Kirsche vs Slowking

[Zkirsche]

Fixed Mode. I open.

Good luck, Anouleth.

[Zkirsche]

Soren joins in chapter 4, but, I admit, doesn’t really start to get going until chapter 5. Let’s check it out:

Base Soren with wind: 18 HP, 8 Atk, 7 AS, 128 Hit, 19 Avo, 2 Def, 7 Res

Now, 7 AS doubles a good majority of enemies in chapter 4 (14/22), so I think it’s safe to assume that Soren will still be doubling quite a bit here. At this point in the game, soldiers, which make up a vast majority of this earlygame, have 1-2 res and about 26 HP. This means Soren’s dealing 12-14 damage to enemies. This is a 2-3RKO, which doesn’t look like much by itself, I’ll admit. However, a level 5 Oscar with 7 Str(14 Atk) (from fighting those fighters and bandits in the first few chapters) will leave soldiers with 26 HP/6 Def with 10 HP – perfect for Soren to finish off. In fact, a level 4 Boyd leaves them with a measly 4 HP – enough for Soren to finish him off even if he doesn’t double. By killing enemies he helps the survival of the team and let’s them grow more by allowing them to finish off the enemy.

So we can see that Soren is generally quite useful when he first joins as he can effectively team up and finish off enemies which may pose a threat to a unit’s survival or to just speed up a chapter. So I’d say a level per chapter is not too generous. So that’s 6 levels. But wait; at Chapter 8 we get to use bexp and after chapter 10, we’ve got a load more to push into these units. So an extra 4 levels of bexp also seems rather fair when you put into context how low his level is compared to others. Now for a direct comparison:

Level 10 Soren with Thunder, ‘C’ Ike: 22 HP, 16 Atk, 8 AS, 30 Avo, 3 Def, 12 Res

Base Zihark with killing edge: 25 HP, 19 Atk, 15 AS, 36 avo, 7 Def, 0 Res

Now that doesn’t look good for Soren, but base stats alone do not a character make. It is the situation that they are placed in which matters most. For durability no unit can ORKO Soren, and all but 9 3RKO Zihark. This looks an easy win for Zihark until you remember that Soren has existent 1-2 range, which means that both can only battle 2 enemies a turn. And as for damage output, Zihark only out-damages Soren against the mounted knights, but this is only by 2-4 points. However, against the armoured knights, Soren can deal a whopping 22 damage to both whilst Zihark barely scratches them, dealing damage as low as 4 points! You might argue crit, but that’s unreliable and Zihark isn’t necessarily entitled to the killing edge with both Mia and Ike around. In that case, Soren’s thunder actually gives him MORE crit than Zihark. Go figure.

So whilst Zihark has statistical leads, Soren deals more damage against those which matter most: those pesky armoured knights which many a unit, Zihark included, struggle against. Zihark, on the other hand, only has major advantages against the lolmages and a lolthief, which makes him easily replaceable. Soren, however, is not; and that is why Soren wins when Zihark joins.

Let’s skip ahead to, say, chapter 18. By this point, both units should have been promoted:

Level 20/1 Soren with thunder forge, ‘B’ Ike, ‘C’ Stefan: 30 HP, 29 Atk, 17 AS, 61 avo, 7 Def, 20 Res

Level 20/1 Zihark with steel sword forge, ‘B’ Ilyana, ‘C’ Muarim: 34 HP, 29 Atk, 22 AS, 71 Avo, 13 Def, 5 Res

Now, Zihark’s AS lead only let’s him double 9 extra enemies. This includes: an archer, which, if it attacks our group before we attack it, will be dead at the same time regardless of whether it attacked Soren or Zihark on that turn; 3 sword knights, which both 2RKO so this is a completely worthless lead, Kayachey, who Zihark doesn’t want to even approach as the guy deals 19 damage to the furry; and 3 ravens who can very easily be untransformed anyway. Therefore, this speed lead is worth next to nothing. However, the def-res gap of these enemies is usually 5, or perhaps more. This means that Soren can potentially do 10+ more damage than Zihark, assuming doubling. Now THAT most certainly is worth noting, as it let’s Soren ORKO 10(!) more enemies. That’s ~30% of the map that Soren is owning that Zihark isn’t. Plus, Zihark is unable to respond at all to 15 enemies on the enemy phase thanks to a lack of 1-2 range on his part. That’s another 42.86% of enemies that Zihark is limited against in this one map alone, and that lead will build up as the game goes on.

But of course, there’s durability, and once against it seems raw stats are on Zihark’s side. 4 HP, 10 avo and 6 def are most certainly not things to be laughed at. But neither is 15 Res or 1-2 range. However, Soren’s main troubles are the warrior, fighter and the two generals. These guy’s 2RKO Soren, but luckily for Soren his avo means that none have any more than 37% displayed, or 27.75% true. Now that’s not a gamble I’d be willing to bet on. Add this to Soren’s 1-2 range and he isn’t really facing any problems durably. So Zihark isn’t, by any means, crushing Soren in terms of durability as Soren is fairly dependable himself.

So finally comes chapter 24, where both units supports are in full flow and their growths should have shown clear distinctions in their stats. Let’s see what these guys have:

20/8 Soren with a thunder forge, ‘B’ Ike, ‘A’ Stefan: 33 HP, 34 Atk, 20 AS, 74 Avo, 7 Def, 23 Res

20/8 Zihark with a steel sword forge, ‘A’ Muarim, ‘B’ Ilyana: 38 HP, 32 Atk, 27 AS, 98 Avo, 16 Def, 7 Res

All Zihark’s AS lead does is let him double a measly 5 more enemies. However, in return for the 4 extra enemies Zihark has a RKO lead on (as he can’t ORKO the paladin), Soren can ORKO 12 enemies that Zihark can’t thanks to the def-res gap and an Atk lead. These being the Berserker, who’s high crit makes attacking him from 1-2 range the safest option, and the wyvern’s, who’s high def makes them an irritating problem for most foot units to kill. So once again, Soren is dealing with the most problematic units on the map, and is of course better at responding on the enemy phase to 2 range attackers, such as an archer or sniper, as he can actually counter attack. These are 17 enemies (32.01%) which Zihark cannot respond to on the enemy phase. Soren is quite clearly dominating on offence yet again.

On the defence, however, it’s definitely Zihark’s. Those supports of his have pushed his avo into laughably high levels making him almost immortal. But remember folks, Soren’s avo isn’t terribad either and neither is his ability to avoid player phase counters thanks to his 1-2 range ,especially come chapter 28 with those ridiculous dragons to fight against.

On a final note, Soren is also the better supporter. Whilst earth is better than dark, Muarim most certainly doesn’t care much about the defensive boost and it will not save Ilyana defensively. Even Brom, who I didn’t use for the purpose of this debate, has absolutely no use for any durability whatsoever as his def stat is ridiculous. On the other hand, Soren is one of Stefan’s only 2 support options and Ike would take Soren over Titania as they match move better (-1 compared to -2) and of course avo > hit. And to be frank, Ike would probably not care about having an ‘A’ Soren as it only loses him 3 avo (barely noticeable) and Oscar might want to support Kieran for better matching move (and A Oscar > A Marcia for Kieran). This would give Soren an extra 5 avo and make him more comparable to Zihark durably.

For those of you thinking tl;dr (which I wouldn’t blame you for), here’s a quick summary:

* Soren joins earlier and helps by teaming up with other units to KO enemies faster.

* Throughout the game Soren is dealing high amounts of damage to tough enemies like generals and wyverns whilst Zihark is merely better against scrubs like the mages.

* Durably, Soren’s res + 1-2 range is very comparable to Zihark’s leads in HP, def and avo, especially when put into the context of the chapter.

* Soren can actually counter 1-2 ranged enemies which can make up a third to almost a half of all the enemies in one chapter.

* Soren helps his support partners more than Zihark does, despite Zihark’s better affinity.

I think it’s safe to assume that the branded dude is better than the furry lover.

Your turn.

[Anouleth]

Good luck to you too.

I was going to write a proper argument, but I'm lazy so I'm just going to respond to your points.

Soren joins in chapter 4, but, I admit, doesn’t really start to get going until chapter 5. Let’s check it out:

Base Soren with wind: 18 HP, 8 Atk, 7 AS, 128 Hit, 19 Avo, 2 Def, 7 Res

Now, 7 AS doubles a good majority of enemies in chapter 4 (14/22), so I think it’s safe to assume that Soren will still be doubling quite a bit here. At this point in the game, soldiers, which make up a vast majority of this earlygame, have 1-2 res and about 26 HP. This means Soren’s dealing 12-14 damage to enemies. This is a 2-3RKO, which doesn’t look like much by itself, I’ll admit. However, a level 5 Oscar with 7 Str(14 Atk) (from fighting those fighters and bandits in the first few chapters) will leave soldiers with 26 HP/6 Def with 10 HP – perfect for Soren to finish off. In fact, a level 4 Boyd leaves them with a measly 4 HP – enough for Soren to finish him off even if he doesn’t double. By killing enemies he helps the survival of the team and let’s them grow more by allowing them to finish off the enemy.

Unless we teleport Boyd and Oscar into Chapter 4 with a time machine, they will not be able to combo with Soren. In addition, if Soren is merely weakening enemies for others, he is not going to gain adequate EXP, which he needs since his offense is so poor at this stage. In addition, you overrate Soren's doubling. Soren can only double the enemies with 3 or less AS - that means, the 5 Soldiers with Steel Lances, the Steel Sword Myrmidon, the Fighter, and two of the Archers. Pathetic. He barely even 4HKOes.

In addition, Soren is not helping the survival of the team in Chapter 4. He is so frail, he simply cannot be exposed to enemies, and in this dense, open map, it is difficult to protect him. Even the Archers 2HKO him, so we even have to be careful exposing him to 2-range! If we need enemies to be weakened for someone else to take the kill, Gatrie will suffice, since he has enough durability to be thrown into a pile of enemies and won't 1-round them due to 5AS base.

So we can see that Soren is generally quite useful when he first joins as he can effectively team up and finish off enemies which may pose a threat to a unit’s survival or to just speed up a chapter. So I’d say a level per chapter is not too generous. So that’s 6 levels. But wait; at Chapter 8 we get to use bexp and after chapter 10, we’ve got a load more to push into these units. So an extra 4 levels of bexp also seems rather fair when you put into context how low his level is compared to others. Now for a direct comparison:

We can also give BEXP to Zihark. It's not like Soren is even helping us in C8/9/10 - C8 is a Defend chapter, C9 can easily be dominated by Titania due to it's linear nature, and C10 can be completed through Stealth. So if Soren can take 400 BEXP or whatever, we can just as easily spend it on someone else, like Marcia or Mia, and give Zihark some BEXP out of the C10 windfall.

And if we're handing out BEXP, only 4 levels seems rather a paltry amount when we have thousands on hand to play with.

Level 10 Soren with Thunder, ‘C’ Ike: 22 HP, 16 Atk, 8 AS, 30 Avo, 3 Def, 12 Res

Base Zihark with killing edge: 25 HP, 19 Atk, 15 AS, 36 avo, 7 Def, 0 Res

Now that doesn’t look good for Soren, but base stats alone do not a character make.

I was going to post my own stat comparison, but I must admit I'm intrigued to find out how winning every parameter except Resistance doesn't make Zihark superior to Soren.

It is the situation that they are placed in which matters most. For durability no unit can ORKO Soren, and all but 9 3RKO Zihark. This looks an easy win for Zihark until you remember that Soren has existent 1-2 range, which means that both can only battle 2 enemies a turn. And as for damage output, Zihark only out-damages Soren against the mounted knights, but this is only by 2-4 points. However, against the armoured knights, Soren can deal a whopping 22 damage to both whilst Zihark barely scratches them, dealing damage as low as 4 points! You might argue crit, but that’s unreliable and Zihark isn’t necessarily entitled to the killing edge with both Mia and Ike around. In that case, Soren’s thunder actually gives him MORE crit than Zihark. Go figure.

Zihark's 2-4 more damage against the mounted knights is relevant, because Zihark has a greater chance to critical and activate Adept. Not only is his crit and proc rate higher, but he doubles, giving him two chances to activate them. Admittedly, he loses against the Armour Knights... all three of them, most of which are too far away for him to encounter.

So whilst Zihark has statistical leads, Soren deals more damage against those which matter most: those pesky armoured knights which many a unit, Zihark included, struggle against. Zihark, on the other hand, only has major advantages against the lolmages and a lolthief, which makes him easily replaceable. Soren, however, is not; and that is why Soren wins when Zihark joins.

Soren does not. C11 is a large chapter, and Soren is unlikely to actually be able to reach the frontlines and help out due to his low movement, like Zihark (who starts on the wrong side of the map, like a doofus). Soren only has an attack advantage against the Armour Knights, and loses against everything else due to Zihark's better critical chances and Adept rate. Hilarious, considering we haven't even had an opportunity to give Zihark BEXP.

Let’s skip ahead to, say, chapter 18.

Oh, that's quick of you. You missed out Zihark's best chapter - Chapter 12.

Right after joining, Zihark might seem like nothing special. Okay durability, okay offense, okay movement. However, Zihark can help us save turns in an otherwise tiresome chapter - Chapter 12. Because of the way the map is structured, ordinarily you can only beat when all the Ravens are on board the ship. However, a sufficiently levelled Zihark can complete it on Enemy Phase, since he can 1-round with the Laguzslayer. Zihark only needs to be level 16 to double the boss, a mere five levels, and only level 17 to double every Raven on the map. In theory, we could RNG abuse an Adept proc with Soren, but if we're willing to do that with him, we could do the same with Zihark, who has a higher proc rate anyway.

By this point, both units should have been promoted:

Level 20/1 Soren with thunder forge, ‘B’ Ike, ‘C’ Stefan: 30 HP, 29 Atk, 17 AS, 61 avo, 7 Def, 20 Res

Level 20/1 Zihark with steel sword forge, ‘B’ Ilyana, ‘C’ Muarim: 34 HP, 29 Atk, 22 AS, 71 Avo, 13 Def, 5 Res

Actually, I'd put them at a higher level. We have piles of BEXP, lets use it! I mean, Aquilae managed to have people promoting before even Chapter 15. I can't find Interceptor's log, but he had something similiar. In addition, Zihark will probably be a higher level. Soren needs to take BEXP in order to match Zihark's initial level lead, and we are almost certainly giving Zihark BEXP in order to have him doubling Ravens in C12.

Soren 20/3 B Ike w/Thunder (+speed band)

31HP 25ATK 19AS 7DEF 20RES 11CEV 64AVO

w/Thunder forge

30ATK

Zihark 20/4 B Brom w/Steel Blade (Wyvern or Knight band)

36HP 30ATK 24AS 14DEF 5RES 12CEV 70AVO 27CRIT 131HIT

w/Silver Blade

34ATK 116HIT

w/Steel forge

32ATK 131HIT

w/Armourslayer (effective, with WTD)

33ATK 126HIT

When we introduce the possibility of a Wyvern or Knight band and a Brom support, Zihark's offense improves. He now 1-rounds everything but the Generals and the Wyverns... but he only needs the Sonic Sword to 1-round the Wyverns (face it - it has no other purpose), or the Silver Blade, and he even 1-rounds the weaker General. Admittedly, he's a point short on the stronger one, but when he has a 67% chance to proc Adept or crit and 1-round him anyway, it's not a big deal. Hell, you could even give Zihark the Energy Drop if you're that fussed. While Soren will still fail to 1-round the Ravens, the Sages, and the 15AS Lance Knight.

Now, Zihark’s AS lead only let’s him double 9 extra enemies. This includes: an archer, which, if it attacks our group before we attack it, will be dead at the same time regardless of whether it attacked Soren or Zihark on that turn; 3 sword knights, which both 2RKO so this is a completely worthless lead, Kayachey, who Zihark doesn’t want to even approach as the guy deals 19 damage to the furry; and 3 ravens who can very easily be untransformed anyway. Therefore, this speed lead is worth next to nothing. However, the def-res gap of these enemies is usually 5, or perhaps more. This means that Soren can potentially do 10+ more damage than Zihark, assuming doubling. Now THAT most certainly is worth noting, as it let’s Soren ORKO 10(!) more enemies. That’s ~30% of the map that Soren is owning that Zihark isn’t. Plus, Zihark is unable to respond at all to 15 enemies on the enemy phase thanks to a lack of 1-2 range on his part. That’s another 42.86% of enemies that Zihark is limited against in this one map alone, and that lead will build up as the game goes on.

Actually, Zihark 2HKOes the Sword Knights and Soren will probably double anyway. And you fail to understand the dynamic of this chapter. Soren and Zihark are both slow foot units (emphasis on Soren). As a result, they will perpetually be behind our 'good' units - the Paladins, plus Marcia/Tanith/Jill, and their enemy phase will be accordingly limited. Since Soren is limited to only 6 move, his ability to counter-attack more units on enemy phase is not useful, and since he is not durable either, we don't really want to throw him into a massive pile of enemies (even if we could). So, like Zihark, Soren is doomed to a mediocre enemy phase, albeit for different reasons.

But of course, there’s durability, and once against it seems raw stats are on Zihark’s side. 4 HP, 10 avo and 6 def are most certainly not things to be laughed at. But neither is 15 Res or 1-2 range. However, Soren’s main troubles are the warrior, fighter and the two generals. These guy’s 2RKO Soren, but luckily for Soren his avo means that none have any more than 37% displayed, or 27.75% true. Now that’s not a gamble I’d be willing to bet on. Add this to Soren’s 1-2 range and he isn’t really facing any problems durably. So Zihark isn’t, by any means, crushing Soren in terms of durability as Soren is fairly dependable himself.

Neither of them has much need for durability anyway, since they should not be relying on their enemy phase. It's worth pointing out though, that due to high crit and Adept rates, Zihark is a good canditate for Vantage.

So finally comes chapter 24, where both units supports are in full flow and their growths should have shown clear distinctions in their stats. Let’s see what these guys have:

They have already show a clear distinction. Both 1-round almost everything, but Zihark does it with 7 move instead of 6. Ergo, Zihark is better.

20/8 Soren with a thunder forge, ‘B’ Ike, ‘A’ Stefan: 33 HP, 34 Atk, 20 AS, 74 Avo, 7 Def, 23 Res

20/8 Zihark with a steel sword forge, ‘A’ Muarim, ‘B’ Ilyana: 38 HP, 32 Atk, 27 AS, 98 Avo, 16 Def, 7 Res

I would put them at a higher level, again.

20/10 Soren w/Thunder (B Ike, A Stefan, +speed band)

34HP 30ATK 23AS 13CEV 8DEF 24RES 81AVO 17CRIT

w/Thunder forge

35ATK

20/10 Zihark w/Silver Sword (B Muarim, B Brom, Wyvern or Knight Band)

39HP 35ATK 28AS 13CEV 15+2DEF 5+2RES 94AVO 27CRIT 144HIT

w/Silver forge

40ATK

w/Vague Katti

34ATK 62CRIT, and his defense increases to 20.

All Zihark’s AS lead does is let him double a measly 5 more enemies. However, in return for the 4 extra enemies Zihark has a RKO lead on (as he can’t ORKO the paladin), Soren can ORKO 12 enemies that Zihark can’t thanks to the def-res gap and an Atk lead. These being the Berserker, who’s high crit makes attacking him from 1-2 range the safest option, and the wyvern’s, who’s high def makes them an irritating problem for most foot units to kill. So once again, Soren is dealing with the most problematic units on the map, and is of course better at responding on the enemy phase to 2 range attackers, such as an archer or sniper, as he can actually counter attack. These are 17 enemies (32.01%) which Zihark cannot respond to on the enemy phase. Soren is quite clearly dominating on offence yet again.

Nope. Zihark can get everything on the map. He admittedly needs to switch to the Sonic Sword or a Silver forge to get the Wyverns, but he can get most things with just plain Silver. The Berserker is not even an issue, since he can't even hit Zihark. Even if Zihark was 3HKOing due to not being given a forge or the SS (which begs the question of who deserves it more than the guy fighting Wyverns), he has a 48% chance to activate Adept and a 39% chance to crit anyway, so he's still killing most of the time.

And again, Soren does not have an enemy phase, any more than Bors or Gilliam or Brom have enemy phases. He is too slow to reach the frontlines due to 6 move. Zihark isn't that much better off, admittedly, but 7 move is still an improvement. Soren's enemy phase isn't even that great due to his durability. If you were to say, try and throw him at the Wyvern Riders, who start on the river, they would 2HKO him. The Snipers both have crit on him. We certainly can't leave him in the path of those Paladins.

On the defence, however, it’s definitely Zihark’s. Those supports of his have pushed his avo into laughably high levels making him almost immortal. But remember folks, Soren’s avo isn’t terribad either and neither is his ability to avoid player phase counters thanks to his 1-2 range ,especially come chapter 28 with those ridiculous dragons to fight against.

There is no Chapter 28. The game ends in Chapter 27, and the rest is just an interactive cutscene where you watch Ike kill everything.

On a final note, Soren is also the better supporter. Whilst earth is better than dark, Muarim most certainly doesn’t care much about the defensive boost and it will not save Ilyana defensively. Even Brom, who I didn’t use for the purpose of this debate, has absolutely no use for any durability whatsoever as his def stat is ridiculous. On the other hand, Soren is one of Stefan’s only 2 support options and Ike would take Soren over Titania as they match move better (-1 compared to -2) and of course avo > hit. And to be frank, Ike would probably not care about having an ‘A’ Soren as it only loses him 3 avo (barely noticeable) and Oscar might want to support Kieran for better matching move (and A Oscar > A Marcia for Kieran). This would give Soren an extra 5 avo and make him more comparable to Zihark durably.

Ike doesn't really care about the Soren support. Oscar is all he needs to rock and roll, and Soren is so goddamn slow anyway.

For those of you thinking tl;dr (which I wouldn’t blame you for), here’s a quick summary:

* Soren joins earlier and helps by teaming up with other units to KO enemies faster.

* Throughout the game Soren is dealing high amounts of damage to tough enemies like generals and wyverns whilst Zihark is merely better against scrubs like the mages.

* Durably, Soren’s res + 1-2 range is very comparable to Zihark’s leads in HP, def and avo, especially when put into the context of the chapter.

* Soren can actually counter 1-2 ranged enemies which can make up a third to almost a half of all the enemies in one chapter.

* Soren helps his support partners more than Zihark does, despite Zihark’s better affinity.

I think it’s safe to assume that the branded dude is better than the furry lover.

Your turn.

Yes, we get it, Zihark is a furry. It stopped being funny a while ago.

To summarise my rebuttal, it is simple:

*Soren is not really contributing in earlygame chapters because he has awful durability, offense and mobility.

*Unless we favour Soren with BEXP, Zihark will have a level advantage.

*Compounding Zihark's level advantage, he is a better choice to give BEXP to since he can 1-round Ravens on enemy phase at level 17. However, he will never advance more than a few levels ahead of Soren and by lategame, the lead will disappear.

*Zihark does not have offense issues if properly supported and allowed use of Bands and forges for the toughest opponents.

*Soren does not have an enemy phase advantage since his low movement and durability hampers his ability to make use of his powerful 2-range.

*Since Zihark and Soren are offensively comparable (kill everything easily), Zihark's movement advantage gives him an edge over Soren in the large lategame chapters.

Edited July 5, 2010 by Slowking

[Zkirsche]

Bonus points goes to viewers who know the origins of the various references I make. B)

Unless we teleport Boyd and Oscar into Chapter 4 with a time machine, they will not be able to combo with Soren.

I was talking about chapter 5, hence:

Soren joins in chapter 4, but, I admit, doesn’t really start to get going until chapter 5. Let’s check it out:

In addition, if Soren is merely weakening enemies for others, he is not going to gain adequate EXP, which he needs since his offense is so poor at this stage.

We can give him a kill occasionally, and since his level is so low, he hardly has any trouble getting exp. For example, averaging enemy levels to 6 to make it easier for ourselves, a base Soren gets 13 exp per attack and 33(!) exp per kill. So 2 kills and 3 attacks alone in chapter 5 get’s him a level. Giving him a turn where he can do absolutely nothing. Or better yet, attack again for even more exp.

Oh and by the way, doubling steel lance soldiers is very useful for the team even if it’s all he doubles. Taking a steel lance soldier from chapter 4 (who will be stronger in chapter 5), this bad boy deals 10(!) damage to a level 5 Ike, aka a 3HKO. And since Ike doesn’t want to get hit by this, a Soren + Ike combo can essentially keep the damage to Ike to a minimum. As without Soren, Ike will get hit by the same guy again on the enemy phase, Ike will finish him off and then another enemy comes in to kill Ike. Oops, reset time. Now if only I had a 1-2 range unit who could easily finish a weakened enemy off for me... oh wait, we have Soren. Problem solved.

In addition, Soren is not helping the survival of the team in Chapter 4.

Soren joins in chapter 4, but, I admit, doesn’t really start to get going

True dat. But he doesn’t hurt it, either, as he can simply run into the top-right hand corner for safety.

1-round them due to 5AS base.

1) Gatrie can’t be everywhere.

2) They won’t necessarily target Gatrie over everyone else.

We can also give BEXP to Zihark. It's not like Soren is even helping us in C8/9/10 - C8 is a Defend chapter, C9 can easily be dominated by Titania due to it's linear nature, and C10 can be completed through Stealth. So if Soren can take 400 BEXP or whatever, we can just as easily spend it on someone else, like Marcia or Mia, and give Zihark some BEXP out of the C10 windfall.

Soren helps in chapter 8 by helping units survive. If you take a look to the right hand side, we have 4 knights. Pwn. A level 8 Soren w/fire deals 20 damage a round to these n00bs, which, by the way, have some of the highest Atk figures on the map. Oh look, another useful supporting role from the back. As Oscar or some other scrub weakens them on the enemy phase, they can heal themselves while Soren finishes the dirty work yet again, meaning they can be stronger for the next round. I don’t know about you, but I think a clear in 8 turns with 100% success rate > a clear in 8 turns with a <100% success rate.

Chapter 10 I’ll give you, but Soren is unhindered by the sand on the beach in chapter 9, and is durable enough to deal with those pesky mages thanks to his res, allowing him to visit those houses for an extra 4000 gold (talisman) and a restore staff for better durability in chapters 14 and 17 with all those venin weapons.

There’s enough for Marcia and Mia too. There’s enough for everyone, unless you plan on making Titania level 20/20, but last time I checked, that was a pointless exercise.

And if we're handing out BEXP, only 4 levels seems rather a paltry amount when we have thousands on hand to play with.

So now Soren’s a higher level and thus can double more enemies and deal more damage a shot, as well as better adept and crit procs. How does this help your argument again?

Zihark's 2-4 more damage against the mounted knights is relevant, because Zihark has a greater chance to critical and activate Adept. Not only is his crit and proc rate higher, but he doubles, giving him two chances to activate them. Admittedly, he loses against the Armour Knights... all three of them, most of which are too far away for him to encounter.

You did not contest the fact that killing edge could go to someone else, or be saved up, so I’ll assume that that is A-OK with you. Without this weapon, Zihark only has 6 crit... against enemies with 3 dodge. This means that, even with doubling, he only has a 6% chance to crit against these guys. Now Soren, with that thunder tome of his, has an 8% chance to crit from just one attack. It’s a sad day for a myrmidon to be out-critted by a mage. And as for adept, in order for Zihark to ORKO these guys, he needs 2 activations. This only has a 2% chance of occurring – the same 2% which Soren has a lead on Zihark for crit. Oh dear, oh dear. And, just for the lulz, those guys 3HKO Zihark, and come in groups, so Zihark wants to stay well away. But he can’t thanks to no 2-range.

Oh and to complete the chapter, at least 1 of those armours need to be cleared out, and who better for the job than Soren? Certainly not Zihark. In fact, these guys once again have some of the highest Atk’s on the map, so the faster they are dealt with, the less damage we have to face. Gee, thanks Soren, I sure wish we had another unit like you. Clearly, by doing something no other unit can do, Soren is more useful than Zihark, who does pretty much what everyone and their mothers can do. It is why a lone healer > a 22nd string fighter.

Soren does not. C11 is a large chapter, and Soren is unlikely to actually be able to reach the frontlines and help out due to his low movement, like Zihark (who starts on the wrong side of the map, like a doofus). Soren only has an attack advantage against the Armour Knights, and loses against everything else due to Zihark's better critical chances and Adept rate. Hilarious, considering we haven't even had an opportunity to give Zihark BEXP.

He would if this was chapter 27 when every unit has the durability to keep ploughing through at max move rates and killing every unit in their way, but it’s not. Nephenee, Mia, Zihark , Brom, Oscar, Ike, Kieran, Mist and Rolf all have issues ORKO’ing. And Lethe and Mordy have gauge. Now, unless we’re going to try and solo the map with Titania, which will be quite inefficient indeed, some of these units are going to get involved and Soren’s going to be able to help as they won’t be moving that fast.

In fact, the high enemy density close to the elwind house means that it is virtually impossible to move quickly, even with just Titania. So Soren’s 1-2 range not only frees up a space on the front lines so more unit’s can attack, but it allows him to effectively KO the enemies faster, so the army moves faster. Zihark is busy worrying about not touching those precious vigilantes, who give us 50 Bexp (~half a level) each, whilst giving us very little Cexp (for being level 1) in comparison. To do this, Zihark has to unequip his weapon and he will get swamped fairly quickly. Aka, he may not even do anything at all in this chapter. However, we can at least position Soren so he can, and there are those soldiers nearby which he can take care of if you really don’t want him to easily wipe out the knight near the elwind house (why?).

I’ve already addressed crit + adept activations.

Oh, that's quick of you.

My opener has already been my longest ever (1600 words), so excuse me for trying to limit the tl;dr by focusing on the major points in these guys’ play through (joining, promotion and fully supported).

Not to mention, I ignored Soren’s greatest chapter, for the most part: chapter 28 (which I’ll address in more detail later).

Right after joining, Zihark might seem like nothing special. Okay durability, okay offense, okay movement. However, Zihark can help us save turns in an otherwise tiresome chapter - Chapter 12. Because of the way the map is structured, ordinarily you can only beat when all the Ravens are on board the ship. However, a sufficiently levelled Zihark can complete it on Enemy Phase, since he can 1-round with the Laguzslayer. Zihark only needs to be level 16 to double the boss, a mere five levels, and only level 17 to double every Raven on the map. In theory, we could RNG abuse an Adept proc with Soren, but if we're willing to do that with him, we could do the same with Zihark, who has a higher proc rate anyway.

Actually, Zihark needs to be level 19 to double the boss and every raven on the map. Seeker has 16 AS, level 19 Zihark has 20 AS. Now, 900 bexp is most certainly not 600 bexp and is more than double what we gave Soren. I smell favoritism, either that or the farm nearby... You see, this would all be well and good if we didn’t have so many units who can use it better. Mia, for example, given a level per chapter before chapter 11, needs less bexp than Zihark to double Seeker as she can double him at level 18, compared to Zihark’s 19. She too can use the laguz slayer for an easy ORKO. Marcia’s flying ability allows her to go out and weaken Seeker so Zihark isn’t even necessary. Plus, by the time Zihark attacks the ravens, they’ll be on the ship, so other units can attack them too. And since they only come one or two at a time, we’ll have no problem finishing them off just as quickly. So tell me: how does Zihark save turns here when Ravens are being finished off the turn they arrive by almost every single unit except rofl or lolrhys?

And even with said non-existent utility, Soren does just as much in Chapter 15, where his mov is unaffected, essentially giving him more mov than pretty much any unit in that chapter (except the fliers). He can also deal quite a bit of damage to Muarim’s very low resistance with just a fire forge thanks to effective mt.

Soren needs to take BEXP in order to match Zihark's initial level lead

Erm... what level lead? You had no qualms with level 10 by chapter 11 before for Soren, and Zihark’s base level is 10, not 11. If you mean all that bexp Zihark took to double ravens with, well, with that in account, we might as well say he’s 20/7 or something. Oh wait, we didn’t give him that bexp because it gave no real bonuses to the chapter and hindered other units. Oh well, 20/3 for both.

Zihark loses a point in strength, and thus ORKO’s neither of the generals with any type of weapon. You might argue crit/adept, but Soren has that too except he has a 100% chance to kill. 100% > 67%.

B Brom

Brom would rather play E.T. for the NES than have a Zihark support. He’d much rather have Boyd, for extra damage per hit (better OHKO chance, or ORKO against generals maybe), and Nephenee, for extra hit so when he goes into bad or worst biorhythm, he always has 100% hit rates. And, like I said before, 100%> 99-%.

This is an extra point of str gone, so Zihark could be level 20/4 and still not ORKO those generals. So the level lead doesn’t even matter anymore.

he only needs the Sonic Sword to 1-round the Wyverns (face it - it has no other purpose),

Uhh, Mist? “Hai guyz, I have 31 Atk with this thing and can pretty much ORKO everything on the map except sages, which I can go melee for anyway.” For reference, at the same level, Mist only has 23 Atk with a steel sword forge, hits def and has no 1-2 range. I think it’s obvious to tell which is the better option to pick.

Even Tanith has more Atk with it than Zihark and she can actually fly over to the wyverns to kill them faster. Soren even OHKO’s them with that sexy thunder forge of his. He won’t even have time to say “welcome to die” before those guys start making applications stating “Hail Hitler’s brainnnsss”. Pwn.

the Ravens

Who will be untransformed half the time. Heck, by the time we even face them , the 9 mov units should have moved past the 7 mov units so that Zihark doesn’t even get a shot at these guys. Soren can at least take potshots with blizzard to weaken them or heal his team mates, something I will go more in-depth with later.

the Sages

Which anyone can kill so Zihark isn’t special for doing so (aka, easily replaceable). Find me as many people who can ORKO generals as fast as Soren at 1-2 range as the number of people that can ORKO sages and then I’ll admit Zihark is just as useful at reducing turn count as Soren.

15AS Lance Knight.

Ummm...

1x Lance Knight lv 20 (steel lance, javelin)

33 hp, 24 atk, 15 AS, 91 hit, 31 avo, 14 def, 8 res

Soren 20/3 B Ike w/Thunder (+speed band)

31HP 25ATK 19AS 7DEF 20RES 11CEV 64AVO

w/Thunder forge

30ATK

Even with normal thunder he 2HKO’s this guy, and with 19 AS, he doubles him too.

And you fail to understand the dynamic of this chapter. Soren and Zihark are both slow foot units (emphasis on Soren). As a result, they will perpetually be behind our 'good' units - the Paladins, plus Marcia/Tanith/Jill, and their enemy phase will be accordingly limited. Since Soren is limited to only 6 move, his ability to counter-attack more units on enemy phase is not useful, and since he is not durable either, we don't really want to throw him into a massive pile of enemies (even if we could). So, like Zihark, Soren is doomed to a mediocre enemy phase, albeit for different reasons.

Now this is true on linier maps like chapter 18 and 19, but take chapter 17 just before this or chapters 20 and 21 and we get large, open maps with high mov units which can get past our defenses and attack those behind it. In chapter 20, this is especially a problem as those pesky wyverns are not, as we see here, ORKO’ed by Zihark. But they are OHKO’ed by Soren, so he can actually afford to even miss a shot before finishing the poor soul off. One of these wyverns even has a short spear, which Zihark can’t do anything about at all on the enemy phase. Now, I’m not saying “let’s have Soren solo the map”, I’m saying that we do not have to limit our movements as much with Soren as he can take the occasional 1-2 range fool and any high def armours and thus the army can progress faster with Soren than with Zihark: aka, it’s better with Soren than with Zihark as we can be more relaxed about position, in other words, more offensive, and less defensive.

And in linear maps, where these two do get left behind in the dirt, Zihark can do nothing except twiddle his thumbs. Soren, on the other hand, can use physics to heal from afar or meteor/blizzard/bolting to attack from large distances to also take out more pesky enemies. See, Soren doesn’t have to be on the front lines to be considered useful, so the mov difference doesn’t matter. Out of range of an enemy for a direct 1-2 ranged assault (technically both Zihark and Soren have the same Atk range because of this, but whatever)? No problem, Soren will kill that oncoming Tiger who has high stats in everything (including hit) with meteor. Or how about that dragon that’s dealing 20+ damage to most of our units who also has ridiculously high HP? Bolting will whittle him down quite nicely. See, that’s what we get with Soren: Mr. Flexible. Do you need a far off guy killed because it’s going to take 2+ turns to kill him whilst he deals good damage to you? Soren’s your guy. Is Jill low on health due to over rushing and an unlucky set of RNG? Soren’s your guy. What do we need Zihark for? Other SM’s + Ravens... who he won’t even reach because of lack of mov.

In fact, the team’s ability to simply rush ahead shows just how good they are, and shows just how bad enemies are. Therefore, lategame holds the least weight in the entire game. And if you want an easier earlygame, Soren’s your guy. Why? Master sealing him is very effective. Whilst both him and Zihark get bonuses from the promotion, only he has 1-2 range after it and healing for extra effectiveness. He’ll be able to keep up better with units like Marcia/Jill so he can heal them after they’ve battled long and hard so they can keep battling on the front lines, instead of having to retreat all the time (which takes turns) to get healed by Rhys/Mist, who have to stay back due to fail durability. A promoted Soren has much less durability worries, so can stay near the front lines.

And later on, despite his low mov compared to the beast of a class that is the paladin. Soren can still physic heal very well, provide a useful support bonus for Ike + Stefan (more on this later) and even bolting stomp distant enemies like the dragons in chapter 27. A level 10/20 Soren, for example, has 50 effective Mt with bolting as long as 1 of Ike or Stefan is in range. That means he can deal 23-26 damage to the dragons in 1 turn. That’s almost ½ of their health. In comparison, a level 20/16 Zihark with a silver sword forge does 24 damage to the weakest dragon compared to Soren’s 26. So even with a master seal Soren can take care of the most threatening enemies on the map better than a Zihark which was leveled normally. I don’t think i even need to contest your lategame comparison because it’s completely irrelevant in the face of the fact that Zihark just can’t make such an impact to efficiency at any point in the game. All Zihark is good for is the occasional enemies which some may struggle to double, such as SM’s and Raven’s, except even that’s not good enough as other units can do that too. Take a level 20/10 Oscar. He has 22 AS right off the bat and with just 7 KW uses out of all 27 of his level-ups, he has 24 AS. That means he doubles the SM in chapter 24. In fact, that will let him pretty much double everything until the end of time. When all Zihark can do later on that Soren can’t is perfectly doable for other units, you know he’s not affecting turn count or making chapters safer/easier as he is replaceable and unnecessary. But no other unit can deal as much damage as Soren can to the strongest and most durable of enemies at such distance combined with the ability to heal. This makes Soren unique in his utility.

So again, if that is what Soren can do when early sealed, what can he do when he isn’t early sealed? Well, a 20/16 Soren can 2RKO the dragons with both a thunder forge and bolting (well, the strongest is left with single digits by the boltings). The only others who can do this are Boyd and Largo. So that means Soren’s one of the top 3 units for taking these guys down. H4x. But of course this is not all, with fire, a level 20/16 Soren ORKO’s all cats and all Tigers, without supports. A level 20/16 Zihark with a silver sword forge doesn’t ORKO Tigers, Brom or no. So not only does Soren have the flexibility to be outside of his partners support range, he doesn’t have to take a counter and face heavy damage (Zihark, on the other hand, does), doesn’t have to use a rare and expensive item and to top it off, Soren actually kills the guy. If this chapter was the whole game, Soren would be top tier.

Now, there may only be 2 of these 3-10 range weapons available through combat/chests alone, but we can steal more and Soren isn’t exactly using them 24/7, as a chapter only lasts for ~10 turns and Soren is probably in range of enemies for the first 5-6 turns and can also physic. So I don’t think that their limitedness is really a problem, especially with hammerne.

Now I know I’ve essentially written a page about how Soren crushes Zihark in chapter 28, but please remember how it relates to the rest of the debate. Remember:

* Soren is more flexible and can perform different things, Zihark is locked to combat.

* Even when his low mov gets the best of him, Soren can, and often does, perform.

* We are not as worried as putting Soren in harm’s way as we are with Zihark as they can generally take the same number of enemies on the enemy phase, but Soren can respond to 1-2 ranged assaults.

* Soren is a complete monster in chapter 28.

for those of you who went tl;dr.

They have already show a clear distinction. Both 1-round almost everything, but Zihark does it with 7 move instead of 6. Ergo, Zihark is better.

Except, Zihark doesn’t ORKO what needs to be ORKO’ed quicker, whereas Soren doesn’t ORKO what can easily be taken care of anyway. Whereas Zihark puts himself in danger to do so, whilst Soren doesn’t.

Simply play it smart: Have Soren prioritise the enemies which pose a serious threat from afar and replace Zihark with Ranulf or Haar or someone else with better mov, as they can actually do more in a chapter because of it; although remember to leave condoms in his inventory as otherwise we may get some laguz-beorc hybrid from Zihark’s free time pleasures. Eww.

Just because you’re not using him like you should be: targeting stronger enemies, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be credited for it.

Nope. Zihark can get everything on the map. He admittedly needs to switch to the Sonic Sword or a Silver forge to get the Wyverns, but he can get most things with just plain Silver. The Berserker is not even an issue, since he can't even hit Zihark. Even if Zihark was 3HKOing due to not being given a forge or the SS (which begs the question of who deserves it more than the guy fighting Wyverns), he has a 48% chance to activate Adept and a 39% chance to crit anyway, so he's still killing most of the time.

True dat, but this is a very favourable map for Zihark, as it is lacking in generals or any sort of troublesome foe, to be frank (with the exception of the berserker and the wyverns). In the case of the wyverns, Zihark either has to use a limited and expensive resource (the silver sword forge/sonic sword) to ORKO (again, Mist/Tanith for sonic sword is better), whilst Soren can simply use thunder to ORKO them. Also, the berserker doesn’t have to hit Zihark, to be able to crit Kieran, or Titania, or most units, really. And again, 100% > 99-%.

A few maps later, say chapter 26, and now we have 15 troublesome enemies: 6 wyverns, 3 tigers, Bertram and 5 generals. Yep, Bertram has got a pretty awesome def stat, and also attacks res. Aka, Soren is a fantastic opponent for him.

And again, Soren does not have an enemy phase, any more than Bors or Gilliam or Brom have enemy phases. He is too slow to reach the frontlines due to 6 move. Zihark isn't that much better off, admittedly, but 7 move is still an improvement. Soren's enemy phase isn't even that great due to his durability. If you were to say, try and throw him at the Wyvern Riders, who start on the river, they would 2HKO him. The Snipers both have crit on him. We certainly can't leave him in the path of those Paladins.

It’s either him, or Zihark. Being able to counter 1-2 range, or not? I’d much rather put Soren there for a wyvern to attack.

There is no Chapter 28. The game ends in Chapter 27, and the rest is just an interactive cutscene where you watch Ike kill everything.

Ragnell is not that effective, I’m afraid:

Level 20/15 Ike with Ragnell, ‘A’ Oscar: 48 HP, 42 Atk, 27 AS, 102 avo, 21 Def

His avo may be very sexy, with displayed hit rates never exceeding 36%, but he needs a little help in the offence department as he struggles a bit against Tigers and dragons. In fact, Dragons 2HKO him, so even with those low hit rates, Ike still has a reasonable chance of dying unless Soren comes to his aid. In fact, this is relying on Oscar, who for all we know is attracting attention too. So now we have two unit’s under serious threat from dragons: Oscar and Ike. So who can save them better, Soren or Zihark? Well, considering Soren doesn’t have to get up close and personal and can heal the two afterwards, I’d say Soren, but that’s just me. :/

In fact, it’s not even efficient to solo it with Ike as the pally’s can move father and still deal good amounts of damage. And guess what? These guys want help KO’ing these toughies. Soren helps make maps go by faster and safer by taking out the strongest opponents. By taking out the weakest, Zihark doesn’t.

Ike doesn't really care about the Soren support. Oscar is all he needs to rock and roll, and Soren is so goddamn slow anyway.

Comparative to Ike, Oscar is faster than Soren is slow (+2 vs -1). Oscar doesn’t really care about the Ike support, all he needs is Kieran to rock ‘n’ roll. Matching mov, similar roles, what more could you want? If anything, Ike needs Soren more, as Oscar will leave Ike behind a lot. Not to mention Soren’s Atk is useful as Ike is very borderline anyway. Just take above as an example. With the Soren support, Ike could actually ORKO all the tigers. Without it, they still live to fight for their friends another day. But they’ll get no sympathy from me, as I’ll just send in Soren to help finish them off; you, on the other hand, would just leave them be to attack again whilst Zihark stands far behind panting and whining. Another turn wasted, more inefficient play to follow.

Yes, we get it, Zihark is a furry. It stopped being funny a while ago.

You fail to see how fail being a fail lover of fail sub-humans is. Fail.

To summarize my rebuttal to your rebuttal, it is simpler:

* Soren is valuable as he can kill the enemies which would normally take 2+ turns to KO, thus saving turns. Zihark never does this as the units he ORKO’s can be done by any unit.

* Soren is flexible: need a healer for the earlygame? Give him a master seal. No-one to fight? Have him heal. A 1-2 ranged wyvern nearby? Don’t worry, about a thing, ‘cuz every little wyvern is gonna be dead.

* Zihark is a furry.

Soren > Zihark

[Anouleth]

I was talking about chapter 5, hence:

Ah, it wasn't clear.

We can give him a kill occasionally, and since his level is so low, he hardly has any trouble getting exp. For example, averaging enemy levels to 6 to make it easier for ourselves, a base Soren gets 13 exp per attack and 33(!) exp per kill. So 2 kills and 3 attacks alone in chapter 5 get’s him a level. Giving him a turn where he can do absolutely nothing. Or better yet, attack again for even more exp.

I don't really see where this is going. Is this tying into Soren having a certain level later? It's certainly not tying into Soren contributing shit.

Oh and by the way, doubling steel lance soldiers is very useful for the team even if it’s all he doubles. Taking a steel lance soldier from chapter 4 (who will be stronger in chapter 5), this bad boy deals 10(!) damage to a level 5 Ike, aka a 3HKO. And since Ike doesn’t want to get hit by this, a Soren + Ike combo can essentially keep the damage to Ike to a minimum. As without Soren, Ike will get hit by the same guy again on the enemy phase, Ike will finish him off and then another enemy comes in to kill Ike. Oops, reset time. Now if only I had a 1-2 range unit who could easily finish a weakened enemy off for me... oh wait, we have Soren. Problem solved.

Oh, thank goodness Soren was capable of extricating us from this completely contrived situation! It's not like Boyd, Oscar, and Shinon could all have done the exact same thing, with the added advantage that if we used them, Ike wouldn't even take a counter-attack! And it's not like against any given enemy that doesn't weigh itself down into 0AS, Soren would be unable to do this without an extremely unlikely Adept proc!

I think Ike can be higher than level 5, as well. Given that we have noone better to feed kills in C3 and C4, he'll be at least level 7.

(And really, Shinon has nothing better to do than weaken stuff for others. It's not like we will ever use him after Chapter 7.)

True dat. But he doesn’t hurt it, either, as he can simply run into the top-right hand corner for safety.

Inspiring stuff from Soren. In comparison, on his starting chapter, Zihark has to be careful he doesn't kill too much stuff.

1) Gatrie can’t be everywhere.

2) They won’t necessarily target Gatrie over everyone else.

Gatrie doesn't need to be 'everywhere'. If Soren is apparently helping us by chipping at a single unit per turn so someone can kill it, then surely Gatrie who can do that to multiple enemies on enemy phase completely obsoletes him?

Soren helps in chapter 8 by helping units survive. If you take a look to the right hand side, we have 4 knights. Pwn. A level 8 Soren w/fire deals 20 damage a round to these n00bs, which, by the way, have some of the highest Atk figures on the map. Oh look, another useful supporting role from the back. As Oscar or some other scrub weakens them on the enemy phase, they can heal themselves while Soren finishes the dirty work yet again, meaning they can be stronger for the next round. I don’t know about you, but I think a clear in 8 turns with 100% success rate > a clear in 8 turns with a <100% success rate.

And if we take a look a leetle bit further to the right, we'll see a Longbow Archer that can easily combo with a Javelin Knight to kill Soren. Soren can't even touch the Archers and Javelin wielders for fear of dying. He is probably our greatest liability on the map. And seriously, the Knights are not an issue for even a semi-competent player. Even goddamn Mia can pick up an Armourslayer and 3HKO with a little BEXP, and Vantage protects her from those scaaary low-HP Armour Knights.

Chapter 10 I’ll give you, but Soren is unhindered by the sand on the beach in chapter 9, and is durable enough to deal with those pesky mages thanks to his res, allowing him to visit those houses for an extra 4000 gold (talisman) and a restore staff for better durability in chapters 14 and 17 with all those venin weapons.

Excuse me if I don't get a stiffy over the prospect of healing some mild poison (oh noes, 2HP damage a turn in one of the easiest chapters in the game!) We also have multiple people who can go in that direction. Ilyana, Mia, Boyd. And since it's an open area, Soren needs to be careful since he can't take multiple hits.

There’s enough for Marcia and Mia too. There’s enough for everyone, unless you plan on making Titania level 20/20, but last time I checked, that was a pointless exercise.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious.

So now Soren’s a higher level and thus can double more enemies and deal more damage a shot, as well as better adept and crit procs. How does this help your argument again?

I could really care less how much BEXP you choose to dole out to Soren, providing Zihark gets a similiar amount. I am confident that under the same conditions, Zihark will perform better.

You did not contest the fact that killing edge could go to someone else, or be saved up, so I’ll assume that that is A-OK with you. Without this weapon, Zihark only has 6 crit... against enemies with 3 dodge. This means that, even with doubling, he only has a 6% chance to crit against these guys. Now Soren, with that thunder tome of his, has an 8% chance to crit from just one attack. It’s a sad day for a myrmidon to be out-critted by a mage. And as for adept, in order for Zihark to ORKO these guys, he needs 2 activations. This only has a 2% chance of occurring – the same 2% which Soren has a lead on Zihark for crit. Oh dear, oh dear. And, just for the lulz, those guys 3HKO Zihark, and come in groups, so Zihark wants to stay well away. But he can’t thanks to no 2-range.

The killing edge is a perfectly viable weapon for Mia. It would be ludicrous to claim otherwise. Ike, not so much, since he has his own Regal Sword for the tougher Armour Knights and Weapon Knights, and he can often get away with a forge.

Even if Soren and Zihark have the same chance of 1-rounding, if Zihark Adepts once, he gets more chances to crit... and he does additional damage even with one adept. 1-rounding is not everything. More units can combo with Zihark to 1-round, and he can even sometimes avoid those fearsome counters that have your panties in a twist.

Oh no, they 3HKO Zihark. They also 2HKO Soren. Even the ranged ones. And Soren can't even go near the boss, who would double and 2HKO at range. Is this supposed to impress me or something?

Oh and to complete the chapter, at least 1 of those armours need to be cleared out, and who better for the job than Soren? Certainly not Zihark. In fact, these guys once again have some of the highest Atk’s on the map, so the faster they are dealt with, the less damage we have to face. Gee, thanks Soren, I sure wish we had another unit like you. Clearly, by doing something no other unit can do, Soren is more useful than Zihark, who does pretty much what everyone and their mothers can do. It is why a lone healer > a 22nd string fighter.

Well, I can think of quite a few characters that are better for the job. Let's see, it's 29HP/16DEF/5RES, correct? So Soren doesn't 1-round himself.

Level 5 Titania w/Hammer (effective, WTA)

36ATK 108HIT 8AS

w/Steel Axe (WTA)

26ATK 118HIT 13AS

Level 12 Boyd w/Steel Axe (WTA)

25ATK 100HIT 9AS

Level 13 Kieran w/Steel Axe (WTA)

24ATK 103HIT 9AS

These fellows all double and 4HKO... in the case of Titania, 3HKO and 2HKO, depending on whether she uses the Hammer. Their hit may be worse, but the Armours have less than 10 avoid, so even under the worst conditions (bottom biorhythm for Boyd), even Boyd's hit will be more than 80! And they all have better movement and durability than Soren... they can easily expose themselves to Mr. Mackoya. They will undoubtedly reach the Armour and kill him first! If anyone is 22nd string, it is Soren... simply because we need to wait an extra turn or two for him to move his lazy ass.

He would if this was chapter 27 when every unit has the durability to keep ploughing through at max move rates and killing every unit in their way, but it’s not. Nephenee, Mia, Zihark , Brom, Oscar, Ike, Kieran, Mist and Rolf all have issues ORKO’ing. And Lethe and Mordy have gauge. Now, unless we’re going to try and solo the map with Titania, which will be quite inefficient indeed, some of these units are going to get involved and Soren’s going to be able to help as they won’t be moving that fast.

Hmm, perhaps I'm overrating the speed of this chapter, but Soren is certainly not getting anywhere near the arrive square.

In fact, the high enemy density close to the elwind house means that it is virtually impossible to move quickly, even with just Titania. So Soren’s 1-2 range not only frees up a space on the front lines so more unit’s can attack, but it allows him to effectively KO the enemies faster, so the army moves faster. Zihark is busy worrying about not touching those precious vigilantes, who give us 50 Bexp (~half a level) each, whilst giving us very little Cexp (for being level 1) in comparison. To do this, Zihark has to unequip his weapon and he will get swamped fairly quickly. Aka, he may not even do anything at all in this chapter. However, we can at least position Soren so he can, and there are those soldiers nearby which he can take care of if you really don’t want him to easily wipe out the knight near the elwind house (why?).

Many characters have access to 1-2 range, and many of them have more movement and Canto as well, so it is easy to manage units around the Elwind house. Zihark does not need to worry about the vigilantes, as a untransformed Mordecai can easily distract them (he has nothing better to do, and he will go there anyway to recruit Zihark).

And, like the Knight on the Arrive square, there are other people who can fight the Armour just as well, and indeed, reach the Armour faster to prevent the Thief from getting to the village. I see no reason to hold ourselves up so Soren can demonstrate his incredible 3HKOing prowess.

Actually, Zihark needs to be level 19 to double the boss and every raven on the map. Seeker has 16 AS, level 19 Zihark has 20 AS. Now, 900 bexp is most certainly not 600 bexp and is more than double what we gave Soren. I smell favoritism, either that or the farm nearby... You see, this would all be well and good if we didn’t have so many units who can use it better. Mia, for example, given a level per chapter before chapter 11, needs less bexp than Zihark to double Seeker as she can double him at level 18, compared to Zihark’s 19. She too can use the laguz slayer for an easy ORKO. Marcia’s flying ability allows her to go out and weaken Seeker so Zihark isn’t even necessary. Plus, by the time Zihark attacks the ravens, they’ll be on the ship, so other units can attack them too. And since they only come one or two at a time, we’ll have no problem finishing them off just as quickly. So tell me: how does Zihark save turns here when Ravens are being finished off the turn they arrive by almost every single unit except rofl or lolrhys?

For a start, because Zihark begins with 80 growth points in speed, he will cap naturally in Fixed Mode at level 17. And he may have gained a level, or at least part of a level in Chapter 11. I suppose it's probably closer to 700 than 600... but either way, it's affordable. We can have more than 3750 BEXP at this stage. What better use could we put it to? Mia, in comparison, needs to be level 18, and she joins at a lower level and will need more BEXP to reach this stage.

Seeker is using a Demi Band, so his speed is only 15.

Zihark saves turns by killing them on enemy phase, before reinforcements show up and extend the chapter.

And even with said non-existent utility, Soren does just as much in Chapter 15, where his mov is unaffected, essentially giving him more mov than pretty much any unit in that chapter (except the fliers). He can also deal quite a bit of damage to Muarim’s very low resistance with just a fire forge thanks to effective mt.

I see no reason that we should not complete this chapter with just an early promoted Marcia and the Laguz Lance. After all, she actually has a shot at 1-rounding Muarim. However, he is admittedly better than Zihark in this chapter. He should savour this victory, since it is his only one, and a minor one since the best way of beating this chapter does not even involve deploying him.

Erm... what level lead? You had no qualms with level 10 by chapter 11 before for Soren, and Zihark’s base level is 10, not 11. If you mean all that bexp Zihark took to double ravens with, well, with that in account, we might as well say he’s 20/7 or something. Oh wait, we didn’t give him that bexp because it gave no real bonuses to the chapter and hindered other units. Oh well, 20/3 for both.

Soren can only get level 10 by Chapter 11 with BEXP. Since Soren is nothing really special in Chapter 8, 9, or 10, we might as well save it and spend it on Zihark, or spend it on some other character and give Zihark a larger slice of the Chapter 10 BEXPie. Unless you're suggesting that we should somehow not give any BEXP at all to Zihark, but give some to Soren.

Soren does not deserve more BEXP simply for joining earlier, when he has limited use.

Zihark loses a point in strength, and thus ORKO’s neither of the generals with any type of weapon. You might argue crit/adept, but Soren has that too except he has a 100% chance to kill. 100% > 67%.

Let's assume the player is not an idiot. Why would the player deny Zihark BEXP that would help him 1RKO difficult opponents, but give the same BEXP to Soren so that he can 1-round difficult opponents? Both require roughly the same amount of BEXP to reach those levels. And an efficient player would want all his characters to ORKO and distribute BEXP accordingly.

Brom would rather play E.T. for the NES than have a Zihark support. He’d much rather have Boyd, for extra damage per hit (better OHKO chance, or ORKO against generals maybe), and Nephenee, for extra hit so when he goes into bad or worst biorhythm, he always has 100% hit rates. And, like I said before, 100%> 99-%.

I don't think Brom really gives a shit who he supports, to be honest. It simply doesn't matter who Brom 'wants' to support, or the microscopic difference that ensues. Zihark wants to support Brom much, much more than Ilyana since Brom boosts his attack, while Brom is not really fussed and is lucky to get any support at all with his yucky movement, so an intelligent player will give Brom B Nephenee/B Zihark or something to make best use of his Water affinity. Ike is not really enamoured with his slow Soren support either, yet I'm not going to question it because it's the smart thing to do.

Uhh, Mist? “Hai guyz, I have 31 Atk with this thing and can pretty much ORKO everything on the map except sages, which I can go melee for anyway.” For reference, at the same level, Mist only has 23 Atk with a steel sword forge, hits def and has no 1-2 range. I think it’s obvious to tell which is the better option to pick.

The bench, obviously. Mist had no problem sitting there in Chapters 1-8. I think a tearful and permanent reunion is in order.

I can show that Mist needs a massive BEXP dump to even reach level 20/01 promoted in a timely manner. Like, she baaarely reaches level 10 for Sealing in Chapter 16, even if she goes beyond the impossible and heals every single turn on every single chapter and we never go pacifistically and we always match the BEXP turn limit when we will probably go under it. Even if Mist was to swipe the 1200 BEXP she needs to promote without a Seal, it's for nothing. Mist still has awful combat. 10STR/17SPD? That's juuuust low enough to make me laugh at the thought of using her. But according to deluded Mist fanboys all over the world, we can give her both of the desireable and contested Arms Scrolls, and the situationally useful Sonic Sword, and it improves her offense dramatically! I think the concept of giving a healer 1200 BEXP and two Arms Scrolls and a useful weapon just so she can run around and kill a few slower enemies before it breaks is not something we should expect of even a semi-intelligent player.

Even Tanith has more Atk with it than Zihark and she can actually fly over to the wyverns to kill them faster. Soren even OHKO’s them with that sexy thunder forge of his. He won’t even have time to say “welcome to die” before those guys start making applications stating “Hail Hitler’s brainnnsss”. Pwn.

Thunder is not effective against Wyverns, so unless Soren somehow capped magic while I wasn't looking, he will 2HKO them. He needs 36 mt with 20 magic. Even with his support, a max mt Wind forge (I won't mention the price, I don't want to give Smash a heart attack or something if he's reading this.)

Although, do you want to know who the absolute best person to give the weapon that is effective against Wyverns to? The person who fucking fights the goddamn wyverns. If Zihark is going to fight a Wyvern, an intelligent player will give him a weapon he can ORKO the Wyvern with, whether that's the Silver Blade (2HKOes with 85hit) or the Steel forge (2HKOes with perfect hit) or the Sonic Sword (see previous). Options exist, and we have no reason not to make use of them when fighting one of the more difficult enemies.

Who will be untransformed half the time. Heck, by the time we even face them , the 9 mov units should have moved past the 7 mov units so that Zihark doesn’t even get a shot at these guys. Soren can at least take potshots with blizzard to weaken them or heal his team mates, something I will go more in-depth with later.

I'm not sure what gauge they appear with, so I can't comment on when they'll untransform.

Well, Soren will be unlikely to have B Rank in Wind if he's been clinging to his beloved Thunder all this time. And if these 9 move units are sooo faaaar ahead, I somehow doubt that even Blizzard can reach them. It doesn't go through walls, and after merely 3 turns, the 9 move units will be more than 9 spaces ahead (since they also generally get given better starting positions). And such a fast paced army has no room for Soren's healing, either, since Mist and Tormod will actually be able to keep pace.

Which anyone can kill so Zihark isn’t special for doing so (aka, easily replaceable). Find me as many people who can ORKO generals as fast as Soren at 1-2 range as the number of people that can ORKO sages and then I’ll admit Zihark is just as useful at reducing turn count as Soren.

Thanks for tying this entire debate to a completely arbitrary comparison. If Zihark has better movement and enough durability to take them and enough strength to 1-round them, then I don't think I care if he can't do it at 2 range, he's still doing it better than Soren.

Ummm...

1x Lance Knight lv 20 (steel lance, javelin)

33 hp, 24 atk, 15 AS, 91 hit, 31 avo, 14 def, 8 res

Even with normal thunder he 2HKO’s this guy, and with 19 AS, he doubles him too.

Ah, I made a mistake there, evidently. I guess Soren and Zihark are even more evenly matched than I assumed... except for the extra movement that he has no answer to.

Now this is true on linier maps like chapter 18 and 19, but take chapter 17 just before this or chapters 20 and 21 and we get large, open maps with high mov units which can get past our defenses and attack those behind it. In chapter 20, this is especially a problem as those pesky wyverns are not, as we see here, ORKO’ed by Zihark. But they are OHKO’ed by Soren, so he can actually afford to even miss a shot before finishing the poor soul off. One of these wyverns even has a short spear, which Zihark can’t do anything about at all on the enemy phase. Now, I’m not saying “let’s have Soren solo the map”, I’m saying that we do not have to limit our movements as much with Soren as he can take the occasional 1-2 range fool and any high def armours and thus the army can progress faster with Soren than with Zihark: aka, it’s better with Soren than with Zihark as we can be more relaxed about position, in other words, more offensive, and less defensive.

Hmm, let's see...

3x Wyvern lv 15-17 (steel lance)

32 hp, 24 atk, 10 AS, 98 hit, 24 avo, 16 def, 6 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

1x Wyvern lv 17 (knight killer)

34 hp, 21 atk (28 eff), 7 AS, 95 hit, 17 avo, 17 def, 6 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

2x Wyvern lv 18 (steel lance)

35 hp, 26 atk, 10 AS, 100 hit, 24 avo, 17 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

1x Wyvern lv 18 (short spear)

33 hp, 24 atk, 10 AS, 98 hit, 24 avo, 18 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

2x Wyvern lv 19 (steel lance)

35 hp, 26 atk, 9 AS, 98 hit, 22 avo, 18 def, 8 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

Well, those are some tough cookies there, that's for sure. Even a 20/6 Zihark ranges from 31ATK (with the Steel Blade) to 35ATK (with the Silver Blade), so he can't really ORKO them reliably, relying on Adept and Crit procs. He needs the Vague Katti (in which case his proc rate climbs to 92%), or the Sonic Sword. 45 battles (Steel Sword and doubling give 4 EXP per battle), however, in 9 chapters, seems reasonable to me. He could very well have the S Rank for Vague Katti. He could easily march in and take them all on. Even his durability is decent enough to survive.

20/6 Zihark B Brom C Muarim (Wyvern or Knight Band)

37HP 79AVO 14+1+3DEF 5+1RES 63CRIT

Ha! Even with WTA, these tough enemies don't even 4HKO him! Some of the weaker enemies are even 6HKOing! And they do it with atrocious hit - around 30 display hit, or 18% real. Even if he was to get attacked five times, his chance of death would be something like 0.02 percent. I was going to suggest that he take Vantage, but now I think he no longer needs it. Oh, and Soren?

20/6 Soren B Ike C Stefan (+speed band)

33HP 69AVO 7DEF

It seems that Soren actually has comparable avoid... so the same low 18% chance exists for him to get hit. But where they differ is that Soren only needs to be hit two or three times to die. We certainly cannot expose him to 5 enemies at once.

And enemy phase is the best way to kill these guys, since they are on top of impassable cliff terrain. So your bizarre assertion that Soren can somehow go places that Zihark cannot is completely ungrounded. If anything, Zihark can go places that Soren cannot, because his durability is better and he has higher movement. In addition, your offhand remark about Zihark not being able to do anything about the Short Spear enemy may be true, but Soren's enemy phase is even worse because he cannot expose himself to multiple enemies.

Oh, and apparently Soren OHKOes them. He would need 40ATK to OHKO the weakest one. With +1 attack from his support and 14 attack from a (stupendously expensive) Wind forge, he needs 25 magic, a number he does not approach until 20/12. Really, Kirsche, 2HKOing is good enough, you didn't need to lie on Soren's behalf.

I think you'll probably say something along the lines of 'why does Zihark get Vague Katti?' Well, because it's better than throwing it in the convoy. The VK is ideal for fighting difficult opponents, so I see no reason why he shouldn't use it.

And in linear maps, where these two do get left behind in the dirt, Zihark can do nothing except twiddle his thumbs. Soren, on the other hand, can use physics to heal from afar or meteor/blizzard/bolting to attack from large distances to also take out more pesky enemies. See, Soren doesn’t have to be on the front lines to be considered useful, so the mov difference doesn’t matter. Out of range of an enemy for a direct 1-2 ranged assault (technically both Zihark and Soren have the same Atk range because of this, but whatever)? No problem, Soren will kill that oncoming Tiger who has high stats in everything (including hit) with meteor. Or how about that dragon that’s dealing 20+ damage to most of our units who also has ridiculously high HP? Bolting will whittle him down quite nicely. See, that’s what we get with Soren: Mr. Flexible. Do you need a far off guy killed because it’s going to take 2+ turns to kill him whilst he deals good damage to you? Soren’s your guy. Is Jill low on health due to over rushing and an unlucky set of RNG? Soren’s your guy. What do we need Zihark for? Other SM’s + Ravens... who he won’t even reach because of lack of mov.

Soren is unlikely to be healing with Physics... nor is it likely to be useful. Observe how Zihark is performing above. Now consider that Zihark isn't even exceptionally durable. Take Titania, for example. She has a fairly uninspiring 15DEF/11RES, but supports can boost that up a whole three points. With WTA and her 40HP, those Wyvern Riders would be 7HKOing at ~40 display hit! Oscar is even better off, with 41HP/18DEF... but also potentially 94 avoid and WTA! Oh, and you mention that Jill might be low on health... A 20/6 Jill in this chapter would have 39HP/18 or 19DEF, depending on band use. With WTA, the Wyverns would be 7HKOing her at worst with ~40 display hit. Am I supposed to be scared? It's certainly convenient of you to assume that we have a team of Paladins that will leave Zihark behind where his superior durability is useless, but equally, it renders Soren's healing almost useless. In general, it's dangerous to assume that we have such a team since it renders everyone without 8/9 move worthless.

In addition, Physics are generally reserved for the frail Rhys, since he lacks the durability to be exposed to enemies and will have the C Rank very easily.

Bolting/Meteor/Blizzard are limited commodities. We are unlikely even to Hammerne them when we have more worthy recipients such as the Rescue staff or the Sonic Sword or the Vague Katti or the Laguz Axe. What's more, Soren has trouble getting to B rank in multiple weapon types.

In fact, the team’s ability to simply rush ahead shows just how good they are, and shows just how bad enemies are. Therefore, lategame holds the least weight in the entire game. And if you want an easier earlygame, Soren’s your guy. Why? Master sealing him is very effective. Whilst both him and Zihark get bonuses from the promotion, only he has 1-2 range after it and healing for extra effectiveness. He’ll be able to keep up better with units like Marcia/Jill so he can heal them after they’ve battled long and hard so they can keep battling on the front lines, instead of having to retreat all the time (which takes turns) to get healed by Rhys/Mist, who have to stay back due to fail durability. A promoted Soren has much less durability worries, so can stay near the front lines.

Actually, I think that earlygame has the least weight since Titania exists and is incredibly awesome instead of merely moderately awesome.

And you act like Soren is the only one who can do this.

10/1 Soren C Ike w/Thunder (+speed band)

26HP 2STR 13MAG 14SKL 14SPD 7LUK 5DEF 14RES

12/1 Ilyana w/Thunder (+speed band)

26HP 4STR 12MAG 14SKL 13SPD 8LUK 5DEF 14RES

10/1 Rhys C Mia w/Light (+speed band)

27HP 3STR 16MAG 12SKL 9SPD 11LUK 4DEF 20RES

Heh, all of these people can emulate Soren's 6move/staves combo. We have plenty of alternative uses for the master seal, and Ilyana is probably the best since she's closer to level 10 (which is why I assumed BEXP for her, since Soren would need some of his own).

And later on, despite his low mov compared to the beast of a class that is the paladin. Soren can still physic heal very well, provide a useful support bonus for Ike + Stefan (more on this later) and even bolting stomp distant enemies like the dragons in chapter 27. A level 10/20 Soren, for example, has 50 effective Mt with bolting as long as 1 of Ike or Stefan is in range. That means he can deal 23-26 damage to the dragons in 1 turn. That’s almost ½ of their health. In comparison, a level 20/16 Zihark with a silver sword forge does 24 damage to the weakest dragon compared to Soren’s 26. So even with a master seal Soren can take care of the most threatening enemies on the map better than a Zihark which was leveled normally. I don’t think i even need to contest your lategame comparison because it’s completely irrelevant in the face of the fact that Zihark just can’t make such an impact to efficiency at any point in the game. All Zihark is good for is the occasional enemies which some may struggle to double, such as SM’s and Raven’s, except even that’s not good enough as other units can do that too. Take a level 20/10 Oscar. He has 22 AS right off the bat and with just 7 KW uses out of all 27 of his level-ups, he has 24 AS. That means he doubles the SM in chapter 24. In fact, that will let him pretty much double everything until the end of time. When all Zihark can do later on that Soren can’t is perfectly doable for other units, you know he’s not affecting turn count or making chapters safer/easier as he is replaceable and unnecessary. But no other unit can deal as much damage as Soren can to the strongest and most durable of enemies at such distance combined with the ability to heal. This makes Soren unique in his utility.

Wow, Soren is physic healing. Because durability is so hard to come by, right? I'll take Soren's healing seriously when it's useful. As for Soren's Bolting utility... seriously? There are something like 7 Dragons in the entire game and we only need to fight maybe three of them. Is that the best you can scrounge up?

And way to misrepresent Zihark's combat against Dragons. 20/15 Zihark with a Wyvern/Knight Band actually has capped strength, for 43ATK with a forge and his support. That's 14x2=28, so he is matching Soren. But he wins in other ways. Zihark has 29 crit and a 30% chance to Adept. The chance he procs at least one is roughly 77%. That's a 77% chance to beat Soren's offense by a country mile rather than an, er, city inch or town yard or whatever.

So again, if that is what Soren can do when early sealed, what can he do when he isn’t early sealed? Well, a 20/16 Soren can 2RKO the dragons with both a thunder forge and bolting (well, the strongest is left with single digits by the boltings). The only others who can do this are Boyd and Largo. So that means Soren’s one of the top 3 units for taking these guys down. H4x. But of course this is not all, with fire, a level 20/16 Soren ORKO’s all cats and all Tigers, without supports. A level 20/16 Zihark with a silver sword forge doesn’t ORKO Tigers, Brom or no. So not only does Soren have the flexibility to be outside of his partners support range, he doesn’t have to take a counter and face heavy damage (Zihark, on the other hand, does), doesn’t have to use a rare and expensive item and to top it off, Soren actually kills the guy. If this chapter was the whole game, Soren would be top tier.

When will you stop making mistakes? 43ATK 1-rounds every Cat and Tiger and Raven and Hawk. Even without Brom, he has a 77% chance to 1-round the Tiger. Ziihark does not want for durability. He has 108AVO at this level, and 20DEF and 44HP. Tigers barely 4HKO him at 21 display hit. woo, scaaaaary. He barely even eats counters since he has a 50.3% chance to Adept or crit before they counter-attack. He even OHKOes the Sages. If I cared about his durability and thought it was an issue, I'd argue for Vantage to give him that same chance to blick stuff before they even attack. I realise his durability is good enough, so I don't argue for it.

Now, there may only be 2 of these 3-10 range weapons available through combat/chests alone, but we can steal more and Soren isn’t exactly using them 24/7, as a chapter only lasts for ~10 turns and Soren is probably in range of enemies for the first 5-6 turns and can also physic. So I don’t think that their limitedness is really a problem, especially with hammerne.

Why would we waste the hammerne just to get 4 uses on Meteor or something? In addition, stealing siege tomes is not really practical because they have high weight, so we'd need to train Volke (like Mist, I could write a paragraph about his combat failure).

Now I know I’ve essentially written a page about how Soren crushes Zihark in chapter 28, but please remember how it relates to the rest of the debate.

Remember:

* Soren is more flexible and can perform different things, Zihark is locked to combat.

* Even when his low mov gets the best of him, Soren can, and often does, perform.

* We are not as worried as putting Soren in harm’s way as we are with Zihark as they can generally take the same number of enemies on the enemy phase, but Soren can respond to 1-2 ranged assaults.

* Soren is a complete monster in chapter 28.

for those of you who went tl;dr.

-Soren is more flexible and can do different things, but they're generally incredibly situational and not very useful and we have other people who can fill that role adequately.

-Soren cannot take the same number of enemies on the enemy phase as Zihark. Even when he faces Weapon Triangle Disadvantage, Zihark can take on large groups of powerful enemies with very low risk of death, even without Vantage, but Soren cannot since he is borderline 2HKOed.

Except, Zihark doesn’t ORKO what needs to be ORKO’ed quicker, whereas Soren doesn’t ORKO what can easily be taken care of anyway. Whereas Zihark puts himself in danger to do so, whilst Soren doesn’t.

Zihark is never in danger past his earlygame. By which I mean the chapter before you dole out some of your thousands of BEXP.

Simply play it smart: Have Soren prioritise the enemies which pose a serious threat from afar and replace Zihark with Ranulf or Haar or someone else with better mov, as they can actually do more in a chapter because of it; although remember to leave condoms in his inventory as otherwise we may get some laguz-beorc hybrid from Zihark’s free time pleasures. Eww.

A smart player would not deploy Soren. I am also amused at your suggestion of Ranulf. You really know how to goad me, don't you?

Ranulf w/ Demi Band, base level

46HP 30ATK 19AS 20DEF 51AVO

Zihark 20/10 B Brom B Muarim w/Silver Sword (Wyvern or Knight Band)

39HP 35ATK 27AS 17DEF 99AVO

Zihark has a colossal avoid lead, doubles faster enemies without a struggle, and has a large offense lead as well. This doesn't even take into account crit or Adept, or the more powerful weapons Zihark has access to. Although apparently it doesn't matter that Ranulf is taking a Demi Band and has shitty stats, as long as he has better movement than Zihark! I guess that also means Tormod is better than Soren despite needing to be fed BEXP with a funnel.

And I agree, laguz-beorc hybrids are disgusting.

Just because you’re not using him like you should be: targeting stronger enemies, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be credited for it.

Fine, he can get credit for lugging out Bolting, all 5 times he does it. Meanwhile, Zihark is actually doing good damage.

True dat, but this is a very favourable map for Zihark, as it is lacking in generals or any sort of troublesome foe, to be frank (with the exception of the berserker and the wyverns). In the case of the wyverns, Zihark either has to use a limited and expensive resource (the silver sword forge/sonic sword) to ORKO (again, Mist/Tanith for sonic sword is better), whilst Soren can simply use thunder to ORKO them. Also, the berserker doesn’t have to hit Zihark, to be able to crit Kieran, or Titania, or most units, really. And again, 100% > 99-%.

Actually, there are about 20 bajillion wyverns, so this is actually an unfavourable map for him. In addition, If we are going to send Zihark to fight the wyverns, it is really only appropiate that we give him a weapon that can kill them. After all, they are the toughest enemies on the map. If we are not going to use one of our limited forges to take them down, what are we going to use it for? The unpromoted Soldiers? The Snipers? Picking Soren's nose?

And I am still not scared by Herr Killer Axe. Take Tanith. At level 15, with B Marcia, she has 81 avoid. With any sword, she has WTA, and the Berserker cannot hit her. Tanith is not exceptionally durable, nor have I even given her the most favourable support option, but she still trivialises this opponent. In fact, any sword user is unfased. Take Makalov. Some KW use can get him to 24AS, in which case he has 70 avoid with B Astrid. A 10% display hit chance! And even if he is crit, he's left with almost 20HP. So even in this unlikely event, he is still durable enough to take a hit or two. In fact, even at that low HP, he needs two of the more powerful Wyverns to hit him, when they're on the other side of the map.

A few maps later, say chapter 26, and now we have 15 troublesome enemies: 6 wyverns, 3 tigers, Bertram and 5 generals. Yep, Bertram has got a pretty awesome def stat, and also attacks res. Aka, Soren is a fantastic opponent for him.

So when it's convenient for you, Paladins move way too fast for Zihark to do anything, but when it's inconvenient for Soren, ooh, suddenly he's teleportalling all the way to the other side of the map to kick ass and take names. The Generals do not even need to be fought on this map and we can easily go around them, unless the Meteor Sage is so scary you don't want him to notice us. Soren is not a great choice for Bertram since he won't double and barely even 3HKOes.

And 20/11 Zihark 1-rounds the Tigers,

It’s either him, or Zihark. Being able to counter 1-2 range, or not? I’d much rather put Soren there for a wyvern to attack.

Do you have a grudge against Soren?

1x Wyvern Lord lv 6 (steel lance)

39 hp, 28 atk, 12 AS, 104 hit, 28 avo, 21 def, 8 res, 7 crit, 4 cev

1x Wyvern Lord lv 8 (steel lance)

40 hp, 29 atk, 13 AS, 107 hit, 31 avo, 21 def, 9 res, 8 crit, 5 cev

1x Wyvern Lord lv 9 (silver lance)

44 hp, 34 atk, 13 AS, 112 hit, 31 avo, 22 def, 9 res, 8 crit, 5 cev

1x Wyvern lord lv 7 (steel lance)

40 hp, 29 atk, 12 AS, 105 hit, 29 avo, 19 def, 9 res, 7 crit, 5 cev

1x Wyvern Lord lv 8 (steel axe)

42 hp, 29 atk, 13 AS, 100 hit, 31 avo, 20 def, 9 res, 7 crit, 5 cev

1x Wyvern lv 9 (short spear)

42 hp, 28 atk, 13 AS, 107 hit, 31 avo, 21 def, 9 res, 8 crit, 5 cev

Just for reference, Soren needs to be 20/20 to have 39HP/9DEF... so he's 2HKOed forever. But he counters at 2-range, so it's okay (I guess). Although sacrificing Soren just so you can get rid of that Short Spear guy a turn earlier seems a little callous to me.

Ragnell is not that effective, I’m afraid:

Level 20/15 Ike with Ragnell, ‘A’ Oscar: 48 HP, 42 Atk, 27 AS, 102 avo, 21 Def

Instant fail. For a start, we may very well give Ike a Seraph Robe or HP/DEF band for increased durability against tough bosses. Second, Ragnell confers a +5 defence bonus. Third, Ike will be at max level so he can fight more effectively against Ashnard. Oh, and like a magician's show, the Soren support has vanished up your sleeve since it's not convenient. I'm sure it will be back soon, though.

His avo may be very sexy, with displayed hit rates never exceeding 36%, but he needs a little help in the offence department as he struggles a bit against Tigers and dragons. In fact, Dragons 2HKO him, so even with those low hit rates, Ike still has a reasonable chance of dying unless Soren comes to his aid. In fact, this is relying on Oscar, who for all we know is attracting attention too. So now we have two unit’s under serious threat from dragons: Oscar and Ike. So who can save them better, Soren or Zihark? Well, considering Soren doesn’t have to get up close and personal and can heal the two afterwards, I’d say Soren, but that’s just me. :/

Well, he can take B Ranulf (snigger) or B Titania for even more avoid. Like, 21 display, or a 9% real chance. Dragons will actually 3HKO him due to Ragnell. And I'm not sure what you think Soren is going to do. Sit there and get 1HKOed? And we have multiple healers by this stage. Even goddamn Mist may have finally promoted.

In fact, it’s not even efficient to solo it with Ike as the pally’s can move father and still deal good amounts of damage. And guess what? These guys want help KO’ing these toughies. Soren helps make maps go by faster and safer by taking out the strongest opponents. By taking out the weakest, Zihark doesn’t.

Whatever, I have no interest in how we're going to beat this chapter, only in what Zihark and Soren do about it.

Comparative to Ike, Oscar is faster than Soren is slow (+2 vs -1). Oscar doesn’t really care about the Ike support, all he needs is Kieran to rock ‘n’ roll. Matching mov, similar roles, what more could you want? If anything, Ike needs Soren more, as Oscar will leave Ike behind a lot. Not to mention Soren’s Atk is useful as Ike is very borderline anyway. Just take above as an example. With the Soren support, Ike could actually ORKO all the tigers. Without it, they still live to fight for their friends another day. But they’ll get no sympathy from me, as I’ll just send in Soren to help finish them off; you, on the other hand, would just leave them be to attack again whilst Zihark stands far behind panting and whining. Another turn wasted, more inefficient play to follow.

Hey, look, the Soren support is back! Conveniently, Ike's been deprived of juuuuuust enough levels that Soren's measly +1 attack actually makes a difference! And apparently, Soren can leap nimbly into the fray like a bolt of lightning on a clear day while er, Zihark is far behind? Remember, Zihark is the one with seven move and Soren is the one with six move.

This double standard is hideously pervasive, I'm afraid. Soren gets his Ike support easily (despite being one of Ike's slowest options), but Zihark has to fight for his Brom support. Zihark's lack of 2-range makes him unable to have an enemy phase (not even true), but Soren's inferior durability does not limit him. We have a team full of invincible Paladins that leave Zihark in the dust, but they also need continuous healing from Mr. E Staves And 6 Move. And Ike gets all the benefits of his Soren support, but Zihark is still back at the base.

You fail to see how fail being a fail lover of fail sub-humans is. Fail.

You fail to see that I don't care.

To summarize my rebuttal to your rebuttal, it is simpler:

* Soren is valuable as he can kill the enemies which would normally take 2+ turns to KO, thus saving turns. Zihark never does this as the units he ORKO’s can be done by any unit.

* Soren is flexible: need a healer for the earlygame? Give him a master seal. No-one to fight? Have him heal. A 1-2 ranged wyvern nearby? Don’t worry, about a thing, ‘cuz every little wyvern is gonna be dead.

* Zihark is a furry.

Soren > Zihark

To summarise my rebuttal to your rebuttal to my rebuttal, it is EVEN SIMPLER.

* Colour me unimpressed.

* 7 move > 6 move

I wonder if you can get your rebuttal below 7 words?

[Zkirsche]

It’s official, this has been my longest debate ev4h B).

I don't really see where this is going. Is this tying into Soren having a certain level later? It's certainly not tying into Soren contributing shit.

You said this:

he is not going to gain adequate EXP, which he needs since his offense is so poor at this stage.

So I showed how he can gain adequate exp. You say he needs this for his "poor" offence, so I was humoring you and showing how he can get better offence rather easily, thus, according to your logic, he can contribute.

Oh, thank goodness Soren was capable of extricating us from this completely contrived situation! It's not like Boyd, Oscar, and Shinon could all have done the exact same thing, with the added advantage that if we used them, Ike wouldn't even take a counter-attack! And it's not like against any given enemy that doesn't weigh itself down into 0AS, Soren would be unable to do this without an extremely unlikely Adept proc!

Why are you mentioning Boyd? His durability isn’t much better than Ike’s (more damage from each hit, but more HP to make up for it), so he too is going to be facing 10-11 damage from these guys. And we only have 1 healer, so this could easily build up and KO Boyd, a top tier unit. The same goes for Oscar, too. Plus, Shinon’s one unit, who might want to help with the left with those mounted knights or the hammer!fighter. Oh and by the way, Oscar only deals 14 damage to the weaker ones from chapter 4, who won’t even exist anymore, and Ike doesn’t deal 11 damage to the guy with a regal sword until level 12, which is not possible for Ike. Boyd can weaken enemies into the range Soren can kill if he doubles (which I showed earlier but you looked over:

In fact, a level 4 Boyd leaves them with a measly 4 HP – enough for Soren to finish him off even if he doesn’t double.

And to add insult to injury, the only enemies Oscar/Boyd will be doubling are the javelin users (who have 3 or less AS anyway) and the steel lance users. Against an iron lance soldier, which can have 5 or more AS, neither double. In fact, Boyd is 3RKO’ing these guys, but with 1 attack by Soren, it becomes a 2RKO. This could again mean that Boyd or another unit takes less counter attacks and thus helps them to survive.

I think Ike can be higher than level 5, as well. Given that we have no-one better to feed kills in C3 and C4, he'll be at least level 7.

Chapter 4 is lance fest, so Ike can’t actually do much there due to bad durability. In fact, the same is true with chapter 3, as a large number of enemies (4, at the very least) reside there who would love nothing more than to attack Ike. The bandits can deal 8+ damage to a level 3/0 Ike per attack. The archer and the myrmidon then deal another 9 damage, so if Ike goes to fast, he faces death rather quickly. This too will limit his exp gain, so I think level 5 is perfectly acceptable. Oh and for the record, when looking up the chapter 3 stats in a playthrough, I only got Ike to level 3 for this chapter, so even that is acceptable.

Inspiring stuff from Soren. In comparison, on his starting chapter, Zihark has to be careful he doesn't kill too much stuff.

Am I missing something here? Is that supposed to be helping efficiency in any way? Not the being careful part, as that is helpful, but the being able to have to be careful (if that makes sense) part. It doesn’t actually help the team in any way. Sooo, yeah. Pointless point is pointless.

Gatrie doesn't need to be 'everywhere'. If Soren is apparently helping us by chipping at a single unit per turn so someone can kill it, then surely Gatrie who can do that to multiple enemies on enemy phase completely obsoletes him?

You’ve ignored point number 2

Even if Gatrie > Soren at something, that doesn’t mean Soren can’t contribute as it doesn’t mean that there are no enemies to chip. As long as there are enemies to chip, Soren can contribute. Not to mention there’s that Hammer guy who can deal quite a bit of damage to Gatrie. Soren + Gatrie can kill him easily. Gatrie weakens, then Soren finishes (or vice versa), essentially keeping the damage to Gatrie to just 1 attack from the guy, and not 2. In fact, the same can be said for most units against most enemies.

Oh and also, having another melee unit attack that enemy might not be possible, as the high enemy density could easily mean that the spaces around said enemy are not available and occupied, in which case, it is either Soren or Shinon. Being one of the only 2 units who can do something is pretty cool.

Not to mention, existing > not existing.

And if we take a look a leetle bit further to the right, we'll see a Longbow Archer that can easily combo with a Javelin Knight to kill Soren. Soren can't even touch the Archers and Javelin wielders for fear of dying. He is probably our greatest liability on the map. And seriously, the Knights are not an issue for even a semi-competent player. Even goddamn Mia can pick up an Armourslayer and 3HKO with a little BEXP, and Vantage protects her from those scaaary low-HP Armour Knights.

For one thing, we can target the longbow archer on the player phase, and one counter attack does not spook Soren at all. So yes, he can touch the javelin user (singular, remember). Heck, a level 8/0 Soren (so, 400 bexp + 1 level a chapter) ORKO’s these fools so he only faces a single attack from him which can simply be vulneraried. To top it off, that same Soren has 21 HP/3 Def, meaning he doesn’t even get killed by both the javelin knight and the longbow archer. So again, Soren doesn’t afraid of anything.

Vantage doesn’t stop Mia from taking counters. A level 10/0 Mia (a level per chapter and 400 bexp: aka, same resources as Soren), has 23 HP/7Def, so she’s going to be eating 9 damage thanks to WTD. And this is a very limited resource which we might rather save for later when Mak can actually get to the armour before Soren can deal with him.

Excuse me if I don't get a stiffy over the prospect of healing some mild poison (oh noes, 2HP damage a turn in one of the easiest chapters in the game!) We also have multiple people who can go in that direction. Ilyana, Mia, Boyd. And since it's an open area, Soren needs to be careful since he can't take multiple hits.

Then we can sell it for an extra 1000 gold to help fund that “expensive” wind forge you keep harping on about later on in your post.

Most of those have mov restriction and are scared of those mages and at this point Soren > Ilyana in every way, so Ilyana’s a moot comparison. Soren can take care of the fighter quickly anyway (1-2 range + doubling), he leaves the guys in single figures. He may not deal much damage to mages, but he can survive them and get to the houses before the bandit can (who Soren can deal 20 damage to with wind, so another pair-up is perfectly possible, especially as this is another enemy who few people double and need help against).

Thanks for pointing out the obvious.

Np.

I could really care less how much BEXP you choose to dole out to Soren, providing Zihark gets a similiar amount. I am confident that under the same conditions, Zihark will perform better.

Prove it. In chapter 11 he can’t do much thanks to his positioning and in chapter 12 (the other chapter we’ve been talking about), my qualm isn’t with Zihark’s stats it’s about how unnecessary they are.

The killing edge is a perfectly viable weapon for Mia. It would be ludicrous to claim otherwise. Ike, not so much, since he has his own Regal Sword for the tougher Armour Knights and Weapon Knights, and he can often get away with a forge.

The regal sword is a limited use weapon. Since Ike usually doubles, a 40 use weapon survives only 20 rounds. That’s 4 rounds a chapter, ignoring chapter 10 for bexp (which we might not even do). Now that’s very easy to do, especially as it’s been his best weapon for so long. Therefore it might not even exist.

An iron sword forge only has 1 more mt than the killing edge, but 21-30 less crit. Not to mention it uses up a valuable slot in our forge line-up which could go to Nephenee, Brom, Kieran etcetera.

Even if Soren and Zihark have the same chance of 1-rounding, if Zihark Adepts once, he gets more chances to crit... and he does additional damage even with one adept. 1-rounding is not everything. More units can combo with Zihark to 1-round, and he can even sometimes avoid those fearsome counters that have your panties in a twist.

And here i thought you were saying Soren wasn’t useful in the earlygame chapters because all he can do is team up with people mere moments before , do you not realize the double standard here, or...?

Let’s take a closer look at their ORKO chances, shall we:

Soren= 8% (crit)

+8% * 11% (Adept + crit)

+ 11 * 92% * 8% (Adept + Hit + Crit)

Zihark= 3% (crit)

+3% * 97% (hit then crit)

+2(15%*3%) (Adept + crit)

+2(15%*97%*3%) (Adept, hit, then crit)

Aka:

Soren = 9.6896% chance to ORKO

Zihark = 7.683% chance to ORKO

So that’s still a 2% difference. In fact, the chance Zihark get’s 2 adept’s in the case he 3/4HKO’s and doesn’t crit is, surprisingly, 2%. So they actually have very similar chances of ORKO’ing enemies. And as for “teaming up”, Zihark can’t team up with anyone for the armours, and both deal the same damage to the knights thanks to WTD (which i overlooked before) with a steel sword so those are moot. Who’s left? The loldiers which Soren leaves with single digits/ORKO’s anyway, the myrmidon, who Soren leaves with 1 HP with wind? Even Rofl can finish that off. If you mean that extra possible adept proc, it isn’t even worth it:

3x Lance Knight lv 12 (steel lance)

27 hp, 20 atk, 7 AS, 85 hit, 17 avo, 11 def, 4 res, 3 crit, 3 cev

Level 12/0 Oscar with iron forge: 22 Atk

Level 12/0 Ike with iron forge: 20 Atk

Base Neph with iron forge: 20 Atk

Level 10/0 Soren with thunder: 16 Atk

Soren’s 1* 12 damage still let’s all these units, none of whom are exactly famous for their Atk, KO this guy. You might argue that there are faster mounts, but we can simply bexp these guys for those speedy ones. Neph, for example, needs, like 400 bexp to double all but the bow knights, who even Zihark doesn’t double with Steel.

Oh no, they 3HKO Zihark. They also 2HKO Soren. Even the ranged ones.

There is only 1 ranged armour, and the armours can be taken out by a combo with Soren that they don’t even matter for him. Soren merely has to take the kill to avoid a counter. In fact, i think the javelin one is the one on the arrive square, which you are so determined Soren’s never even going to reach, so it doesn’t matter. Same goes for the bow mounted knight n00b.

And Soren can't even go near the boss, who would double and 2HKO at range.

... if you’re not smart enough to have Soren equip wind for him, heck, Elwind if he’s leveled up to 11/0 at that point.

Is this supposed to impress me or something?

Am i supposed to be impressed by your lack of ability to simply re-equip something?

Well, I can think of quite a few characters that are better for the job.

Funny thing this, none of these units ARE actually better. For one thing, fewer units can team up with them for the kill (where does this sound familiar?) as they all deal less damage to them in one round. (Except Titania w/ Hammer, but i don’t think being worse than Titania makes you completely useless now does it?) And, unlike in the scenario you posted above, this time it actually matters:

it's 29HP/16DEF/5RES

Level 12/0 Oscar with iron forge: 22 Atk

Level 13/0 Ike with iron forge: 21 Atk

Base Neph with iron forge: 20 Atk

Level 10/0 Soren with thunder: 16 Atk

Level 5 Titania with Steel Axe: 26 Atk

Level 12 Boyd with Steel Axe: 25 Atk

Level 13 Kieran with Steel Axe: 24 Atk

Oscar + Kieran can’t kill him. Neph + Kieran/Boyd/Titania(w/steel) can’t kill him. Ike + Titania/Boyd/Kieran can’t kill him either. However, Soren + Oscar/Ike/Neph always kills this guy. Plus, these weapons are not these guys’ optimal weapons. Boyd and Kieran basically sacrifice their AS just to help prove your point. With it, they double much more consistently and thus can actually perform against the mounted knights. And again, they will be held up by the high enemy density by the elwind house that Soren likely gets to help anyway.

Hmm, perhaps I'm overrating the speed of this chapter

Indeed you are.

Many characters have access to 1-2 range, and many of them have more movement and Canto as well, so it is easy to manage units around the Elwind house. Zihark does not need to worry about the vigilantes, as a untransformed Mordecai can easily distract them (he has nothing better to do, and he will go there anyway to recruit Zihark).

1-2 range which is less in mt than normal iron axes. Yeah, they want to be running around with that amirite? [/sarcasm] And if they’re using canto, they’re not using their full mov, so Soren can easily keep up.

Mordecai will eventually transform, and even then Zihark is still trailing behind other units by quite a distance, so either way, Zihark isn’t doing much in this chapter.

And, like the Knight on the Arrive square, there are other people who can fight the Armour just as well, and indeed, reach the Armour faster to prevent the Thief from getting to the village. I see no reason to hold ourselves up so Soren can demonstrate his incredible 3HKOing prowess.

You reaaalllly underestimate 5/6 mov, dude. It’s not that much lower than Zihark’s. In fact, their original Atk range is the same. So if Soren’s doing nothing, Zihark’s doing nothing. But at least Soren has had the earlygame where he’s guaranteed to do at least something, chip damage or no.

It’s not as if we’re talking about 20 squares away, more like 10 or 11. Soren’s not going to be arriving that late.

What better use could we put it to?

Seeker is using a Demi Band, so his speed is only 15.

Zihark saves turns by killing them on enemy phase, before reinforcements show up and extend the chapter.

Marcia to kill ravens BEFORE they reach the boat (aka saving more turns), getting a better Neph/Jill etcetera. You could argue Marcia has bad durability, but we can quickly ferry the laguz guard over to her to help her and a level 17/0 Marcia is very comparable to Zihark durably, with the comparison being her 27 HP/11 Def vs his 29 HP/9 Def.

That’s not what the PoR enemy stats say. Heck, the boss data say it’s 18, so the -2 from the demi band makes it 16. So yeah, it’s 16.

You just repeated what you said before without countering my argument in anyway, which was that normal ravens can be defeated the turn they arrive anyway, and the last raven/Seeker can be weakened by Marcia before he arrives on the ship so even that raven can be taken out on the enemy phase. Which I said here:

Marcia’s flying ability allows her to go out and weaken Seeker so Zihark isn’t even necessary.

I see no reason that we should not complete this chapter with just an early promoted Marcia and the Laguz Lance. After all, she actually has a shot at 1-rounding Muarim. However, he is admittedly better than Zihark in this chapter. He should savour this victory, since it is his only one, and a minor one since the best way of beating this chapter does not even involve deploying him.

We can save that laguz lance for later, as it is the only one in the game, or even save some bexp for other units so Marcia doesn’t have to be level 20/1.

Soren can only get level 10 by Chapter 11 with BEXP. Since Soren is nothing really special in Chapter 8, 9, or 10, we might as well save it and spend it on Zihark, or spend it on some other character and give Zihark a larger slice of the Chapter 10 BEXPie. Unless you're suggesting that we should somehow not give any BEXP at all to Zihark, but give some to Soren.

Fair enough, I guess, but most of the levels Zihark makes will simply be erased by Soren’s faster leveling prowess thanks to not only his lower level, but player phase offence. As even you seem to agree that neither are getting much in the way of enemy phase.

I don't think Brom really gives a shit who he supports, to be honest. It simply doesn't matter who Brom 'wants' to support, or the microscopic difference that ensues. Zihark wants to support Brom much, much more than Ilyana since Brom boosts his attack, while Brom is not really fussed and is lucky to get any support at all with his yucky movement, so an intelligent player will give Brom B Nephenee/B Zihark or something to make best use of his Water affinity.

Yes, efficiency is about who Zihark wants to support, and no-one else. I mean, Brom goes into bad biorhythm and misses his only chance to actually hit the enemy. But eh, at least Zihark got that Atk support amirite? It’s not like he’s not very important at all and can be replaced or anything like that Oh wait, he is. You see, if Brom misses, he then has to clean it up on the player phase. This wastes a turn, and begs the question: who doesn’t Brom want the extra hit? Heck, Boyd isn’t exactly amazing durably and Neph could use both (her only stats with worse growths than str and def for Neph are lolmag and lolres).

I can show that Mist needs a massive BEXP dump to even reach level 20/01 promoted in a timely manner. Like, she baaarely reaches level 10 for Sealing in Chapter 16, even if she goes beyond the impossible and heals every single turn on every single chapter and we never go pacifistically and we always match the BEXP turn limit when we will probably go under it. Even if Mist was to swipe the 1200 BEXP she needs to promote without a Seal, it's for nothing. Mist still has awful combat. 10STR/17SPD? That's juuuust low enough to make me laugh at the thought of using her. But according to deluded Mist fanboys all over the world, we can give her both of the desirable and contested Arms Scrolls, and the situationally useful Sonic Sword, and it improves her offense dramatically! I think the concept of giving a healer 1200 BEXP and two Arms Scrolls and a useful weapon just so she can run around and kill a few slower enemies before it breaks is not something we should expect of even a semi-intelligent player.

So, you say she can get 9 levels by chapter 16? Well, dump ~1000 bexp in her to make her level 12/0 and we have her promoted by chapter 16. Then, she can get to, say, level 20/3 by chapter 18 from cexp + hexp (healing exp) alone fairly easily (a heal or a battle per turn should do it). Now, with a little spd band usage and str band usage, she has 11 str/19 Mag/19 AS. This, by the way, is enough to double everything except the ravens and Kayachey. Ohmygosh. With ‘A’ Mordy, ‘B’ Boyd, that’s 29 Atk with a steel sword forge. That means she’s ORKO’ing soldiers, archers, the warrior and the sages. That’s not too shabby, especially when many of the enemies she doesn’t ORKO, Zihark doesn’t either. And since you like to go on about a 1 mov difference, Mist now has 8 mov to Zihark’s 7. Heck, some of those (the wyverns, generals + mounts) can be ORKO’ed by the sonic sword; which is obviously best in her hands because of this.

Oh, and ~1000 bexp isn’t >>> 700 bexp, which you were willing to give to Zihark to save non-existent turns, whereas in this case, we get a unit that ORKO’s pretty much everyone and their mother. Clearly worth the bexp, which is already in high amounts anyway.

Plus, according to this, Mist starts with D swords, which are essentially 10 rounds of combat with a steel sword. And if that is still way too much, 1 arms scroll is not a big deal when no other units really want them. Steel axes are ‘E’ rank, so when they promote, pally’s are just fine. Other than that, there’s no other real use I can think of other than just selling the damn things. And we don’t need to sell both of them.

Thunder is not effective against Wyverns, so unless Soren somehow capped magic while I wasn't looking, he will 2HKO them. He needs 36 mt with 20 magic. Even with his support, a max mt Wind forge (I won't mention the price, I don't want to give Smash a heart attack or something if he's reading this.)

You’re right, he doesn’t OHKO them, my mistake, but ORKO’ing isn’t much worse.

Although, do you want to know who the absolute best person to give the weapon that is effective against Wyverns to? The person who fucking fights the goddamn wyverns.

If that was the only use for the sonic sword, then I would agree, but it’s not. It’s not like they’re necessary to kill the wyverns – Soren can do it just fine – and you’ve shown how Zihark does too, with a forge.

Well, Soren will be unlikely to have B Rank in Wind if he's been clinging to his beloved Thunder all this time.

Blizzard is C rank in PoR, and the base weapon level for Soren as a specialist mage in wind is... C. Aka, he can use it.

And such a fast paced army has no room for Soren's healing, either, since Mist and Tormod will actually be able to keep pace.

I thought Mist was on the bench?

And besides, Soren is good at both healing AND combat, something Tormod isn’t. (Especially if you early promote him). In fact, if you early promote Mist she isn’t at all good at combat, even with the sonic sword. I’d much rather have a unit that does 2 jobs for the price of 1.

Thanks for tying this entire debate to a completely arbitrary comparison. If Zihark has better movement and enough durability to take them and enough strength to 1-round them, then I don't think I care if he can't do it at 2 range, he's still doing it better than Soren.

I believe I have shown how Zihark hasn’t always got enough strength to ORKO them and of course, can’t counter at 1-2 range if they attack him on the enemy phase with such a weapon. So no, he isn’t doing it better than Soren.

Hmm, let's see...

He could use the Vague Katti, or Mia could use it. Or Stefan could it. Heck, even Ike could use it. Now, I could understand having vantage/wrath being a good enough reason for Mia to not use it, but Ike, for example, is very borderline without a forge. In fact, Ike/Stefan too would want the Vague Katti over Zihark against such foes. So what makes Zihark anymore deserving? In any case, this is not an unlimited resource and will run out of uses fairly fast. So this doesn’t change Zihark’s overall inability to counter these enemies. Not to mention, generals do exist, and they aren’t as easily taken down.

You are right that Zihark is pretty beast in durability, but Soren is not too shabby either, which you rightfully acknowledged.

Oh, and apparently Soren OHKOes them.

Obviously the same mistake as before (effective mt). I really need to stop debating RD before I write these.

Soren is unlikely to be healing with Physics... nor is it likely to be useful. Observe how Zihark is performing above. Now consider that Zihark isn't even exceptionally durable. Take Titania, for example. She has a fairly uninspiring 15DEF/11RES, but supports can boost that up a whole three points. With WTA and her 40HP, those Wyvern Riders would be 7HKOing at ~40 display hit! Oscar is even better off, with 41HP/18DEF... but also potentially 94 avoid and WTA! Oh, and you mention that Jill might be low on health... A 20/6 Jill in this chapter would have 39HP/18 or 19DEF, depending on band use. With WTA, the Wyverns would be 7HKOing her at worst with ~40 display hit. Am I supposed to be scared? It's certainly convenient of you to assume that we have a team of Paladins that will leave Zihark behind where his superior durability is useless, but equally, it renders Soren's healing almost useless. In general, it's dangerous to assume that we have such a team since it renders everyone without 8/9 move worthless.

Jill was merely an example character which floated in my head, and even if a unit get’s ~7RKO’ed, they still might need healing at least once in the chapter after a set of unlucky RNG’s, and Zihark most certainly cannot do it. Thus, it is an advantage for Soren.

Unfortunately, most of the good units in this game have got 8+ move. Titania/Jill/Oscar/Kieran/Marcia/Tanith/Astrid/Makalov/Mist/Mordecai/Muarim are all in the first few tiers for a reason, even though Neph, for example, has wrath+resolve pwnage, the fact that she has less mov means that she’s obsolete as the 9mov gods can complete chapters faster. Even you went as far to say that Zihark gets left behind earlier on in this debate(“Zihark isn't that much better off”), so using that idea, surely Soren > Zihark just for being able to do something.

Even in a team where there aren’t that many 8-9 mov units, Soren is only 1 mov behind Zihark, yet he has other advantages over Zihark such as being able to counter at 1-2 range, an existence in the earlygame and being more useful overall as he can clear hard enemies no one else can, whereas Zihark can’t (usually) 100% of the time.

In addition, Physics are generally reserved for the frail Rhys, since he lacks the durability to be exposed to enemies and will have the C Rank very easily.

We’re not exactly running short on physics at any point in this game as priests can’t equip staves, so Volke/Sothe can just steal them all. Aka, there’s enough for both.

Bolting/Meteor/Blizzard are limited commodities. We are unlikely even to Hammerne them when we have more worthy recipients such as the Rescue staff or the Sonic Sword or the Vague Katti or the Laguz Axe. What's more, Soren has trouble getting to B rank in multiple weapon types.

C rank.

15 uses when nothing else can be done? Not only is that situation a limited commodity, but it’s more than what Zihark has, unless he started wielding Shinsō when I wasn’t looking?

Actually, I think that earlygame has the least weight since Titania exists and is incredibly awesome instead of merely moderately awesome.

1 Awesome unit vs 10.

Heh, all of these people can emulate Soren's 6move/staves combo.

But tell me: are any of them as good? Clearly not. Soren has the highest speed and the highest def. Rhys may have more Mag, but he doesn’t get light until chapter 13 and Soren still doubles more in any case. Besides, there is more than 1 master seal.

Ilyana is probably the best since she's closer to level 10

This is unimportant as Soren is not only easy to get to level 10/0, but also is better after doing so (see above).

There are something like 7 Dragons in the entire game and we only need to fight maybe three of them.

When he can save turns and HP by killing them... yeah, this is kind of important. Better than not being able to help out, at the very least.

And way to misrepresent Zihark's combat against Dragons.

Way to misread Zihark’s stats. At 21.8 normally, he has 22.5 from his starting points. And a band can only get him to 23, which isn’t his cap. This is 41 Atk with a forge. Aka, 24 damage.

Zihark has 29 crit and a 30% chance to Adept.

Funny thing: Soren has those as well. Albeit 28 crit and 24% chance to proc adept with a thunder forge. Also, and I just checked, crit rounds down in this game. Don’t believe me? Try it out yourself. So that’s 27 crit for Zihark. So 74% for him instead. Not much of a difference, I’ll admit, but every little helps. In fact, Soren is only ~2% behind, with a 71.9% chance of adepting/critting at least once. That means that 98% of the time, Soren deals more damage than Zihark.

[Zkirsche]

When will you stop making mistakes?

Uhhh, most of these mistakes are either mistakes on your part, or the same mistake/misassumption (that thunder is effective vs wyverns, for example), so it’s really just the same mistake.

43ATK 1-rounds every Cat and Tiger and Raven and Hawk.

Except a silver sword forge level 20/15 Zihark only has 41 atk.

2x Tiger lv 11-12 (claw)

46 hp, 31 atk, 17 AS, 129 hit, 37 avo, 20 def, 9 res, 9 crit, 3 cev

Aka, not a ORKO.

Even without Brom, he has a 77% chance to 1-round the Tiger.

100% > 77%

Tigers barely 4HKO him at 21 display hit.

True, but he still has to risk getting hit by them (and dragons). One unlucky set of RNG and he’s dead. Soren on the other hand, doesn’t eat the counters.

Why would we waste the hammerne just to get 4 uses on Meteor or something? In addition, stealing siege tomes is not really practical because they have high weight, so we'd need to train Volke (like Mist, I could write a paragraph about his combat failure).

Volke starts at 12 str, after promoting, he has 14 str. At level 10/1. Aka, no training required.

As for its other options:

Rescue staff

But I thought

durability is so hard to come by, right?

:/

Besides, Soren can also use the rescue staff.

Sonic Sword

Kk, 1 use. Heck, if Mist isn’t the one using it 0 uses. It could last us the whole game, nearly. You might say > 1, but rune sword.

Vague Katti

Yes, moar weaker than silver sword weapons pl0x.

Laguz Axe.

You do realize we get 2 of these, right? And that they’re only really useful for 1 chapter (chapter 28)?

-Soren is more flexible and can do different things, but they're generally incredibly situational and not very useful and we have other people who can fill that role adequately.

-Soren cannot take the same number of enemies on the enemy phase as Zihark. Even when he faces Weapon Triangle Disadvantage, Zihark can take on large groups of powerful enemies with very low risk of death, even without Vantage, but Soren cannot since he is borderline 2HKOed.

“Adequately” meaning “not as well” and remember: we have plenty of other 22nd string combatants. Like Bastian. Woo?

3HKO’Ed at low hit rates is still very good, but Soren can actually respond to 1-2 range foes, so we don’t have to worry about them as much. And by that I mean, don’t have to waste a player phase killing as Soren does it on the enemy phase.

Vantage is better on Neph anyway for Vantage + Wrath lulz.

Zihark is never in danger past his earlygame.

Lol, how naive:

Level 15/0 Zihark with a steel sword: 27 HP, 44 Avo, 9 Def, 1 Res

2x Soldier lv 13 with a steel lance: 30 hp, 18 atk, 4 AS, 93 hit

1x Myrmidon lv 13 with a steel sword: 25 hp, 18 atk, 11 AS, 104 hit

1x Fighter lv 13 with a steel axe: 35 hp, 22 atk, 5 AS, 85 hit

1x Mage lv 11 with fire: 22 hp, 13 atk, 8 AS, 111 hit

Norris lv 5 with a longbow [d], steel bow: 35 hp, 18 atk, 14 AS, 105 hit

All of these guys 3RKO Zihark at relatively high hit rates. And this is ignoring the killing edge myrmidon who has 28 listed hit against Zihark. In fact, he has a 19% chance of insta-blicking Zihark. This is also ignoring the halberdiers on the walkways that we might want Zihark fighting. Overall, this isn’t amazing, and Zihark faces real chances of death given more than 1 enemy phase exposure, which even Soren can take.

So yeah, Zihark has durability problems at the start.

A smart player would not deploy Soren. I am also amused at your suggestion of Ranulf. You really know how to goad me, don't you?

The Ranulf + Haar suggestions were actually jokes to try and help show you that + mov doesn’t mean everything, as you seem to suggest that these guys are virtually nothing in comparison to them. You see, it did make you laugh for a reason.

The point about Soren is not something to be hand waved, however. By making him fight Sages, you are wasting his talents, so stop moaning about it and use him efficiently: target those generals and dragons which trouble most units. Then you’ll see how unique and therefore useful he is. You could say I’m wasting Zihark’s talent by having him fight Generals, but anyone can fight scrub units effectively: it takes real skill to take out those which many struggle against.

And I agree, laguz-beorc hybrids are disgusting.

Well, that just made things awkward :/

Actually, there are about 20 bajillion wyverns, so this is actually an unfavorable map for him.

He does better against wyverns than he does generals/tigers, however.

And I am still not scared by Herr Killer Axe.

Why should you be when you are only looking at those with high avo (Tanith) or high durability overall (Makalov). Let’s take a look at Boyd, for example. Now, with ‘A’ Brom, ‘B’ Titania, a level 20/16 Boyd has 58 HP/59 avo/15 Ddg/15 Def. This means that the berserker has an 8% chance of leaving Boyd in single digits. Now Boyd being in single digits IS something very scary indeed, as his avo is quite frankly laughable. Muarim too can be left quite damaged, and of course our other healers are simply quaking in their boots.

So when it's convenient for you, Paladins move way too fast for Zihark to do anything, but when it's inconvenient for Soren, ooh, suddenly he's teleportalling all the way to the other side of the map to kick ass and take names.

He doesn’t have to teleport, he just has to use his 10 range weapon to deal heavy damage to weaken the guy.

Do you have a grudge against Soren?

No, that’s why I said:

Now, I’m not saying “let’s have Soren solo the map”, I’m saying that we do not have to limit our movements as much with Soren as he can take the occasional 1-2 range fool and any high def armours and thus the army can progress faster with Soren than with Zihark: aka, it’s better with Soren than with Zihark as we can be more relaxed about position, in other words, more offensive, and less defensive.

For a start, we may very well give Ike a Seraph Robe or HP/DEF band for increased durability against tough bosses.

Seraph robes are hard to come by and Ike’s HP is fine enough as it is most of the time. Plus, see below.

Second, Ragnell confers a +5 defence bonus.

You’re right, but my main point was about offence anyway.

Third, Ike will be at max level so he can fight more effectively against Ashnard

Ashnard’s next chapter and this is a high exp giving chapter.

Oh, and like a magician's show, the Soren support has vanished up your sleeve since it's not convenient.

Well, you seem to have it in your head that it isn’t useful, so I’m showing you how it is. Excuse me if that involves showing his performance without the support, but i thought that was the basics in debating this stuff.

Oh, and like a magician's show, the Soren support has vanished up your sleeve since it's not convenient.

Well, he can take B Ranulf (snigger) or B Titania for even more avoid.

Offence was the main point, defense was supposed to be an offhand remark. Besides, even 9 real will build up over time. How about 10 turns of it? Ouch, looks like one of Ike/Oscar is dead.

Sit there and get 1HKOed?

No, Ike’s going to come and finish the thing off. Heck, if Soren hit the dragon with bolting beforehand, Ike’s help isn’t even necessary.

And we have multiple healers by this stage.

And none of them are quite as good as Soren is and none of them are named Zihark.

Whatever, I have no interest in how we're going to beat this chapter, only in what Zihark and Soren do about it.

Even when it has relevance as it means these guys are doing things?

Hey, look, the Soren support is back! Conveniently, Ike's been deprived of juuuuuust enough levels that Soren's measly +1 attack actually makes a difference!

Hey! I see you’ve brought no statistical evidence showing Soren’s support is worthless OR that Ike doesn’t mind an ‘A’ with Soren over Oscar and instead tried to make me look like I’m making a non-existent double standard. How sweet.

In all seriousness, though. You also haven’t responded anything to the whole Soren matches mov better with Ike or shown how Brom’s lack of hit supports doesn’t matter. Heck, I don’t think you’ve once questioned them being useful for Stefan, and if he’s good for Stefan, and Zihark’s good for nobody (and bad for one unit (Brom)), then how does Soren not win supports?

Soren can leap nimbly into the fray like a bolt of lightning on a clear day while er, Zihark is far behind? Remember, Zihark is the one with seven move and Soren is the one with six move.

And remember Soren has a ten range weapon and Zihark only has a 1 range weapon. Don’t try and make it as if I’m the one who thinks these guys are being left in the dirt, i didn’t even bring it up, it was you that was saying they fall behind, and I’m just using that against you by showing you how Soren can actually do things when he’s left behind. Check my opener: it says nothing about 9 mov units. I even Ctrl+F’ed it.

To summarise my rebuttal to your rebuttal to my rebuttal, it is EVEN SIMPLER.

True dat, but since this is my third post, I kinda need to sum it all up for ease for the judges:

* Soren actually exists in the earlygame, and can team up with teammates effectively to help speed up enemy killing.

* Zihark has existent durability problems at the start of the game, and because he doesn’t have 1-2 range, he can only really face as many enemies on the enemy phase as Soren before risking death: 1 enemy.

* Soren is better at dealing with the tough enemies from the Big Bang to 2012, something which very few other units can do, making him an irreplaceable part of the battlefield. Zihark however, does what pretty much every generic fighter does.

* In the event where neither are in range to kill things, Soren can heal other units in the event of some unlucky RNG’s or attack using long-range tomes like bolting. Zihark can do none of these things.

* Soren provides more helpful bonuses to other units, whereas Zihark just provides overkill durability to already durable units: Brom + Muarim.

Soren > Zihark.

I wonder if you can get your rebuttal below 7 words?

I’m sorry everyone, I let the team down. I no longer deserve the title of t3h 1337357.

[Anouleth]

You said this:

So I showed how he can gain adequate exp. You say he needs this for his "poor" offence, so I was humoring you and showing how he can get better offence rather easily, thus, according to your logic, he can contribute.

His experience gain is still slow. Less than a level and a half per chapter, and this is in a Defend chapter where we can feed him kills at our leisure and his movement isn't an issue? I dread to think how much EXP he'll be gaining down the road. Meaning we need to make it up with BEXP. Not that it's surprising from a unit locked to attacking on Player Phase.

Why are you mentioning Boyd? His durability isn’t much better than Ike’s (more damage from each hit, but more HP to make up for it), so he too is going to be facing 10-11 damage from these guys. And we only have 1 healer, so this could easily build up and KO Boyd, a top tier unit. The same goes for Oscar, too. Plus, Shinon’s one unit, who might want to help with the left with those mounted knights or the hammer!fighter. Oh and by the way, Oscar only deals 14 damage to the weaker ones from chapter 4, who won’t even exist anymore, and Ike doesn’t deal 11 damage to the guy with a regal sword until level 12, which is not possible for Ike. Boyd can weaken enemies into the range Soren can kill if he doubles (which I showed earlier but you looked over:

Boyd can attack enemies on enemy phase. So an enemy attacks Boyd and Ike can finish it off. Oscar has enough durability on his own. 27HP/9DEF, going to 28HP/9DEF when he levels. Even the stronger Soldiers will probably only 4HKO him. This map isn't 'Steel Lance Soldiers Only', y'know.

Hammer guy is a joke. 0 AS and awful accuracy.

And to add insult to injury, the only enemies Oscar/Boyd will be doubling are the javelin users (who have 3 or less AS anyway) and the steel lance users. Against an iron lance soldier, which can have 5 or more AS, neither double. In fact, Boyd is 3RKO’ing these guys, but with 1 attack by Soren, it becomes a 2RKO. This could again mean that Boyd or another unit takes less counter attacks and thus helps them to survive.

Oh, it 'could', but it could do nothing, more likely, when we already have Gatrie and Shinon who have nothing better to do than weaken stuff. You said that they might be off somewhere else - where else? This is not a big map, nor is it a particularly difficult map either, and if we run into trouble, Titania is still Goddess.

And Oscar/Boyd not doubling Iron Lance soldiers is such a problem, where does that leave Soren who can only double Steel Lance Soldiers and can't attack Javelin Soldiers?

Chapter 4 is lance fest, so Ike can’t actually do much there due to bad durability. In fact, the same is true with chapter 3, as a large number of enemies (4, at the very least) reside there who would love nothing more than to attack Ike. The bandits can deal 8+ damage to a level 3/0 Ike per attack. The archer and the myrmidon then deal another 9 damage, so if Ike goes to fast, he faces death rather quickly. This too will limit his exp gain, so I think level 5 is perfectly acceptable. Oh and for the record, when looking up the chapter 3 stats in a playthrough, I only got Ike to level 3 for this chapter, so even that is acceptable.

We also have Gatrie and Shinon, who again, have absolutely nothing better to do than feed kills to Ike. He can probably get a kill every player phase. Then again, these are short chapters, so I'm probably overestimating his experience gain.

Am I missing something here? Is that supposed to be helping efficiency in any way? Not the being careful part, as that is helpful, but the being able to have to be careful (if that makes sense) part. It doesn’t actually help the team in any way. Sooo, yeah. Pointless point is pointless.

No, it doesn't really make sense to me.

You’ve ignored point number 2

Even if Gatrie > Soren at something, that doesn’t mean Soren can’t contribute as it doesn’t mean that there are no enemies to chip. As long as there are enemies to chip, Soren can contribute. Not to mention there’s that Hammer guy who can deal quite a bit of damage to Gatrie. Soren + Gatrie can kill him easily. Gatrie weakens, then Soren finishes (or vice versa), essentially keeping the damage to Gatrie to just 1 attack from the guy, and not 2. In fact, the same can be said for most units against most enemies.

Soren chipping an enemy is not really a contribution if Gatrie could have done it anyway on his own. In addition, Gatrie does not take significant damage from the Hammer fighter, who deals maybe 14 damage to Gatrie's 31HP. Gatrie 3HKOes, so he can let the Hammer guy attack him on Enemy Phase and finish him on Player Phase of next turn, or better yet, give the kill to Oscar/Ike/Boyd who will have better accuracy and want the EXP. 17HP is plenty to survive when the majority of enemies deal less than 5 damage, and some deal 0.

Oh and also, having another melee unit attack that enemy might not be possible, as the high enemy density could easily mean that the spaces around said enemy are not available and occupied, in which case, it is either Soren or Shinon. Being one of the only 2 units who can do something is pretty cool.

When it's not really necessary anyway, it's not 'pretty cool'. Zihark is one of the 2 units that can inspire an pointless FE10 debate against a superior character despite being clearly inferior, the other being Aran, yet that doesn't make him cool.

Not to mention, existing > not existing.

Not being the worst character on the team > being the worst character on the team.

For one thing, we can target the longbow archer on the player phase, and one counter attack does not spook Soren at all. So yes, he can touch the javelin user (singular, remember). Heck, a level 8/0 Soren (so, 400 bexp + 1 level a chapter) ORKO’s these fools so he only faces a single attack from him which can simply be vulneraried. To top it off, that same Soren has 21 HP/3 Def, meaning he doesn’t even get killed by both the javelin knight and the longbow archer. So again, Soren doesn’t afraid of anything.

How do we target Herr Longbow on Player Phase? We cannot just elbow our way through the Knights. And one counter attack most certainly does spook Soren. The Javelin Knight has 15ATK to level 8 Soren's 21HP/3DEF. The Steel Bow user can easily finish him off, even if the Longbow user does not quite do it.

I would also like to see Soren 1-round the Knights. That requires us to give him a forge straight away, when we only have one available, shafting everyone else. It's also costly. A max mt Thunder costs 6600, and we only have 7500 from our starting funds plus the Red Gem. Even selling the Ashera Icon, which has it's uses (to prevent Thunder magic crits, especially Bolting. Heddwyn has 15 crit with it, and even top tiers like Jill can be OHKOed or left on single digit HP), still leaves us with 11500 gold, so Soren is taking half of all the money in the kitty just for himself. Something that costly should really wait until after the Chapter 10 windfall.

Vantage doesn’t stop Mia from taking counters. A level 10/0 Mia (a level per chapter and 400 bexp: aka, same resources as Soren), has 23 HP/7Def, so she’s going to be eating 9 damage thanks to WTD. And this is a very limited resource which we might rather save for later when Mak can actually get to the armour before Soren can deal with him.

Armourslayer is most assuredly not worth 'saving'. Once Steel Blades and Steel forges appear, it's days are numbered. Armourslayer has only 14 effective mt, a Steel forge has 13 mt and a Steel Blade has 11 effective mt. I mean, we even get a second in Chapter 17. And this is probably the densest area for Armours in the entire game, both in number and in the way they're in a big clump.

Then we can sell it for an extra 1000 gold to help fund that “expensive” wind forge you keep harping on about later on in your post.

We'd need a bit more than 1000 gold. More like 10000. And I'm not really convinced that Soren is vital to this effort anyway, when Boyd/Mia/Ilyana can take care of themselves.

Most of those have mov restriction and are scared of those mages and at this point Soren > Ilyana in every way, so Ilyana’s a moot comparison. Soren can take care of the fighter quickly anyway (1-2 range + doubling), he leaves the guys in single figures. He may not deal much damage to mages, but he can survive them and get to the houses before the bandit can (who Soren can deal 20 damage to with wind, so another pair-up is perfectly possible, especially as this is another enemy who few people double and need help against).

Why is Soren > Ilyana in every way? Lets assume Soren gained five levels between C5/6/7/8, which seems in line with your earlier claims about his Exp gain. Now, Soren is level 6, so he would be the same level as Ilyana. So if we give them 400 BEXP each, what do we get?

Ilyana level 10 w/Thunder

22HP 14ATK 9AS 26AVO 3DEF 12RES

Soren level 10 w/Thunder

22HP 16ATK 8AS 23AVO 3DEF 12RES

Excuse me if 'Soren > Ilyana in every way' is not immediately obvious. Maybe if you gave Soren more BEXP than Ilyana, but so what? Neither can double the Myrmidons, neither can double the Bandito, both are generally 3HKOing the axe users. Soren's only clear advantage is Adept. But y'know who takes care of the Fighters even better? Mia. She 2HKOes with a Iron forge, she can take them on Enemy Phase, and if a weakened one attacks her she blicks him with Vantage. Or Boyd, who 3HKOes and doubles with simple Iron and 2HKOes with a forge can can take them on Enemy Phase too. So I'm not really convinced that Team Soren is necessary. Boyd even OHKOes the Mages with Steel!

The regal sword is a limited use weapon. Since Ike usually doubles, a 40 use weapon survives only 20 rounds. That’s 4 rounds a chapter, ignoring chapter 10 for bexp (which we might not even do). Now that’s very easy to do, especially as it’s been his best weapon for so long. Therefore it might not even exist.

And eventually Ike will ram his level cap and we'll stop using him. And on some levels, he won't even use it at all since it's Laguz or whatever. And eventually we'll gain access to more powerful weapons and he won't even care about the ~60% chance to crit that KE offers since his strength is good enough.

An iron sword forge only has 1 more mt than the killing edge, but 21-30 less crit. Not to mention it uses up a valuable slot in our forge line-up which could go to Nephenee, Brom, Kieran etcetera.

Didn't stop you from handing a Forge to Soren as soon as I said 'can't even attack Javelineers'.

The fact is that there are only three people who can even use the Killing Edge, and alternative powerful weapons exist for them, so it's not ridiculous to suggest that Zihark will get some use out of the KE (if Mia exists) or ALL use out of the KE (if Mia does not exist).

And here i thought you were saying Soren wasn’t useful in the earlygame chapters because all he can do is team up with people mere moments before , do you not realize the double standard here, or...?

There is only one reason to 'team up' with other characters in C5 - so Soren can weaken for another person to take the kill and gain experience. After all, it's impossible to save turns on that chapter and Titania can get all the items. But if another person can weaken for Ike/Oscar/Boyd to take the kill and gain experience, like Gatrie/Shinon, Soren is obsolete. That is not the case later on, in Rout chapters or wherever where freeing up another character to attack has a clear benefit. There's no benefit to freeing up Gatrie/Shinon in C5, since all they'll do is sit around with their thumbs up their asses.

Let’s take a closer look at their ORKO chances, shall we:

Soren= 8% (crit)

+8% * 11% (Adept + crit)

+ 11 * 92% * 8% (Adept + Hit + Crit)

Zihark= 3% (crit)

+3% * 97% (hit then crit)

+2(15%*3%) (Adept + crit)

+2(15%*97%*3%) (Adept, hit, then crit)

Aka:

Soren = 9.6896% chance to ORKO

Zihark = 7.683% chance to ORKO

So that’s still a 2% difference. In fact, the chance Zihark get’s 2 adept’s in the case he 3/4HKO’s and doesn’t crit is, surprisingly, 2%. So they actually have very similar chances of ORKO’ing enemies. And as for “teaming up”, Zihark can’t team up with anyone for the armours, and both deal the same damage to the knights thanks to WTD (which i overlooked before) with a steel sword so those are moot. Who’s left? The loldiers which Soren leaves with single digits/ORKO’s anyway, the myrmidon, who Soren leaves with 1 HP with wind? Even Rofl can finish that off. If you mean that extra possible adept proc, it isn’t even worth it:

3x Lance Knight lv 12 (steel lance)

27 hp, 20 atk, 7 AS, 85 hit, 17 avo, 11 def, 4 res, 3 crit, 3 cev

Level 12/0 Oscar with iron forge: 22 Atk

Level 12/0 Ike with iron forge: 20 Atk

Base Neph with iron forge: 20 Atk

Level 10/0 Soren with thunder: 16 Atk

Soren’s 1* 12 damage still let’s all these units, none of whom are exactly famous for their Atk, KO this guy. You might argue that there are faster mounts, but we can simply bexp these guys for those speedy ones. Neph, for example, needs, like 400 bexp to double all but the bow knights, who even Zihark doesn’t double with Steel.

And you ignored my point, that Zihark's chance to Adept merely once gives him an edge. 28% percent chance to hit three times is an edge over nothing.

There is only 1 ranged armour, and the armours can be taken out by a combo with Soren that they don’t even matter for him. Soren merely has to take the kill to avoid a counter. In fact, i think the javelin one is the one on the arrive square, which you are so determined Soren’s never even going to reach, so it doesn’t matter. Same goes for the bow mounted knight n00b.

Why are we giving kills to Soren? A few paragraphs ago, you were all hyped up about Soren's ability to protect others from scaaaary counter-attacks, but now, other people are weakening so that he won't get counter-attacked himself.

I wasn't sure about the placement of the Knights, to be honest.

... if you’re not smart enough to have Soren equip wind for him, heck, Elwind if he’s leveled up to 11/0 at that point.

Oh, I guess he'll just get 2HKOed and need to run away and heal. That's okay too. Although he's limited by needing to have Wind equipped.

Funny thing this, none of these units ARE actually better. For one thing, fewer units can team up with them for the kill (where does this sound familiar?) as they all deal less damage to them in one round. (Except Titania w/ Hammer, but i don’t think being worse than Titania makes you completely useless now does it?) And, unlike in the scenario you posted above, this time it actually matters:

And since he has a Javelin, Soren doesn't even want to attack.

Level 12/0 Oscar with iron forge: 22 Atk

Level 13/0 Ike with iron forge: 21 Atk

Base Neph with iron forge: 20 Atk

Level 10/0 Soren with thunder: 16 Atk

Level 5 Titania with Steel Axe: 26 Atk

Level 12 Boyd with Steel Axe: 25 Atk

Level 13 Kieran with Steel Axe: 24 Atk

Oscar + Kieran can’t kill him. Neph + Kieran/Boyd/Titania(w/steel) can’t kill him. Ike + Titania/Boyd/Kieran can’t kill him either. However, Soren + Oscar/Ike/Neph always kills this guy. Plus, these weapons are not these guys’ optimal weapons. Boyd and Kieran basically sacrifice their AS just to help prove your point. With it, they double much more consistently and thus can actually perform against the mounted knights. And again, they will be held up by the high enemy density by the elwind house that Soren likely gets to help anyway.

I have no idea why Nephenee is at base level. Or why Ike is failing to use his Regal Sword or even the Armourslayer. Or why I care that Boyd and Kieran are sacrificing their AS when this guy is literally the last enemy in the level we need to fight. If you're that scared, give them a forge, too.

And Canto means that Oscar/Kieran/Titania will not be held up that much, since they can kill an enemy and then move forward.

1-2 range which is less in mt than normal iron axes. Yeah, they want to be running around with that amirite? [/sarcasm] And if they’re using canto, they’re not using their full mov, so Soren can easily keep up.

No, if they use Canto, they ARE using their full move. That's the idea, you hit an enemy and then move further forward, or to the side. You don't go backward.

Mordecai will eventually transform, and even then Zihark is still trailing behind other units by quite a distance, so either way, Zihark isn’t doing much in this chapter.

Mordecai can Smite Zihark towards the other units. Again, he has nothing better to do.

You reaaalllly underestimate 5/6 mov, dude. It’s not that much lower than Zihark’s. In fact, their original Atk range is the same. So if Soren’s doing nothing, Zihark’s doing nothing. But at least Soren has had the earlygame where he’s guaranteed to do at least something, chip damage or no.

And you underestimate the difference between 6 movement and 7 movement. And if the best Soren can do in his earlygame is a bit of tiny chip damage to help some other characters gain EXP, I'd say that the difference between Soren's earlygame and Zihark's earlygame is less that the difference betweem Soren's movement and Zihark's movement.

It’s not as if we’re talking about 20 squares away, more like 10 or 11. Soren’s not going to be arriving that late.

Sure, it's only 10 or 11 away if we give Mr. Squishy Mage the best deployment slot. If he gets a bad deployment slot, he'll be trailing behind with Zihark... worse than Zihark, actually.

Marcia to kill ravens BEFORE they reach the boat (aka saving more turns), getting a better Neph/Jill etcetera. You could argue Marcia has bad durability, but we can quickly ferry the laguz guard over to her to help her and a level 17/0 Marcia is very comparable to Zihark durably, with the comparison being her 27 HP/11 Def vs his 29 HP/9 Def.

Marcia would need more BEXP than Zihark to reach that level. Like, maybe 3 more levels. If she's level 14 instead of 17, she has issues since even with Iron forge, she has only 23MT, so she 3HKOes and doesn't double. In addition, Ravens come from multiple directions. Marcia is awesome, but she can't be in two places at once. In fact, even at level 17, she only 2HKOes the weaker Ravens and still doesn't double.

That’s not what the PoR enemy stats say. Heck, the boss data say it’s 18, so the -2 from the demi band makes it 16. So yeah, it’s 16.

I was accidentally looking at the NM stats. My mistake... although Zihark can still double Seeker.

You just repeated what you said before without countering my argument in anyway, which was that normal ravens can be defeated the turn they arrive anyway, and the last raven/Seeker can be weakened by Marcia before he arrives on the ship so even that raven can be taken out on the enemy phase. Which I said here:

No, they arrive on Enemy Phase. Only by ORKOing can you take them out on the turn they arrive.

We can save that laguz lance for later, as it is the only one in the game, or even save some bexp for other units so Marcia doesn’t have to be level 20/1.

The Laguz Lance may be great and all, but it's never going to save as many turns in any chapter as it is in Chapter 15. Neither is the BEXP. If we're not going to spend BEXP when it provably saves us turns, when are we going to spend it?

In addition, there are numerous other advantages to having a promoted Marcia, because she kicks ass.

Fair enough, I guess, but most of the levels Zihark makes will simply be erased by Soren’s faster leveling prowess thanks to not only his lower level, but player phase offence. As even you seem to agree that neither are getting much in the way of enemy phase.

Even though I have shown already that Zihark can still ORKO most enemies?

Yes, efficiency is about who Zihark wants to support, and no-one else. I mean, Brom goes into bad biorhythm and misses his only chance to actually hit the enemy. But eh, at least Zihark got that Atk support amirite? It’s not like he’s not very important at all and can be replaced or anything like that Oh wait, he is. You see, if Brom misses, he then has to clean it up on the player phase. This wastes a turn, and begs the question: who doesn’t Brom want the extra hit? Heck, Boyd isn’t exactly amazing durably and Neph could use both (her only stats with worse growths than str and def for Neph are lolmag and lolres).

If Brom fails to get his piddling +5 hit and has to suffer the indignity of an extra 1% chance to miss when using Javelins, it seems to me to be an infinitely small disadvantage, comparable to Soren forcing Ike to go without a support until they reach their B Rank.

Every single one of Boyd's options gives him defense, and most are actually faster than Brom. And Brom can actually support Zihark and Nephenee (he's not a one-woman guy).

So, you say she can get 9 levels by chapter 16? Well, dump ~1000 bexp in her to make her level 12/0 and we have her promoted by chapter 16. Then, she can get to, say, level 20/3 by chapter 18 from cexp + hexp (healing exp) alone fairly easily (a heal or a battle per turn should do it). Now, with a little spd band usage and str band usage, she has 11 str/19 Mag/19 AS. This, by the way, is enough to double everything except the ravens and Kayachey. Ohmygosh. With ‘A’ Mordy, ‘B’ Boyd, that’s 29 Atk with a steel sword forge. That means she’s ORKO’ing soldiers, archers, the warrior and the sages. That’s not too shabby, especially when many of the enemies she doesn’t ORKO, Zihark doesn’t either. And since you like to go on about a 1 mov difference, Mist now has 8 mov to Zihark’s 7. Heck, some of those (the wyverns, generals + mounts) can be ORKO’ed by the sonic sword; which is obviously best in her hands because of this.

And ALL we had to do was give her a thousand BEXP and now she's on par offensively with some turd like Shinon. Seriously, 1000 BEXP fixes ANYONE. BEXP Janaff to level 12 (which is less BEXP, btw, 868 to Mist's 959, plus he takes his BEXP in Chapter 18 while Mist takes hers in Chapter 9), and he ORKOes Soldiers and archers and sages (not the Warrior, but she flubs if he has the Bow), plus he has equipped), and even doubles some stuff she doesn't since he has 22AS to her 18/19 (depending on whether you knocked off weight from her forge), like Ravens which he 1-rounds.

Oh, and ~1000 bexp isn’t >>> 700 bexp, which you were willing to give to Zihark to save non-existent turns, whereas in this case, we get a unit that ORKO’s pretty much everyone and their mother. Clearly worth the bexp, which is already in high amounts anyway.

Sure, she ORKO's until the sword breaks and she goes back to being completely dependent on forges.

Plus, according to this, Mist starts with D swords, which are essentially 10 rounds of combat with a steel sword. And if that is still way too much, 1 arms scroll is not a big deal when no other units really want them. Steel axes are ‘E’ rank, so when they promote, pally’s are just fine. Other than that, there’s no other real use I can think of other than just selling the damn things. And we don’t need to sell both of them.

Any Paladin wants them. I always have difficulty getting them to A Rank Axes, and if noone else, Kieran may want to work on Bow rank so that someone can make use of the Brave and Laguz and Killer Bows (which would go to waste otherwise).

If that was the only use for the sonic sword, then I would agree, but it’s not. It’s not like they’re necessary to kill the wyverns – Soren can do it just fine – and you’ve shown how Zihark does too, with a forge.

It's the only use that doesn't involve giving a thousand BEXP to Mist for a sub-par combatant, and it saves us having to forge or use stronger weapons later on when Wyverns get even sillier.

Blizzard is C rank in PoR, and the base weapon level for Soren as a specialist mage in wind is... C. Aka, he can use it.

My mistake. He can probably C Rank all three.

I thought Mist was on the bench?

That was a joke. I'm perfectly fine with Sealing her so she can heal.

And besides, Soren is good at both healing AND combat, something Tormod isn’t. (Especially if you early promote him). In fact, if you early promote Mist she isn’t at all good at combat, even with the sonic sword. I’d much rather have a unit that does 2 jobs for the price of 1.

Both of them do healing better than Soren due to 8 move. Magic is irrelevant, when Mend heals enough. Both even use the Rescue staff better.

I believe I have shown how Zihark hasn’t always got enough strength to ORKO them and of course, can’t counter at 1-2 range if they attack him on the enemy phase with such a weapon. So no, he isn’t doing it better than Soren.

I believe I have shown that Zihark should have the strength to ORKO in the hands of a competent player, and even if Soren can counter at 2-range on the enemy phase, he can't survive.

He could use the Vague Katti, or Mia could use it. Or Stefan could it. Heck, even Ike could use it. Now, I could understand having vantage/wrath being a good enough reason for Mia to not use it, but Ike, for example, is very borderline without a forge. In fact, Ike/Stefan too would want the Vague Katti over Zihark against such foes. So what makes Zihark anymore deserving? In any case, this is not an unlimited resource and will run out of uses fairly fast. So this doesn’t change Zihark’s overall inability to counter these enemies. Not to mention, generals do exist, and they aren’t as easily taken down.

Dunno why Ike would use it. His strength is high enough to 2HKO with a forge. And really, this kind of enemy is what forges are for.

It doesn't really matter if Ike/Stefan want the VK to fight them, because Zihark is the one fighting the Wyverns, not Ike/Stefan. Their desires are therefore irrelevant. In fact, they're actually worse with it. Stefan will burn uses with Astra. Ike may not have Aether, and even if he does, he doesn't have innate crit, so his chance to ORKO is lower. So thank you for mentioning them and reminding me to point out why Zihark is the best WK user.

Oh no, it might run out. I guess you have me there - if the VK runs out, and so does the Sonic Sword, then I guess Zihark is kinda screwed in Chapter 20. However, they have only been around for a handful of chapters with few tough enemies that actually warrant their use, and we don't see Wyverns again until a handful show up in Chapter 23 that we may not even fight since they appear behind us. After that, Hammerne exists.

You are right that Zihark is pretty beast in durability, but Soren is not too shabby either, which you rightfully acknowledged.

Umm, I'm sorry? I pointed out that he has the same avoid as Zihark, but that does not mean he is somehow safe. He is certainly not capable of the same enemy phase action that Zihark is, and enemy phase is very possible for any unit on this chapter since it's quite small.

Jill was merely an example character which floated in my head, and even if a unit get’s ~7RKO’ed, they still might need healing at least once in the chapter after a set of unlucky RNG’s, and Zihark most certainly cannot do it. Thus, it is an advantage for Soren.

A very minor and situational advantage.

Unfortunately, most of the good units in this game have got 8+ move. Titania/Jill/Oscar/Kieran/Marcia/Tanith/Astrid/Makalov/Mist/Mordecai/Muarim are all in the first few tiers for a reason, even though Neph, for example, has wrath+resolve pwnage, the fact that she has less mov means that she’s obsolete as the 9mov gods can complete chapters faster. Even you went as far to say that Zihark gets left behind earlier on in this debate(“Zihark isn't that much better off”), so using that idea, surely Soren > Zihark just for being able to do something.

Oh, Zihark isn't that much better off, but he's still better off.

Even in a team where there aren’t that many 8-9 mov units, Soren is only 1 mov behind Zihark, yet he has other advantages over Zihark such as being able to counter at 1-2 range, an existence in the earlygame and being more useful overall as he can clear hard enemies no one else can, whereas Zihark can’t (usually) 100% of the time.

And Zihark has advantages as well, like far superior durability, and most of those things are barely advantages at all. Many units can kill Generals, only units with lower strength such as Nephenee, Mia, and Zihark balk, and even they can ORKO with some work. Being able to counter at 2-range is not a valuable trait when you are limited by poor movement and durability from having a decent enemy phase in the first place. And his earlygame existence is spent being your worst character, barely even worth deploying and only contributing by weakening other enemies.

We’re not exactly running short on physics at any point in this game as priests can’t equip staves, so Volke/Sothe can just steal them all. Aka, there’s enough for both.

If Volke and Sothe are on the front lines, stealing staves, then Zihark should also be on the frontlines taking advantage of his durability lead. Right?

In addition, one healer is more than enough, as everyone is so durable. Except Soren, but he can't heal himself anyway.

15 uses when nothing else can be done? Not only is that situation a limited commodity, but it’s more than what Zihark has, unless he started wielding Shinsō when I wasn’t looking?

Zihark has a move advantage, so he will be able to fight more enemies with a weapon he can actually double with.

1 Awesome unit vs 10.

Earlygame chapters are smaller, so you only need one.

But tell me: are any of them as good? Clearly not. Soren has the highest speed and the highest def. Rhys may have more Mag, but he doesn’t get light until chapter 13 and Soren still doubles more in any case. Besides, there is more than 1 master seal.

We didn't Seal Soren early so he could wow us with his awesome combat. We did it so he could heal. The slightly better combat is not a great advantage.

This is unimportant as Soren is not only easy to get to level 10/0, but also is better after doing so (see above).

Soren is not easy to get to level 10 when he's locked to player phase offense and has to be fed kills throughout the whole of his earlygame.

When he can save turns and HP by killing them... yeah, this is kind of important. Better than not being able to help out, at the very least.

Why can't Zihark reach them? After all, C28 is Seize, and Endgame ends when Ike lures down Ashnard. If Ike is going to be fighting/seizing/luring, Zihark can too, in which case he's beating Soren's potshots in terms of damage and can Enemy phase against other enemies to help us.

Edited July 10, 2010 by Slowking

[Anouleth]

Way to misread Zihark’s stats. At 21.8 normally, he has 22.5 from his starting points. And a band can only get him to 23, which isn’t his cap. This is 41 Atk with a forge. Aka, 24 damage.

Zihark's listed average at 20/15 is 21.8, true, but I was considering his 20/16 stats (22.25). I wasn't sure about the levels myself... but when you first brought up Chapter 28, you talked about their 20/16 combat, so I merely followed your lead... but now, I guess they've lost a level.

In any case, he can cap at 20/16. 125 growth points from his band, plus 75 base puts him at 200 over his listed average, so he has room to spare. In fact, he can even do it at 20/15, but it's possible he could be short a single point.

And if Soren can support Ike, then Brom can support Zihark. I guess Boyd will just have to live with er, all his other +def supports that are faster and some give +hit instead of more useless attack.

Funny thing: Soren has those as well. Albeit 28 crit and 24% chance to proc adept with a thunder forge. Also, and I just checked, crit rounds down in this game. Don’t believe me? Try it out yourself. So that’s 27 crit for Zihark. So 74% for him instead. Not much of a difference, I’ll admit, but every little helps. In fact, Soren is only ~2% behind, with a 71.9% chance of adepting/critting at least once. That means that 98% of the time, Soren deals more damage than Zihark.

At 20/16, Zihark has 27.5 average skill, so 28 with his base growth points (borderline again, though). Sorry I didn't read your mind when you changed your opinion about what level was appropiate.

Except a silver sword forge level 20/15 Zihark only has 41 atk.

2x Tiger lv 11-12 (claw)

46 hp, 31 atk, 17 AS, 129 hit, 37 avo, 20 def, 9 res, 9 crit, 3 cev

Aka, not a ORKO.

Admittedly, a 20/15 Zihark does have issues against the Tigers, but again, I hasten to point out that it was you that originally placed him at 20/16, not me, and that Zihark should have a support with Brom.

100% > 77%

If Brom has fallen behind and Zihark no longer has the benefits of his support, then presumably Soren has also fallen behind. 77% > Not even attacking. I said that only in case you pointed out the possibility of Brom not being in range.

True, but he still has to risk getting hit by them (and dragons). One unlucky set of RNG and hes dead. Soren on the other hand, doesnt eat the counters.

Zihark doesn't have to worry about taking the counter attacks because he has this thing called 'durability'. There are a billion and one things we could give him if we were worried about his durability (it's not like anyone needs them), but we're not so we don't.

In addition, this is a crowded map. We are not going to sit around picking enemies off with siege tomes. Somebody has to take attacks for the soft mages. Zihark can. Soren cannot.

Volke starts at 12 str, after promoting, he has 14 str. At level 10/1. Aka, no training required.

I assumed siege tome weight was comparable to RD siege tome weight. In any case, it's still a hassle to goad the sage into unequipping their siege tome and then stealing it instead of just killing the guy.

Besides, Soren can also use the rescue staff.

Why would we want to? The idea behind using the Rescue staff is that a high movement unit such as Mist or Elincia or Tormod can move a slower unit to the frontlines... but there are no units that move more slowly than Soren.

Kk, 1 use. Heck, if Mist isnt the one using it 0 uses. It could last us the whole game, nearly. You might say > 1, but rune sword.

Why wouldn't we use it more when it's a magic 'Kills Wyverns' button? You boasted about how Soren can take on these 'hard targets that nobody else can', but in practice it's only when you sandbag them out of the resources that do it.

Yes, moar weaker than silver sword weapons pl0x.

It also has 35 crit and gives +3 defense. The advantages of such a weapon in the hands of one such as say... Zihark (who can get high proc rates), or Mia (who can use it with her innate Vantage to avoid attacks) or Ike/Stefan (who can get good proc rates, if not quite so good as Zihark) should be obvious. Far better than another 4 weak potshots.

You do realize we get 2 of these, right? And that theyre only really useful for 1 chapter (chapter 28)?

They are useful for any chapter with Laguz in except Chapter 15. Laguz are tough to take down, and in the hands of someone like Titania or Astrid or even Oscar, they can solve their offense issues against the toughest enemies. Even stronger units have some desire - Boyd, for example, can use it to OHKO Ravens and Hawks that he has difficulty doubling, since he can get up to 60ATK with it.

I also forgot to mention Brave weapons.

Adequately meaning not as well and remember: we have plenty of other 22nd string combatants. Like Bastian. Woo?

A healer is a healer. Zihark doesn't care if the guy healing him has 15 speed or 20 speed. Whereas I think there is a massive difference between deploying Bastian and Zihark that I don't need to explain.

3HKOEd at low hit rates is still very good, but Soren can actually respond to 1-2 range foes, so we dont have to worry about them as much. And by that I mean, dont have to waste a player phase killing as Soren does it on the enemy phase.

Did you read nothing? Soren is often 2HKOed, he can scrape a 3HKO only occasionally against pathetic enemies such as Longbow Archers.

Vantage is better on Neph anyway for Vantage + Wrath lulz.

I don't see why. Neph procs Wrath, she has ~55 crit or whatever. Zihark sits there at full health and has a ~25% chance to crit and a 30% chance to Adept. Difference is, Zihark also has better strength, and doesn't need to be on death's doorstep to be kicking ass. Although I guess Zihark is so damn durable he doesn't even need Vantage.

Lol, how naive:

Level 15/0 Zihark with a steel sword: 27 HP, 44 Avo, 9 Def, 1 Res

2x Soldier lv 13 with a steel lance: 30 hp, 18 atk, 4 AS, 93 hit

1x Myrmidon lv 13 with a steel sword: 25 hp, 18 atk, 11 AS, 104 hit

1x Fighter lv 13 with a steel axe: 35 hp, 22 atk, 5 AS, 85 hit

1x Mage lv 11 with fire: 22 hp, 13 atk, 8 AS, 111 hit

Norris lv 5 with a longbow [d], steel bow: 35 hp, 18 atk, 14 AS, 105 hit

All of these guys 3RKO Zihark at relatively high hit rates. And this is ignoring the killing edge myrmidon who has 28 listed hit against Zihark. In fact, he has a 19% chance of insta-blicking Zihark. This is also ignoring the halberdiers on the walkways that we might want Zihark fighting. Overall, this isnt amazing, and Zihark faces real chances of death given more than 1 enemy phase exposure, which even Soren can take.

So? The walkways make it very easy to control enemy phase exposure. But I can certainly imagine why we might want to have Zihark fight the Halberdiers - Soren can't because they 2HKO with their Javelins, and he doesn't double and needs a Forge to 2HKO. Whereas level 17 Zihark with the Killing Edge 3HKOes the Level 2 Halberdiers, giving him a 73% chance to 1-round, and 4HKOes the Level 3 Halberdier, so only a ~60% chance.

The Ranulf + Haar suggestions were actually jokes to try and help show you that + mov doesnt mean everything, as you seem to suggest that these guys are virtually nothing in comparison to them. You see, it did make you laugh for a reason.

The gap between Soren and Zihark offensively is the difference between ORKOing with regular weapons and ORKOing with forges or rare weapons. The difference between Zihark and Ranulf offensively is not bridgeable.

The point about Soren is not something to be hand waved, however. By making him fight Sages, you are wasting his talents, so stop moaning about it and use him efficiently: target those generals and dragons which trouble most units. Then youll see how unique and therefore useful he is. You could say Im wasting Ziharks talent by having him fight Generals, but anyone can fight scrub units effectively: it takes real skill to take out those which many struggle against.

I do not know where this has come from. I have never suggested that Soren should fight Sages, nor have I complained about his lack of offense against them. In fact, even though I cannot be bothered to look up the stats now, I think he probably 2HKOes them anyway with a forge. But nor do most units have trouble with Generals. There's Nephenee, Marcia, Tanith off the top of my head... maybe Astrid depending on how many levels she has. That's about it, I think, for units in good positions on the tier list.

Why should you be when you are only looking at those with high avo (Tanith) or high durability overall (Makalov). Lets take a look at Boyd, for example. Now, with A Brom, B Titania, a level 20/16 Boyd has 58 HP/59 avo/15 Ddg/15 Def. This means that the berserker has an 8% chance of leaving Boyd in single digits. Now Boyd being in single digits IS something very scary indeed, as his avo is quite frankly laughable. Muarim too can be left quite damaged, and of course our other healers are simply quaking in their boots.

For a start, Boyd is probably at the top of my list for a Dracoshield. Second, why would we send a person with poor durability to fight this guy?

This whole thing started when you claimed that Soren was useful for his ability to take down the Berserker with no risk. I've shown that Zihark can do the same, and that there exist other units that can do the exact same thing, yet you are still arguing this even though it benefits Zihark just as much as Soren since he's indestructible as well. It's mystifying.

He doesnt have to teleport, he just has to use his 10 range weapon to deal heavy damage to weaken the guy.

Fair enough, but it's still not that great. Soren is still relying on another character to finish Bertram off.

No, thats why I said:

Something wrong. You claimed that we do not have to limit our movements as much with Soren as we do with Zihark. But if Zihark has the better durability, it is the other way round. We can go on with leaving the single solitary Wyvern carrying a Short Spear alive. This isn't even Rout, it's Arrive, so there's nothing special about taking them all down on enemy phase (that Soren can't do anyway).

Seraph robes are hard to come by and Ikes HP is fine enough as it is most of the time. Plus, see below.

I refer you to my earlier comments on durability.

Youre right, but my main point was about offence anyway.

So you admit you forgot about it?

Ashnards next chapter and this is a high exp giving chapter.

Ike is great and there's no reason not to dump absolutely all BEXP on him at this stage.

Well, you seem to have it in your head that it isnt useful, so Im showing you how it is. Excuse me if that involves showing his performance without the support, but i thought that was the basics in debating this stuff.

If Ike goes without a Soren support, he supports Titania or Reyson instead, but instead, he had no B support.

Offence was the main point, defense was supposed to be an offhand remark. Besides, even 9 real will build up over time. How about 10 turns of it? Ouch, looks like one of Ike/Oscar is dead.

If we are going so slowly as to take 10 turns on this chapter, I highly doubt it is even possible to die barring a crit from Heddwyn.

No, Ikes going to come and finish the thing off. Heck, if Soren hit the dragon with bolting beforehand, Ikes help isnt even necessary.

I'm completely confused by this statement. So Soren hits the dragon and then... I guess the dragon just has a heart attack or something?

In any case, it's not like Zihark can't weaken the Dragon himself. After all, he has the same movement speed as Ike.

And none of them are quite as good as Soren is and none of them are named Zihark.

Is Soren having the best potshots of any healer supposed to cancel out Zihark's movement and durability leads?

Hey! I see youve brought no statistical evidence showing Sorens support is worthless OR that Ike doesnt mind an A with Soren over Oscar and instead tried to make me look like Im making a non-existent double standard. How sweet.

Ike doesn't mind taking A with Soren over Oscar. I think I've said that already. But Ike doesn't really care about which of his supports he takes since his stats are all great anyway. He already has tons of avoid, plenty of attack, etc. etc. and I don't think your claims that Soren's +1atk has a significant impact on his performance are correct. Soren isn't doing Ike a favour or anything by giving him another option along the 3 he already has with Top Tier characters.

In all seriousness, though. You also havent responded anything to the whole Soren matches mov better with Ike or shown how Broms lack of hit supports doesnt matter. Heck, I dont think youve once questioned them being useful for Stefan, and if hes good for Stefan, and Ziharks good for nobody (and bad for one unit (Brom)), then how does Soren not win supports?

I haven't responded because it's true. Soren does match movement better with Ike. Brom does have a lack of hit supports and he might conceivably miss one day with a Javelin. I just don't really care. Ike has a ton of other options. Stefan is iffy later on in the game anyway due to a poor skill and low avoid from supports and a lack of luck. If I had paid more attention, I would have pointed out that Stefan would much rather have A Soren than A Mordecai, so the fact that Soren gets more out of A Ike than A Stefan is moot.

And Muarim does not have other good options. Brom does have other good options, but Boyd himself has other good options as well, and taking Brom over Titania shafts his hit by 8, so it's not like Brom can pick and choose his own options either. So I feel perfectly fine shafting Brom's hit by five points, since you clearly have no trouble shafting Stefan and Ike's avoid by three points each.

So I didn't respond just because it's a complicated mess and the end result is that Brom is slightly disadvantaged, but Boyd gets a slight advantage and Mist gets a slight disadvantage etc. etc. I guess Soren gets credit for supporting Stefan who doesn't have an alternative, but whoop-de-doo, he doesn't need to rely on Mordecai any more for +mt. And I guess Zihark isn't really taking away or giving, since unless you want to figure out exactly who we're assuming deployment for and who we're not and a support chain for everyone, then it's not possible to say.

And remember Soren has a ten range weapon and Zihark only has a 1 range weapon. Dont try and make it as if Im the one who thinks these guys are being left in the dirt, i didnt even bring it up, it was you that was saying they fall behind, and Im just using that against you by showing you how Soren can actually do things when hes left behind. Check my opener: it says nothing about 9 mov units. I even Ctrl+Fed it.

And I only mentioned it once, yet somehow it's somehow my entire argument now.

Although apparently, we're taking ten turns on this chapter so durability can become an issue, so Zihark has plenty of time.

As this is my final post, I would like to conclude.

Soren has a number of advantages over Zihark. Against certain high-def enemies, he has better offense, he has access to 2-range, he can heal, he is available in earlygame, and he can use long-range tomes. However, these advantages are minor. Zihark is capable of 1-rounding high-defense enemies with rarer weapons, and has high chances to kill them even without those rare weapons. Soren lacks the durability or movement to take advantage of his 2-range. Durability is generally high enough that healing is redundant or easily taken care of. Soren's earlygame is atrocious, and largely a case of self-improvement rather than contributing to efficiency. And long-range tomes are limited in use and offer limited damage except against Dragons, which are in themselves rare. Zihark, in turn, has his own advantages against Soren. Better movement, and better durability. These advantages are not insignificant.

[Colonel M]

Filler post. Have to go to work today, but I'll at least read what I can in an hour.

EDIT: Just so you know I read it. Will respond after I get home from work.

Edited August 12, 2010 by Colonel M

[Colonel M]

I think I'll toss my vote to Anouleth. If I need explanation as to why, I'll provide it. However, I will note that Anouleth used a couple shaky points that could've potentially killed his case, though he had the upper hand on being able to backhand it at his opponent's character (wrt Soren's Mov).