Breaking Down: Dimitri- Fire Emblem: Three Houses Unit Analysis

[@JonoabboFE]

10:30 - I can confirm that Cavalier is not a level 30 class that goes by the name of "Gremory". I genuinely have no idea how I managed that.

[@wedorepairs]

But Dimitri would make such a great Gremory! Have you seen his amazing spell list? Such a shame it’s a gender locked class…

[@greg6434]

Speaking of Cavalier it's 7 move, not 6

[@JonoabboFE]

@@greg6434 My brain was apparently an optional extra here. Good job I have an on screen overlay providing the correct information for Cavalier and not information for a completely irrelevant magic class... Oh wait.

[@quatromanthefourth4413]

dang, here I was thinking Dimitri was abouta become the most progressive powerhouse in history

[@dima_yeon]

instructions unclear, he is now destroying everyone with thunder

[@Rengor1997]

Do we really need to be Breaking Down Dimitri? He's doing a fine job of it by himself

[@JonoabboFE]

Maybe we needed Building Up: Dimitri instead?

[@Rengor1997]

@@JonoabboFE I mean Gilbert and Rodrigue did that and look how that turned out

[@lucassilvateixeira3730]

Made me spit my water, thanks Rengor

[@takeyourheart1]

Too soon. 😢

[@MrMarc901]

Protect husbando puppy at all cost

[@baticeer_]

I gotta say thank you for these unit breakdown videos as someone who only got into 3 Houses for the first time recently. It's really nice to have a character building resource I can look at that is more up to date when a lot of the character build guides that I saw were from around when the game first released (so they dont have the DLC or just the benefit of more game expertise). I didn't really know what I was doing on my first runs of the game on Hard but your videos have really helped me with learning how things work and getting ideas for new stuff to try if I replay, or whenever I eventually get around to trying Maddening! Playing blindly Dimitri was not only my favorite character in terms of writing/personality (I did not expect to love this boy so much) but very fun to use, I made him a Holy Knight for no particular reason other than wanting to try out one of the mounted magic classes plus I could pretend he was doing it to be like Rodrigue (😢) LOL, obviously it's suboptimal since his Mag is so bad, but he is so strong that I didn't really miss losing Lancefaire from paladin and occasionally appreciated the extra Res against all those siege tome users in the late game. I didn't figure out how to make proper use of his Battalion skills though and the way you explain it has me already buzzing to try it out on my next Blue Lions playthrough.

[@twobirdsonescone]

i do think there is a little bit more to be said about his crest. casually it’s mostly just frustrating but if you are rigging, it can let base strength wyvern rider! dimitri hit some stupid kill thresholds that he has no right doing. Something i find very impressive is that with +8 from skills (death blow and str+2), base wr dimitri can one shot the first two health bars of hegemon edelgard with blaiddyd smash crits.

[@JonoabboFE]

Definitely true! I usually don't factor in rigging, but considering I mentioned it for crits, I definitely should have done so for the crest too!

[@MrMarinus18]

Also his classes don't really fit him narratively. I would have liked if high lord had something like a +3 attack, -1 def/res every time Dimitri kills a unit.

[@kabukiblooki]

How does one rig?

[@noahcarroll4944]

@@kabukiblooki Divine Pulse spam. The way RNG works in fire emblem is it's basically a long randomly generated number queue that the game pulls from in order to determine hit and crit chances, as well as crest trigger chances in Three houses. Thing is, that number queue will always be the same no matter how many times you rewind. So say I have my Hanneman move up to an enemy and blast them with Fire. It has 100% hit and no chance to crit. During that attack, his Minor Crest of Indech triggers. Since I know that has a 10% activation rate, I can choose to rewind that move and instead have Dimitri walk up to the boss and use Tempest lance to guarantee a kill because I know that his Crest of Blaiddyd will trigger, since Hanneman's crest triggered before I rewound. The RNG in this game will first check for crest activations if any would apply, then checks for hit rates, then checks for crit rates. Because of the true hit system, hit rates will burn 2 RNs in the queue, but every other instance will only burn 1 RN. That's a very oversimplified version of RNG manipulation in Three Houses. It's a little bit of a mess since Crests throw everything off balance.

[@ninjakirby777]

Tbh I’ve just gone his canon class and focused all my teachings for him on lance and authority and he’s always been a monster for me, I like it better than Paladin cause it doesn’t have the speed drawback of Paladin while keeping Lancefaire.

[@VideoMask93]

I agree-I only used Paladin for a few chapters in the latter part of White Clouds. I found it useful for navigating the fires in Remire, and the movement is great, but after timeskip I kept him in his canon classes, though I did still train his riding so he could get Movement+1.

[@JFarenci]

You don't break down Dimitri, Dimitri breaks down you

[@nebby9751]

I know Swordmaster isn't anywhere near optimal on him, but I certainly don't think it's too bad of an option. Rapier+ with innate Swordfaire and +10 crit does great damage, and helps him with tanky enemies like Paladins, Fortress Knights and GK's. It has more durability and is cheaper to maintain than Killer weapons as well. Astra sucks, but it is at least an option to delete something when its absolutely necessary and you don't want to burn a use of Atrocity. Having his Crest proc on Astra hurts my soul though. And A-Authority, A-Swords and D+ Bows is really low investment build for him. You just get the min requirements for archer, then stick with his boons till level 20, and watch that 70% Growth in Str and Speed snowball him into a monster. The 5 move is an ugly hindrance, no two ways about it. But Stride, a Dancer, Yuri's Relic or a dedicated Foul Play user to help maneuver him into position will alleviate that problem a fair bit

[@MegaJesseman]

He has a budding talent in riding also. The budding talent isn't anything great unfortunately, but it does make him proficient in riding after you unlock it. If you grind him up to an A+ in riding which is faster thanks to the proficiency you can give him movement +1. I've always ran Dimitri with movement +1 as a Great Lord. Even though the Great Lord gets 6 movement I found he kept getting left behind my other units, because of Blue Lions basically being the mounted unit class, because their class weapon is lances. After giving him that +1 movement he just went from being "Hey guys wait for me I am super strong, I can help!" To "Oh hey guys I have already got this section covered." 6 movement isn't remotely bad, but like I said when the vast majority of my units had 7-8 movement, canto, and some of them with flying anything below 7 movement had the issue of being resorted to a healer or having to have my dancer hold their hand.

[@g.n.s.153]

Really great video that brought up a lot of things I don't see him being praised enough for! Personally I'm a huge advocate for Bow Knight Dimitri even though it takes more effort than Paladin. Most notably being a little more hungry on Dexterity and Luck boosters to make up for the lack of the Crit+10 ability due to using a slot for Close Counter. The real benefit here is the ability to attack safely on player phase things that are harder to EP and then position yourself properly after. Fortress knights can be difficult to OHKO in a single crit but a hit beforehand makes the K.O. threshold a lot easier to reach.

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you so much!

[@Yggdrasilincarnate]

Bow Knight Dimitri is great, that's what I went for in my playthrough.

[@takeyourheart1]

War Master gives +20 crit by itself plus axe and fistfaire. The axes let him easily deal with armored units and gauntlets have such a good hit rate that it makes his enemy phase even more reliable. It is his best class in my opinion and absolutely worth the investment. Plus with his personal skill in the second half of the game, you can easily farm his axe and fist skills by sticking him in the woods with rusty weapons on a mid month battle map with a Knowledge Gem. With a high avoid battalion plus his +20 avoid when at full health, he can easily dodge everything and raise his skills even during the chapters you can’t teach him. That’s what I did to get him to War Master since I hadn’t planned on using that class initially.

[@JonoabboFE]

"sticking him in the woods with rusty weapons on a mid month battle map with a Knowledge Gem." absolutely counts as excessive grinding in my book.

[@sadeknight9112]

I just finished a blue lions play through the other day and B!wrath + B!vantage + War Master = soloing the final chapter

[@takeyourheart1]

War Master Dimitri is the best Dimitri. The only units he ever has issues with are armored units but with War Master you can set him up with a Killer Axe and he can take them out pretty easily. The gauntlets have such a good hit rate, plus add in hit +20 and a battalion with hit +15 or 20 and crit +15, he will usually end up with 100 hit and 100 crit on enemy phase and just melt everything.

[@jmicjm]

Dimitri doesn't need anything but the easy to get into classes, since training anything but Lance+authority delays his best powerspike. Once I hit A Auth and S Lance I got A flying for alert stance, then grabbed s+ Lance for extra Lance faire and upgraded to alert stance+. Final build for him, unique lord class with battalion wrath, battalion vantage, Lance crit +10, Lance faire, and battalion defence. The battalion defence made it so once I got his battalion to the right range, I never had to set it up again for the rest of the game (basically all of part 2)

[@oxygen3143]

I may have just rolled the weirdest Dimitri ever. At level 38 he has 17 speed and 34 dexterity, despite the fact both of these stats start at 7 with a 50% growth… I mean, dexterity is more important than speed for a wrath/vantage user, but still, what are the odds?

[@Starwars-Fanboy]

Battalion wrath + battalion vantage = pwnage incarnate

[@twobirdsonescone]

you never mentioned regular vantage + battalion wrath which is just about the same as dimitris with the caveat of needing manage flying battalion endurance. Still performs the same role and as well can usually be done on units with very easy flight like petra, bernadetta, annette and friends. as well the bat wrath men that can slide into hero to do the same thing. notably seteth, base alois, jeritza can do the same thing with no mastery requirements.

[@JonoabboFE]

True, I'm not a huge fan of it personally, but it definitely should have been mentioned. I would also say it has a couple of the same drawbacks as V/W - Having to be set up in map, and the lack of safety from being below 50% hp.

[@MegaJesseman]

Dimitri is pretty meh before the 5-year leap unless you get him an A-Rank in authority. He goes from being meh to obliterating everything. Lance and authority, I found to be the most worth it investments. I also like to ramp him up in riding for the movement +1, so the crap load of cavalry and fliers don't just leave him in the dust. Pre time skip I actually advise against making him into a paladin because you run a very real risk of getting speed screwed. It's okay to leave him as a paladin for a while, but I made the mistake of leaving him as a paladin for the entire first half of the game after unlocking it with him and he couldn't double jack squat of anything after the 5-year leap. I just had to spam atrocity and kept having to repair Aeredbhar every chapter. I turned him into a lord for his pre time skip final class and he did loads better. Lord actually has pretty good growth rates especially for an intermediate class and it gave him extra skill growth in lances and authority which are honestly his two most useful skills. And having the increase growth in swords is kind of nice for wind sweep.

[@greg6434]

Bow Knight Dimitri is definitely interesting, but I don't really see the point in it. Unless you have so much hit and crit (replace bow crit with close counter), there are going to be problems. Also shooting seige tomes with a bow from 10 spaces away is gonna be 40 hit. I will say however it is not ridiculously high investment if you go sniper 1st since he has boons in the other 2 areas. Sniper suffers from the same accuracy issues as bow knight tho. I would say swordmaster is more worth with how low investment it is and with the +10 innate crit + wo dao, it makes his low luck something you don't have to pay attention to at all. Also regarding the battalions, the indech sword fighters only have 10 crit so it depends on Dimitri's stats whether you want to use them. You also implied that the Goneril Valkyries are flying when they are infantry. Leicester Mercenaries have the same hit and crit has Goneril so also a great option.

[@JonoabboFE]

Re: Battalions - I was more referring to the Wyvern Co with the Flying aspect and the A Rank Battallion point as to why I prefer Indech to Goneril, but I definitely could have made it clearer.

[@texteel]

Ive seen a meme video about dmitiri just parking in the middle and isntantly killing attackers with some lightning magic. For the longest time I thought it was something to do with paladin, but now I think it was a combination of bat vantage and bat wrath.

[@Matteo_nr1_evermore_stan]

Love that paladin mastery could be either Defiant Avoid, defiant speed or aegis according to the graphic haha

[@briankelly1240]

Made Wyvern Lord in part one but was super difficult

[@dijonmustard4258]

u didn't go in depth on sword dimitri (fair, reasonable), so i'll share. i tried sword dimitri once, just to be wacky and mix things up, and found myself reclassing him from swordmaster to assassin a number of times because i was that desperate for a single crumb of movement. swords also make one of the enemy phase's problematic enemy types, high-avoid pegasi u could have

[@5sparks]

Dodgetanking in general is pretty much a meme and is super inefficient, but ive always had a ton of fun with dodge tank swordmaster Dimitri, the high avoid from his upgraded personal lets him hold onto battalion wrath/ vantage even longer, avoiding being them being neutralized for the rest of the map. If you miss the enemy phase attack and take enough damage to lose your battalion that's it, which is the main weakness of the battalion perks imo. It's super slow, but also funny to solo a map by just walking Dimitri forward and waiting for 40 turns until every single enemy is dead. It also makes up for being a bad player if I ever get myself into a situation where none of my other units can handle a map by serving as a crutch that I can lean on in basically any context. Works even better than my other favorite meme dodge tank Ferdinand.

[@bigdragaobebe]

Do you plan on doing a dorothea video?

[@thoughtfulinsanity3050]

I'm loving this series. Any chance we will see Claude soon?

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you! I will definitely do Claude at some point but not sure when at the minute!

[@thoughtfulinsanity3050]

@@JonoabboFE Awesome he seems really straightforward but I'm curious if he has any quirks that I might have missed.

[@dddmemaybe]

This year old video says Cavalier has 6 move twice. It's 7 move, don't sleep on early cav.

[@skys3383]

I never see anyone pushing dimitri as Wyvern Lord lots of work s+ axe very hard but... after you achieve this he's been the best in the game for me, except Lysithea might still beat him

[@user-rr7qf5hq3c]

Marianne next

[@MrMarinus18]

I would have liked if you had at least touched on his canon classes.

[@JonoabboFE]

There's nothing to really say, they don't offer anything interesting or unique and are basically just paladin with less move and no canto in terms of functionality.

[@MrMarinus18]

@@JonoabboFE Okay, I would have liked for you to at least say so.

[@MrMarinus18]

@@JonoabboFE It does kinda suck it has nothing truly unique. Since it's unique to Dimitri they could have given the classes something fitting like maybe a +1 attack with every kill or something like that.

[@pite9]

Why would you want to make Dimitri into a Wyvern Lord or War Master? They are strong classes, but unless you want an entire team full of them (which would be boring), it makes no sense. Felix, Dedue and Sylvain are much better suited for those classes. He's never going to be good with axes. With no innate lancefaire, he's going to need 33 levels of str boosts just to match Sylvain's damage with axes on the same class. By this time, you might have lancefaire unlocked via your lance skill, but you'd sacrifice another skill. So, you're basically gimping Dimitri into Sylvain, who is a defensive character with ordinary strength. Dimitri could pull off a War Master with fists, but again, you have Felix and Dedue who are built for that class. Dimitri should go for cavalry, which is a hybrid tank/offense class type with a ton of movement and utility. High lord is good too. I liked to switch between it and Paladin depending on the map. I never had any issues with Dimitri's speed on my first Maddening playthrough, which was also my first Three Houses playthrough overall. There are some minor issues with his axe skill. It hurts his ability to unlock Death Blow, but this shouldn't be too hard regardless. Plus, being a tanky character, especially as a cavalry, you may want traits that work defensively too, like hit 20.

[@JonoabboFE]

I'm not sure you actually watched the video - several of the things that you mentioned were things I addressed, such as hit +20, and Paladin was my recommended class on him? Still some of what you are said are absolutely wrong. Firstly, other units being strong in the class does not make Dimitri worse - Flight is a massive beneficit to any unit. As for war master, it's innate Crit+20 is a huge amplifier to any EP unit - although all of this explanation was in the vid so I'm not sure why I'm going through it again? Also Dimitri is more than capable of being good with axes, thanks to how early he can see a massive volume of enemy phase combat. If you prioritise axes on him, he will probably grow at a faster rate than a unit who is neutral in the skill. Also Dimitri and Sylvain are incredibly different characters? Used optimally, Dimitri is primarily an EP Unit who makes use of B!Wrath and B!Vantage to thrive, whereas Sylvain is a PP unit who relies on Swift Strikes to secure kills.

[@pite9]

@@JonoabboFE You said "The Axe Bane is pretty bad", paraphrasing: "because of Wyvern Lord and War Master". My point is that it doesn't matter since he's obviously not designed for those classes. His Axe weakness is more or less irrelevant if you're going Cavalry. It's like saying that Edelgard's Bow weakness is pretty bad. It's not. It just makes Bow classes less viable, but you have plenty of options where it doesn't hurt you. Another more extreme example would be to say that Dimitri's low magic is "pretty bad", because it makes him a bad dark knight. You talked about the negatives of his unpredictable Crest. This is a valid critique because it affects Dimitri pretty much no matter what. But his Axe Bane is only an issue if you insist on picking certain specific classes. No unit is compatible with all the classes. What defines how good a unit is, is how they perform with their optimal class. And like I said, Blue Lions have 3 solid options for those 2 classes already. Isn't that enough? I agree that Dimitri can make axes work. But it's suboptimal. Anyway, building weapon skills with Dimitri is harder than it sounds. If you let Dimitri tank almost everything, while counter one-shotting enemies left and right, then it's going to hurt your team. You're also not properly utilizing Dedue's strengths. That should be his role. Concerning Dimitri's Battallion skills, it's very exploitative and many (like me) refuses to use Wrath+Vantage in any form. To be fair, you just said it was the optimal strat, but I don't think you should define a character by a trick like that. Dimitri having an exploit that relies on counters (rather than direct offense) doesn't make him a fundamentally different character to Sylvain. My assessment that Sylvain is weaker than Dimitri, and thus relatively a more defensive character is accurate. Not to mention he have more affinity with the heavy armor classes. But that's beside the point. My point was that by picking a suboptimal class for Dimitri, you're chipping away at most of that offensive edge he has over Sylvain.

[@JonoabboFE]

@@pite9 Yes, something making it worse for him to go in to options that would otherwise be his best choices is bad for him. I don't really see how that's debatable, Dimitri would be much better if he had easier access to Wyvern Lord. A Wyvern Lord Dimitri using axes will almost always outperform a Cavalry Dimitri, it just takes a lot more investment due to the bane. Calling the Battalion skills an exploit - to me - sounds ridiculous. He was given those skills because of their strength in combination, but honestly, no I did not take your personal ruleset in to account when making this video. That is absolutely true.

[@pite9]

​@@JonoabboFE Wyvern Lord is not the only viable class in the game. It has the best mobility and good growth progression, and the excellent +10 avoid, but you'll get most of your levels before you get the class, so the stat progression won't really matter much. Meanwhile you are limited to axes, you are weak against sword users with axebreaker, you are vulnerable to bows, which are already a pain in the neck to deal with in maddening, especially for a character that will be at the front baiting enemies, and you can't take advantage of defensive terrain. All classes are viable and have pros and cons. That's why you ideally should have a balance of classes and weapon types. It may be the case that in summary, axe classes are a bit better, but that doesn't mean you should make all of them into axe classes, and you already have 3 top tier units in Blue Lion with better axe affinity. The whole discussion about Wrath and Vantage is stupid. All I said was that Dimitri is about one weapon faire skill stronger than Sylvain. At that point I didn't know if you were advocating for him keeping his lance or switching to axe. Whether you use the strat or not shouldn't alter our conclusions since both default general use offensive power house Dimitri and Battallion strat Dimitri wants to maximize his damage output.

[@JonoabboFE]

​@@pite9 I didn't say it was the only viable class in the game, but for a physical unit, it certainly is the best, and having a harder time getting in to it is almost always a bad thing. The growth progression is irrelevant, since stats at that point in the game don't particularly matter at all. What makes Wyvern Lord good is it's 8 move with Flight and Canto, the huge Strength modifier of +4, and affinity towards Axes, the strongest weapon type. That being said it isn't locked to axes, either. You can break out a Lance or a Bow if it's optimal for a combat against breaker skills. Speaking of bows, the bow vulnerability is largely irrelevant, because you can Dismount before attacking or enemy phasing - and either way, on the EP, you will be killing most of your attackers before they get a chance to do anything anyway from chapter 8. I'm not quite sure where the Sylvain comparison is coming from - they are very different units. Dimitri is an EP unit who fuels crits as his main tool, and Sylvain is a PP unit who's best usage comes from Swift Strikes. Also those 3 units who are using axes all have much better options than axes in the late game, with Sylvain and Dedue being lance based due to their combat arts, and Felix tending towards Bows or Gauntlets in Sniper or Grappler. Feel like we are talking at circles at this point, but to revert to your original question, you would want to make Dimitri a Wyvern lord because of it's excellent mobility and damage output, and a war master for the great use of the Crit+20 ability.

[@Aurora_FGC]

Probably the worst enemy phase unit imo, they should buff him

[@cosmictraveler1146]

Make his personal grant 30 avoid and 5 def on enemy phase, boom

[@tirex3673]

@@cosmictraveler1146 Only if in turn Edelgard's personal halves combat art cost.

[@rugvedkulkarni1593]

LoL

[@eesev2017]

flattest persality but a fantastic unit

[@littywitty5867]

Im just waiting for the marianne video 🥺

[@JonoabboFE]

You may not have to wait much longer :)