Okay, first of all, freeze. I'm not saying you should class Elise into Dark Mage or something. That's the implication I'm getting here in this 'is Elise a good magic user' and this dilemma of 'why would you make Elise a combat unit'. Strategist still gives her tome access. She does pretty well to kill things with her tomes given that and E rank is not as crippling as you make it seem.
This isn't an either/or situation. Elise can't compromise her utility as a staff user by taking advantage of tomes unless you're putting her in a class I never advocated you put her in.
E-rank tomes aren't crippling, but they aren't noteworthy either, which was my main point. Forged Fire still has underwhelming base damage, and even if she can ORKO low Res enemies (
which any mage can do), she's still falling short on bulkier units and doesn't even have an EP OR fantastic support options to back it up. Also, you're missing the point; nobody implied you should make her a Dark Mage because that would lower her movement and take away her staff access, which is just about the dumbest thing you can possibly do on Conquest.
The XP curve on staves isn't actually as wide a gap as you're making it seem either. Staff XP is consistent and safe, unlike kill XP, and scales with the rest of your party as opposed to the encounters themselves, which means XP gain per heal is pretty good if you're not osmosing experience too much. Elise was my second character to hit her first level cap, and this didn't happen because of 'favouritism'. She's an essential cog in your army, and if you've been using her enough, her XP gain should be at the very least on curve with everyone else.
Staves are set up so that the user gains experience once per turn
at most. Combat units can gain significantly more EXP, especially when the EP or boss units are taken into account. There is absolutely no conceivable way that Elise is promoting early unless you're staff grinding, which shoots a huge hole in the "Elise is a great mage" argument, when said mage doesn't even exist for a huge chunk of the game. Healing is also variable, so there are some cases where you won't gain much EXP on her if you don't need to heal.
She also, again, has a much easier time building experience and staying with the rest of the army because Odin and Nyx are inherently harder to maintain. Even if staff experience isn't as efficient as kill experience, she still expects to receive more of it on average without compromising herself. You can jack Odin up with Spirit Dust, but it's more like a drip-feed through the mid-game, and Nyx is straight up much harder to 'fix' in general. Odin has everything he needs except Magic. Nyx can't hit the broad-side of the barn and her growths are generally incredibly lackluster aside from her magic and her speed. Which is also kind of important, since you do need to hit stuff with her to gain XP, which is another factor to consider when trying to feed Nyx in general.
Odin isn't difficult to maintain dude. Felicia and tonics gives him 12 speed at base, which is enough to double every enemy in chapter 8 outside of Fighters and Flora. That's a ton of experience he can nab for free right there, and he can similarly perform in Mozu's paralogue which is just "free EXP" the level.
I wouldn't personally use him as a mage since his slow start is really bad and his returns aren't that impressive but it is absolutely possible to make him a viable unit since his support options really are that good. He just needs a ton of maintenance on the player's part before he can start snowball (unless he gets shit level ups, but you were only going to use him up until you got Ophelia anyway). Also, if Nyx can't hit the broadside of a barn, then what about Elise? Her skill growth is similarly terrible but she doesn't even have the luxury of having Heartseeker. Of course, Nyx generally shouldn't be attacking enemies at point blank either, but at least she has access to instant Forged Lightning which lets her 2HKO enemies before they can even counter attack.
So tl;dr, no, investing in Nyx to make her 'good' is nowhere near the same thing as investing in Elise to make her good. Elise will naturally and, frankly, very easily fatten up on XP. You don't need to plan specifically to funnel XP or rig a scenario just to keep her alongside the pack. Elise kind of justifies herself.
Investing in Nyx absolutely makes her good. "Good" in the sense that can she can kill most enemies in one round at a range when trained up which is pretty much all I need her to do as a Mage. She's very flawed and she simply isn't a character I would personally use in combat (especially when her support is like +1 move, +6 Speed and +3 which is way too good too pass up), but she isn't worthless either. Elise's main issue as a combat unit is that she simply does not exist as a Mage for a good chunk of conquest, spends a significant amount of time in E/D rank hell, which lowers the amount of contributions she can make as a Mage AND her pair up options are ass on top of that. That's why I have her pegged as inferior to Leo/Odin/Nyx, who all can make use out of great tomes like Forged Lightning, Mjolnir and Horse Spirit (with the latter 2 of course functioning as decent mages after a boost).
The thing about me saying magic isn't good until a certain point I think is perfectly relevant, though. Your perspective is skewed because you rocked the game with an optimized Magic/Luck build scaling damage and toughness off Magic and tail-ending with Levin Sword. That's amazing, but it's completely irrelevant to what Odin and Nyx bring to the table. Magic in Conquest, essentially, is as good as the characters who can use it and those characters are as good as the circumstances of the maps that they start on, and if they can't get anything started there, they're basically garbage forever. 10 is notable because it's a huge early XP boost but they're both super garbage in that level if they're not manning a turret. Which of course, doesn't actually benefit them. Units with low resistance or vulnerabilities still exist in the early stages of the game, of course, but no mage in the early stages of the game (unless you are building a Mag!Corrin) is worth using offensively anyways. So again, Elise being staff locked isn't relevant toward anything but her starting rank which also isn't nearly as crippling as you're making it sound. And as you conceded, she pushes good damage with a forged Fire, and you didn't need to expend all that effort to get her to the point Nyx could essentially be doing the same thing but a little worse to boot.
That's a false claim. Early game has Fighters and Armors who are absolutely fucked by Magic, and most of the early bosses (besides like Hinoka) have shit resistance. If anything, using an optimized Corrin has shown me how destructive Magic can be. It's only held back by its lackluster users, but you eventually get Leo and Ophelia who rock at magic, and you can make Odin and Nyx function with the help of supports/tonics.
I think you're seriously and disproportionately over-valuing the tome itself over what the unit can actually do with it, basically.
Tomes are literally the life blood of mages. They're the reason why Ophelia is a crit Goddess, the reason why Leo can consistently erase enemies with Forged Lightning/Brynhilda, the reason why Odin and Nyx have any worth in combat since they can sort of the do the above, but are worse at it. Elise spends a significant portion of the game being unable to do any of these things, which is why she isn't a noteworthy mage.
I'm getting sidetracked, though. Nyx sucks. Elise doesn't. Saying that they take the same amount of effort and 'favouritism' to be 'good' at killing dudes is silly and disrupts the point. Your point about Leo having a better start and a better enemy phase is noted and yeah, Leo is amazing. But Elise will still hit things harder and she has overall decent stats to handle anything on your turn. Leo is more well rounded but by design, he's not the magic nuke Elise is. He's versatile, but his tome has an irrelevant gimmick and isn't actually that great compared to the actual magic weapons in the game. My statement didn't relate to 'the best unit who happens to use tomes' (and the answer would be Camilla, actually). If we're talking characters that are really nothing but mages, then Elise does the job better than any other first gen. Strategist gives her a strong mix of power, mobility, speed, and renders her bulletproof to any other magician in the game, and that's relevant because most 2 range units in the game you need to worry about outside controlled circumstances transition to tomes by this point.
Sorry, but Leo not being a magic nuke is complete and utter bullshit. Leo easily caps Speed and Magic and I could consistently get his speed high enough with support to double most enemies, which basically meant quadruple Lightning tome (or an incredibly hard hitting 2 hit with Brynhilda, which hits like a truck because since his magic is overkill). Who cares if his personal tome's ability sucks ass,
its unpenalized 1-2 range with high base damage, which is amazing on its own.
Elise is never hitting as hard as Leo, period.
Nyx takes noticeable investment to be good as a mage. Elise takes little investment to be
acceptable as a mage and she simply does not exist as one until she promotes (which is a long time without staff grinding). That's the crux of my argument.
This post wound up being way messier than I expected, but it's late and I wanted to get it out of the way before I went to bed. To summarize. Elise being a strong magic caster is not mutually exclusive with her utility as a healer and staffbot. There's basically no way she can't farm XP as well or better than her counterparts. Elise is quite to the contrary, a unit that doesn't need specific favouritism to grow. She has a better start and better scaling than Nyx or Odin could ever dream of. And Leo is a great unit, but as a dedicated mage he falls just short in a numbers game because Dark Knight is by design a sort of compromise class. Elise is there to blow people up without gimmicks.
What? Dark Knight Leo has 8 move, access to all the best tomes (instant access to Lightning), Lifetaker, Heartseeker, (which mitigates his sketchy skill growth),
very good pair-up options and
an actual enemy phase. Exactly what about him is gimmicky? As I said earlier, Elise isn't there to blow people up. She's there to Freeze, to heal, to rescue without being attached to a high move unit due to her own high move. I don't need her to blow her up because I can't count on her offense being anything better than "average", especially when she doesn't have the pair up options OR tome rank to be a threat for most of the game.
_/¯
