Rescue or Pair Up

[Faye]

Rescue! I hated Pair-Up for the sheer fact that Pair-Up doesn't save a unit. There are times where a unit is in danger and I wish I could rescue them. Of course, my favorite SS units are Cormag and Vanessa.

What do you mean? The Paired-Up unit can't be attacked at all. D: If a unit is low on HP, have him Pair Up with the nearest ally. He'll stand in back and be protected from attacks. Well, unless the man in front dies. Pair Up is way better than Rescue, since the unit doing the rescuing suffers a speed and skill drop (from what I remember), which is pretty horrible and never worth it in my opinion. With Pair Up, the unit in front gets some stats boosted, which is never a bad thing.

[solrocknroll]

What do you mean? The Paired-Up unit can't be attacked at all. D: If a unit is low on HP, have him Pair Up with the nearest ally. He'll stand in back and be protected from attacks. Well, unless the man in front dies. Pair Up is way better than Rescue, since the unit doing the rescuing suffers a speed and skill drop (from what I remember), which is pretty horrible and never worth it in my opinion. With Pair Up, the unit in front gets some stats boosted, which is never a bad thing.

Pair-Up puts the person being paired-up with in front. I would love Pair-Up more if the person activating the Pair-Up would be in front.

[Jotari]

What do you mean? The Paired-Up unit can't be attacked at all. D: If a unit is low on HP, have him Pair Up with the nearest ally. He'll stand in back and be protected from attacks. Well, unless the man in front dies. Pair Up is way better than Rescue, since the unit doing the rescuing suffers a speed and skill drop (from what I remember), which is pretty horrible and never worth it in my opinion. With Pair Up, the unit in front gets some stats boosted, which is never a bad thing.

In a situation where you attack and due to some unforeseen circumstance your unit ends up with low HP. The unit has then used up its turn and can't attack. Rescue would be able to save that unit by having a stronger one take it in. Pair up will only attach the stronger unit to your weakened unit meaning it still out in the open and will die unless the pair up stats allow it to survive.

[dondon151]

A lot of my videos have mistakes. The strategies are not so inflexible that you can't vary one or two moves.

but they are inconsequential mistakes

[Chiki]

Some of the chapters I posted were too tedious for me to record a perfect one. For example, Boyd got critkilled in 3-4 by a Sage with Elthunder and I posted that on Youtube because it was a bother.

[The Void]

No matter how skilled you are, you definitely need to use Pair Up at some point to survive Lunatic if you're not grinding just because the enemies have such high stats. When it comes to lowering your turncounts and/or increasing your reliability, Lunatic mode in Awakening heavily favors having strong superpairs over fielding team of evenly trained units.

It's not like FE games penalize you for not really trying to train that many units "evenly" unless you're playing for a high enough EXP rank. Otherwise you can get through the games even without not really evenly training units.

Edited May 30, 2013 by The Void

[shadykid]

but they are inconsequential mistakes

are they truly mistakes if they're inconsequential though

yay I love nitpicking stuff

[Chiki]

You aren't nitpicking. Mistakes are by definition consequential. It's like saying colorless green.

[dondon151]

man i really do not want to get into this dumb argument when there really isn't one

- if you attain your LTC objective despite strategic imperfections, then those imperfections don't matter

- hence the oxymoron "inconsequential mistakes," which is implying that those mistakes don't exist

[Chiki]

I was talking about my recorded videos on Youtube. Boyd dying early is a consequential mistake.

[CT075]

Yes. Rescue lets you take back a move by replacing a weak character with one of your overpowered ones.

who the fuck uses rescue to correct a formation mistake

[Florete]

who the fuck uses rescue to correct a formation mistake

People who make a formation mistake.

[shadykid]

who the fuck uses rescue to correct a formation mistake

People who make a formation mistake.

lolol this was pretty good

and yes, most players aren't blitzing through the games with predetermined strategies, so rescue can bail someone out

Awakening rescue staves, fetch people from 30 spaces out

[Knight]

Rescue is better, it wasn't as broken.

[PKL]

I prefer Rescue. Was a lot more strategic and less broken. You actually had to think when using it.

[arvilino]

I said this in another thread, if you stripped away all the bonuses(stats, dual,support bonuses) and even imposed the half speed, half skill penalty on Pair Up it'd still make rescue look really poor in comparison.

Rescue is only really useful on mounted units and only because of canto/re-move. Pair up is useful for both mounted and foot units and apart from one specific thing(which is allowing you to rescue a unit from throne locked bosses enemy phase), it either allows the same thing to be performed in fewer turns or allows movements that rescue alone could never.

I think a good way to set this out is again imagine pair up had the same penalties as rescue. Then think of all the situations in previous Fire Emblem games with rescue where pair up would get a unit(Armored Knight) to a destination faster, keep a unit safe and how many units who you'd almost never use rescue with(foot units) and how they'd actually be able to use pair up more effectively.

[dondon151]

pair up doesn't allow you to use the give/take commands

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Actually they can except theres no Canto involved

Edited May 30, 2013 by JSND

[Jotari]

pair up doesn't allow you to use the give/take commands

Transfer. You can even transfer and separate on one turn like taking and dropping.

[XeKr]

Pair Up gives overly huge stat bonuses like +7 in Str/Skl/Spd/Def or +8 Mag/Spd +7 Res or other silliness. In any other game that's like 15 levels worth of growth at a very solid rate. Even in the earlygame, it can give +5 Spd or Def. 10 levels worth of a stat in the earlygame is huge. It also gives up to like 80% Adept and sets a ceiling on enemy hit rates at around 75%. Oh and Braves can result in reliably attacking up to 12 times.

I really like the mechanic since it’s quite thematic, but the bonuses are just too high. You could argue for inflating enemy stats to match Paired units, which is exactly what Lunatic does. However, the huge gap between Paired and non-Paired units then results in the issues that have been mentioned. I'd like to see Pair Up vs. non Pair Up be a tactical decision. There are glimpses of this in some earlygame chapters like C3 in Lunatic+, but otherwise it's always Pair Up ftw.

As mentioned, the movement possibilities alone do make Pair Up a somewhat interesting tactical option. Just that instead of Rescue-take-drop chains which requires a team to execute, you can hide a weak unit in the support slot instead. You don’t have to chain because Pair Up makes you stronger, rather than Rescue which makes you weaker. If there were Seize maps you don’t need a team to ferry Chrom (or protect the ferry), since Avatar can do it all by herself, then switch to Chrom at the end.

Also, buyable Rescue Staves are far more ridiculous than the old rescue…

Edited May 30, 2013 by XeKr

[Jotari]

And rescue staves have rank E meaning anything that knows what a stave is can use them right away.

[dondon151]

You don’t have to chain because Pair Up makes you stronger, rather than Rescue which makes you weaker.

this is the problem though

there is little depth to the mechanic if one of its consequences is that the player can hide weak units with impunity. the point of rescuing is that there's a tradeoff between mobility and combat. pair up's only tradeoff is that you have one less unit on the field, a drawback that is typically an afterthought.

[Chiki]

It'd help to use two units instead of one if there were more chapters like defense, but there aren't any.

[Tamanoir]

It'd help to use two units instead of one if there were more chapters like defense, but there aren't any.

Well, Tiki's chapter can be considered like a defense chapter. It was the only time, I didn't used Pair Up...

[Chiki]

Yeah, Tiki's chapter can. Too bad it isn't in the main game.