Dark Flier

The Dark Flier is a class that debuted in Fire Emblem Awakening.

History in the Series

The Dark Flier class is a Pegasus-mounted combat physical and magical class. It is the first flying class capable of using offensive magic to appear in the Fire Emblem series. In its original inception in Awakening, the Dark Flier class is introduced as a promotion of the Pegasus Knight class, and is capable of using Tomes and Lances.

In Fates, the Dark Flier class is renamed to Dark Falcon. In this title, the class is unisex and treated as Nohrian. It requires the use of DLC-exclusive Ebon Wings in order for characters to gain access to it. It is otherwise functionally similar to the class's appearance in Awakening.

In the spin-off Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, enemy Mirages of this class are called Whitewing Knights, and they can be found in Area of Memories. They are the final form of the Blackwing Knight Mirages.

In Three Houses, the Dark Flier class is restricted to female characters. A character must be level 20 or higher to take the Certification Exam using the DLC-exclusive Abyssian Exam Pass. The recommended level requirements are B+ or higher in Reason and C or higher in Flying. The class gives bonuses to Reason, Flying, and Swords.

Overview

Combat

Dark Fliers are a little different from Pegasus Knights and Falcon Knights, as they are more offensively diverse. They have the ability to utilize both physical Lances and magical Tomes, allowing them to exploit both Defense and Resistance weaknesses. While the Magic of Dark Fliers will often take time to build up if physical characters are reclassed into the class, it will be well worth the effort eventually when they gain the ability to arm more powerful Tomes. This makes them extremely good for taking down high-Defense units like Generals and counterattacking Snipers, dispelling the need to worry about weapon range while being limited to Javelins, Short Spears and Spears. Offsetting the combat prowess of Dark Fliers is the fact that they retain their weakness to Wind tomes and Bows.

Awakening

The Dark Flier class is the natural promotion of Sumia, Cordelia, and Cynthia and Aversa defaults as a Dark Flier. Female Morgan, if she is the daughter of the preceding four characters, also naturally promotes into this class from her starting class. Female Robin, Lissa, Maribelle, Olivia, Say'ri, Severa, female Morgan, and Emmeryn all have access to the class naturally as a Reclass option.

The two skills that Dark Fliers learn are Rally Movement and Galeforce. Rally Movement is a good Rally skill, but should ideally be used at the beginning of each Player Phase as the movement boost is only useful during the player's turn.

Galeforce is a notorious skill in Awakening as one of the most powerful skills available due to it allowing characters to take an additional full turn of action if they kill an enemy, though only once per turn. A common strategy using the Pair Up function is to Pair Up two characters with Galeforce, which if both can activate it, allows a single unit three full turns of action without considering Olivia's Dance ability. This Skill is only held back due to its limited access. The Pegasus Knight class is a female-exclusive class and only a small handful of units have it in their default class set. Nonetheless, the skill can be inherited by the male children of characters with the skill, allowing Owain, Brady, Inigo, and male Morgan to acquire the skill from their mothers.

Fates

The Dark Flier class has been adjusted to become a special non-promotable base class. The Dark Flier is massively overpowered compared to unpromoted units, possessing superior movement, stats, and weapon choices regardless of whether the unit excels in physical or magical weapons. Once other classes hit the point of Promotion, however, the Dark Flier is actually a bit weaker relative to its competitors than it was in Awakening.

Like most magic units in Fates, Dark Fliers possess a poor skill stat, a significant loss from their performance in Awakening. Though they were always physically frail, their physically frailty is more pronounced in Fates, due to the overall lower average HP growth rates as well as the Dark Flier's significantly lowered maximum HP. Though Wind magic is virtually absent in Fates, the addition of Shuriken makes their magical attacks less viable overall, and the slower rate of weapon EXP growth makes it extremely difficult for Dark Fliers to attack both physically and magically. Galeforce and Rally Movement have both been weakened, and are typically obtained much later into the game due to the change to the EXP formula.

Nevertheless, they are still powerful 1-2 attackers with high Resistance, and their Speed stat has improved relative to the rest of the cast. In fact, after applying the bonuses of Speed +2, Dark Fliers are tied for being the fastest unit in the game.

Three Houses

The Dark Flier is the only class in Three Houses with the capability to use magic while flying. With the Canto ability, this makes Dark Fliers effective chip damage units similar to other mounted units, as they can move forward to attack, hit an enemy, and retreat to safety with their remaining movement. Stat-wise, their attacks are somewhat weaker than Warlocks, due to their lack of magic modifier, but their superior movement and speed often compensates.

One of the Dark Flier's class abilities is Transmute, an ability that temporarily increases their stats should they be hit by magical attacks during the enemy phase. This gives them a temporary edge in combat, which can help in the next player phase, but can in theory also work decently on enemy-phase builds. A problem with using Transmute for enemy phase is that it requires getting hit in order to proc, whereas many enemy-phase builds rely on not getting hit. To alleviate this issue, one can couple the ability with Vantage or Battalion Vantage, to allow the unit to get hit and then get the first strike on subsequent combats.

The weaknesses of the Dark Flier from previous games mostly remain, though their flying weaknesses can be mostly addressed by dismounting. However, the class has other minor shortcomings. The first is that, like Warlock, it doesn't have Dark Tomefaire to improve the attack of dark magic users, which only affects a few units: Lysithea, Hapi and Edelgard (to some extent). Another more significant limitation is their Battalion limitations; only flying battalions can be equipped to Dark Fliers, and only one of these (the Nuvelle Fliers Corps) grants a magical attack bonus. Without this battalion, the attack power of Dark Fliers will be hindered compared to infantry or cavalry magic users, who can equip any magic-improving Battalion of their choice.

In-Game

Base Stats

Maximum Stats

Growth Rates

Class Modifiers

Class Skills

Promotions

Notable Dark Fliers

Awakening

• Aversa - A scheming femme fatale who serves as Gangrel's subordinate.
• Catria (DLC) - The Einherjar recreation of the middle sister of the Whitewings

Three Houses

• Constance (Cindered Shadows) - Member of the Ashen Wolves and sole survivor of House Nuvelle's fall during the Dagda and Brigid War.

Trivia

• Dark Fliers are amongst the rarest classes encountered as enemies in Fire Emblem Awakening, appearing only in Paralogue 6, Chapter 25, Paralogue 20 and Endgame, aside from SpotPass teams and the completely random Risen fights.
• In Fates, if the capturable boss Daniela is promoted to a Dark Falcon, her model will be glitched, using her Strategist's horse model instead of the usual alicorn. This results in her riding a flying horse with a flickering shadow beneath her.
• Although a generic class portrait was made for Three Houses, it cannot be seen in gameplay as there are no generic Dark Fliers in any part of the game.

Gallery