Nóatún

I'm going to go on a rant here: it's frustrating how I can get defense wins one week, and absolutely none the next. I tend to assume it's mostly due to the map rotation for that week, but I also find it hard to relax until I have one. Last week, for example, I immediately received a win in less than an hour after it started with a team of Cecilia, Xander, Reinhardt, and Brave Lyn. Since I don't like to run cavalry teams for defense any more than necessary, I started experimenting with other compositions to see what may work in the future. Even a team that consisted of the Black Knight, a halfway-built Effie and Sheena, and Young Tiki (using both a level 2 and level 40 version at different times) netted me multiple wins when I tested them out. Hell, even my lone Reinhardt often gets me low point wins from people who aren't paying attention at the outset of their daily Arena Assault quests. I had so many by the end of the week that I couldn't even see some of the players I had won against. This week, however, none of those compositions have gotten me anything. I let each of them run for at least a couple of days, then switch to a different one. This morning I decided to try Deirdre, Ayra, Delthea, and Elincia (with the new Guidance seal), but it hasn't looked promising so far. I'm aware that the meta is largely dominated by blues, but even fielding a mostly blue and green team doesn't usually yield good results for me. I would greatly appreciate it if they would allow us to see information about our defenses, namely how many people are actually fighting us, because sometimes I wonder if I'm unlucky and not being queued against enough players. I have a lot of feathers (136,000 right now), but I like to hold on to them to promote and give optimal skills to multiple characters I like instead of merging just a handful. I hate thinking that I need to put all of them into +10ing a unit or two to make sure I'm being fought by players who will actually lose to me.

I have a feeling that this is an official picture of the pig. I wasn't aware that there was a way to contact anyone in charge of a wiki (if there is one), but I'll probably dig around for a way later and see what they think, assuming I can get ahold of them.

The Tellius Recollection was pretty much my first thought when I made this, but I can't find the info on the translation blog where I've seen most of the other information from the books - Marcia's profile from there, for example, makes no mention of her pegasus, nor does it say anything on her other profile. I'm hoping someone who knows for sure will eventually post here, because I really hate the idea of something mistakenly being spread around as fact, but want to wait to hear a definitive answer first (or at least wait a reasonable amount of time for one) before touching the wiki. The Radiant Dawn conversations don't seem to have it, either, at least if the data on Serenes is complete.

I went over the Path of Radiance supports again (well, I pulled them up through Serenes and CTRL-F'd for Apples) and couldn't find anything relating to it. If it was in the game, I would assume at this point that it was in a base conversation that I'd forgotten, or possibly even in one of those silly "support conversations" that Radiant Dawn had, but I can't find any info that supports that, either.

I'm calling all players who might be more knowledgeable about the Tellius series than me; I've played them a ton of times and thought I knew most of it like the back of my hand, but I never saw Marcia mention her pegasus by name. I've noticed that the wiki has their name listed as "Apples", but I can't find a source past that; most of the search results I find are people commenting on other sites with remarks such as, "I just found out her pegasus's name is Apples, did you know that?" or sites that seem to have basically copied information from the wiki, but never a source from the game or supplemental material. I'm a stickler for accuracy and would rather have the wiki remove something that's false if there's no source (such as when many were saying that Camilla's wyvern's name was Marzia because the wiki said so, when it turns out that was a name given to her in fanfiction), so I need your help figuring this out! Oh, and funnily enough, the only other source I see for the name Applies is, coincidentally, a work of fanfiction. Is there a line hidden somewhere in the game where I've missed it?

That is a good argument for him staying rare, now that you mention it. I'm prepared to be burned at the stake for it, but I've never been a fan of his (as a character, that is - he was always too arrogant and rude for my tastes) and would actually prefer that he not get demoted, myself, since that'd leave Amelia or (less likely) Tana as the other candidates, two characters I'd much rather have. I'm just waiting for the swerve where they, for some godforsaken reason, decide to keep Seth as a 5 star.

I recently gave my +ATK Priscilla Wrathful Staff - thanks to favoritism and dumping a ton of orbs into the Hero Fest banner until I had two copies of Genny - and it's been a lot of fun watching her kill a ton of Tempest enemies now. She was already useful as a support for my teams, but now she can actually attack and help cut down on my turn count, which has been the biggest problem for me with this run of the event; there are so many maps where the AI does its best to make you drag it kicking and screaming from its starting position. The competition's fiercer this time, too, seeing as how I've had to use more stamina potions solely for Tempest to stay in the top 5,000. Right now I'm at 84,660 points and rank 3,403, which is good enough for me. I can't imagine how many more runs I'd have to do to make it to the top 1,000.

I'm really, really hoping they make Amelia a 4 star after I spent 40 orbs trying to get her and received a -ATK Delthea for my troubles instead (not a terrible result for the cost, but I don't have it in me to put more orbs into the banner with when my bonus rate's reset), but my line of thinking was mostly the same as yours - she's so buffed up that I almost think that they'd go against their usual routine and keep her locked as a 5 star. Of course, the question then becomes: who else other than Seth would be the likely candidate for demotion? Innes?

I always used a mixture of both, since, as you already stated, his low CON meant that he couldn't use any axe without losing at least some speed in the process. His usually high speed tended to offset that downside, at least, but I still liked to give him enough equipment to take on just about anyone who was foolish enough to attack him (e.g. Swordreaver/slayer, Hand Axe, plus whatever sword and axe I felt like giving him at the time). He was always my favorite from that game, and I once tried to do a solo HHM with him over a decade ago, but ran out of patience once I made it to Sands of Time. I'd assume that they'd just give Glen swords instead, seeing as how he can easily be put in this game, too (and I hope he does make it in, seeing as how he was my favorite of the Grado generals). Of course, there's no telling when he makes it in - for all we know, he'll be in the game by 2019.

Don't forget Raven. He even comments on the fact that he's using axes in one of his castle lines: “I used to rely on a sword, but the stronger I get, I think the axe suits me better.” As for Seth, he's in his starting class (Paladin) and is using a weapon he can normally use (swords).

I've had somewhat decent luck with pulling 5 stars lately (i.e. it's not taking me over 300 orbs to get just one, like what happened with the Female Mage banner), but literally all but two of my last eleven 5 stars have had an ATK or SPD bane. I had very conflicted feelings when I pulled an -ATK Delthea when going for Amelia during this banner - and before you ask, I had only one green orb appear in five summoning sessions.