OMG it's a tier list

[Florete]

Alright, well I know the Hawk thing is being worked on and... we still need to see Naesala. Let's just start with Naesala > both Aran and Boyd, then we can see how this works. Anyone with me on this? I can whip out an argument as well.

Naesala > Boyd is already displayed on the list.

[OrangeCrush980]

Hawks need to move down. They have to eat grass constantly and have sucky offense even when transformed, not to mention they have to worry about crossbows one-shotting them with high hit nonetheless.

[Colonel M]

Hawks need to move down. They have to eat grass constantly and have sucky offense even when transformed, not to mention they have to worry about crossbows one-shotting them with high hit nonetheless.

This isn't FE9: they actually have good offense and durability. Yes the gauge is an issue, but it's probably the only issue they have (and jointime).

[Florete]

Hawks need to move down. They have to eat grass constantly and have sucky offense even when transformed, not to mention they have to worry about crossbows one-shotting them with high hit nonetheless.

Join the discussion, pal. Hawks have been the focus for quite some time now.

Oh, and a wtf at them having sucky offense.

[Interceptor]

Responding to over 9000 people in this post.

I think that's partly my fault, sorry. Plus mine are like the longest things there.

Don't apologize, your arguments are very good in general and the posts were mostly interesting to read (it got tedious though when the same point gets rehashed half a dozen times, though it takes two to misunderstand tango). I very nearly sigged "Since her opportunity cost is higher than her benefit, she is a net negative. ie: Caramilk. Heck, if Gatrie is Doritos then I don't think she'd even rank as high as Junior Mints".

It's just that I have a limited amount of mental bandwidth that I'm willing to dedicate to an argument thread on the Interbutts, so me reading = not posting. This is one of the many reasons that I refuse to debate individuals.

So hopefully no one will argue that point.

I will go apeshit on the first person who even suggests that Boyd can't get a Killer Axe for minimal cost. That's not a dare, that's a warning.

The problem about Boyd is that he's outclassed by basically every other frontliner in the GMs. "oh look if you do this and this. boyd's good" no wait, if you do this and this, the other GMs are even better.

For the love of Ashera, smash, stop wasting everyone's time by refuting arguments that nobody ever made. Of the eight plausible fighters that Boyd is up against in the base GMs, six of them are already over his head in different tiers, and the two beneath him are Rofl and Soren, the first of whom needs no explanation at all, and the second who is a lot worse and/or drains more resources than you are giving him credit for.

By the way, I'm going to be an asshole and copy your posting style for two paragraphs, because 1) I'm too lazy to find the original post and 2) I'd like to (once again) show you how irritating it is:

Zihark having Adept in Part 3 is stupid, and the DB having Adept in Part 3 is only marginally less stupid than that.

"but i had adept on zeeharks in the swamp and he didn't die and he was doing sumthing every player phaze and my toes are cold"

First of all, PEMN. Second of all, DB's 3-4 chapters has a huge gap to cross, called "9 GM chapters". Thirdly, PEMN. Fourth, being able to use this skill on Enemy Phase outside of 3-12 is actually pretty important for the argument, since I can slap Adept on Laura and have her use it on Player Phase without dying. Whoop-dee-doo, call someone who cares.

Also, on another subject, I have a dim memory of being slightly impressed with your rundown of DB expenses, because it was 120% better than your last attempt that had them buying a bunch of shit because it was "nice to have". You're still making noobshit mistakes like forgetting about chest gold, forgetting that Aran/Taur/Fiona come with javelins, that Jill comes with a Hand Axe, failed to account for the multiude of sellables, and I think that you were buying more stuff that we'll actually use in a reasonable playthrough, but that doesn't detract from the basic point that you did better this time, especially seeing as some of those things may have actually been mentioned but I forgot about them because I skimmed. Bravo etc.

EDIT: also dropped was the "let's buy superfluous silver weapons for everyone in the DB", which is another thumbs-up.

Vykan already touched on this, but laguz in particular (Ulki, Volug, Ranulf) want Adept because generally their attacks aren't backed up with mastery skills for awhile. The 3 that I listed, and the last 2 in particular, have a bit of trouble getting to level 30 for a Satori Sign.

Doesn't matter two shits if a unit wants something, what matters is what they do with it with respect to how it helps complete the game efficiently. In addition to Ranulf's gauge and Volug's availibility complicating matters for them, lets not lose sight of the fact that there are three goddamn Adepts in this game.

Alright, well I know the Hawk thing is being worked on and... we still need to see Naesala. Let's just start with Naesala > both Aran and Boyd, then we can see how this works. Anyone with me on this? I can whip out an argument as well.

I'm not with you, I think that there are enough balls in the air already.

Edited July 13, 2009 by Interceptor

[Narga_Rocks]

This isn't FE9: they actually have good offense and durability. Yes the gauge is an issue, but it's probably the only issue they have (and jointime).

Well, that and no two range. But if it wasn't for gauge then no two range would've been minor, so it still comes down to gauge, I guess.

copying from last page:

Okay, so Hawks > Gatrie:

Vykan

Dondon

Kirsche

Master Gordin

+ others that haven't rung in (undoubtedly).

For Gatrie > Hawks:

Int (maybe)

Colonel M. (brought it up back on page 74, post number 1468, maybe before, but that's as far back as I'll go)

Me

Joshybear25

Stephen_Glass

+ hopefully others as well.

(I wonder if I should include Stephen_Glass, though, considering I don't even want to taint this post with the words.)

(looks like 5 - 4 for Gatrie, though maybe more like 4-3 for the hawks)

Compromise:

Janaff > Gatrie > Ulki

1 vote: smash, though with conditions.

2 sorta votes, kirsche and Colonel M, though both sound like they prefer the vote listed above.

Edited July 13, 2009 by Narga_Rocks

[Interceptor]

I am OK with "Janaff > Gatrie > Ulki" since it's better than the other argument, but I'm still of the position that everyone in this thread has failed to prove that the Hawks are matching or beating the 50-60% threshold that I threw out there, so ultimately Gatrie's better than the both of them in the longer term.

No argument from me that the hawks aren't arguably beating him in their shared chapters, or that they'd be better overall if Part 4 was perhaps a dozen chapters long instead of just 2 + Endgame, but the fact of the matter is that a 6 chapter lead is a lot when that's half of the hawks overall avail. Bridge too far, in my opinion. They are not Ikes or Raisins, they are powerful units with significant flaws.

[Florete]

I'm making it Janaff > Gatrie > Ulki. Unless anyone is in major disagreement (like, you'll have to cut yourself major), can we move on to another subject? I've had a few things I wanted to bring up for a while now, but didn't for obvious reasons.

Edited July 13, 2009 by Red Fox of Fire

[-Cynthia-]

I'm making it Janaff > Gatrie > Ulki. Unless anyone is in major disagreement (like, you'll have to cut yourself major), can we move on to another subject? I've had a few things I wanted to bring up for a while now, but didn't for obvious reasons.

I'm fine with this.

On the Naesala issue, this ends up turning into a lot of weird comparisons, since Naesala's beating everyone (Nephenee not as much I guess) around him pretty handily for the time he's around, so it ends up becoming a discussion of how relatively useful character x is pre-Part 4 which is a drag.

Edited July 13, 2009 by -Cynthia-

[Progenitus]

While there are others with better durability or offence, I think the idea is he doesn't hurt us while we are getting him to be good (unlike, say, Rolf). I still think without a speedwing at some point though he won't ever be doubling much. So that's an issue. Plus he probably needs paragon at least once even with a wing, which is a minor issue but definitely not zero cost. And Nolan is likely being raised because there is no reason not to.

I see him being a roughly neutral utility unit at best in part 3, and then for him to be any good in part 4 he needs speedwings + paragon (that's quite a bit of favoritism to throw at him), so basically he's roughly neutral utility in part 4 too.

How is this upper mid tier material at all?

But once you can get him doubling he has really good might and decent concrete durability and 7 move. It is nice to have 40 str, 68 hp, 30 def all at level 20/15. That's 5HKOd by 44 to 46 mt. 4HKOd by 47 to 52 mt. 3HKOd by 53 to 63 mt. Better than most other doubling units. 6HKO or better by <= 43 mt. Pretty good, depending on what part of endgame he gets to that level.

The problem is that he actually has to REACH the ability to double. You yourself said he'll need a speedwing AND a chapter of paragon.

For the love of Ashera, smash, stop wasting everyone's time by refuting arguments that nobody ever made.

You stupid idiot, did you forget you posted this?

I am still reading this ridiculous thread, which is gaining pages faster than I can reach the end, so I don't know if this has been replied to yet, but don't wait on me. I'll argue him back up later if it's warranted. My philosophy on tier lists is that they exist for the purpose of arguing as much as they do for ranking, so I don't mind pointing out (again) that Boyd is a capable walling unit with fairly respectable offense given what he has available to him: Bonds, forges, average MV, self-healing via Concotions, workable concrete durability, possibility of a support with his brother, a nice 1-2 game when that materializes, etc. God only knows when that'll happen, since following this thread is now a full-time job, but c'est la vie.

The whole point is that you're cutting corners and doing stupid crap to make it seem like Boyd's a goodunit, when you can just do the same things for the others and they end up better.

Of the eight plausible fighters that Boyd is up against in the base GMs, six of them are already over his head in different tiers, and the two beneath him are Rofl and Soren, the first of whom needs no explanation at all, and the second who is a lot worse and/or drains more resources than you are giving him credit for.

So you're telling me that since Boyd is the 7th best fighter out of 9 possible in 3-P, he's "good"? That's all that'll really come out of this argument, since Boyd really should not be in upper mid tier at all.

By the way, I'm going to be an asshole and copy your posting style for two paragraphs, because 1) I'm too lazy to find the original post and 2) I'd like to (once again) show you how irritating it is:

Zihark having Adept in Part 3 is stupid, and the DB having Adept in Part 3 is only marginally less stupid than that.

"but i had adept on zeeharks in the swamp and he didn't die and he was doing sumthing every player phaze and my toes are cold"

First of all, PEMN. Second of all, DB's 3-4 chapters has a huge gap to cross, called "9 GM chapters". Thirdly, PEMN. Fourth, being able to use this skill on Enemy Phase outside of 3-12 is actually pretty important for the argument, since I can slap Adept on Laura and have her use it on Player Phase without dying. Whoop-dee-doo, call someone who cares.

Well, you see Int, the differences between Zihark using adept and some random GM using adept is that...

1) Zihark doubles, while a huge majority of the GMs don't (an argument you love to use to justify Mia getting adept), and the GMs get a second adept by 3-11 anyway in case you want to give it to a hawk/Ranulf.

2) It's innate on Zihark, which is really cool when part 4 comes around and we have a billion skills to work with and take advantage of that extra capacity Zihark has (we have, like, 2 resolves, 3 paragons, 3 wraths, 2 cancels, celerity, beastfoe/dragonfoe, and a bunch of other stuff, and things like howl/shade/etc. for the laguz/magic users so they aren't serious competition for the real skills, plus 2 other adepts to give to other characters. The chances that ONE skill isn't free for Zihark to take with no drawback to the team is basically 0, even the stupid ones like corrosion).

3) The DB actually need the extra offense in part 3, because the DB only have like 3-4 main fighters (pick and choose out of Volug/Nolan/Aran/Zihark/Jill) with Sothe doing some things. Micaiah and Laura can potshot, but Laura's god awful at it (liek, sub-20 att ftl), and these two really should be on healing duty anyway. This means that you can't just field random noobs to weaken crap just because you can, so every fighter really counts.

The GMs, on the other hand, have more good units than you can reasonably train (Ike/Haar/Titania/Gatrie/Shinon/Mordy/Ulki/Janaff/Ranulf/Oscar/Mia, and then we get to the upper mid/mid tierish units like Neph/Boyd/Soren who are STILL usable, and then fucking Reyson who can give four guys another action). That's more than 10 good units, WITH Reyson, and several more usable units, including some that I can't be bothered to list. The GMs only really have the resources to train ~7 guys including Ike (unless you like having tier 2 GMs in part 4), and the unit slots to field them, which means we can field like 5 guys just for the sole purpose of weakening things so that the rest of the team can get the kill, lessening the need for

"pray on adept so my guy can one round".

The GM's don't need to have 10 fucking fighters available ready to one round the entire map and never die when the DB are struggling to 3 round tigers and getting 2-3 rounded in return. Have you even looked at tiger stats? They're like fucking GM bosses. They rape the shit out of the jokes like loladins you find in several GM chapters or wimpy steel lance dumbasses that do single digit damage to people or geniuses like steel poleaxe enemies that never hit anyone. Why do the GMs need the extra resources when their enemies are complete jokes compared to tigers?

Now before you strawman (you love that), I'm not saying performance doesn't matter in the GMs, since we can still tier GMs based on how hard they rape. GM chapters is kinda like a slightly harder version of FE9; even though you can generally make any random team to win, we can still tier units based on their performances.

Also, on another subject, I have a dim memory of being slightly impressed with your rundown of DB expenses, because it was 120% better than your last attempt that had them buying a bunch of shit because it was "nice to have". You're still making noobshit mistakes like forgetting about chest gold,

There's a grand total of 1 chest that has gold, which is in 1-4 and has an amazing 3000 gold.

It's enough for a forge or two. That's it.

forgetting that Aran/Taur/Fiona come with javelins, that Jill comes with a Hand Axe,

Oh no I didn't account for a bunch of 600 gold weapons, that'll clearly make a dent in the 39000 gold pool of items that the DB want or whatever the fuck it was.

failed to account for the multiude of sellables,

You mean shit like the gems and fortune which, against the person I was arguing against, was BEING SHIPPED TO THE GMS?

and I think that you were buying more stuff that we'll actually use in a reasonable playthrough,

Considering your "reasonable playthrough" generally consists of "let's sandbag the fuck out of the DB", no one really cares of what your idea of a "reasonable playthrough" is.

Plus, my gold count didn't even include things like forges. It was just things from fucking Aimee's bargains.

And the whole point of my gold count wasn't that the DB are buying everything they can, but it's retarded to ship everything to the GMs. The person I was arguing against was shipping over things like two gems, fortune, two forged tomes, and a bunch of other stuff, AND threw a master seal on Ilyana. That's a lot of crap to be sending over. For starters, why the tomes/seal on Ilyana?

[charmander6000]

Naesala is hard to rank, but let's take a look at how badly he kills everyone in his chapters.

4-P: ORKO everything except 3 Generals and Yuma

4-3: ORKO almost everything, generals, dragonmasters and a handful of other units survive

E-1: ORKO most non-generals, though most enemies are gens, even with SS strike he can't ORKO them (to put this into perspective Tibarn is borderline and will fail against most of them)

E-2: Depends if he has SS strike then as it will be a major factor in ORKO and 2RKO

E-3: 2RKO everything except Big D

E-4: ORKO everything except Sephiran

E-5: Kills all spirits and 2RKO non-defensetile Auras

Also Tear occurs about 64% of the time which means auto-OHKO.

[Narga_Rocks]

I'm making it Janaff > Gatrie > Ulki. Unless anyone is in major disagreement (like, you'll have to cut yourself major), can we move on to another subject? I've had a few things I wanted to bring up for a while now, but didn't for obvious reasons.

Wow, have to cut myself major. That's...pretty major. I'm definitely not feeling that into the Gatrie thing.

So, since I lack things to talk about what are your things?

On the Naesala issue, this ends up turning into a lot of weird comparisons, since Naesala's beating everyone (Nephenee not as much I guess) around him pretty handily for the time he's around, so it ends up becoming a discussion of how relatively useful character x is pre-Part 4 which is a drag.

Naesala is currently immediately under Aran. His part 3 usefulness comes down to what level he can achieve in part 1 before sealing. At 20/1 with A not Edward/Leo, he has 32.5 hp and 23 def and 15.55 spd with little no hope of bexping speed in part 1, and giving a guy with bad endgame that isn't a forced deployment a seraph robe seems silly. So at this point he is borderline on being 3HKOd by 39mt tigers. He is also doubled by cats so he takes 16 damage from tigers, and also 16 damage from 31 mt cats (12 from 29 mt cats). There are so few 22/24 or 27 mt cats or 32/34 mt tigers that they shouldn't matter.

So he is borderline (as in good chance of not getting there) 3RKOd by ~half the map, 2HKOd by the 41mt tigers, and 3RKOd by 29 mt cats anyway.

If he misses even 1 hp or 1 def point he starts 2RKOd by everything and is just like almost everybody else that matters or worse, and there are no special weapons he can use aside from forged steel lance.

A few kills into the chapter he's doing better, and might reach 3RKOd by more things, though.

For 3-13 there are enough 41 mt tigers for it to matter, and he needs 20/4 with his A support to get 34 HP and 25 def to get 3RKOd (by most things, since cats continue to double and 31 mt cats do 12 damage a round.)

So, if we were to say he'll get to level 15 before sealing, then he's looking at needing 15/6 during 3-6 to be different, which isn't happening during 3-6. And he needs 15/9 for 3-13, which wouldn't happen until late in that chapter.

Basically, he isn't doing anything Ed can't do if Aran is sealed at level 15, and is doing something only Volug and crowned Tauroneo and eventually Nolan can do if he reaches level 20 in part 1.

Huge disparity between the two Aran's, so if people don't think he can reach at least level 18 before part 1 ends then I don't see how Aran > Naesala can even be remotely justified.

Especially since depending on level he's mostly 3RKOd in part 1, and isn't exactly special. He can be 2 rounded by some enemies, though not many. He can get to 4RKOd if you over-level him and/or give him stat boosters that go to waste in part 4 unless you field him, but what's the point?

So to be > Naesala, he needs to be 3RKOd in part 3 otherwise he's pointless. I don't think he's getting to a high enough level to be 3RKOd.

For starters, why the tomes/seal on Ilyana?

Well, if you want Ilyana to have good potshots in part 1, she needs a forge. Otherwise she has too much of a miss chance and has a 3 mt weapon, or 5 mt for -5 hit. Once you've already made a thunder forge, and since it'll likely have over 20 uses left, why make another one in part 3? Now, you might ask why do we want a thunder forge, but that's just because Soren/Ilyana would like a way to smack the dragon masters hard enough for other units to be able to OHKO.

The fire forge? We can't forge fire in 3-2, just thunder and wind. I don't remember when we are suddenly able to forge fire again, but it isn't 3-2. So if Soren/Ilyana wants to do more damage against other enemies that aren't dragon masters then fire forge is stronger than wind forge, and cheaper if you are going with +3 mt on fire compared to +4 mt on wind, for example.

The seal? Well, that's only if you really want to bring 8 things. If you don't want to bring 8 things, no seal. Basically, some people like sending a bunch of stuff.

Oh, a couple of other things, you can forge a light tome for Laura in 1-E that she can use once she promotes, and it can be pretty good for any time she doesn't need to heal since it is really accurate already and the tigers have so little res. You can even send one to the gms for Rhys, though I wouldn't recommend it.

Also, don't forget coins. For one thing, if you aren't playing a transfer (and you hate transfers with a passion, for some reason) then the GMs can have 3 coins max for the forge fest in 3-2. That doesn't give very many chances for good stuff.

The DB can have a lot more. So if you run into a coin that would be really good for the gms but isn't as helpful for the dbs, then you can make the weapon in 1-E and send it along, too. Or considering you should have 10 coins in the db, unless you are forging more than 10 things for the db (I say more than 10 because coins come slowly, so a lot of forging happens in 1-4 or whatever without a coin) then there are probably a couple of cards left over. Again, send the forge to the gms.

Or even put coins in her slots. I'm not sure what it'll do to the pre set card list the game makes. I don't know if the list is the same whether the db is forging or the gms, or if they have two different lists. I know selling coins doesn't change the list or skip over something, but whatever. Sending a coin instead of a forge means the DB paid for less GM stuff, by the way, so you might approve of that idea. It isn't like the db can actually use these coins at all, since the coins are basically useless for them until part 4.

Now, including transfers on the other hand changes things a bit because there is much less point of sending coins along with Ilyana, or forges that aren't the thunder or fire tome. But you hate transfers, so that means sending whatever coins the db didn't use is a good thing.

I see him being a roughly neutral utility unit at best in part 3, and then for him to be any good in part 4 he needs speedwings + paragon (that's quite a bit of favoritism to throw at him), so basically he's roughly neutral utility in part 4 too.

How is this upper mid tier material at all?

Neutral at best? Neutral for the beginning, positive somewhere along the way, not sure what part of part 3.

Yes, 1 speedwing + one paragon chapter is quite a bit of favouritism. Thing is, how much favouritism paragon is depends on your team. It can go from minor favouritism to medium favouritism. 1 speedwing is also quite a bit of favouritism, unless of course you are using a bunch of people with overkill speed growths whose problems are strength based not speed based. On the other hand, if you are using the strong but slow party, then giving him a speedwing is a lot more favouritism.

I'd say given the possibilities he's not just roughly neutral in part 4, he's good. He's definitely upper mid, not particularly high in upper mid, but upper mid nevertheless.

The problem is that he actually has to REACH the ability to double. You yourself said he'll need a speedwing AND a chapter of paragon.

Yeah, but that shouldn't kick him out of upper mid, just keep him somewhat low in it. It isn't like half your endgamers aren't already getting paragon sometime. It's not free, not even remotely, but it doesn't cost more than a lot of other things a lot of other units need.

Mordecai needs stuff to be more than a part 2 tank.

Aran needs major kill feeding in part 1 or stat boosters to be good in part 3.

Naesala needs lots of attacks while getting little experience to reach SS (considering the exp he is preventing others from getting, isn't that similar to paragon stopping other units from getting more exp? Boyd can improve with fewer kills than Naesala will need).

Laura needs massive part 1 bexp and paragon to ever be anything more than a healbot, but I suppose people are likely putting her this high for healbotting alone.

Nephenee needs a fair amount of work to get anything spectacular out of her, but at least she can double without stat boosters and paragon, but still. She might be the odd person out in this list since a forge and a bit of part 2 bexp makes her double forever (except swordmasters) and 3HKO stuff.

Oscar doesn't double in part 3 and doesn't even do much in the way of damage, unless you take the crown from someone else. Come part 4, he's looking at low str if you crowned him, or actual str if you bexp abused. So he can be pretty good there, except for his 32 spd cap and starting tier 3 at 26.

I'm never saying anything bad about Jill just in case people use it to try to bring her down, so I'll stop here.

Well, except to say Ranulf has a lot of drawbacks, too, like gauge and needing stuff others could use better/equally to ORKO anyway.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying that he should be above any of them (except Aran), just that they all have their drawbacks, too. Boyd's drawbacks do not kick him out of upper mid.

(I lack things to talk about, oops. Well, then other people posted)

edited things about Neph.

Edited July 14, 2009 by Narga_Rocks

[-Cynthia-]

I'll agree with Naesala>Aran. Naesala> Laura or Micaiah is trickier because they have unique utility in Parts 1 and 3 (staves and Thani).

[_____]

And now for something completely different.

I think that either Mist could stand to drop or Rhys could move up. The gap shouldn't be that big.

In 3-1, since 3-P is lololol...

Level 1 Mist (Florete):28 HP, 7 Def, 22 ATK, 15 AS, 137 Hit, 46 Avoid, lolcrit, loldodge

Level 3 Rhys (Ellight): 27 HP, 7 Def, 28 ATK, 14 AS, 148 Hit, 49 Avoid, lolcrit, loldodge

So, let's see how they fare against enemies.

Both are ORKO'd by both types of Warriors with 59 hit and 62 hit against them, respectively. Mist 5RKOs the weaker one, while 6RKOing the stronger one, while Rhys 2RKOs the weaker one, and 3RKOs the stronger one.

Again, both are ORKO'd by all Halberdiers. Against the most common Halberdier, Mist 9RKOs and Rhys 3RKOs.

Against the Swordmaster, both are ORKO'd (seeing a pattern?). Rhys 2RKOs and Mist 5RKOs.

Next are Sages. 1 of the three tink him, one double neither, and only does 1 damage to Rhys, and the one that actually has 18 AS (the amount needed to double Rhys, but not Mist), does 2 damage to him per round. All 4RKO Mist.

All Snipers 1RKO them, Rhys does more damage, etc.

It goes on like this for the entire chapter. Needless to say, Rhys is crushing Mist early on.

Later, Mist promotes and gets a horse, and now starts to beat Rhys, but how badly is he losing?

Mist is stuck on Ike's route, which means she has to sit through the 4-1 and 4-4, the latter being very cruel to mounted units.

I'll be nice and look at 4-1.

Level ??/20/1 Mist (A Rhys): 39 HP, 18 Defense, 25 Res, 81 Avoid

w/ Florette: 34 ATK, 182 Hit, 27 Crit

w/ Silver Blade: 36 ATK, 147 Hit, 12 Crit

Please keep in mind that Rhys has a 95(!)% chance to get a level of speed by ??/20/1. This is crucial, as it allows him to stop being doubled by every Halberdier, all Warriors, all Snipers, all Generals, and all Sages/Druids. Anything with 25 AS will no longer double Rhys, which is a fair amount of enemies. If you don't mind, I'll take that into account in my comparison.

Level ??/20/1 Rhys (A Mist): 37 HP, 16 Defense, 32 Res, 75 Avoid

w/ Ellight: 35 ATK, 180 Hit, 11 Crit

w/ Shine: 37 ATK, 175 Hit, 21 Crit

Let's agree to have Mist use Florette mainly, and Rhys use Shine, as I believe they are their best weapons.

Mist 2RKOs Halberdiers and is 3RKO'd in return. Rhys 3RKOs and is 3RKO'd in return. The strongest Halberdier 2RKOs Rhys and Mist.

The most common Warriors 2RKO both characters. Mist 4RKOs them, while Rhys 3RKOs them.

The Swordmaster 2RKOs Rhys and 3RKOs Mist. Mist 3RKOs and Rhys 2RKOs.

Both Snipers 3RKO Rhys and 3RKO Mist. The weaker Snipers are 3RKO'd by Mist and 2RKO'd by Rhys. The stronger ones are 4RKO'd by Mist and 3RKO'd by Rhys.

Mist doubles 9 of the 10 armors (but one has a Horseslayer); however, she still 4RKOs them, and she is 2RKO'd by the strongest ones, and 3RKO'd by the weaker ones. Rhys 3RKOs, like, all of them except the strongest, which he 4RKOs. He's 2RKO'd by all of them.

Falcon Knights rip Rhys apart, I won't argue that, but there's only 3 to start on the map.

lololmagesanddruids

lololbishops

So, Rhys crushes Mist offensively early on, while tying her in durability, and then loses only slightly to her (even winning against a few enemies like Warriors) compared to her later on.

You may mention "But Mist has a horse! She can heal people better!", and while it is true that she does have a horse, she can not fully utilize this in 6 of her 7 maps with a horse. In these maps, she only has 1 move on Rhys. Even in that one map, we have had 5 Physics available by this point, and Rhys can easily use one.

As a final note, I would like to say that I did not mention BEXP at all, which Rhys makes wonderful use of as he caps Magic and Res at 11/0. Speed is also his 2nd highest growth, tied with Luck and only beaten by HP, so his reliance on that very, very high 95% chance to get that speed in 4-1 will dissappear.

[Progenitus]

Narga, are you purposely sandbagging Aran or something?

Naesala is currently immediately under Aran. His part 3 usefulness comes down to what level he can achieve in part 1 before sealing. At 20/1 with A not Edward/Leo, he has 32.5 hp and 23 def and 15.55 spd with little no hope of bexping speed in part 1, and giving a guy with bad endgame that isn't a forced deployment a seraph robe seems silly. So at this point he is borderline on being 3HKOd by 39mt tigers. He is also doubled by cats so he takes 16 damage from tigers, and also 16 damage from 31 mt cats (12 from 29 mt cats). There are so few 22/24 or 27 mt cats or 32/34 mt tigers that they shouldn't matter.

So he is borderline (as in good chance of not getting there) 3RKOd by ~half the map, 2HKOd by the 41mt tigers, and 3RKOd by 29 mt cats anyway.

If he misses even 1 hp or 1 def point he starts 2RKOd by everything and is just like almost everybody else that matters or worse, and there are no special weapons he can use aside from forged steel lance.

A few kills into the chapter he's doing better, and might reach 3RKOd by more things, though.

So who's doing better? Volug? And Tauroneo when he joins in 3-13. That's basically it. No one else has the concrete durability to even come close to surviving 2 tigers unless we throw stat boosters around, and at the very least they're doing it way after Aran manages it.

Oh no if he's RNG screwed in HP or def he's getting 2HKO'd.

No wait, it doesn't matter, because guys like nolan and Jill need to be ridiculously RNG BLESSED to not get 2HKO'd.

So, if we were to say he'll get to level 15 before sealing, then he's looking at needing 15/6 during 3-6 to be different, which isn't happening during 3-6. And he needs 15/9 for 3-13, which wouldn't happen until late in that chapter.

lvl 15? wtf? That's only 1 level a chapter for him when he's getting 20-25 exp a kill and ~5 for hitting things. Are we training 8 guys or something, or are we doing stupid things like having Sothe solo the map, because that's the only way any DB unit is only gaining 1 level a chapter.

He should at like level 19 after part 1.

Especially since depending on level he's mostly 3RKOd in part 1, and isn't exactly special.

In 1-3, he's one of THREE guys who doesn't get OHKO'd or 2HKO'd by the entire map (the others being Nolan, and of course Sothe). Considering our next tank in line is a guy named Edward who doesn't even beat Aran's base def until tier 2, this is a laughable idea that Aran isn't "exactly special".

In 1-4 he has a significantly better chance of surviving 2 rounds from anything over anyone not named Sothe and Nolan. And before any fucktard says "but Edward tanks the same/better since both are getting 2HKO'd", Edward has basically a 0% chance of surviving 2 hits from anything in this chapter no matter what you throw at him. Aran is generally losing ~50% of his HP from the laguz at base level, which means gaining a single level from 1-3, and eventually leveling up during the chapter, can vastly improve his performance.

By 1-7 he should be at least 4HKO'd by a majority of enemies, since at 14/0 with B Laura he has 27.5 HP, 16.9 def. You need ~26 att to 3HKO, which is a bit high, and he's still doing better than a lot of other people anyway. A guy like level 17 Jill with a C support has ~25.5 HP, 15 def, which means only ~23.5 att is needed to 3HKO, ~27.75 att to 2HKO.

By 1-E his durability is pretty ridiculous. 29-30 HP and at least 20 def. Half the myrmidons don't even damage him anymore, which is laughable because one of the myrms is a 20 att killing edge, which means a unit like Jill is losing like 12 out of her 27ish HP if it crits. Steel axe fighters have issues 3HKOing him, which is scary because these same fighters are likely 2HKOing Jill/Zihark/Tormod and come really close to Sothe/Nolan. Then we have things like 24 att javelin soldiers that do like 4 damage to Aran, and at that point it becomes a "whocares-HKO", but like 10+ to Zihark/Tormod/etc., which leaves them with single digit HP after 3 hits.

so yeah, wtfrofl @ thinking he's not "exactly special".

I personally don't mind if Naesala is moved above Aran, but seriously, stop sandbagging him. We already have people like Int who hate him for no reason.

Mordecai needs stuff to be more than a part 2 tank.

Aran needs major kill feeding in part 1 or stat boosters to be good in part 3.

Naesala needs lots of attacks while getting little experience to reach SS (considering the exp he is preventing others from getting, isn't that similar to paragon stopping other units from getting more exp? Boyd can improve with fewer kills than Naesala will need).

Laura needs massive part 1 bexp and paragon to ever be anything more than a healbot, but I suppose people are likely putting her this high for healbotting alone.

Nephenee needs a fair amount of work to get anything spectacular out of her, but at least she can double without stat boosters and paragon, but still. She might be the odd person out in this list since a forge and a bit of part 2 bexp makes her double forever (except swordmasters) and 3HKO stuff.

Oscar doesn't double in part 3 and doesn't even do much in the way of damage, unless you take the crown from someone else. Come part 4, he's looking at low str if you crowned him, or actual str if you bexp abused. So he can be pretty good there, except for his 32 spd cap and starting tier 3 at 26.

I'm never saying anything bad about Jill just in case people use it to try to bring her down, so I'll stop here.

Well, except to say Ranulf has a lot of drawbacks, too, like gauge and needing stuff others could use better/equally to ORKO anyway.

The difference between these units you listed and Boyd is that they have other uses that don't depend on "man I need a lot of favoritism on me or else I'm pointless."

Mordy can obviously make himself useful as a tank. Hell, at base level, steel poleaxe warriors in 4-P have issues 3rounding him, and that's WITH them doubling him. liek, half the paladins in 4-P don't even break double digit damage on him, and that's assuming they actually double him, which is not always happening because they have 21-22 AS with a *few* at 23 (srsly, stop failing loladins). Which means you can pretty much use him as a filler tank anytime you want, and if you ever use him as a serious unit you can expect massive rapage from just throwing resolve on him.

Naesala doesn't even really need SS Strike. His tear activation rate is already uber (60+ at neutral bio). And he has stuff like formshift/flying/canto.

A person like Oscar DOES double (just doubles the slow enemies, but at least he doubles some things, unlike boyd, who has serious issues doubling the slowest generals in part 3 even after we throw a speedwing on him). Throw on top of that earth affinity for massive avoid and canto.

And so on.

I don't see how Boyd ISN'T a step below these people.

As for the guy doing Mist vs Rhys...

You're seriously overestimating their level. 20/20/1 at 4-1? Wut? Our guys like Boyd have trouble reaching that, and Mist/Rhys start at a much lower level. Rhys, in fact, would need 1.64 levels per chapter. That's 14 mends. That's a ridiculous amount. Even once physics can be stolen, that's 7 physics a chapter, which means within 2 chapters your physic is almost broken.

They're most likely tier 2 entering part 4. Of course, Mist has the advantage in having her own promo item, while Rhys would need to take a crown. This really sucks for Rhys because he now has a significantly lower chance of having 22 spd (hell, he probably won't even break 20. Healing doesn't give much exp, after all) unless he takes a crown, while Mist is still not going to get doubled. Of course she's never doubling, but then again her offense is crap anyway even if she could, and she's much better off healing anyway. But at least she's dying far less often than Rhys, which is a big reason why she's much higher than him, since Rhys' offense, while better, is still pretty awful.

Of course she starts off a lot worse than him in part 3 since she's also getting doubled and she hits for like 15-20 less damage, but that lasts for a much shorter time than she beats him (where she doesn't get doubled and Rhys still does).

And then you also sandbagged Mist's affinity advantage by having them support each other. Why would two healers support each other? You're usually branching your team off into smaller groups, so if you keep both healers in one team that means one of the groups doesn't get a healer.

Also, Rhys isn't that good at BEXPing. Even after capping mag/res, lck is his highest growth by far, and then his HP/skl/spd are roughly equal, and he still has str and def (def being the lowest), so he might have like a 50% chance to get spd rather than 35% or something, and maybe a 25-30% chance of getting def instead of 20%. That doesn't really do much. He's still slow as molasses, and his HP/def have a huge hole to climb out of due to the fact that his bases are awful.

[Interceptor]

[...]did you forget you posted this? [...] The whole point is that you're cutting corners and doing stupid crap to make it seem like Boyd's a goodunit, when you can just do the same things for the others and they end up better.

Negative, I did not forget. What happened here is that as usual, you saw what you wanted to counter, rather than what was actually there. What I posted was just a preview of the points that I would make, it was not a proper argument. None of what I posted was saying that Boyd was better than his peers, it was just a listing of various facts about him. You extrapolated from that and assumed that I was making Boyd out to be a "good unit", whatever that is. The error is yours.

So you're telling me that since Boyd is the 7th best fighter out of 9 possible in 3-P, he's "good"? That's all that'll really come out of this argument, since Boyd really should not be in upper mid tier at all.

Why would you put the word "good" in quotes when it never appeared in my post? You know where it appeared? In YOUR post. You know, where you made up a quote that doesn't eixst. Which is the crux of why arguing with you is like trying to nail a Jell-O mold to the wall, because you insist on countering what you infer rather than what is actually said. This wouldn't be such a problem if you weren't so awful at deduction, but you are, so it turns you into a straw-man machine.

I don't know why you do this. It's like you see a post that has a little 8-bit doggie avatar, the rational part of your mind goes on vacation to Morocco, and you start bashing your face against the keyboard.

1) Zihark doubles, while a huge majority of the GMs don't (an argument you love to use to justify Mia getting adept), and the GMs get a second adept by 3-11 anyway in case you want to give it to a hawk/Ranulf.

Doulbing vs. not doubling is a fair point for Adept, but not in a void: it has to be taken into context. The reason why doubling is better than not doulbing is because it gives the doubler more chances for it to activate. Also, it increases their usefulness to the army by a greater degree. This does not really apply to Zihark's performance in 3-6 and 3-13 (although he does use it well in 3-12... but one chapter does not an argument make) because of the limiter that you are forced to put on his offense.

2) It's innate on Zihark, which is really cool when part 4 comes around and we have a billion skills to work with and take advantage of that extra capacity Zihark has (we have, like, 2 resolves, 3 paragons, 3 wraths, 2 cancels, celerity, beastfoe/dragonfoe, and a bunch of other stuff, and things like howl/shade/etc. for the laguz/magic users so they aren't serious competition for the real skills, plus 2 other adepts to give to other characters. The chances that ONE skill isn't free for Zihark to take with no drawback to the team is basically 0, even the stupid ones like corrosion).

What this amounts to is a very minor point. The skills he can take with the smallest negative are the most useless ones. Also, even using this method requires that you don't take it off him, which has a sizable opportunity cost. If there were like 12 Resolves this would be a nice perk, but there aren't, so sucks to be him. He is a good Adept candidate in Part 4, but it's not likely to be cap-free anymore.

3) The DB actually need the extra offense in part 3, because the DB only have like 3-4 main fighters (pick and choose out of Volug/Nolan/Aran/Zihark/Jill) with Sothe doing some things. Micaiah and Laura can potshot, but Laura's god awful at it (liek, sub-20 att ftl), and these two really should be on healing duty anyway. This means that you can't just field random noobs to weaken crap just because you can, so every fighter really counts.

This is like watching a Powerpoint presentation on strategy given by Dhumace the Tactical Neanderthal.

The DB doesn't "need the extra offense" in Part 3, at least not the sort that they get from Adept. Why? Because Adept is not reliable. Unlike the GM's, where I can throw Adept Mia into a pack of wolves and not care whether she kills nobody or everybody or somewhere in between, in the DB Adept means tossing the dice constantly. You can't rely it on for offense: if it doesn't proc and you needed that unit to die (and with Zihark you probably did, because he definitely just took a counter and won't survive another one if it hit), now you have to alter your strategy to end that unit immediately. You can't rely it on it for defense, because it runs completely counter to your chances of survival just by virtue of the fact that it will randomly clear a space that you didn't expect.

Now, it's not impossible to mitigate these risky situations, but it reduces your tactical horizon to one effing attack into the future, and most importantly, there is no reason to rush the Part 3 chapters, which is the majority of what offense grants you. Both 3-6 and 3-12 will not be over until you kill exactly the specified number of units -- not before -- and there are no penalties for going slower or bonuses for going faster. Chapter 3-13 is the only exception, being strictly turn-limited, but this is also the worst chapter for random blicks, as there is no longer anything slowing down the laguz this time, and nothing to hide in.

The GMs, on the other hand, have more good units than you can reasonably train (Ike/Haar/Titania/Gatrie/Shinon/Mordy/Ulki/Janaff/Ranulf/Oscar/Mia, and then we get to the upper mid/mid tierish units like Neph/Boyd/Soren who are STILL usable, and then fucking Reyson who can give four guys another action). That's more than 10 good units, WITH Reyson, and several more usable units, including some that I can't be bothered to list. The GMs only really have the resources to train ~7 guys including Ike (unless you like having tier 2 GMs in part 4), and the unit slots to field them, which means we can field like 5 guys just for the sole purpose of weakening things so that the rest of the team can get the kill, lessening the need for "pray on adept so my guy can one round".

Nobody in the GMs needs to "pray" for an Adept. If it works, great, I might go faster and/o rmake my job easier. If it doesn't work, no biggie, maybe next time. This is in start contrast to the DB, who is ACTUALLY praying for either Adept activations or lack thereof. Oh, I hope that Adept procs so that I can kill this unit and not have to finish it off with someone else so that I don't die. Oh, I hope that Adept doesn't proc, because I really don't want that laguz behind this one to come in and rape me in the nose.

Fielding weakeners is all well and good, but random Adepts will be killing units even faster than without it, so the weakeners can weaken DIFFERENT enemies, and therefore speed things up. Funny how that works, eh? Never mind things like Adept on Haar, who suddenly is more "adept" at killing things when he's off by his own, or Ulki/Janaff or what have you.

The GM's don't need to have 10 fucking fighters available ready to one round the entire map and never die when the DB are struggling to 3 round tigers and getting 2-3 rounded in return. Have you even looked at tiger stats? They're like fucking GM bosses. They rape the shit out of the jokes like loladins you find in several GM chapters or wimpy steel lance dumbasses that do single digit damage to people or geniuses like steel poleaxe enemies that never hit anyone. Why do the GMs need the extra resources when their enemies are complete jokes compared to tigers?

It's not that the GMs "need" the extra resources, it's that they use them better when it comes to finishing the game efficiently, and since that's what we tier by, that's where the skill is likely to go.

You love harping on this "Part 3 laguz are like GM bosses" trivia without actually investigating what that means. As evidence that I'm talking hard truth, and that you're flinging your own shit across the room like a monkey in a zoo, imagine how this debate would shift if instead of us discussing Adept, we were discussing Pavise. Holy shit would that change the tenor of the conversation. The GMs would hardly benefit from this skill at all, given how durable that they already are relative to their enemies, but the DB would suddenly be able to mitigate much of their woes by going "haha, fucking denied!" SKL% of the time on incoming attacks. Shit, this hypothetical alone would bump Zihark up in the tier list considerably.

Notice how I basically never say to send Cancel over? It's because Cancel is a DEFENSIVE SKILL that's actually more useful in the DB than it would be in the GMs (Haar has a Cancel for those like Mia who can use it well). Until you can understand that a skill that goes lolORKOsometimesbutnotalways in an army with paper-durability is not actually a TERRIBLY USEFUL ASSET when you're already 5-6 chapters in the fucking hole behind option #2, we don't really have anything to "discuss" on this subject.

Now before you strawman (you love that), I'm not saying performance doesn't matter in the GMs, since we can still tier GMs based on how hard they rape. GM chapters is kinda like a slightly harder version of FE9; even though you can generally make any random team to win, we can still tier units based on their performances.

What does this tangential point have to do with anything? We always tier units based on their relative performance.

There's a grand total of 1 chest that has gold, which is in 1-4 and has an amazing 3000 gold. [...] It's enough for a forge or two.[...] Oh no I didn't account for a bunch of 600 gold weapons [...] You mean shit like the gems and fortune

From an intrepid poster to an ungrateful little shit, you are very welcome for the corrections. I will post a new thread soon with a concise breakdown of assets.

Considering your "reasonable playthrough" generally consists of "let's sandbag the fuck out of the DB", no one really cares of what your idea of a "reasonable playthrough" is.

My "reasonable playthrough" actually is something that assumes that you are only buying items for 4-5 core members, and not every single person who can possibly be deployed. If you have a bunch of items rolling around in your inventory at the end of the game that you bought during Part 1 and never used, you Did It Wrong<tm>.

Plus, my gold count didn't even include things like forges. It was just things from fucking Aimee's bargains.

Congratulations. I'd look to see where I lambasted you for not including forges, but since I'd never find it, because I never said it, I'll just smile at you and nod at your tirade.

And the whole point of my gold count wasn't that the DB are buying everything they can, but it's retarded to ship everything to the GMs. The person I was arguing against was shipping over things like two gems, fortune, two forged tomes, and a bunch of other stuff, AND threw a master seal on Ilyana. That's a lot of crap to be sending over.

It's retarded to ship EVERYTHING to the GMs, but it's not retarded to only leave the DB with enough gold for their needs for Part 1/3. Excess gold on them is gold wasted.

For starters, why the tomes/seal on Ilyana?

This is actually pretty obvious, but someone else will answer this, I am sure.

Until next time, Professor Moriarty.

Edited July 14, 2009 by Interceptor

[Florete]

I was actually thinking of bumping Mist to Upper Mid, but somehow I don't think that will go very far. Rhys could probably stand to go up a bit, but I can't see him closing the gap a whole lot.

Another thing I've been wanting to bring up is Sanaki. I think she should rise to Low. When you think about it, she's not too similar to the other bottom tiers, who all have terrible offense and durability without massive favoritism. Sanaki at least has decent offense right off the bat, and with 1-2 range while at it. I'd say she's probably > Pelleas. Anyone else?

[Shadow Mir]

I was actually thinking of bumping Mist to Upper Mid, but somehow I don't think that will go very far. Rhys could probably stand to go up a bit, but I can't see him closing the gap a whole lot.

Another thing I've been wanting to bring up is Sanaki. I think she should rise to Low. When you think about it, she's not too similar to the other bottom tiers, who all have terrible offense and durability without massive favoritism. Sanaki at least has decent offense right off the bat, and with 1-2 range while at it. I'd say she's probably > Pelleas. Anyone else?

I second Sanaki > Pelleas.

[_____]

As for the guy doing Mist vs Rhys...

You're seriously overestimating their level. 20/20/1 at 4-1? Wut? Our guys like Boyd have trouble reaching that, and Mist/Rhys start at a much lower level. Rhys, in fact, would need 1.64 levels per chapter. That's 14 mends. That's a ridiculous amount. Even once physics can be stolen, that's 7 physics a chapter, which means within 2 chapters your physic is almost broken.

Pray tell, what level would you put them at?

I would point out that there are staves like Ward, Torch, and Unlock that can bolster both of their Experience gains, but I doubt it would make a difference.

They're most likely tier 2 entering part 4. Of course, Mist has the advantage in having her own promo item, while Rhys would need to take a crown. This really sucks for Rhys because he now has a significantly lower chance of having 22 spd (hell, he probably won't even break 20. Healing doesn't give much exp, after all) unless he takes a crown, while Mist is still not going to get doubled.

One could also argue that Rhys having the ability to promote early using a crown, which Mist can't, is a positive for him. He can grab the 3-11 crown (who wants it by this point?), and gain that +2 speed quicker, so as not to be doubled anymore. Healing doesn't give much experience? A guaranteed 15 Exp every turn isn't good experience? Let's not forget that he can also weaken or kill an occaisional enemy; he does pack quite a bit of damage in one hit.

Of course she's never doubling, but then again her offense is crap anyway even if she could, and she's much better off healing anyway. But at least she's dying far less often than Rhys, which is a big reason why she's much higher than him, since Rhys' offense, while better, is still pretty awful.

2RKO and 3RKOing is awful? We have guys like Oscar, Boyd, Rolf, and Mia all 2-3RKOing. It's not that bad.

Of course she starts off a lot worse than him in part 3 since she's also getting doubled and she hits for like 15-20 less damage, but that lasts for a much shorter time than she beats him (where she doesn't get doubled and Rhys still does).

So, it really comes down to offense vs. defense in the middle of Part 3, where Rhy's damage output surpasses Mist's, but Mist can isn't doubled by, like, Generals while Rhys is.

Keep in mind that I have no intention of trying to argue Rhys above Mist. I just wanted to show how comparable they are, and that such a gap was not warranted.

And then you also sandbagged Mist's affinity advantage by having them support each other. Why would two healers support each other? You're usually branching your team off into smaller groups, so if you keep both healers in one team that means one of the groups doesn't get a healer.

For as many maps as we're branching off (3-2, 3-4, and 3-8 come to mind), we has just as many chapters that are very linear (3-5, 3-7, 3-11, etc.). Both want more attack to actually do SOME damage, and FireXWater gives full attack. I don't see what the problem is.

Also, Rhys isn't that good at BEXPing. Even after capping mag/res, lck is his highest growth by far, and then his HP/skl/spd are roughly equal, and he still has str and def (def being the lowest), so he might have like a 50% chance to get spd rather than 35% or something, and maybe a 25-30% chance of getting def instead of 20%. That doesn't really do much. He's still slow as molasses, and his HP/def have a huge hole to climb out of due to the fact that his bases are awful.

I could have sworn Luck was lower. >_< How did I mess that up?

As long as he stops getting doubled, he's 2RKO'd just like Mist. That speed can potentially help him.

Considering how Rhys is gaining a point of speed every 3 levels, and he's only 1 or two speed away from not getting doubled in most chapters, I think you're highly underestimating that extra speed.

Say Rhys is level 11 by 3-10. He gets 3-4 levels of BEXP and gains 2 speed during that time, which is certainly possible, he's now not getting doubled by 43 enemies on the map. There are only 48 enemies on the map. He's now getting 2RKO'd just like Mist, but with a better damage output.

I was actually thinking of bumping Mist to Upper Mid, but somehow I don't think that will go very far. Rhys could probably stand to go up a bit, but I can't see him closing the gap a whole lot.

I dunno'... I think Mist could stand to drop, if anything, instead of Rhys rising.

Edited July 14, 2009 by Ninji

[Shadow Mir]

Pray tell, what level would you put them at?

I would point out that there are staves like Ward, Torch, and Unlock that can bolster both of their Experience gains, but I doubt it would make a difference.

The staves you named aren't available until Part 4. Torch has to be bought in 3-6. Ward isn't available until Part 4 Endgame. And Unlock is likely not seeing use.

Edited July 14, 2009 by Jonathan Aulin

[_____]

The staves you named aren't available until Part 4. Torch has to be bought in 3-6. Ward isn't available until Part 4 Endgame. and Unlock is likely not seeing use.

Damn it. Ignore everything I said about those, then. Still, saying Staves don't give good experience doesn't seem right...

[Lord Raven]

You can still have Mist promoted easily by 4-1, and she doesn't need to compete for the item either. Rhys probably will need competition for the master crown.

they're both pretty easy to kill early on... I think Mist moreso.

[Florete]

Pray tell, what level would you put them at?

I would point out that there are staves like Ward, Torch, and Unlock that can bolster both of their Experience gains, but I doubt it would make a difference.

Ward - doesn't exist until 4-E

Torch - No FoW until 4-1 (3-P and 3-1 have no access to the staff at all), and that's the only chapter

Unlock - Nothing to use it on until 4-4. Literally.

One could also argue that Rhys having the ability to promote early using a crown, which Mist can't, is a positive for him. He can grab the 3-11 crown (who wants it by this point?),

Try everyone. By 3-11 we can easily have some of our tier 2 units like Mia, Nephenee, Boyd, etc. at or near level 20. 3-11 and 3-E is where I usually promote most of my team.

and gain that +2 speed quicker, so as not to be doubled anymore. Healing doesn't give much experience? A guaranteed 15 Exp every turn isn't good experience?

15? From what? Torch is all that gives 15 experience.

Let's not forget that he can also weaken or kill an occaisional enemy; he does pack quite a bit of damage in one hit.

His damage after early part 3 starts getting pretty awful, since Light magic is weak and he's very close to his Mag cap. His chip damage becomes incredibly small. Plus, he's usually healing anyway.

So, it really comes down to offense vs. defense in the middle of Part 3, where Rhy's damage output surpasses Mist's, but Mist can isn't doubled by, like, Generals while Rhys is.

What about support advantages? Water >>>> Fire.

For as many maps as we're branching off (3-2, 3-4, and 3-8 come to mind), we has just as many chapters that are very linear (3-5, 3-7, 3-11, etc.). Both want more attack to actually do SOME damage, and FireXWater gives full attack. I don't see what the problem is.

3-5 linear? The other two I can give you, but in what world is 3-5 linear? Enemies come at you from 3 directions. And another problem with supporting healers together is that they don't really make use of it because they, you know, heal. It's a total waste of Mist's affinity.

And when you drop one or the other (since it's unlikely to use both longterm) you've left one supportless. Amazing.

Say Rhys is level 11 by 3-10. He gets 3-4 levels of BEXP and gains 2 speed during that time, which is certainly possible, he's now not getting doubled by 43 enemies on the map. There are only 48 enemies on the map. He's now getting 2RKO'd just like Mist, but with a better damage output.

When is Rhys getting BEXP? When he caps his Mag (I assume so, since Res caps at 11, which is the level you put him at)? If so, HP, Luck, and Res all take precedence over Spd, and Skl is tied. He'll almost definitely gain Luck and Res over others (Luck is 60%, while HP, the next highest, is 40%. lolRes is 75%), and then being kinda nice to him he has a 1/3 chance of getting Spd for the next one (It's nice because HP beats it and Str and Def might go up as well) until Res caps in 2-3 levels, in which case his chance for Spd increases a bit, but at this point no one cares because he's already gotten his share of BEXP and it would take too much more to actually get him to decent Spd. By this method, he'll have 17 (18 if he's lucky) Spd at level 11. He's not getting doubled by everything, that's true enough, but he still has worse overall durability because a few enemies do double him and Mist w/ a defense support might actually be getting 3RKOd by some of the weaker enemies. Even just a Dracoshield or Seraph Robe (possibly without the defense support) can turn a lot of 2RKOs into 3. Rhys isn't so lucky.

As for offense, he's still borderline 3RKOing everything with a full support, and not even borderline on what his offense might have been nice against, Generals. Rhys isn't there for offense.

Edited July 14, 2009 by Red Fox of Fire

[Progenitus]

Wow.

My firefox literally crashed when I read this, probably because it didn't brace itself for the sheer stupidity of your post. I think that's a sign I should stop clicking on the "view this post" for your posts and just leave you on ignore. So I'm just going point this out to everyone so they can get a good laugh and realize how utterly retarded you are.

Now, it's not impossible to mitigate these risky situations, but it reduces your tactical horizon to one effing attack into the future, and most importantly, there is no reason to rush the Part 3 chapters, which is the majority of what offense grants you. Both 3-6 and 3-12 will not be over until you kill exactly the specified number of units -- not before -- and there are no penalties for going slower or bonuses for going faster.

lol

lol

lol

This has got to be one of the stupidest fucking things I've read in a long time, and that's really saying something considering I read a lot of your posts, int. I thought you couldn't get any fucking stupider, but I guess I was wrong.

So, you're saying there's no need to "rush" 3-6 or 3-12, implying that how long we take to beat those chapters doesn't matter? Then what the fuck does matter? Chapters like GM chapters aren't going to fucking matter either since this "reward" or "penalty" is usually a stupidly useless amount of BEXP that doesn't do much because this is HM, and the CEXP we could get from prolonging chapters, or even just boss abusing, will generally far exceed the BEXP we gain anyway, so that's a pointless reason to use anyway. That's the only thing you're implying here; it doesn't matter how long it takes to beat 3-6 and 3-12? Did you happen to forget that if we killed those 40 enemies at a faster rate, we could be done with the dumbass chapter earlier (e.g. finish in 10 turns instead of 15), kinda like how killing enemies faster will let us beat GM chapters at a faster rate? But no, that doesn't matter, right?

Who cares how long we take to beat a chapter, right? It certainly doesn't matter for chapters like 3-6 and 3-12, according to you, so why would it matter for any chapter? In fact, the only chapters that actually give you a time limit to beat it before you get a game over is like, 1-1 and 3-3, but those time limits are so easy to beat anyway they can be ignored.

Finishing earlier doesn't matter? Then combat efficiency doesn't matter. Who cares if Titania can one-round Wyverns and Boyd can't? We can just take an extra turn and Boyd can kill them too. It doesn't matter how long we take to beat chapters, right? So we don't care. Who cares if Soren has phail defense? Doesn't matter; we can slow our team down and heal him whenever he takes damage. What use is Reyson? We don't need to move faster. Why use healers? We can spam Vulneraries as much as we want, since the number of turns we take to beat a chapter doesn't matter. DB units aren't promoted by 1-E? No matter, boss abuse and give them levels. Rolf has poor combat? Doesn't matter--slow your team down so he can kill.

Saying that the number of turns it takes to beat a chapter doesn't matter is to say that debates shouldn't happen. What would they be about? Efficiency doesn't matter, so who caerz that Unit A is better than Unit B? You can just slow your whole team down. Are we going to drink tea and eat crumpets and talk about the newest episode of Desperate Housewives instead?

No, it doesn't work like that. We're arguing about efficiency. I'm obviously going to care if the DB can beat chapters like 3-6 and 3-12 faster because they could kill the enemies faster due to adept, just like how I'd care if my GMs can kill faster. The difference between the DB and GMs is that I don't have extra filler DB to cover my back, while the GMs are a lot more forgiving just because they're easier chapters in general and I have way too many good units available to even field, let alone train.

Really now, int, do you want to make yourself into the laughing stock of the board?

[dondon151]

I think your post exudes stupidity more than anything Interceptor said in his previous post, smash.

Int specifically said that there is no reason to rush the DB's part 3 chapters. You took this to mean that combat efficiency doesn't matter. How you managed to come to this conclusion, I can't possibly even begin to fathom.

You seem to forget that 3-6, 3-12, and 3-13 have no BEXP bonus for turn limit, so objectively there is no incentive to clear the maps faster. In addition, as defense maps, offense is mostly secondary. These are the two primary differences between the DB maps and the largely irrelevant examples that you assembled as a strawman of Int's argument.