RaIsMyPet

OK. My temper got the better of me. I'm sorry to make an assumption. But you forgot the first few sentences of my topic. I claimed already my dodge tanks never gets hit by normal attacks, even when rattled save some very extreme situations, and for unlucky gambits, divine pulse can always fix that. With my build, you would have more than enough divine pulses because you won't need them for much else.

On my another topic on dodge tanks, some people mentioned not liking the Battalion skills because of setup. Which is totally fine. I can understand this. I don't like setting them up too many times either. But at one point, certain user said "there is no guarantee to make Battalion exactly 1/3 endurance", and it makes me wonder: how many people is unwilling to use Battalion skill because of (happen to) not knowing the fact that setting up exactly 1/3 endurance is guaranteed by this game's mechanism? No intention to be offensive or condescending, just curious and want to make sure all the theory-crafting people are on the same page (and I would certainly think asking this would be arrogant had not some user said too many blatantly wrong stuff about gaming mechanism out of thin air, because I already assumed active users of this board at this time should be long-term veterans).

"dismissed"? I'm a bit confused about the word here. But on other points, you are absolutely right. My topic stated at the beginning very clearly that I aim to "present a hyper-optimized build with relatively low investment", not "you have to use this and accept my supremacy". Even though I said to someone in another thread that I have a "better build" than them, I had the assumption of purely based on EP performance and investment combined (since the topic was very much EP-related specifically), and others do argue with me, which is very welcome of course.

Are you just that used to pull BS out of ... ? Do you even know how Battalion endurance works? Why do I keep arguing with someone who doesn't even have the patience to understand basic gaming mechanics?

That's why you invite people to eat for prof exp. You seem never tried this way and just dismissed the idea so arguing seems meaningless (and others also commented already recruiting at ch4 is not anything significant investment, and ch5 is considered easy; even a ch5 recruited Petra can reach AS+ at ch10 or ch11 latest) You are not paying attention to the definition you are giving: you need to be on "winning state" first, being dependent on other stuff is irrelevant if you are not "winning". I gave you the examples when there are situations you are not winning by simply having a dodge tank who cannot kill, and believe it or not, some people do like to challenge the extreme.

You are right I was a bit negligent about Evasion Ring especially on CF since neither HBD chapter nor Ferdinand paralogue would be available. I don't buy DLC items with renown since I deem it a bit too "pay to win" (nor sauna, but characters, classes, paralogues are fair game because I think them opens up options for mages, and paralogues themselves are somewhat difficult if you don't wait for too long). But also as you said, I think for the baiting type dodge tank the bar can be much lower because the main group is close by to help, can afford to dismount a lot, and in CF you got Ferdinand for his personal. Since I use a solo type dodge tank too, the enemy density is usually much lowered (or at least one flank is taken care of) so that the workload is much lessened. For the Evasion Rings, in CF you can always use Ferdinand to seal speed on Dimitri and then stealing would be easy (extra easy if you use Yuri, since using Petra would be a big loss of a Pegasus). In other routes you already noted there are plenty others.

That sounds fun. I tried once to do a NG+ run in BL with literal full team of heavy armors and axe only with the expectation of Annette and Flayn being MVPs. It was legit hilarious at first but become so tedious and monotonous midgame (even though I was still doing well against enemies) that I gave up halfway. I really appreciate any gimmicky build that can still keep things fresh by comparison.

B support recruit can be savescumed. Anyway I agree you don’t have to do like ch3, I’m simply showing the possibility here, but I usually want ch4, because Petra or Leonie have the ability to trivialize ch5 reinforcements when invested, and I do want to enjoy that (again, I try to find ways to do things smoothly without skipping).

You can see this write up is also sort of mixed response. My goal is to stir thoughtful discussion and expose my build to more people. For that it’s achieved I think. Hey, some people even if they disagree with my philosophy might still try it, who knows? I appreciate all the participation here and I will have next part on teammates next week. You mentioned Annette as a more gimmicky? example, which I have yet to try. I have heard it before. Now that Three Hopes is around the corner, I might try it some day. Cheers!

Now that I learned, let me try again: it’s not a win-more because it doesn’t apply. First you have to be already in the game or hypothetically in the game with a fixed playstyle, which isn’t true. You assumed that I use dodge tank only for baiting, and assumed I have enough PP units to take enemies out. For the latter, it is the case if I play optimally, but not if I try to do a challenge run. I did a NG SS run when my team is one Warmaster, two snipers, and all mages plus a final dodge tank, meant to challenge the final map. In this situation, I don’t see how vanilla dodge tank is an automatic win when enemies already surrounded your units and basically none of your units can take even one hit, and most mages don’t have enough fire power. If the dodge tank can’t take out enemies fast, it’s a possible casualty. As I mentioned earlier, there are other maps you can’t play bait and switch if you want all the rewards.

I guess I indeed didn't know what it exactly means before. Thanks for the info!

I don’t see why you need to train horse rank to recruit Petra when you just shower her with gifts and meals for B support.

Oh dear. Didn’t realize in such short time such wonderful wellspring of thoughtful replies! Very flattered and it’s the kind of theory crafting I hoped to see. I haven’t got time to read everything except fro the earlier replies, and I still have next part on teammate compositions. I’m quite busy over the week so the write up has to wait for next weekend, but I will try to reply to some of you guy’s point over the week. @lenticular very good explanation on two types of dodge tanks and really appreciate the help here. A small thing I want to quickly throw out though: I actually use both types, like Petra+Ferdinand. You do realize that the two types of dodge tanks virtually have no conflict in resources right? Like one wants cichol and the other wants galatea. The best example is perhaps Ferdie/Lysithea paralogue, where I always try to occupy the 4 spots as early as possible so a single solo dodge tank usually doesn’t cut it. I will try to explain my playstyle more when I get time and yes of course people do use what fits best their style.

Really appreciate the detailed reply and thoughts. For the first question, I usually ended with level 45 or so but it's not so different from level 40 since you are only like 3 avo different. So endgame the avo (displayed + A adjutant) will be around: 40+ attack speed, 20 Sword Prowess, 20 Sword Avo, 10 Evasion Ring, 10 Wyvern Lord innate, 5 Cichol, 10 adjutant = 115 avo (without alert stance), most of which is indiscriminate against physical or magic attacks. For magics, Petra usually reaches high 20 or 30 something Luck, so maybe subtract 5~8 avo from calculation, and non-outlier mages don't have nearly enough Hit, and even outlier mage would only have like 15 Hit or something, or 30~40 from outlier mages when rattled (iirc) For Hit, it's around 170 + 10 adjutant I think, so against enemy Falcons who roughly has 70 something avo + sword breaker+ = 100 avo, you are still looking at 80 Hit (92% true Hit), and Paladin is near 100% Hit. Everything else is 100%, sometimes even when they are in forests. For Crit, Pre-BW displayed value I don't remember, but when facing enemies, Wo Dao basically always 100% (I think it's around 90 or so facing Gronder Field Claude), Rapier can guarantee 80% (when doubling, that's 96% at least 1 crit), Silver Sword 60% with a lot more Mt, and in AM you can get Sword of Moralta which is at least 85 Crit. Endgame Petra outgrows a lot of enemies in dex+luck, so it's quite likely that it's higher than that (I frequently gets like 90 crit on Rapier for example). Note that Petra has more crit with plain silver sword than Ingrid with WoDao, and more Mt too. For Ferdinand, he doesn't have BW unfortunately, and for two his HP growth rate is too high on a Wyvern. In practice, you will observe this: Petra kills fast and leveling fast at first, and after certain point, she levels slowly because of overleveling. But Ferdinand doesn't kill that easily, so no overleveling for him. That causes Ferdinand to leveling up in some occasions way more often than Petra in a kind of unexpected way, so his Personal would catch you off-guard. Every male doesn't have pegasus, so Petra's SPD growth is much more stable than males too. As a bonus, you mentioned "highly accurate Sniper", but Snipers always have 0 Hit on me after waiting, with possible exception of enemy Ignatz maybe (but range penalty is a thing to fix that).

OK, fine, by your standard, it’s not vital, happy? If you watched Mangs’ VW play through years ago, he beat NG Maddening with Ignatz and Lorenz, basically no dodge tank, MVP is heavy armor Hilda with pure water. So by your logic everything people talk about is just win-more. Forget about swift strikes, forget about PBV, or even forget about Death Blow on Leonie for a long time. Nothing is “vital” by your standard. Playing this game isn’t vital, it’s just silly. Is that how you deal with real life as well? I got C from my class, that means I passed, the end. I got this mediocre job to keep me alive, I survived, the end. Everyone is going to die, so better material doesn’t matter since it’s not vital. People just have different preferences, and you can choose yours. Why jump to my case every time you have the chance to speak? Go write a separate post detailing your reasoning then. All the reasons you can find. I don’t want to argue this point anymore. If you are determined to play your way, thinking dodge tank is just a glorified bait-and-switch, and thinking Dancer has to be Dancer for no reasoning and squandering a one of a kind ability not reaching it’s full potential and a super OP combat art, I won’t convince you anyway. I only know I found this extremely OP build, without much grinding, relatively low investment, and hope more people can enjoy the fun of breaking the game and feel empowered, not agonized. That’s it.