Greetings and a good monday to you!

The past days I've been busy figuring out why I have constant internet issues that really bother me and hopefully I got the fix now.
Also, I've been seeing someone and yesterday we had our third date, which might have potentially, plausibly affected why I'm posting this review today and not earlier as well as missing reviews on Rain. :P :)

Let's get to Aerith!

Unit Review: NV Aerith Aerith (FFVII REMAKE) NV Aerith (BS) by Memel0rd

Trust Master Reward : A Prayer to Change the Future (Materia) - Increase MAG (40%) and SPR (20%)
Increase fire, ice, lightning, and light resistance (15%)

STMR : Aerith's Clothes (Robe) - 28 DEF, 80 MAG, 70 SPR, 50% MTDH

Vision Card : Planet's Whisper
Lvl 1-10: 40 ~ 65 MAG/SPR
Lvl 4: 25% MAG/SPR w/ Rods
Lvl 7: 25% MAG/SPR w/ Rods
Lvl 10: 20% MAG/SPR for FFVII units

Overview:

Aerith is a weird mix of either healer or damage dealer and frankly I'm not sure if I like it. Let's figure out the problems.

As for her normal form, Aerith has great base stats with good HP, MP, DEF and monstrous base SPR! Her massive SPR gets further amplified with a total of 220% SPR total with her TMR and since she's a healer her innate 70% HP and 60% DEF can easily be patched up, too. She also has a guts passive which adds a neat safety net.
Her innate status resistances for what she offers need to be patched up as they don't cover everything. Throw on a ribbon effect and you'll have it all as she gains stop and charm resistance through the TMR ability, too! Her MAG TDH is not really important in the normal form.

She can W-Cast all of her abilities.

NV Aerith has a variety of rather standard healing abilities. An AoE Curaja level heal, a strong AoE HP regen, an AoE full revive as well as a 30% HP reraise on a party member as well as herself. While it is a ST Reraise, for some reason it's only 30% HP, which can be quite dangerous if your member dies and the boss keeps following up with more attacks.

Her two Liberation abilities are quite interesting due to the auto-casts. Both abilities have two stages, the HP one starts out with a mediocre heal and on the next turn with a strong heal, not quite as strong as Curaja but taking the right direction. Same goes for the MP recover, 40 MP on the first turn and 80 on the next one. During both instances, the HP one cures all ailments, the MP one all breaks, stop and charm.

Talking about curing ailments, her two uses per battle ability, I suppose just Magnus, also cures everything with the same heal as Physical Liberation and an AOE revive 80% reraise. The pro being you can use it two turns in a row, the "bad" thing is you can only use it twice during the entire battle, duh. You might also have to be careful as it costs 255 MP.

Her Limit Burst is very similar to her Magnus ability, combining both Liberations as well. So you'll get a Curaja level heal with cure all ailments and an AOE revive on Turn 1 and on the next turn another strong heal 80 MP and curing everything except Zombie.

When it comes down to mitigations, Aerith is off well! Luckily, you have an on-demand AoE 45% magic mitigation, which is quite big to have from the get-go, but also a ST 5000 HP barrier attached to for herself and an ally. This can make tanking a lot more trivial to just keep spamming a 5k HP barrier onto a party member that needs it. Might it be your actual tank or your squishy damage dealer.
The physical mitigation is locked behind a 3 cooldown ability shared with both forms. Quite similar with the AoE 4000 HP barrier and 45% physical mitigation, though it only lasts 2 turns.

Her last CD ability is huge. ATB Ward is available at Turn 1 with a 5 turn cooldown, applies a massive AoE HP regen for 3 turns and over the duration of 3 turns also fills a total of 30 LB crysts. Coming off of a healer, having that much LB fill support without even using up many actions is great.

Brave Shift:

NV Aerith's Brave Shift form completely flips her prior concept around and you'll end up with basically a second unit.

Her offensive passives matter now! What a surprise. And I'd be lying to tell you that she has a low MAG stat. A total innate 240% MAG with her TMR and 200% MTDH. Don't forget that the MTDH cap also got increased to 400%. So even at Ex 1 with her own VC only at 4, as long as you got the Dark Visions Rod for example you can break 4k MAG! Quite nasty.
And of course having an innate 150% demon killer is much appreciated as a bunch of bosses in Dark Visions and trials are (partially) demon type.

Regarding the uptime, you can Brave Shift from Turn 1 with an infinite amount of turns and if you decide to go back has a 2 turn cooldown, but I don't think there's a big reason to swap often.

In her Brave Shift form, NV Aerith can T-Cast all of her abilities and Quad-Cast all of her offensive ones as she gets to keep the AoE heal, AoE Revive and physical mitigation CD ability.

Both forms also share a ST non-elemental chain with a 6000% backloaded modifier, going up to a 9000% one after her Magnus buffs. This ability also heals, similar to Ashe in her prime time, and if you have spark chaining availability can also be used conveniently in her base form. It's a CWA chain.

Her other CWA chain is locked to light element chains but at least packs quite a punch. An on-demand 7500% (or 8500% after buffs) with Quad-Cast? And a 120% imperil attached to it? If it isn't resisted, you'll deal buttloads.

To buff herself up, Aerith has a Brave Shift unique Magnus ability as well as a new CD ability.
You can also only use her Magnus ability twice in this form, but it increases the modifier of both chains by a good margin and also for three other upcoming finishers as well as boosting her light damage by 15%.

You gain access to these finishers via her Arcane Ward, which has a 5 turn cooldown, you not only gain a massive 300% MAG buff but also the much wanted Quad-Cast! Let's not forget about three different finishers for fire, ice and lightning with a 6000% ~ 8000% modifier as well as their respective 120% imperil.

These finishers, if capped, are currently extremely powerful but hard to cap with Quad-Cast and not as strong as her chain. It's still a great alternative for Dark Visions as you go from having a single available element to four, boosting her viability up by a great notch.

Her Limit Burst is potentially strong but I'm not a fan of it. It has a 10000% modifier, which you can cap, but is split in three elements and thus way too likely to drop in damage.

How does she fare in the meta?

NV Aerith does well naturally as the first mage in the NV era. Her average damage as a chainer is almost 50% higher than Kuja's, which is massive considering how huge of a step up Kuja was in our previous meta.

The damage is limited though. Sadly her only source of damage as a chainer is either non-elemental or light, which can hinder her viability heavily, though to be fair, she can also be used as a magic finisher in which she'd be the strongest currently, too.

As a healer I'm very torn. While she has awesome mitigation options and lots of revives, she lacks any kind of immunity buffs and outside of her Magnus ability has quite poor Reraise options with only a measly 30% HP one. In return, she has awesome barriers and HP regens and well it's hard to pass up 45% phys and mag mitigation, even if not always available.

The additional LB support that comes with her can be used in both forms if you don't mind swapping back as a mage for some additional support.

Overall she's good but currently it feels like her mix up leads to drawbacks in both forms that can make her more niche than she has to be. If you are in need for status immunity as well as break immunity, you might have to bring in an external buffer to fix that. As a chainer, she's extremely niche.

As a healer, if you have spark chains available, her CWA chains that also heal have a cool niche that can go hand in hand with breakers such as Vanille or if you really wanted to an evade provoke tank named Seifer.

Her TMR is not that great. 40% MAG with 20% SPR and ele resistances is fine, but for healers the gains are too low and for mages, you often want either higher MAG materias or none at all for more killers if you can cap it easily.
Her STMR on the other hand is awesome. Not only does it offer 80 MAG with a monstrous 70 SPR, but also 50% MTDH. It would've been amazing before NV, too, but with the additional 400% TDH cap, gaining 50% MTDH can ease up on a crucial materia slot for more killers.

Build Maths:

Normal Build:
https://ffbeEquip.com/builder.html?server=GL#8eee8590-f0fd-11ea-80b7-871db4588803

Brave Shift Build:
https://ffbeEquip.com/builder.html?server=GL#5141dd70-f0fb-11ea-80b7-871db4588803

Aerith (FFVII REMAKE) Damage

MAG post 300% buff: 4909
MAG post 150% buff: 4351
Assuming spark chains


Rotation:
[BS] Turn 1: Arcane Ward   Fleeting Familiar   Ray of Judgement
[BS] Turn 2: Ray of Judgement x4
[BS] Turn 3: Ray of Judgement x4
[BS] Turn 4: Ray of Judgement x4
[BS] Turn 5: Ray of Judgement x4


[BS] Turn 1: 4909^2 x 85 x 3.556 x 1.6 x 1.15 = 13402461403
[BS] Turn 2: [ 4909^2 x 85 x 3.556   4909^2 x 85 x 4 x 3 ] x 2.2 x 1.15 = 80616408378
[BS] Turn 3: [ 4909^2 x 85 x 3.556   4909^2 x 85 x 4 x 3 ] x 2.2 x 1.15 = 80616408378
[BS] Turn 4: [ 4909^2 x 85 x 3.556   4909^2 x 85 x 4 x 3 ] x 2.2 x 1.15 = 80616408378
[BS] Turn 5: [ 4351^2 x 85 x 3.556   4351^2 x 85 x 4 x 3 ] x 2.2 x 1.15 = 63330883680


Average Turn 1-5: 63,716,514,043
-> 147% of Angel of Death Kuja's damage ( 43,259,860,253 )

Character Design: 9/10
Sprite: 9.5/10
Chainer: 8.5/10
Finisher: 9/10
Healer: 8.5/10
Trust Master Reward: 6.5/10
STMR: 9.5/10
Vision Card: 8/10
Arena: 1/10
Limit Burst: 7.5/10
Future Proof: 8.5/10
Dark Visions: 7.5/10
Free 2 Play: 9/10
Pay 2 Play: 8/10
Personal Rating: 8.5/10
Optimal Rating: 8.5/10

Conclusion

She's a great NV unit and the good thing about most NV units for some time, unless GL will change that, too, is, that she won't get powercrept super hard within the foreseeable future. A new NV Sol as well as NV awakened Emperor and Sakura are currently very close to her damage output and while physical units are totally blowing through the roof in comparison to mages, Aerith herself will likely stay for a good while. And even then, she'll still be strong while having uses as a healer, too, though I'm personally not sold on her as a healer due to the lacking resistance buffs.

Have a pleasant day!

Memel0rd out​