With AHR 2023 coming in the middle/end of March 2023, I’ve started saving up my orbs. At the moment, I’ve saved up about 400 Orbs and it’s the middle of December. At about 250 Orbs per month, I estimate that I’ll have around 1,200 orbs by then. In last year’s AHR banner, I spent about 1,300 orbs and barely got one of the units to +10. You can read about that here. This year, however, the likelihood of an all-green banner again is very unlikely, meaning that we need more orbs on average to get those +10 units.
The voting period happens at the beginning of February. Let’s go over my predictions of the likely candidates for AHR 2023.
Note: The images of these heroes were obtained from Gamepress. Since there are a lot of heroes to go over, I’m breaking down my AHR predictions into a few different posts. In this one, I’ll just go over the Red units who I think will likely make it in.
Taking a look at the poll on Reddit, taken at the end of October, here’s what others predicted:
I predict that Red will be the color that the majority of players will attempt to get all 4 heroes to be. Having the color sharing is a win for the majority of the playerbase as we can spend less orbs for more heroes and merges.
For me, I don’t have very many tanky or bulky units. I have built up and invested way more squishy, ranged player-phase nukes like Duo Corrin, Harmonic Azura, and Young Innes. My Arena team is comprised of all ranged player-phase units who can’t take any hits back from opponents like Halloween Duma, or able to enemy-phase. For Aether raids, the tanky units I use are just Ascended Fjorm and Askr. I unfortunately don’t have very many tanky units to use in Aether raids such as Ascended Idunn, Duo Duma, Brave Tiki, or Rearmed Robin who I can use to enemy-phase. I do have Medeus, but he’s a defense mythic and can’t be used on offense without sacrificing my score. The general problem with tanky units though is that they generally don’t last as long as player-phase units and with the introduction of Embla, having a squishy team covered by a save unit is no longer viable.
Red
Likely
- Valentine Chrom
- He can move again after using his assist skill. Also charges both him and the targeted ally’s special cooldowns by 1 if used within the first 4 turns of the match.
- Scores very well in Colosseum game modes and also very annoying to face.
- Summer Edelgard
- Weapon is a brave weapon, grants an additional action. Combined with Galeforce, she can move up to 3 times in a single turn!
- A very good unit especially for those Galeforce strategies in Aether Raids, which is one of the few counters to the Embla Cav-line teams.
- Great in Colosseum game modes as she can charge in, defeat the enemy, then retreat.
- Scores very well in Colosseum game modes.
- Weapon is a brave weapon, grants an additional action. Combined with Galeforce, she can move up to 3 times in a single turn!
- Ninja Camilla
- Has brave vantage effect which is just super annoying to face. Not many players have a brave red tome user.
- She is very good in Aether raids offense, one of the few counters to the Embla Cav-line teams.
- Camilla is also a very popular unit.
- Legendary Veronica
- Disables foe’s counter-attacks, and pierces through damage reduction skills. Very powerful mage.
- The majority of players are missing a good “low-budget” red mage unit. We have Reinhardt for blue and Ninja Corrin for green. Aversa just doesn’t have the offensive capabilities as Veronica and I doubt many players have actually built up any of the red mages we keep getting from the GHBs.
- Scores very well in Colosseum game modes.
- Embla
- Super annoying to face in Aether raids. Having the penalty status neutralization and disabling save skills makes her a really bulky unit and difficult to take out, especially when paired with the modern Cavalry units like Eir and Veronica.
- Save skills are not very common outside of PvP game modes, so that skill might not see a lot of use. She does have speed-based damage reduction though, and she’s also really fast.
- Defensive Mythic unit, offensive mythics are more valuable to have merges on than defensive mythics.
Less likely
- Halloween Duma
- An exceptionally good far-save tank. Not all players have red Armor dragons.
- Counters my green team (L!M!Byleth, Ninja Corrin) when I play the Arena.
- However, I don’t think he’s popular enough or that players need many far save units, most players should have at least one by now (Ascended Fjorm, Legendary Tiki).
- Fallen Lilith
- Can teleport to any space within 2 spaces of their support partner.
- I don’t think the majority of players use supports very often. The support bonuses barely make a difference and I usually don’t have “set teams” where I always bring these same 2 units together.
- She is a good unit but I think the majority of players would prefer a ranged unit, duo unit, harmonic unit, or mythic/legendary unit, and Lilith is none of those.
- Rearmed Lif
- A strong unit that comes with the arcane Sword.
- Rearmed heroes do allow for skill duplication, so having 1 rearmed hero in the pool would be great.
- I don’t think he’s popular enough of a unit to make it into the top 4.
- Rearmed Ophelia
- Very recent unit.
- The majority of players I think wouldn’t have built any red mages so the rearmed Red Tome is not very high in demand.
- Legendary Nanna
- A really good unit that pierces damage reduction. Very good player-phase unit, has full-hp desperation.
- Competition with Brave Seliph and Rearmed Lif. I don’t think Sword Cavalry is very high in demand or very rare.
Unlikely
- Brave Seliph
- Has Miracle built into his weapon, if his HP is greater than 25% at the start of combat, making him hard to defeat as he is very fast and hard to double.
- However, since he came out for CYL, a lot of players already have a copy of him and don’t want merges.
- Young Ike
- He’s also a really good unit. But I think most people already have an F2P Sword infantry (such as Yen’fay or Holst) and I just don’t think enough players would find a slightly more powerful unit of that same type to be appealing.
- Young Mia
- Same as Young Ike
- Bride Sophia
- Ninja Camilla has better matchups.
- Thief Leila
- Ninja Camilla has better matchups.
- Leila’s main gimmick is having Canto (Ally 2), which just overall is not as useful compared to Canto (Rem.).
- This is because if there are no allies within 2 spaces, no Canto is granted, which is just not as good as Canto (Rem.).
- Ascended Young Tiki
- Combat matchups overall aren’t as good compared to the other super-powerful units we got recently.