Awakening to Another Flaw- No Good Prepromotes!

[Interdimensional Observer]

What defines a good prepromote? Well, anything that defines a good unit. Ideally, they have stats that are serviceable, but not as high as that of growth units to give them some use. Good weapon ranks, particularly in weapons that their base class gains on promotion, as opposed to those they start with, are also wonderful.

Now here comes the critique. Awakening gives us the following prepromotes: Frederick, Libra, Anna, Say'ri, Tiki, FlaBas, and the Spotpass 6. 

Frederick is our Jagen, and does that role quite well. Anna is a fine prepromote with a rather early joining time- staff, lockpick, and +1 movement pairup utility, Speed aplenty for durability, and packs a safe and decent hit for a utility unit if you need it with a Levin Sword. Libra, who also joins nice and early, is largely inferior to Anna, lacking the move, the offense, or the Speed to avoid being doubled, but has a C staff rank to start, better than Anna's D.

Then we get Say'ri. Or should I say Say'no? Say'ri does make raising Lon'qu a bit meaningless, but she isn't that much better. Swordlock can be hell in Awakening, for you need 1-2 range for the enormous enemy phases. Tiki technically isn't a prepromote, but as your second Manakete who joins much later, I'd count her. She is solid enough, if lacking for friends (like all prepromotes but Libra and Freddy).

FlaBas, as I call the duo, joins very late. They have nice stats outside of Lunatic, but hardly get any time to shine. They have to play it safe in their joining chapter due to starting away from the rest of your pack, and the next two chapters are their only good chances to fight (the final is too short to matter).

...Unless you count the Spotpass paralogues. Which gives you six lovely, unnecessary and useless Gotohs, with Priam being more of trophy than anything without buying DLC.

Instead of prepromotes in the mid- and late-games, Awakening prefers to give us 13 Ests with really-nothing-special growths. None of which start with good bases without heavily used parents, and all of whom start with single weapon ranks no higher than a C (for Brady it's a mere D staffs).

Fates fortunately fixed this dearth of nice prepromotes by letting you decide whether the kids are early growers or latter game prepromotes depending on when you recruit them.

[BANRYU]

I seem to recall Anna being pretty good in my harder-difficulty runs, her utility of Staff (even if it is quite low-rank) and lockpicking is pretty good. It's unfortunate that she basically NEEDS Levin Swords to kill things and those are sort of hard to come by, but I always thought she was decent.

Tiki is pretty good too, she's easier to use from the get-go than Nowi and doesn't grow like a prepromote at all relative to how strong she is. Those two are solidly usable IMO even if Anna starts to fall off a bit lategame. 

I am sad that Libra wasn't a bit better considering how interesting his unit type is (to me at least lol). 

[SoulWeaver]

For the SpotPass folks, I've actually found myself often appreciating the characters once they've been given time to grow, particularly Priam, actually, who starts with triple Breakers, which is a good thing, especially if your definition of "Game Finished" is beating Apotheosis like I'm(still) working on right now. Walhart's Conquest Skill is also excellent, and both Conquest and ShadowGift are good Skills to pass to Morgan, though it's a shame that nobody else can get the opportunity. As for trophies, I'd say the biggest "Useless Trophy" is actually Aversa given that you're pretty much guaranteed to lose somebody in her retarded map just trying to keep her alive through the whole thing so you even can recruit her, so assuming you're playing Classic chances are she won't be worth even trying her level for. Priam comes in a close second, though. Really, the problem with the "SpotPass 6" as you've dubbed them is that they're all only available at the last second when you aren't bothering with training anything anymore unless you're after Apotheosis - all of them would have seemed much nicer if you could have accessed them at a reasonable point in the story(except Aversa because her level is still not worth it). For one, give us Emmeryn anytime after Gangrel dies and Chrom gets some from(insert pairing other half here), probably right after Lucina recruits.

[Thor Odinson]

Tiki is actually pretty great on Lunatic given her levelling speed due to being considered perpetually an unpromoted unit fighting promoted enemies, when her bases + Dragonstone+ is already really solid. She basically gets a level per kill and a half.

At least, I like to use her. 

I do agree that most other prepromos, bar Fred (I can't imagine doing L+ without him, for one) and Anna are kinda lackluster in Awakening. It does help that Tiki supports Anna, though, so that works well since I use them both.

Edited March 16, 2017 by Thor Odinson

[Interdimensional Observer]

I have used Tiki before, and she is good, though her recruitment chapter can be a challenge on Lunatic. And again Anna is incredible utility, perhaps I didn't stress that enough or it got lost in the polemic. 

You can always cheese Aversa's paralogue. Either: field nobody but Chrom, make Chrom the only strong character fielded and make the rest the characters you never bothered to level (if everyone's trained, buy some weak Einherjar), or (I haven't tried this to see if it works) make everyone 1st tier units via Second Seals before the fight, and then promote them on turn 1 for a massive advantage.

[Barrel]

9 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Libra, who also joins nice and early, is largely inferior to Anna, lacking the move, the offense, or the Speed to avoid being doubled

This is just plain wrong. Nothing of what you mentioned are relevant for rescue (and occasional healing) staffbots (which is what both of them should be doing in the long term) and Libra has very strong bases for his join time.

I would probably give a slight edge to Libra given that you can marry him off to somebody in a pinch if you really wanted, but they're around equivalent anyway.

Edited March 16, 2017 by disjunct.ion

[Shadow Mir]

I disagree, not just on the no good prepromos part, but more so on labeling the kids Ests, because it feels much more like some buzzword used to refer to underleveled characters these days (ya ask me, the archetype pretty much vanished into the ether ages ago).

Edited March 16, 2017 by Levant Mir Celestia

[MeddlingMage]

Anna is pretty good as a prepromote.  Once Chrom talks to her in paralogue 4 just exchange that Steel Sword for the Levin Sword in your convoy (either from the Renown Awards or wait until you beat Gangrel) and Anna becomes amazing.