Guard Questions

[Kinata]

I have some questions about this skill:

1. What's its activation rate? The site only said it involves support level.

2. Does it only activate when the original target is about to receive lethal damage?

3. Can the unit who guards counterattack? If so, with what range weapon?

4. What if the unit who guards has pacifist data? For example, what if your heron guards against a dragon in 4-E-3? Does the dragon attack the heron? If not, this will allow for a useful treehugger strategy.

5. Can Guard activate on the Player phase if a character attempts a suicidal attack?

[nflchamp]

I have some questions about this skill:

1. What's its activation rate? The site only said it involves support level.

2. Does it only activate when the original target is about to receive lethal damage?

3. Can the unit who guards counterattack? If so, with what range weapon?

4. What if the unit who guards has pacifist data? For example, what if your heron guards against a dragon in 4-E-3? Does the dragon attack the heron? If not, this will allow for a useful treehugger strategy.

5. Can Guard activate on the Player phase if a character attempts a suicidal attack?

1. No one knows. No one has cared to figure it out. All we know is that it's bad.

2. It can activate anytime the two are adjacent.

3. The character that gets attacked will be the one to counterattack.

4. Not a clue.

5. Don't know if Guard works on player phase.

I'll admit to not being 100% on 2 or 3, either. As you can guess, Guard hasn't been looked into much.

Edited September 9, 2010 by nflchamp

[Kinata]

For 3, I was actually talking about ranges. For example, let's say the original target (O), the enemy (E), and the Guard (G) are in this position:

O E

G

Does the Guard need a range 1 weapon or a range 2 weapon to counterattack?

In case anyone was wondering, these aren't out of curiosity. It recently came to mind that Guard has a lot of clever uses, but I need to know how it works. I'd test it myself, but I no longer have this game.

Edited September 9, 2010 by Kinata

[whase]

I tried guard once.

I had Sothe stand next to Micky the entire chapter, Micaiah killed lots of enemies, but guard didn't even activate once.

in my 8 PT's of RD I've only seen it once in my party, Sothe was standing next to Micky, Sothe only had a few HP left but has shade, enemy attacks Micky but kills Sothe...

[Kinata]

I presume Micaiah never died during this test. This brings me back to the point that maybe it only activates when the OT is about to die. That would explain why it activates so rarely: what are the chances that a character who happens to have Guard happens to be standing next to his or her support partner who happens to get attacked by someone who can kill him? Guard thus would be useless unless someone uses it intentionally.

Here are some of the theoretical uses of Guard I thought of. I came up with these ideas while under the impression that Guard works like it does for Sephiran: that it activates when the OT is about to die and never fails if it's an A support. I'm not sure how well these will work if Guard really activates as rarely as you guys think.

Like I said, there is the treehugger strategy: put a weak unit (like an unraised Sothe) into the fray in the last 3 battles and make a heron Guard him. In theory, all the enemies will attack Sothe and they will essentially be negated when they are redirected.

If one puts a weak unit into fray in almost any battle and is Guarded by a powerful unit, all of the enemies will be redirected to a battle against the stronger unit.

If there are some mages in an area, they are usually able to attack your characters in the enemy phase without being counterattacked. However, if you put a weak character with a bow (Leo) next to them and guard him with a strong character with a weapon of the right range, all of the mages will be redirected and defeated.

If it is possible to activate Guard on the player phase, than you can use this to get a strong character to attack more times than they would be able to otherwise. This would make it possible to defeat Dheginsea on normal or hard mode with only bronze weapons, which was previously deemed impossible.

To find out if these could actually work, could someone try testing out my questions?

Edited September 9, 2010 by Kinata

[nflchamp]

Kitana, you misunderstood. The person with guard does not counterattack, as far as I know. The person who got attacked will.

[Kinata]

Oh. That is kind of suprising, especially when IIRC that isn't the case with Sephiran. It seems like what happens with him is almost a completely separate skill.

[whase]

Kitana, you misunderstood. The person with guard does not counterattack, as far as I know. The person who got attacked will.

really? because if you attack Lehran on 4-E-4 I could swear it is a spirit who catches the blow and counters...

EDIT: due to a hidden guard...

Edited September 9, 2010 by whase

[nflchamp]

Like I said, I'm not 100%. It could be the case.

[Anouleth]

I can try testing this for you if you want.

brb

back

I can't even get Guard to activate. I tried Micaiah standing next to Sothe about ten times and it didn't proc once. So I guess the theory about needing to be at risk of death for Guard to activate is false.

Edited September 12, 2010 by Mr. Know-it-all-Anouleth

[Kinata]

Did Micaiah actually die during the tests, or was she just at risk of death?

[Anouleth]

She died. Once, she managed to dodge, but Guard had nothing to do with it.

[Kinata]

Well, it's pretty obvious now that its activation rate is definitely terrible, though I'm guessing you used battle saves to test. Battle saves don't seem to be a reliable way to do tests because it doesn't seem like the RN's are completely reloaded each time a battle save is restarted. For example, I once wanted Gatrie to Luna an enemy whom he had about a 1 in 3 chance of Luna'ing. It took me about 30 tries to do it. Another time, an archer had an 80 display hit against Micaiah and was able to kill her. It took her like 50 tries to dodge it.

Anyway, if anyone really wants to test it out, the best way to do it would be to test it out on the first turn of a chapter and to restart the entire chapter after each failed attempt.

[Anouleth]

No, I tested it on the first turn of 1-E. It was a Hard Mode save. I could have just been unlucky.

Also, fyi, both Sothe and Micaiah were at neutral biorhythm and Sothe had ~24 skill.

Edited September 12, 2010 by Mr. Know-it-all-Anouleth

[nflchamp]

I'll go ahead and place bets now that it's A support = SKL%, B = (SKL/2)%, C = (SKL/3)%

[Kinata]

It might be half that based on what I've heard. But the activation rate isn't too important to me since that can be remedied with battle saves and patience. I'm most interested in my other questions, which are relevant to various FE10 challenges.

[Wooster]

I've had Guard activate. The person with Guard completely takes the place of the character he/she is supporting. This creates some interesting contradictions as the character with guard can counter attack despite not being in attack range. My assumption is that the Guard enabled character takes the grid position of the person that's being guarded.

Also, I've yet to have it activate when the guarded character wasn't at critical health with the limping animation.

[Kinata]

That's actually very helpful information. You may have provided the reason no one has been able to see Guard activate: it doesn't activate if the OT is about to die, but rather if they are in a near-death state.

As for the grid position, that's what I had guessed. But now that brought to my attention another question:

6. If the OT is on tile A and the Guard is on tile B, will the Guard receive the terrain bonuses from tile A or tile B? And will the Guard receive bond and tide bonuses from units next to tile A or tile B? Similarly, will the Guard and OT still have their bond/tide bonus between each other during the battle?

[Wooster]

That's actually very helpful information. You may have provided the reason no one has been able to see Guard activate: it doesn't activate if the OT is about to die, but rather if they are in a near-death state.

As for the grid position, that's what I had guessed. But now that brought to my attention another question:

6. If the OT is on tile A and the Guard is on tile B, will the Guard receive the terrain bonuses from tile A or tile B? And will the Guard receive bond and tide bonuses from units next to tile A or tile B? Similarly, will the Guard and OT still have their bond/tide bonus between each other during the battle?

Mmm, I can't really answer any of those questions, Right now I've only have hard mode files, and none of them have access to Sothe and Micaiah. So setting up a proper test would be a bit difficult for me.

However, what I can say from memory, is that I did have White Tide on Micaiah when I was using Guard, and I'm quite sure it activated when Guard did. I cannot speak on terrain bonuses, since both were on plain terrain. But, judging by white tide, I'd put my money on that the Guardian gets his/her own bonuses and not the partners.

I will say though, that when the guarded character was in critical health, Guard was semi-reliable. I didn't do any formalized tests, but I'd say it activated somewhere between 50 and 75% of the time. Now, those numbers are invalid since I'm doing this all from memory and this was like 5 months ago, and Guard may have activated like 6 or so times in that one play through, so it's not even statistically significant.

[Kinata]

According to the official site FAQ, translated by the incredible Google Translate, Guard may activate when Micaiah is "dangerous". Now I presume they meant "in danger". My interpretations of this are that it either activates if the game determines she will be killed in battle, or if she is at low health. And based on the Anouleth's and Wooster's tests, it is presumably the latter. Also, here's my guess at the activate rate:

A support: 50%

B support: 25%

C support: 13% (since the game rounds up support bonuses).