Mekkah vs cheetah7071

[Mekkah]

Let's start with an initial comparison when both are forced.

Stats, with 6% leadership from Eyvel + Fin factored in.

1/0 Marty

32.0 hp, 9.0 str, 0.0 skl, 0.0 spd, 6.0 def, 6.0 luk, 15.0 bld

Iron Axe: 18 atk, 71 hit, 0 AS -- 12 avo

1/0 Tanya

20.0 hp, 3.0 str, 6.0 skl, 10.0 spd, 2.0 def, 6.0 luk, 4.0 bld

Iron Bow: 10 atk, 89 hit, 8 AS -- 28 avo

Offensively, Tanya doubles stuff up to 4 AS whereas Marty never doubles, but that doesn't allow her to win offense due to Marty's grotesque atk lead. For example, if both attack a 3 def enemy, Tanya does 2x7=14, whereas Marty simply does 1x15.

Tanya does have 18 more hit, but she also has to land both her shots to outdamage Marty to begin with. If both attack an enemy with like 6 avo (FE5 enemies are that slow), Tanya has a ~69% chance of landing both hits, whereas Marty has a 65% chance of landing his only blow.

You can change these numbers if you like. The higher you put them, the more Marty wins. You can also lower them to make Tanya win but...it doesn't get much worse than 3 def and 6 avo.

Marty also has enemy phase action, which is important at this point since you only have so many frontliners. Leaf can only take one hit without dying, the same goes for Ronan and Tanya herself, and in Ch3 Lifis faces the same, and Saphy sometimes gets OHKOed, or just captured. Protecting these with only Othin/Halvan/Fin/Dagda/Eyvel might not always work, especially since you may not want to give kills to the latter two. And putting more strain on the former three means they have to use vulneraries more often, which costs them time, and you only have so many.

So Marty helps you to block off people and set up damage for others. He's also generally much more durable than Tanya if they're both exposed. For example, an 11 atk enemy kills Marty in 7 hits, and Tanya in 3. Or an 8 atk does only 2 damage to Marty, which is like a whocares#HKO (16), whereas Tanya still takes 6 damage (4HKO). And anytime Tanya heals, she cannot attack during that turn at all, whereas Marty can still keep going on enemy phase.

In addition, Marty can help capturing things, which is quite beneficial since you don't get any cash, so any free weapons is nice. And he can also easily take over enemies other people have captured, to trade off their weapons to whoever you want and then release them so nobody is stuck with gimped stats for this enemy phase. Tanya can't capture, so she's actually draining more valuable resources simply by attacking, as others have to get new weapons for her. Which brings me to another point: axes are dirt cheap. 30 Iron Axe uses costs 1100G, 30 Iron Bow uses costs 1650G. And Tanya doubles, so she goes through bows faster to do roughly the same damage.

Tanya has a slight supporting edge though, due to the mutual benefit with Othin while supporting Dagda, while Marty only receives bonuses from Dagda.

So I'd say Marty > Tanya so far. Then they both vanish, Marty returning first for a bit of Ch8, then Tanya in 8x...Tanya really can't do anything in 8x though except supporting Dagda and maybe chip damage to brigands that would get ORKO'd by Dagda, as if she gets in attacking range you're in big trouble. Let's see how they look in Ch10, which has no leadership bonus (the boss has 3 stars, Leaf has 2 and Fin has 1).

7/0 Marty

37.4 hp, 9.9 str, 0.6 skl, 0.9 spd, 8.4 def, 9.0 luk, 19.3 bld

Iron Axe: 18.9 atk, 75 hit, 0.9 AS -- 10 avo

7/0 Tanya

23.6 hp, 5.1 str, 9.3 skl, 14.2 spd, 2.9 def, 9.6 luk, 4.3 bld

Iron Bow: 12.1 atk, 94 hit, 12.5 AS -- 38 avo

Marty's durability lead is particulary important in this chapter because of all those ballistae. They have a killer ~22 atk, which leaves Tanya with 3-4 hp, and many of their ranges overlap. This means Tanya faces death chances, has to use vulneraries or hog your healer, which cuts into your supplies and lowers the flexibility of others. Marty doesn't really care for ballistae - 22 atk does 13-14 damage to him, so he can take two shots and still have ~10 hp left. Normal enemies aren't kind to Tanya if they can reach her either. A 17 atk bow armor does 8-9 damage to Marty, so it takes 5 of those to kill him, whereas that kills Tanya in two hits.

Tanya does have 28 avo, but in an 1-RN system and with such a huge concrete durability gap, all that does is give her chance-based...chances to survive more, whereas with Marty you can freely expose him to 4-5 enemies and expect him to live.

Offensively, their atk/hit gaps haven't changed enough to warrant new examples again. All that works into Tanya's favor is not taking counters, but Marty often is more durable even after he does take a counter, plus you can actually heal Marty after a counter if you want to, but we can't ever heal Tanya above her max HP.

Also, Marty improves more when you consider better weaponry. You have the Brave Axe which he can use at base level already, there's buyable Hammers and the Halberd that came with Hicks. Effective weapons do pretty huge loads of damage in this game, pretty much tripling your attack power. Tanya's bows are effective on fliers as well, but fliers are overall less common than armors alone, never mind armors AND mounted enemies. And of course, Marty can take on multiple of those at once, whereas Tanya is limited to one shot at a flier per turn.

Tanya does have few if any competition for bows, but she starts with an E, and it's likely not much further than a D at this point, so all she'll be able to do is switch to a Steel Bow, which cuts her AS, hit and avo even further, only for a bit more mt. She can do Short Bows too, those improve her hit by 10, but also reduce her atk by 2. It'll be a long time before she finally gets her hands on the Hero Bow.

Fast forward to promotion time before this becomes tl;dr...Marty wants to promote ASAP because his level-ups don't really give him anything but hp/def/luk/bld, and his bld caps quickly, so he'll take his major promo bonuses (shown later) over that unless he wants to use scrolls like Sety and Odo some more. Tanya might want to stay unpromoted, but if I let Marty promote and Tanya not it will be unfair, so here's an early promotion for both. I'll assume we're at ~Ch13 now, so we have Fin, Glade and Leaf for a total of 4 leadership. Ch13's boss has only one leadership star, next chapter a whopping 7 (3 once the charging General boss is dead), 14x and 15 only have 1, 16A has a total of 12 but 2 of them are from Eyrios and 4 from Conomore, etc. I'll just assume PC and enemy leadership roughly cancels each other out for now.

10/1 Marty

40.1 hp, 13.3 str, 5.9 skl, 7.3 spd, 12.6 def, 10.5 luk, 20 bld

Iron Axe: 22.3 atk, 87.5 hit, 7.3 AS -- 25 avo

Short Bow: 18.3 atk, 97.5 hit, 7.3 AS -- 25 avo

10/1 Tanya

25.4 hp, 8.1 str, 14.0 skl, 19.3 spd, 5.3 def, 11.4 luk, 5.4 bld

Iron Bow: 15.1 atk, 104.4 hit, 18.7 AS -- 48.8 avo

Steel Bow: 18.1 atk, 99.4 hit, 12.7 AS -- 36.8 avo

Note the huge jump in Marty's speed. Taking into account a slight bit of Sety scrolling, he would DA anything with less than 4 AS, and quite a lot of enemies fail to surpass that despite us being halfway through the game. On those, Marty does 8 more damage per double (Iron Axe vs Steel Bow), much more likely to KO things than Tanya, and much cheaper to boot (Steel Bow costs almost three times as much per hit as Iron Axe). And at this point, Armors are getting pretty damn common - think Ch14. Tanya can barely put a scratch in them, while Marty can obliterate them with a Hammer. Tanya also lost the advantage of flierslaying, as Marty can now use bows as well, and he can also boost his hit and avoid counters with it as needed.

And durability-wise, nothing but "o_O" at Marty. Something with 20 atk would only do 7-8 damage to Marty, about a 5HKO. Tanya only has 10 hp left after one of their blows, and a next one would kill her. Or a 16 atk enemy would hardly scratch Marty (3-4 damage to his 40 hp), whereas Tanya gets 3HKOed, left with single digit after two attacks. Even if Marty were to get doubled, he would be better off.

And Marty can still capture and trademule stuff, of course.

Giving favouritism to both sides only makes things more lopsided in Marty's favor. Give him one of the two Shield Rings, for example, and now he has 15-16 def, surviving like twice as much hits (20 atk now does 3-4 instead of 7-8), whereas Tanya might be able to take 1-2 more, but we can't really make use out of that because she hardly ever counters on enemy phase. Give Marty Wrath, and he starts critting things on enemy phase, whereas Tanya can hardly use that at all. Add in Elite, and Marty now gains twice as much EXP for both player and enemy phase, while Tanya can only gain more on player phase. Or look at scrolls. Two of the earliest scrolls are Odo and Sety, both of which target Marty's major issues. Really fixing Tanya's low str isn't possible until we get the Ch18 Noba scroll, her low def won't improve until we get Dain scroll...the best we can do is 30% more hp growth from Hezul. Which Marty gets just as much out of (120% hp growth, wahoo).

In summary, Marty is always much much more durable. He and Tanya are roughly even on player phase offense, but you can put Marty's to use on enemy phase as well. And later, Marty sometimes beats her soundly on offense, like on Armors. He has more weapon flexibility, makes better use out of resourcs, he can help in the capturing business, and he's much less expensive. In trade, Tanya has better supports, and her avo is better, but I think I've shown that does not help her too much.

Marty > Tanya.

Edited July 12, 2009 by Mekkah

[cheetah7071]

You can change these numbers if you like. The higher you put them, the more Marty wins. You can also lower them to make Tanya win but...it doesn't get much worse than 3 def and 6 avo.

3 def is roughly accurate. Starting up a new file I saw most def scattering around 2-4, with one soldier having 1 and one having 8 somehow. 6 avo is, if anything, too high for the enemies not on terrain.

With the calculations you gave, Tanya and Marty are basically tied offensively. But you did forget to factor in her support with Othin. +10% crit and her starting skill give her a roughly ~40% chance of criticalling over two attacks when you factor in her PCC of 2. That's quite a significant offense lead when Marty kills absoilutely nothing in one round.

10 more hit from support means she uses the numbers you gave against the enemies on the houses, or has a ~80% chance on the ones not on houses, while Marty is still chugging along at 65%.

Defensively, Marty has the clear advantage in concrete durability, but is also popping vulneraries to not die. Tanya has 38 avoid after support and stars, facing enemy accuracies of 70 or worse. I found only one enemy besides the boss who can 2HKO her in chapter 1, though the axe-users of the following two chapters do a lot better offensively than soldiers.

Marty also has enemy phase action, which is important at this point since you only have so many frontliners.

You're obviously talking about earlygame from the rest of the paragraph. Which chapters are you proposing you need a wall in? Chapter one has half the enemies standing still. Chapter 2 needs a rushdown, since the pirates walk right over the rivers and ignore your chokepoints. Chapter 3 has enemies so scattered about a wall isn't needed or desires. I'll grant chapter 2x, but that's only one chapter where walling actually helps before leaf runs off to Manster and finds himself swimming in frontliners.

In addition, Marty can help capturing things

Granted. But how is he capturing anything? The brave axe? There's some stiff competition for that, and it only keeps getting stiffer as the game progresses (and only lightens off when and if Lifis gets enough bld to steal master axes). For him to capture without the brave axe, or if his lollable accuracy gets in the way and has him miss with one of the brave attacks, he's going to need somebody to weaken it for him. Somebody who won't kill it off, but who has reliable accuracy and preferably won't be taking damage from it. Somebody exactly like Tanya.

30 Iron Axe uses costs 1100G, 30 Iron Bow uses costs 1650G.

Tanya also has free reign on every bow you capture. Her only competition until Selphina is Dagda and Ronan. If you're using Marty, then you'll need to capture at least twice if not three times as many axes as bows just to stay afloat. The 1-2 short bows from chapter 1, 1-2 iron bows from chapter 2, and Ronan's iron bow will keep Tanya going for a long time.

Tanya has a slight supporting edge though, due to the mutual benefit with Othin while supporting Dagda, while Marty only receives bonuses from Dagda.

I wouldn't call it slight. It shores up both of their accuracies quite nicely, as well as giving them non-joke critical rates. Tanya will be getting a roughly 40% chance to crit over two attacks, and Othin will be getting a 54% chance (though this only helps him on the player phase, since he has wrath for the enemy phase). His Tanya support is enough to bring him to 100% crit on a second attack with the Pugi.

So Tanya has a 40% chance of killing something she doesn't just kill outright (realistically that'll just be mages for a while), whereas Marty has a 0% chance (maybe upping it to 2% or 3% if his skl ever goes up) of killing things he doesn't kill outright. Neither outright kills many earlygame enemies, so I'm inclined to give Tanya the win in earlygame offense.

Zooming ahead, I'm pretty certain you've been underestimating levels. In my most recent playthrough, I definitely had those members of the Fiana Militia I was using to level 7 by chapter 8x, bringing them closer to level 10 by chapter 10. Still, I think you gave Tanya short shrift in chapter 8x, so let's investigate that chapter using the level 7 stats you provided. Your team has a two star advantage, so that bumps Tanya's avoid to 44 and accuracy to 100.

Dagda could probably solo the enemies that come after them, so I won't suggest she has indispensible offense. She isn't, however, a liability. I don't believe enemy stats have been compilated for FE5, but 73 or so accuracy seems reasonable for the enemies coming at her. I believe they have poison axes, so she isn't actually being 2HKOed unless the enemies have a whopping 9 str, but she'll be taking enough poison damage that she'll have to pop a vulnerary roughly as often.

Enemies coming in, presuming the accuracy of 73, will have a 29% chance to hit her. Since only one enemy is ever attacking her (stick her in a corner with Dagda right above her), if you left her with a vulnerary at the end of chapter 3, she'll have an 0.2% chance of dying by turn 5, an 0.8% chance of dying by turn 6, and only a 9% chance of dying by turn 10. Give her two vulneraries and the chances of her dying before she reunites with the rest of the team are laughable. Meanwhile, every time the enemy misses twice in a row, she gets to attack one of them, and she kills one every two attacks. Maybe not the superstar of the chapter, but not a liability either.

Meanwhile Marty isn't turning any heads either.The corridors are one space wide, so every time he fails to ORKO an enemy (which is every time), he's forcing somebody (usually himself) to finish the enemy off and thus fall behind the rest of the group. The enemies up near the boss all have ranged weapons (either handaxes or just bows). Tanya actually has an enemy phase *advantage* here, because Marty never counters without a handaxe, which brings his accuracy down to a lollable 61, whereas Tanya is being 3HKOed by the 6 mt handaxes with truly inconsequential accuracy (it'll be somewhere around the minimum 1 accuracy after the Othin support if my guess of 73 above is accurate for the poison axes), and she's still critting ~47% of the time.

From here on out, scrolls become important. Out of the scrolls you currently have, Tanya wants Hezul and Neir, and wouldn't mind Fala when you get it next chapter, but it isn't really important. Marty wants Sety and Odo and nothing really else. However, Tanya has the advantage of having much more controllable levelup times. If she's at 80 exp, but Lifis has the Neir scroll and can't each her this turn, just don't have her attack this turn. Marty meanwhile has an enemy phase, and thus has much more trouble controlling his levelups. Thus, I feel justified giving Tanya Hezul and Neir something like 90% of her levelups (functionally reducing +10% modifiers into +9% etc), and Marty Odo and Sety 2/3 of his levels. Feel free to debate these figures, but Tanya is definitely going to have her scrolls more often than Marty gets his.

I'll grant Marty his early promotion, but Tanya doesn't really want one. She's perfectly happy to keep on levelling up at a faster rate, because her promotion bonuses aren't that spectacular. She could pop a knight crest for an earlier brave bow or something but it really isn't worth the bother. Still, not wanting an early promotion means she can feel free to use a later knight crest--surely an advantage, however small.

Using my higher level numbers, Marty should be promoting at the end of chapter 9 or so. Marty is only winning offense against slow enemies (mages, armors, and soldiers, with Tanya ORKOing mages and soldiers anyways). So let's take a look at the enemy makeup of the ensuing chapters, before I take a closer look at chapter 15, which is roughly where I see Tanya promoting.

Chapter 9 Marty doesn't promote till near the end, but even if he promoted near the beginning, it'd only be a slight win offensively. There's some armors, sure, but also fliers. Chapter 10 I'll grant Marty the advantage. Chapter 11 is a joke and has all of 11 enemies, all of whome are in Tanya's ORKO set. Chapter 11x is primarily soldiers, mages, and archers, with a long hallway filled with things Tanya can counterattack but Marty can't without bringing his accuracy down to laughable levels. Chapter 12 is has fairly quick enemies--certainly faster than Marty can double at any rate. Tanya wins. 12x is a joke. Chapter 13 has it's fair share of armors and ballistae, but Tanya is almost never the most tempting target for ballistae (Lifis for some reason taking that honor no matter what his defense and hp, at least how the AI played in my playthrough), and there are plenty of enemies for Tanya to ORKO. A Marty win, but not a big one. Chapter 14 is a big Marty win, I'll grant. In chapter 14x, Marty can't participate in the dark mage capture-a-thon without using the much-contested brave axe, and the pegasi like to run to spots where he can't get them without his laughable hand axe. That leaves both him and Tanya picking off dark mages you're too lazy to capture, except Tanya can hit a few of the pegasi that Dean and/or Karin can't reach, and is much less likely to be poisoned because of her much higher evasion, while Marty's defensive lead is much much smaller due to magical enemies. Overall, this time where Marty is promoted but Tanya isn't is a slight Marty win offensively, but not a blowout. Defensively he has the same advantages as always, except that Tanya can dodge much more effectively now. Marty has a smaller defensive lead than before. I may come back to these chapters in later posts if they become an issue.

That brings us to chapter 15, where Tanya will be promoting. Marty will be levelling somewhere in the vicinity of half as fast, so I'll put him at 10/6. Tanya has basically no competition for her bows, so I'll show her with both steel, killer, and brave. Marty may get a steel axe, but those are basically unstealable before the body ring, so you may be short. I'll show him with steel, iron, and hand.

Tanya level 20/1, Hezul and Neir scrolls 90% of the time since level 7, Othin support.

36 hp, 15 str, 5 mag, 18 skl, 20 spd, 8 def, 16 luk, 7 bld, 7.4 mov

Steel bow: 25 atk, 134 hit, 28 crit, 15 AS, 68 avo

Killer bow: 26 atk, 144 hit, 58 crit, 18 AS, 74 avo

Brave bow: 29 atk, 169 hit, 48 crit, 17 AS, 72 avo, brave effect

Marty level 10/6, Sety and Odo scrolls 2/3 of the time since level 7.

44 hp, 14 str, 2 mag, 8 skl, 9 spd, 15 def, 13 luk, 20 bld, 6.3 mov

Steel axe: 27 atk, 96 hit, 8 crit, 9 AS, 43 avo

Iron axe: 23 atk, 106 hit, 8 crit, 9 AS, 43 avo

Hand axe: 20 atk, 86 hit, 8 crit, 9 AS, 43 avo

Needless to say, Tanya is wiping the floor with Marty offensively by now. He does all of 4 more damage than her against enemies they both double, when she's using just a steel bow. And she dosn't crit. Which she has a 60% chance of doing. And she's basically guaranteed to double things now, whereas Marty won't be doubling archers, myrmidons, and other axe-users. If Tanya ever needs a crit to KO, she can switch to a killer bow, which gives her a 100% chance to crit on the second attack even if the enemy has maxed luck.

So, if Marty wants to win, he needs to tank on the enemy phase. He does have the defense to do it. Except why would you ever have him be the one to take enemy hits when you have people like Othin or Halvan or Brighton or Dean who can not only tank on the enemy phase, but actually kill things on the enemy phase? And if the enemies are magical, suddenly his defenses aren't looking so hot compared to Tanya, where 25-30 more avoid and 3 more magic means a lot more than 8 more hp. Sure chapter 15 (the chapter these stats are for) doesn't have any magical enemies--but what about chapters 16B or 17A? I'd sure hate to have Marty tank against the Gelpritter, whereas Tanya can dodgewall them just fine by sitting in the forest across the river and forcing them to attack her at 2 range. Factoring in two sources of charisma, Tanya will have 112 avo with the brave bow on a forest, making even the leadership-rich chapter 17A have trouble hitting her.

And Marty only has 6 movement--the same as Dalshien or Saphy promoted. Saphy, at least has a billion rewarp staves to help her keep up, but Marty has to plug along and hope there's enough enemies to slow down the people ahead of him. Tanya of course won't be keeping up with the mounted units (at least outdoors anyways), but her bow means she can afford to be a bit farther away. Even in a rush chapter, she'll be falling behind several turns after Marty does.

Tanya's offense stays solid for the rest of the game, as Marty's really starts to lag due to his lol15% str growth and severe competition for the good axes. Still, let's see how they perform a bit later on, say chapter 22.

Tanya level 20/9, Othin support

Hezul and Neir levels 7-20, Hezul and Dain levels 20/1-20/9

43 hp, 19 str, 6 mag, 20 skl, 20 spd, 11 def, 20 luk, 7 bld, 7.9 mov

Steel bow: 29 atk, 142 hit, 30 crit, 15 AS, 72 avo

Killer bow: 30 atk, 152 hit, 60 crit, 18 AS, 78 avo

Brave bow: 33 atk, 177 hit, 50 crit, 17 AS, 76 avo, brave effect

Marty level 10/12

Sety and Odo levels 7-10/12

49 hp, 15 str, 3 mag, 10 skl, 11 spd, 17 def, 16 luk, 20 bld, 6.4 mov

Steel axe: 28 atk, 103 hit, 10 crit, 11 AS, 50 avo

Iron axe: 24 atk, 113 hit, 10 crit, 11 AS, 50 avo

Hand axe: 21 atk, 93 hit, 10 crit, 11 AS, 50 avo

Tanya still wipes the floor with Marty's offense. She now officially does more damage when both use steel, plus tacking on her crit rate, much much higher accuracy (lol at 103 acc with a steel axe) and near monopoly of bows (xavier is around now, but he's quite happy with Master bows, and is content to leave the brave bow to Tanya). If Marty manages to get his hands on a Master axe, he'll have comparable offense to Tanya and 1-2 range...except that master axes have the same accuracy as steel. Good luck hitting anything when the bosses from here on out all have high leadership.

Taking a look at the details of chapter 22, nobody should be taking damage for the first section because you just wait for the reinforcements to get close, then smash them from range. Then you wear out the ballistae, but Marty takes all of one more hit before going down than Tanya (the most powerful ballistae I remember seeing had 25 atk, 5HKOing Marty and 4HKOing Tanya) except Tanya has ~25 more avo, translating to one additional enemy miss over four attacks, so they're really equally good at this.

Then the Gelpritter charges, and neither of them is really doing well except that Tanya can smash a few of them to pieces on the first turn by standing at the edge of their range.

Tanya continues her win through to the final chapter, because the only enemies I can think of right now that are neither dodgy nor magic in the rest of the game are the dragon knights in chapter 23 (lol flying vs bows) and the berserkers in 24x, who Tanya can actually kill on the player phase without having to worry about wrath killing her (and some of whom, by the way, double Marty).

So a tied earlygame (defense vs an actual chance to ORKO things via crits), a small Marty lead midgame before Tanya promotes (maybe even shorter than that, if it becomes neccesary I'll take a look at level 15 Tanya. I'm betting she does better than you'd give her credit for), and then a massive Tanya advantage for the rest of the game.

Edited July 13, 2009 by cheetah7071