Vykan (Ulki) vs Cynthia (Elincia)

[Vykan12]

Tibarn's ears or Crimea's princess?

[Vykan12]

Ulki joins in C18, let’s see how he does there.

Ulki lv --/7 (beak): 41 hp, 28 atk, 138 hit, 15 AS, 18 def, 11 res, 60 avo

Ike lv 20/1 (A Oscar, B Soren, steel blade): 37 hp, 29.5 atk, 124 hit, 19 AS, 16 def, 10 res, 96 avo

Jill lv 20/1 (A Mist, steel axe): 36 hp, 30 atk, 108 hit, 16 AS, 20 def, 10 res, 48 avo

For a comparison against some top tiers, Ulki sure does fare well. Now let’s examine his performance against some C18 enemies:

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

Dishes 83% damage, receives 15% at 25 hit.

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

Dishes 100% damage, receives 7% at 29 hit.

1x Archer lv 19 (steel bow)

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

Dishes 117% damage, receives 29% at 45 hit.

1x Knight lv 16 (knight killer [d])

33 hp, 19 atk (26 eff), 0 AS, 91 hit, 3 avo, 17 def, 6 res, 4 crit, 3 cev

Dishes 67% damage, receives 2% at 19.5 hit.

Pretty impressive. In particular, Ulki’s really hard to take down. For example, the wyvern rider only manages a 0.35% chance of killing him in 10 rounds of combat.

How about later on? Let’s skip to say, C23.

Ulki lv --/12 (B Boyd, B Mordy, beak): 46 hp, 35 atk, 151 hit, 18 AS, 22 def, 14 res, 68 avo

Astrid lv 20/15 (A Makalov, silver axe): 40 hp, 37 atk, 143 hit, 27 AS, 19 def, 17 res, 85 avo

Zihark lv 20/8 (A Muarim, B Brom, silver sword): 38 hp, 33 atk, 139 hit, 26 AS, 16 def, 7 res, 93 avo

Again, Ulki’s proving to be quite comparable to highly ranked characters. The only two areas he loses to both Astrid and Zihark are AS/avo, but such leads are only as big as their practical impact. See, Ulki’s 18 AS manages to double 80% of C23 enemies, and his avo barely matters since enemies have trouble just doing damage to him. Tigers and snipers only manage a 7RKO on him, and the 100 hit enemies only pull off 21 real hit against him anyway, so it’s not as though his avo is unreliable.

Now Elincia decides to join the fun in C26.

Ulki lv --/16 (A Brom, B Boyd, beak): 54 hp, 38 atk, 158 hit, 20 AS, 25 def, 17 res, 73 avo

Elincia lv --/1 (amiti): 27 hp, 18 atk, 122 hit, 18 AS, 11 def, 15 res, 51 avo

The smilie above should convey the magnitude of this blowout. Though if it doesn’t, check out this lone enemy sample:

1x Paladin lv 7 (steel blade)

37 hp, 26 atk, 15 AS, 104 hit, 35 avo, 17 def, 10 res, 6 crit, 5 cev

Elincia does 5.4% damage, Ulki does 113.5%. Elincia takes 56% damage at 56 hit, Ulki takes 2% damage at 20 hit.

I think it’s pretty obvious that 99.9999% of Elincia’s value comes from her healing. The question is, how useful is healing in the last 4 chapters of the game? There isn’t any real objective way to gauge this, but we can at least get some idea by examining variables such as team durability and amount of staff users fielded.

C26 enemies average 23 atk/93 hit. Thus any unit with 45 hp/20 def/60 avo will be 15RKOed at 22 hit. After 35 rounds, that unit would only face a 0.46% chance of death, and the level only has 50 enemies.

Moreover, 45 hp/20 def/60 avo is usually a pretty big underestimation of a given unit’s durability. For example, a 20/9 Makalov (A Astrid) has 44 hp/21 def/69.5 avo, and his avo could be considerably higher with KW usage. Brom at the same level unsupported has 46 hp/25 def, so the average enemy doesn’t even hurt him. A 20/10 Marcia (A Tanith, seraph robe) has 44 hp/16 def/79 avo, and she’s not even considered a durable unit. As shown earlier, Ike/Zihark/Astrid have avo approaching triple digits, which means many enemies literally cannot hit them (0 display hit).

There’s still more to consider. In numerous cases, a character can avoid a player phase attack by attacking at range, landing a crit, using a brave weapon or finishing off a heavily injured enemy. If we’re talking about paladins, 4/6 of them can have sol, which means roughly a 20% chance to heal per attack. Then it’s very rare for a character to attack every turn, so for the ones where they don’t, they can take a vulnerary or elixir. There’s even the possibility that someone ends adjacent to Reyson, who heals them 10 hp at base level untransformed.

Ironically, the only units who will ever have a pressing need to be healed are healers themselves (Soren/Ilyana/Tormod/Rhys/Mist). Therefore, these are the types of units that Elincia is helping offensively (eg/ Tormod being able to take 2 E. phase counters instead of 1).

This isn’t a big deal for a few reasons. First, Mist aside, these characters will not face player phase counters 90% of the time. Usually a level has about 1/3 of enemies that are ranged, but most of those are either snipers (can be attacked at 1 range) or sages (do piddly damage to your own sages/bishops). Second, Mist and Tormod aside, their enemy phases are innately limited by their low movement. Finally, a lot of the playable healers aren’t even that impressive offensively. Rhys and Ilyana have some pretty serious AS issues, particularly if they promote early. Then Mist’s atk is terrible with non-magic swords, and Tormod has some offensive difficulties due to being supremely underlevelled (lol at lv 7/0 in C16). What’s the point of increasing Rhys’ enemy phase when he’s sub-par on offence? I could’ve just kept him on the backlines spamming physics and my team would probably be better off.

So a comparison between Elincia’s healing vs Ulki’s combat could roughly translate to something like Soren taking an extra E. phase counter vs Ulki’s overall combat. The latter is easily superior since even if Ulki loses damage output per hit, he can apply his offense much, much more than a single Soren counter.

Leaving the boring stuff for last, let’s look at supports. Ulki has Boyd/Rhys/Mordecai. Everything about these supports works: the bonuses are good (full atk and partial def guaranteed). Ulki’s supporters can easily have a free slot for him (Boyd has to toss 2 of Titania/Mist/Brom, which isn’t a problem since those are desired partners for many other characters. Rhys’ list is very poor outside of Titania. Mordy just needs to toss Ilyana). The main flaw is support speed since they begin so late, but it’s still much faster than Elincia’s.

She’s stuck with Ike/Geoffrey. The former is never going to happen since earth/heaven beginning in C26 is by far Ike’s worst support option. Geoffrey doesn’t mind her, but A fire/heaven gives 1 atk/22 hit, which is laughably negligible, and it only takes effect for 2 chapters. Then the bonuses only work when she’s in Geoffrey’s range, which is pretty rare since she fears combat whereas he’s a paladin frontliner.

In summary, Ulki has a laundry list of advantages over Elincia: Availability, outgoing support bonuses, offence, durability, possible credit for the knight ring, etc. Her only advantage is healing, and the impact it has is minuscule due to lategame team durability being so colossally high.

[-Cynthia-]

Ulki joins in C18, lets see how he does there.

Ulki lv --/7 (beak): 41 hp, 28 atk, 138 hit, 15 AS, 18 def, 11 res, 60 avo

Ike lv 20/1 (A Oscar, B Soren, steel blade): 37 hp, 29.5 atk, 124 hit, 19 AS, 16 def, 10 res, 96 avo

Jill lv 20/1 (A Mist, steel axe): 36 hp, 30 atk, 108 hit, 16 AS, 20 def, 10 res, 48 avo

For a comparison against some top tiers, Ulki sure does fare well. Now lets examine his performance against some C18 enemies:

Not that well, considering other factors. First off, Ulki is only going to have these stats for about half the map, Ulki won't even transform until turn 4. Considering we want to clear chapters quickly this is pretty bad, as Ulki won't be able to do anything on the player phase or the enemy phase for the first half of the chapter or so, since chapters take ~8 turns to complete. If we take longer than that, Ulki is detransforming near the end of the chapter, so he's still only a viable unit half the time.

Even ignoring his transform issues, Ulki's statistics are not impressive, particularly offensively. His statistics make look comparable to most units (though they were still worse), but remember that these units have access to braves, killers, effective weapons, forges, silvers, and 1-2 range. Ulki is stuck to the equivalent of an Iron Lance for the entire game. Let's compare Ulki to a low tier unit offensively, say Mia.

20/1 Mia (A Rhys B Ilyana) has 29 Atk with a plain Steel Sword/ 34 Atk with a forge. Her 22 AS also doubles every enemy on Ch18 and she has substantial crit (24/33). In contrast, Ulki only doubles 19/35 of Ch18's enemies, so Mia's winning by a lot. Add in that Mia can use her offense the entire map, and Ulki is getting beaten pretty badly by a Low tier unit.

Ulki's durability generally is good I'll admit, but ballistae are big problems. Ballistae appear on half of Ulki's pre-Elincia maps (there are no ballistae on Elincia's maps, so her weaknesses are dimnished). Any ballista variety will 2HKO untranformed Ulki at base and the Killers and Long Ballistae 2HKO tranformed Ulki, standard Ballistae 3HKO. The Killer Ballistae also have a good chance to OHKO Ulki, since he only has 10 Lck.

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

Dishes 83% damage, receives 15% at 25 hit.

2RKOing isn't very good when your teammates can ORKO. Only 31 Atk is required to ORKO this guy, which is easily managed by many when forges are considered and even when they're not sometimes. Why would we want to Ulki to be exposed to this enemy on the enemy phase when Jill can ORKO this guy with a basic steel axe (she has WTA)? It just hurts efficiency to have Ulki attacked when he can't ORKO, since team durability is high enough that Ulki taking attacks isn't all that helpful.

1x Archer lv 19 (steel bow)

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

Dishes 117% damage, receives 29% at 45 hit.

How does Ulki double a 14 AS enemy with 15 AS? He's 2RKOing this guy, and since he can't counter on the enemy phase he's taking two player phases to kill one enemy.

1x Knight lv 16 (knight killer [d])

33 hp, 19 atk (26 eff), 0 AS, 91 hit, 3 avo, 17 def, 6 res, 4 crit, 3 cev

Dishes 67% damage, receives 2% at 19.5 hit.

Like with the Wyvern Rider, a lot of the team can ORKO when forges are involved, making Ulki's 2RKOs less than impressive. Plus its harder to team up with Ulki for a 2RKO than a lot of characters, because while they may barely miss the ORKO, Ulki isnt even close.

Pretty impressive. In particular, Ulkis really hard to take down. For example, the wyvern rider only manages a 0.35% chance of killing him in 10 rounds of combat.

Ulki's durability is all well and good, but durability only really matters when we want the unit to have an enemy phase. Why would we want Ulki to have an enemy phase? Jill has comparable durability toUulki, for example, but she ORKOS a lot more than Ulki does, almost everyone ORKOs more than Ulki does once forges are considered. So basically we're walling Ulki off before he's transformed because he can't counterattack, and we're walling him off afterwards because his enemy phase is poor due to poor offense, in exchange for subpar player phase offense. I'm not seeing how he's a positive here.

Also, these are the enemies Ulki did relatively well against. Here's a few others from Ch18:

Lvl 19 Sword Knight: 34 HP 14 Def. Ulki only 3RKOs this guy, as he does with all the other weapon knights.

Lvl 6 Raven: 33 HP 12 Def, another 3RKO, and these are the low level Ravens.

Level 20 Fighter: 40 HP 11 Def, 3RKOing yet again.

How about later on? Lets skip to say, C23.

Ulki lv --/12 (B Boyd, B Mordy, beak): 46 hp, 35 atk, 151 hit, 18 AS, 22 def, 14 res, 68 avo

Astrid lv 20/15 (A Makalov, silver axe): 40 hp, 37 atk, 143 hit, 27 AS, 19 def, 17 res, 85 avo

Zihark lv 20/8 (A Muarim, B Brom, silver sword): 38 hp, 33 atk, 139 hit, 26 AS, 16 def, 7 res, 93 avo

Again, Ulkis proving to be quite comparable to highly ranked characters. The only two areas he loses to both Astrid and Zihark are AS/avo, but such leads are only as big as their practical impact. See, Ulkis 18 AS manages to double 80% of C23 enemies, and his avo barely matters since enemies have trouble just doing damage to him. Tigers and snipers only manage a 7RKO on him, and the 100 hit enemies only pull off 21 real hit against him anyway, so its not as though his avo is unreliable.

Of course there's the fact that Ulki spends about half the map in this form and half the map useless, and while Ulki has more Atk than Zihark, Zihark has crit and Adept.

Ulki's also a lot more dependent upon supports for his offense than either of these characters, he's getting +4 from supports, Astrid's getting none, Zihark's getting only +1. There are some problems with this support set. Ulki has +2 Mov and flight over Boyd, meaning that if Ulki uses his full Mov, Boyd will quickly be out of range. Boyd also doesn't really want Ulki in the first place, he can support Titania/Mist/Brom instead and receive similar bonuses much earlier, Boyd likely also isn't receiving Ulki's support boost when Ulki isn't transformed, since Ulki will be staying behind, making Ulki an even worse partner.

Mordecai is better, since he matches Mov better and doesn't have as many good options (though Mist/Ilyana/Stefan are all reasonable). However if Mordecai is using the Demi Band he's even more likely to be out of untransformed Ulki's range, so they won't receive each other's boosts all the time.

And when Ulki isn't doubling, his offense is pretty bad, he's generally 3RKOing depending on if his supporters are in range or not.

Ch23 enemies are also on the slow side, which makes Ulkis borderline speed much better. For example, 18 AS is only doubling 11/32 of Chapter 25s enemies, which isnt very good.

I think its pretty obvious that 99.9999% of Elincias value comes from her healing. The question is, how useful is healing in the last 4 chapters of the game? There isnt any real objective way to gauge this, but we can at least get some idea by examining variables such as team durability and amount of staff users fielded.

I agree, Elincia's primary value comes from her staff utility. Note that Elincia doesn't have to be anywhere near combat to exercise this, due to abundant Physics (5 available by this point), 9 Mov, and Canto, Elincia has no problem staying out of enemy ranges, so her durability isn't much of an issue(by the way, you didnt factor in Amitis +3 Def/Res).

C26 enemies average 23 atk/93 hit. Thus any unit with 45 hp/20 def/60 avo will be 15RKOed at 22 hit. After 35 rounds, that unit would only face a 0.46% chance of death, and the level only has 50 enemies.

Taking an average of all the enemy damage doesnt account for all the situations that lead to significant damage though.

Effective weapons are an example of this. Lets take someone normally durable, like Muarim. Theres a laguz axe warrior on Ch26 with 44 eff attack, this 2HKOs a level 14 Muarim (44-18*2= 26, Muarim only has 50 HP). So if Muarim or any other laguz is hit by this guy or many of the other enemies with laguzslayer weapons, theyll need healing.

Some of the common high tier units also have low Res. 20/13 Zihark for example, is 2HKOd by any of the sages on the map in Ch265. Now their hit rates may not be very high, but Zihark also doesnt necessarily have a full support set thats always in range either and if he does get hit by one hes going to need healed.

Plus there are enemies with high crit. There are a few enemies sporting Killers on Ch26, as well as every SM and Sniper having about 26 Crit. These crits do a lot more damage than normal. For example, that Makalov with 44 HP/21 Def takes 33 damage from the Warrior with a Killer Axe crit., the chance to crit is pretty substantial too, about 25%. After this crit, there are several enemies on the map who can kill Makalov in a single hit, so healing him would be beneficial.

There are also enemies with absurdly high Atk and Hit, namely laguz which show up very frequently in the last few chapters. For example Dragons have 43- 48 Atk, which would all 2HKO Makalov, and their hit is high as well(around 135 Hit). Anyone hit by a dragon is going to need healing.

Its not just the dragons either, all the laguz have high hit. Take Zihark for example, he may have 93 Avo, but a Tiger has about 130 hit, which means his chances of getting hit are non-negligible. A 20/14 Zihark is still getting 3HKOd by a 30 Atk Tiger (a lot of tigers have more than this), so his need of healing go up considerably.

There are also just enemies with high Atk period, for example the 34 Atk Wyvern Lord on Ch26. This guy can 2RKO a level 15 Tanith for example, and leaves a lot of other durable units at low HP values after 2 hits.

Ashnard of course, is the king of high Atk. Hes always 2RKOing Ike at very high hit rates, and to finish Endgame in a reasonable amount of time well want Ike(and our royal later on) to attack on both the player on enemy phases. Healing is necessary for this.

Basically, while its true that many of our higher tier units arent facing significant risks from every single enemy, there are bound to be threatening situations that require them to be healed afterwards.

Theres still more to consider. In numerous cases, a character can avoid a player phase attack by attacking at range, landing a crit, using a brave weapon or finishing off a heavily injured enemy. If were talking about paladins, 4/6 of them can have sol, which means roughly a 20% chance to heal per attack. Then its very rare for a character to attack every turn, so for the ones where they dont, they can take a vulnerary or elixir. Theres even the possibility that someone ends adjacent to Reyson, who heals them 10 hp at base level untransformed.

Its true that we dont have to always take counters, though most characters dont have very good damage output from 1 range (theyre going from ORKOing to 2RKOing). Sol is very unreliable and may not even trigger on the right attack. For example, Makalov attacks a dragon, Sol goes off on the first hit when hes at full health. Then the dragon hurts him badly on the counter, Sol doesnt go off on the second attack, Makalov is going to want healing badly, its as if Sol didnt activate at all.

While vulenary/elixir use is possible, vulenaries only heal 10 HP so they can only restore minor wounds. Elixirs are in short supply before Ch28. And yes, it is possible to stand adjacent to Reyson, but its pretty unlikely for frontliners (since Reyson is going to be in the back) and the amount HP healed is pretty small anyway. And plus, if were going efficiently, there are other things that they could be doing with their player phase other than attacking, Shoving for instance.

Ironically, the only units who will ever have a pressing need to be healed are healers themselves (Soren/Ilyana/Tormod/Rhys/Mist). Therefore, these are the types of units that Elincia is helping offensively (eg/ Tormod being able to take 2 E. phase counters instead of 1).

There are a few other units which fit into this category, namely Largo and Calill. Both of these units have pretty excellent offense, but suspect durability, and Elincia allows them to use their offense a lot more, which is more helful to team efficiency than Ulkis subpar offense.

This isnt a big deal for a few reasons. First, Mist aside, these characters will not face player phase counters 90% of the time. Usually a level has about 1/3 of enemies that are ranged, but most of those are either snipers (can be attacked at 1 range) or sages (do piddly damage to your own sages/bishops). Second, Mist and Tormod aside, their enemy phases are innately limited by their low movement. Finally, a lot of the playable healers arent even that impressive offensively. Rhys and Ilyana have some pretty serious AS issues, particularly if they promote early. Then Mists atk is terrible with non-magic swords, and Tormod has some offensive difficulties due to being supremely underlevelled (lol at lv 7/0 in C16). Whats the point of increasing Rhys enemy phase when hes sub-par on offence? I couldve just kept him on the backlines spamming physics and my team would probably be better off.

This isnt entirely accurate.

20/13 Mist (A Mordecai, B Boyd forged Silver Sword)

37 Atk/ 22 AS

37 Atk isnt terrible, she ORKOs everything she doubles except Generals and Wyvern Riders.

And while Tormod might start off underleveled, he doesnt need to be very high leveled to be good at combat.

20/7 Tormod (A Devdan B Calill forged thunder)

34 Atk/ 20 AS

Pretty good, since he kills just about everything he doubles (save sages/bishops, but anyone can else can kill those).

Rhys and Ilyana arent great offensively now Ill admit, but they can still double and kill generals, which a lot of your team has trouble killing without a forge, and Ilyanas good against dragons as well.

So a comparison between Elincias healing vs Ulkis combat could roughly translate to something like Soren taking an extra E. phase counter vs Ulkis overall combat. The latter is easily superior since even if Ulki loses damage output per hit, he can apply his offense much, much more than a single Soren counter.

Note that Soren can counter multiple times, especially when compared to Ulki he can counter about 1/3 of the enemies that Ulki does nothing against. Remember that Sorens Avo is pretty decent with an Ike support, so if he gets healed enough to take an extra hit, he can actually take 2-3 extra hits most of the time. Its more beneficial to expose Soren to a few enemies than Ulki to a few because while Soren will almost always ORKO, Ulki either wont deal damage (untransformed or its a ranged enemy), or will be 2RKOing. Now in a void Ulki would be better because we can expose him to more attacks, but in a team we have other characters that can both ORKO enemies and protect Soren, making Ulkis durability lead rather unimportant.

Elincia also saves Soren a player phase. If Soren would have had to heal someone on his Player Phase, but Elincia does it instead, hes free to attack something, which is why it doesnt really hurt Elincia when other healers are deployed, she frees up their player phases. Shes superior to the Sages and Rhys for healing , since she has a lot more mobility (marginally better than Mist as well because she can fly). Also, while Sages have a max B rank in Staves, Elincia starts off with an A which means she can quickly reach S rank Staves. Even Mist might have trouble getting to S rank staves depending on how much weve used her as a combat unit, since she starts with E. This allows her to Fortify/Ashera Staff and solve multiple problems at once.

Another thing, Elincia doesnt necessarily need to heal to be useful, although there will almost always be someone in need of healing. She could use a Sleep staff to nullify a troublesome enemy unit, or Ward to boost someones Res. And while Elincias offense isnt excellent, she can still ORKO most Sages/Bishops and has high enough Res not to care about the counter.

Leaving the boring stuff for last, lets look at supports. Ulki has Boyd/Rhys/Mordecai. Everything about these supports works: the bonuses are good (full atk and partial def guaranteed). Ulkis supporters can easily have a free slot for him (Boyd has to toss 2 of Titania/Mist/Brom, which isnt a problem since those are desired partners for many other characters. Rhys list is very poor outside of Titania. Mordy just needs to toss Ilyana). The main flaw is support speed since they begin so late, but its still much faster than Elincias.

The problem is with the support speeds, since all of these characters can receive bonuses earlier in the game, and characters generally have more offensive and defensive issues before promotion than afterwards. Boyd for example, can get the exact same bonuses from Mist and Brom that he gets from Ulki, but earlier, or can get Titania and just lose out on 1 Atk and hell gain some hit which he needs from time to time,.

Mordy can get the same bonuses from Mist, and is only losing out on +1 Atk with Ilyana and an Atk and Def with Stefan. So Mordecai gets earlier bonuses and Ilyana/Stefan get earlier bonuses, so the team without Ulki is stronger support wise before he joins.

Rhys doesnt have a partner issue, but has a proximity issue. Rhys is going to be in the back, as you mentioned before, Ulki is going to be in the front when hes transformed(Ulki obviously doesnt get much of a boost unstransformed). Theres a 3 Mov gap here, and its not like Ulki will be Cantoing back to Rhys anytime soon, so its worse than the Mov difference in mounted/unmounted supports.

Shes stuck with Ike/Geoffrey. The former is never going to happen since earth/heaven beginning in C26 is by far Ikes worst support option. Geoffrey doesnt mind her, but A fire/heaven gives 1 atk/22 hit, which is laughably negligible, and it only takes effect for 2 chapters. Then the bonuses only work when shes in Geoffreys range, which is pretty rare since she fears combat whereas hes a paladin frontliner.

Ike/Elincia isnt very good, Ill concede that. Elincia/Geoffrey is a little different from Rhys/Ulki in the sense that Elincia and Geoffrey both have Canto and tie Mov so staying in range is easier if desired and Geoffrey literally has no other options for his B slot.

So yeah, Ill concede that Ulkis outgoing support bonuses are better, but its not a great support list due to Ulkis jointime.

Elincias healing lets us use good combat units, while Ulki is a subpar combat unit, Elincia>Ulki.

Edited August 11, 2009 by -Cynthia-

[Vykan12]

First off, Ulki is only going to have these stats for about half the map, Ulki won't even transform until turn 4.

This can be interpreted as an availability decrease rather than some striking blow to his performance. See, whenever Ulki’s untransformed, he’ll simply be hiding from enemy exposure, so for that period he might as well not be fielded. An empty slot is basically average in performance since while we could’ve fielded someone with that slot, we also reap the benefits of more concentrated resources (CEXP/BEXP/weapons/etc) into the remaining fielded units.

It’s also possible that Ulki transforms before then. In many cases you want your characters to stick with 1 range weapons on enemy phase, so 1-2 ranged enemies are not going to face a counter no matter who they attack. As long as there’s no true inconvenience incurred, we can have Ulki soak up some ranged attacks, and every 2 leads to transforming a turn earlier.

Considering we want to clear chapters quickly this is pretty bad, as Ulki won't be able to do anything on the player phase or the enemy phase for the first half of the chapter or so, since chapters take ~8 turns to complete.

You took the average max BEXP turn count limit over the entire game, not just from C18-28. The average over that time frame comes out to ~11.5 turns, so Ulki’s going to be transformed well over half the time.

If we take longer than that, Ulki is detransforming near the end of the chapter, so he's still only a viable unit half the time.

Laguz revert slower than they transform, so your statement is obviously inaccurate.

[…]remember that these units have access to braves, killers, effective weapons, forges, silvers, and 1-2 range.

Most of the weapons you’re referring to aren’t even available in C18, or if they are, they’re in extremely limited supply. Silver weapons don’t become buyable until C23-24 (swords + lances in 23, axes + bows in 24), and before then, all you have is a silver blade in the desert that is easily missable, and a silver lance in a C16 chest. That combines for 40 uses, or ~20 1RKOes, and this is spread out between 2 units.

The first brave weapon you get is Shinon’s brave bow in C18, though you’ll only get it in 19 if he’s recruited. Our pool of competent bow users is basically limited to Astrid anyway, and she usually prefers sticking to axes unless she faces a boss or something. The next one is a brave sword that is found in a chest about 3/4 of the way through C21, and after that it’s Haar’s brave axe in C25, but then that leads us to my later Ulki comparisons. Then brave weapons are technically even more limited in usage than silver weapons are. While they do have 30 uses, generally we’re using braves on enemies that would be 3HKOed with a more normative weapon choice. That would only rack up 10 1RKOes, possibly more when considering crits and brave usage on fast enemies (eg/ swordmasters).

That brings us to forges. I noticed that you assumed forges wherever possible in every one of your comparisons, and frankly that’s absurd. Over the entire course of the game only 22 forges can be made, which averages out to 2 forges per character on an 11 unit team. Let’s assume that whoever equips a forge can 2HKO any enemy on a given map, which is generous to say the least. Now let’s consider how many kills a given character will garner through various combinations of 2 forges:

2 steel: 35 kills

1 hand + 1 steel: 30 kills

1 steel + 1 silver: 30 kills

2 silver: 25 kills

1 hand + 1 silver: 25 kills

2 hand: 25 kills

*I didn’t include iron forges since they’re likely to be depleted by C18. In fact, many steel forges will be partially used by that time, so the above figures are still being generous.

Going by my enemy stats, there are roughly 1023 enemies in the game, probably quite a few more considering missed reinforcements and FOW maps. Thus if we balanced kills between 10 units evenly, one would expect ~100 kills per unit. So if we forged someone say 2 silvers, those forges would only account for about 1/4 of their total kill count.

With that in mind, consider the following points addressed:

2RKOing isn't very good when your teammates can ORKO. Only 31 Atk is required to ORKO this guy, which is easily managed by many when forges are considered and even when they're not sometimes.

Like with the Wyvern Rider, a lot of the team can ORKO when forges are involved, making Ulki's 2RKOs less than impressive.

almost everyone ORKOs more than Ulki does once forges are considered.

20/13 Mist (A Mordecai, B Boyd forged Silver Sword)

20/7 Tormod (A Devdan B Calill forged thunder)

Last up is hand weapons. The problem is, these weapons have such low Mt that a character 1RKOing consistently with steel will be 2RKOing even more consistently with a hand axe/javelin. Therefore it’s only beneficial to equip these when the majority of a group of enemies has ranged options themselves, otherwise we’re hurting our E. phase efficiency. Since only about 1/3 of enemies carry range, it’s quite rare for them to outnumber 1 range enemies in someone’s immediate attack radius.

I suppose holistically those weapons allow top tiers to beat Ulki’s offence quite significantly. However, all I’m aiming to prove about C18-25 is that our flying friend isn’t hurting the team more than he is helping it. Let’s draw out a more meaningful comparison (ie a comparison between Ulki and someone around mid tier) to satisfy that goal.

Ulki lv --/7 (beak): 41 hp, 28 atk, 138 hit, 15 AS, 18 def, 11 res, 60 avo

Gatrie lv 20/1 (steel lance): 43 hp, 31 atk, 106 hit, 10-14 AS, 21 def, 6 res, 28-36 avo

*I didn’t include supports here since Gatrie can only manage a C level by this point, and his only decent partner is Ilyana.

I’d say Ulki wins rather decisively here. While Gatrie has 3 atk on him, he also doubles a lot less, and his hit rate is questionable. Then his concrete durability leads (2 hp/3 def) are no match for 24+ avo. For example, against a 90 hit enemy, Gatrie faces 58 real whereas Ulki faces 18. Having over three times the chance of avoiding an attack >>> taking an extra hit or two. And while Ulki doesn’t get to fight all the time, he has a movement lead on Gatrie even when transformed (7-9 + flight > 6), so they’ll probably face similar enemy exposure regardless.

20/1 Mia (A Rhys B Ilyana) has 29 Atk with a plain Steel Sword/ 34 Atk with a forge. Her 22 AS also doubles every enemy on Ch18 and she has substantial crit (24/29). In contrast, Ulki only doubles 19/35 of Ch18's enemies, so Mia's winning by a lot. Add in that Mia can use her offense the entire map, and Ulki is getting beaten pretty badly by a Low tier unit.

First off, one of the main reasons for Mia’s low ranking is her earlygame performance, which is arguably the worst on the entire team until Rolf shows up, and continues to be pretty abysmal until she creeps towards promotion. If we ranked Mia based on her C18-F performance, she’d likely be ranked around mid or higher. Compare her to Devdan for instance:

Mia lv 20/1 (A Rhys, B Ilyana, steel sword): 32 hp, 29 atk, 143 hit, 24 crit, 22 AS, 13 def, 8.5 res, 56 avo

Devdan lv --/8 (C Neph, C Tormod, steel lance): 38 hp, 27 atk, 126 hit, 8 crit, 14-15 AS, 12 def, 11 res, 47-49 avo

Easy win for Mia. The only area she loses in is hp/res, but her leads in def/avo easily override that.

Second, A Rhys isn’t possible until C19-20, so that’s -1 atk for a couple chapters. Now she ties Ulki’s base atk, but this is with her supports in range. Without them, 4-5 atk suddenly dissapears, which is 8-10 damage per double. That’s a huge difference considering the amount of enemies Ulki himself cannot 1RKO.

Now let’s consider some resources. Mia wouldn’t mind an energy drop whereas Ulki has a lot to gain from a speedwing. Instead of doubling 68% of C18 non-raven enemies, he doubles 82%. On the other hand, Mia still ties Ulki’s atk with one supporter in range.

Third, you’re completely ignoring durability, which directly translates into offensive production (eg/ if you have good durability you can expose yourself to more enemies without risk). Ulki has 9 hp/5 def/2.5 res/4 avo over her, which is huge. For example, against a 24 atk enemy, Mia’s getting 3RKOed while Ulki’s getting 7RKOed. It doesn’t matter if Mia can double a few extra enemies or use a forge when Ulki can face more than 2 E. phase counters before facing death risks (assuming Mia took a P. phase counter, which is usually the case).

This, combined with Ulki’s movement lead at least cancel out Mia’s lack of transform issues.

Ulki's durability generally is good I'll admit, but ballistae are big problems.

True, but all they really manage to do is limit Ulki’s mobility. There’s also the possibility that we give Ulki the full guard, particularly if we use him to acquire the knight ring in C19.

Why would we want Ulki to be exposed to this enemy on the enemy phase when Jill can ORKO this guy with a basic steel axe (she has WTA)? It just hurts efficiency to have Ulki attacked when he can't ORKO, since team durability is high enough that Ulki taking attacks isn't all that helpful.

Jill (or any unit for that matter) cannot be everywhere at once. If we play a rout map for instance, the ideal strategy is to spread out your frontliner units as much as possible. Such an approach can usually be carried out to maps with other goals. For instance, seizing usually means routing a good 80% of a map. In these types of scenarios, Ulki’s offense is being compared to nobody’s, so the outcome is obviously positive.

Plus it’s harder to “team up” with Ulki for a 2RKO [vs a general] than a lot of characters, because while they may barely miss the ORKO, Ulki isn’t even close.

Ulki leaves generals with 33% hp, who isn’t going to be able to finish the kill? Sothe?

Also, these are the enemies Ulki did relatively well against. Here's a few others from Ch18:

Lvl 19 Sword Knight: 34 HP 14 Def. Ulki only 3RKOs this guy, as he does with all the other weapon knights.

Lvl 6 Raven: 33 HP 12 Def, another 3RKO, and these are the low level Ravens.

Level 20 Fighter: 40 HP 11 Def, 3RKOing yet again.

You basically found enemies that Ulki 3RKOes but other units usually 2RKO, so the gap is the same as 2RKOing vs 1RKOing. The sword knights and warriors are about as durable as wyverns (all take 31 atk to ORKO). Then Ulki can 2RKO the fighter if he gets a speedwing, and the swd knight is difficult to double for anybody (not many units have 18+ AS post-promotion). The ravens are basically impossible to double unless you’re a swordmaster or a fast unit with access to the knight ward (eg/ Neph, Astrid), so even with forges most units will only manage a 2RKO.

Ulki's also a lot more dependent upon supports for his offense than either of these characters, he's getting +4 from supports, Astrid's getting none, Zihark's getting only +1.

While this is true, Zihark and Astrid rely heavily on their supports to be as durable as they are. Zihark in particular loses 22 avo if none of his supporters are in range, and his concrete durability is similar to Mia’s.

There are some problems with this support set. Ulki has +2 Mov and flight over Boyd, meaning that if Ulki uses his full Mov, Boyd will quickly be out of range.

Who’s to say Ulki has to use his full move then? In some cases he’ll benefit from the atk bonus more than being thrust deeper into enemy territory. In others he can reach certain enemies before anyone else (your other fliers can easily be pre-occupied), in which case he’s competing with nothing so the lack of supports won’t matter.

Boyd also doesn't really want Ulki in the first place, he can support Titania/Mist/Brom instead and receive similar bonuses much earlier, Boyd likely also isn't receiving Ulki's support boost when Ulki isn't transformed, since Ulki will be staying behind, making Ulki an even worse partner.

Boyd has to toss 2 of Titania/Mist/Brom, which isn’t a problem since those are desired partners for many other characters.

I guess I’ll have to expand on that point I made in my first post.

Titania’s alternatives: Ike/Rhys/Mist

Mist’s alternatives: Titania/Mordecai/Jill

Brom’s alternatives: Neph/Zihark

Even if Boyd takes Brom, there’s a very good chance the remaining 2 partners will be taken, which leaves Boyd with an empty slot that Ulki later fills.

However if Mordecai is using the Demi Band he's even more likely to be out of untransformed Ulki's range, so they won't receive each other's boosts all the time.

If Ulki has 7 move half the time and 9 the other, that averages out to 8. I’d say 8 move + flying can easily keep up with 9 move. Moreover, Mordy won’t be using his full movement when smiting people, which is easily his primary function when not attacking enemies. Also, if movement differences are such an issue, why would we even consider Ilyana and Stefan as partners for Mordy?

Ch23 enemies are also on the slow side, which makes Ulki’s borderline speed much better. For example, 18 AS is only doubling 11/32 of Chapter 25’s enemies, which isn’t very good.

Does Ulki not level at all between C23 and 25? And again, throwing a single speedwing onto Ulki helps his doubling dramatically.

Effective weapons are an example of this.

They’re also hilariously rare. Only 18% of C26 enemies have them, and while that may sound somewhat high, a lot of effective weapons flat out suck. For example, knight killers have less effective Mt than silver lances. Tornado tomes do a whopping 6 extra damage to fliers. Heavy spears have the same effective MT as a silver lance but they’re also targetting units with massive concrete durability (Gatrie/Brom/Tauroneo all have 48+ hp/22+ def before supports). The only effective weapons that are worth a scare are laguz ones since they sport 18-26 Mt, though now we’re only talking about 3/50 enemies. Whatever laguz are fielded can just avoid these enemies altogether with little movement consequences, or we can prioritize these enemies on P. phase (something we’d probably do anyway due to their naturally high atk).

Some of the common high tier units also have low Res.

Again, we’re talking about a rare occurrence. In C26, only 5/50 enemies attack res (1 being the boss), and out of these, only 2 are sages. There’s also spirit water to consider.

Plus there are enemies with high crit. There are a few enemies sporting Killers on Ch26, as well as every SM and Sniper having about 26 Crit.

The SM and sniper crits basically result in tripling laughable damage, which still comes out as pretty negligible. Take this guy:

1x Swordmaster lv 10 (killing edge)

36 hp, 25 atk, 22 AS, 124 hit, 51 avo, 11 def, 7 res, 55 crit, 7 cev

Your 20/10 unsupported Mak would take 27% damage instead of 9%. With either A Astrid/C Haar, the KW equipped or given a higher level, he’s taking 14% damage instead of 4.5%. In each case, a vulnerary would shake off the hit, and he’s one of the candidates for sol, so the damage could be warded off that way as well.

These crits do a lot more damage than normal. For example, that Makalov with 44 HP/21 Def takes 33 damage from the Warrior with a Killer Axe crit., the chance to crit is pretty substantial too, about 25%.

The thing is, they also have atrocious hitrates. The warrior you’re referring to has 97 hit, but 20/10 Mak (A Astrid) with capped spd has 82 avo, 92 if he uses a sword. In the former case he only faces 5 real hit, so that comes out to a ~1% chance of being critted. The odds of Mak being attacked by this lone enemy, getting critted and getting finished off by another high atk enemy is so remote it’s not worth considering.

There are also enemies with absurdly high Atk and Hit, namely laguz which show up very frequently in the last few chapters. For example Dragons have 43- 48 Atk, which would all 2HKO Makalov, and their hit is high as well(around 135 Hit). Anyone hit by a dragon is going to need healing.

Dragons only show up in C28 and F, but we also have 8 fortify uses in those 2 chapters, which is basically 8 turns where a single healer restores everyone to full hp. If that weren’t enough, we could’ve also saved the Ashera staff and the hammerne. Oh, and dragons can be attacked at range, so we can do something like thunder!Soren + ragnell!Ike + a finishing attack while not facing a single counter.

It’s not just the dragons either, all the laguz have high hit. Take Zihark for example, he may have 93 Avo, but a Tiger has about 130 hit, which means his chances of getting hit are non-negligible. A 20/14 Zihark is still getting 3HKOd by a 30 Atk Tiger (a lot of tigers have more than this), so his need of healing go up considerably.

93 avo is a pretty big underestimate for Zihark’s avo in C26. If he’s 20/13 by then, a full support set nets him 100 avo, at which point said tiger only manages 18 hit. The odds of Zihark getting hit thrice in a row is only ~0.58%, and there aren’t even 3 tigers in close proximity to each other at any point in the game.

Against anything else, Zihark is pretty much untouchable. Even a 110 hit enemy only manages 2.1 real, and many enemies have less than that. Moreover, higher hit rates are usually synonymous with lower atk, with laguz being one of the main exceptions. Anyway, my point is, even if Zihark gets gravely wounded by a tiger, he can still self-heal either through an elixir or multiple vulneraries while still being extremely safe on the frontlines.

There are also just enemies with high Atk period, for example the 34 Atk Wyvern Lord on Ch26. This guy can 2RKO a level 15 Tanith for example, and leaves a lot of other durable units at low HP values after 2 hits.

Why did Tanith only gain 5 levels in 8 chapters? A reasonable amount of BEXP alone would get her there. In addition, Tanith has some freakishly high avo herself. At lv --/17 with A Marcia/B Oscar, she has 101 avo, not to mention 2 high rank weapon types for WTC. The Wyvern Lord you mentioned will only manage 2.53 real, and she could always 1RKO him at range using the sonic sword.

Ashnard of course, is the king of high Atk.

This point is the king of irrelevance since all our healing resources will be focused onto Ike. If a Mist physic alone heals Ike to full hp, what is Elincia doing? Unless the team in play is absolutely horrendous, the majority of the chapter’s generic enemies should be gone by the time the final boss battle ensues.

Sol is very unreliable and may not even trigger on the right attack.

You’re looking at the merits of sol alone rather than how it adds to the durability of a unit. Let’s say Mak gets 5RKOed by an enemy he doubles at 30 hit, and that his sol activation is 22%. Before sol, his odds of dying in 10 rounds are 15%. After sol, it plummets to about 0.1%.

While vulenary/elixir use is possible, vulenaries only heal 10 HP so they can only restore minor wounds.

Minor wounds are the most likely outcome for most lategame units after a turn of combat. Let’s say someone faces 4 enemies, each of which has a 25% chance of hitting that someone for 8 damage.

1 enemy hits: 68%

2 enemies hit: 26%

3 enemies hit: 5%

all enemies hit: 0.4%

That comes out to a 94% chance of receiving 8-16 damage, so an elixir or mend would only be required in the other 6% of possible cases.

Moreover, there’s nothing stopping you from using a vulnerary multiple times on the same unit. That’s only unconstructive if said unit is passing up attack opportunities to heal himself.

Elixirs are in short supply before Ch28.

They’re also in short demand.

There are a few other units which fit into this category, namely Largo and Calill. Both of these units have pretty excellent offense, but suspect durability, and Elincia allows them to use their offense a lot more.

I’ll give you Calill, though Largo can at least become an avo tank a few chapters after joining. He’ll have 82 avo at lv --/11 (A Tauroneo/B Muarim). Moreover, he can usually take 3 hits or more due to having such a high hp base and growth (52 and 80%, respectively). Moreover, he’s one of the few characters in the game who can ORKO reliable at 1-2 range, so he’s rarely taking P. phase counters.

Remember that Soren’s Avo is pretty decent with an Ike support, so if he gets healed enough to take an extra hit, he can actually take 2-3 extra hits most of the time.

No, he’s still limited to taking an extra hit unless you want to gamble with Soren’s life, no matter how small that gamble might be.

It’s more beneficial to expose Soren to a few enemies than Ulki to a few because while Soren will almost always ORKO, Ulki either won’t deal damage (untransformed or it’s a ranged enemy), or will be 2RKOing.

I think you need to re-examine lategame Ulki.

Ulki lv --/16 (A Brom, B Boyd, beak): 54 hp, 38 atk, 158 hit, 20 AS, 25 def, 17 res, 73 avo

He ORKOes 58% of C26 enemies, and falls short on enemies most everyone else has trouble with anyways. Nobody’s going to be doubling these guys:

1x Swordmaster lv 10 (killing edge)

36 hp, 25 atk, 22 AS, 124 hit, 51 avo, 11 def, 7 res, 55 crit, 7 cev

1x Swordmaster lv 10 (longsword)

35 hp, 21 atk (27 eff), 22 AS, 130 hit, 51 avo, 11 def, 8 res, 24 crit, 7 cev

1x Swordmaster lv 13 (brave sword)

37 hp, 26 atk, 23 AS, 126 hit, 53 avo, 12 def, 8 res, 26 crit, 7 cev

Then there are numerous enemies where you need >40 atk to ORKO. For perspective, a 20/15 silver axe!Kieran barely pulls this off, and he has one of the best offences in the game.

As for Ulki not dealing damage due to being untransformed, remember that Soren suffers the same fate in many cases due to not reaching any enemies. I’ll give you ranged enemies though.

Anyway, bottom line, I’m sticking to what I said in my first post concerning this issue:

So a comparison between Elincia’s healing vs Ulki’s combat could roughly translate to something like Soren taking an extra E. phase counter vs Ulki’s overall combat. The latter is easily superior since even if Ulki loses damage output per hit, he can apply his offense much, much more than a single Soren counter.

Now in a void Ulki would be better because we can expose him to more attacks, but in a team we have other characters that can both ORKO enemies and protect Soren, making Ulki’s durability lead rather unimportant.

You’re not making any sense. If we protect Soren, then he won’t face any E. phase counters unless you put provoke on him or something (ranged attackers might fancy attacking him in that case). That makes him like a sniper offensively in that he’s capping at 1 attack per turn, which is evidently less than what Ulki’s pulling off. Moreover, protecting Soren is an imposition on some of your frontliners, so Ulki’s at an advantage for not requiring such treatment to function properly.

Elincia also saves Soren a player phase.

Soren attacks at range, so unless there’s a huge surge of short spear!generals, I can’t see how this will ever be the case.

She’s superior to the Sages and Rhys for healing, since she has a lot more mobility (marginally better than Mist as well because she can fly).

What you described only makes Elincia the best choice for using restore or some other 1 range staff. Where healers make their money is in how well they can use physics lategame, and Elincia is by far the worst in that department thanks to her 12 mag base. A lv 20/14 Mist has twice that mag value, and thus double the physic range. Then the other healers have even more mag than Mist at similar levels.

Also, while Sages have a max B rank in Staves, Elincia starts off with an A which means she can quickly reach S rank Staves. […] This allows her to Fortify/Ashera Staff and solve multiple problems at once.

What’s so special about that? So long as someone hits S rank at some point, having Elincia do it as well is useless. Furthermore, we wouldn’t want Elincia using the fortify anyway due to her low mag stat.

She could use a Sleep staff to nullify a troublesome enemy unit

That is until you realize her accuracy with it is insulting. Let’s say she tries to use it on this guy from 8 spaces away:

1x General lv 9 (steel blade)

39 hp, 28 atk, 8 AS, 106 hit, 21 avo, 23 def, 12 res, 6 crit, 5 cev

A lv --/5 Elincia would have a 47% chance of putting the general to sleep. With that kind of accuracy, she could very well use up the entire staff without having it work (~15% chance).

And while Elincia’s offense isn’t excellent, she can still ORKO most Sages/Bishops and has high enough Res not to care about the counter.

I bolded the important part. Even a levelled Volke can ORKO any sage he comes by, so this serves as a testament to how awful Elincia’s offence is more than anything else.

Elincia/Geoffrey is a little different from Rhys/Ulki in the sense that Elincia and Geoffrey both have Canto and tie Mov so staying in range is easier if desired

Then the bonuses only work when she’s in Geoffrey’s range, which is pretty rare since she fears combat whereas he’s a paladin frontliner.

If we try to put Elincia within Geoffrey’s support range, she’ll inevitably face attacks. That’s why I said the bonuses would only be in effect a fraction of the time, and fractional atk + hit is about as worthless as a support can get.

Elincia’s healing lets us use good combat units, while Ulki is a subpar combat unit, Elincia>Ulki.

Ulki’s sexier.

Ulki > Elincia.

[-Cynthia-]

This can be interpreted as an availability decrease rather than some striking blow to his performance. See, whenever Ulki’s untransformed, he’ll simply be hiding from enemy exposure, so for that period he might as well not be fielded. An empty slot is basically average in performance since while we could’ve fielded someone with that slot, we also reap the benefits of more concentrated resources (CEXP/BEXP/weapons/etc) into the remaining fielded units.

It depends on what we do with Ulki when he’s untransformed. If Ulki wants to see combat, he’s going to have to travel with the rest of the group, but we don’t want him to have an enemy phase, so we’re going to have to restrict everyone else’s movement to keep him walled off, which is a negative. Ulki can choose to lag behind of course, but then he’s going to have some issues reaching enemies.

And in Ulki’s chapters where Elincia isn’t around, she’s obviously acting an empty slot, allowing more CEXP/BEXP/etc. to your units at all times, whereas Ulki has to take a significant portion of CEXP(when transformed) to have even some semblance of offense. And when Elincia does show up, she uses her own pool of EXP(staves), so she’s allowing more CEXP to go among the rest of the units on the team. A team with Elincia is going to be stronger than a team with Ulki because of this.

It’s also possible that Ulki transforms before then. In many cases you want your characters to stick with 1 range weapons on enemy phase, so 1-2 ranged enemies are not going to face a counter no matter who they attack. As long as there’s no true inconvenience incurred, we can have Ulki soak up some ranged attacks, and every 2 leads to transforming a turn earlier.

There isn’t really a way to direct ranged attacks towards Ulki specifically, assuming other characters with 1 range are also in range. And if the other characters in range have 1-2 range, we would obviously want them to counter rather than Ulki.

You took the average max BEXP turn count limit over the entire game, not just from C18-28. The average over that time frame comes out to ~11.5 turns, so Ulki’s going to be transformed well over half the time.

Laguz revert slower than they transform, so your statement is obviously inaccurate.

Not really, assuming Ulki is engaged with enemies while transformed. With one enemy per turn, he’ll only be transformed for 5 turns. With two per turn, it drops down to 4. So let’s look at an example.

On a 10 turn map, Ulki spends turns 1-3 untransformed, then transforms turn 4. Let’s say he faces 2 enemies per turn, which means he spends turns 4-8 transformed, then he’ll be untransformed for 9 and 10. This means he spent half the map transformed.

Of course if Ulki is exposed to less enemies he would spend slightly over the half the map transformed, but if Ulki doesn’t see that much action (he’ll need both phases since he can’t ORKO), he’ll have issues keeping up a 1 chapter/level pace since when he faces enemies he isn’t ORKOing for the most part. Plus, Ulki loses gauge when he gets shot at as well.

Most of the weapons you’re referring to aren’t even available in C18, or if they are, they’re in extremely limited supply. Silver weapons don’t become buyable until C23-24 (swords + lances in 23, axes + bows in 24), and before then, all you have is a silver blade in the desert that is easily missable, and a silver lance in a C16 chest. That combines for 40 uses, or ~20 1RKOes, and this is spread out between 2 units.

I was mainly referring to buyable silvers, which we obviously won’t have issues getting. Once they become available, Ulki’s offense relative to the team becomes worse.

The first brave weapon you get is Shinon’s brave bow in C18, though you’ll only get it in 19 if he’s recruited. Our pool of competent bow users is basically limited to Astrid anyway, and she usually prefers sticking to axes unless she faces a boss or something. The next one is a brave sword that is found in a chest about 3/4 of the way through C21, and after that it’s Haar’s brave axe in C25, but then that leads us to my later Ulki comparisons. Then brave weapons are technically even more limited in usage than silver weapons are. While they do have 30 uses, generally we’re using braves on enemies that would be 3HKOed with a more normative weapon choice. That would only rack up 10 1RKOes, possibly more when considering crits and brave usage on fast enemies (eg/ swordmasters).

They’re still ways for beorc units to compensate for not being able to ORKO that Ulki cannot. If Ulki is only 2RKOing an enemy, there’s nothing he can do to improve it immediately. If a beorc unit only needs to switch to a different weapon to ORKO, they have that flexibility.

That brings us to forges. I noticed that you assumed forges wherever possible in every one of your comparisons, and frankly that’s absurd. Over the entire course of the game only 22 forges can be made, which averages out to 2 forges per character on an 11 unit team. Let’s assume that whoever equips a forge can 2HKO any enemy on a given map, which is generous to say the least. Now let’s consider how many kills a given character will garner through various combinations of 2 forges:

I’ll note that not all characters need forges, namely laguz(like Mordecai) , characters who don’t see much combat anyway(Elincia), or characters who naturally ORKO(Kieran), so that would make for a few extra forges.

Going by my enemy stats, there are roughly 1023 enemies in the game, probably quite a few more considering missed reinforcements and FOW maps. Thus if we balanced kills between 10 units evenly, one would expect ~100 kills per unit. So if we forged someone say 2 silvers, those forges would only account for about 1/4 of their total kill count.

The 1/4 of their kill count that they used forges for was mostly only the portion they needed forges for. It doesn’t make sense to use a forge when attacking a Sage or something, only on that General that couldn’t be ORKOd otherwise.

Steel forges are even easier to maintain due to more uses. While I agree that forges won’t be equipped at all times, they can be equipped as needed, thus giving them an advantage over Ulki

Last up is hand weapons. The problem is, these weapons have such low Mt that a character 1RKOing consistently with steel will be 2RKOing even more consistently with a hand axe/javelin. Therefore it’s only beneficial to equip these when the majority of a group of enemies has ranged options themselves, otherwise we’re hurting our E. phase efficiency. Since only about 1/3 of enemies carry range, it’s quite rare for them to outnumber 1 range enemies in someone’s immediate attack radius.

Some characters can still ORKO at 2 range quite frequently- Boyd, Largo, mages etc, and almost any character can kill a Sage with a Javelin or whatever, and low defense enemies make up a large portion of 1-2 rangers (Sages, Bishops, Snipers).

At any rate, having the ability to counter at 1-2 range comes in handy sometimes and it’s something Ulki can’t do.

Stuff about Gatrie

Gatrie is a bit of a misleading character to compare against, mainly because his placement is mainly due to having a good earlygame which doesn’t really reflect well in a comparison between the two. Nevertheless, with sufficient KW usage(IE 14 AS), Gatrie only doubles marginally less than Ulki and will gain more AS over time (lower leveled so more Exp gain). And when both or neither is doubling, Gatrie wins offense.

20/1 Mia (A Rhys B Ilyana) has 29 Atk with a plain Steel Sword/ 34 Atk with a forge. Her 22 AS also doubles every enemy on Ch18 and she has substantial crit (24/29). In contrast, Ulki only doubles 19/35 of Ch18's enemies, so Mia's winning by a lot. Add in that Mia can use her offense the entire map, and Ulki is getting beaten pretty badly by a Low tier unit.

Second, A Rhys isn’t possible until C19-20, so that’s -1 atk for a couple chapters. Now she ties Ulki’s base atk, but this is with her supports in range. Without them, 4-5 atk suddenly dissapears, which is 8-10 damage per double. That’s a huge difference considering the amount of enemies Ulki himself cannot 1RKO.

How are you getting 4-5 Atk? +1 from Ilyana, +2 to +3 from Rhys, so supports only , count for 3-4 Atk. It’s true that supporters aren’t always in range, though this affects Ulki as well in later comparisons, and you still haven’t accounted for Mia’s crit—when both are 2RKOing, Mia’s chances to kill are a lot higher.

Now let’s consider some resources. Mia wouldn’t mind an energy drop whereas Ulki has a lot to gain from a speedwing. Instead of doubling 68% of C18 non-raven enemies, he doubles 82%. On the other hand, Mia still ties Ulki’s atk with one supporter in range.

I don’t know why you’re counting non-raven enemies, since we have to kill them just like everything else in C18. Also, which supporter in range is important, since Mia gains more Atk from Rhys than Ilyana.

Third, you’re completely ignoring durability, which directly translates into offensive production (eg/ if you have good durability you can expose yourself to more enemies without risk). Ulki has 9 hp/5 def/2.5 res/4 avo over her, which is huge. For example, against a 24 atk enemy, Mia’s getting 3RKOed while Ulki’s getting 7RKOed. It doesn’t matter if Mia can double a few extra enemies or use a forge when Ulki can face more than 2 E. phase counters before facing death risks (assuming Mia took a P. phase counter, which is usually the case).

Mia’s Avo is high enough that her durability isn’t too much of an issue. If Mia took a hit, we can easily counteract that with a healer, like Elincia.

This, combined with Ulki’s movement lead at least cancel out Mia’s lack of transform issues.

I definitely wouldn’t agree with this. Moving 2 more spaces is nice and all, but Ulki is probably quite a distance behind Mia anyway, since we didn’t want to expose him to attacks untransformed. Even if he isn’t behind, I doubt his mobility leads him to so much combat for that half of the map to make up for then other half when he couldn’t do anything.

True, but all they really manage to do is limit Ulki’s mobility. There’s also the possibility that we give Ulki the full guard, particularly if we use him to acquire the knight ring in C19.

Limiting Ulki’s mobility means that it’s no longer an advantage over characters like Mia or Gatrie. As for the Knight Ring, it’s really better to use Janaff anyway. Janaff transforms turn 1, so he’ll be able to get to Naesala quicker, meaning we’ll spend less time trying not kill ravens and on the map in general. Ulki could equip the Demi Band and try to accomplish the same thing, but he can’t have the Demi Band and the Full Guard at the same time(plus Janaff frees up the Demi Band for someone else)

Jill (or any unit for that matter) cannot be everywhere at once. If we play a rout map for instance, the ideal strategy is to spread out your frontliner units as much as possible. Such an approach can usually be carried out to maps with other goals. For instance, seizing usually means routing a good 80% of a map. In these types of scenarios, Ulki’s offense is being compared to nobody’s, so the outcome is obviously positive.

This would only be true if Jill were one of the only units beating Ulki offensively, but there are enough high/top tier units with better offense than Ulki that we should have enough to spread them around the map and clear the map more quickly than if we put Ulki in the same spot.

You basically found enemies that Ulki 3RKOes but other units usually 2RKO, so the gap is the same as 2RKOing vs 1RKOing.

There are several units that can ORKO these guys though, which leads to a larger gap. Plus, taking one more round to kill things is pretty bad, which is more or less the point of all these comparisons.

The sword knights and warriors are about as durable as wyverns (all take 31 atk to ORKO)

Which is far from an impossible figure to reach. Remember that Jill was ORKOing those Wyverns and there are people with more Atk than Jill as well.

Then Ulki can 2RKO the fighter if he gets a speedwing

Ulki is going to have a very difficult time getting a Speedwing. The main issue is that the Speedwing can’t go to use from Ch13- Ch17(4) (there’s also the one in Ch2 but that’s obviously even worse). Ulki isn’t the only character in the game who would like to double more, Mordecai and Boyd come to mind as well as several others (Ilyana, Gatrie, Devdan, Haar etc.) If they’re in play(considering they’re Ulki’s most likely support partners, they should be), both of them would like a Speedwing.

and the swd knight is difficult to double for anybody (not many units have 18+ AS post-promotion).

Depends on your definition of many. By my count I see:

Oscar/Kieran/Makalov(with little bit of KW)

Titania

Marcia

Tanith

Lethe

Stefan

Zihark

Mia

Ike

Soren

Nephenee

Astrid

Muarim

Janaff

Volke does too, but he has offensive issues. But anyway, 18 AS at this point in the game isn’t very difficult to reach, all in all.

The ravens are basically impossible to double unless you’re a swordmaster or a fast unit with access to the knight ward (eg/ Neph, Astrid), so even with forges most units will only manage a 2RKO.

Ulki’s still losing by quite a margin here regardless, whether it’s a ORKO or a 2RKO, since it’s a 3RKO for him.

While this is true, Zihark and Astrid rely heavily on their supports to be as durable as they are. Zihark in particular loses 22 avo if none of his supporters are in range, and his concrete durability is similar to Mia’s.

Astrid only gains 1 Def and 15 Avo from A Makalov and she has 40 HP/18 Def bases without him, so she should be fine.

Zihark does lose a lot of durability when his supporters are out of range, so he’ll probably need a healer, like Elincia.

Who’s to say Ulki has to use his full move then? In some cases he’ll benefit from the atk bonus more than being thrust deeper into enemy territory. In others he can reach certain enemies before anyone else (your other fliers can easily be pre-occupied), in which case he’s competing with nothing so the lack of supports won’t matter.

Like with the ballistae, Ulki’s mobility begins not to become an advantage if he can’t utilize it properly.

I guess I’ll have to expand on that point I made in my first post.

Titania’s alternatives: Ike/Rhys/Mist

Mist’s alternatives: Titania/Mordecai/Jill

Brom’s alternatives: Neph/Zihark

Even if Boyd takes Brom, there’s a very good chance the remaining 2 partners will be taken, which leaves Boyd with an empty slot that Ulki later fills.

There’s a good chance Boyd won’t be full, but also a good chance he will take 2 of Titania/Brom/Mist. If Boyd waits for Ulki, the team will be weaker before Ulki hands out support bonuses (Ulki doesn’t get B’s until Ch23 anyway, so his own offense suffers before then).

However if Mordecai is using the Demi Band he's even more likely to be out of untransformed Ulki's range, so they won't receive each other's boosts all the time

If Ulki has 7 move half the time and 9 the other, that averages out to 8. I’d say 8 move + flying can easily keep up with 9 move. Moreover, Mordy won’t be using his full movement when smiting people, which is easily his primary function when not attacking enemies. Also, if movement differences are such an issue, why would we even consider Ilyana and Stefan as partners for Mordy?

We consider them as partners, but not their support boost to be active at all times. Just like when you said Mia loses 6-8 Atk when supports aren’t in range, Ulki loses a similar amount when his aren’t in range, which is a significant portion of the time.

Does Ulki not level at all between C23 and 25?

Ulki has issues keeping up a 1 level/chapter rate because his Exp gain is pretty low (only ~15 Exp per kill) and he can only see limited combat in chapters due to transform issues. And even if we give Ulki 19 AS for Ch25, it only improves to 17/32, which is barely over half.

And again, throwing a single speedwing onto Ulki helps his doubling dramatically.

And it prevents others from improving dramatically sooner, including Ulki’s own partners. Elincia doesn’t need anything like this.

They’re also hilariously rare. Only 18% of C26 enemies have them, and while that may sound somewhat high, a lot of effective weapons flat out suck. For example, knight killers have less effective Mt than silver lances. Tornado tomes do a whopping 6 extra damage to fliers. Heavy spears have the same effective MT as a silver lance but they’re also targetting units with massive concrete durability (Gatrie/Brom/Tauroneo all have 48+ hp/22+ def before supports). The only effective weapons that are worth a scare are laguz ones since they sport 18-26 Mt, though now we’re only talking about 3/50 enemies. Whatever laguz are fielded can just avoid these enemies altogether with little movement consequences, or we can prioritize these enemies on P. phase (something we’d probably do anyway due to their naturally high atk).

But with Elincia in play, we don’t have to restrict our Mov to avoid certain enemies, we can just take it and patch it back up. And while the other instances are not horribly damaging, they do hurt more than usual and likely require healing.

Again, we’re talking about a rare occurrence. In C26, only 5/50 enemies attack res (1 being the boss), and out of these, only 2 are sages. There’s also spirit water to consider.

While they may be rare, they still exist and can do significant damage to a lot of units, necessitating healing. Pure Water is another example of how Elincia is saving someone a player phase, since it takes a round to consume.

The SM and sniper crits basically result in tripling laughable damage, which still comes out as pretty negligible. Take this guy:

1x Swordmaster lv 10 (killing edge)

36 hp, 25 atk, 22 AS, 124 hit, 51 avo, 11 def, 7 res, 55 crit, 7 cev

Your 20/10 unsupported Mak would take 27% damage instead of 9%. With either A Astrid/C Haar, the KW equipped or given a higher level, he’s taking 14% damage instead of 4.5%. In each case, a vulnerary would shake off the hit, and he’s one of the candidates for sol, so the damage could be warded off that way as well.

The thing is, they also have atrocious hitrates. The warrior you’re referring to has 97 hit, but 20/10 Mak (A Astrid) with capped spd has 82 avo, 92 if he uses a sword. In the former case he only faces 5 real hit, so that comes out to a ~1% chance of being critted. The odds of Mak being attacked by this lone enemy, getting critted and getting finished off by another high atk enemy is so remote it’s not worth considering.

Perhaps not Makalov specifically, but if someone is facing WTD (Nephenee for instance), the hit rates on them are higher and she’s going to take quite a bit from a crit. Also, flyers take significant damage froma sniper crit, for example.

While the individual chances of units taking a lot of damaage is fairly rare, only one of them needs to happen in a turn for Elincia to be needed. And even when they don't, Elincia provides healing for minor wounds that add up over time, which is still useful.

Dragons only show up in C28 and F, but we also have 8 fortify uses in those 2 chapters, which is basically 8 turns where a single healer restores everyone to full hp. If that weren’t enough, we could’ve also saved the Ashera staff and the hammerne.

Yeah, and Elincia can use all of these staves, part of her usefulness.

Oh, and dragons can be attacked at range, so we can do something like thunder!Soren + ragnell!Ike + a finishing attack while not facing a single counter.

These characters conveniently maintain complete offense at 1-2 range. Some characters don’t have access to 1-2 range(SMs, laguz), and most characters lose a lot of offense when fighting at 1-2 range, especially important since dragons have high defense. Plus dragons attack on the enemy phase as well, and healing will be required after that.

93 avo is a pretty big underestimate for Zihark’s avo in C26. If he’s 20/13 by then, a full support set nets him 100 avo, at which point said tiger only manages 18 hit. The odds of Zihark getting hit thrice in a row is only ~0.58%, and there aren’t even 3 tigers in close proximity to each other at any point in the game.

If Zihark doesn’t stick to his supporters, his durability goes down considerably, as do many characters in PoR (Tanith is another example). Having Elincia around gives our team more flexibility so people don’t have to stay glued to their supports.

Against anything else, Zihark is pretty much untouchable. Even a 110 hit enemy only manages 2.1 real, and many enemies have less than that. Moreover, higher hit rates are usually synonymous with lower atk, with laguz being one of the main exceptions. Anyway, my point is, even if Zihark gets gravely wounded by a tiger, he can still self-heal either through an elixir or multiple vulneraries while still being extremely safe on the frontlines.

But then Zihark has to waste player phase healing himself which he could have spent killing something instead. Elincia is saving characters player phases. Yes, they can pop Elixirs for the same effect, but Elincia’s acting like a heron in the sense that she’s giving them an additional action.

Why did Tanith only gain 5 levels in 8 chapters? A reasonable amount of BEXP alone would get her there. In addition, Tanith has some freakishly high avo herself. At lv --/17 with A Marcia/B Oscar, she has 101 avo, not to mention 2 high rank weapon types for WTC. The Wyvern Lord you mentioned will only manage 2.53 real, and she could always 1RKO him at range using the sonic sword.

She doesn’t gain much Exp per kill. A level 17 Tanith is left with 2 HP after 2 attacks, so it doesn’t get much better anyway. As said before by both of us, supporters aren’t always in range(and Oscar is far from guaranteed regardless), and as such Tanith’s Avo drops considerably, lvl 17 Tanith is down to 74 Avo supportless, which ups said Wyvern Lord’s true hit up.

Sure, Tanith can ORKO this guy on the Player Phase possibly, but the Sonic Sword might be broken or in use by someone else, or she might want to attack a different threatening enemy.

This point is the king of irrelevance since all our healing resources will be focused onto Ike. If a Mist physic alone heals Ike to full hp, what is Elincia doing? Unless the team in play is absolutely horrendous, the majority of the chapter’s generic enemies should be gone by the time the final boss battle ensues.

Except for the fact that Ike will require healing twice, once after taking his counter on the player phase and once after getting attacked by Ashnard on the Enemy Phase(the start of his turn).

I’ve already explained the various other reasons units require healing, Endgame is full of laguz, dragons, and high Atk enemies in general. Plus, for one we aren’t guaranteed to be using another healer, secondly Elincia doing Mist’s job means that Mist can go do something else on her player phase.

You’re looking at the merits of sol alone rather than how it adds to the durability of a unit. Let’s say Mak gets 5RKOed by an enemy he doubles at 30 hit, and that his sol activation is 22%. Before sol, his odds of dying in 10 rounds are 15%. After sol, it plummets to about 0.1%.

True enough I suppose, though this only applies for a few units anyway.

Moreover, there’s nothing stopping you from using a vulnerary multiple times on the same unit. That’s only unconstructive if said unit is passing up attack opportunities to heal himself.

Passing up player phases to quaff vulenaries isn’t very efficient, when the alternative is having Elincia heal it and do something else with the player phase. Minor wounds aren’t really a pressing issue at the time, but over the course of the battle they can add up, so it’s good to keep units at full health whenever possible.

They’re also in short demand.

Our earlygame healers aren’t very mobile and have no Physic access, so healing yourself up to full can be handy if they can’t do it.

I’ll give you Calill, though Largo can at least become an avo tank a few chapters after joining. He’ll have 82 avo at lv --/11 (A Tauroneo/B Muarim). Moreover, he can usually take 3 hits or more due to having such a high hp base and growth (52 and 80%, respectively). Moreover, he’s one of the few characters in the game who can ORKO reliable at 1-2 range, so he’s rarely taking P. phase counters.

Tauroneo being in play is a little iffy, if he’s not Largo’s Avo drops to 67, which isn’t that great. Plus, even if Largo’s only getting 4HKOd, that means he’s half dead after 2 hits, which means it’s probably time for a heal. Elincia makes Largo a lot more flexible.

No, he’s still limited to taking an extra hit unless you want to gamble with Soren’s life, no matter how small that gamble might be.

If we aren’t willing to gamble, this makes Elincia even more valuable. It means that if Zihark or Tanith or other high Avo/low Def units take minor wounds, we’ll want them healed immediately.

I think you need to re-examine lategame Ulki.

Ulki lv --/16 (A Brom, B Boyd, beak): 54 hp, 38 atk, 158 hit, 20 AS, 25 def, 17 res, 73 avo

A Brom? Ulki getting any A supports is pretty iffy, namely because the bonuses don’t reach A until Ch25/26, whereas their other option would reach A much sooner. Ulki also doesn’t support Brom.

I’m also going to call Ulki overleveled here. Most units only reach 20/16 or so by Endgame, Ulki is reaching this 3 chapters earlier despite only being able to participate in half of every chapter..

14 Ulki (B Mordecai B Boyd)

36 Atk 19 AS

This Ulki is down to ORKOing 12 /50 enemies. Worse yet, if his supporters are out of range, he’s down to 6/50.

Ulki’s main problem doesn’t go away with levels or supports or stat boosters either, which is his uselessness for half a map.

He ORKOes 58% of C26 enemies, and falls short on enemies most everyone else has trouble with anyways. Nobody’s going to be doubling these guys:

1x Swordmaster lv 10 (killing edge)

36 hp, 25 atk, 22 AS, 124 hit, 51 avo, 11 def, 7 res, 55 crit, 7 cev

1x Swordmaster lv 10 (longsword)

35 hp, 21 atk (27 eff), 22 AS, 130 hit, 51 avo, 11 def, 8 res, 24 crit, 7 cev

1x Swordmaster lv 13 (brave sword)

37 hp, 26 atk, 23 AS, 126 hit, 53 avo, 12 def, 8 res, 26 crit, 7 cev

“Nobody” is somewhat misleading, SMs can do it, as can Paladins or Nephenee with enough KW access.

Then there are numerous enemies where you need >40 atk to ORKO. For perspective, a 20/15 silver axe!Kieran barely pulls this off, and he has one of the best offences in the game.

Those are the enemies we would be using forges on, something Ulki can’t do.

You’re not making any sense. If we protect Soren, then he won’t face any E. phase counters unless you put provoke on him or something (ranged attackers might fancy attacking him in that case). That makes him like a sniper offensively in that he’s capping at 1 attack per turn, which is evidently less than what Ulki’s pulling off. Moreover, protecting Soren is an imposition on some of your frontliners, so Ulki’s at an advantage for not requiring such treatment to function properly.

Because Soren’s player phase offense is better than Ulki’s, IE he’s ORKOing instead of 2RKOing. And since we have enough durable, high Atk units to kill everything on the enemy phase we don’t need Ulki’s subpar offense at all.

Soren attacks at range, so unless there’s a huge surge of short spear!generals, I can’t see how this will ever be the case.

Because if Elincia heals someone that required healing, Soren doesn’t have to do it.

[-Cynthia-]

First time I've hit the quote box limit.

What you described only makes Elincia the best choice for using restore or some other 1 range staff. Where healers make their money is in how well they can use physics lategame, and Elincia is by far the worst in that department thanks to her 12 mag base. A lv 20/14 Mist has twice that mag value, and thus double the physic range. Then the other healers have even more mag than Mist at similar levels.

Elincia is about equal to other healers when using Physic staves, since the Mag deficit makes up for the Mov difference, and she’s better at staying out of enemy ranges than anyone else.

Also, Elincia won’t stay at base forever. She gains 22 Exp per Physic use, so she can gain about 2 levels a chapter and she has 80% Mag growth.

What’s so special about that? So long as someone hits S rank at some point, having Elincia do it as well is useless. Furthermore, we wouldn’t want Elincia using the fortify anyway due to her low mag stat.

If we aren’t using Mist or Rhys (very plausible), Elincia will be the only one who can use these, so that would make her “special”.

That is until you realize her accuracy with it is insulting. Let’s say she tries to use it on this guy from 8 spaces away:

1x General lv 9 (steel blade)

39 hp, 28 atk, 8 AS, 106 hit, 21 avo, 23 def, 12 res, 6 crit, 5 cev

A lv --/5 Elincia would have a 47% chance of putting the general to sleep. With that kind of accuracy, she could very well use up the entire staff without having it work (~15% chance).

If she’s using a sleep staff, it would be a good time to get into Geoffrey’s support range, a B Geoffrey gives her 80% true on this particular enemy.

I bolded the important part. Even a levelled Volke can ORKO any sage he comes by, so this serves as a testament to how awful Elincia’s offence is more than anything else.

All it means is her offense is on par with the rest of the team for that particular enemy.

If we try to put Elincia within Geoffrey’s support range, she’ll inevitably face attacks. That’s why I said the bonuses would only be in effect a fraction of the time, and fractional atk + hit is about as worthless as a support can get.

She only wants to be in range for very specific circumstances (sleep staves), which is much better than Ulki wanting his partners to be around all the time.

Ulki’s sexier.

I tried searching for “sexy Elincia”, but I ended up getting a lot of hentai that I don’t feel like posting here.

Regardless, we know Elincia is sexy because she nabs the hottest guy in the game (Geoffrey). Ulki ends up with nothing or Janaff, both of which are a pretty dismal future.

Elincia>Ulki.