OMG it's a tier list

[Florete]

As an aside: WTF @ this guy who rolls into a 20-month old, 6000+ post thread, and proceeds to lay down a bunch of crazy shit, with no preamble whatsoever. I hereby proclaim you the August 2010 winner of the Giant Brass Balls Medal, in recognition of your willingness to stroll naked up to a beehive, and then hit it with a baseball bat. Congratulations are in order, as this accolade is generally awarded posthumously.

Now that made me - quite literally - LOL.

As for dondon's arguments, I believe Interceptor said what I would have well enough, specifically point #3.

[Narga_Rocks]

As an aside: WTF @ this guy who rolls into a 20-month old, 6000+ post thread, and proceeds to lay down a bunch of crazy shit, with no preamble whatsoever. I hereby proclaim you the August 2010 winner of the Giant Brass Balls Medal, in recognition of your willingness to stroll naked up to a beehive, and then hit it with a baseball bat. Congratulations are in order, as this accolade is generally awarded posthumously.

You totally should have used an image, too. Or something similar.

Anyway, I can admit that 3-4 is probably a good example for Rhys having a win with physic staves. Aside from that, I'm not sure where it matters. I suppose I could go through his videos and see at each point where he used Physic whether or not it would have been necessary if growths existed, but that seems like about an hour plus and I'm not sure what it would accomplish. I know dondon likes the whole 0% growths thing, but a more useful playthrough for a tier list would be more of a fixed growths thing (though how that would work with bexp giving 3 stats I have no idea. Maybe force it to always give +100 to the top 3?). I know somebody pulled off a hack for fe6 that simulated fixed growths, but I have no idea how you'd go about it for fe10.

[Zkirsche]

Is Bastian really better than Lehran? Sure, Lehran only has a chapter, but so does Bastian (unless he get's put into endgame and racks up negative utility), and his is skip clear by Elinica/Pelleas + Tibarn. Lehran's SS staves + Light/Dark magic comes in handy as the asher stave helps with the AoE attacks and his high spd make him a much better combatant than Micaiah, so taking her tome away from her isn't actually a bad thing.

As an aside: WTF @ this guy who rolls into a 20-month old, 6000+ post thread, and proceeds to lay down a bunch of crazy shit, with no preamble whatsoever. I hereby proclaim you the August 2010 winner of the Giant Brass Balls Medal, in recognition of your willingness to stroll naked up to a beehive, and then hit it with a baseball bat. Congratulations are in order, as this accolade is generally awarded posthumously.

The irony of this is that he seems to agree with you on a variety of matters (Reyson = overrated, Haar > Ike).

[-Cynthia-]

3-3 is also a good example, since Haar should be far away from the main group and over fences and the like. 3-5, Haar is probably pretty far away trying to kill Lombroso, and there are quite a few thunder mages/a Wyrmslayer guy. 3-11 with the sandbags has already been mentioned.

Bastian is a pretty big part of the skipclear. He can Meteor and ORKO the tiger surrounding Izuka, allowing Tibarn to kill turn 2.

Edited August 12, 2010 by -Cynthia-

[dondon151]

In reality, there is nothing wrong with a playthrough helping to inform arguments on the tier list. It's useful to have real-world experience to back up various bits of theorycrafting. However, your PT in particular comes packaged alongside three major things that considerably hobble its usefulness in this aspect:

I'm not quite sure exactly how my playthrough is not as useful as backing up theorycrafting as yours, nflchamp's, Queen_Elincia's, or Colonel M's. Sure, it gives an exact turn-by-turn, because there's no room to be vague in a video. But for everyone else, their respective completions also required some exact sequence of positioning - we're just more lax to assume so because there's only so much exactness that we can write out in detail without the log being painful to read.

1) 0% growths: no unit ever gains a stat outside of boosters and promotion bonuses. The implications of this are manifest, particularly since your run is actually worse than the worst possible case of RNG-screwage. The longer down the growth path that your run goes, the more it diverges from reality.

Like I said earlier, "reality" is only a set of strategies used by players who never had any incentives to try anything else. The only reason why 0% strategies aren't "reality" is because they're novel, because I'm sure that you can attest to their effectiveness.

2) RNG manipulation: you rely on high chances of turn-count failure at times, at rates many people would deem unacceptable if they were some particular character's chance of death. There is nothing inherently wrong with chance-based things, but yours go so far as to trivialize the impact of non-guaranteed offense and avoid-based durability, for starters, which is not helpful for the tier list.

You like to accuse me of RNG manipulation, but I do carefully detail an analysis of every risky situation, every chance of death, and every necessary sequence of procs. Most of the time, a successful strategy only requires all attacks to hit (which is essential for every sort of strategy resembling speed). If the player were paranoid over 90 hit rates missing, then he would never get anywhere because he would turtle until he could be sure that there would be no miniscule chance for a hit to miss. Sometimes, I have contingency plans in case an attack does miss, and other times, I don't even need all attacks to hit in the first place.

3) Narrow strategies: often times, in addition to RNG shenanigans, you have tight strategies that rely on very specific positioning and movement. Your playthrough is infinitely close to 100% on the Tier List Laffer Curve. This is nice for you, but not very helpful for tiering, since it significantly constrains the ways for us to discuss character differences. Note that this is not the same thing as "Gatrie is doritos for the 3-3 Master Crown" type argument, since [a] it's arguable, and it encompasses a more broad spectrum of possibilities for him.

These strategies are only narrow because there are no growths to buffer them. For example, you really only have 3 reliable offensive units in 1-6-1 with 0% growths instead of 4 or 5, which subsequently requires Sothe to pretty much be everywhere at once. Also, good strategies are narrow by definition. There are services that are in demand, and naturally only few characters can offer those services. If we need to call on Haar and flying, or Rhys and Physic, or Oscar/Titania with mounted move and Pass, then tough luck for everyone else. This is not a mass production line of Fire Emblem characters; your interchangeable parts here are severely limited if they exist at all, and disregarding that fact greatly reduces the accuracy of the tier list.

Furthermore, why is it necessary that a strategy be broad in order to be considered? Is there a Threshold of Broadness that needs to be fulfilled for an argument to be taken with more than a grain of salt?

This is not a criticism of your 0% growths runs, which are impressive in execution and interesting to watch. But when you have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. I am just pointing out that there is a limited amount of value to the tier list contained in your run. If you're so passionate about the specific results of your run being reflected in rankings, you should just make your own tier list. With hookers, and blackjack. I think that this list is better served with a broader suite of possibilities.

Let me ask you this. Why are the specific results of other efficient runs being reflected in the tier list, but not mine? I am not interested in entertaining the possibility of X unit rising, or trying out viable resource allocation decisions. I am interested only in completing the game as fast as possible, with no casualties.

[Shadow Mir]

As an aside: WTF @ this guy who rolls into a 20-month old, 6000+ post thread, and proceeds to lay down a bunch of crazy shit, with no preamble whatsoever. I hereby proclaim you the August 2010 winner of the Giant Brass Balls Medal, in recognition of your willingness to stroll naked up to a beehive, and then hit it with a baseball bat. Congratulations are in order, as this accolade is generally awarded posthumously.

Yeah, I lol'd.

You totally should have used an image, too. Or something similar.

On a side note, Kirsche, while Pelleas can help skipclear 4-5, his accuracy is iffy, and Bastian one-ups him in that regard.

[Narga_Rocks]

On a side note, Kirsche, while Pelleas can help skipclear 4-5, his accuracy is iffy, and Bastian one-ups him in that regard.

When was he talking about Pelleas?

[Shadow Mir]

When was he talking about Pelleas?

He mentioned that Elincia or Pelleas could help skipclear Bastian's chapter.

Edited August 12, 2010 by Ein Lanford

[Narga_Rocks]

He mentioned that Elincia or Pelleas could help skipclear Bastian's chapter.

Yeah, I was confusing his post with Cynthia's.

[Zkirsche]

On a side note, Kirsche, while Pelleas can help skipclear 4-5, his accuracy is iffy, and Bastian one-ups him in that regard.

It's not bad enougth for it to be a problem. A 15/1 Pelleas with fenrir (a rather neglected pelleas, too) has 121 hit, which is ~85 displayed vs dragon for dragon foe. And with 55 atk he cleanly ORKO's dragon with dragonfoe, which is the only situation he'd be needed for. If he misses, you always have reyson, so...

[Shadow Mir]

It's not bad enougth for it to be a problem. A 15/1 Pelleas with fenrir (a rather neglected pelleas, too) has 121 hit, which is ~85 displayed vs dragon for dragon foe. And with 55 atk he cleanly ORKO's dragon with dragonfoe, which is the only situation he'd be needed for. If he misses, you always have reyson, so...

The chance that Izuka summons a dragon is small, so that's not the best argument to bolster Pelleas's case.

[Narga_Rocks]

It's not bad enougth for it to be a problem. A 15/1 Pelleas with fenrir (a rather neglected pelleas, too) has 121 hit, which is ~85 displayed vs dragon for dragon foe. And with 55 atk he cleanly ORKO's dragon with dragonfoe, which is the only situation he'd be needed for. If he misses, you always have reyson, so...

Um, Tibarn's stars? Base Pelleas has 134 hit.

20 x 2 + 14 = 54. 54 + 20 + 60 = 134 hit. At equal bios, the worst he does is 95 listed (assuming Vykan remembered Izuka's stars). Pelleas only goes down to bad at worst, so even against a dragon at best bio, 80 -> 92.2%. ~85% chance to ORKO. ~99.4% to cause at least half damage. And I'd assume the chance of hitting at least twice in four attacks is well over 90. And that's the worst it gets since that Pelleas got no levels whatsoever in 4-2.

However, how often is Izuka protected by a dragon? Bastian going after a tiger with Meteor seems more commonly useful.

[Interceptor]

You totally should have used an image, too.

I very nearly MSPaint'ed a quick trophy in the shape of a wheelbarrow, but decided not to go overboard with it.

As for dondon's arguments, I believe Interceptor said what I would have well enough, specifically point #3.

Your backhanded comments/compliments never fail to warm my heart!

I'm not quite sure exactly how my playthrough is not as useful as backing up theorycrafting as yours, nflchamp's, Queen_Elincia's, or Colonel M's.

Well, considering that I did not even mention any of those other playthroughs, and also that I gave three specific "flaws" of yours (with respect to usefulness in tiering), I'm not sure what on earth you're talking about here. But since you brought it up: the other playlogs don't have those three issues to the extent that yours does. I can speak in detailed terms only about my own run, but I played it with the intention of highlighting some useful data for the tier list, rather than low-turning (in other words, some strategies were discarded if they were chancy).

Like I said earlier, "reality" is only a set of strategies used by players who never had any incentives to try anything else. The only reason why 0% strategies aren't "reality" is because they're novel, because I'm sure that you can attest to their effectiveness.

"Reality" is what happens over an infinite number of imaginary playthroughs with a hypothetical tier player, the specifics of which are defined as closely as possible by the actual people participating in the discussion. You represent a slice of that, a moment.

You like to accuse me of RNG manipulation, but I do carefully detail an analysis of every risky situation, every chance of death, and every necessary sequence of procs. [...] Sometimes, I have contingency plans in case an attack does miss, and other times, I don't even need all attacks to hit in the first place.

The fact that you carefully document your RNG-manipulations and/or have occasional contingency plans doesn't really address my core point at all, which was that you're trivializing things that should be discussed. It does not help to throw out absurd scenarios like a super-paranoid turtle player that demands 100% success, when in reality what happens is that runs generally just degrade into slower completions.

These strategies are only narrow because there are no growths to buffer them.

Growths factor into it heavily (that's why point #1 existed), but there are other reasons for narrowness in strategy, such as your desire to get the absolute minimum possible turn count. I already talked about this in the FE9 tier list, and I'm sure that you saw the post even though you didn't reply to it.

Furthermore, why is it necessary that a strategy be broad in order to be considered? Is there a Threshold of Broadness that needs to be fulfilled for an argument to be taken with more than a grain of salt?

I don't remember saying that your playlog was worthless for consideration, I just said that it was limited in what it could inform, and I gave specific reasons why. You're free to disagree with my reasoning, naturally, but it doesn't do any good to characterize my position as something that it's not. There's no demand for 100% success, and it doesn't jettison all strategies below a magical unstated threshold.

Let me ask you this. Why are the specific results of other efficient runs being reflected in the tier list, but not mine? I am not interested in entertaining the possibility of X unit rising, or trying out viable resource allocation decisions. I am interested only in completing the game as fast as possible, with no casualties.

I disagree with the premise of your question. What makes you think that the results from yours will not be considered? If nothing else, you've strengthened the arguments for Haar to go up, for healers going down, for Raisin to be repositioned, etc. You've also put meat on the idea that Zihark's contributions in Part 1 are limited, just to dash off an easy few points.

Besides that, information about this game has been floating around for about three and a half years. In other words, you are late to the party with this run, there is very little under the sun that is new and undiscovered, so potential tectonic changes seem unlikely without an equally earthshaking philosophical shift.

So what's the problem? The goals for your run are different than that of the tier list, so it should come as no surprise that the conclusions that can be drawn from it are limited.

[Florete]

Your backhanded comments/compliments never fail to warm my heart!

:/ Let me change that: I do believe Interceptor said what I would have enthusiastically and amazingly with chivalrous elegance. I do not know if that made sense.

[Narga_Rocks]

:/ Let me change that: I do believe Interceptor said what I would have enthusiastically and amazingly with chivalrous elegance. I do not know if that made sense.

Well, sometimes you say stuff like "Person A said that better than I could" or things like that. This time you chose "well enough".

I do kinda think he went overboard, though. I'm assuming he was serious about it, due to the lack of smileys.

[Florete]

Well, sometimes you say stuff like "Person A said that better than I could" or things like that. This time you chose "well enough".

My exact words in these scenarios are more subconscious than purposeful, though I will say that what Interceptor had posted wasn't exactly what I had in mind but gave the same idea, so "well enough" was my initial reaction. I'm not saying it was better or worse, though the fact that I didn't even have anything to add should say something. I definitely did not mean it as a "backhanded compliment," but I feel like Interceptor was just playing around anyway, which is why I responded as I did.

[RNG Princess]

Um, Tibarn's stars? Base Pelleas has 134 hit.

20 x 2 + 14 = 54. 54 + 20 + 60 = 134 hit. At equal bios, the worst he does is 95 listed (assuming Vykan remembered Izuka's stars). Pelleas only goes down to bad at worst, so even against a dragon at best bio, 80 -> 92.2%. ~85% chance to ORKO. ~99.4% to cause at least half damage. And I'd assume the chance of hitting at least twice in four attacks is well over 90. And that's the worst it gets since that Pelleas got no levels whatsoever in 4-2.

However, how often is Izuka protected by a dragon? Bastian going after a tiger with Meteor seems more commonly useful.

I feel like the calculation on Pelleas is wrong, or maybe my Pelleas had worst birhythm. I do remember him having 70-ish% hit on a dragon. Wish I had a back-up file just to check.

Edited August 12, 2010 by Queen_Elincia

[Interceptor]

I'm assuming he was serious about it, due to the lack of smileys.

I avoid smileys except in rare situations. They tend to undermine my rhetorical style, as you might expect.

For ye of challenged sarcasm detection, I was only kidding. I was not implying that Red Fox was a cold-hearted shrew that leaves a trail of broken men and shattered dreams in her wake, nor am I currently in a fetal position with a newly-acquired inferiority complex. You can tell this by the fact that I intentionally did not quote a legitimately nice thing that she said, and also by how she's playing along like a good sport, complete with over-the-top word embroidery on her part.

This lesson in modern societal norms has been sponsored by NBC, Frosted Flakes, and the Council for Tone Doesn't Transmit Well Over the Internet.

Edited August 12, 2010 by Interceptor

[Zkirsche]

Um, Tibarn's stars? Base Pelleas has 134 hit.

20 x 2 + 14 = 54. 54 + 20 + 60 = 134 hit. At equal bios, the worst he does is 95 listed (assuming Vykan remembered Izuka's stars). Pelleas only goes down to bad at worst, so even against a dragon at best bio, 80 -> 92.2%. ~85% chance to ORKO. ~99.4% to cause at least half damage. And I'd assume the chance of hitting at least twice in four attacks is well over 90. And that's the worst it gets since that Pelleas got no levels whatsoever in 4-2.

However, how often is Izuka protected by a dragon? Bastian going after a tiger with Meteor seems more commonly useful.

Huh, I thought I included those >_>. Whoops. In any case, it only strengthens teh argument and makes it better for a birdfoe + reyson fenrir or something like that.

In any case, Elincia is better under any circumstances with 100% hit rates and 100% chance to kill.

[Anouleth]

I avoid smileys except in rare situations. They tend to undermine my rhetorical style, as you might expect.

Even the facepalm?

Oh, and as for 4-5, Tigers can spawn with 22AS iirc, so Bastian cannot alway deal with them on his own. I mean, I had Janaff and Ulki in Hawk Army, so I didn't care, but not everyone would put all their eggs in one team, especially a team like Hawk Army.

Edited August 13, 2010 by Slowking

[General Banzai]

His playthrough is continuous. Check out his 1-8 and 1-E. If you think that you can do better while burning more grass than he did, be my guest. Trust me, if you don't suck you won't have grass problems in 3-6.

It would help if you weren't under the delusion that in an efficient playthrough of HM units will come anywhere near 20/20/20. Also it would help if you focused on what units do to enemies rather than minor statistical advantages. Like, say unit A ORKOs and unit B ORKOs, but unit A causes 60 damage and unit B causes 50 damage. Do we care? No. They both ORKO. Ike's level "issues" aren't actually going to be a problem.

"Efficient". You say it as though this game has a tactics rank. Since it doesn't I see no need to beat chapters at speedrun-like speeds. I mean, if you gain more experience taking more time on chapters, then why not do that? I mean, ranks are stupid in the games that actuall have them (FE7), and there's absolutely no need to act as though there are ranks in a game that doesn't have them. And don't say "Oh, but I don't want to waste an extra half-hour of my life killing all the enemies on the map", because if you're on an internet forum arguing over minute details of characters in a single player RPG that can for the most part be cleared with whatever units are used, you can spend the extra time. Most of you have probably beaten the game upwards of three or four times anyways.

Okay, so Ike does the same amount of stuff that Haar does, only Haar flies. Yet Ike is better than Haar because...?

[dondon151]

"Efficient". You say it as though this game has a tactics rank.

Uh, you need to have some premise to judge units by. If efficiency didn't matter, then there would be no point in a tier list. Jarod abuse up all of your part 1 units and you'd have a bunch of godstompers in part 3 if you were willing to spend a couple hundred turns on 1-E.

[nflchamp]

For ye of challenged sarcasm detection, I was only kidding.

You mean for Narga. You don't need to sugarcoat this, Int. We all know that he's the main target. (Though he swears he's better in real life.)

As for the discussions at hand, I doubt Pelleas can even hit 15 by 4-5. Moreover, I don't know why I'd throw a crown at him. He's going at basically base. This is a problem as even with 26 MAG and Dragonfoe, he's only got 53MT effective on a dragon w/ Fenrir. 53MT - 18RES = 35 damage a pop. Dragon's float right around 70 HP. He's got chances of missing a ORKO if he's unlucky and a dragon procs 71 HP. He misses 26 MAG and his chances of being able to ORKO are pretty much as good as gone. I'm doubting the chances of a 68 HP dragon coming around. 24 MAG Pelleas can't do anything, that's all there is to it. 66 HP dragon ain't happening.

And catching this before I post the original time.

"Efficient". You say it as though this game has a tactics rank. Since it doesn't I see no need to beat chapters at speedrun-like speeds.

Well, any argument you make here will be ignored. This list is based on efficiency. Don't like it? Write up your own rules and make your own list. Be prepared to defend both (your rules and list).

EDIT: Not that "efficiency" and "speedruns" are synonymous in the first place.

Edited August 13, 2010 by nflchamp

[General Banzai]

I fail to see how being "efficient" is necessary at all. But if that's the way you're gonna play, then so be it.

[Florete]

I fail to see how being "efficient" is necessary at all. But if that's the way you're gonna play, then so be it.

How do you suggest we rank characters, then? What would your ideal terms be?

Not that it will matter. If you didn't notice, we've been doing things our preferred way for 20 months and 6,000 posts. Don't think you can come in here and tell us we aren't doing it right.