Blarowl

Close Counter is one of the best skills you can use with Owl tomes, since its best units are usually bulky mages that can take some hits. But it's not the only option for them. Some Owl tome users benefit from the better mage-tanking potential it gives them rather than from the defense boost.

Think about Innes' Nidhogg. It has the same effect as an Owl tome. Does it mean he should use Close Counter? Not really. Same applies for Mae.

I think Owl tomes are best when used for enemy phase builds. You position your unit next to some allies, they get tankier, they are speedier and hit harder and it's easier to set up for enemy phase than for player phase.

However, it still doesn't mean it's bad for a player phase build. You pretty much want a Blade tome probably if you're going for a Swift Sparrow build, but Owl tome might be decent if you need her to be tankier. Your Mae can pretty much be surrounded by 3 tanks that are always next to her and run Swift Sparrow. Those tanks can be either physically bulky(so they can tank melees without problems) or have nice mixed bulk(which would mean they can pretty much take a hit from almost every hero). Your red tank can be Joshua, since he's a free unit and has excellent mixed bulk. Adult/Young Tiki is a great option as well(+Def Adult Tiki with +Res refined Lightning Breath has 38 Def and 28 Res, for example). Then you can get a green tanky hero like Fae(she can deal with Reinhardt/BLyn with TA/Bowbreaker). These are just some examples.

Be careful though, Owl tomes require positioning, but you can still do great work with them.

Close counter is definitely helpful but I wouldn’t say it’s 100% necessary. If you can use your owl tome on the enemy phase and surround your unit with 3 other allies then you’ll get the full buffs, it’s just hard to align the allies together in the player phase

Positioning is everything in with an Owl tome. You can get +10 in your stats by having two units next to her in quad mode, both units give her a boost of 6 in all stats due to the tome and ally support. Then you can still boost two skills with +4 each with Hone/Fortify C skills.

Imprtant to note is that there is still no A skill involved.

My Mae for example has :

Hp 34
Atk 50
spd 36 ( spd refinery )
def 19
res 36

Fury 3 already included.

So if i were to boost her atk and res then her values would be.

Hp 34
Atk 60
spd 42
def 25
res 46

I would even go overboard and give one of the buffers rally speed so she gets 46 spd.

As you can see, owl tomes are a great way to boost mages in enemy phase, even in players phase mae is pretty good if you position the units right, and considering that she already has desperation as a native skill which works perfectly with fury 3.

You can nearly do the same with Boey by the way, they already like each other anyways and they work perfectly in a team, buffing each other. Boey by the way, is a unit who should definitely have close counter, but mae on the other hand is better of with fury 3.