Bartre: Difference between revisions

Bartre joins alongside Dorcas in Chapter 1 of Eliwood mode, and Chapter 2 of Hector mode. Assuming the player went through Lyn mode, Dorcas will already have a significant edge against Bartre, having had some time to grow provided the player used him. That said, on his own merits, Bartre is still trash.

Bartre's base strength is 9. This allows him to dish out decent earlygame damage, especially against sturdy units like cavaliers or knights, who happen to wield lances most of the time (all the time in the case of a knight). He also wields axes, a powerful weapon type with 1-2 range. Sadly, Bartre's defense and resistance are low, having a base of 4 and 0 and a growth of 30% and 25%, respectively, so he isn't what you'd call an ideal frontline unit.

But Bartre's arguably worst aspect is his horrible base speed of 3, unforgivable for even a fighter. For starters, since you need 4 more AS than your enemy to double them, Bartre can't even get rid of the lowest of enemies, soldiers (not that it's the easiest task to get rid of them, but at least everyone else INCLUDING Oswin, an armor knight, can still double them and have better odds of finishing off one), and can't even double knights, whose main weakness just happen to be low speed. What makes this issue even worse is the speed of generic enemies on hard mode. Cavaliers tend to have around 7 to 9 speed, making them a natural predator for the slow fighter, and further hampering him is his constitution of 12. It doesn't sound that bad on paper as it allows him to wield hand axes without a speed penalty, but it comes into play when Bartre needs to use a steel axe in a clutch situation. Not only will his hitrate be low, but if he misses, he most likely GETS doubled. One may look at his speed growth and say "he's faster than Dorcas!" But that is a wrong assumption to make. Even though Bartre may surpass Dorcas in terms of speed eventually if you train him (which you shouldn't), Dorcas still has a base of 6. While not great, it at least allows him to double a few things in the earlygame and even keeps him from getting doubled by every enemy not labeled as a mercenary or myrdmidon. Not to mention that even a 40% growth in speed isn't exactly reliable at all times and you might as well not get speed for a long, long time. Every level up without speed requires you to put 100 Exp into this terrible unit, and you need multiple speed level-ups to even have a decent speed stat. Bartre will just end up not killing anything unless you setup kills for him, considerably slowing your gameplay down. Simply put, Bartre is not a unit worth using. Geitz is a promoted Warrior who can do his job ten times better, with ten more points of base speed and a decent growth in it. Then again, it's also an option to simply not use a warrior at all.

If there is something worth nothing about Bartre, however, is that training him is required to recruit Karla in Hector mode. Though Karla is generally regarded as a "meh" unit, her bases are still decent for the next chapter, "Victory or Death", and she also comes with a Wo Dao, one of the only two in the game. Keep in mind that to do so, Bartre has to be a level 5 Warrior. You might as well Arena abuse him and early promote him if you really wanna use him just to get access to Karla.

 

Other than that, Bartre is just a bad unit, although those who are committed to using him will generally find ''The Blazing Blade'''s difficulty to be pretty easy, what with most enemies having bad stats. Just keep in mind that by using Bartre, you're depriving yourself from a deployment slot which could just as well be filled with a better unit, like a cavalier or a flier.