Ursula banner and a regular banner. Plus, they could just hold off on the next GHB (Legion or otherwise) until after the Tempest Trials event ends on the 22nd. It'd still fit the "second June GHB" schedule.

Most forums don't even care about topics being duplicates. It's not like there's a limited amount of space to go around. I don't see any reason to expect a Kris GHB. They never appear even briefly as an enemy, unlike most other GHB characters, so Katarina seems like she would have been a more fitting pick out of the two, and there's nothing stopping Kris from showing up in a banner later. Of course, f!Robin showed up as a GHB character, so maybe they'll do one gender of Chris as a regular banner character later and the other as a GHB character? What we can assume about GHBs based on this is that Legion will appear in one, potentially the upcoming one, since he's already appearing in the game as an enemy.

Hmm, looking at other characters with the one-level "movement attack" skills in their B slot, I think it's fairly safe to say that if Roderick is available at 4*, he'll have access to Drive Def 2 as a 4*. (Of course, not all characters follow the normal patterns, such as Xander having both of his top-level passives restricted to 5*.) Although Rally Def/Res might be 5* only? We don't have any reference point yet for how "upgraded assists" work at lower star rankings, since only b!Cordelia has had one so far, so it could be either 4* or 5* where they typically get unlocked. If he becomes available at 4* and can learn/pass all of Drive Def 2, Rally Def/Res, and the basic Firesweep Lance from 4*, that'd be pretty great, although that might be a bit much to hope for. One way or another, we can probably expect to end up with (at minimum) two top-level passives and one mid-level weapon all newly available at 4* when this banner finishes, so that's all neat. Another detail, unrelated to the future 4* drops: it's interesting that Roderick's weapon is called the "Firesweep Lance". After the Windsweep and Watersweep skills and the Firesweep Bow, it seemed like "Earthsweep" would be the name of a melee weapon with the Firesweep Bow effect, but instead it's called Firesweep as well. So could one or more Earthsweep skills be coming in some different form? Perhaps as a tome or something. We now have both a sword and a lance that don't have counterparts among the other melee weapon types, but (looking specifically at inheritable weapons) no such tomes, so that'd be a cool thing for them to add eventually along with adding a unique inheritable axe.

He's not in the focus; they already listed off the four characters who are. He'd make sense for a GHB character, although that doesn't necessarily mean he's the next one.

They're really turning up the volume on the new skills. I don't care much about any of the characters, but these skills are cool enough that I'm interested. I was expecting Swift Sparrow to make it into the general pool eventually, but still, it's nice to get it confirmed, and I didn't think it'd be this soon. Also, we now have all three "Owl" tomes, and a second "miscellaneous" melee weapon to join Wo Dao. Wonder what we'll get for the axe. Athena and Luke have the fewest new skills (2 each, while Roderick has 3 and Katarina technically only has 2 but also Swift Sparrow), so they might be the ones dropped? Although Luke and Roderick are a pair, so it'd make sense to drop both of them like with Mae and Boey while holding Athena and especially Katarina at 5* due to being the more special ones. I'm kind of hoping Athena doesn't get dropped because Mae's 4* skill was B Tome Exp, so I'm concerned that Athena dropping would mean she'd just get Sword Exp (as a full skill at 4*) and not one of the more meaningful skills she/others have. At least we should be able to count on Luke dropping? Fire Boost and Panic Ploy both seem powerful, so it'd be nice to have one available at 4* and the other one available as an upgrade for anyone who goes for that. One interesting detail is that the previous characters with automatic access to the "Red-X" tomes (Tharja, Henry, and Raigh) were all dark tome users, so Katarina will probably be the first one to get such a tome as a continuation of Fire/Elfire instead.

I made it to the top 10k! Barely, and just in time to stop playing for the night and slip back down, but still. I seem to be doing better each day, so hopefully I can maintain this and maybe even keep climbing.