Being able to spark up to 4 times is neat for those spending tons of Orbs on a New Heroes banner. Doing the maths, on a regular New Heroes banner, if one were to summon all 5 units on every circle, use the free summon at the start and use all 4 First Summon Tickets, they would have to spend 615 Orbs to get all 4 sparks. Since CYL doesn't have a free summon like other banners, instead letting you summon a guaranteed 5*, but not being able to continue on that circle, that would be 455 Orbs for 1 copy of each Brave Hero. As a result, it's only for those who are really dedicated to a banner and have lots of Orbs to spend on it. I'm not the kind to hoard that many Orbs to spend on one specific banner, so I'll probably just stick to the first spark (which can be reached after 135 Orbs).
Nobody seems to be talking about Frontline Phalanx, the new game mode, and it seems to be plainly because nobody likes it. From what people have said, it's basically Rokkr Sieges but with hit rates and no gameplay. In that case, yeah, I understand why nobody likes it.
Trait Fruit (or as many people on the subreddit are calling it, IV Mango) is a very good and very requested feature that many people will use. I have quite a few units with inoptimal IVs (-Spd Shannan, -Res NY!Alfonse and -Def F!Lyon, to name a few), and now I don't have to spend Orbs on their reruns to fix those. I always wondered why Grail units had superboons and superbanes despite not having access to IVs, but this finally puts them to use. All in all, this could be one of the best additions to the game in a while.
Now all that's left is some way of giving the Askr Trio merges.
To me, the Dragonflower increase is a little concerning for two reasons. Firstly, many of the units who will now have access to +10 Dragonflowers are already meta-defining and can now become even more powerful, and secondly, it implies Gen 5 units are on the horizon, which I'll get onto later.
We haven't been given much on the CYL units, but from what we've seen, they look broken enough for CYL. Edelgard, Lysithea, Dimitri and Claude are axe, red tome, lance and bow users respectively, which are the exact same weapon types as their base forms, unfortunately. However, their weapons are special versions of the Archanea relics (today I learned those exist within Three Houses): Edelgard presumably gets Hauteclere, Lysithea gets Dark Spikes, Dimitri gets Gradivus and Claude gets Parthia. Here are some more details that I could gather:
- We haven't seen much of Edelgard, but she's likely an armoured unit. She seems to have Special cooldown reduction, Noontime, Distant Counter, Armored Stride and some form of damage reduction. She's looking to be very enemy phase-focused as a contrast to L!Edelgard being highly player phase. That said, damage reduction on an armoured unit has the potential to be super hard to deal with, to the point that even Armorslayers may fail to one-round her. It'll likely be a PRF B skill. She may also have some form of Vantage, but I'm not so sure.
- Lysithea is, thankfully, one of the two units we get to see stats and skills for. Predictably, she's an infantry with high Atk and Spd and low Def and Res. She also comes with Moonbow, Atk/Spd Push 4, Lull Spd/Res 3 and Hone Spd 4. As far as I can recall, this is the first unit to come with 2 tier 4 skills. Like regular Lysithea, she's a giant nuke, with the teaser showing her dealing 55 damage per hit to the Death Knight (yes, so funny
).
- Dimitri is an infantry unit with a similar skill set to Edelgard: he has DC, Noontime, a Breath skill of some sort and damage reduction of some sort. A lot of what I've said about Edelgard also applies to Dimitri, but he's an infantry as opposed to an armour so he may be less overtuned.
- Claude is our other unit who we can see the stats and skills of, but only for a few frames. He's a flier with high Atk and Spd and low Def and Res. He comes with Special cooldown reduction, Moonbow, Fury 4, a Chill (probably Spd/Def) and a mysterious C skill that might be new. It likely won't be an exclusive skill since he placed 2nd and only the 1st placers get those. Typical nuke and, unfortunately, possibly the weakest of the CYL4 units, though not to say he's bad.
- ...Oh yeah, Jorge is our GHB. It's hilarious how a previously bottom-of-the-barrel character like him holds the record for highest jump in CYL rankings, likely due to bots, and is now in the game. He's a blue bow infantry with fairly all-around stats, a PRF, Ignis, Chill Def 3 and Spur Atk 3. The noteworthy thing about him is that, unless his weapon gives him +3 to a stat, he has 172 BST, when the current highest infantry bow BST is 168 (tied between Norne and L!Chrom). Likewise, B!Lysithea, presuming she has +3 to a stat since she has no Slaying effect, has 165 BST when the highest non-trainee infantry tome BST is 163 (held by F!Lyon). B!Claude somehow has a ridiculous 170 BST, when not only is the highest bow flier BST 156 (held by S!Loki), but the highest non-trainee flier BST overall is 168 (held by Heath, a lance user). It's worth noting that only infantry units got Gen 4 bonuses, while all armour, cavalry and flying units released alongside them were stuck on Gen 3. In the case of B!Claude, either I got my calculations incorrect somehow, his weapon has an additional Fury effect we haven't been told about, or armours, cavalries and fliers are skipping Gen 4 and going straight to Gen 5. Either way, coupled with the fact that CYL3 introduced our first Gen 4 unit (B!Alm), chances are CYL4 is giving us our first Gen 5 units, which makes B!Edelgard and B!Dimitri even scarier. Get ready for the next Halloween or Christmas banner to give us an armoured trainee dragon that powercreeps even W!Sothis and breaks the record for highest BST in the game.
This time, I'll be summoning on this banner for once. I mean, it's CYL, why would anyone skip this? I might not build Jorge, though, as I'm in the middle of building Itsuki, but if I get enough copies from his GHB and its eventual Revivals, and if Gen 5 is such a drastic increase that it makes Itsuki irrelevant in Arena, then I might. It also depends on how good our other F2P Gen 5 options are.
Lastly, CYL4 will give us a Paralogue as usual, meaning Book 4 will not get another chapter until September. If we keep going on the usual pattern of one chapter per month, Chapter 13 won't be released until December, meaning Book 5 will likely be delayed. I don't really care, though, as I don't really like the story to begin with.
