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Dancer on Maddening - Blue Lions


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2 hours ago, Flere210 said:

You don't need to be a wyvern to use axes. Excalibur is so shit that even if you have tomefaire but no axefaire is still surpassed by lighting axe anyway. It's way easier to just build her as a mage while dipping for C rank Axe and mostly use them. That's how horrible her spell list is.

Then you have a 4 move unit with paper thin durability that needs to get into melee range to use her most powerful offensive attack, that's a lot worse than just using her spells or training her Flying rank for Wyvern.

Idk Excalibur would've been decent if the most threatening late game Flying enemy in Maddening doesn't come with 40+ Res which surpass the tome's 33 effective Mt LMAO. 

 

Edited by Ari Chan
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7 minutes ago, Ari Chan said:

Then you have a 4 move unit with paper thin durability that needs to get into melee range to use her most powerful offensive attack, that's a lot worse than just using her spells or training her Flying rank for Wyvern.

Idk Excalibur would've been decent if the most threatening late game Flying enemy in Maddening doesn't come with 40+ Res which surpass the tome's 33 effective Mt LMAO. 

 

Bolt axe+ is still better than most of her ranged attack by being only slightly worse than excalibur while having 3 range and being arguably better than Thoron in general once you patch the accuracy. 

And i do think it's worse, i said easier, not better. 

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5 hours ago, Flere210 said:

You don't need to be a wyvern to use axes. Excalibur is so shit that even if you have tomefaire but no axefaire is still surpassed by lighting axe anyway. It's way easier to just build her as a mage while dipping for C rank Axe and mostly use them. That's how horrible her spell list is.

Have fun getting wasted if the RNG doesn't smile upon you. And no, Divine Pulse doesn't justify moronic moves like this.

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11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Someone is giving up that Wyvern Rider Combat when you make them a Dancer. For Ferdinand, it's worth it.

Sword Avoid allows him to be a dancer who can reasonably dodgetank and not have to worry about your dancer's durability. Some other characters like Ingrid and Petra can become great dodgetanks with Alert Stance builds but their avoid as dancers is far shakier than his without it.

It's not like Fredinand having +15 Avoid will make him immune to enemy attacks unlike Ingrid or Petra are made Dancers instead. When you account for enemies with Sword Breaker and Gambits, he has a lot less survivability then what on paper would lead you to believe.

Plus if you really wanted your Dancer survive enemy combat you could just do other things such as apply the Impregnable Wall or Sacred Shield Gambits.

To say that +15 Avoid on a class that shouldn't see combat in the first place is enough to push one of the better combat units in the game towards is something I will refute. Unless you can provide actual gameplay to prove his Avoid can hold up in practice, I'll hold my reservations since just  leveling up HP can remove his sole advantage over other Dancers. 

10 hours ago, Ari Chan said:

The only way to beat Chapter 13 is to set up a Swordbreaker/Vantage/Battalion Wrath Dimitri build with a Flying Byleth that can reposition themselves out of danger. It's hard to justify training her only for that map considering that you can dump your resources on Dimitri and Byleth instead who are way better carries with an existant Enemy Phase that can wipe multiple enemies out in 1 turn.

While I'll agree that training Annette for the sole purpose of assisting in that chapter is not a great idea, I'll refute the notion that Dimtri or Byleth can perform well on Enemy Phase on that chapter.

To begin with, Dimitri can't actually utilize Battalion Wrath + Vantage since the game automatically equips King of Lions Battalion on him with no option to change it. And that's not getting to either 1/3rd durability considering Dimitri would need to eat 180 total damage for it to fall that low durability.

Likewise, Dodgetanking is also out of the picture. Without an Adjutant providing him +7 Avoid and with his battalion actually lowering his Avoid by -5, he has a notable chance of being hit by theives with 15-25% of being hit even when standing in a bush. 

And that's the guys he has Swordbreaker on. Grapplers and Snipers have an even higher chance with their hit rates in the 30's and 40's.

Those Hit Rates are also based on the assumption that his personal is active. If he gets hit even once or just levels up HP, he going to be losing 20 Avoid and get pummeled down by enemies.

The most consistent Strategy I found for that map is to lure all the initial enemies with a Byleth equipped with Duscar Heavy Soliders and the Aegis Shield before your allies show up and utilize Wave Attack.

A Wyvern Annette would be useful for taking out enemies, which is important since if any of them are blocked, they'll go North to where Ashe and Glibert are and trigger another entire group of enemies to go for them.

Edited by LoneRecon400
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41 minutes ago, LoneRecon400 said:

It's not like Fredinand having +15 Avoid will make him immune to enemy attacks unlike Ingrid or Petra are made Dancers instead. When you account for enemies with Sword Breaker and Gambits, he has a lot less survivability then what on paper would lead you to believe.

Well we're not being stupid here, we aren't using our Sword Avoid Dancer to tank swordbreaker enemies. Not sure why you bring up gambits, since Ferdinand has one of the higher charm stats among non-lords (second only to Dorothea among for the Eagles; I assume we're not making Edelgard the Dancer), and with the dancer charm bonus and an Evasion Ring he becomes quite adept at dodging those too, which is yet another perk he has as a dodgy dancer compared to other options. I forget if his passive subtracts off of gambit hit rate directly the way the Evasion Ring does; if it does, then he's even better against them.

I've already provided the numbers that show that Dancer Ferdinand can get enough avoid to reliably dodge lower-hit and axe-users, that's a nice boon he has that others don't. It's only 10 less avoid than an Alert Stance+ build (plus 1 or 2 points from class mod), which are proven adequate for dodge-tanking in this game, and while dancer Ferdinand won't have as much AS as does flier Petra/Leonie/Ingrid, he has that +15 from his passive.

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1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Not sure why you bring up gambits, since Ferdinand has one of the higher charm stats among non-lords and with the dancer charm bonus and an Evasion Ring he becomes quite adept at dodging those too, which is yet another perk he has as a dodgy dancer compared to other options.

I've already provided the numbers that show that Dancer Ferdinand can get enough avoid to reliably dodge lower-hit and axe-users, that's a nice boon he has that others don't. It's only 10 less avoid than an Alert Stance+ build which are proven adequate for dodge-tanking in this game, and while dancer Ferdinand won't have as much AS as does flier Petra/Leonie/Ingrid, he has that +15 from his passive.

I forget if his passive subtracts off of gambit hit rate directly the way the Evasion Ring does.

I bring up Gambits because their Accruacy aren't affected by regular skills and are floored at 20-30% while enemies also benefit from Gambit Boost.  While it may not exactly be a high chance, they still freeze him in place if they hit and can even one shot him later on in the game.

But this can be avoided entirely if you use Impregnable Wall, since the enemies see that they do more damage if they double your dancer rather than Gambiting. So why even take a risk of your dancer going down when you can make it a nonissue? 

You've mentioned how Ferdinand can reach a 100 avoid, but there's some assumptions in there that are on a bit flimsy side.

For example, how are you going to reach 1760 Wexp to reach A+ Swords for Sword Prowess level 5? Even reaching Prowess Level 4 is going to take 960 Wexp for a unit who's not going to see combat. 

And what about the 680 Skill exp to reach B Rank Authority for the +20 avoid from Gautier Knights? Dancing doesn't even grant any Authority Experience. 

I will say that if you focus on these goals, you can eventually meet them with little issue with enough time. But focusing on them means postponing or even not getting Riding to A+ for Movement +1 at all. That skill seems a lot more valuable then relying on a chance to dodge that would only work consistently on specific enemies.

And giving him an Evasion Ring when there's only 1-2 in the entire game? I don't see how that's more valuable than getting a Wyvern Lord to engage enemies safely on Enemy Phase. 

The only reason why Dodgetanking is rewarding in this game is because it's the only way to see combat on the Enemy Phase late into game. I don't see why you'd  invest a Dancer to do the same when they can already survive any enemy with no investment at all with a single gambit. 

Also, for future reference, even though the Accuracy Ring does affect gambits, neither the Evasion Ring nor Ferdinand's personal lower the chance of enemy gambit's hitting. https://imgur.com/a/3z0KeGz

Edited by LoneRecon400
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11 hours ago, Ari Chan said:

RNG mainpulation for Advanced class are optional since the promotion items are fairy cheap, Annette's only viable early games thanks to her ever useful rallies and she's not gaining any exp by spamming it, personally I usually get her to lv 10 for Peg Knight and she makes an amazing support unit in ch.13, she can fly, Rally and use Impregable Wall which are very good to keep Dimitri, Byleth alive while Mercie stays at the corner of the map spamming Physics & Fortify. Ashe and Gilbert are legit deadweight tho, Wyvern Ashe is very bad compared to Wyvern Annette and getting him to lv 20 is even more difficult cause he does crap damage, but if you want him to stay alive you basically have to make him a Wyvern Lord since enemies usually flock into the top corner and tend to ignore Mercie/Annie. As for Gilbert I don't know what inspired IS to give the players a 4 mov Armor crap that can't even tank physical hits well in one of the most difficult post time skip map, and of course him and Ashe have to spawn together to make matters worse. Basically you really have to funnel resources into Byleth/Dimitri so they're strong enough to carry your team until Ingrid, Felix and Sylvain arrive, the Battalion Vantage start is very good especially if you give Dimitri a forged Killer Lance or Wo Dao, he's reaching over 80% crit rate with this build and will most likely kills anything that approaches him.

The map is even worse in SS imo, Seteth is nowhere as strong as your House Lord and Caspar is the worst unit in the game along with Gilbert, but if you don't train Caspar or make him a Dancer then it's very hard for Dorothea to hold off everything on her own, at least Petra is a very good unit that comes in early tho.

The only CF map that is extremely unkind to horse unit is ch.18 imo, but you can always Dismount Hubert when he needs to travel through the buring tiles, the penalty is basically a joke anyway. 

I'm still not a believer in the vantage strat because Dimitri needs to be knocked into Vantage range, then dodge all of the enemy archers (and survive counters from anything he doesn't crit). Physic probably doesn't help since it would heal Dimitri over 50%. Concoction spam, maybe?

In CF, ch 15 is a winding maze down the middle, and full of forests down the right. Non fliers have a tough time moving around. Ch16 is ch 5 all over. It doesn't help that trap tiles have 2 move cost for foot, 3 move cost for mounted. Ch 17 is choc full of random wasteland, which iirc is 3 move cost to mounted. I learned the hard way that Hubert can't make it far enough north to avoid the FK reinforcements. Ch 18, as you mentioned, has a lot of burning tiles. All foot units struggle because they're still 2 move cost. Basically, Hubert spends his entire Dark Knight career as a Dark Bishop with longer legs.

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10 hours ago, LoneRecon400 said:

But this can be avoided entirely if you use Impregnable Wall, since the enemies see that they do more damage if they double your dancer rather than Gambiting. So why even take a risk of your dancer going down when you can make it a nonissue? 

The obvious problem with Impregnable Wall on your dancer is that it takes a turn. Since the whole point of the dancer is to grant an extra turn to someone else, you're essentially making this action half as good if you have to both use Dance AND then Impregnable Wall your dancer to give an action to one other unit. A dancer who can self-sufficiently dodge even a modest fraction of enemies has an advantage over one who can't.

 

10 hours ago, LoneRecon400 said:

For example, how are you going to reach 1760 Wexp to reach A+ Swords for Sword Prowess level 5? Even reaching Prowess Level 4 is going to take 960 Wexp for a unit who's not going to see combat. 

And what about the 680 Skill exp to reach B Rank Authority for the +20 avoid from Gautier Knights? Dancing doesn't even grant any Authority Experience. 

Your dancer sees lots of combat, because there are eight chapters (plus a handful of paralogues, I've usually done four) before he or she becomes a dancer.

Prowess 4 is only 4 avoid worse, and you should be able to hit B+ by the timeskip on a boon easily even with relatively minimal tutoring. Ditto B Authority... and even if you don't (because of focus on sword/riding), Jeralt's Mercenaries is only 5 avoid worse. And riding is also auto-built if you make him a cavalier during tier 2. B+/A+ for your non-authority ranks when you have a strength in both is a relatively low bar for training in this game, though; compare Wyvern Lord Ferdinand who needs to get A/A/C but one of the A's is in a skill he is neutral in.

 

10 hours ago, LoneRecon400 said:

The only reason why Dodgetanking is rewarding in this game is because it's the only way to see combat on the Enemy Phase late into game. I don't see why you'd  invest a Dancer to do the same when they can already survive any enemy with no investment at all with a single gambit. 

The point is that it doesn't actually take much investment, in Ferdinand's case. We only need to raise two non-authority skills, both of which he's strong in, and our reward is a unit who can otherwise be a bit squishy getting a notable durability push and thus expanding your available tactical options (because you can safely leave him in range of some enemies in a pinch, as opposed to making some random slow mage a dancer who will likely be ORKOed by most enemies on Maddening). You can quibble the Evasion Ring but I find only a small number of units actually want them, I rarely build more than 1-2 dodgetanks, and if I'm using Ferdinand, he's probably going to be one, whatever class he ends up in. Fair point that in Crimson Flower there's only one super-easy one to get (you can steal them in C7 but the speed benchmarks are definitely non-trivial).

I'm not trying to claim Ferdinand is the one true choice for Dancer, but he's a good one, and the fact that he can stack his personal and Sword Avoid to get to the level of avoid he does is not insignificant.

Thanks for the correction on the Evasion Ring, by the way. Must have seen an enemy using Resonant Lightning or some other rare gambit that has 40 base hit the time I remember seeing 10.

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16 hours ago, msterforks said:

I'm still not a believer in the vantage strat because Dimitri needs to be knocked into Vantage range, then dodge all of the enemy archers (and survive counters from anything he doesn't crit). Physic probably doesn't help since it would heal Dimitri over 50%. Concoction spam, maybe?

They're talking about Battalion Vantage, which requires battalion endurance to be 1/3 or less to work. Unfortunately, as King of Lions Corps has 120 endurance, that's gonna require him to take a shitload of damage (160) to get down there in the first place.

On 12/8/2019 at 2:35 AM, LegendOfLoog said:

Nah, the second part is where you get all the gold. Your units start hitting the max Skill Levels they need, so you have more Activity Points to use at the Arena. If you want gold in Part 2, it's incredibly easy to come by. 

Authority is a given investment no matter what you have Annette do, so that doesn't have much to do with Wyvern specifically. If we're comparing Gremory Annette to Wyvern Annette, the difference is Axe+Flying A and Lance C vs. Reason+Faith A. Reason starts at D+ and Axes start at E+, so there's an extra 60 XP in favor of Gremory Annette. Flying and Faith are the same. The maximum necessary investment into Lances is 160 XP. The difference is only 220 Skill XP in total. That's not a particularly large amount considering you're getting 20~ Skill XP in two Skills per week for free. Wyvern and Gremory are fairly close in investment, but the difference is that Gremory Annette sucks. She has no utility at all, so all you're left with is a 5 Move mage who wilts if an enemy so much as breathes in her direction. With a flying mount, Annette can actually have relevant combat and keep up with your frontliners instead of lagging behind the entire game. Gremory Annette is slightly lower in investment and drastically lower in performance. 

Also, heavy Weight means next to nothing when you're using Combat Arts to one-shot. It's only relevant if you get attacked on Enemy Phase, and if that's happening, there's already an issue there. All you do with Wyvern Annette is abuse Flight to run around, KO a problematic enemy, and Canto to safety. As for poor hitrates, that isn't really a big issue. Magical attacks are much more reliable in general. Just to use Level 30 as an example, a Wyvern Lord Annette will have roughly 80 Hit with a Crusher equipped. Kingdom Wyvern Co, Axe Prowess Lv 5, and an Accuracy Ring bump that to 125. You can also boost this even further with a Wyvern Gilbert adjutant, if you want, for 135 Hit. However, Dust is generally overkill except against particularly high HP enemies, so a Lightning Axe Art with a Silver Axe+ equipped is usually enough to get the job done. This brings your usual Hit rate up to 145, which is more than enough to reliably hit any enemy. I've used this build a few times, and I've tried both Gremory and Dark Knight as well. Wyvern is far and away the best option for Annette, and if you're going to make her a Gremory, you might as well put her on the bench so Annette doesn't waste a deployment slot. 

Problem is, I learned the hard way that you only have so many turns to defeat your opponent, or else you automatically lose. And with enemies being boosted in Maddening... that makes me even more hesitant to buy into the arena playing an integral part in some get-rich-quick scheme than I already am.

I don't know about you, but I want to eliminate chance as much as I can if I ever play Maddening. Wyvern Annette does NOT help me with this; in fact, she does the exact opposite, considering Bolt Axe and Crusher both have 60 base hit, which is -30 to -40 hit compared to her spells. That's, to quote one Wind Vestal, "Unacceptable". That means going from practically a guarantee to Gonzales-level accuracy (and we all know how shit that is), which means a lot of opportunity to get screwed over, which in this case would mean that at best, I need to use other units to clean up Annette's mess, and at worst, Annette herself or someone else dies. And patching that up means giving her valuable resources, including a specific battalion that works better with physical units (said battalion even gives -2 to magic attacks), and an Accuracy Ring, of which there are only like two in the whole game. That's a massive opportunity cost to incur just to make that look viable.

Problem: if you're using combat arts, you're forced into melee range, which is really bad when you're getting doubled with your weapon of choice and have poor defense. Compared to just using spells, that's a hell of a lot worse. Also, in case you still need it pointed out, I like mages and dislike axes.

TL;DR For how much hype it gets, I don't see any reason why I should be sold on Wyvern Annette being something other than a hot garbage gimmick. And trying to find a use for the Bolt Axe or Crusher is like trying to find a use for tits on a bull (they would've been decent were it not for the 60 base hit, and the latter forcing you into melee range). What's more, being unique does not mean being good.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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Becouse people give you numbers and pics of onshots that actually happened and you answer whit words, YGO references and biases. 

Give us numbers beyond the bolt axe base. Prove, whit numbers, that the suggested investment are not worth it. For example by posting a different unit being able to deal as much magic damage whit lesser investment and similar movement. 

Explain why the fact that she dies if she don't kill matter when someone else already prove that she kill so the point is moot. Tell us wich units should use better the resources spent and why those units are not better off whit a ifferent battalion or accessory. We have averages, and we can easily calcukate how much investment is required to do X, saying that X is bad whitout using those statistics is inherently less valid than doing so by providing them.

If you can't or don't want to do that, then there is no point in repeating the same thing whit slight variations 500 times.

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11 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

Becouse people give you numbers and pics of onshots that actually happened and you answer whit words, YGO references and biases. 

Give us numbers beyond the bolt axe base. Prove, whit numbers, that the suggested investment are not worth it. For example by posting a different unit being able to deal as much magic damage whit lesser investment and similar movement. 

Explain why the fact that she dies if she don't kill matter when someone else already prove that she kill so the point is moot. Tell us wich units should use better the resources spent and why those units are not better off whit a ifferent battalion or accessory. We have averages, and we can easily calcukate how much investment is required to do X, saying that X is bad whitout using those statistics is inherently less valid than doing so by providing them.

If you can't or don't want to do that, then there is no point in repeating the same thing whit slight variations 500 times.

You don't get it, do you? Not everyone here likes getting by on dumb luck (emphasis on "dumb"). Now do us both a favor and leave me alone on this, because I won't budge no matter what you say.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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3 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

You don't get it, do you? Not everyone here likes taking foolish chances. Now do us both a favor and leave me alone on this, because I won't budge no matter what you say.

People have provided numbers, repeatedly, to show that we're not taking foolish chances; that you can raise accuracy using a plethora of investments. You just ignore them. If you truly want to be left alone on this and refuse to budge, then I suggest you stop speaking up whenever axes are discussed, because your non-arguments aren't convincing anyone either.

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3 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

You don't get it, do you? Not everyone here likes taking foolish chances. Now do us both a favor and leave me alone on this, because I won't budge no matter what you say.

If i post a build whit no foolish chances, you need to explain why the build is invalid. 

You argument is basically  like saying that power attacking in 3.5 is bad and then disregarding Shock Trooper whitout a sound argument for disregarding it.

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5 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

People have provided numbers, repeatedly, to show that we're not taking foolish chances; that you can raise accuracy using a plethora of investments. You just ignore them. If you truly want to be left alone on this and refuse to budge, then I suggest you stop speaking up whenever axes are discussed, because your non-arguments aren't convincing anyone either.

I had already stated something on those investments - if she needs those, that's worse than not needing them, as I see it, especially since those investments include an accessory you only get two of through the whole game and one of the limited flying battalions, of which this specific one happens to weaken her magic attacks (which means someone else who could've actually benefitted from that same battalion now can't use it).

Edited by Shadow Mir
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Wich is like saying that Lysithea is trash because she need enought boosters to get  50 magic and Thyrsus. And a mage annette would require at least 60 mag because she lacks all the good spells. I suppose getting her to 60 mag is easier than giving her a bit of accuracy.

Every Sothisdamned unit require investment in a specific build on maddening.

Edited by Flere210
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this topic honestly makes me wonder if we're all playing the same game

especially when talking like accuracy ring is an opportunity cost or that farming arena is unreliable lol

early game you SHOULD spam arena whenever possible since it gives you the most professor exp (and arena is still piss easy in maddening)

once you hit like  chapter 10 you should be at professor level A/A+, at which point you have way more points than you actually need and you can start focusing on tutoring Byleth if you so desire, or still do arena for money. best use for leftover activity points would probably be tea time for extra charm but as I absolutely HATE tea time I never do it outside of birthdays

PS: Ferdinand is easily the best BE combat unit, finished a few weeks ago a NG (no online/DLC) maddening BE no recruits run (besides Lysithea for her supports with Edelgard and Mercedes+Jeritza so I could complete their supports aswell without having to play the game another time, the core students always got deployed) and he literally carried my team, got him to brigand and not cavalier (tho iirc he did lv 18-19 while in cavalier since I needed extra mov in some chapters), then wyvern, he almost always hogged one  knowledge gem to himself in order to level up his flying ranks (so he only used the evasion ring in the late game once he learned alert stance+)

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5 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Problem is, I learned the hard way that you only have so many turns to defeat your opponent, or else you automatically lose. And with enemies being boosted in Maddening... that makes me even more hesitant to buy into the arena playing an integral part in some get-rich-quick scheme than I already am.

I don't know about you, but I want to eliminate chance as much as I can if I ever play Maddening. Wyvern Annette does NOT help me with this; in fact, she does the exact opposite, considering Bolt Axe and Crusher both have 60 base hit, which is -30 to -40 hit compared to her spells. That's, to quote one Wind Vestal, "Unacceptable". That means going from practically a guarantee to Gonzales-level accuracy (and we all know how shit that is), which means a lot of opportunity to get screwed over, which in this case would mean that at best, I need to use other units to clean up Annette's mess, and at worst, Annette herself or someone else dies. And patching that up means giving her valuable resources, including a specific battalion that works better with physical units (said battalion even gives -2 to magic attacks), and an Accuracy Ring, of which there are only like two in the whole game. That's a massive opportunity cost to incur just to make that look viable.

Problem: if you're using combat arts, you're forced into melee range, which is really bad when you're getting doubled with your weapon of choice and have poor defense. Compared to just using spells, that's a hell of a lot worse. Also, in case you still need it pointed out, I like mages and dislike axes.

TL;DR For how much hype it gets, I don't see any reason why I should be sold on Wyvern Annette being something other than a hot garbage gimmick. And trying to find a use for the Bolt Axe or Crusher is like trying to find a use for tits on a bull (they would've been decent were it not for the 60 base hit, and the latter forcing you into melee range). What's more, being unique does not mean being good.

From my own experience (cleared BL Maddening a few months ago), Arena enemies aren't boosted significantly. The only difficult one has been Reason Tournaments because BL mages are pretty weak, and I think there's only 2 of those tournaments in the entire game. I'm not speaking in hypotheticals as I've actually done this, and any competent physical unit like Dimitri or Felix can basically clear anything to get massive amounts of gold. 

I understand concerns about her Hit rate in comparison to mage Annette, but you keep singling out the least accurate axes that would obviously never be used in situations where Hit is a major concern. With an Iron Axe+, Annette has 80 Hit, which is only 10-20 less Accuracy. Even if you ignore everything you can use to improve her Hit and only look at resources that are freely available, at Level 30 Axe Prowess Lv 5 still gives 20 Hit, her Dex and Lck give her 20 more, and a Gilbert adjutant gives her 10 more and +3 Mt. That's still 130 Hit without considering items, battalions, or any other Linked Attack boosts. You don't need any of the rest to make this viable, and in situations where an Iron Axe+ Lightning Axe attack is not enough damage, the Hit problems are usually non-existent as well. 

And the main point of all of this is that even with the negligible Hit problems that can easily be patched (and are not anywhere close to Gonzalez level), her other options are terrible in comparison. You've already stated you think Dark Knight is bad, so I'll hammer Gremory a bit more here. If we're not considering items to patch Annette's accuracy, Caduceus Staff and Thrysus aren't allowed either as they're much more valuable than any Accuracy Ring. In that case, you have a 4 Move unit with 2 Attack range until you reach Master. And once you reach Master, you get 5 Move. Not to mention, Annette's Faith spell list is irredeemable, so what are you gaining out of this? A 5 Move mage who cannot reposition as quickly as a Wyvern can, cannot Canto away like a Wyvern can, and doesn't do as much damage as a Wyvern can. So unless you're getting a S rank in Reason, good luck attacking anything ever in the late game.

The key difference here is that Wyvern Annette isn't getting doubled on Player Phase because she kills enemies reliably. And if you've positioned her in a way that other units can't clean up enough enemies to avoid losing a unit on Enemy Phase, that's on you, not the unit. I understand you really dislike axes, but I'm actually speaking with experience on this. I've used this build before a few times on both Maddening and Hard, and it's never been a "hot garbage gimmick." I recommend actually trying it on Maddening before coming to a conclusion. 

Edited by LegendOfLoog
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7 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

From my own experience (cleared BL Maddening a few months ago), Arena enemies aren't boosted significantly. The only difficult one has been Reason Tournaments because BL mages are pretty weak, and I think there's only 2 of those tournaments in the entire game. I'm not speaking in hypotheticals as I've actually done this, and any competent physical unit like Dimitri or Felix can basically clear anything to get massive amounts of gold. 

If Mercedes is levelled in Reason she should take down the reason tournaments effortlessly, many opponents did zero damage to her because her res is so high. (source: my last two Maddening runs) I don't think arena enemies are boosted at all so yeah it's easy money/prof level. Money really isn't that big an issue, unless we're talking about spamming relic combat arts every turn or something. At worst you hit a slight crunch around the start of chapter 7 where suddenly you want to buy silver + new batallions for lots of people, but even on my current run where I've used arena less than usual (trying to recruit everyone and build lots of supports), it's been quite manageable.

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8 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

From my own experience (cleared BL Maddening a few months ago), Arena enemies aren't boosted significantly. The only difficult one has been Reason Tournaments because BL mages are pretty weak, and I think there's only 2 of those tournaments in the entire game. I'm not speaking in hypotheticals as I've actually done this, and any competent physical unit like Dimitri or Felix can basically clear anything to get massive amounts of gold. 

I understand concerns about her Hit rate in comparison to mage Annette, but you keep singling out the least accurate axes that would obviously never be used in situations where Hit is a major concern. With an Iron Axe+, Annette has 80 Hit, which is only 10-20 less Accuracy. Even if you ignore everything you can use to improve her Hit and only look at resources that are freely available, at Level 30 Axe Prowess Lv 5 still gives 20 Hit, her Dex and Lck give her 20 more, and a Gilbert adjutant gives her 10 more and +3 Mt. That's still 130 Hit without considering items, battalions, or any other Linked Attack boosts. You don't need any of the rest to make this viable, and in situations where an Iron Axe+ Lightning Axe attack is not enough damage, the Hit problems are usually non-existent as well. 

And the main point of all of this is that even with the negligible Hit problems that can easily be patched (and are not anywhere close to Gonzalez level), her other options are terrible in comparison. You've already stated you think Dark Knight is bad, so I'll hammer Gremory a bit more here. If we're not considering items to patch Annette's accuracy, Caduceus Staff and Thrysus aren't allowed either as they're much more valuable than any Accuracy Ring. In that case, you have a 4 Move unit with 2 Attack range until you reach Master. And once you reach Master, you get 5 Move. Not to mention, Annette's Faith spell list is irredeemable, so what are you gaining out of this? A 5 Move mage who cannot reposition as quickly as a Wyvern can, cannot Canto away like a Wyvern can, and doesn't do as much damage as a Wyvern can. So unless you're getting a S rank in Reason, good luck attacking anything ever in the late game.

The key difference here is that Wyvern Annette isn't getting doubled on Player Phase because she kills enemies reliably. And if you've positioned her in a way that other units can't clean up enough enemies to avoid losing a unit on Enemy Phase, that's on you, not the unit. I understand you really dislike axes, but I'm actually speaking with experience on this. I've used this build before a few times on both Maddening and Hard, and it's never been a "hot garbage gimmick." I recommend actually trying it on Maddening before coming to a conclusion. 

I did Wyvern Annette on my maddening run and it turned out better than I expected. Though my planning was a bit scuffed as I put too many points into faith and got a somewhat shaky wyvern rider pass rate. One thing really problematic with wyvern Annette is the lack of flier battalions in Azure Moon. There's only 2 very good ones and 1 decently statted one. Two of those are certainly going to go to Seteth and Ingrid. If you made  Sylvain a flier, you have only a D rank pegasus knight battalion for Annette that gives 5 hit. You will never use normal attacks on wyvern annette so the lost attack is nothing but hit rate might be a problem.

I didn't bother recruiting other mages into my team other than Dancer Dorathea who just got a healing staff. Magic staff/accuracy ring are the only potential hold items for Annette. Annette also had exclusive access to all spirit dust resulting in a magic state 5 higher than usual. Lightning axe should be close to one shot enemies with irons and maybe steels/silvers if needed. I didn't bother using her rallies that much as my units didn't really need it that much. A rally is worth if you need to survive an enemy phase or kill many things on enemy phase. 

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2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If Mercedes is levelled in Reason she should take down the reason tournaments effortlessly, many opponents did zero damage to her because her res is so high. (source: my last two Maddening runs) I don't think arena enemies are boosted at all so yeah it's easy money/prof level. Money really isn't that big an issue, unless we're talking about spamming relic combat arts every turn or something. At worst you hit a slight crunch around the start of chapter 7 where suddenly you want to buy silver + new batallions for lots of people, but even on my current run where I've used arena less than usual (trying to recruit everyone and build lots of supports), it's been quite manageable.

Yeah, my Mercedes got Mag-screwed, so it didn't work out for me that well. But since I spammed Arena so much, I think I had 100k gold by the end, which was obviously unnecessary lol. It's too bad there aren't really that many activities to do in the Monastery, but maybe future DLC will change that. 

1 hour ago, PPPPPPP270 said:

I did Wyvern Annette on my maddening run and it turned out better than I expected. Though my planning was a bit scuffed as I put too many points into faith and got a somewhat shaky wyvern rider pass rate. One thing really problematic with wyvern Annette is the lack of flier battalions in Azure Moon. There's only 2 very good ones and 1 decently statted one. Two of those are certainly going to go to Seteth and Ingrid. If you made  Sylvain a flier, you have only a D rank pegasus knight battalion for Annette that gives 5 hit. You will never use normal attacks on wyvern annette so the lost attack is nothing but hit rate might be a problem.

I didn't bother recruiting other mages into my team other than Dancer Dorathea who just got a healing staff. Magic staff/accuracy ring are the only potential hold items for Annette. Annette also had exclusive access to all spirit dust resulting in a magic state 5 higher than usual. Lightning axe should be close to one shot enemies with irons and maybe steels/silvers if needed. I didn't bother using her rallies that much as my units didn't really need it that much. A rally is worth if you need to survive an enemy phase or kill many things on enemy phase. 

Yeah, too many fliers would make Wyvern Annette a lot more shaky without a high Hit Battalion. I ended up having Ingrid as a Dancer and Sylvain as a Paladin, so I had enough flier battalions to go around. Hopefully, they add a magic flier battalion once the Dark Flier class comes in Wave 4. 

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