Ice Dragon

I realized I needed a copy of Lissa in order to transfer both Def/Res Finish 4 and Laguz Friend 4 off of Emblem Ike, so I decided to clean a bit of my barracks and do my pulls on the kids banner now instead of waiting until it's about to expire. 370 pulls, pulling red and colorless until I got 2 each of Robin and Emmeryn and blue and green until I got 12 copies of Lissa: 10 Grima (+1 spark) 3 Robin 3 Emmeryn 3 5-star Lissa 9 4-star Lissa 13 pity breakers Fallen Ninian Ascended Elincia Severa Ascended Elincia Brave Chrom Nimue Monica Monica Ascended Merric Arthur Isadora Ascended Sety Chloe 5.1% focus rate is insanely good, about 7 pulls above average. 8.6% total 5-star rate is also insanely good, about 1 pity breaker above average on top of the focus pulls. I somehow ended up having 10 copies of Grima (including the spark) by the time I finally got my last copy of Lissa, so I decided I might as well grab one last copy of Grima to get her to +10. Despite stopping pulling red and colorless at 2 copies of their respective focus unit, I ended up getting 1 more copy of each, too, somehow. And as usual, Ascended Heroes really seem to like me. This was also my first copy of both Ascended Merric and Severa, which is neat, though neither of them have useful Assets.

Yeah. With Godlike Reflexes, you're required to run one of (1) +1 Special charge rate, (2) Emblem Marth, or (3) Laguz Friend 4, and Pledge is a slot-efficient way to fulfill option 1. Even when running Emblem Marth, Pledge still has value for nullifying an opponent's Guard effect as an alternative to running Tempo. Player-phase builds with No Quarter (or Ruptured Sky) will prefer Incite. Dual-phase builds with No Quarter (or Ruptured Sky) can go either way, with the main reason to pick Pledge over Incite in this case being as a counter to Guard.

As someone who has friends who cosplay and who occasionally helps them put on their costumes, I can assure you this one is on the easier side. I fail to see how this is hating Ike in any way. Merged Ordeals don't make the unit any stronger and is only an incentive to spend more orbs on the unit. Emblem Ike hasn't lost out on anything other than marketing, which is something he obviously doesn't need. Ike is popular with or without incentives to pull for him.

The recommendation is mostly based on your resources. Between Incite and Pledge, which one is better is ultimately determined by what build and role you're running on her.

If that's your situation, then I suggest grabbing some skills on Celine to help clear floor 25 and then going back to fishing for Incite. That way, if someone convinces you to grab Celine, you'll have already started grabbing skills for her, and in the meantime, she can help deal with blue tanks.

It depends mostly on what you have as resources. Godlike Reflexes is easier to get than No Quarter, and Atk/Spd Finish 4 is easier to get than Atk/Spd Prime 4, but this doesn't matter if you have the resources or are using a duplicator for the harder-to-get skills. Between Atk/Spd Pledge and Incite Atk/Spd, it's also worth considering your availability for their prerequisites in case you're planning to get the other through skill inheritance. If you're aiming to grab a second Forma, then it's probably a good place to stop and work on the second unit since all of the skills themselves are good as is. If all you're going for is Alear, then you should still have enough leeway to grab some skills on the other units just to help clear floor 25 more consistently.

Since I mentioned it, I added Holy-Knight II to the translation notes since the remixed skill name was changed in Japanese due to length limits.

Sigurd and Male Byleth were announced in the Feh Channel: Sigurd: Holy-Knight II 2 cooldown At start of turn, grants the following status effects to unit: +1 movement With a Blow condition, 40% damage reduction on opponent's first attack (new) When Special activates: Damage equal to 30% of Atk (previously 25%) If Special activated in combat, after combat, grants the following status effect to unit and allies: +6 Atk/Def (previously only Atk) +1 movement With a Blow condition, 40% damage reduction on opponent's first attack (new) New skill is Seal Def 4, replacing Crusader's Ward. The upgrade to Holy-Knight's Aura adds 40% damage reduction on the opponent's first attack on player phase to the list of status effects granted at the start of the turn and after combat and +6 Def after combat. The Special damage is slightly increased from 25% to 30%. Seal Def 4 replaces the outdated Crusader's Ward in the B slot, which means it's likely that Crusader's Ward's effect will be move to the his weapon's refine. In particular, I think it's likely that the refine will just have Deflect All on it to combine with Holy-Knight II's first-hit damage reduction. Additionally, putting Seal Def 4 in the B slot prevents him from running the more popular Near Trace, which means I'm expecting to see Canto (Rem. +1; Min 2) added to his weapon's refine. Given that Sigurd's main gimmick is his movement range, I'm also expecting him to get a Clash-like effect on his weapon. He would also benefit from follow-up prevention to improve his bulk on enemy phase. He notably also doesn't have first-hit damage reduction on enemy phase, so there's a possibility they'll give him that, too, and it's also possible that it'll also apply to player phase so that he gets 2 stacks on player phase. Male Byleth: Sublime Heaven II 2 cooldown At start of turn, if Special cooldown is at maximum: -1 Special cooldown (new) When Special activates: If opponent's weapon type is not dragon or beast: Damage equal to 30% of Atk (previously 25%) If opponent's weapon type is dragon or beast: Damage equal to 60% of Atk (previously 50%) Percentage damage reduction nullification New skill is Atk/Spd Oath 4, replacing Time's Pulse 3. Byleth's original C skill, Time's Pulse 3, is moved to his Special slot to open it up for Atk/Spd Oath 4, which gives him parity with Legendary Female Byleth. Other than that, the only thing Sublime Heaven gets is a bit of additional damage when it activates. There're no real hints to what his weapon's refine will have. His weapon really only has Null Follow-Up on it, but he also just doesn't need much in terms of skill effects. Tempo is mostly pointless on Byleth since the Pulse effect on his Special will fully charge his Special for his first attack anyways. The only other notable skill effects on the more recent Byleths and Byleth refines are damage reduction, Vantage, and Scowl. Scowl seems like a one-off effect for the Duo version, so I'm not expecting it here. If they give him the Vantage effect, it would be nice to give him the secondary effect of Time's Pulse 4 since it's notably missing from the remix. Since his weapon weapon also grants Null Follow-Up to nearby allies, I wouldn't be surprised to see some or all of the other effects that the weapon gets with its refine to also be given to allies.

I fucking died at the censors on Loki's art. Merged Ordeals seems pretty cool, though it would've been nice if they extended it to also include some earlier units. It's not like they lose anything by increasing Dragonflower income by a bit since demand for them is pretty much always going to exceed supply. Rokkr Sieges finally returning is good news. It's one of the most fun event types for me, and I really want to see how hilariously broken some of the newer units can be in the mode. The Dragonflower rewards are also pretty nice. I'll cover remix stuff in the remix and refinery threads, but Sigurd's remixed skill looks like the first time they've had to abbreviate a remixed skill name in Japanese. And the usual translation notes: Loki's epithet is "戯神" (gishin), "God of Jest". The English video doesn't appear to include her epithet. Supreme Thökk is "神杖セック" (shinjō sekku), "Divine Staff Thökk". Dazzling Discord is "幻惑・不和の烙印" (genwaku: fuwa no rakuin), "Dazzlement: Brand of Discord". As usual, "幻惑" (genwaku), "dazzlement", is an abbreviation of "幻惑の杖" (genwaku no tsue), "Dazzling Staff", which is the name of the Dazzling Staff skill. Divine Deceit is "神杖天空を偽る" (shinjō tenkū o itsuwaru), "The Divine Staff Deceives the Heavens". Holy-Knight II is "グランベルの…・承" (guranberu no...: shō), "Grandbell's...: Second". The original skill name, Holy-Knight Aura, is "グランベルの聖騎士" (guranberu no seikishi), "Grandbell's Holy Knight". "承" (shō) is an abbreviation for "承句" (shōku), "successive phrase", which refers to the second line of a Chinese four-line poem. Used here as a single-character suffix, it's equivalent to "Mark-2".

This week's free Arena ticket gets me Catherine: 86 pulls on the Double Special Heroes banner: 1 Seidr 3 Edelgard (+1 spark) 1 Byleth 1 Fjorm 7.0% focus rate is basically average. I got enough copies of Edelgard to get her to +10 while still having a copy left over to give Armored Blaze to Rearmed Grima. Seidr is now +1. Fjorm is +2. Byleth is +3.

Added Candace's weapon to the translation notes. It's identical to Whitewind Bow.

Given that I don't use dancers at all in PvE, I don't think dancers, much less Wings of Mercy on dancers, is at all vital. The other nail in the coffin for Wings of Mercy is the fact that unlike in PvP, enemies in PvE don't run Distant Counter, and so you simply aren't taking counterattack damage on your ranged units consistently enough to make Wings of Mercy useful. Melee units also aren't commonly taking a large amount of damage from generic enemies due to the fact that they typically have damage reduction and high Def, and dual-phase units nowadays have passive healing. Most dual-phase units at best have 50% percentage damage reduction nullification when not activating their Special. The ones that do run Specials that activate on the first counterattack typically aren't able to run a skill that gives the Special full damage reduction nullification and so are also typically only able to have half nullification. If they aren't activating their Special and don't have a Brave effect on their counterattack, they typically aren't able to kill the attacker with their first counterattack. Units that activate a fast Special might not be able to be handled with a ranged attacker due to them typically having low Def, but offensive melee units don't have that problem. Outside of a handful of extremely bulky units (like Legendary Male Alear and Emblem Ike), dual-phase units are more effective when piloted by the player where you can pick and choose which enemy attackers to fight on enemy phase and how. Dual-phase units that are controlled by the AI can be manipulated into taking combat at a disadvantage. Even if your team's wall breaker is running Desperation for the job, you're still going to want to have it active at 100% HP (or 99% HP if the unit inflicts damage on themselves at the start of the turn). Desperation 3 is completely outdated at this point in PvP modes.

Then run Wings of Mercy in the B slot instead of Mercy-Wing Echo in the X slot. Now that you don't need to run Desperation, you have a whole B slot that's open for Wings of Mercy if that's the effect that you really think you need. But, you say Wings of Mercy is not the highest priority for the B slot because it's currently the most competitive skill slot? That would indeed be a problem if we didn't have so many other sources of mobility available. Infantry and fliers have access to Oath 4 in the C slot. Fliers have Orders, Rein Snap, and several different variations of Guidance in the C and X slots. Pathfinder is now more widely available, usable by all units other than staves, and is in the C slot. Several units have skills in not-the-B-slot that grant Charge to at least one ally. We're also getting more units with Galeforce effects after performing specific actions. Wings of Mercy used to be the only source of semi-consistent additional mobility, but that is simply no longer the case anymore. Due to the amount of stat optimization we've gotten, most offensive units these days have lopsided defenses, which means you're typically able to tank a single attack on the side with the higher stat even with your damage reduction mitigated. For example, I'm running a standard Sabotage-Ploy build on my Bride Cecilia with no damage reduction skills at all, and she's able to tank Abyssal Veyle's Iceberg with just stats and debuffs alone. It's also notable that the most common source of percentage damage reduction nullification is limited to Special activations and most offensive units in PvP modes are built so that their Special activates on their follow-up on player phase. This means that on their enemy phase, they usually won't be activating their Special on their counterattack, which allows you to get around the nullification effect (and the extra Special damage). The units that are actually threatening to offensive units are the current state-of-the-art tanks that simply don't die. Desperation doesn't help against them because they're not dead after you finish attacking them.

Desperation has been an outdated skill for a long time now. Damage reduction effects are good enough that most units can rely on that instead and run a B skill that deals more damage or grants more mobility. Desperation itself has the issue that you can't use the opponent's counterattack to charge a stronger Special, which is a problem now that we have premium Specials with higher cooldowns that can't be activated when running Desperation without at least 2 sources of Special acceleration. If you're in a situation where you actually need Desperation, you're better off using a unit that already has it on their weapon than to waste the B or Sacred Seal slot on Desperation. Desperation is a purely defensive effect, which means it has a particularly high opportunity cost in both the B and Sacred Seal slots. The only ones I can really see giving up their exclusive dance skills are the fairies that still have the original versions of their dance skills. The recently released stronger versions (only relevant on Spring Mirabilis since the other 3 are Rearmed or Attuned) and the remixed versions are all strong enough that losing them is not worth running Mercy-Wing Echo. The original skills, though, have effects that can be made up for with modern support skills. Gray Waves and Call to Flame are not worth giving up because sources of +1 movement are not well distributed, and the inheritable sources of the effect don't have tier-4 versions yet and have significant competition in their skill slot. Similarly, the Galeforce effect on Dragon's Dance is way too valuable to give up. All that said, we have other teleportation skills now with more lenient conditions, so I'm still not terribly convinced of Mercy-Wing Echo's value on units with exclusive dance skills.

The skills Sing, Dance, and Play are specifically excluded from the restriction and can be used with Arcane weapons and Echo skills. Rearmed and Attuned Heroes are also fully immune to restrictions on both Arcane weapons and Echo skills (e.g. Rearmed Chrom can still equip Fate Unchanged... even if he has Arcane Eljudnir and Death Blow Echo equipped).