Good, Actually - WAIFU: Clive 

Fun fact: if Mathilda dies before you can save her Clive will yell at Alm and call him a failure

He's not an out-of-the-box, all-purpose turbodestroyer; but he IS an effective, low-investment answer to an extremely common enemy type.

Man the editor is killing in this video, good work 👏

This was a very good episode, I like that you deconstructed a lot of the exaggerated weaknesses of Clive. While he may not be a broken unit, he’s overall a solid unit that does his job throughout the game.

I'd guess what it is is that Clive's poor first impression leads to players prioritizing resources on other units over him, leading to him continuing to feel mediocre without the speed fountain and promoing late, leading to continued prioritization of other units, resulting in a Clive that's probably only between level 2-4 Paladin when Mathilda joins. Since Mathilda will be doubling enemy horses and a neglected Clive probably won't be, that exp difference probably gets overcome in the map with the bajillion horses, and from that point, Mathilda is strictly better. TL;DR Clive's poor first impression probably leads to him actively performing worse for most players, to the point that Mathilda will be better for them.

The ridersbane is truly the best unit in all of sov

The thing I always find interesting about SoV in the context of unit comparisons is how many slots you have open for most maps. The whole "are they worth the deployment slot over other units?" question rarely applies here. Clive's low investment to be useful doesn't mean that you can't use Matilda (as long as you manage your resources well). And when Zeke comes along? Well, you can field all three if you want to, even if one has fallen behind the others. For these three especially, their high mobility helps keep them useful. I find this kind of refreshing for Fire Emblem honestly.

My opinion on Clive was sealed when Delthea mocked Mathilda in her support with Clair. Clive is good

Mathilda better watch out with how much I’ve been staring at Clive’s magnificent bowl cut these last few months 😏

16:38 I have literally never had a unit die to a teleporting witch, and I believe this is the reason why. I honestly had assumed that Witches were programmed to go after high Res units or units likely to survive, but it was just high Res Falcoknights and especially Dread Fighters were my preferred solo units on maps with Witches.

the bride edit on clive is great

Clive is the perfect WAIFU candidate as a unit who just needs a little help in one or two areas before becoming great, but without those benefits the unit gets dunked on. Mathilda is impressive out of the box and is easier to use in general but her lacking physical durability isn't fixed until promotion, making her much more of a complement of Clive than a replacement. I love Echoes for many reasons, but one big one is because it's one of the few FE games wherein the distinction between physical and magical bulk is incredibly meaningful.

Alot of people say "Just bench him once you get Mathilda" funny thing is, in reality Clive is actually better then her until her strong growths kick in atleast. So he actually does outperform her for atleast the entirety of part 3. His impressive bases and level lead easily carry him for quite some time. And even then, benching him entirely is a waste. Since the support bonuses he gives Mathilda are extremely useful later on.

25:31 man I sure hate it when the ridersbane user's *horse* kicks me for effective damage

5:09 The problem with the floor is that it is made of floor. Well, I can't argue with that.

God, the editing in your videos have gotten so good. Credit to everyone working on them

This is such a banger series. I really enjoy the chill yet passionate feels from these vids.

Looking at paladin bases made me realise how screwed my Clive was. 2 att, 1 speed and defense gained in all his levels as a paladin. When I replay echoes I'll definitely give him another shot

The problem with floor is that it's made of Floor. This is the high quality content I come for.

You know, access to a broken weapon on its own is definitely a boon that shouldn't be ignored, I agree Mekkah, you are correct, and logically, your next waifu candidate has to be Marty

Mekkah is finally embracing the Clive simpage, welcome aboard comrade

The editing in this video is insane

The production here is absolutely fantastic; beautiful, educational, and great video as always Mekkah and co.

The editing for this video is so amazing!! I really like this style. You can really see all the work that went into something you want to watch and listen to. Great job!!!!

If you're playing a limited grind playthrough (only fight each dungeon encounter once) and trying to limit reinforcement spawns, it can actually be really hard to get clive to hit gold knight by the end of act 3 without extreme favoritism. Clive kind of struggles in 3 of the 7 maps in act 3. Hell, to get clive to lv 6 by the time you reach the end of desaix's fortress is pretty hard. He has to average about 150exp per map to do this. The first is the mage forest where he struggles, the third has 3 enemies, and in the fourth he is most likely going to be killing zombies. Also if i remember correctly, isn't it hard to make a killer bow as well as forging the ridersbane? Unless the plan is to trade over a killer bow from celica.

YAY, A NEW WAIFU VIDEO. I love Clive and am excited to see the series back.

Clive has always been my waifu.

The editing on this is really good. Not that I don't also enjoy the tierlist content as well, but this is my favorite stuff you do. Well done!

Great editing on this video, perfect sound, transitions, and effects! Especially the parts with less gameplay, it really accentuates the script and makes the points very clear!

I was literally thinking about this series a couple days ago so glad to see its still going

Clive is probably the unit with the worst "unit feel" ever. It's like the perfect storm of mediocrity. For starters, he is ill fitted for SoV. Valentía is a land of crits. Enemies never get luck so any points in crit feel massive in this game, similarly, many units are left in awkward luck values where they are left with a couple crit per encounter. And while most enemies are bulky enough to take on 2.5 the damage you deal, they are not capable of take 3 times it. Likewise a bulky ish unit like Clive can be eroded easily by these little errors in the matrix, limiting his defensive utility. Literally every time you showed Clive "safely" taking on a witch, I had to hold my sphincter, they had an average of 4% crit on Clive, hitting for fatal damage. Might not be doubling, but he is still dying. Can be fixed, with the Mila statue, just forfeit your weapon, so, no; phyton gives him 3 dodge same as A rank Matilda, of which, I guess no one ever figures and maybe looks up in FEWOD, like this. Just doesn't feel good on crits. Now then, I've never seen mounts as useful in this game. There's never any side objectives, no canto nor any form of rescue and the reposition is borderline crippling. You are getting a weakness for something trivial. Movement is only useful when you have somewhere to go. So the only good places to go are defensive terrain tiles, of which mounts get terrible movement penalties. In a nutshell, the merc line feels a lot swifter in terms of reaching safe positions to dodge tank. After all of that, there's another annoying quirk the cavs have and it's their class stats. Overall, not amusing and this shows when promoting. SoV already has depressing promo bonuses, since they work on class minimum stats (like fe16) but cavs are just bad at stats. To make matters worse, Clive's growths fall in line with the class growths, so he is often obtaining just hp upon promoting. This might be a hot take, but cavs by themselves don't feel good in the game. Then, compared to Matilda, she is just a much more fun unit to play with. High luck so no crit, paired with good speed and skill to double, avoid and crit, lower level and higher growths so she will rack up power fast. Funnily enough you mention Clive having an edge over Matilda in the cav chapter, and, that's like her training arc. She can easily eat the cavs while sitting on tree and waiting. She will eventually need healing but physic exists, so no issues there. She can tie levels with Clive easily there, by that point, the difference in defense is negligible, hp is the only difference and she gets a huge rubber banding for her low joining base hp. She ends up the better cav, all the advantages Clive had can very easily dissappear in a single Matilda level up. Even after investing a lot on him. Oddly enough, if he was worse, he would be a lot more fun. It's just fun to train scrubs and he isn't, he just fills the slot. He isn't double critting like a merc, taking a hundred hits like an armor knight, nor smiting things like a mage. He is just there.

nice ridiculously high effort vid, I can tell this was trickier than normal

On top of being a much better unit than people think, Clive is also an absolute gigachad of a character I do not trust those who dislike Clive or find him "boring"

Talks about how using turnwheel because of unreliability is a bad argument Continues to say you can turnwheel whenever Clive gets crit (which can happen 2/3 times in a playthrough, if not more often)

Excellent editing as others have said. I learned the speed boost trick from you when you did it on the channel playthrough with Bis. Pretty nuts how that one relatively small investment makes Clive jump from fringe mediocre to being one of your better units on Alm's route.

Four Kings shows how good Clive is. In it, you get Locritus, a Wyvern Rider with the same stats and growths as Clive, with a Prf that destroys enemy fliers. He's great. Play Four Kings.

My waifu is here

Wow the editing is amazing here. And the art. Very beautiful

Dang the editing is crazy in this one. Mighty good stuff

Ok step up in production quality

This video is very well done Mekkah. The editing is getting top tier; so much so that I feel guilty for just listening! Keep up the good work. :)

I've played through Echoes only two times in total, but in both Clive served the similar purpose of basically being a mobile tank. The thing about my playstyle is that I like investing into units that can turn out good just from Experience, and Alm's army has a lot of these. Alm himself, Claire, Python, Kliff, Mathilda, Delthea. So I saw no good reasons to give Clive the good weapons, the stat boosters, etc. It felt like I was giving a mediocre unit a chance to be just as good as others that could get there just from feeding them experience. At the end of the day, though, Echoes lets you deploy ALL of your units in overworld story battles. It'd be silly not to use Clive anyway. But will I invest into him to make him good? Take him into lategame dungeon battles? Into the Thabes Labyrinth? Nah. I don't think so.

I'll admit, I was one of those people who said that Mathilda was much better than Clive, though I have since realized that Clive isn't nearly as bad as I thought he was

The editors you get always do such a great job. Thank you to everyone who are helping bring us these wonderful videos.

Wonderfully crafted video. I’ve never felt too strongly on Clive, but this video has definitely given him an edge to the positive for me. Well-spoken, great to both watch and listen to, and very creative with the editing and format. Props to everyone involved!

Clive is probably one of the more underrated units in SoV. He has a lot of opportunity usage that other units lack when he is available. With base stats, he is close enough to crucial target numbers that you can make up for them with a couple of fountains. He and Python were the hard carries of Alm Act 3 in my playthrough. YMMV if you're not aiming for quick clears, but the fact that he enables those quick clears to begin with makes a difference. It's the same idea with having two Villagers promo to Mage, while the third goes Merc in Act 1. Late game, physical units will tend to trump magic ones, but physical units suffer through Act 1 due to poor bases and lack of significant damage sources. On the other hand, having two Fire users plus the Lightning Sword makes it so that you can burn through Act 1 efficiently. That doesn't mean that physical Villagers or Mathilda should be overlooked. They technically end up having a better return on investment. But the investment cost is high, whereas you have fountains to guarantee that you can pretty much meet all target numbers with Mage Gray, Mage Tobin, and Clive even if they were to be RNG-screwed.

YEEEEEES! I recently played a Blitzkreig run of SoV with my little sister, it was her first FE game. I benched Clive in my other playthroughs because I didn't give him enough attention and Mathilda was just better. However, in my run with my sister, I dedicated myself to using Clive and giving him a chance. He turned out GREAT! I even gave him the Gradivus since I made the Rhomphaia for Mathilda (it's broken on her, I stand where I stand). I normally use Zeke or Mycen in endgame, but Clive was way stronger than both of them. Not as strong as my Mathilda, but I have a new appreciation for Clive as a unit

Holy shit this video was amazingly edited, kuddos!

Freaky I just reopened Valentina when this came out! First run I did very minimal grinding and didn’t use fountains so I didn’t see Clive as that good. This new run I did some decent grinding and paid attention to giving attention to weak stats of certain characters, particularly Clive and Tobin and I’ve found great use out of them!

I love the new editing, very nice bro

I’ve never considered Clive to be terrible whether I’ve used a pitchfork or not on him. Although, he certainly is a popular candidate to use a pitchfork to boost him however you please. You highlighted exactly the reasons Clive gets a ton of bad impressions from other players gameplay-wise. It was very insightful to learn the ways Clive can be a bit of a sleeper unit when you have good knowledge of the ways to make him better throughout the game. I also think Mathilda is very amazing and there’s no reason why not use both of them (they also provide good support bonuses too) and even alongside Zeke late game. It was also interesting to learn a small quirk about the witches when using the turnwheel (even though I’ve never used it once outside of activating it for the achievement). A very unexpected Waifu video, but it’s one I appreciated watching a lot.

I am currently playing echoes and saved mathilda yesterday, both have the same level and same class, both have a steel Lance. But mathilda has MUCH higher stats, i don't remember the exact stats, but it's an almost 20 points difference in the total stats.

"[Matilda] takes almost no resources, and can still be useful" "[Clive] is past his peak [in the last stages of the game... He is far from the MVP..." I feel like those two statements kind of sum up Clive's problems (though he's hardly alone in this). Yes, he performs well in an LTC, with a combination of his availability, promotion bases, well-timed SPD boosts, and well-timed forges... But even then, he still falls off eventually. That, and SoV is one of those games that rewards snowballing AND has extremely powerful lords... Enough so that you honestly don't need a large team. Alm & Celica have the bases, growths, weapon choices, and spells to get by mostly on their own... Plus the ability to swap gear and healing items in and out. That's not even getting into Pitchfork shenanigans with Lukas & Valbar. So if you're like me, you're not really going to use *anyone* that isn't either investment-free, or a blast hit in Acts 5-6. Of course, that applies for most of the game's cast, so I can still see your argument-that he still performs better than a lot of the other scrubs.

See also : Base over Growth

Great video. I'll definitely give Clive another chance when I replay SoV one day. As mentioned in the end, the meta knowledge is definitely key to unlock his potential, which I lacked in my first playthrough, and he ended up too slow to be significant despite trying to use him. I look forward to more WAIFU videos in the future.

One correction on doing all the business before finishing Act 1: Enemies won't spawn in Act 3 until you've cleared at least one map on either side.

clive is one of my favorite pitchfork candidates. Covers a lot of his weaknesses while improving his already solid strengths

W.A.I.F.U. makes its return! Clive wasn't the unit I was expecting the most, but he's in an odd position due to his fame in-story, but his performance in-game does leave something to be desired. Of course, interesting maneuver...

This episode is SO good. The editing is top notch as well

So... er... Long post ahead. I've not written it yet but, yeah. Fortunately this video is now over a week old so this will never gain any traction, and since my goal isn't to publicly fight you or anything, it's for the better. I do hope you read it though, obviously. Anyway. I usually agree with the vast majority of your points, and even when I don't, your stance is generally well justified. This is something I greatly respect, and thus... this video felt off. I actually replayed (most of) Echoes to refresh myself on things and making sure I wasn't just remembering everything wrong (and some of it I did remember wrong, for the record), hence why I'm only making this post now. I will not dispute that Clive is a good, underrated unit, and a good candidate for a Waifu episode. The argumentation itself is what I have problems with. I'll just mostly skip what we agree about; it exists though, of course. Early investment in Clive : You... kinda openly suggested grinding right there. I wouldn't even say that's necessary either (getting him to Paladin before Zofia Gate notwithstanding, as I don't think that's generally happening), with two quests in Zofia Castle encouraging you to engage with non-story battles. I won't be the one to tell people to just ignore meaningful content. I have considerably more of a problem with the Spd fountain charge. Now it's just one charge, yes, but between mage villagers really wanting several, it being a great way of liberally fixing up any unit that gets speed screwed early on, and also something that no one ever seems to bring up, which is that Celica's entire team has access to it at the end of Act 2 allowing very effective juggernauting when combined with her own fountains (+6 Spd Killer Bow Leon is a trip, for example), I think it's decently safe to say no one can really claim a charge of this thing. It is true that Clive is far from the "wrong" choice however, IF he's going to be your Ridersbane guy. which brings us to... Villager Cavaliers vs Clive : Okay so, I'm not going to make the argument that Gray or Tobin are especially worth using as Cavaliers over Clive. This can be debated, but just like you, I'm only going to speak of Kliff, since he's fairly obviously the best candidate. 1 : "Kliff requires more investment(paraphrasing)." I don't think his growth taking place as he's one of the main assets on your team qualifies as investment at all. Every single map from Thieves' Shrine up until the Deliverance HQ greatly favors high movement and above average defense. Even once the lightning sword has happened and he's clearly outclassed in combat, he can still enjoy the advantage of fighting two turns before everyone else in a Warp-less environment. 2 : "Kliff and Clive are comparable stat-wise at this point" Okay so your averages seem to assume gaining stat points through any other means than levelling up should reset pre-built decimals and I don't think that's accurate, but that's minor, moving on; Kliff has one pretty big advantage here, which is that he's extremely unlikely to hit averages on all his stats. Some will be better or worse. But the way Echoes promotion work and how it overrides the bad ones, means that low base-high growth units will in most cases be better than their averages post promotion, which is obviously not something Clive gets to take advantage of as a fresh Paladin(ironically this is relevant for Zeke vs Clive however, which may be why your Clive was better). For instance, my own Kliff on this playthrough got Spd screwed, but Def blessed. The resulting Paladin was the one you showcased, except with 3 more Def, making the choice between him and Clive a no-brainer. Most importantly, Kliff's Spd, Lck and Res advantages are not to be understated. The speed resources Clive needs to keep up, Kliff doesn't need, and they can go to mages or archers so they can enemy phase with the Killer Bow. More Luck means better Crit and Magic Avoid too, though yeah, trash crits matter way less here, for sure. Most importantly though, the magic users Clive has to constantly plan around throughout Act 3, Kliff can just engage with everything else. 3 : "Villagers are better off as other classes such as Mercenary". So I completely agree that every villager "composition" should have at least one Mercenary. Heck, one may argue for two, though the second one will struggle to keep up without the lightning sword to carry his earlygame. But I don't with the statement as a whole. Now why should Kliff not be that mercenary ? Well because it's like the one class he's not particularly better at than the other two(Mage Tobin being another debatable exception). Making Kliff a cavalier instead of the other two gives you a better cavalier, when making him a mercenary just gives you another mercenary. This is somewhat true of Archer as well. And out of his other good choices, it's hard to debate that cavalier is the most useful, as as you've demonstrated yourself throughout this video, it's an amazing class in Act 3 and most of 4. Now when it comes to the Ridersbane, aka what this is all about really, I get your argument that Clive always exists and can always make great use of it. But beyond his annoying dislike of magic users, the important part is, it's a great idea to make Kliff a cavalier even if he never gets to use the thing at all. And from there, he's its best user, so why shouldn't he get it? Furthermore, it's fine not to use Clive, because a team of Kliff, Mathilda and Zeke is generally all the Gold Knight-ing you'll need. And if to the question "Can Clive be better than Mathilda if he gets the Ridersbane" I do think you provided a pretty solid answer, a Clive without the Ridersbane will usually fare much worse. He's also a pretty bad longterm pick for Act 6, though best not get into that I suppose. Basically Cavalier Kliff existing is probably the biggest argument against making Clive as good as he can be, and beyond my above disagreements, I mostly think he should have had a... different place in the video. Witches : That one's gonna be short but I do have to bring it up, even though as you said, Witches don't have as big a presence as people seem to think. After some testing, I can't see where your statement that Witches will always walk instead of teleporting if you turnwheel a teleport came from. It's not a thing, and unless I got RNGed hard, it doesn't seem to lower the odds even. I've tried with rewinding to the start of the enemy turn and before the witch's action, neither were failsafes. It's still a good way of changing their action into a more favorable one, but this was still a weirdly specific piece of misinformation. As for the other part, while it is true that Clive can be protected from them if he's not isolated, him being isolated ahead of the team is like, his entire thing. Again not a huge deal, I just didn't really like these arguments. Clive vs Mathilda : As said above I think you provided a decent case and this was definitely something that warranted addressing. Namely, Clive's level lead giving him earlier Gold Knight access is a real advantage, even though I think that exp fountain might be best used elsewhere. Couple things I did want to say though: - Clive may be around for longer, but he's only great in two out of those five maps (one of the two barely being a map at all), and pretty bad on two others. If you rush to Desaix's fortress to cut down on cavalry reinforcements instead of going to the Forest village, you should also only face one, which lowers the level difference since those are basically free level ups for a Ridersbane user. - Mathilda can also OHKO with the Ridersbane if you forge it to 3 stars, which you can do right then and there, and will do eventually, so why not ? Also, Clive's OHKOing with the 2 stars version is not all that reliable. - Mathilda can definitely hold her own just fine on that map you showcased. She can only take three hits from the Iron lance wielding Cavaliers, but those are the minority. The others she can take 11 hits from at base level. ... okay I think that's all actually. Now I understand (and enjoy !) the concept of these videos, and do agree that Clive deserves more credit and spotlight than he gets. I just don't think the facts were always there on this one. Thanks for reading if you have, and have a nice day either way. Looking forward to the next video.

Just finished watching mekkahs SOV ironman. The timing of this video is impeccable

On the topic of needing meta knowledge to get the most out of him, this can be a real detriment to how a lot of people view him especially when they use fountains for favoritism on other units. I for example like giving Faye stat boosts just because it's funny to me to see a cleric doubling enemies even though she probably has better things to be doing as a cleric and all with physic, rescue and eventually anew. Not to mention until she's a saint she'll have a shaky 60 hit rate. As a result Clive kind of gets left without what he needs when I play like that.

Honestly those closing remarks are something I love about these analysis videos. Not only are they great and informative, but answering the question of why certain units feel good/bad to the average player is just as important. Clive doesn't have the flash and shiny noticeable power of other units like Alm or a mercenary, he requires understanding of the game that a blind player doesn't have, and his first impression isn't great. I think it's always interesting seeing how misconceptions surround units and how a casual player uses a unit differs from someone more experienced, Seliph being probably my favourite example of this, since he varies from "solid, reliable combat unit" in a casual play through, compared to the living god he becomes if you optimise his inheritance and exp gains.

Wow, I didn't know Clive was seen as bad unit for some people I found him reliable throughout the whole game.

So basically, if you grind to promote Clive before Act 1 endgame, then give him a speed well, then let him use the Ridersbane instead of any of your other units, he ends up being comparable to base Mathilda in the critical stats (while being significantly worse in the "not critical but REALLY nice to have" stats), and then if you give him further limited resources he ends up better for a brief period before potentially getting outclassed by base Zeke anyway. Is it really that surprising that most people, who aren't going to do all of that, end up underwhelmed by Clive? If you're not playing in a way that makes him snowball his level advantage will probably be minimal by the time you get Mathilda so the earlier promo doesn't happen, and if he's not snowballing then even though he's around for longer, he probably wasn't doing anything that important in that time, so the availability difference barely matters. Also Mathilda actually has good growths in a game where most units don't, and if nothing else, that's satisfying.

I randomly thought about this yesterday in chat. and somehow here it is!

i love these drawings!

You can actually get a +3 Ridersbane as soon as you reach the Forest Village. If you have Celica finish up her side of Act 3 first, she can use a peddler to send Alm the Rion Shield from the Desert Stronghold. Alm can then give the shield to Lord Rion in Zofia Castle and receive a Pegasus Cheese, which can then be given to the cheese lover right next to him for an Exotic Spice. The Exotic Spice can be sold to the blacksmith for three Gold Marks, which is enough to forge the Ridersbane to its maximum level. This does mean you'll have to suffer through Celica's maps first, but it's worth it, since it allows Clive to double every single Act 3 Cavalier if he has just two extra points of Speed above his base, which he can reliably receive from his Paladin promotion and a drink from the fountain in the Thieves' Shrine. With the extra weight of the +2 Ridersbane, Clive would have to get a lucky level or two if he wanted to double the faster Cavaliers, and most people would prefer not leaving this kind of thing up to RNG if they could help it.

First time I played SoV, I was using a stat well distribution guide. And they recommended giving Clive 1 or 2 speed wells. Unfortunately for me, I skimmed past the part where they said to make sure you promote Clive *before* using the wells. So cue one surprised pikachu face when I realized I royally screwed up and wasted the wells. Restarted the whole game because of course I had already saved over my progress. Thankfully it's just Act 1, so I was able to quickly get back to where I was by skipping dialogue.

The editing on this video is actually nuts, please treat your editor well.

I think that the reason why Clive is considered a poor unit is because very few players play for efficency and instead grind up their units to easily crush most of the challenges in the game. As such, Clive having more mediocre growths makes him look meh in comparison to a fully trained up villager cavalier and Mathilda or Zeke. However, once you start playing faster and focus on saving turns you start to realise how valuable Clive's physical bulk is, his ability to reach enemies quickly without warp, not needing to be trained up while suffering from bad combat like villager cav does, being an excellent user of the ridersbane and having good availability. It's just that the strategies that make units like Clive, Leon, Cecilia and others thrive aren't well known and most players preffer to play at a much slower pace than people that spend their time making LTC tier lists and fall into pitfalls like overrating growths or benching him for Mathilda. And due to these reasons Clive just feels meh to most players, despite him being pretty useful overall.

The editing on this video is top tier lmao

after doing a no recruit run on classic hard, i've learned to respect Clive as a very good unit if you actually train him up

I'm honestly surprised a lot of people aren't rocking with Clive. Act 3 has the best atmosphere and vibe to it. I love the flat grassland battle fields with a horde of cavaliers charging in and Clive impaling them with a ridersbane is just so awesome. To me Clive was the best combat unit I had in act 3 and he left a great impression. Even after I got Mathilda and gave her the ridersbane and babied her to catch up with the rest Clive was still super strong with the steel lance. I didn't even have a RNG blessed Clive he just was great at killing what he needed to. You Clive haters are tripping

the EDITING IS SO GOOD. and good video

I love this edit. But some part of me miss when I didn’t even hear what you were saying because of your bad mic.

Great Video Mekkkah

Man I hope you do another waifu video soon these are my favorite

Ha what a coincidence I just started the game 2 days ago then this video came out, I my first impression of Clive was bitter at first but you definitely changed my mind here! Thanks Mekkah :)

"Bad first impression" is right on the money. While I have kept Clive around before (to good results!) I distinctly remember dismissing him for Mathilda on my first SoV playthrough because he kept missing. But, I did the same with Hector on my first run in his game (he missed like 4 times in a row), so I'm certainly not the best jusge of first impressions. One thing I still stand by after many playthroughs though, is that the Cavalier tree as a whole just feels underwhelming to me in SoV and that directly reflects badly on my opinion of Clive and Mathilda. Sure, they have decent move, but Peg Knights are generally better utility and Mercs eventually also get as much speed and are far more evasive throughout. Not to mention archers, who don't move as much but can attack from huge range in this game. I know comparing classes goes beyond judging a single unit, but cavaliers just feel bad in SoV.

I may have to give Clive another chance now after this video. Amazing work as always Mekkah!

Man I loved using Clive in my last playthrough, and I really like your points here for how he can be good.

this is definitely changing my perspective on him, I normally hate cavalry units & so I never use the ones the games gave me, in fact I only go Cav Faye with the star to max her growths then pitchfork to max villager before going to a magic class Frankly it has been a while since I’ve played, but I have like a max capacity of how many characters I can care about of 10-ish, like we already have the villagers, the lords, so that just leaves four spaces & I don’t see Clive taking any of them I still want to try and get all of the renowned metals, & I believe I’m missing LTC one, so this Clive & maybe pitch forking Matilda into a mage might be my new plan

Is this always how WAIFU was edited? This is everything, thank you editor!

Yeah I commented on your tweet that he has movement so a lot of his weaknesses don't matter, also Echoes let you field most of your units without a hassle. I'm glad it's mostly aligned with your points. I don't think any cavs are particularly super disadvantaged in combat either, so one would have to slightly play past any shortcoming

Also seeing Clermit referenced in this video, when I know the person who started it, is pretty wild.

never understood the clive hate. give him forged ridersbane youll be set for act 3 and beyond

Oh my god Diogo is going to come here isn't he

Clive gets screwed by UNIT FEEL. That's also the reason people prefer Mathilda imo.

I'd love to see more WAIFUs of Gaiden/Echoes characters

Great analysis. To add my own thoughts, I believe that Clive and Mathilda are different enough to have their own, unique niche over the other, meaning that neither of them truly outclasses the other. Clive has a very strong performance in act 3 that can only partially be replicated by Mathilda. On the other hand, Mathilda significantly outscales Clive in act 4 as the gold knight promotion basically fixes all her issues whereas Clive's issues will never truly go away. Also, thanks to her ridonculous speed, Mathilda can actually use another hidden potential of the ridersbane (after stabbing a few dudes on horse with it): Romphaia. While she will have to land a lot of hits with the thing to unlock it, Dragonhaze is one of the most ridiculous skills I've ever seen on such a fast unit (by the end, Mathilda can easily(!) break 20 speed, especially considering that I counted *at least* 12 speed boosts in this game, if not even more). And Romphaha Mathilda is able to OHKO certain units that Clive doesn't well against (mostly dread fighters) and can oneshot even a LOT of bosses if you get a critical hit (which is honestly not that unlikely as the weapon has a pretty nice crit bonus and the skill increases that even further). Basically, Clive is the better short-term investment, Mathilda is the better long-term investment. Depending on what you need more, choose one over the other, or just use both. You could even start with Clive and then transition into using Mathilda over him later. That's one thing I like a lot about fire emblem: there is more than one possible strategy.

I played Echoes for the first time about a month ago. I almost never used cavalry in general in that game, but when I did it was only ever Conrad or Mathilda. Upon her recruitment, I slapped an unleveled ridersbane in Mathildas hands, threw her at the horde of riders on the left, and let her do some work, before running back for healing. Her high res gave her a use for me against mages, and her levels and some stat boosting made her tanky enough to reliably kill multiple mounted units. Clive got benched basically on arrival (not actually benched, because no deployment limit, just basically never utilized beyond the occasional physical meat shield) because I was too busy trying to feed kills to my fliers Faye and Claire (which actually ended up saving me some headaches later, but that's a long story). Basically Clive, at least to me, seemed bad, mostly because I didn't invest the admittedly small initial investment cost to make him useful, and instead distributed those resources in different ways, some of which went to his wife who did end up vastly outperforming him in my playthrough. Actually my Mathilda got so beefy that she outperformed Zeke. Yet for the final map, the only Cavelry I used was Conrad, because you're limited to 10 units per lord and I very much so had an army of mages ready to be used for Alm. (Alm, Luthier, Delthea, Mage path Kilff, Archer path Tobin, Mercenary path Grey, Flier path Faye, Claire, Silque, and Tatania)

When I beat the level where you save Mathilda I took a break from the game for a few days. When I came back I had forgotten about her and didn't free her. I remembered several chapters later and went back for her. Her stats were still much better than Clive's.

I still think Mathilda is better than Clive, but I do appreciate him more now. I never thought he was bad, and always used him in combination with his wife. I severely underestimated how good he was with just a little investment. I may replay and give him another shot.

It's frustrating, because he is the ONLY unit besides Tatiana who has ever given me trouble when i try to use them... And i KNOW he can be really good, and it makes me sad that every interaction i have with using him ends in frustration... In my latest playthrough, i gave myself the insane task of grinding every character to level 20 in their highest classes as early as possible (including overclasses), and i HAD to recruit every character i could! And even with the EXP grinding DLC, this took SOOOOO long! However, for most of the characters it was just a matter of either parking them in front of the enemies and watch them do 5 damage at best to my characters after a few levels, or keep them at a distance and snipe enemiest for easy EXP... However, Clive and Tatiana were easily the hardest characters to grind out, as they both felt frail as tissue paper if they took a hit, and could never kill anything in one hit unless it was very low on health, or they got one of their very rare crits...

This is a classic WAIFU. Up there with your Canas video. Never played Echoes but I feel like I got better at it just by watching lol

This video is kinda old but it's high quality and I like talking about this so I don't care I never used Clive really I mainly felt like he served more as a filler unit since I wasn't a very big fan of his character, felt sort of generic especially since my focus was really high on my magic units and chipping people down with nosferatu and avo terrain, even when I was using him I felt worried about exposing him since he was somewhat underleveled from underuse especially when I got access to Mathilda (who I gave my horseslayer since that and Rhombia my brain assigned as her signature weapon for whatever reason) but overall he has never been a bad unit to me just below average since I never used him Again very good video I like listening to these analysis :)

I think one other thing that greatly affected everyone's subconscious expectations of Clive was the fact that he was the Deliverance leader on recruitment and with a title like that combined with his subpar performance (even if everyone else's was too) on his debut map really made people's expectations far exceed his poor performance on his debut map (even if everyone else's performance was affected by the floor as well)

Damn haven't really watched your vids in a while, this shit is good af

love the thumbnail lmao hes so cute