FE6 Tierlist 2017

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

@XeKr

@Refa

added votes and updated the list

 

Quote

Douglas:  Great unit to use the boots on.  10/10

For what purpose exactly?

[Refa]

It's just an injoke.  Seriously, give him a 1/10 because I don't see him contributing any more than Dorothy could.  If he had like ten more skill and six more base speed, he might have been pretty decent IMO.

[ping]

Yodel 5.5 - A tad worse than Niime as a staffer and with a bit less availability than her. He's definitely useful, but it's just not a lot of game left to play when he joins.

Karel 2 - Perfectly useable for the (almost) two chapters he's in, but his contribution (hit dragons with effective damage) isn't exactly niche at this point of the game.

Merlinus 6 - His immortality is actually quite nice in the earlygame in casual play, too, same with the ability to sell trash without loading up multiple units with it for the entire game.

[Shin]

Yodel - He's an endgame staffbot, and he's passable filler. You probably won't need him very much but he can at least contribute for his brief existence. 3/10

Karel - His usefulness is really hampered by his awful availability, plus you need to field a loser in his chapter to get him. The last few chapters aren't particularly hard and you generally have good enough dudes already. He's probably better than like Barth, but that's not a high benchmark - 1.5/10

Merlinus - Has a great mustache and Roy treats him like dirt. You can do a few nifty things early when he's forced which lets you convoy things at the right time, and he can also act as bait. He's not really a unit so I'm just going to leave him unscored.

[Colonel M]

Yodel is best due to having auto-S in Staff rank, so he requires no work. Just his late join-time is the only bad thing about him. 7.5/10

Karel is basically a bad filler. He can maybe help in the chapter he joins if you want, but really you likely won't take him to Final in most cases. I suppose that if you feed him boots and toss him the Wyrmslayer he's an alright filler, so that kind of helps him a little bit. 1.5/10

Abstain from Merlinus.

[-Cynthia-]

Yodel- Can Warp (but not as well as Niime can) and probably your only S rank staff user. Combat isn't really good for anything- if he had S rank Light he could smack dragons but getting there probably isn't worth the effort. Good enough staff filler to get fielded. 5.5/10

Karel- His stats are fine, but he's a footlocked unit that comes after the Boots rush so it's questionable what he ever contributes to the team in most playthroughs. 1/10

I think we're not really counting Merlinus as a unit, so not voting either.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

After adding the latest results here's the (cleaned) final tierlist for now:

God-tier (9-10)

• Miledy 9.75
• Marcus 9

 

Top-tier (8-8.99)

• Rutger 8.94
• Elphin / Lalum 8.89
• Percival 8.8
• Saul 8.05
• Shanna 8
• Shin 8

 

High-tier (6.5-7.99)

• Niime 7.78
• Alan 7.75
• Lance 7.55
• Dieck 7.3
• Merlinus 7
• Tate 6.94
• Clarine 6.93
• Zealot 6.8

 

Up-mid-tier (5-6.49)

• Cecilia 6.31
• Astol 6.19
• Sue 6.15
• Noah 6.13
• Klein 5.89
• Zeiss 5.85
• Echidna 5.78
• Yodel 5.7
• Igrene 5.4
• Ellen 5.3
• Lugh 5.14

 

Mid-tier (3.75-4.99)

• Fir 4.78
• Batre 4.72
• Treck 4.2
• Chad 4.13
• Roy 4.05

 

Low-mid-tier (2.5-3.74)

• Lot 3.6
• Gonzales 3.3
• Fae 3.2
• Garrett 3.1
• Dayan 3.05
• Lilina 2.61

 

Low-tier (1-2.49)

• Raigh 2.33
• Oujey 2.06
• Hugh 1.95
• Wolt 1.82
• Cath 1.75
• Dorothy 1.75
• Ward 1.72
• Geese 1.67
• Douglas 1.6
• Yuno 1.3
• Karel 1.13
• Bors 1.09

 

Bottom-tier (0-0.99)

• Barth 0.6
• Sophia 0.5
• Wendy 0.15

 

Of course people still can submit their votes.

The best and worst four characters are exactly in the same order how I'd rank them.
I think there aren't too many surprises.

Edit: Slightly changed the class borders.

Edited April 1, 2017 by Magillanica Lou Mayvin

[Shadow Mir]

Bors - 3/10. Being an armor in a game like this hurts, but unlike the other two Ostian knights, he shows up early enough that you might be able to get some use out of him.

Alan and Lance - 8/10 for both. Reliable units that make a solid addition to any team.

Ellen - 6.5/10. Solid healer with a good speed base. Her speed growth is worrisome, however, and she's fragile, too (that, though, tends to be par for the course for healers).

Ward - 1/10. High HP and Strength, but he's so. Damn. Slooooow. 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

God-tier (9-10)

• Miledy 9.75
• Marcus 9

 

Top-tier (8-8.99)

• Rutger 8.94
• Elphin / Lalum 8.89
• Percival 8.8
• Saul 8.05
• Shanna 8
• Shin 8

 

High-tier (6.5-7.99)

• Niime 7.78
• Alan 7.77
• Lance 7.59
• Dieck 7.3
• Merlinus 7
• Tate 6.94
• Clarine 6.93
• Zealot 6.8

 

Up-mid-tier (5-6.49)

• Cecilia 6.31
• Astol 6.19
• Sue 6.15
• Noah 6.13
• Klein 5.89
• Zeiss 5.85
• Echidna 5.78
• Yodel 5.7
• Ellen 5.41
• Igrene 5.4
• Lugh 5.14

 

Mid-tier (3.75-4.99)

• Fir 4.78
• Batre 4.72
• Treck 4.2
• Chad 4.13
• Roy 4.05

 

Low-mid-tier (2.5-3.74)

• Lot 3.6
• Gonzales 3.3
• Fae 3.2
• Garrett 3.1
• Dayan 3.05
• Lilina 2.61

 

Low-tier (1-2.49)

• Raigh 2.33
• Oujey 2.06
• Hugh 1.95
• Wolt 1.82
• Cath 1.75
• Dorothy 1.75
• Geese 1.67
• Ward 1.65
• Douglas 1.6
• Yuno 1.3
• Bors 1.25
• Karel 1.13

 

Bottom-tier (0-0.99)

• Barth 0.6
• Sophia 0.5
• Wendy 0.15

[Titamon]

Honestly, I can't believe Wolt is that high.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I think Wolt's average score is expectable as his placement. He's still a somewhat decent chipper in the chapter you can bring him. He can double soldiers and poke dracos. Furthermore Roy and Alance benefit from his quick supports with him. Till chapter 7 he's usable.

If Ward had only one more base speed which would make him doubling / onerounding soldiers, then I'd give him 1-1.5 points than I did. His awful speed makes him getting doubled by several cavaliers in chapter 4 so he can't even used as a safe frontunit anymore despite his decent HP.

Imo Percival is a bit overrated, at least the gap to Rutger and the dancers could be higher.

Therefore I find Zealot a bit underrated. (increased the high-tier class border just to place him in)
 

[Irysa]

On 31/03/2017 at 3:12 PM, XeKr said:

 

Fir: 6

Spoiler

We could restart last year’s discussion in the past topic again. >_> I long since lost my reply It mostly regards the opportunity cost of deployment slots and how much variance we allow teams (and if weighted based of their optimality). Less about the chance Rutger is Spd screwed and more about allowing that Rutger, and to an extent Percival/Miledy, are not always in play.

Still, Fir isn’t around for the earlygame, and certain bosses especially Dorie/Henning (but even Wagnar/Reygans can be hard to double). She needs some time to level/promote for the midgame bosses. At some time she finally realizes her potential against the lategame promoted enemies/bosses, with some high Skl/Spd/Luck/crit. 

The lategame can be fast because of Warp but if your chance of success is 10% on a 3 turn or death that’s expected to be 30 turns on average. If Fir can pull 50% through crits on a similar strat that’s a massive increase in efficiency. In practice, one can sometimes adopt strats that transition for more reliability (not always, as may need to defend Roy too and some enemy phases are just ridiculous) and these can favor units with durability to survive multiple rounds. Fir has worse concrete defenses but better avoid so her overall survival chances aren’t always too much worse.

Also one side niche that’s possible if desiring fastreliable clears is having 11/1ish Rutger for the earlygame but also training Fir a bit more past 10 so she has a few more stat points for later. She does fine in the Isles, and there’s a few turns there waiting for a recruit to show up, or the bosskill to happen, or clearing out enemies for Roy, or some lenient side objective, where one can train her more. I think a later promo Fir can pull noticeably better chances than 11/-- Rutger (yeah he gets the midgame bosskill exp for a lead), and pretty much everyone else, on certain later enemies/phases. (as a side note: with the fixed patch she will want to promote at either 13 or 17. And ultimately 13 is probably the more reasonable, but then again Irysa/Lord Raven got Lilina to 16/19 by 14x. Clearly there was rigging, but otoh reliable clears are slower and give more exp. And I would consider Fir easier to train despite melee.). Obviously a faster run of incomplete recruitment/tactical sacrifices is harsher for her.

Maybe I need to step back to crunch the numbers more objectively, but based on my last playthrough I still think you want an SM lategame if reliability is a strong concern. Even Percival/Miledy don’t have the best chances against some bosses, not to mention whoever else may be on the (nonspecific) team.

Again, her performance probably has some strong dependence on the pace of the midgame chapters, as the investment costs can then be mitigated, to an extent. I have some baseline in mind, based on highly reliable clears, but my last run (Elphin/Sacae route, if it matters) did aim for a number of optional objectives including recruit all and all items (except like stealable vulneraries, etc), plus used Sue/Noah/Fir/Lilina in addition to the typical team (including Shanna/Rutger/Miledy/Percival/Shin. Promoted Noah early instead of Alance.). otoh, I actually thought Fir had some of the best performance lastgame, and I’m clearly not about to rate her that high.

Actually I did almost convince myself to rate her even higher but I’m not sure she’s better than Echidna (but then again, what is Echidna doing in most teams?). I also know that I did some hand waving for Fir’s training, given comments about Lugh/Sue/reliability in general, but it’s a matter of payoff. Do others really find it so trivial to lolwarp the game without save state fishing or a script for the crit rns?  ;\ (even hit rates are a major concern sometimes)

All that said, 6 doesn’t seem to be a massive outlier anyway.

 

I don't have the time right now to make a full responses to a lot of posts but I want to address this point here; Roartz is a prime candidate for the scenario you are talking about but neither Rutger nor Fir reach the 21 Str required to ORKO him via crit + hit in any reasonable span of time, so really we're looking at a 2RKO anyway, in which case for a 5HKO (1 crit and 2 hits) Rutger only needs 18 Str (which is achievable at 11/11 with the Energy Ring from 19I), or 6HKO (double crit or 1 crit 3 hits over 4 attacks at 60 disp~, 68.40 True and 27 crit, roughly 20%~ CoS if I did my math right) at 16 Str (which lets you save the 19I Energy Ring or use a lower leveled Rutger).

Tick is weaker than Roartz so the calcs are more leniant, and Percival already has a pretty good CoS on Murdock anyway due to WTA. Rutger would also have exposure issues to get to Murdock to bosskill anyway and also can't drop Roy in a safe spot then canto to Murdock for EP + PP, so he'd cost an extra Warp, making the whole thing a bit questionable, though I'll give you that Horsekiller Knights help Rutger's case. Though, doing some back of the envelope math, it's pretty dicey, Rutger needs a Robe or be exactly on his durability averages at 11/14 to not get 2HKO'd by Knight + Murdock, and he also has to face 3 enemies instead of 2 due to not being able to drop Roy safely and EP Murdock. He does have like an extra 10 Avo vs the enemies, but really, Percival's not very far behind reliability wise, and you could use the extra Warp saved from Warping Percival + Roy as a combo to Warp someone else in to help finish Murdock off on the last turn. Fir obviously isn't doing any better than Rutger is here either since her durability is worse than his.

The Pereth bosskill reliability only really becomes a concern if you are insistent on a 2 turn in which the bosskiller gets in 2 sets of boots, otherwise the fact he's 4HKOable by Percival (who due to awesome base Res does generally better than many other choices with a Barrier Boost vs his Nosferatu, but I'll grant that many other units are capable here), so the value of the SM bosskill here is also a little questionable.

For other bossess...well, neither Rutger or Fir can do well vs Alucard without busting out Durandal (Fir may not have even reached it by then), and the alternative in Horsekiller combos of other units is generally prefferable. Monke requires 16 Str to 4HKO with a Silver Sword or 6HKO with a Killing Edge...Durandal is near impossible for the two of them to double him with due to heavy AS loss so whilst they could oneshot him with a Durandal crit at lower str, that strategy is probably more one of neccessity/desperation. Gel cannot be doubled anyway so their chances vs him aren't particularly better than most other possible units, arguably worse since they die in one crit to him wheras Miledy can feasibly survive a double crit with a robe. 20xS has other reliability concerns if you aren't rigging the correct throne, and if you are then you should be aiming for the bottom right (automatic if you reset and start chapter immediately on the original untampered cart or rom, don't think the fixed mode patch touches the secondary RNG since desert item trick still works with it), which is a pretty reliable bosskill for many units, not just the SMs, plus 10 mov flier can reach him without using a Warp or Dance on T1.

For Zephiel, doubling with Durandal isn't too difficult and you probably need Niime's Apocalypse to help finish him anyway so 18 Str (11/11 + an Energy Ring, as we outlined) with Durandal hit + crit and Apocalypse (plus backup Shin Murgleis doubling if neccessary) is about as good as it's going to get for killing him in a single turn. 19 Str (11/14 + Energy Ring, pretty realistic if he's taking the later bosskills, or double Energy Ring) would make it even more reliable since a reasonably leveled Shin would only need to connect one Murgleis, so you basically have a 88% chance of getting at least one of the finishing hits in if the SM pulls off the crit + hit beforehand.

So 16 Str is really what we're looking for, and that benchmark requires 11/7 Fir (modify unpromoted levels as you wish), keeping in mind you can't keep her unpromoted for too many of those otherwise she'll cap speed and may not reach the speed benchmarks for doubling. To be entirely honest, considering Fir is promoting in 12 or 11E at best, if you're capable of getting Fir that many levels, you can't argue Rutger isn't capable of reaching the benchmarks too. There's also the option of going Elphin/Bartre route to score an additional Energy Ring.

So tl;dr, whilst I agree that SM bosskills are actually still relevant on a bunch of mid/lateish dudes if you're not script rigging Percival's bosskills, Fir really does not have a notable niche over Rutger in terms of achieving them. Rutger even has better skill than Fir does, which is definitely more significant than her marginal luck lead (he has about 5 more hit than her at even equal levels). We basically end up back at the same point of needing to have an RNG screwed Rutger or a run that is not using him for her to relevant.

Edited April 8, 2017 by Irysa

[XeKr]

Is it really fair for Rutger and Marcus to be in different tiers if they differ by 0.06?

@Irysa

Well I mean, maybe I should have emphasized the sentence, “Less about the chance Rutger is Spd screwed and more about allowing that Rutger, and to an extent Percival/Miledy, are not always in play” more, because I find that’s the most significant part (as you’ve also identified I think). 

A few things of note here. 

-    I think Rutger is somewhat underrated mid/lategame. Basically Fir is generally a worse Rutger, but Rutger is actually great, even at certain times later, so the fact that she can replicate certain Rutger contributions is actually impressive. Even if not all of them, and not some of the big early ones. If most are rating Rutger high for just the earlygame, then I can understand rating Fir very low since she lacks that. Though again I would disagree there since I think the SMs still have value later in certain clears that is often overlooked.

-    I agree that Fir does not have substantial contributions in teams with Rutger, but it’s not so simple to just call her superfluous-end-of-story. There’s perhaps a bit more nuance, as has been discussed so much before. FE9!Jill is mostly superfluous in a team with Marcia (she can’t be shoved so she cannot replicate fully either), but few would argue her to be midtier. Noah is generally superfluous in teams that use Allen/Lance, given his lower Str/Spd, but he still gets some recognition for potential uses in the Isles. Quite a bit of credit actually, considering Alance even have early availability and some more potential later. And there are tons of similar cases across FE, given how the cast usually works. Generally there is allowance for some variance in the team to account for this. How it precisely works can differ, though I think we generally should strive for some degree of consistency in cases where possible/analogous (and this is not always easy, mind). I can write a lot more about this tbh, had some insight recently.

-    The niche where Fir gets a lot of extra unpromoted levels is only notable because there’s essentially no way to get around promoting Rutger early. Basically if Rutger tries to stay unpromoted for exp gain, you lose way too much efficiency on certain bosses, while Fir can get away with it because we have Rutger. Yeah this is technically a favorable argument for Rutger, but it’s not like I am trying to penalize him here. Again, it was specifically called a side niche for Fir (specifically, a team composition that uses both Rutger and Fir instead of either/neither). So Rutger still beats some of the early bosses, while Fir hopefully pulls better chances on later bosses/promoted enemies (even with warp it’s not all just bosses). You’ve run some numbers which is very appreciated, though to me it suggests how valuable a very strong combat unit can be, given the trouble toptiers Rutger/Perceval/Miledy might have. Keeping in mind the expected efficiency of clears, so stuff like 20% success (or reset) is arguably unacceptable, depending on the alternatives. 

-    The other side of this is ofc whether 17/-- or whatever Fir actually pulls noticeably better chances after running the sims/calcs, and taking into account no canto for drops/her+Roy’s survival/etc. I specifically had a disclaimer for the need to run the objective numbers, to assess if the rough judgement of my last run holds up (made really brief comparisons to the 0% growth bosskills since the numbers were there). I obviously like to think my statistical intuition is decent but otoh humans in general are obviously notoriously bad at it. Again, your post on the later bosses is very good at getting to this point actually, and I’ll refrain from too many nitpicks atm because I don’t have the time you’ve put in the effort and I haven’t yet.

-    On that point however, I do think it’s more useful to have statements like: Rutger with 9 base Str at level 4 needs 6 or more Str procs + Energy Ring + Promotion to reach at least 19 Str. A Rutger that gains 20 levels (11/14) has a 58.36% chance of reaching that benchmark. Fir needs 5 or more Str procs + Energy Ring + Promotion to reach at least 19 Str. Say 17/11 Fir has around 81.56% chance of that. And so on. Keeping in mind when I talk about the reliability of clears, it takes into account these numbers, not just assuming we have the average stat. 

-    I also think it’s somewhat common trend (not just itt, and not you specifically) to overestimate the reliability of clears, such that certain assumptions players have for what is more efficient, do not actually hold up to careful analysis. Especially pertaining to the overkill combat (or not) of various units.  I tend to find myself on the “not reliable enough” side because the “not fast enough” side has already been so successful in recent years, and in FE6 terms I suppose it puts me in defense of Fir (really SMs in general). 

Edited April 9, 2017 by XeKr

[Dark Holy Elf]

4 hours ago, XeKr said:

Is it really fair for Rutger and Marcus to be in different tiers if they differ by 0.06?

 

I have to agree with this concern. I personally would recommend putting the tier gaps where there are large drops, e.g. between Miledy and Marcus, then between Percival and Saul. etc.

 

Another thing:

I'm definitely a bit surprised at how little respect Raigh has gotten here. He's obviously not the best unit in the world because he is underlevelled to start, but the payoff is quite impressive: he gets enough speed to double many enemies, decent power, physical bulk which is merely below average instead of crap, and Nosferatu tanking is more effective in this game than the other GBA games because the tome doesn't weigh him down. He also has a pretty quick support with Lugh which makes both very dodgy, which is important since that's pretty much how you stay alive in this game. He can carve through large groups of enemies on HM once he gets going. So can others, I realise, but few people do it with as much 1-2 offence as he offers (especially since javelin/hand axe accuracy in this game is so shaky). Though I notice this list thinks less highly of mages in general than I do, in fairness. (I'd rate Lugh higher as well.)

Again I acknowledge his start is bad (though not atrocious) and I don't think he's anywhere near top tier but scores like 2/10 for him seem excessive. I've found him dramatically more useful than pretty much everyone in the two tiers above him except maybe Fir (though I could see the case for Bartre too) and that was without favouritism or RNG-blessing.

[Irysa]

@XeKr

I think the core point is that Rutger is heavily biased towards being assumed in play due to how much better his bosskilling is than alternatives when it really matters. Basically, it's hard to envision a scenario where we give Rutger bosskills early on, promote him for Henning, then just stop using him once Fir is trained, unless he is RNG screwed. I don't think it is a scenario that is worth considering heavily. The difference with Alance and Noah is that Noah exists before the point the first Knight Crest is actually used, and can reasonably gain 3 or 4 levels in the subsequent Chapters to promote for midgame dominance. Fir basically always exists in a world where Rutger has been killing bosses, is promoted and is still capable fo continuing to do so unless we are purposely sandbagging him or he gets RNG screwed. In a scenario where Dieck gets the first crest, it still statistically makes more sense to promote Rutger with the next crest rather than Fir because he'll have a level lead and less opportunity cost (Fir is pretty good at keeping up but she still isn't perfectly reliable in not dying or making her own kills). You're already doing something inefficient by promoting Dieck first, so now you have to layer on Fir's too.

I'm not trying to say there is no scenario ever where Fir can shine, I'm just saying I really don't think we can weight it beyond a 6 or so because Rutger is second to only Marcus for basically being assumed to be in play for a significant portion of the game. If we keep using Rutger and train him and let him do bosskills when he can, Fir is still effectively functioning as a backup unit, one that we're only sinking EXP into in case Rutger performs poorly. I don't see how equal credit for these later kills makes sense; Rutger basically gained exp, promoted and killed bosses early on because we were as close to being forced to use him as you can get and putting on the brakes intentionally despite the fact he can keep going just seems extremely arbitrary. Only the RNG screwed scenario would seem to apply. Also I forgot that there was an Energy Ring in 19S too so Roartz is pretty leniant on both routes, but the reason I was assuming averages was since you were talking about fixed mode in your earlier post.

EDIT: To tl;dr this part of the post, I'm trying to say that to consider a scenario where Rutger is not in play or is being heavily sandbagged is quite inefficient in the first place, but since we can't penalise the player for basically having to willfully construct a scenario where Fir is more relevant, the penalty has to fall on Fir herself for requiring this kind of meddling, which effectively waives her actual contributions. The more natural scenario is the RNG screwed Rutger one. I think that Miledy and Percival are a lot more superfluous than Rutger is, and I think you are underestimating how much of an impact it has when he's not on your team earlygame (for the record, I've done this and it sucks).

16 unpromoted FIr levels doesn't make sense as I've outlined because she caps speed and skill relatively early. This is actually a problem because the Armorslayer weighs 11 and Durandal weighs 12, so she loses 5/6 AS even when promoted. She can barely reach doubling vs the General Bosses (assuming no HM bonus fluctuation, a concern if we are playing with an unfixed RNG), but she can't double Zephiel with Durandal without getting to 24 speed. One can argue for her getting a Speedwing or Body Ring post promotion but is this really a useful distribution of resources when there are typically better contenders wheras the Energy Ring isn't really contested much? To me it makes far more sense to promote her a bit earlier and just use Energy Rings, especially since higher avo and hit/crit actually help improve bosskilling reliability (which is the whole reason we're training her in the first place), wheras an extra point of strength or two doesn't matter much as long as you reach the magic number. I suppose for Martel both the SM's are reasonable choices if Miledy is not in play as Shanna or Tate can't really muster up the attack power to ORKO him, and Zeiss doesn't double. Randy perhaps, 15 Str 22 AS is required, so Fir would need to be something like 12/1 with the Body Ring or Speedwings, wheras Rutger would need to be 11/7, but again, Miledy would have to not be in play.

25 speed is also required for Monke, so 16/5 + Body Ring or so, and she can't be under average for her promoted levels or she won't make it there either. I can't really see how if you were able to get Fir 16 unpromoted levels and another 4 promoted ones that Rutger can't have reached 11/11 by then.

EDIT: WoD bossdata was wrong, Monke is 15 Def on Reset, means you need 17 Strength. This means both Rutger and Fir would need 20 levels along with 25 AS to ORKO, and Fir would end up needing a Body Ring and Speedwings to be likely pull it off anyway. The only Energy Ring before this point is on Bartre route. Fuck Monke holy shit.

20% or so reliability (and I'm basically waiving survival when I crunch that since Percival and Miledy have a huge durability lead over Fir and Rutger) is about as good as it's going to get for many of the bosskills in this game, and I believe that is reasonable considering these are generally going to be 2 turns. If we are not warping and clearing the areas out more methodically then I can see more of where you're coming from though, as at that point ganging the boss with multiple Swordmasters starts to become a lot more feasible, but in many maps there is only one 1 range tile to attack the boss from and/or it's difficult to actually get two bosskillers + Roy to the seize point due to the extra warps required (ie, Roy likely needs to be danced upon getting into range to be Warped which means you can't double Warp on T2.)

Lastly, the 19 Str or so requirement isn't as important to meet as you make it sound because we only need to get that high after the Secret Shop is in play. The actual magic number for most of the lategame is 16, and Rutger can be 2 points behind on average and still reach it with the chapter 19 Energy Ring, which means Monke and possibly Martel (if there is no Miledy to handle the bosskill) are the only two

 

Random thoughts - Fir needs the Body Ring in order to carry Roy, something of a concern in a few strategies if one wishes to conserve Warp.

Edited April 10, 2017 by Irysa

[XeKr]

On 4/9/2017 at 5:37 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Another thing:

I'm definitely a bit surprised at how little respect Raigh has gotten here. He's obviously not the best unit in the world because he is underlevelled to start, but the payoff is quite impressive: he gets enough speed to double many enemies, decent power, physical bulk which is merely below average instead of crap, and Nosferatu tanking is more effective in this game than the other GBA games because the tome doesn't weigh him down. He also has a pretty quick support with Lugh which makes both very dodgy, which is important since that's pretty much how you stay alive in this game. He can carve through large groups of enemies on HM once he gets going. So can others, I realise, but few people do it with as much 1-2 offence as he offers (especially since javelin/hand axe accuracy in this game is so shaky). Though I notice this list thinks less highly of mages in general than I do, in fairness. (I'd rate Lugh higher as well.)

Again I acknowledge his start is bad (though not atrocious) and I don't think he's anywhere near top tier but scores like 2/10 for him seem excessive. I've found him dramatically more useful than pretty much everyone in the two tiers above him except maybe Fir (though I could see the case for Bartre too) and that was without favouritism or RNG-blessing.

The thing is FE6 is all seize and has midgame Warp Staff + Hammerne + generous staff range formula. So Raigh being kinda good at combat against generics later after investment doesn’t really help that much overall.

Some of the people above him have various utility purposes like effective damage chip, or rescue chains, or staffbait that are relevant and do help, however small. 

Maybe he could have an argument against the axe users, given their use seems to be tanking Lances which Nos can also do. Raigh might also be able to clear thronerooms for safe drops of Roy decently well. Not sure how fast he can snowball to competency though, given his Skl/Spd/Def bases, especially given Nosferatu’s 70 hit.
 

On 4/9/2017 at 7:35 PM, Irysa said:

*snip for length*

 

What about Marcia and the Raven chapter? She enables the 2 turn, or iirc you can 5 turn with recruiting Jill (still requires Marcia). Or wait even more for enemies to come to the boat. She wants investment and usage to improve the reliability of the clear (and other early ones, I think 11 needs her flight too?). So she’s nearly always in play (like Rutger) by that point, and has the shove point in her favor later, and more easily makes Spd benchmarks for doubling later bosses, so we continue using her and I suppose Jill is superfluous? Noah has a slightly better argument since you can do the earlier chapters without investing Alance much (especially if training Sue/Roy more), but I think more efficient teams are still going to use Alance and not Noah since they have much better chances of Str/Spd benchmarks in the Isles, and later.

Anyways beyond that kind of philosophical concern, it comes down to whether Fir actually manages higher success rates later, which you don’t seem convinced by. My impression is that 11/?? Rutger isn’t actually that reliable later in the game given how slow exp gains are in the promoted levels (he’s probably considerably more reliable than all the non-SMs, but that can still be unreliable). This isn’t Fates where internal levels give early promotion a consistent level lead. Post promotion, 11/-- or 17/-- both level like 20/-- units which is really slow except against other promoted enemies or bosses. Unpromoted levels are a lot easier to gain against the vast majority of enemies especially midgame, which is how she gets so many (maybe as proof of principle here, should just compare with level 20 unpromo for the full benefit). A lot of the reliability benefit is how the extra levels improves the probability of meeting certain benchmarks. I conceded earlier Fir is probably not getting all those levels if not waiting for certain recruitments and such. The nature of FE makes me biased to consider that a relevant “optional” objective though, much like obtaining the good ending and no deaths and so on. 

If Rutger can actually gain levels fast enough with bosskills for reliable clears thoughout the game, then I can agree the niche I brought up is even smaller. I don’t think it’s very clear because a selection of recent runs are either rigged and mostly without later Rutger, are 0% growths, or also used Fir (my recent playthrough). I also don’t know who else even cares about reliability as much as I do (on principle), particularly given easy access to savestates and gba’s rng. 

I said in my last post we lose too much efficiency overall without early promoted Rutger, so I’m also assuming he’s usually in play (the more nuanced position is contexts with Rutger are weighted more because they’re more efficient but this post is already getting too long). Again I think he’s underrated, if anything. This ties back into an earlier point, with the crux of this argument revolving around: Rutger is really good, so is discount Rutger good? On one hand she is because she’s replicating/supplementing some of the contributions of a good unit (and the important thing is, no one else besides them has the accuracy+crit), but on the other hand she isn’t needed to do those things because we’re probably using that good unit already. It would to take an even longer post to explore this, but draw comparisons to Marcia/Jill, Luke/Rody, etc. To be fair, I think you’ve detailed ways in which Fir specifically is highly lacking compared to Rutger, but part of the issue here regards the underlying principle.  

To clarify, these are mostly separate points. One says that Fir is useful simply because she’s 1 of 2 units with hit hit+crit mid/lategame (she’s Rutger-lite. Karel is too late). Maybe she’s worse (or no better) than Rutger in this role but she’s still better than many others in the cast. Whether this holds value might depend on if we even care about the 2nd unit in this role, and what precisely is the assumed usage of the first unit. The side niche says Fir is useful in addition to Rutger because she can gain many unpromoted levels with somewhat low investment cost (this is arguable), padding lenience in benchmarks, so she pulls the best success rates in certain cases late in the game. I only threw that out there as a suggestion for reliable lategame clears as again, I wasn’t entirely convinced 11/?? Rutger can gain enough levels to pull them off.

I do think 20% (or reset) is too low even in 2 turn clears (actually as noted it’s probably lower because of growths and survival chances). It’s statistically equivalent to slowplaying 10+ turns on average, if we account for the reset turns. I realize this can get into territory where we nitpick about relevant player actions per turn and time-efficiency and so on, which I won’t get into, but suffice to say 20% is really low. Should look to adaptations in strats that transition to 3-4 turns for these cases. 

Energy drops are arguably less contested than other boosters, and they arguably go best on the SMs anyways, but the Nomads/Wyverns/others may want them for some clean onerounds instead of 55% 1 crit in 2 chances, or maybe if 1 Warp range is needed, etc. Plus buyable Rings do directly cost Boots. Your point on this is good but I think there’s still some minor benefit to lenience in Str benchmarks.

Maybe not too relevant but Rutger actually benefits more from the fixed mode since he gets some “free/bonus” growth points after reaching certain levels and he reaches benchmarks around average level with 100% reliability instead of 60%ish as in reality (well, as in pretend-rng-is-random land) and wanting extra levels to cushion the probabilities.

I don’t see Spd actually capping that fast? In 13 levels (when she caps “on average”) she actually has a 64.37% chance of capping speed. 16/19 levels is 87.59/96.58%. Skill is further behind. The extra levels are still mostly for the Str and maybe Hp/Def/Luck tho.

Roy can carry Fir for late warps, or just have her use that Body Ring (but they can’t carry each other since Roy gets +2 con promo, is that how it works?). Regardless I think there’s enough warps that some can be used for turnshaves (roughly 1 turn/use) or extra items/gold (like Sophia’s ring?), meaning it is arguably more efficient to use them instead for certain double warp cases with significantly improved reliability (which I think is many, given survival chances and such). Given lack of canto, single warps are relatively poor options anyway for SMs since Roy is exposed and you can’t really have an enemy phase to fight (as most bosses have 1-2 options and will just target Roy). You can correct me here since you’re definitely the expert.

Still, I’m pretty convinced now Fir can’t go too much higher (if any), and I wasn’t going to push and call Fir comparable to the Sue/Noah group (6.5ish) anyways. But now I do wonder is Echidna really that relevant as an infantry unit? Yeah she doesn’t cost stuff but she also doesn’t have 30 class crit. For that matter, still lingering Firhype, what is Deke expected to be doing with the second crest exactly? His combat is pretty good but more comparable to Paladins/Wyverns (w/ move difference) or the prepromos, while Fir/Rutger are your only high hit/crit options.

Apologizes for the disorganization of this post, but I think I commented on most things. I saw the ping in the other topic, I think you mostly covered it, though I’ll add a bit sometime later. 

Edited April 11, 2017 by XeKr

[Irysa]

Going to spoiler tag quotes to make the post easier to read but still allow me to reference back to paragraphs without swapping between tabs. @XeKr

Spoiler

What about Marcia and the Raven chapter? She enables the 2 turn, or iirc you can 5 turn with recruiting Jill (still requires Marcia). Or wait even more for enemies to come to the boat. She wants investment and usage to improve the reliability of the clear (and other early ones, I think 11 needs her flight too?). So she’s nearly always in play (like Rutger) by that point, and has the shove point in her favor later, and more easily makes Spd benchmarks for doubling later bosses, so we continue using her and I suppose Jill is superfluous? Noah has a slightly better argument since you can do the earlier chapters without investing Alance much (especially if training Sue/Roy more), but I think more efficient teams are still going to use Alance and not Noah since they have much better chances of Str/Spd benchmarks in the Isles, and later.

I'm not well versed enough in PoR LTC to really be able to properly answer that. How bad is the efficiency drop if you don't use Marcia until Jill joins? I'm just estimating, but I think in Chapter 11 you only lose like 2 to 3 turns there compared to Marcia. Though, I suppose if you're conserving the BEXP dump for Jill, that'll get worse. I don't know how bad Chapter 12 is without Marcia (although I've done it without a dumped one, never without her entirely). Can you give me a TC estimate for that map with no Marcia? If it's long enough and the later game doubling benchmark stuff is a significant concern, then I'd say Jill deserves a penalty, but this is assuming that there's no real benefit to having Jill on the team if Marcia is, and I'm pretty sure having both is still good.

Alance may get more early EXP than Noah but there is an ease of application argument to made with Noah since he doesn't have to work on his Sword Rank as much as they do, along with the fact that if the player is skipping Sue or Cath Alance miss out on a really big EXP dump in Chapter 6. And ultimately, the decision to promote Noah does not negatively impact efficiency as much as Rutger does because Noah's crest is going to be used anyway, and he only requires about 300~400 exp to promote in contexts where he doesn't have chances of death, wheras Fir is asking for rather a bit more.

Spoiler

Anyways beyond that kind of philosophical concern, it comes down to whether Fir actually manages higher success rates later, which you don’t seem convinced by. My impression is that 11/?? Rutger isn’t actually that reliable later in the game given how slow exp gains are in the promoted levels (he’s probably considerably more reliable than all the non-SMs, but that can still be unreliable). This isn’t Fates where internal levels give early promotion a consistent level lead. Post promotion, 11/-- or 17/-- both level like 20/-- units which is really slow except against other promoted enemies or bosses. Unpromoted levels are a lot easier to gain against the vast majority of enemies especially midgame, which is how she gets so many (maybe as proof of principle here, should just compare with level 20 unpromo for the full benefit). A lot of the reliability benefit is how the extra levels improves the probability of meeting certain benchmarks. I conceded earlier Fir is probably not getting all those levels if not waiting for certain recruitments and such. The nature of FE makes me biased to consider that a relevant “optional” objective though, much like obtaining the good ending and no deaths and so on. 

Rutger kills like 7 bosses consectutively after promotion (8, 8x, 9, 10A/B, 11A/B, 12, 13) and is the best unit to utilise against promoted enemies for this segment of the game too. If the player does not have Miledy in play then he is still the best bosskiller for 14 and 14x (costs turns/extra warp use though mind), and is a good choice against Narcian, close to the best if the player is opting to skip the Delphi Shield and is clearing the map faster with Warp. He is by far the most reliable option in 16x. He's also good against the odd Manakete one sees before lategame. All of these serve as a significant injections into Rutger's EXP gain, and this isn't even getting into the fact that he can feasibly be spending time in the arena in maps like 11 or 17. I got Rutger to like level 11/14 by 20I in a slower run I did recently and that was without deploying him or letting him bosskill for quite a few portions of the game, so I feel confident in saying 11/11 is very possible if you care about his EXP gain.

I'll concede that you don't actually lose a whole lot of efficiency in a CR run for training Fir, but my point was that unless Rutger underperforms, Fir is actually just sub-par Rutger due to lower skill, lower durability, and lower con. You'd only use her if Rutger fails to do what he needs to do, so even if she hypothetically ups the reliability of an overall playthrough, the fact she's not actively doing stuff on the map to make that happen means I don't feel comfortable giving her full credability comparable to stuff that units like Sue or Noah are ACTUALLY doing typically.

Spoiler

If Rutger can actually gain levels fast enough with bosskills for reliable clears thoughout the game, then I can agree the niche I brought up is even smaller. I don’t think it’s very clear because a selection of recent runs are either rigged and mostly without later Rutger, are 0% growths, or also used Fir (my recent playthrough). I also don’t know who else even cares about reliability as much as I do (on principle), particularly given easy access to savestates and gba’s rng. 

I care quite a bit because my more relaxed and typical experience with GBAFE these days is without savestates and with unfixed RNG patches. I'll concede it's not particularly clear now but I am speaking from a degree of personal experience with the game that extends beyond rigged exhibitionist runs. Having said that, I have never done a full, properly calculated expected tc run of the game, because when I play casually I think more about my real time investment WRT reliability, thus 20% is fine for stuff that I reset on turn 2 for in a Warpskip because it takes less than a minute to get there, wheras playing out a 4 turn or so requires a considerable amount more planning and contingencies and the like that is frankly not of a large concern if one is not trying to demonstrate strategic prowess. I also have not rigorously attempted to cut my TCs down in these playthroughs (and in some maps I've taken a bunch of extra uneccessary turns to grab extra loot or train Lilina or whatever), but I'm trying to focus solely on Rutger's ability to gain EXP and how good he is at bosskiling and I believe it still relates well.

Spoiler

I said in my last post we lose too much efficiency overall without early promoted Rutger, so I’m also assuming he’s usually in play (the more nuanced position is contexts with Rutger are weighted more because they’re more efficient but this post is already getting too long). Again I think he’s underrated, if anything. This ties back into an earlier point, with the crux of this argument revolving around: Rutger is really good, so is discount Rutger good? On one hand she is because she’s replicating/supplementing some of the contributions of a good unit (and the important thing is, no one else besides them has the accuracy+crit), but on the other hand she isn’t needed to do those things because we’re probably using that good unit already. It would to take an even longer post to explore this, but draw comparisons to Marcia/Jill, Luke/Rody, etc. To be fair, I think you’ve detailed ways in which Fir specifically is highly lacking compared to Rutger, but part of the issue here regards the underlying principle.  

I misunderstood you then, or got caught up in what I thought you said instead of reviewing it properly (blame the fact I tried to avoid too many direct quotes and thus didn't reread what I was replying to enough), so apologies.

I'm going to mostly gloss over this because I think I mostly answered it earlier, but on the Luke/Rody thing, you pick at the start for those two since they have the exact same availability. That kind of comparison doesn't make sense, and Rody does have reliability advantages later over Luke due to his better growths for speed benchmarks anyway.

Spoiler

I do think 20% (or reset) is too low even in 2 turn clears (actually as noted it’s probably lower because of growths and survival chances). It’s statistically equivalent to slowplaying 10+ turns on average, if we account for the reset turns. I realize this can get into territory where we nitpick about relevant player actions per turn and so on, which I won’t get into, but suffice to say 20% is really low. Should look to adaptations in strats that transition to 3-4 turns for these cases. 

Many warpskip esque clears are pretty problematic if one attempts to do them slower. In 16x for example, a Barrier boosted Rutger is still 2hko'd by a couple of combinations from all the magic nukes flying around in the throne area, and these guys are all in the 40 to 50ish accuracy range. Given that there's like 6 instances of combat (counting the boss twice) that the bosskiller has to face if taking an extra turn, and the fact that Saul will not be able to reach with a Physic, the actual logicistics of trying to basically get in 3 instances of combat with a single unit over 3 turns are already pretty unattractive, and trying to clear the area with just Rutger is also kind of gross due to lack of good 1-2. The best option is to Warp in a decent mount carrying the Swordmaster on T2 and trying to EP the boss with the SM, perhaps not Barriering the mount to try to lure magic attacks off the SM, then Warping in Roy on T3 as both the SM and mount try to combo on the boss. Refusing to reset past this point typically means you sit popping Elixirs till you crit due to the limits of staff range (and Elixirs are worth enough to want to conserve them). I'm pretty sure the Bishops will Physic the boss if he gets too low too, plus he prefers to try to Berserk over attacking on EP a lot which would make more reliable attempts take even longer. You can try blowing more warps to hit the boss with more units but whilst extra warp charges may improve reliability here, eventually we get forced to take longer elsewhere due to a lack of them, so whether we're actually improving efficiency starts to come into question.

This is a recurring problem - 20I has an undodgable Berserk Druid in the throne area who doesn't move, which essentially means if you want to not have to reset on not killing the boss you'll have to have a bait unit placed about halfway into the map, which is going to neccessitate having cleared a large group of relatively powerful enemies in order for the bait or the staffers dedicated to restoring them to survive. all before you even make a move on the boss. Furthermore, there's a Killer Bow Sniper and a Killer Ballista in range of the boss, which again are things that Percival (and Miledy, if she has the Delphi Shield and got to D Swords) might not struggle too much with handling, but that Rutger and Fir aren't exactly coping well with in combination with the boss's attacks, even with Physic support.

EDIT: Or Warp Saul on T2 I guess as outlined in other thread.

The 18S boss can only be attacked from 1 spot at 1 range and has random reinforcements (although I think I figured out soft resetting before ending turn meant none spawned). The enemies in general are pretty unreliable and annoying to deal with due to lack of effective ways to fight them on EP and general dodginess. They don't pose much of a threat to our bulkier units, but we need to press out relatively far in order to Warp Roy into seize range. Additionally, the throne area has a very realistic chance of getting too clogged up to let Roy seize properly, and the boss will use a Brave Sword at 1 range, meaning once again Rutger or Fir are going to be facing pretty real chances of death without being in range of Physic support, limiting potential PP action if they need to keep using Elixirs (which also cost boots...). The Druid also probably Physics the boss. So if you want to improve reliability you'll have to deal with like 10 nomads/troopers before you can even really make a move on the boss, which is not going to go that quick.

19S quick clears are basically completely contingent on if Saul has 14 Mag or not in the first place, and you can't go for a more reliable clear that extends the bosskill with the fast strat since the path to the throne becomes too clogged for Roy to be able to seize on a later turn if the bosskiller fails. Short of Saul having ungodly magic, you'd have to go round the side to have any chance of improving reliability, which basically leaves you in the same boat as a non 14 Mag Saul. Furthermore, there's not really many units other than Percival or Miledy who stand a good shot at handling potential Gel crits + the rest of the chip, forcing you to slog it out even longer whilst still faicing pretty considerable chances of death against the boss when you eventually get to him. Considering it takes like 5 to 6 turns to even get into position to move in from the side for clears that are still hardly particularly reliable, I'm pretty convinced if you have 14 Mag on Saul then you take the 2 turn, meh CoS or not. Speaking of 19, I forgot that since the game is dumb and doesn't let you fly into the city, you can't get the Energy Ring in a quick clear, so I guess Sacae Roartz sort of gives a bit of credence to Fir.

20S is pretty reasonable to slow down in since the ideal strat already aims for 3 turns due to Dayan; warp in a double bosskiller combo into the throne area on t1, then double silence the Bolting Sages on T2 with Niime whilst the Bosskillers attempt to kill the boss by T3. Reliability can be improved decently by taking an extra turn to kill the throne room Sages before committing to the boss, which would allow for Physic support and less CoD on EP. Mind, I've never actually done this so the Knight formations might get problematic, but since one of them attacks at 1 range I figure both bosskillers should be able to start engaging come T3. Although I suppose in reality, the clear was never game over if Roartz wasn't dead by T3, so this strat was already pretty easy to extend, thus more reliable by nature. 20IX is the same; basically just contingent on making sure the Swordmaster is dead so it's not that big a deal to take longer as a failed bosskill by T3 isn't game over. EDIT: The Druids Physic Tick over statusing other units so this is actually worse than I thought.

21 we've already covered that if you even wanted to augment reliability with extra Warp that you need to Warp an Armorslayer mount first to drop Roy so another Warp can be done for the bosskiller assistant next turn, and obviously it also has a hard limit of like an extra 2 turns after entering the boss area lest you start getting completely overwhelmed by Draco reinforcements.

22...this is a kinda tough one. The main pressing concern is that the reinforcements from the starting area on the left will likely cause a lot of problems as the majority of one's force has to be concentrated on the switches and the throne room, leaving the units left to fight there pretty limited, either for pressing in to avoid or defending at the choke. Weakening your forces in the other areas will impede the reliability of handling the throne room itself. Bear in mind, the stairs also need to be blocked to prevent further reinforcements in the throne room on the subsequent turns. I think if you double Sleep staff the Heroes you can reasonably take an extra turn or two to secure the area without it being unreliable to do so, letting you wail on Zephiel for a bit till you can seize.

23 is difficult because there are so many enemies with killer weapons around and Brunya hits VERY hard, and there's only one tile to attack the boss from at 1 range. Clearing out the enemies here in a reasonable timeframe without dying seems pretty difficult given a single errant crit is likely to murder someone. The most difficult enemies are 8 mov fliers in combo with strong Ballista and Siege magic, so limiting exposure and instead going for the 20 to 30%~ CoS 2 turn makes more sense to me, but I haven't done the math, I'm just going off intuition.

So having thought about it, only 22 really has a bosskill that's in the 20% area that is worth trying to take longer for I think, but even then having extra sleep staff uses for application elsewhere (particularly 24 and 21) improves their efficiency, so it's a bit give and take.

Spoiler

Energy drops are arguably less contested than other boosters, and they arguably go best on the SMs anyways, but the Nomads/Wyverns/others may want them for some clean onerounds instead of 55% 1 crit in 2 chances, or maybe if 1 Warp range is needed, etc. Plus buyable Rings do directly cost Boots. Your point on this is good but I think there’s still some minor benefit to lenience in Str benchmarks.

Even if others may appreciate them a bit, generic enemies that absoloutely have to die on any given turn rarely are within a single Energy Ring range of being an ORKO, and covering for a non crit is pretty easy usually. By 19 there's basically no better user for it, and as I've already said, Fir requires other boosters to be competitive with Rutger anyway due to lower con and durability so at best she cancels out her cost rather than having a lead.

Spoiler

I don’t see Spd actually capping that fast? In 13 levels (when she caps “on average”) she actually has a 64.37% chance of capping speed. 16/19 levels is 87.59/96.58%. Skill is further behind. The extra levels are still mostly for the Str and maybe Hp/Def/Luck tho.

The point is less about when the speed cap actually happens and more that you need to have +2 to 3 extra speed over 22 (which is what she will probably have in your context), which is a fair amount of promoted levels. Either that or she needs the Body Ring/Speedwings. I see it as more economical to promote when the cap happens (and its going to happen a fair amount before you'd like) to try to limit the dependancy on these other boosters.

Spoiler

Roy can carry Fir for late warps, or just have her use that Body Ring (but they can’t carry each other since Roy gets +2 con promo, is that how it works?). Regardless I think there’s enough warps that some can be used for turnshaves (roughly 1 turn/use) or extra items/gold (like Sophia’s ring?), meaning it is arguably more efficient to use them instead for certain double warp cases with significantly improved reliability (which I think is many, given survival chances and such). Given lack of canto, single warps are relatively poor options anyway for SMs since Roy is exposed and you can’t really have an enemy phase to fight (as most bosses have 1-2 options and will just target Roy). You can correct me here since you’re definitely the expert.

Bolded, please don't say that...you're the one who's actually used Fir and tried to play efficiently so if anything you're the better judge.

Promoted Roy can rescue Promoted Fir, but the time when you'd want to consider combining Roy and Fir to save Warps is well before Roy promotes. You're mostly right anyway, the lack of canto is the real problem with trying to do single Warp strats, but like I said earlier, reducing the amount of Warp we have available elsewhere and basically only using Warp as a reliability buffer/to save 1 turn has efficiency impacts across the playthrough, not just in a single chapter. Really though, if I was going to blow 2 Warps anyway I'd just do the mount + SM setup if possible anyway. It's just this doesnt always work out very cleanly

Spoiler

Still, I’m pretty convinced now Fir can’t go too much higher (if any), and I wasn’t going to push and call Fir comparable to the Sue/Noah group (6.5ish) anyways. But now I do wonder is Echidna really that relevant as an infantry unit? Yeah she doesn’t cost stuff but she also doesn’t have 30 class crit. For that matter, still lingering Firhype, what is Deke expected to be doing with the second crest exactly? His combat is pretty good but more comparable to Paladins/Wyverns (w/ move difference) or the prepromos, while Fir/Rutger are your only high hit/crit options.

Echidna basically does mostly borderline utility like handling a few enemies to your flanks (even distracting them is fine usually), helping to augment your offence in a few rush scenarios, or breaking walls with the Brave Axe/Wyrmslayering some enemies. Also nice in maps like 12 where your force gets split up. If you have a suboptimal team she slots in instantly and can be one of your better combat units for a while without costing anything. Really it's mostly the "doesn't need to be fed anything" argument that biases her and other prepromotes a lot.

Deke is pretty whatever if he promotes that late though yeah, he just does the same stuff Echidna does except generally worse on the utility side and superfluously better on the combat side. He's rated that highly for earlygame contributions and having at least a small chance of being your first Hero Crest promoted unit (which is saying a lot considering how good Rutger is). I would generally say it's not worth using the second crest on him, or anyone for that matter and that it should be sold.

Edited April 13, 2017 by Irysa

[-Cynthia-]

Echidna has WTC and Fir doesn't, doesn't cost a promo item, allows Exp to be spread to other units. Fir is better in instances where we don't use Rutger, but that seems like it would be a rare team. I don't think Deke is really worth promoting either unless he gets blessed or something.

Edited April 12, 2017 by -Cynthia-