i think an alfred waifu video is warranted. he plays such an interesting role and i feel it demonstrates how a player's understanding of the game can completely 180 a unit's performance
I think Alfred's performance fits the part of his backstory where he and his sister recall him being sick often as child. That sets him up for a nice run, he's a unit with clear shortcomings, but a certain kind of player will get a great amount of enjoyment out of keeping him around.
Agreed and with a lot of training, which we know he doesn't have a problem with, and something to help his speed, res, and somewhat iffy hit rate (**cough Lyn Ring), you can turn him into a monster offensive unit during a casual playthrough especially as a Wyvern Knight, Warrior, or Griffen Knight. I had more fun training him than Anna or Jean.
I guess, kneejerk response, while Clanne might take 8 and Alfred might take 4x2...Clanne also has 1-2 range and is a mage, he shouldn't really be getting attacked too often. Alfred is going to be in the fray a lot more, and while he might have more HP to compensate, it's not a good introduction(And it doesn't bode well for the rest of him through the playthrough). You can expend resources to bring him up to speed and make him good for sure, but you can use those resources to make other units better.
@@inigoerrandonea2513 Yeah this much investment for this minor of a niche that gets outclassed that badly should not be getting a 36 minute long defence
I mean, I wouldn’t assume that you just keep Alfred at base stats forever if you plan to use him. He’s going to get experience, levels, and sp, which will probably give you good return on investment. He’s got 7 chapters on Amber, and 10 chapters on Merrin, and if you do the paralogues that unlock in between, it’s even more time. I’m not going to argue on whether he’s better or worse than them, but availability is a large factor when it comes to matters like these. As for the 4x2 vs 8 damage point, you’re right, Clanne shouldn’t be in a position to take that damage. But by the time you get Alfred, you already have access to Chain Guard and Staff healing and vulnerareis that I’d argue it’s no issue keeping him at least healthy. And as the game goes on, he’ll get better at his role, and that’s not even counting the amount of reclassing you can do if you’re really not a fan of Avenir. As for the use that investment to make other units better point, if a unit is already good at their role (Merrin, Kagetsu, etc), wouldn’t it be better to use that investment to help out the units that would appreciate it more? Of course, I’m not telling you how to play FE, do whatever you’d like. But if don’t have anybody who’s starving for resources, why not give them to the few units that actually would like it the most? I don’t feel like because a unit needs investment equates to them being a bad unit. (And I hope this comes across as respectful, I’m really not trying to pick a fight here.)
@@colorcraze138 As for the last part I still think its better to invest in good units because an invested good unit will do what nobody else ever could before, whereas an invested weak unit will mean you have 1.5 good units. Its the same as giving boots to an 8 mov unit over a 5 mov. (That being said this is just about optimal play, I would recommend everyone use like, 1 bad unit per playthrough since it makes things more fun I find)
"What are people DOING with Alfred that leads to him getting doubled?" I dunno where I'm going wrong, you see I have him go into combat with anything not wielding axes or wearing heavy armor and it just kinda HAPPENS :p
@@MetalGearRaxis funny seeing a frequent name from the fire Emblem Gamefaqs have the same knee jerk reaction I did. I was watching the opening and the first thing she said caught me so off gaurd, I had to go to the comments and I saw this. But yeah, Alfred has to have some of the worst stats for his level in game besides Vander. That speed won't catch up unless you've committed to Wolf knight, which in my opinion is the only way to get him usable by mid game.
"Alfred isn't that bad because he takes the same damage from sword fighters in his joining chapter that a mage who doesn't take counterattacks does, and getting doubled means he has two chance to dodge or activate Golden Lotus, and he can usually three-shot units if you give him a strength tonic" might be the biggest example of damning a unit with faint praise I've ever heard.
And he doesn’t even get golden lotus early either. Like you might be able to get it by the end of the Brodia castle map if you favor him heavily but that doesn’t matter at all for early game.
@@justcritlmao5730 For real, I could not have given a more convincing argument for why Alfred isn't worth using if I tried, and she was trying to argue in his favor.
The comment on Golden Lotus is in relation to the "taking a single big hit vs taking half that hit twice" as in it's better to take 4x2 than 8, because you get more chances to avoid the damage.
Used him in both my playthroughs- was a beast in hard mode and caught up in maddening after a slow start. Gave him the pact ring both times because he’s best buddy. No regrets.
Here was my comment on this: "Skip, dump the XP into actually good units unless doing a challenge run or you like the character. He is a growth unit without the growths aspect, unique class isn't anything huge. Without Sigurd he has a terrible early game."
I'm not really convinced about that Bonded Shield niche. Mostly because it requires running a bunch of cavalry units and because it's competing with flier Bonded Shield. Looking at the cavalry classes Paladin and Wolf Knight are solid but you generally have better options, Bow Knight is... ok I guess?, Great Knight kinda stinks, and Cupido is exclusive to Fogado who generally prefers Warrior anyways. Mage Knight is the only cavalry class that's super good. Fliers get Wyvern, Griffin, and Lindworm, which are all great and you are way more likely to have a bunch of. Even with all that I don't think he's going to do the job much better than any other competent physical unit in a cavalry class that joins pre chapter 10.
Mage Knight clears the flying classes too wdym. The only ones there that are good are Ivy on Lindwurm which is one unit or a magical griffin knight. They have some of the highest speed in the game and hit enemie's on their much weaker resistance. On top of that the actual flying utility of flier classes fall off as most lategame maps actually don't have a whole lot of terrain you need to fly over.
@@quijassajiuq900 Yeah there's kinda a reason the meta around Chloe is shifting more towards a Sword Griffin promotion eventually transitioning to Mage Knight. Mage Knight's a very strong combat class.
Yeah and regardless of flier vs cav bonded shield I feel like stacking avoid is a much better way of protecting your bonded shielder. Lucina's dual support already gives some avoid if you support any of the bonded shield targets, so it makes sense to lean into that. Micaiah's engrave is not especially contested ime, so it's easy to slap that on your bonded shielder's weapon to stack a bunch of avoid. A naturally speedy unit with Micaiah engrave and some supports should be able to achieve 0% hit rates from most enemies and just never be targeted ever. Maybe even inherit Avoid + X from Marth early on if you wanna be extra sure to hit those avoid thresholds. Alear is a popular choice for this since they can support everyone, and my Wyvern Alear on my maddening run works very well as a bonded shielder. I could also see someone like Wyvern Lapis or Wyvern Zelkov doing this role well due to their naturally high speed and avoid-based personal skills. Chloe, Merrin or Kagetsu could also work, but they're so strong that I'd rather have them killing things instead lol. I probably forgot some good candidates too. Alfred is just so far down the list of units I'd consider as a bonded shielder. If you like Alfred I'm sure you can make it work, since you can make almost anything work in this game. But he's just outclassed in this role.
"He's usable" is pretty much how I feel about every character in engage. Alfred has a neat niche in ch.5, but I don't see him doing much beyond that. You have other characters that can play bonded shield bot and do a better job of it - alear and merrin both come to mind. And it's weird comparing him to goldmary, considering goldmary comes ready to do whatever you want her to, right out of the box.
alfred's stats before he gets going are just really poor. with sigurd early on he can make up for this somewhat earlygame, but he doesn't catch up until well after promotion and probably a reclass where he gets a real speed stat. Speaking of that speed, it would be a lot less of a problem if he was tanky enough for the more powerful mid/lategame promoted enemies or if he actually had a good strength stat for most of the game before his growth kicks in
I agree that his stats in the early game are poor on Maddening and that it can be frustrating getting him to promotion even with giving him the Sigurd Ring and Dracoshield, but once you can get him to promotion, especially into Warrior, Wyvern, or Griffen, and are willing to give him the Lyn Ring as that fixes all of his weaknesses, that's when he can really shine all the way through the end of the game. That said, you have to want to use him to make him great, as this formula works with most of the early game units, but I've had the most fun training him to be a monster especially given the comments on how bad he is.
@@lanceareadbhar Lyn makes quite literally any physical unit broken. And frankly, I don't think Alfred needs it. After a while I think he'd be fast enough as a wyvern with lucina or something and inherited spd +3, meaning I can put Lyn on a unit who better makes use of her strengths
Used Alfred on Hard and he's still on my team as of Ch17 of Maddening, and I stand by my opinion Alfred is weird as an unit. He's not *bad* by any means, but he's in a very awkward position where he's meant to be a better Paladin in a game where the class isn't that good to begin with. As a result, he's the kind of unit who's both tanky and squishy at the same time, and can hit quite hard while also bound to get doubled often.
@@BurningFyre On maddening mode he might go over the cap and enemies ignore him. Besides, Timerra is the best Hector user imo. She can actually use heavy attack thanks to her low con. Combined with her Sandstorm proc, she hits for 190%
I thought Alfred wasn't actually that bad when i tried doing a little bit of LTC. I thought he wouldn't contribute very much but in the early chapters, he actually performed pretty nice with some good bulk and some pretty good damage output with the Steel Lance, which is also helped by his personal skill. Alfred is definitely one of the units that has grown the most on me from when I first started playing this game.
Sadly not someone who's readily good and there's better units to invest into. Used him on Maddening with Lyn and Lance Power build-up throughout the game and he worked just fine.
I don't really know what I did but I never felt the need to drop Louis in my first maddening run. Yeah he was so tanky that enemies ignored him but I used it to my advantage for the most part. I keep hearing that he falls off but 🤷
a whole lotta discussion and almost none of it was talking points exclusive to him. "He's a good bonded shielder" oh wow. "He's really potent with Sigurd early game" wow.
@@Mekkkah I just don't think "bulky bonded shielder" is a niche that is very valuable when you can just stack avoid on your bonded shielder though. Lucina's Dual Support already gives avoid if you support any of the bonded shield targets, so it makes sense to lean into that. It's not very difficult to stack avoid and reach 0% hit rates from enemies and just never get targeted at all. Many engraves give avoid, and e.g. Micaiah's engrave is not especially contested ime, so it's easy to just slap that on your bonded shielder's weapon since they don't care about the big loss in mt anyway. Speed contributes to avoid, and you're probably stacking speed with stuff like meals or Speed + X anyway. You can even get Avoid + X for fairly cheap early on from Marth if you want to use someone like Alear as your dedicated bonded shielder. Certain units like Lapis and Zelkov are naturally fast, have personals that give avoid, and they often like to reclass to Wyvern anyway which works nicely for flier bonded shielding. Pretty much any speedy unit with the above avoid stacking ought to work better than Alfred (or any bulky unit) as a bonded shielder. If you like Alfred you can probably make it work, but I feel like he's just outclassed in that role.
I never genuinely thought of Alfred as bad, only joked about it since he can be really disappointing compared to a bunch of other units in Engage, so I’m glad to see some thoughtful insight about an underlooked unit composed into 1 (or maybe 2) videos.
Really good video. Went over a ton of niches that are unique to him that I never would have considered, even after knowing how good bonded shield is. Next maddening mode play through I do I’ll definitely give him another shot.
I think this analysis is interesting but it doesn’t make me want to use Alfred. You don’t really need tanking early (you can literally just body block with unequipped Vander and have Alear pseudo solo through chapter 6, maybe have Chloe help out.) Chloe can get Momentum for the hallway Override. Framme is better for Bonded Shield IMO thanks to Qi Adept (no arts proficiency unto l chapter 15) and Crimson Cheer along with having good supports (Kagetsu, Chloe, Alear.) She also trains herself with staves and Chain Guard so she doesn’t take EXP from Chloe, Alear, and whatever Brodia characters you choose. What’s more since she doesn’t fight she can make great use of Micaiah Engrave since she doesn’t care about the Mt loss. Alfred is just outclassed at every point IMO.
Also a counter I have on the "you can pump up unit speed" is the tasks required to do so just aren't fun or are tied to RNG like cooking. Nothing is more frustrating than getting an F rank meal in engage.
@@danielarenas8760 Yeah, as much as people say the gameplay is fine-tuned in this entry, when you put the Emblem mechanic aside, nearly everything else that returns is watered-down in some way.
@@danielarenas8760 I mean I get why failing is a thing but I think it shouldnt come at the risk of negative stats it should instead just use up extra ingredients or straight up dont do anything. Reason why nobody cooks on maddening is because the risk of punishment is just too high for the +2 stat rewards.
I took Alfred in my first run (hard) and used him as a bonded shield bot, but then realized that Merrin with bonded shield spreading poison around was much better. I just never found a niche for him that someone else couldn't do better...
tbf poison is pretty overrated. +1 extra damage for the second time you attack an enemy is rarely going to make the difference between killing an enemy on the second attack or not. Poison only really matters for bosses since you can actually get a +3/5 stack on them but even then, they're easy enough to kill without that.
@@Docaccino I mean people do all kinds of loops for just +1 or 2 damage. Getting that for free while just having a Bonded Shield bot do their thing is better than NOT getting that, and some bosses it's really really nice.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 What is essentially a 90% chance (63% w/ dual assist+, 27% w/ the base version) to apply +1 damage to an enemy if they didn't die in one round of combat is absolutely not worth going out of your way for. Not to mention poison chain attacks are only viable on cav bonded shield setups since flying classes don't have a knife access.
@@Docaccino That's the thing though. It's not out of your way. It's just sitting there. For free. On Wolf Knight. With the weapon type they are already using for 99% of fights they're ever actually in. If you're going to do cav Bonded Shield, the only reason to not pick a Wolf Knight is because you don't like them or somehow don't have one. Otherwise it's seeing a free couple points of damage on the table, and saying "nah I'm good" just to be obtuse.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 There's an opportunity cost involved in choosing wolf knight as your bonded shield user's class since you lose out on bulk compared to great knight, mage knight (for Res) and avenir. Enemies being less likely to attack your Lucina user is a much bigger advantage than the poison proc that is going to matter once in a blue moon.
I feel like Alfred is made to be used with Sigurd, which grants con, speed, and more damage on the first attack based on how many tiles were moved. It's a good tank unit, and low res could be fixed given the number of res boosters in game
Imo Golden Lotus isnt worth the bad stats, hes a tanky boy so great knight is better and the base DEF is such a neede boost, I dont care if hes doubled, dont care if he doesnt double, both these problems can be solved by bulkiness and a smash weapon. SPD isnt king in FE Engage, it doesnt benefit engage attacks, theres an alternative weapon line with crazy MT fit for bulky units, you can craft an early silver greatlance so early you are bound to oneshot everything that tries to attack you before the 2nd hit lands.
I’m on my first playthrough right now on Hard mode, and Alfred has been amazing. He’s gotten only good levels, always gaining at least 2 of 3 on Str, Def or Spd. And he’s leveled up Bld multiple times. He’s actually better than Amber upon recruitment stats wise and I like his personality more. Equipped Sigurd for the fun meme of him tokyo drifting around Tiki’s Paralogue while Engaged. Still in the earlygame but I love him. Edit: I love having Alfred block a chokepoint with Alcryst behind him, which allows them both to activate their +Str personal skills.
The epitome of personal experience. Don't get me wrong that's part of what makes fe fun, but it sounds like you got lucky. Don't get me wrong I don't think Alfred sucks. Also, he's kinda intended to be one of the Sigurd options early game.
Imo alfred isnt as bad as everyone says he his but still gets outclassed during the early and late game. Louis still clears alfred during the early game. If you want to boost Alfred early game with dracoshields and tonics you can, but louis is so good as a unit because out of the box he does his job. I can have louis overdrive on chapter 5 and leave one or two stragglers that go attack my main force, but that main force can easily deal with a low health armor knight or archer. For resource-efficient play louis just makes more since as a zero investment unit until he ends up falling off mid-late game (on maddening anyway, on hard louis keeps up till the last chapter). If he isn't earning his deployment slot mid-game you can bench him but I doubt an invested alfred would fair much better in the tighter maps of the midgame (excluding like, the solm palace map but that one gives you a bunch of deployment slots anyways). Then as you enter the late game, you encounter a better, bulkier, zero investment bond shield user in Mauvier, who is one of if not the best mixed tank in the game. This puts alfred in a position where he can definitely be a staple on your team if invested (really anyone can in post-well engage) but he is easily replaceable in his best aspects by units who do it as good or better for free.
I wouldn't say that Alfred gets ouclassed by Louis at all, really. The fact of the matter is that Alfred has Sigurd for a full map longer than Louis ever can, and that one map has enemies that Vander and Alfred can easily tag team along the northern side. This lets Alfred get a lot of EXP/SP, enough Bond levels with Sigurd to unlock Momentum for Chapter 5, and all while Louis mostly has to stay in the middle area not gaining any SP at all since he can't equip a Ring. Once Chapter 5 rolls around Alfred + a Defense Tonic will be able to handle most of the same jobs Louis can but with higher movement (especially the +2 Bonus he gets as a Cav in addition to the +5 Sigurd already gives) and he just keeps working. It's essentially the same issue that Armor Knights typically run into in other Fire Emblems even if Cavalry units themselves are less dominant in this iteration.
I don't really think having momentum half a chapter earlier makes as big a difference as you're implying when louis can make up for the damage he's missing out on from the missing bond levels (if you don't take the few turns necessary to grind at the start of chapter 5 that is). Louis starts out a level higher than alfred with massive stat leads at base, having 3 hp, 4 strength and a whopping 8 defense lead on alfred immediately upon joining, not factoring in the exp he's going to receive from his role in chapter 4. Even if you've been funneling exp into alfred since his join chapter he's going to need 10 levels on fixed growths to even be on par with louis' base str. At max alfred is going to be doing ~6 damage more with momentum overdrive (if louis does not have momentum and is still at base) which may hit some hp thresholds that louis does not, but louis doesn't need to finish those enemies off to be an asset, as the low hp knights and archers are to longer threats to the rest of your army.
Then throughout the rest of the early game louis keeps his bulk lead with higher growths in hp and defense, and although alfred has 2 or 3 more mv while engaged with sigurd, louis still has plenty to get the job done as a highly mobile tank with high combat prowess, whose overdrive will be doing more damage with his higher strength.
@@panteloupe8608 You’re getting too caught up in comparing Alfred and Louis’s bases to each other and not the enemies they’d be fighting. Alfred can reliably fight the Sword Fighters and ORKO the Thieves in Ch5-6 with Bond Lv. 2 Sigurd, which he’ll have just by using him normally in Chapter 4. Louis not only just cannot fight Thieves, but the Sword Fighters will often ignore Louis if he even gets one level in Defense, which hampers his ability to tank anything but the Axe Fighters that can actually damage him without Chain Attacks. Unlocking Momentum is more like a bonus that further accentuates how easily Alfred can replicate Louis’s job with the low cost of 150G.
Not sure what you mean about him not being able to fight thieves, he can dispatch them very handily, but while I do concede louis' enemy phasing capacity is hindered on maddening due to the better ai, it isn't a wipe, for example if there is a backup enemy by louis other enemies will end up attacking into him even if they do 0 damage, allowing him to take chip damage (less than alfred would in the same scenario with hp to spare) and dish back a hearty serving of his own. Those axe fighters also serve as a huge threat to alfred (in my experience) especially on chapter 7 where they can very easily eat him alive if he happens to take on more than one. Again, not arguing alfred is unviable, just that louis can get the job of mobile tank done with better with no investment.
I've been using Alfred in a no DLC Playthrough that I've been recording. I'm about to do Chapter 19 and Alfred has been a pleasant surprise. I made the mistake of turning him into a Wolf Knight, and under utilizing Lucinia, but he's been dealing more damage than I expected, in spite of not hitting doubling thresholds. It's a little boring, I guess, but the royals really are at their best in their default classes.
My experience is quite simple; dude leveled okay, ran riot through early game on Hard Mode. Hit a wall where he had 12 speed, when everyone else was surpassing him. Speed gap got too great, and suddenly his two things I used him for (high movement, high defense) became less and less of an acceptable trade-off for the speed. Alear stomped as a Great Knight, so just felt weird to me. i knew a lot less about class growths, and just assumed he was destined to be slow. Frankly, boy just needs a better class than his custom one. I guess regular paladin, but honestly I think he'd be pretty good as a hawk flyer. Staff utility on top of having even better unimpeded move, + to speed on promo, + to speed growth? Sign him up.
This is normal and if you want him to be great, you need to be willing to give him the Lyn Ring and then he shouldn't get doubled and can eventually inherit the speed skills to start doubling himself. He's certainly a unit that needs help to get going, but his natural strength, HP, and Defense growths really shine of you are willing to give up resources to patch up his weaknesses.
I am using Alfred in my maddening run. In the early game Sigurd gives Str, Def and extra extra move to cavaliers making Alfred (and Vander) bulkier and the most mobile. Marth gives Spe and a good Sword fixing Alfreds (and Vanders) Spe and giving resistens to getting broken on enemy phase.(I got him Cantor) I also early Promoted Alfred giving him swords and at least +1 in all stats, including Move and Build.(I early promoted a lot.) In the mid game a promoted Alfred with Leif takes -3 Damage from all sword, lance and axe users keeping him bulky and freeing up Sigurd. (+3 Bld from Leif helps his AS a lot) And after chapter 10 you get Lin to fix his speed. (+5 Spe replaces +3 Bld) I now got Sigurd back, Alfred now deletes meteor Mages and balista Archers by running 15 spaces and using momentum. Sigurd, Marth, Leif, Lin and Ike make Alfred gain exp all day, his high move gets him to the front faster, and if you get the DLC Emblems then Hector makes him double on enemy face. TLDR: Alfred can do, what Vander does in the early game, for the entier Game because Alfred levels up and promotes.
Alfred, as a unit, really requires you to level him with priority for the first two or three chapters, if you want to really make use of him. After that? He is a very solid unit, especially in his personal class. He feels like Xander light.
As someone who has completed 3 runs with Alfred in Avenir, I feel like I can confidently say that the class is bait. His speed handicaps him so much and he sustains too much damage to be a wall despite his pretty high defense and health and Golden Aegis doesn't proc very often. He does, however, hit like a fucking truck. If he breaks or has followup he can be very strong as long as you plan around him. But be very careful around magic. he will get one rounded.
Good video, and I've always thought Alfred's been overhated because of "cavaliers are top tier" whiplash. There are a couple of notes I have though: -Bond Shield isn't really a point for any unit. AI hates avoid rates and dual support (Lucina skill) gives ridiculous avoid. As long as your unit isn't getting one shot they're probably not getting targeted. Literally anyone can do bond shield, so the points one can get for that role involve secondary utility while using it, like RK staves or poison dual strikes. Or better offense than Alfred has. -Alfred doesn't scale better than Louis into the game. I don't know where the "Louis falls off" meme comes from, but I suspect it's from first playthroughs where people aren't early promoting and using Louis/Sigurd. If Louis is unpromoted in Solm, of course he falls off. As soon as Louis promotes though, he still has top tier strength/def and suddenly he has top tier mobility. If you forge him a Silver Greatlance, he's realistically one-shotting stuff. Dying to mages is a meme because the vast, vast majority of enemy groups in Engage have no magic damage. Especially relative to Alfred, Louis has better damage/bulk AND ties his mobility. Where's Alfred outscaling Louis?
Dual Support only gets really strong if you have support ranks with multiple people adjacent to you. Those people each ought to be strong enemy phase sweepers (such as stacked mage knights or wolf knights) appropriate for the situation, so that you’re not dropping kills that you could otherwise get by funneling all the enemies into just one target. Those kinds of combinations are not all that common in practice, except with Alear specifically, and they really limit the kinds of positions you can put your sweeper in because the geometry gets awkward.
Really nice video, I enjoyed and Scepti together, really nice balance between you both. If we consider DLC then I think Alfred is actually a smart unit to invest in. The DLC Divine Paralogues are just painful to play in part 2, it makes sense to play them around Chapter 9, so you will want a pretty good team to bring to these maps.
Alfred was a beast in my first playthrough (hard mode) despite everyone saying he was terrible. Haven't tried him on Maddening yet cause everyone said he's terrible...
@@alsaiduq4363 His bases on Maddening still allow him to function and he can do a lot of cool stuff in the early-game that most of the Firene Squad can't do as effectively as he can. He's no Chloe but he's no Boucheron either.
@@ljthompson3011 I recommend Zoran’s demonstration videos for a deeper look into Alfred’s uses in the early-game, but to sum it up: 1. He has first dibs on Sigurd for Chapter 4 since both of his retainers face disadvantages against many enemies on that map, Framme is a Staff/Chain Guard bot until she promotes, and Clanne wants to wait until you unlock Second Seals to train in Paralogues. This gives him a chance to rock the north side of the village with Vander chipping so he can gets the EXP/SP and a couple Bond levels. All of this while Marth!Alear and Celica!Celine devour the South and Middle sections with chip from their own retainers. 2. He can use the levels he gets from Ch4 and a Defense Tonic to tank all the Sword Fighters on Enemy Phase even if they Chain Attack. This gives you the chance for kills on any early joiners you want to train without the enemies outright ignoring him like they would with Sigurd!Louis (Sigurd!Chloe is still too frail to tanks a CA from those swordies but she’s still useful elsewhere even with just a Bond Ring). 3. He can ORKO the Ch6 Thieves with an unforged Javelin, which once again ignore Louis. This Chapter is mostly a Marth!Chloe buffet though so Alfred’s contributions are less important. After this point Alfred will easily have the Bond levels to inherit skills from Sigurd (or the player has the Bond Fragments to spare the Arena level, anyway) and he can use Marth and/or Celica during the Paralogues or Brodia arc to build up the SP needed for Canter, and possibly Favorite Food if you want to do funny Bonded Shield stuff with him later.
@@cartooncritic7045 I’ll check zorans video out. Alfred is definitely not someone I’d recommend babying in the early game tho and giving special treatment if here’s just too many good units later in that I mainly focus on framme, Celine , Chloe and alear in the early game
More videos like this would be great! Talking to someone with a deep knowledge of a specific game to defend something that a lot of people overlook is such an interesting concept! Off the top of my head one thing that comes to mind is Fates generics, whether that be captured generics, einharjars, or capture bosses.
Been using Alfred in a maddening-classic draft run and he's honestly impressed me with how tanky he can be, despite his mobility. He doesn't oneround things on player phase necessarily, but he's basically become a highly mobile damage sponge, with Golden Lotus reducing the upkeep it takes to keep him online (i.e., not having to pull him back because a physic staff is enough to keep him at safe HP.) His dexterity also means he doesn't really have as many hitrate issues as a lot of other tanks (like hoo boy, late game Louis, Jade, and Madeline just cannot hit faster enemies whatsoever) which is really nice to have for him. Also, Quick Repost Ridersbane to eat horses is fun, carried me through the first half of chapter 19.
I had to delete my last comment, because it must be said, Alfred is BAD! Or not bad, just very very mid. And outclassed, VERY outclassed. So the one chapter that I assumed that Alfred outdid Louis in was chapter 5 due to momentum but what does Alfred even achieve with Momentum? Well he can override the hallway, then what? He dies. Yeah remember the Zoran lp mentioned here? Zoran didn't even solo the left room, because Alfred cannot do that. He actually soloed it with Celine. How about Louis taking no damage? Enemies won't attack you if they do no damage, right? Right, but Chain attacks are damage, and enemies can detect them. If an axe fighter attacks Louis, (which they will, they're strong enough to detect damage on them) then the swordfighter will detect damage, and thus attack Louis. Who by the way, easily solos the left side, he’s bulky enough, he counters and kills on the enemies he overrode because of break immunity, and he survives because of his higher bulk. Later on, Louis falls off right? Wrong. Louis falls off if you try to make him do exactly what he does earlygame, yes, but so does alfred. Yet here so many alternatives are discussed its even proposed you make him a healer. Louis can reclass to Halberdier, (which he is the clear superior candidate for) and utilise both his high strength and high bulk to become a player phase killer, who can equip Eirika to one most enemies with a brave lance. This build is pretty easy to use, and makes good use of an earlygame carry who would otherwise fall off. For Alfred, the best you get is a bonded Shield spammer. Let's talk about why this niche is not Alfred’s and shouldn't even be counted as his contribution. Anyone can bonded shield, just like anyone can grind exp with Micaiah, or anyone can use Tiki. But the better candidates are units who won't be targeted. Being a cav, Alfred can only support other cavs with 100% consistency. Merrin and Zelkov are better at this, as they can use their personals to reach a similar effect, and poison strike with Dual Assist. But if you're using it on a flier, which you absolutely should, Wyvern Alear is the best user, because her high support pool means she can utilise dual support+ to reach 0% enemy hit and therefore become untargetable. So all of this is to say that while you can do all of this for Alfred, you could do the same for any unit you’d realistically be putting in C or even D. (Mind you Alfreds not D he’s more low C) Alfred forces you to give more, plan more, and think more, all for less. And by anyone’s standards this should not be a good thing, ever.
Chloe doesn't conflict with Alfred over any resources besides *maybe* the first Master Seal, but that's irrelevant if you do Anna's Paralogue as soon as it unlocks.
@@nachohangover5104 The maps where Alfred performs best with the Emblems that Chloe wants the most are the map where she can't equip Emblems (Chapter 4) and the maps where he can use the ones she isn't (Chapters 6, 7, and 8). If they're actually competing for anything it's the extra Skill Books from the Well to get a second Ability once they both get Canter, which is the only area where Alfred completely loses to Chloe because she's just better.
@@quijassajiuq900 More accurately: “Being worse than the best unit for a solid 1/3 of the game doesn’t mean you’re useless or not worth investment.” Chloe is such a goddess that she can afford to to basically sit out Ch4 and 5 and still promote on Ch8 thanks to Marth. That means you can do basically whatever you want with the rest of the army until that point, and Alfred compares pretty well during this time.
I find Alfred to be pretty similar to Echoes Clive: -Earliest joining cavalier -Not very hard to promote -Low-ish speed, but not as slow as people make it out to be -Probably the best Ridersbane user in the early/early-to-midgame -Other cavs might be better in combat, but why not use multiple of them? So I approached him with that mentality. He’s actually a pretty bulky Great Knight that can dish back decent damage, so I think he’s a solid Not Bad/10
I mean the difference is that Clive doubles what he needs to, Alfred just doesn't double at all (and can find himself often getting doubled). Granted I agree he's not unuseable, he does feel outclassed though.
@@twigz3214 If memory serves Clive needs some speed fountains to do that. He is not doubling what he needs to without it so he really isn't doing his job without investament Anyway Alfred and Clive are different units to begin with as Clive is carried by class bases but has s*** growths while Alfred has good growths but s*** personal bases This is an issue since unless you have dlc it is hard to raise that many units in time to be useful in the mid game out of your early game choices and despite popular belief, most of the early game units have some kind if value for long term use. Alfred ends up solid once he gets out of the pit of his terrible bases but just about every unit ends up at least solid if invested in which makes Alfred harder to justify using.
Alfred is one of my favourite characters in Engage, and that unfortunately doesn't have anything to do with him as a unit. I'll agree to disagree with most of this video, because on both Maddening and Hard, he just doesn't do a damn thing early on except poke with the Javelin and maybe rush a Sword Fighter with low HP that threatens to KO someone close by. There's no reason to funnel any early resources into him as every other character is better suited to any role he could do. I stopped watching when they said Alfred is better than Louis because that is nowhere close to being true. Even in the chapter in Firene Castle, you don't even need to Override the hallway before the Theif makes it across; you have several turns before he gets to the chests and loots them. I used Alear with Sigurd and Clanne with Celica to overwhelm the Armour Knight with Override and Warp Ragnarok. Clanne, beside Alear, took down the Archer and Alear with Clanne during playerphase can KO the remaining Axe Fighter and Sword Fighter and catch up before the Theif even gets the second chest. Louis is also the better option for the Override strat because his higher defense allow him not to die to 3 hits from the Archer, A Fighter, and S Fighter. He also doesn't get broken by the A Fighter and can do damage to the Archer with a Javelin.
I've been using Alfred on the maddening run I've been chipping away at. I feel like at worst he wants an emblem to be able to fully contribute, but that can be said about a lot of characters. And in a game about using emblems, that's hardly a death sentence.
On my Hard run, I gave him Sigurd, a Byleth Engraved Brave Lance, Resolve, and Lance Power. He started absolutely wrecking face and shredding boss HP bars. He was my anti Wolf Knight and Swordmaster unit since he'd 2 tap them with the Brave Lance, and no one else could double them. He would get so much defense after resolve that enemies would do minimal damage to him as well. He was usually off doing his own thing before zooming in with Momentum+ and deleting something
I'm using Alfred in my first Maddening playthrough and he's been great throughout. Reclassed him to Wolf Knight to patch up his Speed, slapped Lucina on him and man he's so much fun :D
I’ve been a day 1 Alfred supporter (so this is with the context of fixed maddening with day 1 dlc and heroes weapons) and the only thing I haven’t really done was give Alfred Sigurd. I personally like giving him Marth since it allows him to heavily sword fighters with Break Defenses, and while engaged let’s him one round them (with a strong enough weapon equipped). He was the first unit that I promoted and it allowed him to reach one rounding thresholds without needing to be engaged. Speedtaker is definitely a quintessential “give me to everyone” skill, and of course, Alfred likes to have it to double the slow units and stop getting doubled by fast units.
he's usefull to break ennemies in the early game but later on idk why use him as bound shield user when framme exist she can dodgetank relliably + recharge lucina way faster
Alfred can keep up with other Cavalry units like Mage and Wolf Knights with 100% activation rate whereas you’ll have to hold them back when using Framme. I consider Alear a better Emblem recharger than Framme; Arts work better with their promotion than Framme in her base and their level 5 skill makes recharging them even easier. Dodge tanking requires stacking avoid and luck to favor you (not exactly a reliable or repeatable tactic); most enemies on Maddening will ignore your units if they read no damage or no Hit. A common practice in these games is assuming every attack going out and coming in are going to hit (even the shaky 33% hit).
@@NoCryinRyan i pref frame cuz she can stack dodges with personal sk and have support with units that i like using in the formation such as alear anna or cloé she wont be attacked back this way plus i find that when fighting very fast units such as w kn the aoe healing can be usefull but i ye i agree that alear would be an objectively better emblem user most of the time ps i m only playing on madening
Alfred was on the bench on my first play through but when I found about his ending I knew I had to give him a shot in my next play through. Well, after giving him a decent amount of favouritism (2 speed wings and tiki growth skill) he’s among the best units I have. He’s gotten to a point where he’s getting ignored because of his insane defense, so I guess he’s suffering from success. He’s not a good unit by any means, I spent a lot of time babying him and giving stat boosters, but he’s doing good in maddening.
@@jerry3115 yeah I get that. Main thing I was trying to convey was that Alfred isn’t so bad that he can’t catch up with investment. Modern fe games have no truly unusable units, so the criticism I see of Alfred seems a lil too much with people saying that he was so bad that he couldn’t do anything which isn’t really true. Alfred with investment is probably one of the best tanks in the game, with his personal class and high move. His low build is also good with emblems like Hector. He’s not Seth or anything, but Alfred is perfectly fine imo.
On my first run (Hard), I didn't really use him. I got confused about how Proficiency worked, got Lance Prf on Boucheron, then when I finally figured it out I just said "Screw it" and made him a Wyvern to justify it. By the time I lost Sigurd (which I did have advance warning of), my roster had three mainstay Fliers (Boucheron, Chloe, and then Ivy) plus Citrinne and a Bow Knight Etie with Canter. I did actually unbench him in the late-game because I was grinding an Anna anyway for a meme build, but no amount of grinding was catching him up to my team at that point, which included DracoHex Celica Ivy, a Louis with multiple Talismans, Res+4, and Ike with Urvan, and said meme Anna that actually worked so well I'm using her in Maddening too. Speaking of Maddening, Alfred is a permanent slot on my maddening team. Used some early books to give him Canter and Lance Power 2, handed him a Sigurd-engraved Javelin+3, and he makes an effective softening unit even into the midgame. He's usually been holding a Caeda bond ring for Sympathetic, but rn I'm trying him out with Ike on some Paralogues.
I’ve been using Alfred in my new maddening run and I feel like he functions just as well as everyone else, definitely enjoyed the earlier momentum from Sigurd. I plan to use him in his base class for a bit until seals become less scarce and turn him into a Wolf Canter hobbler, low build but decent str/spd growth seems to fit this role well. Maybe give him a forged riderbane to also kill cavalry? Not 100% sure about those thresholds though.
I find that even on normal he just takes a lot of work. Its not just an initial fat investment, its constant care and favoritism thats required to keep him up to par. Not to excel, but just to be as strong as everyone else. Damn near every unit you get in the second half comes in as a fully functional powerhouse right out of the box. He's a unit that can be made to work, after all you can make Anna work too, but that's all he'll ever be.
His only crime is falling off as soon as you give Sigurd to someone else or lose Sigurd. He's not bad at all, yet very much like Clanne he's still very usable and can keep up with enough investment.
@@alexpowell1184 Well, given the caveat of "neglecting to train Clanne until you can reclass him to a physical class and then power-levelling with Great Sacrifice" then I can see how Clanne might seem better. That still raises the question of what Alfred is doing in the meantime, and it turns out he can do quite a lot.
Alfred has the base stats of a level one character while being level five, I figured this out by comparing others characters bases with him which makes him have a minus two in nearly all stats at the start. Add onto the fact that his base class is actually really good stat wise and that makes him seem like a normal level five character when he truly not. Alfred having a really good base class is another really bad thing for him because when he class change into something better it barely boots his overall stats which makes it even harder for him to catch up with the average stats of the other characters when they also class change. Alfred is four levels behind most characters, while one of the best character kagetsu is around four levels ahead of most characters which was interesting to learn. True be told, Alfred growths are actually really good but his bases are so low it takes him 20 levels to play catch up with most other characters and twenty more to surpass them and the game is usually over by that point. I usually like to use use general to stat fix his strength, def and build for about ten levels to twenty and then switch to his main class or something with speed and strength
Imo there is a huge gap in Alfred's viability between dlc and no dlc I've used him in both cases. Without dlc, training Alfred is a pain as even with the steel lance, he does little damage and can't survive enemy phase. Probably bottom 5 unit But with Dlc, with the bonus energy drop and a forged Fensalir/Silver Lance, he's amazing. Slap Sigurd on him and watch him one shot stuff with momentum. Really surprised of how good Alfred turned out with just a few extra resources.
I get where this is coming from but in a game where anyone can be fixed or salvaged why would you use alfred unless you like him? Pure face Tanking isn’t good past 11, because you get bonded shield and can abuse that with high offense units for the rest of the game and you def don’t want to be doubled/ really want to be the one doubling in a lucina ball which is the best form of “tanking” since spd is an issue since he’s no Kagetsu, merrin, Chloe, and or lapis for that let’s talk strength, he has good str once it gets rolling but he’s out performed in the str nut role (crit/one shot type units) by Panette, Amber, Louis, and even etie (tho her start is also god awful but if you can suffer through Alfred’s bad start you can suffer through hers too) since the only stat they really care about is str. He obviously can’t do magic so let’s skip that. Support? Well anyone can do that and he doesn’t do it better then anyone else. Even if you did want someone for pure tanking that isn’t lucina ball and some baiting Louis and even more so goldmary out perform him and it’s not really a job where you want more then 1 person doing it if you choose to have a regular tank on the team. It’s not just that he’s outclassed as a cav and or lance unit. He’s outclassed everywhere. And he’s gonna get dropped once you start really gaining those brodia units. If he somehow makes it past brodia and ch 11 he’s def off the team once those early solm deployment slots show up. There are just so many better units then alfred. And getting doubled by ch 5 cavs when using the raidersbane is awful. He has to fight only 1 of them because he will die to 2. He’s one technically one of the best ways of dealing with them but he’s not very accurate with it and he dies to them pretty fast if your not careful. He’s mid/ bad in everything when compared to others so he does nothing truly well Like I said he’s not unusable but everyone is useable so that doesn’t make him special or better then most people. I will be nice to him and say I don’t think he’s a bottom 3 unit those Anna and Jean are both more annoying then him and timerra is an actual liability on her join map outside of destroying crates and she just never sees the light of day after that map while alfred has maps of essentially being a forced deploy and that takes him above all of those units for me Edit: Also you don’t need a bulky bonded shield user, alear is the best bonded shield user. Give them a micaiah engraved weapon and with dual support they won’t get attacked, don’t go for bulky bonded shield user, just go for unhittable which alear will become with micaiah engraved weapon plus dual support. Alfred has meh support options so he isn’t even getting that much out of it. Girffin alear is best alear so that helps flier balls and is natural, but you can also do mage knight alear(royal knight is also an option if you want to have the staff utility instead of the chain attack), micaiah engrave a thunder tome and then they are chain attacking from 3 range so they can help our Allie’s next to them attacking at 2 range. You want unhittable that way they don’t get attacked and more enemies go into the meat grinder. And alear gives a damage bonus for his teammates which helps them hit great thresholds
Timerra outside of her join chapter is fine. With Ike she’s just a faster tank. She may get hit harder than tanks but the doesn’t get doubled and she doesn’t get one shot by mages. She’s like slightly better Goldmary.
@@goroadachi9489 I don’t see her like a better goldmary when it comes to face tanking, don’t get me wrong I don’t think face tanking is that good in this game but when it comes to that goldmary is def the best when it comes to face tanking, wyvern goldmary has better defenses then picket timerra with more def and res and hp and has the spd to avoid key doubles with a spd meal/tonic, now pure face tanking aside yeah timerra has sandstorm for better occasional better offense and more spd but I just don’t think she’s worth using (I don’t think goldmary is either but she’s def a fantastic face tank) after ch 13 she never sees the light of day because getting her 5 levels with her awful str is not fun. And they’re are just better units to deploy, I would rather bring bunet as a 6 move repo bit then her to the maps after 13. Because she never really sees deployment since it takes to long for her to even get her questionable gimmick going. I just don’t see a reason to deploy her when she’s surrounded by better units. At least alfred always has some use in early game since they’re isn’t a point in benching him until you get more units to replace him. And she’s also not really deserving of ike when someone like Kagetsu, panette, merrin are right there
@@nachohangover5104 like I said for to other commenter I just don’t see a time where he gets used, well kinda screwed him over in the sense that you want to wait until after you get the well unlocked so you can get an extra well use out of his map. And you want to do the Anna map before him so you get a master seal for a promoted unit. He just doesn’t have much time to be used compared to alfred since you kinda want all hands on deck for awhile before the better units show up: jean being a martial monk is nice for that chain and healing tho if you grab him earlier but I just don’t think it’s worth.
The chapter he joined in i had to reset several times not only because he was getting double, but because he was getting crit and dying constantly. I hoped he would get better with level ups and the exp in this game is so stingy (atleast on maddening, can't speak to other difs) that i couldn't justify using him past chapter 5 or 6. I think he's at level 6 or 7 in the backrow right now.
The guy was the Tiki holder from DLC unlock all the way to chapter 16. Then the moment I try and convert him to Lucina he instantly starts getting bodied. In Hard or lower he can probably work, but if he can't be useful with the bonus growths Tiki gives after existing the whole game, he's trash. Do I need to feed him the stat items and a +5 weapon and spend bond reserves to give him high tier Emblem skills so that he can occasionally be a slightly more consistent Lucina bot than even Diamant? Meanwhile Diamant was given Hector and one skill from Ike and he'll carry, with no other coddling from me at all.
I love how his unique ability is a pavise based on dex % but both his def and dex are trash and he ends up dealing one digit damage and getting doubled anyway.
No hate but what is up with Sceptistar's mic like jesus. Is that a voice changer or just the worst mic ever? If you're gonna do a long-form video I feel like having nice audio should be near the top of your priorities
Beautiful video, this along with Zoran’s play-through and my own testing elevated Alfred’s ranking from trash tier in my initial impressions to decent. Sure his damage will fall off eventually, but the fact that he’s the best Sigurd user for chapter 4, 5, and probably 6 too has got to count for something.
My Alfred has been going really strong on my (still ongoing. Currently Chapter 25, btw) Maddening first playthrough, and all I had to give him was like 2 Speedwings.
Alfred is pretty fun unit in My first play through of engage (maddening) I did give him the Ike ring and QR 4 and he did pretty well and was fun and outperformed my Louis pretty quickly but my Louis got like 0 def growths so my Alfred was just better Louis for me and with more move
I would describe alfred as moderate louis. He has high str/def and low spd but not to the extent of louis. I think people expect his class to be like a paladin when it's more like a great knight.
I know tiki makes everyone busted, but Tiki Alfred was amazing for the entirety of my first maddening run. Awesome wall with mobility and fire breath to help with choke points. Easily one of my top 4 units on my team by the end when they vomit units at you
In my current maddening run Alfred been one of my best units. In the early game I gave him a draco shield and Sigurd which put him in the goldilocks zone for tanking. He gets hit for 1-3 and does decent enough damage that he makes a good enemy phase character if you give him Lance power he does really good damage as an enemy phase tank. Once Sigurd goes away I second sealed him into halberdier and gave him Hector. And finally I gave him Lunar Brace. For weapons he's rocking a Brave Lance, a Ridersbane, and a spear which with his low build means he gets good value out of heavy attack. So I'd say Alfred is great. He fills a unique role in the early game and in the mid - late game he can be a heavy damage dealer.
Not very far into the video but my experience on this second playthrough where I'm actually using him is Well access gives him a really freaking strong lance, he gets doubled by some things but it doesn't matter most of the time, his Def is pretty good and Golden Lotus triggers just about often enough to supplement his good-but-not-perfect Def as an Avenir. Keep in mind this is on Normal tho.
In my first run Alfred absolutely carried, idk y but he was just my best unit, he had sigurd when he was available but I also gave him tikis healing ability at the highest degree and I cant remember what else but he just swept for me
I guess it goes to show how much favoritism goes into discussion about unit viability. You can’t convince me that Alfred is good when he starts taking more and more damage-while still being doubled by chapter 7. The more you have to invest and baby a unit the worse they actually are, just use Kagetsu
For me Alfred (or any other enemy phase unit) pretty much will shine with the Hector Ring. Its a zero-to-hero moment. Like I know its kinda taboo to bring up DLC stuff but at the end of the day I'm not going to pretend they don't exist lol. It's like saying you can't ever count the four winds as characters to do studies on all because they're DLC locked. So with that out of the way.....Alfred really can be a beast. Like I leveled him up to like 10 in his promoted form, then switched over to Great Knight to really bump up his defenses (had him there to level 20, then switched him back to his regular promoted class for his prf skill). All with Hector Ring on.....HE STRAIGHT UP barely dies (which either killing physical units with Armads or just living in a mass orgy of enemies with Rune Sword). I even gave him Corrin's one skill that negated back-up attacks (to nullify chip damage). Though I think this is moreso a statement at how cracked Hector's ring can be, but considering we don't really have an enemy phase main ring, its worth to note Hector.
Alfred performs great as a paladin which fixes his speed and dex issues even on fixed mode, he's not the hardest hitter but he does really well and even with just a +1 fensalir he can wreck shop
The way Alfred is discussed in this video is contingent on moderately paced play. You're probably losing a couple of turns on C4 if you give him Sigurd instead of Clanne/Vander. Taking the hallway in C5 is a huge detour that's simply not worth it. There are few occasions to feed Mercurius kills when you're playing fast, and those occasions are barely enough to get Alear and Chloe ready for C10. What Alfred can do with Bonded Shield, most units can do nearly as well and some with added utility (Merrin/Alear). It's simply not worth it to train Alfred to level 10 to run a job nearly any unit can do. A lot of the discussion seems inspired by Zoran's run; a meticulously planned playthrough that honestly puts effort comparable to an LTC towards EXP optimisation. If you play super optimally in terms of farming EXP, but not going so far as to abuse mechanics to do so, Alfred can be salvaged to the B tier. What?
Mid to late game you can also convert Lucina into a bit of a DPS emblem with the DLC crystals. You can add +4 might to the Noble Rapier with just one upgrade to counter enemy Wolf Knights and Paladins. The Parthia also makes him a decent bow user coupled with his high strength and gives a lot of experience for each kill. On either of these you can stack a speed crystal to help Alfred double and Lucina already gives a speed bonus. Granted this could work on anyone, but it's good to note that the Lucina user doesn't have to be just a Bonded Shield bot.
I liked this format and would love to hear about the propaganda that units like Framme, Clanne, and Tamara are bad, or that units like Céline and Jean are great.
I'm really intrigued by the concept of giving him a defense tonic to make him a tank that doesn't take 0. Definitely going to try that next time. My endgame squad did have 3 cavs that did nothing but abuse emblem abilities, I guess Alfred can fulfill that role too.
I wasn't a big fan of a lot of the early game units, and Alfred was consistently lackluster. I played on hard, and while he wasn't the worst unit in my army, I found him not worth a slot by the time I got to Brodia. He was weak, slow, and not particularly bulky. Just overall a meh unit by the time I benched him. Helpful early on when there's very few playable units, but otherwise...meh. I never even got him to level 10. I don't think he ever got a good level up so I wasn't motivated to keep him in.
(hard/classic) i stayed away from the internet when i started the game so i did not see all the alfred hate - he has been one of my best units for the entire game (first with sigurd, now eirika). him and timerra have been my MVPs so I was surprised to see all the haters!!!
I bought into the hype of Alfred being terrible because he got horribly strength screwed on my first hard playthrough (10 str at level 11!!!) and I assumed his growths were just atrocious. Imagine my surprise when I checked serenesforest and saw his personal 40% str growth
I haven't finished the video but my experience with Alfred was that he just eventually got outclassed. I've been taking my sweet time in a blind maddening run and while there was nothing wrong with Alfred at the start, and he has decent growths on stats that matter like speed, strength and luck to help him with crit, he just didn't really excel and I ended up benching him by the time i got past Brodia and could incorperate Anna and Jean into my team full (He did interestingly crit quite a bit due to his good dex and luck, nearing near 40% with a base killer lance). Had I been better about my planning however I'm fairly sure I would have found a good use for him. As a unit i might try using him more later in another playthrough but I don't believe his best class is his unique one at all. It feels too weak for his general problems. It doesn't help his build. It doesn't really solve his build or speed problems all that well. One consideration i had for a future run is to run Alfred as an armored unit: Run his base class to 10 and immediately second seal him after his promotion into a General to help his build and strength issues while making him decently bulked up. After 10 levels you can second seal him yet again into his final class of Great Knight, giving him even more defense with Allied Defense, or Paladin to give him more speed, res and some extra luck at the cost of some defense. Leif sounds like a perfect pick for Alfred in general once he's made this transition to Great Knight, as with Vantage and Arms Shield++, Alfred will take basically nothing while engaged due to Lief's Adaptability, or he'll kill his enemy before they get a chance with his higher strength growth. Just have to keep him away from magic users. Alfred might be one of those units that as he gets more focus to attempt to work, people will find him to be exceptional if set up properly, similar to how Framme was initially considered a poor unit, but her high supports and utility slowly crept her up to being basically an metagame unit.
i find that the biggest aspect about alfred that holds him back is that he's not beginner friendly. on maddening mode, if you don't already have a deeper understanding of the meta-game/fire emblem in general, then alfred will appear as being borderline unusable. when you go in already knowing the meta-game and knowing the niche that alfred falls into, it's easy to put the pieces together to bring him up to speed with other units. 99% of players don't know the exact damage range of sword fighters into alfred pre-chapter 9, or know alfred's growths, or how he uniquely compares to louis. they just see that louis takes 0 damage and alfred takes some damage, and they write him off as being inferior. in short, alfred makes a terrible first impression on anyone without advanced knowledge of the game, and that first impression is often all it takes for him to get benched for the entire game.
By chapter 9 Luis can promote and reclass and when they are in the same classes he is straight up superior because their 10/1 personal averages of Speed and Res are identical. What Alfred has over Luis is Lolavenir and 15% speed growth wich ironically mean GK is the only class where i feel Alfred can perform better.
See I used on first playthrough and he drove me mad he wasn’t terrible but he wasn’t as great as everyone else, but then on my third playthrough I made him a halberdier, slapped tiki on him and he was actually pretty good, took him a while but he got there he was an actual useable party member. I don’t think he’s a bad unit but takes a lot time, babying, and a decent emblem to make him good
I think Alfred's peak "first impressions are everything." which explains why Louis filled his role in early community play. There's lots of early axemen which can break him if you're foolish which feels bad, while Louis shrugged it off. But, utility is important, and Louis' inflexibility showcases how useful it is compared against Alfred, and how you can have too much of a good thing (defense) when you just want Goldilocks, which he is!
Louis' Def is incredibly funny because if you do the thing a lot of people do and give him Sigurd he gets ignored by 2/3 enemies in Ch5. Even just Sigurd bond level 2+ and his first level up, which gives him another point of Def on fixed, are enough to make him take 0 from pretty much every non-armor/boss/axe/magic user (either uncommon enemies or ones that absolutely murder him) until ch9/10 on maddening, which kind of makes the whole "charge armor knight into frontlines and watch them tank stuff" he can do with Sigurd pointless since there isn't much tanking to be done if enemies don't acknowledge your existence lmao. Louis? More like Kellam ha gottem
Im working toward Enchanter Alfred. No idea how he'll do in the roll but woth that outift he fits the butler image. Obviously butler Alfred is required.
Alfred was really kinda meh for me. I liked that he was one of the few characters whose supports *didn’t* end up revolving around “muh food”, but I used him for the whole game, expecting this to be one of those FEs where Lords are good given how much they were pushed, but his combat performance was consistently just okay. If I ever play the game (and that’s a fairly big “if” considering how obnoxious I found a lot of the later maps and their insufferable reinforcement spams) I’ll probably reclass him to be an armour knight, because that feels like it’d have been a better class for him.
I don't remember Alfred being doubled, but when I played on Maddening, his damage output was OK, and dropped off steeply as I kept going each chapter. Whenever I needed that one-hit wonder unit, it was never Alfred. TBF, it was never mounted units in general, but that was especially true for him.
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i think an alfred waifu video is warranted. he plays such an interesting role and i feel it demonstrates how a player's understanding of the game can completely 180 a unit's performance
you're gonna enjoy the end of the video
I think Alfred's performance fits the part of his backstory where he and his sister recall him being sick often as child. That sets him up for a nice run, he's a unit with clear shortcomings, but a certain kind of player will get a great amount of enjoyment out of keeping him around.
Agreed and with a lot of training, which we know he doesn't have a problem with, and something to help his speed, res, and somewhat iffy hit rate (**cough Lyn Ring), you can turn him into a monster offensive unit during a casual playthrough especially as a Wyvern Knight, Warrior, or Griffen Knight. I had more fun training him than Anna or Jean.
I guess, kneejerk response, while Clanne might take 8 and Alfred might take 4x2...Clanne also has 1-2 range and is a mage, he shouldn't really be getting attacked too often. Alfred is going to be in the fray a lot more, and while he might have more HP to compensate, it's not a good introduction(And it doesn't bode well for the rest of him through the playthrough). You can expend resources to bring him up to speed and make him good for sure, but you can use those resources to make other units better.
Exactly... if he's taking the same damage as my mage when he's a cav, he needs to go straight to the bench.
Periodt, idk this video is just weird, it's so obviously biased it's taking me tf out
@@inigoerrandonea2513
Yeah this much investment for this minor of a niche that gets outclassed that badly should not be getting a 36 minute long defence
I mean, I wouldn’t assume that you just keep Alfred at base stats forever if you plan to use him. He’s going to get experience, levels, and sp, which will probably give you good return on investment. He’s got 7 chapters on Amber, and 10 chapters on Merrin, and if you do the paralogues that unlock in between, it’s even more time. I’m not going to argue on whether he’s better or worse than them, but availability is a large factor when it comes to matters like these.
As for the 4x2 vs 8 damage point, you’re right, Clanne shouldn’t be in a position to take that damage. But by the time you get Alfred, you already have access to Chain Guard and Staff healing and vulnerareis that I’d argue it’s no issue keeping him at least healthy. And as the game goes on, he’ll get better at his role, and that’s not even counting the amount of reclassing you can do if you’re really not a fan of Avenir.
As for the use that investment to make other units better point, if a unit is already good at their role (Merrin, Kagetsu, etc), wouldn’t it be better to use that investment to help out the units that would appreciate it more? Of course, I’m not telling you how to play FE, do whatever you’d like. But if don’t have anybody who’s starving for resources, why not give them to the few units that actually would like it the most? I don’t feel like because a unit needs investment equates to them being a bad unit.
(And I hope this comes across as respectful, I’m really not trying to pick a fight here.)
@@colorcraze138
As for the last part I still think its better to invest in good units because an invested good unit will do what nobody else ever could before, whereas an invested weak unit will mean you have 1.5 good units. Its the same as giving boots to an 8 mov unit over a 5 mov.
(That being said this is just about optimal play, I would recommend everyone use like, 1 bad unit per playthrough since it makes things more fun I find)
"What are people DOING with Alfred that leads to him getting doubled?"
I dunno where I'm going wrong, you see I have him go into combat with anything not wielding axes or wearing heavy armor and it just kinda HAPPENS :p
Scepti constantly has every single unit chugging speed tonics and inheriting Lyn's speed +3 which honestly will fix any speed problem anybody has
@@quijassajiuq900 That explains a _lot_.
@@MetalGearRaxis funny seeing a frequent name from the fire Emblem Gamefaqs have the same knee jerk reaction I did.
I was watching the opening and the first thing she said caught me so off gaurd, I had to go to the comments and I saw this.
But yeah, Alfred has to have some of the worst stats for his level in game besides Vander. That speed won't catch up unless you've committed to Wolf knight, which in my opinion is the only way to get him usable by mid game.
I'm not really convinced.
So true
Can’t believe they didn’t let him use Venomous in Avenir, smh
It's literally his country's national treasure! We were robbed
"Alfred isn't that bad because he takes the same damage from sword fighters in his joining chapter that a mage who doesn't take counterattacks does, and getting doubled means he has two chance to dodge or activate Golden Lotus, and he can usually three-shot units if you give him a strength tonic" might be the biggest example of damning a unit with faint praise I've ever heard.
And he doesn’t even get golden lotus early either. Like you might be able to get it by the end of the Brodia castle map if you favor him heavily but that doesn’t matter at all for early game.
@@justcritlmao5730 For real, I could not have given a more convincing argument for why Alfred isn't worth using if I tried, and she was trying to argue in his favor.
Fr lmao
The comment on Golden Lotus is in relation to the "taking a single big hit vs taking half that hit twice" as in it's better to take 4x2 than 8, because you get more chances to avoid the damage.
Alfred is pretty tanky by the time he gets golden Lotus you really aren't gabling on it to keep him alive
Used him in both my playthroughs- was a beast in hard mode and caught up in maddening after a slow start. Gave him the pact ring both times because he’s best buddy. No regrets.
You saved his life by doing this.
Here was my comment on this:
"Skip, dump the XP into actually good units unless doing a challenge run or you like the character.
He is a growth unit without the growths aspect, unique class isn't anything huge. Without Sigurd he has a terrible early game."
don't you put Timerra in s tier
Starting build and speed overall is just horrible. Notice how male cavs in other games had much higher build/con, and then there's Alfred lol
Lore accurate
I'm not really convinced about that Bonded Shield niche.
Mostly because it requires running a bunch of cavalry units and because it's competing with flier Bonded Shield.
Looking at the cavalry classes Paladin and Wolf Knight are solid but you generally have better options, Bow Knight is... ok I guess?, Great Knight kinda stinks, and Cupido is exclusive to Fogado who generally prefers Warrior anyways. Mage Knight is the only cavalry class that's super good.
Fliers get Wyvern, Griffin, and Lindworm, which are all great and you are way more likely to have a bunch of.
Even with all that I don't think he's going to do the job much better than any other competent physical unit in a cavalry class that joins pre chapter 10.
Mage Knight clears the flying classes too wdym. The only ones there that are good are Ivy on Lindwurm which is one unit or a magical griffin knight. They have some of the highest speed in the game and hit enemie's on their much weaker resistance.
On top of that the actual flying utility of flier classes fall off as most lategame maps actually don't have a whole lot of terrain you need to fly over.
@@quijassajiuq900 Yeah there's kinda a reason the meta around Chloe is shifting more towards a Sword Griffin promotion eventually transitioning to Mage Knight. Mage Knight's a very strong combat class.
Yeah and regardless of flier vs cav bonded shield I feel like stacking avoid is a much better way of protecting your bonded shielder. Lucina's dual support already gives some avoid if you support any of the bonded shield targets, so it makes sense to lean into that. Micaiah's engrave is not especially contested ime, so it's easy to slap that on your bonded shielder's weapon to stack a bunch of avoid.
A naturally speedy unit with Micaiah engrave and some supports should be able to achieve 0% hit rates from most enemies and just never be targeted ever. Maybe even inherit Avoid + X from Marth early on if you wanna be extra sure to hit those avoid thresholds.
Alear is a popular choice for this since they can support everyone, and my Wyvern Alear on my maddening run works very well as a bonded shielder. I could also see someone like Wyvern Lapis or Wyvern Zelkov doing this role well due to their naturally high speed and avoid-based personal skills. Chloe, Merrin or Kagetsu could also work, but they're so strong that I'd rather have them killing things instead lol.
I probably forgot some good candidates too. Alfred is just so far down the list of units I'd consider as a bonded shielder. If you like Alfred I'm sure you can make it work, since you can make almost anything work in this game. But he's just outclassed in this role.
Alfred propaganda failed
"He's usable" is pretty much how I feel about every character in engage. Alfred has a neat niche in ch.5, but I don't see him doing much beyond that. You have other characters that can play bonded shield bot and do a better job of it - alear and merrin both come to mind. And it's weird comparing him to goldmary, considering goldmary comes ready to do whatever you want her to, right out of the box.
alfred's stats before he gets going are just really poor. with sigurd early on he can make up for this somewhat earlygame, but he doesn't catch up until well after promotion and probably a reclass where he gets a real speed stat. Speaking of that speed, it would be a lot less of a problem if he was tanky enough for the more powerful mid/lategame promoted enemies or if he actually had a good strength stat for most of the game before his growth kicks in
I agree that his stats in the early game are poor on Maddening and that it can be frustrating getting him to promotion even with giving him the Sigurd Ring and Dracoshield, but once you can get him to promotion, especially into Warrior, Wyvern, or Griffen, and are willing to give him the Lyn Ring as that fixes all of his weaknesses, that's when he can really shine all the way through the end of the game. That said, you have to want to use him to make him great, as this formula works with most of the early game units, but I've had the most fun training him to be a monster especially given the comments on how bad he is.
@@lanceareadbhar Lyn makes quite literally any physical unit broken. And frankly, I don't think Alfred needs it. After a while I think he'd be fast enough as a wyvern with lucina or something and inherited spd +3, meaning I can put Lyn on a unit who better makes use of her strengths
Used Alfred on Hard and he's still on my team as of Ch17 of Maddening, and I stand by my opinion Alfred is weird as an unit.
He's not *bad* by any means, but he's in a very awkward position where he's meant to be a better Paladin in a game where the class isn't that good to begin with. As a result, he's the kind of unit who's both tanky and squishy at the same time, and can hit quite hard while also bound to get doubled often.
Aka, sucks 😅. He was only just ok in hard mode. I can only imagine how shitty he is on maddening
I often give him Erika or Hector to remedy that.
@@breloompauncher5593 Yeah but Hector should go to Diamant, who becomes a beast of a tank
@@breloompauncher5593 pretty much anyone can do what he can do better 🫠
@@BurningFyre On maddening mode he might go over the cap and enemies ignore him. Besides, Timerra is the best Hector user imo. She can actually use heavy attack thanks to her low con. Combined with her Sandstorm proc, she hits for 190%
I thought Alfred wasn't actually that bad when i tried doing a little bit of LTC. I thought he wouldn't contribute very much but in the early chapters, he actually performed pretty nice with some good bulk and some pretty good damage output with the Steel Lance, which is also helped by his personal skill. Alfred is definitely one of the units that has grown the most on me from when I first started playing this game.
As it turns out, the old Fire Emblem adage that bulky mounted units can still be useful in a lot of situations holds true even in 2023.
Agreed. His bulk is definitely undervalued.
Sadly not someone who's readily good and there's better units to invest into. Used him on Maddening with Lyn and Lance Power build-up throughout the game and he worked just fine.
I don't really know what I did but I never felt the need to drop Louis in my first maddening run. Yeah he was so tanky that enemies ignored him but I used it to my advantage for the most part.
I keep hearing that he falls off but 🤷
Real
a whole lotta discussion and almost none of it was talking points exclusive to him. "He's a good bonded shielder" oh wow. "He's really potent with Sigurd early game" wow.
Those aren’t exclusive to him though
Unfortunate that you missed the part about how he's a bulky bonded shielder with earlygame utility and enough SP to inherit Canter + something else.
@@Mekkkah My b. You can't tout Alfred's unique bonded shielding utility - the skill that requires committing to a space - without canto.
@@Mekkkah I just don't think "bulky bonded shielder" is a niche that is very valuable when you can just stack avoid on your bonded shielder though. Lucina's Dual Support already gives avoid if you support any of the bonded shield targets, so it makes sense to lean into that. It's not very difficult to stack avoid and reach 0% hit rates from enemies and just never get targeted at all.
Many engraves give avoid, and e.g. Micaiah's engrave is not especially contested ime, so it's easy to just slap that on your bonded shielder's weapon since they don't care about the big loss in mt anyway. Speed contributes to avoid, and you're probably stacking speed with stuff like meals or Speed + X anyway. You can even get Avoid + X for fairly cheap early on from Marth if you want to use someone like Alear as your dedicated bonded shielder. Certain units like Lapis and Zelkov are naturally fast, have personals that give avoid, and they often like to reclass to Wyvern anyway which works nicely for flier bonded shielding.
Pretty much any speedy unit with the above avoid stacking ought to work better than Alfred (or any bulky unit) as a bonded shielder. If you like Alfred you can probably make it work, but I feel like he's just outclassed in that role.
Ok then make Alfred a dodge tank it’s not that hard
I never genuinely thought of Alfred as bad, only joked about it since he can be really disappointing compared to a bunch of other units in Engage, so I’m glad to see some thoughtful insight about an underlooked unit composed into 1 (or maybe 2) videos.
Really good video. Went over a ton of niches that are unique to him that I never would have considered, even after knowing how good bonded shield is. Next maddening mode play through I do I’ll definitely give him another shot.
Getting the same amount of damage hit by framme is NOT a good argument for him 👻
I mean clanne
I think this analysis is interesting but it doesn’t make me want to use Alfred. You don’t really need tanking early (you can literally just body block with unequipped Vander and have Alear pseudo solo through chapter 6, maybe have Chloe help out.) Chloe can get Momentum for the hallway Override. Framme is better for Bonded Shield IMO thanks to Qi Adept (no arts proficiency unto l chapter 15) and Crimson Cheer along with having good supports (Kagetsu, Chloe, Alear.) She also trains herself with staves and Chain Guard so she doesn’t take EXP from Chloe, Alear, and whatever Brodia characters you choose. What’s more since she doesn’t fight she can make great use of Micaiah Engrave since she doesn’t care about the Mt loss. Alfred is just outclassed at every point IMO.
Also a counter I have on the "you can pump up unit speed" is the tasks required to do so just aren't fun or are tied to RNG like cooking. Nothing is more frustrating than getting an F rank meal in engage.
U could retry cooking as much as u wanted in Fates. Why the hell did they remove this???
@@danielarenas8760 Yeah, as much as people say the gameplay is fine-tuned in this entry, when you put the Emblem mechanic aside, nearly everything else that returns is watered-down in some way.
@@danielarenas8760 I mean I get why failing is a thing but I think it shouldnt come at the risk of negative stats it should instead just use up extra ingredients or straight up dont do anything. Reason why nobody cooks on maddening is because the risk of punishment is just too high for the +2 stat rewards.
I took Alfred in my first run (hard) and used him as a bonded shield bot, but then realized that Merrin with bonded shield spreading poison around was much better. I just never found a niche for him that someone else couldn't do better...
tbf poison is pretty overrated. +1 extra damage for the second time you attack an enemy is rarely going to make the difference between killing an enemy on the second attack or not. Poison only really matters for bosses since you can actually get a +3/5 stack on them but even then, they're easy enough to kill without that.
@@Docaccino
I mean people do all kinds of loops for just +1 or 2 damage.
Getting that for free while just having a Bonded Shield bot do their thing is better than NOT getting that, and some bosses it's really really nice.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 What is essentially a 90% chance (63% w/ dual assist+, 27% w/ the base version) to apply +1 damage to an enemy if they didn't die in one round of combat is absolutely not worth going out of your way for. Not to mention poison chain attacks are only viable on cav bonded shield setups since flying classes don't have a knife access.
@@Docaccino
That's the thing though.
It's not out of your way.
It's just sitting there. For free. On Wolf Knight. With the weapon type they are already using for 99% of fights they're ever actually in.
If you're going to do cav Bonded Shield, the only reason to not pick a Wolf Knight is because you don't like them or somehow don't have one.
Otherwise it's seeing a free couple points of damage on the table, and saying "nah I'm good" just to be obtuse.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 There's an opportunity cost involved in choosing wolf knight as your bonded shield user's class since you lose out on bulk compared to great knight, mage knight (for Res) and avenir. Enemies being less likely to attack your Lucina user is a much bigger advantage than the poison proc that is going to matter once in a blue moon.
Great info on Alfred, early on people were using him as a meme but now I see his all-aroundness has a role to play.
I feel like Alfred is made to be used with Sigurd, which grants con, speed, and more damage on the first attack based on how many tiles were moved. It's a good tank unit, and low res could be fixed given the number of res boosters in game
Imo Golden Lotus isnt worth the bad stats, hes a tanky boy so great knight is better and the base DEF is such a neede boost, I dont care if hes doubled, dont care if he doesnt double, both these problems can be solved by bulkiness and a smash weapon.
SPD isnt king in FE Engage, it doesnt benefit engage attacks, theres an alternative weapon line with crazy MT fit for bulky units, you can craft an early silver greatlance so early you are bound to oneshot everything that tries to attack you before the 2nd hit lands.
I’m on my first playthrough right now on Hard mode, and Alfred has been amazing. He’s gotten only good levels, always gaining at least 2 of 3 on Str, Def or Spd. And he’s leveled up Bld multiple times. He’s actually better than Amber upon recruitment stats wise and I like his personality more. Equipped Sigurd for the fun meme of him tokyo drifting around Tiki’s Paralogue while Engaged. Still in the earlygame but I love him.
Edit: I love having Alfred block a chokepoint with Alcryst behind him, which allows them both to activate their +Str personal skills.
The epitome of personal experience. Don't get me wrong that's part of what makes fe fun, but it sounds like you got lucky. Don't get me wrong I don't think Alfred sucks. Also, he's kinda intended to be one of the Sigurd options early game.
@@korinoriz Oh absolutely! I understand that very well. It’s interesting to see other people’s takes on him be so different from my own due to that.
Imo alfred isnt as bad as everyone says he his but still gets outclassed during the early and late game. Louis still clears alfred during the early game. If you want to boost Alfred early game with dracoshields and tonics you can, but louis is so good as a unit because out of the box he does his job. I can have louis overdrive on chapter 5 and leave one or two stragglers that go attack my main force, but that main force can easily deal with a low health armor knight or archer. For resource-efficient play louis just makes more since as a zero investment unit until he ends up falling off mid-late game (on maddening anyway, on hard louis keeps up till the last chapter). If he isn't earning his deployment slot mid-game you can bench him but I doubt an invested alfred would fair much better in the tighter maps of the midgame (excluding like, the solm palace map but that one gives you a bunch of deployment slots anyways). Then as you enter the late game, you encounter a better, bulkier, zero investment bond shield user in Mauvier, who is one of if not the best mixed tank in the game. This puts alfred in a position where he can definitely be a staple on your team if invested (really anyone can in post-well engage) but he is easily replaceable in his best aspects by units who do it as good or better for free.
I wouldn't say that Alfred gets ouclassed by Louis at all, really. The fact of the matter is that Alfred has Sigurd for a full map longer than Louis ever can, and that one map has enemies that Vander and Alfred can easily tag team along the northern side. This lets Alfred get a lot of EXP/SP, enough Bond levels with Sigurd to unlock Momentum for Chapter 5, and all while Louis mostly has to stay in the middle area not gaining any SP at all since he can't equip a Ring.
Once Chapter 5 rolls around Alfred + a Defense Tonic will be able to handle most of the same jobs Louis can but with higher movement (especially the +2 Bonus he gets as a Cav in addition to the +5 Sigurd already gives) and he just keeps working. It's essentially the same issue that Armor Knights typically run into in other Fire Emblems even if Cavalry units themselves are less dominant in this iteration.
I don't really think having momentum half a chapter earlier makes as big a difference as you're implying when louis can make up for the damage he's missing out on from the missing bond levels (if you don't take the few turns necessary to grind at the start of chapter 5 that is). Louis starts out a level higher than alfred with massive stat leads at base, having 3 hp, 4 strength and a whopping 8 defense lead on alfred immediately upon joining, not factoring in the exp he's going to receive from his role in chapter 4. Even if you've been funneling exp into alfred since his join chapter he's going to need 10 levels on fixed growths to even be on par with louis' base str. At max alfred is going to be doing ~6 damage more with momentum overdrive (if louis does not have momentum and is still at base) which may hit some hp thresholds that louis does not, but louis doesn't need to finish those enemies off to be an asset, as the low hp knights and archers are to longer threats to the rest of your army.
Then throughout the rest of the early game louis keeps his bulk lead with higher growths in hp and defense, and although alfred has 2 or 3 more mv while engaged with sigurd, louis still has plenty to get the job done as a highly mobile tank with high combat prowess, whose overdrive will be doing more damage with his higher strength.
@@panteloupe8608 You’re getting too caught up in comparing Alfred and Louis’s bases to each other and not the enemies they’d be fighting. Alfred can reliably fight the Sword Fighters and ORKO the Thieves in Ch5-6 with Bond Lv. 2 Sigurd, which he’ll have just by using him normally in Chapter 4. Louis not only just cannot fight Thieves, but the Sword Fighters will often ignore Louis if he even gets one level in Defense, which hampers his ability to tank anything but the Axe Fighters that can actually damage him without Chain Attacks. Unlocking Momentum is more like a bonus that further accentuates how easily Alfred can replicate Louis’s job with the low cost of 150G.
Not sure what you mean about him not being able to fight thieves, he can dispatch them very handily, but while I do concede louis' enemy phasing capacity is hindered on maddening due to the better ai, it isn't a wipe, for example if there is a backup enemy by louis other enemies will end up attacking into him even if they do 0 damage, allowing him to take chip damage (less than alfred would in the same scenario with hp to spare) and dish back a hearty serving of his own. Those axe fighters also serve as a huge threat to alfred (in my experience) especially on chapter 7 where they can very easily eat him alive if he happens to take on more than one. Again, not arguing alfred is unviable, just that louis can get the job of mobile tank done with better with no investment.
I've been using Alfred in a no DLC Playthrough that I've been recording. I'm about to do Chapter 19 and Alfred has been a pleasant surprise. I made the mistake of turning him into a Wolf Knight, and under utilizing Lucinia, but he's been dealing more damage than I expected, in spite of not hitting doubling thresholds.
It's a little boring, I guess, but the royals really are at their best in their default classes.
My experience is quite simple; dude leveled okay, ran riot through early game on Hard Mode. Hit a wall where he had 12 speed, when everyone else was surpassing him. Speed gap got too great, and suddenly his two things I used him for (high movement, high defense) became less and less of an acceptable trade-off for the speed.
Alear stomped as a Great Knight, so just felt weird to me. i knew a lot less about class growths, and just assumed he was destined to be slow. Frankly, boy just needs a better class than his custom one. I guess regular paladin, but honestly I think he'd be pretty good as a hawk flyer. Staff utility on top of having even better unimpeded move, + to speed on promo, + to speed growth? Sign him up.
This is normal and if you want him to be great, you need to be willing to give him the Lyn Ring and then he shouldn't get doubled and can eventually inherit the speed skills to start doubling himself. He's certainly a unit that needs help to get going, but his natural strength, HP, and Defense growths really shine of you are willing to give up resources to patch up his weaknesses.
All unit's can carry hard with the right build
I am using Alfred in my maddening run.
In the early game Sigurd gives Str, Def and extra extra move to cavaliers making Alfred (and Vander) bulkier and the most mobile.
Marth gives Spe and a good Sword fixing Alfreds (and Vanders) Spe and giving resistens to getting broken on enemy phase.(I got him Cantor)
I also early Promoted Alfred giving him swords and at least +1 in all stats, including Move and Build.(I early promoted a lot.)
In the mid game a promoted Alfred with Leif takes -3 Damage from all sword, lance and axe users keeping him bulky and freeing up Sigurd.
(+3 Bld from Leif helps his AS a lot)
And after chapter 10 you get Lin to fix his speed. (+5 Spe replaces +3 Bld)
I now got Sigurd back, Alfred now deletes meteor Mages and balista Archers by running 15 spaces and using momentum.
Sigurd, Marth, Leif, Lin and Ike make Alfred gain exp all day, his high move gets him to the front faster, and if you get the DLC Emblems then Hector makes him double on enemy face.
TLDR: Alfred can do, what Vander does in the early game, for the entier Game because Alfred levels up and promotes.
"Ask not what your [units] can do for you. Ask what you can do for your [units]." - John F. Kennedy (Kinda).
Alfred, as a unit, really requires you to level him with priority for the first two or three chapters, if you want to really make use of him. After that? He is a very solid unit, especially in his personal class. He feels like Xander light.
He wish he could be xander
Still love the guy
As someone who has completed 3 runs with Alfred in Avenir, I feel like I can confidently say that the class is bait. His speed handicaps him so much and he sustains too much damage to be a wall despite his pretty high defense and health and Golden Aegis doesn't proc very often. He does, however, hit like a fucking truck. If he breaks or has followup he can be very strong as long as you plan around him. But be very careful around magic. he will get one rounded.
I used him my first Playthrough and I actually really liked him. I haven’t used him since 🙃
The only unit I always use is Chloe ✨
Good video, and I've always thought Alfred's been overhated because of "cavaliers are top tier" whiplash. There are a couple of notes I have though:
-Bond Shield isn't really a point for any unit. AI hates avoid rates and dual support (Lucina skill) gives ridiculous avoid. As long as your unit isn't getting one shot they're probably not getting targeted. Literally anyone can do bond shield, so the points one can get for that role involve secondary utility while using it, like RK staves or poison dual strikes. Or better offense than Alfred has.
-Alfred doesn't scale better than Louis into the game. I don't know where the "Louis falls off" meme comes from, but I suspect it's from first playthroughs where people aren't early promoting and using Louis/Sigurd. If Louis is unpromoted in Solm, of course he falls off. As soon as Louis promotes though, he still has top tier strength/def and suddenly he has top tier mobility. If you forge him a Silver Greatlance, he's realistically one-shotting stuff. Dying to mages is a meme because the vast, vast majority of enemy groups in Engage have no magic damage. Especially relative to Alfred, Louis has better damage/bulk AND ties his mobility. Where's Alfred outscaling Louis?
Preach louis rules
Dual Support only gets really strong if you have support ranks with multiple people adjacent to you. Those people each ought to be strong enemy phase sweepers (such as stacked mage knights or wolf knights) appropriate for the situation, so that you’re not dropping kills that you could otherwise get by funneling all the enemies into just one target. Those kinds of combinations are not all that common in practice, except with Alear specifically, and they really limit the kinds of positions you can put your sweeper in because the geometry gets awkward.
Really nice video, I enjoyed and Scepti together, really nice balance between you both.
If we consider DLC then I think Alfred is actually a smart unit to invest in. The DLC Divine Paralogues are just painful to play in part 2, it makes sense to play them around Chapter 9, so you will want a pretty good team to bring to these maps.
Alfred was a beast in my first playthrough (hard mode) despite everyone saying he was terrible. Haven't tried him on Maddening yet cause everyone said he's terrible...
His bases on maddeing are god awful
@@alsaiduq4363 His bases on Maddening still allow him to function and he can do a lot of cool stuff in the early-game that most of the Firene Squad can't do as effectively as he can. He's no Chloe but he's no Boucheron either.
@@cartooncritic7045 what “cool” stuff can he do that no other Firene member can’t
@@ljthompson3011 I recommend Zoran’s demonstration videos for a deeper look into Alfred’s uses in the early-game, but to sum it up:
1. He has first dibs on Sigurd for Chapter 4 since both of his retainers face disadvantages against many enemies on that map, Framme is a Staff/Chain Guard bot until she promotes, and Clanne wants to wait until you unlock Second Seals to train in Paralogues. This gives him a chance to rock the north side of the village with Vander chipping so he can gets the EXP/SP and a couple Bond levels. All of this while Marth!Alear and Celica!Celine devour the South and Middle sections with chip from their own retainers.
2. He can use the levels he gets from Ch4 and a Defense Tonic to tank all the Sword Fighters on Enemy Phase even if they Chain Attack. This gives you the chance for kills on any early joiners you want to train without the enemies outright ignoring him like they would with Sigurd!Louis (Sigurd!Chloe is still too frail to tanks a CA from those swordies but she’s still useful elsewhere even with just a Bond Ring).
3. He can ORKO the Ch6 Thieves with an unforged Javelin, which once again ignore Louis. This Chapter is mostly a Marth!Chloe buffet though so Alfred’s contributions are less important.
After this point Alfred will easily have the Bond levels to inherit skills from Sigurd (or the player has the Bond Fragments to spare the Arena level, anyway) and he can use Marth and/or Celica during the Paralogues or Brodia arc to build up the SP needed for Canter, and possibly Favorite Food if you want to do funny Bonded Shield stuff with him later.
@@cartooncritic7045 I’ll check zorans video out. Alfred is definitely not someone I’d recommend babying in the early game tho and giving special treatment if here’s just too many good units later in that I mainly focus on framme, Celine , Chloe and alear in the early game
More videos like this would be great! Talking to someone with a deep knowledge of a specific game to defend something that a lot of people overlook is such an interesting concept!
Off the top of my head one thing that comes to mind is Fates generics, whether that be captured generics, einharjars, or capture bosses.
Been using Alfred in a maddening-classic draft run and he's honestly impressed me with how tanky he can be, despite his mobility. He doesn't oneround things on player phase necessarily, but he's basically become a highly mobile damage sponge, with Golden Lotus reducing the upkeep it takes to keep him online (i.e., not having to pull him back because a physic staff is enough to keep him at safe HP.) His dexterity also means he doesn't really have as many hitrate issues as a lot of other tanks (like hoo boy, late game Louis, Jade, and Madeline just cannot hit faster enemies whatsoever) which is really nice to have for him.
Also, Quick Repost Ridersbane to eat horses is fun, carried me through the first half of chapter 19.
I had to delete my last comment, because it must be said, Alfred is BAD!
Or not bad, just very very mid. And outclassed, VERY outclassed.
So the one chapter that I assumed that Alfred outdid Louis in was chapter 5 due to momentum but what does Alfred even achieve with Momentum? Well he can override the hallway, then what? He dies. Yeah remember the Zoran lp mentioned here? Zoran didn't even solo the left room, because Alfred cannot do that. He actually soloed it with Celine.
How about Louis taking no damage? Enemies won't attack you if they do no damage, right? Right, but Chain attacks are damage, and enemies can detect them. If an axe fighter attacks Louis, (which they will, they're strong enough to detect damage on them) then the swordfighter will detect damage, and thus attack Louis. Who by the way, easily solos the left side, he’s bulky enough, he counters and kills on the enemies he overrode because of break immunity, and he survives because of his higher bulk.
Later on, Louis falls off right? Wrong. Louis falls off if you try to make him do exactly what he does earlygame, yes, but so does alfred. Yet here so many alternatives are discussed its even proposed you make him a healer. Louis can reclass to Halberdier, (which he is the clear superior candidate for) and utilise both his high strength and high bulk to become a player phase killer, who can equip Eirika to one most enemies with a brave lance. This build is pretty easy to use, and makes good use of an earlygame carry who would otherwise fall off.
For Alfred, the best you get is a bonded Shield spammer. Let's talk about why this niche is not Alfred’s and shouldn't even be counted as his contribution. Anyone can bonded shield, just like anyone can grind exp with Micaiah, or anyone can use Tiki. But the better candidates are units who won't be targeted. Being a cav, Alfred can only support other cavs with 100% consistency. Merrin and Zelkov are better at this, as they can use their personals to reach a similar effect, and poison strike with Dual Assist. But if you're using it on a flier, which you absolutely should, Wyvern Alear is the best user, because her high support pool means she can utilise dual support+ to reach 0% enemy hit and therefore become untargetable.
So all of this is to say that while you can do all of this for Alfred, you could do the same for any unit you’d realistically be putting in C or even D. (Mind you Alfreds not D he’s more low C)
Alfred forces you to give more, plan more, and think more, all for less. And by anyone’s standards this should not be a good thing, ever.
The biggest problem for Alfred is that Chloé is breathing down his neck for all his resources.
Chloe doesn't conflict with Alfred over any resources besides *maybe* the first Master Seal, but that's irrelevant if you do Anna's Paralogue as soon as it unlocks.
@@cartooncritic7045 Well they're both competing for an Emblem.
@@nachohangover5104 The maps where Alfred performs best with the Emblems that Chloe wants the most are the map where she can't equip Emblems (Chapter 4) and the maps where he can use the ones she isn't (Chapters 6, 7, and 8). If they're actually competing for anything it's the extra Skill Books from the Well to get a second Ability once they both get Canter, which is the only area where Alfred completely loses to Chloe because she's just better.
Being worse than the best unit in the game isn't something to bash someone over
@@quijassajiuq900 More accurately: “Being worse than the best unit for a solid 1/3 of the game doesn’t mean you’re useless or not worth investment.” Chloe is such a goddess that she can afford to to basically sit out Ch4 and 5 and still promote on Ch8 thanks to Marth. That means you can do basically whatever you want with the rest of the army until that point, and Alfred compares pretty well during this time.
I find Alfred to be pretty similar to Echoes Clive:
-Earliest joining cavalier
-Not very hard to promote
-Low-ish speed, but not as slow as people make it out to be
-Probably the best Ridersbane user in the early/early-to-midgame
-Other cavs might be better in combat, but why not use multiple of them?
So I approached him with that mentality. He’s actually a pretty bulky Great Knight that can dish back decent damage, so I think he’s a solid Not Bad/10
I mean the difference is that Clive doubles what he needs to, Alfred just doesn't double at all (and can find himself often getting doubled). Granted I agree he's not unuseable, he does feel outclassed though.
Except Clive had free deployment for almost the whole game. Alfred doesn't.
@@twigz3214 If memory serves Clive needs some speed fountains to do that. He is not doubling what he needs to without it so he really isn't doing his job without investament
Anyway Alfred and Clive are different units to begin with as Clive is carried by class bases but has s*** growths while Alfred has good growths but s*** personal bases
This is an issue since unless you have dlc it is hard to raise that many units in time to be useful in the mid game out of your early game choices and despite popular belief, most of the early game units have some kind if value for long term use.
Alfred ends up solid once he gets out of the pit of his terrible bases but just about every unit ends up at least solid if invested in which makes Alfred harder to justify using.
I ran Alfred as an AVO tank thief and he did great the whole run. I feel thief's weird stat growths suited him well.
Alfred is one of my favourite characters in Engage, and that unfortunately doesn't have anything to do with him as a unit.
I'll agree to disagree with most of this video, because on both Maddening and Hard, he just doesn't do a damn thing early on except poke with the Javelin and maybe rush a Sword Fighter with low HP that threatens to KO someone close by.
There's no reason to funnel any early resources into him as every other character is better suited to any role he could do.
I stopped watching when they said Alfred is better than Louis because that is nowhere close to being true.
Even in the chapter in Firene Castle, you don't even need to Override the hallway before the Theif makes it across; you have several turns before he gets to the chests and loots them.
I used Alear with Sigurd and Clanne with Celica to overwhelm the Armour Knight with Override and Warp Ragnarok. Clanne, beside Alear, took down the Archer and Alear with Clanne during playerphase can KO the remaining Axe Fighter and Sword Fighter and catch up before the Theif even gets the second chest.
Louis is also the better option for the Override strat because his higher defense allow him not to die to 3 hits from the Archer, A Fighter, and S Fighter. He also doesn't get broken by the A Fighter and can do damage to the Archer with a Javelin.
I've been using Alfred on the maddening run I've been chipping away at. I feel like at worst he wants an emblem to be able to fully contribute, but that can be said about a lot of characters. And in a game about using emblems, that's hardly a death sentence.
On my Hard run, I gave him Sigurd, a Byleth Engraved Brave Lance, Resolve, and Lance Power. He started absolutely wrecking face and shredding boss HP bars. He was my anti Wolf Knight and Swordmaster unit since he'd 2 tap them with the Brave Lance, and no one else could double them. He would get so much defense after resolve that enemies would do minimal damage to him as well. He was usually off doing his own thing before zooming in with Momentum+ and deleting something
I'm using Alfred in my first Maddening playthrough and he's been great throughout. Reclassed him to Wolf Knight to patch up his Speed, slapped Lucina on him and man he's so much fun :D
I’ve been a day 1 Alfred supporter (so this is with the context of fixed maddening with day 1 dlc and heroes weapons) and the only thing I haven’t really done was give Alfred Sigurd. I personally like giving him Marth since it allows him to heavily sword fighters with Break Defenses, and while engaged let’s him one round them (with a strong enough weapon equipped).
He was the first unit that I promoted and it allowed him to reach one rounding thresholds without needing to be engaged. Speedtaker is definitely a quintessential “give me to everyone” skill, and of course, Alfred likes to have it to double the slow units and stop getting doubled by fast units.
he's usefull to break ennemies in the early game but later on idk why use him as bound shield user when framme exist
she can dodgetank relliably + recharge lucina way faster
Alfred can keep up with other Cavalry units like Mage and Wolf Knights with 100% activation rate whereas you’ll have to hold them back when using Framme.
I consider Alear a better Emblem recharger than Framme; Arts work better with their promotion than Framme in her base and their level 5 skill makes recharging them even easier.
Dodge tanking requires stacking avoid and luck to favor you (not exactly a reliable or repeatable tactic); most enemies on Maddening will ignore your units if they read no damage or no Hit. A common practice in these games is assuming every attack going out and coming in are going to hit (even the shaky 33% hit).
@@NoCryinRyan i pref frame cuz she can stack dodges with personal sk and have support with units that i like using in the formation such as alear anna or cloé she wont be attacked back this way plus i find that when fighting very fast units such as w kn the aoe healing can be usefull
but i ye i agree that alear would be an objectively better emblem user most of the time
ps i m only playing on madening
Alfred was on the bench on my first play through but when I found about his ending I knew I had to give him a shot in my next play through. Well, after giving him a decent amount of favouritism (2 speed wings and tiki growth skill) he’s among the best units I have. He’s gotten to a point where he’s getting ignored because of his insane defense, so I guess he’s suffering from success. He’s not a good unit by any means, I spent a lot of time babying him and giving stat boosters, but he’s doing good in maddening.
starsphere will do that to anyone after long enough, not to mention the speedwings
@@jerry3115 yeah I get that. Main thing I was trying to convey was that Alfred isn’t so bad that he can’t catch up with investment. Modern fe games have no truly unusable units, so the criticism I see of Alfred seems a lil too much with people saying that he was so bad that he couldn’t do anything which isn’t really true. Alfred with investment is probably one of the best tanks in the game, with his personal class and high move. His low build is also good with emblems like Hector. He’s not Seth or anything, but Alfred is perfectly fine imo.
@@victorzheng8042 Any resources and investment can also be given to units which use it better...
On my first run (Hard), I didn't really use him. I got confused about how Proficiency worked, got Lance Prf on Boucheron, then when I finally figured it out I just said "Screw it" and made him a Wyvern to justify it. By the time I lost Sigurd (which I did have advance warning of), my roster had three mainstay Fliers (Boucheron, Chloe, and then Ivy) plus Citrinne and a Bow Knight Etie with Canter. I did actually unbench him in the late-game because I was grinding an Anna anyway for a meme build, but no amount of grinding was catching him up to my team at that point, which included DracoHex Celica Ivy, a Louis with multiple Talismans, Res+4, and Ike with Urvan, and said meme Anna that actually worked so well I'm using her in Maddening too.
Speaking of Maddening, Alfred is a permanent slot on my maddening team. Used some early books to give him Canter and Lance Power 2, handed him a Sigurd-engraved Javelin+3, and he makes an effective softening unit even into the midgame. He's usually been holding a Caeda bond ring for Sympathetic, but rn I'm trying him out with Ike on some Paralogues.
I’ve been using Alfred in my new maddening run and I feel like he functions just as well as everyone else, definitely enjoyed the earlier momentum from Sigurd. I plan to use him in his base class for a bit until seals become less scarce and turn him into a Wolf Canter hobbler, low build but decent str/spd growth seems to fit this role well. Maybe give him a forged riderbane to also kill cavalry? Not 100% sure about those thresholds though.
I find that even on normal he just takes a lot of work. Its not just an initial fat investment, its constant care and favoritism thats required to keep him up to par. Not to excel, but just to be as strong as everyone else. Damn near every unit you get in the second half comes in as a fully functional powerhouse right out of the box. He's a unit that can be made to work, after all you can make Anna work too, but that's all he'll ever be.
His only crime is falling off as soon as you give Sigurd to someone else or lose Sigurd. He's not bad at all, yet very much like Clanne he's still very usable and can keep up with enough investment.
Clanne > Alfred
@@alexpowell1184 Well, given the caveat of "neglecting to train Clanne until you can reclass him to a physical class and then power-levelling with Great Sacrifice" then I can see how Clanne might seem better. That still raises the question of what Alfred is doing in the meantime, and it turns out he can do quite a lot.
@@cartooncritic7045 Clanne > Alfred no matter what you do with them
@@alexpowell1184 Yawn…
@@cartooncritic7045 Ok
Alfred has the base stats of a level one character while being level five, I figured this out by comparing others characters bases with him which makes him have a minus two in nearly all stats at the start. Add onto the fact that his base class is actually really good stat wise and that makes him seem like a normal level five character when he truly not.
Alfred having a really good base class is another really bad thing for him because when he class change into something better it barely boots his overall stats which makes it even harder for him to catch up with the average stats of the other characters when they also class change.
Alfred is four levels behind most characters, while one of the best character kagetsu is around four levels ahead of most characters which was interesting to learn.
True be told, Alfred growths are actually really good but his bases are so low it takes him 20 levels to play catch up with most other characters and twenty more to surpass them and the game is usually over by that point.
I usually like to use use general to stat fix his strength, def and build for about ten levels to twenty and then switch to his main class or something with speed and strength
Imo there is a huge gap in Alfred's viability between dlc and no dlc
I've used him in both cases. Without dlc, training Alfred is a pain as even with the steel lance, he does little damage and can't survive enemy phase. Probably bottom 5 unit
But with Dlc, with the bonus energy drop and a forged Fensalir/Silver Lance, he's amazing. Slap Sigurd on him and watch him one shot stuff with momentum. Really surprised of how good Alfred turned out with just a few extra resources.
I get where this is coming from but in a game where anyone can be fixed or salvaged why would you use alfred unless you like him? Pure face Tanking isn’t good past 11, because you get bonded shield and can abuse that with high offense units for the rest of the game and you def don’t want to be doubled/ really want to be the one doubling in a lucina ball which is the best form of “tanking” since spd is an issue since he’s no Kagetsu, merrin, Chloe, and or lapis for that let’s talk strength,
he has good str once it gets rolling but he’s out performed in the str nut role (crit/one shot type units) by Panette, Amber, Louis, and even etie (tho her start is also god awful but if you can suffer through Alfred’s bad start you can suffer through hers too) since the only stat they really care about is str.
He obviously can’t do magic so let’s skip that. Support? Well anyone can do that and he doesn’t do it better then anyone else.
Even if you did want someone for pure tanking that isn’t lucina ball and some baiting Louis and even more so goldmary out perform him and it’s not really a job where you want more then 1 person doing it if you choose to have a regular tank on the team.
It’s not just that he’s outclassed as a cav and or lance unit. He’s outclassed everywhere. And he’s gonna get dropped once you start really gaining those brodia units. If he somehow makes it past brodia and ch 11 he’s def off the team once those early solm deployment slots show up. There are just so many better units then alfred. And getting doubled by ch 5 cavs when using the raidersbane is awful. He has to fight only 1 of them because he will die to 2. He’s one technically one of the best ways of dealing with them but he’s not very accurate with it and he dies to them pretty fast if your not careful.
He’s mid/ bad in everything when compared to others so he does nothing truly well
Like I said he’s not unusable but everyone is useable so that doesn’t make him special or better then most people. I will be nice to him and say I don’t think he’s a bottom 3 unit those Anna and Jean are both more annoying then him and timerra is an actual liability on her join map outside of destroying crates and she just never sees the light of day after that map while alfred has maps of essentially being a forced deploy and that takes him above all of those units for me
Edit: Also you don’t need a bulky bonded shield user, alear is the best bonded shield user. Give them a micaiah engraved weapon and with dual support they won’t get attacked, don’t go for bulky bonded shield user, just go for unhittable which alear will become with micaiah engraved weapon plus dual support. Alfred has meh support options so he isn’t even getting that much out of it. Girffin alear is best alear so that helps flier balls and is natural, but you can also do mage knight alear(royal knight is also an option if you want to have the staff utility instead of the chain attack), micaiah engrave a thunder tome and then they are chain attacking from 3 range so they can help our Allie’s next to them attacking at 2 range. You want unhittable that way they don’t get attacked and more enemies go into the meat grinder. And alear gives a damage bonus for his teammates which helps them hit great thresholds
Timerra outside of her join chapter is fine. With Ike she’s just a faster tank. She may get hit harder than tanks but the doesn’t get doubled and she doesn’t get one shot by mages. She’s like slightly better Goldmary.
“Pure face Tanking isn’t good past 11, because you get bonded shield and ca-“
You didn’t even watch the fucking video.
Eh Jean can staffbot and chain guard at base, he's a serviceable filler unit.
@@goroadachi9489 I don’t see her like a better goldmary when it comes to face tanking, don’t get me wrong I don’t think face tanking is that good in this game but when it comes to that goldmary is def the best when it comes to face tanking, wyvern goldmary has better defenses then picket timerra with more def and res and hp and has the spd to avoid key doubles with a spd meal/tonic, now pure face tanking aside yeah timerra has sandstorm for better occasional better offense and more spd but I just don’t think she’s worth using (I don’t think goldmary is either but she’s def a fantastic face tank) after ch 13 she never sees the light of day because getting her 5 levels with her awful str is not fun. And they’re are just better units to deploy, I would rather bring bunet as a 6 move repo bit then her to the maps after 13. Because she never really sees deployment since it takes to long for her to even get her questionable gimmick going.
I just don’t see a reason to deploy her when she’s surrounded by better units. At least alfred always has some use in early game since they’re isn’t a point in benching him until you get more units to replace him. And she’s also not really deserving of ike when someone like Kagetsu, panette, merrin are right there
@@nachohangover5104 like I said for to other commenter I just don’t see a time where he gets used, well kinda screwed him over in the sense that you want to wait until after you get the well unlocked so you can get an extra well use out of his map. And you want to do the Anna map before him so you get a master seal for a promoted unit. He just doesn’t have much time to be used compared to alfred since you kinda want all hands on deck for awhile before the better units show up: jean being a martial monk is nice for that chain and healing tho if you grab him earlier but I just don’t think it’s worth.
Im on my second maddening run, with the rule of not reusing any units across the two runs
Alfred has been benched in both 😅
The chapter he joined in i had to reset several times not only because he was getting double, but because he was getting crit and dying constantly. I hoped he would get better with level ups and the exp in this game is so stingy (atleast on maddening, can't speak to other difs) that i couldn't justify using him past chapter 5 or 6. I think he's at level 6 or 7 in the backrow right now.
The guy was the Tiki holder from DLC unlock all the way to chapter 16. Then the moment I try and convert him to Lucina he instantly starts getting bodied. In Hard or lower he can probably work, but if he can't be useful with the bonus growths Tiki gives after existing the whole game, he's trash. Do I need to feed him the stat items and a +5 weapon and spend bond reserves to give him high tier Emblem skills so that he can occasionally be a slightly more consistent Lucina bot than even Diamant? Meanwhile Diamant was given Hector and one skill from Ike and he'll carry, with no other coddling from me at all.
I love how his unique ability is a pavise based on dex % but both his def and dex are trash and he ends up dealing one digit damage and getting doubled anyway.
No hate but what is up with Sceptistar's mic like jesus. Is that a voice changer or just the worst mic ever?
If you're gonna do a long-form video I feel like having nice audio should be near the top of your priorities
Definitely a voice modifier, sounds almost exactly like the one used by the host of Extra Credits. I've always found it very annoying.
Sometimes a bad mic is just a bad mic lol
@@foolsgold5588 Could be worse. At least it's not Fred
Beautiful video, this along with Zoran’s play-through and my own testing elevated Alfred’s ranking from trash tier in my initial impressions to decent. Sure his damage will fall off eventually, but the fact that he’s the best Sigurd user for chapter 4, 5, and probably 6 too has got to count for something.
My Alfred has been going really strong on my (still ongoing. Currently Chapter 25, btw) Maddening first playthrough, and all I had to give him was like 2 Speedwings.
Ive formed the habbit of giving the micaiah ring to alfred and using him as a beefed up troubador to grind levels out of his base class
I really like this video, I got pumped to try out the Alfred-Bond Shield Build and hearing how he compares to the rest of the cast 👍
Alfred is pretty fun unit in
My first play through of engage (maddening) I did give him the Ike ring and QR 4 and he did pretty well and was fun and outperformed my Louis pretty quickly but my Louis got like 0 def growths so my Alfred was just better Louis for me and with more move
I would describe alfred as moderate louis. He has high str/def and low spd but not to the extent of louis. I think people expect his class to be like a paladin when it's more like a great knight.
I know tiki makes everyone busted, but Tiki Alfred was amazing for the entirety of my first maddening run. Awesome wall with mobility and fire breath to help with choke points. Easily one of my top 4 units on my team by the end when they vomit units at you
In my current maddening run Alfred been one of my best units. In the early game I gave him a draco shield and Sigurd which put him in the goldilocks zone for tanking. He gets hit for 1-3 and does decent enough damage that he makes a good enemy phase character if you give him Lance power he does really good damage as an enemy phase tank. Once Sigurd goes away I second sealed him into halberdier and gave him Hector. And finally I gave him Lunar Brace. For weapons he's rocking a Brave Lance, a Ridersbane, and a spear which with his low build means he gets good value out of heavy attack.
So I'd say Alfred is great. He fills a unique role in the early game and in the mid - late game he can be a heavy damage dealer.
Not very far into the video but my experience on this second playthrough where I'm actually using him is Well access gives him a really freaking strong lance, he gets doubled by some things but it doesn't matter most of the time, his Def is pretty good and Golden Lotus triggers just about often enough to supplement his good-but-not-perfect Def as an Avenir. Keep in mind this is on Normal tho.
In my first run Alfred absolutely carried, idk y but he was just my best unit, he had sigurd when he was available but I also gave him tikis healing ability at the highest degree and I cant remember what else but he just swept for me
I guess it goes to show how much favoritism goes into discussion about unit viability. You can’t convince me that Alfred is good when he starts taking more and more damage-while still being doubled by chapter 7.
The more you have to invest and baby a unit the worse they actually are, just use Kagetsu
Just wanted to mention that I got a good first impression of Alfred during my blind Maddening Mode run lol. But I may just be biased towards Cavs.
For me Alfred (or any other enemy phase unit) pretty much will shine with the Hector Ring. Its a zero-to-hero moment. Like I know its kinda taboo to bring up DLC stuff but at the end of the day I'm not going to pretend they don't exist lol. It's like saying you can't ever count the four winds as characters to do studies on all because they're DLC locked. So with that out of the way.....Alfred really can be a beast. Like I leveled him up to like 10 in his promoted form, then switched over to Great Knight to really bump up his defenses (had him there to level 20, then switched him back to his regular promoted class for his prf skill). All with Hector Ring on.....HE STRAIGHT UP barely dies (which either killing physical units with Armads or just living in a mass orgy of enemies with Rune Sword). I even gave him Corrin's one skill that negated back-up attacks (to nullify chip damage).
Though I think this is moreso a statement at how cracked Hector's ring can be, but considering we don't really have an enemy phase main ring, its worth to note Hector.
Alfred performs great as a paladin which fixes his speed and dex issues even on fixed mode, he's not the hardest hitter but he does really well and even with just a +1 fensalir he can wreck shop
The way Alfred is discussed in this video is contingent on moderately paced play. You're probably losing a couple of turns on C4 if you give him Sigurd instead of Clanne/Vander. Taking the hallway in C5 is a huge detour that's simply not worth it. There are few occasions to feed Mercurius kills when you're playing fast, and those occasions are barely enough to get Alear and Chloe ready for C10. What Alfred can do with Bonded Shield, most units can do nearly as well and some with added utility (Merrin/Alear). It's simply not worth it to train Alfred to level 10 to run a job nearly any unit can do. A lot of the discussion seems inspired by Zoran's run; a meticulously planned playthrough that honestly puts effort comparable to an LTC towards EXP optimisation. If you play super optimally in terms of farming EXP, but not going so far as to abuse mechanics to do so, Alfred can be salvaged to the B tier. What?
Mid to late game you can also convert Lucina into a bit of a DPS emblem with the DLC crystals. You can add +4 might to the Noble Rapier with just one upgrade to counter enemy Wolf Knights and Paladins. The Parthia also makes him a decent bow user coupled with his high strength and gives a lot of experience for each kill. On either of these you can stack a speed crystal to help Alfred double and Lucina already gives a speed bonus. Granted this could work on anyone, but it's good to note that the Lucina user doesn't have to be just a Bonded Shield bot.
I liked this format and would love to hear about the propaganda that units like Framme, Clanne, and Tamara are bad, or that units like Céline and Jean are great.
I've heard most people think Timerra is good though
My Alfred had so much def, he was basically a high mobility tank
Do you think royal knight Alfred would be viable? Running him as a bulky support may be worthwhile, but I don’t know if his magic growth would work?
Scepti is a good foil to you in this video but...man oh man is her audio quality distracting from what she is saying.
I'm really intrigued by the concept of giving him a defense tonic to make him a tank that doesn't take 0. Definitely going to try that next time.
My endgame squad did have 3 cavs that did nothing but abuse emblem abilities, I guess Alfred can fulfill that role too.
I wasn't a big fan of a lot of the early game units, and Alfred was consistently lackluster. I played on hard, and while he wasn't the worst unit in my army, I found him not worth a slot by the time I got to Brodia. He was weak, slow, and not particularly bulky. Just overall a meh unit by the time I benched him. Helpful early on when there's very few playable units, but otherwise...meh. I never even got him to level 10. I don't think he ever got a good level up so I wasn't motivated to keep him in.
I made him put on an apron and be my enchanter boy. He's pretty good at that role.
(hard/classic) i stayed away from the internet when i started the game so i did not see all the alfred hate - he has been one of my best units for the entire game (first with sigurd, now eirika). him and timerra have been my MVPs so I was surprised to see all the haters!!!
I bought into the hype of Alfred being terrible because he got horribly strength screwed on my first hard playthrough (10 str at level 11!!!) and I assumed his growths were just atrocious. Imagine my surprise when I checked serenesforest and saw his personal 40% str growth
Finally Vindication
I will have to try it on a second maddening run. It felt like alfred the middle of the road between louie and jagen (forgot his name)
I haven't finished the video but my experience with Alfred was that he just eventually got outclassed. I've been taking my sweet time in a blind maddening run and while there was nothing wrong with Alfred at the start, and he has decent growths on stats that matter like speed, strength and luck to help him with crit, he just didn't really excel and I ended up benching him by the time i got past Brodia and could incorperate Anna and Jean into my team full (He did interestingly crit quite a bit due to his good dex and luck, nearing near 40% with a base killer lance). Had I been better about my planning however I'm fairly sure I would have found a good use for him.
As a unit i might try using him more later in another playthrough but I don't believe his best class is his unique one at all. It feels too weak for his general problems. It doesn't help his build. It doesn't really solve his build or speed problems all that well. One consideration i had for a future run is to run Alfred as an armored unit: Run his base class to 10 and immediately second seal him after his promotion into a General to help his build and strength issues while making him decently bulked up. After 10 levels you can second seal him yet again into his final class of Great Knight, giving him even more defense with Allied Defense, or Paladin to give him more speed, res and some extra luck at the cost of some defense.
Leif sounds like a perfect pick for Alfred in general once he's made this transition to Great Knight, as with Vantage and Arms Shield++, Alfred will take basically nothing while engaged due to Lief's Adaptability, or he'll kill his enemy before they get a chance with his higher strength growth. Just have to keep him away from magic users.
Alfred might be one of those units that as he gets more focus to attempt to work, people will find him to be exceptional if set up properly, similar to how Framme was initially considered a poor unit, but her high supports and utility slowly crept her up to being basically an metagame unit.
i find that the biggest aspect about alfred that holds him back is that he's not beginner friendly. on maddening mode, if you don't already have a deeper understanding of the meta-game/fire emblem in general, then alfred will appear as being borderline unusable. when you go in already knowing the meta-game and knowing the niche that alfred falls into, it's easy to put the pieces together to bring him up to speed with other units. 99% of players don't know the exact damage range of sword fighters into alfred pre-chapter 9, or know alfred's growths, or how he uniquely compares to louis. they just see that louis takes 0 damage and alfred takes some damage, and they write him off as being inferior. in short, alfred makes a terrible first impression on anyone without advanced knowledge of the game, and that first impression is often all it takes for him to get benched for the entire game.
By chapter 9 Luis can promote and reclass and when they are in the same classes he is straight up superior because their 10/1 personal averages of Speed and Res are identical. What Alfred has over Luis is Lolavenir and 15% speed growth wich ironically mean GK is the only class where i feel Alfred can perform better.
See I used on first playthrough and he drove me mad he wasn’t terrible but he wasn’t as great as everyone else, but then on my third playthrough I made him a halberdier, slapped tiki on him and he was actually pretty good, took him a while but he got there he was an actual useable party member. I don’t think he’s a bad unit but takes a lot time, babying, and a decent emblem to make him good
I think Alfred's peak "first impressions are everything." which explains why Louis filled his role in early community play. There's lots of early axemen which can break him if you're foolish which feels bad, while Louis shrugged it off.
But, utility is important, and Louis' inflexibility showcases how useful it is compared against Alfred, and how you can have too much of a good thing (defense) when you just want Goldilocks, which he is!
Louis' Def is incredibly funny because if you do the thing a lot of people do and give him Sigurd he gets ignored by 2/3 enemies in Ch5. Even just Sigurd bond level 2+ and his first level up, which gives him another point of Def on fixed, are enough to make him take 0 from pretty much every non-armor/boss/axe/magic user (either uncommon enemies or ones that absolutely murder him) until ch9/10 on maddening, which kind of makes the whole "charge armor knight into frontlines and watch them tank stuff" he can do with Sigurd pointless since there isn't much tanking to be done if enemies don't acknowledge your existence lmao. Louis? More like Kellam ha gottem
Im working toward Enchanter Alfred. No idea how he'll do in the roll but woth that outift he fits the butler image. Obviously butler Alfred is required.
Alfred was really kinda meh for me. I liked that he was one of the few characters whose supports *didn’t* end up revolving around “muh food”, but I used him for the whole game, expecting this to be one of those FEs where Lords are good given how much they were pushed, but his combat performance was consistently just okay. If I ever play the game (and that’s a fairly big “if” considering how obnoxious I found a lot of the later maps and their insufferable reinforcement spams) I’ll probably reclass him to be an armour knight, because that feels like it’d have been a better class for him.
I actually used Alfred Lucina Bonded Shield in my first run on hard lol
I don't remember Alfred being doubled, but when I played on Maddening, his damage output was OK, and dropped off steeply as I kept going each chapter. Whenever I needed that one-hit wonder unit, it was never Alfred. TBF, it was never mounted units in general, but that was especially true for him.