How Efficiency Has Warped the FE Community, and How We Can Improve

[Queenly Arts]

 

https://youtu.be/snUvnpDLmtg

For those who already saw my video analysis or Reddit post introducing it, thank you! I figured I should repost this here, as I got a decent amount of survey responses from here, and I wanted to follow up with those respondents just as much as those coming from other spaces.

Two weeks ago, I posted a survey on player perception of the term "efficiency". Using the responses alongside further research into the community's history, I made a full analysis of the term's impacts on the community, specifically under the context of gameplay discussions. I believe these issues are complex enough to demand such a thorough discussion. This is not an attack on any person or "side". Rather, I would like to address longstanding issues of communication around gameplay discussions, and move on to a more agreeable, inclusive space for all players. Regardless of your previous experience in the community, I ask that you give the topic serious consideration, so that we can make legitimate progress in issues that have been left unresolved for over fifteen years.

I would recommend watching the full video to see the analysis of my survey results. Also, I take a deep dive at the history of arguments over gameplay discussions and how the issues still manifest to this day. Here are my main takeaways:

Goals for Gameplay Discussions

1. Give all players interested in Fire Emblem gameplay a space to express their experience and skill
2. Open up new views on available strategies
3. Provide opportunities for players to analyze statistics and further deepen their game knowledge

Issues within Current Gameplay Discussions

1. Heated and frustrating debates with no proper resolution
2. Players feel excluded when their gameplay doesn't reflect community standards
3. Players downplay and doubt their skill

Causes of these Issues (intentional or not)

1. Making comparisons and value judgements within one context and applying them to other contexts
2. Running or contributing to gameplay discussions assuming a certain definition of efficiency but not making it clear
3. Referencing one playstyle (efficiency) as a metric for "good gameplay"

Recommendations for Moving Forward

1. Restrict direct comparisons to playstyles that have a calculated metric of success
2. Expand and open up new avenues for non-comparative gameplay discussions that allow for more players to participate
3. Be careful that value judgements ("bad", "optimal") actually apply the context of the discussion

Something I mention in the video and would like to reiterate is that words and actions have meaning past what is directly stated. Holding strategies up to the standard of "efficiency" (usually meaning Reliable LTC) to determine some sort of quality pushes that standard as superior. The issue isn't "telling players how to play", but there is an implication that a certain playstyle demonstrates "high level" gameplay. Furthermore, players who don't follow such metrics are disregarded from serious gameplay discussions.

I know that there is a fear that there won't be any interesting discussions if we don't assume a strict standard for comparisons, but this is a slippery slope fallacy. There is a large amount of untapped potential for discussions that we aren't considering. Players have demonstrated a large amount of game knowledge and skill in coming up with strategies to complete various goals, and by opening ourselves up to new formats, I believe these experiences can create more interesting and impactful gameplay discussions.

Personally, I have two ideas I'd like to contribute. For one, I think that "team reviews" could be expanded upon. In this format, players show off their teams after completing a playthrough, but I think players could go even further. What was the process like getting the units to where they are now, what were some specific moments where they were particularly effective in achieving the player's goals, what are some potential improvements for having even higher performance, etc. This fulfills the desire for players to express their experience, as well as introducing strategies that other players may not have considered before.

For players that really want to compare units, I would suggest a unit performance chart. In this chart, players would consider the different builds that a unit can have, and what level of investment it takes to reach them. The end result isn't a comparison of which units or builds are "better" than others, but a visual representation of what resources it takes to get a unit to help with your strategies. This is a rough idea, but if you're interested in seeing if further developed, let me know, and I can make a full video giving an example in the future. If you have ideas for a new format for inclusive gameplay discussions, I'd love to hear them!

[Jotari]

I'm not going to watch the video right this minute as it's rather late, but I will express that I think the issue with efficiency is much better now than it was a few years back. It feels like there is a much more heightened sense of playing the game anyway you want is fine compared to even six years ago. And if I were to speculate completely without data and purely on gut feeling, I'd say Shadows of Valentia was a bit of a turning point as a game that resists any real talk of efficiency by having a fixed cast of (mostly) full deployment. The only real values choice involved is Sonia vs Deen. And while it probably is easier to just never recruit a bunch of units to centralize the exp, no one was really promoting that as a playstyle that had to be taken.

Edited September 23 by Jotari

[Florete]

I support any movement that attempts to advance "efficiency" as it exists in FE fandom. Kill it if we must. I especially love that comment at the end of the video saying how inefficient efficiency has been for us.

My biggest issue with efficiency has been the assumption that certain units aren't or shouldn't be used (an extension of "the villager problem"). The "good" units can be assumed to be in play, but every unit deserves to be used and judged in the context of being used to the best of their abilities, even the "bad" ones. If this takes a lot of investment, well, that's why they're bad. It's just awful being told "Don't use Donnel," "Why use Hana when Ryoma is right there?" "Amelia never catches up because Seth kills the enemies too fast," etc.

I like the team review idea as a starting point. I hope that gets some traction.

[AnonymousSpeed]

I have not felt this problem.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Rethinking it, how often do we even see complaints about unit discussion and interference in the name of efficiency to begin with. Hell, how often do you see unit discussion and not was Edelgard right all along? The last time I witnessed someone remark on the nature of unit discussion was back when the clivetalk in the unpopular FE-opinions thread was around and there it was commentary on the near copy-paste nature of reddit comments.

I also think that with fandom size it simply becomes increasingly diffcult to (un-/willingly) maintain a, let´s call it "elitist" mindset - I remember some Pokemon Nuzlocker talking about the Ultra Necrozma Clause and how the discussion around this has fizzled out, with the community around nuzlocking growing. I would think the same could be said about FE.   

No disrespect, but the more I think about it, the more this seems inventing or reigniting a problem to solve it. 

1 hour ago, Queenly Arts said:

Personally, I have two ideas I'd like to contribute. For one, I think that "team reviews" could be expanded upon. In this format, players show off their teams after completing a playthrough, but I think players could go even further. What was the process like getting the units to where they are now, what were some specific moments where they were particularly effective in achieving the player's goals, what are some potential improvements for having even higher performance, etc. This fulfills the desire for players to express their experience, as well as introducing strategies that other players may not have considered before.

For players that really want to compare units, I would suggest a unit performance chart. In this chart, players would consider the different builds that a unit can have, and what level of investment it takes to reach them.

Also, hell to the naw. Discussing performance may be something done somewhat easily in older games where branching promotions and builds have not existed, but forget that real quick with Awakening/Fates/TH/Engage imo. Discussing all the potential things to do with Effie, reclasses, pair-ups, supports, tonics, permanent stat boosts, weaponry, with/without DLC, accounting for the stats of every enemy and accounting for every single WT interaction, wexp gains on a unit that joins in basically chapter 1 of the campaign? That is a metric tons of work.

I did something on a much much smaller scale in a topic about... was it armor knights? It had something to do with armor knights. Regardless it was to see how Effies speed holds up in CQ relative to enemies and doing that was a ton of work and that was only to see how fast she was.

Didn´t something like team reviews exist anyway? Unit Debates of something shelved like that?

Mekkah does have some unit discussion lists, which do focus on what can unit x do. Also, we do have the rate the unit threads, at least for TH and Engage on SF and I believe similar things exist on reddit.

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I'd say Shadows of Valentia was a bit of a turning point as a game that resists any real talk of efficiency by having a fixed cast of (mostly) full deployment

Well, there's also the feature with how it rewards xp based on how many kills each character got.

 

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

The only real values choice involved is Sonia vs Deen.

And there's also the option of skipping out on Zeke and Tatiana if you're doing an LTC run.

And I'll watch the video later on

[samthedigital]

As with most I'll watch the video later, but I do want to point one thing out right now:

2 hours ago, Queenly Arts said:

Heated and frustrating debates with no proper resolution

This is arguing over the internet in a nutshell. There is no real resolution to that.

[Armchair General]

30 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

This is arguing over the internet in a nutshell. There is no real resolution to that.

Apparently, 79% of the answers to his survey came from Reddit; but he's also citing some really old threads from here.

[Armchair General]

Well, regarding the "best class in 3H" argument that popped up in 3H, there's an few reasons why people prefer Wyvern Lords over anything else. Mostly, it's for the mobility and the stat boosts that it gets are noticeably better than nearly all of the other endgame classes. On the other hand, people generally shit on the Holy Knights because it's filling in an niche that the game doesn't actually support; Dark Knights are an bit of an fair trade for mobility over utility; Mortal Savants are an little bit on the slow side and their magical damage is more of an stopgap for an few specific situations...Or it's just an easier means of preserving your weapon usage while getting in an free attack.  It all depends on how you fight.

People hated the Great Knights on how much effort it takes to qualify for it in comparison to just getting an Wyvern Lord.

 

As for the rest, it's mainly about how Gremory being the best magical class also locks  most of the male magicians into an mediocrity.

 

But to be fair, there really isn't much of an different between Ivy's personal class and turning her into an Mage Knight unless you're using an really heavy tome against an fast opponent. Obviously, you don't have to worry too much about enemy archers, if you go through it; but it's not exactly the pinnacle of min-maxing Engage, IIRC

 

But the biggest thing that you have barely addressed that the series is essentially an game of chance. Not in the "HOLY FUCK!! THIS GUY HAS AN KILLER AXE!" kind of fun; but it's more of along the lines of how some people aren't meeting certain speed or strength benchmarks to kill an specific unit somewhere down the line in an run with (extremely) limited resources. It's an part of the reason why people tend to defend the villager recruits (I never really understood how Jean was good, tbh. But having an second or third healer was nice) because their growth rates were significantly better than some of the filler units. 

Edited September 23 by Armchair General

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, Armchair General said:

Well, there's also the feature with how it rewards xp based on how many kills each character got.

 

And there's also the option of skipping out on Zeke and Tatiana if you're doing an LTC run.

And I'll watch the video later on

Thinking on it more, there's also the values choice of which promotion to give the villagers. But generally speaking, while people might say mage Kliff is the best or something, all of the villager choices are going to be workable (though I'd love to see someone make all the villagers Generals). And to expand upon my perspective that efficiency problems are a thing of the past, right after Shadows of Valentia we got Three Houses, which goes in the opposite direction of Shadows of Valentia in that there is a near endless amount of value choices you can make, but, all of them are either decently good, or so obviously bad that if you're running something like gauntlet Hanneman you know you're doing it for the lolz. Like people acknowledge that Wyvern Lord is the best class, but no one is seriously expecting making your whole army Wyvern Lords to be the standard way to play the game even if it might actually be the most "Efficient". Engage is pretty similar in that regard with its approach to Emblems. This is all in contrast with the likes of Binding Blade, probably the peak of this problem, where choosing to use the likes of Wendy, Oujay or Sophia and ignoring the likes of Rutger and Shin is going to make the game a lot more challenging to clear.

Edited September 24 by Jotari

[Aircalipoor]

With all the ressources (DLC, Statbooster, Arena, BEXP, Base, babysitting, boss-abuse, supports) every unit aside the odd joke unit can become valiable. Character discussions wouldn't be fruitfull if there weren't some sort of metric, restrictions and standards to label units as good or bad. Hence efficiency has quickly established itself as a decent guideline to compare characters and possiible ways to beat the game (by analyzing the map-design and objectives) once you have finished the game once.

In short, be able to differentiate your subjective opinions from objective facts, don't take it personal and argue with reason. Naturally, an egregious mindset on the internet.

[Parrhesia]

I'm not watching the 45-minute video. Sorry. I will risk some of this being brought up or expanded upon there, but that is too great a tax to engage with the point. I'm coming at this from the perspective of having lurked through a lot of efficiency discussion in the early 2010s, and sporadically looking through FEtubers and current meta discussions since. I know vanishingly little about the meta discussions surrounding the games that care more about unit customisation (13/14/16).

It is fine and good, actually, that we have metrics used to measure units' quality. It is not an indictment on people who like Wil enough to use him (like me! This is not a hypothetical!) to say that Wil is fucking terrible, nor on people who don't care for using Jagens to say that, measurably, Jagens make the game go faster and easier. For everyone.

When discussing units, 'efficiency' isn't about 'good gameplay', and it isn't just a synonym for LTC. It's just a principle of FE that units who are strong on the face of it will make things easier for anyone. Marcus is fantastic if you're rushing for objectives to clear them in 4-12 turns, but a weaker and less confident player will still benefit from using him over, like, Bartre. If someone really likes Bartre and wants to use him, fine! True champions win with their favourite Pokemon, etc. There's a reason that all units found their way onto the old tier lists (granted, FE12's tier list lumped about half the cast into Free Silvers, but have you seen FE12's cast?), not just the optimal ones. And it's worth discussing how these units will perform in normal patterns of play, not just how many shiny green numbers they have at the end. If you're going to use Bartre, then here, these are the things he can do.

There was an era where people would assume, if someone was not using Marcus much and did use Nino, that they were just idiots who didn't know how to play the game properly. But we're talking, like, 2011. It was obviously stupid then, but it did stem from pushback against the GameFAQs of the late 00s that handed out a lot of terrible advice for actually beating the game. Someone who uses Nino is going to have a harder time clearing maps than someone who doesn't; use Nino all you like, but for fuck's sake, telling people you should? I remember thinking I must be a terrible player for leaning on a shit unit like Duessel, way back in the day. I was a terrible player, but Duessel's the reason I managed to clear FE8 anyway.

Efficiency is a pretty fuzzy metric, and it can be improved upon. And yeah, evaluating unit choice within the context of a playthrough... gets complicated by the fact that they all have faces and, ideally, personalities; still, it's not like the skill of finding the right tool for the job completely goes out the window once units become anything but stat-blocks. I know that Rutger is a great boss-killer, but there is no chance in hell I'm deploying Rutger under any circumstances, so I need to figure out who else can do the job he does. And again, it's a universal issue, because no matter what you're doing, no matter how fast, no matter how completionist, ironman or not, everyone is looking to beat the same chapters.

Frankly, I'd say this is a solution in search of a problem, but there isn't really an alternative solution proposed. Nobody is stopping anyone from talking about the teams they use after a game. I have made a complete campaign hack, and a constant throughout is people talking about the units they used and how they performed throughout. As for the unit performance chart, that literally doesn't work for most of the series. How many different ways to 'build' Dorothy are there? But if we're talking about what resources a unit needs to become strong, that's... that's literally the crux of efficiency discussions! Marcus needs 0 investment to murder everything at a time where your other units are weak, Nino needs multiple chapters of babying to get to that point at a time where your other units are strong, and most units fall somewhere in between. This is not some incompatible concept to efficiency.

And circling back to the hack, discussions on unit viability in what is essentially an efficiency framework have helped inform unit balancing, making sure every unit can effectively perform their niche. Obviously that isn't something IS has ever particularly cared about, but I like the idea that all of my units have genuine strengths and reasons to exist, and that none of them are just complete liabilities. Some are obviously going to be better than others, sometimes significantly so. But if people are willing to put into words, 'Hesterine's movement advantage doesn't outweigh her terrible combat', then I can buff her combat and put her in a place where people actually want to use her as a unit, and those that would always want to use her because of her personality or her fancy new portrait or because they just like all cavaliers don't feel like they're being held back for doing so.

An actual alternative framework I've seen a couple of times is framing units along the lines of 'strong without investment / strong with investment / fine without investment / requires investment to be fine'. Honestly, this does feel like it might be the best of all worlds.

Edited September 24 by Parrhesia

[Jotari]

49 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

I remember thinking I must be a terrible player for leaning on a shit unit like Duessel, way back in the day. I was a terrible player, but Duessel's the reason I managed to clear FE8 anyway.

People were saying Duessel is a bad unit 0.o He has like, Seth tier bases, comes right before the hardest chapter in the game and can't even be accused of stealing exp like Jagens as he's a mid game prepromote when you're starting to promote your units anyway. If perfection in unit balance exists, it's Duessel. He manages to be great without being Seth (ie ridiculous).

Edited September 24 by Jotari

[SnowFire]

I'm sure this was done with good faith, but regardless of the intent, this is essentially flamebait. 

Imagine a debating club where people share opinions, sometimes strongly.  And some of the debaters don't agree on terms, or are overly nitpicky about something, or are just wrong.  That's debate!  It's healthy.  The undercurrent of the OP's post is essentially "Everyone else is Doing It Wrong, why don't you fix your problems by agreeing to my terms instead."  That's a tad insulting, frankly.  If you disagree, that's cool!  State your case.  People's opinions do change over time, and have - 2004 Fire Emblem opinions are not 2010 FE opinions are not 2018 FE opinions are not 2023 FE opinions.  But this seems to be going up a meta-level, and treating the disagreement like it's a "problem" rather than just, that's how discussion on the Internet works.  There is no problem and nothing to "fix" here.  You are free to go into any FE discussion and talk about how you don't consider efficiency that important - and that's fine!  But going in and telling everyone "Hey you've been arguing wrong, you need to build unit performance charts according to my specs", and...  no.

There will NEVER be a "proper resolution" to FE debates, nor is one desirable if it could be achieved.  If everyone hates Unit X and one person comes along and loves Unit X, that's great - that's the whole point of these discussions.  We're not gonna say "Sorry this point has been settled, Ewan is officially a mere D-class unit" if someone shows up talking about how Summoner wrecked Lagdou for them. 

It's also very weird seeing the OP act as if the existing standards are "too strict" , when they totally aren't and the OP's new guidelines are far stricter.  Sometimes areas of the Internet have a bit of a hivemind, but I can't think of any "exclusionary" FE groups, and if you're in one, then you should just leave it.  Bad And Wrong Opinions are welcome at every FE discussion I see, which is good because otherwise it's not a discussion, it's a group essay or something.

(If I have one complaint I would make about Reddit, it's that a subset of people cannot resist using downvote for "I disagree" rather than "This is off-topic / flamebait" - but that's not a problem with FE discussions, but rather Reddit software.)

Edited September 24 by SnowFire

[Armchair General]

2 hours ago, SnowFire said:

There will NEVER be a "proper resolution" to FE debates, nor is one desirable if it could be achieved.  If everyone hates Unit X and one person comes along and loves Unit X, that's great - that's the whole point of these discussions.

Honestly, the fact that there's hardly an concrete method of actually playing the series (outside of the earliest entries) is the very reason why people are content to keep innovating for an new flavor of the month playstyle. Plus, meme builds are fun every now and then.

But an unit performance chart ignores an lot of the short-term objectives and benchmarks that people have to deal with on an regular basis. Shit like one-rounding a specific boss or holding an choke point without resetting. Yes, it's useful in it's own ways; but it also feels cumbersome since it doesn't immediately address the antics of the rest of your army.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

I took the time to watch the video, over a long lunch break. It actually took me about an hour, since I stopped for most of the on-screen comments. Most of that vixmdeo is covered here, except for the particular results of your survey. I found that to be the most fascinating part of your video, and would advise anyone who participated in the survey to at least watch "Part III" of the video. I have respect for the work you've put into it, and think it's a worthy topic of discussion and consideration.

Having said that, I mostly disagree with your thesis as presented. Sure, there's a lot of discussion, even argumentation, over unit merits. But I view that as the sign of a thriving community, not a hostile or inhibitive one. And while efficiency is an inexact metric, I don't see that as bad - exact metrics, as you pointed out (i.e. Speed Growths) don't lend themselves to interesting comparisons. 

My biggest bone to pick would be with your repeated use of the term "misinformation" in the video. I don't think it was being used properly. If someone says "Seth is a bad unit", that's not misinformation - it's an opinion. At worst, it's a "misapprehension". If they say "Seth is a bad unit because he has low growth rates relative to other cavalry", then that IS misinformation. But that kind of "outright lying" or "being flat-out wrong" is not so frequent in tiering discussions, and usually gets called out promptly.

One more thing - just because I call a unit "bad", doesn't mean I'm calling the player who uses that unit "bad". Like, I think Marisa is the worst unit in Sacred Stones, but that doesn't make someone "wrong" for using her. It makes them wrong for calling her a good unit. But it's possible to play intelligently, and "aim for efficiency", even while using "bad units". That can be pretty impressive, even moreso than, say, clearing the game with just Seth and a flier.

On 9/23/2023 at 11:18 AM, Queenly Arts said:

Personally, I have two ideas I'd like to contribute. For one, I think that "team reviews" could be expanded upon. In this format, players show off their teams after completing a playthrough, but I think players could go even further. What was the process like getting the units to where they are now, what were some specific moments where they were particularly effective in achieving the player's goals, what are some potential improvements for having even higher performance, etc. This fulfills the desire for players to express their experience, as well as introducing strategies that other players may not have considered before.

For players that really want to compare units, I would suggest a unit performance chart. In this chart, players would consider the different builds that a unit can have, and what level of investment it takes to reach them. The end result isn't a comparison of which units or builds are "better" than others, but a visual representation of what resources it takes to get a unit to help with your strategies. This is a rough idea, but if you're interested in seeing if further developed, let me know, and I can make a full video giving an example in the future. If you have ideas for a new format for inclusive gameplay discussions, I'd love to hear them!

I'm not opposed to either of these models. I think that they can exist alongside traditional efficiency-based tiering. I just don't think that they should displace the way we've been doing it.

On 9/23/2023 at 11:44 AM, Jotari said:

I'd say Shadows of Valentia was a bit of a turning point as a game that resists any real talk of efficiency by having a fixed cast of (mostly) full deployment. The only real values choice involved is Sonia vs Deen. And while it probably is easier to just never recruit a bunch of units to centralize the exp, no one was really promoting that as a playstyle that had to be taken.

There are a few other elements, though. "Who should I feed the fountains/boosters to? Which weapons should I forge? Which class do I make each Villager?" These are questions where some answers are better than others. Even if Echoes tends to depersonalize units to a degree that, with the right attention and investment, any unit can do whatever you want of them. The only really "sticky" traits are Res and spell lists.

On 9/23/2023 at 10:24 PM, SnowFire said:

The undercurrent of the OP's post is essentially "Everyone else is Doing It Wrong, why don't you fix your problems by agreeing to my terms instead."  That's a tad insulting, frankly.  If you disagree, that's cool!  State your case.

This is sort of the core of it to me. It comes across a bit as though the OP is trying to dictate how we "should" do things, as a community. Even if that's not the intention, it's frustratingly condescending. Like, I can respect "basic human decency" stuff, like "don't lob personal insults" and "be open to new voices". I try to stay "above the board", and deserve to be called out where I fail. But this goes beyond that, to "your metric is elitist and exclusionary, please change it". I don't want to be uncharitable, but that's the impression I'm left with, sadly.

[Jotari]

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

Like, I think Marisa is the worst unit in Sacred Stones, but that doesn't make someone "wrong" for using her. 

Really? Worse than Amelia? Or was that just a randomly selected not!Seth unit.

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

There are a few other elements, though. "Who should I feed the fountains/boosters to? Which weapons should I forge? Which class do I make each Villager?" These are questions where some answers are better than others. Even if Echoes tends to depersonalize units to a degree that, with the right attention and investment, any unit can do whatever you want of them. The only really "sticky" traits are Res and spell lists.

Yeah I actually did remember the fountains after posting but I was like "Eh, do I really want to go back and point out a bunch of exceptions to my point" XD Of course other games have stat boosters too, Valentia's unique trait is making them stationary, which is honestly kind of a better choice imo, disencourages hoarding and makes players think about what they need in the now. I think my larger point had some merit though in that, while it's not completely devoid of values choice and two players can end up with two different armies, Valentia's full deployment low customization approach is resistant to discussions about efficiency. Because "use Clive" or "use Matilda" can easily be answered by "use both and manage them each to their own ability and skill."

Or just solo the game with Alm and Silque. Because that's pretty possible to do.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

Because "use Clive" or "use Matilda" can easily be answered by "use both and manage them each to their own ability and skill."

Yeah that's true, no one's really "competing for a spot". Same situation in Genealogy. Even units you "bench", by leaving in the Castle, can still Arena and do staff support.

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

Really? Worse than Amelia? Or was that just a randomly selected not!Seth unit.

This was mainly a "for example", but it's also my genuine take. Marisa joins with better combat stats than Amelia, sure, but no common access to 1-2-range. As such, she's almost always putting herself at risk by attacking, whereas Amelia can avoid this. Moreover, Amelia can promote into Cavalier pretty quickly. This gives her good mobility and Rescue/Drop support. Even if you don't want to invest in her all the way up to Paladin, she can still do "odds and ends", like visiting villages or Trade-and-Canto. Marisa isn't offering anything of the sort, even if her melee combat is better. And with investment, Paladin Amelia is clearly better than Marisa in either of her two promotions. Ergo, I credit Amelia with only being the second-worst unit in Sacred Stones. You go, girl!