Bridal Ninian

• Preferred IV: +SPD / -HP or -DEF
• Weapon: Fresh Bouquet+ (+Spd)
• Assist: Dance
• Special: Moonbow / Iceberg
• Passive A: Fury / Swift Sparrow / Atk/Res Bond
• Passive B: Chill Atk / Chill Res / Chill Spd / Wings of Mercy
• Passive C: Fortify Fliers / Goad Fliers / Drive Spd / Flier Guidance
• Sacred Seal: Hone Atk / Drive Atk / Guidance

Because Ninian’s base stats don’t allow her to be particularly threatening on the battlefield, she finds her usefulness in other ways, namely in supporting her teammates via Dance and various buffs to ensure that they’re well-situated to take out their foes.

This set allows Ninian to give a full round of buffs to an adjacent flier ally at the beginning of your turn with +4/+4/+6/+6, which makes her the perfect solo support for any flying Blade tome you may have. This also benefits Ninian by boosting her own Speed and giving her whatever buffs her ally may have offered in order to hopefully eliminate anyone she may have to fight against during that turn.

Chill Atk is a good B slot for her and she comes with it naturally. A Chill skill is probably her best bet for supportive B slot and it’s up to your team composition to determine which skill works best on her. For an Enemy Phase team, you may want to keep Chill Atk, while for a Player Phase team you would likely want to swap it out for Chill Spd or a debuff to your chosen defensive stat. This allows Ninian to debuff one of her opponents without fail, which further benefits and supports her team.

Fury is her best A-slot with this build, as it slightly lifts her combat capability into something usable by boosting all of her stats at once. The loss of HP shouldn’t be an issue for her, as she doesn’t want to enter combat that often regardless .

For a non-flier team, Ninian still has plenty of supportive options, including a Guidance seal to enhance her ally mobility and her native Drive Spd and Drive Atk that works fantastically with a Spur stacking team.

• Preferred IV: +SPD / -HP or -DEF
• Weapon: Blárblade+
• Assist: Dance
• Special: Moonbow / Iceberg
• Passive A: Swift Sparrow / Fury
• Passive B: Desperation / Chill Res / Chill Spd / Wings of Mercy
• Passive C: Goad Fliers / Hone Fliers / Hone Speed
• Sacred Seal: Speed +3 / Attack +3

While this set may seem like the clear choice, it’s difficult to fully recommend making your dancer into a Blade mage, as typically you don’t want to be investing heavily in supporting your dancer in combat. However, because Ninian is the only emblem-type magical dancer in the game, it merits discussing her utility as a Blade mage, a niche in which she will readily outperform her only competition, PA Shigure and Inigo.

Due to her low stats, it’s imperative to keep her buffed at all times if you’d like her to do damage at all. Moonbow is recommended over Glimmer here due to her poor base Attack. If she isn’t fully buffed when she attacks, Glimmer is likely to do less additional damage than Moonbow.

A Ninian with a Speed boon and Swift Sparrow will reach 40 Speed. Assuming she is buffed, she’ll reach 46 Speed, 49 with a Spd +3 seal in her seal slot. This enables her to double attack even the fastest of units. You can sacrifice 1 point of Speed and Attack and opt to choose Fury for this set instead. With Fury, it will only take Ninian 2 engagements to drop her HP below Desperation threshold, which grants her far safer attacks.

As an alternative to Desperation, you can run a Chill debuff in her B slot instead, which helps her damage potential at the risk of her getting killed due to an enemy counterattack.

The rest of the set is pretty cut and dry. Buff her with ally support and send her into battle!

• Preferred IV: +SPD or +RES / -HP
• Weapon: Blárserpent+ (+Spd)
• Assist: Dance
• Special: Iceberg / Glacies
• Passive A: Distant Def / Atk/Res Bond / Mirror Stance
• Passive B: B Tomebreaker / Quick Riposte
• Passive C: Res Ploy / Spd Ploy / Atk Ploy
• Sacred Seal: Distant Def / Iote’s Shield / Quick Riposte

Due to a lack of stats, Ninian shines best when she can minmax key stats to give her an advantage. With Distant Defense 9, Ninian essentially stacks 18 Defense and Resistance to her respective 18 and 27, giving her the defenses of 36/45. While this is counteracted somewhat by her weakness to bows, it still allows Ninian to function a lot easier as a combat unit as long as the enemy attacks her at range. She’ll take far less damage and then be able to dish out punitive Iceberg procs without any buffs whatsoever (though flier buffs would take her to 42/51 Def/Res- certainly nothing to discount there).

Focusing on her Speed is still good, as it helps her avoid doubles from mid-tier Speed units, while B Tomebreaker counteracts blue tomes who would otherwise outspeed her, such as Linde and Ishtar. While Res Ploy won’t take Distant Defense into effect, it can still proc off of her respectable 27 (or 30) Resistance to allow her to hit her opponent harder, while Atk or Spd ploy serves to make her even more tanky.

If desired, you can forego Distant Defense in her Seal Slot to run Iote’s Shield, which could be useful if you’re running her in an all-flier composition. This gives her a Defense of 30, which can be buffed to 36 and is generally enough to tank at least one archer hit.