PAIRINGS The Pairing Thread

[Czar_Yoshi]

When I say 'always', I assume the player is actually trying to accomplish something difficult and doing his utmost best to reach that goal. Fooling around with female Morgan as a General is wasting her potential. Extremes are all that matters post-game.

I know what Yoshi does, I'm just stimulating him with risky, distinct, questionable, half serious statements to spawn an intellectual discussion.

Well, OK. Just keep in mind that this is a general help thread and not strictly for challenge run theorycrafting- so in this case what the player is trying to accomplish is a clear of a map with a very large reputation that they may know pretty much nothing about. Extremes don't matter so much as simply having an idea of what you're up against.

And for what it's worth, +Spd Lon'qu!Severa!Morgan@General with a Berserker pairup and no All+2 does hit 75 Spd, resulting in comparable Str, similar Spd and superior Skl to a Wyvern x Berserker +Str Lon'qu!Severa!Morgan (just with less Mov). General may prevent Morgan-F from doing a lot of other things she'd normally be able to do, but she's also possibly the unit least impacted by its flaws (still have to pack Rescuebots for the Mov, though).

As for Apo's difficulty tuning, it may be more balanced for no other DLC... If this didn't exist. Keep in mind that not only does the game not show you that, it makes it really hard to figure it out on your own with Apo's wave structure. Also keep in mind that nowhere else (except Double Duel and Spotpass teams) are there enemies with stat mods, so not only are enemies with really high stats kind of unprecedented but you've also got no way to practice dealing with them beforehand so you don't know what does and doesn't work. If you've got full access to online resources (the enemy data and calculations page at minimum, with a helpful guru or two to explain why each thing matters being handy too), then yeah vanilla S.Apo is going to lay down and die. That's not what it's balanced around- it's balanced around an average SRPG player, with Awakening as their first FE game, doing a full blind run on a file with entirely aesthetic pairings, lots of missed inheritances, maybe a few deaths, sporadic forges, no tonics, and maybe only half of their stats capped with LB. And with all that, it's really hard. Maybe even too hard, given the reputation it earned itself.

If I wanted a primarily physical Morgan would Olivia!Lucina!Morgan be better or Sumia? I'm thinking Olivia because Morgan would get a +2 str and +7 speed (along with others, but those seem like the most important.) Would Morgan prefer the +0 str and +9 speed?

As a general rule of thumb, more Spd is preferable until you no longer know what you'll need it for, and then investing in other mods becomes better. In this case, +7 Spd allows a physical Morgan to run Wyvern Lord without All+2, which gives her room for an Aether procstack which is very nice. +9 doesn't particularly help her above that (GK x Paladin without All+2 comes to mind, but Wyvern x Berserker is better anyway), so Olivia's +2 Str will be better if you're purely concerned about having a physical Morgan.

Chrom x Sumia still provides greater team synergy, though. Using it would sacrifice 2 Str on Morgan for more options for the rest of your team, which might be a good trade. One thing I could recommend is +Str Sumia!Lucina!Morgan@Wyvern with All+2 and a procstack- she'll have +6 Str from mods/skills and hit 75 Spd, while +Spd Olivia!Lucina!Morgan with a Faire will hit the same Spd threshold and have +7 Str from mods/skills. Now the difference between them is only +1 Str in Olivia's favor, but Sumia!Lucina gains +4 Atk on her husband (Spd is a relatively useless stat for hard supports). Combined with the team synergy thing, that tips the balance much more in Sumia's favor. And if you were to forgo flight and make Morgan a Paladin with a Faire over All+2? GG Olivia, I wish your mods were better.

Sumia!Lucina is a very good unit, Sumia!Lucina!MorganF is a very good unit. How does Chrom!Cynthia!MorganF fare? MorganF would still get aether, but Lucina is free to s-rank with a unit other than MaMU, one with a lower set of stats but still accomplishes the support role "well enough". Is there any notable advantage one way or the other and if Chrom!Cynthia!MorganF was used, who would suit lucina as an S-Rank pair?

You would use Chrom!Cynthia!Morgan over Sumia!Lucina!Morgan if:

-You want Lucina to have a better hard support husband than Avatar-M. This would mean Yarne/Laurent for more Atk or Gerome for DSp+.

-You want Lucina to be part of a double Galepair to maximize the number of attacks per PP her DSt+ is active for.

-You're trying to get a lot of 100% DS pairs and need her to soak up someone with bad Skl.

-There aren't many other favorable husbands for Cynthia. Thanks to DSt+, Lucina can take almost anyone, which Cynthia is sometimes more restricted.

-Cynthia is your waifu.

Ok so here's the scenario trying to pair Panne up with someone. I have Ricken, Libra, and Kellam left. I paired her up with Kellam last time so I'm trying to decide between Ricken and Libra.

I say Libra. Better Str than Ricken and keeps the +Hit skills.

All things considered they'll perform about the same, though.

But Ownage, Kellam!Yarne was all the rage back in the day, so it must have some merit right?

Yarne "already has everything he needs" and since Kellam is a +Str/Skl dad with few other merits he was dumped on Yarne because Yarne is hurt least by Kellam's shortcomings. It was sound for its time, but...

Now that Chrom x Olivia, Stahl x Cordelia and benched Virion are no longer mandatory, pairings are much freer and there's no shortage of good dads for Yarne, so that logic no longer applies.

I'm having fun critic spamming with Henry's Ruin and Henry!Cynthia's wrath-activated forged Sigurd's Lance vs Streetpass teams, so I want to try a serious -want try it too on normal/secret apo- higher critical rate (at least vs no-Aegis dudes) with Lon'qu!Laurent with a forged Katarina's Bolt (I have some Wilderwind tomes but those are 5 uses per tome & are annoying to get and no want him be Sorc).

Would it change your mind about Ruin/WW if they let you get 100% Vantage OHKOes on all of S.Apo's 55 Lck non-Aegis+ mooks?

[Ownagepuffs]

But Ownage, Kellam!Yarne was all the rage back in the day, so it must have some merit right?

It was something I advocated too. Fuck me. I know better now.

[Carmine Sword]

I don't remember if you were around when the "Let's Rate the Pairings" threads were all the rage on Gamefaqs (it was around the Summer of 2013), but I look back on some of my old opinions in those threads and cringe slightly.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I remember them. I'm pretty sure I kept my trap shut (and rather hope so since I didn't start to get really good at Awakening until around a year ago).

Those would have been just after Apo was released though, so I have a feeling they'd be heavily biased with scrub rage due to things like Sol Nostank Cordelia waifus getting tromped by 1-range Counter in Wave 1.

[Sentacotus]

Thanks for the help guys think I'll go with Libra Panne and see how that turns out. Its just an experimental Hard Classic run anyways so no hard feelings!

[Joycdonnell]

Would it change your mind about Ruin/WW if they let you get 100% Vantage OHKOes on all of S.Apo's 55 Lck non-Aegis+ mooks?

Is very important the extra 5 critic points that offers Ruin over Katarina's Bolt -forged-? because he gets little more critic points as sage (30 after rallies+tonic) over Sorc (27.5 rallies+tonic), so he is really missing 3 points unless I'm doing wrong the critical calcs.

Would be more awesome if they let you forge Ruin's critical hit but it can't *cri*.

[Ownagepuffs]

Sol Nostank Cordelia waifus

I laughed way harder at this than I should have. Coincidentally, the character discussion thread for Cordy just came out today over on the FE subreddit.

I don't remember if you were around when the "Let's Rate the Pairings" threads were all the rage on Gamefaqs (it was around the Summer of 2013), but I look back on some of my old opinions in those threads and cringe slightly.

I actually like some of those threads. Sure it was when Virion!Anything was ranked at D but some of those pairings are going strong today like Stahl!Gerome, Libra!Inigo and Ricken!Owain. Some pairings were popular back then for completely different reasons! Chrom x Sumia comes to mind. PavGis RKF was the reason it was considered good.

[Knusperkeks]

Well, OK. Just keep in mind that this is a general help thread and not strictly for challenge run theorycrafting- so in this case what the player is trying to accomplish is a clear of a map with a very large reputation that they may know pretty much nothing about. Extremes don't matter so much as simply having an idea of what you're up against.

After you (rightfully) challenged my claim about male vs female Morgan, I went into detail and explained every little thing about it. Don't you think that's interesting to know, too? These very specific posts would have helped my past self much more than any general advice would have done. Others might feel different.

That's not what it's balanced around- it's balanced around an average SRPG player, with Awakening as their first FE game, doing a full blind run on a file with entirely aesthetic pairings, lots of missed inheritances, maybe a few deaths, sporadic forges, no tonics, and maybe only half of their stats capped with LB.

I'd like to see evidence for this claim.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Knusperkeks

[Carmine Sword]

Even today, I'm still wondering how Frederick!Gerome managed to get as much hype as it did considering how mediocre it actually was in practice.

[Knusperkeks]

Even today, I'm still wondering how Frederick!Gerome managed to get as much hype as it did considering how mediocre it actually was in practice.

Maybe they thought Sol/Renewal/Aegis/Luna/Axefaire is really cool?

[Czar_Yoshi]

Is very important the extra 5 critic points that offers Ruin over Katarina's Bolt -forged-? because he gets little more critic points as sage (30 after rallies+tonic) over Sorc (27.5 rallies+tonic), so he is really missing 3 points unless I'm doing wrong the critical calcs.

It's important if you want perfect 100% critical, which in turn is important if you want to be able to safely VV. If you pass up Vantage and keep yourself at high HP, using the crits mainly for mostly reliable chip, then being at 70-95% is just fine. Critstack Henry!Nah typically has about 50% in the back (all you need to, on average, damage tie with a Brave weapon).

I'd like to see evidence for this claim.

Kinda hard to give conclusive proof since it strictly happens when you don't pay attention to the numbers, but here's a very good piece of anecdotal evidence:

He doesn't know how Rallies work (stacking and positioning), doesn't prioritize targets properly to get his whole team in the fray, has bad staff management, a few pairs at A instead of S, poor mod/class synergy, no GF on Brady, Skl/2% procs without a procstack. He had a major derp involving misjudging Olivia's Mov, dropped a kill due to leaving Mire equipped on the back, and had one instance in which Kjelle had to be blatantly saved by the RNG (she picked a fight with 1-range Counter at low HP and a bad proc/DS order could have killed her).

And all in all, S.Apo was a pretty good match for him. He got into a lot of pickles and close shaves that he really had to think his way through (nevermind that you and I can see obvious ways out, he was thinking and that's what was important). He took several rounds of combat to kill some of the bosses. He got stuck in a choke in Wave 1, and made a bad approach in Wave 2, but ultimately made it without losing anyone.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[Ownagepuffs]

I'll second the claim that Apo was meant to be the end all, ultimate challenge for the casual FE player. The map isn't really tuned for peeps like Knusperbro, Czar, or Airship. You all have the map down to a science, to the point that you could complete it in your sleep. It wouldn't be the final DLC ultimate mega challenge if it was made for that. Lunatic+ still hasn't been 100% figured out yet. That mode was tuned for Knusper/Czar/KTT/Int/whoever.

Edit: wrt to the vid Czar posted. I love it to pieces. Omega may not have had the most tech savvy gameplay, but he sure made it look like 2 hours of epic. The Bravely Default music was such a perfect fit. He also did Apo during the early stages of Awakening's life span. Back then Apo was THE challenge. Heck, it was during a time when it was thought that LB was required to beat it.

Even today, I'm still wondering how Frederick!Gerome managed to get as much hype as it did considering how mediocre it actually was in practice.

High offensive mods and PavGis. PavGis was a big deal back then. And Armsthrift. And Sol. Edited April 27, 2015 by Ownagepuffs

[Czar_Yoshi]

Maybe they thought Sol/Renewal/Aegis/Luna/Axefaire is really cool?

High offensive mods and PavGis. PavGis was a big deal back then. And Armsthrift. And Sol.

>.>

<.<

Fred!Gerome has neither Axefaire nor AT...

But yeah it was PavGis+Luna/Sol. All those procs for his glorious +2 Skl mod.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[Carmine Sword]

Oh yes, PavGis. How could I forget about PavGis given all the Vaike!Kjelle vs. Donnel!Kjelle topics?

I apologize if I'm disrupting the conversation with these ramblings about old meta stuff. I just find it interesting to see how far things have progressed since then.

[Joycdonnell]

It's important if you want perfect 100% critical, which in turn is important if you want to be able to safely VV. If you pass up Vantage and keep yourself at high HP, using the crits mainly for mostly reliable chip, then being at 70-95% is just fine. Critstack Henry!Nah typically has about 50% in the back (all you need to, on average, damage tie with a Brave weapon).

Ok, so if I go to the route Lon'qu!Laurent as Sorc for Ruin (because everyone who ends as Sorc w/Ruin have magical muscles inside of those clothes lol), which gonna be the skills for his support partner (preference Avatar!Lucina@GL unless it requieres certain class like Hero/Sage for the nessesary Skill points)?

[Knusperkeks]

>.>

<.<

Fred!Gerome has neither Axefaire nor AT...

But yeah it was PavGis+Luna/Sol. All those procs for his glorious +2 Skl mod.

I might have thrown in too many errors in my recent statements, now you're always being suspicious of everything I say! :D

Oh yes, PavGis. How could I forget about PavGis given all the Vaike!Kjelle vs. Donnel!Kjelle topics?

I apologize if I'm disrupting the conversation with these ramblings about old meta stuff. I just find it interesting to see how far things have progressed since then.

I honestly believe that Vaike!Kjelle is good at what she is destined to do.

[Carmine Sword]

Funnily enough, back then I thought Vaike!Kjelle was outclassed by Frederick!Gerome since Gerome had a higher defense mod.

[Ownagepuffs]

>.>

<.<

Fred!Gerome has neither Axefaire nor AT...

But yeah it was PavGis+Luna/Sol. All those procs for his glorious +2 Skl mod.

I was speaking in a more general sense when I mentioned Sol and AT. As you could see in the video you posted, Sol was even used as the only proc sometimes.

Oh yes, PavGis. How could I forget about PavGis given all the Vaike!Kjelle vs. Donnel!Kjelle topics?

I apologize if I'm disrupting the conversation with these ramblings about old meta stuff. I just find it interesting to see how far things have progressed since then.

Draco was right, you're too chill for you're own good. It's cool. I bring it up myself from time to time. It's still technically relevant as it is pairing related, although this is like the universal Awakening help thread at this point, lol.

In other news, Matt5ster used Virion!Inigo in a recent apo run. I think it was an unpromoted class only run of Normal Apo or something. That's kinda cool, since Virion!Inigo is a throwback pairing.

Edit: If you asked me to choose between Vaike!Kjelle and Donnel!Kjelle now, I'd probably go with Vaike!Kjelle. Donny is really underwhelming. Vaike!Kjelle is kind of like Gregor!Noire. Both are amazing but off forgotten because no GF.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Ownagepuffs

[Czar_Yoshi]

Rambling about the old meta is always fun.

But hey, since we're talking about that age-old Vaike!Kjelle vs Donnel!Kjelle debate, why not take another go at it?

What's on the table is 2% PavGis. Since 100% PavGis would cut damage coming your way by 50%, 2% PavGis therefore cuts incoming damage by 1%.

Donnel!Kjelle, however, has +1 Def/Res over Vaike!Kjelle, thanks to her superior Def/Res mods. In order for the 1% damage reduction from Vaike's PavGis to be equal to the +1 damage reduction from Donnel's Def/Res, incoming damage must be 100. Anything above that, and Vaike is superior. Anything below, and Donnel is superior.

However, since Kjelle only has 85 HP, any damage above 84 will be lethal, therefore the damage range in which Vaike is superior doesn't exist. Thus, Donnel!Kjelle is a better tank than Vaike!Kjelle.

In your face, SazukeEX.

Ok, so if I go to the route Lon'qu!Laurent as Sorc for Ruin (because everyone who ends as Sorc w/Ruin have magical muscles inside of those clothes lol), which gonna be the skills for his support partner (preference Avatar!Lucina@GL unless it requieres certain class like Hero/Sage for the nessesary Skill points)?

For the Sorc route, you need 60 Skl. It doesn't matter how you get it, you just need it (Rally is fine, LB isn't. You need V/V/Wrath/Gamble/Focus). If Rally is on the table, that's 12 Skl you need between mods, tonic and pairup- you get +5 from mods, +2 from tonic and that leaves +5 to be attained from pairup. Any +Skl class will do the trick, GL won't.

All his support needs are DSp+, Solidarity and Anathema. Lucina will work fine for that.

He does need 109 Atk and 220 Hit for the guaranteed OHKOes, so make sure you can get those.

I honestly believe that Vaike!Kjelle is good at what she is destined to do.

If that's being speedy, she's definitely better at it than Donnel. As a non-GF lead she's pretty good.

In other news, Matt5ster used Virion!Inigo in a recent apo run. I think it was an unpromoted class only run of Normal Apo or something. That's kinda cool, since Virion!Inigo is a throwback pairing.

I hope it was either base classes of S.Apo or base classes with no DLC/Rally for Normal, because otherwise AC is at least way ahead of him.

Galeboys in general (except Morgan-M) have really bad Spd so if he needed it for something more than a proc, props to him. I've been wanting to justify no procs Inigo for a long time now so I could give him a fast dad, since I think fast Galeboys are under-explored and want to play around with them more.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[Carmine Sword]

Now you just have to convince Endgame that Aether/Luna procstack is a viable alternative to Vengeance.

I really wish my quote button worked so that I could put Czar's reasoning for Donnel!Kjelle being superior in my sig.

[Knusperkeks]

If that's being speedy, she's definitely better at it than Donnel. As a non-GF lead she's pretty good.

Well you couldn't possibly know, because I'm referencing my own experience.

On my very first run of the game, I had Vaike!Kjelle with Aegis/Pavise/Sol/Axefaire/Deliverer as a General. I was so happy with how she performed, just like a little child. It's a bit embarrassing.

Now you just have to convince Endgame that Aether/Luna procstack is a viable alternative to Vengeance.

It's impossible, the guy is stubborn like a donkey.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Knusperkeks

[Joycdonnell]

For the Sorc route, you need 60 Skl. It doesn't matter how you get it, you just need it (Rally is fine, LB isn't. You need V/V/Wrath/Gamble/Focus). If Rally is on the table, that's 12 Skl you need between mods, tonic and pairup- you get +5 from mods, +2 from tonic and that leaves +5 to be attained from pairup. Any +Skl class will do the trick, GL won't.

All his support needs are DSp+, Solidarity and Anathema. Lucina will work fine for that.

He does need 109 Atk and 220 Hit for the guaranteed OHKOes, so make sure you can get those.

So is possible apply it the same to Sage with forged Wilderwind if Laurent get 60 skill (dang it Katarina's Bolt y u no 35 critc)?

Thanks for the info Czar!~~

[Vascela]

Now you just have to convince Endgame that Aether/Luna procstack is a viable alternative to Vengeance.

I really wish my quote button worked so that I could put Czar's reasoning for Donnel!Kjelle being superior in my sig.

You're better off trying to convince me that than Endgame. But your definition of "viable" might not follow the same standards I set for performance.

[Carmine Sword]

Well, I was able to convince Endgame that Chrom x Sumia is superior to Chrom x Olivia, so that makes me think that it's not impossible for a skilled mediator to convince him to change his mind on other aspects of optimization.

[Knusperkeks]

That much should be obvious, since Sumia's Lucina is inherently better at magic than Olivia's, and magic is what the guy loves the most.