Xander: Dancing Knight

[Emerson]

Xander: Dancing Knight
    “Crown Prince of Nohr. Seeks to better himself. Invited to a Hoshidan festival, he opted to don the traditional garb and participate.”
HP: 34/38/41
ATK: 32/35/38
SPD: 13/17/20
DEF: 31/34/37
RES: 12/16/19
Weapon: Dusk Uchiwa+ 
    Effective against cavalry foes. Disables unit's and foe's skills that change attack priority. After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts Def/Res-7 on target and foes within 2 spaces of target through their next actions.
Assist: Dance
A Skill: Close Counter
B Skill: Quick Riposte
C Skill: Odd Def Wave

Xander’s newest version, coming in the Festival in Hoshido banner, retains almost the same type of stats his main version had. High Atk and Def, solid HP, low Spd and Res. His heavy focus in being able to take physical hits and deal them back is reflected right back in his base kit, with Close Counter allowing him to fight 1 range units head on, Quick Riposte meaning his poor speed barely matters, and Odd Def Wave allowing him to self-buff easily.
His weapon compliments this as well. Dusk Uchiwa+’s passive effect is the same as Hardy Bearing, an uncommon sacred seal, but one that works very well here, allowing Xander to negate Desperation, meaning his EP encounters with damaged Mages and Archers can go smoothly for him, as well as Vantage, which can help him chip at damaged DC Armors, bulky off-meta infantry Mages and Dragons, and run through Cavalry enemies.
However, this is simply a secondary purpose. As a dancer, Xander is an amazing team support, allowing for more fluid team movement and second attacks. Odd Def Wave is a fair compliment to this, making him a solid support unit every other turn, although can often benefit himself more than his allies. Being a dagger unit also supports this, as his weapon will naturally debuff enemies after combat.
 

Teammates:
Mage Counters:
As typical for these high def, low res type units, a mage counter is appreciated heavily, because while Xander can actually oneshot lower Def mages, most with below average to middling defense can live and easily destroy him, while high def mages will easily take his hits and destroy him.
Buffing allies:
Due to Xander’s high atk, with a respective effective weapon he will likely take most of the health out of enemies weak to it. But in most cases, he will fail to take them out, and likely fall to their counter attacks, particularly some bulkier mages and dragons, and well built, high defense, Distant Counter armors. Because of this, an Atk boosting ally can help him overcome the threshold and take them out. While you can simply take most out on Enemy Phase, there are times where you may prefer to attack on your turn and having that flexibility available can be great. Any unit with Attack Tactic can work very well as long as you don't run 3 infantry units together, but a special mention goes to Odd Atk Wave, and by extension, Ishtar, which buffs on the same turn as Odd Def Wave.
Def boosting allies can help as well should you choose to change his C skill to something else, such as Savage Blow or a Smoke skill. Res boosting allies can help him survive higher Atk variants of Dragons should Xander be running a Dragon-killing set.
Really, anyone:
Every unit in the game appreciates dancers, whether it be for mobility, more chances to attack, or the other benefits they may bring through their individual quirks. Xander in particular can help with teams with lower defense in dealing with physical units, particularly Distant Counter ones.
 

Builds:

Spoiler

(IVs shown: neutral)

This budget build doesn't even look like one at first. Close Counter, Quick Riposte 3? Not something you can usually mean when you say budget. But Xander's incredible base kit can let him function extremely well with the only resources put in to him being a Male Robin and a refine. For those in the lower or mid levels of arena, struggling against the onslaught of horses, look no further than here for your Brave Lyn slayer. On Odd turns his defenses turn him practically invulnerable to all physical attack but those from units who easily abuse specials like Luna and Moonbow, and even then they'll struggle to take more than a small chunk of his health. In return, he can easily dish out enough damage in the first hit, but the second will be a fully charged  Bonfire for an extra 24 damage atop his already great attack stat.
His A and B skills really have no reason to be changed, although depending on your team setup, you may want a different Sacred Seal like Distant Defense instead, or Atk Smoke, which can help his durability against groups of enemies.
IVs wise, anything really works, although -Atk, -Def, and -HP will make for varying results.

(IVs shown: +Atk -Spd)

Firstly, I'd like to say that Close Counter and QR is still extremely viable and useful on both of these set. However, the above set can work extremely well, as the ability to no longer rely on Enemy Phase for the best damage output means Xander can safely attack DC, Tome and Dragon armors without the worry of taking a hit in retaliation.
With everything in place (Chill Def, Odd Atk Wave), Xander can very easily one shot almost every single armor or dragon respectively in the game of equal merge level and without extremely heavy buffs. Even without those, he will likely take every armor down from ~90% health, with the exception of two. Both Arden and Zephiel's crazy high HP stats allow them to survive Xander's hits at full blast, and while Zephiel lacks the power to kill in return, Arden most certainly will. Dragons on the other hand, will indeed fall, as despite how good they are, not much will save them from an attack. On Defensive tiles, Armors will still fall to the fully active Xander, as will Dragons, but without it Xander will struggle to kill. On regular terrain, without any buffs on Xander or debuffs on the enemy, equal level merge Dragons will still fall to him, with the exception of defensive Nowis thanks to her high HP stat.
The C and Seal alternate options carry themselves over from the above build, although they're a lot harder to justify unless returning to CC/QR instead of the Death Blow set.
Another alternative if you don't have the ability for Xander to self-buff with Odd Atk Wave is running Attack Tactic on your team. While this can change how your team comp is a small bit, it's extremely useful in allowing Xander to attack with his full force every turn, and not simply every other.

(IVs shown: +Def - Spd)

The final build I'll be putting here is a good PvE set for abusing Ignis. Barb Shuriken + Ignis means that when attacked by an enemy with higher speed, which is extremely likely, Xander's second attack with always be a devastating nuke, either an extra 36 damage without Odd Def Wave, or 41 with. Xander also has an effective 46 (No Odd Def) or 52 (Yes Odd Def) defense when attacked, which will likely stop any physical threat in it's track. The only thing he'll have to worry about is specials, specifically Luna.

A notable combination of C and Seal would be Atk and Spd Smokes. They allow him to debuff enemies in every stat without losing the strengths of whatever weapon he has for Smoke Dagger. While he won't have the self buff or Close Def in that case, team support can easily fix that, or even give him more than before.

One final thing I'd like to mention is that none of these builds inhibit his ability to be a dancer and support his allies. They just give him options for attacking that wouldn't otherwise be there, aside from his base kit.

What's the most "optimal" build?:
Personally, I'd say Xander's most optimal build would be an Armorslaying or Dragonslaying set. Either one gives Xander a solid target in high ranking arena. Although, to get there with him on your team, it will require some merges, something Seasonal units typically struggle to get under anything lower than a minor whale situation. For those who don't find themselves in the upper levels of Arena, the base kit can be extremely useful to take down horses that appear frequently there.
For PvE content, I'd say Barb Shuriken/Kagami Mochi Ignis abuse is the way to go. It can easily let him take down melee threats whenever needed while also being able to be valuable Dance support that GHBs, LHBs, and BHBs will often find extremely valuable.

Conclusion (A TL;DR for people):
Xander is a unique defensive dancer and dagger unit, with an extremely solid base kit that makes use of his strengths, so much so that he can easily be deployed without changing a single thing and still performing great, but can be outfitted to be not only an amazing support as a dancer, but also to take out dangerous armored and dragon units. Even without that, he's still a dancer, and very valuable as a support for many teams.

Edited August 12, 2018 by Emerson

[bottlegnomes]

Tiny nitpick. You forgot to highlight the HP super bane.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, ranged units can't use deflect melee.

Edited August 10, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[Ice Dragon]

Ranged units are unable to use Deflect Melee and Dull Close.

The build description is incredibly difficult to read. Even if there is a lot of overlap, you should make an effort to split it into discrete builds by their intended purposes. For example, you can start by splitting it into three builds, one for each passive A skill choice, and then see if it makes sense to continue splitting until each build is at an easily digestible size.

 

On 8/9/2018 at 9:52 PM, Emerson said:

The Cleaner+: Can be used to combat enemies with good initial positioning for Tactics/standard buffs. Can be combined with Dull Ranged or Dull Melee for maximum damage output in those situations. Situational, and probably best for specific GHB scenarios.

Dull Ranged negates Windex+'s effect against ranged opponents.

[Emerson]

On 8/10/2018 at 5:36 AM, bottlegnomes said:

Also, if I'm not mistaken, ranged units can't use deflect melee.

13 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Ranged units are unable to use Deflect Melee and Dull Close.

Dull Ranged negates Windex+'s effect against ranged opponents.

Ack! The former I totally forgot about, it just blanked on me, but the latter I actually asked around about and wasn't given much of a solid answer. Thank you for telling me how they function alongside each other.

13 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

The build description is incredibly difficult to read. Even if there is a lot of overlap, you should make an effort to split it into discrete builds by their intended purposes. For example, you can start by splitting it into three builds, one for each passive A skill choice, and then see if it makes sense to continue splitting until each build is at an easily digestible size.

Yeah, I'm not sure what I was thinking to be honest. I'll work on that today.

 

EDIT: Should be better now, please give me feedback on this.

Edited August 12, 2018 by Emerson