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Fantastic Dodge Tanks and Where to Find Them


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7 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

You still need to train riding 4-5 times or get lucky with her asking to join your class. In general I'd personally consider chapter 4 recruits to be a not insignificant investment (likely eroding your professor rank a bit). I've never actually recruited anyone in chapter 3 (besides trivial cases of course)... I can see how it's possible, but it's too big an investment for me, and not remotely necessary. Chapter 5 is dead easy though, and isn't that big a loss, especially since Petra actually auto-trains two relevant skills for this build.

B support recruit can be savescumed. Anyway I agree you don’t have to do like ch3, I’m simply showing the possibility here, but I usually want ch4, because Petra or Leonie have the ability to trivialize ch5 reinforcements when invested, and I do want to enjoy that (again, I try to find ways to do things smoothly without skipping).

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1 hour ago, RaIsMyPet said:

You can see this write up is also sort of mixed response. My goal is to stir thoughtful discussion and expose my build to more people. For that it’s achieved I think. Hey, some people even if they disagree with my philosophy might still try it, who knows? I appreciate all the participation here and I will have next part on teammates next week.

You mentioned Annette as a more gimmicky? example, which I have yet to try. I have heard it before. Now that Three Hopes is around the corner, I might try it some day. Cheers!

I did use Annette as a wyvern lord. This was to sort of use her as a pseudo malig knight from fates since her primary offensive is the bolt axe and lightning axe combat art with a forged hammer. She was able to one round some mortal savants with a brave axe though I needed death blow to do it. A couple of stat boosters I think was needed but overall she had well mixed stats.

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2 hours ago, Barren said:

I did use Annette as a wyvern lord. This was to sort of use her as a pseudo malig knight from fates since her primary offensive is the bolt axe and lightning axe combat art with a forged hammer. She was able to one round some mortal savants with a brave axe though I needed death blow to do it. A couple of stat boosters I think was needed but overall she had well mixed stats.

That sounds fun. I tried once to do a NG+ run in BL with literal full team of heavy armors and axe only with the expectation of Annette and Flayn being MVPs. It was legit hilarious at first but become so tedious and monotonous midgame (even though I was still doing well against enemies) that I gave up halfway. I really appreciate any gimmicky build that can still keep things fresh by comparison.

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17 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

@lenticular very good explanation on two types of dodge tanks and really appreciate the help here. A small thing I want to quickly throw out though: I actually use both types, like Petra+Ferdinand. You do realize that the two types of dodge tanks virtually have no conflict in resources right? Like one wants cichol and the other wants galatea. The best example is perhaps Ferdie/Lysithea paralogue, where I always try to occupy the 4 spots as early as possible so a single solo dodge tank usually doesn’t cut it. I will try to explain my playstyle more when I get time and yes of course people do use what fits best their style.

For sure. It's not something that I'd be likely to do myself, since it wouldn't really mesh well with my playstyle, but there's absolutely no reason why you can't run multiple dodgetanks. The major resource that they'd compete over would be the evasion ring. It's always possible to pick up more than one of them, but how easy it is depends on which route you're playing and whether you have the DLC. There's always the easy one from Anna;s shop, but if you don't have the DLC (or are choosing not to use it, or don't want to spend the renown) then I believe that the only other ones you can get in Crimson Flower are by stealing from Dimitri or Claude at the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, which is a pain. Still, even if you only have one evasion ring, it's certainly possible to build a dodge tank without one, and I can certainly imagine times when I'd want to equip a different accessory instead.

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20 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

I don’t see why you need to train horse rank to recruit Petra when you just shower her with gifts and meals for B support.

Because simply put, early on, I'll be wanting to get my professor rank up asap. The sooner I boost my professor rank, the sooner my options open up. Trying to recruit someone that early will, more often than not, interfere with that, with no meaningful payoff to show for it. In fact, if I wanted to go out of my way to recruit someone that early, it's most likely to be someone whose class path goes through Fighter or Monk, due to a quirk in the system.

8 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Now that I learned, let me try again: it’s not a win-more because it doesn’t apply. First you have to be already in the game or hypothetically in the game with a fixed playstyle, which isn’t true. You assumed that I use dodge tank only for baiting, and assumed I have enough PP units to take enemies out. For the latter, it is the case if I play optimally, but not if I try to do a challenge run. I did a NG SS run when my team is one Warmaster, two snipers, and all mages plus a final dodge tank, meant to challenge the final map. In this situation, I don’t see how vanilla dodge tank is an automatic win when enemies already surrounded your units and basically none of your units can take even one hit, and most mages don’t have enough fire power. If the dodge tank can’t take out enemies fast, it’s a possible casualty. As I mentioned earlier, there are other maps you can’t play bait and switch if you want all the rewards.

How does it not apply? Because outside of Dimitri's Battalion Vantage shenanigans, Battalion Wrath has all the makings of a win-more ability (looking good at first glance, but due to the fact that it goes away if your battalion retreats, and the fact that there isn't much room between red battalion and retreated battalion [especially since there's no guarantee that your battalion is at exactly 1/3 endurance, and if it isn't, that means that the enemy needs less hits to make your battalion withdraw], it NEEDS a working dodgetank chassis to be anything resembling useful... and if I have someone who I have absolute confidence will not get hit ever, I'm already looking good). Also, SIlver Snow endgame is not really the finest hour for such a setup, because *Miracle intensifies*. Basically, you have to hope you get lucky even more than you already do. All this in mind, I cannot think nearly as highly of Battalion Wrath as you do.

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2 hours ago, lenticular said:

For sure. It's not something that I'd be likely to do myself, since it wouldn't really mesh well with my playstyle, but there's absolutely no reason why you can't run multiple dodgetanks. The major resource that they'd compete over would be the evasion ring. It's always possible to pick up more than one of them, but how easy it is depends on which route you're playing and whether you have the DLC. There's always the easy one from Anna;s shop, but if you don't have the DLC (or are choosing not to use it, or don't want to spend the renown) then I believe that the only other ones you can get in Crimson Flower are by stealing from Dimitri or Claude at the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, which is a pain. Still, even if you only have one evasion ring, it's certainly possible to build a dodge tank without one, and I can certainly imagine times when I'd want to equip a different accessory instead.

You are right I was a bit negligent about Evasion Ring especially on CF since neither HBD chapter nor Ferdinand paralogue would be available. I don't buy DLC items with renown since I deem it a bit too "pay to win" (nor sauna, but characters, classes, paralogues are fair game because I think them opens up options for mages, and paralogues themselves are somewhat difficult if you don't wait for too long).

But also as you said, I think for the baiting type dodge tank the bar can be much lower because the main group is close by to help, can afford to dismount a lot, and in CF you got Ferdinand for his personal. Since I use a solo type dodge tank too, the enemy density is usually much lowered (or at least one flank is taken care of) so that the workload is much lessened.

For the Evasion Rings, in CF you can always use Ferdinand to seal speed on Dimitri and then stealing would be easy (extra easy if you use Yuri, since using Petra would be a big loss of a Pegasus). In other routes you already noted there are plenty others.

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2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Because simply put, early on, I'll be wanting to get my professor rank up asap. The sooner I boost my professor rank, the sooner my options open up. Trying to recruit someone that early will, more often than not, interfere with that, with no meaningful payoff to show for it.

That's why you invite people to eat for prof exp. You seem never tried this way and just dismissed the idea so arguing seems meaningless (and others also commented already recruiting at ch4 is not anything significant investment, and ch5 is considered easy; even a ch5 recruited Petra can reach AS+ at ch10 or ch11 latest)

4 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

it NEEDS a working dodgetank chassis to be anything resembling useful...

You are not paying attention to the definition you are giving: you need to be on "winning state" first, being dependent on other stuff is irrelevant if you are not "winning". I gave you the examples when there are situations you are not winning by simply having a dodge tank who cannot kill, and believe it or not, some people do like to challenge the extreme.

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I don't get why dodge tanking is being dismissed. Its not hard at all to make a dodge tank. Its also not necessary to use a dodge tank. Maddening is very flexible in what you can do. The more I play it the more open ended it feels. If you don't like the idea of using a dodge tank you don't have to use it. On the other hand its not hard to set up and you'll easily have AS+ in time to trivialize hunting by daybreak. But thats just one way to clear that map.

Edited by wissenschaft
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14 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

especially since there's no guarantee that your battalion is at exactly 1/3 endurance, and if it isn't, that means that the enemy needs less hits to make your battalion withdraw

Are you just that used to pull BS out of ... ? Do you even know how Battalion endurance works? Why do I keep arguing with someone who doesn't even have the patience to understand basic gaming mechanics?

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7 minutes ago, wissenschaft said:

I don't get why dodge tanking is being dismissed. Its not hard at all to make a dodge tank. Its also not necessary to use a dodge tank. Maddening is very flexible in what you can do. The more I play it the more open ended it feels. If you don't like the idea of using a dodge tank you don't have to use it. On the other hand its not hard to set up and you'll easily have AS+ in time to trivialize hunting by daybreak. But thats just one way to clear that map.

"dismissed"? I'm a bit confused about the word here.

But on other points, you are absolutely right. My topic stated at the beginning very clearly that I aim to "present a hyper-optimized build with relatively low investment", not "you have to use this and accept my supremacy". Even though I said to someone in another thread that I have a "better build" than them, I had the assumption of purely based on EP performance and investment combined (since the topic was very much EP-related specifically), and others do argue with me, which is very welcome of course.

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27 minutes ago, RaIsMyPet said:

"dismissed"? I'm a bit confused about the word here.

But on other points, you are absolutely right. My topic stated at the beginning very clearly that I aim to "present a hyper-optimized build with relatively low investment", not "you have to use this and accept my supremacy". Even though I said to someone in another thread that I have a "better build" than them, I had the assumption of purely based on EP performance and investment combined (since the topic was very much EP-related specifically), and others do argue with me, which is very welcome of course.

Oh typo, I meant people dismissing Vantage/wraith builds as if they are too much trouble to set up. Though my point is still the same. Dodge tanks nor Vantage/wrath are necessary. But its not that hard to set up either. There are some maps vantage builds will be weak on but many others where you'll just wipe the map clear with them. They are not THAT hard to set up either. Any more than setting up Vengeance to one shot a boss.

Edited by wissenschaft
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59 minutes ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Are you just that used to pull BS out of ... ? Do you even know how Battalion endurance works? Why do I keep arguing with someone who doesn't even have the patience to understand basic gaming mechanics?

Way to come off as condescending and arrogant there. I know that battalion damage does not proceed beyond 2/3 and 1/3 if the damage taken would've pushed it below that  (for example, if I take 10 damage with a 36 endurance battalion when my battalion has 105 max endurance, its endurance would stop at 35 instead of 31. However, this isn't something I would call a "basic" mechanic when the game doesn't clearly state the exact nature of the relationship between a battalion taking damage and its user taking damage, only that a battalion takes damage when its user does). MY problem, which you seem to be failing to grasp, is that if the user of the battalion took any damage after that point, it won't be at exactly 1/3 endurance. And you cannot replenish battalion endurance without needing to weaken it again, which means you'd likely need to swap battalions.

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

MY problem, which you seem to be failing to grasp, is that if the user of the battalion took any damage after that point, it won't be at exactly 1/3 endurance. And you cannot replenish battalion endurance without needing to weaken it again, which means you'd likely need to swap battalions.

I'm just jumping in here, but why does it matter if the durability is at exactly 1/3? The durability as long as it's above 0 doesn't matter if you don't get hit. The point of a dodge tank is to not get hit, which when you max out the unit's evade shouldn't happen. Of course min-maxing evade like that early in the game probably isn't happening.

I saw mention of this "win-more" concept. If the game's being played in Maddening you need the power to one round enemies, even in Hard. You need to one round with your dodge tank if you want to clear maps relatively quick, not LTC per se, but not to much more than 10 turns. Of course bait and switch is a thing, and it's fine, but that objectively takes longer than just straight killing the enemies when they engage.

Personally If I'm doing some Wrath/Vantage or Wrath/Dodge build it's for specific maps where it's easy to just not replenish that unit's battalion for a few maps and then they're good to go when the time comes. Again with a proper dodge tank you shouldn't be getting hit, of course RNG can screw you even with 90% avoid, but divine pulse exists. Then with Battalion Desperation for example, you still aren't depleting durability after player pahse nuking something and canto'ing out.

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51 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Way to come off as condescending and arrogant there. I know that battalion damage does not proceed beyond 2/3 and 1/3 if the damage taken would've pushed it below that  (for example, if I take 10 damage with a 36 endurance battalion when my battalion has 105 max endurance, its endurance would stop at 35 instead of 31. However, this isn't something I would call a "basic" mechanic when the game doesn't clearly state the exact nature of the relationship between a battalion taking damage and its user taking damage, only that a battalion takes damage when its user does). MY problem, which you seem to be failing to grasp, is that if the user of the battalion took any damage after that point, it won't be at exactly 1/3 endurance. And you cannot replenish battalion endurance without needing to weaken it again, which means you'd likely need to swap battalions.

OK. My temper got the better of me. I'm sorry to make an assumption. But you forgot the first few sentences of my topic. I claimed already my dodge tanks never gets hit by normal attacks, even when rattled save some very extreme situations, and for unlucky gambits, divine pulse can always fix that. With my build, you would have more than enough divine pulses because you won't need them for much else.

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2 hours ago, wissenschaft said:

Oh typo, I meant people dismissing Vantage/wraith builds as if they are too much trouble to set up. Though my point is still the same. Dodge tanks nor Vantage/wrath are necessary. But its not that hard to set up either. There are some maps vantage builds will be weak on but many others where you'll just wipe the map clear with them. They are not THAT hard to set up either. Any more than setting up Vengeance to one shot a boss.

Vantage/Wrath builds are "too much trouble" to set up in a different way than you're acknowledging: they require mastering both Mercenary and Warrior (or alternatively, mastering Warrior then spending time in a 5-move class with mediocre stats). I've done it, as you said they can be effective at times, but I think they're harder to set up as well as less potent than dodgetanking, and certainly less good at keeping the unit alive (since you have to watch for siege weapons as well as anything which survives your critical, in addition to gambits).

The in-battle setup isn't trivial, though I agree it's not too bad overall. (Still yet another issue dodgetanks don't have.)

Edited by Dark Holy Elf
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10 hours ago, LoneStar said:

I saw mention of this "win-more" concept. If the game's being played in Maddening you need the power to one round enemies, even in Hard. You need to one round with your dodge tank if you want to clear maps relatively quick, not LTC per se, but not to much more than 10 turns. Of course bait and switch is a thing, and it's fine, but that objectively takes longer than just straight killing the enemies when they engage.

I don't think you "need" to one-round enemies on Enemy Phase on Maddening, let alone Hard. By this I just mean that, by the time that dodge tanks become viable, Player Phase-centred tactics are good enough to deal with everything to come in a timely way. 

Bait-type dodge tanks are very likely to do non-zero damage to most of the people that come its way, so the relative efficiency to soloing only depends on how much you advance. For example, if your dodge tank is designed to solo maps as much as possible, and where the win conditions are rout or kill the (human) boss at the end of the map, the speed of victory is reliant on the speed at which your solo dodge tank can move. However, this means the Player Phase outside of your solo dodge tank is fairly useless (mainly healing/siege tome/killing reinforcements normally unconnected to victory conditions). Let's compare with a bait-type dodge tank, which is less likely to kill everything that attacks it. This time, the rest of your army are engaged killing/gambiting whatever has been left behind. Provided that your Player Phase can deal with the leftovers*, the battle is still moving at the speed of your dodge tank. Even assuming a solo-type can one-round a boss and the bait-type can't, all the bait-type player needs is one more Player Phase to mop up the last round of enemies. That player has taken more real-world time to complete the map, but difference in turn count between the two styles is minimal. 

Other ways of using your dodge tank, such as engaging one particular front where multiple fronts are active, do not in principle rely on quick kills to achieve the dodge tank's objective, so sufficiently high avoid (which both builds can achieve) is good enough for these purposes. Other objectives (defend, monster bosses, save the NPCs) will require multiple units with strengths on Player and Enemy Phases to be cleared quickly and efficiently, so I haven't discussed those here.

*If your Player Phase, even with its killing power/gambits, can't handle every enemy left behind a bait-type dodge tank, then it is likely you have advanced it too far, or have otherwise failed to get good positioning for your army. Handling this kind of situation would presumably be a merit of the solo-type dodge tank, in that it allows for less care about other units' strength and placement. The cost is overall responsiveness to the demands of a level (which can be mitigated by meta-knowledge, so isn't a huge cost after your first run/if you're prepared). 

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1 hour ago, Imuabicus said:

I think the whole discussion here is too enemy phase centric - people probably deploy more than two units.

Who knows, there may even be a Sniper, Paladin or a Mage among the player units.

I guess this is the heart of the debate here. By the sole metric of victories/encounters, or enemies killed per turn, this sword flier build is surely up there. But while the OP has provided a perfectly acceptable way of approaching the game (invest well in a dodge tank in Part 1 then let them deal with the major difficulties in Part 2), the majority of commenters (myself included) don't seem to share all their priorities. This means that "optimising" takes on a different flavour for us. 

Few of the comments consider dodge tanks in a vacuum when they think about efficient or enjoyable play. In my case, I want all my deployment slots to contribute to my victory, so Player Phase matters a lot to me, and this influences my choices in unit development. From that, a valuable critique of the sword flier build (which is what the thread seems to be about) is that it does not align with the priorities and play styles of at least some players, as people have already said (and the OP acknowledges).

This is probably a different kind of critique to what may have been expected (i.e. mechanical/practical problems with creating such a unit), and perhaps why the OP tried to head it off at the pass with their Q&A section. In attempting to meet the spirit of that and abstract from these individual differences in play, we get to considering a dodge tank's merits as 'objectively' as possible, i.e. their performance on Enemy Phase. Which is why the discussion here is going to be Enemy Phase centric, even though people may not actually play that way. Losing the anchor of how people actually play makes the discussion less practically relevant, but more in line with the intent of the author, who has been explicit about the thread being "academic". 

Long story short, the discussion here is about as Enemy Phase centric as you'd expect, given the thread.

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1 hour ago, haarhaarhaar said:

Few of the comments consider dodge tanks in a vacuum when they think about efficient or enjoyable play. In my case, I want all my deployment slots to contribute to my victory, so Player Phase matters a lot to me, and this influences my choices in unit development. From that, a valuable critique of the sword flier build (which is what the thread seems to be about) is that it does not align with the priorities and play styles of at least some players, as people have already said (and the OP acknowledges).

I am also in this camp -- I like my dodge tanks to serve primarily as bait and secondarily contribute on PP. Otherwise why even bring the others along. I have built successful map-sweeping 1-char-army units and while it can be satisfying, I prefer to savor my victories and get kills with my whole army in a bait-and-surround fashion. I also tend to armor break every monster I can even when it serves no purpose like on the final maps. Why? Because f(*&^ 'em that's why.

I also really like to use "sub-optimal" setups like Sword Avo +20 Swordmaster Ferdinand* as a dodge tank. Or Brawler Dimitri with Brawl Avo+20 and Renewal as extra insurance that his personal ability stays up. I've used Great Knight Byleth with Alert Stance+ on maddening NG+ just to see if it works (of course it does Byleth is a boss). I've even used dodge-focused Assassins to bait in enemies. There are dozens of ways to do this and they're all fun despite/because of their flaws. I feel like flying units enjoy too many advantages over infantry/cavalry and so I like these setups a lot.

That said, I'm not able to point out anything in the OP's build where I can say "yeah that's a poor choice." Overkill? Definitely. But that's the whole idea.

 

*(Gotta give him +1 or +2 shoes though; that 5mv is a serious drag)

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