Fie comes to the original Class VII with a chill mood and lots of survival skills in her sleepy head. She joins holding the Zephyr time master quartz, which adds status reduction effects to attacks and boasts incredible speed boosts. Her Brave Order, Zephyr Wing, cuts down delay after attacking and gives Insight status. While Fie's normal attacks are extremely close-up with the blade end of her gunswords, she can counterattack from an impressive distance.
The orbment layout for Fie's ARCUS II has four lines, two of which have multiple slots in addition to the mandatory two wind and one time quartz. This gives her a lot of liberty to combine different debuffs into her attacks. Fie has a very high base evasion and speed, decent strength, but has low HP, defenses, and arts strength.
Fie's crafts have essential applications for any fight and good enough range to hit from anywhere.
Sweep is a low-cost, low-power, large-area attack that impedes charging.
Cipher Edge launches Fie in a straight line through foes, bearing good power, very high unbalance efficacy and a chance to deliver a Deathblow to whatever it hits that is vulnerable to an instant knockout.
Tri-Cyclone has a very small area but has very high power and break damage and the potential to delay enemies' active turns. When upgraded, it also carries the chance to seal physical abilities.
Concealing Wind grants Fie stealth, and when upgraded, several turns of boosted strength and speed.
Lethal Crusade peppers the battlefield with bullets and a chance to instantly kill enemies vulnerable to Deathblow.
Build 1: Counterattack
Weak.
Min-maxing for evasion and attack on Fie and dropping her in the middle of a crowd is an easy way to win many battles. Her two master quartz, together with Rage, and working off of her long counterattack range, cause many enemies to destroy themselves on Fie.
Master Quartz:
Main: Sirius
Sub: Gungnir
Line 1:
[Zeus Gem/Evade 3]
Rage
[Umbral Gyre/Speed Breaker III]
Line 2:
Carnelia Gem/Attack 3
[Esmelas Gem/Evade 2/Recuria SR]*
Line 3:
Mars Gem/Attack 2/Burn III
Line 4:
Evade 3/Evade 2 OR any +STR without disabling ailments**
One of the easiest strategies to pull off and one that does not suffer much through the Cold Steel saga, counterattack Fie is a beast and will shred everything that can't land a hit on her. With her low defenses, she only needs to worry about boosted accuracy once her evasion tips the scales at and beyond 100%. Many foes, including bosses, have trouble reliably hitting Fie. For what does hit her though, it will likely hit hard. This strategy gets better as the game goes on and those more evasion-heavy quartz are available.
Two Evergreen are recommended for Fie unless playing Cold Steel IV where this accessory's evasion has been nerfed - Kaiser Mishy, Shadow Vivace, and Victory Belt are options that carry more evasion.
There is a caveat when using an Aegis-based tank - instead of usually targeting whoever is closest, enemies will go after the aforementioned tank, so Fie will want to follow the tank to ride some AoEs. Putting Aegis on Fie in place of Gungnir sacrifices an awful lot of damage so I do not recommend it. This Fie build performs better in the absence of an Aegis tank.
Laura, Rean, and Fie herself have brave orders that can make damage output even more explosive through the Insight and additional damage perks.
*Recuria SR gives evasion bonuses in Cold Steel IV, but not Cold Steel III.
** If Fie's evasion exceeds 100%, have the last quartz be your strongest +STR quartz in reserve that does not cause Freeze, Seal, Petrify, Mute, Sleep, or Nightmare, because you want the enemy to try to attack Fie as much as possible to make use of this build.
Build 2: Utility
Crouching tiger, hidden waitress
Fie makes an ideal runner for Moebius in an emergency situation when most characters are held back by it. Her high evasion gives her survivability and her high base speed helps her deliver the lowest-delay healing and buffs without relying on a good EP pool. Her four lines enable her to cripple large areas of enemies, giving the party an easier opportunity to clean up.
Master Quartz:
Main: Moebius
Sub: Sirius/Zephyr
Line 1:
[Zeus Gem/Evade 3]
Rage
[Umbral Gyre/Speed Breaker III]
Line 2:
Sennin Gem/HP 3
[Esmelas Gem/Evade 2/Recuria SR]
Line 3:
Lunar Gyre/Amberl Gem/Defense 3
Line 4:
Solar Gyre/Shield Breaker III
Moebius shows value at higher levels as it will expand the range and effectiveness of healing items to cover an area. Because cooking provides healing and buffs, including healing of EP and Craft Points, and item delivery neither requires a charge nor has high delay, fielding a Moebius main works as a complete alternative to a support caster when you have a lot of items.
As with the classic counterattack build, Fie should have high-evasion items equipped, such as Evergreen, Kaiser Mishy, Shadow Vivace, or Victory Belt. Rage alone helps her reach 100% accuracy even without Evergreen, so that she can pepper enemies with the low-cost, high-range Sweep and reduce some stats with the gyres filling her orbment lines. Sirius enables Fie to deliver heavy counterattack damage.
Defense and speed are the two more important stats to focus on lowering before the gyres are available. The entire party can get more turns in as the strength of the debuff stacks, and the physical attackers will hit harder. In order to keep Fie's Craft Points up independent of a restorative ally, linking her with someone that either has great unbalance efficacy against the fielded foes or someone who will take a lot of damage will enable her to build Craft Points off of Link Attacks and revenge abilities to continuously use Sweep.
Because Evergreen is less effective in Cold Steel IV, and enemies that dive under the battlefield have highly boosted accuracy, this variant appreciates the bulk provided by Sennin Gem and Amberl Gem so it can continue providing support. If going with this more defensive recommendation, then Zephyr also helps spread Stat Down when gyres are replaced and offers Chrono Burst so Fie can return to stealth after using restorative items on teammates if most of the party is still down.