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Analysis by lordhelpme
Deirdre - Lady of the Forest

5 Legacy

Obtainable as a 5 during certain summoning events only.

Hero Stats

Max Avg Total Stats at Lvl 40
148
HP 36
ATK 33
SPD 28
DEF 16
RES 35

Stat Variations

Level 1 Stat Variation
5★
HP ATK SPD DEF RES
Low 16 8 5 2 8
Middle 17 9 6 3 9
High 18 10 7 4 10

Level 40 Stat Variations
5★
HP ATK SPD DEF RES
Low 33 30 24 12 32
Middle 36 33 28 16 35
High 40 36 31 19 38

IV Sets

Key stats worth increasing through nature if possible.
Complementary stats that matter, but not to the point of picking them over key stats for nature increase.
Relatively worthless stat that can safely be decreased through nature.
HPATKSPDDEFRES

Skill Sets

…what? [adult swim version] (Defensive / Ranged Specialist)

Build by lordhelpme
Recommended
Divine Naga (+Eff)
Alternate: Snow Globe+ (+Res)
A Mirror Stance 3
Alternate: Atk/Res Unity
Positional Assist B Null C-Disrupt 3
Iceberg
Alternate: Sol
C Joint Drive Res
Alternate: Atk Smoke 3
IVs

+ATK or +RES

SQuick Riposte 3

Show Explanation/Analysis

Weapon: Divine Naga (+EFF) / Snow Globe+ (+RES) / Plegian Torch (+RES) / Amity Blooms (+RES) 

Assist: Positional Assist / Flexible

Special: Iceberg / Sol / Noontime 

Passive A: Stance Skills / Unity Skills / Solo Skills

Passive B: Null C-Disrupt / Null Follow-Up / Special Spiral / Quick Riposte

Passive C: Joint Drive Skills / Smoke Skills / Flexible

Sacred Seal: Quick Riposte / Solo Skills / Mystic Boost / Bond Skills / Stance Skills 

  • Deirdre’s stat inclination towards Attack and Resistance makes a defensive playstyle centered on taking on ranged foes her best option, especially considering Quick Riposte’s ability to somewhat mediate her mediocre Speed via guaranteed follow-up attacks. Pairing her with a Near Save ally, while not strictly necessary, is highly advisable if possible to round out her matchups and ensure she can take a stat-enhancing A skill without putting restraints on her performance. 
  • Her refined Divine Naga is pretty solid here despite its age: nullifying enemy bonuses while providing a modest supplement to Deirdre’s stats works wonders for maintaining superiority against foes and eliminates the need for Lull Atk/Res, while its dragon advantages helps occasionally for sniping lingering threats like Seiros. However, she does have a few other weapon options as well. 
    • Snow Globe is a phenomenal inheritable weapon and should be at the top of any considerations (if available, of course) for the simple reason that it carries built-in Atk/Res Unity — a powerful effect that ensures Deirdre can not only absorb any Attack and Resistance penalties without batting an eye, but moreover purposely exploit them to obtain staggering in-combat enhancements. 
    • Plegian Torch is another inheritable weapon with an astonishing ceiling when it comes to stat advantages, but operates differently than Snow Globe — rather than working off her debuffs, Plegian Torch doubles the effects of any Atk/Res penalties active on her foe. This presents the notable advantage of greatly patching her physical bulk unlike Snow Globe (which only improves her magical resilience), but its non-adjacency requirement can be annoying to work around.
    • In contrast to the above-listed options, Amity Blooms applies only a modest -5 Atk/Res debuff on Deirdre’s foe during combat in exchange for consistent healing on each of her attacks; this innate sustain is useful for some leeway in her Special and skill choices since she can afford more resources to enhancing damage this way. It does leave her susceptible to Fatal Smoke, but it is available on a four-star seasonal hero (unlike the other two)!
  • For her A skill, Deirdre generally prefers Attack and Resistance augmentations over all else, essentially being down to your choice of Mirror Stance (as her susceptibility to follow-up attacks makes permanent Guard during Enemy Phase quite attractive to avoid charging up enemy Specials), Atk/Res Unity (to exploit stat penalties), or Atk/Res Solo
    • It’s worth mentioning, however, that while her Speed is fairly mediocre, it’s also just high enough to potentially avoid follow-up attacks with sufficient support — so those at higher level of investments may benefit from emphasizing Speed instead of Resistance, especially if using Null Follow-Up
    • There’s also the offhand chance you want to broaden Deirdre’s defensive capacity towards dragons as well if equipped with Divine Naga, in which case Close Ward becomes a compelling option too. However, it’s a pretty steep investment, and most are generally off better using her daughter for such purposes due to Naga.
  • Null C-Disrupt is a natural B skill option here considering Deirdre’s ranged focus, as those threats tend to be the ones that typically carry counterattack-negating mechanics like Dazzling Staff and Firesweep Bow. Other options are Null Follow-Up to shut down enemies featuring automatic follow-up attacks and/or if going the route of Speed investment, and Special Spiral to leverage three-turn Specials on each counterattack. 
  • Deirdre’s C skill and Sacred Seal selection follow the same principle: essentially, just pick anything that further aids the Lady of the Forest in achieving stat superiority. That being said, for Deirdre’s Sacred Slot, special mention goes to Quick Riposte to ensure she can double without relying on Speed checks (and if it's not used here, it should be her B skill) and Mystic Boost for greater sustain.

My Compliments to the Chef (Offensive / Special Activation Focus)

Build by lordhelpme
Divine Naga (+Eff) A Sturdy Impact
Alternate: Death Blow (3 or 4)
Positional Assist B Special Spiral 3
Ruptured Sky
Alternate: Moonbow
C Time's Pulse 3
Alternate: Joint Drive Atk
IVs

+ATK / -DEF

SQuickened Pulse

Show Explanation/Analysis

Weapon: Divine Naga (+Eff) 

Assist: Positional Assist / Flexible

Special: Ruptured Sky / Glimmer / Moonbow 

Passive A: Sturdy Impact / Death Blow / Atk/Res Solo / Fury 

Passive B: Special Spiral 

Passive C: Time’s Pulse / Joint Drive Atk / Res Smoke / Fatal Smoke / Flexible

Sacred Seal: Quickened Pulse / Death Blow / Fury / Sturdy Blow 

  • Although her awkward Speed deters the typical approach to offensive strategies, Deirdre’s respectable baseline Attack, dragon-effective damage, and inherent ability to deny through enemy buffs via Divine Naga does make her fairly capable of running a more burst-centric build; these qualities may also make her worth considering within the context of Aether Raids Defense. A +ATK IV is recommended for maximum damage. 
  • Combining Special Spiral with two-turn cooldown Specials composes the crux of this build. Following their initial activation, such Specials become permanently charged up for Deirdre’s first hit in every subsequent round of combat, allowing for greatly honed explosive power — and since their starting cooldowns are pretty low to begin with, it’s fully within her capacity to start looping her Special immediately via Time’s Pulse and the Quickened Pulse Sacred Seal. 
    • As for which Special to use, Ruptured Sky synergizes well with the dragon effectiveness of Divine Naga to guarantee easy OHKO’s on wandering breath wielders, while also punishing high Attack and beast foes. It’s pretty scarce, though, so the more widely available Glimmer and Moonbow also work. 
    • This strategy works fantastically for general usage, though those aiming to use Deirdre within Aether Raids Defense may reap greater benefits from a stronger Special like Glacies and Iceberg to maximize the chances of one-tapping a challenging foe. This does require outside Infantry Pulse or Pent support, though, and it should be noted that Deirdre is likely better off using Wings of Mercy or Null Follow-Up in such cases instead of Special Spiral for a B skill. 
  • Sturdy Impact is undoubtedly Deirdre’s best A skill across all platforms for such purposes — it pushes her raw damage further, massively offsets the impact of her low Defense, and even negates her foe’s follow-up Attack for even more safety in case she fails to OHKO. If unavailable, Death Blow and Atk/Res Solo are reasonable alternatives, or even Fury considering that the bonus stats allotted by Divine Naga rely on her visible Resistance being higher than her foe’s.
  • If you’re able to provide the sufficient Special charges needed for Deirdre to loop through outside support, her C skill and Sacred Seal slot become open to anything that aids her raw damage; this includes skills like Joint Drive Atk, Res Smoke, and Death Blow. While it doesn’t exactly add to her firepower directly, Fatal Smoke is standout for its ability to neutralize any sort of enemy healing, though its extraordinary value and scarcity makes this an investment moreso for her diehard fans. It also means potentially killing her husband for her, and that’s sad :(

Strengths

Divine Naga

Her signature Divine Naga carries a variety of nifty counterplay mechanics that help differentiate her from her peers: negation of adaptive damage and dragon-effective damage allows her to easily punish breath users, and carrying what’s essentially an omni-Lull is always nice for generalist purposes. It’s definitely lacking compared to modern standards and the increase in quality of inheritable weapons — especially for green tomes, given recent access to Amity Blooms, Plegian Torch, and Snow Globe — has made it steadily more difficult for Divine Naga alone to make the Lady of the Forest worth using, but it at least ensures her role as a solid dragon counter remains unwavering if nothing else.

Respectable Attack & Resistance

Deirdre features a respectable starting Resistance value of 35, enabling relatively consistent access to her Divine Naga’s bonus stat enhancements if equipped with investment and making her fairly resilient to magical pressure. Coupled with her solid 33 Attack, Deirdre is well-tuned for defensive roles emphasizing magic tanking, especially thanks to her innate range as it gives the flexibility of equipping a stat-boosting A skill rather than a counterattack-enabler. 

Infantry Benefits

The infantry class is renowned for its stellar skill availability, and Deirdre is no stranger to this benefit herself: access to useful tools like Null C-Disrupt and Special Spiral is the key to her build flexibility, allowing her to expand both offensively and defensively to greater extents than she could if she were mounted.

Weaknesses

Unimpressive Defense & Speed

For someone who apparently can’t remember anything, Deirdre has no trouble sticking to her roots from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War with utterly uninspiring values in Defense and Speed. This renders tanking physical damage of any sort extremely questionable considering she doesn’t have much wiggle room in HP to begin with and while her Speed is definitely the more workable of the two, it’s usually barely enough to avoid follow-up attacks rather than actually perform them outside of investment-intensive builds.

Weapon Skills

Weapons SP Rng. Mt.
Wind
Green Tome Users Only
50 2 4
Elwind
Green Tome Users Only
100 2 6
Rexcalibur
Green Tome Users Only
200 2 9
Divine Naga

Effective against dragons. Foe's bonuses (from skills like Fortify, Rally, etc.) are nullified during combat.

Learns by default at 5 ★
Non-Inheritable skill.
400 2 14
Weapon Evolution
Weapon Upgrades
Weapon Upgrades

Support Skills

Support Skills Rng. SP
Ardent Sacrifice

Heals adjacent ally 10 HP. Unit loses 10HP (but cannot reach 0 this way)

1 150

Passive Skills

Passive Skills SP Slot
Quick Riposte 1

Unit automatically makes a follow-up attack if attacked at HP ≥ 90%.

Inheritable by all units.
60
B
Quick Riposte 2

Unit automatically makes a follow-up attack if attacked at HP ≥ 80%.

Inheritable by all units.
120
B
Quick Riposte 3

Unit automatically makes a follow-up attack if attacked at HP ≥ 70%.

Inheritable by all units.
Unlocks at 5 ★
240
B
Spd Ploy 1

At start of turn, inflicts Spd-3 on foes in cardinal directions with Res < unit's Res through their next actions.

Inheritable by all units.
60
C
Spd Ploy 2

At start of turn, inflicts Spd-4 on foes in cardinal directions with Res < unit's Res through their next actions.

Inheritable by all units.
120
C
Spd Ploy 3

At start of turn, inflicts Spd-5 on foes in cardinal directions with Res < unit's Res through their next actions.

Inheritable by all units.
Unlocks at 5 ★
240
C

Other Info

Origin
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

Banners Featured In

Official Hero Artwork