Worst unit in each game?

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

True, but a Rolf who can at least take a hit makes the re-recruitment slightly less tricky to pull off.

Tbf, the only real worries on that map are some immobile long-range mages.

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

2 effective weapons are better than one!

I'm not sure I'd agree when one is being used by a massive liability. However, 2 Laguzslayers IS better than one when it comes to the raven chapter (the second can be stolen from the boss in the prior chapter).

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I mean, I'm not accountable for your rating criteria. I assume you're referring to CQ Arthur? The notion that he could be the worst unit in Conquest is downright laughable. Even if he's never your lead unit, he offers a sizable Strength boost to literally anyone else via the Pair-Up system.

He ain't the only one, though. Some other high availability units that were tossed about in this thread (whether by myself or somebody else) were Donnel, Nyx, Subaki, Rinkah, Setsuna, Odin, Wendy, Mozu, Virion, Arden... yeah. Anyway, if that's the only thing Arthur is good for, that's only marginally better than being useless, and thus I'd rather bench him for someone who is actually worthy of a unit slot.

[LoneRecon400]

9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Tbf, the only real worries on that map are some immobile long-range mages.

It's FE9. Enemies are absolutely chumps in that game.

And that's no exception here, as a base Rolf would be able to tank a seige tome with a Pure Water.

[Shadow Mir]

4 hours ago, LoneRecon400 said:

It's FE9. Enemies are absolutely chumps in that game.

And that's no exception here, as a base Rolf would be able to tank a seige tome with a Pure Water.

Fair enough. Heck, I honestly think Pure Water is an underrated item myself.

[AnonymousSpeed]

20 hours ago, Jotari said:

Obviously the worst Shadow Dragon characters are Frey and Norne, because they don't exist on anything above normal, and normal isn't worth talking about.

17 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Literally zero availability.

Dorcas is actually the worst Shadow Dragon character.

[fates is based]

Ryoma is the worst unit in Conquest, no I won't elaborate why.

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 4/25/2022 at 5:53 AM, drattakbowser said:

- Path of Radiance : Ena

Absolutely not. She's the only way to beat Ashnard if you can't, won't, or don't level Ike on Hard mode. This mostly just matters on challenge runs, of course, but can arise in normal gameplay if Ike gets severely RNG-screwed.

Ironically Nasir is worse IMO (despite better stats) just because if you get him, you're guaranteed to have an Ike who can easily handle Ashnard, thus nullifying this purpose. (And both Ena and Nasir are pretty pointless otherwise.)

[FailWood]

On 4/25/2022 at 8:53 AM, drattakbowser said:

Fates (Birthright) : Azama

I disagree with this, Azama's promotion to Great Master is too good.  It gives him +8 Strength after starting with a base Strength of 9, meaning he can function as a combat unit on turns when he doesn't need to heal.  He also joins at level 7, meaning he doesn't need much work to reach promotion.  Besides, Setsuna exists, and I already went over why she's awful earlier in the topic.

[ussgordoncaptain]

Shadows Of Valentia

Alm - Sir Mycen

Mycen exists in exactly 2 maps out of 27, and he joins right after dread looped bow knight power-creeps every single player unit. he doesn't have a Killer bow in the part of the game where that and the rapier are the only 2 weapons. He can be OK against fiends but that's about it. Berkut's map is very easily trivialized by Killer bow dread looped kliff+rapier alm+python, so Mycen has no purpose.

 

In the final map he isn't a bow knight isn't alm, doesn't have warp, doesn't have swap/Shove and doesn't have rescue. Therefore he is mostly useless.

 

 

Lukas/Forsyth are extremely underrated, Forsyth is a better main combat unit  than Mathilda, though his flunky capabilities are worse. Forsyth is about 10th-12th overall on alm's route, armorknight is a really good class due to high base attack and base defense, only really held back by a lack of speed. Echoes is a rout game so combat often matters more than movement, forsyth's movement only really betrays him on 3 maps, Zofia castle (his warp priority of 4 is a bit too low), Desaix's fortress (he can't kill the cantor in the corner) and Fear mountain (he can't  reach the armorknights as fast as alm/kliff can kill the topside)

 

Celica - Nomah/Jesse/Sonya

Jesse's probably the classically worst character he joins at a time when grinding him to myrmidon would be extremely awkward, and his join level is extremely bad. However he's still a dread fighter and if you chose to grind him he'll end up just as good as every other dread, he's not as bad as the next 2 because he has the ability to kill witches at base thanks to his high speed, res and doing physical damage.

Nomah just sucks, his spell list is good, but he has 12 magic to use it with. He can kill exactly 1 enemy and heal leon and that's about it, he doesn't join in time to learn swap/shove ect He also exists during the time when leon just goes brrr so he can't even help with chip damage.

Sonya is basically the same unit as nomah but slightly better, since she has 13 base magic and has an actual magic growth unlike nomah. She also has a niche use as a swapbot but with only 1 leather shield you'll probably already have a swapbot. However she's worse than Nomah for 1 big reason, she forces you to use Saber

 

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

Mycen exists in exactly 2 maps out of 27, and he joins right after dread looped bow knight power-creeps every single player unit. he doesn't have a Killer bow in the part of the game where that and the rapier are the only 2 weapons. He can be OK against fiends but that's about it. Berkut's map is very easily trivialized by Killer bow dread looped kliff+rapier alm+python, so Mycen has no purpose.

In other words, with a unit that takes a shitton of grinding to get. Honestly, I can't take you seriously if you're bringing that up, because not everyone has the patience for that kind of stuff.

3 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

However she's worse than Nomah for 1 big reason, she forces you to use Saber

What's the problem with that? Because it's not like Saber is bad.

Anyhow... this reminds me that I forgot about SoV when I answered way back when.

On Celica's side I'd say Nomah, as he doesn't do anything Mae, Celica, Boey, or Sonya can't do better. Deen gets dishonorable mention (It's not that he's bad; it's that imho, he's not good enough to justify fighting Sonya when her group is ten billion percent harder than his group is, and the best part of getting him DOESN'T even require me to get him).

On Alm's side, I'd say Mycen because by that point, Zeke and Mathilda outclass him. Another aspect of the game that hurts him is that you need to get into combat with equipment to learn their associated combat arts, which puts him further behind everyone else.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[Dark Holy Elf]

I used Mycen for the final dungeon because he had a good Def stat. He appealed to me more than Zeke who just seemed like a worse Mathilda, though I can see preferring otherwise. That said, I don't think that route has anyone truly bad. I'd lean toward Forsyth I guess - 4 move melee sucks (it's funny how @ussgordoncaptain mentioned his move only being really bad on 3 maps... unfortunately those are some of the maps in Alm's route I remember being relatively more difficult, which doesn't reflect well on him).

For Celica's route I'm inclined to nominate Atlas, just seemed too underlevelled/classed without a backtrack right after you get him, but I also missed Nomah entirely so I'm not gonna weigh in on whether he's worse. Deen definitely had big "why on earth would I want a fourth myrmidon" energy but I don't think he's bad if you get him, just boring.

[FailWood]

54 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

For Celica's route I'm inclined to nominate Atlas, just seemed too underlevelled/classed without a backtrack right after you get him, but I also missed Nomah entirely so I'm not gonna weigh in on whether he's worse. Deen definitely had big "why on earth would I want a fourth myrmidon" energy but I don't think he's bad if you get him, just boring.

It really does depend if you think the backtrack for Atlas is worth it, and if you want to spend resources for whatever you turn him into (I'm a backer of Archer Atlas these days, giving him a Killer Bow was one the most enjoyable experiences I've had in all of Fire Emblem).  I feel the payoff with him is better then Jesse and Est, and I stand by Nomah as who I consider the worst unit in SoV.  As for Deen, I'd take him over Jesse any day.  His bases are fine, and a good chance of hitting Level 10 for Dread Fighter by the end of Act 3 if you focus on him.

...I never did pick anyone from Alm's side.  Uh... either Forsyth, Zeke, or Mycen.  Was never impressed by any of these 3.

[Jotari]

Mycen has a useful role in walking off the bosses that chase you in the final map. His high defense means he can take hits from more than one of them, protecting your mages who might not even be able to take them all out in one turn. Those three guys are pretty tough.

I second Nomah as the worst unit in the game. He really does nothing to distinguish himself. Only thing you're likely to ever use him for are some recovers.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Jotari

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 hour ago, FailWood said:

It really does depend if you think the backtrack for Atlas is worth it, and if you want to spend resources for whatever you turn him into (I'm a backer of Archer Atlas these days, giving him a Killer Bow was one the most enjoyable experiences I've had in all of Fire Emblem).

I don't remember the resource situation in SoV at all any more, but is this actually practical? I assume Leon is already wielding a Killer Bow, and one or two characters in Alm's route besides. Is it reasonable to make four of them? If so, they're certainly good enough that I can see the case for going out of your way to baby along Atlas. 

1 hour ago, FailWood said:

As for Deen, I'd take him over Jesse any day. 

As I said, I think Deen is objectively fine, just boring. I'm only talking about him in this thread because somebody else brought him up.

[Shadow Mir]

49 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Mycen has a useful role in walking off the bosses that chase you in the final map. His high defense means he can take hits from more than one of them, protecting your mages who might not even be able to take them all out in one turn. Those three guys are pretty tough.

Hades, Cerberus, and Naberius, right? And is this on hard mode?

1 hour ago, FailWood said:

As for Deen, I'd take him over Jesse any day.  His bases are fine, and a good chance of hitting Level 10 for Dread Fighter by the end of Act 3 if you focus on him.

I don't know about you, but I don't think that's enough to make up for the fact that Sonya and her squadron of teleporting witches are just waaaaay worse to deal with. Especially when the best thing about Deen (the Brave Sword he comes with) is something I don't even need to get him to have.

28 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

As I said, I think Deen is objectively fine, just boring. I'm only talking about him in this thread because somebody else brought him up.

Like I said, I don't think he's bad per se. I'm just not convinced that he's so great that it justifies the headache that is fighting Sonya and her teleporting witches (in a game where almost everyone has poor resistance, at that).

[LJ_Reflet]

2 hours ago, FailWood said:

...I never did pick anyone from Alm's side.  Uh... either Forsyth, Zeke, or Mycen.  Was never impressed by any of these 3.

I personally agree with Mycen being bad, but Forsyth and Zeke are fine. I’d have to go with Nomah being the worst since he has nothing to set him apart from the other mages, and he has terrible growths and a really late join time. To top it off, he essentially has the same exact spell list as Boey who’s lightyears better.

Zeke has the decency to come fully promoted with fairly good bases, but he’s outclassed by Mathilda. Regardless, Clive is an overall below average unit despite his early join time, and Zeke is the perfect filler for him if Clive ended up RNG-screwed.

This is kind of a hot take on my end, but I don’t think Forsyth is a bad unit—he’s just in a bad class. Taking things into perspective, he has better bases than Python who joins at the same time (and great growths at that), but Python usually gets good treatment because he’s an Archer. Even still, Python notably requires some babying to get him going—albeit the payoff is much more worth it for Python than Forsyth since Archers are really good overall in Echoes. Forsyth needs resources (aka a Pitchfork), grinding, and backtracking for him to actually shine (which to be 100% honest I’ve never actually done for him) but I think he’s safe from being called the worst imo. And tbh, in my most recent playthrough, Forsyth ended up better than Clive even without grinding.

Edited May 1, 2022 by LJ_Tenma

[ussgordoncaptain]

7 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

In other words, with a unit that takes a shitton of grinding to get. Honestly, I can't take you seriously if you're bringing that up, because not everyone has the patience for that kind of stuff.

What's the problem with that? Because it's not like Saber is bad.

 

I beat Alm's route in 80 turns by using dread looped archer kliff. If you give him 1-2 EXP wells you can loop him before rigel falls and he'll go brr super hard. The amount of grinding I did was just enough to get him to Myrmidon and silque to warp before zofia castle. Grinding pre 1-7 enables faster strategies in later maps so the grinding more than pays for itself (it also means you don't have to rig silque's nosferatu). From there he just.. snowballs exp and kills dudes with his rapier? idk he's just so much better than every unit in your army that he kills way more enemies than anyone else can.

 

 

As for Saber: Saber is a worse unit than Deen because he requires a lot more experience to get going. He doesn't use the fire spell which makes him not very good early on. Then in the desert his lack of either flight or range is extremely bad, this is a part where Killer bow leon is one rounding everything with his bow and mae or boey can use extremely powerful spells liek Saggitae/aura to one shot mercs thanks to them snowballing with all their early exp gain. Grieth's citadel is a map about range and Saber lacks it. Deen is also a much better dread fighter than saber because he is likely to hit the 20 speed benchmark naturally, or if he doesn't he's also likely to hit the 19 speed benchmark before promotion so you don't have to hope for a lucky speed proc before Dolth keep.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Mycen has a useful role in walking off the bosses that chase you in the final map. His high defense means he can take hits from more than one of them, protecting your mages who might not even be able to take them all out in one turn. Those three guys are pretty tough.

 

You can just beat that map by blitzing through the right hand side with warp/rescue/swap/shove mycen up there should see exactly 0 combat. 

 

[LJ_Reflet]

22 minutes ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

As for Saber: Saber is a worse unit than Deen because he requires a lot more experience to get going. He doesn't use the fire spell which makes him not very good early on. Then in the desert his lack of either flight or range is extremely bad, this is a part where Killer bow leon is one rounding everything with his bow and mae or boey can use extremely powerful spells liek Saggitae/aura to one shot mercs thanks to them snowballing with all their early exp gain. Grieth's citadel is a map about range and Saber lacks it. Deen is also a much better dread fighter than saber because he is likely to hit the 20 speed benchmark naturally, or if he doesn't he's also likely to hit the 19 speed benchmark before promotion so you don't have to hope for a lucky speed proc before Dolth keep.

While I do agree that Deen is an amazing unit, I can’t agree with Saber being a bad unit. I find them pretty on par with each other in regards to their performance, but Saber has a little bit of an upper hand since he joins much earlier.

I don’t find his lack of Fire a problem at all — having swords is just fine. He doubles at base, and he can finish enemies off on the frontlines while Mae and Boey can take away chunks of enemy HP from afar. He doesn’t necessarily need “a lot more experience to get going,” since, well, he literally joins in the beginning to get all the experience he needs. To be 100% honest, Deen is the one that may require more experience since he joins as a Myrmidon when Kamui and Saber are probably already Dread Fighters (but as I said, I find Deen to be a great unit regardless).

Dread Fighters don’t suffer as much of a move penalty as other units, so they can—with some effort—make their way through the desert better than your Mages and, hell, even Celica. Plus, they’re the only units that can tank magic, so you’re probably gonna force them up front anyways.

Several of the problems you bring up about Saber, Deen carries as well due to the virtue of both being in the same exact class. Like, you mentioned Saber lacks range, but Deen does as well to be quite honest lol.

And the last point about his lower speed: The beauty of class bases in Echoes is that stats get bumped up upon promotion if that stat was behind, so Saber’s low speed growth isn’t much of a problem since his natural class line patches all that up.

Edited May 1, 2022 by LJ_Tenma

[ussgordoncaptain]

19 minutes ago, LJ_Tenma said:

 

Dread Fighters don’t suffer as much of a move penalty as other units, so they can—with some effort—make their way through the desert better than your Mages and, hell, even Celica. Plus, they’re the only units that can tank magic, so you’re probably gonna force them up front anyways.

Several of the problems you bring up about Saber, Deen carries as well due to the virtue of both being in the same exact class. Like, you mentioned Saber lacks range, but Deen does as well to be quite honest lol.

And the last point about his lower speed: The beauty of class bases in Echoes is that stats get bumped up upon promotion if that stat was behind, so Saber’s low speed growth isn’t much of a problem since his natural class line patches all that up.

Yeah so I disagree that you'll have your merc be a dread by the time the desert starts, they'll be a myrmidon with some levels but that's about it.  Unless you feed him kills by waiting for enemies to spawn on the world map+backtrack to seabound shrine to feed him exp wells. 

Deen also has those issues, but he has the issues in 3 maps (valley approach Temple of mila and Dragon shrine) and in 2 of those maps (Valley approach / Dragon shrine) his lack of range doesn't matter since he'll exclusively fight enemies he can kill with the brave sword. In valley approach level 6 saber  has a 33.69% chance of missing the doubling benchmark on the myrmidon and thus you'll need to hope for your +2 brave sword to crit in 1 attack. In the temple of Mila the lack of range hurts both of them but the temple itself has a much more open layout and it's much easier to get a myrmidon to 1 range the enemies.  The desert has more walls, is almost entirely high range enemies, and the few 1 range enemies that do exist are rarely doubled by saber. 

On the class bases comment, Deen has a good chance of *breaking past* his class bases which let's him hit 19 speed naturally, then after a pegasus cheese he hits the 21 speed benchmark, which is a critical benchmark for doubling enemies in dolth keep. You better hope saber doesn't whiff a speed growth in his 1-2 levels you get between 4-1 and 4-3, otherwise he'll fail to double the ram wine dread fighter in dolth keep and the iron sword dread fighters in duma gate.

The TLDR is that saber is a worse dread fighter than deen, and is held back by his movement type (5 move foot) in the desert. Dread fighter is an amazing class but myrmidon and mercenary are not good. Using saber long term hurts overall efficiency because he snipes exp away from Mae or Boey who are super juggernauts that snowball out of control,  Then when act 3 shows up Saber gets powercrept by leon so it's extremely hard to find places to train Saber in Desert stronghold/Deen's map/Grieth's citadel.  

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

As for Saber: Saber is a worse unit than Deen because he requires a lot more experience to get going. He doesn't use the fire spell which makes him not very good early on. Then in the desert his lack of either flight or range is extremely bad, this is a part where Killer bow leon is one rounding everything with his bow and mae or boey can use extremely powerful spells liek Saggitae/aura to one shot mercs thanks to them snowballing with all their early exp gain. Grieth's citadel is a map about range and Saber lacks it. Deen is also a much better dread fighter than saber because he is likely to hit the 20 speed benchmark naturally, or if he doesn't he's also likely to hit the 19 speed benchmark before promotion so you don't have to hope for a lucky speed proc before Dolth keep.

To be blunt, I *REALLY* don't think Deen is good enough to justify fighting Sonya and a bunch of teleporting witches (in a game where almost everyone has shit resistance, at that). At all. That's practically the SoV equivalent of playing Russian roulette with 5 bullets in the chamber.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[LJ_Reflet]

3 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

Yeah so I disagree that you'll have your merc be a dread by the time the desert starts, they'll be a myrmidon with some levels but that's about it.  Unless you feed him kills by waiting for enemies to spawn on the world map+backtrack to seabound shrine to feed him exp wells. 

What I meant was, there's a fairly high chance your Myrmidons will be Dread Fighters by the time they fight Deen, not by the time the desert maps begin.

3 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

The TLDR is that saber is a worse dread fighter than deen, and is held back by his movement type (5 move foot) in the desert. Dread fighter is an amazing class but myrmidon and mercenary are not good. Using saber long term hurts overall efficiency because he snipes exp away from Mae or Boey who are super juggernauts that snowball out of control,  Then when act 3 shows up Saber gets powercrept by leon so it's extremely hard to find places to train Saber in Desert stronghold/Deen's map/Grieth's citadel.  

@ bolded: It's a little difficult to compare Deen and Saber's movement because ... they have the same movement/are in the same class. You're comparing Dread Fighter with Myrmidon and Mercenary when Dread Fighter comes from Myrmidon and Mercenary. If you keep using Saber, he's gonna end up in Dread Fighter regardless. It's quite obvious that a promoted version of the same class is superior to its predecessor, so you can't really say and Mercenary are necessarily "not good." If Deen was a Dread Fighter upon recruitment, sure I guess, but he's a Myrmidon. On top of that, as I've said right above, Deen and Saber are in the same class line--both Saber and Deen share whatever benefits and flaws that are rooted in their class line.

Mae and Boey are great units, yes, I can definitely attest to that---but they suffer from a much higher movement penalty than Saber. They have more range, sure, but Thunder and Sagittae (aka 3 range spells) are heavy spells and if you're resorting to using either to relieve them of their reduced movement, the best they can do is heavy chip. I find it hard to see that Saber in the long-term hurts efficiency when you're pretty much allowed to deploy all units available and Saber's useful from the get-go.

@ Leon: This is comparing apples to oranges. Leon is a good unit, but he plays a completely different role from Saber. Leon's performance shouldn't take away anything from Saber since they're completely different units.

Lastly, like don't get me wrong--Deen is a great unit and I prefer to recruit him over Sonya, but just cause Deen is good doesn't automatically make Saber bad. If we're picking at the worst Mercenary in Celica's party, it's most definitely Jesse.

49 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

To be blunt, I *REALLY* don't think Deen is good enough to justify fighting Sonya and a bunch of teleporting witches (in a game where almost everyone has shit resistance, at that). At all. That's practically the SoV equivalent of playing Russian roulette with 5 bullets in the chamber.

Tbh tho, Deen is objectively the better unit compared to Sonya so I'd rather deal with Sonya's map to get Deen lmao. You gotta get one anyways, so you might as well get the better one.

Edited May 2, 2022 by LJ_Tenma

[Shadow Mir]

21 minutes ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Tbh tho, Deen is objectively the better unit compared to Sonya so I'd rather deal with Sonya's map to get Deen lmao. You gotta get one anyways, so you might as well get the better one.

Being better does NOT equal being worth it in my book. Especially when the best part of getting Deen isn't even something I need to get him for imho.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

6 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I don't remember the resource situation in SoV at all any more, but is this actually practical? I assume Leon is already wielding a Killer Bow, and one or two characters in Alm's route besides. Is it reasonable to make four of them? If so, they're certainly good enough that I can see the case for going out of your way to baby along Atlas. 

You only need one Killer Bow, TBH. Play Alm's Act III beforehand, and forge a Steel Bow into a Killer Bow. It takes 230 Silver, so it should be doable right after Desaix at the latest (sooner if you get the Exotic Spice from the Cheesemonger). Beat Act III with the Killer Bow on Python or Kliff or whoever, then use the Merchant to send it to Celica's side. So that Leon or Atlas can use it. From there, you can upgrade the Killer Bow with the resources from Grieth's Citadel. Celica's side now gets the Killer Bow for Act IV, but she can Merchant it back to Alm right before the Tower of Duma. It makes sense to do Celica's side first anyway, to get Alm his promotion ASAP.

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

To be blunt, I *REALLY* don't think Deen is good enough to justify fighting Sonya and a bunch of teleporting witches (in a game where almost everyone has shit resistance, at that). At all. That's practically the SoV equivalent of playing Russian roulette with 5 bullets in the chamber.

Witches are scary, but they're also dumb. They almost never do as much to screw the player over as they could. The play to beat the Sonya map is just "undeploy Valbar, and make sure Leon isn't holding something that gets him doubled". I agree that the Deen map is more consistent, but it's not like the Sonya map is some impassible obstacle. 

4 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

The TLDR is that saber is a worse dread fighter than deen, and is held back by his movement type (5 move foot) in the desert. Dread fighter is an amazing class but myrmidon and mercenary are not good. Using saber long term hurts overall efficiency because he snipes exp away from Mae or Boey who are super juggernauts that snowball out of control,  Then when act 3 shows up Saber gets powercrept by leon so it's extremely hard to find places to train Saber in Desert stronghold/Deen's map/Grieth's citadel.  

Wait, how is Boey a "super juggernaut that snowballs out of control"? Like, who is he doubling that Celica doesn't? He's not a bad unit, but I don't think he holds up nearly as well as anyone else in Celica's starting crew.

[Shadow Mir]

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

Witches are scary, but they're also dumb. They almost never do as much to screw the player over as they could. The play to beat the Sonya map is just "undeploy Valbar, and make sure Leon isn't holding something that gets him doubled". I agree that the Deen map is more consistent, but it's not like the Sonya map is some impassible obstacle. 

If you're trying to reassure me, you failed. Miserably. Anyway, I'm not saying it's an impassable obstacle, only that the reward is, to put it bluntly, disappointing for how much more troublesome fighting them is.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

You only need one Killer Bow, TBH. Play Alm's Act III beforehand, and forge a Steel Bow into a Killer Bow. It takes 230 Silver, so it should be doable right after Desaix at the latest (sooner if you get the Exotic Spice from the Cheesemonger). Beat Act III with the Killer Bow on Python or Kliff or whoever, then use the Merchant to send it to Celica's side. So that Leon or Atlas can use it. From there, you can upgrade the Killer Bow with the resources from Grieth's Citadel. Celica's side now gets the Killer Bow for Act IV, but she can Merchant it back to Alm right before the Tower of Duma. It makes sense to do Celica's side first anyway, to get Alm his promotion ASAP.

 

Yeah, fair, I never did much in the way of merchant shenanigans, and also switched between parties based on my mood rather than worrying about what was "optimum". Still, the problem is that Leon is obviously first in line to use the Killer Bow. I guess you can raise up Atlas just so you can glue him to Leon and have them trade the Killer Bow back and forth every turn? That might be enough to get Atlas out of the basement, for all that it's still not the type of thing I'd probably bother with myself.

2 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Tbh tho, Deen is objectively the better unit compared to Sonya so I'd rather deal with Sonya's map to get Deen lmao. You gotta get one anyways, so you might as well get the better one.

I've never done Sonya's map (as I mentioned, independent of their relative quality, I'm utterly unenthused by picking up a third/fourth myrmidon for Celica, when they're basically all copies of each other), but I don't think I agree with this logic. The goal in discussing a unit's worth should be who gets you through the game as easily as possible. If recruiting Deen does truly subject you to a much more difficult map, that'd definitely enter into the calculus of who you should recruit. Particularly since Celica's route is... well, easy. I failed to save Leon, who's often considered one of, if not the best unit on the route, and I still found it significantly easier than Alm's route and one of the easiest Fire Emblems in general (comparing them on their hardest difficulties). If this map is such an exception to deserve note, then avoiding it seems the objective best plan.

That said I'll admit I'm a bit skeptical that this map is as tricky as Mir makes it out to be.

[LJ_Reflet]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I've never done Sonya's map (as I mentioned, independent of their relative quality, I'm utterly unenthused by picking up a third/fourth myrmidon for Celica, when they're basically all copies of each other), but I don't think I agree with this logic. The goal in discussing a unit's worth should be who gets you through the game as easily as possible. If recruiting Deen does truly subject you to a much more difficult map, that'd definitely enter into the calculus of who you should recruit. Particularly since Celica's route is... well, easy. I failed to save Leon, who's often considered one of, if not the best unit on the route, and I still found it significantly easier than Alm's route and one of the easiest Fire Emblems in general (comparing them on their hardest difficulties). If this map is such an exception to deserve note, then avoiding it seems the objective best plan.

That said I'll admit I'm a bit skeptical that this map is as tricky as Mir makes it out to be.

That's fair, I think that's worth noting when it comes to making the choice between Sonya and Deen, however I definitely feel like Shadow Mir is making the map seem significantly more difficult than it is in reality. I also believe the reward is worth considering as well. Deen is a competent unit and one of the better Act 3 recruits (since the others are Jesse and Est whose bases are a little ... unusable) even though he is redundant.

This is a personal experience, but I recruited Sonya for one playthrough and found no uses for her, but I found much more usefulness in Deen in the playthrough where I recruited him instead.

Ironically enough, I found Alm's route much easier than Celica's in my personal experiences.

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Witches are scary, but they're also dumb. They almost never do as much to screw the player over as they could. The play to beat the Sonya map is just "undeploy Valbar, and make sure Leon isn't holding something that gets him doubled". I agree that the Deen map is more consistent, but it's not like the Sonya map is some impassible obstacle. 

This is honestly a really good explanation of her map lol. All the enemies are witches, and Sonya is slightly harder to deal with cause she counters with Excalibur. The witches typically have low defense and HP so they're relatively easy to take out, but Leon typically needs to be kept clear cause the witches are likely to double him (if he's absent, then your Dread Fighters are the most important fighters of the map). Sonya's Excalibur can be scary, but she's slow so anyone can double her.

I personally found the Dead Man's Mire map much more difficult than Sonya's (albeit, you have no choice but to do this map), so I wouldn't say Sonya's map itself is big enough an obstacle to steer one away from recruiting Deen if they would prefer him as a unit. It is definitely more of a challenge than Deen's map, I'll give it that, but nothing as hard as what Shadow Mir is making it out to be.

Edited May 2, 2022 by LJ_Tenma