What IS mediocre is that you're supposed to sacrifice these units to get them on anyone else.
That was kind of my view, honestly. They're whatever units with some great one-off abilities. Being able to soft-counter vantage etc is good, but only great on a better unit (or the existing unit with heavy investment).
With that said, it's entirely possible Alm or Faye (or both) will be 4* units like Eirika and Reinhardt after their banners, making inheriting those skills somewhat less painful.
In other news, now that I have a good candidate for Goad Fliers (Clair), I fed Nino to Spring Camilla for
maximum gronnblade shenanigans for Flier Emblem.
Edit: Random note on Clair / Hit & Run, but this skill seems to have fewer overall uses than Drag Back. I've been running Drag Back on Lyn for a while and I can't think of many situations where she's hit something and I wished she didn't bring the enemy back a square with her.