So just what is Manuela's best class anyway?

[lenticular]

This was touched on a little in the thread about the bishop class, but I figured it could use its own topic. What is Manuela's best class? She's a unit who has some considerable strengths: her spell list has some real standouts like Warp and Bolting; she has a strength in flying; she learns the Hexblade combat art; she has a speed of 8+60%. All of this is great. She also has some glaring weaknesses, though: weakness in Reason; no healing spells more powerful than Heal; late recruitment; mediocrity in both strength (10+35%) and magic (8+35%). It's no secret that she's an awkward unit to use with few obvious synergies among her strengths. When I've tried to use her, I've generally been left with a feeling of "this is OK, but...". I've certainly never felt that I have found the one true build that really makes her sing, if you'll forgive the pun.

For the purpose of this question, consider "best class" to include considerations of how difficult it is to get to the class and how well she'll perform across the whole game up to that point, not just how good she'll be once she gets there.

Some options, with pros and cons:

• Assassin
  • Pros: Easy for her to get into, swordfaire for extra damage, super fast
  • Cons: No magic, no flying
• Bishop
  • Pros: Probably the easiest endgame class to certify for, gives a second use of warp
  • Cons: Does nothing to help her offense, horrible movement, her healing is still almost non-existant
• Trickster
  • Pros: Combines her sword and faith strengths, half magic rounds up so has no effect on Warp uses and minimal effect on Silence uses
  • Cons: No -faire skill leads to mediocre damage output, no flying
• War Cleric
  • Pros: Fistfaire and inherent brave effect on gauntlets for extra damage, half magic rounds up so has no effect on Warp uses and minimal effect on Silence uses
  • Cons: Late recruitment and no strength in gauntlets make this slow to start, no flying
• Dark Flier
  • Pros: Flying is really good, magic is really good, tomefaire for extra damage
  • Cons: Has to struggle through her weakness in reason, bolting is the only real standout on her reason list so black tomefaire doesn't offer all that much, magic flying battalions are in very short supply
• Falcon Knight
  • Pros: Flying, as super speedy as assassin, lancefaire is an option, sword growth bonus means that's also an option
  • Cons: No magic, magic lance options are limited at best so you're restricted to strength builds if you want the -faire, has to work through neutrality in lances, good flying battalions are in short supply
• Gremory
  • Pros: Almost a straight upgrade on bishop, double uses for warp and bolting, one more movement than bishop
  • Cons: Has to struggle through her weakness in reason, movement may be better than bishop but still sucks
• Mortal Savant
  • Pros: Swordfaire, magic
  • Cons: Requires training in reason, huge loss of speed relative to assassin, no flying
• Wyvern Lord
  • Pros: Flying, Wyvern Lord is a really good class, axefaire for damage, bolt axes are readily available if you want to focus on magic damage, skill requirements synergise well with backfilling for Death Blow and Darting Blow
  • Cons: No magic, has to work through neutrality in axes, good flying battalions are in short supply
• Something else entirely?
  • Pros: Nobody will see it coming!
  • Cons: Probably a terrible idea?

Of the above, I've tried her as an assassin, a trickster and a falcon knight. They've all been reasonable but not great. Falcon Knight was probably the strongest of them, but that might just be because Falcon Knight is the best of the three classes on its own. The ones that I am most curious to try are War Cleric and Wyvern Lord. Anyone have any thoughts? What classes have you tried for her? How did they work out? What do you think is her best class overall?

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Generally, I think this list could be divided into "low-investment" (Assassin, Bishop, and Trickster) and "high-investment" (anything that demands B+ or higher in a neutral/bane area).

Of the low-investment, I'm actually gonna say Assassin. Weird, I know, but it does bring her the best possible infantry mobility, plus good speed. Hexblade can hurt, especially with effective weaponry, but she really wants to get to a place where she can double with the Levin Sword. And she'll get her pick of magical and hybrid battalions. Losing all spell access sucks, but going down to Trickster, to get some back, feels too great a cost (1 move, Swordfaire).

Of the high-investment, I'll say it's situationally Falcon Knight. That sitauation is "are you plaing Crimson Flower (for Arrow of Indra), and did you play the Yuri/Constance paralogue (for magical flying battalion)?" If yes to both, it can all come together for a formidable magically-offensive flier. I used Falcon Knight Manuela on SS, without these tools, and she was... just okay. Without them, her best (high-effort) route is probably to suck it up and train Reason. If she can make it into Gremory with Bolting and Warp, she can do some really interesting stuff for your team.

Ultimately, though, the best way to use Manuela? Put her in Pegasus Knight to trivialize her paralogue, marginally raise her authority for the sake of Rally Charm, and then drop her for the rest of the game. I really like her character, but as a unit, she's very hard to optimize.

[Barren]

I never thought of going for Pegasus Knight Manuela in that Oil and Water paralogue. That is actually an interesting idea. I did to it without needing her as a pegasus knight but I could try it on Crimson Flower when I go for my maddening run. All I would really need to do is work on her lances, authority and flying. Her sword rank is pretty much covered.

Currently on my Blue Lions maddening run, I'm trying to make Manuela a Gremory so she could support Dorothea when she goes Mortal Savant. 

[Jotari]

The obvious answer is dancer...she just can't become one.

[SnowFire]

I'm gonna say that Trickster is the best of the low investment builds.  Yeah, you lose Swordfaire from Assassin 5/7 of the time, as well as terrain-ignoring.  However, you keep Stealth (important for fragile Manuela), and you keep Manuela's white magic utility, much of which is still fine on half charges like Silence & Warp as noted.  She's still more of a support unit but can chip or finished off the wounded even without Swordfaire.  This will also allow you to build into the best high-investment option naturally, Mortal Savant.  Trickster's speed growth is great which helps offset the eventual MS penalty.  MS is good not so much from gaining Sword/Black Tomefaire (it's nice, but her offense still struggles to one-round), but because getting 2 charges of Bolting, one of the most useful spells in the game, is more important than Trickster's 1.  Bolting allows some plays that simply can't be done without it, so while it takes for freaking ever to train up A Reason for her, there is at least a satisfying reward at the end.

Bishop is the truly low investment build for when you don't really want to use Manuela and haven't trained her but have decided to deploy her anyway because you want some Warp charges.  It's a niche at least.

I'm sure Dark Flier is solid, because that class is good and can make even meh mages scary.  As noted you only get 1 +Mag Flying Battalion and Manuela probably isn't as good as something like Constance / Annnette / Marianne, but whatever, I'm sure she'd be fine at it.

In the realm of "eh, probably not"...  Gremory seems worse than doing Mortal Savant if you want to grind up her Reason, but if you want FOUR Boltings, sure.  War Cleric, I guess it might work?  But I don't see the point of switching from Swords to Fists when Manuela has Hexblade.  Brawl Avo+20 maybe?  Except that Stealth off Assassin / Trickster is like Avo+100, and Mortal Savant can stay back behind the lines of battle entirely.

For Falcon Knight, it's one of the best classes in the game so I'm sure it's probably fine, but there's some real "Ingrid but worse" issues.  Ingrid has Frozen Lance to hit low-res enemies hiding in trees with the magic hit formula which works nicely with Lancefaire, Manuela's stuck with unboosted Hexblade.  Ingrid has a Strength in Lances and a Lance Relic.  AM Ingrid can start training right away, other routes can take advantage of cheaty enemy Peg Knight stat growths.  If you really want to take a speedy late-joining character who isn't a Lance specialist and make them a Falcon Knight, pick Catherine instead - she's got a much better Strength score.  The point about Crimson Flower's Arrow of Indra access is interesting, but CF is also shorter, which is kinda meh for "train really hard in skills that start at E-rank in C6 or C7 for a cool payoff eventually" builds.

 

[Barren]

That has always bugged me. You can make as many Levin Swords, Bolt Axes, Magic Bows, and Aura Knuckles as you can afford. But the Arrow of Indra you only get one of. Now that you say it, Falcon Knight, while still a strong class is an underwhelming option for Manuela.

Makes me rather train her as a Trickster because at least Foul Play can make for some interesting strategies.

[lenticular]

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

Generally, I think this list could be divided into "low-investment" (Assassin, Bishop, and Trickster) and "high-investment" (anything that demands B+ or higher in a neutral/bane area).

That's a fair way to look at it, yeah. Although I think that there is still a fairly substantial difference in how high the investment is for other builds. Getting to B+ in a neutral skill is going to be a lot less work than getting to A in a weakness. But yeah, the three you said are definitely the builds that take the least investment, by a fairly wide margin.

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

Of the low-investment, I'm actually gonna say Assassin. Weird, I know, but it does bring her the best possible infantry mobility, plus good speed. Hexblade can hurt, especially with effective weaponry, but she really wants to get to a place where she can double with the Levin Sword. And she'll get her pick of magical and hybrid battalions. Losing all spell access sucks, but going down to Trickster, to get some back, feels too great a cost (1 move, Swordfaire).

 

1 hour ago, SnowFire said:

I'm gonna say that Trickster is the best of the low investment builds.  Yeah, you lose Swordfaire from Assassin 5/7 of the time, as well as terrain-ignoring.  However, you keep Stealth (important for fragile Manuela), and you keep Manuela's white magic utility, much of which is still fine on half charges like Silence & Warp as noted.  She's still more of a support unit but can chip or finished off the wounded even without Swordfaire.  This will also allow you to build into the best high-investment option naturally, Mortal Savant. 

I partly agree with both of these. I think there are definite advantages to both Assassin and Trickster and which is better is probably situational, largely depending on which other units you're using and whether they give access to warp and -- to a lesser extent -- silence. If I already had another warper, then I think I'd probably prefer to put Manuela into Assassin; if I didn't have one then I'd probably go with Trickster.

As for Manuela being fragile, it's worth noting that her defensive bases and growths aren't bad at all. She has 25+50% hp and 5+30% defense. For comparison, that's identical growths and only 1 less in each of her bases than Seteth, for instance. As I understand it, her big problem is that she spends her first 15 levels autoleveling as a priest with terrible priest growths, which means that she has pretty weak stats when you pick her up. That said, if you can catch her back up with a stat booster or two, she does have the growths to be able to keep up and not need perpetual babying.

2 hours ago, SnowFire said:

War Cleric, I guess it might work?  But I don't see the point of switching from Swords to Fists when Manuela has Hexblade.

I hadn't done the maths, but I was assuming that she'd be able to put out decently more damage with gauntlets as a War Cleric than with swords as a Trickster. Let's actually look at some of the maths now. Hexblade gives +7 might and a silver sword+ is +13 might, so that's +20 might. On the gauntlets side of things, aura knuckles are +2 might and fistfaire gives +5, for a total of  +7. So, if we assume that everything else is equal (same magic stat, same enemy res stat, same presence/absence of fiendish blow, etc.) then a single hit with hexblade will do 13 points of damage more than a single hit with aura knuckles. However, the gauntlets are guaranteed to double. That means that the break-even point is 26 damage. If your Hexblad does 26 damage, then your double attack with aura knuckles would also do 26 damage. If you're doing more than that with Hexblade then the aura knuckles would have done more still; if you're doing less than that then they would have been less still. There's honestly not much to call between the two in this situation. Swords are probably better some of the time, gauntlets at other times.

However, there's also the possibility for the gauntlets to quad. Here, the break even point is between 17 and 18. If your Hexblade is hitting for 17 or under then a quad with aura knuckles would be better; if it's hitting for 18 or more then you'd have been better off punching.

Having looked at the numbers (not exhaustively, there are other things that could still be considered), I'd say that if you put aside the ease of getting into the class and only consider how well it works once you're there, then Trickster is better on maddening but War Cleric is better on Normal or Hard. On maddening, you won't have the speed to be quadding as many enemies, you'll be more concerned about the damage from the counter attack, and you're going to be in more positions where 17-26 points of chip damage is actually relevant. Below maddening, though, I think that War Cleric has a real upside in terms of maximum damage potential and being able to one-round more enemies.

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

Ultimately, though, the best way to use Manuela? Put her in Pegasus Knight to trivialize her paralogue, marginally raise her authority for the sake of Rally Charm, and then drop her for the rest of the game. I really like her character, but as a unit, she's very hard to optimize.

 

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

The obvious answer is dancer...she just can't become one.

Sadly, these are both undoubtedly true. Alas. Poor Manuela.