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

[timon]

24 minutes ago, Elspeth said:

I'm surprised both at the amount of people who like Dorothea on Dancer, and at the lack of people who like her on Mortal Savant.

Dorothea on Dancer is a waste, through and through. You want your Dancer to be dancing, and that means they lose a lot of offensive capability. Dorothea is a really good mage, and making her dance every turn instead of cast spells is a huge waste. I don't see why you would make her a Dancer instead of somebody like Linhardt or Marianne, who have access to both Physic and another utility spell (Warp/Silence), and who aren't offensively slanted characters anyway.

Dorothea on Mortal Savant, though, is pretty great. Dorothea gains way less than characters like Lysithea by going Gremory. She gets 2x Meteor, but she completely lacks a solid Faith spell kit to make use of (as opposed to Lysithea's Seraphim and Abraxas), and 2x Meteor, IMO, isn't impactful enough to lose out on inherent Tomefaire. Dorothea works on Mortal Savant really well despite her abysmal Strength growth, meanwhile, because you can slap her with a Levin Sword. Dorothea armed with a Levin Sword+, Swordfaire, and Black Tomefaire is going to annihilate.  Mortal Savant also gives higher Movement than Gremory. As an added bonus, Dorothea learns Hexblade, and so can even convert good physical swords into high magic damage on Mortal Savant.

You basically lose out on +3 Magic, an extra cast of Meteor, and some Speed growth by going Savant rather than Gremory. That seems like a worthwhile tradeoff to me in exchange for Swordfaire plus a Levin Sword, Black Tomefaire, and better movement.

Why use a Levin Sword when you can cast spells?

Swordfaire is 5 damage, not enough to justify using it over Thoron, Sagittae or Agnea's Arrow. Not only that, but contrary to faith, raising her sword skill is a nightmare since she does absolutely no damage unless you use Hexblade (which can't double). Considering Dorothea's Str you're also never going to double anyone with the Levin Sword, especially with the speed loss of MS.

I'd rather spam crit Thoron 16 times with 2 Meteors than having that faire bonus. In the meantime getting 10 Physics is not exactly a bad thing either.

I guess it all comes down to your last sentence. "You basically lose out on +3 Magic, an extra cast of Meteor, and some Speed growth by going Savant rather than Gremory. That seems like a worthwhile tradeoff to me in exchange for Swordfaire plus a Levin Sword, Black Tomefaire, and better movement." This sounds like a terrible deal, the 1 Mov is the only thing you're gaining (but you're falling behind mounted units anyways, so I don't know how much that matters).

[freewaffles]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Gauntlets have very little use on enemy phase, possibly even none. They're only good for player phase, but unfortunately, other weapons tend to be good for both player and enemy phase. It doesn't help that they are range locked, nor does it that they're not usable by mounted units. Axes are too heavy and inaccurate for me to want to rely on.

Okay then, wise guy. Do YOU believe that gauntlets, with their lack of use on enemy phase, their being unusable by mounted units, and their range lock aren't one of the worst weapon types in the game?

Because Raphael requires investment that I could've given to better units to do Gilbert's job. Also, I honestly found him a liability in my run, and felt like my team was doing much better after benching him because I didn't have to constantly babysit a unit who'd constantly get doubled and isn't defensive enough to make up for it.

Let's do a quick, objective comparison of Raphael as Warmaster versus some of the more common cavalry units.  I'm using the spreadsheet posted by Dragonfire here: https://forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/88714-three-houses-spreadsheet/&tab=comments#comment-5485335.

1. A level 30 Sylvain who goes Fighter/Cavalier/Paladin/Bow Knight on average has 25 Strength and 22 speed.  Using a Silver Bow and standing next to a woman gets an additional 19 might (12 + Personal + Bowfaire) at the cost of 9 Weight, 5 of which is canceled by Strength for a total of 44 damage at 18 attack speed.  As a Paladin who took the BK test using a Silver Lance, he has 26 Strength and 20 speed, but gets 20 might from a Silver Lance (13 + Personal + Lance Faire) at the same weight for 48 damage at 16 attack speed.  Defensively, Sylvain will have 51 HP, 22 defense and 13 Res as a Bow Knight (with personal included) or 23 defense and 15 res
2. Level 30 Leonie on this route has 46 hp, 24 strength, 26 speed, 21 defense, and 10 res as a BK (and then add personals).
3. Level 30 Ferdinand has 51 hp, 24 strength, 22 speed, 18 defense, and 10 res as a BK (without personals).

A level 30 Warmaster Raphael, who goes Fighter/Brigand/Warrior/Warmaster on average has 63 hp, 35 strength, 19 speed, 22 defense, and 10 res.  Using Silver Gauntlets, he has an additional 9 might (4 + Faire) at the cost of 7 weight.  6 of the Weight is canceled by his Strength, so he hits for 44 damage with an 18 attack speed.  (If Raphael goes Grappler instead of Warrior, he finishes with the same speed but 1 less strength, so might as well pick up Wrath).  

We're not trying to say that Raphael is amazing.  We're not trying to say that gauntlets are amazing in enemy phase.  We are merely saying that neither Raphael nor Gauntlets are as terrible on enemy phase as you seem to have convinced yourself based on anecdotal evidence.  Raphael, using Gauntlets, is comparable to three mid-tier Calvary in the game on enemy phase.  Meanwhile, he obliterates anything in his sights on player phase before he gets touched.

The simple fact of the matter is for any male character that is not going to be a Wyvern Lord, Warmaster with Gauntlets or Axes is a legitimate option. 

Edited August 26, 2019 by freewaffles

[magnetic_cactus]

14 minutes ago, freewaffles said:

The simple fact of the matter is for any male character that is not going to be a Wyvern Lord, Warmaster with Gauntlets or Axes is a legitimate option. 

Here's your issue. This forum is obsessed with Wyvern Lord (and for good reason, in fairness) and seems to implicitly assume 12/12 Wyvern Lord teams (give or take a healer/Bow Knight), and so gauntlets, which can't be (effectively) used by Wyvern Lords, will never be seen as good to a percentage of posters.

[Burklight]

10 minutes ago, freewaffles said:

Let's do a quick, objective comparison of Raphael as Warmaster versus some of the more common cavalry units.  I'm using the spreadsheet posted by Dragonfire here: https://forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/88714-three-houses-spreadsheet/&tab=comments#comment-5485335.

1. A level 30 Sylvain who goes Fighter/Cavalier/Paladin/Bow Knight on average has 25 Strength and 22 speed.  Using a Silver Bow and standing next to a woman gets an additional 19 might (12 + Personal + Bowfaire) at the cost of 9 Weight, 5 of which is canceled by Strength for a total of 44 damage at 18 attack speed.  As a Paladin who took the BK test using a Silver Lance, he has 26 Strength and 20 speed, but gets 20 might from a Silver Lance (13 + Personal + Lance Faire) at the same weight for 48 damage at 16 attack speed.  Defensively, Sylvain will have 51 HP, 22 defense and 13 Res as a Bow Knight (with personal included) or 23 defense and 15 res
2. Level 30 Leonie on this route has 46 hp, 24 strength, 26 speed, 21 defense, and 10 res as a BK (and then add personals).
3. Level 30 Ferdinand has 51 hp, 24 strength, 22 speed, 18 defense, and 10 res as a BK (without personals).

A level 30 Warmaster Raphael, who goes Fighter/Brigand/Warrior/Warmaster on average has 63 hp, 35 strength, 19 speed, 22 defense, and 10 res.  Using Silver Gauntlets, he has an additional 9 might (4 + Faire) at the cost of 7 weight.  6 of the Weight is canceled by his Strength, so he hits for 44 damage with an 18 attack speed.  (If Raphael goes Grappler instead of Warrior, he finishes with the same speed but 1 less strength, so might as well pick up Wrath).  

We're not trying to say that Raphael is amazing.  We're not trying to say that gauntlets are amazing in enemy phase.  We are merely saying that neither Raphael nor Gauntlets are as terrible on enemy phase as you seem to have convinced yourself based on anecdotal evidence.  Raphael, using Gauntlets, is comparable to three mid-tier Calvary in the game on enemy phase.  Meanwhile, he obliterates anything in his sights on player phase before he gets touched.

The simple fact of the matter is for any male character that is not going to be a Wyvern Lord, Warmaster with Gauntlets or Axes is a legitimate option. 

I think I finally figured out the disconnect, so let me try and fill you in. All that "data" and stuff you posted only applies if we're talking about the meta of the actual game. That has no place in threads like this where the forum posting has a totally different meta. See, because you posted this on forums, gauntlets are bad because WL can't use them. In an Optimal Play™ run, which consists of 8 WLs jerking each other off while Lys warps your 9th WL to one shot the boss, gauntlets never get used.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, freewaffles said:

Let's do a quick, objective comparison of Raphael as Warmaster versus some of the more common cavalry units.  I'm using the spreadsheet posted by Dragonfire here: https://forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/88714-three-houses-spreadsheet/&tab=comments#comment-5485335.

1. A level 30 Sylvain who goes Fighter/Cavalier/Paladin/Bow Knight on average has 25 Strength and 22 speed.  Using a Silver Bow and standing next to a woman gets an additional 19 might (12 + Personal + Bowfaire) at the cost of 9 Weight, 5 of which is canceled by Strength for a total of 44 damage at 18 attack speed.  As a Paladin who took the BK test using a Silver Lance, he has 26 Strength and 20 speed, but gets 20 might from a Silver Lance (13 + Personal + Lance Faire) at the same weight for 48 damage at 16 attack speed.  Defensively, Sylvain will have 51 HP, 22 defense and 13 Res as a Bow Knight (with personal included) or 23 defense and 15 res
2. Level 30 Leonie on this route has 46 hp, 24 strength, 26 speed, 21 defense, and 10 res as a BK (and then add personals).
3. Level 30 Ferdinand has 51 hp, 24 strength, 22 speed, 18 defense, and 10 res as a BK (without personals).

A level 30 Warmaster Raphael, who goes Fighter/Brigand/Warrior/Warmaster on average has 63 hp, 35 strength, 19 speed, 22 defense, and 10 res.  Using Silver Gauntlets, he has an additional 9 might (4 + Faire) at the cost of 7 weight.  6 of the Weight is canceled by his Strength, so he hits for 44 damage with an 18 attack speed.  (If Raphael goes Grappler instead of Warrior, he finishes with the same speed but 1 less strength, so might as well pick up Wrath).  

We're not trying to say that Raphael is amazing.  We're not trying to say that gauntlets are amazing in enemy phase.  We are merely saying that neither Raphael nor Gauntlets are as terrible on enemy phase as you seem to have convinced yourself based on anecdotal evidence.  Raphael, using Gauntlets, is comparable to three mid-tier Calvary in the game on enemy phase.  Meanwhile, he obliterates anything in his sights on player phase before he gets touched.

The simple fact of the matter is for any male character that is not going to be a Wyvern Lord, Warmaster with Gauntlets or Axes is a legitimate option. 

Yeah, well, unfortunately, with everyone here orgasming over Wyvern Lord, I kinda don't think anyone is gonna care. And I dunno about you, but I feel I'm wasting my time - and more - investing in a unit that's gonna be hard-pressed to avoid being the worst unit I have through the early phases of the game.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[freewaffles]

15 minutes ago, magnetic_cactus said:

Here's your issue. This forum is obsessed with Wyvern Lord (and for good reason, in fairness) and seems to implicitly assume 12/12 Wyvern Lord teams (give or take a healer/Bow Knight), and so gauntlets, which can't be (effectively) used by Wyvern Lords, will never be seen as good to a percentage of posters.

 

13 minutes ago, Burklight said:

I think I finally figured out the disconnect, so let me try and fill you in. All that "data" and stuff you posted only applies if we're talking about the meta of the actual game. That has no place in threads like this where the forum posting has a totally different meta. See, because you posted this on forums, gauntlets are bad because WL can't use them. In an Optimal Play™ run, which consists of 8 WLs jerking each other off while Lys warps your 9th WL to one shot the boss, gauntlets never get used.

Oh, I 100% agree.  There is little doubt that Wyvern Lord is the best class in the game, and anyone who can efficiently become one should.  The Fighter/Brigand or Pegasus/Wyvern Rider/Wyvern Lord route gives great growths, the best movement, and immunity to ground fire.  But for those of us who live in the reality of the actual game: You're not wasting your limited individualized tutoring time trying to make Leonie a Wyvern rider when she can be Bow Knights with ease.  I'd rather just pump Hilda's Flying and then maybe get her Heavy Armor for -3 weight.

Edited August 26, 2019 by freewaffles

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

Dang, I am just changing opinions a lot here, am I? First, I had Dorothea as a Dancer, but then I heard the Mortal Savant argument, then the argument against it.

I’ll say, Gremory (or Warlock) Dorothea sounds sick.

Besides, I am considering not recruiting Leonie this time around in Black Eagles now and recruiting Lorenz instead. Which he’ll be a Dancer then instead of Flayn. For spoiler reasons.

 

[Silly]

3 hours ago, ApocaLips said:

I’m not very interested in continuing this game of ‘name a few drawbacks, ignore benefits, claim X is bad.’ There are plenty of enemies that have high enough hp/defenses that gauntlets are very welcome - they deal with those quickly and free up actions for your team. I’d certainly prefer one of those to the 10th axe-using flier. 

Except gauntlets don't deal with high defense enemies significantly better than any other weapon type... they have incredibly low might, which means that enemy defense cuts into their damage output significantly.

For example, consider a mid game armor knight (chapter 14 GD Hard). They are level 28 and have roughly 40 hp and 25 prt.

Say you want to kill them on player phase with Silver Gauntlets. This means you need 31 strength (minus any bonuses from abilities/battalions/etc). Forging here doesn't help, as all a gauntlet forge gives you here is +5 hit.

Now say you want to kill them on player phase with a Silver Axe. You only need 29 strength before your weapon is factored in to kill. Forging here drops the threshold to 28 strength.

Note that this is on Armored Knights. Fortress Knights in the next chapter are even bulkier, with 32 prt, which is even worse. Also, this is on player phase. The Silver Axe maintains its damage output during enemy phase as well, whereas the gauntlet's damage output has now dropped by half.

I would also like to point out that if you really wanted to ensure that you hit the benchmarks to kill enemy armors on player phase, you have access to effective weaponry such as the Rapier/Armorslayer/Any of the many Axes that have effective damage vs armors. For example, a sword user with a Rapier+ only needs 18 strength to be able to ORKO armor knights on both player and enemy phase.

The lower the enemy's defense is relative to your attack, the better gauntlets do relative to traditional weaponry. The main issue that I have here is that this game does not demand you hit such high numbers consistently. If other weapons do the job of gauntlets well enough, then they don't really have a significant niche.

Non-armor units are not nearly bulky enough, so it is not difficult to hit ORKO thresholds on them with traditional weaponry on player phase. Even in the endgame ORKO thresholds with traditional weapons mostly hover in the 60 attack or less range. Armored units are bulky enough that you might not be able to kill them with traditional weaponry. But their high defense means that gauntlets aren't as comparatively advantaged. Plus if you really needed to deal with an armored unit it's better to rely on effective weaponry or magic or something anyways.

The biggest spot where gauntlets are advantaged compared to traditional weaponry are against enemies with massive HP pools but moderate to low defenses. As it stands, traditional generics don't really fall into this camp. This category mostly applies to some beast units, and I can freely admit that this is a situation where the damage output of gauntlets does matter. However, does this make gauntlets better than other weapon types? I don't think so. The situations in which the primary advantage of gauntlets are necessary are just too small, and the situations in which gauntlets aren't as good as other weapons happens too often.

This is completely ignoring the fact that weapons are attached to classes (certain classes have faire skills that make them better at using specific weapons) and just evaluating how the weapons perform in a vacuum.

On a side note, if you guys want to strawman every viewpoint that doesn't fit into your own by circlejerking about "lel the other side only talks about 12 flier teams", then that is a kind of silly way to talk about things. (The fact is that I have never advocated for that kind of thing, and have instead said the opposite.)

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

2 hours ago, freewaffles said:

Let's do a quick, objective comparison of Raphael as Warmaster versus some of the more common cavalry units.  I'm using the spreadsheet posted by Dragonfire here: https://forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/88714-three-houses-spreadsheet/&tab=comments#comment-5485335.

1. A level 30 Sylvain who goes Fighter/Cavalier/Paladin/Bow Knight on average has 25 Strength and 22 speed.  Using a Silver Bow and standing next to a woman gets an additional 19 might (12 + Personal + Bowfaire) at the cost of 9 Weight, 5 of which is canceled by Strength for a total of 44 damage at 18 attack speed.  As a Paladin who took the BK test using a Silver Lance, he has 26 Strength and 20 speed, but gets 20 might from a Silver Lance (13 + Personal + Lance Faire) at the same weight for 48 damage at 16 attack speed.  Defensively, Sylvain will have 51 HP, 22 defense and 13 Res as a Bow Knight (with personal included) or 23 defense and 15 res
2. Level 30 Leonie on this route has 46 hp, 24 strength, 26 speed, 21 defense, and 10 res as a BK (and then add personals).
3. Level 30 Ferdinand has 51 hp, 24 strength, 22 speed, 18 defense, and 10 res as a BK (without personals).

A level 30 Warmaster Raphael, who goes Fighter/Brigand/Warrior/Warmaster on average has 63 hp, 35 strength, 19 speed, 22 defense, and 10 res.  Using Silver Gauntlets, he has an additional 9 might (4 + Faire) at the cost of 7 weight.  6 of the Weight is canceled by his Strength, so he hits for 44 damage with an 18 attack speed.  (If Raphael goes Grappler instead of Warrior, he finishes with the same speed but 1 less strength, so might as well pick up Wrath).  

We're not trying to say that Raphael is amazing.  We're not trying to say that gauntlets are amazing in enemy phase.  We are merely saying that neither Raphael nor Gauntlets are as terrible on enemy phase as you seem to have convinced yourself based on anecdotal evidence.  Raphael, using Gauntlets, is comparable to three mid-tier Calvary in the game on enemy phase.  Meanwhile, he obliterates anything in his sights on player phase before he gets touched.

The simple fact of the matter is for any male character that is not going to be a Wyvern Lord, Warmaster with Gauntlets or Axes is a legitimate option. 

This is a pretty good post.

Setting aside the whole talk about how War Master is as a class though, let's just focus on the weapon choice. I want to point out that as a War Master you should probably just use axes as your primary weapon type and have gauntlets as a backup for the occasional situations where it's actually beneficial to use them. The extra attack on gauntlets is kind of unnecessary, considering an axe snags important KOs just as easily.

For example, let's take a look at your numbers on Raphael. Since you set Raphael at level 30 let's assume enemies are roughly level 30 as well (ch 15 GD). In this chapter, Raphael with your stats (plus a damage boosting battalion) has pretty similar combat against all enemies with either gauntlets or axes except for the following:

• Fortress Knight x5: Gauntlets and weaker axes do not ORKO on enemy phase here. Silver Axe (and anything stronger) snags an ORKO on enemy phase. Gauntlets, along with Iron Axe, will manage to snag an ORKO on player phase because of Death Blow.
• Gwendell: This guy is too bulky to be ORKOed by this Raphael with anything short of a Hammer. Both regular axes and gauntlets miss the ORKO on both player and enemy phase. If you happen to have a Hammer (or one of the stronger variants) then you can ORKO him during both player or enemy phase, but nothing short of a Hammer manages to kill him.

Overall, using primarily axes is probably better. For the most part you are killing the same things, but the additional flexibility of being able to pick up really high might axes against bulkier enemies, use effective weaponry, and sometimes pick up a 1-2 range weapon here or there is helpful. Gauntlets can be kept for the niche where the enemy has a gigantic health pool (beasts), or when you are both too slow to double and cannot just one-shot someone with an axe (which is fairly rare, but could happen sometimes).

On a completely different note, as you've pointed out, Wyvern Lord is pretty clearly the "better" class compared to War Master in terms of axe users. This means that when considering the "best" class for someone with axe proficiency, War Master should mostly be outclassed by Wyvern Lord, except in cases when training flying is too prohibitive. If you're one of the people who can't train flying (such as Dedue), then War Master is a totally acceptable class to claim as the "best" class, as it reasonably meets or exceeds ORKOing benchmarks and is probably better than any of the other non-mounted options.

Also, if you want somebody that uses fists, then sure War Master is the only endgame class option. You should be a War Master if you really want to punch things, since that's your only real option. But in the context of killing enemies fists aren't really that special of a weapon type, as something like an axe or a bow or whatever will likely meet ORKO benchmarks on player phase just fine.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Silly

[Dark Holy Elf]

Gauntlets are pretty clearly the worst weapon type in the game. They're not bad, to be clear, and do have some legitimate advantages, but the fact that (a) no mounted class can use them, (b) no woman can get a -faire in them, (c) their niche of hitting twice on player phase can be mimicked by other weapon types when they get Brave, albeit for less AS, and (d) they don't have a ranged option.

They're solid earlygame since none of those disadvantages matter then except for (d), but as time goes on, they don't age well. The only real niche they maintain is quadding potential (due to being lighter than brave weapons), but that's mitigated by a several things, and not many things need quadding to bring down anyway.

[Flere210]

Gauntlets are mostly lacking endgame options. After a certain point you are swimming in relics,brave and efdective weapons of everything else, but you are stuck whit silver or killer gauntlets forever.

[ApocaLips]

4 minutes ago, Silly said:

Except gauntlets don't deal with high defense enemies significantly better than any other weapon type... they have incredibly low might, which means that enemy defense cuts into their damage output significantly.

For example, consider a mid game armor knight (chapter 14 GD Hard). They are level 28 and have roughly 40 hp and 25 prt.

Say you want to kill them on player phase with Silver Gauntlets. This means you need 31 strength (minus any bonuses from abilities/battalions/etc). Forging here doesn't help, as all a gauntlet forge gives you here is +5 hit.

Now say you want to kill them on player phase with a Silver Axe. You only need 29 strength before your weapon is factored in to kill. Forging here drops the threshold to 28 strength.

Note that this is on Armored Knights. Fortress Knights in the next chapter are even bulkier, with 32 prt, which is even worse. Also, this is on player phase. The Silver Axe maintains its damage output during enemy phase as well, whereas the gauntlet's damage output has now dropped by half.

I would also like to point out that if you really wanted to ensure that you hit the benchmarks to kill enemy armors on player phase, you have access to effective weaponry such as the Rapier/Armorslayer/Any of the many Axes that have effective damage vs armors. For example, a sword user with a Rapier+ only needs 18 strength to be able to ORKO armor knights on both player and enemy phase.

The lower the enemy's defense is relative to your attack, the better gauntlets do relative to traditional weaponry. The main issue that I have here is that this game does not demand you hit such high numbers consistently. If other weapons do the job of gauntlets well enough, then they don't really have a significant niche.

Non-armor units are not nearly bulky enough, so it is not difficult to hit ORKO thresholds on them with traditional weaponry on player phase. Even in the endgame ORKO thresholds with traditional weapons mostly hover in the 60 attack or less range. Armored units are bulky enough that you might not be able to kill them with traditional weaponry. But their high defense means that gauntlets aren't as comparatively advantaged. Plus if you really needed to deal with an armored unit it's better to rely on effective weaponry or magic or something anyways.

The biggest spot where gauntlets are advantaged compared to traditional weaponry are against enemies with massive HP pools but moderate to low defenses. As it stands, traditional generics don't really fall into this camp. This category mostly applies to some beast units, and I can freely admit that this is a situation where the damage output of gauntlets does matter. However, does this make gauntlets better than other weapon types? I don't think so. The situations in which the primary advantage of gauntlets are necessary are just too small, and the situations in which gauntlets aren't as good as other weapons happens too often.

This is completely ignoring the fact that weapons are attached to classes (certain classes have faire skills that make them better at using specific weapons) and just evaluating how the weapons perform in a vacuum.

On a side note, if you guys want to strawman every viewpoint that doesn't fit into your own by circlejerking about "lel the other side only talks about 12 flier teams", then that is a kind of silly way to talk about things. (The fact is that I have never advocated for that kind of thing, and have instead p

Yeesh, more of this...

Your example doesn’t take into account the impact of critical hits and is really off for that reason alone, but even playing by your rules, I’m sure everyone talking about gauntlets is aware that when you have multiple attacks, enemy defense (as well as damage boosts) factors in multiplicatively. However, this only results in other weapons outdamaging gauntlets when the difference between the might of the weapons exceeds the difference between the units attack (without might factored in) and the enemy's relevant defense. This is not common in a game with deathblow and faire skills, which your oversimplified example fails to account for. And that’s also ignoring the very real possibility that a gauntlet user quads due to reduced weapon weight while the other user fails to double. 

Anecdotally, my competent gauntlet users haven’t had issues dealing with armor knights. In the rare circumstance the situation you describe exists, aura knuckles usually can still nab a ohko. 

Glad we got to the point where you’ve shifted from claiming gauntlets have no niche to “freely admitting” they have situations where they outperform in the endgame (apparently early game doesn’t matter anymore?). Not that it will push you off of your bizarre agenda to spread the gospel of WL, but for the viewers at home, I’ll remind that there are plenty of chapters with a significant amount of beasts, and, if I dare, suggest that maybe, just maybe, it’s worth adding one unit to your team that can cleanly deal with them rather than the Nth wyvern lord. And that’s also ignoring the fact that gauntlet users can crush some problematic bosses, which alone warrants consideration for a slot. 

[Jakkun]

4 minutes ago, ApocaLips said:

Glad we got to the point where you’ve shifted from claiming gauntlets have no niche to “freely admitting” they have situations where they outperform in the endgame (apparently early game doesn’t matter anymore?). Not that it will push you off of your bizarre agenda to spread the gospel of WL, but for the viewers at home, I’ll remind that there are plenty of chapters with a significant amount of beasts, and, if I dare, suggest that maybe, just maybe, it’s worth adding one unit to your team that can cleanly deal with them rather than the Nth wyvern lord. And that’s also ignoring the fact that gauntlet users can crush some problematic bosses, which alone warrants consideration for a slot. 

I don't think most people, even Silly thinks that splashing in a War Master or non Wyvern Lord in general will kill you. And in his defense, he did say in his last post that he doesn't actually advocate for 12 wyvern teams.

I understand your stance well bro, but try to refrain from hyperbole. It's not a good look man.

[ApocaLips]

15 minutes ago, Jakkun said:

I don't think most people, even Silly thinks that splashing in a War Master or non Wyvern Lord in general will kill you. And in his defense, he did say in his last post that he doesn't actually advocate for 12 wyvern teams.

I understand your stance well bro, but try to refrain from hyperbole. It's not a good look man.

I am literally responding to a post from hours ago where he claimed “Gauntlets kind of don't have a niche past the early game.“ It took this much work to get to a point where he admits that actually, there are instances where they outperform other weapon types. 

Practically every single one of his posts boils down to ‘X isn’t optimal because WL can do the same thing but better.’ That is, honestly and truly, an accurate description of the vast majority of his posts, and it is very often counterproductive. He only just now conceded that 12-WL teams aren’t optimal, and only because someone directly confronted him with the absurdity of that suggestion. 

It is, frankly, way too much work to have a conversation in these forums about anything other than WLs when the same few posters jump in and spam gospel about them for pages.

 

(FYI, I’ve been playing FE games a very long time and have seen some seriously broken shit. WLs are good in this game, but are being significantly overrated. I’d dare say they’re not even better than FE9 paladins.)

Edited August 26, 2019 by ApocaLips

[Dark Holy Elf]

Critical hits do not deserve serious hype because they're unreliable and hence inferior to methods of reliably ORKOing enemies which demonstrably exist, particularly on the player phase.

Wyvern Lords can deal with beasts extremely well, and are certainly a better overall class at it than any foot class, because they have a much easier time getting to to the harder to reach back panels and launching their barrier-breaking gambits or weakness-hits. Archers are also useful because of their ease of targetting hard-to-reach parts of the barrier. If you don't care about breaking beasts for their drops and just want to get one piece of their barrier down then pile damage into that, fist-users still don't excel at this, because they don't actually deal out higher damage than other options except at narrow AS thresholds where they double and a brave user doesn't, and being stuck on a melee unit without canto means they'll then permanently occupy the (potentially only) melee spot that will be able to strike the monster in the spot where you broke the barrier.

Melee infantry just have fewer tactical options, which is why they get less respect. They would need significantly better combat to make up for this, and they don't have that. You brought up Path of Radiance, and it's the exact same problems they had there. Paladins/fliers in FE9 aren't broken because of killing power (for instance, when he joins in midgame Stefan has clearly better killing power), they're broken because of their mobility and canto, and their killing power is good enough.

(And no, before I get hit with this strawman, I'm not saying you should 12 wyvern lords. But gauntlet-users are one of the weakest overall options, compared to fliers, horse units, archers, and mages. By and large, other roles can do the same things they do, but the reverse is not true.)

[hinode]

So far Crimson Flower is the only route I've beaten through endgame, and the last two maps of that route (especially 17, yeesh the terrain on that stage) really do make fliers the dominant combat option outside of siege magic, which you only get a few shots of per-map. If you're on a self-imposed challenge to see every single map gimmick and fight every single monster unit possible, then sure, go ahead and make a team full of earthbound War Masters or whatever. But fliers backed by mages with warp/physic/Meteor/etc. are pretty self-evidently the best choice for anything resembling a fast playthrough for those stages.

 

I say this as someone who's only done one mostly blind playthrough of CF and thus didn't have the foresight to actually make that optimal team comp, but it was pretty noticable how much more effective that one flier I did have was; she could zoom around and target pretty much whoever I want while everyone else was stuck slowly slogging through rough terrain.

Edited August 27, 2019 by hinode

[ApocaLips]

10 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Critical hits do not deserve serious hype because they're unreliable and hence inferior to methods of reliably ORKOing enemies which demonstrably exist, particularly on the player phase.

Wyvern Lords can deal with beasts extremely well, and are certainly a better overall class at it than any foot class, because they have a much easier time getting to to the harder to reach back panels and launching their barrier-breaking gambits or weakness-hits. Archers are also useful because of their ease of targetting hard-to-reach parts of the barrier. If you don't care about breaking beasts for their drops and just want to get one piece of their barrier down then pile damage into that, fist-users still don't excel at this, because they don't actually deal out higher damage than other options except at narrow AS thresholds where they double and a brave user doesn't, and being stuck on a melee unit without canto means they'll then permanently occupy the (potentially only) melee spot that will be able to strike the monster in the spot where you broke the barrier.

Melee infantry just have fewer tactical options, which is why they get less respect. They would need significantly better combat to make up for this, and they don't have that. You brought up Path of Radiance, and it's the exact same problems they had there. Paladins/fliers in FE9 aren't broken because of killing power (for instance, when he joins in midgame Stefan has clearly better killing power), they're broken because of their mobility and canto, and their killing power is good enough.

(And no, before I get hit with this strawman, I'm not saying you should 12 wyvern lords. But gauntlet-users are one of the weakest overall options, compared to fliers, horse units, archers, and mages. By and large, other roles can do the same things they do, but the reverse is not true.)

Putting aside that the critical hit percentages can get very high in this game, that the comment is irrelevant because I mentioned it solely to explain that the math proposed was incorrect, and that saying another type of weapon user does reasonably well in a certain circumstance in no way impacts whether something else has “no niche”....

I find the comment on FE9 to be the most peculiar and entertaining part of this post. As you (and I) said, FE9 paladins were very strong (although part of this was that they tended to have overall better stat caps than most any other class, but that’s beside the point). IMO, they were generally way more OP than WL are here. Yet even in that game, no one was seriously saying you shouldn’t use Nephenee, Shinnon, etc. 

What’s been going on here is the equivalent of whenever someone is talking about Nephenee, someone else interjects with pages upon pages of what boils down to ‘Nephenee isn’t optimal because she’s not Oscar.’ This is honestly not much of an exaggeration, if at all. 

[hinode]

...um, people absolutely do say that about FE9. Especially Shinon, he's pretty terrible there.

[Jakkun]

25 minutes ago, hinode said:

go ahead and make a team full of earthbound War Masters or whatever.

I know this definitely wasn't what you meant by that wording, but I'm imagining Ness as a War Master and that gave me quite a chucke lol

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 hour ago, ApocaLips said:

What’s been going on here is the equivalent of whenever someone is talking about Nephenee, someone else interjects with pages upon pages of what boils down to ‘Nephenee isn’t optimal because she’s not Oscar.’ This is honestly not much of an exaggeration, if at all. 

Nobody is saying you can't use Nephenee, just as nobody is saying you can't use War Master. They're fine. (Shinon is trash though.)

What we are saying is that objectively better options exist, in both cases. And the claim that Oscar is completely superior to Nephenee is an extremely common one in tier discussion (because he is).

[Silly]

This sort of discussion happens every time someone brings up "best" or "tier list".

No Fire Emblem game is hard enough to the point where you are pretty much required to play in a specific way to beat it, outside of "dumb" difficulties like early game Awakening Lunatic. Given that this game is a single player game, you are free to experience it however you like. If you want to play using only "low tier" units or classes, that's up to you. If you want a run using only your lord, or only females, or only sword users, that's also up to you. I've personally done many of these things, despite most of this being what is supposedly "inefficient". (As a side note, don't do all mages RD, 4-E-3 is basically impossible and requires grinding Kurth for 50+ turns to clear the map.)

But despite doing dumb stuff all the time, I do my best to look at things objectively.

Is Paladin Amelia better than General Amelia? Definitely. Does this mean that General Amelia won't be able to beat the game? Not at all. Does Paladin Amelia being better than General Amelia mean that I'm only going to be using Paladin? Heck no. Gimme dat big General hunk of metal. My Amelia will tank enemies just as hard as she tanks my turn count, and I'll like it that way.

However, when talking about things like tier lists or optimal class paths online, I'm not going to say that General Amelia is the best unit just because I have used her in that way and beaten the game with it.

[Jayvee94]

The true purpose of picking the best class is to make the difficulty easier. I'm not gonna stop you guys from having a bit too much fun. 😆

[charcoalswift]

Warmaster is underrated, I got Caspar who reached 100 crit with Wild Abandon on Killer Axe+

[Jayvee94]

Before we proceed, let's keep the topic about the characters we are currently voting for. If you want to talk about different characters, make sure to vote for them for the next round.

Next round starts on August 29 9:30 PHT (my home timezone) OR when this topic moves on to page 2.*

*provided there's no tie needs to be broken.

[freewaffles]

6 hours ago, Silly said:

Overall, using primarily axes is probably better. For the most part you are killing the same things, but the additional flexibility of being able to pick up really high might axes against bulkier enemies, use effective weaponry, and sometimes pick up a 1-2 range weapon here or there is helpful. Gauntlets can be kept for the niche where the enemy has a gigantic health pool (beasts), or when you are both too slow to double and cannot just one-shot someone with an axe (which is fairly rare, but could happen sometimes).

 

I agree, using axes over fists in the large majority of cases is superior.  I typically reserve gauntlets only for Mages (to avoid the big incoming hit since WMs tend to have bad Res) that a Helm Splitter or other Axe CA won't OHKO. 

But the argument addressed was Shaodw Mir's statement that War Masters were bad because, "Gauntlets have very little use on enemy phase, possibly even none. They're only good for player phase, but unfortunately, other weapons tend to be good for both player and enemy phase. It doesn't help that they are range locked, nor does it that they're not usable by mounted units. Axes are too heavy and inaccurate for me to want to rely on." 

I suggest merely that Silver Gauntlets are comparable to Silver Lances for enemy phase. Nothing more, nothing less.  I don't address Spears (which do crap damage and are heavy anyway), but readily admit that a Silver Bow is objectively better than a Silver Gauntlet, even if doing near identical damage, for enemy phase thanks to the range and Close Counter.

_________________

As for WL, I like in your analysis of Axe v. Gauntlet that you mentioned the batallion.  People, myself included, have largely ignored the limited number of flying batallions and the extra authority required for those that do exist.  As I recall, no route has more than 4 available flying batallions. This creates a second soft cap (in addition to flying training time) on how many flyers you can have as not having a batallion attached more than negates the +4 str bonus of Wyvern Lord.

Edited August 27, 2019 by freewaffles

[LegendOfLoog]

13 minutes ago, freewaffles said:

As for WL, I like in your analysis of Axe v. Gauntlet that you mentioned the batallion.  People, myself included, have largely ignored the limited number of flying batallions and the extra authority required for those that do exist.  As I recall, no route has more than 4 available Flying.  This is creates a soft cap on how many flyers you have as not having a batallion attached more than negates the +4 str bonus of Wyvern Lord.

Small point regarding the number of flying battalions. At least in BL, there are more than 4. You get two Seiros Pegasus battalions (one from shop and one from Seteth), one Kingdom Pegasus Battalions, and one Kingdom Wyvern Battalion. On top of this, you get one Cichol Wyvern Battalion from Flayn/Seteth paralogue and one Galatea Pegasus Battalion from Ingrid’s paralogue. However, the Cichol battalion is locked at A rank Authority, making it difficult to achieve for most units. Also, the lower level ones are fairly weak, so riding and infantry units might be able to get better stats simply from battalions.

Edited August 27, 2019 by LegendOfLoog