Slize's Character Ranking/Balancing Topic

[Dat Nick]

Are we supposed to just not use him and waste turns so that other people can be used seriously?

wtf? when did I ever say this? I've been arguing the direct OPPOSITE.

[Narga_Rocks]

Can people read my posts before replying to them? This is the third time I've had to state that killing things on rout maps AND clearing a path to the boss is the only function most units who are not Seth are able to serve when rushing. How can one sentence be this hard to comprehend?

Oh?

You think it's interesting to discuss who chips better out of Unit A and Unit B?

This post doesn't really seem in line with your claims that you acknowledge that Unit A and Unit B do more than merely chip.

I did read. Unfortunately for you, I also read the post I quoted. The trouble is you are being inconsistent. Makes it really hard to know precisely what you understand. You seem to think that they are being tiered off chipping. But then you turn around and say they kill things on rout maps and clear paths to bosses on boss-kill maps. And when clearing a path to the boss, how do you think they are even doing that? Chipping? Nope. Gotta kill or nothing gets cleared.

Hence, it is quite easy to tier other units based on their performance on what they get to do.

[Dat Nick]

2 units chipping equals one unit dead. So it's still pretty silly to say Franz is cool in C2 because he helps Gilliam kill a brigand.

[Anouleth]

Well, Franz isn't realistically going to kill Brigands on his own. He needs about level 8 just to double the things, since they generally have 6 or 7 AS. I'd rather have Eirika fight them, since she has a decent shot at 10 speed, and she can just sit on a forest and be indestructible. Plus there's that 11-13% crit rate.

I wouldn't be using Gilliam either. His accuracy is seriously terrible against the Axe users and he doesn't deal a whole load of damage. I guess if he procs speed he's good in C4 because he 1-rounds Revenants and never dies, but I'm not holding my breath on his 30% speed growth proccing. Better to give the kill to Franz, he's a lot more salvageable.

Edited May 5, 2010 by Anouleth

[dondon151]

Garcia also ORKOs revenants at base.

[Narga_Rocks]

2 units chipping equals one unit dead. So it's still pretty silly to say Franz is cool in C2 because he helps Gilliam kill a brigand.

You still need to make the choice of who chips first. At which point, chances are that unit is better than the killer due to either higher avo, better concrete durability, or more accurate 2 range. And besides, some units still ORKO some things, apparently, so you can tier based off that as well. Also, if there are units capable of chipping for a longer period of time, then they are helping more and so a unit that chips for the first 10 chapters > a unit that chips for some set of 5 chapters. Things like that.

[Rewjeo]

I'm gonna do ratings based on both limited Seth and Sethskip, so go back and read those on Seth/Eirika if you're interested. Balancing is still only for limited Seth, though.

[Rewjeo]

Franz

Franz is pretty ridiculous. The first few chapters are great news for him since he has swords, but, unlike Eirika, he continues to have WTC. In Chapter 1, when he joins, he can cleanly ORKO all the enemy soldiers with an iron sword even with WTD. The only way for Eirika to reach 2HKO status is to use Seth's steel sword, which, if she can even use it yet, will seriously slow her down so she still 2RKOs. Gilliam can't double, and it would take him 15 STR to OHKO them. This leaves Seth, who, as we all know, is ridiculous and ORKOs everything for a long time.

In chapters 2&3, he comes the closest to ORKOing besides Seth, and is probably the most durable, again, besides Seth. He's 3HKOd at 17.11 True Hit while on a forest. Gilliam's 4HKOd, but can't reliably dodge. Vanessa's 2HKOd and can't reliably dodge. lolRoss, and Garcia's 3HKOd with worse avoid. That leaves Eirika, who's 2HKOd but has better avoid. The same thing holds true in chapter 3, where he can potentially grab a javelin as well as maintain WTA against the swordies.

Franz ORKOs just about everything in chapter 4 with no problems and is still more durable than most people.

This continues, and, with his good growths and great performance, he continues to grow very quickly. He can promote to GK, probably the best class in the game, and become even better. He'll continue to double just about everything and 2HKO just about everything, especially when he has access to special swords/lances/axes. Full WTC just lets him do even more damage and take even less. Franz is really a pretty ridiculous unit.

9.5/10

Balancing

4 base speed, 30% growth. So, he shouldn't be getting doubled, but he's suddenly killing things much more slowly. Also dropping his STR growth to 30. So, while he's got the whole game and rescue utility, he's not nearly the huge offense machine he was before.

Sethskip

Franz has the unique ability of having a lot of time to build up his stats as well as being better at it than most. This means that, down the line, he's not a huge combat failure, although he's definitely not a great combat unit, and will really only be used if he's in a position where it won't hurt, and he's got a lovely 8 MOV for rescue utility as a Paladin. Sethskip's pretty new, so this is about as much as I've figured out. I wouldn't mind a comment from dondon on what more he found he was able to do.

8.5/10

Edited May 21, 2010 by Slize

[Integrity]

Whaaat? You can't not post for two weeks in a thread and then pop up like nothing happened. At least acknowledge the hiatus. :(

But welcome back to ratings.

[Rewjeo]

School's been busy, and it's finally coming to a close. Finally had time to do stuff again.

[Junkhead]

Franz is indeed a great Cavalier, he's an in-between of Lance and Kent, with a good Str base equalling Alan's.

[dondon151]

Franz doesn't really cut it as a good combat unit in Sethskip. You'd use him either because he's there or because he has a horse.

[Rewjeo]

That's sort of what I meant with "he's not a huge combat failure." I'll change it to be more like what you said.

Edited May 21, 2010 by Slize

[Rewjeo]

Gilliam

So, it's our friend Gilliam here- our only natural knight in the game, and the only one in any sort of efficiency run at all. So, to start, he's not awful. In fact, by raw stats, he's decent, even against axers. In chapter 1, he's 5RKOd by axers, whom he 2RKOs at 72.99 true hit. Yeah, not great, but it's not awful. However, axers are only prevalent in his first three very short chapters. Come chapter 4, he suddenly hits a really strong point. If he two levels, he's got a good chance at doubling and ORKOing Revenants (3 levels gives a very good chance of this) and will consistently 2HKO other enemies while taking pitiful damage. And, luckily for him, there are enemies everywhere. This ignores one of his two really big problems- 4 MOV. In many chapters, that means that he's left in the dust. Especially when you've got people like Franz, Forde, Kyle, Seth, and Cormag shooting ahead.

As the earlygame continues, he stays your tank who doesn't take much damage but doesn't really double much. But, as the game goes on, his durability isn't so special, he 4 MOV becomes worse, and his lack of doubling becomes more problematic.

Fortunately, after promotion, he can hit average MOV as a GK, which also happens to be great class- WTC, good gains, decent caps. Of course, then there's the problem of competing with Franz, Kyle, and Forde for a promotion item, and they're all great. This is especially bad on Eir. Route since you only have two Knight Crests. So he's promoting later and hasn't done a whole lot. He's underleveled. How does he do? Well, not great. 10 AS sucks. 18 STR means he hits hard once and 20 DEF means doubles aren't that bad. But quite frankly, in the last quarter of the game, he's gonna have pretty poor offense. 2RKOing at best isn't good when everyone else is ORKOing easily.

So, Gilliam is basically our earlygame tank who's amazing when he doubles, but doesn't double much. Down the road, his 4 MOV is problematic, and once he gets past that, he's too slow to do much. Fortunately, his earlygame is enough to get him a...

5/10

Balancing

Gill's already in my target range!

Sethskip

Gill's one of the worst units for Sethskip that's actually worth using. Mainly, he can protect Eirika earlygame while Seth bumrushes. 4 MOV means he can't do much else.

1.5/10

Edited August 20, 2010 by Rewjeo

[Shimmachi]

If you are using Gilliam to LV 20/1 GK, he's going to likely or not reach A Lances quickly, so he has early usage of Vidofnir. And the cavaliers juggle between swords and lances. Of course, since this is SETHskip we are talking about, it may not be good...

Also GK gives him the notorious weakness to both anti-armor and anti-calvary. His speed also phails at life, and the fact that he gets E SWORDS AND AXES means that he will have to spam Steel Axes for a decent secondary weapon.

[dondon151]

Hand Axes are E rank too.

[Parrhesia]

And I'm pretty sure that GKs begin with D Axes. I think Generals start with Es though.

[Rewjeo]

Yup, GK gives D, General gives E. As for the double weakness, it doesn't mean much seeing as there are very few left.

[Anouleth]

Just give Gilliam +1 speed initially to double Armours and Soldiers and Revenants but 1 less speed on promotion. At least he's useful for five or six chapters instead of 0.

[Rewjeo]

I'm back.

Moulder

Moulder's pretty good. After all, he's your only healer for 2-4. But then Natasha shows up, and can do anything he can. In fact, she's forced in chapter 5, so he probably doesn't get much there. And, well, there's not much more from there. He gets half credit for healing until 12, but that's not much. Then L'arachel and Saleh (Eir.) show up, and the movement makes them better. I guess he can promote for equal movement, but when we could promote Lute or Artur... After all, he'll just be so underleveled that his offense will be poor at best. Still, being our only healer for the chapters where we'll need a lot of healing and then being one of two for the next hardest part of the game isn't bad.

7.0/10 (lol put /20 first)

Balancing

The only thing I can really think of his giving him 4 MOV instead of 5. Even 0 base MAG still gives him plenty of use since GBA staves are so awesome.

Sethskip

Healing is not as important here early on, but he's probably your best bet at Warp and Latona.

8.0/10

Edited July 6, 2010 by Slize

[dondon151]

Sethskip

dondon has him high in Sethskip, but I'm not sure why. Seth won't need that much healing if any at all. By the time he, Duessel, and friends finally stop being uber invincible, we've got other dudes with more movement that can heal, too...

Warp and Latona would require more healing than I see likely.

4.0/10

Watch the videos? Moulder starts with C staves and gets +40 upon promotion to bishop. Units not named Seth will like healing as well.

[Rewjeo]

Still, that's 70 heals to promoton. That takes until after the route split in normal playthroughs, let alone Seth-heavy. Plus he probably healed more in yours than usual because it was 0% growths. Still, I'll bump him up to an 8. After all, he does have until almost the end of the game.

Edited July 3, 2010 by Slize

[dondon151]

0% growths or not, characters are not going to gain enough EXP to the point where they become either dodge tanks or take 0 damage from attacks. Moulder can heal scratches. In addition, there is at least one map on each route where Moulder can spam Torch and he can spam Barrier after it becomes available. A or S staves should be a piece of cake. He'd probably gain staff EXP and WEXP faster in normal growths because in 0% growths I had to forego him for more combat units on a couple of maps.

[Rewjeo]

Yeah, that's why he got up to an 8. I seriously overestimated how much WEXP he needed. The main thing is that his early game healing isn't doing nearly as much as before, but he's one of if not your best bet at Warp/Latona.

[Rewjeo]

Vanessa

Vanessa here looks like she has some great stuff going for her. +5 ATK/DEF and +25 AVO/CEV from supports is awesome and used to get her a lot. Used to. Then we realized that these supports are so freaking slow, and, in order to either build or utilize, force her to abandon her #1 use: flier utility.

In chapter 2, she's necessary for Ross's survival which might (anyone know?) be necessary for Garcia's recruitment (I know that if they both survive, he'll join at the end even if you never spoke to him.) Chapter 4, she's your fastest shot at getting Lute, and after getting down there, she probably saves you a turn by taking out the enemies in that corner. Chapter 5, she might be one of your best shots and the northernmost village since she can hop the wall. Chapter 6, she's your best shot at saving those villagers. 7, depending on how fast you're going, can be vital. She can help ferry Eirika up to the top along with whoever else to KO Murray (that's the boss there, right?) 9 Eirika, she can help get to the left village while Tana grabs the right village. 11 Ephraim, she can go off the ships to help not take up space or she can go help out L'arachel and Dozla. In 12 Eirika, she can go on the mountains to help deal with Baels, Gargoyles, and Mogalls. 13 Ephraim, she can, if she's at a high enough level, be a good shot at clearing the chapter very quickly since she's got great RES and can fly straight to Selena. 15, uh, desert. 17, she can ferry people over the mountains. 18, she can get to eggs quickly. 20, if this strategy works, she could help ferry the lord over and triangle attack Morva.

Yeah, that's a lot right there.

Now, that's all that she really has. Her combat is pretty poor. To start off, she's weighed down by almost everything. And she has problems in chapters 2/3 since lolaxes destroy her. Afterwards, she's still 2RKOing like everyone else at best. If she can double them with heavier lances, then they probably have higher defenses. If she can't, then she gets to use slim lances with poor might. 35% STR doesn't help much, although 60% SPD on 11 base helps with doubling. And her durability, while it's better, still isn't great. And a 50% HP growth and 20% DEF growth doesn't get that very far very fast. But, hey, at least she has good RES! She can tank magic fairly well. Which is actually pretty helpful for fighting, say, mogalls, who fly around over terrain. However, her flying utility is just so much that I'm giving her a

9/10

Balancing:

I dunno what you can do short of making her lose her pegasus. Maybe 0% growths all around? I still doubt that that would put her balanced. I dunno, maybe with others being balanced, it'll make it less likely for them to be able to handle being out on there own, and that'll help.

Sethskip:

She gets to ferry Seth to the bosses to KO when there's terrain in the way! AKA she does pretty similar stuff.

9/10