Fiona: Difference between revisions

Fiona is the only cavalier on Micaiah's team, joining in 1-7. She has poor base stats for both her level and especially her joining time. She struggles to deal damage, hit reliably, dodge, double, or take any hits. She is equal or inferior to base Nolan in every stat except magic and resistance, despite joining seven maps later. Her base Lance rank of C prevents her from quickly using Tauroneo's Silver Lance, as it requires an A rank; she also does not have the skill capacity to equip Discipline or Paragon without promoting, and her strength of 8 is too low for her to weild even an Iron Lance without getting speed penalties: an Iron Lance will reduce her speed by one point, and her starting Steel Lance halves it, leaving her vulnerable to get double attacked, while the Bronze Lance, which is accurate and is light enough for her to use without speed penalties at base, is very weak. She theoretically has high movement and canto, giving her rescue utility, which is further complemented by her innate skill, Savior. However, most of her available Part 1 and 3 chapters hinder her mounted mobility. 1-7 and 1-E, and 3-13 are indoors and have ledges, and 3-6 is a swamp. Indoors chapters have the least penalty to mobility for mounted units, but as she is on a horse, she can't climb ledges unless she gets help from [[Jill]] via rescuing. In general, Fiona can only properly contribute if she is raised via dedicated investment, boss abuse or using Nailah's Glare on a Bishop in 1-E. Otherwise, she will likely be unable to withstand any combat against the laguz in Part 3 and fall permanently behind the level curve. Without investment, Fiona can be two-shotted and one-rounded during the two chapters in Part 1 where she's available.

Fiona has high growths in speed, luck, defense, and resistance and average growths in strength and skill, so she's defensive and has the potential to grow, but she's hard to train. Due to her lackluster bases, her durability will not shine until after her first promotion, and her low health growth limits her bulk. She will likely be reliant on forged Iron or Steel Lances to overcome her starting issues, and lances are the most expensive of the Weapon Triangle to purchase and forge, so that requires investment that can be used on other units such as [[Edward]], [[Nolan]] or [[Jill]]. In tier 2, she will on average cap speed, defense, and resistance by her final levels, so BEXP can be used to help her weaker HP, strength, and skill. She will likely only reach this point by the time most other units have already promoted to Tier 3.

In Part 4, she faces significant difficulties in the second map of every army due to their terrain, although Micaiah's desert is by far the worst, as mounted units have even harsher penalties on the desert. Instead, Ike's second chapters is indoors, so it hinders her movement less. She can face extensive enemy phases to help contribute in rout chapters due to her good bulk finally coming into force, although she may struggle to ORKO more durable units. For endgame, she has respectable stat caps to double many units and take both physical and magical hits, and is capable of using the Wishblade if desired, although her strength issues will continue to persist. While Fiona can be a solid endgame candidate, she ultimately requires an immense amount of babying to get her to a usable point for part 4 and offers nothing unique to endgame.

Fiona has two innate skills, Savior and Imbue. Savior will make sure that her skill and speed won't be halved when she rescues someone, which can be helpful to carry injured or drail units away from danger or pressure, but due to her limited mobility on her available chapters, it's best put on other units like Jill or Volug, or given to Ike's team via Ilyana. If Savior is kept on her, she can help with rescuing ally units in part 3 to open options for other units. Imbue lets her recover HP every turn with an amount equal to her magic, which is 6 at base with 15%, although it is only useful later on when she can reliably survive enemy phase encounters, as at base, it will only heal a quarter of her HP, which while useful, it's not enough to exploit until her growths take effect. The cavalier class cannot equip any useful skills in Tier 1, limiting her options until promotion. Paragon is strongly recommended once she promotes, especially in Part 4, to allow her to catch up, and Adept can partially mitigate her damage issues. Paragon can be obtained as soon as Chapter 1-6 stage 2.