Jump to content

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


Would you use this weird thing?  

105 members have voted

  1. 1. Round 1: Holy Knight?

    • Yeah, I can imagine a scenario where I make a Holy Knight.
      71
    • No, I can't see an application or justification for Holy Knight over other classes
      34
  2. 2. Round 2: Battalion Renewal?

    • Yeah, I think I could see myself using this.
      9
    • No, I wouldn't waste an ability slot on this source of healing.
      70


Recommended Posts

22 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

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.

Prowess provides amazing overall stat boosts and I can't imagine wanting to unequip your last one. On Maddening enemy avoid gets reasonably high and while you may not need Reason Prowess to hit the less accurate ones, it's gonna help a lot for the more evasive. Especially since the hit boosts from Reason Prowess are so high. Additionally, without a Prowess skill, many characters face non-zero crit from a huge number of enemies.

HP+5 makes a fairly notable difference for whether your mage is one-hit killed in my experience; a lot of them have pretty poor base HP so there's almost invariably some range of enemy atk where 5 more HP is decisive. Full disclosure that I rarely bother with stat boosters and the HP-boosters are pretty potent, so you can probably get their HP high enough that OHKOs would never come up except from bosses. But then I'd think it would start to help them with not being 2HKOed? I dunno, I feel like mages' poorer skill choices coupled with their lower HP means HP+5 is almost a staple for them, while some bulkier units will drop it later for me.

22 hours ago, ajmiam said:

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.

Ooh, that is a neat idea. Particularly if you don't have the Rafail Gem (which is always an issue on Chapter 17 CF, as you note).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 489
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

On 1/12/2020 at 9:40 PM, Glennstavos said:

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.

Echoing @Dark Holy Elf, I think it's a mistake to view certain things in competition, when they could be in synergy. The linked attack bonus isn't a good reason to unequip Reason prowess - wouldn't you rather stack two hit-boosting mechanics, whenever possible? The only case I could see is if you're regularly getting 100 hit on everyone - but even then, it's nice to get it without worrying about allied positioning.

Same with Magic+2 and Fiendish Blow. It's not a case of +2 versus +6, but instead +8 versus +6 (assuming you're not dropping Fiendish Blow, because... why would you?).

HP+5, it depends. I recently had to Divine Pulse when an enemy Assassin had just enough attack to one-round my Bishop Mercedes without the skill assigned. So that sucked. Then again, Personal Experience Never Is Sufficient.

I think Bowbreaker is quite good (if I can drop enemy bow attacks from 60 to 40, then retaliate with Thyrsus/Caduceus, you better believe I'm taking that), and I'm a sucker for Renewal, but I'd say they come late enough that there'll be a while when neither is competing directly with Poison Strike.

Ironic, then, that I actually disagree with Dark Holy Elf (and seemingly agree with you @Glennstavos, although stranger things have happened), in that I think Poison Strike is useful, at least for a time. Basically it works to stack with other skills (arguably outshining HP+5), and can translate to any offensive type (so if you pivot to hybrid, or even pure physical, Poison Strike is just as useful). Can be good for setting up kills on durable Maddening mode enemies, especially if you can combine it with a Seal skill or combat art.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Ironic, then, that I actually disagree with Dark Holy Elf (and seemingly agree with you @Glennstavos, although stranger things have happened), in that I think Poison Strike is useful, 

I'm actually not arguing in favor of poison strike at all. I'm just responding to @Dark Holy Elf's challenge of my statement that "mages have low competition for equippable abilities until the end of the game". And it doesn't matter whether any of those four abilities are all crucial or not, since you have five slots, not four. That's the heart of what I'm getting at. 

I don't make a point to state how I vote, but I'm a no on poison strike. It has significantly underperformed all my expectations in practice. And in the three chapters where I expected to find the most use from it, it was thwarted handily by those bosses only taking 5% health from it instead of 20. Frustrating.

Edited by Glennstavos
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Glennstavos fair enough, my apologies for misinterpreting your words. I do generally agree that mages have less skill competition than physical units (especially multi-weaponists). But I've said all I care to re: Poison Strike, so I'll wait patiently for the next one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well then Round 5 is Desperation. Here is the strawpoll link. And here are some notes so everybody is on the same page:

  • Desperation allows the user to perform their double attack before the enemy's counterattack if their HP is 50% or less
  • Desperation is obtained from mastering the Cavalier class.
    • Which may be a bit ironic, since cavalier's -10 speed growth would be detrimental to the fast units who could make use of this skill.
  • Desperation has no value unless you double, and if your double doesn't one round, the outcome of the battle will be the same outside of having two chances to crit or crest proc before counterattack.
  • Due to the ability's HP threshold, it has some synergy with other abilities that require low health, such as Defiant skills.
    • But as a player phase only skill, it has no synergy with others that explicitly have the same HP threshold, like Vantage and Wrath.
  • The goal of Desperation is for the user to avoid counterattacks, but brave weapons, brave combat arts, ranged weapons, and gambits all exist too. 

Edit: I have created a new poll with a captcha. Please vote again if you have already.

Edited by Glennstavos
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cavaliers come early and there are good reasons to have them, so you are likely to get it before you have a complete build, so you may as well use it.

Now that i think about it, i made my Bernie a cavalier, so i may try to keep her low to make use of the sinergy whit her personal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think Desperation is good on the right unit. That is to say, someone speedy. Will be way better on females since they can get Darting Blow at all. It just may not be the most practical to use for a unit, especially given how fast some of these units are on Maddening.

Edit: Also, I only saw one vote when I voted just did it.

Edited by Azure, Roundabouted Out
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On second thought, Desperation would work with a good pair of knuckles.  Silver would be the most cost-effective, but I can see situations where Aura/Dragon Knuckles would carve out a huge chunk of HP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Flere210 said:

So you are valuing 1 point of speed over movement+canto? 

I dunno about you, but I found Cavaliers to underperform in this game compared to past games - sure, high movement is nice, but I don't think it is enough for me to overcome the fact that they're just not as good as they were in past FE games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cavalier is still a good class. If we ignore skills gained from mastery it's the second best physical class at Intermediate tier easily (7 move + canto is easily better than Bow Range +1 or... whatever tiny stat improvements Merc/Thief/Brigand/Brawler are trying to sell themselves on). Obviously if you factor in mastery skill then Brigand soars and Archer improves too, but that still leaves Cavalier in a decent spot.

 

On Desperation: I can see some use for it. Unlike Poison Strike and Miracle, Desperation is obtained from a solid class which is not just a minor variation on another class which grants a better skill, so I'm more likely to pick it up in the first place. And then I could see it being useful in some builds, due to its synergy with the Defaint skills. I think it even has some synergy with Vantage/Wrath builds since it's nice for those units to have some player phase.

But it's not great. Remarkable how much better it feels in FEH, such is the difference between a game where healing is cumbersome (takes one of four turns, you may not be deploying someone who can do it, can only be done at certain ranges) vs one where it's easy (you have 10-12 units so it's easy to devote 1-2 for healing, and Physic is range 1~toodamnhigh).

Probably the best thing we've rated so far IMO.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Desperation sounds like it could definitely result in  fun builds, but my biggest issue is that almost my entire army fails to double anything that's not an armoured knight on Maniac. And useually the few units that can double aren't going to be able to reliably kill the enemy in one round of combat before the enemy counters. When it comes to maniac, evasion and hit are basically way too important for much else to be considered. Still, it sounds like it could be fun, just not for a serious playthrough of maniac.

11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Cavalier is still a good class. If we ignore skills gained from mastery it's the second best physical class at Intermediate tier easily (7 move + canto is easily better than Bow Range +1 or... whatever tiny stat improvements Merc/Thief/Brigand/Brawler are trying to sell themselves on). Obviously if you factor in mastery skill then Brigand soars and Archer improves too, but that still leaves Cavalier in a decent spot.

 

On Desperation: I can see some use for it. Unlike Poison Strike and Miracle, Desperation is obtained from a solid class which is not just a minor variation on another class which grants a better skill, so I'm more likely to pick it up in the first place. And then I could see it being useful in some builds, due to its synergy with the Defaint skills. I think it even has some synergy with Vantage/Wrath builds since it's nice for those units to have some player phase.

But it's not great. Remarkable how much better it feels in FEH, such is the difference between a game where healing is cumbersome (takes one of four turns, you may not be deploying someone who can do it, can only be done at certain ranges) vs one where it's easy (you have 10-12 units so it's easy to devote 1-2 for healing, and Physic is range 1~toodamnhigh).

Probably the best thing we've rated so far IMO.

The fact that perma death isn't really a thing in Heroes (or in the maps where it makes an instant fail, you only lose a minute and a half of play time) also helps it. Three Houses gives a great reversability to a unit dying, but the fact that your unit is put in a lot more danger to use such skills makes it look more risky in Three Houses. I can play around and experiment in Heroes, I can't really do so in Three Houses without wasting a tonne of time.

Edited by Jotari
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have used desperation in past playthroughs, but it has never been very useful for me. I'm now on NG+too many times for my units to ever have leftover skillslots, and in hard mode hardly anybody reaches below 50% hp or stays there long enough. I plan my first lunatic pt soon but I hear nobody doubles there anyways~

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Cavalier is still a good class. If we ignore skills gained from mastery it's the second best physical class at Intermediate tier easily (7 move + canto is easily better than Bow Range +1 or... whatever tiny stat improvements Merc/Thief/Brigand/Brawler are trying to sell themselves on). Obviously if you factor in mastery skill then Brigand soars and Archer improves too, but that still leaves Cavalier in a decent spot.

 

On Desperation: I can see some use for it. Unlike Poison Strike and Miracle, Desperation is obtained from a solid class which is not just a minor variation on another class which grants a better skill, so I'm more likely to pick it up in the first place. And then I could see it being useful in some builds, due to its synergy with the Defaint skills. I think it even has some synergy with Vantage/Wrath builds since it's nice for those units to have some player phase.

But it's not great. Remarkable how much better it feels in FEH, such is the difference between a game where healing is cumbersome (takes one of four turns, you may not be deploying someone who can do it, can only be done at certain ranges) vs one where it's easy (you have 10-12 units so it's easy to devote 1-2 for healing, and Physic is range 1~toodamnhigh).

Probably the best thing we've rated so far IMO.

RE: Desperation: Well, that's because as @Jotari stated, losing a unit doesn't translate to an automatic reset most of the time in Heroes (and if it does result in a fail, you don't lose that much time), whereas in these games, that could set you back a good chunk of time. Well, that, and the fact that healing is much more cumbersome there than here. Granted, Three Houses does have Divine Pulse, but it doesn't change the fact that it's much riskier to be low enough to use Desperation than in Heroes.

RE: The Cavalier class: Just how many units have good enough speed growths that the -10 from Cavalier won't screw them over in the long run??? Off the top of my head, I can count the number of units this applies to on one hand (Petra, Leonie, Ingrid).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quick lighting round of the previous two since i missed them:

Miracle: the skill itself has been pretty meaningless outside of Fe4 and Divine pulse makes its existence even less important since in old games it would just prevent a reset. I rarely leave people in death range outside of the early game (where you don’t have Miracle) I would not use this skill.

Poison Strike: This skill has its uses, and Mages don’t often have heavy competition for abilities so they usually have room for it, so the only real negative too it is having to stay in Dark mage to master it, and you obviously want Fiendish blow or even Hit +20 over Poison Strike. I would use this skill, but only after getting other core skills.

On to desperation.
 

Desperation builds will not work against every enemy type, neither will it work well on slow units. So obviously i would never put Desperation on a unit like Dedue or on somebody in a class with a negative speed modifier like Paladin. If the unit has good strength and speed, and has ease of access to Cavalier (Like Dimitri or Ferdinand) then I can see it being somewhat useful since it allows them to one round enemies without retaliation on Player phase, meaning that while they need to be on half health, they don’t take a hit and thus save battalion endurance.

Of course this becomes completely pointless in the face of brave weapons and brave combat arts such as Swift Strikes, which so the same thing but are much safer, at the cost of more weapon uses but that doesn’t matter as much.

The only time i would actually consider using Desperation would be in the mid game when you don’t have access to Brave arts or weapons, however the issue then arises of other intermediate masteries. A unit wants Death Blow or Darting Blow much more than Desperation, and by the time you master one of those skills you will be at a point that if you swap to Cav and try to get Desperation, you will most likely have at least one brave weapon by the point you finally master it.

I would not use this skill.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Speed screwage is difficult to contextualize into "averages" when it happens. For instance, my Ferdinand going from 12 to 14 when I classed him into paladin at 20. I didn't spend a single one of those levels in the cavalier class, but I bet if I had I'd be blaming the class the whole way there. Instead of patching up his speed with carrots, I treated speed like the dump stat it became and focused on how better he could tank and assassinate with swift strikes since those are better qualities in Maddening than having a great speed stat. The cavalier's -10 speed growth would be more palatable if it had any redeeming increase to compensate, but it doesn't.

The discussion on cavalier being the best male class on the level 10 tier is interesting to me. Movement and canto is obviously good for positioning concerns, but my army moves together as long as the map design and objectives allow it - which is often very long. Fliers have so much more freedom of movement that they're far safer to split them off from the party for objectives. They can move through inaccessible terrain, hit a guy, then pass back to the other side of that terrain. Cavaliers can't do that, so they wouldn't keep up with a party of fliers. About the only advantage I see to sticking with the class is gaining some free riding experience that you can put toward your later classes. That's a bonus +2 points every round of combat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

More move and canto are always useful to have. A cavalier can kill an enemy which is right beside them and keep moving forward; if a brigand does that they may not be able to do anything useful the next turn. Canto also allows a character to attack an enemy or use a positioning combat art (Reposition etc.) in a location that would leave a non-canto unit open to fatal damage on the following enemy phase, then retreat to safety. Higher move in general ensures that a character is more likely to have useful options on any given turn; more enemies or allies to reach, more options in positioning (e.g. getting behind a monster to leave the spaces in front open for other attackers).

Most people consider Stride to be an excellent Gambit. Being a cavalier instead of an infantry physical class is like having 40% of Stride's effect active all the time, and Canto on top of that. That should obviously be considered good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

More move and canto are always useful to have. A cavalier can kill an enemy which is right beside them and keep moving forward; if a brigand does that they may not be able to do anything useful the next turn.

Yeah but the brigand will remain in range to get healed and not burn a physic. This is a point of the game where we have mages and later priests, but not bishops. Canto is only of value to the cav if he can slip out of enemy range entirely or into a nearby forest after combat and entering a forest tile is 3 move cost for them. Choosing to move forward into the arms of the next three enemies will just get you killed. If enemy strength were lower, like in the GBA games, I'd agree with you on always wanting to move forward.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...