Ranking each game by class: Mages / Sages

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

More to the point though, on top of exp being spread thin, it is also very difficult to stop singular units from blowing up out of control. When I think of solos, I generally think of a player making a choice to play the game that way... except when it comes to Awakening, where players have to stop the game from pushing one of their units leagues above the rest, to a point where there's no strategical sense not leaning on them more and more. Then before long, no one else can do combat well but them.

The way I beat Lunatic+ was by using 2 gen 1 combat pairs, kids, and a few Rescue bots; that's more or less my frame of reference for that difficulty. That being said all of the Veteran units capped their relevant stats, and more than one unit was necessary to deal with different skill combinations, so a single unit snowballing didn't happen. Maybe I was playing wrong, but I'm not sure.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

So all I'm saying is, I can sympathize with it being boring to discuss solos, but... the game is kinda tying our hands and all. If you can extract a genuine conversational baseline out of it, more power to you, I sure can't.

It's not that it's boring exactly; it's just that if we're using that as our way of ranking classes in Awakening I'm not sure why Valkyries would be compared to Sages or why Miriel even enters the conversation at all. I'm mostly talking about Lunatic carries here; I haven't experimented with Lunatic+ enough, but there's really no reason for a carry to go into Valkyrie, and there is a reason to go into Sage if Robin is trying to kill Grima with a magic build. On that difficulty Robin can sustain through sheer stats, but Sol or stacking defensive skills works. I've only ever tried the latter with Fred, but I'm assuming that it works with Robin for obvious reasons.

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I guess, but... I'm not sure what that accomplishes for conversation.

Well, if you want to talk about a specific style of play then I'm sure there are ways of finding good approximations. I had originally assumed that you said this because it's difficult to gauge how someone is playing, but I'm not so sure now.

Edited November 21, 2023 by samthedigital

[Cysx]

1 minute ago, samthedigital said:

The way I beat Lunatic+ was by using 2 gen 1 combat pairs, kids, and a few Rescue bots; that's more or less my frame of reference for that difficulty. That being said all of the Veteran units capped their relevant stats, and more than one unit was necessary to deal with different skill combinations, so a single unit snowballing didn't happen. Maybe I was playing wrong, but I'm not sure.

Well of course not, but it does depend on whether you're playing with kids or not, at least I think. Really this whole idea of unlocking paralogues with S-ranks muddies the waters, even though it's cool on paper. How many kids was that ?
Also I lack Lunatic+ experience, for the record. Juggernauting I guess is harder there ?

5 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

It's not that it's boring exactly; it's just that if we're using that as our way of ranking classes in Awakening I'm not sure why Valkyries would be compared to Sages or why Miriel even enters the conversation at all. I'm mostly talking about Lunatic carries here; I haven't experimented with Lunatic+ enough, but there's really no reason for a carry to go into Valkyrie, and there is if Robin is trying to kill Grima with a magic build. On that difficulty Robin can sustain through sheer stats, but Sol or stacking defensive skills works; but I've only ever tried the latter with Fred. I'm just assuming it works with Robin for obvious reasons.

I actually agree that Sage/Valkyrie combat isn't highly relevant in that game. Miriel can carry though, as a Nosferatank, after a good bit of favoritism. Also Robin still wants Sorcerer for a Grima magic kill, unless you lucked out with a Celica's gale. Unless you meant for pairup, in which case I'd still favor just sticking with Chrom.

The lategame cannot really be survived through sheer stats in my experience. Every solo I've actually tried the unit would just die.

11 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

Well, if you want to talk about a specific style of play then I'm sure there are ways of finding good approximations. I had originally assumed that you said this because it's difficult to gauge how someone is playing, but I'm not so sure now.

Oh, no, I'm just not really of the stance that you can speak of thresholds in Awakening past the midgame, because things get too unpredictable. That's largely all I was saying.

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

I actually agree that Sage/Valkyrie combat isn't highly relevant in that game. Miriel can carry though, as a Nosferatank, after a good bit of favoritism. Also Robin still wants Sorcerer for a Grima magic kill, unless you lucked out with a Celica's gale. Unless you meant for pairup, in which case I'd still favor just sticking with Chrom.

I'm talking about Sage for Tomefaire earlier on and for the kill if you use Renown or luck into it (otherwise just use Sorc with Tomefaire). It's a little more consistent than Sorc, but magic really isn't that great against Grima from what I remember; I've always gone with a physical set-up when given the opportunity.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Well of course not, but it does depend on whether you're playing with kids or not, at least I think. Really this whole idea of unlocking paralogues with S-ranks muddies the waters, even though it's cool on paper. How many kids was that ?

I used 4 combat kids and got a few more filler ones that I didn't use. Laurent, Severa, Lucina, and Morgan were the combat kids. The reason I like Sage Miriel in particular is because she doubles (triples?) as utility and producing a much better Nos tanking unit in Laurent while also not competing for combat exp once she promotes.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Also I lack Lunatic+ experience, for the record. Juggernauting I guess is harder there ?

I'm not going to pretend that I have a lot of experience myself; I've played through once, and I know that there are people that have finished ironmans of it and the like. I would say that it is harder though, yeah. Counter is incredibly oppressive on its own, and I don't know that having Robin press start to win the game is possible given that and several other nasty skill combinations. That's not to say that it's impossible to juggernaut; it just requires smarter play and positioning with a few more unit types for different skill combinations. I can definitely see myself being wrong about this to some degree though as I haven't done a lot of research on the Lunatic+ meta outside of watching Kuroi and a friend of mine play.

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The lategame cannot really be survived through sheer stats in my experience. Every solo I've actually tried the unit would just die.

edit:

I forgot to reply to this. I agree, I should have said that they can rely on sheer stats up to a certain point which gives them room to inherit skills.

Edited November 21, 2023 by samthedigital

[Cysx]

6 hours ago, samthedigital said:

I'm talking about Sage for Tomefaire earlier on and for the kill if you use Renown or luck into it (otherwise just use Sorc with Tomefaire). It's a little more consistent than Sorc, but magic really isn't that great against Grima from what I remember; I've always gone with a physical set-up when given the opportunity.

I've heard the sentiment, not entirely sure where it comes from. Bows have magic beaten for sure, and so do Falchion users, but beyond that... One'd think Waste has hit issues against Grima, but it narrowly doesn't, and magic users have barely worse numbers and don't have to deal with Pavise+ at all. And, Sorcerers can reach 100% vengeance rate fairly easily, which boosts their outptut significantly, as long as they get damaged by Grima or something else.
Mostly Robin in particular has the issue of usually having Chrom in the back, so no +Mag pairup, and their Mag modifier usually being neutral or -1. Even then it's doable with them pretty reliably. Miriel on the other hand can reach the magic 79 Atk number which enables a clean 2RKO, though you generally need rally mag and either spectrum or tomefaire. Failing that, any help from Vengeance basically seals the deal.
Either way, Celica's Gale has 6 less mt than Waste, so even with Tomefaire and the +2 Mag cap of Sage, they're pretty much the same.

6 hours ago, samthedigital said:

I'm not going to pretend that I have a lot of experience myself; I've played through once, and I know that there are people that have finished ironmans of it and the like. I would say that it is harder though, yeah. Counter is incredibly oppressive on its own, and I don't know that having Robin press start to win the game is possible given that and several other nasty skill combinations. That's not to say that it's impossible to juggernaut; it just requires smarter play and positioning with a few more unit types for different skill combinations. I can definitely see myself being wrong about this to some degree though as I haven't done a lot of research on the Lunatic+ meta outside of watching Kuroi and a friend of mine play.

I might be a bit too laser-focused on base Lunatic at times. Just feel like it's the best the game has on offer. But yeah, I think the amount of children paralogues you did on that run made raising more people a lot more realistic. I guess with how easy the game is to solo, people usually don't bother and even I have gotten into the habit of assuming most of them aren't unlocked.
Should it be the way though, no clue.

6 hours ago, samthedigital said:

I forgot to reply to this. I agree, I should have said that they can rely on sheer stats up to a certain point which gives them room to inherit skills.

Oh yeah, absolutely, in fact I think all "clean" solos do that to some extent.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Cysx

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Mostly Robin in particular has the issue of usually having Chrom in the back, so no +Mag pairup, and their Mag modifier usually being neutral or -1. Even then it's doable with them pretty reliably. Miriel on the other hand can reach the magic 79 Atk number which enables a clean 2RKO, though you generally need rally mag and either spectrum or tomefaire. Failing that, any help from Vengeance basically seals the deal.

If Rally Mag and/or Tomefaire are in the picture it does support the argument that Sage is not a completely redundant class at the very least. Personally though I tend to assume that the only units that will get any exp are the carry, Chrom, and Fred, so I would probably not have any convenient Rally other than Basilio's. In that context Chrom is likely to have some decent damage numbers against Grima himself provided he's getting stat boosters and a few kills here and there.

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

I've heard the sentiment, not entirely sure where it comes from. Bows have magic beaten for sure, and so do Falchion users, but beyond that... One'd think Waste has hit issues against Grima, but it narrowly doesn't, and magic users have barely worse numbers and don't have to deal with Pavise+ at all.

It's probably doesn't matter if you're looking for good enough, but I'm not sure that it's a 100% reliable setup since there are a few failure points.

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

I guess with how easy the game is to solo, people usually don't bother and even I have gotten into the habit of assuming most of them aren't unlocked.
Should it be the way though, no clue.

I would tend towards using fewer units myself on Lunatic compared to Lunatic+ because of what I'm looking for when playing on that difficulty personally, but I have no opinions on what should be the way.

[Cysx]

12 hours ago, samthedigital said:

If Rally Mag and/or Tomefaire are in the picture it does support the argument that Sage is not a completely redundant class at the very least. Personally though I tend to assume that the only units that will get any exp are the carry, Chrom, and Fred, so I would probably not have any convenient Rally other than Basilio's. In that context Chrom is likely to have some decent damage numbers against Grima himself provided he's getting stat boosters and a few kills here and there.

Sage is definitely not redundant, it's the best pure staffing class in the game that all three of Lissa, Anna and Libra can access. It's mostly Sage's combat that doesn't really matter.
I've said as much elsewhere, but staff users are really easy to raise once Rescue is buyable. It tends to give around 30 exp a pop, so 60 a turn with Olivia (who can incidentally be the rescue target). As a result, putting Lissa through Sage and Falcon for Rally Magic and Speed is genuinely super simple.

12 hours ago, samthedigital said:

It's probably doesn't matter if you're looking for good enough, but I'm not sure that it's a 100% reliable setup since there are a few failure points.

I'm curious what qualifies as good against Grima to you, then. Other than Brave Bow Warrior, which genuinely doesn't need much to reach 79 Atk(and Bowfaire Sniper isn't too far behind). Chrom needs 113 Atk to 2RKO, which even with a 45 mt Prf, is a lot, and he has to deal with Grima's 80% Pavise+ rate.
Everyone else, Sword, Axe, Lance, non Sorcerer magic(assuming no Celica's gale), everything struggles against Grima. Sorcerer is among the very, very few builds that can down him reliably in one turn.
People really do tend to say that Sorcerers are bad against Grima, and so did I for a long time... but looking at the actual numbers and testing it out, it just feels like one big misconception.

12 hours ago, samthedigital said:

but I have no opinions on what should be the way.

Frankly I don't think many people have for the last ten years or so.

[samthedigital]

34 minutes ago, Cysx said:

I'm curious what qualifies as good against Grima to you, then. Other than Brave Bow Warrior, which genuinely doesn't need much to reach 79 Atk(and Bowfaire Sniper isn't too far behind). Chrom needs 113 Atk to 2RKO, which even with a 45 mt Prf, is a lot, and he has to deal with Grima's 80% Pavise+ rate.

A Brave Bow is definitely ideal as you mentioned, but failing that I'd go with any Brave Weapon with decent starting damage paired with Chrom or Lucina in the back to help with Dual Strikes.

[Cysx]

56 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

A Brave Bow is definitely ideal as you mentioned, but failing that I'd go with any Brave Weapon with decent starting damage paired with Chrom or Lucina in the back to help with Dual Strikes.

The problem is that due to Grima's 80% Pavise+, even at something really high like 85 Atk, they only deal 60% of their damage on average, aka 9.

As for Lucina and Chrom, they unfortunately have massive accuracy issues against Grima, as all pairups do, unless they're at a very high level. That's especially true without Anathema and Hex, which are in play for Sorcerer. Grima has 90+20 Avo, the Falchions all have 80 Hit, so with around 20 Skl&Lck, they have... 10+5(because Charm) displayed Hit on Grima, in a two RN game. That's the low end, but it's a long way to 60+ Hit, and reliability even more so (there's also the dual strike rate to consider, especially for those who cannot S-rank Chrom).
Usually at best they're a complete coin toss, not damage output you can count on.

Edit : Also, the main problem with the Brave Bow is that it's A rank, and that raising Bow rank is a pain unless you get lucky with Arms Scrolls on merchants.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Cysx

[samthedigital]

43 minutes ago, Cysx said:

As for Lucina and Chrom, they unfortunately have massive accuracy issues against Grima, as all pairups do, unless they're at a very high level. That's especially true without Anathema and Hex, which are in play for Sorcerer. Grima has 90+20 Avo, the Falchions all have 80 Hit, so with around 20 Skl&Lck, they have... 10+5(because Charm) displayed Hit on Grima, in a two RN game. That's the low end, but it's a long way to 60+ Hit, and reliability even more so (there's also the dual strike rate to consider, especially for those who cannot S-rank Chrom).
Usually at best they're a complete coin toss, not damage output you can count on.

We might have discussed this in another thread, but I go down the Archer>Sniper line specifically for this. It also helps Chrom get a little more boss exp with the Long Bow.

43 minutes ago, Cysx said:

especially for those who cannot S-rank Chrom

I would mostly consider those kinds of runs to be inferior to carries with units that support Chrom in general if I'm being honest since it's more work to keep Chrom safe over the course of the playthrough if he isn't the backup, and he provides some Dual Guard protection if he is.

43 minutes ago, Cysx said:

Also, the main problem with the Brave Bow is that it's A rank, and that raising Bow rank is a pain unless you get lucky with Arms Scrolls on merchants.

This is a setup that I would go for in more of a duo than a pure solo since it then opens up the possibility of a kid (probably Morgan or some other Veteran/Galeforce kid) using Galeforce and backup to train their Bow rank.

Edited November 22, 2023 by samthedigital

[Cysx]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

We might have discussed this in another thread, but I go down the Archer>Sniper line specifically for this. It also helps Chrom get a little more boss exp with the Long Bow.

Yeah, I guess we have to an extent, I don't think we got into the numbers though.
I don't really do boss feeding as you've guessed since the setup tends to double as turncount murder, but... the Longbow thing you've mentioned then as well, kinda sounds like boss grinding even ?
Either way, I guess Hit +20 would help quite a bit (I assume it works for pairups, though to be honest... proc skills don't, so I'm kinda wondering), but man, that's so much work.

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

I would mostly consider those kinds of runs to be inferior to carries with units that support Chrom in general if I'm being honest since it's more work to keep Chrom safe over the course of the playthrough if he isn't the backup, and he provides some Dual Guard protection if he is.

It's one big factor among others as far as I'm concerned.

[samthedigital]

21 minutes ago, Cysx said:

Either way, I guess Hit +20 would help quite a bit (I assume it works for pairups, though to be honest... proc skills don't, so I'm kinda wondering), but man, that's so much work.

If you're interested in what works and what doesn't this might be accurate. I've gotten my information primarily from talking to people though, so I'm not sure if there's an actual resource for it.

35 minutes ago, Cysx said:

I don't really do boss feeding as you've guessed since the setup tends to double as turncount murder, but... the Longbow thing you've mentioned then as well, kinda sounds like boss grinding even ?

It's just a matter of giving Chrom the boss kill; there isn't any grinding involved. The Longbow is useful primarily so that Chrom doesn't have to worry about facing a counter. You don't have to do too much more than that. Chrom gets a lot of exp just from being the backup and will get any stat booster that the main character doesn't need. I don't really see it as work.

50 minutes ago, Cysx said:

the setup tends to double as turncount murder

The specifics of the carry aside though we probably have differing opinions when it comes to turn counts, grinding, etc. I'm not sure if I should go down this particular tangent though.

[Eltosian Kadath]

Took me a while to get to this one, and it was a tough one for me to judge overall.

 

S Tier: One of the Best Classes in the Game

Thracia 776: As much as I could jokingly say Staff are king, hence S tier, but that would be taking away too much credit from how useful, and vital magic is in Thracia. Thrones and Gates (your bog standard seize points...) give +10 defense, and immunity to status effects, and good magic damage tends to be the best way to deal with that. Some chapters go from fairly normal, to brutal if you don't have access to a mage, like Gomes's monstrous reputation was built on people not having the magic to deal with him. Your mage is always the boss killer you send in for the warp skip, and they deserve the S rank credit for that. Also, they get staff access, just to ensure they get into that S tier.

 

Three Houses: I thought about putting this just in A tier, but what pushed it over for me, is that everyone and their mother is passing through this class line for Fiendish Blow, on top of it having good classes to be in anyway. With magic being the only weapons locked to class, classes that get them have this inherent advantage to them, and with all magic open to any mage, you get good combat together with the utility of White Magic. Gremory is a great final class for any magically inclined females with those double all magic skills, and Dark Knight is great for the males, with two really solid endgame options on top of some solid options along the way.

 

A Tier: A Good Class

Binding Blade: One of the biggest weaknesses of this class is that every single member is a project. Despite that this class has so much stuff going for it that it earns its way to A tier anyway. Getting an effective damage attack that targets the weaker resistance of wyverns in this game is really good. They get the most accurate 1-2 range options, and the most viable siege magic, which are nice as well. Getting staff access after promotion is useful, and if you are willing to grind a LOT of staff rank, they get some of the best staff ranges, which is really good if you take that massive amount of effort...if only Sages got their own prepromote like the other magic classes this would be an easy S tier.

 

Echoes, Shadows of Valentia: In a game where being indoors gives people +20 avoid, and some terrain gives +60, having your primary weapon type ignore terrain is really useful. They also get further ranges, especially with the amazing mage ring, but with enemy phase always defaulting to their weakest spell, that makes it far weaker than Bows, and while there are a fair number of enemy types with resistance, those that don't take a lot of damage from mages. I don't think the flaws of being worse than the best classes in the game are enough to drop it below A tier.

 

New Mystery of the Emblem: I have been waffling a bit back and forth over whether this should get A tier, or B tier, but I think I am letting it into A tier for now. First off, it gets a new flyer effective tome on top of Exalibur, all ready for the monstrously brutal Flying Dragon Desert map, female mages get access to the amazingly potent Nosferatu (one of the few ways to be tanky in a game where you are lucky to have a unit survive two hits), and its 1-2 range is some useful versatility for how rigid this game tends to be. Unfortunately it doesn't really get the speed stats you need for lategame, but people tend to use them late game anyway, as you kind of need at least one to kill Garnef, 1-2 range lets you get in some player phase work by avoiding counters, and forging up a high crit tome to rig suicidal crits targeting on Medius weaker defense is the scuffed version of using Naga against him from Shadow Dragon. This one is a close call, but I think it squeaked its way in here for me.

 

B Tier: An OK Class

Blazing Sword:  I am tempted to give this the A rank for Pent alone, but was tempered by this being more about classes. Alas the old assessment of the three mages ending up about the same holds true, with the basic Mage's only edge over the other version being that more of them are available.

 

Engage: It is a solid option in the early game, but slowly gets overshadowed by newer and better things as the game goes on. I don't think they ever get bad enough that I went without one, but I never find them to be one of the classes that really shines, as they slowly get relegated to your slow moving backup healer. If Ivy, or Hortensia's classes weren't exclusive to them this class would almost certainly be in a lower tier.

 

Genealogy of the Holy War:  This class can absolutely run the gamut of quality here, with some stuck as infantry after promotion, some gaining that beloved horse, and with almost exclusive Holsety access (Holsety Corple is a joke) that can swing anyone that touches it's value up at least one, if not two tiers, with inheritable Wrath as a fun bit of spice on the side. I just don't know how to tier this one, as the class's value in the second generation is so wildly variable by parentage, but this is about where I think it ends up in first generation, with the one that gets a horse on promotion being a bit mediocre due to how long it takes him to get going, with the infantry versions both getting something particularly valuable to them to keep them better than most infantry units.

 

Fates: This class has a lot going for it, the stat buffs on Hoshidan Scrolls makes for interesting plays, but Horse Spirit is so good that it tends to overshadow the rest of them, staff access after promotion, and some nice promoted skills. I just never found Birthright to be a good environment for the class, Revelations is designed in very silly ways, and there are too many hoops to really use it much in Conquest (especially since Izana clearly reached Onmyoji from the healer side of things). I guess I should mention Basra as well, and in my experience, going the Basara route mostly just makes you agonize over whether you should have Horse Spirit, or Guard Naginata equipped, and other equally gimmicky, and silly options. Not completely useless, but definitely a meme build, especially if you start leaning into some Quixotic proc skill builds that take til endgame to become functional.

 

Sacred Stones: I am very, very tempted to drop this into C tier, as the other magic type class just get so much better tools to work with, but if you do bother to use a mage, they end up fine. I guess the higher move of Mage Knight is something, but still pales in comparison to summoning and slayer.

C Tier:  A Subpar Class

Shadow Dragon: Despite enemies having embarrassing resistance, forged effective damage so thoroughly overshadows it, and the only effective magic can't be forged. They do have staff access after promotion (but worse rank than Bishop), and magic isn't useless, so it avoids the D tier, and is even kind of close to B tier.

Awakening: This class gets really overshadowed latter into the game, but it does have some minor early game utility as a magic user, and if you are willing to grind them up, a lot, they do get some skills that are useful to have when in a better classes.

 

Path of Radiance: This ones placement is complicated by the Japanese version of the game (which has to be used to access the highest difficulty setting of this game), having a bug which lets you underflow the crit rate of forged Thunder tomes so that they have 100 crit against all enemies. I am ranking them without that boon in mind, but I could see an argument of them potentially even reaching S tier with an argument of giving one vantage and 100 criting enemies to death on enemy phase. They are slow moving, and physically squishy, but they do get good 1-2 range, can be promoted into staff users, and potentially doing a little dodge tanking. I am tempted to let them slide into D tier, but I have used Soren with an Ike support enough to know they are slightly better than in Radiant Dawn.

 

D Tier: A Bad Class

Radiant Dawn: I have brought too many mages into the tower for a run where I decided to field all the max rank weapons, and it really emphasized just how bad mages are in this game. Despite all the magics getting effective damage against different enemy types, they just don't get the stats (and stat caps) to capitalize on it. Ilyana even has the highest availability in the nonsense availability of this game, and it is simply not enough to make people consider her good, that is how bad the class line is.

 

[Cysx]

7 hours ago, samthedigital said:

If you're interested in what works and what doesn't this might be accurate. I've gotten my information primarily from talking to people though, so I'm not sure if there's an actual resource for it.

Yay, so many old faces. Well I guess Tables' still around, in other places.
All right then, not sure how they knew, but that's enough for me.

7 hours ago, samthedigital said:

It's just a matter of giving Chrom the boss kill; there isn't any grinding involved. The Longbow is useful primarily so that Chrom doesn't have to worry about facing a counter. You don't have to do too much more than that. Chrom gets a lot of exp just from being the backup and will get any stat booster that the main character doesn't need. I don't really see it as work.

Idk, the carry ORKOs the bosses usually(on Luna, anyway), even with really weak weapons. The boss bonus is also fairly low in FE13, but maybe I just ought to give this a go sometime.
... you can't really deny that it's not the most straightforward of procedures, and that the Grima kill ends up luck based regardless. Doesn't sound too different from relying on Vengeance, and that doesn't require training anyone but the carry.

7 hours ago, samthedigital said:

The specifics of the carry aside though we probably have differing opinions when it comes to turn counts, grinding, etc. I'm not sure if I should go down this particular tangent though.

Eh, I think that's an aspect of... efficient play, that generally works with Awakening still; don't hang around in a chapter for longer than you need just to get an advantage. So it's doesn't really have to be about your opinion or mine.
That being said, yeah, probably no the place anyway.

[samthedigital]

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

Eh, I think that's an aspect of... efficient play, that generally works with Awakening still; don't hang around in a chapter for longer than you need just to get an advantage. So it's doesn't really have to be about your opinion or mine.

To be as brief as possible for the sake of this discussion I consider grinding to be a good option if it saves time later on, I don't particularly care about turn counts if they aren't wasting much time and aren't interfering with mechanics that I care to take advantage of ( e.g Engage stuff and Lucky 7 in Fates), and I consider staff spamming in an ETC like context to be similar to something like water trick in Awakening or grinding in general. If you're just looking at raw turn counts and the like then your perspective on a few things might be different to mine.

For the sake of staying at least somewhat on topic it does influence how I rate Sages to some degree seeing as I don't consider Rescue/Dance spamming for exp to be a free action. For as much time I've spent defending the class in Awakening I wouldn't rate them that strongly really. Thracia would be my pick for #1, but otherwise the class feels relatively similar to me in terms of effectiveness throughout the series.

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

Idk, the carry ORKOs the bosses usually(on Luna, anyway), even with really weak weapons. The boss bonus is also fairly low in FE13, but maybe I just ought to give this a go sometime.

Chrom might not even need to do this to gain a sufficient amount of levels either; I'm not too sure. I needed him to get a lot of levels in my Fred solo, but with units that don't need such strict breakpoints just going Archer>Sniper>Paladin/etc probably works, so the backpack exp alone might be enough. I haven't played around with it too much; I just go for it because I'm not worried about spending an extra turn if the carry doesn't dual strike.

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

... you can't really deny that it's not the most straightforward of procedures, and that the Grima kill ends up luck based regardless. Doesn't sound too different from relying on Vengeance, and that doesn't require training anyone but the carry.

It might not be intuitive; I'll give you that. It does make just about every strategy more reliable and doesn't take appreciably longer to set up than not doing it though. As far as reliability goes... I think that some setups have a chance at one rounding Grima with Chrom in the back, but at worst you could Rescue everyone else away and hope that Grima attacks first on EP. From what I've been told Grima attacking first might have a little bit of randomness associated with it, but I don't remember exactly. That much might be going overboard if I'm being honest lol; the one time I needed a 100% reliable kill I went with 3 combat units instead.

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

Yay, so many old faces. Well I guess Tables' still around, in other places.

Kuroi is still around elsewhere too.

Edited November 22, 2023 by samthedigital

[Shadow Mir]

 

On 11/19/2023 at 6:52 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

There are certainly good Fire Emblem stats who manage to have only one good stat, and Orochi actually has three (Magic, Skill, Res). But regardless, her magic is so good that you can get away with giving her a weaker weapon which raises her other stats by 3, and the proof is in the pudding: she has enough magic/speed to one-round a large number of enemies at 1-2 range. If you think Orochi sucks, post a build for a unit typically considered mid tier or below (I'll let you choose who) which is more impressive at one-rounding at equal or less investment than the one I posted.

Big fucking deal. High skill and resistance aren't exactly selling points, bud; there are good units that have those... but those units often get praise for other attributes. Anyway, you don't see a problem with making Azama a class that he is not built for just to make Orochi serviceable? Because that is exactly what you're implying. And I have issue with that, as you're making the team worse just to make a bad unit less bad.

Bold: The only unit that manages to be good despite that (that I can think of anyway) is Atlas. Who is in a game where promoting boosts his worse stats up to class bases. Also, his game mostly made unit choice moot, as outside of dungeons and the final battle, you could deploy everyone. Contrast Fates, where as far as Birthright is concerned, you have to start cutting units from the team by chapter 9; who are you willing to bench to use Orochi, hmm...??? Because she, Setsuna, and Hayato are the obvious benchwarmers.

On 11/19/2023 at 7:30 PM, SnowFire said:

I guess you learned something new about me then!  I'm a fan of Orochi.  Not Ryoma-tier or anything, or even Hinoka-tier, but then most characters aren't.  Now you know.

I don't need everyone to be on the level of Ryoma, Camilla, Xander, Kagetsu, or what have you. That, of course, is unrealistic. But I generally consider crippling overspecialization to be one of the worst things a unit can be from a statistical perspective. It's all the same with units like those... and it seldom ends well. Unsurprisingly, those units' good stats get dragged down by their lacking ones. Like Setsuna. She's a glass cannon without the "cannon" part, as she has poor strength, as well as hit problems. Which is bad, especially when she's sharing a class with Takumi, who, aside from having a 14 might bow with no downsides, actually comes with the base stats to meaningfully contribute immediately. Or Nyx. While she is in a different class from Orochi, she has much the same issue, that being her stats are either good (magic and speed) or laughable (literally everything else). And the result is no different- her otherwise great offense is ruined (unlike Orochi, it's her hit rates that make her unreliable-and she cannot use Heartseeker to fix them because she is so brittle she REALLY doesn't want to take a hit), and she is more of a liability than an asset. And that isn't even getting into Leo's existence, as he is one of the TWO mages in the entirety of Fates to NOT be complete garbage. Long story short.... If the best I get out of a mage is being easier to squish than a Goomba and being too slow to double fucking armors without help forever (in Orochi's case) or being a magical Gonzales (Nyx).. then maybe, just maybe, the mages in this game are a lost cause.

[Cysx]

7 hours ago, samthedigital said:

and I consider staff spamming in an ETC like context to be similar to something like water trick in Awakening or grinding in general.

Just to make it clear because I'm not sure I have, when I speak of staff spamming, I do mean doing it strictly while the carry(ies) is clearing the chapter, hence why it's a multi chapter process. In that regard I completely disagree that it must fall under that spectrum to make a difference. Don't think the water trick would be contentious in the slightest if it didn't take dozens of turns either. Just taking advantage of terrain, which we do all the time, especially with fliers, and is a big part of clearing chapter 2 at that.

I also actually don't care about turncount that much either, I couldn't tell you how low people go in any particular game. I just think/know it's an effective rule at keeping the games balanced. As balanced as they're gonna get, anyway.

7 hours ago, samthedigital said:

just going Archer>Sniper>Paladin/etc probably works, so the backpack exp alone might be enough.

Depends on child paralogues. Also on whether you one turn most of the late midgame or not, as doing it can genuinely skip hundreds of fights. If you don't, from my experience 10->10->10->1 should be very narrowly possible in a pure solo with him as the backpack.
However, his stats will still likely not be good enough to have reliable(tm) accuracy, even with Hit +20. Though with Hex/Anathema in play he can likely roughly reach 75% Hit with that amount of exp, which isn't bad in 2RN.

7 hours ago, samthedigital said:

From what I've been told Grima attacking first might have a little bit of randomness associated with it, but I don't remember exactly.

I believe it's really simple actually, but I haven't done super extensive testing or anything. If any enemy present can ORKO any unit present(without crits mind you), they'll act before. Otherwise Grima always acts first. That's what generally makes 1 turn setups possible, you get to fight Grima twice in a row without anything else happening.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Cysx

[samthedigital]

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

Just to make it clear because I'm not sure I have, when I speak of staff spamming, I do mean doing it strictly while the carry(ies) is clearing the chapter, hence why it's a multi chapter process. In that regard I completely disagree that it must fall under that spectrum to make a difference. Don't think the water trick would be contentious in the slightest if it didn't take dozens of turns either. Just taking advantage of terrain, which we do all the time, especially with fliers, and is a big part of clearing chapter 2 at that.

To be absolutely clear I care more about the real time implications of spamming staves. If it's better to get my unit to some specific level then it doesn't matter to me when that happens. It's a more obvious difference in Awakening compared to say FE6 where there's a stronger correlation between time and turns. Practically speaking though I don't see it making much of a difference since most people are pretty lax about what they consider to be efficient  anyway.

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

Depends on child paralogues. Also on whether you one turn most of the late midgame or not, as doing it can genuinely skip hundreds of fights. If you don't, from my experience 10->10->10->1 should be very narrowly possible in a pure solo with him as the backpack.

However, his stats will still likely not be good enough to have reliable(tm) accuracy, even with Hit +20. Though with Hex/Anathema in play he can likely roughly reach 75% Hit with that amount of exp, which isn't bad in 2RN.

Are you also factoring in Prescience and any skill stat booster that the carry might not need? In my Fred solo (where I could have fed Crom for free a lot more than I did since I didn't really go into it with much planning) he went from 10(Lord)>10>10(Sniper)>10>1 or something like that where I got at most 1 child paralogue run done if I did any of them. I'd have to see what he would look like if I skipped more enemies... Maybe I'll look into it a little later when I'm not busy.

[Dark Holy Elf]

11 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Big fucking deal. High skill and resistance aren't exactly selling points, bud; there are good units that have those... but those units often get praise for other attributes. Anyway, you don't see a problem with making Azama a class that he is not built for just to make Orochi serviceable? Because that is exactly what you're implying. And I have issue with that, as you're making the team worse just to make a bad unit less bad.

But high magic is considered a major selling point, which you're ignoring. "Three high stats, and one of them is one of the important ones" isn't damning. It's not automatically good by any means, but it can work. And in the case of Orochi, I've already shown it does work. You can get her to double a remarkable number of enemies thanks to pairup + Horse Spirit, and Birthright enemies are usually not too fast outside of specific maps.

Onmyoji is a perfectly reasonable promotion for Azama; Grand Master involves a wait for 1-2 range and doesn't give Rally Magic. He's going to be mostly on staff duty anyway, barring some sort of elaborate build. That said, if you prefer him in another class, that's fine. Izana literally exists for a zero-effort as I already mentioned. And although I think of Onmyojis as ideal pairups for mages, there are other classes which aren't that much worse (swordmaster and nine-tails offer even more speed, master ninja offers speed and move, etc.).

11 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Bold: The only unit that manages to be good despite that (that I can think of anyway) is Atlas. Who is in a game where promoting boosts his worse stats up to class bases. Also, his game mostly made unit choice moot, as outside of dungeons and the final battle, you could deploy everyone. Contrast Fates, where as far as Birthright is concerned, you have to start cutting units from the team by chapter 9; who are you willing to bench to use Orochi, hmm...??? Because she, Setsuna, and Hayato are the obvious benchwarmers.

Constance only has one high stat, Lysithea might as well only have one (her other high stat is Dex but that's nearly useless on FE3H mages, clocking in at +0.5 hit per point, a third as potent as Fates Skill). Both are generally considered good. I don't play FEH any more but Reinhardt was utterly dominant for a large stretch of time with only one high stat. etc.

For your last query... I bench different people on different playthroughs... and in particular, if I'm talking about a unit, I'm always going to assume they're not benched (unless they have some bench-specific utility I suppose, like a FE3H adjutant). That said, even from your list, I'm surprised at no mention of Subaki or Rinkah, and I could easily see adding Hana.

[Cysx]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

To be absolutely clear I care more about the real time implications of spamming staves. If it's better to get my unit to some specific level then it doesn't matter to me when that happens. It's a more obvious difference in Awakening compared to say FE6 where there's a stronger correlation between time and turns. Practically speaking though I don't see it making much of a difference since most people are pretty lax about what they consider to be efficient  anyway.

I don't really get what you mean. The turn/time correlation seems mostly the same between FE6 and FE13 to me, and what I'm talking about isn't a lengthy process at all. Takes 20 seconds per turn, give or take ?

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

Are you also factoring in Prescience and any skill stat booster that the carry might not need? In my Fred solo (where I could have fed Crom for free a lot more than I did since I didn't really go into it with much planning) he went from 10(Lord)>10>10(Sniper)>10>1 or something like that where I got at most 1 child paralogue run done if I did any of them. I'd have to see what he would look like if I skipped more enemies... Maybe I'll look into it a little later when I'm not busy.

Ah, you're right, I did forget about Prescience. That definitely helps a lot.
Not gonna lie, I still think you completely underestimate Sorcerer, but you're kinda selling me on this now.

Edit : Oh wait, I just realized this wouldn't work on Grima's turn. Or enemy phase in general, throughout the game.
... well... that's still pretty good.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Cysx

[samthedigital]

52 minutes ago, Cysx said:

I don't really get what you mean. The turn/time correlation seems mostly the same between FE6 and FE13 to me, and what I'm talking about isn't a lengthy process at all. Takes 20 seconds per turn, give or take ?

FE13 has the enemy phase skip feature and has more route maps. I wouldn't say that it's a lengthy process either; the point was to show why I don't necessarily value turn counts rather than critiquing things like the water trick and the like.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Not gonna lie, I still think you completely underestimate Sorcerer, but you're kinda selling me on this now.

Maybe I am underselling Sorcerer's ability to kill Grima a little bit since you originally showed me a strategy that assumes Chrom will do nothing at all. We are still only talking about the Grima kill right?

[Cysx]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

FE13 has the enemy phase skip feature and has more route maps. I wouldn't say that it's a lengthy process either; the point was to show why I don't necessarily value turn counts rather than critiquing things like the water trick and the like.

I guess one could make the argument that 20 seconds can fit three turns in Awakening, but... that is a pretty restrictive line to draw. Similarly, the water trick isn't particularly long to perform.
I'm not against the concept of real time efficiency in FE(even though I'm like, the worst at it, everything I do takes ages), but just like turncounts don't assume LTC, imo it shouldn't assume what I can only describe as speedrunning considerations. Otherwise you're ultimately talking about a way of play that reflects less than, say, 1/1000th of players. These are games about thinking, thinking takes time.

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

Maybe I am underselling Sorcerer's ability to kill Grima a little bit since you originally showed me a strategy that assumes Chrom will do nothing at all. We are still only talking about the Grima kill right?

Yeah yeah, that's what I meant.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Cysx

[samthedigital]

5 hours ago, Cysx said:

I'm not against the concept of real time efficiency in FE(even though I'm like, the worst at it, everything I do takes ages), but just like turncounts don't assume LTC, imo it shouldn't assume what I can only describe as speedrunning considerations. Otherwise you're ultimately talking about a way of play that reflects less than, say, 1/1000th of players. These are games about thinking, thinking takes time.

I don't factor in the time it takes to think about a move. It's a skill to be sure, but not a quantifiable one if we're comparing different strategies. I agree with you though, at least in the sense that I wouldn't compare speedrunning to real time efficiency. Speedruns don't necessarily care about reliability either which is obviously something I find important. They also tend to be played on the easiest difficulty, and a certain friend of mine would probably feel some type of way if I didn't mention that the amount of people that speedrun Fire Emblem is really low; 1/1000 is... generous.

6 hours ago, Cysx said:

I guess one could make the argument that 20 seconds can fit three turns in Awakening, but... that is a pretty restrictive line to draw. Similarly, the water trick isn't particularly long to perform.

The water trick doesn't necessarily have to be considered inefficient even if I would compare it to grinding to some extent. It might be that the water trick saves time overall; it certainly makes it easy to get Robin to start snowballing as soon as possible. The same can be said for staff spamming for a Sage. I just don't see the difference between getting it done while my carry is getting kills and grinding at the end of a map in a real time setting is all.

Just as an aside I played through a few chapters of Awakening to see where Chrom would end up assuming I skipped more enemies. Chrom was a level 7 Sniper by chapter 18. I stopped playing because Fred just didn't have the stats to continue since I skipped so many enemies. This is while employing the Chrom kills a few enemies here and there strategy.

[Cysx]

4 hours ago, samthedigital said:

the amount of people that speedrun Fire Emblem is really low; 1/1000 is... generous.

Lowballed it a bit liberally because the point was made regardless, yeah. Although I wasn't necessarily speaking of going for leaderboards per se. More so about anyone who makes a priority of optimizing time spent, in general.

4 hours ago, samthedigital said:

The water trick doesn't necessarily have to be considered inefficient even if I would compare it to grinding to some extent. It might be that the water trick saves time overall; it certainly makes it easy to get Robin to start snowballing as soon as possible. The same can be said for staff spamming for a Sage. I just don't see the difference between getting it done while my carry is getting kills and grinding at the end of a map in a real time setting is all.

I guess that'd be the difference between approaching (turn) efficiency as a mean to an end, as opposed to a ruleset ?

4 hours ago, samthedigital said:

Just as an aside I played through a few chapters of Awakening to see where Chrom would end up assuming I skipped more enemies. Chrom was a level 7 Sniper by chapter 18. I stopped playing because Fred just didn't have the stats to continue since I skipped so many enemies. This is while employing the Chrom kills a few enemies here and there strategy.

All right, noted.

[samthedigital]

56 minutes ago, Cysx said:

Lowballed it a bit liberally because the point was made regardless, yeah. Although I wasn't necessarily speaking of going for leaderboards per se. More so about anyone who makes a priority of optimizing time spent, in general.

I could say the same thing about optimizing for turn counts or any other kind of system for unit/class/etc evaluation, so I guess I'm not sure why you're making that specific point.

2 hours ago, Cysx said:

I guess that'd be the difference between approaching (turn) efficiency as a mean to an end, as opposed to a ruleset ?

If that ruleset bans grinding, yeah.

[Cysx]

11 hours ago, samthedigital said:

I could say the same thing about optimizing for turn counts or any other kind of system for unit/class/etc evaluation, so I guess I'm not sure why you're making that specific point.

I'm just being coy. Because it goes without saying that you in particular should play how you like and I don't want to sound like I'm arguing against that, etc. Within the scope of this applying to more than yourself however (which may not be what you're going for in the slightest), one cannot be this strict, the way the game is actually played has to be a major factor. Which is also why I'm not really for ignoring decision time. It's... a good 70-90% of playtime with animations off.

I'm also hesitant about the variable duration of enemy phase being a factor, since that is unconditionally when the game isn't being played. It can be optimized still, by making choices that limit its length, but in general, it's out of the player's hands.

Clearly we don't have the same approach here, which is fine. Also Imma moderate myself from here because I'm reaching a new level of off topic. Good talk !