There are a lot of weird opinions I’m seeing from the usual streamers about AFjorm… One doesn’t really think highly of her in general despite considering her to be a “waifu” (in the most casual sense I can politely put it as). One thinks it has to be highly merged/whaled up to be able to beat their defense, and this and that…

Meanwhile, I’m on the side that she doesn’t NEED high merges to perform at an extremely high level. Naturally, she’s not the best at anything (she never was in any of her iterations, we should all know this by now). BUT she’s the only NCD Save Armor that exists in FEH at the moment, in a AR meta where too many people rely on Flash and Sweep effects to make their AR-D. ALSO, her innate skills let her perform great at just about any merge, and I feel not enough people recognize this. This is for a couple factors:

1. Her special scales off the damage she reduces. The lower her merges, the lower her defenses, thus the more damage she will receive and reduce, which goes back to the opponent. At higher merges, her natural attack stat will generally compensate for the less damage she repels back to the opponent, but this equivocates to diminishing returns with high merges, especially compared with other units.
2. Ice Mirror damage reduction is a Special, not a Skill. There are no skills in FEH that eliminate the damage reduction done by SPECIALS. All piercing damage available in the game thus far only pierce SKILLS and not SPECIALS. AFjorm exists beyond piercing damage meta (and OG Fjorm at that, but OG Fjorm cannot use Save).

There is of course still counterplay to AFjorm–again, not the best at anything and not BROKEN by any means–She’s weak against Guard effects, requires support to deal with debuff/Fatal Smoke meta, she’s still an ARMOR so she’s weak to armorkillers unless you change her A skill. And changing her A skill then makes her more susceptible to Specials since she loses her own Guard effect. The list goes on, really. Even so, these are generally easy to overcome, especially compared to using the rest of the Save crowd at the present.

I’m just glad I never invested hard into Flash/Sweep effects for my AR-D in the first place, so even though I HAVE changed my AR-D setup in recent months, I never wasted Flash/Sweep fodder onto any units thus far. I just get to laugh at all the AR-D I run into that heavily rely on these things and pummel them down with my +2 A Fjorm. And this I was already doing before her bonus week. This week was her first bonus week, and next week will be her 2nd/last. People have not been adjusting their defenses, and they’re paying for it.

Now if something FINALLY cuts through Near/Far Save meta, then things will really have to move in both AR-O and AR-D… Until then, we eat glue.