As is becoming an annual tradition, I forgot to look at the date when publishing, this is not an April Fool's video lmao

edit- Also for clarity, arguments made in this video and the footage for the video pertain to US hard mode, not maniac

edit edit - I don't know what to tell you guys, I've been in the trenches arguing with people about Soren for years, glad to see maybe sentiment isn't as low on these mages as I thought!

Just gotta say, the mage lizard on the thumbnail is fantastic.

While I do often like evaluating units with a lot of nuance, Ilyana just makes me go "hungry thunder girl go brrrrrrrr" and I give her ridiculously blatant favoritism every run I do.

The actual big reason you might use Tormod over other sages is that he comes with free Celerity in a game where you can't steal it off him to give to someone else. Mages' low move can be worked around in the ways you mentioned, but having 2 extra is still inarguably a huge boon.

The mage hate is generally directed at radiant dawn to my knowledge. I think Soren and Ilyana are good! Even on Maniac they have the crit underflow glitch keeping them relevant.

My issue here is the hype on Soren’s survivability. On maniac, one hit is often enough to KO him. Soren really wants the chapter 1 seraph robe to be able to tank an attack, but Ike desperately wants that for chapters 2 and 4. Dodge tanking isn’t reliable in the early and early mid game. Soren is a liability until his Ike support is online and until he gets a good bit of speed.

Anyways, awesome video as always, and I agree with pretty much everything you said in regard to hard mode! And most of it with maniac in consideration.

"There's a lot of bonus EXP in Path of Radiance" is like the reason that units can only be So Bad in PoR.  It's not a premium request to actually level up a unit.

Also I have always felt like Tormod had the easiest "why this one" out of every mage, because +2 move from Celerity is huge.  Remember the whole 'we can get people places'?  Tormod doesn't need the shove or rescue.  It's the specific reward for investing in him when you already had lots of opportunities with others.

I remember in my first play through I immediately blundered both my healers so Soren suddenly became very useful for me as I desperately needed staves

I think you forgot the big deal for why might wanna use Tormod over, that what was suppose to be Tormod's main selling point, Celerity, since skills when removed don't turn into scrolls and you don't get a celerity scroll, Tormod has an effect +2 movement against Ilyana and Soren.

9:00 “forget one rounding, Soren is chipping for pretty puny amounts of damage” clip shows Soren doubling and K’Oing I’ll take your word for it.

Why are you dropping the Pegasus Band at 11:00?

As an addition to mages having low mov, tormod, a fire mage you get alongside muarim, has celerity, a skill that raises his move by 2 I believe

Complete perfection: a mage Lizard

Tormod has 2 extra movement; that's the reason why he's worth using. He was my go-to mage in my first playthrough.

Soren has been a long running blorbo for me, so i am glad other ppl are on the Soren propaganda train

Agreed, Soren is solid. Particularly in maniac mode, vantage adept Soren can be a very useful tool to take out  bulky enemies reliably, and so many enemies have 1-2 range so comparing the low might of times to high might 1 range weapons doesn't apply since you almost always have a jav/HA equipped. Another solid video

It's funny that in fully rigged 100% growths LTC's POR mages are literally better than everyone other than marcia. (and early game anima mages in general are just dominant in almost all FEs)

The main reasons early game anima mages are good are A: staves B; seige tomes and C: easy early 1-2 range

The early 1-2 range is way better when you can assume every enemy just misses, but even so soren way outdamages anyone at 1-2 other than titania

Staves are OK but surprisingly there are 0 maps where Soren's higher magic cap matters over Rhys. In spite of this if you're dilligent you can easily get soren to B staves to use rescue, (15 heals 14 mends 12 Physic/ward=41 uses of staves to reach B) and in a casual playthrough his high magic growth matters for some rescues

Seige tomes however are really good, you can seige tome a door with bolting to get it out of the way, Seige tome annoying enemies in the way of marcia, or seige tome a boss in a map like chapter 27. Since Path of radiance has roughly 19 uses of anima mage seige tomes available there is a lot of seige to go around your 1-2 seige tome users. POR mages are basically Ballisticians late game

JUSTICE FOR MY BOY

I’ve never understood the PoR magic hate - the only real issue for me is you have to ignore using multiple magic types if you want to use high level tomes

Kind of weird how people would complain about mages in Path of Radiance when it's successor, Radiant Dawn, treats mages much worse.
Firstly their speed. Many magic users struggle to double enemies throughout most of the game And the speed cap of mages isn't great either.
Especially light magic users suffer, they have the same speed caps as generals! And then we have Thunder magic, which has been nerfed into the ground.
It now has even less might than wind, while still being less accurate. The crit bonus is negligible. Its only saving grace is that it's effective against wyverns and dragons.

I used Illyana and Callil my first run and they were pretty solid, probably could have done better if I were willing to sink money into forged tomes. But while mages are just aight in PoR, they're just godawful in RD where enemies actually have a Res stat which makes the low tome Mt an irreconcilable issue