Rewjeo

So, how many ingame years has it taken for the island of Malta to conquer all of this land?

Except Stefan.

Or, based on player choices, how the story unfolds could change. It might even be as drastic as changing whether the main character ends up winning or dieing.

It doesn't have to be necessary, though. We just don't have to go out of our way and put anything on the line to see if he gets SPD. They won't become an issue. I even said "they will never be in our way." Yes, we COULD have Franz do it, but then we COULD have Gilliam get some EXP there, too. I know, it's not like Gilliam ORKOing stuff and never dieing in chapter 4 or being a high ATK tank around midgame is more helpful than having mediocre offense (that only really gets worse) and crappy defense (that never really gets better) starting around midgame. I'd argue we're dropping Gilliam before he reaches the point Marisa is at when she joins. He also exists earlygame, which automatically makes him pretty decent, too, given that he helps in chapter 4. That is certainly way more than Marisa could ever hope to do. What the heck? First, you change my argument slightly and respond to that, then here you completely ignore my argument to say that Gilliam is worse than Garcia? I'd rather have Garcia out of that corner, anyways, seeing as, if you don't just ignore what I'm saying, Gilliam does the job just as well. AROUND chapter 10. Not explicitly chapter 10 and just chapter 10. A: She can't keep up with your horses better than Saleh or anyone else promoted. Lute does it better. A lot of our units can have Physic, so they don't need to keep up with our mounted units. B: 6th string healer is not semi-redundant. It's purely redundant. C: No, there is no difference. You're pulling a double standard. Gilliam is outclassed by more combat units than will fit in our team, which isn't even true 100% of the time. L'arachel is outclassed by more healers than will fit in our team. She has no more excuse than Gilliam. Anyone, bar Colm, Franz, Vanessa, and Eirika (for existing before someone similar shows up) fails to do things that cannot be repeated by other units. The thing is, Gilliam can do them, and in fact I would rather have him do it in chapter 4 than Garcia, while other units simply cannot do anything remotely helpful. 600 EXP and a Knight's Crest. SOOOO many resources. I called him a mini Duessel with no future. I'd call that accurate- he's doing Duessel's immediate job, but worse, and after a few chapters he'll be dropped. Troubadours have 6 MOV in Sacred Stones. Saleh can travel just as far. Well, it's not. But then, the moments where he has GOOD combat and decent movement are helpful. Well, the only thing here that actually relates to my original point is the EXP. I don't think Franz will miss that 1.7% of the EXP we're expecting him to gain before the route split. I'm so glad that someone has made such logical points. I am done arguing Gilliam to the top of High Tier. Oh. Wait. I'm not. This is not remotely related to my point. @Elincia: I've wondered the same thing. She is literally positioned perfectly to nab the chapter 9 Rapier in Eir. Route, while in Ephraim's she does nothing. My guess is it has to do with later chapters. Edit: Okay, let me explain my point right here. None of this other clutter. In chapter 1, we do not have to waste any time to get Gilliam a level. 30% of the time, he will gain SPD. He will be used so rarely that I see no reason to not only use him when this happens when we don't have to do much (hardly anything) to check. This makes him very good in chapter 4, and he will gain plenty of EXP. Then, between chapters 5,6, and maybe 8 we only have to get him to level 10, and he should have gained plenty of EXP by now. I think it would be fairly easy to do that. Promote him. Have a tanky guy for a while. When he starts doing poorly, drop him. If you want to argue against this, tell me... ...why we should decide to use him and then continue whether or not he gets SPD. ...why he can't get enough EXP. ...how we won't actually be good around midgame. ...maybe something else that relates directly to this point.

Yeah, realized that Um, Knoll.

Gee, if only I could get him EXP some other way... Oh, right, he has 4 turns to get EXP. And only soldiers get ORKOd, and only by Franz. If only he could also chip at enemies or fight back on enemy phase to get EXP. It's a shame that the only thing we can do to get him EXP is have him solo the reinforcements. Which we could do for the extra EXP since they are never in our way. Of course he won't actually kill all of them, but that's more EXP. Is he really as bad as Marisa, Ewan, and Amelia? He can, you know, amount to something and actually save turns in a couple places. I'd say saving turns in chapter 1, 4, and maybe a few around chapter 10 is better than L'arachel for reasons I'll address later. That really depends on the Low Tier unit, though. I see no reason to use L'arachel. Less than Gilliam at least. Syrene, Knoll, and Rennac, however, might grab my attention. I could see Gilliam in Bottom Tier, but, IMO, L'arachel and Neimi would have to go with him, and none of those units are of the same level of uselessness as the units currently in Bottom. Chapter 1. Chapter 4. GKness (sort of a mini Duessel but with no future) around midgame. Yes, it is, because being a SIXTH STRING HEALER is not good when there is no reason to have more than two healers on the map. Say we had a bunch of healers but not very many combatants. Would Marisa be good, then, if she was our only (or one of maybe two) combatants? Yes. What if six Salehs showed up and not only did her job better, but also healed and so did something else she could never hope to do? Would she still have instant barebones utility? There is quite literally one potential healer in the game that doesn't beat L'arachel at her job. Knoll. And that's actually debatable in chapter 15 since he can at least get to people. "So if a combat unit sucks at combat and has nothing else, what can he say he has that helps us at all?" Let's change that for L'arachel. So if a healer sucks at healing and has nothing else, what can she say she has that helps us at all? I'm not saying Syrene can't be helpful. I'm saying it's possible that she won't be. How is that more accurate? You're assuming that we are automatically investing literally everything in Gilliam and then seeing what he does with it. We're maybe letting him get 50 EXP more than he normally would, which is only pulling that half a level away from Franz and Eirika together, and I don't either of them care all that much about 25 EXP, and seeing what he does with it. We're investing practically nothing. It's like giving the man a dollar and if he finds some way to give you 10 back, we'll feed him more. The funny thing is, we're not even feeding him that much more. After that first level up, all he needs is 5 levels and a Knight's Crest.

Artur

Please understand my argument before you disagree. He's going to get a level up in chapter 1. 30% of the time this results in 4 AS. He will be used very rarely. Why not use him when he has 4 SPD only when you aren't even going out of your way to check? I'm not seeing him outside of Low Tier. I'm am 100% aware of him being garbage. Sorry, I'll reword it. Why shouldn't the members of my team be fluid? They CAN be used in absolutely every single run? Okay. Will they? When you are inferior to like five other staffers, yes, you can be not useful. Especially if you also fail to have anything other than staffs going for you. I don't see how there was no point in bringing them up, either, seeing as they're better at L'arachel's job than her. I have three other fliers. One for a lord, two for boss killers. Is Syrene necessary? No. Would it be better to use her instead of an untrained Tana/Vanessa (or alongside them?) Possibly. Maybe not, I haven't really looked into it. Well, in the analogy, you can't, so I don't know where that's coming from.

Hm, tough. I could ease my earlygame with Garcia and/or Joshua, or I could get super awesome come chapter 9 with Duessel and/or Cormag... I don't have a healer, so I'll take Garcia for extra earlygame tankiness and Cormag for a flier. What's the stance on forced undrafted characters? Just try and keep them from doing things?

But you can get around it. It's not even hard. He's gonna level up anyways. Actually, it is and you literally restated the next part of my post. I'm not saying we won't use units in case they get RNG screwed. I'm saying we won't use them AFTER THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN SCREWED BY THE RNG. Y'know what the difference between Gilliam and Amelia is? Under the rules of the tier list, you can very very easily go around Gilliam's bad times. Amelia is always absolutely worthless so there's nothing you can do. Gilliam won't do anything in far more than just 70% of playthroughs. More like 95% We're only using him 1/6 as often as he procs SPD. Why shouldn't a team be fluid?Are Syrene and L'arachel useful in all runs? Moulder has C staves at base, Artur can promote for C staves, Lute has D staves on promotion, Natasha has D at base, and on Eirika's route Saleh shows up immediately after her with C staves. Syrene is just another flier for the last few chapters. It's entirely possible that we will have other fliers who can take her role on just as well, and even if they're slightly worse, how much is she contributing edit: over what the other fliers could do? Gilliam is actually pretty helpful for a couple chapters if he gets that SPD. Time for a crappy analogy. There is a portal to some thing you really really want, but only 30% of the time. The other 70% of the time you just end up behind it. You can see through it, so you know when it will be good and when it won't. It only opens once a day, and you can only try to walk through it one out of every twenty days for some reason. Make it up. Why would you choose to walk through it when you know you won't get anything out of it when you could wait until you know you'll get whatever you want and then walk through it? That is a pretty horrible analogy, but it does explain my thinking.

I think the speed thing decides whether or not he's better than Ross, personally.

And Nintendo can't do that while not pissing off their customers? I understand Nintendo's reasoning, I just wholeheartedly disagree with it.

I'm pretty sure the games people are pushing for would turn a profit. It's obviously not done to anger their customers, but that seems to be the biggest effect. Unless Nintendo actually isn't making a disgustingly large amount of money. I'm not just talking about FE12, though. Games simply sell more in America than other places, and there is money in that. Besides, how much energy has to actually be put into translating casual games? It seems to me that a company should be more than just a money making machine.

I'll probably end up importing it (glad I have a DS Lite. Seriously, what is the point of region locking systems?) and I do know some Japanese, but from what I remember of emulating this game, there's a lot of really advanced stuff in it that you can't just learn from a middle school/high school class. Especially since the stuff I've learned is not conversational, with some exceptions. I could get by in Japan fine, but I would really struggle even with making this post in Japanese, unless whoever I was typing to didn't mind random English words/phrases in there. I also don't care that much about the OR games, but the idea behind it something that I certainly support and Nintendo doing what it did really annoys me. And it's not like it's the first time Nintendo (or other companies) has done something seemingly only to piss off their customers. Is there some reason behind it? Yes, there is. But I, at least, would rather see a company that cares about making good games than making good money, and it's not like Nintendo couldn't do both very easily.

This just doesn't make sense, though. By not localizing those games (as well as others, such as FE12) Nintendo is just losing millions of dollars both from purchases of those games and from purchases many offended fans will not make in the future.

I am, but seeing as we won't use Gilliam in 100% of playthroughs, there are only certain times he will be used. Except Gilliam isn't so unusably poor that he won't be touched. Some of the time, yes, but that's true with all characters. Yes, this will happen to Gilliam more often than other units, but the player does not have to go out of his/her way to take a chance, and, if he is going to be unusably bad, then he won't be used. You can ignore his bad times because it is so easy for the player to do while still actually using him sometimes.

So Nintendo can give us the finger all it wants, but we shouldn't do anything about it? I haven't bought a game so far this year, and I don't think I'll buy one at least for a Nintendo system. Not even just because I'm really upset with them because they refuse to translate games I want. They refuse to translate basically ALL of the games I'm interested in, so there ISN'T anything for me to buy.

I'm not saying what you're saying I'm saying. Gilliam will get SPD 30% of the time, but will only be used, in, say, 5% of playthroughs. So, over 20 playthroughs, he will get SPD in chapter 1 6 times, but will only be used once. Why wouldn't the player choose to use him when he has 4 SPD at the end of the chapter? The player doesn't have to rig any level ups, he/she just has to take advantage of a good level up. I've had Franz at something like level 14 going into chapter 8. However, I'm pretty sure that I did not just fly Eirika over to the boss to finish the chapter really quickly, so there was a lot of EXP there for him.

Nintendo has enhanced their ability to prevent their customers from getting their merchandise. But only for the DSi and up.

4 SPD means he ORKOs revenants (and loldiers later) in chapter 4. That's a lot of experience he's not getting if it's faster to put someone else there. Do the boss's stats really vary? I thought all non-generic stats were fixed?

I'm gonna really surprise you guys with this choice- Franz

He's bad because he's bad? Basically, that's what I'm hearing. You use a unit in the best possible way, and it's very easy with Gilliam to ensure that this best possible way happens to involve him have 4 SPD at the end of chapter 1.

Hmm, I've never actually been in a draft before. I'll try this one. One question though. Shouldn't you set which route to take? I'd imagine that one is faster than the other.

30% of the time, Gilliam gets the SPD level up. He'll be used less than 30% of playthroughs. Why not be smart and choose those times you use him from the times he's good? I don't think Franz cares all that much, and, IIRC, he isn't so durable that he can enter all the combat he wants. He won't mind Gill taking some hits instead.

*sigh* I'm not saying that we're assuming Gilliam gets SPD on his first level up. I'm saying that it should be assumed that the player will only use him if he DOES get speed on his first level up. But why? Wouldn't not doing this for other units be a double standard? Doesn't this make the list pointless as it is now assumed that units are all awesome all the time? No. This is a level up that you don't have to go out of your way to get. It's gonna happen anyways, and if it goes well, that's great. That doesn't happen with any other units (except Eirika, who WILL be used, and Franz, who will be used virtually 100% of the time) so it's not a double standard. What other unit is going to get a level up for sure that relies on it to be a decent unit? I certainly can't think of anything. It's generally assumed that if a unit is really screwed, the player will drop them, and that if a unit the player wasn't going to use gets really blessed, they'll probably end up getting used.