I feel that one of the biggest nerfs to cavs was the loss of rescue drop. This was something Cavaliers would often do if their talents stat wise were not required. That combined with only +1 mov over foot units and generally pretty bad engage bonuses baring Sigurd
It would be cool if Cavs could rescue but flyers could not, as a tradeoff for flight being a better overall movement type, since I personally don't think Boe weakness is enough to even come close to making them even.
I miss horse emblem but we had it too good for too long. I think they are in a decent spot in Engage, it's just hard for a lot of classes to compete with fliers and warrior. Agree with your thoughts on Vander as well. I think he may actually be the most underrated unit in the game with how many people call him useless.
I honestly think it's healthy for fire emblem in the long term for different classes to be the "best class" in each game, because it makes the series feel more distinct. I kind of like that paladins suck and while I hope they eventually end up on top for at least some game in the future (like fe4 remake) I'm perfectly fine with "paladin good" not being the status quo
I like Vander in this game. A "traditional" Jagen is honestly a perfect fit for this game, considering how cutthroat the deployment slots are. Having a unit that is clearly meant to fall off makes it easier to bring him along for the Firene/Brodia arcs, have him help whittle down the cew units you plan on using long-term, and then retire him without feeling like youre letting a potentially good unit go. One cool thing about Vander is that he's the only unit who can use the Revanche once you get it, which gives him a little bit more use on chapters 7, 8, and the paralogues as having an A rank Killer Axe is pretty nice. Once you get past Chapter 8, you should have a few Master Seals and can either promote Diamant and just pass the axe over to him, or just save the Axe for someone else. Alfred, from my experience is just a big case of opportunity cost. Which is weird since he's one of the first units you get. If you have the FEH DLC, you can give him Fensalir and it won't even weigh him down after a few merges...but the same applies to Chloé who can use the weapon even better thanks to having a speed stat. The same applies to Steel/Silver Lance; you could just double down on Alfred being slow and commit to big damage tanking, but Louis is right there and has much better unit feel and shows more consistent results. Like you said, if Alfred was a swordie, he could've stood out more and not be weighed down by everything outside of Slims. The fact that he gets Swords on promotion is just depressing, since you gotta get him to Lv10 and use one of your early seals (which has a LOT) of competition, just to get the guy to where he should've been from the start. Being Alfred is suffering.
I think the other big benefit of wolf knight Lucina is that they do the 100% bonded shield with the best mounted class: mage knight. Which is arguably the best caster class as well. I think it's fine if Merrin or any other wolf knight falls off in damage, if she can just spam bonded shield and gain enough avoid to stay safe. And also be able to snipe the odd flyer with Parthia.
I never really used Merrin as a delete button. I use her as a boss debuffer. I gave her Draconic Hex and equipped her with Lucina. Have her attack the boss, give them a stack of Poison and lower their stats, and then her Dual Attacks will allow her to get the other poison stacks while your other units tear through the boss health. She is actually why I am able to consistently one round bosses from full health, even when there are multiple bosses.
I noticed the edge Vander gets with Sigurd over Louis is he gets access to the emblem one chapter earlier, which means he can start chapter 5 (the one that matters) with Momentum and deal more damage than Louis, who will spend a number of turns until getting Momentum. Also I wish they'd given him a Silver Axe but alas, I guess that doesn't translate well to infinite durability EDIT: Hell, I say we should go full overhaul and make Silver weapons the only weapon with durability while making them stronger.
I used Wolf Knight Amber but I wasn’t planning on it from the start, so I had to wait to reclass him from Paladin after Leif came back… not the worst thing ever, but I think his speed and resistance could’ve been better with those extra levels Lyn was a great fit for him, I think Canter and Speedtaker are good choices on him if you wanna give Lyn to someone else. He’d still do work with Eirika or even Camilla since she increases his movement when Engaged by a lot, plus she gives bonuses to Speed and Resistance: his worst stats. I inherited Speed/Res+4 from Camilla, but I think if I was planning on giving Lyn to someone else, I would inherit Speedtaker instead Also, my Alfred was good on hard mode, but I see that things like his low build really prevent him from shining on Maddening. Tbh His whole squad is kinda screwed! Poor Etie has a terrible ability, Boucheron has 20% strength growth, and Alfred has been benched by soooo many players!
Louise as a great knight with some talismans dumped into him makes a great moveable wall. Honestly I've used him full game till the end both times. And he does leagues better as a great knight
All I have to say about Amber is his biggest problem is Panette exists. He's around sooner and genuinely does incredible early combat with a swap to Warrior, though, early Vantage from Leif/Using Leif's Adaptability with a bow/Leif engraved Greataxe in warrior and he genuinely pops a lot of enemies early and through the game. He doesn't transition into crit as well, meaning when phys damage falls off(23 and onward imo), so too does he, but that's still a lot of the game he's a top dollar combat unit.
Pannette fills the warrior crit build better, but I think throughout a lot of the game there's merit to having 2-3 strong units on your team. Ch22 in particular since its a route map, though having multiple strong combat units is useful throughout the mid and end game. While physical damage definitely falls off after chapter 22, I think he can still contribute to a degree even then.
Great video. Merrin pwns as a Wyvern night. It shores up her strength and makes her a great hit n run. She can either be kept there or moved back to wolf for the end game.
So my play through I used Marrin and the weird thing that happened was that she barely gained strength (ended the game with about 20) but by god did she get magic (ending at like 28) so I just ran around with a forged levin sword and sword power 4 from Roy and killed basically everything. Idk if that’s normal for her but it was probably for the best because she naturally doubled everything, was strong enough to kill mages and such with daggers, and now using her magic for the levin sword was able to kill walls like armor knights
finally another amber fan everyone hates him so much i finally dont feel insane i love using him he's so fun rn i'm doing my first maddening run and im only about half way in but i've promoted amber after his join map and then recalssed him into royal knight while prob not the best for him i find it fun staves mean he's always getting exp so he's always getting better and while reforge isnt the best class skill it is pretty nice in some situations and i find that if you give him a flame lance he can do some higher chip damage than he does with a jav also next point is just highly a me thing but i almost never any units who come with staves (i just dont like framme chole ivy i like pandreo but i always have a stronger mage by that point so i bench him) so while yeah just a me problem i like having a unit that can heal pre hortensia lol
At least as royal knight he gets to keep his horsey. It's funny that's part of hia gimmick but IMO his best class options dont have horses. TBH wolf knight should have let him ride an alpaca. If Rosado gets a ribbon wyvern, Amber deserves an alpaca mount.
@@DaniDoyle HOLY SHIT YOUR SO RIGHT THAT BE GREAT also yeah i agree on the horse part he prob destroys maps in wyvern tbh it's just that in my 2 previous hard mode runs the only time i even used a horse was first run mage knight clanne and second run wolf knight boucheron so this time i kinda wanted to use something more normal lol
I know this video is mainly about the individual units, not the class, but I came to the realization just now that I haven't been using any cavaliers in this game. I suppose wolf knight Merrin does fill a similar role, and I am using two bow knights in Etie and Fogado's unique class, but there is not a single typical paladin or great knight on my team. I suppose I've just found more utility in other classes. It's just interesting to me how different this game is that I'm not resorting to my usual FE strategy of making half my team full of cavaliers
Technically Wolf Knight promotes directly from Cavalier (an unpromoted Cav can go either paladin or wolf knight) but yeah, the extra point of move is nice but often not enough to make me value them over other classes.
I like Amber as a bow knight a lot. His personal is perfect for sniping high avoid flyers with the longbow, and you don’t have to do that much speed fixing to make it work. Speed growth is the same as the speedy classes like wolf knight and gryphon, and you can actually use his personal while he’s moving with the rest of the party. Then again, daggers are way too good.
I tried so hard to make Alfred work in my first hard run but he just kept dying and eventually on one of the DLCmaps I just didn't wanna waste the time crystal charges and left him "dead".
In my first playthrough in hard, amber got so many killer lance crits in his join map that he got MVP, even though I wasn't gonna use him, he got benched but that was pretty funny
I think the Alfred slander is overblown. Maybe everybody just robs his emblem ring and guts his kit but he hasn’t let me down yet, Solid bruiser character who towards the end of the game you’ll end up shocked how good he got
Okay but counterpoint, in this game anyone you invest heavily in the end game will end up as a decent unit. However the amount of investment Alfred needs is not worth the payoff in my opinion
@@DaniDoyle Idk if this applies to maddening, never tried it yet, but on my hard play through I barely invested in Alfred. I just used him as usual and got like a def+3 on him and he was great the entire time. One of my tankiest units. Ik maddening has fixed growths so that’s probably why people don’t like him but he was actually one of my best units with little investment.
@@RaccoonProductionsInc Yeah, not many in the fe community will see it as a "haha funny", mostly because this community had years of people flexing their blessed units as an actual reason why "X isn't bad"
One thing that affects a lot the early units is how bad Alear is, part 1 is basically "how to salvage Alear the game", making units like Chloe Clanne and Boucheron that are way better Marth users not able to shine because your more focus praying that Alear level up strength and speed, and even then Alear will most probably still not being very good in mid/end game He will most likely be in a support rol. So why not making Alear a support to begin with? ,Alear has natural art proficiency so They can access martial Master way more early than all the cast, you can give him micahiah and had another healer and be able to use their personal skill more and also not had to worry about Their level because Great sacrifice and then after chapter 11 promote to Martial master and enjoy your +3 damage 100% bonder guard bot and unhitable thanks to dual support This way is more easy to give invest to early units and snowball characters like Mage Knight Clanne, Wyrven knight Chloe or even things like Berserker boucheron, Mage khight Chloe (because vidame suck), or Hero Lapis.
@@yes1667 i mean yes, but honestly for me the unit feel of Offensive Alear in general is super boring, I prefer put my reasorces in other units early game than Alear, Also Martial Master Alear is probably the best Martial master in the game, the guy is actually pretty bulky and he is decently fast and also the best candidate for Lucina Bonder Shield strats.
I made my Alear a high priest, and he's great in that class, but I'll admit there are times I wish I kept him in his default class, because the Dragon class typing gives access to a lot of utility through Emblems, like Corrin's Dragon Veins
@@juicyjuustar121 Wile Divine Dragon effects are in emblems are interesting, other classes in general can use them better. for example Corrin with mysticals have access to the fire vein which is the best one to slow down enemies also Mysticals have access to 3 range weapons to better use of Dread full aura Byleth gives Mysticals access to thyrsus to nuke enemies far away and with fliers you have a way more mobile goddess dance compare to divine Dragon. And then there is Lucina Why would you want a unreliable 90% Bonder Guard when you can have a 100% with Qi adepts ? In general the affects of Dragon just arent worth it.
About alfred the "he get's high speed if you feed a lot of exp early game" argument is very flawed in my opnion since you can say that with any character for example a level 20 general would probably outspeed a level 1 myrmidon.
I didn't talk about Brunei because he's not part of the cavalier class line (since GK promotes from armor, instead of cav) but I think his only real niche would be 5 Cav Bonded Shield, since a lot of people he supports with do decent in mounted classes (Mage knight pandreo and Cupido Fogado)
I agree with almost everything said here. I like giving vander Sigurd just because he gets to places faster then Louis (used to be Chloe but I took the marth pill for her) Alfred is pretty awful, I would put him really low d tier, bad, not unfixable but everyone is. Amber is mad slept on though I gotta say I also don’t really like halb Amber that much, pincer is kinda annoying to set up. I like warrior the most just because he becomes slightly worse panette with hit personal instead of a crit personal so he uses the corrin engrave pretty well (which he’s not procing his personal on halb) but being a worse panette isn’t a bad thing. Merrin is probably my only disagreement, kinda. She does support and dodge tanking really well (just gotta be careful with your avoid) as a wolf but if you want to use her offensively you need to give her Roy or erikia to help patch up her fire power. As wolf that is. I know you said you haven’t tried it but I highly recommend reclassing merrin as she is pretty gross. She’s a great warrior due to her magic (one less base and 5% less personal magic growth then pandreo) so she uses radiant bow really well along with her str being only 2 base behind Kagetsu and 5% less personal growth then him. If you have dlc mage knight is really fun (only recommend for dlc because you don’t need to wait so long for magic prof). And the holy grail being wyvern. She’s worse then Kagetsu in this role (at level 20 wyvern Kagetsu has 3 str and def over her but that’s fine tbh because Kagetsu is cracked and she’s close enough) but having a second one of him is really really gross. She loves Roy again her due to him making her really bulky(her mixed bulk is quite good for a wyvern) even stronger, good 1- 2 range. And a plus 5 spd inherit makes her really powerful. She really doesn’t need that much because if you feel like giving Roy to Kagetsu or someone else then she can take leif too. She likes the bulk. It gives her the build to not be destroyed by master lance and tomahawk (at 15 she can use it without penalty) and use silver axe unhindered . And she likes light brand too since she has existent magic even as a wyvern. Either way merrin can rip things up. Honestly she has the most class flexibility in the game due to her high bases and well rounded growths with great spd. She can do whatever you want and find a way to slot onto a team
I haven't tried that yet, might have to check it out, although I'll be honest I'm not a huge fan of thieves outside of the early game, i just don't think the class bases hold up.
@@DaniDoyle I suppose. But you also lose out on the terrain bonus provided by the forests. I don’t particularly like flyers outside of Chloé and Rosado because of that.
I agree that Vander is a bit underrated, although he probably still is the worst Jagen to date. You could've gone into reclassing options a little bit more though. He has some useful ones considering he'll be the only promoted unit for a bit. I still don't get the Gunther hate though. He is quite definitely the best pair up for Corrin (female Corrin especially), and a great pair up that you don't want on the field at that. Definitely worth deploying in every chapter.
The reason I didn't talk about Vander's reclassing options is you cannot get any second seals until after chapter 8, where 3 are avaiable for sale. At this point, you have access to three master seals (2 drops, 1 from shop) so you will have 3 other promoted units if you want to reclass someone. I think spending a second seal on Vander at this time is a waste of money (and your limited seals) on a unit who doesn't benefit from it much, and who honestly shouldn't be fielded at all at this point in the game unless its for Memes. As for Gunter, if the best trait about a unit is their potential as a pair up bot, they are a bad Jagen. Rinkah is also a good pair up bot, but I don't think that makes her a good unit.
@@DaniDoyle I don't have too much experience with Engage, but I felt like early promotion wouldn't be a great idea because exp gain is already so low and the game is pretty long. I promoted most of my units around chapter 12-15 or so. But I will admit that I haven't tried early promoting personally, so it might be good, although Vander is still one of 3 units with access to promoted classes in that case. I don't think you should bench him already in chapter 8 though, you really don't have that many units that are worth using over him (especially with a second seal) I don't get how that makes Gunther bad. He is the best pair up for the best unit, and even though you get tons of units in Rev, most of them aren't that good. So he's optimal deployment for almost every map in the game and will help you out until the end, which is more than what Vander provides. Or other mediocre Jagens for that matter, like fe5 Eyvel or fe12 Arran. Not to mention he's basically essential for chapters 2 and 3 and still pretty good for a couple of chapters after he rejoins.
Promoting doesn't affect your experience gain in engage, but increases your stats and growth rates, as well as putting only five levels away from your class scale if that's the skill you care about, so there's actually no reason not to early promote of you have the seal for it
I have a great strategy for consistently increasing merrin’s strength called getting lucky. I used this same tactic to get 13 strength alear at level 10.
On Amber, I would like to give my 2 cents on one of my favourite units and characters of Engage. Amber actually has decent growths in all Strength, Speed and Defense in his Cav to Paladdin class without ever reclassing him. His Strength is so good that you can really just focus on fixing his Speed. You can easily fix his Speed issues by giving him Speedtaker from Lyn and if you really favour him, plus one Speedwing along with Speedtaker. The reason is because his Strength is so good that if he doubles, he will kill his enemies no doubt. His Defense can be easily fixed by giving him Emblem Eirika or Ike (I personally love giving Eirika to him). With his added personal skill, he can also be one of your most accurate units going into the later parts of the game in both player and enemy phases.
I'm sorry I know this was just a passing comment but in what world is Leonie not great? She's insane by all measures. Girl has everything and honestly lacks any noticeable flaws. The speed, the power, the bulk, combat arts, everything. She can even as a mage if you want to. I haven't heard anyone call Leonie a less than stellar unit in a long time.
@@DaniDoyle Ok I'm done watching the video. It's all good about Leonie.👌 I agree that Amber is slept on a bit. Ivy often gets a pass for speed fixing when it's applicable to quite a few units and I know, flying mage and all that but Lindwurm is certainly flawed as well. I'm using Bow Knight Amber in my Brodians only run and with Lyn he's amazing as you would expect. One thing I would add is that while not a promotion for cavaliers, Mage Knight is a very good class in Engage. Chaos Style is up there for the best class ability.
Yeah I'm planning on making a follow up video about the other mounted classes just because a lot of people have been asking about bow knite great knight and mage knight in the comments
Calvary units are alright on this game, the main problem is that they don't get enough speed to maintain a spot on your army. Alfred gets a lesser great knight. Amber is just competing for way too much. Because you wouldn't be able to build him until chapter 9 and better/already promoted units will want the XP/SP gains from that instead. Merrin seems good.
The Lyn discussion is a good example of how speed issues are overblown in this game. For 2500 SP you can get Speed Taker and Speed +3. This is basically what I do with Ivy, and I run a speed emblem on her. Suddenly you can double pretty much everything in the game for the next 12 chapters. Getting Attack however is harder, the skills are more expensive. A character with mediocre strength/magic bases and growths are just really hard to justify because they're harder to fix. Magic units can generally get away with it because resistance caps are low in this game, you will frequently see capped res in maddening. Also you kind have to lean into speed on Amber because otherwise he's just outclassed by Louie the entire game. Level 6 base 13 strength vs level 11 base 15 strength. Not that you can't run both, but as a bruiser Louie just does it better.
Louis gets a good deal of his strength from armour knight bases. His personal strength stat is 5, and at level 11 that personal strength stat is 7.75. when reclassed to the same class, Amber will always have more strength than Louis at the same level, with higher levels just making the gap larger. I also think that on maddening it is not guaranteed that Louis even reaches level 11 by the time Amber joins.
In regards to your three houses remarks at the beginning, yeah Lorenz sucks but Leonie is fantastic. She easily goes into doubling desperation builds because her stats are good and she also gets point blank volley if she is a bit stat screwed. I've never had a Leonie that didn't perform fantastically on maddening.
@@DaniDoyle Whoopsie. Also I made the mistake of not checking the comments to see if my comment had been made already before making it. My bad for contributing to the spam.
You've pretty much summed it all from the start: starter units suck overall due to exceedingly low base stats, except the 2 "villagers"...while 3 of the 4 units you cite are starter units... 😑 Differences between classes were considerably lowered in 3H and moreso in Engage (no hidden 10% crit there, quasi-same movement here, no transferable mastery ability gained in other classes, lower weapon line requirements), and cav suffers from lack of distinctiveness, as do footsoldier classes. Which ends up meaning it's mostly about the stats. The only slight difference there is between Paladins of all colours and footsoldiers is a bit more bulk (DEF/HP). The Paladin ability is anecdotal as are most of the others, and the one thing that makes our early cavalry guys feel any good and different to footsoldiers is Sigurd, period. With all the issues this fact implies. And to mention another cav class you passed upon: bow knights suck. Vander is a great illustration: as you've said, he's not Gunter (GR similar to Saphir, with terrible bases) yet apart from movement all qualities you've recognized him are his...HP & DEF, with the advantage of being mobile: he's not made to be a paladin, but a Great Knight or heavier! Even his max stats scream it: +3 DEF, - 2 RES, -2 SPD. Another thing: since the AI is so rush-happy, unless the movement difference is huge, there isn't as much interest in having the meager +1 MOV in this episode.
I'm just saying, if base Alfred had Swords/Lances and then when promoted to Avenir was given Sword/Axe/Lances (like Fe6+7 paladins) , he would stand out and definitely make use of the Leif Ring, but the poor prince is just unusable
I'm glad you made this video, because I also agree that cavs are underrated in this game. That being said, I wanted to take the time to respond to some of your arguments in this video. I. Vander I totally disagree with this point. For every context outside of LTC, I think Vander is cheeks, and tbh as we optimize LTC, I expect Vander to become even less relevant there. While it's true that most early game units are "not worth" investing in, I'd argue that using Vander in combat casually past chapter 4 or 5 is not making the game any easier on yourself. While it's true that Vander saves turns and hypothetically makes the game easier, early game Maddening is not so difficult that not using Vander makes the game significantly more difficult, and then you get the added bonus of powerleveling your Alear/whatever other early game unit you want to use. While Louis is definitely the best Sigurd holder in LTC because of his early bulk, casually, I think Chloe's unrestricted movement easily makes her the best holder, and it helps her snowball even more easily. By Chapter 6, Sigurd!Chloe is on par with Sigurd!Vander, and by Chapter 7, she can one round most enemies on the map. I guess he's okay for setting up kills for the muscle gang. II. Alfred I mean, I guess he's a villager archetype, but he's worse than Clanne at that imo. I agree though, if it wasn't for being a force deploy, he may be the worst unit in the game. Just awful, awful bases in a game where the replacement units are stronger than your trained units. I don't really have much to say on him that you didn't cover. III. Amber Halberdier Amber is a garbage idea that got thrown around by certain people when we were newer to the game imo. Halberdier is just not that strong of a class, and I have to sacrifice my position to fake being a solid unit? No thanks. I think Berserker/Warrior Amber is pretty solid, but you're just diet Panette at that point. Wolf Knight Amber is definitely an interesting and fun take on the character I haven't tried myself. However, I think his best use case is abusing his high Str + Momentum on Great Knight or Wyvern. I definitely agree that Amber is a very slept on unit. IV. Merrin I think reclassing Merrin is just optimal, unfortunately. Immediate reclass to wyvern basically just makes her better than Rosado, and her combat prowess basically turns her into a 2nd Kagetsu, with less drop-off from Kagetsu to her than from Panette to Amber, imo.
I'll respond to your points in sections too 1) Vander I think Vander's early bulk does still make him useful,at least through chapter 6 and I would argue in chapter 7 as well. This is a point in the game where you have very few units, who can take multiple rounds of combat without dying, and while hes not nesicary, he certainly helps. His speed sucks but this is a train almost all early game units have, and the ones who are fast are also very frail. I don't think using him in combat meaningfuly takes away from experience for early game training projects (outside of LTC where you want to squeeze every drop possible on your limited turns) unless you are trying to use the the majority of the early game units. 2) amber (skipping alfred because he kinda sucks) I haven't tried Wyvern Amber yet, though considering Wyver's bases and Amber's strength, it sounds worth looking into. I am also not a huge fan of Halb Amber, though if anyone is going to make the class work it'd be him. Also agree that panette does the warrior thing much better, but at least for the midgame a mini-panette is useful, and late game you're probably warpskipping most maps anyway so subpar Amber doesn't hurt too much. 3) Merrin: Its possible i value forged daggers to highly, but since post-leif knife access is a trait Merrin shares only with Panette (who probably wants to stay warrior) and Zelkov (who is stuck in thief) I like having her stay in WK, but I will try reclassing her one day though, and possibly feel stupid for not tryng it earlier.
@@DaniDoyle Taking Merrin away from her wolf should be a criminal offense, but sometimes I must be cruel and inhumane for the sake of "efficiency" and "turn counts"
"if you're not using merrin you can pass the forged dagger to another knife user" literally who? Like, what knife users are you using besides merrin? Veyle for 3 chapters? Zelkov? Yunaka? I almost never use any of these for similar reasons to merrin...
Thief Vander, obviously. Real talk, the merrin section of this video has aged poorly. While she can work as a no investment wolf knight, i think the best way to use her is as a warrior or wyvern, leveraging her personal bases in a better class.
in my *opinion* gunter is still halfway decent in the conquest route, though I don' think I've ever used him in Birthright. Maybe its because my rom is *glitched* so I cant deploy him.
cavs are awesome but not super op, bow knight is really good on amber, fix his spd and skills problems (his personal helps a lot too) and is one of the best users of lyn in this class, merrin in wolf knight with roy is amazing too pd: and ofc mage knight pandreo top 3 units in this game xD literally magic kagetsu
Isn't it a little arbitrary to count wolf knights as cavs when they're essentially mounted thieves, but not count Great Knights, Fogado's personal nomad-like class Sentinel. I get discounting the magic based classes. Kind of arbitrary to count the one not riding a horse as a cavalry.
When using a master seal, the class Cavalier can promote directly into Paladin or Wolf Knight, but cannot promote to Bow Knight (the closest paralell to Fogado's class) or Great Knight and instead require a second seal to reach those classes.
@@DaniDoyle I had a bow knight Etie, she was actually alot less powerful after switching to warrior than when she was a bow knight. The increased movement range and better stats of bow knight just made her generally more viable.
Clanne is way better than you make him sound. Promote him to mage knight at level 10 and he'll consistently be one of the fastest units in your army for the rest of the game, and he can double basically anything magic is worth a damn against even on Maddening with little help. Hell, give him your spirit dust and some forges and the like and he can consistently one-round too.
While that is definitely a role he can excel in if given investment, I generally don't think it's worth training him to get him to that point, since Pandreo comes for free as a better fast mage than Clanne and Citrine and Ivy come as better High Magic mages.
All he needs is a second seal to either Sage or Mage Knight, he will have better Magic than the average 10/10 Clanne in either of those classes, and only 1 less point of speed, and honestly getting Clanne to 10/10 mage knight before Pandreo joins probably requires more favoritism than he is worth.
@@DaniDoyleI'm trying him as mage knight and he's pretty great, especially being able to carry bolganone without incident. But remember Clanne has 6 entire chapters where he has Canter and Pandreo doesn't.
I don't think canter alone makes up for his deficits, but even if you do that means he requires even more favoritism than is required just to get him to a point where his stats are semi-close to pandreo. Clanne starts with 300 sp, and has no way to gain sp on chapter 2 or 3, and probably not 4 either since Celica is locked to Celine. While you could spam micaiah with him, that takes her away from units with more to offer long term. The bond fragment investment is also non-negligible since early on, your bond fragments are often best spent getting Mercurius on people.
Leonie is not that good is just plain incorrect. Objectively ,If you compare her personal (before considering class)stat growths with say Dimitri (one of the best physical units in the game) she only lags behind in 4 of 9 stats (str, res and Cha) meaning in the other 5 she either matches or outclasses him. Compared to felix (another physical beast, she only lags behind significantly in str and only slightly in hp, mag and res.) Subjectively, she consistently has solid performance without having to baby her.
the only good cavaliers in FEE are wolf knights (for the insane avoid) and mage knight (+3 speed). Armour knight was only good in TH, out of it is a poor unit, and paladins can only use one weapon and bow knight only gain a sort amound of movement. alfred is one of the worst units in the game and fogado is better as a warrior
I think cavalry is the worst class type. Movement is so low and pathetic in this game that the difference between 5 and 6 move is negligible, and that's all they have+extra weakness. Every other class type has something better to offer. Youd be better off making all cavalry into fliers if you want the movement
I think the advantages horse classes have are more subtle. Paladin is one of the few classes with rank access (though admittedly this is only relevant late in the game), Wolf Knight has absurd speed and knife access. Mage Knight is another decent class, though if you go mystical for access to Corrin or Byleth bonueses that's sometimes a trade off worth doing
They're not good anymore. And Vander is garbage. Probably the worst Jagen. Constantly doubled and doesnt get exp due to Engages weird perceived level system...
Dumb question, yes. Mage Knight is a standout class. If you want to run archers, bow knight with Canter is solid. The melee cavs are meh, entirely replaceable with non cavs.
Thanks for commenting and giving me an algorithm boost, though I would advise watching videos before commenting in the future, it will help your comments be more relevant to the topics covered :)
I feel that one of the biggest nerfs to cavs was the loss of rescue drop. This was something Cavaliers would often do if their talents stat wise were not required. That combined with only +1 mov over foot units and generally pretty bad engage bonuses baring Sigurd
It would be cool if Cavs could rescue but flyers could not, as a tradeoff for flight being a better overall movement type, since I personally don't think Boe weakness is enough to even come close to making them even.
@@DaniDoyle i agree. Make it a paladin level 5 personal instead.
I miss horse emblem but we had it too good for too long. I think they are in a decent spot in Engage, it's just hard for a lot of classes to compete with fliers and warrior. Agree with your thoughts on Vander as well. I think he may actually be the most underrated unit in the game with how many people call him useless.
I honestly think it's healthy for fire emblem in the long term for different classes to be the "best class" in each game, because it makes the series feel more distinct. I kind of like that paladins suck and while I hope they eventually end up on top for at least some game in the future (like fe4 remake) I'm perfectly fine with "paladin good" not being the status quo
I fed him all my stat boosters and he's still only ok.
I like Vander in this game. A "traditional" Jagen is honestly a perfect fit for this game, considering how cutthroat the deployment slots are. Having a unit that is clearly meant to fall off makes it easier to bring him along for the Firene/Brodia arcs, have him help whittle down the cew units you plan on using long-term, and then retire him without feeling like youre letting a potentially good unit go.
One cool thing about Vander is that he's the only unit who can use the Revanche once you get it, which gives him a little bit more use on chapters 7, 8, and the paralogues as having an A rank Killer Axe is pretty nice. Once you get past Chapter 8, you should have a few Master Seals and can either promote Diamant and just pass the axe over to him, or just save the Axe for someone else.
Alfred, from my experience is just a big case of opportunity cost. Which is weird since he's one of the first units you get. If you have the FEH DLC, you can give him Fensalir and it won't even weigh him down after a few merges...but the same applies to Chloé who can use the weapon even better thanks to having a speed stat. The same applies to Steel/Silver Lance; you could just double down on Alfred being slow and commit to big damage tanking, but Louis is right there and has much better unit feel and shows more consistent results.
Like you said, if Alfred was a swordie, he could've stood out more and not be weighed down by everything outside of Slims. The fact that he gets Swords on promotion is just depressing, since you gotta get him to Lv10 and use one of your early seals (which has a LOT) of competition, just to get the guy to where he should've been from the start. Being Alfred is suffering.
Is the Revanche DLC?
"you won't feel bad benching him later" is not what i would call a defence^^
I'm glad you agree that Panette is the best unit in the game
I think the other big benefit of wolf knight Lucina is that they do the 100% bonded shield with the best mounted class: mage knight. Which is arguably the best caster class as well.
I think it's fine if Merrin or any other wolf knight falls off in damage, if she can just spam bonded shield and gain enough avoid to stay safe. And also be able to snipe the odd flyer with Parthia.
50+ Def Endgame Louis begs to differ, this guy rocked until the very end
I never really used Merrin as a delete button. I use her as a boss debuffer. I gave her Draconic Hex and equipped her with Lucina. Have her attack the boss, give them a stack of Poison and lower their stats, and then her Dual Attacks will allow her to get the other poison stacks while your other units tear through the boss health. She is actually why I am able to consistently one round bosses from full health, even when there are multiple bosses.
I noticed the edge Vander gets with Sigurd over Louis is he gets access to the emblem one chapter earlier, which means he can start chapter 5 (the one that matters) with Momentum and deal more damage than Louis, who will spend a number of turns until getting Momentum.
Also I wish they'd given him a Silver Axe but alas, I guess that doesn't translate well to infinite durability
EDIT: Hell, I say we should go full overhaul and make Silver weapons the only weapon with durability while making them stronger.
I used Wolf Knight Amber but I wasn’t planning on it from the start, so I had to wait to reclass him from Paladin after Leif came back… not the worst thing ever, but I think his speed and resistance could’ve been better with those extra levels
Lyn was a great fit for him, I think Canter and Speedtaker are good choices on him if you wanna give Lyn to someone else. He’d still do work with Eirika or even Camilla since she increases his movement when Engaged by a lot, plus she gives bonuses to Speed and Resistance: his worst stats. I inherited Speed/Res+4 from Camilla, but I think if I was planning on giving Lyn to someone else, I would inherit Speedtaker instead
Also, my Alfred was good on hard mode, but I see that things like his low build really prevent him from shining on Maddening. Tbh His whole squad is kinda screwed! Poor Etie has a terrible ability, Boucheron has 20% strength growth, and Alfred has been benched by soooo many players!
FEH taught me if Ninian on foot can be a Cav, then Merrin riding a Wolf absolutely can be a Cav
Louise as a great knight with some talismans dumped into him makes a great moveable wall. Honestly I've used him full game till the end both times. And he does leagues better as a great knight
All I have to say about Amber is his biggest problem is Panette exists. He's around sooner and genuinely does incredible early combat with a swap to Warrior, though, early Vantage from Leif/Using Leif's Adaptability with a bow/Leif engraved Greataxe in warrior and he genuinely pops a lot of enemies early and through the game.
He doesn't transition into crit as well, meaning when phys damage falls off(23 and onward imo), so too does he, but that's still a lot of the game he's a top dollar combat unit.
Pannette fills the warrior crit build better, but I think throughout a lot of the game there's merit to having 2-3 strong units on your team. Ch22 in particular since its a route map, though having multiple strong combat units is useful throughout the mid and end game. While physical damage definitely falls off after chapter 22, I think he can still contribute to a degree even then.
Great video.
Merrin pwns as a Wyvern night. It shores up her strength and makes her a great hit n run.
She can either be kept there or moved back to wolf for the end game.
So my play through I used Marrin and the weird thing that happened was that she barely gained strength (ended the game with about 20) but by god did she get magic (ending at like 28) so I just ran around with a forged levin sword and sword power 4 from Roy and killed basically everything.
Idk if that’s normal for her but it was probably for the best because she naturally doubled everything, was strong enough to kill mages and such with daggers, and now using her magic for the levin sword was able to kill walls like armor knights
She actually has 5% less magic growth than strength haha
finally another amber fan everyone hates him so much i finally dont feel insane i love using him he's so fun rn i'm doing my first maddening run and im only about half way in but i've promoted amber after his join map and then recalssed him into royal knight while prob not the best for him i find it fun staves mean he's always getting exp so he's always getting better and while reforge isnt the best class skill it is pretty nice in some situations and i find that if you give him a flame lance he can do some higher chip damage than he does with a jav also next point is just highly a me thing but i almost never any units who come with staves (i just dont like framme chole ivy i like pandreo but i always have a stronger mage by that point so i bench him) so while yeah just a me problem i like having a unit that can heal pre hortensia lol
At least as royal knight he gets to keep his horsey. It's funny that's part of hia gimmick but IMO his best class options dont have horses.
TBH wolf knight should have let him ride an alpaca. If Rosado gets a ribbon wyvern, Amber deserves an alpaca mount.
@@DaniDoyle HOLY SHIT YOUR SO RIGHT THAT BE GREAT also yeah i agree on the horse part he prob destroys maps in wyvern tbh it's just that in my 2 previous hard mode runs the only time i even used a horse was first run mage knight clanne and second run wolf knight boucheron so this time i kinda wanted to use something more normal lol
I know this video is mainly about the individual units, not the class, but I came to the realization just now that I haven't been using any cavaliers in this game. I suppose wolf knight Merrin does fill a similar role, and I am using two bow knights in Etie and Fogado's unique class, but there is not a single typical paladin or great knight on my team. I suppose I've just found more utility in other classes. It's just interesting to me how different this game is that I'm not resorting to my usual FE strategy of making half my team full of cavaliers
Technically Wolf Knight promotes directly from Cavalier (an unpromoted Cav can go either paladin or wolf knight) but yeah, the extra point of move is nice but often not enough to make me value them over other classes.
I like Amber as a bow knight a lot. His personal is perfect for sniping high avoid flyers with the longbow, and you don’t have to do that much speed fixing to make it work. Speed growth is the same as the speedy classes like wolf knight and gryphon, and you can actually use his personal while he’s moving with the rest of the party. Then again, daggers are way too good.
I’ve found the Fogado works really well with a raiden bow and the Lyn ring!
I tried so hard to make Alfred work in my first hard run but he just kept dying and eventually on one of the DLCmaps I just didn't wanna waste the time crystal charges and left him "dead".
In my first playthrough in hard, amber got so many killer lance crits in his join map that he got MVP, even though I wasn't gonna use him, he got benched but that was pretty funny
I think the Alfred slander is overblown.
Maybe everybody just robs his emblem ring and guts his kit but he hasn’t let me down yet,
Solid bruiser character who towards the end of the game you’ll end up shocked how good he got
Okay but counterpoint, in this game anyone you invest heavily in the end game will end up as a decent unit. However the amount of investment Alfred needs is not worth the payoff in my opinion
@@DaniDoyle Idk if this applies to maddening, never tried it yet, but on my hard play through I barely invested in Alfred. I just used him as usual and got like a def+3 on him and he was great the entire time. One of my tankiest units. Ik maddening has fixed growths so that’s probably why people don’t like him but he was actually one of my best units with little investment.
@@RaccoonProductionsInc a unit being stat blessed does not reflect their typical performance.
@@DaniDoyle I know. Was just putting in my experience since it’s funny to see how my individual performance is vs everyone else’s.
@@RaccoonProductionsInc Yeah, not many in the fe community will see it as a "haha funny", mostly because this community had years of people flexing their blessed units as an actual reason why "X isn't bad"
One thing that affects a lot the early units is how bad Alear is, part 1 is basically "how to salvage Alear the game", making units like Chloe Clanne and Boucheron that are way better Marth users not able to shine because your more focus praying that Alear level up strength and speed, and even then Alear will most probably still not being very good in mid/end game He will most likely be in a support rol.
So why not making Alear a support to begin with? ,Alear has natural art proficiency so They can access martial Master way more early than all the cast, you can give him micahiah and had another healer and be able to use their personal skill more and also not had to worry about Their level because Great sacrifice and then after chapter 11 promote to Martial master and enjoy your +3 damage 100% bonder guard bot and unhitable thanks to dual support
This way is more easy to give invest to early units and snowball characters like Mage Knight Clanne, Wyrven knight Chloe or even things like Berserker boucheron, Mage khight Chloe (because vidame suck), or Hero Lapis.
Or you can make alear a wyvern Knight to hyper carry
@@yes1667 i mean yes, but honestly for me the unit feel of Offensive Alear in general is super boring, I prefer put my reasorces in other units early game than Alear, Also Martial Master Alear is probably the best Martial master in the game, the guy is actually pretty bulky and he is decently fast and also the best candidate for Lucina Bonder Shield strats.
I made my Alear a high priest, and he's great in that class, but I'll admit there are times I wish I kept him in his default class, because the Dragon class typing gives access to a lot of utility through Emblems, like Corrin's Dragon Veins
@@juicyjuustar121 Wile Divine Dragon effects are in emblems are interesting, other classes in general can use them better.
for example Corrin with mysticals have access to the fire vein which is the best one to slow down enemies also Mysticals have access to 3 range weapons to better use of Dread full aura
Byleth gives Mysticals access to thyrsus to nuke enemies far away and with fliers you have a way more mobile goddess dance compare to divine Dragon.
And then there is Lucina
Why would you want a unreliable 90% Bonder Guard when you can have a 100% with Qi adepts ?
In general the affects of Dragon just arent worth it.
Either feed them the dlc stat boosters or reclass into wyvern knight
About alfred the "he get's high speed if you feed a lot of exp early game" argument is very flawed in my opnion since you can say that with any character for example a level 20 general would probably outspeed a level 1 myrmidon.
What do you think about Bunet? I want to make a good build for him but he just seems a little meh atm.
I didn't talk about Brunei because he's not part of the cavalier class line (since GK promotes from armor, instead of cav) but I think his only real niche would be 5 Cav Bonded Shield, since a lot of people he supports with do decent in mounted classes (Mage knight pandreo and Cupido Fogado)
I agree with almost everything said here.
I like giving vander Sigurd just because he gets to places faster then Louis (used to be Chloe but I took the marth pill for her)
Alfred is pretty awful, I would put him really low d tier, bad, not unfixable but everyone is.
Amber is mad slept on though I gotta say I also don’t really like halb Amber that much, pincer is kinda annoying to set up. I like warrior the most just because he becomes slightly worse panette with hit personal instead of a crit personal so he uses the corrin engrave pretty well (which he’s not procing his personal on halb) but being a worse panette isn’t a bad thing.
Merrin is probably my only disagreement, kinda. She does support and dodge tanking really well (just gotta be careful with your avoid) as a wolf but if you want to use her offensively you need to give her Roy or erikia to help patch up her fire power. As wolf that is. I know you said you haven’t tried it but I highly recommend reclassing merrin as she is pretty gross. She’s a great warrior due to her magic (one less base and 5% less personal magic growth then pandreo) so she uses radiant bow really well along with her str being only 2 base behind Kagetsu and 5% less personal growth then him. If you have dlc mage knight is really fun (only recommend for dlc because you don’t need to wait so long for magic prof).
And the holy grail being wyvern. She’s worse then Kagetsu in this role (at level 20 wyvern Kagetsu has 3 str and def over her but that’s fine tbh because Kagetsu is cracked and she’s close enough) but having a second one of him is really really gross. She loves Roy again her due to him making her really bulky(her mixed bulk is quite good for a wyvern) even stronger, good 1- 2 range. And a plus 5 spd inherit makes her really powerful. She really doesn’t need that much because if you feel like giving Roy to Kagetsu or someone else then she can take leif too. She likes the bulk. It gives her the build to not be destroyed by master lance and tomahawk (at 15 she can use it without penalty) and use silver axe unhindered . And she likes light brand too since she has existent magic even as a wyvern.
Either way merrin can rip things up. Honestly she has the most class flexibility in the game due to her high bases and well rounded growths with great spd. She can do whatever you want and find a way to slot onto a team
Can I just say that theif alfred is kinda great? Love the vid.
I haven't tried that yet, might have to check it out, although I'll be honest I'm not a huge fan of thieves outside of the early game, i just don't think the class bases hold up.
I’ve done about 5 playthroughs at this point, 3 on Madening. Not once have I ever put Alear as a Flyer. I have put them as a Paladin though.
I like flying alear for ch11 specifically, as it allows you to get to the escape point much faster, due to the forests and water.
@@DaniDoyle I suppose. But you also lose out on the terrain bonus provided by the forests. I don’t particularly like flyers outside of Chloé and Rosado because of that.
I agree that Vander is a bit underrated, although he probably still is the worst Jagen to date. You could've gone into reclassing options a little bit more though. He has some useful ones considering he'll be the only promoted unit for a bit. I still don't get the Gunther hate though. He is quite definitely the best pair up for Corrin (female Corrin especially), and a great pair up that you don't want on the field at that. Definitely worth deploying in every chapter.
The reason I didn't talk about Vander's reclassing options is you cannot get any second seals until after chapter 8, where 3 are avaiable for sale. At this point, you have access to three master seals (2 drops, 1 from shop) so you will have 3 other promoted units if you want to reclass someone. I think spending a second seal on Vander at this time is a waste of money (and your limited seals) on a unit who doesn't benefit from it much, and who honestly shouldn't be fielded at all at this point in the game unless its for Memes.
As for Gunter, if the best trait about a unit is their potential as a pair up bot, they are a bad Jagen. Rinkah is also a good pair up bot, but I don't think that makes her a good unit.
@@DaniDoyle I don't have too much experience with Engage, but I felt like early promotion wouldn't be a great idea because exp gain is already so low and the game is pretty long. I promoted most of my units around chapter 12-15 or so. But I will admit that I haven't tried early promoting personally, so it might be good, although Vander is still one of 3 units with access to promoted classes in that case. I don't think you should bench him already in chapter 8 though, you really don't have that many units that are worth using over him (especially with a second seal)
I don't get how that makes Gunther bad. He is the best pair up for the best unit, and even though you get tons of units in Rev, most of them aren't that good. So he's optimal deployment for almost every map in the game and will help you out until the end, which is more than what Vander provides. Or other mediocre Jagens for that matter, like fe5 Eyvel or fe12 Arran. Not to mention he's basically essential for chapters 2 and 3 and still pretty good for a couple of chapters after he rejoins.
Promoting doesn't affect your experience gain in engage, but increases your stats and growth rates, as well as putting only five levels away from your class scale if that's the skill you care about, so there's actually no reason not to early promote of you have the seal for it
The Leonie slander lol
I have a great strategy for consistently increasing merrin’s strength called getting lucky. I used this same tactic to get 13 strength alear at level 10.
Damn i should try that strategy it sounds based
Merrin with forged daggers and Sigurd carried me. Momentum is one hell of a drug.
I know it would be way too broken, but i wish momentum+ applied to both hits instead of just one. Imagine merrin getting double momentums
@@DaniDoyle literally broken lol
Does Gunter even count as a Jagen? Considering he's not deployable pretty early on.
In Rev he is a jagen, i would not count him as one in CQ however
On Amber, I would like to give my 2 cents on one of my favourite units and characters of Engage. Amber actually has decent growths in all Strength, Speed and Defense in his Cav to Paladdin class without ever reclassing him. His Strength is so good that you can really just focus on fixing his Speed. You can easily fix his Speed issues by giving him Speedtaker from Lyn and if you really favour him, plus one Speedwing along with Speedtaker. The reason is because his Strength is so good that if he doubles, he will kill his enemies no doubt. His Defense can be easily fixed by giving him Emblem Eirika or Ike (I personally love giving Eirika to him). With his added personal skill, he can also be one of your most accurate units going into the later parts of the game in both player and enemy phases.
I'm sorry I know this was just a passing comment but in what world is Leonie not great? She's insane by all measures. Girl has everything and honestly lacks any noticeable flaws.
The speed, the power, the bulk, combat arts, everything. She can even as a mage if you want to. I haven't heard anyone call Leonie a less than stellar unit in a long time.
Yeah, she's actually good. I honestly don't onow what i was thinking
@@DaniDoyle Ok I'm done watching the video. It's all good about Leonie.👌
I agree that Amber is slept on a bit. Ivy often gets a pass for speed fixing when it's applicable to quite a few units and I know, flying mage and all that but Lindwurm is certainly flawed as well. I'm using Bow Knight Amber in my Brodians only run and with Lyn he's amazing as you would expect.
One thing I would add is that while not a promotion for cavaliers, Mage Knight is a very good class in Engage. Chaos Style is up there for the best class ability.
Yeah I'm planning on making a follow up video about the other mounted classes just because a lot of people have been asking about bow knite great knight and mage knight in the comments
Calvary units are alright on this game, the main problem is that they don't get enough speed to maintain a spot on your army.
Alfred gets a lesser great knight.
Amber is just competing for way too much. Because you wouldn't be able to build him until chapter 9 and better/already promoted units will want the XP/SP gains from that instead.
Merrin seems good.
The Lyn discussion is a good example of how speed issues are overblown in this game.
For 2500 SP you can get Speed Taker and Speed +3. This is basically what I do with Ivy, and I run a speed emblem on her. Suddenly you can double pretty much everything in the game for the next 12 chapters.
Getting Attack however is harder, the skills are more expensive. A character with mediocre strength/magic bases and growths are just really hard to justify because they're harder to fix. Magic units can generally get away with it because resistance caps are low in this game, you will frequently see capped res in maddening.
Also you kind have to lean into speed on Amber because otherwise he's just outclassed by Louie the entire game. Level 6 base 13 strength vs level 11 base 15 strength. Not that you can't run both, but as a bruiser Louie just does it better.
Louis gets a good deal of his strength from armour knight bases. His personal strength stat is 5, and at level 11 that personal strength stat is 7.75. when reclassed to the same class, Amber will always have more strength than Louis at the same level, with higher levels just making the gap larger. I also think that on maddening it is not guaranteed that Louis even reaches level 11 by the time Amber joins.
Leonie is good in 3H
Yeah, IDK what i was thinking haha
In regards to your three houses remarks at the beginning, yeah Lorenz sucks but Leonie is fantastic. She easily goes into doubling desperation builds because her stats are good and she also gets point blank volley if she is a bit stat screwed. I've never had a Leonie that didn't perform fantastically on maddening.
Yeah Leonie is top tier. My comments were a massive L. Goes to show you should not believe everything you hear online haha
@@DaniDoyle Whoopsie. Also I made the mistake of not checking the comments to see if my comment had been made already before making it. My bad for contributing to the spam.
You've pretty much summed it all from the start: starter units suck overall due to exceedingly low base stats, except the 2 "villagers"...while 3 of the 4 units you cite are starter units... 😑
Differences between classes were considerably lowered in 3H and moreso in Engage (no hidden 10% crit there, quasi-same movement here, no transferable mastery ability gained in other classes, lower weapon line requirements), and cav suffers from lack of distinctiveness, as do footsoldier classes. Which ends up meaning it's mostly about the stats.
The only slight difference there is between Paladins of all colours and footsoldiers is a bit more bulk (DEF/HP). The Paladin ability is anecdotal as are most of the others, and the one thing that makes our early cavalry guys feel any good and different to footsoldiers is Sigurd, period. With all the issues this fact implies. And to mention another cav class you passed upon: bow knights suck.
Vander is a great illustration: as you've said, he's not Gunter (GR similar to Saphir, with terrible bases) yet apart from movement all qualities you've recognized him are his...HP & DEF, with the advantage of being mobile: he's not made to be a paladin, but a Great Knight or heavier! Even his max stats scream it: +3 DEF, - 2 RES, -2 SPD.
Another thing: since the AI is so rush-happy, unless the movement difference is huge, there isn't as much interest in having the meager +1 MOV in this episode.
I'm just saying, if base Alfred had Swords/Lances and then when promoted to Avenir was given Sword/Axe/Lances (like Fe6+7 paladins) , he would stand out and definitely make use of the Leif Ring, but the poor prince is just unusable
Try wolf knight Alear, you will not regret it.
I did, my alear in RR is a wolf knight. It was super fun!
I'm glad you made this video, because I also agree that cavs are underrated in this game. That being said, I wanted to take the time to respond to some of your arguments in this video.
I. Vander
I totally disagree with this point. For every context outside of LTC, I think Vander is cheeks, and tbh as we optimize LTC, I expect Vander to become even less relevant there. While it's true that most early game units are "not worth" investing in, I'd argue that using Vander in combat casually past chapter 4 or 5 is not making the game any easier on yourself. While it's true that Vander saves turns and hypothetically makes the game easier, early game Maddening is not so difficult that not using Vander makes the game significantly more difficult, and then you get the added bonus of powerleveling your Alear/whatever other early game unit you want to use. While Louis is definitely the best Sigurd holder in LTC because of his early bulk, casually, I think Chloe's unrestricted movement easily makes her the best holder, and it helps her snowball even more easily. By Chapter 6, Sigurd!Chloe is on par with Sigurd!Vander, and by Chapter 7, she can one round most enemies on the map. I guess he's okay for setting up kills for the muscle gang.
II. Alfred
I mean, I guess he's a villager archetype, but he's worse than Clanne at that imo. I agree though, if it wasn't for being a force deploy, he may be the worst unit in the game. Just awful, awful bases in a game where the replacement units are stronger than your trained units. I don't really have much to say on him that you didn't cover.
III. Amber
Halberdier Amber is a garbage idea that got thrown around by certain people when we were newer to the game imo. Halberdier is just not that strong of a class, and I have to sacrifice my position to fake being a solid unit? No thanks. I think Berserker/Warrior Amber is pretty solid, but you're just diet Panette at that point. Wolf Knight Amber is definitely an interesting and fun take on the character I haven't tried myself. However, I think his best use case is abusing his high Str + Momentum on Great Knight or Wyvern. I definitely agree that Amber is a very slept on unit.
IV. Merrin
I think reclassing Merrin is just optimal, unfortunately. Immediate reclass to wyvern basically just makes her better than Rosado, and her combat prowess basically turns her into a 2nd Kagetsu, with less drop-off from Kagetsu to her than from Panette to Amber, imo.
I'll respond to your points in sections too
1) Vander
I think Vander's early bulk does still make him useful,at least through chapter 6 and I would argue in chapter 7 as well. This is a point in the game where you have very few units, who can take multiple rounds of combat without dying, and while hes not nesicary, he certainly helps. His speed sucks but this is a train almost all early game units have, and the ones who are fast are also very frail. I don't think using him in combat meaningfuly takes away from experience for early game training projects (outside of LTC where you want to squeeze every drop possible on your limited turns) unless you are trying to use the the majority of the early game units.
2) amber (skipping alfred because he kinda sucks)
I haven't tried Wyvern Amber yet, though considering Wyver's bases and Amber's strength, it sounds worth looking into. I am also not a huge fan of Halb Amber, though if anyone is going to make the class work it'd be him. Also agree that panette does the warrior thing much better, but at least for the midgame a mini-panette is useful, and late game you're probably warpskipping most maps anyway so subpar Amber doesn't hurt too much.
3) Merrin: Its possible i value forged daggers to highly, but since post-leif knife access is a trait Merrin shares only with Panette (who probably wants to stay warrior) and Zelkov (who is stuck in thief) I like having her stay in WK, but I will try reclassing her one day though, and possibly feel stupid for not tryng it earlier.
@@DaniDoyle Taking Merrin away from her wolf should be a criminal offense, but sometimes I must be cruel and inhumane for the sake of "efficiency" and "turn counts"
Honestly, I blame the devs, she should keep her tail in other classes. Its inexcusable.
Wheres Bunet?
As I mentioned in the video, Great Knight promotes from Armour instead of Cav in this game.
"if you're not using merrin you can pass the forged dagger to another knife user" literally who? Like, what knife users are you using besides merrin? Veyle for 3 chapters? Zelkov? Yunaka? I almost never use any of these for similar reasons to merrin...
Thief Vander, obviously.
Real talk, the merrin section of this video has aged poorly. While she can work as a no investment wolf knight, i think the best way to use her is as a warrior or wyvern, leveraging her personal bases in a better class.
The best Cavs in this game are Louis merrin and especially Goldmary who can literally go on her own with eirika and go on a rampage on a choke point
I personally enjoyed mage knight Merrin 😂
Are the any good?
Yes, kinda, though not in the traditional way.
Hey, don't badmouth Gunter, he's an absolute powerhouse (compared to Mystery of the Emblem Alan anyway)
You’re right early game cavs are great, like Gunter the **fun** old man too bad to falls off pretty hard after chapter 3.
in my *opinion* gunter is still halfway decent in the conquest route, though I don' think I've ever used him in Birthright. Maybe its because my rom is *glitched* so I cant deploy him.
cavs are awesome but not super op, bow knight is really good on amber, fix his spd and skills problems (his personal helps a lot too) and is one of the best users of lyn in this class, merrin in wolf knight with roy is amazing too
pd: and ofc mage knight pandreo top 3 units in this game xD literally magic kagetsu
Isn't it a little arbitrary to count wolf knights as cavs when they're essentially mounted thieves, but not count Great Knights, Fogado's personal nomad-like class Sentinel. I get discounting the magic based classes. Kind of arbitrary to count the one not riding a horse as a cavalry.
When using a master seal, the class Cavalier can promote directly into Paladin or Wolf Knight, but cannot promote to Bow Knight (the closest paralell to Fogado's class) or Great Knight and instead require a second seal to reach those classes.
In three houses anyone who is a good cavalier is just a better wyrven knight
Yeah basically. The only benefit i can think of is grounded battalions, but so many maps hate hores movement that it still feels bad
Cavalier as a class is fine, most units that get the class just suck.
I actually think the opposite is true TBH
@@DaniDoyle I had a bow knight Etie, she was actually alot less powerful after switching to warrior than when she was a bow knight. The increased movement range and better stats of bow knight just made her generally more viable.
Clanne is way better than you make him sound. Promote him to mage knight at level 10 and he'll consistently be one of the fastest units in your army for the rest of the game, and he can double basically anything magic is worth a damn against even on Maddening with little help. Hell, give him your spirit dust and some forges and the like and he can consistently one-round too.
While that is definitely a role he can excel in if given investment, I generally don't think it's worth training him to get him to that point, since Pandreo comes for free as a better fast mage than Clanne and Citrine and Ivy come as better High Magic mages.
@@DaniDoylewhat's your Pandreo build? He's been kinda underwhelming on the run I'm doing with him as a draft pick.
All he needs is a second seal to either Sage or Mage Knight, he will have better Magic than the average 10/10 Clanne in either of those classes, and only 1 less point of speed, and honestly getting Clanne to 10/10 mage knight before Pandreo joins probably requires more favoritism than he is worth.
@@DaniDoyleI'm trying him as mage knight and he's pretty great, especially being able to carry bolganone without incident. But remember Clanne has 6 entire chapters where he has Canter and Pandreo doesn't.
I don't think canter alone makes up for his deficits, but even if you do that means he requires even more favoritism than is required just to get him to a point where his stats are semi-close to pandreo. Clanne starts with 300 sp, and has no way to gain sp on chapter 2 or 3, and probably not 4 either since Celica is locked to Celine. While you could spam micaiah with him, that takes her away from units with more to offer long term. The bond fragment investment is also non-negligible since early on, your bond fragments are often best spent getting Mercurius on people.
Leonie is not that good is just plain incorrect. Objectively ,If you compare her personal (before considering class)stat growths with say Dimitri (one of the best physical units in the game) she only lags behind in 4 of 9 stats (str, res and Cha) meaning in the other 5 she either matches or outclasses him. Compared to felix (another physical beast, she only lags behind significantly in str and only slightly in hp, mag and res.) Subjectively, she consistently has solid performance without having to baby her.
Yes
Where's Fogado? He is also a cavalry unit.
Fogado's personal class is parallel to Vow Knight, which promotes from Archer as opposed to Cavalier, which is why I didn't include him
the only good cavaliers in FEE are wolf knights (for the insane avoid) and mage knight (+3 speed). Armour knight was only good in TH, out of it is a poor unit, and paladins can only use one weapon and bow knight only gain a sort amound of movement. alfred is one of the worst units in the game and fogado is better as a warrior
I think cavalry is the worst class type. Movement is so low and pathetic in this game that the difference between 5 and 6 move is negligible, and that's all they have+extra weakness. Every other class type has something better to offer. Youd be better off making all cavalry into fliers if you want the movement
I think the advantages horse classes have are more subtle. Paladin is one of the few classes with rank access (though admittedly this is only relevant late in the game), Wolf Knight has absurd speed and knife access. Mage Knight is another decent class, though if you go mystical for access to Corrin or Byleth bonueses that's sometimes a trade off worth doing
They're not good anymore. And Vander is garbage. Probably the worst Jagen. Constantly doubled and doesnt get exp due to Engages weird perceived level system...
Jagens don't need experience, they are early game units
Dumb question, yes. Mage Knight is a standout class. If you want to run archers, bow knight with Canter is solid. The melee cavs are meh, entirely replaceable with non cavs.
Thanks for commenting and giving me an algorithm boost, though I would advise watching videos before commenting in the future, it will help your comments be more relevant to the topics covered :)
@@DaniDoyle Nah homie, nah. But good luck with your youtubing!