Should You Pull (Jul 21, 2017)

Original Post / Discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/FFBraveExvius/comments/6ofg98/defianthermits_should_you_pull_awakened_heroes/ DefiantHermit's Should You Pull? Awakened Heroes Banner 2 - Jul 21]

Hello everyone, /u/DefiantHermit here for this week's SYP, featuring... no new units >_>

Anyways, the next few weeks are gonna be a bit messy for me, so my apologies in advance if I'm late for banners. I have a decent headstart on quite a few possible future banners and awakenings, but you'll never know when Gumi might surprise us. Like this banner!

I've tried keeping most things fresh, but sorry if a few sections on Cecil/Refia/Tree are rehashed from previous SYPs! Without further ado, here's my analysis on the Awakened Heroes Banner 2!

Luneth
Luneth was our second unit with innate Dual Wield and remained as king in damage for a while. Powercreep was swift, though, and he's fallen quite a bit from his early glory. Today, he's getting a fresh batch of enhancements, which definitely bring him back to the spotlight, so you can see what all the fuss is about on this week's [Should You Enhance]. He comes with an excellent base 146 ATK (+34 with pots), but a ‘subpar' +50% ATK from passives, leading to a great total of 270 ATK.

His equipment selection is short, but all he needs: Daggers, Swords, Katanas and Greatswords for weapons and Clothes, Light and Heavy Armour, Hats and Helms for armour. He can equip all the current major weapon types aside from Knuckles and has a great offensive armour selection.

His skillset is even shorter, but in this case happens to be his major downside. Notable passives include Talisman of Ur (+100% Blind/Paralyze/Confuse/Petrify Resist), offering some amazing ailment immunities, Auto-Refresh (Recover 5% MP per Turn) for some MP sustain and the excellent Dual Wield (Wield Two Weapons), saving a materia slot for whatever suits your needs.

His offensive skill is comprised entirely of Cut Through (250% ST 1 Hit Physical Attack + Ignore 25% DEF - normalized to 333%), which has outdated modifiers for the current meta. Advance (Self 3 Turn +60% ATK & Self 3 Turn -30% DEF Debuff) provides a good ATK buff and a self DEF break, but it's completely passable prior to enhancements.

Japanese Altema Rating: 90/100 (96/100 After Enhancements)

Global Trust Mastery Rating: Celestial Gloves - +30 ATK/DEF/MAG/SPR - Accessory - 8.5/10

While this accessory provides an excellent raw bonus to all stats, for physical damage dealers, it directly competes with Gaffgarion's Bracers, which provide invaluable +15% HP. In any case, +30 DEF/SPR is equivalent to a ~15% boost too, so run the numbers on your unit's effective HP and see what's better for them!

Japanese TM Rating (altema.jp): Unranked

Why would you want Luneth?: Because he's a very solid dps out-of-the-box, specially for newer players that aren't swimming in DW sources. He's currently getting a significant boost in damage with his enhancements, turning him into one of the best physical finishers currently released, but that's basically all he does.

What about the future? You can check this week's Should You Enhance to see what juicy upgrades Luneth is getting and whether it's worth enhancing him and using on your main team!

Dark Knight Cecil
Dank Knight Cecil is back and for previous owners, he's also coming back from the depths of your unit bench. Base 155 ATK (+34 with pots) is fantastic, but there's the same less-than-optimal +50% ATK from passives, for a great total of 283 ATK.

His equipment selection is a tad bit more restricted than Luneth, but still covering all necessary bases: Daggers, Swords, Greatswords, Katanas and Spears for weapons and Light and Heavy Armour, Helms, Small and Large Shields for armour. Once again, all current major weapon types aside from Knuckles and a decent selection of offensive armours.

DKC's skillset is wider than Luneth and built thematically as a dark knight. Notable supporting skills include Shikkoku (+20% ATK & +50% Dark Resist), offering some neat innate dark resistance and being enhanced to provide extra damage and Auto-heal (9999 HP, 1x) per turn as the expected HP sustain.

His offensive skills are completely passable and are what kills the unit prior to enhancements. Dark Cannon (Lose 40% HP + 250% AoE 1 Hit Dark Physical Attack) and Soul Eater (Lose 49% HP + 320% ST 1 Hit Dark Physical Attack) simply do not provide enough modifiers for the HP toll to be worth it and Dark Flame (250% AoE 1 Hit Dark Magic Attack) has very bad modifiers.

Everything changes when the fire nation attacks with enhancements, when DKC gets a massive modifier boost, some incredible imperils and extra sustainability, so be sure to read this week's Should You Enhance? to see what's new for him.

Japanese Altema Rating: 85/100 (95/100 After Enhancements)

Global Trust Mastery Rating: Deathbringer - +120 ATK, Dark Element, Man-Eater - Greatsword - 9/10

Excellent greatsword, providing one of the highest ATK available on weapons and bringing Dark element to greatsword users. It's not necessarily BiS for DKC himself, as his damaging skills are already imbued with Dark, but allows many other damage dealers to profit from his incredible Imperils and upcoming Dark Veritas' chains.

Man-Eater is icing on the cake here.

Japanese TM Rating (altema.jp): SS Rank

Why would you want Dark Knight Cecil?: Because, after enhancements, he becomes a monster of a finisher. Absurd modifiers and one of the strongest Imperils available in the game at the cost of some tricky heal timings when Dual Wielding. Without enhancements, he's just a TMR fodder, as his damage and usability are far outdated.

What about the future? Enhancements treated DKC greatly and you can check all of them on this week's Should You Enhance?

Refia
Our Chocobo lover still has one of the best victory animations in the game, but she's been seeing some serious competition with Y'shtola and Tilith being prevalent. Refia has base 150 SPR (+26 with pots), which is extremely solid and a +30% SPR passive brings her to a total of 228 SPR. For MP, Refia has base 181 MP (+85 with pots) alongside a +20% MP passive for a total of 319 MP, which is huge.

Her equipment selection is what you'd expect from a healer, being able to wield Staff, Rods and Maces and wear Robes, Clothes and Hats. No shields for extra survivability, but her selection generally does the job.

Her skillset is excellent, boasting all sorts of supporting and healing skills: Curaga (AoE ~1000 HP Heal w/ 3.4x Mod) as her major heal, Esuna (ST Cure Poison, Blind, Sleep, Silence, Paralyze, Confuse) and Stona (ST Cure Petrify) as ailment cleansers alongside her LB (AoE Cure All Ailments & AoE 3 Turn +40% -> 64% DEF). Talisman of Kazus (+100% Silence/Paralyze/Confuse/Petrify Resist) provides amazing ailment resistance for all the major ones that affect a healer.

Finally, Refia has access to Arise (ST Revive with 100% HP) as an incredible full raise and the fantastic Embolden (AoE 5 Turn +45% ATK/DEF), as one of the major physical buffs currently used on global.

Japanese Altema Rating: 90/100 (92/100 After Enhancements)

Global Trust Mastery Rating: Mentality - +30% SPR, +20% MP - Materia - 7/10

Solid materia for healers and tanks alike, with a significant boost in MP and a major one in SPR. The lack of HP is certainly a downside, but the SPR buff is very significant.

Japanese TM Rating (altema.jp): A rank

Why would you want Refia?: She's a strong healer with almost everything you'd want included in her kit. She definitely needs Dual Cast to be able to compete with Y'shtola and Tilith, but once that's covered, she performs her role extremely well, with her ailment immunities and full-raise being her main selling points.

What about the future? For those that didn't manage to grab a Tilith, Refia will serve as your main healer completely fine for the forseeable future. Dual cast and spell based kit allows her to perform multiple roles per turn over Tilith and her ailment resistances are unmatched by ribbon-less healers.

Her enhancements are unfortunately nothing out of the ordinary, aside from the much needed Auto-Refresh, so she's basically the same old Refia we've always loved.

Rosa
Rosa is another of those unfortunate units that only go to  (that will probably get awakened in the future!). There's nothing really special about her for this meta, so this shall be brief. Base 119 SPR (+16 with pots) is great as a and there's a really decent +30% SPR from passives, for a total of 175 SPR.

Equipment selection is the expected for healers, being able to wield Daggers, Rods, Staves, Bows, Instruments and Whips and wear Robes, Clothes and Hats for armour. No noteworthy weapon masteries, so the usual Staff should be the way to go here.

Rosa's healing kit is basic, but does the job: Curaga (AoE ~1000 HP Heal w/ 3.4x Mod) as your main healing spell, Esuna (ST Cure Poison, Blind, Sleep, Silence, Paralyze, Confuse) to clear most ailments and Stona (ST Cure Petrify) and Cleanse (ST Cure Virus) to clear the remaining.

The new tools she brings to the table compared to other healers is Dispelga (AoE Stat Buff Removal) instead of the usual ST Dispel and Bless (AoE ~10 MP Heal w/ 0.1x Mod split over 3 Turns) as an MP recovering ability. Bless should heal ~10 MP per turn at 300 SPR, which isn't bad, but you can very likely find a better source of MP battery at this point, even with Bless' enhancements.

Japanese Altema Rating: 73/100 (Before and After Enhancements)

Global Trust Mastery Rating: Goddess Bow - +91 ATK, +40 SPR - Bow - 6/10

Bows are such an underwhelming weapon type and even with TDH, this isn't very exciting. The best part about it is the +40 SPR for healers, but most of them would just rather have a staff instead.

Japanese TM Rating (altema.jp): Unranked

Why would you want Rosa?: Currently, you really don't. She's an okay healer, but we're waaaaay past the time where those were even passable. Her TMR is mediocre and her kit is uninteresting.

What about the future? Rosa's enhanced Bless is nuts, as it acts as double Curaga and can recover ~30 MP per turn. Unfortunately, squishy unit, so we can just hope for the next FFIV event!

Cecil
Recently demoted to bench sitter due to the release of WoL, Cecil is back on a third banner to try and get some of his old glory back. Base 141 DEF (+34 with pots) alongside +50% DEF from passives brings Cecil to a total of 262 DEF, which is excellent. He also comes with base 3640 HP (+390 with pots) and a +20% HP passive for a total of 4836 HP, which is very beefy.

His equipment selection is fantastic for a tank, being able to wield Daggers, Swords, Greatswords, Katanas, Hammers and Spears and wear Cloth, Light and Heavy Armour, Helms and Small/Heavy Shields. Hammers open up the great Gigantaxe for some sweet HP, but no Staves for SPR or Knuckles for Winged Saint.

His skillset is still robust to this day, including both tanking and supporting skills. For the support kit, Cecil has access to Curaga (AoE ~1000 HP Heal w/ 3.4x Mod), which is a great AoE heal and allows your healer to have some breathing room on difficult fights, Dispel (ST Stat Buff Removal) to remove enemy buffs and Focus (AoE 3 Turn +40% MAG/SPR) as a great magic based buff.

Not only that, but his LB provides a very solid buff and one of the reasons to feed him all your LB pots if he's your main tank: AoE 3 Turn +50% -> +74% ATK/DEF/SPR. Cecil even has High Tide (LB Fill Rate +100%) to allow this fantastic buff to be cast more frequently.

His tanking kit is extremely short, comprised entire of Saintly Wall (75% Chance to Defend an Ally (Reduce +50% Phys./Mag. Damage), which is one of the better ST cover tanking skills, with solid proc chance and significant damage reduction. Cecil lacks innate provocation of any sort, so for trials where ST damage is prevalent, Golem's Provoke might not cut it and you'd prefer to bring a better provoke tank.

Saintly Wall (+Provoke) is still enough to get around most decently hard content (including all trials up to Orthos) and Cecil's off-healing capabilities are still unmatched by other tanks. Unfortunately, there's no AoE cover in his skillset, so Cecil is mainly an off-healer on AoE heavy fights

Japanese Altema Rating: 90/100 (93/100 After Enhancements)

Global Trust Mastery Rating: Excalibur - 120 ATK, Light Element - *Greatsword * - 9/10

Greatsword with fantastic ATK and the cornerstone of Light Chains with Orlandu and Bran (and Agrias in the future). You generally want at least 3 copies of this (2 for chainers, 1 for finisher) for your main physical party.

Japanese TM Rating (altema.jp): SS Rank

Why would you want Cecil?: Because he's still one of the best tanks in the game and has one of the better TMR weapons too. All that and he's a base. Fantastic damage mitigation, very solid supporting skillset and great stats makes Cecil one of the must have units.

What about the future? WoL came here to stay and will basically remove any chance Cecil has to shine when his enhancements roll and his ST game becomes better. Cecil is still an excellent choice for tank, even with his fresh enhancements not giving him any major boost.

Exdeath
This is Exdeath's 3rd banner and he's gotten some serious competition since then. Base 145 MAG (+26 with pots) and innate +30% MAG passive brings him to a very solid 222 MAG, which is very close to the other 6* mages out there, rivalling even the 5* base ones.

His equipment selection has always been his major weak point. While he's able to use a wider selection of weapons, Rods, Staves, Swords, Maces and Daggers, his armour choice is what's weird. He can equip Shields, Heavy Shields, Helms, Light Armour and Heavy Armor, meaning no clothes and no hats. While he gets to use a few interesting weapons (like enhancer with Letters and Arms) and the Lunar Shield for extra MAG, there are very few, if any, Helms, Light and Heavy armour with MAG. The extra DEF is mostly irrelevant for his role as a damage dealer and it's usually not worth it to give him Equip X materia for the armour slots. While his equipment choice fails a bit, his skills more than make up for it.

For spells, Exdeath has the standard -aga trio (180% AoE 1 Hit Fire/Ice/Lightning Magic Attack), a strong nuke in Meteor (250% AoE 1 Hit Magic Attack + Ignore -25% SPR - normalizes to 333%) and Osmose (ST 30% Attack w/ 30% MP Drain) as a solid MP recovery tool, as he lacks Auto-Refresh.

For abilities, he comes with the lovely Dual Black Magic (Use Two Black Magic), which allows him to dual cast any of the above mentioned spells, and two new elemental toys, Earth Shaker (180% AoE 1 Hit Earth Magic Attack) and Wicked Light (280% AoE 1 Hit Light Magic Attack + Ignore -25% SPR - normalizes to 373%). To top it all off, he has Transcender (+30% Magic damage against humans, birds, beasts, plants and bugs), which is a very significant damage increase against the major monster types.

Japanese Altema Rating: 89/100 (90/100 after enhancements)

Global Trust Mastery Rating: Holy - 230% ST 1 Hit Light Magic Attack - Materia - 4/10

Holy's simply not strong enough to warrant a materia slot on a Mage. This gets a slightly boost in the future when the White Magic SPR conversion rolls out, but it's still quite underwhelming.

Japanese Trust Mastery Rating: A Rank

Why would you want Exdeath? Because he's a very strong mage that's also a 3* base. Great stats, built-in dual cast, strong nukes and good elemental coverage. The lack of Auto-Refresh and a larger MP pool hurt his Meteor spammability, but Osmose is more than enough to keep him up for the great majority of content.

What about the future? Our beloved tree has seen the rise and fall of many mages, but most of them bases. His meteor spammability still provides excellent damage and versatility in Arena, but his poor survivability and rise of better damage dealers have certainly hurt his usability in most teams.

His enhancements are, unfortunately, one of the worst sets ever released and really don't improve the unit at all. You can check the trainwreck on this week's Should You Enhance.

Should You Pull?
This banner is another one of those that have a deceptive answer to this question, so we'll stick to the good ol' depends. If you've been playing for a while, you very likely already have a multitude of Cecils, Refias and Exdeaths. So, for veteran players, this is a very solid no, because there's really not much to gain aside from extra Excaliburs if needed.

For relatively new players, this banner can offer you a very solid tank in Cecil, an excellent healer in Rosa Refia and a very good magic damage dealer in Exdeath. Even if you're already using a WoL, Excaliburs are incredible weapons that you'd want to have at least 2 copies of. So if you're lacking any of these roles (more so in the tank and healer department), be sure to try and grab a Cecil and a Refia.

For whales, enhanced DKC is not only one of the best finishers in the game, but provides a ridiculous, unmatched, on-demand Dark Imperil. If you plan on pulling for DV, DKC provides not only a better Imperil, but a huge finishing hit and an excellent TMR. Luneth is a bit less exciting, but he's still an incredibly strong finisher. I wouldn't personally pull for him as he doesn't bring much to the table compared to other top-end finishers (aside from damage, that is), but hey, that's your money.

If you're not a whale and pulled either units, you just got yourself a damn fine enhanced finisher, so yaay! :P