Is Levin!Arthur really that amazing?

[Horakthi]

I just replayed FE4 with Levin x Tiltyu in an efficient, low-turn count playthrough and despite hearing how good it was from all sides, I can't help but think that it's quite overrated.

1. When Arthur first comes in Chapter 6, the only enemy he can actually attack is the bandit on Sophara. Of course, he's absolutely godly when he comes in, but he only has 5 move - in a ranked run, I highly doubt that he'd be able to reach other enemies in the chapter, especially the axe knights that come after you. They have high move and they'll be able to reach you quickly, so this doesn't really give Arthur any time for combat. Arthur also starts far away from the action, and with his low move, he'll have a hard time reaching anything. Although Julia and Rana have low move as well, thanks to where they start from (and hopefully Rana will have Libro) they'll be near your team. Yes, you could give Arthur a Leg Ring, but I think Celice would do much better with it because he's needed to quickly reach castles. If you decide to send Arthur south by himself to Rivough while all your units are at Ganeishire, he'll hog all the experience for himself which wouldn't be very wise. He can kill the boss, at least, but it's not necessary.

2. In Chapter 7, Arthur definitely won't be able to reach the Yied castle. To be honest, that doesn't really matter much, because he can finally shine when he reaches Melgen castle, where Ishtor is. Although he'll still have trouble keeping up with your team with his low move - at least he can get a headstart. At Melgen, he's finally likely to take hits, so it's not very wise to send him there alone, either. He'll also have a hard time reaching Blume because of his silly move. Aless and Shanan working together are good candidates anyway, so he's not really needed for Blume.

3. The next chapter, Arthur's move issues prevent him from reaching Lenster's knights very well, but I suppose a Warp (if you do have one) would help here since Lenster is a player castle if I'm not mistaken. He can also reach the outermost of Muhammad's knights. If you do Warp him, he can reach Ishtar. This is very risky and he can get killed - Faval comes before Ishtar so you can simply kill her in a hit with the Ichival, so he's not very necessary here. You can also alternate between Shanan and Aless. I highly doubt he'd be promoted by now, because he wouldn't have enough money to buy the Elite Ring AND repair the Holsety. After Ishtar, he'll once again have issues reaching Blume and the rest of the chapter. You can also get Levin!Sety late in this chapter.

4. In Chapter 9, 10 and 11, he's promoted and I won't deny that he's great. He still does have issues though - he will likely reach his low caps early and he lacks Pursuit. I'm sure that there are other people you can give the Pursuit Ring to in his place since he does just fine without Holsety (even then, the Pursuit Ring costs 40k coins, and between repairing Holsety, it might not be wise to get it), although he's not as good as Levin!Sety at killing bosses. If my math is correct, then he has a 30% chance to not activate Continue or Critical - which is significant, since he won't be able to one round 1/3 of enemies (I'm not too sure about the math here). He also has issues with the Sleep Staff in chapters 10 and 11. If I recall correctly, his resistance isn't high enough for him to negate Sleep. Furthermore, Levin!Sety will likely have resistance high enough to take sleep thanks to the Sage class's cap - although, again, I'm not sure about this point.

While I agree that Levin x Tiltyu is likely better for ranked runs simply because Tiltyu's other mates are all just ok or crappy, I just feel that it's a bit too overrated for my liking because it has some significant issues. I'm just interested to see in what everyone has to say.

Edited April 19, 2011 by Horakthi

[Integrity]

The only thing I can question right now at oh-dark-thirty is that Arthur can cross the mountains to the south EDIT: <--in C6 /EDIT and get dibs on the cavalier squad and the boss of the last castle. I squirreled him away in them during my last draft and noticed that :D

Edited April 19, 2011 by Integrity

[Horakthi]

I just restarted chapter 6 in order to try out what you said, and if you do that then he's going to solo all of those axe knights. That wouldn't be very good for your units, since they want exp.

But still, he can be used to kill the boss.

[Silvercrow]

I just replayed FE4 with Levin x Tiltyu in an efficient, low-turn count playthrough and despite hearing how good it was from all sides, I can't help but think that it's quite overrated.

1. When Arthur first comes in Chapter 6, the only enemy he can actually attack is the bandit on Sophara. Of course, he's absolutely godly when he comes in, but he only has 5 move - in a ranked run, I highly doubt that he'd be able to reach other enemies in the chapter, especially the axe knights that come after you. They have high move and they'll be able to reach you quickly, so this doesn't really give Arthur any time for combat. Arthur also starts far away from the action, and with his low move, he'll have a hard time reaching anything. Although Julia and Rana have low move as well, thanks to where they start from (and hopefully Rana will have Libro) they'll be near your team. Yes, you could give Arthur a Leg Ring, but I think Celice would do much better with it because he's needed to quickly reach castles. If you decide to send Arthur south by himself to Rivough while all your units are at Ganeishire, he'll hog all the experience for himself which wouldn't be very wise. He can kill the boss, at least, but it's not necessary.

He can go south and kill/abuse Dannan, as Integ mentioned.

2. In Chapter 7, Arthur definitely won't be able to reach the Yied castle. To be honest, that doesn't really matter much, because he can finally shine when he reaches Melgen castle, where Ishtor is. Although he'll still have trouble keeping up with your team with his low move - at least he can get a headstart. At Melgen, he's finally likely to take hits, so it's not very wise to send him there alone, either. He'll also have a hard time reaching Blume because of his silly move. Aless and Shanan working together are good candidates anyway, so he's not really needed for Blume.

He can deal with the Melgan army far better than anyone else individually. Yea, he probably wants Charisma, healing, and a bit of help mopping up, but he's definitely carrying the team here unless you wait for Shanan or use a more risky alternative (Julia, Lex!Arthur). How is him taking on Blume inefficient? It will take longer than Aless or Shanan to get to Blume than it will Arthur (since he needs to recruit Tinny anyway).

3. The next chapter, Arthur's move issues prevent him from reaching Lenster's knights very well, but I suppose a Warp (if you do have one) would help here since Lenster is a player castle if I'm not mistaken. He can also reach the outermost of Muhammad's knights. If you do Warp him, he can reach Ishtar. This is very risky and he can get killed - Faval comes before Ishtar so you can simply kill her in a hit with the Ichival, so he's not very necessary here. You can also alternate between Shanan and Aless. I highly doubt he'd be promoted by now, because he wouldn't have enough money to buy the Elite Ring AND repair the Holsety. After Ishtar, he'll once again have issues reaching Blume and the rest of the chapter. You can also get Levin!Sety late in this chapter.

He can be sent north to solo Ovo's squad. You also have a dancer at this point, so his move is no longer as big an issue even in an efficient run. In fact, it's advantageous to promote him asap, so... You also have to realize that until Sety joins, he has done absolutely nothing thus far.

4. In Chapter 9, 10 and 11, he's promoted and I won't deny that he's great. He still does have issues though - he will likely reach his low caps early and he lacks Pursuit. I'm sure that there are other people you can give the Pursuit Ring to in his place since he does just fine without Holsety (even then, the Pursuit Ring costs 40k coins, and between repairing Holsety, it might not be wise to get it), although he's not as good as Levin!Sety at killing bosses. If my math is correct, then he has a 30% chance to not activate Continue or Critical - which is significant, since he won't be able to one round 1/3 of enemies (I'm not too sure about the math here). He also has issues with the Sleep Staff in chapters 10 and 11. If I recall correctly, his resistance isn't high enough for him to negate Sleep. Furthermore, Levin!Sety will likely have resistance high enough to take sleep thanks to the Sage class's cap - although, again, I'm not sure about this point.

The Pursuit Ring is more or less a given on non-Pursuit Arthurs. There is absolutely nobody who wants it more. If it's cash you're worried about, he can inherit it or Patty can loan him some. Cap-ramming isn't such a big deal, his capped stats are sufficient for blowing the brains out of every enemy from here to the final chapter without taking hits. Also, while his raw crit rate may be lower, he has Wrath to compensate and that can be used to guarantee crits in situations where they're needed (ex: against Final Chapter Ishtar). He does have issues with Sleep Staffs and Sety will just barely be above that range on average... He either needs a Restore bot or a Barrier Ring.

Does it spit out the best character imaginable? No. But he's awfully damn good and nobody else measures up. Sety's move issues are daunting and giving him a Leg + Knight Ring is asking more than giving Arthur the Pursuit ring (since you're denying your dancer those precious items), and Arthur is around a whole lot longer even if his contributions during that point aren't stellar because of his low move, it's better than simply not existing (since in no way is he a liability).

That said, I actually prefer Levin!Sety. But Arthur is pretty clearly better.

[Horakthi]

You seem to have misunderstood the point of the thread. I am not debating that Levin!Sety is better than Levin!Arthur. I clearly state, at the end of my post, that Levin!Arthur would be superior in a ranked run, but I think it's vastly overrated compared to what some people here say. I won't deny some of his advantages, of course.

It will take longer than Aless or Shanan to get to Blume than it will Arthur (since he needs to recruit Tinny anyway).

Shanan and Aless can move out while Arthur recruits Tinny. He's not really necessary here so it doesn't improve your efficiency per se.

He can be sent north to solo Ovo's squad.

So no one else is getting exp?

The Pursuit Ring is more or less a given on non-Pursuit Arthurs. There is absolutely nobody who wants it more. If it's cash you're worried about, he can inherit it or Patty can loan him some.

The Pursuit Ring is a bit of a waste on Arthur when he has a 70% chance of ORKOing a bunch of enemies. Patty also has other people she'll want to give money to, like staff users, other holy weapon users.. why priortize and spoil Arthur so much? There's Johan and Tinny that I can think of off the top of my head.

Edited April 19, 2011 by Horakthi

[Mekkah]

This is the last time I'm ever writing about Holsety in generation 2. From now on I'm going to save this and repost it every time it's brought up, so I won't have to look up the numbers again and again.

I think there are about three to four different playstyles or arbitrary goals for playing FE4 to take into account when talking about "how good this unit or that pairing is", whether it's about tier debates or recommendations or just arguing for the heck of it. They are:

1. Efficiency runs

2. Ranked runs

3. Speedrunning

4. Casual play

These are all vastly different in terms of unit standards, and the way you play the game really impacts what you can do with Holsety and Arthur. But I am convinced that he is really great for all of these.

First, let's talk about efficiency runs. In these, you strive for the lowest turn count possible, or at the very least, the lower amount of turns the better. There's no time for training scrubs on this one. You will be making use of your best units off the bat, using your resources effectively to make them even more powerful, basically facilitating Celice to get danced, Rescued, and walked from castle to castle in the shortest amount of time.

Celice isn't bad at fending for himself. His dad probably left him a 50+ kill Silver Sword to work with, and/or a Hero Sword, as well as the Elite Ring, the Leg Ring, perhaps the Knight Ring, and some stat rings like Power, Speed, Shield, etc. That's because it's in your best interest to get Celice that mount and extra movement ASAP, to accelerate his seizing. Preferably, he would be promoted at the start of Ch7. This pretty much requires him to solo Ch6 though, or close to it. Balcerak's ranked run shows this can be done.

But Celice does have issues. His lack of powerful 2-range stops him from mowing through enemy archers and mages on enemy phase, and his best friends Aless, Altenna, or even something like Leg Ring Shannan (although Leg Ring is prolly best off kept on Celice, or sold to Leen) can't help him with that. This is where Arthur comes in.

Arthur, like Celice, will give you enormous returns for the favouritism required in order to get him to promotion level. At bare bone basics, he has this to work with:

2 Levin!Arthur w/ Holsety

40 Atk, 26 AS -- 31 HP, 2 Def, 6 Res, 62 avo

46% Continue, 20% Critical

(probably a slight bit less because FEA pretends Tiltyu makes it to L30, but that's like 1-2 pts difference and doesn't change the story much)

With Celice swallowing so many stat rings, you might think there is nothing left to give to Arthur. You could not be more wrong.

First, there's the Bargain Ring. Levin is one of the best candidates for it since it takes no sidetracking for him to pick it up. The only other candidates would be Sylvia and Aideen. There's no real reason to staff grind Aideen in an efficiency run since she'll never get to fight, and there simply isn't much demand for her or her daughter's staves when there's various alternatives. Claude, Levin, Fury, Ethlin, perhaps Lachesis if she manages to promote. In gen 2, you get Nanna, Sety, and again perhaps Leaf. I can't be bothered to check if Aquilae managed to promote his Leaf in his efficiency run, and whether he did it without impacting turn counts on raising Leaf (taking into account Rescue staff abuse can make up for that loss).

But before I sidetrack too much, we were talking the Bargain Ring. The dancers are other candidates, but I don't think the Bargain Ring does a lot for them if you plan to keep Leg Ring on your Lord (since that also impacts the effectiveness of the Knight Ring). Plus, Sylvia can just grab almost every village in Ch2 instead. The Bargain Ring is more efficiently placed on Levin and Arthur because Arthur's worth grows exponentially with every ring he can buy, and every Holsety shot he can fire. With the Bargain Ring, the sky is the limit.

With the Bargain Ring, it's not too hard to also purchase the Magic Ring (there's pretty much no demand for this one). Why does someone with 40 Atk want the Magic Ring? The reason is that the Axe Fighters of Sophara have 42 HP/0 Res and the Axe Knights with Schmidt have 42 HP/1 Res. With the Magic Ring, Arthur only needs one use of Holsety to dispose of them.

With these bases, Arthur "only" has a 43% chance to whiff an ORKO on something he 2HKOs. Of course, we can't rely on the Magic Ring to bail us out forever, since enemies get over 45 HP more quickly than he can grow a lot of Mag (his 40% growth is respectable but can't match the enormous HP growth enemies have). But thankfully, there's the Pursuit Ring.

Yes, it's very valuable at 40k, though Bargain Ring cuts it to 20k. It's easy enough for Levin to afford in gen 1, since he's been carrying the Bargain Ring all along and mostly making use of Elwind, while kicking butt in the arena. Is there others who want it in an efficiency run? It would make raising Leaf slightly easier, but if you insist on raising him, you will likely have to spoonfeed him things and rigging him through the arena anyway. Again, Balcerak's run shows you don't need Pursuit Ring on Leaf to make him promote eventually. Even though it is ranked, a lot of Leaf's training happens in the arena.

The aforementioned Celice and friends all have Pursuit, so they don't need it. Sety always has it, Altenna always gets it on promotion, Faval always has it, the Sword kids always have it, etc. You're not going to use Patty to fight and you're not going to use Tinny at all, so there's really no competition for this ring.

So we have a powerhouse in Arthur, with room for various rings and gadgets to turn him into an indestructible killing machine...but he still only has 5 movement. How do we use him efficiently?

I believe there's two ways to go with him in Ch6. Either send him straight south from his starting position, towards the Axe Knights, where he can leverage his Avo by equipping either Elwind or Holsety and standing on a mountain, forest, plain or even road tile. It depends a little on what Schmidt's friends are willing to attack. FE4 AI is weird and unpredictable. These guys have 68 Hit, so standing on a plain with Holsety sounds safest. Schmidt has 96 hit though, so you will probably want to lure him into attacking you on a mountain before you eliminate the Axe Knights. I have done something like this before in an attempted speedrun but I forgot the details. Either way, it's possible to do it, with a fairly low chance of death, especially as he gains levels and his Avo rises.

Then there's the possibility of going straight east and taking on Johalva's army. In an efficiency run, you don't neccessarily have to recruit everyone unless that's a self imposed goal...if you consider that a requirement, then you will need some tactical planning. Celice will run straight through Johan and it's hard to get Arthur to kill all these Axe Fighters while recruiting Johalva with Lakche. I'm sure it's possible somehow...Probably best to just go south with Arthur if you want to recruit one of the Axe brothers.

That is admittedly all Arthur can get in Ch6. But now we're in Ch7, and Celice is probably promoted (or close to). Ch7 is one of Arthur's best maps.

Arthur is reasonably around L10 right now if not higher, with the EXP from last chapter and the arena. I rounded the numbers a little:

10 Levin!Arthur w/ Holsety (Magic Ring, Bargain Ring, Pursuit Ring)

48 Atk, 35 AS -- 41.4 HP, 4 Def, 7 Res, 83.6 Avo

55% Continue, 26.8% Critical

You can take a gamble for some EXP with these Dark Mages. They have 128 Hit factoring in WTA, so around 44% hit on him. It's not worth the risk to throw Arthur into a crowd of them, but thankfully they are fairly spread out. Celice is busy walking to Yied and that will take a while, so you will probably have plenty of time to have Arthur take only one, maximum two at a time to, healing with Julia or Lana when he gets hit. Since Celice is probably promoted and not gaining any EXP on his Yied quest, it's not out of the question for Arthur to use the Elite Ring here, for a couple more levels.

When Celice has seized Yied, Arthur can continue down to Melgen. The enemies there have varying hit. Bow Armors have 86 hit, so they can't touch him. Lance Armors have 96, so they probably won't hit him. Thunder Mages have 84 after WTD. Liza has 140 hit though, so you will want to KO her on player phase. Ishtor has 96 with Bolting, you can probably take him out from above or beside the castle. Why am I saying all this? Because I think Arthur can, with some careful risk management, solo Melgen. It might take some try-outs to see what works and what doesn't, though.

From there, Arthur needs to go east to recruit Tinny. Unless you don't really care about recruiting her...but he's still very good at killing her army so that just makes him look better. Once again, his low movement is rather immaterial because Celice needs to seize Melgen and Darna. He should be able to get where he needs to be. He makes a good candidate for killing Blume. Shannan actually isn't too great at it: Blume has 46 Atk, and Shannan has 38 HP/4 Res. He does have 120% HP growth, but only 5% Res, so he probably can't avoid the OHKO. It's safer to have Arthur and his 48+ total HP/Res take him on. Aless could do it as well, of course, but he also has to visit Darna. Blume has 9 AS, whereas base Mistolteen!Aless has 8 and only 30% Speed growth. So Arthur is definitely the best choice to take him on.

With all this available experience that can be fed to Arthur without impacting turn count (since Celice keeps needing to go back and forth between places), as well as the potential Elite Ring and the Ch8 arena, he should be able to promote in Ch8.

Yes, it's a lot of favouritism, but there is little to no opportunity cost involved, and it will definitely start paying off now. Ch8 features tons of threats that Arthur is much better at taking care of than Celice or Aless. The Mage Sisters can theoretically be killed by Aless because of their triangle attack suicide AI, but if my memory serves the combined hits of the three of them would kill him, so he needs Ambush + critical to bail him out, or a lucky dodge. Meanwhile, this is Arthur:

20 Levin!Arthur w/ Holsety (Magic Ring, Bargain Ring, Pursuit Ring)

55 Atk, 37 AS -- 54 HP, 10.5 Def, 10.7 Res, 92 Avo

57% Continue, 32% Critical

He can run into one of them and kill them with his huge proc rate (roughly 70% chance of proccing either of these on his first attack). Aless could try the same, but I think killing one of them might disable the triangle attack AI. Anyway, Arthur is virtually guaranteed to dodge the Thunder one (92 hit after WTD) and will easily survive two hits (27 and 30 Atk on his 10-11 Res wouldn't kill him), so he's safe.

Then there's Ishtar. He's probably the only person that doubles her other than Shannan, and like with Blume, Shannan won't survive Thor Hammer. You can also get Arthur into Wrath range for her to guarantee killing her before she can attack. There's also a large group of Javelin Lance Knights, and the Elthunder Mage Knight captain Ovo to take care of. Then there's Blume's castle full of Bolting threats he can just ignore and waltz through, countering anything in there at 2-range, etc. He's an expert at cleaning a path for Celice.

From here Arthur just proceeds to be nearly invincible, and a failsafe mounted kill on pretty much everything. His current Atk is already sufficient to 2HKO Arion without triggering Prayer (70 HP, he does 46 damage per hit), which is ridiculous. You have two more encounters with Ishtar, there's the dreaded Earth Sword Falcoknights, etc etc. He's a beast.

Why was I so elaborate here? Because many of the numbers and strategies here also apply to other runs. In ranked, Arthur's beastliness is less interesting, because ranked isn't really about low turning or being efficient, but rather about distributing EXP. Balcerak is doing a good job at trivializing this challenge by having 8 levels to go in roughly 150 turns when he's only got Ch10 and Final to go, so that just goes to show how much of a laugh it is to tier units in a ranked run. At best you can argue that some are easier to get to L30 than others, but in the end nearly everyone needs to get there or at least to promotion level, so it's silly to argue one unit is a lot more neccessary than others. The worth of having a mounted nuke is significantly less when often the problem isn't killing an enemy, but killing an enemy with your physically challenged thief or dancer or armor or female mage or what-have-you. Still, now that he has EXP locked him, I expect he will be using Arthur a lot for some fast clears.

Then there's speedrunning...which is a lot like efficiency, except you also mash buttons and do stuff fast. As I said, one time I had a vague ambition to do an FE4 speedrun, and strangely enough it involved mostly Celice and Arthur storming through. Just like efficiency. So a lot of the strategies mentioned above apply.

And finally we have casual runs, where you can basically only rank characters based on how easy they make the game for you. The only thing that can really be brought up against Arthur here is that people playing through the first time might not have all the neccessary knowledge needed to make Arthur so awesome really quickly...but they don't need to. I can't speak for how everyone plays the game when they're not caring for anything except beating the game by the end...some like to kill every enemy, some want to use everyone, even get everyone to L30. Some might have trouble pairing Levin with Tiltyu, but with just a little bit of knowledge you can do this, even if you only have Ch4 and Ch5 left.

That's it for my Arthur thesis. Commence the copypasta.

[Silvercrow]

Rating is all relative. If Arthur is better than all other units in the game, then he's better than all other units in the game. I don't think anyone has said anything further than that.

Shanan and Aless can move out while Arthur recruits Tinny. He's not really necessary here so it doesn't improve your efficiency per se.

Uhm, assuming you have Arthur go after Ishtor, he is far, far closer to Alster than either Shanan or Aless. Aless won't even appear for a couple of turns, and Shanan has to cross a desert very slowly (much slower than Celice due to lack of Leg Ring). Arthur can easily reach Alster before Shanan and certainly before Aless. How quickly are you completing this chapter, exactly?

So no one else is getting exp?

The optimal EXP distribution is the one that enables the game to be completed in the (a) fastest and (b) easiest way possible. Will giving Arthur the EXP help us complete the game faster? Yes, because when he promotes, he rapes face. Will giving Arthur the EXP give us an easier time completing the game? Yes, because once he promotes he can stomp everything for the remainder of the game with minimal help from others.

Everyone else that needs EXP can pull them from Muhammed's squad or the civilians later. Either way, no reason you can't have Leaf/Fin/Nanna help Arthur out since they're already up there.

The Pursuit Ring is a bit of a waste on Arthur when he has a 70% chance of ORKOing a bunch of enemies. Patty also has other people she'll want to give money to, like staff users, other holy weapon users.. why priortize and spoil Arthur so much? There's Johan and Tinny that I can think of off the top of my head.

A 70% chance is very low, although I know what you're implying. But there is absolutely nobody that makes better use of the Pursuit Ring. The only characters without pursuit in gen2 are: Arthur, Tinny, Patty, Johan, Johalva, Leen, Corpul, Hannibal. Tinny is useless no matter what because of her awful move, having the ring on her is a waste. Patty doesn't need it. Johan and Johalva don't make very good use of it because axes weigh them down so badly. Leen and Corpul don't need it. Giving it to Hannibal is like shooting yourself in the face with a 12-gauge. Basically, we can give Arthur the Pursuit Ring and turn his 70%s into 100%s, or we can give it to someone else so they can be useless with it. Yes, there's the argument that Leaf can get it before promotion, but I haven't seen any sort of numbers put forward that makes it clear to me that that's a good decision in any way.

Edited April 19, 2011 by Silvercrow

[Horakthi]

Half of your post involves favoritism for Arthur's sake. I really doubt that Arthur is that special if he needs a lot of favoritism (even if it pays off) to work at his best. There are a lot of units that want exp as well, which I think is a point against him, rather than a point for him. Furthermore, it might disadvantage you in the later chapters if you decide to focus on Arthur and not other units - the earlier chapters are especially important, after all.

The fact that Arthur is good for taking on Ishtar isn't really something very special. Everyone has to take on Ishtar with a risk - she can kill Arthur if she activates Continue, and she can kill Shanan in a hit. Shanan will have to activate Meteor Sword or Continue to reliably kill her, Aless will have to crit her, Faval will actually have to hit her, etc... He does well against Arion though, I won't deny that, but Levin!Sety does even better than he does. Then again, Arthur will be promoted this time around, so he can reach him more quickly. The pegasus knights aren't reliably one rounded, either.

Like I said, I'm not arguing that Levin!Arthur is the best pairing for efficiency. I'm just wondering why people think he's so amazing and failsafe when he has some huge issues.

Uhm, assuming you have Arthur go after Ishtor, he is far, far closer to Alster than either Shanan or Aless. Aless won't even appear for a couple of turns, and Shanan has to cross a desert very slowly (much slower than Celice due to lack of Leg Ring). Arthur can easily reach Alster before Shanan and certainly before Aless. How quickly are you completing this chapter, exactly?

Celice has to go all the way to Darna.. Shanan has plenty of time to reach Alster. Aless has a massive 10(?) move in the path from Darna to Melgen. I'm sure he can reach Melgen very quickly. Maybe you forgot that there are partner units blocking Melgen before conquering Yied, and Alster before conquering Melgen?

The optimal EXP distribution is the one that enables the game to be completed in the (a) fastest and (b) easiest way possible. Will giving Arthur the EXP help us complete the game faster? Yes, because when he promotes, he rapes face. Will giving Arthur the EXP give us an easier time completing the game? Yes, because once he promotes he can stomp everything for the remainder of the game with minimal help from others.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not so sure about this - if units other than Arthur are much weaker than usual in the final two chapters, then you'll have a harder time with them. Furthermore, Arthur isn't infinite use either, because Holsety is quite expensive.

The only characters without pursuit in gen2 are: Arthur, Tinny, Patty, Johan, Johalva, Leen, Corpul, Hannibal. Tinny is useless no matter what because of her awful move, having the ring on her is a waste.

I was talking about ranked runs, so I think the argument is valid.

I didn't consider Leaf because I assumed he'd be promoted at that time.

Edited April 19, 2011 by Horakthi

[Silvercrow]

Because those "huge issues" aren't huge at all. What is wrong with the favoritism? Is it slowing us down at any point?

Also, Arthur can just Wrath Crit all those guys you mentioned (save Arione) and have a 100% chance of not dying against them.

[Mekkah]

You asked what makes Arthur so amazing. I make a very detailed post about not only why Arthur is amazing if you give him the right resources, but also why those resources are practically personal to him in an efficiency run. You proceed to tell me he's not that awesome because he needs favoritism, and because he has "huge issues" (I take it you're mostly referring to his 5 move...another problem that only lasts for 2-3 chapters, all of which have work to do for a 5 move nuke).

[Horakthi]

It seems that everyone's arguments for Arthur's efficiency involves a great deal of favoritism. I can't imagine why on earth Arthur is so entitled to receive all of this favoritism, when in general favoritism is so frowned upon in debating insofar as I can see. If a units needs so many items and resources and favoritism in order to reach his maximum potential, why is this considered a plus for him? Rereading the posts that everyone here made, it seems that Arthur is entitled to all of these things:

1. A Bargain Ring

2. A Magic Ring

3. A Pursuit Ring

4. Soloing half of the earlygame chapters

5. Entitled to receive money from Patty

There may have been others mentioned that I'm forgetting. Why aren't other units entitled to these goodies?

Shanan, Aless, Altenna and Faval want the Bargain Ring just as much as Arthur. Maybe not Altenna and Faval because the Gae Bolg slows down Altenna considerably and Faval can only attack on the player phase, but there's no way that Shanan and Aless don't want the Bargain RIng. Aless has high move and he'll be getting an incredible amount of combat action. The AI is programmed to target Shanan the most out of everyone, in my and other people's experiences. Why aren't they just as entitled as Arthur to receive the Bargain Ring? I agree that Levin is the best candidate in gen 1, but just because he wants a Bargain Ring doesn't mean he should get it.

I agree that people don't want the magic ring much, but Tinny could definitely want it if she wants to one hit KO people with Wrath (then again, she probably won't be used in an efficiency run, but she needs it greatly in a ranked run). Sety will want the Magic Ring as well to Silence / Sleep some of the higher magic bosses such as Ishtar later on. If we're going with Noish!Sety or Claude!Sety, there's no denying that he still wants the Magic Ring in either case. Arthur STILL has a 70% chance to ORKO things at late game and a Magic Ring isn't really going to improve that. Furthermore, if you give a Magic Ring to Sety, he will recover 5 more HP for everyone with Reserve, which can definitely be significant in higher risk cases. There's no way on earth Arthur is entitled to get the Magic Ring. Even in chapter 6 when he comes in, he'll hardly be doing any fighting because of where he starts anyway, so it won't be useful to him there, unless of course you decide to solo that part of the chapter with him.. I guess it's useful in chapter 7, though, but it's only one chapter out of 6.

There are plenty of people who want the Pursuit Ring. It's a good idea to pass down the Pursuit Ring to Leaf because it'll make training him a lot easier and it'll pay off in the end. I'd rather give the Pursuit Ring to someone if they'll have a much easier time training rather than improve already high odds to one round stuff... Even earlygame Patty would want it more than Arthur, since, again, Arthur has a high chance to ORKO things anyway. Tinny can't get Pursuit through promotion either, so if you have to use her in a ranked run, then she'll definitely need it more than Arthur. Johan can also be much better with a Pursuit Ring and a Hero Axe, although he's admittedly not very good. Still, plenty of people have a higher demand for the Pursuit Ring.

To add to all of these points, even if Arthur has the highest demand for all of these items out of anyone else, they are extremely expensive. In total, they cost 100k coins, and coupled with repairing Holsety, that's an incredibly significant amount of cash - it's 100 extra Holsety uses. Which brings me to my next point. Arthur is in no way entitled to receive help from Patty if he does have the Bargain Ring - Shanan, Aless, Altenna etc. would want it more than him if he does have the Bargain Ring. Arthur will go broke no problem if the favoritism continues. If he uses Holsety 100 times in a playthrough (which I think is an underestimate) that's 200k coins that he needs for the entire game. Even without the Bargain Ring if it's going to be passed down, that's 160k coins. Don't you think the favoritism he receives is a bit ridiculous? The only way I can think of is if Patty helps him through the entire playthrough, which is ridiculous - she's so hard to train in the first place.

And I don't think that Arthur being somehow "entitled" to solo entire parts of a chapter makes him any better. The fact that he needs so much experience from your units and prevents them from improving is a point against him, not for him. It certainly will end up making your units weaker in the long run if they don't get as many kills - Arthur isn't so good that he can solo the entire game by himself, after all - the Holsety is too expensive and even with the Holsety, his caps are horrid and lategame he won't be as effective (especially against Ishtar and the pegasus sisters, and the Dark Warlords). There are plenty of tough armor knights with Hero weapons in chapter 9 and 10, and letting Arthur solo them is just a bad idea. Shanan is probably the unit least affected by the favoritism that Arthur receives.

Comparing Levin!Sety to Levin!Arthur (note just in case people jump on me, I'm just using this to prove a point, I agree that Levin!Arthur is superior in ranked), all Levin!Sety needs is a Leg Ring (you could say that Leen wants it too, but I was under the impression that we can do favoritism here) and he'll be an even better combat machine than Arthur. I can entitle the Leg Ring to Sety just like you can entitle Arthur to half of the good resources in the game (and half of the enemy units in gen 2...). But I won't argue that Sety is entitled to the Leg Ring, because Leen wants it too. But by everyone's logic though, I'm allowed to entitle it.

I can understand certain kinds of favoritism, such as Olwen receiving the Ambush manual: but that's a different situation. In that case, there's no doubt that no one really cares about the Ambush manual. Asvel? Pfft, it'll hardly make a difference. With just the Ambush manual, Olwen pretty much goes from meh to amazing. That's with just a single item without sacrificing the efficiency of your other units. You can say that this case is the same, but hopefully I did a good job in proving that other units want Arthur's resources as well.

I think that resources should be divided equally among units. With the consideration of how many resources and enemy units Arthur needs to improve himself, I think that this is a negative for him rather than a positive, because it'll bite your ass later in the game when Arthur isn't as special - hell, maybe he'll fall asleep and you won't be able to Restore him. The fact that he takes so many resources will weaken your team in the long run. I don't think this is a very good idea, but maybe it's just me. Even if Arthur does want each of these resources the most, why should he get every single one of them? Why not divide between your units to make them more balanced?

I take it you're mostly referring to his 5 move...another problem that only lasts for 2-3 chapters

3 chapters is half of the second generation.

PS: I responded to you, Silvercrow, but I suppose you didn't see that I edited my post?

Edited April 20, 2011 by Horakthi

[Silvercrow]

I did but only much later and didn't feel like responding last night. Was busy with homework and LoL.

I'm not at my computer so all I'll say is: there is nothing intrinsically wrong with favoritism so long as it benefits us in the long run. Your task is proving that other people not only make equally good but better use of those resources than Arthur. Nobody complains about Marcus getting the first half dozen boss kills (at least) in FE7 because of how much he benefits from it.

Edited April 20, 2011 by Silvercrow

[Horakthi]

Your task is proving that other people not only make equally good but better use of those resources than Arthur.

I explained everything I could think of so far, so hopefully I did a good job.

I've been curious about Levin!Arthur for years (and I finally could be bothered playing), and I just think that he was a bit lackluster compared to what I thought he would do. So I registered to see what people think.

Edited April 20, 2011 by Horakthi

[General Spoon]

It seems that everyone's arguments for Arthur's efficiency involves a great deal of favoritism. I can't imagine why on earth Arthur is so entitled to receive all of this favoritism, when in general favoritism is so frowned upon in debating insofar as I can see. If a units needs so many items and resources and favoritism in order to reach his maximum potential, why is this considered a plus for him?

etc...

Favoritism or smart distribution of available resources?

[TheEnd]

I explained everything I could think of so far, so hopefully I did a good job.

I've been curious about Levin!Arthur for years (and I finally could be bothered playing), and I just think that he was a bit lackluster compared to what I thought he would do. So I registered to see what people think.

It's called hyping. As people get passionate about something, they tend to start seeing small differences as goddamn abysses. Somewhere along the road, they also forget or ignore that not playing for ranks is an option, and that FE4 is pathetically easy if you know what you're doing and don't want to worry about nearly maxing everyone in less than 400 turns.

Also, welcome.

[Silvercrow]

Shanan, Aless, Altenna and Faval want the Bargain Ring just as much as Arthur. Maybe not Altenna and Faval because the Gae Bolg slows down Altenna considerably and Faval can only attack on the player phase, but there's no way that Shanan and Aless don't want the Bargain RIng. Aless has high move and he'll be getting an incredible amount of combat action. The AI is programmed to target Shanan the most out of everyone, in my and other people's experiences. Why aren't they just as entitled as Arthur to receive the Bargain Ring? I agree that Levin is the best candidate in gen 1, but just because he wants a Bargain Ring doesn't mean he should get it.

There are alternatives aside from the bargain ring to generate funds, such as the Thief Sword or Thief Ring, either of which are fair game for both Aless and Shanan. Either way, they won't be spamming their holy weapons nearly as much as Arthur due to lack of 2-range, so it's pretty fair to assume that they won't be repairing their weapons as often and therefore have less need of the Bargain Ring.

I agree that people don't want the magic ring much, but Tinny could definitely want it if she wants to one hit KO people with Wrath (then again, she probably won't be used in an efficiency run, but she needs it greatly in a ranked run). Sety will want the Magic Ring as well to Silence / Sleep some of the higher magic bosses such as Ishtar later on. If we're going with Noish!Sety or Claude!Sety, there's no denying that he still wants the Magic Ring in either case. Arthur STILL has a 70% chance to ORKO things at late game and a Magic Ring isn't really going to improve that. Furthermore, if you give a Magic Ring to Sety, he will recover 5 more HP for everyone with Reserve, which can definitely be significant in higher risk cases. There's no way on earth Arthur is entitled to get the Magic Ring. Even in chapter 6 when he comes in, he'll hardly be doing any fighting because of where he starts anyway, so it won't be useful to him there, unless of course you decide to solo that part of the chapter with him.. I guess it's useful in chapter 7, though, but it's only one chapter out of 6.

There is a second Magic Ring in chapter 10, where many of those things you mentioned actually become an issue. There is no reason Sety can't get the ring in Ch10. Frankly I don't even consider Tinny an option and I'm not arguing ranked because I find the requirements are awfully trivial.

There are plenty of people who want the Pursuit Ring. It's a good idea to pass down the Pursuit Ring to Leaf because it'll make training him a lot easier and it'll pay off in the end. I'd rather give the Pursuit Ring to someone if they'll have a much easier time training rather than improve already high odds to one round stuff... Even earlygame Patty would want it more than Arthur, since, again, Arthur has a high chance to ORKO things anyway. Tinny can't get Pursuit through promotion either, so if you have to use her in a ranked run, then she'll definitely need it more than Arthur. Johan can also be much better with a Pursuit Ring and a Hero Axe, although he's admittedly not very good. Still, plenty of people have a higher demand for the Pursuit Ring.

Leaf wants the Elite Ring more than the Pursuit Ring. Assuming you are not new to this game while playing it, you are going to watch Fin's strength so that in Ch7 he won't KO the Alster Armors allowing Leaf to kill them easily. Pursuit Ring on him up to this point is a waste, whereas Arthur is making great use of it against the Melgan army. In Ch8, we can start spoonfeeding Leaf or, if Arthur inherited these rings, giving him Patty's money to buy the Elite Ring.

You are keeping this arbitrary sense of balance between characters because the game lets you deploy everyone. You are not required to do so and in fact the game is easier if you do not, as with most FE games. In ranked this is a concern, but as I said, I'm not arguing ranked because I have never attempted it myself and don't have any empirical evidence to put forward (other than Balcerzak's run where he met the EXP requirement 2 chapters early and will be able to stomp Ch10 and Final with Arthur). Either way, Patty does not need to be KOing people, in fact feeding her KOs is overall disadvantageous by denying EXP from better units such as Arthur, because lets be honest: Even a high level, promoted Holyn!Patty is not going to be a good combat unit, not to mention all those other Patties.

All Tinny needs is Tron, you can look at analysis of Lex!Arthur to know what exactly this can do. Tinny can promote mostly through the arena and hit level 30 through Libro spam before the final, even in ranked. Even with Johan's surprisingly good speed growth, he has 0 AS at base level with the Hero Axe. Why the Pursuit Ring is a waste on him should be pretty obvious.

To add to all of these points, even if Arthur has the highest demand for all of these items out of anyone else, they are extremely expensive. In total, they cost 100k coins, and coupled with repairing Holsety, that's an incredibly significant amount of cash - it's 100 extra Holsety uses. Which brings me to my next point. Arthur is in no way entitled to receive help from Patty if he does have the Bargain Ring - Shanan, Aless, Altenna etc. would want it more than him if he does have the Bargain Ring. Arthur will go broke no problem if the favoritism continues. If he uses Holsety 100 times in a playthrough (which I think is an underestimate) that's 200k coins that he needs for the entire game. Even without the Bargain Ring if it's going to be passed down, that's 160k coins. Don't you think the favoritism he receives is a bit ridiculous? The only way I can think of is if Patty helps him through the entire playthrough, which is ridiculous - she's so hard to train in the first place.

Levin can pick up the Bargain Ring at 0 cost in Gen1 and pass it down. 60k cost. Cut that in half now because he has the bargain ring, 30k cost. There is really no problem here when it's considered how easily Levin can blast through the arena without Holsety.

And I don't think that Arthur being somehow "entitled" to solo entire parts of a chapter makes him any better. The fact that he needs so much experience from your units and prevents them from improving is a point against him, not for him. It certainly will end up making your units weaker in the long run if they don't get as many kills - Arthur isn't so good that he can solo the entire game by himself, after all - the Holsety is too expensive and even with the Holsety, his caps are horrid and lategame he won't be as effective (especially against Ishtar and the pegasus sisters, and the Dark Warlords). There are plenty of tough armor knights with Hero weapons in chapter 9 and 10, and letting Arthur solo them is just a bad idea. Shanan is probably the unit least affected by the favoritism that Arthur receives.

Well, Arthur doesn't need to kill everything ever. I seem to recall a topic a while back about base level Shanan's offense in the final chapter and how ridiculous it is. You can solo the final chapter with those three units. Not to mention that Arthur can OHKO Ishtar with a Wrath crit at like 80% accuracy without Charisma. The Dark Warlords are honestly a joke, you can just park Arthur in the forest to the west of Barhara and face a maximum hit rate of something like 25%, and he can kill them all. In fact, some of them will even refuse to attack him because their hit rates are so low. You can do the same with Shanan, to be fair. Horrid caps aren't such a big deal when you still have 40+ speed, 30+ skill and 50+ attack with high crit rate (or guaranteed crit rate with Wrath). The only problem he faces is really leadership, but nobody is suggesting that Arthur unconditionally solos everything.

Comparing Levin!Sety to Levin!Arthur (note just in case people jump on me, I'm just using this to prove a point, I agree that Levin!Arthur is superior in ranked), all Levin!Sety needs is a Leg Ring (you could say that Leen wants it too, but I was under the impression that we can do favoritism here) and he'll be an even better combat machine than Arthur. I can entitle the Leg Ring to Sety just like you can entitle Arthur to half of the good resources in the game (and half of the enemy units in gen 2...). But I won't argue that Sety is entitled to the Leg Ring, because Leen wants it too. But by everyone's logic though, I'm allowed to entitle it.

The weakness in Sety's case is his much poorer availability. Levin!Arthur is extremely clutch in C7 and C8, where Sety is doing absolutely nothing. Leg+Knight Ring Sety wins for 3 chapters, but the issue is that denying Leen the Leg and Knight rings is much, much worse than denying some scrubs the Pursuit and Magic rings. You are "allowed" to entitle people to whatever they want, but you need to prove that nobody else wants them more. We've fairly solidly proven that those Rings are well-placed on Arthur, but can you prove that some minor stat benefits are better than having a much more effective Dancer?

I can understand certain kinds of favoritism, such as Olwen receiving the Ambush manual: but that's a different situation. In that case, there's no doubt that no one really cares about the Ambush manual. Asvel? Pfft, it'll hardly make a difference. With just the Ambush manual, Olwen pretty much goes from meh to amazing. That's with just a single item without sacrificing the efficiency of your other units. You can say that this case is the same, but hopefully I did a good job in proving that other units want Arthur's resources as well.

I remain unconvinced that anyone makes use of those resources nearly as well as Arthur. Not to mention that the Ambush Manual on Olwen is still sort of a weak argument due to the existence of Eyrios, but that's a whole other issue.

I think that resources should be divided equally among units. With the consideration of how many resources and enemy units Arthur needs to improve himself, I think that this is a negative for him rather than a positive, because it'll bite your ass later in the game when Arthur isn't as special - hell, maybe he'll fall asleep and you won't be able to Restore him. The fact that he takes so many resources will weaken your team in the long run. I don't think this is a very good idea, but maybe it's just me. Even if Arthur does want each of these resources the most, why should he get every single one of them? Why not divide between your units to make them more balanced?

Why? This is completely arbitrary. Wanting to do this on your own runs is one thing, but trying to argue that it's more efficient is pretty futile.

3 chapters is half of the second generation.

That's also, interestingly, how long Sety, the next best alternative doesn't exist for.

I hope that made sense. The reason I'm arguing efficiency is because it's the most easily measurable standard to compare people by. In inefficient runs obviously things will be different depending on how you play (like I said, I prefer Levin!Sety in casual runs).

Edited April 20, 2011 by Silvercrow

[Horakthi]

There are alternatives aside from the bargain ring to generate funds, such as the Thief Sword or Thief Ring, either of which are fair game for both Aless and Shanan. Either way, they won't be spamming their holy weapons nearly as much as Arthur due to lack of 2-range, so it's pretty fair to assume that they won't be repairing their weapons as often and therefore have less need of the Bargain Ring.

The Thief Sword has horrible might and hit. That's a terrible way to gain cash, and it puts your unit at greater risk. You don't even gain much cash from fighting with the Thief Sword anyway. 1k or 2k per battle? It's not worth it. The Thief Ring appears at Chapter 8 and only Fee can get it. It costs 40k to buy. I highly doubt any of them will be buying that if Patty is giving all her money to Arthur. Arthur can also fight well with just an Elwind to conserve his Holsety uses, thanks to Continue and Critical.

There is a second Magic Ring in chapter 10, where many of those things you mentioned actually become an issue. There is no reason Sety can't get the ring in Ch10. Frankly I don't even consider Tinny an option and I'm not arguing ranked because I find the requirements are awfully trivial.

The village is rather far away from the Miletos - Grandbell border, and coupled with Sety's low move, that's a bad idea to get. I guess Arthur himself could get it if you REALLY don't have anyone else to give to, though. Unless you're suggesting to favoritise Arthur enough to give him two Magic Rings?

Leaf wants the Elite Ring more than the Pursuit Ring.

No. The Elite Ring is too valuable not to have in chapter 6. Leaf is definitely more entitled to the Pursuit Ring. Just because something is "possible" doesn't mean we should do it.

You are keeping this arbitrary sense of balance between characters because the game lets you deploy everyone. You are not required to do so and in fact the game is easier if you do not, as with most FE games.

So we should only deploy Arthur? I'm talking about your other power houses too, the ones that are also gamebreaking.

All Tinny needs is Tron, you can look at analysis of Lex!Arthur to know what exactly this can do.

That very same Tinny wants a Magic Ring too.

Well, Arthur doesn't need to kill everything ever. I seem to recall a topic a while back about base level Shanan's offense in the final chapter and how ridiculous it is. You can solo the final chapter with those three units.

Unless you're thinking about save state abuse, I find this really hard to believe. That sounds quite hard to do without save state abuse. Furthermore, if you do use only 3 units for the final chapter and not any other units, there will be more units blocking your path and they'll slow you down. 2-range attackers love to go after Shanan.

Levin!Arthur is extremely clutch in C7 and C8, where Sety is doing absolutely nothing.

How is he "clutch"? He's completely unnecessary for chapter 8 where you have plenty of units to kill Ishtar. Beating Ishtar is a risk based challenge in the first place. His move might even be too low to reach Ishtar. The most useful thing I can think of is Melgen in chapter 7, and Blume if he can reach him.

That's also, interestingly, how long Sety, the next best alternative doesn't exist for.

Arthur, with his low move, isn't really necessary at all. I think he's much more useful lategame than early.

Edited April 20, 2011 by Horakthi

[dondon151]

It seems that everyone's arguments for Arthur's efficiency involves a great deal of favoritism. I can't imagine why on earth Arthur is so entitled to receive all of this favoritism, when in general favoritism is so frowned upon in debating insofar as I can see. If a units needs so many items and resources and favoritism in order to reach his maximum potential, why is this considered a plus for him?

On the contrary. Many units do so significantly better with a certain resource that it would be foolish not to give it to them in the context of efficiency. I can think of so many examples off the top of my head:

FE5: chapter 2 Speed Ring (Leaf), chapter 8x Leg Ring (Leaf), chapter 18 Build Ring (Pahn)

FE6: chapter 13 Body Ring (Miledy)

FE7: chapter 15 Dragonshield (Marcus), chapter 23 Body Ring (Isadora), chapter 28x Speedwings (Vaida)

FE8: chapter 5 Dragonshield (Seth)

FE10: chapter 1-E Speedwings (Titania), chapter 2-3 Speedwings (Haar)

FE11: chapter 6 Seraph Robe (Caeda), Wing Spear forges (Caeda)

FE12: chapter 9 Speedwings (Palla), chapter 9 Boots (Marth)

The list is non-exhaustive. The point is, for good units, there's no provision against them taking all of the resources necessary to make them good.

Edited April 20, 2011 by dondon151

[Horakthi]

On the contrary. Many units do so significantly better with a certain resource that it would be foolish not to give it to them in the context of efficiency.

I agree, since earlier I mentioned Olwen getting Ambush. I would agree with Levin!Arthur, but there are other units who giving a Pursuit, Bargain Ring or whatever would definitely still be a smart idea.

Edited April 20, 2011 by Horakthi

[Silvercrow]

The Thief Sword has horrible might and hit. That's a terrible way to gain cash, and it puts your unit at greater risk. You don't even gain much cash from fighting with the Thief Sword anyway. 1k or 2k per battle? It's not worth it. The Thief Ring appears at Chapter 8 and only Fee can get it. It costs 40k to buy. I highly doubt any of them will be buying that if Patty is giving all her money to Arthur. Arthur can also fight well with just an Elwind to conserve his Holsety uses, thanks to Continue and Critical.

You're right, Arthur doesn't need to spam Holsety at every possible moment, which means Patty realistically doesn't need to feed him much. You are hanging on this point way too hard. Patty feeding Arthur is pretty much just for the purpose of allowing him to pick up rings Levin may not have passed down if you screwed up there.

Also, Bandits are 5k gold with the Thief sword. Imagine it, you hit a bandit, get 5 Holy weapon uses. What a bargain! Either way, 1-2k gold per enemy adds up when you aren't using your Holy Weapon that often anyway.

The village is rather far away from the Miletos - Grandbell border, and coupled with Sety's low move, that's a bad idea to get. I guess Arthur himself could get it if you REALLY don't have anyone else to give to, though. Unless you're suggesting to favoritise Arthur enough to give him two Magic Rings?

Why would Sety actually need it in chapter 10? The chapter is nearly over at that point, it won't really do much unless you're having Sety take on Ishtar or something.

No. The Elite Ring is too valuable not to have in chapter 6. Leaf is definitely more entitled to the Pursuit Ring. Just because something is "possible" doesn't mean we should do it.

Of course, but Leaf doesn't need the Elite Ring in C7. He wants it in C8 so he can promote by C9. Leaf can get tons of free armor kills in C7 without any Rings so long as you're careful with Fin.

So we should only deploy Arthur? I'm talking about your other power houses too, the ones that are also gamebreaking.

You have not sufficiently proven how they're not still useful if you don't spoonfeed them. They have much less problems with funds than Arthur, and their sets of skills let them handle the enemies they're needed for.

That very same Tinny wants a Magic Ring too.

No, because Tinny is always useless in actual combat. The key to getting Tinny to level 30 is Wrath through arena (ring not needed) -> promote -> staff spam. She is useless in combat, and she will always be useless in combat because of her terrible move, horrible joining situation, and no ability to wield a holy weapon. Wasting a magic ring on her is silly.

Unless you're thinking about save state abuse, I find this really hard to believe. That sounds quite hard to do without save state abuse. Furthermore, if you do use only 3 units for the final chapter and not any other units, there will be more units blocking your path and they'll slow you down. 2-range attackers love to go after Shanan.

The final chapter is heavily stacked in your favor, despite appearances, so long as you have a method of evading staves. There are mountains everywhere for your +20 speed boosted units to benefit from. You can position so that units will be in your range on player phase to be massacred (the preferred method of dealing with Ishtar). On my draft run, I more or less soloed the final chapter with Celice, Shanan, and Hawk (to restore Shanan). Everyone else was almost completely extraneous except for dealing with Arione (in a normal run Altenna will just talk to him).

How is he "clutch"? He's completely unnecessary for chapter 8 where you have plenty of units to kill Ishtar. Beating Ishtar is a risk based challenge in the first place. His move might even be too low to reach Ishtar. The most useful thing I can think of is Melgen in chapter 7, and Blume if he can reach him.

Of course we have plenty of units to kill Ishtar. How many of them have 9 move? Celice, I guess, if you can crit with his Silver Sword. Arthur can kill her with 0 risk so long as Wrath procs. Try it sometime, it's fun.

Arthur, with his low move, isn't really necessary at all. I think he's much more useful lategame than early.

How many other units are dealing with the Melgan Army and Blume as well as Arthur are? You are overrating high movement at these points in the game, due to the nature of the maps Arthur has plenty of time to get where he needs to be before Celice, Shanan, Aless, or whoever else you're trying to arbitrarily balance.

[Mekkah]

It's called hyping. As people get passionate about something, they tend to start seeing small differences as goddamn abysses. Somewhere along the road, they also forget or ignore that not playing for ranks is an option, and that FE4 is pathetically easy if you know what you're doing and don't want to worry about nearly maxing everyone in less than 400 turns.

Also, welcome.

I don't know if you're trying to imply that *I* forget there's other playing goals than just ranking...that seems kinda weird considering I mentioned all of four different styles!

@Horakthi, first off let me make it clear that these resources only have Arthur's name on them if you are playing quickly - either for efficiency, or a full blown speed run. Abstractly, you could say putting the Magic Ring, or the Bargain Ring, or the Pursuit Ring, or anything else I mentioned saves you the most turns when you put them on Arthur. Other units can put them to use as well, but not as effectively. Since you are trying to play as effectively as possible, they should go on Arthur.

Now if we're talking about other playstyles/goals, such as ranked or casual, then we have other things in mind than just low turns. For instance, you want to raise other units for EXP rank or just the fun of it. In those cases, you don't need to have Arthur and Celice massacre the entire Jugdral continent.

Shanan, Aless, Altenna and Faval want the Bargain Ring just as much as Arthur. Maybe not Altenna and Faval because the Gae Bolg slows down Altenna considerably and Faval can only attack on the player phase, but there's no way that Shanan and Aless don't want the Bargain RIng. Aless has high move and he'll be getting an incredible amount of combat action. The AI is programmed to target Shanan the most out of everyone, in my and other people's experiences. Why aren't they just as entitled as Arthur to receive the Bargain Ring? I agree that Levin is the best candidate in gen 1, but just because he wants a Bargain Ring doesn't mean he should get it.

There's several reasons why Arthur is better at Bargain Ringing than these. Some apply to all of them, some to only a few.

First off, Arthur joins roughly halfway through Ch6. The others all join a little later, or significantly later. That means they will give you less bang for your buck. For every swipe of a Holy Weapon you repair with Bargain Ring, you save 500G. Wouldn't you want to save the most gold possible? Then you'll want to make use of the Bargain Ring as much as possible.

Second, Shannan and Faval don't have mounts. That means they will be unable to keep up with Celice. Even with a Leg Ring (which would cost them 10k to buy with Bargain Ring), they would not be able to move after attacking unless you also give them Knight Ring (20k). And Leg Ring saves more turns when it's on your dancer or on Celice, since that allows you to seize earlier. Arthur and Celice can already kill every enemy in their way on their own, so having a third string 1-range fighter, even if they're badasses like Shannan, doesn't do as much.

As you mentioned, Faval also only fights on player phase. I think it could be argued that if you're smart about it, you don't even ever need to repair Ichieval. He practically has three and a half map left to do stuff on, and in the arena he gets by with generic bows, and in Thracia he can ORKO every Dragon Rider without Nihil just fine with just the Silver Bow he joins with. On a slightly similar note, Altenna will often want to use lighter lances/swords over the Gae Bolg.

Aless is mounted, and is about the only person out of all of these that could want the Bargain Ring. Slightly less good at it than Arthur, but still good. Thankfully, there's another money-making ring in the game: the Thief Ring in Ch8. It comes later, sure, but it's there. If you really want, you could have Arthur get the Thief Ring, and sell the Bargain Ring to Aless, but that thing costs 40k to buy. Arthur bypasses this problem by inheriting it, but Aless can't do that. So we might as well get the Thief Ring with him. Aless can also use the Thief Sword to get money on player phase, then switch to Mistolteen for enemy phase.

You posted as I was writing this and I can't help responding to it:

The Thief Ring appears at Chapter 8 and only Fee can get it

This is false, there's a path going there. Fee is the quickest way to it, but that also puts her at risk of the Wing Clipper Thief Fighter. It cuts Aless from the main chapter's action to get there, sure, but it's not like he's by any means neccessary to go through the last few enemy waves. He isn't particularly good at fighting Javelin Dracoknights, anyway.

That should answer the question why they are not just as entitled to the Bargain Ring. It's not optimal, and therefore, it's not as good for optimal play.

Some other snippets you said that I want to directly answer. I normally hate going quote-by-quote, but sometimes that's needed.

I agree that people don't want the magic ring much, but Tinny could definitely want it if she wants to one hit KO people with Wrath (then again, she probably won't be used in an efficiency run, but she needs it greatly in a ranked run).

Yes, Tinny is completely irrelevant for efficiency runs. She does matter for ranked, sure, but that is a completely different beast. I don't advocate throwing every resource (barring the ones Celice needs) possible at Arthur in ranked, just in an efficiency/speedrun.

Sety will want the Magic Ring as well to Silence / Sleep some of the higher magic bosses such as Ishtar later on. If we're going with Noish!Sety or Claude!Sety, there's no denying that he still wants the Magic Ring in either case. Arthur STILL has a 70% chance to ORKO things at late game and a Magic Ring isn't really going to improve that.

You can get Arthur in Wrath range using the arena to get a 100% OHKO on Ishtar. Or you can put him in Ishtar's attacking range.

20 Levin!Arthur w/ Holsety (Magic Ring, Bargain Ring, Pursuit Ring)

55 Atk, 37 AS -- 54 HP, 10.5 Def, 10.7 Res, 92 Avo

57% Continue, 32% Critical

Ishtar has 224 Hit and 60 Atk, so she does have 100% hit on Arthur despite WTD. But she puts him straight into Wrath range with her 60 atk, allowing him to counterkill with 100% success. If you're not afraid of 45% Continue, this is a solid option. Alternatively, you can just bring the fight to her and attack first. Roughly a 70% chance to kill her before she gets to attack, so only 30% of the time she will be able to counter. Of that 30%, there's a 45% chance she would kill Arthur with continue. The other 55%, she won't proc Continue and Arthur will launch his Pursuited second attack and kill her. Well, L30 Arthur does have "only" 53 Atk without Mag Ring, 58 with, and Ishtar has 70 HP/32 Res, which means you would only do 42 total damage if you don't proc anything, 52 with Mag ring. But those chances are so absurdly low: 2 chances to proc either Continue or Critical, we're looking at around 8% chance here. And Celice/Aless would be able to finish her off regardless.

Why am I typing all this up, anyway? There are two Magic Rings, you can put one on Arthur and one on Sety. Or Arthur can sell his, since he doesn't exactly need it that much anymore. Why are you implying Sety needs to visit that village for the 2nd Magic Ring? He can just buy it off someone else. He's a rich dude.

Furthermore, if you give a Magic Ring to Sety, he will recover 5 more HP for everyone with Reserve, which can definitely be significant in higher risk cases.

Those 5 points are never going to make a difference, anyway. If you do need that little bit of extra HP recovered, you have so many options to do it. Not only do you have several other healers who can use Libro to top people off, you also have access to a Recover staff that restores full HP regardless of magic (I doubt the 5 pts would be crucial on multiple units). And compounding that, your dancer can revitalize up to 4 people including healers.

Even in chapter 6 when he comes in, he'll hardly be doing any fighting because of where he starts anyway, so it won't be useful to him there, unless of course you decide to solo that part of the chapter with him..

I've explained in detail why it's a good idea to have him solo either Johalva's troops or Schmidt's troops. He's positioned just fine to do so, and the Mag ring is extremely useful for him in those scenarios.

There are plenty of people who want the Pursuit Ring. It's a good idea to pass down the Pursuit Ring to Leaf because it'll make training him a lot easier and it'll pay off in the end. I'd rather give the Pursuit Ring to someone if they'll have a much easier time training rather than improve already high odds to one round stuff...

Look, either you can complain about Arthur's 70% killing rate being unreliable, or you can say Pursuit Ring doesn't do much for him because he already kills 70% of the time. But you're not allowed to complain about both. Have your cake or eat it.

Ballerzak has shown how to train Leaf in a ranked run. Whether Leaf pays off in any kind of efficiency run is questionable, but I think Aquilae did it. And you don't need Pursuit Ring on him to get it done by Chapter 9, while promoting Leaf at Ch8 is pretty much impossible barring some kind of abuse.

Even earlygame Patty would want it more than Arthur, since, again, Arthur has a high chance to ORKO things anyway.

Why would I want Pursuit Ring on Patty? Her offense is horrid for like 18 levels, even with Pursuit Ring and Moonlight Sword and Holyn as her dad. If you want to train Patty in a ranked or casual run, you have to make the best of the arena with Prayer Sword or Ambush (Lex!Patty) abuse, and have her steal low kills. Again, Balcerak shows exactly how to do that. Patty doesn't really have a place for anything in an efficiency run, though, and I never said it's a good idea to load up on Arthur right away in a ranked run (since it will kill your EXP rank), so I'm not sure what your point is.

To add to all of these points, even if Arthur has the highest demand for all of these items out of anyone else, they are extremely expensive. In total, they cost 100k coins, and coupled with repairing Holsety, that's an incredibly significant amount of cash - it's 100 extra Holsety uses.

100000G sounds like a lot, but it's just a funny number that doesn't represent anything Arthur has to pay for. He inherits all these rings, and gold on a character in gen 1 gets like divided by 20 before it's passed on to the children (inheritence tax rates are insane, apparently). And Levin doesn't have to pay for the Bargain Ring, just the Pursuit Ring (20k) and the Mag ring (5k). As I said, Levin is amazing in arenas, each of them giving him 17500G with ease. The meager cost of his Elwind tome after Bargain Ring, and the occasional Holsety repair don't cut much into that. Even if he's a little short on a last minute purchase in Ch5 for some reason (like, you want him to repair Holsety to 50 uses before passing it on), you can sell everything Tiltyu has and give it to him. Her Tron tome alone is a full 12k (halved on selling, but Bargain Ring), let's say 11k because you might've used some in Ch3.

Which brings me to my next point. Arthur is in no way entitled to receive help from Patty if he does have the Bargain Ring - Shanan, Aless, Altenna etc. would want it more than him if he does have the Bargain Ring. Arthur will go broke no problem if the favoritism continues. If he uses Holsety 100 times in a playthrough (which I think is an underestimate) that's 200k coins that he needs for the entire game. Even without the Bargain Ring if it's going to be passed down, that's 160k coins. Don't you think the favoritism he receives is a bit ridiculous? The only way I can think of is if Patty helps him through the entire playthrough, which is ridiculous - she's so hard to train in the first place.

Okay, we'll delve deeper into Arthur's financial expenses.

Let's say he joins generation 2 with 50 Holsety uses, 50 Elwind uses, Bargain, Pursuit, and Magic Ring. His parents went completely broke for him, leaving him with nothing but a meager 1000 starting gold. This is disregarding any additional things Levin could have bought in generation 1 for sale in generation 2, such as a Fire tome you won't care about.

Arthur goes ahead and kills either Johalva or Schmidt's army. Let's say the latter, since that uses up more Holsety uses. A total of 13 uses max down the drain (Schmidt is 2HKO'd and he has 11 friends), maybe 15 if you also kill Dannan with him. So Holsety has 35 uses left. There's a village north of Rivough that he's in perfect positioning to take that will be in perfect condition (no bandit ever goes there), so that's +5000G he now has. We also get 1000G on every chapter for every castle left intact during this chapter. Assuming we seize neither Sophara nor Isaac, that's still 3000G.

Arthur goes into Ch7 with 35 uses of Holsety left, and 9000G on the bank. Repairing Holsety to full costs 7500G, so 1500G left. The arena should cost him about 1000G to run through at most, earning him 16500G every time. After all, Elwind is only 50G per use and Arthur has Wrath, so this does take into account occasionally having to bust out Holsety for 500G. Ch7 starts, and Arthur has 18000G. Admittedly, this isn't enough for the Elite Ring unless you plan ahead and don't fully repair Holsety or something.

Now he's going to go through a lot of Holsety in this chapter according to plan. There's 8 Dark Mages, let's say he kills like 6 of them, using up 11 Holsety uses in the process. 39 uses left.

Then we get Melgen. 22 enemies, let's say he crits around 1/5th of what he fights. He'll nearly break Holsety here, in fact he will if he fights everything with Holsety, though you don't have to kill the ballistae with Holsety when you can use Elwind (after killing all the other threats), or if something hits him he crits every time thanks to Wrath. Let's say he has 5 uses left after this.

Repairing those 45 uses isn't possible with what he has currently so he would indeed need a little Patty donation. Patty does join with 10000G though, and as I said efficiency is mostly about Celice and Arthur taking on the world, so there's not much of a reason not to do it. But if you're reluctant to do so, let's just say he repairs it with what he has to around 30 uses and no cash left. He uses up like 10-12 more uses on the magic fiends and Blume on the right before you seize. 18 uses left.

Now he gets 4000G from castles and 16500G from the arena, for a total of 20500G. Enough to repair 41 uses of Holsety! In addition, we've come to a point where he can potentially sell the Magic Ring for another 10000G, which is another 20 uses. He could do that last chapter too, of course.

It goes on like this. You get around 20k per chapter just from the arena and intact castles. I'm sure that with a little better planning on what you buy with Levin, and how you spread your Patty donations, and what villages you visit with Arthur, you could allow him to buy the Elite Ring. Balcerak got Arthur to promote in the middle of Ch8 in his ranked run by having him kill Muhammed's squad, but admittedly that's ranked and it's different...but I know for a fact that I managed to get a promoted Arthur at the start of Ch8 in my speedrun.

You also mentioned he can fight well with Elwind. Doesn't that help his case, rather than hurt it?

And I don't think that Arthur being somehow "entitled" to solo entire parts of a chapter makes him any better. The fact that he needs so much experience from your units and prevents them from improving is a point against him, not for him. It certainly will end up making your units weaker in the long run if they don't get as many kills - Arthur isn't so good that he can solo the entire game by himself, after all - the Holsety is too expensive and even with the Holsety, his caps are horrid and lategame he won't be as effective (especially against Ishtar and the pegasus sisters, and the Dark Warlords). There are plenty of tough armor knights with Hero weapons in chapter 9 and 10, and letting Arthur solo them is just a bad idea. Shanan is probably the unit least affected by the favoritism that Arthur receives.

You seem to not understand how efficiency playthoughs work. The goal of those is not to have a large army of powerful units. The goal is to clear the game extremely quickly. For that, you don't want a large army of okay units or strong units - you want a small amount of units that devastate anything in their path. Why would I want enemies to attack someone like Delmud or Skasaha and waste EXP on them, when I can just ORKO them with Aless, Arthur, or Celice? I'm not getting any lower turns by spreading my resources and EXP as thinly as possible.

Arthur's lategame is great - you even mentioned it's his best part. His caps being low hardly affects him - almost nothing survives a double Holsety attack, the few things that do have a 90%+ chance to get killed by Continue/Critical. His 90+ avo can be further supplemented with Celice's double leadership, or clever use of terrain, making him practically unhittable. Those Hero Lance troops you mentioned, for example, only have 100 hit.

I think that this is a negative for him rather than a positive, because it'll bite your ass later in the game when Arthur isn't as special - hell, maybe he'll fall asleep and you won't be able to Restore him.

Why would you ever let that happen? You're assuming the player doesn't know what he's doing. Sety can use Restore at base level, at 10-range, if the need arises. Or Leaf can do it if he's trained for Rescue staff abuse. Interestingly, during my speedrun, I noticed Barrier Ring Arthur was immune to the Chronos Dark Mage Sleep staff due to having more Res. Yes, it's another resource, but it doesn't help anyone as much as he does.

[Horakthi]

I hate quoting parts and posting to multiple people, so I think I'll just make a general post here.

I do understand how efficient playthroughs work. I think it's a difference in playstyles that make you think I don't. I think it'd be much faster if you used around 10 units to go through chapters rather than just Arthur and Celice, or the odd Leg Ring Shanan. In that playstyle, then I'm sure I would want to avoid soloing parts of a chapter with Arthur. Maybe we need to establish what the fastest playstyle is first before deciding what really is efficient and what isn't?

I will admit that I had forgotten about the Thief Sword prior to posting my argument about the Bargain Ring. However, I don't think the Thief Sword is much of a gamebreaker at all - it has horrible might, meaning that Aless will hardly be able to cause any damage (FE4 enemies have huge HP, after all). Cantoing and equipping the Mistoltin after using the Thief Sword is a good idea, of course, I didn't know that was even possible. However, bandits don't grow on trees and they don't get one rounded by Aless if you do end up attacking them, which would mean you'd need to use another unit to help finish the bandit off, which can slightly diminish your efficiency.

I think that Arthur may be the best candidate for the Bargain Ring because Levin can get it from a village easily and pass it down to him, but it doesn't change the fact that there's still demand for it - unlike other situations where favoritism can be preferred. Furthermore, about the Thief Ring, if we really are going to plow through the game with a small team of efficient units (Celice, Lakche, Shanan, Arthur, Fin, etc.) I don't think it'd be very wise to send Aless down to the Thief Ring village. As far as I can recall, the ballistae are like walls and the dragon knights more so like portable ones - I think one would want to use as many units as possible to plow through these to reach Mease as quickly as possible. They have Javelins (as far as I can remember) so they'll love to go after Shanan of all people. I'm sure you would want to bring Aless to get through the enemy units even quicker - which is why I think Fee would be a better idea. Aless can reliably one round everything, which is especially why he's important. Furthermore, the path to Mease is very narrow, so you'll have a harder time passing through to the castle.

In my experience, about Faval getting action in the player phase, the AI attacked Faval from 2 range very often even though they could attack from 1 range. This also happened with Bridget and Midir in the first gen. I don't think it's just me that happened to but I think the AI may favor going after Faval. PEMN, but I'm pretty sure if the AI is programmed that way then he can be another candidate for the Bargain Ring as well. I'd like some confirmation on this if possible.

By the time chapter 10 arrives, the Magic Ring is superfluous to Arthur. He doesn't need it anymore because the enemy HP and res is so high that he would be unable to one round them, as far as I can recall, even with a Magic Ring. He would have to rely on his 70% chance to ORKO, again. I didn't imply that Sety should take the Magic Ring from chapter 10 - Silvercrow did.

Look, either you can complain about Arthur's 70% killing rate being unreliable, or you can say Pursuit Ring doesn't do much for him because he already kills 70% of the time.

I believe that I have to respond to this directly. I agree that this sounds ridiculous at first glance. However, the reason why I suggested the Pursuit Ring for other units was because Arthur didn't need it as much as other units - even though 70% is still relatively unreliable compared to other Pursuit users. If you don't end up passing the Pursuit Ring to Leaf, though, then I agree that Arthur deserves it the most.

I was under the impression that Balcerzak was using save states and RNG abusing? If that's true, then I really don't think you can use that as an argument. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it should be done. I was never an advocate of using save states, which is why I quit my ranked run so early on.

Edited April 20, 2011 by Horakthi

[Colonel M]

I don't know if you're trying to imply that *I* forget there's other playing goals than just ranking...that seems kinda weird considering I mentioned all of four different styles!

I think he meant Horakthi, but I could be wrong.

I do understand how efficient playthroughs work. I think it's a difference in playstyles that make you think I don't. I think it'd be much faster if you used around 10 units to go through chapters rather than just Arthur and Celice, or the odd Leg Ring Shanan. In that playstyle, then I'm sure I would want to avoid soloing parts of a chapter with Arthur. Maybe we need to establish what the fastest playstyle is first before deciding what really is efficient and what isn't?

Ah, the age old debate. What is efficient, what isn't efficient, how is it defined, etc etc. Regardless, if Arthur can solo a part of a map efficiently without harming the team to an extreme point (as Mekkah pointed out), why bar him from doing it? Favoritism is part of what makes some good characters reach peak performance. This is why we give Leg Rings to Celice instead of Hannibal. Or even certain kill experience. Yes, they all are tied with a cost, but in cases such as Arthur's he makes up for most of it. There isn't many units that can really brag being close to Arthur's performance.

Also dondon's post meant Sirius not Palla with that Speedwing comment.</sarcasm>

[Anouleth]

I hate quoting parts and posting to multiple people, so I think I'll just make a general post here.

I do understand how efficient playthroughs work. I think it's a difference in playstyles that make you think I don't. I think it'd be much faster if you used around 10 units to go through chapters rather than just Arthur and Celice, or the odd Leg Ring Shanan. In that playstyle, then I'm sure I would want to avoid soloing parts of a chapter with Arthur. Maybe we need to establish what the fastest playstyle is first before deciding what really is efficient and what isn't?

I haven't played this FE extensively, but in FE in general it is often possible and usually desirable to send out one high move unit to kill everything on enemy phase rather than spreading kills amongst multiple units. Using larger groups of units is often flawed for several reasons - you are forced to move at the pace of the slowest character, enemies will generally target units that won't kill them on the counterattack or that they can kill, and resources are spread amongst multiple units.

[Horakthi]

Celice / Shanan / Faval / Leaf / Sety / Delmud / Lester / Aless / Arthur / Nanna / Altenna / Fee / Lakche / Patty would be much more effective, in my opinion, that just rushing through chapters with just Celice and Arthur. You can remove Lester and Delmud if you think it's too much, but I think Lester has a lot of one rounding potential with the Hero Bow. There are multiple disadvantages of using only two or three characters that I can think of:

1. There are many narrow passages in the maps that are filled with enemies. If you plow through these enemy passages with your team, you can save a turn instead of having Arthur wait and let him kill everything in one turn.

2. There are thousands of 1-2 range users and they'll love to go attack Celice or Shanan, and not Arthur. These enemy units will block your way and minimise how quickly you can move to the opposing castle. You can't just "keep Celice away", either. He has to reach the castles as quickly as possible, so this is inevitable. Even if you do, that brings me to my next point..

3. Arthur's Holsety is expensive, even with the Bargain Ring. FE4 has a crap load of enemies and Holsety would break very often if you only relied on him.

4. Arthur has low Resistance, so if he gets slept, he's screwed. You likely won't be able to Restore him either because he might be too far.

5. Arthur IS possible to kill, because of his shoddy caps, especially in the later chapters. I'm not considering save state abuse here.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Horakthi