Morgan (F)

• Preferred IV: +ATK or +SPD / -HP
• Weapon: Blárblade
• Assist: Reposition
• Special: Iceberg / Glimmer
• Passive A: Death Blow / Life and Death / Darting Blow
• Passive B: Chill Res / Desperation / Chill Spd / B Tomebreaker
• Passive C: Odd Atk Wave / Res Ploy / Goad Fliers
• Sacred Seal: Atk +3 / Spd +3

This is basically the standard build for most magical units without legendary weapons, and for good reason: it works, particularly in emblem-oriented teams where a unit can receive up to +24 stat buffs to cap out their potential damage with their Blade tome.

It comes as no surprise that Morgan should be run with a Flier team if she has this build equipped, and she will require Hone Fliers/Fortify Fliers to be carried by her teammates in order to give her the maximum damage potential possible for a Blade tome build.

There are two ways that you can attempt to build your Morgan: the easiest, and probably more  reliable way is to just buff her Attack. With an Attack IV, Death Blow, Atk +3 seal, and full flier buffs, Morgan will hit for a base 89 magic damage- enough to wipe many units off the map. If she lands a Res Ploy, she can increase her damage to 94, and if she procs Iceberg, that damage increases to 110.  She can choose to take Chill Res instead of Res Ploy, but has less ability to choose her target- still, the debuff will be larger and will help her in more scenarios vs opponents with high Resistance. Without flier buffs, she can still buff herself with an Atk Wave skill, either of which will help her hit for 12 more damage every other turn.

Glimmer is an attractive second choice for her Special, though the damage isn’t as guaranteed as it is with Iceberg.  Glimmer’s damage scales off of the amount of damage inflicted, so if a fully buffed Morgan does more than 33 damage, then Glimmer will proc for higher damage. This is also affected by things like Weapon Triangle Advantage and how much HP the enemy unit has left, making it all the more inconsistent, albeit still a practical choice for a higher risk/higher reward sort of build.

There is a chance at salvaging Morgan’s speed if you manage to pull a +SPD IV, though this will likely make her less consistent, particularly in the Arena where even 45 Speed can miss doubles on faster units.  With a +SPD IV, Life and Death, and a Hone Fliers buff on her, Morgan reaches 44 Speed, which can be used to double in PvE content somewhat reliably, though it still leaves her reliant on that Hone Fliers buff to pull off doubles in Arena.  This can be further mitigated by her Seal Slot, which can raise her Speed to 47, as long as she has that buff on her.

With 47 Speed, she looks like a much more reasonable user of Desperation, and thanks to her lessened Defense and Resistance, it won’t take much to knock her into Desperation range.  Keep in mind that this harms her damage output if she can’t double- her max damage becomes 82 (98 on Iceberg proc).

Her A slot and C slot can both be manipulated to push her into a higher Speed tier while maintaining her Resistance by sacrificing more damage and using Darting Blow over Life and Death. While this further reduces her buffed damage to 77 (93 on Iceberg proc), it increases her Speed to 48 and gives her the opportunity to use her Resistance for more valuable ploys- such as Spd Ploy (effectively granting her 52 Speed), or Res Ploy (Effectively granting her 82 damage once more). The drawback here is that she has to land a ploy to maintain her effectiveness, while with Life and Death, both Attack and Speed boosts are already present at the expense of her Resistance.

• Preferred IV: +RES or +DEF / -HP or -SPD
• Weapon: Blárserpent (+DEF) / Blárserpent (+RES)
• Assist: Reposition
• Special: Glacies / Iceberg
• Passive A: Distant Defense / Iote’s Shield / Fury
• Passive B: Quick Riposte
• Passive C: Res Ploy / Atk Ploy / Hone Fliers / Goad Fliers
• Sacred Seal: Iote’s Shield / Distant Defense

The introduction of Blárserpent allows us to take the infamous Distant Defense 9 build that archers have access to and apply it to mages, which can to boost Morgan’s defenses by a ridiculous amount, particularly if we assume that she also has access to a Fortify Fliers buff on her team.

This allows Morgan’s Resistance to be increased to absurd levels- she can easily hit 40 RES on her own with a boon and forge, but coupling in Distant Defense 6 from her weapon and A slot, on top of a Fortify Fliers buff, gets her to 58 Resistance.  Iote’s can be discarded for a third Distant Defense to stack if you’re really masochistic, allowing Morgan to reach an unprecedented 64 Resistance.

With Blárserpent and Distant Defense in A or C slot, Morgan can also reach a Defense of 30, which can be increased easily via IVs, Forges, or Fortify Fliers for a cap of 43 Defense (49 with Distant Defense in both A and Seal slots).  This allows Morgan to counter not only mages, but also counter archers, if she has an Iote’s shield in her A or Seal slot.

If raising her to be a mixed ranged tank, it would be better to focus more on Defense over Resistance for her IV and forge.  As she’s significantly lacking in Defense, balancing out those stats will help her tank physical ranged threats better, and maximizing her Resistance is a bit overkill anyway (since you cannot take less than 0 damage).

Glacies is still the ideal here due to the massive buff to her Resistance, making it her highest stat and her main damage-dealing stat.  Quick Riposte is the only option for B slot due to Morgan’s poor speed- focusing on her defensive stats means that she’s definitely unlikely to double anything during Player Phase.  It works to her advantage however, because stacking her defenses can help Morgan to stay over the 70% threshold for Quick Riposte to activate.

• Preferred IV: +ATK or +RES / -HP
• Weapon: Blárowl (+Res) / Keen Blárwolf (+Res) / Blárserpent (+Eff)
• Assist: Reposition
• Special: Glacies / Iceberg
• Passive A: Fury / Mirror Stance
• Passive B: Quick Riposte  / Chill Spd
• Passive C: Res Ploy / Spd Ploy / Atk Ploy
• Sacred Seal: Atk Ploy / Atk +3 / Res +3

As a generalist, Morgan wants to be able to use her large Resistance stat to debuff her opponents in order to manipulate combat in her favor. She does this through the use of Ploy skills in both her C and Seal slot, which makes her capable of debuffing an opponent -5/-5 in two separate stats before she engages.

Fury is one of the few A slots in the game that boosts Morgan’s out of combat Resistance, meaning that the stat increases from Fury allows her to more effectively administer her debuffs onto the opponent, in addition to all of its other benefits. With a +RES IV, Fury, and Resistance forge, Morgan reaches an out of combat Resistance stat of 42- capable of debuffing practically any unit in the game.

She can use this with the Blárowl tome to become a very balanced unit- Blárowl and Fury have a good synergy in that they both boost all stats, which helps Morgan further improve upon her generalist role. Blárowl’s buffs means that, with proper positioning and manipulation, Morgan’s opponents will have a difficult time doubling her and she’ll be able to retaliate back for significant damage- the true mark of any strategist.

Her weapon is still flexible though- Keen Blárwolf will help Morgan hard counter Blade tome cavalry compositions in the Arena and other cavalry units that may pose a threat to the rest of your team. In addition, she can keep her native Blárserpent for even further damage mitigation, though it doesn’t help her offenses much, save for an extra +4 damage from a Glacies proc.