Reclassing the DLC Units Makes them Better?

[BloodRonin]

Now that the dlc has been out for a while, what are your real thoughts on the 4 winds along with the 2 new dragons we receive?

Personally, I think Rafal is fine to stay in his current fell dragon class mainly for the dragon stone use.  (though does have more base str than Panette if you reclass him in zerker or warrior) He essentially is a dragon version of our favorite goth wielding axe girl. I found him to be really useful, and I love his crit quotes. 

BUT, besides him, I could argue that all the other dlc characters would do better off in alternative classes. 

Nel is very lack luster for me. her starting stats if you take in account her internal level of 20 feel really weak. In both my dlc runs, I had several of my starter units have a much better stat spread if you compare their relative levels. Nel's personal and class skill are really... well bad imo.Both Nel and Rafal do not have any negative max modifiers or additional. So whatever class they go into, the max stats they have will be that class. That being said, I did see a build with Nel online that made great use of Byleth as a dragon (for the +3 to all stats, and her stat spread made sword of the creator and the fists weapons hit pretty hard. BUT you could also argue others could do this as well, and with rally sprectrum, instruct all stats isn't that game changing anymore imo)

Madeline

Highest base str growth in the game. Her problem is her terrible speed and dex growths. You pretty much have to run hit engraves or +hit skills on her if you keep her in her base class. (though general imo is such a poor class anyhow) I found making her into Halberdier to be her best class. It allows her to make great use of her really high strength, and with pincer attack skill, the ability to easily double enemies. Again her speed is trash, and dex is too. The other options are great knight (best great knight in the game imo with her personal skill stacking with great knight skill. Add armshield+ and the Erika emblem and she is taking easily 15 less damage with weapon advantage) or wyvern knight with brave Axe and a +hit engrave. 

Zelestia

Soulblade is kind of terrible. If makes levin sword hit less against low res targets and makes physical weapons hit less against hit res targets. It really it nice to have though to levin sword down mages. The benfit to her is the fact she is a flyer with tome access. That does count for a lot, and her personal skill is actually really great if used correctly. She makes a better mage knight imo with her growths if losing flying isn't an issue for you. 

Gregory

Gregory comes with some really nice nukey stats. He is essentially just a better version of Citrinne. With really high base magic, he will hit hard... if he hits. He has incredible res too. He is like the mage version of Madeline. Problem is his speed and terrible dex. He makes a fantastic dire thunder user, but even then you will want to help fix his dex. I personally love his sage outfit as Griss is my favorite from engage, and he does have innate staff use too. So he could be a good Griffin knight support, and levin sword Griffin knight would help fix his bad speed/dex. 

What are your thoughts about reclassing them? Have you? and what did you do?

[samthedigital]

Generally speaking I think it matters when we do the Fell Xenologue; all of the characters are pretty busted if we blast through Fell Xenologue on Normal mode after chapter 7 or so. I had an overall positive with Zelestia. She started having troubles one rounding when not engaged as the game went on (Chrom), but since flying magic damage is so good I would probably fix her problems with stat boosters if it wasn't working out.

I swapped Nel to a Paladin with Camilla, Canter, and Lance Power 4 if I remember correctly. The combination sort of worked, but in the future I wouldn't use Paladin. It seemed good on paper, but her usefulness was heavily tied to being engaged. I suspect that she would do better in something like Wyvern with an item surge boosted Killer Axe (or alternatively something that increases her Mt) to help supplement damage though.

I used Rafal as a Byleth bot, so he didn't end up doing much outside of support; I can't comment on him. I also don't really care about post-game content, so I haven't experimented with that either. Gregory seems fine, but I didn't try him out. I didn't use Madeline either, but that's mainly because she has a defensive stat spread, and I don't find that to be terribly useful in this game.