Ironthunder

YOU don't care about range. The fact everyone else does means a lot more. The issue is that while she can kill during player phase, or she can bait ranged enemies, and deal with 1-rangers on EP, she can't do it all at once. Marcus with a Javelin can. She can't even bait mages and ranged folk until the lategame. These are the issues we think of. Not 'can she do it?', more 'can she do it at the same time as everything else?'. Lyndis can chop through on player phase and bait a couple on enemy phase. Marcus can sit there and fight against anything short of a ballista, a siege tome or a longbow. None of which are very common, and none of which Lyndis can do anyway. Marcus can do so much more than Lyndis that it's not even funny. Lyn can either fight at 1-range and get dunked on by 2-range, or fight at 2-range and get dunked on at 1-range. Marcus fights at both and isn't dunked on at either.

The main issue with Amelia is the old Investment vs End Result tradeoff. Will she be good enough to warrant the investment she'll need to reach that marker? By and large the answer is no. Seth and Duessel massively outclass her as either a Paladin or a Great Knight, and unless you give her the Boots then making her a General is little other than a mistake. And the Boots are a long time coming. Sure, you can stop and grind her in the tower. Is it worth the time spent sat there feeding kills to her? And will she be good enough to warrant it in the first place? The common consensus is a resounding 'No.' She's not bad per se, she's just outclassed and takes a lot of effort to make worthwhile for how good she ends up being. All the trainees suffer this issue, although Ross at the least comes early enough that he can mitigate the resources needed, because there's usually only three candidates for exp at that point in Vanessa, Franz and Garcia (Seth doesn't need exp at that point really), and of them Ross can flat replace Garcia if you feel like gambling on growths.

Here goes. Should be fairly self-explanatory.

Righto, here goes. First off, use whoever turns out decently. You're finding that your Rebecca does well? Keep her on. Erk got screwed and hasn't gained Mag in seven levels? Drop him if there's someone better. When you get to the desert chapter (there is only one), use a flier to rescue the green person and then use the map on the main site to get all the items. Every item hidden on the desert map is extremely worth getting except possibly the Eclipse tome. Big tip: The vast majority of bosses do not move, and those that do only move when they can move to attack you within that turn.

holy crap this thread derailed

Right so. First off, having played for a long time is not out of the ordinary here, and the length of time you've played for is in no way, shape or form an indicator for how good you are or how good your advice is. It might be gold to you and to people who've never played the game, but to literally anyone who's played even ENM, they know that Lyn is a unit with a poor earlygame and requires high investment to reach her mediocre lategame. Swords/Bows is one of the worst weapon access combos in the game, up there with Bowlock, Swordlock and Stafflock. Add in that due to reduced effectiveness and the weapon triangle, in most every situation you are better off taking an axe or a mage- both of which basically anyone who's playing will have- to kill the fliers than Lyndis, who'd be classed as a mediocre archer if she had bow access when unpromoted. Being an FE "veteran" doesn't make your opinion automatically gold, it just means more people will laugh at you if you're wrong. Which in this case you are. Just to compare Lyndis to the other archers you will have at this point: Lyndis, 20/1: 32 HP, 14 Str, 21 Skl, 20 Spd, 15 Lck, 9 Def, 11 Res, 6 Con, 6 Mov, D rank bows. That's 20 Str with Iron Bow, 23 Str/17 Spd with Steel Bow. Louise, 4: 28 HP, 12 Str, 14 Skl, 17 Spd, 16 Lck, 9 Def, 12 Res, 6 Con, 6 Mov, A rank bows. The Str looks bad but her Silver Bow patches it to 25 Str with no penalty. She'll probably double most non-bosses and do more damage than Lyndis. Geitz, 5: 46 HP, 20 Str, 14 Skl, 15 Spd, 11 Lck, 12 Def, 4 Res, 13 Con, 6 Mov, B rank bows. Straight-up outclasses Lyndis in everything but Speed, and he's got the Str to make sure the first hit will put them in the ground anyway. Plus, his not-bow weapon has better WTA for the majority of what's left of the game. Rebecca, 20/4: 34 HP, 16 Str, 17 Skl, 20 Spd, 15 Lck, 8 Def, 10 Res, 6 Con, 6 Mov, likely about B rank bows. Pretty much flat-out superior to Lyndis if you bothered training her. Wil, 20/4: 39 HP, 18 Str, 18 Skl, 15 Spd, 14 Lck, 11 Def, 8 Res, 8 Con, 6 Mov, probably B rank bows. Steel Bow puts him to 27 Atk and 14 Spd. Iron is 24 Str with no penalty. He's got more damage per hit, but he's worse. Rath, 13/1 (Assuming Rath was killed in LHM): 33 HP, 13 Str, 13 Skl, 14 Spd, 7 Lck, 11 Def, 6 Res, 8 Con, 8 Mov, B rank bows and a horse. Superior Mov and bow rank, about equal Str and bulk, less Skl and Spd. At the given levels, he's worse, although delaying promotion could do better. Rath, 20/1 (Assuming he survived LHM): 38 HP, 17 Str, 15 Skl, 18 Spd, 9 Lck, 11 Def, 8 Res, 8 Con, 8 Mov, likely B rank bows and a horse. Bulk is outright superior, movement is better, and with a Steel Bow he hits 26 Str and 17 Spd, which is better than Lyn does with the same equipment. These are the main units who should really be bothering with a bow. Dorcas/Bartre got excluded because they promote to have E rank bows and that's literally useless, they might as well be axelocked. Of these, at least three of the units are outright better than Lyn (Geitz, Rebecca and Rath), and there's only one unit who's pretty much undoubtedly worse than her (Wil). In short, if Lyn is your best archer, you've lost a lot of other units on the way. Geitz alone can handle basically any flier with axes. As for sword users: Lyndis, 20/1: 32 HP, 14 Str, 21 Skl, 20 Spd, 15 Lck, 9 Def, 11 Res, 6 Con, 6 Mov, likely C/B rank swords. We'll assume that she has the Mani Katti but saves it for effective damage, so Iron Sword is 20 Str and Steel Sword is 22 Str and 16 Spd. With the Mani Katti, it's 22 Str. Sain, 20/6: 40 HP, 23 Str, 13 Skl, 17 Spd, 13 Lck, 13 Def, 8 Res, 11 Con, 8 Mov, likely B rank swords. Literally superior. Kent, 20/6: 42 HP, 17 Str, 19 Skl, 19 Spd, 13 Def, 8 Res, 11 Con, 8 Mov, likely B rank swords. Literally superior. Marcus, 5: 34 HP, 16 Str, 17 Skl, 12 Spd, 9 Lck, 11 Def, 9 Res, 11 Con, 8 Mov, A rank swords. Marcus has sheer weapon availability on his side, roughly equal bulk, and he hits harder, plus more Mov and Con, whereas Lyndis is faster. Eliwood, 20: 33 HP, 14 Str, 15 Skl, 15 Spd, 15 Lck, 11 Def, 7 Res, 7 Con, 5 Mov, likely B rank swords. Bulk is better, speed is worse. Not too much to say. Eliwood, 20/1: 37 HP, 16 Str, 15 Skl, 16 Spd, 16 Lck, 12 Def, 10 Res, 9 Con, 7 Mov, likely B rank swords. Slower, but bulkier, with more Str and Con so less of a Steel penalty, plus the movement and lance availability. Guy: 20/4: 45 HP, 16 Str, 23 Skl, 24 Spd, 14 Lck, 11 Def, 7 Res, 9 Con, 6 Mov, likely B/A rank swords. Literally superior. Lowen, 20/6: 46 HP, 15 Str, 13 Skl, 15 Spd, 15 Lck, 18 Def, 8 Res, 11 Con, 8 Mov, likely B rank swords. Slower, but so bulky he may as well be an armor. Raven: 20/4: 48 HP, 20 Str, 22 Skl, 25 Spd, 8 Lck, 13 Def, 7 Res, 10 Con, 6 Mov, likely B/A rank swords. Literally superior. Isadora, 5: 31 HP, 14 Str, 13 Skl, 18 Spd, 12 Lck, 9 Def, 7 Res, 9 Con, 8 Mov, A rank swords. Typical cavalry Mov/Con/weapon access advantage, but less Skl. With a Steel Sword, she matches Lyn for Str/Spd. Ignoring thieves because they shouldn't see combat anyway and Rath because E rank swords. Sain, Kent, Lowen, Raven and Guy are outright superior. Isadora's about as good. Eliwood and Marcus are questionably as good (This is H26 so Marcus should be starting to lag a bit here anyway) and quite frankly it's questionable as to whether Spd and bows can beat out slight bulk, lances and Mov to make Lyn a better use of the seal than Eliwood. Even if we ignore the cavalry in this, there's still two infantry swords here who are basically outright superior to Lyndis. The long and short of the story here is that at promotion, which is H26 and so is as good a place as any to declare the start of the lategame and when growth units like Lyn start hitting their stride, Lyn is outclassed both as a sword user and as a bow user. Given this, it's safe to say that Lyn is an inferior choice when she has competition like Geitz and Raven, and for swordlock or bowlock there's Guy and Rebecca, both of whom are clearly superior to Lyn with their respective weapons. Lyn may not be a bad unit, but she's definitely outclassed as a sword user, as a bow user or as a multirange combatant. The main difficulty with comparing Lyn and Marcus is you're comparing two completely different units. Marcus peaks for the earlygame and it carries him throughout, whereas Lyn peaks towards the end of the game, along with basically everyone else. We might as well compare apples and carrots. They're completely different and are for completely different times. So, to summarise: -Is Lyn good? She's outclassed, both as a sword user, a bow user and a multirange unit. Not necessarily bad, but there's better. -Is Marcus bad? He starts great and gets worse. On average he comes out as being good because he starts at his peak and stays there for a while, but he starts to fall off as basically everyone else ramps up so it's a lot more noticeable. By the endgame he will likely be your worst Paladin, but even then 'worst Paladin' isn't much of a metric because it's such a good class, sort of like how 'best Sniper' isn't much of a metric because Snipers are typically viewed as being kind of crap. He might be bad by the time you hit Cog through VoD, but by that point you should probably have seen his descent and dropped him. Flexibility is the most important tool: Recognise when someone's not keeping up and swap to someone who does. -Is Lyn better than Marcus? This strongly depends at where in the game you're looking. By the lategame, Lyn's peaking and Marcus is falling off, so she probably will be. For earlygame, Marcus is peaking and Lyn's struggling, so it's reversed. The question isn't which unit is better but rather which is worse: The late-game falloff or the early-game bases struggle? Most of the time, people will say the early-game struggle is worse, because with the falloff Marcus can be dropped for the lategame when he struggles because he's already hit his peak and done his bit. Lyn on the other hand doesn't have a lategame if you don't force yourself through the earlygame struggle. They're completely different units with different peaks, the question is are the peaks worth the troughs? With Marcus, yes because his are after he peaks. With Lyn, the troughs come before the peaks, and the question comes down to the individual. Numerically however, the answer tends to lean more towards no than yes, simply because there's other units that do her job better.

It's not automatic but it's a significant advantage, and one that becomes larger the further into the game you get. 1-lock and 2-lock are perfectly fine and usable, but they have the advantage of a slight power boost over the ability to counter at multiple ranges, which isn't really comparable. The only bad range is 0-range.

1-2 range is quite possibly the single most dominating factor in whether a unit is good or not. Being able to take both melee and archers/mages on EP is by far the best way to get through the game, and is almost always going to be faster because you get hits in on EP that normally you can't. Managing EP is as important if not more so than PP. You'll survive EP just as well with 1-2 as without, if not more so because it means you're clearing the board quicker. Explain how 1-2 range is not beneficial in basically any situation.

I would rather drag around a Jeigan with usable stats now than drag around a growthie with potentially usable stats by like, three-quarters of the way into the game. Marcus' stats are guaranteed to be at the very least decent, and that's much better than the possibility of having a blessed Lyn, because there's just as big a chance that the Lyn will be cursed as she is blessed, at which point the exp would have been better spent on two to three one-stat levels on Marcus. Why risk a 40% when you have a 100%? Yes the 40% could be more rewarding, but is that reward worth the 60% failure risk that's extremely likely to turn around and bite you in the arse come BBD/Cog? I'd say no. You'll probably say yes because you have a substantially higher view of growthies than I do (and I admit, perhaps I undervalue them sometimes), but the point still stands: The safe option isn't a bad option, so is the risk really worth it?

Ok so first of all. Giving them 'the worth they deserve' drastically depends on your valuation of the unit. Several units, like Lyndis and Rebecca, are frequently given the worth they deserve, which is minimal exp because they'll be benchwarming all game in favor of fielding better units. To you, they might seem worth investing in because to you, their growth potential makes them better. To me, their growth potential is a risk, and their lack of anything at base means they're going to struggle to carry their weight early on. And if they can't carry their weight early on, then usually they aren't worth fielding over someone who can. Yes Rebecca and Lyn have good growths. But their bases are terrible, and their initial combat potential is extremely lacking. Is killfeeding worth it? Possibly. Is that a risk worth taking against putting the exp into someone who'll make use of the levels, like one of the cavaliers or Hector? Not really. 20/20 statlines look cool and all, but in reality you aren't hitting 20/20 without either severely neglecting units or abusing arenas. Hell, 10/20 is questionable. There's a reason Lyn, Rebecca and Wallace are all about the same usability tier. The latter is a worse Marcus in every sense and as such is not worth investing in, while the former two require significant investment for a chance to possibly be good, which ultimately makes them not worth investing in, because if they don't turn out good then you've just wasted what typically amounts to a few chapters' worth of exp, which could have been levels on units who'll actually remain good for a while. One look at Marcus' averages? Who cares? He can stay at bases and still be usable for the vast majority of the game. Unlike Lyndis, who's completely reliant on her growths to even stand a chance at being good and if she gets let down then she wastes a solid number of levels for any other unit, as well as slowing down the game, worsening the playing experience and generally making the game both harder for yourself and worse to play. If your 'experience' (which I'm starting to question now given your blatant idiocy) leads you to blindly trumpet growth units and decry jeigans as the fruits of Satan's loincloth, then quite frankly I'm not sure you've been playing the same FE7 as the rest of us. Growth units are not reliable and are certainly in no way better than units with actually good bases. And the moral of this story, the main lesson every actually experienced Fire Emblem player learns and accepts, is that growths mean nothing if you don't have the bases to get the levels to potentially proc them. I'm yet to see any example of any unit being so perfectly, reliably good that feeding them kills is a superior strategy to anything else outside of the 3DSFE avatars, whereas there's an array of examples of units whose bases are plenty sufficient to carry them through most if not all of the game. Most if not all of the Jeigans for starters.

First off, experience in absolutely no way, shape or form guarantees quality. Let's just get that out of the way. Second of all, there's a tradeoff between speed and effort. People want to do it in the easiest and best way, yes, but they also don't want to be sat killfeeding for a good ten chapters and would rather get those chapters out of the way so they can get to the part with the actual good units like Pent and Hawkeye. Which is basically what happens to have Lyndis, Rebecca, or anyone in the usual 'suboptimal' group come out as good. Yes people want a strong and effective team, but they also want to actually get on with the game instead of having to play a certain way to get the (extremely subjective) 'Most Optimal' squad. I'd much rather use Marcus and get through the game than sit there killfeeding to grind Lyndis up and hope she doesn't get boned on the growths. The fact you're still trumpeting growth units as the be-all and end-all means that despite your 'experience', you're still not very good at this.

Yep. Still never seen the hit go below 40 against any of my guys. I've gotten sub-40 hit against enemies before (mostly vs Uhai when he's sat on a forest) but never against my units.

>Lyndis is better against wyverns What the fuck kind of world are you living in friend because in reality, Lyndis should never be near a wyvern. That's just a given. She can possibly kill one if she's lucky and crits twice, but if there's more than one wyvern or if she doesn't double-crit, then Lyn's dead. RE:Dodgetanking, I don't think I've ever seen anyone in FE7 face less than a 40% hitrate (which goes for SS too actually, but that's kind of by the by). I've also seen Lyn die in the prologue twice due to not dodging. Evasion is unreliable and quite frankly relying on evasion is the most hazardous thing in the game.

The difference between Marcus and Lyn is that Lyn has a chance to be somewhat OK, although that's questionable in and of itself. Marcus is consistently usable at the very worst. Lyn's bases are not great, her damage output is mediocre without effective damage (which is almost always at WTD so good luck surviving any of that combat), her bulk is worse than basically any other playable unit and her speed is her only good stat, which is neither use nor ornament when there's literally nothing else on the unit. Evasion is not a reliable survival technique, and doubling means nothing when your damage output is piss. Add in that she promotes late and gains the infamous rangelock combo, and there's really very little reason to ever bother using her. She starts bad and doesn't get much chance to get better, and even when she's given the chance she's no better than if literally anyone else is given that exp. Hell, you could probably give it to Bartre or Wil and they'd come out just as usable if not slightly better. Lyn's a solid candidate for the worst playable character in FE7.

>Lyndis and Marcus ...Hoo boy. Lyndis is, in my opinion, solidly one of the worst units you get in the game. Bulk is nonexistent, damage output is poor and frequently nonexistent without the effective bonus of the Mani Katti. She has Speed, yes, but Speed alone means absolutely jack-shit when you don't have damage to back it up. Then we get Marcus. Extremely good bases for his jointime and he carries himself with those bases through the entire game, even if his growths absolutely fail him. Has the bulk to cover when his speed fails, reliable damage output all game and his Speed is usually enough that he can typically avoid being doubled for a solid chunk of the game, which is handy because it's FE7 and evasion's not worth shit.