In Fire Emblem: Awakening, unlike prior games in the series, you play the role of a unique character within the game, Robin. As a non-Lord character, you’re able to name the character and mould them into any role you wish, a fact that is signposted very early in the game when you come equipped with both a Tome and a Sword. Robin can turn their hand to almost any role the game has to offer, whilst always remaining a powerful mainstay in your small army.
So which class should Robin be? Their starting route – Tactician into Grandmaster – is very powerful, and it’s one we’ll wholly recommend here, but what next? With a wealth of options available to you, and Second Seals easily found, the choices are numerous. Join us then, as we put forth our favourite options for your all powerful Avatar.
Tactician -> Grandmaster
Much like our initial choice for Chrom, our advice is to stick with your main role first. The statistical growths and skills earned here are very powerful, and you’ll find that no matter your choice of weapon, Robin will defeat most enemies in short order.
In our experience, the magical, tome-wielding choices seem to make the most sense. Awakening is filled with great melee units, so we tend to opt for using the tome whenever possible. Committing to one of your initial weapons is a great idea, especially early on, and since you’ll be hitting some flying units pretty early on, something like an Elwind tome can really turn the tides of battle.
Overall the initial class is well balanced on higher difficulties, and a little too good on those lower. Grab the excellent skills as you push through the early game, and get ready to commit to your next choice to see you through the remainder.
Class Skills
Veteran
- Increased experience gain when paired up with another unit.
Pair up is not entirely necessary throughout Awakening, but you’d be ignoring a very powerful option by not making use of it. On higher difficulty levels, we like to pair up a defensive unit like Frederick with Robin to build a bit of a tank, capable of hitting things in both melee and ranged or covering great distances, depending on your current switch. Veteran makes sure that nobody falls behind.
Solidarity
- Gives adjacent allies +10 to Crit & Crit Avoid.
We’ve never been a huge fan of relying on critical attacks to get the job done, so a skill such as this really isn’t in our wheelhouse. The crit avoid does have some very niche uses on high difficulty levels, but even then it’s not something we keep on our unit for long.
Ignis
- Chance (Skill/2)% to add 50% of your magic stat to a physical attack, or 50% of your strength stat to a magic attack.
As you might imagine, this isn’t a skill that you’re likely to see very much. When you do see it however, it’s a great addition of damage, since your statistics tend to build in a very balanced fashion.
Rally Spectrum
- When the Rally command is used, add +4 to all statistics for allied units within a 3 tile range of your unit. Lasts for 1 round.
We’ve never been huge fans of Rally skills on more ‘main’ characters, rather keeping them on our supporting cast, but when they up every single statistic by +4 it’s hard to ignore. Either use it before sending your force out to kill surrounding enemies, or before the round ends when defending a choke point, and you’ll surely see success.
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Dark Mage -> Sorcerer
Since the days of Shadow Dragon, we’ve always loved a Dark Mage, despite their relative weakness in numerous Fire Emblem titles. There is something very satisfying about specialising in dark tomes, with all their weird and wonderful added effects.
Speaking of which, the tomes on offer in Awakening effectively make this class viable. The skills aren’t fantastic and the growths aren’t too different from other magical classes. The tomes however, are fantastic. By the mid to late game you’ll have a huge amount of options available, from defence ignoring versions to the all powerful Nosferatu. The fact that you’ve already picked up some fantastic stats from the base class means you’ll come to the Dark Mage tree ready to scale up into the late game, and nothing stands up to a well levelled Sorcerer there. Enjoy!
Class Skills
Hex
- Reduces adjacent enemies Avoid by -15.
It’s quite rare that you’ll actually be standing next to an enemy as a caster, though your stats will likely mean you could. Still, this is not the best skill around.
Anathema
- All enemies within a 3 tile radius have their Avoid and Critical Avoid reduced by -10.
This is essentially a ‘nice to have’ passive ability. It’s nice, but you’re unlikely to have trouble hitting enemies, especially not with your avatar, and relying on reducing critical avoid to fish for critical hits really isn’t worth it.
Vengeance
- Chance (Skill/2)% to deal (Max HP – Current HP)/2 on top of your regular damage.
Meeeeh. This skill always sounds like it has so much potential, but in practice you don’t tend to stay low health for very long, especially with self healing tomes on offer. The activation chance is always pretty low too, shame.
Tomebreaker
- When the enemy has a Tome equipped, your Avoid and Hit rating are increased by +50.
As you might imagine, this is the ultimate in mage killing skills. Equip this and you can throw your single unit into a huge amount of magic users and come out without a scrape. Just make sure there aren’t any monster melee attackers mixed in there (even then, just equip Nosferatu and go afk…).
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Thief -> Trickster
Bet you didn’t see this one coming.
Alright, so this is a very personal choice, but we just love the Trickster class. This is the choice we tend to take if we’ve chosen to level up our Sword rather than the Tome. It’s a super versatile class, since it’s also able to use Staves, adding another dimension of support to the equation.
As a trickster, Robin isn’t going to completely take over the map and dominate, but you will be able to muck in where needed and offer some great utility with your staff and magic stat. As a bonus, you no longer need to bring a Thief or a load of keys along with you, should you choose to retain Locktouch.
Admittedly, this is more of a fun choice than a min max, super powered choice, but we found it thoroughly enjoyable. It enabled us to focus on some other units, rather than ransacking the entire map with our avatar.
Class Skills
Locktouch
- Allows you to open chests and doors without keys.
More useful than it might sound if we’re honest. Whilst the done thing is to load up your avatar with powerful skills, you’ll be surprised how often this comes in handy. Saves fielding a Thief too.
Movement +1
- Erm, increases your movement by… +1.
Movement is always a nice boost, but if we’re honest Awakening doesn’t really have the kind of sprawling maps you might see in a Thracia or such, so we don’t tend to keep this one.
Lucky Seven
- For the first 7 turns of battle, Hit Rate and Avoid are increased by +20.
It’s often looked upon as a bit of a joke skill, but you’d be surprised how often maps are practically over in before the 7th turn. Useful if you expect your Trickster to be on the front lines.
Acrobat
- Removes terrain movement penalties (all tiles are treated like basic ground).
Terrain skills are always fantastic in theory. We conjure up images of mountainous maps being traversed by our newly unencumbered unit… But then you have flying units, and mountains are in short supply. Bit pointless this one, then.
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Categories: Fire Emblem: Awakening
TRUUUTH
…oh uh and I agree; }
*100%*