# 10 - Soren (Path of Radiance)

                So kicking off my "Top 10 Greatest Mages in the Fire Emblem Series" list is Soren from Path of Radiance. Some of you who are reading this may wonder why Soren isn't rated higher up on this list. Some of the really hardcore fans of the series who may be reading this would most likely believe that Soren shouldn't even be on the list to begin with. This is something of a compromise between the two and chances are, neither side will be fully satisfied. So with that in mind, let's begin our analysis of Soren's worth as a unit.

                Soren is hands down the greatest mage in Path of Radiance. This doesn't say a whole lot about him given the fact that he doesn't have the best competition, but it's still something that he has going for him. His availability is fantastic and he gets a sweet support bonus from Ike. Soren also comes with innate Adept, which helps his offense out quite nicely because who wouldn't enjoy getting an extra consecutive hit? Soren usually doesn't have any trouble double attacking enemies either which helps his case out quite a bit. Let us also not forget that Soren has staff utility after promotion which is also very nice as it means that he can eventually use the Rescue staff, provided you manage to somehow get his staff rank up to the point where he can use it.

                Speaking of Soren's offense Chiki-chan gave a wonderful post about Soren's usefulness on the Fire Emblem Reddit that you should check out (which you can find here). According to Chiki, Soren does incredibly well with forged Thunder tomes that have maxed crit so there's that for you. Add the Vantage skill and ballistic siege tomes and Soren can pretty much wreck face. It's wonderful watching Chiki's videos of Soren ballistic blicking enemy scrubs from long distances away.

                 So with all those positives in mind, how does Soren get such a low spot on the list? Well, for starters, his durability is crap. If Ike is considered fragile in comparison to the rest of the Greil Mercenaries how do you think Soren would fare? Soren starts out with a measly 18 HP and 5 defense which means that he's gets killed in 2 hits by just about any enemy that isn't a mage. The rest of the Greil Mercenaries all have vastly superior durability at base and the thing here is that they're not going to remain at base level when Soren joins the group. What further compounds this problem is that Soren joins in a chapter where the map is an open field chock full of non-magic enemies. Basically, Soren starts out as a major liability for your team and has to fight an uphill battle for resources and bonus experience.  

                     Also, Soren has 5 movement. You want to know who else has 5 movement? Freaking Gatrie, the armor knight. There is only one Fire Emblem game where 5 movement isn't considered horrible at first and Path of Radiance isn't it. Sure, you can mitigate this problem with Shove and Rescue but that still doesn't change the fact that Soren's going to lag behind the rest of your team. What also makes this worse is that all of the best units in Path of Radiance happen to have very high movement too. Titania, Marcia, Jill, Oscar and Kieran can all wreck schmucks left and right while also getting to the enemies first. They can also do other things that Soren can't do too which makes his life even more miserable. Yeah, no wonder Soren's so sullen most of the time. He just wants a little extra love and attention.

                    While Soren will eventually get high speed and magic his base stats in both areas start off less than desirable. 99 % of the Tellius cast rejoices at the new attack speed formula which keeps them from getting attack speed losses; guess who's part of the 1 %? Yeah Soren. Being a mage means that his strength stat isn't likely to be very high and it doesn't grow very much on average so getting weighed down by a considerable number of the tomes in his game. Fortunately, this isn't as bad in practice as it looks, but it is a setback for Soren. His low base magic means that he's dealing chip damage too at first. Again, like his speed, this gets remedied over time but it's still a pain in the butt.

                Overall, Soren is a good unit that faces a lot of challenges and setbacks when he joins, but given enough time and experience he will eventually grow into a powerful mage in his own right. Given the fact that Soren doesn't face the same level of competition as the cavaliers did in my cavalier list, he gets to make it to the list, but barely. In spite of all his shortcomings, he is a pretty good unit and character wise he is one of my favorite units in the series and I will probably always use him in Path of Radiance regardless of what anyone else may say.