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Light mage? Are they going to make him a staff-user?

Apparently we're also getting some new daily arena quests as a way to get orbs and feathers. There's also a retweet campaign running to get us another 5 orbs on top of the 20 from the voting gauntlet.

First, datamine: looks like the next Grand Hero Battle will be Michalis. Flying Green/Axe. Get your Takumis ready. There's also apparently an Eliwood/Minerva banner in the works. That could be the "Battling Michalis" banner, or it could be something else, but it seems likely to be related to the Grand Hero Battle.

Second, the new banner is slightly interesting for a couple reasons.

1. Ninian is a Dragon Dancer. Dancers have some excellent niche uses (I use one to great effect in my Arena defense team), but can suffer from low stats. Dragons tend to have decent stats. Ninian could become a meta unit for that reason. It's also really hard to get Azura, and Olivia's not great without some feather investment, so Ninian being a summon focus could lead to a lot of people seeking her out.

2. Jaffar looks like he could be a monster in terms of team synergy. His Deathly Dagger inflicts -7 def & res after battle as well as doing an additional guaranteed 7 damage after battle... plus he has Threaten Speed AND Life and Death to jack his attack/speed even further.

I wasn't super hyped about this banner, so I went ahead and tried a few more pulls on the Battling Ursula banner before it went away last night. Sunk about 80 orbs into it and ended up with some trash (obviously) and some decent units:

3* Barst +HP/-Def (meh)
3* Barst +Spd/-Res (perfect, but trash character)
3* Bartre +Def/-HP (meh)
4* Catria +Atk/-Spd (bad, and I have my perfect Catria from prev. roll)
3* Corrin +HP/-Spd (-Spd makes Lucina, Nino, and Anna double her = trash)
5* Effie +HP/-Atk (not bad for a wall-Effie, just glad to have gotten her!)
3* Florina +Atk/-Res (see below, heh)
4* Florina +Atk/-Res (pretty good; +Spd might have been better)
3* Henry +Spd/-Def (Henry's natural speed is terrible, so this feels like a waste on him)
4* Henry +Res/-Atk (trash)
4* Jagen +HP/-Spd
3* Oboro with Neutral rolls (meh, Oboro is meh, and I have an army of Oboros)
3* Oboro +Res/-Def (meh)
4* Odin +Spd/-Res (perfect Odin)
4* Odin +HP/-Def (not bad, but nothing to write home about)
4* Sully +Atk/-Res (Perfect—first good mounted lance! Might have preferred Abel or Peri.)

So after 180 orbs, I managed to snag a 5* Nino a couple days ago and a 5* Effie last night, the two focus characters I actually wanted. I'd say that's a pretty resounding success for a free player.

I have 40 orbs left, and I'm debating continuing summoning on blue orbs for Ninian, Azura, Ephraim, and Robin, or sitting pat and accumulating until Tellius.

I spent 40 orbs on the new banner and literally got nothing but trash. Nothing is even worth mentioning. I'm going to end up using all these characters for feathers or skill inheritance (on that note, one of them is a 4* Eirika with bad IVs; Eirika gets hone speed 3 at 4* which is quite useful, admittedly).

by the way, I also heard that Karel is a monster. I agree with everything you said about Ninian and Jaffar. They are very solid.

Jordan wrote:I spent 40 orbs on the new banner and literally got nothing but trash.

That'll be me this afternoon.

Jordan wrote:by the way, I also heard that Karel is a monster.

Wo Dao+ gives +10 damage when special triggers, and his special cooldown is 2 action and grants 30% of his damage suffered to his attack. This synergizes with both Defiant Atk (+7 attack if below 50%) and Desperation (follow-up immediately if below 75%). If you can keep him from getting ORKO'd, he can nuke pretty much any unit. I can see +HP/Atk/Spd and -Def/Res being good natures on him.

Assuming neutral stats and special up, a Karel at 50% HP (24 damage) would have an attack of 43+7 (defiant) +8 (reprisal) + guaranteed 10 (Wo Dao), potentially immediately followed up by a second attack of 43+7. Even against a blue unit, that's nothing to scoff at. With a +Spd nature, he can double a neutral Takumi, which could nullify his close counter advantage (excepting the Vantage Takumis that are coming next week). Getting him under 50% and then keeping him safe with Dance/Draw Back could be a legit strategy (Karel, Ninian, Nino, Takumi).

I was going to summon just blue orbs this round trying for Ninian/Azura/Ephraim, but maybe I'll summon around the whole board. 40 orbs = 10 characters, and there are some decent ones in all colours I don't have.

Holy moly, just caught this gigantic developer update where they outline all their plans through the next couple of months. This is an abundance of open communication! You don't see that every day, even from big community-oriented companies that use player feedback to significantly steer the direction of the game.

Well, Skill Inheritance is here, as well as a Training Tower quest that lasts until the end of March with the potential to earn 36 orbs.

I really need to figure out what skills are good / what I want on my good units.

Distant Counter + Vantage on any unit (or Close Counter on mages) = hellooooo one-shot kill meta. Hope you can kill Linde/Tharja/Nino/Julia in one hit! Otherwise you're getting one-shot countered or one-shot Vantaged before you can do anymore damage!

Alright, I've created a new, more comprehensive FEH spreadsheet!

• I've loaded all the character data into the backend, so this sheet accepts the character name and stars/rarity in the first two columns and auto-populates most of the rest of the data (colour, weapon & movement type, and even weapon and skills).
• I've also loaded all the skill data into the backend, so when it surfaces your characters' skills, it auto-populates a summary of their effects (and might, range, and cooldown) on the main page!
• The other user-entered fields are your stats at level 1. The sheet will then automatically compare them to the neutral base stats for that unit and populate your IVs for you, which means you don't need to look them up on the wiki anymore. Just enter your new character and it'll tell you what you have.
• The final addition is a series of charts that give you at-a-glance visual breakdowns of various aspects of your roster (level spread, rarity spread, etc.).

The last thing I'm thinking of working on is a formula that will automatically evaluate your IVs based on a set of "preferred stats" for each character, but I don't really have the appetite for that right now.

Nice stuff Kong. I've been playing around with the skill inheritance stuff since they added it. I promoted Selena to a 5* unit since Azama is unable to inherit Poison Strike 3, sadly. I then rolled a Karel somehow. I decided to steal his weapon and give it to Selena instead (it was a +Res, -Atk Karel). I also gave Selena Ignis. I'm debating whether to give her Renewal 3 or Vantage 3. I feel like Vantage 3 would be best saved for a "counter at all ranges unit" such as Nowi though. As I happen to have a good Nowi, I'm probably going to save it till I can promote her.

I gave Elise Hone Attack 3. That might sound redundant given that she has an attack balm skill, but I find the latter too unreliable. I think I'd rather just have her inherit some other balm skill, such as swift wind balm from a duplicate Serra I got.

I gave Nino HP+5, Glacies and Vantage 2. Those are not necessarily the optimal skills on her, but they are respectable. I still have 1,000 or so SP to burn so I could always replace some of them.

As I was looking through my units, one thing I noticed is that Nino is literally the only decent ranged unit I have. That's problematic because it makes me feel forced to build a team around her needing buffs.

Some generalized comments about skill inheritance:

-It's broken, despite some limitations on it.
-The units that were bad before are generally still bad.
-The units that were good before will probably get even better.
-Units that were decent but not top tier can become potentially very strong though.

Some strategies I've heard about:

-Putting reposition on a flier so you can move units from one bridge to another on that dumb dual bridge map. This also allows you to ferry units over rough terrain.
-Putting quick riposte on heavy damage, slow tanks like Ephraim.
-Putting Vantage on pretty much anything, though especially units that can counter at any range.
-Putting Fury on pretty much anything to increase arena score by default.
-Putting Close Counter or Distant Counter respectively on just about anything. I have no idea why they didn't make these special skills. Terrible idea on their part.
-Putting Odin's tome, Tharja's tome or Henry's tome (WTA vs. colorless/Red tome) on certain colored mages, depending on what the team needs.
-You can smite units over impassable terrain, making it another useful support ability.
-Putting Defiant Attack 3 and Moonbow on characters who need it. Defiant Attack 3 also works well with Vantage. Odin is now a great unit to pass down skills.
-Giving Brave+ weapons to absurdly speedy units like Lon'qu along with skills like Darting Blow to virtually guarantee a 4x attack.
-Effie got even stronger (she was already top tier along with Hector) but other armored units can benefit from her wary fighter skill now, if for some reason you don't like Effie.
-Dragons can inherit different breaths so you can use this as your team needs. E.g. putting Dark Breath+ on a different dragon for the debuffs or putting lightning breath on Corrin to give her the ability to counter at range.
-Like Effie, Kagero got even better but other ninjas can also benefit from her weapon in case Kagero is not desirable to the player.
-Death Blow 3 is very strong on mages.
-Desperation 3 is strong on slower, tankier units.
-Triangle Adept 3 synergizes extremely well with the weapons of Robin, Cecilia and Henry.
-Wings of Mercy is a totally bullshit skill for defense teams on arena, but particularly for high attack melee units alongside ranged units.
-Drag Back can be a useful way to help high attack but weak defense characters by moving them to safety after their attack. This along with Hone Speed 3 makes Eirika another very good unit for skill inheritance (especially since she gets both at 4*).
-I'm kind of curious if Jaffar's weapon damage stacks with poison strike 3, but it likely doesn't matter anyways as most of the time Jaffar's debuffs and damage probably put an enemy into kill range.

Good summary of some skill inheritance ideas! I agree that you should hang onto Vantage 3 until you have someone you'll really get value out of. You don't want to waste it. Here are some ideas I have had:

• Renewal on any Falchion user lets you heal 10HP every 2 turns and every 3 turns.
• If you get rid of Draug's Brave Sword, he actually has good Spd for an Armored unit. Maybe put Killing Edge on him to get a 2-action cooldown on Pavise, meaning he'll take half damage pretty much every round. Add a special like Ignis to take advantage of his high defense to give him some damage-dealing capacity.
• Wings of Mercy is good on a dancer. Teleport to hurt units to get them out of sticky situations.
• Pivot is great on any Armored unit. Doubles or triples their mobility.
• If you put a Brave Axe on Cherche, she becomes an ICBM.
• I will probably put Vantage on Takumi.
• You can move Gunter's Hone Cavalry over to a better horse unit (Sully/Peri?), allowing you to use a better green like Frederick.
• Now that you can put better skills on Anna, she could be a top-tier green unit, since she has teleportation and Vantage build-in.
• If you put a WTA vs. Colorless and G Tomebreaker on Nino, she'll essentially have an edge against Blue, Green, and Colorless. (You can't put Tomebreaker on for their weakness.)

EDIT: Jordan, I just noticed Jagen's currently your leader. Are you playing Horse Emblem by any chance?