Colonel M (Ike) vs Vykan (Tanith)

Vykan12 · June 30, 2009

Clash of the earth affinities.

Colonel M · July 3, 2009

Commanders as well. Alright, I've had to think of how to actually approach this argument, but here goes... something. *Cracks Knuckles*.

EDIT: Perhaps I was too lenghty. 2 and 1/2 pages. >_>;

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Ike is around the team permenantly. He doesn't eat up a unit slot, and for the most part brings positive contribution to the team. I don't want to go totally in-depth on how Ike's performance earlygame though, but if required I can demonstrate. I'll just zoom in toward C18 when Tanith joins. I'm just going to use a little bit of the Fighter Band, just 5 levels that are used with BEXP. That should suffice. This only yields +25% in HP and Str, which is all he really needs.

20/1 Ike (who is in Brawl):

37.5 HP | 17.75 Str | 6.8 Mag | 17.5 Skl | 19.45 Spd | 12.65 Luck | 15.6 Def | 9.6 Res

38 HP | 18 Str | 7 Mag | 18 Skl | 19 Spd | 13 Luck | 16 Def | 10 Res

--/10 Tanith:

32 HP | 16 Str | 10 Mag | 18 Skl | 24 Spd | 18 Luck | 15 Def | 13 Res

I don't think I need to really stretch out some of these leads. Ike wins in durability by +6 HP and +1 Def vs. +3 Res. Ike also has a Str lead and only loses in a few non-negotiatable stats (Mag by 3? and Luck by 5). I will admit that Tanith here has a massive Spd lead, but let's see where it matters.

Let's talk about Ike's supports. He has a plethora of options btw: Oscar, Titania, Soren, Lethe, Reyson, Ranulf, and lolElincia. Tanith shares two of Ike's supports: Oscar and Reyson. At this point, Ike can easily score an A Oscar, so Tanith is likely left with a B Oscar support. For B, I'd say Soren is a fine assumption for Ike. So, we're looking at A Oscar / B Soren on top of this.

Let's just see the usual:

Ike (A Oscar, B Soren) w/forged Steel Sword

38 hp, 32 atk, 19 AS, 124 hit, 96 avo, 16 def, 10 res, 9 (18 w/max forge) crit, 13 cev

Tanith w/forged Steel Lance

32 hp, 31 atk, 24 AS, 124 hit, 66 avo, 15 def, 13 res, 9 (18 w/max forge) crit, 18 cev

Simply looking at this so far, it appears that Ike is kicking the living tar out of Tanith in almost every aspect. Though the question still remains: if the AS difference... makes a difference. The answer? No, most units at this point sit around 10-12 Spd at base and likely lose some AS due to Steel weighing them down.

Offensively they would be evenly matched most of the time, even with WTD going against Ike. Since Ike would have the upper hand on Axes and Tanith with Swords, it would rarely bend toward her favor. With a forged Steel Sword on top of it, she would have the 2 Str gap. Anyway, both ORKO Soldiers and the Halberdier with the weapons listed above, Ike can ORKO some of the Wyvern Riders (32 HP, 15 Def); however, he fails to ORKO those with either 34 HP or 16 Def. Same goes with Tanith. Actually, Ike's only advantage in #RKOes offensively appears to be the Warrior with 41 HP / 10 Def. Forged Steel Sword Tanith has 30 Atk with WTA taken into account. Fighters with 11 Def appear to be trouble as well for Tanith.

So defensively, the Soldier 8RKOes Ike with ~110 base hit (WTA taken into account) which drops to 14% displayed hit. Tanith is 7RKOed, though she faces displayed 34% displayed. Obviously with true hit taken into account, neither are likely to be hit, but Tanith is by a slight margin. Halberdier w/Short Spear is 7RKOing Ike at worst with ~109 base Hit (WTA taken into account) while Tanith is 6RKOed. Wyvern Riders 5RKO Ike with ~107 base Hit (WTA taken into account) and Tanith is 4RKOed. The Fighter 5RKOes Ike with ~83 base Hit (WTD taken into account) while Tanith is 4RKOed. Ditto with the Warrior w/roughly the same Hit rates. Neither are dying in dangerous hit rates; however, Ike will always triumph both Avoid and concrete durability, the latter actually being the better victory.Now the Sages? Good question. The Bolting Sages will always 3RKO Ike. For Tanith, they also 3RKO despite the Res gap between Ike and Tanith. They only have base Hit rates ~89, so Ike is never being hit by them unless some strange circumstance approaches (Ike in negative Bio and Sage in positive Bio). Blizzard Sage has about 99 base Hit, so Ike has 3% displayed with neutral Bio. I'd say Ike is tying with Tanith offensively under most circumstances, and is beating Tanith defensively.

Let's just skip to C25, since I want to touch Laguz a bit. Here we have most promoted units ~Lv 7 and ~Lv 11 Laguz. Assume Ike is about 20/10 and Tanith is about --/15.

Ike (A Oscar, B Soren)

Base Stats: 44 HP | 22 Str | 9 Mag | 22 Skl | 24 Spd | 16 Luck | 19 Def | 13 Res

Silver Sword - 36 Atk, 24 AS, 140 Hit, 109 Avoid, 19 Def, 13 Res, 11 Crit, 16 CEV

Vague Katti (if applicable) - 35 Atk, 24 AS, 140 Hit, 109 Avoid, 22 Def, 13 Res, 46 Crit, 16 CEV

Tanith (A Marcia, B Oscar)

Base Stats: 35 HP | 18 Str | 12 Mag | 22 Skl | 26 Spd | 20 Luck | 16 Def | 15 Res

Silver Lance - 34 Atk, 26 AS, 146 Hit, 107 Avoid, 16 Def, 15 Res, 11 Crit, 20 CEV

Silver Sword - 32 Atk, 26 AS, 151 Hit, 107 Avoid, 16 Def, 15 Res, 11 Crit, 20 CEV

As we can see, the differences are pretty marginal, but most of the time Ike is winning. With the Vague Katti, his durability jumps a bit, though otherwise he's still beating Tanith with +9 HP, +3 Def, and +2 Avo > +2 Res. Offensively Ike wins with the Silver Sword even pitted against Tanith's Silver Lance. If the Vague Katti is intact, he also triumphs in %chance to ORKO with a Crit.

Laguz are the main units I wanted to point out, but I can easily do more of them later on. Cat Laguz have 19 AS tops, so Ike is always doubling them as well as Tanith. I think Tigers are pretty obvious. So, let's compare shall we? Without using something broken such as Laguz weapons both 2RKO the Cats and Tigers, so no real lead there offensively. Defensively, Tigers have 32 Atk while Cats have 28. Tigers normally 4RKO Ike though with the Vague Katti it becomes a 5RKO. Meanwhile, Tanith is being 3RKOed flat out. Cats are even more lol for Ike: 5RKO without the VK, 8RKO with it. Tanith is still 3RKOed. Now Ike triumphs defensively versus the Laguz and just about ties with Tanith offensively, sometimes beating her under some circumstances.

Since this is getting lengthy as hell I better stop. Let's just go over Skills quickly. Ike wants Wrath + Resolve combo and is practically entitled to it. Without it the game is pretty damn difficult to beat. Ike cannot use this combo until C28, so he's not getting such a combo for a while. He can work with simply Wrath but getting him that low on HP is pretty damn difficult with such awesome durability. Perhaps without his support partners he can get within Wrath range and then killface with Wrath. If applicable, Aether can be used temporarily. With it, it's possible to snag Nasir instead of Ena for lategame, though Ike alone can handle everything so it's not important. It's optional, to say the least. With it, the activation rate (when doubling) is ~33% @ 20/1 and 20/10 Ike has ~40% activation rate. Tanith has Reinforce, but there are some disadvantages to the skill itself. While being unique, the Pegasi can't be "controlled" per se. They can only be controlled if Ike has not wasted a turn and will automatically move after the Player Phase. They can be controlled to move onto the spot positioned; however, the others will scatter around the desired position. Due to being Non-PC units, they can possibly rob CEXP from other units by accidentally killing or injuring a unit too low. If the Pegasi can 2RKO and aren't 2RKOed, it is very likely they will take a kill. Then, to make matters worse, they can only be summoned twice and appear where the brigade started. This means that we can only take full advantage of the first set, but the second has a fair chance of being left behind.

I think that shall suffice for now. I can always go more in-depth later. Brawl > ...Uh... Bengion?

Edited July 3, 2009 by Colonel M

Vykan12 · July 6, 2009

20/1 Ike (who is in Brawl):

Your point being? Manith Tanith is the first male pegasus knight in all of Tellius, which makes him a pioneer. Ike appearing in Brawl just makes him a sellout.

Ike is around the team permanently. He doesn't eat up a unit slot, and for the most part brings positive contribution to the team.

Ike’s earlygame is pretty average though. Take chapter 4, for instance.

Ike lv 6/0 (iron sword): 23 hp, 12.5 atk, 116 hit, 10 AS, 7 def, 2 res, 28 avo

5x Soldier lv 4 (iron lance, 1 vulnerary)

23 hp, 12 atk, 2 AS, 92 hit, 4 avo, 5 def, 1 res, 3 crit, 0 cev

2x Soldier lv 7 (steel lance, 1 vulnerary)

25 hp, 16 atk, 0 AS, 85 hit, 1 avo, 6 def, 2 res, 3 crit, 1 cev

Ike 2-3RKOes these enemies while getting 3RKOed in return. Going by the iron lance soldiers, they have 91 true hit on him, so that’s a whopping 75% chance of death after 3 attacks. In contrast, if Soren doesn’t get countered on player phase, he can face 3 iron lance soldiers with a 65% chance of death. Before you claim the example I used was biased against Ike, consider that 14/22 (63.6%) of the enemies in this chapter use lances, and only 1 uses axes.

Though, just to be thorough let’s look at him against some other enemy types in this chapter.

2x Archer lv 4 (iron bow)

20 hp, 10 atk, 5 AS, 102 hit, 11 avo, 5 def, 1 res, 4 crit, 1 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 6 (steel sword)

22 hp, 14 atk, 2 AS, 92 hit, 5 avo, 6 def, 1 res, 4 crit, 1 cev

Offensively, Ike 2RKOes both. He could switch to steel but then he doesn’t double anymore and his avo becomes even worse. Defensively, the archer may not seem intimidating (lol 3 damage), but then that archer + 2 steel lance soldiers still manage to kill Ike if they all land their hits, and the archer has about 87 real on him. The myrmidon is basically acting like a soldier except he takes an extra round to kill him. Once again, Ike’s avo is notoriously unreliable as he’s facing 74 real against one of the level’s least accurate enemies.

These problems don’t exactly go away in a hurry either. Let’s look at the lance prevalence up to say, chapter 13:

Chapter 5: unknown (FOW)

Chapter 6: 12/24 (50%)

Chapter 7: 19/33 (57.5%)

Chapter 8: 22/42 (52%)

Chapter 9: 8/34 (23.5%)

Chapter 10: unknown (stealth is assumed)

Chapter 11: 16/37 (43%)

Chapter 12: 0% (raven chapter)

Chapter 13: 10/38 (26%)

Chapters 6-8 are especially brutal in that respect.

But how well is Ike comparing to his teammates?

Ike lv 6/0 (iron sword): 23 hp, 12.5 atk, 116 hit, 10 AS, 7 def, 2 res, 28 avo

Oscar lv 7/0 (iron lance): 28 hp, 15 atk, 102 hit, 9 AS, 9 def, 1 res, 24 avo

Boyd lv 6/0 (iron axe): 33 hp, 17 atk, 92 hit, 7 AS, 6 def, 1 res, 21 avo

Gatrie lv 9/0 (iron lance): 31 hp, 19 atk, 97 hit, 5 AS, 14 def, 0 res, 15 avo

Titania lv --/1 (iron axe): 33 hp, 20 atk, 112 hit, 14 AS, 11 def, 7 res, 39 avo

Shinon lv --/1 (iron bow): 32 hp, 15 atk, 124 hit, 13 AS, 9 def, 9 res, 35 avo

Soren lv 1/0 (wind): 18 hp, 8 atk, 121 hit, 8 AS, 2 def, 7 res, 21 avo

Soren aside, Ike is vastly inferior to everyone else around him. They all manage to beat his atk by at least 2 and surpass his concrete durability by an even greater margin.

Oscar: +5 hp/+2 def

Boyd: +10 hp/-1 def

Gatrie: +8 hp/+7 def

Titania: +10 hp/+4 def

Shinon: +9 hp/+2 def

Each of these characters can take at least 1 more hit than Ike can, and Shinon aside, all have superior weapon choices, hence more frequent WTA. They also have miscellaneous advantages such as higher movement (Oscar, Titania) and ranged options.

If anything, it seems like Ike is more of a hindrance than a help before Tanith joins.

Let's talk about Ike's supports. He has a plethora of options btw: Oscar, Titania, Soren, Lethe, Reyson, Ranulf, and lolElincia. Tanith shares two of Ike's supports: Oscar and Reyson. At this point, Ike can easily score an A Oscar, so Tanith is likely left with a B Oscar support. For B, I'd say Soren is a fine assumption for Ike. So, we're looking at A Oscar / B Soren on top of this.

In terms of Ike’s supports, I think we can agree to chop off Lethe, Reyson, Ranulf and Elincia from that list for obvious reasons, mainly that each of those supports are either late, give crappy bonuses and/or are with sub-par characters.

In Titania’s case, she has atk issues lategame so A Mist/B Boyd would be her ideal option. An Ike B support only gives her 10 avo/1 def and they have trouble staying in range of each other.

For Soren to support Ike, I now need to use 2 of the worst earlygame characters instead of 1, and all I get in return is a glass cannon who can’t keep up with the team. At max level, Soren only has 39 hp/10 def, so anything with 30 atk or more can 2HKO him. Giving him B Ike jumps his avo from 66 to 81, but that simply reduces the chances of death he shouldn’t even be facing. Even then, some enemies will still manage to hit him pretty reliably. Tigers have ~130 hit, so 2 attacks from them is roughly a 1/4 chance of Soren biting the dust.

Suffice to say, Soren has enough issues to have a reasonable chance of not being in play, and the support only really helps as a failsafe as opposed to letting Soren actually frontline better.

That leaves the Oscar support. While this is undoubtedly a great support, Oscar can easily pass on it without much consequence. A Kieran/B Tanith still gives him 32 avo, which is already on the verge of overkill. Then his durability is pretty phenomenal even when he’s unsupported. For example, at 20/1, wyvern riders in chapter 17 only do 2 damage to him, and that’s before WTA (assuming you gave him axes). Even putting him against a chapter 23 cat, he’s only taking 7 damage, which is a 6HKO. Then he can take sol for a 16.5% chance of healing per attack or equip the KW for +2 def/res, among many other things.

Now let’s take a look at Tanith’s list: Oscar, Marcia and Reyson.

I put Marcia’s name in bold because she has a lot to gain from a Tanith support. See, Marcia is highly avo dependant for her durability, though unlike Soren, she has enough concrete durability to sustain herself on the frontlines.

Let’s suppose Marcia hits promotion in time for chapter 18.

Marcia lv 20/1: 32 hp, 14 def, 14 res, 50 avo

3x Wyvern Rider lv 14-15 (steel lance)

31 hp, 24 atk, 9 AS, 95 hit, 21 avo, 15 def, 5 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

4x Soldier lv 16-18 (steel lance)

34 hp, 21 atk, 9 AS, 98 hit, 22 avo, 11 def, 6 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

1x Fighter lv 20 (steel axe, hand axe, vulnerary)

40 hp, 27 atk, 12 AS, 92 hit, 29 avo, 11 def, 6 res, 5 crit, 5 cev

1x General lv 1 (short spear, vulnerary)

32 hp, 22 atk, 6 AS, 93 hit, 15 avo, 17 def, 9 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

Marcia gets 3HKOed by the fighter at 63 real hit, but otherwise she’s 4HKOed at ~39 hit. Let’s pretend Marcia has a B with Tanith now. The fighter’s hit rate drops to 54 (-9) while the remaining enemies’ hit rates drop to ~30 hit (-9). It may not be a huge improvement, but 9-10 avo can compound over time into instances where Marcia dodges instead of getting hit, which in turn frees up healers, allows her to press forward, etc. Furthermore, Marcia’s avo growth is a rather sizeable 150%. So, the further we get into the game, the lower the hit rates Marcia will naturally be facing, meaning Tanith’s 5-7 avo is skewing by even more thanks to the 2RN system.

Tl;dr Ike’s supports aren’t really helping anyone but himself whereas Tanith is helping to increase Marcia’s frontline exposure.

Ike (A Oscar, B Soren) w/forged Steel Sword
38 hp, 32 atk, 19 AS, 124 hit, 96 avo, 16 def, 10 res, 9 (18 w/max forge) crit, 13 cev

Tanith w/forged Steel Lance

32 hp, 31 atk, 24 AS, 124 hit, 66 avo, 15 def, 13 res, 9 (18 w/max forge) crit, 18 cev

Simply looking at this so far, it appears that Ike is kicking the living tar out of Tanith in almost every aspect.

The only convincing lead Ike has over Tanith is 6 hp/30 avo (possibly even less w/o Soren). However, Tanith is already very durable to begin with. Since she has two weapon types, she can force WTN/WTA in basically any situation. If we took the same enemies I used with Marcia in chapter 18, Tanith faces at most 23 real hit with weapon triangle neutrality. If we gave her a steel sword against a lv 20 fighter, now she’s only facing 2.53 hit. The funniest part is this is before supports. Raise her B Oscar/B Marcia (only takes 6 chapters) and now she has 91 avo, more if we consider levelling + a 110% avo growth. There are enemies in chapter 24 that she would face 0 display against, and the most accurate enemy I could find was an iron blade swordmaster with 114 hit. That’s 10 true hit before possible WTA from lances, which would drop it to 1.36.

Sure, Tanith does get 3-4+RKOed whereas Ike can take an extra hit. But bottom line, neither unit ever gets hit on a regular basis so they might as well be tied in terms of durability.

Actually, Ike's only advantage in #RKOes offensively appears to be the Warrior with 41 HP / 10 Def. Forged Steel Sword Tanith has 30 Atk with WTA taken into account. Fighters with 11 Def appear to be trouble as well for Tanith.

So far it’s been established that the difference between Ike and Tanith’s combat is practically indistinguishable. There are 2 key elements you are ignoring though.

First off, Tanith has a sizeable mobility advantage. Every time both units move fully, Tanith manages to get 2 spaces ahead of him. There isn’t much in this game that can slow down Ike or Tanith since they obviously kill enemies and survive so proficiently, which amplifies the value of this lead. After 4 turns, Tanith is so far ahead of Ike that she could choose to not move at all and she’d still be 1 space ahead of him.

And that’s not even looking at her flight. She can bypass obstacles in a single turn that would take units like Ike and Boyd 3 or more to do the same. That’s 2 turns where anything Tanith does is competing with nothing since Ike hasn’t reached those particular enemies yet. She could spend one turn healing and the other weakening an enemy to 30% hp, all the while moving back 2 spaces, and she’s still being more constructive.

Moreover, Tanith isn’t just highly mobile on her own, she’s also helping the team’s mobility. She can rescue a unit, canto away to a safe spot and end her turn. Next player phase, she moves as far as she can and drops. These types of tactics can heavily increase the usefulness of someone like Brom who has great combat but doesn’t move quickly enough to ever get a chance to apply it.

Speaking of canto, that’s yet another way that Tanith manages to jump ahead of Ike. You see, Ike can only move fully and attack an enemy if an enemy is exactly 7 spaces from him. Tanith doesn’t carry such a restriction. This obviously includes trades, rescuing, dropping, using items, being set up for vigors, and a plethora of other functions.

The second major advantage of Tanith’s you neglected to mention is 1-2 range. On enemy phase, Ike cannot counter anything with 1-2 range or 2 range whereas Tanith can, so any damage she does to those enemies is competing with 0 damage. Even if she’s only doing 8 damage to a general, she’s at an advantage, and she usually 2RKOes with hand weapons anyway (if not a javelin, a spear/short spear/forge will work). This is important because ranged enemies are more frequent than you’d think:

Chapter 18: 10/36 (28%)

Chapter 19: 11/32 (34%). If we disregard ravens (we’re probably getting the knight ring), it jumps to 48%.

Chapter 20: 16/39 (41%)

Chapter 21: 19/55 (34%)

Chapter 22: 12/33 (36%)

The chapters I listed above average out to about 1/3 of enemies who have 1-2 range. That’s a lot of enemies that Tanith has an advantage against.

With the Vague Katti, his durability jumps a bit

It also only has 25 uses. 12-15 enemies later, that +3 def is gone, not that it made any difference to begin with (both units have overkill avo). It does also give Ike a crit lead, but then Tanith has access to both killer lances and killing edges, which are more plentiful than the vague katti and killing edges.

Without using something broken such as Laguz weapons both 2RKO the Cats and Tigers, so no real lead there offensively.

I’m assuming you left out laguz weapons since there are many units who use them effectively, making them highly competed for. Thanks to Tanith’s high mag stat, she can use the flame lance better than the average unit. At the level you proposed (--/15), she has 32 effective might with the flame lance. Even against a chp 28 cat:

3x Cat lv 9 (claw)

39 hp, 25 atk, 17 AS, 122 hit, 36 avo, 17 def, 8 res, 7 crit, 2 cev

She does 123% damage, which is a clean 1RKO. Not only that, but the weapon is 1-2 range, so Tanith doesn’t even need to take a counter while attacking a laguz. This is especially important for taking down dragons, enemies that are powerful enough to be bosses (one of them has 61 hp/48 atk/21 AS/138 hit/46 avo/32 def/27 res).

Since this is getting lengthy as hell I better stop. Let's just go over Skills quickly. Ike wants Wrath + Resolve combo and is practically entitled to it.

I agree with resolve, but why wrath? Unless Ike is RNG screwed (at which point Tanith would be soundly beating him due to being very RNG proof), resolve alone allows him to take out Ashnard pretty efficiently. Wrath simply turns a 2RKO on both forms into a very likely 1RKO, which is the equivalent of saving 2 turns. Putting wrath on anyone we want instead of just Ike easily supersedes that.

He can work with simply Wrath but getting him that low on HP is pretty damn difficult with such awesome durability.

All the more reason to throw wrath onto someone who can make better use of it. Zihark wouldn’t be a half-bad choice; he has bigger atk issues than Ike so the crit boost would be more helpful. He also has less concrete durability than Ike but similar overkill avo. This allows him to separate from his supporters, get injured below half hp, then return to them without taking forever to do so. Now he’s 2RKOing most enemies he faces with a 91% chance to ORKO them via a crit instead of a mere 36%.

Come to think of it, Tanith could do the same thing as Zihark did (temporarily separating from her supporters, maybe forcing WTD), but now she’s using wrath with high move + 1-2 range. Gogo ORKOing armors with a short spear, canto-ing off somewhere, then taking down a legion of wyverns.

*Stuff about reinforce*

You’re completely underrating reinforce here. Without even looking at the stats of the reinforcements, there are a lot of obvious advantages they bring to the table.

-Distracting and possibly taking out enemy reinforcements. This allows you to allocate more units to accomplishing a specific task.

-Luring out dangerous enemies and absorbing deadly attacks. Let’s suppose we were at the bridge chapter. Tanith’s reinforcements can act as ballista bait while your playable fliers can roam more freely. The same concept applies to lategame tigers, dragons, siege tome threats, etc.

-They increase the team’s staff exp. Now you have 3-6 more units on the team, which means your healers have more people to physic/recover/etc on.

Now let’s look at the combat performance of these reinforcements.

1x Pegasus Knight lv 10 (javelin)

20 hp, 16 atk, 15 AS, 98 hit, 40 avo, 8 def, 8 res, 7 crit, 10 cev

1x Pegagus Knight lv 10 (steel lance)

26 hp, 24 atk, 20 AS, 121 hit, 53 avo, 11 def, 12 res, 9 crit, 13 cev

Falcon Knight lv 1 (silver lance)

32 hp, 32 atk, 24 AS, 137 hit, 62 avo, 15 def, 18 res, 12 crit, 14 cev

The first 2 reinforcements will die pretty quickly, but the third one is amazing. Let’s look at that falcon knight compared to a 20/1 Ike and base level Tanith.

Falcon Knight lv 1 (silver lance)

32 hp, 32 atk, 24 AS, 137 hit, 62 avo, 15 def, 18 res, 12 crit, 14 cev

Ike lv 20/1 (iron blade)

37 hp, 27 atk, 19 AS, 119 hit, 50 avo, 16 def, 10 res, 9 crit, 13 cev

Tanith lv --/10 (steel lance)

32 hp, 26 atk, 24 AS, 124 hit, 66 avo, 15 def, 13 res, 9 crit, 18 cev

This guy is hilarious. He’s actually arguably beating both of them before supports and forges. Even if Ike were arguably better than Tanith, he’s most certainly not better than 3 of them.

Edited July 6, 2009 by Vykan12

Colonel M · July 12, 2009

Colonel used debate!

Ike’s earlygame is pretty average though. Take chapter 4, for instance.
Ike lv 6/0 (iron sword): 23 hp, 12.5 atk, 116 hit, 10 AS, 7 def, 2 res, 28 avo

5x Soldier lv 4 (iron lance, 1 vulnerary)

23 hp, 12 atk, 2 AS, 92 hit, 4 avo, 5 def, 1 res, 3 crit, 0 cev

2x Soldier lv 7 (steel lance, 1 vulnerary)

25 hp, 16 atk, 0 AS, 85 hit, 1 avo, 6 def, 2 res, 3 crit, 1 cev

Ike 2-3RKOes these enemies while getting 3RKOed in return. Going by the iron lance soldiers, they have 91 true hit on him, so that’s a whopping 75% chance of death after 3 attacks. In contrast, if Soren doesn’t get countered on player phase, he can face 3 iron lance soldiers with a 65% chance of death. Before you claim the example I used was biased against Ike, consider that 14/22 (63.6%) of the enemies in this chapter use lances, and only 1 uses axes.

Though, just to be thorough let’s look at him against some other enemy types in this chapter.

2x Archer lv 4 (iron bow)

20 hp, 10 atk, 5 AS, 102 hit, 11 avo, 5 def, 1 res, 4 crit, 1 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 6 (steel sword)

22 hp, 14 atk, 2 AS, 92 hit, 5 avo, 6 def, 1 res, 4 crit, 1 cev

Offensively, Ike 2RKOes both. He could switch to steel but then he doesn’t double anymore and his avo becomes even worse. Defensively, the archer may not seem intimidating (lol 3 damage), but then that archer + 2 steel lance soldiers still manage to kill Ike if they all land their hits, and the archer has about 87 real on him. The myrmidon is basically acting like a soldier except he takes an extra round to kill him. Once again, Ike’s avo is notoriously unreliable as he’s facing 74 real against one of the level’s least accurate enemies.

Alright, seems to me that you skipped Prologue - C3, so obvious guess that you concede those chapters. +3 for Ike.

Now let's look at Chapter 4 more in-depth: WE LIKE IKE!

Notice that there are a lot of forests to the north and to the south. It's better to take the ones to the north and use them for cover. These offer +10 to Avoid and +1 to Def (another error on the site: it says it offers 10 Def lawl). I'll get toward the Ike in levels, but using your Lv 6 Ike as the example gives the Steel Lance Soldiers around 55% displayed, 59.95% true. That means that there's a 36% chance that Ike is realically going to be hit by both of these guys, and if say a 3rd one crawls around it drops to 21.6%. Granted that would equate to his chance of death, but we're also talking about him taking more than 3 hits per round, which is pretty hard due to his inability to ORKO and usually facing about 2 units per turn max.

These problems don’t exactly go away in a hurry either. Let’s look at the lance prevalence up to say, chapter 13:
Chapter 5: unknown (FOW)

Chapter 6: 12/24 (50%)

Chapter 7: 19/33 (57.5%)

Chapter 8: 22/42 (52%)

Chapter 9: 8/34 (23.5%)

Chapter 10: unknown (stealth is assumed)

Chapter 11: 16/37 (43%)

Chapter 12: 0% (raven chapter)

Chapter 13: 10/38 (26%)

Chapters 6-8 are especially brutal in that respect.

Not quite. C6 and C7 are brutal, but C8 there's something else you forgot. C8 Map

Many of the Armor Knights are being choked off with Titania, leaving the west and the south sides to concentrate on. The South side consists of Weapon Knights while the West has a combination of Myrmidions and Soldiers. This means Boyd isn't doing much better on the west, and Oscar is probably the best candidate to choke that off. Ike + Boyd can focus on the south end with the weapon Knights due to Ike's access with the Regal Sword. No one has the Halberd or a class-effective weapon at this point of time and even if they do they're in a heap of trouble. Taking that Ike is about Lv 10 at worst with a C Oscar, thus making his avoid and durability about the same. However, Regal Sword can ORKO all the weapon Knights and 2RKO the Armor Knights. Steel Lance!Oscar 3RKOes the Armor Knights, which is just pitiful, and Boyd is at least 2RKOing the AKs with a Steel Axe. The only unit doing better is Hammer!Titania, and that alone should've been obvious.

From there, C9 is pretty easy: Ike goes to the north and deals with the Axe users, then flees a bit more to the south and finishes whatever is left. C10... I guess Stealth is assumed. Guess we're playing like Snake now? C11, alright. Ike is probably about Level 14 and has just about obtained a C Soren / B Oscar, thus his Avoid jumps to about 66, which now means that it takes a helluva lot of Hit just to even get close to 50%. 90 Hit is about the highest I see with a Soldier, so that jumps to 100 Hit obviously. With 66 Avoid, this about 34% displayed (23.46 True). As for the #RKOes it takes to kill Ike if all of them hit, 29 HP / 10 Def is meh, but the 18 Atk Soldier 4RKOes. For chance of death against that Soldier is about 1% tops. That's good. So, any question of his durability from hereon out should probably be tossed aside.

But how well is Ike comparing to his teammates?
Ike lv 6/0 (iron sword): 23 hp, 12.5 atk, 116 hit, 10 AS, 7 def, 2 res, 28 avo

Oscar lv 7/0 (iron lance): 28 hp, 15 atk, 102 hit, 9 AS, 9 def, 1 res, 24 avo

Boyd lv 6/0 (iron axe): 33 hp, 17 atk, 92 hit, 7 AS, 6 def, 1 res, 21 avo

Gatrie lv 9/0 (iron lance): 31 hp, 19 atk, 97 hit, 5 AS, 14 def, 0 res, 15 avo

Titania lv --/1 (iron axe): 33 hp, 20 atk, 112 hit, 14 AS, 11 def, 7 res, 39 avo

Shinon lv --/1 (iron bow): 32 hp, 15 atk, 124 hit, 13 AS, 9 def, 9 res, 35 avo

Soren lv 1/0 (wind): 18 hp, 8 atk, 121 hit, 8 AS, 2 def, 7 res, 21 avo

Soren aside, Ike is vastly inferior to everyone else around him. They all manage to beat his atk by at least 2 and surpass his concrete durability by an even greater margin.

Oscar: +5 hp/+2 def

Boyd: +10 hp/-1 def

Gatrie: +8 hp/+7 def

Titania: +10 hp/+4 def

Shinon: +9 hp/+2 def

Each of these characters can take at least 1 more hit than Ike can, and Shinon aside, all have superior weapon choices, hence more frequent WTA. They also have miscellaneous advantages such as higher movement (Oscar, Titania) and ranged options.

Titania is the easiest to concede to, and Gatrie + Shinon are only around for a grand total of 3.5 chapters. Oscar and Boyd are also absent at times, and then there's another problem: weapons. Lances in particular, Oscar and Gatrie practically have to share their weapons, and Boyd is normally passing the Hammer to Titania and using the Steel Axe sparingly. Then the Hand Axe (I'm assuming there is only one) could also have been used by Titania, and this also ignores that Titania can also use Lances. So Oscar, Gatrie, and partially to Titania have to share weapons at times. Ike, on the other hand, has his own monopoly of weapons and has no worries of running out of them. I will concede that these guys usually have the better durability (to deny this is stupid); however, offensively they're quite comparable. Boyd has some issues doubling some enemies such as the Soldiers, ditto with Gatrie, and Shinon won't always ORKO. Offensively, to compare: the Soldiers are usually 2RKOed by Ike, and Oscar isn't pulling ORKOes at this point with Iron.

If anything, it seems like Ike is more of a hindrance than a help before Tanith joins.

The only chapters Ike is a hindrance on is C4, C6, and C7. After that, Ike is doing much better with the Avoid factored into account and his durability increasing slightly.

In Titania’s case, she has atk issues lategame so A Mist/B Boyd would be her ideal option. An Ike B support only gives her 10 avo/1 def and they have trouble staying in range of each other.

B Titania isn't a bad support for her. She'd like the extra durability that Ike and Titania offers to them, and it's an easy support with Canto. I wouldn't advocate to an A Titania for Ike anyway; B would probably be the furthest I'd go and only if we were forcing Soren out.

For Soren to support Ike, I now need to use 2 of the worst earlygame characters instead of 1, and all I get in return is a glass cannon who can’t keep up with the team. At max level, Soren only has 39 hp/10 def, so anything with 30 atk or more can 2HKO him. Giving him B Ike jumps his avo from 66 to 81, but that simply reduces the chances of death he shouldn’t even be facing. Even then, some enemies will still manage to hit him pretty reliably. Tigers have ~130 hit, so 2 attacks from them is roughly a 1/4 chance of Soren biting the dust.
Suffice to say, Soren has enough issues to have a reasonable chance of not being in play, and the support only really helps as a failsafe as opposed to letting Soren actually frontline better.

Soren also has a second use: healing utility. About Level 10 or so when the first Master Seal is available, we can use it on Soren. He's probably the best user of it due to the amount of levels that were given to him at least and promotion-wise he doesn't need to enter combat all the time to get EXP thanks to Staves. His offense is a bit rigid and his durability is questionable, but in Mage / Sage scenarios, he's probably the best of the bunch next to Calill though she joins very late in the game. He can at least use the Avoid bonus as well as the Atk bonus when under some circumstance he does enter combat. With Adept's decent activation rate, even single-hit wise, the +1 Atk offered with a B is nice to have.

Even so, if you were to deny me the Soren support, Ike still has the flexibility of a B Titania.

That leaves the Oscar support. While this is undoubtedly a great support, Oscar can easily pass on it without much consequence. A Kieran/B Tanith still gives him 32 avo, which is already on the verge of overkill. Then his durability is pretty phenomenal even when he’s unsupported. For example, at 20/1, wyvern riders in chapter 17 only do 2 damage to him, and that’s before WTA (assuming you gave him axes). Even putting him against a chapter 23 cat, he’s only taking 7 damage, which is a 6HKO. Then he can take sol for a 16.5% chance of healing per attack or equip the KW for +2 def/res, among many other things.

Well I know you were using A Kieran / B Tanith as the example because if we were to wait a crapload of chapters just to make Tanith useful, Oscar would rather take the B / A Ike. Even so, A Ike is marginally better than A Kieran due to the extra Avoid offered since Oscar isn't failing with the Hit scenarios. With the extra Avoid tacked onto him, it's a failsafe option to have when Oscar is under negative biorhythm and suddenly loses 10 Avoid. The Ike support offers a bit more flexibility to that situation.

Even so, Oscar doesn't mind the support earlygame. Taking a Level 10 Oscar in C8, his durability isn't bad: 30 HP / 10 Def. However, his Avoid game is a bit wonky: 27. He's facing Hit rates over the 50s, sometimes a bit higher or lower pending on Biorhythm. Taking a random Soldier the max Hit they have is about 88 Hit. That's 61% displayed, 69.97% true Hit. With the C Ike support, that suddenly takes the Hit rates down to 51% displayed, 52.47% true Hit. Then, we have situations where Oscar has to wield the Steel Lance (AKs, for example) where his Avoid drops quite a bit: 8 Avoid gets dropped when wielding this. A support is never one-sided: there's always a benefit for both sides. Oscar appreciates the Avoid boost that Ike offers, so A Oscar / B Soren or A Oscar / B Titania is always nice to have.

Even if under the situation that the max Oscar would want is a B just to take an A Kieran, he's cool with that. Ike's Avoid drops a bit with B Titania / B Oscar (30 Avoid); however, this doesn't automatically mean Ike will suck with it: he still obtains the Avoid that he appreciates and Titania gets her +1 Def still as well as Oscar getting his Avoid. Ike is very flexible support-wise, something Tanith can never dream of.

As for the KW, remember that a lot of units can use the item, not just Oscar. Then we have to deal with it doesn't even come around until we see Astrid, so until then Oscar appreciates the earlygame boost to his durability.

Now let’s take a look at Tanith’s list: Oscar, Marcia and Reyson.
I put Marcia’s name in bold because she has a lot to gain from a Tanith support. See, Marcia is highly avo dependant for her durability, though unlike Soren, she has enough concrete durability to sustain herself on the frontlines.

A base Level Marcia has 20 HP / 8 Def, which is actually worse than Ike. No, Marcia's main problem isn't the mid-game, it's her durability in the earlygame that makes her a wonky choice. Too bad Tanith isn't helping Marcia in her most desperate of hours.

Let’s suppose Marcia hits promotion in time for chapter 18.
Marcia lv 20/1: 32 hp, 14 def, 14 res, 50 avo

3x Wyvern Rider lv 14-15 (steel lance)

31 hp, 24 atk, 9 AS, 95 hit, 21 avo, 15 def, 5 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

4x Soldier lv 16-18 (steel lance)

34 hp, 21 atk, 9 AS, 98 hit, 22 avo, 11 def, 6 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

1x Fighter lv 20 (steel axe, hand axe, vulnerary)

40 hp, 27 atk, 12 AS, 92 hit, 29 avo, 11 def, 6 res, 5 crit, 5 cev

1x General lv 1 (short spear, vulnerary)

32 hp, 22 atk, 6 AS, 93 hit, 15 avo, 17 def, 9 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

Marcia gets 3HKOed by the fighter at 63 real hit, but otherwise she’s 4HKOed at ~39 hit. Let’s pretend Marcia has a B with Tanith now. The fighter’s hit rate drops to 54 (-9) while the remaining enemies’ hit rates drop to ~30 hit (-9). It may not be a huge improvement, but 9-10 avo can compound over time into instances where Marcia dodges instead of getting hit, which in turn frees up healers, allows her to press forward, etc. Furthermore, Marcia’s avo growth is a rather sizeable 150%. So, the further we get into the game, the lower the hit rates Marcia will naturally be facing, meaning Tanith’s 5-7 avo is skewing by even more thanks to the 2RN system.

Sorry Vykan, I don't pretend in debates. I look at the concrete stuff in front of me, and right now it's telling me just how horrible Marcia is by herself even at this point. By C18, she has a C Support, not a B. This offers her +5 Avoid, so now the Fighter's hit rate is a bit higher, and with that it only increases her chances of death. Just for a B Tanith it takes 4 extra chapters, which just grieves Marcia if she's this desperate for Avoid at this point of time. If Ike isn't helping Soren, I dare not imagine how Tanith is helping Marcia.

Tl;dr Ike’s supports aren’t really helping anyone but himself whereas Tanith is helping to increase Marcia’s frontline exposure.

Bah, once it's built up. Though I've already proven how Oscar appreciates the extra Avoid early and at least Titania doesn't mind a B Ike. Ike is very flexible when it comes to supports while Tanith is not so much. Oscar could've filled himself up with a B Kieran or A Kieran and then A Ike or B Ike.

You know, I did forget something about Marcia: she too has other support options. Gatrie and Kieran come at a reasonable time of day and can help bolster her. Kieran isn't a major help but still offers the partial Avoid. As for Gatrie, m'boy, a B gives her +1 to Def which increases her concrete durability. I'll ignore Rofl at least, but just to say that even A Tanith isn't even guaranteed at the end of the day.

Oh, and another thing: Full Guard. Marcia and Tanith want it to decrease their chances of death against Archers and Snipers, thus having to share the item. It's bad enough someone like Jill would appreciate it as well or a Laguz can use it for Fire protection. You're a pretty bad support partner when you hog things like Full Guard and saying "oh I can pass it around" doesn't work very well because we still have to equip it. There's only one.

The only convincing lead Ike has over Tanith is 6 hp/30 avo (possibly even less w/o Soren). However, Tanith is already very durable to begin with. Since she has two weapon types, she can force WTN/WTA in basically any situation. If we took the same enemies I used with Marcia in chapter 18, Tanith faces at most 23 real hit with weapon triangle neutrality. If we gave her a steel sword against a lv 20 fighter, now she’s only facing 2.53 hit. The funniest part is this is before supports. Raise her B Oscar/B Marcia (only takes 6 chapters) and now she has 91 avo, more if we consider levelling + a 110% avo growth. There are enemies in chapter 24 that she would face 0 display against, and the most accurate enemy I could find was an iron blade swordmaster with 114 hit. That’s 10 true hit before possible WTA from lances, which would drop it to 1.36.

You appear to forget that .4 Def lead that Ike has, which increases the #RKOes that he can take. This means if he ever is outside of supports, he isn't giving a whole lot to care about. I don't know why you'd even claim about throwing a support away (the B Soren) when I too could easily toss out Tanith's B Oscar as well seeing as he doesn't need it by this point of the game and would rather have it earlier than before. Even though Ike won't always win Avoid if he travels outside of supports, he at least wins concrete durability which you've basically shown: "the only convincing lead Ike has over Tanith is 6 HP / 30 avo (possibly even less w/o Soren and Titania in place of it)." By the way, the B Titania would only raise his durability lead even more by trading the +5 Avoid for +1 Def.

Sure, Tanith does get 3-4+RKOed whereas Ike can take an extra hit. But bottom line, neither unit ever gets hit on a regular basis so they might as well be tied in terms of durability.

Never. This also denies that neither unit can go under different biorhythm circumstances, which can throw around the Avoid situation. In relations to the team, being 3RKOed at this point is not entirely heard of unless you're a Magi user (or I guess Marcia in this case). Just to show how bad Tanith's so-called durability is:

- 20/1 Jill - 36 HP / 17 Def

- 20/1 Boyd - 40 HP / 11.5 Def

- 20/1 Oscar - 38 HP / 16 Def

- --/10 Titania - 40 HP / 15 Def

- 20/1 Mist (+5 w/supports) - 29 HP / 13 Def

- 10 Lethe - 41 HP / 12 Def

- 20/1 Kieran - 38 HP / 15 Def

- 20/1 Astrid - 34 HP / 14 Def

- 20/1 Makalov - 39 HP / 17 Def

Those are just some examples. Tanith is almost comparable to Mist with her supports and Astrid while Ike at least has the extra HP to buffer his Defenses and, on top of it, the +1 Def.

So far it’s been established that the difference between Ike and Tanith’s combat is practically indistinguishable. There are 2 key elements you are ignoring though.
First off, Tanith has a sizeable mobility advantage. Every time both units move fully, Tanith manages to get 2 spaces ahead of him. There isn’t much in this game that can slow down Ike or Tanith since they obviously kill enemies and survive so proficiently, which amplifies the value of this lead. After 4 turns, Tanith is so far ahead of Ike that she could choose to not move at all and she’d still be 1 space ahead of him.

There's still a problem: now Tanith has to baby with her other supports. Granted that some of them are quite mobile, but assuming she got stuck with someone like Reyson now she has to stay behind. Her durability gets cut down slightly by a Bow-user as well, then take chapters that have Ballistae and her sizable mobility range can get in the way. Also, with the more hits that we actually take, the more and more it cuts into her durability because eventually she'll get hit whether it's due to biorhythm or the number of enemies that she might face.

And that’s not even looking at her flight. She can bypass obstacles in a single turn that would take units like Ike and Boyd 3 or more to do the same. That’s 2 turns where anything Tanith does is competing with nothing since Ike hasn’t reached those particular enemies yet. She could spend one turn healing and the other weakening an enemy to 30% hp, all the while moving back 2 spaces, and she’s still being more constructive.

What obstacle seriously takes 3 or more turns to bypass? Mountains? We all know Ike and Boyd can't climb them. They aren't rushing toward a whole lot of fortresses because the terrain layout barely has anything that is going to slow the team down. There's the bridge chapter with potholes and maybe the chapter where Geoffery is an NPC, but that's about all I can think of and the latter is a heavy assumption due to the forests being the only weakness.

Moreover, Tanith isn’t just highly mobile on her own, she’s also helping the team’s mobility. She can rescue a unit, canto away to a safe spot and end her turn. Next player phase, she moves as far as she can and drops. These types of tactics can heavily increase the usefulness of someone like Brom who has great combat but doesn’t move quickly enough to ever get a chance to apply it.

Oh great, now we're going to piddle around with Tanith's durability and take an Enemy Phase away from her. That's quite effecient, isn't it? Barely anyone needs rescuing at this point in the first place, and now we have to protect Tanith if she does. Besides, Ike has something better: Shove. Shove may waste his turn of movement, but unlike Tanith it doesn't waste two unit's turns.

Speaking of canto, that’s yet another way that Tanith manages to jump ahead of Ike. You see, Ike can only move fully and attack an enemy if an enemy is exactly 7 spaces from him. Tanith doesn’t carry such a restriction. This obviously includes trades, rescuing, dropping, using items, being set up for vigors, and a plethora of other functions.

Okay, so she can Canto and Ike cannot. Conceded.

The second major advantage of Tanith’s you neglected to mention is 1-2 range. On enemy phase, Ike cannot counter anything with 1-2 range or 2 range whereas Tanith can, so any damage she does to those enemies is competing with 0 damage. Even if she’s only doing 8 damage to a general, she’s at an advantage, and she usually 2RKOes with hand weapons anyway (if not a javelin, a spear/short spear/forge will work). This is important because ranged enemies are more frequent than you’d think:
Chapter 18: 10/36 (28%)

Chapter 19: 11/32 (34%). If we disregard ravens (we’re probably getting the knight ring), it jumps to 48%.

Chapter 20: 16/39 (41%)

Chapter 21: 19/55 (34%)

Chapter 22: 12/33 (36%)

The chapters I listed above average out to about 1/3 of enemies who have 1-2 range. That’s a lot of enemies that Tanith has an advantage against.

Ike loses for a short time, but that doesn't mean he's totally out of the question for a ranged weapon. There's the Sonic Sword which at least allows Ike to 2RKO enemies on the Enemy Phase that range against him, and he doesn't really need it. If we use something like Javelins on Tanith anyway, then we're piddling her offense up close and just taking more turn just to kill things. Even though Ike can ORKO a unit up close, at least I know he's dead and the ranged enemy can easily be killed on the next Player Phase. With Tanith, now I have to clean up double the work: not only the unit that she probably failed to KO from a distance, but now the enemy that she failed to KO up close. 1-2 range is cool and all, but it's not crippling Ike in anyway since it's not making us do double the work.

It also only has 25 uses. 12-15 enemies later, that +3 def is gone, not that it made any difference to begin with (both units have overkill avo). It does also give Ike a crit lead, but then Tanith has access to both killer lances and killing edges, which are more plentiful than the vague katti and killing edges.

Crit leads are barely negligible anyway because Tanith would have to compete with Ike's Aether activation. The Vague Katti may have a limit of uses; however, who is really going to take it? The only unit that has an S Rank at this point (or is damn near close) is probably Ike and maybe a random like Zihark or Makalov, which the latter would favor Axes instead.

I’m assuming you left out laguz weapons since there are many units who use them effectively, making them highly competed for.

Pfft, no. It was only to measure their offense without such a weapon. We already know they're ORKOing with the stupid things, so why bother re-iterating it?

Thanks to Tanith’s high mag stat, she can use the flame lance better than the average unit. At the level you proposed (--/15), she has 32 effective might with the flame lance. Even against a chp 28 cat:
3x Cat lv 9 (claw)

39 hp, 25 atk, 17 AS, 122 hit, 36 avo, 17 def, 8 res, 7 crit, 2 cev

She does 123% damage, which is a clean 1RKO. Not only that, but the weapon is 1-2 range, so Tanith doesn’t even need to take a counter while attacking a laguz. This is especially important for taking down dragons, enemies that are powerful enough to be bosses (one of them has 61 hp/48 atk/21 AS/138 hit/46 avo/32 def/27 res).

At that point with Dragons Ike has Ragnell anyway and is considering Resolve + Wrath, so taking a hit isn't that big of a deal. Even with Resolve, the Dragons would only be helping him out. As for the Flame Lance and attacking indirectly, fine. Though now we have to preserve the weapon and have to trade with her just to preserve it. Unless you're going to suggest that we keep it on and break it. We can forge a Silver Sword and obtain 40 Atk, which is just enough to ORKO the kitties and the ligers.

You're also downplaying Ike's durability lead here, so I'll assume that you're conceding that, which is probably the best idea especially when Ragnell comes around.

I agree with resolve, but why wrath? Unless Ike is RNG screwed (at which point Tanith would be soundly beating him due to being very RNG proof), resolve alone allows him to take out Ashnard pretty efficiently. Wrath simply turns a 2RKO on both forms into a very likely 1RKO, which is the equivalent of saving 2 turns. Putting wrath on anyone we want instead of just Ike easily supersedes that.

Very well then. I'd prefer Aether anyway until Resolve rolls around.

All the more reason to throw wrath onto someone who can make better use of it. Zihark wouldn’t be a half-bad choice; he has bigger atk issues than Ike so the crit boost would be more helpful. He also has less concrete durability than Ike but similar overkill avo. This allows him to separate from his supporters, get injured below half hp, then return to them without taking forever to do so. Now he’s 2RKOing most enemies he faces with a 91% chance to ORKO them via a crit instead of a mere 36%.
Come to think of it, Tanith could do the same thing as Zihark did (temporarily separating from her supporters, maybe forcing WTD), but now she’s using wrath with high move + 1-2 range. Gogo ORKOing armors with a short spear, canto-ing off somewhere, then taking down a legion of wyverns.

Though to say that Ike isn't making good use of it is rather foolish. Again, I'd prefer Aether, but Wrath!Ike isn't a terrible situation. First off, because by midgame he's facing 4RKOes or higher, it means that Ike is more durable upon Wrath activation. Tanith here is facing 3RKOes sometimes, so it's likely that it takes two hits to get toward Wrath activation and then likely dies in a single shot. It doesn't help that Bows can decrease the usefulness of this or even the Ballistae. While it can help her get toward the Wrath range, it can also cost her when she's under it. Wrath is better on units that are somewhat durable and don't take a crazy number of hits to die. Ike fits the bill pretty well.

Wrath also is a skill that has good competition. You mentioned Zihark who has good Avoid and needs the Crit boost due to the lack of Killer weapons.

You’re completely underrating reinforce here. Without even looking at the stats of the reinforcements, there are a lot of obvious advantages they bring to the table.
-Distracting and possibly taking out enemy reinforcements. This allows you to allocate more units to accomplishing a specific task.

This also tarnishes the EXP we could've obtained from killing such enemy reinforcements. Take the example on the bridge chapter. We're likely keeping a couple units behind to recruit Haar anyway, so leaving the Pegasi isn't doing us a whole lot of good.

-Luring out dangerous enemies and absorbing deadly attacks. Let’s suppose we were at the bridge chapter. Tanith’s reinforcements can act as ballista bait while your playable fliers can roam more freely. The same concept applies to lategame tigers, dragons, siege tome threats, etc.

I'd rather have someone sturdy like Tauroneo take on the Ballistae anyway. It just cuts more into Tanith's disadvantage against such things as well.

Anyway, baiting other units isn't a bad strategy, but most are going to move toward you anyway. The Dragons I believe are the rare exception as well as the Seige tomes. The former are dangerous I'll admit, so you can have your point there. The latter... it looks like the Seige tomes have about 30 Atk tops. This isn't FE6 or FESD where the Res stat is terrible, so most of the time I'd assume that we're going to be 3RKOed at worst. Nevermind that against most units they have pretty iffy hit rates. Taking the C28 example they only have about 102 Hit, which means it's about 122 at worst (negative bio for you and positive for him). They're not a major threat except under very rare circumstances.

-They increase the team’s staff exp. Now you have 3-6 more units on the team, which means your healers have more people to physic/recover/etc on.

This isn't always true. What if they're dead before you even get that chance? It's quite possible. Then, the team is going to be damaged eventually, and most units would rather attack if possible then heal again and again. These things aren't very durable in the first place, and it shows later on in the game that perhaps the only 1-2 units that might survive is the FalcoKnights.

Now let’s look at the combat performance of these reinforcements.
1x Pegasus Knight lv 10 (javelin)

20 hp, 16 atk, 15 AS, 98 hit, 40 avo, 8 def, 8 res, 7 crit, 10 cev

1x Pegagus Knight lv 10 (steel lance)

26 hp, 24 atk, 20 AS, 121 hit, 53 avo, 11 def, 12 res, 9 crit, 13 cev

Falcon Knight lv 1 (silver lance)

32 hp, 32 atk, 24 AS, 137 hit, 62 avo, 15 def, 18 res, 12 crit, 14 cev

The first 2 reinforcements will die pretty quickly, but the third one is amazing. Let’s look at that falcon knight compared to a 20/1 Ike and base level Tanith.

Case in point with the healing utility, so let's nevermind them. The latter looks good now, but later on he's not going to be very helpful. 32 HP / 15 Def by lategame is where I'm going to be biting my nails and wonder if he's even facing a situation where he's 3HKOed.

Falcon Knight lv 1 (silver lance)
32 hp, 32 atk, 24 AS, 137 hit, 62 avo, 15 def, 18 res, 12 crit, 14 cev

Ike lv 20/1 (iron blade)

37 hp, 27 atk, 19 AS, 119 hit, 50 avo, 16 def, 10 res, 9 crit, 13 cev

Tanith lv --/10 (steel lance)

32 hp, 26 atk, 24 AS, 124 hit, 66 avo, 15 def, 13 res, 9 crit, 18 cev

This guy is hilarious. He’s actually arguably beating both of them before supports and forges. Even if Ike were arguably better than Tanith, he’s most certainly not better than 3 of them.

That isn't even 3 Taniths. The fact that a reinforcement is better than Tanith is almost a sad, sad thought.

Your turn, Vykan.

Vykan12 · July 14, 2009

Alright, seems to me that you skipped Prologue - C3, so obvious guess that you concede those chapters. +3 for Ike.

Why would you consider the chapters I didn’t mention a concession? I was simply showing he had earlygame issues, not doing a tiresome chapter-by-chapter analysis. Though if you want to bring up P-3, that’s fine with me.

Prologue shouldn’t really get any consideration as it’s more of a storyline event than anything. The only way you can lose is to not have Ike use a vulnerary and the only random chance involved in the chapter is Ike’s level-up. Everything else might as well be an interactive cutscene.

Chapter 1 is nice to Ike in that the majority of enemies are axe users. Even then, his combat leaves a lot to be desired.

Ike lv 2/0 (iron sword): 20 hp, 10.5 atk, 5 AS, 5 def, 16 avo

3x Fighter lv 1 (iron axe)

24 hp, 13 atk, 0 AS, 81 hit, 0 avo, 3 def, 0 res, 1 crit, 0 cev

Ike 2RKOes while getting 3RKOed in return at exactly 50 display hit. That means him facing 3 fighters results in a 12.5% chance of death, and against 4 fighters that increases to 31.25%. In contrast, Boyd/Oscar/Titania take 4/5/17 rounds to take down, respectively.

Chapter 2 is much of the same story. However, now there’s a higher enemy density so Ike’s poor durability becomes more noticeable.

In chapter 3, we trade Oscar/Boyd for Gatrie/Shinon, so now Ike is even more cemented as the worst unit on the field.

Notice that there are a lot of forests to the north and to the south.

There are no forests to the south in chapter 4. The picture you gave in the “I like Ike!” link clearly shows that the forests are both north and west of your starting position.

It's better to take the ones to the north and use them for cover.

That would be a huge waste of time seeing as though you need to charge west to beat this map optimally. Ike is the only unit who wants to wait around on forests seeing as though Gatrie/Titania/Shinon aren’t worried about dying and Rhys/Soren have pathetic durability, forests or not.

That means that there's a 36% chance that Ike is realically going to be hit by both of these guys, and if say a 3rd one crawls around it drops to 21.6%. Granted that would equate to his chance of death …

Exactly. Just 3 enemies cause Ike to face more than a 1/5 chance of a game-over. That’s another issue: If some random character like Soren dies, we can continue playing the game with little consequence (ie we’re just forced to drop him) whereas Ike dying is an automatic reset every single time.

but we're also talking about him taking more than 3 hits per round, which is pretty hard due to his inability to ORKO and usually facing about 2 units per turn max.

It’s quite possible in this map seeing how closely packed all the enemies are (again, reference the map provided by Colonel M’s link). Even if only 2 soldiers manage to completely surround Ike’s adjacent squares, he’s still open to ranged threats.

The issue with Ike’s durability isn’t just facing death chances though. Everything I described about his durability so far applied to him at full hp, so whenever he has a player phase where he’s injured, he’ll probably be 2RKOed. In other words, he has to heal constantly in order to be usable. That, combined with having to limit his enemy phase exposure to begin with and only 2RKOing the majority of enemies he faces is what makes his earlygame so unremarkable.

However, Regal Sword can ORKO all the weapon Knights and 2RKO the Armor Knights.

The problem with the weapon knights is that Ike will be exposed to all 6 of them in one turn. Assuming a 13/0 Ike (a pretty generous level IMO), if they all hit he will be left with 2 hp. What’s worse is 2 of these enemies have a javelin, so Ike can only kill those on player phase. So now he demands Rhys’ attention since a vulnerary won’t be enough, and to keep Rhys away from those jav users we need Ike to give up his player phase shoving Rhys away. Armor knights are even worse for Ike since they all use lances and beat the cav enemies in atk by 3+ points. The 18 atk ones manage a 4HKO, for instance.

Sure, Ike’s doing a lot better than he was in the first 5 or so chapters. However, he’s pretty much always taking more damage in one round than can be healed with a vulnerary so his durability still limits his offensive potential greatly.

For chance of death against that Soldier [in chapter 11] is about 1% tops. That's good. So, any question of his durability from hereon out should probably be tossed aside.

A 1% chance of death is still considerable. If Ike had such a chance occur in every map from 11 onwards, his odds of dying at least once in the game would be about 16.5%. Resets shouldn’t ever really happen since risks are avoidable, which is why even small death chances should be given large weight.

Now this 1% chance when both of Ike’s possible supporters are in range. Ike doesn’t have matching movement with either Soren or Oscar, and all 3 might not all be in play simultaneously, so that’s a very real possibility.

So Oscar, Gatrie, and partially to Titania have to share weapons at times. Ike, on the other hand, has his own monopoly of weapons and has no worries of running out of them.

You can trade weapons in the advancement and a lot of the weapon distribution is intuitive. Boyd, for instance, doesn’t even want to use the steel axe much since it weighs him down. Ditto for steel lance!Oscar. The hand axe also hurts Boyd’s accuracy a fair deal so Titania’s innately more likely to use it.

I really don’t see how this pans out into an advantage for Ike. If anything, Ike being locked to iron/steel/regal sword is worse than Oscar having options like the short spear and javelin while Boyd has the hand axe and hammer, shared or not.

Offensively, to compare: the Soldiers are usually 2RKOed by Ike, and Oscar isn't pulling ORKOes at this point with Iron.

If Oscar can pull a ORKO using steel, why wouldn’t he? Gatrie’s better off sticking to a weaker lance in chapter 8 since he 2RKOes armors with either iron or steel.

The only chapters Ike is a hindrance on is C4, C6, and C7.

If you’re considering extreme cases only, then 17-3 and 4 should be added to that list. Though really, Ike is arguably the worst unit around until Soren joins, and continues to be second worst until Mia joins. Even if he somehow gathered “positive utility” in the timeframe where Tanith wasn’t around, it would be minor at best.

B Titania isn't a bad support for her. She'd like the extra durability that Ike and Titania offers to them, and it's an easy support with Canto.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. The first sentence suggests you’re focusing on a Mist/Titania support, but that can’t be it since Mist doesn’t support Ike. You also can’t be talking about Titania because she can’t support herself. Clarification?

Soren also has a second use: healing utility.

The problem is that supports don’t help Soren’s contribution as a healer. He’s obviously not making use of the offensive bonuses when mending someone, and the defensive bonuses only apply when an enemy can break through the frontlines. Then being within support range of a non-Mist healer is definitely an issue for various reasons. First, healers go where they are in demand, whereas a map’s combat usually follows a linear progression from point A to B. Second, if Ike is one the frontline, then Soren might not get ample protection being only 3 spaces away. And finally, I’d like to re-iterate their movement differences. Once Ike promotes, there’s not much that can slow him down, so compounding 1 move over 4 turns would already have Soren out of range.

His offense is a bit rigid and his durability is questionable, but in Mage / Sage scenarios, he's probably the best of the bunch next to Calill though she joins very late in the game.

What the hell’s a mage/sage scenario? It doesn’t matter if Soren is the best sage in the game if the units who share her class aren’t even good to begin with.

And yeah, sealing Soren will murder his offence in the long run. If you promote him as early as you can, he’ll only have 16 spd/18 mag at 10/10 and 21 spd/24 mag at max level. Take the 10/10 scenario at chapter 17 for example: With an elwind tome he 2 rounds most of what he doubles, and many enemies have 13+ AS by this point.

With Adept's decent activation rate

I’d hardly call a 14% chance of activation per hit after sealing to be decent, particularly if Soren is relying on this to land kills.

With the extra Avoid tacked onto him, it's a failsafe option to have when Oscar is under negative biorhythm and suddenly loses 10 Avoid.

Unlike RD, it’s very rare to get +-10 bio as its effect only lasts 1 turn. The most common one I found when recording enemy stats was +-5.

There were also some points about Ike’s supports you didn’t address.

Then he can take sol for a 16.5% chance of healing per attack or equip the KW for +2 def/res, among many other things.

In Titania’s case, she has atk issues lategame so A Mist/B Boyd would be her ideal option. An Ike B support only gives her 10 avo/1 def and they have trouble staying in range of each other.

A base Level Marcia has 20 HP / 8 Def, which is actually worse than Ike. No, Marcia's main problem isn't the mid-game, it's her durability in the earlygame that makes her a wonky choice. Too bad Tanith isn't helping Marcia in her most desperate of hours.

Marcia also chooses a more opportunistic time to join than Ike did. Not only can we BEXP her the chapter after she joins, we also get a huge supply of said resource from stealthing chp 10. Then once we get past 11, she gets to reap the benefits of 2 exp rich chapters (12 and 13 have ravens) while 15 provides her another huge share of BEXP to work with.

I look at the concrete stuff in front of me, and right now it's telling me just how horrible Marcia is by herself even at this point.

You can call Marcia horrible all you want, the only proof you provided so far was claiming her durability bases were worse than Ike, which I already countered a paragraph ago in saying she jumps out of base level at a frantic pace.

If Ike isn't helping Soren, I dare not imagine how Tanith is helping Marcia.

Marcia 20/1 (C Tanith): 32 hp, 14 def, 55 avo

Soren 10/12 (B Ike): 31 hp, 7 def, 62 avo

Do you stand by that comment?

Though I've already proven how Oscar appreciates the extra Avoid early

The period in which Oscar’s concrete durability is low enough to “appreciate” Ike’s extra avoid is reasonably small. I already showed that Oscar laughs at enemy attacks by promotion, and if that occurred in 16, we’re only talking an 8 chapter gap between your example and mine. But then that falls to 6 when considering 10 and 15 are best performed in a pacifist manner. Then the ravens in 12 have really low atk (even an 11/0 Oscar takes 5 damage per hit, an effective 5HKO) and only 2-3 come at your group every few turns or so. Then the enemies in 13 are mostly distracted by the NPCs, and a 15/0 Oscar only faces about 0-6 damage per attack on average (a 6+HKO). I could go on, but you get the point.

and at least Titania doesn't mind a B Ike.

If Titania really wants durability, she’ll take sol. The first occult can only be used in 14, which is well before most of your units can even promote, so putting it on her saves an occult from collecting dust for 3-4 chapters. Then virtually none of the pallies want sol in the first place. Oscar and Kieran have phenomenal concrete/avo durability combos. Then Astrid and Geoffrey have paragon, which leaves Makalov. But then a 20/1 Mak has the same def as a 20/3 Oscar, which seems to indicate that he becomes incredibly durable himself once he gets past his sucky start. Even if we gave an occult to Ike and Makalov, that still leaves an occult for Titania as well as a spare.

As for Gatrie, m'boy, a B gives her +1 to Def which increases her concrete durability. I'll ignore Rofl at least, but just to say that even A Tanith isn't even guaranteed at the end of the day.

Why would Marcia pass up 10-15 avo for 1 def, even if the point of def takes effect for longer?

Oh, and another thing: Full Guard. Marcia and Tanith want it to decrease their chances of death against Archers and Snipers, thus having to share the item.

Archers/snipers are prime player phase targets because they can be attacked with no fear of counter. Also, eliminating them gets rid of a 2 range annoyance the following enemy phase. Moreover, bow users aren’t even that common.

Chapter 18: 2/36 (5.5%)

Chapter 19: 4/32 (12.5%)

Chapter 20: 3/39 (7.7%)

Chapter 21: 4/55 (7.3%)

Chapter 22: 5/54 (9.3%)

Usually, the only bow threats that are menacing to fliers are ballistae. You really just want to give your tankiest flier the FG and have that unit take out the ballistae so that your other fliers can roam freely, which resolves said issue pretty quickly.

You're a pretty bad support partner when you hog things like Full Guard and saying "oh I can pass it around" doesn't work very well because we still have to equip it.

If both Marcia and Tanith were in play but not supporting each other, this full guard issue would still exist. Thus, the support itself has nothing to do with it.

You appear to forget that .4 Def lead that Ike has, which increases the #RKOes that he can take.

Yeah, because a fraction of a def point is really going to let Ike face more rounds than Tanith. If you’re trying to be a comedian, then your career is off to a blazing start.

I don't know why you'd even claim about throwing a support away (the B Soren) when I too could easily toss out Tanith's B Oscar as well seeing as he doesn't need it by this point of the game and would rather have it earlier than before.

Ike’s Soren support has a laundry list of problems I’ve already pointed out, whereas Oscar doesn’t really care who he’s supporting.

This also denies that neither unit can go under different biorhythm circumstances, which can throw around the Avoid situation.

Not in any significant way. I’ll re-post Tanith’s avo numbers assuming she gets –5 bio and the enemy has +5 bio.

If we took the same enemies I used with Marcia in chapter 18, Tanith faces at most 39 real hit with weapon triangle neutrality. If we gave her a steel sword against a lv 20 fighter, now she’s only facing 9.03 hit. The funniest part is this is before supports. Raise her B Oscar/B Marcia (only takes 6 chapters) and now she has 91 avo, more if we consider levelling + a 110% avo growth. There are enemies in chapter 24 that she would face 0 display against, and the most accurate enemy I could find was an iron blade swordmaster with 114 hit. That’s 21 true hit before possible WTA from lances, which would drop it to 5.95.

I was also undermining Tanith’s concrete durability in saying she got 3-4+HKOed. In chapter 18:

Enemies that 3HKO

-1 archer

-1 fighter

-2 sages

-1 general

-kayachey

Enemies that 4HKO

-3 wyvern riders

-1 warrior

-1 lance knight

Enemies that 5HKO

-1 sage

-1 general

-2 lance knights

-1 axe knight

-1 paladin

Enemies that 6HKO

-4 soldiers

-2 sword knights

Enemies that 7HKO

-1 halberdier

Enemies that do 1-4 damage

-1 soldier

-2 bishops

-1 knight

-7 ravens

Out of 35 enemies, 68% of them require 5 hits or more to take down Tanith. Moreover, the majority of the enemies that pull 3-4HKOes on Tanith tend to have the lowest hit rates on her. For instance, the laguz lance!general only pulls 21 true, 15 with C Marcia. Even if we biorhythm screwed her, it’s still only 28 true she’s facing. The 2 bolting sages are even worse, they only manage 16 real despite biorhythm working against her.

Just to show how bad Tanith's so-called durability is:
- 20/1 Jill - 36 HP / 17 Def

- 20/1 Boyd - 40 HP / 11.5 Def

- 20/1 Oscar - 38 HP / 16 Def

- --/10 Titania - 40 HP / 15 Def

- 20/1 Mist (+5 w/supports) - 29 HP / 13 Def

- 10 Lethe - 41 HP / 12 Def

- 20/1 Kieran - 38 HP / 15 Def

- 20/1 Astrid - 34 HP / 14 Def

- 20/1 Makalov - 39 HP / 17 Def

All you did was show that a bunch of high/top tier units have comparable to better concrete durability than Tanith. Why you’re ignoring avo as part of durability is beyond my comprehension.

Base lvl Tanith- 66 avo

20/1 Jill – 41 avo

20/1 Boyd – 40 avo

20/1 Oscar – 44 avo

--/10 Titania – 53 avo

20/1 Mist –53 avo

10 Lethe – 58 avo

20/1 Kieran – 44 avo

20/1 Astrid – 46 avo

20/1 Makalov – 45 avo

Before you scream supports, most of these characters would still lose avo with them. Boyd, for example, doesn’t get any avo from supports, while someone like Mist can only get 7 from Jill (7 from Rolf too but who cares). Oscar would be the only one who can beat unsupported Tanith (89 avo with A Ike/B Kieran).

Evidently, Tanith only widens these gaps as her own supports come into play. For example, if she has A Oscar/B Marcia at lv --/16, she’ll have 112 avo. In contrast, max level Ike with A Oscar/B Soren has 120 avo while max level Zihark with A Muarim/B Brom has 110.5 avo.

Again, Ike’s concrete durability lead would only have any significant impact if either character could actually get hit. Any enemy that 3HKOes Tanith at 10% real only manages a 0.1% chance of killing her, and you yourself said 1% were favourable odds. The fact that you won’t even find 3 enemies that can 3HKO Tanith within her attack range simultaneously simply makes her even harder to kill.

There's still a problem: now Tanith has to baby with her other supports. Granted that some of them are quite mobile, but assuming she got stuck with someone like Reyson now she has to stay behind.

Why would Tanith’s supports ever slow her down? If she for some strange reason chooses to support Reyson, she’ll simply pass on his bonuses most of the time, not restrict herself to staying in his range. Moreover, Tanith matches movement with her supporters better than Ike does with his:

Ike-Titania: 3 move gap, lessens to 2 once Ike promotes.

Ike-Oscar: 2 move gap.

Ike-Soren: 1 move gap.

Ike- Reyson/Ranulf-Elincia: A combination of the first 3 cases.

Tanith-Marcia: Perfect movement match.

Tanith-Oscar: Their movement only differs in the advantages Tanith’s flight brings.

Tanith-Reyson: 4 move gap, reduces to 1 whenever Reyson transforms.

Her durability gets cut down slightly by a Bow-user as well, then take chapters that have Ballistae and her sizable mobility range can get in the way.

That only serves to mitigate a huge advantage, and as I said earlier, bow users are both priority targets and rare enemies. Ballista are the only things really holding Tanith back, but those are gone as soon as a full guard!flier takes them out, and Tanith might just be the very unit assigned to that task.

Also, with the more hits that we actually take, the more and more it cuts into her durability because eventually she'll get hit whether it's due to biorhythm or the number of enemies that she might face.

The thing is Tanith won’t be facing enemies every single turn, so whenever that’s the case, she has a free opportunity to vulnerary herself. Since she doesn’t get hit a lot, that lone vulnerary usually suffices to alleviate her wounds. Alternatively, a healer could physic her if she’s the only unit with a non-negligible wound on that turn, and that can’t really be held against her as hogging healer attention.

What obstacle seriously takes 3 or more turns to bypass?

It can take foot soldiers the entirety of the chapter to reach the area where Shiharam is, whereas Tanith can get there in 3.

There are multiple waterways that Tanith can bypass, and each one saves countless turns a foot soldier would otherwise need to maneuver around.

Most units need to zigzag around the sandbags I encircled while Tanith can simply fly over them in 1 turn.

Tanith can reach Rikard in about 3 turns. A foot soldier, however, has to not only go by the bridge on the northeast corner of the picture, they also have to go around the forest northwest of the picture. They might only get there by the time you already have a unit ready to arrive.

Flying introduces so many shortcuts in this chapter it’s staggering. Tanith could fly circles around Ike here and still be ahead of him.

Bypassing that forest is as big a shortcut as the Talrega one mentioned earlier.

These are just the major obstacles that Tanith is able to bypass. Including the minor ones would probably double the length of this post.

Mountains? We all know Ike and Boyd can't climb them.

Acknowledging a character’s flaws doesn’t make them any less prevalent.

Oh great, now we're going to piddle around with Tanith's durability and take an Enemy Phase away from her. That's quite effecient, isn't it?

Tanith would only rescue someone in situations where very few enemies are immediately ahead. So let’s say Boyd moves up to her, she rescues him, cantoes into a mountain. Then, next turn she drops him. Boyd now moved an extra 6 spaces (more if Tanith bypassed a terrain obstacle) at the cost of 1 phase for Tanith as well as 1 player phase for both units. In countless situations this is a positive trade-off because of the long-term benefits we get from having boosted Boyd that much farther than he would’ve gotten on his own.

Barely anyone needs rescuing at this point in the first place, and now we have to protect Tanith if she does.

Everyone who doesn’t have a mount profits from ferrying tactics. You must be under the mistaken impression that Tanith is rescuing injured units to protect them. While she can indeed do that, her main function behind rescuing is to help a foot soldier keep up with your other mounts.

Besides, Ike has something better: Shove. Shove may waste his turn of movement, but unlike Tanith it doesn't waste two unit's turns.

There are numerous units Ike cannot even shove but Tanith can rescue (untransformed Lethe for instance). Then if Ike had to move 5 spaces instead of 7 to shove someone, we basically just sacrificed 2 move to gain 1, which is a net loss. The increased mobility Tanith’s ferrying provides to the team easily outweighs the benefits of Ike’s shoving.

There's the Sonic Sword which at least allows Ike to 2RKO enemies on the Enemy Phase that range against him

The problem here is that the Sonic Sword has finite use whereas Tanith’s 1-2 range options are buyable. 2 rounding with a 25 use weapon only results in 6.25 kills. Then we’re also eliminating the possibility of putting the SS on a unit with a good mag stat, particularly Mist who can 1RKO basically anything with it. For example, a 20/8 Mist with supports has 36 atk targeting res. For perspective, that does 117% damage to chapter 28 tigers.

If we use something like Javelins on Tanith anyway, then we're piddling her offense up close and just taking more turn just to kill things.

That would only be true if Tanith’s only weapon choices were javelins. Obviously we have her use javs when its benefits outweigh the advantages of using a 1 range weapon. If we pit both Ike and Tanith against say, a group of sages, Tanith has the ability to output more enemy phase damage than Ike’s 0, which can only be seen as an advantage for her.

The Vague Katti may have a limit of uses; however, who is really going to take it? The only unit that has an S Rank at this point (or is damn near close) is probably Ike and maybe a random like Zihark or Makalov, which the latter would favor Axes instead.

I have no idea why Makalov would pass up the vague katti for a steel axe since he’s probably not going to have A axes for a while, if at all. Steel axes give 2 WEXP and 181 is required to jump from E to A. That’s 45 kills Makalov needs before silvers are available to him, more if we consider he won’t be using axes 24/7 after promotion. See, a steel blade actually ties a steel axe in Mt while having +10 accuracy, and the game has plenty of sword/axe users he’d want to use it on. And according to the site, steel blades are buyable in all but 4 chapters after chp 13, so running out of them isn’t an issue either.

You’re also forgot to name plenty of “randoms” such as Stefan, Tauroneo (base rank of A in swords) and of course Tanith herself (base rank of A in swords as well).

As for the Flame Lance and attacking indirectly, fine. Though now we have to preserve the weapon and have to trade with her just to preserve it. Unless you're going to suggest that we keep it on and break it.

So Ike can get the VK while maintaining a clean slate whereas Tanith taking the flame lance warrants negative attention? Sounds like a double standard to me.

At any rate, Tanith has some very thin competition for the weapon. She has 13.5 mag at max level while most units are well below that (Gatrie for instance only has 3.5 at max lvl). There actually isn’t a single unit who can both use lances and beat her mag stat, and the closest anyone can get is ~2 points. As I showed earlier, Tanith can ORKO laguz with the lance, though not by such a huge margin that people with lower mag could do the same. This obviously suggests that her odds of getting the lance are pretty damn high.

You're also downplaying Ike's durability lead here, so I'll assume that you're conceding that, which is probably the best idea especially when Ragnell comes around.

Need I remind you how little Tanith needs to worry about her survival lategame?

Max level Tanith (A Marcia, B Oscar): 38 hp, 17.5 def, 16 res, 112 avo

(A Oscar, B Marcia): 117 avo

2x Tiger lv 11-12 (claw)

46 hp, 31 atk, 17 AS, 129 hit, 37 avo, 20 def, 9 res, 9 crit, 3 cev

Tanith is 3HKOed at 3-6 real hit. Assuming the latter case, that’s a 0.02% chance of death in 3 attacks, which is less than 1 in 4000 outcomes. What’s funnier is that the chapter only has 2 tigers until reinforcements start showing up.

3x Cat lv 9 (claw)

39 hp, 25 atk, 17 AS, 122 hit, 36 avo, 17 def, 8 res, 7 crit, 2 cev

Tanith is 6HKOed at 0.55-2 real hit. Tanith’s death chances are better expressed in scientific notation (6.4 x 10^-9 % after 6 attacks).

3x Hawk lv 9-10 (beak)

39 hp, 24 atk, 17 AS, 128 hit, 36 avo, 15 def, 8 res, 9 crit, 2 cev

Same scenario as the cat, more or less.

1x Halberdier lv 11 (silver lance)

42 hp, 30 atk, 15 AS, 116 hit, 35 avo, 16 def, 11 res, 9 crit, 5 cev

Tanith is 4HKOed at 0-0.36 real hit.

1x Sage lv 9 (meteor, bolganoe)

31 hp, 29 atk, 10 AS, 102 hit, 24 avo, 11 def, 17 res, 7 crit, 4 cev

He can’t even hit Tanith in either support configuration, and that includes possible biorhythm fluctuations. I suppose there’s the extremely rare case where Tanith has –10 bio and the sage has +10, but then she’d face the same hit rates she saw against the cat (0.55-2 real).

Ragnell!Ike and his glorious 27 def might be able to laugh off enemy attacks, but Tanith enjoys the same level of invincibility over 99.9% of the time (or some similarly ridiculous figure). I’ll concede that Ike wins the other 0.1% of the time (if that). However, that’s about as significant as Ike roflstomping the prologue.

This also tarnishes the EXP we could've obtained from killing such enemy reinforcements.

That is compensated for in the BEXP we get from allied units fighting. Then since BEXP is easier to control than CEXP is, our reinforcements could actually prove to be a net positive in this regard.

Take the example on the bridge chapter. We're likely keeping a couple units behind to recruit Haar anyway, so leaving the Pegasi isn't doing us a whole lot of good.

The reinforcements can be used as ballista bait instead. There are 3 after all, so 6 pegasi should keep those archers occupied while your playable fliers go take them out.

I'd rather have someone sturdy like Tauroneo take on the Ballistae anyway.

The ballistae have 10-15 range, why would they choose to attack one of the most durable members of the team? That is unless you meant Tauroneo kills the ballistician, but that’s an even sillier notion. Anyone can attack an archer on player phase without taking a counter. Then Tauroneo would be among the last people to actually reach the ballistician, and he might not even double the archer who’s using it.

It just cuts more into Tanith's disadvantage against such things as well.

??? I’m not sure if that was a counter-point or a bitter concession.

That isn't even 3 Taniths. The fact that a reinforcement is better than Tanith is almost a sad, sad thought.

If you look at that comparison carefully, you’ll see that the reinforcement beats Ike as well. A 5 atk/5 AS lead is huge. In fact, supports and forges aside, those NPC seraph knights are probably the best units you can field until silver weapons are buyable. Sure, you cannot really control them fully, but you’ll reap their combat benefits in some way regardless.

Colonel M · July 15, 2009

Too much to quote, though I believe Vykan might take two pages as well because I was super lengthy due to clarifying things.

Why would you consider the chapters I didn’t mention a concession? I was simply showing he had earlygame issues, not doing a tiresome chapter-by-chapter analysis. Though if you want to bring up P-3, that’s fine with me.
Prologue shouldn’t really get any consideration as it’s more of a storyline event than anything. The only way you can lose is to not have Ike use a vulnerary and the only random chance involved in the chapter is Ike’s level-up. Everything else might as well be an interactive cutscene.

Chapter 1 is nice to Ike in that the majority of enemies are axe users. Even then, his combat leaves a lot to be desired.

Ike lv 2/0 (iron sword): 20 hp, 10.5 atk, 5 AS, 5 def, 16 avo

3x Fighter lv 1 (iron axe)

24 hp, 13 atk, 0 AS, 81 hit, 0 avo, 3 def, 0 res, 1 crit, 0 cev

Ike 2RKOes while getting 3RKOed in return at exactly 50 display hit. That means him facing 3 fighters results in a 12.5% chance of death, and against 4 fighters that increases to 31.25%. In contrast, Boyd/Oscar/Titania take 4/5/17 rounds to take down, respectively.

I meant 1-3, since yeah Prologue doesn't really count but anyway.

Boyd also has another issue: Tempest. Though he isn't always under negative biorhythm, that's just it: all it takes to increase his chances of death. Even at neutral bio he's facing high hit rates: 67-71%. Taking the 71%, he has 48% chance of death. That's almost a coin flip. Thank the Iron Axe for nerfing 3 AS from him. Boyd doesn't even 2RKO all the time either: he fails to 2RKO a Fighter, a Bandit, and the Boss obviously.

For Oscar, he's 4RKOed by any Axe user with 14 Atk. In C1, there's an even balance of these (3 Fighters + 1 Bandit have 13 Atk, 2 Bandits, 1 Fighter, and the Boss have 14). Anyway, he also faces pretty high Hit rates also. 72-76% Hit rates is still pretty dangerous. As for chances of death, if he is 5RKOed he has a 54% chance of death. If he is 4RKOed, he has a 61% chance of death. Then his offense is about the same as Ike's.

Titania: well, I think you know what I'm going to say.

Chapter 2 is much of the same story. However, now there’s a higher enemy density so Ike’s poor durability becomes more noticeable.

C2 Map

Notice there are two trees right near the mountain, which increases Ike's Def +1 and his Avoid by 10. Assuming he's about Level 3 at this point, he'll have 32 Evade here: 42 with WTA. Since most Axe users have about 79-81 Hit rates, that's 37-39% displayed. For durability, he has 20.5 HP | 5.8 Def, so let's just round up the Def and round down the HP for the example since .8 is closer than .5. The Fighters with 13 Atk 4RKO with and without cover, which means he's being 4RKOed when under the trees. Offensively he's 2RKOing as usual. Keep in mind I only listed 1 level per chapter then (Prologue is free and +1 for C1). If you wondered his chances of death: he has .009% chance of death in the forests. In case he ever treads out of the forest for some weird reason, it's only 11% (and it's assuming he's 3RKOed).

Boyd and Oscar's situation is about the same more or less. Oscar is being 4RKOed a lot more often now and even the Steel Axe Fighter has pretty good Hit on him. Boyd's situation is more or less the same, though pending with Tempest.

In chapter 3, we trade Oscar/Boyd for Gatrie/Shinon, so now Ike is even more cemented as the worst unit on the field.

True, he may seem like the worst unit on the team at this point; however, this does not make him useles. Gatrie + Shinon can easily weaken the units on this chapter since giving them CEXP is nearly pointless. Ike can still 2RKO on his own anyway and the Hit rates aren't seemingly high (they vary widely between 59 to 83 tops). A Level 5 Ike with WTA has 35 Avoid. To compare, Shinon here has about that Avoid rate, so obviously Ike isn't doing bad in that department. While 22 HP | 6.6 Def doesn't seem much, 12-15 Atk is still pretty "eh". There's one with 19 Atk but it's a lone Steel Axe user. Rounding the Def figure down and include WTD for the Fighters (so 11-14 real Atk), Ike is 3RKOed by the 14 Atk unit, but 4RKOed everywhere else. If the Def point rounds up, let's say he's > or = to 4RKO.

Offensively Ike is guaranteed to 2RKO for the most part. Sometimes Shinon can miss ORKOing with the Steel Bow. I'd say that Ike does alright even on his own for this chapter.

There are no forests to the south in chapter 4. The picture you gave in the “I like Ike!” link clearly shows that the forests are both north and west of your starting position.

D'oh. North, west, and near the starting position. Point is: there's a lot of cover in this chapter.

That would be a huge waste of time seeing as though you need to charge west to beat this map optimally. Ike is the only unit who wants to wait around on forests seeing as though Gatrie/Titania/Shinon aren’t worried about dying and Rhys/Soren have pathetic durability, forests or not.

Granted that you are correct, but it's because we do have to protect Rhys and Soren that we have to be careful on how fast we trudge this. Though in all honesty: only Gatrie and Titania are the most durable of the group and the former lacks Mov. We have 4 turns to clear this for max BEXP (which I proceeded to say WTF myself) and we lose 10 per turn that we sit and do nothing. Even though Ike isn't speeding this up, unless you actually ARE Gatrie and Titania it isn't a whole lot better for you either. Scratch that: Gatrie has some issues doubling on this chapter unless he gained a point in Spd (lol), so it's likely Titania is the best unit in here.

So, in reality... if we're aiming for max BEXP, then no one but Titania is probably the best unit for obtaining this. This means Ike staying behind in the forests isn't a big deal to us. If we're going to move everyone as fast as we can, then let's say that Gatrie won't ORKO often, Shinon can't counterattack on the Enemy Phase, Oscar is doing okay but he's 2RKOing all the time, Boyd might like a little cover since he's still locked onto Tempest (if you can remove it beforehand, then slightly disregard this). I mean, to be honest, this chapter really isn't a favorite for anyone. Just Titania, and that's about it.

Exactly. Just 3 enemies cause Ike to face more than a 1/5 chance of a game-over. That’s another issue: If some random character like Soren dies, we can continue playing the game with little consequence (ie we’re just forced to drop him) whereas Ike dying is an automatic reset every single time.

Only in the chapters such as C4, C6, and C7 will Ike ever face real chances of death that high. For the most part, dying is only a worry in those chapters, and to be honest it isn't much better for every other unit.

Taking C6, assuming Oscar got 3 levels, while his durability is pretty good, his offense is a bit lackluster. Not saying Ike's is much better, but even Oscar's mehness in combat is a problem. He just hits 14 Atk with an Iron Lance. To compare, a Level 7 Ike has about 13 with the Iron Sword, though it is 12 with WTD. Regal Sword bumps this up to 15, 14 with WTD. Sure Oscar's durability is nice, but since we're mashing on Ike's offense, might as well rag on Oscar's. With Steel Sword, Ike's offense jumps 1 point higher than Oscar and still has 6 AS on him. Oscar has about 8 Spd on him and at this point still loses 1 AS from an Iron Lance. So in comparison to Ike's 10 AS to Oscar's 7, Oscar misses doubling on just about everything, which means Ike is doing better in single hit comparisons with a Steel Sword. With an Iron Sword, Ike's 10 AS misses doubling on 5/24 enemies, which is a hell of a lot better than Oscar doubling 7/24 enemies. Ever notice how pathetic that is? Really want to know what's sad? Oscar misses doubling on the Armor Knight with 4 AS. While it's true that a Level 7 Oscar will do a bit better (either 7.8 Str or 8.8 Spd), this just shows how borderline Oscar is at sucking offensively at this point.

Then there's Boyd. While he's doing better in single hitting (16 Atk), there's chances where he won't double either. 7.8 Spd is what he lands on, and he still loses 1 AS from the Iron Axe. Again, level up clears some of this, but again, just shows how borderline this really is.

So even though Ike doesn't do a whole lot of good in some of the chapters defensively, offensively he's not doing bad. 2RKOing pretty much constantly and helping out on taking out any Cavalry or AKs. Granted they aren't abundant in this chapter, but having an edge on these enemies is something you can't exactly brush off.

C7 is a bit about the same. Shockingly there's more Armor Knights (8/33 or 24% of the enemies) so having an edge on these guys helps a lot.

It’s quite possible in this map seeing how closely packed all the enemies are (again, reference the map provided by Colonel M’s link). Even if only 2 soldiers manage to completely surround Ike’s adjacent squares, he’s still open to ranged threats.

In that case, it's true that the ranged threat would be Ike's doom. With the forests's though, his cover becomes much better. Even with the ranged threats, since he's barely dying IIRC he should be able to survive the impacts within the forests. Using the Level 6 Ike as an example, under forest conditions he has 22.75 HP | 8 Def. If Ike can get the +1 in HP, he can actually survive the most brutal of Soldiers (the ones with 16 Atk) and the Archers with 1 HP to spare. Heh, I'm almost inclined to say C4 isn't bad for him now with the Forests being able to cover up his Def better and mashing his Avoid higher.

The issue with Ike’s durability isn’t just facing death chances though. Everything I described about his durability so far applied to him at full hp, so whenever he has a player phase where he’s injured, he’ll probably be 2RKOed. In other words, he has to heal constantly in order to be usable. That, combined with having to limit his enemy phase exposure to begin with and only 2RKOing the majority of enemies he faces is what makes his earlygame so unremarkable.

...

In C4 he can take 3 enemy shots in the forest before going down. In C1-3 he has good Avoid and even decent durability under those conditions, in C8 the Oscar support helps his durability a bit and from there on it's not even that bad. In fact, I haven't seen many conditions other than C7 and C8 (and partially to C4) where he is 3RKOed at rather dangerously high Hit rates. Oscar and Boyd, two units that are pretty good, have offense that is either comparable or, at times, WORSE than Ike's. Ike may not be the most spectacular unit in the GMs at some points, but at those times the others don't have a whole lot more to write about.

The problem with the weapon knights is that Ike will be exposed to all 6 of them in one turn. Assuming a 13/0 Ike (a pretty generous level IMO), if they all hit he will be left with 2 hp. What’s worse is 2 of these enemies have a javelin, so Ike can only kill those on player phase. So now he demands Rhys’ attention since a vulnerary won’t be enough, and to keep Rhys away from those jav users we need Ike to give up his player phase shoving Rhys away. Armor knights are even worse for Ike since they all use lances and beat the cav enemies in atk by 3+ points. The 18 atk ones manage a 4HKO, for instance.

Take a Level 9 Oscar at this point. 29 HP | 10 Def just to clarify. This leaves Oscar with about the same amount of HP. Now a Level 11 Oscar with 30 HP | 11 Def. 21 / 30 HP. Really, taking all six of them is exausting for anyone who isn't Titania, and this is Oscar for damn sakes. Level 9 Boyd has 35 HP | 7 Def. Boyd gets KOed in all of these shots. Then a Level 11 Boyd has 37 HP | 7 Def. He can survive 6/7 of the assualts. Just saying, do you know how ridiculous the statement is? Then take Avoid into account for someone like Ike. C Oscar and let's just say he's 10/0 at the worst (I'll hit 13/0 in a minute). 43 Avoid with all that calculated. Now, just to clarify the Hit rates for the Weapon Knights:

- 85 (Steel Sword)

- 102 (Iron Sword)

- 69 (Javelin)

- 70 (Javelin)

- 84 (Iron Axe)

Time for some math. Ike faces the following Hit rates in order (Real / True): 42 / 35.70, 59 / 66.79, 36 / 26.28, 37 / 27.75, 31 / 19.53, 31 / 19.53. Are we clear on this yet? Chances of ALL of these hits connecting are not very high to begin with. With 25.75 HP | 8.6 Def, let's assume that we rounded both since we have access to the base and there's still the bands to consider. Now he's KOed by the 5th Weapon Knight most of the time, so let's just say it's a combination of the two Sword users, two Lance users, and one of the Axe users. The chances of all 5 of those hitting are super-slim: .005%. The phrase "not a chance in hell" could easily be used here, and this is assuming the worst of scenarios.

For Oscar, let's assume that Oscar has hit Level 11, which is very generous on my part IMO. He has 39 Avoid with C Ike. Now we pit him against the enemies above: 36 / 26.28, 53 / 56.29, 30 / 18.30, 31 / 19.53, 55 / 59.95, 55 / 59.95. Assume that all of these hit now is like .001%. In fact, use another example: take away the Oscar / Ike support since we're so hellbent on it being a one-sided support, and all of a sudden Oscar faces that 1% again. I mean, sure it doesn't seem like a whole lot from most of a perspective, but that's still shaving off quite a bit of chances to hit.

I dunno why you even mentioned this at all, then the Javelins are a joke: they have terrible hit rates even on Ike (< 36-37 displayed Hit? Olol). By the way, using a Javelin on Oscar still tarnishes his AS and such: Level 11 Oscar with a Javelin loses 1-2 AS pending on the rounding (9.6). It also tarnishes his Avoid and, inevitably, his Atk. Sure, Ike can't counterattack the Javelins on the Enemy Phase; however, is it really worth dropping your Atk score just to hit some unit indirectly and thus make it harder to kill the units? 1-2 range is nice and all, but you have to remember the consequences of using it: in particular, Oscar's hit rate is going to be shaky as 11/0 Oscar has 87 base Hit while the Weapon Knights have about 9-10 Avoid. One has 13 Avoid (Axe Knight nevertheless) and the Iron Sword user has about 10 after WTA takes into account. Then theirs WTD against the two Axe Knights... see what I mean? It's nice to have, but that doesn't automatically mean Ike loses now. If anything, we've just made it harder to beat the chapter because of wielding the Javelin on the Enemy Phase.

Sure, Ike’s doing a lot better than he was in the first 5 or so chapters. However, he’s pretty much always taking more damage in one round than can be healed with a vulnerary so his durability still limits his offensive potential greatly.

If the attack even hits. Take C9 where we'll use your Level 13 Ike. Round up his Def (9.8). In order to actually put him under non-Vulnerary, he'd have to take 21 damage in the process. 3 AKs + the Boss are the only units that can actually accomplish such a task. Everyone else, even the Soldiers, are too low. He'd have to be under heavy circumstances (missing the support somehwere, negative biorhythm, no forests, etc) in order to face such a situation. A Level 14 Oscar has 2 pts more of Def and Boyd is losing to Ike Def-wise by 2 when Boyd is Lv 14. Gee, that sure sucks right? Then take something crazy like their HP:

13/0 Ike - 28 HP | 10 Def

14/0 Oscar - 32 HP | 12 Def

14/0 Boyd - 39 HP | 8 Def

This is C9, btw. It still takes quite a lot: even to 3RKO Ike it takes 13 damage per hit or 26 Atk, and no one realistically has such numbers. I don't see how Ike's durability is tarnishing him that much from offense. He'll need a heal from time to time a little bit before Boyd and definitely Oscar, though that doesn't mean Ike is getting roflstomped. Then look at offense:

Ike (Steel Sword) - 19 Atk, 12.6 AS

Oscar (Steel Lance, both Atk and Spd are rounded up) - 21 Atk, 10 As

Boyd (Steel Axe) - 25 Atk, 10 AS

Boyd and Oscar both miss on doubling some enemies: 16/34 enemies to be exact (reinforcements were counted as well). That's 47% of the enemies on this map. Then take Ike, who let's say gets Spd screwed. 8/34 enemies are being missed, or 24%. So, while Ike may get shafted a bit with not survivng a round or two more than Oscar or Boyd, the offensive edge is still prevalant. If Ike gets +1 in Spd and wields an Iron Sword (-3 Atk unless we forge one), then Ike can double 2 more enemies (both being Myrmidions). I know I'm slightly drifting off from C4, which was the main part of the post; however, you were attacking Ike's offensive and defensive parameters in general earlygame. Though he does have rough times, it's not like his entire team is a whole lot better. Ike being able to make up for it after a few iffy chapters is easy to do.

A 1% chance of death is still considerable. If Ike had such a chance occur in every map from 11 onwards, his odds of dying at least once in the game would be about 16.5%. Resets shouldn’t ever really happen since risks are avoidable, which is why even small death chances should be given large weight.

Unfortunately for this statement, Ike improves over the course of 11 chapters, which makes that 1% look a lot less intimidating in general. The only time he should be facing such figures of death is his so-called "worst chapters", which at least one of them (C4) isn't quite as intimidating with the forests. Remember, that chapter is also a "defeat boss" so Ike has no real motivation to move forward.

Now this 1% chance when both of Ike’s possible supporters are in range. Ike doesn’t have matching movement with either Soren or Oscar, and all 3 might not all be in play simultaneously, so that’s a very real possibility.

As in "both won't be on the field" or "both won't be around him"? Oscar has no real reason to leave Ike behind. Having that extra Avoid is great even with your durability: it makes it from having somewhat slim chances of dying to "lolwhutisdying?" Oscar does appreciate such boosts earlygame since that gives Oscar a jump in durability. It doesn't need to be used indefinitely, but there is no reason that Oscar would charge forward without it and not think twice about it.

Soren, well, I'll admit it's not a great support. It's okay for Soren to have since he could use the extra dodge, but for Titania's case it almost doesn't matter though I'll explain that later on.

You can trade weapons in the advancement and a lot of the weapon distribution is intuitive. Boyd, for instance, doesn’t even want to use the steel axe much since it weighs him down. Ditto for steel lance!Oscar. The hand axe also hurts Boyd’s accuracy a fair deal so Titania’s innately more likely to use it.

With Oscar, there are instances where he won't always double with an Iron Lance. He's still losing AS for a while. Take C4 for example when Oscar is about Level 6 from your perspective. He still misses doubling on 8/22 enemies on C4, which is about 36% of the enemies. Those enemies he can swap to a Steel Lance and have powerful single hits. Before you ask "how much does his AS plummet?" it does go down to 2; however, it'll only get Oscar doubled by 1 Myrmidion though he's only doing 6 damage with both hits, so it's not a major penalty. I'll admit for Boyd it's a bit more of a constraint. Boyd has about 8 AS with an Iron Axe and with Steel it once again drops to 2, so single-hit wise they aren't bad options.

I really don’t see how this pans out into an advantage for Ike. If anything, Ike being locked to iron/steel/regal sword is worse than Oscar having options like the short spear and javelin while Boyd has the hand axe and hammer, shared or not.

You said so yourself: Boyd wouldn't want to use the Hand Axe because of it's iffy accuracy. Even Oscar isn't winning the olympics with his ranged weapon and his AS plummets to about 4, which barely doubles units such as Soliders. As I've said, 1-2 ranged is cool, but that doesn't automatically mean Ike is scratched out. Ike has Regal Sword: can Oscar or Boyd compare to that? (Lol Boyd + Hammer = 0 AS).

If Oscar can pull a ORKO using steel, why wouldn’t he? Gatrie’s better off sticking to a weaker lance in chapter 8 since he 2RKOes armors with either iron or steel.

Try Oscar has 2 AS with a Steel Lance. The chances of him ORKOing with 17 Atk is fairly slim. He can take down a fairly weakened Solider, but Gatrie is likely the better option here.

If you’re considering extreme cases only, then 17-3 and 4 should be added to that list. Though really, Ike is arguably the worst unit around until Soren joins, and continues to be second worst until Mia joins. Even if he somehow gathered “positive utility” in the timeframe where Tanith wasn’t around, it would be minor at best.

In those chapters Ike is not forced to hold Leanne. Anyone can supposedly carry her: it is not totally on Ike's burden. Units such as Jill and Marcia can hold onto her if needed and the team can pass Leanne around. Since the first Chapter is nothing but a defend chapter so if someone, say Jill, is promoted and she doesn't have to do much she can sit in the forests and not take counterattacks (where the enemies won't reach her). She can still participate in battle with Canto helping this out, so she's not being deadweight with such a strategy.

Ike is about 50/50 in C4, C6 is hellish but not many other units are doing that much better, then C7 at least there are AKs. Ike, for the most part, is contributing positively in many ways:

- Ike is being 3RKOed or higher, pending on the situation. He is at risk of 3RKOes in some of the more brutal chapters of his, but still has ways to accomodate it.

- Ike has the Regal Sword: something Boyd nor Oscar could ever attempt to fathom.

- Ike is able to double more often if he wields a heaveir weapon: his AS growth is that good.

- Ike's durability is also easy to fix. Recall that he has a 75% HP growth on top of a 40% Def growth. It's a bit shadowed by the bases, but it just goes to show how much easier it is to fix The Knight Band is available as early as C3 which gives Ike a little time to make his C6 and C7 performance a bit better.

- Ike's dodging game is on par thanks to his high Avoid growth: 135%. Oscar support greatly benefits it while Titania / Soren can partially benefit it.

- Other than some of Ike's mediocre chapters, his contributions are either neutral in some situations or even positive, which is much more than a "minor" advantage.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. The first sentence suggests you’re focusing on a Mist/Titania support, but that can’t be it since Mist doesn’t support Ike. You also can’t be talking about Titania because she can’t support herself. Clarification?

A Mist | B Ike.

The problem is that supports don’t help Soren’s contribution as a healer. He’s obviously not making use of the offensive bonuses when mending someone, and the defensive bonuses only apply when an enemy can break through the frontlines. Then being within support range of a non-Mist healer is definitely an issue for various reasons. First, healers go where they are in demand, whereas a map’s combat usually follows a linear progression from point A to B.

Most healers would be following the combat units, thus I'd highly doubt that healers would not move in a linear rate. The Ike | Soren support isn't as helpful later on, yes, but earlygame it can help his chances of death decrease. Lesse... he gets a C by C9. Let's say Soren is Level 8 for the hell of it:

It's not helping him a whole lot more early on, but let's put him at promotion at 10/1 by C11. Let's just round up the Spd stat.

10/1 Soren: 26.05 HP | 2.45 Str | 12.4 Mag | 14.95 Skl | 14 (13.6) Spd | 7.7 Luck | 5.35 Def | 13.05 Res

Wind: 14.4 Mag, 14 AS, 35 Avo

Thunder: 16.4 Mag, 13 AS, 33 Avo

Note that C Ike offers +7 Avoid. Now, let's look at the hit rates for this chapter:

Fighter - 81 Hit, 61 Hit

Myrmidion - 102 Hit x2, 100 Hit

Weapon Knights - 85, 90, 93, and 100 Hit rates (85 is more common)

AKs - 76 Hit, 89 Hit x2

Soldier - 88 Hit, 90 Hit x2

This should suffice. Now let's see... It takes 14 Atk to 3RKO and 18 Atk to 2RKO. Latter is obviously more common, so let's use those.

To clarify as well, Soren doubles 30 enemies with Wind and it's barely affected wielding Thunder. Though this isn't the point: chances of death is. Alright, so he won't be damaged much on the Player Phase, so let's focus on the Enemy Phase.

Without Ike vs an 85 base Hit unit: 50-52 Hit

With Ike vs an 85 base Hit unit: 43-45 Hit (37.41 - 40.95 real)

Let's assume the best case scenario: with the 37.41% real hit, the chance of death for Soren is 25% without Ike vs. 13%. Granted Soren isn't the manliest of units and to be honest he isn't durable at all; however, just with the Ike support it's easy to determine how much better it is for Soren to survive.

As for being out of range, there's Physics to consider as well.

Second, if Ike is one the frontline, then Soren might not get ample protection being only 3 spaces away. And finally, I’d like to re-iterate their movement differences. Once Ike promotes, there’s not much that can slow him down, so compounding 1 move over 4 turns would already have Soren out of range.

Ike has 7 Mov to Soren's 6. While it's true Soren will have to stay out of harm's way, we aren't going to "LEEROY JENKINS" through the chapters. Soren being near Ike isn't a major detriment just as long as he's 3 spaces away, which will at least decrease the chances of being hit on the Enemy Phase.

What the hell’s a mage/sage scenario? It doesn’t matter if Soren is the best sage in the game if the units who share her class aren’t even good to begin with.

Yeah, Soren almost does look like a chick. Creepy, isn't it? He actually has a decent HP growth, though I will admit his Def sucks. Somewhat easy to fix though (it's not a lifesaver) but he can have the Def bands to increase his durability growth from 5% to 10%.

And yeah, sealing Soren will murder his offence in the long run. If you promote him as early as you can, he’ll only have 16 spd/18 mag at 10/10 and 21 spd/24 mag at max level. Take the 10/10 scenario at chapter 17 for example: With an elwind tome he 2 rounds most of what he doubles, and many enemies have 13+ AS by this point.

When? 10/1 Soren by C11 was doubling the vast majority of units. He's not much of a sellout in C12 but Ravens are hell for just about anyone. By C18 Soren should be around Level 10/10 at worst which puts his Spd at 17.6 (just rounded to 18). This doubles practically everything in C18 as it is. 10/20 Soren has 21 Spd which doubles almost everything, a Level 11/20 or 12/20 Soren has 22 Spd which doubles over 50% of the map until you start gearing toward Endgame. On top of that Soren is close to 4 Str with some Band levels, which at least is enough to wield Tornado with 1 AS loss. An early seal can piddle around with Soren by lategame, but this doesn't mean Soren is going to be deadweight from an offensive perspective.

I’d hardly call a 14% chance of activation per hit after sealing to be decent, particularly if Soren is relying on this to land kills.

This increases with doubling. He has about a 26% chance of activating it when doubling. Taking C11 for the example, Thunder!Soren has 16 Atk and 13 AS. While I do admit he only 2RKOes at this point without Adept, this doesn't mean that he's totally reliant on it. For example, if Soren attacks a Weapon Knight that has 29 HP | 4 Res, he leaves it well within kill range (5 points off). If Soren is allowed to have a forged Thunder, which has 21 Atk now, this actually ORKOes everything Soren doubles.

Unlike RD, it’s very rare to get +-10 bio as its effect only lasts 1 turn. The most common one I found when recording enemy stats was +-5.

Ah, I apologize. It's actually +/- 10 for Avoid and +/- 5 for Hit, so in reality you will face +/- 15 at best and worst.

There were also some points about Ike’s supports you didn’t address.
Then he can take sol for a 16.5% chance of healing per attack or equip the KW for +2 def/res, among many other things.

I thought I did cover this partially. It's fine: by lategame neither Oscar nor Ike are really begging to be near each other since the former has Sol and the latter has Aether for healing purposes. That doesn't mean the support is never going to be used: Laguz have scarily high Hit rates and both would like to be near each other to circumvent some of the hit. C22 Cats have 127 Hit and Tigers have 122 Hit. 20/10 Oscar has 56 base Avoid to Ike's 64. The former faces 71% and 66% displayed compared to Ike's 63% and 58% displayed. Though in respects Oscar is 6RKOed and 5RKOed and Ike is slightly similair (+1 HP difference). With the support intact, that makes Oscar face 41% and 36% displayed while Ike faces 33% and 28% displayed. That's a major difference without even looking into real hit scenarios.

As for the Knight Ward, again, I thought I was clear here:

As for the KW, remember that a lot of units can use the item, not just Oscar. Then we have to deal with it doesn't even come around until we see Astrid, so until then Oscar appreciates the earlygame boost to his durability.

In particular: any Paladin, Nephenee, and any AK that could see use. It's a highly competititive item.

In Titania’s case, she has atk issues lategame so A Mist/B Boyd would be her ideal option. An Ike B support only gives her 10 avo/1 def and they have trouble staying in range of each other.

A Mist/B Boyd still had Mov issues to begin with (Mist earlygame in general and then we're still stuck with Boyd). So, let's just take a glance at how "bad" her offense is with the difference. 20/10 by C18, k?

--/10 Titania (A Mist / B Boyd)

Steel Axe - 29 Atk

--/10 Titania (A Mist / B Ike)

Steel Axe - 28 Atk

To compare:

Base Tanith (Steel Lance) - 26 Atk

Base Ike (Iron Blade) - 27 Atk

At this point the Ike support is still keeping her above both Tanith and Ike w/out suppports (recall that Ike would scratch out Soren in this case). To compare, they still match in #RKOes against the Wyverns (31 HP | 15 Def), Soldiers + Halberdiers, 2RKO the Fighter and Warrior, etc. Notice there really isn't much of a difference with the support.

Now pit max Titania and toss her the Silver Axe.

--/20 Titania (A Mist / B Boyd)

Silver Axe - 39 Atk

--/20 Titania (A Mist / B Ike)

Sivler Axe - 38 Atk

To compare once again:

--/15 Tanith (B Marcia since A doesn't matter)

Silver Lance - 34 Atk

--/10 Ike

Silver Sword - 35 Atk

...Yeah, how is her lategame crippling again? She's beating both Ike and Tanith, the latter with a +Atk support.

So I don't see what's so crippling about it. Take that Ike support vs. the Boyd support: the extra 10 Avoid offered by Ike gives Titania 78 Avoid. C24 has some units that break a bit over the 100 Hit rates. Then there's Laguz with ~125 Hit rates. Without the support it's 57% Hit rates vs. 47%. which is a difference of the 2RNG system to bend in Titania's favor. That's just how beneficial it can be.

Marcia also chooses a more opportunistic time to join than Ike did. Not only can we BEXP her the chapter after she joins, we also get a huge supply of said resource from stealthing chp 10. Then once we get past 11, she gets to reap the benefits of 2 exp rich chapters (12 and 13 have ravens) while 15 provides her another huge share of BEXP to work with.

Looking at C1, I'd say that Ike joined at a fairly good time. He has slight issues in a total of maybe 3 chapters but after that then it's barely noticable. When Marcia joins:

--/4 Titania - 35.4 HP | 13.35 Str | 4.75 Mag | 14.8 Skl | 15.5 Spd | 12.35 Luck | 12.2 Def | 8.35 Res

14 Ike - 28.75 HP | 11.5 Str | 3.6 Mag | 12.5 Skl | 14.15 Spd | 10.55 Luck | 10.2 Def | 5.2 Res

14 Oscar - 32.05 HP | 10.95 Str | 3.2 Mag | 11.5 Skl | 11.95 Spd | 8.3 Luck | 11.85 Def | 3.3 res

14 Boyd - 39 HP | 14.2 Str | 0.6 Mag | 10 Skl | 11.4 Spd | 8.2 Luck | 8 Def | 3 Res

10 Soren - 22.05 HP | 0.45 Str | 11.4 Mag | 12.95 Skl | 11.6 Spd | 7.7 Luck | 3.35 Def | 11.05 Res

Marcia - 20 HP | 8 Str | 0 Mag | 7 Skl | 11 Spd | 4 Luck | 8 Def | 6 Res

Haha, yeah. What luck, right? I thought Soren was a deadweight unit (which he won't be in 1-2 levels and a Seal), but this is freaking ridiculous. Here's the gaps for Marcia:

Titania - +!5.4 HP | +4.2 Def

Ike - +8.75 HP | +2 Def

Oscar - +12 HP | +3.85 Def

Boyd - +19 HP

We thought Ike was getting slaughtered in C4 in comparison to his team (2 of the units that actually left permenantly btw), but Marcia is looking very crappy here. She would need some massive BEXP use in order to catch up, and she will still lose in durability for quite a while.

Let's just say Marcia is about Level 12 by C12 which is fairly nice on my part. For durability we have 24 HP | 10 Def at best. She's 4RKOed by units that also have Canto, which is bad. Level 15 Ike has 30 HP | 11 Def, which is pulling a 6RKO. Both on the low end of things, since there is Ravens with 17 and 18 Atk. For Marcia, she's 4RKOed by the 17 Atk but 3RKOed by the 18 Atk Ravens. For Ike, the worst is a 5RKO against the 18 Atk Ravens! On top of that let's look at offense:

Marcia - 21 Atk (Steel Lance), 13 AS

17 Atk (Javelin)

Ike - 20 Atk (Steel Sword), 15 AS

Admittidely Ike is 4RKOing many of the Ravens while Marcia can 3RKO a bit more; however, it becomes much worse with the Javelin. It's against 10-11 Def with that Javelin, which is pretty low damage output when it's backed by 17 Atk. Just 30 HP | 11 Def is a 5RKO with the Javelin. While Ike takes the course of 2 actual turns, Marcia takes 2 and a half with the Javelin. In fact, a Javelin chucked at a Raven means Marcia tarnishes some of her 3RKOes and now just became a 4RKO. 1 Javelin shot + 2 Steel Lance shots = 26 damage.

You can call Marcia horrible all you want, the only proof you provided so far was claiming her durability bases were worse than Ike, which I already countered a paragraph ago in saying she jumps out of base level at a frantic pace.

Admittidely she can climb out of it, but that's just how bad it is for her at that point. Though Marcia is at least improving on durability in the meantime, she will stay inferior to the rest of the GMs except Soren and maybe someone like Mia.

Marcia 20/1 (C Tanith): 32 hp, 14 def, 55 avo
Soren 10/12 (B Ike): 31 hp, 7 def, 62 avo

Do you stand by that comment?

Did you seem to brush off the Avo difference? Let's actually look at this (C19). Obviously I'm going to skip the Ravens since we want the Knight Ring. Now, Fighters have 88-89 Hit rates, Wyvern Riders have 97-98 Hit rates, lone Sniper has 109 Hit, Myrmidions have quite a lot (120s even!), etc. Let's just assume that it's the low-ends (so let's say the WKs). Soren faces 35% displayed (24.85 True) while Marcia faces 42% displayed (35.70 True). Yes, Soren does lose a bit on the concrete durability, but in the Avoid aspect Soren can escape a bit better. There's a 6% chance for Soren to die in two hits, while for Marcia (25 Atk vs 32 HP | 14 Def so a 3RKO) but a 4%. That's just how borderline Marcia is to Soren in this case.

The period in which Oscar’s concrete durability is low enough to “appreciate” Ike’s extra avoid is reasonably small. I already showed that Oscar laughs at enemy attacks by promotion, and if that occurred in 16, we’re only talking an 8 chapter gap between your example and mine. But then that falls to 6 when considering 10 and 15 are best performed in a pacifist manner. Then the ravens in 12 have really low atk (even an 11/0 Oscar takes 5 damage per hit, an effective 5HKO) and only 2-3 come at your group every few turns or so. Then the enemies in 13 are mostly distracted by the NPCs, and a 15/0 Oscar only faces about 0-6 damage per attack on average (a 6+HKO). I could go on, but you get the point.

At this point Ike is starting to improve as well. Notice that he's already doing well against the Ravens (taking about the same as Oscar damage-wise) and by the time Ike nears promotion he has 33 HP | 13 Def. To compare, a 20/1 Oscar has 38 HP | 16 Def. Though yes, Ike does lose a bit against him, it doesn't mean that Ike is being slaughtered. The support is a minor boon for both of them when they face rather weird Hit rates, go under biorhythm for that one turn, etc. I've shown that Oscar still appreciates it, and by midgame neither really need the support, which is true (Masteries taken into account).

If Titania really wants durability, she’ll take sol. The first occult can only be used in 14, which is well before most of your units can even promote, so putting it on her saves an occult from collecting dust for 3-4 chapters. Then virtually none of the pallies want sol in the first place. Oscar and Kieran have phenomenal concrete/avo durability combos. Then Astrid and Geoffrey have paragon, which leaves Makalov. But then a 20/1 Mak has the same def as a 20/3 Oscar, which seems to indicate that he becomes incredibly durable himself once he gets past his sucky start. Even if we gave an occult to Ike and Makalov, that still leaves an occult for Titania as well as a spare.

Titania is obtaining +1 Def from either Boyd or Ike, so that doesn't matter. Then it's 1 Atk vs. 10 Avoid, which I've shown the 10 Avoid isn't bad to have when someone such as Mist isn't even offering her any extra Avoid anyway. Yeah, there is no true issue with Occult scrolls, but keep in mind with the fact that at this point the durability leads for Oscar have been closing in with Ike promoted. He doesn't have as nutty stats; however, Ike does at least have some extra Avoid on his own.

Why would Marcia pass up 10-15 avo for 1 def, even if the point of def takes effect for longer?

Well, you win for today. Gatrie doesn't kick in until C20. Though, to answer your question: take the example I presented above with Marcia vs. Soren. With that +1 Def, suddenly she is 4RKOed by the 25 Atk Wyvern Knights. Concrete durability is still important to have by Midgame, and she's being very rocky in this aspect considering that many of our units at this point are taking way more than 3RKOes to actually die (except I guess healers).

Archers/snipers are prime player phase targets because they can be attacked with no fear of counter. Also, eliminating them gets rid of a 2 range annoyance the following enemy phase. Moreover, bow users aren’t even that common.
Chapter 18: 2/36 (5.5%)

Chapter 19: 4/32 (12.5%)

Chapter 20: 3/39 (7.7%)

Chapter 21: 4/55 (7.3%)

Chapter 22: 5/54 (9.3%)

Usually, the only bow threats that are menacing to fliers are ballistae. You really just want to give your tankiest flier the FG and have that unit take out the ballistae so that your other fliers can roam freely, which resolves said issue pretty quickly.

Hm... let's see. There's only one problem: Tanith is not the tankiest flying unit we have. In fact, it's actually Jill who would be using the Full Guard. In other words, if something such as a Sniper isn't taken out (or in some cases the Ballistae), Tanith needs to avoid these guys.

If both Marcia and Tanith were in play but not supporting each other, this full guard issue would still exist. Thus, the support itself has nothing to do with it.

It's simply stating how horrible of a support partner she really is. What a thief. Ah well, at least Jill would be the best unit for the Full Guard anyway, so there isn't much of a bother here.

Yeah, because a fraction of a def point is really going to let Ike face more rounds than Tanith. If you’re trying to be a comedian, then your career is off to a blazing start.

I promise Vykan that I'll recommend you as a contact. But really, let's just see how that .4 Def does make a difference:

20/1 Ike v1 - 38 HP | 15 Def

20/1 Ike v2 - 38 HP | 16 Def

V1 is 4RKOed by a 24 Atk Wyvern Knight for an example. V2 is 5RKOed. .4 makes quite a difference, good sir.

Ike’s Soren support has a laundry list of problems I’ve already pointed out, whereas Oscar doesn’t really care who he’s supporting.

Only thing is Oscar will take the Ike support and at least have the Keiran support. Anyway, Soren's support is a minor boon since the main goal Soren is doing is a primary healer and a secondary fighter anyway. Healers make pretty nice supporters for that reason. How else is Mist that high other than Canto + Healing utility?

Not in any significant way. I’ll re-post Tanith’s avo numbers assuming she gets –5 bio and the enemy has +5 bio.
If we took the same enemies I used with Marcia in chapter 18, Tanith faces at most 39 real hit with weapon triangle neutrality. If we gave her a steel sword against a lv 20 fighter, now she’s only facing 9.03 hit. The funniest part is this is before supports. Raise her B Oscar/B Marcia (only takes 6 chapters) and now she has 91 avo, more if we consider levelling + a 110% avo growth. There are enemies in chapter 24 that she would face 0 display against, and the most accurate enemy I could find was an iron blade swordmaster with 114 hit. That’s 21 true hit before possible WTA from lances, which would drop it to 5.95.

Alright I see what you meant.

Colonel M · July 15, 2009

Pt II

I was also undermining Tanith’s concrete durability in saying she got 3-4+HKOed. In chapter 18:
Enemies that 3HKO

-1 archer

-1 fighter

-2 sages

-1 general

-kayachey

Enemies that 4HKO

-3 wyvern riders

-1 warrior

-1 lance knight

Enemies that 5HKO

-1 sage

-1 general

-2 lance knights

-1 axe knight

-1 paladin

Enemies that 6HKO

-4 soldiers

-2 sword knights

Enemies that 7HKO

-1 halberdier

Enemies that do 1-4 damage

-1 soldier

-2 bishops

-1 knight

-7 ravens

Out of 35 enemies, 68% of them require 5 hits or more to take down Tanith. Moreover, the majority of the enemies that pull 3-4HKOes on Tanith tend to have the lowest hit rates on her. For instance, the laguz lance!general only pulls 21 true, 15 with C Marcia. Even if we biorhythm screwed her, it’s still only 28 true she’s facing. The 2 bolting sages are even worse, they only manage 16 real despite biorhythm working against her.

You threw me off with saying that she was 3-4RKOed, hence why I said it. Even with Ike under negative biorhythm and no supports with him (so -10 I'm assuming?) Ike still has 41 Avoid. Obviously supports boost this a bit, but you get the point: neither are dying, just Ike isn't dying as soon as Tanith "might".

All you did was show that a bunch of high/top tier units have comparable to better concrete durability than Tanith. Why you’re ignoring avo as part of durability is beyond my comprehension.

Most of the time concrete durability should be assumed, but okay let's see.

Base lvl Tanith- 66 avo
20/1 Jill – 41 avo

20/1 Boyd – 40 avo

20/1 Oscar – 44 avo

--/10 Titania – 53 avo

20/1 Mist –53 avo

10 Lethe – 58 avo

20/1 Kieran – 44 avo

20/1 Astrid – 46 avo

20/1 Makalov – 45 avo

Before you scream supports, most of these characters would still lose avo with them. Boyd, for example, doesn’t get any avo from supports, while someone like Mist can only get 7 from Jill (7 from Rolf too but who cares). Oscar would be the only one who can beat unsupported Tanith (89 avo with A Ike/B Kieran).

I wasn't even going to scream such a statement. Though to keep going, Titania with B Ike is 3 off of base Tanith's Avo, 8 for Mist (B Jill), 3 for Lethe (B Jill, ramming for A), Kieran with B Oscar / A anyone ties Kieran, etc. It's cool that base Tanith has the Avoid, but that's just it: she's slightly more reliant on the Avoid than these guys with their concrete durability.

Evidently, Tanith only widens these gaps as her own supports come into play. For example, if she has A Oscar/B Marcia at lv --/16, she’ll have 112 avo. In contrast, max level Ike with A Oscar/B Soren has 120 avo while max level Zihark with A Muarim/B Brom has 110.5 avo.

Alright... so neither are killable except Ike's still beating her because of this?

Again, Ike’s concrete durability lead would only have any significant impact if either character could actually get hit. Any enemy that 3HKOes Tanith at 10% real only manages a 0.1% chance of killing her, and you yourself said 1% were favourable odds. The fact that you won’t even find 3 enemies that can 3HKO Tanith within her attack range simultaneously simply makes her even harder to kill.

To use an example, say I threw both Ike and Tanith into the middle of the field, expecting both to take hits. I ditched their supports, etc. I'm a bit more relieved to throw Ike into the middle of the field than Tanith just because of two reasons:

1) I know what #RKOes Ike will face without being hellbent reliant on the RNG.

2) Aether activation. 20/1 Ike has a 31.11% chance of unleashing Aether in one of those two hits, thus automatically healing Ike for the amount of damage given to the opponent.

Obviously both are quite durable with and without Avoid right now.

Why would Tanith’s supports ever slow her down? If she for some strange reason chooses to support Reyson, she’ll simply pass on his bonuses most of the time, not restrict herself to staying in his range. Moreover, Tanith matches movement with her supporters better than Ike does with his:
Ike-Titania: 3 move gap, lessens to 2 once Ike promotes.

Ike-Oscar: 2 move gap.

Ike-Soren: 1 move gap.

Ike- Reyson/Ranulf-Elincia: A combination of the first 3 cases.

Most of Ike's supports are still slightly within their range. Just because Ike is 2 gaps off most of the time doesn't mean he sucks as a support unit and is slowing up down. In contrast, the reason Tanith is slowing it down is because of below:

Tanith-Marcia: Perfect movement match.
Tanith-Oscar: Their movement only differs in the advantages Tanith’s flight brings.

Tanith-Reyson: 4 move gap, reduces to 1 whenever Reyson transforms.

This being the main reason. Reyson has little Mov to begin with, thus Tanith needs to slow down to have this support. On top of that, Tanith could be assumed to need to protect Reyson who isn't exactly the most durable unit on earth. If we're going to hyperspam about Ike and his Mov gaps, the Reyson / Tanith one should be considered to be a slight negative as well.

That only serves to mitigate a huge advantage, and as I said earlier, bow users are both priority targets and rare enemies. Ballista are the only things really holding Tanith back, but those are gone as soon as a full guard!flier takes them out, and Tanith might just be the very unit assigned to that task.

You said that I would give the unit with the best concrete durability the Knight Ward. The winner is supposedly Jill in that case, so why would I send someone who is that much more inferior in concrete durability (but I will admit Tanith wins in Avoid somewhat)? I wouldn't: Jill with the Full Guard about 19 Def by 20/5, which is better than Tanith's 15 at base backed by a 20% Def growth. Jill is less likely to take damage in terms of concrete hits than Tanith, which is important because Ballistae have about 20-22 Atk when they arrive.

The thing is Tanith won’t be facing enemies every single turn, so whenever that’s the case, she has a free opportunity to vulnerary herself. Since she doesn’t get hit a lot, that lone vulnerary usually suffices to alleviate her wounds. Alternatively, a healer could physic her if she’s the only unit with a non-negligible wound on that turn, and that can’t really be held against her as hogging healer attention.

If I'm reading this statement right, you're saying that "Ike needs healer attention" when he has a Skill that has over 30% chance to heal him in a single match.

(IMG #1)
It can take foot soldiers the entirety of the chapter to reach the area where Shiharam is, whereas Tanith can get there in 3.

So what are we doing? Wardrop and such? Alright, let's look at the # of turns needed to clear for max BEXP. So... 10 turns. Alright then, looking at the map, it's true that she can help speed up this chapter, but only if she did something such as a War drop over the mountain. To clarify: we usually have more than enough Paladins to ferry units at least around the Mountain. There's a 10 turn span for us to finish this chapter, so with driving forward and not looking back, then this chapter can be cleared fine without the Pegasi.

By the looks of it, crossing that mountain with a unit seems perilous. There are many Wyvern Riders in this chapter and they usually roost near Shiharam or in the Mountains. War drops aren't a good idea either, so it's left to Tanith just reaching there faster. Not really a big deal with this chapter in general since the only logical strategy here would've been either Tanith travels alone (which means no Oscar) and goes with Marcia. Just to clarify on that, it's still a C which means her Avoid is going to be about 74 with a --/13 Manith near C Marcia.

(IMG 2 & 3)
There are multiple waterways that Tanith can bypass, and each one saves countless turns a foot soldier would otherwise need to maneuver around.

There are so many bridges on here. We could have a lone Paladin (think Oscar) trounce around to obtain the 1st and 2nd chest rooms, then manuever the team toward Ena. BTW: we have 18 turns to clear this chapter. That gives us quite a bit of time to reach toward Ena.

(IMG 4)
Most units need to zigzag around the sandbags I encircled while Tanith can simply fly over them in 1 turn.

Ah, and this is the chapter with the Ballistae, which would make this a minor point if any, maybe even a bad situation just because of them. It's simply better to walk around them or, IIRC, just do the glitch with Haar / Jill with the Full Guard.

(IMG 5 & 6)
Tanith can reach Rikard in about 3 turns. A foot soldier, however, has to not only go by the bridge on the northeast corner of the picture, they also have to go around the forest northwest of the picture. They might only get there by the time you already have a unit ready to arrive.

Ah, and the maps are gone at this point. Alright, so this will have to be off the top of my head. IIRC there is a bridge to the west of our starting position which is only surrounded by forests. Not a major deal to get around (I could be missing something important but it's due to the lack of resources).

Flying introduces so many shortcuts in this chapter it’s staggering. Tanith could fly circles around Ike here and still be ahead of him.

This chapter is also perilous because of the rocks automatically doing 10 damage per hit, and Tanith isn't high on her HP count. There's also the dangerous Iron Ballistae wandering around here, cutting into the "flying in circles" thing a bit under.

Bypassing that forest is as big a shortcut as the Talrega one mentioned earlier.

This also puts us against a lot of dangerous situations: many longrange tomes, Dragons roaming around the throne, and then all it takes is one wrong look at a Sleep staff and Tanith's stuck all the way over there in the forests ready to die.

These are just the major obstacles that Tanith is able to bypass. Including the minor ones would probably double the length of this post.

Some of the major ones have flaws though. For one, crossing the mountains in Shiharam's chapter by doing something such as a wardrop is not a good idea. For the indoor chapter it does help somewhat; however, with such a high turn count there isn't much grinding needed for it. Not sure on the chapter with Rikard so I'll have to cross my fingers on that. Then the other three I mentioned have issues (ballistae, long range tomes, Sleep Staves, etc).

Tanith would only rescue someone in situations where very few enemies are immediately ahead. So let’s say Boyd moves up to her, she rescues him, cantoes into a mountain. Then, next turn she drops him. Boyd now moved an extra 6 spaces (more if Tanith bypassed a terrain obstacle) at the cost of 1 phase for Tanith as well as 1 player phase for both units. In countless situations this is a positive trade-off because of the long-term benefits we get from having boosted Boyd that much farther than he would’ve gotten on his own.

Hey, that's great and all but there's one problem. I think Boyd might want to be near his supports since he isn't a dodging tank and isn't much on the durable end. One of the few non-mounted units that might benefit from such a setup is possibly Ike and that is only because his ability is unique to him.

Everyone who doesn’t have a mount profits from ferrying tactics. You must be under the mistaken impression that Tanith is rescuing injured units to protect them. While she can indeed do that, her main function behind rescuing is to help a foot soldier keep up with your other mounts.

Mounted units don't mind going further ahead, but there is nothing that is saying "you can't go back" either. Canto is a flexible ability that allows the mounted units to come back to the unmounted units. Even so, unmounted units aren't lacking in a skill that mounts don't have.

There are numerous units Ike cannot even shove but Tanith can rescue (untransformed Lethe for instance). Then if Ike had to move 5 spaces instead of 7 to shove someone, we basically just sacrificed 2 move to gain 1, which is a net loss. The increased mobility Tanith’s ferrying provides to the team easily outweighs the benefits of Ike’s shoving.

Not at all. Take for example of a unit that is just one Mov away from reaching a unit. Ike can easily easily shove the unit forward and only waste a Player Phase. Shove is a nice skill to have because it allows easy reach. Shoves are also reliable for clearing out units that are in the way. Say Boyd attacked a unit but he didn't KO but there is no more room for another unit to attack. Ike can easily Shove Boyd aside and let another unit finish the weakened unit off. I don't recall if Ike gains Wt by promotion (I assume he has 12 at that point), so I'll take 2 scenarios:

If he has 9, Ike can shove:

- Boyd

- Rhys

- shinon

- Soren

- Mia

- Ilyana

- Mist (before Mount)

- Volke

- Nephenee

- Zihark

- Sothe

- Tormod

- Reyson

- Janaff

- Ulki

- Calill

- Lucia

- Bastian

The possibilities are endless. Then give someone like Ike the Statue Frags, and he can shove a hell of a lot of units. If he does have about 12 upon promotion, he can even shove someone like Tauroneo 1 extra space.

Shove is also nice for many other reasons. Take C23 with the Priests: Tanith can't help shove these idiots aside while Ike has no problems shoving a Priest into the wall (man... that seems cruel). Then there's another thing Tanith can't do that Ike can: Shove enemies. Say someone like Soren is at risk of dying; however, for some reason Ike cannot ORKO the unit that is within Soren's range. All Ike has to do is walk up to the unit and Shove him aside, thus saving Soren.

Rescue is cool when you're a mount, but Shove is also cool when you're not a mount.

The problem here is that the Sonic Sword has finite use whereas Tanith’s 1-2 range options are buyable. 2 rounding with a 25 use weapon only results in 6.25 kills. Then we’re also eliminating the possibility of putting the SS on a unit with a good mag stat, particularly Mist who can 1RKO basically anything with it. For example, a 20/8 Mist with supports has 36 atk targeting res. For perspective, that does 117% damage to chapter 28 tigers.

That's great and all, but at that point the Runesword is available. Ike does have the opportunity to have 1-2 range; however, he doesn't mind 1 range except on the rare occasion.

That would only be true if Tanith’s only weapon choices were javelins. Obviously we have her use javs when its benefits outweigh the advantages of using a 1 range weapon. If we pit both Ike and Tanith against say, a group of sages, Tanith has the ability to output more enemy phase damage than Ike’s 0, which can only be seen as an advantage for her.

What kind of rare scenario is this? Again, allow me to point something out:

"Let's say Ike ORKOes everything that is 1 ranged and Tanith 2RKOes with range. Ike attacks one unit on the Player Phase and Tanith does as well. The score so far is 1-0. Now for the Enemy Phase let's say there's 1 unit that attacks from a distance and one that attacks up close. Ike ORKOes the unit up close and cannot dent the unit from a distance. Tanith now proceeds to kill the unit that she weakened; however, she cannot ORKO the two units that apporach her. Now the score is 2-1 in Ike's favor. Ike kills another unit, and let's just say that Tanith weakens another unit. 3-1 so far. Enemy Phase same scenario: Ike kills one but leaves the other alive, Tanith at least KOes the 3 units that she has weakened; however, the other two enemies that are approaching are only chipped."

While 1-2 range is nice to have, that's just it: it tarnishes your #RKO potential. Ike can clearly kill more in a course of two phases with a close combat weapon than Tanith can with a 1-2 range weapon. The best Tanith can do with it is weaken a unit and then proceed to kill the same unit alive on the Enemy Phase then simply weaken two more. While Ike has left 1 enemy untouched, Tanith has left 2 enemies. Last time I checked, 1 was a lower number than 2, so despite having 1 range Ike can still be either equal or more effecient with 1 range.

I have no idea why Makalov would pass up the vague katti for a steel axe since he’s probably not going to have A axes for a while, if at all. Steel axes give 2 WEXP and 181 is required to jump from E to A. That’s 45 kills Makalov needs before silvers are available to him, more if we consider he won’t be using axes 24/7 after promotion. See, a steel blade actually ties a steel axe in Mt while having +10 accuracy, and the game has plenty of sword/axe users he’d want to use it on. And according to the site, steel blades are buyable in all but 4 chapters after chp 13, so running out of them isn’t an issue either.

As soon as Makalov promotes he wants to stray away from maining Swords and would rather stick to a forged Steel Axe and Hand Axes. Yeah, Mak has a chance of Vague Katti, but by promotion Swords are merely an afterthought for him. Besides, Urvan is back with the dead Griel. >_<;

You’re also forgot to name plenty of “randoms” such as Stefan, Tauroneo (base rank of A in swords) and of course Tanith herself (base rank of A in swords as well).

Vague Katti is an S Rank weapon, not an A Rank. We could've guessed Stefan, Taur is a bit late, and Tanith... alright, fine. It's possible she could've used it too.

So Ike can get the VK while maintaining a clean slate whereas Tanith taking the flame lance warrants negative attention? Sounds like a double standard to me.
At any rate, Tanith has some very thin competition for the weapon. She has 13.5 mag at max level while most units are well below that (Gatrie for instance only has 3.5 at max lvl). There actually isn’t a single unit who can both use lances and beat her mag stat, and the closest anyone can get is ~2 points. As I showed earlier, Tanith can ORKO laguz with the lance, though not by such a huge margin that people with lower mag could do the same. This obviously suggests that her odds of getting the lance are pretty damn high.

Why give it to someone like Gatrie who can't double? Anyway:

20/10 Marcia - 6.8 Mag + 24 Mt

Cats are ORKOed (42 HP | 9 Res)

20/10 Oscar - 8.2 Mag + 24 Mt

Cats are also ORKOed.

20/10 Kieran - 5.55 Mag + 24 Mt

Kieran has a 45% chance of ORKOing Cats as well.

20/10 Jill - 7 Mag + 24 Mt

Does it seem obvious yet?

20/10 Nephenee - 7.4 Mag + 24 Mt

*Sigh*

--/15 Titania - 7.5 Mag + 24 Mt

She needs an extra level, but then she'll double most of the Cats.

See what I mean? It takes minimal magic to make this Lance work on something like Cats.

Need I remind you how little Tanith needs to worry about her survival lategame?
Max level Tanith (A Marcia, B Oscar): 38 hp, 17.5 def, 16 res, 112 avo

(A Oscar, B Marcia): 117 avo

2x Tiger lv 11-12 (claw)

46 hp, 31 atk, 17 AS, 129 hit, 37 avo, 20 def, 9 res, 9 crit, 3 cev

Tanith is 3HKOed at 3-6 real hit. Assuming the latter case, that’s a 0.02% chance of death in 3 attacks, which is less than 1 in 4000 outcomes. What’s funnier is that the chapter only has 2 tigers until reinforcements start showing up.

3x Cat lv 9 (claw)

39 hp, 25 atk, 17 AS, 122 hit, 36 avo, 17 def, 8 res, 7 crit, 2 cev

Tanith is 6HKOed at 0.55-2 real hit. Tanith’s death chances are better expressed in scientific notation (6.4 x 10^-9 % after 6 attacks).

3x Hawk lv 9-10 (beak)

39 hp, 24 atk, 17 AS, 128 hit, 36 avo, 15 def, 8 res, 9 crit, 2 cev

Same scenario as the cat, more or less.

1x Halberdier lv 11 (silver lance)

42 hp, 30 atk, 15 AS, 116 hit, 35 avo, 16 def, 11 res, 9 crit, 5 cev

Tanith is 4HKOed at 0-0.36 real hit.

1x Sage lv 9 (meteor, bolganoe)

31 hp, 29 atk, 10 AS, 102 hit, 24 avo, 11 def, 17 res, 7 crit, 4 cev

He can’t even hit Tanith in either support configuration, and that includes possible biorhythm fluctuations. I suppose there’s the extremely rare case where Tanith has –10 bio and the sage has +10, but then she’d face the same hit rates she saw against the cat (0.55-2 real).

Let's also review something else. Take away supports altogether just to see how they do without:

20/10 Ike - 44 HP, 19 Def, 64 Avo

--/15 Manith - 35 HP, 16 Def, 72 Avo

This is just to see how well they do on their own since sometimes Ike or Tanith have to attack without their supports. Without their supports, Ike does win concrete durability: it's 9 HP | 3 Def vs. 8 Avo. Not only is Ike and Tanith good with supports, but Ike is pretty good even WITHOUT his supports. Then max Tanith vs. 20/15 Ike w/Ragnell:

20/15 Ike (Ragnell) - 48 HP, 24 Def, 72 Avo

--/20 Tanith - 38 HP, 18 Def, 77 Avo

Now it's Endgame and Ike is crushing Tanith in durability. 10 HP, 6 Def against 5 Avo again. Really, this just goes to show how well Ike is without his supports.

With supports, they're comparable. Outside of supports; however, Ike will beat Tanith in durability regardless. Then take other things into account: Ike has access to the forests to increase his Avoid and durability which makes up for the WTC Tanith has.

Ragnell!Ike and his glorious 27 def might be able to laugh off enemy attacks, but Tanith enjoys the same level of invincibility over 99.9% of the time (or some similarly ridiculous figure). I’ll concede that Ike wins the other 0.1% of the time (if that). However, that’s about as significant as Ike roflstomping the prologue.

Trust me, Ike wins even before both cap levels. 20/1 Ike vs. --/10 Tanith are comparable in stats at their join point, then with supports taken away Ike's durability actually matters more and more while Tanith is more reliant on them so her Avoid numbers are high enough. So, no, Ike ties Tanith with supports and in a short time bests Tanith in durability without supports.

That is compensated for in the BEXP we get from allied units fighting. Then since BEXP is easier to control than CEXP is, our reinforcements could actually prove to be a net positive in this regard.

Marginal extra amount of BEXP. It depends on what happens during the chapter, but even so the most we can probably get is about 200 with both of them shown out onto the field.

The reinforcements can be used as ballista bait instead. There are 3 after all, so 6 pegasi should keep those archers occupied while your playable fliers go take them out.

I could also send someone like Jill w/Full Guard and take out the Ballistae with little penalty or worry of losing her (I at least know she'll survive without making a dumb mistake). They make nice Ballistae-bait, but it's simply better to leave it to something that is controllable.

The ballistae have 10-15 range, why would they choose to attack one of the most durable members of the team? That is unless you meant Tauroneo kills the ballistician, but that’s an even sillier notion. Anyone can attack an archer on player phase without taking a counter. Then Tauroneo would be among the last people to actually reach the ballistician, and he might not even double the archer who’s using it.

Braves easily accomodate that (or if Resolve activates), but anyway: the point is we can use a durable unit to take out the Ballistician. In a span of turns and attacking up close, let's say the Ballistician is 16 panels away. Taur's 6 Mov vs. someone else's 7 Mov. Taur takes about 3 turns to reach there while the 7 Mov unit... takes the same amount of turns. No harm in letting the most durable unit do what he does best: send him in the middle of everything and watch him survive petty assualts.

??? I’m not sure if that was a counter-point or a bitter concession.

I... don't see anything that says that.

If you look at that comparison carefully, you’ll see that the reinforcement beats Ike as well. A 5 atk/5 AS lead is huge. In fact, supports and forges aside, those NPC seraph knights are probably the best units you can field until silver weapons are buyable. Sure, you cannot really control them fully, but you’ll reap their combat benefits in some way regardless.

Looking at C18, Ike practically doubles everything except the Raven reinforcements, but that's about it.

Edited July 15, 2009 by Colonel M

Vykan12 · July 16, 2009

I decided to do something different and divide this debate into sections so that it’s easier to read. Now you can ctrl+f [1.X] to find specific sections.

-Ike’s earlygame [1.1]

-Supports [1.2]

-Full guard [1.3]

-Flying + 1-2 range [1.4]

-Reinforce [1.5]

===============

Ike’s earlygame [1.1]

===============

Even at neutral bio he's facing high hit rates: 67-71%. Taking the 71%, he has 48% chance of death.

What makes Boyd more durable is that he has a 0% chance of dying in 3 hits while Ike is already facing non-negligible death odds. If both units face 3 enemies in a turn, at least I can send Boyd back a few spaces and have him heal himself. Ike, on the other hand, could’ve caused a reset, and now I have to repeat some amount of turns to regain my progress in the game.

Thank the Iron Axe for nerfing 3 AS from him.

The fastest enemy in chapter 1 is a myrmidon with 3 AS so it’s impossible for Boyd to get doubled.

Boyd doesn't even 2RKO all the time either: he fails to 2RKO a Fighter, a Bandit, and the Boss obviously.

This issue may exist for Boyd in chapter 1, but it disappears almost immediately. For one thing, his AS growth is huge: it’s essentially 100% (60% str + 40% spd) until he stops getting weighed down whereas enemy AS progression is pretty pitiful (even if they gain AS from levels, they also start to use steel more which weighs them down). The same concept applies to his str; he grows atk much faster than enemies grow concrete durability.

Let’s jump to chapter 7 for instance.

Boyd lv 8/0 (iron axe): 19 atk, 9-11 AS

I put Boyd’s AS as a range because there’s a very good chance he’ll use the speedwing we get in chapter 2. His only real competition for that resource in most of earlygame are Soren and Ilyana, but giving it to them means that speedwing needs to rot for a few chapters instead of taking effect. Moreover, we’re supposedly master sealing our mage characters, which makes their combat pretty pitiful, speedwing or not. Boyd can apply his additional doubling in far more places than they can so he’s easily the most logical choice for it. Later on we get Mordy and Brom who might want that speedwing, but now we’re talking about waiting 8-9 chapters to use it, and both units need multiple speedwings to immediately double reliably.

3x Soldier lv 7 (steel lance)

25 hp, 16 atk, 0 AS, 85 hit, 1 avo, 6 def, 2 res, 3 crit, 1 cev

1x Soldier lv 8 (iron lance)

26 hp, 13 atk, 5 AS, 95 hit, 11 avo, 6 def, 2 res, 3 crit, 1 cev

1x Soldier lv 7 (javelin)

25 hp, 13 atk, 3 AS, 75 hit, 7 avo, 7 def, 2 res, 3 crit, 1 cev

Boyd 1RKOes all of these. In fact, the only soldier he 2RKOes is a lv 9 iron lance!soldier, and he can still manage the 1RKO if we gave him a speedwing.

1x Fighter lv 6 (steel axe)

30 hp, 19 atk, 0 AS, 76 hit, 1 avo, 7 def, 1 res, 2 crit, 1 cev

Though he 2 rounds, he still manages to do 80% damage, so basically anyone can finish this enemy off without taking a counter.

2x Knight lv 7 (steel lance)

25 hp, 18 atk, 0 AS, 81 hit, 1 avo, 13 def, 3 res, 2 crit, 1 cev

Boyd manages a 2RKO using steel.

In fact, the only enemy I could find that Boyd takes 3 rounds to kill is the boss himself.

72-76% Hit rates is still pretty dangerous. As for chances of death, if he is 5RKOed he has a 54% chance of death. If he is 4RKOed, he has a 61% chance of death.

The point I made about Ike’s durability vs Boyd’s also applies here. What really makes Oscar more durable is that he has a 0% chance of dying in 3-4 hits while Ike is already facing non-negligible death odds.

Then his offense is about the same as Ike's.

From a raw attack perspective, Oscar will be leading Ike for a very long time. He has a 1 base lead, then lances have a Mt advantage of 2 over swords in most cases. Furthermore, Oscar’s one of the first units who hits promotion while Ike is guaranteed to only promote in time for chapter 18. A 5% str lead (essentially +1 point every 20 level-ups) isn’t going to make up for that.

Then you have numerous other factors boding in Oscar’s favor. Movement, canto, 1-2 range, durability lead that allows him to apply his offence better, etc.

*Chapter 2 and 3 stuff*

Fair enough.

So, in reality... if we're aiming for max BEXP, then no one but Titania is probably the best unit for obtaining this. […] I mean, to be honest, this chapter really isn't a favorite for anyone. Just Titania, and that's about it.

I don’t see how this is helpful for Ike’s case. If Titania is forced to solo the map for max BEXP, then Ike is basically doing nothing of use here. We might as well scratch this chapter off of his total availability.

Taking C6, assuming Oscar got 3 levels

That’s a huge underestimation. You’re giving Oscar 1 level per chapter when it should be more like 1.5. Giving Oscar 4 kills alone nets him a level-up, and since everyone except Titania is 2RKOing, he also gains a decent amount of hit exp. 4 kills and 4 non-kills would give him at least 140 exp, for instance.

Chapter 6 is also the most favourable time for Ike to be compared to Oscar thanks to Oscar + Boyd being gone in chapters 3-4. The reason Ike only trails Oscar’s atk by 1 is because he has a level lead, which will turn into a tie or possibly in Oscar’s favor after a few chapters due to all of his class advantages.

If we compare both units at level 10 in chapter 8, you’ll notice Oscar’s 10 AS doubles basically everything there, and now the atk gap has widened to 2 (3 if Ike has WTD, which is often). If Ike switches to steel, he’ll lead atk by 1, but he’ll also lose AS by 1, not to mention hurting his avo by 6, so it’s rarely a good trade-off. Finally, if Ike uses the regal sword, they tie in atk unless Ike fights a cav or armor enemy. I suppose this would be a close comparison if we implanted Oscar’s stats into Boyd, but Oscar has a mount and far superior durability against anything that doesn’t wield an axe.

In order to actually put him under non-Vulnerary, he'd have to take 21 damage in the process.

Vulneraries recover 10 hp in FE9 so Ike actually only needs to take 11+ damage. A single armor knight hit in chapter 9 can pull off that level of damage, and in general it only takes 2 enemies for Ike to pass the 10 damage threshold here.

Then look at offense:
Ike (Steel Sword) - 19 Atk, 12.6 AS

Oscar (Steel Lance, both Atk and Spd are rounded up) - 21 Atk, 10 As

Boyd (Steel Axe) - 25 Atk, 10 AS

Since this is chp 9 we’re talking about, we can have up to 2 iron forges by this point (source). Forges are of course awesome because we can make them +2 Mt stronger than steel, they have better accuracy, and most importantly don’t weigh anyone down. Now Oscar can have 12 AS (while retaining his atk lead), so he’s doubling basically the same as steel sword!Ike is. Then Boyd can have 11 AS, 13 if we speedwing’ed him.

You’re also underestimating Oscar and Boyd’s level at least slightly. By chapter 9 we have a whopping 1700 BEXP available, and it only takes 117 to get Oscar from level 14 to 15. There’s a good chance that you’ll pump as many levels as necessary into Boyd and Oscar to turn them into combat powerhouses, though if we do this for Ike, he’ll be stuck at lv 20/0 sooner, which isn’t really constructive.

Unfortunately for this statement, Ike improves over the course of 11 chapters, which makes that 1% look a lot less intimidating in general.

That computation was made to give perspective on how a seemingly tiny %age can accumulate over time. The point is, a 1% chance of death anywhere is pretty significant because of the consequences it entails. 1/100 times I put Ike in the range of more enemies than I should’ve, I have to reset the game and re-gain anywhere from 1-10+ turns of lost progress.

(Lol Boyd + Hammer = 0 AS).

Boyd also has huge effective Mt with it. Assuming lv 13/0, he has 34 atk with it against armor knights, which comes out to 70-74% damage per hit. In contrast, a lv 13/0 Ike (regal sword) does 66-74% damage after doubling. In other words, Ike’s regal sword only helps him against cavs in comparison to Boyd.

Try Oscar has 2 AS with a Steel Lance.

A lv 7/0 Oscar has 4 AS with a steel lance so you must’ve made a huge computational error. Since you had Oscar at lv 14/0 in chapter 9, I’ll assume he’s lv 12/0 in 7, which would give him 8 AS with steel. That’s enough to double 23/33 (70%) of the level’s enemies and most of what he can’t double he 2RKOes anyway (eg/ 5-6 AS mages).

In those chapters Ike is not forced to hold Leanne.

I have no means to check this right now but this doesn’t seem to add up. If we can give Leanne to other units, why can’t we drop her as well?

==========

Supports [1.2]

==========

Most healers would be following the combat units, thus I'd highly doubt that healers would not move in a linear rate.

Let’s suppose you have a frontline wall as such:

xxxxxxxxx
xxxxAxxxx
xxxxBxxxx
xxxxCxxxx
xxxxDxxxx
xxxxExxxx
xxxxxxxxx

If unit A needs healing the first turn, then unit E needs it the second, then unit B the third, your healer is essentially zigzagging up and down to meet his/her demand. Of course, the diagram I made is a bit of an idealism; your frontline likely doesn’t have everyone adjacent to each other. Let’s say we come up with a scenario more like this:

xxxxxxxxx
xAxxxxxxx
xxxxBxxxx
xxxCxxxxx
xxxxxDxxx
xxxxxxxxE
xxxxxxxxx

Now our healer’s movement patterns are even more erratic. He/she could easily be moving in all directions over the course of the chapter to perform healing duties.

The Ike | Soren support isn't as helpful later on, yes, but earlygame it can help his chances of death decrease.

As I said sometime earlier, this support is contingent on using 2 shaky earlygame characters instead of 1. And unlike Ike, Soren’s durability problems don’t lessen significantly over time. There are still numerous enemies that 2-3HKO Soren throughout the game thanks to an abysmal 45 hp/15 def/110 avo durability growth spread.

And again, Ike supporting 2 units, 1 of which has more move than him and 1 that has less than him makes for a pretty awkward support triangle. For it to function properly, Ike has to slow down so that Soren can keep up, which in turn means Oscar/Titania have to really slow down so that Ike can stay in their range. Realistically, Ike will usually only profit from 1 unit’s support bonuses at a time. Since Oscar gives superior bonuses, Ike’s more motivated to keep up with him than he is to accommodate Soren.

As for being out of range, there's Physics to consider as well.

True, but physics only show up from chapter 15 onwards and by then Ike’s earlygame is basically over. Moreover, Soren needs 70 WEXP to be able to use physics, which equates to 24 heal/mend uses. While that’s not much, it’s possible Soren won’t achieve that before physics come into play unless we use him as a full-time healer. Though if we do that, the Ike/Soren support is being even less useful than before.

By C18 Soren should be around Level 10/10 at worst

You’re giving Soren 18 levels in 14 chapters (1.28 per chapter). While this may sound reasonable if not an undershoot for most units, remember that Soren jumps to promotion for half his existence, which hurts his exp gain considerably. Taking a 10/1 Soren in C11 for instance, he only gains 6 exp per atk and 13 per kill. If he turns to staves, he only gets 11 exp per heal until his rank jumps to D, at which point he gets 12 from mend.

So for Soren to maintain his average levelling post promotion, he’d need something ridiculous like 11 mends/10 kills/some combination of both. Evidently Soren can’t heal every turn and he certainly can’t attack every turn (even if he had a mount, enemy density will never be that high). Furthermore, most chapters don’t even last 10 turns. If you want to get max BEXP, the average chapter has to be beaten within 8.7 turns. Though, with a reasonably good team we will consistently get under that, so if there’s a 15% cushion, the average chapter is being beaten in 7.4 turns.

If Soren manages to gain exp in one way or another in 75% of a given chapter, that only gives him 5.5 turns of 12-13 exp, which comes out to roughly 66-72 exp per chapter. That’s basically 1/2 of his average exp gain, so Soren is more realistically 10/5-6 by chp 17-18. Now Soren has 15-16 AS, which fails to double archers, cavaliers, fighters and of course ravens in 18. What’s worse is that numerous enemies have a higher spd growth than Soren’s 40% (see here) and because his levelling isn’t particularly fast, the level gap between him and the enemy will remain more or less consistent. In other words, enemies are actually becoming faster relative to Soren as the game progresses, particularly in lategame where enemy levels and feral one prevalence takes a spike.

This increases with doubling.

Ah yes, thanks for reminding me that a master seal’ed Soren actually sabotages his mag enough that he needs adept activations to land kills. See, our 10/6 Soren only has 19 atk with thunder. That only manages to do 78% damage to chaper 18 knights and they have one of the highest def-res gaps of any enemy class (the one I looked at had 17 def/6 res, so 11).

Now let’s see how Soren compares to Neph (currently an upper-mid unit) against some random enemies.

4x Soldier lv 16-18 (steel lance)

34 hp, 21 atk, 9 AS, 98 hit, 22 avo, 11 def, 6 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

Soren manages 76% damage while a 20/1 steel lance!Neph does 82%.

1x Archer lv 19 (steel bow)

29 hp, 20 atk, 14 AS, 107 hit, 33 avo, 11 def, 7 res, 8 crit, 5 cev

Soren does 83% damage while a 20/2 Neph can manage a ORKO with steel.

1x Warrior lv 1 (steel axe, iron bow)

40 hp, 26 atk, 10 AS, 89 hit, 24 avo, 10 def, 6 res, 5 crit, 4 cev

Soren does 65% damage, 20/1 Neph does 75%.

Soren does have adept but Neph doubles a lot more (with the KW she can have up to 22 AS at 20/1) to compensate.

Now what was the point of this mini-comparison? It’s to give perspective on how unremarkable a master seal’ed Soren is in combat. Even if he can double reasonably well in this chapter, he’s still getting outperformed by pretty much anyone who isn’t mid tier or lower.

If Soren is allowed to have a forged Thunder, which has 21 Atk now, this actually ORKOes everything Soren doubles.

True, but that forge could’ve gone to anyone else on the team with atk issues. Or, even if a unit has pretty good atk (eg/ Kieran or Jill), forging them a steel axe means they can 1RKO generals and wyverns naturally, or they can ORKO more consistently through forged hand weapons.

By this point everything we’re giving Soren is beginning to add up to a formidable sum. The master seal we gave him could’ve otherwise been used to save another unit a level-up, or give someone like Astrid axes earlier. The str band we’re giving him to wield tomes better could’ve raised some other unit’s str average by 2 points over the course of the game, which is 4 damage per double. We probably had trouble getting Soren to lv 10 in C11 without plowing some BEXP into him, which could’ve been put into a unit who actually sees combat on a consistent basis. If all of that weren’t enough, we’re adding a forge, not to mention physics. Wow, Soren’s actually pretty good offensively when we give him 5 highly desired resources, but then he still has sucky move and durability. What a wise investment!

Ah, I apologize. It's actually +/- 10 for Avoid and +/- 5 for Hit, so in reality you will face +/- 15 at best and worst.

Where are you getting this information from? When I recorded enemy stats I consistently found that when enemies have +/- 5 hit, they also have +/- 5 avo and vice versa.

C22 Cats have 127 Hit and Tigers have 122 Hit. 20/10 Oscar has 56 base Avoid to Ike's 64. The former faces 71% and 66% displayed compared to Ike's 63% and 58% displayed. Though in respects Oscar is 6RKOed and 5RKOed and Ike is slightly similair (+1 HP difference). With the support intact, that makes Oscar face 41% and 36% displayed while Ike faces 33% and 28% displayed. That's a major difference without even looking into real hit scenarios.

You’re overlooking the fact that Oscar has another support partner. If it’s A Kieran, he gets +22 avo, or if it’s B Tanith, he gets +20 avo. Now Oscar’s being 6RKOed by tigers at ~50 real hit. For Oscar to die, he’d have to take 6 consecutive tiger hits while missing a 21% chance to heal 10 times in a row. The odds of that happening is ~0.148%, and as mentioned in my second post, you’ll never even see that many tiger attacks in the entirety of a chapter.

As for the Knight Ward, again, I thought I was clear here:

I didn’t bold the knight ward part.

--/10 Titania (A Mist / B Boyd)
Steel Axe - 29 Atk

--/10 Titania (A Mist / B Ike)

Steel Axe - 28 Atk

To compare:

Base Tanith (Steel Lance) - 26 Atk

Base Ike (Iron Blade) - 27 Atk

Chapter 18 is practically the middle of the game. I said Titania had atk issues lategame, which is more like chapters 25-F.

Now pit max Titania and toss her the Silver Axe.
--/20 Titania (A Mist / B Boyd)

Silver Axe - 39 Atk

--/20 Titania (A Mist / B Ike)

Sivler Axe - 38 Atk

To compare once again:

--/15 Tanith (B Marcia since A doesn't matter)

Silver Lance - 34 Atk

--/10 Ike

Silver Sword - 35 Atk

Why did Titania gain 10 levels to Tanith’s 5 when they have the same level in chapter 18? If we reduce Titania’s level to --/15, she now has 34 atk before supports. In chapter 26, that falls short of ORKOing warriors, paladins, cats, tigers, generals, high levelled halberdiers and wyvern lords. Sure we could toss her a forge, but the 2 atk she gets from Boyd + Mist mitigates Titania’s desire for said resource rather significantly.

I’ll admit I exaggerated in saying Titania’s atk issues are “crippling” lategame, but that doesn’t change the fact that the benefits she gets from atk supports are clearly worthwhile. What Titania gets from Ike’s +10 avo is easily inferior to that.

Going by our lv --/15 Titania (A Mist, B Boyd), she has 44 hp/21 def/17 res/59-71 avo depending on how many levels she got with the KW equipped. In contrast, 20/10 Oscar has 43 hp/19 def/11 res and he can supposedly take on 6 tigers before dying. Combine that with sol and Titania’s clearly not concerned about her survival, so Ike’s 10 avo is superfluous to her.

When Marcia joins:
--/4 Titania - 35.4 HP | 13.35 Str | 4.75 Mag | 14.8 Skl | 15.5 Spd | 12.35 Luck | 12.2 Def | 8.35 Res

14 Ike - 28.75 HP | 11.5 Str | 3.6 Mag | 12.5 Skl | 14.15 Spd | 10.55 Luck | 10.2 Def | 5.2 Res

14 Oscar - 32.05 HP | 10.95 Str | 3.2 Mag | 11.5 Skl | 11.95 Spd | 8.3 Luck | 11.85 Def | 3.3 res

14 Boyd - 39 HP | 14.2 Str | 0.6 Mag | 10 Skl | 11.4 Spd | 8.2 Luck | 8 Def | 3 Res

10 Soren - 22.05 HP | 0.45 Str | 11.4 Mag | 12.95 Skl | 11.6 Spd | 7.7 Luck | 3.35 Def | 11.05 Res

Marcia - 20 HP | 8 Str | 0 Mag | 7 Skl | 11 Spd | 4 Luck | 8 Def | 6 Res

Haha, yeah. What luck, right? I thought Soren was a deadweight unit (which he won't be in 1-2 levels and a Seal), but this is freaking ridiculous.

Of course Marcia is terrible when we compare her to the best 3 units on the team, mirite? That sort of argument was legitimate against Ike because he was consistently the 1st-2nd worst unit on the field. However, when Marcia joins, we have Ike/Titania/Oscar/Boyd/Rhys/Soren/Marcia/Mia/Ilyana/Mist/Rolf so our standard for average has dropped quite significantly.

Or, if you don’t buy that argument, look at how badly some apparently good characters struggle when they join:

Brom lv 8/0 (iron lance): 28 hp, 17 atk, 7 AS, 13 def, 2 res, 18 avo

Brom only 3RKOes most non-volunteers in chapter 11 while 20+ atk 4RKOes him. Mages also manage to 3 round him. Note that he’s facing something like 80 display hit, so unlike other characters, he can’t even get lucky and dodge fatal attacks with any reliability. Oh yeah, he can switch to a steel axe to improve his offence, but now he gets doubled to the point where he’s basically unusable.

Nephenee lv 7/0 (iron lance): 22 hp, 15 atk, 11 AS, 9 def, 3 res, 28 avo

She’s even worse off than Brom is. While she can double weighed down enemies, her damage output is basically nonexistent. Against a lance knight for instance, she only does 8/28 (28.5%) damage and she tinks knights. We could switch her to steel, but now she stops doubling and loses 10 avo, so now she’s as good an avo tank as base lvl Brom. Durability-wise, she’s consistently 3RKOed and some enemies can even manage to 2RKO her. Like Brom, avo isn’t being of much help either; basically everything she faces is well over 50 display hit, so 2RN skewage isn’t kind to her.

Zihark lv 10/0 (steel sword): 25 hp, 18 atk, 13 AS, 7 def, 0 res, 32 avo

Not quite as bad as the first 2 cases, but the numbers clearly show his atk and concrete durability are dreadful.

Astrid lv 1/0 (iron bow): 20 hp, 12 atk, 7 AS, 5 def, 4 res, 17 avo

She has worse atk/def than Neph, worse AS/avo than Brom, is locked to bows and joins 2 chapters later. Need I say more?

Unless all these units are somehow more of a hindrance than a help for the entirety of the game, Marcia’s rough earlygame is more than forgivable, especially when we have a reasonable means to promptly help her out of it.

Let's just say Marcia is about Level 12 by C12 which is fairly nice on my part. For durability we have 24 HP | 10 Def at best. She's 4RKOed by units that also have Canto, which is bad. Level 15 Ike has 30 HP | 11 Def, which is pulling a 6RKO.

All we need to do for Marcia is toss her a seraph robe and now she has 31 hp/10 def as opposed to Ike’s 30 hp/11 def. That’s considerably less effort than everything we put into Soren just to make him have staves early as well as performing well offensively.

Admittidely she can climb out of it, but that's just how bad it is for her at that point. Though Marcia is at least improving on durability in the meantime, she will stay inferior to the rest of the GMs except Soren and maybe someone like Mia.

Let’s not drift from the main point here: Tanith’s outgoing bonuses to Marcia see far more application than Ike’s outgoing bonuses to Soren ever will. It’s not really important how good of a unit Marcia actually is (assuming she’s not an utter waste of space like Bastian or something) for this point to maintain its validity. The fact that she may very well be worse than all the GMs (I’m assuming you meant Ike/Oscar/Boyd/Titania only) isn’t changing the fact that Tanith is significantly helping the durability of a solid frontline unit.

Though I feel I’ve extended this point far beyond it needs to go, I just wanted to finish off by substantiating that Marcia is indeed pretty competitive with some of your better units.

Marcia lv 20/7 (B Tanith, B Kieran, silver lance): 35 hp, 35 atk, 24 AS, 15 def, 15 res, 75 avo

Makalov lv 20/7 (B Astrid, steel axe): 43 hp, 31 atk, 20+ AS, 20 def, 9 res, 62+ avo

Silver sword: 33 atk

Astrid lv 20/15 (B Makalov, steel axe): 40 hp, 32 atk, 25+ AS, 18 def, 14 res, 76+ avo

Silver bow: 34 atk

Oscar lv 20/10 (A Ike, B Kieran, steel axe): 43 hp, 31 atk, 22+ AS, 19 def, 11 res, 102 avo

Silver lance: 35 atk

Marcia beats all of these units offensively thanks to higher atk and flight. On the durability end, she’s competitive everywhere except concrete durability, though if we threw a robe at her, we’re only talking 1 hp/3-5 def. A chapter 24 silver sword!paladin only manages a 4RKO at 10 display hit against seraph robe!Marcia, and that’s one of the level’s higher atk enemies. Some of the lesser enemies only manage 3-5 damage per hit with similarly minuscule hit rates, so Marcia’s durability is of minimal concern anyway.

Did you seem to brush off the Avo difference? Let's actually look at this (C19). […] There's a 6% chance for Soren to die in two hits, while for Marcia (25 Atk vs 32 HP | 14 Def so a 3RKO) but a 4%. That's just how borderline Marcia is to Soren in this case.

This example was constructed such that Marcia has twice the def that Soren has as a point of ridicule. You’ll notice that Soren has gained 20 levels to Marcia’s 16 despite the fact that promoting him early heavily nerfs his exp gain. If we gave Soren a more realistic level (I stand by 10/6ish), he’ll obviously be getting blown out in the durability department even more. That comparison was implicitly saying “even if I gave Soren a huge level lead, Marcia STILL wins durability”.

Though even supposing this comparison was realistic, you’re still overlooking the fact that Soren has poor durability against any enemy whereas Marcia’s problems are only really pronounced against high atk enemies. 25+ atk is reasonably rare in chapter 18 (only 3 enemies have it) whereas 20 atk seems to be reasonably common. Against that, Marcia is 6RKOed whereas Soren is 3RKOed. Soren’s avo lead isn’t anywhere close to covering that RKO gap: assuming the enemy has 90 hit, after 6 attacks, Marcia’s odds of dying are 0.02% while Soren’s are 5.56%.

At this point Ike is starting to improve as well […] The support is a minor boon for both of them when they face rather weird Hit rates, go under biorhythm for that one turn, etc. I've shown that Oscar still appreciates it, and by midgame neither really need the support, which is true (Masteries taken into account).

If Ike’s support ever gives Oscar non-negligible durability benefits, it’s rather temporary. As you said, neither characters really needs the support by midgame. On the other hand, Tanith’s outgoing support benefits are always beneficial to Marcia because while she is decently durable, she is nonetheless a highly avo dependent character, and Tanith’s giving her exactly what she wants through earth bonuses.

To use an example, say I threw both Ike and Tanith into the middle of the field, expecting both to take hits. I ditched their supports, etc. I'm a bit more relieved to throw Ike into the middle of the field than Tanith just because of two reasons:
1) I know what #RKOes Ike will face without being hellbent reliant on the RNG.

2) Aether activation. 20/1 Ike has a 31.11% chance of unleashing Aether in one of those two hits, thus automatically healing Ike for the amount of damage given to the opponent.

Obviously both are quite durable with and without Avoid right now.

Fair enough, but this hypothetical doesn’t carry much weight since there isn’t any sensible reason to separate Tanith from Marcia or Oscar. If we add Kieran to the mix, we have a deadly support quadrilateral where each character gets full bonuses. One possible set-up would be:

Tanith: Marcia/Oscar

Oscar: Kieran/Tanith

Marcia: Kieran/Tanith

Kieran: Oscar/Marcia

If we had to separate the mounts and the fliers, we still have Tanith/Marcia and Oscar/Kieran in tact. If we’re willing to make further splits, it’s probably because each character can solo a small group of enemies without any real worries. This is especially true of many of the lategame maps that still contain numerous un-promoted enemies.

In contrast, the reason Tanith is slowing it down is because of below:
Tanith-Marcia: Perfect movement match.

Tanith-Oscar: Their movement only differs in the advantages Tanith’s flight brings.

Tanith-Reyson: 4 move gap, reduces to 1 whenever Reyson transforms.

This being the main reason.

I’ve already addressed this in my second post.

If she for some strange reason chooses to support Reyson, she’ll simply pass on his bonuses most of the time, not restrict herself to staying in his range.

===========

Full guard [1.3]

===========

Ah well, at least Jill would be the best unit for the Full Guard anyway, so there isn't much of a bother here.

Why would we put the full guard on our tankiest flier? A 20/3 Jill takes 11 damage from chapter 20 steel bow!snipers before supports, so putting the full guard on her is a total waste.

But really, let's just see how that .4 Def does make a difference:
20/1 Ike v1 - 38 HP | 15 Def

20/1 Ike v2 - 38 HP | 16 Def

No, that’s a difference of 1 def. Or, you could look at it as the difference 1 def makes in 40% of cases or something. Regardless, the effect is extremely minor (taking an extra hit against very specific atk values a fraction of the time).

You said that I would give the unit with the best concrete durability the Knight Ward.

I did? Where? Also, I think you made a typo and actually meant the full guard, but again I never said the unit with the highest concrete durability is entitled to it.

Jill with the Full Guard about 19 Def by 20/5, which is better than Tanith's 15 at base backed by a 20% Def growth. Jill is less likely to take damage in terms of concrete hits than Tanith, which is important because Ballistae have about 20-22 Atk when they arrive.

If Tanith takes the FG, she takes 5-7 damage from ballistae while FG!Jill takes 1-3, but then Tanith also has a rather sizeable avo lead. Even subscribing to your logic that the most durable unit gets the FG, Tanith has a pretty provocative case for it.

Also note that ballistae and mountains usually accompany each other, which means fliers don’t even necessarily face that many attacks en route to a ballista.

If I'm reading this statement right, you're saying that "Ike needs healer attention" when he has a Skill that has over 30% chance to heal him in a single match.

That entire paragraph was about Tanith, so no, you’re not reading right.

Vykan12 · July 16, 2009

=================

Flying + 1-2 range [1.4]

=================

There's a 10 turn span for us to finish this chapter, so with driving forward and not looking back, then this chapter can be cleared fine without the Pegasi.

We measure a unit’s performance based on how efficiently they help you beat the game, not how well they allow you to meet some arbitrary turn count for each chapter. At any rate, if Tanith allows you to beat the chapter in 8 turns instead of 10, that means we could’ve donated 2 turns to raising under-levelled units, or throwing hand weapons at a boss, or getting your healers more staff exp. Beating a map faster > beating it slower whether we abide by an arbitrary turn limit or not.

It's simply better to walk around them or, IIRC, just do the glitch with Haar / Jill with the Full Guard.

What glitch do you speak of? Anyway, abusing the game’s programming isn’t exactly a welcome thing in debates. Do you see anyone hyping a bunch of characters in FE7 who are eligible to use the uber spear?

This chapter is also perilous because of the rocks automatically doing 10 damage per hit, and Tanith isn't high on her HP count. There's also the dangerous Iron Ballistae wandering around here, cutting into the "flying in circles" thing a bit under.

Tanith can avoid all of the rocks thanks to being able to move freely in mountain areas. As for the iron B, it only really prevents fliers from moving up the middle mountain range until a FG!flier takes it out. Speaking of which, Tanith is easily the prime candidate for that. If you travel up the middle mountain area, you’ll be intercepted by the boss. He happens to be a wyvern lord that Tanith can 1 turn with the sonic sword, whereas Jill has a tough time with him (47 hp/23 def vs 35ish atk and might not even double), particularly when he activates resolve.

This also puts us against a lot of dangerous situations: many longrange tomes, Dragons roaming around the throne, and then all it takes is one wrong look at a Sleep staff and Tanith's stuck all the way over there in the forests ready to die.

There are only 2 long range tomes in the level, and 1 happens to be located in the forest Tanith’s passing by. The dragons are deadly sure, but Tanith can still hit & run them or perhaps wait for Tibarn to dispose of them. The sleep staff user only has 9 range, so Tanith can outrange him with the help of Reyson, who’s probably using a laguz stone here anyway.

Hey, that's great and all but there's one problem. I think Boyd might want to be near his supports since he isn't a dodging tank and isn't much on the durable end.

You’re underestimating his durability then. Going by chapter 25:

Boyd lv 20/12: 54 hp, 14 def, 9 res, 54 avo

1x Cat lv 7 (claw)

37 hp, 24 atk, 16 AS, 119 hit, 33 avo, 15 def, 7 res, 7 crit, 1 cev

The cat 6 rounds him.

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

4 rounds at 32 real.

3x Sniper lv 7 (steel bow, 2 onager)

32 hp, 23 atk, 15 AS, 111 hit, 35 avo, 14 def, 10 res, 24 crit, 5 cev

Same scenario as the cat.

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

He only manages to 9 round Boyd at 47 real.

There’s no reason Boyd can’t handle himself for a single enemy phase unsupported. Moreover, we’re probably fielding more than 1 flier so we could veritably paradrop one of his supporters on the same turn if we wanted to.

If ferrying Boyd is too risky for you, there are plenty of foot units who surpass his durability unsupported. Tanith can carry Brom, for instance.

Mounted units don't mind going further ahead, but there is nothing that is saying "you can't go back" either.

True, but it’s always favourable to push forward when you realistically can since doing otherwise is inefficient.

Say Boyd attacked a unit but he didn't KO but there is no more room for another unit to attack. Ike can easily Shove Boyd aside and let another unit finish the weakened unit off.

That would have to be one hell of an enemy. There’s up to 4 spaces from which you can attack an enemy (9+ if we consider ranged attacks) so the enemy would need to be backed into a corner with another enemy adjacent to him or something equally crazy for your scenario to pan out.

Then give someone like Ike the Statue Frags, and he can shove a hell of a lot of units.

We also lose 4000g or +con on another character in the process.

Take C23 with the Priests: Tanith can't help shove these idiots aside while Ike has no problems shoving a Priest into the wall (man... that seems cruel).

This scenario only lasts for 1 chapter. Tanith’s ferrying is applicable in any chapter where she’s available.

Then there's another thing Tanith can't do that Ike can: Shove enemies. Say someone like Soren is at risk of dying; however, for some reason Ike cannot ORKO the unit that is within Soren's range. All Ike has to do is walk up to the unit and Shove him aside, thus saving Soren.

Again, this is a rather convoluted scenario. The enemy has to have Soren at the very edge of his attack range, otherwise the shove is useless. Then Ike can probably just 1RKO the enemy he chose to shove. Finally, where is Soren’s protection? Ike can probably position himself to hinder the enemy’s path to Soren for better results than he’d get simply shoving the enemy.

That's great and all, but at that point the Runesword is available.

Ike gets to use the runesword a whole single chapter before the ragnell becomes available. Moreover, Tanith uses this weapon better anyway. Assuming max lvl (if she’s not there in 27, she’ll be pretty damn close), she has 28.5 atk targeting res. That ORKOes some generals and snipers while doing 70-90ish% damage to anything else that isn’t a sage/bishop. Ike has 3 less mag so he’s obviously outputting less damage than that.

While 1-2 range is nice to have, that's just it: it tarnishes your #RKO potential.

Quit dodging my point. Obviously we have her use javs when its benefits outweigh the advantages of using a 1 range weapon.

Your only counter to that was saying a group of mages was rare. You proceeded to go on a paragraph-long tangent where you assumed Tanith was equipping a javelin in a situation where she obviously shouldn’t be, which is stupidity on the player’s part.

Let’s run this scenario by you: Ike and Tanith face 3 enemies: a short spear!soldier, a hand axe!warrior and a steel lance!wyvern rider. On player phase, Tanith attacks the wyvern rider at range without killing it while Ike ORKOes said wyvern rider. Ike leads 1-0. On enemy phase, Tanith kills the wyvern rider and injures the 2 remaining enemies while Ike does jack. Tanith leads 2-1. Now Ike still needs 2 player phases to take out the soldier and the warrior whereas Tanith just needs another enemy phase. That puts her ahead even more.

Basically, Tanith’s range works in her favor whenever the majority of a group of enemies have range, and she still might be able to pull ahead if only half the enemies have range. Short spear!Tanith has 30 atk at max lvl overall, and a forged javelin increases that to 32, and that can often ORKO weaker enemies like swordmasters and snipers, let alone all the unpromoted lategame scrubs.

Yeah, Mak has a chance of Vague Katti, but by promotion Swords are merely an afterthought for him.

It doesn’t really matter if Mak uses swords that much in second tier. What’s important is if he can realistically reach S rank in swords so that the VK is even available to him.

Mak starts with a C rank in swords, which probably jumps to B by the time he’s ready for promotion. The act of promoting itself ups your primary weapon rank, so now he has A swords. Getting him to S only requires 70 WEXP, or 18 double-attacks with a steel blade. That’s definitely reasonable considering what I said earlier about how good the steel blade is for Mak.

See what I mean? It takes minimal magic to make this Lance work on something like Cats.

What about tigers? They’re basically cats with 7+ hp and similar res. I checked to see if any of the examples you gave would work against tigers, and only Oscar does, albeit being a borderline case (he does exact damage).

===========

Reinforce [1.5]

===========

Marginal extra amount of BEXP. It depends on what happens during the chapter, but even so the most we can probably get is about 200 with both of them shown out onto the field.

I’d hardly call that marginal. 200 BEXP allows a 20/8 unit to fully level-up, or for a 20/1 unit to get 1.35 BEXPed level-ups. The reinforcements would have to take more than that amount in CEXP in order to start “stealing” exp. If you relegated some high levelled units like Titania and Muarim to taking out a group of reinforcements, they probably won’t gain anywhere near 1 lvl-up of CEXP, so there will undoubtedly be situations where reinforcements are giving out more exp than they are taking.

Looking at C18, Ike practically doubles everything except the Raven reinforcements, but that's about it.

I am going to bold the only part of my post you addressed.

If you look at that comparison carefully, you’ll see that the reinforcement beats Ike as well. A 5 atk/5 AS lead is huge. In fact, supports and forges aside, those NPC seraph knights are probably the best units you can field until silver weapons are buyable. Sure, you cannot really control them fully, but you’ll reap their combat benefits in some way regardless.

Even then, you only countered the AS part. I’m assuming that means you conceded the rest of that paragraph?

Now to conclude:

Manith: The face of the movement for equal Pegasus flying rights.

Colonel M · July 16, 2009

Just to clear up: I thought you could block the pitfalls with flying units like in FE10 on the bridge chapter. That's what I meant by the glitch.

Probably still -1 for me anyway.

Edited July 16, 2009 by Colonel M

-Cynthia- · July 16, 2009

Quite a long debate.

I felt Vykan was rather effective in showing that Ike's earlygame was detrimental(Colonel M conceded Ike was in C4, C6, and C7) or neutral. Colonel M did show that Ike's durability gets better over time (1% chance of death is not really significant), but there is the point that better units come along anyway once Ike starts improving, and thus his relative performance stays roughly the same. Vykan made Ike's availability lead seem to be only a minor positive.

As for supports, the debate kind of got into a semi-offtrack Marcia vs. Soren discussion. I didn't think Colonel M made a very good case for Marcia not being a very good unit, definitely not to the level where she's too poor to be fielded. But on the other hand, I didn't find Vykan denying Ike/Soren too effective (being a backline unit still means you want durability), and Colonel M showed Ike had other options anyway. Overall I felt both debaters showed their supports to be beneficial to the team in both cases.

Then the direct comparison. I didn't find Ike's statistical leads terribly impressive, a .4 Def lead only matters if you round up and the enemy has just enough Atk to 4HKO one and 5HKO the other. Really the only time I saw Ike had significant durability leads were vs Bows and with Ragnell. Colonel M showed that Ragnell!Ike beats Tanith in pretty much all departments, but that is only 2 chapters. The point for ballistae was decent(Tanith is not entitled to Full Guard usage), but I don't understand why Tauroneo is hunting down snipers manning ballistae when he usually can't ORKO them and takes forever to get there, as Vykan pointed out. Bows are relatively uncommon anyway.

So then there were Tanith's Flight/Canto/Mov leads that Vykan capitalized on and Colonel M really couldn't do anything about, except the Rescuing point possibly. Colonel M did point out that Tanith is fairly vulnerable during a Rescue, but this is still utility she has that Ike doesn't. This was similar to 1-2 range, there are drawbacks to using a Javelin instead of a stronger weapon, but the ability to switch between the two. The only utility Ike has that Tanith doesn't is Shove, which is nice but pales a bit in comparison to Tanith's usefulness.

Vykan also won the point on Reinforce, Colonel M's main argument being that they steal EXP, but since they provide BEXP(often greater than the possible CEXP), it didn't seem to counteract the usefulness of the Reinforcements in any way.

So, close debate but I think I'm going to go with Vykan.

Edited July 16, 2009 by -Cynthia-

Tino · July 20, 2009

I do not have the time (nor the resources, I am typing this on my cellphone) but I vote vykan.

Tino · July 20, 2009

I do not have the time (nor the resources, I am typing this on my cellphone) but I vote vykan.

Mekkah · July 29, 2009

vykan was quite a lot more convincing than colonel, imo.

Colonel M (Ike) vs Vykan (Tanith)

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