Would you use this underachieving thing? (FE TH) Round 23: Recovery Roar

[Dandy Druid]

I have yet to see Miracle proc in my game file. There's no reason to master Priest when your healer could've been classed as a Mage to learn Fiendish Blow instead. Maybe I'm unlucky or spoiled by FE4's version of Miracle, but it never seems to work. I'd rather put other skills that I know have a better chance of being active in battle. Plus, it's not worth using a slot for a skill that will most likely not activate when you could've had a skill that would have gave your character a slight boost during the whole battle.

 

Also, I know we're done with Holy Knight, but they really had the worst armor design.

 

Now back to Miracle. Not a fan.

[SpiceMan]

1 hour ago, Dandy Druid said:

Also, I know we're done with Holy Knight, but they really had the worst armor design.

I'd argue Mortal Savant or Female Sniper and Wyvern lord looked way worse. 

[Dandy Druid]

3 hours ago, SpiceMan said:

I'd argue Mortal Savant or Female Sniper and Wyvern lord looked way worse. 

A lot of the armor designs aren't great. But at least there's no butt windows for no reason. Mortal Savant isn't too bad imo, just horribly out of place. They should've just made it Mage Fighter and based it off of the FE4 designs. Female Sniper is bad because Male Sniper is superior in every way in terms of design.

But do you know what's worse than those armor designs? Miracle in Three Houses.

[Flere210]

At least the classes on literal BDSM gear are male only lol.

[Vitezen]

You'll likely get miracle when you don't have many other things. Equip it for the few levels you'll have it and then throw it away like the garbage it is.

[Sid Starkiller]

It's filler until you get better stuff. There's a reason it comes so early.

[NegativeExponents-]

I actually get pretty lucky when it comes to miracle activations but still don't find it worth a slot once I start picking up other skills. Especially not when there's divine pulses to take advantage of if a mistake does happen.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Nobody seems intrigued by the question of whether Miracle is more or less viable with the addition of aggro lines and divine pulse? What a juicy brain teaser!

Round 4 is Poison Strike. Here is the strawpoll link. And here are some notes so we are on the same page:

• Poison Strike reduces the opponent's health by 20% max health after combat if the unit attacked and hit.
• Poison Strike is the class Mastery for Dark Mage, which requires a Dark Seal to certify into. Your opportunities to collect a Dark Seal, regardless of route, are Chapters 4, 6, 8, along with any future chapter where Death Knight is encountered as an enemy.
  • Also note that Dark Mage is a male-exclusive class. It provides the Miasma spell (or double miasma charges, if your name is Hubert), and heartseeker as class skills. 
• If a Poison Strike wielder reduces a monster's current HP pool to zero, Poison Strike activates after the health bar refills for the next stage
  • However, I have observed a bug where the game only checks the max health of the monster's first stage, making the skill less effective than it should be on later stages
    • The three Strongest monsters in the game: A big turtle, a big bird, and a big dragon, all have an ability called Ancient Dragonskin, which does indeed cut Poison strike's damage further in half. On their final stage, Poison Strike is only chipping for 5% of their current max health which is a bummer.
• I find that magic users in general have low competition for equippable skills, at least until the end of the game.

[Jotari]

Poison Strike I might throw on a mage in a legitimate playthrough, but not because I see any use to it really. Typically my mages are going to be the ones doing the killing blow due to their squishy counter potential and the common problem with debilitating skills being that you're going to kill most enemies in two hits regardless. Though Three Houses does seem to have a bit better enemy quality than a lot of other games. It can be fun for builds by stacking on Seal Skills, especially in New Game+ when you can pair it early on and put it on an archer or something, but in legitmate playthroughs, Dark Seals are hard enough to get as is so Poison Strike doesn't seem all that useful.

[Shadow Mir]

On 1/11/2020 at 12:03 AM, Dandy Druid said:

I have yet to see Miracle proc in my game file. There's no reason to master Priest when your healer could've been classed as a Mage to learn Fiendish Blow instead. Maybe I'm unlucky or spoiled by FE4's version of Miracle, but it never seems to work. I'd rather put other skills that I know have a better chance of being active in battle. Plus, it's not worth using a slot for a skill that will most likely not activate when you could've had a skill that would have gave your character a slight boost during the whole battle.

Lemme guess - you also had the misfortune of having it activate when the enemy had it.

As to the subject, no on Poison Strike. Dark Seals are hard to get a hold of unless you either started with the Golden Deer or recruited Lysithea if you didn't. Second, Dark Mage is male-exclusive, which hurts as the only male unit that's a good mage is Hubert. It doesn't help that time spent mastering Dark Mage could have been better spent mastering Mage for Fiendish Blow. That said, it could be more useful on a NG+ run as you get to bypass the awkward requirement of having to master Dark Mage...

I nominate Lifetaker and the Defiant abilities.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

I said YES to Poison Strike. It's no game-changer, but extra chip is usually a good thing. I'll often use my mages to take a chunk out of an enemy or monster (especially with Thyrsus or Caduceus), and extra damage can mean an ally gets the kill on the first strike (versus getting countered, or having to use a combat art). There are occassions where the extra chip can hurt you (say, Monsters with Defiant Avo), so you have to keep it in mind when attacking. It's no Fiendish Blow, but I think it has enough value to be worth a slot in the midgame, or on NG+.

Re: Miracle, I don't think the aggro lines make a big difference, since its activation is so shaky anyway. I do think Divine Pulse makes it slightly worse, since saving you a pulse is generally less valuable than saving you a reset. 

[Galap]

Poison strike is kind of funny. I think it's kind of a lot better in theory than it ends up being in practice due to other circumstances. In a vacuum, I think it's a great skill and would equip it, but I think that it's better to master the mage class than the dark mage class:

Its main competition is the Mage mastery skill, Fiendish Blow, which is very similar, in that in both cases you do extra damage when you initiate an attack. Neither is strictly better than the other; poison strike does more damage if the enemy has >30 HP, which for most of the game I think they will. however, the poison strike damage can't kill the enemy directly, and if you get the double strike, the fiendish blow damage will be doubled as well. I think in most situations fiendish blow is better.

[Femboy Advance SP]

Maddening mode has proven that poison strike is indeed useful on snipers, but sadly the only player unit I could see this being realistic for is ignatz, might be a pretty decent build for him.

[Vitezen]

Poison strike would be cool, but the problem is that you just won't have time to learn it while you're filling your mages with more worthwhile skills. Why should they spend time learning poison strike when they could be learning fiendish blow? Mages tend to fill up on skills quickly. I think it would be a lot better if you could instantly learn it simply by unlocking dark mage. It's not terrible.

[Flere210]

Poison strike is one of those things that lack an ideal user. Mages want to oneshot, not chip. Hubert can benefit for poison strike because he has no reason to go warlock and it's better than lifetaker, but between dark spike and frozen lance he will often just murder things whitout proccing it.

Dorothea could use it well on paper because she is a long range specilist whit mhe magic, but the patriarchy prevent her to promote to dark mage. Lorenz could use it i guess, but is a lot of resources for some chipping.

It would be ideal on bow knight whose role is long range chipping in the first place, but they need to deviate from their build to access poison strike. If it was on thief or assassin like in fates it would be a great skill.

[eclipse]

I might consider it for Hanneman, if I wanted to be supremely silly.  Would make Meteor chip hurt even more!

[Flere210]

6 minutes ago, eclipse said:

I might consider it for Hanneman, if I wanted to be supremely silly.  Would make Meteor chip hurt even more!

Right forgot about him. It may work quite well.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

What the heck? 100 people voted on this most recent strawpoll? Is anybody else seeing this? I don't believe it for a moment. I hope there wasn't a glitch when I created it, as I am interested in the real results.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, Glennstavos said:

What the heck? 100 people voted on this most recent strawpoll? Is anybody else seeing this? I don't believe it for a moment. I hope there wasn't a glitch when I created it, as I am interested in the real results.

Interestingly, there were around 100 when I voted, too, several hours ago. Maybe Strawpoll glitched and gave 50 votes to each option at the start? IDK.

4 hours ago, Femboy Advance SP said:

Maddening mode has proven that poison strike is indeed useful on snipers, but sadly the only player unit I could see this being realistic for is ignatz, might be a pretty decent build for him.

Seconding @eclipse pointing to Hanneman, whose proficiencies are ideal for going Dark Mage, then Sniper, or even Bow Knight. But his low strength, and good Reason list, mean he'll likely prefer to stay in magic classes. Plus he joins late, so mastery is a challenge.

Ashe could conceivably do this. His magic options aren't great, but he can combine poison strike with bows, or with the Shatter Slash combat art (through Lance budding talent). Alternatively, he has an easy road to Wyvern Rider, where he can get Seal Defense to pair with Poison Strike.

Another pick is Ferdinand, who is neutral in both Bows and Reason, but gets Seal Speed through his budding talent in Armor. He also has a fairly accessible road to Bow Knight.

Finally Hubert, like Hanneman, is strong in both Bows and Reason, and joins earlier. You'll lose out on his great spell list and better offensive stat, though. Still, I found Cavalier->Paladin->Bow Knight great with Frozen Lance, so maybe there's potential?

[Dandy Druid]

7 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Lemme guess - you also had the misfortune of having it activate when the enemy had it.

Actually I haven't even seen the enemy use it. All I know is that I had to Divine Pulse a couple of times because Marianne could never activate Miracle to save her life (literally).

The only times an enemy had Miracle that was used against me was Heroes.

Now back to the subject of Poison Strike.

It's not a bad skill imo, BUT it is with the wrong class entirely. Dark Magic is BEEFY and usually one rounds enemies. Even the standard Miasma spell will kill high resistance enemies. There's no need for Poisoned Strike when you're straight up killing the majority of the enemies. It only comes into play against beasts, but beasts aren't too much of a problem when they're put up against a competent gauntlet user or gambits that take down  their defenses. It's a good skill, but it should have been on a different type of unit. Maybe it would be better for Hubert to go Dark Mage -> Assassin so he can gain some utility, use the levin swords, and poison strike enemies from a distance with a Magic Bow. Now, I'm interested in building Hubert like that. Maybe I'll try it. Ignatz could also try this. Hmm..... maybe I'll do this with Ignatz instead because Hubert's spell list is too good to give up. If only the ladies could do it though, Dorothea, Marianne, Ingrid, and Mercedes would like this build. Annette is also a good contender, but raising her bow skill high enough will be a little bit of a challenge.

But my rating of Poison Strike is neutral. It's not a bad skill per se, but it's on a type of unit that doesn't need help dealing additional damage. It was much better in Fates because hidden weapons weren't the most powerful.

[Dark Holy Elf]

20 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

I find that magic users in general have low competition for equippable skills, at least until the end of the game.

I dunno. Assuming Fiendish Blow is picked up first (due to being a clearly better skill), the standard mage build has HP+5, Magic+2, Reason Prowess, and Fiendish Blow eating four slots by the time getting Poison Strike is at all possible. I guess it's possible Poison Strike is better than any fifth at that point, though, unless your mage is trying to flex Nosferatu (Faith Prowess), or a magical combat art ([weapon] prowess) or has snagged Armour rank C (Weight-3).

Anyway I vote no for Poison Strike. Mages want to get Fiendish Blow too badly instead, and while stacking both is possible it rarely feels useful. A mage should leave most opponents mostly dead already, it rarely matters if they're at 1 HP or 15 HP for how easy they are to finish off.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

30 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I dunno. Assuming Fiendish Blow is picked up first (due to being a clearly better skill), the standard mage build has HP+5, Magic+2, Reason Prowess, and Fiendish Blow eating four slots by the time getting Poison Strike is at all possible. I guess it's possible Poison Strike is better than any fifth at that point, though, unless your mage is trying to flex Nosferatu (Faith Prowess), or a magical combat art ([weapon] prowess) or has snagged Armour rank C (Weight-3).

Yeah, but mages generally don't nab any skills beyond those four that are worth equipping. Not until they reach S and S+ in reason for range and damage increases. Warlock's bowbreaker does not encourage me to risk getting one rounded by snipers. Renewal is extra since they're not taking hits on a regular basis. Miracle is obviously contentious. Even some of those four skills are debatable. Depending on how accurate your spells are, you can ditch reason prowess in the mid-late game since linked attack bonuses are several magnitudes stronger, and high rank magic batallion options provide good hit. HP+5 rarely makes the difference in whether you get one rounded. Magic +2 is less than half of fiendish blow, and depending on where your magic stat is, can be equipped for another space of range on warp/rescue.

We've also forgotten authority, but I do gambits for locking people down and breaking armor. Not for their damage. In general, the only mages with high opportunity cost in abilities are Annette due to her rallies, and any mage I decided to make a dancer, since special dance and stacking sword avoid +20 with sword prowess are all at least a little tempting. Weapon prowess for magic combat arts sounds good too, as they tend to get pretty inaccurate as the game goes on. But if it's just a level 3 providing 10 hit it's questionable again. 

[ajmiam]

I happen to think this ability is decent...but not for mages.  Most of my mages either one-round enemies or do so much damage that the extra chip from Poison Strike is irrelevant.  However, I think it works well with most bow users, and honestly any physical attacker that isn't a Grappler or War Master.  Sometimes they just won't have enough oomph to kill without a lucky crit, or can only reach their target with Curved Shot, and this skill can help ensure that the next unit gets the kill and it doesn't become a 3-round KO.  (Enemies in Maddening can have surprisingly high bulk and evasion, even units like Grapplers that one might not think of as tanky.)  I particularly like Poison Strike on Ashe because he can set up faraway enemies for easy kills if he lands a Deadeye.  (In spite of his Reason bane, the overall investment to reach D+ Reason is pretty small compared to advancing a half-letter grade on Bows towards the endgame.)

Further, you can combine Poison Strike with the Impregnable Wall gambit for a zero-risk way to wear down non-monster bosses--a technique I like to call "Safe Striking".  Certain bosses with Counterattack--specifically, two that appear in Chapter 17 of Crimson Flower--just output so much damage that I found I had no ways to attack into them normally without a very high risk of losing a unit.  We're talking numbers like 30x2 Mt, 75 Hit, 33 Crit against my whole army.  Poison Strike ignores the drawback of Impregnable Wall, as well as all status-blocking abilities like Immune Status or Commander, so you attack the enemy for 1 damage, you take 1x2 damage, and they lose 20% of their HP.  Just do this until they're low enough to kill with a unit that isn't under Impregnable Wall.  Saved me a lot of stress in that chapter (and, incidentally, Chapter 17 of VW), it did.

All told, I like having it on several of my units and swapping it in or out as the map demands.

[Jotari]

13 hours ago, eclipse said:

I might consider it for Hanneman, if I wanted to be supremely silly.  Would make Meteor chip hurt even more!

Oh, that's actually not a bad idea. Might actually try that to see how it works out.

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

I think I would on maybe one character: Ignatz. Considering how low his strength is, he could make great use of Poison Strike as an archer, sniper, or bow knight. He even has reason proficiency as part of his hidden talent.

Of course, I highly doubt I would go down this path on Maddening. Less work to make Ignatz a Dancer on Golden Deer and not recruit him on any of the other paths.

In the end, I would in one very specific circumstance. Otherwise, no.