Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes features a fantastic array of playable units to choose from in missions, and this guide will cover some of the best units available in the Azure Gleam route. With powerhouses like Dimitri and Dedue, lightning-fast attackers like Felix and Sylvain, and incredibly powerful spellcasters like Annette and Mercedes, the route offers an excellent variety of units.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is an RPG and hack-and-slash game from Koei Tecmo and Omega Force, published by Nintendo. Set in an alternate timeline, in the same world as Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the game follows a set of new possibilities created by the involvement of the new protagonist "Shez."
Dimitri
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the King of Faerghus is one of the best units in the route, along with being completely exclusive to the route. With excellent strength and access to his unique classes High Lord and Great Lord, he tears through enemies with tremendous power. Dimitri has excellent stats for a physical fighter, and the Crest of Blaiddyd can amplify his combat art damage significantly at the cost of some extra durability.
With the Hero's Relic Areadbhar providing excellent durability after its skills are unlocked, and his King's Might skill further amplifying damage whenever he sends enemies flying, he can trash enemy health bars easily. He also has decent dexterity and speed, giving him a reasonable awakening duration and critical rush damage along with good recharge times on his potent combat arts.
His Unique Skill "Azure Lightning" imbues all of his attacks with lightning for additional damage. He performs best in his unique classes of High Lord and Great Lord, though he also makes for a good Great Knight due to his solid stats.
Dedue
The King's retainer and close friend Dedue is also an excellent unit in this route, with the strength to rival Dimitri's and defensive stats without peer. Dedue's favored class line leads to Great Knight, and indeed this is a class he truly excels in with his impenetrable defensive stats and fantastic skill "Staunch Shield" which causes taking hits while guarding to restore the warrior gauge. Dedue can tank the worst the game has to throw at him and give just as much back, with his unique skill "demolisher" allowing him to charge strong attacks into explosive attacks for tons of extra damage.
Dedue lacks resistance and speed, making him a poor choice for spamming combat arts or dealing with mages, but he can traverse the battlefield surprisingly fast as a mounted unit and his defensive stats ensure that nothing else can keep him down. Players who find a weapon with Defense Factor on it (especially an axe) have struck gold, as this skill lets them add his incredible defense stat to the damage calculation of his swings.
Felix
Felix, Duke of Fraldarius, is both the King's biggest critic and one of his closest friends. While he acts disinterested he always has Dimitri and the Kingdom's well-being in mind, and his number one priority in battle is keeping his friends safe. In gameplay, he's a well-balanced fighter with a tremendous speed advantage due to his unique skill "Intense Velocity," which allows him to increase his speed simply by dodging mid-attack. This stacks up multiple times until he starts glowing blue to indicate his speed boost has peaked. This tremendous speed allows him to pull off long combos in mere moments and tear across the battlefield at a great pace.
As a natural swordsman, Felix excels in the Mortal Savant Class, though he can also make a fantastic trickster or even dancer. His excellent speed-boosting effect also pairs very well with cavalry classes, and his well-balanced stats allow him to use most classes well.
Annette
Annette is a former student of the School of Sorcery and a lover of singing who wields her magical prowess to great effect on the battlefield. With fantastic stats for magic, and decent dexterity, speed, resistance, and charm, she performs best as a Gremory. She can unleash tremendously powerful spells, with her natural spell list including Abraxas for tearing through lines of enemies with light, and Excalibur for ripping flyers out of the air with insurmountable force.
If she takes out 30 or more enemies with a warrior special (a fairly trivial feat for her) she gains a large damage increase for a while due to her "overachiever" ability, while "Courageous Aria" allows her to periodically unleash songs that provide a variety of buffs to herself and nearby allies. Buffs from Courageous Aria range from speed boosts, to elemental imbuement, to temporarily turning all hits into critical hits, making it a fantastically powerful ability. She can also learn Wind Assist, enhancing her allies' strong attacks with the wind element while she is assigned as their adjutant, allowing her to play a supporting role.
Mercedes
Annette's Classmate and friend from the School of Sorcery, Mercedes is a kind soul with exceptional magical skills to rival Annette. She has exceptional magic and resistance stats, with decent dexterity and charm too, making her a very solid Gremory. She can also make a fantastic archer with a magic bow, and indeed her hidden skill is found in Bow Knight, helping her to gain improved critical hit chance.
Her natural spell list includes devastating fire spells like Ragnarok, along with powerful healing spells like Fortify. With the Ichor Scroll Hero's Relic, she can also cast Abraxas to tear through entire lines of enemies with light damage. Since she learns "Essence of Light" from the priest, which replaces all light-based attacks she performs with stronger variants, she is terrifyingly strong as a Bishop or Gremory, and her "Light Assist" skill allows her to imbue an ally's strong attacks with light while assigned as their adjutant to provide extra healing.
Her "Radiant Love" skill allows her to nuke the field with an AOE light attack that deals damage to enemies and heals allies, the range, and strength of which are exceptional, while "Live to Serve" causes all healing magic she uses to heal her by the same amount it healed her allies.
Along with the Ichor Scroll, she can also equip the Rafail Gem, nullifying effectiveness from specific damage types against her, effectively making all damage that would be especially effective against her into neutral damage instead. It also renders her immune to all status effects and has a chance to nullify incoming attacks.
Rodrigue
Rodrigue, the former Duke Fraldarius and the father of Felix, is an excellent unit with well-balanced stats. He has balanced growth in Strength and Magic allowing him to make equally good use of classes that rely on either. He also has pretty good resistance, allowing him to take hits from magic more readily than other units.
When using his "Martial Prowess" unique skill he can increase his own damage, attack range, and knockback rate simply by hitting each button in a combo with the correct timing, quickly amplifying his capabilities if in the hands of a player who has mastered the timing. His "Right-Hand Man" skill nullifies critical hits and status effects when his HP is below 50%, while also preventing him from getting knocked back while attacking, which can synergize with weapons that drain health from the user in exchange for a benefit, such as the Devil Axe.
Rodrigue performs very well as a Dark Bishop or as a Holy Knight or Dark Knight, where he can make the most of his range-boosting unique skill.
Catherine
Thunder Catherine, one of the Knights of Seiros, is a truly fantastic swordswoman who can be acquired around halfway through the Azure Gleam route. Her unique skill "Twofold Ruin" allows her to amplify her damage and cause all her attacks to hit twice for a time, allowing her to deal truly incredible damage with her combos and especially with powerful Combat arts.
She comes equipped with Thunderbrand, a Hero's Relic that allows her to use Foudroyant Strike. This combat art allows her to shoot forward at speed, breaking guards and dealing lightning damage, and is extra effective against armored units. If Thunderbrand is upgraded it gains a skill to reduce the cooldown times of spells and combat arts, allowing Catherine to unleash them with far greater regularity.
The "Fighting Spirit" skill she possesses greatly reduces her damage taken from enemies when she either has no battalion or runs out of battalion endurance, while the Crest of Charon has a 50% chance of greatly increasing the damage of her combat arts. This makes Catherine exceptionally strong when making heavy use of combat arts, and thus her preferred classes of Swordmaster and Mortal Savant make perfect sense here.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes launched on 24th June 2022 for Nintendo Switch.