The Let's Play Archive

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest

by midnight_lasagna

Part 83: Azura


Azura
Songstress (HS: Sky Knight)
A+ Support Classes: Elise (Troubadour)
Personal Skill: Healing Descant (Allies within 2 tiles recover up to 10% of their HP at the start of player phase)
Growths (With Default Class):
HP: 25% (25)
STR: 50% (60)
MAG: 25% (25)
SKL: 60% (70)
SPD: 60% (70)
LCK: 40% (60)
DEF: 15% (15)
RES: 35% (35)

Azura is this game's Dancer unit, although what she actually does is sing. There is no FE game in which a Dancer is not, at the very least, one of your best units. Letting one of your units move again is just a really really useful thing! It lets you move units farther than they normally could in a turn, it allows your best combatant to attack twice, it lets you fix positioning errors... No matter how you play the game, you're always going to want to make room in your army for your dancer.

Azura however is special in that the mechanics of Fates are really kind to her. There are three things she has going for her that most other dancers don't, and those are: Special Dance, Dual Attacks, and the Shelter skill.

Special Dance is a skill that Azura gets at level 10 that boosts the Skill, Luck, and Speed stats of the unit she dances by 3 points for a turn. Thanks to her early join time and the high rate at which she earns EXP, she'll probably unlock it quite soon. Dual Attacks allow Azura to make use of her weirdly high strength growth without ever initating combat herself, something a dancer pretty much never wants to do. It also lets her contribute to combat without ever getting hit, something that would otherwise spell doom for her. Lastly, the Shelter skill can let her dance more than a single term per turn, although it takes some setup and isn't easy to pull off. An unpaired Azura dances a unit, another unit Shelters her, a third unit swaps Azura from the Shelter unit's formation to their own and then swaps their formation, putting Azura in front so she can dance again. She won't be able to move from where she is without ending her turn, but if you plan carefully you can absolutely do some neat tricks with two dances in a turn regardless.

Combatwise, Azura hits fast and hard and dies if anything ever hits her back. Some Dancers can be weirdly tanky when fed EXP, Azura is not one of them. She's also quite viable as a combat unit, especially as a Kinshi Knight where she can take advantage of high mobility and ranged weapons to strike without being hit, but the waste of her refresh ability is absolutely not worth the cost unless you're just messing around. If you want then you can grind Azura to level 40 in Chapter 5 if you have like 3 hours spare to get a briefly monstrous combat unit, but you should never do this.

Azura's growths matter more when considering her as a mother. Her kids will be fast and strong and not impacted too hard in the magic department if they're meant to be magical attackers, but they will be a bit squishy. Regardless of husband she will always have a unique child of her own, Shigure, so you will need to consider the stats of her husband when marrying her off if you want to optimise your child units.

Friendship sealing her with Elise is absolutely not worth it so don't bother unless you really don't want a Dancer. I guess Azura could make use of some of the class's passive abilities, but even then you'd be depriving yourself of refreshes for at least a chapter...

TL;DR:
Pros

Cons

My Rating: Should maybe consider learning a second song to sing

Faillen Angel" post="518352001 posted:

i did kinshi knight azura just to get her amaterasu and she capped all of her offensive stats by the time she got it LOL

She's such a menace and possibly worth feeding your Seraph Robes to

Unfortunately unlike Olivia who can be fed Spirit Dust and given Swordfaire to make the Levin Sword a usable ranged option, Azura can never get Lancefaire without specifically marrying Corrin exactly.