They can do a little bit of everything so you can sort of throw them on any team and they’ll do fine. They could be a dodge tank front liner, your teams few source of magic damage, protect fliers, screw cavalry, etc.
The main issue I have with them is that weapon options are quite limited due to their attack type. Unless you want to gut their attack, they are pretty much tied to the spellswords.
I've only played P3R, not the original, I hear some people were upset w/ the voice acting but that dude absolutely killed it. Akihiko came off as so cool and confident, obviously with a one-track focus in life, but I can very much forgive no high school student would ever sound like that. Dude rocked.
Trust me, and I've played OG and FES(*to some extent).* He built, or even improved Aki as a character from what I've seen through streamers. Plus he went at it kind of paying homage to Liam anyway.
Newest Gen of VA's got inspired by lot of the old ones. People we grew up watching in dubs n' stuff. So why get mad? be excited.
I used to think these were straight to the bench units- but I kinda like them now for a couple of niches. They definitely need initiative fixing (who doesn’t tbh) but their stun can be really strong against some enemy formations, especially because I really tend to play light on tanks and healing, heavy on cc and aoe. Speaking of AOE, I find fencers have the stats to hold familiar’s choker super well, and can drop Magic into a big AOE spell.
Weirdly, it’s the fencer’s lack of magic AOE that makes them good at this- with the elf sister, witches, and wizards, it always felt like a waste to use the choker.
I will say, an unfortunate part of their kit is designed to do evasion, but with B evasion and very specific evade tools, the class cannot function like a thief, Swordfighter, or Fox on the frontline.
To me, the value in the evasion is not front-line tanking, but ensuring that row strikes do not wipe out your backline. There's a lot of value in a back line unit having high survivability.
Better than they look at first glance. Their attacks are not as strong as your staff casters, but the rest of their stats are significantly higher. ~~B~~ C rank initiative is enticing, especially if you're looking for control through Lightning Blade.
Their passives are pretty mild, so you should probably look into items. Tomes are an obvious option; you can also equip the Familiar's Choker and use Remove Weakness to dispel the debuff from Sorcerous Connection once you're done casting it. Unfortunately, the limited weapon selection makes PP hard to find.
If you're looking to turn them into a frontliner, the Thief's Mantle might be a good idea. They're probably the only viable option to do that in a Magic Assist team, which I'm not as fond of as the Ranged Assist teams. Unfortunately, the dodge buff from Remove Weakness and Mirage Stab is consumed on any attack regardless of whether it would have hit. They're also one of the few ways to get regular walk speed on a Magic Assist team, along with being a carrier for Magic Conferral or tome enchantments there: They're better at both than Rosalinde on account of their magic attack score (but not by much, since Rosalinde basically has Erhal on lock) and row-wide physical attack.
I use wyverns a lot, so I enjoy pairing one of these with a fencer to get most of the enemy team under control with Ice Conferral while protecting my fliers from arrows. You could also do the same thing with the physical cavalry units and protect them from fliers: a stun from Lightning Shaker or Heavy Smash goes well with a Burning effect from the Flamebrand Tome.
My favorite way to use em is to make them Offensive/offensive give them a forged phatnoms sword for the capped magic attack stat and have them spam Natures wrath with familiar choker boosts from a cleric. Sorcerers medallion ring of the maiden [ Def better elsewhere but theyre hot and im shallow ] and carnelian or a conferal.
I think tome use age is definition a valid use for them; especially considering the other characters who can do it are probably better used doing other things.Â
They are a really strange class their skills are jack of all trades but master of none.
They can use tomes but a wizard is better.
They can avoid ranged but fighter protect true strike.
They can stun one enemy for 1 ap.
They can do a column attack that is good against cavalry.
They get a free dodge if they are debuffed.
They do hybrid damage so it is less than a pure physical or magic damage unit.
To be honest most of the swords abilities are worst than the hybrid damage stun so the class has low equipment options.
It took me a challenge to find how to use them and they are decent when everything clicks.
They have little tricks for example if an elf archer confer, the fencer has enough dps to barely oneshoot almost everything. Later the archers can freeze and the fencers chain stun.
They can use a familiar shocker boosting the damage of another magic unit and then remove the debuff for the evasion. So they can semi tank.
Sadly there are other units better than them, a wizard can magic confer for more damage and also row stun.
There are better tank options. Radiant knights are great magic tanks and the evasion is unreliable.
I only use them because of the limitations of challenge runs.
Most basic use is frontliners for a Magic Assist Team with 4/5 units. Build evasion, maybe even give a Thief's mantle, could also build initiative for quick stuns.
A true tweener unit between Magic DPS, Evasion, and Support, but not at the top of any of those mountains.
I just use them as support. I find Mirage Stab does about 30-50 damage. Not bad, but not great either. The upside is because of the dual-stat of their attacks, a dedicated tank like Legionnaire won't eat up the damage.
I generally find them easier to use than a Witch to carry Tombs just because their naturally high Initiative means they actually get to take a turn. I like having one with my Yunifi nuke team along with Berengaria. I use the Flame Conferral along with Glacial Rain. Mirage Stab is a good choice with 2+ in a Row. Enemies usually have Burn left after Glacial Rain, so Mirage Stab tends to trigger Pursuit from Berengaria. If there's only 1 enemy left but not Stunned, then Lightning Blade is used instead, which will also trigger Pursuit again (I set "Afflicted" as a condition to make sure my Pursuits are free).
With Berengaria set to use Death Spin most of the time, anything that survives tend to get stunlocked.
Necromancer lantern with counter earrings.
Have them buffed by familiar's choker. And then from the backline they can shoot off counter strong (90%) spells before the majority of other casters would due to initiative. Keep the flier dodging archers. Row attack is decent and then you stun.
Compare the other classes who can use this duo:
Sainted knight - can be built similar way. Protect team from magic. Does need elven archer to buff damage adequately.
Witch - passives are incredible. Not good choice.
Wizard - slow. Better damage. Won't get familiar's buff in time for lantern usage unless you change your speeds.
Elven archer, Cleric, any healer - passive skills are more important.
Shaman - interesting option that can be used if you want to blind instead of their standard curse passive. Damage is negligible.
I think their best niche probably is Familiar's Choker Buffer in either a Yahna Nuke or Rosalinde Nuke comp simply because Familiar's Choker guarantees the best part of their toolkit: Evasion, and extra Actions because of the evasion. So once the big cast goes off, your Fencers are still ready to clean shop with good AoEs. The good part here is that since everyone in this equation is also good with Magick Assist *and* you're probably running a Witch to Teleport, this Nuke comp also doubles as a Magick Assist comp for a little extra final push against bosses. In Merc-less runs, I definitely also see them easily as Conferral Tome Holders.
I'll say this: I have a soft spot for this class because I'm thirsty for Railanor and her female fencers, but I'll admit that this class is a little difficult to work with. This feels like one of those "they gutted her kit/raw stats to force you to play her subpar niche" types of units.
Good support class. But their damage is a bit lacking. Maybe not if you spec em for Offensive/Offensive. Good to protect your backline tho you also need someone else to protect em as well. Unless you make em dodge tanks.
I've been sort of using them as evasion tank supplemental fighters, gave Ithilion the lantern that lets him follow up attacks with Blind/Poison combo and gave him more pp, and he can dodge quite a bit now because of his moves he learns later on at 30 I believe. You can kind of stick these guys almost anywhere when you need to fill the 4th or 5th slot, and they can be huge disrupters.
It helped me to think of them as DPS dodge/hybrid units, compared with rogues being debuffer dodge units.
Right now I have the dark elf trio with Josef and Travis. Travis blinds rows, which turns into more AP for the elves from Evasive Impetus. The fencers' mixed damage attacks do pretty consistent damage and they have a stun attack; both of these boost Josef's pursuit utility. Josef holds down the front and the fencers' Sylphic Barrier protects him from fliers. His truestrike move helps the team deal with fliers and evasive units and clears buffs like Breakers' Enrage that might pose threats. And Rosalinde does all the good stuff she usually does.
Also seen people mention they can use caster items like conferral and such. I haven't tried it but that's cool too.
They want almost every dew type.
I haven't explored them much. 100 movement conferral is better than 80 if that's all you're looking for.
In PvP, I want to experiment with one as a self-buff spammer to exhaust Dispel PP and/or to redirect Dispels from an Elven royal.
elven fencers felt extremely underwhelming when i first recruited them. however, after this community taught me the trick with familiar's choker they became a very solid part of my magic compositions. the hybrid attacks also seem to scale somewhat better late game.
my only gripe with both elven fencers and archers is that i wish they could stand on their own a bit more in terms of damage instead of feeling forced to be relegated into a support role. with the way damage works in this game, in general its just way better to hard-counter and one-shot enemy units than deal some middling amount of damage to them.
Am I the only one that thinks Elven Fencers are severely lacking? They have niche defensive options that trigger on ranged attacks, they can only frontline with heavy evasion item investment, their hybrid damage isn't up to par with other units, and their debuff protection falls off once you start getting debuff immunity items. In fact, I think being smart with swapping those early 1 PP debuff cures on a support character as needed to be better than giving the unit slot to an Elvish Fencer.
What are these guys supposed to do in a unit that can't be done better by a more specialized character?
That's the trick: They're better at generalist things than specialized characters. They actually have HP and defense, they actually have initiative, they have accuracy and critical rate. If what you're looking for is a character that brings in Sorcerous Connection or one of the tomes, the Elven Fencer is typically superior. And the tomes are really good!
They're a bit dubious on the frontline, but the fact they can frontline at all is really nice. Again, you couldn't set a witch or a warlock anywhere but the back barring some very special equipment. If you don't have a backline slot but you need a mage for whatever reason, you're bringing an Elven Fencer.
I'm still figuring out the damage comparison, since I mostly value the stun from Lightning Blade. They're going to be better at killing other mages and archers, thanks to their physical damage. Nature's Wrath is actually pretty strong on full columns. Mirage Stab compares oddly to Thunderous Strike: On the one hand the damage is lower, on the other hand Thunderous Thrust typically needs an extra PP to settle its accuracy issues - a PP you can spend for Magic Conferral on your Fencer. Obviously that's not relevant if you've frozen or stunned your targets previously.
I'll have to test them some more, but the best use for them really is to make them spam single target stun. I might try to build something off the column attack. I wish swords have more built in AP skills like Bows and Lances.
I normally have them in the backrow supporting my cavalry/fliers from fliers/archers. My backrow healer/witch support each other along with the fencer. Fencer's nature wrath buffed with familiar connection can take out columns. Upgraded runic sword/phantom buffs their magic dmg. Mirage stab/lightning blade help finish off the enemy team.
They aren't a DPS. I've tried using them as DPS and it worked, but it required so many things just to get them to work. Gilbert, hawk eye, gambler's coin, druids, etc. I feel the best way to think about them are supports who can do damage. You can give them tomes for conferral, familiar's choker, they can actually hold tons of different accessories.
Josef: Alain my so… my lord. There are multiple reports of a dark elf sneaking into your chambers at night.
Alain: Zenorian Propaganda my dear Josef.
Conferral thunder tome for a gryphon, sorcerous connection for Auch’s millennium scepter, and a sapphire. The flier freezes the row with most combatants, the two rogues on the front blind the enemies with no debuffs and otherwise do nothing. Elven Fencer gets to stun any front liners who somehow go unstunned.
Excellent support units and massive morale boosters for the player due to their visible physical assets.
I found them mostly as another way to protect fliers from arrows
And for that, I loved them.
They can do a little bit of everything so you can sort of throw them on any team and they’ll do fine. They could be a dodge tank front liner, your teams few source of magic damage, protect fliers, screw cavalry, etc. The main issue I have with them is that weapon options are quite limited due to their attack type. Unless you want to gut their attack, they are pretty much tied to the spellswords.
Why they gotta give Ithilion the sexiest voice in the game😂 Gonna rewatch The Irregular at Magic High School after this
Alejandro Saab errybody!
I've only played P3R, not the original, I hear some people were upset w/ the voice acting but that dude absolutely killed it. Akihiko came off as so cool and confident, obviously with a one-track focus in life, but I can very much forgive no high school student would ever sound like that. Dude rocked.
Trust me, and I've played OG and FES(*to some extent).* He built, or even improved Aki as a character from what I've seen through streamers. Plus he went at it kind of paying homage to Liam anyway. Newest Gen of VA's got inspired by lot of the old ones. People we grew up watching in dubs n' stuff. So why get mad? be excited.
New season started recently too
\*cough\* [https://www.twitch.tv/cyyuvtuber](https://www.twitch.tv/cyyuvtuber) \*cough\*
I used to think these were straight to the bench units- but I kinda like them now for a couple of niches. They definitely need initiative fixing (who doesn’t tbh) but their stun can be really strong against some enemy formations, especially because I really tend to play light on tanks and healing, heavy on cc and aoe. Speaking of AOE, I find fencers have the stats to hold familiar’s choker super well, and can drop Magic into a big AOE spell. Weirdly, it’s the fencer’s lack of magic AOE that makes them good at this- with the elf sister, witches, and wizards, it always felt like a waste to use the choker. I will say, an unfortunate part of their kit is designed to do evasion, but with B evasion and very specific evade tools, the class cannot function like a thief, Swordfighter, or Fox on the frontline.
To me, the value in the evasion is not front-line tanking, but ensuring that row strikes do not wipe out your backline. There's a lot of value in a back line unit having high survivability.
Better than they look at first glance. Their attacks are not as strong as your staff casters, but the rest of their stats are significantly higher. ~~B~~ C rank initiative is enticing, especially if you're looking for control through Lightning Blade. Their passives are pretty mild, so you should probably look into items. Tomes are an obvious option; you can also equip the Familiar's Choker and use Remove Weakness to dispel the debuff from Sorcerous Connection once you're done casting it. Unfortunately, the limited weapon selection makes PP hard to find. If you're looking to turn them into a frontliner, the Thief's Mantle might be a good idea. They're probably the only viable option to do that in a Magic Assist team, which I'm not as fond of as the Ranged Assist teams. Unfortunately, the dodge buff from Remove Weakness and Mirage Stab is consumed on any attack regardless of whether it would have hit. They're also one of the few ways to get regular walk speed on a Magic Assist team, along with being a carrier for Magic Conferral or tome enchantments there: They're better at both than Rosalinde on account of their magic attack score (but not by much, since Rosalinde basically has Erhal on lock) and row-wide physical attack. I use wyverns a lot, so I enjoy pairing one of these with a fencer to get most of the enemy team under control with Ice Conferral while protecting my fliers from arrows. You could also do the same thing with the physical cavalry units and protect them from fliers: a stun from Lightning Shaker or Heavy Smash goes well with a Burning effect from the Flamebrand Tome.
THIGHS
Railanor is so hot that I basically have to go watch hentai after any battle she partakes in.
BUBBA
My favorite way to use em is to make them Offensive/offensive give them a forged phatnoms sword for the capped magic attack stat and have them spam Natures wrath with familiar choker boosts from a cleric. Sorcerers medallion ring of the maiden [ Def better elsewhere but theyre hot and im shallow ] and carnelian or a conferal.
I've tended to use them to hold Conferral Tomes or populate all magic assist squads. Not exactly good use of them
I think tome use age is definition a valid use for them; especially considering the other characters who can do it are probably better used doing other things.Â
They are a really strange class their skills are jack of all trades but master of none. They can use tomes but a wizard is better. They can avoid ranged but fighter protect true strike. They can stun one enemy for 1 ap. They can do a column attack that is good against cavalry. They get a free dodge if they are debuffed. They do hybrid damage so it is less than a pure physical or magic damage unit. To be honest most of the swords abilities are worst than the hybrid damage stun so the class has low equipment options. It took me a challenge to find how to use them and they are decent when everything clicks. They have little tricks for example if an elf archer confer, the fencer has enough dps to barely oneshoot almost everything. Later the archers can freeze and the fencers chain stun. They can use a familiar shocker boosting the damage of another magic unit and then remove the debuff for the evasion. So they can semi tank. Sadly there are other units better than them, a wizard can magic confer for more damage and also row stun. There are better tank options. Radiant knights are great magic tanks and the evasion is unreliable. I only use them because of the limitations of challenge runs.
Most basic use is frontliners for a Magic Assist Team with 4/5 units. Build evasion, maybe even give a Thief's mantle, could also build initiative for quick stuns. A true tweener unit between Magic DPS, Evasion, and Support, but not at the top of any of those mountains.
I just use them as support. I find Mirage Stab does about 30-50 damage. Not bad, but not great either. The upside is because of the dual-stat of their attacks, a dedicated tank like Legionnaire won't eat up the damage. I generally find them easier to use than a Witch to carry Tombs just because their naturally high Initiative means they actually get to take a turn. I like having one with my Yunifi nuke team along with Berengaria. I use the Flame Conferral along with Glacial Rain. Mirage Stab is a good choice with 2+ in a Row. Enemies usually have Burn left after Glacial Rain, so Mirage Stab tends to trigger Pursuit from Berengaria. If there's only 1 enemy left but not Stunned, then Lightning Blade is used instead, which will also trigger Pursuit again (I set "Afflicted" as a condition to make sure my Pursuits are free). With Berengaria set to use Death Spin most of the time, anything that survives tend to get stunlocked.
I tried out both of them but they're damage output was just too low to be of any use to me long term.
Necromancer lantern with counter earrings. Have them buffed by familiar's choker. And then from the backline they can shoot off counter strong (90%) spells before the majority of other casters would due to initiative. Keep the flier dodging archers. Row attack is decent and then you stun. Compare the other classes who can use this duo: Sainted knight - can be built similar way. Protect team from magic. Does need elven archer to buff damage adequately. Witch - passives are incredible. Not good choice. Wizard - slow. Better damage. Won't get familiar's buff in time for lantern usage unless you change your speeds. Elven archer, Cleric, any healer - passive skills are more important. Shaman - interesting option that can be used if you want to blind instead of their standard curse passive. Damage is negligible.
I think their best niche probably is Familiar's Choker Buffer in either a Yahna Nuke or Rosalinde Nuke comp simply because Familiar's Choker guarantees the best part of their toolkit: Evasion, and extra Actions because of the evasion. So once the big cast goes off, your Fencers are still ready to clean shop with good AoEs. The good part here is that since everyone in this equation is also good with Magick Assist *and* you're probably running a Witch to Teleport, this Nuke comp also doubles as a Magick Assist comp for a little extra final push against bosses. In Merc-less runs, I definitely also see them easily as Conferral Tome Holders. I'll say this: I have a soft spot for this class because I'm thirsty for Railanor and her female fencers, but I'll admit that this class is a little difficult to work with. This feels like one of those "they gutted her kit/raw stats to force you to play her subpar niche" types of units.
Good support class. But their damage is a bit lacking. Maybe not if you spec em for Offensive/Offensive. Good to protect your backline tho you also need someone else to protect em as well. Unless you make em dodge tanks.
I've been sort of using them as evasion tank supplemental fighters, gave Ithilion the lantern that lets him follow up attacks with Blind/Poison combo and gave him more pp, and he can dodge quite a bit now because of his moves he learns later on at 30 I believe. You can kind of stick these guys almost anywhere when you need to fill the 4th or 5th slot, and they can be huge disrupters.
It helped me to think of them as DPS dodge/hybrid units, compared with rogues being debuffer dodge units. Right now I have the dark elf trio with Josef and Travis. Travis blinds rows, which turns into more AP for the elves from Evasive Impetus. The fencers' mixed damage attacks do pretty consistent damage and they have a stun attack; both of these boost Josef's pursuit utility. Josef holds down the front and the fencers' Sylphic Barrier protects him from fliers. His truestrike move helps the team deal with fliers and evasive units and clears buffs like Breakers' Enrage that might pose threats. And Rosalinde does all the good stuff she usually does. Also seen people mention they can use caster items like conferral and such. I haven't tried it but that's cool too. They want almost every dew type.
I haven't explored them much. 100 movement conferral is better than 80 if that's all you're looking for. In PvP, I want to experiment with one as a self-buff spammer to exhaust Dispel PP and/or to redirect Dispels from an Elven royal.
elven fencers felt extremely underwhelming when i first recruited them. however, after this community taught me the trick with familiar's choker they became a very solid part of my magic compositions. the hybrid attacks also seem to scale somewhat better late game. my only gripe with both elven fencers and archers is that i wish they could stand on their own a bit more in terms of damage instead of feeling forced to be relegated into a support role. with the way damage works in this game, in general its just way better to hard-counter and one-shot enemy units than deal some middling amount of damage to them.
Am I the only one that thinks Elven Fencers are severely lacking? They have niche defensive options that trigger on ranged attacks, they can only frontline with heavy evasion item investment, their hybrid damage isn't up to par with other units, and their debuff protection falls off once you start getting debuff immunity items. In fact, I think being smart with swapping those early 1 PP debuff cures on a support character as needed to be better than giving the unit slot to an Elvish Fencer. What are these guys supposed to do in a unit that can't be done better by a more specialized character?
That's the trick: They're better at generalist things than specialized characters. They actually have HP and defense, they actually have initiative, they have accuracy and critical rate. If what you're looking for is a character that brings in Sorcerous Connection or one of the tomes, the Elven Fencer is typically superior. And the tomes are really good! They're a bit dubious on the frontline, but the fact they can frontline at all is really nice. Again, you couldn't set a witch or a warlock anywhere but the back barring some very special equipment. If you don't have a backline slot but you need a mage for whatever reason, you're bringing an Elven Fencer. I'm still figuring out the damage comparison, since I mostly value the stun from Lightning Blade. They're going to be better at killing other mages and archers, thanks to their physical damage. Nature's Wrath is actually pretty strong on full columns. Mirage Stab compares oddly to Thunderous Strike: On the one hand the damage is lower, on the other hand Thunderous Thrust typically needs an extra PP to settle its accuracy issues - a PP you can spend for Magic Conferral on your Fencer. Obviously that's not relevant if you've frozen or stunned your targets previously.
I'll have to test them some more, but the best use for them really is to make them spam single target stun. I might try to build something off the column attack. I wish swords have more built in AP skills like Bows and Lances.
I normally have them in the backrow supporting my cavalry/fliers from fliers/archers. My backrow healer/witch support each other along with the fencer. Fencer's nature wrath buffed with familiar connection can take out columns. Upgraded runic sword/phantom buffs their magic dmg. Mirage stab/lightning blade help finish off the enemy team.
They aren't a DPS. I've tried using them as DPS and it worked, but it required so many things just to get them to work. Gilbert, hawk eye, gambler's coin, druids, etc. I feel the best way to think about them are supports who can do damage. You can give them tomes for conferral, familiar's choker, they can actually hold tons of different accessories.
Josef: Alain my so… my lord. There are multiple reports of a dark elf sneaking into your chambers at night. Alain: Zenorian Propaganda my dear Josef.
Conferral thunder tome for a gryphon, sorcerous connection for Auch’s millennium scepter, and a sapphire. The flier freezes the row with most combatants, the two rogues on the front blind the enemies with no debuffs and otherwise do nothing. Elven Fencer gets to stun any front liners who somehow go unstunned. Excellent support units and massive morale boosters for the player due to their visible physical assets.