The Greatest Mage in Fire Emblem History - Asvel (Thracia 776)

                  And here at last we've come to the # 1 spot. Honestly, I was considering whether or not I should put Levin!Arthur as # 1 and Asvel as # 2. What caused me to change my mind? Well both of these guys are awesome combat units in their own games, but Arthur has to deal with the fact that a Perfect Inheritance Seliph exists, whereas Asvel doesn't. Seliph is all you need to solo the second generation of Holy War. Give Seliph the best swords for him, the Leg and Elite Rings and a ton of stat-booster items and he'll break Holy War with ease. Arthur's contributions are still important, but are aren't as necessary as Asvel's and I'm about to explain why.

                 Asvel is to Thracia 776 what Rutger is to Sword of Seals. What makes this analogy work even better is the fact that both units benefit greatly from their games' crit-friendly mechanics. Rutger gets a 30 % crit bonus once he promotes, Asvel gets Pursuit Critical Coefficient. For those of you who don't know what PCC (Pursuit Critical Coefficient) is, it's basically a mechanic in Thracia 776 where the current critical hit percentage of a unit multiplies by a certain number unique to that particular unit whenever they land the second attack (it only works on the second attack). So for example, if Asvel has a critical hit percentage of 25 % and he has a pursuit critical coefficient of 3, then during the second attack that round he will have a critical hit percentage of 75 %. Yeah, PCC is crazy.

                   Asvel is the best combat unit in his game. He also shares the same title as Rutger as boss killer. The predominant reason for this is that, according to Ronaldo Villanueva, "throne or gate bonuses are even crazier here than in FE6, since they give an absurd +10 Def, +30% Avoid. It is very difficult to kill them with physical weapons, even with critical hits, but thankfully their Mag stat is usually low, which leaves them vulnerable to magic assaults. Thanks to Asvel's personal weapon, not only does he not have issues with enemy avoid, but he also goes through any sort of defenses the enemy might have."

            One of Asvel's many perks is his OP prf rank tome, Graphcalibur. Take a look at  Graphcalibur's stats:

Mt - 13
Hit - 100
Wt - 3
Crt - 40

                     Holy crap is this weapon awesome! 40 % critical hit percentage (the highest critical rate out of any weapon in Thracia 776. Yeah, let that sink in for a moment) in a game where PCC exists, that translates into Asvel getting guaranteed critical hits all the freaking time. Keep in mind too, that Asvel comes with this and he joins you in Chapter 4x of Thracia 776. So yeah Asvel has fantastic availability in his game and he's your best combat unit since the time that he joins you. According to Ronaldo Villanueva in his analysis of Asvel in his "Top 15 Greatest Fire Emblem Units of All Time" list

            "Asvel is capable to reach at base 17 Atk, 4 AS, 43% Critical, which allows him to ORKO enemies with 0 AS and low Mag. Asvel's critical hit rate is multiplied by three, which means that he can get 100% critical hit chance with Graphcalibur. Yes, all of this at BASE level."

                 Asvel also comes with a 75 % speed growth, which is just awesome. In addition to this insanity, he's usually considered to be your best candidate for the Sety Crusader Scroll which gives him a - 10 % HP growth, a + 30 % Speed growth and a + 10 % Magic growth. This means that Asvel will get a 45 % magic growth and a 105 % speed growth. This lightning fast monster will now be getting guaranteed speed level-ups in order to bolster his already insane avoid. Asvel also has Adept which relies on attack speed in order to proc so in addition to consistently double attacking everything in sight and having a ridiculous chance of landing a critical hit on his enemies Asvel will also be having a consistent chance of getting an extra consecutive attack on his enemies. 

                

                      As if that wasn't enough Asvel also benefits from another nifty feature in Thracia 776. You see, in Thracia 776 if a map takes place indoors any mounted or flying unit has to dismount. If they do so, their movement is reduced to 5 and they have to use swords, which most of the time isn't their primary weapon so they're going to be using weaker weapons due to their lower weapon level. Unmounted units don't have their movement affected by indoor maps so Asvel doesn't have to worry about a high movement character stealing his thunder. Asvel is your best indoor combatant which means a lot given the fact that a considerable percentage of the maps in Thracia 776 are indoors. Asvel starts out with 6 movement and after promotion gets 7. 7 movement is tied with swordmasters for the highest indoor movement of a foot unit in the game so Asvel cleverly avoids the issues that Levin and Sety run into in Holy War. Also, it just so happens that Asvel joins you in an indoor map and the next level after that is an indoor map as well so Asvel's going to get a lot of experience super fast.

Speaking of promotion, check out Asvel's promotion boosts:

+ 5 Magic

+ 5 Skill
+ 6 Speed

+ 4 Defense 

+ 1 Con

+ 1 Movement

                       The caps in Thracia 776 are all at 20, so for this game, these promotion bonuses are crazy-awesome high so feel free to promote this guy once he reaches level 10. Another unique aspect of Thracia 776 is that magic and resistance are the same stat so Asvel's high magic stat also serves another purpose:  

                      "An SSS Rank playthrough is usually described as “Staff Emblem”, and it is pretty accurate due to the domination of status staves and Warp. Status staves affect most physical units negatively since they depend on M Up or Holy Water to actually avoid being affected, not to mention that most units can't be trained adequately at the pace a Warpskip strategy expects. However, Asvel remains relevant due to being the main boss killer in Warpskip strategies, as well as having enough Mag to be unaffected to enemy status staves." (Again this quote was brought to you by Ronaldo Villanueva)  

                      Asvel also benefits heavily from the support bonuses given to him in his game. As Ronaldo puts it, " with the boost in hit-rates and critical hit chance, he eventually reaches enough offense so that he doesn't need Graphcalibur anymore and does the job with basic Wind tomes. The aforementioned Asvel Lv10/1 with Wind has 33% Critical with Leif support, which is increased to 99% due to the Pursuit Critical Coefficient." So basically, Asvel's offense doesn't always rely on his uber broken Graphcalibur to get the job done. 

                   Moral of the story: Asvel rocks! He's fast, he's strong and it feels like this game goes way out of its way to help him out in making him the greatest mage in Fire Emblem history.