Vander using Axes also organically guides the player into using him correctly while learning about Engage's weapon triangle implementation. Being one of only two early axe units, Vander is the natural choice to strike first on lance enemies to break them, which also happens to make him deal chip damage on player phase like a Jagen should. Meanwhile, his defense is just low enough to take scratch damage from sword enemies, allowing them to break him. This in turn makes the enemy AI prioritise him over some of your more fragile units, teaching you about enemy targetting priorities while helping Vander tank.
I agree with you completely, Vander feels like they finally learned how to properly balance a Jagen. My only complaint is how tedious it is to level him up, in case you ever want to use him, if you really like his character or something.
DLC really helps with training Vander, I made him a Griffin Knight and paired him with Tiki, he kept up with the army by steadily gaining EXP by being a flying staffbot
I have this exact problem! I think Vander is a really cool character, which is why it sucks to see him fall off so hard just 1/3 of the way into the game.
Staves are the answer. Give him Micaiah, then reclass to a healer class. I went with Royal Knight, it fits him well. The lance from the well also goes great with this. He does need a little bit of speed fixing to not get doubled in Royal Knight, but with his balanced defenses and high hp pool, if you can keep him from getting doubled in combat he can actually remain decently bulky.
Any "Jeigan" archetype that doesn't kill enemies in one hit is good, because he lets you actually use every character and breeze through the battle field while keeping EXP distribution healthy.
After Three Houses frustratingly didn't make Jeralt playable in the early game as a Jagen, it's nice to see that Engage has one with Vander. Having a Jagen early on in Engage is very helpful especially on Maddening, and Three Houses not having one really just showed why they're essential.
@angquangnguyenthac2833 what are you babbling about? Byleth is not a Jagen, they have the same level or around the same as the students and you need to train them the same
Modding Fire Emblem games made me realize my favorite Jagen design, was basically a paladin with a Fighter/Warrior-esque stat spread. Enough Strength to lower an enemy's HP significantly. Not enough Speed to reliably double most things. Enough skill to reliably hit High HP to survive enemy phase But mediocre Defense, so they well be in trouble if they try to solo Vander was basically what I wanted Jagens to be after experimenting with them in modding. Except my Jagens had more skill. Maybe that will be fixed in the next FE.
Great video, I definitely agree. Out of the FE games I’ve played tho, I think FE6 Marcus is better designed. He’s got all the strengths Vander has, but in in a game where a lot of the early game growth units are very much worth training, comes with the Silver Lance, and offers GBA mounted utility even past his expiration date. But Vander is easily the best designed Jagen we’ve had in a while.
Vander is on par with FE6 Marcus as a really good example of a jagen They both even have a really similar first map impression of being able to damage enemies just low enough for alear/anyone in Roy's squad to take a kill I'd still argue that FE6 Marcus is a better jagen as 1. He comes with the obligatory silver lance, which does really help bail out of sticky situations in the more difficult FE6 early game, 2. He has surprisingly good to perfect accuracy (for FE6) with an iron sword 3. Rescue dropping and canto means Marcus will have some additional utility use post ostia arc if you really still want to use him
I’ve just started playing through FE6, I’m on chapter 3 but Marcus is too fast, he doubles and kills everything. I’ve just been throwing him at the side objectives and using Alan to tank and Lance for dodge tank mostly
@@m3m3nt0m0r1_ Yeah, they're probably thinking of specifically FE6 hard mode with Marcus, where he leaves most enemies with just enough health to be finished off by anyone else.
Engage is astoundingly well thought out from a gameplay perspective. And Vander is a great example. An interesting point about the lack of silver axe though: Having one would actually be really problematic for Vander. His main role is as a tank, but as an HP tank more than a defense tank. As an HP tank, he really doesn't like getting doubled, and he'll get doubled by almost everything if he had a silver axe. I've found that to use Vander most effectively, I add a compact axe to his arsenal, and actually find it to be his best primary weapon. This gives him only a point of extra speed, but combined with a speed bond ring, it's sufficient to prevent almost all enemies from doubling him. This also makes it so Framme can chain guard him against Sword Fighters and prevent him from being broken. It also fixes the accuracy issue. I play in maddening, so the compact axe is likely not very useful for hard and lower. But the silver axe would be detrimental in all difficulties I believe.
I still think that if they swapped Vander and Clanne's personals it'd be much better Anywho, for my first playthrough (hard/classic), Vander managed to feel a nearly unlikable monster for chapter 1 and 2 (barring one scary moment with a ridersbane...) a solidly useful unit in 3 and 4, just okay in 5 and 6, and just around then is when I started to bench him because I liked other units better. I saw him in the opening cut scene and I was like, "oh look, it's the Jaegen!"
The "Jeigans" have always been recognizable in Fire Emblem games since they're almost always old men in big paladin armors. Only Thracia 776 subverted this stereotype by having your overpowered mentor being a female swordsmaster instead.
I spit in the face of this excellent video. Vander came with me on every map on my Maddening playthrough. I fed him every stat booster. I made him the king of Engage. I also gave him Hector so he could actually do some damage.
I will say something I love about vander is you can make him work long term. He gets the most value out of the arena early on due to his level and he’s one of the best people to give Sigurd to so he will be great at slowly keeping up and unlocking canto to consistently be a set up guy in the late game. He also consistently stays one of the few units that’s obviously goog at eating hits and I found him to be a great great knight and a solid wyvern to play a supporting role on the team. So if you really want to use him he’s Totally usable. He just gets out classed if you don’t. This makes him better in some regards than marcus because of you want to use marcus in 6 tough luck he has to fall off.
Maybe its because my first FE was Awakening and I haven't played any older ones, but I really like Frederick. I like that once you catch up to him, he doesn't become irrelevant. But eh, I'm sentimental and don't like leaving people behind.
You mentioned a few details about this but my favorite thing about Jagens is learning to use them on the highest difficulty. I'm the type of player to try to give as few combats as possible to my Jagen, even when I was new to the series, so learning to play around them when the enemies were stronger was a fun learning curve.
For as much as I like to clown on him. Vander is a great Jagen. In my Reverse Recruitment. Mauvier is so strong he can just one round enemies. Which actually just meant for me that I benched him faster. He stole XP from my other units and couldn't chip, even his staff utility wasn't that helpful since I wanted other units to get staff XP. I find base Vander helpful up until the end of chapter 11, since he's much bulkier, and Mauvier was benched as soon as he was competing for a deployment slot.
You can tell Vander is a balanced jagen because a lot of people say he is useless. I do think his starting internal level could have been lowered a bit tho, just to make him slightly more usable in the long term.
I dunno, I feel they overtuned him to fall off too hard. It's not only that it becomes inefficient to use him, but he straight up becomes unvaible without an astronomical amount of exp to even get him on par. Personally I feel the perfect balance is a unit like Fredrick in Awakening, where he fulfils his purpose in teaching you strategy, allows for you to rely on him as a shield or heavy hitter in the early game, but still falls off enough that your other units can show their growth but not so much that you couldn't make him work with a bit of effort.
He’s still usable long term just because of how broken some engage weapons are. Basically anyone can one round late game with seraphim and that includes vander
The frustrating part is that Vander's personal skills other half is a great starting point for a way to make him more useful long-term. If he'd give alear a less negligible amount of crit, and maybe he'd get hit in exchange instead, or maybe some other buffs in the vein of Gunther, he could remain an interesting deploy as an Alear support bot even after his own combat was past its peak. While Jagens should fall off, imo they should still have some reason for deployment, such as how FE6 Marcus still has cav utility and can give support bonuses.
My take is we need more Snipers jagen. FE9 Shinon with iron bow is good to almost not kill the enemies (unless he crit with the 10% class bonus in English versions) and can tank some hits. And TRS has a Sniper with mercy skill. Limiting your Jagen combat to player phase only is a good way of not making a solo run in the early game while feeding kills to other units.
I haven't been paying too much attention to engage discussions (just got the game and I'm on chapter 10 hard mode) but I didnt understand why I kept hearing he was bad. And I'm glad I'm not some out of the loop hard mode players because I genuinely adore Vander as a jagen he is so well balanced as one and I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that. Great videos keep up the good work :)
None of this has kept me from keeping my High Priest Vandad all the way up to chapter 21. He's gonna kill Sombron, watch. Anyway, excellent video. I agree wholeheartedly, from the start Vander struck me as a super solid Jeigan. Up there with FE12!Arran and FE6!Marcus, one of the greats, and there are ways to keep him viable if you like him that much. That personal, though. I even tried to get meme use out of it, but 5 crit is just horrendous. On the topic of Vander's accuracy, thinking about it, I'm wondering if his accuracy isn't somewhat shaky on purpose. He has exactly enough base SP to get hit +10, which as you said, solves this problem well and doesn't hurt to do since Vander isn't intended as a long-term unit. Perhaps they did this to organically show the player the usefulness of skill inheritance?
my only gripe is that Vander really should have been internal level 10/1 rather than 15/1. there would be valuable utility in leveling him up to 5 to learn Pivot and just be a 6 mov reposition bot if it was actually possible to level him without excessive arena grinding. but i still end up using him through at least chapter 11 on each run - he's fast enough to not get doubled and has a big HP pool to eat a few hits and chip away and that's all you really need him to be
I agree with you in that vander is an excellent example of a jagen for earlygame, but the problem that I have with him, is that he’s the only unit who’s mostly impossible to make viable for long term, even with engages mechanics and resources. The only thing you can do with him is put him on staff utility, but so many more units can do that role better than him as staff utility
I was about to write off this video after a few minutes in, but I think it’s a mixed bag of good and bad ideas. At the end of the day, I figure a unit is a unit. If they’re a Jagen then use them until they fall off but if they’re an oifey then that’s not a bad thing. It just means they can ride with your army than sitting on the sidelines. The problems come when you focus on these units rather than using others
Really love this video! I thought about his hit rate being a flaw, yes making him more reliable would be objectively better but also I wonder if his low hit rate helps teach new players about hit rate problems. Vander is durable so if you do miss he’s likely too survive still so new players can learn about the danger of low hit rate without the harsh penalty of a player death. You also mentioned he’s great to test SP skill spending on so he also may serve as a great unit to learn about picking good skills to inherit for units weaknesses. I don’t know if this possible built in tutorial is worth being less reliable but it could be an interesting intentional design :-)
My issue with Vander is his internal level being so high (15) when it's so overkill, I think a internal level of 10/12 would make him just flow better, since that's Beginning of Brodia where he could get slightly more exp to atleast teach players about his Lower growths or let Jagen chads actually use him. Second issue with him is his lack of reclassing, since SD, Jagens always had the benefit of having fun and useful support tier reclasses like Wyvern/Sage Jagen, Wyvern Fred (though awakening itself is eh), Wyvern Gunter for early Rally Def, Felicia and Jakob getting early skills, etc. Vander meanwhile doesn't offer anything really due to the way the engage reclassing works and how late you get second seals, though you do save a master seal on him. Third is the Lack of a "Silver Lance" for Vander, He's just stuck to the Iron Axe, Fe6 Marcus On HM is a perfect example of that where Iron Sword chips and silver lance is a emergency Nuke. (Atleast DLC now gives you a silver axe, but it's far too late).
I agree, that's what I meant when I said towards the end that sadly the rest of Engage is not so kind to early game units, which does make Vander's role in feeding them kills a bit less important.
I think one solution to the silver axe problem would be to give the Vander an exclusive personal weapon. Call it "Vander's Axe" where it has the same stats as a silver, but is locked to Vander and can't be forged/engraved because "Vander lets no one touch his axe". Could even play into his supports.
Instructions unclear. I now have a level 7 Great Knight Vander with Ike ring on the retaking Solm map. Jokes aside, he kinda kicking ass tho with a +5 Hammer and a +2 Hurricane axe for effective damage. He legitimately got so much HP he's a pretty okay user of Ike ring. If he had some more Str or Mag he'd be oneshotting without needing so many refined, but maddening would make me get those refines sooner or later with the sheer bulk of enemies, and it beinf my second playthrough that I call the tough guy run. Every unit I use must either be able to punch someone really hard or Axe chop someone really hard. No other weapons unless they come with a class that can do the other two previously mentioned, except books. Books are for NERDS, not TOUGH GUYS. Yeah, that's why I needed that Hammer and Hurricane Axe anyway. But Vander uses em alright. Got a +3 Armorslayer anyway for a non Ike user. Wonder if I can beat the game like this? Hopefully I can use Vander all the way till the end. If ya read this far, I might post an update months later if I did beat the game or couldn't beat the game like this.
To me the hallmark of an ideal Jagen: 1. Strong enough to solo the entire early game, that is, no enemy can concievably kill him unless you let them. Not even bosses 2. Eventuall falls off gracefully or at least ends up with equal stats with everyone the moment they get promoted 3. Adept at weakening and setting up kills. This usually means that the best Jagens don't ORKO the enemy, but rather leaves them with 1-2 HP. This is the reason I love Jakob and Felicia so much (even though they don't technically fall off and neither do Ryoma/Xander) because their daggers really soften up the enemies
I think I'm cooking over here with my idea to give Vander the coveted "silver lance nuke" button along with also helping out the other stewards. My idea is to have a paralogue for the "steward weapons" while giving Vander his "steward weapon" at base for him to use for big damage at the start, like a PRF weapon (or like Alear's weapon you get before the final chapter). The idea is that it's a trial for all stewards to tackle once the time is right. Clanne and Framme could gain their own weapons/items specific to them to give them more focus as the Divine Dragon's caretakers, while also being able to briefly examine how a steward is chosen. This could also promote reclassing as Clanne's MAG growth sucks and he could get a physical weapon to take advantage of his higher STR growth. This solves the problem of having the silver weapon just being passed around and would give Vander that powerful weapon when he needed it.
when I've heard about the personal skill I think either a skill that supports other characters by enhancing them or make him not being able to crit or get critted could work I feel would fit the mentor or veteran archetypes as they get older they know how to manage troops/deal with tricky enemies because of their experiences but dont go all guns blazing because of their age and goals having shifted.
A Jegan I like is Sothe in Radiant Dawn. He is very tough early in the game, but falls short towards the end of the first part of the game. He is very accurate and if he uses bronze knives he can hit 1-2 range without ever criting. If you want to delete something, he can use better weapons like Beast Killer. He can steal and open doors and chests as well. He starts with maxed Support with Micaiah and take hits for her if he's next to her.
I reached chapter 25, and I'm attempting to max out Vander just for the sake of dialogue! I attempted getting dialogue in Sigurd's trial map, and failed miserably, because he's very underleveled.
I think you're spot on with pretty much everything in this video. I wish you weren't though because I think Vander is cool. Seeing him fall off the way he does is a bit of a letdown. Even if it truly does make him align better with what his role as a Jagen is supposed to be.
I only wish they gave u a second seal earlier so you could fool around with reclassing him giving vander an even more niche role - the only unit who could reclass into some advanced classes early.
I think fe5 and Langrisser 1 have the best Jagens cause they have kategame ready bsses and just get killed when the gane's like "ok you're ready now" (well fe5's a little more complicated but you get my point)
Berwick Saga's fix for the Jagen problem is simple. (Speed-based) Doubling isn't a thing. So Ward is super strong and when he hits he chunks enemies, but he never kills them solo. Eventually your other units get skills or prf weapons that allow them to occasionally double or one-shot and they grow to surpass Ward offensively by virtue of that fact.
I keep him on my party till the last chapter. Surprisingly he's really good as Great Knight over Paladin xD As much It does tempting me to make him into other jobs like Mage Knight or other.
If only he had jeralt’s personal skill. Also another problem with vander is he becomes outclassed in his role by Louis very quickly especially with sigurd. It’s entirely sensible for him to be the first unit benched because Louis and Chloe are just strong enough to handle most physical and magical threats respectively and also are some of the better early units long term
If you want to keep him a bit longer you can give him one of the armored classes as a reclass since he won't be able to reach high enough speed (except for specific speed stacking builds) to not get doubled anyways as a Paladin. This will only extend his time away from the bench for a few chapters though.
He actually seems very simular to shadow dragon jagen IF you dont forge him a riders bane or reclass him. Personally i like it when the jagen has some long term viability such as gunter as a corrin stat back pack or sothe as a thief but vander doesn't even have a small niche. +5 crit on alear is the only thing he can do that others cant and his stats are so bad that hes relegated to staff use and chipping enemies with the flmae lance as a grypon rider if you want him to be useful and even then the only reason you would do this is to challenge yourself
I think one of the big problem for havens is that they can kill tons of enemies in enemy phase while I feel in player phase they’re more balanced because they can only kill 1 ☝️. Having the ability to eleminate a big target is great! Maybe a way to have your cake and it too you could split the jagen’s function- delete ealry game enemies and tank a lot of damage- into 2. A squishy but high damage prepromote that has limited ealry game growth, and a defensive character that will not be one rounding units.
One point I think should be mentioned is how the break system affects the functionality of a Jagan. With the break system in play, and many early game enemies in Engage being sword users (unlike the typical Axe fiesta), Vander simply cant solo the game, even early on. On the plus side, he has the additional utility of being a break bot against lance users, which happen to be something Alear loves to see and would struggle against without the assistance of him or the Bouche. I disliked using Vander in my hard classic run, but I am 4 chapters into my first maddening run and I can see how his utility shines and how useful he is. His low speed, if anything, benefits him in doing the jobs Jagans are supposed to do as well, since he rarely kills save for the Jagan-tax/crits.
Vander is the perfect Jagan in a game where all characters besides Vander are late game viable. I hate how good of a Jagan they made him lol. I count the dlc stat boosters as the "put Vander on par" boosters.
I'm gonna say it; there's no need for stubbornly fixating on "archetypes" and there isn't anything wrong with a 'jaegan' still being usable full-game. ideally EVERY unit should be usable full-game, but Vander is perhaps the one unit who genuinely just can't keep up, at least on maddening. They don't need to be overbearing, much as don't like awakening fredrick is a solid enough combat unit for the whole game even if other units catch up to him, and with pairup mechanics he makes a fantastic backpack thanks to the good bonuses (hello +1 movement) from great knight.
There's nothing wrong with a jagen being usable for the full game, but Its a problem when a jagen remains your best unit for the whole game. Sacred stones is the perfect example, where Seth is so strong that he invalidates most of the cast. I agree that Frederick is pretty healthy in his game. I don't think every unit needs to be usable for the entire game as long as the game signals to you that you shouldn't heavily invest in units that are only good for the early game. Engage does that well with Vander. And if you really want to use him for the whole game you can, Engage has enough tools to make any unit useful.
I'd add a little caveat based on experience: Seth kinda falls off lategame as the Franzes and Kyles and Fordes and Cavalier! Amelias even grow and grow and grow while Seth's ceiling approcahes fast. In post-game even, I find him too susceptible to Stone Gorgons, which leave him open to crits that do kill. Making my own FE8 currently, and my Jagen is a Valkyrie. Her niche is that she's your only way to access Physic from Ch1 and only magic unit until Ch2.
My favourite jagens are Dagdar and Frederick, because you can use them long term if you want to. They're (usually) not gonna be as good as training projects, but they're viable. I really like Gunter as a character, but there's very little reason to use him after ch3. In Conquest he's ok filler, but in Rev he's the first of many, many... many units that join underleveled/underpowered. He starts getting doubled and two rounded one chapter after he joins and with very low growths there's no hope for him improving. Thing with FE7 Marcus and Seth is that their games are easy enough that you can get away with using them exclusively. FE7 to a lesser extent, in Hector Hard Mode you're gonna struggle if you only use Marcus, but in FE8 there's absolutely nothing stopping you from soloing the game with Seth.
Unit Feel and Lore are important. Seth is a young veteran so he gets to be OP. Titania not an old lady. Ditto? Vander, maybe he has silver hsir plus he doesn,t have wrinkles on his skin. In my custom Fire Emblem game that is on a tabletop setting our Jagen is a woman still in her prime with 35 with hp, 19 str, 21 dex and spd, 11 lck, 13 def and 6 res at level 17, tier 2. This is because of how our stat system works and everyone abides by it, not to mention e ertone gets the same 60 levelsmto grow? Besides, vows completsly zone this Jagen out and we hesitate to get her too close when we see an archer on the grid. If I were to do a Lex Talionsis version, i would change nothing. ------- This comment section needs a contrarion
Frederick is the best jegen, you can give hem robin bronze sword to set up kills for other units while also being able to 1shot with silver lance, the same cannoy be said about vander. .Barely tankier that your other units .leaves enemies to 1hp even when you need hem to kill A jegen should be use to set up kills for other units but can 1 round them when needed but vander will only set up kills and nothing else
As long as they're serving as a crutch character that lets n00bs experience enough of the game to become interested in the game, they're doing their job as Jagens imho.
That's literally the point of why there is a distinction between the jagen and the oifey. Even if you don't like it the defining purpose is that jagens help you develop your army then fall off instead of being consistently powerful.
As someone who wants some of my early game units to be levelled as much as possible, Vander critting on 3 to 5% was annoying in its own right, and thats not even counting for him being next to Alear.
I think the best jagen by far in design are og jagen and FE10 sothe, one can contribute long term even with atrocious growths and the other will contribute with the thief class. I think FE games should start experimenting with other classes for jagens like armor knight or hero, they can make them unique and good in the early game with high defenses and medium to low speeds, with stuff like growths and reclassing you can make an amazing unit midgame great in the mid/late game like FE5 Dagdar and FE5 Eyvel
Vander is a bit of an odd case in engage. I actually find him to be more useful on higher difficulties (especially maddening) where early game growth units have a much harder time catching up to him in general. It’s kind of funny when I think about it.
I think fe6 Marcus is the perfect Jagen. He can perfectly weaken units in the first couple chapters, or hit them with the Silver Lance if you’re in a pinch, he’s quite bulky so he can safely take several hits from fe6’s strong early game enemies, and his skill and luck are high enough that he can reliably hit. Plus while his bases are quite good, his 9 base strength will very quickly get surpassed, so he undeniably still falls off. His only real issues are the fe6’s early enemies are so strong that even Marcus with the Silver Lance fails to one round them pretty quickly, which is kinda annoying, plus I wish he started with D axes so he could use the halberd from the get go. Like, I get it gives Lot and Wade their own unique utility, but they’re never hitting anything with that and it’s annoying to actually have to train up a Jagen to use it.
i like Vander more as a character than i do a unit. but thats because i dont care much for jagen's. i see the appeal, and i definitly abuse their benefits, but i never feel good about using them, outside of seth and titania (9 not 10).
I am a dump Jagens as soon as they can kinda of player. I like the challenge it give early game and rarely do I suffer from doing that. so I am not the kind that to ask what makes a one good. But I do recognize they use as a solid rock for early game. but like any rock on the road you it should just end up a stepping stone towards the end. But having a Titania or Seth for a while can be fun. I won't pretend it's not for me.
On maddening I use vander for only chapter 2 and 4. On hard, none. I will say though, for maddening those 2 chapters are crucial, but even 5 isn't that different with or without him
The perfect "Jagen" has high hit and no crit chance. So low base and growth in Dex/Skl with a high accuracy weapon and/or hit chance improving personal skill and/or hit increasing class skill.
I think setting up kills for your weaker units is part of the charm, and a jaegan that has multiple sources of crit . Steel Axe also having crit makes it lot more likely His base defense is exactly the same as Alcryst and Alfred as well, shaky hit rates, chain attack bait, and cripplingly low res. Jaegens have more worth to a team than setting up kills and taking damage, and I'd argue that vander isn't even good at that on maddening. A single GBA esque side objective is too much for him. He's not surviving combat with enough enemies to get to that village for you the way marcus does. He doesn't need to be seth or titania, but he could stand to be a lot better. On maddening I doubt he survives past the yunaka map without aggressive turnwheeling
I agree his hit rate is so annoying. And I wish he had a silver axe. Becuase of those 2 things he seemed underwhelming to me. But he does do what a jagan should do and doesn't trivialize the game.
Tbh jagen should have big growths just because he's lvl 15 and he gets no exp ever and his bases are so so so bad that when he can get some exp he can't do anything
Vander should have had double his skill on early game IMO. FE6 marcus having 14 base skill makes him the hest axe user early since the early axe users cant hit anything with their non-existent skill
My issue with Vander is that he is the worst of both worlds as a unit in that he had awful growths and bad bases. In previous games there was a lower power ceiling so even the bad Jaigens can fill roles in mid to end game maps because of their good bases. Vander has nothing going for him because his bases are worse than mid game units and his growths do not address his survivability or his damage
Vander is balanced gameplay wise, but as a support completionist, his uselessness in battle after a certain point makes it super annoying to grind support levels with characters other than alear
Vander reminds me of the old Gamefaqs days of FE discussion where people were describing Marcus as this awful unit that will steal your EXP and make the lategame harder, only Vander is actually like that. Vander's bases aren't very good, his personal skill is trash, his S rank in axes was close to pointless in the base version of the game as there were no high rank axes to use in the earlygame, his bulk is nice, but quickly falls off thanks to enemy chain attacks and worse of all, because he uses axes his hitrates are often quite shaky even in the earlygame which makes him bad at his only job. He's not the worst unit in Engage and the update did give him some nice benefits, but overall Vander is among the worst "Jagens" we've had in the series. The main problem with Vander is that the "Jagen" archetype doesn't really have a reason to exist in the modern FE. Modern FE isn't like older FE where it's expected you often swap out your army and don't reset once you lose a unit. In those games, having a strong unit that can carry you through the earlygame made sense, but with the emblem rings being so strong it just goes to show Vander's lack of true reason to exist. I question why this supposed idea of a Jagen falling off is held as some gold standard in the community considering that the entire rest of Engage's cast are supposed to be units you can use for the entire games (in theory) and the existence of extremely powerful units like Kagetsu or classes like swordmaster being almost useless while wyverns are once again one of the best units in the game shows that IS isn't losing sleep over making the game balanced. As such, it feels like a the only reason why Vander exists is because IS felt pressured to include a "Jagen" as Engage is supposed to be a celebration of the series, despite him not really fitting in at all.
This video reminds me why i hate fe9 titania so much. Literally a touch of death character for the entire early game. Literally cant set up kill for anyone so everyone stays bad unless you bexp. I find I'm often trying to tank her speed by rescuing someone so i can get other units off the ground. Feels pretty bad when optimal play is solo with titania, recruit marcia, full bexp marcia, solo with marcia.
Honestly Vander is a pretty terrible unit, at least within engage. Engage relies heavily on inherited skills, emblems, and reclassing for units to get powerfull, or in some cases even just to get usefull. Due to his high internal level Vander never gets to use most of those mechanics. Having above average stats simply isn't that important in Engage in comparison to those skills. On top of that the break mechanic completly screws him over due to how many sword wielders there are in the early game. Which leaves him as a dissapointing stat-stick that doesn't do anything particularly interesting before being benched. As for the "problem" of the powerfull Jagens like Seth. You could just not solo the early chapters with one unit... Noone's making you do that. Simply don't min-max the fun out of things...
I'm sorry but no, Vander getting less exp than everyone is stupid. I like to grind up all my units and make them the best they can be but his slow growth and engage's bad level scaling for random encounters means even people playing on casual mode are forced to bench him because he just can't keep up. And the majority of his existence is spent in arena where he also gets his butt kicked by emblems and all the other units and gets less xp as a result because engage hates losers and has no time for anyone that falls behind whether that's from low bst and being unable to keep up or units that can't get caught up if they aren't used for a bit.
@@pksprite6401 no I understand the point of the video. I'm just saying that it doesn't hold up with Engage's terrible level scaling system that can make even good units fall behind from even minimal lack of use. And this compounding with Vander's lower exp rate means that you'll likely be dropping him even earlier than most other Jagens. He can't keep up because Engage doesn't let anyone get caught up even on the lowest difficulty.
@@dustinvance243 ??? Vander is solid enough up until around chapter 10 or so, that’s about on par with the other Jagen’s that actually fall off. Vander doesn’t need to catch up and he doesn’t need to be grinded, his role is to be good in the early game, and that’s exactly what he is.
@@pksprite6401 he's immediately outclassed by alfred as soon as you get him and that's in chapter three. THREE! And Alfred's not even promoted yet! the game gives you a cavalry lord to replace him immediately because it knows he will never be as good as any of the other units and with Engage's dumb power scaling he can never be caught up. Vander can never be good outside of the frickin tutorial levels and it's all because of this game's arbitrary power scaling.
@@dustinvance243 Vander has better stats than base Alfred across the board and 1 more point of movement, so that clearly isn’t true lol. It’ll take Alfred a bit to catch surpass Vander, which is the whole point of Jagens. You can keep bitching about “muh power scaling” all you want, but that really isn’t a big deal for Vander since he really isn’t supposed to be used outside of the early game regardless. He’s fine for about 10 chapters. (And even if Alfred was an immediate replacement for Vander, that wouldn’t make Vander any worse; deployment slots early on aren’t all too tight, and just saying that Alfred is better isn’t a good argument for Vander being bad)
Vander is an awful Jagen, he is rendered obsolete as soon as chapter 5 when you get start of map access to an armor knight. I say this because of his offensive pressure in the early game is so poor that his "chip" still needs 2 of your baby units to kill a non-mage, bar Etie and Celine. So his main value is taking hits, yes that is very valuable against the chapter 6 boss that either one-shots or nearly one-shots the entire cast bar him and Louis. No he should not be deployed for 8-11 chapters (5-8 chapters since you can't undeploy units till chapter 4) as he is far past his expiration in the chapter 10 events. The only part of the game where I see him needed beyond being early game deployment filler is chapter 2 to face tank Lumera. As such I undeploy him after chapter 7 or just get him killed on chapter 3/4 and see no spike in difficulty. Play the same as always use Louis to bait enemies kill armor units with mages. If Vander had the utility of being a non once per 4 turns delete button (as that is the fastest you can get an engage attack back it) or being fast enough to double/just doing enough damage to nearly one shot as to better set up kills then he would be fine. Still a low tier unit since engage early game, while fun, is very easy. Yes all of this is on maddening I started the game on the difficulty and have never gone down. 6:05 no just no, he has base 500 SP and due to his slow exp gain even if you are willing to give him an emblem ring he would never really hit a point of inheriting something that the base 500 would not allow, so no getting one or two without save resetting. Not to mention that none of the skills worth inheriting at that point in the game are very good. Marth: gives avoid (other things like break defense but that is 2000 so no on Vander) which is unneeded give that he is so bulky, 40 HP, and Unyielding which can be decent I guess, "heal 8 HP if at or below 8 HP at start of player phase". Siguard gives canto, he can't afford, hit +X, is good because Axes but not really a learning moment since it is just oh guy hits 10% more (not true because hybrid RN but who cares), and imunity to freeze which is irrelevant for the time in the game when Vander is used. I am skipping Celica for obvious reasons, favored food could be decent though. Same thing for Micaiah, having her equipped to heal is nice but it takes away an EXP farm from another character and has no value for inheritable skills. Roy maybe, strength +1 is just a numbers increase so whatever, but advance is something that can be learned through Vander if not through Diamant when he has the ring equipped. And Lief would leave the player thinking incorrectly, build +X is fine not that Vander would be doubleing at that point in the game even with build +5 but whatever, arms shield is like advance but more intentional since you might not notice arms shield at all since it is a passive tank ability as opposed to the conscious that is advance, but Vander makes Vantage look awful by being so bad offensively activating vantage will rarely end in a kill meaning the a low health Vander is enemy phasing for nothing. Clearly Vander is a better Jagen than Jagens like Seth, Marcus, and Titania who are your best unit till for a dozen chapters or so and stay relevant till near the end of the game.
FE7 Marcus, Seth, and FE9 Titania being as strong as they are are precisely why they are bad Jagens. The point of the video is that Vander is useful for the very early game when most of your army are scrubs and then you bench him once the big boys and girls get going.
@@cartooncritic7045 Read the last paragraph, it says he is a better Jagen. Here... "Clearly Vander is a better Jagen than Jagens like Seth, Marcus, and Titania who are your best unit till for a dozen chapters or so and stay relevant till near the end of the game." Please read the comment if you want to argue about it. I never said he was worse than them. And he is still a bad Jagen his job as a hit taker is removed in chapter 4/5 when Louis joins. Since his damage/speed is low and has axes so even when he can do damage he is still not consistent at it. For gods sake he does no damage to the bosses of chapter 3/4 you need Clanne/Celine and Alear true damage to hit kill them. TLDR: He is still a bad Jagen just in a reverse way of Seth and the like, he is not strong enough to contribute damage noticeably better than his peers, bar Framme. And is replaced in his role as early as chapter 4. Only reason you keep deploying him after is because you are down a deployment slot if you don't, as there is no filler units this early in the game.
Vander using Axes also organically guides the player into using him correctly while learning about Engage's weapon triangle implementation. Being one of only two early axe units, Vander is the natural choice to strike first on lance enemies to break them, which also happens to make him deal chip damage on player phase like a Jagen should. Meanwhile, his defense is just low enough to take scratch damage from sword enemies, allowing them to break him. This in turn makes the enemy AI prioritise him over some of your more fragile units, teaching you about enemy targetting priorities while helping Vander tank.
I agree with you completely, Vander feels like they finally learned how to properly balance a Jagen. My only complaint is how tedious it is to level him up, in case you ever want to use him, if you really like his character or something.
DLC really helps with training Vander, I made him a Griffin Knight and paired him with Tiki, he kept up with the army by steadily gaining EXP by being a flying staffbot
I have this exact problem! I think Vander is a really cool character, which is why it sucks to see him fall off so hard just 1/3 of the way into the game.
Staves are the answer. Give him Micaiah, then reclass to a healer class. I went with Royal Knight, it fits him well. The lance from the well also goes great with this.
He does need a little bit of speed fixing to not get doubled in Royal Knight, but with his balanced defenses and high hp pool, if you can keep him from getting doubled in combat he can actually remain decently bulky.
His personal skill should have been something like this:
Playing it safe: this unit cannot crit but instead adds crit to hit.
Any "Jeigan" archetype that doesn't kill enemies in one hit is good, because he lets you actually use every character and breeze through the battle field while keeping EXP distribution healthy.
After Three Houses frustratingly didn't make Jeralt playable in the early game as a Jagen, it's nice to see that Engage has one with Vander. Having a Jagen early on in Engage is very helpful especially on Maddening, and Three Houses not having one really just showed why they're essential.
that's more because 3H Jagen is ......Byleth. Or moreso he/she is the one that is probably gonna bail you out of a shit spot earlier on.
@@angquangnguyenthac2833 I am not counting Byleth as a Jagen at all
@angquangnguyenthac2833 what are you babbling about? Byleth is not a Jagen, they have the same level or around the same as the students and you need to train them the same
@@angquangnguyenthac2833 *me treating Byleth like a jagen and seeing them die instantly on the first map* huh. Weird. Why didn't that work.
@@Manavine Because Jagens aren't meant to carry the map alone?
Modding Fire Emblem games made me realize my favorite Jagen design, was basically a paladin with a Fighter/Warrior-esque stat spread.
Enough Strength to lower an enemy's HP significantly.
Not enough Speed to reliably double most things.
Enough skill to reliably hit
High HP to survive enemy phase But mediocre Defense, so they well be in trouble if they try to solo
Vander was basically what I wanted Jagens to be after experimenting with them in modding. Except my Jagens had more skill. Maybe that will be fixed in the next FE.
So dagda?
@@Neogears1312 Dagda on a horse.
This is what I’ve been saying, strong but not too strong and sets up kills for your little squishy fellas and his big 40 hp is neat.
Great video, I definitely agree. Out of the FE games I’ve played tho, I think FE6 Marcus is better designed. He’s got all the strengths Vander has, but in in a game where a lot of the early game growth units are very much worth training, comes with the Silver Lance, and offers GBA mounted utility even past his expiration date. But Vander is easily the best designed Jagen we’ve had in a while.
Vander is on par with FE6 Marcus as a really good example of a jagen
They both even have a really similar first map impression of being able to damage enemies just low enough for alear/anyone in Roy's squad to take a kill
I'd still argue that FE6 Marcus is a better jagen as
1. He comes with the obligatory silver lance, which does really help bail out of sticky situations in the more difficult FE6 early game,
2. He has surprisingly good to perfect accuracy (for FE6) with an iron sword
3. Rescue dropping and canto means Marcus will have some additional utility use post ostia arc if you really still want to use him
I’ve just started playing through FE6, I’m on chapter 3 but Marcus is too fast, he doubles and kills everything. I’ve just been throwing him at the side objectives and using Alan to tank and Lance for dodge tank mostly
@@m3m3nt0m0r1_ Yeah, they're probably thinking of specifically FE6 hard mode with Marcus, where he leaves most enemies with just enough health to be finished off by anyone else.
Marcus’s accuracy is so good he can kinda actually use axes sometimes.
@@m3m3nt0m0r1_ Rescue to lower his speed
Those reasons are why Marcus (FE6 especially) is my favorite Jagen.
Engage is astoundingly well thought out from a gameplay perspective. And Vander is a great example.
An interesting point about the lack of silver axe though:
Having one would actually be really problematic for Vander. His main role is as a tank, but as an HP tank more than a defense tank.
As an HP tank, he really doesn't like getting doubled, and he'll get doubled by almost everything if he had a silver axe.
I've found that to use Vander most effectively, I add a compact axe to his arsenal, and actually find it to be his best primary weapon. This gives him only a point of extra speed, but combined with a speed bond ring, it's sufficient to prevent almost all enemies from doubling him. This also makes it so Framme can chain guard him against Sword Fighters and prevent him from being broken. It also fixes the accuracy issue.
I play in maddening, so the compact axe is likely not very useful for hard and lower. But the silver axe would be detrimental in all difficulties I believe.
"i dont like that term so I'll only be using the term Jagen"
BASED AF
I still think that if they swapped Vander and Clanne's personals it'd be much better
Anywho, for my first playthrough (hard/classic), Vander managed to feel a nearly unlikable monster for chapter 1 and 2 (barring one scary moment with a ridersbane...) a solidly useful unit in 3 and 4, just okay in 5 and 6, and just around then is when I started to bench him because I liked other units better.
I saw him in the opening cut scene and I was like, "oh look, it's the Jaegen!"
The "Jeigans" have always been recognizable in Fire Emblem games since they're almost always old men in big paladin armors. Only Thracia 776 subverted this stereotype by having your overpowered mentor being a female swordsmaster instead.
@@manat31790 Genealogy and Sacred Stones don't do it either, as they have (Sigurd) Oifey and Seth, and they don't have huge armor
@@manat31790Titania is also a woman Jaegan, and Fredrick is far from old (even if he acts like an old dude lol)
I spit in the face of this excellent video. Vander came with me on every map on my Maddening playthrough. I fed him every stat booster. I made him the king of Engage.
I also gave him Hector so he could actually do some damage.
I will say something I love about vander is you can make him work long term. He gets the most value out of the arena early on due to his level and he’s one of the best people to give Sigurd to so he will be great at slowly keeping up and unlocking canto to consistently be a set up guy in the late game. He also consistently stays one of the few units that’s obviously goog at eating hits and I found him to be a great great knight and a solid wyvern to play a supporting role on the team. So if you really want to use him he’s Totally usable. He just gets out classed if you don’t. This makes him better in some regards than marcus because of you want to use marcus in 6 tough luck he has to fall off.
Maybe its because my first FE was Awakening and I haven't played any older ones, but I really like Frederick. I like that once you catch up to him, he doesn't become irrelevant. But eh, I'm sentimental and don't like leaving people behind.
You mentioned a few details about this but my favorite thing about Jagens is learning to use them on the highest difficulty. I'm the type of player to try to give as few combats as possible to my Jagen, even when I was new to the series, so learning to play around them when the enemies were stronger was a fun learning curve.
For as much as I like to clown on him. Vander is a great Jagen. In my Reverse Recruitment. Mauvier is so strong he can just one round enemies. Which actually just meant for me that I benched him faster. He stole XP from my other units and couldn't chip, even his staff utility wasn't that helpful since I wanted other units to get staff XP. I find base Vander helpful up until the end of chapter 11, since he's much bulkier, and Mauvier was benched as soon as he was competing for a deployment slot.
You can tell Vander is a balanced jagen because a lot of people say he is useless.
I do think his starting internal level could have been lowered a bit tho, just to make him slightly more usable in the long term.
I dunno, I feel they overtuned him to fall off too hard. It's not only that it becomes inefficient to use him, but he straight up becomes unvaible without an astronomical amount of exp to even get him on par. Personally I feel the perfect balance is a unit like Fredrick in Awakening, where he fulfils his purpose in teaching you strategy, allows for you to rely on him as a shield or heavy hitter in the early game, but still falls off enough that your other units can show their growth but not so much that you couldn't make him work with a bit of effort.
He’s still usable long term just because of how broken some engage weapons are. Basically anyone can one round late game with seraphim and that includes vander
The frustrating part is that Vander's personal skills other half is a great starting point for a way to make him more useful long-term. If he'd give alear a less negligible amount of crit, and maybe he'd get hit in exchange instead, or maybe some other buffs in the vein of Gunther, he could remain an interesting deploy as an Alear support bot even after his own combat was past its peak. While Jagens should fall off, imo they should still have some reason for deployment, such as how FE6 Marcus still has cav utility and can give support bonuses.
This is propavanda
My take is we need more Snipers jagen.
FE9 Shinon with iron bow is good to almost not kill the enemies (unless he crit with the 10% class bonus in English versions) and can tank some hits.
And TRS has a Sniper with mercy skill.
Limiting your Jagen combat to player phase only is a good way of not making a solo run in the early game while feeding kills to other units.
I haven't been paying too much attention to engage discussions (just got the game and I'm on chapter 10 hard mode) but I didnt understand why I kept hearing he was bad. And I'm glad I'm not some out of the loop hard mode players because I genuinely adore Vander as a jagen he is so well balanced as one and I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that.
Great videos keep up the good work :)
None of this has kept me from keeping my High Priest Vandad all the way up to chapter 21. He's gonna kill Sombron, watch.
Anyway, excellent video. I agree wholeheartedly, from the start Vander struck me as a super solid Jeigan. Up there with FE12!Arran and FE6!Marcus, one of the greats, and there are ways to keep him viable if you like him that much. That personal, though. I even tried to get meme use out of it, but 5 crit is just horrendous.
On the topic of Vander's accuracy, thinking about it, I'm wondering if his accuracy isn't somewhat shaky on purpose. He has exactly enough base SP to get hit +10, which as you said, solves this problem well and doesn't hurt to do since Vander isn't intended as a long-term unit. Perhaps they did this to organically show the player the usefulness of skill inheritance?
Naming my child Vander
my only gripe is that Vander really should have been internal level 10/1 rather than 15/1. there would be valuable utility in leveling him up to 5 to learn Pivot and just be a 6 mov reposition bot if it was actually possible to level him without excessive arena grinding. but i still end up using him through at least chapter 11 on each run - he's fast enough to not get doubled and has a big HP pool to eat a few hits and chip away and that's all you really need him to be
I agree with you in that vander is an excellent example of a jagen for earlygame, but the problem that I have with him, is that he’s the only unit who’s mostly impossible to make viable for long term, even with engages mechanics and resources. The only thing you can do with him is put him on staff utility, but so many more units can do that role better than him as staff utility
I was about to write off this video after a few minutes in, but I think it’s a mixed bag of good and bad ideas. At the end of the day, I figure a unit is a unit. If they’re a Jagen then use them until they fall off but if they’re an oifey then that’s not a bad thing. It just means they can ride with your army than sitting on the sidelines.
The problems come when you focus on these units rather than using others
Really love this video! I thought about his hit rate being a flaw, yes making him more reliable would be objectively better but also I wonder if his low hit rate helps teach new players about hit rate problems. Vander is durable so if you do miss he’s likely too survive still so new players can learn about the danger of low hit rate without the harsh penalty of a player death. You also mentioned he’s great to test SP skill spending on so he also may serve as a great unit to learn about picking good skills to inherit for units weaknesses. I don’t know if this possible built in tutorial is worth being less reliable but it could be an interesting intentional design :-)
My issue with Vander is his internal level being so high (15) when it's so overkill, I think a internal level of 10/12 would make him just flow better, since that's Beginning of Brodia where he could get slightly more exp to atleast teach players about his Lower growths or let Jagen chads actually use him.
Second issue with him is his lack of reclassing, since SD, Jagens always had the benefit of having fun and useful support tier reclasses like Wyvern/Sage Jagen, Wyvern Fred (though awakening itself is eh), Wyvern Gunter for early Rally Def, Felicia and Jakob getting early skills, etc.
Vander meanwhile doesn't offer anything really due to the way the engage reclassing works and how late you get second seals, though you do save a master seal on him.
Third is the Lack of a "Silver Lance" for Vander, He's just stuck to the Iron Axe, Fe6 Marcus On HM is a perfect example of that where Iron Sword chips and silver lance is a emergency Nuke. (Atleast DLC now gives you a silver axe, but it's far too late).
I would argue that on Maddening at least, there is little incentive to train your early game units in fe17
I agree, that's what I meant when I said towards the end that sadly the rest of Engage is not so kind to early game units, which does make Vander's role in feeding them kills a bit less important.
Vander propaganda
Let Vander cook
Opposite to vander slander
Propavanda
You can fix vander by inheriting Axe Power 5 on him by chapter 6 (just use the well) obviously
Vander is definitely the best designed Jeigan we've gotten since FE6 Marcus.
I think one solution to the silver axe problem would be to give the Vander an exclusive personal weapon. Call it "Vander's Axe" where it has the same stats as a silver, but is locked to Vander and can't be forged/engraved because "Vander lets no one touch his axe". Could even play into his supports.
I really like the idea of a veteran axe with a story attached to it
Instructions unclear. I now have a level 7 Great Knight Vander with Ike ring on the retaking Solm map.
Jokes aside, he kinda kicking ass tho with a +5 Hammer and a +2 Hurricane axe for effective damage. He legitimately got so much HP he's a pretty okay user of Ike ring. If he had some more Str or Mag he'd be oneshotting without needing so many refined, but maddening would make me get those refines sooner or later with the sheer bulk of enemies, and it beinf my second playthrough that I call the tough guy run. Every unit I use must either be able to punch someone really hard or Axe chop someone really hard. No other weapons unless they come with a class that can do the other two previously mentioned, except books. Books are for NERDS, not TOUGH GUYS.
Yeah, that's why I needed that Hammer and Hurricane Axe anyway. But Vander uses em alright. Got a +3 Armorslayer anyway for a non Ike user. Wonder if I can beat the game like this? Hopefully I can use Vander all the way till the end. If ya read this far, I might post an update months later if I did beat the game or couldn't beat the game like this.
To me the hallmark of an ideal Jagen:
1. Strong enough to solo the entire early game, that is, no enemy can concievably kill him unless you let them. Not even bosses
2. Eventuall falls off gracefully or at least ends up with equal stats with everyone the moment they get promoted
3. Adept at weakening and setting up kills. This usually means that the best Jagens don't ORKO the enemy, but rather leaves them with 1-2 HP. This is the reason I love Jakob and Felicia so much (even though they don't technically fall off and neither do Ryoma/Xander) because their daggers really soften up the enemies
I think I'm cooking over here with my idea to give Vander the coveted "silver lance nuke" button along with also helping out the other stewards. My idea is to have a paralogue for the "steward weapons" while giving Vander his "steward weapon" at base for him to use for big damage at the start, like a PRF weapon (or like Alear's weapon you get before the final chapter). The idea is that it's a trial for all stewards to tackle once the time is right. Clanne and Framme could gain their own weapons/items specific to them to give them more focus as the Divine Dragon's caretakers, while also being able to briefly examine how a steward is chosen. This could also promote reclassing as Clanne's MAG growth sucks and he could get a physical weapon to take advantage of his higher STR growth. This solves the problem of having the silver weapon just being passed around and would give Vander that powerful weapon when he needed it.
the Vander agenda
My very first playthrough of Sacred Stones, Seth carried me through the entire game, only dying to Fomortiis at endgame. Myrrh cleaned up the rest.
2:57 Also why POR Ike works so well as a Lord that you dump some exp into.
The law of Jagen: The more young, hot, and ginger they are, the more busted.
when I've heard about the personal skill I think either a skill that supports other characters by enhancing them or make him not being able to crit or get critted could work I feel would fit the mentor or veteran archetypes as they get older they know how to manage troops/deal with tricky enemies because of their experiences but dont go all guns blazing because of their age and goals having shifted.
A Jegan I like is Sothe in Radiant Dawn. He is very tough early in the game, but falls short towards the end of the first part of the game. He is very accurate and if he uses bronze knives he can hit 1-2 range without ever criting. If you want to delete something, he can use better weapons like Beast Killer. He can steal and open doors and chests as well. He starts with maxed Support with Micaiah and take hits for her if he's next to her.
The iron weapon kill set up vs silver weapon one shot that earlier jagens had alone is far more engaging than anything Vander offers.
Yea except in a lot of cases it was actually iron sword one-round-KO or silver lance one-shot.
New lizard let’s go 💪
Lmao, this whole video I was like ohhhhhh that's a good point. Irrelevant to me cuz I married Vander so I had my special lil guy on every map lmao
I reached chapter 25, and I'm attempting to max out Vander just for the sake of dialogue! I attempted getting dialogue in Sigurd's trial map, and failed miserably, because he's very underleveled.
I think you're spot on with pretty much everything in this video. I wish you weren't though because I think Vander is cool. Seeing him fall off the way he does is a bit of a letdown. Even if it truly does make him align better with what his role as a Jagen is supposed to be.
I only wish they gave u a second seal earlier so you could fool around with reclassing him giving vander an even more niche role - the only unit who could reclass into some advanced classes early.
I think fe5 and Langrisser 1 have the best Jagens cause they have kategame ready bsses and just get killed when the gane's like "ok you're ready now" (well fe5's a little more complicated but you get my point)
Berwick Saga's fix for the Jagen problem is simple. (Speed-based) Doubling isn't a thing. So Ward is super strong and when he hits he chunks enemies, but he never kills them solo. Eventually your other units get skills or prf weapons that allow them to occasionally double or one-shot and they grow to surpass Ward offensively by virtue of that fact.
Here is my
Vander
Emblem Hector
Str +4 Def +5 Bld +3
Skills
Mag/Res +5
Spd/Res +5
Hp: 77
Bld: 16 (+3) 19
Str: 46 (+5) 51
Mag: 20 (+5) 25
Dex: 46
Spd: 35 (+5) 40
Def: 38 (+5) 43
Res: 27 (+10) 37
Lck: 30
The role of the Jagen is to trade away their weapons on turn 1 of map 1 and only get one back in dire emergencies.
Uh, no. There is literally no Jagen I can think of where that is the best way to use them
I keep him on my party till the last chapter.
Surprisingly he's really good as Great Knight over Paladin xD
As much It does tempting me to make him into other jobs like Mage Knight or other.
If only he had jeralt’s personal skill. Also another problem with vander is he becomes outclassed in his role by Louis very quickly especially with sigurd. It’s entirely sensible for him to be the first unit benched because Louis and Chloe are just strong enough to handle most physical and magical threats respectively and also are some of the better early units long term
If you want to keep him a bit longer you can give him one of the armored classes as a reclass since he won't be able to reach high enough speed (except for specific speed stacking builds) to not get doubled anyways as a Paladin.
This will only extend his time away from the bench for a few chapters though.
“You aren’t going to use him in the late game” That’s what you think. I’m a proud Vander simp and I’m going to let him get the final hit on Sombron
He actually seems very simular to shadow dragon jagen IF you dont forge him a riders bane or reclass him. Personally i like it when the jagen has some long term viability such as gunter as a corrin stat back pack or sothe as a thief but vander doesn't even have a small niche. +5 crit on alear is the only thing he can do that others cant and his stats are so bad that hes relegated to staff use and chipping enemies with the flmae lance as a grypon rider if you want him to be useful and even then the only reason you would do this is to challenge yourself
I think one of the big problem for havens is that they can kill tons of enemies in enemy phase while I feel in player phase they’re more balanced because they can only kill 1 ☝️. Having the ability to eleminate a big target is great! Maybe a way to have your cake and it too you could split the jagen’s function- delete ealry game enemies and tank a lot of damage- into 2. A squishy but high damage prepromote that has limited ealry game growth, and a defensive character that will not be one rounding units.
I feel like if he had just one stat point higher across the board at base he’d be perfect but otherwise I pretty much agree
One point I think should be mentioned is how the break system affects the functionality of a Jagan. With the break system in play, and many early game enemies in Engage being sword users (unlike the typical Axe fiesta), Vander simply cant solo the game, even early on. On the plus side, he has the additional utility of being a break bot against lance users, which happen to be something Alear loves to see and would struggle against without the assistance of him or the Bouche. I disliked using Vander in my hard classic run, but I am 4 chapters into my first maddening run and I can see how his utility shines and how useful he is. His low speed, if anything, benefits him in doing the jobs Jagans are supposed to do as well, since he rarely kills save for the Jagan-tax/crits.
I put Tiki on him and kept him the whole game, I just like him, it's nice to have a guy with facial hair in between all these pretty boys
Vander is the perfect Jagan in a game where all characters besides Vander are late game viable.
I hate how good of a Jagan they made him lol.
I count the dlc stat boosters as the "put Vander on par" boosters.
I'm gonna say it; there's no need for stubbornly fixating on "archetypes" and there isn't anything wrong with a 'jaegan' still being usable full-game. ideally EVERY unit should be usable full-game, but Vander is perhaps the one unit who genuinely just can't keep up, at least on maddening. They don't need to be overbearing, much as don't like awakening fredrick is a solid enough combat unit for the whole game even if other units catch up to him, and with pairup mechanics he makes a fantastic backpack thanks to the good bonuses (hello +1 movement) from great knight.
There's nothing wrong with a jagen being usable for the full game, but Its a problem when a jagen remains your best unit for the whole game. Sacred stones is the perfect example, where Seth is so strong that he invalidates most of the cast. I agree that Frederick is pretty healthy in his game.
I don't think every unit needs to be usable for the entire game as long as the game signals to you that you shouldn't heavily invest in units that are only good for the early game. Engage does that well with Vander. And if you really want to use him for the whole game you can, Engage has enough tools to make any unit useful.
I'd add a little caveat based on experience: Seth kinda falls off lategame as the Franzes and Kyles and Fordes and Cavalier! Amelias even grow and grow and grow while Seth's ceiling approcahes fast. In post-game even, I find him too susceptible to Stone Gorgons, which leave him open to crits that do kill.
Making my own FE8 currently, and my Jagen is a Valkyrie. Her niche is that she's your only way to access Physic from Ch1 and only magic unit until Ch2.
My favourite jagens are Dagdar and Frederick, because you can use them long term if you want to. They're (usually) not gonna be as good as training projects, but they're viable. I really like Gunter as a character, but there's very little reason to use him after ch3. In Conquest he's ok filler, but in Rev he's the first of many, many... many units that join underleveled/underpowered. He starts getting doubled and two rounded one chapter after he joins and with very low growths there's no hope for him improving. Thing with FE7 Marcus and Seth is that their games are easy enough that you can get away with using them exclusively. FE7 to a lesser extent, in Hector Hard Mode you're gonna struggle if you only use Marcus, but in FE8 there's absolutely nothing stopping you from soloing the game with Seth.
Unit Feel and Lore are important. Seth is a young veteran so he gets to be OP. Titania not an old lady. Ditto? Vander, maybe he has silver hsir plus he doesn,t have wrinkles on his skin.
In my custom Fire Emblem game that is on a tabletop setting our Jagen is a woman still in her prime with 35 with hp, 19 str, 21 dex and spd, 11 lck, 13 def and 6 res at level 17, tier 2. This is because of how our stat system works and everyone abides by it, not to mention e ertone gets the same 60 levelsmto grow? Besides, vows completsly zone this Jagen out and we hesitate to get her too close when we see an archer on the grid. If I were to do a Lex Talionsis version, i would change nothing.
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This comment section needs a contrarion
Seth is supposed to be injured yet he still op as hell
Frederick is the best jegen, you can give hem robin bronze sword to set up kills for other units while also being able to 1shot with silver lance, the same cannoy be said about vander.
.Barely tankier that your other units
.leaves enemies to 1hp even when you need hem to kill
A jegen should be use to set up kills for other units but can 1 round them when needed but vander will only set up kills and nothing else
i actually have to ban seth from my fe8 runs just cause of how insanely good he is
Based "Oifey" archetype hating.
The only people who think Oifey is a thing have never played FE4
As long as they're serving as a crutch character that lets n00bs experience enough of the game to become interested in the game, they're doing their job as Jagens imho.
That's literally the point of why there is a distinction between the jagen and the oifey. Even if you don't like it the defining purpose is that jagens help you develop your army then fall off instead of being consistently powerful.
As someone who wants some of my early game units to be levelled as much as possible, Vander critting on 3 to 5% was annoying in its own right, and thats not even counting for him being next to Alear.
I think the best jagen by far in design are og jagen and FE10 sothe, one can contribute long term even with atrocious growths and the other will contribute with the thief class. I think FE games should start experimenting with other classes for jagens like armor knight or hero, they can make them unique and good in the early game with high defenses and medium to low speeds, with stuff like growths and reclassing you can make an amazing unit midgame great in the mid/late game like FE5 Dagdar and FE5 Eyvel
Vander is a bit of an odd case in engage. I actually find him to be more useful on higher difficulties (especially maddening) where early game growth units have a much harder time catching up to him in general. It’s kind of funny when I think about it.
I think fe6 Marcus is the perfect Jagen. He can perfectly weaken units in the first couple chapters, or hit them with the Silver Lance if you’re in a pinch, he’s quite bulky so he can safely take several hits from fe6’s strong early game enemies, and his skill and luck are high enough that he can reliably hit. Plus while his bases are quite good, his 9 base strength will very quickly get surpassed, so he undeniably still falls off. His only real issues are the fe6’s early enemies are so strong that even Marcus with the Silver Lance fails to one round them pretty quickly, which is kinda annoying, plus I wish he started with D axes so he could use the halberd from the get go. Like, I get it gives Lot and Wade their own unique utility, but they’re never hitting anything with that and it’s annoying to actually have to train up a Jagen to use it.
i like Vander more as a character than i do a unit. but thats because i dont care much for jagen's. i see the appeal, and i definitly abuse their benefits, but i never feel good about using them, outside of seth and titania (9 not 10).
I am a dump Jagens as soon as they can kinda of player. I like the challenge it give early game and rarely do I suffer from doing that. so I am not the kind that to ask what makes a one good. But I do recognize they use as a solid rock for early game. but like any rock on the road you it should just end up a stepping stone towards the end. But having a Titania or Seth for a while can be fun. I won't pretend it's not for me.
"a nearly perfect Jaegan" - yes that's why you usually drop him like; chapter 4?
On maddening I use vander for only chapter 2 and 4. On hard, none. I will say though, for maddening those 2 chapters are crucial, but even 5 isn't that different with or without him
The perfect "Jagen" has high hit and no crit chance. So low base and growth in Dex/Skl with a high accuracy weapon and/or hit chance improving personal skill and/or hit increasing class skill.
I think setting up kills for your weaker units is part of the charm, and a jaegan that has multiple sources of crit . Steel Axe also having crit makes it lot more likely
His base defense is exactly the same as Alcryst and Alfred as well, shaky hit rates, chain attack bait, and cripplingly low res. Jaegens have more worth to a team than setting up kills and taking damage, and I'd argue that vander isn't even good at that on maddening. A single GBA esque side objective is too much for him. He's not surviving combat with enough enemies to get to that village for you the way marcus does.
He doesn't need to be seth or titania, but he could stand to be a lot better. On maddening I doubt he survives past the yunaka map without aggressive turnwheeling
I agree his hit rate is so annoying. And I wish he had a silver axe. Becuase of those 2 things he seemed underwhelming to me. But he does do what a jagan should do and doesn't trivialize the game.
Tbh jagen should have big growths just because he's lvl 15 and he gets no exp ever and his bases are so so so bad that when he can get some exp he can't do anything
Vander should have had double his skill on early game IMO. FE6 marcus having 14 base skill makes him the hest axe user early since the early axe users cant hit anything with their non-existent skill
But is he better than FE6 Marcus?
My issue with Vander is that he is the worst of both worlds as a unit in that he had awful growths and bad bases. In previous games there was a lower power ceiling so even the bad Jaigens can fill roles in mid to end game maps because of their good bases. Vander has nothing going for him because his bases are worse than mid game units and his growths do not address his survivability or his damage
It also doesn't help that being a paladin doesn't have rescue utility in this game
Vander is balanced gameplay wise, but as a support completionist, his uselessness in battle after a certain point makes it super annoying to grind support levels with characters other than alear
Dude practice on your annunciation. Your voice is brutal, you sound like Mort Goldman from Family Guy
Vander reminds me of the old Gamefaqs days of FE discussion where people were describing Marcus as this awful unit that will steal your EXP and make the lategame harder, only Vander is actually like that. Vander's bases aren't very good, his personal skill is trash, his S rank in axes was close to pointless in the base version of the game as there were no high rank axes to use in the earlygame, his bulk is nice, but quickly falls off thanks to enemy chain attacks and worse of all, because he uses axes his hitrates are often quite shaky even in the earlygame which makes him bad at his only job. He's not the worst unit in Engage and the update did give him some nice benefits, but overall Vander is among the worst "Jagens" we've had in the series.
The main problem with Vander is that the "Jagen" archetype doesn't really have a reason to exist in the modern FE. Modern FE isn't like older FE where it's expected you often swap out your army and don't reset once you lose a unit. In those games, having a strong unit that can carry you through the earlygame made sense, but with the emblem rings being so strong it just goes to show Vander's lack of true reason to exist. I question why this supposed idea of a Jagen falling off is held as some gold standard in the community considering that the entire rest of Engage's cast are supposed to be units you can use for the entire games (in theory) and the existence of extremely powerful units like Kagetsu or classes like swordmaster being almost useless while wyverns are once again one of the best units in the game shows that IS isn't losing sleep over making the game balanced. As such, it feels like a the only reason why Vander exists is because IS felt pressured to include a "Jagen" as Engage is supposed to be a celebration of the series, despite him not really fitting in at all.
This video reminds me why i hate fe9 titania so much. Literally a touch of death character for the entire early game. Literally cant set up kill for anyone so everyone stays bad unless you bexp. I find I'm often trying to tank her speed by rescuing someone so i can get other units off the ground. Feels pretty bad when optimal play is solo with titania, recruit marcia, full bexp marcia, solo with marcia.
FE8 is so boring that I literally dropped it on hard, playing the harder route because press seth, press insert cav
1-2
all die
Worst jagen of all time. Fe6 Marcus is a perfect jagen. Vander is a waste of space
Nah, you’re just being ignorant.
Honestly Vander is a pretty terrible unit, at least within engage.
Engage relies heavily on inherited skills, emblems, and reclassing for units to get powerfull, or in some cases even just to get usefull. Due to his high internal level Vander never gets to use most of those mechanics. Having above average stats simply isn't that important in Engage in comparison to those skills.
On top of that the break mechanic completly screws him over due to how many sword wielders there are in the early game.
Which leaves him as a dissapointing stat-stick that doesn't do anything particularly interesting before being benched.
As for the "problem" of the powerfull Jagens like Seth. You could just not solo the early chapters with one unit... Noone's making you do that. Simply don't min-max the fun out of things...
I'm sorry but no, Vander getting less exp than everyone is stupid. I like to grind up all my units and make them the best they can be but his slow growth and engage's bad level scaling for random encounters means even people playing on casual mode are forced to bench him because he just can't keep up. And the majority of his existence is spent in arena where he also gets his butt kicked by emblems and all the other units and gets less xp as a result because engage hates losers and has no time for anyone that falls behind whether that's from low bst and being unable to keep up or units that can't get caught up if they aren't used for a bit.
You have totally missed the point
@@pksprite6401 no I understand the point of the video. I'm just saying that it doesn't hold up with Engage's terrible level scaling system that can make even good units fall behind from even minimal lack of use. And this compounding with Vander's lower exp rate means that you'll likely be dropping him even earlier than most other Jagens. He can't keep up because Engage doesn't let anyone get caught up even on the lowest difficulty.
@@dustinvance243 ??? Vander is solid enough up until around chapter 10 or so, that’s about on par with the other Jagen’s that actually fall off. Vander doesn’t need to catch up and he doesn’t need to be grinded, his role is to be good in the early game, and that’s exactly what he is.
@@pksprite6401 he's immediately outclassed by alfred as soon as you get him and that's in chapter three. THREE! And Alfred's not even promoted yet! the game gives you a cavalry lord to replace him immediately because it knows he will never be as good as any of the other units and with Engage's dumb power scaling he can never be caught up. Vander can never be good outside of the frickin tutorial levels and it's all because of this game's arbitrary power scaling.
@@dustinvance243 Vander has better stats than base Alfred across the board and 1 more point of movement, so that clearly isn’t true lol. It’ll take Alfred a bit to catch surpass Vander, which is the whole point of Jagens. You can keep bitching about “muh power scaling” all you want, but that really isn’t a big deal for Vander since he really isn’t supposed to be used outside of the early game regardless. He’s fine for about 10 chapters.
(And even if Alfred was an immediate replacement for Vander, that wouldn’t make Vander any worse; deployment slots early on aren’t all too tight, and just saying that Alfred is better isn’t a good argument for Vander being bad)
Vander is an awful Jagen, he is rendered obsolete as soon as chapter 5 when you get start of map access to an armor knight. I say this because of his offensive pressure in the early game is so poor that his "chip" still needs 2 of your baby units to kill a non-mage, bar Etie and Celine. So his main value is taking hits, yes that is very valuable against the chapter 6 boss that either one-shots or nearly one-shots the entire cast bar him and Louis. No he should not be deployed for 8-11 chapters (5-8 chapters since you can't undeploy units till chapter 4) as he is far past his expiration in the chapter 10 events. The only part of the game where I see him needed beyond being early game deployment filler is chapter 2 to face tank Lumera. As such I undeploy him after chapter 7 or just get him killed on chapter 3/4 and see no spike in difficulty. Play the same as always use Louis to bait enemies kill armor units with mages. If Vander had the utility of being a non once per 4 turns delete button (as that is the fastest you can get an engage attack back it) or being fast enough to double/just doing enough damage to nearly one shot as to better set up kills then he would be fine. Still a low tier unit since engage early game, while fun, is very easy. Yes all of this is on maddening I started the game on the difficulty and have never gone down.
6:05 no just no, he has base 500 SP and due to his slow exp gain even if you are willing to give him an emblem ring he would never really hit a point of inheriting something that the base 500 would not allow, so no getting one or two without save resetting. Not to mention that none of the skills worth inheriting at that point in the game are very good. Marth: gives avoid (other things like break defense but that is 2000 so no on Vander) which is unneeded give that he is so bulky, 40 HP, and Unyielding which can be decent I guess, "heal 8 HP if at or below 8 HP at start of player phase". Siguard gives canto, he can't afford, hit +X, is good because Axes but not really a learning moment since it is just oh guy hits 10% more (not true because hybrid RN but who cares), and imunity to freeze which is irrelevant for the time in the game when Vander is used. I am skipping Celica for obvious reasons, favored food could be decent though. Same thing for Micaiah, having her equipped to heal is nice but it takes away an EXP farm from another character and has no value for inheritable skills. Roy maybe, strength +1 is just a numbers increase so whatever, but advance is something that can be learned through Vander if not through Diamant when he has the ring equipped. And Lief would leave the player thinking incorrectly, build +X is fine not that Vander would be doubleing at that point in the game even with build +5 but whatever, arms shield is like advance but more intentional since you might not notice arms shield at all since it is a passive tank ability as opposed to the conscious that is advance, but Vander makes Vantage look awful by being so bad offensively activating vantage will rarely end in a kill meaning the a low health Vander is enemy phasing for nothing.
Clearly Vander is a better Jagen than Jagens like Seth, Marcus, and Titania who are your best unit till for a dozen chapters or so and stay relevant till near the end of the game.
FE7 Marcus, Seth, and FE9 Titania being as strong as they are are precisely why they are bad Jagens. The point of the video is that Vander is useful for the very early game when most of your army are scrubs and then you bench him once the big boys and girls get going.
@@cartooncritic7045 Read the last paragraph, it says he is a better Jagen. Here...
"Clearly Vander is a better Jagen than Jagens like Seth, Marcus, and Titania who are your best unit till for a dozen chapters or so and stay relevant till near the end of the game."
Please read the comment if you want to argue about it. I never said he was worse than them. And he is still a bad Jagen his job as a hit taker is removed in chapter 4/5 when Louis joins. Since his damage/speed is low and has axes so even when he can do damage he is still not consistent at it. For gods sake he does no damage to the bosses of chapter 3/4 you need Clanne/Celine and Alear true damage to hit kill them.
TLDR: He is still a bad Jagen just in a reverse way of Seth and the like, he is not strong enough to contribute damage noticeably better than his peers, bar Framme. And is replaced in his role as early as chapter 4.
Only reason you keep deploying him after is because you are down a deployment slot if you don't, as there is no filler units this early in the game.
dogwater boring unit, he is outclassed by everyone but alfred the map you get etie