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Learns Seal Movement upon completing budding talent.

This analysis was written by FlashingFire.

Dimitri is one of the best units in the entirety of Three Houses.

The first reason for this is easily understood from his stat spread and growth rates. 12 base strength and an initial D+ in lances means that Dimitri's Tempest Lance will hit harder than just about anything else in the early game. A titanic 60% strength growth means things only get better from there, and the rest of his bases and growths range from solid to high-end wherever physical combat is concerned.

Base 9 charm and a 55% growth rate also make Dimitri one of the few units that can semi-reliably hit gambits early on, as well. Between his raw combat prowess, gambit utility, and the fact that he gets 20% extra experience thanks to his personal ability, Dimitri will quickly establish himself as a pivotal member of your army, and in all likelihood he will never fall off.

The second and more game-breaking reason for Dimitri's usefulness is his unique access to both Battalion Wrath and Battalion Vantage, the latter of which is reached at A rank authority. Once both of these abilities are unlocked, and Dimitri is given a battalion with a third of its endurance or less, the prince can become the one-man army the game's lore makes him out to be.

It's almost comical how well Dimitri can take advantage of this combination. The Blue Lions get early access to the Retribution gambit through the D-rank Kingdom Archers battalion, providing the ability to retaliate from any distance. Dimitri's super-high charm makes enemies miss most of their gambit attempts, though they remain one of the few things that can circumvent this setup. The Fraldarius Soldiers, which give +20 crit and +7 attack and can have 35 endurance while still activating the ability combo, are a reward from the paralogue of an in-house student (Felix). However, it's worth noting they provide no hit rate boost, so the Goneril Valkyries and Leicester Mercenaries preferred for reliability and similar overall bonuses. The combination of Battalion Wrath, one of the aforementioned battalions, and a forged killer weapon brings his base crit rate to 100 or more even before factoring in dexterity. The result is a unit that can delete scores of enemies on enemy phase, an extreme rarity on Maddening mode. This notably makes dealing with Azure Moon's high volume of siege magic users almost trivial so long as Retribution is active (or the Chalice of Beginnings is equipped). Honestly, proper use of this strategy can lead to more concern over the durability of Dimitri's killer weapons than the man himself.

Dimitri is also very capable of pulling off an evasion-focused build. The crux of this strategy involves designating Dimitri as your Dancer for Sword Avoid +20 (much to his chagrin) and coupling it with his personal ability Royal Lineage+, which provides +20 Avoid while Dimitri is at full health. Throw in a high-avoid battalion (Gautier Knights, anybody?) and an Evasion Ring, and Dimitri can force enemy hit rates into the single digits. Incidentally, this can become an alternate method of dealing with long-range magic with Retribution support, and the 5 charm boost from dancing lessons only furthers Dimitri's ability to dodge gambits, which could otherwise ruin evasion builds. To top it all off, his player phase combat will still be top-of-the-line between his raw stats and combat arts like Sword Dance and Windsweep. This strategy does sometimes require the player to choose between maximizing Dancer utility and emphasizing combat, so it won't be for everyone.

Even outside of highly specialized builds, Dimitri makes a terrific physical combat unit almost no matter what you do with him. Despite his bane in axes, a D+ rank is not too difficult to reach, so mastering Brigand for Death Blow is a no-brainer unless you have an enemy phase focus in mind. If movement is what you want, Paladin is easily accessible and wyvern classes are broken as ever, though the investment it takes to get Dimitri to Wyvern Lord is rather inefficient. Wyvern Rider, however, can be certified at C axes and C flying, so it's a lot more attainable. High Lord and Great Lord are solid unique classes and Atrocity is a terrific combat art, though even Dimitri does not want to dive too deep into enemy lines without being able to Canto away. Honestly, just about any physical build is worth considering if you're not committed to Battalion Wrath + Battalion Vantage, but some require much less investment than others.

Speaking of efficiency, if your goal for Dimitri is any variant of non-mounted lance or sword combat, then training his weapon rank to S+ for Lancefaire/Swordfaire is a feasible goal even in Maddening non-NG+. He can simply focus on the weapon and authority until the latter reaches B or A, depending on your strategy, and then beeline the former up to S+. The sauna DLC can make this process even quicker. With the amount of combat he should be seeing, his lack of tutoring for some of the post-timeskip period should barely slow him down.

As a final note, Dimitri gets Linked Attack boosts with Dedue and Byleth, which can be situationally useful. Equipping them as adjutants is generally undesirable, however (and in Byleth's case impossible during the main story), and Dimitri is one of the last members of your team that will need Adjutant support in the first place.

So that's Dimitri! A unit with a unique game-breaking ability combination that could still reasonably claim to be one of the best combat units in Three Houses without it. Have fun!

Dimitri can build support with the following characters.

Dimitri cannot be recruited into other houses.

They will automatically be recruited if the player selects to teach the Blue Lions house.