Rate the Unit-Three Houses, Day 39: Constance

[Barren]

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 and no stat booster items

- 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

Jeritza: 8.2

Ferdinand: 7.78

Catherine: 7.7556

Sylvain: 7.66

Balthus: 7.5

Ingrid: 7.34

Hilda: 7.31

Yuri: 7.28

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

Alois: 5.75

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)

Manuela: 3.1

Gilbert: 2.27

Anna: 1.978

 

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: 5.57 (rounded, it was a very very long number)

Average score for Ashen Wolves: 7.39

[LoneStar]

Miss Nuvelle is here. Constance's growth rates are similar to Lysithea's, so that basically means she is a glass cannon nuke. However her speed is pretty bad, so her role will mostly be to do heavy chip damage or try to one shot. She has a set of interesting talents that I'll get into later.

First of all she learn two rally skills in Magic and Resistance, but no battalion skill which is unique, but also not an issue. She gets Soulblade and Hexblade, so coming off of her high magic these are some strong nukes. Another hard hitting magical combat art she gains is Mystic Blow from her Brawl budding talent. Her Reason spells aren't anything too crazy, Fimbulvetr and Agnea's Arrow are strong also Bolting, but they have low hit rates. You will want to have Hit+20 from Archer, or Uncanny Blow from Valkyrie, but that's much later. From her Faith list she gets Rescue, which is nice to have.

She will do fine in any of the mage classes. She has strengths in Reason and Flying, so that aim's her towards Dark Flier. A flying mage class is lowkey broken, but Constance's low speed, and the class having the Pegasus Rider's base stats keeps it tame. Her strength in Authority lets her equip some high ranking battalions like Macuil Evil Repelling Co., which has +30 hit to help her out, but she has to be in a grounded class, like Dark Knight or Gremory. Mortal Savant can be good too, as the main issue with the class is it's low speed she isn't hurt too much. She can be a decent dancer, I used her in my Golden Deer Maddening run. Although she has Bolting her support list isn't too high, but those that she do support can benefit, and Rescue from earlier is a nice option. Finally her budding talent in Brawl opens War Cleric as an option, but until you get her Brawl to A rank for Aura Knuckles, she will have to rely on Mystic Blow to do any real damage.

My Rating: 7/10. Overall a good mage that has plenty of options.

[L3xandr3]

In the dark, she’s a more bombastic Clarine. In the light, she’s even more self-destructing Marianne. Neither of the two do I appreciate. I like witty characters. I like humble characters. I don’t like gimmicks, hyper-aggressiveness, or self-destructive people. This sums up my thoughts on her character.

     Skill Levels:      Swords (E+), Reason (D+), Authority (D), and Flying (D) are Boons. Talent in… Grappling? Banes in Axes and Armor. Her banes are nonissues, as is her Talent.

     Abilities:     Circadian Beat is only good for the Str/Mag boost. She’s a very squishy mage. Why should she be taking hits? She also gets Rallies Magic and Resistance (C). Not worth the ability slots, in my opinion.

     Arts:     Both Souldblade (C+) and Hexblade (A)? Ok.

     Spells:     Fire, Sagittae (C), Fimbulvetr (B), Bolting (A), and Agnea’s Arrow (A+). Very good list, especially considering she’s slow, even by mage standards. For Faith, she gets Ward (C), Rescue (B), and Abraxas (A). Aside from Rescue, bad Faith list.

     Stats:     12+60% Magic is the highest in the game. But, Oi, are the rest of her stats terrible. 7+35% Speed is Annette level bad. 7+30% Skill and 5+30% Resistance are comparably bad. 5+20% Strength is irrelevant (the Weight offsetting is insignificant, considering her Speed). 23+20% Hp and 3+15% Defense. Wet Tissue Paper is more durable. 4+15% Luck is also irrelevant (She shouldn’t be facing crits, let alone attacks). 7+25% Charm is terrible. The actual hell was IS thinking?!

     Classes:     Beginner- Monk

Intermediate- Mage

Advanced- Dark Falcon. If you want to use Magic sword memes, then maybe Assassin

Master- Mortal Savant. I’d recommend staying in Dark Falcon, though.

          The Verdict

Magic nukes and Rescue. With DF mobility, Rescue is comparable to Warp. Honestly IDK what to rate her. She’s either the best mage or the worst, depending on your opinion of a unit that evaporates as soon as an enemy glances at her. So I guess I’ll give her a 6/10.

[Barren]

Now we get to talk about Constance. This formal magician dreams of restoring House Nuvelle back to the glory days of old. She also likes to perform magical experiments and she has a bit of a split personality going on when either indoors or outdoors. But we're here to talk about her potential on the battlefield. This is assuming hard.

Constance is third to last members of the Ashen Wolves and her stat spread is rather lopsided like Lysithea except it's a bit different. She has a 60% magic growth which is among one of the highest growths in the game. But every other stat growth she has doesn't exceed 35% with her second highest being in speed. Her dex, resistance and charm are at a low 30% growth too. Her HP and strength are sitting at a low 20% and her defense and luck even lower at 15%. So needless to say she is very much a class cannon mage. Her personal ability Circadian Beat functions like indoor fighter and outdoor fighter from Awakening merged together. If indoors her strength and magic goes up by 3, if outdoors, then it's her defense and resistance that gets the boost.EDIT: +3 Str/Mag on Fog of War maps works as an in door map. It's a cool little feature but also makes her a bit situational as she really excels better when indoors IMO. She bears the crest of Noa which by chance can preserve her uses of magic attacks.

She has a boon in swords, reason, authority and flying with a budding talent in brawling. Her banes consist of axes and heavy armor so no fortress knight for her. I wouldn't recommend weight -3 anyways because she is simply not fast enough to double anything outside of fortress knights. Still her qualities can't be ignored. If you recruit her between chapters 3 - 5, she'll have faith at rank D which means she already comes with heal. Her sword combat arts consist of Soul Blade at rank C+ and Hexblade at rank A. Both of which capitalize on her high magic stat. Her budding talent in brawling grants her Mystic Blow which basically does the same as her sword combat arts. Her reason spell list which is the highlight of this character, consists of Fire (which she already has), Sagittae at rank C,  Fimbulvetr at rank B, Bolting at rank A then Agnea's Arrow at rank A+. These spells are quite strong as Fimbulvetr albeit inaccurate can score critical hits and Bolting is one of the best spells in the game. Of course since her dex growth is quite low, she'll be having trouble landing those spells. Her faith spell list has Ward at rank C, Rescue at rank B and Abraxas at rank A. Ward is okay at best. Rescue can be helpful in certain dangerous situations and Abraxas while a strong spell in it's own right, doesn't exactly stand out.

As for class options, they tend to be geared towards magical routes. Like Monk for Magic +2 and then Mage for Fiendish Blow. Pretty obvious stuff here. If you want to you could work on her bow rank to get it up to rank D+ and have her certify as an Archer. For advance classes, there is Warlock for Bowbreaker. From there, you can take Bowbreaker and bring it to the Dark Flier class. Bowbreaker is a great ability for Dark Flier as this ability gives the class an extra layer of protection against enemy Snipers. Especially when you combine that with Alert Stance. Constance having a crest allows her to equip other hero's relic like the Thyrsus so range won't be an issue for her. Constance can co Valkyrie if you want the extra range thanks to the class bonus and get Uncanny Blow. But of course you'll need to train her riding up to a minimum rank C+. Her sword options may consist of something like Swordmaster or Assassin, but you would lose out on her magic and she's too frail to pull it off. Constance could go War Cleric if you want to experiment around with her brawling, yes Mystic Blow will deal a lot of damage but you better be sure she won't get revenge killed for it afterwards otherwise all that power would go to waste. Constance can go Gremory if you like having her on the ground and having double uses of all magic. Or Mortal Savant if you're feeling different. Like Yuri, she can also be a decent choice to be a dancer, her boon in swords and authority really helps and she can be a support bot with bolting similar to Dorothea and Hilda. Except that her support pool is very limited compared to those two. She also comes with Rally Magic off the bat then get Rally Resistance at rank C. No battalion vanatge or wrath or anything of that sort. But honestly it's fine that she doesn't have anything of that sort.

Overall, I think Constance is really a 6.5/10 unit. She is capable of being a good mage but you may have to baby her a little first. But still, if you want to help her realize her dream of restoring House Nuvelle, then now's the time to do it.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Barren

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm a bit surprised Balthus outranked Dedue by such a large margin.

 

Constance is an offence-oriented mage with 60% magic growth, a repositioning faith spell at B, and an authority boon. This should sound familiar.

The good: Constance's stat build only contains one standout, but it's a good one: 11+60% magic, same as Lysithea. This lets her hit hard with all her various offensive magic tools, and she has a lot of them. Of note, she gets Fimbulvetr at B; this is a bad spell at A, when everyone else gets it, but a decent one at B, giving her Lysithea-level offence at that point (albeit off slightly shaky hit). At A+ she upgrades to Agnea's Arrow as her strongest. Fire and Saggitae provide accuracy at lower levels. She gets a magical combat art, Soulblade, at C+ swords, so she can hit hard at melee too. Adding on to all of this is her personal skill: for indoor/dark maps, she gets +3 magic (and strength), which vaults her even a bit past Lysithea for damage at many points.

She also gets Bolting, which is really neat: a siege tome with 2 uses (4 as a Warlock/Gremory). While her short support list means that she can't provide as many linked boosts as Dorothea, the ones she does provide are nice, and of course it's a very helpful offensive option even independent of that, especially with how hard she hits. Her faith list includes another notable long-range option: Rescue, which, off her magic stat, reaches higher ranges than the other mages with it, giving her some extra utility.

She has an authority boon, to go with her expected boons in reason and swords, and a flying boon. This gives her easy access to Dark Flier and Mortal Savant in addition to the standard Warlock/Gremory, and the authority boon frees up a bit of training for some other things.

The less good: Back to stats, Constance shares Lysithea's problem of her non-magic stats being quite poor. She's even worse off than Lysithea, actually, because 6+35% speed is slower than any student mage except Linhardt. 23+20% HP, 4+15% luck, 3+15% def, and 4+30% res is a bad durability spread even for a mage. This also makes the other half of her personal skill, which boosts her def/res by 3 while outdoors, feel mostly wasted, as her HP/speed/luck won't let her take many hits even then. 6+25% charm is also pretty mediocre, so don't expect her to be your best wielder of offensive gambits, especially as a Dark Flier: landing the 40-base-hit Nuvelle Fliers Resonant Lightning may be tricky (her short support list doesn't help).

For an offence-focused mage, not having a 3-range spell like Thoron is also definitely a downer. And in a comparison with Lysithea, the other offence-focused mage who shares this problem, she doesn't have specialist offensive spells like Luna or Dark Spikes.

Her faith list is, aside from Rescue, pretty bad: no Physic or Fortify or Restore, not even Recover, meaning she's a bad healer (Ward's okay, but situational). And since she's only neutral in Faith as opposed to strong, getting any given faith spell, Rescue included, takes longer that it should, and this largely erases the advantage of her authority boon.

Overall, Constance has most of the same strengths and weaknesses as Lysithea, which really begs comparison between the two. And while it's tempting to be dazzled by Constance's indoor magic stat, ultimately she's not likely to perform as well, because of her lower amounts of offensive options and gaining skills more slowly due to neutral Faith + no Mastermind. Still, she's a solid addition to the team, especially since she's a chapter 2 pickup for any route, and siege tomes are always great to have. Constance gets a 6.5/10 (Maddening).

[L3xandr3]

1 hour ago, Barren said:

Her personal ability Circadian Beat functions like indoor fighter and outdoor fighter from Awakening merged together. If indoors her strength and magic goes up by 3, if outdoors, then it's her defense and resistance that gets the boost.

Small nitpick, but please note that she gets the +3 Str/Mag on Fog of War maps as well as indoor maps.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Constance, considered on Maddening.

The Bad

With one glaring exception, Constance's stats run the gamut from bad to worse. Her Strength (5 + 0.20x) is atrocious, so abandon all pretexts of a cheeky physical build. Her poor Defense (3 + 0.15x) synergizes wonderfully with her miserable HP stat (23 + 0.20x), granting her the defensive prowess of a wet paper mage. And if you think she'll be more durable on the magical side - you're right, but barely. Her Resistance (5 + 0.30x) is... not good, in fact, it's equal to Balthus's own. Her Luck is terrible, too, at 4 + 0.15x - presumably why she keeps forgetting her parasol. Her Charm (7 + 0.30x) and Dexterity (7 + 0.30x) are acceptable, but no better. And her Speed (7 + 0.35x) is barely even better. By the way, these are her level 3 Noble stats. Presumably, she lost stats on the first two level-ups.

As for proficiencies, she's... huh. She's cursed with just a couple banes, and neither is in areas she would likely care about. She has an Axe bane, so no Brigand or Death Blow, but it's not like her physical offense was potent to begin with. Her other bane comes in Armor. In conjunction, this gives her a hard time going for Armor Knight, to boost her Defense (and likely HP) up to acceptable levels. And Weight-3 will be an even tougher sell, to make up for her low Strength. But let's not kid ourselves, Fortress Knight Constance was always going to be a joke. Oh, one more thing - she joins with E in Faith, which kinda sucks if she wants to stick in a magical build. However, if she's recruited as a Monk (in Chapter 3/4/5), which I generally recommend, she'll bring D Faith to the table. Not too shabby.

What else? Well, she gets a few combat arts, but no physical ones. Which is probably for the better, given her strength. Anyway, she has fairly thick spell lists, but on the Faith side... uh, there's only one healing option? I admit, I'm starting to stretch here. I'll have more to say on the positives side. Oh! Right, her Personal either gives +3 Str/Mag (indoor maps) or +3 Def/Res (outdoor maps). The former is far preferable, as her bulk is so frail that a few extra points do so little for her. But it also happens less often - most maps are outdoors, and this is exacerbated when considering Paralogues and Auxilliary battles.

The Good

I've already complained about her bad stats, so let's talk about her good stat - Magic. At 12 + 0.60x, Constance's Magic stat sits among the highest in the game. This makes her one of your hardest-hitting mages, while also reinforcing a couple of her support spells. But can a unit make it with just one good stat?

Back to proficiencies, she has a few cool boon areas. Foremost among them is Reason (D+), so she'll have an easy time getting more spells, and going Mage for Fiendish Blow couldn't be simpler. Another boon she joins with is in Swords, which might sound useless with her poor Strength, but she has some magical options here. She has a budding talent in Brawling, too, which... doesn't do a ton for her, especially with physical attacks. As for movement types, she comes with a boon in Flight (D), so Pegasus Knight (and thereby, Darting Blow) will just take some Lance training (and she can still use magic swords for combat). Finally, there's an Authority boon (D) at work, which is always welcome. And it'll be higher if she joins late, which (like Yuri) dampens the usual problem with late joiners.

Looking at combat arts, she gets magical ones, which are... all she would really want. Soulblade (C+) and Hexblade (A) are near-indistinguishable options for a 1-range nigh-on nuke. Her budding talent, too, unlocks the Mystic Blow combat art - while she misses out on doubling, it provides a solid enough boost for her to, again, do solid 1-range damage. Her spells, though, are where things get good. I said before that Hanneman has the best Reason list in the game, but the heir of House Nuvelle may give him a run for his money. Sagittae has a ton of uses, Fimbulvetr gets a crit boost, Bolting is just Meteor with twice as many uses, and Agnea's Arrow is super-high-Mt. Notably, she's the only Reason-specialist to learn Bolting, so if you want to take advantage of this siege spell, she's most suited for it. On the Faith side, she gets... some interesting stuff, I guess. Ward is support, Rescue can be really good on a high-mobility class (or with Warp/Stride support), and Abraxas is just damage.

In the long-run, which class should she go for? Dark Flier is probably the most obvious, since that's her class in the Cindered Shadows campaign. The mobility, and Black Tomefaire, are both welcome - but the limited battalion options are a drag. Falcon Knight has a similar problem, and no spells, but makes up for it (kinda) with even more move and an avoid boost. Assassin is another physical class she can go for (Swordfaire is great with Soul/Hexblade, she'll enjoy Stealth given her frailty, and best possible infantry mobility), while as a Mortal Savant, she'll lose some utility but regain spells. If you want to go ham on Gauntlets, I guess she can make War Monk work (with Aura Knuckles and Mystic Blow). Finally, magical infantry classes ought not to be totally discounted. Warlock combines Black Tomefaire with doubled spell uses and infantry battalions, while Gremory loses the former boon in favor of more move and white magic uses.

There are a couple other tools to her favor, too. She joins with Rally Magic, and gets Rally Resistance at C-rank. This lets her bolster fellow magic-specialists, in case she won't be attacking, or healing, or... whatever on the turn in question. I mentioned her personal, Circadian Beat already, but on indoor maps, 3 extra damage is hard to turn down. Finally, there's her Major Crest of Noa, offering her a 20% chance of conserving an offensive spell charge - always welcome in casting classes. And while there's no Relic or Sacred Weapon associated with it, at least she'll take no penalty with tools like Thyrsus or Blutgang.

The Verdict

So I asked a simple question - can a unit, with only a single good stat, be good? And the simple answer is: for the most part, yes. Constance is pitifully frail on both sides, she physically hits as hard as a newborn kitten (namely, Lyre), she's bound to misfortune, and in most other areas (Speed, Dexterity, Charm), she's just okay. Her Magic, however, sits among the highest in the game. And with her outstanding Reason list, and generally acceptable Faith collection, she performs swimmingly in a casting class. Namely, she can offer a rare Rescue, or an even-rarer Bolting (for damage, or link/gambit support). And she brings a few other neat tricks with her - two Rallies, a Major Crest, a litany of magical combat arts, and an Authority boon. I don't know the fate of House Nuvelle, but I'd say there are far less capable hands it could sit in than Constance's. As such, I'm awarding her a 7 out of 10.

[Barren]

1 hour ago, L3xandr3 said:

Small nitpick, but please note that she gets the +3 Str/Mag on Fog of War maps as well as indoor maps.

Ahh good catch. I'll edit my post.

[Agro]

It's too late to rate, but Constance for me was an easy 8/10. Rescue is really nice for increased strategic options and helps her to keep up her EXP gains; Bolting is a free enemy-delete button that you get SIX of per map as a Gremory as long as she has a good battalion and a Magic Staff equipped. She has a crappy early game which is what keeps me from rating her higher, though.