Why Swordbreaker?

I see it as a way to stop broken specials like Black Luna or Regnal Astra, and while there are other ways to do this, Swordbreaker is great because it allows for flexibility, working in both enemy phase and player phase (such as going up against Vengeful vs. Bold Fighter - Slaying Edge vs. Ayra's Blade, etc.).

The only unit I've ever run Swordbreaker on is my 5* Nowi, and even then I hardly ever use her (back when I tried to use units that were "meta" instead of units I wanted).

It's just a way to check units like Ayra/Mia/Karla/Hana/Soleil/Zelgius/anyotherswordunit, but if you actually have a unit that can take care of swords, then Swordbreaker isn't really a necessary skill, especially over something like.. well the skills mentioned.

But yeah, it's just a good way to avoid taking a Regnal Astra to the face, I guess. lol

I look at "breaker" skills as something to use with units that have poor speed. For example, a slow red mage like Lyon or Lilina can use it to reliably take down sword users.

I have it on Chrom as well to give him advantage in sword duels.

There are some units that don’t benefit from skills like Desperation or Vantage and Swordbreaker counters the vast majority of speedy reds in Arena

For instance I run Swordbreaker on Roy because he already has QR on his weapon, doesn’t have the speed for Desperation, and doesn’t really have the build to take advantage of Vantage. But with his defenses he can use Swordbreaker to deal with dragons and swords units.

Similarly I run Swordbreaker on Lilina because she doesn’t use Enemy Phase skills like Vantage or QR and doesn’t have the speed for Desperation.

Not to mention that niche units like TA Armorsmasher can use Swordbreaker to secure ORKO against green and red armors

And it’s a cheap skill to acquire

It’s a great skill to have to make certain units AA viable. It makes units like Sharena have a bit more purpose to them, especially if you’re scoring in the 730+ range for AA. She can double and kill max merged sword units when I need her to.

2-3 reasons:
- As others said, it will shut down Ayra/Mia/Karla will probably shut down bold fighter Zelgius/BK (depending on your spd). I ran some calculations with +spd B.Lucina and found that she tends to lose without swordbreaker, which is problematic if she's supposed to take care of enemy swords for the team.
- A lot of swords often use swordbreaker, especially support units such as Eirika or Olivia, because they have at best the speed to prevent a double from the speed demons but not enough to double back. Good to shut the door against wings of mercy. Other units that might use swordbreaker include Alfonse
- Due to the rise of swordbreaker, some swords which wouldn't otherwise use it take it up, such as some builds of Soleil, just to prevent someone from breaking her.

The other most common use I can think of is on blue dragons to shut down Falchions

I've put swordbreaker 2 on more than one mage for TT, and it really helps with the inflated stats, not only if Ayra or Lon'qu appear, but also against some slower swords who I should be able to double if the stats weren't getting so out of hand.