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Favoritism vs Practicality


Ronnie
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When it comes to building your army do you choose units based on favorites (like personality or design) or do you choose the more practical units (with better growths and stats)? Or a mix of both?

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I tend to favor characters I like over characters who may have objectively better stats. If a unit I like has fantastic stats then I appreciate it but greats stats isn't going to save a character I dislike from being permanently benched. 

Peri for example never got into my team. I don't even know if she's a good unit or not and I don't really care. She's Peri so she's being paired with the bench. 

Azelle on the other hand doesn't have a pony for a very long time and gets outclassed by Levin in most stats that matter. I really like Azell so those problems didn't prevent me from showing him some favoritism no matter how slow he moved. 

Edited by Etrurian emperor
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A mix of both seems good. You don't need all of your units to be amazing war machines, boss-killers bringers of destruction. You need everyone to be able to do their job.

This is especially important on games that let you field many characters like Genealogy and Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia: it's better to have two good units than 1 overkill unit and a useless one.

For example, if you give Jamka's Killer Bow to Midir, you suddently have 2 good bow users, since Jamka can still pull his weight with a Steel/Silver Bow, instead of having a Bow Knight that can't actually do anything meaningful and an Archer that would have killed the few enemies he reaches even with a weaker weapon.

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A mix of both. I priorities using units I actually like, then I will fill the rest of the gaps with what would be considered good units.

For example, I always use Shiida when I play Mystery of the Emblem, because even though Catria and Palla are way better in nearly every way when it comes to stats, it just feels wrong not using Shiida.

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Practicality, at least for a first run of a game where I take everything seriously. I think Jesse, Atlas, and Est are hilarious, but not worth raising up since they're way too behind on exp and fit no niche. And I tend to grab one of each class line to fill out the roster. Like, I don't think Odin is especially good, but he is the better mage in Conquest so I use him at least until I can get Leo. Odin being my favorite character in the game is just a nice bonus.

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A mix of both, though i prioritize units that i like over good stats. Like, in Binding Blade, i will always use Sophia over Raigh and Niime. Raigh's just a little bitch, and Niime is.....i can't remember. So in terms of character, i like Sophia more, which is why i use her over the other two Shamans. Another example in the same game is using Lilina over Lugh. Even though Lugh is arguably better due to earlier join time, i like Lilina's character more. That, and she's able to max out her Support rank with Roy, so she and Roy have an advantage over everyone else because they can max out their Supports in like, a chapter, whereas everyone else takes ages to get C-Rank. Of course, there's times where there's a unit that i like, but won't use that much. For example, i like Valbar's personality, but Knights aside from Lukas (another character i like) just suck in Echoes, and he loses his usefulness real quick, especially given the terrain on Celica's maps. Another example would be Silque. I like Silque's personality, but once Cleric!Faye (another character i like) gets Physic, Silque just kinda falls behind, and it doesn't help that Saint!Faye with A-Support with Alm is one of the most broken units in Echoes.

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I suppose it's less of a matter of practicality and more of a matter of what's fun and interesting. For example I like to use Luka in TRS because I enjoy using an Archer with the Charge skill, even though he is pretty terrible by any objective standard. In the same game I would really love to use Kate but using her would inevitably result in her being overshadowed by just about every other unit. It would be more a matter of keeping her around as opposed to actually using her.

So I suppose favoritism is not much of a factor as long as there aren't any characters that are completely unbearable like Camilla or the entire cast of Awakening. Too bad you can't drop Corrin though. I would drop this guy from my team so hard that the bench would break under him. And then I would club him with the fragments of the bench until they break too.

Edited by BrightBow
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Like most, I use a mix of both. Bonus points if I like a character that is practical.

Most of the time, however, I end up liking characters that are generally outclassed by others and, because I like them, I end up dragging them along to maps in hopes of getting them up to snuff.

Sometimes, I use characters that I don't like for some reason, too. So, I guess I just use characters whenever?

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^^^Don't you have to wait a chapter before you can activate another convo with someone you already supported, even if you racked up enough points? 

Anyways, I'd say a mix of both; I generally don't avoid a unit like the plague unless they're irredeemably awful (Meg, Gwendolyn, Lyre, etc.), too much hassle to work with (PoR Rolf, etc.), or I just don't like them or their class (most infantry axe users). Sucks that Sigurd's status as MC makes him a must use, though - if he weren't, I'd drop him so hard the castle game closes on him, then I'd pummel him until my muscles turned to jelly.

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Favoritism for sure, although practicality inevitably affects that.

On another note: using worse units makes the game harder. Unless the game jumps past hard and into tedious, that's not a bad thing.

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Usually a mix of both, but sometimes my favorite characters end up being the objectively great ones anyway so in some games it balances nicely.

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I think with enough favouritism anyone can be good; but at the same time, I normally like units that give me something to work with. I trained Nino up to level 20 as a Mage then promoted her. But from the same game as Nino; I like Matthew, I really like using the thief class; he was so terrible for me I drop his ass for Legault in a heartbeat.

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I tend a little towards practicality, though I use favouritism as a tiebreaker of sorts. And of course if a favourite of mine is salvageable I'll bring him/her along. (A lack of a horse can't stop me from using Lewyn and Ayra for example and I'll always use a myrmidon). Obviously, this changes in ranked/LTC/draft.

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Personality matters not for me- I try not to be so illogical as to drop someone solely on the grounds of looks or behavior.

I prefer practicality, but I do try to make room for a couple experimental pet projects on a given run. And themed runs I find fun too.

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Straight up favoritism for me.  If I enjoy a character, I use them.  Even if there are better choices, I like to see how my favorites can fare on the battlefield.  Most people prefer Joshua, I lean towards Marisa.  I had a good Python, others didn't.  It's all preference in my eyes.

But I do have to say that some practicality does help with favoritism too.  Like Benny in Fates, I didn't really see much of him before the game came out, then I tried him out along with seeing his supports and he's one of my favorites in Fates.

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I usually pick my favorite units, and then fill in the rest of the spots still open with good units. And when my favorites are some of the best then it's a win-win situation.

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Favoritism mostly. I'll use pretty much any unit I like as long as they aren't completely useless, and I've benched good units because I didn't like them. I'll always use Wolt and Gordin despite them being pretty mediocre statistically, and I usually end up benching Xander in favor of Siegbert, for example (although in that case it doesn't really help that Xander has always gotten pretty terrible Speed for me). That being said, if a unit is good enough (like Camilla, as Glaceon Sage mentioned), I'll use them anyway.

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Practicality, I guess. I choose units based on their numbers, not their personality or looks, although I almost never try to go with the 'perfect' team. I usually have a few mid-tier units in my team and try to fit in one or two scrub units, and when I replay a FE game, I'll try to use units that I benched before. There's only a few (non-Jagen) units of varying quality that I use in every playthrough, such as FE12!Catria, Fir, Franz or Nino.

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