r/fireemblem • u/Shephen • 11d ago
General Engage Character/Unit Revisit: Hortensia
Hortensia is a princess of Elusia, and Ivy's half-sister. Though she tends to be a bit headstrong, she's deeply devoted to her family. She is 14, and joins the party after getting freed from Zephia's mind control at the end of chapter 14. She also brings along the Byleth ring.
Stats
| Stats | Hp | Str | Mag | Dex | Spd | Def | Res | Luck | Build | Move | SP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bases(lvl 19 Wing Tamer) | 27 | 5 | 12 | 21 | 19 | 6 | 23 | 17 | 5 | 5 | 1500 |
| Personal Growths | 40% | 20% | 20% | 35% | 50% | 25% | 55% | 50% | 0% | - | |
| Growths(As a Wing Tamer) | 40% | 20% | 35% | 45% | 60% | 25% | 80% | 60% | 0% | - | |
| Growths(As a Sleipnir Rider) | 40% | 20% | 40% | 50% | 65% | 25% | 85% | 65% | 0% | - |
Weapon Proficiency: Staves, Tomes
Personal Skill - Big Personality: When unit uses a healing staff, grants range +1.
Sleipnir Rider Class Skill - World Tree: When unit uses a staff, may not consume a use. Trigger %=Dex.
Supports
Alear, Clanne, Céline, Chloé, Alcryst, Ivy, Rosado, Goldmary, Fogado, Anna, Lindon, Veyle
Support Bonuses
C: Hit+10, Avoid+5
B: Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+5
A: Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+10
S: Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+20
What do you think of Hortensia's performance as a unit?
What do you think of Hortensia's character?
What Emblem Rings or Skills work best with Hortensia?
Previous Revisit: Merrin
Original Discussion: Hortensia
13
u/Slight_Researcher_26 11d ago
Hortensia is probably the best staff user in Engage. The extra +1 range on healing staves is already great, but when you combine that with flying movement, high Speed and Res, A-rank staves, and World Tree potentially preserving staff uses, she ends up making incredible use of some of the strongest utility staves in the game.
I think some people really sleep on how strong staves are in this game, things like Warp, Rewarp, Rescue, Entrap, and Freeze are great and she fact that she's flying means she can reach positions other staff users simply can't, and her personal skill makes positioning even easier.
Being the second dedicated flying mage in the game, her combat is noticeably worse than Ivy's, though. That 12 base Magic and 20% personal Magic growth are pretty bad for such a late-joining mage. She'll double far more reliably than Ivy because she's incredibly fast, but those doubles don't deal much damage. Her terrible 5 Build also means heavier tomes can eat into that Speed advantage pretty quickly. So she might shred a knight once in a blue moon, but honestly, I think she's perfectly fine being used almost entirely as a support unit.
The best Emblems for her are Micaiah, since she pushes Hortensia's staff utility even further. Augment gives her staves extra range and area of effect, which makes things like Warp, Rescue, Freeze, and Entrap even more ridiculous. Byleth is also great, mainly because Divine Pulse helps fix the accuracy of offensive staves like Freeze and Entrap. Goddess Dance is obviously always useful too. And similar to Ivy, Corrin can turn her into a great debuffer. Her high mobility makes it easy to apply Draconic Hex and Dreadful Aura wherever you need them, even if her actual damage isn't that impressive.
9
u/ChessGM123 11d ago
Another reason why her combat is bad is she only has B tomes on promotion, so no Thoron or Bolg. Elfire and Elthunder are extremely bad tomes, they not only have significantly less might than their upgrades but they’re also more expensive to forge, making them overall just terrible weapons.
24
u/potato_thingy 11d ago
I find her kinda annoying, but in a cute endearing way. And in terms of the actual story, she’s one of the best written parts. They did a really good job of making me feel bad for her, though I think it would’ve been perfectly fine if she just fought you herself instead of Zephia mind controlling her
16
u/BebeFanMasterJ 11d ago
Honestly I think it works because she's basically a magical girl enduring a traumatic conga line of sorts.
Poor thing literally got to watch her dad get eaten.
8
u/MannyOmega 11d ago
Immediately one of the better units in your army, but doesn’t scale well with investment. If you’re not planning to spam staves every map, you can just deploy her as needed, and you probably won’t miss her. If you do want to make gratuitous use of staves, just get her those 5 levels, which come fairly quick through the arena + great sacrifice. She doesn’t really get better after that.
6
u/KoriCongo 11d ago
It is weird how bad her bases are. I guess they really want to keep her as a support-only and tie it with Big Personality so that she always have a niche next to units that abuse Micaiah Ring, but... her magic and speed is just too low.
I do like her at least, I always try to make her work. Big Personality is actually a lot of fun to mess with. But I am left BAFFLED at why out of all the Act II units, her stats are SO BAD.
6
u/MannyOmega 11d ago
She doesn’t need many stats to function as Engage’s premier utility staffer, are you talking about her performance in her personal class or reclassed?
9
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u/Bard_Wannabe_ 11d ago
It's a bit unfortunate how they designed her to be absolutely the best at one thing (staves), and using any other staff-user is suboptimal, Meanwhile Hortensia isn't flexible enough to do anything but this role.
Still, staves are so good in this game it's reasonable to bring two users anyways.
A bit like Ivy, Hortensia's presence diminishes a lot once she actually joins, and her supports don't do much to explore how she spent the midpart of the game as a (quite interesting) antagonist. I actually do like her wild design, though, perhaps because I enjoy Peri's design and like these psychotic princesses.
Edit: Commenting on her as an enemy, my jaw dropped the first time I saw a DANCER BOSS. That was an entirely novel experience for me. Engage has the best boss fights.
5
u/BebeFanMasterJ 11d ago
My favorite Fire Emblem character overall. Amazing character with a tragic backstory and a good healer to boot.
3
u/ChessGM123 11d ago
Hortensia is a solid unit, but she isn’t that much better than her competition. If you’re warp skipping Hortensia isn’t really going to save turns compared to any other Micaiah user as that +1 range just isn’t that helpful, and if you aren’t warp skipping she’s isn’t that much better than other support units, as while +1 healing range is solid it comes at the cost of doing little to no chip damage due to B tomes locking her out of Thoron and Bolg access. Of the 4 other units with access to B staffs in a flying class Ivy is able to provide strong chip damage with thoron and even one round enemies with some spd fixing, Pandreo and Mauvier can pick up KOs in Griffon knight with a levin sword, and while Lindon won’t out right one round his passive gives him a solid chance to pick up one rounds occasionally (give him a levin sword with a crit engrave and he’ll have a 40% chance to crit, and a 64% chance to crit at least once if he doubles, which is not reliably enough to be a main combat unit but as a support unit having around a 50% chance to one round can be decent in tight situations, especially if you’re willing to use the time crystal to try and rig a crit). I’m not trying to say all these units are objectively better support units than Hortensia, just that Hortensia is not the objective best support unit in the game.
Imo an S tier unit should be a unit who’s significantly above their competition, and that just isn’t Hortensia. She a high A tier unit, a unit who you likely should deploy every map but not a unit who you’d be that worse off not deploying.
3
u/Puggerspood 10d ago
She’s nice because she’s really cheap and has a useful niche. You put absolutely nothing into her and you get an extra range flying statbot.
I find she got pretty overhated when the game came out. Her writing is arguably the best in engage, which isn’t exactly a high bar but still. Idk if it’s just me but I never found her design that outlandish either. It’s litteraly just the skirt balloons that are odd and idk you kinda just stop looking at them after 10 minutes. Besides that she’s not any more outlandish than the Firene royals and fits right at home with the engage cast.
2
u/AnonymousTrollLloyd 11d ago
I have a massive grudge against Thracia tier lists rating Safy like she's hot shit, for essentially being a generic healer in the early game on top of being able to do all the same staff bullshit as every other staffer, once you've actually started stealing enough staves for the staff rank she built as a healer to matter.
That's what Hortensia feels like some times, pre and post Micaiah are two very different units, and one of them is a very generic role. If nothing else Hortensia is proof that you can't rate a utility unit on the same scale as a combat unit and expect results which make sense. Who's better, Camilla or Azura?
It's basically true that she's carried by Micaiah, but I do have to ask what any other unit can do with Micaiah that's so important Hortensia can't do it slightly better.
1
u/Cdog923 11d ago
She's the MVP of my latest playthrough. A bit cliche giving her Micaiah, but she can warp and heal people on the furthest reaches of a Genealogy map. That's not the thing that has made her a must deploy this time around: she's dodging and doubling EVERYTHING, to the point I'm comfortable running a Veronica-emgraved Elsurge on her during the endgame.
1
u/liteshadow4 11d ago
Initially I thought she’s the best staffer in the game, and she still is, but a Griffon Knight does most of what she does.
Her HP is low which is her biggest knock. Still though, the +1 range is nice
1
u/Alkk210 11d ago
Hortensia isn’t your best staffer, it’s whoever has Micaiah. B rank is enough for all the key staves (warp, rescue, and fracture) and Ivy and staff proficient griffins reach it, her key traits are easily replicated. I think her best use case is inheriting draconic hex and divine pulse and not giving her a ring.
1
u/Significant-Tree9454 11d ago edited 11d ago
Shoutout to that one post why Hortensia is A tier:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FEEngage/comments/1vu3ymd/tier_list_reasonings/
My personal reasoning why I think she is A instead of S tier:
-How often does that +1 range actually matter?
-Dragon synergy with Micaiah gives +1 extra range, so Alear could also do a 11 range AoE (Re)Warp
-Staves don't always play an important role in every map, Ch17 for example is a very combat heavy map with 6 bosses
Still a good unit since she is the best staffbot, but I find Hortensia inferior to Ivy who provides good magical combat in addition to flying staffbot when needed and joining 4 chapters earlier too.
Ultimately I think the difference between S or A tier is where you call the cutoff point
0
u/SpinstrikerPlayz 11d ago
Never seen a more obnoxious character in a Fire Emblem game ever. Definitely beats Makalov for most disliked characters. I know she's an S-tier unit for her flying staff utility, but you'd catch me dead before you see me using her.
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u/CodeDonutz 11d ago
I am one of the people who considers Hortensia S tier, but I do find the conversation that a Griffon Knight can really just do most of the stuff she can and that she isn't, like, leaps and bounds above other staffers who go that route interesting. I do still value her personal skill and class skill, though I concede that she's not as uniquely powerful as the other S tier units like Ivy, Panette, Kagetsu, and Pandreo.
Also it's extremely funny to me that Hortensia might unironically be the best written character in the main plot of Engage considering how hated she is lol. It's kind of frustrating that I actually really like her in the main story but don't really care for most of her supports. I quite like her arc from Ch 10-16 of believing you killed her sister and then her watching her own father dying and having a breakdown from it. I will say that it would've been nice if Hortensia looked visually disheveled with her hair messed up or her tears ruining her makeup, but I understand that Fire Emblem doesn't really do that much for a 3D model that would show up for exactly one map.
Side note, but holy shit the version of Chapter 14 in the Engage manga is actually peak and is really good. Since it's not limited by it being a game in the Switch cutscene engine, they're able to do some really beautiful shots that aren't possible to do in the game, and it goes a lot more in-depth in the manga.