Is Levin!Arthur really that amazing?

[Dr. Tarrasque]

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.

Assuming said narrow path happens to contain enemies so close that the entire team can actually attack them all and save this turn that you claim.. Usually you'll end up able to reach inside the narrow path and Arthur's the best candidate here as he would be able to nuke them all and clear it on the enemy phase. Remainders can be picked off by mounted units thus no movement hindered.

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..

And that's why it's a good thing that Arthur, when mounted, can get so far ahead with Holsety, so he can rid the field of these ranged enemies for Celice to proceed and not have his movement hindered.

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.

Thief Sword when promoted (just attack any random mook someone else will finish off to get the money and then proceed and equip Holsety) or the even more helpful Thief ring and use of Elwind when facing weaker mooks and if the playthrough consists of the characters you've mentioned, sounds like the Pursuit Ring doesn't have any other worthwhile candidates. If Fee's his lover, she can get money from bandits and villages to supply him the necessary funds to fix Holsety. Funds is really no big deal unless you're trying to do rank or use so many units.

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.

Restore is B ranked and has 1-10 ranged. Claude!Fee or Claude!Nanna can stay within range to restore him (and have the MDEF to prevent sleep herself). Any Sety with a leg ring shouldn't be too far to use it either. An overleveled Arthur may even have gained sufficient MDEF to turn a Barrier Ring into his anti-sleep ring.

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

You're grasping here. You can save on every single turn by the game's own save function (save stating's for abusing outcomes) and his so called shoddy caps is what allows him to take on so many enemies because in the case of Levin!Sety, his avoid will be too overkill that enemies will not attack him due to 0 hit and just pile up on him resulting in the movement issues you've mentioned earlier so even with a Leg ring, he won't be doing all the killing Arthur will thanks to this.

Put simply, in a small team, Levin!Arthur has little to no issue getting the resources to eliminate whatever problems he may have. Larger teams are less efficient in terms of turn count and real time because you are to spread your resources around several people as opposed to overpowering just a few. Sigurd solo doesn't get you the highest turn count in gen 1 is because of the 1-2 ranged enemies which Arthur doesn't have a problem with.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Sirius

[Horakthi]

Assuming said narrow path happens to contain enemies so close that the entire team can actually attack them all and save this turn that you claim.. Usually you'll end up able to reach inside the narrow path and Arthur's the best candidate here as he would be able to nuke them all and clear it on the enemy phase. Remainders can be picked off by mounted units thus no movement hindered.

Narrow paths like that exist all the time. I can think of the path to Mease, the path to Freege and the path to Barhara. Both of the paths to Dozel if you're quick too.

"Remainders can be picked off by mounted units" I was under the impression that the most efficient strategy was to go through the game with just a handful of characters?

And that's why it's a good thing that Arthur, when mounted, can get so far ahead with Holsety, so he can rid the field of these ranged enemies for Celice to proceed and not have his movement hindered.

If he does that consistently then Celice is hardly going to get any experience and it's not going to be good for him when he goes to Velthomer to kill Manfloy, for example. This is getting a bit ridiculous. I would have never imagined that debates consist of incredibly biased favoritism.

Thief Sword

I thought the point of the game was to speed through with Arthur. Using a Thief Sword is going to slow you down if you don't one round stuff on the player phase. If he goes after Bandits, which are the only enemies that give him significant cash, that's going to slow him down even further.

Thief Ring

So Arthur is going to go down to the village to get the Thief Ring? Or is he going to buy it? That's 20k. I'm sure if we're soloing the game, he'll want to repair Holsety often. He's not getting the Thief Ring easily.

If Fee's his lover, she can get money from bandits and villages to supply him the necessary funds to fix Holsety.

That supports my argument rather than yours, because I'm all for using Fee.. I was under the impression that Arthur was going to plow through the game as quickly as possible with Celice. Fee won't have much time to spend with Arthur, so this'll be difficult to do.

Restore is B ranked and has 1-10 ranged. Claude!Fee or Claude!Nanna can stay within range to restore him (and have the MDEF to prevent sleep herself). Any Sety with a leg ring shouldn't be too far to use it either. An overleveled Arthur may even have gained sufficient MDEF to turn a Barrier Ring into his anti-sleep ring.

Leen is probably going to get the leg ring after Celice promotes. If he gets slept on the enemy phase, then that'll prevent him from attacking when he gets gangbanged by enemies, which is a disadvantage if he's your main fighter. I believe that the Sleep Staves go first.

So you're giving Arthur a Holsety, Bargain Ring, Magic Ring, Barrier Ring and a Pursuit Ring? That sounds like the most efficient way to beat the game is to solo with him.

You can save on every single turn by the game's own save function

Everyone on the game can be useful if we manipulate the RNG. I could make Sophia useful if I kept on restarting until she dodged every hit with 99 accuracy. This argument also means that averages don't count for crap since we can restart the game as often as we want.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Horakthi

[Integrity]

But here's the thing, dude:

You're saying "oh but you have to give this and this and this to Arthur to make him so great" - but what if you gave it all to somebody else? Is Patty going to solo armies with a couple of rings and ...er, her own money support? Is Lakche/Shanan going to sprout reliable 2range? Faval 1range? Give him all the rings in the world, and Ares is still locked to Mistoltin's - while certainly beautiful - 1range.

Yes, you can spread the wealth. If you give Holsety to Sety, the Pursuit Ring to ...Patty?, the Magic Ring to ...hell, Lana or something and the Bargain Ring to I guess Shanan? then you'll have a good squad that, all told, is better than Arthur alone.

Now look at the comparisons here: you're comparing your entire army to Arthur.

And in Scenario 2, when Arthur has all these items, what're Shanan/Faval/Ares doing? Sitting in the main castle picking their collective asses? No, because there's more than too much XP in Gen 2 to go around and they're still great. Now in any instance where you need a push on multiple areas, you still have Ares and Faval and Altenna and wtfever. Lana can still spam staves despite Arthur having Holsety and a few rings she might have liked. You may say that using any of those units in tandem with Arthur diminishes his usefulness on account of not every enemy will attack him - but you still have a fast motherfuckin' Holsety user who can blick the shit out of anything or any pile of thing you want him to. Not using him at maximum efficiency all the time doesn't make him less statistically great.

If this is poorly received blame it on the hour.

EDIT: An incidental note: I think the point of bringing up "the game's own save function" was more for the "bullshit happened and six separate dudes landed 8% hits" rather than "arthur rolled everything except def reset".

Edited April 21, 2011 by Integrity

[Dr. Tarrasque]

Narrow paths like that exist all the time. I can think of the path to Mease, the path to Freege and the path to Barhara. Both of the paths to Dozel if you're quick too.

"Remainders can be picked off by mounted units" I was under the impression that the most efficient strategy was to go through the game with just a handful of characters?

Aless, Oifaye, Fin and Altenna for example. You can raise Delmud, Nanna and Fee to promotion with little to no trouble.

If he does that consistently then Celice is hardly going to get any experience and it's not going to be good for him when he goes to Velthomer to kill Manfloy, for example. This is getting a bit ridiculous. I would have never imagined that debates consist of incredibly biased favoritism.

Balcerzak's ranked playthrough has shown that you can get Celice to 20+ in chapter 6 if he inherited the Leg ring and Elite Ring. Between that, Arena, 1 or 2 kids in chapter 8 and bosses he may kill to seize, level 30 is no fantasy, not even close.

I thought the point of the game was to speed through with Arthur. Using a Thief Sword is going to slow you down if you don't one round stuff on the player phase.

The game's maps are not one narrow path blocked by hordes of enemies. If on the player phase you have one enemy near Arthur that he can attack and continue moving with no hindrance, Arthur can attack the enemy with a Thief Sword, continue moving and equip Holsety or (whatever he'll use to kill the next enemeis) and whoever's nearby (Celice for example) can just kill off the enemy. You're not losing anything in this scenario since most enemies will suicide against your units during the enemy phase. If you had instead attacked and killed the enemy with with Arthur, you may be able to kill another with Celice on the player phase but that's nothing to celebrate since this enemy would've just suicided on the enemy phase.

If he goes after Bandits, which are the only enemies that give him significant cash, that's going to slow him down even further.

An IF I did not bring up for good reason.

So Arthur is going to go down to the village to get the Thief Ring? Or is he going to buy it? That's 20k. I'm sure if we're soloing the game, he'll want to repair Holsety often. He's not getting the Thief Ring easily.

He can if Celice and the other handful of characters can take the enemies without having their movement hindered (can't recall if this is doable or not). Otherwise, he can buy it. You're exaggerating the use of Holsety and its repairing costs. I've done similar playthroughs and managed to sell him the thief ring and this was without the Bargain ring on him.

That supports my argument rather than yours, because I'm all for using Fee.. I was under the impression that Arthur was going to plow through the game as quickly as possible with Celice. Fee won't have much time to spend with Arthur, so this'll be difficult to do.

It's a bit of a stretch but it's not impossible. Early on she can spend a good number of turns with him and there's a conversation that gives them 100 love points.

Leen is probably going to get the leg ring after Celice promotes. If he gets slept on the enemy phase, then that'll prevent him from attacking when he gets gangbanged by enemies, which is a disadvantage if he's your main fighter. I believe that the Sleep Staves go first.

.

Present evidence where this can happen. I can't seem to find a case that cannot be easily dealt with.

So you're giving Arthur a Holsety, Bargain Ring, Magic Ring, Barrier Ring and a Pursuit Ring? That sounds like the most efficient way to beat the game is to solo with him.

If the barrier ring prevents your key rusher from being put to sleep/silenced, would you not give him the ring? Can you find a better use for it?

If the handful of units you're using already has pursuit, are you not going to give it to the key unit that lacks it or are you going to give it to Johalva just so he can do better in the Arena?

Who are you going to give the Bargain Ring if you're only using a handful of units that are likely the other mounted folk?

Everyone on the game can be useful if we manipulate the RNG. I could make Sophia useful if I kept on restarting until she dodged every hit with 99 accuracy. This argument also means that averages don't count for crap since we can restart the game as often as we want.

Pardon? All I did was bring up the in-game's save function in response to you bringing up save states and the very slim chance of Arthur dying. Yes, Arthur can die and so can everyone else, he has the smallest chance of it however.

"save stating's for abusing outcomes" is not a comment in regards to efficiency playthroughs but for playthroughs by other players who don't give a crap about efficiency/low turns and spend all the time in the world to abuse the outcomes of level ups to their choosing which is as irrelevant here as save states.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Sirius

[Balcerzak]

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.

In my opinion, you definitely want more than just Celice and Arthur. The charisma!bots and leg!Leen at the very least, but also Ares, Leaf, and your fliers should be able to find a place on your team, even if Arthur solos large chunks of the entire enemies. Personally, I don't find Shanan to be useful past Chapter 7, and Faval only has rare situational use, and unless feeding them levels for rank is part of your goal, they're aren't likely to get much in the way of priority treatment for dances or such.

For instance, I basically quad the last half of Chapter 9 with Celice/Nanna/Delmud/Arthur, with the rest of the team performing the important but boring Castle Defense. Most of Ch 10 is quadded by either a combination of Celice/Delmud/Arthur/Aless or Celice/Arthur/Delmud/Nanna. Leaf is obviously around for Rescue Staff, and Fliers join in where able with Tinny and Lana providing some long range Libro/Restore. The other people are only basically around for self-improvement.

I guess in some way I'm in partial agreement, at least for the moment, in that your useful people will probably be out on the field, and doing the occasional odd job, however, many of them will be either a phase or two's movement behind, either due to being ignored by the dancer, or deliberately by choice to limit enemy phase exposure. Addressing your specific numbered complaints:

1) In the tight spaces, you could decide to use your 2-4 units to punch just enough of a hole to run past, and let the enemies either fail to catch up, if they're Armors or something, or to annihilate themselves on your rear flank instead of your front flank.

2) Celice with Light Brand or any other magic sword has passable 2-range. Sometimes that's enough to deter the enemy from attacking him, but I can't claim to really understand FE4's AI.

3) Maybe I'm underusing Holsety, but it's never really dipped below 30 uses. Clearly on strict efficiency, with a much heavier emphasis on soloing things would be different, but I can't imagine it breaking as often as you're worried about.

4) Arthur is a low priority sleep target for the AI, in my experience. It prefers almost everyone else, Altenna, Lester, Hannibal, Joha*, Oifaye, Skasaha, etc., etc. You can probably keep them within 10 square radius of enemy staffer without having them close enough to actual combat, especially if trees or other terrain exist.

5) The only time Arthur has ever died for me was enemyphase-baiting Ch10 Ishtar, who procced continue, and failed to miss either of her ~30% hit rates. (When I redid it so that Nanna was also around and hit rates dropped to ~20%, suddenly both missed, lol.) But PEMN, so...

I guess in summary, I'm not really sure where to weigh in on this. I definitely wouldn't come out and call Levin!Arthur "underwhelming", as Horakthi seems to be, but he's certainly not a one man team. Nobody can really be a one man team in FE4, in the same way that FE7!Marcus or FE9!Titania can, though in all fairness Levin!Arthur probably does come the closest. I do see a fair bit of flawed argument going around in multiple places, but often it's either addressed by the time I get around to wanting to reply, or I just can't figure out the best way to phrase it, but after awhile, I felt that I was almost obligated to step in and say at least something.

Present evidence where this can happen. I can't seem to find a case that cannot be easily dealt with.

The approach to Miletos. If you have Arthur bait out Ishtar on the enemy phase, unless you've cleared away top half's sleep users using your fliers (not that hard to do, but not trivial), they would be around, and he'd be the only one in range, presumably. The bottom half's sleep users are no issue.

[Horakthi]

Aless, Oifaye, Fin and Altenna for example. You can raise Delmud, Nanna and Fee to promotion with little to no trouble.

I was already arguing for using other units.. I think you should read my posts more carefully.

I think Balcerzak summed up some of my points, but people here made it sound like Arthur and Celice were going to solo the game by themselves and Arthur was going to get every item. I know you're arguing against some of my points, but in your run you were using multiple units like I suggested in the first place already.

Needing ridiculous amounts of favoritism <<< not needing it. Arthur has the same move as Arden for 5 chapters, and he's basically the worst character in FE history. I can't help but think that there's some bias involved.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Horakthi

[Dr. Tarrasque]

The approach to Miletos. If you have Arthur bait out Ishtar on the enemy phase, unless you've cleared away top half's sleep users using your fliers (not that hard to do, but not trivial), they would be around, and he'd be the only one in range, presumably. The bottom half's sleep users are no issue.

Silence/Sleep by Claude!Fee. IIRC you have to clear Rados before proceeding to this section of the map so it's possible Sety or a high priest can silence them.

[Horakthi]

I forgot to reply to this.

Pardon? All I did was bring up the in-game's save function in response to you bringing up save states and the very slim chance of Arthur dying. Yes, Arthur can die and so can everyone else, he has the smallest chance of it however.

How is it slim if you decide to go beat the entire game with Arthur? He has around 95 evade at endgame? There are plenty of dark mages in chapter 10 and Epilogue, and plenty of units with Hero weapons. This is why you shouldn't go through the entire game with just Arthur and Celice. Basic probability says the chance of getting hit becomes more and more likely as you dodge more. So there's going to be hundreds of battles for Arthur, it's going to be pretty likely.

[Mekkah]

Sure, you should use Celice/Delmud/Nanna/Oifaye when convenient. As long as you know when to get them out of the way to let Arthur clean up on his own, there's nothing wrong with that. These units can all keep up to some degree from leftover scrubs on the field and arena. In fact, the latter three were of utmost importance in my FE4 0% growths run.

Needing ridiculous amounts of favoritism <<< not needing it. Arthur has the same move as Arden for 5 chapters, and he's basically the worst character in FE history. I can't help but think that there's some bias involved.

Sure, Arthur is worse than every unit that can reach his level of awesomeness without favoritism. The problem is that there's nobody like that.

Percival has roughly the same availability as Sophia. Palla has the same bow weakness as Est. Haar has less resistance than Brom. Every character has a weakness even if they're beyond godly. But these low points mean nothing out of context. Ardan is stuck in an army that consists mostly of mounted units off the bat, and the maps give him very few opportunities to contribute since they're so linear. Arthur has opportunities in 6, 7, and 8 to contribute or do some self-improvement despite his 5 movement.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

I was already arguing for using other units.. I think you should read my posts more carefully.

And I was not arguing for a Celice + Arthur run of the game, which you seem to believe is the case just because several resources are going to Arthur and he's killing so many enemies. I'm not fond of items and such favoritism being considered when discussing characters but there's truth to the arguments regarding resources on certain characters just because few people believe this resource allocation shouldn't be done doesn't mean it's going to stop.

I was arguing against your flawed points... I think you should read other people's posts more carefully. What I did suggest was using less units and that's because the units that aren't mounted can be benched lategame in favor of your mounted units which will do just fine as this game isn't difficult.

How is it slim if you decide to go beat the entire game with Arthur? He has around 95 evade at endgame? There are plenty of dark mages in chapter 10 and Epilogue, and plenty of units with Hero weapons. This is why you shouldn't go through the entire game with just Arthur and Celice. Basic probability says the chance of getting hit becomes more and more likely as you dodge more. So there's going to be hundreds of battles for Arthur, it's going to be pretty likely.

It's slim because enemies see poor hit rates against against him, he's not dying in 1 hit and he can be healed in playthroughs that are not your Celice + Arthur assumption from misunderstanding what has been said. Throw any other character in the same misconstrued scenario and there's a good chance you'll have to restart more often.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Sirius

[General Spoon]

Needing ridiculous amounts of RESOURCES <<< not needing it. Arthur has the same move as Arden for 5 chapters, and he's basically the worst character in FE history. I can't help but think that there's some bias involved.

Arthur taking the RESOURCES does have an opportunity cost, just the same as anybody using RESOURCES. Instead of arguing "This is favoritism. QED," instead argue why giving the RESOURCES to others is objectively superior than giving the RESOURCES to Arthur.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Mediocre Troll

[dondon151]

Needing ridiculous amounts of favoritism <<< not needing it. Arthur has the same move as Arden for 5 chapters, and he's basically the worst character in FE history. I can't help but think that there's some bias involved.

Favoritism is a means to an end. If the end result offsets the opportunity cost of favoritism, and then some, then it's a good investment. Your blanket statement is incredibly short sighted and implies that resources do not exist to be used.

Basic probability says the chance of getting hit becomes more and more likely as you dodge more. So there's going to be hundreds of battles for Arthur, it's going to be pretty likely.

No, it doesn't. Maybe you're wording it incorrectly (or you could just be stating something completely false, but I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt), but if Arthur faces 10% hit and dodges 10 attacks in a row, he's still only going to get 10% of the time on all subsequent attacks.

Now, by the law of averages, Arthur should get hit by exactly 10% of enemy attacks, but that's only assuming an infinitely large sample size. Maybe you're saying that Arthur will inevitably get hit, but his chances of getting hit by any given attack do not increase upon dodging. His chance of getting hit by x number of attacks increases with sample size y, but this is really only significant if he's 2HKO'd or isn't getting healed.

[Renall]

If anything, non-Levin Setys are grossly underrated.

[Silvercrow]

If anything, non-Levin Setys are grossly underrated.

Since when? O_o

[Mekkah]

It's not really that anyone thinks Sety sucks, just some folks who seem to think Sety needs Levin is the only viable parent for him when in fact Noish and Claude do perfectly fine.

[SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre]

I want to point out that Aless can pop Ishtar in one blow if he has 22 strength in Chapter 7.

While the title seems to be about Levin|Arthur in general, the actual points in the first post are solely related to the pairing's performance in efficiency runs.

Now, in order to achieve max efficiency without "cheating" in the chapters themselves(NOT the arenas), Levin|Sety is the only way to pass down Holsety without costing a bunch of turns of waiting in Chapter 5, so Levin|Fury wins by default. Regardless, Holsety will see VERY little action in efficiency because in efficiency, cutting down turns is all that matters regardless of resources expended.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Canadiens de Montreal

[Silvercrow]

Now, in order to achieve max efficiency without "cheating" in the chapters themselves(NOT the arenas), Levin|Sety is the only way to pass down Holsety without costing a bunch of turns of waiting in Chapter 5, so Levin|Fury wins by default. Regardless, Holsety will see VERY little action in efficiency because in efficiency, cutting down turns is all that matters regardless of resources expended.

Unless I'm mistaken about how love growth works, it takes 47 turns of Levin and Tiltyu staying next to each other in chapters 4 and 5 for them to fall in love. Are you really losing turns? I don't really have a baseline for turncounts here.

EDIT: Looking back at previous runs, pretty sure love growth does look like that seeing and Lex and Tiltyu solidly fell in love within 52 turns total for both of those chapters. Just a matter of whether 47 turns is reasonable or not (I think it is given the distances sigurd has to cover?)

Edited April 21, 2011 by Silvercrow

[Balcerzak]

The NicoNico low turn count run cleared Ch4 in 22 turns, Ch5 in 16 turns, and only took 6 turns between seizing Silvail and Orgahill in Ch3. Assuming 100% adjacents, that's three turns shy.

Obviously though, even in most standard efficient play it's not done maximally efficient, like the Nico run was. Nico run also pulled some hilarious mid-chapter arena-RNG-burning shenanigans, IIRC.

Long story short, you're on a tight budget, and Levin!Arthur may be risky to make, and may or may not recoup turns spent pairing up with his contributions.

[Horakthi]

I also forgot to mention that in an efficiency run, you'll have a hard time pairing up Claude with Fury. Fury is greatly restricted thanks to Claude's move. But Claude!Sety is really good.

And I was not arguing for a Celice + Arthur run of the game, which you seem to believe is the case just because several resources are going to Arthur and he's killing so many enemies.

Please tell me what you're arguing for instead of using my own points to prove yours in your first post rather than just now. I was arguing for using other units all the time, maybe more units than usual, but whatever. You haven't said anything that indicates what you're debating for in your first post. I'm not the only one saying Arthur is almost soloing the game by himself, you know. Several people here indicated that.

It's slim because enemies see poor hit rates against against him, he's not dying in 1 hit and he can be healed in playthroughs that are not your Celice + Arthur assumption from misunderstanding what has been said. Throw any other character in the same misconstrued scenario and there's a good chance you'll have to restart more often.

I wasn't misunderstanding anything. People made it sound like Arthur and Celice were the only people needed for the entire game. Shanan and Levin!Sety have more avoid than Levin!Arthur, by the way.

No, it doesn't. Maybe you're wording it incorrectly (or you could just be stating something completely false, but I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt), but if Arthur faces 10% hit and dodges 10 attacks in a row, he's still only going to get 10% of the time on all subsequent attacks.

Of course I didn't mean that the chance literally increases after an attack, my bad. I meant that the chance for dodging 10 hits in a row is still 35%. Dodging 5 in a row is 59%. And so on.

Sure, you should use Celice/Delmud/Nanna/Oifaye when convenient.

I think it'd be much more effective to use around 5 more units and spread around resources such as experience and items more, which I've already explained, but whatever.

Edited April 22, 2011 by Horakthi

[Integrity]

First off, the dodging statistics only truly apply in the way you're using them if Arthur is 1HKO'd, which to what I'm hearing he isn't. Yeah, it's 65% for one of the ten attacks to nail him in the face - but he's okay with that and Lana/Mana/Nanna/Janne (oh god that is hilarious to read out loud) is about a convenient 10 steps behind to heal if necessary. Or is it "favoritism" to Physic Arthur?

As to the final, the last thing you're evidently failing to consider is that Arthur is not getting every single resource in the game. Arthur being his best, while it does preclude some others from being THEIR bests, does not preclude those others from being used. As I said, there's way more than enough XP to go around and there are point at which you can cool Arthur off while the Scrub Brigade mops up for some levels - oh, and there's the Arena giving free xp. And the real, allocatable resources? Arthur doesn't want the delicious Power Ring that Lakche/Fee/Celice could use. If he's using Holsety, he probably doesn't give a fuck about the Speed Ring. Those Holy Weapons that make the other kids great? They still have them.

In short, Arthur getting the lion's share of the kills doesn't stop you having a rest of the team.

[Horakthi]

Or is it "favoritism" to Physic Arthur?

I didn't say that. People here indicated that Arthur was going to basically solo the game with Celice and I simply said that other units should be used for this reason.

As to the final, the last thing you're evidently failing to consider is that Arthur is not getting every single resource in the game.

I never said that either. Let me quote what you said before:

Yes, you can spread the wealth. If you give Holsety to Sety, the Pursuit Ring to ...Patty?, the Magic Ring to ...hell, Lana or something and the Bargain Ring to I guess Shanan? then you'll have a good squad that, all told, is better than Arthur alone.

You're agreeing with me. I've been debating for giving around stuff in the first place. Why are you bothering to reply against me now?

In short, Arthur getting the lion's share of the kills doesn't stop you having a rest of the team.

Of course not, but if your team is weaker, you won't be able to clear the entire arena as often, you won't be able to one round enemies as often, you'll take more damage and dodge less often..

Edited April 22, 2011 by Horakthi

[Integrity]

I wasn't agreeing with you, I was ceding a point. Yes, if you give all the resources to everybody else, the everybody else will outclass the Arthur. But again, look at it. You're comparing everybody to Arthur. Arthur still has backup, even if they're not all they can be.

And you say of course it doesn't stop you from having a rest of the team like it's common knowledge, but you've been passionately arguing that the two scenarios are Celice + Arthur, no other characters, Final Destination versus using everybody in the army without prejudice. This is silly.

[Rodykitty]

Listen, nobody is trying to overrate Arthur or elevate him to godlike status. The only reason he got so much limelight is because people aren't quick to accept unorthodox pairing setups, and Sety is an extremely popular unit. It's really more "hey, he has a horse and still kills stuff" than "omg Arthur is sooooo amazing"

Arthur is simply a top tier unit. You can beg for resources and need other units and still be considered top tier.

[Horakthi]

You're comparing everybody to Arthur. Arthur still has backup, even if they're not all they can be.

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.

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.

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.

And that's why it's a good thing that Arthur, when mounted, can get so far ahead with Holsety, so he can rid the field of these ranged enemies for Celice to proceed and not have his movement hindered.

Sounds like almost a solo to me. I'm not even comparing everybody, I even listed characters that would make a good team.

Listen, I'm comparing playstyles. I'm comparing giving Arthur almost everything instead of spreading resources evenly.

Listen, nobody is trying to overrate Arthur or elevate him to godlike status

I agree that Arthur is a top tier unit, but I heard some to the contrary.

From here Arthur just proceeds to be nearly invincible, and a failsafe mounted kill on pretty much everything.

Sounds almost godly to me.

Edited April 22, 2011 by Horakthi

[General Spoon]

I didn't say that. People here indicated that Arthur was going to basically solo the game with Celice and I simply said that other units should be used for this reason.

Would you please stop saying this? It lost meaning after you first said it, and you continue to state this. Nobody cares at this point.