Finished Conquest on Lunatic mode without DLC, Wifi, etc.

[starburst]

9 hours ago, samthedigital said:

+skl is a little underrated, and I would choose it primarily for the ability to hit more enemies reliably than anything else.

You know, I also value Skill, a lot. A unit that cannot hit is worthless. The majority of the party has only one job: wipe enemies. And if they do not fulfil their job, then they are not worth using. I like my units to all have at least 20 Skill for the last third of the game. They must connect and they should land critical hits.

The thing here is that Ninjas already have high Skill. Their problem is not that they fail, but that they do not hit hard enough to kill. That is why I would have gone +Strength.
I would have said the same about a Mercenary or a Cavalier, their problem is not dexterity, specially when they can wield swords.

I would have gone +Skill on a Berserker, for example (but grabbing -20 % Avoid from Mage would be as effective.) I do not remember ever using an Adventurer Cornflakes, but that would be another candidate.

[samthedigital]

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The thing here is that Ninjas already have high Skill. Their problem is not that they fail, but that they do not hit hard enough to kill. That is why I would have gone +Strength.

Corrin is probably not going to spend all of her time as a Ninja, so +skl still has some uses. I was not implying anything about you or your post in particular though. It just seems that he wanted it for the skill procs, and I don't think that it's a strong motivation to go +skl given the alternatives.

[Shadow Mir]

9 hours ago, samthedigital said:

+skl is a little underrated, and I would choose it primarily for the ability to hit more enemies reliably than anything else. The only problem I have with it is that it makes one rounding Takumi harder depending on the build. 

 

13 minutes ago, starburst said:

You know, I also value Skill, a lot. A unit that cannot hit is worthless. The majority of the party has only one job: wipe enemies. And if they do not fulfil their job, then they are not worth using. I like my units to all have at least 20 Skill for the last third of the game. They must connect and they should land critical hits.

The thing here is that Ninjas already have high Skill. Their problem is not that they fail, but that they do not hit hard enough to kill. That is why I would have gone +Strength.
I would have said the same about a Mercenary or a Cavalier, their problem is not dexterity, specially when they can wield swords.

I would have gone +Skill on a Berserker, for example (but grabbing -20 % Avoid from Mage would be as effective.) I do not remember ever using an Adventurer Cornflakes, but that would be another candidate.

The issue with Skill is that point-for-point, it's less valuable than other stats tend to be - ergo, one extra point of skill won't make a difference the way an extra point of strength or defense might. It doesn't help that it tends to be easy to fix hit rates in a lot of FE games.

[samthedigital]

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The issue with Skill is that point-for-point, it's less valuable than other stats tend to be - ergo, one extra point of skill won't make a difference the way an extra point of strength or defense might. It doesn't help that it tends to be easy to fix hit rates in a lot of FE games.

It depends on the cotext here. In Conquest specifically it's possible to hit most threshholds without getting the appropriate boon. In the case of defense it can be dangerous if it gets too high, so it's better to have some control over it. There will never be a time where having more skill is a bad thing though; it's impossible to get reliable (or even 100%) hit rates on everything especially if Corrin has to suffer WTD or faces a dodgy boss.

[starburst]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

It just seems that he wanted it for the skill procs, and I don't think that it's a strong motivation to go +skl given the alternatives.

Oh, I get it now. And I agree with you. +Skill is always useful, even if other options could have had more synergy, one can never have too much dexterity.

I forgot to mention that I sometimes go +Skill as a “general” boon for her daughter. I usually marry Cornflakes to Odin, but when I do not want Corrin to be a magical user, I choose +Skill (or +Speed) to still benefit Ophelia and let the mama be proficient at whatever she wants to be.

Mozu » Sophie and Mozu » Velouria are incredible with Aptitude and high Skill.

Edited May 17, 2020 by starburst

[Shadow Mir]

22 hours ago, samthedigital said:

It depends on the cotext here. In Conquest specifically it's possible to hit most threshholds without getting the appropriate boon. In the case of defense it can be dangerous if it gets too high, so it's better to have some control over it. There will never be a time where having more skill is a bad thing though; it's impossible to get reliable (or even 100%) hit rates on everything especially if Corrin has to suffer WTD or faces a dodgy boss.

I agree that having high skill is better than having low skill, but regardless, I'd think a skill boon is about the least useful overall (ergo, the one with pretty much no strong motivations to go for), simply because it's easy to boost hit. The only dodgy bosses that come to mind are either early on or are ones Corrin likely won't be very useful against (Kotaro in particular comes to mind here).

[samthedigital]

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I agree that having high skill is better than having low skill, but regardless, I'd think a skill boon is about the least useful overall (ergo, the one with pretty much no strong motivations to go for), simply because it's easy to boost hit.

The luck boon is much worse, and I probably don't need to explain why. Otherwise it's not quite that easy to boost hit, and it's generally not the primary thing that most units want when boosting stats with meals. The argument against the defense boons is that they don't provide much of a boost statistically, and +def can make it harder to get Corrin's defense in the right threshholds for enemies to attack her while dealing low amounts of damage. The speed boon is mostly superfluous, and with the branch of fates trick Corrin will likely never have problems doubling.

The other 4 boons are all useful, but the advantage skill has is that it helps Corrin hit more consistently against random enemies, she hits dodgier bosses like Fuga and Kotaro more consistently, and she doesn't have to worry about using WTA or being in the correct class to hit reliably. Randomly missing is more noticable with a Bolt Axe, but it's still something that can happen from time to time with just about any attack. The problem could be solved by using skill books (meals too I guess, but other units need help with damage output far more than Corrin does), but by freeing those up we let another unit hit everything consistently. Xander can one shot ninjas somewhat reliably with Siegfried as an example of a potential use for them. Skill boon offers the greatest boost to any stat that isn't completely useless too, so that's something else to factor in. The only big disadvantage is that not having +str makes one rounding Takumi a lot more challenging, but there are ways around it.

Edited May 18, 2020 by samthedigital

[Shadow Mir]

14 hours ago, samthedigital said:

The luck boon is much worse, and I probably don't need to explain why. Otherwise it's not quite that easy to boost hit, and it's generally not the primary thing that most units want when boosting stats with meals. The argument against the defense boons is that they don't provide much of a boost statistically, and +def can make it harder to get Corrin's defense in the right threshholds for enemies to attack her while dealing low amounts of damage. The speed boon is mostly superfluous, and with the branch of fates trick Corrin will likely never have problems doubling.

The other 4 boons are all useful, but the advantage skill has is that it helps Corrin hit more consistently against random enemies, she hits dodgier bosses like Fuga and Kotaro more consistently, and she doesn't have to worry about using WTA or being in the correct class to hit reliably. Randomly missing is more noticable with a Bolt Axe, but it's still something that can happen from time to time with just about any attack. The problem could be solved by using skill books (meals too I guess, but other units need help with damage output far more than Corrin does), but by freeing those up we let another unit hit everything consistently. Xander can one shot ninjas somewhat reliably with Siegfried as an example of a potential use for them. Skill boon offers the greatest boost to any stat that isn't completely useless too, so that's something else to factor in. The only big disadvantage is that not having +str makes one rounding Takumi a lot more challenging, but there are ways around it.

Bold: Really? Because attack stance gives +10 hit (maybe more depending on the support unit), and Heartseeker cuts enemy avoid by 20. You'd need something like 7 or 14 skill to equal those, respectively. Hence why I say it's easy to boost hit. 

Second bold: On the contrary, I'd say it's pretty much because IS realized how much of a joke stat Skill is - it's just not valuable unless you have a lot of it. And it takes a lot of it for it to make any noticeable difference in hit rates, because like I said, one point of skill is pretty much meaningless compared to one point just about anywhere else.

The rest: I'd say the big disadvantage of a skill boon is that I don't have a boon in a more important stat. Is it really worth sacrificing extra points in more important stats just for a few extra points of hit??? Honestly, I say no way. As far as I'm concerned, it's only really useful if your Corrin build involves being in an axe class. What's the branch of fate trick, anyway? Because I find using branch of fate impractical. Also, this is nitpicky, but why assume that Corrin's going to be played as a female??? Because some of us here (like yours truly) much prefer to play with a male Corrin. And why do you say the speed boon is superfluous? What class are you assuming specifically?

Edited May 19, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[samthedigital]

 

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Really? Because attack stance gives +10 hit (maybe more depending on the support unit), and Heartseeker cuts enemy avoid by 20. You'd need something like 7 or 14 skill to equal those, respectively. Hence why I say it's easy to boost hit. 

Skill boon offers 3 skill at base and a 25% growth (so it effectively matches those kinds of numbers), and Corrin is not always going to pick up Heartseeker.

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I'd say the big disadvantage of a skill boon is that I don't have a boon in a more important stat. Is it really worth sacrificing extra points in more important stats just for a few extra points of hit??? Honestly, I say no way

It depends on the build and on the threshholds that Corrin is likely to hit, so this isn't always true. In the case of speed even a Knight build (and I'm not sure why anyone would do that) can get to doubling ranges with tonics and pairup bonuses. At worst there are speedwings if it becomes a problem, and there are a lot more of those than is necessary anyway.

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What's the branch of fate trick, anyway? Because I find using branch of fate impractical.

 Branch of fate trick means using branch of fate after playing through the start of the game to change her boon/bane so that she gets a few points of growths with another boon. It's particularly useful to be able to double more at the start of the game and to get a few points of extra speed. I'm not sure how it would be impractical.

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. Also, this is nitpicky, but why assume that Corrin's going to be played as a female???

We use the words he/she to refer to people in the english language, and functionally speaking it doesn't really matter in this context. Otherwise you're just trying to be pedantic and it's a waste of time on both ends.

[starburst]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

Branch of fate trick means using branch of fate after playing through the start of the game to change her boon/bane so that she gets a few points of growths with another boon. It's particularly useful to be able to double more at the start of the game and to get a few points of extra speed. I'm not sure how it would be impractical.

It is a known exploit more than it is a trick, mate. Specificity matters in this case because of the different connotation of each word. I would never abuse it, and you cannot expect others to do it just because you do. As simple as it may be, you would always need to specify that the exploit was used when trying to argue about thresholds.

It takes one twenty minutes to reach Chapter 6 on Conquest Hard and Lunatic. The exploit is not about saving time, but about reaching otherwise impossible thresholds.

I also do not use Path Bonuses, My Castle resources or rewards, DLC gifts, DLC Gold or Experience maps…
Conversely, I always recruit Velouria right after Chapter 14 by replaying the Before Awakening map. I like to have may ten main units as soon as possible, and I honestly believe that recruiting her at that point is not game-breaking. But I would never call it “standard.” I would always have to mention this liberty, otherwise other users would not be able to follow.

[samthedigital]

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It is a known exploit more than it is a trick, mate. Specificity matters in this case because of the different connotation of each word. I would never abuse it, and you cannot expect others to do it just because you do. As simple as it may be, you would always need to specify that the exploit was used when trying to argue about thresholds.

It doesn't matter if you call it a trick or an exploit; those are just semantics. It is something that exists in the game, and I do not need to talk about every mechanic that I would use.

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, samthedigital said:

Skill boon offers 3 skill at base and a 25% growth (so it effectively matches those kinds of numbers), and Corrin is not always going to pick up Heartseeker.

Corrin themselves doesn't even need it, per se - only for someone with it to be adjacent to the opponent. Either way, I'd consider a one level detour of Dark Mage a far better idea than picking a boon that is practically zero help whatsoever in the grand scheme of things compared to, say, an HP boon. Even factoring in the +3 from the boon, it still takes most of Corrin's unpromoted levels just to get enough extra skill to equal the attack stance boost, and you fall short of getting enough skill to match Heartseeker. Which just goes to show how little skill actually matters. Also, what the hell do you plan on sacrificing for the sake of those extra points of hit? Luck? Have fun constantly risking random game overs against cannon fodder, and having the Ryoma duel that much more likely to go wrong. I don't have any issue having skill for the bane BECAUSE it's so damn easy to make up for lacking hit (and personally, I don't have Corrin leave their base class tree for very long, if at all). Worst comes to worst, I could just give Corrin the secret books. It's a lot harder to make up for, say, lacking crit evade, and the adverse effects are much more pronounced.

3 hours ago, samthedigital said:

It depends on the build and on the threshholds that Corrin is likely to hit, so this isn't always true. In the case of speed even a Knight build (and I'm not sure why anyone would do that) can get to doubling ranges with tonics and pairup bonuses. At worst there are speedwings if it becomes a problem, and there are a lot more of those than is necessary anyway.

Perhaps, but at the same time, the fact remains that high skill is not as meaningful as high amounts in other stats. So what if Corrin is useless against, say, Kotaro (which is likely to be the case unless your Corrin build involved axes or bows or you somehow got a Dual Katana)? I've got other units to deal with him.

3 hours ago, samthedigital said:

Branch of fate trick means using branch of fate after playing through the start of the game to change her boon/bane so that she gets a few points of growths with another boon. It's particularly useful to be able to double more at the start of the game and to get a few points of extra speed. I'm not sure how it would be impractical.

Okay. But it's not really worth it imho.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[samthedigital]

 

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Also, what the hell do you plan on sacrificing for the sake of those extra points of hit? Luck? Have fun constantly risking random game overs against cannon fodder, and having the Ryoma duel that much more likely to go wrong.

If you're ever worried about getting crit you can just use tonics or stat boosters, but even without those Corrin does not face much in the way of crit rates even with the bane. It's the most common one for a reason; point for point luck is by far the worst stat. I'm a little confused at the mention of Ryoma. He is one of the bosses where having more skill helps, and at worst it's just an extra heal since he likely can't one round Corrin. It's also a little ironic that your argument for luck could also be made for skill.

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Even factoring in the +3 from the boon, it still takes most of Corrin's unpromoted levels just to get enough extra skill to equal the attack stance boost

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Perhaps, but at the same time, the fact remains that high skill is not as meaningful as high amounts in other stats. So what if Corrin is useless against, say, Kotaro (which is likely to be the case unless your Corrin build involved axes or bows or you somehow got a Dual Katana)? I've got other units to deal with him.

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Worst comes to worst, I could just give Corrin the secret books.

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 Either way, I'd consider a one level detour of Dark Mage a far better idea than picking a boon that is practically zero help whatsoever in the grand scheme of things compared to, say, an HP boon.

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and personally, I don't have Corrin leave their base class tree for very long, if at all

The commonality among all these points is that you're assuming that the game is played in a specific way to match your tastes. You might not find +skl to be very useful, but I could list alternatives that are either just as effective or more effective in some scenarios.

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Okay. But it's not really worth it imho.

I'm not really sure why you don't think that it's worth it for Corrin to double more consistently early on, but ok.

[Cyana]

On 5/17/2020 at 12:23 AM, Zerxen said:

Are the DLC classes from Before Awakening busted? I decided to be more lenient my second time and use this DLC to grind up any supports to ensure I get certain child characters? I don’t plan on using the EXP or Gold dlcs since that defeats the purpose of Conquest.

Lodestar can fix Xander's speed without compromising his defense and still allows him to use Siegfried, which frees up your speedwings/speed pair-ups to go elsewhere. Haven't tried it on lunatic yet but it worked very nicely on hard. Same with making Leo a dark flier, fixes his speed and makes him a bit more specialised. MVP on both hard and lunatic

[Shadow Mir]

11 hours ago, samthedigital said:

If you're ever worried about getting crit you can just use tonics or stat boosters, but even without those Corrin does not face much in the way of crit rates even with the bane. It's the most common one for a reason; point for point luck is by far the worst stat. I'm a little confused at the mention of Ryoma. He is one of the bosses where having more skill helps, and at worst it's just an extra heal since he likely can't one round Corrin. It's also a little ironic that your argument for luck could also be made for skill.

I hard disagree with you there - misses aren't nearly as bad as getting critted. Once again, it's easy to make up for low hit; it's more costly to have to make up for low crit evade, and you actively have to do it if you don't want to auto-lose (Case in point: Arthur).

Edited May 20, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[samthedigital]

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I hard disagree with you there - misses aren't nearly as bad as getting critted. Once again, it's easy to make up for low hit; it's more costly to have to make up for low crit evade, and you actively have to do it if you don't want to auto-lose (Case in point: Arthur).

Using tonics is not costly, and they are largely unnecessary for most situations even with a luck bane (and that's assuming that there was any other point to Goddess Icons). I also feel that it's kind of obvious that attack stance and heartseeker are not always good solutions to fix hit, but that point seems to have gone over your head.

Edited May 20, 2020 by samthedigital

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, samthedigital said:

Using tonics is not costly, and they are largely unnecessary for most situations even with a luck bane (and that's assuming that there was any other point to Goddess Icons). I also feel that it's kind of obvious that attack stance and heartseeker are not always good solutions to fix hit, but that point seems to have gone over your head.

Likewise, I think that it's obvious that pair up isn't always a good solution to fixing low crit evade, and neither is using bronze weapons (while there are other weapons that boost crit evade, they're either randomly obtained [joke weapons], weak [joke weapons and bronze weapons], exclusive weapons [Siegfried, Brynhildr, final Yato forms, Waterwheel] or not available for very long [final Yato forms, Waterwheel in Birthright]). That leaves the only real solution to low crit evade to be a DLC skill... yeah. Unless you like the thought of needing to marry off a bottom 5 (maybe even bottom 3) unit who suffers from all the problems associated with low crit evade AND gluing the unit you get to such units to fix it. Also, I think it's obvious that low crit evade is naught but a recipe for disaster in a game where critical hits are innately more powerful for the enemy than they are for the player.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[samthedigital]

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That leaves the only real solution to low crit evade to be a DLC skill... yeah.

It's as if you didn't read the first line of my post.

[starburst]

20 hours ago, samthedigital said:

It doesn't matter if you call it a trick or an exploit; those are just semantics. It is something that exists in the game, and I do not need to talk about every mechanic that I would use.

Sure, man, you are the only normal around here and we are all outsiders. Ask everyone whether or not they consider the exploit standard, then ask them to follow an argument stating that Speed pair-up bonuses, Speed Tonics and Speed boon are superfluous because your Cornflakes are somehow always capable of doubling, magically. Afterwards, maybe we could argue that one actually has 13.000 Gold (and not 3.000) by Chapter 7, because of Anna's Gift; or that skills are irrelevant to the class because one can always buy whatever one fancies in other Castles.

Anyway, I will stop here. It is clear that we will not agree about this. Maybe in another topic. 😉

 

13 hours ago, Cyana said:

Lodestar can fix Xander's speed without compromising his defense and still allows him to use Siegfried, which frees up your speedwings/speed pair-ups to go elsewhere. Haven't tried it on lunatic yet but it worked very nicely on hard. Same with making Leo a dark flier, fixes his speed and makes him a bit more specialised. MVP on both hard and lunatic

I used to think the same, but Lodestar does not really make a unit that faster, it is the +3 Speed skill that matters. Weird, right?
Polaris Xander has 1 or 2 more points of Speed than Paladin Xander (whose Speed everyone complains about so much), and has the same Speed than Hero Xander. Moreover, the only statistic in which Polaris Xander leads is Luck, on everything else it is tied to or lower than Paladin Xander or Hero Xander. 🙃

I still think that Polaris adds some variety, and +3 Speed plus Charm plus Speed Taker is a nice combo. But I do not think that is it much better than Hero. (I am talking in general now, I do not even use Xander; he is my favourite NPC.)
You know what?, for me, the +5 Speed from Sexy Fliers is one of the best early skills in the entire game, but I do not think that I have ever used it on a Hero. I might try it on a future campaign and compare that build to a Polaris.

[samthedigital]

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Sure, man, you are the only normal around here and we are all outsiders. Ask everyone whether or not they consider the exploit standard, then ask them to follow an argument stating that Speed pair-up bonuses, Speed Tonics and Speed boon are superfluous because your Cornflakes are somehow always capable of doubling, magically. Afterwards, maybe we could argue that one actually has 13.000 Gold (and not 3.000) by Chapter 7, because of Anna's Gift; or that skills are irrelevant to the class because one can always buy whatever one fancies in other Castles.

The branch of fate trick is not online dlc, and public consensus on semanics is not something I care to waste my time with.

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Anyway, I will stop here. It is clear that we will not agree about this. Maybe in another topic. 😉

If you care strongly about it then why not create a new topic or PM me rather than just admiting that it wasn't worth continuing the discussion here?

Edited May 21, 2020 by samthedigital

[Shadow Mir]

On 5/20/2020 at 3:17 PM, samthedigital said:

It's as if you didn't read the first line of my post.

Because the luck problems I'm thinking of are those that a luck tonic alone is insufficient to fix (in case you don't know, crit evade is half your luck in Fates). Last I checked, a lot of Hoshidan classes either have high skill or boosted crit, OR both. 

On 5/20/2020 at 1:03 AM, Cyana said:

Lodestar can fix Xander's speed without compromising his defense and still allows him to use Siegfried, which frees up your speedwings/speed pair-ups to go elsewhere. Haven't tried it on lunatic yet but it worked very nicely on hard. Same with making Leo a dark flier, fixes his speed and makes him a bit more specialised. MVP on both hard and lunatic

I dunno - it only gives 2 speed, and his growth stays the same. Speedtaker is a level 35 skill too, so that's not helping.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[samthedigital]

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in case you don't know, crit evade is half your luck in Fates

This is exactly the reason why I suggested that luck isn't an important stat. You're trying to argue that a 5 crit avoid difference at 20/20 is enough for Corrin to face a significantly increased chance of death from a random crit, and 5 crit avoid is just a number. Crits don't matter when playing Conquest as a player phase heavy game, most of the game can be trivialized at the point where the difference is highest, and many enemies do not have the tools available to either crit or deal significant damage to a luck bane Corrin (guard stance, weapons, low stats, etc). You might also want to consider the fact that there are enough stat boosters to distrobute to the few units that do want to fight a lot on enemy phase if you are worried about it.

Edited May 22, 2020 by samthedigital