Part 97: Izana
Izana
Onmyoji (from Monk) (HS: Samurai, Apothecary)
A+ Support Partners: None
Personal Skill: Peacebringer (Allies and enemies within 2 spaces deal 2 less damage)
Growths (With Default Class):
HP: 45% (45)
STR: 15% (15)
MAG: 35% (55)
SKL 55% (65)
SPD: 30% (45)
LCK: 45% (45)
DEF: 35% (35)
RES: 35% (50)
It's Izana! Leader of Izumo, a nation famed for being neutral in all conflicts to the point of not even having a standing army, is here to fight for Nohr. I guess the developers thought it was a waste to give this guy a portrait and not let you marry him.
Izana is rare in Fates in that he's a unit who's recruitment comes with a cost, which is wasting 3 DVP on a building that is almost entirely useless besides the slight boost to crit avoid it gives you in castle battles. It's not exactly a steep cost in the same vein as spending 20,000 gold to recruit Farina in FE7, but it's still something I feel I should mention when talking about if he's good or not.
Izana shows up after Chapter 22 at the earliest, and his join stats will scale to whenever you recruited him. His high magic and existing staff rank make him ideal as a staff bot, although despite having promoted into Onmyoji from the staff-using Monk class (and being a pacifist!) his tome rank is higher for some reason. Between Elise, the two servants, Flora, Shura, and the two Troubadour kids he's not exactly unique in his staff using abilities, but he's got some stuff going for him that nobody else has.
Onmyoji is a Hoshidan class that you otherwise cannot access in CQ without a specfic Corrin or by marrying Nyx to Niles to get Diviner as a reclass option for Nina. By default Izana comes with two Hoshido unique rallies in Rally Magic and Rally Luck, the former can be very useful for securing kills and the latter can make combat a little safer. Lategame Conquest favours raising the stats of a few core units to very high levels to dipose of troublesome groups of enemies, so the more rallies you can stack the better. His class also learns Tomefaire at level 15, and while it doesn't increase magic (and therefore staff effectiveness) in Fates like it does in Awakening, it's still useful as an offensive tool. Izana himself isn't much of a fighter but Corrin or Kana could steal the skill for themselves. Izana's base speed might be a little low but his magic and skill are very high, so he will be able to deal good damage right off the bat if he needs to, personal skill aside.
The second half of Izana's unique utility is his personal skill - it might sound detrimental, but damage reduction skills can get very silly very fast when stacked with other skills and rallies, meals, tonics, etc. The chokepointy nature of Conquest's lategame maps make it fairly easy to pile as many units like Izana and Elise behind a frontliner as possible to raise their bulk to nigh-invulnerable levels. The damage reduction for your own units can hurt, but even that might be useful in case where you need to avoid a kill to either feed EXP to someone else or prevent your own attackers from being overwhelmed. It does also hurt Izana's own damage output and he's a bit too fragile to want to participate in combat himself all that much for the boost to his own bulk to matter, but Izana's a lover not a fighter and he doesn't care much either way.
He's also got a few interesting reclasses, but there's not much reason to use them. If you want more Izana he can reclass into Mechanist for Replicate, but good luck getting him levels as one. Theoretically he could also go Master of Arms for Life and Death, which combined with Tomefaire and a Lightning tome could be used for some insane player phase damage, but that's a bit too much setup for something your other units could probably do better anyway.
So basically he's a rallybot and a spare staff and tome user if you need either of those things. Bring him along if you need the rallies or if your healers have disappointed you, otherwise it's safe to bench him or not recruit him at all.
My Rating: Not even the second best hair in the game