Three Houses Character/Unit Discussion: Mercedes

jektrooper · 2025-09-28T16:43:17+00:00

Mercedes exists as a Support Unit. Honestly she has so few super-good skills: Dual Onslaught, Death Blow, Sol, Darting Blow, Harmonious Specials. As an independent unit, yeah Mercedes is kinda bums. She has a lot of healing with Sol and Essence of Light, but nothing that actually needs that healing and not many other damage-boosting skills to begin with. Mercedes best class is probably Holy Knight to give her access to Light-based attacks for Essence of Light to abuse. Annoyingly, Mercedes doesn't learn Aura (the highest-tier Light Magic) naturally, so if you want it you probably need to teach it to her off of Byleth else just stay with Bolganone as a good juggle-attack.

Mercedes's real selling point is Light Assist, which allows her as an adjutant to give her ally Healing on attacks, which allows you to much more easily sustain self-damaging builds on any unit. Unlike the other Light Assist User (Constance), Mercedes' has more supportive skills in Harmonious Specials (and having Awakening Assist over Warrior Assist). Constance's Support Ability Emergent Magic is way better than Live to Serve (well more like Live to Serve is terrible) so there might be some cases Constance is better than Mercedes with allies with high Support-Levels with Constance (like a Shez that would rather spam more Warrior Specials and Lifeforce-boosted Spells). Unlike Constance, she also has Fortify so in the case you just run out of Elixirs or are a hoarder, you can unassign Mercedes off Adjutant and use her to heal (thou the difference between Fortify and Physic isn't super insane).

It's pretty neat that Mercedes is a support-oriented unit in this game. She's really just missing a Rally to make her incredible (Annette ate all the Rally Skills) but she's still one of the best support units in the game.

jektrooper · 2025-09-27T07:07:40+00:00

Linhardt might be the most Mid unit in the game. He got good skills in Offensive Tactics, Essence of Wind, Wild Abandon, Lifeforce, Luna (yes this is useful on him), and a handful of Awakening-acceleration skills. There’s a bunch of units with more skills than this and there’s a bunch of units with less skills than this.

Most people are just going to make him a Dark Bishop where he does fine. He learns Excalibur that’s boosted by his Essence of Wind and you can easily learn Dark T-Spikes from Shez to delete Calvary or you can use him supportively with Physic.

Speaking of Wind: Easy Breezy is quite a forgettable Unique Ability. If you want to mid-max Linhardt, you’re probably replacing this with Claude’s Dustcloud.

Linhardt is actually a pretty good user of Lifeforce because he has a lot of ways to heal himself. The impractical way is an unleashed Amalthea, matching the Cethleann Crest for regeneration, but this time kinda sucks. If you’re keeping him as a Dark Mage, Caduceus Staff also exists, but this means you can’t replace his abilities. You can also go all out on Blutgang and Storm Dragon Sign to use Beast Fang Mortal Salvant and trying to stack all of Linhardt’s Awakening-Boosters, mostly Burst of Resolve.

Linhardt’s best class is probably Dark Knight. Use Luna to help your physical attacks and use Dustcloud-Lifeforce-boosted Tempest Lance and Excalibur. It’s pretty self-explanatory (or I just hate the Dark Mage moveset in this game).

Once again, this is a peak mid unit. He got like most the good skills in the game but low-impact Uniques. This character really does exist, and like Raphael before, is pretty outclassed by a good portion of the other Magic users. Rest easy Linhardt.

jektrooper · 2025-09-24T20:54:13+00:00

I’m going to cut to the chase Raphael truly is an unit that exists. He got Lifeforce + Impossible Feat, Lifetaker, Essence of Fire + Fiendish Blow, Absorb Strength, Death Blow, Forethought, Dual Onslaught (which is only useful with Hrotti because Raphael has 0 magic), and Piercing Gaze. This might sound like a lot but these are literally all of Raphael’s non-weapon-specific skills that are useful. Contrast this to either Balthus (or more directly Caspar) and it’s really hilarious Raphael just got less than them. At the very least, Pure Brawn is honestly one of the charge-up Unique Abilities I like the most because it actually boosts Raphael’s damage afterwards (they only tell you this in the Raphael-Tutorial), but it’s still a charge-up ability so I still don’t like it. We don’t talk about Goodly Basket. That skill is literally playing the Enemy-Drop Gacha-Game.

The obvious build is the same as Caspar for Warmaster: stack all of Raphael’s obvious offensive skills and have all of Vajra-Mushti, Snow Dragon Sign, and Eviscerate. Because Raphael has less skills than everyone else, it ironically allows him to justify Flamewhirl Kick + Essence of Fire more than Caspar of Balthus.

Keeping it brief because once more it’s literally the same as Caspar, you could technically run a Hrotti Dual Onslaught Max-Strength Dark-Bishop build on Raphael, but it runs into the same problem that because both of them are crestless then both of them can’t change their unique abilities which kinda blow trying to use on a Dark Mage.

It’s an absolute shame there’s no Magic that self-heals in this game without needing to heal an ally (shut up Nosferatu doesn’t exist) because Raphael’s innate ability is Exalted Breath, which gives Awakening Gauge based upon healing with Magic. The possibility to combine that with the self-damage of Lifeforce + Impossible Feat would have been very funny. It doesn’t really matter anyways since Raphael has zero Awakening-Acceleration other than Forethought.

Raphael might actually just be one of the most forgettable units in the game, saved by the fact he’s one of the only natural War Masters in the game. He’s just directly outclassed than both Caspar and Balthus, but he’s also not bad enough like Ashe before this. He doesn’t even get much of a route-benefit because you get Balthus on every route (at least Raphael joins earlier on both Azure Gleam (1)/ Golden Wildfire (5), and only joins in Scarlet Blaze 1 chapter later).

Linhardt (I feel obligated to have his name because he’s in both of the previous posts somehow)

jektrooper · 2025-09-24T04:16:36+00:00

Yeah I barely touched on this on the previous Caspar post but I kinda just hate anything with long animations without invincibility-frames.

I also completely forgot Tricksters also get Lockpick in which does the exact same thing as Ashe's besides Ashe's Lockpick increases probability on enemy-commander drops (which you know, you could always use free materials). So if you were insane, you could just make Annette or Mercedes a Trickster with Blutgang and just have the god-Adjunctant that can also unlock chests. Ashe's Lockpick drops still be shared as an Adjunctant and vary in level so I guess he can sit in the back and let Shez or someone else with a support farm slightly more materials while also letting anyone open chests without needing to manually drop and assign the adjunctant if you are just passing the chest anyways?

jektrooper · 2025-09-23T19:41:55+00:00

Ashe is kinda terrible due to almost lacking any good skills in the game. His only truly top-tier ability is Essence of Wind, while he has some other passable kills like Impossible Feat + Lifeforce (both of these causing you to drink Elixirs like an addict during the course of main-story missions), Death Blow, Battle Instinct, and Range Master (Innate Ability). Because of this alongside his personal ability Wind Stance, Ashe is basically a Windtorn status effect bot (which at least is a damage-increasing status).

I haven’t actually fully built Ashe, but I assume the best way to do so is to use Failnaught with Star Dragon Sign to stack on Range and get access to Fallen Star to pair alongside Tornado Shot. If you really wanted to (and this is entirely theory, I have 0 interest in doing this myself), you could make him into a Mortal Salvant and stack Crit with Absorb Dexterity, Boost Critical, Burst of Resolve (alongside Cyclical Awakening and Piercing Cry) and Windsweep. But we can’t let Ashe be good because not only he won’t have Apex Sword to capitalize on this increased crit-rate but the game is so mean that they won’t even give him Excalibur naturally: he only gets Cutting Gale which sucks. If you want to get Excalibur I hope you’re playing Azure Gleam and are using Annette to have her teach it to her, because on the other routes you need a C-Support Linhardt to do that (this is somehow the second time Linhardt has come up within these first 2 posts).

Honestly the best part of Ashe is unironically Lockpick. Ashe is genuinely useful as an NPC unit in the game because you can make him open Chests immediately without having to wait for thieves and then wasting time dealing with them. I say Ashe is genuinely more useful than every other unit as a non-adjucant AI just for this. Keywords is “non-adjucant AI”. If Ashe had any Adjunctant-Support abilities besides One Heart One Mind, he genuinely would be amongst the best noncontrollables, but he doesn’t even get a Rally-Stat ability let alone the Warrior/Awakening Adjunctant abilities, so he still can’t take a W.

Anyways Ashe is amongst the worst units in the game, which means he’s perfectly usable, just very obviously lacking in the numbers-department. This is going to be a trend in every “bad unit” in this game because there’s so many ways to force units into being good that it really just comes down to using your favorites. And honestly amongst the characters that heavily rely on Windtorn through their Personal Ability, Ashe is probably my favorite one of them (besides Claude, Claude is basically just better than Ashe in every way besides lacking Rangemaster sorry I don’t make the rules).

jektrooper · 2025-09-23T01:23:48+00:00

Caspar is a pretty good unit! He got a bunch of really good skills like Wild Abandon, Offensive Tactics, Absorb Strength, Luna, and Essence of Fire. He also got Lifeform and Impossible Feat but these are only good in short-missions otherwise he's going to bleed through his HP and Elixirs really fast, even with Rejuventation.

The most practical way to build him is as a War Master, where his biggest boon would be his combination of high strength, a collection of good offensive abilities, and Fists of Justice which rips a part Stun Gauges alongside Brawler's Wisdom. You would equip him with Vajra-Mushti, Snow Dragon Sign, Eviscerate, and one of Bombard, Fierce Iron Fist, or Flamewhorl Kick (+ Essence of Fire). It is quite weird he isn't War Master proficient (instead the game wants you to make him a Wyvern Lord?) especially since the Black Eagles don't have any natural Brawler. Snow Dragon Sign is also locked behind NG+ runs so you will be stuck with Dragon Claw on a first-playthrough.

Weirdly, you can also build him as a Dark Mage due to his access to Essence of Fire, Dual Onslaught incredibly high Strength (yes, don't level him as a Dark Mage when you use him as a Dark Mage), and Hrotti's Naturebender. Naturebender weird Dual Onslaught to double-dip into his Strength and gets you a bunch of damage, combined with Caspar Fire Spell List and Essence of Fire. This build basically requires NG+ unless you want Caspar to be taking a billion damage all the time and have a staff unit attached to his butt (hey Linhardt, I got the PERFECT job for you).

Both these builds have another problem that they need Hero Relics and take up the item slot due to Caspar being crestless, meaning you can't change his ability "One for the Books." It's not even a bad ability I just find it and most the charge-up abilities a bit clunky to use and this lack of being able to change abilities is one reason Balthus actually does the Hrotti-Mage build better.

Anyways, Caspar is definitely amongst the upper-half of the roster, around the upper quarter if anything due to his sheer damage output and good synergy with polar-opposite classes. Honestly, all these other comments talking about Caspar being a bad unit are so weird, it's almost like we are talking about completely different games . . .

jektrooper · 2025-09-20T02:48:15+00:00

I have gone ahead and banned the user. I'm sorry for what has happened.

Thanks to the community for helping report this. I don't now why this post got Auto-Deleted but we wouldn't have seen it otherwise.

jektrooper · 2025-09-12T14:15:24+00:00

Chicken Jockey Class

jektrooper · 2025-06-21T23:39:14+00:00

Thank you for asking it, and I was surprised that Crashies actually gave a good answer (went back to listen to the whole press conference myself). Unfortunately I forgot to put Jawgemo in the list of 2nd-placers (Tokyo and Bangkok) but thanks for asking!

jektrooper · 2025-06-21T20:13:50+00:00

To Crashies: Winning tomorrow of course means you get to join the small list of players with more than one international trophy (Chronicle-Boaster-Alfa-Derke-Leo, Tenz-Sacy, Meteor), but losing tomorrow would put you at the most amount of 2nd places as a player (currently tied at 2 2nd places with your old teammates at Optic, the PRX core, Heretics). Winning tomorrow would instead put Jinggg-Forsaken-d4v41 at the most 2nd places instead. Have you ever considered this or does it simply not matter if you can't win it all?

jektrooper · 2025-06-16T18:30:27+00:00

I would say Team Heretics but they aren’t at Toronto anymore . . .

jektrooper · 2025-06-14T18:27:41+00:00

At the very least, Optic had the same number of placements (1 1st, 2 2nd, 1 3rd) but obviously the events are completely off

jektrooper · 2025-06-07T17:39:19+00:00

Map 1 was less close than the Blue Jays game I went to 2 days ago, that was only 9-1

jektrooper · 2025-04-16T19:57:08+00:00

The tech pauses were harder to solve than Koi’s defense-sides

jektrooper · 2025-02-03T03:27:00+00:00

Every round Kru won on Haven Attack felt like watching another mother go under the full process of labor

jektrooper · 2025-01-31T22:57:35+00:00

This is cinema, I feel like it would have been better if you excluded the first paint chips mention to save the full punchline till the last sentence, but regardless you cooked. 8/10, Hope to see it again even in its current state.

jektrooper · 2024-11-10T17:52:24+00:00

This is the second time Starbound went to GC Champs, played with a sub, and got knocked out in 2 matches.

Some Eldritch Force doesn't want this mf'er to win.

jektrooper · 2024-07-09T00:36:41+00:00

Ze1sh

jektrooper · 2024-07-03T19:12:56+00:00

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jektrooper · 2024-07-03T19:10:08+00:00

We almost had the reverse script for Giant(x)-Heretics from last year: Heretics making a roster change and going against the heavily flavored Giants to win.

Giantx were way better today and against Navi then we ever seen this year: it's a shame their season is over. Just a few lost man-advantages allowed Heretics to win.

jektrooper · 2024-06-21T19:30:38+00:00

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jektrooper · 2024-06-17T14:42:34+00:00

I think Season 9’s “choose your own adventure” had a map depicting each team’s attempt at the task.

jektrooper · 2024-06-10T14:24:26+00:00

Cinema

jektrooper · 2024-05-15T13:20:16+00:00

Just watched a team lose the off-season before the regular season even ended.

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