Ice Dragon

Def/Res Smoke 3 is really nice. I wasn't expecting Pathfinder as its secondary effect status, but it's perfect for it, especially with Leila's weapon's Canto effect. The new Canto types are pretty cool, particularly because Unit n×n and Ally n allow the unit to ignore terrain. Recall also seems like it could be really fun to use with a teleportation skill. As expected, the inheritable weapons have Canto (1), which is fair. Nina's Duo skill looks like it's designed specifically for Arena (which it should be). Quite solid. Her weapon is basically Blizzardblade. Canto Control's value increased significantly with this update. All of the ranged units have their Canto completely disabled by Canto Control. If I'm reading the description of Canto Control correctly, it will also prevent melee units from moving more than 1 space away (the wording in Japanese is different from Gravity and should presumably also apply to warping). If I get lucky, I might try to +10 Nina because she looks really fun to use, but I won't force it. I need to save my gacha budget for CYL and FGO's summer event. Leila having both Sweep and Pain+ is also really tempting, but not enough to go for a +10 unless I somehow get the same insane luck as I got on the Thorr/Nifl summer banner. EDIT: Rickard's weapon has Canto (Rem.+1) on it.

All numbers with max Dragonflowers: Kiria has the second highest Atk stat of all tome infantry, but has no other effects on her weapon. Lysithea has +1 Atk over Kiria and has an actual Spd stat. Fallen Julia has the same Atk as Kiria and has a guaranteed follow-up. Ascended Celica has less actual Atk, but deals additional damage that brings her effective Atk higher than Kiria's and has an actual Spd stat. Eleonora has both Windsweep and Watersweep on her weapon minus the drawback, i.e. prevents the opponent's counterattack if she has higher Spd. The strongest unit that is similar to her is Ishtar, who has +3/+6 offenses over Eleonora, which increases to +5/+8 if you have Ishtar's Resplendent outfit. However, Ishtar can only run one of Windsweep or Watersweep at any given time and doesn't have a free B slot. Shamir has +8/+4 over her and doesn't require a Spd comparison. You can also compare her to Ulir, who has +10/+5 and is used similarly, but has the Desperation effect instead of Sweep. The strongest units with a Firesweep Bow+ are Ninja Shinon (+0/+0), Ulir (+3/-1), Bride Shanna (-1/+0) for flying units, and Wolf (-1/-1) for cavalry. Kiria is literally just Fallen Julia without a guaranteed follow-up. You can build her for one-hit kills like Hapi, but Ophelia does the job significantly better and without the need for team support to get her Special charged. Eleonora has essentially the same stats as the best units with Firesweep Bow+. However, she requires a Spd comparison, which prevents her from being usable against faster units, and she is still pretty far behind similar units with exclusive weapons.

There's no reason not to use Summoner Support since it gives a flat boost to stats that is independent of team composition. As far as optimization, this is best used on units that you use most often and/or bulky units that can make use of most of their stats. Ally Support is a bit more niche, but it's still helpful enough. There are a few units whose weapons rely on having Ally Support, so it's worth giving Ally Supports to them if you're using them. Any units that you use on the same team often are also good choices, particularly those that often stick together, like Save tanks. Neither affect Arena scoring, and neither affect AI-controlled defense teams.

Not much I'd actually change, but there are a few things: Every banner should have a spark. There isn't much of a reason not to do so other than to limit distribution of Celestial Stones, but I don't think Celestial Stones are so valuable that they need that be so limited in distribution. Increasing the distribution of Celestial Stones will only affect paying players anyways, and it's not like paying players get that much of a benefit from getting that many more Celestial Stones. I often forget they exist. Right now, you really only get two chances to spark for any given unit, and if you miss both (or don't have Feh Pass to access both), you're SoL on having guaranteed chance to get the unit. On the topic of sparks, I think they should remove the Feh Pass requirement for the spark on all banners and instead make Feh Pass give you an additional spark on all banners (including banners that already have more than one spark). (The additional spark would also not exclude units you already picked in previous sparks, which prevents weirdness from happening on the CYL banners, which have as many sparks as units on the banner, and increases the value of the additional spark.) Also on the topic of sparks, they should make it so that you aren't forced to pull your spark immediately and allow you to pull it later. It's frustrating when you randomly pull the character you sparked for after already using the spark, and this is most prominent on banners with two units sharing a color when you're pulling that color. Allow Aether Raids Aether regeneration to go over the Aether cap, but only if it isn't already over the cap at the daily reset. Every now and then, I'll forget to do an Aether Raids run on Tuesday (usually due to falling asleep in the afternoon and waking up after the reset), which loses me the 70 Aether from the daily regeneration. The annoying thing is that it doesn't matter any day of the week other than Tuesday, so just letting Aether go over the cap like that wouldn't hurt and still encourages players to spread out their runs across the week without forcing them to play every day. Realign Summoner Duels S/R so that they only occur on weeks without Allegiance Battles. It's really annoying having every other week have almost no competitive events and then having the other weeks have literally everything (other than Arena Assault) in the same week. Summoner Duels S/R is way more tedious than Arena Assault, so having both Allegiance Battles and Summoner Duels S/R in one week in exchange for not having Arena Assault is not a fair trade. That's literally what a spark is for (and is part of my reasoning for why all banners should have a spark). Also, $10 is way too cheap. It's fine for older units, but definitely not for newer ones. It costs on average about $80-90 to pull a specific 5-star focus unit on a 4-unit 3% focus banner if all of the orbs are bought. I've already changed my summoning strategy to pull the entire summon circle instead of just grabbing the free pull. It's not going to make me want to pull more than that, but I think sacrificing 15 orbs to have a chance at grabbing a 4-star SR Special Hero is fair enough. However, I do think that they should make the SR Special Hero pool bigger and just have it synced up with the regular SR pool. There's no reason why the SR Special Hero pool should be behind the regular SR pool when older Special Heroes weren't actually designed to be better than regular units.

A lot of them are in classes with low stat totals, so this makes them actually viable to use in the Arena. Without their Duel effect, they'd lose a lot of their value since they aren't otherwise designed to be used in other game modes in particular. It's there to make them actually worth pulling for players that care more about gameplay performance.

43 pulls from the Hero Fest: 1 Muspell (+1 spark) 1 Ascended Fjorm 1 Neimi 1 Flavia I originally said I'd pull for Muspell and spark for Fjorm, but since I got a Fjorm while pulling, I sparked Muspell instead. These 2 copies of Muspell get him to +10, so now all four units from this banner are +10. 4.7% focus rate is below average, but 9.3% 5-star rate is a bit above average. Neimi is now +5. This is my first copy of Flavia.

I'm iffy on whether or not CYL 4 is going to get a refine this year. As I've mentioned before, I consider CYL 4 to be the start of modern weapons. However, Moon Gradivus and Wind Parthia are both pretty borderline. Moon Gradivus is behind other Distant Counter weapons due to lacking a stat boost, and Wind Parthia still somewhat suffers from the trend of older bows being too conservative. Dark Spikes T could also feasibly get a refine without breaking it, though it would likely be weaker than other recent refines, but Flower Hauteclere is definitely up to par with other modern weapons. If it gets a refine, it would have to be quite small. Anyways, the usual translation note: Wanderer Blade is "流浪の鋭剣" (rurō no eiken), "Wanderer's Sharp Sword". The localization team's allergy to the word "sword" strikes again. And hopes and predictions: Rutger: Wanderer Blade Base weapon is Slaying Edge. Rutger has almost identical stats to Athena with a Spd Asset and max Dragonflowers other than a sizable advantage in HP (+7/+0/+1/+1/-1). Our most recent free-to-play sword infantry are Kamui (-2/+4/+0/+5/-4 over Rutger) and Guy (-2/+3/+1/+2/-1), all stat comparisons again with a Spd Asset and max Dragonflowers. Keeping his base weapon's Slaying effect and getting a +6 Atk/Spd boost are pretty much a given, though there is a chance he'll get +5 to all stats instead due to his base kit coming with Atk/Def Bond and Vantage, despite both skills being awful for his stat spread and role. The condition on the stat boost is probably Blow-or-Unity, again due to having a Bond skill on his base kit. As for additional effects, make a dartboard with Dodge, Tempo, Flashing Blade, Spd-based damage, and maybe a few other effects and throw some darts at it, though I do expect some additional source of damage due to Rutger's slightly lower Atk stat. Keaton: Wolfskin Fang Base effect is the Meister effect. It has the standard beast transform condition and the old beast infantry transform effect. Keaton is currently untied for the highest base Atk of all beast infantry at 48 with an Atk Asset and max Dragonflowers. Updating the beast infantry transform effect is a given. Other than that, it's almost certainly getting a boost to at least Atk and Def (one of +6 Atk/Def, +5 to all stats, or -6 Atk/Def to the opponent). I can see it getting Vantage on the refine in order to encourage keeping Keaton's default Special Spiral on his B slot. if they want to get really fancy, it would be really cool for the refine to have 5 HP regeneration after combat in order to perfectly offset the recoil from Distant Storm or just give him En Garde. Summer Laegjarn: Worldsea Wave Base effect is Desperation if HP is 50% or higher and a permanent +3 Spd. Worldsea Wave is literally identical to unrefined Holsety. Laegjarn has -1/-1 offenses compared to Levn with a Spd Asset and max Dragonflowers. Holsety's refine added +8 Atk/Spd, nullified Levn's Penalties to Atk/Spd and the opponent's Bonuses to Atk/Spd. Worldsea Wave is also similar to Shadow Sword, which received a refine much more recently, with the only difference between the two base weapons being that Worldsea Wave has +3 Spd whereas Shadow Sword has the Slaying effect as their permanent stat effects. Laegjarn has +1/-5 offenses compared to Fallen Mareeta with a Spd Asset and max Dragonflowers (+1/-2 if you count Worldsea Wave's permanent +3 Spd). Shadow Sword's refine added +10 Atk/Spd, the offensive half of Tempo, and grants either +8 Atk or +8 Spd depending on a stat comparison. Like Holsety and Shadow Sword, the base effect's condition is likely to be change to if HP is 25% or higher. Given that Laegjarn is a Special Hero, I'm expecting Worldsea Wave's refine to be at least as strong as Shadow Sword's. Laegjarn's current problems are her relatively lower Spd compared to her competition, her lack of access to Null Follow-Up, and the fact that she has no reliable means of guaranteeing a Special activation in every round of combat. Levn has access to Special Spiral and Time's Pulse, the former he has on his base kit, and Mareeta has the Slaying effect on her weapon. I can see it getting either +5 or +6 Atk/Spd on the base effect and then another +5 or +6 on the refine effect. Ideally, it would also get the offensive half of Null Follow-Up and some effect to guarantee a Special activation in every round of combat (Slaying effect, Brave effect, Pulse effect, +1 Special charge rate, etc.). And then some other effect to make it at least as good as Shadow Sword. Naga: Divine Breath Base effect is +3 to all stats for each dragon or unit with effective damage against dragons within 2 spaces (max +9), effective damage against dragons, and a permanent +3 Atk. Divine Fang+ is getting an additional effect that grants +6 Atk/Spd as a Bonus to Naga and allies within 2 spaces. Naga's remix also gives her Dive-Bomb to replace Chill Spd. Divine Breath should allow Naga to teleport to any allied dragon or allied unit with effective damage against dragons. Given that she is getting Dive-Bomb with her remix, it looks like they want to give her more offensive presence, and this would make it much easier to activate the weapon's base effect. Since Divine Fang+ is now granting Bonuses, it's possible that the refine could grant additional stats or effects based on the total Bonuses on Naga or on nearby allies. Since all of Naga's remix updates are offensive, it's unlikely she'll get any defensive effects on her weapon, so the obligatory stat boost will probably be +6 Atk/Spd. Hilda: Freikugel Base effect grants +6 Atk/Spd if there are no allies with more Def within 2 spaces, +4 Atk/Spd to allies within 2 spaces that have more Def than Hilda, and a permanent +3 Spd. Hilda is very awkward to use. Her Def is slightly below average for a melee unit at 31 with maximum Dragonflowers. In order to get the stat boost for herself, she typically has to either stay away from the rest of the team or move first (which does not sound in character for her). Melee units can move in after her to get the stat boost from her, but ranged units usually don't have high enough Def to do so. I have no idea what they're going to do with the base effect on this weapon, as the current conditions are just too ungainly to work with compared both to more recent units and the strength of the effects themselves. Hilda is a pretty generically offensive unit, so there's any number of skill effects they could give her. Throw some more darts at the dartboard you previously made for Rutger. Maybe an effect to reference Apocalyptic Flame or her Crest. Legendary Alm: Luna Arc Base effect deals damage equal to 25% of the opponent's Def and has a permanent +3 Spd. Lunar Flash II gains the ability to nullify percentage damage reduction. Alm's remix also give him Time's Pulse. I'm expecting this refine to be relatively tame given that Alm is still a pretty good unit, largely due to Lunar Flash being a really good Special skill. Neimi (+0/+4 offenses over Alm) is the most recent bow infantry, and her weapon effectively gives her +17/8/5/5 with no other combat effects. Ulir (+4/+4) is the current gold standard for bow infantry, and her weapon gives her +6/6/0/0, the Slaying effect, the offensive half of Tempo, and nullifies her Penalties to Atk/Spd. With the obligatory +6 Atk/Spd that it will surely get, Luna Arc will put Alm 3 Spd behind Neimi and 1 Spd behind Ulir. This leaves enough room that there could potentially be another boost to Spd. The remaining difference in Atk compared to Neimi is already effectively covered by Luna Arc's base effect. Alm comes with Null Follow-Up in his base kit, but it's often replaced with Desperation on player-controlled teams for survivability. With Alm getting Time's Pulse from his remix, which allows him to activate Lunar Flash if the opponent does not counterattack, it makes sense to give him the Desperation effect (high or low HP works) on his weapon. The offensive half of Tempo would also be nice to promote Null Follow-Up over Spd/Def Tempo. If they really want to tread on Ulir's toes some more, Alm could nullify the opponent's Bonuses to Spd and Def, which would be useful for him in the Arena and would again promote his default Null Follow-Up over Lull Spd/Def. Caineghis: Lion King Fang Base effect is +4 to all stats on enemy phase and a permanent +3 Atk. It has the standard beast transform condition and the standard beast armor transform effect. Make a new dartboard with all of the effects that enemy-phase armors want (excluding everything already he has on his base kit) and throw some darts. Caineghis has Fortune in Radiant Dawn, so Guard would make sense. +5 to all stats or -6 Atk/Def to the opponent are pretty likely for the obligatory stat boost, but it'll probably get an additional stat boost on top of that because Caineghis's Res is pretty far behind what you'd want of a Distant Counter armor these days. Maybe it could also have some novel defensive effect like what Kjelle got.

Yes, but that's how it is already right now. A unit with the setup in my previous post has 2,330 SP. A unit with the same setup and an exclusive weapon has 2,380 SP. Both are in the 2,300 scoring bucket. Adding a tier-4 B skill to the unit with an inheritable weapon brings them up to 2,390 SP, which is still in the 2,300 scoring bucket. The addition of tier-4 B skills only makes a difference for units with exclusive weapons (and no exclusive B skill), which will be able to move up to the 2,400 scoring bucket, and for units with an inheritable weapon running Reposition, which will be able to move up from the 2,000 scoring bucket to the 2,100 scoring bucket. If I were designing a pricing model for a continuous currency for this game mode, it would probably look something like this: Base price is based on the unit's Book, with more recent units being priced higher. Probably works with a rolling window so that the current book has a certain price, and the price goes down depending on how many books ago the unit was released rather than a fixed price based on the book number. Multipliers for units with special statuses, namely Special Heroes, Legendary Heroes, Mythic Heroes, Ascended Heroes, Duo Heroes, and Harmonized Heroes. Probably something like 1.5× for Ascended Heroes and 2× for all of the others, stacking multiplicatively if a unit belongs to more than one category. It looks like we might not be able to change a unit's skills after we get the unit in the game mode, so it might not be worth charging for skills. However, this also lessens the value of buying units from this game mode except to just to get a unit you don't already have or to get an extra copy of a Grail unit without spending Grails.

If you were already running with maximum-SP skills, it will have zero effect on units without exclusive weapons: 350 SP from weapon 400 SP from Assist 500 SP from Special 300 SP from passive A 240 SP from passive B 300 SP from passive C 240 SP from Sacred Seal is 2,330 SP. Adding 60 SP from a tier-4 B skill will only bring that up to 2,390, which doesn't change how well the unit scores. All it does is give you the option to drop the A or C skill down to a 240-SP skill if you want to maintain maximum possible scoring for the unit. Since all relevant A skills already have a 300-SP version, all that does is trade the number of options you have in the C slot for the number of options you have in the B slot. Unlikely unless there is some way to control what units they are usable on. The reason Forma Souls make sense in Hall of Forms is because the developers have complete control over which units players can use Forma Souls on. If they have Canto (1) instead of the Rem. versions of Canto, then I think they're fine to be unrestricted. If they have the Rem. versions of Canto, then there's a possibility that they'll be restricted by movement type. (Beast weapons are already restricted by movement type, so it wouldn't be anything brand new.) On a side note, I just noticed that Nina's weapon has Canto, but can only choose between staying at the unit's current location and returning to the square the unit started its current action from. Looks pretty fun for Arena, Aether Raids, and Summoner Duels. Assuming the effect counts as Canto, it should get completely shut down by Canto Control since Nina is ranged. However, if a melee unit gets the effect in the future, it might be immune to Canto Control if the movement counts as warping.

The outfit is not so much referring to the target of the heist as much as it's to signify that the thief himself is a classy individual. Lupin was a gentleman, after all. I think (at least for the modern version) it's also meant to allude to the typical outfit of stage magicians, as phantom thieves typically use trickery and illusion in addition to the more standard stealth.

They don't properly say what the actual theme of the banner is in the English video, but it's "phantom thieves" ("怪盗" (kaitō) in Japanese, which is mentioned in the Japanese video), the trope where the thief leaves a calling card before the heist to tip off the law enforcement, still manages to steal the goods from under their noses, then makes a flashy getaway. Cath, Leila, and Sothe's outfits are quite typical of the trope (the typical male outfit is masquerade ball; the typical female outfit is somewhere on the spectrum between masquerade ball and Catwoman; bonus points for having a top hat) with the others being a bit more stylized. So they are proper thieves and not just "rogues". The origin of the trope is Arsène Lupin, and the origins of the typical outfit are Lupin and Catwoman.

I'm expecting Alm to get Tempo and a defensive effect, which will guarantee an activation on the second hit. Given that he has Windsweep on both his regular version and his CYL version, it's entirely possible that his defensive effect here will also be Windsweep. Assuming his defensive effect is good enough, he should be able to go back to running his default Null Follow-Up over the more popular Desperation, which secures his ability to get a follow-up attack to activate Lunar Flash on.

Despite my previous expectations, we're once again getting two remixes this month. Alm gets Time's Pulse as a new skill to replace the mostly useless Odd Atk Wave. Lunar Flash II keeps its base effect and gains percentage damage reduction nullification like Deadeye and Lethality. Naga gets Dive-Bomb as a new skill to replace the mostly useless Chill Spd. Divine Fang+ keeps its base effect and also grants +6 Atk/Spd as a Bonus and a guaranteed follow-up on player phase as a status effect to herself and allies within 2 spaces as long as there is at least one ally in range.

Kita Senri's art is always so damned good, as expected of the Tellius games' official artist. Sure, the girls all look great, but Sothe's idle art is definitely my favorite of the bunch. As far as character picks, I have no real objections. It's nice to see Nina get an alt. Never really cared about Ricard, though. I'm pretty sure I just used Julian in FE3, though it's hard to remember since it's been well over a decade since I last played the game. I find it a bit weird that Cath and Nina are cavalry. Horses are good for a speedy getaway, but not particularly good for stealth. I feel like they should've made all of the units infantry or fliers. Maybe with one of the infantry getting +1 movement like Yuri or teleportation like Ninja Igrene to fit the theme. This banner is making it difficult for me to figure out how I want to split up my budget for the next month or so with both CYL and the FGO summer event coming up later this month, though I suppose that's why I've been saving up a separate gacha fund specifically for FGO summer (I still don't want to use that much of it, though). I'm not surprised we're finally getting tier-4 B skills. They feel like they've been long overdue, as there are a bunch of B skills that are in serious need of an upgrade. The Weaponbreaker skills have been almost completely irrelevant ever since Null Follow-Up made them useless against a lot of faster units. Brash Assault has been shit ever since it was released at launch. It's a bit of a bummer that the first one will be a Chill skill, though. They're not amazing in their slot, but they don't really need an upgrade quite yet. Florid Cane being an inheritable sword with Canto is pretty cool, though we can't tell yet if it's Canto (Rem.+1) or Canto (1). And it also has +5 Atk/Spd. Remix for Alm is pretty tame. Makes sense since Alm isn't too outdated compared to his competition simply by virtue of Lunar Flash being a really good Special skill. Lunar Flash II only gains the ability to ignore percentage damage reduction like Deadeye. Time's Pulse already has pretty good distribution with 14 other units having the skill, 4 of which are Legendary or Mythic Heroes. Naga's remix is pretty nice. Divine Fang+ grants an additional +6 Atk/Spd as a Bonus to herself and allies within 2 spaces as well as a guaranteed follow-up on player phase as a status effect. Quite solid. Dive-Bomb as the new skill is rather nice, too, given that it has pretty low distribution. Those 17 spare copies of Naga I have will now see some use. Duo Ephraim being dropped to the 4-star SR pool is cool. It's nice of them to make it so that I don't have to pull much from the Hero Fest. I already have Nifl, Fjorm, and Laegjarn at +10, and Muspell is close at +8, so I don't really have any need to pull for any of them. But if there's a spark, I'll probably take it. And then learn my lesson and not go for a plus-one. Binding Worlds looks like it could be pretty fun. Like Hall of Forms, but even more random. I'll include translation notes when we actually get the banner trailer. It is nice that I finally get confirmation on the pronunciations of Muspell's and Nifl's epithets, though: 炎神 (enshin) for Muspell and 氷神 (hyōshin) for Nifl.

Assuming you have a bonus unit on the team: Every 5 points of base stats are worth 0.5 points per match. "Base stats" here are the unit's stats with no skills equipped, excluding stats from merges, Dragonflowers, Summoner Support, etc., but includes the first-merge bonus (the removed Flaw for units with a Flow and the +3 bonus points for neutral units). This is overridden by Duel effects if the Duel effect is worth more points of stats. Remainders aren't counted, so a unit with 184 base stats counts the same as a unit with 180 base stats. Every 100 points of SP on the unit's equipped skills are worth 0.5 points per match. SP is counted by the amount of SP it costs to learn the equipped skill. It doesn't include the cost of any prerequisite skills and doesn't include the 50% markup for skills learned through Skill Inheritance. SP for Sacred Seals are counted as equal to the SP cost of the skill the Sacred Seal is based on. For skills that are exclusive to Sacred Seals, you can look up the value on the Fandom wiki. Remainders aren't counted, so a unit with 1690 SP in equipped skills counts the same as a unit with 1600 SP in equipped skills. Every merge is worth 1 point per match. Every in-season blessing is worth 2 points per match multiplied by the number of matching Legendary Heroes. Mythic Heroes count as having a matching Legendary blessing if they match the current Mythic season. For example, during Fire-Water-Light-Dark season, Eir counts as having both Fire and Water blessings. Some recommendations: Merges are often much more important than base stats (and basically everything else, too). For example, a +10 Gen 1 ranged cavalry (145-149 stat bucket) scores the exact same as a +5 unit with a 195 Duel effect if everything else is the same. Similarly, a single merge is equal to 200 SP worth of skills, so while units with exclusive skills or tier-4 skills have access to skills with higher SP costs, the difference is easy to make up with better-merged units. It is worth giving units a 500-SP Special skill, though, as each 500-SP Special skill is worth 1.5 points per match more than a 200-SP Special skill. A full team will give you 6 more points per match. Aether (Chrom) and Galeforce (Cordelia) are the easiest of these skills to obtain. You can also squeeze out some extra points with 400-SP Assist skills, but they come at the cost of losing Reposition and are generally harder to obtain. I don't recommend using them unless you really need the extra points. If your Legendary Heroes are not highly merged, it could potentially be optimal to not run one at all. Running 1 Legendary Hero + 3 blessings is worth 6 merges. Running 2 Legendary Heroes + 2 blessings is worth 8 merges. However, you do have to consider the fact that Pair-Up Legendary Heroes have Duel effects that could make up for a few more merges on top of the blessing score bonus.

You can only have one stack of any unique status effect applied to a unit at a time, so if you have two sources of Resonance: Blades, only one will be applied.

Lull Spd/Res from Ashera and Atk/Res Rein from Plumeria are both decent skills. However, both have the issue that many of the units that want the skill already have it, so there aren't that many units that can make use of it. Lull Spd/Res is usable on fast magic (tome, staff, and dragon) infantry and cavalry that don't need to run Desperation in their B slot because they already have a survivability effect on their weapon, which isn't that many units, and a good number of them already have the skill. Cavalry also have the issue that S/R Far Trace (Near Trace for dragons) competes for the skill slot and is generally better outside of countering niche enemy builds (like that one guy running Bonus Doubler Doubler Doubler Nowi in Summoner Duels). Atk/Res Rein only has use on slow magic fliers. A lot of the ones that aren't outdated already have Atk/Res Rein by default, which really leaves just the two flying Micaiahs and the slow flying dragons.

The buffs are applied to all allies in range. However, in order to activate, there must be at least one ally in range that is not a Heroes character.

The fact that this argument was started because someone rejected the use of the word "cow" to refer to the species says otherwise. Wikipedia says otherwise, and I'm not in a position to dispute their knowledge:

There is an ice dragon in this Voting Gauntlet. My team has been decided for me. If Nifl goes down, I have both Thorr and Edelgard built and will probably join one of their teams. If both of them go down, I'll probably move to one of Claude or Micaiah.

I'm very aware that it's the actual name of the animal, but this entire argument is because people in this thread cannot agree on a singular name for the animal, so you suggesting "cattle", which is not singular, is absolutely pointless. And the fact that people in this thread cannot agree on a singular name for the animal shows that "cow" is not universally accepted. If "cow" were universally accepted, then Wikipedia would almost certainly use "cow" as the name of the page instead of redirecting "cow" to "cattle". This is the only Wikipedia page for an animal that uses a plural word for the name of the page. The Wikipedia page itself highlights this: Yes, I know. I'm quite aware of the etymology of the names of food animals and their meat in English. The names of animals come from Anglo-Saxon, which was the language of the peasantry that raised the animals, whereas the names of meats come from Norman, which was the language of the nobility that typically had no contact with the live animals.

I'll be happy to finally have Nagi stop pity breaking me. I have a giant pile of her from Legendary Edelgard's banner and I'm apparently cursed to always get more copies of units I already have a ton of copies of. It's also nice to see the TMS characters drop into the SR pool. Leila and Perceval are also cool. Also nice to see Fiora and Eyvel drop since they have literally nothing worthwhile as fodder and are generally outperformed by better units in the 4-star pool.

I was originally going to suggest we just call it a "beef". Apparently, the word even has a standard plural "beeves" that exists, but doesn't see much use, and this would give it more usage.

"Cattle" is not singular.

I'd assume a farmer would not have use for a sex-nonspecific word for a cow.