-Cynthia-

An easier way to take out Petra is to hit her with a gambit first (her Charm is not that high), which should lower her Avo significantly.

I doubt he would take it, working under Dan Snyder is probably the least desirable job in the league. The Rooneys are very forgiving and will probably keep Tomlin at least another 3 years.

So Foles got knocked out in the first quarter Week 1, but the plus side is that Gardner Minshew looks pretty good which I was not expecting. Didn't love Marrone's decision to go for two and gamble the game considering the Texans couldn't do much offensively and running up the middle when our O-line was getting no push all day was a questionable playcall. Oh and Jalen Ramsey is asking to be traded...I kinda get why but it's not really a good sign.

Lysithea's nuking and Warping kind of go hand-in-hand- being able to OHKO most enemies means she can more easily gain Exp, which gives her more levelups, more Mag, and a higher Warp range.

Having axes also means Ferdinand and Sylvain can more easily get Death Blow though, which cuts into the Str advantage significantly once that is online. Admittedly not on EP although personally I found Dimitri's EP combat pretty underwhelming due to Spd, at least where lategame promoted enemies were concerned. I suppose the core thing is that Ferdi/Sylvain generally have the tools to get PP kills themselves (Death Blow, Brave Axe/Swift Strikes, Hammer for armors etc.) so I question how much the Str lead practically comes into play outside of earlygame. Felix is kind of a whole other deal- I think he's up there for having the strongest earlygame and being able to transition to Bow Knight but he has some other issues like durability.

Not to beat Dimitri into the ground since people seem to agree on it, but I still don't really get it. Are we muscling through the axe weakness into Wyvern or is Paladin/Bow Knight just as valuable? The latter doesn't seem to be the conclusion- I'm guessing Ferdinand/Sylvain/Felix are A- primarily because they can't access Pegasus Knight and Dimitri has that issue but even worse. There's just so much terrain, especially in the post-timeskip maps, and I don't think Dimitri's combat advantages (which is mostly just strength, Paladin tends to make him slower than the A/A- combat characters) matter too much on Hard.

I thought Blue Lions Cornelia was all right, she's foreshadowed before the War Phase and some connection to Dimitri backstory wise. Although her being an Agarthan isn't super relevant here so eh. The rest are definitely underdeveloped/underutilized, Thales especially since he's their leader. Even in GD/Church, you just kinda show up to his house and kill him and he doesn't have anything particularly interesting to say.

I think Dimitri is more A tier than S tier. He has trouble transitioning into a flier due to the Axe weakness and Wyvern>Paladin due to speed as well as flight being very important. The other two Lords can easily fly and I'm not sure Dimitri brings anything else to the table to warrant S tier. I think Catherine is more B-, I think she's worse than Seteth and Shamir. She has good if not better stats, but Snipers(and Bow Knight) and Wyverns are just way better classwise than Swordmaster. I guess you can make her an Assassin for 1 more Mov and 1-2 range, but that's still not as good. Getting to Falco requires a lot of high investment into skills she's not strong in so it would take a while.

It's very difficult to take on Medeus on Lunatic without using Marth unfortunately, and he needs pretty high stats not to get one rounded. I think it might be possible to beat Medeus by rigging Aura crits or sacrificing units but yeah you might want to give Marth some stat boosters.

Good to see these starting back up again, it's been a longgg time since I did a debate here but I can judge. In general, I think both of you could have benefited from more usage of enemy stats, particularly with statements like 'Garcia doubles all non mercmyrym enemies" "Garcia's 7 might with a hand axe isn't good enough later in the game" etc. It's just more effective when you can show what these differences actually are. Would probably give this one to CannedCaineghis, the fundamental argument of 'mages don't need durability' is rather flawed. Mages are still combat units and having more durability to expose them to more Enemy Phase combat is still valuable which CannedCaneghis did bring up although numbers would have improved the durability argument. side bee also let the argument of Lute staves not being valuable because she can't fight slip away- she can use a staff on the Player Phase and still have Enemy Phase combat, although that would have undermined the argument of mages only being used for Player Phase combat. For sidebee(Percival) vs. AnonymousSpeed(Niime), I'm going to go with AnonymousSpeed. I think they did an effective job of demonstrating how Niime's Warpusage is superior to her staff counterparts and mentioned important aspects of Niime like Nosferatu, other staves, Apocalypse etc. side bee mentioned Percival's availability a lot, which is a good core of the argument, but the onus was on him to explain how Percival contributed to all of these chapters compared to other mounted combat units and I didn't see too much of that. Enemy stat comparisons would have been useful, particularly with bosses, since Percival is good at bosskilling. AnonymousSpeed made a good point that 1-2 range is not really how you kill bosses in FE6 (although numbers would have helped here).

Nice buffs, he seems a lot more worth using now.

I think part of the reason they did that was to even out the evil and good characters more- I believe original BG2 has 7 good party members and only 3 evil ones. The unfortunate side effect of trying to kill two birds with one stone (alignment and sexuality imbalance) was that all the gay romance options are evil.

So people are rumoring Joe Flacco to the Jags (although mostly just La Canfora who is wrong most of the time). I really don't like this idea, they've been pretty much the same statistically the past two years or so, except Flacco is older and more injury prone. Ravens also probably wouldn't have any interest in Bortles, so we'd have to pay both which we really don't have the cap space for atm. It reminds me of when people kept saying we'd get Eli Manning the past few offseasons. Yeah we have a QB problem, but the solution is not QBs playing at a below average level nearing retirement.

Well at least this season is over. I can't fully blame the offense for looking like shit, you can't expect much when you line up a 4th string tackle against JJ Watt with a 3rd string tackle on the other side. The Steelers could probably do better coaching wise than Tomlin, but they could also do significantly worse and I wouldn't expect drastic moves based on how their ownership has acted in the past. The team looks to be heading towards decline soon regardless as Big Ben's retirement looms.

Our defense looked like Swiss Cheese against a previously pretty shitty Cowboys offense and our offense predictably sucked as usual. We're still tied for the division lead but damn we gotta turn it around.

I had a lot more fun watching the Bills win than whatever the Jaguars were doing this week at least.

I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that the Steelers should move on from Tomlin if this season goes poorly enough. Andy Reid was a great coach for the Eagles, but I don't think it was in their best interest to keep him on indefinitely for a similar example (Reid>Tomlin IMO but close enough). However, I think their problems extend beyond coaching. Their defense is pretty bad and probably just isn't as talented as some Steelers fans think it is, coaching aside. Ben is getting older and his retirement is probably 1-2 years away, if not at the end of this season. There's also the whole Le'veon Bell mess. The franchise has an inevitable rebuilding process ahead and maybe a fresh face is the better option for that.

As loath as I am to admit, the Titans are pretty good. I think a lot of people (including myself) are waiting for some more decisive victories though, as discussed previously in this thread winning by a small margin every game is generally not sustainable. Nice win over the Jets this week, Chiefs should be an interesting matchup. How often do we have a big AFC game that doesn't involve the Pats or Steelers?

True, I don't think the Patriots defense is that strong of a unit overall. But they still made the Super Bowl which I would prefer not to see happen again. Also first win for the Browns in over a year! Good for them, it was getting sad.

It was nice to finally beat Tom Brady and the fucking Patriots for once, and fairly decisively at that. But I will note that this is pretty common for the Patriots, the Chiefs had a great game against them in the opener last year and look what happened.

A whole year without a win, play your most hated rival week 1 the next season and...tie? I think as a Browns fan I would be confused.

Well that wasn't pretty, but I'll take it. Defense still looks great outside of allowing that big run, but the offense needs work across the board. I really hope we have Fournette back next week we can't punt seven straight times against the Pats.

I think the Texans do have some solid reasons to expect a return to relevance with Watson and their defensive starters coming back+ some good additions in the secondary. They have a lot of questions though- is Watson as good as he looked in that 6 game stretch, will JJ Watt be able to return to top performance after so many injuries, will their O-line hold up etc. I don't think the Colts will be very good even if Luck comes back 100%, I just don't think they have the roster pieces right now. Not a position for the Jaguars I'm used to- on paper we're a top contender with pretty much the same team from last year. Some overall improvements on offense while only losing some rotational players on defense. Nothing is certain, but Pythagorean wins(11.9) suggest the Jags were not a flash in the pan. We had good injury luck on defense last year though.

Awesome to have you back, will be interesting to see what you come up with.

Still in with all four PCs.