Ice Dragon

Remixes have been announced in the Feh Channel: Thrasir: Killing Intent+ At start of turn, inflicts Exposure on closest opponents within 5 spaces and opponents within 2 spaces of them (new) If opponent's HP is 99% or lower at start of combat or if opponent has a penalty: -5 Spd/Res to opponent in combat If unit initiates combat: Desperation effect New skill is Atk/Spd Ideal 4. Adds Exposure with a splash range. Useful since she can now activate the other effects of Killing Intent without needing someone else to supply debuffs or running Menace. Exposure is also just a really strong debuff that's a pain to deal with alongside units with Brave weapons or Triangle Attack. Another source of Atk/Spd Ideal 4 is nice, especially since I have a few spare copies of her lying around. Peony: Gentle Dream+ Counts as Sing/Dance Has Sing/Dance's effect Grants the following effects to target and allies in orthogonal directions from target and unit, excluding unit: +4 to all stats as a visible bonus (previously +3) Formation as a status effect Penalty nullification as a status effect (new) Cannot be used on an ally with Sing/Dance New skill is Cross Spur Res. Penalty nullification is useful, especially since she's on the same season as Yune. And also just because penalties are really common in Aether Raids due to how common structures that inflict stat penalties are. Cross Spur Res looks like it's there specifically because her weapon has Cross Spur Atk/Spd, though it's rendered less useful by the fact that Embla inflicts Feud and is in the same season.

"Heroes players" and "Fire Emblem fans" are not the same thing and neither should be assumed to be representative of the other. The list gives the same rank to characters with the same number of votes without subsequently skipping a rank to compensate, so even though the lowest rank is 429th, there are a lot more than 429 characters in the list.

Even before the leak, I was expecting Gullveig to make top 2 since she had a lot more vocal support than any other Heroes character since Veronica, but I definitely wasn't expecting her to take first. Fancy that. Sonia somehow made it to 41st somehow, somehow. Also six characters from TMS made it into the top 100.

It looks like both of the recent leaks were accurate. CYL results were not unexpected, though Gullveig placing first instead of second is surprising. Valentine banner looks interesting with Hana as a fast 4-star armor. Fuzichoco returns to do another art for Sakura. Unless Elise is an absolute must-have, I can probably get away with just pulling one of each character and then going for a +10 Hana. Even if Elise is a must-have, I'll probably still skimp out and just pull for one or two copies tops. New Arena mechanic is cool, though it probably won't make much of a difference for me. Basically, it just removes the need to fish for higher-scoring teams since you'll always get the highest score your team allows you to match against. Given, I have over a thousand Arena stamina restores, I'm not really in a position where fishing for score costs me anything of value other than time. New demotes are always welcome. Thrasir looks much more usable when controlled by a player since she no longer needs support or a C skill to supply the debuffs needed to activate her skill effects. Peony now grants penalty nullification with her Dance skill, which is super useful for Aether Raids offense. She won't be dead weight anymore during her bonus seasons. Focus Charge mechanic is pretty cool. Removing pity breakers after you get three in a row is pretty nice and prevents some of those really annoying situations where you're constantly pity broken instead of getting a focus unit. Daisuke Izuka follows up his amazing Fomortiis art with another absolute banger of an anniversary artwork. Nemesis sticking his tongue out and Thorr and Loki in casino? uniforms were not things I realized I needed in my life. And more Ninian being cute.

Kiran is back to his usual shenanigans this week:

No, they were posted at the end of day 3, which is normal.

Something that we definitely need is a tier-4 Recovery skill that activates on every turn instead of every other turn like the current Odd/Even versions. And as a tier-4 skill, it should probably also grant an additional defensive status effect of some kind. Also, now that Gjallarbru has a refine, it would be nice to get an inheritable staff that comes with only the "Isolation Ploy" effect. It would make staff units with high HP (Desert Cheine, Summer Rhys, Eremiya, and Azama) legitimately useful. To that effect, every time we get a cool new debuff status effect, they really should release a staff that inflicts it. And speaking of effects that don't get enough distribution, maybe something like Rewarp 4 (Passive B): Unit can move to a space within 2 spaces of any ally within 2 spaces. If an Assist skill is used by unit, enables [Canto (Recall)].

This week's Arena ticket gets me Gray. Also did 62 pulls on the Double Mythic Heroes banner for the time being just to get the spark for Gotoh for Aether Raids and then pull a few more merges. I'll do more pulls sometime later: 2 Gotoh (+1 spark) 0 Fomortiis 3 Arval 8.1% focus rate is basically average. As usual, the rerun unit really likes me for some reason.

This is the first day of Gotoh being the bonus Hero in Aether Raids (and I ended up having to do my initial pulls for him today because of it), and I am thoroughly impressed with his bulk. My current copy is +2 merge with an Atk Asset (will probably switch to Def when I get one, but I have some time to think about it), and he's already tanking hits like a champ, even from Embla. It's made going for the Aether structures on the last few turns of each map extremely easy because he can literally just walk up to them without worrying about the last melee unit I left alive poking at him the whole way there. I just realized yesterday that I confused Nightmare and Demon Light. Nightmare is Fomortiis's long-range "staff" weapon, which puts its target to sleep, hence why its effect in Heroes ends a unit's turn. Demon Light is Fomortiis's "tome" weapon, which is the animation that Heroes uses for Ravager's "magic" animation.

Personally, I don't think the single points from the neutral merge bonus are really ever worth it compared to an Asset in a useful stat, even if it isn't the perfect stat. Basically, Atk > Spd > neutral > HP/Def/Res for Rearmed Ophelia. Also, if you're actually considering giving her an Ascended Asset in Atk, you should definitely go with the Spd Asset base over a neutral base.

If you're running him specifically as a Vantage tank (with one of Special Spiral 3, Special Spiral 4, or Time's Pulse 4), you want to prioritize Atk. Special Spiral 3 is the cheapest option, but it doesn't give you any additional benefits. Special Spiral 4 grants an additional 5 damage and allows Shining Emblem to ignore percentage damage reduction. Time's Pulse 4 frees up the B slot to run Null C-Disrupt. If you're running him as a "standard" unit that happens to have Vantage, you want to prioritize Spd.

Fun. It looks like Team Ymir was big enough to survive two straight hours of multipliers from Team Lilith.

Bleh. Five wins and 4 losses puts me at 5,418 points, which is currently rank 376. I had originally planned on stopping after the first win, but there's literally nothing to lose in tier 18 since I'm already guaranteed top 1,000 since there aren't 1,000 players in this tier or higher yet since it takes 5 wins just to reach this tier from the previous one. Annoyingly, this does put me one win away from moving up another tier, which is annoying. That said, from here on out, it's literally three tiers in a row that require 6 wins to go up, which is also annoying.

Yeah, the intention was so that Pathfinder would functionally make Alear's movement 3 spaces in diagonal directions when moving through Cervantes in addition to helping out any other Galeforce units on the team. Ideally, a full Galeforce team should really have Pathfinder on as many units as possible.

Oh. I was definitely thinking about the Smoke skills while I was typing that. My top pick would be Def/Res Smoke 3 to grant himself Pathfinder so that Alear and/or your other Galeforcers can move around more easily. Panic Smoke 4 and Fatal Smoke 3 are both also decent options. Menace grants more immediate power compared to Smoke, but is usually less powerful after the first round of combat on each turn, so it's your pick whether you want more power up front or after the first Galeforce. I generally lean towards Smoke if you're running multiple Galeforcers because constantly applying debuffs helps both the unit applying the debuffs as well as your other Galeforcers.

The main reason I put Owain in the top spot is because even though both end up with Null Follow-Up and a guaranteed follow-up, allowing them to break an opponent's follow-up prevention, Cuan gets stopped by a moderately fast opponent with Null Follow-Up, whereas Owain is harder to stop. And if you were going to use a slow cavalry like Cuan, you may as well use someone with higher Atk, like Matthis or Fernand. A Charge Galeforce build would probably look something like this: Cervantes [+Atk] Arcane Qiang [any refine] [Assist] Galeforce Atk/* Ideal 4 Guard 4 / Seal Def 4 / Seal Atk 4 / Mystic Boost 4 / Wings of Mercy 3 / Chill Def/Res 3 / Chill Atk 4 / Sudden Panic 3 Assault Troop 3 Atk/Res Ideal 3 / [Any Sacred Seal that boosts stats] / Mystic Boost 3 Any of the Atk Ideal skills work in the A slot. It really depends on what you think you'll need most. Cervantes's Spd is actually high enough that a Spd-boosting A skill will help him double units with middling Spd and follow-up prevention. Res is an option against dragons and the occasional tome with a Close Counter skill. Def helps him against you usual high-Atk physical units. Same deal with the refine. Arcane Qiang and Galeforce makes it so that he doesn't really need any of the Fighter skills, so he can just run one of the recently released premium skills that are available to all movement types. If you aren't running a premium skill, you can run Special Fighter 3 just for the Guard effect with a better HP threshold than Guard 3, Mystic Boost 3 for passive healing, or Wings of Mercy 3 for mobility.

The name's reference to the Fomorians of Irish mythology seems to be coincidental at best. His name in Japanese is "Fodeth", which is likely an unknown source for "fo-" ("It sounds cool" is sometimes the only reason needed, as was confirmed to be the case for the "re-" in "Reshiram" and "ze-" in "Zekrom" in Pokémon) and an intentional or unintentional misspelling of English "death". The localization simply replaced "death" with the Latin "mortis" (genitive singular of "mors" meaning "death", seen, for example, in English "rigor mortis") with an extra "i" probably because it looked cool.

That's his name in Japanese. It was changed to "Fomortiis" in the localization presumably because it was a bit too on-the-nose. I mean, Grima is named "Robin" because he's still using Robin's body, you're still interacting with Robin's body, and the artwork is still of Robin. Fomortiis is named "Fomortiis" because he literally just has Lyon's dead, limp body suspended there to not eat up your castle screen, doesn't interact with you with Lyon's body, and the artwork is of Fomortiis.

I was actually looking at the Arcane Qiang yesterday and didn't really come to a decision myself, but I did look through the options. The best cavalry option right now is Valentine Owain, as he is never going to get a refined weapon and has the best stats among them. He's also a 4-star unit, which is convenient. Spring Minerva is next and is also a 4-star unit, followed by Summer Cordelia. Including units that are not going to get refines for a long time and units that have refined weapons worse than Arcane Qiang, the best options are Fernand, Matthis, Cuan, and Orson, in that order, but I'd rate all of them below Owain. For fliers, the best options that are never going to get refines are Dancer Eldigan and Spring Marisa. For units that aren't going to get refines for a long time and units with worse refines, Melady is stronger than Eldigan, and Karin, Marcia, and Phila are faster and stronger than Marisa. Altenna is also an option whose refine is coming up, but it's still a ways out. Infantry has a lot of options. Summer Norne is the best free-to-play option. Ninja Navarre is better, and Ninja Corrin, Summer Ogma, Pirate Geese, and Bride Charlotte are all in the same ballpark. Resplendent Brave Lucina and Resplendent Lukas are also comparable and have worse exclusive weapons that already have refines. Winter Hilda is probably the single best option among armors if you can have her merged. Valentine Eliwood is the best free-to-play unit that will never get a refine, but Effie is a better option, even without her Resplendent outfit. Cervantes is on par with Resplendent Effie and is not getting a refine for a very, very long time. He needs fewer Dragonflowers and has better physical bulk in exchange for worse magic bulk.

Not just that, but also because colorless is still the most premium color for tomes, dragons, and beasts. Additionally, there aren't that many Legendary/Mythic Hero options with bows or daggers, and most of them end up being colored instead of colorless for the same reason. Additionally, it looks like they're trying to keep the number of Legendary/Mythic Heroes in each color relatively balanced, and with the release of Fomortiis and Gotoh, we're currently at 19 red and blue and 18 green and colorless. A fairly large number of Legendary/Mythic Heroes have fixed-color weapons (26 excluding staves, which only has Elimine, totaling 35% of the 74 Legendary/Mythic Heroes currently released), so they have to get their colorless units from somewhere.

The difference is that Edelgard has Galeforce in a skill slot other than the Special slot, which is not replicable by anything Fomortiis can do. Even though Fomortiis has stats for days, he lacks the ability to either run both Galeforce and Bonfire or run Galeforce twice. Previously, Fallen Edelgard could be run with her default build of a dual-phase Galeforce attacker and an alternate build for Savior. The release of Fomortiis effectively renders the Savior build obsolete outside of Aether Raids Dark defense teams, but doesn't change anything about the Galeforce role.

I pulled all of the focus-colored orbs on the first sessions of the two banners and got Ymir. I think that's a sign.

Even if they removed a unit or two for the Hero Fest, that doesn't fix the fact that Xander is still the most recently released Legendary/Mythic Hero on the banner with this now being his second rerun. Unless they pad the banner with some exceptionally good standard pool reruns, the banner just looks extremely underwhelming. I feel like their best bet is to either release a new red Legendary Hero and skip ahead in the standard unit rerun schedule to Tiki or Ophelia or release a new colorless Legendary Hero, move Elimine or Ashera to the Hero Fest, and put Rearmed Grima in the third colorless slot.

The easiest way to beat a Save tank is to let them walk into your own Save tank. Fomortiis can land Bonfires on Valentine Lucina, but there's not much else he can do when he can't double her and she heals back 5 HP on each of her own attacks due to Valentine Robin's support effect, which means all of the regular mooks attacking her are just healing up the damage she took from Fomortiis. Gotoh ended up being the last enemy standing and got backed into a corner where I just had New Year Ash and Ashera do single-digit damage to him for a few turns to eventually whittle away his HP. Infernal was instead cleared with Desert Nino, Duo Linde, Legendary Ninian, and Harmonized Azura. Linde can kill Fomortiis in two rounds of combat on the first turn before he can transform. Gotoh again ended up being the most troublesome unit to kill due to his ridiculous bulk and ability to counterattack against ranged units, which meant I needed Ninian to soften him up before having someone else land some chip damage for the finishing blow.