Rate the Unit: Intermission

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Below the ratings for the base game units:

Spoiler

Unit Ratings:

Alear    7.6
Vander    5.2
Clanne    5
Framme    6.25
Alfred    3.75
Etie    4.25
Boucheron    3.67
Céline    6.4
Chloé    9
Louis    7.4
Yunaka    5.75
Alcryst    5.5
Citrinne    5.5
Lapis    5.8
Diamant    5.67
Amber    5.75
Jade    3.7
Ivy    9
Kagetsu    8.58
Zelkov    5.38
Fogado    7.1
Pandreo    8.21
Bunet    2
Timerra    5
Panette    9
Merrin    8.19
Hortensia    7.5
Seadall    9.57
Rosado    4.92
Goldmary    6.29
Lindon    5
Saphir    5
Mauvier    5.1
Veyle    6.4
Jean    2.75
Anna    4.5

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Anyway, I made this topic to ask what ya´ll wanna do with the DLC units, considering the near non existent response to Nel and the rule amendment suggested by Snowfire:

On 10/13/2023 at 8:29 AM, SnowFire said:

As a slight nitpick, if rating DLC units, I think it's fair to also allow DLC rings (well, bracelets technically), Rule 3 in the guidelines.  If you have access to Nel, you definitely have access to Edelgard / Dimitri / Claude at minimum and for free basically, and possibly more.  (Although the DLC maps generally being harder than the regular game makes it weird, granted, since if you could already beat the DLC Emblem join map, you're clearly capable of taking on the rest of the game...)

as well as the variability in their recruitment mentioned by samthedigital:

On 10/13/2023 at 5:24 PM, samthedigital said:

It makes the most sense, but I'd also have to wonder when we can assume that the DLC characters get recruited. They're pretty broken if we play through the Xenologue on Normal just to have them for the main game on Maddening if the rest of the DLC doesn't break the game already.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[samthedigital]

I would propose having one single topic to discuss/rate the DLC characters and separating their ratings from the other units. I'm not sure if anyone else would be interested in this, but it's what makes the most sense to me at the moment. The only real problem I have in rating the units is that I haven't used the characters more than once, and I'm not sure that triangle attack has the DLC units available which is how I was looking at benchmarks beforehand. This might be off-topic, but it would also be neat to have a topic afterwards to discuss the units that some of us missed or the unit rankings in general; I didn't comment on many of the earlier units, and I've changed my mind on a character or two in the meantime. I'm not sure that there's enough to warrant individual character revision threads.

Edited October 17, 2023 by samthedigital

[lenticular]

I wanted to see if I could draw any conclusions from the numbers that we ended up with, so I reordered the list to sort it by score rather than recruitment order:

Spoiler

1. Seadall        9.57
2. Chloé        9
3. Ivy            9
4. Panette        9
5. Kagetsu        8.58
6. Pandreo        8.21
7. Merrin        8.19
8. Alear        7.6
9. Hortensia    7.5
10. Louis        7.4
11. Fogado        7.1
12. Céline        6.4
13. Veyle        6.4
14. Goldmary    6.29
15. Framme        6.25
16. Lapis        5.8
17. Amber        5.75
18. Yunaka        5.75
19. Diamant        5.67
20. Alcryst        5.5
21. Citrinne    5.5
22. Zelkov        5.38
23. Vander        5.2
24. Mauvier        5.1
25. Clanne        5
26. Lindon        5
27. Saphir        5
28. Timerra        5
29. Rosado        4.92
30. Anna        4.5        
31. Etie        4.25
32. Alfred        3.75
33. Jade        3.7
34. Boucheron    3.67
35. Jean        2.75
36. Bunet        2

The one thing that really stands out to me here is how much undifferentiated middle there is here. From Céline in 12th down to Rosado in 29th is fully half of all units, but they're only separated by 1.48. I don't know if that's just an artifact of having multiple people giving scores and that driving scores towards the middle or if Engage really does have that many units of very similar quality. Probably a bit of both. Either way, I think it's at least vaguely interesting.

I don't have any opinion about how the DLC units are handled, except to say that I won't be participating since I never picked up the DLC. So I'll just say thank you to Imuabicus for running the thread and to everyone else who participated. I had fun with it, and reading everyone else's opinions helped change my feelings in a few cases and clarify them in others.

[Bartozio]

It has been quite the ride, huh.

For starters, major thanks to @Imuabicus der Fertige for running this, it has been a ton of fun.

I personally don't have the DLC, so I won't be voting for any dlc characters regardless of the form this takes.

On 10/17/2023 at 6:31 PM, samthedigital said:

This might be off-topic, but it would also be neat to have a topic afterwards to discuss the units that some of us missed or the unit rankings in general; I didn't comment on many of the earlier units, and I've changed my mind on a character or two in the meantime. I'm not sure that there's enough to warrant individual character revision threads.

I second this. I overall like how the rankings came out, but there's several placings that I feel would at least be interesting to discuss (Goldmary having a considerable higher score than Saphir and Lindon for example). A single thread is probably fine though, since there's likely a lot of units people just agree on.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

On 10/17/2023 at 6:31 PM, samthedigital said:

The only real problem I have in rating the units is that I haven't used the characters more than once,

That´s generally the impression I´m under that the dlc characters just.. aren´t all that used? At least impression by feedback in this threads and the Nel thread which was meager. 

I think I´mma wait till Sunday this or Monday next week with this and then see where we stand.

51 minutes ago, Bartozio said:

On 10/17/2023 at 6:31 PM, samthedigital said:

@samthedigital This might be off-topic, but it would also be neat to have a topic afterwards to discuss the units that some of us missed or the unit rankings in general; I didn't comment on many of the earlier units, and I've changed my mind on a character or two in the meantime. I'm not sure that there's enough to warrant individual character revision threads.

I second this. I overall like how the rankings came out, but there's several placings that I feel would at least be interesting to discuss (Goldmary having a considerable higher score than Saphir and Lindon for example). A single thread is probably fine though, since there's likely a lot of units people just agree on.

So just post a thread with the above list (or maybe I´ll shamelessly snag lenticulars list for visualization purposes) and let people throw stones at who they want?

Maybe with a Vote set up to see if there´d be specific interest to discuss a character in a separate topic?

[Mizerous]

I love Intermission in the game! When they said its Engaging time on Sombron I cried so hard.  10/10

[Dark Holy Elf]

Thanks for running this, @Imuabicus der Fertige!

On 10/17/2023 at 11:16 AM, lenticular said:

The one thing that really stands out to me here is how much undifferentiated middle there is here. From Céline in 12th down to Rosado in 29th is fully half of all units, but they're only separated by 1.48. I don't know if that's just an artifact of having multiple people giving scores and that driving scores towards the middle or if Engage really does have that many units of very similar quality. Probably a bit of both. Either way, I think it's at least vaguely interesting.

It's definitely interesting. Of your two explanations, I favour your second one, that Engage does indeed have many units of similar quality. The ability to reclass everyone means that, outside some early utility (e.g. their starting class and immediate contributions), characters tend to feel a bit same-y, and ones with comparable overall stats therefore all earn relatively similar ratings.

 

On 10/19/2023 at 2:07 AM, Bartozio said:

I second this. I overall like how the rankings came out, but there's several placings that I feel would at least be interesting to discuss (Goldmary having a considerable higher score than Saphir and Lindon for example).

A gap of 1.24 really isn't that big, even if there are a lot of units who fall between them. Certainly I feel that all my scores have at least a ±1 margin of error, and I suspect it's the same for most others.

That said I do think Goldmary vs Saphir is an easy enough comparison which I do tend to think Goldmary wins. I suppose this might be less true depending on when you do paralogues, but for me, I did quite a lot of them between Chapter 16 and 19, so Goldmary ends up joining 6 internal levels and at least that many maps earlier. Once you adjust for this, it's fair to say Goldmary has significant wins in speed/def/res, while Saphir's wins are in less important areas like HP and Build, and Goldmary has higher availability on top of that. I don't think it's a massive win but it's clear enough IMO. If you do paralogues at a different time you may feel differently.

[Bartozio]

On 10/19/2023 at 12:04 PM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

So just post a thread with the above list (or maybe I´ll shamelessly snag lenticulars list for visualization purposes) and let people throw stones at who they want?

Maybe with a Vote set up to see if there´d be specific interest to discuss a character in a separate topic?

Pretty much this, yeah.

9 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

A gap of 1.24 really isn't that big, even if there are a lot of units who fall between them. Certainly I feel that all my scores have at least a ±1 margin of error, and I suspect it's the same for most others.

That said I do think Goldmary vs Saphir is an easy enough comparison which I do tend to think Goldmary wins. I suppose this might be less true depending on when you do paralogues, but for me, I did quite a lot of them between Chapter 16 and 19, so Goldmary ends up joining 6 internal levels and at least that many maps earlier. Once you adjust for this, it's fair to say Goldmary has significant wins in speed/def/res, while Saphir's wins are in less important areas like HP and Build, and Goldmary has higher availability on top of that. I don't think it's a massive win but it's clear enough IMO. If you do paralogues at a different time you may feel differently.

I mostly just think of both Goldmary and Saphir as physical filler characters who are unlikely to become the main stars of someones team. In that sense they're basically the same character, so there being 10 characters between them felt odd.

You do make a good point about availability though. I usually don't think about that too much when ranking characters, but it's fair that other people would. And I guess 1.24 points isn't as big of a gap as it seemed.

[vanguard333]

I have yet to play the DLC aside from obtaining the Tiki Emblem so I could have Alear actually be a dragon, so I can't rate any of the DLC units. My plan was to do two playthroughs: one without the DLC aside from Tiki, and one with all the DLC, but now I'm not sure if I really want to do a second playthrough of Engage. One thing I can say is that it does sting that the only dragon units that actually can be dragons are DLC-exclusive.

 

On 10/17/2023 at 2:16 PM, lenticular said:

The one thing that really stands out to me here is how much undifferentiated middle there is here. From Céline in 12th down to Rosado in 29th is fully half of all units, but they're only separated by 1.48. I don't know if that's just an artifact of having multiple people giving scores and that driving scores towards the middle or if Engage really does have that many units of very similar quality. Probably a bit of both. Either way, I think it's at least vaguely interesting.

I imagine it's the latter mixed with Engage having a lot less to make individual characters stand out as units. Reclassing, emblems, and reduced emphasis on unit growth rates (and growth rates in general) means there aren't really any ways that most characters can stand out other than availability and base stats. A lot of the characters with an average rating above 7 are characters who do stand out either through a useful unique class (Ivy, Hortensia, Seadall) or great stats (Kagetsu).

[SnowFire]

If I ever do a 3rd (or maybe 4th?) playthrough of Engage, I plan on doing the Fell Xenologue ASAP and then running the Four (Three?) Winds + dragon kids the whole game to see how it pans out.  But until then, can't really rate the DLC units short of just pure theorycraft.  Maybe a single all-DLC thread?

Anyway, the rankings, rounded to the nearest 0.5 (I think the extra decimals are probably superfluous):

9.5: Seadall
9: Chloé, Ivy, Panette
8.5: Kagetsu
8: Pandreo, Merrin
7.5: Alear, Hortensia, Louis
7: Fogado
6.5: Céline, Veyle, Goldmary, Framme
6: Lapis, Yunaka, Amber
5.5: Diamant, Alcryst, Citrinne, Zelkov
5: Vander, Mauvier, Clanne, Timerra, Lindon, Saphir, Rosado
4.5: Anna, Etie
4: Alfred
3.5: Jade, Boucheron
3: Jean
2: Bunet

The average score (of the rounded scores) is 6, so Framme & Lapis win the Most Average Award.

Here's a variant with a Tiermaker chart (values are rounded to the nearest score, not truncated, so e.g. Kagetsu's 8.58 becomes a 9; higher rankings to the left):