Overrated Characters?

[samthedigital]

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The best nukers is one that does not restrict you to the low movement, no canto gremory because you have so few ammunitions on your big guns and so many enemies require one speciphic spell.

It really depends on what you're trying to do. In an LTC context for example Lysithea needs all of the resources she can get to have a high warp range, and consequently there isn't any room to build any other magic users for combat. In a speedrunning context Lysithea is not that useful (I am aware that she is useful in some categories, but she isn't a combat unit), so she could be considered to be overrated in that context, but people don't generally consider this when talking about overrated characters and the like. Otherwise it's going to depend on what the individual player wants more in a unit.

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Thyrsus will make almost any mage amazing. That's the problem - people attribute to Lysithea the praise they should be attributing to Thyrsus, which is a broken accessory.

That logic doesn't lead us anywhere. Even if she was only good because of Thyrsus we can break down any character that way.

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 11/15/2019 at 8:12 PM, samthedigital said:

Ike exists in a far easier game, and he does not have the durability or damage dealing issues that they have. There are also more incentive to actually give him resources and level him in a game where this is also much easier and more efficient to do.

Damage: not sure why you say that.

Eirika: 4+40% str
Eliwood: 5+45% str
Ike: 5+50% str

Eliwood and Ike are basically tied (by the time Ike leads by over a point, Eliwood has access to lances). It seems like he has a small lead on Eirika, until you remember her support with Seth grants full power (Ike isn't getting more than 1 power from supports realistically), so again they're basically equal. What isn't equal by the way, is their speed: Eirika doubles more than the other two early, though later on all should do it easily. She's also got the best Rapier since it's the only one with a 3x multiplier.

Durability: Ike does have a minor lead on durability, though realistically none of the three are in much danger of dying once they get rolling with supports. Ike gets full avoid (+30!) from Oscar, Eirika gets full def/res from Seth, Eliwood gets full def/res/avo from Hector, all of which are some of the easiest supports to get. Eirika's in a slightly worse place at base, (3 def and 16 HP compared to Ike's 5/19) but it's not as bad as it sounds because non-mage PC defence is just higher in PoR generally (e.g. how Oscar starts with 8 compared to Franz starting with 6). All three start as some of the squishier people on the team, though not so squishy that they're at all hard to level, and grow into frontliners.

[Shadow Mir]

17 hours ago, Ari Chan said:

Lysithea is clearly the best candidate for Thyrsus and all the Magic Stat boosters in the game though, she’s only a few points away from OHKOing most late game enemies in Maddening thanks to having the highest Mag stat late game, most damaging spells (Hades & Dark Spikes) and Luna for Gremory/Falcon Knight/ Boss nuking.

Thyrsus makes even horrendous mage like Annette or Lorenz good but that doesn’t change the fact that the Relic is best given to Lysithea (or Dorothea, Hubert if you don’t have her on your team).

Crap like this is exactly why I see Lysithea as overrated. Anyone would be amazing with special treatment on that scale, so I don't see why she deserves it whatsoever.

Edited November 17, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Ari Chan]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Crap like this is exactly why I see Lysithea as overrated. Anyone would be amazing with special treatment on that scale, so I don't see why she deserves it whatsoever.

Because you only have enough resources to make 1 Magic Nuke in Maddening and Lysithea (or maybe Hubert with Flores's Frozen Lance build mentioned above idk) requires the least amount of investment thanks to her already very high base Mag and having a Spell List that specializes for nuking stuffs? Any other mages in this game will require you to spend more time farming for additional Magic stat boosters in order to achieve the same result because the 3 or 4 Spirit Dusts you get throughout the game aren't enough.What you said also applies to whoever Dodgetank Flier (or Bow Knight) powerhouse you choose to invest in, obviously you also need to feed them a lot of Speedwings/Speed Carrots, give them Evasion Rings (which are also rare), grind for skills like Alert Stance +, Vantage, Defiant Avoid, etc. and have them equipped with expensive forged weapons like Wo Dao+ in order for them to turn out amazing. All combat units in Maddening requires special treatment to stay relevant and perform well, some just requires less investment than others (except for trash like Caspar and Raphael of course).

Also I don't see how late game Lysithea has accuracy issues with Hades and Luna, during my last VW Maddening run she's having around 130 base hit with both spells and all I did was giving her the Macuil Evil Repelling Co battalion from the shop that gives + 30 hit at max rank (I still have my save file here if you want proof), magic also ignores terrain avo bonus so she's not having a rough time trying to kill enemies that hide in forest tiles.

Edited November 17, 2019 by Ari Chan

[Shadow Mir]

On 11/11/2019 at 9:17 AM, Etheus said:

IMO, Erk isn't even close to being bad. But he does compare unfavorably to an orbital nuke who happens to be available at the same time - Lucius.

I agree that Erk isn't that bad, but I think Lucius is also overrated - sure, he has higher magic, but once again, is it really necessary when dealing with Blazing Blade's wimpy enemies???

[Troykv]

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Crap like this is exactly why I see Lysithea as overrated. Anyone would be amazing with special treatment on that scale, so I don't see why she deserves it whatsoever.

One would say the same about something like the fact a lot of people put every stat booster in the game in Jill because she is a flier (aka: having an inherited advantage compared with the alternatives, like Nolan).

It happens the same with Lysithea, except instead of Flying skills is her ability to quickly got powerful spells and stats with least investment (also Dark Spikes is pretty much unique to her before mid/late game).

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Troykv said:

One would say the same about something like the fact a lot of people put every stat booster in the game in Jill because she is a flier (aka: having an inherited advantage compared with the alternatives, like Nolan).

It happens the same with Lysithea, except instead of Flying skills is her ability to quickly got powerful spells and stats with least investment (also Dark Spikes is pretty much unique to her before mid/late game).

Problem is, her spell list isn't that great (Luna isn't the gamebreaker it was in Blazing Blade, Dark Spikes, while good against cavalry, isn't that useful because with the exception of one enemy, cavalry units aren't that threatening, and Hades is not nearly powerful enough to make up for its iffy hit [woo-hoo, it's only 3 points stronger than Ragnarok, while being -15 hit compared to it! And this is a game where magic hit doesn't follow the normal formula, so hit rates are liable to be an issue, too - after all, what good does a nuke do you if you miss?? Absolutely nothing!]). Her case isn't helped by the fact that Warlock boosts other mages' spell uses and power, which she doesn't benefit from at all. For someone who get a lot of hype as the so-called best mage in the game, she ain't impressing me at all.

Edited November 17, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Troykv]

1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

Problem is, her spell list isn't that great (Luna isn't the gamebreaker it was in Blazing Blade, Dark Spikes, while good against cavalry, isn't that useful because with the exception of one enemy, cavalry units aren't that threatening, and Hades is not nearly powerful enough to make up for its iffy hit [woo-hoo, it's only 3 points stronger than Ragnarok, while being -15 hit compared to it! And this is a game where magic hit doesn't follow the normal formula, so hit rates are liable to be an issue, too]). Her case isn't helped by the fact that Warlock boosts other mages' spell uses and power, which she doesn't benefit from at all. For someone who get a lot of hype as the so-called best mage in the game, she ain't impressing me at all.

I agree Lysithea is overhyped, but there is good reason to say she is one of the best mages.

[Shadow Mir]

Just now, Troykv said:

I agree Lysithea is overhyped, but there is good reason to say she is one of the best mages.

Like what? Just saying that doesn't make it true, you know...

[Troykv]

1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

Like what? Just saying that doesn't make it true, you know...

Well, I already explained it, and more people had come to comment about it; it would just turn this thread into an endless loop of discussing Lysithea's utility.

But basically; access to Warp and Dark Spikes, powerful magic for ocasional nukes with Hades, the highest Magic Growth alongside the second highest base mage, access to Mastermind, making her the fastest to get good ranks in Reason Magic.

Technically I think Hubert is about as good as Lysithea, because of similar Magic stats and sharing some of the spells, but he lacks Warp and Early Dark Spikes.

Edited November 17, 2019 by Troykv

[samthedigital]

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Eliwood and Ike are basically tied (by the time Ike leads by over a point, Eliwood has access to lances). It seems like he has a small lead on Eirika, until you remember her support with Seth grants full power (Ike isn't getting more than 1 power from supports realistically), so again they're basically equal. What isn't equal by the way, is their speed: Eirika doubles more than the other two early, though later on all should do it easily.

Ike has access to forges and bonus experience. The other important thing to consider is that it takes time to get supports in the GBA FE games compared to FE9. You don't want to look at stats in a vacuum because it doesn't really show us anything important. If we spam maps with Marcus/Seth or whatever the lords just don't have any time to catch up either; Ike doesn't have that problem.

Edited November 18, 2019 by samthedigital

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 hours ago, samthedigital said:

If we spam maps with Marcus/Seth or whatever the lords just don't have any time to catch up either; Ike doesn't have that problem.

Path of Radiance is one of the most cavalry friendly games, and just as prone to having Titania stomp all over the map as FE7/FE8 is to have Marcus/Seth do so. Ike not only has this  problem, he has it far worse, for with bonus experience, forges, and autopromoting at level 20 Oscar, Kieran, Jill etc. can far more easily become just as dominate as Titania, and with the better form of Canto player phasing enemies doesn't slow mounted down like in FE7/8. You can use forges and bonus experience to bolster Ike, but they just as easily be used to make the mounted units gods that will keep any infantry unit from moving fast enough to be relevant. There is a reason Path of Radiance is remembered as one of the horse emblem games, but like all Fire Emblem games it depends on how you want to play it, and not everyone will play FE9 the same way you will.

[Garlyle]

For the Lysithea part, I think she's still the best candidate. Outside of Black Eagles units, she's the only one who can learn dark spell, which are pretty damn good in my book. She's basically made out of tinfoil paper, but so is Annette. Her high Mag that reaches 40 easily is something I can't just ignore, as it's used to easily one-shot enemies with her set of spells, but also she can heal a lot with a single Heal spell. Of course I'm still looking at her mainly for her offense, also thanks to her potentially high Spd - I'm sure it can be useful even in Maddening runs, this stat put a bad light on some mages for me. But the best thing about all this is that she learns spells much sooner than others, and because of her crest giving her even more power.

She's overpowered, not overrated - that's how I see it.

[samthedigital]

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Ike not only has this  problem, he has it far worse

You either misinterpreted what I said or I did not say it clearly. I was referring to experience and not in terms of catching up to enemies. The game hands us so many resources that we can reasonably assume that Ike will be on level with some sort of forge most of the time. The lords in FE6-FE8 do not have this luxury.

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make the mounted units gods that will keep any infantry unit from moving fast enough to be relevant

You're also simplifying this a little too much. There are certainly situations where Ike is a servicable unit. He has all game to contribute. It can be reasonably assumed that he is going to be fighting some enemies given that he sometimes needs to get to the boss to seize, recruit a character here and there, or he can clear a secondary objective where movement isn't as important.

[Eltosian Kadath]

52 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

You either misinterpreted what I said or I did not say it clearly. I was referring to experience and not in terms of catching up to enemies. The game hands us so many resources that we can reasonably assume that Ike will be on level with some sort of forge most of the time. The lords in FE6-FE8 do not have this luxury.

Ike is only on par if that is how you want to play, and any resource spent on him can easily be spent elsewhere. Even in FE6-8 you can perform rescue drops, arrange for kills, or simply slow your pace to ensure the lords can get the experience they need to compete (although story promotions may limit things). As with Ike, how much experience they have is down to how you want to play. Your assumption that the FE6-8 lords wouldn't get the experience they need due to the cavalry getting it all made it clear you were looking at an efficient or LTC style of play, and if you give the same treatment to FE9 you wouldn't waste such valuable resources on Ike when they could be better used by your mounted units.

 

57 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

You're also simplifying this a little too much. There are certainly situations where Ike is a servicable unit. He has all game to contribute. It can be reasonably assumed that he is going to be fighting some enemies given that he sometimes needs to get to the boss to seize, recruit a character here and there, or he can clear a secondary objective where movement isn't as important.

I have only simplified things as much as you have simplified the situation with the other lords. The lords have always been needed to recruit or seize. It can be reasonably assumed that they are going to be fighting some enemies given that they sometimes needs to get to the boss to seize, recruit a character here and there, or they can clear a secondary objective where movement isn't as important.

[samthedigital]

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Ike is only on par if that is how you want to play, and any resource spent on him can easily be spent elsewhere. Even in FE6-8 you can perform rescue drops, arrange for kills, or simply slow your pace to ensure the lords can get the experience they need to compete (although story promotions may limit things). 

It's possible to invest heavily into mounted units and still feed bonus experience to Ike. I'm not sure why you're under the assumption that the two are mutually exclusive. We don't need to slow the pace down or suffer for Ike to be a competent unit.

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 have only simplified things as much as you have simplified the situation with the other lords. The lords have always been needed to recruit or seize. It can be reasonably assumed that they are going to be fighting some enemies given that they sometimes needs to get to the boss to seize, recruit a character here and there, or they can clear a secondary objective where movement isn't as important.

This doesn't work for the other games because you can't reasonably assume these things when it might just be better to not train the lords or have them babied to the throne. (Edit) It doesn't help that Eliwood promotes too late in his story and doesn't do those things in Hector's story. Eliwood isn't that durable either. I'm not sure if it's the quality of enemies or the fact that he is not able to get the same kind of treatment that Ike gets for free, but he definitely has durability issues in many different chapters. HHM is a far different beast compared to FE9 HM. I don't know FE8 that well, but I'm going to assume that Eirika's defenses are low enough that she isn't a reliable frontline unit even if she wanted to be.

Double edit:

If you're interested in examples you can look at the respective speedruns of the games. They are generally done on the easier difficulties, but it's not going to be terribly different on hard mode. They will probably do a better job of showing you than my wall of text trying to explain it to you. If you can't be bothered then I'll just note that Ike gets to 20/15 or so whereas the FE7/8 lords are hardly above their base level at the end of the run.

Edited November 18, 2019 by samthedigital

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, Garlyle said:

For the Lysithea part, I think she's still the best candidate. Outside of Black Eagles units, she's the only one who can learn dark spell, which are pretty damn good in my book. She's basically made out of tinfoil paper, but so is Annette. Her high Mag that reaches 40 easily is something I can't just ignore, as it's used to easily one-shot enemies with her set of spells, but also she can heal a lot with a single Heal spell. Of course I'm still looking at her mainly for her offense, also thanks to her potentially high Spd - I'm sure it can be useful even in Maddening runs, this stat put a bad light on some mages for me. But the best thing about all this is that she learns spells much sooner than others, and because of her crest giving her even more power.

She's overpowered, not overrated - that's how I see it.

You must have really low standards for being overpowered. Or be very, very, VERY generous.

13 hours ago, Troykv said:

Well, I already explained it, and more people had come to comment about it; it would just turn this thread into an endless loop of discussing Lysithea's utility.

But basically; access to Warp and Dark Spikes, powerful magic for ocasional nukes with Hades, the highest Magic Growth alongside the second highest base mage, access to Mastermind, making her the fastest to get good ranks in Reason Magic.

Technically I think Hubert is about as good as Lysithea, because of similar Magic stats and sharing some of the spells, but he lacks Warp and Early Dark Spikes.

I already explained Warp before - only one use until you become a Bishop or Gremory. Dark Spikes isn't that great unless cavalry units are the bane of your existence. Hades Omega is Awesome But Impractical - it has high power at the cost of shit hit and high weight - a losing combination, to be sure. I'd much rather have something like Excalibur instead. Oh, and I must note that Lysithea's default lesson plan does not include Faith, meaning if you didn't pick the Golden Deer to start, you're going to want to have to go out of your way to recruit her early if you want Warp in a timely fashion.

Anyway, to get back on topic: Most wyvern riders. For all the extra investment they need over pegasus knights, I'm not convinced it pays off that much more.  The only exceptions are Camilla, who starts off overpowered (and is in a game with two armies anyway), Haar, who starts off rather powerful and has relatively good availability in a game where availability is overall wonky, and Miledy.

Edited November 18, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[De Geso]

4 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I already explained Warp before - only one use until you become a Bishop or Gremory. Dark Spikes isn't that great unless cavalry units are the bane of your existence. Hades Omega is Awesome But Impractical - it has high power at the cost of shit hit and high weight - a losing combination, to be sure. 

You only need one Warp in boss-kill maps (a good amount of 3H's maps). Dark Spikes is still good against non-cavalry units and on Maddening is capable of one hitting a lot of enemies (source: my current GD run on Maddening). Saying it's only good against horses is a misnomer and really disingenuous man. It's not like she's garbage, she's just not the master god of everything that people make her out to be.

3 hours ago, Garlyle said:

For the Lysithea part, I think she's still the best candidate. Outside of Black Eagles units, she's the only one who can learn dark spell, which are pretty damn good in my book. She's basically made out of tinfoil paper, but so is Annette. Her high Mag that reaches 40 easily is something I can't just ignore, as it's used to easily one-shot enemies with her set of spells, but also she can heal a lot with a single Heal spell. Of course I'm still looking at her mainly for her offense, also thanks to her potentially high Spd - I'm sure it can be useful even in Maddening runs, this stat put a bad light on some mages for me. But the best thing about all this is that she learns spells much sooner than others, and because of her crest giving her even more power.

She's overpowered, not overrated - that's how I see it.

I don't think a unit who gets doubled and one-rounded by archers is overpowered. Mastermind is pretty good, though, which I didn't think about.

16 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I agree that Erk isn't that bad, but I think Lucius is also overrated - sure, he has higher magic, but once again, is it really necessary when dealing with Blazing Blade's wimpy enemies???

Lucius is hardly overrated. In fact I think his uses as a staff-bot are underappreciated since he gets barrier right when he promotes and he can start warping with his fuckhuge magic not long after that. Of course, you also get Pent, and both will be around when Warp is actually available, so the point is somewhat moot.

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 hours ago, samthedigital said:

It's possible to invest heavily into mounted units and still feed bonus experience to Ike. I'm not sure why you're under the assumption that the two are mutually exclusive. We don't need to slow the pace down or suffer for Ike to be a competent unit.

It does slow you down, and can make you suffer. Giving bonus xp to Ike means it does not get to one of your other units, which means it takes longer for units to get the extra movement from promotion, you have to act more cautiously due to less bulk, or have to spend more time to kill enemies on player phase, and any of these failing could lead to a reset or death. Same idea with forges, if one is going to Ike, one isn't going to one of your units that can reach combat, which means it takes longer to wipe out the enemies that need to die.

 

2 hours ago, samthedigital said:

This doesn't work for the other games because you can't reasonably assume these things when it might just be better to not train the lords or have them babied to the throne.

Making that assumption reasonable cost resources. If you baby Ike to the throne, you no longer have to spend those resources on making that assumption reasonable, and those resources can instead be spent on units that can see combat without intentionally slowing your pace to a crawl to justify the expense. For other lords to make this assumption reasonable it would take a lot of favoritism, and expending the resources needed to let Ike make this assumption reasonable takes a similar level of favoritism, even if the means of getting there is different.

 

[samthedigital]

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It does slow you down, and can make you suffer. Giving bonus xp to Ike means it does not get to one of your other units, which means it takes longer for units to get the extra movement from promotion, you have to act more cautiously due to less bulk, or have to spend more time to kill enemies on player phase, and any of these failing could lead to a reset or death. Same idea with forges, if one is going to Ike, one isn't going to one of your units that can reach combat, which means it takes longer to wipe out the enemies that need to die.

Yeah, this just isn't true, and if you read my edit you can look at an actual example instead of using assumptions. The easiest way to explain why you're wrong though is to consider what say 8 Ike levels nets us if we distrobute it among other non Ike units. It's probably about 1k bxp which is maybe 3 levels for a single promoted unit or not even a level for several. It doesn't mean very much.

 

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Making that assumption reasonable cost resources. If you baby Ike to the throne, you no longer have to spend those resources on making that assumption reasonable, and those resources can instead be spent on units that can see combat without intentionally slowing your pace to a crawl to justify the expense. For other lords to make this assumption reasonable it would take a lot of favoritism, and expending the resources needed to let Ike make this assumption reasonable takes a similar level of favoritism, even if the means of getting there is different.

The difference is that it costs time and efficiency in other games and not in FE9. As I said before your assumption that resources are too limited in FE9 is just flat out wrong. There's just no other way to put it. If you're not willing to accept that then there really isn't any point to the discussion; you're going to have to show me some evidence that the extra experience matters in FE9 if you want me to change my mind, and I doubt you have any.

Edited November 18, 2019 by samthedigital

[Eltosian Kadath]

14 hours ago, samthedigital said:

 

If you're interested in examples you can look at the respective speedruns of the games. They are generally done on the easier difficulties, but it's not going to be terribly different on hard mode. They will probably do a better job of showing you than my wall of text trying to explain it to you. If you can't be bothered then I'll just note that Ike gets to 20/15 or so whereas the FE7/8 lords are hardly above their base level at the end of the run.

Using another incredibly specialized and arbitrary run type as an example of a counter point, of the sword lords, Ike sees the second least use (only beating out Eliwood) on 0% growth LTCs. Both our examples are absurd to even to mention in this context, but if you are introducing such shoddy evidence so will I. For goodness sake the only units that sees any real use on a speed runs are Marcia, Titania, and Ike; and in any other context (like efficiency or LTC, or even a normal run/LP) getting Oscar, or Kieran, or any other mounted unit (or heck any fourth unit that might actually be capable of getting over a fourth of Maricia's kills) would not only see some use, but getting them to be stronger would be a far greater boon over the course of the game. As for why Ike ends up so high levels on a lot of speed runs, it isn't immediately apparent that Ena can kill Ashnard in the same number of turns as Ike, (and part of the method of pulling off the turn 2 kill involves equipping and unequipping the demiband to get transformed movement 1st turn while still being push-able at the start of the turn, and still get the full transformation stats with a Laguz gem, which is a lot of precise button presses that might trip up a speedrun, but not any other kind of run). A lot of people think of Ike as the only way through Ashnard, when he isn't, and that gets a lot of xp dumped into him, which inflates people's perception of him.

11 hours ago, samthedigital said:

As I said before your assumption that resources are too limited in FE9 is just flat out wrong. There's just no other way to put it. If you're not willing to accept that then there really isn't any point to the discussion; you're going to have to show me some evidence that the extra experience matters in FE9 if you want me to change my mind, and I doubt you have any.

Bexp is a limited resource, especially when spread over a playable cast of 43. Even if you think he deseves the far more reasonable 1/19 of the bexp (based on the highest possible deployment slots in the games) or 1/14 (based on deployment slots in endgame) there still isn't enough to go around to make him as strong as you seem to think, even if I look at the even more reasonable 1/10 (cutting out 4 for Reyson not needing xp, and ignoring the three prepromotes that probably don't need the help being Titania, Tanith, and Haar). To give a better idea of how limited bexp is in the various modes, I am going to tabulate some numbers, mostly how much should his share be based on the best case scenario, with the various above ratios, both overall, and before he can promote. Lets assume you perform the impossible and get all Bexp in the game (including such ludicrous tasks as stealthing chapter 10 in 12 turns with every player and npc units escaping, and keeping all enemy Laguz in chapter 15 alive) to give Ike the best shot he has, you get 12150 Bexp before chapter 17, and 23940 overall in easy; 8100 before chapter 17, and16060 overall in normal; 7350 before chapter 17, and 12110 overall in hard; and 4025 before chapter 17, and 6405 overall in maniac. I will look at these 4 baselines for each mode (1/43 for if equally shared among all playable units, the 1/19, 1/14 and 1/10 values) in both raw bexp numbers, and a very roughly estimate of how high of level Ike could get from level one if all of it was dumped in at once, both by the end of the game, and before chapter 17. This should gives a good baseline for how much bexp expenditure warrants undue favoritism. Note numbers are taken from the Serenes Forest main site.

Spoiler

                                                  1/43                                            1/19                                          1/14                                                    1/10

Easy (Before 17)        282ish (roughly to level 4)      639ish (roughly to level 8 )     867ish (roughly to level 10)         1215 (roughly to level 14)

Easy (Endgame)         556ish (roughly to level 7)      1260 (roughly to level 14)        1710 (roughly to level 18)        2394 (roughly to level 20 plus 2 levels beyond)

Normal (Before 17)   188ish (roughly to level 3)       426ish (roughly to level 6)      578ish (roughly to level 7)          810 (roughly to level 10)

Normal (Endgame)     373ish (roughly to level 5)      845ish (roughly to level 10)   1147ish (roughly to level 13)       1606 (roughly to level 17)

Hard (Before 17)        170ish (roughly to level 3)        386ish (roughly to level 5)         525 (roughly to level 7)              735 (roughly to level 9)

Hard (Endgame)         281ish (roughly to level 4)       637ish (roughly to level 8 )        865 (roughly to level 10)            1211 (roughly to level 14)

Maniac (Before 17)    93ish (roughly to level 2)         211ish (roughly to level 3.5)      287 (roughly to level 4)             402ish (roughly to level 5.5)

Maniac (Endgame)   148ish (roughly to level 2.5)    337ish (roughly to level 5)          457 (roughly to level 6)             640ish (roughly to level 8 )

Now looking at the numbers, this idea that Bexp is plentiful enough that Ike can be carried by it without blatant favoritism only really holds in easy mode. That 1k example you gave is generally a once a game situation, likely after he promotes without some fairly blatant and unwarranted favoritism. These are very optimistic numbers, and to get to that 20/15 level you claim is standard, Ike has to work through most of that the hard way, and that would require you to either hold your horses, or dump far more than his share of bexp to get there, and Ike has enough weaknesses not to warrant it. That bexp could be used to get Oscar or Kieran closer to promoting, or make Marcia, or Jill great the chapter after recruiting, or even get Mist a horse, or powering up one of the mages, or make Astrid and Makalov fighting units, or even simply strengthening a unit that is capable of countering at range before the last two chapters of the game.

 

[samthedigital]

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Using another incredibly specialized and arbitrary run type as an example of a counter point, of the sword lords, Ike sees the second least use (only beating out Eliwood) on 0% growth LTCs.

Right, because a 0% growths LTC is a good indicator of how well growths units do. A speedrun tries to finish the game as quickly as possible, so it's going to be a good test of how to play efficiently. If you bother to look there are LTCs that also get Ike to 10 or so promoted on Maniac mode, and that difficulty actually has limited resources especially because money is also limited. Ironman runs give Ike bxp too because it's far easier to give Ike bonus experience than the alternative. On the other hand FE7-8 lords largely stay at their base level in their own games.

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Now looking at the numbers, this idea that Bexp is plentiful enough that Ike can be carried by it without blatant favoritism

We often don't need to train 10 units to play the game efficiently. It also doesn't help that there aren't that many mounted units to pass bonus experience around. In the end this doesn't really matter though. You can try and provide evidence why Ike shouldn't be that useful, but actual gameplay goes against it.

edit: I also want to bring up forges again because they matter in this discussion too; we've been talking about bonus experience exclusively. I was alluding to them when talking about money in the Japanese version. On the English version we can forge every single chapter and still have a lot of money left at the end of the game. It's basically impossible to run out of forged weapons if we play reasonably quickly, and that's while wasting a bunch of forges on weak enemies.

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As for why Ike ends up so high levels on a lot of speed runs, it isn't immediately apparent that Ena can kill Ashnard in the same number of turns as Ike, (and part of the method of pulling off the turn 2 kill involves equipping and unequipping the demiband to get transformed movement 1st turn while still being push-able at the start of the turn, and still get the full transformation stats with a Laguz gem, which is a lot of precise button presses that might trip up a speedrun, but not any other kind of run)

I'm going to assume you haven't watched a speedrun. Otherwise reroute it and prove to me that Ena is faster, but it still doesn't change that Ike would be likely nearly as efficient as Ena while also being servicable throughout the game; it makes the whole process easier so that he doesn't die.

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 That bexp could be used to get Oscar or Kieran closer to promoting, or make Marcia, or Jill great the chapter after recruiting, or even get Mist a horse, or powering up one of the mages, or make Astrid and Makalov fighting units, or even simply strengthening a unit that is capable of countering at range before the last two chapters of the game.

Mist and the mages aren't very good units. Why would you even mention them? We also don't need 10 units to play through the game quickly. It's possible to get Jill and Marcia to promotion instantly while still giving Ike sufficient bxp. We can even level Oscar and Kieran and whatever crappy early game unit we want to along with Ike. Not all units are created equal, and having 7 mounts is not going to be that different from having 6. There's also a lot of time to actually give Ike bxp, and we don't have that opportunity in the GBA Fire Emblems.

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 Lets assume you perform the impossible and get all Bexp in the game (including such ludicrous tasks as stealthing chapter 10 in 12 turns with every player and npc units escaping, and keeping all enemy Laguz in chapter 15 alive)

I also wanted to get an edit in for this point. Keeping all Laguz alive in chapter 15 isn't very difficult even while getting Stephan and such. The nice thing about that and having a good strategy for chapter 10 is that after we find a strategy it can be done fairly consistently every single time without having to think about it. My strategy for chapter 10 does not involve all NPC units escaping granted (they don't need to for recruitment), but it's good enough.

edit: I should probably summarize the actual point of this whole thing. You could potentially find a run that clears the game really quickly and doesn't train Ike, but the fact of the matter is that fast runs also exist that do level Ike (I'm not sure where you're coming from when you say that we get a lot more out of training another character over Ike, you really need specific gameplay examples than just posting numbers. Perhaps you could show me an example of where having every single mounted unit deployed and trained saves time over having a few less.), so as I stated earlier those resources aren't actually as important as you think they are. If this is the case at near optimal play it only goes in Ike's favor when playing more casually since there will be more time for him to get kills.

FE9 is an incredibly generous game for any unit with decent combat potential casually because of bonus exp. Even if it was giving Ike preferential treatment the cost is literally just the time it takes to give him a bunch of bexp. The cost of making Eliwood good for example is finding a lot of enemies for him to kill, and he is stuck in a game where a lot of enemies deal enough damage to him that he needs to be careful to not die.

Anyway, if you want to talk about this further maybe we should open a thread on the PoR forums or something? It's probably a bad idea to go on too much with this here given that this is not that topical.

Edited November 19, 2019 by samthedigital

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

A speedrun tries to finish the game as quickly as possible, so it's going to be a good test of how to play efficiently.

No, it isn't. Speed-running is a very different style of play from any other type of Fire Emblem run, as it is the only one that optimizes real time, which can lead to a lot of weird situations where speed-runs are intentionally less efficient to optimize real-time instead.

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

Ironman runs give Ike bxp too because it's far easier to give Ike bonus experience than the alternative.

Ironman runs tend to take things a lot slower, and pump a lot more resources into Lords than most runs to reduce the chance of a gameover ending the run.

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

I'm going to assume you haven't watched a speedrun. Otherwise reroute it and prove to me that Ena is faster, but it still doesn't change that Ike would be likely nearly as efficient as Ena while also being servicable throughout the game; making the whole process easier so that he doesn't die.

If you want to look a bit earlier in the thread I went over how Ena can get the Ashnard kill in the minimum number of turns possible on the highest difficulty. Most people think Ike is required for the Ashnard fight, but Ena can clear it in the same number of turns, and requires less resource to get there (although it was described in terms of stat boosters due to the strat originating from a 0% growth run, but Bexp could be used instead). I have already pointed out one reason why a speed-run wouldn't use that method (and it is only a concern in a speedrun context), as it requires more precise execution, in exchange for more efficient play in terms of turn counts. A quick look at three FE9 speed-run endgames from youtube, so far all of them spend an extra turn to reduce the number of animations that happen on enemy phase, that eat up a lot of real time (and play on an easier difficulty where it is possible to one turn that fight, which both Ike and Ena could do on an LTC or efficient run). I am not a speed-runner, and this intentional loss of turns makes it clear why speed-running isn't what people mean when they say efficient play. To be fair how the community uses the term efficient play is very vague, but it is a combination of prioritizing turns, like an LTC, but more concerned with reliability (as some LTC strats rely on extreme amounts of luck)

20 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

Mist and the mages aren't very good units. Why would you even mention them? We also don't need 10 units to play through the game quickly.

If you looked at a couple of LTCs you might notice mages topping the kill counts on multiple of them. If you get them the training and Bexp they need they will be extremely good units due to good 1-2 range, and targeting weaker defenses (and their Laguz effective weapons is a plus), although to get those kill counts, they might be skirting the edge of reliability (I would have to go over a few in a way that takes a fair bit of time to confirm this suspicion). As for Mist, if you have the resources to promote her you can take advantage of Canto healing, and cavalry movement Rescue Staff uses, which can save turns or a run.

 

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

You can try and provide evidence why Ike shouldn't be that useful, but actual gameplay goes against it.

Do you have any evidence that he is that useful? You keep pointing to other runs that use him like that is evidence, but you never state why he was used over other units in that run, or what was gained by doing so. If its simply to feed him enough resources to finish the Ashnard fight, that seems faulty without some additional reasoning why Ena couldn't be used. This thread is about overrated units, and if there is no good reason for the favoritism or use he sees, that would make him overrated.

 

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

It's possible to get Jill and Marcia to promotion instantly while still giving Ike sufficient bxp. We can even level Oscar and Kieran and whatever crappy early game unit we want to along with Ike.

Do you have any numbers to back that up? What even are you considering sufficient bxp for Ike?

2 hours ago, samthedigital said:

We often don't need to train 10 units to play the game efficiently.

What is the magic number of units to train then? Why that number of units?

[samthedigital]

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No, it isn't. Speed-running is a very different style of play from any other type of Fire Emblem run, as it is the only one that optimizes real time, which can lead to a lot of weird situations where speed-runs are intentionally less efficient to optimize real-time instead.

If you're trying to play efficiently you don't try to optimize anything else, and oftentimes real time and LTC do intersect. Pure LTC is not very efficient in general though; the only reason to bring it up is to show that Ike can still be shoved bonus exp without any real worry.

Edit: The other problem is that "efficiency runs" don't exist. Generally speaking people aren't as interested in that sort of thing, so there are no concrete videos or examples of such a run. I don't understand the fascination people have arguing about it because people just don't play with that in mind, and the casual player is not going to say that X character is good because they save Y turns in a map on average. They say that the character is good because they help finish a map consistently.

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As for Mist, if you have the resources to promote her you can take advantage of Canto healing, and cavalry movement Rescue Staff uses, which can save turns or a run.

You can alternatively just use the Ward staff to train her, and healing isn't incredibly useful. It's definitely not as good as other FE games anyway.

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Do you have any evidence that he is that useful? You keep pointing to other runs that use him like that is evidence, but you never state why he was used over other units in that run, or what was gained by doing so. If its simply to feed him enough resources to finish the Ashnard fight, that seems faulty without some additional reasoning why Ena couldn't be used. This thread is about overrated units, and if there is no good reason for the favoritism or use he sees, that would make him overrated.

Read my post earlier about it. The point is that he can be trained without costing very much when playing at maximum efficiency.

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What is the magic number of units to train then? Why that number of units?

In most defend maps the amount of useful units is 1. In an escape map generally speaking it's two. It does not take maximum deployment slots to accomplish most tasks in this game. I would guess that Lord+Jill/Marcia, 2 Cavaliers, potentially a mage are enough, and even then it could be done with less. That's 6 units that need help with bonus exp.

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Do you have any numbers to back that up? What even are you considering sufficient bxp for Ikee?

As I said earlier I don't really need numbers. I don't really need to waste my time when evidence suggests that we don't need it.

I would also like to point out that you've completely ignored any other lord, and this is what we've been arguing about in the first place.

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Ironman runs tend to take things a lot slower, and pump a lot more resources into Lords than most runs to reduce the chance of a gameover ending the run.

This is true in FE6, but there are so many chapters where Lyn and Eliwood are not force deployed in HHM (besides the fact that they aren't really needed for anything) that it's not worth training them. I'd also argue that in FE8 it's simpler to just not train Eirika so that she never faces chances of death since she can not die at all costs, and her defenses are shaky.

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If you looked at a couple of LTCs you might notice mages topping the kill counts on multiple of them. If you get them the training and Bexp they need they will be extremely good units due to good 1-2 range, and targeting weaker defenses (and their Laguz effective weapons is a plus), although to get those kill counts, they might be skirting the edge of reliability (I would have to go over a few in a way that takes a fair bit of time to confirm this suspicion).

Oh, as for this point. Defensively mages are bad, and they don't have high movement. Mounted units do not have damage problems most of the time, so targeting weaker defenses isn't that strong of a point. Mages are mostly used for Rescue and long range magic, and I would guess that they don't see that much combat outside of that (Actually, interestingly enough Soren is the most used combat unit, but Ike is still comfortably top 7 in the run I am looking at... He does abuse level ups and such though, so as with you I'm going to question the reliability of a mage surviving EP and getting that much combat somewhat.). More to the point though Ike is still trained in most of those LTC runs, and arguing that Ena can do it too is not really an argument given that most runs just feed experience to Ike and call it a day. You can't say that Ena exists and therefor Ike is worthless; it doesn't work that way.

Edited November 20, 2019 by samthedigital

[Quillmonger]

On 11/17/2019 at 5:47 PM, Troykv said:

I agree Lysithea is overhyped, but there is good reason to say she is one of the best mages.

I really think that my biggest problem with her is that she can't take even one engagement with physical attackers. You might not get the damage output out of Annette or Dorothea, but I feel like they have a higher survivability so it kind of balances out. I like to specialize, but I come from a school of thought that says everyone needs some kind of survivability.