#she’s a healer but third in terms of damage in my main team

[ghostdata]

first 20 star hero

[murasaki-murasame]

After two full months of waiting, enough for me to have 600 goddamn summons hoarded up, Gala Leif has finally been released, and even though I probably should have waited to get an idea of how good all the new units are, I decided to immediately summon on the gala anyway.

I’ll go over all of what I can remember from my summons under the cut, but TL;DR: I got every new banner unit and I still have 330 summons left >:3c

Before the gala summons, I also used the 5-star adventurer/dragon vouchers I got from the royal regimen endeavors, which got me a dupe Xander, a dupe Mikoto, two dupe Louises, a dupe P-Siren [now at 1UB], a dupe Freyja [now my second copy’s at 3UB], and I think the third dragon was maybe a Nidhogg or something but I don’t remember.

As for the gala itself, the new units I got were:

-Gala Leif [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

-Two copies of the Xuan Zang alt [one of them was from within my first ten single vouchers lol]

-Zhu Bajie [I got Leif after 220 summons and then I decided to keep going for this dude, who I thankfully got after just 50 more summons]

-Four copies of Tie Shan Gongzhu [Since I got so many copies of her I decided to use a few sunlight stones to get a MUB copy of her while having a 0UB one left over. I tend to run my two copies of Freyja at the same time pretty often in my wind team, so I figured it’d be worth having two copies of her. I still have eight sunlight stones left over anyway]

-Andromeda [I dunno if I’ll ever use her but it’s cool to get her]

And these are the dupes I got that I can remember:

-Lathna [I swear to god I’ve gotten a dupe Lathna from like every single gala since she came out]

-Grace [Guess who I got from the last dream summon lol]

-S-Celery

-S-Julietta [She’s quickly becoming one of my dreaded dupes to get, especially since I didn’t get Gala Elly when she came out]

-Gala Sarisse [I think I’ve somehow gotten like three copies of her in total at this point]

-Arctos [I have him MUB already so this is just gonna be a second copy now]

-Kagutsuchi [now at 1UB]

-OG Siren [now at 1UB]

-Epimetheus [now at 3UB]

-Garuda [now at 1UB]

-Shinobi [now my second copy’s at 3UB]

-Freyja [like I said with the other Freyja dupe I got, my second copy’s now at 3UB]

-Simurgh [now at 1UB]

-Nimis [now at 1UB]

-Nyarlathotep [now at 3UB]

That’s all I remember but there were probably a few more, lol.

Anyway, I haven’t had much time to use them yet, but I actually feel more excited about the new light units than Leif himself. I honestly can’t figure out what role Leif is meant to play in the wind meta. In spite of having a shield stance, his only real defense utility is a 60% defense buff that only applies to himself, and other than that he has lots of attacking skills that apparently do a lot of damage, unique attack combos that are basically the same as the chefs but he only needs a 6+ combo to activate it, and a whole bunch of entirely offensive abilities. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up being a top-tier wind DPS unit, but it feels like he’s intended to play a defensive role even though he doesn’t really have anything in his kit to support that. I think his big self-only defense buff has a good shot at letting him cheese part stuff like HMC’s waterfall, but that only applies to himself.

In general I dunno who he’d replace on my wind team for stuff like soloing eCiella. Unless I can get by without T-Hope’s team defense buffs, I might be able to get rid of Ranzal and just share his S1 for the dispel, but I dunno.

I really hope he doesn’t end up falling into obscurity due to not having enough in the way of unique utility to make him stand out, but he seems like he at least does way more damage than Gala Ranzal, so that’s nice, lol.

But aside from him, the new light units honestly all look extremely good. I think they’re definitely going to shake up the light meta a lot more than Leif will do for wind, but it’ll still be a while before shadow Agito comes out in the first place.

I only have a vague idea of what some of the damage mods are for all the new units, but I’m hearing that Xuan Zang’s S1 does a surprisingly high amount of damage, at least in it’s upgraded form. Her S2 AoE zone also looks way bigger than what other units with that type of skill get, so it’ll probably be a lot easier for her to reliably include all her teammates in it. Apparently her force strike also works more like a staff force-strike, so that’s neat. I think she might actually trump Peony in the DPS sim just due to raw damage mods, but she also provides a lot of defensive utility via her S1 strength debuff, and her S2 shadow res buff, so that might edge her out as well in a way that wouldn’t be reflected in something like the DPS sim. Also she can reduce the enemy’s paralysis resistance but I don’t know the numbers on that, or how much it’d really impact a paralysis team.

Zhu Bajie also seems even better in practice than I thought he’d be, lol. He plays a lot like the Monster Hunter units due to his unique force-strike which basically works in the exact same ways theirs do, and unlike how axe force strikes normally work, it works more like a lance force-strike. So he ends up not playing like an axe unit at all, which is interesting. And on top of all that stuff, he also has enmity scaling on his S1, and he can reduce his health with his S2 like Natalie can. I saw that his S1 gets up to a max of like 1900% damage mods, which is really good, even if you won’t really get that high in practice. His force-strike also has really high SP gain, enough to fill his S1 in two force-strikes [which takes like five or so seconds], so it feels like it’s gonna be really easy to spam, which makes the high damage mods even better. His force-strike also seems to have a 460% paralysis punisher damage mod added onto it when it’s fully charged, so that might make a real impact on his overall damage. He also gets Resilient Offense, which is a really good ability in general, but it might be hard to trigger it multiple times since his S2 makes it so you can’t heal him for 10 seconds. His S1 also inflicts stun, which might be good in certain situations but stun tends to be pretty unreliable. I think he’s going to pair extremely well with the Xuan Zang alt, since her strength debuffs and shadow res buffs will make it way easier for him to tank hits while at low health.

Sorta like how the Xuan Zang alt makes me feel way better about having skipped Peony, Zhu Bajie makes me feel better about having skipped all the Monster Hunster units [mainly Vanessa], lol. Vanessa still has her own unique defensive stuff going on, but I feel like Zhu Bajie plays extremely similarly to her in spite of being an axe unit, so that’s cool.

I’m a little salty that Sha Wujing is another light lance instead of a light healer, but honestly his kit looks really good, and he’ll probably see more use this way than if he was a healer, lol. His main appeal is basically that he has a defense debuff zone on his S2, which is really nice in general, though his two abilities are about buffing his damage, so maybe his S1 will let him do a lot of damage as well. The thing that’s really interesting to me, though, is that his S2 is a shared skill you can give to other characters, which I really didn’t see coming, since they’d actively avoided letting you skill share any other defense debuff zone skills. He might end up being a really useful skill share option for certain fights, especially stuff like speedrun comps where you want to stack as many strength buffs and defense debuffs as you can right away.

Also it’s extremely funny to me that since he’s a featured 4-star in a gala banner, he wound up having extremely high appearance rates [7% normally, and 40% on the final summon in a tenfold], which basically means that any amount of summoning on this gala is gonna lead to you getting like a million copies of this dude, lol. I think in the 270 summons I did, I got like 15-20 copies of him, with there being multiple instances of me getting like three copies of him in a single tenfold. It’s not a big deal or anything, and he seems to be a really good unit so it’s nice that he’s really easy to get, but it’s funny to me how much he’s been plaguing everyone’s summons.

Tie Shan Gongzhu also looks like she’s gonna be the go-to dragon for basically any light support unit, so that’s cool. She doesn’t have a heal skill, but we already have Cupid for that.

I don’t know all of their damage mods and SP costs and stuff yet, and it’ll be a little while before the DPS sim updates to include them, but I think they’re going to be top-tier light units. Hopefully they don’t get powercrept by the time shadow Agito comes out, lol. Either way this is exactly what the light element’s been desperately needing after like six months of Oops! All Limited!

Which is also why I’m really really happy that they decided to put these characters on rate-up along with Gala Leif, since it meant I was able to get them along with Leif, instead of having to skip their banner entirely to save for the next gala. I hope they make this a trend going forward. I think GBF does this a lot with their galas, so maybe they’re shifting to this model for galas now. This just seems like a net positive all around, and it means I feel like I’m missing out less by hoarding exclusively for gala banners.

Anyway this banner treated me extremely well, which is a huge relief after how bad my experience with the Gala Alex banner was. I was worried that the 600 summons i had saved up wouldn’t be enough to get Leif, but I managed to get at least one copy of everyone in less than 300 summons, so that’s great.

I guess now my short-term goal is to just skip all the non-limited banners between now and the next gala. So we’ll just see how that goes. I have a feeling we’ll get a rerun of the Daikokuten banner in the next month or two, which might really tempt me since I didn’t get Daikokuten or Nobunaga when they came out, but I don’t know if they interest me enough to chase after that, especially with monthly galas seeming to be a thing now.

[imagine-loki]

Loki and the Witchling

TITLE: Loki and the Witchling 

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 43/?

AUTHOR: nekoamamori

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine you’re a healer working with the Avengers when Loki comes to join the team

RATING: T (so far) 

NOTES/WARNINGS: Also on AO3 click here

    You knew the palace quite well after exploring it with Loki like playful children for the past three weeks. Well, playful children who liked to hide in alcoves making out, so maybe playful teenagers. You’d been discovered more than once by maids, but they just politely pretended not to notice the usually stoic prince making out with his lady, while they gave you smirks and giggles of approval when you saw them again. Loki flushed when you were caught, but that didn’t stop him from initiating the hunt for the next make out alcove.

    Since you knew the palace so well, you knew that the fastest way to Loki’s favorite garden was through one of the hallways on one of the lower floors, so that’s where you went first. It was admittedly not one of your brightest plans.

    “Look, it’s Loki’s little pet human,” a thuggish looking man who obviously had no real reason for being in the palace said as he stepped out in front of you.

    “And she’s alone without her powers. The prince isn’t doing a very good job protecting his little mortal,” came another voice from behind you.

    “If we control the girl, we control the throne,” the other commented. That was a stupid-ass jump of logic.

    You rolled your eyes and stepped so the wall was at your back and you could see both men clearly. Obviously neither belonged here. “I’m Asgardian, dumbasses, just leave now before I have to beat the shit out of you for being where you don’t belong,” you told them firmly. They ignored your sage advice and lunged for you. You had your dagger unsheathed in an instant. You shrieked for help from the guards, but defended yourself well with hard earned skills of hand-to-hand and dagger combat, plus a couple of nasty tricks you had learned from Nat.

    Both men were bleeding on the floor by the time the guards arrived. You had a few small wounds, a black eye, a split lip, and a nasty cut on your arm from the battle, but nothing terrible and you had taken care of yourself without your powers. The story of Loki’s little healer darling taking care of two hulking men without her powers would spread throughout the palace like wildfire. You cleaned your dagger on the shirt of one of the bleeding men before you would resheath it. You briefly explained what happened to the guards. They took the men away to the dungeons, promising to question them and find out where they had come from and why they had dared to attack you. You nodded regally, and continued on your quest to find Loki.

    You ducked into the hidden alcove of Loki’s favorite garden to find him sitting on the bench there. “If this is another illusion, I am going to kick your ass when I find you,” you told him firmly, grumpy that you had been attacked while looking for him. You just wanted to lie down and put some ice on your face.

    “That is what Thor said when he came to the library,” he said softly without looking up from where he was picking nervously at his palms. “And then informed me in no uncertain terms that you were wandering the palace on your own determined to find me, so I had better show up where you would find me quickly, or he would chain me to Mjolnir for you,”

    You went to stand next to him and wrapped your arms around him. He was real this time, so you settled yourself on the bench next to him and undid his cloak from around your neck so you could wrap it over the two of you. “I may have get my own Mjolnir, since no one but Thor can lift his,” you teased. He looked over at you, shocked that you would threaten to chain him to a Mjolnir. His face fell when he saw yours and he was suddenly angry again.

    “What happened?” he demanded, turning your face toward him so he could see the damage.

    “A couple of thugs snuck into the palace and attacked me on my way down here. They’ve been dealt with and they’re in the dungeons being questioned on how they got in and why. I’m fine,” you tried to reassure him, but he growled something about his own uselessness and how he should have been there. Pain and his mood scraped on your temper. “No. You should not have been there, neither of us should have been. We should have been cuddling with healing tea and books in one of our rooms. I’m sorry about whatever your father did to put you in this mood, but no, love, you should not have taken it out on me. You should have confided in me. I’m here for you no matter what mood you’re in, no matter what emotions and old soul wounds are riding you,” you told him firmly.

    “I’m sorry. I wanted to spare you from this mood, from seeing me like this. I didn’t take into account your feelings,” his voice was soft and you could see that he truly felt bad. He knew he’d made a mistake.

    “I love you, Loki, so does Thor, so does you mother. Trust in us, confide in us, at least in me if you won’t trust them. I’m not going to judge you or hurt you. You know that. We’re in this together,” you reminded him again. You saw him thinking over your words, and it hurt you to do it, but you had to throw one more barb at him, add one more bruise so he would finally realize what he was doing when he did this. “We’re in this together, so please stop attacking our relationship. Stop attacking me and my feelings just to prove to yourself that I’ll leave you. I’m not leaving you unless you tell me to go, but I am tired of you hurting me to try to see if I’ll leave, just because you’ve been hurt before.” He looked shocked, hurt by his own actions when he realized what he had done, what he kept doing.

    You stood from the bench and fastened the cloak back in place. “Now that I know you’re ok, I’m going up to my room. I know you and know you need time to yourself, too, especially in this mood. You’re welcome to brood down here until you’re ready to join me,” you told him. You kissed his forehead.

    “I should-” he started. You smiled at him and cut him off.

    “I’ll be perfectly safe walking to my room. It’s a direct path through the family wing from here. There’s no safer place in the palace than the family wing, as you know,” you reminded him. You kissed him. “Cool off your temper and this mood. Feel better, love. I’ll be waiting for you when you’re ready.” You kissed him again before you ducked back through the bushes to the main path in the garden.

    You ran into Thor on the garden path. “You have not found him yet?” he asked, sounding disappointed before he got a clear look at you. “What happened?” he demanded, rushing toward you when he saw your face.

    “I’m fine, Thor,” you took his arm and started walking back to the palace with him. “I met up with a couple of thugs on my search. They’ve been thoroughly beaten up by me and are now being questioned in the dungeons,” you told him. “I just want to go back to my suite,” you added.

    “Healer first,” he told you firmly. You rolled your eyes, but didn’t protest and let him walk you to the healers first. “You did not find Loki?” he asked again as you walked.

    “I found him. He’s ok, but need more time to cool his temper and this mood. We talked things over. He’ll come in when he’s ready,” you told Thor. “He’s ok, Thor, we both are. You don’t have to chain him to Mjolnir,” you added with a grin.

    “I should…” Thor grumbled. “He has hurt your heart and gotten you hurt physically,”

    “Yes, but if you chain him to Mjolnir, then I can’t move him either,” you reminded him patiently, which made him laugh.

    “We will have to find out one day if you are worthy, little sister,” he commented jovially.

    The trip to the healers was quick, they healed the cut on your arm, but insisted there was no need with the bruise on your face, it would fade by the morning anyway. You didn’t blame them for conserving their powers. You knew that your powers were freakishly strong. That was why the betrothal was set up in the first place.

    Thor stayed with you the entire time and walked you back to your suite after, despite your protests that you didn’t need an escort. He reminded you that you had gotten attacked in the palace and he wasn’t risking your safety. He claimed that he didn’t want to get stabbed by Loki if something happened to you, but you knew it was because he cared. He kissed your forehead when you reached your suite. “Stay inside tonight?” he asked.

    “I will, or at least find an escort if I have to go out,” you promised. He accepted that and left for his own plans for the evening. You opened your suite’s door and were surprised when you were instantly pulled into a near desperate hug by a very worried looking Loki. “Loki?” you asked him softly, trying to breath.

    “You weren’t here!” he told you as he held you even tighter. “You said you’d be here. I thought something happened.”

    “I ran into Thor on the way back into the palace. He insisted I needed to see the healers before he’d let me come back here,” you explained quickly. Loki’s grip on you didn’t loosen.

    “I was so worried,” he replied. “I’m so sorry. You were right; I took you and our relationship for granted. I swear, I’ll never do it again,”

    “I accept your apology,” you replied with a smile. “Now can we get to our evening of books and tea?” He chuckled and kissed your forehead.

    “Of course, witchling,”

    He brewed the healing tea too strong. He claimed it was to heal the black eye faster. You had a feeling he just wanted to tuck you safely into bed where he could curl around you and feel like he was properly taking care of you after his mood earlier. You fell asleep to his whispers that he loved you and was sorry he had hurt you again and he would not let it happen a third time.

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen’s Rambling XIX: Delinquents, Actresses, Cats, and More (Persona 5 Characters)

So I don’t have to continually double check what number of Rambling I’m at and more importantly for the sake of organization, I’m just going to number all Ramblings, as well as tag my ramblings with the fandoms I’m talking about in general from now on, fandom backlash be damned. 

Moving on, So during the spring break I briefly caught up with my friends Infall ( @infall-of-music ) and Ninjaweeb ( @xenagodbestgod ). I told them I had gotten Persona 5 and they asked me if I thought it was game-of-the-year material, or at least RPG-of-the-year. I didn’t have solid answer for them back then since I had just started the game at that point. Now that I’ve finished it I can safely so no, I think RPG-of-the-year will probably be Breath of the Wild, but I digress.

Originally, I was just going to give a long, spoiler filled post my feelings on Persona 5 as a whole, but… the rambling I did when I played 30 hours of it basically covered my current thoughts. Eh, I guess I’m consistent in my thoughts if anything. I have more things I want to talk about with the game, but… just nothing else gameplay-wise. No, what I wanted to talk about were the characters, the party members specifically.

Just so you all know I didn’t max out a single party member on my first playthrough. I know, I know, how dare I not waifu Makoto, but… Togo just gave too many good benefits (and didn’t require max charm). Anyway, I just wanted to give a quick update on my thoughts of all the characters now that I beat the game and played through a little bit of new game plus. But first…

Making Amends

So… when I rambled Persona 5 last time I later learned a lot of my nitpicks (money and time management namely) were only issues because I didn’t know about certain social links at the time and just… screwed myself over in the late game. Long story sort the Sun, Temperance, Hanged Man/Tower, and Fortune would had fixed a lot of the problems I was complaining about. Sun helps you make mountains over money in hold-ups, Temperance grants you MORE TIME TO DO SHIT, Hanged Man and Tower made your guns useful for late game, and Fortune just gave you a lot of good buffs for social stats, dungeon crawling, ranking up other social links, and so on.. Real nice stuff over all. Then again… half of these nice social links were either near late game or require some high social stats, so… it was irritating to learn a lot of these late game. So yeah, I just wanted to say that.

With that said, I’ll just dive right in and start talking about the characters now. Fair warning now, I’ll be spoiling things up to the third dungeon story-wise, and some social link stuff, but I’ll try to keep everything else as vague as I can make it.

Ryuji

Y’know, I might get a little flack for saying this, but I really like Ryuji’s character. In terms of the “best friend sidekicks” I think Ryuji is the best one yet. Then again, Junpei didn’t get a social link so… it’s still a little debatable. Anyway, Ryuji is a mix of Kanji and Yosuke with a dash of Junpei. He’s brash and emotional, but his heart’s in the right place, and a lot of the moves he makes, while fueled by his temper and hotheadedness, are understandable. Of course, there were at least two moments I really wanted to punch him, but there were only two, as compared to Junpei and Yosuke’s… several moments. I got to about rank 8 of his social link, and I think it was pretty interesting. I really liked how he still had passion for sports despite not having a body able to compete anymore. Actually, I’m not sure if he’s semi-crippled, or just fell out of track after the team more or less disbanded and he got his leg broken... Someone mind confirming that for me?

Anyway, one thing I didn’t like was how much crap Ryuji had to take from people. I get he’s kind of a dunce, but there’s a limit to how much a person should fail or be blamed for things. Yosuke and Junpei usually got what they deserved because they were being perverted, acting against the party’s will for stupid reasons, or doing something way outside the realm of logical. Ryuji… does a lot of things that make sense in context. When he lashes out it’s when something bad happened to him or someone close to him. When he’s SCREAMING ABOUT HOW HE’S A PHANTOM THIEF TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC OH MY GOD RYUJI SHUT THE HELL UP, it’s out of genuine excitement of getting caught up in the moment, and under the (somewhat sound) assumption no one really cares what a bunch of teenagers say. He’s not so much stupid as he is really impulsive. There’s a big difference between the two in my book, and I’m glad that he’s not just some delinquent jock that causes trouble for the party.

On a side note, I’m kind of curious if there are some official pictures of him in black hair, some concept art or something like that. They say a handful of times Ryuji dyed his hair blonde, so… I wanna’ see his natural hair color.

Ann

Oh Ann… I feel so bad I never got past Rank 6 with you, especially since by then I was interested in your social link (but it was late game by then). But yeah, me an Infall talked a little about Ann and her… issues.

Okay look, I’ll just say the elephant in the room now. She’s a high school girl with a hyper-sexy outfit. Yes, it’s sexual. Yes, it clashes with the themes of her character arc and personality. Yes, it’s cheap fanservice with poses and whatnot. I get it, and it’s a fair complaint to make given the context of the game’s themes. However, as a guy that’s seen, played, and bought way more fanservice-y games and anime than Ann’s attire, I’m barely phased by it. Look, I play strategy RPGs for the strategy, I could honestly care less what Ann’s wearing because as far as I’m concerned, Ann isn’t a “sexy character” to me, she’s my magical DPS character, secondary healer, and status ailment afflicter that’s a bitch to manage due to her heavy SP usage.

Now, as a writer I’ll at least say that her sexy attire could had been forgiven if they played up her sexy angle as a point of her character arc. She’s a model and the object of the perverted fantasies of boys at her school. It’s said several times in the text flavor of the early game that her popularity was mostly due to her body and that popularity was more infamy than fame. Combine that with the fact that she has clear foreign ancestry and is an outsider among her peers because of it and they could have had a really nice character arc discussing sex appeal and views of foreigners and half-breeds. If she had awakened her Persona under the pretense of “yes, I’m sexy, but that doesn’t make me someone’s toy to fantasize about. I’ll use my body to crush and toy with anyone that gets in my way” then I don’t think we’d be having this conversation right now. Yeah, the Bayonetta-type of characters tend to be skating a fine line between “empowering” and “excuse for fanservice,” but I think Atlus could do a good job with that type of character. Sadly… Atlus decided to make her a comically bad actress and destroy that what potential that had… Then again, maybe she improved over her social link and I just didn’t get through enough of it to see that.

Anyway… Ann’s a good character overall, just wish I did more of her social link in the first playthrough.

Yusuke

Like I said in the Rambling I think Yusuke could had been written in a lot better. He just feels a bit out of place with the other party members since he’s from another school and his arc felt more forced if anything. Again, maybe his social link covered this better, but I only got to rank four, and if I need to do what is debatably an optional character arc to really understand him I feel like that’s bad writing, especially when characters like Makoto and Futaba got better arcs when joining too.

If he had been written like Makoto where we saw glimpses of his personality before he even interacted with the party and joined the party a little more smoothly instead literally falling into their laps I’d probably like him more. I feel like his character could had explored a bit about Stockholm mentality and dealing with the pressures of being a prodigal student on scholarship and having to constantly make new works to make ends meet. Then again, if his social did go into these details then… I guess I’ll just focus on his social link for my second playthrough.

Makoto QUUUUEEEEENNN!!!

Oh Makoto… if only I didn’t romance Togo before actually getting to you (if only you didn’t require max Charm to get through your social link too). I’ll be going for her on my second playthrough indefinitely. Anyway, onto actually talking about her.

I’ll be honest, it took me a bit to get use to Cherami Leigh’s portrayal of her. It wasn’t bad, I just didn’t expect that tone and pitch of voice at first was all. I got used to it eventually though. Now, Makoto is my favorite party member since she’s does healing, physical and magical damage, and can buff defense. She was in my party almost all the time once she joined. Plus, she has a very well-written arc. They introduced her soon after the first dungeon and was a bit of an antagonist for a while. We got to see her personality really shine before and after she joined the Phantom Thieves, and that’s something I really appreciate. This also makes Yusuke’s poorer arc all the more unforgivable since the writers know how to include someone in a story without it seeming forceful.

Onto Makoto herself, I like the fact that she’s a prim and proper girl that absolutely loses it when she’s had enough or when in combat. It kind of reminds me of myself in a way (as I’m sure Infall and Ninjaweeb knows how I can get when I lose my cool -_-;;), so I can relate a little. I’m no honor student, but I know the pressure of having to play the nice one when all you want to do is cuss out/punch out the opposing party.

Also, I need to see fanart of Makoto in an Aikido uniform since she canonically knows and studies it. As a main of Aoi Umenokoji, Asuka Kazami, and almost any other female fighter in hakama I just… I just HAVE TO see her in that uniform. I’ll draw it myself if I have to.

Futaba

I heard a lot of talk of Futaba showing signs of being autistic and I agree with it, but I can understand why the writers might not had outright said it. It’s likely to avoid people analysis her character too deeply or being put at the risk of giving a bad portrayal due to key part of autism not being shown in the story. I know I have a few OCs that I privately think of as having certain mental illnesses, but don’t outright state it due to fear if improperly written them that way.

Anyway, I like Futaba. She’s cute, she’s a dork, she HEALS SP, all good stuff. I hope I can get through more of her social link on the second playthrough because it was really cute and nice to see her slowly become more social.

Yeah… that’s all I can really say without spoiling it folks. Feel free to message me for my full thoughts if you really want them.

Haru

I’m… I’m gonna’ be real here, I only got to rank two of Haru’s social link because max Proficiency was a bitch to grind out and she’s a late game party member. I like the whole “rich girl with a secret sadistic streak” thing they have for her, but… she’s a late game party member that didn’t get any development beforehand like Makoto… so… I’ve got nothing to really say. And again, still avoid spoilers for this one.

However, I will say I’m a bit annoyed she didn’t get the same treatment Makoto did in terms of writing. Her character arc was very well written for late game, but she goes to the same school as the main character, they could had hinted at her way earlier as a gardener you ran into, or occasionally gave you SP-healing plants throughout the game… Then again, accessing Haru’s benefits in the early game might have broken it for a savvy player, so… eh.

Also, she’s got the cutest voice in the whole cast. The moe, cutest voices are usually either forgone for a more mature voice or poorly done in English dubs, but goddamn Xanthe Huynh nails it.

Oh wait, one more thing I need to say. SHE GETS HEAT RISER, MAKING HER THE BEST PARTY MEMBER. PERIOD. NO QUESTION. THIS IS NOT A DEBATABLE SUBJECT.

Morgana

I can’t believe I forgot to talk about Morgana… damn, how foolish of me. I love Morgana. I love his voice, I love his cute, yet cocky attitude, I love how he’s a male healer with wind magic, making him Hisui Heart, except I don’t have the urge to strangle him through all the early game. I… I just love this cat so damn much. Except when he makes me go to sleep, then he can die in a thunderstorm, but he’s a good cat overall. 

I’m also glad he wasn’t [ RETRACTED BECAUSE SPOILERS ] like a certain someone I could mention, but I won’t because that’s a spoiler to another game, so I won’t.

Making the Magician (AKA “Sidekick”) Arcana the mascot character surprisingly worked well. Morgana really did have your back most of the time, and the fact that he was the one saying how you got more guts, intelligence, kindness, etc. surprisingly made the Protagonist feel a little less generic... just a little though. And on a sidenote, Zorro definitely had the coolest design next to Captain Kidd. I… don’t really have anything else to say in terms of how he was written or anything, I just really like him. He was the best sidekick to have.

Now at this point I’d go over Akechi, but he’s an ultra-late game party member and going in depth with him is a spoiler in itself since it discusses late game things, so… I’ll just say he could had been waaay better written, and the fact I’m saying it makes it sting so much since he was introduced before Makoto was. But anyway,  that’s it in terms of my thoughts of the Party members in Persona 5. Good Lord this was a long rambling, but it’s done. Now onto the Video Game Update… Lord help me.

[murasaki-murasame]

Since the next batch of mana spiral upgrades should be coming out in the next week or two, I figure now’s probably a good time to go over my predictions for what the first batch of mana spirals for each element might be like, now that we have a good idea of what to expect from them.

This got really long so I’ll put it under a cut.

First off, I think that the adventurers in the first batches of mana spiral upgrades per element will probably be:

Shadow: Nefaria, Curran, Heinwald, OG Cleo, Alex, Audric [maybe], Kleimann, Berserker, and the 3-stars

Water: Xanfried, Laranoa, Lily, OG Elly, OG Celery, Thaniel, Luther, and the 3-stars [except maybe Jakob]

Wind: Hawk, Sylas, Louise, OG Ranzal, Su Fang, Pia, Aeleen, and the 3-stars

Light: Julietta, Lucretia, B-Zardin, OG Luca, Elias, Vixel, Amane, and the 3-stars [except maybe Xiao Lei]

I’m not entirely sure about Lily and Louise since they’re already pretty solid, but I dunno. B-Zardin might be too recent to get buffed but Cassandra was even more recent, lol. And honestly light needs all the buffs it can get, especially when it comes to the non-limited ones.

Botan might have been a special case, but it’d be nice if they include other event units in the mana spiral upgrades as well. Especially since they’ve always been particularly held back by the wonky abilities that event units get. Though I think most of them probably wouldn’t benefit quite as much from a buff as Botan did, since she was already really good.

There’s other units I want to see get buffed, like Annelie and Fritz, but I think other units need the buffs more.

Anyway, let’s break down what changes I think will be made to all of these characters, and what I’d like to see.

Firstly, going by how the flame mana spirals went, we can probably assume that it’ll be the 5-stars and the free story 4-stars who’ll get the most attention put into their upgrades, while the gacha 4-stars and the 3-stars will probably all just have their numbers scaled up across the board, and lots of them will get status afflictions added to their skills. But it’s safe to assume that every single mana spiral unit will get 100% potent status resistance [and off-element resistance units will get their resistances changed to something that actually works for them], and units with any sort of skill prep ability will get it buffed to 100% skill prep + skill charge [aside from unique cases like Naveed].

Either way, this is how I think it’ll go down per element.

SHADOW:

[I’m starting here ‘cause it’ll be the next batch that’ll come out]

As much as I’d love to see my absolute son boy Norwin get a mana spiral upgrade, I think he won’t be in the initial batch since he’s already a pretty solid unit all around. I’d say he’s probably the most well-rounded of the 4-star shadow gacha units, along with Patia.

Orion’s definitely a candidate, but I don’t think they’ll give him an upgrade just yet. Partly because Alex will definitely get one [although they did give both Euden and Karl buffs at the same time], but also because it might really backfire if they give him built-in 100% skill prep since he inflicts blind on his S1, lol. That might lead to some unintended cheese strats, but who knows.

As for the ones who I’m more certain will get buffed, Nefaria’s basically the poster child for ‘absolutely needs a buff’, along with Hawk, but I’m not really certain what I think they’ll do with her. There’s just a lot of fundamental things wrong with her as a unit, and I don’t think that just buffing her stats would be enough. The main thing is just that since blind is such a powerful status affliction, it’s highly resisted by basically every endgame boss, and we haven’t gotten any blind punisher dragons/wyrmprints yet. So a unit like her that’s built around inflicting blind is probably just never going to work because she’ll always be shackled.

Honestly my first suggestion would just be to retcon her entire kit into being about inflicting poison rather than blind, lol. At least then she’d fit in with the poison meta that’s been steadily developing. But that might be too much of a change to make.

The other big issue with her is that her blind affliction is tied to her using her S2 and then using force-strikes. On top of that taking longer to activate than a blind-inflicting S1 would, bow force-strikes are just completely horrible in every way and need to be changed. The bow force-strike should just be a single big charged shot that you charge and fire like you do with the sword and blade force-strikes. That’d make it a lot faster and more reliable to actually hit anyone with them in the first place.

I think her two main abilities will at least get their numbers bumped up, but I think they should take a cue from Naveed’s mana spiral and add an additional effect to one of them along the lines of ‘While Twilight Arrows is activated, increase strength/crit rate/whatever by x%’. It’d at least be SOMETHING to make her stronger, and it’d help justify tying so much to her S2 and it’s effect.

I’m not entirely sure if Curran and Heinwald will get buffed, but I think they at least need it more than Yaten and Natalie do, and it’d be a bit weird if Nefaria’s the only shadow 5-star to get buffed in the next batch, so I’m including them.

For Curran, I think the defense debuff on his S1 should have a 100% chance of applying, and maybe he could get poison punisher added to it as well. And I think his S2 should have either poison punisher or defense debuff punisher [like DY-Malora] added to it. And I feel like they should change his Last Offense ability to just be Resilient Offense like Cassandra. He doesn’t really have a good way of utilizing that sort of ability like she does, but Last Offense is just kinda useless as it is, lol.

For Heinwald, I think he should inflict poison with his S1, and the cap on it’s heal should either be raised or removed. I also think that the team strength buff on his S2 should be changed to not be limited to a short-range AoE around him, but that goes for everyone who has that sort of ranged team buff, and I doubt Cygames would agree with me on this and change all of them, lol. But either way I want either him or Curran to inflict poison so they can synergize with Lathna. Since Heinwald is another unit with an S2 that activates a named effect like Naveed, I could see him getting a similar sort of unique buff added to his skill prep ability that activates while Abyssal Connection is active. Maybe either a recovery potency buff or something related to strength/skill damage/poison punisher.

Kleimann’s a pretty easy one to assume will get a buff since they seem to specifically be trying to correct the whole Gala Cleo issue, and he’s one of the more accessible shadow wand units. But I don’t think they’ll do a whole lot with him beyond making his stats better, and maybe giving him poison on his S1.

Berserker’s one of those units who really needs a bit of a buff, since he’s just a bit too weak and defense-oriented to work well in the current meta. But I think his buffs will also be pretty simple. They’ll probably raise the chance of the strength debuff on his S1, and maybe add poison to it, and his S2 will probably be changed to give him 15% HP per use, which would at least let him hit the cap in two uses of it rather than three. It’d be nice if they also added a temporary strength buff to it though, since he really doesn’t have a lot of personal DPS. I think they’ll add a flurry effect to his first ability that raises his strength or skill damage when he’s got a certain combo count, and like with Curran I think they should change his Last Offense ability to something else. At least he’d benefit more from Resilient Offense since he’s got some self-healing in his kit. [Also with Monster Hunter Berserker on the way, now would be a nice time to buff his OG version]

If they want to buff Audric, I’m not entirely sure what they could do with him aside from just raising the stats of his skills and stuff. He’d at least benefit a lot from getting 100% potent paralysis res, though. Maybe they’d add some kind of ‘dragon attacks dispel enemy buffs’ effect to his third ability, and poison to his S1, to make him even more like Euden.

The fact that Alex already got her kit adjusted before getting a mana spiral makes me unsure if they’re even going to give her one any time soon, but if they do, I think she’ll probably at least get poison punisher added to her S1, and maybe an added effect to her skill haste ability where using skills or force-strikes partially charges her skills.

I think OG Cleo is basically 100% guaranteed to get a buff, but I’m not entirely sure what they’re gonna do with healers in general when it comes to mana spirals. At least the ones that are specifically focused on healing. She should at least get full skill prep and potent paralysis res, and probably a buffed HP = Defense ability. Other than that, I think that either her S1 or her S2 should have a regen heal effect added to it.

For the 3-stars I think that they’ll just get the same sort of basic stat buffs across the board, and status effects added to some of their skills. I dunno if that’d benefit anyone to the extent of how strong Xania became with her mana spirals, though. Althemia might end up getting poison on both of her skills, but since her skill damage ability if locked behind a Full HP criteria, she might not be quite as good as Xania even then. They should also probably retcon Vida’s stun res into either paralysis res or blind res, and it’d be nice if they added blind cleanse to Edward’s S1.

WATER:

In terms of 5-stars, I think Xanfried is the most likely one to get buffed, with Laranoa at a close second, but I’m not even sure if any of the other ones need a buff, since they’re all pretty solid. Really it’s the 3/4-stars that are more in need of a buff here, lol.

For Xanfried, it seems pretty likely to me that they’ll add freeze to his S1, since it’s literally called Dragon Frostfang. It’d at least be better than giving him bog, and we need more water units that have easy access to freeze. And for his S2 I think it’ll be like with Botan where a team crit rate buff for water units gets added to it. Going by how they buffed Euden, I think they’ll buff his Dragon Claws ability to be 45% strength total, and they’ll add enemy buff dispel to his dragon form attacks. Or they’ll just increase the damage that his dragon attacks do, which would at least help justify his dragon time ability. I’m not sure if this would make him meta for HBH or anything, but I think it’d make him a lot stronger in general.

I’m not super familiar with Laranoa since I don’t have her yet, so basically all I can assume from looking at her kit is that it’ll just get buffed across the board. But it’d be nice if the short-range team buff on her S2 got changed into a normal universal one, at least. I’m not entirely sure if they should add any status effects to her S1. In general I’m really worried about what might happen if they give lots of water units bog on their S1, since that didn’t turn out well for the summer units. Maybe if they were willing to rework bog into something that can be applied regularly throughout the fight without being overpowered it’d work, but since you always want to save it for a specific part of the fight, putting it on a skill is kinda bad.

OG Elly is pretty obviously gonna get a mana spiral sooner or later, but I’m a bit worried they’d make her overpowered, lol. Though on the other hand, it’d be kinda funny if in exchange for letting you upgrade her S1 to a 25% team strength buff, it locks it to only working on water adventurers. That’d help balance her to make her more in line with other buff units, but it’d probably make a lot of people mad, and it’d mess with a lot of rainbow Mercurial Gauntlet team compositions. I think it’d be worth it, though. Also they should just commit to giving her 100% burn res. That on it’s own would probably make her even better for HBH since she wouldn’t need to run a burn res print anymore.

It’d be nice to see OG Celery get a buff if only so she can get to full burn res as well, which would hopefully also make her a much better pick for HBH, but we’ll see. I can’t really think of anything to add to her kit aside from that, other than a crit rate/damage buff on her S2.

I can take or leave Luther, but I feel like he literally never gets used in any content so he really needs some sort of buff. Even if it ends up not helping him much. I’d at least want his debuffs to happen with 100% chance, though maybe they could also move the defense debuff to his S1. And he should at least get Flurry Strength added to his third ability.

I’m very biased on this one but I DESPERATELY want Thaniel to get a mana spiral upgrade that makes him as good as if not better than Jiang Ziya, lol. He at least really needs to get a regen heal added to his S2 to that his heals in HBH aren’t as tight. In a perfect world they’d add full skil prep to one of his abilities but that’d be a bit of a pipe dream. I’m curious to see if they’d add anything to basic recovery potency abilities like what he has, or if those will just get buffed for everyone that has them.

Summer Ranzal also needs a buff but since he’s fairly recent I don’t think he’ll get one just yet. But probably later.

I feel like a whole bunch of 3-stars are gonna get bog or freeze added to their skills, and I really don’t think that’d be quite as useful as what happened with flame. At least when it comes to bog, because of how that whole affliction works and how you want to save it. So that might backfire and make a lot of them even more off-putting to use. Waike’s a good example of this, since even though Joe benefited a fair bit from getting even more burn added to his kit, Waike would just use up all the bog inflictions before the boss gets broken in the first place.

Personally I’m hoping that Jurota will get freeze added to his S1 [since it’s called Avalance Blade, lol], and that doing that along with giving him full potent stun res would help make him better, at least for stuff like Void Agni.

WIND:

Hawk’s basically a carbon copy of Nefaria except he’s a wind unit who inflicts stun, so basically everything I said with her applies to him. Like with Nefaria he suffers from the fact that stun is a very powerful status affliction that I think is fairly heavily resisted by most bosses, and we haven’t gotten any stun punisher dragons or wyrmprints yet to capitalize on it. And the recent banner with Kirsty and Joachim just goes to show that wind is leaning even more heavily into favouring poison as a status effect. So my first guess for him would also be to just make him a poison-inflicting unit, but that seems even less likely than it would be with Nefaria, since basically every single other wind bow in the game is about inflicting poison too, and would do it better than him. They could at least add some sort of effect to one of his abilities where his S2 effect also increases his strength/crit rate/stun punisher, but there’s just a lot of issues inherent to niche status-inflicting bow units.

This might require more of a broad overhaul of the status effect system, but maybe to get around the relative uselessness of a lot of statuses, they could introduce some kind of a mechanic where a boss can be ‘marked’ as having a certain status ailment without suffering any debilitating effects from it, so you can still benefit from punisher abilities. Or maybe they could experiment with adding something like Volk’s plague effect to their kits, so that they can manually increase the boss’ vulnerability to status effects. In general I think there’s a lot of potential for the plague mechanic to address the central issue of how there’s nothing you can do when a boss fully resists a status ailment.

Other than him, I think Sylas is the only wind 5-star who I think 100% needs to get a buff soon. The other ones are all up in the air, with Louise and Wedding Aoi probably being my runner-up choices. Even Lin You’s fallen out of relevance a lot lately, but she’s still very strong. Sylas on the other hand is just super wonky. For one thing I think the strength debuff on his S1 should happen all the time, and it should have a poison punisher effect added to it, but the main issue is just his S2. It’s way too expensive for way too little value. The easiest way to improve it would probably just be to lower it’s SP cost to around 8k so you can use it at around the same frequency as Kirsty or Xanfried’s S2s, but really the whole idea of it being a roulette buff is just fundamentally bad. I’d honestly be happy if they just reworked it into being a flat skill haste and crit rate buff. All of the roulette buffs aren’t really that important when wind already has units like Noelle, Kirsty, and Lowen to provide those sorts of buffs more consistently. So he should probably just focus on more unique buffs. Basically I think his S2 should be more like Laranoa’s. 

Also, Last Recovery is just a really weak ability, so it’d be nice if they could add some sort of extra affect to that, or just change it into something else. Maybe they could make it happen three times per quest rather than just once, and add a permanent 10% defense buff to each use of it, to make it like a tanky version of Resilient Offense. And the health regen effect would help let him get to low health several times in a fight, like Cassandra.

I don’t think much needs to be done with OG Ranzal aside from just making all of his skills and abilities stronger, but I also think that Last Defense sucks, so they should probably change it to something like a Resilient Defense ability where he gets a permanent defense buff each time he gets to low health up to three times.

Aeleen has a fairly basic kit and I don’t think they’d really add much to it aside from maybe poison or poison punisher on her S1. And maybe an additional short buff on her S2.

Pia is basically Aeleen but in far more need of a buff, lol. Her kit’s just so wonky. There’s really not a whole lot that can be done to salvage her unless they add more energy users to the wind roster. At the very least her S2 should give the team two or three energy stacks, on top of maybe another buff to make it more worthwhile, but I dunno if that’d do much to help her.

I’m not sure if they’d bother buffing Su Fang, but if they do, I think they’ll probably add a crit rate buff to his S2, and make his skill damage ability into a 35% one.

There’s not much to say about the wind 3-stars, but I hope they at least give Philia either bog or freeze res. I could see them also adding poison to her skills [and removing the existing paralysis effect from her S2].

LIGHT:

Light’s just in a really weird situation all around where most of their really good units are event limited ones, so I hope that some of the older, non-limited ones get some good buffs. It feels like a lot of light units in general tend to suffer from being defensive in a way that doesn’t really work in the endgame, or from using energy in a lackluster way. So there’s a lot to improve.

Julietta’s a good example of being too defensive for her own good. At the very least, I think her S2 should be a team-wide defense/knockback resistance buff. A purely selfish defensive buff like what she has now is just kinda useless. It’d at least help her trigger strength doublebuffs and whatnot. And to help her DPS overall I think they should probably add either paralysis or a defense debuff to her S1. And like with Sylas I think they should add something to her Last Recovery ability. Maybe make it so that when her S2 effect is in place, she has a passive HP regen, or something like that.

Lucretia’s not super weak or anything but her energy usage is kinda disappointing, so I think they should at least make her S2 into a team-wide energy buff, and maybe buff it to three stacks rather than two. It’d also probably be nice if they added paralysis to her S1 too.

They might skip over B-Zardin but he probably needs a buff even more than Lucretia. He’s just really bad all around. Both of his skills give energy buffs to him and nobody else, so I think at least one of them should be a team-wide energy buff instead, and the debuffs on his S1 should happen 100% of the time. Though I think they should also focus on giving him a good strength or defense debuff, rather than giving him two mediocre ones at the same time. I feel like his Stunning Visage effect really needs to give him some sort of strength buff or something as well. And he’s one of the many units that make me think there should really be some stun punisher dragons/wyrmprints, lol. His first ability is also sorta weak so it’d be nice if they added something to it, but I dunno what.

I think OG Luca will probably get 100% curse res, paralysis punisher on his S1, and paralysis infliction on his S2, and not much else, so hopefully that’d be enough to make him worthwhile. But probably not. I’d also like to see Summer Luca get a buff, but like with Summer Ranzal it’ll probably take a while for him to get a buff too.

Elias is probably the event unit that needs a buff the most. He at least needs to have his S2 give two or three energy stacks, and his S1 should probably inflict paralysis, or have paralysis punisher on it. And his Last Offense ability should be changed to something like Resilient Offense, but it probably won’t be.

I honestly forgot that Felicia existed since her event happened before I started playing the game, lol. But if she gets a buff, I think her S1 should get poison cleanse, she should get full poison res, and full skill prep. I dunno how good that’d make her, necessarily, but still.

And on the topic of 4-star light healers, Vixel really needs a mana spiral upgrade if only just to fix his goddamn useless sleep resistance. Since Felicia is already based around poison resistance and cleanse, I think it’d make sense if he got turned into a curse res unit. Especially since Lucretia and Elias are also curse res. I’m not sure if he’d get curse cleanse added to his S1, but it’d nice. It might invalidate Hildegarde, though. He’s also got a kind of weird and under-tuned S2 that really needs to be buffed. It should at least be two stacks of energy for the team, and I’m really not even sure that the point of the teamwide recovery potency buff is meant to be, other than making his own S1 stronger. It’s not like you’ll be running with more than one healer on a light team 99% of the time, so nobody else would benefit from it. If they want to really lean into the idea of it powering up his S1, maybe they could have it instantly energize him [though not the rest of the team], or have it immediately ready his S1 for use. Something like that. Or they could replace it with a regular team heal. And of course he’d probably get 100% skill prep. Though if he gets curse res, maybe they could replace the recovery potency buff on his S2 with a team defense buff so that he can basically be like a light version of Thaniel, and help people deal with HZD’s opening blast.

I also kinda forgot about Amane since I don’t use her often, but I really think they should lower the SP cost of her S2 a fair bit [sorta like with Sylas], and make the HP buff into a 15% one so that it only takes two uses to hit the cap. She should probably also get a debuff or paralysis punisher or something added to her S1, and she’d benefit a lot from getting full skill prep and skill charge.

I think Xiao Lei’s the only light 3-star that’d really benefit from a mana spiral, but going by how they skipped over Marty they might also skip over her since she also got added post-launch. But if she gets a flat 35% skill damage buff like Xania on top of a stronger crit rate/damage boost on her S2, and maybe paralysis on her S1, she might become super strong.

Anyway, that’s all far too much effort put into thinking about stuff that I’ll probably get proven wrong on soon enough, lol. There’s just a lot of characters who I really want to see get improved, and with how much the flame mana spirals shook things up, I have high hopes for the rest of them.

[murasaki-murasame]

I’ve got a whole bunch of thoughts about Gala Laxi and all the new summer units, and even though I should just wait until they actually come out and we get exact numbers for everything, I still wanna make a whole post about it, lol.

Anyway this will go under a cut.

Firstly, Gala Laxi is a flame dagger, as I expected, so that’s cool. I did think there was a chance of her being a water blade, but honestly her being a flame dagger unit just made more sense. I feel bad for everyone who invested in Ezelith, if Gala Laxi ends up being better, but I never invested in her so I’m fine with this, lol.

She does look really good on paper, though, and I need more good flame units so I want to get her. Like with all units, her overall damage output will depend on what her exact damage mods and whatnot are, so it’s impossible to tell for sure how good she’ll be, but on paper she looks really good. One of the first things that stands out to me, which makes me even more interested in getting her, is the fact that she has the same standard attack damage co-ability that Tiki does. Which I REALLY want, since I skipped Tiki’s banner when it came out.

Other than that, her kit seems pretty straightforward, and actually doesn’t have as many downsides as I thought it would. The whole concept of Eden Mode seemed like it’d be a real risk-reward type of thing, similar to how her original version works, but the only real downside to it is that her unique gauges don’t increase when she’s in Eden Mode, and they reset afterward. But those just give her extra buffs, so it’s not like she’d be notably handicapped after Eden Mode ends.

Going by how her gauges work, it sounds like the general idea is for you to use your standard attacks and your S1 to max them out before using Eden Mode, to make the most out of them before they reset once that ends. I get the feeling that the alternate versions of her skills that happen during Eden Mode are gonna be really strong, to give her that burst damage vibe.

It also looks like when Eden Mode’s activated she basically summons a robot companion that shoots additional projectiles, which is an extremely interesting idea. It makes me wonder if they might be experimenting with adding some kind of companion system, maybe based around the puppy from April Fools. Either way, I get the feeling it might give her a lot of additional DPS during Eden Mode, so that’ll be neat. It might also help her get combos going faster, which ties into her third ability, where if she can maintain a combo she can basically stack up to 12% crit rate and 40% crit damage, which resets when her combo ends. Which also kinda reminds me of Ezelith, lol.

I don’t really care that much for Laxi as a character, but as a unit she’s really tempting and I hope I can get her. I actually don’t have that many good flame units built up at the moment, so she’d really help flesh out my flame team.

Next we have Summer Sinoa, who’s a 5-star wind wand. I won’t mind much if I don’t manage to get her from the gala, but her kit does interest me a bit. I like that they kept the RNG team buffs idea from her original version and fleshed it out into something that works for a 5-star unit. Usually RNG buffs aren’t very good, but it’s nice that if you can max your Overload stacks, you can give the entire team all three buffs at once.

Going by how her Overload stacks make her S1 charge more and more slowly, I think you’ll have to choose between either 1: holding off on your S2 until you have max Overload stacks for the full team buff, at the cost of dealing with the slower S1 charging, or 2: using your S2 as much as you can to get rid of your Overload stacks so your S1 charges faster, at the cost of getting a random buff from it that only affects yourself. So it’s a choice between focusing on team support vs her own personal DPS. We’ll see how her damage mods go, but she has a 30% skill damage passive, and her first ability means that she gets an extra 20%, 25%, or 30% skill damage buff for her S1 based on her Overload stacks, so she might actually do enough damage that you could opt to use her more selfishly.

Then there’s Summer Norwin, who I obviously care the most about, lol. I’m kinda iffy about him being a wind dagger, but I don’t use any of the other ones I have so he won’t really interfere that much with my wind team set-up, so that’s nice. Basically everyone on this banner has a complicated kit, but his feels especially strange. It feels kinda impossible to make any predictions about how good he’ll be before we get more info on him.

But going by what we know from the preview, his main gimmicks are his self-inflicted debuff, and his unique version of skill shift. If I’m reading it right, both of his skills are skill-shift skills with four stages each, but using either skill moves BOTH skills to their next stage, so in practice he’ll get through them really fast. The first three stages of each skill are pretty basic, since they just do increasing amounts of damage, but the weird stuff is with how phase 4 of his two skills work. Phase 4 of his S2 does more damage and inflicts poison, but it also gives him one stack of his unique debuff, and makes him take damage relative to how many stacks of it he has, while phase 4 of his S1 removes all of his debuff stacks, and energizes the team. Which is all kinda hard to wrap my head around, lol. The whole order of operations involved is kinda hard to interpret. Like, does he take damage from his phase 4 S2 the very first time he uses it, or does it only happen if he uses it when he already has at least one stack of it beforehand? He’s also unable to get energy stacks while he has his debuff stacks, so I’m hoping that the cleanse effect on his phase 4 S1 triggers first, so he also gets to receive the energy buff.

His first ability is energy = skill haste, so I imagine that he must be able to give himself his own energy buff, since there’s basically no other sources of energy in wind for him to make use of. This whole ability in and of itself is kinda strange to me, though, and I’m not sure how much it’ll help him, since he’d lose his energy stacks when he uses a skill anyway, so there wouldn’t be much uptime on the skill haste. But it’s still a 25% skill haste buff when he’s energized, which isn’t exactly bad.

I think he’ll actually have pretty good uptime on the team energy buff, though. It feels like it’d be pretty slow since it’s the phase 4 effect of a skill shift, but if I’m right about how it works for him, it’d effectively only take two uses of his S1 for it to trigger.

If you want to maximize how often you do the team energy buff, I think his skill rotation would basically be S2 phase 1 -> S1 phase 2 -> S2 phase 3 -> S1 phase 4, though unless they have the same SP cost you probably won’t be able to just alternate between them like that. But still, he’d probably be able to get the buff off with every second or third use of his S1, if you focus on that.

But one weird consequence of how his skill shift seems to work is that in each skill shift rotation, you have to choose one skill to use at each stage, which means that if you use your phase 4 S1 all the time, you’ll be skipping your phase 4 S2. Which honestly seems like a good thing, since it means you’ll never actually inflict that debuff on yourself. But on the other hand, his phase 4 S1 doesn’t do damage and only does the team energy buff, while his phase 4 S2 does damage and inflicts poison in addition to the self-inflicted debuff, so depending on his damage mods you might want to focus on his S2 instead and just deal with the debuff if you want to maximize his personal DPS, and are willing to deal with the side-effects of the debuff.

Additionally, he also has a 30% poison punisher passive, which is nice, even if he’d probably have to rely on having someone else to inflict it most of the time. He also has a 10 his = hp regen chain co-ab, which I think is the first time we’ve seen something like that, and it seems really interesting. It might not be a very strong heal, but it means that if he works with people with good combo uptime, he’d effectively be a substitute healer, which might be really useful for stuff like eCiella.

In general he and Summer Sinoa actually feel pretty similar, in terms of how it seems like they can basically choose if they want to focus on team support or personal DPS, while each having different stack mechanics that have negative effects to juggle. Which makes me wonder exactly how good they’ll actually end up being in practice, and how well the AI will handle them.

Finally we have Summer Konohana Sakuya, who honestly seems kinda disappointing, lol. Basically she seems based around long fights where you’ll have time to actually build up her stacks, but I just don’t know if the effects they provide are worth the time. Wind also doesn’t really have any characters other than DY-Xainfried who can shapeshift a lot to make use of how she can apply an additional buff stack with her dragon skill.

I could see her being useful in eCiella, and probably mCiella when that comes out, if it’s an even longer fight. But at least for me, I already have a whole lot of good wind dragons, so she’s not super tempting. Which is good, since I want to focus my resources on future gala dragons instead, lol.

Basically everyone on this banner feels kinda weird and complicated, but hopefully they’ll all be worth getting. Gala Laxi seems like she’ll be the winner, but the summer units have potential to be really good too.