Anouleth

All of the FE main characters are Mary Sues to a certain extent, depending on your definition. If anything, Micaiah is the least Mary-Suish, since she actually makes questionable moral judgements.

45% defense growth is also crazy. If you compare 45% defense growth to the other DB beorcs: 20% defense: Laura, Sothe 25% defense: Zihark 30% defense: Ilyana 35% defense: Edward, Leonardo, Nolan, Meg, Jill, Tormod 45% defense: Tauroneo 55% defense: Fiona 75% defense: Aran She's tied for 3rd highest growth on that list (she beats everyone except Edward/Volug in HP growth) - in fact, by the time she reaches Tauroneo's level, she'll have 19.4 defense to his 21 defense, and 40hp to his 38. That's insanely tanky for a mage.

Well, it depends on what transfers you allow (speed transfer for Haar?), but I don't think Soren would go up that much. In fact, he'd go down - since Titania and Oscar will be on base 23 speed, they're doubling most of the stuff in 3-P while he isn't.

For a start, Meg is a Heaven affinity, so she only provides +hit. This is only really useful for Meg if she wants to use Wind Edges, which she doesn't because she'll have substandard strength by the time she gets a support going. In addition, nobody in the DB wants Heaven - the only person I can think of with hit issues is Aran, and by the time they get a support formed, Aran's Skill will have caught up. So, base Aran vs. base Meg. Well, Meg's base 8 AS is awful - she gets one-rounded by some of the tigers in 1-4 in HM (since some of them have 12AS), everything else 2-rounds her, and her lack of decent 2-range means she will either be stuck on Wind Edges (deals 6 damage vs tigers, 8 damage vs cats, 60% hit rate), or she gets counterattacked and possibly killed. Aran is also doing badly, but nothing is one-rounding him, and if he switches to a Javelin, he deals better damage with better accuracy. He'll also probably level-up quite early in this chapter since he gained some exp in 1-3, and probably gain STR/SKL/DEF, increasing his lead. See, Aran's growths are simply better distributed than Meg's. She has marginally higher HP, higher speed, higher luck, and higher resistance. Well, Aran's ridiculous defense makes up for his slightly worse HP, Meg's never fast enough to double anything due to a bad base and a bad cap, her luck is pretty useless since she's never fast enough to dodge-tank, and mages really aren't that scary. Compared to Aran's monstrous leads in Defense and Strength, her growths are awful, so she's never going to catch-up to him. It's that 8 base speed that makes her worse. You say that Jill has comparable defense to a level 3 unit... but she has 3HP, 7SPD and 3DEF lead? For a start, Jill is never going to be doubled if she doesn't want to. Meg needs to level up quickly and gain speed just to avoid being doubled by half the stuff in 1-5. Jill is also much more mobile - she can fly up and engage the Pegasus Knights in 1-6-1 and ferry Tauroneo to the boss in 1-6-2. Her offense is better as well, since she's got Axes. She will also end up better since she has better growths. Jill has far better physical defense than Meg, since she doesn't get doubled. I don't get why you think she has accuracy issues - an Iron Axe only loses out to a Iron Sword by 10 hit, and Jill has higher skill anyway. In addition, she can also be given the Energy Drop since she's the second best canditate for it after Nolan. Astrid can run around and take potshots in 2-3, even if she's fragile. Meg is also fragile, but her potshots suck due to Wind Edges being fail. And lol at Meg tanking. Aran can be used as a tank only because of his growths - his base stats are simply not good enough to tank with. Why should it? You're entire argument was 'Meg is comparable to Aran and Jill, therefore Meg up'. Since you have not established that Meg is comparable to Aran or Jill, everyone stays where they are.

Matthew Tormod Elincia Geoffrey Ashnard Aran

With capped skill, a Seraph Knight has a 36% chance of proccing stun, for a ~59% chance of activating it if they double. A marksman with capped skill is only looking at 20% chance of proccing DDeye, 36% if they double. So even if the Marksman always doubles and the Seraph Knight never doubles (not really happening), they have identical chances of proccing the ability. This is leaving out Elincia's wtfh4x 83% chance of proccing Stun if she doubles.

Worst skill is Shriek. It takes up 20 capacity, only activates when your Hawk/Raven is being attacked from afar, and does almost nothing (reduces enemy luck to 0). In theory, it could be useful against crossbows, but a ~30% chance to reduce the enemy's hit by ~20% is still awful.

To begin, I'll point out something that I should have done earlier - how bad Kyza is without that 3-4 speedwing. If he doesn't get it, his AS drops to 22 transformed, allowing him to double mages and generals pretty much exclusively. You've probably already realised this, which is why you asked for the speedwing right off the bat, because he's pretty much unplayable without it. To be honest, I didn't quite pin down the best forge for Lucia there - a max hit, max crit max mt steel sword has slightly better stats than the silver forge I posted (-1 mt, +11hit, +6crit), but without any cards and better value for money (40 durability vs 30). And you assume that because we're going for uber high crit, she wants +crit cards - truth is, Lucia's crit is high enough and she'd really rather have +mt or +hit. You claim that giving her gamble on top of the forges is increasing her resource consumption, when so few people want Gamble, or use it as effectively as her. The only people who could really use it are other trueblades and Volke. Let's go through them - Zihark doesn't have as much crit and would rather keep Vantage/Adept/Cancel, same for Mia, Stefan can't get skills put on until 4-E, Edward has better hit rate but the worst crit because he can't even get FE9 transfer bonds. Oh, and even Volke has less crit once Lucia becomes a Trueblade. If we were to go ahead and give them gamble anyway, most of that damage is overkill anyway. Lucia needs gamble more than they do. You say she 'wants one so bad', but Kyza wants that 3-4 speedwing badly as well, since his offense stinks without it. The forged sword is expensive, but noone particularly wants gamble but Lucia, and she'll take any +hit card, which aren't exactly in high demand either. Paragon isn't particularly necessary and neither is the BEXP, although level 19 Lucia gains 0.9 stats on average, has four stats capped and is almost certain to gain in her real problem areas of STR and DEF, so she's ideal for BEXP. I don't know exactly how many kills she needs in 4-2 to promote, but considering how many high-levelled enemies the game throws at you, she's not exactly in danger of starving the rest of the group. 4-2 has 75 enemies in normal mode, around level 4 to 5, so 10 or 12 kills out of that isn't exactly crippling the team. The reason I mention Paragon is that it has to go to someone, and preferably someone underlevelled to get the most out of it. Probably not Lucia, but she's a better canditate than Kyza because she's at a lower level and doesn't suffer from laguz exp rates. Lucia isn't just going from 2HKOed to 3HKOed, she's improving her damage output significantly as well, as well as her avoid rate. A level where you essentially sit in bushes and watch Izuka send waves and waves of beasties against you? Sure, durability becomes important, but even with a C support Lucia's avoid is still high enough. What was it again, 135? Tigers and Dragons are 145 and cats and hawks are 155, and since Izuka will summon beasties at the same monotonous rate of 4 per turn, she's not getting attacked so much anyway. Sure, he ORKOes with beastfoe and without a crit, which makes it sound like Lucia is banking on luck to kill, but she isn't because her crit rate is 100%. Beastfoe doesn't even come into it. Anyone can take Beastfoe in 4-5 and be good, so I don't see what you're trying to prove - for example, the Lucia I posted would one-HIT-ko those tigers if we added beastfoe to what she has (her mt would be 41, for a crit of 123), not that we will. Look at it this way - Beastfoe can be used by everyone and anyone. Gamble cannot be used by the vast majority of characters, and many characters aren't helped by forges as much as Lucia is. The Geoffrey thing was stupid I realise - the +5 crit doesn't matter at all to Lucia. Parity only affects Lucia on Player Phase, and she can use a Tempest Blade to get around counters. I said you *could* BEXP her strength if you had some spare - she's not even capping naturally. 31 Strength is tame yes, as is 30 spd. Lucia and Heather support, aside from sounding like someone's wet dream, is silly because Lucia is forced into Hawk Army and we want Heather to go with Ike to open chests. Well, I could argue 4-E-2 makes a difference, but why should I when you can just claim that's it's way too short anyway to matter? For what it's worth, she will perform better than him if you actually choose to do any fighting on the bottom part of the level. Enemy hit rates hover around 140 and go up to 160 for snipers and swordmasters, and a B Tanith will leave her with about 150 avoid, making her pretty much untouchable. Comparing Dragonfoe to Wyrmslayers is very, very faulty. To begin, 5 wyrmslayers are available, and only about a dozen characters can use them. Only one Dragonfoe is available, and every character in the game is benefiting from it except the super weak ones like Micaiah and Heather. On top of that, Dragonfoe>Wyrmslayer in attack potential. Wyrmslayer has 33 mt, 15 more than Alondite. Dragonfoe on someone using Alondite would give their weapon 54 mt, a full 21 mt more than with wyrmslayer, and if you do this with Lucia, she will also one-round. Dragonfoe is 'unlimited', true, but we're not trying to solo the map or anything. Lucia and whatever Gold Knights/Seraph Knights/Trueblades you brought along have more than enough wyrmslayers to go around. Why? Whatever character we put it on, we get an extra 20 damage against auras, so Lucia may as well keep it so she can one-round Cover spirits. If we want to kill two spirits or two weakened auras, we can have two powerful attacks, killing both, or they can both attack, killing one full health aura. I see no reason to put it on Caineghis just so we can have a nice big number, unless Aurora scares you that much in a level that's usually finished by the end of turn 2. Again, these people don't have any net gain by having Parity over Lucia. If anything, Lucia gets priority over them because some of them gain attack bonuses from supports. Because Kyza wastes one of the best endgame skills. I couldn't care less how much capacity Kyza has, Parity nets us 20 damage on Lucia and 10 damage on Kyza versus the auras. My point is that Lucia comes with a very good endgame skill, and is exactly the kind of character that uses it well, and this on top of everything else > Kyza in Endgame. Mentioning Gamble was admittedly a mistake on my part, since I didn't realise spirits had such high luck. Sure, Kyza never causes such a hindrance. He never does ANYTHING. Lucia, on the other hand, is advising queens, liberating countries, uncovering hidden plots, falling into traps, having haircuts, provoking epiphanies in Elincia, and inadvertantly attracting handsome and well-spoken Counts of Fayre. She's the most powerful and influential swordmaster in all of Tellius. Kyza isn't even the most powerful Tiger in Gallia.

I don't have time to post a full rebuttal right now, but just to clarify, the number on the left is the mt/hit/crit, and the number on the right is the def/avo/dodge. A bit further down, I explained that in this case, we got 10x2 mt, 72 hit, 86 crit. Sorry for not making it clearer.

I've never done one of these debates, so I assume my job is just to nitpick the preceding post and find stuff to dispute. First, I agree that taking a 3-4 Speedwing is a big negative against Kyza. I can't really dispute the stats you've posted to back yourself up, but I'd like to point out that even with this speedwing, he's still very mediocre offensively. Perhaps more importantly, you've neglected to post his stats untransformed. Kyza lv 18 (A strike): 55 hp, 20 Mt, 10 skl, 13 spd, 14 lck, 10 def, 5 res Not a surprise to anyone - all laguz are this bad untransformed, which is precisely why people don't like using them. Depending on how much Olivi Grass you burn, Kyza's essentially useless for between half or a tenth of the game. That speedwing is unjustified not because Kyza's only average with it, but because he's average when he's transformed with it. You pointed out that Gatrie has inferior move to Kyza - if Kyza spends 3 turns transformed and running ahead with 9 move (risking untransforming at a critical point and possibly dying) and then needs to run back for 2 turns and munch grass so his gauge can refill, he's hardly all that much better. 9 move isn't really that great either when you can't Canto and take full advantage of it. When you take into account his uselessness against indirect attackers as well, he starts to sound less average and more really bad, especially compared to the rest of the GMs. Whatever, Part 3 is so boring anyway. Enough about Kyza's bad start. I won't deny he gets better, though. Since S Strike is so damn good in this, he's pulling his weight by the end of Part 3, when his horrible SPD cap hasn't quite caught up with him. So at the start of Part 4, Lucia is getting ripped to shreds, right? Given how we gave Kyza the speedwing all the way back in 3-4, I think we're entitled to forge a nice pretty sword for Lucia. Depending on how much we're willing to splash out, Lucia could be doing ok. Of course, her mt is never going to be as good as Kyza's, but it doesn't need to be. If we give her a forged silver sword with +hit and +crit (the cards that nobody wants) and give her gamble, she can just crit her way to victory because she gets unique bond bonuses from Elincia and Geoffrey - two good characters in their own right and both with canto. I'm taking 10 as enemy luck, because Serenes doesn't seem to have data on it - it's probably higher, though. 4-5 20/18 Lucia vs Tiger 56 HP Mt 34 vs 24 Hit 200 vs 55 AS 28 vs 20 Crit 53 vs 10 That's with a Silver Sword with +3 mt, +15 hit, +9 crit and a triple arrow card, assuming we have Geoffrey and Elincia sitting next to Lucia. Lucia chooses to gamble -> 10 mt, 72 hit, 86 crit chance, variable with biorhythm. I'm not sure how to calculate real hit, but I'd say that's not too bad for showing up badly underlevelled. All that forged stuff are probably a bit too much for Lucia, to be honest - the 30 durability sword will cost 6660 gold, and a triple arrow card (lol). Personally, I think Lucia would better use being BEXPed or paragoned to 3rd tier, which would also help solve her durability problems and let her double the faster enemies - she admittedly has no chance against the cats and hawks. 4-5 Tiger vs Lucia (C support with Tanith, sitting on bushes) 40 hp Mt 40 vs 15 Hit 153 vs 128 (not sure if thicket boost is 20 or 10) AS 20 vs 28 Crit What Crit? Ok, she gets touched, she gets ripped to shreds. But again, for a character who's miles behind everyone else, 25 display hit at neutral biorhythm ain't too bad. If we baby her for a chapter by levelling her up to 19, BEXPing one level and then crowning her or whatever before 4-5, she's no longer 2HKOed by Tigers - Dragons probably will, but their hit is so low I won't even consider them for 4-5. Her mt will go up, so her crits do reasonable damage, as does her crit rate and luck - plus she now doubles those cats and ravens. 4-5 20/20/1 Lucia vs Tiger 56 hp Mt 37 vs 24 Hit 205 vs 55 AS 32 vs 20 Crit 64 vs 10 Suddenly, when we turn on Gamble we have 13 mt, 75 ht and 100 critical! We're not even considering the risk of hitting Astra and insta-killing. Her avoid will have jumped up a couple of points too, so it's something like 18 display hit. Meanwhile, Kyza versus the same dood will do something like 20 damage twice, so he 2RKOs. Lucia can also pretty much insta-kill the dragons with Wyrmslayer + Gamble. Far from 'Kyza far outperforming Lucia in 4-2 and 4-5'. I admit 4-2 is unwinnable for Lucia, but I've hardly given her mountains of favouritism - A 7000 gold forge with a card noone wants A couple of easy kills in 4-2 to get her to level 19 A level of BEXP A crown or another level Compared to Kyza - A stat booster everyone wants Various grasses/stones a handful of other characters really want You putting up with his untransforming habit, like all laguz On top of that, Lucia's endgame is so much better than Kyza's it's not even funny. 4-E-1 Not much to say here. Lucia's avoid is through the roof, and if Geoffrey's in play her damage will be too. When Geoffrey and Elincia aren't around, just Parity anything on a Cover tile. You could BEXP her strength if you have some spare, I guess, although there are probably better canditates. 4-E-2 BK is such a pushover. Who cares? 4-E-3 Wyrmslayers + Gamble = good times 4-E-4 and 4-E-5 In all your pages, you forgot to mention Parity, which, given the propensity of spirits and auras to sit on +def tiles, comes in very handy. Sure, Parity can be taken off and given to anyone, but since it cancels the Tide and Pool abilities, only Trueblades can get any benefit from it since they still double Ashera. Really, Lucia is dealing 34 damage against all auras, and without taking damage in return. Yeah, Kyza doubles the spirits with Nasir - so does everyone. Difference is, Lucia can choose to Parity, effectively increasing her might by 10 against Cover spirits... and IIRC by 15 against Lehran, and still double. Or she could Gamble and get obscene crit. Kyza has only one choice - to fail. In conclusion, Kyza starts terrible, with favouritism becomes useful, and fails in endgame, and is always a laguz and thus kinda not worth it. Lucia starts wtfh4x, then disappears, has a haircut, comes back initially bad, but with a bit of favouritism that noone else really wants becomes win again. Oh yeah, plot related statements. Lucia seems to actually have a personality, plus Bastian likes her, and who are you to disagree with Count Bastian himself?