To Reclass a unit in Shadow Dragon truly is a godsend. Were it not for this feature, countless units would be rendered positively useless, resigned to the bench for eternity. Of course, it’s not entirely unusual that you can change class in a Fire Emblem game, but no other title makes it as easy as Shadow Dragon, not even requiring a consumable to do so. Still, not all reclass options are made equal. You could make an entire team of mages and armour knights should you wish, despite how positively terrible that would be. So we’ve decided to put together a list of our top 5 reclass options in the game to help you sort the good from bad.

5. Cord – Reclass to Hunter

As any hardened Fire Emblem fan will know, the older games tend to provide you with an abundance of Fighter units. Unfortunately Shadow Dragon, again baring similarities to other Fire Emblem’s, doesn’t exactly give you a great choice. Of course you could tape them together and hope that the support bonuses help out, but why not reclass?

Well one of the most useful that we’ve found is to reclass Cord to a Hunter unit. Let’s face it, he’s never going to be able to stand up in comparison to Barst in his base class, and you don’t exactly have a huge amount of choices in the Hunter class now do you? What you’ll end up with is a Horseman unit with respectable amounts of speed and strength, capable of contributing some chip damage whilst having a good amount of movement available to him.

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4. Draug – Reclass To Dark Mage

Speaking of units that are pretty useless in their base class, here is Draug. He starts out as a Knight and, difficulty level pending, immediately convinces the player that the class is useless. In reality the Knight/General class line isn’t useless at all, it’s Draug that is the issue. Whilst he has vaguely useful statistics for the class, he’ll fall a fair distance short of others throughout the game, certainly in any stat other than speed.

So we’d choose to make Draug into a Dark Mage. Should you do this, you’ll end up with a weak but very fast glass cannon mage. That might not sound like the best trade in the world but you must remember two things; that makes him much more useful than as a Knight, and it doesn’t cost much to forge a few tomes…

3. Jagen – Reclass To Dracoknight

We’ve waxed lyrical about the effectiveness of Jagen in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. Here and here for example. There is no denying however that this early promoted unit will eventually fall behind, mainly due to his small growths. That being said then, why are we talking about reclassing him?

Well, you can extend his usage further into the game by swapping him over to a Dracoknight. Not only will you be getting the innate increase in move distance that comes with the class, but you’ll also be able to make use of Jagen’s high lance experience. He’ll surely come in handy on occasion, even if it’s just to finish off a straggler or two, and you can change his class as soon as the option becomes available to get him training with axes. Besides, we’ve been carried through so many early game Fire Emblem parts by their respective Jagen, that we think we owe him a little more screen time by now.

2. Wolf – Reclass To Hero

Anyone familiar with Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon will not exactly be surprised by our top two entries. The first of which is Wolf, the first of the ‘growth beasts’. Wolf can essentially be anything you want him to be. You can make him a Sorcerer and watch him slowly overtake your current caster units, make him a Berserker for those huge axe hits, or even keep him as a Horseman, though we might have to question your intelligence should you do so..

For us, Hero is the ideal class for Wolf. His growths will gain hugely in almost every area and once you get him a few levels, he’ll accelerate up the ranks of your team in no time at all. You can dip into General for a few levels at first, especially if you’re struggling to get him experience with his base stats, but be sure to get him back into Hero soon. By the time you reach the mid game he’ll be double hitting enemies and proving himself essential in your squad.

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1. Sedgar – Reclass To General

The other of the two swiftly growing units is Sedgar, who joins at the same time as Wolf. He too inhabits the Horseman class, and as much as we enjoy mounted archer units, he really should be reclassed into something more useful. In particular we would recommend changing him into a General, mainly because his growths will mean a guaranteed level of Defence each time he levels up – sometimes two. This means that with some commitment to the class, Sedgar can cap his defence rating, thus turning him into an absolute wall. Combine this with the rest of his stats, all of which will also grow well, and you’ll have a unit that can trivialise entire maps, no matter the difficulty level.

As an added bonus, once he does cap that defence you can reclass him to something else depending on your needs. We’d recommend either Hero or Warrior, though you may want to stock up on some Arms Scrolls to get his weapon up to speed.