Vykan vs Meekah

[Vykan12]

Mekkah opens.

Edited December 29, 2008 by Vykan12

[Mekkah]

Gerik and Arthur are both pretty good, but Arthur is good for longer. The advantages for being around over someone who isn't around should be obvious. Arthur is helping out the team while Gerik is not, Arthur benefits support partners while Gerik does not, and Arthur will have a solid level lead on Gerik when he joins.

For supports, Arthur's most likely set-up is A Lute/B something. I'll be the first one to admit Neimi isn't likely, but Cormag [Eph route] and Joshua are fine, and otherwise he will simply get Tethys.

Gerik's list overlaps slightly with Arthur's. He's probably getting A Tethys. B Saleh is plausible on Eirika route, not so much on Ephraim route. Innes, Marisa and Ross are sucky, which leaves Joshua, who is probably full by now (A Natasha/B Arthur), but we'll pretend he isn't so we can be nice to Gerik.

Supporting Tethys isn't really benefitting anyone but yourself. She cannot attack, so offensive bonuses are wasted. And making use of her defensive bonuses actually lowers your efficiency, since she doesn't do anything back, so that's pretty worthless too.

So Arthur has the better list, which is more likely to be full, helps for longer, and helps for more.

Then we can travel on Eirika's route to be nice to Gerik once again, and Gerik is recruited around halfway through Ch10. Arthur has had six and a half map now. His level lead depends on your team size, pretty much. You could be low manning and he could be almost ready for promotion. Or you could be using a more "standard" size, say, 8 units, and he would have a lead of like 2-3 levels. Putting it somewhere in between, let's say 14/0.

14/0 Arthur - A Lute/B Joshua

Lightning: 18.0 atk, 12.8 AS, 138.3 hit, 15.8 crit - - 50.6 avo, 25.6 hp, 7.8 def, 16.6 res, 30.0 critavo

10/0 Gerik

Steel Sword: 22.0 atk, 13.0 AS, 104.8 hit, 6.3 crit - - 34.0 avo, 32.0 hp, 10.0 def, 4.0 res, 8.0 critavo

For offense, Gerik has 4 Atk and that's pretty much it. Throw in Arthur's Res-hitting and that's pretty much overridden, and then there's his other tiny leads (pretty much foolproof accuracy and ~9 more crt), which do more than Gerik's .2 AS lead, if you can even call that a lead.

Defensively, Gerik wins concretely against 1-range enemies with his 6.4 hp/2.2 def leads. Arthur, however, has ~16 more Avo. Something like a 80 hit Bael or Renevant has 18.3% real on him, while on Gerik it'd have 42.8%, more than twice as likely to get hit. If you're wondering why I'm using monsters for the equation, it's because those represent the next two chapters.

Also, it should be noted that Gerik has fairly low CEV. Luckily for him enemies don't surpass 17 Skl that easily, though something like a Slim Lance Pegasus or Thunder Mage has an existant chance of critting him.

Then there's the two things that must always be hyped when defending a magician over a melee unit, namely a fairly massive Res lead (12.6 points) and the 1~2 range. Short but sweet, Arthur doesn't take counters on player phase, can be protected more easily than Gerik, can actually counter ranged enemies (which stacks on his defensive win against Mages, which overrides Gerik's damage lead on them).

So after Ch10, you have not one but two Guiding Rings, so Arthur is probably promoting soon. He could do it right now and it wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

15/1 Arthur - A Lute/B Joshua

Lightning: 20.5 atk, 13.2 AS, 141.3 hit, 16.5 crit - - 51.6 avo, 29.2 hp, 10.9 def, 19.2 res, 30.2 critavo

12/0 Gerik

Steel Sword: 22.9 atk, 13.6 AS, 106.6 hit, 6.7 crit - - 35.8 avo, 33.8 hp, 10.7 def, 4.5 res, 8.6 critavo

Gerik's AS lead grew by .2, but his Atk lead shrunk by 1.6. What's more, the HP gap shrunk to ~3, their Def are practically the same, and all the other leads for Arthur got somewhat bigger. But now Arthur gets +8 Atk against Monsters when using Lightning, and he has C staves, which has the obvious rehashed advantages (extra EXP pool, something to do when there's less enemies than PCs needed, increases ally's durability). And he's in an EXP bonus class, which means 15/0 and 15/1 Arthur gain the same amount of EXP from killing (10). Also, Torch staves are actually buyable, and can be spammed in Ch11 as often as you wish. And the Barrier you get in Ch10 can be used even if there's no wounds, like on turn 1.

Gerik could of course use a Hero Crest now, but that rapes his EXP gain, since unlike Arthur he doesn't have a class bonus or staves.

So can Gerik catch up? I´ll leave that to you to argue before this gets tl;dr. However, note that above scenarios only happen half of the time. The other half (Eph route), Gerik doesn't join until Ch13, so that's three extra maps for Arthur to be useful in while Gerik is working for Innes.

Edited December 29, 2008 by Mekkah

[Vykan12]

Edit: Ignore this post.

Edited January 8, 2009 by Vykan12

[Vykan12]

Gerik and Arthur are both pretty good, but Arthur is good for longer.

You are presuming Arthur is good when he joins, but I dare assert he’s only average at best.

Artur lv 2/0 (lightning): 19 hp, 10 Mt, 8 spd, 2 def, 6 res, 2 lck, 18 avo

Colm lv 3/0 (C Neimi, iron sword): 19 hp, 10 Mt, 11 spd, 3 def, 1 res, 8 lck, 32 avo

Eirika lv 7/0 (C Seth, rapier): 20 hp, 14 Mt, 13 spd, 6 def, 4 res, 9 lck, 37 avo

Franz lv 5/0 (iron lance): 23 hp, 16 Mt, 9 spd, 7 def, 2 res, 4 lck, 22 avo

Garcia lv 5/0 (C Ross, iron axe): 29 hp, 18 Mt, 7 spd, 5 def, 1 res, 3 lck, 22 avo

Gilliam lv 6/0 (steel lance): 27 hp, 20 Mt, 4 spd, 10 def, 3 res, 4 lck, 12 avo

Neimi lv 3/0 (C Colm, iron bow): 18 hp, 12 Mt, 7 spd, 3 def, 3 res, 5 lck, 21 avo

Ross lv 5/0/0 (C Garcia, hatchet): 18 hp, 11 Mt, 4 spd, 4 def, 1 res, 10 lck, 18 avo

Seth lv --/1 (C Eirika, brass knuckles): 30 hp, 15 MT, 12 spd, 12 def, 9 res, 13 lck, 39 avo

Vanessa lv 4/0 (iron lance): 19 hp, 13 Mt, 10 spd, 7 def, 6 res, 6 lck, 32 avo

Artur has one of the worst durabilities on the team. Out of the 10 mentioned units, he’s tied for third worst hp (19), claims the sole title of worst def (2) and has the second worst avo. If that weren’t enough, his crit evade is horrible. If enemies have so much as 3 crit or higher, Artur starts running the risk of getting 1HKOed, something that can’t be said for any other unit in the army except maybe Vanessa vs bows or something. So, Artur has arguably the worst durability on a team that is already pretty fragile, seeing as how Gilliam and Seth are your only tanky units in the earlygame.

Our curly haired monk isn’t winning any awards for his offence either. He’s tied with Colm for the lowest attack power on the team (aside from Moulder, but he has staves), but lucky for him he targets res, right? Oh wait, every monster in his joining chapter has 0-3 def and 0 res, so the def-res gap is tiny. Though, knowing how pathetic monsters are in general, I also checked the stats of the human enemies in the next chapter and it’s largely the same story. In fact, I only managed to find one enemy who had 4 def, but also had 1 res, so aside from the boss, the def-res gap can safely be considered less than or equal to 3 for a good portion of the earlygame.

Probably Artur’s only redeeming factor is his 8 base spd, which makes him more valuable than trash like Ross, though it’s still far from outstanding, as he only manages to beat Garcia and Neimi (and Ross) in that department. And even then, Garcia can turn to a steel axe and do almost as much damage in one hit as Artur can do in 2, and Neimi gets a good deal of crit from her lightning fast Colm support, and Ross grows at a million miles per hour, so Artur is not even close to outclassing who he manages to beat, if that.

In other words, Artur is majorly sucking, and sucking <<<< not existing.

The advantages for being around over someone who isn't around should be obvious. Arthur is helping out the team while Gerik is not, Arthur benefits support partners while Gerik does not, and Arthur will have a solid level lead on Gerik when he joins.

Since I hopefully made it pretty clear that Artur is more of a hindrance than a help, at least around his joining time, I’ll focus on his supports now.

Artur’s supports are problematic for him. First off, they grow too damn slowly, particularly in counter-acting all those problems that Artur faces that I outlined earlier.

Lute: 15 turns for a C, 35 for a B and 62 for an A

Neimi: 19 turns for a C, 39 for a B, 66 for an A

Tethys: 25 turns for a C, 55 for a B, 95 for an A

Cormag: 29 turns for a C, 59 for a B, 99 for an A

Joshua: Same as Cormag

Artur joins in chapter 4, and the game is 20 chapters long. Assuming each chapter took 12 turns on average (which is a lot, IMO), that only gives Artur 192 turns in which to grow supports. Then, assuming units can only be adjacent to each other ~50% of the time (again, I consider that rather high), that leaves Artur with 96 turns in which to build supports. That pretty much rules out A Joshua, Cormag or Tethys happening, and most of his Bs are only happening past midgame, probably in the chp12-15 range.

So that leaves Lute and Neimi for his A, which is by no means a good thing. Neimi and Lute have about the same durability as Artur, which means Artur needs another fragile unit fielded to gain those support benefits. In addition, Neimi never really becomes more than a decent unit, so her being in play alone is questionable.

Oh, but there’s more. Artur isn’t even a favourable support option for Neimi. Since she can’t counter for all of first tier, she’d rather not get attacked on enemy phase, so an attack support is far more favourable than the defensive bonuses that Ice gives. Moreover, Neimi has Colm, Garcia and Amelia as faster supports, along with Gilliam for another alternative option, all of which give both attack and crit that Artur doesn’t.

Gerik's list overlaps slightly with Arthur's. He's probably getting A Tethys. B Saleh is plausible on Eirika route, not so much on Ephraim route. Innes, Marisa and Ross are sucky, which leaves Joshua, who is probably full by now (A Natasha/B Arthur), but we'll pretend he isn't so we can be nice to Gerik.

Joshua already has high natural avo and decent defence, while having slight damage problems, so it makes sense to give him A Ice B Thunder than A Ice B Ice. In addition, Gerik gives Joshua full crit bonuses, and the only other support that Joshua gets crit from is L’arachel, so he definitely wants to boost that stat as much as he can.

Supporting Tethys isn't really benefitting anyone but yourself. She cannot attack, so offensive bonuses are wasted. And making use of her defensive bonuses actually lowers your efficiency, since she doesn't do anything back, so that's pretty worthless too.

There’s no offensive bonuses being put to waste. Gerik could’ve supported someone else and given them attack, but that other person could’ve probably gotten attack from yet another different supporter, so there isn’t really a negative here. Plus, even if one assumes Tethys is questionable for support, I don’t see any issue with A Saleh B Joshua as an alternative, or even Innes (not as bad as you make him out to be).

And using Tethys for defensive bonuses is not hurting efficiency, it will merely take effect in less situations. Eg/ Gerik is in a couple enemies’ attack radius but Tethys isn’t, though she’s still within 3 spaces of Gerik and had danced someone on that turn. Getting Gerik and Tethys to end adjacent to each other while still making use of Tethys’ dancing would admittedly be trickier than the average support, but thankfully their support has an insane growth rate (30 starting value, gain 4 points per adjacent turn).

Then we can travel on Eirika's route to be nice to Gerik once again, and Gerik is recruited around halfway through Ch10. Arthur has had six and a half map now. His level lead depends on your team size, pretty much. You could be low manning and he could be almost ready for promotion. Or you could be using a more "standard" size, say, 8 units, and he would have a lead of like 2-3 levels. Putting it somewhere in between, let's say 14/0.

14/0 Arthur - A Lute/B Joshua

Lightning: 18.0 atk, 12.8 AS, 138.3 hit, 15.8 crit - - 50.6 avo, 25.6 hp, 7.8 def, 16.6 res, 30.0 critavo

10/0 Gerik

Steel Sword: 22.0 atk, 13.0 AS, 104.8 hit, 6.3 crit - - 34.0 avo, 32.0 hp, 10.0 def, 4.0 res, 8.0 critavo

14/0 is a bit steep, you’re giving Artur >1.7 levels per chapter when it’s likely closer to 1.5. Though, admittedly, reducing his level by 1-2 won’t make much of a difference, so wtv.

Obviously my main quarrel with this comparison is giving Artur a full support set in chapter 10. I’m sorry but there’s no way you’re going to have Lute and Artur adjacent to each other for 62 turns in 7 chapters and Joshua for 59 turns in 6 chapters. That’s roughly 75% of the time that both Lute AND Joshua are adjacent to Artur, and of course some joke chapters like 4 don’t take 10-12 turns to beat.

Here’s the revised comparison giving Artur a C with both characters.

Artur lv 14/0 (C Lute, C Joshua, thunder): 26 hp, 17 Mt, 13 spd, 5 def, 14 res, 5 lck, 36 avo

Gerik lv 10/0 (steel sword): 32 hp, 22 Mt, 13 spd, 10 def, 4 res, 8 lck, 34 avo

So now Gerik has a 5 atk lead, which is a whopping 10 damage in most enemy encounters, and that’s not even factoring in the additional advantages that his superior con gives, such as being able to use a steel blade (+3 Mt) with only 1 AS loss while Artur already loses 2AS just to upgrade to shine (+2 Mt).

As for that def-res gap, checked it again for chapter 10 just to see if it ever changes. Aside from a couple mercenaries with 5-6 def and 1 res, the gap is always 3 or less. So even putting that into consideration, Gerik is still winning raw damage output.

Then for durability, 6 hp and 5 def > 10 res and 2 avo, though there is the fact that Artur can avoid player phase counters with his 1-2 range tomes, so we’ll call that a tie.

Also, it should be noted that Gerik has fairly low CEV. Luckily for him enemies don't surpass 17 Skl that easily, though something like a Slim Lance Pegasus or Thunder Mage has an existant chance of critting him.

Actually, they don’t pass it at all. Most of the enemies have a lolable 4-5 skill, while the mercenaries and myrmidons have 11-12. Plus, when you factor in that Gerik’s durability isn’t crap and that slim lance criticals are pretty harmless, not to mention the second he has a C this problem is entirely gone, then this is largely a non-issue. Really, this is nothing compared to Artur’s problem of having 2 CEV at base level since his hp, def and avo were low enough at that point to have any significant risk of dying.

Then there's the two things that must always be hyped when defending a magician over a melee unit, namely a fairly massive Res lead (12.6 points) and the 1~2 range. Short but sweet, Arthur doesn't take counters on player phase, can be protected more easily than Gerik, can actually counter ranged enemies (which stacks on his defensive win against Mages, which overrides Gerik's damage lead on them).

Too bad magic enemies are outnumbered by physical enemies at least 5 to 1, which means Gerik’s hp and def lead matters a lot more than Artur getting tinked by mages. As for countering ranged enemies, the enemy is always going to favor a target who cannot counter, and Artur isn’t exactly going to solo a part of the map, so I don’t see where this advantage would ever receive any meaningful application. And of course, this advantage is merely temporary since once Gerik promotes, he can then go on to use hand axes.

So after Ch10, you have not one but two Guiding Rings, so Arthur is probably promoting soon. He could do it right now and it wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

Problem is, promotion items are competed for, so Artur has to rob other mage-type characters of a promo item to get his early promo, which I think is questionable.

Look at Moulder for instance.

Moulder lv 15/0 (C Vanessa, C Gilliam): 28 hp, 10 mgc, 14 spd, 7 def, 10 res, 3 lck, 41 avo

Artur lv 14/0 (C Lute, C Joshua): 26 hp, 13 mgc, 13 spd, 5 def, 14 res, 5 lck, 36 avo

Moulder beats Artur in everything except mag and res. However, assuming both units promoted, Moulder would win offence anyway because his 11 con would allow him to use divine while 7 con Artur is likely still stuck using lightning/shine to avoid AS loss. Finally, a staff user gaining magic > a magic user gaining staves in terms of the team’s overall utility, so Moulder has Artur completely beat when it comes to promo item viability.

Then you have Lute.

Lute lv 12/0 (C Artur, C Vanessa, thunder): 22 hp, 22 Mt, 12 spd, 7 def, 11 res, 13 lck, 47 avo

Artur lv 14/0 (C Lute, C Joshua, lightning): 26 hp, 17 Mt, 13 spd, 5 def, 14 res, 5 lck, 36 avo

Again, Artur is getting crushed. 11 avo and 2 def >>> 4 hp and 3 res and Lute wins damage by a huge margin.

Even Natasha provides decent competition for a guiding ring, so I don’t see how Artur is realistically going to promote before more rings start to show up.

15/1 Arthur - A Lute/B Joshua

Lightning: 20.5 atk, 13.2 AS, 141.3 hit, 16.5 crit - - 51.6 avo, 29.2 hp, 10.9 def, 19.2 res, 30.2 critavo

12/0 Gerik

Steel Sword: 22.9 atk, 13.6 AS, 106.6 hit, 6.7 crit - - 35.8 avo, 33.8 hp, 10.7 def, 4.5 res, 8.6 critavo

This comparison assumes Artur gets promoted while Gerik doesn’t and the only reasoning against doing that you gave was as follows:

Gerik could of course use a Hero Crest now, but that rapes his EXP gain, since unlike Arthur he doesn't have a class bonus or staves.

He’s not raping his exp gain, it’ll be the exact same as Artur. The only difference is that Artur can use staves, but staff exp usually gives less than CEXP even at high levels, so I can only see him using it in situations where there’s few enemies in the immediate radius, and that’s rare enough that Artur will only get maybe 3-4 levels on Gerik from here on to the end of the game. Moreover, Gerik wants to promote earlier so he can get axes for 1-2 range and higher attack power, in addition to the immediate stat gains from a promo which are likely more helpful than what Gerik will get from additional levelling in first tier.

Then when we consider that Artur might not actually promote in chapter 11, then that whole advantage disappears and both units will likely promote at lv 20/0, meaning Artur won’t have a period where he’s promoted and Gerik is not, which is the only way he can ever amass anything resembling a lead on him.

Gerik's AS lead grew by .2, but his Atk lead shrunk by 1.6. What's more, the HP gap shrunk to ~3, their Def are practically the same

Yeah, funny how Artur with a full support set AND an early promotion is still losing Atk and spd, arguably the 2 most important stats in the game.

and all the other leads for Arthur got somewhat bigger. But now Arthur gets +8 Atk against Monsters when using Lightning

Monsters that almost anyone can ORKO with iron weapons, mind you. The only real advantage brought forth is maybe against monster bosses, which are basically regular monsters with lots more hp and are easily 2RKOed anyway. I guess later in the game slayer is more helpful vs those Cyclops monsters, but by then you’re literally getting legendary weapons tossed at you like dodgeballs.

and he has C staves, which has the obvious rehashed advantages (extra EXP pool, something to do when there's less enemies than PCs needed, increases ally's durability).

Fair enough.

And he's in an EXP bonus class, which means 15/0 and 15/1 Arthur gain the same amount of EXP from killing (10).

I’ve never heard of this before. Xplain?

So can Gerik catch up? I´ll leave that to you to argue before this gets tl;dr.

Well he doesn’t need to catch up if he’s already ahead, though since you’re too lazy to compare their lategame, I might as well.

Artur lv 20/12 (A Lute, B Joshua, Ivaldi): 38 hp, 41 Mt, 33 crit, 17 spd, 18 def, 28 res, 9 lck, 63 avo

Gerik lv 20/8 (A Tethys, B Joshua, Garm): 51 hp, 45 Mt, 41 crit, 25 spd, 20 def, 12 res, 13 lck, 83 avo

Pretty large win for Gerik. 13 hp, 2 def and 20 avo >>>>>16 res, so Gerik is undeniably winning durability. Offence is also a dominant win for the G-man, since even if you call raw att tied, he still wins spd by a whopping 8 as well as crit.

Ok, I’ll admit it was a bit unfair to give Artur a heavy weapon like Ivaldi when he already has slayer. Though, if he downgrades to something lighter, the avo gap closes but Gerik then wins att by a larger margin. Also, Gerik has the option of using a killing edge/axe for a whopping 71 crit (91.59% in 2 hits), as well as brave weapons, whereas Artur doesn’t have such options. Last of all, Gerik can opt to get an S in either swords or axes, which means he’s ultimately facing less competition for a legendary weapon than Artur is.

However, note that above scenarios only happen half of the time. The other half (Eph route), Gerik doesn't join until Ch13, so that's three extra maps for Arthur to be useful in while Gerik is working for Innes.

Considering Gerik could compare to supported+promoted Artur, I’m sure giving Artur a 3 chapter lead instead would more or less result in the same thing. If you gave both to Artur, he might actually start winning, but Gerik nonetheless wins most of the possible scenarios.