Dark Holy Elf
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Posts posted by Dark Holy Elf
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Dragonstone Corrin is pretty good, yes! But using a Heart Seal is still a negative for Mozu since that's a contested resource. It is for Jakob and Corrin too, to be clear. The difference is that if they don't use it, they're still great units.
Also frankly the type of favouritism you want to give Mozu will make most units good. Charlotte, for instance, has even more offensive cannon potential than Mozu does, if we're willing to bear with her bad start.
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Tiger gauge isn't that terrible, though. I might remember things incorrectly, but I think it is usually possible to let Muarim transform on turn 2 by giving him some weed and letting someone attack him and maintaining non-cat transformation is a bit annoying, but very possible. I still find him a bit more helpful than Tormod (and less of a liability in 4-4), but Nailah and BK are indeed a great deal stronger than Muarim.
I don't have enemy stats in front of me but my memory is that Tormod can one-round the vast majority of enemies (as can Muarim to be clear). He isn't immortal like transformed Muarim, but he can generally take a couple hits; his durability is comparable to that of Sothe or Zihark, which is good enough. Finally he has 1-2 range which is quite useful on the maps they share because of all the ledges. Tiger gauge isn't the end of the world, but it is a negative that other top units (including Tormod) don't have and it's enough to keep him out of the party in 1-E for me. But if you want to argue Muarim is slightly better that's fine. I don't really agree, but I can certainly accept it.
What I don't accept is that somehow Muarim deserves 2 or 3 points higher score than Tormod because of 4-4, where he isn't very useful (46 atk/22 spd is underwhelming, he has a gauge to watch, 1 range only), and I feel like I'm seeing a lot of that in the comments. One map where he is mediocre instead of trash shouldn't make a large difference to his score.
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Low move does not make someone unusable, and I say this as someone who certainly values movement.
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I've been slowly trying to do some testing (I'll save you time with Aether/Sol/Luna: their proc rates are bad) but yeah the lack of documentation for this game is a real downer as an FE fan. I'm so used to great documentation for Fire Emblem games!
I found Eleanora one of the less good characters personally; her durability/defensive typing leaves much to be desired IMO and I don't think crits are that great due to only being a 50% boost (which doesn't carry over into sessions) and being unreliable. She's fine in randoms because she gets three elements, though, which means more session opportunites than some characters. As for Mass Destruction, it takes 2 SP to do what Pastel Power does with 1, so I didn't find much use for it personally.
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Jakob 1 is definitely the best unit in Conquest who can't use dragon veins, I think. He's either a jeigan unit who never really falls off that hard (like Seth except less dominant + Camilla exists), or he's your best (and sometimes only) healer.
In a way, after doing this evaluation I would say Silas should be above Jakob since if we are getting a kid Sophie is pretty goodI really don't think the gap between Sophie and Dwyer (if we account for it at all when considering their fathers) is large enough to offset Jakob 1's advantages as a unit. By your own analysis Jakob beats Silas pretty bad until the latter promotes and is competitive enough thereafter. Remember that he still has access to L15 skills other units do not. Trample or Swordfaire/Lancefaire will nicely offset any Str edge Silas has, for instance.
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Okay then. I was curious because I know she had gotten some zeros, as I had predicted would be the case (but what can you expect when you're practically unusable outside of easy mode?).
You're strangely hung up with Meg getting really low scores. And she's completely "usable" on Hard Mode, let alone Normal (it helps that 1-4 is chokepoint central so you can level anyone you want there). There may not be much reason to use her, but that's a different statement from the one you made.
Tauroneo: 5/10. He's god in two part 1 maps, basically irrelevant in 3-12, and then decent in 3-13. He's usable in part 4 as filler but that's about it. I have little to say about him past that; he's a weird case.
Fiona: 1/10. So I used her on my first playthrough because after PoR I figured that an earth affinity cavalier would be an instant great unit. She did have windows where she was quite good but it's not worth the incredibly bad start, the worst of any unit in the game I think. I'm not sure if she's the worst unit in the game (because certain other bad units don't even have good potential), but she's in the conversation.
Tormod: 3.5/10. He's quite good for three maps! Doubles most things with 1-2 range damage, especially nice since there are ledges in two of his three maps and enemies in swamps to make said range useful. But he's still essentially a temp and for two of those maps he's a dramatically worse one than Nailah and Zelgius. Then when he returns he's complete junk.
Muarim: 3/10. I'm surprised how well-liked he is here. Like yeah he's fine in part 1 but the laguz gauge means he's less useful than the other delete buttons you have at that point, namely Nailah, BK, and Tormod, and stronger DB members like Sothe are also competitive with him. I'm never terribly tempted to deploy him for 1-E, for instance (unlike Tormod). He's not completely worthless in 4-4 (though not good either, 22 speed is bad and his attack isn't any different than say Titania's by then, which is to say good but not OHKO level) but he's terrible in endgame like all tigers so there's no reason to actually use him then beyond some minimal chipping.
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If Jakob's healing is so valuable that losing him would seriously hurt your team, then you're implying that Jakob deserves a pretty high tier placement, I'd say! He's either one of two healers (and the only one for C12) for a while, or he's your best non-Camilla combat unit until like... chapter 14ish, minimum. Don't forget he gets access to skills like Trample/breakers/etc. super-fast.
Him being an exp sink is no concern. Every combat unit is an exp sink. You're gonna be adding Leo, Xander, and possibly various kids / staffbots / maybe Keaton to your team midgame, so Jakob isn't making any worse use of exp than whatever units you're planning to drop for them, and he helps your team way more.
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The electoral college vote is essentially ceremonial and I'm not really sure how much news coverage it deserves. That there are more faithless electors than usual this year is kinda interesting but I'm not sure what it speaks to, beyond perhaps the widespread discontent about this election.
I'm not surprised that none are against Trump; it's much "safer" to be a faithless elector if you were pledged to support a loser since your action can not possibly affect the final result. A quick check of Wikipedia confirms my suspicions: there hasn't been a faithless elector from the victorious candidate's side in a long time (specifically since 1972), though there have been quite a few from the losing candidate's side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#List_of_faithless_electors
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Yeah, Pastel Power is really great. Unlike most other status skills it never fails barring immunity so it pretty much destroys savage encounters and mini-boss fights.
I believe the 7th skill I used on Tsubasa was Javein Rain, because MT skills can add up to a bunch of free damage (if you're starting a session with a lance skill, the difference in damage to the primary target doesn't matter that much, whereas the secondary targets can take a bunch of extra damage which will make them easier to kill with other things). Still her Str isn't too hot so the other options you listed are decent ones. I'd probably go with Sexy Dance because really Samarecarm doesn't restore that much more HP than a revival item, but if you're planning on doing arena fights then Samarecarm becomes much more useful.
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Jill: Her Str/HP could be better, but they could also be worse: she's lucky that forged iron makes weapon weight not the issue for her that it looks like it was on paper in the J version. Also she's rarely 10/10 level dominant since she's pretty much always playing catch-up for level-gain compared to first the OP units of part 1-3, and then various others in Part 4. But she's in a broken class, has good overall stats (spd/def in particular) and is good all the way through to the end of the game. 9/10.
Zihark: A dodge-based unit in a path where dodging isn't really that much of a thing, and Volug's a better choice for it anyway. But... still a prepromo, still good throughout part 1 and 3 if less so than certain amazing units, and has good endgame potential, arguably the best endgame sword-user depending on what you're looking for because his evade gets so batty. 7.5/10
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Serenes really needs to get its Item Locations page up and running. That said, I just did a quick run-through of the FE wiki and didn't see any aside from the one in C9, so you have that + the three from the L1-2 store for a total of four.
Silas: he could stand to go down to top of high tier maybe, ill need some more convincing. Idk i feel hes so low cost and he joins so early that ill keep him in top tier for now. He hits like a truck, joins early and is in a great class.I'm not seeing what is particularly special about Silas' attack/offence? Setting aside the potential +3 from Vow of Friendship and the -3 when he's on special terrain (i.e. assuming Elbow Room is active), and giving each unit iron, we have:
Base Silas, Iron Sword, 20 atk
Base Arthur, Iron Axe, 20 atk
Base Effie, Iron Lance, 20 atk (+3 when her personal is active)
Silas has the lowest str growth of this trio, too, and is the only one with no 1-2 range access (for now). He is the most accurate and is the only one with a second weapon (even if it's E rank) and has 2-3 more move, but if raw offence is your argument he doesn't stand out from the crowd. The characters who join in the next few maps all have comparable atk (Nyx, Beruka, Peri), are much better at doubling (Niles, Selena, Kaze), or are low tier and thus Silas being better than them proves little (Odin, Mozu, Laslow, Nyx again).
And I'll re-iterate that Silas being three tiers above Peri is a headscratcher.Pretty much if there is a resource that many units would like to use, then the person who gets the most usage out of it is the unit who is simply better all around and should be the main recipient of it. In FE10, there is a speed wing you get in Path 2 on Crimea that you can carry into to give it Haar on end game for the Crimea path. Many units would love to see a speedwing, but Haar will get the most mileage out of it.I mostly agree in a way but you have to be careful about oversimplifying, and overrating the Haars of the world in the process, by "assuming" they get the resource. Haar (or whoever) using that speedwing is still a big resource that lots of other people would like and thus him using it means nobody else can. Any analysis of Haar vs. another unit should either feature neither getting that Speedwing, or both getting it, or the other unit getting a resource of roughly similar value instead. (Haar can be shown as superior to units in these situations just fine, of course, but that's not my point.)
What are you smoking? do you realize Keaton is A) really fast, B) very bulky, C) very powerful and D) Has a passive Beast killer effect? Like, do you realize this? His combat potential is incredible.This is significantly overrating Keaton; you should look at his stats again.
-Keaton is only even above average speed with the Beaststone+ (and certainly is never "really fast"). If he has the Beaststone+ equipped, he isn't "very bulky". Beaststone Keaton has only +1 speed on base Leo... or Selena four maps earlier, for that matter.
-"Very powerful" is again going too far for Keaton, at any point in the game. He joins around when forging is generally availble for units who need it, and uses weapons which top out at 9 power, then 12 power after C19. For all that you antihype Beruka's "meh STR" she will generally be able to output similar raw damage per swing, though Keaton will be faster with the Beaststone(+). She's very close speedwise to Beastrune Keaton.
-Beastbane is nice but most combat units get some sort of weakness-hit option, be it a Beast Killer, Hammer/Armourslayer, bows against fliers, etc. Keaton hardly stands out just because he has one too.
Keaton is still decent since he can shift around his stats for what the situation requires, but no one stat package he offers looks that impressive to me. Toss in his unremarkable move and total lack of range-2 options or other utility and he doesn't feel that great. I could see him as high as Mid Tier, but comparing him to staffbots and the like is difficult. -
Luck as a game concept is very different from luck as a stat. I agree that games shouldn't be too luck-dependent. Fire Emblem is in a good spot generally, for me. Games where most of the challenge is determined by whether you are ambushed or not, not so much.
Luck as a stat is indeed kinda weird stylistically. For Fire Emblem, I do like having a stat that governs critical resistance, though honestly you could have skill do that and not miss a beat (skill needs the help). For other games, the luck stat varies in its effect, and annoyingly is often barely documented for what it does and doesn't do. I agree that these sorts of luck stats feel weird/pointless (for instance, Suikoden's).
My least favorite stat is Speed. I think it has too much sway in dictating whom has the upperhand or who contributes the most in many RPG battles. So, I like games where it has little impact (if any) to battles. I don't mind it determining priority if combatants are generally all allowed to act before the next "turn" occurs; Golden Sun or even the Persona games do this well, among others. If someone is being lapped in the turn queue, then either they should be much more stronger to justify the limited turnaround rate. Or the faster characters should be somewhat limited at least in one key aspect that they appreciate the slower man/woman's contribution. Or perhaps, have the slow characters be especially talented at making their faster comrades even deadlier with potent support skills or something, to encourage waiting on them to make some battles that would be unwinnable otherwise, a breeze.I think speed is conceptually fine but you're right that RPG designers frequently underestimate how important it is. However, there are certainly some games out there that do what you expect: the slow PCs are generally some of the most effective in Wild Arms games, for instance (well, aside from XF). I think lapping is fine and dandy (and has the potential to be much more interesting than "everyone has to get an equal number of turns" systems, especially with haste/slow effects), but absolutely has to be balanced around.
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Yeah it's pretty easy to train Nino on Night of Farewells if you want. Some people may want to and that's okay!
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Ilyana stuff. If you get bored/don't want to debate this I'll knock it off.
I don't count Pent, Saleh, Calill and Leo as mages, as they are already promoted and not mages anymore.Fair enough. In that case base Ilyana starts to look a bit better relative to the group you described, but now it's a pretty unimpressive group since you stripped out most of its best names.
However Lugh, Erk, Lucius, Canas, and Tharja are all not tanky when you recruit them.They're not "tanky" but they're more durable than Ilyana, whether you are comparing them to average PC stats at the time (e.g. Erk having similar HP/def to squishier fighters like Lyn/Matthew/Rebecca/non-HHM Guy), or to enemy stats. Being 3HKOed instead of 2HKOed goes a long way to making someone whose gimmick is countering everything more useful.
And you conveniently did not mention Lilina, Soren, PoR Ilyana, Miriel or Ricken.Er, yeah, because I was trying to debunk the claim that she's "one of the best" mages out of the gate. To do so I only need to show a decent handful who are similar/better; I don't need to compare her to scrubs. I accept that she's better out of the gate than everyone you described, most of whom are significantly underlevelled anyway.
RD Ilyana is definitely more of a threat than base Lugh or Erk. If you factor in transfers, and I didn't, her offense is ridiculous. 17 MT on chapter 3 is damn strong. Erk has 10 MT on chapter 14 (4, 5 if you count the side chapter).Erk has 10 MT in Chapter 5, where enemies are still level 1-2 and there's a range-1 boss who doesn't move. In Chapter 14 he has 13 MT minimum due to starting with Thunder, probably more like 14-15 due to whatever Exp he gained in Lyn Mode. Toss in the fact that enemy Res is lower in FE7 (0-2 instead of 2-5, according to references I found here on Serenes), and yes, Erk has pretty comparable offence to Ilyana out of the gate, and takes hits better.
I think considering transfers is rather dubious in general, but especially so for Ilyana whose only remotely likely caps (i.e. above 10%) are Skl and Res.
Meg: Meg isn't great, but I think she's kinda underrated here? Maybe I play DB maps more defensively than the average player here but I generally have uses for anyone who can take hits in that path and with 10 base def + decent Res too she can actually do that somewhat; I prefer her to Edward or Leo. She also makes very good use of BExp out of the gate due to how the formula works (PC level is in the denominator, so a L3 gets twice as much as a L6) which mostly is useful for making sure she isn't doubled on HM (NM this isn't an issue since the tigers are 8-10 speed). She is generally worse than Aran (among others), though, and certainly has flaws that have already been mentioned. 4/10
Volug: Volug is amazing, good unit for part 1 who becomes even better in part 3. DB Part 3 is one of the tough patches of the game and Volug makes mincemeat out of it with a dual earth support and whatever key skill strikes your fancy (Resolve is the safest). He's nothing amazing in part 4 but he's still solid there thanks to high sky-high his avoid gets and being one of the few laguz to easily hit SS strike, he can either run around on the desert or go on a route with authority and be almost unhittable until like Endgame-3. 9/10] -
It's completely untrue that Camilla makes a bad investment. Compare Camilla at */20 to any other unit at 20/15 (or choose any other equivalent levels); she should have better stats than almost anyone, and certainly better than any other "balanced" unit (barring maybe some Aptitude child build?). Using her doesn't take disproportional exp away from anyone else unless you choose to have it happen, no more than raising any other combat unit.
It's pretty much never optimum to bench a unit at first and start using them later. Who are you planning to bench for Camilla when you decide to start fielding her? Whoever it is, you'd be better off benching that unit immediately and giving her their share of kills in chapter 10-12 (or whatever), since whoever it is she'll be better than them during that part of the game, and will consume the same resources.
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I have no idea how you can give Meg a 0 in a game where IMO there are several significantly worse units (to stick with the DB, ranking Meg <= Fiona strikes me as crazy talk as someone who has used both, multiple times in Meg's case), but I'll see the arguments soon enough I suppose.
Most starting mages are 2HKOed by physical attacks.Not really? GBA mages weren't really notably less durable than other units the way Tellius ones are (to be clear, they're below average, just not by as much); most aren't 2HKOed except by strong attackers. Offhand I find Lugh, Erk, Lucius, Canas, Pent, Artur, Saleh, Calill9, Tharja, and Leo more effective out of the gate (note: this list is not necessarily exclusive, I think several others are comparable and/or I can't be bothered to look up their/enemy stats to confirm my memories), never mind long-term potential.
I'm not sure what you mean by rigging crits; she can't use Wrath. Is this some hype involving battle saves? Because while this may be relevant to some challenge runs (LTC or whatever) I wouldn't give it any serious consideration for a general rating. Your standards may be different!
I agree that she's not utter crap when she joins, though I don't think she's that impressive either.
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I can't speak for Benny, but Ignatius's paralogue gets stupid if you wait too long. As in "Ignatius has a chance to die before you can save him" levels of stupid. Needless to say, that's no bueno.
This is true but we have no reason to wait that long to get Ignatius. Even on no-grind you should be able to get Benny's S support done by chapter 21-22 or so at which point getting Ignatius is still very doable, especially if he has Wary Fighter.
I found Ignatius decent enough when I bothered to get him but I'm not sure about kid tiering in general.
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So how does it have a huge impact to someone like Arthur? I get that Axe users tend to miss....but by that Logic, Camilla has to be as worse as Arthur and yet she isn't.
Camilla has +19 hit on base Arthur due to axe rank, skill, and luck. Granted, Arthur won't be at base by the time Camilla joins, but he may not have improved much since he only gains about +1 hit / level. And if he's gained Gamble (which IMO is a trash skill you should remove ASAP), the gap could easily be 25+.
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Ilyana: I hate her gameplaywise in this game, probably more than she deserves. But... she leaves the party which gives her all the same problems as, say, the LEA, and at base isn't nearly as good as them (she's 2HKOed by almost everything, "one of the better mages in the series" this is not). I use her in 1-3 and 1-4 but after that I generally try to ease off her as much as possible as she rapidly becomes mediocre anyway. And of course the less that his said about her performance in Part 3, the better. I dunno. I don't think Tormod deserves a very good score and Ilyana is rather clearly worse to me. Maybe if 1-4 were actually challenging I'd respect her more? 2/10
Aran: He's not incredible or anything, but he's solid. Good atk/def. I often find him a bit problematic by 3-12 as he faces doubling and crit from most enemies, and like many DB units he's not great in part 4. But... he plays a solid role in the meantime, being able to take more hits than any other unpromoted unit except perhaps Nolan. 6/10.
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This election is notably less contested than 2000 was (though social media kicking around every tiny thing that partisans on either side can latch onto may make it seem otherwise), and we survived that. Although you can argue it set the stage for partisanship to reach a new high? Trump (and you can argue Clinton too, sure, for all that I don't personally agree) being a uniquely awful choice for president was going to make problems of this sort regardless, I think.
Calls for the electoral college to vote faithlessly are ludicrous and are largely being treated as such, as far as I've seen. It's not gonna happen since it would be ruinous for American democracy.
If Trump screws up as much as people say he will, he can be impeached.Which just means his hand-picked successor becomes president instead.
Mind, I'm for this in general, otherwise congress could impeach the president for purely political reasons. But... yeah, you'll forgive Trump's detractors for not being especially cheered up by this option.
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Give the Light Brand to someone who has no range-2 option otherwise, which after promotion means a Swordmaster or perhaps Lyn (though she at least has bows).
Your team looks very good aside from a lack of fliers, which may make the next side chapter a bit unpleasant should you do it.
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I also like Mediarama for anyone who can learn it (unless/until they learn Mediarahan), since it's stronger than all but the rarest items.
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Battle saves are good and should return in some form. I don't really mind exactly what that form is. I like a lot of the suggestions in this thread. The DS games already had a pretty good way, but I wouldn't mind if they were tied to map progression or you just had 1-3 per map, etc.
Personally I don't find the abuse potential that bothersome; it's a single-player game, and from my perspective a reset is a reset, so needing to save-scum until you dodge is pretty much admitting you did the map badly. The RNG abuse for stats is a bit more egregious (though absolutely exists with or without battle saves, especially with bonus exp) but I've long felt that all the games should do what Fates Lunatic does and roll levels out in advance.
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Damn, missed some of these.
Edward: 3.5/10. He's the exact type of unit the DB doesn't need: a fragile melee unit. Pretty good offence but not really great or anything, 7 base str + swords isn't hot.
Leonardo: 3/10. Yeah Lughnasadh is decent in part 3 I guess, but otherwise he's weak/slow/frail.
Nolan: 8.5/10. Nolan can actually take some damn hits which is invaluable in the DB path. He's also got good str, adequate speed, and the invaluable earth affinity, which can enable Zihark/Volug to actually dodge things. Long-term he's great unlike most DB units; his speed/evade/power combo makes him a great pick even for endgame.
Sothe: 8/10. Unike Nolan he eventually falls off hard, but he's god through most of Part 1 and Part 3. Prepromo in the game's third map is automatically a high score; 1-2 range, Beast Killers help.
Laura: 5/10. She's okay, but far from invaluable. Vulneraries are really good in this game, so she's really just a ghetto dancer. There are worse things but sometimes it's nice not to have to protect that durability which makes Micaiah's look good (and unlike Micaiah, she's not forced so I feel no incentive to give her a Seraph Robe). Also as I mentioned in an earlier post, she's awful at gaining exp so I don't think much of her longterm potential.
Question regarding Spirit, Body and Almighty skills
in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore
Posted
I can't speak to Lunatic or whatever the NG+ difficulty is called, but playing on Hard, I never saw a savage encounter or mini-boss recover from Pastel Power enough to threaten my team. It only statuses, but it leaves them utter sitting ducks for your sessions to take out (which conveniently boost your SP gauge back up to pay for it, something an instant KO doesn't).