Ice Dragon

A few translation notes here, too, I guess. Black Knight's line in the third panel is "女性に話しかけられることは…　／　ある" (josei ni hanashi-kakerareru koto wa... / aru). An extremely literal translation would be "Girls initiating conversation with me... / [is a thing that] exists," with the break into two speech bubble indicating a pause for thought. I think it could probably be a bit more accurately translated (meaning it gets the meaning, tone, etc. across even if the words are entirely different) would be something like "Girls talking to me...? / Indeed. They do." Black Knight's "Yes" in the fourth panel in Japanese is "…と" (...to), which indicates the end of a quotation, or in this case, the end of the telling of a story (which grammatically counts as a quotation in Japanese). The event depicted inside the speech bubble with Azura and Black Knight is being recounted to Sylvain as words, followed by an "and that's what happened".

Desperation is kind of meh as a Sacred Seal. Newer units tend to have defensive effects like passive healing, damage reduction, or the Desperation effect itself with a more lenient condition already and would rather have stats over Desperation. Older units are in more need of stats, and the Sacred Seal slot grants more points of stats than the B slot, so unless the unit requires a different B skill to function, they'll typically prefer to run Desperation in the B slot instead of the Sacred Seal slot. A Desperation Sacred Seal would have been huge 3 or even 2 years ago. Now, not so much. Lucius looks pretty good. He has proper support effects (+6 Def/Res and follow-up prevention as status effects) and proper combat effects (+6 Atk/Res and guaranteed follow-up in combat). I'm expecting him to have something like Resplendent Genny's stat spread, maybe even min-maxed a bit more with more Atk/Res and less Spd/Def. I'll be surprised if he actually has a good Def stat instead, though. EDIT: Added Lucius's weapon to the translation notes.

For anyone who doesn't want to open another tab to read the last frame: Katsura continuing to be my favorite artist for this series. That octopus is absolutely adorable.

Anyways, the usual translation notes: The banner name, "No Matter Where", is "世界のどこにいても" (sekai no doko ni ite mo), "No Matter Where in the World You Are". Hector's epithet, "Sworn Friend", is "友との誓い" (tomo to no chikai), "An Oath With a Friend". Valiant War Axe is "戦神の勇斧" (senjin no yūfu), "War God's Brave Axe". Not to be confused with the Brave Axe weapon, which is "勇者の斧" (yūsha no ono), "Hero's Axe". As usual with these weapons "戦神" (senjin), "War God", is Thorr's epithet. Armored Beacon is "重装の聖炎" (jūsō no seien), "Sacred Flame of Armor". Ostia's Heart is "オスティアの心魂" (osutia no shinkon), "Ostia's Heart and Soul". Eliwood's epithet, "Pledged Friend", is "友との約束" (tomo to no yakusoku), "A Promise With a Friend". Fiery War Sword is "戦神の烈剣" (senjin no rekken), "War God's Blazing Sword". "烈剣" (rekken) literally translates as "fierce sword", but is a reference to Durandal's epithet, "烈火の剣" (rekka no ken), "Sword of Blazing Flame". Spd/Def Clash is "速さ守備の激突" (hayasa shubi no gekitotsu), "Spd/Def Clash". Inborn Idealism is "理想への天質" (risō e no tenshitsu), "Natural Idealist". The skill name translates literally as "natural talent [to move] towards [one's] ideals". Rebecca's epithet, "Breezy Scamp", is "屈託なき笑顔" (kettaku-naki egao), "Carefree Smile". Gusty War Bow is "戦神の風弓" (senjin no fūkyū), "War God's Wind Bow". Mark's epithet, "Winds of Hope", is "希望を呼ぶ風" (kibō o yobu kaze), "Wind That Brings Hope". Total War Tome is "戦神の破界の戦記" (senjin no hakai no senki), "War God's War Chronicles of World Breaking". Definitely sounds like hope. Sabotage is "混乱" (konran), "Chaos". Alternatively, "confusion". Sabotage A/R is "攻撃魔防の混乱" (kōgeki mabō no konran), "Atk/Res Chaos". Again, alternatively, "Atk/Res Confusion". Lucius's epithet, "Calming Light", is "ひそやかな光" (hisoyaka na hikari), "Quiet Light". Mystic War Staff is "戦神の天杖" (senjin no tenjō), "War God's Heavenly Staff".

I have no idea what Mark is doing on this banner. I'm not entirely sold on leaving Mark completely voiceless, but I'll probably get over it pretty quickly. Unless there are time shenanigans going on, Eliwood's exclusive skill and Mark being a duo with Lyn make zero sense. Eliwood feared dragons as much as everyone else up until it was revealed that Ninian was one, and Mark and Lyn had never met at this point (and Mark probably shouldn't even be in Elibe at this point). We're getting Atk/Spd Finish 3 on a 4-star unit, but it's a Special Hero, as always. That's really irritating. I'll probably try to +10 Rebecca and get a few extra copies for fodder. As with all other recent Special Hero banners, there's really no need to actually go for +10 on the premium units due to the Legendary Hero Arena bonus mechanic, and none of the premium units are big enough game changers to make me want to merge them up. I'll probably go for +0 on Hector and Eliwood. I might pull for more copies of Mark, but we'll see. The only thing remotely masculine about Mark's art is that they have short hair. Children are generally pretty androgynous without hair and clothing styles as cues. I mean, fantasy settings as a whole tend to tie magic with intelligence. EDIT: Novelty.

Rath ties his bandanna in the back, whereas Rebecca ties it on both sides. This one is tied on both sides.

I haven't played a significant amount of any of the games after Radiant Dawn, so I have no clue how popular newer characters are (and in the cases of the Switch games, who they are in the first place). Witch Rinea is a possible pick, especially now that we know that the developers are willing to add stronger teleportation effects into the game. I'd personally like to see Rajaion and Cipher's Risen King Chrom. Kishuna would be really cool, but I'm not sure they're willing to do his gimmick justice just yet. That said, heavy-handed counters are entirely on brand for the developers, so it's not entirely out of the question. While not himself "fallen", I wouldn't mind Izca showing up. Mareeta not being in the game yet didn't stop them from releasing Fallen Mareeta.

You don't have to be showered with candidates to get a spot on the banner, especially when they've included non-canon picks like Cipher's berserk Ike. There are only five slots each year after all, including the Grand Hero Battle, and the banner has never been themed entirely around a single game, so the game only needs a single candidate in order to get a spot. The fact that it had obvious candidates from Three Houses (Edelgard, Dimitri, Rhea), but didn't use them that year when the game had been out for almost a full year likely meant that they still didn't want to include spoilers at that time and waited another year to do so. With Engage having been released for only a bit more than a month, I doubt they'll include spoiler units this soon.

145 pulls from Yuri's banner: 4 Yuri (+1 spark) 3 Embla 6 Sigurd 1 Askr 9.7% focus rate is pretty good. 2.8% Yuri rate is basically average, so no complaints. As usual, I get a disproportionately large number of the oldest unit, though. No copies of Yuri with a Spd Asset is a bummer, but I did at least get one with an Atk Asset, so that will have to do for now. And 101 more pulls from the AHR banner: 1 Camilla 5 Ophelia 1 Veronica 2 pity breakers Neimi Fallen Male Morgan I'm convinced Ophelia is the only actual focus unit on this banner.

Legendary Yuri has 30% damage reduction against the opponent's first attack, which is something that regular Yuri doesn't have. In fact, regular Yuri doesn't have any defensive effects on his weapon at all, not even a basic boost to Def/Res. Prior to the release of Remote Sparrow and Guard 4, regular Yuri was forced to run a one-hit-kill build or a Sweep skill in any situation where he could conceivably go up against units that can counterattack. While Legendary Yuri lacks the ability to run Time's Pulse, he can at least take a counterattack and can therefore run more conventional builds. Legendary Yuri is literally just a bulkier version of Harmonized Linde that can walk on trees, and Linde doesn't really have problems taking single counterattacks. (And even if Legendary Yuri has problems taking counterattacks, he has one more skill slot than Linde does to run additional stacks of damage reduction.) I don't consider it to be powercreep at all that the majority of new weapons have the Slaying effect. Back when the Weapon Refinery was first released and we didn't yet have exclusive weapons for every unit, Slaying weapons were the preferred weapon on literally every unit that didn't have an exclusive weapon and had access to a Slaying weapon (and several units would still forgo their exclusive weapon for a Slaying weapon). The fact that the Slaying effect is this prevalent is simply a reflection of the reality that having it has been the baseline for as long as Slaying weapons have existed (Killer weapons had stronger competition from Brave weapons before the release of the Weapon Refinery). Also, likely a large part of the reason why it's so prevalent on weapons is the fact that the effect isn't available on any other skill slot. Restricting the effect to weapons gives the developers more freedom when designing skills in other skill slots since it's easier to keep track of and avoid unintentional game-breaking synergies with the game's strongest single skill effect. I mean, all that does is give us even more Glimmer and Moonbow and Luna and Glacies and whatnot. Giving all premium units 6 skills looks fancy, but functionally does jack shit. The reason why staff units now have 6 skills is because they have premium options in all 6 slots. In comparison, non-staff units really only have 4 slots with premium options, as the best Assist skills have enough distribution to not really be particularly premium anymore (for comparison, Rally Atk/Spd+ is available from 5 units in the standard summoning pool, all of which are in the SR pool, whereas Return+ is only available from 1 5-star unit in the standard summoning pool), and the premium Special skills are "pseudo-exclusive". It's worth noting that while non-premium non-staff units still only get 4 skills, non-premium staff units have gotten 5 skills for the last 5 years (ever since Nanna's release in April 2018), presumably due to the fact that they have a lot of skills that are exclusive to their weapon type in combination with the fact that there are very few units of their weapon type released in general.

While it would be nice for Yuri to have 6 skills instead of 5, if they're going to stick to giving non-staff units only 5 skills, I'd rather they drop the Special slot over any other skill slot on every new unit released because getting yet another unit with Glimmer or Moonbow or Luna or Glacies is pretty damned near pointless. As far as the Slaying effect itself is concerned, it's very obviously the best of the "visible stat" effects, so it's not a surprise nearly every exclusive weapon has it. A lot of build archetypes rely on having the effect because being stuck with a 2-cooldown Special kind of sucks, especially for ranged units that aren't counterattacked reliably (and often can't take a counterattack in the first place), unless the unit has access to some other method of charging their Special faster.

And the usual translation notes: Yuri's epithet, "Underground Lord", is "薄闇を統べる者" (usuyami o suberu mono), "The One Who Commands the Darkness". The word "薄闇" (usuyami) more accurately translates as "faintly lit darkness" rather than complete darkness, but there doesn't appear to be a concise way to say this in English without pulling in unwanted baggage. Abyssal Blade is "薄闇の王の刃" (usuyami no ō no yaiba), "Blade of the King of Darkness". Same deal with "薄闇" (usuyami), "faintly lit darkness", as above. Atk/Spd Hexblade is "攻撃速さの魔刃" (kōgeki hayasa no majin), "Atk/Spd Magic Blade". Compare with Sorcery Blade, "魔道の刃" (madō no yaiba), "Blade of Sorcery", and Infantry Hexblade, "歩行の魔刃" (hokō no majin), "Infantry Magic Blade". Hexblade is "魔刃" (majin), "Magic Blade". Fetters of Dromi is "ドローミの鎖環" (dorōmi no sakan), "Fetters of Dromi".

This is surprisingly tame for a new Legendary Hero. Atk/Spd Hexblade looks pretty good. They're actually trying to make viable options for the A slot that don't overshadow other skills, and that's neat. They've also fixed the glaring issues with Sorcery Blade's activation condition and actually made it worth running. Presumably, though, this skill requires Sorcery Blade 3 as a prerequisite, which is a problem since Ylgr is the only other unit in the game that has it to allow Yuri to pass both Atk/Spd Hexblade and Spd Seal 4 at the same time. Fetters of Dromi removing Yuri's movement boost if he gets hit with Stall is also a pretty cool gimmick. That said, Yuri is still pretty tame, so there isn't too much of a reason for me to merge him too much immediately. I'll probably aim for +2 or +3 and then put the rest of my orbs in the AHR banner. It also doesn't help that I have both of the other red units on the banner already at +10. Some more copies of Embla would help merge up my second copy of her for Aether Raids shenanigans, but that's not a huge priority.

I assume Garon was chosen due to his ties to Anankos since most of the other members here are related to a god in some way. Speaking of which, Caineghis and Yarne clearly didn't fit that pattern at all, and I was trying to figure out why they were included until I realized I was forgetting one of the homophones (because there are a lot for "kami", the ones not mentioned not being relevant here) because it's a verb form. "噛み" (kami) means "bite" (from the verb "噛む" (kamu), "to bite").

"髪" (kami) only refers to hair on the top of the head, of which Cervantes has none. Facial hair is "ひげ" (hige). The generic word for hair is "毛" (ke, also ge or mō in compounds), which also includes fur and feathers.

That's where you're supposed to put your duplicates. This Kiran is clearly not summoning enough if he has enough space in the regular barracks for 7 copies of Gunter.

But many many maaaany comics ago, keeping a complete Herodex didn't take up 85% of your barracks.

Her weapon already has a guaranteed follow-up, so I wouldn't expect her to also get Null Follow-Up. Fast units rarely have follow-up prevention, and slow units rarely have both follow-up prevention and Null Follow-Up. If you actually end up in the niche case where you do need both effects, Edelgard is an infantry unit and can forgo some stats to run the Null Follow-Up Sacred Seal. Also because she's an infantry unit, she can already run Tempo in the B slot, so there's little reason for them to put it on her weapon. She isn't fast enough to reliably run Dodge skills, so the only real competition for her B slot is with Bulwark and some tier-4 skills. Something I would actually like to see is Edelgard get Galeforce like her other non-Brave versions, but with an "on kill" condition. This makes it harder for her to break walls by just bashing her head against them a few more times, but still lets her take out fragile units just as easily.

Before I forget again, this week's Arena ticket gets me Say'ri: As usual, I'm pulling a full session on any Special Heroes rerun banner that has the 4-star SR Special Heroes instead of just the free pull. Got another Spring Catria on her own banner. Nothing else notable. Now back to waiting for this month's Legendary Hero to be announced.

I don't understand how this Kiran has the luxury of letting Gunter use up 7 slots in their barracks.

And my usual hopes and analysis: Banutu: Wizened Breath Currently has Dark Breath, which has a player-phase-only -5 Atk/Spd Smoke effect and can be refined to have a -7 Atk/Spd Seal/Smoke effect that activates as long as the unit attacks in combat. Banutu is a 4-star unit, so I'm not expecting anything particularly amazing. As a unit, Banutu is basically just a red Nowi with a bit more Def and a bit less Res. His base kit makes little sense, having the enemy-phase Fierce Breath, but the player-phase Savage Blow, so I think the refine will probably ignore his default skills. His Res is not high enough to reliably use Dragon Wall, so he lacks the ability to run damage reduction outside of tier-4 skills or Dragon's Wrath. If they want to make him a bulkier unit, he'll want to have damage reduction on his weapon and probably also follow-up prevention. While he also wants a guaranteed follow-up for damage output, his inability to reliably use Dragon Wall leaves his B slot open for Quick Riposte or Dragon's Ire, so I don't think it's too important for him to have a guaranteed follow-up on his weapon. Since his base weapon is Dark Breath, I wouldn't be surprised if his weapon is focused on applying debuffs, possibly with Menace targeting or something similar. Conrad: Masked Lance Currently has Barrier Lance, which grants a +7 version of Warding Stance. Conrad is essentially a bulkier version of Berkut, being a slow lance cavalry with middling Atk and high defenses. He is actually tied with Jeigan for the highest base Res of all lance cavalry after Dragonflowers. His default skills are Bracing Stance and Chill Atk, which don't say much other than he's bulky and was originally intended to be used on enemy phase. Unlike Banutu, Conrad has options in the B slot that he would rather run over Quick Riposte, so he'll definitely want a guaranteed follow-up on his weapon, especially since this weapon would need to compete against Arcane Qiang. As a bulky unit, he would also appreciate any kind of damage reduction he can get as well as follow-up prevention, the latter of which Arcane Qiang also has. While bulky lance cavalry isn't a particularly crowded class, it would be nice to get some kind of gimmick to set him apart from Duessel and Zeke as well as set the weapon apart from Arcane Qiang, which has pretty much everything that a slow lance cavalry would want. Silque: Staff of Lilies Currently has Melancholy, which inflicts Guard and resets the Special cooldown on the target and all enemies within 2 spaces of the target after combat. Silque is slow and physically bulky with the highest base Def stat of all staff units, tied with Spring Bruno and Valentine Lissa with maximum Dragonflowers. In fact, her stat spread is identical to Lissa's other than the fact that Lissa has 1 more HP and 7 more Res from her extra stats for being an armor. Silque default skills are Dazzling Staff and Staff Experience, which doesn't really say anything other than the fact that her new weapon will have Wrathful Staff on it. I'm expecting the weapon to double down on Special denial, perhaps inflicting Guard at the start of the turn and having a Tie-like effect with more lenient targeting. It would be really cool to have her grant Brave Tiki's pre-combat anti-battery effect either as a status effect or as a Drive-like effect. I'm hoping they don't tie any of her effects to her stats. Despite having the highest Def stat in her class, it isn't actually that high compared to units in other classes. Duo Alfonse: Imbued Koma Current effect is: Slaying effect If unit's Special is fully charged at start of combat: +5 to all stats in combat Follow-up prevention Alfonse's Duo skill charges the Special of himself and infantry allies within a 3-space-wide cross by 2 points. Alfonse's entire kit revolves around landing a single hit with an Open the Future activation, which is pretty outdated given the number of units that have damage reduction on the opponent's first attack. It would be a waste to give him percentage damage reduction nullification to fix this because it's an effect on Special Spiral 4, which is the logical progression of his default Special Spiral 3, but forcing him to need Special Spiral 4 to overcome this is also not a great situation for his usability. Additionally, Alfonse needs to use his Duo skill before his first round of combat in order to actually function. He definitely wants to get 2 stacks of Quickened Pulse on his weapon so that he can save his Duo skill for later. Since he is intended to have his Special fully charged at the start of combat, Alfonse would really want to be able to run Finish somewhere on his kit. He currently has Close Counter in his A slot, so giving him Finish on his weapon would be nice. However allowing him to give up Close Counter to run 2 stacks of Finish seems somewhat ridiculous. They could move Close Counter to his weapon, but then he'd be required to get yet another premium skill that he doesn't already have, which makes him hard for average players to use. Some kind of Vantage effect would also be nice since his defenses aren't super amazing (alternatively, make his defenses more amazing like Duo Askr). He doesn't have any stand-out stats that he could run a Preempt-like condition with, so it'd probably be best to also tie it to his Special being charged at the start of combat. Edelgard: Victorious Axe Current effect is: Slaying effect If the number of enemies within 2 spaces (excluding target) is greater than or equal to the number of allies within 2 spaces (excluding self): Guaranteed follow-up The base effect condition is almost certainly being replaced with a Blow-or-Solo condition like most of the others with the same condition. I'm expecting Edelgard to borrow effects from the other Edelgards, just like the Byleths, Dimitri, and Claude did. Galeforce, damage reduction, and passive healing are the most likely candidates. A mobility effect like +1 movement or Charge is also probable.

Next refines are announced: Banutu gets Wizened Breath Conrad gets Masked Lance Silque gets Staff of Lilies Duo Alfonse Edelgard And the usual translation notes: Wizened Breath is "老巧のブレス" (rōkō no buresu), "Veteran's Breath". Masked Lance is "仮面の騎士の槍" (kamen no kishi no yari), "Lance of the Masked Knight". "仮面の騎士" (kamen no kishi), "Masked Knight", is Conrad's epithet. Staff of Lilies is "白百合の杖" (shirayuri no tsue), "White Lily Staff".

The name of this Voting Gauntlet in Japanese is "自分のカミを誇れよ！" (jibun no kami o hokore yo!), "Take pride in your hair/god/bite!". "髪" (kami), "hair", "神" (kami), "god", and "噛み" (kami), "bite", are nearly homophones in Japanese, here written phonetically in katakana as "カミ" (kami). The only difference is their accenting ("髪" has its high pitch on the "mi", whereas "神" and "噛み" have their high pitch on the "ka"), which is not reflected in the orthography. As much as I like Alear's hair, I'm going to start on team Ash because lazer cow.

Magical Lantern and Drifting Grace are the two best weapons for Veronica. If you can, grab a Spd refine, but don't worry too much if you can't get the right refine. Magical Lantern is easier to obtain, but costs Grails and can be more expensive if you use Grails for merges. One copy of Drifting Grace is readily available from Divine Codes 3 from the first manual on its track, but additional copies need to be pulled from a 4-star Special Hero. As far as combat performance, Drifting Grace is generally better due to granting +5 Spd from its base effect (+7 with a Spd refine); however, Magical Lantern grants +1 Special charge rate and better mobility due to its ability to ignore trenches. Special skills should always be chosen for their rarity first, then for their performance in Hall of Forms since Special skills are either extremely rare or extremely common with nothing in between. Ruptured Sky is therefore the best choice, followed by Blue Flame. Assist skills don't really matter that much, so just get something that scores well in the Arena in case you ever need something for score. Like Special skills, Assist skills are all either extremely rare or extremely common with nothing in between. I prefer Rally Atk/Spd+ or Harsh Command+ since they're generally useful. Ranged cavalry don't have many options for A skills. It's basically either Atk/Spd Catch 4 for more stats or Remote Sparrow for damage reduction. Remote Sparrow is rarer, so I'd prioritize it over Atk/Spd Catch. The best skills for the B slot are S/R Far Trace and Guard 4. Guard 4 is harder to get, but both are still quite rare, so it's your pick. S/R Far Trace grants more mobility and offensive stats, whereas Guard 4 helps survive counterattacks. The best skills for the C slot are Atk/Spd Menace and Def/Res Smoke 3. Atk/Spd Menace grants more immediate power and is good for picking off units one at a time, whereas Def/Res Smoke is better for a more aggressive playstyle and is harder to get. Alternative options include Fatal Smoke, Panic Smoke 4, and C Feud. Summary: Valentine Veronica Magical Lantern+ [Spd] / Drifting Grace+ [Spd] Rally Atk/Spd+ / Harsh Command+ / [any other two-stat Rally+] Ruptured Sky / Blue Flame Remote Sparrow / Atk/Spd Catch 4 S/R Far Trace 3 / Guard 4 Atk/Spd Menace / Def/Res Smoke 3 / Fatal Smoke 3 / Panic Smoke 4 / C Feud 3 [Sacred Seal doesn't matter] Use the Atk or Spd Asset as a base. An Atk Asset is better if you can reliably activate Dual Strike (for example, in Aether Raids defense), whereas a Spd Asset is better if you can't (for example, in Resonant Battles). Her skills are okay to use as fodder, but there are easier ways to get the important ones: Atk/Spd Clash 4 is available from the standard pool from Brave Seliph and is only a side-grade compared to other options like Surge Sparrow and Atk/Spd Catch 4. Flow Guard is a very good skill, but it's available from Thorr, who has predictable reruns due to being a Mythic Hero. Def/Res Hold is not in particularly high demand because it's only really useful on support units and on units that target the lower defensive stat, and for the latter, it's usually still better to run the Atk/Res or Spd/Res versions instead since most units have lower Res than Def (and the ones that don't often have garbage Def).

Added all of the Book 3 banners before CYL 3 to the look-forward list of units. As mentioned before, CYL 3 is where we finally have units that are capable of catching up to modern units in terms of stat totals by using Dragonflowers. That said, I still don't think we'll be getting many Book 3 Resplendent Heroes if we get any at all because they're recent enough to have refines that make up for their lower stat totals. And I don't think I'd count Masked Marth out of the running for a Resplendent outfit. Players who have been playing this game since launch will have him merged since he had a lot of reruns. Aversa is in the same boat. She was a highly recommended unit to build, so a lot of players probably already have her merged and at least somewhat built.