I spent about a month out of the game, and when I came back a couple of months ago they had gone from top to mid tier, how did that happen? Why are cavalry units with built-in distant counter and decent stats below other much more 'mundane' units?
For instance, how is Draug superior to Xander? How is Hinoka superior to Camus? Sure, there are situations where they work best, but the same will always be true, no matter the units involved. But what is usually more useful? What I'm not seeing?
Trenches are everywhere nowadays, basically crippled all melee calvaries in most of the maps.
Draug as armor unit has bold fighter & Vengeful Fighter, and bold fighter is the most broken skill in the game right now.
Hinoka has her new spear, with easy-to-use swift sparrow on both phase and flier + normal guidance built in.
Distant counter is nice but they certainly aren't the best unit to use it, since they often get doubled by mages nowadays and have poor res.
Put simply horses are better for offense not defense. They have reduced bst for being mounted, which means less in some sort of defensive stat, and they can't use the ever powerful Steady/Warding breath or wrath, unlike armors who are built for defense. They aren't bad units by any means but when you have such high mobility (just bogged down by trees and trenches) it's better to make use of the range offensively. This is why horse emblem teams usually have offensive threats such as Brave Lyn Rein and a blade tome mage. This is also why fliers are typically offensive, their mobility is better for it.
Additional note is that they (mostly xander) has competition from defensive horses with an extremely good niche, them being Sigurd for mage tanking and Swordhardt and Ares with devastating vantage procs.
Also side note: Red and blue are better on offensive sets than defensive, as green is the more defensive color.
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