Tibarn vs Elincia

[Vykan12]

Tibarn is way cooler than Elincia. Not only is he the King of a country of hawks, he has a huge scar across his face signifying his experience in battle and of overcoming adversity. Elincia, on the other hand, is merely a princess hastily thrown into a position of power from the death of her parents, and it’s perfectly clear by the part 2 occurrences that she doesn’t have the leadership or the resolve to successfully lead Crimea.

With that nonsense aside, let’s look at Elincia’s part 2 chapters. In 2-P, she is your worst offensive unit. She does a whopping 4 damage per hit against the enemies’ 34 hp, meaning it takes her 5 rounds just to kill an enemy. Hell, it would take her 2 rounds to kill an enemy if she got a double stun, and that only has a 4.41% chance of happening at neutral biorhythm. In contrast, Marcia and Nealuchi 2 round everything, Haar 1 rounds (or at least close to it) and Leanne is basically giving you a free kill per turn. Ok, Elincia does have healing, but nobody’s going to be needing it. Nealuchi has 53 hp, 20 def and 96 avoid, so he’s getting 7HKOed at 12 real hit. In fact, Nealuchi could survive the entire level untransformed since the enemies still won’t be able to double him and would only pose about 50ish hit rates at that point. Similarly, we all know how much of a tank Haar is (46 hp, 23 def, only there for half the map), Elincia can’t use mend on herself and no one’s attacking Leanne, just capturing her. That leaves Marcia who *might* need healing, but there’s plenty of healing items circulating around and you’re not going to be attacking every turn since the enemies are fairly spaced out. So, Elincia is almost completely useless here, and even if she weren’t, being good on a map where all you have to do is wait essentially is not much of a selling point.

In 2-E, it’s hard to make a case against her. She now has the amiti and a physic, and will be your best attacker aside from perhaps Haar. Nevertheless, she is a huge liability since archers and crossbows 1HKO her at high hit rates, so her offensive use is pretty restricted until those enemies are cleared. If you so much as forget about them or miscount the attack range of a crossbow dude, you’re basically guaranteed to hit reset.

So after Elincia being really good for all of 1 chapter, she decides to have hawt lesbian action with Heather (though more likely just twiddling her thumbs) until 4-2, at which point Tibarn boldly claims status as team leader and Elincia cowers away in fear. I’ll assume Elincia got 3 levels from her healing, but that’s being generous and assuming 2-E was played out the full 15 turns.

Elincia lv --/--/4 (Amiti): 37 hp, 36 Mt, 18 mag, 23 skl, 24 spd, 31 luck, 22 def 28 res, 11 crit, 187 hit, 99 avo, 23% stun, 9 move

Tibarn lv 31 (SS strike): 68 hp, 56 Mt, 48 skl, 40 spd, 29 luck, 32 def, 20 res, 24 crit, 235 hit, 129 avo, 40% tear, 10 move

This is a complete blowout, it’s like watching a tidal wave drown an ant. Tibarn’s offensive leads are huge (20 Mt, 16 spd, 13 crit, 48 hit, 17% mastery). There’s no way to sufficiently put into perspective how much better Tibarn is than Elincia on offence, but one way of looking at it is that he would tie her attack power if his talons had 0 Mt, and most of his leads are almost double Elincia’s respective stats.

As for durability, it’s once again only describable in metaphor (think Roger Federer playing tennis with a 3 year old). 31 hp, 10 def and 30 avoid… it’s like Tibarn took Elincia’s bases and added on 20 levels of growth. I can only do my best to try and put these numbers into perspective, but even assuming they had equal def and avo, Tibarn’s hp lead is large enough that he takes roughly twice as many hits. Leaving that hypothetical aside, Tibarn takes 10 damage to Elincia’s 20, and if she takes any less damage, then the attacks required to take down Tibarn grow exponentially. Then when Elincia faces 50% real, Tibarn faces 8%. When Elincia faces 32% real, Tibarn faces 2%. Now try putting all those facts together, and it’s pretty clear we’re dealing with 2 units in entirely different leagues in terms of combatative performance, and I haven’t even gotten to some of the lesser recognized points.

Tibarn has an extra point of move over Elincia, and his base move of 10 is the highest in the game. The advantages of that should be obvious, so no need for juicy analogies. Then Tibarn also has a better set of innate skills with savior and pavise while Elincia is stuck with lolrenewal, as well as that awful mercy skill she’s likely to remove. Then Tibarn has a lot more skill capacity than Elincia, so he could replace savior and pavise with anything he wants whereas Elincia’s stuck with 2 skills such that they can only take up a combined 25 capacity. This means I can give Tibarn utterly broken skill sets like celerity and resolve while Elincia is stuck with much tamer combinations. And finally, for what it’s worth, Tibarn gives his team 20 hit and avoid because of his leadership bonus. Considering everything I’ve laid out so far, it’s pretty obvious that Tibarn’s utterly destroying Elincia in every way imaginable.

Oh yeah, I forgot, Elincia needs 26-27 speed to double even basic enemies like warriors and halberdiers in 4-2, so she doesn’t even have quadruple attacks from the amiti yet. Though, even if she did, Tibarn is still killing enemies more proficiently since he fares better against high def units and has a much better chance of killing the enemy in one hit thanks to his tear activation percentage.

Anyway, before going on about what might be Elincia’s only saving grace, let’s look at a 20/20 Elincia against a base level Tibarn.

Elincia lv --/--/20 (A Fire, Amiti): 45 hp, 45 Mt, 25 mag, 31 skl, 35 spd, 40 luck, 25 def, 33 res, 15 crit, 245 hit, 125 avo, 31% stun, 9 move

Tibarn lv 31 (SS strike): 68 hp, 56 Mt, 48 skl, 40 spd, 29 luck, 32 def, 20 res, 24 crit, 235 hit, 129 avo, 40% tear, 10 move

Tibarn still wins everything by huge margins aside from resistance. The only thing that really changed in Elincia’s favor is her huge hit rate increase from supports, but Tibarn has 100 hit on auras anyway, so it’s a virtually nonexistent advantage. Clearly had I given Tibarn a support and a level or two, then he’s simply winning by more than he already is, though I feel that’s getting to be a bit redundant.

Onto Elincia’s saving grace, which is undoubtedly healing. Let’s look at what healing fundamentally does: It allows a unit to persist attacking the enemy instead of having to retreat and take a concoction or something. Though, is there really many situations where this is really going to take any significant effect?

Let’s look at what’s mitigating Elincia’s only advantage. Micaiah is a force deployed healer in 4-E, and she will be healing since her offence is terrible. Just taking a quick look at her numbers:

Micaiah lv 20/15/1 (A Sothe, Rexcalibur): 34 hp, 46 Mt, 24 skl, 22 spd, 36 luck, 19 def, 34 res, 110 avo

She’s pretty awful. 4-E generals have 24-26 spd, so she’s certainly not doubling them and is easily getting doubled by anything just slightly faster than them. She’s also getting 2HKOed though her avo is not half bad. Thani doesn’t allow her to 1HKO generals, so she’s pretty much not 1RKOing anything, then we have to consider her crap move and how the enemies past 4-E-3 have super high res, there really is not much point in having her attack things.

So that at least has me convinced that Micaiah’s healing 24/7, and Micaiah actually heals better than Elincia in any case due to having magic that’s at least 7 points higher. Now consider the existence of the fortify, a 5 use staff that heals anyone within 16 spaces of Micaiah by 42 hp, and it’s pretty clear that Micaiah has healing entirely covered. Though if she’s not enough, you also get Lehran in 4-E-5 with an Ashera staff, plus you could trade him the hammerne to repair the fortify, and thus have more uses in the final chapter than turns you’ll take to beat it.

The next major point as to why Elincia’s healing is completely frivolous in 4-E at least is based on the raw power of your attackers. Out of 73 units, you’re going with whoever your top 10 are, and you’re already guaranteed 2 top tier units in Reyson and Haar. Plus, you’re piling all of your best resources onto them. By this point, you have 3 cancels, 4 nihils, 2 shades, 1 stillness, 2 fortunes, 2 resolves, 2 imbues, 2 saviors, 3 paragons, 2 paritys, 2 renewals, 1 pavise, and the list goes on. Pretty much any of your 10 optional units will be getting a skill that helps them out defensively, and about half of them are either royals, physical tanks or have an earth support leading to wtflevels of avoid. If that weren’t enough, there’s many strategies allowing you to 1 turn 4-E-2, 3 and 4, and 4-E-1 and 5 also take single digit turn counts at most, which exemplifies how trivially easy the final chapters are with some decent planning.

Thus, it’s evident that you’d want someone who’s clearly a cut above the rest in combat for your part 4 chapters instead of some sub par healer who happens to outmanoeuvre your other healer options and can also fight decently. Hence the reasoning behind Tibarn > Elincia.

[Florete]

Tibarn is way cooler than Elincia. Not only is he the King of a country of hawks, he has a huge scar across his face signifying his experience in battle and of overcoming adversity. Elincia, on the other hand, is merely a princess hastily thrown into a position of power from the death of her parents, and it’s perfectly clear by the part 2 occurrences that she doesn’t have the leadership or the resolve to successfully lead Crimea.

While that may be true, Elincia has much more backstory and development than Tibarn. Tibarn is basically "I'm badass, look at me." Elincia, on the other hand, hired a group of mercenaries and took back her lost kingdom after her parents were murdered. Then, she had to stop a rebellion in her own country, and she was succesful. Obviously, Elincia plays a bigger role than Tibarn.

Elincia in 2-P (Cut for space)

I'll admit she isn't the greatest unit here, but she's not without use either. Marcia's avoid isn't highly reliable, so Elincia will be keeping her alive, and a staff use > a Vulnerary; Gives Elincia experience and Marcia the turn to attack, as well as saving resources. If Nealuchi sees his gauge go out, he's likely to get hurt as well. Also, Elincia doesn't have to worry about dying either, so she's good as a shield to protect Leanne so that she doesn't get taken. She's also good for luring the Dracoknights in with the possibility of Stunning them and making the kill so much easier.

In 2-E, it’s hard to make a case against her. She now has the amiti and a physic, and will be your best attacker aside from perhaps Haar. Nevertheless, she is a huge liability since archers and crossbows 1HKO her at high hit rates, so her offensive use is pretty restricted until those enemies are cleared. If you so much as forget about them or miscount the attack range of a crossbow dude, you’re basically guaranteed to hit reset.

It's a disadvantage, but fairly minimal. The only immediate enemy that she truly fears is a Warrior with Bowgun and Coin, but with the help of Leanne, she can knock him out with Amiti on the first turn without fear of a counterattack. There are those Archers with Steel bows, and they have 48 displayed hit on her for 28 damage, but she shouldn't be taking hits from them anyway without a height advantage, making their hit 0 on her. Since she has Canto, this is perfectly reasonable. She'd probably be doing this anyway.

As for reinforcements, Haar and Mordecai should be tanking to the right while Brom tanks to left anyway and she heals/snipes enemies below near Ludveck. She's still a great hit-and-run unit because she can one-round pretty much anything and get away if needed. During the times when there are no bow users to worry about, she can pretty much clear up the right side of the map single-handedly in one enemy phase. Granted, this will be around turns 5-6, but it's very possible and involves little risk.

But that's not what she's doing the most anyway. I only touched on it in the last paragraph, but I'll elaborate; healing. Everyone is taking damage in this chapter, even Haar (except for the occasional SM), so she'll be healing quite a lot. Then there are those pesky Longbow users and Halberdiers in front of Ludveck she can take care of. With Leanne around, there's no reason Elincia won't find time for all of this.

So after Elincia being really good for all of 1 chapter, she decides to have hawt lesbian action with Heather

More likely with Lucia since Heather runs to the GM's, but whatev.

I’ll assume Elincia got 3 levels from her healing, but that’s being generous and assuming 2-E was played out the full 15 turns.

I don't think it's generous at all. With all the healing and occasional fighting she did, I find level 3 very likely, maybe even 4, though that's stretching it.

This is a complete blowout, it’s like watching a tidal wave drown an ant. Tibarn’s offensive leads are huge (20 Mt, 16 spd, 13 crit, 48 hit, 17% mastery). There’s no way to sufficiently put into perspective how much better Tibarn is than Elincia on offence, but one way of looking at it is that he would tie her attack power if his talons had 0 Mt, and most of his leads are almost double Elincia’s respective stats.

Yeah... I can't really argue the offensive lead Tibarn has. The only thing I can say is that Elincia has access to ranged swords, but she's using Amiti much more often anyway.

Then Tibarn also has a better set of innate skills with savior and pavise while Elincia is stuck with lolrenewal, as well as that awful mercy skill she’s likely to remove. Then Tibarn has a lot more skill capacity than Elincia, so he could replace savior and pavise with anything he wants whereas Elincia’s stuck with 2 skills such that they can only take up a combined 25 capacity. This means I can give Tibarn utterly broken skill sets like celerity and resolve while Elincia is stuck with much tamer combinations.

In case you didn't know already (though by the way you worded this, you might. I'll point it out anyway), Tibarn's Savior and Pavise are not advantages in his favor, since they prevent him from adding any more skills past his 6. It would be exactly the same if he came with scrolls of the two in his inventory. I can't, however, argue his capacity lead, but since he can still only equip two skills, it's not a serious advantage.

On to Elincia's skills. Since when is Mercy awful? I'd go so far as to say it's one of the most useful skills in the game, and it's a major point in Elincia's favor. Tibarn's team is the one going to 4-5, the laguz slaughterfest, and so is very, very likely where you sent your weaker units to be trained. Pelleas is here also, and although he sucks, people use him. There's no easier way to train these d00ds than having Elincia knock an enemy to 1 health (or close to it) without risk of a kill. Throw in a possible Stun and it's like a feeding trough for lower leveled units, or anyone really. This also means that Tibarn killing everything is somewhat counter-intuitive, since it destroys the real point of these chapters.

Also, Elincia is the best unit to take Imbue. She's the only unit who can equip it that is actually somewhat based off of Magic, so she can recover 20 health every turn at base level with it and Renewal, rendering her almost unkillable. And this is considering she gets hit at all and isn't fully recovered from a staff she may have equipped. This allows for much more flexibility when using her.

And finally, for what it’s worth, Tibarn gives his team 20 hit and avoid because of his leadership bonus.

This can almost be seen as a point against him. Your team is getting the bonus anyway regardless since he's forced, so it can't really be seen as a point in his favor. I believe you used this against Ike in the tier list topic, and it's essentially the same thing here. However, it's making the enemies highly inaccurate, which means that Tibarn's brokenness isn't so valuable anymore because everyone is suddenly dodging a ton of things and no one should have issues hitting either.

In any case, if it's a point for him, then Elincia's 3 stars back in 2-P and 2-E were a point for her

I realize this kind of works against Elincia as well, since it means she won't be healing as much. However, units still get hit on occasion and she's mainly doing her Amiti + Mercy work anyway, so the effect is minor for her.

Let’s look at what’s mitigating Elincia’s only advantage. Micaiah is a force deployed healer in 4-E, and she will be healing since her offence is terrible. Just taking a quick look at her numbers:

The thing about using Micaiah against Generals is that most units other than royals won't be one-rounding them, so Micaiah can severely weaken or even get the kill, granting her much more experience than a healing would. Now yes, she will be healing more than fighting, but having two healers > having one since enemies can hurt more than one unit, and Elincia is likely the next best choice for a healer, the best competition being Mist, who can't fly and doesn't have as good offensive qualities.

Then there's Restore staves and the AOE attacks that Silence/Sleep/damage in all chapters except 4-E-2. Elincia is easily the best unit to use this so that she can reach and restore allies with her flying capabilities. And when everyone is taking damage from AOE attacks, you need more than one healer.

And don't forget Mr. Bolting, Mr. Blizzard, and Mr. Double Bow that can hurt more units than Micaiah can heal, especially your dragons.

If that weren’t enough, there’s many strategies allowing you to 1 turn 4-E-2, 3 and 4, and 4-E-1 and 5 also take single digit turn counts at most, which exemplifies how trivially easy the final chapters are with some decent planning.

This works against Tibarn as much as it works against Elincia. These chapters are so easy, so who cares? Most of your better Beorc units can one-round almost anything at this point anyway, so what is so special about Tibarn's awesome combat? At least Elincia has external use in staves, even if they won't be used too much on her.

Tibarn's offensive lead is always better than Elincia's, there's really no arguing against that. However, Elincia has two more chapters of being awesome, one being fairly difficult (2-E), whereas Tibarn is a broken unit among broken units, so he never really stands out. Elincia's utility and availability > Tibarn's quick shots of being broken.

I'll admit I had a hell of a time with all this. Your opening argument was pretty amazing.

[Vykan12]

While that may be true, Elincia has much more backstory and development than Tibarn. Tibarn is basically "I'm badass, look at me." Elincia, on the other hand, hired a group of mercenaries and took back her lost kingdom after her parents were murdered. Then, she had to stop a rebellion in her own country, and she was succesful. Obviously, Elincia plays a bigger role than Tibarn.

Playing a bigger role in the plot doesn’t necessarily make one a more likeable character. Look at someone like Volke for instance. His manner of secrecy and strictly business conversation style makes him a fan favorite. Similarly, Tibarn being a total badass is sufficient enough to make him more likable than Elincia and her backstory.

I'll admit she isn't the greatest unit here, but she's not without use either. Marcia's avoid isn't highly reliable, so Elincia will be keeping her alive, and a staff use > a Vulnerary; Gives Elincia experience and Marcia the turn to attack, as well as saving resources.

Well technically, it’s just a better use of resources since 1/30 mend uses is more cost efficient than 1/8 vulneraries. And I already stated that Elincia healing is no different than Marcia doing so in terms of Marcia being able to attack if there’s no enemies in her immediate range.

If Nealuchi sees his gauge go out, he's likely to get hurt as well.

Although he might get injured during the chapter, particularly when transformed, it’s very unlikely that he’ll get injured enough in 8 turns to die. That is, unless you do something really moronic like have him rescue someone untransformed or get attacked by the boss untransformed, at which point I’d be questioning the player’s sanity.

Also, Elincia doesn't have to worry about dying either, so she's good as a shield to protect Leanne so that she doesn't get taken.

Hmm, didn’t really consider that, though in some situations having the enemy rescue Leanne on purpose is useful since it reduces their hit rate considerably and makes them easier to double. Particularly useful for the boss, in any case.

She's also good for luring the Dracoknights in with the possibility of Stunning them and making the kill so much easier.

True, although that’s only really benefiting Marcia, since she’s the only one concerned about dying here.

It's a disadvantage, but fairly minimal. The only immediate enemy that she truly fears is a Warrior with Bowgun and Coin, but with the help of Leanne, she can knock him out with Amiti on the first turn without fear of a counterattack. There are those Archers with Steel bows, and they have 48 displayed hit on her for 28 damage, but she shouldn't be taking hits from them anyway without a height advantage, making their hit 0 on her. Since she has Canto, this is perfectly reasonable. She'd probably be doing this anyway.

This, however, requires Elincia to use Leanne instead of having someone else make use of her services, and Leanne’s particularly useful on the early turns to get your units to hurry up and reach the enemy. But the problems don’t end there. Elincia cannot pursue Ludveck because he is guarded by a crossbow dude, and it doesn’t help that there are 2 longbow archers there as well. Also, the southern area is infested with enemies, so Elincia will be taking a lot of damage from non-bow threats, so her chances of dying are pretty high if she chooses to go for Ludveck in an aggressive manner. Because of the reinforcement bowgun users on the left side of the map, she’s also likely restricted to attacking on the middle platform or the right side, but the right side is usually taken by Haar since there’s plenty of generals there he can double and thus optimize his exp gain. So her attacking options are pretty limited overall, at least on enemy phase.

She's still a great hit-and-run unit because she can one-round pretty much anything and get away if needed. During the times when there are no bow users to worry about, she can pretty much clear up the right side of the map single-handedly in one enemy phase. Granted, this will be around turns 5-6, but it's very possible and involves little risk.

That cannot be argued, but what’s the value in that? Elincia gains little exp from killing those units and it’ll take quite a long time for units heading to the right to actually reach Ludveck, so it serves little purpose aside from self-improvement, and I’ve already shown that a max level Elincia loses to a base level Tibarn.

But that's not what she's doing the most anyway. I only touched on it in the last paragraph, but I'll elaborate; healing. Everyone is taking damage in this chapter, even Haar (except for the occasional SM), so she'll be healing quite a lot. Then there are those pesky Longbow users and Halberdiers in front of Ludveck she can take care of. With Leanne around, there's no reason Elincia won't find time for all of this.

This is assuming Elincia is hogging Leanne, and considering the static nature of the chapter (ie people sitting around clogging spaces, assuming Haar doesn’t go hammer time on Ludveck), Leanne will have plenty of other options available for vigoring. Though yes, Elincia does have a nice balance of healing and hit & run tactics to offer, which I had already conceded in my opener.

Yeah... I can't really argue the offensive lead Tibarn has. The only thing I can say is that Elincia has access to ranged swords, but she's using Amiti much more often anyway.

Ranged swords? Elincia would give up a 15 MT, infinite use brave sword for a wind edge? That’s silly, in 4-2 she’d have 28 Mt and would be single attacking enemies, meaning she’d be lucky to reach double digit damage against most enemies. I guess things get better when tempest blades start showing up, though there are only 2 that you get without stealing, and with a tempest blade, max str, and a fire support, she has 47 Mt. It takes 52-56 MT to ORKO 4-E generals, so it might help her kill stuff in 4-E-2, but that’s about the extent of it.

It would be exactly the same if he came with scrolls of the two in his inventory.

Valid point.

I can't, however, argue his capacity lead, but since he can still only equip two skills, it's not a serious advantage.

Whether it’s a serious advantage or not depends on what combination you give him. There’s a lot of really deadly 15-20 skill combos that Elincia cannot make use of such as celerity + pass, adept + pavise, resolve + nihil, etc.

On to Elincia's skills. Since when is Mercy awful?

It weakens Elincia’s exp gain, which in turn hurts both her offensive capabilities and healing (less mag growth). By helping others get easy kills, she’s doing so at the sacrifice of her own performance in the upcoming chapters, which isn’t exactly good when she’s already losing to Tibarn by a huge margin (in fact one she can’t even overcome).

I'd go so far as to say it's one of the most useful skills in the game, and it's a major point in Elincia's favor. Tibarn's team is the one going to 4-5, the laguz slaughterfest, and so is very, very likely where you sent your weaker units to be trained.

You’re overvaluing this powerleveling strat in 4-5. The people who make the best endgame units are those who don’t generally need that much leveling, such as most of your GMs and the Royals. I’ll grant some of the DB might be worth pursuing (Nolan and Zihark particularly) but everyone else who needs major leveling is an inferior choice anyways. The CRKs are mostly made of paladins who all have fail caps, which just leaves Calill, but even then she targest res, which is bad for the very final chapter, and having bad durability and move is not too hot even if she does attack at range. The DB have fail like Leo, Ilyana and Meg, and Edward offers nothing that Zihark and Mia don’t. That really just leaves lategame fillers like Tormod, Pelleas, Lucia, etc., none of which have anything superior to offer relative to higher availability units in their classes.

Plus, if your units are so bad that they need the enemy to be reduced to 1 hp, how would you expect them to develop enough in time for 4-E? I know 4-5 is an exp goldmine, but the more turns you spend on it is time wasted for trivial returns since you already have all you need for an efficient completion of 4-E.

This also means that Tibarn killing everything is somewhat counter-intuitive, since it destroys the real point of these chapters.

So you’re essentially trying to argue that Tibarn’s too good? The purpose of gaining tons of exp is to gain levels, which in turn increases your combat performance, so Tibarn already being there is a major plus for him, not some bizarre negative as you’re trying to assert.

Also, Elincia is the best unit to take Imbue. She's the only unit who can equip it that is actually somewhat based off of Magic, so she can recover 20 health every turn at base level with it and Renewal, rendering her almost unkillable. And this is considering she gets hit at all and isn't fully recovered from a staff she may have equipped. This allows for much more flexibility when using her.

This would be a cool point if we were arguing why Elincia is teh pwnzorz, but is a bit meaningless in this debate since Tibarn has better durability without imbue than Elincia does with the skill.

This can almost be seen as a point against him. Your team is getting the bonus anyway regardless since he's forced, so it can't really be seen as a point in his favor. I believe you used this against Ike in the tier list topic, and it's essentially the same thing here. However, it's making the enemies highly inaccurate, which means that Tibarn's brokenness isn't so valuable anymore because everyone is suddenly dodging a ton of things and no one should have issues hitting either.

I agree that it’s ambiguous whether leadership should be considered a point for Tibarn or not. However, to claim Tibarn’s brokenness isn’t so valuable is a gross exaggeration. First of all, the difference between Tibarn’s leadership bonus and Ike’s is 5, so the difference is only really noticeable between Tibarn and Micaiah’s group. Second, the leadership bonus doesn’t offer any help to offensive capabilities unless you have hit rate issues, nor does it offer much help to units who have poor base avoid.

In any case, if it's a point for him, then Elincia's 3 stars back in 2-P and 2-E were a point for her

Damn, didn’t think of that. Guess they cancel out, though Tibarn’s chapters are arguably harder and longer than Elincia’s part 2 chapters, so his bonuses are more valuable.

The thing about using Micaiah against Generals is that most units other than royals won't be one-rounding them, so Micaiah can severely weaken or even get the kill, granting her much more experience than a healing would.

If you’re aiming for speed, then there’s plenty of people one rounding generals. Ike, all the royals except Naesala (even then he only needs SS strike), any axe user (cuz of hammer + urvan) and any bow user (cuz of the double bow), and none of this is factoring in mastery activations, which allow just about any character to kill the enemy with >50% reliability, moreso with adept or bliss in effect.

Now yes, she will be healing more than fighting, but having two healers > having one since enemies can hurt more than one unit

Hence why I mentioned fortify. You can also have the same healer use a physic twice thanks to your heron.

and Elincia is likely the next best choice for a healer, the best competition being Mist, who can't fly and doesn't have as good offensive qualities.

Flying doesn’t even offer that much mobility advantage in 4-E as it does in most other maps in the game. It’s completely irrelevant in 4-E-2, 4-E-4 and 4-E-5, which just leaves a couple platforms to fly between in 4-E-1 and 4-E-3. However, Mist has more magic than Elincia does, and probably a level lead as well, so she has more physic range and does her healing job better. Also, if you don’t use Elincia, then you can replace her easily with Mist (kinda mentioned the reasons ^ and she also gives a sweet water support to someone), whereas it’s very difficult to find someone who can fight on Tibarn’s level. You could say the lions do it, but they have a lot of trouble reaching 40 spd (the amount required to double auras without Nasir) whereas Tibarn has 40 base speed, and the auras are the only non-boss enemies that high end royals will have trouble killing.

Then there's Restore staves and the AOE attacks that Silence/Sleep/damage in all chapters except 4-E-2. Elincia is easily the best unit to use this so that she can reach and restore allies with her flying capabilities.

Silencing is a pretty lolable status affliction since you’re not deploying many mage characters and units with high res have a low probability of being silenced anyway. I don’t recall any sleep statuses ever occurring except in 4-E-5, and that’s if you take like 7 turns, which is quite unlikely if you’re making proper use of your attackers, dragons and heron. Damage is covered in the next point.

And when everyone is taking damage from AOE attacks, you need more than one healer.

Again, fortify staff. It might only have 5 uses (17 with full hammerne use) but using it in a timely manner will more than keep you covered if you have a half decent team deployed. Since 4-E-5 has the Ashera staff, we’re basically talking about more than 1 use per chapter, and there’s no reason you’ll need it on a joke chapter like 4-E-2.

And don't forget Mr. Bolting, Mr. Blizzard, and Mr. Double Bow that can hurt more units than Micaiah can heal, especially your dragons.

You could either take them out on turn 1 with a flier or put them to sleep with Micaiah or something. Oh, and Mr. Double Bow doesn’t move, so he’s easy to take care of.

This works against Tibarn as much as it works against Elincia. These chapters are so easy, so who cares? Most of your better Beorc units can one-round almost anything at this point anyway, so what is so special about Tibarn's awesome combat?

Reliability (100% kill rate > 80/90), performance against bosses, particularly Deghinsea and the entirety of 4-E-5, and of course reaching enemies the soonest thanks to having the best mobility in the game.

At least Elincia has external use in staves, even if they won't be used too much on her.

You don’t need a healer at all for chapters that are 1 turned.

Tibarn's offensive lead is always better than Elincia's, there's really no arguing against that. However, Elincia has two more chapters of being awesome, one being fairly difficult (2-E),

2-E difficult? What’s hard about blocking 2 passages with unarmed units? It’s as difficult as you make it for yourself and there’s definitely a balance of getting your units exp and keeping things not too risky that can be reached.

whereas Tibarn is a broken unit among broken units, so he never really stands out. Elincia's utility and availability > Tibarn's quick shots of being broken.

Who exactly is broken in 4-2 and 4-5? And he’s performing better enough than your other units that he’s not “just another broken fighter” he IS the broken fighter that most of your units aspire to be. Elincia’s combination of healing, flying and decent combat cannot compete with that.

[Florete]

Playing a bigger role in the plot doesn’t necessarily make one a more likeable character. Look at someone like Volke for instance. His manner of secrecy and strictly business conversation style makes him a fan favorite. Similarly, Tibarn being a total badass is sufficient enough to make him more likable than Elincia and her backstory.

In Volke's defense, he played a pretty big role in PoR. And although having more backstory might not make her more likable, she has accomplished quite a lot and done things most people her age wouldn't be able to, and that at least wins my respect. As for Tibarn...well, yeah, he's the king of hawks, but he go through a lot to get there? All we know is that the strongest gets to be king, so he probably power-leveled for a while.

Well technically, it’s just a better use of resources since 1/30 mend uses is more cost efficient than 1/8 vulneraries. And I already stated that Elincia healing is no different than Marcia doing so in terms of Marcia being able to attack if there’s no enemies in her immediate range.

Although he might get injured during the chapter, particularly when transformed, it’s very unlikely that he’ll get injured enough in 8 turns to die. That is, unless you do something really moronic like have him rescue someone untransformed or get attacked by the boss untransformed, at which point I’d be questioning the player’s sanity.

I agree that Marcia is the only one really in danger of dying and even that isn't much of a threat, so this point is really just getting Elincia experience.

Hmm, didn’t really consider that, though in some situations having the enemy rescue Leanne on purpose is useful since it reduces their hit rate considerably and makes them easier to double. Particularly useful for the boss, in any case.

And lose Leanne for a turn? No way. You already conceded that Marcia isn't getting killed too easily, so why would you need to weaken the enemy when you won't actually be killing him faster? Everyone doubles regardless, and hit chances are high.

Haar also needs no help taking on the boss. If anything, he wants Leanne there so he can kill the boss faster (On his own turn).

True, although that’s only really benefiting Marcia, since she’s the only one concerned about dying here.

It's better than them capturing Leanne, which is the point you just used (Enemy inability to move, attack, or dodge > enemy losing some hit and avoid + us losing our Heron). Especially useful for the boss. :D

This, however, requires Elincia to use Leanne instead of having someone else make use of her services, and Leanne’s particularly useful on the early turns to get your units to hurry up and reach the enemy.

But it not only benefits Elincia, it benefits everyone. Only Brom and Haar will take little damage from that Crossbow, whereas everyone else will take a good deal of damage, especially Marcia, Calill, untransformed laguz (also transformed in the case of Nealuchi and Leanne), and Nephenee. Elincia taking him out fast is helping everyone, since no one else can one-round him.

Elincia cannot pursue Ludveck because he is guarded by a crossbow dude, and it doesn’t help that there are 2 longbow archers there as well.

Perhaps I should have detailed this more. When not healing, Elincia is especially useful for taking out those enemies in front of him. She can jump down, slay one, jump back up. She's even perfect for luring them in and teaming with Marcia/Haar on this, since they can't hit her when she has height advantage.

Also, the southern area is infested with enemies, so Elincia will be taking a lot of damage from non-bow threats, so her chances of dying are pretty high if she chooses to go for Ludveck in an aggressive manner.

Her chances of dying there are similar to Haar's even. Where there is a bow user, there is always a Thunder Mage, and Elincia is easily the best for taking them out. She also has better avoid to somewhat counter act Haar's higher defense, though his overall durability will obviously be better.

I disagree with going for Ludveck in such an aggressive manner anyway. There's no turn count for BEXP here, so taking a long time only has benefits, including more experience and items (like that Dracoshield, some Olivi Grass, an Arms Scroll, an Energy Drop, Nullify, Coins, and a Silver Greatlance).

Because of the reinforcement bowgun users on the left side of the map, she’s also likely restricted to attacking on the middle platform or the right side, but the right side is usually taken by Haar since there’s plenty of generals there he can double and thus optimize his exp gain. So her attacking options are pretty limited overall, at least on enemy phase.

Elincia can utilize the right side just as easily. She doubles (Quadruples) things he doesn't and the max displayed hit she'll see at neutral Biorythms is 44%. While that alone isn't fairly reliable, consider the fact that that number only goes down and that she's taking 15 damage at max (and that's from non-moving enemies) and recovers some from Renewal each turn and she really isn't in much danger of dying. Also considering she only needs one level to very possibly get some more avoid and power (perfectly possible with healing) and she's actually a fairly decent tank that can clear out enemies quicker. Remember that Haar can't double a lot of the reinforcements without a lucky Speed level up.

As I said before, where there is bow user, there is a Thunder Mage. If we're at the right side, these guys only appear at turns 2, 8, 10, and 11, so we have that span of no worries for either of them. This is, of course, considering Elincia doesn't stay in the middle area to heal and snipe out the enemies in front of Ludveck, but since she can fly over anything, she can do that from turn-to-turn if needed as well.

That cannot be argued, but what’s the value in that? Elincia gains little exp from killing those units and it’ll take quite a long time for units heading to the right to actually reach Ludveck, so it serves little purpose aside from self-improvement, and I’ve already shown that a max level Elincia loses to a base level Tibarn.

It shows that she's among the best units in this chapter, second only possibly to Leanne. How she compares to Tibarn later means nothing as of right now. She's a better unit than Tibarn is right now because she exists and is a great help to the team.

This is assuming Elincia is hogging Leanne, and considering the static nature of the chapter (ie people sitting around clogging spaces, assuming Haar doesn’t go hammer time on Ludveck), Leanne will have plenty of other options available for vigoring. Though yes, Elincia does have a nice balance of healing and hit & run tactics to offer, which I had already conceded in my opener.

Considering only four of your units have Canto, one who needs to transform and one who is usually walling, putting Elincia in place for Leanne is very easy and highly beneficial with the things Elincia can do in this chapter. And it isn't "hogging" so much because another unit is getting the treatment as well.

Ranged swords? Elincia would give up a 15 MT, infinite use brave sword for a wind edge? That’s silly, in 4-2 she’d have 28 Mt and would be single attacking enemies, meaning she’d be lucky to reach double digit damage against most enemies. I guess things get better when tempest blades start showing up, though there are only 2 that you get without stealing, and with a tempest blade, max str, and a fire support, she has 47 Mt. It takes 52-56 MT to ORKO 4-E generals, so it might help her kill stuff in 4-E-2, but that’s about the extent of it.

Yeah, I wasn't really trying to use that as a serious point, I just thought I'd mention it.

It weakens Elincia’s exp gain, which in turn hurts both her offensive capabilities and healing (less mag growth). By helping others get easy kills, she’s doing so at the sacrifice of her own performance in the upcoming chapters, which isn’t exactly good when she’s already losing to Tibarn by a huge margin (in fact one she can’t even overcome).

So a skill that helps increase the power of others as well as herself to a lesser degree is worse than just powering herself a bit faster? She still has staves and she'll be fighting a lot with this method so she can still gain a fair amount of levels.

You’re overvaluing this powerleveling strat in 4-5. The people who make the best endgame units are those who don’t generally need that much leveling, such as most of your GMs and the Royals. I’ll grant some of the DB might be worth pursuing (Nolan and Zihark particularly) but everyone else who needs major leveling is an inferior choice anyways. The CRKs are mostly made of paladins who all have fail caps, which just leaves Calill, but even then she targest res, which is bad for the very final chapter, and having bad durability and move is not too hot even if she does attack at range. The DB have fail like Leo, Ilyana and Meg, and Edward offers nothing that Zihark and Mia don’t. That really just leaves lategame fillers like Tormod, Pelleas, Lucia, etc., none of which have anything superior to offer relative to higher availability units in their classes.

Plus, if your units are so bad that they need the enemy to be reduced to 1 hp, how would you expect them to develop enough in time for 4-E? I know 4-5 is an exp goldmine, but the more turns you spend on it is time wasted for trivial returns since you already have all you need for an efficient completion of 4-E.

If only for those few DB units (I'd say Zihark, Nolan, Jill, and Volug are the main candidates) it's still a useful strategy. Some GM's might not be one-rounding everything right now either, and in any case, allowing other units to take kills without fear of a counterattack is pretty nice since it helps that units overall durability.

So you’re essentially trying to argue that Tibarn’s too good? The purpose of gaining tons of exp is to gain levels, which in turn increases your combat performance, so Tibarn already being there is a major plus for him, not some bizarre negative as you’re trying to assert.

I guess I dug myself into that one.

This would be a cool point if we were arguing why Elincia is teh pwnzorz, but is a bit meaningless in this debate since Tibarn has better durability without imbue than Elincia does with the skill.

That too.

I agree that it’s ambiguous whether leadership should be considered a point for Tibarn or not. However, to claim Tibarn’s brokenness isn’t so valuable is a gross exaggeration. First of all, the difference between Tibarn’s leadership bonus and Ike’s is 5, so the difference is only really noticeable between Tibarn and Micaiah’s group. Second, the leadership bonus doesn’t offer any help to offensive capabilities unless you have hit rate issues, nor does it offer much help to units who have poor base avoid.

+20% avoid will help even those with poor base avoid. Maybe you misunderstood me (Or maybe I'm misunderstanding myself, I'm not sure at this point). What I mean is that Tibarn's part IV chapters are easier than Ike's or Micaiah's (Mostly because of his stars, Reyson, and open, linear maps), so a broken unit isn't as valuable here as it would be on another team. It's still valuable, just to a lesser extent. It's similar to the reasoning Endgame chapters don't hold as much weight as other chapters.

Damn, didn’t think of that. Guess they cancel out, though Tibarn’s chapters are arguably harder and longer than Elincia’s part 2 chapters, so his bonuses are more valuable.

Longer I can possibly give you, but harder? No way. 2-E isn't some everyone-gets-one-or-two-rounded-by-any-enemy chapter, but it's enemy count is higher, they are more accurate, they do more damage, chosen units and weapons are much more limited, and an inferior Heron + only one healing unit. As for the strategy used on this chapter, it'll be covered later.

2-P is easily shorter and easier, I'll give you that.

Hence why I mentioned fortify. You can also have the same healer use a physic twice thanks to your heron.

When there are two or three units to heal, I hardly find Fortify over healing twice the better case since it's more useful later. The Heron I can give to you, but that's still a bit more situational than simply having a second healer.

However, Mist has more magic than Elincia does,

At base level with Mend, Elincia heals 37 damage. Considering she'll be higher than base and Mist's average isn't much higher than hers, the extra few points is negligible.

whereas it’s very difficult to find someone who can fight on Tibarn’s level. You could say the lions do it, but they have a lot of trouble reaching 40 spd (the amount required to double auras without Nasir) whereas Tibarn has 40 base speed, and the auras are the only non-boss enemies that high end royals will have trouble killing.

Giffca and Nailah are almost sure to reach 20 Speed by 4-E-5, and Caineghis is fighting just as well up until then. Naesala is still fighting very well also, especially if he has gotten SS Strike by now, at which point the difference in the two is very small.

I don’t recall any sleep statuses ever occurring except in 4-E-5, and that’s if you take like 7 turns, which is quite unlikely if you’re making proper use of your attackers, dragons and heron. Damage is covered in the next point.

Hetzel and another Bishop have Sleep staves in 4-E-1 that can hit anyone unprepared.

Again, fortify staff. It might only have 5 uses (17 with full hammerne use) but using it in a timely manner will more than keep you covered if you have a half decent team deployed. Since 4-E-5 has the Ashera staff, we’re basically talking about more than 1 use per chapter, and there’s no reason you’ll need it on a joke chapter like 4-E-2.

I doubt the Hammerne staff is being used on Fortify when there's Florete, Tarvos, possibly SS magic and any unbuyable weapon you happen to be using, like a strong forged weapon. Still, point taken.

You could either take them out on turn 1 with a flier or put them to sleep with Micaiah or something. Oh, and Mr. Double Bow doesn’t move, so he’s easy to take care of.

Taking them out on turn 1 poses problems. If you're going after the Blizzard, it must be done with range and needs to be with Haar or Jill so they won't be Double Bow raped, but it's also puts this unit in Sleep range. If you go after Bolting, it can't be with Haar or Jill or they'll get thunder raped, and it now puts a unit in range of both sleep staves. Mr. Double not moving doesn't mean he won't attack, and he is still fairly accurate and strong, though you are right about the Sleep staff.

Otherwise, attacking them on the first turn would leave both units fairly vulnerable to enemies around them, compounded by possible sleep conditions. Not a good idea. If anything, you'd need another healer even more.

Reliability (100% kill rate > 80/90), performance against bosses, particularly Deghinsea and the entirety of 4-E-5, and of course reaching enemies the soonest thanks to having the best mobility in the game.

Yes, he has those advantage, I can't argue that. But what is so special about having it now, at the easiest part of the game, when others are performing only a bit worse? And I could argue that Marksmen (Shinon in particular) are better against bosses like Dheginsea for having no fear of a counter attack, and therefore no need for Nihil or healing.

You don’t need a healer at all for chapters that are 1 turned.

You don't need Tibarn for chapters that are being one-turned. But really, 4-E-2 is the only chapter I see being normally one-turned. I know it's possible for the others, but it isn't nearly as likely.

2-E difficult? What’s hard about blocking 2 passages with unarmed units? It’s as difficult as you make it for yourself and there’s definitely a balance of getting your units exp and keeping things not too risky that can be reached.

It still has a higher degree of difficulty than any chapter Tibarn is in, especially if you want to actually get some experience rather than let the enemies pile up, and also get the items in the chapter. Walling and not moving forward is only a waste of time and experience.

Who exactly is broken in 4-2 and 4-5? And he’s performing better enough than your other units that he’s not “just another broken fighter” he IS the broken fighter that most of your units aspire to be. Elincia’s combination of healing, flying and decent combat cannot compete with that.

I can't argue that Tibarn is the most powerful unit in those chapters, that's just the way it is. But part 4 is where things have gotten hella easy, and not just because Tibarn is here, because we have third tier units that, although not as powerful as him, are still damn good. Elincia is contributing to this as well by keeping the team alive and using her skill to more easily make them stronger.

[Vykan12]

In Volke's defense, he played a pretty big role in PoR. And although having more backstory might not make her more likable, she has accomplished quite a lot and done things most people her age wouldn't be able to, and that at least wins my respect. As for Tibarn...well, yeah, he's the king of hawks, but he go through a lot to get there? All we know is that the strongest gets to be king, so he probably power-leveled for a while.

Now there’s a way to choose a king. Instead of having some blood feud over who inherits the throne of a country, thus creating numerous inferior leaders over a mere tradition, Phoenicis appoints the King to whoever has what they value most: Strength. While Elincia is a timid leader and far too young and naïve for her role as queen, Tibarn is quite a deal more comfortable with his position of authority as it suits his characteristics much better.

And lose Leanne for a turn? No way. You already conceded that Marcia isn't getting killed too easily, so why would you need to weaken the enemy when you won't actually be killing him faster? Everyone doubles regardless, and hit chances are high.

Conceded. However, this has almost no relevance to the core of the Tibarn vs Elincia debate.

But it not only benefits Elincia, it benefits everyone. Only Brom and Haar will take little damage from that Crossbow, whereas everyone else will take a good deal of damage, especially Marcia, Calill, untransformed laguz (also transformed in the case of Nealuchi and Leanne), and Nephenee. Elincia taking him out fast is helping everyone, since no one else can one-round him.

Fair enough, though Elincia has the weakest exp gain on the level (combat-wise, at least) and the only purpose of prolonging the level at all is to improve your characters, so it seems more logical for Leanne to be vigoring the likes of Marcia, Neph, Brom and Calill before anyone else.

Perhaps I should have detailed this more. When not healing, Elincia is especially useful for taking out those enemies in front of him. She can jump down, slay one, jump back up. She's even perfect for luring them in and teaming with Marcia/Haar on this, since they can't hit her when she has height advantage.

I had not considering baiting out the boss and the crossbow dude using Haar, then having Elincia attack either on turn 2. However, if Haar gets the speedwing, he could either equip a hand axe and ORKO the crossbow guy or a hammer and just end the chapter immediately. Actually, come to think of it, Haar with 20 spd could just hammer Ludveck a single time and 1 to 2 meteor attacks would finish him off. Or Leanne could allow Haar to attack twice on the same turn. There’s plenty of strategies permitting killing Ludveck within the first 3 turns that don’t involve Elincia, thus decreasing the value of her being able to use the lure tactics you mentioned.

Her chances of dying there are similar to Haar's even. Where there is a bow user, there is always a Thunder Mage, and Elincia is easily the best for taking them out.

On the contrary, the number of bow users exceed the amount of thunder mage users at least 2 to 1. The bowgun to thunder ratio might be similar, but then you have to consider regular bow users that Elincia fears just as much. Also, Haar only takes about 50-60% damage from a thunder hit whereas Elincia is auto blicked by crossbow dudes and takes a good 66-80% damage from regular archer hits, and crossbow dudes are more accurate against her than thunder mages are against Haar.

She also has better avoid to somewhat counter act Haar's higher defense, though his overall durability will obviously be better.

Fine by me.

I disagree with going for Ludveck in such an aggressive manner anyway. There's no turn count for BEXP here, so taking a long time only has benefits, including more experience and items (like that Dracoshield, some Olivi Grass, an Arms Scroll, an Energy Drop, Nullify, Coins, and a Silver Greatlance).

That all depends on who you choose to field in the long term. If you’re not using Brom, Neph, Heather or Marcia, then there’s not much purpose in playing out additional turns. Laguz won’t gain much strike level because you’re looking to conserve laguz stones at this point, and the only half decent laguz in the long term is Mordy anyway, who has mighty troubles doubling. Haar wants a speedwing a lot more than whatever level-ups he’ll get here, which just leaves Elincia. You could do something like giving her paragon in 4-2, since every mercy attack is like a kill for her, and physic heals similarly give some amazing exp gains, so that’ll help her catch up those levels lost in 2-E, and only at the expense of giving paragon to someone of choice. But she’s a likely candidate considering she has low bases, high growths and is an ideal endgame choice, so it’s not a particularly harmful decision. As such, once one gets all the loot the level has to offer then the remaining 8-10 turns aren’t generally worth the trouble.

Elincia can utilize the right side just as easily. She doubles (Quadruples) things he doesn't and the max displayed hit she'll see at neutral Biorythms is 44%. While that alone isn't fairly reliable, consider the fact that that number only goes down and that she's taking 15 damage at max (and that's from non-moving enemies) and recovers some from Renewal each turn and she really isn't in much danger of dying. Also considering she only needs one level to very possibly get some more avoid and power (perfectly possible with healing) and she's actually a fairly decent tank that can clear out enemies quicker.

Maybe on most enemies she might not face particularly high hit rates, but crossbow guys are posing more than 44 real.

1x Sniper lvl 3 (Crossbow)

HP 34, Atk 28, AS 18, Hit 159, Avo 57, DEF 14, RES 10, Crit 19, Ddg 11

1x Sniper lvl 5 (Crossbow)

HP 35, Atk 28, AS 18, Hit 163, Avo 59, DEF 15, RES 11, Crit 20, Ddg 13

1x Sniper lvl 6 (Crossbow)

HP 35, Atk 28, AS 19, Hit 165, Avo 61, DEF 16, RES 11, Crit 20, Ddg 13

Elincia’s avoid at neutral biorhythm (considering leadership bonuses) is 88. Against a 160 hit sniper, she has an 84.6% chance of dying. The crossbow guy on the right side of the map is lodged pretty heavily behind other enemies, so if Elincia kills a bunch of dudes, she risk getting exposed to his attack and getting what’s practically an automatic game-over. I’ll freely admit she can tank this side just as well as Haar when the crossbow dood is taken care of, but he’s as much a threat to Elincia as the hammer guy is to Brom before they’re disposed of.

If we're at the right side, these guys only appear at turns 2, 8, 10, and 11, so we have that span of no worries for either of them.

I claimed most of the crossbow reinforcements come from the left. The only reason she might not take on the right has already been mentioned above.

This is, of course, considering Elincia doesn't stay in the middle area to heal and snipe out the enemies in front of Ludveck, but since she can fly over anything, she can do that from turn-to-turn if needed as well.

Yeah yeah I get it. Elincia can fly around and find targets to kill easier than most other units in this level. I never claimed she was bad here, just that she required careful use to keep alive.

It shows that she's among the best units in this chapter, second only possibly to Leanne. How she compares to Tibarn later means nothing as of right now. She's a better unit than Tibarn is right now because she exists and is a great help to the team.

I never said otherwise, but 2-P and 2-E only make up 22% of her playtime, and it’s been pretty well established that her use is banal in 2-P, so she really only has about a ten percent playtime advantage over Tibarn. The majority of my argument revolves around Tibarn being >>> Elincia when they’re both around, hence why I feel having so much talk about these 2 chapters is semantics at best.

Considering only four of your units have Canto, one who needs to transform and one who is usually walling, putting Elincia in place for Leanne is very easy and highly beneficial with the things Elincia can do in this chapter. And it isn't "hogging" so much because another unit is getting the treatment as well.

Indeed Elincia can make easier use of Leanne than others, which makes it more realistic for her to use her services than others. However, Elincia depending on Leanne for her hit & run tactics isn’t so hot, at least when comparing it to people who don’t need to do that and can perform just as well offensively. Though, that really is just Haar, so I suppose you have a point.

So a skill that helps increase the power of others as well as herself to a lesser degree is worse than just powering herself a bit faster? She still has staves and she'll be fighting a lot with this method so she can still gain a fair amount of levels.

Look at it this way: Elincia is in dire need of exp in order to get to a point where she’s killing things reliably whereas Tibarn’s already set for the rest of the game at base level. While Elincia can give her other units more exp with mercy, it’s at the expense of her own development, whereas Tibarn can do largely the same thing in other ways. For instance, with his h3x movement and savior, he could spend the entirety of 4-2 ferrying units instead of pwning enemies, and this is generally a good thing even with under-levelled units considering how many stationary enemies there are in this stage.

Another thing I’d like to point out is that mercy is overrated in regard to feeding your other units kills. Although it is no doubt the best means to feed one of your units kills, there exists plenty of alternatives such as having your stronger characters use bronze weapons, or putting flourish on someone, or having weak characters team up for a kill. And, like I pointed out earlier, it’s questionable that a unit who needs an enemy to be weakened to single digit hp for a free kill is going to be endgame ready on time without massive babying. Someone like Lucia, for instance, might only be lv 20/14 but she’s 3 rounding some of the weaker enemy types, isn’t too concerned about her durability thanks to nice avoid and has some pretty easy means to boost her killing chances (adept + killing edge, for instance), and Lucia’s generally accepted as a low tier character on hard mode. Another example is Pelleas, who is 20/12, has a 21 spd base and a 60% growth, so he’ll be doubling in no time, attacks at range, has enough magic to 2-3 round most stuff and can even resort to using the fenrir for 3-10 range snipes. So, even your crappy characters aren’t so helpless that they need Elincia to weaken enemies to the extreme to pick up kills with any consistency, meaning the alternative aforementioned methods will work just fine.

If only for those few DB units (I'd say Zihark, Nolan, Jill, and Volug are the main candidates) it's still a useful strategy. Some GM's might not be one-rounding everything right now either, and in any case, allowing other units to take kills without fear of a counterattack is pretty nice since it helps that units overall durability.

First of all, I don’t see how Volug would be a main candidate. He’s great and all, but there’s no doubt that he dwindles in part 4. At level 31 and with SS strike he only has 49 Mt whereas someone like Titania has 56 Mt with the Urvan, and I doubt Volug is ever going to gain 17 levels in 10 chapters, especially considering how his exp gain in half of them are nonexistent. The only reason Volug would be used as a serious endgame choice is to help out his support partner while offering a mediocre attacker with high durability in himself, but even that becomes questionable in the later 4-E chapters where dragon/spirit/etc hit rates supersede high avoid, and Volug’s resistance is terrible (16 at max level). Though, assuming you do use him, levelling won’t do him much good since it doesn’t change anything about him having a 25% str, 15% def and 10% res growth, which are the main issues I outlined concerning his 4-E performance. Finally, he’s too valuable for the DB to leave them in the dust considering he won’t have any troubles in 4-P (the enemies there are about as strong as part 3 ones) and his mobility is very useful in the desert.

As for the remaining ones, consider first that if you are going to use Zihark, Nolan and/or Jill, you would’ve given them “kill favoritism” in parts 1 and 3 to promote their development, so they might not be as underlevelled as one would think. And with the existence of 3 paragons and few units who actually need raising at this point, in addition to how good these units are despite their low level, they can definitely level up just fine without Elincia’s help.

This leaves the GMs, but consider that the exp gain difference in Ike’s route and Tibarn’s route isn’t quite so far apart as people would lead you to believe. Particularly, Oliver’s mansion has over 100 total enemies if you permit all the reinforcements to show up, so there’s definitely a huge exp pool here even if it isn’t quite as infinite as 4-5’s is (and using that one for all 30 turns can be considered abuse). Plus, just like Nolan/Z/Jill, you can put effort into focusing some of your better resources into your weakest links to promote their development so long as it doesn’t harp with your efficiency in any meaningful way.

+20% avoid will help even those with poor base avoid. Maybe you misunderstood me (Or maybe I'm misunderstanding myself, I'm not sure at this point). What I mean is that Tibarn's part IV chapters are easier than Ike's or Micaiah's (Mostly because of his stars, Reyson, and open, linear maps), so a broken unit isn't as valuable here as it would be on another team. It's still valuable, just to a lesser extent. It's similar to the reasoning Endgame chapters don't hold as much weight as other chapters.

Granted, though that doesn’t change the fact that Tibarn can reach enemies sooner than any other unit in your army, and is the main proponent for intercepting Izuka as quick as possible, so there’s definitely ways in which Tibarn’s route being easy doesn’t affect his h3x.

Longer I can possibly give you, but harder? No way. 2-E isn't some everyone-gets-one-or-two-rounded-by-any-enemy chapter, but it's enemy count is higher, they are more accurate, they do more damage, chosen units and weapons are much more limited, and an inferior Heron + only one healing unit. As for the strategy used on this chapter, it'll be covered later.

Hmm, you seem to underestimate the 4-5 enemies, especially considering how you seem to be expecting all your weaklings to be piled onto that group.

So, just for fun, let’s examine Elincia’s durability against enemies here. A level 10 Elincia has 40 hp, 23 def and 110 avoid.

Going by the NM mode stats I recorded a long time ago, so keep in mind the enemies will actually be more powerful than indicated. Also didn’t list ravens since they suck and are infrequent.

Tiger lv 22 : Mt 45, Hit 148

Cat lv 21: Mt 33, Hit 158

Red dragon lv 18: Mt 54, Hit 146

Elincia is 2HKOed by tigers at 29 real. 8% chance of dying in 2 hits 0_o

Against cats, she’s 4HKOed at 43 real. 3.41% chance of dying in 4 hits

For red dragons, 2HKOed at 26 real. 6.76% chance of dying in 2 hits

These numbers are just bad, and Elincia’s supposed to be one of your better units in this level. Note that giving her imbue won’t save her since enemy laguz have tons of move on land and her getting attacked by 2-3 of anything is quite likely.

So yeah, I’ll give that 4-2 is easier than 2-E (but not 2-P), though between 2-E and 4-5, it’s rather arguable, and both really depend on what approach you use to beat the level in terms of risk vs efficiency management. Nevertheless, you already conceded that the part 4 chapters are at least longer, so if the difficulty is arguable, then the advantage is still Tibarn’s (long + difficult > short + difficult in terms of Tibarn’s contribution to the team).

When there are two or three units to heal, I hardly find Fortify over healing twice the better case since it's more useful later. The Heron I can give to you, but that's still a bit more situational than simply having a second healer.

The thing is, Elincia isn’t even your best healer, strictly speaking.

Elincia lv --/--/15: 23 magic

Micaiah lv 20/16/1: 32 magic

Laura lv 20/9: 25 magic

Ilyana lv 20/20/6: 30 magic

Soren lv --/20/8: 35 magic

Mist lv --/20/10: 28 magic

Rhys lv --/20/10: 33 magic

Pelleas lv --/12/1: 26 magic

Base level Bastian: 35 magic

Base level Oliver (!!!): 31 magic

Every mage character in the game aside from Tormod out-heals Elincia, and I’m generously under-estimating the levels of most of the units here. In fact, most of these healers win magic by at least 10 points, which is 5 physic range, more than enough to counteract Elincia’s mobility advantage.

So lol at Elincia being the second crappiest healer in the game before factoring in mobility advantages. And all the mobility is doing is allowing her to use restore/ward/etc staves on your units easier than the likes of Oliver, and those staves are used far less frequently than raw healing.

So again, if I don’t use Elincia, I’m more than covered with alternatives whereas there’s no one except maybe the lions who can match Tibarn’s fighting capabilities (and I already argued why they’re worse on auras), and absolutely no one with his kind of movement.

At base level with Mend, Elincia heals 37 damage. Considering she'll be higher than base and Mist's average isn't much higher than hers, the extra few points is negligible.

She could use recover for all I care. The fact is, other people are healing arguably better even when considering Elincia’s flying, but the same can never be said about Tibarn in relation to his combat abilities.

Giffca and Nailah are almost sure to reach 20 Speed by 4-E-5

Although true for Giffca (50% spd growth on a lion? Wtf?), the same can’t be said so much for Nailah. She starts off at level 33 and has a 20% speed growth, so she needs to reach level 36-38 just to have a reasonable chance of capping spd, which isn’t happening. Ok, you could use BEXP, but that makes her spd growth even worse.

Nailah’s growths: Hp 60%, Str 30%, Mag 15%, Skl 20%, Spd 20%, Lck 45%, Def 30%, Res 30%

Not only is spd tied for her second lowest growth, her hp and luck growth are also noticeably higher than everything else. We all know that BEXP skews towards higher growths, so Nailah’s chances of gaining spd easily drop to like 10% or lower. Yeah, kinda ironic how she only needs one point of speed but has the uttermost difficulty of reaching it.

Getting back to Giffca, Tibarn is at quite an advantage considering he always has his first player phase and doesn't need to use up the most expensive resource in the game to keep himself transformed.

and Caineghis is fighting just as well up until then.

Again, no argument there. However, the majority of the units we’re fielding are fighters, so Tibarn having a couple of units more or less on his level isn’t as damaging as Elincia having much more competition for her position as a healer since we only want to field 1 or 2, and it’s already been well established that Elincia’s worse at what she does than Tibarn is.

Naesala is still fighting very well also, especially if he has gotten SS Strike by now, at which point the difference in the two is very small.

Naesala isn’t actually fighting quite that well. He’s arguably worse than a good deal of your beorc units in 4-E-1 since he won’t have SS strike by then without having levelled the whole desert or something, and thus has trouble killing generals without a tear activation (which is pretty high I’ll admit). So, Jill getting a guaranteed kill with the hammer/urvan > Naesala killing enemies with 75%+ proficiency. Once he does hit SS though, I’ll grant that he does perform rather close to Tibarn’s level, though obviously never surpassing him.

Hetzel and another Bishop have Sleep staves in 4-E-1 that can hit anyone unprepared.

That’s not the same thing as an AOE sleep affliction. Also note that Lekain’s AOE actually cancels out the effect of sleep, so Hetzel and Lekain putting 2 units to sleep isn’t quite as threatening as it should be. Oh, and normally the unit being put to sleep has high def but low res, so they can handle taking a couple of guaranteed hits if such a thing must be allowed in the given situation.

I doubt the Hammerne staff is being used on Fortify when there's Florete, Tarvos, possibly SS magic and any unbuyable weapon you happen to be using, like a strong forged weapon. Still, point taken.

Florete? You’re kidding me, right? Why would I pass on an uber healing item so that I can continue having Mist fail at being an attacker? Note that there’s a buyable florete anyway (though damn expensive), that Mist can use alondite in 4-E and the she can get the florete blessed. Serious waste of a hammerne use unless you’re really insistent on developing Mist in a hurry, and there’s other ways of carrying that out.

Tarvos is not quite so silly. However, a silver poleax has 2 more MT than the tarvos, and a forged silver axe has at least 3 more MT, so the only reason to prolong the life of the Tarvos is for the +4 def bonus, but Nolan has dependable avoid and the Urvan gives +3 res anyway, in addition to being a whopping 6 Mt stronger. Don’t see that one happening.

SS magic would be another waste. Your only magic users with any chance of going to 4-E are Calill and Soren, and they have enough magic to kill generics with arcmagic, or maybe bolganoe/tornado if you’re really desperate, so they can be saved long enough that they get blessed before breaking.

So yeah, I don’t see any weapons you mentioned that even come close to offering the broken power of extra heal-alls.

Taking them out on turn 1 poses problems. If you're going after the Blizzard, it must be done with range and needs to be with Haar or Jill so they won't be Double Bow raped, but it's also puts this unit in Sleep range.

Nullify would allow Tanith to pull that off, though she’s kinda mediocre, so don’t put too much thought towards that. More importantly, though, is that you can kill the blizzard guy and canto to the left, thus avoiding any chance of being put to sleep since that unit will be out of sleep range.

If you go after Bolting, it can't be with Haar or Jill or they'll get thunder raped

??? The bolting guy can’t counter, so that’s not an issue. There is a lone elthunder user there as well, but nothing spirit water + nullify won’t take care of. If it isn’t clear, Haar takes spirit water while moving closer to his location, then after vigoring takes out the bolting mage.

and it now puts a unit in range of both sleep staves.

Yes, I suppose that does make the bolting guy not so ideal to remove immediately. There are ways to remove both sleep staff users on the first turn with proper allotment of the celerity and pass skills, and perhaps the boots, depending on who you’re using.

Anyway, we’re detracting from the original point which was when you said “And don't forget Mr. Bolting, Mr. Blizzard, and Mr. Double Bow that can hurt more units than Micaiah can heal, especially your dragons.” In addition to some of the workarounds I mentioned in the past few paragraphs, the fortify + hammerne strategy and vigor healing strategy combine for enough cases that a second healer is easily avoided without any real negative consequence.

Otherwise, attacking them on the first turn would leave both units fairly vulnerable to enemies around them, compounded by possible sleep conditions.

Just felt like pointing out something random, but some units actually become more durable with increased enemy exposure. This mostly applies to Ike since he never has to worry about dying and each enemy he faces helps him stay at full hp thanks to Aether activation. I guess my real point was that there’s no real risk to be faced in sending out good units like your royals to face large enemy exposure, at least for 4-E-1.

Yes, he has those advantage, I can't argue that. But what is so special about having it now, at the easiest part of the game, when others are performing only a bit worse?

And what is the value of having your best healer deployed in 4-E versus your second best, or even the value of healing at all? After all, what healing is doing is permitting your fighters to stay on the frontlines, and if they can do that already, then the healer is suffering more from futility than then the fighters are from having their performance relative to other fighters becoming too alike.

And I could argue that Marksmen (Shinon in particular) are better against bosses like Dheginsea for having no fear of a counter attack, and therefore no need for Nihil or healing.

True, but we’re talking about 1 class (though mainly 2 units) against a single boss, which taken in isolation is nothing but a special case, an anomaly if you will. The only other boss that comes close is Ashera herself, but she’s only slightly harder to kill than an Aura (+30 hp but –5 def) and must be finished with Ike, so she’s a non-threat compared to Deghinsea, who’s very difficult to damage.

You don't need Tibarn for chapters that are being one-turned.

He does, however, apply to many more 1 turn strategies than Elincia does. For instance, putting celerity on Tibarn and shoving him is one of the best ways to get someone to take out the aura in front of Lehran without getting vigored to cover the distance.

But really, 4-E-2 is the only chapter I see being normally one-turned. I know it's possible for the others, but it isn't nearly as likely.

It always helps to show that Tibarn wins in a multitude of situations :)

It still has a higher degree of difficulty than any chapter Tibarn is in, especially if you want to actually get some experience rather than let the enemies pile up, and also get the items in the chapter.

As mentioned earlier, 4-5 is arguable, and 4-E-5 is actually a very difficult chapter if you don’t optimize resource use properly. IE, if you deploy a crappy team for 4-E or forgot to bring any of your skills, or didn’t acquire fortify and missed Lehran, then you could be in big trouble, whereas 2-E doesn’t have such risk factors to consider.

And there’s

Walling and not moving forward is only a waste of time and experience.

If it’s a waste of time to do so in 2-E, then what of 3-13? Also, walling in and taking 15 turns is faster than playing out 15 turns because of the time saved in player phase moves, thinking out what you’re going to do, etc.

I can't argue that Tibarn is the most powerful unit in those chapters, that's just the way it is. But part 4 is where things have gotten hella easy, and not just because Tibarn is here, because we have third tier units that, although not as powerful as him, are still damn good. Elincia is contributing to this as well by keeping the team alive and using her skill to more easily make them stronger.

If part 4 chapters are easy, then not only are enemies easier to kill, they are lesser threats to your units, which decreases the value of healing as well. It’s difficult to say who gets more affected by this, but I’d say it’s Elincia since at least Tibarn has the capability of solo’ing (though more likely semi-soloing if you’re going for low turns) his part 4 maps whereas most others cannot at his level of proficiency, Elincia included.

This was a very fun debate, hope you enjoyed it too RFoF.

Edited January 23, 2009 by Vykan12

[Florete]

This was a very fun debate, hope you enjoyed it too RFoF.

I'm being totally serious when I say this really was quite an enjoyable ass-kicking you gave me.

Yeah, I'm not even going to bother with a final reply, you raped me. However, you said before we started that you would have taken Elincia's side as well. I obviously didn't do this right, so would you mind telling me what you would have done differently?

[Vykan12]

However, you said before we started that you would have taken Elincia's side as well. I obviously didn't do this right, so would you mind telling me what you would have done differently?

Sure, I can try my best I guess.

Although I didn’t make any sort of outline, I certainly had the following things in mind for the debate:

-Minimize Elincia’s part 2 win. With 2-P I had the set turn count and the durability of the other units to work with, though 2-E was a lot more difficult to argue. I did my best with the crossbow argument, but ultimately I had to concede most of the points I made about this and in my last post I put a few lines in trying to downplay Elincia’s availability advantage. You did a good job of keeping more focus on the part 2 chapters as there should’ve been, since I couldn’t just say “all of this doesn’t matter in the big picture” since it would appear that I was conceding a point I could possibly win anyway given the right persuasion tactics.

-Demonstrate that Tibarn is clearly superior to Elincia in terms of combat with a stat comparison. Although I don’t normally do this, I put a lot of effort to put into perspective the meaning of each lead since the average person might not see how much of a win 50 avoid is compared to a 10 avoid lead, for instance. Showing that base level Tibarn beats a fully leveled Elincia was another way of quantifying Tibarn’s leads, and didn’t give the opposing debater any opportunity to make arguments about Elincia’s combat potential.

-With Tibarn’s combat lead clearly established, I do my best to hype Tibarn’s combat ability while minimizing the value of Elincia’s healing. This is obviously why you see me constantly mentioning Tibarn’s mobility, maintaining focus on max efficiency strategies, showing the disadvantages the other royals have compared to him, doing my best to disregard your Shinon point vs Deghinsea, etc.

Once we got into the debate, you brought up things I didn’t in my opener so I did my best to address them. In particular, downplaying the value of mercy by showing all the alternatives to raising crappy units I could think of, demonstrating how the even low tier units aren’t so helpless as to need enemies reduced to 1 hp, etc.

Anyway, if I were to argue Elincia, the main thing I would’ve focused on would be Elincia’s hybrid ability. You’ll see that I argued that almost everyone could heal better than Elincia, but none of those characters could heal well, attack well, be durable, all the while having great mobility. By putting emphasis on that, and to how you don’t even need much magic to heal effectively (eg/ recover use), then it’s easy to establish that she’s your best healing option in 4-E.

Next would be to refute the point I made about Micaiah healing reducing Elincia’s value as best as I could. First off, I could put into question Micaiah being raised, particularly if my opposition was arguing for some really efficient strategies, which wouldn’t give many DBs opportunity to develop when applied to part 1. I would’ve also pointed out that Micaiah could only have up to an A rank in staves in 4-E-1, which isn’t enough to use a fortify, and would do my best to downplay her getting an arms scroll, which would then involve some pretty detailed arguments about why you’re short on cash at that point (even if you’re not lol). And I would’ve argued for the hammerne to be used on brave weapons instead of what weapons you pointed out, though me refuting the specific examples you gave was sly of me since obviously the hammerne can apply to any weapon, not just the ones mentioned.

I’m not really sure what else I would’ve done. Skimming back through the debate, I notice how I pointed out Elincia’s durability was bad in 4-5, but I could use this point in her favor by pointing out how incredibly useful her healing is here considering how hard tigers hit and how large the enemy numbers are.

The problem is, when you get 2 really good debaters going at it, then it starts to matter a lot more which character is better than which debater is doing a good job selling his/her character. You have Tibarn > Elincia on the current HM list, and for good reason. If I were to debate Elincia against say, Mekkah with Tibarn, I could definitely lose because whatever persuasive argument I can muster for the inferior character can only go so far, whereas if Mekkah can dig out enough detail and persuasion for his superior character, then there’s nothing I can do.

Hope that helped somewhat :/

Edited January 23, 2009 by Vykan12

[Florete]

Hope that helped somewhat :/

It did actually. I'm happy I got this chance to debate with you because I feel I've learned quite a bit from it and it will help me do better in the future. I never even thought of the Brave weapons for some reason, even though I use the Hammerne on them as much as anything else. I didn't think of Micaiah's staff level either, though I highly doubt I could argue that she won't get an Arms Scroll.

I didn't think of her "hybrid" ability either, mainly because I was comparing her to Tibarn, who is obviously a superior fighter. This is why I focused on Mercy and healing, since you pretty much threw out any combat Elincia could pull off with your 20/20 comparison to base level Tibarn.

[Mekkah]

I think it's pretty clear Vykan won this one, though I believe Elincia is usually higher on tier lists...well, his own feedback pretty much has all what I wanted to say. The key to winning with Elincia isn't to argue about healing, availability, etc individually, but that she can do it all whereas Tibarn can only fight.