Anyway, decided to level them (Azama, Barst, Hawkeye, Merric, and Tiki) up and as a way to get badges for Alfonse and Sharena to promote -- already promoted Anna, Matthew, and Virion. Starting with the bad, Azama's underwhelming. I figure this is more to do with the fact that of all the healers I've used, he's the only 3* one. Lissa and Serra started out with better heals, especially Serra, and as 4* units, their stats are naturally higher. That said, the fact he is a healer makes him very useful regardless if he's a 3*. Although, a 1* or 2* healer probably won't be as useful if they're locked out from "basic" skills.
Skipping the two axes users, Merric is surprisingly really good. I don't know, I just don't like his design for some reason. Maybe it's the color usage or whatever. Similar case with Arthur who I think looks awesome in a superhero, Code Name: STEAM style, but it feels out of place at times given that Arthur is very vibrant. Anyway, part of this is that he's the only 4* mage I've ever had and of the green mages, he's more of a normal one who's fast enough to double and not get doubled unlike Cecilia whose speed is atrocious yet unsurprisingly, still better than Alfonse. That said, the trade off outside of Cecila being a mounted unit, so 1 more movement, looks to be that Merric is much more fragile -- his resistance is average for a unit and probably low for a mage. How fragile might be relative if Merric doesn't get doubled, but still takes a chunk of damage from any unit versus Cecila getting doubled taking tremendous amounts of damage from physical attacks and probably against red mages.
Onto adult Tiki. She's a freaking tank, but her resistance sucks and so does her speed -- probably related to her sleeping a lot and being groggy all the time. She's literally a tank, then, except not as tanky as Gwendolyn who has good resistance in my first file. Trade off is that Gwen is weak to anti-armor and can't counter against ranged attacks to Tiki being weak to magic and anti-dragon weapons. Overall, I like her and at least she's a red, non-sword unit. One thing that's weird is apparently she has an accent -- British-like? -- now which is weird when young Tiki is voiced by the same person, Mela Lee, and Tiki in Awakening didn't have an accent.
So, why the skip on the axe users? It's because they're axe users. I have 5 of them and they're fulfilling similar roles. Of the 5, I would say only Raven that stands out because he's freaking average. Barst having a Brave Axe kind of competes with Raven, except Barst's speed is so-so making it rough to use it and his overall resistance isn't as good as Raven; Barst leans towards having better defense, but lower resistance. This leads to Bartre where he and Barst are classic fighters who have low resistance, so-so speed, and high attack, defense, and HP. Bartre basically edges out as a better anti-armor, anti-lance unit because of his Hammer while Barst seems to be more of an initial attack unit since he has Knockback which would play well with Brave Axe, but if you screw up, he could have too low of a speed to do enough damage or would get doubled. With Hawkeye, he's also a classic fighter, but leans to having more resistance while still having pretty good, but not as good defense as Bartre and Barst. So, he's more of a mage masher which is also what Anna is, but she's much faster and more fragile. Speaking of fast and with more overall defense like Hawkeye, Raven. It comes full circle. Here's the thing, I like all of them, but it's really annoying to have basically 5 of the same units, some on the extremes like Anna, the glass cannon mage masher and Bartre and probably Barst, the I'm going to die to any mage brosifs.
The other green units, the two mages are different enough; infantry and cavalry. With the red units, at least I have two types and more like 3 different units, well, more like Selena making Alfonse look even worse than he is -- he's never going to live this down for me -- and Tiki, a dragon. And then we go to the blue unit. Notice the singular. I have no other blue units other than the one everyone starts with. I NEED A BLUE UNIT. Current chapter, 8-4, I'm on has 3 red units and I'm sure as hell Sharena will not be able to take down Tiki if she's a physical tank even with Sharena having weapon advantage and being durable not to mention she'd need to take down 2 others. I mean, who else am I going to bring? Red units who'll be neutral and possibly useless (Alfonse), the green units who'll probably be dead within moments of the game, or the helper squad of Azama, Lissa, Matthew, and Virion? I don't want to overlevel to steamroll the chapter as it would take the fun out of it.
Right now, I would be okay with a 5 blue summon. Seriously, I could end up with an armor, a cavalry, flying, or mage unit. The possibilities when units like Cordelia, Donnel, Est, Gwendolyn, Odin, Subaki, Sully, Sumia, and more exist... I just realized something. We don't have a lance wyvern rider, do we? Or even a sword one? Outside of Beruka, Camilla, Cherche, and Narcian, all of whom are axe users, who else is there? They could have just shoehorned Heath from Blazing Sword as a lance wyvern rider. Meanwhile, the all melee weapons Pegasus Knights. Hmm... No flying mages yet and I don't think we have a mounted archer.