Why Sophia is the WORST Unit in ALL of Fire Emblem! (Except FE12 Bantu...)

[@MythrilZenith]

So clickbait title aside I definitely forgot about fe12 Bantu entirely. I guess in my mind he's so bad I completely forgot he exists. My mistake.

[@DaniDoyle]

Damn, how quickly you abandoned the lessons we learned in our colab

[@lilaemblem6014]

Won't lie, I clicked on this video with the soul purpose of correcting you. But it seems like enough people beat me to it for you to offer an official correction. It's honestly funny just how massive the gap between FE12 Bantu and Sophia is in Sophia's favor. Like, you can always get worse, but Bantu really went "you think that's bad? Hold my beer."

[@intensellylit4100]

​@@lilaemblem6014*sole

[@ZorotheGallade]

"What is my purpose?" "You recruit Tiki." "Oh my Naga."

[@eaturgrns]

Sophia really got them manakete bases but no dragonstone lol.

[@shellpoptheepicswordmaster755]

Nor manakete growths.

[@DaniDoyle]

In addition to the fire having high hit lilina also gets a basically free c support with Roy which will give her even more hit, which is good because despite the only ok skills growth it makes accuracy very high

[@ElutPesto]

Funny bad: hits for very little damage, made of paper Painful bad: misses constantly while also advertising very low damage, made of paper I don’t get where you would even train sophia. My last run I figured I’d try for the memes but I could not do it. Even if you isolate a unit for sophia to attack without a counter her hitrates being in the 20s-30s on 2 rn goes from funny bad to existential crisis bad

[@auraguard0212]

Don't play Hard Mode then xD

[@topazlight1586]

My own approach would be to jack up her Skill and Luck really high to represent her sort of clairvoyance abilities coming into play in battle, and rework her Speed a bit to be… not necessarily GOOD, but adjust it for the constant penalty she’s getting from her weapons. This probably wouldn’t really “fix” her, but it would at least give her a funny gimmick to set her apart, which is basically just as good.

[@michael_betts]

I love training weak units. I regularly use amelia, neimi, wendy, and nino. Sophia is too much for me. 20/20 sophia still isnt a great unit, and cant hit anything ever.

[@Juan-zs6jt]

Sophia can kill herself to save turns, she can desert walk, can dig out items in the sand, I say she has enough uses to not be the worst unit ever. Some units in this series are so useless they cannot even do what little Sophia is capable of. She is not a good fighter and getting her to fight is a lost cause but some units who join at the start of their respective games cannot even get off the ground despite not being in a hellhole like Binding Blade.

[@fey0217]

sophia is a bad unit. horrible bases, not good growths, horrible availability, etc. but it's a gratifying experience training her and watching her go from being practically useless to being able to hold her own to some degree (granted i usually give her a lot of stat boosters if i wanna use her in a play through lmao). obviously niime and raigh are more worth training if you're looking for a shaman in fe6 to use but sophia presents a unique problem that i think makes for frustrating yet more interesting strategies in trying to train her.

[@MommyRexacuse]

Sophia is definitely one of the worst, though I think fe12 bantu is the worst in the series. He gets one-rounded by every enemy, has basically not growths, and at least Sophia has 1-2 range so it’s at least possible to train her, this is not true for Bantu

[@MythrilZenith]

Good point, while Sophia is just technically over the usability bar, FE12 Bantu is well below it.

[@gurucheeks4510]

@@MythrilZenithSophia is objectively unusable unless you spend around 60 extra turns with rigging her attacks to hit. In literally any sort of context that requires you to beat the maps in less than 40 turns each, she's unusable.

[@wenxiwu6480]

In my opinion, Miranda is worse than Sophia in terms of cost of opportunity. In order to recruit her, you need to play the B route, leaving the posibility of recruiting Sleuf, another user of staves (which are broken in Thracia cof cof) while Sophia just joins you and you don't lose anything for recruiting her. (Unless she dies in which case, gg to the good ending)

[@jemolk8945]

How to fix Sophia: give her Karel's growths, or at least close. You could even reduce her bases further if you did that. This is I think the best answer -- trash her bases even more, but give her growths so high that if you actually raise her, she will cap literally everything. This keeps her appeal as a particularly difficult training project, her niche as a dark mage, and her character as a noncombatant all completely intact, but also offers a reason to use her beyond just liking her character. And really, she's part dragon. She should have _at least_ dormant potential, even if she doesn't have the experience to know how to wield it.

[@PipoZePoulp]

About Raigh; he's set at level 10 in the character table, but is deployed at level 12 in chapter 12. He gets two empty levels, but it's often overlooked because of the hard mode bonus stats he gets.

[@Neogears1312]

Aka doesn’t the ones he doesn’t get.

[@isuckatgaming1873]

I wish raigh got hard mode bonuses lol

[@g.n.s.153]

One of Sophia's biggest redeeming factor is her C Dark. It's not unique to her but FE6 has a ton of units with horrible weapon ranks and to her credit C dark is great for a lv 1 unit. Even if she had better bases struggling through D rank with only Flux would be so much worse imo. Her good res is nice to manipulate the status staves and dark magic being so light in fe6 makes her completely negate the weight of Flux after a Body Ring and then Nosferatu on promotion. As for the accuracy idk, I signed up for that when I decided to play FE6 anyway.

[@yumenonaka5257]

As a rule of thumb, I don't believe any unit that uses magic is exactly untrainable, across the series. Sophia typically leaves a bad taste in the player's mouth because Arcadia is a stressful chapter and if she doesn't hit that 60% a few times, or gets a crappy level-up or two, it feels more hopeless than if the same thing happens to Wolt early on. FE6 is pretty long if you get all the gaidens and everything, so really there's plenty of time to futz around with Sophia even if she feels like a late joiner. Even Zeiss, the "Est," isn't really used all that much even though he joins before the second routesplit. FE6 is a bit cursed in that regard.

[@michaelshan22]

Along with New Mystery Bantu, I'd say Lyre from Radiant Dawn is easily worse. Both are pretty much useless at the time of joining but at least Sophia can potentially become something.

[@hadoukenfighter]

I'd very much put a few other units below Sophia since there is a "CHANCE" for them to do something. as others have mentioned there's a few FE12 dudes that qualify even on hard difficulty as unusable, but I was going to suggest Fiora from FE10 since the only way I found to train her would be to petrify a Psychic staff cleric in 1-E and have her poke at it until she either promotes or can kill the guy with a bronze lance.

[@lordsoronexle]

As much as the epic rant of BlazingKnight on FE12 Bantu comedically dunks on the video, Sophia is pretty much up there as one of the worst.

[@MythrilZenith]

Bantu so bad I legitimately forgot he existed for the duration of time it took me to make and upload this video.

[@blankblank6214]

Finona of radiant dawn would like a word

[@SJtheMFZB]

Nah, she's fine. FE6 wouldn't be as much fun without her.

[@hfbirdie9970]

Well there's Hugh for an unpromoted unit after Sophia...(though he's level 15 so..) I tried using her in a Reverse run mod and just feels so let down despite her earlier join in it.

[@shaymue]

I'm about to do a "why Sophis is good" video...

[@JM-tj5qm]

Even if she joined in chapter 1 with the same bases she wouldn't be that good, just average. She still misses constantly, and can't double anything. Yet she joins in chapter 14, that's insane

[@Neogears1312]

Counterpoint, Wendy’s worse; soph gets one of my only 2 guiding rings prior to the secret shop. That’s great. I can use it on a real magic unit. Wendy gets me AND has worse move.

[@MythrilZenith]

IMO counting the guiding ring Sophia finds is like counting the Energy Ring in Ewan's starting inventory as a contribution he makes. It has absolutely nothing to do with the unit's viability even if it is a contribution they bring.

[@Neogears1312]

@@MythrilZenithI would. Even if I don’t use them that’s a contribution. It’d be like ignoring the fact guy gives your only killing edge till the secret shop.

[@ji-wonseong1623]

I wouldn't call Sophia the "worst-" just horrible if you actually plan on doing a minimum-turn playthrough. Her growth and stats are just too abysmal to invest into her- and the result isn't even guaranteed. When you look at other bad units like Lot, Wade, Wendy, Bors, Walt, and mediocre units, there just one thing Sophia doesn't have- the proper time to be invested in. Even with horrible units, you can make them shine through usage and a bit of babying. Plus, Raigh and Niime exist. Just throw a few angelic robes and Niime and you're set.

[@auraguard0212]

Objection: Sophia is better than Wendy. You can promote Sophia earlier than you can feasibly promote Wendy, because the second Guiding Ring comes earlier than the second Knight's Crest. (You could use your first Knight's Crest on Wendy, but why? She's Trec without a horse.) I find it funny that Niime has the worst Magic-users in the game (more-mediocre-than-Hugh Raigh and Sophia herself) as competition within her niche. Good lord.

[@isuckatgaming1873]

You can obtain a knights crest before the 2nd guiding ring if you recruit percival early And if you don't, you'll get the 2nd knights crest 1-2 maps later(depends on if you get the gaiden chapter), and then a 3rd 2-3 maps later Also, good luck promoting Sophia before you get the 2nd or 3rd knights crest lol, she needs to gain 9 levels first, and to do that she needs to hit first

[@dominicjannazo7144]

this video is far too quiet. while it's easy to blow out videos and make them too loud, i have to crank my speakers to max to even hear this video. Also, i've never heard Sophia called the worst unit. Worst in the GBA games, sure, but she's not Bantu at least.

[@MythrilZenith]

Understandable, been messing with my audio again after I noticed my computer reverted some settings. It's hard to tell exactly how loud it is when my editing software makes it sound super loud but then the output is like half the volume. Will make sure future videos don't suffer the same issue, apologies!

[@Demonhornz]

Why did you make the music so goddamn loud? Holy shit.

[@necrowolf77]

Damn, and I always max out her levels.

[@freetoplayking7362]

What about Shanam?

[@RaidenKaiser]

Dunno Alfred might be competing pretty hard for worst unit, joking aside even if sophia is the worst I firene might be the worst army ever in fire emblem hell even the dawn brigade isnt as bad as firene lol.

[@maltheopia]

I think FE7 HHM Geitz is the worst unit in the franchise. Not due to anything with the unit, but because of the opportunity cost to get him. Sure, units like Bantu and Sophia are bad, but they don't require a huge investment spanning over several chapters. Nino shows up when the game is 75% of the way over and requires babying, but if you don't want to use her, she doesn't hurt you. Geitz requires you to feed experience points to two subpar units. Recruiting him literally made your army worse.

[@isuckatgaming1873]

If that's your argument, then Karla is way worse. Geitz requiring you to train all of your lords isnt a big issue, since you have to force deploy them on many maps and the extra levels really help their survivability. There are benefits to training them. Karla, on the other hand, requires you to train up bartre, one of the worst units in fe7, to level 5 promoted, and then also make sure he's not strong enough to kill Karla, but also bulky enough to survive 3 rounds of combat against her, and then only after all that can you recruit her - and she's not even good. Geitz is at least a decent unit on his own.

[@maltheopia]

@@isuckatgaming1873 I've tried getting both on 100% runs, and I have to say, it's much harder training up the Lords on HHM than Bartre, because you need to feed them more experience and also have to do it much earlier than the time limit you have for Bartre. And, unfortunately, you can't do 2-range chip with Lyn and Eligood the way you can chip with a handaxe/bow with Bartre. And you can just early-promote Bartre, and sometimes his speed growth does pop off.

[@isuckatgaming1873]

@@maltheopia the issue is, if you early promote bartre there's a higher chance he just can't fight karla without dying Saying that bartres speed can pop off is meaningless, because you could say the same about the lords stats as well. Eliwood could level up well... but nobody wants to rely on that. At the very least, all of the lords have effective prf weaponry. The rapier is accurate, and the mani katti is just a generally good weapon. Bartre has to rely on the hammer and halberd separately, both of which weigh him down (and he's already terribly slow), and are fairly inaccurate. As much as he does have the benefit of having 2 range with hand axes, it doesn't matter if he never hits the target. Ultimately the biggest nail in the coffin is the fact that hhm has barely any deployment slots. Eliwood and lyn are forced deployed on certain maps, so you can guarantee they will have to exist on your team. You can still choose not to use them, but they will be deployed. Bartre is never forced deployed, outside of the portion of the game where you don't have preparations yet. In order to train him, you have to make the conscious decision to remove a good unit from your team, and then later you have to make the conscious decision to use a hero crest on him instead of someone actually good, like raven, or someone who has a decent niche like dart, guy or dorcas. It's probably better to just sell a hero's crest than use it on bartre, than way you have the freedom to buy Farina. The lords don't have to compete much for the heaven seals - promote whoever you want first, 'cause it's not like you can sell the seal. You aren't losing anything by training the lords. The inevitably will be on the maps, and will have opportunities to gain experience. Bartre doest get the same luxuries, and thus Karla cannot he afforded the same treatment.

[@maltheopia]

@@isuckatgaming1873 The thing is, if Bartre ends up popping off, you don't have to early promote him. The rare chances it happens, you can just use him like a normal unit. But the good thing about Bartre is: even if he does suck, you can just early promote him and give him trickle experience with later chapters. You can't do that with Eligood and Lyn. If they end up sucking, you still have to keep feeding them levels past level 10 if you want Geitz. And yes, there are points where they're force-deployed, but if you're relying on that to get you to the required experience you will never have enough. HHM's XP reduction are brutal, it's like having anti-paragon. You need to deploy both on them on many maps where they're not force-deployed, otherwise you'll never get the level requires. And because the window for getting Geitz is smaller than getting Karla, there are many more maps in which you have those two serving as deadweight than Bartre. You can see it on 100% LTC runs -- getting Bartre up to the appropriate levels for Karla is simply easier than getting Lyn and Eligood up to the appropriate levels for Geitz. Also, early-promoted Bartre can survive a round of combat with Karla even on 0% growths and no statboosters. Karla is seriously that bad. She hurts your army if you want to get her. But getting her doesn't put you as far behind as Geitz does, even though Geitz is genuinely a good unit.

[@isuckatgaming1873]

@@maltheopia training kyn and eliwood doesn't put you behind at all though Even if they aren't great combat units, giving them survivability is always valuable. If they are capable of surviving on their own when force deployed, that allows the player far more leniency in strategy, whereas when untrained you have to neuter your other units to protect them. Your army isn't any weaker by having them trained, as they are a resource you will inevitably have to deal with, but if trained they can at the very least not hold your other units back - no need to keep them constantly rescued, or body block with pent and hector. While exp is reduced in hhm, there is still plenty to go around - especially considering that your deployment slots are so limited, you hardly have enough units out for the exp to go to. You might would say that it's better to use those limited deployment slots to train units you will use in the long term, and while that can be true, more often than not the only early units you'll use long term are Marcus, your choice of cavalier, a, flier, a mage and raven. Even then, as the game goes on you get plenty of units who often will have better stats than those who you sank exp into, like harken, Farina, isadora, and pent. Because of this, even the early units you train for long term often get benched due to not having the space for them, and a better version of them being right there. You can afford to give a bit of exp to your lords - it really won't have any impact on the rest of your team. If you need an early mage, canas joins early at a decent level. If you need a flier, fiora and heath don't need as much training as florina do - harken and isadora have already been mentioned. If someone asks me if they should train the lords, I'd give them a maybe. If you aren't confident in your ability to defend your lords with other units, then they should train them early on when it's easy. If you are confident, then leave them be. It's never harmful to give them exp. It's not even particularly difficult. The only situation where it would be bad is if you were trying to play incredibly efficiently - but that's only one way of playing. To circle back to the original comparison of your comment, being Sophia and geitz, while obtaining geitz in a high efficiency run like an ltc or speedrun is extremely difficult, Sophia is hard to use no matter what kind of run you do. You could play at a snails pace, only moving your units as a ball of death, and still likely have a hard time using her. Even in reverse recruitment, where the game is modified to have her recruited in the first 7 chapters, she is so offensively bad that she cannot keep up with enemies on normal mode at her join time. Even if you put in the effort to train her, she is more likely than not to still turn out extremely weak. Worse yet, if you try to use her and she dies on her join map, you lose the forblaze and the guiding ring that you have to reach with her to obtain. Though you can only obtain the guiding ring with her, you already have 1 guiding ring which you likely used, and you just received Cecilia, who despite her stats manages to meet the bare minimum for combat and is a very capable staff bot - usually a better staff user than a promoted lugh, lilina, or raigh due to them promoting with E staves. Due to this, while having the second guiding ring is nice, it doesn't have enough of an impact to make her any better than the absolute worst. She won't work in any style of play, and the only way to get any progress out of her is to either get absurdly lucky while simultaneously playing extremely well so as not to allow her to take any hits and keeping the rest of your units healthy, or by just brute forcing it through resets and cheese strats - and even with cheese strats, she's difficult to train due to her low accuracy compiled on top of the fact that Flux only has 30 uses, and missing with a spell tome still draining uses. Even in the least optimal conditions, she isn't good. In comparison, geitz is a unit who can fight prettt well. Obtaining him requires you to train 2 units who will slow you down, but are rarely outright detriments, and you will have to see on your maps on occasion regardless. The units promote late, but for free with no competition, and they all have great support partners including each other, so they can be made more consistent. Time spent using them will make your run easier down the line, unlike Sophia who likely won't be of any help even fully trained.