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Level 1 Prince
Parents: Ethlin & Cuan
HP: ~32 (130%) Spd: ~10 (45%)
Str: ~12 (60%) Lck: ~8 (25%)
Mag: ~3 (7%) Def: ~10 (50%)
Skl: ~10 (50%) Res: ~3 (10%)
Move: 6
Weapon Ranks: Swords (A) (B without Minor Baldo)
Promotion Bonuses: +4 Str, +4 Mag, +5 Skl, +6 Spd, +5 Def, +4 Res, +3 Move, Canto, A Swords (redundant with Minor Baldo), A Lances, A Axes, A Bows, A Fire Tomes, A Thunder Tomes, A Wind Tomes, C Light Tomes, Pursuit
Items: Iron Sword + Inherited Items
Skills: Continue, Charisma
Holy Blood: Minor Noba, Minor Baldo
You know...one of the things I'm realizing as I go through these is; I actually do NOT know these units as well as I do the Gen 1 units. I can't remember the last time I HAVEN'T just blasted through Gen 2 with Celice (with some occasional help from Sety/Arthur, Ares, and Leaf); the only time I can ever remember doing otherwise is on my very first playthrough of this game. So, I'm having to theorycraft a lot more on these units than I did on the Gen 1 units. So if there are any ratings I give that are glaringly wrong, please forgive me; I'm more than open to changing them.
That said, here's my opinion on Leaf. As far as just AAAA Ranking is concerned, he's a very impressive unit. His bases are good enough to get him by to promotion. From there, he can easily staff-spam his way to LVL 30. Plus, the guy is the indisputed master of Rescue Staffing. The sheer amount of turns he can save is beyond ridiculous. So look forward to that in later updates.
Putting that aside, however? I've never found him to be THAT impressive under most settings. He does have slightly better stat caps than Celice, yes. He DOES have an instant A Rank in every weapon type except Light and Dark, that's all true. And his growths are really good...that is never to be denied. And yet, I just could never find anything that only HE could do; inspite of ALL of that amazing stuff he has post-promotion. I mean ok, again, he has the Rescue Staff...but that only really matters in Efficiency runs. Otherwise, that's really not that big of a deal.
As for the other stuff...well, here are the arguments as I understand them...and then here are the counter arguments...
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Argument #1: This guy is a REALLY awesome combat unit!
Counter-Argument #1: Ok...so is Shanan, Holsety!Arthur/Sety, Celice, Ares, and Althena; and Celice and Holsety!Arthur/Sety STILL end up better than him! Besides, the enemies don't actually start getting hard till Chapter 10; the rest of the game up to that point is a one-sided Celice stomp against everyone you come across. The only players who won't have haxed Celice to the max are new players; and if they don't know how to utilize Celice's full potential, they're not going to know how to use Leaf's.
Argument #2: This guy can use every staff in the game!
Counter-Argument #2: Yeah, that's pretty cool...but I could've always just used Sety/Hawk or any of my other many, many staff users.
Argument #3: The guy's super good at killing bosses!
Counter-Argument #3: Yep...and so are Shanan, Holsety!Arthur, Celice, and Ares. And I don't have to BABY any of those guys like I do with Leaf.
Argument #4: The guy has ample time to train on Armours in Chapter 7, and plenty of Gold to get from the villages!
Counter-Argument #4: He does...but said Armours are only at Level 5. And while there is indeed a lot of Gold, it's still not enough to allow him to afford the Elite Ring. The only way I found to getting him to get him an early promotion is to give him a 100 Kill weapon and grind him off of Jabarro's men. But even then, there's no way for me to guarantee his survival. I'm relying on RNG to go my way.
Argument #5: The guy has almost-exclusive access to tools, like Tornado, that almost no one else is ever gonna use!
Counter-Argument #5: He does...but Holy Weapon users like Holsety!Arthur have LITERAL exclusive access to tools that are even better than that. And again, no investment is required for them.
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So basically, my problem with Leaf is this. You CAN get a really good unit out of him if you're willing to put up with his "locked to swords, stuck at Level 1, and no-horse" nature...but he's still superfluous. I mean, he'll still be great for the EXP ranking and all of that, but...All of the really important jobs are already covered by units that don't require any of the investment he does.
Besides that, I've found using him to be outright...frustrating, at times. I HAVE to have either passed down the Return Staff to Nanna, or passed down the Return Ring to Leaf; otherwise, I have to wait a while before I can even get them to any of my Chapter 7 castles. And if I want to promote Leaf at Chapter 8 (which I won't be doing this playthrough)...I also can't easily do THAT unless I have said Return Ring or Return Staff. Otherwise, I have to manually walk him all the way down to where the main castle is. These aren't crippling issues, but I still feel like I have to work around his starting positions more than I do most of the other units in this game.
So in conclusion, this guy is perhaps the greatest Est unit the franchise has ever seen...but he's still an Est unit. And he's an Est unit in a game where a good chunk of his buddies are broken from start to finish, no investment needed.
As for character comparisons, he would easily be Dragon Ball Super!Trunks. He is the son of one the mightiest heroes on Earth, starts off as a hero fighting a near hopeless battle, lived most of his life without his dad, uses a sword as a weapon, and somehow has a completely different hair color from the other guy I compared to Trunks.
He's not too impressive at first; but that changes very quickly. Through the power of contrived writing DEDICATION, DETERMINATION, AND DESIRE, he manages quite possibly the most absurd jump in power his world has ever witnessed. And through his B.S. Gary Stu powers THE INTELLIGENCE INHERITED FROM HIS MOTHER, he somehow masters a whole lot of crazy techniques in just minutes. Heck, he wasn't even trying to use one of said techniques! He just sort of used it on accident, and split the bad guy in half with it. Crazy, huh?