Alkaid

It's still possible the symbol just shrinks down to make room the same as the blessing one does when you double S support a blessed unit. Duos would lose a lot of draw gameplay-wise if they can't be blessed since nobody would take them into AR and whales don't need them for the BST scoring bump if they won't score better than a blessed 180 BST armor anyway. It'd be odd for IS to shoot themselves in the foot like that. Pair Up got a new mode around it and they very explicitly stated which modes its functionality was limited to when pair up legendaries got their Feh channel debut. They didn't give any caveats for the usage of duos, so seems like a good chance they're fully functional in all modes. I would think they'd mention they can't be blessed either since that'd be a big deal.

You can forget defense if you're not competitive, but it's not that simple if you are. Even if you score perfect 160 point matches with 2 Eirs during light week, if your defenses suck you might be at risk for even making top 3k. It's tighter these days, just like arena. I'm not saying this Hector specifically will ruin everyone's AR defense scores, but he'll certainly be very powerful for those who have him and there's only more to come. With the game's track record for powercreep this year I don't think it's cynical to dislike how hard it's been going, and here's another big jolt of it. You're missing that there's non-whales that are hanging in there too in the high ranks, and with moves like this it only increases the gap of what those people can manage compared to the whales. It really will just be people who shell out the most money in tier 21 arena and top 1k AR if they keep raising the bar like that. Duel skills had seemed like a bandaid to help that issue for arena score, but now those are 15 BST score behind this new Hector. It really doesn't matter if he has the actual stats, the scoring alone is not a good thing. Obviously powercreep is an issue in 99% of these games and expected, but the rate and degree at which they're doing it, especially this year, has only increased.

As somebody who's been 20/21 for the past year I can say the last round of BST inflation (the 180 dragon armors and Surtr) definitely made it quite a bit harder to maintain 21 for consecutive weeks and this probably will too once we have more than 1 of them. It doesn't take much of an increase to make things noticeably harder for non-whales to score competitively. The duel skills that were helping f2p/low spending people without 180 BST armors to may not be enough for much longer at this rate.

BST inflation is a core part of these Duo heroes so you can't really separate them. We've had the bar raised yet again and scoring well as a non-whale becomes even harder to compete. The duel skills that have been helping people use their other +10s who didn't just pay for max BST armors all the time are a full 15 BST behind now. You make it sound like grabbing a +10 duo hero to use for arena is a simple matter, especially if you have no interest in them besides their scoring. The duo special ability is the least of the issues, though it'll make certain AR offense teams be a lot easier to win with now which also means better prepare your defenses for it if you want to keep scoring well on that front. Who knows how powerful the next duo heroes' effects could be either.

I like the new AR farming and cooking things, that's a step towards making AR actually have some function like I hoped they'd do. Still don't think I want to pay that tax, though.. I'm not interested in this selection of characters for Halloween myself, but some good variety for fans of those games. However, I really don't like the duo hero thing at all. 185 BST and an overpowered extra skill you can use on ANY map?(which could mean AR too) That's awful. And as if the Duel skills weren't immediately a joke to IS last year when 180 BST LTiki came out right after they were first introduced, now we have this.The powercreep has just been horrendous this year. New mode and free tickets on the banner are pretty nice. Overall I'm happiest about another way to get more dragon flowers at least.

Unfortunately have to add myself to the unpopular side for this one. If not for SoV, this game would be my least favorite Fire Emblem I've played. It would probably my biggest disappointment of the year if not for the mess going on with Pokemon right now. Sorry for the wall of text but I've been sitting on these opinions for about 2 months and have yet to air them. I'll spoiler it.

I'm really glad she's a flier. I was dreading her being an infantry or something, which would make me have to lug her around and figure out tactics teams for astra in AR. This should make things more comfortable for my units. I like her art, though too bad about her skills. She seems pretty boring, not to mention granting dragon effectiveness to allies is hardly useful in AR offense. That's much more potent for defense teams. Feels a shame to do, but maybe Lightning Breath and a flier buff may be the budget way to go for her. Not that keen on the A skill either, over just tossing on Fury or something else consistent.

I hope Louise will be cool. Maybe we'll finally see somebody content with Lyn (more than Sue did anyway). Absolutely based.

Indeed. This behavior is ridiculous, time and time again, too.

Got my Fjorm guess right. It really was just the art that made her look loli-sized. Not really interested in these older characters, though Fjorm looks pretty cool. She'll also be amazing in AR with that assist-canceling staff. The pulse smoke is very nice for AR too, but I don't think I'd pull for that, especially not when the unit shares a color too. I'd like Fjorm but I'll probably be skipping for Astra and continued CYL savings.

I'm maintaining my Fjorm guess. Only other thing it could be to me is Ylgr, but while I don't think they have any issue making another loli bride no matter what backlash happened, Fjorm just makes more sense to get a bride alt. Either way, it's basically for sure it's a Nifl sister, since the hair, seemingly Fjorm's earrings and the even the little sparkle effect line up. (Maeshima Shigeki is who uses those type of sparkles in his art)

Left looks like Fjorm going by the hair and earrings. It's short enough I thought of a loli at first, but the Fjorm IS short, and the details make me lean towards her. Right seems like it could be Seliph or possibly Lyon.

I'd like another Fates banner. There's still a few first gen characters I'd really like to get, like Charlotte(regular), Benny, Nyx, Orochi, etc. I feel like the next banner will be either Awakening or Sacred Stones, though. Been a while since they got banners and I'd think Awakening in particular wouldn't get too much longer of a drought.

I'd probably grail her too if I didn't have such a backup of grail projects already. It'd be really cool if she ends up with some WoM/Escape Route type prf. She could get stuck with a generic tome(watch her randomly get the red serpent tome to troll us), but maybe she'll get a cool prf to match the rest of the units.

Yeah that's fair. Not possessed in the same way, but it still works. I like they signify it with her tail being left out.

The banner looks great! Berkut is pretty much perfection, and the rest look really nice too. Corrin's a bit random since she's the only one of them who never actually gets possessed. They could have picked Gunter or something instead, but she's still looking good. Possessed Delthea for the GHB sounds really nice too. More power creep skills, but it's to be expected. Another round of really nice fallen alts overall, and I'd like to get them all if I weren't saving for other things right now.

Alm and colorless overall looks great on this banner, but I'll have to skip so I can keep saving for other things. I don't have any of them and would like Leanne and even Eirika as well, but brides and summer are coming up, plus the astra mythic next month which will be required for AR scoring. All I can say about Alm is "we are very concerned about power creep." I don't look forward to seeing him whaled out on AR defense teams in the near future, especially not during his bonus weeks.

It's pretty much like clockwork. I'm liking the Cherry Blossom festival idea for a seasonal. I forgot it was that time of year (trees are still all dead where I am and I don't even remember it's April half the time) Fallen heroes 2 will probably happen at some point, but they could just be another non-seasonal like last time still. Once again, I think I'm one of the few who's cool with more seasonals. My only gripe is my orbs can't keep up with them.

If that gives me a chef Peri alt, I'm all for it. Take my money.

Yeah, that's fair. Just trying to think of what other popular themes FEH hasn't really done for a seasonal and that one at least has something to work with. It's more likely it's just brides moved up for some reason. The tap battle name seems like it could point toward that too.

Brides or not, I hope the characters are ones I can skip. My orbs definitely aren't up for another seasonal this month. My hope's been to save at least until the astra mythic if I can. Highly likely they put at least 1 unit I want on it, though. If it's another filler seasonal like the hot springs banner, and not brides, I'm not sure what it could be. They could go for something like a maid/butler theme banner. I know that's a popular limited banner theme for some gachas. We've even got the Fates maid/butler outfits as a basis for it if they wanted to, at least.

I've got a feeling we'll see either Camilla or Lucina as a bride. If Lucina isn't a bride then I'm thinking she might come for summer instead. (my other summer guess is Tharja, but not sure if they'd do both Lucina and Tharja together) Eirika's a good candidate too, but she's been expected ever since the first bride banner and didn't happen twice now. It'll surely have her on one eventually, though. Not expecting any grooms on the banner. Maybe another TT one, though.

Of course, though I'd say the differences from those prfs is still a lot more than can be said for Gerome and Haar. It's just especially close with them. Gradivus is pretty major in letting Camus can be used different from Finn, and Takumi's niche effect even has a little more use now for with AR. (Poor Clarisse just has nothing at all over him, though. Hopefully she gets a refine herself at some point)

Yes, I mean with a Bonfire charged Michalis has a higher output with it on player phase due to the Wo Dao effect. Just an extra flair he has. Enemy phase-wise, I don't find much to talk about between them since they're close enough you might as well just build whichever one you like best. I've run numbers too, and the difference is just not that big. I don't even like Michalis, but of the 3 options he's got a little more damage potential. For primarily walling things, I'd rather just use Beruka over any of them anyway, so that's why I put a bit more emphasis on their higher damage when looking at them. The point is that besides favoritism he's pretty much just Gerome again. Kind of uninteresting to have 2 units in the GHB/TT pool that are about the same. I guess his Wave fodder is what's supposed to be most unique about him.