Othin

Gameplay-wise, he's one of the strongest lords in his own games, and he defeated a god. He's also the second-most iconic character in the series after Marth, and of the two, I'd certainly call Ike stronger. So while it's quite a title, I don't see anyone else with a better claim to it.

Watersweep looks pretty bad in general, honestly. I don't see either ranged or melee attackers wanting to give up their shot at doubling for that.

I didn't notice the difference between the descriptions to see that 10-5 was a time limit rather than a time to defend, so that messed me up the first time. Didn't help that I didn't bring any blues, either. Spent my ~90 orbs pulling red and green, but got no 5*s at all. I did get Chrom and Sheena as new 4*s, though, so at least there's that. I'm also just a handful of feathers away from my next 20k, which will probably go to Xander when he's released.

Ashnard and BK and others would be more thematically appropriate, but since we know Lloyd is coming and all the other known GHB characters so far have appeared in story maps, it'd make sense for him to appear in one of the new story maps before his GHB, now that we're starting to get them. If not this one, then perhaps a future one coming soon? Although we already had an FE7 chapter, and the non-playable GHB characters showed up in Ch9, which was outside of specific FE game worlds like the early maps in this new chapter. I'm not sure what the purpose of having those maps be set in Zenith would be if not to allow non-FE9 characters in them.

Hmm, now that I think about it, wasn't there a mention that the earlier stages of the new chapter don't actually take place in the World of Radiance? If that's the case, it could provide an explanation for having non-FE9 characters appear there, rather than more new FE9 characters. In that case, it could also preview future GHB characters, like Lloyd.

That's a good point. With a whole new story chapter rather than just a paralogue, it makes sense for this to also be a point where they add non-banner characters, unlike previous banners.

Looking at Maria's skill set, Miracle is listed before Imbue, while normally, skills a character learns first are listed before the ones they learn later. I'm not sure why Miracle is the exception to this pattern, but with that in mind, it's understandable how in listing characters' "final" skills for each slot would result in Imbue being listed in place of Miracle despite it working out for other skill sets. To my knowledge, Miracle is the only skill with this discrepancy, and so far, every healer learns both Imbue and an alternative "upgraded" special. So I'd say this works out to indicating that Mist really does learn Miracle.

It's not just Navarre. Like the other GHB heroes, f!Robin has been a bonus hero. I'm not sure we can assume it'll keep rotating through the starting three. If it does, it'll be possible to guarantee a full-power bonus hero each week by putting resources into all three of them, which would be convenient but would really take away from the relevance of the rest of the bonus heroes.

Altenna, Travant, and Ashnard all have special non-axe ultimate weapons, so hopefully they'll all make it into the game with them.

I could see Astrid as the first one, when we get further into Tellius units. Either her or one of the FE6 ones.

Mark, the player-insert tactician in FE7, was also praised a ton by the characters.

Yeah, generic axe fliers are pegasi. It's unusual, but I don't see a problem with it.

It depends on what sort of stats they've been putting on recent units. Although, regardless of stats, I'm not that excited about the skill sets either Soren or Titania have, and Soren's skillset in particular looks like a worse version of Merric's. Gunter is another reason for me to want to pull green, though. I didn't keep any spare copies of him from the beginning, and he can supply Hone Cavalry. I want more spare units with cavalry buff skills to inherit onto 5*s, particularly the offensive ones for boosting Reinhardt's damage, and while Goad Cavalry is the most appealing, it's also way less accessible.

I'm definitely going to be focusing primarily on red orbs for this banner. I imagine that gives a 3% chance of getting Ike? Still not seeing an appeal in pulling colorless. Pulling green seems a bit silly since I already have two 5* green mages and three 5* axes, and despite their new skills, neither Soren nor Titania look that good. Still, as far as I can tell, Titania is the first green cavalry available at 5* without using feathers or pulling from a GHB banner, so she could be useful since I'm interested in working on a cavalry team. Plus, extra odds of getting a bonus unit is nice. There are some blue units I'd like (Azura, Ninian, and 5* Reinhardt so I don't have to upgrade my 4* one), but lack of any focus unit means blue less appealing right now.

Throughout the FE series, there's a ton of characters with swords with built-in 1-2 range. It makes sense that they'd want to change things up for a few of them, so that they can have different effects on their weapons rather than just repeating the same one and so that the game doesn't get too overloaded on Distant Counter sword users. And the fact that he doesn't use a sword explains why Hector could have Distant Counter even when there wasn't really room for Roy and Zephiel to. As for Takumi, he does actually have the ability to attack in melee in his later appearances as a boss on the Conquest route, so him being the character to have Close Counter is appropriate.

Alm's banner has been out for about a week and a half. It seems to be shorter than others.

This is going better than expected. 4,794 is still solidly in the top 5k at 3,337, and I even managed to finally get a 289 Defense result.

This is a neat way to add both more copies and a second chance at the originals. I've taken a few attempts due to misunderstanding missions and messing up against Navarre a couple of times, but having 99 Stamina is very convenient. Got everything except defeating Navarre with Navarre now.

I wonder if they'll bring back the GHB banners as well. I haven't been interested in them so far, but having them return as options for targeting particular characters as 5* is nice for completionism, like having more chances to target specific 5*-only characters to get them more easily.

Good to see them re-releasing GHBs, although Navarre is certainly an odd choice for this soon. Wonder what the special aspects will be. I don't expect the battles themselves to award more copies of the characters, but perhaps this will offer more copies somehow, such as through quests or adding them to the regular summon lineup?

It's not too critical of a threshold. My intent was mostly just to focus on characters you'd be most likely to finish training to 40 while also cutting the list down to a reasonable size. Of the 5*s you've trained, there are two big holes I'm seeing: none of them are blue, and none of them have a good melee enemy phase. Camilla is the only one that's melee, and she's built for player phase. Sharena can help with both issues, so if you've upgraded her to 5*, definitely train her up to 40 as soon as possible. Do you have any other 5*s? I've used Sharena to great success and I found Merric useful in early arena stages, but I haven't personally used any of the others in arena settings. My recommendation is to focus on your 5*s: from the sound of it, your best bet is Sharena and Camilla as blue and green melee, Tharja as a red nuke, and either Merric or Jeorge as the last slot. Make sure they all learn all the skills they can get naturally, and remember that they can use skill inheritance to get additional stuff: in particular Hone/Fortify/Rally skills will help Tharja. So I'd say focus on trying those out, even on lower difficulty levels, and see if you can report in more detail how things go. Those characters should be able to get better results than the ones you've been getting, so we'll probably be able to give you some helpful strategic advice once you can give more detail about how the battles go and where they go wrong.

That sounds very strange. What characters are you using, and what are their levels, star ranks, and skills? You mentioned trying out various different characters but if you post the ones you have available, we should be able to help you pick which ones can make a good team. In particular, using fully leveled units is how you get good scores, so what characters do you have at or near lv40?

There's a lot to learn from experimentation about what works for you personally. For example, when I was using Spring Camilla as my bonus unit, I gave her Hone Atk 2 because it seemed like a generally useful C skill and could be upgraded into Hone Fliers later, if I got someone to inherit it from. (It'd be redundant with Rally Attack, but I switched that out for a movement assist. Also, it turns out that the only character currently with Hone Fliers is Hinoka, but I only just checked that now.) It turned out that the +3 Atk was often useful for having Hector OHKO Nino, letting him take her out on the enemy phase without dying to her follow-up attack. So once Camilla stopped being a bonus unit, I still wanted to boost Hector's Atk, so I had Sharena inherit Spur Atk 2 to cover that role. There's lots of little things like that that can make a big difference, depending on your own team and your own options available.

Finally got a deathless run, which is especially nice since I didn't manage one at all last week. Got scared at the start of the 7th match when I realized I'd just agreed to fight a Peri team, since I want to avoid cavalry teams and I would've bailed before the fight if I'd thought about it (especially with it being the 7th match), but it turned out to be a conventional and plenty manageable team. Score of 4,794, which is currently sitting at 2,221! Hopefully that's solidly enough in the top 5k to stay there, and even if not, top 10k is still better than last week. I do still need a defense win, though.

Light mages using elemental magic wasn't an issue in FE13, so it's pretty odd for it to be an issue here. Micaiah was even a Dark Mage as DLC.