Delthea has the misfortune of being Alm’s Est, the archetype of which a unit joins extremely late into the game with amazing growth rates, yet is extremely underleveled with low base stats.
Delthea boasts the highest attack growth in the whole game, and has arguably the best offensive growths out of any unit, with 70% in attack and 55% in speed, but is somewhat hindered by her low 35% skill growth. But being a mage at base means that her low skill is somewhat irrelevant due to magic having set hit rates.
However her growths are purely offensively-oriented, having among the worst defensive growths at 30% HP and 20% defense, tied with Genny (barring Nomah and Mycen).
Regardless, Delthea can be an offensive nuclear magic powerhouse if given time to grow. But by the virtue of the Est-archetype, she hardly has any time to grow.
Delthea is a very high-investment unit should you want to use her. However, she does prove to be a potent fighter if given the time and effort.
Now, if you do invest time in her, then reclassing her into a Mercenary is definitely something to be considered.
Mage isn’t a bad class for her at all, it’s actually a great class for her since magic is always useful in the game. However, the Mercenary line does offer a few things that being a Mage doesn’t.
One of biggest problems that mages have is being locked to 4-move throughout the whole game. Having 3-range spells helps, but Delthea doesn’t have that. Once promoted to Dread Fighter, she will be able to jump into the frontlines with 7-move on top of her monstrous attack and speed growth, proving to be a highly potent frontliner.
Apotrope on top of Delthea’s stellar base resistance means she’ll be near 100% immune to all magic attacks, making her the perfect counter for enemy mages--including bosses like Jedah. Her HP will be slightly more improved as a Dread Fighter, however her defense will remain as low as ever-which can be a drastic problem if fighting physical units.
Another plus to the Dread Fighter line is that she will have access to the Dread Fighter-loop, meaning she’ll be able to revert to Villager at level 10. Of course, her late join will mean that this may be unlikely, but it is something that can be of use if you would like to bring her into postgame.
A huge drawback to Dread Fighter Delthea is that she has to be a frontliner due to most--if not all--swords being locked to 1-range. Despite having amazing resistance, the Dread Fighter line does nothing to fix her survivability against physical enemies and being on the frontlines will leave her highly exposed. Despite this, the fact that Dread Fighter grants her an amazing speed stat, she will have a pretty good avoid-rate which can definitely help her survivability.
Overall, Delthea is a min-maxed offensive nuke that can deal crazy amounts of damage, but at the cost of her defenses. But her high resistance base combined with Apotrope will make her immune to almost all magic, making her one of the best mage-counter units as a Dread Fighter. However, her performance is heavily reliant on investment, and choosing to reclass her as a late-recruit does pose a high opportunity cost for the heavily contested Villager Pitchforks.
My Personal Experience
Kind of like what I said just above, I did have to think a good deal about if I wanted to use a pitchfork on Delthea. Around the middle of the game I was considering reclassing Boey since he was falling behind with his low movement and terrible speed, but ultimately I chose to hand it over to Delthea since I wanted a female Dread Fighter LOL.
True to her archetype, she did require a LOT of time and effort. I even turned to buying the DLC-exp maps just to train her up to put her on par with the rest of my party.
But man, it was pretty worth it LOL. It’s no question that she had the highest attack stat out of my whole team (she does have the highest growth), but somewhere out there, I knew Mila was watching over me cause I managed to get a Ladyblade in the Astral Temple around the time she joined LMAOOOOO.
Seriously, the Ladyblade was MADE for Delthea LOL. My gods, was her damage complete overkill. But I’m seriously glad I invested my time in her because she was a little monster with her damage and speed. I fortunately didn’t have a problem with her defenses since she usually managed to kill before she got killed, and she has good speed so her dodge rate was really high.
Arcanists, Witches, Cantors, and even Jedah stood no chance against the force that is Ladyblade-Dread Fighter-Delthea.
If you’re willing to put your time into Delthea and even gamble on her defenses, I definitely say give this build a shot ! Otherwise, the Archer line may be another build to consider to keep her away from the front.
For years, Brian Langan has been providing Pennylvania music fans with his brand of indie rock. Langan, a Scranton native, now calls Philadelphia home and boasts a resume that includes The Sw!ms, stints with The Spinto Band, Sweatheart, and his solo project Langor. Sweatheart recently opened for The Darkness in New York City at Terminal 5, just weeks after Langan sang backup for them during a Radio 104.5 studio session.
On December 19th, Langor will perform at the 2012 Philebrity awards, where he has also been nominated for "Breakout artist of the year." You can cast your vote by clicking here.
