Reikken

I don't know what you're trying to argue now, Sandman. If you're trying to say that Leo is useable and not made of fail, I never disagreed with that. Is he useful? Sure. Would he be even more useful if he had better stats? Yes. As for there not being any most important stat... wha? All stats are not created equal. You don't need to be able to assign stat points for some stats to be more worthwhile than others. (And you actually can to some extent: statups.) Ask yourself this: Would Leo be better off if his huge skl growth swapped places with his lower str or spd growths? Answer: Yes, very much so. Gaining more avoid and attacking twice is much better than a few points of hit and an extremely small amount of crit (double attacking actually even boosts hit and crit as well due to giving you two chances to hit and crit). And gaining 5 atk is much better than gaining 10 hit and 2-3 crit for many reasons, not the least of which being that it takes only +50% cost to add that much hit and crit to a forged weapon, while it takes +250% cost to add that much power, or that supports give +5 hit per full level and only +1 atk. Once he hits 3rd tier, then skl's usefulness goes up a bit due to having a skl-based mastery skill (but still not enough to be on par with str since Deadeye is skl/2 rather than full skl), but before that, str and spd >>>> skl.

Brom does indeed get fast enough to double attack lots of things. His spd is still terrible before promotion, but after it, assuming Knight Ward use for most of his levels, his spd starts to get pretty good. 55% spd growth is rather nice. A 20/5 Brom with Knight Ward from lv 10 on has 17.2 spd, 18 on fixed mode. A 20/5 Boyd averages 16.9 spd. Granted, Boyd's level is a bit higher than Brom's, but still, that's not bad spd at all.

not enough Hero Crests for lv11 Gonzales to promote as soon as he hits 20 unlesa you're not using Deak or something like that

What? His bases are good. What are you talking about? 5 more str than Edward (10 more atk), 4 more def, 10 more hp What is, then, huh? What other stat has such a huge effect on both offense and defense? None. It is indeed the most important. A few points can give someone twice as much offense or half as much defense (getting doubled), and it has the most effect on avoid. I didn't say a single thing about how good he is later. I said his stat growths are not good, and he starts off bad. Yes, he has an awesome personal bow. And he also has a nice affinity. First of all, you're wrong. Shinon kills things with two normal hits plenty often enough with those pwnsome bows you can get and his good base str. Second of all, crits do happen, and with two shots at getting a crit each round, it happens quite a bit.

It's not about it not being possible. No one is that good or bad. Even the difference between someone with 30 in every stat including move vs someone with 5 in every stat except 15 in hp and 10% growths across the board isn't enough for that. It's about it being easier or harder.

Spd is by far the game's most important stat. Being fail in that is a huge blow. Str is the next most important for physical attackers, and Leo's growth and base are below average. Yes, Shinon's str growth is the same. So what? This is about Leo, not Shinon. That doesn't change the fact that Leo's str growth is below average. But if you want to talk about Shinon, first, their bases differ tremendously. Shinon's bases and his speed and def are what make him good, not his str growth. Leo is subpar in all three of those areas. His growth is nice, but his base is pretty bad.

Nolan is much better. He joins as the best on the team in a hard part of the game. In other words, he's extremely helpful. He also has w1n spd and beastly avoid, making his offense and defense very good. Boyd, on the other hand, joins with most of the other units better than him, and his spd is lacking throughout, so he rarely double-attacks, making for meh offense, and his defense isn't too good either: He has a nice def growth, but a rather poor base, and he has low avoid.

Well, that would depend on your standards for sucking. When you're losing to other units by as much as Leo is losing to Nolan, and enemies are stronger than you, I would consider that to be sucking. This is again beside the point since growths don't have much effect until later, but I want to comment on it anyway... We've been over this already. His growths are not good. His growth total is high, yes, but the allocation is horrible. He has below-average growths in the most important stats, like str and spd, and overkill growths in the least important ones.

FE10 Mist would be superawesome if Florete's mt = her mag. FE9 Mist already wtfpwns everything with the Sonic Sword. It could help her save uses by 1HKing things, though.

That would work if the mag stat existed for sword-users in FE7.

I strongly disagree. I would say that res is the least important. Point-for-point, hp is also fail. Luck helps with hit, and more importantly, avoid and crit avoid. Many enemies have boosted crit, like snipers, thunder mages, or half of everything in part 4. Low-luck units can randomly and unexpectedly die due to eating crits. That really sucks. I've even seen Haar die this way, in 2-E, and to physical attackers. No thunder mages were even involved. On a physical fighter... spd >> str >> def >> luck > skl >>> hp > res >>>> mag

Blasphemy!

The Knight Ward gives +30 spd growth when equipped. Brom can cap spd. He also has an additional +0.90 spd on fixed mode (http://serenesforest.net/fe9/base_exp.htm), making the AS difference a solid 3. Occasionally 4.

I like his personality. Except the anti-laguz bit. And he's cute.

I dunno. I notice spd variations the most, since it's the most important and all, but I can't say if that's the one that is most affected.

Chapters are generally longer in this game than in other FEs, so even the slow supports, like almost all of Geese's and Gonzales's, don't take all that long. Getting to A takes forever, but getting to B isn't too bad. He can reach B with Echidna/Lalum not too long after promotion (assuming promoting at end of ch 16). And assuming you're going fast enough to get the best tactics rank.

What sucks is that she starts out terrible, actually manages to be hard to level up since not only does she get one-rounded by everything, but also her hit sucks, and even once you do get her leveled up, she's still pretty crappy.

Thany > Zeiss. Even if nothing else, Thany is useful for rescuing and visiting villages/shops. And using pegs lets you use the nomads without going to Sacae if that's something you want to avoid, as many do.

I have them completely off almost always. I might spend like total 5 turns per play of map only, and maybe 10 rounds of animations on just to see what they look like.

Both are wrong. It's actually レイ. With no English localization, spell it however you want to... All of them suck, but Rey sucks the least, and by a fairly large margin.

because the topic is who does or doesn't start out sucking 1-E has nothing to do with how these units start out. It has what, 10 uses left? If even that. Weapons break. You'll need another axe. A forged iron axe is cheaper as well as lighter and more accurate than a steel axe. And you can sell that steel axe, too. the same reason you're spending 100 per use on a longbow. So your units can perform better. And it's really not that expensive. A forged iron axe that's as powerful as a steel axe costs about 15 per use. That's as much as a plain unforged iron bow. Even one with maxed mt still costs only 28 per use, less than a steel bow. There's really no reason at all to not use forged axes. They're cheap no matter what. Thunder magic is more expensive, but it's still much cheaper than longbows. One with +10 hit (more hit than an iron bow or a longbow at 3 range with a height advantage) costs 31 per use. One with +10 hit and as much mt as Elthunder costs about 40 per use. (Elthunder is 42 per use. It sucks.) I don't remember about normal mode, but on hard mode, Micaiah gets doubled and OHK'd by nearly everything, while Ilyana doesn't. That's a very substantial durability difference. Ilyana also hits 20 earlier and is free to promote in part 1, while Micaiah has to wait.

You are mistaken. Unless you're talking about later chapters, like 1-4 and on, in which case you're talking about something else entirely. By then, you can forge iron axes, so he has no more reason to use any unforged steel or iron. I can count one chapter (1-5) where you can do that. The other chapters either don't have ledges or don't have enemies below the ledges. Or don't have enemies below them that you need 3 range to reach. And this is also beside the point. Stop using Elthunder. It sucks. You can forge a thunder tome that's just as strong but with much more hit for the same cost or not much more. This isn't about later on. This is about who starts off not sucking. I know Ilyana is terrible and Leo is better. She just doesn't start terrible. She starts faster than Leo, doing much more damage, and has more versatility (can counter melee and avoid counters from archers). and to your Micaiah bit.. Micaiah has about 8 spd by the time you get Ilyana, who has 13. post that started this discussion: Everyone starts sucking except Nolan, Jill, and Ilyana. Mostly Nolan.

Only bother leveling the higher leveled unpromoted DB units (Nolan, Jill, Ilyana), and they almost reach tier 3 by part 4. This is with not recruiting Jill in 3-7, and on hard mode.

No, I was talking about player units. Enemy units don't have lower res at all. They have higher if anything.

Res is lower in general, but you exaggerate.. Warriors, berserkers, generals, snipers, nomads, and falcoknights have less res than they do in FE7. The rest have about the same (sages, heroes, bishops, paladins, swordmasters, druids, thieves).