The Budding Talent system of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is essentially an ‘alternative route’ for your units to take. In everyday life people will often discover that they have a hidden skill for certain tasks, and your students are no different here. It’s yet another layer to the onion that is the Fire Emblem skill system, and it’s one that reinforces attachment to your chosen few; put the time in, give them experience and they’ll return your investment in the form of a new boon and often a useful skill. As is always the case however, not all skills are created equal, so who exactly is worthy of your time investment? Join us below as we rate our top 5 Budding Talents in FE3H.
5. Anna
- Budding Talent: Riding
- Skill Unlocked: Pass
There are two things we should highlight prior to talking about Anna’s budding talent. Firstly, we’re aware that she is not a popular unit at all and we often find her propping up the tier lists on certain forums. The derision she receives is well deserved in many regards – we’ve often attempted to use her, perhaps out of some rose tinted nostalgia for the series, and struggled to wrench much performance out of her. Secondly, we’re also aware that Bernadetta also unlocks the Pass skill, and does so much more easily thanks to her route to Bow Knight. So… Why Anna?
Well we must first consider that we’re attempting to rank the power of budding talents and what they can do for a unit. In this regard, learning the Pass skill is probably the only thing capable of rescuing the performance of such a poor unit. With this in your arsenal it’s possible to craft her into something useful; outside of the obvious Bow Knight route she can actually pivot into a more armoured riding role quite easily, and her Axe proficiency will open even more doors. Give her a try, you might be quite surprised!
… Or maybe it is our rose tinted spectacles after all.
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4. Dorothea
- Budding Talent: Faith
- Skill Unlocked: +20 avoid when using Faith magic
Unlike many other characters in Three Houses, Dorothea actually has quite a few reasons to dislike her. A good amount of players will be deterred by her unusual personality, and yet another subset will be put off by her poor growths and all round statistics, but each of these can be trumped by one thing: Her spell selection. All things considered, Dorothea has one of the best magic repertoires in the entire game, both Reason and Faith included, the highlights of which have to be both Meteor and Physic. That said, her budding talent in Faith allows her to reach the holy grail of caster classes – Gremory – quicker than usual. In fact, she’d likely be higher up this list were it not for the rather disappointing White Magic Avoid +20 skill.
3. Flayn
- Budding Talent: Reason
- Skill Unlocked: Seal Magic
Much like our choice above, Flayn often splits the fan base due to her personality, poor statistics and wholly improbable hair style. Alright we added that last one in, but the first two points stand; she’s not going to win any awards for performance. Once again this all gets rescued by her budding talent, which allows her to progress to Gremory with much less effort. Her overall spell list might not be the best and she’s never going to win any awards for her Magic stat, but this does get balanced out slightly by the fact that she learns Seal Magic, making her an ideal candidate for taking down enemy mages.
2. Hubert
- Budding Talent: Lance
- Skill Unlocked: Frozen Lance
If you’ve spent any time with the Black Eagle house, or indeed any of the houses for any great length of time, you’ll no doubt be aware of Huberts excellent magical power. We’re not about to rank him among the absolute best mages around, not at all, but he’ll hit hard enough to ensure his target falls in short order. Thanks to some… Creative Master class choices by the developers however, there always remains the question of what exactly to do with male mages in the late game? If only there were some sort of beacon, a light in the dark that would show us the way…
Yes that’s right, we’re recommending that you push the grumpy dark mage down the Lance route, and we do so for two reasons. Not only does this allow you to quickly pivot into the Dark Knight class, itself a great boon to have in a team, but it also allows him to learn Frozen Lance. At first glance this doesn’t seem like much of a benefit, but you must consider that this combat art – an attack that uses your weapon to deal magical damage – takes into account the exact type of lance that you’re using. So you might be facing a particularly annoying mounted unit, like a Death Knight let’s say, and you might have a Horseslayer just laying around…
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1. Yuri
- Budding Talent: Bow
- Skill Unlocked: Deadeye
Don’t you just love it when things slot together in a really satisfying way? It’s almost like the developers knew what they were doing and applied lessons learnt to the DLC units. Yuri is the speed demon of the Cindered Shadows expansion, and he joins the team as a quick witted, sword and faith wielding rogue. It’s a role he can excel in for sure, but his true calling lies elsewhere..
First we must understand Yuri’s personal skill: Honorable Spirit. This grants him +3 damage on an enemy unit directly next to him, assuming that no ally is nearby. This means that optimal usage of this unit would be to keep him away from your team, picking off stragglers and generally making maps flow a little more smoothly. This is easier said than done however, because he’s not going to want to get in an enemy’s face every round and he certainly doesn’t have the defence to take on groups at a time… If only there were a way to ensure that he can remain a distance from his allies whilst simultaneously contributing…?
Yes that’s right, throw a Bow on Yuri, activate his budding talent, learn Deadeye and rejoice. You now have a unit that can run off on its own, pepper opponents in your main squad from afar and take down singular units alone with his personal skill. There are much better Faith users out there, so we’d recommend making him an Assassin and never looking back.
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Categories: Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Top 5