Ice Dragon

Japanese trailer:

I already have a +10 Brave Eirika and a ton of extra copies, so I pulled every color other than blue, went for the spark, and cleaned my pity rate afterward. At the spark, I had enough copies of Gatekeeper to get him to +9, but I sparked Marth instead because I was sure the game would spite me with another copy of Gatekeeper while pulling to clear my pity rate (and if not, on some banner soon afterward with the number of him I've gotten as pity breakers). And then I got Gatekeeper, Yuri, and Eirika on the session that cleared my pity rate. 70 pulls: 1 Marth (+1 spark for a total of 2), now +7 1 Eirika, now 14 copies past +10 4 Gatekeeper, now +10 1 Marianne, now +4 Pity breakers: Bernadetta, now +7 Fallen Ike, now +10 Yuri, now +3 10.0% focus rate. 14.3% total 5-star rate. Well, at least this makes up for the steaming pile of garbage that was my attempt to grab another copy of Duo Micaiah.

Direct addresses are a bit of a muddy area because you can address people by words that aren't actually used as names. (As a correction, it really should be "as a name" instead of my previous post's "as if it were a name", which is a bit too broad.) The case of "dad" above should be capitalized because it is used as the person's actual name. As a general rule, if you would normally use the word as a name outside of a direct address, it counts as a name. For example, if you would normally actually say the sentence, "When I got home, Meanie was already asleep," then you'd capitalize "meanie" in a direct address, but if you wouldn't normally refer to them in that way in a sentence, then you wouldn't capitalize "meanie" in a direct address. Courtesy titles (e.g. "mister") and professional titles (e.g. "doctor"), i.e. titles that go in front of a name, behave a bit differently. They should be capitalized if they are functionally a shortening of the person's name with the title attached (e.g. "Doctor Smith"). For example, even though "sir" is a courtesy title, it shouldn't be capitalized if it isn't used specifically as a courtesy title, such as in "Yes, sir." So even though you typically wouldn't say, "When I got home, Doctor was already asleep," you would still say, "When I got home, Doctor Smith was already asleep," and so it should still be capitalized in a direct address. "Reverend" is a weird case because even though it is a professional title, it is typically worded as "the reverend" when used in a sentence as a title. I honestly have no idea how this one is capitalized. (As a direct address, it's used without the "the" and should be capitalized. It's just a weird case of whether it should be capitalized in the middle of a sentence that I have no clue.) At least, this is how I was taught. I would go take a look at an actual style guide, but I don't have one here with me (I have Warriner's at my parents' house, though).

In English, it is flat-out incorrect to not capitalize titles that are used as if they were names. When I got home, Dad was already asleep. When I got home, my dad was already asleep. Good morning, Doctor. The doctor will see you now.

With my example build, Effie has a massive 19-point Atk lead over Arden, coming out to 92 effective Atk, which allows Effie to hit harder against opponents with more than 54 Def, especially if the opponent has Guard and blocks Effie's Bonfire and Arden's Ignis. Effie also has a Dull effect on her weapon, which allows her to have a potential 25-point Atk lead over Arden if the opponent is buffed. Effie also has a 13-point Spd lead, giving her the ability to break follow-up prevention on slower armors. With an Ascended Spd Asset (not entirely sure why you'd actually do this, but it's an option), she can even double Brave Hector and straight-up deletes him if he isn't running a dedicated melee tank build. While neither of them are capable of killing Fallen Edelgard in one round of combat, Effie is fast enough to double, matching the primary advantage of Arden's Meister weapon and allowing Effie's significantly higher Atk to put a larger dent into Edelgard's HP. Arden's primary advantage over Effie is his Meister weapon, which gives him an edge against opponents with Null Follow-Up and allows him to kill opponents with middling bulk (high enough to avoid a one-hit kill from Effie, but low enough to die in two hits from Arden) before they can counterattack. The Guard effect on his weapon is nice, but with Effie having 119 single-hit physical bulk and 88 two-hit physical bulk, Effie can typically afford to eat a Special on the first counterattack as long as the opponent isn't green if she kills on her follow-up attack, and Surge recovers a massive 70% of her max HP when her own Special activates. As far as more minor differences, Effie also has a respectable 14-point lead (effectively 20 points if the opponent's Atk is buffed) in Res, allowing her to more safely engage dragons, even if her Res isn't high enough to reliably contest Dragon Wall, whereas Arden's Res stat is laughably bad. Effie also has better availability, coming from the 4-star pool instead of using Grails. As previously mentioned, both Effie and Arden have a crap stat total for Arena, coming in only at the 170 bucket, whereas modern melee infantry are in the 180 bucket, making both of them ill-suited for the standard Arena. You're honestly better off just using Skasaher, Ninja Corrin, or anyone with a Duel skill in the standard Arena. Both of them are also not great in Aether Raids, with Effie's weapon effect condition preventing her from being used effectively as a tank and Arden's color getting him deleted by Brave Eirika (who ignores his Guard and can tank Arden's counterattack) and Seiros (who hits his awful Res and can tank Arden's counterattack). I think both of them are niche units at this point, so whether you care to build one or the other depends either on a very specific need or favoritism.

Other than the ludicrously large fantasy pauldrons, Effie's original armor isn't any bulkier than real-life armor, and real-life armor can be worn just fine with only a standard athletic build. Meet me after school behind the gym.

Looking at Effie's stats again, she does have a specific niche and that's as a player-phase armor on an armor ball team. Her Atk stat is easily the highest of all melee armors due to having both a very high base Atk stat being only 2 points behind the current leader and having a monstrous +11 Atk on her weapon for the first round of combat on each phase, which makes her suitable for running Bold Fighter and providing Armor March support for the team's Save tanks to keep up. The "first round of combat" limitation becomes trivial if you're using the unit only on player phase. Basically, she optimally runs Effie [+Atk] Effie's Lance [unique] [Assist] Bonfire Sturdy Surge Bold Fighter 3 Armor March 3 Death Blow 3 / Atk/* Solo 3 / Blade Session 3 Her only real competition for this role is Winter Ephraim due to having only slightly lower Atk in exchange for a conditional Brave weapon, but he is a 5-star Special Hero and is therefore harder to both obtain and merge.

Aiming for 11 copies of Cecilia, as many copies of Sophia as 11 copies of Cecilia gets me, 4-5 copies of Lilina, and 3 copies of Roy from the Bride banner. 364 pulls: 4 Roy 5 Lilina (+1 spark for a total of 6) 3 Sophia 3 5-star Cecilia 9 4-star Cecilia 12 pity breakers 4.1% focus rate, which is quite a bit above average. 7.4% overall 5-star rate, which is a bit above average. I ended up going for a fourth copy of Roy just to try for a better Asset since my first three copies were all +Res. I got +HP. That was a dud. Managed to get Atk Assets on all three other units. None of the copies of Cecilia are +Spd, though I'm not sure if a Spd Asset would even be worth running on her. She is quite a bit slower than Walhart, who is one of the slowest player-phase units that commonly runs a Spd Asset. Pity breakers included my first +Spd copies of Catherine and Eyvel as well as an extra merge for Ascended Mareeta (now +2) and two extra merges for Fallen Lyon (now +5).

Looks like our next Resplendent Hero is Jotunheim Effie. Based on Nott's design in contrast to Amelia, who is based on Dagr. Fitting. Very fitting. And the art looks great. Those muscles on her thighs are really something. That said, I can't really say I like the open shoes. They look a bit out of place with how much armor she has on. In comparison, Amelia also has open shoes, but has lighter armor. For stats, she'll have 55/45/27/38/28 at +0 merge with maximum Dragonflowers. Unfortunately, her weapon is rather underwhelming, granting an effective +11/+0/+5/+5, but only for the first round of combat during each phase, and only +6 Atk afterwards. This leaves her poorly equipped for Aether Raids and high-level PvE maps where defensive units are expected to fight multiple rounds of combat on the first turn. She is still usable in the Arena, but she only scores in the 170 score bucket, whereas modern infantry score in the 180 score bucket, which kind of defeats the purpose of using an armor. Her base stats and weapon give her very high Atk and HP, but her middling Spd stat and low stat total means her Def and Res are lower than usual for an armor. Even with the Resplendent stat boost, she falls behind Valbar in every stat except Atk when compared to other 4-star lance armors, and she also falls behind Brave Hector in every stat except HP and Atk on top of lacking the mountain of skill effects on Hector's weapon.

I'd still fodder Rennac over Ethlin when building Cath. Unless you absolutely need Rennac for maps with a Sacred Stones restriction, Cath is literally just a better Rennac, so you aren't really losing anything by foddering your only Rennac. A potential merge on Ethlin is worth more than a "duplicate" Cath that's harder to merge. The only advantage to using Ethlin as fodder is the fact that you can grab Joint Drive Spd at the same time (since you can't grab all of Windsweep at once), but there are better options for that skill slot now. However, if you are set on foddering Ethlin, I no longer think it's worth using Divine Codes for the manual unless there are other units you want on that track, and you should just use your spare copy now that you have access to the Forma version.

Freyja is decent. She's a fast Distant Counter cavalry unit with Dodge on her weapon, which is great for PvE content, especially when noting that she's currently the only green cavalry unit with Distant Counter on a weapon. The cavalry beast transform effect is only active on player phase, so you don't really have to worry about keeping her transformed when using her in PvE In PvP content, she's more of a player-phase unit since Dodge is inconsistent due to the increasing prevalence of effects that nullify it on ranged units. Despite her decent base Atk and extremely high base Spd, she's still behind the head of the pack in both stats due to the fact that her weapon lacks the usual in-combat stat boost in order to make room for Distant Counter. However, she somewhat makes up for it by offloading the extra stats onto her exclusive B skill, which effectively grants +4 to all stats and steals the opponent's Bonuses (same effect as Legendary Caeda), basically being a stronger version of Lull Spectrum, though the latter effect is really only reliable in the Arena. Freyja's biggest weakness is the fact that she doesn't really have access to Null Follow-Up or Canto due to her B slot being occupied by her exclusive skill and doesn't have access to stronger Special skills due to her class. She's definitely worth using, but she isn't a must-have.

Muarim's transformation effect is the same as the updated infantry effect. The old effect was +10 damage. The new effect is +7 damage with Tempo. Fomortiis.

The character introductions are out, and as is fairly typical, we get a Sharena drawing of what each of the girls' outfits look like from behind. Eliwood and Roy get a drawing of their outfit without the jacket to show off what their waistcoats look like, which I think is a first (but I don't pay enough attention to know for sure). Male Special Heroes often do get a drawing of the back of their outfit, but for some reason, none of the male characters on previous bride banners did (perhaps there was nothing out of the ordinary to show off, but then Caspar and Sylvain don't either and still get a back drawing).

I don't think they'll change the transformation movement-type bonus effect unless they do it with every unit of the type like they did with infantry. We already have both Rafiel, Freyja, New Year Selkie, and Summer Freyr who aren't particularly well-suited for their movement type's effect. I don't really expect to see any other transformation conditions other than the two we've already gotten (standard and feral) except maybe a feral-type permanent transformation on turn 3, but as I've previously mentioned, I do expect to see Izca have a skill effect that can force allied beast units to transform regardless of their transform condition. Even though Fomortiis is already represented in Fallen Lyon, I still kind of expect to see an eventual beast Lyon, perhaps as a Legendary Hero or Mythic Hero. We are still severely lacking in armored beasts, and I don't really think there are enough lions to make up for it. We basically just have Giffca, Skrimir, and Soane remaining.

I'm referring just to Heroes because stat spreads from the source games don't usually transfer particularly well into Heroes due to the restriction that units have similar stat totals to each other. While most alts tend to stay true to how the unit was previously depicted in Heroes, the units I mentioned in my previous post differ quite a bit. However, even if you do consider "canon" to be the source game instead of the unit's first appearance in Heroes, you still end up with some units with very non-canon stat spreads, like Florina, Ephraim, Ike, Lyon, and Mediuth all having significantly lower Spd stats. Florina and Lyon can perhaps be attributed to the fact that they are weighed down by their weapons, but it's harder to argue that for Ephraim, Ike, or Mediuth. You also have the fact that most modern units in Heroes end up needing to be min-maxed in some way in order to actually be relevant, which results in units being forced into one of only a few stat spread archetypes, and the one chosen might not accurately represent their stat spread in their source game.

Modern dancers have -8 points of stats at level 1 and -5 points of growth rates relative to other units of the same class, so yeah, that should come out to an average -10.223 points lower than non-dancers.

Tiki, Ike, and Dimitri started with middling Spd and have gotten quite a bit faster. Camus (if you include Sirius and Zeke) and Palla have stat spreads that are all over the place between versions. Alm's Spd also varies quite a bit from version to version. The Morgans went from sub-par typical offensive stat spreads to slow and bulky. And then there's Spring Maria. That happens to a lot of armor alts, like Winter Tharja, Male Grima, Winter Cecilia, and Valentine Robin. I wouldn't really count that against them, even if not all armor alts do this. Yes. Treachery and Dominance are damage boosts whereas the weapon effects are Atk boosts. Speaking of which, I keep forgetting to translate new effect names in Duo/Harmonized skill effects. Lemme fix that. EDIT: Added Treachery:

Oh, nice. We're finally getting the Def/Res Form Sacred Seal, which is arguably the best Sacred Seal for Far Save tanks. Atk Cantrip on Lalum is also pretty cool. It was previously only available from Summer Dorothea.

The usual translation things: The banner name, "Bridal Blossoms" is "百花繚乱の花嫁" (hyakka ryōran no hanayome), which very roughly translates as "A Gathering of Blossoming Brides". The word "百花繚乱" (hyakka ryōran) literally translates as "a hundred flowers blooming in profusion" and is an idiom that can either be interpreted literally or can mean a gathering or sudden emergence of many talented people or achievements or, in this case, a gathering of beautiful women, both of which evoke the imagery of "blooming in abundance". Lilina's epithet, "Beaming Bride", is "華燭の花嫁" (kashoku no hanayome), "Bride of Magnificent Lights". The word "華燭の典" (kashoku no ten), literally "ceremony of magnificent lights", means "wedding ceremony". True-Love Roses is "一途な想いの薔薇" (ichizu na omoi no bara), "Roses of Earnest Love". Still Water is "止水" (shisui), "Still Water". The word "明鏡止水" (meikyō shisui), literally "[like] a polished mirror and still water", is an idiom meaning "clear and serene". The first half, "明鏡" (meikyō), "clear mirror", is the word used for Warding skills, e.g. Warding Blow. The name of this skill is different from the wording used in Still-Water Balm, which is instead "静水の祝福" (seisui no shukufuku), "Blessing of Still Water". The word "止" (shi) means "stopped", whereas the word "静" (sei) means "calm" or "quiet". Sophia's epithet, "Prescient Bride", is "未来を見る花嫁" (mirai o miru hanayome), "Bride That Sees the Future". Dragon Bouquet is "竜血継ぐ花嫁の花" (ryūketsu-tsugu hanayome no hana), "Flowers of the Bride That Inherits the Blood of Dragons". Words. Atk/Res Hold is "攻撃魔防の大牽制" (kōgeki-mabō no daikensei), "Atk/Res Great Restraint". The word "牽制" (kensei), "restraint", is the name of the Rein skill series. "大牽制" (daikensei), "great restraint", follows the same pattern as some other upgraded skill series, like Drive from Spur and Brazen from Defiant, which are "大紋章" (daimonshō, "Great Emblem") from "紋章" (monshō, "Emblem") and "大覚醒" (daikakusei, "Great Awakening") from "覚醒" (kakusei, "Awakening"), respectively. Cecilia's epithet, "Etrurian Bride", is "エトルリアの花嫁" (etoruria no hanayome), "Etrurian Bride". Bridal Orchid is "花嫁のカトレア" (hanayome no katorea), "Bride's Cattleya". Interestingly, the spelling for "cattleya" is more commonly "カトレヤ" (katoreya) instead of the "カトレア" (katorea) used here. Cattleya is a genus of orchid. Roy's epithet, "Blazing Bachelors", is "双炎の花婿" (sōen no hanamuko), "Bridegrooms of Dual Flames". Blazing Polearms is "紅炎の親子の聖斧" (kōen no oyako no seifu), "Holy Axe of the Parent and Child of Crimson Flames". The word "紅炎" (kōen), literally "crimson flame", can also mean "solar prominence". Flow Force is "怒涛・不屈" (dotō: fukutsu), "Surging Waves: Fortitude". The word "怒涛" (dotō), "surging waves", is the name of the Flow skill series. Faith in Humanity is "人の可能性を信じる" (hito no kanōsei o shinjiru), "I believe in the potential of man". Compare with Legendary Roy's Human Virtue, which is "人の可能性を！" (hito no kanōsei o!), "[I believe] in the potential of man!", and drops the "信じる" (shinjiru) that is understood in context. Treachery is "強化ダメージ＋" (kyōka damēji+), "Bonus Damage+". The word "強化" (kyōka) is the word used for the Bonus mechanic. The Japanese effect name should be interpreted as "boosted damage from Bonuses". Compare with Dominance, which is "敵弱化ダメージ＋" (teki jakka damēji+), "Enemy Penalty Damage+", which should be interpreted as "boosted damage from enemy Penalties". Literal effect names. Lalum's epithet, "Dancing Bride", is "舞い踊る花嫁" (mai-odoru hanayome), "Dancing Bride". Bridal Sunflower is "花嫁の向日葵" (hanayome no himawari), "Bride's Sunflower".

Lilina is basically just a blue version of her Legendary version without Hardy Bearing, but with more damage. Her stat spread of 39/44/22/16/42 is an almost exact carbon copy of Legendary Lilina, who has 40/43/22/17/41 with max-minus-5 Dragonflowers. Still Water is basically just Life and Death, but for Atk/Res instead of Atk/Spd. As it is right now, Bride Lilina is probably the only unit in the game that definitively wants the skill. Legendary Julia can also run it, but I think the extra Spd from Life and Death is more useful than the extra Res from Still Water. Sophia is interesting. She's probably slow like her other versions, given that the bow pegasus doubles her, but her weapon grants +5 to all stats including Spd instead of inflicting the presumably more optimal -6 Atk/Res penalty on the opponent. This time around, she properly has a guaranteed follow-up on both phases on her weapon to open up her B slot and presumably make her viable on both phases. Also having the Litrraven effect on her weapon means that colorless bows have their Atk bonus reduced from 1.5× to the more manageable 1.2×. She comes with a new Hold skill. Cecilia is the demote. Her weapon grants +5 Atk/Res and Bonus Doubler for Atk/Res only, which is pretty decent. The rest of her kit is unnoteworthy. Given that she fails to double the sword fighter in the video, she probably has middling Spd like her base version, which is a bit disappointing. Roy unsurprisingly has a cohesive set of skills. Strong, but not exceptionally so. His weapon copies the effective damage against dragons and beasts from Brave Eliwood's weapon, grants Canto (2), +5 to all stats, and reduces the opponent's stats by half of his total Bonuses to a maximum of 6 (total Bonus of 12). His exclusive C skill grants himself and human units within 3 spaces +6 Atk/Spd in field buffs and grants himself the Tempo effect if there are at least 2 human units other than himself anywhere on the map with at least 10 points of total buffs. The field buffs from his C skill effectively fully activate both his weapon's effect and its own Tempo effect. Flow Force is okay, but not super amazing. It has the same shared effect as the other Flow skills, and its unique effect nullifies penalties to Atk/Spd. It'll see some use for nullifying the debuffs from Bright Shrine and Atk/Spd Menace, but that's probably it. Flow Guard is still generally better. Steady Surge once again comes on a unit that would rather prefer Surge Sparrow. It's now 2 for 2 on that. Gustav could've had it, but no, they wanted him to be a dual-phase unit. Nothing on this banner looks like a must-have for me. Lilina is generally useful, but I already have a +10 Legendary Lilina who doesn't need to run a Duel skill to be useful in the Arena. Unless they seriously surprise me with Sophia or Cecilia's stats, both of them are probably going to end up as units that I just pull one copy of, except I'll probably get a bunch of copies of Cecilia pulling for my one copy of Sophia. I'm probably going to try for a few copies of Roy for Resonant Battles. He seem useful in general, too.

It's a Fire Emblem distilled down to its core strategy gameplay. Deterministic combat and AI means you cannot lose to back luck and cannot be bailed out by good luck and also means you can accurately plan for upcoming turns. Small movement ranges make positioning significantly more important. You own your wins, and you own your losses. The game being non-linear lets it make a lot of the "fluff" optional. You can always skip the story and come back to it later and are never stuck in a situation where you want to run a map but are stuck behind other content. The game is very well designed to fit into its mobile medium. Only a few game modes keep you tied up for more than a few minutes at a time, which lets you pick up the game without needing to commit to playing it for a significant duration of time and lets you put down the game on a moment's notice. Great for lunch break and for when my code is compiling. Meanwhile, the game has enough complexity for serious theorycrafting.

Vital Astra is garbage defensively. Mareeta is the only unit that can have its defensive effect consistently active, and it's completely nullified by Deadeye and Lethality regardless. The only armors that commonly run Hardy Fighter are Brave Hector and Ascended Fjorm. Fjorm's HP is awful, as she needs to have 2 more blessing boosts than Ninian to avoid being hit by Pulse Tie, meaning Ninian doesn't need to run an HP Asset to hit her. Hector only gets hit by Pulse Tie from Ninian if Ninian has an HP Asset and even then only if he is getting the same number of blessing boosts as Ninian. If Hector is leading in blessing boosts, Ninian can't hit him at all. I can really only see Sudden Panic as an actual reason to run an HP Asset, but regular Ninian is flat out better for anything that requires an HP comparison at the cost of not have special effects on her dance skill (which are nice to have, but typically not necessary for the standard dancer strategies). Ploy is outdated at this point, and Sabotage is also pretty underwhelming, especially if you're already running both Shrines. Are there actually any debuffs the require Res comparisons that are actually worth running these days? Oh, I got the math wrong on this. Oops. A unit needs at least 90 effective Atk for a Res Asset to beat a Def Asset on the first round of combat and 101 effective Atk on rounds of combat after that against a +10+5 Rhea with her base kit and the Close Def Sacred Seal. Assuming they can even get within 10 points of Rhea's Res to being with. And those numbers go up if she has team support. Maybe? I'm still not entirely convinced. The few dual-phase units that can get close are mostly dragons or Edelgards. Most dragons lack access to skill effects that are actually threatening to tanks, and Edelgards are unable to break her Wary Fighter due to their equally awful Spd stats. Seiros is also too slow to break Wary Fighter, even if she has the Res to start cutting into True Dragon Wall. Mediuth is the only unit that could even potentially be a threat since he can potentially get enough Spd and Res to fully nullify True Dragon Wall and double her through Wary Fighter, but he has some trouble getting enough Atk to actually be particularly threatening, and his margins are thin enough that team support easily reverses the match-up.

Male Byleth is Duo Sothis's cheerleader.

Obviously, the character on the right. A minor deity in ancient Egyptian mythology that looks like a bedsheet ghost and shoots lasers from his eyes. His name means "The Smiter". Is now a meme for obvious reasons.