Ice Dragon

It's not that Brave Edelgard is bad. It's that Rearmed Robin and Valentine Lucina are just the best Near Save units in the game right now. There's still an argument to use Edelgard over Lucina if your Edelgard is significantly merged and your Lucina is not, though it sounds like @XRay is making the assumption that the two are equally invested (which is probably not a good assumption since Edelgard has significantly more availability due to being released earlier, being released on the most hyped banner of the year, being rerun more often, and being in the standard summoning pool). The main issue with Edelgard is that even though she has a lot of skill effects on her weapon and exclusive skill, a lot of those effects are there to offset the fact that she's pretty much guaranteed to be doubled. Since a lot of builds rely on the fact that a unit will double and will therefore back-load damage onto the follow-up attack, Edelgard has to account for a lot more shenaniganry than Robin and Lucina, who can simply prevent the follow-up attack entirely and deal with the usually weaker initial attack. That said, Brave Edelgard is probably the best slow Near Save unit right now and is probably better than the weaker fast Near Save units (Winter Sothis, Winter Hilda, and Picnic Felicia). I'm not sure how she compares to the two fast Arcane Eljudnir armors. It depends, but in general, yes. The primary advantage of running Distant Counter (D) is the fact that the A slot has access to stat skills with non-stat skill effects, whereas the Sacred Seal slot does not, and gaining non-stat skill effects is often more valuable than gaining a few extra points of stats. Running a stat-boosting Distant Counter with a stat-boosting Sacred Seal is generally less effective than running Distant Counter (D) with one of the tier-4 A passive skills (Stance, Defense, Unity, Finish, etc.). The only times I can see Distant Counter (D) not being used over a stat-boosting Distant Counter is if you need a different Sacred Seal for whatever reason (Quick RIposte, Null Follow-Up, etc.) or if the unit has a weapon that already provides all of the skill effects you want (though even in that case, Unity or Finish are probably still more worthwhile since their effects stack with similar effects). Or if you don't have access to the good A skills, but do have access to the stat-boosting Distant Counter skills for whatever reason. Yeah, the pretty much guaranteed 4 extra damage (plus the 0.6 extra damage from the percentage boost) feels more impactful than 3 Res, which basically has no effect if the opponent's Res is already low enough that you're getting the maximum effect from Dragon Wall. Even though Halloween Naga's base Res isn't super high, she already has every excuse to be stacking Res with her passive skills since she doesn't need Spd.

I'd also add Winter Sothis, Winter Hilda, and Picnic Felicia to that list, but all three of them are lower in priority than Valentine Lucina, Valentine Ike, and Winter Manuela for the time being. Sothis can switch out her weapon for Arcane Grima (which would come free with A/S Near Save), though I wouldn't recommend doing so unless you have a lot of resources since she's scheduled to get a refine to her base weapon pretty soon (Duo Hector is next in line, followed by Duo Marth and Winter Sothis on the same banner). I'm expecting her to get a refine that's intended for Far Save (along with A/S Far Save being released on a new unit at around the same time or sooner, such as on the upcoming Winter banner), so it's best to wait and see. Hilda is only one point slower than Valentine Ike, but is significantly easier to merge due to being a 4-star unit. However, she doesn't have access to an Arcane weapon yet, unlike Ike and Manuela. On the other hand, her color gives her an advantage against Brave Seliph and Brave Eirika compared to the two sword armors. Felicia has a gigantic Spd stat with the boost from her weapon and also already has damage reduction from it. Her Res comparison condition is a bit iffy, though that can be made up for with Mythic blessing stat boosts if you have the corresponding Mythic Heroes and actually use them. If you aren't getting Res from her blessing boosts, she's still getting +11 Spd from her weapon before accounting for the Res comparison stats and can viably give up a Spd boost in the A slot for Still Water, especially if you're getting Spd from her blessing boosts, though that's obviously expensive and less optimal of a setup and might also be overkill since there aren't that many melee units that you actually need that much Res for. Regardless, she's the least reliable of these options, but I think she's still a viable option for A/S Near Save. As far as recommendations go, you should definitely test out Lucina without A/S Near Save and see if her performance with her default A/D Near Save is already sufficient before committing A/S Near Save to her. From experience, my +10+10 Lucina [+Spd] (Ally Support with Valentine Robin, but no Summoner Support, and only sometimes has Spd from blessing boosts) functions fine with her default A/D Near Save, but I don't have the experience to know how she'll hold up without the extra Spd from merges and whatnot.

Nope.

333 pulls from the Rearmed Robin banner: 11 Robin (+1 spark) 3 Eir And 12 pity breakers: Dieck Ascended Laegjarn Ascended Joshua Julian Wolf 2 Flayn Ascended Florina Nimue Brave Byleth Fallen Edelgard Brave Marianne 4.2% focus rate, which is quite a bit above average. 7.8% 5-star rate, which is also quite a bit above average. This definitely makes up for the abysmal luck I had on the Halloween banner. I was so far under budget that I went ahead and pulled for an extra Robin for no other reason than that I could, and I still ended up under budget despite being pity broken 5 times (once by Eir) going for the extra copy. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the extra copy. Also, as usual, I seem to just attract Ascended Heroes as pity breakers.

Yeah, Worldbreaker definitely helps. Neutral is definitely better since it'll be a better merge base in case you do decide to merge them. And yeah, she'll get HP, Atk, and Spd on her first merge, which is better than the HP Asset.

Lethality is a bit tricky to use since it likely won't land until the second round of combat, so it might be worth switching to Moonbow on Nina or Luna on Yuri if you find that you need more immediate power instead of a burst on the second round of combat. Nina's default C Feud is fine if you don't have the resources for something else, though it isn't quite as valuable for offense as it is for defense. I currently run Atk/Spd Menace on her (though that's helped by the fact that I have a giant pile of Brave Eirikas for fodder).

The one thing that Canto (Recall) + Ash does is let you teleport over obstacles and then teleport back, but that's gimmicky at best, so Yuri on Light season is perfectly fine.

Yeah, Canto Control shuts down all forms of Canto completely for ranged units. If we ever get melee units with the phantom thief Canto variations, they would still work after Canto Control, but you'd be restricted to only adjacent squares. For example, if a melee unit with Canto (Recall) were to be hit with Canto Control, it would only be able to return to the space it moved from if that space was only 1 space away.

And this is exactly why I wish we were allowed to wait until later to pick who we want as our spark. After pulling my 11 copies of Halloween Naga, I had already gotten 1 copy of Male Corrin and 4 copies of Duma (5 counting the spark), but no copies of Female Corrin. So I decided I'd pull red and blue. I'd stop pulling red if I got another copy of Duma before getting Corrin, and I'd stop pulling altogether if I got Corrin. It took me 121 pulls until I finally got another focus character, and it was Duma. It then took me another 74 pulls sniping blue before finally getting Corrin, and on the way there, I was pity broken by another Duma. In the end, I had gotten 11 blue pity breakers before finally getting my first copy of Corrin (including previous sessions). Fuck my life. 314 pulls on the Halloween banner: 3 Duma 1 Female Corrin 3 5-star Naga 3 4-star Naga And 12 pity breakers: Echoes Palla Brave Marth 2 Brave Chrom Guinevere Ronan Zeke Monica 2 Brave Dimitri Fallen Male Corrin Hapi 2.2% focus rate is trash. 6.1% 5-star rate is below average by about 3 pulls. Total 399 pulls: 6 Duma (+1 spark) 1 Female Corrin 1 Male Corrin 3 5-star Naga 8 4-star Naga 16 pity breakers 2.8% focus rate is below average by about 3 pulls. 6.8% 5-star rate is below average by about 1 pull. I was hoping that because I was only planning on getting +10 on Naga that I would be able to spend less than normal on this banner. But no, this came out to almost exactly my usual budget. At least I got a +6 Duma out of this mess. I'm going to wait until tomorrow to pull on the Rearmed Robin banner and hope that my luck is better tomorrow because today definitely wasn't it. EDIT: Never mind. Today is melee special training maps, and I actually want to use them for Robin. I guess I'll have to hope my luck has recovered by later tonight.

Quick question to see what other people's opinions are while I continue to fail to pull Halloween Female Corrin: Atk or Res Asset for Halloween Naga with Arcane Grima? A Res Asset is obviously better for tanking with Dragon Wall, but Halloween Naga has the highest base Atk stat of all dragon fliers and can easily run a more offensive build when equipped with Arcane Grima. Plus, I'm unsure if the extra 3 Res from an Asset will actually matter all that much when she's getting 9 Res from Arcane Grima [Res], 7-9 Res from Atk/Res Catch 4, and 4 Res from Atk/Res Rein 3 when compared to the extra 4 Atk she could get from an Atk Asset. Neutral Yuri is better than [+HP, -Def]. Not only does neutral have better merge potential (since the first merge bonus is +1 HP, Atk, and Spd), but Yuri's Def is already his lowest stat, and I don't think giving up 4 points of Def for 3 points of HP is really worth the slightly higher magic bulk. Both of them might have occasional trouble during Light season due to Mediuth's default Canto Control, but other than that, there isn't much in either season that affects the two of them all that much on the enemy side. On the player side, Ash on Light season has some synergy with Yuri's Foul Play, and her teleportation support is useful on the occasional map when Duo Thorr appears and hits you with Stall since Yuri can't get rid of his +1 movement.

Yeah. As long as she gets doubled and her own follow-up isn't blocked, she'll land Glacies on her follow-up attack. You can alternatively run Moonbow or Ruptured Sky in order to have more reliability in exchange for less damage (80% of your own Res is stronger than 60% of the opponent's Res from double Moonbow or 40% of the opponent's Atk from double Ruptured Sky). But one of the advantages of Glacies is that occasionally you'll end up with a situation where the opponent does something that messes with your Special timing (like attacking with a staff unit) and you'll end up with a fully charged Glacies at the start of your player phase, which allows you to instantly delete an opposing unit. If you're on the fence, it might be worth experimenting with both Moonbow and Glacies to see which one you prefer more. Both are cheap skills, after all. Yeah, it should be fine to use her on Astra season. Running Robin on Astra season also has the advantage of having passive healing against Duma, especially if he deletes the Healing Tower. Yeah, I think it's always worth the reminder that you only need an 8:7 W-L ratio in Aether Raids offense. It's a lot less stressful knowing you're allowed to get away with a 53% win rate without any penalty.

Lantern Breath (Halloween Kurthnaga), Serenity Breath (Halloween Naga), and Surprise Breath (Halloween Nils) are the best non-Arcane inheritable dragon weapons right now: Lantern Breath grants Guard, but its stat modifiers are only to Atk, so you don't get any extra points of Res for Dragon Wall calculations. Serenity Breath grants follow-up prevention, which is weaker than Guard, but is still useful, but it has a modifier for Res, which gives you 5 more points towards Dragon Wall. Surprise Breath doesn't have any non-stat effect, but it applies a fairly large modifier for Atk and Res. You can easily get the equivalent of +13 Res on units with good base Res (40 visible Res). Surprise Breath is probably the strongest of the three since you can offload Guard to the A slot (if you're not running all three of Distant Counter, Dragon Wall, and Quick RIposte) or to a teammate, but Lantern Breath and Serenity Breath are still strong options and are arguably easier to get since they don't need Grails (and because Nils isn't in the Grail shop yet). Without Arcane Grima, you're forced to run a guaranteed follow-up on either the B slot or Sacred Seal slot, which means if you also want to run Dragon Wall, you're stuck putting Distant Counter in the A slot instead of as a Sacred Seal if you want to run the skill. Yeah, I currently have Lucina + Robin on my Light team (since they don't need extra damage reduction and mobility support from Elimine) and Gustav + Henriette on my Astra team. As far as Far Save units with ranged weapons go, Valentine Robin is currently the best one. Henriette, Artur, and Picnic Faye are the only other Far Save units with ranged weapons that I consider to be worth using right now, though Artur has an unfortunate color and Faye doesn't have access to passive healing. Robin should run the exact same build as the above Henriette, but with her exclusive weapon and Glacies (since her weapon has the Slaying effect). Again, she ideally runs D/R Far Save, but that's hard to get. The next best option is unfortunately A/R Far Save, which is not the one she has by default, but her default A/D Far Save isn't a deal breaker. Robin's biggest advantage over the other ranged options is the fact that she provides passive healing to your entire team (as long as you have three different movement types on the team not including herself), which is extremely helpful on Aether Raids offense teams to help keep your Near Save unit alive, too. It's also great in PvE content. Unless you're running through all of your ladders, you probably shouldn't worry too much about losing a few extra points of bulk from merges. The goal of Aether Raids offense isn't to win every match; it's to win just enough matches that you don't use up all of your ladders before the season is over.

Henriette is certainly usable for Far Save under player control. Mine tanks well enough, though I also have Flayn + Elimine on the team, and I'm also running her with effectively max investment, so your experience may differ: +10+10 Valentine Henriette [+Res] (Summoner Support S) (Ally Support Valentine Gustav S) Unity Blooms+ [Res] Reposition Iceberg Distant Def 4 / Svalinn Shield Crafty Fighter 3 A/R Far Save 3 Def/Res Form 3 She'll still fail a map every now and then, but not enough to deplete my ladders. In a perfect world, I'd switch out A/R Far Save for D/R Far Save, but it's currently too expensive for me to do so since only Artur has it. I run Distant Def in the A slot on one team and Svalinn Shield on another team. The team with Svalinn Shield is used if the opponent has a ranged unit with effective damage against armor, and the Distant Def team is used otherwise. Yeah. There's really no reason to run A/R Near Save unless you don't have A/D Near Save or the unit has some form of Res comparison.

Our first two Arcane weapons filled in some notable gaps that were restricting unit builds. Both weapons gave their weapon types an option to not need to run Quick Riposte (or similar skills) by granting a guaranteed follow-up in the weapon slot. This frees up the B slot and Sacred Seal slot to run other skills, which make some of the less used (and harder to get) B skills more appealing (like Dragon's Wrath, A/D Near Trace, Daring Fighter, etc.). Arcane Grima also gives dragons an excuse to run defensive Specials by giving it bonus damage that is on par with 2-cooldown Specials. I think we're eventually going to get a lance and an axe that have a similar effect as Arcane Eljudnir so that slow lances and slow axes also have actual build options (especially since an analogue to Coral Saber doesn't exist for them). Bows, daggers, and tomes notably are lacking in good defensive weapons despite having units with defensive stats (currently, the best options are the Blooms tomes), so we're probably also going to be getting weapons with guaranteed follow-ups on them, too. However, they might be limited to enemy phase only and make up for it by granting damage reduction, which ranged units traditionally don't get access to outside of exclusive skills. Bows and daggers are also likely to get a more offensive option since there is currently very little reason to use anything other than Vicious Dagger, Whitecap Bow, Brave Bow, or Firesweep Bow if a unit doesn't have an exclusive weapon of their own (or has an exclusive weapon with an outdated refine). Since Arcane weapons are supposed to be strong, I think this is a valid excuse to introduce weapons that fix the shortcomings of unit archetypes that have fallen by the wayside and need something extremely strong in order to perform the same role as a unit with a better weapon and weapon type or class. As far as characters go, I can see Ganglot and Thrasir having Arcane weapons, like Lif. If Ganglot somehow survives the current Tempest Trials arc, I can also see her resurrecting some previously killed characters as Rearmed Heroes in future story arcs. Like Surtr. Or Gunnthra. Or Nott. Or Sharena. It doesn't look like Embla is going to live too much longer, so it's unlikely she'll be behind any Arcane weapons. Perhaps the antagonist of the next Book will have the ability to pass out Arcane weapons to new original characters or alts of existing characters so that we can have a steady stream of them. We don't really have enough examples to really figure out what they want to do with Rearmed alts of existing characters. Lif and Robin both have lore behind why they have an Arcane weapon, but I don't think they'll be able to keep it up. Maybe we'll get more characters that are basically Fallen alts on normal banners (but get stuck in whatever purgatory Duo Ephraim was sent to) or maybe we'll get random normal characters that look normal other than the fact that the player picked Soul Edge as their weapon skin (just like any unit that you have inherit an Arcane weapon).

This is my general-use setup for Lucina, but the skills are the same for defense. If you need something a bit more fool-proof for the AI to use, you can run a 2-cooldown Special with Atk/Spd Form in the Sacred Seal slot instead of Ignis + Darting Breath, which will boost her performance if she initiates combat, though her Special won't hit as hard. If you need a second copy of Arcane Grima or A/S Near Save because you already used your first (or you needed Hardy Fighter), it's probably worth trying for a second copy if your pity rate is already that high. While Legendary Nanna is the scariest unit for a Near Save tank to face, she's almost never actually used in Aether Raids defense (I've literally never run into her even once since she was released). I have no idea what her usage is in Aether Raids offense since I don't bother to check my replays. I run into Brave Seliph on a defense team about twice a week. Valentine Gustav can actually tank him despite weapon triangle disadvantage, but takes more than 50% damage, so he'll die if Seliph is danced and attacks again. I think Ascended Idunn and Winter Ephraim should be fine due to having weapon triangle advantage over Seliph.

In order to hit a Save unit, you only need to hit the closest unit that is covered by Save, which makes it significantly easier to snipe the unit and get back out. And since Duo Chrom is able to move after using To Change Fate!, he can be used offensively to get another unit in range to make it easier to sweep all of the threatening units in one turn without even needing to get back out. Yeah, there's nothing of note offensively on Light/Dark season other than Mila's Isolation effect, so there's no real risk of putting Robin on Dark season. Yeah, her base kit is good. Ideally, you'd replace her C skill with A/S Near Save from Rearmed Robin, and depending on your priorities, that might be worth the opportunity cost of losing a copy of Arcane Grima. Hardy Fighter is strictly better than Savvy Fighter on slow units, but they are side grades on fast units (since Savvy Fighter relies on the unit having enough Spd to avoid a natural double for the damage reduction effect). Hardy Fighter grants only the defensive half of Null Follow-Up, but has much higher damage reduction. Savvy Fighter grants the full Null Follow-Up and allows the unit to use an offensive Special, but grants less damage reduction. Basically, if you need the extra bulk, run Hardy Fighter, but if not, Savvy Fighter gives you more counterattack damage. Savvy Fighter also isn't vulnerable to False Start. My current setup for Lucina is Valentine Lucina [+Spd] Gerbera Axe Future Vision Ignis Kestrel Stance 3 Savvy Fighter 3 A/D Near Save 3 Darting Breath though I intend to swap out A/D Near Save for A/S Near Save once I get around to actually pulling on the banner. It is worth noting that I'm running her with Valentine Robin, which gives Lucina a reliable source of passive healing.

Yeah, A/R Far Save is better for Hector since his Res is naturally pretty low. He wants as much Res stacking as he can get. I'm not too worried about Divine Fang. Unless the opponent is using it with a unit with a Brave weapon (or Triangle Attack), Robin should have enough damage mitigation to deal with it decently well in combination with the -8 Atk inflicted by Dragonhide. However, if it does worry you, then swapping Robin and Lucina will work just fine.

If you are running him with Far Save, then yes, Hardy Fighter + Aegis is the best set you can give him. Your options to charge Aegis are to either run a teammate that grants +1 Special charge rate or to run a Breath skill in the Sacred Seal slot. The former leaves you vulnerable to Feud skills, but because C Feud is the only commonly used Feud skill, it's really only a problem if the support unit is colorless. The latter leaves you vulnerable to Brave weapons, as you are unable to run Deflect Magic in the Sacred Seal slot. Alternatively, you can give up some of the damage reduction to run Sacred Cowl instead. On Aether Raids defense, you can't really rely on teammates for the +1 Special charge, though it still should be fine if it's mostly just to keep the opponent from attacking into you at the start. Far Save is difficult to run on melee units without one of Distant Counter or Svalinn Shield on their weapon because of how many skill effects are actually needed to deal with all of the ranged bullshit that is currently running around. Her damage reduction on follow-up attacks is probably good enough to pass up on Deflect or Def/Res Form in order to run Svalinn Shield + Distant Counter (D), though it's hard for me to judge Far Save units just because of how many setups I've seen that are intended to just obliterate them. I currently consider Valentine Lucina and Rearmed Robin to be the best Near Save units in the game. Winter Sothis is right behind them, but she wants Arcane Grima and is vulnerable to the occasional Brave Alm (and kind of just dies to Brave Alm + Harmonized Catria). Robin might be a bit better than Lucina right now since she has an easier time dealing with Brave Seliph, who is gaining popularity in Aether Raids defense, though Lucina has the advantage of Gerbera Axe being able to grant both herself and your Far Save tank the Dull effect without needing a skill slot or support from another teammate. For Aether Raids defense, I think Robin is a bit harder for the opponent to take advantage of since she has better player-phase performance, which also allows you to save Lucina for Aether Raids offense without having to change blessings.

Pair-Up feels like a half-assed mechanic that could use a rework. At the minimum, make it usable in more game modes and maybe even introduce non-Legendary units with the ability. (I wouldn't be surprised if they make Pair-Up available to Ascended or Rearmed Heroes in the future.) I literally don't remember that this mechanic even exists outside of Allegiance Battles and Mjolnir Strikes. It would be interesting to see "passive" skills that give a unit an active trigger effect, like Duo and Harmonized skills. We now have Arcane weapons that prevent a unit from equipping other exclusive skills, so I think this could be implemented in such a way that a unit can only have one such skill equipped at a time, even if they release skills like this in more than one skill slot. Legendary Ninian is the first unit in the game that has a status effect that persists beyond the status effect's usual expiration time, which is implemented as a status effect that replaces itself with a new, different status effect when it expires. This can definitely be leveraged for other novel status effects. It would be nice if the English localization team would learn how to use paragraph breaks in skill descriptions. The Japanese have already figured that one out. I think this is the most underrated QoL improvement that could be implemented into the game. As best as I can tell, the current system ties range to weapon type and not to individual weapons. All skills that activate with a unit's range as a condition work even if a unit has no weapon equipped. I don't think it's very likely that we'll ever see weapons with 3 range. They can also already simulate siege weapons with Sweep + Canto (Recall). We already have Sweep skills. While "Null Counter" is different, I don't think it's different enough to warrant inclusion as a new skill, as the only thing it does that Sweep doesn't do is get around Null C-Disrupt. As much as I know this is a joke, I do still have to say that the game already has an existing formula for calculating a unit's stats based on their rarity: Promoting from an odd rarity to an even rarity grants +1 to the unit's 3 highest stats at level 1. (Promoting from an even rarity to an odd rarity grants +1 to the other 2 stats.) Promoting one rarity boosts the unit's growth rates by 0.07× the unit's base growth rates. And the usual disclaimer that if the unit can continue to be merged after promotion to 6-star rarity, this is an excellent way to piss off the part of the player base that brings in the most revenue. The fact that players can trust that the developers won't make us pull for more than 11 copies of a unit in order to max it out is the reason why we can justify using additional copies as skill fodder.

Added Ricken's weapon, Cervantes's weapon, Veronica's epithet, and Veronica's weapon to the translation notes. The new Veronica is pretty much guaranteed to be an Ascended Hero simply based on the naming of her weapon, which matches the format of all three other Ascended Heroes-original characters' weapons. I've also simplified the translation of Eir's weapon to match. I also found this page on the Japanese Heroes website that conveniently lists how to read a bunch of skill names. Its most recent update appears to be the Three Hopes banner, so it looks like I won't be able to immediately check if my guesses are correct. And apparently every 剣, "sword", is pronounced "ken" except for Iron Sword (鉄の剣, tetsu no tsurugi), Steel Sword (鋼の剣, hagane no tsurugi), Silver Sword (銀の剣, gin no tsurugi), Royal Sword (王家の剣, ōke no tsurugi), and Binding Blade (封印の剣, fūin no tsurugi), which are all read "tsurugi". The first four are because item names were written purely phonetically in FE1, 2, and 3, and that's how they were written in those games, and Binding Blade because that's how it's officially pronounced in the game's title.

42 pulls on the Hall of Forms banner: 1 Eleonora (+1 spark) 1 Tsubasa And pity breakers: Ascended Joshua Brave Eirika 4.8% focus rate and 9.5% overall 5-star rate is pretty good. Eleonora is now +5. Tsubasa is now +9. And 20 more pulls on the Halloween banner with my leftover orbs: 1 Duma 1 4-star Naga This brings my total up to 80 pulls: 3 Duma (+1 spark) 5 4-star Naga 4 pity breakers 3.8% focus rate and 8.8% overall 5-star rate is pretty good. Now if only the banner would give me Corrins so that I could stop pulling blue and green. EDIT: 5 more pulls (total 85 on the banner) got me Halloween Male Corrin, so now I don't need to pull green anymore. Yay. He's [+Spd, -Atk], which is fine as a merge base if I incidentally end up getting more copies of him on some future banner.

You don't have team slots for two Nifls in Aether Raids if you're actually going for score. You get one Kaden or one Nifl. That's it.

On the one hand, Volke is insanely good. On the other hand, he's recent enough that his base version already has a good set of default skills, and most of his default skills are still up to date, which means there isn't much to gain from Forma Volke other than Volke himself. Shinon is probably the lowest priority of the three since you already have a copy of him and you have access to a pretty much perfect Forma Eleonora. Jill has more to gain from Hall of Forms, but Volke is just a comically strong unit, so pick whichever one fits your needs better. As for suggested Forma skills (and Assets for Trait Fruits and florets), Jill [+Spd (+Atk)] Shuriken Cleaver+ / Ninja Masakari+ Rally Atk/Spd+ / Harsh Command+ Ruptured Sky Atk/Spd Catch 4 / Atk/Spd Clash 4 / Surge Sparrow S/D Near Trace 3 / Flow Force 3 Spd/Def Hold / Atk/Spd Menace / Atk/Spd Oath 4 / Spd Smoke 4 / Def/Res Smoke 3 S/D Near Trace is preferred over Flow Force, though Flow Force is a decent option if you're going to be using her in the Arena. Spd/Def Hold is the preferred C skill as long as you can offload buffs and debuffs to allies. Atk/Spd Oath is an option to combine with Atk/Spd Clash in the A slot. Menace and Smoke are good overall. Volke [+Spd / +Atk] Vicious Dagger+ [Spd] / Courtly Fan+ [Spd] Rally Atk/Spd+ / Harsh Command+ Ruptured Sky Atk/Spd Ideal 4 Spd/Def Ruse 3 / Spd Preempt 3 / Disarm Trap 3 / Lull Spd/Def 3 Atk/Spd Menace / Atk/Spd Oath 4 / Def/Res Smoke 3 Unfortunately, Atk/Spd Finish isn't in the Hall of Forms pool yet, so you're stuck with Atk/Spd Ideal. Spd/Def Ruse is an option for Aether Raids defense as well as general use with a dancer. Disarm Trap is an option for Aether Raids offense. Spd Preempt is there because +4 Spd is actually decent, and while Vantage isn't reliable, it can still be useful now and then. Lull Spd/Def is usable in the Arena against Rally balls and is a more reliable source of stats in general if you're running Null Follow-Up in the Sacred Seal slot instead of a stat-boosting skill. Atk/Spd Oath is notable here for granting its teleportation effect as a Bonus that cannot be nullified in combat, which allows Atk/Spd Ideal to always have at least one stack active.

Caineghis's Res is pretty low for a Distant Counter tank, even when you consider the stat boosts from his weapon, and ranged tanks in general have too many skill effects that they need to have in order to function in competitive game modes, which makes it harder to fix the lower stats with other skills. The worst case scenario for mandatory skills is as a Far Save tank in Aether Raids, where he needs Svalinn Shield in the A slot to prevent being instantly deleted by Duo Chrom, and he ideally also wants Deflect Magic in the Sacred Seal slot to better tank Harmonized Lysithea and anything Harmonized Catria throws at him. Mystic Boost 4 doesn't quite do enough for him in comparison to Hardy Fighter, especially since Hardy Fighter is also blocking Duo Chrom's guaranteed follow-up, assuming you're already offloading Guard to Kaden.

It's pretty common for the opponent's last unit to be a Triandra, and Mila can just stand there and take hits while my Save ball goes off to break the opponent's Aether structures.