Rate the Unit 27: Hortensia

[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: Hortensia

Class: Wing Tamer (promotes to Sleipnir Rider, with Class Skill: When unit uses a staff, may not consume a use. Trigger %=Dex.)

                     Lvl   HP    STR   MAG   DEX   SPD    LCK   DEF    RES     BLD

Bases:          19    27       5       12       21      19        17       6      23        5

T. Bases:      19     9        5        7        12      11         11       5      12         1

Growths:      /       40      20      20      35     50       50      25      55        0

 

Personal Skill: When unit uses a healing staff, grants range +1.

Innate Proficiency: Staff

SP: 1500

 

Support Bonuses:

C    Hit+10, Avoid+5
B    Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+5
A    Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+10
S    Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+20

 

Tools and mo stats:

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

Engage Numbers - Google Tabellen

 

Rating: 7.5

Next unit on Monday

Edited September 11, 2023 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[samthedigital]

8/10

Hortensia's utility is tied to her class and personal skills. Flying magic/staff utility is really good, but Hortensia's problem is her lack of bulk and damage. If she has to face a counter from a physical attack she's probably going to die, and that might happen through tonics as well. I've given her a Seraph Robe and a lot of Spirit Dust that I wouldn't have used otherwise in one playthrough, and she became a pretty decent combat unit with those bolstered by her staff and class utility, but I'm not sure that I'd recommend it.

She makes decent use of Corrin to spam Dreadful Aura with her 1-3 range and flight. She can also get to just about any emblem energy circle with Canter+Rewarp which makes staying engaged really easy. The lack of ability to take any real damage is a problem though.

It's impossible to talk about Hortensia without mentioning Micaiah. Micaiah is by far the most broken emblem in the game (Byleth too, but we don't need to get into that), and Hortensia is overwhelmingly the best Micaiah user. She has to wait for Micaiah to come back, but she also doesn't have to see play before then either. It's just a matter of availability, and this is an instance where I think it's fair to dock her a point or so for it. Her luck helps her spam offensive staves using Divine Pulse+ and World tree. Micaiah can be a better version of Corrin sometimes too with Freeze and a unit with a decent enough luck stat. Fortunately Hortensia has a fantastic luck base and growth to make use of it. The main thing that Micaiah has going for her is Warp/Rewarp/Rescue though, and Hortensia is necessary if we want to pull off some one turn cheese. Having World Tree to make sure we have enough to last us the game is a nice bonus. The effective weaponry is worth a brief mention, but I honestly don't give a shit about combat with Micaiah.

I  guess the only real problem is how much we attribute Hortensia's success to Micaiah. Micaiah is still broken on her own, but Hortensia's +1 staff range makes her the obvious choice. The only reason to mention another unit if we're just using Micaiah for staves is when they can also do the same thing, but I've never used anyone else because there isn't a good reason to do so when I might risk the staff range having been necessary.

Divine Pulse+ and Canter are the two skills that Hortensia wants. Canter is great for obvious reasons, and Divine Pulse+ lets us reroll offensive staff misses.

[Bartozio]

If cuteness isn't a competition, Hortensia is here to change that. The following assumes Maddening difficulty.

For starters: @Imuabicus der FertigeI think something went wrong with Hortensia's DEF column.

Honestly, I find Hortensia fairly difficult to rate. As a combat unit she's pretty lackluster, having good speed, but terrible build and damage output.

Her main use is as a utility character though, in particular as a staff bot. Being able to fly and use 3-range weapons makes her fairly good at using Corrin as well tbh, though I find the dragon vein option for flyers fairly underwhelming.

The issue with her using staves though, is that technically any character can reclass to Griffon Knight and be a flying staff bot. Likely with a lower staff rank to be fair, though that doesn't really matter if you were planning to put Micaiah on them anyway. That means her main niche comes from having a chance to perserve staff uses. Which is nice, but you can get enough copies of each staff that I wouldn't consider it game breaking.

That might sound very negative, but on the other hand... staves are really good and quite plentiful in this game, so I feel like you almost always want at least one character who mainly focusses on using them on your team (especially when Micaiah is available). And Hortensia is the best character at filling that role.

Overall, I'm going to settle for a 7/10. She takes no real effort to get going and is a good addition to any party, but replacing her with someone else isn't going to hurt you too much.

[vanguard333]

First Playthrough, Normal Difficulty.

Her voice can be grating at times, especially if, like me, the player has sensitive hearing and finds specific sounds literally painful to hear, but she is a fantastic support unit.

Staves are not only plentiful in Engage, but they come in a wide variety beyond healing and each type of staff is very useful. As a result, staff users are very useful in this game for more than healing, and Hortensia is a fantastic staff user.

Being a flying unit, she has fantastic movement. Since she's mainly a support unit, she will want to stay from bows anyway, so the main weakness of flying units isn't as much of an issue for her. Her +1 staff range also further increases the usefulness of her staves.

However, the great variety of useful staves does mean that staff users do suffer a bit from the limited weapon/item slots. Hortensia may be a support unit, but she will still want at least one tome in case she needs to fight and one healing item for healing herself. This means only... I'm actually struggling to remember how many weapon/item slots each unit has right now; I think it's five, but someone please correct me if I'm wrong; anyway, it means there are only so many slots remaining for staves, so you will have to carefully pick which staves would be best for each map and there is the risk of making the wrong choice of staves.

I see everyone mentioning Micaiah, and Micaiah is indeed a fantastic emblem ring that Hortensia pairs very well with. However, I do think it is important to mention that Hortensia isn't recruited until the end of chapter 14; four chapters after Emblem Micaiah is taken away, and the player doesn't re-obtain Emblem Micaiah until the end of chapter 19.

 

Overall, I would give Hortensia an 8/10. She is a great support unit in a game where support units are very useful. Just keep her away from fights unless absolutely necessary and, if you have sensitive hearing, lower the volume or mute whenever she's on-screen.

[SumG]

Hortensia is one the hardest units to evaluate, and arguably the unit who's value will change most depending on your playstyle.  Her stat profile is quite odd.  She has fantastic speed and good dexterity, but her raw magic power is low and her bulk is outright laughable.  The bulk is a survivable concern for a mage, but that fact that her magic power is so low really restricts her to being a support unit that can do occasional chip damage.

Her unique class is quite good.  She is one of two units in the game with access to a class with tomes, staves, and flying mobility, and that is quite a powerful combination.  The mastery ability of that class will occasionally allow you to rebuy uses of very powerful staves, and given Hortensia's high dex, it should be triggering fairly often.  There's a reason why a number of staves exist only in limited quantities in the game, and an ability that lets you skirt that, even a little, is potentially strong.

Hortensia's personal ability is where I think the divisiveness in playstyle comes in.  In a normal playthrough, a large portion of the usage of the ability will be to extend the range of healing staves to 2 range.  That's all well and good, since it allows you to keep her farther away from the front lines, but once you get Canter this use is largely irrelevant.  Beyond that, I'd wager in most casual playthroughs the extra staff range most often does not matter at all.  However, my understanding is that in highly optimized play and LTC runs, there are times where the extend range of staves allows for strategies that no one else can do, particularly in regard to mass Warp/Rewarp Micaiah strategies.  That's not how I play, but it is worth noting.

I've seen some people argue that she is the 'best' staff user in terms of accuracy.  Perhaps that is true, as staff accuracy scales with Magic and Dex, and Hortensia does have a good combined stat total.  But I'd wager any advantage she has here over another mage is fairly minor, and really not worth considering.

So for the average player, I'm going to settle on a 7.5/10, carried heavily by her unique class.  But I will say that her value as a unit significantly increases the more you are trying to use Warp strategies.  If that's the type of way you play, I can definitely see her moving up to even 9 or so.

[Barren]

God I can’t stand her voice. Yes, it’s time to talk about Hortensia. I’m assuming hard but this may also apply to maddening.

 

She joins you once you beat her in chapter 14. Once she joins you master seal her right away. There is no reason to have her stay in wing tamer at base level 19.

 

With that said, Ivy is a black mage on wings essentially so this makes her the white mage counterpart. Well sort of. Her promoted class Slepnir Rider gives her S rank in staves while maintaining B rank in tomes. Obviously she’s made to be probably the best staff bot in the game. Big Personality extends her staff range by 1 which is great. And World Tree has a chance to save a staff use during combat. That is nice when it happens because this could mean another chance to use any staff before it breaks.

 

As others have mentioned, Divine Pulse+ and Canter are the two abilities that really enhances her support role really well. Emblem wise she likes using Byleth, Corrin for Draconic Hex and of course Micaiah. She’s the best Micaiah user for a reason. Aoe Warp, Heal, Rewarp, need I say more?

 

Her durability is a weakness and her damage output isn’t the best either given the fact she’s only good to use Elfire or El Thunder. But she can function as a Griffon Knight with Levin Sword or Sage if want to use Byleth and Thyrsus. She fast and has high luck so her ability to dodge could come in handy at times. So avoid + x could also be an option if you want to use her as bait. It’s not the wisest idea mind you but still.

 

Overall 9/10. She’s just that damn good of a support unit. I can see the argument of her being an 8. But honestly she’s pretty much a stable on teams like Ivy or Kagetsu or Panette and so forth.

 

One last thing, while I don’t like her high pitched voice as all, when she talks in her lower pitched voice, she sounds fine. That’s my opinion of course.

Edited September 7, 2023 by Barren
Grammar

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, SumG said:

I've seen some people argue that she is the 'best' staff user in terms of accuracy.  Perhaps that is true, as staff accuracy scales with Magic and Dex, and Hortensia does have a good combined stat total.  But I'd wager any advantage she has here over another mage is fairly minor, and really not worth considering.

The most important stat is luck with Divine Pulse+. The difference between Hortensia and a unit with a bad luck stat like Ivy for example is pretty significant. The difference against a unit with high staff evade can be higher than 10%, and the difference is even more noticeable if you're trying to hit multiple targets at once with Freeze or something. You can use this binomial probability calculator and a convenient graph if you want to play around with the numbers yourself.

[SumG]

5 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

The most important stat is luck with Divine Pulse+. The difference between Hortensia and a unit with a bad luck stat like Ivy for example is pretty significant. The difference against a unit with high staff evade can be higher than 10%, and the difference is even more noticeable if you're trying to hit multiple targets at once with Freeze or something.

Right, it's fair to consider Luck in Divine Pulse+, but I'd consider this particular point more of a knock against Ivy than a particular strength of Hortensia.  If we do a comparison of an immediately promoted Hortensia and a Griffin Knight Chloe at the same internal level, Hortensia has all of 2 more luck, on average.  That's not really much.  And I get that Hortensia has a really good growth rate, but that might net her an extra 3-4 points over the course of an entire playthrough from that point.  Is a 5% higher likelihood of triggering Divine Pulse (which probably translates into more like 2-3% more staff accuracy over an average magic user, since it only has a chance to trigger on actions that initially miss) *that* much of a draw?  It's nice, but I don't think it's worth going out of the way for.

[samthedigital]

2 minutes ago, SumG said:

Right, it's fair to consider Luck in Divine Pulse+, but I'd consider this particular point more of a knock against Ivy than a particular strength of Hortensia.  If we do a comparison of an immediately promoted Hortensia and a Griffin Knight Chloe at the same internal level, Hortensia has all of 2 more luck, on average.  That's not really much.  And I get that Hortensia has a really good growth rate, but that might net her an extra 3-4 points over the course of an entire playthrough from that point.  Is a 5% higher likelihood of triggering Divine Pulse (which probably translates into more like 2-3% more staff accuracy over an average magic user, since it only has a chance to trigger on actions that initially miss) *that* much of a draw?  It's nice, but I don't think it's worth going out of the way for.

You could consider it one of Chloe's strengths too; it's mostly a difference in semantics at that point. You'd also have to determine what exactly you want your Micaiah user to do. I'd take those small advantages with Micaiah since I'm not looking for a combat unit even if it wasn't for World Tree or the staff range, but you might feel differently.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

@Bartozio thanks for catching that, the issue of Hortensia being a defensive but unlucky gigachad has been remedied

[SnowFire]

20/20 Sleipnir Rider Hortensia:

35 HP, 10 Str, 22 Mag, 32 Dex, 34 Spd, 12 Def, 42 Res, 32 Lck, 6 Bld, 6 Move
For all that you'd be bonkers to level Hortensia up all of one level in C15, this isn't old FEs where you could Master Seal on the battlefield to avoid "wasting" XP.  And also, Sleipnir can't fly?  ...probably?  At the very least, he's certainly not a winged horse in Norse myth.

Also, since she can't wield Bolganone anyway, the Build isn't actually a problem!  That's enough to wield a forged Elfire just fine without speed loss.  And yes, Hortensia is tied for game-best Resistance with High Priest Pandreo, for all that he has better HP.

--

Looking back, I gave Citrinne a 6/10 (which was on the high side for the topic), and wonder if she isn't worth even more.  I really don't think that Citrinne and Hortensia are all THAT different in overall worth, as often times the extra offensive punch from Citrinne is quite helpful in an unknown situation.  Admittedly, if you really know your Engage and are doing LTCs and such, that probably favors Hortensia a tad...   although it could be equally argued that if you know your stuff, you don't need the extra staff charges that World Tree will provide over time.

Anyway, don't get me wrong.  Hortensia is a fine unit.  I'm somewhat less sold on the utility of flying for a support than for Ivy, though, if Hortensia is going to stay safely on the backlines rather than flying over mountain passes.  Mystical has some nice utility (especially with certain emblems like Corrin & Byleth) that Flying type lacks, like the terrain-evade ignoring, so you probably don't want to run your only mages as Ivy & Hortensia.  I'd also point out that if you give Hortensia Micaiah, you're giving up on Micaiah's "give a non-staffer staves" utility, which is a not insignificant loss (especially if running a Mage Knight).

I guess to be consistent, I'll give Hortensia a 6/10, although I could see being argued up to 7 (but also probably wanting to upgrade Citrinne at the same time if so).  She's good, but you CAN replicate some of her functionality with other units (you could make Divine Pulse Celine use attack staves too, it's fine, and spend a tad more money on staves), which makes it hard to get TOO high up there.

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, SnowFire said:

Admittedly, if you really know your Engage and are doing LTCs and such, that probably favors Hortensia a tad...   although it could be equally argued that if you know your stuff, you don't need the extra staff charges that World Tree will provide over time.

Big Personality is the more relevant skill in LTC and efficiency runs that allow warp skips because it gives Warp/Rewarp/Rescue +1 range. World Tree might be something for efficiency to get more uses out of Rewarp, but LTCs can just get what they want out of the well, so it's probably not important for anything besides saving time assuming they need more in that context.

1 hour ago, SnowFire said:

Looking back, I gave Citrinne a 6/10 (which was on the high side for the topic), and wonder if she isn't worth even more.  I really don't think that Citrinne and Hortensia are all THAT different in overall worth, as often times the extra offensive punch from Citrinne is quite helpful in an unknown situation.

I would probably revise my rating of Citrinne also, but the reasoning is unrelated to Hortensia. It mostly has to do with the fact that fixing speed is less difficult than I originally assumed which makes Citrinne's value skyrocket.

[Alogeo]

Good support that do support things at maddening. Solid 7/10.  also a great unit for ltc.

Not particular good at doing dmg.

 

[lenticular]

No rating for me here, since I've not used her enough to feel I have a solid handle on how good she is, but I will ramble a bit about what experience I have had with her anyway.

I haven't been particularly impressde with her. She wasn't bad, but she didn't stand out either. She seems great on paper. Staves are strong in Engage and she has a personal skill and a unique class that are dedicated to making staves even better. But my experience was that she didn't really do that much. First, flight isn't as big a boon for a support unit as it is for an attacking one. It's still better to be able to fly than not, but it's not as big a difference. And of course, unlike Ivy's unique access to the tomes/flight combo, staves/flight is also available to Griffin Knights as well as any flying unit with Micaiah.

Then there's her personal skill and her class skill. +1 range on staves is kinda nice, I guess, but was something that didn't seem to come up all that often. It's the ultimate break point, I guess. If the unit you want to target is exactly one square further away then you can (safely) reach, then +1 range is an absolutely huge difference-maker. If they're any closer or any further than that, though, then +1 range is completely meaningless. Preserving staff charges also sounds nice in theory, but in practice, most staves fall into one of two categories: I have enough charges that I don't really care about preserving them, or so few charges that you can't rely on having the skill proc at all. So, a nice bonus, for sure, but not something that would have much impact on the way I play.

I can easily imagine Hortensia being great for someone who uses staves more than I do, especially someone who likes to warp skip a lot, but I am not that player, so I found her fairly underwhelming.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Missed a rating for Merrin, so I'll do it here I suppose. Merrin's good, able to do any physical build well. The comparison with Kagetsu is an obvious one to make given their similar join times and stat builds; Merrin gives up 2 strength and 2 defence in exchange for a better personal (in no small part because it helps her teammates who might need it more than her). This is probably a losing trade? But not by enough to change the score. 8/10. (This is a Merrin rating, do not count this for this thread.)

Hortensia I find very difficult to rate and I might just abstain. She's the best at what she does, but on my replay when I didn't use her I found that there are definitely advantages to not having a pure staff-user. Is it better to have Hortensia with +1 range and saving you the odd staff use, or is it better to use a unit with good combat who can also use staves (and Micaiah means this could be almost anyone)... a team with multiple such units is better set up for turns where all you need is combat while still being able to handle heavy staff use if needed.

To be fair Hortensia does have a shadow of combat herself thanks to flight and speed even if she tends to be short of one-rounding much of anything thanks to iffy magic and a max B in tomes. I think she probably belongs on the "best" team, but it's less of a slam-dunk compared to what I expected from my first playthrough.

[Barren]

@Dark Holy ElfI can understand that. She’d be as good as someone that can score a 3 pointer for your team. Then you hear the crowd cheer: THREE!!!