Best Classes of your Students (and Faculty) Encore: Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude

[NegativeExponents-]

@Silly I'm sorry what? Are we playing the same game? Sure EP is the phase to focus on in almost every other FE but this game actively discourages EP with enemy gambits, monster AoE, siege weapons, blow skills, bolting/meteor, or those pesky enemy archers that only your own archers can counterattack and therefore will obviously not aim at them and go for your wyvern lords instead.

Far from efficient to focus all your efforts on the phase that's more likely to screw you over.

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

Ok. I swear this is he last time I’ll do this. But I changed Felix’s best class to Bow Knight. Because it removes his sustainability weakness from the picture (mostly).

[Fabulously Olivier]

Felix's best class is adjutant. Weakness in Authority, passive that encourages him to not use Battalions, and dies if more than one enemy farts in his general direction. Not exactly what I'd consider to be a great field unit. Certainly not for a melee class. Only reason I'd even consider using him over other Bow Knight options is that Strength growth.

Edited August 23, 2019 by Etheus

[Jayvee94]

57 minutes ago, Azure in a Roundabout said:

Ok. I swear this is he last time I’ll do this. But I changed Felix’s best class to Bow Knight. Because it removes his sustainability weakness from the picture (mostly).

Nothings wrong with being open minded, buddy. 😉

Edited August 23, 2019 by Jayvee94

[ApocaLips]

12 hours ago, Warhydra said:

Why do so many people want Ferdinand as a GK? It's slow for a mounted class and the stats are not great, Wyvern Lord, Bow Knight or Paladin are all better

I prefer Paladin, but Great Knight is better on him than on many other characters. The main drawback of that class - the speed loss - is less of an issue because he has swift strike, so he’ll double on player phase regardless. On the other hand, defense is very welcome on him - combined with his avoidance passive, it makes him exceptionally tanky and helps keep his HP high enough to recover off any damage with the combination of his two relics (which together restore quite a bit of hp every turn). 

Wyvern lord gives up lancefaire+swift strikes which leaves a lot of damage on the table in the mid game, and plenty of other units make for a just as good if not better wyvern lord. Ferdinand is a top candidate to use several of the exceptional lances, especially the spear of assal. I’d rather run him in a niche that few other units readily fill than make him the Nth wyvern lord. 

[Silly]

5 hours ago, Cysx said:

Well, Mekkkah would be proud. Which is not a criticism by the way, and his pitfalls videos have a very good reason to exist; I'm not blaming the process here. This also was a very well written post. I can't shake the feeling though, that we're essentially pretending this is PoR since it generally works, so why fix ways of play that aren't broken? The fact of the matter is, stride despite unarguably being a huge boosts to canto units, makes quite a few changes for footlocks:

 - They do not need several turns to reach the enemies anymore

- Those with range can usually pass the enemies and hit from there while being relatively safe since with a good team everything around them will die; this allows them better positioning

 - Stride has two charges and the user will inevitably fall behind, meaning it can be activated on units that are lagging to allow them to immediately catch up. Yes, that's only once. We also both know that's enough in a majority of cases because maps aren't that incredibly massive

And you said it yourself, one can only canto so far ahead. You have to show some restraint, meaning there is a limit on how much move a unit really needs. That's really, really important.

 There's also a point to be made that clears with primarily a PP phase mindset(or at least a general balance of both phases) are remarkably faster in this game than most previous entries, since thanks to stride, many more of your units can fight immediately and constantly. Killing 8 to 10 enemies on every PP is a really big deal. Demonic beasts are also best dealt with on PP. Units that don't die to a juggernaut on EP that cantoed ahead will instead be taken down on the next phase invariably, all of them without slowing down your clear by more than 1 or 2 turns overall. Which, unless we're going for LTC, is nothing. It's peanuts, it doesn't matter, it's a valid efficient playstyle and shouldn't be discouraged in any way.

I think you have a big misconception here.

LTC in this game is primarily player phase focused, given that the majority of the maps can be cheesed in a single turn. This means that your units never have to worry about what is going to happen on enemy phase. But here as we can clearly tell, high mobility units are the superior player phase units, since they're the ones that enable you to pull off these one turn clears in the first place (given that most good units can reach the ability to ORKO on player phase, the one with the mobility to get to the important targets is clearly better).

If you're playing quickly but are not implementing LTC strats, then EP will be a significant portion of your combat. Of course, not all combat should be done on EP. There are situations where PP combat is the right call. But much of the combat that you think should get done on PP can actually be more efficiently done on EP. Why kill 8-10 enemies on PP and none on EP when I could kill 8-10 enemies on PP and then position myself to kill 8-10 more enemies on EP? This frees up many PP actions that would otherwise be spent killing those 8-10 enemies that are already dead, which allows them to attack more important targets that should be dealt with on PP (such as beasts), heal, open chests, or do whatever else the unit wants to do with their PP action.

Plus, as I brought up previously, high mobility units with canto are superior with stride. Yes, stride gives mobility to foot units, which really helps fix their first one or two turns, but as I pointed out it also gives mobility to your mounted and flying units as well. And mounted/flying units actually make better use of the movement buff than foot units do. Even including stride, the mounted units that have gotten strided will be further ahead of the foot units, unless you're intentionally holding them back.

Also, to your point, "it's a valid efficient playstyle and shouldn't be discouraged in any way", I point you to this.

On 8/20/2019 at 11:49 PM, Silly said:

There is a big difference between what is viable and what is optimal.

Very little in this game is not viable, outside of maybe stacking too many really dumb things onto the same team, like Bishop Raphael with his 15 Mag and 15 Spd growths. You can be a Swordmaster and still have fairly reasonable combat. You can be a Grappler. You can be a Fortress Knight.

However, there must be a distinction made between being viable and being optimal. Just because Assassin is a viable class does not make it optimal. Just because War Master is a viable class does not make it optimal. If the game contained an alternate class that was literally just Assassin but it had 7 move, it doesn't make the existing Assassin class any worse at clearing maps than it is now. However, it does make it a comparatively worse choice, because why promote into an assassin when you could promote into "basically assassin but better"?

It is very hard, and some would even say impossible, to achieve perfect balance. The fact of the matter is that some classes and units are simply going to be worse than others. In a ranked list, something has to be put at the bottom. (And classes like Assassin and War Master aren't even at the bottom, they're solid choices that are unfortunately not broken like the top tier choices are.) This is not an attack on a unit/class/whatever or a claim that the it is unusable. Because pretty much everything in this game is usable. It's just saying that it isn't as comparatively good as something else.

If the discussion is supposed centered on what is "best", which is presumably what the criteria here is... then yes, being good but worse than other options does mean that something should not be considered. This is in no way disparaging a playstyle. This is a single player game and players are allowed to do whatever they like without impacting the experience of any other player. But at the same time saying "everything is the best and nothing matters because the game is sunshine and roses" is not very conducive to discussion.

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9 hours ago, Peck said:

Your point about engaging as many units as possible on EP is probably the most boring and cheesiest way to play. It is not difficult or compelling gameplay to make Byleth/lord/insert favorite unit here into a defensive powerhouse with avoid, health steal, etc. and throw them into as many enemies as possible. Nor is using a ton of the same class just because they are overpowered. If that’s how you enjoy playing there’s no accounting for taste but I can tell from the way you discuss fire emblem that you are analyzing it and min maxing every aspect of gameplay to a degree that the devs are never going to match with challenging but also fair and balanced content. As the game stands hard difficulty does not require anywhere near the amount of thought you are putting into it as far as theorizing efficiency. And the truth is lunatic won’t either. The only situation I can see any of your perspectives holding any degree of value would be when applied to an extremely specific set of rules and criteria as established for challenge runs, speed runs or self imposed limitations. So unless you are talking about an extremely specific set of circumstances in which one is putting any of your ideas into practice than you need to chill because there is probably multiple billions of unique combinations of ways to clear any given map and none of them are objectively wrong. 

Is your criteria when discussing/advising LTC or not? Because you seem to discuss this ethereal version of the game that only exists in your mind that isn’t clearly defined whatsoever. 

Are you going to actually address anything in my post rather than calling me names?

[ApocaLips]

2 hours ago, NegativeExponents- said:

@Silly I'm sorry what? Are we playing the same game? Sure EP is the phase to focus on in almost every other FE but this game actively discourages EP with enemy gambits, monster AoE, siege weapons, blow skills, bolting/meteor, or those pesky enemy archers that only your own archers can counterattack and therefore will obviously not aim at them and go for your wyvern lords instead.

Far from efficient to focus all your efforts on the phase that's more likely to screw you over.

I’ve personally given up on engaging with that poster. Each of his responses are long, but they essentially all boil down to ‘+1-2 move and flying canto trump everything else in this game,’ when of course they don’t for the reasons you mentioned as well as many others that have been pointed out to him across several threads. 

This isn’t FE7, parking your best unit in the middle of the map and having everything suicide on it doesn’t always work. 

Edited August 23, 2019 by ApocaLips

[Flere210]

How can you kill those swordmaster and assassin whit more AS than Petra on EP whit WL. How are you going to kill the fortress knights whit 60+ hp and enormous defense. How are you going to even counter the archers that won't attack your archers if they have literally any other options.

Lots of units can't be defeated on EP by normal units whitout rng bless or dumping several stat booster, and you can't overdose whit boosters more than a couple WL. And this assuming they won't kill you because most units get 3HKO and you can't really have 100% avoid all the time.

If you can provide averages and confront them whit red units stats then i will believe you. But i seriously doubt that you can juggernaut EP whitout abusing quick riposte.

[Cysx]

3 hours ago, Silly said:

I think you have a big misconception here.

LTC in this game is primarily player phase focused, given that the majority of the maps can be cheesed in a single turn. This means that your units never have to worry about what is going to happen on enemy phase. But here as we can clearly tell, high mobility units are the superior player phase units, since they're the ones that enable you to pull off these one turn clears in the first place (given that most good units can reach the ability to ORKO on player phase, the one with the mobility to get to the important targets is clearly better).

If you're playing quickly but are not implementing LTC strats, then EP will be a significant portion of your combat. Of course, not all combat should be done on EP. There are situations where PP combat is the right call. But much of the combat that you think should get done on PP can actually be more efficiently done on EP. Why kill 8-10 enemies on PP and none on EP when I could kill 8-10 enemies on PP and then position myself to kill 8-10 more enemies on EP? This frees up many PP actions that would otherwise be spent killing those 8-10 enemies that are already dead, which allows them to attack more important targets that should be dealt with on PP (such as beasts), heal, open chests, or do whatever else the unit wants to do with their PP action.

Plus, as I brought up previously, high mobility units with canto are superior with stride. Yes, stride gives mobility to foot units, which really helps fix their first one or two turns, but as I pointed out it also gives mobility to your mounted and flying units as well. And mounted/flying units actually make better use of the movement buff than foot units do. Even including stride, the mounted units that have gotten strided will be further ahead of the foot units, unless you're intentionally holding them back.

Also, to your point, "it's a valid efficient playstyle and shouldn't be discouraged in any way", I point you to this.

I didn't mean that LTC was EP focused, I meant that turns mattered more with that mindset. And yes, fliers win LTC(and everything else), that is undeniable. Though a lot of maps are rout too, but that's really not what I want to discuss at all. You're also not killing nothing on EP with a PP focused playstyle, and I need to stress out that my main point here is how negligible the difference is. Which leads us to...

3 hours ago, Silly said:

If the discussion is supposed centered on what is "best", which is presumably what the criteria here is... then yes, being good but worse than other options does mean that something should not be considered. This is in no way disparaging a playstyle. This is a single player game and players are allowed to do whatever they like without impacting the experience of any other player. But at the same time saying "everything is the best and nothing matters because the game is sunshine and roses" is not very conducive to discussion.

 

Well, that's the big thing isn't it. I don't think discussing strictly what is best is ultimately that interesting, especially when the barrier between optimal and sub-optimal is clear, but thin. Which is not to say that the extreme opposite is any better; I'll be the first to admit that certain classes in this game are redundant, or even straight up bad, and not all characters are equal. My problem is that exclusively discussing what's the greatest can easily leave what's just "great" in the dust, in terms of being discussed, explored, understood, for no good reason. And why this is relevant here -and this is where you stop me if I'm wrong- is because I see shades of that in your posts. Not only that, of course.

I think we can do better than to recite "use wyverns" until the next FE happens, yet I can shake the feeling that we're well on our way to doing exactly that.

Edited August 23, 2019 by Cysx

[Silly]

3 hours ago, Flere210 said:

How can you kill those swordmaster and assassin whit more AS than Petra on EP whit WL. How are you going to kill the fortress knights whit 60+ hp and enormous defense. How are you going to even counter the archers that won't attack your archers if they have literally any other options.

 Lots of units can't be defeated on EP by normal units whitout rng bless or dumping several stat booster, and you can't overdose whit boosters more than a couple WL. And this assuming they won't kill you because most units get 3HKO and you can't really have 100% avoid all the time.

 If you can provide averages and confront them whit red units stats then i will believe you. But i seriously doubt that you can juggernaut EP whitout abusing quick riposte.

Player phase combat is also a thing. Having a good enemy phase does not mean you fight every enemy on enemy phase. Your player phase action should be for killing enemies that are high priority player phase kills, and you leave the other enemies to enemy phase.

You also probably misunderstand me. This game isn't ideal for sending one unit in and pretending they're invincible while they kill everything. However, you are still able to position units in a way to maximize enemy phase combat within reason.

Like I said, if your unit dies to 5 hits, then the optimal position is a place where you can fight 4 enemies at once. If your unit dies in 4 hits, then position them forward enough such that they can fight 3. (Heck, often times your unit is going to dodge some of these enemy hits, because enemy hit rates in this game are trash, so you won't even have to heal. But it's best to be safer and not have to rely on a dodge.)

Charging into the middle of all of the enemies is likely not going to end well (unless you have a really good unit or are stacking dodge, which is a possibility, but not one I'll necessarily cover here). But it's completely reasonable to engage in a fair amount of enemy phase combat while progressing through the map at a relatively fast pace.

Also, if you want stats, let's take a look at some stats.

For example, Chapter 21 GD has the following generics on hard mode, order in terms of how fast they are:

• Swordmaster x4 - 39 AS
• Falcon Knight x1 - 35 AS
• War Master x1 - 33 AS
• Hero x2 - 31 AS
• Wyvern Lord x1 - 30 AS
• Grappler x2 - 27 AS
• Dark Knight x1 - 24 AS
• Warrior x3 - 23 AS
• Mortal Savant x1 - 22 AS
• Sniper x1 - 22 AS
• Boss - 21 AS
• Paladin x2 - 21 AS
• Dark Bishop x5 - 20 AS
• Miniboss - 19 AS
• Bishop x2 - 16 AS
• Holy Knight x1 - 16 AS
• Miniboss - 4 AS

These enemies are all level 41 (with the boss being level 43), so it should be reasonable to assume that your good combat units are level 41+ here.

Let's take Hilda as an example of a generic "high" tier Wyvern Lord. Assuming you went a fairly reasonable path of Pegasus Knight -> Wyvern Rider -> Wyvern Lord, then Hilda has on average 34.1 Speed at level 41, with just level up stat gains. If you went through Brigand instead of Pegasus Knight, subtract one point of speed here. This number can be higher if you give her a Speed Ring or stat boosters.

Hilda doubles every enemy here besides the Swordmasters, the Falcon Knight, the War Master and the Heros (Hilda is only 1 point away from doubling Heros, so it's very reasonable for her to get to doubling threshold if she has a Speed Ring/one stat booster/one or two extra levels of exp). Let's ignore the Heros for now, since it's not unreasonable to say that you've gained +1/2 speed from one of the other factors that I brought up. Every enemy that Hilda doubles she will kill, with the exception of the 4 AS miniboss (who you can probably tell is an armored unit).

The miniboss guarding a door who is a Great Knight, with 40 Protection and 67 HP (these numbers are equal to what you would be seeing on the Fortress Knights in Chapter 22 as well). With these stats, a typical level 41 Hilda is hitting a 2RKO with a regular weapon (such as Silver Axe) and is borderline for ORKOing with a Hammer. (If you have some extra strength from somewhere, or a stronger weapon such as Axe of Ukonvasara or Axe of Zoltan then the ORKO is very guaranteed). So depending on whether you are allowed freedom in your weapon selection, then this can either be an ORKO on enemy phase, or somebody that you deal with on player phase. But let's call this a problem enemy as well.

Also as a side note, if you have to fight these enemies on EP and you know it, there's always equipping a forged Killer Axe and fishing for a 40+ crit. Either you hit the crit and the enemy dies when they wouldn't normally have, or you don't crit and you just kill the enemy on player phase like you normally would have anyways. But let's ignore that for now.

Given the above enemy distribution, the "high priority" targets to kill on player phase the 4 Swordmasters, the 1 Falcon Knight, the 1 War Master, the 1 Sniper (since you cannot counterattack these), the GK miniboss, and I guess the boss (even though he's pretty weak on this specific map), since you normally kill those on player phase. These enemies are for the most part not all clumped up in the same place, and you should probably have multiple units with good player phase combat at this point, which means that it is very possible to kill the "problem" enemies on player phase and leave the weaker enemies to fight on enemy phase. I don't find it too unreasonable to claim that you have enough units that you can safely deal with 9 of 30ish enemies on the map during your player phase actions. Chapter 20 is fairly similar, with about 11/32ish enemies being "deal with on player phase" type enemies, and the rest being squishy enough that you can kill pretty easily on enemy phase.

Chapter 22 (the endgame) has a fairly high density of problem units, making it a more player focused map, but that's largely because the map is full of relatively strong minibosses. But then again, that map also has some of the most awful terrain of any chapter, which means that your fliers are very important here for taking out said minibosses.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Well, that's the big thing isn't it. I don't think discussing strictly what is best is ultimately that interesting, especially when the barrier between optimal and sub-optimal is clear, but thin. Which is not to say that the extreme opposite is any better; I'll be the first to admit that certain classes in this game are redundant, or even straight up bad, and not all characters are equal. My problem is that exclusively discussing what's the greatest can easily leave what's just "great" in the dust, in terms of being discussed, explored, understood, for no good reason. And why this is relevant here -and this is where you stop me if I'm wrong- is because I see shades of that in your posts. Not only that, of course.

I think we can do better than to recite "use wyverns" until the next FE happens, yet I can shake the feeling that we're well on our way to doing exactly that.

This is a fair point. But I do want to bring up that the thing that started this discussion was me bringing up that I didn't think Lysithea was a top tier unit in the context of a non-LTC efficiency run. I didn't even call her a bad unit. She's high tier on my list, and I can fully admit that she is still very good. I just said that she was overrated by many people, and didn't measure up to the level that the absolute top tier units do (which on my current list is like... 6 units).

Being in the tier right below the six best units in the game is not a bad thing. I think we can all agree on that. These units literally have the best and easiest combat in the game. And when it boils down to it I'm going to maintain that Lysithea's contributions (especially towards combat) are worse than someone like Claude's or Byleth's or Edelgard's (assuming you put them into their best classes). But I do think that Lysithea has an important niche that she occupies very well, making her a very good unit.

For some reason people think that "here are the places where the mage class is flawed" is some sort of grand attack on the existence of all the non-fliers, when I personally have multiple characters that are best as mages in high tier. They're a good class with their uses, and you should deploy them because there is a real niche that they occupy that is more valuable than whoever your "seventh best flier" is. It's just that when you look at all things, it's very clear that they are a much less well-rounded class than the absolute best classes in the game.

If you want to talk about other classes specifically, here's some pretty straightforward rankings. Generally the best class for any unit is whatever class they can realistically get into, going down the list:

• Wyvern Lord (Falcon Knight), Bow Knight, Dark Knight (Holy Knight), Dancer are the best classes in the game (classes in parentheses are slightly subpar options, but are close enough in strength that if you find they're easier to get into due to your weapon ranks, you should just go for it).
• Gremory/Bishop/Warlock is also a very acceptable class if you want to fulfill a few specific niches (basically doubling the use of super low-usage spells like Warp and Meteor).
• War Master, Great Knight, Assassin, Paladin are acceptable, though there is usually a better class to be. If you have to end up in one of these though, it's not the end of the world. They still have good combat, they're just missing something that the more OP classes have.
• Mortal Savant is sort of on the border between "I think this class sucks" and "this class isn't one of the best but is acceptable". It really has nothing particularly special going for it, and is instead just very okay.
• Everything else is strictly outclassed by another class (for example, Wyvern Rider < Wyvern Lord), or just kind of poopy (such as Fortress Knights having the double whammy of being ridiculously slow and having no move).

Edited August 23, 2019 by Silly

[Peck]

10 hours ago, Silly said:

I think you have a big misconception here.

LTC in this game is primarily player phase focused, given that the majority of the maps can be cheesed in a single turn. This means that your units never have to worry about what is going to happen on enemy phase. But here as we can clearly tell, high mobility units are the superior player phase units, since they're the ones that enable you to pull off these one turn clears in the first place (given that most good units can reach the ability to ORKO on player phase, the one with the mobility to get to the important targets is clearly better).

If you're playing quickly but are not implementing LTC strats, then EP will be a significant portion of your combat. Of course, not all combat should be done on EP. There are situations where PP combat is the right call. But much of the combat that you think should get done on PP can actually be more efficiently done on EP. Why kill 8-10 enemies on PP and none on EP when I could kill 8-10 enemies on PP and then position myself to kill 8-10 more enemies on EP? This frees up many PP actions that would otherwise be spent killing those 8-10 enemies that are already dead, which allows them to attack more important targets that should be dealt with on PP (such as beasts), heal, open chests, or do whatever else the unit wants to do with their PP action.

Plus, as I brought up previously, high mobility units with canto are superior with stride. Yes, stride gives mobility to foot units, which really helps fix their first one or two turns, but as I pointed out it also gives mobility to your mounted and flying units as well. And mounted/flying units actually make better use of the movement buff than foot units do. Even including stride, the mounted units that have gotten strided will be further ahead of the foot units, unless you're intentionally holding them back.

Also, to your point, "it's a valid efficient playstyle and shouldn't be discouraged in any way", I point you to this.

If the discussion is supposed centered on what is "best", which is presumably what the criteria here is... then yes, being good but worse than other options does mean that something should not be considered. This is in no way disparaging a playstyle. This is a single player game and players are allowed to do whatever they like without impacting the experience of any other player. But at the same time saying "everything is the best and nothing matters because the game is sunshine and roses" is not very conducive to discussion.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Are you going to actually address anything in my post rather than calling me names?

No I suppose not because you are actively and intentionally not interesting to discuss anything with and ignore any facts or data that doesn’t align with your way of thinking. You talk at people not with them. You are clearly not here to learn anything or have a discussion but to explain to others why you think they are wrong which gets old incredibly quickly. Myself and many other posters in this thread alone have already pointed out flaws in your logic or counterpoints as to why in certain situations what you say does not apply and you continue to willfully ignore these points and double down explaining why you believe you are right and everyone else is wrong. Also at no point did I call you any name(s).

[Jayvee94]

"I'm right, you're wrong" arguments are not healthy here. I don't like anyone ignoring reasonable rebuttals. Don't act like a "prophet" or I will make sure you won't be able to reply to this topic for at least a week.

[georgetruman]

Most people rejected his message.

They hated Silly because he told them the truth.

[Silly]

In the interest of avoiding derailing this topic, I'll keep this post short.

My original post that spawned this mindblowingly dumb debate literally had the following two points:

• Mages don't have combat that is as good as fliers. They both reliably kill the large majority of enemy types on player phase, but fliers can take more hits and are thus able to have stronger enemy phase combat as well.
• The low movement on mages is another drawback that prevents them from being able to reach places and accomplish objectives as easily as fliers (such as killing specific enemies, getting somewhere to open a chest, preventing a green unit with bad AI from killing themselves when you needed to save them, etc.)

As a result of these two points, I said that in the context of a run where Warp is not of the utmost importance, Lysithea probably does not deserve to be top tier (which in my opinion is only roughly 6 characters at the current moment), and instead should be in the tier below top tier. This goes against a not-uncommon opinion that calls Lysithea the best unit in the game even in a non-LTC setting. I do not think this is true. She is a good unit, but she doesn't rival the best units in the game, who have both excellent combat and reasonable access to a flying class. I'm not talking about bad fliers here, but the broken ones like Byleth and Claude.

I feel these points are fairly reasonable, and I don't see anything particularly controversial about them.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Silly

[Jayvee94]

20 hours ago, Silly said:

In the interest of avoiding derailing this topic, I'll keep this post short.

My original post that spawned this mindblowingly dumb debate literally had the following two points:

•  Mages don't have combat that is as good as fliers. They both reliably kill the large majority of enemy types on player phase, but fliers can take more hits and are thus able to have stronger enemy phase combat as well.
•  The low movement on mages is another drawback that prevents them from being able to reach places and accomplish objectives as easily as fliers (such as killing specific enemies, getting somewhere to open a chest, preventing a green unit with bad AI from killing themselves when you needed to save them, etc.)

As a result of these two points, I said that in the context of a run where Warp is not of the utmost importance, Lysithea probably does not deserve to be top tier (which in my opinion is only roughly 6 characters at the current moment), and instead should be in the tier below top tier. This goes against a not-uncommon opinion that calls Lysithea the best unit in the game even in a non-LTC setting. I do not think this is true. She is a good unit, but she doesn't rival the best units in the game, who have both excellent combat and reasonable access to a flying class. I'm not talking about bad fliers here, but the broken ones like Byleth and Claude.

 I feel these points are fairly reasonable, and I don't see anything particularly controversial about them.

You make a good point. As much as I love Lysie myself, the utility of saving every last green unit or opening every last chest can't be disregarded.

[Silly]

20 minutes ago, Jayvee94 said:

You make a good point. As much as I love Lysie myself, the utility of saving every last green unit or opening every last chest can't be disregarded.

I feel like you're cherry picking something here to make a sarcastic comment about instead of contributing something helpful.

If the statement was not intended as sarcasm, please disregard.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Silly

[Jayvee94]

20 hours ago, Silly said:

I feel like you're cherry picking something here to make a sarcastic comment about instead of contributing something helpful.

If the statement was not intended as sarcasm, please disregard.

1. Sorry if I poorly worded my statement and offended you.
2. Let me remind you that I started this topic and I would not contribute something unhelpful

[Silly]

2 minutes ago, Jayvee94 said:

1. Sorry if I poorly worded my statement and offended you.
2. Let me remind you that I started this topic and I would not contribute something unhelpful

I mean, if you were being sarcastic, then yes of course your statement is unhelpful, as it doesn't contribute anything beyond attempting to be antagonistic.

If you made a wording mistake and intended no such thing, simply clarify that you did and it's all water under the bridge.

[Peck]

 

3 hours ago, Silly said:

In the interest of avoiding derailing this topic, I'll keep this post short.

My original post that spawned this mindblowingly dumb debate literally had the following two points:

• Mages don't have combat that is as good as fliers. They both reliably kill the large majority of enemy types on player phase, but fliers can take more hits and are thus able to have stronger enemy phase combat as well.
• The low movement on mages is another drawback that prevents them from being able to reach places and accomplish objectives as easily as fliers (such as killing specific enemies, getting somewhere to open a chest, preventing a green unit with bad AI from killing themselves when you needed to save them, etc.)

As a result of these two points, I said that in the context of a run where Warp is not of the utmost importance, Lysithea probably does not deserve to be top tier (which in my opinion is only roughly 6 characters at the current moment), and instead should be in the tier below top tier. This goes against a not-uncommon opinion that calls Lysithea the best unit in the game even in a non-LTC setting. I do not think this is true. She is a good unit, but she doesn't rival the best units in the game, who have both excellent combat and reasonable access to a flying class. I'm not talking about bad fliers here, but the broken ones like Byleth and Claude.

I feel these points are fairly reasonable, and I don't see anything particularly controversial about them.

I am genuinely curious what your top 6 units are. 

[Silly]

8 hours ago, Peck said:

I am genuinely curious what your top 6 units are. 

Roughly ordered.

• Claude
• Edelgard
• F!Byleth
• Dimitri
• (M!Byleth)
• Petra
• Leonie

Considering dropping Leonie to the tier below, as she is kind of borderline imo. Female Byleth is better than Male Byleth not because of the Sylvain recruitment (though that is a bonus) but mostly due to the ability to access Pegasus Knight early on.

For reference, the next tier of units (aka the remaining "great" units) that I have is as follows:

• Hilda
• Ferdinand
• Sylvain
• Lysithea
• Ingrid
• Seteth
• Shamir
• Lindhart
• Felix
• Catherine
• Dorothea
• Marianne
• Mercedes

Less ordered than the top tier list. If characters moved up or down a few places I wouldn't be particularly worried. (On a side note, if you care about LTC then Lysithea and Shamir probably move into top tier and Leonie drops out.)

Edited August 24, 2019 by Silly

[georgetruman]

@Silly do you factor in stuff like farming for speed carrots?

Edited August 24, 2019 by georgetruman

[Silly]

2 minutes ago, georgetruman said:

@Silly do you factor in stuff like farming for speed carrots?

Not particularly. I don't think it's significant enough to impact character ranking because every character can take advantage of gardening abuse.

I do think that some units are particularly interested in getting their stats fixed in certain areas, such as Raphael. And farming for garden boosters does make these characters much better than if you had chosen not to garden abuse. So if you wanted to use Raphael on your team then this is a very good way to improve his viability greatly.

But then again, gardening is a limited resource, and you can't farm enough boosters to give to all 10 or so units on your roster everything that they want. Every speed booster that I'm giving to Raphael to turn him from "really slow" into "good unit" comes at the cost of a strength booster that I can't give to Petra or Ingrid, a magic booster that I can't give to Lysithea, etc.

Gardening does probably benefit the less good characters more than the better characters comparatively, since there is more room for the worse character to become more useful. But a mediocre character + gardening abuse is, in my opinion, still worse than a good character + gardening abuse.

[georgetruman]

I mean more along the lines of comparing say Petra to Edelgard. They basically end up with a 10 point difference in strength and a 10 point difference in speed in their respective favors. The thing is, you only end up needing so much speed and so much strength to 1rko the majority of enemies. Is one closer to those important thresholds than the other, so they don't need as many boosters to get to the point where they can 1rko the vast majority of enemies, or does it end up just being a wash

[freewaffles]

On 8/22/2019 at 9:54 AM, ZanaLyrander said:

^This is why I like Mortal Savant Felix. Felix can be good at whatever he does, he gets a free five damage for not having a battalion assigned, and his stats are generally pretty good all around. Even with a low magic stat, I’ve found his spells do enough to 1RKO most non-magic using units in the late game. But more importantly, it gives him flexibility: he’s still an excellent swordsman, and the lousy speed growth of Mortal Savant won’t matter because by that point his speed should already be very good. He’ll still do more damage with a sword than with his magic, but now he’s suddenly a hybrid unit, so no matter what type of enemy he faces, he can choose to attack whichever defense is weaker. Mages and Pegasus/Falcon Knights (or other high resistance units) he can easily dispatch with his sword, and his magic, while not all that impressive, is more than powerful enough to take down Fortress/Great Knights and other units with high enough defense to survive his sword. It’s one of the main appeals of Enlightened One Byleth, that magic/strength flexibility. The only real drawback, and it’s a significant one, is his low mobility that means he has a hard time keeping up with faster moving units. 

A Levin Sword+ provides all the same benefits and has the same might as Thoron, but procs his crest and can be used with Combat Arts.  The only loss is 2 wt and 15 crit (alternatively, Magic Bow+ has 1 less might, and as a Bow Knight, Felix can use it from 5 spaces away).  The weight is negated with the higher speed of Assassin/BowKnight compared to Mortal Savant and the crit skill from Budding Talent is immaterial since you can reach S Tank in either weapon through natural progression anyway.

[Silly]

3 hours ago, georgetruman said:

I mean more along the lines of comparing say Petra to Edelgard. They basically end up with a 10 point difference in strength and a 10 point difference in speed in their respective favors. The thing is, you only end up needing so much speed and so much strength to 1rko the majority of enemies. Is one closer to those important thresholds than the other, so they don't need as many boosters to get to the point where they can 1rko the vast majority of enemies, or does it end up just being a wash

So if you meet both the speed and strength thresholds required to reliably kill the majority of enemies, that's obviously the ideal scenario.

If you're not quite there yet, then it's a bit harder to evaluate, but I would say that generally having more speed tends to be preferable to more strength. There are ways to fix both strength and speed in this game, but the ways to fix strength are more readily available than ways to fix speed. Battalions provide big strength boosts, and are an easy way to add additional attack power, but no battalions provide speed. In addition, by switching to a heavier, more powerful weapon, a unit gains the ability to trade speed for attack. If your unit has overkill speed but just not enough attack to kill something, you can always switch to a stronger weapon if you need meet some particularly important thresholds (worst case scenario you can use a relic like the Lance of Ruin, which can very easily fix up strength issues with its massive might).

On the other hand, the unit that meets the strength threshold but not the speed threshold doesn't have nearly as many ways to gain additional speed. You can cook speed meals for a temporary +1 speed, and you can equip a Speed Ring for +2 speed. But that's about it. (I guess if you have Ignatz you can rally speed).

Though despite the fact that I just called Petra's extra speed on Edelgard an advantage, I do think that Edelgard is the better unit due to advantages in other areas. One important advantage is their innate abilities. Petra's is often not very useful, because when it is active she often just kills the enemy without needing to rely on her ability. On the other hand, Edelgard's ability is pretty relevant throughout the whole game at ensuring that she always remains above the curve. Secondly, Edelgard will likely have considerably more bulk than Petra, due to her free Armored Lord promotion bumping her defense up to 17 at minimum. Lastly, Aymr is really good, which is a plus in Edelgard's favor. Though as much as I like Aymr I do recognize that it's very limited in its uses so it shouldn't add too much in Edelgard's favor.

------------------------------------------------

Edit:

After rereading, I might not have answered the exact question you were asking, and instead answered something completely different, so here is another attempt.

Part of why Wyvern is so good is that it's pretty damn close to meeting both the speed and strength thresholds required to ORKO naturally.

I tend to classify enemy groups as "super fast" (stuff like swordmasters), "fast" (heroes), "mid-speed" (warriors and paladins), "slow" (bishops), and "really slow" (armored knights). 

The mid-speed enemies tend to sit at maybe 25ish AS in the endgame, which means that pretty much every Wyvern Lord will double them pretty easily, given that the minimum speed for the class is 24. Only really slow Wyverns (like if you went for Wyvern Raphael) might have a chance of missing out on doubling.

Fast enemies, it depends on the Wyvern. These enemies tend to have AS numbers in the low 30's near the end of the game. Taking Hilda as an example, her natural speed growth puts her at borderline doubling threshold for these enemies (she'll have roughly 33ish speed around level 40). She does need a little help, but it's fairly reasonable to say that if you wanted to double these enemies you would be able to.

Super fast enemies are very hard to double. It usually requires a very, very fast character (such as Ingrid or Petra) to have a hope of doing so.

For the most part, if you can double an enemy as a Wyvern, you will kill them. No character that will realistically turn into a Wyvern has terrible strength in this game (35% might be the lowest growth), and between natural strength growth, battalion bonuses, axes being the strongest weapon type, axefaire, and the class's strength bonus, you should be able to hit ORKOs (you'll need roughly 55 attack to reliably ORKO most enemies in the later stages of the game with a double imo). The big exceptions are the really bulky enemies, such as Fortress Knights and Great Knights, who usually will not be ORKOed if you don't have overkill strength (you're going to need maybe 75 attack to ORKO endgame armors), but they can be compensated for with a hammer if you have the option.

Petra is probably slightly better in terms of meeting important thresholds given that she will very reliably meet the speed threshold (whereas Edelgard might need a little bit, but not a lot, of help with speed), and can fairly reasonably meet the strength threshold as well, but for the most part unless you have godawful stats you will likely only require a little bit of help to meet these thresholds as a Wyvern Lord.

Edited August 25, 2019 by Silly