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Julius the enemy phase terror

Soon our red demon boy is out and nobody seems to agree on how good he is.
I'd like to voice my opinion here, since I really dig him as a unit.
His magical bulk might be the highest in the game. He has 44 effective res in combat with no A slot, seal or buff. Just him and his weapon. You can 'easily' bring it to 56 (!) with dual distant defence (53 if you run fury). Even blue mages will have trouble with him.
His 49 atk is pretty nice for a mage, but he really shines is blasting iceberg in the enemy's face.

The really problem is of course his defence, an effective 22 is still low for a unit that will get doubled. He'll survive bows that don't double, but just asume they will.
If you take fury/DD seal in account you'll get 31 defence and 30 speed. With 38 hp an enemy will need to deal 19 damage to kill him.
31+19 is 50 atk needed to kill him, which looks bad but if you can get his atk ploy to proc they'll need 55. A lot more managable. Still this assumes that they won't special.
So basicly, he might be able to avoid some brave bows that won't deal insane damage and slower archers.

One idea is to give him bowbreaker instead of quick reposte, but that'll hurt his main role as a mage tank.
Another option is to have some support on the team to boost his speed and def.

I like Julius, but he's not a unit that can just be used without thought. Which is kinda fun.

Asked by Sir of Coffee7 months 2 weeks ago

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Yeah I don't understand what people mean when they say that he will be a lackluster unit. He WILL be the best mage tank there is. Just like with most mages you are NOT supposed to take melee hits. That is not how you play with ranged units.

Also his speed doesn't even matter with that gargantuan magical soak. You will often get double zeros from enemy mages so you'll stay in quick riposte range for a long time.

Oh, and you actually want the enemy to double so you can proc Iceberg every fight.

Really looking forward to this unit.

People tend to rate heroes based on their arena performance.

top arena use a lot of melee / armored heroes so it's hard for Julius to shine.

and unfortunately Christmas Tharja is a better red mage

Well, Julius also has stellar attack so he'll be able to be paired up with an physical tank and finish off weakened enemies. With fury he could survive an DC attack as long as it's not a special.

W!Tharja might indeed be better on pure enemy phase, but she's a rare unit and armored. Julius can be effective in mixed or infantry (pulse) teams.

Plus Julius doesn't get owned by Thani.

He's good, but I kind of wished he was green, so that he would complete the GHB mage tank family (Arvis and Saias).

If he is green he would take +70% dmg from falchion users (lol)

(+90% if falchion also use tri adept)

Maybe, but remember that Julia and Deirdre also are part of that family.

Julius being red helps his one magical 'weakness' against naga.

He's not bad, but he's not really that "special" either aside from being able to debuff the enemy more than once thanks to his tome. You can hit them with Threaten Atk, or Atk Smoke, AND Loptous' -6 in combat effect. Yeah, that's amazing, but his niche of "Slow mage tank" is kinda filled by a variety of other units.

People tend to prefer green or blue mages, or other red mages, for a few reasons.

1. Green tomes can counter Reinhardt and Lyn.
2. Blue tomes don't get immediately disintegrated by other blue tome units
3. Rather use Ploy Boy Arvis/Saias.

Not only that, but it seems like red mages in particular aren't really that fast. Arvis, Julius, Sanaki, Lilina, and W!Tharja are pretty slow, and faster units are usually for Bladetomes, which tends to be the most preferred tome for most of the FEH community. Can't pose a threat if you're dead, amirite? lol.

The fastest infantry red mages are M!Morgan, a 5* exclusive, Katarina, a 5* exclusive, and Tharja, meanwhile, greens and blues tend to be faster to focus on more offensive builds, or if they are defensive, they have enough speed to not get doubled.

Basically Julius is just another "slow mage-bait" unit for a lot of people. His tome's debuff is cool, but in the grand scheme of things, many people already have good mage-baits that can bait mages (including blues) like H!Henry, Micaiah, Deirdre, Saias, Lute, F!Morgan, etc.

Actually, Male Morgan is now a 4*!
Makes him much easier to get.
Also, Celica with Ragnarok and Renewal can be very good (although she might want Desperation instead, and she's a 5* exclusive)
Most of the time, I use my red mages to counter green mages, because most DC swords have low Res, making them not the best for countering green mages unless you optimize them with skills like Distant Def.

Oh yeah, completely forgot about the demotion to M!Morgan, xD.

If you want to use Julius to debuff, his ploy is the best choice.
Threaten atk or atk smoke really do not work that well with him, since he's going to be baiting enemies to his position.
Loptous' effect really doesn't work like a debuff and more like a close def/distant def without the damage boost to the special.
As a support Arvis does indeed a better job, but Arvis can't take red and blue mages as well as Julius. With Loptous and 5 more health he's better as mage bait.
Sanaki is probably the closest to him, but she's rare and needs all the right conditions to tank magic as well as Julius (she's better in offence though)

As for blue mages:
They need to have optimal conditions to kill Julius in one round (bladetome with buffs, quickend pulse-moonbow reinhardt ect.) Even then, you can use dull ranged against that and julius can win.

Of course W!Tharja is probably better and Micaiah is probably better thanks to her unique tome (funnily fighting Micaiah is the one thing Julius does do better than W!Tharja)
But both are exlusive 5* and Julius can do something better than the two of them
With Tharja: Julius can work with infantry pulse and is mobile
With Micaiah: If you want to use an offence blue unit, Julius works better as a magic tank in that team than Micaiah.

Atk Ploy requires positioning which will not always work. Threaten Atk is a way to de-buff the enemy without them actually engaging. It's similar to Atk Ploy in how it works, but I personally find it a bit more reliable, at least in my experience, and Atk Smoke is a way to de-buff multiple enemies that you wouldn't be able to get if they weren't in exactly a straight line to hit with ploys. But, again, that's in my experience.

I mean... it's basically the same thing? De-buffing the enemies is usually, in the long run, increasing your units survivability, so po-ta-to - po-tah-to.

As for Arvis vs Julius, I guess, but that's what other teammates are for. Arvis' main objective is to activate all four ploys onto the target(s), something that is impossible to everyone except for Saias (and I guess dagger units if you count them de-buffing all stats, but that's different).

On your point of Blue Mages, not everyone has Dull Ranged, though. I know I don't, and I've never pulled a M!Morgan before, not to mention many people will be running something like Quick Riposte in his B slot to free up the seal for Distant Defense. Not everyone, but a lot will.

For Tharja - Mobility isn't necessarily that much of a "bane" for armored units, though. Sure, you don't get around much, but the point of armored units isn't to get around, it's to lure enemies in and benefit from the buffs of your other armored units (if using Armor Emblem).

When I first looked at his stats and tome, I was excited, now I’m just kinda meh about him. His role, Res tanking is not very prominent right now (especially in the red department) and his weapon looks good, but -6 doesn’t feel like enough to survive the physical/breath meta that will tear him to shreds. Will I 5* him? Depends on if I need a bonus unit. Would I use him otherwise, yes actually he seems like fun, just not very high on the feather priority list at the moment.