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Rate the Unit-Three Houses, Day 32: Manuela


Barren
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I hope it's okay with everyone I help out here. Now we get to our former songstress and current physician at monastery Manuela!

Rules

- Ratings are assumed to be on Hard or Maddening Mode. Also, they should be based on when the unit is first available. (When rating a unit, please specify whether you are rating assuming Hard or Maddening.)

- Votes need some explanation regarding their gameplay performance to be counted (unless they fall into the general parameters of the average rating, but reasoning is still strongly encouraged on those even if you just wanna quote people) — incredibly low scores or high scores without proper justification will not be counted. Don't put in some random text thinking it'd count as justification. Put in at least a little thought and give REAL reasoning.

- Numbers for votes, please - not something like "Marcus/10", etc. Proper Justification will be determined by me and whoever decides to help.

+/- ≤1 point extra regarding personality/appearance is okay, but no more.

- Votes out of 10, or something proportional to it. Makes it easy to calculate, please and thank you~!

-The rating you give to a unit assumes a good build for said unit-nothing among the lines of, "Dedue is 2/10 because he's a bad mage."

-The ranking assumes no grinding of any form, no DLC and minor, (one or two stat boosters per month) use of the Greenhouse.

- Make votes easily visible, please! "[Explanation text]: So, overall, I think X unit is a 7.5/10, with a +1 bias included for being hawt/cute/funny/etc.."

- Every ranking phase ends approximately at 20:00 PST. Do the math for your timezone, please!

-We will ask you to not use the "Not X unit" reason. Because it will be used a lot. I.E, do not say "Linhardt bad because not Lysithea."

-The Black Eagles may be assessed based on their performances in either Silver Snow or Crimson Flower, other than when not applicable.

 

Scores:

Dimtri: 9.14

Byleth: 9.05

Edelgard: 9.00

Claude: 8.977

Felix: 8.625 

Lysithea: 8.472

Petra: 8.34

Leonie: 8.2

Ferdinand: 7.78

Catherine: 7.7556

Sylvain: 7.66

Ingrid: 7.34

Hilda: 7.31

Seteth: 7.2273

Bernadetta: 7.125

Linhardt: 7.11

Marianne: 6.9769

Mercedes: 6.756

Shamir: 6.65

Dorothea: 6.375

Cyril: 6.0454

Dedue: 5.8571

Annette: 5.5375

Hubert: 5.525

Ignatz: 4.88

Flayn: 4.583

Caspar: 4.32

Hanneman: 4.18

Lorenz: 3.8077

Raphael: 3.7273

Ashe: 3.69 (nice)

 

 

Underscore: Black Eagles

Bold: Blue Lions

Itallics: Golden deer

Purple: Faculty

Boldunderscoreditallics: DLC


Average score for Black Eagles: 6.94

Average score for Blue lions: 6.82

Average score for Golden Deer: 6.543

Average score for Faculty: 6.073

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Manuela would have made a fabulous dancer, but alas. With Manuela we run into that old question "is warp worth a deployment slot?". And unfortunately, she'll be learning warp much later than Lysithea or Linhardt if either started in your house. And if you're playing Blue Lions, I think if you're willing to recruit Lysithea early she will get it before Manuela does, especially if infinite grinding strategies are in the picture (just have her as an adjutant to one of your units you'd like to grind, and have her equipped with heal to earn faith experience each round). It's going to take a couple chapters for Manuela  to go from Faith B to Faith A, and by then you've probably run out the clock on pre-time skip paralogues where warp is such a hot commodity. Compare this to Flayn who absolutely will learn rescue in time to use it. She does start with Silence which is borderline useless beyond picking up more experience that doesn't take away from other units, and Ward which similarly gives her a means of earning free experience on any turn she can't be doing something more useful. But both spells will see use in post-time skip maps that you're forced to tank some siege tomes. She can be a godsend on any map you intend to use a double wrath unit to solo the enemies. The appeal of using Manuela in a mage class is that ease of leveling up, even if she's providing little in tangible usefulness or damage.

Manuela can rally charm, which is not nothing. Most bulky units in the game appreciate that rally. Manuela can learn Bolting at A, but with her low availability you'd be a fool to go for it. She joins with Hexblade which will be stronger than any of her reason spells. And she's debatably the bulkiest mage with generous growths in HP, Def, Res, Speed, and Charm. Like the other bulky "mage" (Lorenz), I don't recommend using her in a mage class unless she has learned warp and you're in a map that's really calling for it. Manuela would rather be a swordmaster to pad out her growth rates and have swordfaire to boost her primary attack. Later in the game she can be a mortal savant in order to use magic again for some utility. The flying proficiency is tantalizing, but with no starting ranks or proficiencies in lances or axes, I think making her a flier is too high investment. If you think combat experience is being spread too thin among your roster, she can stay as a mage and try to level up through silence, ward, and occasional heals, but even in that scenario I still advocate for training her sword rank up over her reason rank.

I think Manuela is one of the more fun characters to use, but has too many glaring weaknesses to recommend beyond warp utility for a chapter or too. Above all else, that low magic growth hampers her potential warp range and hexblade performance. 2.5 out of 10.

Edit: Oh crap, I forgot Mortal Savant requires Reason rank, not either Reason or Faith. Because this game is made by monkeys. Oh well. I don't think that meaningfully alters her rating for me. All she's missing out on is the growth rates that mortal savant has over swordmaster - namely the 10 magic, and you could say that Swordmaster's +20 speed (instead of -10) is still more valuable.

Edited by Glennstavos
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Manuela is a unit that isn’t very outstanding. She starts of as a Priest, but her growth rates are similar to Ingrid’s. She has some nice support spells like Ward, Silence, and Warp. But her low magic makes her Warp range short, so you will have to use her in conjunction with another Warper to do some one turn cheese. Dorothea and her grant each other extra might, so that can help with both of their low offensive stats.

She learns Hexblade, which does a good chunk to most enemies, but she won’t be one shotting anything without a crit. Rally Charm can be nice to make your gambits more accurate. She learns Bolting, but her weakness in Reason and it being learned at A rank makes it impractical to  aim for. 

For classes Bishop is okay, it lets her just provide support. Classes like Assassin and Falcon Knight can be decent on her, but when she joins she is focused on being a Bishop, and misses out on some Strength auto levels. She will need a good amount of focus to change her course. DLC Trickster is okay too, Foul Play will probably have the same range as her Warp, and the Swordfaire can let her Hexblade do more.

My Rating: 2.5/10. 

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Ah, yes. The utter mess of a woman. A drunkard and slob. Joy. And she actually thinks there’s nothing wrong with her! Speaking of, stats. She’s first recruitable at Lv 15.

     Skill Levels:      Boons: C+ Swords, B Faith, and D Flying. Banes: Reason (Ouch) and Armor. A bit of a tricky one, this.

     Abilities:     Infirmary Master cuts down on Crit rate. Aside from the DK, this is only ever good against the occasional Killer Weapon wielder. Rally Charm (D) is of dubious usefulness. Battalion Renewal (C) is bad.

     Arts:     Manuela starts with her only Art: Hexblade. Why is it that Hexblade and Soulblade wielders always want the other Art? It still does Ok damage.

     Spells:     Ugh, leveling Manuela’s Reason. What a pain. Thunder (D), Bolganone (C), and Bolting (A). Trying to get Bolting is suffering. For Faith, she starts with Heal, Nosferatu, Ward, and Silence. She gets Warp at A. Warp is good, getting Ward instead of Physic/Recover is terrible, and Silence has only a couple times when it’s not just free Exp.

     Stats:     Ok, I’ll make it short for you, Manuela’s Growths are basically Ingrid’s, but with less Resistance and more HP and Charm. Her bases aren’t anything to write home about, either.

     Classes:     Intermediate- Mage if you can suffer through it, Priest if you can’t

Advanced- Bishop

Master- N/A. Sorry but She can’t really get into any of the Master Classes efficiently.

          The Verdict

Warp utility. Check. Nuke option. Half-Check. Good healing. Nonexistent. Actually variable? That’s a nope for me. That Bane in Reason kills her usefulness. Anything she can do, someone else does better, especially by the time she joins. 3/10, still better than Ashe and SS Cyril.

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Ah, Manuela. Our alcoholic diva/professor of Garreg Mach. How does she work on the battlefield? Let’s see:

Good traits

Super fast with 60% and in the league with the Speed Sisters(Petra, Leonie, and Ingrid)

Great Boon in Flying for Darting Blow, Falco Knight, and Dark Flier.

Gets Bolting which is a nice siege time to have.

Gets Warp, which sounds good right? Right...

Bad Traits

Like almost everybody else related to the Church, she has to get important abilities that your students should already have. 

Having both low Magic and Strength is bad. Ingrid also has this problem, but she can get important abilities earlier than  Manny.

She gets Bolting...with a Reason bane. It doesn’t relate to anything, she has that bane just to have it and that’s annoying! 😠

She gets Warp...but due to having low Mag, it has to coexist with another Warp user to get any benefit.

Ingrid exists lol. Having almost identical stat growths with Better availability, no relevant banes on her, has a crest and a relic, and gets Physic and Seraphim in her Faith Spell list and Thoron on her Reason list...

Big oofs for you Manuela.

Overall Score: 3.5/10

She’s playable, but no matter what you do with her, somebody can do it 10x  better.

 

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It's Manuela's turn to be on stage for this review. But how well does she perform on the battlefield? This is assuming hard and no dlc

Manuela can be recruited during chapter 8 if you are level 15. But you would be able to lower that requirement really easily with faculty drills and that would lower the level requirement from 15 to 12. Manuela's growths are very similar to Ingrid though there are a couple of exceptions. She starts the game off as a Priest with a higher HP and charm growth than Ingrid both with a 50% growth. Thanks to her class bonus, her magic is now at a 40% growth. Her res jumps up to a 35% growth as well. Her strength does get lowered to a 30% growth. So her physical attacks are not good. Her personal ability Infirmary Master allows adjacent allies gain Crit Avo +10 during combat. Now this is something she brings to the table to your party. The only problem is that having crit avoid would have been better paired with having additional regular avoid and that would have given her a stronger niche as a support unit. She does have other utility with her.

She has a boon in swords, faith, and flying. Her banes are in reason magic and heavy armor. This is a rather awkward trait for someone that starts off as a healer. I mean sure you can always make Manuela something other than a healer but you would hope that she was dealt with a better hand. Manuela joins you with her sword rank at C+. Not to mention that all of her sword combat arts mastered and not too far off from getting Axebreaker. Her other sword combat art is Hexblade. This is a straight up magic sword combat art so this allows her to inflict some good damage. Manuela also comes with Faith at rank B already having heal, nosferatu, ward and silence. Ward is fine for boosting your res against enemy mages. Silence is a good spell for stopping other mages from attacking you for a turn. She gets Warp at rank A, while a very good spell, she gets it later than Linhardt or Lysithea especially if you focus on their faith from the start. Her bane in reason is quite problematic. She learns Thunder at rank D, Bolganone at rank C then Bolting at rank A. Her being a Bolting support bot sounds great for her except her progress in reason gets grounded to a crawl so it's basically not worth struggling through. However, if you decide to go down that way, her support pool is quite big, almost as much as Dorothea's. Her boon in flying which already starts at rank D, could maybe get you alert stance at least. Manuela also gets Rally Charm at authority rank D. If you're looking to land a strong gambit attack, this will help you out.

You can make her a Pegasus Knight then maybe Falcon Knight if you want to disregard her spell list. Her boons in sword and flying makes it easy for her to get there. If you would rather focus on her spells, then the easiest one to go for is Bishop. At least she can use double uses of Warp that way. If you're a crazy person and would be willing to work on her reason bane, she can go Mortal Savant. But then all you would be doing is spamming forged Levin Sword. Plus you would have to deal with the -10% speed drop. Then there is gremory but same issue as Mortal Savant, you have to work through her reason bane. 

Overall, I think Manuela is really a 4/10 unit. I mean you could in theory make her a rally charm/siege tome support bot but that takes forever to get there. Honestly, similar to Hanneman, you can just recruit them, do their paralogue then bench them afterwards.

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Manuela is another odd character who doesn't know if she wants to be a fighter or mage. She could have excelled at either if she'd joined in Chapter 1, but alas...

The good: Manuela has a pretty solid set of stats regardless of your plans for her. 10+35% str is weird but respectable (though hurt a bit by auto-levelling as Priest), 8+60% speed is great, 26+50% HP and 5+30% def is adequate bulk for a frontliner, and 7+50% charm is very high for a non-lord. 8+35% magic is low for a mage, but way better than most other fighters. Actually, the entire stat build is nearly identical to that of Ingrid, trading some res for some magic, which is a good place to be. The str/mag are both a bit higher in practice because she gets a +might support with Dorothea, who is almost always available for support due to Meteor.

She has a boon in flying, which can help her to flying build and/or Darting Blow, and swords, which help her to a Assassin and let her double things with a Levin Sword or hit (somewhat) hard with Hexblade. She also has a boon in Faith and a spell list which includes Silence and Warp (though with lower range than Linhardt or Lysithea for the latter). Her reason list, if you decide to invest in it hard, includes Bolting. So there's a lot of things she can do kinda well.

Her personal is situational but very neat when it comes up, allowing an ally to bait a high-crit enemy they would not normally be safely able to. (As an assassin, Manuela can even be assured not to be targeted by this enemy herself, or she can just hang out right outside its range.)

The less good: Unfortunately, while Manuela seems to have a lot of promise in a variety of directions, she's definitely a master of none. Bolting and Warp sounds nice, but with a Reason bane (starting at E) and a lack of healing spells, the road through the magical classes is a tough one. Her road to flying classes also involves training something that is an E at chapter 8 (either lance, axe, or post-DLC, reason). She's in a tough spot on join, with only Priest and Thief/Mercenary open for intermediate classes, and she'll need to train quickly to unlock better classes like Pegasus Knight or Mage. Or she can use this time to backtrack to Monk/Myrmidon and grab a stat+2 and movement art... but it's not good that she needs to do so!

Getting to an advanced class in time is also a pain; Assassin is the easiest but still requires some quick bow investment, Bishop's an option but she's a terrible one with her lack of healing, Wyvern Rider requires very heavy investment. And regardless of what route she's going, she'll also need authority. She joins with an E rank, which is terrible for going to a flying class and in general for her point in the game. There's a case to just muck around in Beginner+Intermediate tier for longer because of this, but that's just that much more time she has to spend playing catchup with your other units who are already good.

Other: The DLC improves her a little since Trickster is a class she has an easy time getting into... essentially similar to her Assassin form trading mobility, Stealth, and Swordfaire for her white magic list (Silence/Warp), Foul Play, and freedom from the need to train bows. She's pure utility this way, but decent at it.

I want to like Manuela more but she's really a unit who gets killed by her join time. Swords+faith is just a rubbish auto-train choice, since it's unlikely any build of hers (besides Trickster) especially wants both; she really needed to start investing in reason, lances, bows, authority, or really almost anything else before she shows up in Chapter 8. As is transitioning her to an effective combatant, while possible, is quite a pain, and your reward after all that is just a weird Ingrid variant. Unless you badly want three Warp users, you're probably better off raising someone else. Manuela gets a 3/10 (Maddening).

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Manuela, considered on Maddening.

The Bad

Like Hanneman, Manuela doesn't become playable until chapter 8. So there's a solid chunk of time that she's not helping (well, outside of Faculty training). Once recruited, though, she's deployable for any map aside from Hunting by Daybreak.

How are her stats doing? Note that these are based on her recruitment in chapter 8, as a level 15 Priest. Her Defense (8 + 0.25x) is... bad... but that's typical of magical units. Speaking of which, she is a magical unit, right? Well, her Strength (14 + 0.30x) and Magic (14 + 0.40x) are remarkably close - if she switches to a physical class, they may switch positions. While neither stat is awful, neither is very impressive, either. And unlike units who are iffy in both offenses (Ingrid, Lorenz, Ignatz), Manuela hasn't had the chance to get Beginner or Intermediate masteries to buff her combat. So her offense is weak on both sides, and shows little hope of catching up. Finally, her Luck (12 + 0.35x) is nothing special.

Looking at proficiencies, Manuela has a bane in Armor, so she'll have a hard time getting Weight-3, or bolstering her Defense with Armor Knight certification. Still, those are small potatoes compared to her other bane, in Reason. This is the single worst area for a magical unit to come with a bane in, and it means her spells - and Mage, for Fiendish Blow - will come a bit harder to her. One more thing - she joins with E Authority, which is just... why? She's supposed to be a teacher, and she fronted an opera company, so she has to have some leadership ability, right? Whatever, it sucks.

What other problems are there? Well, she has no Crest, so if you want to use tools like Thyrsus or Blutgang on her, she'll be taking a penalty. Starting with E rank in Riding and most weapon areas really limits her class versatility, too. Her Reason list is short, and while her Faith list is dense, she learns no healing magic beyond Heal. Which seems awkward. For a physician.

The Good

Make no mistake, Manuela has some good things going for her. Her HP (34 + 0.55x) is none too shabby, and in tandem with her Resistance (15 + 0.35x), she'll have alright magical bulk. Her Charm (15 + 0.50x) is actually quite good - get her Authority up, and she'll do alright with offensive gambits. Her Dexterity (13 + 0.45x) is pretty good, too. The standout stat, though, has to be her Speed, at 16 + 0.60x. On top of helping her Avoid, it will give her a feasible route to doubling many enemies.

Back to proficiencies, Manuela has a few boons to her name as well. Her sole weapon boon is in Swords (C+), letting her use the Levin Sword from joining. She can go Thief right away if you want one, and Assassin isn't out of the question. She's also strong in Flight (D), so while she starts low in Lances, getting her to Pegasus Knight is an option. Darting Blow goes well with her already solid speed, and she can even go Falcon Knight in the long-run (although I imagine Swords to be her weapon of choice). Her strongest area, though, is her Faith. Starting at B with a boon, her route to Bishop is easy as fruit-and-herring tart. Beyond that, Holy Knight is an option for the mobility, although getting her Riding up will be a chore. Gremory may look more desirable than Bishop for her, but fighting her Reason bane will be a struggle in perpetuity. As it hurts her going Mortal Savant (if she wants Swordfaire and spells).

Manuela gets only one restricted combat art, but it's a pretty solid one. She joins with Hexblade, so she can do fairly good magic damage, even in classes with no spell access. Still, reiterating that Manuela's Magic stat is fairly low for a magic-specialist, she's hardly nuking most targets. Her spell lists, though, are both really interesting. While her Reason list is short, she's among the few blessed with Bolting at A rank. Before that, though she has to make do with Thunder and Bolganone. I'm not gonna say getting Bolting is impossible, but it's gonna require her to go hard in Reason from day one (well, chapter 8), and she probably won't get it until shortly before the endgame. Her Faith list is a cool one, too - and here, she starts with a leg up. She joins with Ward and Silence, two rather niche spells, for support and utility. But the star of the show is Warp, at A rank. If you don't already have a Warper, or would like a second one, Manuela can fulfill the role pretty well (although her iffy Magic hurts her range).

What other neat things does Manuela bring to the stage? Her personal ability gives adjacent allies Critical Avoid +10. This is a neat little bit of support, although unless she's a flier, it may be hard to keep her near your frontliners. Another cool support tool - once she hits D-Authority, she'll offer Rally Charm. This can help allies who are at risk of being gambited, or who are about to deliver a gambit in their own right.

The Verdict

Manuela is, by and large, a support unit - not the star of the show. Her offensive stats are unimpressive, as is her physical bulk and Luck. She's good in a few areas, namely Speed and Charm, but without the offensive stats or mastery skills to back it up, she'll do little more than chip. Outside of just going Bishop, any other interesting build (Gremory, Holy Knight, Falcon Knight, Assassin, Mortal Savant) is gonna take some work on her ranks. And she'll want to build her Authority from the start. Still, even with a little effort, she can provide some support with her neat Faith spells (chiefly Warp) and Rally Charm. When the curtain drops, I feel comfortable rating her performance as a 3 out of 10.

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5 / 10 on Hard

The good:

  • Excellent Spd & Chm growth and good HP growth.
  • Interesting Faith spell list, notably having access Warp and Silence, although sadly no Physic, which limits her flexibility as a utility unit.
  • Proficiency in Faith and joining with B rank, which help to certify Bishop and don't take too long to learn Warp. Proficiency in Flying and joining with D Flying and C+ Sword help with Peg/Falcon class progression, which sync with her Spd & Chm growth for a good dodge tank potential.
  • Personal ability that grants Crit Avo +10 to adjacent units, which is situationally useful to manipulate enemy Crit, although not something to actively plan around. 
  • Rally Charm at Authority D, useful to manipulate gambit dmg/hit/avo. 
  • Up to +3 Mt with Dorothea, useful on the field or as adjutant.

The mixed:

  • Learns Bolting at Reason A rank, which can be used to snipe across the map or as a utility unit with a linked attack bonus. Unfortunately she joins with an E rank during Ch8 and has a bane in Reason, thus needs some serious investment to be able to take advantage of it. Otherwise she only has Thunder and Bolganone in her Reason spell list. 
  • Learns Hexblade, which unfortunately sync better with a high Mag unit than a low Mag/high Spd unit like her or Ingrid.

The not-so-good:

  • Unimpressive base stats as a Ch8 recruit.
  • Lacklustre Mag & Str growth, which limits her offensive potential and Warp range, although the former is partially mitigated by her doubling more often than most mages.
  • Authority E when joining at Ch8, thus needs to catch up with in-house members.
  • Only has Priest unlocked and no Axe, Bow or Reason rank, thus takes more time to catch up with her class masteries. Her Reason bane is also annoying for most offensive magic class certifications.
  • No crest, thus penalty when using Thyrsus or other relics.
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1.5/10 Manuela barely classifies as not useless. Barely. She joins in chapter 8, which is terrible availability, and has the low base stats you would expect from a faculty in this game. So at base her strength isn’t helping her at all, but I guess her C+ in swords helps her use good swords faster, and her D in flying is I guess a nice start to get her towards falcon knight on top of her swords already being good enough, if you want to go that path to capitalize on her high speed. Her base 60% growth in speed is fantastic no matter how you slice it I must admit, and 50 in charm and hp are nice, too bad she has E rank authority at chapter 8. Her base strength and magic growths of 35 are also horrendous (for scale, that’s Anna’s and Ingrid’s strength growth). Her base 30 in defense and 25 in res also aren’t doing her any favors. Well Manuela joins as a priest, so perhaps the game thinks she’s good for faith utility. Well let’s look at that shall we? She has a nice starting faith rank of B and her spells are... heal, nosferatu, ward, and silence. Wat. Well she can occasionally silence and... that’s really it, ward is even more situational than silence, nosferatu sucks and while heal... heals, there are better spells for that. However just two ranks later, at faith A, she learns warp! Hooray! What’s that? Its range in this game is magic divided by 4? So with her lower magic growth, unless you’re lucky, her range won’t get that much higher than 3? Hooray. At least she has bolting as well, right? Well on top of her low magic, even if its range is fixed, she has a bane in reason. And joins with E rank. In chapter 8. Hoo boy. So her offense is out the window, as is her faith utility with the exception of being able to give a little warp. She can also learn rally charm. Those are what give her her +0.5, I’m surprised at how high her scores are. I would say bench her immediately.

Edit: Forgot to mention she also learns thunder and bolganoe, which aren’t great on her by way of her being Manuela, but they’re there. She also has no crest so damage penalties from relics (that would be wasted on her anyway, just like a deployment slot!).

Edited by Sooks
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On 11/11/2020 at 12:32 PM, Glennstavos said:

Manuela would have made a fabulous dancer, but alas.

Just replying to +1 this idea.  Things you want your dancer to have ideally: sword proficiency if building a dodgetank / bait unit, powerful but limited utility (e.g. Warp, Fortify), and sure some attack magic.  Manuela is certainly well-built for doing this, but it turns out it's against the rules for the judges to declare themselves the winner.  (Alas for Dancer Alois or Shamir as well.)  Too bad that IntSys is never gonna release hypothetical no-monastery, no restrictions mode to allow shenanigans like this.

Manuela: Uh, she's usable enough because a free healing Adjutant is still handy, and if you're short deployment slots for some reason an underlevel backline healer is useful in a way that an underlevel fighter isn't.  But if we're talking about ACTUALLY using her long-term as a non-filler, non-Adjutant?  Yeah, 2/10 sounds right.  Warp is cool, but you don't really need redundant Warps unless you're doing an LTC playthrough or the like, and BE & GD already have a significantly better Warper, and Manuela doesn't really support with many Blue Lions (Sylvain & Gilbert). If you want the more useful Manuela builds than "bad Bishop worse than Flayn / Linhardt / Marianne / Mercie", then she has to climb one of the toughest skill training gaps in the game, unless you just sit her in Assassin forever maybe and eschew Mortal Savant / Pegasus Knight / etc.   DLC does help because Trickster is another legit, low-investment option for her, but she's still probably worse than many other options like Marianne or Yuri at Trickster'ing, and those aren't even necessarily the best builds for those characters.  Clearly better than a 1/10 useless, but all of that extra investment and Sauna trips that isn't really required for other characters means she's pretty bottom of the barrel objectively.

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1 minute ago, SnowFire said:

Just replying to +1 this idea.  Things you want your dancer to have ideally: sword proficiency if building a dodgetank / bait unit, powerful but limited utility (e.g. Warp, Fortify), and sure some attack magic.  Manuela is certainly well-built for doing this, but it turns out it's against the rules for the judges to declare themselves the winner.  (Alas for Dancer Alois or Shamir as well.)  Too bad that IntSys is never gonna release hypothetical no-monastery, no restrictions mode to allow shenanigans like this.

Plus Manuela's charm is some of the highest naturally in the game, so even the sword dance combat art would punch way harder than her spells despite being a physical attack. I haven't played much with that combat art, but I remember with Dorothea its scaling in damage was huge. More than the likes of Finesse Blade. Another shortcoming I neglected to mention is that Manuela makes a good Blutgang user, yet has no crest to mitigate the recoil damage.

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Blutgang, sadly, is nearly useless anyway on anyone but Marianne (and not great on Marianne). Levin Sword is only 4 less might and actually has range. And if you're at range 1, you can use Hexblade (or Soulblade, depending on the unit), and the generic Silver Sword+ has the same might and better hit than Blutgang. That leaves the only use for Blutgang as an enemy phase range 1 magic sword option, which seems incredibly niche to me.

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7 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Just replying to +1 this idea.  Things you want your dancer to have ideally: sword proficiency if building a dodgetank / bait unit, powerful but limited utility (e.g. Warp, Fortify), and sure some attack magic.  Manuela is certainly well-built for doing this, but it turns out it's against the rules for the judges to declare themselves the winner.  (Alas for Dancer Alois or Shamir as well.)  Too bad that IntSys is never gonna release hypothetical no-monastery, no restrictions mode to allow shenanigans like this.

To push back on this somewhat, I'm of the mind that the only thing you want your Dancer doing on player phase is... well, Dancing. Every turn she Warps, Heals, Rallies Charm, etc. is a turn she's not Dancing. And vice-versa - when she Dances, she's not making use of her other player-phase utility she has. These tools aren't synergistic; rather, they're in competition with one another. It's the struggle I faced with Dancer Annette (to Dance, to Rally, to Heal, to Attack?).

Moreover, Manuela is actually missing a couple things that I would say make for an ideal Dancer. Movement is the most important (arguably, the only important) stat for a Dancer. And since Manuela is neutral in Riding, and starts at E, she doesn't have a route to Movement +1. This next one only matters with the DLC, but - having no Crest means she takes a penalty from the Fetters of Dromi. She can use them, granted, but it'll make her survivability even worse-off. She can still use the March Ring without penalty, but then she's missing out on Canto. Obviously, what the Fetters offer is good on any infantry unit, but I like them best on a Dancer.

Thematically, though, a Dancer Manuela would be wonderful. I made a thread some months back, about each character getting a personal Master class, and the class I proposed for Manuela included Dancing. And I wouldn't mind throwing all gameplay considerations out the window in favor of making Alois dance, either.

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Well, Manuela's good on the Sword Avo +20 plan at least, which is passive and useful even if she dances every turn.  Grab a Training Sword for pure dodgetanking or a Levin Sword to actually kill people.  I agree that TOO much utility is problematic due to the contention issue, but I think that Utility that is very situational is still good on a Dancer - Silence the best example from Manuela's kit, you almost never use it but it's very good sometimes and worth skipping a turn dancing.  Warp can be a little weird with Dance as an option (only useful if you're jumping a ledge or want to keep your Warp-Dancer really far back - talk about considerations that almost never come up, considering Linhardt's game-worst Charm, and Dancer Lysithea being a horrible waste!), but Manuela "loses less".  The other example of something like this is Dancer Flayn's Fortify - Flayn is mostly straight-up Dancing but can also take a turn off for a mass team heal, which is handy.

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2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Moreover, Manuela is actually missing a couple things that I would say make for an ideal Dancer. Movement is the most important (arguably, the only important) stat for a Dancer. And since Manuela is neutral in Riding, and starts at E, she doesn't have a route to Movement +1. This next one only matters with the DLC, but - having no Crest means she takes a penalty from the Fetters of Dromi. She can use them, granted, but it'll make her survivability even worse-off. She can still use the March Ring without penalty, but then she's missing out on Canto. Obviously, what the Fetters offer is good on any infantry unit, but I like them best on a Dancer.

The Fetters of Dromi doesn’t have recoil when you dance, only if you get into combat. Also the tier list assumes no DLC (which I disagree with but that’s what it is).

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8 hours ago, Stones said:

The Fetters of Dromi doesn’t have recoil when you dance, only if you get into combat. Also the tier list assumes no DLC (which I disagree with but that’s what it is).

Shoot, really? Huh, I guess that's my bad for never trying it. I guess having a Crest isn't really relevant for your dancer, then, unless you expect them to get into any enemy-phase combat.

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18 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Blutgang, sadly, is nearly useless anyway on anyone but Marianne (and not great on Marianne). Levin Sword is only 4 less might and actually has range. And if you're at range 1, you can use Hexblade (or Soulblade, depending on the unit), and the generic Silver Sword+ has the same might and better hit than Blutgang. That leaves the only use for Blutgang as an enemy phase range 1 magic sword option, which seems incredibly niche to me.

Still better than the Crusher, which is practically unusable. Which reminds me, I hate when weapons and items that get constantly hyped in the storyline don't live up to the hype, and while a lot of Hero's Relics are guilty of this, the Crusher is the most egregious one by far.

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