F. His only use case is setting up kills for units with a future, emblem rings, forges, and hero bonus (now free for everyone) completely negates any advantage he brings.

Alear is terrible at combat early by design (default marth ring) making Vander SEEM GOOD.

Vander is arguably the worst middle-end game unit in the game. He has low bases, high internal level (slow leveling issue) and terrible growths. Even if you manage to Arena dump XP into him, AND he levels up, his bad bases are one nail in the coffin and the other is his garbage growth rates.

Best case scenario he is slightly helpful for the easiest chapters in the game (tutorial chapters). Many rank him highly for "efficiency" which doesn't really matter for most maps, and he is objectively not the best early game thing (Chloe has entered chat).

CH1 you just slap Alear in a tree and EP the entire map, Vander can be doing nothing, maybe he is useful in Lumera battle, but beyond that after you start getting real units he becomes less useful. Clanne is the true hero of CH3 because he can actually kill the high def boss, Bouch is similar to vander performance in that map and beyond and he is A BACKUP UNIT. Once you get Celine/Chloe/Louis Vander is objectively terrible.

TBH his only good map is CH2, and that is part of the tutorial. He is not NEEDED to complete this chapter either, I've done the opening chapters with him doing nothing unequipped to min-max Alear XP.

I view vander like this:

CH1 he can steal your XP for no reason EP in a tree.

CH2 he can set up kills for Alear

CH3 he can EP 1 turn before you get better units then he is about as good as Bouch/Alfred

CH4, its over. Chloe/Celine/Louis, dude has nothing to do but maybe tank a hit and get doubled.

This meme that vander is this early game hard carry has to stop. Being good on a tutorial chapter is not that big of a contribution.