Reikken

FE9- Ike and Soren duo where they both promote at lv 1 and start like that from ch 1. I also banned the use of stat ups and bonus exp.

Bors is bor ing. And he sucks. He's a knight, and he has all the phailures associated with them, but without the benefits. He has low move, and he's slow so he gets doubled, etc., but he's not tanky and doesn't have high atk. In the first chapter, he's getting doubled by half the enemies, and he dies in 3 hits. And he's melee, so he eats a counterattack when he attacks. And he has about 56 hit on them, so he misses half the time. So trying to do anything with him is usually counterproductive. Chapter 2 is a bit better since it has soldiers in addition to fighters. His low move hurts him more, though, since after the first group of enemies, you have to hurry to the other side of the map, where Deak's group is already fighting and pushing back the enemy line, so he doesn't see much, if any action, after the first enemy group. In chapter 3, he finally doesn't fail completely. There are only two fighters, and he's pretty decent against all the soldiers, though his hit is still only about 75 on them. And he's still hindered by his low move. After the first couple of turns, enemy density is pretty low until you get closer to the throne and run into those cavalier reinforcements, so he falls behind then. Either that or you send him to go help recruit Lugh or get that Mend staff, in which case he sees even less combat. Ch 4, however, is almost as bad as ch 1. There aren't any loldiers for him to fight, and he gets doubled by everything, and his sucky hit is sucky, since these enemies have existant spd and therefore have existant avoid. He has about 59 hit on them. 69 on the few ones with swords. And the fact that he fails so massively in the previous chapters (not reaching enemies, missing, or just not attacking due to doing so being a bad idea (ch1 mostly), etc.) means he didn't get much exp, so his level is pretty low. Then ch 5 is mostly axes again, and their spd went up more since ch 1 than his did (They have 8-10 spd), so he's fail incarnate. Either they use steel axes, rendering his def worthless, taking off well over half his hp anyway, or they double him, which is worse, since he can potentially get one-rounded. They can have up to 22 atk (23 after WTA) along with their ~9 AS. That one-rounds 12 def and 22 hp, which is pretty averageish for Bors at this point. And since their spd went up, their avoid went up as well. He gets like 52 hit on the ones that don't have steel equipped. And some of them are on forests. Enjoy your AIDS. Ch 6 has a lack of axes and instead features lots of lances, with more loldiers than anything else. Yaye, Bors can actually gain exp. There are quite a few mages, too, though. Magic hurts on his 0 res, lopping off about half his hp with each hit. They're not fast, fortunately for him, so he doesn't get one-rounded. But that can get him killed, even with only one mage, since loldiers (and knights) have good str if nothing else, and some have steel lances. Ch 7 fortunately has no axes, but it has few soldiers, which sucks for Bors since his offense is mad fail on anything else. And those wyverns are dangerous for everyone, but especially for Bors since he gets doubled and potentially one-rounded. Then you have a lot of ground to cover to get to the throne, so his low move limits his combat exposure. In addition to the limits imposed by his durability issues. Then ch 8 is like hell for low move units. It has a super long stretch of low enemy density, so everyone that's not mounted is using all their move almost every turn for quite a while, until you get to that knot of enemies shortly past Barth/OJ/Wendy's joining spot. To give you an idea of just how long that is, it takes Bors 12 turns to get there if he uses his full move every turn. After that little group, you have quite a bit of ground to cover yet again. From there to the throne is almost just as far. Enemy density is near zero for several turns after this. And here is where Lilina joins. In the downtime starting the second half of ch 8, before the flood of enemy reinforcements. Bors is about level... Let's see... he gets crap all from ch 1, maybe half a lv from ch 2, a level from ch 3, like half a level from ch 4, crap all from ch 5, two levels from ch 6, a level from ch 7, and little to nothing from the first half of ch 8. That comes out to about 5 levels, which puts him at lv 6, so I'll give him lv 7. Omg Lilina's stats are even lower than Bors's! But there are several very important differences. First of all, I'll talk about supports. Bors has absolutely no supporters, fail or otherwise, until chapter 8, so I haven't even made mention of supports until now. Bors's supports are pretty terrible. He has Lilina, Barth, and Wendy, who are all low/bottom tier trash. Then there's Astol and OJ, who are mid tierish. Astol is just a theif, and usually a secondary one at that, so he's only getting fielded on chapters with things to steal and such, and sometimes not even then since Chad may be able to handle it by himself. And when he is fielded, he's off doing thiefy things most of the time, and making use of his 6 move vs Bors's 4. So this support is pretty worthless as well. So OJ is all that's left. He's not low tier, but the gap between high/top tier and mid tier is pretty huge in this game, so he's still pretty meh. He may or not get used. So Bors has one iffy support. Lilina, on the other hand, has a huge 10-unit support list. She basically has Bors's support list plus 5 other units. Bors, Barth, Wendy, and Astol can be safely thrown out for reasons already stated, and OJ is iffy. For the other half of her list... She has an instant C with Roy, and Gonzales is quite pwn and finds his best support in Lilina. Those are her two best supports. Then there's also a support with Marcus, who is pretty lol after earlygame, and Garret and Cecilia, who are useable but aren't good at all. They're a fair bit worse than OJ. Moving on, the next important difference is that fire has 25 more hit than an iron lance. That's pretty huge. Bors has crappy hit (about 85 before enemy avoid), whereas Lilina's is pretty good (112). The next difference is that Lilina's attacks have 1-2 range. No eating counterattacks for this little girl, much unlike Bors. This helps tremendously on keeping her alive. It also lets her be removed from the enemy a bit, which does two things: She can attack while still being behind others, further helping with staying alive, and she doesn't get in the way of someone like Deak or Lance attacking the enemy. Bors attacking often actually hurts you offensively since you have him attacking with his crappy hit and meh power and zero AS instead of someone with much better offense, whereas Lilina's damage is pretty much always in addition to someone else's, so she's actually helping. Next, Lilina's attacks hit res, which is generally much lower than def. Bors currently has 5 more atk, but they do silimar damage because of this point. Lilina also has a 75% mag growth and is lv 1, so her damage is going up very quickly. Bors has a pretty low 30% str growth, and he's currently gaining 18 less exp per kill due to being 6 levels higher. And the last difference is the coming chapters. After ch 8, enemy composition becomes heavily axe-based, which spells very bad news for Bors. It's like ch 5 all over again, but for 5 full chapters, and somewhat in 8x, too. Have fun missing half the time. Have fun getting counterattacked for half your hp and then being stuck there, in enemy range, and making it harder for someone else to follow up. Aside from using Wendy, using Bors is the worst thing you can be doing in these chapters. Oh, one more thing: Bors's move sucks. And not only does Lilina have more move, but her effective attack range is larger due to ranged weaponry. Bors can reach 5 tiles from where he stands, aside from pulling out a loljavelin, which has 15 less hit than his already fail hit. Lilina's range is 7. With all that missing (missing gives 1 exp), falling behind, and just fail in general that Bors is doing in addition to him being on a higher level, he's gaining much less exp, so Lilina catches up in level pretty quickly. If Bors miraculously manages to gain a level in every one of those chapters, he's about lv 14 by the end of it. Well, let's take a look at their performance midway through it. Ch 11's fighters average about 28 atk with their steel axes. A lv 11 Bors averages 14.5 def and 29 hp. And 7 spd. So he's right on the border of getting killed in two hits. They average about 11 spd, ranging from 10 to 12, so he also may or may not get doubled by the ones that don't use steel axes. Anyway, his defense is terrible. And as bad as that is, his offense is worse. Bors with an iron lance has 17 atk and about 88 hit. The fighters have 5-6 def, 2-3 res, and like 39 hp, and 15-28 avo (I'll take 20). So he does 10-11 damage with about 58 hit. Oh, and his move sucks. Lilina at lv 9 gets OHK'd by all of them, but she also doesn't get counterattacked and is much easier to keep from getting attacked, as stated, so if anything, she's easier to keep alive than Bors is. For offense, Lilina with fire also averages 17 atk but has about 117 hit (and hits res). So she does 13-14 damage at ~97 hit. Lilina is clearly much better on offense. Then Bors gets relief after that hellish series of axe chapters... for one chapter. After ch 13, it's the desert. He has 1 move there. And the most common enemies are axers. Lilina, on the other had has 5 move. Then 14x-16 have a pretty nice mix of units. Axes, lances, swords, bows, and mages are all there. And then they promote. Now Bors's def is actually high enough for him to be pretty tanky, as long as magic (or armorslaying weapons) isn't involved. And Lilina has enough hp/def to take a hit from even the strongest attacks. Even two hits from weaker things (things that tink Bors) since she's getting +3 def from her Gonzales support, giving her a total of about 8 def at 20/1. Or several hits vs magic, since her res is pretty high (~19) (and Bors takes loads of damage from them since he has about 5 res). Anyway, now Bors's raw defense is pretty nice, after that +4 def promotion gain and a few levels. But the real issue is what is he doing with this def? He can't very well get into position to be counterattacking much since his move is bad, and there are much better tanks that have 60% more move. And you don't really want him counterattacking things over someone else anyway because his offense is still pretty bad. 20/2-3 Bors with a killer lance has about 26 atk, 106 hit, 14 AS, 36 crit. Just to get an idea of how low that is, compare that to someone who doesn't fail at life (note this is a mid tier unit, not a high/top tier one): Geese with a killer axe on the same level = 31 atk, 114 hit, 14-15 AS, 79 crit. Or kick it up to someone actually good: Alan at this point with a killer lance = 34 atk, 128 hit, 18 AS, 54 crit. So as you can see, Bors's offense is still terrible. Anyway... 20/2-3 Bors with a killer lance has about 26 atk, 106 hit, 14 AS, 36 crit. 20/2-3 Lilina (supported) with aircalibur has about 33 atk, 128 hit, 14 AS, 26 crit, hits res, 51 atk on fliers. So Lilina wins offense by even more than she did before. She does like 13 more damage per hit (assumed a 6 def/res gap), or 30+ more on fliers, and she has 22 more hit. 10 less crit, though she can trade 2 atk and 5 hit for 5 crit if you really want crit. So she does almost twice as much damage per hit (far more on fliers) and misses much less, so she has over twice as much offense. That's a pretty massive difference. Then Lilina's offense grows much faster than Bors's. 45 higher atk growth. And she also gains exp faster because... Then Lilina now also has staves, which seals the deal, if it wasn't already clear before. Massive mag makes her good even with the base Heal, and she gets another exp pool to draw from. Then it continues about like that for the rest of the game, with the only real difference being that Lilina's damage lead increases. On ranks, Bors's terrible offense is horrible for the combat rank. Low move and fail in general is bad for tactics, and Lilina is better for exp due to starting out underleveled and getting staves after promotion.

and I'm opening

omg, it's you Hello

I see Sniper is using a sniper... Orange Juice and Klein both have pretty meh supports. Klein has three good units he supports, but two of them already have better and earlier supports. And Percival has a ton of move and w1n stats, while Klein can't even counter melee. In other words, Percival ventures around all over the place while Klein is a backliner. So that won't work out too well. Supports don't help Klein much anyway. His affinity is defensive and most of his supporters' affinites are defensive, and you don't want him to get attacked anyway because he's an archer. Without much in the way of supports, combat stats are pretty straightforward: 20/5 Klein, killer bow 25.8 atk, 14.4 AS, 121.0 hit, 38.3 crit - - 43.2 avo, 34.6 hp, 9.8 def, 8.2 res, 14.4 critavo 20/1 OJ, killing edge 24.8 atk, 18.6 AS, 119.7 hit, 37.8 crit - - 52.6 avo, 42.4 hp, 11.4 def, 4.5 res, 15.4 critavo 4 AS is a lot... And the AS difference is in an important place, too. Enemies in 16x, for example, have 10-15 spd. Except the armors, which have like 4. So OJ has much better offense. And he has better defense with his 8 hp, 1-2 def, and partial weapon triangle control, and he can make much better use of that defense due to being much better able to counterattack. After this point, OJ has a lower level and sees more combat (enemy phase) for more exp gain, and he has better growths, and he raises his axe level, so things are only getting worse for Klein. Before this point, OJ's hp and spd are still higher, but he has less def and loses atk by more, and Klein still can almost never counterattack, while OJ can. There are also exp and funds ranks to consider. OJ helps the exp rank a fair amount, while Klein instead hurts it. Klein needs no promotion item, which is nice for funds, but he also uses the most expensive weapon type. OJ's weapons are cheaper, especially when he's using axes. Better at combat, much better on the exp rank, and slightly more expensive > Klein.

Rate your team? I give it a C. Take off Ike and Titania, and you get an A.

Note that Mekkah's question was specifically about HHM... And HHM is indeed the only mode I play.

When everyone can support anyone else, I don't see why anyone would be unsupported. That's depriving you of support bonuses at no gain. Especially an earth support.

Supporting her with Oscar means whoever Oscar was supporting has to lose a support and find someone else to support, and Oscar has to drop to C and then build back up to A again. , , ,

ya sure low? mid? high? what? not even characters at all, but rather something else?

Earth affinity ftw. She lacks in spd, though. Adding her also makes it easier to get off the triangle attack, which can actually be useful since things are pretty hard to one-round normally, and all of the pegs have canto.

I think Cecilia, Cath, and Fa are far too good, so not them. I'll take Lilina.

Who all do you consider low tier? also, edit'd my post to specify hard mode. Is this hard mode?

Someone suggested to move it here, so I did. It would probably have been better to leave the discussion there, but meh.

I'm always up for FE6 and 10 (hard mode).

maybe Yeah, like ch 16 and two parts of ch 17, or something like that. No, he has less def. 0 base ftl. He does have more hp, though. And he doesn't have more avoid, either. His luck is higher, and Mist's spd is slightly higher. You can't just buy anything. You can only buy basic weapons. No killing edges, no brave lances, no hammers, no laguzslayers, etc. And forges are limited by the one per chapter restriction rather than by money. That never happens outside of RNG blessing/screwing. He starts with less, and his goes up much more slowly. 80 hit only when she's going against the weapon triangle like that. She has more on literally every other enemy type. 80 displayed hit is also 92.2% real hit. And to Rhys one-rounding that... His average AS is about 16.5. So he might but probably not. He can one-round slower things pretty easily, though. Like generals. And 1-2 range doesn't help player phase offense. Unless you mean attacking range. Which he still loses. And Mist one-rounds magic doods. She gets bishops easily and is borderline on sages. That is, until you can buy silver swords. Then she moves up to one-rounding snipers, too, though borderline on those if you're doing random mode. Then forged weapons help both of them, especially a forged silver sword, which lets Mist one-round most things. This is also where durability and mobility come into play the most. There's the issue of Rhys being in range to attack things and having enough durability to do so. Especially since most good units have like 500 move. Rhys has like 8 less avo and 5 less def. He dies in 2-3 hits. He also has a chance of dying instantly to crit-boosted classes (snipers and swordmasters) or killer weapons, or ballistae (since they're operated by snipers) while Mist has enough def to avoid that. No, the knight ring is awesome on loads of doods. Like Ike, Boyd, Reyson, Mordecai. Even Volke to let him get chests faster. Archer band, sure, since there are like 3 of them. But the same goes for Mist, too. A str/spd/def band helps. wyverns: 18,19,23,24,26,29, and extremely common in 20. Eh, they're not all that rare. Plus a couple random crits (she does get +10 crit from Ike sometimes) should make for 25. Anyway, even if you make it like 23, that's not much different.. Considering that an average number of kills per chapter is about 5-6, after mages, forged weapons, unpromoted doods, and just helping someone else kill in one turn, you shouldn't need to kill much more than about two enemies per chapter. More some chapters, less others. Which makes for about 7 chapters. Either way, you get silver swords before it runs out. Ah. Well, he isn't. He's better for about 4 of them. Ch 9 and the ~3 promoted/not promoted chapters

Yes, Rhys exists for early chapters. But while it is six chapters, do note that most of these are among the game's shortest chapters. Chs 2 and 4 combined are shorter than most of the rest of the game's chapters. 5 is also quite short. 6 isn't so short as to be only as long as half a chapter, but it's still on the short side. Only 7 is pretty average-sized, and 8 isn't much shorter. 100 exp isn't a big deal, but it's a much bigger deal than 3k saved. You already have enough money to forge a weapon with maxed mt and boosted hit every chapter. What are you going to do? add 9 crit to a weapon? Forge something super expensive like adding mt to a light tome? That's really about all it's doing for you. So no, Rhys isn't any better. Healing someone with high hp like Boyd to full after he gets reduced to like 4 hp? Ok, that's valid, though minor due to how rare it is. It has to be someone who has that much hp, and then he has to take that much damage without any healing in between, and then he also needs to have to have it all healed back quickly. Someone quickly losing over 30 hp and then needing over 30 hp of healing done very quickly after that? Yeah, that's pretty rare. The differences between them after Mist gets Mend and before Rhys promotes are pretty negligible. "Mist's earliest support with Titania doesn't appear until chapter 12. Mordecai's support doeasn't appear until 13. So Rhys is cheaper for three chapters and thats the only outstanding factor between the two for chapters 10 and 11. And if Rhys is at least level 16 by then(or if he starts with some base defense), then you'll probably have to wait for her Mordy support for it to matter." What does Rhys's level have to do with Mist's supports? "Without something forged or magic imbued, I don't think Mist is two rounding things." Perhaps you're forgetting that she gets like +4 atk from her supports? +2 to +5, depending on which supports. A Mordecai B Titania = +4 atk. lv ~20/7-8 Mist, steel sword, supports = 24 atk, 20 AS vs lv 6 halberdier (37-38 hp, 13-14 AS, 12-13 def). That's 10-11 damage per hit, 20-22 per round, even with her going against the weapon triangle. Obviously she fares much better against warriors, snipers, sages, and the various unpromoted units. Even swordmasters. She won't double them, but she can take a heavy weapon, like a steel blade, and get enough atk to kill in two hits. Then you get silver swords starting with ch 23. "Then the Magic weapons give her 40 uses - Probably about 19 kills, or two chapters worth of offense." more like 25 kills. There's nothing that isn't getting killed in two hits, and wyverns usually get OHK'd by the sonic sword. 20 mt on them and all. Anyway, saying "two chapters" is rather misleading. It's only getting used when needed, and Mist is support offense to begin with, so it lasts much longer than two chapters. And 10 kills is more than a chapter's dose already. There are what? 40-50 enemies per chapter? If you have 7 attackers +Mist, that's like 5-6 kills each. "With everything I've outlined, I'm sure you could find at least 12 chapters." I don't know what you're saying here...

Oh yeah, give her some bexp. Healers make pretty nice use of it. More levels doesn't make them gain exp any slower, and Mist gains a lot on promotion. And she's currently a really low level.. and... wtf? Why is your Rhys 10 levels higher?

Hm... It probably would be better to keep it here. But whatever.

No, they can't one-round much, but they can certainly 2-round things. That's not all that crappy. It's not like everyone else is always one-rounding everything. Adding some crap offense to someone who can't quite make the kill in one round gets the thing killed. And, given a forged weapon, they can one-round more things. The cost of staves isn't much of an issue. You're not exactly hurting for money. You pretty much have more than you need. And besides, Mend gives more exp. If Rhys decides to try to be cheaper by using Heal instead of Mend, his level lead diminishes. Yes, Rhys is better for chapter 9. But not after that. I would say that Mist is better if anything, due to giving support bonuses. Until Rhys promotes and before Mist does. He's better there again. This is also when you start getting physics and whatnot, stuff that gives tons of exp, so Mist promotes not long after Rhys does. And then Mist is better for the rest of the game. And no, arms scrolls aren't needed for her to use magic swords. She only needs 90 weapon exp to get a high enough weapon level. That's 45 swings of a steel sword, or about 25 rounds of usually double attacking. She can't use the sword right away without the use of arms scrolls, but it doesn't take an incredibly long time either. Not that arms scrolls are particularly valuable anyway. I can't think of much use for them. Weapon levels aren't hard to come by, and there aren't many high level weapons until you can buy silvers, which isn't until ch 23.

I do. Mist is better, not because of the second part of chapter 27 (I don't give that any weight at all; it's luck-based either way, so you're best off skipping it.), but because of supports, and mobility and durability after promotion. And magic swords.

Boots? The item? Those go to Reyson, obviously.

Ike talks to Astrid, Astrid talks to Gatrie. Also, Titania and Jill are pwn. Arguably the game's two best. But it doesn't matter that you're not using them. This game is easy enough as it is, even on hard mode. There's no need to make it even easier by using the game's best units.

Fix'd. Matthew easily beats the other two. Fix'd 67% of the way.