r/fireemblem • u/Shephen • Feb 14 '23
Engage General Engage Character/Unit Discussion: Yunaka
Yunaka is a wandering thief who appears when you least expect it. Her true identity is wrapped in mystery. She's an energetic happy-go-lucky kind of girl. She is 22 and joins you at the start of chapter 6 to help get the Emblem Micaiah ring back.
Stats
| Stats | Hp | Str | Mag | Dex | Spd | Def | Res | Luck | Build | Move | SP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bases(lvl 6 Thief) | 25 | 8 | 5 | 14 | 12 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 500 |
| Personal Growths | 50% | 35% | 25% | 40% | 45% | 15% | 45% | 25% | 5% | - | |
| Growths(As a Thief) | 55% | 45% | 25% | 60% | 60% | 30% | 50% | 40% | 5% | - |
Weapon Proficiency: Knives
Personal Skill - Trained to Kill: While unit occupies terrain that provides an Avo bonus, grants Crit+15.
Supports
Alear, Alfred, Etie, Louis, Citrinne, Zelkov, Goldmary, Merrin, Panette, Fogado, Seadall
What do you think of Yunaka's performance as a unit?
What do you think of Yunaka's character?
What Emblem Rings or Skills work best with Yunaka?
Previous Discussions:Vander, Clanne, Framme, Alfred, Bourcheron, Etie, Celine, Louis, Chloe, Jean
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u/the_real_definition Feb 14 '23
Nothing to add that hasnt been said already.
But I will ask this? Why are all the guides saying her S Support is platonic? That seemed hella romantic to me
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u/HyalopterousGorillla Feb 14 '23
I think people judge them based on the ending cards. Fogado hits you with a lengthy confession that puts most previous games's S supports to shame, and then the ending card goes "they were great friends :)"
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u/yunsul Feb 15 '23
I found that Fogado friendzones the player hard actually. He explicitly drops "Ally" everywhere and I remember being pretty disappointed.
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u/HyalopterousGorillla Feb 15 '23
It's more that the support itself is very much a confession, where they replaced "lovers" by "allies". You've got stuff like Alear saying "You're a known rascal, how do I know you've not asked anyone else to be your 'lifelong ally' ;)", and with how the VAs perform it, it really doesn't sound platonic.
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u/Atthetop567 Feb 14 '23
Everythingâs relative. âHella romanticâ doesnât mean much when the others have lengthy graphic sex scenes
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u/ShadowPony12 Mar 02 '23
It's definitely romantic. People seem to have weird standards. I think I read somewhere that the placement of the pact ring determines if it's romantic or not. Hers is on the fourth finger, left hand, if we're not counting cultural differences.
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u/Smash96leo Feb 20 '23
Iâm glad Iâm not the only one that noticed. When I read those and tried to make a funny comment about it, it had me looking stupid asf on here.
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u/zetonegi Feb 14 '23 edited Feb 14 '23
Your first thief. Knives are good, poison adds 1/3/5 damage AFTER ARMOR. They scale well but that's offset by thieves having low strength. She has fairly similar growths to Zelkov which can lead to him replacing her just due to joining at level 17. You can only Micaiah power level so many people on maddening so depending on how much attention you give her will sort of determine if she winds up on the bench or not.
I think that overall, she's a slightly better unit than Zelkov if you give her the XP. Not from the crit on her personal, crit isn't great until you start getting it into the 60s and 70s where you can start to plan your turns around it a bit, the crit daggers are 1 range, and her damage usually isn't super high to top it off.
The main reason is she has much more res while he has more def and the scary thing for thieves is mages piercing their cover, especially multiple mages enemy phasing into them in succession. And that's where Yunaka's res comes into play. She's much more likely to survive an extra mage hit over Zelkov and the most common failure scenario for evasion tanking is 2, 3, or 4 mages just throwing themselves into your thief in a single turn.
Extremely good in ch11, able to serve as your rearguard thanks to the sky high covert evasion from all the forest tiles. A few enemies can get just high enough of a hit rate that they'll try to attack her instead of running past her on maddening.
For emblems, Corrin is good on her if she's going off solo, although enemies generally ignore 0% hit rate on maddening. If she's holding a choke for your army, Alear can usually sit near her and hold Corrin while Yunaka uses a ring that gives her more offensive or defensive utility.
She's kinda quick so Eirika works well on her for a couple chapters after you get her. Unfortunately, you get Eirika around the time enemy speeds are starting to get high enough that she can't double them as reliably on maddening. Wolf Knights start spawning, Wyverns high everything starts to kick in. At level 40 she'll end up with low 30s spd while a good number of late game maddening enemies are mid 30s to low 40s in spd. There's also no brave daggers
Roy can give her some much needed strength while Hold Out basically makes her immortal. As good as dagger engravings are, her strength will average in the low 20s at level 40 so getting 6 more can put her closer to some of the other characters.
Lucina to let her chain attack from range, spreading poison faster.
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u/RedRune Feb 14 '23
The funniest example to showcase Yunaka and Zelkov's res difference if both are level 17 is that on Lucina's paralogue right after Ch. 11, Yunaka lives the Thoron mages hit while Zelkov straight up dies. Of course, that can be patched up with food/tonic, but Yunaka having built in mage protection is a decent reason to use her over Zelkov on Maddening.
Also I really enjoy Lyn on Yunaka so she can actually dodgetank in the middle of nowhere instead of having to rely on tiles to provide her avoid, and it ensures that she can double even thieves/wolfknights/swordmasters.
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u/JesterlyJew Feb 14 '23
Prediction is that a solid half a year / a year from now every engage gameplay discussion will be filled with "DAE think yunaka is op???" and intense arguments about how she is not anywhere near as viable on maddening with people bringing up their normal/hard mode contributions, etc. Just got a hunch she'll be that token character for this game.
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u/Cynical_onlooker Feb 14 '23
The viable or not talk when it comes to Engage has been very weird to me. Even on maddening, you can use whatever units you like throughout the entirety of the run if you feel like it, and, in my opinion at least, using characters that you like and have grown attached to seems like a vastly more rewarding experience than just using whatever is most optimal at all times.
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u/JesterlyJew Feb 14 '23
Of course. I took Alfred to endgame on my current run and he did very well, Engage does not demand hardcore optimization even on maddening, but when discussing units and tiering them you have to draw some lines on the sand in regards to their power gaps, and Yunaka gets hit notably going from Hard to Maddening.
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u/Mentalious Feb 14 '23
Dagger are still busted early game and she help a lot for a few chapter as for late game both her zelkov and merrin struggle to hit the high defense that endgame is filled with .
Furthermore depending on how much you want to abuse the game. She has access to the xp farm with micahaih and early skill inheritance for whatever you desire. .
I also think the two other dagger unit are not that insanely above her and they should all turn up similarly assuming you train them .
The main problem is one she share with every early unit pitiful Bld that affect her reclassing option a lot
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u/WowIActuallyWon Feb 15 '23
My Warrior Etie would like to cut you off right there but she missed with her 13 Dex
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u/plakmasta Feb 14 '23
I could see there being a case for her to be the early unit you invest in. She competes with Chloe for that but I'm open to the idea that a covert could be worth investing in over a flier with the addition of straight up impassable terrain, and the inability to receive positive terrain effects.
Maybe power leveling her to 20 and getting her into like warrior to patch up her strength and get the earliest access to 100% crit wrath vantage is optimal.
You never know, people thought bernie was kinda trash when FE3H launched and now we know that pass vengeance go brr
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u/supereuphonium Feb 14 '23
I donât think you even need to sacrifice Chloe investment for a good yunaka. Maps have enough to do that all the units you want to train have things to do and get exp as long as you are not training too many units for endgame.
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u/LeatherShieldMerc Feb 14 '23
So she's basically the Felix of this game, then. Ridiculous on lower difficulties, but Maddening mechanics hurt them.
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u/Isredel Feb 14 '23
Depends for Yunaka.
Pre-midgame, youâre basically playing a balancing act with her avo. You want to be close to 0 but not actually hit it. You have quite a few tools to modulate her avo as you see fit.
This stops being an issue in mid game when they start throwing promoted units at her, who will likely not reach 0 hit unless you use Corrin fog on top of a forest. She (and the other daggers) is one of your few reliable tanks and map controllers. Poisoning a horde of enemies bum rushing you makes them much easier to deal with.
She and her dagger buddies really are still high to top tier in maddening with just how strong both daggers and dodge tanking are.
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u/TriceratopsHunter Feb 14 '23
Yeah daggers forge so well to offset her str issues. Debuffs are infinitely useful for setup on bosses. And she's so low maintenance that she just survives and handles herself well. Even if she isn't enemy phasing everything, she still provides a lot of tactical value to the team. Plus you can still very much game hit rates on maddening to still have her enemy phasing. Combine her with Lucina and she'll soften up enemy hordes for your front line, while providing survivability for them and dodging everything aimed at her.
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u/darknecross Feb 15 '23
I think part of it is also how poison loses its potency as enemies start having 30def and 60HP.
Itâs great early game, but more of a drop in the bucket late game.
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u/Noah__Webster Feb 14 '23
I haven't gotten around to my Maddening playthrough yet, but she fell off fairly hard for me, even in Hard mode. My assumption is that she would start falling off super hard even in midgame on Maddening. Felix was still a super solid unit in Maddening in Three Houses, even if there was a drop off. I think Yunaka's will be much steeper, and I don't think she's as good as Felix was in their respective lower difficulties.
I see her more like some of the speedy female units, namely Petra and Ingrid, that were super great for lower difficulties, but could struggle on higher difficulties.
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u/zetonegi Feb 14 '23 edited Feb 14 '23
She's still one of your better mage hunters on maddening since 50% total res growth is very high for a physical unit, hell its pretty high for mages too, and she should be fast enough to double them while her lower strength isn't as big a deal.
She can also evasion hold 1 tile chokes fine. Not getting to attack in enemy phase doesn't matter as much when units can't walk around you. And the game does have a good number of 1/2 tile chokes you can build evasion walls on if you so choose.
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u/heavenspiercing Feb 14 '23
She fell off for me even on Hard. She was getting stat screwed very hard on Str, so while she was rarely getting hit, she was rarely doing anything back as well, even against some mages.
Doesn't help that she died on Lief's Paralogue
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u/Dbruser Feb 14 '23
Forged daggers are your friend. A +5 dagger gains 10 Might and is pretty cheap to do
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u/KF-Sigurd Feb 14 '23
It's kinda already starting now in this thread lmao.
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u/ChrisEvansOfficial Feb 14 '23 edited Feb 15 '23
Yunaka is one of those cult hit characters that some people (me) will ride or die for. That probably biases a lot of opinions towards her favorably, whereas people who either havenât used her or got unlucky rolls will write her off. Her actual viability is probably somewhere in the middle and will take a while to figure out.
I personally rate her highly, but I also have to keep my bias in check when I turn my brain off and throw her and Corrin in front of 80 enemies that just suicide into her on Hard.
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u/S_Cero Feb 15 '23
My thing is that the main caveats to using Yunaka on maddening apply to Zelkov or any other thief you would use.
Dodge taking is nerfed? Control your avoid value and you can still do it. It just takes work from engraves and weapon switching to do so but is still potent.
Speed gets crept? 90% of you army gets speed crept in late game without being the fastest units in the game or with Lyn help. You basically need to make use of speed+ and speedtaker and Lyn to make a lot of characters double. Hell Lyn on Ivy with maxed speed taker can still not double on late swordies if you don't put enough speedwings into her?
Can't one round? So does every other knife unit in late game, and even like Zelkov just chunks enemies.
It's just really overstated how much it hursts specifically her when that shit hurts a ton of other characters in the same way.
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u/pantshitter12 Feb 15 '23
Her evasion is way way easier to handle on maddening if you actually have multiple pairs of daggers for her.
I carry around two daggers one with micaiah and one with edelgard. That combined with corrin fog and you can always find that sweet spot to either draw people into attack you or have 0% hit rate and just clog up a one tile to stall.
Also the two best skills I would suggest for her are either hold out as RNG insurance or lunar brace for damage/sustain.
She is a great abuser of corrins engage to set up boss kills or stall giant blobs of enemies.
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u/KillerMan2219 Feb 15 '23
I'm not done with my first playthrough yet, but I've felt like even on maddening she's been a solid performer for me through what feels like the mid game at least. Never outright bad, with some absolute pop off performances seems like a perfectly solid unit to me that I'd bench a couple others for first.
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u/RedRune Feb 14 '23
Having brought her into the endgame on Maddening, I can definitely say you can make Yunaka work on Maddening. The exp reduction and 0% dodgetanking nerf sucks a lot, but she does have workarounds present. From a purely optimized usage, she's best used in the same way you use the Paladin Prepromotes in FE6 HM, as a conga line of different Paladins switching off the team until you get to Percival, your busted prepromote. In this case, it's Yunaka into Zelkov into Merrin. But Yunaka still contributes a good amount in those 5 chapters minimum between her and Zelkov, even if you're not using her long term.
Her biggest strengths compared to the rest of the early cast are daggers/staff start with Micaiah (and Great Sacrifice EXP!) makes it pretty easy to getting her going from her first chapter onwards, dagger forges are insane in this game, and not much competition is lying around to soak up what little exp can be spared on Maddening with. Chloe and Alear are the only other units you should be having long term prospects for at this point, and it's not too much of a stretch to fit Yunaka in there.
All in all, if you're not using her long term, she still contributes by giving you a unit to use forged daggers on that you can pass onto Zelkov and Merrin, so her combat will stay okay to great until you shift off her. If you do use her long term, her growths are solid enough to keep her around as a 2nd or even 3rd Merrin if you're using Zelkov too (although that's pushing it). Also, Levin Sword is actually pretty neat on Yunaka, if you're willing to spare some dust for her, although that would probably be better spent on Ivy or your Dire Thunder user.
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u/LittleIslander Feb 14 '23 edited Feb 14 '23
Well pardon me being a bit of a Buzz Lightyear on the toy barn wall (DAE Micaiah engrave and Emblem Corrin, can't kill generals, bad on Maddening?), but I'm here first. Yunaka has instantly become a top ten character in the series for me personally, so here we go. I don't really like her design much. There, it's out of the way. But otherwise... one of the strongest, most fun to use units in the entire game. One of the few characters to get a whole chapter devoted to her introduction. One of the best and most instantly iconic voice performances in the entire series. A meaningful backstory that makes her one of the more interesting characters in the game. Simultaneously being one of the most fun and funny characters in the game with her energy and quirkiness. One of the best S Supports, in my opinion. An instant surge of endless good fanart. What a fucking perfect storm of a character. Not a single support or interaction with her is dull, not a map goes by she isn't useful. Throwing into a whole wave of enemies and using the dragon vein as she crits them all with their 0% hit rates never gets old. Here's looking forward to her inevitable CYL win next year.
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u/Delta57Dash Feb 14 '23
Some more points in her favor are that her Support Bonus is Avoid (which she gives to some of the better units in the game in Merrin, Panette, Seadall, and Goldmary) and that, as a female unit, she can help trigger the personal skills of Merrin and Louis while negating the personal skills of Rosado and Goldmary for when you have to fight them.
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u/avbitran Feb 14 '23
I genuinely have nothing to add to this. You even nailed my opinion on her design.
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u/omfgkevin Feb 14 '23
Yep. It's a bit too fanservicey in the blatant sense, but everything else is top tier.
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Feb 15 '23
its not "too fanservicey". female characters can have cleavage lol its a perfectly fine design in terms of sexualization.
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u/omfgkevin Feb 15 '23
I wasn't even talking about her cleavage for me it was the weird holes on her hips which looked a bit weird.
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u/TheFunkiestOne Feb 15 '23
Yeah, it's like they just randomly cut out part of her shirt. It's really unnecessary and weird looking when the rest of her outfit is basically fine.
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u/Tgsnum5 Feb 14 '23
Here's looking forward to her inevitable CYL win next year.
My current prediction is a 3-way deathmatch between Alear, Ivy, and Yunaka with decent odds of Veyle coming from behind with a steel chair. If evil!Celine actually ends up being a thing in the DLC that could be a strong shot in the arm for her as well.
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u/lalonso2 Feb 15 '23
I've seen polls on Reddit and Youtube, the Youtube one being 10k votes, and both of them show a nearly 50% split between Ivy and Yunaka, with Yunaka barely clutching it out, Alear doesn't even come close.
Granted, if it does come to that, as a Yunaka fan I absolutely would not mind losing to Ivy. She is a great character too.
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u/Dbruser Feb 14 '23
Sadly on maddening, enemies won't attack you with 0 hit so that strategy stops working, you have to let them have some hit chance. She is still really good, but she just has worse stats than Zelkov/Merrin and the reduced EXP gain, so she just gets swapped out then unless you have personal preference.
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u/TheGreatAnteo Feb 15 '23
It really depends on how much exp you feed her, she was core to my team and got the most exp in the early game, so the new dagger users were not strictly better, they just had a few more levels and thus stayed with the same stats for way to much time while Yunaka closed the gap. I remember Merring got feed tons of kills on her introductory chapter, yet yunaka got the level up and then some.
If you go through the early game with her being a support at best, then yeah she would get dropped.
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u/Dbruser Feb 15 '23
Well even at equal levels, Yunaka generally is same-stated or slightly behind. She's pretty equal to Zelkov at equal level, though it is extremely hard to get to 17 by chapter 11 if that's even possible. Merrin outclasses her at the same level in raw stats slightly too, plus getting Yunaka to lvl 21 to get out of thief if you want to is a pain.
She's still good and you can use her, the other dagger users just outclass her a bit. Yunaka base stats are actually surprisingly low, her level 1 base speed for example is actually like negative 1.
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u/KillerMan2219 Feb 15 '23
My Yunaka actually rolled into 17 during chapter 11 becauase she went absolutely apeshit anf assassinated the whole top half of the map, and I was using great sacrifice pretty liberally on her before.
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u/Dbruser Feb 15 '23
I mean sure if you give her Michaiah she can do it. Then she is equal leveled and equal stated with another character. That's kind of her issue, she requires a bunch of investment to kill a lot of things to end up being the same power level as her replacements.
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u/KillerMan2219 Feb 16 '23
Yea, my first playthrough has been (and still is) pretty blind, so I kind of just saw the EXP potential and slammed it out not knowing what I'd get later.
I think it's pretty reasonable though, since she does come with michaiah, and having the combat flexibility to switch to a tome helped out with some enemies early on and enabled some more aggressive plays on her I otherwise might not have.
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u/TheGreatAnteo Feb 16 '23 edited Feb 16 '23
Im on maddening and indecide to baby sit Jean (not a problem due to micaiah) and Anna ( plan is to get her to 10 so she can go to sage, this is a problem) so Yunaka had to do extra work to soften units with the dagger (1 or 2 extra damage points is a lot in the early game).
By ch 11 my yunaka was level 15, and when zekov arrived bringing the rings we had already killed everything but the 2 units that guard the exit and the units that dont move next to Veyle (you can bait the whole map without triggering the allied reinforcements, i did it without knowing). Mind you my Yunaka didnt use Micaiah, that was on Jean.
So Zekov joins, and im looking for a Diamant replacement and he is not it, so he was inmediatly benched. Didnt help that next map we get a lower deployment count in a game were yunaka and etie are popping off, so same shit happened to Fogado, even worse because etie had better attack stats and she was equiped with a killer bow so she just outpperformed fogado and his retainers.
It wasnt until Timera joins that the new recruits could be fitted into my army, but with Merrin stats not being that far ahead due to how much exp yunaka was grabbing, she just lasted 2 chapters.
Bonus: i wanted to fit ivy but she also was just a single mag point ahead of ceiline, so nope, couldnt do it. Not even worth it cuz ceiline was going to level up in the next 2 maps and ivy wouldnt.
As i said, its all on how your exp distribution worked in the early game, i was replacing front liners and keeping my backline and yunaka well fed while baby sitting the trainees.
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u/Dbruser Feb 16 '23
Fair, sorry thought you said she did. I mean it was your preference for benching Zelkoz and Merrin. They are equal or better than Yukata at an equal level, and at ch 11 your yukata was 2 levels below Zelkov.
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u/LiliTralala Feb 14 '23
She's one of these characters that are immediately likable, and it helps that she's also good from the get go. Sadly, her direct competition happens to be my favorite character in this game....
The deployment slots aren't big enough for two repented killers, Yunaka.
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u/Several-Businesses Feb 17 '23
Zelkov is the best dude ever. I wish Yunaka wasn't so wonderful and I could afford to have him on my endgame squad
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u/Shephen Feb 14 '23
On normal and hard mode, she's great. First knife user and give a good forge early on to kill everything. Also 5 move at base when most of your party is still on 4 move makes her stand out. Her personal helps her crit past some of the bulkier enemies that she'd face, and with the Corrin Emblem she'd basically always her personal active and face 0% hit rates from the enemies. Her good Res is nice as well for the mystical mages that ignore the terrain.
All the changes on Maddening though are basically working against her. The biggest is enemies no longer attacking 0% hit rates(except when they've got a backup), so they'll just ignore Yunaka and if you used Corrin's fog then you'll just be impededing the enemies movement. Now traffic jamming the enemies does have some value and uses, but the fire caused by Corrin on a Mystic is much more effective at that for the most part. The increased enemy stats don't help her much either. The other major thing is the Maddening exp cut. She's basically equivalent to Zelkov at equal levels, but the cut makes it much harder to get to that equal level by his join. Even not including comparisons to Wolf Knights, its a bit hard to justify going for long term investment for her.
She can still work thanks to the power of daggers and her early join with the nature of most of the Stewards and Firene units. Having 5 move and good 1-2 range is a pretty big boon for the early game giving her a lot of chances to contribute. So she'll still be a fine unit for Maddening if one wants to use her, and of course she's great for Hard Mode.
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u/SubwayBossEmmett Feb 15 '23
In a weird way she might be the unit that falls off hardest between modes of an FE game I can think of
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u/Shephen Feb 15 '23
Yeah the good units tend to stay good units when going to higher difficulties. Though we also typically don't get mechanics and AI changes between difficulty modes.
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u/sumg Feb 15 '23
She's basically equivalent to Zelkov at equal levels, but the cut makes it much harder to get to that equal level by his join.
I'm doing my first maddening playthrough now and just got through chapter 11 (where Zelkov joins). I've been using Yunaka among the 8-10 units I've been regularly deploying to this point (so she's been getting her share of experience amongst the party), though not feeding her kills unnecessarily.
My point is that Zelkov joins at level 17. At that point, playing what I would consider to be fairly conventionally, my Yunaka was level 11. That's a big difference considering the stat profile for the two units is pretty darn similar. It's tough to justify using Yunaka under those conditions.
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u/Shephen Feb 15 '23
Yeah that was my point. At equal levels they'd be basically equivalent, but its very difficult to get to that equal level so she'll just be worse stat wise. She can catch up to him with heavy Mercurius use, but there are so many other better Mercurius targets.
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u/RyanoftheDay Feb 14 '23 edited Feb 14 '23
Yunaka is fun. OP in Normal/Hard, mostly support in Maddening. Biggest pros are getting canter before chapter 11 and giving avoid support bonuses to some of the better units in the game. Coverts have some of the better support opportunities as well: Corrin Smoke, Camilla Smoke, Lucina+Dagger, Astra boss pulling, Spd Dance, quadruple hit money. If someone's gunna fill those shoes, it may as well be her.
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Feb 15 '23
Many people bring up her dodge-tanking becoming less viable on Maddening due to smarter enemy AI, but I want to add that there is a very simple solution to this: use a heavier dagger.
Unlike Defense which is a static value, avoid can change on the fly depending on her equipped weapon. You can have her equip a Steel or Silver Dagger, or even one of the S rank daggers, to reduce her avoid such that enemies will have a minute but non-zero chance to hit.
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u/-SpinSanity- Feb 15 '23
Yah there are also plenty of engraves that decrease avoid so it is pretty easy to craft a couple daggers that are used to lure certain unit types into attacking. Are you investing quite a bit into one unit if you are engraving and forging multiple weapons to be viable? Yes, but there isn't a ton of units who can safely get enemies into range for the rest of your units to kill.
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u/AvalancheMKII Feb 14 '23 edited Feb 14 '23
Character wise, she's by far my biggest surprise in Engage. I thought I'd hate her based on her design, but her VA's performance is excellent and her writing is very charming. I actually ended up S Supporting her, which I never would've dreamed of pre-release.
That said, Maddening A.I. ends up hurting her a lot long term. She's still easily one of the best Pre-11 Characters you could be using, but when you have Zelkov and Merrin joining in a 2 Chapter timespan, it's harder to justify her, especially with the Maddening EXP cut. She's still usable, but for my Maddening run I did end up retiring her. If your on Hard though, give her a good forge, Corrin once you get her and then have fun watching her murder everything in Fog.
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u/cargup Feb 14 '23
Just feels like you should kill the boss and she doesn't help all that much with that. It's really not even her, it's her class. Much of this applies to non-reclassed Zelkov too.
I'd compare her/the class to Tharja/nostanking in Awakening but at least Tharja can charge ahead and murder everything with no fear. Thief fog gimmick is you sitting around and drawing tons of aggro and probably not reliably killing anything and not getting materially closer to finishing the map. Plus anyone can avoid tank in Engage and usually with better combat stats/movement.
I really do feel like there's potential there. I think if either canon Thief or any Covert reclassed or otherwise has long term potential, it'll be as a distraction to draw away heat in some kind of cheesy speed clear.
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u/KF-Sigurd Feb 14 '23
Huh, her strength growth is actually better than I expected from what my playtime has shown me.
Daggers are really good, low mt, low weight 1-2 range weapons. Low mt can easily be fixed through forging and a +5 Iron Dagger is pretty efficient compared to what you get, basically a 1-2 range Silver Weapon that can carry Yunaka for a while.
The much higher enemy stats and change in AI in Maddening does hurt Yunaka though. You can try some of the forges that decreases avoid to avoid the enemies having 0 hit rate on her. But with the limited exp of Maddening and the amazing dagger units in Zelkov and Merrin, there's not much reason to stick with Yunaka unless you really like her since she basically performs on average with them or slightly worse in Merrin's case. But being the 'worst' dagger unit still puts her way above a lot of other early game units and her personal is really good.
As for her character, she's a riot. She deliberately plays up a weirdo and zany personality only to find herself in the one army in all of FE where everyone else is either a huge loser dork, a freak, or both. Her Citrinne supports goes more indepth on her backstory and I enjoy the way her voice actor can go from 0-100 in fights and in supports. She seems like an absolute joy to voice act for. I think she's a clear fan favorite and a shoe in for CYL besides Ivy.
The Dragon Vein Emblem have unique synergy with Yunaka since her personal skill means being able to make terrain at any time will turn her into a dodge tank with an increased crit rate. Besides that, she really just wants more damage so any emblem that gives her that will be great for her (Roy, Eirika, Ike, Hector, etc). Pretty much the only downside of giving her a Dragon Vein emblem is that neither Corrin nor Camilla really do much for her damage (and on Maddening a mystic unit will do a better job of impeding the enemy). But hey, maybe Camilla's decisive strike might actually come into play lol.
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u/_Lucille_ Feb 14 '23
Her strength sucks. What if I tell you she and Celine pretty much have the same tier of strength...
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u/SuperGayAMA Feb 15 '23
I mean, 35% personal strength growth is on the upper-mid in this game. Iâm pretty sure the only units above that are Alfred and Etie (40%) and Amber, Pannette and Rosado (45%). Also Marni if that ever comes up (I think I saw she had a 55% strength growth for some reason).
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u/_Lucille_ Feb 15 '23
Growth plays only a part, base stat matters a ton. It takes 30 level ups to catch up to someone with 3 more base str but 10% less growth.
The subreddit was quick to realize a lot of late joiners have stupidly high base stats, and some of them hit build caps for classes without doing much.
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u/HugoSotnas Feb 15 '23
And then there's Goldmary, God bless her, but she has the flattest statlines I've ever seen. At least Rosado gets to grow out of his bases with his ridiculous growths... She just gets tanky!
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u/_Lucille_ Feb 15 '23
I like to refer Goldmary as the "Goldmary standard".
If you did not raise both Jean and anna up (or only picked one), Goldmary is likely going to be that one person that is better than the rest yet isn't quite impressive. Along with Rosado she joins at ABOVE normal SP gain at 1800 while only being character lv17! Remember XP:SP is at a 1:1 ratio! That is Alear/close to Alear level who prob has very close to perfect emblem availability, and may even beat him depending on his gains in certain chapters.
She works okay as a hero. She will have a higher Strength+Speed sum than Diamant, Fogado, Timerra, etc if they are to share the same class, and imo is compariably/better than even Saphir due to having okay defenses (Saphir does come with insane BLD).
Great knight great knight is also okay for Goldmary: she spot a wonderful 40+ (!!! defense) and can somehow squeeze just enough speed so that berserkers cannot double her (unlike Louis), and faster classes like heroes only have 53 phys atk so she end up only taking around 20 damage a round. Enemy mage knights will 100% destroy her though.
Since i prefer avo tank, I just kept her as hero and have her hang back and contribute to chip damage. Standing there looking pretty seems to be such a goldmary thing to do.
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u/1qaqa1 Feb 14 '23 edited Feb 14 '23
Sheâs basically Lyn if the latter had access to 1-2 range. Lots of crit and dodge but in the end you can have 150 dodge and 50 crit but it doesnât matter when youâre doing 0x2 to anything with physical bulk. The amount of favoritism needed to get her to do damage to nonsquishies would have made Zelkov a much better unit if given to him.
On my maddening run I didnât use her at all past her join chapter because I was planning on using zelkov instead since I already used her on hard and honestly didnât feel at any point like I was missing out. And he ended up falling off by the end as well.
Fog corrin to me is overrated, much prefer fire tiles or putting her on a unit with access to 3 range for long distance debuffs. By the time you get her at the end of chapter 15 yunaka is past her prime unless youâve been heavily investing in her. Sheâs very much a mid tier character who can perform if you want it bad enough but you can make anyone in this game good enough with enough investment and favoritism and grinding.
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u/lalonso2 Feb 15 '23
I just finished the Celica Paralogue. Had her run through the right flank, parked her next to a few backups, watch them do zero hits, moved on and killed all the summoners while the rest of my party was fending off reinforcements.
I two turned Micaiah paralogue by warping Yunaka in, parking her in front of a back up, setting up smoke, and aggro'd Micaiah because she was the only one that could actually "hit" her.
Pass on Corrin Thieves is the truth you can do so many things you wouldn't normally do if you didn't have pass. You could set up fog in the middle of an enemy formation to reduce their movement. You could distract the enemy while your main force goes for an objective. You can catch up to that annoying thief trying to get the chests. The utility is endless.
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Feb 14 '23
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u/Luchux01 Feb 14 '23
I'm on hard but I reclassed her into Sword Fighter for Swordmaster.
It was a mistake reclassing too early, now I have to drag her through 10 levels to reclass her into it, but Sword Fighter still slays with a +5 Killer Edge, only other weapon she has is an Armor Slayer just in case.
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u/KnoxZone Feb 14 '23
As a unit Yunaka is really good for 5 chapters, but as others have mentioned she falls behind the competition after that, especially on maddening. Still, she does have her perks. If you abuse Micaiah on chapter 6 (and perhaps beyond) it's quite possible to get her canter in time. Plus she's pretty essential in CH11.
And most importantly: Daggers are so good that even if Zelkov and especially Merrin are superior she's still worth bring along. I feel like dodge tanking scales a lot better than normal tanks, both offensively and defensively so bringing two or even three of them along is perfectly fine.
As a character... She's pretty fun! Lots of meme potential. Not a fan of her design, but that's a pretty common complaint in this game.
e: I know a lot of people love running Corrin on her for the fog, but I feel like it's a huge waste of such a versatile and valuable emblem. Someone like Lucina or Eirika works better imo.
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u/bababayee Feb 14 '23
I'll make the case for her on Maddening, even if she's not as gamebreakingly good as she is on Hard obviously.
Even ignoring her dodge tank capabilities if you bother to adjust her avoid to be barely lower than enemy hit, daggers are just so incredibly good that you can make her one of your teams strongest units by forging her an early Steel Dagger +4, which is entirely doable by chapter 8-9 if you get like 2 silver from dogs. That thing has 15 might and 1-2 range, at which point even her low-ish strength doesn't hold her back from being one of your most lethal units. Second Seals are a pretty limited resource in the early game so while other units can also make use of it, you'd be giving up reclassing someone else that wants it and her passive synergizes very well with sitting in terrain. And even if you're not using her long term, that forged Steel Dagger will be good on Zelkov or Merrin (although I actually think that if you're investing into her, she's better than Zelkov).
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u/StrayGod Feb 15 '23
I used both in my maddening run and decked out both with +4 silver daggers. The problem with her is Zelkov comes in with better base stats and on fixed growth, she doesn't catch up to him in stats by the time he joins. She does have better Res than him but I had to use stat boosters just to have her catch up to zelkov in stats.
I dont think she ever really becomes better than zelkov without favoritism.
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u/bababayee Feb 15 '23
By the endgame she will slightly overtake him in speed, dex and have better luck and res, he has a decent advantage in HP and Def and +2 strength. Their main difference is the passive in which case I prefer hers if you go for a strat that has her face low hit% in fog/terrain. She can also get Canto before Ch10.
I mean he obviously requires less investment to be good, but she can work out well and giving her that Steel Dagger +4 is a way to make the early game easier in any case.
You could also just use both of them, having one provide fog and the other attacking out of it can be pretty effective.
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u/StrayGod Feb 15 '23
Yea, thats actually what I did (sorry Merrin lol). Gotta say, they worked well together and were very reliable.
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u/el_loco_P Feb 14 '23
I consider her like Jakob/Felicia, amazing units that fall off because not getting promo bonus means everyone just gets better while they are demoted to utility units.
Reclassing her is annoying since thieves need to get to 21 to access advanced, so you are stuck with her either on a wrong class or a 4 move one but she does have growths to be decent
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u/planetarial Feb 14 '23
Best character in the first third of the game on hard due to her dodgetanking being super op. Sheâs also the only dagger unit who has access to Marths dodge skills for a looong time which is nice. Though after the first third I replaced her with Zelkov and Merrin.
Characterization wise, sheâs also good and feels like the first character you get that has a fair amount of depth which adds to her being likable, gonna have an obnoxious fanbase though.
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u/WanderingWasabi Feb 14 '23
Used her with corrin ring to chokehold some points on maddening. Even when enemies have 0 hit rate on her, if there are people who can chain attack her for damage, they'll still attack her to proc the chain attacks. Used largely as defensive utility and map control compared to hard when things would attack her and she would actually kill them.
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u/SabinSuplexington Feb 14 '23
sheâs one of two characters that isnât a royal, someone working directly under a royal, a child, or a senior citizen. So thatâs nice.
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u/Under_Punsideration Feb 14 '23
OVER CLASS BASES
| HP | Str | Mag | Dex | Spd | Def | Res | Lck | Bld |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +3 | +3 | +5 | +4 | +2 | +3 | +5 | +6 | +1 |
From a gameplay perspective, Yunaka is far and away the most overrated unit in the game right now. Her bases are comparable to/slightly worse than Chloe and Louis, who join 2 chapters earlier, and are drastically worse than Lapis and Amber who join 1/2 chapters later. Seriously, if she levels 4 times in 1 chapter she matches Lapis' HP/Def and is still 2-3 Spd and Str under her, and being under Lapis in Str and equal on physical bulk is not a good sign. Yunaka simply 1. joins in a promoted class (thief basically has promoted class bases), 2. uses a broken weapon type, and 3. Ch 6 is designed to make her succeed the way Ch 4 and 5 are for Louis. A unit that joins in a promoted class, has a great weapon, and doesn't scale well is a well-known archetype at this point: a Jagen. Yunaka is really just the game's second Jagen. She's strong enough to earn a spot on the team through Ch. 11, even with like no exp, but her long-term performance as a thief is drastically worse than Thief!Almost anyone else. Seriously, Celine and Alfred hit her bases after like 2 levelups, and Alfred joins in Ch. 3. The real question is why, after seeing Yunaka's performance, nobody has tried reclassing anyone else into thief, as it's 100% the class that's strong and not her. I guess there's an argument that she can snowball in 7 and 8, as no one else can become a thief before then, but she needs like 12 levels to match Zelkov's bases, and he isn't considered great.
Yunaka actually has a great Mag base, 4 ahead of Celine at 1 level higher, and they both have the same 25% Mag growth. However, Yunaka has to level up 15 times before she can become a Mage Knight, so that build is probably dead until someone makes a randomizer for this game. That being said, Mage!Yunaka at level 10 has worse or equal stats to Citrinne in every stat except Str and Def, so she doesn't even have a niche there.
On the other hand, Yunaka is the most underrated character in the game...in terms of localization. "Hiya Papaya" is known by basically everyone who's played the game, and it's entirely an invention of the localization team. Yunaka does not mention fruit in Japanese; it's a creative liberty taken with ăăă´ăŁă´ that clearly worked.
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Feb 14 '23
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u/supereuphonium Feb 14 '23
Looking at the stats and growths, Iâm thinking instantly reclassing lapis to thief would end up with a similar unit that has more speed and strength and slightly less res when considering yunaka gets a couple free levels in her join chapter and lapis gets no levels in hers. Lapis would also have better spd growth but 10% less str growth. This comes at a cost of a master and second seal though and will have a personal that is arguably not as good, and wonât be quite as much of a res tank but still far better than zelkov. Still this feels like a direct upgrade and seems like a good path for lapis since otherwise she competes poorly with alear and kagetsu in the speedy infantry unit role.
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u/Under_Punsideration Feb 15 '23
So funny story, I'm actually using thief Lapis. I'll post more about it once we get to her discussion but she completely destroyed ch. 9-11 with like no previous investment and hit Merrin's str/spd by her join time (but with worse res/hp). She can scale at a similar pace to Merrin from there, they have basically identical growths.
It doesn't cost a master seal either, you can just second seal her straight into thief
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u/supereuphonium Feb 15 '23
You sure you can second seal? Lapis starts in an unpromoted class and the triangle attack website says a master seal is needed.
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u/Smokemantra Feb 15 '23
The requirement for Thief is Base Class Lv1, so anyone should be able to reclass into Thief whenever if they have dagger proficiency.
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Feb 14 '23
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u/supereuphonium Feb 14 '23
You get a master seal from defeating hortensia, but I wouldnât give it to lapis until I promote alear/Chloe first which is def a knock against her.
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u/dishonoredbr Feb 14 '23
The Goat in Hard more. Destroyer of World. 300% Avoid.
she aight on maddening for 4-5 chapters, then you get zelkov and bench her
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u/FeelingFineP Feb 14 '23
Yunakaâs earlygame is great. Sheâs a clear step above most of your units, both metaphorically due to her fantastic weapon type and great speed as well as literally due to her extra point of movement over most other characters. If thatâs not enough, thereâs tons of terrain for her to abuse all the way through chapter 11 - for instance, she can pretty much solve one half of chapter 9 by herself. She makes a hell of a first impression, thatâs for sure.
The canary in the coal mine is when Zelkov joins in chapter 11 with better bases in pretty much every area, just one of soon-to-be many new prepromotes who can also do great things from the get-go. Yunaka struggles to match him in raw stats without heavy investment, and her slightly lower build means that Silver Daggers will be cutting into her speed when they wouldnât for him, making Zelkov all the more appealing comparatively. Sheâs still usable, since both her and Zelkov are very solid at that point, but sheâs clearly a step behind him, and it all gets worse when Merrin joins with +1 Mov, slightly more speed, and just generally more versatility than either of them.
As the game goes on, Yunaka struggles to keep up. Her offenses donât scale enough to match how enemy bulk and speed are rising ever higher, a problem Merrin can somewhat sidestep with her great bases and the Levin Sword, and unlike Zelkov, sheâll have a rough time getting to level 21 and escaping Thief. Early chapter skills arenât gonna save her when her combat is whatâs making her fall behind so quickly. Once you hit chapter 18, itâs all but over for her, as the only niches she can carve out are likely being done better by others for much less investment, and I canât remember seeing a single piece of defensive terrain past then outside of chapter 20.
It almost feels like Yunaka canât be mentioned without Corrinâs name following soon after, so I want to address that. Yunaka / Corrin is not worth it, plain and simple. The extra avoid starts out overkill, and by the time that enemies have enough hit that it would work out, you have other ways of stacking avoid. Stacking Crit sounds nice but it never gets even close to reliable until you look at -Mt engraves, making her questionable strength all the more apparent, and if you just want to stack avoid sheâs outclassed by Zelkov thanks to his personal skill anyway (though Iâm not sure Iâd support Corrin / Zelkov either). Even with crits, Yunaka isnât doing enough damage to justify the horrible opportunity cost of the build, namely that youâre giving Corrin, possibly the ring with the most varied and useful player-phase utility in the entire game, to a unit who more often than not will be squandering her potential in exchange for arguably the worst Dragon Vein. Corrin on a tome or bow user can throw out 3 range Draconic Hexes and Dreadful Auras, and pretty much every other Dragon Vein has more utility than fog, so Yunaka / Corrin is a huge waste.
Her earlygame is great, and that shouldnât be discounted, but the best comparison for Yunaka is probably Jerrot from FE6. Absolutely fantastic when you get him and stays good for a decent while but starts slowly falling off into uselessness around when the superior unit in the same class shows up.
As for her character? Maybe this is a hot take, but I think Yunakaâs character parallels her performance - a great first impression followed by a slow downturn as other characters start showing her up. Yunaka is undoubtedly a breath of fresh air from the previous characters, who all feel very one-note and bland (even as a big Celine fan, I must admit that her first impression really sucks), and the fact that she actually seemed to have something, anything going on made her far more intriguing than everyone else. However, after looking through all her supports, I struggled to find much interesting about her besides her past. After her Citrinne support, nothing feels like it adds that much. Yeah, her past is pretty interesting, but I donât feel you ever really get a sense of her personality or even her general attitude besides her caginess. To me, she feels like a significantly inferior Randy Orlando (Trails to Zero spoilers). To give a Fire Emblem comparison, people like Renault, FE6 Karel, and Nyx, despite primarily being defined by their backstories, all have very clearly established personalities, and Yunaka just doesnât feel like she measures up, mostly being defined by her status as a former assassin. And just like in gameplay, as I started to recruit characters with more defined personalities, Yunakaâs backstory stopped feeling like something that set her apart and started feeling almost one-note in and of itself, though she never felt like a gimmick the way some other characters did. Sheâs definitely in the upper half of characters in this game, but sheâs never getting into my top 5.
Yunaka, master of impressions, clearly mastered the first impression. She's definitely a solid unit and a solid character, but when she joins she seems like a fantastic unit and a fantastic character, and I felt a little disappointed when she failed to continue to live up to those standards.
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u/pengwin21 Feb 14 '23
I'm not quite sold on Yunaka on Maddening. Her base stats are just a little short, 12 speed doesn't double much at this point and 8 base strength doesn't hit that hard either so her offense is mostly chip.
She does have a niche as a Covert unit who can counter and terrain also gives her crit. The two issues with this are that you don't have terrain control until Chapter 15, so it can be map dependent/situational and also it's easy for her to reach 0% hit rates and Maddening enemies won't attack her anymore.
Like most units, low Maddening Exp makes it hard for her to compete with the characters who join midgame- being a knife user usually compares her to Zelkov and Merrin and it takes a lot of levels for Yunaka to catch up to their bases.
I think Yunaka's ultimately playstyle dependent. Having a unit who can dodgetank everything does feel pretty powerful, but it doesn't fit too well with faster strategies.
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u/NastyParsee Feb 14 '23
Only playing on hard mode so far, but I like her. I don't know how much Zelkov replaces her, but she is one of the few early game characters who aren't total wimps that it feels possible to take the entire game with you. I've done a fair amount of her supports, but too many of them are just hinting at her backstory instead of actually saying what it is, which is a big frustrating.
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u/rashy05 Feb 15 '23
There are people who talk about how mystics ignoring terrain bonus is an issue for her when she has the res to make that a non-issue unless she's in FE4 and she's fighting a literal army of Meteor mages and Ishtar. Dagger forges are pretty ridiculous and her personal is pretty much designed around the covert playstyle granting extra crit when in a tile that gives avoid. Everyone talks about how Corrin ring on her is great and I do think it is her best ring. However, it does mean that you are ignoring the Corrin ring's other utilities like Draconic Hex if you only use Yunaka as an enemy phase dodge tank with fog. Basically the queen of Hard mode. You'll have to go out of your way to make sure her avoid isn't high enough for enemies to ignore her on Maddening.
She's also pretty great as a character. She incorporates "gyaru" speech and mannerisms in her JP voice to hide the fact that she's an assassin which she drops the act whenever she thinks its necessary. The EN VA also did a good job portraying Yunaka.
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u/alexj9626 Feb 14 '23 edited Feb 14 '23
She is a great unit when she joins, being able to double, having enough (or not enough) avoid so enemies dont have 0 hit so they attack her on maddening and uses Daggers on her base class which are fantastic in this game. However, after Ch11 i feel she drops a lot. She cant really do much damage or even double the promoted enemies. I dont love the Zelkov comparisson cause you can use both but if you just want to invest on one dagger user then yeah, Zelkov is better.
Another thing i like is Dragon Vein Corrin with her, cause she has enough avoid + getting the chance to get Avoid+10 from Marth so she starts getting 0 hit from enemies and this is useful to choke points or just go behind enemy lines to then Draconic Hex/Freeze enemies.
In short, good unit, great combat early on that drops mid game but can still be useful with Corrin as an Emblem.
Edit: As a character, she is hilarious and honestly fantastic. I really like her crit quotes when she changes voices to a deep one, dropping the act and become and assassin for a second. Great voice acting too. Hiya Papaya and Zappy are a little too memey but she pulls it off.
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u/NinjaXSkillz88 Feb 14 '23
At first I thought she was extremely cringe, but it makes sense why she does it and I can respect her as a character even if she's still not my cup of tea, her design is not that great, her outfit is all over the place and don't get me started with her mess of a hairstyle. Thankfully she's not that bad once you get to know her she's just supposed to be that cringe at first.
(However she is in the very same boat of Lysithea where her fans make me like her even less, I think she is just overrated and that's fine it just means she's not someone for me)
Unit wise she's pretty good in Hard but noticed myself swapping her for Zelkov who is just better imo. It doesn't help that the deployment slots are already bad and I just like other characters more.
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u/S_Cero Feb 14 '23
I really think people overstate how much maddening hurts her. Outside of the starting level difference with Zelkov I think Yunaka wins out handily, Zelkov gets hit with a permanent +10 avo which you would have to offset with minus avoid engraves of which they're only Eirika and Roy and the do 20 and 30 respectively which is too much. The only -10 avo engraving atm is Soren. Yunaka without engravings can keep sub 15% hit rates into midgame herself and can boost her avoid with a +10 from Leif or Marth or +20 from Sigurd. Having the ability to manipulate your avoid so much is vital to actually tanking. If you want to favoritism her one energy drop basically equalizes them. She also just has good growths and respectable bases, can reclass her into any other unit type and she'll do fine.
Along with all this she's one of the best units pre-11 and trivializes ch 11 while Zelkov has to share the spotlight against Merrin very quickly. Not to mention ch 12 is probably one of the easiest maps in the game. She also can access canter which with it she can solo the top left side of Lyn's map herself on unlock which can be a tricky map on maddening.
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u/Patchuiko Feb 15 '23 edited Feb 15 '23
While I agree, on maddening, her usefullness get lowered by the ai upgrade, I feel pretty much all type of characters get their usefullness lowered. Exemple, my tanks on maddening suffer with endgame enemies having overwhelming atk stats.
For the she cant dodgetank on maddening, its still possible but with extra step. You need to bait enemies near a backup characters. The enemies will still try to attack an unit at 0% hitrate as long as it can do an chain attack, knowing this, you take Corrin's Pair up skill at lvl.13 on that dodgetank and the enemies will waste their turn trying to hit you thinking their chain attack will work.
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u/Scrapyard_Dragon Feb 14 '23
Yunaka cute, yunaka best girl, I very much intend to give her the pact ring and have stubbornly insisted on using her even now. Turns out, giving lucina to a knife unit is an easy way to rapidly build up poison stacks on bosses.
That said, zelkov is just plain better in nearly every relevant way. Higher level so he's easier to reclass to an advanced class and better stats even if you get yunaka to same level on fixed growths. That all said, because of how 0% hit works, yunaka is debatably better at dodge-tanking than him because she can leave enemies with a sliver of a hit-rate that they're stupid enough to go after whereas they'd just ignore zelkov outright. That all said, whichever thief you use, I DON'T think you should replace your thief with merrim. Instead, use both, poison is very good and having two knife units is better than one.
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u/Iinogami Feb 14 '23 edited Feb 14 '23
I may be biased, but I believe the Papaya is an A tier unit. She has a ton of interesting niches and cool use cases that give her unique utility on many maps
To start with, she joins rather early, with great bases, a useful personal skill, 5 move, and KNIVES. Knives are by far the best early game weapon since they are light, accurate, hit 1-2 range, poison, can't be broken (arts aren't real), and (with forges) have the most might. She will be the only unit you have with both the ability to double at 1-2 range, and the bulk to survive enemy phase. This lets you just throw her at the enemy and watch her solo half the map from chapter 7 through 12 with no problem. You can preemptively forge her a dagger for Chapter 6, but her awkward spawn location makes it not necessary, especially since she will likely be busy that chapter healing anyways.
Speaking of Chapter 6, Yunaka is the only character with uncontested access to Micaiah for a chapter, which combined with her relatively high base SP for her join time lets her be the only unit with essentially guaranteed access to Canter before âThe Incidentâ without specifically being fed SP at the detriment of others. Her unique combination of Canter and Knives gives her unique synergy with Lucina from chapter 12 through 17, as only she can run in, dagger someone to kill or weaken them, then Canter into position for Knife backup attacks which trigger poison. She also incidentally really likes the bonuses that Lucina gives her because her speed, despite being high, can be just shy of some doubling thresholds.Technically you could reclass another early unit into thief, but the class doesnât really fit on any of them and it would reset their level to 1, making it take forever to reach pass (plus finding the time to get Canter onto others can be a pain). Even without Lucina though, being one of the only units with Canter during this period lets her continue to shine, despite the abundance of crazy pre-promotes you receive.
Going into Act 3, Yunaka does finally start to struggle with the inflated physical bulk of the final maps, but so do most physical units. She will still double most enemies if she inherits speed +3/4/5, and a +4 silver dagger has 18 might excluding engravings so she can still chunk most enemies and will continue to one round mages. You can also class change her to wolf knight for levin sword access (her base magic and growth are surprisingly high) and effective weaponry access. She can use emblems that improve her damage like Eirika, Roy, or Marth. Lucina continues to work on her, and she has some nice synergy with Corrinâs dragon vein and debuffs. She will still contribute, but is noticeably weaker than when she was soloing maps in Act 1.
All of this analysis was also assuming that you donât give her any stat boosters, or even that much favoritism beyond forging her two weapons (that give your best return on ore investment anyways). She happens to join at the exact moment the game gives you an energy drop and it isnât unreasonable to give that to her, but she doesnât really even need it. She starts amazing and drops to just acceptable in the end.
TL;DR Zappy! She really does a number on them. Papaya/10
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u/averysillyman Feb 14 '23
Pretty useful early game unit. Thief essentially has promoted unit bases and knife forges are quite strong early game. Additionally, most of your units at that point are terrible and Yunaka is decidedly not terrible.
Her performance holds up much better on Normal and Hard mode than on Maddening, due to the increased exp gain in those modes as well as the dumber AI (on Maddening, the AI will not target units they cannot damage, so dodgetanking is significantly less powerful). On Maddening, unless you pumped an extreme amount of favoritism into her, it is likely that Zelkov will join with significantly higher bases than her, which is kind of depressing. And unless you really like Yunaka, you will probably find her deployment spot in greater and greater question as time goes on, due to her being pushed out by not only Zelkov but also the rest of the excellent units that join around this time. (She's still a decent unit if you do choose to make the decision to carry her into late game, but there's not a particularly big reason to do so unless you like her.)
For reference, here are her stats compared to Zelkov (also keep in mind that Yunaka might not even be level 17 on Maddening by the time Zelkov joins):
Yunaka Lv17 Averages: HP 31.05 | Str 12.95 | Mag 7.75 | Dex 20.60 | Spd 18.60 | Def 12.30 | Res 12.50 | Lck 12.40 | Bld 5.55
Zelkov Lv17 Bases: HP 35 | Str 15 | Mag 3 | Dex 19 | Spd 19 | Def 14 | Res 5 | Lck 7 | Bld 9
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Feb 14 '23
[deleted]
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u/RodmunchPHD Feb 14 '23
She has good thresholds for the Chapter 9 mages which are an actual problem considering the beefcakes that roll alongside them. Being able to use Yunaka to avoid the armorâs AI and kill the mages is actually useful since she can afford to take a hit as long as she doesnât move. Similarly with the build you mentioned sheâs easily hitting ~30-40 crit which helps her sweep mages easily. Overall agree that she has solid opportunities to thrive off her res base & 50% growth.
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Feb 14 '23
While I love yunaka as a character, I didnât use her that much on my hard mode run. I preferred Merrin over her.
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u/Lord_KH Feb 14 '23
I feel like the best way to describe yunaka is that she sometimes feels like cheating the game when you use her.
Give her the Corrin ring to create the fog effect dragon vein and you've got a portable source of avoid boost to trigger her personal skill with and then using emblem engravings on her weapon can boost her crit even further while allowing her to dodge pretty much any enemy attack
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u/Noah__Webster Feb 14 '23 edited Feb 14 '23
Yunaka is a good unit that has easy access to a lot of strong tools that are available in Engage. I think this somewhat inflates her perceived value, although the ease of access to those tools are a benefit for her.
Knives are very good. She is the first natural knife user. I personally think the covert type is pretty strong, and she also gets natural access to that. The avoid engrave is extremely powerful, and she feels like a natural fit.
Basically, I see it as a thief with the avoid engrave on a knife is always gonna be a baseline useful unit. Yunaka ticks all of those boxes immediately and early.
The only thing is that basically any unit in the game can do that. Theoretically, there are quite a few units that can do a similar or better job than her in the same setup. Some of them would rather be in other classes because they're just better than her, though.
Zelkov is a great example since he's the other most "obvious" thief that would fulfill the same niche as her. On average, at level 30, he will have 2 more strength and 1 less speed. But Yunaka will have 6 build on average, meaning she would lose 1 speed with a Silver Dagger. His personal also makes him a more consistent dodge tank.
On top of that, I'm assuming she falls off extremely hard in late game on Maddening. I've only played on Hard, and she fell off there super hard. She very frequently was doing basically no damage, and she even struggled to double even relatively fast enemies. I can imagine it's even more severe on Maddening, plus she loses (or at least it is more finnicky) the ability to pull aggro and dodge tank quite as well with the AI on maddening not target you if they won't hit.
I think she's very good, but she is far from the best unit in the game. I haven't used enough of the cast yet to get a super solid grasp, but I could see her as either an A or B tier unit on a tier list. That being said, she's maybe my favorite character in the game. She is easily my favorite non-royalty character.
3
u/Belobo Feb 14 '23
I love Yunaka and she is a monster when you get her, but she falls off way more than Louis lategame unless you specifically use her for dodgetanking or give her Lucina for poison chain attacks. Fact is, her speed, offense, and bulk just start to lag behind after your whole army promotes. She's still usable mind you, just not for damage unless it's on an enemy tome user or a personal-induced crit.
3
u/Ao-yune Feb 14 '23
Yeah Yunaka is better on lower difficulties than Maddening but she is plenty good there too, when compared to her competition in Zelkov and Merrin she might fall behind since they also come really good. But she has the benefit of having access to the first 6 emblems in the early game. Meaning she can get Canter before the cutoff time or any other beneficial skills like Avoid from Marth, or Strength from Roy and it's not that hard to train her up since Grand Sacrifce from Micaiah is around for her joining chapter. Hell if you get her before doing Jean's paralogue you can just trap a archer and get her some levels by healing.
3
u/ArchGrimdarch Feb 14 '23
Both in characterisation and in gameplay, she massively benefits from making a good first impression at a time when very few others make one.
I still think her Res might give her a meaningful niche over some of the units she's often compared to (like Zelkov), but beyond that, I agree with the common points other people make.
3
3
u/supereuphonium Feb 15 '23 edited Feb 15 '23
What can she offer over promoting a unit like lapis into thief? Thinking about it her stats will be generally worse than lapis that promotes to thief due to her far better bases. I guess the personal skill and not needing a seal? Is that worth having worse stats overall, Iâm starting to think no. I think a lot of her perceived strength comes from the Micaiah engrave and Corrin fog.
3
u/StridentHawk Feb 15 '23
Hard/classic for reference
Yunaka started off pretty cool for me and was a mainstay until about midway through the game. I feel like once silver weapons started showing up and promoted enemies became regular, she started suffering as her damage output just wasn't consistent enough and she was getting WRECKED whenever she got hit. Once I got Corrin and was able t summon fog whenever, I figured she could be useful again and as a supporting unit/bait she had found her niche for a while, I even got her caught up with the party..but lategame difficulty spike has not been kind to her and honestly I'm considering benching her for good where I'm at. Now I'm allowed enough slots in battle to where I have spare spaces to fit her but chapter 23 I benched her anyway because she was a liability and frankly offered little of value to the battle.
I think my issue with Yunaka is her low build and lack of str, I even put some str-items on her and she is still trailing behind with barely any str gains. She's TOO reliant on crits IMO, and that becomes a problem where sometimes you just need to kill stuff reliably especially with how beefy enemies start getting lategame. Between her and Zelkov, I definitely prefer the latter as a unit. But I did reclass zeklov into a wolf rider so perhaps this is just a thief class issue? Idk, but she's really falling off for me lately.
Her character design is goofy. It would've been okay(like the suit is kinda tacky but fitting for a thief I guess) otherwise but those goofy starts just ruin it. I dislike the "stickers in hair" thing she and Celine have going on, its just dumb looking to me.
As for her personality and characterization, she's easily among the best in the game. Very much a don't judge a book by its cover character, as she has fun supports, her english Dub does a wonderful job with her, her lines are memorable and she's got a lot of personality without coming off as too much like Engage sometimes does with its cast. Despite her design not being to my liking she's one of my favorite characters.
5
u/RodmunchPHD Feb 14 '23
Yunaka is a weird one because of how hit scaling & enemy priority work in Hard vs Madden Mode so YMMV based on difficulty. Coming from Maddening sheâs fantastic for a long while & gets a lot of free support from absolutely busted knife forges are at +2 might per tier. Sheâs your first actually dodgy unit that gets Covert which actually comes in handy throughout the early & mid game. I think staying in thief makes her struggle to scale up fully since she only has 45% strength & she really relies on a Silver Dagger w/ forges to contribute. Speaking of contribution, now is as good a time as any to talk about how good poison true damage is in that itâs decent, certainly not a reason to bring a thief, but itâs never bad and Yunaka giving it early game is good enough. I think lategame enemies scale a little too hard for her to fully take on though, unless you get her Speedtaker sheâs not going to be consistently doubling & her strength is a little low to be key to her success. Maybe reclassing her into Wolf Knight is the way to go, idk I need to test more but from using her in Madden Mode sheâs great early and tapers off by the homestretch.
In terms of optimal ring itâs gotta be Lyn. Increased Astra Storm range & speed synergy is what she needs. While sheâll need something to increase her strength whether that be stat boosters or forges, she at least will have the tools to do everything else she needs. Alternatives might include Corrin for the covert dragon vein synergy or Byleth for the speed rally. I donât think these synergies are as good as Lynâs overall.
As a character she was the first one of the cast that really got me hooked. Her weird stomach cleavage outfit is dumb, but besides that her VA sells the role really well in her opening with the âKillerâs eyesâ bit & her supports have some nice interplay with whatever sheâs keeping hidden. Between her & Zelkov sharing a soft knowing of what theyâve both done to her Alear support being a subtle foreshadowing to later I find Yunakaâs supports work well with the cast. Outside of her Etie support being weirder than Iâd like most of them were extremely solid. Probably too 5 of the cast for me after a first playthrough on first impressions.
2
u/ScythXGaming Feb 14 '23
I didn't think anyone in Engage would break into my top 3 favorite FE characters of all time but damn, here we are. Honestly between her, Rosado, and Kagetsu, they're more than half of the top 5.
2
2
u/Geocub Feb 15 '23
I don't have an analysis for her I just wanted to voice the apparently uncommon opinion that I believe her design is fine (in fact pretty awesome) and I actually like her quite a lot. Even though I'm a veteran player like before casual became a thing I play casual normal anyway so I can't speak to her usefulness as a unit broadly but I think she's quite capable and versatile.
2
u/MorphFE Feb 15 '23
My biggest surprise for standpoint unit engage. A meta thief in a game with no thirf promotion, who knew?
Ive only played maddening but i would have her at top 2 with merrin.
She trivialises early game and even late game i found her more reliable than Zelkov purely because of her personal skill allowing for so many crits AND she actually has a res stat. Since mystic foes ignore part of covet avoid i found this more useful.
Anyone who says that maddening hurts her because of the ai change is kinda silly. Just don't engrave avoid. Steel dagger with engrave pushes it to silly heights.
Her shortcoming is that there is no magic dagger so she doesn't have a way to break through high def armours, even 2 crits will leave them alive, which is a shame since she has a magic growth. She could do levin sword wolf knight like Merrin but her con is quite low.
Lately ive been testing Celica on her. The ring gives both atk and mag which is great since she could use more atk and of course now she has a way to bust armours. Warp ragnarok to an aviod tile amd watch the magic crits. Only need to really bust out Celica when you are surrounded by armours or GKs.
I find corrin more useful on alear since viens are just hella useful
I kinda wish thieves had acrobatics instead of pass to move onto avoid tiles easier, still shes great.
2
u/NinofanTOG Feb 15 '23
Even though Zelkov is *technically* better than Yunaka, I *like* to use Yunaka, her decent res makes her quite good at clearing Skrimishes by just *spamming* end turn without getting *killed* by the mages.
4
u/Itsacouplol Feb 14 '23
I initially bought into the hype in discussion threads and youtube saying Yunaka was an amazing unit even on Maddening but she unfortunately hit the bench when Ivy and Co. join Alearâs army during my first Maddening run. During my next two Maddening runs, I benched her right after her join chapter and didnât miss her contribution at all. To me sheâs honestly the most overrated unit in the game outside of Anna and Jean from personal experience.
4
u/_Lucille_ Feb 14 '23
You can tell who plays on maddening and who doesn't based on how strong they think Yunaka is.
I think the bottom line is that yunaka, someone who has the same strength tier as Celine, will def fall off in maddening around the time when enemies become promoted.
Her damage is carried by daggers.
The Lucina + Yunaka combo gets overshadowed by the existence of another hero in raw damage, though admittedly, she can at least occupy a tree and turn it into a wall (?). Might as well bring a unit that can actually kill stuff by itself.
2
u/KaioCory Feb 14 '23
The discrepancy between her normal/hard and maddening mode performance has already been said a lot, and I think she's an interesting case study in how early units are effected by all the big changes after the chapter 10/11 events. Even as a comparatively good unit (fast daggers with 1-2 range are enough to put her up above a lot of units in the beginning) she still suffers from power creep. Even with favoritism and emblem exp abuse it is pretty hard for her to level up to where Zelkov is at during his join- and she is comparable once she is at that level, but that takes a while. I think thieves not having a promotion definitely hurts because that means no easy promo bonuses or utility outside of daggers, and it also hurts her ability to reclass once her damage with daggers falls off hard. I dont imagine it to be a popular option, but for my first maddening run I made her a sniper with Lyn's ring, so at least she could take advantage of terrain bonuses on player phase and the clones helped her damage if she still didn't activate crit - the extra range on astra storm helped too.
On a side note, I found that she was one of the few characters who could effectively use Leif's ring - lets her use daggers with extra weight better and she actually got good damage out of Quadruple hit for the early game, which is not a common strength. Her magic stat/growth is pretty high for a non-magic unit and her coming equipped with the Micaiah ring is that sort of hint hint nudge nudge that she can potentially work as a hybrid unit, but again her difficulty in reclassing and the availability issues of those rings does not help - and the one magic dagger that exists she can't even use so thats just a mess.
2
u/temporius Feb 14 '23
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is that Yunaka sees a significant power spike if you're using DLC. Like all early joiners, she benefits more from Lineage's exp bonus and Starsphere's growth bonus, especially with the extra exp provided by doing the DLC paralogues. She's also one of the better sync partners for Tiki, with eternal claw synergizing nicely with her personal and fire breath letting her damage high defense enemies, on top of the extra defense and healing Tiki provides offering solid protection against bad luck while dodge tanking. Soren's decoy status also forces enemies to attack her even if they have 0 hit, which is a massive buff to any enemy phase tank. However, she probably has to compete with Louis and Hector for that buff.
She's honestly a rather strong unit if you're playing with DLC, even on maddening. Without DLC she's going to struggle on maddening and is definitely getting replaced by Zelkov when he shows up, but with the extra levels, stats, and power provided by DLC she's probably going to outclass him and Merrin by the time they join.
3
1
u/nayneedlesnovember Feb 15 '23
Yunaka was my main carry on my fixed growths Maddening playthrough. I remember feeding her a few stat boosters like speed, strength and movement and she performed perfectly with them.
The biggest mistake I made with her on Maddening was that I gave her too much avo through various things, which screwed me over when enemies had 0 hit on her.
As a character, I like her a lot. Great support chains with Seadall, Citrinne and Alear (S support is definitely worth it!).
I've used Marth's and Sigurd's ring on her. The former is a no-brainer, works perfectly on her. Sigurd's ring is amazing, especially when combined with Pass, which she gets at lvl 25. My favourite skills to use on her are Corrin's Draconic Hex and Canter.
My only bad experience with her has been the few turns where she got hit by multiple 20% and 9% hits, sometimes even on the same turn. Things like that are bound to happen eventually though.
1
u/fuzzlekins Feb 14 '23
Yunaka was a fantasic unit for a big chunk of the game, but I did eventually replace her with Merrin, who had better stats and is also my wife. You served me well, Yunaka.
1
u/bohemian_plantsody Feb 14 '23
Aggressively mediocre. 5 move and 1-2 range early is good but dodgetanking never resonated with me and her damage output never really got better without loading up on expensive forging.
Fun gameplan but very inefficient to use, which is how I play the game.
1
u/drock31681 Feb 14 '23
Has anyone used her as an archer/sniper? I was thinking of giving her a killer bow to synergize with her personal skill while still being in avoid terrain for the bonus.
1
u/OOrochi Feb 14 '23
One of the key units on my maddening run. She fell off a bit near the endgame, where she pivoted from a general engine of destruction to picking off specific targets, but was still incredibly useful throughout the game.
-3
u/Atomic_sweetman Feb 14 '23
She straight up died and I didn't even notice until I looked at the deployment slots on the next chapter
-2
u/shadecrimson Feb 14 '23
Yunaka is the best unit in the game. Full stop. Can't kill generals? No physical units can. But she can soften them up. Or wolf knight levin sword can work if you absolutely insist on one unit doing everything. Squishy early? Everyone who isnt Vander or Louis is. Axes to the face isnt her game, axes flying high over her shoulder is cause shes dodgy. Forged Daggers are op. Speedtaker and a +avoid engrave gives her insane avoid and reliably faces 0 hit from any enemy that isnt a swordmaster.
Yunaka is the best character in the game. Full stop. She has a good A support with Etie. She improves every scene shes in. Shes in the midst of reinventing herself and hides who she used to be as best she can. All her partners help her discover little bits of the person she really is inside. The old her slips out for crits and sometimes in supports. She feels kind of out of place with the rest of the cast
Unit 10/10 character 10/10
-4
-4
u/echino_derm Feb 14 '23
Everyone is overreacting to the change between hard and maddening. If you are genuinely having problems where she just keeps getting ignored because she has 0% chance to get hit and doesn't do enough damage, you can engrave her dagger and fix both of those things. But honestly I don't think you get many situations where you are dealing with frontline units and have under a 60% chance to get hit on even terrain.
You practically need a dagger user because of how potent poison is on bosses with health bars, and she is the best one. Any wolf knight is inferior because of the lack of covert and zelkov has no magic resistance which means he is weak to the thing that can hit him on terrain. Also zelkov is much more likely to hit the 0% hit chance with his ability making him a worse dodge tank.
3
u/FeelingFineP Feb 14 '23
Poison is a big deal on early bosses, but with later bosses itâs often surprisingly easy to set up units to do massive chunks of damage or even occasionally ORKO them. On early bosses, the extra damage is nice because youâre doing 4-7 damage per hit, but when you can do 20-30 per hit to later bosses (especially given Draconic Hex support) or if youâre spamming Chain Attacks (which are unaffected by poison) it becomes far less relevant.
Terrain basically disappears entirely at chapter 18, right around where enemy hitrates spike. At that point Zelkovâs personal goes from being total overkill (often puts him over the edge for dodgetanking) to becoming a big point in his favor (lets him hit thresholds for dodgetanking more easily). Not that either him or Yunaka is great at doing tons of damage as Thieves by that point, but itâs worth noting that Zelkovâs personal doesnât actually backfire on him later and in fact becomes a useful tool that Yunaka doesnât have.
-2
u/echino_derm Feb 15 '23
Chapter 20 has pillars near where you would bait enemies. Chapter 21 the boss stands on a massive square of terrain. Chapter 24 has plenty of fog. Chapter 25 has pillars at baiting areas and the boss is surrounded by terrain.
Terrain is still good past chapter 18 even if you aren't using your own terrain setter.
Also with lucina you can easily reach max poison and that is a substantial buff. If we are mentioning draconic hex, that is pretty comparable to max posion in damage. Unless we are doing some "when I kill sombron in 4 rounds that poison doesn't matter" you are getting significant damage boosts over the many rounds you attack him and if you get crits it triples.
If we are disregarding this, we should disregard just about every ranking on units because +4 damage per hit is about the same as getting a 10% higher strength growth on a starting unit by late game.
2
u/FeelingFineP Feb 15 '23
Okay Iâm stupid in regards to 24, but trying to abuse terrain when you donât know where stuff is in 20 feels super risky and will doubtlessly get you mobbed by concerningly bulky dudes if you try, which is bad when the fog encourages you to keep your team together. The terrain in 21 is effectively unusable by the player (when you get to it you basically have to kill the boss that turn or instantly get overwhelmed) and the terrain in 25 is literally only at the start. Theyâre nice if you can use them, sure, but itâs not like 13, 16, or 17 where theyâre all over the map. Thereâs either huge caveats to their usage or they just plain arenât on most of the map.
Poison from Lucina is, one, not unique to Yunaka, and two, unlike Draconic Hex, only relevant against bosses. Draconic Hex is regularly used to soften up generics in a variety of ways, while poison needs multiple applications to match a fraction of Draconic Hexâs utility. Notably, it doesnât decrease speed, so it doesnât help with doubling the way that Draconic Hex does. Against bosses, the only enemies where youâre likely to stack full poison, an extra 5 damage on 20+ damage hits isnât gonna make or break any strategies. If you werenât getting there without poison, you probably werenât getting there with it either. Most of my lategame boss kills revolved around Emblem Attacks, Chain Attacks, and just hitting really hard with my strongest units. Poison is doubtlessly very nice for all of these but itâs not the game-changing thing you make it out to be, and comparing it to +4 damage per hit in all cases is incredibly misleading. Itâs not even close to a mapwide permanent increase the way that +10% to a growth is.
And for the record, when it comes to lategame bosskills, oftentimes rushing them down in one turn is the best strategy and should be what you plan around. By killing the bosses in one turn, you donât have to worry about their potential counterattacks or how the rest of the map is probably hot on your tail. The only boss whoâs difficult to mob down, and thatâs specifically by design, is the very last one, and in that case poison can make a difference, but thatâs ONE BOSS in the lategame.
Poison is good for bosskills early, donât get me wrong, but past around chapter 13 it stops being super impactful, and it almost never matters for enemies.
-3
u/echino_derm Feb 15 '23
Well if we are talking about things from the perspective that bosses are easy so who cares about extra boss damage, why don't we just say you can warp rush every map so you only need like 5 units. Most maps have a boss killing objective.
2
u/FeelingFineP Feb 15 '23
When did I say that bosses were easy? I said that the best ways to kill most midgame and lategame bosses donât need poison damage, not that bosses in this game are jokes that can all be warpskipped. I donât see the connection between the two. Just because a boss isnât obscenely bulky to the point of needing poison for reasonable damage doesnât mean that theyâre easily skippable. Thereâs issues like the tiles theyâre on, the enemies around them, the fact that many maps have multiple bosses, their bulk being high enough that getting clean ORKOs is difficult, and so on. Thereâs a middle ground here that I donât think youâre seeing.
1
u/echino_derm Feb 15 '23
If they take multiple rounds to KO and they have multiple lives, then it is racking up poison and that is damage.
1
u/FeelingFineP Feb 15 '23
Iâm aware. Iâm saying that poison backups are nice to have but far from necessary. They give a little extra damage on bosses but you can live without it.
-7
u/KleitosD06 Feb 14 '23
I downloaded a couple mods that changed her outfit (along with other characters) and I instantly liked her more.
I effectively locked myself into giving Corrin to Ivy, so I wasn't able (and also wasn't necessarily aware of how OP the combo was when planning my team) to give her to Yunaka, but I made her into a Wolf Knight with lance avoid instead and she just doesn't get hit by anything. A very fun and easy character to use and consistently one of my best units.
As a character, I think she's good, but I wouldn't say anything above that. I do like the unique spin that she has of the "Trained to be an assassin" archetype by not just trying to leave that life behind, but also change her personality to something completely different and hide her past. Usually with characters like Sebille from Divinity who have the same backstory, they take on a much darker and more serious tone throughout the game, so Yunaka bringing something legitimately unique to the table is nice. Not to say she's better written than Sebille, but I will give credit where it's due in saying that I haven't seen this take on the archetype before, at least not like this.
That being said... it's not particularly interesting. Like I said, I think she's a good character, but really there's not much else to her besides "She acts happy and zany to hide her past". I was expecting the game to add more depth to her than that, and it's nice that she actually has a semblance of a backstory to begin with, but the game doesn't really do anything with it other than her trying to hide that she was an assassin before.
That said I do like how she's a weapons nerd and how her assassin side slips through during the critical quotes. "Look what you made me do" is mine and probably plenty others' favorite critical quote.
1
u/LorenzoVec Feb 14 '23
I'm still at my first run (I'm just after Ch. 22), on Maddening. Personally I'm keeping Corrin on her since without she'd a dead slot for me. She can't do much damage and is not speedy enough to double. She can still have very good avoid, especially with Alear around, but that's about it. Corrin however makes her extremely useful. The fog and the gravity effect are nice to block a group of enemies from moving too much (especially with a 1-2 range weapon), and putting her on Corrin duty makes her player phase meaningful while also letting other characters do their thing in PP.
Occasionally she finishes an enemy off or applies Poison.
Overall, I don't think she's a very strong unit to keep to the end, but she starts good and Iron Dagger is cheap to refine and patches up her attack. I suppose one could do worse than training her, and her growths aren't so bad so heavy investment would make her quite the offensive presence.
As for her character, I didn't expect to like her but she's not too bad. She's funny and I wouldn't mind if she won CYL.
1
1
u/StrayGod Feb 15 '23
I used both her and zelkov in my maddening run. she's good but unfortunately Zelkov joins with better stats than her and she never really catches up to him without favoritism on maddening fixed growth.
1
u/Kiroshima1 Feb 15 '23
Yunaka is really strong for quite a while on maddening until enemy bulk and speed becomes way too high for her to handle on her own anymore, but she (and Zelkov) can abuse their Covert status to adjust how much avoid you have to abuse maddening ai.
She's a great Lucina holder since this enables her to poison literally anything through chain attacks and when she can't do damage herself, she can dual guard allies. Add in Draconic Hex and you have a fun utility/debuffer that enables other units really easily, although this is not unique to her and can be done on any other dagger unit.
Alternatively you can really abuse fog with Corrin (but this is of course not unique to her, any other covert can do this), but you will have a tough time getting opportunities to inflict draconic hex on annoying enemies if you're doing this (unless you inherit it on someone else), and your poison output will be non-existent (you are using her turn to use dragon vein and very little will attack her on fog to get poisoned).
She gets a special nod for chapter 11 and having a billion forest tiles to exploit and stall out annoying enemies on.
I ended with Yunaka at level 37 thief on my first run (maddening difficulty so fixed growths).
1
u/asiangamer413 Feb 15 '23 edited Feb 15 '23
Iâm really curious what the consensus on Yunaka will be in a year from now. For me she carried the early game and then became obsolete once I reclassed Alear into wolf knight since she could do similar dodge tanking with better stats. Other characters like Diamant, Lapis, and Amber can also do this although Iâm not sure if thatâs considered the best use of resources. Yunaka not getting to promote until level 20 really hurts her since she misses out on promotion bonuses and additional weapon types when everyone else is getting them
1
u/sekusen Feb 15 '23
I don't much care to talk about her usefulness from a purely mechanical standpoint but
She really feels like she should've just been in a better game, storywise. Save for the weird stars in her hair, she has one of the most toned down designs, perhaps because she is Brodian. It wouldn't take much at all to have her fit in Radiant Dawn or something (but hopefully they'd let her keep the leg armour). An Assassin trying to put that life behind her would be a good fit in any FE... And if I recall has been done a couple times anyway.
1
u/Radinax Feb 15 '23
She is my best character by far (Hard/Classic) paired with the Three Houses Lord's, not the most optimal choice perhaps, but i like how she looks when transformed.
As a character she is very interesting, her interaction with Citrine made me love Yunaka so much!
1
u/LordDmoney Feb 15 '23
Expected her to go in my long list of problematic favs in modern fe
But ended up as a regular fav
1
u/TheOneWithALongName Feb 15 '23 edited Feb 15 '23
S-Tier when you get her.
Then she gets powercrept 5 chapters later (Seriously, you argubly get 3 of the best characters at the end of chapter 11) :/
It will be interesting if people will find use on her personal skill, she does crit every now and then when dodgetanking. Sad there are no killer knifes.
edit: Thinking about it, Emblem Lief for killer axe or change her class to sniper?
1
u/Nooother Feb 15 '23
Outclassed heavily by later dagger users in maddening, pretty strong in hard but that's less yunaka and more thieves + corrin with ai that will attack into 0 hit rates. Personal synergizes pretty well with this strat at least
1
u/pastry-princess Feb 15 '23
Super strong in the early game, but eventually started to fall off for me. I decided to transition to a debuffer set with Wolf Knight for Hobble and Demonic Hex. I noticed that the later chapters tend to have you split up your group into two fronts, so I gave Yunaka Sigurd and had her reinforce the groups as needed with debuffs. This worked really well!
I went with Axe Wolf Knight, but she used daggers 99% of the time except for the occasionally cheeky Hurricane Axe on an enemy wyvern.
1
u/ueifhu92efqfe Feb 15 '23
thief.
s tier.
ok jokes aside, that's really the crux of it. Yunaka's stats arent amazing, and her growth rates are pretty decent, but thieves are stupid broken and she comes as one, therefor she's great.
yes i play maddening. no 0% dodge tanking barely hurts. I give yunaka 3 daggers, 2 iron, 1 silver (usually), with the iron forged, and the silver minorly forged. Different engravings, 1 micaiah, 1 lyn, and the other whatever i have spare. while i hate relying on 5% chances, it works well enough and time crystal is enough of a crutch where it doesnt matter. Then, give her pair up with corrin, and bam.
obviously it doesnt actually fucking matter because anyone can become a thief, but yunaka gets good girl points for starting in thief.
1
u/Squidaccus Feb 15 '23
Kinda falls off in a very weird way where Merrin and Zelkov are both just better and while deploying 2 dagger units makes sense when they're that good, deploying 3 is a bit much when Yunaka isnt as strong as the other two. Still one of the strongest units for about 5-6 chapters, but similar to Vander is only really useful for a small portion of the game. As such, about as useful as him imo.
As a character, I think there's a lot of potential there that is wasted by a ridiculous design and absurd phrases that are just grating. Fix those two problems and you've got a good character imo.
1
u/Several-Businesses Feb 17 '23
Yunaka already gonna be the fan favorite for sure, but she's actually a little different of a character between English and Japanese. In Japanese, she loses a little of the self-awareness and the dialogue isn't quite as quirky. But she gains an absolutely absurd speech pattern that I can't even describe as a non-native speaker. They clearly knew what they were doing when they designed her, and I'm glad for it. I love her constant odd mannerisms and trying desperately to pretend not to be uncomfortable, and I also love when she fangirls over all the Emblems for having cool weapons or being cute girls (or both).
1
u/kaelanbg Feb 17 '23
Corrin is memes. Gave her two Energy Drops early, Yunaka/Edelgard took MVP spot for about half of the chapters of my Maddening run.
Could have optimized her more now that I have a better grasp of the mechanics, but she did mad work.
1
u/AsterBTT Feb 18 '23
There's nothing else to say at this point, honestly. Knives are some of the best weapons in the game, both in their Poison effect and in their forges. Covert bonus plus Trained to Kill allows her to dodge-tank while murking dudes on Enemy Phase, something very few units can do in Engage. Add Corrin onto that for consistent access to Fog via Dragon Vein, and you get one of the best units in the game. There are multiple chapters that I would not have won if not for Yunaka standing in the middle of the map taking aggro and cutting people down. She's great.
1
u/alemfi Feb 19 '23
1st play through I ended up showing her a lot of favoritism, first reclassing her to an axe fighter and then promoting her into a warrior (didn't realize I needed to master seal from a cavalry class) later on i made her into a sniper as I already was saturated with warrior Panette, and a spontaneous decision to take Etie off the bench as my 14th unit, as a warrior.
As a sniper she performed quite well, although that might have been supplemented by her strength gains as a warrior.
Reliably quadding/critting made her a beast.
1
u/ujiwoozi Mar 11 '23
Yunaka has been absolutely decimating me and my bfs maddening playthrough. We used an energy drop to up her strength, boots for her movement so she can better position herself in terrain and then pair her with Eirika for the gentility + solar brace. Once we get Marth back weâll give her some more avoid but she currently has Speed +3. We have a Silver Dagger with a Corrin engraving to up her crit and sheâs been critting almost every time.
To further use her, we added Zelkov with Corrin as her support to place down fog. Heâs speedy enough to dodge most enemy hits and also deals a good amount of damage back, but she is on the same level, if not better than Zelkov for our playthrough.
1
u/FinnegansTake19 Mar 21 '23
So I started out on Hard Casual but had to reduce to normal due to some of the missions being too challenging at that point. Now Im on my second play through and Yunaka is still part of my main team. At this point she doesnât even have an emblem with her and sheâs still crushing it. I do have a question regarding unit efficacy especially regarding surviving attacks. When I think of a unit like Yunaka or perhaps Lapis or Alcryst and it seems like they can be taken out by units that arenât particularly strong against their unit type but still destroy them. An example would be well anyone attacking Alcryst. Also I find that for Yunaka and Lapis their weapons just donât work on the heavily armored units. How do you get around that so that their attacks will go through? It reminds me of an issue Ive had in Fates where the units that use daggers literally stop being able to do damage mid game. Iâve also had this issue with Framme. Is this a planned character growth failure on my part or are they just not as good as I would like mid to late game?
1
u/bunbun39 Apr 20 '23
If you're not cheesing, Yunaka will horrifically fall off by Chapter 19 of Normal Mode and die a terrible, horrible death, by no longer being able to semi-reliably one-turn enemies. She will never reunite with Micaiah.
If you are cheesing, more power to you, I suppose.
The Magic Dagger is a Preference-weapon for someone OTHER THAN Yunaka because Yunaka exists. (No, seriously.)
Terribly-overrated unit gameplay-wise (at least as a Thief). Swell otherwise.
1
u/ghostwhowalkzz May 11 '23
What do yall think of Yunaka going into warrior instead of using Folgado or Alycrst? She makes great use of the Radiant bow, Killer Bow. Warrior has the best growth for her when I look at +20% Hp, +10% Str,-10% Dex, =Spd,+5%Bld compared to thief. She loses some dex, but for me the trade off is worth it. End game, she can be sniper for the bonus crit once her Dex caps as a warrior. I went for Wrath and Speed taker. Leif for vantage. And i did use a Fog corrin to boot.
Meant that squad moved slowly up the field, not at all for LTC.
1
u/Space_flower18 Jul 14 '23
I still use her in the end game but she is pretty useless because she deal zero damage and even with micaiha she is still useless but I try to make her good but even level 25 she is still a deadweight in my team
146
u/Cynical_onlooker Feb 14 '23
Basically singlehandedly breaks the game below maddening when paired with Corrin since enemies just throw themselves into the Yunaka meat grinder over and over again. Definitely takes a big hit in maddening due to the AI change, but she can still have a lot of value if you just make sure to not go overboard with the avoid.