I am bored so I took some time to take a deep dive into how shared skills will work and what skills will be worth equipping.
All of the skill in the selection showed in the update detail are from S1.
So from the discussion in ERA discord group, it seems there are confusions with equipping S3 and S4. The two skills are equipped separately. If you have weapon skill in S3, you are not required to have helper skill in S4. Take a look at the pic below. The shared skills featured a healing skill in S3 slot and the helper skill in S4 slot when Euden has the default weapon.
Another interesting bit from this pic below is that similar skill can have different cost. Cleo and Aurien's S1 both heal at 108/130% recovery potency at lv3/4 respectively, but Cleo's one can remove paralysis. However, Cleo's S1 costs lower than Aurien even though Aurien's one is worse in terms of functionality. Btw, Verica's S1 cost is 5 from another pic, but as we know, healing over time is much better since it provide twice as much than lv3 instant heal or 1.68x lv4 healing.
So now the questions I have are:
1. Does the shared skills work like normal skill or helper skill? In other words, do they require SP or do they have limited use?
2. Can we equip skill with phases? If so, do we still get phase 2/3 bonus?
> From what I see, it probably doesn't since none of those skills are featured in the update detail.
3. For damage and healing skills, will it just consider your leader stat only?
4. The cost limit varys between units. So do they depend on their weapon class, rarity, or even unit class (lol)?
I can't say for sure that buff skill will be more expensive than the other since they only showed one buff skill in the selection, but it should be since buff skills are powerful. Highly doubt they will allow us to have buffer equipping two more buff skills.
I really like how there will be more strategies after this update. Like, people are saying healers are gonna go extinct in co-op. I don't really think so. For example, many top flame units depends on combo. I suppose you will break your combo if you use shared skills, like helper skill. Having Emma to provide healing in eVolk sounds good, but can she keep it up? Even if she equips two healing skills, you still lose the range advantage. You wanna keep up the the buff during the fog phase, but you don't want the other steal your bait.
I am not saying you can't use healer-buffer in eVolk, but it will take time to practice. And equipping two healing skill on buffer just sound off to me. Emma's S2 isn't really useful in eVolk too. With Halowen, you can equip a buff skill and even Ranzal's S1 for dispel. It doesn't matter the S4 damage is low, you just need that dispel. I truly think this update will open up more situation you want a buffer-healer or healer-buffer depending on situation.
So there are skills you wanna unlock first, like dispel. There are only four S1 in the game right now that can dispel. GAlex's S1 requires her S2 to dispel. Bellina's ones requires her to be in dragondrive form. So you are left with Naveed and Ranzal. Ranzal is much better since his lv4 S1 do big damage (2224%) and inflict poison (a total of 291% over 15 s at 120% chance). It might be the only dispel skill you can equip too since Naveed's S1 damage depends on the number of the time he used S2.
And should we put another punisher skill on dps S4? Like should we put Vice's S1 (2376% against poisoned enemies) on Gleo's S4 so we can do make sure you end the fight during break in mHJP?
Or what if we just put a damage skill that provide a bit healing like Marth's and Welly's S1? Or even Heinwald's?
This will open up a lot in the game. It is gonna reflect our play style too. And this mechanism will make them easier to balance the game too. (I guess?)
Can't wait to be an all-rounded support next week.