Ice Dragon

I'm at my desk. My phone is old and has a habit of suddenly thinking it has no battery when it reaches 20-40% and isn't plugged in.

Use the second button from the left (with the icon of the house and person) to switch the buttons from purple to blue. Then use the second button from the right to set which defense map is used for each season. (No idea what the text on the buttons is in English.)

My phone ran out of battery in the middle of an Aether Raids run and not only did it not allow me to resume the match, but it also ate my Aether without using a ladder. What the fuck.

I think part of it is the fact that Volke is still the only source of Lethality and part of it is the fact that Lethality ends up being blocked by both follow-up prevention and Guard (and is blocked if Claude can't activate his Brave effect). Ruptured Sky is more consistent in terms of activation since it doesn't get blocked by follow-up prevention and only gets blocked by Guard, but it's nowhere near as powerful, and Lethality is significantly better at breaking bulky units as long as you can get it to land. (Even 2 Ruptured Sky procs doesn't beat a single Lethality except against beasts with no damage reduction.) On the other hand, Ruptured Sky is better for taking out enemies before they can counterattack, but again, is less effective against bulky opponents. What makes Claude a good option for Lethality over units like Duo Lyn who prefer Ruptured Sky is the fact that as long as Claude doesn't get hit by Deadeye or Lethality, he's pretty much guaranteed to survive a single counterattack and therefore can afford to spend 4 hits killing the opponent instead of needing to do it in just 2. At neutral +0+0, he already has 230 single-hit physical bulk, and that goes up to 260 at +10+5. But still, make sure to run the numbers if you need him to take out bulkier units. Brave Hector and Legendary Edelgard, for example, both have follow-up prevention, and Legendary Edelgard and Brave Edelgard are green, which might make things dicey even with Lethality.

Atk/Spd Catch 4 is the best option if all skills are on the table. Life and Death 3 is the best skill available from the 4-star standard pool. The loss in bulk is negligible because Fallen Star gives him 200+ single-hit bulk just from his HP alone.

With a back-of-the-envelope calculation, it's probably closer to 400 orbs, but yes, it's relatively cheap to +10 a 4-star focus unit. Claude is a good unit overall. Canto, a 20-Mt Brave weapon, flier mobility, and 80% damage reduction on the opponent's first attack. His conditional Brave effect is pretty easy to set up with Menace because very few units are capable of nullifying both an opponent's Bonuses and their own Penalties, though it's technically optimal to keep his default Rein and let his teammates do the buffing and debuffing for him. If you can get your hands on it, he can land Lethality every round of combat if the opponent doesn't have Guard. He might have trouble with the armored Edelgards, though, but you should run the numbers to be certain.

Probably 7-11 months from now.

Three in a row with a Grail unit. Yay!

I don't know why I keep going for a "plus one" after completing my primary objective. It literally never goes well. After getting Edelgard to +10, I decided to pull for one more copy of Micaiah... which took 77 pulls (~170 USD). But even with the poor luck on the plus one, I still ended up quite a bit below budget due to insane luck before that. 311 pulls excluding the plus one: 10 Edelgard (+1 spark for a total of 11) 2 Micaiah 1 Dimitri 3 5-star Claude 8 4-star Claude And lots of other things: 5.1% 5-star Focus rate, which is well above average. 11.6% total 5-star rate, which is ever more well above average. 77 pulls for the plus one: 1 Dimitri 1 Micaiah From the 5-star pool: Louise Fallen Edelgard And from the 4-star SR pool: Mist Innes 2.6% 5-star Focus rate, which is below average. 5.2% total 5-star rate, which is also below average. However, overall, I still had a 4.6% 5-star Focus rate and 10.3% total 5-star rate, which are both still well above average, so things ultimately went well despite the plus one going to shit. Other notes: My first Micaiah was [+Atk, -Def], so I'm set for a merge base. Echoes Palla was [+Atk, -Spd], which is (1) perfect and (2) my first +Atk copy of her. Brave Claude is now +9 and Brave Lysithea is now +7. Both copies of Dimitri have the same awful [+Res, -Spd] nature. Seriously, game? This is my third copy of Nyx. All three of them are +HP.

If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time a 4-star-summonable Special Hero has appeared on a banner without a 4-star Focus pool. Four-star-summonable normal Heroes only ever appear in the 4-star Focus pool on their original banner and reruns of it, so it's nothing special that they aren't available as a 4-star Focus on these banners. However, 4-star-summonable Special Heroes have never appeared on banners other than their original banner, reruns of it, and Double Special Heroes banners until now, all of which have a 4-star Focus pool if a unit on the banner is available at 4-star rarity. This is the first time such a unit has appeared on a "normal" banner.

40 pulls on the Ashe banner: 1 Ashe (+1 spark for 2 total) 2 Ingrid Also Ascended Ishtar and Farina as pity breakers and Brave Hector and Tibarn from the 4-star SR pool. 7.5% Focus rate is slightly below average. Ashe is +Atk, which is better than my existing +Res copy. He'll be +2 once merged. None of the others are better than my existing merge bases. Ingrid will be +3. Ishtar will be +2. Farina will be +4.

Assuming I'm reading this right, be warned that 4-star Sylvain is not available on today's Three Houses banner. There is no 4-star Focus pool on this banner.

Elincia, Micaiah, and Sanaki are the only ones in Tellius at the end of Radiant Dawn. Then just replace Sanaki with big Sanaki.

Queens. Edelgard, Altina, Micaiah, and Elincia are all queens. Altina was the lead in her Winter banner Duo with Sanaki. The enemy typically doesn't debuff themselves, so Catch is still pretty much entirely under your control. It's a bit harder to land debuffs on the right enemy on maps with extremely mobile opposing units where you often need to take out multiple units in a single turn, but in the high Arena where Rally balls tend to send one enemy at you at a time, Catch is extremely consistent. With Menace increasing in distribution (and easy to grab on Forma), tier-4 Smokes being introduced, and the general lack of other good C skills for cavalry, it's not particularly difficult to activate the debuff condition consistently with cavalry. It's a bit more difficult with fliers due to the fact that most of them would rather have Rein over Menace, and recently released fliers tend to have Rein instead of Menace for that reason, but it's still doable without too much trouble.

43 pulls on the Bernadetta/Dorothea banner: 1 Bernadetta (+1 spark for 2 total) 2 Dorothea 7.0% focus rate is obviously well above average. Also yet another a random Gatekeeper pity breaker and yet another female Kana. I seem to be getting a ton of them now that they're both +10 (or at least Gatekeeper would be +10 if I could decide on a merge base). Also another Jaffar. I get him a lot, too. Bernadetta is [+Spd, -Def], which is perfect. Neither Dorothea is better than the one I already had (old one is +Res, new ones are +HP and +Def). I only had one copy of each before this banner, so both of them will now be +2 once I get around to merging them. Now I'm a bit annoyed that the ranged Special Training Map was yesterday and I have to wait another 4 days to level up Bernadetta.

Damn, Whitecap Bow is good. Good enough that there's actually a chance it won't be able to be refined, like the Ninja weapons, though it's not like it even needs a refine to compete. Now let's just hope that they don't screw over Elincia's Atk stat too much. Infantry Hexblade is really underwhelming for the 20k points reward Sacred Seal. The effect is actually good, but the Spur range makes it completely unusable outside of PvE maps. Atk/Def Catch is amazing, though, and hopefully they keep up the pace and release a new Catch or Ideal skill each month. While they aren't as strong as the Solo skills, their activation condition isn't dependent on positioning and obviously matches up much more smoothly with the same skill on the A slot so that you don't have to worry about having two different activation conditions to meet. Dual-phase units like Zeke, Gustav, and Legendary Claude can't really use the other A-skill Sacred Seals particularly well, so it's nice to finally have the Catch and Ideal skills coming out as Sacred Seals. (Solo, Stance, Defense, and Session skills are active only on one phase. Bond, Form, and Solo have positioning conditions that make them difficult to use on one phase. Brazen doesn't work on the first round of combat (or after the unit is healed), and Push only works on the first round of combat (and doesn't even match the conditions of the tier-4 skill).) Also, I'm constantly running out of Sacred Seals for game modes like Allegiance Battles, modes using Brigades, and Summoner Duels S, so this should help alleviate that. Or at least it will once the Atk/Spd versions are released.

Yeah, it has the same name in English and Japanese as the Gambit from Three Houses.

Catria leads Harmonized Catria and is a back character for Duo Palla. Xander also can't swim. Hence why Xander has a floatie and Edelgard has a beach umbrella.

Today's was too cute to ignore. Just Tharja doing introvert things. Ka'aii~

The usual translation things: The name of the banner, "Summer Vacation", is "級長たちの夏休み" (kyūchō-tachi no natsuyasumi), "The Class Heads' Summer Vacation". Dimitri's epithet, "Sky-Blue Lion", is "夏色の獅子" (natsuiro no shishi), "Summer-Colored Lion". Unyielding Oar is "蒼波薙ぐ剛力の櫂" (sōha-nagu gōriki no kai), "Oar of Incredible Strength that Mows Down the Azure Waves". Spd/Def Menace is "速さ守備の脅嚇" (hayasa-shubi no kyōkaku), "Spd/Def Intimidation". Micaiah's epithet, "Wavecrest Maiden", is "潮騒の乙女" (shiosai no otome), "Maiden of the Crashing Waves". The word "潮騒" (shiosai) means "the sound of waves". Moonlight Drop is "純白の月の雫", (junpaku no tsuki no shizuku), "Pure White Moon Drop". Claude's epithet, "Tropical Trouble", is "南国の異端児" (nankoku no itanji), "Dissenter of the Tropics". Frozen Delight is "真夏の涼の氷菓子" (manatsu no ryō no kōrigashi), "Midsummer's Refreshingly Cold Frozen Desert". Edelgard's epithet, "Summer Empresses", is "女王たちの夏" (joō-tachi no natsu), "The Empresses' Summer". Regal Sunshade is "強靭なる烈女の大傘" (kyōjin-naru retsujo no ōgasa), "Large Parasol of the Tenacious Heroines". Assault Troop is "一斉突撃" (issei totsugeki), "Charge All at Once". Charge is "突撃" (totsugeki), "Charge" or "Assault". WIth a dolphin, naturally. It's summer, after all. Elincia's epithet, "Seaside Queen", is "波打ち際の女王" (namiuchi giwa no joō), "Queen of the Water's Edge". The word "波打ち際" (namiuchi giwa), "water's edge", is a pretty flowery word that literally translates as "the edge of where the waves hit". Whitecap Bow is "白波の弓" (shiranami no yumi), "Whitecap Bow". I just noticed that this banner is the Three Houses class heads plus a bunch of queens.

I'm not looking forward to dealing with another unit that has Fallen Star, but at least this one doesn't have Null Follow-Up. On the other hand, a 4-star unit with Spd/Def Rein is kind of ridiculous. Conditional Brave weapons seem to be the latest attempt to counter Save tanks, even though Far Save tanks are already struggling to keep up with regular Brave weapons. If I were wearing socks, I'd be laughing my socks off at Altina being the back unit for Edelgard after saying that it's unlikely for Sanaki to be the back unit for this banner's Harmonized Hero, though it makes more sense for Altina since she was the lead of her Harmonized Hero unit. So far, we haven't had any duplicate characters on paired units where the duplicate is in the same position (front or back). No, Alfonse and Lif don't count as the same character.

Hel, Otr, and Gustav all got brand new weapons when they were made summonable, so if we get Book I Veronica now, she'd most likely also get a new weapon. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we got Book I Veronica now and then Book VI Veronica as an Ascended Hero after the book ends. Fjorm did the same thing, just with more time in between. Also, it's very likely that Book VI Veronica is going to be red based on the trailer, as Heroes is generally not very subtle about its colored magic.

Sanaki is already the back character for Harmonized Altina, even if it's her Path of Radiance version instead of her Radiant Dawn version. It's unlikely we'll see her on a second Harmonized Hero. The only characters we've had repeat on the paired unit types are Catria and Ephraim, but in both cases, one unit was a Duo Hero and the other was a Harmonized Hero. EDIT: Correction, both of Ephraim's are Duo Heroes. That said, both characters still share the situation that one of their paired units was from the child banner theme. Also, in both cases, the character was the front character in one unit and the back unit in the other.

I'm pretty sure the utility of Foul Play is more enticing than a wall breaker, even if you don't have a wall breaker yet.

I could see it go either way between blue and green. Two of the same color in a row is rare, but not unheard of, and while Eitri is the most recently released unit of the reruns, the gap between her and Ulir is smaller than the gap between Nott and Freyja. Of the remaining current top contenders for Legendary Heroes, Veronica is green, assuming we get the Book I version of her Bruno is blue Deirdre is most likely to be colorless, but has a chance to be blue or green Finn is most like to be blue Ninian is most likely to be either green or colorless, but has a chance to be blue Elincia is most likely to be red, but has a chance to be colorless Sothe is most likely to be green, but has a chance to be colorless Robin is most likely to be red, but has a chance to be any other color Corrin is most likely to be red, but has a chance to be any other color Xander is most likely to be either red or green Itsuki is most likely to be red Tsubasa is most likely to be blue Given that the element will be Fire, I think the most likely options are Finn for blue and Xander for green. Personally, I want it to be Xander.