Hey guys as a quick note I’ll be putting my suggested builds at the top in these photos and discussing them in order at the bottom of this post!
Garon: King of Nohr
Summary:
Garon is a pretty solid red infantry dragon, with the only other red dragons being our 3 Tikis, it’s a pretty good niche that he falls in to.
Overall Garon is good, but can be outdone by other red units, his mixed bulk is nice, but aside from his nullification of the “effective against dragons” bonus, he’s nothing too special when it comes to dragons. Tiki outclasses him in most ways, but that doesn’t mean Garon isn’t a good unit, if he was in the summoning pool there’s a good chance he’d outclass her.
Without Skill Inheritance:
At a glance, Garon has an incredible base kit given that he’s a free unit. Panic Ploy and Distant Defence are both highly coveted skills, and while Garon doesn’t fully optimise them without a few tweaks, they’re still nice to see being made available to us.
With his blatant lack of speed, and enemy phase related skills, Garon is designed to soak up a few hits from green enemies, activate his weapon’s ability to recover some health, and to dispense a lot of damage in one short burst. While his base kit is pretty good, he’s honestly not as appealing as a low inheritance version of any of the Tikis, at least they’re effective against dragons.
With Skill Inheritance:
Getting his hands on some new skills is crucial for a dragon like Garon. Slapping on some premium skills can turn this twisted old man into quite the fighter! Seriously though, the fact any dragon can suddenly become so powerful is sickening, and means that they’re the only units who can effectively not need to eat a Hector to become top tier.
Having access to breath weapons means that Garon can be really versatile, from being a mass debuffer with a dark breath and distant counter build, to being a bog standard, beefy dragon by taking on the lightning/steady breath combo.
Strengths:
Garon is in a really niche category, with only one other non 5 star red dragon unit readily available in the game, it’s nice for us to have access to one.
His base set is great. Seriously, his weapon gets rid of the worry of falchion users, and both his A and C slot abilities are pretty neat, with summoner support he can make use of panic ploy, and with minimal skill inheritance you can have a powerful build.
He’s free. Yeah, I know you have to beat his GHB but he’s a dragon with a legendary weapon and good skills that we can just get, making him more available than 2 of our 3 other red dragons.
Weaknesses:
He’s red. Don’t get me wrong there’s nothing wrong with having red units, but with so many other good red units and blue units making up a good majority of the arena enemies, Garon doesn’t really stand out.
He’s a GHB unit. This is more of a problem for using him competitively, but because he’s from a GHB you have a really limited number of merges, which means he’s going to score worse than a +10 merged Tiki, which means he’s quite quickly made obsolete.
A lot of skill inheritance is needed to make him good. As much as I personally like the possibilities that can come out of Garon’s base set, he works a lot better if you just make him into your typical dragon, and doing that is going to cost you both a lot of valuable 5 star units, and a hell of a lot of feathers.
Build Suggestions:
Budget Build:
Slapping quick riposte (it doesn’t even need to be 3, 2 works just fine!) and close defence sacred seal immediately makes Garon able to tank hits from enemies near and far, and allows him to reach most of his potential as an enemy phase tank. Having a beefy 41 def and 40 res means that almost any hit can be soaked up, even against pesky falchion users, allowing at least one counterattack.
Distant Dragon:
We all know that Garon wasn’t exactly the most loving father, but this time we’re taking distant to the next level. By giving him summoner support and lightning breath you can have a strong enemy phase ranged unit, who’s not going to be stopped by Sacae’s blessing, and has more than enough defence to take on any ranged or close enemy, reaching 49 defence and 40 res in the enemy phase, and still an impressive 43 defence if the enemy is close ranged. A word of warning though as when Garon loses his weapon he becomes weak to dragon effective weapons once more
Dark Father:
For my final build idea, how about making Garon reflect his daughter’s common build? Female Corrin is one of very few dragons who I’ve seen run this style of mass-debuffing builds, and I think that it’s a little bit overkill, but given that Garon has the bulk to do this, why not? At the very least it allows him to step in against a weaker enemy and help his allies to pick off the stronger opponents.
