Vykan12

This is getting silly. S rank > E rank is obviously the game designer's intent. The fact that this is even in question is making me think you guys are trying to be overly philosophical about the game. Cut the crap. 5 stars > 1 star, S > A > B > C > D > E rank, and so on. You already see this progression in weapon ranks, it's the way grades progress in university (replace E with F and S with A+)... The higher ranks are harder to achieve, for instance hoarding money is harder than spending it freely. There's no secret deception behind what the game devs intended, it's very straightforward and for good reason. I agree that reliability is often overlooked when discussing efficiency. So, let's examine reliability in detail. The game is luck based, there's no way around that. With very few exceptions, you'll never have strategies where your characters pull 100 display hit against every enemy. Similarly, unless you play fixed mode, luck will largely determine how your characters turn out, which creates all sorts of contingencies. So, when devising an efficient strategy to beat a chapter, it will inevitably have some risk involved. But, there are ways to quantify the value of this risk. There are two scenarios to consider: 1) If the LTC strategy fails, you can simply take another turn to complete the chapter. 2) If the LTC strategy fails, something catastrophic (eg/ character death) forces a reset. 1 doesn't entail much actual risk. You're taking your chances on a high reward, but if that doesn't pan out, you can still achieve the more reliable clear that eats up an extra turn. IMO the best way to quantify turns used is through a probability weighted average. 80% chance for 2 turn 20% chance for 3 turn 0.8(2) + 0.2(3) = 2.2 turns 2 is more problematic since a failure comes at a higher cost, namely a reset. In such a case I find that Merc Raven's N/P approach is most effective. 2/0.8 = 2.5 turns I think the reason reliability isn't discussed that often is because players intuitively shy away from anything that requires a noticeable amount of RNG abuse. And, using our quantified approach, we can show that a 12% chance to 3 turn is pretty garbage if we otherwise have to reset. 3/0.12 = 25 turns What's interesting is higher ranked characters already satisfy this criteria of being "more reliable". It just doesn't make sense for a character to be highly ranked for consistently pulling unreliable LTC strategies. Having better combat paramaters makes you more reliable, plain and simple. Throwing FE9 Titania into a group of earlygame enemies has a near 100% chance of success, whereas doing the same with Ike will likely get him killed. Obviously we won't do something as stupid as throwing earlygame Ike into a pile of halberdiers, so we'll use him in a reliable way at the expense of the utility he could've provided in a more aggressive role. I don't see where this metric really fails. Take FE10 Haar for instance. Thunder mages obviously affect his reliability, so we make him avoid such enemies, or kill them with a brave weapon, or give him nullify. Whatever choice we take, we're trading efficiency for reliability in a sensible way. It's been said time and again in this topic: Low turning has no intrinsic value, but a playstyle that puts such pressure on the player is what ultimately allows us to differentiate between units based on their combat qualities (offense, defense, mobility, etc). Without the pressure of beating the game efficiently, combat advantages begin to lose their meaning as flaws begin to lose any meaningful negative impact. And Snowy: Save this discussion for the FE9 tier list.

Tbh I was testing out the extreme of debating under the metric of LTCing, and literally counting turns to see which unit is better. I agree that it's restrictive (Devdan vs Brom was pretty lame under such a pretense), so I'll be more flexible in my debate style from now on. It didn't help that when I saw the FE9 tier topic the last 3-4 pages were on Marcia/Jill LTC strategies. That's why I said "in most cases". He's an obvious exception because of the finicky usefulness of smiting.

Must...stop...posting 99% of the time, if a unit can pull an LTC strategy, they will have the same value to your team no matter how long you take to beat the game. Since I've been talking about FE9 Marcia so much recently, I'll use her as an example. In chapter 17-2, Marcia can reach the arrive square in 2 turns thanks to a long sequence of shoves. But, let's say we want to take the time to level up our units in this chapter. We could have Marcia go nearby the arrive square in 3 turns, and camp there for however long we want. She's giving us the amazing flexibilty to end the map whenever we want, whether that be in 2 turns or 20. Similarly, if you play a rout map, you could doodle around for the first 5 turns... that doesn't make flying any less h4x whenever a burst of efficiency is needed. Basically, what I'm saying is for the most part a good unit will still be just as good even if we relax the level of efficiency involved. It's just that LTCing is the single most powerful way to differentiate units' abilities, though admittedly it kills a lot of debate. Who needs more than a sentence to write off an armor, for instance? Edit: Look at it this way. Someone like FE10 Haar is useful no matter your playstyle, he's delivering strategic flexibility to any approach you use towards beating the game. He also happens to be the primarily used unit in most LTC clears in FE10. So, in addition to satisfying an extremely specific LTC strategy, he also satisfies an inummerable amount of other approaches that aren't quite as efficient. Basically, usefulness is usefulness. It's hard to come up with examples where a unit is useless in most conceivable strategies, yet suddenly becomes essential in an LTC setting. LTCing (or a playstyle closely approximating it) is just the most accurate metric we've come up with so far.

You’re right, there is a tiger up there :/ Doesn’t really change anything though. Assuming you’re right, this helps Marcia’s case even further. C15: Marcia 1 turn advantage C26-28: Neutral Let’s break this down. First off, it’s not just C12. That may be her single biggest lead, but she also wins a half-dozen other chapters. What does Jill have? A meaningless edge in C20, and a turn in C23 and C25. It’s like 9-10 turns vs 2-3 turns, no contest. Next, why does Jill need that much less BEXP? She only has a 3 level advantage on Marcia (8/-- vs 5/--), which is 286 BEXP less that she needs to reach promotion. But, Marcia also has more chapters to accumulate CEXP, particularly C11. I calculated and it takes Jill 1547 BEXP to go from base level to promotion. To cut that down to 1000, she’d need 4-5 levels in 2 chapters. While C13 is very generous, she won’t be able to double ANY enemies (lol base 9 AS), which hurts her CEXP gains over the 7 turns. And unless she’s the bosskiller in C14 (which would require an earlier BEXP dump), she won’t be gaining much CEXP in C14. Does 5 levels over 10 turns sound realistic to you, especially for a unit who’s not yet capable of ORKOing? Even assuming you’re right that Jill needs less BEXP, and later on, this doesn’t make a big impact on the comparison. Marcia’s team will simply need an extra chapter to build up Oscar/Kieran/Boyd with BEXP. Or, since you love multiple options so much, let’s look at delaying Marcia’s BEXP dumping. Now Marcia and Jill use the same amount of BEXP and promote at the same time. Marcia still wins 2-3 times more chapters than Jill does. As for defensive resources, both Jill and Marcia need the full guard when ballistae are around. And, in my chapter breakdown Marcia doesn’t even need a seraph robe, with the exception of C23 (the bridge) and perhaps C26-28, which I didn’t look at. Though even if Jill’s team has a seraph and 2 dracos that Marcia doesn’t, where’s that going to go that’s going to make a difference? Is having a tankier Astrid or wtv a significant opportunity cost?

So basically, everyone has a vested self-interest in promoting their playstyle? Sounds about right.

How do you expect a low tier using an energy drop to offset the opp. cost of giving it to a higher tier unit who will inevitably see more combat? That energy drop we put towards Kyza comes at the cost of not giving it to Jill + the hawks, for instance.

My thoughts on Marcia vs Jill This definitely needs to be broken down chapter by chapter. C10: If we recruit so much as 1 of Neph/Brom/Kieran with a stealth approach, then Marcia’s guaranteed to be useful here. C11: Marcia is necessary for a 3 turn completion, though getting Titania to kill the arrive square armor with a hand axe seems pretty questionable. C12: Obviously Marcia’s a superstar here. C13: Neutral C14: Only Marcia (+ promoted Astrid) can be used for the 2 turn because of shove/smiting potential. With a seraph robe + energy drop, she can 1RKO with a forged steel sword, and can survive the boss’ crit. Granted, this is a lot of investment for a 1 turn advantage over Jill, so I wouldn’t count it for much. C15: Marcia = Jill for a 2 turn strat. C16: Neutral C17: Marcia has a 1 turn advantage thanks to 17-2, though the strategy for that chapter is pretty inflexible. C18: Neutral C19: Getting Jill to double Homasa is pretty unrealistic. Even with a speedwing, she’d need to be 20/13. The remaining chapters require much more analysis. C20: As shows, you don’t even need to fight the wyverns to have your super flier reach the arrive square. But even if you do want them killed, Jill doesn’t have a large combat advantage.I’m going to assume our super flier is 20/8-10, as this is consistent with Gergeshwan and Merc Raven’s logs. 3x Wyvern lv 15-17 (steel lance) 32 hp, 24 atk, 10 AS, 98 hit, 24 avo, 16 def, 6 res, 6 crit, 4 cev 1x Wyvern lv 17 (knight killer) 34 hp, 21 atk (28 eff), 7 AS, 95 hit, 17 avo, 17 def, 6 res, 5 crit, 3 cev 2x Wyvern lv 18 (steel lance) 35 hp, 26 atk, 10 AS, 100 hit, 24 avo, 17 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 4 cev 1x Wyvern lv 18 (short spear) 33 hp, 24 atk, 10 AS, 98 hit, 24 avo, 18 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 4 cev 2x Wyvern lv 19 (steel lance) 35 hp, 26 atk, 9 AS, 98 hit, 22 avo, 18 def, 8 res, 6 crit, 4 cev 20/9 Marcia (+knight band): 37 hp/20 str/25 AS/17 def/16 res/63 avo Steel lance forge/silver lance: 35 atk Javelin forge: 31 atk 20/9 Jill (+knight band): 41 hp/22 str/20 AS/21 def/9 res/51 avo Steel axe forge/silver axe: 38 atk Hand axe forge: 34 atk Out of 9 enemies, only 1 has a 1-2 range weapon, so Jill’s 1-2 range superiority is basically irrelevant. At 1 range, Marcia ORKOes 7/9 of the wyverns while Jill gets them all. Durability-wise, Marcia takes 7-9 damage / hit. That’s a 5-6HKO, and at 28 true hit to boot. From the same video I linked earlier, she’ll get attacked by 6 wyverns (+ a harmless blizzard attack) on turn 1. That’s a 0.1-0.7% chance of death, and this is before throwing ANY durability resources onto Marcia (eg/ seraph, dracoshield), which she’s likely to get. And obviously if she gets hit hard on turn 1 we can physic her next turn so that Shiharam has no chance of killing her. Basically, while Jill has an advantage, in practice it amounts to basically nothing. If we used an N/P argument against Marcia, then she’d be using 2/0.993 = 2.014 turns compared to Jill’s 2 turns. I also read that Cynthia had Jill defect by attacking Shiharam on hard mode with only the B Lethe support. I doubt A Mist/Jill is an issue, but the possibility of Jill defecting must hold some weight against her, especially since we’re not sure what the exact requirements are for her to stay. C21: Definitely a win for Marcia. Sleep bishop has 17 mag/14 skl. {30 + [(Magic - enemy's Resistance) x 5] + Skill} - (Distance between units x 2) Assuming you’re 5 spaces away from mr. sleep bishop, his base accuracy is 34. A 20/12 Jill with full strength spirit water has only 17 res. Marcia matches that without spirit water, and with it, she literally has a 0% chance of being put to sleep. Proof: 30 + (17 –24)*5 + 14 – (5*2) = -1 Even if Marcia was right besides the sleep bishop, she’d have a measly 9% chance of being sleep’d. And, as far as I understand, there’s no possibility of using the restore staff in case our super flier falls asleep, so being lulled to sleep leads to a reset. Jill’s N/P turncount = 6/0.66 = 9.09 turns Marcia’s N/P turncount = 6/0.91 = 6.59 turns Things only get worse for Jill if the bishop has multiple opportunities to use the sleep staff. C22: Neither flier does anything here. C23: Jill’s definitely better here. The 3 turn strat requires the super flier to have Ike rescued on turn 1 and dropped on turn 2, so there’s no chance to heal at all in this map. Marcia can pull it off, but she’d need the seraph and both dracoshields (44 hp/20 def vs 20-29 atk). C24: The rescue staff negates Marcia’s shove/smite advantage, so both fliers are basically identical in contributing to a 3-4 turn completion. C25: Intuition says Jill wins here by a turn, because super Marcia can’t pull the tight 2 turn strategy. It goes without saying that our super flier will be assigned the task of handling the peak. At the peak, there’s a sniper, 3 warriors, 3 halberdiers, a bishop, an SM, a fighter and a couple wyverns. What’s notable about this is there are no laguz whatsoever up here, which helps Marcia’s durability. Also, if we take 3 turns, then it’s not necessary to face all the peak enemies in 1 turn, which also helps her survivability. So, on turn 2 our super flier is dealing with something like: 1x Fighter lv 19 (steel axe) 40 hp, 26 atk, 12 AS, 90 hit, 29 avo, 13 def, 5 res, 5 crit, 5 cev 3x Warrior lv 6-7 (steel axe, 1 steel bow) 46 hp, 27 atk, 12 AS, 94 hit, 29 avo, 12 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 5 cev 1x Sniper lv 6 (longbow, iron B) 33 hp, 19 atk, 15 AS, 108 hit, 35 avo, 13 def, 8 res, 24 crit, 5 cev 2x Halberdier lv 6 (steel lance, 1 short spear, 1 vulnerary) 38 hp, 23 atk, 13 AS, 105 hit, 31 avo, 13 def, 8 res, 7 crit, 5 cev 1x Halberdier lv 6 (knight killer) 40 hp, 20 atk (27 eff), 11 AS, 102 hit, 26 avo, 13 def, 9 res, 7 crit, 4 cev 1x Swordmaster lv 6 (laguzslayer [d]) 32 hp, 23 atk (32 eff), 20 AS, 116 hit, 45 avo, 10 def, 6 res, 24 crit, 5 cev 2x Wyvern Rider lv 19 (steel lance, 1 javelin) 35 hp, 25 atk, 11 AS, 101 hit, 27 avo, 18 def, 8 res, 6 crit, 5 cev By now our fliers have maxed out their potential, or are at least very close to it. 20/20 Marcia (+knight band): 43 hp/23 str/28 AS/21 def/19 res/74 avo Silver lance: 38 atk Forged javelin: 34 atk Spear: 35 atk 20/20 Jill (+knight band): 48 hp/27 str/25 AS/26 def/12 res/64 avo Silver axe: 43 atk Forged hand axe: 39 atk Tomahawk: 40 atk Jill is basically invincible, only the bishop has any hope of doing more than 0-2 damage, and she ORKOes every enemy with a forged hand axe. Did someone swap her with FE10 Haar or something? Marcia’s not doing half bad herself though. With the forged jav, She does 42/46 damage to the warriors, and 32/35 damage to the wyvern riders. That definitely eliminates the possibility of her 2 turning, but the 3 turn is guaranteed for her so long as all bishops are disposed by then (which they will be). Durability-wise, Marcia’s going to survive. Even if all 11 enemies I listed hit her, they will do a combined 6+21+0+4+0+1+8 = 40 damage. With the exception of the SM, the enemies don’t exceed 110 hit, so at most she’s facing 26 real hit. Even if she somehow faced 15 attacks and needed 8 to kill her, she’d only have a measly 2.2% chance of dying. Conclusion: Jill is slightly better here, I’d give her a solid 1 turn advantage. C26-28: Similar logic to C25, let’s say Jill gets a turn each, for a combined 3 turns in her favor. Endgame: Neither flier matters so long as the rescue staff still exists. Even then, a suicide drop would be the most efficient way of beating the chapter. Overall, I think the evidence overwhelmingly points in Marcia’s favor. Jill’s biggest leads (C23, C25-28) are almost single-handedly countered by Marcia’s C12 alone. Then she has the advantages of Chapters 11, 14, 17-2, 19 and 21.

Yeah, and the more optimally we play, the more she gets. It’s by no means a stretch for her to get her full 1600 BEXP when that leads to the largest net benefit. I counted roughly 3500 BEXP… This means BEXP plowing Marcia in C12 costs us less than 50% of our total supply, and yet you led me to believe it was the entire thing this whole time. Tsk tsk. I already addressed this. This approach forces us to use more siege tomes per enemy, and given the very limited supply of sieges, this is a very bad thing. You’ll be losing out on ballista + bosskills if you do this, so having a super sage is more ideal. OTOH, I can agree to this: This is enough to give Marcia a load, Soren a lot, and still have given Oscar and Kieran enough to kick ass. If we want to dump a bunch on Astrid or Makalov, we can do so after C15's bounty of Bexp. The only reason we would be short at this point is if we're training Jill in addition to Marcia, in which case I wouldn't recommend this strategy. (…) Certainly there's an opportunity cost for Soren taking this Bexp (probably equal to the cost of it going to one of Nephenee, Astrid, or Makalov - assuming Jill wasn't recruited). But it's also not obvious that these units (fourth or fifth Paladin, another un-mounted unit?) can make better use of the Bexp than Soren. Because Soren not only helps in this C15 clear, he can become our sole siege tome user (we don't have to give Calill or any other Sage Bexp) and provide staff utility and rout support to boot.

I'll concede Brom > Devdan, but here's some counter-points just for the fun of it. As I showed earlier, base Devdan can actually handle reinforcements pretty well up to a certain point. Watch up to 1:35. Even if Brom is in an ideal formation position and moves completely forward on turn 1, he won’t face any enemies. Your mounts manage to kill all the nearby enemies on turn 1 player phase, and by the next turn they’ve left Brom in the dust. So just kill the KE myrm on player phase. Since he’s the most dangerous enemy around and we surely have more than 1 unit hanging back to handle reinforcements, it’s only logical that he’ll be eliminated on P. phase. Only a select few (max. 4) units will have any chance of reaching the ravens, so we have the remainder of our deployed units to deal with turn 7 reinforcements. Again, throwing 900 BEXP towards a mid tier unit is never going to happen, at least not until later in the game when being careless with BEXP is much more palatable. When discussing Marcia vs Oscar you hammered Marcia to death about the opp. cost of using BEXP. If you want to take that stance, then you have to apply the same logic to Brom. 900 BEXP we put on him is 900 BEXP that could’ve gone towards Marcia/Jill/Kieran/Astrid/etc, all of which are seeing 4x more combat than Brom ever will. That’s a net negative. There is, however, a point in the game (let’s say C25 and beyond) where your developed frontliners are such overkill that BEXPing reject units would actually provide a net benefit. So, I’m not arguing the extreme that both units are in “unused tier”. Just that it’s extremely unlikely they’ll be seeing any BEXP until the last third of the game. A 2 turn strategy only requires Ike/super flier/Calill/bosskiller/maybe Reyson. That leaves 5 slots to find a physic healer for Devdan, so healing him on turn 2 is a complete non-issue. Reikken Chance of Death Calculator. Very useful when you don’t feel like working out binomial probabilities. ================================================================================= How, exactly? Rhys has a sizeable staff rank lead on him. Just by promoting he’d have a C rank, compared to Soren’s E, but then he gets to heal for a good half-dozen chapters before Soren can even touch a staff. Is it because of superior mag? 10/1 Rhys: 16 mag 10/1 Soren: 12 mag 15/1 Soren: 17 mag Don’t think so. Though, even if Soren did have a sizeable advantage in that area, it hardly makes a difference. You need 2 points of mag / point of extra physic range, so it takes a hell of a lot of magic to have noticeably more staff range. And even an underlevelled healer will manage >20 hp healing with a physic (formula = mag stat + 10). Unless your name is Boyd, it’s quite rare to suffer more than 20 hp worth of damage in a short time span. We have 15 seige tome uses over the entire game (C16 bolting is definitely missed). In fact, we may even have less than that since 2/3 seige tomes are acquired off enemy drops. That’s stretched very thin considering all we want to do with our precious siege tomes. -Shiharam (1 use) -Schaeffer (2 uses) -Gromell (2 uses) -Petrine + Bertram (2 uses) -Ballistas (maybe 5 uses?) -Dragons/tigers/other threats It’s better to BEXP Calill and get more mileage out of our siege tomes than it is to do what you proposed. Look at it this way: Soren’s earlygame usefulness causes ripples in the ocean. In contrast, Calill’s siege toming causes a tidal wave. This is a matter of philosophical difference, I guess, as you seem to value availability much more than I do. Remember that Marcia takes 1600 BEXP in C12’s base. This means Soren’s drawing BEXP from what we’ve accumulated over only 3 chapters: C12-14. That’s only 850 BEXP that’s available to him, and whatever he’s taking directly affects what Jill (if recruited), Kieran, Astrid, Makalov, even Oscar are receiving. They haven’t received any so far. As me and Merc Raven keep saying, these C15 rescue-drop strategies simply aren’t practical.

FE Tiering is like politics for SRPG gamers. What remains is to identify which philosophies are "conservative", and which are "liberal".

Thieves should be given an infinite use 3-10 range brave tome that ignores enemy res and is effective against armors, cavaliers and bosses.

Have you considered using a wii save? If you have an SD card you could download a transfer file and save the trouble of an entire playthrough dedicated to making some FE10 units slightly better. Here's one I made myself a while back (link). Has 14 transfers :)

Mage time ================= Low resource approach ================= I don’t feel like quoting the chapter-by-chapter because it’s mostly “chip damage w1n!!!” and/or “healing!!!”. So, I’ll skip to your own conclusion. So… why would Soren being your sole staff user carry any value whatsoever? Rhys and Mist already satisfy such a role just by using a deployment slot. Mist is also likely to be used long-term for rescue staff utility. Yes, Soren can both heal and attack, so what? By promoting him early, his offence is reduced to chipping, and his movement is such that he’ll only face reinforcements unless he’s rescue-dropped. That’s a very minimal advantage compared to being heal-locked. This situation would be different if slots were so competitive that we couldn’t field multiple healers. But we can, even on most rout maps. At any rate, I don’t see how Soren being a redundant healer with the advantage of chipping enemy reinforcements can in any way overcome Calill’s vastly superior siege utility. ================= High resource approach ================= So ultimately, Soren’s earlygame can be summarized as follows: C4: Chip C5: Self-improvement C6: Dead weight C7: Chip C8: Self-improvement That’s some incredible leverage he’s got on Calill so far! C9: Chip C10: Dead weight C11: Still chipping C12: Self-improvement Calill is curled in the foetal position sobbing her eyes out by now! C13: You know my opinion on this by now. It’s a self-improvement chapter for basically anybody since the map can so easily be curbstomped within 2-3 turns. C14: Dead weight C15: So Soren is going to assist Marcia to do something she can already do reliably on her own… and in the process costs us a turn we had a 75% chance of saving. Sounds like a plan! Yet another chapter of self-improvement/dead weight-ness! How deliciously ironic then, that the only enemies Soren is likely to face are those very myrmidon reinforcements. The cycle of dead-weight/self-improvement continues! ===================================================================================================================== I’m not at all sold that Soren’s availability has any meaningful leverage on Calill’s siege toming capabilities. However, with all these self-improvement chapters, if Soren’s capable of reaching promotion by now (or at least by C20) with less than 500 BEXP, then I could see Soren > Calill. 20/1 Soren: 31 hp/3 str/18 mag/20 skl/18 AS/11 lck/7 def/19 res Base Calill: 32 hp/8 str/19 mag/18 skl/18 AS/16 lck/8 def/17 res Technically Calill’s still slightly better, especially in that she doesn’t lose much AS from siege tomes, and she has the rank to use all 3 of them. But long-term chipping and staffing could more than compensate for that, I guess. Since Tormod > Soren on the list already, I’ll stop here. Basically, I’d go for Tormod > Soren > Calill >> Ilyana.

@Aku Chi: Adressing Devdan vs Brom for now, will get to Soren vs Calill as soon as I read those posts you linked me to. It’s not a stat comparison, but rather a way of showing the resources Brom requires to match Devdan’s performance. My point is that Brom needs to be BEXPed close to promotion before his combat is even comparable to Devdan’s, and that’s a large investment (~1300-1500 BEXP). Obviously how the 2 units compare has everything to do with the BEXP investment we put towards them. If we put 1500 BEXP towards Devdan as well, he’ll gain about 8 levels. Brom 20/1: 40 hp/18 str/40 hit/12-16 AS/21 def/8 res/30-38 avo Devdan --/12: 42 hp/19 str/55 hit/16-18 AS/15 def/12 res/51-54 avo Devdan wins across the board, except for def. But 42 hp/15 def is very good concrete durability until lategame. For instance, in Chapter 21 the higher atk enemies only manage a 4-5HKO. Also, the less BEXP we give both units, the better Devdan will be in the comparison since he profits less from the BEXP dump than Brom does (8 levels gained vs 13). This is especially true before Brom promotes since those promotion gains are very important towards his performance. In the comparison I showed, Devdan has a 2 AS advantage, and the only way Brom’s gaining ground is through a levelling advantage. I suppose he could achieve higher AS at some point, but by then we’ve invested much more BEXP into Brom than he’ll ever realistically get. First of all, if this is all these units are outputting for the team, then neither Devdan nor Brom are worthy of much investment. Their roles are little more than cleaning up reinforcements that spawn near your army’s starting point, which is hilariously easy to satisfy. Mobility’s not an issue because the enemies come to you. Offence isn’t much of an issue since you have multiple turns to take out the same enemies. Generally, 2RKOes are highly acceptable in these situations. All you need is acceptable durability and this secondary role is pretty much satisfied. All to say, your BEXP is much better invested in frontline units, so we can’t expect Brom or Devdan to get much going their way. Low maintenance is key for this role, and Devdan is clearly superior in this regard. Though, just for ****s and giggles, let’s look at those chapters you mentioned more carefully. 11: Base Brom 3HKOes cavaliers, and fares even worse against knights. In fact, he even 3HKOes one of the soldiers. The only enemies he doesn’t suck against are vigilantes, but they’re worth more alive than dead. 13: This 7 turn has some of the most relaxed requirements in the game. You can’t really give anyone credit for anything they do past the first 2 turns as anything other than self-improvement. 14: What’s Brom doing? Visiting the spirit dust house to the west? Even Sothe can do that. 17-1: Without rescue-dropping, foot units are left in the dust for a 2 turn clear. If we take extra turns, then some myrmidons show up at the starting position. Base level Devdan 2HKOes them all and is 4HKOed in return. Admittedly Brom doesn’t need much to 2HKO them either. 18: Base Devdan doubles the wyvern riders for an easy 2RKO. OTOH, Brom needs 9 levels to double (2RKO), before that he pulls off a paltry 4RKO. Neither character has a realistic chance of 1RKOing without being given steel forges, but that’s a serious misappropriation of resources, giving that they’re killing 3 enemies. 20: The only reason we’d rescue-drop Brom is to take out Shiharam. But, his work is already cut out for him when 35 hp/17 def wyverns are getting in his way. Even with a forged steel lance, he needs to be 20/5 to pull off a borderline ORKO. That’s a ton of investment to do something that our super flier is already capable of. At any rate, Devdan can do the same thing. For virtually the same exp investment (2350 BEXP vs 2384 BEXP), a --/14 Devdan can ORKO the same wyverns without survival issues. Devdan --/14: 44 hp/16-18 def/13-16 res/60 avo Depending on if he gets the KW or not, the wyverns are 5-6HKOing him at 32 real hit. His odds of dying in 8 attacks are ~1.6%, just to give you an idea of how durable he is. 25: Brom needs to be promoted to do anything meaningful at the peak. Though, if we do provide him that investment, I’ll admit he could be quite useful here. Neph, Boyd and obviously Devdan have less durability on him, and Tauroneo’s too slow. I looked at the chapters you didn’t mention, and both units would be next to useless there… Anyway, Devdan > Brom for low investments, and Devdan ~= Brom for higher investments (only C25 makes it arguable). Lower investment is much more likely for both characters, though. Even if our frontlines are powerful, most of the time improving the 1-2 range of a 9 move unit is probably more worthwhile than buffing 6-7 move units, so they get last dibs on available BEXP.

Since I seem to have killed all discussion with that last post, let me see if I can re-ignite some debate. ===================================================================================== First, I’d put Mordecai over Muarim and Neph for smiting considerations. The only cost to using Mordecai is a deployment slot, yet his usefulness in LTCs is unquestionable. OTOH, Neph demands resources to become a 7 move combat machine… hardly the same level of usefulness in regards to highly efficient play. Muarim is a trickier argument. He can counter Mordy being a smite bot by being a shove bot himself. Then, in lategame we can give Muarim smite, effectively making them identical in this regard. However, lategame smiting is less useful compared to midgame because of the presence of Reyson + the rescue staff. Aku Chi covered this in detail in one of his posts. It’s true that Muarim is a decent combat unit for about 6 chapters, though apparently Mordecai can OHKO a bunch of enemies with a Mist support, and ORKO a fair share of slower enemies throughout a similar time span. Overall I’d take Mordy’s smiting > Muarim’s combat in that timespan before the 2nd smite scroll becomes available. After all, by C18 you already have an established offensive core, whereas giving units +2 move every turn cannot be replicated by any other unit. ===================================================================================== I also think Calill needs to move up. I’d go as far as arguing her > Soren. I’ve actually done this before, but there was a different tiering philosophy present at the time. In the context of LTCing, most of the usefulness of having a sage is for siege tome bosskills. Other usage such as staff utility and mopping up reinforcements simply pale in comparison to eliminating bosses more quickly. Since sages are relegated to this very simple task, it makes sense that low maintenance is of utmost importance in terms of their ranking. Soren fails in this regard because he requires a lot more EXP than Calill to produce the same output in regards to eliminating a boss. First, let’s look at the availability of siege tomes. Blizzard- Chapter 23 (enemy sage) Meteor- Chapter 20 (Calill) Bolting- Chapter 16 (chest), chapter 22 (enemy sage) The C16 bolting’s in the upper-left chest room, and will therefore be missed unless we recruit Devdan or something (even then…). So chapter 20’s the earliest that bosskilling becomes relevant. ======== Chapter 20 ======== Shiharam lv 10 (tomahawk [d], full guard, elixir) 45 hp, 33 atk, 14 AS, 100 hit, 29 avo, 21 def, 13 res, 8 crit, 1 cev Let’s say a 20/8 Marcia faces Shiharam. With forged steel she has 34 atk, doing 24 damage. Shiharam has 21 hp left. Base Calill does 17 damage with meteor. All she needs to finish him off is a spirit dust and 4 levels of BEXP (783 BEXP total). If Marcia has just 1 more strength, then Calill only needs the dust. In comparison, Soren needs 20 levels just to match Calill’s base mag. Sure, some of that is for free off of earlygame CEXP chipping, but otherwise that’s a LOT more investment to achieve the same result. ======== Chapter 21 ======== Without bolting available neither sage is particularly useful against Ena. Base Calill is only doing 5/52 damage. ======== Chapter 22 ======== The most reliable 1 turn strategy involves siege toming Schaeffer twice (with the help of Reyson obv). He has 51 hp/9 res, so 36 atk is required. Base Calill has 30, so with a spirit dust only 8 levels of BEXP are required. But, since we already gave her 4 to deal with Shiharam, our net loss is only 4 levels or 974 BEXP. ======== Chapter 23 ======== Seiging Petrine is pretty useless since she has high res, and it’s difficult to get a sage there anyway. ======== Chapter 24 ======== Who’s Rikard? ======== Chapter 25 ======== We now have bolting, so Gromell is screwed. Our trained Calill takes off 72% of his health per hit, with 80 display hit (92 real). Even base Calill can team up with a sonic sword peggie for the kill. Also note that Calill has 22 spd/10 str. This means she can double most enemies using meteor and blizzard (0-1 AS loss). Even with bolting she has 19 AS, enough to double all non-laguz/non-SM enemies. Goodbye ballista threats. ======== Chapter 26 ======== Being able to attack Bertram at 3-10 range is very useful because he has no opportunity to heal himself. Since he has 54 avo, maximizing accuracy is paramount, so we’ll choose the blizzard. Same Calill as C22 is doing 12/49 damage to him at 83 display hit (94 real). This leaves Bertram with 37 hp/25 def. This allows Marcia to ORKO him with a forged silver lance, let alone other units with higher str stats. ======== Chapter 27 ======== Similar to chapter 26. ================ Chapter 28 + Endgame ================ By now we can be careless with BEXP, so maxing Calill’s level gives her 11.5 str/25 mag/24 AS/68 hit. That’s a whopping 51 eff mt against dragons. Given a +str band, she can borderline double the lower levelled dragons, and borderline 2HKOes! Yes, she’s borderline ORKOing some of the toughest enemies in the game, or is otherwise weakening them significantly. Hitrate’s not an issue either (>90 display hit). Basically, with as little as a spirit dust and 1757 BEXP, Calill can shave turns by either directly killing or heavily assisting in the slaying of multiple bosses. Namely, Shiharam, Schaeffer, Gromell, and C28-29 dragons. The spirit dust comes at virtually no cost since fielding 2 sages in the same PT is pretty stupid. I guess it could increase Mist or Elincia’s rescue range by 1, but that’s not making any difference as far as I know. The 4k you could get from selling the dust is inconsequential since money isn’t even remotely an issue in this game. The BEXP may sound like a lot (zomg more than we give Marcia!), but it’s given in 2 lump sums, not all at once, and the later in the game you use BEXP, the loss costly it is since the available supply of BEXP will be larger. C20 and 22 are pretty late in the game (~2/3 through). At this point, we’ve accumulated around 10270 BEXP so far, so she’s only using 17% of our available BEXP supply. By the end of the game this value falls to 11.69% of our total supply. I’d hardly call that a strain on resources. On an 8 unit team, a fair BEXP share would be 12.5%, and most useful units are vying for BEXP earlier on. This argument isn’t so much about Calill > Soren as it is simply gauging the usefulness of sages towards LTCs. But, unless Soren, Tormod and Ilyana have significant contributions towards efficient play outside of bosskilling, Calill stomps them because she requires around half the BEXP they do to achieve the exact same thing. And it’s not as though Calill can’t hold her own in regular combat anyway. I’ve already shown a long time ago that even base Calill is a ORKOing machine, and that her primary combat issue is durability. What’s so amazing about Soren’s earlygame as to warrant a higher ranking? It’s already been shown that Oscar’s not saving that many turns in earlygame due to Titania domination, imagine where that puts Soren, whose combat is at its worst in earlygame. Tormod’s a weird case since he can actually keep up with our mounts, so his combat utility over the game is much more relevant. He isn’t mostly limited to boss sniping. For this reason I wouldn’t object to Tormod > Calill > Soren. ===================================================================================== Gatrie > Haar seems pretty suspect to me. Let’s look at Gatrie’s earlygame. Chapter 3: Ike, Gatrie and Shinon are nothing more than distractions for the enemies as Titania charges for the boss. He’s basically inconsequential here. Chapter 4: See chapter 3. Chapter 5: Loldefendchapter. Chapter 7: Since Gatrie and Shinon spawn at opposite ends of the map relative to your other units, their circumstances basically force them to be useful. This is precisely “FE10 1-P Edward” type usefulness. Even so, both units do little more than distract the enemies until Titania can catch up and mop up their mess. After that, Gatrie disappears until C13, at which point he might as well not exist due to lolmove and AS issues. Wow, Gatrie did next to nothing useful for his entire existence! What about Haar? We’re basically getting a durable flier for free. The usefulness he has from rescue dropping in C25 probably outweighs all of Gatrie’s earlygame, and that’s even if we deploy Tanith, Marcia AND Jill on that map. ===================================================================================== Devdan > Brom, anyone? First off, Devdan’s bases wreck Brom. Look at what levels Brom needs just to match them. Hp: 18 Str: 17 Mag: 20/20 (just for the lulz) Skl: 20 Spd: 20/4 Spd (using KW): 20/1 Luck: 20/20 (actually never) Def: Already 2 points ahead Res: 20/9 The spd advantage is especially biting. Brom needs to be promoted just to compete with Devdan statistically. Since getting Brom CEXP is pretty hopeless except in C13, he has to make up that deficit almost entirely through BEXP. There goes around 1500 BEXP, now we’ve delayed Marcia h3xing the game at least 2-4 chapters. Even ignoring the huge BEXP cost to put Brom on equal footing, Devdan’s still superior to him, for 3 reasons. 1) 10% higher spd growth means the gap between Devdan and Brom’s spd only increases as the game goes on. 2) Devdan has +1 move on him, and we all know how important that is. 3) Brom is harder to rescue (Marcia + Tanith cannot do it) and shove. The comparison is already unsalvageable for Brom. The fact that he has overkill durability, that he can use axes, and that he gives Boyd an awesome support, this is all rendered pretty much irrelevant by the other factors I’ve mentioned. ===================================================================================== I’d definitely put Volke and Sothe above Brom/Devdan, possibly even Haar/Gatrie. I mean, both thieves get partial credit for the boots, which is a huge freaking deal. They eliminate the need for chest keys in C13, can be rescue-dropped all the way to the full guard chest in C16, and provide some other tidbits of usefulness here and there. I can understand that LTCing forces us to miss most treasure in the game, hence their plummeting rank, but they should still be above ****y combat units that would be lucky to get more than 5 kills on a LTC run without being given serious investment that would outweigh their usefulness (i.e. BEXPing Brom more than Marcia early on). ===================================================================================== The last thing I’ll say is that I think the bottom tiers could use some loving attention. For now I’m only going to focus on Elincia’s ranking, though. Elincia being in the lowest possible tier is ridiculous. If Mist isn’t in play (which would save ~1000 BEXP and a master seal, mind you), then Elincia is instrumental in all 3 of her final maps because of the rescue staff. Other sages will never have the rank to use it, and Rhys cannot match her range unless he gets shove conga’ed, and even then he can’t canto back to safety. In fact, even if Mist is in play, it’s possible for both units to use the rescue staff on the same turn through trading. There’s a lot of units as high as upper-mid that you can argue barely affect that game’s turn count positively, especially given opp. costs (if I don’t use Stefan how does my team suffer? … They’re barely affected?!?). With Elincia though, the benefits are clear and measurable (eg/ 1 turn saved in endgame). Even better, she has free deployment in 2/3 of her maps.

BEXP to 99 then. Full level-up on first attack next chapter. I definitely agree that Kyza is better though in regards to part 3.

*Note that I heavily edited this post since I initially wrote it in a rush. By your concept of favoritism inertia, this is false. Once we begin to favor Marcia, she's beginning to build a net benefit over Jill that only increases the more resources we put towards her. Sure, that's a problem. It's not like there aren't workarounds though. For instance, with all the movement boosting Marcia gets (shove/smites, boots, vigor), she can often take out a ballistician on player phase. I know because I used to do it all the time when I played the game. Compared to Jill, what is Marcia losing? A player phase action? Not the end of the world so long as Marcia can push forward unhindered. I don't understand why Marcia would have trouble surviving when she's flying in an area where most enemies can't reach her. Savior covers the issue of her carrying someone. Full guard covers the problem of the only ballista shooting at her. Gromell was already shown to be a minimal threat, especially when we can 2RKO him with a combination of sonic sword + bolting... and that pretty much covers it for turn 1. The wyverns only show up later as reinforcements, giving her an opportunity to heal if necessary. Ironically, Jill and Haar are actually worse off in this situation thanks to Gromell. Because of their thunder weakness, Gromell has 10 extra atk (36 total), and does 25 damage to both characters (2HKO before def boosters come into play). They also have much less avoid. This boss advantage isn’t limited to C25 either. As you said yourself, “I forgot so many bosses used magic weapons…” I already explained the 5 level lead is based on increased CEXP gains from bosskilling and playing a pivotal role in most chapters. There's an opp. cost to that (like all things), but I'd say it's pretty small since alternative approaches often involve some unit charging ahead and sponging most of the exp for themselves anyway. More importantly, though, I think you’re misinterpreting the intent of my post. Obviously if we compared Marcia to Kieran and gave both seraph robes, exp favoritism, etc, then Kieran’s going to be more durable. That’s not the point. It’s more like this: most of the units in high/top tier are plenty durable without any form of durability boosting favoritism. So, if Marcia can measure up to them using the resources I discussed (EXP favoritism, seraph robe, full guard), then her durability concerns have been addressed. Your argument seems to be that even with all these things, she’s still a defensive liability and therefore needs dracoshields on top of everything. That’s all that I’ve been challenging. ===================================================================================== Now for the stuff you quoted Narga on: If we plough Oscar with BEXP in C10-11, this carries the cost of delaying Marcia and/or Jill’s ascension to godmode. Hell, it already compromises low turning C12, arguably Marcia’s biggest single victory in the game. Opportunity costs can work against Oscar too you know. Besides, what is so costly about Mordecai using a laguz stone in C10? Is there any other point in the game where there’s a pressing need for him to be transformed? 90% of the time he smites on turn 1 and is done, no transformation required. And if he really needs it, there’s always the demi-band. I’m certain Titania can single-handedly reach the arrive square by turn 4, so having Oscar promoted in C11 is pretty inconsequential, as you even implied. BEXPing him at this point would be a waste. You obviously highly value low maintenance units, and if this were a harder game like FE6, we wouldn’t be having these long discussions. The problem is, the value of low maintenance isn’t as significant in a game like FE9 because of its lack of difficulty and large pool of resources. These factors significantly reduce the cost of being high maintenance because the combat requirements a unit must meet to 1RKO with reasonable survivability are quite low, and there’s such an abundance of BEXP over the course of the game that you can turn do crazy things like instantly turn 4-5+ gutter units like Tormod into ready-made 1RKO machines over the course of a playthrough. This is why I keep insisting Marcia’s resource drainage isn’t a big deal. On paper it might seem that way, but the circumstances of the game paint a different picture. Enormous emphasis is put on the 1600 BEXP she initially uses. I did some rough adding and the total BEXP supply over the course of the game is roughly 15020 BEXP. That’s only exhausting about 10.6% of the total supply, which is very reasonable given a 10 unit team, no less a smaller one (which is far more likely). BTW, it takes 1645 BEXP to get Marcia from base level directly to promotion. She has 3 chapters of usage before C12 (though C10 may or may not be stealthed). If she gains so much as a level in that time frame, she cuts the BEXP by ~100 points. Speaking of C10, you loose a whopping 700 BEXP by fighting your way through. If the cost of low turning chapters is considered, this should be no exception. I’ll admit I have a personal bias that stealthing should be assumed… it may take 2 more turns but it’s just so much more elegant than bulldozing your way through. I don’t expect many to agree with this view, though, since it’s arbitrary. Again, you’re underestimating the availability of BEXP over the long term. We can easily have a team of Oscar, Kieran, Jill AND Marcia all capable of kicking ass, with enough BEXP left over to easily build another 3-4 units. The only point of contention is in the order which these units are BEXPed, but that is already pretty much decided since making fliers awesome ASAP is clearly the optimal choice. I.E. Let’s go down the path of making Oscar + Kieran awesome first. There’s 1460 BEXP from chapter 15 alone, BOOM a flier is raised. Similarly, complete just about any 3-4 chapters after 10 and you’ll have a similarly large supply to work with. By chapter 17-18 you will easily have both of your fliers promoted, even despite favoring Oscar + Kieran beforehand. And, in a couple more chapters we can push another loser unit into glory mode. Lather, rinse, repeat, and none of this is factoring CEXP gains or ready-made units.

Jesus, Clipsy, if Seth is only an 8 turn penalty it would've been worth it on all these maps.

Ever wanted to manipulate FE6-8’s RNG without constantly using guesswork and savestates? No? Well too bad. Here’s a guide on how to use a simple RNG script so that you can manipulate hits, level-ups, crits, etc, deterministically and with minimal effort. Sounds very technical, but it’s much, MUCH easier than you think it is. I’ll do the best to make this guide idiot-proof regardless. First, you need an emulator that runs lua scripts. I highly recommend Visual Boy Advance re-recording V23.5a (http://code.google.com/p/vba-rerecording/downloads/detail?name=vba-rerecording-svn394-win32.7z&can=2&q=) but most of the newer versions of VBA on this page will work as well. Make sure to unzip the file you downloaded. If you don’t know how to do that, stop reading. You should end up with something like this: I recommend you create a folder and call it VBA to store these 3 items. Believe it or not, I’ve had problems with the emulator by putting it into an unnamed new folder. Probably has to do with vista sucking. When you open a rom, make savestates, etc, folders will automatically be made for storing these things. Your VBA folder will probably end up looking like this: Second, you’ll need RNG scripts. For now I’ll link to the FE8 scripts (http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=278325#278325) since scripts for the other GBA games are harder to find. Simply visit the link and download the first script, titled “rngdisplay”. I’ll assume you have a working Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (U) rom. They’re not hard to find, but I can’t link you to them for copyright reasons. Hopefully that wasn’t too scary! Now let’s begin. Load your rom, start a chapter, make a savestate. I recommend you turn off battle animations, though it’s optional. For the purposes of this guide I’ll start at the prologue. Now we want to run the script. Go tools -> lua scripting -> new lua window. Now click browse Find wherever you placed “rngscript” and double click. If you’ve done everything correctly you should get the following: What I’m pointing at in red is of paramount usefulness: You see the previous 3 RNs, and the next 10 RNs. This means you can follow the game’s RNG at all times! This alone will set you apart from those who reset abuse for their luck manipulation. There are still 2 important things you need to learn, though. How the RNG advances When a player lands a hit, the game typically uses 3 RNs: hit, hit, crit. Even if the player’s crit is 0, an RN will still be used to check its value. However, when a player misses, the game will only use 2 RNs: hit, hit. All of what I said is also true for the enemy. Here’s a very common scenario to consider: you have a high avoid unit such as Eirika who double attacks an enemy, and the enemy fails to hit. The RN sequence would be as follows: 1: Hit 2: Hit 3: Crit -- 4: Enemy Hit 5: Enemy Hit -- 6: Hit 7: Hit 8: Crit Thus, when Eirika attacks, 8 RNs will be used. Now let’s say she also levels up from this fight. Now instead of 8 RNs, 15 consecutive RNs will be use. The RNG will check each stat in exactly the same order the game presents, namely: 9: Hp 10: Str 11: Skl 12: Spd 13: Def 14: Res 15: Luck How can we use this to our advantage? Simple: with knowledge of hitrates, critrates, and even growth rates, you can figure out the acceptable values for the manipulated RN. Let me illustrate this by manipulating a critical for Eirika. [spoiler=“Note”] If the information on the left-hand script bothers you, it can easily be removed. Find “rngdisplay”, right click edit, and remove these lines from the code: gui.text(0,0,"Player") gui.text(0,8,"Hit: " .. memory.readbyte(phit)) gui.text(0,16,"Damage: " .. memory.readbyte(pdmg)) gui.text(0,24,"Crit: " .. memory.readbyte(pcrt)) gui.text(0,40,"Enemy") gui.text(0,48,"Hit: " .. memory.readbyte(ehit)) gui.text(0,56,"Damage: " .. memory.readbyte(edmg)) gui.text(0,64,"Crit: " .. memory.readbyte(ecrt)) For the remainder of this guide my pictures have this removed, meaning no hit/damage/crit information on the LHS of the screen. Look at the next 3 RNs: 1- Hit (38) 2- Hit (30) Since (30 + 38) / 2 = 34 < 100, Eirika will hit, meaning the game will check if she crits. 3- Crit (7) Since 7 < 14, Eirika will crit. Since Eirika attacking uses 3 RNs, you already know the next RN is 96. What’s weird is that in FE8, when a character lands a critical hit, an extra RN is used to see if they’ll use silencer (the skill that makes thieves instantly kill an enemy). I have no idea why this is, I’d say it’s a programming oversight. In other words, Eirika’s first attack alone is using 4 RNs. 1- Hit (38) 2- Hit (30) (Hit lands, so crit check) 3- Crit (7) (Crit lands, so silencer check) 4- Silencer (96) If you play out the whole sequence, 9 RNs will be used. 5- Enemy hit (55) 6- Enemy hit (85) (Since (55+85)/2 = 70 > 39, the enemy misses and no crit check is done) 7- Hit (10) 8- Hit (10) (Since (10+10)/2 = 10 < 100, there’s a hit) 9- Crit (89) (Since 89 > 14, there is no crit) After Eirika kills the brigand, the next RN will be 26. If you count how many RNs are between 38 and 26, you’ll notice 9 RNs were used, just as predicted. Now for the more complicated stuff: Certain promoted classes have skills (eg/ pierce). These skill activations are checked after the hit but before the crit. For example, if you have a wyvern knight Vanessa attacking, she will burn RNs as follows: 1-Hit 2- Hit 3- Pierce (if hit lands) 4- Crit (if hit lands) 5- Silencer (if crit lands) If that doesn’t make your head spin, having Vanessa attack a general will add even more complexity because of Great Shield. I’m not sure, but I think the sequence goes as follows: 1- Hit 2- Hit 3- Great shield (if it activates then the rest of Vanessa’s attack is ignored) 4- Pierce (if hit lands) 5- Crit (if hit lands) 6- Silencer (if crit lands) It should come as no surprise that hundreds of RNs are used on enemy phases. It’s important to keep track of what RNs are responsible for what, otherwise you’ll likely screw up a manipulation. Speaking of enemy phase, the game uses an RN every time an enemy moves. RNs are also used to determine the stat variation in starting and reinforcement enemies. This means that enemy stat deviations are manipulable. That pretty much covers it, moving on: How to Manipulate the RNG You’re aware of how the game uses RNs to determine outcomes, but how do you manipulate the RNG to your advantage? Simple: by exploiting the game’s path drawing algorithm. Since I’m lazy I’m going to copy-paste the explanation I gave on TASVideos: If you’re at all confused, don’t worry. Applying this knowledge is amazingly simple. Unfortunately the prologue is a horrible place to manipulate the RNG because it’s such a narrow map. The cursor doesn’t have the freedom to make decisions about how you form a diagonal path. Continue to chapter 1 and select Eirika: The next RN is 80. How can we burn an RN so that the next RN is 39? Simple, move the cursor diagonally (In this case I moved it diagonally up-left). Awesome, right? But how do you do it again? Just as simple. Undo your move (in this case move diagonally down-right), and repeat the original diagonal move (up-left). So now you’ve burned 2 RNs since starting the chapter. You can repeat this procedure as necessary to burn as many RNs as you want! Unfortunately, making perfectly diagonal moves is pretty tricky. Often the game will register the movement inputs separately, and no RN will be burnt. With a bit of practice this won’t be a major issue, but it is annoying to deal with. If you really want 100% reliability, you could program 1 button to handle multiple button presses (eg/ down + right), but I don’t think it’s worth it. OK, but Vykan… it’s very slow to burn 1 RN at a time like this, and I’m trying to manipulate something crazy! How do I speed up the process? The key is to make a long diagonal path and “wobble” the cursor. The longer the diagonal path, the better. Let me illustrate this with Seth. Since this involves 5 pictures in a row I’m putting them in spoiler tags to save space. [spoiler=“Seth RN Burn”] In 2 moves I manage to get Seth to burn 11 RNs! With this approach, if I were to continue wobbling, he’d burn about 5 RNs every time the cursor lands on a movable square. There are 2 major drawbacks to this method, though: One, you can’t know for sure how many RNs any individual “wobble” will use. The value will often vary by +-2 from the average, sometimes more. Second, it’s very easy to skip over the RN you were trying to land on. In general, it’s a good idea to wobble until an RN comes up that you like, then burn one at a time until you reach it. Last thing I’ll say: if you want to optimize wobbling, a flier is your best choice. The higher movement the unit has, the more RNs they can burn. Not only that, the diagonality of the path makes a huge difference. This is why RN burning in long corridors or around enemies is inefficient. The is also why the fact that fliers ignore most terrain is a huge boon for pulling off this RN burning technique. It all has to do with the number of decisions the RNG has to make about the path it is forming from the unit to the cursor’s present location. Who Wants More? That pretty much covers the basics of RNG manipulation using lua scripts for the GBA games. Perhaps this seems like a lot of information at first, but with some practice and experimentation, manipulating the RNG will become second nature to you. If any section so far is unclear, I’ll try and clarify. I may also post a video tutorial with a voice-over since that’s the best way of teaching this. There are also more complicated RN exploits you can pull using RNG tables (useful for chaining together improbable occurrences), an enemy phase script (greatly facilitates enemy phase manipulations), and even a way of manipulating the RNG directly through memory watch (this is basically cheating though). I’ll cover these if enough interest is shown in them.

Tanith has 10 base mag and doubles (lol 17 AS boss), so it's still a 2RKO as I claimed. XanderSalamander clearly failed at math because he didn't take into account the increased probability of only needing 1 crit in 2 hits. The 67% value I came up with is also an underestimation because I forgot about the 6-7 crit bonus Ike gets from resolve. The odds are then easily above 70% for the 2 turn.

Whoa, chill out Merc Raven. I think the idea is that vantage + brave axe Boyd will 1RKO 1-range enemies before they even get a chance to attack. How effective this is depends on how many 1-2 range enemies are up there, but you do have additional turns to mop them up after the first turn carnage. You’re right about SMs though, Boyd only has 62 display hit on them with the brave axe, and faces a non-0 crit chance. I don’t think this is a strong point anyway because of *surprise* opportunity costs. Vantage is useless on Boyd until the brave axe comes into play… The skill would’ve been put to better use on someone with a good starting skill like wrath or adept. And the brave axe is a highly valuable weapon with only 30 uses. By having Boyd use it here, we’re cutting back on guaranteed tiger+general kills, facilitated bosskills, increased player phase durability, and so on. To be fair, Marcia’s largely doing the same when a strategy relies on her using a spear or a forge, so I guess that aspect cancels out. I think you mean Gromell, because Hafedd is the C27 boss (the BK chapter). IIRC base Tanith can 2RKO with the sonic sword, so he’s not that much of a nuisance. This is completely wrong. Bosskiller uses pure water, gets rescued. The rescuer gets vigored, drops the bosskiller. Turn 2, the bosskiller is free to move while profiting from the res boost. No turns are lost using the spirit water. Yeah, but where? Trudging through this topic is a pain. The issue isn’t so much whether Titania can kill the boss as it is Ike keeping up with her. I know Titania is awesome, but I’m not sure she can handle enemies while carrying Ike without getting her path blocked. It wouldn’t amaze me if she could, though.

If you apply some rule where a unit's forced to use their combat and be raised, then Meg vs Fiona would come out to who's hurting the team less when used seriously. That's pretty hard to judge since even at their full potential, both units are riddled with issues like terrible caps. Has anyone performed a draft where they were forced to use Meg or Fiona? If anything, it would make an interesting read.

Why is anyone taking Meg and Fiona's combat seriously? Especially beyond part 1... Is hitting an enemy for 3 damage at 43 display hit suddenly useful?

You've proven your case that the gap between flier and flier-less (or at least Marcia/Jill-less) play isn't as big as I made it out to be. Cool beans. Even so, I still think Marcia > Oscar. The team that favors Marcia is clearly at an advantage throughout the game compared to Oscar's team, which has the freedom to distribute resources elsewhere. The only thing that would convince me otherwise is the weight of Oscar's earlygame. I honestly have no idea how handicapped you'd be without using Oscar in earlygame, as I've never tried it. I'll venture some educated guesses for the lulz though. C1: Lose a turn from not being able to rescue-drop Ike. C2: At least 1 turn lost by not sending Oscar west. Depending on how much ground Titania can cover, could be a big win for Oscar. C3: Unavailable C4: Unavailable C5: Defend map C6: Another big chapter for Oscar, definitely saves a turn, not sure about two. It's certainly inconvenient that Titania has to rescue and drop Ike at least once. C7: By not training Oscar, Boyd is going to be that much stronger, probably ORKOing most of the map. Also, Titania deals with 90% of the map. In Gergeshwan's run, the remainder of the units were dealing with the enemies near the starting position, so Oscars' contribution is largely replaceable by more intervention with Soren, Mia, Boyd and Ike. Basically, the turn count isn't affected. C8: Defend map C9: If we're not recruiting Marcia, Oscar's probably saving a turn in the rush to the throne. Otherwise we have time to let Titania basically clear out the optimal path to the throne while Marcia ferries Ike there. C10: Marcia's now a part of the team, and is equally useful in stealth clears. IMO those aren't big wins, and this is not accounting for the forced low deployment advantage. I mean, Marcia's C12 and 17-2 alone pretty much even out all of Oscar's earlygame. Even if favoring Marcia is considered effectively worthless from C18 onwards, she has a clear win in my eyes.

If you're careless about spacing having Kurth besides Rafiel could be the difference between him surviving and dying? Probably a better use would be 4-E-3 and 4-E-4 shoving. The 4-E-4 1 turn is pretty tight, so having Kurth for free is helpful, especially if the rescue staff broke by this point.