Interceptor
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Posts posted by Interceptor
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What about avoid, or Vantage, or DS to kill them first? It's hardly the only way, and it's one of the least reliable.
Avoid doesn't work against the nightmare Hawkeye/Luna+ combo, Vantage needs to be on the Lead unit, and DS only helps if you can go first and secure the kill. Dual Guard also doesn't rely on the Lead unit being able to counter-attack, which is actually kind of important.
DG is the shit. Gives zero effs about your circumstances, and just contributes a consistent chance to negate damage.
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Yes, it's great. Play Lunatic+ some time, and you'll be worshiping at the altar of Dual Guard before you know it. It's the only mechanic that can negate those disgusting Luna+ enemies, and DG+ only makes it better.
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There are no Playthrough Police™ that are going to give you shit for using units that you like. The desire alone is a "good enough" reason.
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There is a huge skill component to Lunatic+, it's not just a luckfest. People who reset constantly (except on Chapter 2, which is legitimate bullshit) are falling short in either technical skill or long-term strategy. A lot of "impossible" skill combinations are really just "pretty difficult", and there are folks who tend to pull the ripcord a bit too early.
Don't get me wrong, the mode could be better; earlygame is brutal, and they introduce the extra skills too quickly. But the random skills specifically designed to unravel standard vanilla Lunatic strategies is a decent start, and overall it's a good experience that really challenges your ability to adapt on the fly.
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LTC scrub, Exiledwolf, Falchion, The Pale Shadow, Meta_Knight, Guy in a Chair Man, Noire, Kyrin, Crizix, Valflame, JamesBCrazy, Bowser, Canto, MVP, ZMeister, Carter, Alg, Monado, Parthia, RightfulGod, Super Luigi, Sumia, Jolteon, Ace Tactician, shadykid, Chester924, superpro, Alvitazi, JayShee, Viewtiful_J, MessengerIris, JasonMendez, NoNameAtAll, Amelia
Scarlet letter for all of you. This is a travesty that will not soon be forgotten.
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How is Frederick not running away with this?
At the time of this posting, I am disappointed in seven of you.
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Unless there's something I've missed that'll give more, I believe it's 8 EXP on literally everything. But please correct me if you've found something that does give more EXP, since I'm trying to work out the EXP formula. I believe both EXPonential Growth level 30 Entombed, and level 20 bosses in DLC, should both give 8 EXP.
Entirely possible that it's literally +8 EXP at that point no matter what; I was just leaving the door open in case there was some weird case I hadn't noticed before.
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Could someone explain the internal level cap to me? I am planning to play on Lunatic+ (Chapter 3...) and does it affect me in any bad way? I guess 50 is high.
Every time you use a Second Seal, the game adds hidden levels to the unit that you just class-changed, which add to its actual level used to determine EXP gain. Having a lot of hidden levels added can really slow you down. This is why reclassing Frederick to a tier 1 class doesn't really help his EXP gain as much as other people, because he stocks a bunch of hidden levels from reclassing out of Great Knight, which makes him effectively higher than you'd expect a level 1 unit to be.
In Lunatic, this caps out at 50, and doesn't ever go higher than that. That's a pretty high cap, though. You could have a 20/1 promoted unit that's gaining EXP like they were level 71, which is pretty ridiculous. They'll be getting 8 EXP per kill on almost anything.
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Depends on whom you ask. My own answers are based on a grinding run.
I am just trying to make some sense of these rankings, because the priorities seem to be all over the place, i.e. the parameters are poorly defined. Donnel seems like he'd especially suffer from this, because whether you care about his unique skills depends entirely upon how you are weighing various parts of the game.
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Is this an "ignore everything except Apotheosis" ranking thread, when it comes to gameplay?
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Oh. You know what? Gregor.
If you go... Mercenary > Hero (5) > Myrmidon (10) > Swordmaster (20+), he can still get Vantage in a decent time-limit AND have Sol. ... Is that alright, in your opinion?
I actually had Gregor in mind specifically; I've been trying to think of a way to get Sol on him (to pass down) without locking him into Hero endgame, and this would be one such way. He has a couple of good options here, including what you posted as well as Myrm -> Assassin and Barbarian -> Zerker/Warrior.
Not too impressed with Vantage in story unless it's for a second gen.
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I did want to chip in and say, here's a paths I've used for Chrom before, on Lunatic. It's something of a medium length path for an all-purpose Chrom.
1) Lord (20) > Great Lord (5) > Cavalier (X) > Great Knight (opt. > Paladin) [X - when stats are capping, or level 10, whichever comes sooner]
This path has a few advantages. Firstly you second seal a little later than the standard level 20, increasing the chance you'll have a Second Seal available. It also only takes one Second Seal. SSing at level 5 promoted is a surprisingly good route - your internal level won't be a big issue (cumulative level of 12), and then you get some very quick levels unpromoted while still not being capped.
This is a pretty cool idea; I hadn't thought of SS'ing at the first promoted level five before. That will definitely take some of the SS pressure off the good reclassers, and an extra 3 cumulative levels isn't a death sentence if your second promotion is your target end class.
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Oh, damn, good point.
... Should I make both in-game and then most optimal post-game paths, then?
I don't see the point of post-game paths. You can literally grind out anything that you want, especially first generation. Screw up more than Mr. Magoo, and still your character will be fine even on Lunatic.
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Hmm? What do you mean by this? I thought Lissa only had Peg and Staff classes on her at first tier.
Just means that I need to pay more attention to class sets. Lissa's instant offense is a Sage promo and basically that's it. Her second seal use would be to make her a Troubadour, which was one of my original plans before Miriel popped up.
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Unless the Archers have Counter, naturally. Might be a heavy lift!
EDIT: although, since he's basically tinking them, I suppose it would take him a long time to kill himself.
EDIT #2: and you'd have to hope that the Archer didn't have Pass.
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Avatar is the best early Second Seal, no doubt about it.
There are a lot of good candidates for second place, IMO. I'm not sure how I would do it on another run; I don't regret reclassing Miriel, who turned out to be a brick house for a while, but I could have gotten comparable performance just by keeping her as a Mage. You could use one on Chrom, to get your first primary bow-user prior to Ch9: never tried it, but I think it's a decent theoretical use. Lissa is good, too: it's easy to get her over-leveled as a Cleric, and a Second Seal would give you an instant magic-user. Ditto Maribelle. Those are the strongest candidates I can think of off the top of my head.
Adding to the above, I wonder how Donnel would do on this run. If you don't use Gregor or male Avatar for the job, he's the only unit who can pass AT/Mercenary down to Laurent. Although it's frightening to consider what it would take to get that loser to level 10 for a reclass, not to mention the kind of bases he'd be passing down.
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And now, far too late, the post-run debriefing -- AKA the Retrospective -- where I go over what worked, what didn't, what was a surprise, etc. It's also a good excuse for more lists. Anyone can feel free to weigh in with their thoughts as well.
- Second seals are pretty limited. I got lucky with a couple of Anna shop hits, but even though Master/Second Seals are fairly common compared to other items, it's not a good thing to use too many early on, if for nothing else but repeatability. Units that I don't immediately need to reclass could probably see more use.
- I probably didn't use Chrom effectively in this run. For a while I kept up with his training, but by the time the Valm arc landed he was just a throw-in unit still stuck in tier 1. He would have benefitted by going Bow Knight like Lucina, except through Archer instead of Mercenary. The basic point is that I either need to train him properly or abandon him at Lord level 10; the in-between status just gave me a unit that drained early EXP but never became a strong contributor.
- Dual Support+ was not that great. It did help some, but was largely irrelevant to combat results, because anyone paired with Miriel usually had plenty of offense. Defensively, it helped Miriel a little (guaranteed bonuses), but with her durability she couldn't face a lot of non-magic combat anyway. From the back-line, only Lucina and Morgan got large boosts from it, and they usually wanted other partners. I could see this skill being more useful if the holder wasn't required to be the Support unit to contribute effectively (i.e. if it applied to the adjacency bonus, for example). This doesn't hurt Valkyrie though, because Rally RES is really good on this team.
- Demoiselle is better in the early-to-mid game, when enemy hit rates can actually be impacted significantly by the skill. Unfortunately I got it towards the tail end of that window, because of reclassing order (Mage -> DM -> Troub). This is an argument to use Maribelle sooner than later, since she doesn't use a Seal, gets to Demoiselle fairly quickly, and can be discarded later without wasting anything but staff EXP investment. Another consideration: only Chrom and Gregor are going to use it amongst the earlygame units. Laurent and Morgan are the late game beneficiaries.
- The most popular Spotpass item was Levin Sword by far. I bought a couple Physic staves, and primed Laurent with Mire, but the flood of Levin Swords really enabled the earlygame to work, and Mercenaries to be trainable. I could easily give up all Spotpass team benefits other than this one.
- Laurent/Lucina was an amazing combination, and basically was just an accident of circumstance. I chose Laurent as an experiment to see if AT/Mire would be useful, and because he could marry Lucina and give her a partner other than Morgan to fight with. Morgan remained the best unit in the army, but this was easily the best pairing.
- Gregor was a little disappointing, from the perspective of combat contribution. His "prime" was pretty short, because not long after I got him trained (which took three entire chapters), he started to fall off against the heavy-hitting and accurate Valm units. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it wasn't worth training him -- he was partially responsible for Laurent, after all -- but I may have trained him differently. Passing down Sol to Laurent, for example, would have been a huge boon in terms of late-game survivability, even though it would have meant Laurent had to swing through Mercenary briefly (easier to do that than Hero).
- I ignored Anna in this run, and that may have been an error. Within a few levels she is incredibly dodgy from Lucky Seven, and Mage/Thief/Archer access gives her some useful path options in the promoted classes. The lack of AT is a factor for her, as are her support partners, but she can use Avatar for a bit (also Tiki: I never picked her up, but she's a possibility) and Anna is also a one-person argument for a Dual Support+ unit to exist in the army. Her low defense is less of a problem than Gregor's low avoid.
- Losing out on Despoil turned out to be basically inconsequential. I got enough money from normal play, and saved enough via Armsthrift, that I had the capacity for more maxed-out forges than I even ended up needing. Leif's Blade is probably a better idea than Barbarian, if the need should arise.
- I'd really like to find a way to get Dual Guard+ going somewhere. DGs are the best way to avoid late-game damage, but plowing through 14 levels of Great Knight means leveling without being able to negate Counter, and there are no units that are a natural fit for it. Frederick is the closest candidate, but also one of the worst statistically. Ideally I'd like to have it on Lucina, but Chrom cannot pass it to her. Sully/Stahl/Kellam have the best statistics, need no reclasses, and also make the best parents, but they have to rely on walls and javelins to get there. It may not be worth the effort in the long run.
- Lissa as a Falco was ridiculous, but ultimately useful late. I am glad that I went the Cleric -> Sage -> FK route with her. I never got around to writing up the post-game Paralogues properly, but she was a big part of reliable completion on several of them, and a flying Rescue was perfect for Ch25 in the story. Rally MAG was also handy on occasion.
- Henry was good for the brief time that I used him. I don't feel like he was a huge factor, but neither was he a complete waste.
You probably already know this, but mire is also available from Gharnef's shop.
Yeah, I used that shop primarily as my Mire source. I think I ended up buying about 5-6 of them over the course of the game. Eventually Laurent just stopped using charges period.
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Yeah, it's a little weird that Lucina's third-string critical quote is up for voting here, but regardless it's still a strong one comparatively.
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Sully was so close. Only lower by one syllable.
Too bad that we're not playing horseshoes or hand grenades.
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Sully's, by far. Lucina's quotes are all boring as hell, imo.
Saw title, clicked into thread expecting to see exactly this, was not disappointed.
That's the point of a critical quote.
Lulz, let's just make up random criteria to support our chosen result. I say that the point of the critical quote is to have as many syllables as possible, thus Lucina's wins.
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The problem is that Miriel is usuall act as staffbot. If I can't use any staff then perhaps buying elixirs should suffice? And I got one second seal left. I might used it to reclass my avatar to Sniper just for this one.
Well, try it first. Can you confirm whether or not she can move on Mountains? If not, yes I'd use Elixirs. They are dirt cheap for what they can do. Also, if you're going to reclass anyone, why not Miriel? As a Sage she'd have roughly the same utility, but can definitely sit on a Mountain.
I wouldn't recommend starting bows at this late juncture, because you won't have the rank to use Brave Bows in Endgame.
The class that usually dubbed as useless proved to be versatile in Lunatic and Lunatic+ huh?
Lunatic+ mostly; vanilla Lunatic is just Hard with more difficult enemies. Lunatic+ rewards using out-of-the-ordinary strategies.
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So I must retreat my unit into the mountain? I have Miriel!Valkyrie which mean she cannot reach it. Also the one Fliers reinforcement have Rexcalibur equipped which would let me at RNG Goddess mercy during that turn.
It's a solid strategy. That's how I cleared Ch25 with only Morgan and Avatar on my first Lunatic+ run. I just had them equip bows and hide on the Mountains, picking people off as they got close.
You can switch back to a land unit once your fliers and/or staffers get the people there. If you can't get a Valkyrie on a Mountain (I don't remember), either hide Miriel on a flier until things cool down or don't deploy her in the first place.
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My playlog is here. Worth noting that as KTT said, it depends on having raised a +DEF over-leveled Avatar as a requirement, but you still might find some useful info there regardless of your spec.
EDIT: full-on Ninja'ed
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What right gives you the means to say this?
I've been playing games longer than some of the people on this forum have even been alive.
I've seen people say this before and I really don't get why. A video game like FE should aim to have a good story. These types of games are more like interactive novels than anything else, imo. Of course, a game like Angry Birds is a different story, but I do see FE as a little bit above Angry Birds.
It DOES have a good story, unless your expectations are completely unreasonable for a game of this caliber. People coming into FE expecting Shakespeare are 1) insane, and 2) going to be disappointed. A story like Awakening's as a novel or a TV series would be cause for torches and pitchforks, but for a Fire Emblem game, it's perfectly fine.
Whatever you think about it, the stories here have always been window dressing for the mechanics.
*Raises hand*
I can honestly say that Fire Emblem has the deepest, most complex storytelling of any game I've played.
You need to play more games, then. This is thin gruel. Even the meanest mass-market RPG can generally kick the crap out of your average Fire Emblem.
Is DG+ really that great?
in Fire Emblem: Awakening
Posted
Yes. A unit can face a lot of consecutive attacks in this game, because of Enemy Phase. Nothing else does precisely what Dual Guard does, and Support units have pretty limited options. It's an excellent skill that can be difficult to get to.
If you're playing in a Carebear mode, it may not matter (due to overpowering stats on your units), but there's a place for DG+ in this game.
A thousand pardons for not being specific enough to satisfy your demands for pedantry. Do you understand what I was getting at now, or do I need to break out my electron microscope?
The question was, "Is DG+ really that great?", and the answer is: "yes, it is". It may not be easy to get DG+, but if you have it, it's really useful in Lunatic+. There are no conditions except activation (extreme flexibility), and DG+ gives you more benefit than you can reasonably get from other sources (such as increasing DEF/RES directly).
Every other option is inferior to DG. Vantage requires that you be beaten half to death, able to attack in the first place (underrated point: enemy Longbows and Mire users huehuehue at Vantage), and able to KO the enemy before they strike. DS has the same limitations on Enemy Phase due to requiring Vantage in the first place, and on Player Phase only works if you can wipe an enemy in one volley. Aegis+ and Pavise+ make this considerably more difficult to do in many random situations.
DG doesn't give a shit about any of that. You have an X% chance to negate the damage, period. DG+ is a great skill because it gives you an S-rank activation increase, that works for both damage types, contained in one itty-bitty little skill.
As if there's going to be some significant number of situations where you'd want to Dual Guard less, or remove the DG+ skill for something else. Dual Guard is ~99.9% gravy (100% for non-pedants).