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Dark Holy Elf

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About Dark Holy Elf

  • Birthday 01/22/1982

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  • Pronouns
    Any/All
  • Interests
    Video games (Fire Emblem, JRPGs, and Nintendo games in particular), fantasy novels, writing, ice hockey, and mathematics
  • Location
    Canada

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  • Favorite Fire Emblem Game
    Three Houses

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  1. Reposting something from another thread talking about the same battle: Avoid agrroing the snipers (that is, ending your turn inside their attack range) until you need to. If one wakes up, the crowd of other enemies around them will too. Instead, use any fliers you have (Claude obviously, any others are a nice bonus) to bait individual non-sniper enemies, thinning them out as much as you can. Note that once an enemy is woken up, they will move toward your squishies unit, generally, and if they move beside an enemy, THAT enemy wakes up to, so be careful about waking an enemy then retreating. Claude's Ashes and Dust is a huge get-out-of-jail free card if a turn looks bad. You get two shots, use them wisely. Remember that Claude (and any other fliers) can dismount if you want him to take a hit from a sniper... or just in general, because of the thicket evade bonus.
  2. Seconding the sentiments expressed in this thread. I do wish there was either an option to turn off animated GIF avatars or just for us not to have them at all. I find animations quite distracting. (I fully respect that I'm hanging out on these forums without paying a dime and I do not expect the mods to do unpaid work just to make me happy, so I'll deal with it, but figured I'd make my voice heard.)
  3. Largely already covered, but to me the biggest thing is that hexes make things more dangerous. In general, with squares, it's usually easy enough to reduce the number of available spaces for enemies to attack you to 2 (it's possible to go to 1 with a walled formation), while in hexes the relevant number is 3 (and 2 with a wall). That's a pretty big difference. Ironically I feel like I often find walls more valuable in hex-based games because of this, but it obviously varies by game. And I agree that I generally value durable units more in hex grids than square grids (assuming both have comparable systems with respect to permadeath). All of this applies more to SRPGs with reasonably large (8+) unit counts and reasonably small attack ranges than it does to other games, but of course both of these disclaimers include Fire Emblem. I think the difference is less significant for games like Final Fantasy Tactics (squares) and Wild Arms XF (hexes). Those games (particularly FFT) aren't really built around defensive formations anyway, both because you don't have the numbers to pull it off and because attack range is so much higher generally (magic hits from range 4 or 5 instead of 2). definitely agree with this. I've never felt Fire Emblem needed zone of control, whereas something like Brigandine would definitely lose something without it.
  4. Enjoying the game so far for sure. This is the third game I've played with this sort of squad-based combat I've played (Ogre Battle and Soul Nomad) and I think it does it far better than the previous ones, since it actually wants you to think about how you assemble squads and gives different classes clear roles to play in that. Good fun. While I definitely think this game's combat forecast is pretty good at what it does, I don't really think Fire Emblem would benefit from imitating it. If you know in advance that you're going to miss, hit, or critical in Fire Emblem, that feels like it would remove all the probabilistic decision-making. Being a game where each combat is 1-3 interactions instead of a dozen (or so) is a big difference. Baking in the RNG for the combat forecast is interesting. On the whole I definitely think it's a decent, easy solution to letting players own their decisions, but it does result in some awkwardness. One of the most effective tactics in this game is to try your hand at attacking an enemy squad and if you don't like the preview (specificaly, if you feel like it's worse than it "should" be), wait until another combat has resolved elsewhere and try again; you may find a much more advantageous outcome. I think it would probably be even better if the game gave a detailed combat forecast that included the % chance of every given unit in both squads falling to zero HP, and then listed average expected damage as well. But this would be pretty difficult to calculate (you'd have to follow an extensive series of probability branching; it would easily be hundreds of calculations) so I understand why they didn't go this road. One thing I've definitely learned is that you really need to be wary when the listed enemy damage is equal to or greater than the lowest HP of your squad mates. In such circumstances it often pays to think about how the battle will go and try to predict if the damage will all go to one person or not, since by and large you don't want to lose units too often unless the map is about to end or there's a campsite nearby.
  5. To be clear, I've never tried it either; I was speaking of Chloe and Mage Knight separately in my post. I'm slightly skeptical of Mage Knight Chloe just because I find that the magic benchmark to ORKO most enemies with tomes is reasonably tight; you can do it but you need a pretty good magic stat, or a lot of investment in that direction, but some people seem to have gotten good results (and obviously Levin Sword + Sword Power is always an option). Chloe's got pretty average def and above average HP so she's not particularly frail, particularly in Wyvern. The strength can definitely be cause for concern; she's a unit who is helped notably by the well IMO since now she can just grab Sword/Lance Power for her killing needs, and not needing much speed support is certainly appreciated. I might be missing something but I don't think you can; they don't show up in your regular inventory. Which is a shame because you often do end up with some extras. (If there's a way to sell them I missed, I'm all ears; I've been known to miss strange interface options before. I don't want to talk about how long it took me to notice you can pick up bond fragments from your achievements on my first playthrough...)
  6. I assume by early master seals you mean the ones in part 1, since you get a bunch more in early part 2. Combine that with the fact that deployment slots fall around then and you should be able to promote everyone you plan to use for Chapter 12. If I was making recommendations I'd generally probably suggest the following: Alear should be promoted by the start of Chapter 11. Chapter 11 has a win condition of bringing Alear to a certain point, and it's smoother if Alear is at least move 5. You can use the one you get from the Chapter 10 boss (the fourth one) if you'd like, or you can promote them earlier. Chloe just has great part 1 combat and snowballs easily, both times I made her one of my early promotions I was extremely happy with the result. Mage Knight has great magical offence out of the gate, and the earlier the promote the earlier you get Chaos Style which makes their offence even better. I don't think either of them are great units, but both Diamant and Lapis should be promoted if you plan to use them longterm because their base class is bad, a backup with no ranged weapons.
  7. I think people like the idea of them, but mostly, not the art. Heck, 3H fanart itself is awash with similar CGs for the Three Houses characters themselves.
  8. Tend to agree with Gaiden (not counting BS for this). I don't think it's Thracia, even speaking as someone who hasn't played it. The game has an identity, and I've definitely seen big fans of it as a result. Its sales are bad, but I don't think it's enough worse than Gaiden to close that gap in passion. Of course, this is with the caveat that I don't discuss the game in Japanese circles - if Thracia is the least favourited game of 1-6 in Japan, then it's possible. It's definitely not RD. Plenty of people like that game a lot. It was my favourite FE of the era and I always found lots of like-minded people on that front - not to say there weren't people who preferred 7 or 8 or 9, but 10 was certainly a contender. Also, the remarkably strong showing of Tellius characters in CYL to this day (i.e. generally stronger than Elibe or Magvel overall) show that the game is more popular than its sales indicate. Among games released outside Japan, I think it's gotta be Shadow Dragon. Maybe SoV, but that one's different enough that I think it carves out a decent little fanbase. Shadow Dragon isn't particularly beloved by the English fandom and has to compete with the other Archanaea games in Japan (and I have a sneaking suspicion it's the least popular of the four there). Can't really see it being any of the others.
  9. I'm... honestly not convinced Geoffrey takes less effort to get ready for the tower. Sure, he starts 13 (iirc) levels ahead of Rolf. But he also has 11 fewer maps in part 3+4 to get them! (I'm excluding part 2 because Geoffrey pretty much just gets 1 exp per combat then.) I don't think getting an even vaguely competent unit approximately one level per chapter is particularly effortful. Certainly, my experience of using Rolf in the tower is that by the time I got him there, giving him a modest number of kills per map throughout his 13 appearances, he was doing great, Double Bow and Brave Bow with that strength goes brrr. While when I used Geoffrey in the tower, I frankly thought he was very unimpressive; bad speed and only so-so other stats and lances are not a great specialization for the tower (the SS weapon is the last one obtained, no hammer, no wyrmslayer), and he doesn't get 34 speed or earth supports or anything else interesting that his competition gets. Now I'm willing to imagine Geoffrey could be a "good" unit in the tower if you give him a lot of BExp (or just drag out 4-5 grinding off Izuka's summons) so he's rolling in there at or near his tier 3 caps, but that's not what I would consider low effort. I think Geoffrey's probably a more useful unit than Rolf overall but that's because he's very useful in 2-3 and 3-9. But I definitely think Rolf will do much better in the Tower in most situations where you plan to use one or both of them there. Mmm, in most Fire Emblems I'd agree, but in Radiant Dawn a unit with low caps can definitely fall off in E-4 and E-5 pretty notably (and in some cases E-2). While this doesn't have a huge impact on a unit's overall worth because there are many, many maps before E-4 (e.g. we all agree Haar rules), it does impact performance in Endgame, and hence how worthwhile they are to bring there (Haar does okay for himself in Endgame because of Hammer access for E-1, but is mediocre thereafter; I would not usually consider him part of an "optimum" endgame team. And Geoffrey is significantly worse.) You're correct that you can still beat Endgame with those weaker picks, but you can also easily beat Greil Merc Part 3 maps using weaker units too, for instance. RD is also in a unique position with respect to caps precisely because it asks you to cull your team for the tower. In another FE, if another unit suffers a bit at their caps, who cares, you've already committed to using them as one of your 12 (or whatever) units you're bringing to every map, building supports for, etc. In RD, if you have an excellent unit who falls off in the tower, you just use them until then. Even if you employ small teams in part 4 you'll probably need to bench roughly half your regulars when you reach the tower (if you use full-size teams, it'll be closer to two thirds), so you might as well bench the ones who do least well there, even if they were an MVP up to that point. Anyway what was this thread about again? Oh right! If we're defining MVP the way the game does (most kills), then I've had a lot of MVPs, usually some with high availability and often (though not always) a relatively low starting level. Nolan, Jill, and Volug from the DB; Mia, Rolf, Haar from the GM side of things. Oscar once? Maybe Titania? I forget. It feels like it's a different unit every time, though I think maybe Haar was twice. (Fun fact which dovetails back to my previous paragraph: I once had Haar be MVP even though I didn't take him to the tower.) If we're talking about "which unit I actually consider to be the best on a given run" then the list is probably shorter, being pretty typically the usual top-tier suspects such as Haar, Titania, Jill, Ike, and Volug (this one's a bit controversial maybe? I stand by it, he's absolutely saved my behind before in Dawn Brigade part 3, the hard part of the game). And of course herons, they're silly busted in this game even with the paper durability.
  10. The ones attached to quests are, obviously, at least big quests like the merchant ones. Otherwise? I typically find them not worth it, myself. Much of what aux fights give you can be given in a fraction of the time through other means. A seminar gives you comparable weapon exp in seconds, and usually just choosing to explore gives even better rewards still - professor exp, money (via arena), gardening rewards (stat boosters), support building, faculty training. To go into more detail: realistically, realistically you usually want to explore every weekend except the last of each month, for motivation reasons (exception: if you have lots of paralogues you want to do). In Chapter 5 you should do two quests battles, and in Chapter 8-11 (and for the Lions, Chapter 6), you have paralogues, which give better rewards than aux fights. In Chapter 7 there is no "free" battle weekend, as Chapter 8 opens with an instruction week before the first weekend. That just leaves Chapters 3, 4, and 6 (Eagles/Deer) pre-timeskip. In these chapters, there's a case for aux fights, but IMO early professor rank increases and recruitment prerequisite increases are more valuable, and certainly take less time. I suppose there's also a case for aux fights post-timeskip but I definitely find them to be a bit grindy / time-wasting at that point. You don't need to master many classes post-timeskip unless you're desperately trying to pretend that Gilbert is a good unit. Depends on the unit and the enemy, but I don't feel this is that big a problem. I will say a lot of the units one might favour for Vantage/Wrath builds (i.e. high-str units with axe boons) tend towards being reasonably bulky, so it's usually not very hard to get them to survive something. If you're okay with your V/W user not being a flier, they can also use a guard adjutant to survive doubles (and V/W users kinda want an adjutant for the hit boost), or even Blessing.
  11. Not only does RD Hard Mode suck, but it really isn't even that much harder than Normal Mode imho. In particular, it is extremely similar to Normal Mode if a player wastes or sits on bonus exp (two things I'm both very guilty of, depending on the run, and I imagine I'm far from alone). The one time I did play Hard I did a bit of a pseudo-challenge run limiting myself to certain affinities only (I certainly used a number of the units mentioned on that list, like Rolf and Meg). I don't doubt for a moment that lenticular could have used the team she cited for the tower on hard mode too and done fine. I also strongly second the above. I suspect most people just discuss what they are most familiar with, only agreeing to settle on a particular difficulty it's actually relevant for a discussion (it often isn't, most great units are great regardless of mode) or has been pre-stated to remove ambiguity.
  12. Depends on the build, the point in the game, and your playstyle. Broadly when talking about low-HP builds, we are talking about one of the following: Vengeance: Vengeance allows its users to kill foes in one hit at a point in the game where few other things kill in one hit (just Catherine and perhaps an RNG-blessed lord). To use it the user needs to have low health so you'll need to protect them, but the payoff can certainly be worth it on some maps, particularly around Chapter 4-8 or so. In fact, I would say Vengeance during this stretch of the game is the most "worth it" low-HP tool. The further you go in the game, the less useful I find it, because you get more and more things which kill reliably without the downside of being one hit from death (and needing to be lowered there every fight), though some players find it useful even late (I'm not a big fan). Bernadetta and Dedue tend to get more out of it than Cyril, for several reasons (they get it earlier, they have Persecution Complex and higher HP respectively, and they don't have the largely superior Point-Blank Volley). Balthus's personal: It's a cool bonus for sure, but a bit fiddly even by the standards of low HP powerups. The defence boost is quite potent in pure physical situations early (later it won't do much unless you're already stacking a lot of def), and of course the attack allows kills you might otherwise miss, so I do like to keep Balthus at lower HP when possible. The big problem is that Balthus wants to use combat arts on player phase, and those can easily heal him out of this zone due to his crest. If you're leveraging this with him late, chances are it's for Vantage/Wrath (see below). Defiant [abilities]: Are almost strictly bad, IMO. Most are gained incredibly late, and I can't say I'm ever tempted to kick out one of my existing good skills for something that requires me to be at <25% HP. Defiant Strength is gained earlier but involves mastering Hero (which sucks, on top of being gender-locked), and every time I've tried to use it the unit has fallen off too much to be worthwhile thereafter. Particularly since the main build that wants low HP late is the one below, and the thought of trying to master both Hero and Warrior on one unit fills me with a deep feeling of dread. Vantage/Wrath: IMO this is the main low-HP build worth using in the later stages in the game, though it's still a bit weird and I would hesitate to call myself a big fan. There's a major investment here: Needing 150 class exp in the mediocre Warrior is a drag (and you'll also want Mercenary), you have to set up for low HP every fight, and you have to avoid or mitigate all the things which punch holes in this build, i.e. siege weapons, monsters/armours, and gambits. But if you do the payoff is cool, being able to reliably kill on the enemy phase without having to worry about battalion durability, and Retribution is nice at expanding the things the build works on (meteor/bolting in particular). Works best on units with high strength since every point counts for triple, and an axe boon is preferred as well to get to Warrior in a decent amount of time. When using low HP builds in general, watch out for extra sources of healing: there are a lot in this game. Sacred weapons and various accessories, healing tiles, being in range of Fortify, healing crest effects (Byleth, Edelgard, Balthus, Claude, etc.), being adjacent to Dorothea, being named Raphael. Most of these can be worked around to some extent but they're definitely a source of frustration when using these builds in my experience. Conversely, you can take advantage of various ways to safely lower HP like devil weapons, relic backlash (if the unit doesn't have a crest), and of course deliberately leaving the unit in range of certain enemies (archers are especially useful for this on Maddening due to Poison Strike).
  13. For what it's worth I wasn't thinking of value as "which one would I rather play the game without". The latter conversation, while sometimes interesting, leads to some odd results: for instance, if we adopted that definition, then Brom (RD) is definitively more valuable than Seth, because Sacred Stones can be reasonably cleared without using Seth while Radiant Dawn 2-1 without Brom is a nightmare (I'd buy that it's possible, but I wasn't able to do it when I tried). Admittedly I'm not sure exactly how I would define value. If I had to put it into words in the context of Ryoma: I am impressed by how well Ryoma does what he does without needing much investment, and find that when I try to replicate him with someone else, they either do significantly worse or need a lot more resources to get there.
  14. I do agree that Rutger grows into an excellent dodgetank and Fates "pure" dodgetanks can never be as good (due to using single RN and having fewer ways to stack evade, but Ryoma is still secretly pretty much the most durable unit once he joins in Birthright on top of having the best offence. Since he doubles at 1-2 range he can fill up the dual guard gauge every two combats, and on top of that he has -2 damage received in this state from his personal (assuming his partner's level doesn't exceed his, but given his high starting level and exp gain this is basically a guarantee). Beyond that, my opinion is that they're both excellent and measuring which of two units is more valuable in completely different games is rarely going to be easy. On the whole I'd lean toward Ryoma, but a lot depends on how much you dock him for missing Chapters 7-13. I definitely agree with this.
  15. Y'know for years I could never put my finger on why Binding's portraits felt notably worse than Blazing's to me even though the style is similar and it's the same artist iirc, but yeah, the palette has a lot to do with it. (Binding still definitely has some good ones, though.)
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