Vanessa vs. Tana in LTC settings

[Espinosa]

By now I've got used to the opinion that Vanessa, thanks to her early join time and therefore presumably the early options of gaining experience through kills, is better than Tana who is said to join too late at a level too low. On my recent run where I aim for low turn counts as much as I can reasonably manage, Vanessa wasn't even lv. 3 by the time Tana joined in Chapter 9. I probably could've fed her more kills, but it was a difficult thing to do, as she was too busy ferrying people around, getting Pure Water, performing all sort of utility. During Ephraim and Eirika's first reunion chapter, Vanessa is not very desirable unless you're going for the 4-turn strat that calls for a promoted Franz (good luck with that without TASing or RNG hacking). While her earlygame contributions are there when Tana is entirely absent, she is not very likely to be higher than Tana in level when both become available, and Tana's bases and growths make her a slightly more preferable choice, especially if you're travelling Eirika's route and killing Aias prematurely.

Another thing on my mind is Franz. He competes with several others for experience earlygame - your lord, Vanessa, Artur, Garcia and Joshua, out of whom Franz *might* only have priority and claim for latergame usefulness over Garcia and Joshua (though I'd like to hear if Joshua is better than Gerik on Ephraim route in LTC when Gerik joins later and a free Hero Crest is available much earlier). When aiming for Eirika route, Joshua is probably benched in favour of Gerik with greater durability and instant 1-2 range noodles eventually, making focusing on Franz to get an early Paladin for utility a stronger priority. Regardless, Joshua will double enemies that the Cavs fail to double for a long while, as Seth ending the chapters quickly leaves little room for Franz to make use of his excellent speed growths. Plus, Kyle and Forde start at higher base levels and demand less resources to get to lv. 10, only to do the one thing Paladins are supposed to be doing later on - carrying people around. So I'm really curious how Franz is always evaluated second losing only to Seth when the prevailing approach to measuring units' value is LTC.

[CrashGordon94]

I heard that Franz is consider awesome mostly in Sethless LTC/Efficiency, if that helps.

[Espinosa]

That seems to be the case, because early on Franz's enemy phase is limited (he has trouble taking on more than 2-3 enemies at once), he fails to double the enemy units besides those whom everybody doubles anyway, and his ORKOing potential against those units is also shaky (needs Steel Lance to one-round soldiers and doesn't have enough AS to double Knights when weighed down by it, and even then is far from one-rounding). In the light of that, a Cav like Kyle at least has an advantage of better durability and Garcia-level strength, and may want the first Knight Crest before anyone else. Franz does have a lot of earlygame presence, but not quite enough turns and not good enough bases to make full use of it, and the competition is very stiff.

[Rewjeo]

Vanessa is not considered better than Tana for anything remotely close to combat. She's better because of the extra flying utility she has. In a LTC setting, neither will ever contribute on the combat side of things.

It has been a while since I've played FE8, but I recall having Franz at level 16 by the end of chapter 8, and he easily could (should) have promoted before then.

[Espinosa]

However, will you disagree that having a flier with decent combat helps complete chapters, particularly rout ones of which there are so many, in fewer turns?

And I wonder if lv. 16 Franz is feasible in LTC settings that early.

[General Horace]

In my efficent runthrough of FE8, IIRC Franz promoted in chapter 11, which is when he reached level 10.

He's pretty bad combat wise, he's just a ferrybot.

[Rewjeo]

And I wonder if lv. 16 Franz is feasible in LTC settings that early.

Well, it was a long time ago, Franz' first few level ups were very good for his offense (he moved towards his averages later), and I didn't do the obvious fast clear on chapter 7, so it was higher than it would normally be, but if you make good use of Franz, he can level up quickly, and it's much easier to get a 7 MOV combat god with him than with Vanessa.

[Espinosa]

In my efficent runthrough of FE8, IIRC Franz promoted in chapter 11, which is when he reached level 10.

He's pretty bad combat wise, he's just a ferrybot.

That definitely reflects my experience as well. I had Forde reach promotion range earlier too, by chapter 9, but saw little immediate point in promoting him ASAP.

[dondon151]

tana has decent bases and is much more salvageable on the combat side, but her starting level is just too low

[Hawk King]

With Seth being used to his fullest potential it will take Franz a long time to promote. In a draft where Franz killed 75% of all enemies he was LV 18 when he promoted withe the CHP 7 Knight Crest. Rewjeo having Franz at LV 16 would suggest Seth was not used. Or he had really high turncounts...

Joshua kinda sucks because of his being sword-locked. I personally think Gerik is much better. Well at least on Eirika's route.

[CrashGordon94]

It's perfectly plausible that Seth wasn't used, Sethless efficiency exists.

[Hawk King]

Yeah Crash, that was exactly my point. Everyone else was talking about efficiency with Seth being used. Hence, why Rewjeo had Franz at a way high LV than they thought he could get to.

[Titamon]

Yeah Franz really is a beast in Sethless, he gobbles up levels like it's nothing

As for Vanessa vs Tana, mirroring what Dondon said her bases aren't that bad, for example Base Tana is on par with a level 7 Vanessa (a very generous estimate for Vanessa around Chapter 9); and Tana wins growths so that's not getting any better for Nessie in the long run.

My biggest problem with Tana is her lance rank though. D sucks

Edited May 21, 2012 by Psycho Silver

[CrashGordon94]

It sounds like Tana's better for combat, while Nessie's better for utility. I could kinda imagine this holds for casual runs too (except perhaps the utility point).

[General Horace]

It's quite easy to get Tana's lance rank up to C by abusing steel lances, they give double WExp.

[RNG Princess]

Tana is Syrene-lite ^^'. Especially in a 0% run. Both are very useful, Franz is only better than Nessie in a Seth-less run.

[Mystical Mermaid]

if you're going for a low turn count, I'd say sticking with Vanessa. While Tana's growths are better and will come out stronger if both were promoted to 20/20 and compared, her starting stats are on the low end of the spectrum, which will cost you efficiency if you want to improve her. In efficiency runs, a Pegasus Knight is best suited for transfortation, not combat, so stats are pretty much irrelevant. As with Franz, he's also preferable or Kyle or his brother thanks to early game availability and thus more time to train him. His stats aren't half bad either, but if you're mostly using him to carry slower units, that's less of an issue. One should also consider Cormag, who joins the chapter after Tana in Ephraim's route or four chapters later in Eirika's route. He starts out a higher level than both of them, is another flying unit, and has more solid base stats than both of them, making him a capable fighter as well as a ferry. That being, my suggestion would be to stick with Vanessa until you recruit Cormag, and have him as your main from then on. In summary, Vanessa vs. Tana is the classic FE tradeoff of early game availability vs overall potential. For another example, we could compare Franz to Amelia, who joins in the same chapter as Tana. While Franz is playable from the first chapter, Amelia starts off at essentially level negative nine, giving her more potential stat gains but she's nearly impossible to train without skirmishes and the Tower, which in LTC will likely be avoided.

[Refa]

if you're going ltc you're going to use both tana and vanessa.

and most likely forde and kyle too, franz is not very good in sethless.

cormag is only really worth recruiting on ephraim route.

[Rewjeo]

Regarding the whole Franz aspect of things, I just started a Sethless run and, despite being STR screwed, I have a 14/3 Franz going into chapter 9 and I have been maintaining turncounts that would be very competitive within a draft. I believe I'm four turns behind the fastest draft run (without Seth) that I've seen so far, and that is with that person RN burning for the fast clear in the Prologue while I didn't. Those two remaining turns were in chapter 7, where I somehow forgot about the obvious Eirika drop. If you cut those out, then Franz would be at 13/3 going into chapter 9.

Edited May 27, 2012 by Rewjeo