Rate the Unit 7: Boucherone

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Guidelines:

2.1.) mention the diffculty on which you rate the unit 

2.2.) what classes your unit went through, what skills they had and so on; don´t consider obviously suboptimal builds.

2.3.) no DLC rings, no non-unit DLC bonuses

2.4.) no grinding in skirmishes

2.5.) no rng abuse (no resetting for bond rings)

2.6.) cooking is allowed

2.7.) ratings to be given in the format X/10

2.8.) if it isn´t mentioned above, it´s fair game

2.9.) no "Kagetsu exists and obsoletes Lapis, 0/10", explain your rating

 

Unit: Boucherone ButcherOne

Class: Fighter

                     Lvl   HP    STR   MAG   DEX   SPD    DEF    RES    LCK   BLD

Bases:           4    29     10       0        8         7         6         3         5      9

T. Bases:       4     3       1         0       3          2         3         2        4       2 

Growths:      /     85     20        0       50       45       35       20      15    20

 

Personal Skill:  When an ally joins a chain attack in this unit’s combat, unit deals +2 damage.

Innate Proficiency: Axe

SP: 300

 

Support Bonuses:

C    Hit+10, Critical+3
B    Hit+10, Critical+3, Dodge+5
A    Hit+10, Critical+6, Dodge+5
S    Hit+10, Critical+12, Dodge+5

 

Tools and mo stats:

Engage Numbers - Google Tabellen

Average Stats - Fire Emblem: Engage (FE17) (triangleattack.com)

 

Rating: 3.67

Next unit on Sunday

Edited July 2, 2023 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[lenticular]

So let's talk about Chain Attack. Chain Attack damages an enemy for one tenth of their health, rounded down. And that rounding down has some interesting consequences. When enemy health ranges are in the 10s, it theoretically takes between 10 and 19 Chain Attack hits to kill the enemy. With health ranges in the 20s, it takes from 10 to 15. By the time the health ranges are in the 50s, it's 10 to 12. This means that Chain Attack is more consistently good in the late game when enemy hp is higher. There are still targets in the early game where you're doing 10% damage, but not as many of them.

Chain Attack is also something that becomes better once you're able to stack more backup units. Both because more damage is obviously better but also because of reliability. Hitting, eg, 2 out of 3 Chain Attacks has a much better probability than hitting 1 out of 1. Once you have multiple, you can actually start relying on them much more often.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Boucheron isn't very good. Yes, he's your first backup unit and backup units are good, but he's a backup unit at the time when they are at their weakest.

My experience in trying to use Boucheron is that he was pretty mediocre to start with, managed to maintain mediocrity only with care, and ended up dipping to the point where I dropped him. I give him 3/10.

[Barren]

So it’s time to talk about this big softie Boucheron. He joins you turn 2 of chapter 3 like Etie and Alfred as previously mentioned, and he’s your first back up unit in the game. As the post above already explains it, back up units can participate in battle using chain attacks to chip away at the enemy’s HP based on their max HP so it could either lead into a kill or kill themselves. Its great for maddening later on as enemies tend to be way more bulkier than normal.

 

Despite having a good hp, speed, dex and build growth, his personal strength growth is at 20%, which is suspiciously low. This is before factoring in class growths on top of that. Axe users tend to have shaky hit rates from the start, and Boucheron is no different. His ability moved to tears adds 2 damage when units are able to participate in chain attacks. This in conjunction with Alear’s divinely inspiring can help mitigate his lowish strength growth despite being an axe fighter. Plus in chapter 4 he can get a hand axe from a corrupted cavalier so that can add to his arsenal.

 

He does contribute early on like Etie but eventually you may consider dropping him for a better strength unit down the line. But let’s say you do want to use him, Berserker can be a decent option for him as it can add more HP, strength and build as the game goes on. Warrior is definitely his better option for similar reasons but Warriors get a bow rank and a higher dex stat cap which is what Berserkers really lack towards the end of the game.
 

Ike or Lyn is good for him pending on what you want to focus on. But there are better candidates for these emblems than him. I’d say 4/10 seems fair. 

[Armchair General]

Honestly, I think that he's one of those characters that are mainly there to fill out your deployment slots. But even then, I mainly kept him around because I had an lot of hand axes but only two or three axe units. Anna is kind of mediocre as an axe goblin and Jade is just slow and inaccurate. Diamant, on the other hand, consistently gets shit done.

[SnowFire]

Boucherone: 0/10.  Didn't recruit him.  Who is he?

--

Boucheron: Here's his 20/20 stats as a Berserker:

71 HP, 30 Str, 0 Mag, 28 Dex, 27 Spd, 19 Def, 12 Res, 11 Lck, 21 Bld, 5 Move
If that Str looks suspiciously high, Berserker has notably better Str growth than other classes, which probably explains Bouchy's suspiciously low natural Str growth.  Of course, in practice, you're actually making Boucheron a Warrior (just requires a quick trip through Leif or an Arena visit for the Bow prof.), which will lose him ~3 points of Str but get him some minor speed & Def/Res tankiness.

--

I'm a Boucheron defender!  I used him to the very end in my Hard playthrough (as a Warrior, ofc).  Various people / streamers seem to consider Boucheron very bad, as in bottom tier or even worst unit in the game.  Having a personal Strength growth equivalent to Hortensia is indeed very suspicious, yes.  Still.  Boucheron does have a niche: surviving on enemy phase.  You don't necessarily care about killing that much for this, just defensive stats, and Boucheron can do this.  (Louis will do it better, yes, but Boucheron's HP & Spd means he holds up better vs. mages.)  Chain Attacks don't really care about how strong you are, so Boucheron ends up as a Chain Attack specialist on player phase (grind up the Lucina "Chain Attack anywhere you can move" skill if you can - not just for Boucheron, but his friends too to trigger Moved to Tears) and someone who survives on enemy phase.  And besides, his Str, while bad, isn't THAT bad; class growths matter too, and he can heft the very heaviest of axes without issue to patch his attack power some.

Boucheron does have one other odd niche: he's a decent Leif user.  Leif's personal weapons are insanely heavy for whatever reason, so Boucheron's overkill Build means he can actually heft them without getting weighed down (important if Engaging and avoiding the much-complained about "Leif switched to a personal weapon and got my character doubled").  Obviously he's not great as a Vantage "kill everyone first" style Leif user, but he can do okay with the "Arms Shield tank" style.  (Leif's Bld bonus is sadly wasted, at least past the brief C9-C10 moment of usability.)

Anyway, while I'm trying to stand Boucheron up as doing at least something in early game and still being usable late game, I'm certainly not going to claim he's a unit in the top half of the cast.  Or even in the second quartile, he's firmly in the bottom quarter of units.  Just...  not the absolute worst, either.  Exists early and can be made usable later.  4/10, for all that that there may be some favoritism here and I can hardly complain about 3/10 ratings.  

Edited June 30, 2023 by SnowFire

[FashionEmblem]

Reviving the Boucheron thread just to bring up that he benefits a LOT from the DLC, even on Maddening. Not within the rules of this discussion, thus I will omit giving him a score. However, for anyone who wants to invest into him he has two notable claims he lacks in the base game:

1. Early access to Warrior combined with his high speed and build allows him to double and one round the wyrms in Tiki's Divine Paralogue at ~level 12 with a Long Bow. This is notable because the Long Bow allows him to retaliate against the wyrms on Enemy Phase. Bonus points if you raise his bond level enough with Sigurd to gain immunity to the Freeze status from the wyrm's ice breath. This paralogue gatekeeps the other Divine Paralogues, so having a unit able to easily thin out the ranks of all those wyrm reinforcements is much appreciated. Of course, this may not be the use of an early Master Seal, but if that map gives you trouble this is a potential out.
2. He makes a great Mage Cannoneer. Mage Cannoneer damage scales of Dex, which is one of Boucheron's higher stats. His strength is mediocre, but his high build and dex help offset this for hit rate calculations. Thanks to his high HP pool, he can exploit Reprisal and Hold Out to stack a lot of damage, and run the Piercing Blast to punch through enemy defenses. At his best he probably runs Roy and inherits Reprisal + to safely hit 1 HP and convert that missing HP into big damage. Roy gives boosts to HP and strength which help fuel his damage (after Reprisal) and accuracy, respectively. You can inherit Divine Pulse + to improve the success rate of his long shots or Canter to help with keeping up with the rest of your army (and attacking at closer range, with fewer hit rate penalties). A more SP efficient approach is to run Veronica as his emblem and inherit Hold Out from Roy instead. A bit weaker in reverse since Veronica's stats don't mesh well with the Bouch, but you do save potentially a lot of SP if you are willing to inherit a lower tier of Hold Out.

Edited July 26, 2023 by FashionEmblem