It's really annoying that Merrin and Yunaka have such decent magic growth as Dagger units, when that's literally the only weapon type without a Magic equivalent
Here me out. I love her design so I wanted her on my madenning run. I left her class alone, put draconic hex on her, and kept Lucina on her so she could back up and inflict poison on foes during chain attacks. She's a huge debuff unit. She is also very high avoidance so she survives easily on avoid tiles.
@@CrazyBreadWithSauce I'd say no because it says that it will only activate when the unit attacks. Even on enemy phase it won't activate, so it even more less so in chain attacks. But at least she will poison them if she equips dagger
Eirika emblem is really good on wolf knight Merrin, fixes damage while keeping speed. Your engage attack also gets a boost as a cav unit. She’s absolutely disgusting with this set up.
Merrin is one of the true zero investment units in Maddening, imo. All she needs is a steel dagger+4 for the whole game with either Lucina for debuff chain attack and cav bond shield, or Eirika for Lunar Brace quaking. Very solid unit, throw a single strength drop her way and she's running with the best of your army.
One thing this guide doesn't really take advantage of is that her magic base is phenomenal. Only one point behind Pandreo. As a Wolf Knight she shines with Levin Sword as a secondary weapon, and as a warrior she's probably the best Radiant Bow user. These also really let her take advantage of Eirika's hybrid phys/mag utility.
Hey Iced Coffee! I just wanted to say I love your videos on fe engage and they’ve been super helpful for me. It’s nice that you spent the time to figure this shit out so I don’t have to! Thanks and keep up the good work!
Momentum helps out quite a bit on Wolf Knight because she should always be moving around a bunch. With a silver dagger with a good engraving you can deal some pretty decent damage. I also gave her Alear's steel sword +5 after I upgraded him to new swords and that does some pretty good damage. I threw Sigurd on her for free momentum + canter and she can use the steel sword +5 when overriding. It doesn't do insane damage but it makes her a super mobile poke debuffer.
I gave her Draconic Hex and Book of worlds from Veronica for Maddening run. Left her on Wolf for daggers Defuffing a single enemy and freezing them and possibly having extra debuffs from Book is insane
Merrin is also really good on Royal Knight (probably the best Royal Knight in the game). Her combo of Strength and Magic make her flexible with her attack options. Flame Lance is pretty much the only decent weapon for lance users vs armored enemies, so her ability to use Flame Lance well makes her pretty unique. Sigurd is a natural fit for this build since Lance Power benefits Flame Lance as well as physical lances, and Sigurd also helps with her Build stat and keeps her from being weighed down.
Merrin was majorly helping my team as a wolf knight mid-game but she started falling off in the later chapters. I should have put draconic hex on her probably because wolf knight really makes more sense as a debuff class
I gave mine a Levin sword +3 and it's pretty decent. Granted she also has byleth so more mag, but still. Gave her draconic hex and she can hit from 2 range with either daggers or Levin sword depending on enemy (often time the Levin sword does more dmg, but daggers poison). Still very strong vs armor and makes her a strong debuff/support style unit (just without staves). She doesn't 1round anything but is very useful nonetheless when I find myself up against something I don't have a good answer for (aka, panette has already 1shot something). Edit: actually thinking about it, my build would probably be much better on Griffin knight due to staff availability 🤔
Merin has a base strength of nine, so I don't think I agree with her having low str base so much as a low str growth. Wyvern knight is a way to patch the low growth and high base to 'fix' her, but the numbers also suggest that a hybrid class like griffin knight can take advantage of her stellar magic base stats. I see Kagetsu and her in a similar light, because they both have excellent bases but sorta need a second seal to push into S tier units. Kagetsu is a better unit in almost every way other than magic, so we might as well spec her into class which takes advantage of her excellent stats, like a mage knight who actually includes swords or a griffin rider with staff utility and a magic weapon.
She was starting to fall behind in damage endgame so I gave her 2 energy drops and she kicked ass. Next time I'll be using a second seal on her so I don't need to give her those energy drops. I'm doing random growths so I can't let her run around with such a low strength growth. That magic base is great though, so she might even be a decent magic knight? She's a really solid unit who could do well in a lot of classes.
I don't know if Im the only one who gave her a swordmaster class and the reason why I gave her that class is because I want to her to actually be a speedy/insta kill/critical hit unit. So I gave her a Marisa bond ring that allows her to insta kill enemies and ike's skills which was wrath. Tbh I never grow tired of her insta killing armored units
For her as a wolf rider, I give her the silver dagger and a Levin sword, both of them forged, she does really good with the Levin for armored units, no need for the armor slayer.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming Ah, I see. The passive damage is non existent for me as I typically only run 1 unit on each class. Plus Byleth is usually on Hortensia as she’s a utility flier. Losing out on Thyrsus sucks but on multiple occasions my sage has been out of position and not be able to goddess dance the right units because of terrain or the lesser movement.
I left her in wolf knight, put chrovin on her, Roy also works great, upgrade a melee and a silver dagger on call it a day, she cries to dead everything while avoiding most damage
Lucina on Alear? When you use bonded shield you're not attacking, so I generally only have lucina on thieves/covert types who can dodge tank and who rarely actually need to attack on player phase
Merrin is, imo, the lowest investment required unit in the game, get bent Mauvier. Merrin just works. Yeah, you can invest in her and make her even better, but basic, out of the box Wolf Knight works great, she's basically Emblem agnostic, but can make great use out of otherwise niche emblems, she does good damage, her speed is enough to rely on, she's just solid. She starts falking off a bit totally uninvested by endgame, but even then, she's fine. I will say, her Magic is good enough to consider a Levin Sword, if you somehow haven't found a home for it yet. Additionally, she'd probably appreciate an Armorslayer over the sword she starts with, because let's be honest, she's NEVER using a Silver Sword over a dagger.
On the last part, you're saying best to run Lucina on Alear which I've been doing as well for 2 runs. Now I'm thinking to give Lucina to someone that uses dagger so that the unit can participate in chain attacks and spread poison to enemies. Now talking about bond shield, I think it should be the same % chance of success except if you run Alear with dragon class right? The only benefit is that Alear has support with all units so it will increase Alear Avoid but not the % chance of bond shield success. I think it is still at 80% and 90% if Alear is in dragon class. THe avoid bonus is nice but during bond shield, most enemies will be hitting your bonded units anyway.
I've found that Speedtaker works well even on already fast units to turn them into Avoid tanks. Stole it from an Alear maddening solo vid that ran Wolf Knight Alear + Lyn, forgot the name
Merrin is definitly my 3rd MVP. Kept her as Wolf Knight gave her Eirika emblem, Draconic Hex, and it's a toss up of Speedtaker or Canter. Weapon Steel Dagger for crit or Silver for a little more damage and Armorslayer and Wyvernslayer.
Her speed and dex truly is the best in the game. Turned her into a berserker to help with her hp and strength and she still gained both spd and dex like crazy and became a heavy hitting avo tank for me
draconic hex is good skills overall, I'd say on bruiser type that can't 1 round enemies. Plus if you leave her on dagger then she will apply poison too.
@@priestessii how is it cheating? i ran alear on wolf knight and had anna shield bonded. i assume you get similar results with merrin. you get the enemies to come close thinking they can damage anna but it doesnt work because she is mage knight. then on player phase you kill them. wolf knight providing assists along the way.
@@priestessii bonds rings arent the problem. the issue i have is people manipulate the rng. there is nothing wrong with mercurius. dunno who would tell you that. micaiah is more busted on an armour knight from what ive seen. the problem with dlc is not that it is cheating. the problem is it is busted. they give you so many resources. and at times in the story you arent supposed to have emblem rings. making those sections a cakewalk. i think you get like 20 silver and silver weapons. like craft any endgame weapon you want. no limits.
I'm starting to think Kagetsu is overrated tbh, every time I start running him he levels slow due to internal level, can't reclass into Wyvern until post CH13, will need to take someone else's upgraded weapon to deal good damage and has some investment that I think is glossed over because of his stats. On CH12 he isn't very good at all due to how the map functions, you can't even reclass him into Griffin due to lack of staff proficiency availability or wyvern due to lack of non-sword second weapon so he is stuck on the ground. On this chapter he tends to lose XP to my Chloe/Lapis wyverns who kill mostly everything, throw Ivy into the mix and he has a hard time getting kills. On CH13, he is just painfully average on swordmaster with little to do/attack, there are 2 emblem rings that don't help him and he can't 1 round at this point. On Ch14 he can finally be put on Wyvern, same as Merrin, but arguably her passive is stronger because it helps ALL FEMALE UNITS hit/avo and she seems to level at a similar rate than him. If I had to pick one, I'd pick merrin every time. She doesn't compete with other units for XP in CH12, joins with 300 more SP, has better supports etc.
@Iced Coffee Gaming yeah I have to admit Kagetsu needs an xp buff carry to keep from falling behind lol. If you have dlc the xp curb is negligible for him but if not you can't do anything to fix his poor xp gains until you get byleth and even then it messes with your positioning because as far as I know mentorship doesn't work on the user of the skill just the adjacent allies.
@Iced Coffee Gaming yeah it basically gives an extra attack when you break, not good for bosses or armored units tho. Yeah the extra attack does only 50% of damage but I like it on faster units to increase their dps output. But I was asking your thoughts if it's worth the cost if you can afford both it and canter lol
Everything else aside, she has S tier coolness. So definitely take that into account. And as warrior, you can see how ripped she is haha.
It's really annoying that Merrin and Yunaka have such decent magic growth as Dagger units, when that's literally the only weapon type without a Magic equivalent
It has one.
But its character locked
@@eldritch-rage I think this fact makes it that much more frustrating
@@longers1028 *e x a c t l y*
Here me out. I love her design so I wanted her on my madenning run. I left her class alone, put draconic hex on her, and kept Lucina on her so she could back up and inflict poison on foes during chain attacks. She's a huge debuff unit. She is also very high avoidance so she survives easily on avoid tiles.
Also Miciah Engrave with Silver Dagger +3 and Wo Dao +3
Alternatively you can do the same thing with anyone and they'd be just as good
But Merrin is a really hefty stat block that can do more
Does Draconic Hex work in chain attacks?
@@CrazyBreadWithSauce I'd say no because it says that it will only activate when the unit attacks. Even on enemy phase it won't activate, so it even more less so in chain attacks. But at least she will poison them if she equips dagger
Sadly no. Specifically tied to when the unit initiates combat. Poison works tho.
Eirika emblem is really good on wolf knight Merrin, fixes damage while keeping speed. Your engage attack also gets a boost as a cav unit. She’s absolutely disgusting with this set up.
Merrin is one of the true zero investment units in Maddening, imo. All she needs is a steel dagger+4 for the whole game with either Lucina for debuff chain attack and cav bond shield, or Eirika for Lunar Brace quaking.
Very solid unit, throw a single strength drop her way and she's running with the best of your army.
One thing this guide doesn't really take advantage of is that her magic base is phenomenal. Only one point behind Pandreo. As a Wolf Knight she shines with Levin Sword as a secondary weapon, and as a warrior she's probably the best Radiant Bow user. These also really let her take advantage of Eirika's hybrid phys/mag utility.
She is good on any class. Unit is honestly just solid.
Hey Iced Coffee! I just wanted to say I love your videos on fe engage and they’ve been super helpful for me. It’s nice that you spent the time to figure this shit out so I don’t have to! Thanks and keep up the good work!
Momentum helps out quite a bit on Wolf Knight because she should always be moving around a bunch. With a silver dagger with a good engraving you can deal some pretty decent damage. I also gave her Alear's steel sword +5 after I upgraded him to new swords and that does some pretty good damage.
I threw Sigurd on her for free momentum + canter and she can use the steel sword +5 when overriding. It doesn't do insane damage but it makes her a super mobile poke debuffer.
I gave her Draconic Hex and Book of worlds from Veronica for Maddening run. Left her on Wolf for daggers
Defuffing a single enemy and freezing them and possibly having extra debuffs from Book is insane
I love these guides.
Merrin is also really good on Royal Knight (probably the best Royal Knight in the game). Her combo of Strength and Magic make her flexible with her attack options. Flame Lance is pretty much the only decent weapon for lance users vs armored enemies, so her ability to use Flame Lance well makes her pretty unique. Sigurd is a natural fit for this build since Lance Power benefits Flame Lance as well as physical lances, and Sigurd also helps with her Build stat and keeps her from being weighed down.
Interesting. Chloé can potentially be even better with that since she has 10% more magic growth and 5% more speed, while still having same str and dex
Merrin was majorly helping my team as a wolf knight mid-game but she started falling off in the later chapters. I should have put draconic hex on her probably because wolf knight really makes more sense as a debuff class
She's so cool 😢
Merrin: Holy Crap! I’m a dragon!
I gave mine a Levin sword +3 and it's pretty decent. Granted she also has byleth so more mag, but still. Gave her draconic hex and she can hit from 2 range with either daggers or Levin sword depending on enemy (often time the Levin sword does more dmg, but daggers poison). Still very strong vs armor and makes her a strong debuff/support style unit (just without staves). She doesn't 1round anything but is very useful nonetheless when I find myself up against something I don't have a good answer for (aka, panette has already 1shot something).
Edit: actually thinking about it, my build would probably be much better on Griffin knight due to staff availability 🤔
Merin has a base strength of nine, so I don't think I agree with her having low str base so much as a low str growth. Wyvern knight is a way to patch the low growth and high base to 'fix' her, but the numbers also suggest that a hybrid class like griffin knight can take advantage of her stellar magic base stats.
I see Kagetsu and her in a similar light, because they both have excellent bases but sorta need a second seal to push into S tier units. Kagetsu is a better unit in almost every way other than magic, so we might as well spec her into class which takes advantage of her excellent stats, like a mage knight who actually includes swords or a griffin rider with staff utility and a magic weapon.
Kagetsu has a worse passive and less starting SP, I think they are pretty similar in terms of relative power/trade offs
13:28 Mans really don't like panette's warrior outfit
She was starting to fall behind in damage endgame so I gave her 2 energy drops and she kicked ass. Next time I'll be using a second seal on her so I don't need to give her those energy drops. I'm doing random growths so I can't let her run around with such a low strength growth.
That magic base is great though, so she might even be a decent magic knight? She's a really solid unit who could do well in a lot of classes.
I don't know if Im the only one who gave her a swordmaster class and the reason why I gave her that class is because I want to her to actually be a speedy/insta kill/critical hit unit. So I gave her a Marisa bond ring that allows her to insta kill enemies and ike's skills which was wrath. Tbh I never grow tired of her insta killing armored units
I was literally just looking for this about a couple of hours ago
For her as a wolf rider, I give her the silver dagger and a Levin sword, both of them forged, she does really good with the Levin for armored units, no need for the armor slayer.
I gave mine Sigurd, Levin Sword+3, Silver Sword, & a Silver dagger, Speed+X and Sword Power. She puts in work vs armors and squishy units
Wolf knight+eirika+forged silver daggers with Leif engraving
I currently have my Merrin as a Qi Adept and she punches the piss shit outta ppl
I know this is a Merrin video but Sage Ivy over Lindwurm? You find 5% mag/dex/res and 15% luck worth losing flying mobility and 1 move? 🧐
He's been messing around with Sages in this particular Maddening run. This mans has like 4 maddening runs going on at the same time 😂
Better more consistent damage passive, no flyer weakness, Byleth siege tome user.
I think it's a bit better in some areas :)
@@IcedCoffeeGaming Ah, I see. The passive damage is non existent for me as I typically only run 1 unit on each class. Plus Byleth is usually on Hortensia as she’s a utility flier. Losing out on Thyrsus sucks but on multiple occasions my sage has been out of position and not be able to goddess dance the right units because of terrain or the lesser movement.
I left her in wolf knight, put chrovin on her, Roy also works great, upgrade a melee and a silver dagger on call it a day, she cries to dead everything while avoiding most damage
Lucina on Alear? When you use bonded shield you're not attacking, so I generally only have lucina on thieves/covert types who can dodge tank and who rarely actually need to attack on player phase
merrin is cool 😎
Merrin is, imo, the lowest investment required unit in the game, get bent Mauvier.
Merrin just works. Yeah, you can invest in her and make her even better, but basic, out of the box Wolf Knight works great, she's basically Emblem agnostic, but can make great use out of otherwise niche emblems, she does good damage, her speed is enough to rely on, she's just solid. She starts falking off a bit totally uninvested by endgame, but even then, she's fine.
I will say, her Magic is good enough to consider a Levin Sword, if you somehow haven't found a home for it yet.
Additionally, she'd probably appreciate an Armorslayer over the sword she starts with, because let's be honest, she's NEVER using a Silver Sword over a dagger.
I put Roy on Merrin on my first run of the game. It's not too bad, glad to see someone else use the Merrin/Roy combo!
On the last part, you're saying best to run Lucina on Alear which I've been doing as well for 2 runs. Now I'm thinking to give Lucina to someone that uses dagger so that the unit can participate in chain attacks and spread poison to enemies. Now talking about bond shield, I think it should be the same % chance of success except if you run Alear with dragon class right? The only benefit is that Alear has support with all units so it will increase Alear Avoid but not the % chance of bond shield success. I think it is still at 80% and 90% if Alear is in dragon class. THe avoid bonus is nice but during bond shield, most enemies will be hitting your bonded units anyway.
I've found that Speedtaker works well even on already fast units to turn them into Avoid tanks. Stole it from an Alear maddening solo vid that ran Wolf Knight Alear + Lyn, forgot the name
Merrin is definitly my 3rd MVP. Kept her as Wolf Knight gave her Eirika emblem, Draconic Hex, and it's a toss up of Speedtaker or Canter. Weapon Steel Dagger for crit or Silver for a little more damage and Armorslayer and Wyvernslayer.
I also kept her on wolf knight and found out I mostly used Levin sword even opposed to silver daggers
Her speed and dex truly is the best in the game. Turned her into a berserker to help with her hp and strength and she still gained both spd and dex like crazy and became a heavy hitting avo tank for me
I’m using Chloe alear (girl) ivy gonna use Hortencia I need a 5th wvyern maybe Merrin is the best 5th option?
@@priestessii I thought merrin was a dude, dang
@@Y2kha that’s very funny to me for some reason
wolf knight merrin = goat roy emblem user
wow i just got to the part where you put roy on her, whoops
Wyvern knight ftw
I just inherited dragonic hex on merrin, is that good?
draconic hex is good skills overall, I'd say on bruiser type that can't 1 round enemies. Plus if you leave her on dagger then she will apply poison too.
@@yohanes2034 ok thanks
keep her on wolf knight. give her lucina.
@@priestessii how is it cheating? i ran alear on wolf knight and had anna shield bonded. i assume you get similar results with merrin.
you get the enemies to come close thinking they can damage anna but it doesnt work because she is mage knight. then on player phase you kill them. wolf knight providing assists along the way.
@@priestessii dagger chain attacks apply poison. Really great with wolf knight.
@@priestessii Using mechanics the game provides you as intended is not in any way "cheating" the game.
@@priestessii Yeah but those people are also wrong
@@priestessii bonds rings arent the problem. the issue i have is people manipulate the rng.
there is nothing wrong with mercurius. dunno who would tell you that. micaiah is more busted on an armour knight from what ive seen.
the problem with dlc is not that it is cheating. the problem is it is busted. they give you so many resources. and at times in the story you arent supposed to have emblem rings. making those sections a cakewalk.
i think you get like 20 silver and silver weapons. like craft any endgame weapon you want. no limits.
She seems like a less powerful kagetsu lol
I'm starting to think Kagetsu is overrated tbh, every time I start running him he levels slow due to internal level, can't reclass into Wyvern until post CH13, will need to take someone else's upgraded weapon to deal good damage and has some investment that I think is glossed over because of his stats.
On CH12 he isn't very good at all due to how the map functions, you can't even reclass him into Griffin due to lack of staff proficiency availability or wyvern due to lack of non-sword second weapon so he is stuck on the ground. On this chapter he tends to lose XP to my Chloe/Lapis wyverns who kill mostly everything, throw Ivy into the mix and he has a hard time getting kills.
On CH13, he is just painfully average on swordmaster with little to do/attack, there are 2 emblem rings that don't help him and he can't 1 round at this point.
On Ch14 he can finally be put on Wyvern, same as Merrin, but arguably her passive is stronger because it helps ALL FEMALE UNITS hit/avo and she seems to level at a similar rate than him.
If I had to pick one, I'd pick merrin every time. She doesn't compete with other units for XP in CH12, joins with 300 more SP, has better supports etc.
@Iced Coffee Gaming yeah I have to admit Kagetsu needs an xp buff carry to keep from falling behind lol. If you have dlc the xp curb is negligible for him but if not you can't do anything to fix his poor xp gains until you get byleth and even then it messes with your positioning because as far as I know mentorship doesn't work on the user of the skill just the adjacent allies.
Off topic but what is your thoughts on break defense if you have the sp to pair it with canter on lapis,alear,and chloe?
Break Defense the Marth skill?
@Iced Coffee Gaming yeah it basically gives an extra attack when you break, not good for bosses or armored units tho. Yeah the extra attack does only 50% of damage but I like it on faster units to increase their dps output. But I was asking your thoughts if it's worth the cost if you can afford both it and canter lol