Who was the best unit in your run of Radiant Dawn?

[Ancient Gai]

For me, it was Ike. His Solid bases and promotion to Vanguard made him the GOAT of the game.

[lenticular]

Which run? I tend to have different MVP units in each playthrough. For my most recent run, I'd say either Rolf or Fiona. Which sounds like I'm shitposting until I mention that it was a "bad units only for the tower" challenge run, and their competition was the likes of Meg, Lyre, and Astrid. Rolf was probably stronger by end-game, but Fiona was more valuable because of her contributions to Part 3's Dawn Brigade maps.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I've had multiple MVPs throughout my playthroughs. Brom (yes, really), Ike, Tibarn, Oscar, Titania, Haar, Caineghis, Mia...

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Like others here, I've had various. Without pulling out my Wii, I can say that Ike, Titania, Haar, and Tibarn have all received MVP honors at least once. Of course, "secures the most kills" doesn't necessarily mean "most valuable unit". Dancers and Healers really get the short end of the stick when it comes to ranking units this way.

[Ancient Gai]

17 hours ago, lenticular said:

Rolf or Fiona

Fiona is kind of a mid, Rolf has really worsened from PoR, he now does not have that personal weapon. In my opinion, bad units for tower runs need Meg and Astrid, or Pelleas.

[Shadow Mir]

On 2/22/2024 at 6:12 AM, Ancient Gai said:

Rolf has really worsened from PoR

Really? Because I'd argue the exact opposite. Rolf was TERRIBLE in PoR because bows sucked, and he came underleveled. 

[Ruy]

Tibarn is usually the best or second best unit for me. But sometimes Ike or Mia end up better. 

That being said, the utility of Heron Laguz is unmatched, if you know how to use them.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

11 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Really? Because I'd argue the exact opposite. Rolf was TERRIBLE in PoR because bows sucked, and he came underleveled. 

Advantages Rolf has in PoR:

Spoiler

- An exclusive weapon

- Availability: he's not living in Shinon's shadow for most of the time

- Boyd and Oscar are better than in RD, so it makes sense to raise all of them and use the Triangle Attack

- Bows do effective damage against Wyverns. Also he faces more Birds in this game than in RD.

- Uh... PoR is just an easier game than RD in general

Advantages Rolf has in RD:

Spoiler

- Crossbows exist, and absolutely murder enemy Pegasi and Birds

- Better Bows in general, like the Silencer and the reformed Double Bow, doing triple-effective damage

- 3-range attacking as a Marksman

- Innate Bond Supports with Boyd, Oscar, and Shinon (wait, did these exist in PoR too?)

- Base stats that don't make me want to reflexively vomit

- 75% Strength growth (boy's been eating his Wheaties)

- What other Bow users is he competing with, Astrid? Leo? Unironically he's the second-most tower-viable Bow user in the game.

So yeah. Rolf isn't a good unit in either game, but he's definitely better in the sequel. All this conversation makes me want a playthrough with MVP Rolf, haha.

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

- What other Bow users is he competing with, Astrid? Leo? Unironically he's the second-most tower-viable Bow user in the game.

Depends what you're counting as a bow user. If you include Silver Knights, then Oscar and Geoffrey and Fiona both take less effort to get ready for the Tower. But they're also capped at A rank for bows, which means that they can't use the Double Bow and are probably going to just pretend they're still lance-locked.

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

All this conversation makes me want a playthrough with MVP Rolf, haha.

Do it!

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

13 hours ago, lenticular said:

Depends what you're counting as a bow user. If you include Silver Knights, then Oscar and Geoffrey and Fiona both take less effort to get ready for the Tower. But they're also capped at A rank for bows, which means that they can't use the Double Bow and are probably going to just pretend they're still lance-locked.

I thought about them, but then started double-thinking: "Wait, do people even bring Silver Knights to the Tower"? Even though the Tower is relatively friendly to cavalry (no ledges, no indoor movememt penalty), I know people rag on their caps a bunch, as a reason not to bring them. I've probably brought Oscar to the Tower before, though, since he can give his A Earth support to... well, anyone else, but especially Ike or another Greil Merc. And Geoffrey seems like he'd do... fine, I guess. Definitely lower-effort than Rolf, although arguably with a lower performance ceiling than him.

14 hours ago, lenticular said:

Do it!

Next time I've got 60 hours to kill, will-do.

On 2/23/2024 at 12:29 PM, Ruy said:

Tibarn is usually the best or second best unit for me. But sometimes Ike or Mia end up better. 

Tibarn is honestly excellent, but I'm still scratching my head at how he was once my MVP. I think I just had him kill basically all the reinforcements in his Part IV Maps. Thus inflating his kill count, because Part IV cut the brake lines when it came to reinforcements.

[lenticular]

6 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I thought about them, but then started double-thinking: "Wait, do people even bring Silver Knights to the Tower"? Even though the Tower is relatively friendly to cavalry (no ledges, no indoor movememt penalty), I know people rag on their caps a bunch, as a reason not to bring them. I've probably brought Oscar to the Tower before, though, since he can give his A Earth support to... well, anyone else, but especially Ike or another Greil Merc. And Geoffrey seems like he'd do... fine, I guess. Definitely lower-effort than Rolf, although arguably with a lower performance ceiling than him.

Worrying overly about caps always seems like a bit of a dead end to me. Once you get to the point where you're starting to butt up against caps, pretty much any unit is going to be pretty great. You could make the argument that capped cats and ravens are still pretty weak, but anyone else is going to do just fine. I find it hard to conceive of anyone who is sufficiently good at the game to get to the Tower and have units pushing their stat caps but will have any difficulty at all getting through the Tower because they decided to bring Silver Knights. That sort of difference can absolutely be worth worrying about for highly-optimised runs like speedruns or LTCs, but I don't think it's relevant for most people.

[Dark Holy Elf]

22 hours ago, lenticular said:

Depends what you're counting as a bow user. If you include Silver Knights, then Oscar and Geoffrey and Fiona both take less effort to get ready for the Tower. But they're also capped at A rank for bows, which means that they can't use the Double Bow and are probably going to just pretend they're still lance-locked.

I'm... honestly not convinced Geoffrey takes less effort to get ready for the tower. Sure, he starts 13 (iirc) levels ahead of Rolf. But he also has 11 fewer maps in part 3+4 to get them! (I'm excluding part 2 because Geoffrey pretty much just gets 1 exp per combat then.) I don't think getting an even vaguely competent unit approximately one level per chapter is particularly effortful. Certainly, my experience of using Rolf in the tower is that by the time I got him there, giving him a modest number of kills per map throughout his 13 appearances, he was doing great, Double Bow and Brave Bow with that strength goes brrr. While when I used Geoffrey in the tower, I frankly thought he was very unimpressive; bad speed and only so-so other stats and lances are not a great specialization for the tower (the SS weapon is the last one obtained, no hammer, no wyrmslayer), and he doesn't get 34 speed or earth supports or anything else interesting that his competition gets. Now I'm willing to imagine Geoffrey could be a "good" unit in the tower if you give him a lot of BExp (or just drag out 4-5 grinding off Izuka's summons) so he's rolling in there at or near his tier 3 caps, but that's not what I would consider low effort.

I think Geoffrey's probably a more useful unit than Rolf overall but that's because he's very useful in 2-3 and 3-9. But I definitely think Rolf will do much better in the Tower in most situations where you plan to use one or both of them there.

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

Worrying overly about caps always seems like a bit of a dead end to me. Once you get to the point where you're starting to butt up against caps, pretty much any unit is going to be pretty great.

Mmm, in most Fire Emblems I'd agree, but in Radiant Dawn a unit with low caps can definitely fall off in E-4 and E-5 pretty notably (and in some cases E-2). While this doesn't have a huge impact on a unit's overall worth because there are many, many maps before E-4 (e.g. we all agree Haar rules), it does impact performance in Endgame, and hence how worthwhile they are to bring there (Haar does okay for himself in Endgame because of Hammer access for E-1, but is mediocre thereafter; I would not usually consider him part of an "optimum" endgame team. And Geoffrey is significantly worse.) You're correct that you can still beat Endgame with those weaker picks, but you can also easily beat Greil Merc Part 3 maps using weaker units too, for instance.

RD is also in a unique position with respect to caps precisely because it asks you to cull your team for the tower. In another FE, if another unit suffers a bit at their caps, who cares, you've already committed to using them as one of your 12 (or whatever) units you're bringing to every map, building supports for, etc. In RD, if you have an excellent unit who falls off in the tower, you just use them until then. Even if you employ small teams in part 4 you'll probably need to bench roughly half your regulars when you reach the tower (if you use full-size teams, it'll be closer to two thirds), so you might as well bench the ones who do least well there, even if they were an MVP up to that point.

 

Anyway what was this thread about again? Oh right! If we're defining MVP the way the game does (most kills), then I've had a lot of MVPs, usually some with high availability and often (though not always) a relatively low starting level. Nolan, Jill, and Volug from the DB; Mia, Rolf, Haar from the GM side of things. Oscar once? Maybe Titania? I forget. It feels like it's a different unit every time, though I think maybe Haar was twice. (Fun fact which dovetails back to my previous paragraph: I once had Haar be MVP even though I didn't take him to the tower.)

If we're talking about "which unit I actually consider to be the best on a given run" then the list is probably shorter, being pretty typically the usual top-tier suspects such as Haar, Titania, Jill, Ike, and Volug (this one's a bit controversial maybe? I stand by it, he's absolutely saved my behind before in Dawn Brigade part 3, the hard part of the game). And of course herons, they're silly busted in this game even with the paper durability.

[Ancient Gai]

On 2/24/2024 at 11:42 AM, lenticular said:

On 2/24/2024 at 8:48 AM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

- What other Bow users is he competing with, Astrid? Leo? Unironically he's the second-most tower-viable Bow user in the game.

 

Kyaaa? Astrid has a mount. Silver Knights exist.

[Uscari]

I just completed an ironman run of Hard Mode and I have to say that Harr is just undeniably easily the best for the playthrough as a whole. He carried both of his chapters in part 2, he pretty much solos every chapter he is in for Part 3, and he still was a force in Part 4. He eventually fell off in the last two stages of the tower because of his low speed and res but who cares he hard carried everything else. Using him is like doing a playable cutscene.

Harr is just totally cracked in this game and I don't know what the devs were thinking when they removed bows effective damage against Wyverns along with nerfing thunder magic.