Rate the Unit 17: Jade

[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: Jade

Class: Axe Armor

                     Lvl   HP  STR MAG DEX SPD DEF RES LCK BLD

Bases:          12    33    14    4       14    5     18    6       5    8

T. Bases:      12     8      6     4        8     4     6     6       3    1

Growths:      /       55    35   25     35   30   40   30    20   10

 

Personal Skill: If unit uses Wait without attacking or using items, grants Res+2 for 1 turn.

Innate Proficiency: Axe

SP: 800

 

Support Bonuses:

C    Hit+15
B    Hit+15, Avoid+5
A    Hit+20, Avoid+5
S    Hit+30, Avoid+5

 

Tools and mo stats:

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

Engage Numbers - Google Tabellen

 

Rating: 3.7

Next unit on Monday

Edited August 7, 2023 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[Armchair General]

Jade is honestly an little bit on the underwhelming side; but not to the point where she's an instant bench. She might work out better as an Great Knight or an Warrior than as an axe general

[SnowFire]

20/20 General Jade:

57 HP, 31 Str, 12 Mag, 27 Dex, 14 Spd, 37 Def, 18 Res, 11 Lck, 16 Bld, 4 Move

--

Jade is, IMO, the most pointless character in the game.  The game balance is good enough that she's technically usable, sure.  Notably, investing in her magic growth means that like many other characters, she can make an acceptable Griffin Knight.  But...  just...  why bother.  At base, Jade is basically "worse Louis" in that her stats are slightly weaker than Louis's and even worse, the time when Knights / Generals are good is just about ending.  There's already a good argument to drop Louis around C10-C14 or so; from a gameplay perspective, why would you want to trade downward, or to deploy a 2nd, worse Louis?  Again, she's not a HUGE downgrade, but there's just not much point.  And if you want a Griffin Knight, you already had lots of options.

If you keep Jade as a General, the results are even less impressive than Louis: she's just a little bit less stronger and tankier in exchange for being able to wield a Hurricane Axe.  Oh well.

I'm not handing out any 1/10s for Engage because nobody is that bad, but Jade is in the absolute bottom tier of the characters in gameplay worth.  She gets a 2/10.

[Barren]

So now we get to Jade. This is assuming hard but will mention maddening.

 

Jade is obviously in a bad spot upon her join chapter because around the time the player might be thinking about benching Louis you’re probably not going to give Jade a chance. At least not on maddening mode. On hard mode, she is workable. She has a interestingly higher res growth for a tank and her ability is essentially post time skip Edelgard but half the effectiveness.

 

She can go Griffon Knight as already mentioned with Hurricane Axe since Jade also has a rather good magic growth. She can also go Sage if you want her to be completely different. It certainly wouldn’t be out of left field.

 

Hurricane Axe to me is the worst weapon in the game because it’s a smash weapon that forces you to go second no matter what. Not to mention that it scales off of magic and not many units can really put it to good use. Other smash weapons like Silver Greataxe or Silver Blades are still good for engage attacks.
 

At least Flame Lance you can sort of tolerate. Levin Sword and Radiant Bow are the best ones obviously. In fact why not just have her ditch axes entirely and have her focus on something else if you’re determined. Like Mage Knight or Royal Knight can be decent enough options for Jade.

 

I’m giving her a 3/10. At least units like Anna lets say can be rewarding if you train her particularly during Jean’s paralogue with Micaiah as your emblem. Jade just needs too much help and effort to make her at least viable.

[Palasid]

I like Jade, she is neat and her armor looks cool. I think her personality gimmick of being a stoic comedy writer is fun.

She is such a strange knight archetype though... An ability that boosts her res when waiting is nice. Good strength, great defense, oddly high magic and res. Her dexterity is also great, when I first got her I just assumed she would always crit kill at least one enemy. Her problems are that she has really shakey hitrate, as with most units with low luck. Mixed with axes it hurts her a LOT.

I have tried to use her in all my playthroughs. (Hard, Lunatic). She makes a surprisingly strong Pegasus Knight. I will admit I dropped her in all but one playthrough, she has a really hard fall off much faster than Louis.

I will give her a generous 4.5/10, she has potential but Knight/General just can't cut it on harder modes. 

[lenticular]

At first glance, Jade looks like she's just worse Louis. But she does have one slight advantage over him, in that she has a res stat that isn't completely horrible. So in some respects, she's better thought of as worse Goldmary. Goldmary starts out ahead of Jade for res, with Jade only catching up (assuming both are generals) at ilevel 37 and pulling 1 point ahead at ilevel 40, which is where they stay from that point on since they're both capped. Meanwhile, Goldmary will be fully 7 points ahead in def at that point. Being so thoroughly outclassed by both an earlier and a later unit does not do her any favours. Especially given that even for players who like to use concrete tanks (and I count myself as such a player), it's rarely useful to have multiple of them.

One of the advantages that the Lythos/Firene/Brodia units tend to have over the later units is that they're well positioned to inherit some early skills.. However, in the case of tanks, the best skills to inherit come from the second lot of Emblems. Pair Up from Corrin and Resolve from Ike are both much better than anything that the earlier Emblems have to offer, so I'm typically going to want to be saving my SP in preparation.

And sure, you can try to do things with her that don't involve tanking, and there are doubtless options where she'd be competent, but again, she's just outclassed in whatever direction you want to look. No matter what you try to have her do, multiple other characters are going to be doing it better than she can. 3/10.

[Coreyographed]

Jade is one of my favorite units to use in Engage. I don't think she's the best, only average, but hear me out. Jade is the final unit that joins you before the thing happens (assuming you don't save the paralogues), which is a blessing and a curse.

Jade comes with 800 SP and innate axe proficiency. The 800 SP is honestly her biggest weakness, moreso than any of her stats because she cannot generate SP in her joining chapter. This locks Jade out of 1000 SP skills without the use of manuals or delaying paralogues. However, I would argue there aren't any crucial skills that she is missing before this point that cost that much SP. Speed +3 is only 500 SP and she'll have access to it shortly anyway.

What does Jade bring to the table? She joins right before a series of great mid-game promoted units. She starts off as a Knight, but has very average stats across the board. She's a Level 12 unit that's ready to promote and joins at the time to learn any early game proficiency you want from the first 6 emblems. You want her to be a Mage Knight or Sage? Last unit to be around to gain non-inherent Tome Proficiency until after chapter 18, and you don't have to raise her to level 10. Any other unit without it innately has to wait until Chapter 14 for Axe Proficiency from Ike. Lance Proficiency? Enjoy waiting until after Chapter 16 is completed for Eirika. Jade can be a Sword/Lance/Axe Wyvern or Griffin Knight as early as Chapter 10 if you so desire. Other often talked about units like Kagetsu and Merrin have to wait until Chapter 14 at the earliest to be fielded as an axe wyvern (not very limiting to Merrin, who joins in Chapter 13 in fairness). By that point, Jade may already have Air Raid, and Chapter 14 includes a very abusable area for that skill except on bosses. But if you want them to have lances as a secondary weapon then you have to wait until Chapter 17 to be fielded in such a class. Flying Jade also could help out more on Chapter 12 and 13 than Swordmaster Kagetsu and Wolf Knight Merrin, all other things being equal.

Is that significant? No, not at all. But it is unique. Jade can promote to be any role you want and do surprisingly well with it with minimal investment (by Engage standards).

My experience with Jade has been as a Wyvern Knight w/ Lyn, a Vantage-Axe Power Griffin Knight w/ Ike, and I'm planning something along the lines of a Bravery-Speed+ Mage Knight w/ most likely Ike. 

I give Jade a 6/10 for flexibility and acknowledging my bias, though I get why people don't use her if they make her a conventional tank as presented by the game.

[Alef Zero]

This section saddens me. Jade was one of my strongest units, for a time, she kind of slowed down in the late game, but never to the point of uselessness, far from it. She just could no longer tank mages, but almost no normal enemies were able to scratch her, the only really dangerous things were chain attacks, but her high HP usually allowed her to survive even enemies attacking en masse.
Great Knight all the way, I realize Bunet joins soon after, and Louis, but I have weakness for blond, ponytail girl knights, don't judge me. Too much konosuba and monster musume.

Next time I play, I'll probably try mage knight and make her mine :}

Rating: 8/10

Edited October 9, 2023 by Alef Zero