Prognosis4/Vykan12 (Kyza) vs Anouleth (Lucia)

[Vykan12]

Loyal tiger servant vs blue haired babe.

[Vykan12]

I don’t have any plot related opening statements to work with concerning Kyza whereas you can proclaim Lucia’s hawtness. I guess I could argue Kyza’s pretty cool for being low key, but he’s no Volke. Bah, I might as well cut to the chase.

There’s one highly noticeable advantage Kyza has over Lucia, which is availability. Whereas Lucia only has 2-2 and part 4 (8 chapters), Kyza has most of part 3 in addition to part 4 to work with (12 chapters). That means Kyza has 50% more playtime than Lucia. Keep in mind that if Kyza can compare to Lucia while he’s around and he’s above average when she isn’t, he’s easily winning the comparison. In fact, he could win (though by a lesser margin) even if he were slightly inferior to Lucia in part 4 if his part 3 were good enough to compensate. So how is Kyza doing in part 3?

First and foremost, Kyza will gladly take the negative of taking a 2-3 speedwing. This is a lot of baggage for Kyza to overcome, since he has to perform well enough to counteract having taken a speedwing away from the likes of Haar, Mordy, Boyd, Rolf, etc… and is also causing the item to rot until 3-4. Let’s now look at his bases with the speewing applied.

Kyza lv 18 (A strike): 55 hp, 30 Mt, 20 skl, 26 spd, 14 lck, 20 def, 10 res, 145 hit, 81 avo

===

Warrior lvl 10 (Steel Axe)

HP 42, Atk 34, AS 20, Hit 130, Avo 55, DEF 16, RES 9, Crit 10, Ddg 15

Offense: does 66% damage

Defence: 14 damage at 49% true hit. 5.76% chance of dying in 4 hits

===

Halberdier lvl 10 (Steel Lance)

HP 38, Atk 30, AS 20, Hit 134, Avo 54, DEF 19, RES 13, Crit 15, Ddg 14

Offence: does 57% damage

Defence: 10 damage at 56% true hit. 3.08% chance of dying in 6 hits

===

Swordmaster lvl 9 (Steel Sword)

HP 34, Atk 26, AS 23, Hit 146, Avo 61, DEF 16, RES 11, Crit 21, Ddg 15

Offence: does 41% damage per hit, just 1AS from doubling

Defence: is 9HKOed

===

Fire Sage lvl 8 (Elfire)

HP 32, Atk 26, AS 18, Hit 130, Avo 47, DEF 12, RES 16, Crit 8, Ddg 11

Offence: Does 112% damage

Defence: 23% chance of dying in 2 hits.

===

Thunder Sage lvl 9 (Elthunder, one has Vulnerary)

HP 33, Atk 26, AS 17, Hit 121, Avo 46, DEF 11, RES 16, Crit 18, Ddg 12

Offence: Does 115% damage

Defence: 1.04% chance of dying in 4 hits

===

Sniper lvl 9 (Steel Bow)

HP 37, Atk 30, AS 20, Hit 139, Avo 55, DEF 17, RES 11, Crit 21, Ddg 15

Offence: Does 70% damage

Defence: 11% chance of dying in 6 hits

===

Axe General lvl 11 (Steel Poleax)

HP 40, Atk 37, AS 17, Hit 117, Avo 51, DEF 24, RES 15, Crit 10, Ddg 17

Offence: 30% damage

Defence: 0.45% chance of dying in 4 hits

===

From these numbers, we can see that Kyza isn’t really killing anything but sages, but aside from armors, he’s generally inflicting >50% damage per enemy, and his durability is impressive, as he can generally take 4-6 hits while only facing 50ish hit rates. It may not seem like Kyza’s any real all-star, but there’s few GMs who are doing any better than him.

Gatrie lv --/15/0 (B Shinon, steel greatlance): 45 hp, 41 Mt, 20 skl, 23 spd, 17 lck, 29 def, 13 res, 83 avo

Gatrie cannot double any of the enemies Kyza can aside from mages (which Kyza ORKOes anyway) and generals, so even though he leads damage per hit by 11, he’s still losing damage overall. If you don’t believe, look at the #s:

Vs the warrior: 57% damage (+9% Kyza)

Vs the halberdier: 57% damage (tie)

Vs the swordsmaster: 76% (-35% Kyza, +6% if Kyza doubles)

Vs the sniper: 67% (+3% Kyza)

Vs the axe gen: 85% (-55% Kyza)

Though Kyza loses significantly against 2 enemy types (though sometimes only 1 if SMs are being nice), he is doing slightly better against everything else. I won’t deny that Gatrie wins durability (9 def, 3 res and 2 avo > 10 hp) but Kyza also has 50% higher move than Gatrie, meaning he can get out of sticky situations easier to heal himself with a concoction, and the move also helps his offence by allowing greater enemy exposure than Gatrie, which is major considering that’s Gatrie’s biggest downfall.

So it seems Kyza can decently compare to one of the GM’s better units already from joining. Let’s see how he fares against a couple others.

Kyza lv 18 (A strike): 55 hp, 30 Mt, 20 skl, 26 spd, 14 lck, 20 def, 10 res, 145 hit, 81 avo

Mia lv --/12/0 (B Rhys): 38 hp, 34 Mt, 29 skl, 30 spd, 20 lck, 15 def, 9 res, 95 avo

Kyza has some nice durability leads here (17 hp, 5 def and 1 res > 14 avo). Mia does admittedly win attack by 4 (8 per double) but both units are two rounding most enemies, so her only real offensive advantage is against SMs, which she doubles. Before you bring up adept as Mia’s main defence, note that Mia’s adept activation in 2 hits is 51% whereas Kyza’s is currently 46%, as well as the fact that Kyza’s activation rate is only going to improve since Mia is stuck with her tier 2 spd cap for a while. So clearly, Kyza is matching up to Mia as it stands.

And onto my final example.

Kyza lv 18 (A strike): 55 hp, 30 Mt, 20 skl, 26 spd, 14 lck, 20 def, 10 res, 145 hit, 81 avo

Shinon lv --/16/0 (B Fire): 44 hp, 34 Mt, 30 skl, 26 spd, 16 lck, 23 def, 17 res, 83 avo

I can’t really claim Kyza’s winning anything statistically. Though, like the Mia match-up, both units are 2 rounding, so Shinon’s 8 extra damage per double isn’t much of an advantage, especially when almost everyone in the army at this point is 2 rounding. Shinon also wins durability by a little (3 def, 7 res and 2 avo > 11 hp) but Shinon’s inability to counter (aside from sucky crossbows) is arguably worse than Kyza’s transform issues, and even if it weren’t, Kyza still has +2 move to brag about.

So, based on those 3 samples, Kyza’s not looking half bad, so I can safely assert that he’s at least average right now. Fortunately for Kyza, he improves in a hurry. Supports grow a level every 1.5-2 chapters, then he’s got strike gains to profit from, in addition to the gains from level-ups.

For strike gains, he needs to perform 70 hits. Assuming most of what Kyza attacks he doubles, that’s roughly 35 enemies he has to face off with. Assuming he attacks on average about 7 enemies per chapter, it’ll only take him 5 maps to improve his strike.

Now onto his exp gain. The formula for HM exp gain is as follows:

Atk exp = (EL-UL)/2 + 5

Kill exp = Atk exp + (EL-UL) + 15

Where EL= enemy level and UL = unit level

According to Reikken, laguz level = 2* beorc level, so Kyza would be lv 36, or 20/16 in the formula. Versus a 20/11 enemy, Kyza gains the following amount of exp:

Atk exp = (11-16)/2 + 5 = 3 exp per hit

Kill exp = 4 + (11-16) + 15 = 14 exp per kill

Assuming Kyza injures roughly half the enemies he faces and kills the other half, he’s gaining on average 8.5 exp per enemy encounter. So by the time he’s gotten to S strike, he’ll have gained roughly 3 levels, possibly more when factoring in some BEXP usage.

Finally, for supports, let’s give Kyza A Mordy. They both have similar mobility and joining time, so it seems like a logical pairing. So jumping to 3-E (at this point, I can only go with NM stats since HM isn’t recorded past 3-9):

Kyza lv 21 (A Mordy, S strike): 58 hp, 39 Mt, 22 skl, 28 spd, 16 lck, 25 def, 15 res, 87 avo

===

Sniper lv 13 (steel bow)

Hp 39, Mt 32, Hit 145, As 21, Def 19, Res 13, Avo 63

Offence: 102% damage

Defence: 9HKOed at 65% real.

===

Swordsmaster lv 16 (steel blade)

Hp 38, Mt 33, Hit 130, As 26, Def 19, Res 12, Avo 65, Crit 23

Offence: 52% damage

Defence: 8HKOed at 37% real

===

Halberdier lv 13 (steel lance)

Hp 39, Mt 30, Hit 130, As 21, Def 21, Res 14, Avo 51

Offence: 92% damage

Defence: 12HKOed at 37% real

===

Thunder sage lv 12 (elthunder)

Hp 34, Mt 26, Hit 129, As 18, Def 12, Res 17, Avo 54

Offence: 138% damage

Defence: 6HKOed at 36% real.

===

Axe paladin lv 13 (steel poleax)

Hp 39, Mt 36, Hit 116, As 19, Def 19, Res 12, Avo 54,

Offence: 102% damage

Defence: 6HKOed at 17%(!) real

===

Dragonmaster lv 15 (steel axe)

Hp 43, Mt 35, Hit 132, As 20, Def 22, Res 9, Avo 55

Offence: 81% damage

Defence: 6HKOed at 40% real.

===

Lance gen lv 14 (steel greatlance)

Hp 42, Mt 37, Hit 128, As 19, Def 27, Res 17, Avo 56

Offence: 57% damage

Defence: 12 damage at 34% true. 0.45% chance of dying in 5 hits

===

Major improvement over last time. Kyza’s either one rounding or severely injuring (80-90% damage) most enemy types, and 2 rounds anything he faces aside from maybe bosses (didn’t examine that). More impressive though, is Kyza’s durability improvement. Now he’s easily taking 6-12 hits against everything he faces, and at 40% or lower real. Kyza could also switch from Mordy to another support partner to trade atk and def for something and 8 avoid, at which point he’s only facing 25-30ish hit rates while maybe taking 1 or 2 less hits. There isn’t really much need to compare Kyza to anyone else since it’s obvious he’s being quite useful, though let’s check him out against Titania anyway, just to show how well he’s doing.

Kyza lv 21 (A Mordy, S strike): 58 hp, 39 Mt, 22 skl, 28 spd, 16 lck, 25 def, 15 res, 87 avo

Titania lv --/20/4 (A Ulki, steel poleax): 47 hp, 48 Mt, 18 skl, 27 spd, 22 lck, 27 def, 23 res, 91 avo

Yeah, I certainly can’t argue Kyza is better, but it’s not like he’s getting completely outclassed. The only thing Titania’s really crushing Kyza in is attack, but all this means is Titania lands all of her kills cleanly whereas Kyza is a lot more borderline on his kills, so most of that advantage is sheer overkill. Durability’s a lot closer (11 hp vs 2 def, 12 res and 4 avo) but we already showed that Kyza is plenty durable as it is, so all we’re showing is that Titania’s lolinvincible, which seems to support her being close to top tier in most FE10 tier lists.

Though, perhaps showing Kyza is only doing somewhat worse than a high tier unit isn’t quite as convincing as showing someone in the GMs he clearly beats. Bah, what the hell, this has reached tl;dr already.

Kyza lv 21 (A Mordy, S strike): 58 hp, 39 Mt, 22 skl, 28 spd, 16 lck, 25 def, 15 res, 87 avo

Oscar lv --/20/2 (A Boyd, steel greatlance): 47 hp, 41 Mt, 27 skl, 27 spd, 23 lck, 22 def, 19 res, 114 avo

The attack gap is much smaller (only 4 damage per double) and Kyza beats Oscar in durability everywhere except avoid, which he has a sizeable 27 point lead in. At the very least, you can definitely claim that Kyza is on Oscar’s level, and Oscar is a pretty good unit.

Yeah, 6 pages in word trying to argue that Kyza > nothing in part 3. I think by now it’s been clearly established that with the speedwing, Kyza can definitely contribute to an efficient part 3 completion since his offence and durability are fairly impressive even if it is rather difficult to find a GM he’s doing better than. In other words, Kyza’s part 3 – the negative of the speedwing – Lucia’s 2-2 win = a rather good head start for Kyza when Lucia joins. Now onto direct comparisons.

Before mentioning anything about part 4 Kyza vs Lucia though, not that Kyza can go on any route he likes whereas Lucia’s locked to Tibarn’s group. This is particularly advantageous for Kyza in Micaiah’s group since he can choose to go in the desert, where he has full 9 move transformed while most of your units are stuck with 1-2 move.

Kyza lv 22 (A Mordy, S strike): 58 hp, 41 Mt, 24 skl, 28 spd, 16 lck, 27 def, 15 res, 92 avo

Lucia lv 15 (Steel blade): 39 hp, 31 Mt, 28 skl, 28 spd, 19 lck, 14 def, 15 res, 95 avo

Kyza is devouring Lucia in this match-up, no euphemisms intended. Although both characters share the same speed, Kyza does a whopping 10 damage more per hit, which is 20 per double, and he still wins attack no matter what fancy sword Lucia chooses to switch to. Durability’s also a blowout, as Kyza’s double digit lead in hp and defence easily trump 3 avoid.

Now let’s go back to that attack lead and put it into perspective. Most enemies have roundabout 40 hp and 20 def, so if Lucia does 24 damage, then Kyza’s doing 44. Easy 1 round for Kyza, and a barebones 2 round for Lucia. Major difference.

Now let’s suppose it’s a general, and now the def is more like 28. Lucia does lolable single digit damage while Kyza’s doing more than 50% damage. An even bigger win for Kyza.

And now let’s get into applying the durability difference. If Kyza’s taking in 10 damage (6HKOed), Lucia’s taking in 23 (2HKOed). Kyza’s defence lead is enough to take thrice as many attacks in this case. The enemies doing less damage to Kyza is once again in his favor. Suppose he takes 3 damage (20HKOed), then Lucia is taking 16 damage (3HKOed). Major lulz at Lucia taking about 1/6th of the hits that Kyza can in this case.

I suppose Lucia could take adept to offset her bad offence, but Kyza could use it just as well (same spd stat of course) and such a resource consumption would partially cancel out with Kyza having used the speedwing we used on him. So that’s leading nowhere.

Okay, but Lucia can level super fast and also has a super h3x earth affinity, mirite? Well, she can only reach B Earth at best for 4-E, and that’s being quite generous (1 support level per chapter is pretty dang fast). Also, most of your non-sucky characters already have an established support, so Lucia would have to settle for someone like Pelleas.

Let’s jump to 4-E, where Lucia might actually stand a chance in this comparison.

Lucia lv --/20/10 (B Tanith, Vague Katti): 48 hp, 45 Mt, 38 skl, 37 spd, 24 lck, 19 def, 25 res, 143 avo

Kyza lv 26 (A Mordecai, SS strike): 62 hp, 48 Mt, 28 skl, 30 spd, 18 lck, 29 def, 15 res, 93 avo

A lot more arguable than before. Kyza still wins attack and doesn’t have trouble doubling generals or sages (generals have ~24-26 spd in 4-E-1 and sages have slightly less), which the first endgame chapter is almost entirely composed of, so he appears to win offence. However, I do suppose Lucia has a 19% astra and maybe like a 15% crit chance, which gives her a 53% chance to kill enemies at neutral bio (assuming double), though with a little effort, Kyza could more or less match that with a 51% roar. Overall, offence can maybe be considered tied at this point.

For durability, Kyza still has a 14 hp and 10 def lead, but Lucia has a whopping 50 avoid lead so she isn’t getting hit much. The advantage goes to Lucia, even though the gens are only doing about 13 damage to Kyza with 50ish hit rates (5HKO), so he’s only healing himself maybe once or twice in the chapter, whereas Lucia might not have to. Not a very large advantage, if you ask me.

But wait, there’s a lot that hasn’t been considered here. First of all, I gave Lucia 16 levels to Kyza’s 4 despite the fact that Kyza’s far outperforming her in 4-2 and 4-5, and also doesn’t have crappy CEXP gains against enemy laguz the way he does against beorc. Secondly, I gave Lucia a B Tanith support that I already clarified would probably only be a C, and also implies that Tanith’s sacrificing whatever support she has so far to get this one. Finally, Lucia has to compete with the likes of Zihark and Mia for the Vague Katti, whereas Kyza doesn’t have any competition for his fangs (lol), though I guess that could cancel out with Kyza wanting a laguz gem here.

I won’t really delve into much more of 4-E. I’ll grant that Lucia wins 4-E-2 from a sheer doubling advantage, and could also seize 4-E-3 due to the wyrmslayer, though from her on to 4-E-5 her avoid isn’t looking so hot against 170+ hit rates, which makes her def disadvantage to Kyza more apparent. Well, to be honest, she also wins 4-E-4 and 5 again for a doubling advantage, though it should be noted that Kyza can double spirits besides Nasir since he’ll have a respectable 35 speed. The thing is, Lucia’s also rather bad in the only 3 chapters where she beats Kyza, so it’s questionable for her to even be fielded.

Again, I don’t want to cover this in-depth yet (we can do that in subsequent counters) but Lucia’s doing pretty bad against auras. At max level, she averages 27 str, so she has 47 Mt with the VK. Against side auras, that’s only 34 damage (37%), and does a considerably worse 14 damage (15%) against corner auras. In comparison, a lv 32 Kyza with SS strike and A Mordy has 55 MT, so he’s doing 25 damage to side auras (27%) and 15 to corner auras (16%). Though both are sucking hard (no pun intended), Lucia’s lead is pretty small (avg of 26% vs avg of 21.5%) though Lucia does have the first turn and gets better bonuses from red dragons.

So in conclusion, Kyza being rather good in part 3 w/ the speedwing + pwning Lucia in 2 part 4 chapters >>> Lucia being pwn in 2-2 and possibly beating Kyza in 4-E

Edited January 27, 2009 by Vykan12

[Anouleth]

I've never done one of these debates, so I assume my job is just to nitpick the preceding post and find stuff to dispute.

First, I agree that taking a 3-4 Speedwing is a big negative against Kyza. I can't really dispute the stats you've posted to back yourself up, but I'd like to point out that even with this speedwing, he's still very mediocre offensively. Perhaps more importantly, you've neglected to post his stats untransformed.

Kyza lv 18 (A strike): 55 hp, 20 Mt, 10 skl, 13 spd, 14 lck, 10 def, 5 res

Not a surprise to anyone - all laguz are this bad untransformed, which is precisely why people don't like using them. Depending on how much Olivi Grass you burn, Kyza's essentially useless for between half or a tenth of the game. That speedwing is unjustified not because Kyza's only average with it, but because he's average when he's transformed with it. You pointed out that Gatrie has inferior move to Kyza - if Kyza spends 3 turns transformed and running ahead with 9 move (risking untransforming at a critical point and possibly dying) and then needs to run back for 2 turns and munch grass so his gauge can refill, he's hardly all that much better. 9 move isn't really that great either when you can't Canto and take full advantage of it. When you take into account his uselessness against indirect attackers as well, he starts to sound less average and more really bad, especially compared to the rest of the GMs.

Whatever, Part 3 is so boring anyway. Enough about Kyza's bad start. I won't deny he gets better, though. Since S Strike is so damn good in this, he's pulling his weight by the end of Part 3, when his horrible SPD cap hasn't quite caught up with him.

So at the start of Part 4, Lucia is getting ripped to shreds, right? Given how we gave Kyza the speedwing all the way back in 3-4, I think we're entitled to forge a nice pretty sword for Lucia. Depending on how much we're willing to splash out, Lucia could be doing ok. Of course, her mt is never going to be as good as Kyza's, but it doesn't need to be. If we give her a forged silver sword with +hit and +crit (the cards that nobody wants) and give her gamble, she can just crit her way to victory because she gets unique bond bonuses from Elincia and Geoffrey - two good characters in their own right and both with canto. I'm taking 10 as enemy luck, because Serenes doesn't seem to have data on it - it's probably higher, though.

4-5

20/18 Lucia vs Tiger 56 HP

Mt 34 vs 24

Hit 200 vs 55

AS 28 vs 20

Crit 53 vs 10

That's with a Silver Sword with +3 mt, +15 hit, +9 crit and a triple arrow card, assuming we have Geoffrey and Elincia sitting next to Lucia. Lucia chooses to gamble -> 10 mt, 72 hit, 86 crit chance, variable with biorhythm. I'm not sure how to calculate real hit, but I'd say that's not too bad for showing up badly underlevelled. All that forged stuff are probably a bit too much for Lucia, to be honest - the 30 durability sword will cost 6660 gold, and a triple arrow card (lol). Personally, I think Lucia would better use being BEXPed or paragoned to 3rd tier, which would also help solve her durability problems and let her double the faster enemies - she admittedly has no chance against the cats and hawks.

4-5 Tiger vs Lucia (C support with Tanith, sitting on bushes) 40 hp

Mt 40 vs 15

Hit 153 vs 128 (not sure if thicket boost is 20 or 10)

AS 20 vs 28

Crit What Crit?

Ok, she gets touched, she gets ripped to shreds. But again, for a character who's miles behind everyone else, 25 display hit at neutral biorhythm ain't too bad. If we baby her for a chapter by levelling her up to 19, BEXPing one level and then crowning her or whatever before 4-5, she's no longer 2HKOed by Tigers - Dragons probably will, but their hit is so low I won't even consider them for 4-5. Her mt will go up, so her crits do reasonable damage, as does her crit rate and luck - plus she now doubles those cats and ravens.

4-5 20/20/1 Lucia vs Tiger 56 hp

Mt 37 vs 24

Hit 205 vs 55

AS 32 vs 20

Crit 64 vs 10

Suddenly, when we turn on Gamble we have 13 mt, 75 ht and 100 critical! We're not even considering the risk of hitting Astra and insta-killing. Her avoid will have jumped up a couple of points too, so it's something like 18 display hit. Meanwhile, Kyza versus the same dood will do something like 20 damage twice, so he 2RKOs. Lucia can also pretty much insta-kill the dragons with Wyrmslayer + Gamble. Far from 'Kyza far outperforming Lucia in 4-2 and 4-5'. I admit 4-2 is unwinnable for Lucia, but I've hardly given her mountains of favouritism -

A 7000 gold forge with a card noone wants

A couple of easy kills in 4-2 to get her to level 19

A level of BEXP

A crown or another level

Compared to Kyza -

A stat booster everyone wants

Various grasses/stones a handful of other characters really want

You putting up with his untransforming habit, like all laguz

On top of that, Lucia's endgame is so much better than Kyza's it's not even funny.

4-E-1

Not much to say here. Lucia's avoid is through the roof, and if Geoffrey's in play her damage will be too. When Geoffrey and Elincia aren't around, just Parity anything on a Cover tile. You could BEXP her strength if you have some spare, I guess, although there are probably better canditates.

4-E-2

BK is such a pushover. Who cares?

4-E-3

Wyrmslayers + Gamble = good times

4-E-4 and 4-E-5

In all your pages, you forgot to mention Parity, which, given the propensity of spirits and auras to sit on +def tiles, comes in very handy. Sure, Parity can be taken off and given to anyone, but since it cancels the Tide and Pool abilities, only Trueblades can get any benefit from it since they still double Ashera. Really, Lucia is dealing 34 damage against all auras, and without taking damage in return. Yeah, Kyza doubles the spirits with Nasir - so does everyone. Difference is, Lucia can choose to Parity, effectively increasing her might by 10 against Cover spirits... and IIRC by 15 against Lehran, and still double. Or she could Gamble and get obscene crit. Kyza has only one choice - to fail.

In conclusion, Kyza starts terrible, with favouritism becomes useful, and fails in endgame, and is always a laguz and thus kinda not worth it. Lucia starts wtfh4x, then disappears, has a haircut, comes back initially bad, but with a bit of favouritism that noone else really wants becomes win again.

Oh yeah, plot related statements. Lucia seems to actually have a personality, plus Bastian likes her, and who are you to disagree with Count Bastian himself?

Edited January 27, 2009 by Anouleth

[Vykan12]

First, I agree that taking a 3-4 Speedwing is a big negative against Kyza. I can't really dispute the stats you've posted to back yourself up, but I'd like to point out that even with this speedwing, he's still very mediocre offensively.

I will not deny that, however it’s still better than Lucia not being there. And you didn’t mention his durability, so I’ll assume you conceded he has impressive durability at least relative to the enemies. Having good defence > having good offence in many situations, since you can compensate for offensive flaws easier than lacklustre survival ability. If you don’t believe me, consider someone like Soren who generally needs a wall of protection to be safe on enemy phase, which is slowing down your teammates, whereas someone who’s average on offence but lolimpossible to kill like Oscar just needs to keep finding enemies to offset his average-ish killing ability.

Based on that, and the stuff in my first post you “can’t really dispute”, Kyza is quite a ways better than mediocre, which is all I really need to prove in regards to part 3.

Perhaps more importantly, you've neglected to post his stats untransformed.

Kyza lv 18 (A strike): 55 hp, 20 Mt, 10 skl, 13 spd, 14 lck, 10 def, 5 res

Not a surprise to anyone - all laguz are this bad untransformed, which is precisely why people don't like using them.

He won’t ever be in this state except for the beginning of a chapter, and that’s if you don’t have him use a laguz stone, which there are plenty of at this point.

Depending on how much Olivi Grass you burn, Kyza's essentially useless for between half or a tenth of the game. That speedwing is unjustified not because Kyza's only average with it, but because he's average when he's transformed with it.

There’s no denying the 10% thing (though laguz stones and possible Reyson use make it more like 5%). However, Kyza going from pretty bad to above average with the speedwing > giving it to someone else who will go from good to slightly better. There’s no other GMs who magically go from doubling almost no one to doubling almost everything off of one speedwing. Since the net result is more positive than any other speedwing allotment, the negative of Kyza taking the speedwing from the team is thus lessened.

You pointed out that Gatrie has inferior move to Kyza - if Kyza spends 3 turns transformed and running ahead with 9 move (risking untransforming at a critical point and possibly dying) and then needs to run back for 2 turns and munch grass so his gauge can refill, he's hardly all that much better. 9 move isn't really that great either when you can't Canto and take full advantage of it. When you take into account his uselessness against indirect attackers as well, he starts to sound less average and more really bad, especially compared to the rest of the GMs.

First, Kyza (or any laguz for that matter) don’t ever need to risk going untransformed once in a transformed state. You know the maximum amount of enemies that Kyza can face on that enemy phase when put in a given spot, as well as his current meter status, so there’s no difficulty in deciding when he has to take olivi grass and when he can pass on that option to make an attack.

Second, Kyza doesn’t have to run back to munch grass. On the contrary, you’re usually throwing a laguz into a pile of enemies when they take grass so that their heightened meter can be put to use by countering a ton of enemies. The only situation where he’ll have to run back is if he’s short on grass AND health and must prioritize healing, thus meaning he risks untransforming if any other enemies attack him.

Third, 9 move isn’t suddenly “not great” (and not great compared to what? 7 move?) because Kyza lacks canto. Every turn Kyza moves fully that someone else doesn’t compounds how far Kyza can get ahead (2 on turn 1, 4 on turn 2, 6 on turn 3, etc). And only 4 turns are required such that even if Kyza stood still on that turn, the person behind him could at best catch up to him, at which point Kyza can still jump ahead on subsequent turns. And, the goal of any map is usually to get from point A to point B while killing everything in your way in an efficient manner, so Kyza being able to already do half of that just by inherent class abilities is pretty pwn.

Oh, then Kyza also profits from mobility advantages in other ways. Whereas he gets reduced to 7 move while climbing a cliff, others get reduced to 5, and in some cases even 4. And sometimes people take 2 turns to climb a cliff whereas Kyza usually only takes 1. In these situations, Kyza’s move lead is amplified. And let’s not forget not being hindered by bushes. This is quite a ways more useful than his only real movement disadvantage, which is crap move in water, something most other units have anyway (and your valuable canto units like Titania suck even more at that, they can’t even pass through a river or climb or descend ledges). And Kyza is probably your second best smite user, so if Mordy isn’t in play, he has that possible win on his side.

Whatever, Part 3 is so boring anyway.

This isn’t a justification for anything. I could just claim Lucia’s chapters are boring whereas Kyza’s are incredibly fun, and I’d be done. Please try and avert this kind of subjective nonsense in a debate.

I won't deny he gets better, though. Since S Strike is so damn good in this, he's pulling his weight by the end of Part 3, when his horrible SPD cap hasn't quite caught up with him.

Conceding part 3 is cool in my book. I’ll reserve any comments about his speed cap until we address part 4.

So at the start of Part 4, Lucia is getting ripped to shreds, right? Given how we gave Kyza the speedwing all the way back in 3-4, I think we're entitled to forge a nice pretty sword for Lucia. Depending on how much we're willing to splash out, Lucia could be doing ok. Of course, her mt is never going to be as good as Kyza's, but it doesn't need to be. If we give her a forged silver sword with +hit and +crit (the cards that nobody wants) and give her gamble, she can just crit her way to victory because she gets unique bond bonuses from Elincia and Geoffrey - two good characters in their own right and both with canto. I'm taking 10 as enemy luck, because Serenes doesn't seem to have data on it - it's probably higher, though.

By putting a bunch of resources into Lucia, you’re making her compare slightly better to Kyza at the expense of making Kyza’s speedwing consumption negative diminish, since now they’re starting to get on more comparable levels of what they want to compete well against enemies.

I don’t have any issues with Lucia getting a forge. You can make an infinite supply of them, and you have quite a bit of money at this point. But still, you’re getting carried away here. A forged silver sword with +5 Mt already costs 4500 gold whereas a silver blade only costs 3600 g while doing 1 less damage. Considering you want to boost other aspects of the sword, particularly its crit rate, we’re talking easily 5-6k for a 30 use weapon. 200 g per use, 400 g per double is quite a lot of money, and Kyza ain’t costin’ a dime for his attacks. Though what really surprised me about your argument was mentioning cards. Manipulating Lucia’s forge to get the specific card that gives crit bonuses is a daunting task, and likely isn’t happening. There’s just as good an odds of only getting a hit bonus, or the vine card, or a card that ups the weapon +1 attack, or nets you more coins (the raven coin), or you might not even have any coins left. Considering that, Lucia’s bonuses from a forge are unreliable and the fact that she wants one so bad to close the gap against Kyza’s speaking volumes about how much she’s currently losing by. Giving her gamble on top of all this just compounds her resource consumption to the point where Kyza’s speedwing consumption is a lesser negative.

4-5

20/18 Lucia vs Tiger 56 HP

Mt 34 vs 24

Hit 200 vs 55

AS 28 vs 20

Crit 53 vs 10

That's with a Silver Sword with +3 mt, +15 hit, +9 crit and a triple arrow card, assuming we have Geoffrey and Elincia sitting next to Lucia. Lucia chooses to gamble -> 10 mt, 72 hit, 86 crit chance, variable with biorhythm. I'm not sure how to calculate real hit, but I'd say that's not too bad for showing up badly underlevelled. All that forged stuff are probably a bit too much for Lucia, to be honest - the 30 durability sword will cost 6660 gold, and a triple arrow card (lol).

I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of this was. You didn’t post Lucia’s damage against the tiger, or the tiger’s defence stat, so for all we know from the data you gave, she could be doing 3 damage per hit and unable to kill the tiger with 2 astra activations. Nor did you post how much def Lucia has, though I’m sure you don’t want to openly advertise that she’s getting 2HKOed by tigers at 55 display hit. And I think your crit numbers are wrong, you didn’t seem to factor in luck, so it’s really 43 crit vs 0. Well come to think of it, none of what you listed seems to make much sense. If it’s Lucia’s stats (left) vs the Tiger’s stats (right), then how come Lucia beats the tiger in attack power? A tiger’s MT at this point is ~45, and that’s on normal mode. I won’t quote any of your other numbers for similar reasons (they confuse me). I’ll address them once you clarify, though.

As for the second half of your post, there’s not much I need to say since you’re basically digging yourself into a whole with your own arguments. Though I must point out that statements like “she’s doing good considering how under-levelled she is” are meaningless in a debate since we’re not tiering units based solely on their potential. Lucia doing bad right now is bad for her no matter how you’d like to word it.

Ok, she gets touched, she gets ripped to shreds. But again, for a character who's miles behind everyone else, 25 display hit at neutral biorhythm ain't too bad.

See the last sentence of my previous post.

I think Lucia would better use being BEXPed or paragoned to 3rd tier, which would also help solve her durability problems and let her double the faster enemies - she admittedly has no chance against the cats and hawks.

So you want her to get a forged sword, the gamble scroll, a specific coin bonus, paragon AND BEXP? Kyza doesn’t need any of that and is still beating her. Yes, you can argue against his speedwing all you want, but what you’re proposing for Lucia thus far is in a league of its own.

If we baby her for a chapter by levelling her up to 19, BEXPing one level and then crowning her or whatever before 4-5, she's no longer 2HKOed by Tigers - Dragons probably will, but their hit is so low I won't even consider them for 4-5. Her mt will go up, so her crits do reasonable damage, as does her crit rate and luck - plus she now doubles those cats and ravens.

See above. Also, that’s quite a lot for Lucia to go from being 2HKOed to 3HKOed, whereas Kyza’s only real resource consumption so far has had much larger benefits.

Suddenly, when we turn on Gamble we have 13 mt, 75 ht and 100 critical! We're not even considering the risk of hitting Astra and insta-killing. Her avoid will have jumped up a couple of points too, so it's something like 18 display hit. Meanwhile, Kyza versus the same dood will do something like 20 damage twice, so he 2RKOs.

And look at everything it took for Lucia to build this marginal offensive lead, whereas Kyza’s still beating her in durability and mobility, which are arguably far more important in this level. Plus, I could just give Kyza beastfoe and have him ORKO everything on the map without a crit. There, one skill compared to Lucia’s 2-3, BEXP, forges, etc. and now he’s wtfstomping her. Though, if Lucia tosses all that favoritism aside for beastfoe, she still might not be able to 1RKO tigers normally and still gets killed easily, and being rape on offence is very useless when it also employs high risk strategies. Lucia isn’t like Calill or something where she can compensate for bad defensive stats through ranged attacks, since Lucia would have to turn to wind edges, and I don’t think much needs to be said about that.

I admit 4-2 is unwinnable for Lucia, but I've hardly given her mountains of favouritism -

A 7000 gold forge with a card noone wants

A couple of easy kills in 4-2 to get her to level 19

A level of BEXP

A crown or another level

Compared to Kyza -

A stat booster everyone wants

Various grasses/stones a handful of other characters really want

You putting up with his untransforming habit, like all laguz

This list is severely flawed. First, you put count Kyza’s untransformed-ness somehow as favoritism for him but not everything Lucia’s worse at like attacking and surviving. Also, Kyza taking up grass/stones (a lot of which you get for free) is arguably on par with Lucia using regular swords and other generic items. So it’s really 4+ points against Lucia vs 1 point vs Kyza, and not every point has the same weight. For instance, wanting BEXP at this point is very bad, since everyone who’s late second tier (20/15-18ish range) currently wants to BEXP ram their stats and there’s not much BEXP to go around on hard mode. That could arguably cancel with Kyza’s speedwing, which leaves 3 vs 0. Kyza obvsiously wins in that regard.

4-E-1

Not much to say here. Lucia's avoid is through the roof, and if Geoffrey's in play her damage will be too. When Geoffrey and Elincia aren't around, just Parity anything on a Cover tile. You could BEXP her strength if you have some spare, I guess, although there are probably better canditates.

Geoffrey? Explain plz. Not only is Geoffrey terrible beyond 3-9 (gets doubled by 4-5 cats and probably easier to kill than Lucia is), but their support level can only hit C by 4-E-1. If anything, I’d argue Lucia getting Heather or something if she wanted attack, since then she can actually build some support time in 2-2.

Parity isn’t saving Lucia either, as that gets rid of her support bonuses which is like 90% of her durability, and she isn’t exactly the best person to have attacking the generals on defensive tiles considering they have higher stats than most of the other enemies here. Oh, and you did mention BEXPing her strength, but she that involves 3 things: First, that she’s actually reached a level where she has spd and skl capped, which is unlikely. Second, more resources that Lucia’s using or at least wanting > others that Kyza doesn’t, and third, Lucia won’t even improve much from it since she has a pretty tame 31 strength cap whereas Kyza exceeds 31 strength at level 32.

4-E-2

BK is such a pushover. Who cares?

You’re just diminishing Lucia’s only chance to actually beat Kyza. Though, you should note that all of 4-E can be beaten in 7 turns, 3 of which can be 1 turned with various strategic set-ups, so if BK is a pushover, the majority of 4-E is as well.

4-E-3

Wyrmslayers + Gamble = good times

Read my topic about making void statements.

Red dragon lv 23

Hp 72, Mt 56, Hit 161, As 12, Def 34, Res 18, Luck 10, Avo 59

White dragon lv 23

Hp 67, Mt 54, Hit 175, As 12, Def 22, Res 36, Luck 10, Avo 59

Lucia with a wyrmslayer at –/20/15 has 51 effective MT versus dragons. She’s doing 34 damage against Red dragons and 58 against white ones. So even with her magical blade of fury, she’s only 2-3RKOing enemies. Not that Kyza’s doing any better, but both are relying on skill/crit procurage to kill the enemy in one round, and I already showed earlier that Kyza’s roar activation ~ Lucia’s astra and crit activation. Another thing is that if Kyza gets dragonfoe, he wins offence handidly. With SS strike being tripled, he already has 60 Mt, 9 higher than Lucia, and well above 20 strength, so he’s doing at least 46 damage per hit to red dragons. So, cool at Kyza 1RKOing everything with a certain resource whereas Lucia cannot with a similar resource, and it helps that Kyza’s is unlimited while Lucia’s is stuck to 20 uses, which is 10 attacks, possibly less.

4-E-4 and 4-E-5

In all your pages, you forgot to mention Parity, which, given the propensity of spirits and auras to sit on +def tiles, comes in very handy.

Leaving parity on Lucia is moronic, it’s put to much better use on someone like Caneighis who can do up to 84 damage to corner auras using it.

Sure, Parity can be taken off and given to anyone, but since it cancels the Tide and Pool abilities, only Trueblades can get any benefit from it since they still double Ashera.

Almost every royal, Volke, Sothe, all hawks, cats, and every other trueblade (you know, ppl like Mia and Zihark who are actually getting SS swords Lucia’s supposed to be using) can double auras without nasir, so just about any of them get parity priority if they’re fielded.

Really, Lucia is dealing 34 damage against all auras, and without taking damage in return.

Who said Lucia could get parity but Kyza couldn’t? 10 capacity space isn’t much, especially when laguz have more than beorc past lv 30.

Yeah, Kyza doubles the spirits with Nasir - so does everyone. Difference is, Lucia can choose to Parity, effectively increasing her might by 10 against Cover spirits... and IIRC by 15 against Lehran, and still double. Or she could Gamble and get obscene crit. Kyza has only one choice - to fail.

I’ve refuted the whole parity notion twice, though even more people can double spirits than auras (it only takes about 34-35 spd vs 39-40).

Mentioning gamble again shows that you’re not doing your homework. Thunder spirits exceed 100 avoid, and royals, the most accurate units in the game, only reach about 230-240 hits. So even if Lucia had 240 hit, gamble drops that to 120 and massive lulz at 8 true hit being effective. To make this more laughable, consider that spirits also have 30 luck, so Lucia’s massive crit isn’t doing much good. If she has 50 crit, the spirits drop that crit rate to 20. So again, massive hilarity at thinking 8 true hit and 20 crit is a reliable way to kill spirits.

In conclusion, Kyza starts terrible, with favouritism becomes useful, and fails in endgame, and is always a laguz and thus kinda not worth it. Lucia starts wtfh4x, then disappears, has a haircut, comes back initially bad, but with a bit of favouritism that noone else really wants becomes win again.

I won’t even bother countering that, it’s just a useless summary with no substance. I don’t feel any need to make a summary of my own for why Kyza > Lucia, the points all lie in the evidence presented thus far.

Oh yeah, plot related statements. Lucia seems to actually have a personality, plus Bastian likes her, and who are you to disagree with Count Bastian himself?

She’s also naïve enough to fall into an obvious trap and get captured. Kyza never causes such a hindrance so him >>> that.

Edited January 28, 2009 by Vykan12

[Anouleth]

I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of this was. You didn’t post Lucia’s damage against the tiger, or the tiger’s defence stat, so for all we know from the data you gave, she could be doing 3 damage per hit and unable to kill the tiger with 2 astra activations. Nor did you post how much def Lucia has, though I’m sure you don’t want to openly advertise that she’s getting 2HKOed by tigers at 55 display hit. And I think your crit numbers are wrong, you didn’t seem to factor in luck, so it’s really 43 crit vs 0. Well come to think of it, none of what you listed seems to make much sense. If it’s Lucia’s stats (left) vs the Tiger’s stats (right), then how come Lucia beats the tiger in attack power? A tiger’s MT at this point is ~45, and that’s on normal mode. I won’t quote any of your other numbers for similar reasons (they confuse me). I’ll address them once you clarify, though.

I don't have time to post a full rebuttal right now, but just to clarify, the number on the left is the mt/hit/crit, and the number on the right is the def/avo/dodge. A bit further down, I explained that in this case, we got 10x2 mt, 72 hit, 86 crit. Sorry for not making it clearer.

[Anouleth]

To begin, I'll point out something that I should have done earlier - how bad Kyza is without that 3-4 speedwing. If he doesn't get it, his AS drops to 22 transformed, allowing him to double mages and generals pretty much exclusively. You've probably already realised this, which is why you asked for the speedwing right off the bat, because he's pretty much unplayable without it.

I don’t have any issues with Lucia getting a forge. You can make an infinite supply of them, and you have quite a bit of money at this point. But still, you’re getting carried away here. A forged silver sword with +5 Mt already costs 4500 gold whereas a silver blade only costs 3600 g while doing 1 less damage. Considering you want to boost other aspects of the sword, particularly its crit rate, we’re talking easily 5-6k for a 30 use weapon. 200 g per use, 400 g per double is quite a lot of money, and Kyza ain’t costin’ a dime for his attacks. Though what really surprised me about your argument was mentioning cards. Manipulating Lucia’s forge to get the specific card that gives crit bonuses is a daunting task, and likely isn’t happening. There’s just as good an odds of only getting a hit bonus, or the vine card, or a card that ups the weapon +1 attack, or nets you more coins (the raven coin), or you might not even have any coins left. Considering that, Lucia’s bonuses from a forge are unreliable and the fact that she wants one so bad to close the gap against Kyza’s speaking volumes about how much she’s currently losing by. Giving her gamble on top of all this just compounds her resource consumption to the point where Kyza’s speedwing consumption is a lesser negative.

To be honest, I didn't quite pin down the best forge for Lucia there - a max hit, max crit max mt steel sword has slightly better stats than the silver forge I posted (-1 mt, +11hit, +6crit), but without any cards and better value for money (40 durability vs 30). And you assume that because we're going for uber high crit, she wants +crit cards - truth is, Lucia's crit is high enough and she'd really rather have +mt or +hit. You claim that giving her gamble on top of the forges is increasing her resource consumption, when so few people want Gamble, or use it as effectively as her. The only people who could really use it are other trueblades and Volke. Let's go through them - Zihark doesn't have as much crit and would rather keep Vantage/Adept/Cancel, same for Mia, Stefan can't get skills put on until 4-E, Edward has better hit rate but the worst crit because he can't even get FE9 transfer bonds. Oh, and even Volke has less crit once Lucia becomes a Trueblade. If we were to go ahead and give them gamble anyway, most of that damage is overkill anyway. Lucia needs gamble more than they do. You say she 'wants one so bad', but Kyza wants that 3-4 speedwing badly as well, since his offense stinks without it.

So you want her to get a forged sword, the gamble scroll, a specific coin bonus, paragon AND BEXP? Kyza doesn’t need any of that and is still beating her. Yes, you can argue against his speedwing all you want, but what you’re proposing for Lucia thus far is in a league of its own.

The forged sword is expensive, but noone particularly wants gamble but Lucia, and she'll take any +hit card, which aren't exactly in high demand either. Paragon isn't particularly necessary and neither is the BEXP, although level 19 Lucia gains 0.9 stats on average, has four stats capped and is almost certain to gain in her real problem areas of STR and DEF, so she's ideal for BEXP. I don't know exactly how many kills she needs in 4-2 to promote, but considering how many high-levelled enemies the game throws at you, she's not exactly in danger of starving the rest of the group. 4-2 has 75 enemies in normal mode, around level 4 to 5, so 10 or 12 kills out of that isn't exactly crippling the team. The reason I mention Paragon is that it has to go to someone, and preferably someone underlevelled to get the most out of it. Probably not Lucia, but she's a better canditate than Kyza because she's at a lower level and doesn't suffer from laguz exp rates.

See above. Also, that’s quite a lot for Lucia to go from being 2HKOed to 3HKOed, whereas Kyza’s only real resource consumption so far has had much larger benefits.

Lucia isn't just going from 2HKOed to 3HKOed, she's improving her damage output significantly as well, as well as her avoid rate.

And look at everything it took for Lucia to build this marginal offensive lead, whereas Kyza’s still beating her in durability and mobility, which are arguably far more important in this level. Plus, I could just give Kyza beastfoe and have him ORKO everything on the map without a crit. There, one skill compared to Lucia’s 2-3, BEXP, forges, etc. and now he’s wtfstomping her. Though, if Lucia tosses all that favoritism aside for beastfoe, she still might not be able to 1RKO tigers normally and still gets killed easily, and being rape on offence is very useless when it also employs high risk strategies. Lucia isn’t like Calill or something where she can compensate for bad defensive stats through ranged attacks, since Lucia would have to turn to wind edges, and I don’t think much needs to be said about that.

A level where you essentially sit in bushes and watch Izuka send waves and waves of beasties against you? Sure, durability becomes important, but even with a C support Lucia's avoid is still high enough. What was it again, 135? Tigers and Dragons are 145 and cats and hawks are 155, and since Izuka will summon beasties at the same monotonous rate of 4 per turn, she's not getting attacked so much anyway. Sure, he ORKOes with beastfoe and without a crit, which makes it sound like Lucia is banking on luck to kill, but she isn't because her crit rate is 100%. Beastfoe doesn't even come into it. Anyone can take Beastfoe in 4-5 and be good, so I don't see what you're trying to prove - for example, the Lucia I posted would one-HIT-ko those tigers if we added beastfoe to what she has (her mt would be 41, for a crit of 123), not that we will. Look at it this way - Beastfoe can be used by everyone and anyone. Gamble cannot be used by the vast majority of characters, and many characters aren't helped by forges as much as Lucia is.

Geoffrey? Explain plz. Not only is Geoffrey terrible beyond 3-9 (gets doubled by 4-5 cats and probably easier to kill than Lucia is), but their support level can only hit C by 4-E-1. If anything, I’d argue Lucia getting Heather or something if she wanted attack, since then she can actually build some support time in 2-2.

Parity isn’t saving Lucia either, as that gets rid of her support bonuses which is like 90% of her durability, and she isn’t exactly the best person to have attacking the generals on defensive tiles considering they have higher stats than most of the other enemies here. Oh, and you did mention BEXPing her strength, but she that involves 3 things: First, that she’s actually reached a level where she has spd and skl capped, which is unlikely. Second, more resources that Lucia’s using or at least wanting > others that Kyza doesn’t, and third, Lucia won’t even improve much from it since she has a pretty tame 31 strength cap whereas Kyza exceeds 31 strength at level 32.

The Geoffrey thing was stupid I realise - the +5 crit doesn't matter at all to Lucia. Parity only affects Lucia on Player Phase, and she can use a Tempest Blade to get around counters. I said you *could* BEXP her strength if you had some spare - she's not even capping naturally. 31 Strength is tame yes, as is 30 spd. Lucia and Heather support, aside from sounding like someone's wet dream, is silly because Lucia is forced into Hawk Army and we want Heather to go with Ike to open chests.

You’re just diminishing Lucia’s only chance to actually beat Kyza. Though, you should note that all of 4-E can be beaten in 7 turns, 3 of which can be 1 turned with various strategic set-ups, so if BK is a pushover, the majority of 4-E is as well.

Well, I could argue 4-E-2 makes a difference, but why should I when you can just claim that's it's way too short anyway to matter? For what it's worth, she will perform better than him if you actually choose to do any fighting on the bottom part of the level. Enemy hit rates hover around 140 and go up to 160 for snipers and swordmasters, and a B Tanith will leave her with about 150 avoid, making her pretty much untouchable.

Read my topic about making void statements.

Red dragon lv 23

Hp 72, Mt 56, Hit 161, As 12, Def 34, Res 18, Luck 10, Avo 59

White dragon lv 23

Hp 67, Mt 54, Hit 175, As 12, Def 22, Res 36, Luck 10, Avo 59

Lucia with a wyrmslayer at –/20/15 has 51 effective MT versus dragons. She’s doing 34 damage against Red dragons and 58 against white ones. So even with her magical blade of fury, she’s only 2-3RKOing enemies. Not that Kyza’s doing any better, but both are relying on skill/crit procurage to kill the enemy in one round, and I already showed earlier that Kyza’s roar activation ~ Lucia’s astra and crit activation. Another thing is that if Kyza gets dragonfoe, he wins offence handidly. With SS strike being tripled, he already has 60 Mt, 9 higher than Lucia, and well above 20 strength, so he’s doing at least 46 damage per hit to red dragons. So, cool at Kyza 1RKOing everything with a certain resource whereas Lucia cannot with a similar resource, and it helps that Kyza’s is unlimited while Lucia’s is stuck to 20 uses, which is 10 attacks, possibly less.

Comparing Dragonfoe to Wyrmslayers is very, very faulty. To begin, 5 wyrmslayers are available, and only about a dozen characters can use them. Only one Dragonfoe is available, and every character in the game is benefiting from it except the super weak ones like Micaiah and Heather. On top of that, Dragonfoe>Wyrmslayer in attack potential. Wyrmslayer has 33 mt, 15 more than Alondite. Dragonfoe on someone using Alondite would give their weapon 54 mt, a full 21 mt more than with wyrmslayer, and if you do this with Lucia, she will also one-round. Dragonfoe is 'unlimited', true, but we're not trying to solo the map or anything. Lucia and whatever Gold Knights/Seraph Knights/Trueblades you brought along have more than enough wyrmslayers to go around.

Leaving parity on Lucia is moronic, it’s put to much better use on someone like Caneighis who can do up to 84 damage to corner auras using it.

Why? Whatever character we put it on, we get an extra 20 damage against auras, so Lucia may as well keep it so she can one-round Cover spirits. If we want to kill two spirits or two weakened auras, we can have two powerful attacks, killing both, or they can both attack, killing one full health aura. I see no reason to put it on Caineghis just so we can have a nice big number, unless Aurora scares you that much in a level that's usually finished by the end of turn 2.

Almost every royal, Volke, Sothe, all hawks, cats, and every other trueblade (you know, ppl like Mia and Zihark who are actually getting SS swords Lucia’s supposed to be using) can double auras without nasir, so just about any of them get parity priority if they’re fielded.

Again, these people don't have any net gain by having Parity over Lucia. If anything, Lucia gets priority over them because some of them gain attack bonuses from supports.

Who said Lucia could get parity but Kyza couldn’t? 10 capacity space isn’t much, especially when laguz have more than beorc past lv 30.

Because Kyza wastes one of the best endgame skills. I couldn't care less how much capacity Kyza has, Parity nets us 20 damage on Lucia and 10 damage on Kyza versus the auras.

I’ve refuted the whole parity notion twice, though even more people can double spirits than auras (it only takes about 34-35 spd vs 39-40).

Mentioning gamble again shows that you’re not doing your homework. Thunder spirits exceed 100 avoid, and royals, the most accurate units in the game, only reach about 230-240 hits. So even if Lucia had 240 hit, gamble drops that to 120 and massive lulz at 8 true hit being effective. To make this more laughable, consider that spirits also have 30 luck, so Lucia’s massive crit isn’t doing much good. If she has 50 crit, the spirits drop that crit rate to 20. So again, massive hilarity at thinking 8 true hit and 20 crit is a reliable way to kill spirits.

My point is that Lucia comes with a very good endgame skill, and is exactly the kind of character that uses it well, and this on top of everything else > Kyza in Endgame. Mentioning Gamble was admittedly a mistake on my part, since I didn't realise spirits had such high luck.

She’s also naïve enough to fall into an obvious trap and get captured. Kyza never causes such a hindrance so him >>> that.

Sure, Kyza never causes such a hindrance. He never does ANYTHING. Lucia, on the other hand, is advising queens, liberating countries, uncovering hidden plots, falling into traps, having haircuts, provoking epiphanies in Elincia, and inadvertantly attracting handsome and well-spoken Counts of Fayre. She's the most powerful and influential swordmaster in all of Tellius. Kyza isn't even the most powerful Tiger in Gallia.

[Vykan12]

To begin, I'll point out something that I should have done earlier - how bad Kyza is without that 3-4 speedwing. If he doesn't get it, his AS drops to 22 transformed, allowing him to double mages and generals pretty much exclusively. You've probably already realised this, which is why you asked for the speedwing right off the bat, because he's pretty much unplayable without it.

First, I’d like to point out how terrible Lucia is in 4-2 and 4-5 when not given any non-basic resources that other people want. Plus I justified Kyza’s speedwing consumption as being probably the best use of the resource overall in regards to the team if he’s in play, whereas the same cannot be said for Lucia.

To be honest, I didn't quite pin down the best forge for Lucia there - a max hit, max crit max mt steel sword has slightly better stats than the silver forge I posted (-1 mt, +11hit, +6crit), but without any cards and better value for money (40 durability vs 30). And you assume that because we're going for uber high crit, she wants +crit cards - truth is, Lucia's crit is high enough and she'd really rather have +mt or +hit.

You can keep modifying your perception of what Lucia needs to compete with Kyza, it doesn’t change the fact she’ll need an expensive forge while Kyza’s fangs are cost free.

You claim that giving her gamble on top of the forges is increasing her resource consumption, when so few people want Gamble, or use it as effectively as her. The only people who could really use it are other trueblades and Volke. Let's go through them - Zihark doesn't have as much crit and would rather keep Vantage/Adept/Cancel, same for Mia, Stefan can't get skills put on until 4-E, Edward has better hit rate but the worst crit because he can't even get FE9 transfer bonds. Oh, and even Volke has less crit once Lucia becomes a Trueblade.

What are you basing this on? Mia and Zihark easily have a level lead on her, and it would be a mystery for neither of them to have hit trueblade by part 4.

Zihark’s --/20/1 crit: 36 (32/2 skl + 20 class bonus)

Mia’s --/20/3 crit: 36

Volke’s base level crit: 43

Lucia’s --/15 crit: 24

Of course, Lucia will promote rather soon and catch up in crit, but she’s certainly not exceeding theirs, which is what you were claiming. And I don’t see why Zihark and Mia want to pass gamble for the skill combo you mentioned. You could have gamble-vantage-adept or gamble-vantage-cancel as alternative combos and there’s no guarantee that any of those skills are going to them, particularly in part 4 when you get units who easily exceed their spd and skl stat, thus making for better activtion %ages.

If we were to go ahead and give them gamble anyway, most of that damage is overkill anyway. Lucia needs gamble more than they do. You say she 'wants one so bad', but Kyza wants that 3-4 speedwing badly as well, since his offense stinks without it.

I don’t actually think she’d want it that bad. At best, it only gives her a better chance at killing an enemy on player phase than she’d normally have, and even that’s questionable considering how bad of a hit rate drop it is to halve it, meaning for it to truly become a more reliable means of player phase killing, she’d additionally need a heaven support or something. Whereas one simple stat booster fixed a great deal of Kyza’s offensive problems, there is no single stat booster that makes Lucia have an epiphany and actually fight well, and everything you’ve proposed so far only offer marginal solutions.

I mean, maybe we could compare Kyza to Lucia while minimizing the favoritism we give them as that might benefit Lucia more than Kyza. However, I see that as being unrealistic considering how a player would normally try to compensate for the flaws of their weaker characters immediately instead of letting them overcome a period of suck in order to hold their own weight later. In which case, Kyza getting the speedwing vs Lucia getting forges/gamble/etc maintains status as the realistic comparison.

The forged sword is expensive, but noone particularly wants gamble but Lucia

You know, trueblades and Volke aren’t the only people with good hit and crit rates. Shinon or Rolf wouldn’t mind gamble either since their entire offence is player phase, and even someone like Janaff w/ insight could make decent use of it.

and she'll take any +hit card, which aren't exactly in high demand either.

You got a vine card! Sorry.

Srsly though, I’ve already covered why coin bonuses are unreliable. Lucia has maybe a 40% chance of getting a bonus she actually wants. I might be cutting that chance short here, but it’s not even remotely close to 100%.

Paragon isn't particularly necessary and neither is the BEXP, although level 19 Lucia gains 0.9 stats on average, has four stats capped and is almost certain to gain in her real problem areas of STR and DEF, so she's ideal for BEXP.

Hok, but how is she supposed to be competing against Lucia without those things? If you don’t pile enough things on her, this will happen:

Kyza lv 22 (A Mordy, S strike): 58 hp, 41 Mt, 24 skl, 28 spd, 16 lck, 27 def, 15 res, 92 avo

Lucia lv 15 (Steel blade): 39 hp, 31 Mt, 28 skl, 28 spd, 19 lck, 14 def, 15 res, 95 avo

As I showed in my openar, pwnt.

And though Lucia may indeed promote in 4-2 off CEXP alone, Kyza just needs to hit SS strike to guarantee that Lucia’s never winning attack, and he wins durability and move no matter what.

4-2 has 75 enemies in normal mode, around level 4 to 5, so 10 or 12 kills out of that isn't exactly crippling the team.

The issue isn’t getting her those kills, it’s getting them efficiently. If Lucia is 2-3 rounding things while facing the same fate against enemies (They 2-3HKO her), and she only has 7 move and lots of vines to pass through, how is she supposed to be getting those kills within say, 15 turns? Elincia mercy set-ups is probably pushing it.

The reason I mention Paragon is that it has to go to someone, and preferably someone underlevelled to get the most out of it. Probably not Lucia, but she's a better canditate than Kyza because she's at a lower level and doesn't suffer from laguz exp rates.

Under-levelled units can only make the most use of it if they are doing really well in combat to promote getting kills while not dying, so it’s more likely to be going to a more intermediate unit (someone who’s not quite under-levelled but not Titania-levelled either). Plus, even if they did, everyone still wants this skill horribly bad since enemies in part 4 generally give very high exp gains anyway compared to other parts, and doubling the growth rate of any unit is h3x.

Lucia isn't just going from 2HKOed to 3HKOed, she's improving her damage output significantly as well, as well as her avoid rate.

I suppose that’s true, but she’s still locked in a period of suck (not 1RKOing anything reliably, can easily die).

A level where you essentially sit in bushes and watch Izuka send waves and waves of beasties against you?

Tibarn can chase him down in a hurry so there’s no need to extend this beyond 10 turns and lose BEXP, in addition to wasting time when you should be going to 4-E.

Sure, durability becomes important, but even with a C support Lucia's avoid is still high enough.

High enough against what? You didn’t specify what type of support so I’ll assume 3 cases.

--/20/1 Lucia has 105 avoid

1) C fire/heaven/light/water- 113 avoid

2) C dark/thunder/wind- 115 avoid

3) C earth- 120 avoid

On NM, these suckas reach 150+ hit, so Lucia’s not looking too good.

Case 1: Lucia faces a 40% (true) hit rate. If she’s 2HKOed, it’s a 16% chance of death, if in 3, it’s a 6.4% chance of death.

Case 2: Lucia faces 27% hit. 7% and 1.9% respectively.

Case 3: Lucia faces 18% hit. 3% and 0.5% respectively

In all those cases, Kyza’s chances of dying are 0% since with 25 def, he’s taking ~18 damage from tiger attacks.

Now, those are awful durability numbers for Lucia. In fact, the first 2 are worse than Kyza’s durability against elfire mages in his joining part 3 chapter, and the level didn’t exactly have ~50% of the enemies being those mages like this level has with tigers.

Sure, he ORKOes with beastfoe and without a crit, which makes it sound like Lucia is banking on luck to kill, but she isn't because her crit rate is 100%. Beastfoe doesn't even come into it.

Even somehow assuming her crit rate is 100% with gamble (it’s more like 70-80% even with a super forge), her odds of killing the enemy are nowhere near 100% and only work on player phase. Let’s look at her accuracy, something you conveniently ignore all the time when mentioning gamble.

Lucia’s accuracy before selecting a weapon at --/20/1 is 105. A silver sword has 80 hit, so if you maxed out its hit rate, it would be 105 as well. So that’s 210 hit for Lucia. Divide that by 2, she’s back to 105. Unfortunately for her, tigers have ~58 avo while cats have ~70, so this is almost as stupid as using gamble against spirits (24-44% true). Congrats Lucia, your offence seems to always turn out worse with gamble than without!

Anyone can take Beastfoe in 4-5 and be good, so I don't see what you're trying to prove - for example, the Lucia I posted would one-HIT-ko those tigers if we added beastfoe to what she has (her mt would be 41, for a crit of 123), not that we will. Look at it this way - Beastfoe can be used by everyone and anyone. Gamble cannot be used by the vast majority of characters, and many characters aren't helped by forges as much as Lucia is.

Where is Lucia getting 123 crit from? Beastfoe doesn’t increase her crit odds.

I only mentioned beastfoe because it’s a useful conditional to my case. IF Kyza uses beastfoe, he’s easily beating Lucia, even IF we look at how she does with it herself. And the odds of them getting it is pretty high considering they’re probably your worst units being fielded in 4-E (remember that the more you suck, the less likely you are to be used) so they get a bigger boost from the skill than high end GMs who are already killing everything fairly reliably.

The Geoffrey thing was stupid I realise - the +5 crit doesn't matter at all to Lucia.

Glad we’re in agreement then.

Parity only affects Lucia on Player Phase, and she can use a Tempest Blade to get around counters.

Tempest blades do help out her 1-2 range game, but have a lolable 55 hit. A 20/8 Lucia has 167 hit before supports (and she doesn’t want fire or heaven if she’s going for avo tank) with the Tempest blade, which isn’t too bad in 4-E-1 (enemies have 70ish avoid) but becomes pretty ugly as you go along, particularly against those 135 avo auras (20% true per attack). And forget using gamble with those things, not to mention tempest sacrifice 2 of her much needed attack when the vague katti shows up.

Lucia and Heather support, aside from sounding like someone's wet dream, is silly because Lucia is forced into Hawk Army and we want Heather to go with Ike to open chests.

Hey, I was trying to help you out with that point. Heather doesn’t need to be in 4-4 because of the existence of chest keys and unlock staves, and the only thing you really want there is fortify and maybe arbalest.

Well, I could argue 4-E-2 makes a difference, but why should I when you can just claim that's it's way too short anyway to matter?

My original point still stands.

Comparing Dragonfoe to Wyrmslayers is very, very faulty. To begin, 5 wyrmslayers are available, and only about a dozen characters can use them. Only one Dragonfoe is available, and every character in the game is benefiting from it except the super weak ones like Micaiah and Heather. On top of that, Dragonfoe>Wyrmslayer in attack potential. Wyrmslayer has 33 mt, 15 more than Alondite. Dragonfoe on someone using Alondite would give their weapon 54 mt, a full 21 mt more than with wyrmslayer, and if you do this with Lucia, she will also one-round. Dragonfoe is 'unlimited', true, but we're not trying to solo the map or anything. Lucia and whatever Gold Knights/Seraph Knights/Trueblades you brought along have more than enough wyrmslayers to go around.

5 wyrmslayers are indeed available, but they can also be used beforehand. Wyverns in general are second only to generals in enemy durability and generally pretty difficult to ORKO, plus swordsmasters have less than stellar attack, so they want to be using it at any of those opportunities. So you could easily fall to 3 wyrms by 4-E and Ike will probably get one, leaving just 2. Looking at the number of people who can use swords by this time (TBs, pegs, marshals, gold knights, etc), Lucia’s competition is rather hefty for the item, it turns out.

And once again, dragonfoe is just a hypothetical that need not be ignored. I suppose Lucia ORKOing with the alondite is better than Kyza doing so at 1 range, but not much is done on enemy phase in this map if you care at all about unit survival (50+ Mt and 170-180 hit enemies? Gah!) so it’s a pretty minuscule advantage.

Why? Whatever character we put it on, we get an extra 20 damage against auras, so Lucia may as well keep it so she can one-round Cover spirits. If we want to kill two spirits or two weakened auras, we can have two powerful attacks, killing both, or they can both attack, killing one full health aura. I see no reason to put it on Caineghis just so we can have a nice big number, unless Aurora scares you that much in a level that's usually finished by the end of turn 2.

Though you do have a point about the 20 extra damage, you’re also admitting that Lucia’s attack is going to be weak, and it’s easy to find other units who are weak that can fulfill the type of role that Lucia is (lolSothe). Though, there are 2 things I can nitpick at here. First, Caneighis doing the most damage to corner aura (more or less) means he takes a lot of damage back, so parity prevents that from happening. In addition, he has the aura weakened to the point where it can be 1HKOed, so a non-nihil/parity unit can kill it without hp loss.

And besides, we’ve already established that Lucia isn’t likely to keep parity simply because everyone wants it for damage reduction.

Again, these people don't have any net gain by having Parity over Lucia. If anything, Lucia gets priority over them because some of them gain attack bonuses from supports.

What sounds better, Lucia doing 12 damage to Lehran instead of 0 or Giffca ORKOing Lehran instead of 2 rounding him? Also note that parity cancels out any chance of Lehran activation corona, which is quite high (40+-10% activation), so anyone who attacks Lehran or any other boss wants the skill.

Against spirits, it doesn’t really make much of a difference if Lucia takes parity or not since most people likely to be played don’t have much trouble killing them and you could just shove the spirits close to Lehran to remove his guard hax.

My point is that Lucia comes with a very good endgame skill, and is exactly the kind of character that uses it well, and this on top of everything else > Kyza in Endgame. Mentioning Gamble was admittedly a mistake on my part, since I didn't realise spirits had such high luck.

I already gave Lucia the win in 4-E in my opener. Kyza wins everywhere else by a much greater margin, which was the core of my case all along. Mentioning 4-E was mostly to show that Kyza isn’t getting completely outclassed there or something.

Sure, Kyza never causes such a hindrance. He never does ANYTHING. Lucia, on the other hand, is advising queens, liberating countries, uncovering hidden plots, falling into traps, having haircuts, provoking epiphanies in Elincia, and inadvertantly attracting handsome and well-spoken Counts of Fayre. She's the most powerful and influential swordmaster in all of Tellius. Kyza isn't even the most powerful Tiger in Gallia.

She’s advising queens how to phail, seeing as Crimea rebelled against Elincia and experienced a short civil war. Liberating Crimea is basically undoing part of what she helped do, so working towards lessening a negative you caused yourself < nothing. There’s nothing inherently valuable about falling into a trap unless you’re a stunt double, and haircuts only offer aesthetic changes. The rest of the stuff someone else could’ve done much better if they weren’t airheads, and Kyza is above all this simply by being a low-key tiger who kicks ass.