Valentimeslip.

I’m pretty keen for this one – previous Valentine’s events have produced some very good units. Let’s take a look!

Here’s the tl;dr of the gachas:

New Units A decent offensive support with broad range, as well as a potential combo base Ludicrous damage output, but on a very rigid clock Selfless offensive support and secondary healer Defensive support that draws enemy fire Strong all-rounder that doesn’t need a lot of support AR Cards Garbage, but it’s free to run, I guess? Actually quite strong on a unit that can apply Curse (e.g. Sitri, but there are other good targets) Minor effect, but a broadly useful one Plenty of units will benefit from this one – use it, if you’re lucky enough to pull it

One of two new permanent units, Echo’s 3★ and 4★ forms play out pretty similarly: hit things pretty hard in her default attacking mode, then switch to a longer range and boost your team’s damage output after getting hit.

Her 4★ is particularly good at this – switching to All-range is no joke, particularly when she applies Weakness and Fear at decent rates.

With how reliable this range increase is, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a farming team that is built around stacking buffs on Echo to the point where she sweeps each phase.

We’ve seen global Possession before on Nightmare Kuniyoshi; it’s not bad by any means, but it never seems to work out very well in practice.

I’m always a fan of units that explore new design space, and Heracles absolutely qualifies – penalties for moving him is really cool.

As far as what he does, it’s pretty straightforward: he sits around (his 5★ form will be doing quite a lot of damage here, even through his passive Curse), and every couple of turns, he immediately charges his CS, and completely destroys everything in front of him.

I was curious to see how much damage his 5★ deals with increasing Charge Skill level, so I graphed it (assuming level 70, max skill but no seeds, and full HP for Limit):

His CS damage starts at 850 thousand. If you do seed him (level 80, +1000 ATK), the chart looks like this:

Remember that this is doubled if he gets dropped to 1 HP. Thanks, Limit!

This is really only a few buffs away from hitting 10 million damage – that’s enough to deal 50,000 damage through Evasion.

He’s stopped from being completely broken by how restrictive the timing is on his LB3 – if you don’t use his CS immediately when it triggers, his damage will drop back down to normal levels, and it will only really trigger once or twice per quest.

Coming off the back of Heracles, Gyumao is a lot simpler. That said, he’s still very good – he reminds me a lot of Christmas Claude (who is still one of the best offensive supports available), with easy access to good offensive buffs for your team.

Increased horizontal movement is really nice to have on a unit with so many movement based skills, and Oppression can also be useful for dividing up the enemy team.

Edit: /u/Shaman_Infinitus pointed out that I hadn’t mentioned Gyumao’s healing output (or his CS, oops); with two reliable sources of healing on his Default skill, he can restore 700 HP in a pretty generous range to your team. His CS, though tricky to time, can also deliver a good chunk of health to your team – and doesn’t interfere with his other healing.

Though I probably wouldn’t run him as your sole source of healing in harder quests (particularly since he doesn’t offer any defensive buffs), you’ll definitely appreciate having him along to help out.

Barguest and Gyumao feel almost like mirror versions of each other – if Gyumao is the offensive movement-based support, then Barguest is the defensive one.

Taunt is an ability that we haven’t seen a ton of since its introduction about a year ago – though it’s not always the most practical ability (if your team is getting hit by multiple enemies it doesn’t do much), it’s still a good thing to have handy (phase 5 of the Shinjuku level 80 dungeon quest immediately sprang to mind).

Tenacity, Protection and Curse all combine to make Barguest very tanky, combining to reduce incoming damage to about 8% – in most cases, Regeneration will be plenty of sustain for this.

He’s not going to be outputting a whole lot of damage, but extra damage against Curse is a good starting point. Interestingly enough, he’s a valid target for the new AR card that also gives bonus damage against Curse – I’ve confirmed that this does stack, so this is a pretty decent pairing.

I’m not usually a fan of abilities that trigger on a unit dying – why are you planning for one of your units to die – but it’s a nice contingency to have on a unit so intent on getting the enemy to target them (plus, it’s thematically appropriate for Barguest).

His CS basically trades any sort of effect (Burn does so little it hardly counts) for a 6x damage multiplier (compared to the normal 3x for 4★ units), which is pretty respectable.

I was planning to call Snow everyone’s favourite blue lion, and then realised that both Voltron and Fire Emblem have blue lions of some description.

That said, everyone’s favourite blue lion is here to round out this gacha, and he absolutely does not let it end quietly.

Snow is quite reminiscent of 5★ Ophion – he has a decent amount of self sustain, and can build CS quickly, which gives him Barrage, so he can build his CS even more quickly.

What really sets Snow apart here is his LB3 – where Ophion has to work to start his cycle of rapid charge skill activations, Snow starts with his CS fully charged, and doesn’t have to work to start the cycle. He’s also a good deal more difficult to lock down, with both Remove Debuff and Nullify Debuff easily accessible in his kit. He does trade in a bit of utility for this – you’ll miss Ophion’s increased horizontal movement – but the gains more than make up for it.

Crit every 2 turns should help smooth out his damage – most of the time, you’re going to see this trigger the turn after his CS triggers. Removing all buffs from the enemy on turn 3 of the phase is a sensible backup option – if you haven’t killed them through his CS or Crit damage, then they almost certainly have a buff or 3 keeping them alive.

It’s entirely possible to get Snow firing off his CS every other turn – which, when the aim of the game is to defeat the enemy, is pretty effective.

So there we have it! Once again, some very solid options here. Good luck to those rolling!