SumG

Another unit that I really tried to make work, but never really could. Again, I tried her on hard moving her into the mage path due to her high growths. Even on hard I found her a middling option compared to other mages I was using. On Maddening, her stats struggle to keep pace with enemies. She suffers from the similar issues as Jean, in that her base class is not well suited to her stat growths, which means you have to make the decision between immediately reclassing (and not getting to a magic based class until IL 15 or so) or dawdling through a melee class that she is not suited to for 5 or so levels. One interesting idea that I've heard for an Anna build, though I have not tried it myself, is to view her as a Radiant Bow wielder in either Warrior or Bow Knight. She certainly has the magic stat to support it. I'd view her main competition for this role to be Fogado, and there could be at least some debate as to who function better in this role. Anna should end up with a slightly higher magic stat at comparable levels, a lead that will slightly grow over the rest of the game, but Fogado will hold the edge in speed by a handful of points. Ultimately, I'm inclined to favor the unit with higher speed, leading me to prefer Fogado in general, but I can certainly see how you might be able to swing it in practice. Anna's personal ability is a contentious one, particularly on Maddening. On Maddening, resources are tightly constrained, with a fixed amount of gold available and few ways to supplement it if you aren't playing online. Some players enjoy the ability to get supplemental gold sporadically from Anna's personal, even if it is intermittent. There are two problems with this, though. First, Anna is not an amazing combat unit, which means it can be challenging for her to secure kills. Perhaps she can fare better as an anti-flier unit using the build I discussed previously, and given the prevalence of fliers in this game that might be enough to get some benefit. If you're particularly dedicated to it, you might be able to get 50-100 kills, which would translate to ~50,000-100,000 gold. That sounds like a lot, but in the scheme of things it doesn't change all that much. It might get an extra support level or two in one region on the map, but that's about it; most support levels will still be unattainable. And the second problem is if you are judicious with how you spend your money, particularly in terms of how much country support you are offering, even without DLC or online supplements you shouldn't be hurting that badly for money. These days when I play through Engage, I find my purchasing and upgrading is more often limited by the amount of bond fragments or ores I have instead of the amount of money I have. So Anna picking up a small amount of gold really doesn't provide that much benefit. In the end, I'll give her a 4/10 just on the basis that the Radiant Bow build seems semi-viable. But broadly I think there are better options even for that role.

I tried Jean on Hard, and found him to be a perfectly serviceable mage by the midgame. When I moved up to Maddening, I tried him as a mage and found him sorely lacking, though I admit knowing the game better at this point I might be able to make that build more functional now. Then, having heard that he was much better as a melee unit, I tried him as a Warrior on Maddening, and was similarly disappointed. I agree that this implementation of the growth skill is the most interesting one they've done so far. And it feels like it should work, as by default most classes have the highest growths in the stats that they most need to function, so doubling those growths should mean that Jean can function well if he commits to a path early. The problem is fourfold. First, as mentioned by others, you don't actually get to commit to a path early. You're more or less obliged to keep him in Martial Monk until level 10, as waiting until you get a Second Seal to shift him to another first-tier class is impracticable. Second, Martial Monk as a class has incredibly poor stat growths in terms of taking advantage of Jean's personal skill. Jean's personal skill works best in class that have large growths in key stats to really pump up those stats key to the class, but Martial Monk is a class that has middling growths in many different categories. By the time Jean reaches level 10, the benefit you've gotten from Growth is at best unfocused. Third, Jean's bases are also really bad. Really none of his base stats are acceptable for a unit that wants to do anything. His best starting stat is probably speed, which average. Every other stat is poor at base, meaning he has a very long way to go before his stat growth can overcome the deficit he's facing at the beginning of the game. And, because he might not get into a class that is helpful to him until level 10, that process might not start until Chapter 10 or so. Fourth, the devs did the thing that they've done with many of the most recent installments of growth units in the franchise where the unit with the growth skill also has as compensation extremely poor base growth levels. Comparing Jean's base growth rates to pretty much any other unit's base growth rates is a laughable exercise. He has middling speed growth, and poor growth in basically every other stat. In this case, instead of growth making a good unit extremely strong by the endgame, the growths makes a bad unit average by the endgame. But let's say you even bother to put in the effort to train Jean. If you make him a physical unit, you're going to want to put him in a beefy class to take advantage of a large strength or defense growth. However, those classes typically require high might weapons to be effective, and Jean has extremely poor build, so even though his speed should be OK it ends up in practice being terrible. Even if you make him a magic user, you are likely to run into the same problem, as an IL 30 Mage Knight Jean will only have a build of around 7.5, which means he'll still be taking ~5 speed of penalty using a Bolganone tome. It's just unacceptable. He's a 2/10 to me on Maddening. He's fine on Hard, but other than that he's more of a headache than he's worth.

Veyle is OK. She's a magic based unit, so at the very least she can do decent chip damage, and getting daggers is handy for dealing with enemy mages. However, on a pure stats basis, she's not impressive in a noteworthy way. She has good, but not great stats. Her speed is so-so, and her build is a bit on the low side, and combined it makes her difficult to use as a damage dealer by the time she shows up on Maddening. Her personal ability is OK, but is a worse mirror image of Alear's. She's recruited at a high level and comes with a large amount of SP, which is nice. What separates her from Mauvier to me is the fact that she gets access to a dragon-type class. I've mentioned before that I think there's a good deal of usefulness in the dragon-utility you can get from certain emblems, and Veyle provides a second unit that can do this sort of thing. This dragon utility comes with a different style, as Veyle is more magic based while Alear is likely to be a pure physical unit. As such, Veyle makes for a pretty handy wielder of Corrin or Byleth in the endgame with basically no investment. Veyle is not going to light the world on fire, particularly how late she joins up, but it's very easy to find her a role in the party when she's recruited, especially considering that you pick up extra deployment slots when she joins. I'll give her a 6/10.

Is that really viable on Maddening in Engage? There are a number of mechanics, particularly in the late game, that would make this strategy more challenging in practice. Clear objectives for maps are often defeating numerous bosses, each of which can have multiple revival stones, and often multiple bosses will activate in tandem so they must be dealt with simultaneously. Endgame maps typically require dividing your party into multiple subgroups, which can make low-manning them more difficult. Without resorting to warp-skip tactics, I have to imagine that sort of strategy is more challenging than having a full party, though I admit I have not tried it myself. And with warp-skips, you're basically doing LTC strategies, so the discussion is moot.

Mauvier is a unit that I tried once, but in trying him out really didn't make much sense to me for Maddening. The nicest thing that you can say about him is that he joins at a high level with OK stats. If to that point you have only been using a number of units equal to your deployment slots, Mauvier will likely have higher raw stats than most of the bench units that you haven't used in 5+ chapters just in time to take advantage of the new 13th and 14th deployment slots. But I'm not particularly impressed with how his stat block is allocated, and if you've made the forethought to train an extra unit over the course of the game then that unit will likely serve you better. In LTC or other styles of play where large portions of maps are skipped and the associated experience is lost he may have value, but otherwise I just don't see it. The problematic thing about Mauvier's stat block is that his attacking stats are evenly divided between magic and strength while also having low speed. It means that it takes a significant amount of work in order to get him to double, and even if he does he will do significantly less damage than other big damage dealers. His speed is in line with other slowpokes like a comparably leveled Amber or Citrinne, but those units have the benefit of at least having a big attack stat (str and mag, respectively) to build around while Mauvier is average in both. He's got good raw defensive stats, but again because his speed is so low he's liable to be doubled by a large number of enemies unless you commit significant resources to improving his speed, in which case you're not going to do good damage. His build is good, so he can wield heavy weapons without any further speed penalty, but that only does so much when his base speed still means he's getting doubled quite often. His personal ability is cute, but would have been far more useful in the first few chapters of the game instead of Chapter 21 when he joins and enemy attack/damage is much higher. If you're playing through the game for the first time and did not realize that you were getting extra deployment slots so late, there's a case to use him over a bench unit that's sitting at IL 22 or similar. If you're going for a LTC or highly efficient playthrough, then he can slot in to a team then. And in Royal Knight at least he has staff access to do some cheap healing and utility staff work. But I just think there are far better things you can do with a deployment slot if you're playing the game more or less conventionally and have even a little forethought. I'll give Mauvier a 4/10.

Bonded Shield is certainly very strong, but I would think the ideal is that your Lucina holder would effective function as a dodgetank, not an actual tank. The main reason being that you want enemies to attack the people Lucina is shielding, not the Lucina emblem holder, and if you get the Lucina user's avoid high enough enemies will not attack them. That way, your Bonded Shield targets get to do great damage on the counterattack, instead of the Lucina holder doing a largely unimpressive counterattack. If the Lucina user is a dodgetank, then you can largely ignore concerns about enemy ranges; if you're using a tank then you'll have skirt to the extreme of enemy ranges to ensure the Lucina holder doesn't get attacked to much. And FYI, the reason Alear is often touted as a great Lucina holder is not because of their personal ability (though it is certainly a nice benefit for Bonded Shield). The main reason they are suggested as such is because the Lucina Holder gets free use of Dual Support, which can massively boost avoid dependent on support level with adjacent units. Most units in the game only get supports with 10 or so other units, of which you might only be using a handful of in any given run. Alear gets supports with every character in the game, so they get massive avoid bonus from any Bonded Shield target they are adjacent to. It's pretty easy to boost Alear to 190 avoid or more, particularly if using the Micaiah engrave, which means basically no enemy will ever attack them (which is exactly what you want from your Bonded Shield user).

But you're leaving out one really important thing: her speed growth. She maybe able to get some doubles when she joins (though not as many as a number of other units), but her struggles are only going to increase as she moves through the game compared to other units. She only has 25% speed growth, tied for the lowest in the game, compared to growths of 40-55% for units that are considered moderate to high speed. And while I understand that minor differences in growth rates can be ignored as they make little difference even over a large number of levels, by the end of the game we're probably talking about an extra 3-6 speed you have to make up compared to when she joins. And that's not 3-6 speed to get her to doubling, it's an extra 3-6 speed on top of the speed deficit she is already facing. When she joins she, needs a good chunk of help in order to double. By the end of the game, she will need all of the help in order to. And the payoff is just not worth it, as Goldmary just has average offensive stats. I'll certainly cede that there is some benefit to having the type of stats where she can just immediately slot in to your lineup if something has gone badly, either you've lost a unit in an ironman or a build you were trying just didn't work out. But in a run where you know what you're doing, I just don't see enough benefit to get excited.

To me, it's a question of how many resources are required to reach those doubling thresholds that influences how much I care about speed. Because you're absolutely right that with enough resources applied you can even reach doubling thresholds with slow units like Amber or Citrinne. But the question is how many resources to you need to commit in order to do that? Speed+ abilities are something that can be relied on, certainly, as anyone can buy them. Meals are semi-reliable, though I don't know how much I would want to count on them for making a big difference. And I'll freely admit that I probably undervalue Speed potions, as I typically do not use them, so maybe that's a blind spot for me. But there are a limited number of speed boosting emblems, and because of that those resources are in high demand, and that's before even considering their other benefits. It's fine to say that she could equip Lucina, but so could many other units, and there are far stronger things to due with Lucina than to have her provide an admittedly desirable speed boost to a middling speed unit. And I've already covered my distaste for speed instructs in most play. I'll cede that they may sense in an LTC context, but otherwise I don't want to use a covert unit in the first place (since I'm not wild about the combat effectiveness of those classes), and I'm further not wild about putting a great support emblem on a footlocked, 5-movement unit. But these conversations are supposed to discount these considerations. It's much better for a unit to have enough speed that they only need one or two speed boosts to reach doubling thresholds instead of four or five. If you're going to use a unit that needs a whole bunch of speed help, then there needs to be significant payoff in order to justify it. Ivy, Citrinne, and Amber are all slow units, but they justify their speed investment because they have such tremendous offensive potential due to their high attack stats. But Goldmary doesn't have that type of attacking ability. So even if you make the above average speed investment on Goldmary, what are you getting out of it? In my mind, not enough. Let's just do a quick comparison between Merrin, a very good unit, and Goldmary, an OK unit. Compare Goldmary's stats at join (IL 19) to an IL 19 Merrin who switched to hero. At those levels, Merrin has an extra 3 speed, 1 strength, and 1 build, not to mention a whole bunch of dex and the ability to use magic weapons if she chose due to actually having a magic stat. Goldmary gets a 5 more defense and basically nothing else. And arguably that isn't even Merrin's best class! There's just a big gap between Goldmary and the best units in the game statwise, and she doesn't offer enough unique traits to make up the difference.

Goldmary's solid, though in a bit of an odd position. She has decent stats and growths, particularly in terms of defensive stats, though they are not the best suited to her default class on Maddening. On Maddening, her speed just doesn't quite cut it, which in turn means she wants to move into a class like Warrior where she can get more strength help or a tanking class like Great Knight or General. Unfortunately, other units in the game are better suited to doing the Warrior DPS plan, which doesn't get Goldmary a great role there. And while tanking classes can be done, those units have their utility decline as the game goes on and you are able to get the full builds of your party members online. By the time you get Goldmary, you might only need a pure tank role for a few more chapters until before they become more of a niche instead of a necessity. Her personal ability should be good, but I've been less impressed with it in practice than I thought I would be, as a tanking role doesn't get much benefit from it (since they aren't dodging anything anyway). So my big takeaway is that Goldmary's late recruitment really hurts her utility. She a perfectly fine unit, but by the time you recruit her you'll probably have someone just as good, if not better, than her in whatever role you would use her in. If she showed up in Chapter 10 with proportionally similar stats, she'd be a unit that gets a bit more attention, but as it is I'd just give a very replaceable 5/10.

My first playthrough of the game was on Hard, and in that Rosado was fantastic. Then I brought that same build over to Maddening (more or less standard Wyvern Rider) and it simply did not function. Part of that was definitely on me for not knowing how to properly build units for Maddening at that point, but it did also lay bare the problems that Rosado has. Unfortunately, though not poor in either Rosado does not stand out in strength or speed, and top of that his build is poor. This makes it very challenging to get him to effective damage levels on Maddening. It's possible to patch problematic stats with abilities and emblems, but needing to patch so many stats makes it very challenging, and limits the types of build you can try. After that first Maddening run I did not try Rosado again in later playthroughs when I better understood unit builds, so I'm willing to believe that it may be possible to build him into a contributing unit. But I'm skeptical that he has the ceiling to be a very strong unit. Given that he shows up so late, with such middling stats, and his personal ability ends up being pretty unnecessary considering the existence of weapon engravings, it's hard to recommend him. I'll leave him at a 4/10.

Dancers gonna dance. Dancer/10 grade. Dancers are consistently some of the most powerful units in Fire Emblem games, as they simultaneously allow you to get extra actions with your most powerful units, provide flexibility to allow your party to adapt to different situations, and enables strategies that allow you to move dramatically faster than normal (either through units getting multiple movements in a single phase or enabling truly broken Dance/Warp strategies). The biggest weakness of Dancer tend to be the general squishiness of the unit and the low movement dancers tend to have. While the first problem is still a concern, in Engage Seadall can pick up Canter which makes his movement significantly better than pretty much any dancer in Fire Emblem history. So even among dancers, some of the most powerful units in Fire Emblem, Seadall is strong. Beyond that, Seadall even gets bonus utility. His personal skill allows for some incidental healing. He can also pick up Quality Time to further supplement that healing capability. It doesn't sound like much initially, but it's possible for Seadall to heal 20 HP to a single unit on any given turn cycle, and he can easily heal 40-50 HP in a single turn across the entire party in the right conditions. And he does this without even needing to sacrifice the ability to dance on those turns. That's fantastic extra utility for what is already one of the most useful units in the game.

I definitely wouldn't consider Timerra a bad unit, particularly on an Ironman run. Her big problem is that she has a rocky start, but that matters much less on an Ironman once you have sufficient levels. Timerra has bad raw stats, however Sand Storm is a disgustingly strong ability. When you first get access to Sand Storm at Picket Lvl 5, on average it will be adding around 6 damage to each attack you make. By the time you cap Picket at Lvl 20, on average it will be adding around 12 damage to each attack you make. The only issue is that the damage is inconsistent. In order to get good damage out of Timerra, you need to working to trigger Sand Storm as often as possible to mitigate the inconsistency. That means you probably want to use a Brave Lance for her and work to get quad attacks on Player Phase. A Brave Lance has 14 Wt at base, which is well higher than Timerra's base build. A good chunk of her loadout should look to mitigate that. Leif is not a terrible choice for Timerra, but she fares much better with Sigurd. She benefits from the significant boost to build, but she also wants the extra movement since she's in a footlocked class and will primarily using 1-range weapons, and she also wants the free access to Canter since she needs to be spending her ability slots elsewhere. She should get Spd+3 immediately upon recruitment, and can upgrade it as much as is convenient. Now that you have Leif back, you should also consider getting her Build+3 as well to further reduce the speed penalties. With Sigurd at a good bond level and Build+3, Timerra should be taking almost no speed penalty from a Brave Lance, and with Spd+ she should be able to quad most enemies in the game, barring thieves, swordmasters, and griffons. Functionally, she should be able to kill a good portion of enemies with decent consistency while still having the defenses necessary to not die on enemy phase. For a weapon engraving, there's two good ways to go. Early on, you may want to put a weight reducing engraving on the Brave Lance to help with build issues. Later on, you may want to switch to an engraving that gives 10-20 crit, as you're already fishing for Sand Storm procs so you might as well fish for crits as well. However, she definitely does not want engravings that reduce weapon might, as each point of might lost translates into 4 lost damage when quadding. So she tends to fare well with the Sigurd or Marth engravings.

Right, it's fair to consider Luck in Divine Pulse+, but I'd consider this particular point more of a knock against Ivy than a particular strength of Hortensia. If we do a comparison of an immediately promoted Hortensia and a Griffin Knight Chloe at the same internal level, Hortensia has all of 2 more luck, on average. That's not really much. And I get that Hortensia has a really good growth rate, but that might net her an extra 3-4 points over the course of an entire playthrough from that point. Is a 5% higher likelihood of triggering Divine Pulse (which probably translates into more like 2-3% more staff accuracy over an average magic user, since it only has a chance to trigger on actions that initially miss) *that* much of a draw? It's nice, but I don't think it's worth going out of the way for.

Hortensia is one the hardest units to evaluate, and arguably the unit who's value will change most depending on your playstyle. Her stat profile is quite odd. She has fantastic speed and good dexterity, but her raw magic power is low and her bulk is outright laughable. The bulk is a survivable concern for a mage, but that fact that her magic power is so low really restricts her to being a support unit that can do occasional chip damage. Her unique class is quite good. She is one of two units in the game with access to a class with tomes, staves, and flying mobility, and that is quite a powerful combination. The mastery ability of that class will occasionally allow you to rebuy uses of very powerful staves, and given Hortensia's high dex, it should be triggering fairly often. There's a reason why a number of staves exist only in limited quantities in the game, and an ability that lets you skirt that, even a little, is potentially strong. Hortensia's personal ability is where I think the divisiveness in playstyle comes in. In a normal playthrough, a large portion of the usage of the ability will be to extend the range of healing staves to 2 range. That's all well and good, since it allows you to keep her farther away from the front lines, but once you get Canter this use is largely irrelevant. Beyond that, I'd wager in most casual playthroughs the extra staff range most often does not matter at all. However, my understanding is that in highly optimized play and LTC runs, there are times where the extend range of staves allows for strategies that no one else can do, particularly in regard to mass Warp/Rewarp Micaiah strategies. That's not how I play, but it is worth noting. I've seen some people argue that she is the 'best' staff user in terms of accuracy. Perhaps that is true, as staff accuracy scales with Magic and Dex, and Hortensia does have a good combined stat total. But I'd wager any advantage she has here over another mage is fairly minor, and really not worth considering. So for the average player, I'm going to settle on a 7.5/10, carried heavily by her unique class. But I will say that her value as a unit significantly increases the more you are trying to use Warp strategies. If that's the type of way you play, I can definitely see her moving up to even 9 or so.

Merrin's a really good stat ball, probably only behind Kagetsu in terms of being an all-around physical fighter. That said, aside from very good all-around stats, she doesn't have anything unique to recommend her. Her starting class is solid for the near-term future upon recruitment, but she probably will want to move out of Wolf Knight eventually due to its low strength. It can be a bit of a decision whether or not commit any resources to upgrading daggers for her, as the weapons are helpful immediately, but not great in the long term. Happily, she fares very well in most of the strong physical classes like Warrior, Wyvern, and Hero. Definitely one the easier units to grade overall. Very good grade, just not as good as the very best units. I'll go for an 8/10.