Poll.

[Second Pronoun]

I put

Midayle-Aideen

Gives Lester Pursuit and Charge, Lester is most important as Lana is always good. If a pursuit ring is there I like Jamka!Claude better, but I always use the pursuit ring to make Levin!Arthur a God

Noish-Ayra

Gives a great array of skills to both children. I find critical to be overall more effective on her children than Moonlight hit because it activates more and many enemies at the start of gen 2 have low defense. I also like it better than Lex being their father because I have never had problems raising the swordtwins stats.

Delmud-Lachesis

Delmud is the most important part of this pairing I believe. Nanna can always heal but if you make Delmud a great fighter than Nanna becomes a good fighter also. Delmud has a great skillset and it is easier and more efficient to make than Fin and Lachesis.

Noish-Briggid

My personal favorite. This is my pairing for Noish if he doesn't have Ayra. Noish passes down swords to Patty and Patty really only needs to steal gold. Faval becomes amazing as he can critical anything and gets okay HP good strength and good defense. If Patty promotes she also becomes a great fighter, and the Thief critical animation is beastly.

[Dark Sage]

Noish isn't as good as Lex or Holyn Statwise. Skillwise, he's awesome, but Holyn/Lex Lakche+Ska have better raw stats. I do like Holyn's for the massive HP, since it's useful for getting accidentally Meteor'd in mageland lategame and the defense isn't that far off from LexAyra kids due to lolswordfighterdef. Plus Charge really is a double-edged sword. Don't get me wrong, I like it better than LexAyra, actually, it's probably my second favourite pairing for Lakche (though with my totally subjective playstyle, it actually benefitted Ska more tha Lakche), but on numbers, I'd rather use the two most canonical ones. Plus I'm more familiar with them since I did LexAyra twice and HolynAyra god knows how many times. Wanna do FinAyra sometimes, though, sounds fun~

That being said, I usually look at both Lex and Holyn's stats. I know both have the swordies cap str, that is a given. I think Lakche comes to 29.something with Lex (rounds up to 30), and hitting 30 with Holyn.

If you're looking for alternate Aira pairings, try BeowulfxAyra or DewxAira. DewxAira's not bad for ranked runs and Bargain and Sol aren't really bad skills plus great stats. Beowulf provides the sword inheritance and Charge.

I think you misunderstood what I said. I meant that NoishxAira is arguably the best because it has both good stats and skills. Of course I know the stats aren't as good as the Holyn and Lex versions.

Charge doesn't actually activate nearly as much as Astra, though. Especially since Del's biggest problem is his speed and it's an AS based activation while Astra is pure skill, something that Odokids have an overload of. While their speed growths for the most part aren't that much better than Del's, the ridiculous swordfighter bases and promo gains offset that.

First of all, swords are as light as a feather, so the "speed issue" isn't actually an issue at all. Maybe in the beginning, but later on, not so much. And again, he has a horse, so he's able to face a lot more enemies and arguably, be more useful to the team.

Also, I don't talk about Ska much because he lacks one thing that Ayra/Lakche/Shanan has.

Continue.

It does hurt him quite a bit compared to Lakche after promotion since Lakche will be now attacking TWICE as much as him, and better caps as well. As I've said countless times, Forrest is totally sandbagged and should have more defense, at the very least. I love Ska, but, a Lex Skasaher has NO advantages over Lakche, and a Holyn one only has slight durability leads. And when both have HP in the 70s, it doens't matter that much.

Continue hurts him that much? Lol. With Astra or Astra/Hero Sword, who gives a shit about Continue?

[Thor Odinson]

I'd wager someone else wants Hero sword besides Ska. Del needs one, since his raw combat parameters are not as great, and Leaf will probably want another at least until he promotes. Astra has like, a 27% chance of activation. 32 if you give him a ring, so it's not reliable all the time. With Continue, it's even greater chances to kill everything, as the numbers stack. Even with 27 str doubling, enemy HP gets really high and ORKO is not guaranteed with two hits should Astra not activate, while as more RNs are rolled, it's more likely to get at least SOMETHING to activate. Continue has AS+20 for activation rate, so it's even more likely than Astra to proc, and IIRC, in FE4, it stacks. Plus not facing an enemy phase when you double is nice.

Hero sword is pretty light, yeah, but 6 AS loss from blades is still pretty significant. Say he has 23 speed, that got brought down to 18 and, that's pretty terrible. Charge also takes into account into enemy AS. Don't remember the formula but it's on SF. While it could probably work well against those negative AS axe users, but anyone can kill negative AS axe users.

As for DewAyra and BeoAyra, the former sounds interesting and I'd probably wanna try it sometimes when I bother playing FE4 again, and the latter I feel is just a nerfed version of NoisheAyra while maybe giving Ska a Silver Blade that he can buy anyway, since Noishe can go up to B after promotion. plus NoisheAyra has pretty fanarts by Agahari. I don't pass up on that.

I can definitely agree that NoishAyra is an excellent pairing, my second favourite, in fact, and I feel Lex belongs to someone who has kids with more issues leveling than the swordies. I admit, though, I do have a massive bias towards HolynAyra, partially due to how much I use Lakche for everything. But I don't feel that it's an inferior pairing.

And like I said before, Charge is somewhat of a double-edged sword. On the occasion that you miss or can't finish someone off regardless, it means eating another enemy phase. And the former is actually not that unlikely due to single RN.

Edited August 28, 2011 by Luminescent Kitty

[Dark Sage]

I'd wager someone else wants Hero sword besides Ska. Del needs one, since his raw combat parameters are not as great, and Leaf will probably want another at least until he promotes. Astra has like, a 27% chance of activation. 32 if you give him a ring, so it's not reliable all the time. With Continue, it's even greater chances to kill everything, as the numbers stack. Even with 27 str doubling, enemy HP gets really high and ORKO is not guaranteed with two hits should Astra not activate, while as more RNs are rolled, it's more likely to get at least SOMETHING to activate. Continue has AS+20 for activation rate, so it's even more likely than Astra to proc, and IIRC, in FE4, it stacks. Plus not facing an enemy phase when you double is nice.

Of course, but I'm saying the option is available. You have two Hero Swords and you certainly don't mind giving one to Lakche at your own convenience. Why not Skasaha? Anyway, once Leaf promotes, Skasaha can get his mitts on the Hero Sword.

Even without it, a level 20 promoted Noish!Skasaha has 26.9 skill. So 10% of the time, he has a 45.24 percent chance of activating it in a single round. If he does proc 27 skill, that's a 46.71 percent chance of proccing Astra in a single round, which is not bad at all. Now if we do give him the ring and he has 27 skill before that, he has a 53.76 chance of activating Astra in a single round.

Hero sword is pretty light, yeah, but 6 AS loss from blades is still pretty significant. Say he has 23 speed, that got brought down to 18 and, that's pretty terrible. Charge also takes into account into enemy AS. Don't remember the formula but it's on SF. While it could probably work well against those negative AS axe users, but anyone can kill negative AS axe users.

Delmud can also use a Silver Sword. You have two of them you know. Anyway Charge's activation is User's AS - Enemy's AS + HP/2. Unless the enemy is using a sword, wind magic, or a lighter bow, the enemy's AS is going to be pretty low since enemies weigh themselves down heavily. Keep in mind that swords are actually one of the rarer weapon types in the game.

So Beo!Delmud has 56 HP on average when he gets 23 AS. If he gets weighed down by a Silver Blade (which brings him down to 17 AS btw), then his Charge activation will be 17-Enemy's AS+28. Now I can't find any info on the enemy's AS after Chapter 6 or 7, so on a Chapter 10 Duke Knight, I believe they have 6 AS. So that's (11+28)% or 39% of Charge activating. Not completely reliable, but it can be bolsetered further with a speed ring up to 44%. With a Silver Sword he has a 42% chance of activating Charge, 47% after the speed ring, which isn't bad.

As for DewAyra and BeoAyra, the former sounds interesting and I'd probably wanna try it sometimes when I bother playing FE4 again, and the latter I feel is just a nerfed version of NoisheAyra while maybe giving Ska a Silver Blade that he can buy anyway, since Noishe can go up to B after promotion. plus NoisheAyra has pretty fanarts by Agahari. I don't pass up on that.

DewAyra, while worse than NoishAyra, is a pretty good pairing if you're doing ranked since it gives kids both stats and Bargain makes it easier to ferry around Elite Rings and Hero Swords.

I can definitely agree that NoishAyra is an excellent pairing, my second favourite, in fact, and I feel Lex belongs to someone who has kids with more issues leveling than the swordies. I admit, though, I do have a massive bias towards HolynAyra, partially due to how much I use Lakche for everything. But I don't feel that it's an inferior pairing.

And like I said before, Charge is somewhat of a double-edged sword. On the occasion that you miss or can't finish someone off regardless, it means eating another enemy phase. And the former is actually not that unlikely due to single RN.

Oh there's nothing wrong with personal preferences. For example, I actually like Aira's subs better than her kids. Just to let you know in case I sound intolerant.

Anyway you should try SylviaxLex. Very, very good in a ranked run, but it's just good in general since it allows Corple to level up and promote and have good defense without needing to go help out citizens if you use the Libro staff liberally. At that point, who really cares about Layela for example? Plus Prayer+Ambush+Sleep Sword+Continue= Arena deliciousness.

[Shin]

I'm also a fan of NoishxAyra. He's not significantly behind Lex growth-wise and he offers two incredibly potent skills which go well together with Astra. Both the kids are quite happy without the Hero Sword. It just takes a little while before they have enough HP for charge to activate consistently. Although you still get fantastic results with Holyn, Lex or Dew.

[Oreo]

- I voted for JamkaXAideen because I remember my Lester being terrifyingly good the run I did it. Even if he doesn't have Pursuit, he's good for chip damage. I have to give props to AideenXDew, for being amazing stat-wise, but the skills make it pretty bad otherwise..

- I went for AiraXLex over AiraXHolyn simply because I prefer the defense blood over the skill blood (and the Elite really helps). I'm currently doing AiraXDew, and the kids are okay so far.

- I voted for LachesisXBeowulf (over LachesisXLex which I worship to death) because even though I've said before that I hate LachesisXBeowulf, I can see why people like it, having done the pairing three times before. Lex provides capped strength and defense (and almost speed for Delmud ;D) but they're kinda just my tanky Nanna and Delmud once I gave the Pursuit Ring to Arthur over them.

- for Bridget, I voted for BridgetXLex; I'll give props to Holyn, because my Faval capped a bunch of stats my run I did that, and Patty actually became useful, but the elite makes it all better. Also, there's another reason I'm voting for it.

How is that not AWESOME? (oh, and Faval got promoted the same chapter I got him and all, and the defense really helps on him, which is why I prefer this pairing.

[CrashGordon94]

I just noticed that I'm using all the top-rated pairings here!

[Ansem]

You need a poll to write a pairing guide?

Do we really need another one?

[Darros]

You need a poll to write a pairing guide?

Do we really need another one?

It's for the Emblem Wiki on this site. And I'm noting what the forum recommends via polls.

Edited August 28, 2011 by Darros

[Thor Odinson]

@ Sage: Hm, I'll try Sylvia Lex sometimes. Seeing that I have mental blocks against AyraLex anyway, it's pretty likely I won't be using it anytime soon~

(lol too lazy to quote everything. I still don't find Del that easy to use. Maybe I should stop giving Lakche leg ring, XD)

Edited August 28, 2011 by Luminescent Kitty

[Dark Sage]

Celice and Leen are by far the best candidates for the Leg Ring. Lakche doesn't hold a candle to them in that regard,

[Ansem]

You mean Laylea ~_~

[CrashGordon94]

You mean Laylea ~_~

He probably prefers to pair up Sylvia.

Edited August 29, 2011 by CrashGordon94

[Esaka]

Haters hating Leen, whatever.

I'm surprised that Beowolf is considered better then Fin for Lachesis, I thought the general opinion was that that Fin is superior 0-o.

Edited August 29, 2011 by 3-13Archer

[Dark Sage]

It's faster, it provides similar stats, and it has Charge over Prayer, which is a more offense oriented skill. The stat differences, while minor, are enough to give Beowulf a slight edge (Strength and skill vs luck basically). Charge vs Prayer is personal preference.

[CrashGordon94]

Plus inheritance too, Beo can pass down Swords for Delmud, but Fin can't and wants his Lances.

[Anouleth]

What is the objective? Rankings or turncount? Many pairings are good at different things.

[Darros]

What is the objective? Rankings or turncount? Many pairings are good at different things.

A variety of things are weighed, including skills, stats of both kids, and ease of pairing. I don't really have ranks or turncounts in mind.

[Anouleth]

A variety of things are weighed, including skills, stats of both kids, and ease of pairing. I don't really have ranks or turncounts in mind.

Except how do you determine which is more important? Claude gives Lester no skills, but Rana the Rescue staff. A player who wanted a good Lester (or a ranked player) would find Claude to be a terrible father, but a player who wanted a good Rana (or an efficient player) would find him to be a great father.

[Dark Sage]

Same with Sylvia's pairings. In an efficiency run, it doesn't really matter who is Sylvia's husband but in a ranked run, LexxSylvia is way too good to pass up.

[CrashGordon94]

Presumably there is no "goal", people just pick what they think is the best pairing.