# 2 - Catria (Gaiden)

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                   So Catria in many ways is just like her sister Palla. Catria exists in just as many games and usually serves the same, exact role as Palla. Depending on which game you're playing Catria might be better than Palla too. In Fire Emblems 3 & 12 Palla is the superior Pegasus Knight. In Fire Emblem 1, and in Shadow Dragon, Catria is the superior unit. I could be wrong since I'm not as knowledgeable about the Archanea games in comparison to the other games in the series. That being said, Catria is almost always awesome in each and every Fire Emblem game that she's in. If I had to rank the different Catria's together the order would look like this:

Gaiden Catria > FE 12 Catria > FE 3 Catria > FE 1 Catria > Shadow Dragon Catria

                  Shadow Dragon Catria joins late for her game and her base stats aren't that good either for her game. In Fire Emblem 1 the enemies are significantly weaker, her growths are better and her base stats are better here than in Shadow Dragon which is why FE 1 Catria beats Shadow Dragon Catria. In Fire Emblem 3 she's significantly better, in fact I would put Catria in the Top 5 Best Fire Emblem 3 characters. Her availability is fantastic, her combat is amazing from the word "go" (she can use silver weapons at base level) and her growths are still amazing. However, Fire Emblem 3 has the dismounting feature which nerfs her whenever you're in an indoor map. Catria is one of the few characters in the Archanea saga that didn't get nerfed between Fire Emblem 3 and Fire Emblem 12. She joins at the same time in FE 12 as she does in Fire Emblem 3 but she no longer has dismount issues and a couple of the units that used to be her competition in FE 3 are no longer her competition in 12 (Sirius and Linde). Also, Catria can reclass to a cavalier in 12 and gain some extra durability (not that she has bad durability as a Pegasus Knight). That being said, FE 12 Catria still has to deal with the existence of My Unit, Palla and Mallesia (to a lesser extent) so while she's great her contributions aren't as great as they are in Gaiden for reasons that I'll get into.

 

                    Catria is the best unit in Celica's army. For those of you who don't know, Gaiden tier lists always rank Alm and Celica's army separately. The reason for this is because Alm and Celica's group are separate from each other for 99.9 % of their game. The only time Alm and Celica's armies fight together is literally at the end of the game when you're fighting against Doma, the final boss. It's a similar reason to why the first and second generations of Holy War have their own separate tier lists. 

 

                  To repeat myself from before Catria IS the best unit in Celica's army. For starters, she doesn't have anywhere near as much competition here than in her other games. Caeda, My Unit and Mallesia don't exist in Gaiden and all of your warp bots are in Alm's army so the only competition that Catria has is from Palla. Palla and Catria both join at the exact same time and they both can fly which is a huge deal in Celica's route. Palla has a slight lead over Catria in HP, strength and defense while Catria's leads in speed, skill, luck and resistance are significantly higher. What gives Catria the edge are her growths. Palla has a 10 % speed growth in Gaiden so eventually she will run into enemies that she can't double. Catria never has this problem. Catria's strength and defense will eventually be greater than or equal to Palla's while she continues to maintain her significant leads in speed, skill, luck and resistance. Many of Catria's growths are considered excellent for her game except for HP, luck, defense and resistance which are considered average.

 

Character Growth Stat
HP		Str		Skl		Spd		Lck		Def		Res
30%		30%		30%		40%		20%		20%		0%

 

 ^ No I am not joking nor being sarcastic. Those are considered some of the better growths in this game. Catria also joins your army with the awesomeness that is the Angel Ring, an item that doubles stat gains during each and every level-up in addition to boosting luck automatically to 40, the maximum luck cap in the game. 

 

                    So after I decided to bump Marcia up to # 3 on the list I began to ask myself whether Marcia in Path of Radiance was better than Catria in Gaiden. In the end, I came to the conclusion that Gaiden!Catria was better for reasons that I'm about to get into. 

 

 

             The way I see it Marcia has two major advantages over Catria:

• Marcia joins earlier in her game: Marcia joins in Chapter 9 of Path of Radiance, whereas Catria doesn't join your army until half-way through the game. That's a pretty big advantage.

•  Marcia promotes earlier than Catria: Marcia benefits greatly from bonus experience which she is going to get a lot of, Catria doesn't have this advantage in any of her games, much less in Gaiden. Not only does Gaiden have the worst experience gain formula in the entire series but also Pegasus Knights promote way later than the vast majority of the other classes. Pegasus Knights don't promote until Level 12 in Gaiden, whereas the majority of second tier classes are promoting to third tier by Level 10. When you combine that with the horrific experience gains that this game gives you it will feel like 129837129035109235618536745823 years have transpired before these ladies get to promote. 

         Well those are some pretty big advantages right? So why is Gaiden!Catria ranked higher? Well...

• Catria has a better start than Marcia: Even though it doesn't take very long before Marcia turns into a powerhouse unit, she still doesn't join your army as that great a unit. To quote Ronaldo Villanueva's Marcia analysis, At first sight, Marcia's base parameters are mediocre, with 20 HP, 8 Str, 8 Def, which is not capable of enduring a considerable amount of hits, while it lacks capability of doing good damage on a consistent manner.(https://www.facebook.com/notes/851371554904958/)   Catria, by contrast, doesn't have this problem. Catria is awesome from the moment you get her to the moment where the game ends. This feels like more of a nitpick considering how quickly Marcia becomes powerful, but when you're comparing two amazing units even the smallest pros and cons can make the difference between placement on a list like this. 

• Catria outclasses her competition more than Marcia does: This, for me, is the biggest reason why I consider Gaiden!Catria to be better than Marcia. Marcia is a great unit, but she's a great unit in a game full of great units. Catria by contrast is part of an army of mostly mediocre units. Every unit in Celica's army, prior to the arrival of Palla and Catria, starts out with 4 movement. Even if you manage to promote them (which is being very generous when you take Gaiden's experience gains into consideration) your characters still aren't likely to have more than 5 movement, so they're at a huge disadvantage when they're up against a unit that will most likely have 3 extra movement and can fly (which means that she can ignore terrain that they can't). Catria's strength, and durability (which includes her resistance) also manages to be above average in comparison to the rest of her army while she outclasses everyone in terms of speed, luck and skill.

                       Marcia, by contrast is in the same game as Titania, Oscar, Jill, Kieran and Tanith. All of them have high movement, awesome combat ability, rescue utility, and most of them have decent join times. I'm not saying that Marcia is bad, but if her contributions stand out as much as they do in her game when you have a bunch of powerful units to pick and choose from then think about how much Catria's contributions would stand out when she's in an army mostly full of mediocre units.

•      Catria has better in-game perks than Marcia: This is the final point I'd like to make before ending this really long post. Marcia and Catria come from different games and can therefore take advantage of different perks that their games give them in order to succeed and dominate. I personally believe that Catria has superior perks to Marcia in this regard.

                         For example, every level in Gaiden has a rout objective which means that all Catria has to do is charge ahead and kill everything while Marcia's maps have more variety in terms of objectives, which means that it's harder for her to do everything at once while Catria only needs to get better stats and she can murder everything in sight. It's true that Marcia gets support bonuses from some of the best units in her game, but Catria doesn't have to worry about bows. In fact, there isn't a single weapon in Gaiden that deals effective damage against fliers so Catria can charge ahead without having to worry about what weapons the enemy has. 

 

                  Also, after Catria promotes she can land an automatic critical hit against monsters. Remember all the monsters from Sacred Stones? Well 99 % of them originated in Gaiden. Instead of having a bishop with Slayer, it's the Falcon Knights who are the monster killers and considering the fact that the majority of enemies in Celica's route are monsters this is a HUGE advantage that Catria has since she can easily crush them all.

                    So to sum it up: Gaiden!Catria is the best of the 5 Catrias, Catria is a juggernaut in an army of mooks so her contributions tend to stand out more and her ability to crush things without fear of the consequences is a huge advantage that she has going for her. All-in-all Gaiden!Catria is a freaking goddess on wings.