smash fanatic (Bastian) vs Vykan12 (Nealuchi)

[Progenitus]

I open, whoamg

[Progenitus]

Bastian > Nealuchi because Bastian speaks like a Shakespearean actor, which is badass because Shakespeare and his plays were badass. liek, h4x plots and puns and sexual innuendos and stuffs. Nealuchi? He's an old coward who even says running away is a raven's specialty. Why would you ever want to use Nealuchi?

But unfortunately this isn't a personality contest, so I'll have to get to the more boring stuff to show why Bastian is more awesome than an old bag of bones.

So one thing Nealuchi has is availability. Big deal. Availability doesn't give you a free ride to being special unless you're actually decent in those chapters. And Nealuchi isn't very special.

First of all, in all of part 2, there's a severe lack of olivi grass, which means there's big problems keeping him transformed, especially in 2-P where you have NO olivi grass. As if laguz didn't already have their own problems staying afloat with a steady supply of grasses, imagine them staying transformed when supply is tight.

Next, two of his three chapters in part 2 are very short. 2-P is 8 turns, and there's only like 10 enemies or something small. 2-2 is another short chapter. 7 turns for max BEXP, just to give you an idea. Even if he was good, being good in short chapters isn't that special, especially since when Bastian comes around the chapters are a lot longer, and obviously winning long chapters > winning short chapters. 2-E isn't too bad in length, but...

Third, he has fierce competition. Elincia is okay in 2-P since she heals, and in 2-E she stomps pretty hard because she has amiti and one rounds the entire map. Haar is in both chapters (though he joins halfway through for 2-P) and obviously stomps hard, since he's liek the best unit in the entire game. Marcia is more than servicable in 2-P. Mordy is good. Brom isn't too bad. Lucia is good. And then Leanne, who makes the gaps between the uber units and Nealuchi even greater, since I can chant my uber units and get even more out of them than I could with Nealuchi (e.g. if we assume Elincia and Haar one round while Nealuchi 2-rounds, in one attack Elincia/Haar kill an enemy and Nealuchi kills "half" an enemy, a difference of "half" an enemy. If we factor in Leanne, Elincia/Haar can kill another enemy while Nealuchi kills "half" an enemy, so now the difference is a full enemy).

So yeah, Nealuchi isn't really that good in part 2.

And then he disappears until part 4, and by now he's crap. He still has 27 att, which isn't doing anyone anything. He does like 0 damage to generals, and single digit damage a hit to pretty much everything else, which is like 3 or 4 rounding. That's awful. When your offense is that bad, and you have no other utility (no staves, no chanting, no thieving... he's not even that durable), you're terrible.

And then Bastian, our Shakespearean friend, joins in 4-5. And because he's an archsage, he can use a tome based on whatever he's attacking, and he one rounds pretty much everything. The only enemies he has trouble one rounding are tigers and ravens, and he can typically leave them with single digit HP anyway. Cats and hawks get OHKO'd, and he doubles and 2HKOs red dragons. And he has staves.

Nealuchi? His offense is still horrible. He's doing 0 or negligible damage to dragons and tigers, and he's doing single digit damage to cats and hawks. Ravens is the only enemy he's decent against. And he still has transformation issues. nothnx

Now you could say that Nealuchi can go to a different team, since Bastian is locked to Tibarn's, but really, who cares? His offense is still terrible. His mediocre damage and then wasting turns smoking grasses so he can stay transformed isn't helping anyone. Bastian one rounds almost all of 4-5. That's a ridiculous lead. Nealuchi doesn't even come close to one rounding any map.

This trend basically continues into 4-E, with Bastian hitting really hard because he has a ton of att and hits res, usually doing the same or more damage than Nealuchi, even assuming Nealuchi doubles and Bastian doesn't. And then Bastian has staves, which is badass since 4-E-1 has a sleep staff and he can just restore the sleep away, and physics are buyable so he can always just stand back and use physics, which is awesome in chapters like 4-E-3 where we have dragons running around the place 3HKOing our God units like Tibarn and Ike and having massive hit to boot.

Nealuchi doesn't even have a big durability lead. He has HP/def/avoid, but Bastian avoids player phase counters far more often, and in the event that Bastian is too frail to attack, he can just use a staff. If it's too dangerous for Nealuchi to attack, he ends up doing nothing.

And Nealuchi STILL has to worry about a transformation gauge. "Laguz gem", doesn't cut it, because we only get 2 until Nasir joins, and we have plenty of laguz fighting for those spots in 4-E (the hawks, Volug, Ranulf, Reyson, and more), so Nealuchi taking the gem instead of them now makes them have the issues, so it doesn't help him at all.

And the lack of 2-range really sucks for Nealuchi, because everything in 4-E-3 and beyond has 2-range, which means he's a sitting duck on enemy phase. Bastian HAS 2-range, and in 4-E-3 he can use a blessed siege tome and rain death on dragons anyway.

So what does this leave Nealuchi with? Canto? That just lets Nealuchi attack something with his pitiful damage and then hide behind someone. Bastian doesn't even need to do that. He can just use physic or siege tome. who caers about canto.

So....

Nealuchi is meh in part 2.

Nealuchi is horrible in his first part 4 chapter.

Bastian stomps Nealuchi for the rest of the game.

Shakespearean mage >>>> old fart raven

Edited July 15, 2009 by smash fanatic

[Vykan12]

First of all, in all of part 2, there's a severe lack of olivi grass, which means there's big problems keeping him transformed, especially in 2-P where you have NO olivi grass.

When Nealuchi reverts, it doesn’t have to last more than a turn. All he needs to do is draw in 2 ranged attacks on E. phase and he’ll jump from 0 to max meter. Moreover, none of your part 2 units have decent 1-2 range so having hand axe enemies attack him instead of someone else will yield the same result on E. phase (ie countering for no damage). The only real issue with this strategy then, is if Nealuchi can survive decently when untransformed.

Nealuchi base lvl (reverted): 53 hp, 10 def, 18 AS, 70 avo

2x Dracoknight lvl 18 (Iron Axe)

HP 33, Atk 26, AS 14, Hit 127, Avo 45, DEF 16, RES 0, Crit 7, Ddg 7

4RKOed at 63 hit.

3x Dracoknight lvl 19 (Hand Axe)

HP 34, Atk 26, AS 15, Hit 117, Avo 47, DEF 17, RES 0, Crit 7, Ddg 7

4RKOed at 45 hit.

2x Soldier lvl 18 (Steel Greatlance)

HP 30, ATK 30, AS 15, Hit 111, Avo 39, DEF 13, RES 8, Crit 8, Ddg 9

3RKOed at 34 hit.

1x Soldier lvl 19 (Javelin)

HP 32, Atk 23, AS 16, Hit 106, Avo 41, DEF 14, RES 9, Crit 8, Ddg 9

5RKOed at 26 hit.

It stands to reason that Nealuchi can almost always safely engage 3 enemies even when reverted, which is more than sufficient.

So yes, Nealuchi does have obvious transform issues in part 2, but in most situations they’re easy to work around.

Obviously winning long chapters > winning short chapters.

I disagree. What’s important is the difficulty of the chapter. For instance, 1-1 and 1-2 are very short chapters, but that doesn’t change the fact that Nolan’s contributions in those chapters are invaluable.

Third, he has fierce competition.

Let’s take a closer look at that.

In 2-P, Nealuchi is easily the 2nd best unit on the field (Leanne being the 1st). Haar’s basically out of contention since he shows up halfway through, might even join later if Marcia isn’t correctly positioned, and since the map only has 11 enemies he might not have that many targets to pick on. Marcia is basically Nealuchi on offence –1 atk (they both 2 round everything so who cares), but she also has much worse durability than he does. Iron axe!dracoknights manage to 4RKO her at 68 true hit, which is ironically worse than untransformed Nealuchi. The fact that the old raven gains 10 def and 36 avo upon transforming should already tell you how much of a blowout that is. That leaves Elincia, but then her offence is laughable (she 4RKOes some dracos and tinks the boss) and her healing utility is pretty much limited to keeping Marcia alive.

In 2-2 Nealuchi is still amongst your best units. Offensively, only Lucia beats him in damage output. I suppose Mordecai also wins against whichever armors he can double, but Nealuchi does more damage against everything else, most notably mages he can manage to ORKO. Durability-wise, he’s second only to Mordy.

Mordecai: 57 hp, 32 def, 43 avo

Nealuchi: 53 hp, 20 def, 106 avo

Lucia: 38 hp, 14 def, 83 avo

1x Halberdier lvl 3 (Steel Lance, stealable vulnerary)

HP 34, Atk 27, AS 18, Hit 127, Avo 47, DEF 15, RES 12, Crit 14, Ddg 11

1x Armor Sword lvl 20 (Steel Blade)

HP 37, Atk 32, AS 16, Hit 107, Avo 44, DEF 19, RES 7, Crit 7, Ddg 12

1x Archer lvl 18 (Steel Bow)

HP 29. Atk 27, AS 17, Hit 125, Avo 43, DEF 13, RES 6, Crit 9, Ddg 9

Mordy isn’t injured by any of these enemies so he might as well be invincible. Excluding the archer, Nealuchi is facing 5-8RKOes at 0.03-9 hit. Lucia, on the other hand, is 3RKOed at 12-39 hit. Fun fact: Even if all the enemies in 2-2 were archers, Nealuchi would still be arguably more durable than Lucia.

Hell, Nealuchi’s durability is so cool that we can have him survive a bowgun attack, take an herb and keep him on the frontlines. Now he can effectively decimate a group of enemies on his own thanks to wrath giving him +50 crit per attack. This type of antic is also possible if we purposely let Nealuchi take some hits untransformed, similar to how one would get Mordecai to resolve hp in parts 3+4.

One could also argue that due to the FOW nature of this map, Leanne’s heron utility here is fairly limited. To be on the safe side, she needs to be at least 8-9 spaces away from the nearest hidden square that an enemy can walk on. Combine that with her 5 move and it’s pretty hard for her to even vigor 2 people per turn.

Looking at 2-E, Nealuchi is basically in the same situation as 2-2 except we traded Lucia for Elincia, added in Haar and made Leanne more useful. Moreover, even if you don’t use Nealuchi much as a combatant here, there’s plenty of utility he can nonetheless provide. For one thing, he’s one of the better choices for finding hidden treasure in this map. Looking at unit luck:

Elincia: 29

Marcia: 12

Nealuchi: 24

Leanne: 27

Haar: 13

Brom: 13

Neph: 12

Heather: 16 + 60

Lethe: 18

Mordecai: 15

Calill: 16

CRKs: 16-20

Strictly speaking, Nealuchi has the 4th best luck stat out of 16, which puts him in the top quarter of the list for finding hidden items. Then obviously his flying allows him to reach these hidden treasure points sooner than most other units.

Realistically, Heather won’t be able to reach any of those points on her own, which brings me to my next point: Nealuchi can ferry people in 2-E. Again, referring to the above map, you can see that flying gives h4x mobility in this chapter. Thus, we can do things like having Nealuchi drop an untransformed Mordecai on the platform where Ludveck is, have Leanne vigor both of them, Mordecai runs into a group of generals and transforms, and Nealuchi carries Leanne off to safety. If we gave Mordy a speedwing, he will actually double Ludveck and thus manage a 2RKO. In addition, Neals can shove a unit while cantoing off somewhere, which is particularly useful for setting up vigors. He can hit & run over a wall to set up kills for other units, and someone like Neph really appreciates that. Oh yeah, and his meter is of the least concern here since we can put him at the top of some stairs and draw out non-threatening ranged attacks.

And then he disappears until part 4, and by now he's crap. He still has 27 att, which isn't doing anyone anything.

True as that may be, Nealuchi can also dramatically increase his combat utility with a resource or two. Giving him an energy drop bolsters his atk to 31, which is already managing a 2RKO on most 4-P and 4-2 enemies. Then he can get up to 3 atk from supports. He also levels like a 20/13 beorc, so he’s getting 12 exp per hit and 35 exp per kill, so he’s levelling incredibly fast. With a 35% str growth, every 3 level-ups basically nets him 2 points of atk.

So let’s say he manages 36 atk. Now he can 3HKO quite a few enemies (eg/ a lv 6 halb with 43 hp/21 def) so putting adept on him will actually allow him to ORKO semi-reliably. Even at base level his chance of activating adept at least once in 2 hits is 60%, and then he has a pretty huge spd growth (40% but he’s a laguz so it’s basically double effect). This is of course all before wrath takes effect, which spikes his killing efficiency well above 80%. At that point, he’s basically indistinguishable from adept + tear Ulki on offence.

When your offense is that bad, and you have no other utility (no staves, no chanting, no thieving... he's not even that durable), you're terrible.

Claiming Nealuchi has “no other utility” couldn’t be farther from the truth. In any given map he can use his flying utility to shove, rescue, ferry, trade, hit & run, etc. The value of this is of course amplified by the fact that part 4 maps are huge, and his ability to boost team mobility or set up kills for others is especially useful in a map like 4-3.

You’re also cutting his part 4 durability short. Take a lv 26 Nealuchi in the desert for instance. He’ll have 55 hp/22 def/107 avo (+5 from fire being 4-3’s affinity). In contrast, Naesala has 60 hp/26 def/104 avo. Or, if that doesn’t convince you, consider that a steel poleax!dragonmaster only 3RKOes him at 17 hit. Something weaker like a steel lance!halb only manages a 5RKO at 37 hit. If we put Nealuchi on Tibarn’s route, his durability becomes hilariously better thanks to the +20 leadership bonus. 4-5 tigers only manage 22 hit, for instance. It’s rather ironic that enemies have so much trouble hitting the oldest raven in tellius. It’s like finding out your grandmother is a ninja or something.

And because he's an archsage, he can use a tome based on whatever he's attacking, and he one rounds pretty much everything.

Although Shakespeare is pretty impressive on offence in 4-5, he won’t be able to use it long due to getting mauled by enemies. Tigers 2RKO him at 77 hit, which is already a 59% death chance after 2 attacks, and 87% after 3. Cats and ravens 3RKO him at even higher hit rates, so he doesn’t fare much better against those either. Since our units are spread pretty thin in 3 armies, it’s very unlikely Bastian will get enough protection in 4-5 to actually provide any worthwhile contribution. Or if he does, he’s still forcing units to slow down to give him that protection, which heavily cuts down on the offensive performance he was providing in the first place.

It doesn’t even take much for Nealuchi to outperform Bastian in this chapter either. A level 25 Nealuchi w/ an energy drop and beastfoe has 47 effective Mt. That’s enough to 1RKO cats, hawks and ravens while leaving tigers with ~20% hp left. Thus Nealuchi can now do what Bastian was doing, but can also apply his offence more due to +2 move and not being impeded by swamps, not to mention being able to face multiple enemies without a huge death risk. He might have to trade some player phases grassing, but that’s easily better than Bastian losing every enemy phase.

You mentioned Bastian has staves, but whenever he takes so much as 1 hit, he needs to be healed himself. He could easily harm team durability more than he’s helping it by being fielded.

Nealuchi doesn't even have a big durability lead. He has HP/def/avoid, but Bastian avoids player phase counters far more often.

You’re ignoring the fact that Bastian gets doubled to death. There’s a 22% chance he won’t have gained a point of spd in 3 level-ups, which would allow 4-E-1 snipers to double him. 4-E-2 is considerably worse since he needs to have gained 5 levels just to not get doubled by common enemies like halbs/warriors/snipers, and SMs always double him. Even at max lvl, Ashera and non-thunder spirits manage to double him, though he has such high res that he probably doesn’t care.

He also has a slight problem with low crit evade. With 21 base luck, snipers and swordmasters manage about a 5-8 crit rate on him. That’s a 5-8% chance of dying instantly before Bastian’s avo is factored in.

Other than that, their durability situation is basically the same as I described earlier in 4-5. Bastian gets 2-3RKOed by any physical threat he faces, only now their hit rates are even higher, particularly in 4-E-3 onwards. Nealuchi might only be able to take 1-2 extra hits, but he also has monstrous avo to rely on. At lvl 27, he has 123 before supports, so 150 hit only manages 15 real on him. 22/65 (34%) of enemies in 4-E-1 have less than 150 hit, and most of them don’t surpass 165ish.

This trend basically continues into 4-E, with Bastian hitting really hard because he has a ton of att and hits res, usually doing the same or more damage than Nealuchi, even assuming Nealuchi doubles and Bastian doesn't.

Again, while this is true, you’re overlooking the fact that it is easier to boost Nealuchi’s performance with resources than it is to do so with Bastian. Boosting Bastian’s atk does absolutely nothing since he’ll be 2 rounding physical enemies regardless. His spd is beyond repair thanks to a pitiful 24 base. Moreover, there isn’t really any way to fix Bastian’s durability. Even if we toss him resolve, he still loses avo to Nealuchi, but now he has low enough hp to be 1HKOed by almost anything. Moreover, he can’t even reap the benefits of resolve long since flare will eventually activate.

Now let’s look at Nealuchi. An energy drop alone gets his offence from Lyre level to respectable 2 rounding. His huge spd stat allows him to use any number of skills proficiently (eg/ adept, cancel, vantage). If we can manage to get him to lv 30 by 4-E, we can add tear to that list, and by that point adept + tear gives him a proc% of 89 at neutral bio. If we give him resolve, he’ll then have 171 avo before supports. That’s so ridiculously huge that the highest levelled white dragon in 4-E-3 only manages 2.53 hit on him. Suffice to say, wrath + resolve + maybe tear makes him a force to be reckoned with.

And then Bastian has staves, which is badass since 4-E-1 has a sleep staff and he can just restore the sleep away, and physics are buyable so he can always just stand back and use physics, which is awesome in chapters like 4-E-3 where we have dragons running around the place 3HKOing our God units like Tibarn and Ike and having massive hit to boot.

Staves aren’t that special in 4-E since we already have a forced healer who sucks at combat in Micaiah. Having her alternate between physics/fortify uses alone has all of our 4-E healing needs covered, and bringing another one is basically pointless. Instead, I could’ve brought an extra fighter who can increase my player phase offence.

For restore, Bastian has to be adjacent to the person he restores, which could ultimately put him in mortal danger, thus defeating the purpose of the restore in the first place (ie preventing anyone from dying). There’s also the possibility that Lekain does his status-all attack that cancels out the effect of sleep. It’s even possible to kill both Hetzel and the other sleep staff bishop on the same turn with some clever use of Reyson and the pass skill, though that’s unlikely.

And Nealuchi STILL has to worry about a transformation gauge. "Laguz gem", doesn't cut it, because we only get 2 until Nasir joins, and we have plenty of laguz fighting for those spots in 4-E (the hawks, Volug, Ranulf, Reyson, and more), so Nealuchi taking the gem instead of them now makes them have the issues, so it doesn't help him at all.

Why would we realistically want to bring Volug and Ranulf to 4-E? If we have the opportunity to bring our 10 absolute best units, then it clearly doesn’t make sense to bring 2 characters with obvious atk issues. A lv 30 SS strike!Volug only manages 49 atk, which doesn’t really ORKO anything in 4-E aside from joke enemies (sages, bishops) and spirits who aren’t on cover tiles. Of course, putting Volug at lv 30 means we gave him 15 levels in 11 chapters, which is unreasonable when you consider he probably didn’t gain a level in all of part 1 (6 chapters). So now he has even less atk and no mastery, the latter making him one of the worst choices for fighting dragons. For Ranulf, putting him at lvl 31 with S strike gives him only 45 atk, so no need to elaborate there.

Though even if we do use an abnormally high amount of non-royals in 4-E, it won’t really make much of a difference. Nobody’s wasting a gem on 4-E-2, so you already have 10 uses just for 4-E-1. You probably won’t use a gem in 4-E-3 if you plan on killing Deghinsea in the first 5 or so turns because every laguz starts at full gauge. Then 4-E-4 and 5 are short enough that a laguz stone could keep every non-royal in play transformed the entire chapter without needing olivi grass. This is especially true of Giffca and Skrimir who only lose 2 meter per enemy encounter.

And the lack of 2-range really sucks for Nealuchi, because everything in 4-E-3 and beyond has 2-range, which means he's a sitting duck on enemy phase. Bastian HAS 2-range, and in 4-E-3 he can use a blessed siege tome and rain death on dragons anyway.

I’ll give you 4-E-3, but in 4-E-4 and 5, Bastian’s 2 range is useless. Even if we capped his magic and gave him rexcalibur, he’s only managing to borderline 2RKO spirits. Nealuchi, on the other hand, can manage a ORKO so long as we can get him to 40 atk, which could easily happen if we used him seriously up to this point. For example, a lv 27 Nealuchi with A Fire and S strike already manages 39 atk.

More importantly, though, spirits are never going to target Bastian on E. phase. Why attack someone they do 4-8 damage against while taking a counter when they can attack someone else for 20 damage while taking 0 in return? Bottom line, both characters have nonexistent enemy phases in 4-E-4 and 5 and Nealuchi wins player phase offence. Thus he obviously wins overall offence in those 2 mini-chapters.

So in conclusion, old ravens are wise while our poetic lawyer is but a purveyor of empty rhetoric.

[Progenitus]

When Nealuchi reverts, it doesn’t have to last more than a turn. All he needs to do is draw in 2 ranged attacks on E. phase and he’ll jump from 0 to max meter. Moreover, none of your part 2 units have decent 1-2 range so having hand axe enemies attack him instead of someone else will yield the same result on E. phase (ie countering for no damage).

First of all, you're assuming that he's only getting attacked by 2-range enemies when he's untransformed. The fact is that not all enemies have 2-range. 2-2, for example, has only 8 enemies with 2-range out of 25 enemies (the reinforcements you'll probably never fight) and one of those 8 is the boss that doesn't even move. You'll definitely get a couple of 1-range enemies mixed in if you try to have Nealuchi tank while untransformed to build his gauge, which is wasted opportunities when it comes to countering them. Countering 1-range enemies probably won't even build his gauge either, since he has like 130 hit before any authority stars and 17 att, and the only enemies who have at least this much def are armors/generals, plus 2-E halbs, and you have to do no damage on the counter to build your gauge.

Second, no one has decent 1-2 range? That's not even true in 2-P. Haar joins halfway through, and his offense with a javelin is better than Nealuchi transformed, since Haar doubles everything in the map anyway, and he wins att. In 2-2, Lucia has a wind edge, which gives her 3 less att than transformed Nealuchi, but has more crit. And in 2-E we have Elincia who has 2 less att than Nealuchi with a wind edge, and Haar who has 32 att at base level with a hand axe, which does ~15 damage to halbs (as opposed to Nealuchi doing double 10s). It's a bit bigger against lower def enemies like warriors/snipers/SMs, but on the opposite side of the spectrum, we have generals, where Haar with the hand axe does 10+ damage to them, and actually doubles a lot of them, while Nealuchi does double 6s or so.

Also in 2-E, I have lots of ledges to abuse, which means instead of having Nealuchi sit by the ledge drawing fire and not doing any damage in return, I can have someone like Calill instead to do some damage.

True, only a few have decent 2-range, but to say "none" is a lie.

Also, a bunch of the 2-range enemies are those using bows, or even bowguns, which Nealuchi really doesn't like.

Letting Nealuchi attack untransformed is no better than simply waiting turns to refill his gauge.

I disagree. What’s important is the difficulty of the chapter. For instance, 1-1 and 1-2 are very short chapters, but that doesn’t change the fact that Nolan’s contributions in those chapters are invaluable.

Sure. The difficulty/magnitude of the chapter is important. But the length still matters too. I care more if my unit is helping out a 10-turn chapter over a second unit helping out a 5-turn chapter, assuming they're both h4xing the same amount. Length of a chapter and its difficulty usually go hand-in-hand anyway, since usually the longer a chapter is, the greater the chance that something will go wrong along the way and screw everything up.

The problem with part 2 is that 2-P and 2-2 are very short chapters, especially since we have so few units to use that the amount of time it takes to make moves for everyone is less than other chapters. 2-E is a decent length, but as said before it has the fiercest competition, giving Nealuchi the hardest time to gather positive utility.

In 2-P, Nealuchi is easily the 2nd best unit on the field (Leanne being the 1st). Haar’s basically out of contention since he shows up halfway through, might even join later if Marcia isn’t correctly positioned, and since the map only has 11 enemies he might not have that many targets to pick on. Marcia is basically Nealuchi on offence –1 atk (they both 2 round everything so who cares), but she also has much worse durability than he does. Iron axe!dracoknights manage to 4RKO her at 68 true hit, which is ironically worse than untransformed Nealuchi. The fact that the old raven gains 10 def and 36 avo upon transforming should already tell you how much of a blowout that is. That leaves Elincia, but then her offence is laughable (she 4RKOes some dracos and tinks the boss) and her healing utility is pretty much limited to keeping Marcia alive.

The point of being awesome and positive utility and such isn't about how much more raw stats you have over the other PCs, but rather how well you fare against them. We all like looking at really huge numbers, especially if they're flashing and green, but this ultimately doesn't tell us anything unless we actually look at the enemies' stats.

Now, you make it sound like Marcia getting 4HKO'd at 68 true hit is bad, but there are only 11 enemies, and several don't even move unless someone comes in range, plus the wyverns generally come by themselves or with another wyvern, so Marcia is not very worried about dying. Given that Marcia has almost the same offense, they're almost indistinguishable, and in fact when Nealuchi untransforms, Marcia is the one winning now because she has 9 more att and doubles and can also attack on player phase, and if we have Nealuchi try to lure a wyvern to counter and build his gauge, that's an enemy that Marcia could've countered.

Elincia's not terrible at attacking either. Yes, her att fails, but she has ~37.59% chance of activating stun once per round because she doubles everything. While it still doesn't do much damage, it puts the enemy out of commission, at which point it's basically dead, since you can just take it out whenever you have the time.

Haar's not "basically out of contention" either. The fact that he DOES join gives you a failsafe in beating the chapter. For example, even if I don't touch Nealuchi but I run into trouble, I just need to stay afloat long enough for Haar to come in and save me.

So is Nealuchi the 2nd best unit on the field? Maybe. But considering how well Marcia and Elincia can do by themselves and Haar coming later as backup, his win is very small.

In 2-2 Nealuchi is still amongst your best units. Offensively, only Lucia beats him in damage output. I suppose Mordecai also wins against whichever armors he can double, but Nealuchi does more damage against everything else, most notably mages he can manage to ORKO. Durability-wise, he’s second only to Mordy.

Again, this is the same case as 2-P. Nealuchi is good. But you have plenty of other fighters who are decent.

Brom, for example, is a little worse than Nealuchi in this chapter. However, he's still good. He has lots of durability, and while he loses offense/mobility, he can at least 2HKO most of the enemies in the map anyway, and on the flip side he doesn't have any issues with staying transformed.

Lethe is basically Nealuchi with no canto and a slightly worse laguz gauge, and has just "good" durability rather than overkill. Yes, she loses to Nealuchi. But again, she's still usable.

Same case with Lucia's durability as well. Nealuchi's durability > her's, but Lucia's durability is not bad. There aren't that many enemies in this chapter (25 enemies, 3 being lolsages, 2 being lolpriests, 1 being a rogue that doesn't even move IIRC), and you don't even need to kill them all since it's an arrive and not a rout, and there's lots of chokepoints to use, so getting 3HKO'd isn't too bad, especially when she faces pretty low hit rates. Note that the 127 hit halb you took has the highest hit rate out of all the enemies in the chapter other than the bowgun, the boss who doesn't even move, and one archer. The average hit rates of all the enemies minus the priests/bowgun/boss is ~115.86 (with the bowgun and boss it's 118), Since she has 83 avoid, the enemies have ~22 real hit, which is ~1.06% chance of dying after 3 hits. I don't see her being worried about straight-up dying. She might need to use a vulnerary or two, but Nealuchi will have to use a grass or two anyway, so both are losing player phases.

And then on the flip side, Lucia's the only one in this whole chapter one rounding stuff that aren't mages or priests (if Nealuchi one rounds anything not a mage/priest, he's very, very borderline), and for stuff she can't, she has decent crit.

Mordy can actually OHKO mages. 38 att vs 25-26 HP/6-7 def. And Nealuchi doesn't actually do that much more damage, since he has 11 less att. This means against enemies who have 16 def, they do the same damage even with Mordy not doubling and Nealuchi doubling. Halbs have about this much. Soldiers and archers and the warrior have slightly less. Armors and generals have slightly more.

And he's usually strong enough to let nearly anyone else finish the job anyway. For example, a soldier. 32 HP, 14 def. Mordy does 24 damage to this. It has 8 HP left. At this point, anyone else on the team can kill it. Or a halb. 34 HP, 16 def. Mordy does 22 damage to this. It has 12 HP left. At this point the only person who can't kill this enemy is Heather (note that Nealuchi does the same damage to this halb as Mordy).

So the offense difference between Nealuchi and Mordy is very, very small.

Plus Leanne, who's basically two units in one. Sure, she's frail and it's FoW, but again, we have lots of chokepoints to abuse. She can easily hide behind our tanks, move in and vigor and then canto back to safety.

So is Nealuchi one of your better units in this chapter? Maybe. But one rape unit in a mix of multiple rape units isn't very special, since I could just use another person in place of Nealuchi and get (almost) the same amount of rape.

Also, IIRC, the bowgun enemy is in the back of the map by the boss, so Nealuchi won't have much time to go "lolwrath".

Strictly speaking, Nealuchi has the 4th best luck stat out of 16, which puts him in the top quarter of the list for finding hidden items. Then obviously his flying allows him to reach these hidden treasure points sooner than most other units.

Nealuchi still has a pretty poor chance at finding hidden items. He *might* find something if you're lucky, but I'd rather just leave it to Heather.

Realistically, Heather won’t be able to reach any of those points on her own, which brings me to my next point: Nealuchi can ferry people in 2-E.

I can have Marcia ferry. In other words, having Nealuchi ferry Heather instead of Marcia means... I free up Marcia to attack? Not really impressive, since Marcia is pretty sucky at fighting.

Again, referring to the above map, you can see that flying gives h4x mobility in this chapter. Thus, we can do things like having Nealuchi drop an untransformed Mordecai on the platform where Ludveck is, have Leanne vigor both of them, Mordecai runs into a group of generals and transforms, and Nealuchi carries Leanne off to safety. If we gave Mordy a speedwing, he will actually double Ludveck and thus manage a 2RKO.

That seems like a very convoluted and unnecessary strategy, and it also requires a speedwing on Mordy, which doesn't help us since MOrdy still has issues doubilng anything else without resolve, and if he gets resolve he doubles without the speedwing anyway.

Mobility is nice, but mobility by itself doesn't really do anything. Look at someone like Sigrun; she has good mobility, but she still sucks, because she sucks at fighting, and fighting is more important than just being mobile. Now Nealuchi is pretty good at fighting, but he's still a step down from Haar/Elincia, and Leanne, and Mordy is debatable, but then he has issues staying transformed, which means he's fighting less often.

In addition, Neals can shove a unit while cantoing off somewhere, which is particularly useful for setting up vigors. He can hit & run over a wall to set up kills for other units, and someone like Neph really appreciates that. Oh yeah, and his meter is of the least concern here since we can put him at the top of some stairs and draw out non-threatening ranged attacks.

Shoving is a pretty minor thing. It's basically just +1 move, which *can* come in handy, but it's not nearly as useful as someone like Haar blocking a chokepoint or Elincia one rounding an enemy. Setting up vigors is very unlikely as well since my two best units are Haar/Elincia and they're both mounted, and Nealuchi can't shove them anyway. I suppose he can shove Leanne, but she already has canto, so she can generally make a vigor safely anyway. Also, Nealuchi shoving is only "special" if him being able to canto away after the shove matters, since if it doesn't and I just want the +1 move, I can use anyone to shove, like Heather or something.

Basically, Nealuchi can get some positive utility in 2-E, but it's fairly small. Unlike a person like Haar who gets plenty of positive utility because he's pwning half the map, or Elincia who one rounds the entire map with decent durability and can also heal, Nealuchi is mainly doing small jobs like ferrying, hit and runs, attacks things for the turns he's transformed and then maybe canto away because he doesn't really want to waste his gauge, etc.

True as that may be, Nealuchi can also dramatically increase his combat utility with a resource or two. Giving him an energy drop bolsters his atk to 31, which is already managing a 2RKO on most 4-P and 4-2 enemies. Then he can get up to 3 atk from supports. He also levels like a 20/13 beorc, so he’s getting 12 exp per hit and 35 exp per kill, so he’s levelling incredibly fast. With a 35% str growth, every 3 level-ups basically nets him 2 points of atk.

So let’s say he manages 36 atk. Now he can 3HKO quite a few enemies (eg/ a lv 6 halb with 43 hp/21 def) so putting adept on him will actually allow him to ORKO semi-reliably. Even at base level his chance of activating adept at least once in 2 hits is 60%, and then he has a pretty huge spd growth (40% but he’s a laguz so it’s basically double effect). This is of course all before wrath takes effect, which spikes his killing efficiency well above 80%. At that point, he’s basically indistinguishable from adept + tear Ulki on offence.

There are many things wrong with this passage.

1) An energy drop on Nealuchi is an energy drop I could have given to any other unit. Not to mention, this energy drop could have been used a lot earlier on another unit. Suppose that instead of using the energy drop on Nealuchi when he joins in 4-2, I use it instead on a unit like Janaff (we can steal one in 3-5). Now Janaff has 44 att, which basically 2HKOs everything except generals (note that Janaff starts running into issues 2HKOing non-generals even by 3-8, which means he'll have issues in 3-10, 3-11, etc... so he really likes that energy drop). This is ridiculously awesome when a huge portion of the team has issues doubling, and a huge portion of the team that are doubling have severe issues 2HKOing.

So I could give Nealuchi an energy drop in 4-2 so his offense doesn't stink as much, or I could give an energy drop to Janaff so I can get a one rounding machine by 3-7? It's very clear that I'd rather give it to someone like Janaff before Nealuchi.

It doesn't even need to be on Janaff. It can go to someone like Ulki, or Neph, or someone from the DB like Zihark, etc. All of them improve with an energy drop. The same idea applies to adept, etc.

The only skill you mentioned that no one really wants is his innate wrath, but then again, Nealuchi isn't hilariously durable anymore and will be in danger of dying if he's flying around at 30% HP to have wrath active.

None of these resources help Nealuchi's case at all. It improves Nealuchi, but weakens the rest of the team, which puts him back at square 1.

2) He's not leveling like a 20/13 beorc. CEXP calculations with laguz double the level, which means since Nealuchi is a level 22 laguz, he levels like a 20/20/4 beorc. This means he actually levels slower than your other beorcs, who are around that level or slightly lower in 4-P/1/2, especially since once Nealuchi gains 1 level, he now levels like a 20/20/6 beorc.

3) Supports not only take time to build, which means that att from supports won't come immediately, but who is actually going to support him? Everyone we brought along from the DB/GMs/CRKs are supported with someone, so they're all out. This only leaves people who joined in part 4. The laguz royals don't want him, because they'd rather just jump into a group of 10 enemies and rape all their faces off, not stick next to Nealuchi, because then the enemies will go for Nealuchi instead and that's less enemies that'll die on enemy phase. The only people this leaves are like, Elincia, plus a bunch of low tiers that we're likely not even bothering with (like Sanaki).

And then no one in part 2 really wants him, because most of these people are going to the GMs/CRKs and are already supported by the time Nealuchi rejoins (Brom/Neph/Haar/etc.), so they're off limits. This leaves like, Leanne, but she's not the heron I'd take into 4-E (I'd much rather bring Rafiel or Reyson), which means Leanne gets left behind and Nealuchi has to find another supporter anyway. So he's not building supports in part 2, unless he wants Leanne and then be unsupported in 4-E and have to find someone else anyway.

So let's say Nealuchi finds some guy in part 4 who, for some reason, wants to support him. 4-P/1/2 aren't long enough to get a C unless you abuse, which means he might not even get a C until 4-E-1. And because 4-E chapters tend to be shorter than your average chapter, he may not even get a B until 4-E-4 or so. That's nothing worth talking about.

4) For Nealuchi to even scrounge up 36 att, WITH an energy drop and C support, he would need to be level 28. Not only is that level very high, by that level, we're not in 4-P/1/2 facing lvl 6 halbs anymore, we're in 4-3/4/5 facing stronger enemies.

Claiming Nealuchi has “no other utility” couldn’t be farther from the truth. In any given map he can use his flying utility to shove, rescue, ferry, trade, hit & run, etc. The value of this is of course amplified by the fact that part 4 maps are huge, and his ability to boost team mobility or set up kills for others is especially useful in a map like 4-3.

If he's going to be flying, shoving, rescuing, etc., I have plenty of other units who can do that, such as the pegs. Part 4 maps are huge, but we're also given a lot more unit slots, which means I can field more filler units for non-combat jobs and not have to use Nealuchi.

You’re also cutting his part 4 durability short. Take a lv 26 Nealuchi in the desert for instance. He’ll have 55 hp/22 def/107 avo (+5 from fire being 4-3’s affinity). In contrast, Naesala has 60 hp/26 def/104 avo. Or, if that doesn’t convince you, consider that a steel poleax!dragonmaster only 3RKOes him at 17 hit. Something weaker like a steel lance!halb only manages a 5RKO at 37 hit. If we put Nealuchi on Tibarn’s route, his durability becomes hilariously better thanks to the +20 leadership bonus. 4-5 tigers only manage 22 hit, for instance.

Naesala's selling point in 4-3 isn't his durability, it's his ridiculous offense (and mobility) WHILE maintaining decent durability.

Also, a minor nitpick; HM doesn't have map affinity.

Now you say his durability is good. And it's *okay*, I'll admit (I never said it was bad). The problem is that Nealuchi ALSO has to worry about his transformation gauge. So if his durability is only slightly above average, this means he's still going to require someone healing, on top of already wasting player phases using grasses. That's a lot of upkeep.

(This is part of the reason why Naesala can get away with being less than invincible, since formshift means he doesn't have to worry about grassing).

So you say that he's getting 5HKO'd at 37 hit vs soldiers (more like 42, since there's no map affinity in HM), and some other stuff. While that's fine for not straight-up dying in a single turn, Nealuchi will be taking some hits, and eventually will need healing, which is healing that other units could have used, so that doesn't really help him. Now Nealuchi can just use a vulnerary/concoction/etc., right? But he also has to grass. So if he's using vulneraries and grasses, he has even fewer player phases to work with, cutting into his flexibility.

Although Shakespeare is pretty impressive on offence in 4-5, he won’t be able to use it long due to getting mauled by enemies. Tigers 2RKO him at 77 hit, which is already a 59% death chance after 2 attacks, and 87% after 3. Cats and ravens 3RKO him at even higher hit rates, so he doesn’t fare much better against those either. Since our units are spread pretty thin in 3 armies, it’s very unlikely Bastian will get enough protection in 4-5 to actually provide any worthwhile contribution. Or if he does, he’s still forcing units to slow down to give him that protection, which heavily cuts down on the offensive performance he was providing in the first place.

This chapter has quite a bit of chokepoints to use. Going up the middle part with the first batch of thickets, for example, is like 2 tiles wide, and the non-flying laguz suck at crossing water. So it's pretty easy to make walls for Bastian without going out of your way.

I suppose this means Bastian can't tank, but that's okay, since one rounding anything I want is already better offense than nearly anyone in this chapter save for Tibarn (especially since Tibarn's team is most likely getting your weakest units from parts 1/2/3, such as the DB/CRKs who are underleveled, due to the fact that 4-5 is an exp mine, and Tibarn has the most authority stars), and gives him a special place in any strategy for nuking any target I want. Not everyone needs to be able to tank to be useful. Non-tankers like our staff users are useful despite them not being capable of taking hits, for example. It's still better than Nealuchi in 4-5, who's just mostly tanking, which can be replaced more easily by someone else on the team except better because that unit probably has superior offense as well.

And if it really is too dangerous for Bastian to attack anything for whatever reason, he can just sit in the back and heal with physic (they're buyable the next chapter so we may as well use up whatever's lying around).

It doesn’t even take much for Nealuchi to outperform Bastian in this chapter either. A level 25 Nealuchi w/ an energy drop and beastfoe has 47 effective Mt. That’s enough to 1RKO cats, hawks and ravens while leaving tigers with ~20% hp left. Thus Nealuchi can now do what Bastian was doing, but can also apply his offence more due to +2 move and not being impeded by swamps, not to mention being able to face multiple enemies without a huge death risk. He might have to trade some player phases grassing, but that’s easily better than Bastian losing every enemy phase.

You're way too loose when it comes to giving out favoritism.

The fact taht Nealuchi needs an energy drop AND beastfoe while Bastian doesn't need anything is proof that Bastian has a gigantic offense lead in 4-5, since you have to give Nealuchi stuff to make up for the gap. I can easily give those things to anyone else on the team. Basically, Nealuchi with favoritism + some unit without it vs Bastian + some unit with favoritism. Obviously the latter team >>>> former team. Some unit with favoritism >>>> some unit without it, which leaves Nealuchi's durability/mobility vs Bastian's *still* superior offense/staves/no transformation issues/2-range.

btw, beastfoe doesn't work on hawks and ravens. you need BIRDfoe for that... So, STILL with the energy drop, he's 5HKOing hawks and still leaves ravens alive with single digit HP. Pretty awful when Bastian can OHKO hawks and also leaves ravens with single digit HP, except with no major favoritism required.

And he's still doing horrible damage to dragons. Not even worth mentioning how many attacks it takes to kill them off.

Also, I can just as easily give Bastian things like spirit dust (stronger potshots. If you give him two, he caps mag pretty quickly as well), or talismen (caps res earlier, so he has an easier time BEXP abusing. Note that once res caps, skl is his highest growth, and then spd and lck tie for 2nd highest). These two items are in very low demand because few even use mag for anything, and res doesn't really bother most people. Unlike, say, energy drops, which nearly everyone wants because it increases their damage.

You mentioned Bastian has staves, but whenever he takes so much as 1 hit, he needs to be healed himself. He could easily harm team durability more than he’s helping it by being fielded.

If Bastian uses physic and gets attacked, you're doing it wrong. He has at least 17 range with physic, which gives him plenty of room to heal and still be out of range of enemies.

Plus, if he takes damage, he can always just switch to a staff and still make himself useful while getting free heals on every player phase.

You’re ignoring the fact that Bastian gets doubled to death. There’s a 22% chance he won’t have gained a point of spd in 3 level-ups, which would allow 4-E-1 snipers to double him. 4-E-2 is considerably worse since he needs to have gained 5 levels just to not get doubled by common enemies like halbs/warriors/snipers, and SMs always double him. Even at max lvl, Ashera and non-thunder spirits manage to double him, though he has such high res that he probably doesn’t care.

1) There are only 2 snipers in all of 4-E-1, one of them being the double bow sniper that we're killing on turn 1 with Shinon (or even Rolf) so we can have him godmode with this uber weapon, which will leave 1 sniper. 1 enemy is a negligible problem, especially since the same sniper gets bonus damage on Nealuchi.

2) 4-E-2 is a shaky chapter, I'll admit. However, he can still sit in the back and heal with physics. They ARE buyable in 4-E's shop. It's an open field and your frontliners will be taking hits in all directions, so they'll be constantly losing HP, and Bastian can help keep them healthy.

3) Ashera can't double him, because her AoE attacks can't double anyone, and her single-target siege attacks are 20 wt, which means her AS drops to 28 (8 str, 40 spd). Bastian only needs 1 spd to not get doubled. She has 32 if Bastian was trying to attack her directly, which is pretty stupid anyway since Ashera has 50 res.

He also has a slight problem with low crit evade. With 21 base luck, snipers and swordmasters manage about a 5-8 crit rate on him. That’s a 5-8% chance of dying instantly before Bastian’s avo is factored in.

Snipers are so rare in 4-E-1 that they may as well not exist, and then the last time snipers/SMs appear is in 4-E-2, which Bastian is never going to face if he's sitting in the back spamming physics anyway, and snipers are effective against Nealuchi anyway.

Other than that, their durability situation is basically the same as I described earlier in 4-5. Bastian gets 2-3RKOed by any physical threat he faces, only now their hit rates are even higher, particularly in 4-E-3 onwards. Nealuchi might only be able to take 1-2 extra hits, but he also has monstrous avo to rely on. At lvl 27, he has 123 before supports, so 150 hit only manages 15 real on him. 22/65 (34%) of enemies in 4-E-1 have less than 150 hit, and most of them don’t surpass 165ish.

The difference between their durability is taht if it's too dangerous for Bastian to attack, he can just use physics (or siege tome in 4-E-3). If it's too dangerous for Nealuchi to attack, he sits around doing nothing since close combat fighting is all he can do.

Also, for Nealuchi to make use of his durability advantage over Bastian, he has to attack, which means you'd have to stick him somewhere on enemy phase, but I could have just as easily stuck another unit in place of Nealcuhi to tank except they'd probably do it better since they'd probably have superior offense while maintaining similar or better durability.

Also, you can think of Bastian's physic spamming as increasing the durability of other units on the team. However, Bastian healing can be applied to anyone else on the team, while Nealuchi's durability on Bastian is only helping Nealuchi.

Staves aren’t that special in 4-E since we already have a forced healer who sucks at combat in Micaiah. Having her alternate between physics/fortify uses alone has all of our 4-E healing needs covered, and bringing another one is basically pointless. Instead, I could’ve brought an extra fighter who can increase my player phase offence.

Micaiaih is only 1 unit. Are you saying 1 physic a turn is going to keep 10+ other units alive? Even top tiers like Ike might actually die, especially in 4-E-3 where dragons are 2-3HKOing our team at scary hit rates, and 1-2 range makes them a pain to counter on enemy phase. If Micaiah is the only other staff user on the team, bringing Bastian along effectively DOUBLES my healing power. Does Nealuchi do anything like doubling my fighting power?

As for fortify, it only has 5 uses, and it's a lot better for a chapter like 4-E-5 where Ashera's AoEs pwn everyone, so if she wants to spam it before that, we're more likely to use a hammerne on the fortify. And hammerne could have been used way back in 3-3 on weapons like the brave lance.

So, Bastian being an extra healer means Micaiah doesn't need to fortify nearly as much, which means there's a much smaller chance we need to waste a hammerne use on fortify, which means hammerne can be used on other things earlier in the game, which means we can do stuff like repair the brave lance so Haar can one round the entire map with that weapon? Not to mention that just healing in general is useful for keeping our guys alive?

Clear advantage for Bastian.

And, what's this "I could've brought an extra fighter"? Are you saying you can bring another fighter in place of Bastian? Dude, you're already bringing Nealuchi. This is Bastian vs Nealuchi.

For restore, Bastian has to be adjacent to the person he restores, which could ultimately put him in mortal danger, thus defeating the purpose of the restore in the first place (ie preventing anyone from dying). There’s also the possibility that Lekain does his status-all attack that cancels out the effect of sleep. It’s even possible to kill both Hetzel and the other sleep staff bishop on the same turn with some clever use of Reyson and the pass skill, though that’s unlikely.

You restore the sleeping unit with Bastian, and then everyone else including the guy who woke up continues their push forward. For Bastian to actually die on you if he goes to restore whoever got slept, you'd have to move the frontlines *backwards*, since even if the frontline doesn't go anywhere, Bastian is still behind the unit that was slept, so if he dies on you while trying to restore, you're doing something wrong at no fault to Bastian.

Also, Lekain's AoE isn't reliable when it comes to canceling the sleep status, since it seems he does his AoE at random times (as opposed to your units getting slept for the first 3 turns), and not everyone gets affected by the AoE anyway.

You mentioned something about killing the sleep staffers with Reyson + someone with pass, but since you said "that's unlikely", I won't talk about it further.

Why would we realistically want to bring Volug and Ranulf to 4-E? If we have the opportunity to bring our 10 absolute best units, then it clearly doesn’t make sense to bring 2 characters with obvious atk issues. A lv 30 SS strike!Volug only manages 49 atk, which doesn’t really ORKO anything in 4-E aside from joke enemies (sages, bishops) and spirits who aren’t on cover tiles. Of course, putting Volug at lv 30 means we gave him 15 levels in 11 chapters, which is unreasonable when you consider he probably didn’t gain a level in all of part 1 (6 chapters). So now he has even less atk and no mastery, the latter making him one of the worst choices for fighting dragons. For Ranulf, putting him at lvl 31 with S strike gives him only 45 atk, so no need to elaborate there.

For a guy who was so willing to give energy drops/adept to Nealuchi, you sure are being stingy to Volug and Ranulf...

Ranulf can get his mastery easily by 4-E, which gives him a decent chance to one round even if he has low att. So his offense isn't that bad, especially since he's eventually going to reach SS-strike for another +5 att (I'd say around 4-E-2 or 3).

Volug's att isn't that bad either. Let's compare his att to several other beorcs.

20/20/10 Ike, Ragnell - 52

20/20/10 Mia, Vague Katti (A support with someone) - 52

20/20/10 Neph, Wishblade (note this doesn't even show up until 4-E-2, so she's actually using a forged silver right now or something which has even less att) - 50

Now we have units like Haar and Titania who have a ton more att, but they have serious issues doubling, so they'd lose offense anyway.

Even if you say "well Volug isn't level 30", his str growth is poor so subtracting a few levels doesn't reduce it by much. Volug at level 26, for example, would have 2 less att (25 str growth). And he should at least hit level 30 by 4-E-3 for mastery in time for the dragons.

BUT, because Volug has the h4x earth affinity, you may want to bring him along just for that, since he's still not a bad choice. I, for example, usually pair him with Jill, and Jill is one of the first choices I'd bring into 4-E, so sometimes I bring Volug along anyway.

And, Volug gets a huge boost from energy drops. Since you felt like giving Nealuchi an energy drop, Bastian's team now has an energy drop free, since he doesn't need it. So if we give it to Volug instead, he gets +4 att. Oh snap. 53 att. And doubles like everything. h4x. This is like Nailah #2, and we all know how much Nailah rapes. Even dropping his level by 4 only drops it to 51, which is still Ike-level att (granted, Ike has 1-2 range, but then again Ike has a track record for pwning everything in sight, so even being comparable to Ike is very good). This is a guy I wouldn't mind investing a laguz gem in.

Though even if we do use an abnormally high amount of non-royals in 4-E, it won’t really make much of a difference. Nobody’s wasting a gem on 4-E-2, so you already have 10 uses just for 4-E-1. You probably won’t use a gem in 4-E-3 if you plan on killing Deghinsea in the first 5 or so turns because every laguz starts at full gauge. Then 4-E-4 and 5 are short enough that a laguz stone could keep every non-royal in play transformed the entire chapter without needing olivi grass. This is especially true of Giffca and Skrimir who only lose 2 meter per enemy encounter.

1) No one uses a gem in 4-E-2? Why?

2) 5-turning 4-E-3 (or so) sounds really fast, since it's going to take a full turn just to kill degh because his voice gives him super strength he has ridiculous stats, and it'll usually take two units just to kill a single dragon because they're that ridiculous too, and our healers are always busy healing so they have little time to contribute to offense. True, the laguz start at full gauge, but there's not many dragons to fight on the first turn, which is the perfect opportunity to use the gem so I don't have to worry about grassing in future turns. Plus, even taking 5 turns to beat the chapter, for a laguz that's -16 gauge already, and that's not including any attacks they do against dragons, which is -3 per attack (in addition to enemy phase where dragons get free hits on them). It's not as bad for Skrimir/Giffca, but it's even worse for Ranulf, so w/e. They may end up wasting a grass or two anyway, which could have been avoided if we gem'd on turn 1.

3) 4-E-4 and 5 are short, but remember that laguz lose gauge for every round of combat, and since they lack 1-range, they're obvious magnets for spirits to attack and waste their gauge. Say that we have someone like Janaff just use a stone. Now if 2 turns pass, and just 5 spirits attack him over those two turns, he's already down to 7 gauge. Now I don't recall exactly how many spirits move, or whether or not all the spirits will gang up on the same laguz (as opposed to the spirits attacking different laguz, where losing gauge is more manageable), but, why take the risk? Gem on the first turn instead of stone and we don't have to worry about it.

The whole idea of using a laguz gem outside of 4-E-1 is about reliability/lower risks/etc. You COULD speed blitz the chapter fast enough where a stone is enough to keep you transformed the whole chapter, but, what if something goes NOT AS PLANNED wrong and you end up taking longer? Say, for example, one of our avoid tanks like Zihark ends up not dodging and takes hits and ends up at single-digit HP, which means our healer like Micaiah now has to physic him instead of nuke with a siege tome and that nuke could've killed anenemy, yadda yadda.

I’ll give you 4-E-3, but in 4-E-4 and 5, Bastian’s 2 range is useless. Even if we capped his magic and gave him rexcalibur, he’s only managing to borderline 2RKO spirits. Nealuchi, on the other hand, can manage a ORKO so long as we can get him to 40 atk, which could easily happen if we used him seriously up to this point. For example, a lv 27 Nealuchi with A Fire and S strike already manages 39 atk.

A large portion of 4-E-4 is either +10 def or +15 def covers, which really hurts Nealuchi because that's -20 or -30 damage. Bastian does poorly if they're on wardwood too, but wardwood makes up a far smaller portion of the map, and chances are YOUR units are on the wardwoods so there are less wardwoods for spirits to use, not to mention that any spirits that move to attack us on enemy phase will most likely move to a cover, since most of the people they'll end up attacking hit def, so they'll move to cover for the +def.

Here's a map someone on FEFF made of 4-E-4. Here's the post...

http://s11.zetaboards.com/Fire_Emblem_Fusion/single/?p=387762&t=395605

According to this map, all the tiles in a 2-range radius of Sephiran's starting position are +15 def covers, and these are the spirits you really want to kill so you can get rid of their annoying guard. Since the spirits have different HP/def/res, I'll cover them separately. I'll use *base* level Bastian with Rexcalibur.

Wind has 38 HP/35 def/32 res (due to +15 def cover). Bastian does 16 damage.

Fire has 40 HP/37 def/30 res. Bastian does 18 damage.

Thunder has 38 HP/35 def/30 res. Bastian does 18 damage.

Nealuchi needs 43 att to match Bastian's damage vs wind spirits, 46 vs fire spirits, 44 vs thunder spirits. Consider that Nealuchi's str CAP is 16, and S-strike is 12 mt, which means at max str he has 44 att.

Of course, this is before supports, but then again, consider that not only does Nealuchi not even cap str until about level 39, and Nealuchi's issues of even getting a support, but this is Bastian at base level. Not even an energy drop can save Nealuchi, and getting him to SS-strike is going to be a severe pain, while we can still give Bastian levels/spirit dusts, which can give him up to 5 more att. Thsi means that even if the spirits are on a +10 def cover instead of a +15, Nealuchi only does like 5 more damage, but then loses by roughly the same amount on the +15 def covers, which are the ones that matter more for reasons I already said.

Nealuchi wins this chapter? Hardly.

More importantly, though, spirits are never going to target Bastian on E. phase. Why attack someone they do 4-8 damage against while taking a counter when they can attack someone else for 20 damage while taking 0 in return? Bottom line, both characters have nonexistent enemy phases in 4-E-4 and 5 and Nealuchi wins player phase offence. Thus he obviously wins overall offence in those 2 mini-chapters.

True, they won't attack bastian. They will, however, attack someone like... Nealuchi! Who has no 2-range. Nealuchi is certainly a detriment on our enemy phase, and Bastian not nearly as much. Advantage for Bastian.

tldr

- Nealuchi is okay in part 2. It doesn't help that 2-P and 2-2 are short chapters, plus your other units are generally strong enough to tackle the chapter with little to no help from Nealuchi, meaning Nealuchi's positive utility is very small. 2-E is a longer chapter, but it has even tighter competition. The fact that there's a severe shortage of olivi grasses doesn't help, since he has even fewer turns to be building up positive utility.

- Nealuchi is bad in his first part 4 chapter unless he takes resources, which could have gone to other units, so that doesn't help Nealuchi at all. His horrible performance in his first part 4 chapter overrides his positive utility in part 2.

- Nealuchi needs resources to match Bastian's offense in 4-5, which is a clear advantage for Bastian. And because of the law of supply and demand, Bastian's offense matters more than Nealuchi's other advantages on Bastian.

- Staves gives Bastian a big advantage, and also a job to do in case he's not fighting for any reason. Restore is h4x in 4-E-1 due to sleep, and physic spamming also takes a load off of Micaiah's shoulders. She can more easily save the fortify staff for 4-E-5, which means we can possibly save hammerne uses on that thing, which means the hammerne can be used on weapons earlier in the game like a brave lance. Not to mention that just healing is useful in general. Nealuchi fights better, but not THAT much better, because his offense is still unimpressive and he has competition for laguz gems.

[Vykan12]

First of all, you're assuming that he's only getting attacked by 2-range enemies when he's untransformed. The fact is that not all enemies have 2-range. 2-2, for example, has only 8 enemies with 2-range out of 25 enemies (the reinforcements you'll probably never fight) and one of those 8 is the boss that doesn't even move. You'll definitely get a couple of 1-range enemies mixed in if you try to have Nealuchi tank while untransformed to build his gauge, which is wasted opportunities when it comes to countering them. Countering 1-range enemies probably won't even build his gauge either, since he has like 130 hit before any authority stars and 17 att, and the only enemies who have at least this much def are armors/generals, plus 2-E halbs, and you have to do no damage on the counter to build your gauge.

While this can occur, we’re only going to have Nealuchi tank untransformed when it best suits our interests. If there’s two steel axe guys/one hand axe guy, obviously we won’t bother to put him in that situation. However, if we have one steel axe guy/2 hand axe guys, the player would give it much more consideration.

Let’s say we’re in 2-P with the above scenario (1 steel/2 hand axe), and Nealuchi has like 7 gauge. If we hid him in a corner, Marcia would’ve countered 1/3 enemies. Now if Nealuchi was exposed to those 3 enemies, he wouldn’t counter any of them (technically he’d do damage to the 1 range enemy but it would be very minimal), but now we have an extra combatant for another 3-4 turns. The latter sounds easily more beneficial than the former.

What’s more is that Nealuchi wouldn’t be the only person on the team pulling these antics. Lethe reverts even faster than he does while Mordy reverts at the same pace, and as you saw in one of our previous debates, olivi grass is seriously lacking (1 in 2-2, the rest are hidden treasure).

Second, no one has decent 1-2 range? That's not even true in 2-P. Haar joins halfway through, and his offense with a javelin is better than Nealuchi transformed, since Haar doubles everything in the map anyway, and he wins att. In 2-2, Lucia has a wind edge, which gives her 3 less att than transformed Nealuchi, but has more crit. And in 2-E we have Elincia who has 2 less att than Nealuchi with a wind edge, and Haar who has 32 att at base level with a hand axe, which does ~15 damage to halbs (as opposed to Nealuchi doing double 10s).

I suppose that is true, but the fact remains that all those characters would rather stick with 1 range the majority of the time. 2-P Haar borderline ORKOes wyverns using steel, so his motivation for using javelins is pretty thin there. Similarly, Lucia can borderline ORKO some enemies with a silver sword, and it’s also her only decent weapon choice against armors. Elincia obviously prefers using the amiti since she won’t face a counter either way (she usually 2HKOes with it), and her enemy phase won’t really be that active due to having poor durability, not to mention she wants to staff spam for the much higher exp gain.

Moreover, 1-2 range is only useful if everyone within an enemy’s range is equipped with it. That’s a pretty hard feat in many cases. Like in 2-2, your only good ranged attacker is Lucia, so 3 laguz/Neph/Brom/Heather/Leanne being far away from Lucia all the time is extremely unlikely.

Also in 2-E, I have lots of ledges to abuse, which means instead of having Nealuchi sit by the ledge drawing fire and not doing any damage in return, I can have someone like Calill instead to do some damage.

What you said would only be true if there were very few ledges to abuse. Whoever has range can take the ledges they want and still leave room for Nealuchi to take one for himself. At that point, he’d only be a hindrance if everyone with 1-2 range were ORKOing since he’d be drawing away an enemy that would’ve otherwise gotten killed the same phase. With maybe the exception of Haar, that’s evidently not the case.

Letting Nealuchi attack untransformed is no better than simply waiting turns to refill his gauge.

It takes a full 5 turns for Nealuchi to go from 0 gauge -> 30, whereas having him draw out specific enemies can get him there in as little as 2-3. Getting an extra combatant for a few turns is quite easily > missing an E. phase counter or two, especially if said counters would’ve otherwise been ineffective anyway.

Sure. The difficulty/magnitude of the chapter is important. But the length still matters too. I care more if my unit is helping out a 10-turn chapter over a second unit helping out a 5-turn chapter, assuming they're both h4xing the same amount.

Even assuming I agreed with you, this doesn’t help Bastian’s case regardless. 4-5 may have a 10 turn BEXP limit, but it can be beaten in as little as 2-3 turns if one has little motivation to milk enemy laguz for CEXP. Then 4-E can be beaten in 6 turns, though realistically it will probably take 10 or so. Nealuchi’s part 2 alone is arguably longer, especially with 2-P being 8 turns long no matter how you approach it.

Length of a chapter and its difficulty usually go hand-in-hand anyway, since usually the longer a chapter is, the greater the chance that something will go wrong along the way and screw everything up.

I’d say it’s the reverse actually. Usually earlygame chapters are shorter than lategame ones, whereas earlygame is more difficult due to your units being undevelopped, not having supports or h4x resources to depend on, etc.

These trends are irrelevant though, as they don’t tell us which chapters are harder between Nealuchi’s part 2 and Bastian’s part 4. To satisfy that goal, let’s try and compare relative team offense and durability:

First off, you have a number of offensive godmoders in 4-5. Tibarn should be obvious (he only misses out on dragons but also has a 40% tear rate per hit). Then whoever gets beastfoe will be in the same boat. Furthermore, if any non-Bastian sages are in play, they will have effective Mt through fire tomes and probably better AS than him (Soren has more at --/20/1).

Now let’s take someone fairly mediocre in part 4, like Tauroneo, and see how he does.

Tauroneo lv --/20/5 (silver poleax): 47.5 hp, 48 atk, 27 AS, 27.5 def, 94 avo

Killer axe: 40 atk, 45 crit

Brave axe: 41 atk

Using the silver poleax, he does 57% damage to cats, 70% to tigers, 49% to hawks, 74% to ravens and 39% to dragons. He’s essentially 2RKOing anything he comes across. If he equips the killer, he’ll 3RKO cats, but he also has about a 51% chance to kill per hit (crit/luna combo). With the brave, he’s doing >85% damage to cats and tigers, and also ORKOing ravens, not to mention more opportunities to land luna.

On the durability end, dragons 2RKO, tigers 3RKO and everything else does significantly worse. Fortunately for him, “everything else” makes up 59% of the level’s enemies.

Now let’s look at someone pretty average in part 2: Calill seems like a decent example.

Calill lv --/6/0 (elfire): 32 hp, 26 atk, 18 AS, 11 def, 62 avo

She usually manages 3RKOes (eg/ 37% damage to halbs) on offense. Durability-wise, 27 atk 2HKOes her, and even crossbow users manage 28 atk. She does attack at range and has slightly more avo than Tauroneo, but generally he’s much safer to expose to enemies.

Now let’s compare some of the better units from both armies. I’ll assume DB units for part 4 since we’re more likely to send under-levelled people on Tibarn’s route.

Nolan lv 20/20/3 (A Zihark, forged silver): 54 hp, 48 atk, 35 crit, 30 AS, 23 def, 151 avo, 29% colossus

Killer axe: 39 atk, 50 crit

Zihark lv 20/20/4 (A Nolan, forged silver): 45 hp, 43 atk, 52 crit, 34 AS, 20 def, 152 avo, 17% astra

Killing edge: 34 atk, 67 crit

Wyrmslayer: 59 eff atk, 37 crit

These guys are pretty ridiculous on offense. Just looking at proc% (assuming enemy luck of 15):

Forged silver!Nolan (1 hit): 43%

(2 hits): 68%

Killer axe!Nolan (1 hit): 54%

(2 hits): 79%

Forged silver!Zihark (2 hits): 73%

Killing edge!Zihark (2 hits): 84%

In addition, both have high AS, so they’re good candidates for adept. That can cause their proc% to jump as high as 90%.

Though even if both characters go dry in the skill/crit department, they’re still doing considerable damage. Nolan’s basically doing the same as Tauroneo (2RKOing reliably), but he can also pop out a crossbow to 1HKO ravens and hawks. Zihark, meanwhile, does worse against tigers but better against everything else due to doubling more.

Defensively, both characters face single digit display hit, which means it’s rarer for them to get hit than it is for some units to take crits. That alone makes them more durable than any unit you get in part 2 except maybe Mordy.

Let’s compare this to Haar in 2-E:

Haar lv --/12 (steel poleax): 46 hp, 39 atk, 15 crit, 20 AS, 24 def, 7 res, 63 avo

Hand axe: 33 atk, 15 crit

Hammer: 63 effective atk

Let’s see: with the steel poleax he does ~2/3 damage to basically anything except armors (more like 1/2) and priest/mages (1RKOes), though he can 1HKO armors using the hammer. Our part 4 friends are still arguably better due to having high %chances to kill anything, whereas Haar’s crit is negligible.

Defensively, Haar looks good until thunder sages show up, as they not only 2RKO him with ~50 display hit, they also have a small chance of instantly killing him. Moreover, a single thunder hit + a general hit could easily finish him off, as could any number of enemy combinations. There isn’t anyone in 4-5 who has to fear effective Mt. Speaking of which, Elincia and Marcia have to avoid bow threats altogether, and Brom has to look out for a hammer enemy.

Another thing, we have 1 healer in 2-P and 2-E, and no healers in 2-2. In 4-5 and 4-E we can have multiple healers if we really wanted to. Also:

Reyson > Leanne

Ranulf > Lethe

Janaff/Ulki > Nealuchi (the hawks might not be forced on Tibarn’s route but there’s still incentive to send them there)

Many part 4 people > part 2 Neph/Brom/Heather

*For now I’m exhausted but I’ll feel free to prove the above points in my next post.

I haven’t even gotten to 4-E in detail yet. Though, just to get an idea how absurdly good your units are there:

The Black Knight (Alondite): 70 hp, 56 atk, 180 hit, 30 AS, 40 def, 80 avo

Caineghis base lvl (SS strike): 76 hp, 66 atk, 237 hit, 34 AS, 44 def, 113 avo

Giffca base lvl (SS strike): 73 hp, 64 atk, 231 hit, 36 AS, 40 def, 115 avo

Tibarn base lvl (SS strike): 68 hp, 56 atk, 240 hit, 40 AS, 32 def, 124 avo

Naesala lv 30 (SS strike): 61 hp, 54 atk, 219 hit, 44 AS, 26 def, 125 avo

Nailah base lvl (SS strike): 66 hp, 54 atk, 242 hit, 38 AS, 32 def, 126 avo

The royals are performing against a major boss similar to how part 2 units perform against generics (2-3RKOing while being 2+HKOed at ~50 display hit). If that’s too abstract for you, check this out:

2x Warrior lvl 14 (Silver Axe)

57 hp, 47 atk, 29 AS, 154 hit, 83 avo, 24 def, 15 res, 15 crit, 25 cev

Every royal 1RKOes this guy naturally. Naesala aside, the warrior takes 5-26 rounds just to kill one of them, and most of the royals can shake off his hits with imbue or an herb. His hit rate also stinks against them: At best, he pulls 34 real hit against Cain.

To give this an analogy, we have up to 5 units with part 2 Mordy’s concrete durability, part 2 Nealuchi’s avoid and 2-E Elincia’s offense.

In addition, there are some units who can actually compare to the royals in combat. Eg/

Nailah base lvl (SS strike): 66 hp, 54 atk, 242 hit, 38 AS, 32 def, 126 avo

Jill lv 20/20/12 (A Aran, urvan): 48 hp, 54 atk, 222 hit, 34 AS, 34 def, 133 avo

Shinon lv 20/20/13 (A Gatrie, double bow): 55 hp, 56 atk, 216 hit, 34 AS, 34 def, 112 avo

Energy drop!Janaff lv 33 (A Ulki, S strike): 59 hp, 55 atk, 241 hit, 36 AS, 29 def, 127 avo

If that weren’t enough, we can focus 3 adepts, 2 resolves, 2 imbues, 2 renewals, 4-5 cancel/disarm/corrosions, a few provokes, etc into 10 units. Then we can BEXP ram some people to raise their averages, bless brave weapons, keep any laguz in play transformed thanks to laguz gems/huge laguz stone supply, and the list goes on. If it weren’t for 4-E-3, I’d daresay 4-E as a whole would be in contention for easiest chapter in the game.

Tl;dr part 2 is most certainly more difficult than 4-5 and 4-E.

So is Nealuchi the 2nd best unit on the field [in 2-P]? Maybe. But considering how well Marcia and Elincia can do by themselves and Haar coming later as backup, his win is very small.

So is Nealuchi one of your better units in this chapter [2-1]? Maybe. But one rape unit in a mix of multiple rape units isn't very special, since I could just use another person in place of Nealuchi and get (almost) the same amount of rape.

Basically, Nealuchi can get some positive utility in 2-E, but it's fairly small.

I agree that Nealuchi’s leads over some of the other part 2 units is pretty small. However, he is force deployed in all of them except for 2-E, though that map has such high max deployment that he might as well be. Thus, saying we can put someone in Nealuchi’s place for roughly the same results doesn’t quite work.

Let’s take 2-P for example. If Nealuchi hides in a corner, Marcia and Elincia are taking on all the enemies until Haar shows up. By adding Nealuchi to the mix, we’re distracting some enemy attacks away from those 2, which in turn increases their durability. Moreover, if we take this level on in a semi-aggressive manner, then we’ll have our 3 attackers spreading out (though staying reasonably close to Leanne) in an effort to counter as many enemies as possible. Evidently spreading out 3 units with similar combat paramaters > spreading out 2.

Basically, saying Nealuchi’s usefulness is limited because he’s largely replaceable ignores the tasks he does that would otherwise not be accomplished if he weren’t there. If say, all your units are preoccupied in areas a,b and c, whatever Nealuchi does in area d is competing with nobody.

I’m not sure how else to explain this clearly, so maybe another example will help. Let’s look at Leo’s early part 1. Even though he is a pretty terrible unit there, he’s being useful because he’s injuring enemies that wouldn’t have been injured had he not existed in those maps. However, by your method of comparison, we’d see that he’s worse than everyone else available (Micaiah/Nolan/Edward/Sothe), and so he’d rack up negative utility instead of minor positives.

All to say, being above average on forced maps is definitely worth more than you’re making it out to be.

I can have Marcia ferry. In other words, having Nealuchi ferry Heather instead of Marcia means... I free up Marcia to attack? Not really impressive, since Marcia is pretty sucky at fighting.

This plays right into my previous point: why have just Marcia ferry when both Marcia and Nealuchi can do it? 2 ferriers > 1.

Shoving is a pretty minor thing. It's basically just +1 move, which *can* come in handy, but it's not nearly as useful as someone like Haar blocking a chokepoint or Elincia one rounding an enemy.

Nealuchi can shove someone then canto into a chokepoint.

This chapter has quite a bit of chokepoints to use. Going up the middle part with the first batch of thickets, for example, is like 2 tiles wide, and the non-flying laguz suck at crossing water. So it's pretty easy to make walls for Bastian without going out of your way.

Chokepoints in 4-5? It’s one of the more wide open levels in the game.

I don’t see any easy way to wall near your starting location.

There is a 2 space chokepoint on the side, but Bastian can still be flanked by the enemies coming from the north, so that’s no good.

The only time I can see Bastian getting decent protection is once most of your units reach the swamps. Though by then you will have gotten 2 fliers to Izuka already (one to kill an adjacent laguz, another to land the bosskill on the same turn), so the chapter could end at will.

especially since Tibarn's team is most likely getting your weakest units from parts 1/2/3, such as the DB/CRKs who are underleveled, due to the fact that 4-5 is an exp mine, and Tibarn has the most authority stars

Just because Tibarn’s route is an exp mine doesn’t mean we load the chapter with useless units. The only reason we care about gaining exp in 4-5 is to improve one’s performance in 4-E, but if we didn’t plan on sending any CRKs there, then training them in 4-5 is just a huge waste of time. Moreover, high exp gain and leadership boosts benefit everyone, not just under-levelled DBs/CRKs.

Look at it this way: Tibarn’s route is a valuable, and somewhat limited resource. There’s no reason to assume weaker units are more entitled to this resource than stronger ones. On the one hand, the weaker units will see more improvement, but the stronger units will also get to apply their improvement more due to being innately better.

For example, let’s compare paragon!Ike to paragon!Boyd. While Boyd’s change in performance is certainly more noticeable (decent -> great instead of great -> overkill), Ike still counters way more enemies than Boyd due to his combat leads.

At any rate, you only have 10 optional slots in 4-E, so if we have a distribution of 2/5/3 (Micaiah/Ike/Tibarn routes respectively), then there will only be 3 under-levelled units on Tibarn’s route to worry about. And besides, some people fare quite well despite lack of levelling, as my Zihark/Nolan/Jill stats showed earlier.

Not everyone needs to be able to tank to be useful.

True, but now Bastian has to rely on offense and healing alone in like 2-4 chapters (depending on how you weigh 4-E) to be better than Nealuchi.

Micaiaih is only 1 unit. Are you saying 1 physic a turn is going to keep 10+ other units alive?

Having her alternate between physics/fortify uses alone has all of our 4-E healing needs covered

In other words, she uses physics if only one person is gravely injured, or multiple people have minor wounds. The fortify is saved for points like 4-E-3 where multiple units take severe damage in one turn.

Also, Micaiah can physic twice per turn if Reyson vigors her. It’s quite easy to set up vigors that include her since physicing doesn’t restrict her to very specific spaces. Then someone injured can take a concoction/elixir if no enemies are in their range, or will die to them on an enemy phase counter anyway (eg/ someone’s on Hetzel’s tile with a hammer).

As for fortify, it only has 5 uses, and it's a lot better for a chapter like 4-E-5 where Ashera's AoEs pwn everyone, so if she wants to spam it before that, we're more likely to use a hammerne on the fortify.

We get a 3 use Ashera staff in 4-E-5. That alone should cover us for the entire chapter.

And hammerne could have been used way back in 3-3 on weapons like the brave lance.

The hammerne has 3 uses. It’s not that tall an order to save 1 use for the fortify.

So, Bastian being an extra healer means Micaiah doesn't need to fortify nearly as much, which means there's a much smaller chance we need to waste a hammerne use on fortify, which means hammerne can be used on other things earlier in the game, which means we can do stuff like repair the brave lance so Haar can one round the entire map with that weapon? Not to mention that just healing in general is useful for keeping our guys alive?

Clear advantage for Bastian.

Essentially, you’re saying Bastian’s healing could lead to another brave weapon in play. That’s pretty minor since we’re talking about a 40 use weapon that might be used up to 3-4 times on the same enemy, so it could break after like 15 kills. Moreover, we don’t want the weapon to break since we want to get it blessed in 4-E-3, so we might only get 37 uses out of it, not to mention having to be extremely careful once we’re down to 10-15 uses.

Also, there’s no guarantee that Micaiah will even need to hammerne the fortify. We could’ve deployed any other healer (even Oliver) to get 2-4 physics per turn, which is plenty, so adding Bastian as a third healer is pretty unremarkable. Or we could have Bastian replace Oliver, but then the difference to the team is essentially Bastian’s offense vs Oliver’s, but both of them are so weak in that department that we probably won’t make much use of it anyway.

And yes, healing is an undeniable advantage for Bastian, my argument is only aiming to mitigate that lead.

Ranulf can get his mastery easily by 4-E, which gives him a decent chance to one round even if he has low att. So his offense isn't that bad, especially since he's eventually going to reach SS-strike for another +5 att (I'd say around 4-E-2 or 3).

I wouldn’t say him getting a mastery is much to brag about since everyone in 4-E will have one with about the same activation (the exceptions being SMs/snipers but they have huge crit to make up for it). I mean, if anyone with a mastery and decent atk has offense that “isn’t that bad”, then basically any unit who can double attack consistently qualifies.

1) No one uses a gem in 4-E-2? Why?

You can end the chapter at will. It’s possible for Ike to 1RKO the BK using a hammer if he has 36 str (or 34 if he has an atk support). Though if he can’t manage that, it’ll just take an extra phase, and you probably want to spend a turn or two getting the wishblade anyway. At any rate, a laguz stone will suffice for your non-royals unless there is some urgent reason to play this chapter out for more than 3-4 turns.

2) 5-turning 4-E-3 (or so) sounds really fast, since it's going to take a full turn just to kill degh because he has ridiculous stats, and it'll usually take two units just to kill a single dragon because they're that ridiculous too, and our healers are always busy healing so they have little time to contribute to offense.

Beating Dheginsea is all about clearing the area I encircled in red, and getting key units to within ~7-9 spaces of him. Once that is done, killing Dheginsea on the same turn is fairly trivial. Here’s one possible stategy:

-Put Ena diagonally down-right from Dheginsea.

-Have Tibarn attack, then canto away. Minimum 22 damage.

-Have Caingeghis attack. Minimum 42 damage.

-Vigor Caineghis.

-Have Caineghis deal the finishing blow.

Here’s another one:

-Have someone bless a wyrmslayer, then trade it into Ike’s inventory.

-Ike attacks Dheginsea twice with Reyon’s help. Approximately 80 damage.

-Blood tide!Shinon attacks at 3 range for the finishing blow.

There’s quite a few possible combinations so long as you have high atk characters to work with. The point being, 5 turning 4-E-3 shouldn’t be a problem with suitable planning and decent unit choices.

4-E-4 and 5 are short, but remember that laguz lose gauge for every round of combat, and since they lack 1-range, they're obvious magnets for spirits to attack and waste their gauge.

There is a nice solution to that. Put provoke on a unit with low res but massive avo (Ulki works well), and if that unit is a laguz, they can use a laguz gem. This way, only 1/15 total gems are used on that chapter.

The whole idea of using a laguz gem outside of 4-E-1 is about reliability/lower risks/etc. You COULD speed blitz the chapter fast enough where a stone is enough to keep you transformed the whole chapter, but, what if something goes wrong and you end up taking longer?

If that’s the case, then the probability of using a grass is the same as the unplanned occurrence, which should be really small. You used Zihark getting hit as an example, but at lv --/20/15 (A Nolan) he’s only facing like 1.3 real hit (eg/ 171 hit fire spirit vs 163 avo). So about 1% of the time Volug has to take grass for 1 turn instead of attacking. Big deal.

I don’t see where the risk is in beating 4-E-4 anyway. All 4 spirits adjacent to Lehran can be shoved/smited, and Lehran is easily 1RKOed by a parity user.

True, they won't attack bastian. They will, however, attack someone like... Nealuchi! Who has no 2-range. Nealuchi is certainly a detriment on our enemy phase, and Bastian not nearly as much. Advantage for Bastian.

Nah, Nealuchi’s res is too high (20 base, 25% growth). The spirits either team up on people with the lowest res on the team (usually the guys with like 10-15ish res) or go after whoever has provoke. If they are attacking Nealuchi, we could simply have him canto onto wardwood tiles for 30+ res, at which point spirits do less than 6 damage to him. Unless Nealuchi’s the only unit with no 2-range on the field (extremely unlikely), he’s not going to be hurting your enemy phase in 4-E-4 and 5.

I’ll concede that Bastian is in fact better in part 4 (that’s why I ninja’d a big chunk of your post), though Nealuchi can still make himself useful with shove/rescue/ferrying utility to cut into that advantage.

Also, we can drop Nealuchi after 2-E and he’ll have accumulated a certain level of usefulness. Now Bastian’s usefulness in 4-E has severely diminished (if not a negative) since he’s taking up a very valuable unit slot whereas the old raven isn’t.

[Progenitus]

There are some things I want to proof read some more or elaborate, but I want to get a start on my debaet with CATS, so... meh.

ibnojohns

While this can occur, we’re only going to have Nealuchi tank untransformed when it best suits our interests. If there’s two steel axe guys/one hand axe guy, obviously we won’t bother to put him in that situation. However, if we have one steel axe guy/2 hand axe guys, the player would give it much more consideration.

Let’s say we’re in 2-P with the above scenario (1 steel/2 hand axe), and Nealuchi has like 7 gauge. If we hid him in a corner, Marcia would’ve countered 1/3 enemies. Now if Nealuchi was exposed to those 3 enemies, he wouldn’t counter any of them (technically he’d do damage to the 1 range enemy but it would be very minimal), but now we have an extra combatant for another 3-4 turns. The latter sounds easily more beneficial than the former.

True, but the problem is that there aren't that many 2-range enemies in the first place, at least in part 2.

In 2-P, there are 10 enemies + boss, and 4 have hand axes (the boss has a short axe too). However, since the enemies usually come by themselves or with another wyvern (3 enemies? I don't ever recall facing that many in one turn in this chapter), and some don't even move until someone is in range, chances are you're only seeing one or two enemies per enemy phase, in which case here are the likely combination of enemies you'll be facing...

1 1-range

1 1-2 range

2 1-range

1 1 range + 1 1-2 range

2 1-2 range

The first and third ones are obviously bad since those are lost opportunities where Marcia (or even Elincia; stun procs are handy) could've countered. But they are also the most likely combinations since 1-range enemies outnumber 1-2 range enemies. The fourth one is iffy as well since that's 1 enemy that Marcia could've countered.

In 2-2, as said earlier, there are only 8 enemies out of 25 total in the map that have 2-range, one being the boss that doesn't even move, so 7/24. That makes it extremely unlikely that you'll face more than one 1-2 range enemy.

What’s more is that Nealuchi wouldn’t be the only person on the team pulling these antics. Lethe reverts even faster than he does while Mordy reverts at the same pace, and as you saw in one of our previous debates, olivi grass is seriously lacking (1 in 2-2, the rest are hidden treasure).

Well, I typically find that the grasses I can get in part 2 are enough to keep 2 laguz transformed for almost every turn in both 2-2 and 2-E, assuming I pick up one as hidden treasure in 2-E. That would be 8 uses for two laguz to last ~20 turns. You grass on turn 1, then wait around on turn 2 (grassing a second time would be pointless, as cats/tigers get +10 or 8 gauge a turn, which means they'll hit 30 on turn 3 with or without a second grass), then transform on turn 3. Since you'd probably do this in 2-2 and 2-E, this would leave... 6 grasses to last ~16 turns. That would give you 120 gauge (you'd start with 30 on turn 3). Mordy would lose 64 gauge from 16 turns passing, which means he can attack 18-19 times before untransforming. Lethe would lose 80 and be able to attack 10 times before untransforming.

But if I throw in Nealuchi when Lethe and Mordy are already around, it's 16 grasses for 3 laguz, which is much harder to manage. In other words, by not using Nealuchi and instead using Lethe/Mordy, I probably don't even need to resort to those tactics, and if I ever do it'll only be once or twice. So it's still a disadvantage for Nealuchi either way.

Of course, if I use Nealuchi over one of the other laguz, then Nealuchi won't have any real transformation issues, but then I'd be losing out on one of those two, which means Nealuchi's positive would only be worth about the difference between the two. For example, if I used Nealuchi instead of Lethe, Nealuchi's net positive would only be the difference between the two.

I suppose that is true, but the fact remains that all those characters would rather stick with 1 range the majority of the time. 2-P Haar borderline ORKOes wyverns using steel, so his motivation for using javelins is pretty thin there. Similarly, Lucia can borderline ORKO some enemies with a silver sword, and it’s also her only decent weapon choice against armors. Elincia obviously prefers using the amiti since she won’t face a counter either way (she usually 2HKOes with it), and her enemy phase won’t really be that active due to having poor durability, not to mention she wants to staff spam for the much higher exp gain.

Whether they counter with 1-2 range or stick with 1-range depends on what could attack them on enemy phase. For example, Haar in 2-P; if everything that could attack him had 1-2 range, then obviously he'd switch to a javelin.

Moreover, 1-2 range is only useful if everyone within an enemy’s range is equipped with it. That’s a pretty hard feat in many cases. Like in 2-2, your only good ranged attacker is Lucia, so 3 laguz/Neph/Brom/Heather/Leanne being far away from Lucia all the time is extremely unlikely.

It doesn't have to be *that* many people. If, for example, you're sitting at a 2-tile wide chokepoint, then the only people that would need 1-2 range are Lucia and the other person with her.

What you said would only be true if there were very few ledges to abuse. Whoever has range can take the ledges they want and still leave room for Nealuchi to take one for himself. At that point, he’d only be a hindrance if everyone with 1-2 range were ORKOing since he’d be drawing away an enemy that would’ve otherwise gotten killed the same phase. With maybe the exception of Haar, that’s evidently not the case.

That would depend on how many 2-range enemies are below the ledge. My memory of the chapter is poor, but I don't recall very many enemies with 2-range on the bottom floor with Ludveck that are also in range of attacking anyone up the ledge (I'm assuming that's where Nealuchi is trying to pull this antic). If there is, say, only 1 enemy with 2-range, then Nealuchi would obviously be a poor choice to put at the ledge, since I'm countering 0/1 enemies. If there were 2 enemies, and I had an extra 2-ranger, then it would be 1/2. If there were three, then it would be 2/3, and so on.

Even assuming I agreed with you, this doesn’t help Bastian’s case regardless. 4-5 may have a 10 turn BEXP limit, but it can be beaten in as little as 2-3 turns if one has little motivation to milk enemy laguz for CEXP. Then 4-E can be beaten in 6 turns, though realistically it will probably take 10 or so. Nealuchi’s part 2 alone is arguably longer, especially with 2-P being 8 turns long no matter how you approach it.

Speedrunning can be applied to part 2 chapters as well. For example, 2-E can be completed very quickly, with Haar/Elincia/Leanne being able to wipe out LUdveck, especially if you gave Haar a speedwing or something. In fact, your speedrun completed 2-E in 1 turn, and even though it was NM, HM wouldn't be different since Ludveck has the same stats on both modes anyway.

Anyway, I find that assuming we're blasting through chapters as quickly as possible by spamming all the god tier units makes debates among the lower tiers extremely boring, since they end up doing little, if anything at all, while the god tiers just steamroll everything in sight. At that point, debaets between low tiers would be about who has more availability and therefore more opportunities to make small contributions without getting in the way of the god tiers, rather than actual potential. It's also assuming the god tiers are *always* in play, which more or less goes against the tiering philosophy where the high tier units are simply more *likely* to be played compared to lower tiers, not always played.

I’d say it’s the reverse actually. Usually earlygame chapters are shorter than lategame ones, whereas earlygame is more difficult due to your units being undevelopped, not having supports or h4x resources to depend on, etc.

These trends are irrelevant though, as they don’t tell us which chapters are harder between Nealuchi’s part 2 and Bastian’s part 4. To satisfy that goal, let’s try and compare relative team offense and durability:

I can't say anything about your raw numbers (though some of your levels are pretty inflated. Nolan/Zihark a few levels into 3rd tier? I'd say being freshly promoted would be more accurate for 4-5), but there are a few things to note that your comparison did not include.

The most important one is the later chapters tend to have a lot more enemies. For example, chapter 2-2 has 25 enemies, while a chapter like 4-E-1 has like... 70 enemies or something ridiculously high like that (I lost count halfway through). 2RKOing when there are 70 enemies to clear out can take just as much time, if not more, than 3RKOing when there are only 25 enemies.

Let's say our average unit in an arbitrary earlygame chapter is 3RKOing, and there are 20 enemies to kill. Theoretically, it would take 60 attacks to finish them off. Now let's say our average unit in an arbitrary lategame chapter is 2RKOing, but there are 50 enemies. It would take 100 attacks to finish them off. If the earlygame chapter took 6 turns, you'd have to do 10 attacks a turn. If the lategame chapter took 10 turns, you'd have to do... 10 attacks a turn!

Durability is a similar situation. If you were getting 3RKO'd when there are 20 enemies to kill, then you can effectively face 10% of the map safely in one turn (2 enemies out of 20). Now let's say you were getting 6RKO'd when there were 70 enemies. You could effectively only face 7.14% of the map safely in one turn (5 enemies).

I'm not seeing any real difference between the two situations. Even when you throw in the fact that lategame gives you stronger PCs (like the royals who one round the entire map), more resources, etc., you can see that generally it's a lot more forgiving if our units are weaker relative to the enemies earlygame than lategame. There are (usually) fewer enemies and it's (usually) shorter.

I'll use a real example this time. I'll use Tauroneo's offense in 4-5 and Neph's offense in 2-2 (I'd say Tauroneo being level 5 is rather high, but meh, that's not what I'm trying to argue here).

Using the silver poleax, he does 57% damage to cats, 70% to tigers, 49% to hawks, 74% to ravens and 39% to dragons. He’s essentially 2RKOing anything he comes across. If he equips the killer, he’ll 3RKO cats, but he also has about a 51% chance to kill per hit (crit/luna combo). With the brave, he’s doing >85% damage to cats and tigers, and also ORKOing ravens, not to mention more opportunities to land luna.

vs

Neph has 29 att with steel greatlance and doubles 2 enemies and the priests. Vs soldiers/halbs she does 38-53% damage. vs armors she does 22-27% damage (and doubles one armor, for 69% total). Vs archers, ~57% damage. And a few others but they're all rare so w/e.

However, 4-5 has over 50 enemies, and 4 more appear every turn, while 2-2 has 24 enemies + a boss. If we assume we want to beat 4-5 in 10 turns (the max BEXP limit), there'd be 9 rounds of reinforcements, so something like 90 enemies total. Even though it's not a rout but a kill boss chapter, we're still probably killing at least 60 enemies. That would mean you'd have to kill about 6 enemies a turn.

2-2 has 24 enemies, and a 7 turn BEXP limit, so if we assume we're taking 7 turns, then you'd have to kill off roughly 3.5 enemies a turn.

If we round Tauroneo's offense in 4-5 to 2RKOing while Neph's to 3RKOing, and then assume that everyone else is doing the same, it would take Tauroneo 12 attacks to accomplish those 6 kills a turn. It would take Neph ~10.5 attacks to accomplish that 3.5 kills a turn.

Again, I'm not seeing any big differences.

Second, your 4-E about the royals is not entirely accurate. Sure, their stats are ridiculously overkill. However, they have no 2-range, and 4-E has a ton of enemies with 2-range. 4-E-3 and 4 are very obvious examples, as every single enemy has 1-2 range. Even if they won't die, we're going to be wasting time if they take too many attacks on enemy phase as that's just wasted opportunities to counter dragons/spirits/whatever. The royals are good, but saying they trivialize 4-E is overestimating their capabilities.

To conclude this messy section, yes, lategame gives you more resources, more h4x units, etc. However, you're also generally wiping out more enemies per turn, which means the bar is raised that much higher than earlygame chapters, since you need your units to be that much stronger in offense and that much more durable in defense. A unit 3RKOing and getting 3RKO'd in return in an earlygame chapter could be doing just as well as a unit 2RKOing in a lategame chapter and getting 6RKO'd in return.

First off, you have a number of offensive godmoders in 4-5. Tibarn should be obvious (he only misses out on dragons but also has a 40% tear rate per hit). Then whoever gets beastfoe will be in the same boat. Furthermore, if any non-Bastian sages are in play, they will have effective Mt through fire tomes and probably better AS than him (Soren has more at --/20/1).

Tibarn is one unit.

Beastfoe only works on cats and tigers. They do make up most of the enemies though.

non-Bastian sages? Well, for starters, Soren is forced with Ike, so he can't compete. Ditto for Tormod, and he's horrible in part 4 anyway. Ilyana's part 3 is too terrible to even bother with, so I don't see her being competition for Bastian in part 4, let alone 4-5. Calill's part 3 is better than Ilyana's but still nothing good, and she's a lot of trouble to raise. Certainly not as good as Bastian in 4-5 who's ready to nuke anything you want with no prior training or resources.

That doesn't leave very many units who are as good as Bastian in 4-5 in terms of offense.

I agree that Nealuchi’s leads over some of the other part 2 units is pretty small. However, he is force deployed in all of them except for 2-E, though that map has such high max deployment that he might as well be. Thus, saying we can put someone in Nealuchi’s place for roughly the same results doesn’t quite work.

Let’s take 2-P for example. If Nealuchi hides in a corner, Marcia and Elincia are taking on all the enemies until Haar shows up. By adding Nealuchi to the mix, we’re distracting some enemy attacks away from those 2, which in turn increases their durability. Moreover, if we take this level on in a semi-aggressive manner, then we’ll have our 3 attackers spreading out (though staying reasonably close to Leanne) in an effort to counter as many enemies as possible. Evidently spreading out 3 units with similar combat paramaters > spreading out 2.

Basically, saying Nealuchi’s usefulness is limited because he’s largely replaceable ignores the tasks he does that would otherwise not be accomplished if he weren’t there. If say, all your units are preoccupied in areas a,b and c, whatever Nealuchi does in area d is competing with nobody.

I’m not sure how else to explain this clearly, so maybe another example will help. Let’s look at Leo’s early part 1. Even though he is a pretty terrible unit there, he’s being useful because he’s injuring enemies that wouldn’t have been injured had he not existed in those maps. However, by your method of comparison, we’d see that he’s worse than everyone else available (Micaiah/Nolan/Edward/Sothe), and so he’d rack up negative utility instead of minor positives.

All to say, being above average on forced maps is definitely worth more than you’re making it out to be.

True, but in part 2 you generally don't need to spread out that much, nor do you need that many fighters. Rarely do we have "areas A, B, C, and D" to take on. Usually, it's just "areas A and B". In this case, Nealuchi could well be replacing someone. For example, in 2-2, you'll generally need two groups; one to push forward, one smaller one to cover the rear. Sometimes you'll use a guy to hold a chokepoint. Well, at least that's how I handle this chapter. Anyway, if Nealuchi holds a chokepoint when someone like Mordy or Brom could have just as easily done so, that's not a benefit to using Nealuchi.

In 2-P, again there are 10 generics + boss. Since we have 8 turns to beat this chapter, I could easily have Elincia and Marcia with Leanne chanting to kill off 1-2 enemies a turn (Marcia 2-rounds, Elincia has a 21% chance to stun per attack, which is basically a kill), and then have Haar later clean up the mess. Tackling the chapter in an aggressive manner seems silly to me since it's going to take 8 turns to beat no matter what, due to the time limit.

The logic in your Leo example is sound, but it isn't the same thing as Nealuchi in part 2. See, in early part 1, Sothe is the only unit who can do whatever he wants. Nolan is our second best unit, and he's already getting 3HKO'd, occasionally 4HKO'd. So Nolan, despite being the second best unit in those chapters, still wants as much help as possible. With Leo around to potshot, Nolan's like "that's cool, cause I need all the help I can get".

On the other hand, in part 2, Neph is one of our *worst* units and she's getting 3HKO'd or so. Go up to someone that's better, like Brom, and he's freakishly tanky compared to the DB. Like, 6HKO'd. If Nealuchi was around to help, Brom would be all "that's cool, but rather unnecessary". And Brom's not even the second best person in part 2.

Chokepoints in 4-5? It’s one of the more wide open levels in the game.

Sure, the first two turns or so you're in a relatively open field. But for the rest of the map you're in thickets that are 2 tiles wide or so, or the middle portion of the map is like, 3 or 4 tiles wide.

Just because Tibarn’s route is an exp mine doesn’t mean we load the chapter with useless units. The only reason we care about gaining exp in 4-5 is to improve one’s performance in 4-E, but if we didn’t plan on sending any CRKs there, then training them in 4-5 is just a huge waste of time. Moreover, high exp gain and leadership boosts benefit everyone, not just under-levelled DBs/CRKs.

Look at it this way: Tibarn’s route is a valuable, and somewhat limited resource. There’s no reason to assume weaker units are more entitled to this resource than stronger ones. On the one hand, the weaker units will see more improvement, but the stronger units will also get to apply their improvement more due to being innately better.

For example, let’s compare paragon!Ike to paragon!Boyd. While Boyd’s change in performance is certainly more noticeable (decent -> great instead of great -> overkill), Ike still counters way more enemies than Boyd due to his combat leads.

Nah, I'd still make my weaker units into strong units, rather than make my strong units into stronger ones. This is because it gives me more viable fighters to work with. As you said earlier, we may have to spread the team out into areas A, B, C, and D. This is especially true in chapters 4-P to 4-5, where we have to split our team into three groups, and thus each team is very small, so it's more like we're splitting everyone we trained into areas A, B, C, D, E, F, G... (A/B/C being in chapter 4-P, D/E/F being in chapter 4-1, etc)... By turning an okay unit into a good one, I now have an extra unit to use on enemy phase and help wipe out enemies in an area that will likely have no one there, or only 1-2 other people. Ike is a good unit, but he's only one unit, and he can't be everywhere at once.

Also, more units means that I have more people to act as meatshields for my heron/healers, so they can exponentially increase my performance.

At any rate, you only have 10 optional slots in 4-E, so if we have a distribution of 2/5/3 (Micaiah/Ike/Tibarn routes respectively), then there will only be 3 under-levelled units on Tibarn’s route to worry about. And besides, some people fare quite well despite lack of levelling, as my Zihark/Nolan/Jill stats showed earlier.

Well, if only 3 people are going with Tibarn (and the forced units), then you'll have even fewer units to deal with 4-5, making Bastian that much more important.

In other words, she uses physics if only one person is gravely injured, or multiple people have minor wounds. The fortify is saved for points like 4-E-3 where multiple units take severe damage in one turn.

You're overestimating the durability of our units. There are units who aren't worried about dying, but they're a minority. Two or so attacks could already be seen as "severe damage" for our average unit.

For example, 20/20/10 Titania with... A Oscar, has 47.8 HP, 27.6 def, 23.9 res, 121.2 avo.

Some enemies...

4x Axe Gen lvl 14 (Silver Axe)

50 hp, 45 atk, 25 AS, 155 hit, 76 avo, 30 def, 23 res, 15 crit, 26 cev

3HKO'd at ~35 hit (24.85 real). 1.53% chance to die in 3 hits. 4.99% in 4. 10.2% in 5.

4x Lance Gen lvl 14 (Silver Lance)

50 hp, 43 atk, 26 AS, 163 hit, 78 avo, 31 def, 23 res, 15 crit, 26 cev

4HKO'd (though dangerously close to being 3HKO'd) at ~42 hit (35.7 real). 1.62% chance to die in 4 hits. 5.80% in 5. 12.5% in 6.

And that's assuming someone like Oscar was actually crazy enough to support her (like he'd want light when he wants more att). Give her a more realistic support, such as... Haar, and her avoid drops to 106. Redoing chances of death...

4x Axe Gen lvl 14 (Silver Axe)

50 hp, 45 atk, 25 AS, 155 hit, 76 avo, 30 def, 23 res, 15 crit, 26 cev

3HKO'd at ~49 hit (48.51 real). 11.4% chance of dying in 3 hits. And that's all I need to say for that.

4x Lance Gen lvl 14 (Silver Lance)

50 hp, 43 atk, 26 AS, 163 hit, 78 avo, 31 def, 23 res, 15 crit, 26 cev

4HKO'd (though dangerously close to being 3HKO'd) at ~57 hit (63.45 real). 16.2% chance to die in 4 hits.

Not pretty at all.

I'll take another unit.

20/20/10 Mia with... A Shinon, has 50 HP, 26.8 def, 19.5 res, 124.4 avo.

She's not much better off than Titania with A Oscar was.

And these are both high tier units! If we go to upper mid tiers, like, say, Neph.

20/20/10 Neph has 48.6 HP, 27.8 def, 26.05 res, 106.2 avo.

I'm not sure what support Neph could get, since she has lolwind which will more or less scare off anyone with a good affinity (like Oscar's earth or Mist's water), although if I supported her with wind, her durability would actually very similar to Titania's with A Oscar. So you know that Neph isn't invincible either.

Also, 4-E-1 has a sleep staff, where you need restore, which means we have one less chance to physic. If our only staff user is Micaiah, then no one is getting healed other than self-healing with items.

4-E-2 is just as brutal. Sure, it's shorter, since the chapter ends when Ike kills the BK, but it's a completely open field, which means it's very easy for a single unit to get attacked 3 or more times.

4-E-3 is awful. Even our royals are worried about dying.

31 Tibarn, 68 HP, 32 def, 20 res, 124 avo

8x Red Dragon lvl 27

77 hp, 58 atk, 13 AS, 169 hit, 64 avo, 37 def, 20 res, 10 crit, 13 cev

3HKO at 45 hit (40.95 real). 6.87% chance to die in 3 hits. 19.0% chance to die in 4.

12x White Dragon lvl 25

71 hp, 56 atk, 13 AS, 179 hit, 63 avo, 23 def, 36 res, 11 crit, 12 cev

2HKO at 55 hit (59.95 real). 35.9% chance to die in 2 hits. 64.7% to die in 3.

Ouch.

I suppose Tibarn could be a higher level, but he levels rather slowly and his growths aren't that high (effectively 75% HP, 80% def, 40% res, 120% avo), so that isn't going to change much. A single hit from a white dragon already can be seen as severe damage.

I suppose 4-E-4 and 4-E-5 won't really see many units worried about dying, but then Bastian is now not very worried himself either (ton of res in chapters with magic enemies), so he can more or less go anywhere he wants.

Also, Micaiah can physic twice per turn if Reyson vigors her. It’s quite easy to set up vigors that include her since physicing doesn’t restrict her to very specific spaces.

It would depend on how many other fighters you can vigor. If you can get 4 fighters vigor'd, then vigoring Miciaiah instead of that unit would mean we lose out on another unit getting an attack. If we could only get 3 or less fighters to get vigor'd, then sure, having Micaiah fill a vigor spot isn't a problem.

However, 4-E gives you the most units with canto available, as well as good 1-2 range allowing for non-canto units to position themselves better for a vigor. So that happens pretty often.

We get a 3 use Ashera staff in 4-E-5. That alone should cover us for the entire chapter.

That requires we recruit Lehran, which is easier said than done, because Ike needs at least 27 spd to not get doubled and pwned by the BK, and he only averages 26 at 20/20. We'll need to throw a speedwing on Ike so he won't die, which is largely a waste since Ike doesn't have issues doubling outside of a few chapters, which means we're basically using a speedwing just so we can get the Ashera staff. Not a good trade.

Well, unless he gets spd screwed, then a speedwing would be a good investment on Ike, but if he did get spd screwed, then chances are the speedwing won't even be enough to not let him get doubled by BK in 3-7 anyway, so w/e.

Essentially, you’re saying Bastian’s healing could lead to another brave weapon in play. That’s pretty minor since we’re talking about a 40 use weapon that might be used up to 3-4 times on the same enemy, so it could break after like 15 kills. Moreover, we don’t want the weapon to break since we want to get it blessed in 4-E-3, so we might only get 37 uses out of it, not to mention having to be extremely careful once we’re down to 10-15 uses.

The thing with the brave lance, or any uber weapon, is that we use it in a situation where we must accomplish something. We don't spam it every turn. For example, you'll use it to kill off a key enemy that is within range of a heron and you have to use the brave weapon.

I'm not really sure how to explain it, but I'll keep talking and maybe something will make sense in the end.

Generally when I play through a chapter, it's not "one key decision after another". I'm usually just going through the motions, using more or less anyone I want to kill enemies and stuff, and once in awhile I get into a "oh crap I'm in trouble" situation and then I fall back on my god moders. I'm pretty sure this is what many people do with jeigans, such as Marcus or Sothe. The jeigans sit in the back and do little, if anything at all, until the team gets into the trouble and then they swoop in to save the day. Essentially, the brave weapons are like those jeigans. You don't use them unless you get into trouble.

In other words, getting another brave weapon could pull us out of up to 15 hairy situations over the course of the game. Even if this extra brave weapon pulls us out of just 5 hairy situations, that's still 5 that wouldn't have existed if the hammerne had to be used on the fortify. Such a situation could cost us a turn, or even worse, cause someone on our team to die. Of course it's impossible to exactly quantify how many turns having another brave weapon could save us, but regardless, it's a great benefit to have more uses of a ridiculous weapon.

Also, there’s no guarantee that Micaiah will even need to hammerne the fortify. We could’ve deployed any other healer (even Oliver) to get 2-4 physics per turn, which is plenty, so adding Bastian as a third healer is pretty unremarkable. Or we could have Bastian replace Oliver, but then the difference to the team is essentially Bastian’s offense vs Oliver’s, but both of them are so weak in that department that we probably won’t make much use of it anyway.

True. However, Nealuchi could also be replaced by another fighter, and there are a lot more fighters who beat out Nealuchi in combat than there are staff users who beat out Bastian in healing.

Also, you may decide to just kill off Oliver rather than recruit him. You have to bring Rafiel all the way to the top left corner (where he's better off at other parts of the map chanting as many people as possible) with his lol5move and him getting one rounded by everything, so Oliver can talk to him. He's not ridiculously hard to recruit, but getting him on the team is just one more thing you need to do in 4-4, and it's one hectic chapter to begin with, what the ridiculously strong enemies and crapton of reinforcements and sleep bishop and getting all the chests (including the fortify) and whatnot.

I wouldn’t say him getting a mastery is much to brag about since everyone in 4-E will have one with about the same activation (the exceptions being SMs/snipers but they have huge crit to make up for it). I mean, if anyone with a mastery and decent atk has offense that “isn’t that bad”, then basically any unit who can double attack consistently qualifies.

Well, that's true. If you double and have a mastery/crit and have decent att (in the event their proc doesn't go off we aren't sitting around with our thumbs in our asses because they did crappy damage), your offense isn't too bad.

Let's take a look at how Ranulf's offense fares against the high tiers in 4-E. I'll use the current tier list on this forum.

Titania - She has more att, but has severe issues doubling and her mastery proc is much lower than Ranulf's even if she did. Like, 15% Sol vs Ranulf's >30% rend.

Zihark - Similar to Ranulf, really. Zihark will probably have slightly more att. He has crit, but his mastery also goes off much less often, so their crit procs are about the same. He has innate adept, but doesn't Ranulf have like, 40 free capacity or something? So he could fit adept + anything he wants anyway, so w/e.

Leanne - not a fighter

Sothe - lolgarbage in part 4

Nolan - He has more att and a slightly lower proc rate, so he does a little better. He might have to watch for spd screwage in case he can't double the fast enemies though.

Nailah - screw the royals, I have debaets

Janaff - He has a bit more att and a slightly higher proc rate, so he does better.

Gatrie - More att, though a lower chance to proc his mastery, but he also may have serious issues doubling if he wasn't given an early crown in part 3.

Ulki - He'll have about the same att, and a slightly higher proc rate.

Mia - She's like Zihark with more att.

Shinon - screw shinon and his double bow

Rafiel - not a fighter

Ranulf doesn't look too bad. He doesn't lose to most of these high tiers by a very large. Mostly, screw Nailah/Shinon, Nolan/Mia/Zihark/Janaff/Ulki are a bit better, and Titania/Gatrie need to watch their spd.

So offense in 4-E can be summarized as "if you 2RKO and have a 50 or so proc rate you're not half bad".

You can end the chapter at will. It’s possible for Ike to 1RKO the BK using a hammer if he has 36 str (or 34 if he has an atk support). Though if he can’t manage that, it’ll just take an extra phase, and you probably want to spend a turn or two getting the wishblade anyway. At any rate, a laguz stone will suffice for your non-royals unless there is some urgent reason to play this chapter out for more than 3-4 turns.

1RKOing the BK is more or less impossible without Ike getting speed blessed, since he only averages ~31 at 20/20/10 and you need 34 to double, though I suppose you can kill him in 3-4 turns easily, so w/e. But getting to Levail to kill him and get the wishblade is easier said than done, since he's surrounded by a ton of henchmen and his resolve makes him tough to take down (36 spd/53 att/1-2 range/42% impale wtf. Also, my calculations come out to 36 crit with resolve up. I think whoever did the enemy stats didn't take into account Levail being a sentinel and having +10 crit).

Also, since 4-E-2 is an open field, it's entirely possible for units to get attacked by multiple enemies in a single turn. Not only does this mean laguz are in much more danger of untransforming (thus wanting the laguz gem), but units might actually die, which would make Bastian's healing more important.

Beating Dheginsea is all about clearing the area I encircled in red, and getting key units to within ~7-9 spaces of him. Once that is done, killing Dheginsea on the same turn is fairly trivial. Here’s one possible stategy:

I never said actually killing Degh is the problem, since if everyone gangs up on him in one turn he should go down unless your team really sucks. However, it's *getting* to him that's the problem. You circled the area to clear out, but there are other dragons around and they move, which means more dragons will come in. It doesn't help that you'll generally need two units to kill off one dragon, and then your staff users are almost always busy healing (Bastian can help with this...!), and the dragons have 2-range so it's hard to deal with them on enemy phase.

There is a nice solution to that. Put provoke on a unit with low res but massive avo (Ulki works well), and if that unit is a laguz, they can use a laguz gem. This way, only 1/15 total gems are used on that chapter.

I suppose I can't say anything about that.

If that’s the case, then the probability of using a grass is the same as the unplanned occurrence, which should be really small. You used Zihark getting hit as an example, but at lv --/20/15 (A Nolan) he’s only facing like 1.3 real hit (eg/ 171 hit fire spirit vs 163 avo). So about 1% of the time Volug has to take grass for 1 turn instead of attacking. Big deal.

The situation I was more talking about was something like 4-E-2 or 4-E-3 where Zihark is at a lower level (reducing his avoid), and especially 4-E-3 where the dragons have a crapton of hit and 2HKO him as well as a huge majority of the team.

And of course, Zihark was an example. Take someone with less avoid, such as Oscar (he's probably not supporting another earth affinity, which means his avoid will be lower than Zihark's), or Mia, or other dodgers, and they're in even greater danger of dying, let alone getting hit.

For example, 20/20/10 Mia has 116 avoid (before supports, but since she's fire affinity, all her avoid would have to come from her partner). The lowest hit enemy in 4-E-2 stil has 22 displayed hit on her. Take a tougher enemy, like a silver axe warrior, and it has 38 displayed hit. A unit like Mia could easily take a few unlucky hits and then require immediate healing.

I don’t see where the risk is in beating 4-E-4 anyway. All 4 spirits adjacent to Lehran can be shoved/smited, and Lehran is easily 1RKOed by a parity user.

The spirits can be shoved? I didn't know that. I guess I can't say anything about that.

Also, we can drop Nealuchi after 2-E and he’ll have accumulated a certain level of usefulness. Now Bastian’s usefulness in 4-E has severely diminished (if not a negative) since he’s taking up a very valuable unit slot whereas the old raven isn’t.

Nah, since Bastian can easily pull his weight, and more, so I don't mind if he takes a unit slot.

Let's say that our 10 units we're bringing are all fighters, and then Ike is forced, so that makes 11 competent fighters (competent means people like Sanaki and Sothe are not included). If Bastian replaced a fighter, theoretically that would mean your fighting capabilities dropped at most 9% (since you now have 10 fighters rather than 11), but in reality it would be even less, since Bastian is more likely replacing one of the weaker fighters rather than a royal or Shinon or *insert good 4-E unit*.

Now Bastian can also heal. And how much more healing will you have available with Bastian? Lots. If Micaiah is our only other staff user, then Bastian effectively increases my healing by 100%. That is over 11 times greater than the 9% loss in combat. Even when you factor in Micaiah using fortify once in awhile, Bastian is still increasing my healing by far, far greater than 9%.

Now how important is healing compared to fighting? Well, fighting usually involves killing enemies and surviving, while healing is usually just surviving, so healing could be seen as half as important as combat, I guess. However, Bastian does increase my healing far greater than the amount of combat I lose, so whatever.

Also, Bastian can rain death on dragons in 4-E-3 with a freshly blessed siege tome, which makes for some very powerful potshots on red dragons, and white dragons should be taking enough damage for anyone else to finish them off.

Speaking of which, I forgot about other staves. Things like sleep exist, and while they are very limited and Micaiah could just as easily use them, it's an option for Bastian. Plus, Micaiah can't use every staff at once. She can't use physic + sleep on the same turn, not without getting vigor's anyway.