Pumped for my boy Kouri, it's your FFVIII banner ;p Like me, you'll give no bleeps that your man isn't uber meta and go hard to get all you want from it. You'll relish seeing him in his animations every battle and it will be worth it. Plus, he's still going to be a good mage just as Squall has served as a solid finisher (and is amazing for elemental objectives in story missions) despite the hate he gets for this game. Get your Golbez, good sir! I look forward to milking that 300% when farming the event haha I look forward to you posting how much of the currency you get after a run with bonus enemies with all the bonus units you'll be running!
It's going to be so weird when Akstar hits, from nearly every one pulling for him to barely anyone now. Mostly people that couldn't land Esther I suppose. Not even buffing can save him when Esther is THAT far ahead of him and it's hard to imagine him getting that significant a bump. I'm trying to decide what my next 5* pull will be. Now that I have Fina at 7* finally it's not as tempting to upgrade healer but I might still do it. I was thinking Lenna since Bartz is a much better consolation prize than Red XIII but I want nothing to do with the TDW meta. You need to both have two great weapons for each TDW unit AND you need to get both Lightning and Bartz's tmrs to truly take advantage of it....no thanks! At this point in the game we have a number of TDH gear options and only need half the amount of good weapons. So Esther has me set until S3 Rain. Also, I don't like the stacking mechanic for the damage dealers coming up so another reason to wait for Rain. Although I might wait until Noctis as Rain was brought back to share his banner.
With Sylvie, I don't need Fid but I'll take a look at Fidra's skill set to see if I should get them since they are used in so many trials but I have Sylvie and CG Nichol so probably set at support and I have both Auron and CG Lid for breaking. Now that I have Awakened Rain at 7* finally, I could skip CG Charlotte. I'd like WoL but don't know that I'll need an upgrade from Siegfried that soon. I guess we'll see what the state of the game is at that point. So really I'm probably in a place where I only bother with major upgrades for roles from what I have but actually, I could probably use a stronger mage as Barb is my strongest. Maybe I'll go for Sol or wait for CG Dark Fina. Basically will keep an eye on what hits Japan by the time we get to the end of the year and decide accordingly.
I'm trying to think of what to do for my other ATK unit option though. Right now I have Jecht in but he can't chain with Esther so it seems really inefficient to use him. As I'll be using friend Esther's, maybe I shouldn't worry about having my own second chainer? I could have Squall in as the finisher and maybe have either a buffer or breaker in the main team. I could grab Akstar and then have him chain with Auron while Esther chains with friend Esther. Hmmm
Edit: I know the proper answer is doesn't matter because me team will crush most content anyway and then the trials require specific types of units for easier completion which would dictate my team composition. I'm waiting for more beat x trial with Esther and Sylvie guides haha