Integ's gon' rank the characters!

[Integrity]

W-wait, what? I went to bed and all of a sudden we're talking about Ross. Somebody fill me in, I can't follow this even reading all the posts.

[_____]

Oh, and Ninji underrates Neimi's level gain. You should have promoted all characters by C15.

She can still promote by then and get a horse, but 20/3 seems a little bit bloated to me.

2-range + Not ORKOing = Not level 20 by Chapter 15.

[-Cynthia-]

There's a fair gap in performance between Eir Innes and Eph Innes, due to Eir Innes having more chapters where's he's a decent unit.

[Integrity]

There's a fair gap in performance between Eir Innes and Eph Innes, due to Eir Innes having more chapters where's he's a decent unit.

Aye, that there is. There's also a moderate gap between Eir Cormag and Eph Cormag for the inverse, and Eph Duessel and Eir Duessel. I'm rating on their better route and letting you, the user, decide how much less they're worth on the other route.

[Integrity]

Hi!

DUESSEL

Duessel.

Duessel is interesting. He's abso-fuggin-lutely redundant on Eirika's route, but he can save your ass on Ephraim's route. This isn't to say he's useless on Eirika's route, per se, but by the time you get to C15 you probably (definitely) have a favorite Cavalier who's probably been promoted - f'example, 20/1 Kyle is already better than Duessel in most measurable ways. Thus, in keeping with the rest of the list, I shall focus on his better route - Ephraim's, where he joins a full five chapters earlier. Ephraim's route, Chapter 10 is not a difficult chapter. You're forced to recruit Duessel anyway, so you're going to - no points off for being a pain in the assRennac. C10 he comes in as a --/8 Great Knight, which is probably higher than everybody in your party bar a heftily abused Seth or a unit that you arena ground to 20 in Joshua's chapter (done it without savestates. never doing it again.) So it's safe to say that Duessel is your best unit when you pick him up.

However, the biggest factor giving Duessel the points is Ephraim 11. Ephraim 11 is better known as the Pirate Ship, and it's fucking stupid. Reinforcement fliers from everywhere wielding lances combined with reinforcement fliers everywhere using magic and also fog of war plus L'Arachel who may very well die if you turtle too hard, failing you the mission (citation needed) - did I mention Fog of War? Oh, and there's a BOSS Deathgoyle who spawns back there too. The only other units besides Duessel who can reliably hold back these tides are Seth and maybe a babied Vanessa. Everybody else will either die to the magic, or die to the lances. Duessel? He stands and laughs. Fuck, he could probably rescue your healer and still fight them back, with 1-2-range WTA in the form of Hax Axes.

Sadly, that's Duessel's peak. He provides an immeasurable amount of support on the Ship, and then he becomes a second Seth - not necessarily a bad thing, but. Afterwards, he becomes a rather overleveled but slightly below-par Great Knight. GK is a good class, fortunately, so he gains back for that, but once any of your other Cavaliers start hitting his levels he loses all his potential due to mediocre growths and poor bases for his inflated level. What's this mean for his rating? Well, he helps massively for Ephraim 11-14, and then he's probably phased out due to mediocrity - but not badness. As such, I think it's fair to give him a

8.0

but those pretend points you've been subtracting from Innes and Saleh and Cormag for their bad routes, subtract double from him.

EDIT: Fuery's playthrough log gave me useful knowledge - L'Arachel does NOT fail you Ephraim 11 if she dies.

EDIT2: Duracell is now officiall an 8.0.

Edited July 19, 2010 by Integrity

[Rewjeo]

No mention of AAA weapons, giving him a great shot at Garm to fix his one problem stat.

[Integrity]

Is true, except gk!Kyle/Franz/hero!Gerik/Ross could use it better.

[Rewjeo]

Really? Do any of them (besides Ross, who's got a good shot at not being in play) actually get as much out of it as he does? 20/10 GK Franz has 23 AS, 15 Duessel has 14. How many enemies does 28 AS double that 23 doesn't? Not too much. How much does 19 double that 14 doesn't? Probably a lot.

[Tables]

Not to mention Duessel can get S axes far easier than other GK's, who are basically stuck on axes for a few chapters if they want to S rank it (they need 220 axe WEXP compared to 70 Lance/Sword, and have access to better Lances and Swords than Axes). Duessel is one of only a few characters who can reasonably S axes without being a potential detriment, others being Garcia (definite possibility of being in play) and Ross (less likely).

[Junkhead]

GK is a good class, fortunately, so he gains back for that, but once any of your other Cavaliers start hitting his levels he loses all his potential due to mediocre growths and poor bases for his inflated level.

What? His growths are pretty awesome, his Str growth is the highest one of the mounted units tieing in with Orson (Who's not even here) and Cormag, not to mention he also ties in with Orson's hilarious 45% Def growth with a 17 base, he's a tank, 41 HP/17 Def is no joke, and even if they do damage him, he's still laughing as long as you raise him, basically, he's Gilliam's filler with a AAA and better Spd and Res. And another important thing, he supports two great units, Ephraim and Cormag, and all three of them have great affinities.

Is true, except gk!Kyle/Franz/hero!Gerik/Ross could use it better.

Kyle and Gerik could use it better, but that doesn't mean getting them from an E rank to an S is effecient, especially when the fastest way is Tower abusing. And why would Gerik want Garm? What isn't he doubling? He wants more Res, not Spd.

And Kyle could just get more Def from Vidofnir.

Although, I have to agree with the good score. He's best of with Garm, only Ross is slightly suffering from Spd issues.

Edited April 26, 2010 by Soul

[dondon151]

GKs start with D axes, but I agree that it takes too much effort and is probably not even feasible to raise weapon rank from D to S.

[Anouleth]

Gerik is unlikely to reach S Axes. In fact, unless you main a weapon or start with an A or something, you don't have much chance of hitting S.

However, Ross being in play pretty much crushes Duessel's shot at Garm. Ross has better strength and more crit and more hit and once he promotes similiar WTC and better movement and can actually be rescued. Duessel should count himself lucky that Ross isn't very likely to be in play.

Funny how if Ross joined at 10/01 he'd probably be one of the best characters in the entire game.

[Salad Utensil]

Gerik is unlikely to reach S Axes. In fact, unless you main a weapon or start with an A or something, you don't have much chance of hitting S.

I got him to S axe by spamming with the Devil axe, it was easy and he never killed himself PEME. Seriously it's more trouble than its worth, though its not like Gerik really NEEDS swords >.>

Edited April 26, 2010 by Brighton

[Anouleth]

I like to have Gerik use Killing Edges. The +35 crit he has on Steel Axe Gerik is useful. Lancereaver access is nifty too since it makes him invulnerable to lance-carriers.

Besides, the last few chapters are over so quickly. Last time I promoted Gerik to Ranger, he didn't even have an opportunity to hit S Swords. Admittedly, that's mainly because Bows are so nice to use... especially the Longbow.

[Integrity]

Since Duessel was meh anyway for me to write and the debate is all about Garm so I assume I didn't do anything particularly egregious, I'll move right along to everybody's favorite

AMELIA

Heh. Amelia. For the purposes of this post I'm going to be generous and compare her stats at certain levels to Forde, because I consider Forde to be the weakest of the three Cavaliers.

Amelia is a TRAINEE! As you all know by now (flip back several pages if you forgot the Ewan Debacle of Several Pages Ago), I have a particular soft spot for Trainees. Something about raising these little dudes from 1/--/-- to 10/20/1 gives me that happy little feeling. Like...seeing a Recruit kill something in X-COM. Or leveling Halfling Slingers to Ultra Elite. Or seeing the words "Boyar Vlan was knocked unconscious by Rhodok Tribesman". I like guiding the little dude to inevitable greatness. I'm kinda like Emilio Estevez, I guess.

Except Amelia isn't really great.

Or good.

Unlike Ross and Ewan who have passing starts, Amelia is horrid to try to level in the beginning. Ross has the advantage of showing up very, very early and Ewan has the advantage of 2-range chip damage that's moderately easy to land and checks against RES instead of DEF. Amelia is forced to use Javelins because there's no way in fuck she's going to melee anything. This means that her AS is necessarily slowed to negative levels so she'll never double, and Javelins for all their uses have pathetic HIT. Combined with her late join time (GOD SAVE YOU if you passed her on Eirika 9), she's going to miss frequently, turning that glorious 34XP chip into a 1XP miss. Since she's never ever doubling before she promotes (or really after, but I'll get to that) - EVER - she's not going to be able to steal the kills even EWAN can. She sounds like a right brilliant unit now, don't she?

Well, you say, Integrity, Ross promotes and is able to kill shit like a motherfucker. Ewan promotes and can more efficiently chip things. What can Amelia do after she promotes? My answer to that is, I have never seen Amelia used better than any other unit in your group could have been. Her meatshielding capabilities are, for the longest time, slightly inferior to Fox Moulder's. Her damaging capabilities fall slightly above those of FE10's unpromoted Laura. I have made her useful before, mind you. Since PEME in this thread, I can happily state that one time I got her to 10/--/-- in Eirika 9 and built a Neimi support while doing it. From there, she was an almost-decent unit. Oh, wait, I lied. She still sucked. But she gave Neimi some fucking ludicrous CRIT in the end. Some CRIT that oh, Colm, Garcia, or Gilliam could have given her.

Integrity, she must have some redeeming qualities? Yes, she does. She can, eventually, promote to a Great Knight. She can also promote to a General. I, personally, have a slight hard-on for both classes, and therefore she will receive points for that. However, and I said earlier I would compare her to Forde because Forde isn't a great unit for me, she fails in comparison to anything. Let's start.

A THEORETICAL 10/20/1 gk!Amelia beats a 20/1 gk!Forde in every stat but HP. However, she does this only barely - often by fractions of a point, and Forde comes back and beats her in several stats by 10/20/20 and 20/20. The difference between them is, in Chapter 9 when you can pick up Amelia, she's 1/--/--. Forde, on the other hand, assuming you used him at all during 5x and 8, is probably 8 or 9. So in the very beginning, Forde is at least 20 levels higher than Amelia, and doesn't need to be babysat unlike her. Factor in that any map with Fog of War will see a force undeploy of Amelia, and defense maps (Eirika 13, PIRATE FUCKING SHIP) probably will too, and you're not going to see a 10/20/1 Amelia until, oh, Rausten Court. What's this mean in the simplest of lights? She's worse than Syrene, except for that you have to baby her for half the game. She'll probably never catch Duessel in raw level and let's leave stats alone. She, even if babied, doesn't have the offensive capabilities of other units that need less babying (L'Arachel, fucking MARISA). She does have a decent, if slow growing support table, being able to provide double CRIT to Ross (who loves it), Neimi (who loves it), Ewan (who loves it), or Franz (who loves it) - except they all have better support options in their tables. Except maybe Ewan. She can support Ewan.

She also loses points for being Franz's only potential love interest, because IS dropped the ball and didn't let me get Franz and Natasha married.

1.5

.5 because she can promote to a GK OR a General.

[Anouleth]

I don't know if being able to promote to Knight is a good thing. 4 move and mono-lances is just so hard to work around in an efficient playthrough, unless you're Grandjackal.

[Integrity]

Promoting to Knight is not a good thing. Promoting to GK (going via Cav) is a good thing. Eventually promoting to General can be a good thing, if you can stomach the twenty levels as Knight.

[Junkhead]

She also loses points for being Franz's only potential love interest, because IS dropped the ball and didn't let me get Franz and Natasha married.

Natasha is a cleric, you know, she has morals and would know better other than marrying a kid, especially when she has an awesome Swordmaster than can actually keep up with thanks to the fact he's not Seth mounted.

Although it's pretty awesome Amelia comes with a free Speedwings (Not that she needs a raising for that), there are two or three Fighters where she starts off, but after those there are LOLdiers whom someone like Neimi can weaken so she gets them, just sayin', although I know that's not either effecient or worth it with the other awesome mounted units you have by now.

[Integrity]

Neimi always kills the loldiers :( I can't get her to weaken anything if I'm using her.

If I'm not raising Neimi so she has a low enough ATK to weaken then I'm applying two shitty units to making a shitty unit less shitty.

Amelia comes with Speedwings, but Ewan comes with a delicious Energy Ring. :P

[Junkhead]

That Energy Ring goes best with either Eirika or Forde, but the Speedwings ain't bad for someone like Kyle or Gilliam.

[Integrity]

I operate under the policy that STR generally > SPD, so nyeh.

Edited April 28, 2010 by Integrity

[Integrity]

Time to kick up the pace. Iuno if I can finish this before Fuery finishes his but DAMMIT I'M GOING TO TRY!

TANA

Tana. Uh...

I notice that I often begin these with a very similar statement:

Syrene, eh?

Gerik! Everybody loves Gerik, amirite?

Heh. Amelia.

See? Queer. Anyway...

Tana has a rocky start. She's your second flier, which is kinda yay, but she joins in C9 at level 4. Yeah, 4. The good news is, she offsets the late join date by having better growths than Vanessa if you really want to use her - but you've had Vanessa for eight chapters and - even if they were eight shitty Axe-filled chapters - she's probably a little higher than 4 by now. Let's walloffacts!

At the very most basic, 4/-- Vanessa v. 4/-- Tana, Tana wins. From there, Tana continues to win in every stat except SKL until the end-game (we're talking 20/15 here) when she falls behind in RES by a point or two. So, we're looking at Tana being the victor in every stat forever except SKL - as long as they're the same level. This is, actually, rather hard for me to calculate. I haven't played a run using Vanessa in a non-abusive fashion in...forever, so the numbers may be a little off when I say Vanessa can be level 9 by C9. Amusingly, even given this provision Tana is generally a better unit....wha?

Okay, something's gotta be wrong here, and I ain't joking around for the sake of comedy. I'm honestly perplexed as to why I always defend Vanessa righteously and neglect to mention that Tana is superior in every way and just joins late. She has faster supports with better units, has higher stats for every stat bar one for every level except the very very endest of games, what's missing? Somethings gotta be missing in my calculations, otherwise I've been wrong about several things for a rather long while. I'm going to leave this stats thing for Slize or Soul or Fuery to correct me on later because fuck if I know what's missing here or Tana is actually a better unit.

Uh...anyway...

Um.

Okay, this came out NOTHING like I was expecting.

Tana is also the last listed one on the supports list and that's got to count for or against something?

Shit, guys. Help me out here. Show me where I'm missing something obvious, or tell me I'm actually right.

8.0

Edited April 29, 2010 by Integrity

[Rewjeo]

First off, I'd mention that Amelia's Ewan support prolly won't happen since training BOTH of them in a non-abusive run is ridiculous.

Well, I guess Vanessa has supports (C Moulder/C Lute by now seems doable) meaning she actually has significantly better STR/SPD/DEF/RES when Tana joins. So, I think she can double more with heavier weapons and does more damage per hit with the same weapon.

Availability is also a pretty big factor.

Growths wise:

HP: 50/65

STR: 35/45

SKL: 55/40

SPD: 60/65

LUK: 50/60

DEF: 20/20

RES: 30/25

The EXP gain gap isn't much to boast about, so within 7 levels, Tana will probably manage to tie HP, and then by promotion will come out ahead. STR, Vanessa's supports can keep her in the lead, or at least tied, as long as they aren't flying way out of the way to battle. SKL, lol. SPD, it takes like 60 levels to catch up, so even with the level gap, she'll probably never win. LUK, lol. DEF, Vanessa's already winning and supports keep growing, so she'll always win. RES, same as DEF, except she also wins the growth.

So I guess you just have to look a little deeper for Vanessa to win. At first glance, though, I was definitely feeling the same as you.

[Integrity]

I thought about supports, actually, because I thought it would be the thing I was missing.

However, MoulderxVanessa is 15+2 - that means that Vanessa has to be tied to a healer (read: backline) for 33 turns, by my quickmath. By the time Tana shows up, I frankly don't see a C Moulder AND a level advantage, let alone a C/C since Lute is slower by three turns and shows up a chapter later. And there's always Vanessa's fliership to consider, which makes it harder to use her well and build supports with anything but another flier.

Again, I don't see supports and levels both gained readily for Vanessa.

AmeliaxEwan wasn't serious. The point was he's her best option because all the others have better. :P

EDIT: I argue, but please do try to convince me. I WANT to place Vanessa half a point higher on the charts but I don't see why I should.

EDIT2: As for availability, Vanessa only has maybe two or three chapters of real usefulness before Tana shows up, since the early and late-early game is Brigand territory.

Edited April 29, 2010 by Integrity

[dondon151]

Well, I guess Vanessa has supports (C Moulder/C Lute by now seems doable) meaning she actually has significantly better STR/SPD/DEF/RES when Tana joins. So, I think she can double more with heavier weapons and does more damage per hit with the same weapon.

Vanessa x Moulder takes 33 turns to C and Vanessa x Lute takes 35 turns to C. I spent 42 total turns in the game up to chapter 9; 8 of them were chapter 5x, and 4 of them were chapter P and 1. So it wasn't possible for them to even build a level of support; even with a slower playstyle I don't really see how that is feasible.

Availability is also a pretty big factor.

Yeah, basically.

Edited April 29, 2010 by dondon151