samthedigital

I rather enjoy it now, but it took some doing because without having a good grasp of the mechanics battles are far too slow.

I've always given her a speedwing or two to help her reach doubling thresholds.

I am a fan of the series, but this is a problem that I have with Xenoblade 1 too. The game punishes you heavily for being underleveled, and the only real solution is to grind. How far into the game did you get? The game feeds you combat mechanics at a glacial pace, and this might be true to some extent. You don't really need to explore anything past the surface level to beat the games. Playing this way makes Xenoblade 2 an absolute slog, but I could go on a huge rant on the games myself despite actually enjoying them.

Even units like Seth are replaceable, so I'm not sure what you're getting at with your argument. He's not replaceable in an LTC or maximum efficiency context, but Seadall isn't replaceable in that context either.

To be sure I don't consider him to be the best unit in the game, but it seems that a lot of people on serenes in particular attribute a unit's success to emblems rather than the units themselves, and a lot of Seadall's power comes from refreshing emblem specific actions. If we're having a series wide discussion that's also part of it, but some dancers just have a hard time keeping pace with the game's carry. I guess there's also FE7 that has a lot of defend maps where the action economy doesn't matter as much. I am going to make an educated guess and say that most people play without realizing just how broken Bonded Shield is and don't warp skip. That along with what I mentioned above has influenced ratings at least somewhat.

It's worth mentioning that Shanna can build her sword rank during the western isles arc with an early promotion. It's what I would recommend since she can start using Killing Edge for some additional combat utility. She doesn't really have the stats to be a good long term combat unit, so it helps her remain useful for longer more than anything. You'll want to be using Fae as much as possible. There's a trick that you can do with deployment order to have enemies prefer to target Fae, so while she will otherwise be useless she can soak up staves. You might not find yourself using every single unit in the maps with a lot of deployment slots, so you don't have to be hyper focused on constructing a team around them. You can also have plenty of success with a lot of different units, so you can pick some of your favorites if you want. I don't get the impression that you're trying to play the game optimally, and I like to use units like Fir, Lilina, and Gonzalez because it's fun. The only units that I would strongly recommend as long term carries are Miledy, Percival, Rutger, and one of Alan/Lance. I would recommend budgeting your gold and trying to get as many sellable items as possible. That way you have more options to break the game when you access the chapter 21 secret shop. As with your team construction I wouldn't be hyper focused on it, but definitely keep it in mind.

10/10 (Maddening, but does difficulty really matter in this case?) His personal can be annoying I guess? Otherwise he's a dancer; it's basically self evident that he's amazing. It's the case in some games where it can be difficult for the dancer to keep up and stay relevant, but that's not really the case here. We're also spoiled for choice in terms of powerful tools that we can use more than once a turn in Engage. He can help enable warp skips, freeze more enemies with Dreadful Aura, get a goddess dance ready again immediately after someone uses emblem energy, etc; the sky's the limit. I go with Canter and Mentorship. Mentorship doesn't do all that much admittedly, but nothing is particularly useful in the second skill slot.

The problem I have is that staff spamming is not really any different from something like boss abuse; it's just that one is turn conscious and the other isn't. I like the arena example that you gave too since it gets the same general idea across. I want to quickly note that some communities have started moving away from strict LTC and also factor in reliability to the equation too when determining what the best strategy is theoretically speaking, so you might see "efficiency" tier lists that have that added criteria that are completely separate from LTC tier lists. There is a lot of commonality between unit rankings between the two naturally to be sure. I mentioned the above because I want to make it clear that I wouldn't advocate for a "pure efficiency" mindset when evaluating gameplay or units. If I created a tier list for a speedrun for example most units would be equally useless, and some would be even worse than useless because they waste time. The same general idea applies to any kind of optimized playthrough. Admittedly we create problems when we have a looser definition of efficiency, but if the whole concept wasn't subjective to some degree people wouldn't be talking about it I guess 😄.

The poll also mentions time. I've always been of the opinion that this should be relevant in some way because things like staff spamming are still forms of grinding and cost time even if it doesn't show up just by looking at the turn counts.

Big Personality is the more relevant skill in LTC and efficiency runs that allow warp skips because it gives Warp/Rewarp/Rescue +1 range. World Tree might be something for efficiency to get more uses out of Rewarp, but LTCs can just get what they want out of the well, so it's probably not important for anything besides saving time assuming they need more in that context. I would probably revise my rating of Citrinne also, but the reasoning is unrelated to Hortensia. It mostly has to do with the fact that fixing speed is less difficult than I originally assumed which makes Citrinne's value skyrocket.

Here is something that might help, but I'm sure that there's more.

You could consider it one of Chloe's strengths too; it's mostly a difference in semantics at that point. You'd also have to determine what exactly you want your Micaiah user to do. I'd take those small advantages with Micaiah since I'm not looking for a combat unit even if it wasn't for World Tree or the staff range, but you might feel differently.

The most important stat is luck with Divine Pulse+. The difference between Hortensia and a unit with a bad luck stat like Ivy for example is pretty significant. The difference against a unit with high staff evade can be higher than 10%, and the difference is even more noticeable if you're trying to hit multiple targets at once with Freeze or something. You can use this binomial probability calculator and a convenient graph if you want to play around with the numbers yourself.

I saw the topic on reddit when you posted it, but I refrained from replying because it's difficult to answer the questions you asked without going into detail, and there are other things that come into play besides defining efficiency when people argue about units.

8/10 Hortensia's utility is tied to her class and personal skills. Flying magic/staff utility is really good, but Hortensia's problem is her lack of bulk and damage. If she has to face a counter from a physical attack she's probably going to die, and that might happen through tonics as well. I've given her a Seraph Robe and a lot of Spirit Dust that I wouldn't have used otherwise in one playthrough, and she became a pretty decent combat unit with those bolstered by her staff and class utility, but I'm not sure that I'd recommend it. She makes decent use of Corrin to spam Dreadful Aura with her 1-3 range and flight. She can also get to just about any emblem energy circle with Canter+Rewarp which makes staying engaged really easy. The lack of ability to take any real damage is a problem though. It's impossible to talk about Hortensia without mentioning Micaiah. Micaiah is by far the most broken emblem in the game (Byleth too, but we don't need to get into that), and Hortensia is overwhelmingly the best Micaiah user. She has to wait for Micaiah to come back, but she also doesn't have to see play before then either. It's just a matter of availability, and this is an instance where I think it's fair to dock her a point or so for it. Her luck helps her spam offensive staves using Divine Pulse+ and World tree. Micaiah can be a better version of Corrin sometimes too with Freeze and a unit with a decent enough luck stat. Fortunately Hortensia has a fantastic luck base and growth to make use of it. The main thing that Micaiah has going for her is Warp/Rewarp/Rescue though, and Hortensia is necessary if we want to pull off some one turn cheese. Having World Tree to make sure we have enough to last us the game is a nice bonus. The effective weaponry is worth a brief mention, but I honestly don't give a shit about combat with Micaiah. I guess the only real problem is how much we attribute Hortensia's success to Micaiah. Micaiah is still broken on her own, but Hortensia's +1 staff range makes her the obvious choice. The only reason to mention another unit if we're just using Micaiah for staves is when they can also do the same thing, but I've never used anyone else because there isn't a good reason to do so when I might risk the staff range having been necessary. Divine Pulse+ and Canter are the two skills that Hortensia wants. Canter is great for obvious reasons, and Divine Pulse+ lets us reroll offensive staff misses.

I'd say that they're roughly equivalent in terms of difficulty. For some context the hardest difficulty was removed outside of Japan, and forging costs were halved to name a few of the changes made to make the game easier. You've beaten Awakening Lunatic though, and that's generally considered to be one of the more difficult titles from what I remember.

I would recommend Genealogy before Thracia also because it fits better that way narratively. Don't get intimidated by the difficulty though; a lot of it is just Nintendo hard, so it's more of a game knowledge barrier than general Fire Emblem difficulty if that makes sense. My suggestion would be PoR and then RD. Play PoR on the hardest difficulty on any release besides the Japanese one. It's one of the easiest titles even on that difficulty, and it shouldn't be a problem given the games you've already beaten. I'd suggest playing Radiant Dawn on Normal. Hard mode removes some quality of life features, so I wouldn't recommend it on a first play unless you're primarily looking for a challenge. It's also tedious to train most units on Hard because of enemy stats and the lack of exp, so I wouldn't recommend the difficulty if you're looking to use a lot of random characters that you like either.

Yeah, chapter 4 is an example, and I'm sure we could find a few more. Some of the core gameplay mechanics are also worth mentioning too. Fatigue, capturing, hidden support bonuses, leadership stars... I could go on, but I'll refrain. They do their job in really cementing the ideas that the story is telling, and it elevates what is (in my opinion) an otherwise unimpressive one.

You haven't played Thracia yet right? I'll avoid examples of gameplay/story integration in that game just in case you aren't privy to the story, but if I were to make an argument that's the first Fire Emblem game that would come to mind because there are numerous examples.

That's not necessarily true. What you need is a team that's strong enough to get a perfectly reliable clear; that doesn't necessitate having the best possible stats. For example I could have a unit with one less speed than another unit while still being able to double every relevant enemy. The same can be said for stats like defense, strength, hp, etc; it just takes someone dedicated enough to figure out what those breakpoints are. After we determine that then we'd want to figure out what combination of units does it fastest if we wanted to have the "correct" answer to your topic, and I'd refer to one of my previous posts for my thoughts on that. If she's being used as a carry she will siphon some experience from other units, but not all of it, and they will still become stronger than her eventually. It might just be that it happens later than you would be used to. Maniac mode has a lot of available cexp anyway, so there probably isn't much of a difference by the end of the game. That really depends on the person's playstyle and how they approach an ironman in general. More optimized ironman runs would find ways to avoid stalling as much as possible even if they might have to slow down some for consistency. I wouldn't know though; this is not a high priority game for most people for obvious reasons, and speedrunning and ironmans are already niche.

He's probably conflating the word solo with carry. There are better units for that job once we get Jill/Marcia up and running, but Titania can still find a spot on the team depending on playstyle.

9/10 Merrin is effectively the same unit as Kagetsu, so just about everything written in that topic is applicable to this one. She has a better personal and a slightly worse distribution of stats, but the differences aren't enough to make much of a difference in my experience. She's a good unit for one more chapter (give her a forged Silver Dagger) and has access to Wolf Knight for a little longer for what that's worth too. Here's a fun fact: In a speedrun when Merrin joins she's better than Alear in every single way who has been the main carry up until that point and has been fed all of the relevant resources. It's still better to continue with Alear because of main character privilege. This doesn't affect my rating whatsoever because I'm not using speedruns or normal mode as a way of rating units, but there honestly isn't anything that interesting to talk about. Merrin is just a ball of stats that is amplified by whatever emblem and class we want her to have.

The unit will get the bonus speed if it's a flier only tile and the enemy isn't a flier basically. It's as situational as it sounds; Engage class skills in a nutshell.

The numbers that I provided reflect my general opinion on the topic: Panette is the only unit that consistently gets the fully reliable 100% hit and crit with Ike. She can also do this with Roy and have some bulk with Hold Out, and Eirika would also give her the damage output if you just want to put her at one range without taking risks. I completely agree with you if this is your main point. Ike does provide a lot for Panette, and while I don't believe that any other unit is going to be as good as her with Ike I do think that they can still be pretty good. I also find this to be true in a more general sense. How a unit performs is very much tied to what emblem they get and what resources the player gives them. I remember a lot of people overvaluing the unit they gave Lyn right after release for example. In fairness though it is difficult to dissociate the two because a well built unit with an emblem is going to perform a heck of a lot better than another unit that didn't get the same treatment regardless of the unit's base attributes, and most people usually won't play through the game more than once or twice to try out different combinations. edit: To put what I said in the last sentence another way: Emblems and skills are going to influence the feel of a unit far more than the unit themselves if that makes sense. I'd be interested in reading an LTCer's perspective on Panette. If I remember correctly (from the limited research I did) in that sort of setting she's worse than Merrin and Kagetsu while still being a top tier unit, but I don't really have much of a frame of reference for LTC and could easily be wrong.

I didn't have this experience, but I also tied her to Ike who gives her bulk and +12 damage. I did notice a few missed one rounds when I swapped to Wyvern on my latest Maddening playthrough, and that should be similar to your experience damage wise. You wouldn't get Ike's bulk, so I would agree that you'd have to rewind more often if you don't do the math to make sure she can survive EP beforehand. You'll note from in the last topic that I don't have a problem keeping my units engaged permanently. Granted this isn't the case for every unit because as good as energy circle refills are they are limited, but my goddess dance unit is always my first pick for obvious reasons. Given the permanent uptime I can see the utility in having such a unit because they can contribute every turn by making my other units even better instead of having a mediocre unit who can also Goddess Dance.