Unit Comparisons by Class (Fire Emblem Heroes)

[Chase]

Moderators: I placed this thread in Gaming General because I wanted to open discourse up to people beyond the Fire Emblem group. If that group is the only appropriate place for this thread, I would not mind if it is moved there. I just wanted to let you guys know I wasn't trying to break any forum rules or anything. Thanks for all that you do and I apologize for any inconveniences.

 

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One of the most active channels on the Reborn Discord server (or...the only active channel I tend to spend any meaningful amount of time in) is the Fire Emblem channel. In that channel there is always one constant matter of discussion. The mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes, a gacha game that is surprisingly generous to free players that allows them to collect and battle with various units from across the entire Fire Emblem franchise. Yes, I am plugging the discord channel and FEH... bite me.

 

In this thread, I want to open up discussion for units that are similar in weapon type, color, and movement type so that one may get the best experience, be it as a free player or one who chooses to spend for their favorite heroes. I'll open the discussion up by starting with the games assortment of Refresher units, or perhaps more affectionately known as dancers and singers. ...because it isn't war if there isn't someone singing a war hymn or dancing furiously to raise morale....what do you mean people who actually fight are more important?

 

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Olivia: Blushing Beauty (Fire Emblem Awakening, Sword, Infantry, available for free via Hero Battle rotation, summoned at 3*-4*)

Spoiler

Olivia is an infantry sword fighter who has access to the assist skill 'Dance', which is the crux of her value. Or, it would be the crux of her value, but she's made even more worth using for low spending to free players due to the fact that she is able to be obtained through her pair of Hero Battle maps at 1 or 2 star rarity. Getting Olivia up to 4 stars is not too taxing, as it is very easy to earn 2000 some-odd feathers. From there, her high merge potential insures that she will be able to get great stats without too much investment, meaning that she has the potential to be a saving grace for freemium players early, and stay good for a long while, even if she is working in tandem with other performers for multi-dance shenanigans. She has access to a fairly strong Silver Sword and with Hone Attack in her base kit, she also assists her team in buff support along with her dancing capabilities. Before Skill Inheritance, this made Olivia arguably leagues better than her sorority sister Azura, who's Fortify skill wasn't as helpful in an offensive meta.

 

There are two caveats with Olivia however. While not a weakness, there is very little reason to promote Olivia to 5*, as she only gets a little extra might out of her sword in the deal, which is not quite worth 20,000 feathers. Finally, Olivia is a sort of balanced unit, who doesn't have much of a field presence herself unless you do her right and begin merging her at 4 star rarity. After all of the effort however, your 4*+10 Olivia will still have great stats, those equivalent to her 5*+5 counterpart.

 

It is worth noting, that the Silver Sword+ is also refine-able, which may give a 5* Olivia more of a niche outside of being a jack-of-all-trades dancer, but I wouldn't recommend the feather and refining stone investment. It is just another thing she has over Azura.

 

Azura: Lady of the Lake (Fire Emblem Fates, Lance, Infantry, summoned exclusively at 5*)

Spoiler

Azura is another infantry refresher, but this time she wields a lance. The lance she wields is the Sapphire Lance+, the upgraded "gem weapon" that boasts the Triangle Adept effect (essentially accentuating her color triangle strengths and weaknesses by applying a 20% bonus on combat against units she has an advantage and disadvantage over.) This lance provides Azura with her secondary niche, that of a dedicated Red check that still finds great success in dueling swords and red tome users despite feeling pressure from some of the newer additions such as Ayra or Zelgius. This made her a very common arena unit in tandem with launch day powerhouses such as Takumi due to the ability to fight reliably. Unlike Olivia, Azura has a decisively more offensive stat spread, with her defenses being more suspect unless her opponent is a red.

 

For all of that offensive value, Azura does face some issues. As of late she's one of the more antique 5* exclusives, meaning that her rarity isn't nearly as justified due to her low BST (made worse by being a refresher unit at launch) as well as being an infantry unit, which bars her from Emblem buffs to further augment her offensive power. Olivia's relevance has only increased for free players as more and more blues have been added to the summoning pool, making Azura harder to "reroll" your starting orbs for as opposed to how desirable she was at the games launch. On the other hand, she has been powercrept by two alternative versions of herself, her son Shigure, an alternative version of Olivia, and her son Inigo - although she retains value over them in her availability out of the permanent summoning pool.

 

This has made OG Azura a relatively rare find, and may relegate her to collector's item status if the player has a Performing banner unit or New Years Azura. However, Azura still holds a decisive statistical advantage and stronger initial kit than Olivia despite her being harder to obtain, making her a better pick for Arena unless you have invested a bit into Olivia beforehand. With the advent of Skill Inheritance, players would actually place Olivia's Hone Attack skill on Azura to get the best of both worlds. This is a unit who still is very much usable, albeit perhaps not as flexibly as her competitors.

 

Ninian: Oracle of Destiny (Fire Emblem Blazing Sword, Blue Breath, Infantry (Dragon), summoned exclusively at 5*)

Spoiler

I don't know a whole lot about Ninian but I am going to try my best here.

 

Ninian is the unique combination of a dragon who can refresh other units. This makes her very good for Dragon Emblem, because she can dance to augment the movement of dragons such as Fallen Robin and give her dragon allies multiple opportunities to attack enemies. To further exemplify her value to other dragons, she comes with the Dragon Emblem buff skill Fortify Dragons, which makes her fellow drakes much more harder to damage. She also has the ability to inherit Lightning Breath, which is a great weapon that allows her to retaliate regardless of distance from her assailants. Finally, her dragonbreath can be refined using the weapon refinery, allowing her to have an adaptive damage effect that targets the lower of the opponents defenses, making Ninian always threatening.

 

Where Azura is the innate offensive refresher, and Olivia is decent at everything, Ninian seems to have a preference for playing defense and support primarily out of the box, and it can take considerable effort and resources to get her to where she is ready to fit on most teams. She also looks to be the most expensive dancer to kit out out of the refreshers in the normal summoning pool, as enemy phase Dragons would prefer to have some more premium skills such as Steady or Warding Breath. This has made Ninian a niche refresher, and her exclusive summoning nature isn't making it easier to to obtain her any time soon. Unlike Azura however, one can point to the great success of Dragon Emblem in the Arena and say that Ninian absolutely should be a 5* exclusive unit.

 

Performing Olivia: Festival Dancer (Dagger, Infantry, only available on designated Legendary banners and Performing banner reruns)

Spoiler

Beginning our series on seasonal refreshers we have a pretty interesting one in Performing Olivia.

 

Olivia shares the niche of being able to attack from two range on player phase with her son Inigo and Shigure, but unlike those two she uses a physical damage weapon, the Dancer's Fan (or a dagger of the player's choice). While daggers are lacking in offensive capability they make for a really good supportive weapon, as the weapon generally causes significant debuffs to the target after combat. Olivia is really the only refresher that can debuff enemies consistently - at least out of the box. With decent resistance and innate access to Distant Defense 3 in her kit, she also has the ability to fight mages with a good amount of success. Her B slot gives her the unique refresher skill Blaze Dance, which gives units +4 attack after dancing for them.

 

She can also be given Kagero's Poison Dagger or Halloween Sakura's Kitty Paddle to either give her some damage assistance against all infantry units or solidify herself as a threat to magic users.

 

All of this sounds fantastic, and it is, but it comes at the cost of having a lackluster attack stat and being stuck in the dagger fraternity, which is not exactly known for felling units on the battlefield. On top of that, the occasional Raven Tome user will trip up Olivia as she would normally prioritize mages over other enemies if forced into combat. Finally, free units and newer players are not going to be seeking out Performing Olivia because she will need to be announced on a legendary banner or have the Performing banner rerun in the future in order to obtain her. 

 

Performing Inigo: Indigo Dancer (Fire Emblem Awakening, Green Tome, Infantry, only available on designated Legendary banners and Performing banner reruns)

Spoiler

Between Inigo and Shigure, who are ranged BST tomes who really need their stats in the right places in order to find shining roles on teams taking on challenges and Arena, Inigo has a much more serviceable spread.

 

Inigo comes with an excellent tome weapon, the Dancer's Ring, which heals an adjacent ally for 7 HP after an action. This synergizes really well with his role as a support unit and incentivizes players to use him in combat, an ask that isn't too hard to respond to considering Inigo is a Green Tome unit who can attack from a distance against some of the most annoying units in the current meta, including a specific tiny handed gentleman. On top of this, players can opt to give him a Gronnraven tome instead, sacrificing the HP recovery of his allies for the ability to take on a specific female lord on a horse who uses a bow. Being able to take on Reinhardt and Brave Lyn while also being a refresher unit makes Inigo very useful. His B skill, Gale Dance, is worth noting to refresher enthusiast, granting +4 speed to members of his audience.

 

This does all come at the cost of BST, and the 2nd generation performing gentlemen really have a lack of it. Inigo, like his mother, is thriving solely on specific matchups. That being said, it's hard to knock the guy. He's got some very relevant selling points that make him a solid pull on future legendary banners, even for those that may already have Performing and or New Years Azura.

 

Performing Azura: Lady of Ballads (Axe, Infantry, only available on designated Legendary banners and Performing banner reruns)

Spoiler

Everything you could ever ask of OG Azura, plus a personal weapon that boosts all of her listeners' stats by 3  (freeing up her b slot for skills like quick riposte, desperation, vantage, the ever coveted Wings of Mercy for healers and refreshers, etc.) and a direct upgrade of her Fortify Resistance to Drive Resistance. Her Sapphire Lance weapon effect is still there in spirit as Triangle Adept in her A slot, her B slot is open, which is valuable for units with the still great offensive stat spread she boasts, and all it takes is a quick glance to realize that this Dark Song Azura-...i mean, singer NOBODY knows... is pure powercreep.

 

Her axe, Urdr, which means Fate in Norse (because of course it does), also has 16 might, getting an attack blessed Azura to 51 base attack. She can also reach 37 speed unboosted. These facts mean that she is still very good at killing things. Green is also a really good defensive or support color because she can take on things like Reinhardt (and if she's running Distant Counter with an Emerald Axe he should be very afraid.)

 

She does lose out on the ability to handle red units, and some may argue that OG Azura holds some value (despite her ancient BST) over her alternate here because reds are still a very relevant part of the meta in their own right. However, all Performing Azura needs is a strong Blue ally of her own, like...Reinhardt, and she should be good to go. This is easily one of the best refreshers available.

 

Performing Shigure: Dark Sky Singer (Fire Emblem Fates, Blue Tome, Infantry, only available on designated Legendary banners and Performing banner reruns)

Spoiler

The draw with Shigure is purely variety. If you are a fan of Azura's son (and I wouldn't hold it against you, he's pretty cool if you ask me) you are going to want to get him a lot of different tomes and skills to try out because he has decent stats all around...and that's about it.

 

In terms of what he's packing, he wields the Dancer's Score, which is a tome that heals adjacent allies for 7 damage when Shigure is involved with combat, much like Inigo's Dancer's Ring. He also comes with Geyser Dance in his B slot, which boosts both of his audience's defenses by 4 after singing for them. Finally, he has the role of Blue Tome Coach under his belt, being the sole owner of Blue Tome Valor, enabling other units who wield blue tomes to pick up extra SP so long as he is alive and fielded. His B and C skills are very nice to have for a mega budget build because you could just slap on Fury in his A slot for making his stats a little bit better, or Triangle Adept to give him more of an edge against Red units.

 

His balanced stats pretty much mean he can run most tomes thrown his way. Mae's Owl tome seems really cool on Shigure because he will almost always be near allies, Raven tomes are always appreciated for units like Bow Lyn, Brave Bows, and Kagero, Wolf tomes are good against cavalry units, and he matches up favorably to Odin running a blade tome to boost his raw damage output with Eirika as a partner because Shigure has a role outside of combat that can make his balanced stats easier to stomach.

 

However, that's a tough swallow even with Sing, because being a refresher means that Shigure is going to have to suffer with poor BST numbers. Being very balanced while also having next to no stats means that Shigure's ceiling is very low, and concerning blade tomes, there are other units with much more appealing statlines that would rather have that tome instead. However, I do believe Shigure offers a unique additional saving grace to all of those traditional magic builds by also being very supportive, and so long as he sings most of the time and plays to his strengths in combat, Shigure has more variety than his mother's original version and Olivia due to being a magic user.

 

It's a shame he's very rare, I'd love to see a high merge Shigure's statline.

 

New Year's Azura: Celebratory Spirit (Axe, Flier, only available on designated Legendary banners or New Year's reruns)

Spoiler

in comparison to her other iterations, it might at first seem that NY!Azura is lacking in the bench press department.

 

However, that doesn't take into account that New Year's Azura is the first refresher to have a different movement type, now being able to traverse over previously blocked off terrain as well as being able to join Ninian in having access to Emblem buffs. Hone Fliers in particular will bring Azura back to the fighting fit you are used to, with even more speed than normal. Also, she has access to the Guidance Seal, which can bring footlocked units to her for extra position play.

 

Her kit has the Hagoita, a decorated paddle that serves the function of an axe and provides allies within 2 spaces +2 to their defenses. Her B slot has Earth Dance, a refresher skill that gives +4 to her audience's physical defense after she's sung for them, and her C skill is highly sought after Hone Fliers.

 

One can argue Airzura is the best dancer in the game at this moment, competing with the buffing capability of...herself. If you want her, I can't fault you for pulling the next time she becomes available arises. Just mind the arrows.

 

[Chase]

New day, new group to talk about.

 

This time, I'm going to talk about freely available units. Free units often become critical for newer players or players that are adverse to spending money on the game. One of the ways in which Heroes is rather generous for a gacha game is that there are several very usable characters that are obtainable as rewards for certain game modes or challenges. Yesterday, I pointed out that Olivia was a dancer that freemium players had easy access to through the Hero Battle rotation.

 

The next step up from there is the Grand Hero Battle, a series of three battles that are much more difficult than Hero Battles are. The rewards however, are unique to GHBs alone. The other game mode that offers units as rewards is Tempest Trials, which follows a story in which Masked Marth follows a storm that runs through the various Fire Emblem worlds, and is a chain challenge where players must have all four units survive a set number of battles. Tempest Trials gives players less access to merges with their reward units, but does at a certain tier give the player a free unit at 5* rarity, while the best rarity GHB unit one can be rewarded with is 4*, requiring some time investment on the player's end.

 

To specify what unit and movement type, we're going with Lance Cavaliers. There are four of them available. For Free.

 

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Clive: Idealistic Knight (Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Lance, Cavalier, available only during a specified Tempest Trial rerun)

Spoiler

Clive is the most bare bones cavalier out of the free lance cavalier pool. He uses a Silver Lance, comes with Defense +3 in his A slot, has a decent but likely replaced defensive special in Escutcheon, and has his familial trademark skill in Hit and Run in his B Slot, which he shares with his sister Clair. (I say familial, because this occurs again, where Cordelia and Selena both carry Triangle Adept in their base kit)

 

To keep Clive inexpensive, it's a genuinely good idea to run Defense +3 in his A slot. This augments a pretty decent base 32 defense to 35, which is actually pretty good. His Silver Lance+ will give him 15 additional might to his respectable 33 Attack - making it 48, easily boosted over the 50 threshold with cavalry buffs.

 

Worth noting is that Clive has a refine-able weapon, which can boost his up to (non-attack) or higher than (attack) the might of most preferred weapons. An Attack refine puts Clive at 51 Attack, and a Defense refine puts him at 49 Attack and up to 39 Defense with his innate Defense +3 factored in. This may be worth considering if you like Clive, but is considered a waste of refinement stones that could be used in units with much higher merge potential or weapons with better effects than mere added might.

 

The rub with Clive is that he has very poor resistance and his not much better speed stat isn't going to do him any favors. Mages being able to double or even quad Clive will pose a significant threat to his potential on many maps. On top of that, his base kit is probably the most vanilla, save for Hit and Run, which may be better spent on an early attempt at building a Flier Emblem team, due to the fact that wyverns and pegasi make much better use of that skill than horses. 

 

Still, Escutcheon and Defense +3 are very nice to have in his base kit, and for an extraordinarily cheap amount of investment, Clive is a unit that can easily be an asset to other horse units as he can nab Hone Cavalry from Gunter (another free unit) for his open C-Slot, as well as do a very decent job on the front lines for the typical freemium player. That is...if you were able to get him.

 

Finn: Lance of Legend (Fire Emblem Thracia 776, Lance, Cavalier, only available during specified Tempest Trials reruns. Or in this case, NOW.)

Spoiler

Finn is a slightly upgraded version of Clive in the kit department, and similar to Camus when it comes to offensive statline. What this means is that where Clive was geared for being a tanky cavalier, Finn is geared for offense.

 

This makes his base kit a bit of a disappointment. He comes with Miracle in special slot, which if active will allow Finn to survive a lethal hit. He comes with Attack and Defense +2 in his A slot (very similar to Clive, except a dual boost) and he does come with the somewhat rare Goad Cavalry C slot that makes him an apt fit for Cavalry teams right out of the box. Miracle and Attack/Defense are okay skills, but Finn is wielding a low might Brave Lance+ and is really wanting to double whatever he runs into, meaning he might have a tad more investment that he might want to come into his statistical role.

 

Investment aside, Finn will likely become a fantastic red duelist if you fill his open B slot with Swordbreaker, or improve his quad-chart if you give him Lancebreaker. If you want to mitigate some of the damage to your speed due to the Brave Lance, go with Life and Death or Fury in his A slot.

 

For Finn, the statistical comparison to Camus, a unit who recently got better merge potential with his GHB maps being recurring and coming with quests, is an issue, but he is still a very good offensive lance cavalier for players who are adept at position play.

 

One thing he has over Clive, is that he is currently available as a reward at the time of this post. Go get him.

 

Berkut: Prideful Prince (Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Lance, Cavalry, Available as a Grand Hero Battle unit)

Spoiler

Berkut statwise is very similar to Clive, but his base kit is extremely interesting.

 

His base kit starts with his weapon. Berkut's Lance boosts his resistance by a neat 7 points when an enemy initiates combat, effectively giving him 31 Resistance on the enemy phase. To put this into perspective, Berkut has 31 physical defense as well, meaning that he would take the same amount of damage from similar attack stat blue mages as he would from archers. Water Boost is an HP dependent skill that further increases his Resistance. It's a fairly okay budget option because Berkut does have a decent HP threshold for a cavalry unit. Finally, he gets Ward Cavalry, which is a pretty neat skill that makes his fellow riders 4 points tankier in both defenses. 

 

His base kit is extremely focused and streamlined into making him a tanky cavalier who helps his allies also become tanky, and I am a firm believer that there is something there. However, it all comes crumbling down when you look at the unavoidable fact that Berkut has 22 base Speed. For as much damage control as his base kit provides in the resistance department, he doesn't want to be doubled by Nino, and he will be doubled by quite a few green mages with that stat the way it is.

 

Still, Berkut's weapon is a hot commodity, even for other units. He really appreciates the massive sacrifice of a Hector to obtain Distant Counter. The skill allows him to use his augmented resistance in a fair fight where he can attack the aggressor back in the same action. Berkut's Lance is also a refine-able weapon, which can augment his speed to a semi-respectable amount after Hone Cavalry buffs or provide a boost where the player desires. As a candidate for Horse buff reception, Berkut can be helped out of the pit a little bit, and if you run your horse teams with healers such as Clarine, Priscilla, Nanna, or Elise, Berkut can become very good, even without DC. This is made further apparent due to his recently improved merge potential.

 

Camus: Sable Knight (Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, Lance, Cavalry, Available as a Grand Hero Battle unit)

Spoiler

Camoo here is considered to be the best lance cavalier among the freely obtained ones. The reason for this is quite simple. He wields the regalia known as Gradivus, a prf Lance that has 16 might and can counterattack regardless of distance, meaning he can hit oppponents that are firing arrows or daggers at him from afar in the same action. And I guess magic spells, although there's an issue with that.

 

He also has a pretty neat base kit that is fitting of his role. Grani's Shield protects Camus from weapons that give effective damage against cavalry units. This is made particularly helpful when considering the recent addition of the Poleaxe and Michaiah's Thani tome to the previous list of Zanbato, Ridersbane, and Wolf tomes. He also comes with the rare Goad Cavalry skill to assist fellow riders.

 

His big hiccup though, is that he is still going to get hurt by powerful magic users, and this puts him a little bit at odds with his personal weapon depending on the situation. Fortunately, his speed is able to be buffed to a point where they may not double him, and against bows and daggers the Gradivus really shines as a threatening and defining weapon in this particular group of units. Finally, like Berkut, his merge potential has gotten a little better.

 

[Commander]

I guess I'll help you guys giving you my thoughts on some free to play characters starting with everyone's favorite: swords

 

Zephiel (King of Bern/ Fire Emblem Binding Blade)

 

Spoiler

Zephiel was hyped like crazy when he was first announced and placed very high into the tiers for a very good reason. He's a sword armor with a lot of HP and Bulk, Wary Fighter, and a nasty skill on his personal Sword Ekesachs. Even now he still has the second highest base HP stat in the game, but time has started to make him rust as a few new f2p characters such as the Black Knight and Arden brought some very, very impressive exclusive skills to outclass him.

 

Zephiel is a very odd unit as depending on what you put into him, you'll go from him being the worst to best Sword Armor. His weapon refine has distant defense 3 attached to it as well as adding 3 more HP to his bulk making him a res monster with only a small handful of seasonal Armors (and Hardin) who can outperform him in this role. If you are willing to sacrifice a Hector, Zephiel and W! Lissa are the best options to pick due to their performance and stat spreads and kits. I use a Distant Counter Zephiel and he is easily one of my strongest units with an arsenal that includes Ayra and Mia. Even without that skill if he runs his DD3 refine and DD3 seal, it's still a 58/38/40(28 + 12 against tomes) bulk at base making him a great wall on enemy phase. You can pretty much safely throw Zeph at anything but Reinhardt to bait them out then weaken their defenses with his skill. He just can't one round stuff due to his inability to double which is his biggest drawback. Great unit to train up for Armor Emblem due to his kit.

 

 

Black Knight (Sinister General/Path of Radiance)

 

Spoiler

The Black Knight is likely one of the weirdest characters in the game due to his summon counterpart Zelgius. The Black Knight has one thing over him though: a higher base speed. The Black Knight's base kit is easily one of his best to serve as a well rounded Armor since he has above average stats for everything but resistance. 34 Base speed is nothing to scoff at for an Armor but with a +3 Speed Seal or Skill, he could easily start doubling. That's a scary thought when you see him activate the infamous Eclipse skill called Black Luna in this game. Deducting 80% off the defense stat usually means a unit is about to be one shot combined with BK's 50 attack if he has his personal weapon Alondite attatched. This is topped off with the fact Alondite has Distant Counter built in.

 

In theory, Black Knight sounds like he'd completely outclass the other two free sword Armors, but there's a big BUT. The first has to do with his A skill. Steady Defense 3 is a pretty solid skill and a good substitute for Steady Breath 3 which many, many units want that skill badly. With the only other option being locked into the 5 star pool, it's hard to come by this skill. There's also only 3 total Black Knights possible with one locked behind a paywall. Personally, I don't think a +2 BK will change him at all so it's better to used those two for fodder. There also one other thing that keeps him back. While he can handle a fight or two, he's not invincible. After combat with a mage, he can't really handle much else other than possibly proccing a Black Luna. With all the competition rising, he's slowly being pushed to Armor Emblem over being in mixed. Still one of the best f2p units if not the best.

 

 

Arden (Strong and Tough/Genealogy of the Holy War)

 

Spoiler

"I'm strong and I'm tough, but don't call me slow." Arden is such an odd duck f2p unit. He's certainly no Ayra, but what makes him unique is his Pursuit ring skill. This allows him to perform a double attack as long as his HP is above 50%. Considering his impressive 60 HP and 41 Def, that's not hard to keep for a little while. He also has an impressive 35 Attack to boot. His biggest faults are that he needs a better A skill (which freebie Eliwood can suffice there for Fire Boost) and the fact he will be doubles by everyone. It's kind of sad he's been forgotten about due to how good the above two are, but he has his own unique niches such as being able to quad then proc Ignis on a melee unit probably killing them. There's also a lot of boosts such as Armored boots and Panic Ploy to make him even more threatening.

 

It's actually kind of a sad sight to see one of the best units be kind of forgotten about simply because he's free and unusual. Having Double Fortress Dense now makes his already high defense reach 51 making very few physical attacks even hurt him (at the cost of doing pitiful damage though). Very underrated unit who should be talked about a lot more than he is. It's likely due to how big the sword pool is.

 

 

Joshua (Tempest King/Sacred Stones)

 

Spoiler

Joshua is a character who is cursed to be just average. His stat spread is pretty average and somebody is going to outclass any role he'd perform. In fact, Marissa pretty much is a superior Joshua being equipped with a Wo Dao+. Joshua's most impressive stat has to be his high res for a sword unit. He just doesn't have very good means to make full use of it. Joshua is in no means a bad character as his base stat total is very high with all of his stats in the low 30s. He also comes with a very, very rare skills of Windsweep and Close Defense so you probably don't want to merge both and use one for SI.

 

If you want to use Joshua though, it's going to grind down to what role you want him to perform and what you have. DC used to be a viable option but with the free Vanguard Ike, it's not as desired as it was. I'd personally recommend Life and Death on him as it'll make use of his bulk while now being able to hit hard and double. Fury 3 and a ploy Skill also are pretty solid on him as it makes use of his niche res.

 

 

Marissa (Crimson Flash/Sacred Stones)

 

Spoiler

Marissa in a nutshell is Joshua but with better speed. If you compare the two, Marissa has speed and HP over Joshua plus Infantry pulse making her the superior of the two. Sure she doesn't hit as hard not having a personal weapon, but Wa Dao+ is refineable and makes up for that freeing her A skill to be about anything. Her biggest fault is that there's a very long list of fast hard hitting units that can do what she does with less effort such as Ayra, Mia, Lyn, Ryoma, Fallen Celica, Soleil, Lucina, etc. The chances of not having one of those by now is very low. If you don't, Marissa certainly isn't one to ignore and should be trained up as a hard hitting red. Plus she has Infantry Pulse which is a great C support skill.

 

 

Masked Marth (Enigmatic Blade/Awakening)

 

Spoiler

One of the most infamous Tempest Rewards being not only very common, but having only her Falchion at base and her stats are base Lucina. For those who got all of her versions, she's better than Lucina since she can hit +4 now which very few f2p units can. She also is essentially the best Tempest Trial character to use in Tempeset due to her Falchion and Renewal serving as a Medic when needed. Her Falchion refined skill also makes her a tad bit stronger when near allies making her hit even harder than she already does. With Fury 3, Falchion, and +2 merged, she hits 53 Atk and 40 speed. She's a very good unit, but she is very difficult to raise due to the need to SI her entire kit. It's very well worth is once you do since you'll have a strong sword and the second best Falchion user.

 

 

Tobin (The Worthless Clueless One/Shadows of Valentia)

 

Spoiler

Tobin is both bad and not bad at the same time. If it weren't for his abysmal 27 speed combined with his all average stats, he'd have more uses. Joshua, Marissa, and Masked Marth all have uses and more completed skillsets over Tobin who needs a completely new skillset to work. It's also kind of sad that you could just spend 5 orbs and more than likely roll something better than Tobin such as Hinata. There's really nothing justified to training or spending this much time on him though as he only has okay stats in the other fields due to being a villager, but anything with 32 speed or higher will double and probably kill him. Most people already probably knew that.

 

Now if you actually make a fully invested and perfect moveset for Tobin with Steady Breath and Aether, he's actually not going to be as bad as people think. This very, very expensive kit turns him into a pseudo dragon making him kind of hard to kill since his defense is pretty good. Add a slaying edge and he'll be a solid tank to boot. It's just that this is very expensive and very hard to do making him the second worst tempest character (sorry Hunter but that medal goes to Clive). But all in all, it's better to just pick Joshua or Marissa over him for a certain role he performs.

 

(Behold the rare sight of a level 40 Tobin)

 

Navarre (Scarlet Sword/Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem)

 

Spoiler

Navarre is a character who was overshadowed the entire game time. He's now got the slaying edge but there's just many people who can do what he can do better. Navarre's biggest and best feature is that he's fast for a f2p character. 37 speed is impressive but his attack is still a bit to be desired. 47 attack isn't bad but with his defenses, he's not going to be living very many battles which he kind of needs to. He also has very, very heavy competition from fast swords who have slightly better stats than he does. He's not bad and worth promoting if you're short on good swords, but he's just outclassed by so many characters it's not even funny. Maybe he'll eventually get a personal making him a little better.

 

 

Lloyd (White Wolf/Blazing Blade)

 

Spoiler

Lloyd is perhaps the weirdest possible f2p sword unit in the game and that's not even talking about his game art. The man is designed as a mage killer with really good res, but with no built in DC and low defense, it makes him a quirky unit to use. Whether or not you want to promote and invest in him is entirely based on what you need. Lloyd provides great abilities to mage bait and kill with his swords affect giving him a good boost to possibly double and kill a mage, but he also has a rare refine effect that also gets a boost if an infantry mage is nearby. If you're good with making use of drive and ward skills, you could make Lloyd hit some really, really high stats especially with a mage dancer, but this niche could also work well with Nino since she is well...one of the best green tome mages. I definitely do think he gets overlooked because of his low defense making him kind of frail, but his refine skill kind of turned him into a decent sword with a unique niche. He also has decent speed to boot. It's a shame he's part of the "I want DC" group like so many other heroes who'd greatly benefit from it.

 

 

Xander (Paragon Knight/Fates)

 

Spoiler

Oh boy Xander aka who I feel is a bit overrated due to his DC skill attached to his sword. Xander's biggest niche is that he serves as an armored unit on a horse with stats built around that. The key difference between an armor and Xander is that Xander will be doubled by most mages and without horse buffs backing him up, he's going to have a hard time killing them before dying. Now you've got a mage in desperation range ready to cause trouble.

 

Xander's just in an awkward situation as most horse teams are designed to be hyper offensive which a few certain red swords such as B!Roy and Eliwood give, but when it comes to defense, he's only got respectable defense to work with which is just enough. It just makes DC not very helpful on him compared to how Sigurd's stuff that makes him near untouchable during enemy phase. Low Res and Low Speed for a DC unit don't mix. We can then compare him to Camus who ironically has the speed to not be doubled as much (base 33 speed isn't bad at all) with the same res.

 

I don't think Xander is awful, but I feel he's one of the worst sword calvs due to his niche being so limited in use. Xander doesn't stick out if you try using him outside of horse emblem. 

 

 

Alfonse (Prince of Askr/Heroes)

 

Spoiler

Alfonse is who we refer to as the Bench Boy, but I feel as time went on he went from being the worst of the trio to the middle outclassing his sister. So what exact does Alfonse has going for him? He has a low speed, decent defense, and a really high attack stat for a f2p unit. With his personal weapon, he hits a whopping 51 attack and comes with Death Blow. If you're willing to spend some Sacred Coins, you could kit him out with Desperation 2 (save your Shannas for other characters) and Brash Assault along with Reciprical Aid/Ardent Sacrifice though he probably could reach that threshold after one round of combat.

 

There's a specific reason to do this. His personal weapon gives him +5 attack when he's at or below 50% of his HP. With that kit, he'll be hitting people with 62 attack twice probably killing anything that isn't an armor. It's a risky kit but the payoff is great since it makes use of his full stats. Even with a lesser kit, Alfonse usually can pitch a heavy hit in the Arena if you need to use him. His base kit has more chances of KOing someone over Anna or Sharena or finishing enemies off. Spur Attack 3 is also a nice skill for supporting making him at least somewhat helpful if he's on the field.

 

The biggest con with Alfonse isn't that he's bad, but he's average and with niches most speedy swords perform better anyways. He's actually not awful or complete trash and if he had a little more speed and a little more defense, I'd honestly consider him a very, very good unit. He's a very fun unit to experiment around with and easily worth investing time into as he gets an orb mission once in a while. He's clearly outclassed by a very large chunk of the sword pool, but he's honestly the most interesting of the Askr trio. And of course, he doesn't have merges or refines, but maybe one day he'll get a refine skill.

 

 

Ike (Vanguard Legend/Radiant Dawn)

 

Spoiler

Depending on your definition of f2p, Vanguard Ike is and isn't a free to play unit. I'll be using his base stat version in my explanation. The biggest difference between this Ike and the Path of Radiance Ike is that he's designed to be tankier. He comes in with a pretty solid kit but his main feature is Warding Breath. This is essentially the best A skill on him as when it combines with Radiant Aether, he can simply tank enemies for a while, especially if he keeps healing back up to QR range.

 

Ike is not immortal, but he's about as close as you can get to anything that's not blue. He has all the right stats in all the right places with the 30 speed threshold preventing him from being doubled by quite a lot. He also makes great use for his Distant Counter Blade, Ragnell much better than his regular version does. The most crucial piece is that he's a legendary hero who adds attack and hp to units with Earth blessings. He basically has an AoE Drive Attack 2 during earth seasons. Attack imo is the best stat to raise as sometimes a hero just barely misses the damage threshold by a tad bit.

 

His only weakness is the he relies on QR to function. When he gets out of the QR range and can't proc Radiant Aether, there's a good change he's probably about to die especially if he's near a mage. If you use him as a Mage tank (bar blues) then he also needs the DD3 seal to make full use of him hitting that 30 res threshold. Even when taking that into account, he still outclasses pretty much any other f2p sword unit option. That is to be expected from one of the strongest lords and units in the entire series.

 

 

I'll eventually upload pics of what my heroes look like for these guys, but I need to finish training Tobin and Navarre first. Maybe I'll eventually do the f2p mages.

[Chase]

Hey man, Clive is great, what is wrong with you

 

That's some good work, Commander.

 

---

 

Today, I feel like talking about a few of the worth considering dagger units in the game. Daggers are low might distance attackers that have the added bonus of debuffing their targets after combat. This is pretty much essential, because these units often will not be able to outright kill whoever they are attacking, but they can swing the tide in your favor if you use them ahead of your other units. What's important with making a dagger user work is either A - finding one of the few that can possess a strong physical attack stat or specific niche target they will perform well against, or B - supporting them with heavy hitters that can clean up.

 

Let's start with a freebie, and my favorite dagger (and easily top 5 favorite units) in the game.

 

---

 

Felicia: Maid Mayhem (Fire Emblem Fates, Dagger, Infantry, Available for free via the Hero Battle rotation)

Spoiler

In the long term, Felicia quite simply is a high merge potential unit that recently has been blessed with refinement capabilities and can use them to expand her role. That role in particular is being a very speedy resistance tank, being able to duel most mages in the game.

 

In the short term, Felicia struggles very mightily and will really need some Tower/Training Map babying and to be at least 4 star rarity to come into the role to begin with. There are some negatives with Felicia that have to be addressed first. She is not a unit anyone should be using in the very early stages of ones' Heroes career unless they are comfortable with an enemy phase play-style and relying on Felicia to proc a special. Her Attack stat is initially horrendous, and any serious Felicia user will need to begin merging her at 5* rarity as soon as possible (even if I don't do that personally) as her silver dagger's might is diminished because it is compensating for a bad stat, on top of using a dagger as a weapon lowering her damage potential.

 

Her base kit comes with standard metal daggers until her unique personal at 5*, Resistance +3, which is a very good budget skill and worth using if you pick her up early, and Breath of Life, which is a homage to her stave wielding assist role in Fates and is a great psuedoheal skill for position-keen players that can made better with the BoL seal.

Now to the fun part. If you do plan on using her early, she can inherit a dagger that allows her to debuff enemies regardless on if she can kill the target or not in the short term, which allows users to appreciate her weapon type for what it is. If you get her to 5* rarity she can pick up her personal weapon, a frozen plate in her namesake that can attack for the lower of the enemies' defenses. This shifts her killing potential from squarely on mages and a few other infantry when a proc occurs to potentially most units in the game with a proc, allowing her to function on both Player and Enemy Phase. Finally, her Plate can be refined with a stat augment of the player's choice, or with a personal effect that gives her a cooldown charge when engaged with a magic user, further supplying her strengths even though the weapon initially broadened her horizons.

 

Felicia is worth the struggle, and patient players may even find use for her early. She comes for free in a couple of copies and she is much more serviceable in her role as an anti-mage duelist in availability than Performing Olivia and Halloween Sakura, both of which are seasonal units. She can psuedoheal, she can tank, she can assault. She'll take various skills from Mia's Flashing Blade to Titania and Leon's Gaurd and make them shine. I could go on, but I think at this point you all at least know that she's a long term rewarding unit to use.

 

Sothe: Zephyr (Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn, Dagger, Infantry, Summonable at 4-5 star rarity)

Spoiler

Sothe is the shiny new kid on the block, and has safely wrested the title of "best" infantry dagger user from Kagero.

 

He comes with a personal weapon, the Peshkatz, a very strong knife that debuffs the target in all stats aside from HP while buffing allies within two spaces by the same amount for the turn. This, when played proper, effectively makes Sothe's team extremely deadly to the target if they manage to survive, and still threatening to anyone Sothe may not have targeted that may be in the vicinity. He also comes with the highly desirable Life and Death skill in his A slot, which gives him +5 Attack and Speed in exchange for -5 to both of his defenses. This works really nicely for Sothe personally because an unusually terrifying statline at 36/33 gets made even better, to the point where enemies will want to kill him before he can attack most units. His innate special is Glimmer, which is again a very well sought after skill that now has a great cooldown count and boosts damage by 50% when active, which means he's getting off even more damage and doing so often. Finally, he comes with a very good dual Spur in Attack and Speed.

 

Sothe came in a very good banner alongside Arena threats Zelgius and Micaiah, and even though he has a very good base kit, it simply wasn't as good as the other two, which made him the 4* demotion. This is arguably the best thing about Sothe, because he's now one of those units you will get - eventually. Life and Death provides the only real "negative" if you choose to run Sothe, in that his frailty may limit his ability to impact a battle, but that can be avoided by swapping LnD out for a skill like Swift Sparrow when you get the fodder, or being very mindful of positioning.

 

If you get a good nature, this is a unit you should build. If you don't, someone can get Life and Death 3 for your team. Sothe's a good guy.

 

Saizo: Angry Ninja (Fire Emblem Fates, Dagger, Infantry, Summonable at 3-4 star rarity)

Spoiler

If you were thinking about using Matthew: Faithful Spy, and Hector's good buddy from Fire Emblem Blazing Sword, pay attention to this build for him knowing that Saizo A - does anything Matthew could hope to do better and is almost as equally available, and B - what his idea is if you still want to go that route because you like Blazing Sword more than Fates or something.

 

Saizo and Matthew have statlines that lean toward physical defense, allowing them to potentially check enemy archers and other daggers using the Distant Defense seal, which everyone should get their hands on. Saizo personally comes with the Smoke Dagger, which is a very good AoE debuff that affects enemies around the one Saizo targets. this can be very helpful for building flexible Arena cores, because not every unit can score KOs efficiently and the Smoke Dagger can cover a good distance and thus assist the team if they can attack an effective enemy. He also comes with Poison Strike, which synergizes very nicely with Saizo's inability to kill targets by dealing further damage to them, meaning his teammates again don't have to work so hard to finish the job. Finally, he has Spur Speed, which is only accessible at 5 Stars and isn't a great incentive to get him there, admittedly (thankfully his dagger is).

 

My recommendation for a Saizo (and less so with Matthew) would be to capitalize on his ability to survive physical encounters and become an angry soothsayer of doom for your enemies. Long term, he gets a lot better by coughing up Takumi's Close Counter to him (which isn't a super good unit unlike Hector and Distant Counter, but you may have other 2 range units that want that skill, so pay attention to your barracks!) because a lot of physical 1 range enemies will fail to kill him, especially after a defensive refine. After the defensive refinement and CC however, Saizo isn't that expensive to build and his high merge potential can render PvE content and Arena foes alike in a really poor spot. Saizo is content running Fury until you can get him CC as well.

 

Like Felicia, He has a very low ceiling with low investment, but is widely available and can serve a very interesting niche that in this case can allow you to use more of your favorite units for Arena runs and high-end content. I think that's worth it.

 

[Chase]

Today, I want to talk about a couple of the new dragons as well as a few of the easier to obtain dragons already in the game, as Dragon Emblem has been both extraordinarily effective in Arena performance and has been getting blessed by Intelligent Systems as opposed to being nerfed on and off. For general reference, Dragon units are seemingly atypical of the general Heroes mantra that good offense is everything. Fully built, dragons will be able to tank hits from physical units and magic users alike with great consistency. They also will have adaptive damage that targets their opponent's less reliable defense stat. On Player Phase, they attack from 1 range, but will target the resistance stat unless specified in weapon description that they have adaptive damage or their breath has been refined. Their flexible nature makes them by themselves pretty good fits for mixed teams, but with Dragon Emblem buffs they can reach fearsome stats. Unlike dealing with the movement type buffs however, Dragons need very specific counterpicks to be taken down with regularity. Falchion users (as is the case in normal Fire Emblem games) make for decent picks against most of the field, with most dragons being Green at this point as well as the swords having natural effective damage against dragons. The other alternative is the Naga and Divine Naga tomes.

 

Falchion users are limited to the following units: Marth (Shadow Dragon), Alm (Echoes/Gaiden), Chrom and his Exalted Cavalier alternate (Awakening), Lucina and her masked variant (Awakening) - making a total of six specific sword units with Masked Marth being the only freebie and Marth and regular Chrom being the only two easily summonable. The Naga tomes are restricted to two units from Genealogy of the Holy War, Julia, and her mother Deirdre. Both Naga wielders are 5* exclusive.

 

Finally, to illustrate the raw power of dragons, it is not a done deal that Falchion units will prevail (with Alm's Double Lion refinement being the exception) in the case of dragons that are blue, and built correctly, Julia and Deirdre are at risk against any iteration of Tiki, both of which are red units. Thus, there are arena defense teams that are utilizing Dragon buffs and can take care of both of their effective weapon weaknesses.

 

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Male Kana: Dragon Spawn (Fire Emblem Fates, Blue Dragon, Infantry, Soon to be available in an upcoming Grand Hero Battle)

Spoiler

Male Kana is poised to be the most atypical GHB unit to date.

 

First, he will be the first dragon unit available to free players, which means he has a significant personal niche on the freemium scale. Remember, Dragons are typically flexible.

 

Secondly, Kana has been blessed with three extremely compelling inheritance options. Brazen Defense/Resistence will boost his defensive stats by SEVEN once he hits the 80% or less HP threshold. Compared to Defiant Defense, this skill is much more generous in stat provision as well as how much damage Kana will be allowed to take in order to activate the skill. Armor units such as Fallen Robin and Zelgius would make great use of this skill when it comes to top tier units that enemy phase. Kana also comes with Water Breath, a dragonbreath that offers adaptive damage innately and again boosts the defenses, this time by four, when the enemy initiates combat. This is Bracing Stance built into a weapon, and with another dragon you will see from her base kit why this is nice. Finally, he comes with Fortify Dragons, an additional defensive boost to adjacent dragon allies that was previously locked to Ninian, a high demand 5* exclusive.

 

Thirdly, he is a very balanced unit, which is the sweet spot for drakes where it may be potentially problematic for other units. He still has okay speed and attack, and his defenses are 31/30, meaning dual defense boosts (like Water Breath and Brazen Def/Res....Hmm...) will make both of his defensive stats the same level of good.

 

If you were to use a cheap build and go for something like Swordbreaker in the B-slot, you have someone who be able to nullify Falchion's effective damage, while boosting his physical defense to 41 under Water Breath and Brazen boosts WITHOUT the help of anything like a drive defense, a tactic, or a Dragon Buff. Within the context of a dragon team, Kana could be nigh invincible, even unmerged. This is a pretty huge deal for free players because it makes sure their first dragon is a very good one to include in a core. Oh yeah, even though he'll need to retaliate on the next turn, he still reaches 40 Resistance, which is again really good and makes a multiturn engagement considerable, especially when his breath gives adaptive damage.

 

Of the two Kanas, I would say Male Kana is much more receptive of Lightning Breath. This leaves his defenses relying solely on Brazen Def/Res, which will still give him 37/36 in each of those stats, while immediately countering the mages that attack him. This again, doesn't take into consideration team or peripheral stat buffs. He's reaching these levels all by himself - meaning he's good for being an initial starter unit to being a strong Arena prospect. For Free.

 

...also, he's called Dragon Spawn not as in insult, but as a cute homage to his support with Rhajat, where she coined the moniker. Rhajat, like her inspiration Tharja, is captivated by the avatar, and sees her son as her offspring before his own individual identity.

 

Female Kana: Dragon Princess (Fire Emblem Fates, Green Dragon, Infantry, 5* Exclusive, currently a focus unit on the Wings of Fate banner)

Spoiler

Female Kana differs in focus from her alternative timeline masculine self. She's slightly quicker and has a preference to taking physical damage as opposed to being indifferent to either attack. This makes her able to be doubled less in general, but take more damage from mages out of the box. Comparably, she has a similar statline to Female Corrin, her alternative timeline....father who is actually a woman?....phrasing.

 

Instead of Brazen Def/Res, Female Kana has an equally desirable Fierce Stance skill in her A slot initially. This skill gives SIX extra points in Attack when the enemy initiates. This would initially join her Water Breath defense buffs to give her up to 40 Attack with a +Attack boon not counting weapon might, along with 37/30 defenses at neutral on the enemy phase. This works nicely for taking down most lances on the enemy phase while shrugging off damage, but doesn't mean anything when the opponent is too far away to hit back. Without Water Breath, she misses out on the ability take magic damage well, which makes a replacement like Lightning Breath iffy outside of a Dragon Emblem team because Kana won't have access to buffs that matter in most cases. 26 Resistance is shaky. 

 

That being said, Kana has the potential to hit 37 speed unboosted. This not only sets up better-than-appears magical bulk due to not being doubled (though she still will want to watch out for Dire Thunder and Bladetomes), she has decent enough attack to be built into a very rare player phase dragon, making skills like Fury or Swift Sparrow or even Life and Death if you are feeling frisky not all that bad an option. If she wants to keep Water Breath (which you should do if you want to run her off of a dragon set up), a not-so-modest sacrifice of everyone's favorite Ostian Lord will allow her to have both the distant counter effect of Lightning Breath and the enemy phase defense boosts. Within a Dragon Team, you can compensate for cutting corners with Ward Dragons patching up questions about her resistance. There's also the distant defense skill seal, though it is highly competitive as to who should be holding it on a dragon team.

 

Within her color, she runs slightly more favorably to Fae lacking merges, but isn't as good as Myyrh or Fallen Robin. Within her statline she compares favorably to Female Corrin. Her statline is rather interesting, and I'd imagine it is taking Gamepress a long time to figure out how to talk about her, because she has a lot of potential on both phases and nobody really knows how to build her to be optimized quite yet.

 

Adult Tiki: Naga's Voice (Fire Emblem Awakening, Red Dragon, Infantry, 3-4* availability)

Spoiler

Let's talk about dragons who are not initially good but can be made good by high merges and skill inheritance.

 

Adult Tiki is a red dragon that has decent attack, great defense, and bad speed and resistance. This makes her a coin-flip unit immediately out of the box because she will always attack for resistance without a breath refine and will either laugh at physical damage (excluding Falchion's effective damage) or get burned by magic damage.

 

The employment of Steady Breath or Warding Breath immediately helps Tiki out. Steady doubles down on the good things, giving Tiki nigh impenetrable physical bulk, where Warding Breath fixes the lacking Resistance. Both Breath skills give an extra cooldown charge each action, giving Adult Tiki a threatening precense with her innate Bonfire special active extremely often. She also has Lightning Breath innately, and in the latter instance, it starts to really shine, especially with a resistance refine drawing her enemy phase bulk dead even with her physical bulk. From there she can run the gauntlet of B slot skills. Quick Riposte, though now a seal, will let her retaliate after each enemy strike and works well considering her bad speed. Guard protects her from special damage, Vantage lets her hit people before they can hit them, Renewal recovers HP, etc.

 

I wanted to use Adult Tiki to make a little bit of a broader point when it comes to to the cheaper dragons such as her, Nowi, Fae, Female Corrin, and possibly Male Kana. They make for extremely great "sandbox" units with a lot of surprising potential and are very easy to merge up. The mentioned dragons have exceptional longevity, and they cover the color triangle as well as the potential dragonslayer weapons if built to handle them. Keep watching this post for a write up on Female Corrin.

 

Just know, that A!Tiki and her younger iteration are very good at dealing with enemy Naga users.

 

[Felicity]

Fun fact, given a defense boon, def refine Water Breath and Brazen, which she can get by eating her brother, FKana is actually at the same tier of tanking as Myrrh and Tiki, if not better due to her higher speed and res. She can hit, with a close defense seal as well as Dragon defense buffs, around 63 defense when attacked and in brazen range. All those skills proccing also helps her res too, bar CD since most magic is ofc ranged. 

 

Kana is basically slightly worse at physical tanking than Tiki or Myrrh but makes up for it for being better with magic and having a better speed stat than either of them. Her real low point seems to be her attack in fact. To hit her high defense stats she has to sacrifice DC lightning breath for WB and she loses 10 defense to both stats on intiation since CD and WB are of course enemy phase. That said, the high points of tanks has always been living long enough to see the special proc, you give her ignis and i doubt her damage will be an issue.

 

So yeah, she adorable and murderous. Like almost every dragon.

 

 

 

[Commander]

Since I'm in a Red Colored mood and I've actually been working on a bunch of heroes I may as well do a Lord review as well since it's really surprising how little many of these don't get talked about anymore. Let's just start with Mascot boy:

 

Marth Altean Prince (Shadow Dragon/New Mystery of the Emblem)

 

Spoiler

Marth is really kind of unfortunate. I think it's kind of insulting that he has no alternates, but his wife actually does. Marth is portrayed pretty accurately in Heroes especially when it first came out. He doesn't have any real stats that stand out other than speed, but none of them are necessarily bad. But his speed stat of 34 isn't really as good as it once was but it isn't bad by all means. This average stat distribution really bites him in the long run since every other Falchion user does outclass him in one way or another.

 

Marth isn't completely worthless though as he has a much higher res stat compared to most of his competition making decent use of his Falchion's dragon slayer effect. Other than dragons he most likely will want to avoid getting too much into combat until his Falchion heals him back up since he can't deal too much damage. This is again very true to his game where he rarely stood in the front lines and was written to be more supportive of his comrades. That's likely why his refineable Falchion is a drive all 1 skill which honestly is a very good skill to have. Unfortunately, another lord performs his support role better, but he's certainly not a worthless investment if you put effort into him. If the meta shifts and Panic Skills come more often, he definitely will be seeing a lot more use being a good supporting character who's ready to jump into the action if needed.

 

Caeda Talys's Heart (Shadow Dragon/New Mystery of the Emblem)

 

Spoiler

While Caeda is not a true lord, she may as well be considered one in Shadow Dragon. Just to give you an idea: Caeda's role in Shadow Dragon is of more importance and significance than Azura is to Fire Emblem Fates. She even receives her own signature weapon in Shadow Dragon (not sure about FE12) and it's really, really good. I really feel she should have been a Lance Flier because the Red color did not do her justice. In fact, Caeda used to be one of the worst units in FE Heroes.

 

So how does she fair now? The biggest change is the fact she now has her Wing Spear in the form of the Sword helping compensate for her very low attack. She does get an Attack Superboon which is probably what I'd recommend on her if you want to invest in her. She has a very respectable base speed of 37, which Shigure just came in with which people are praising since very few fliers even hit that threshold. She even has excellent res to boot. Her biggest downfall is that low res which really hurts her in combat. The limited IV selection hurts her but since she's pretty common now, you'll eventually get a good one to invest in.

 

The saving grace on Caeda is her weapon which is super effective against Calvary and Armored units. While being in combat with Armors isn't necessarily the best idea, she can take on Green ones pretty safely with enemy phase tactics. What's really cool about her refine effect is her flashing blade skill. If he place her into combat with a mage and then counter them with a double, that's one dead mage. It really helps her stand out as unique which all three of the Sword Peg Princesses (even though one is a queen) keep unique roles making each one worth investing for a different reason.

 

 

Alm Hero of Prophecy (Shadows of Valentia)

 

Spoiler

Alm is another tale of a character going from zero to hero which is kind of funny seeing as his in-game self was always okay for me then crazy good when he got his Falchion. He was a pretty bad unit because he had slow speed of 30 and not the greatest attack and defense stats. They aren't bad, but don't really work all that well when you die in a round to a lot of things. He got one really cool skill of Double Lion letting him have a brave sword effect when his HP is at 100% then losing 5 HP afterwards. This makes his kit all work perfectly together. If you strap phantom speed on him, he'll basically be the dragon slayer everyone has been looking for. Then pull him out of the way and let his Falchion recover the damage afterwards and he'll do it again. That's my personal recommendation as it serves a lot of cool purposes but it grinds down to IVs you roll on him.

 

Is he the best Falchion user though? That's really hard to say. Masked Marth has more utility and damage so she will win in more scenarios but I feel Alm is better suited for the scenarios she's not good at. His defense also is kind of low for a slow unit so he'll need to be careful. In fact, Masked Marth is tankier than him. I think Marth also is tankier than him...which is saying something. Great unit and good to bring to the Arena if you are tired of pesky dragons.

 

 

Celica Caring Princess (Shadows of Valentia)

Spoiler

I want to start off saying that there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to Celica. People are quick to jump seeing her rather good speed and design her to be a nuke like Nino. Is that a very viable strategy one her? Absolutely and Life and Death is a pretty good option on her. The problem there is that people then think she's the only good red infantry mage due to her being the only real fast one. I'm about to lay down some cold hard facts saying that she's the third best infantry mage and one I'd recommend against fully investing unless you have a Soothe army. I also finally get to talk about Red Mages.

 

So people put Life and Death on her because of her tome Ragnorok giving her attack and speed +5 when she's at full HP. A neutral Celica would then have 56 attack and 43 speed. That sounds absolutely amazing, right? That is until you realize that she'll die to anything does 56 damage before she attacks and and 51 after a round of combat. 56 hurts, but it can't always one round things which means she'll take damage from ranged units. That's going to really hurt since she has 17 defenses since you chipped those away. Now let's take a look at Sanaki. Without any investment, she has roughly the same attack stat being 52, but won't double. She has a good chunk of Res so she can combat mages just fine (mine has plus Res) while also being able to support other units. The thing is that she can run a breaker skill and perform almost as well as nuke Celica with little investment and even outperform her with investment while also being a support unit.

 

I haven't even gotten to the best part. There's now a better nuclear warhead. Liliana has an insanely high attack which you can get an Atk boon one rather easily reaching 54 attack. This girl is a glass cannon so she'll probably be running death blow and her DB3 refine making her hit 66 damage. You may argue that it's not as much damage as Celica. Well, Forblaze also has the effect of lowering the enemy with the highest res by 7 making it basically hit 73 on them. Not a lot of things are going to be able to survive her and anything green knows it's about to die. She also has a freed up B slot to run a breaker skill as well.

 

Celica is not bad and she ultimately will do more damage then these two, but the margin is so small that it makes all three viable choices. The key thing that Celica has over the other two options is not her attack power, but her speed and okay defense stat. Her res is actually kind of bad but workable, but her defense is enough to possibly take an arrow...which the other two will more or less die to one unless Sanaki is a raven tome. 22 def and res is just enough to work and is not worth the cost of sacrificing for the sake of damage output since she can potentially be one shotted by a lot of things. I'd personally recommend a blow skill (Death or Darting) or Fury-Desperation to make full use of her stats as she'll last a lot longer then. She's a good unit and a fantastic red tome, but far from the only good option.

 

 

Sigurd Holy Knight (Genealogy of the Holy War)

 

Spoiler

This is the only lord I don't have...because the game does not want me to have him. The best way to describe him is that you could throw a nuclear bomb at him and he'd come out alive. Sigurd is one of the best enemy phase units in the entire game purely due to his amazing weapon to compensate for his only poor stat on him: his Res. Divine Tryfing cuts magic damage in half for the first attack and if you double, his crusader's ward will make the second hit do almost zero damage. This man can survive a hit from Michaiah's Thani easily making him one very big pain in the ass to kill. He also comes with Close Defense adding insult to injury. Pretty much he'll probably be surviving an enemy phase round no matter what you throw at him.

 

Being good at enemy phase is pretty critical imo as sometimes you need to draw enemies out on a map and have them move towards you. Sigurd compliments horse emblem perfectly because very, very few horses can do that making him a rather fine meat shield. His only real fault is that he's kind of bad on the player phase. Lord had mercy giving him only 32 speed because if he was faster, we'd all be in a lot of pain with his solid 51 attack stat if you count his sword. I really hope I get Sigurd one of these days since I love enemy phase units, but that'll probably never happen anytime soon. I'm definitely not going to argue against him being the best lord in heroes though since he has very, very few weaknesses.

 

T_T I'll probably never have a Sigurd pic for this.

 

Seliph Heir of the Light (Genealogy of the Holy War)

 

Spoiler

So which one of these lords is the worst? Some might argue Marth, but I'd honestly say it's Seliph...if we don't count Alfonse. He's not unusable as Divine Tryfing (don't use his normal Tryfing) lets him serve as an amazing mage tank, but then we see the problem that he has in which his father didn't. He has 24 speed. If he came with Distant Counter, I'd say he's a really good unit, but he doesn't so any combat with melee units will likely spell the death of him. I haven't trained or tested him yet, but from experience with Alfonse, I'd definitely say he's kind of underrated.

 

So what Seliph has going for him is that he's an easy unit to get IVs in which I'd recommend trying to get a Res bane since mages will have a hell of a time killing him. He can still do the role of his father there which he could use the Deflect magic seal to be exactly like his dad if you aren't running DC. He also has a great attack which combining with a special can kill a lot of units. His really standout feature is his very high HP stat. Now from my experience from Alfonse, I can tell you that having a high attack stat usually isn't spectacular if you don't double because you can't exactly kill somebody. That's kind of where the 24 speed bites him. Arrows will likely do him in and he can only handle melee fighting so much before dying.

 

His other big fault is that making him viable is very expensive. He is the only lord here where you need to divine dew him just to be able to even use him. That's kind of a bad thing when so many units really, really want to preference weapons upgraded. He also has people like Lloyd and Joshua who while they can't mage tank as well as he can, they'll perform it well enough for a much cheaper price. But if you're upset about not rolling Sigurd, Seliph is a fun option to watch those enemy mages do next to nothing to you.

 

Leif Prince of Leonster (Thracia 776)

 

Spoiler

Being the last lord to arrive, Leif has some very, very stiff competition from the very large sword movepool. I'd honestly say that he's the most well rounded of the options having the right stats just where he needs him including an okay res stat of 23. First thing to point out is that Leif is really, really fast with that nice base 38 speed letting him be able to double a large number of enemies. Steady Blow is an interesting skill on him but...I'd have to say Fury might be a better option. S Drink is a very interesting B Skill which I'll say is very viable for chain challenges and tempest, but it's a glorified quickened pulse outside of that. Not a bad skill to keep as only desperation is the only replacement.

 

Now let's talk about Leif's weapon the Light Brand. It helps compensate for Leif's overall low attack (it's not too bad though) by adding +7 whenever the opponent's res is +5 or more lower than its defense. Leif's Drive Atk 2 C skill is amazing but if you want to be THAT GUY, you could put Threaten Res on Leif to hit the mixed bulk (cough Dragons cough) hard as well. The day a Res Smoke Seal comes out will be a grand day for Leif. I kind of wish he came out before Ayra and Mia as those two kind of outclass him due to their more consistent higher damage, but he's a good substitute for those who don't have him. The poor boy also got outclassed by Rein being the to roll for character instead. He's a good unit who just can't get a break from being overshadowed.

 

 

Roy Young Lion (Binding Blade)

 

Spoiler

Roy has to be the unsung hero of the Fire Emblem lords. He was kind of meh until weapon refinement made him into a pretty cool unit. So Roy's weapon is rather niche letting him be a pretty cool dragon slayer as it makes the Binding Blade effective against dragons and gives him def and res +4 when he's attacked and a QR3 refine. The best way I can describe him is the enemy phase version of Alm. While he isn't as good at killing, he's certainly has the res to take them on in combat since his 31 speed makes it so very few bulky (dragon) enemies will double him. He does want an attack boon so that he'll have a solid 49 attack which is just enough to do what he needs.

 

When you look at him outside of dragon emblem is when he starts looking a little rusty. His kit lets him retaliate back rather well but that attack may have some trouble with killing them or taking hits. I'm planning on giving mine Steady Stance (RIP Black Knight) and Close Defense to make that lousy 25 into an impressive 41. He has a wild amount of options to pick out for his kit and even his own Triangle Adept option isn't too bad. He definitely is a fun one to kit out and try due to his huge variety of options especially with that high res stat for a Sword unit. Just be aware the his low speed will make him very weak to fast swords.

 

 

Eliwood Knight of Lycia (Blazing Blade)

 

Spoiler

Eliwood is a special snowflake lord. He has a lot of options to work with though I don't recommend investing in a Blazing Durandal on him unless you really, really want to maximize Eliwood's potential. The best way to sum up Eliwood is that he's a horse and he hits hard. I do think he's better than Xander in that regard as unlike Xander he can take hits from mages with his impressive 29 res and okay 30 speed. When you have 50 attack with a boon, it works out just fine especially after horse buffs. The slight downside to Eliwood is that he has a horrible defense stat of 23. He won't be getting doubled so he'll survive a hit or two being able to retaliate and kill them on the Enemy phase.

 

A while back, I'm sure people would shrug Eliwood off being worthless, but now he is starting to shine as a viable option. with the rising amount of dragons, horse emblem has a hard time curbstomping them...mostly because Rein and Lyn don't one shot many of them...especially certain new green dragons. I think you can see where I'm going with this. He's a rare horse who could get into combat with a dragon and do some impressive work. He's become my Xander replacement for a reason. Outside of horse emblem Eliwood is just okay. He can do work but without the buffs he has trouble oneshotting a lot of things. 60 attack if you count Durandal's DB2 and DB3 will take down a large number of things or you could run swift sparrow with horse buffs and see him actually double. He's a fun and easy to train unit, but there may be better tankier options.

 

 

Lyn Lady of the Plains (Blazing Blade)

 

Spoiler

Lyn has a lot of speed...that's all she has going for her sadly. Lyn is a very quirky unit because of her weapon Sol Katti. It's a desperation 2 which is really good, but when you refine it, it makes it desperation 3 and bash assault 4 letting both activate when she's 75% HP or below. It's not the best refine but it frees up her B slot...it's just that there's not very many easy to give B skills for her past that. I've seen a lot of weird options given to her but Seal Defense might actually be viable on her. Escape Route and Guard could also be viable options. You also get a seal freed up on her which she wishes Flashing Blade was a seal. She doesn't have a lot of attack and is rare so it's very hard to get in which we haven't seen her on a banner in a long time.

 

If you want to use her, Fury or Defiant Attack work well on her for easy to come by skills. I say Fury and not Life and Death because Lyn actually has pretty decent bulk for a speedy unit (she comes with a nice 37 speed base). You really do need to kit her out to have good attack otherwise she will feel...very weak or may not even do damage to the enemy. That's really why she's one of the shakiest units to say if she's good or bad since it's so low. I haven't done the refine but the one I've used is a double edged sword as she's crazy fun and does solid damage when she's in the 50% HP range but it's so risky as an enemy could easily finish her off if she doesn't get out of range.

 

 

Hector General of Ostia (Blazing Blade)

 

Spoiler

Sigh...I don't even think I need to really go into this one. Hector is one of the best heroes in the game and has not been taken down even after a full year has passed. Instead of talking about him, I'll take about whether or not you should consider upgrading his weapon to Berserk Armads. It's a really big depends and not because Berserk Armads isn't good (it really is an amazing weapon), but Armads has a niche effect of letting Hector double without being doubled. I have both Hectors who have similar strats, I have used both Hectors enough times to say that they are about even. If you prefer Vantage Hector, go for Berserk Armads as you'll dish out crazy damage and possible even kill them in one hit. I prefer ignis hector since mine has 40 def and he can one shot on activation. Both are good and both serve similar roles. But for the love of all things, don't go Vantage Berserk Armads. I facepalm every time I see that because all it does is make Hector die one turn faster. It's probably good against the AI but so easy to counter for players who know what they're doing.

 

Then there's the ye old question "Should I fodder Hector off?" Hector is really good purely due to his Distant Counter skill. His stats are great, but that's what makes him such a threat. Many units also greatly benefit from it as well. The best answer I can give you is this "If you don't care about losing great units in the long run, it should be fine, but don't waste it on someone stupid." Building certain armors with DC is a lot of fun.

 

(I run the QR3 seal on him but that's in use right now)

 

Eirika Restoration Lady (Sacred Stones)

 

Spoiler

We're all probably aware of the famed Rallybot by this point. Eirika may have to be desired stats especially in attack, but she comes with Sieglinde's nice effect of raising the attack of adjacent allies by +3. With her weapon refinement, that is now boosted to a +4 and see can now boost three stats by that if she equips Hone Speed and a Hone Def/Res Seal. The Sword also allows her to stack those same boosts from nearby allies back onto herself. If you're a nerd though, you'll realize she can actually get the same buffs as non infantry units if you use a mix Emblem. That turns her to be desired stats into something respectable and she's great to have with Nino to boost her bladetome to sky high levels of damage.

 

She sounds like a very good and super viable unit to put on the field. Not...exactly. She's good, but there are many situations where all your units aren't adjacent from one another. This is where Marth shines as he doesn't need to be next to somebody to give boosts while Eirika does her thing. There's also Panic Ploy which would ruin your whole plans given armors run at least one with it. I haven't actually tested how Sieglinde works under Panic Ploy conditions. She also needs to run furry or triangle adept since she has a lot of middle ground stats and a pitiful 42 base attack with her weapon. Thankfully she's not uncommon so you can get good IVs. I'd argue that Marth is a slightly more viable option due to his weapon, but Eirika certainly has her own niches and uses, but there's one group of support roles I didn't talk about: Dancers.

 

We know dancers are good and many of the newer ones can actually stand on the front lines or serve as offensive units, but they now have a new trick up their sleeve: Dance B skills. These units are rare and hard to get appearing only on two seasonal banners, but dance skills are much more useful than Wings of Mercy. Remember how I said units have a hard time staying close together. Well these dance skills do the same boost but a unit doesn't have to be adjacent for it to work. These skills are very, very useful as well as Wards since it allows for units to stay out of danger zones a lot easier and Eirika can't exactly retaliate against ranges units...which her defenses are only okay. I could see her doing better on a mixed flier team since those have crazy mobility mechanics and synergies well with her skills.

 

If you are going to use her, there are some skills that I do recommend. Harsh command may seem like an odd skill on her, but with Chills appearing it may start making much more use. Her B skill can be a few things such as Counter and Escape route/wings of mercy giving her mobility. The attack smoke seal might not be bad on her either since she usually will be dealing KOs with her buffs. I'm going to start building her towards a mixed emblem...but I have a long list of Divine Dew units so it'll be a while.

 

 

Ephraim Restoration Lord (Sacred Stones)

 

Spoiler

If you want a laugh, my Eirika has more attack than my Ephraim. This man is very strange and he's got a lot of options on top of being a solid support unit. His only negative is his low speed but getting a speed boon is actually not a bad thing. So the game has this little trick in which if you refine Ephraim's lance Siegmund, it allows him to make a follow-up attack when he intiates and has HP 90% or higher. So if he uses windsweep with this, it cancels the two out and if Ephraim's speed is 5 higher than the opponent's, he'll do a double without even taking a hit. That's kind of crazy coming from someone with 52 attack. He has nice defense as well with a solid 32 and a nice 45 HP. I have a Earth Boost on mine but I may swap that out for Death Blow and the Heavy Blade Seal. He's a very fun unit regardless and being a lance makes him kind of superior to Eirika as he has a bit looser competition only having Brave Lucina fighting him for his role.

 

Now there's a new fun little toy he recently recieved. You can give him the Flame Siegmund which is a crazy good weapon. This lets him double when more enemies than allies are near him. This can make him pretty scary like his horse version who is pretty hard to kill in melee combat. It's hard for me to recommend one over the other as both are very good and very solid but I feel Siegmund is slightly better due to the Hone Attack 3 which is my go to C skill. He's one of the best infantry lances and he has a lot of options always making him interesting to look at and use.

 

 

Ike Young Mercy (Path of Radiance)

 

Spoiler

When Ike was first released, he dominated the arena along with Ryoma as they had all the right stats and Distant Counter was king. Now...it's not as big of a deal to have Distant Counter since the meta shifted more towards the physical side. This unfortunately really put the hurt in Ike and Ryoma. His exclusive A skill, Heavy Blade becoming a seal also really hurt him and his niche. Then Brave Ike came out and made Heavy Blade not as good. Then weapon refine...you probably get the idea.

 

Ike is not by all means bad, but he really fell with all of these viable options came out. I still use my Ike and he's still really good especially with his Aether Heavy Blade combo. Mine was plus speed so I summon supported him and equipped a +1 speed seal to make an impressive 37 speed Ike. Ike is a little slow, but he has enough speed and bulk to work with his distant counter Ragnell. What makes him good is that he hits hard and could recover with Aether letting him live for quite a long while.

 

Ike is still very good and viable. It's kind of like Takumi in which after the meta changed he isn't as viable of an option. He also got powercrept by his now superior version from Radiant Dawn which we recieved for free. The big difference between the two is that Vanguard Ike has more Res and a kit to take Magic damage better. The Black Knight also has similar stats in which he also serves as a better tank. It just kind of sucks when a good unit is outclassed by two free options. He also isn't every going to get a buff due to Vanguard Ike which adds insult to injury. Still a good unit, but you already have a better one...unless you foddered it off then in that case use this Ike instead because the only reason to fodder him is for Aether...which is Chrom's job.

 

 

Micaiah Priestess of Dawn (Radiant Dawn)

 

Spoiler

This is by far one of my favorite units so there will be bias here. So stats wise Miciah actually reflects her game stats not really having anything stand out, but she does have solid res and a low defense stat but 18 is at least useful for some builds. Her only bad bane would be -atk as getting a boon in any stat could have uses. At first glance, people will say Micaiah is good because of Thani. Thani adds +3 res and is super effective against horses and armors. This is very useful especially at handling common units like Rein, Lyn, and Winter Tharja. I haven't tested it on Henry and V! Lyn, but likely she'll have an easy time on those. She'll do a ton of damage to those specific units and can tank ranged damage thanks to her Distant Defense A skill. She's good at dealing with mages and dealing with a lot of units weak to Thani, but there's one skill we need to talk about: Sacrifice.

 

Sacrifice is one of the best skills in the game allowing for Micaiah to outclass even Masked Marth as a healer since it allows her to heal up to 34 HP on a unit. What also makes it really, really good is the Harsh Command effect reversing any debuffs they suffered. In short battles like Arena, that quick action can make all the difference especially on Armors who serve as tanks. This helps compensate for her weaker stats letting her build some nasty sets including Desperation with the Brash Assault Seal and perform it well. I personally run Renewal on mine so she can do a quick heal if even needed.

 

Her weakness is not being able to handle units who target her defense and melee as she will fall rather easy to them and she also has trouble being an offensive unit since she'll never double without meeting certain conditions. Something really good you can do with her to deal with DC armors is run Windsweep avoiding any dangers such as Vantage Hector. The only skill I don't recommend is running counter on her. It's not bad but...the times she's in that HP range are so little.

 

 

Elincia Lost Princess (Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn)

 

Spoiler

Commander! Elincia isn't a lord. She doesn't count. Radiant Dawn is a confusing game as the leader or lord in that game varies from chapter to chapter. Usually it's Ike or Micaiah, but at some points Elincia and Tibarn take charge. She's one of my favorite characters so bias will be bias. I wanted to actually strangle someone who sent an Elincia home simply because she had bad IVs of +Atk -Speed believing she sucked. Elincia is one of the best fliers and arguable the best Sword Flier. If she has +Atk, you rolled the best possible variation of Elincia.

 

So I want to clear up one misconception, Elincia's speed probably isn't going to matter. Amiti is an 11 mt brave sword with a speed reduction of -2 which sounds great on paper for quadding. Her speed is either going to be 31, 34, or 37 with it equipped. In most scenarios, you'd only be able to double enemies unless they are 29 or below speed. While you can make her quad with buffs...hone flier isn't easy to come by so you'd need to make use of goads and all that jazz. The thing is with an attack boon, she'll be hitting 51 attack counting death blow and 57 with hone flier buffs. This completely negates the reason to even quad in the first place. If you can kill the enemy without quadding then the speed doesn't even matter at that point. Elincia's speed is still very good and she can make use of tactics like the Firesweep sword, but I only recommend that if you have really good speed on her.

 

Now let's reverse that and say that you rolled -atk on her. Does that mean she's bad? Let's look at the other two options we have. Caeda has 25 base attack and Palla has 31 base attack. Elincia's low attack is on par with Palla's normal. So even at her worst she still outclasses the other two. She even has only two points in attack less than NY Camilla. If that were to happen then I'd suggest changing her weapon as while she isn't as strong, she's still very good and has a really good speed stat. Firesweep is probably the best option due to her lowish defense.

 

Another thing I want to point out. If you put moonbow on her with Amiti, I will slap you. So Moonbow would theoretically be better as it'd proc more often, right? There's a lot of big ifs. The first is if Moonbow doesn't kill the enemy on activation and you get a second attack. The second if is if the enemy isn't able to strike back and damage you since it'd be wasting a cooldown count. Moonbow would theoretically hit twice in three rounds of combat while Luna would hit 1-2 possible times. I'm a bigger fan of more damage since battles are usually too short for that to matter. Another fun strat is to throw Windsweep on her to avoid taking damage while dishing out some heavy damage, but make sure somebody is ready to get her out of range if you run that. I personally stick with her healer strat just like she was in the Tellius games. If she doesn't one round something, she probably does not want to engage it and hang back so healing is a nice thing to do while waiting. If you aren't a fan of those, the tried and true Hit 'n Run or Desperation Brash Assault works well on her.

 

There is one character I'd like to mention. While she is the best, NY Camilla isn't that far behind her. The biggest difference between the two is that NY Camilla has good defense and meh letting her be a great bulky flier while Elincia is kind of the frail hard hitting one. Both are fantastic options and both play different roles to the point one doesn't outclass the other and are both worth investing. I feel Elincia is better due to being more useful in mixed emblem.

 

 

Chrom Exalted Prince (Awakening)

 

Spoiler

Well let's humor myself and see what Gamepress says about him...I can't comprehend why Chrom is 4/5 and Alfonse is 2.5/5 when they have nearly identical stats to the point Alfonse is a tad tankier. I'm not saying Chrom is worse but...people really need to stop hating on Alfonse. So what makes Chrom good? Uhh...he has a Falchion, he has Aether, and he has decent defense. The only advantages he really has over Alphonse is the ease of getting IVs and his really good refine skill with good support from Aether. It's hard to recommend him as while his attack is huge, Alm and Roy kind of have his role covered and don't get doubled by nearly everything.

 

I'm sorry to bash Chrom there but I just don't see the charm in him. To make him really viable, you either can go the Brave Sword route (Which Alfonse can do almost just as well) or spend Divine Dew and make him a decent tank so long as an ally is nearby. I'd be puzzled why you'd spend Divine Dew on Chrom instead of Masked Marth who has the same effect but trades some of that defense for speed. He's a superior unit to Alfonse and he will perform certain niches well, but with a big movepool and options...it's just hard to say bring this tankish swordsman to battle. At least with Alfonse you know that you're going to get worth out of him as he's used in quests for orbs. He's okay I guess but I had a hard time keeping mine even alive. I guess if you really want to make him useful, a Plus Attack Brave Sword DB3 Chrom hits as hard as Brave Lance Effie who from my experience is great at killing but is very frail with Wary Fighter being her saving grace. 31 def is not much when you get doubled by nearly everything.

 

 

Robin High Deliverer (Awakening)

 

Spoiler

He may as well count as when he dies it's a game over and is so involved in the story he's on par with Chrom in importance. So how's a good old boy Male Robin holding up after the powercreep keeps charging? I was expecting him to drop down into completely useless, but he actually still manages to hold up and show he still has some use from time to time. Robin's niche used to be the go to mage to handle red and gray units. With the spike in stats from mages, he'll basically die to anyone but those colors. This is really funny because if you look at his stats now they are kind of terrible having 43 attack with a boon holding the rave tome and 29 def. He still serves as a solid grey killer being able to handle many bows and daggers with almost no problems. He'd really like Lyon's Tome though so he can do more damage. His niche role is still good and still fun to use on top of easy to build. If he didn't have that 29 defense, he would be really almost not usable anymore. I recommend giving him a try again to see for yourself as the results may end up surprising you. Plus he's a really good unit to add to your Arena Assault options to counter a random Brave Lyn.

 

 

Robin Mysterious Tactician (Awakening)

 

Spoiler

Female Robin is more or less just Green Robin. The same exact role applies except she can't roll for IVs and doesn't have the same merge potential. You probably don't want to merge her due to her exclusive blue tome breaker being available at 4 stars. Other than that she comes with a Wolf Tome which can be upgraded but other than being surprisingly bulky in the defense stat, there's not much else to talk about with her. In fact, you can actually get Cecilia for free who honestly if you were going to five star to turn Robin into a Raven Tome, you may as well use her as she's kind of just better at it. I don't know what else to tell you guys other than that.

 

 

Corrin Fateful Prince (Fates)

 

Spoiler

I'm still in progress on mine, but here's hoping he gets the lord treatment like many of his predecessors turning him into an awesome unit. His Yato gives him Darting Blow 2 which certainly isn't a bad skill at all letting him double quite a lot but he really needs a boon in speed to work. I'm predicting his sword will be turned into Swift Sparrow 2 as that'll give him exactly the stats he needs to properly do good damage, but I have no clue on his other effect. It's also very possible he'll be getting a legendary hero soon passing down his Blazing Yato to his normal self to use.

 

But what Corrin is right now is painfully average. There's nothing good that stands out about him, but there's nothing bad about him either. I'll likely edit this post later giving a full analysis but there's not really anything to say other than he's not too deeply interesting right now, but he's one definitely to look out for as with the right tools he could rise into an interesting niche or role like many heroes who got refines have.

 

Corrin Fateful Princess (Fates)

 

Spoiler

While her male counterpart may be average, this Corrin certainly can be called anything but average. Corrin is a blue dragon with low attack and low res, but the rest of her stats are solid and she is really fast as mine with a Speed Boon is 37. She sounds like a terrible unit, right? Actually that low attack isn't that bad as she serves a fantastic supporting role with her dark breath inflicting a nasty atk/spd -5 on nearby enemies possibly letting her slower brethren double. Everyone knows by now how deadly dragons are and with this around you are never safe. Even outside of Dragon Emblem this is a pretty nifty skill as that debuff is very, very good.

 

Now some people may be inclined to suggest lightning breath on her. I personally don't recommend it as her defense is only good an not great...and the fact a certain other blue dragon fills that role much better. I much prefer her debuffer strat since it is very good. Her res is also not that great which is why someone like Ninian prefers lightning breath even with her pitiful attack and Corrin shouldn't be too invested in it. I'm not an expert on Dragon Emblem but we have a super, super solid skill of Brazen Def/Res coming up in a GHB which would be a very, very solid option on Corrin if you want to maximize her debuffing capabilities. If you are on a budget or have limited skills, I'd actually say attack or speed +3 are not bad options on her for non arena designed teams. She wants a little bit of attack or speed without sacrificing her tankiness. I'd personally probably refine her breath to increase attack then give her an attack seal and possibly speed +3 making her have respectable stats instead of lackluster. It's a cheap kit since most dragons are begging for very expensive and hard to get ones like Steady Breath, Warding Breath, or even fury in the worst case scenario.

 

 

Alfonse Bench Warmer (See previous post of mine)

 

Sharena Princess of Askr (Heroes)

Spoiler

Oh Sharena how you went from best to worst so fast. So what makes Sharena kind of bad? Well, she has a base of 32 speed. While this isn't awful, she won't be doubling and she won't get doubled by anything but really fast units. Her defense and attack stats are just okay and res is to be expected. Her personal weapon is threaten attack 2 which threatens have gotten worse over time being replaced by cool skills like ploys and now chill. She also come kited with Rally Attack, but there are now many better rally skills out there. For a freebie starter she's decent to train all the way up but powercreep treated her very badly. She'll find uses if you train her up as there's always going to be a mission here and there required to use her, but with lances plentiful and a large chunk better, she's just...not having a good time shining in anything really.

 

 

Anna Commander (Heroes)

 

Spoiler

Commander Anna is the best of the Askr trio and one that plays a very unique role. With a respectable 48 attack and 41 speed with fury equipped, she stands out as a free fast attacking axe infantry unit which are actually very rare. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are Raven and Legion both which outclass her, but Legion only slightly outclasses her. What's really odd about her is that she has a lousy 22 base def and an oddly high 28 res. Neither of these stats are really doing her any favors but Fury 3 works well on her as her personal axe in an Escape Route 2 letting her plop in by a ranged unit to finish the job. Not the best personal but useful to pull her out of any danger zones. While she stands out as unique, she has competition from two very common units of Legion and Raven making her not quite so quick to promote. Like the other two though, she's worth promoting for the sake of missions, but she actually works well and can be used as an axe unit in both Arena and other challenges just fine.

 

 

Fjorm Princess of Ice (Heroes)

 

Spoiler

(Insert joke here about her not being a lord). Did you know that you can get Fjorm free after...I'll stop. Fjorm is an odd duck unit who honestly has a pretty solid kit for a free unit especially with her Distant Counter lance Leiptr. All the skills she learns are all very useful and good especially her Ice Mirror letting her be a pretty good revenge killer. Some people would argue keep Shield Pulse on her, while others would push for QR2. Both are good options. Even her Atk/Def Bond 3 skill can be very useful to boost her average stats into decent. She's a decent infantry unit but with her HP kind of low, 31 speed, and 30 defense she just is very average. She's an amazing res tank and really makes good use of her distant counter effects, but her middle ground stats and especially her speed keep her from being an amazing unit. She's really, really easy to train so there's no point at least leveling her up and using her base kit plus reposition. It really grinds down to how you want to build her as dropping Ice Mirror means Shield Pulse is worthless freeing two slots and she has the stats to go with one role or another...except offensive speedster.

 

 

A good notice for anybody reading this is that golden week is coming up. People are kind of blowing it out of proportion that golden week will be a crazy time with a spectacular banner but...I'm picturing it more as a prime opportunity to get uncommon items like divine dew and sacred coins in large abundances. If that's the case, you've got a lot of cool options to look at and invest it. Personally, I'm going to be working on Minerva then Roy, but for right now I'll only be doing pictures of units I completed and rated since only some are partially trained and some are on my que of waiting for feathers (Corrin, Marth, and Seliph).

 

Edit: I'm uploading pictures under my spoilers but if anyone has a fully kited unit I made a review or note, feel free to ping me (preferably in discord) and I'll use that picture or add it as well under the spoiler. And of course, I'll give you credit labeling which hero is whose.

[Chase]

After a bit of a hiatus due to studies and house-sitting and ultimately procrastination, I'm here to talk about three unique flying colorless units in order of what I deem to be the most easy to obtain. All three of these units are new, and are unopposed in their categories. They all share the same position in that either by pegasus or through the delicious teleportation method of levitation due to high concentrated amounts of evil they are flying units and usually are weak to arrows while also receiving buffs from Flier Emblem.

 

Flier Emblem is a very interesting offensive Arena core to run because there are lots of units that are terrifying in the offense department.

 

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Hinoka (Wings of Fate): Blue Sky Warrior (Fire Emblem Fates, Bow, Flier, 5* Exclusive on the Wings of Fate and subsequent banners (that means not on the Cooldown banner with Ayra or prior))

Spoiler

WF Hinoka is the first bow flier to be introduced into Fire Emblem Heroes, and she has drawn comparisons to the paragon of Archer offense in Brave Lyn.

 

While such comparisons aren't totally fair (Brave Lyn comes with Sacae's Blessing, which is something Hinoka would benefit greatly from), Hinoka is the first archer to be able to receive Flier Emblem buffs much like the Sacaen bow user, which paired with her very decent 32/35 offenses ensures she is able to deal good damage to the field at a distance. Hinoka also is the sole wielder of the Warrior Princess, a bow that provides Hinoka with 3 additional points of speed, provides her allies with a Drive Attack boost, and does effective damages to armored foes along with the standard advantage over opposing fliers.

 

This provides you with a 38 base speed (at neutral) unit that can boost that speed and serviceable attack even further with the right teammates a decent amount as well as help out the damage output of her teammates and take down two different movement types. Matchup-wise, Hinoka deals effective damage against Myyrh and Fallen Robin, dragons with completely different movement types. That doesn't mean that she wins those battles with her base kit, but a skill like Windsweep that will be able to negate counter attacks will get Hinoka at the very least, very close and keep her safe. Throw in a supporting Airzura as a teammate and Hinoka proves to be quite lethal.

 

For Fodder, Hinoka introduces the first Bond skill (Attack/Speed) into the normal summoning pool (and also works very well alongside Flier buffs due to the nature of positioning) as well as a new C Skill for Fliers in Flier Guidance. This skill, along with her B skill Flier Formation, gives Hinoka total control of the airspace, be it moving to spaces adjacent of her flying friends, or bringing her friends next to her. This works really great with Hinoka's two space weapon type, because if Hinoka for whatever reason fails to kill an enemy, other 1 range flying allies are in great position to finish the job.

 

Hinoka has durability issues, having workable resistance but poor defense, and thus leans heavily on her great speed to avoid double attacks. Her HP and defenses are also prone for superbanes which damages a naturally poor arena score. However, she is worth trying to make work with her statline, because she can swap out her signature bow for all of the proven bows such as Firesweep or Brave or keep her personal bow and have good reinforcing skills like Windsweep or Drive Attack. 

 

Robin: Empty Vessal

 

Kagero: Spring Ninja

 

(work in progress, library is closing soon)

[Commander]

So since I did units I've both used and not used as much I decided to pick 10 units of my favorites that haven't been picked and put them into a list. And what may really surprise you is that I actually have most of the top tier units and even fully utilized them such as Ayra, Rein, and Brave Lyn, but being the best doesn't mean they're my favorite (sometimes being good is boring), but I can attest that all these units are spectacular and worth using. So let's get started.

 

Sanaki Bengion's Apostle (Radiant Dawn)

Spoiler

So when I first started training her, I thought Sanaki was kind of terrible. I definitely wouldn't argue with you if you thought that up until her new skill refine. She has great attack, really good res, and low speed and defense. Something I learned over time is that while having speed is a great asset, it doesn't matter if your attack is low. A slower unit can outdamage a faster unit so long as they have both a higher attack and are in a capable players hands. Breaker skills to utilize this in Infernal Modes. I use Axe Breaker Sanaki a lot purely due to IS's love to throw in green tanky units across the games and after her Legion extermination (aka one of the hardest GHBs at the time) I fell in love.

 

So I'm about to argue Sanaki is better than Tharja aka the best Red Blade tome unit besides the possible Horse Eirika, but I've never dealt with too many of her so I'm not going to argue anything there. Tharja can easily outdamage and outspeed Sanaki and has overall better stats. So what makes Sanaki possibly even better. It's her tome upgrade which has a very, very useful Drive 2 attack built in. Having a drive skill is very, very useful as Tharja needs someone in one of the four spaces to function, Sanaki can support someone in 12 different positions near them. It is very, very difficult to keep units next to each other all the time so while Sanaki will do less damage, she will be much more consistent. And she's not afraid to go up against any enemy mage so long as they aren't blue, but with the right builds she may even be able to handle that...just not Rein.

 

One really cool thing about Sanaki is that she's not limited to a single build. Depending on her stats, you'll want to build her one way or another. You could turn her into a triple driver giving units some nice stats, or you could turn them into nukes giving them a +12 Attack from Drives. Or you could get a little crazy and throw other drive sets in there. Even her Hone Attack combined with Draw Back is a solid combination. That's just factoring her support. Her Triangle adept base skill actually is pretty useful as not only does it allow her to shrug off green tomes (which aren't all that uncommon), it may keep her alive from being hit by an axe. Since her attack is super high, Swordbreaker isn't a bad skill and if she's +Def, she may be able to pull off Bowbreaker with proper kiting. She's a character you need to tailor towards her IVs and your needs as Fury 3 Desperation Brash Assault also is a nutty combination since you never have to worry about her being in range to support her allies.

 

So why does my kit look like overkill? This Sanaki is designed to deal with all greens in really hard Infernal Maps. I choose Axebreaker as Sanaki always is just barely short of the kills and it lets her guarantee a KO to every axe bar the occasional axe peg. I chose to give her the refine effect instead of a stat booster (which isn't a bad option either) due to the rarity of Divine Dew and the fact I run mixed emblem a lot. She makes a really good partner with NY Azura. Dragon Gaze is a really odd skill to put on her but I was limited in options since I'm always short on Glacies and Iceberg fodder. Her special proc rarely matters as it's only ever used on mages and ranged units which usually is enough for a kill if needed. It's an underrated skill and while Glacies does more damage it's pretty minimal difference. Double Savage Blow is a pretty interesting tactic I developed for AI exploits. Sanaki will only ever attack if she's going to kill something. That 14 chip damage is pretty useful as many encounters my units barely come up short on the kills. It also distracts healers which can be very annoying. It helps me score some extra KOs.

 

 

Mia Lady of Blades (Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn)

Spoiler

Oh mama Mia! Every time this name comes up you'll always hear somebody say Ayra is superior. She is but the huge difference between the two is rather minimal. If you roll Ayra, you can build her like Mia and vice versa. Mia is honestly the more interesting of the two simply due to her higher speed and kit designed to throw more damage. I was pretty sure I wasn't getting an Ayra so I really, really built mine around doing heavy damage including foddering a spare Nephenee for Wrath. I'll explain that build in a minute. Other than skills, Mia has more speed and res over Ayra and that's the key differences in their statlines. Ayra is going to be able to take more overall damage while Mia has her skill slots all pretty much open to run quite a number of builds. Ayra just only has one cheap and easy one which works so well there's no point in changing it.

 

So you're probably wondering what the heck is going on with my Mia. Mia's personal weapon adds 3 attack to her attack which mine happened to be plus attack. Most people would love having all that attack, but I feel it is an excess. If Mia is in Wrath range, she'll be doing 20 damage in addition to her normal which almost guarantees a KO. She also had -res which is a good stat, but I noticed her Def is rather low. My Ike with summoner support had 35 res and was able to make pretty good use out of it. That's why I gave her the A skill of fortress def which honestly works rather well. Then came the Fortress Def seal so I'm using that instead. Now I have a problem: I need a replacement A skill. Flashing Blade is good but Moonbow is another excess situation. I'm probably going to put Sol or Aether on her and make her be able to survive longer. The 35 defense is important as wrath users need to live to activate the skill. This is a fun unit who just got a whole lot more fun with fortress def so I'm interested to see where I'll go from here.

 

 

Camilla Holiday Traveler (Fates)

Spoiler

I never thought I'd ever put Camilla in a top 10 list on anything. While she probably is at the very bottom, I actually adore this version of her on the field. Also it may just be me, but I actually feel they toned down the sexualization of Camilla for the New Year version. Obviously they still make her key feature apparent, but it's not as glaring before. I kind of like it. Anyways, I hated the fact I rolled this character, but goddamn she won me over. Before I can explain why Camilla is good, I need to explain what units she can be compared to.

 

We have 3 red fliers in the normal summoning pool which Palla serves as the tanky one. Palla's stats are all kind of an overall low average not being able to stick out in anything. Her stats are all a solid 30. This is actually kind of high compared to the other two sword fights being fast frail units. So there's really no Red flier dedicated towards being a good tank. In fact, most fliers aren't meant to take hits and the ones that are can be rather slow. This made my flier team awkward as I mostly play towards the enemy phase in battles. That's where this unit comes in. Camilla is a sword with a lot of defense and a pretty respectable speed of 35...unless yours is mine with a speed bane.

 

I feel like New Years Camilla does not get talked about a lot since she's a seasonal unit, but she's probably my favorite of all the ones they created. I rolled a plus defense one and it has put in a lot of work for my flier emblem. Her base kit is about tanking and not getting doubled which she does splendidly especially with her weapon and bond support. That 38 def can actually stack and turn into 55 def with the right setup. She pretty much just laughs at any melee combat except from lances which she usually can take a hit from one. Even without all the buffs, 40 def when an ally is nearby is pretty respectable and 32 speed isn't slow but not fast either. Being bulky and not getting doubled are two of my favorite combinations. Sometimes I run Sol on her over Bonfire so she can keep serving as a wall until I can clean up the area. Renewal is to also help her prolong the fight. She's my red flier staple for a reason and solidified her spot on my Flier emblem. Fantastic unit and I'd love to see similar units to her pop up because Flier emblem needs some more defensive tanks.

 

 

Hardin Dark Emporer (Mystery of the Emblem)

Spoiler

This man is my one and only free summon so far. He's also the unit I never knew I wanted until I had him. He's also Zeph's best bro as I often use those two together with one hopping in front of the other to protect themselves. He also replaced Brave Lance Effie on my Armor core. I doubt I need to say much, but I have a preference for bulky units as it fits my playstyle so much. My +Def Hardin is the exact definition of a bulky unit...and I always loved Emperor Hardin's design. The man is perfect coming in with that amazing base skillset and actual good res to make use of his distant counter weapon Gradivus.

 

I don't really need to tell you how good he is so I guess the one thing I can talk about are his skills. I haven't tried Aether, but Bonfire is a rather solid skill on him to guarantee a KO with Wrathful Fighter. Brazen Def/Res is his best A skill due to his ridiculously high bulk making him even tankier. QR is another giving skill since he's an armor and won't always make it to the enemy which making him mixed phase is a very good idea since he's built for it. Now Pivot I use mostly due to how he and Zeph work together. Hardin doesn't like fighting Greens in which Zeph doesn't mind so I generally pivot Hardin out so he's out of range. When Zeph is done or in trouble I pivot him out making for a hilarious image of two villains playing leapfrog with each other. Swap is a great skill on him as well which I'll probably eventually get to teaching to him as most tanks should carry that skill.

 

 

Ephraim Legendary Lord (Sacred Stones)

Spoiler

Of the four legendary heroes...that I have, this one is easily my favorite. You may notice that this list is lacking in Calvary. While I like using Reinhardt for the sake of crowd control, I wouldn't say he's my favorite but certainly one I really like using. Most calvs don't suit my playstyle of enemy phase focused and rarely can handle more than one or maybe two battles if they take damage. Ephraim has been the calv I've been waiting for as he's exactly what I wanted. We know about Ephraim's lance being able to double enemies when more or less nobody is around. When combined with his high attack, this lets him take out a pesky ranged enemy usually KOing them. He's so good for cleanup due to his 3 move. He's also pretty solid engaging in melee combat due to his stance skill and his amazing B skill allowing for him to recover 30% of the damaged proc which stacks with the damage dealt. Stack this with the heavy blade seal and he'll be recovering HP like no tomorrow.

 

Some people may say running Aether on him is better but...I don't recommend it. A normal Ephraim has a solid 55 attack due to his awesome lance. Heavy blade will often let him proc an attack with a foe that can counter and heal up some damage if he's using Sol. If you want more bulk, he's one of the few units to make full use of Close Defense. I'd also argue that his only bad bane is -Atk since mine has -def and he's killing it in the Arena against tier 19 and tier 20 enemies. I can't quite recommend him for horse emblem though. Horse Emblem is about all the characters being close together to keep their buffs stacked while Ephraim wants to be away from people. He seems to do better in mixed armor since their mobility is janky and easy to move around. But honestly his niche is a physical tank and KOing tomes due to his weapon. And as a bonus his gives a nice boost to Fire Blessed heroes during that season. 

 

 

Tana Winged Princess (Sacred Stones)

Spoiler

Remember how I was talking about how there's not very many tanky red fliers. Lance pegs actually come in quite the variety. Tana is quite the interesting character as due to her weapon, she has solid or useful stats no matter what. She's probably one of the only heroes where an attack bane is actually a good bane. It's not that she doesn't want to keep her pretty high attack, but she just has a pretty low HP, low def, amazing speed, and good res. I mean -hp is probably her best bane, but when a unit has really low HP that amount can make a huge difference. It really grinds down to what role you want her to play, but trust me -atk on her isn't that big of a deal unless you go for one specific set.

 

So the most common role for Tana is the firesweep set. This is a very solid arena defense strategy and one of the scariest. Usually this is done by Cordelia who with Hinoka appearing as a bonus unit in the Arena I think we're going to see more of now due to Flier Guidance. Seriously, that skill is going to screw with people not prepared or calculating moves carefully. Windsweep Bow Hinoka is a build I recommend despite it not allowing her to double. I'm actually considering it tbh given Armor Emblem and their love for Vantage tactics. Anyways, Guidance is useful as it gives infantry and armors calv movement allowing for better positioning and getting over terrain easily. It's kind of surprising you don't see that seal being used too often. She's not not the best fire sweep user thanks to Shigure, but the sheer difference between the two and Cordelia is so minimal that merged Cordelia is a better Firesweep unit. Since it'd take roughly one unit to match Tana and I think 6 to surpass.

 

Tana's mediocre defense is an illusion though as her preference weapon gives her +7 def when hit by a sword, lance, or axe when a foe initiates combat. This makes her a solid unit to take a hit from one foe knocking her down into desperation range. It actually makes her A skill +Speed/Def 2 actually a useful skill to have as those are her two most important stats. This setup allows her to be a mixed phase unit both in and out of flier emblem. She's really fantastic in both serving different purposes and with that much versatility, you can't go wrong with using her. Sometimes I give her close defense seal so she can rock a solid 38 defense and with such an insanely good speed, she rarely doesn't double the enemy. I'm not a fan of firesweep so I'll probably be keeping her tank strat for a long time.

 

 

Valter Dark Moonstone (Sacred Stones)

Spoiler

Something you'll learn is that IS has kind of a smart system where they don't hand out many units outside of Red especially super good units. It's a system where people feel the need to summon to get more reliable options. I should consider myself fortunate to have insane luck with Green because I don't think we've had a free green unit since Legion. Legion is a good forgotten axe unit people should consider using. Anyways, Valter honestly is one of my favorites and easily my favorite free unit because he has solid stats. They may look a bit lower but the cursed Lance has an awesome effect of adding 2 attack and speed to him hitting the 50 atk and 33 speed mark on top of a cooldown -1. The man also is pretty bulky and can make great work of his defense stat even with the -4 damage after every round of combat.

 

Valter's Base Kit is honestly super solid and a great addition to flier emblem, though I don't think his Panic Ploy is as great as it was due to how high most Arena HP stats are. And on challenging maps most enemies are in the 50s and 60s. I personally love his tanky stats and use it on my own flier emblem team as it's good to lure non magic enemies out and make them aggressive. A lot of the good fliers are a little squishy so it really works out in his favor. I was also on a budget with him which is why he has Vantage, but Lancebreaker is also a pretty good option on him. Sadly he can't get into too much combat as that -4 HP damage really starts adding up...which is also why you shouldn't put fury on him. He's also definitely one of the F2P units to train up for any F2P challenges due purely to his bulkiness and good speed for a tank. Kind of sad that the superior Tana came out during his time, but I love tanky fliers so it works out.

 

(I probably should replace Panic Ploy with a Goad)

 

Lute Prodigy (Sacred Stones)

Spoiler

Lute is an awkward unit. Imagine being a solid unit not really used because you're not...qualified for many meta builds or tricks. Lute has a high BST, unique weapon, and comes with a really good C skill. Slap Fury on her and she will be a fast and strong blue infantry mage who's a great debuffer to boot. Her biggest problem is that another solid supporter, Delthea, and Reinhardt set a very high bar that may never be surpassed. Delthea is a great support unit with similar stats, but since Lute is a CYL, she has higher stats than a normal mage. Her tome even gives her +3 Speed on top of the speed ploy effect making her pretty much be able to double anyone.

 

This fantastic Blue Tome girl comes with a steep price. She needs to be in certain positions on the map to make full her use of herself. She also has 16 def which is very frail and arrows usually can take her down. But for a solid ploy unit with solid attack, speed, and res, that's a price worth paying as she doesn't need to be next to allies to support them especially with tank stats weakening the enemies with a solid 3 debuffs (Speed, Attack, and Res is what I usually use). I'm not too fond of fury on her, but she needs that extra res for debuffing so I tend to be careful with her positioning. Ploying stuff is always fun...though that's starting to be replaced with Chills.

 

 

Minerva Red Dragoon (Shadow Dragon/Mystery of the Emblem)

Spoiler

Minerva was one of my super early five stars back around the second voting gauntlet where the RNG wanted me to support the House of Minerva instead...especially giving a +Speed one. Minerva has been one of those units who has been strong the entire game especially with Life and Death giving her insanely strong hits at the cost of being a little frail. Something I do want to mention about Life and Death is to not really be afraid of it if your unit is tanky but has an insane amount of speed. My Minerva has 23 def and it's usually enough for her to work and be usable. Not being doubled/doubling is more important than 5 stats in defense sometimes. Fury is actually another solid option if you want to keep her impressive bulk.

 

Minerva is a very interesting Green flier as her niche compared to her competitors being her brother, a rider with a dragon wielding the same name, and that last woman's son. They all have good bulk but Minerva trades some of her bulk for respectable speed and it really helps that she's able to double quite a lot of things. With LnD, a skill I used even in the Arena and Infernal challenges, she hits a solid 51ish attack and 38/41 speed. She's a high risk high reward unit as she's able to take things down rather easily especially due to her -1 cooldown on her weapon...which got better with Quickened Pulse. She did see some competition from Cherche who was a hard hitting, but slow unit who'd hit for roughly the same output, but safer if she ran hit and run. Minerva and her brother Michalis recieved a really, really good weapon refinement. It add the Wo Dao effect to her. She just needed a little more oomph to one shot stuff and that's exactly what she needed. I've been planning to upgrade her for a long time with that...but so many other units who needed it more got priority such as Zephiel. I'm not saying I dislike her more than Zeph, but that she's so good she doesn't even need to refinement to do her role just fine.

 

I do want to go over her glass cannon feel. Life and Death does make her on the frail side, but she really isn't any more frail than a Pegasus (ironic seeing as she originally rode one). She can take a hit for baiting and protection in which I actually used to use threaten speed and seal defense as tactics. Those were the good old days of when SI was new and seal defense worked surprisingly well for revenge kills on massive tanks. It doesn't work as well nowadays given all the tools and such. I love using her as a hard hitting unit and even served me in the first tempest being one of my best. She's not as shiny and good as she once was, but these new tools helped her stay relevant at least...though her brother is the one who benefited more from the buff, but I may eventually completely change her kit around.

 

(...Roy is a little busy using her Quickened Pulse right now)

 

Genny Endearing Ally (Shadows of Valentia)

Spoiler

Healers have always been in an awkward situation of being bad or not very usable to the point only Elise would even be considered worth using. Staffs got some major buffs in the game. Now we have two kinds of people in FEH regarding staffs: those who acknowledge staffs are some of the strongest units in the game, and those who still think they suck. I'm on the side of the fact that staff units are some of the best and you should invest in at least two: an infantry and a calv one, but no more than 4. The reason is that staffs all serve different roles, but each role has many common centers. Most staff units are also very common so fully investing into one will not be too difficult or even get to +10 merging if you're fully committed...and those who made that +10 Wrys instead of sending him home, you can laugh.

 

What does this have to do with Genny? As I said, all staffs are good and useful and the preference depends on the player. Genny is an odd duck unit who I could totally see some people calling bad or inferior to Priscilla or Elise. Genny has one major thing going for her...besides carrying Wrathful staff: she has a very high attack stat of 35. She comes with a very good startup kit of wrathful staff and with weapon forging she can forge Dazzling Staff to hit enemies hard without being hit. This allows her to kill annoying vantage units as you'll probably be giving her Atk +3 for an A skill and Atk +3 seal giving her 51 attack. You could even do the good old Gravity Draw back train (with savage blow C skill and seal) and kill enemies one by one slowly. There's so many sets, but it's her attack that makes her very useful. She can make great use of the Psychic+ Staff healing characters 25 HP from a distance. That's usually 50-80% of somebody's HP. It's why I like using her for long challenges since she can stay out of enemy range pretty safely. It's actually why I want an armored healer since they don't have to be in or near the front lines to be super useful. And could you imagine 55-58 attack on a healer? Genny is about as close to that and with her okay res sometimes she can take a hit from a mage...hitting them back with her 50 attack...which kind of hurts. Can't blame a guy for loving Genny and her massive attack as that's all she needs.

 

 

[Chase]

Oh, we're doing User's Greatest Hits now?

 

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Tharja: Dark Shadow (Fire Emblem Awakening, Red Tome, Infantry, Available at 3-4* rarity)

Spoiler

While Commander may have a preference, I actually have a very hard time rubberstamping a red mage as "the best" because there aren't very many of them in comparison to the other colors and all of them seem to be different from one another.

 

So, why is Tharja one of my best overall units? While the entire world got all up in a spell about how great Nino is as a Blade Tome user with good stats and a decent launch day kit, Tharja was one of my first summons ever in this game and also runs off the same concept. The only reason (and to be fair it is a good one) I can think of as to why Nino would be outright "better" would be that Green gives Reinhardt a bad day at the office, whereas he has no trouble with Tharja.

 

The sultry-yet-distant magician from Plegia comes with Raurblade in her base kit, and to my knowledge is the only mage in the game to carry it, making her interesting fodder potential in the future should other offensive red mages make it into the game without having to trade off some pretty decent abilities like Celica or Lilina. She also has a very decent skill in Darting Blow in her base kit, which allows Tharja to hit things twice when she engages an enemy. Finally, she has Spur Resistance, which can be used on a lot of teams but is a little bit out of touch and should probably be replaced. Her special, Vengeance, is thematic, but it is easily the last thing she will want in any of her optimal builds.

 

For a launch unit, a +Speed Tharja can reach 37 Speed, which can be buffed significantly with the new Speed Tactic skill from Legendary Lyn and or hones/drives/Sieglinde effect. This means she isn't beholden to Darting Blow at all, even though it is a great budget option. Her +Attack stat of 35 is surprisingly monstrous, making her blade tome a threat pretty much immediately if she can get some sort of buff. All of her other stats, are not important, so if you really really like your resident stalker red mage, rejoice, because as of recently she became a very good long term merge project to invest in. A high merge Tharja will be able to survive where shouldn't be able to before, and because Tharja is a threat if she's alive, that is the reward for you.

 

Good for skills for her include Life and Death, which can put Tharja at 40/39 if she has her best nature. (That means, with her Raurblade equipped Tharja reaches 53 Attack without the inevitable buff support.) She can also run Brazen Attack and Speed for the same effect after taking a small amount of damage. Cheaply, Hinata is an abundant sacrifice because of Fury.

 

Tharja is strong enough to be a decent user of Swordbreaker to improve her matchup chart with proverbial feathers in her proverbial cap over some of the scarier swords in the game, such as Ayra and Mia (be wary of the whales and their distant counter builds!), +Speed variants are passable Sweepers due to the blade tome's high damage output (now that Watersweep is a readily available skill), and the 'ole reliable skill Desperation will allow her to clean up a few maps by herself after she's taken some abuse.

 

Because she's a distant attacker, she's actually a great user of Smoke skills to cripple opposing teams when she attacks foes that can't hit her because she can debuff for free (and even those that normally could that she can sweep), although Threaten Res is a cheap option to boost her offense even more.

 

All in all, Tharja is a heavily slept on unit because people generally opt for sword units over red mages, but should you choose to use her, I would think that her availability, high merge potential, and tried and true method of doing things puts her in the conversation as one of the better red mages available.

 

Gray: Wry Comrade (Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Sword, Infantry, 5* Exclusive)

Spoiler

The first of two Valentians in my greatest hits list is Gray, the bestest friend you could ever ask for.

 

Calling a spade a spade, Gray is a very difficult unit to get your hands on currently, and I was lucky to have him be my free summon even though I was really ticked off he wasn't Celica at the time. Gray has a very solid statline due to the fact that he receives Villager/Trainee BST boosts and they positive effective his HP pool enough to make his A slot skill, Wind Boost, a viable build option. He also is the official Sword Coach unit, carrying Sword Valor in his base kit. He also has Swap, which can be a useful positioning assist skill for armored foes if you want to fodder it along with his Zanbato (a cavalry slaying sword) to an armor or other bulky unit. His own neutral 30 defense, ability to boost his speed, and good HP makes him not a bad Swap unit himself.

 

I'm actually going to suggest that HP is his best boon. He'll have 46 HP at level 40, which gets boosted even further with any refine (including the boost nullifying effect of the Zanbato's effect refinement) by 3. That puts him roughly on par with +HP Amelia, -HP Hector, and Fallen Robin in terms of HP threshold, all of which are some pretty beefy units. This will trigger his wind boost skill, granting him 6 more effective speed. His neutral attack of 35 is already really solid.

 

Give him Swordbreaker so he can duel swords as well as greens and cavalry units, and Gray will show you just how much of a strong man he really is. Many people will tell you he shouldn't be 5* exclusive because his kit is pretty underwhelming today. That's fair. However, the dude can get 5* exclusive results if taken seriously by summoners.

 

Sonya: Vengeful Mage (Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Green Tome, Infantry, 5* Exclusive)

Spoiler

Part of the story for my Tharja's success is just how well her Valentian counterpart compliments her.

 

In terms of roles, Sonya is a mage duelist who has uncanny ability to do way more damage than she should be doing on average thanks to her A-Slot skill and her tome, Dark Excalibur, along with her innate access to Moonbow and her ability to Ploy opposing units for Resistance. In other words, she's a magic duelist who is probably going to win a good deal of the time.

 

Dark Excalibur adds a flat 10 extra damage to special triggers. This effect is known as the Wo Dao effect and it salvages a lot of mediocre attackers with great speed usually. Sonya however, has very good attack with a neutral of 33, which just makes this already sound like overkill. This works very well in lockstep with Moonbow, because it puts the flat damage on top of the defense ignoring effect to make the special extremely powerful. It's also freakin' Moonbow, so it's going to proc all the time. Her A-Slot has a dual blow skill in Mirror Strike, which boosts Sonya's Attack and Resistance when engaging a foe first. Even more damage, and taking very little magic damage if the opponent somehow survives.... They probably wont a fair deal of the time, if they allowed themselves to be Ployed for Res before Sonya caught them.

 

For a base kit...that's all just bananas. It virtually makes Sonya comparable to Blade tome user like Nino without even wielding Gronnblade due to just how often all of the dominoes fall in place. Sonya fits very well on teams that decide to use their blade tome in a different color and she also benefits from the buffer's presence. Seriously. Get you a Sonya. She's terrifying.

 

[Chase]

Today, I want to talk about five units that I think are some of the best bargain units to use with significant longevity, inspired by pulling the first one on this list in a good nature. "Bargain" units typically are pulled at 3-4 stars. While there are many who can be made effective fighters with low investment, there are some units who are worth giving up either your arm or your leg for for various reasons.

 

Here, I'll open up by talking about the Weapon Refinery and how it has changed the game for these units. Before it had been introduced, you had units that simply were too outdated or outclassed to see any light of day in today's metagame. This was such an epidemic that it even affected Lords (or main characters) quite heavily (Marth, Alm,  Roy, Chrom, and Male Corrin come to mind)... With the Refinery, many a new weapon has been introduced, and many new effects have become refineable on some of the series' most recognizable instruments of war. The Refinery also allows common weapons, such as Slaying weapons or Wo Dao effect weapons, to be refined in order to provide forgotten units (or already pretty good units) with stat boosts and customization options.

 

Let's go.

 

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Lilina: Delightful Noble (Fire Emblem Binding Blade, Red Tome, Infantry, Available at 3-4 star rarity)

Spoiler

Lilina was once considered an underwhelming unit that ruined pity rates when summoned because of her launch day stats and lack of a strong magic weapon to complement her good attack stat, leaving her kind of exposed when weapon effect paragraphs became more and more complex and gamebreaking. This changed fairly recently after the Ostian heiress went to her local bookstore and picked up Forblaze, a hefty 14 might fire tome that debuffs the most magic-resistant enemy by 7 points in that stat at the start of the turn. This is known across the statboard as "Chill X", Chill effects may not fully debuff a strong unit into oblivion, but if your opposing army is hugging the margins then the opposite is true and their best magic/speed unit is likely done for.

 

For Lilina herself however, having Chill Res, especially in her weapon where she can go for a priority influencing skill or a breaker skill in her B-Slot as well, is usually always lethal, especially when paired with Forblaze's effect refinement. Death Blow 3, a skill that adds 6 Attack points upon unit initiation, is played on top of the Chill Res effect, giving Lilina 13 damage pretty much for free. That 13 can become 16 using Lilina's base Attack +3 A-slot skill on the cheap, or a whopping 19 when giving Lilina Death Blow 3 for her A-slot to effectively give her Death Blow 6. Lilina is already tailor-made to kill things with the snap of her fingers statwise, so this makes her a walking nuclear bomb.

 

Swordbreaker is a very good b-slot to enable her positive match-ups against fellow reds, particularly those who find themselves faster than her. For her C Slot, my personal recommendation would be Attack Smoke. This gives Lilina less of a need for care when it comes to position skills by lowering the attack of anyone within two spaces of the target's Attack by 7. This helps her take on magic users on the enemy phase with a supreme advantage due to her passable resistance. You can always go for Hones, Spurs, Goads, Drives, or Tactics skills in C to help her friends out too.

 

Lilina can become absolutely obnoxious with dancers and buffers around her, and if you want to see some stupid damage output, this common hero has the potential to get there with a little TLC. Just make sure to ask Hector for his blessing.

 

(watch this space)