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    Home Unlabelled Fire Emblem No hesitation! Mercenary Byleth Fire Emblem GBA styled portrait

    Fire Emblem No hesitation! Mercenary Byleth Fire Emblem GBA styled portrait

    June 24, 2021

    Fire Emblem No hesitation! Mercenary Byleth Fire Emblem GBA styled portrait

    No hesitation! Mercenary Byleth Fire Emblem GBA styled portrait

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    Clive is by far the best cavalier/paladin/gold knight in Echoes - SoV Clive Unit Analysis

    Posted: 24 Jun 2021 09:56 AM PDT

    Clive is one of the most important characters in Echoes storywise as he's the leader of the Deliverance until Alm takes over and has a similarly large presence throughout the story of SoV. However, there is one other thing that Clive is far more famous for in the community. Being an absolutely terrible unit. Or is he?

    Now, before you ask "Every Computer you well dressed internet crybaby with a talent in sounding smarter than you really are, isn't it well known in the community by this point that Clive is and absolute chad and one of the best units in the game?", that's a fair question. It's true that in the most recent tier list forged in this subreddit Clive was ranked as an A tier unit (you can find the tier list here) and most people agreed that he belongs there. Well, I wasn't planning to make this post, but then Mekkah released his Echoes:SoV character guide and well, let's look at the comments:

    "I feel like Clive should be in the same tier as Forsyth, he's the worst unit in the game imo (for alms route at least), he's really just has nothing going for him gameplay wise"

    "I love Clive as a character but on a gameplay prospective I'd never put him above characters like Mathilda, Delthea, Zeke or Clair, in Echoes he's possibly the unit in Alm's route that requires the most effort to become decent "

    "Here's the tier list: Use Matilda, Fae, Kliff and Alm and you instantly win also NEVER NEVER EVER use Clive"

    These are all real comments and this isn't just some minority, there are many more comments trashing Clive. You can even go to GameFAQs to see how Clive would get bodied by a rattata or to other FE subreddits to see how Clive is actually the worst thing since ambush spawns. On the FE wiki (the org one) Clive is considered to be meh because Mathilda and Zeke surpass him ,etc. So, it seems like there has to be someone to tell everyone who thinks Clive is a bad unit:

    ALL OF YOU ARE WEAK!!!!!

    RULES: No grinding, hard difficulty, the game is being played at least somewhat efficently, no pitchforking and personal preference isn't taken into account.

    ​

    Availability, bases, growths and class

    Clive joins Alm's army in act 1 at the Deliverance and is available for the rest of Alm's route. Despite only having 1 map leftover in act 1, he joins with a base level of 6, which means that he only needs 1 level to promote and it's unlikely that anyone else in your army by that point has reached more than level 5 or 6, unless you grinded in the dungeons. His bases are somewhat underwhelming, coming with pretty great strength at 12 and decent bases in other areas, aside from resistance. However, then we get to his growth rates and while Clive has good growths in HP and attack, as well as a resistance growth that's on par with the rest of the cast, his growths in skill, luck and defense leave something to be desired. His most notable problem is his low speed growth meaning that he won't be getting much faster as time goes on. Clive luckely does have a great class. Cavalier is a good class on Alm's route and the rought parts of it (essentially act 1) are over by the time Clive joins, so he has the benefit of having great movement without many significant downsides and he also comes with a steel lance that boosts his attack by 4 and gives the armorcrush and tempest lance combat arts, making it a good investment overall. Clive will essentially be your most mobile unit, without warp, aside from Clair who has worse combat than Clive and villager cavalier. Clive does effectively miss 1/4 of the game, but still, his availability isn't bad.

    Clive is a solid unit for the last map of act 1, though certainly not spectacular or anything. However, soon (and soon means like 2 hours if playtime) after this we go to...

    Act 3

    If you've used Clive in the final map of act 1 (and there's no reason not ot use him) he's likely gotten 1 level and can promote now, likely with other units in your army. Clive's promotion is pretty good as paladin gives him +1 movement and additional HP, speed and defense.

    Now, here's the main point of contention. Clive benefits A LOT of you give him a forged ridersbane and a single speed point from the act 1 speed well. Now, this is a large point of contention for a lot of people as it essentially says that Clive needs a lot to function well and is therefor a bad unit. However, a lot of other units in SoV also need investment to become great. A good example is Silque who needs a significant amount of training to get warp. Now, would you call Silque a bad unit for needing investment, I think not.

    Why you should give all these things to Clive

    Clive is by far the best user of the ridersbane in act 3 and one of the best users of the speed wells. The main units who want extra speed are Silque, Tobin (if you're using him as a mage so he can double soilders, if not give 2 speed points to Silque), Leon and Clive. Other units either don't need additional speed a lot of the time to reach their tresholds or don't make great use of it. If you think there is some other great user of the speed wells please let me know, because I haven't seen any concrete reason as to who makes better use of it.

    Another thing is that the most common enemies you have to deal with on Alm's route are Knights, Cavaliers and Bow Knights, with exceptions like Nuibaba's abode which features more diverse enemies. So, Clive with a +2 forged ridersbane is going to be excellent at dealing with cavalier and not bad at dealing with bow knights, while knights are hard to deal with in general if you aren't using the lightning sword or mages.

    Finally, for most of act 3 there isn't anyone who makes better use of it. Lukas needs 4 speed shrines to double cavalier in act 3 as they usually have 6 AS and the ridersbane slows you down for 2, along with having poor movement without warp, Forsthy needs 3 speed wells and needs more investment to promote and finally Clair has much worse bulk than her brother.

    So, ultimately, Clive is a great user of the tools SoV gives you and these investment aren't some big cost that's gonna leave you pennyless for the rest of the game.

    Performance in Act 3

    Now, let's look at Clive's performance in act 3. In the northern Zofia map Clive is going to reach the enemies on the far left the quickest. With a forged ridersbane or even with an unforged ridersbane Clive is gonna one round the cavs. Alternatively he can 3HKO them with a +2 steel lance which means he's going to kill them in 3 round as he still doubles them without a point from the speed well. He is going to kill Fernand in 3 round with an unforged ridersbane and while Fernand is gonna double Clive, he doesn't have a lance equipeed so he's only going to deal 3 damage to Clive and while Fernand has crit on Clive, so does Clive on Fernand. With a forged riderbane this macth is gonna be even more one sides in Clive's favour. Ultimately, the main thing that threaten Clive are the witches and the Miasma arcanist, but you can keep him out of the way of witches very easely and Clive can deal with the Mire Arcanist with some assistance. Now villager mercenary can also one round the cavs with the lightning sword, but he needs warp and he prefers to deal with the bridge instead.

    Zofia Forest 1 isn't a great map for Clive, but most unit struggle here as very few people have decent res on Alm's route. Still, this a bad map for Clive

    Forset Crossroads is a much better map for Clive as it fetures cavalry exlcusively. Addmitedly, this is a map in which a trained Lukas is better as the enemies all rush you and they are too fast and bulky for Clive to deal with effectively. Still, Clive can score some kills by trading the ridersbane around.

    Now, it depends wether you recruite Luthier now or after Desaix Fortress, but if you do recruit Luthier there are map reinforcements, which can be good for Clive if they end up being paladins.

    Desaix Fortress. Clive isn't gonna do too well here as he doesn't have the bulk or power to take on the barons with a forged steel lance, but he can deal with the archers and revenants pretty well and can reach a lot of the enemies without warp. There is one annoying witch on this map, but it's not hard to deal with her, since witches can only teleport to locations where they would have a single unit in the furthest tiles of their attack range.

    Zofia Forest 2. Now, this is a great map for Clive as he can double all of the 7 speed cavs with a single speed point (assuming you gave him the speed well) or in case you don't sell the pegasus cheese to the cheese tatser to get an exotic spice which seels for 3 gold you can use it on Clive. If you've forged the ridersbane additionaly, Clive can likely one shot the cavs by this point and you don't Clive can still one round the 7 speed cavs with a +3 forged steel lance and 2 strength procs (he has a 40% strength growth). Mathilda also joins you for this map, but I've rarely ever seen anyone talk about benching Clive for this map as there are 2 routes overflowing with cavs where you can send each of them.

    Now, this is the most important part. You get to the Syvan Shrine and give EXP to anyone you want. Now, it's a really good idea to give it to Clive as he's likely gotten quite a few levels, unless you've been sandbagging him and he can get to gold knight ASAP. Why is this important? Well, gold knight has bonkers bases, 40 HP, 12 speed, 18 str and 13 def is ridiculous and proves how growths don't matter. Now, you can give it to other units as well, but usually you want to give them to Palla/Catria, Celica's myrmidon, Alm's myrmidon, Silque and some other units depending on the playthrough. I understand this is a big investment, but it's definetely worthwile for act 4.

    Forst Northside this map features a bow knight boss, but you can just have Mathilda kill him as she one round him easely. You usually want to hold her back though as she has really poor bulk and Clive can one round the archers with 3 strength procs and a +3 forged steel lance. There are witches on this map that can kill Clive, but as long as you don't rush him headfirst into battle they won't be too much of a problem.

    Sluice Gate addmitedly isn't a great map for Clive as there are a lot of magic users and aside from him dealing with the paladins there isn't much for him to contribute.

    Performance in Act 4

    Border Battle features a lot of diverse enemies. Luckely among them are also cavs so Clive can do well against them. Mathild likely has the speed necessary to one round them as well, but she has lacking durability so it's best to use both Clive and Mathilda a bit catiously on this map as Mathilda is very hard to promote this soon and there are a notable amount of magic users.

    Rigel Forest is mostly a hunter's volley + dread fighter chapter. Remember how witch AI works for this map, it's really important. Anyway, Clive is pretty meh in this map overall, though if he's a gold knight by this point he can definetely do some damage with a forged steel lance.

    Fear mountain also features a diverse set of enemies. Aside from the few paladins Clive can also contribute against the Barons if he's gotten armorcrush which he should definetely have by this point and can clean up with killing some other enemies, such as the snipers.

    Nuibaba's abode isn't a good map for Clive and he isn't doing anything relevant here.

    Rigel Plains contains a lot of cavalry, so Clive does well. He can one round all of the paladins with a single speed point, and he will be able to kill the bow knights as a gold knight at base.

    Give the speed wells in Fear Shrine to Clive and Zeke so they both have 16 speed and can double every gold knight in the game (aside from bosses) using a -1 weapon.

    Rigel Falls is another map where Clive kills some cavalry and calls it a day. Sure, you have Mathilda and Zeke by this point as well, but the enmies are spread out enough so that all of them have something to do and don't get in each other's way.

    Last Bowstian is mostly a bow knight + Alm chapter. Clive can do some damage to the Barons with armorcrush and can kill some of the bow knights if you warp him, but it's not recommended.

    Rigel Castle is just a kill Rudolf ASAP map. He's really bulky and fast, so it's not like Clive can do much to him. Maybe he can deal the finishing blow, but it's probably best to just send Alm in.

    Act 5

    Clive is unluckely outmatched in Act 5 as by this point Mycen joins and Mathilda has likely become a gold knight. As such, Clive is mostly a filler unit by this point that exists to give support to Mathilda and have some other filler contributions.

    Performance throughout the game

    We can see through reading my analysis that Clive can contribute in a fair amount of maps and even has some pretty important contributions on some maps without needing a huge amount of investment. It's not like using clive is gimping another unit either until the final parts, but that's a very short part of the game.

    In fact Clive is actually a pretty self sufficent unit. He takes less effort to make good than the like of Boey, Palla, Catria, Leon, though his returns are obviously much lesser than those units.

    Additionally a lot of Clive's weaknesses aren't very relevant. Growths don't matter (it's a joke I'm sorry). Clive's speed isn't a problem due to how Echoes works: In Act 4, base GK Clive is only doubled by some bosses, myrms/dreads and enemy GKs. The only relevant Spd benchmark Clive has trouble reaching is the 16 Spd required to double GKs with a +2/3 RB but worst case scenario he only needs 4 extra Spd with a total of 5 points being available through relatively uncontested boosters in Act 4.

    His weakness to magic users is a problem, but a lot of other units struggle in said area as well. Barons are often worse at dealing with magic as they can get doubled and have bad res and it's not like magic users are so prevalent on Alm's route that bad res is a death sentence.

    Common counter arguments

    I'm just going to cover some reasoning I see a lot of people throw out:

    Clive takes a lot of work to be good which could be spent better. - Unfortunately, Echoes is a game where most units take a lot of work to become really good. Sorry, there isn't a super self sufficent unit like Seth in this game and Clive doesn't even require that much work

    Clive is too reliant on the ridersbane and the speed wells. - True, just like how Robin is too reliant on their personal skill and growth rates. While, I can see how Clive has a mediocre performance without those things, it's still undeniable that not that many units use the same investments better, especially when accounting Clive's great availability.

    The fact that Clive can kill a bunch of cavalry just means the ridersbane is good, not Clive. - This argument would have some kind of point if you could have a bunch of cavs without the pitchfork DLC and that said cavs were just better than Clive in every way.

    The fact that you have to learn how witch AI works just shows that Clive isn't worth it. Sure, I can understand why Clive's low res is annoying when dealing with witches, but it's really not a crippling thing to learn and they aren't some dominant force than you need to prepare for at every map they appear in.

    All of the other cavaliers are better and easyer to use. - Ced from FE4 is easyer to use than FE4 Leif, but would you call him a better unit just because of that? Additionally, let's look at all of the other cavs:

    Villager Cavalier - The main problem villager cav has is that they have poor combat in act 1 which makes them hard to train up to match Clive and by the time Clive joins if you haven't at least matched his bases with villager cav then you aren't doing much as the game feeds you enough good cavalry to not need another cav. Remember the class relative power of cavalier is only 3, so it's not like villager cav is likely to outlevel Clive unless you're grinding.

    Zeke - He is really good, but the thing is that Zeke joins really late and while he can stil contribute in the act 4 maps, it's not like said contributions are something amazing that can't be reached without him. Still, he joins really strong for free, but that doesn't matter much this late into the game, along with not having a lot of supports or time to build them.

    Mycen - Mycen has no availability, so while he's good in Act 5 he cannot match Clive's contributions earlyer in the game.

    Mathilda - This is the big one. Mathilda at base is definetely much faster and stronger than Clive, along with having great growths and great base resistance. However, Mathilda does have her own issues as well. She joins as a level 1 unit with 26 base HP and only a 40% growth in said area. She only has 3 maps in act 3, which means that her availibilty isn't that great. Along with that her base level of 1 is really problematic unless you grind as the maps start going by quick and Mathilda has trouble getting into gold knight as she needs to reach level 10. Finally, her bulk sometimes makes her worse at dealing with enemy cavalry despite her superior strength and speed compare to Clive, due to taking a lot of damage from phisical attacks.

    Clive is bad if you grind a lot - If you grind then Clive should be promoted into gold knight ASAP, so I don't see how he can be bad.

    I don't like using Clive - That's completely fair, but there's a difference between "Clive isn't fun to use" and "Clive is one of the worst units in the game".

    Conclusion

    Clive is in fact very good, being one of the best units on Alm's route and among the best units in the entire game as long as you know how to use him properly and don't fall into 20 different pitfalls along the way.

    Thank you for reading.

    submitted by /u/Every_Computer_935
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