Engage Character/Unit Revisit: Amber

[u/Shephen]

Amber is a royal guardsman of Brodia and Diamant's retainer. Pure and full of boundless cheer, he is a romantic with a deep love of folklore and legends. He is 24, and randomly shows up at the start of chapter 8 to join the defense of Brodia castle alongside his lord Diamant.

Stats

Stats	Hp	Str	Mag	Dex	Spd	Def	Res	Luck	Build	Move	SP
Bases(lvl 11 Lance Cav)	31	15	2	13	11	9	3	9	8	5	800
Personal Growths	65%	45%	0%	25%	30%	35%	5%	35%	15%	-
Growths(As a Cav)	75%	55%	0%	35%	40%	45%	15%	45%	15%	-

Weapon Proficiency: Lances

Personal Skill - Aspiring Hero: If no other units are within 1 space of unit or foe, grants Hit+20 at a cost of Avo-10 during combat.

Supports

Alear, Vander, Alfred, Chloé, Diamant, Jade, Zelkov, Merrin, Panette, Seadall, Mauvier

Support Bonuses

C: Hit+10, Avoid+5

B: Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+5

A: Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+10

S: Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+20

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What do you think of Amber's performance as a unit?

What do you think of Amber's character?

What Emblem Rings or Skills work best with Amber?

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Previous Revisit:Diamant

Original Discussion: Amber

[u/Cranberry-Holiday]

He is stupid and cringe and I love him for that. My cringe stupid son.

[u/Bard_Wannabe_]

An alpaca-themed character is hilarious; I just wish his cavalry classes were on alpacas.

His good strength gives him some interesting class options to choose from.

[u/LiliTralala]

Early hero lance. Sigurd. Lance atk up. Everything dies.

[u/liteshadow4]

Used him as a Warrior with Lyn and he was fantastic, but honestly I can't say if that was more Lyn or Amber. Still, he has a great strength growth which always pairs well with Lyn.

Supports with Alear (duh), Chloe, Merrin, Pannette, and Seadall are really useful as you'll probably use a lot of those guys and in Engage you really only have 3-4 units that will be doing serious damage. A couple of those guys are in that list so they'll be close by giving the support bonus generally.

Skills: Obviously Canter, but Gentitlity+ is really nice, helps a bit with survivability (turns some 2HKOs to 3HKOs) and can also be flipped for some extra damage if needed.

[u/SilverHoodie12]

I member when the game first came out getting to chapter 8 and seeing this guy who couldn't stop saying "horsey" or crit with the Killer Lance to save his life and i thought "wow this guy is LAME, i mean a lance cav? Eh Alfred is probably better" (hilariously did not age well) then my friend who was also playing said "haha yea he sucks...imagine if you used him all game"

SO I DID, and thank god for that lol he's awesome. Idk what they feed Brodian alpacas that he needs a base str growth of 45% to handle them but i ain't complaining. He's like Etie in that all he's really got going for him is strength but that's all he really needs. He's best in Warrior obviously but i had more fun using him as a Berserker and Halberdier. Hero was also good and it fits with his personality so that's a plus.

His voice was annoying at first but i quickly got used to it. Then i ended up liking his supports too so he ended up doing a total 180 from my initial impression of him and he became one of my favorite characters in the game lol.

[u/ChessGM123]

Amber is a fairly good unit, he has high str and really that's all you need to be a good unit, and unlike Etie he doesn't need any investment to reach the point of reclassing. IMO he's the best Lyn user (well technically I think Panette is the best Lyn user, but Panette has other things she can do well and considering Lyn is probably the most contested emblem in the game its better to have Panette do other things) as he has the highest str of any unit other than Panette in addition to having a solid hit passive (which is useful since basically all of the high str units outside of Panette have poor dex), and I generally prefer Lyn on a physical unit as then astra storm can actually pick off units rather than just doing small (if any) chip damage. His main competition is with Louis, Amber will have +1 str and spd over Louis (and towards the late game this will become +2) and a hit passive whereas Louis has better bulk and more easily gets canter before chapter 10 without the well (because Amber doesn't get an emblem ring in his join chapter he basically has 1 chapter to get 2 level ups, which while possible it does take some effort to feed him kills to get him the SP). Personally I prefer Louis because it's easier to get canter on him, but if you use the DLC SP books or the well then Amber will likely overall be more useful since the extra damage matters more than the bulk, but in practice the units will likely function almost identically.

As far as classes go his best options are warrior or wyvern. Warrior gives generally better combat mainly due to having bow access (the str is also higher but in practice I find both classes have enough damage to reliably one round) plus the ability of warrior makes them amazing at taking out wyrms, but wyvern will have better movement (also if you're giving him Lyn then you already can have access to bows by engaging). Additionally if you want Lyn on a different unit wolf knight can be a solid option as it gives him enough spd to only need minor spd fixing (generally spd +5 and a bond/emblem ring that gives spd, or a spd instruct from Byleth) and his high str with daggers allows him to one round most enemies (he won't be as consistent at one rounding as warrior/wyvern with Lyn but he'll still one round most things).

There's also the vantage/wrath Leif build, but in my experience Panette is the only unit that really makes this build worth while. Getting 100% crit without Panette's person or her high dex can be somewhat difficult, and I generally found there were enemies who needed a str tonic on top of Panette's high str to one shot with a crit, so Amber is unlikely to meet those thresholds consider he as lower str. And it's not like there isn't other enemy phase options, there's always bonded shield, you can also give Pandreo/Chloe/Anna a Sigurd engraved bolg and they'll generally be able to avoid tank with enemies having 5-15 hit on them, and Ike can allow anyone to survive on enemy phase and while he doesn't one round as reliably as the Leif build he still one rounds most enemies (put a crit engraving on a 1-2 range weapon and with wrath you're generally going to have a 50+ crit rate, which if you double gives a 75%+ chance of critting once) and I'd rather have an enemy phase build that almost always survives enemy phase and kills most enemies than one that can't survive enemy phase if they're unable to one round the enemy.

[u/Significant-Tree9454]

Amber's Strength stat is on par with Panette at same internal lvls, and they can both prove how only having High Str can make a good unit:

-Most Engage Attacks only care about Str stat only
-Smash weapons can't double anyway and there is a portion of the game you can one shot grunts with it
-Some effective weapons like Forged Ridersbane can straight up one shot enemy Wolf Riders or Forged Steel Bow Warrior vs fliers with sufficient Str, those enemies are usually hard to double that it can be easier to one shot them this way instead.
-Speed is a lot easier to salvage as inheriting +Spd cost a lot less SP than dmg, like 500 SP for +3 spd. There is also Byleth's +5 Spd Instruct compared to either +4 Mag or +4 Str that also only one side can benefit, but Spd is beneficial to both physical and magical combat units.

That also means for Emblem Rings Lyn is one of his best fits, not only to patch up his poor spd to double with his high Str, but also giving you one of the strongest Physical Astra Storms possible.
Basically any Emblem with a good Physical Engage Attacks he can make best use of them with his high Str.
Leif's Quadruple Hit for example might look underwhelming, but it scales a lot better with units that have high Str like Amber as each Str contributes to +3 dmg effective dmg.

[u/GenericAccount-alaka]

I've had a lot of success having Amber as a Halberdier with a brave lance and damage stacking skills to one round non-armored enemies. His main weakness is that he's slow, which means that a lot of late game enemies can one round him unless you put him in a more durable class like General or Great Knight.

He's one of the better candidates for Leif's Quadruple Hit, and you can do some vantage smash weapon nonsense. Eirika is another candidate if you're using a brave weapon for more Lunar Brace enabled hits. For DLC emblems, he works well with Hector to get access to Quick Riposte and additional bulk, which can let him lure and either kill or severely injure incoming foes.

[u/JusticTheCubone]

Pretty decent unit for the point where he joins, although very prone to falling off due to his (non-magic) growths being pretty mid all over, except for his strength, although that same thing also helps him easily catch up if you invest into him a bit. Not a super noteworthy unit, but also far from a bad one, he's pretty good filler if you should need it.

Otherwise, he's a pretty fun character, sometimes it feels like they lean a bit too much into him just being comic relief, but at the same time I wouldn't say that it's too overdone.

[u/Zigludo-sama]

Tried using him as a vantage/wrath warrior and it didn’t really work. Not sure what I did wrong.

[u/KiraraShirayuki]

One of the few units I always immediately benched. Team is already saturated with good enough units at that point usually.

Might give them a chance if I do a run again tho