What's up with Aptitude and other boost-growths skills?

[De Geso]

2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

High strength alone does not a good unit make. Just look at the GBA fighters, who Raphael reminds me of. They were much the same - high strength and little else. Needless to say, it didn't take them far. So why should I believe that Raphael doesn't suck??? Because as things are, I'm MUCH better off recruiting a superior unit (read: literally anyone else) and using them instead of continuing to invest in an experience black hole. Oh, and this is assuming that I started with the Golden Deer in the first place; otherwise, why should I go out of my way to recruit him???

The difference between the GBA fighters and Raphael is that the former do not have access to brave weapons at E rank. Even if they are low-might, Raphael still does 12x2 damage to any enemy (15x2 with Hilda support) at base which is enough to take off about half their health on Maddening.

You keep jumping around in circles, Levant. The point of the discussion is: does early game Raphael have a niche, and does that niche make him more valuable than Cyril? Considering that he is tied for highest Strength of the Golden Deer (not counting Byleth), I would say, "Yes, he does, in that he can do fairly accurate and fairly high damage to a unit on the player phase without needing to use a combat art and has the HP (highest in the GD outright) and defense (tied for highest in the GD) to take on 2 enemies on EP, which is something almost no other unit on Maddening can say besides Dedue who you don't have and Byleth who is broken.

He falls off quickly, yes, and he is not a particularly good unit, but he can contribute at base and for another chapter or two and Cyril cannot. Raphael is a bad unit but he is certainly better than Cyril, who would have bad bases in Chapter 1. It's kind of silly to argue this point when the only stat level 1 Cyril has over level 1 Raphael is a single point of Res. He grows to be better, sure, but who cares when getting him there is troublesome?

Edited October 14, 2019 by De Geso

[Florete]

45 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

High strength alone does not a good unit make. Just look at the GBA fighters, who Raphael reminds me of. They were much the same - high strength and little else. Needless to say, it didn't take them far. So why should I believe that Raphael doesn't suck??? Because as things are, I'm MUCH better off recruiting a superior unit (read: literally anyone else) and using them instead of continuing to invest in an experience black hole. Oh, and this is assuming that I started with the Golden Deer in the first place; otherwise, why should I go out of my way to recruit him??? Besides that, gauntlets' poor enemy phase, range lock, and general lack of flexibility are just too bad for me to ignore.

If GBA fighters had access to E rank brave weapons, they’d be pretty good. This is a really stupid argument; these are two completely different games.

The only point I made that requires starting in GD is Hilda.

Raphael can also use hand axes.

You’re stuck in a mindset and making bad or non-existant arguments to defend it. Barely anything you’ve said here has any meaning.

[Arachnofiend]

Honestly, the GBA Fighters are a pretty good comparison but not for the reasons Mir thinks. Bartre sucks because he has low skill and speed, give him a high accuracy weapon that lets him double regardless of his speed stat and suddenly he starts to look a lot better.

[Shadow Mir]

5 hours ago, Florete said:

Raphael can also use hand axes.

Sure, except they're weak, heavy, and inaccurate, aka not worth it. And he's already slow as molasses to begin with, so that's not much help.

5 hours ago, Florete said:

If GBA fighters had access to E rank brave weapons, they’d be pretty good. 

Except these brave weapons have laughable might. That might have been good in the GBA games because enemies are weak in those games (except for FE6), but in the context of 3 Houses, I'm not impressed.

5 hours ago, Florete said:

 The only point I made that requires starting in GD is Hilda.

If I'm starting in GD, I also have Leonie, who's also much better than he is. Between her, Hilda, and Byleth, is it any wonder that I see Raphael as a lost cause? Sure, he might stop sucking once he gets to War Master, but if he needs to make it to a Master tier class to not suck, that is a Texas sized red flag.

5 hours ago, De Geso said:

The difference between the GBA fighters and Raphael is that the former do not have access to brave weapons at E rank. Even if they are low-might, Raphael still does 12x2 damage to any enemy (15x2 with Hilda support) which is enough to take off about half their health on Maddening.

You keep jumping around in circles, Levant. The point of the discussion is: does early game Raphael have a niche, and does that niche make him more valuable than Cyril? Considering that he is tied for highest Strength of the Golden Deer (not counting Byleth), I would say, "Yes, he does, in that he can do fairly accurate and fairly high damage to a unit on the player phase without needing to use a combat art and has the HP (highest in the GD outright) and defense (tied for highest in the GD) to take on 2 enemies on EP, which is something almost no other unit on Maddening can say besides Dedue who you don't have and Byleth who is broken.

He falls off quickly, yes, and he is not a particularly good unit, but he can contribute at base and for another chapter or two and Cyril cannot. Raphael is a bad unit but he is certainly better than Cyril, who would have bad bases in Chapter 1. It's kind of silly to argue this point when the only stat level 1 Cyril has over level 1 Raphael is a single point of Res. He grows to be better, sure, but who cares when getting him there is troublesome?

And then he gets eviscerated in return unless someone else weakened them for him. Of course, considering that you need to weaken enemies first because they hit so hard, why should I give those kills to Raphael instead of someone else who actually has prospects of being usable in Maddening??

Unfortunately, he's not even that much more durable than Hilda is starting out (woohoo, 1 more HP and defense!). And I'm not sure his growths are going to enable him to get to a point where he actually has a meaningful defensive advantage over her ever, especially since his having the lowest speed growth at 15 ensures he gets doubled all the time.

You can't recruit Cyril until around chapter 5 (assuming you're not aligned with the Black Eagles), so that point is moot.

Edited October 14, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Florete]

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Sure, except they're weak, heavy, and inaccurate, aka not worth it. And he's already slow as molasses to begin with, so that's not much help.

You complained about gauntlets not having ranged options. I offered an alternative Raphael can use.

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

If I'm starting in GD, I also have Leonie, who's also much better than he is. Between her, Hilda, and Byleth, is it any wonder that I see Raphael as a lost cause? Sure, he might stop sucking once he gets to War Master, but if he needs to make it to a Master tier class to not suck, that is a Texas sized red flag.

You're doing a lot of confirmation bias here and in general. You're not looking at what Raphael can do and coming to the conclusion that he's bad, you've already decided he's bad and are coming up with arguments to validate that belief. A ton of your arguments are meaningless. You mentioned GBA fighters, but why do they matter? You said you could recruit a superior unit, but so what? You can recruit Raphael, too. You called him "an experience black hole," and that right there is clear evidence of your bias; you're not going to use him because you've already decided he's not worth it, therefore you shouldn't use him. It's circular logic.

I made a post briefly outlining advantages of gauntlets and showing multiple ways of stacking damage. You quoted it, but you didn't really respond to any of it. You merely restated your beliefs.

[De Geso]

13 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

And then he gets eviscerated in return unless someone else weakened them for him. Of course, considering that you need to weaken enemies first because they hit so hard, why should I give those kills to Raphael instead of someone else who actually has prospects of being usable in Maddening??

Unfortunately, he's not even that much more durable than Hilda is starting out (woohoo, 1 more HP and defense!). And I'm not sure his growths are going to enable him to get to a point where he actually has a meaningful defensive advantage over her ever, especially since his having the lowest speed growth at 15 ensures he gets doubled all the time.

You can't recruit Cyril until around chapter 5 (assuming you're not aligned with the Black Eagles), so that point is moot.

Raphael can weaken the units for your long-term characters to get the kills. I know that's a scary thought, having a unit at low HP, but as long as he doesn't die (which he won't if he faces only one enemy prior to healing) it doesn't matter.

He's more durable than Hilda to the degree that it is significant. In the early game, when both units get doubled, he takes 2 less damage per round of combat which can, in some cases, mean he is surviving two rounds when she isn't. I'm not talking about his growth potential, stop changing the subject. I'm talking about what he is able to do at base that gives him a niche, not what makes him this stellar growth unit, because he should be benched fairly early for a better combat unit.

No, that is my point - Cyril, at base, at chapter 5, is worse than Raphael at chapter 1. His stats, point-for-point, in each stat, are lower than Raphael's (except Res and Charm which are not relevant to either character's performance) four chapters later. He is garbage at base at a time when the rest of your army has been trained to some degree. Raphael may be awful, he may be the worst student in the game, but that isn't the point - is he better than Cyril on Maddening? Yes, demonstrably, because he has some kind of marginally effective early-game niche which the latter can not boast. Cyril can grow into a better unit than Raphael, yes, but that does not matter in the context of Maddening where your units are either Byleth, your lord, one or two trained in-house units, and recruits with good bases. "Time to grow" is so limited in Maddening Cyril is not who you want to spend it on.

I know your Raphael died a couple times on Hard so you hate him and think he's worse than garbage, but you have to look at things objectively. (No, "he's slow and gets doubled so he is automatically horrible" is not objective). I don't go around saying Annette is the best mage in the game because my Annette is magic-blessed and one-shots everything. Objectively, she is simply not that good at it (rally utility not being relevant to her performance as an offensive magic unit).

[Shadow Mir]

On 10/14/2019 at 9:34 PM, Florete said:

You complained about gauntlets not having ranged options. I offered an alternative Raphael can use.

They're an alternative, I'll admit, just not a good one. 10 wt/4 might hand axes on a unit that's already slow to the point he's at risk of frequently getting doubled and is nowhere near durable enough to compensate for it does that unit no favours.

On 10/14/2019 at 9:34 PM, Florete said:

You're doing a lot of confirmation bias here and in general. You're not looking at what Raphael can do and coming to the conclusion that he's bad, you've already decided he's bad and are coming up with arguments to validate that belief. A ton of your arguments are meaningless. You mentioned GBA fighters, but why do they matter? You said you could recruit a superior unit, but so what? You can recruit Raphael, too. You called him "an experience black hole," and that right there is clear evidence of your bias; you're not going to use him because you've already decided he's not worth it, therefore you shouldn't use him. It's circular logic.

 I made a post briefly outlining advantages of gauntlets and showing multiple ways of stacking damage. You quoted it, but you didn't really respond to any of it. You merely restated your beliefs.

I say it's less confirmation bias and more that I find it very, very hard to find a situation where Raphael can do his job better than the other three I mentioned because they're not being doubled constantly and he is, which isn't helped by the fact that he's not nearly durable enough to make up for it (he only has 1 HP and Defense over Hilda, 4 HP over Leonie, and 3 Hp and 1 defense over Byleth at base). And I think what advantages gauntlets have aren't enough to make up for the downsides (being good player phase weapons ain't much help when you're talking about a series where enemy phase tends to be more important, and gauntlets are horseshit on enemy phase). Sure, they're "good" if you master Brigand and such, but what about before then...? Not that that helps much when other weapon types can do the stuff gauntlets can do, but better, while gauntlets cannot do the stuff other weapons can. Some of the other stuff you mentioned  (Fistfaire, Fierce Iron Fist) requires him to see a lot of use (enough to make it to Advanced classes), which is a very dicey proposition when his stat build does NOT age well.

Edited October 16, 2019 by Shadow Mir