Brave Ephraim

*idk why Atk/Def Solo can't be in the seal slot, just pretend it is.

Antithetical to B!Ephraim's base kit, this build focuses on making Ephraim a solo tank. Armored Stride synergizes with Atk/Def Solo, keeping him a fair distance from your team as well as fulfilling Garm's proc condition. Who needs double waves, when you get twice that and extra mobility? Ephraim, like any other tank, greatly appreciates Distant Counter, although Distant Foil is viable if you think Ephraim should avoid mages like the plague.

Garm nullfies any follow-up prevention, and what better way to exploit this than by running Wary Fighter? Now, with Atk/Def Solo Ephraim can hit 48 defense when unmerged, and any single hit he takes every combat gets soaked up by his additional 14 healing. His res leaves something to be desired, but with hp like his Ephraim can make do - 80 magic bulk is good enough when you only need to take a single hit. Sol is run over Noontime, as with his meaty attack stat of 71 you can expect Ephraim to maim most foes on the first hit and barely make use of Noontime's healing on the second hit.

Alright elephant in the room; “Why Wary fighter?? He isn’t Surtr dummy, he can follow up you idiot” Garm’s frankly overpowered refine besides the heal, gives Ephraim a form of Null follow up, but only related to his follow ups in question. This not only includes being able to double units like Rudolph and bypass impact skills, but also bypass his own skills. Wary fighter in the context of Ephraim’s refine simply acts as a follow up prevention on only the opponent, while Ephraim is free to auto double thanks to Garm’s first effect. This means that rather than constantly having to react to attacks with a 7 heal, he reacts to one attack with a 14 heal. The rest of the build is straight forward and what you would expect of a brave Ephraim build. Due to not having special fighter, he faces special activations and no extra charge. Moonbow remedies this and grants a quick damage boost, while pulse smoke insures nobody one shots him with a sidelining bonfire.

Having both Odd and Even Waves means he will always double, these can be switched out for any type of Wave and do not necessary need to match in terms of what stat they boost. I prefer Atk wave to make up for the lack of a damaging special.

Noontime paired with Special fighter means that he is always using his special and stays above the HP requirements for Garm's added effect.

Pivot is used as an attempt to make up for is poor movement.

Distant Counter is great thanks to his natural bulkiness and allows for him to enemy phase ranged units. If you want to make him a solely enemy phase unit I would recommend giving him a pair of Res Waves as he is already very bulky in terms of defense.

My main axe unit for one of my armor teams, and this isn't a budget build by any means. I gave him distant counter with a distant def seal to take out blue ranged units. I give him armor buffs with my other armor units LA Lyn and Zelgius and he buffs them by giving them more movement with armor march. Then he uses Aether to heal up and major damage. Overall one of the best green axe units that isn't hector.

this is basically a common bold fighter,brave weapon build, this build benefits Ephraims awful speed stat,since it doesn’t really serve any purpose, so it’s fine to use the brave axe, however with this build there will be some down sides, yes the brave axe has a lower might but
It’s highly beneficial when being able to sweep most of the opponents you meet in battle(including some counters like laslow, Cherche, etc.) I’ve tested it multiple times to be sure. It’s HIGHLY advised you run this with an all armored team to efficiently use this build, and by that I mean have hone/goad/fortify armor skills on the other members for some extra bulk, well that and because a armor emblem is best suited for this because Ephraim has the benefit of armor march to cover a lot of ground on the battle field.