Best Wyvern Riders List # 2 - Camilla (Fates: Conquest)

                                   

                                        Hey guys I figured out why Camilla has such ridiculous over-sized breasts. No, it’s not for the fan-service, that’s just silly. Intelligent Systems would NEVER create fan-servicey characters. They’re much too noble for that. Camilla’s boobs store her strength. That’s why she’s so powerful, her boobs store her strength. That, and she can use them to distract male enemies so that while they’re fixated on her rack she can hack their heads off with her axe. I can imagine Camilla in some Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest Abridged version saying “My boobs give me super strength”.

                                         Okay, all jokes aside Camilla is a really good Wyvern Knight / Malig Knight / Unit that rides on a Wyvern and kills things. Camilla is one of the few Wyvern Riders on this list to have amazing availability, which is arguably her biggest advantage over Miledy. Not only that, but Camilla starts, continues and ends on an amazing note. When she first joins you in Chapter 10 enemies deal either 0 damage or single digit damage and that’s including combined damage from dual strikes. Meanwhile, she’s usually 1 Round KO’ing these schmucks with her Steel Axe. Generally speaking you could have Camilla defend one side of Chapter 10 on her own and she’ll do just fine. Her flying utility also means that she can be wherever you want her to be, which comes in handy.

                                        There are other levels of Conquest that she can cheese too. Chapter 19 (a.k.a the stupid furry chapter where you fight nothing but foxes) can be easily cheesed by her if you reclass her into a Wyvern Rider and get her up to D rank lances where she can use the Beast Killer on the entire map. It’s also possible to beat Chapter 21 in 4 turns with just Camilla and Corrin. I know, because I’ve done it. Her flying utility is also greatly appreciated in the last two Endgame chapters of Conquest where the main strategy of those levels is to bum-rush enemy units and blitz toward the boss. I’m sure I may be forgetting other levels that she can turn into a joke but pointing out further examples only reinforces my point.

                                        Camilla also has a pretty great skill pool. Her personal skill, Rose’s Thorns, gives her allies + 3 damage to their attacks and in turn they receive 1 less damage. This is a pretty great skill overall. She also joins with Strength + 2 and Lunge. At level 5 of Malig Knight she will get Savage Blow which deals some nice area-of-effect damage to nearby enemy units, At Level 15 she’ll have access to Trample, which means that she’ll deal 5 extra damage to non-mounted enemies (which constitute the vast majority of them). As a Wyvern Lord she’ll have access to Rally Defense and Swordbreaker which are both great skills to have. Camilla also has access to the Dark Mage class which means that she also has access to the Vengeance and Bowbreaker skills which again are very good skills to have. So as you can see, Camilla’s got a great skill pool going for her.

                                      Camilla’s growths are also pretty darn good for a Fates character:

HP - 40 % (50 % as a Wyvern Lord)

Strength - 50 % (65 % as either a Wyvern Lord or a Malig Knight)

Magic - 25 % (40 % as a Malig Knight)

Skill - 50 % (60 - 65 % as a Wyvern Lord or a Malig Knight)

Speed - 55 % (65 % as a Wyvern Lord or a Malig Knight)

Luck - 25 % (30 % as either class)

Defense - 35 % (55 % as a Wyvern Lord, 45 % as a Malig Knight)

Resistance - 45 % (60 % as a Malig Knight)

                             A 40 % HP growth is around average for Fates HP growths, 50 % strength is much higher than the strength growths of the cast, she has the second highest speed growth of the Conquest characters and she has a better resistance growth than Nyx. Combine great growths with great base stats and you’ve got a powerful unit. 

                           Now you may be asking what Camilla’s flaws are. They are:

1. Bow weakness: Despite mentioning earlier that she has access to Bowbreaker this is still an issue for her. For starters, Bowbreaker doesn’t get rid of her weakness to bows, it just makes them less accurate, which is mitigated by the fact that Fates has a notorious RNG so even if bows have a 40 % accuracy on Camilla she could feasibly get hit. Also, this strategy requires us to reclass Camilla to a Dark Mage, where she loses out on what makes her special. We would also have to reclass Camilla back into being a Wyvern Lord so we’re spending 4k on getting Camilla a skill that might solve her issues, even though it doesn’t solve them completely.

2. Her durability has it’s limits: Camilla exists in a game where many of the enemies have stat debuffs of some kind. Whether it’s the Enfeeble staff, Hidden Weapons or the Seal skills, durability only goes so far in this game. In addition to that the AI makes it so that enemies won’t attack you if they can’t damage you (the exception here are the ninjas who have ridiculous skills like Poison Fang or Grisly Wound in addition to stat debuff weapons). This means that it is possible to say that there is such a thing as too much defense.
   
   

                          Outside of that there aren’t a whole lot of flaws with Camilla’s performance. It’s all fun and games to laugh at her ridiculous, fan-servicey design but even I have to give props to her amazing combat-performance. She’s a fantastic unit, which is why she is # 2.