Where do you guys rank the infantry dancers in the game

Flying Azura and Olivia tops for me because of movements. But I don’t have an Olivia infantry merge so I am curious if that is worth it. Soft spot for PA Azura as she has been my main for a while as my two fliers are recent. No idea about the new ones as they are situational, but could be worth it for arena assault against respective teams (cav dragon armor)

Personally, I think Olivia is the best, (normal version) myself, though I am certainly biased. She's easily mergeable, doesn't suffer from a ranged BST decrease, and has a pretty versatile statline. Mine's at +7 (it would be higher if I pulled more versions of her) with Kadomatsu++Spd, Aether, DC, Chill Speed, Attack Tactic and Drive Atk. I have a friend with a wildly different build, though, who has taken down Hardin without taking barely any damage, which is nuts.

I haven't used Lene, but I do have the others. PA Azura is good but lacks the easy merge potential of Olivia, but has a prf weapon so she's not as bad in arena if you have the same amount of merges. PA!Olivia is quite good due to dagger's natural debuffing abilities, so she has more potential as a support/debuffer than the others.

The magic dancers are pretty great, Inigo can run the Gronnraven/Adept build to decent effect, but neither of them really have the best statlines to run a really terrifying build on their own. Bladetome builds probably would be the best bet, though. (That's how I run my +Atk Shigure. Blarblade, Deathblow, Geyser Dance, Spurs)

OG!Olivia - PA!Azura - Lene - OG!Azura - PA!Olivia - Inigo - Shigure, I think is how it would go. Now, I know I am biased and also just because I rate Shigure the lowest doesn't mean I think he's bad at all, I get a tonne of use out of him and all the dancers can be really well built and cool units.

PA Azura>>>>>. But all the other infantry dancers are still good, just not As Good

PA Azura is the buffing queen.

OG Olivia has some pretty solid stats with easy merging potential.

PA Shigure with Geyser Dance is good at bugging Blade Mages

OG Azura can counter the plethora of Swordlords who don’t have Black Luna.

OG Ninian has the benefit of dragon buffing and Light Breath to buff non-Dragon team mates.

PA Olivia is a fairly good mage counter, but what she does, most others can do better.

Inigo has been the least useful for me, his stats unable to make him stand out in any significant way.

Lene might be amazing for me if ever I had pulled her

I kinda want the new Ryoma most. His stats seem comparable to his OG self with lower defenses, but he could still be good to counter the slew of sword lords and the rare red mage who isn’t reindeer girl

Xander’s dance animation is silly, but with defense like he has, he could be a good tank, especially with a Smoke Dagger or Peshkatz(which I don’t think can be inherited)

Festival Micaiah
Festival Elincia
Everyone else

That is how I rank them based solely on my own personally favoritism, i.e. not stats or anything like that. I just really want the kinomo wearing Tellius girls!

And if I get both I will make them work to the best of my ability, and the only other dancer I have that I might use as much as them would be B!Ninian because of her flier support potential.

I'm not so convinced that ranking them is important because they fill different niches. Olivia can merge, but Elincia with TA will probably have a significantly easier time vs blues while debuffing the enemy team. PA Olivia can function kind of like Felicia if she uses QR, taking enemy mages on enemy phase. PA Azura with wings of mercy is extremely dangerous teamed with a +10 fury + desperation Nino (or Tharja or Tailtiu, or any blade tome for that matter); no other dancer can do this. To go full circle, it's very hard to take any dancer other than Olivia into 724 scoring range (which you can do with +10 on both her and Reinhardt and two units with high-scoring skills, don't even need merges on the other two).