Rate the Unit 15: Diamant

[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: Lapis

Class: Lord (promotes into Successeur, learning the exclusive skill Sol: Unit may recover HP=50% damage dealt. Trigger %=Dex.)

                     Lvl   HP    STR   MAG   DEX   SPD    LCK   DEF    RES     BLD

Bases:          11     32     13       3       13       13      10       10        6        9

T. Bases:      11      9       5        2        6        5        7        5          3        2

Growths:      /       75     30      15      20      40      20      40      25       15

 

Personal Skill:  If unit initiates combat, grants Hit+15 to unit and foe if foe is able to counterattack.

Innate Proficiency: Sword

SP: 800

 

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:

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

Engage Numbers - Google Tabellen

 

 

Rating: 5.67

Next unit on Monday

Edited July 31, 2023 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[Armchair General]

Well, the game has an glaring shortage of decent swordsmen who can actually stay alive and Diamant filled that niche in Hard Mode. For some reason, I just handed him an Armorslayer, a Steel Sword, and an Hand Axe; and just watched him go to town on whatever challenged him. Sure, he's mainly stays alive due to Sol and his higher than average health pool. But other than that, he's essentially an Hero who just sucks against mages and has trouble routinely killing things in one round (but they do get maimed pretty badly in comparison to Alfred's performance)

[FashionEmblem]

In my Maddening experience, Diamant is unfortunately one of those characters that falls short of excelling. Enough speed to avoid being doubled, but not enough to double. Pretty strong, but not enough to keep up with enemy defense, especially without doubling. Fairly bulky for a non-armor, but not quite bulky enough and unfortunately Sol off his low dexterity does not bridge the gap. Since Sol is mediocre on him, his personal class doesn't offer much since it's an axe Hero with better weapon ranks but a much worse class skill. Unfortunately, I found that Diamant's stats are tied up in his personal class having good bases, so reclassing him out doesn't really help him aside from being some form of support (e.g., a Brave Assist/Dual Assist bot). Aside from all that, Diamant's personal skill is nice for boosting the accuracy of axes on player phase and he has good build to weild heavy weapons such as those axes well.

At his best Diamant is probably in his personal class focused on tanking. He can use Roy for Hold Out and with enough other tanking support (e.g., inheriting Resolve) Sol is probably reliable enough to keep him from dying. He can also run Ike and go for Vantage + Wrath, but that has some unfortunate anti-synergy with Sol, especially if Sol procs at an unfortunate moment to take you out of Vantage range and set you up for a subsequent death. On the bright side, Diamant is more likely to crit in such a scenario thanks to Wrath, so a Sol crit is more likely than not to top out his HP rather than leading him to the grave, but the situations where that fails will sting. From DLC, Hector works well enough for Diamant, improving his bulk, allowing him to double early in enemy phase with Quick Riposte, and Sol can even re-up Quick Riposte occasionally. As a physical bruiser with middling speed, Diamant can also benefit from all of Lyn's speed boosts, but that's not a particular niche to him.

[Barren]

Did you know that Diamant is french for Diamond? Cool right?

 

Anyways, Diamant. I remember people hyping him up since he’s a lord character that showed to have solid stats across the board. And admittedly he does have good enough base stats starting out.

 

The fact that he is ready to promote as soon as you get him adds points to his favor. 800 starting SP is also quite nice since he would be able to inherit some good skills like Canter or Sword Power early on before the end of chapter 10. He does however start off sword locked which is unfortunate but he does have Emblem Roy equipped right out of the gate so he does benefit from engaging to enable rise above which gives him 5 levels worth of stat boosts.

 

This also gives him lance reaver which allows him to break enemy lance users like lance fighters/cavaliers. He could double these units while engaged but is just a point of strength shy from ORKO’ing them. That is pretty unfortunate as he could have used a kill while engaged for some nice exp. 
 

His Successeur class while is unique in a sense that he could use a brave sword and a brave axe in this class, some of his stat caps in this class is what might let you down. Dex in particular is what people would often consider an eyesore. 22 is the max stat cap in Dex for him since his personal stat caps has -1 dex which means that the Successeur class should have 23 dex. The ability he gets Sol while can be nice to have for self healing and making him a sustainable tank, having it trigger around 1/5 of the time isn’t something one should be banking on. You can extend the cap with emblems and bond rings, including Chrom’s S rank ring, but that is RNG rigging at it’s finest.

 

He does however have solid enough bulk and speed throughout where he doesn’t get doubled or one rounded but can’t do the same to the enemy. Fair Fight does also help with his accuracy if he initiates combat. +15 hit isn’t nothing to sneeze at but the same applies for the enemy. So you be best to use it if he is going to either break an enemy for one of your allies to capitalize on them, or if you’re going to feed him an easy kill.

 

His build to me makes him stand out, at base a Steel Sword does not weigh him down at all so he can use it freely. When he promotes, he can use a Killing Edge without being weighed down as well as something like a forged Steel Axe. Even a Lyn engraved Killer Axe will do him wonders and a Lucina engraved Tomahawk helps improves his accuracy tremendously. Both of which he can get by chapter 10 and 11 respectively. By chapter 12 you can get him online assuming that you’re willing to invest into him. Speed + x from Lyn helps him reach certain thresholds to double much slower enemies and keep him from being doubled but enemy Swordmasters with smash weapons as well as Wolf Knights for the mid game.

 

Unfortunately his speed isn’t the greatest so unless he has speed taker, he will eventually get doubled by the late game. You can however mitigate this by giving him a Silver Blade with Micaiah’s engraving as well as Avoid + x from Marth assuming you’re planning ahead for the long term.

 

Speaking of Marth, he can also inherit Break Defenses assuming that you’re willing to use SP books from the well/update bonus to further enhance his Fair Fight ability. 2000 SP is a steep price to pay but this will allow him to inflict additional damage if you do this.

 

Emblem Ike is also good for Diamant as his HP is high enough to withstand punishment as long as you’re not too greedy about it. Leif for Vantage if you’re going for Vantage + Hold Out/Wrath builds though as already pointed out this does have anti-synergy with Sol. 
 

Overall I could say he is 6/10. That’s about as far as I can do for him because I do like him and he does have a cool design. And he could work on maddening if invested. Not as well as some of the higher tier damage carries but can pull his weight. I would have given him a 4/10 if was being more honest because he just doesn’t exactly offer you a great return after investing into him considering that he’ll still run into problems. So guess if I had to even this out, it would actually be 5/10.

[SnowFire]

20/20 Successeur Diamant:

59 HP, 29 Str, 8 Mag, 22 Dex, 29 Spd, 26 Def, 14 Res, 19 Lck, 15 Bld, 5 Move
--

There's an interesting thing about Diamant.  If you do all the default promotions with waiting until L20 to promote (enjoy your sword-lock if you actually do this), and rank all the characters by their damage / attack speed with basic assumed gear, Diamant is the only character in Engage to be both at least 1 attack speed faster than average, and to deal more than average damage.  Yes, Kagetsu is still way better (he's technically a bit below average damage... in exchange for breakneck speed), but still.  (Diamant is 29 Attack Speed to a 26.8 AS average, or +2.2).

That said, his unique passive in Sol is a bit tough to rely on if you're going for an enemy phase tanking strategy.  Even on Hard, things can go wrong, and it's very dangerous to count on Sol procs on Maddening.  You can of course throw Ike on him if you want, but that's not that unique to Diamant.  You're probably better off sticking to the generic Hero since dual assist is much more reliable, for all that this is less fun than using his unique class of course.

As has been discussed before, Diamant runs into some trouble on Maddening due to not making certain speed benchmarks.  He's still above average speed, but he lacks the breakneck speed of the Chloes and Kagetsus of the world, while Goldmary can tank a bit better. 

6/10.  Usable, but requires work.

Edited July 28, 2023 by SnowFire

[lenticular]

As with many of the Brodian units, Diamant suffers from being neither a truly early unit (who is going to see some deployment regardless and who has a lot of time to snowball if you do decide to use them) nor a later unit (with their pre-promotions and better bases). The awkward middle stage pokémon problem, if you will.

When I've tried to use him, in both Hard and Maddening, it's felt like something of a struggle to keep him relevant. It's always been a case of "and I'll get this kill on Diamant for xp so he doesn't fall behind" and never "I have Diamant to bail me out of this difficult situation". He's not bad, but nor is he particularly good.

His unique selling point is access to Sol, which has been a pretty nice skill at some points in the series, but requires the right character. It's typically good on an enemy-phase unit who will, on average, take considerably less damage per combat than they can expect to heal up with Sol. That way they need to get massively unlucky not to go net positive on health. I've had good success with Sol on Titania and Corrin, for instance (and no, this isn't an invitation to talk about Sol in those games). Diamant just isn't set up well for that sort of approach, having neither the def for concrete tanking nor the speed for dodge tanking. Nor, for that matter, the dex for reliable Sol procs. I don't doubt that it's possible to set up a working Sol tank Diamant, but it probably requires more resources and effort than what you get out of it. This leaves Sol as "it's kinda nice when it triggers, I guess" rather than anything special.

Overall, I feel like 5/10 is about right for him.

[Hrothgar777]

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

As with many of the Brodian units, Diamant suffers from being neither a truly early unit (who is going to see some deployment regardless and who has a lot of time to snowball if you do decide to use them) nor a later unit (with their pre-promotions and better bases). The awkward middle stage pokémon problem, if you will.

When I've tried to use him, in both Hard and Maddening, it's felt like something of a struggle to keep him relevant. It's always been a case of "and I'll get this kill on Diamant for xp so he doesn't fall behind" and never "I have Diamant to bail me out of this difficult situation". He's not bad, but nor is he particularly good.

His unique selling point is access to Sol, which has been a pretty nice skill at some points in the series, but requires the right character. It's typically good on an enemy-phase unit who will, on average, take considerably less damage per combat than they can expect to heal up with Sol. That way they need to get massively unlucky not to go net positive on health. I've had good success with Sol on Titania and Corrin, for instance (and no, this isn't an invitation to talk about Sol in those games). Diamant just isn't set up well for that sort of approach, having neither the def for concrete tanking nor the speed for dodge tanking. Nor, for that matter, the dex for reliable Sol procs. I don't doubt that it's possible to set up a working Sol tank Diamant, but it probably requires more resources and effort than what you get out of it. This leaves Sol as "it's kinda nice when it triggers, I guess" rather than anything special.

Overall, I feel like 5/10 is about right for him.

This more or less sums up my experience with him on Normal. He was dead weight who could never/almost never one-shot an opponent. He was never dropping like a fly on the first Enemy Phase, but he didn't...do anything useful either.

I don't know why I kept him around when there were far better alternatives. But I learned my lesson and haven't even considered him in my Round 2.

I'm sure that I'm not being fair and there is a way to take advantage of him. But he's not good enough by default, and that's a cardinal sin so far as casual players go.

[Excellen Browning]

Diamant is likely one of the better physical units in your army when you get him. He compares favourably to early promoted 10/1 Alear and Boucheron, and notably a bit worse than Chloé unless you also immediately promote him. He's also noteworthy in that he has decent physical bulk and that he can wield a steel sword without losing AS.

On hard mode he starts usable and stays usable throughout the game without otherwise being exceptional, at least in my opinion. There's better units than him vying for deployment slots.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Excellen Browning