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These are starting to feel a little bipolar. Obviously, you don’t need me to tell you that Bow Knight is good. It’s easily one of the best classes in the game and it holds the unique position of the class that you can put any unit in and they will have a noticeably significant effect on your army’s performance- at least in my opinion.
For a 100% pass rate of the Bow Knight exam, you’re going to need C lances, A bows and A riding. The riding rank can be a little annoying to train, but so long as you make an effort to plan things out in advance, it shouldn’t give you too much trouble. This is our first Master Class, so you have 10 more levels to work on your skills before you can qualify over the Advanced Classes. You may not really be using lances as a Bow Knight, but C+ in lances is sometimes enough to pick up powerful Combat Arts like Vengeance.
Analysis
The base stats that the Bow Knight guarantees are nothing to write home about. If you classed the unit in question into an Advanced Class (which you probably should have) you’re not likely to see any stat boosts on qualifying. Just for the sake of putting it out there, you’re granted 17 strength, 14 dexterity and 16 speed. The Bow Knight gives class bonuses of 1 strength, 3 dexterity and 1 speed (while mounted, 3 while not). Looking into this, was a little eye-opening as I hadn’t considered dismounting to potentially increase your speed to doubling range, but with a class like Bow Knight, that may be situationally viable.
Bow Knights have huge mobility, boasting 8 movement while mounted and 6 while dismounted. Being bow specialists (and taking into account their Class Skills), this gives them outrageous attack range, that can easily keep them out of danger while raining death down upon their targets.
Bow Knights have potentially the strongest set of Class Skills in the game. Bowfaire, Bow Range +2 and Canto are all incredibly strong and probably have the best synergy among Class Skills in the game. The class’s Mastery Skill is Defiant Speed.
Bowfaire encourages bow specialization and gives you 5 bonus damage while doing so. Bows are the best weapon type in the game. It’s great.
Bow Range +2 is self-explanatory. Bows have the advantage of being able to attack and provide linked attack bonuses at a range. Giving 2 extra range on that is exceptionally strong and can almost always allow you to avoid counterattacks.
Canto allowing you to use your extra movement after taking an action lets a Bow Knight stage hit-and-runs better than any other class in the game and can ensure that your positioning is always strong.
Defiant Speed is fine, but it’s often a little more work than it’s worth to get a Bow Knight down to 25% of their total health for a speed boost. On new game+, there’s probably some value in using the skill for vantage/desperation/wrath builds, but outside of that niche, I don’t think it’s all that great.
In terms of growths, the Bow Knight offers little. A 5% detriment to speed is the only thing worth noting and pretty much the only thing that there is as 10% HP and 5% charm are granted or beaten by almost every other class in the game. It seems like this is where the developers intended to balance this otherwise outrageously powerful class, but after 30 levels of growth in other classes, it’s too little, too late.
Good Bow Knights
Felix is probably the best combat unit in the game and consequently winds up being the unit with the best performance as a Bow Knight. He even has a strength in bows to ease the training process for your convenience. He has everything you need: high strength, speed and dexterity. His Major Crest of Fraldarius is just icing on the cake that can give you even more damage for free. With a brave bow, or even without, he can consistently obliterate targets in a single turn more effectively than any other unit classed into Bow Knight.
Out of the low strength archer kids, Ignatz makes the best Bow Knight due to his inherent Hit +20. With a longbow and equipping the Archer’s Hit +20 on top of his personal, Ignatz just doesn’t miss regardless of range. Bernadetta and Ashe also make strong Bow Knights, despite missing out on Ignatz’s niche. All three kids gain the ability to use powerful bows at minimal cost while staying away from dangerous enemies that could potentially cause them undue harm due to their middling combat prowess.
Cyril and Leonie make natural promotions to Bow Knight, and all things considered, they’ll do quite well in the class. If you don’t have access to Felix in part 2, either can act as a diet replacement, even though I think that both are better off elsewhere. Petra isn’t a bad choice either, however she winds up being an off-brand substitute for Leonie in this role. Still quite strong, but unless you’re making every unit a Bow Knight, she’s also better off elsewhere to avoid being redundant.
With a magic bow, even mages make great Bow Knights. Mercedes, Hubert and Hanneman can do it. Hubert and Hanneman even have the strengths in the right skills to do it easily. I may not wholeheartedly recommend this as I think that all 3 are better off as casters, but for the sake of doing it, not only should it work, it should work well.
Conclusion
Bow Knight is really strong, however I’m going to break from my praise for it for a moment. I think it’s easily the frontrunner for strongest class in the game on Normal or Hard, but I think it loses a lot of its appeal on Maddening due to the huge boon in the quality of enemy units. With Poison Strike and a venin bow, it can shore up the offensive deficiencies of a unit like Ashe and offer uncontested amounts of safe chip damage.
Basically, I’d never field more than 2. It keep your army from feeling stale.
