Jean: "My family has studied the art of herbs and medicinal remedies for genera -- " Divine dragon: "Actually I found this street urchin of a little girl in some bandit infested ruins and despite her airheaded personality she's actually _really_ good at reading, so she's our mage/doctor now. "
I want to use Anna for my first foray into Maddening, but I still can't decide whether to go for Sage, High Priest or something else. I keep hearing conflicting things (heck I saw one person advocate making her a Sword Master that uses the Levin Sword) and obviously more than one build can work, but that just makes it harder to decide. High Priest has the highest Luck growth, so it makes sense given I mainly want my Anna to help with money, but getting the money means getting kills and Sage grants more power and more powerful tomes. Then there is the mobility of Mage Knight to consider.
@@Ryodraco If you use DLC, High Priest because Tiki gives art proficiency and she'll already have really high magic by then. Otherwise, Sage because you won't have an emblem with art proficiency when it's time to promote and reclass. You can always give her boots for mobility.
@@Ryodraco the lack of access to tomes past elfire isn't really as big of a deal as you might think tbh. Magic gets alot of power from being able to double. So more than with other weapon types you really don't want to use a tome that is too heavy for the caster. Almost all of the casters have super low bld bases and growths. Meaning that the A rank spells are quite often too heavy for them. This isn't a permanent problem of course but High priest Anna can end up feeling quite strong since Elfire is very light and i believe +3 is usually where the lower level tome equals the non upgraded higher level tome. (ie fire+3 is the same at elfire +0 and so on) The B rank tomes are significantly cheaper to forge than the A rank ones.
It feels like Tiki was designed with Anna in mind. She gets early access to high priest, becomes useful immediately, gains bonus points and skills that boost luck and HP, and divine blessing+ gives a ton of exp.
@@Feed_Matt_Steak There's really no reason to replace Tiki with Byleth on Maddening. It's basically worse in every way to swap because it makes her significantly less durable. It lowers her luck growth to do so (Which helps to offset the slight luck bonus difference you get from equipping Byleth), and she loses a significant amount of HP to switch. Byleth is also a support ring, and Anna will be amassing so many kills that she turns into one of your carries if you're farming gold, so it's better to have someone else aoe dance.
@@RaptureSR Honestly I really don't agree. You don't gain stat boosters and passives from the rings. You can test this. You only get their abilities and what it displays upon the equip menu- meaning you dont get Tiki's HP/Lck and have to inherit it- same as Byleth's Lck. This also applies to bond effects that make you gain Avo., Hit, Dodge from corresponding weapons. Additionally +2 range from Byleth's engage is ABSURD on a unit like Anna and having a refined Tome can be really nice compared to being locked only into using Anna as a frontline unit with Tiki's breath. The offensive power with Byleth makes it so she cannot be counter attacked and simply and literally does not need to be bulky to begin with. Byleth's weapon variety allows for offensive Byleth ring pairings to be done- but I will admit this should be paired with Seadall to fit in a Goddess Dance (and even then with Tiki you don't really wanna use the Engage without first giving Divine Blessing, so this kind of applies to her as well if you dont wanna sink a turn into losing an offensive turn on Anna) I honestly feel like Tiki is inherently good at enabling units that would otherwise be mediocre, and Anna doesnt fall under this remotely. At the end of the day they're both good options tho.
Anna with Tiki brings her growth to 95% with a benefit of luck and hp until you get Byleth who has more luck for the money. So 9/10 levels of mag growth is just as crazy imo
Don't forget Tiki gives her the ability to heal 40 HP by waiting and removes statuses. My Anna got to 60+ HP so any enemy she doesn't double, can't double back and can never do enough damage to kill. She literally is able to stand there and outheal or out-tank most damage, while killing them in 2 hits guaranteed with elfire.
She was my favorite character in the game. Both to use (for all the reasons you state), and because she had the funniest personality and support conversations. Her "crit lines" are also the best in the game.
I think Byleth is hands down THE best emblem for Anna once he's available. As a Sage, Anna gets +2 range on her spells from Byleth. I had that on Céline in my first playthrough and she ended up being my nuke button 90% of the time despite her lower growths, because just was always in range and able to double. Now imagine that on Anna. Byleth also gives her an insane amount of extra luck (I think it was +12 at max or something?) and because of the teacher passive, she'll level faster as well. I didn't use Anna on my first playthrough, so I'm looking forward to her on my second now. I got her to level 10 just in time for the first master/second seals already just by putting Micaiah on her. Great Sacrifice is a free level if it heals enough units of course, but an AoE Mend *also* gave me a full level right before that. It's kind of insane how quickly Micaiah levels units.
I had mine on pandreo first playthrough but there's a strong case for running it on her instead, my Anna got screwed by chapter 11 taking away my rings and no foreknowledge of her growths or how long it'd be before I could get her into a magic class.
@@Smuggers. I got to the point you get Byleth on my second run yesterday. Byleth really DOES make her the force I assumed she'd be, but I'm now actually thinking about wther or not I want to keep him on Anna when I get the rest of the rings back. Anna has the best stats of my mages and heavily benefits from the Luck bonus, but the special dance from Byleth also grants a +4 magic bonus on mystic units. I'm contemplating to move Byleth on Céline eventually, so that Anna can get more moves per turn (1 regular, 1 from Seadall, 1 from Byleth, then 1 from Seadall again). You only can do that once Seadall gets Canter after chapter 17 at the earliest, but that seems VERY strong and incentivizes using more than one mage. I might go for that instead. In that setup, Anna can get Olwen S (if I get that ring) or Celica for the echo skill.
@@justsomejojo Yeah, as nice as byleth is to have on mages he's somewhat of a sacrifice, because it means you can't get byleth danced or benefit from the +4 mag.
@@Smuggers. in my first run, I had Byleth on Céline and she still was my biggest asset in killing bosses and strong regulars, because I'd only ever use the special dance when Seadall was in range. This still meant 2 casts + the dance, which usually was good enough for things in Hard mode. So on that difficulty, the two options are just "really optimized" vs "still good but a bit less so". Not sure how much of a difference it makes on Maddening. For the moment, just running an extra mage (my Céline is turning really well once again) seems to do the trick.
Me and my mate's Anna are both busted in their own right, and we're both getting silly amounts of money thanks to her. My friend has her on Mage Knight with all the El tomes equipped, while mine's a Thief equipped with Byleth, Lineage and Tiki's stat growth who i've been loading with all the stat boosters, and it's actually hysterical watching her clean shop with the enemies almost solo while making huge amounts of money. Love this game's little loot goblin.
I didn't make her a mage, but because of her base magic growth, she is pretty good with the magical-type weapons like Radiant Bow. I gave her a longbow, a radiant bow, and also the axes that are effective against cavalry and armored, so she can do significant damage to just about any type of unit. She gets better in late game because it takes a while for her BLD stat to become respectable enough to use the axes more. If you make her strong enough to start soloing mobs (or pairing with Alear), it makes the gold situation so much easier. I haven't done a maddening run yet but I imagine next time around I will try making her a magic unit
Its still early to tell and I could be wrong, but in a low turn count(or try to beat the game as few turn as possible) playthrough, I actually think Anna is going to be bad. Why? Well 1. You can’t do skirmishes(those will increase ur turn count) to grind to catch up with ur other units 2. You have to put Micaiah ring on her early game to get exp cause shes to weak/frail which decreases your team’s flexibility 3. Takes to long/too much resources to be good. I would say it takes anna around the mid game to be on par with celine who imo is like mid tier and by then u get ivy whos much better and can fly. Not to mention her skill isnt going to proc that often. At lvl 20 as a sage shes going 11 luck(3 base + 6 from 10 sage lvls + ~2 base class) Additionally, she has to kill to get it to proc which some cases would require some setup
@@IcedCoffeeGaming a lot of fire emblem youtubers/veterans use the ruleset of finish the game in the lowest number of turns without rng hack or very specific strat like tripe warp, minimal to no grinding when ranking a unit in a tier list. I just said ltc cause its shorter myb not being specific. They use this general ruleset for tier list as with grinding/investment, any unit can be good. Thats why in a lot of these you see growth units ex. Est, Nino, Donnel rank so poorly, even the ones you get early. Not saying anna is garbage(imo prob like mid tier), but just not a high tier. If you are talking about a casual playthrough and don’t care about turn count, then yeah I agree as her growth+personal are amazing when opportunity cost is not a big factor
@@riddivalion design is different thatn what was being discussed here. Anna in awakening is really only useful because gaius is trash. She has inherent utility for being a thief but otherwise is kind just a whatever unit. She also has no supports with anyone other than robin which meant that her pair up bonuses (which was where alot of characters power came from) were all bad.
Her awakening design was her best ! And she was not a meh unit. I played on Lunatic and her bases alone carried her far. Staff + theif utility is great. To really be good at combat I think she should reclass into a sage or Valkiery since her physical attack falls behind. Otherwise just use Levin sword on her.
My only regret is not utilizing her sooner. by the time I reclassed her on my maddening run she was already level 7 axe fighter. Mage Knight Anna nukes
I've really been wanting to use a Mage Knight but couldn't think of who fits. Is it that good? Mage Knight would be cavalry, so it doesn't get the Mystical bonus of ignoring cover which becomes very important for taking out those dodgy swordmasters especially if they're in cover I'm sure.
So I went full spoiler free in my first maddening run, didn't watch any videos or check growth rates, and completely missed out on Anna (I thought she was meant to be a gimmick unit who was hard to use but could fix the economic issues a bit) and just struggled my way through. Second playthrough knowing how insane she is, farmed 80k gold in one map and destroyed the bosses in chapter 11 between her, jean, chloe and alear. PURE upside on this lass
Not related to the video on hand, but I sat down yesterday to put together a serious tool for weapon forging analysis that may be of interest. It's linked at the bottom. Feel free to make a copy for yourself and play around. Data was copied from Serenes Forest, but formatted to show full stat data for each weapon, instead of showing weapon base stats in one section, and weapon forging modifications in another. Additionally, I created a new measurement "Mineral Cost" Which is 1x iron, 10x steel, 100x silver. This is proportional to flee market pricing, and roughly consistent with the exchange rate at the smith (although they charge about a 10% conversion fee.) I found this very helpful, as comparing 70 iron 8 steel and a silver to 20 steel 3 silver isn't the most intuitive thing. The "Weapon Comparisson" sheet has drop down menus for any weapons you'd like to compare side by side. "Weapon Data" is just a list of everything in detail, and may be useful in determining if it's worth refining to the next level or not. I found it helpful to draw conclusions. You can draw your own conclusions of course, but some of my main takeaways include: 1. Standard weapons, are always worth refining to +1 if you plan to use them at all since it's very cheap, even if you won't use them very long. I'd recommend this for most iron weapons. 2. Standard weapons at +2 and +4 just gain 5 hit, so +2 is worth skipping over. 3. For the resource price of raising a weapon from +3 to +5, you could raise 2 weapons from +0 to +3, or 13 weapons from +0 to +1. If your character can handle the weight, I'd suggest using a heavier material. If not, I'd suggest forging other weapons. 4. Knives follow a different trend, and do get significant boosts at +2 and +4. +5 remains very expensive, but these give an enormous return on investment. I'm of the opinion that the iron dagger +4 is the best weapon in the game because of it's high attack (13) enormous hit rate (110) which is great for terrain busting, negligible weight, 1-2 range, application of poison, and reasonably cost. The steel dagger +4 has 2 more strength and 10 crit, but 20 less hit, which makes it worse for dealing with units in terrain, in addition to being more expensive. Silver Dagger +3 is comparable in stats, but about 3x as expensive. 5. Tomes have a bigger difference between tiers than weapons (Fire, Elfire, Bolganone) and are more expensive to refine regularly. You could spend 500 minerals and 5000 gold to turn a fire tome into fire+4, netting a 9Mt 100 hit, 4 Wt tome, or you could save 2000 gold, spend 500 minerals and 3000 gold to make it into a Bolganone, 16Mt, 85 Hit, 11 Wt, with room for future refinement. You could have this ready for your first promote. Unfortunately, Bolganone is heavier than desired, but having it as a nuke option for bosses, or just forging Elfire until a bit later I think are both good options. 6. Most non-standard weapons I think you want to get to at least +1, but not +5. +2,3 and 4 are usually reasonable. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zE0mNWqLMDnZT3tCIcY-E3rKbyeGv8WDa7m8jmWUXt4/edit#gid=103960619
@@learnpolishangel2194 Can be anything really, but first Maddening run did made into Royal Knight and had super awesome lance and staff usage with unbelievable dexterity and speed, doubled everything with almost always 100 hit, gave a flame lance due to balanced strength and magic so could always hit enemy weakness. Second run made into Berserker and was insane, nearly every level up got strength and had some level ups where had +2 HP as well as maxing out speed super quickly.
@@Grimrai悲壮ライPlay I think I'll go with Berserker. Axe units are my favorite, and I think it'd be funny to see Jean running around with an axe. By the way, if you don't mind me asking, how good are Rosado and Goldmary? I really like their designs, but I haven't heard much about them as units.
@@learnpolishangel2194 Rosado is really good and Fliers very strong in this game, from what have played, Goldmary has not impressed self lot compared to other units.
@@Grimrai悲壮ライPlay Thanks for telling me! One last question, as you seem knowledgeable. Should I funnel most of my EXP into the best units early game (Chapters 1-6), or should I try to evenly spread it? I don't plan on using Vander, Clanne, Framme, Etie, or Boucheron past that point, so I don't know if I should feed them any kills or only let them take the necessary ones.
It’s funny. Most “Est” units in Fire Emblem as a whole have been considered bad units. But Engage has made things much better for Anna and Jean, with Micaiah’s Great Sacrifice and staff access, and Jean starting as a martial monk so he has safe access to exp with backline staff and chain guard usage. And the reward for getting them trained is absurd.
I used both Anna and Jean in my maddening run. Jean on Micaiah staff spam and Anna spamming Mercurius from Marth's level 10 bond. Both very fun units 😉
Mage Anna with Dire Thunder has been a consistent MVP of my maddening run, but I think it is worth noting that she requires pretty heavy investment and her bases aren't amazing, so although she can become quite strong the resources you invest in her are explicitly not going to others, which is noteworthy. I find her super fun to use and enjoy it a lot, but in terms of optimal play I'm not sure that she outclasses some of the other mages like Citrine, Ivy, or even Lindon (Dire Thunder with +20 crit from personal is strong despite lower growths). For a casual run, though, she has great unit feel and she's very satisfying to raise into a monster
While you are investing in her, you're getting a return on that investment in the form of a god unit and money. You can use that return for your other units. With other units, you get no return, from investment outside of a good unit.
Idk, she's been hard carrying my maddening run tbh. She outclassed Ivy so much that I had to start diverting resources to her so she didn't hit like a wet noodle. I think she's been like 10+ attack power ahead of everyone else for a good while now, which is while I started thinking of moving goddess dance away from her just so I don't miss out on an extra attack on that alpha strike turn on bosses.
I dont know that this holds tbh. You get Anna before literally all of those units so some of that "investment" could quite literally never have gone to them in the first place. Also if you put similar levels of investment in to all of those characters only Ivy really provides an equivalent return. Citrinne actually falls behind Anna from a damage perspective on every magic class, and Lindon is so late in the game that his only value is the dire thunder gimmick. (which is good but hes also a pre promoted sage, Anna by that point if used as a sage will have stats equal to or far greater than him). And on a casual run most people wont know or think to make her magical and thus she gets benched since she is squishy and does not damage.
@@SH1NK1R01 it does hold. Pretty sure op didnt mean the investing in the other units. Op prob meant that investment that went to anna could’ve went to some other unit or just make your team as a whole better. Opportunity cost is a huge factor to consider when evaluating how viable is a unit(esp growth units). This why historically growth units like Est and Donnel always rank poorly by high skilled/ltc fe players. There have been cases where growth units have been good like Cyril and fe8 franz. Cyril is good cause he can catch up really quickly cause point blank volly and his weapon proficiencies. Franz is good because he starts with a good base class, decent bases, but most importantly comes very early in ch2(also enemies in fe8 a piss weak). In the context of an efficient playthrough, imo Anna is mid tier cause she still requires a good amount investment and takes time for her to be good. She is def one of the better growth units in fe history as she has better return and requires less investment compared to Est and Donnel.
@@bobfan2821 opportunity cost. You realize that the “opportunity” there is not just decorative right? It refers to the theoretical loss of choosing one option over another. There is literally no caster other than Ivy that even remotely comes close to Anna. And the resources devoted to her would only have gone to either Celine or citrinne at that stage of the game. You can’t just look at how much total resources are used on a character, what’s more important is wether those resources could have even been given to anyone else for a similar or better result. Anna does require investment. But almost everything you give her wasn’t going to anyone that would end up better with the same investment. And the few who would aren’t in the game at that stage so they can’t get it regardless. You are also completely ignoring the utility of getting money. From a pure equipment perspective she can pay for everything she cost to gear and forge. Meaning most of her investment is 2 seals and maybe 10 or 15 kills for setup. On maddening you can comfortably do that in maybe 2 chapters. Or do the exploit on Jean chapter. The last archer on the map will only attack the villagers. If you second seal Anna to martial monk before clearing Jean paralogue then you can just spam heal that villager till she hits 10 or you run out of uses. It’s honestly bonkers to call a unit like this mid tier with such easy setup and such little competition.
My hard carries were these 3: 1: anna, the video already explains it. 2: ivy, once she inherited speadtaker i gave her lucina's ring for chain attacks from either balgon or thoron range, she also had canter so she was both a dodge tank, one shot monster, and if necessary a healer. 3: alear, i made her a wyvern knight to fix her mediocre str growth (i mean... 35 str growth for physical damege dealing fe protagonist is kinda low, just look at byleth, they had better str, mag, res and luck growth's then alear, even togh classes growth rates in three houses were on avarage lower then in engage, alear have better hp and def growths but the divine dragon class is no tank), and since alear already have a 50 spd growth, and now she had the str to get kills, she then got more exp, so even on fixed growth her spd on the endgame was the same of my divine dragon playtrough, but she hitted harder, her spd was still able to make her double everything, and with the extra str she was able to kill everything with these 2 hits, wyver knight can also use 2 weapon classes so i gave her a spear for 2 range physical, and she was still able to double everything with it, she had an engraved killing edge for the extra oomph when neaded, and then she double critted instead of just double, she could also use ridersbane, so her aresenal was liberation, killing edge, armorslayer, spear and ridersbane.
Well, in my playthrough i made Anna a wolf knight.. and together with a tomahawk she kills everything: The damage from the opponents: 5dmg, 0%, 0% krit Her damage: 70-80dmg, 100%, 30-40% krit
Im guessing you got lucky with levelups and put stat boosters on her? She is not a good physical unit. I mean, she has 15 str growth, so... Any real phys unit would have done 100 damage :D
Another thing. After I got Byleth, she never misses. As a Mystical, terrain doesn't matter when attacking an enemy. I never saw divine pulse on her (which triggers by luck), and even if the enemy can dodge divine pulse might trigger. Also with Byleth, she gets +2 magic range while engaged. Elthunders hitting from 5 range. Kill something, dance her, goddess dance, dance her again, kill something again.
griffon knight Anna with the Levin sword def carried my Maddening run with Chole sitting behind her Lucina Bond shielding made Anna kill everything on enemy phase
See i found out about mage anna pretty damn late and when i did i was aversed to it cuz aesthetically all previous annas were never mages if you dont count her depictions with the levin sword. So i stuck pretty much with warrior on both my first botched maddening run and my current one and shes honestly my best unit and im not even running any optimal builds. I did get the dlc and i strapped edelgard on her and called it a day. and her skill inheritance is entirely byleths luck and tikis hp/luck just cuz money drop every other kill (im pretty close to 50 lck with buffs). Her dmg is nutty and despite being a warrior, i have her at 21 mag and having radiant bow is pretty great.
I put Anna on Mage Knight with Micaiah so she can run axe, tome, and staff with high mobility and ez levels with Great Sacrifice. Threw Luck passive from Blythe and Tiki on her and she has been giving me gains and slaughtering everything the entire time. Engaged with Micaiah she is pretty much an unkillable machine with Nosferatu so she can just chain bait people into her and print money.
I kept her as Warrior so she can abuse Radiant Bow +5 and Killer Axe +5 while Equipping Leif for all that extra build (currently she's at 17 build at level 5 Warrior), and Vantage++. All I need now is to give her Lyn's ability so she can double before an enemy can even touch her lol.
So I waited till I got my second seal and used it on Anna to make her a Martial Monk. Got her to 10 and advanced her to High Priest, did 40 levels into high priest. Mainly because she has 59 luck with tiki and byleth skills. By herself she can solo fights and gain crap tons of money. Reclassed her to Sage and now she is nuking all fights with her luck still at 51. I say for her to not die just add avo to her weapons so she dodges everything as High Priest but as Sage she does get hit like 15% of the time
One thing to consider on whether to master seal then second seal is Base Stats. Anna’s worst base stat is MAG. If you master seal at 10 then second seal, Sage has a base MAG of 9. So, no matter what, Anna will have 9 MAG at “internal” level 10. Alternatively, if you second seal at level 5, mage has base MAG of 7. On average she’ll have 10 MAG at level 5 mage when you decide to go the other way. It’s 2 more magic, but then she’ll be level 5 mage vs 1 sage, which has worth growths (so at best 1 more MAG after 5 levels. Probably not worth it.
Anna is absolutely bananas. Along with Chloe she has been carrying my maddening run (just finished chapter 17). That said, I know Byleth for the stats is tempting, and is what I've been using so far, but Anna is going to likely be your heaviest hitter, but after finishing chapter 17 I feel that you need your goddess dance NOT on your highest dps unit. Idk, that's the feeling I went to bed with last night after a 3 hour map in which I had to fight basically 3 bosses + 10 units at the same time (technically you fight Zephia 2 turns earlier but you don't have time to replenish your engage attacks unless you actually engage 2-3 turns before you actually pull her and immediately replenish behind you as the other 2 bosses come running for you). Something to consider...
Been using corrin on her that give hp + the luck and hp skill from tiki . she does struggle to double in maddening but so does a lot of unit not named chloe/yunaka/lapis etc
You should try running Merrin with Lucina later on, back up unit daggers + mounted units are also 100% block first hit can potentially lead to a lot of money making through making enemies go for Anna if mage knight.
you can make anyone broken by staff abusing. while it definitely benefits some characters more, taking it into account for unit viability isn't helpful for a discussion because anyone can be broken by doing so. you could use the same argument of "just level them up in jean's paralogue" to any unit and have them be an "S TIER MUST USE" unit. also the gold she gains probably wont amount to much. being extremely generous, lets say she gets 300 kills in a playthrough and gets her passive 50% of the time. that'll equate to around 75000 gold which sounds like a lot but only really equates to 15 silver. while gold in this game feels very scarce, it definitely gives more than enough for all the staves, tonics, seals, and donations you need. the ore you can buy from the shop definitely isn't cost efficient and is mostly just there to spend excess money. obviously any extra silver is helpful but a unit isnt game breaking just because they give out some extra silver
Leveling her up to my other units levels quickly on a chapter = staff abuse? She could just be a dedicated healer to hit level 10, wouldn't make a difference. 80% Magic growth is objectively very strong. Getting more silver means better weapons which means running Anna gives your OTHER UNITS more damage on top of having absurd magic growth herself. She also has good speed growth. On CH16 she procced 6 times and netted me 3K at 30% proc rate. After I do Byleth Paralogue I can increase her luck further by getting her to 20 Byleth Bond and upping the inherited skill as it scales. She can easily hit 50 luck and start generating a ton of money. If you take her money generated and convert into high donation tiers you scale up all resources you get in the endgame region, giving you well over a handful of silver :)
@@IcedCoffeeGaming I'm not sure the exact numbers on it but I'd assume getting to level 10 on a unit on a single chapter through only healing takes quite a bit of turns even with the micaiah ring. even if you are only getting her up to the same level as the rest of the army its still very inefficient to do so and eats up a lot of turns this way. It'd be similar to saying units like Est or Nino are good because you can catch them up to the rest of the army in the arena. Using her as a dedicated healer means that the Micaiah ring needs to be on her meaning other units lose access to it and might be able to make better use of it. I'll admit and say that I've only done two maddening playthroughs so far so I don't know who'd be the best to utilize the amount of exp the micaiah ring gives in the early game but a unit being forced to rely on resources just to be able to catch up with other units doesn't sound too good. Even with an 80% magic growth she still has to accomodate for her horrible bases. Assuming you promote her at 10, she'll only have 11-12 magic as a mage knight, which I'd assume is her optimal class considering it gets an extra 5 speed and 1 move compared to sage with its skill and stats. While 11-12 magic is useable it definitely isnt anything to write home about, especially considering she has 6 build meaning she can't even use heavier tomes without severe penalties. She'll have to be around level 5 mage knight just to be able to catch up to something like mage knight pandreo's magic stat but even then she'll most likely have to use elfire to be able to double because of how heavy bolganone is but pandreo and ivy can use it only being weighed down by 1-2 points. obviously anna will eventually overtake them but at that point you've invested so much into her for her to only slightly better than units that require nowhere near the same amount as investment. It's also not like the difference between the 50% mag growth most other magic units have is that different from 80%. Over the course of all this investment assuming a unit gets 25 level ups itll equate to 8 points of magic which is obviously a lot but again anna is stuck using elfire which has around 5 less might meaning that turns into a 3 magic difference for all of that effort. Again being extremely generous anna probably gives around 50-70k throughout a playthrough. I'll be honest and say I haven't used the donation feature as much but I'd assume getting to level 3 on most regions is good enough which is around 15k per region for a total of around 60k. the game most definitely gives more than enough gold for this if you're not buying any ore in the shop. meaning the extra gold from anna would likely amount to just buying more ore. forges are obviously nice but I think you overrate them quite a bit. Later forges are extremely expensive for only a +2 might in most cases which is obviously nice but its not going to change everything. Even with me barely looking into the systems other than just have 5 dogs, I was generally able to forge everything I wanted to. I never got any +5s or anything but those are so expensive for such little gain that I don't really think I ever needed.
I have my Anna on High priest cus I needed a sub healer. Slightly higher luck and speed cap compared to Sage is also pretty good. Bit less damage, due to not being able to equip higher tier tome, but her mag is stupid high, so it's not too bad.
I ignored her in favor of Jean. He became a badass, Naruto running around and punching everything. But yeah, switching Anna asap to a magic unit is pretty good. Definitely doing that in another playthrough.
Im curious how well a wyvern lord Jade could do. Her stats are extremely well rounded, even having 30% base growths in res and sped which makes her potentially flexible as a jack of all trades
The thing about Anna is she's so good in almost any role. Sage is the best choice if you want raw offensive output. Mage Knight is a good choice if you want mobility and breaks, at the expense of a little less offense. High Priest is the best choice for maximizing her personal, and if you want a way to break tomes/bows/daggers. If you want to stay physical, she's a good candidate for the Radiant Bow as a Warrior. However, this caps your MAG at 20, and almost anyone does well with a Radiant Bow. But it can still work well enough. The only places she won't work are the pure physical classes.
the limiting factor of anna is you need to kill enemy with her, so she ended up hoarding most of exp to make it work. and in maddening difficulty where i only ever get 1 skirmish even when i'm already at chapter 21 tell us how important exp is, unless like i said you don't mind having one man army. i like my team to be well rounded so i tried to make all my character useful (i like yunaka and chloe a lot so i used them from the start, thankfully chloe growth is quite good but yunaka though, thief is getting more useless by the end game). for me depending too much on anna is like i'm falling to meta trap though, and my biggest reason why i ended up dropping her even though i already tried to build her at first. well it's your gameplay and everyone should just play whatever they like though
Not all enemies are created equally, some provide almost no XP. Generally early-midgame enemies that are advanced units give big XP and base units give much less.
Citrine has something like 15 base magic, and you get a master seal in the same chapter you get her. Your Anna has the same magic as citrine at base + promo
Citrinne also has 30% speed growth vs Anna's 50%, 45% HP growth vs Anna's 55, 40% mag vs Anna's 50. 25% luck vs Anna's 45% HP Str Mag Dex Spd Def Res Lck Bld Citrine: 45 10 40 25 30 20 40 25 5 Anna: 55 15 50 50 50 20 35 45 5 Even if Citrinne had 20 base magic I'd still say Anna is much better. She is WAY FASTER, gets more crits, has a game breaking passive throughout a playthrough. Citrinne is outclassed by Ivy for mobility and damage, and Anna for economy and speed. Long term Anna will eventually catch up to Citinne. 70% mag vs 80% over 10 levels on fixed means Anna gets +1 mag per 10 levels. The speed argument makes Citrinne not a contender. Bad speed growth means less doubling, less doubling means less damage. The economy Anna generates allows for higher donation level/acquisition of crafting materials and boosts your entire team as a result. On CH16 my Anna netted me 3K gold(from JUST that map) and currently has a 30% chance to give me 500 gold on kill. So far she has made me around 10-12k and she just now has high luck and consistently doubles medium/slow enemies while generally avoids getting doubled herself.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming I like everything you said there except for Cittrine's speed growth being a big factor. 1.She boasts the highest magic stat for all of the game from the point she joins, assuming all your mages earned equal exp. She will be taking off a full HP from bosses from 3 range very consistently. The 1 point extra magic that Anna gets over the 10 levels is nothing compared to the roughly 10 points of magic that citrinne starts with over anna. 2. Speed does not matter when you are firing off attacks with 3 range tomes. Thunder tomes don't double. 3. Citrinne can bridge the gap in mobility compared to Ivy by using Byleth for an extra 2 range with tomes, which I believe is the only 5 range option in the game (barring engage attacks). Ivy as Flying unit does not get the +2 range Thyrsus from Byleth. Granted Anna does the same and make better use of the luck. Overall, Cittrine gets going a lot faster than Anna. Speed doesn't matter when your weapon can't double. And Byleth is a broken ring. I urge you to try out citrinne in a playthrough. Give her +hit from Sigurd, and then whatever other skill you want (I used canter) and you have Lysithea 2.0
I will be using Citrinne on my 3rd run. 1. By end game she will be 4-6 magic levels higher than Anna but will generate zero gold. I have a level 35-40 Anna on my 2nd run with 32 base magic. 35 with ring modifier, and 29 speed. She has generated at least 20k by this point. 30% speed growth is very bad and sage doesn't fix this. You can't reliably double with almost anything. 2. Thunder tomes aren't optimal unless running some kind of crit build. Doubling enemy armor / slow units is huge value. Byleth on Sage allows Anna to kill 2 enemies a turn with a dancer at 4 range. 3. Ivy doesn't need the range, she can break the game with flying squad Lucina and farm literal waves of enemies. She also can increase her own accuracy/damage via passives. Void Grasp turns nonlethal doubling into kills frequently. I disagree Citrinne is faster, if you just have anna heal villagers on Jean paralogue she hits level 10 in 5 minutes and starts to snowball from there.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming Yeah I gave Citrinne all the Spirit Dusts, Early forged an Elthunder to trade her before the join chapter. Then gave it the Roy engraving for +2 mt. When the game gave me elthunder, I forged that into Thoron and gave it the Ike emblem for +3 MT. Speed doesn't matter when you delete the entire health bar in 1 hit or with the aid of chain attacks. have to be careful because when equipped with these mighty tomes, her avoid and speed tend to be 0. Basically a player phase monster that can heal. Not even Lucina can save her.
i strugle to keep her alive, so she is a general now with a levin sword, still insane, she still gets magic every other level, so that is still really good
@@IcedCoffeeGaming yea, i didnt get her canter, so that was a big oversight on my part, but i also didnt get the tiki ring on this playtrough, on my next one ill get the tiki ring, or maybe the generic ring that give follow up attacks on thunder tome if i can. I also think ill use celine with levin sword as a mage knight, i think that that could be pretty viable
Funny thing, High Priest Anna, with Tiki Emblem and some Avoid investment, can solo 40lvl Tempest Trials. I did it as a joke to see how fast i lose but it kept going...so yea, guess she can also grind those TT orbs too and not just money
Anna is god tier, but you should second seal her into a magic class at 10 to maximize her caster growth. If you have the DLC, give her Tiki early until she can buy StarSphere for the +15% per stat. My Anna has 49 luck (combined with Byleth) and am not at the end yet.
I like anna caractere but unfortunaty I don't play her anymore because she is too weak in my build case, she get often target by ennemis, bad defense too, But since I did unlock corrine I should to give her more HP to tank easily
@@IcedCoffeeGaming before i knew about her magic growth i made her a swordmaster and i nothing outsped her except the fastest of the fastest then hooked a corrin engraved plus 5 killing edge and just watched
I don't know how mandatory she is. I think it's fine to use Citrine over her honestly. Anna's biggest problem is the same as Citrine's - attacking against something that reliates. Let's say she attacks a General with a Spear, she'll probably die before her second attack. Citrine has the same problem. This forces them both into using Thunder-based tomes, and then Anna's crazy speed advantage doesn't really matter anymore - her stats look a lot like Citrines and Citrine didn't need any special treatment to get her there. I think Anna is fine - nowhere near as much work as say Donnel required or something like that. But I don't think she's mandatory either. Even someone like Celine can double armors and she'll even have a chance to survive while Anna might not, and because Celine is doubling anyway, her lower magic doesn't matter. Celine also has utility as an anti-mage unit while Anna does not. I'm sure someone will argue with me, but I think Citrine, Anna and Celine are all pretty interchangeable as a 3rd string magic user depending on what you want from the unit. For variety's sake, you can't really go wrong with 1) Ivy; 2) Pandreo or Hortensia; 3) Citrine or Celine or Anna.
@@Namingway248 Yeah, I don't think so. Alacrity will likely never trigger without Speedtaker to help her. Anna's speed isn't that high, especially when she only has 5 build to start off with so having a 9 speed advantage on a unit is a really tall ask. Speedtaker or better versions of Alacrity are also 2000-3000 sp. That's basically end-game, which is meaningless for unit analysis. Depriving Lyn of a physical unit that can use it better is also not worth it. No matter how you slice it, she's pretty similar to Citrine in more situations than she is not. And if the armor can't retaliate, I think all 3 mages I listed can beat the armor anyway. I want to reiterate, I'm saying Anna is fine, I'm just saying these mages are all pretty interchangeable. At the end of the day, Pandreo and Ivy are much more tanky and Hortensia has unique healing abilities, so we're really talking about who the best 3rd string magic user is. I don't see a playthrough changing that much depending on who you pick. I really don't.
She isn't mandatory unless you want to make 1-3k gold a mission midgame, 3-6k gold a mission endgame. Snowballing your economy means you can upgrade more weapons by buying more materials and donating more enabling your entire team.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming I honestly didn't make that much money with Anna when I used her. I'm almost done a playthrough with her now. Money isn't really the limiting factor here either - it's silver. Even if she made 15k over the course of the game (I don't believe it if anyone said she did lol), that's not a lot of extra silver. Not exactly a big factor here that I would say she is mandatory. I always have extra gold at the end of a playthrough. I am always out of silver. I don't think anyone's convinced me that Anna is somehow really so much better than the other two options. They really do seem very interchangeable to me.
Anna is literally the best mage in the game. In comparison Anna: 50% MAG 50% DEX 50% SPD Ivy: 30% MAG 25% DEX 40% SPD Celine: 35% MAG 25% DEX 30% SPD Framme: 25% MAG 35% DEX 55% SPD Citrinne: 40% MAG 25% DEX 30% SPD Veyle: 45% MAG 35% DEX 30% SPD Even if you don't want money, you have a really strong unit. So I agree she's definitely S tier, really though it's the money that really bumps her up there lol.
Growths aren't everything. Bases, mobility, efficiency all matter. Anna *cannot* be S tier because the decision to use her tanks your efficiency/turn count. Any unit requiring either a cheese/exploit to be usable is not high tier Anna is like C tier. If you're playing really chill shes great, but if you're trying to play remotely fast shes a no go since you need to exploit her to even make her playable
"pretty hard to get silver" after beating chapter 14, you unlock a shop which sells Silver Ingots for $500. It has 10 (not sure if it refreshes after every chapter/stage, let me beat chapter 15 and I'll let you know.)
Tbh im completely new to the FE series in general so I have a question.. if I already experienced different jobs on Anna that aren't magic oriented, can I somehow reset all these stats and focus on magic to make her a mage? Or is it a done deal and im locked into a physical build now? Like... does stats have a cap?
You need to have her learn weapon proficiencies from emblem rings by battling them in the arena or using them. These can be used to test in to new classes. Some emblem rings give staff, tome, bow etc proficiencies. You can use a second seal to change from advanced class to advanced class to switch out of physical into a mage.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming thanks a lot for replying... and once I learn these weapons proficiency, will my magic stat growth be fixed? Or am I never reaching a high magic stat because I wasted levels on some axe jobs?
Problem I have with sage Anna is her speed growth is meh like citrine (not bad just meh) so she's probably gonna cause so many resets dying in one hit. Sage is a decent class but it's Hella risky. I'd sooner maker her martial
You just got really unlucky. Anna's base speed growth is 50 percent. To put that into perspective, it's the second highest in the game behind characters like Chloe and Lapis with a blazing fast 55% speed growth.
How can you have Anna heal anyone when she starts as an axe fighter? You don't get access to second seals until after both her and Jeans paralogue afaik. Do you just do the paralogues later?
What are your thoughts on Lineage on non-early units? Like units you get past chapter 10? At just 150 SP I can't imagine it not being worth it, but I haven't quite gotten to the end-end game so I'm not sure just how badly SP can dry up for that last skill you want to pick up.
@Iced Coffee Gaming oh yeah, it's a skill you can inherit from Edelgard for 150 SP at just bond level 5. It increases exp gain for the unit by 20% from all sources. If SP gain really is linked directly to exp gain then it's just busted and is probably an auto-teach on all units until they pick up their second skill
Do you think it's worth putting Roy on Anna? I just got Roy and I noticed his Quad attack skill. Is that actually useable with her or is that skill just a gimmick that sounds cool but isn't practical?
That skill requires a very high str character as each of the weapons used are his actual engage weapons. If your str is middling or low then most if not all of the hits will be zero. The main purpose of that skill is that its a guaranteed break on any non armored unit. Otherwise i don't think you want that on her.
@@IcedCoffeeGamingi just did the Tiki paralogue with Anna using healing staff, holy f it took me 60 turns and all the rewinds, my Anna went from lv5 to lv11 just by healing. Love the fire emblem content, keep it up !
Yes if you want she can be decent but nowhere near S tier. S tier is for absolutely broken units like Ivy, Kagetsu and Panette. Also if you donate only to level 2 (which is the optimal thing to do) and don't upgrade usless weapons you will have enough gold for everything
its not surprising really. Early tier lists dont really use serenes forest and other such resources to view bases or growths. All you have is your single run of the game on whatever difficulty. And Anna does NOT have a good introduction in a blind run of the game. An axe figher with baby strength that never gets any defense levels. And promotes in to two axe classes that have low dex caps so she misses alot AND doesn't hit hard. Most wont notice that her mag is getting lots of levels, nor will they think to hand her a radiant bow/levin sword. once the data became more common it became super clear that she was FAR stronger as a magic class.
@@SH1NK1R01 True, I got that info that she excels as mage from people through gamefaqs, lol. I don't keep up with growth info and data so I wonder if there's anyone else like Anna that's better off as an entirely different class.
@@Palidor clanne. He has only 10% base for mag growth. But starts as a mage. He is actually the worst caster in the game. But is granted to you as the canon early mage.
Optimal build for her is a reclass into mage right away, then at level 10 go into sage. Then as soon as you get byleth learn fists and change her into a priest for the insane luck growth. Also priest just has much higher and better caps on stats. Her super hi dex and spd growth will make up for the 0 growths of the magic classes. Very solid unit overall but yea I think priest is the optimal class on her absolutely necessary if you are using her to farm gold.
That is an awful idea. If you do that you have to feed her nine more levels in mage. You should rather get her to level 10 in axe fighter, get her promoted, and then reclass to mage knight. High priest is not very good offensively and a few more points in magic I'd not a big deal.
@@spongbobsquarepants3922 That is 5 wasted level ups. Which matter on harder difficulties. Mage has 25% magic growth rate which is the exact same as mage knight and priest. Only sage has 5% more at 30 so they are all pretty close in terms of growths rates. The reason priest is better in the end in my opinion is because it has much higher stat caps in hp, magic, and luck which is a huge deal for her. The only thing that is better about mage knight is the one more move along with higher str and def which she has terrible def and str growths so it wont matter in the end. Unfortunately mage knight is just outclassed by sage and priest if you trying to min max. Especially on Anna where luck is worth a lot more for gold farming so you need that high luck cap of the priest. If you look up growth rates and class stat caps you will see what I am talking about. Does not mean other options are bad. She is just a very solid unit overall. And on easier difficulties min maxing does not matter. But on maddening you want to get her up and running as fast as possible and making her a mage early makes her a lot more useful early on.
@@theolong6689 I don't think those levels are wasted. You just get different stats than if you turn her into a mage. You get more HP, Spd, and Def as an axe fighter. But this thing about growth rates are not that important for the base class. After having had an equal amount of levels, the immediate second seal to mage will have a lead in magic by one point. That is pretty irrelevant. However if you do the fast promotion, then you will have the class ability faster.The point is to get Anna's stats to be good as quickly as possible. We do this, to get the painful few levels over as soon as possible. If you immediatly turn her into a mage as soon as you get her, she becomes a worse Clanne, and needs to be babied a lot before she can hold her own in battle. Getting a few more points of luck don't matter as much as making her good at combat, because to get money from her skill, she has to be good at combat. This is something she won't be if she is in High Priest. Because of her crappy speed base, she has serious trouble doubling for a while, and Mage knight lets her double faster than any of the other magic classes, since it has more speed than the other magic classes, and the class ability gives three more speed against the right kinds of weapon types. I find that actually being able to one round enemies is better than High Priest for grinding money.
@@spongbobsquarepants3922 Thats fair I see your point. I was mostly focused on growth rates and stat caps without really taking the advanced classes base stats into consideration which does matter a lot more early and on harder difficulties. That said I do still think that Priest is her optimal class for endgame and for capping out stats since it has the higher stat caps for the stats that matter especially luck for farming gold in the endgame/post game. But I do agree that mage knight is the better option early for that bonus to speed and bld which will get her doubling much more effectively. She does however lose the utility of staves and even fist which can be very effective in specific situations against strong mages.
@@theolong6689 I agree that post game it probably is better to have her as a High Priest if she is a super soldier who can mow down enemies. Also, You cannot get her into high priest immediatly if you do not have DLC, because Tiki Grants fist proficiency, and without DLC you need to wait for Byleth, at the start of Chapter 15. you do not even have the option of going HIgh Priest until Midgame.
because you only need to lvl her up 5 lvls to get her to warrior then you second seal her if you reclass her first, then you need to lvl her up 10 times to promote her you lose 5 levels on the second side that could have been used on sage or mage knight
Jean: "My family has studied the art of herbs and medicinal remedies for genera -- "
Divine dragon: "Actually I found this street urchin of a little girl in some bandit infested ruins and despite her airheaded personality she's actually _really_ good at reading, so she's our mage/doctor now. "
Her medical bill must be insane
@@RoboMAS1 the 319th rule of acquisition, the greatest wealth is your health.
Jean is literally great at everything though
@@RoboMAS1💀💀
High Priest Anna for that higher luck growth and cap... 75% growth and a 39 cap? Better join the church of Anna because you're getting a lot of money.
Anna would definitely be a protestan mega church priestess
I want to use Anna for my first foray into Maddening, but I still can't decide whether to go for Sage, High Priest or something else. I keep hearing conflicting things (heck I saw one person advocate making her a Sword Master that uses the Levin Sword) and obviously more than one build can work, but that just makes it harder to decide. High Priest has the highest Luck growth, so it makes sense given I mainly want my Anna to help with money, but getting the money means getting kills and Sage grants more power and more powerful tomes. Then there is the mobility of Mage Knight to consider.
@@Ryodraco axe armor Anna ftw!!!1!1!
@@Ryodraco If you use DLC, High Priest because Tiki gives art proficiency and she'll already have really high magic by then. Otherwise, Sage because you won't have an emblem with art proficiency when it's time to promote and reclass. You can always give her boots for mobility.
@@Ryodraco the lack of access to tomes past elfire isn't really as big of a deal as you might think tbh. Magic gets alot of power from being able to double. So more than with other weapon types you really don't want to use a tome that is too heavy for the caster. Almost all of the casters have super low bld bases and growths. Meaning that the A rank spells are quite often too heavy for them. This isn't a permanent problem of course but High priest Anna can end up feeling quite strong since Elfire is very light and i believe +3 is usually where the lower level tome equals the non upgraded higher level tome. (ie fire+3 is the same at elfire +0 and so on) The B rank tomes are significantly cheaper to forge than the A rank ones.
Hands down my favorite unit. How could you not like an adorable child that turns enemies into 500 gold every 2nd toss of a Elfire?
NO WINDOW SHOPPERS!
@@cosmictraveler1146 SLASHING MORE THEN PRICES!
It feels like Tiki was designed with Anna in mind. She gets early access to high priest, becomes useful immediately, gains bonus points and skills that boost luck and HP, and divine blessing+ gives a ton of exp.
ehhh, I feel like she has more synergy with Byleth honestly... Tiki is cool too though!
@@DukeBradleyLoL I forgot to mention the part where you replace Tiki with Byleth ASAP.
all this new infos making me want to do another run. all these missed opportunities
@@Feed_Matt_Steak There's really no reason to replace Tiki with Byleth on Maddening. It's basically worse in every way to swap because it makes her significantly less durable. It lowers her luck growth to do so (Which helps to offset the slight luck bonus difference you get from equipping Byleth), and she loses a significant amount of HP to switch. Byleth is also a support ring, and Anna will be amassing so many kills that she turns into one of your carries if you're farming gold, so it's better to have someone else aoe dance.
@@RaptureSR Honestly I really don't agree.
You don't gain stat boosters and passives from the rings. You can test this. You only get their abilities and what it displays upon the equip menu- meaning you dont get Tiki's HP/Lck and have to inherit it- same as Byleth's Lck. This also applies to bond effects that make you gain Avo., Hit, Dodge from corresponding weapons.
Additionally +2 range from Byleth's engage is ABSURD on a unit like Anna and having a refined Tome can be really nice compared to being locked only into using Anna as a frontline unit with Tiki's breath. The offensive power with Byleth makes it so she cannot be counter attacked and simply and literally does not need to be bulky to begin with.
Byleth's weapon variety allows for offensive Byleth ring pairings to be done- but I will admit this should be paired with Seadall to fit in a Goddess Dance (and even then with Tiki you don't really wanna use the Engage without first giving Divine Blessing, so this kind of applies to her as well if you dont wanna sink a turn into losing an offensive turn on Anna)
I honestly feel like Tiki is inherently good at enabling units that would otherwise be mediocre, and Anna doesnt fall under this remotely. At the end of the day they're both good options tho.
High Mag, Dex and Speed?
Thyrsus?
Wait a second, this Anna is just Lysithea in disguise.
Anna with Tiki brings her growth to 95% with a benefit of luck and hp until you get Byleth who has more luck for the money.
So 9/10 levels of mag growth is just as crazy imo
Dlc 😂
@@johnymcmuffins7898 yes
Don't forget Tiki gives her the ability to heal 40 HP by waiting and removes statuses. My Anna got to 60+ HP so any enemy she doesn't double, can't double back and can never do enough damage to kill. She literally is able to stand there and outheal or out-tank most damage, while killing them in 2 hits guaranteed with elfire.
@@Josh10Force also reduced crit chance against her too and I enemy boss emblems will do less damage to her. She is a literal god
She was my favorite character in the game. Both to use (for all the reasons you state), and because she had the funniest personality and support conversations. Her "crit lines" are also the best in the game.
No window shoppers
anna as sage with dire thunder is single handedly carrying me on maddening right now and is my biggest source of money
Same build bro, she dont need an Emblem Ring just S rank Olwen ring
Got bored so tried something dumb, griffin knight anna works really well. She truly a great combat unit
That's what I did in my Normal run. She's able to solo. I'm probably do the same for my Maddening playthrough. Gave her a Levin Sword.
I think Byleth is hands down THE best emblem for Anna once he's available. As a Sage, Anna gets +2 range on her spells from Byleth. I had that on Céline in my first playthrough and she ended up being my nuke button 90% of the time despite her lower growths, because just was always in range and able to double. Now imagine that on Anna. Byleth also gives her an insane amount of extra luck (I think it was +12 at max or something?) and because of the teacher passive, she'll level faster as well. I didn't use Anna on my first playthrough, so I'm looking forward to her on my second now. I got her to level 10 just in time for the first master/second seals already just by putting Micaiah on her. Great Sacrifice is a free level if it heals enough units of course, but an AoE Mend *also* gave me a full level right before that. It's kind of insane how quickly Micaiah levels units.
I had mine on pandreo first playthrough but there's a strong case for running it on her instead, my Anna got screwed by chapter 11 taking away my rings and no foreknowledge of her growths or how long it'd be before I could get her into a magic class.
@@Smuggers. I got to the point you get Byleth on my second run yesterday. Byleth really DOES make her the force I assumed she'd be, but I'm now actually thinking about wther or not I want to keep him on Anna when I get the rest of the rings back. Anna has the best stats of my mages and heavily benefits from the Luck bonus, but the special dance from Byleth also grants a +4 magic bonus on mystic units. I'm contemplating to move Byleth on Céline eventually, so that Anna can get more moves per turn (1 regular, 1 from Seadall, 1 from Byleth, then 1 from Seadall again). You only can do that once Seadall gets Canter after chapter 17 at the earliest, but that seems VERY strong and incentivizes using more than one mage. I might go for that instead.
In that setup, Anna can get Olwen S (if I get that ring) or Celica for the echo skill.
@@justsomejojo Yeah, as nice as byleth is to have on mages he's somewhat of a sacrifice, because it means you can't get byleth danced or benefit from the +4 mag.
@@Smuggers. in my first run, I had Byleth on Céline and she still was my biggest asset in killing bosses and strong regulars, because I'd only ever use the special dance when Seadall was in range. This still meant 2 casts + the dance, which usually was good enough for things in Hard mode. So on that difficulty, the two options are just "really optimized" vs "still good but a bit less so". Not sure how much of a difference it makes on Maddening. For the moment, just running an extra mage (my Céline is turning really well once again) seems to do the trick.
Me and my mate's Anna are both busted in their own right, and we're both getting silly amounts of money thanks to her. My friend has her on Mage Knight with all the El tomes equipped, while mine's a Thief equipped with Byleth, Lineage and Tiki's stat growth who i've been loading with all the stat boosters, and it's actually hysterical watching her clean shop with the enemies almost solo while making huge amounts of money. Love this game's little loot goblin.
sage even makes her look like anna from fates, it was meant to be
I didn't make her a mage, but because of her base magic growth, she is pretty good with the magical-type weapons like Radiant Bow. I gave her a longbow, a radiant bow, and also the axes that are effective against cavalry and armored, so she can do significant damage to just about any type of unit. She gets better in late game because it takes a while for her BLD stat to become respectable enough to use the axes more. If you make her strong enough to start soloing mobs (or pairing with Alear), it makes the gold situation so much easier. I haven't done a maddening run yet but I imagine next time around I will try making her a magic unit
Yeah I went sword master with levin sword and paired with lucina for ×2 exp bow and dual guard utility
Its still early to tell and I could be wrong, but in a low turn count(or try to beat the game as few turn as possible) playthrough, I actually think Anna is going to be bad. Why? Well 1. You can’t do skirmishes(those will increase ur turn count) to grind to catch up with ur other units 2. You have to put Micaiah ring on her early game to get exp cause shes to weak/frail which decreases your team’s flexibility 3. Takes to long/too much resources to be good. I would say it takes anna around the mid game to be on par with celine who imo is like mid tier and by then u get ivy whos much better and can fly. Not to mention her skill isnt going to proc that often. At lvl 20 as a sage shes going 11 luck(3 base + 6 from 10 sage lvls + ~2 base class) Additionally, she has to kill to get it to proc which some cases would require some setup
LTC is an optional self imposed ruleset that has nothing to do with general maddening viability.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming a lot of fire emblem youtubers/veterans use the ruleset of finish the game in the lowest number of turns without rng hack or very specific strat like tripe warp, minimal to no grinding when ranking a unit in a tier list. I just said ltc cause its shorter myb not being specific.
They use this general ruleset for tier list as with grinding/investment, any unit can be good. Thats why in a lot of these you see growth units ex. Est, Nino, Donnel rank so poorly, even the ones you get early. Not saying anna is garbage(imo prob like mid tier), but just not a high tier.
If you are talking about a casual playthrough and don’t care about turn count, then yeah I agree as her growth+personal are amazing when opportunity cost is not a big factor
The one time Anna is a good unit in a game, I let her die thinking she'll be the same as all the other Annas.
Yeah they definitely overcompensated this game with her, haha.
The only time she was bad was in 3H. Awakening Anna is peak and fates Anna is pretty solid.
@@Starwars-Fanboy hard agree her awakening character design was her best imo
@@riddivalion design is different thatn what was being discussed here. Anna in awakening is really only useful because gaius is trash. She has inherent utility for being a thief but otherwise is kind just a whatever unit. She also has no supports with anyone other than robin which meant that her pair up bonuses (which was where alot of characters power came from) were all bad.
Her awakening design was her best !
And she was not a meh unit. I played on Lunatic and her bases alone carried her far. Staff + theif utility is great. To really be good at combat I think she should reclass into a sage or Valkiery since her physical attack falls behind. Otherwise just use Levin sword on her.
Warrior Anna with the magic bow hits and edlegard hits super hard both physically and magically. She one rounds most for me at least.
Anna legit as a mage knight capped every single stat other than str at the last chapter, shes insane. cant wait to do a maddening run with her.
My only regret is not utilizing her sooner. by the time I reclassed her on my maddening run she was already level 7 axe fighter. Mage Knight Anna nukes
I've really been wanting to use a Mage Knight but couldn't think of who fits. Is it that good? Mage Knight would be cavalry, so it doesn't get the Mystical bonus of ignoring cover which becomes very important for taking out those dodgy swordmasters especially if they're in cover I'm sure.
@@jackmanleblanc2518 You can use the mobility to walk right up to them and use Elsurge which has 100% hit chance always
@@wiredrayne I... didn't know that. Huh. I might have been underrating Elsurge because it doesn't have a third tier (which I still think is dumb).
So I went full spoiler free in my first maddening run, didn't watch any videos or check growth rates, and completely missed out on Anna (I thought she was meant to be a gimmick unit who was hard to use but could fix the economic issues a bit) and just struggled my way through. Second playthrough knowing how insane she is, farmed 80k gold in one map and destroyed the bosses in chapter 11 between her, jean, chloe and alear.
PURE upside on this lass
She's so good, I made her a Mage Knight and which a forged Levin Sword she kills most things
Not related to the video on hand, but I sat down yesterday to put together a serious tool for weapon forging analysis that may be of interest. It's linked at the bottom. Feel free to make a copy for yourself and play around.
Data was copied from Serenes Forest, but formatted to show full stat data for each weapon, instead of showing weapon base stats in one section, and weapon forging modifications in another.
Additionally, I created a new measurement "Mineral Cost" Which is 1x iron, 10x steel, 100x silver. This is proportional to flee market pricing, and roughly consistent with the exchange rate at the smith (although they charge about a 10% conversion fee.) I found this very helpful, as comparing 70 iron 8 steel and a silver to 20 steel 3 silver isn't the most intuitive thing.
The "Weapon Comparisson" sheet has drop down menus for any weapons you'd like to compare side by side. "Weapon Data" is just a list of everything in detail, and may be useful in determining if it's worth refining to the next level or not.
I found it helpful to draw conclusions. You can draw your own conclusions of course, but some of my main takeaways include:
1. Standard weapons, are always worth refining to +1 if you plan to use them at all since it's very cheap, even if you won't use them very long. I'd recommend this for most iron weapons.
2. Standard weapons at +2 and +4 just gain 5 hit, so +2 is worth skipping over.
3. For the resource price of raising a weapon from +3 to +5, you could raise 2 weapons from +0 to +3, or 13 weapons from +0 to +1. If your character can handle the weight, I'd suggest using a heavier material. If not, I'd suggest forging other weapons.
4. Knives follow a different trend, and do get significant boosts at +2 and +4. +5 remains very expensive, but these give an enormous return on investment. I'm of the opinion that the iron dagger +4 is the best weapon in the game because of it's high attack (13) enormous hit rate (110) which is great for terrain busting, negligible weight, 1-2 range, application of poison, and reasonably cost. The steel dagger +4 has 2 more strength and 10 crit, but 20 less hit, which makes it worse for dealing with units in terrain, in addition to being more expensive. Silver Dagger +3 is comparable in stats, but about 3x as expensive.
5. Tomes have a bigger difference between tiers than weapons (Fire, Elfire, Bolganone) and are more expensive to refine regularly. You could spend 500 minerals and 5000 gold to turn a fire tome into fire+4, netting a 9Mt 100 hit, 4 Wt tome, or you could save 2000 gold, spend 500 minerals and 3000 gold to make it into a Bolganone, 16Mt, 85 Hit, 11 Wt, with room for future refinement. You could have this ready for your first promote. Unfortunately, Bolganone is heavier than desired, but having it as a nuke option for bosses, or just forging Elfire until a bit later I think are both good options.
6. Most non-standard weapons I think you want to get to at least +1, but not +5. +2,3 and 4 are usually reasonable.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zE0mNWqLMDnZT3tCIcY-E3rKbyeGv8WDa7m8jmWUXt4/edit#gid=103960619
From all my playthrough, Anna, Chloe and Jean have all been S tier easily, cannot wait to see tier list if ever do one!
What did you run Jean as? I've heard that he can be put into anything, but this is my first maddening playthrough and I want to start off strong.
@@learnpolishangel2194 Can be anything really, but first Maddening run did made into Royal Knight and had super awesome lance and staff usage with unbelievable dexterity and speed, doubled everything with almost always 100 hit, gave a flame lance due to balanced strength and magic so could always hit enemy weakness. Second run made into Berserker and was insane, nearly every level up got strength and had some level ups where had +2 HP as well as maxing out speed super quickly.
@@Grimrai悲壮ライPlay I think I'll go with Berserker. Axe units are my favorite, and I think it'd be funny to see Jean running around with an axe.
By the way, if you don't mind me asking, how good are Rosado and Goldmary? I really like their designs, but I haven't heard much about them as units.
@@learnpolishangel2194 Rosado is really good and Fliers very strong in this game, from what have played, Goldmary has not impressed self lot compared to other units.
@@Grimrai悲壮ライPlay Thanks for telling me! One last question, as you seem knowledgeable. Should I funnel most of my EXP into the best units early game (Chapters 1-6), or should I try to evenly spread it? I don't plan on using Vander, Clanne, Framme, Etie, or Boucheron past that point, so I don't know if I should feed them any kills or only let them take the necessary ones.
They felt bad for all of Anna's bad sisters so they made the youngest the strongest
It’s funny. Most “Est” units in Fire Emblem as a whole have been considered bad units. But Engage has made things much better for Anna and Jean, with Micaiah’s Great Sacrifice and staff access, and Jean starting as a martial monk so he has safe access to exp with backline staff and chain guard usage. And the reward for getting them trained is absurd.
For anyone who missed the opportunity at ch10-11. I'll say that the fighter class is still okay on her.
If your going to keep her in that class line, promote to Warrior then and forging a hurricane axe and radiant bow is a must
I used both Anna and Jean in my maddening run. Jean on Micaiah staff spam and Anna spamming Mercurius from Marth's level 10 bond. Both very fun units 😉
Mage Anna with Dire Thunder has been a consistent MVP of my maddening run, but I think it is worth noting that she requires pretty heavy investment and her bases aren't amazing, so although she can become quite strong the resources you invest in her are explicitly not going to others, which is noteworthy. I find her super fun to use and enjoy it a lot, but in terms of optimal play I'm not sure that she outclasses some of the other mages like Citrine, Ivy, or even Lindon (Dire Thunder with +20 crit from personal is strong despite lower growths). For a casual run, though, she has great unit feel and she's very satisfying to raise into a monster
While you are investing in her, you're getting a return on that investment in the form of a god unit and money.
You can use that return for your other units.
With other units, you get no return, from investment outside of a good unit.
Idk, she's been hard carrying my maddening run tbh. She outclassed Ivy so much that I had to start diverting resources to her so she didn't hit like a wet noodle. I think she's been like 10+ attack power ahead of everyone else for a good while now, which is while I started thinking of moving goddess dance away from her just so I don't miss out on an extra attack on that alpha strike turn on bosses.
I dont know that this holds tbh. You get Anna before literally all of those units so some of that "investment" could quite literally never have gone to them in the first place. Also if you put similar levels of investment in to all of those characters only Ivy really provides an equivalent return. Citrinne actually falls behind Anna from a damage perspective on every magic class, and Lindon is so late in the game that his only value is the dire thunder gimmick. (which is good but hes also a pre promoted sage, Anna by that point if used as a sage will have stats equal to or far greater than him). And on a casual run most people wont know or think to make her magical and thus she gets benched since she is squishy and does not damage.
@@SH1NK1R01 it does hold. Pretty sure op didnt mean the investing in the other units. Op prob meant that investment that went to anna could’ve went to some other unit or just make your team as a whole better. Opportunity cost is a huge factor to consider when evaluating how viable is a unit(esp growth units). This why historically growth units like Est and Donnel always rank poorly by high skilled/ltc fe players. There have been cases where growth units have been good like Cyril and fe8 franz. Cyril is good cause he can catch up really quickly cause point blank volly and his weapon proficiencies. Franz is good because he starts with a good base class, decent bases, but most importantly comes very early in ch2(also enemies in fe8 a piss weak). In the context of an efficient playthrough, imo Anna is mid tier cause she still requires a good amount investment and takes time for her to be good. She is def one of the better growth units in fe history as she has better return and requires less investment compared to Est and Donnel.
@@bobfan2821 opportunity cost. You realize that the “opportunity” there is not just decorative right? It refers to the theoretical loss of choosing one option over another. There is literally no caster other than Ivy that even remotely comes close to Anna. And the resources devoted to her would only have gone to either Celine or citrinne at that stage of the game. You can’t just look at how much total resources are used on a character, what’s more important is wether those resources could have even been given to anyone else for a similar or better result. Anna does require investment. But almost everything you give her wasn’t going to anyone that would end up better with the same investment. And the few who would aren’t in the game at that stage so they can’t get it regardless. You are also completely ignoring the utility of getting money. From a pure equipment perspective she can pay for everything she cost to gear and forge. Meaning most of her investment is 2 seals and maybe 10 or 15 kills for setup. On maddening you can comfortably do that in maybe 2 chapters. Or do the exploit on Jean chapter. The last archer on the map will only attack the villagers. If you second seal Anna to martial monk before clearing Jean paralogue then you can just spam heal that villager till she hits 10 or you run out of uses. It’s honestly bonkers to call a unit like this mid tier with such easy setup and such little competition.
My hard carries were these 3:
1: anna, the video already explains it.
2: ivy, once she inherited speadtaker i gave her lucina's ring for chain attacks from either balgon or thoron range, she also had canter so she was both a dodge tank, one shot monster, and if necessary a healer.
3: alear, i made her a wyvern knight to fix her mediocre str growth (i mean... 35 str growth for physical damege dealing fe protagonist is kinda low, just look at byleth, they had better str, mag, res and luck growth's then alear, even togh classes growth rates in three houses were on avarage lower then in engage, alear have better hp and def growths but the divine dragon class is no tank), and since alear already have a 50 spd growth, and now she had the str to get kills, she then got more exp, so even on fixed growth her spd on the endgame was the same of my divine dragon playtrough, but she hitted harder, her spd was still able to make her double everything, and with the extra str she was able to kill everything with these 2 hits, wyver knight can also use 2 weapon classes so i gave her a spear for 2 range physical, and she was still able to double everything with it, she had an engraved killing edge for the extra oomph when neaded, and then she double critted instead of just double, she could also use ridersbane, so her aresenal was liberation, killing edge, armorslayer, spear and ridersbane.
Well, in my playthrough i made Anna a wolf knight.. and together with a tomahawk she kills everything:
The damage from the opponents: 5dmg, 0%, 0% krit
Her damage:
70-80dmg, 100%, 30-40% krit
Im guessing you got lucky with levelups and put stat boosters on her? She is not a good physical unit. I mean, she has 15 str growth, so... Any real phys unit would have done 100 damage :D
Anna saved my maddening run because I fell for the donation meme early
What if I told you donation is the metagame but you need to do it at key points in time :)
Level 2323 donations is optimal i hear. Youll be drowning in minerals
Another thing. After I got Byleth, she never misses. As a Mystical, terrain doesn't matter when attacking an enemy. I never saw divine pulse on her (which triggers by luck), and even if the enemy can dodge divine pulse might trigger.
Also with Byleth, she gets +2 magic range while engaged. Elthunders hitting from 5 range. Kill something, dance her, goddess dance, dance her again, kill something again.
griffon knight Anna with the Levin sword def carried my Maddening run with Chole sitting behind her Lucina Bond shielding made Anna kill everything on enemy phase
See i found out about mage anna pretty damn late and when i did i was aversed to it cuz aesthetically all previous annas were never mages if you dont count her depictions with the levin sword. So i stuck pretty much with warrior on both my first botched maddening run and my current one and shes honestly my best unit and im not even running any optimal builds. I did get the dlc and i strapped edelgard on her and called it a day. and her skill inheritance is entirely byleths luck and tikis hp/luck just cuz money drop every other kill (im pretty close to 50 lck with buffs). Her dmg is nutty and despite being a warrior, i have her at 21 mag and having radiant bow is pretty great.
Get max cash in Celica's Paralogue with Anna.
I’m using all my arena uses to level anna up, plan to use her later on once I get byleth
Anna is my most killed unit. Cmon anna don't let em see you cry
I second sealed Anna to High Priest, and I got a Goddess Icon last night! I've gotta increase her luck!
I put Anna on Mage Knight with Micaiah so she can run axe, tome, and staff with high mobility and ez levels with Great Sacrifice. Threw Luck passive from Blythe and Tiki on her and she has been giving me gains and slaughtering everything the entire time. Engaged with Micaiah she is pretty much an unkillable machine with Nosferatu so she can just chain bait people into her and print money.
I kept her as Warrior so she can abuse Radiant Bow +5 and Killer Axe +5 while Equipping Leif for all that extra build (currently she's at 17 build at level 5 Warrior), and Vantage++. All I need now is to give her Lyn's ability so she can double before an enemy can even touch her lol.
So I waited till I got my second seal and used it on Anna to make her a Martial Monk. Got her to 10 and advanced her to High Priest, did 40 levels into high priest. Mainly because she has 59 luck with tiki and byleth skills. By herself she can solo fights and gain crap tons of money.
Reclassed her to Sage and now she is nuking all fights with her luck still at 51. I say for her to not die just add avo to her weapons so she dodges everything as High Priest but as Sage she does get hit like 15% of the time
One thing to consider on whether to master seal then second seal is Base Stats. Anna’s worst base stat is MAG. If you master seal at 10 then second seal, Sage has a base MAG of 9. So, no matter what, Anna will have 9 MAG at “internal” level 10.
Alternatively, if you second seal at level 5, mage has base MAG of 7. On average she’ll have 10 MAG at level 5 mage when you decide to go the other way.
It’s 2 more magic, but then she’ll be level 5 mage vs 1 sage, which has worth growths (so at best 1 more MAG after 5 levels. Probably not worth it.
My Anna has 49 Luck with Tiki. She's basically a coin flip of whether she'll get gold from a kill or not.
Anna is absolutely bananas. Along with Chloe she has been carrying my maddening run (just finished chapter 17). That said, I know Byleth for the stats is tempting, and is what I've been using so far, but Anna is going to likely be your heaviest hitter, but after finishing chapter 17 I feel that you need your goddess dance NOT on your highest dps unit. Idk, that's the feeling I went to bed with last night after a 3 hour map in which I had to fight basically 3 bosses + 10 units at the same time (technically you fight Zephia 2 turns earlier but you don't have time to replenish your engage attacks unless you actually engage 2-3 turns before you actually pull her and immediately replenish behind you as the other 2 bosses come running for you). Something to consider...
Yes i dont think byleth on anna is ideal tbh.
Been using corrin on her that give hp + the luck and hp skill from tiki . she does struggle to double in maddening but so does a lot of unit not named chloe/yunaka/lapis etc
You should try running Merrin with Lucina later on, back up unit daggers + mounted units are also 100% block first hit can potentially lead to a lot of money making through making enemies go for Anna if mage knight.
you can make anyone broken by staff abusing. while it definitely benefits some characters more, taking it into account for unit viability isn't helpful for a discussion because anyone can be broken by doing so. you could use the same argument of "just level them up in jean's paralogue" to any unit and have them be an "S TIER MUST USE" unit.
also the gold she gains probably wont amount to much. being extremely generous, lets say she gets 300 kills in a playthrough and gets her passive 50% of the time. that'll equate to around 75000 gold which sounds like a lot but only really equates to 15 silver. while gold in this game feels very scarce, it definitely gives more than enough for all the staves, tonics, seals, and donations you need. the ore you can buy from the shop definitely isn't cost efficient and is mostly just there to spend excess money. obviously any extra silver is helpful but a unit isnt game breaking just because they give out some extra silver
Leveling her up to my other units levels quickly on a chapter = staff abuse? She could just be a dedicated healer to hit level 10, wouldn't make a difference. 80% Magic growth is objectively very strong.
Getting more silver means better weapons which means running Anna gives your OTHER UNITS more damage on top of having absurd magic growth herself. She also has good speed growth.
On CH16 she procced 6 times and netted me 3K at 30% proc rate. After I do Byleth Paralogue I can increase her luck further by getting her to 20 Byleth Bond and upping the inherited skill as it scales. She can easily hit 50 luck and start generating a ton of money.
If you take her money generated and convert into high donation tiers you scale up all resources you get in the endgame region, giving you well over a handful of silver :)
@@IcedCoffeeGaming I'm not sure the exact numbers on it but I'd assume getting to level 10 on a unit on a single chapter through only healing takes quite a bit of turns even with the micaiah ring. even if you are only getting her up to the same level as the rest of the army its still very inefficient to do so and eats up a lot of turns this way. It'd be similar to saying units like Est or Nino are good because you can catch them up to the rest of the army in the arena.
Using her as a dedicated healer means that the Micaiah ring needs to be on her meaning other units lose access to it and might be able to make better use of it. I'll admit and say that I've only done two maddening playthroughs so far so I don't know who'd be the best to utilize the amount of exp the micaiah ring gives in the early game but a unit being forced to rely on resources just to be able to catch up with other units doesn't sound too good.
Even with an 80% magic growth she still has to accomodate for her horrible bases. Assuming you promote her at 10, she'll only have 11-12 magic as a mage knight, which I'd assume is her optimal class considering it gets an extra 5 speed and 1 move compared to sage with its skill and stats. While 11-12 magic is useable it definitely isnt anything to write home about, especially considering she has 6 build meaning she can't even use heavier tomes without severe penalties. She'll have to be around level 5 mage knight just to be able to catch up to something like mage knight pandreo's magic stat but even then she'll most likely have to use elfire to be able to double because of how heavy bolganone is but pandreo and ivy can use it only being weighed down by 1-2 points. obviously anna will eventually overtake them but at that point you've invested so much into her for her to only slightly better than units that require nowhere near the same amount as investment. It's also not like the difference between the 50% mag growth most other magic units have is that different from 80%. Over the course of all this investment assuming a unit gets 25 level ups itll equate to 8 points of magic which is obviously a lot but again anna is stuck using elfire which has around 5 less might meaning that turns into a 3 magic difference for all of that effort.
Again being extremely generous anna probably gives around 50-70k throughout a playthrough. I'll be honest and say I haven't used the donation feature as much but I'd assume getting to level 3 on most regions is good enough which is around 15k per region for a total of around 60k. the game most definitely gives more than enough gold for this if you're not buying any ore in the shop. meaning the extra gold from anna would likely amount to just buying more ore. forges are obviously nice but I think you overrate them quite a bit. Later forges are extremely expensive for only a +2 might in most cases which is obviously nice but its not going to change everything. Even with me barely looking into the systems other than just have 5 dogs, I was generally able to forge everything I wanted to. I never got any +5s or anything but those are so expensive for such little gain that I don't really think I ever needed.
Yes she is a dodge magic cavalier for me with a lot of def and res
I have my Anna on High priest cus I needed a sub healer. Slightly higher luck and speed cap compared to Sage is also pretty good. Bit less damage, due to not being able to equip higher tier tome, but her mag is stupid high, so it's not too bad.
I ignored her in favor of Jean. He became a badass, Naruto running around and punching everything. But yeah, switching Anna asap to a magic unit is pretty good. Definitely doing that in another playthrough.
Im curious how well a wyvern lord Jade could do. Her stats are extremely well rounded, even having 30% base growths in res and sped which makes her potentially flexible as a jack of all trades
The thing about Anna is she's so good in almost any role. Sage is the best choice if you want raw offensive output. Mage Knight is a good choice if you want mobility and breaks, at the expense of a little less offense. High Priest is the best choice for maximizing her personal, and if you want a way to break tomes/bows/daggers.
If you want to stay physical, she's a good candidate for the Radiant Bow as a Warrior. However, this caps your MAG at 20, and almost anyone does well with a Radiant Bow. But it can still work well enough.
The only places she won't work are the pure physical classes.
Made her a Mage Knight, and probably was one of the reasons why I gave Lucina to Cavalry (Fogado) instead because this with Alacrity was so dumb.
the limiting factor of anna is you need to kill enemy with her, so she ended up hoarding most of exp to make it work. and in maddening difficulty where i only ever get 1 skirmish even when i'm already at chapter 21 tell us how important exp is, unless like i said you don't mind having one man army.
i like my team to be well rounded so i tried to make all my character useful (i like yunaka and chloe a lot so i used them from the start, thankfully chloe growth is quite good but yunaka though, thief is getting more useless by the end game). for me depending too much on anna is like i'm falling to meta trap though, and my biggest reason why i ended up dropping her even though i already tried to build her at first. well it's your gameplay and everyone should just play whatever they like though
Not all enemies are created equally, some provide almost no XP. Generally early-midgame enemies that are advanced units give big XP and base units give much less.
I did same here, chapter 8 promote her into berserker, and reclass her into sage, and killed the 4 hounds in chapter 11 with her on maddening.
Citrine has something like 15 base magic, and you get a master seal in the same chapter you get her. Your Anna has the same magic as citrine at base + promo
Citrinne also has 30% speed growth vs Anna's 50%, 45% HP growth vs Anna's 55, 40% mag vs Anna's 50. 25% luck vs Anna's 45%
HP Str Mag Dex Spd Def Res Lck Bld
Citrine:
45 10 40 25 30 20 40 25 5
Anna:
55 15 50 50 50 20 35 45 5
Even if Citrinne had 20 base magic I'd still say Anna is much better. She is WAY FASTER, gets more crits, has a game breaking passive throughout a playthrough. Citrinne is outclassed by Ivy for mobility and damage, and Anna for economy and speed. Long term Anna will eventually catch up to Citinne. 70% mag vs 80% over 10 levels on fixed means Anna gets +1 mag per 10 levels. The speed argument makes Citrinne not a contender. Bad speed growth means less doubling, less doubling means less damage. The economy Anna generates allows for higher donation level/acquisition of crafting materials and boosts your entire team as a result. On CH16 my Anna netted me 3K gold(from JUST that map) and currently has a 30% chance to give me 500 gold on kill. So far she has made me around 10-12k and she just now has high luck and consistently doubles medium/slow enemies while generally avoids getting doubled herself.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming I have olwen ring on citrinne to compensate the lack fo speed. I only care for magic on her.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming I like everything you said there except for Cittrine's speed growth being a big factor.
1.She boasts the highest magic stat for all of the game from the point she joins, assuming all your mages earned equal exp. She will be taking off a full HP from bosses from 3 range very consistently. The 1 point extra magic that Anna gets over the 10 levels is nothing compared to the roughly 10 points of magic that citrinne starts with over anna.
2. Speed does not matter when you are firing off attacks with 3 range tomes. Thunder tomes don't double.
3. Citrinne can bridge the gap in mobility compared to Ivy by using Byleth for an extra 2 range with tomes, which I believe is the only 5 range option in the game (barring engage attacks). Ivy as Flying unit does not get the +2 range Thyrsus from Byleth. Granted Anna does the same and make better use of the luck.
Overall, Cittrine gets going a lot faster than Anna. Speed doesn't matter when your weapon can't double. And Byleth is a broken ring.
I urge you to try out citrinne in a playthrough. Give her +hit from Sigurd, and then whatever other skill you want (I used canter) and you have Lysithea 2.0
I will be using Citrinne on my 3rd run.
1. By end game she will be 4-6 magic levels higher than Anna but will generate zero gold. I have a level 35-40 Anna on my 2nd run with 32 base magic. 35 with ring modifier, and 29 speed. She has generated at least 20k by this point. 30% speed growth is very bad and sage doesn't fix this. You can't reliably double with almost anything.
2. Thunder tomes aren't optimal unless running some kind of crit build. Doubling enemy armor / slow units is huge value. Byleth on Sage allows Anna to kill 2 enemies a turn with a dancer at 4 range.
3. Ivy doesn't need the range, she can break the game with flying squad Lucina and farm literal waves of enemies. She also can increase her own accuracy/damage via passives. Void Grasp turns nonlethal doubling into kills frequently.
I disagree Citrinne is faster, if you just have anna heal villagers on Jean paralogue she hits level 10 in 5 minutes and starts to snowball from there.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming Yeah I gave Citrinne all the Spirit Dusts, Early forged an Elthunder to trade her before the join chapter. Then gave it the Roy engraving for +2 mt. When the game gave me elthunder, I forged that into Thoron and gave it the Ike emblem for +3 MT. Speed doesn't matter when you delete the entire health bar in 1 hit or with the aid of chain attacks. have to be careful because when equipped with these mighty tomes, her avoid and speed tend to be 0. Basically a player phase monster that can heal. Not even Lucina can save her.
After grinding her with Tiki at bond lvl 20, I made her a Griffin Knight with Levin Sword.
Anna is the reason enough to use her because it is Anna
I could just chuck her in front as whatever class after power levelling her.
My headcanon is that this is the one that grows up into Apotheosis Anna. Outrealm logic.
Anna is such a smol sassy lost child you adopt to make you rich haha
Yeah Anna is just strong, it's crazy.
Reporter: Why did you decide to invest in Anna?
Coffee: (As Mr. Krabs) I like money!
i strugle to keep her alive, so she is a general now with a levin sword, still insane, she still gets magic every other level, so that is still really good
She needs canter early and use her like a standard mage unit, pick fights, hit armors, look for 1 range targets to hit at 2-3 range etc
@@IcedCoffeeGaming yea, i didnt get her canter, so that was a big oversight on my part, but i also didnt get the tiki ring on this playtrough, on my next one ill get the tiki ring, or maybe the generic ring that give follow up attacks on thunder tome if i can. I also think ill use celine with levin sword as a mage knight, i think that that could be pretty viable
Funny thing, High Priest Anna, with Tiki Emblem and some Avoid investment, can solo 40lvl Tempest Trials. I did it as a joke to see how fast i lose but it kept going...so yea, guess she can also grind those TT orbs too and not just money
Anna is god tier, but you should second seal her into a magic class at 10 to maximize her caster growth.
If you have the DLC, give her Tiki early until she can buy StarSphere for the +15% per stat. My Anna has 49 luck (combined with Byleth) and am not at the end yet.
My anna, i make her the mage knight cannon with the thoron and the bond ring that makes 20% more damage with lightning attack
I use Anna with High priest and with Tiki is nuts even more so when you have both luck bonus' from Byleth and Tiki
I like anna caractere but unfortunaty I don't play her anymore because she is too weak in my build case, she get often target by ennemis, bad defense too, But since I did unlock corrine I should to give her more HP to tank easily
Pretty sure every Character is overpowered if you build it correctly to minimize weaknesses and cripple the enemies ability to hit you.
Mine is a mage knight with the hurricane axe. Nothing ever hits her and she's averaging 76 dmg with each hit.
That is an interesting start, will have to try it haha
Not only does she have a 50 magic growth but im pretty sure she has a 50 speed and dex as well
Absolutely crazy unit love her
She was very accurate throughout my entire run, more so than Ivy.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming before i knew about her magic growth i made her a swordmaster and i nothing outsped her except the fastest of the fastest then hooked a corrin engraved plus 5 killing edge and just watched
Absolute S tier
I don't know how mandatory she is. I think it's fine to use Citrine over her honestly. Anna's biggest problem is the same as Citrine's - attacking against something that reliates. Let's say she attacks a General with a Spear, she'll probably die before her second attack. Citrine has the same problem. This forces them both into using Thunder-based tomes, and then Anna's crazy speed advantage doesn't really matter anymore - her stats look a lot like Citrines and Citrine didn't need any special treatment to get her there.
I think Anna is fine - nowhere near as much work as say Donnel required or something like that. But I don't think she's mandatory either. Even someone like Celine can double armors and she'll even have a chance to survive while Anna might not, and because Celine is doubling anyway, her lower magic doesn't matter. Celine also has utility as an anti-mage unit while Anna does not.
I'm sure someone will argue with me, but I think Citrine, Anna and Celine are all pretty interchangeable as a 3rd string magic user depending on what you want from the unit. For variety's sake, you can't really go wrong with 1) Ivy; 2) Pandreo or Hortensia; 3) Citrine or Celine or Anna.
Alacrity and its + variants can cause that speed advantage to matter significantly more
@@Namingway248 Yeah, I don't think so. Alacrity will likely never trigger without Speedtaker to help her. Anna's speed isn't that high, especially when she only has 5 build to start off with so having a 9 speed advantage on a unit is a really tall ask. Speedtaker or better versions of Alacrity are also 2000-3000 sp. That's basically end-game, which is meaningless for unit analysis. Depriving Lyn of a physical unit that can use it better is also not worth it. No matter how you slice it, she's pretty similar to Citrine in more situations than she is not. And if the armor can't retaliate, I think all 3 mages I listed can beat the armor anyway.
I want to reiterate, I'm saying Anna is fine, I'm just saying these mages are all pretty interchangeable. At the end of the day, Pandreo and Ivy are much more tanky and Hortensia has unique healing abilities, so we're really talking about who the best 3rd string magic user is. I don't see a playthrough changing that much depending on who you pick. I really don't.
She isn't mandatory unless you want to make 1-3k gold a mission midgame, 3-6k gold a mission endgame. Snowballing your economy means you can upgrade more weapons by buying more materials and donating more enabling your entire team.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming I honestly didn't make that much money with Anna when I used her. I'm almost done a playthrough with her now. Money isn't really the limiting factor here either - it's silver. Even if she made 15k over the course of the game (I don't believe it if anyone said she did lol), that's not a lot of extra silver. Not exactly a big factor here that I would say she is mandatory. I always have extra gold at the end of a playthrough. I am always out of silver.
I don't think anyone's convinced me that Anna is somehow really so much better than the other two options. They really do seem very interchangeable to me.
Anna is literally the best mage in the game. In comparison
Anna: 50% MAG 50% DEX 50% SPD
Ivy: 30% MAG 25% DEX 40% SPD
Celine: 35% MAG 25% DEX 30% SPD
Framme: 25% MAG 35% DEX 55% SPD
Citrinne: 40% MAG 25% DEX 30% SPD
Veyle: 45% MAG 35% DEX 30% SPD
Even if you don't want money, you have a really strong unit. So I agree she's definitely S tier, really though it's the money that really bumps her up there lol.
You have to look at class growths and bases to get a full picture. And availability.
Growths aren't everything. Bases, mobility, efficiency all matter.
Anna *cannot* be S tier because the decision to use her tanks your efficiency/turn count. Any unit requiring either a cheese/exploit to be usable is not high tier
Anna is like C tier. If you're playing really chill shes great, but if you're trying to play remotely fast shes a no go since you need to exploit her to even make her playable
"pretty hard to get silver" after beating chapter 14, you unlock a shop which sells Silver Ingots for $500. It has 10 (not sure if it refreshes after every chapter/stage, let me beat chapter 15 and I'll let you know.)
It sells steel for 500g each, silver are 5000 each and they only sell a small amount of them. Also both are finite and do not refresh IIRC
I gave her an elsurge with the dodge engrave as soon as I could
I made mine a hero and gave her a levin sword zero regrets
I got very unlucky with my magic growth. I had to use some spirit dust
Tbh im completely new to the FE series in general so I have a question.. if I already experienced different jobs on Anna that aren't magic oriented, can I somehow reset all these stats and focus on magic to make her a mage? Or is it a done deal and im locked into a physical build now? Like... does stats have a cap?
You need to have her learn weapon proficiencies from emblem rings by battling them in the arena or using them. These can be used to test in to new classes. Some emblem rings give staff, tome, bow etc proficiencies. You can use a second seal to change from advanced class to advanced class to switch out of physical into a mage.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming thanks a lot for replying... and once I learn these weapons proficiency, will my magic stat growth be fixed? Or am I never reaching a high magic stat because I wasted levels on some axe jobs?
The moment I saw her personal skill I knew she was busted.
Problem I have with sage Anna is her speed growth is meh like citrine (not bad just meh) so she's probably gonna cause so many resets dying in one hit. Sage is a decent class but it's Hella risky. I'd sooner maker her martial
You just got really unlucky. Anna's base speed growth is 50 percent. To put that into perspective, it's the second highest in the game behind characters like Chloe and Lapis with a blazing fast 55% speed growth.
@Jackman LeBlanc interesting. Still dunno if I want her to be sage tho I already have a few planned like hortensia.
@@RaidenKaiser Her as a sage allows her to use nova, which basically means, she's a big nuke. She can one shot the final boss without crits
rather Anna as warrior, my first playthrough was sage, second warrior with the magic bow and she is more powerful than the sage.
Anna popped off way to hard in my last playthrough so I tried to nerf her in my current... and failed 🤦♂️
I don't understand how your Chloe got so strong. Mine is squishy. Gets high dodge from a +5 DLC weapon, but still.
Everyone on Discord tells me not to use her because "it's not worth farming gold in Maddening".
How can you have Anna heal anyone when she starts as an axe fighter? You don't get access to second seals until after both her and Jeans paralogue afaik. Do you just do the paralogues later?
Just use Micaeah!
@@seiryuumizukamiya3566 yeah that earns xp faster too
What are your thoughts on Lineage on non-early units? Like units you get past chapter 10? At just 150 SP I can't imagine it not being worth it, but I haven't quite gotten to the end-end game so I'm not sure just how badly SP can dry up for that last skill you want to pick up.
Also remember that sp = XP so lineage generates sp
Is Lineage DLC because I don't know about it, I use Professor's Expertise though, 250 SP for tons of XP seems worth it :)
@Iced Coffee Gaming oh yeah, it's a skill you can inherit from Edelgard for 150 SP at just bond level 5. It increases exp gain for the unit by 20% from all sources. If SP gain really is linked directly to exp gain then it's just busted and is probably an auto-teach on all units until they pick up their second skill
Do you think it's worth putting Roy on Anna? I just got Roy and I noticed his Quad attack skill. Is that actually useable with her or is that skill just a gimmick that sounds cool but isn't practical?
That skill requires a very high str character as each of the weapons used are his actual engage weapons. If your str is middling or low then most if not all of the hits will be zero. The main purpose of that skill is that its a guaranteed break on any non armored unit. Otherwise i don't think you want that on her.
@@SH1NK1R01 ahhh okay. Thanks for clearing that up for me!
A real shame. I found out about making her into a mage much too late.
if my anna is a high priest, can i get her to do damage spells? i just got tiki on her and bond lvl 18
She can still do good damage on high priest
Oops, I benched her the moment I saw she was level 5 lmaoo. Maybe in another life 😔
i already did Jean Paralogue before getting her, any ways to get her to level 10 ?
You can use Miciah on her to run staves or set up kills for her to level on mainline missions. Also nice avatar, Berserk is amazing.
@@IcedCoffeeGamingi just did the Tiki paralogue with Anna using healing staff, holy f it took me 60 turns and all the rewinds, my Anna went from lv5 to lv11 just by healing. Love the fire emblem content, keep it up !
Yes if you want she can be decent but nowhere near S tier. S tier is for absolutely broken units like Ivy, Kagetsu and Panette.
Also if you donate only to level 2 (which is the optimal thing to do) and don't upgrade usless weapons you will have enough gold for everything
Hard disagree, 80% magic growth and economy snowballing is broken. She can fund maxing out more weapons.
Cant believe people put Anna in low tier in tier lists, she's an amazing mage.
its not surprising really. Early tier lists dont really use serenes forest and other such resources to view bases or growths. All you have is your single run of the game on whatever difficulty. And Anna does NOT have a good introduction in a blind run of the game. An axe figher with baby strength that never gets any defense levels. And promotes in to two axe classes that have low dex caps so she misses alot AND doesn't hit hard. Most wont notice that her mag is getting lots of levels, nor will they think to hand her a radiant bow/levin sword. once the data became more common it became super clear that she was FAR stronger as a magic class.
@@SH1NK1R01 True, I got that info that she excels as mage from people through gamefaqs, lol. I don't keep up with growth info and data so I wonder if there's anyone else like Anna that's better off as an entirely different class.
@@Palidor clanne. He has only 10% base for mag growth. But starts as a mage. He is actually the worst caster in the game. But is granted to you as the canon early mage.
I messed up and didn't get her tome proficiency early game before the rings are taken... help?
I feel ya, buddy.
There's a nice bench waiting for her.
You get them back, and other new ones can get you tome proficiency.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming which one?
Everyone saying Anna base mag is 50% and im over here with a 9 in mag and 20+ in STR. Fuck is going on🤣
Fixed mode makes her insane, on sage she gets +80%
If you have the DLC Emblem Tiki gives a crazy Luck boost
Plus 10 Luck and HP and 4 Defense at max bond Lvl
It would appear that it is Tiki Time, all the time.
Optimal build for her is a reclass into mage right away, then at level 10 go into sage. Then as soon as you get byleth learn fists and change her into a priest for the insane luck growth. Also priest just has much higher and better caps on stats. Her super hi dex and spd growth will make up for the 0 growths of the magic classes. Very solid unit overall but yea I think priest is the optimal class on her absolutely necessary if you are using her to farm gold.
That is an awful idea. If you do that you have to feed her nine more levels in mage. You should rather get her to level 10 in axe fighter, get her promoted, and then reclass to mage knight. High priest is not very good offensively and a few more points in magic I'd not a big deal.
@@spongbobsquarepants3922 That is 5 wasted level ups. Which matter on harder difficulties. Mage has 25% magic growth rate which is the exact same as mage knight and priest. Only sage has 5% more at 30 so they are all pretty close in terms of growths rates. The reason priest is better in the end in my opinion is because it has much higher stat caps in hp, magic, and luck which is a huge deal for her. The only thing that is better about mage knight is the one more move along with higher str and def which she has terrible def and str growths so it wont matter in the end. Unfortunately mage knight is just outclassed by sage and priest if you trying to min max. Especially on Anna where luck is worth a lot more for gold farming so you need that high luck cap of the priest. If you look up growth rates and class stat caps you will see what I am talking about. Does not mean other options are bad. She is just a very solid unit overall. And on easier difficulties min maxing does not matter. But on maddening you want to get her up and running as fast as possible and making her a mage early makes her a lot more useful early on.
@@theolong6689 I don't think those levels are wasted. You just get different stats than if you turn her into a mage. You get more HP, Spd, and Def as an axe fighter. But this thing about growth rates are not that important for the base class. After having had an equal amount of levels, the immediate second seal to mage will have a lead in magic by one point. That is pretty irrelevant. However if you do the fast promotion, then you will have the class ability faster.The point is to get Anna's stats to be good as quickly as possible. We do this, to get the painful few levels over as soon as possible. If you immediatly turn her into a mage as soon as you get her, she becomes a worse Clanne, and needs to be babied a lot before she can hold her own in battle. Getting a few more points of luck don't matter as much as making her good at combat, because to get money from her skill, she has to be good at combat. This is something she won't be if she is in High Priest. Because of her crappy speed base, she has serious trouble doubling for a while, and Mage knight lets her double faster than any of the other magic classes, since it has more speed than the other magic classes, and the class ability gives three more speed against the right kinds of weapon types. I find that actually being able to one round enemies is better than High Priest for grinding money.
@@spongbobsquarepants3922 Thats fair I see your point. I was mostly focused on growth rates and stat caps without really taking the advanced classes base stats into consideration which does matter a lot more early and on harder difficulties. That said I do still think that Priest is her optimal class for endgame and for capping out stats since it has the higher stat caps for the stats that matter especially luck for farming gold in the endgame/post game. But I do agree that mage knight is the better option early for that bonus to speed and bld which will get her doubling much more effectively. She does however lose the utility of staves and even fist which can be very effective in specific situations against strong mages.
@@theolong6689 I agree that post game it probably is better to have her as a High Priest if she is a super soldier who can mow down enemies. Also, You cannot get her into high priest immediatly if you do not have DLC, because Tiki Grants fist proficiency, and without DLC you need to wait for Byleth, at the start of Chapter 15. you do not even have the option of going HIgh Priest until Midgame.
Why class her into a warrior if you're going to swap to a magic class? That seems counterproductive to me but I'm also not a maddening expert
because you only need to lvl her up 5 lvls to get her to warrior then you second seal her
if you reclass her first, then you need to lvl her up 10 times to promote her
you lose 5 levels on the second side that could have been used on sage or mage knight
Lysitheanna
When switch to a magic user?
You need to second seal her into mage or master seal into advanced at lv 10 then second seal her into sage high priest mage knight etc