I'm curious to hear if people have any predictions or ideas for what new unit type IS will be introducing this year. We've gotten a new unit type every year of the game thus far, and I'd expect that pattern to continue assuming the game remains in a reasonably healthy state.

As a summary of the past few years:

Obviously the first two years were focused on the major PVP game modes (Arena and Aether Raids). Legendary Heroes and Mythic Heroes are respectively essentially required for top-tier play in the competitive game modes, although if you don't care about being top they matter significantly less.

Duo Heroes provide a strong power boost in PVE with Duo effects, and give increased scoring potential with high merges in Arena. One copy will help casual players, while going for full merges on recent Duo units is important for extremely competitive Arena players who want to stay on top.

Harmonic Heroes are a more niche version of Duo Heroes, as they are essentially required to make it into the higher tiers of Resonant Battles but have no real benefits outside that mode. Even Harmonic effects only impact teammates from the same titles.

Ascended and Rearmed Heroes both seem largely targeted toward players who want more options to deck out their favorite units, particularly older units in the case of Arcane weapons. Ascended Heroes were implemented very oddly, as you can only earn one Floret per Ascended Hero ever, rather than one Floret per copy, which might be what players expected to encourage whaling. Conversely, Rearmed Heroes are very focused on FOMO, as they don't go into the permanent pool. Rearmed Heroes also permit skill duplication, which further encourages pulling additional copies.

Where do you think IS will go next? They seem to follow similar ideas in pairs of years, as 2017/2018, 2019/2020, and 2021/2022 introduced new categories of heroes along similar lines. I'm personally not sure what a new unit type might look like, but I'm interested to see what ideas folks have! Based on past history, we should expect a new type of unit sometime in the range of Sept - Dec, although Harmonic Mia was introduced in June, so it could be earlier.