Which Skill is Better: Renewal or Lifetaker?

[LuigiandShadowGirl]

Tactician, Grandmaster, Mage, Sage, Dark Mage, Dark Knight, Sorc, Dark Flier, Valkyrie and Dread Fighter can use Tomes. That's 10 tome using classes.

Barbarian, Berserker, Fighter, Warrior, Hero, Wyvern Rider, Wyvern Lord, Griffon Rider, General, GK, War Monk, and Dread Fighter can use Axes. That's 12 axe using classes.

Ignoring base classes and Dread Fighter, it's still 6 to 8. If War Monk switched to Bishop(tomes), it would be even either way.

Just for kicks, the game has 17 sword using classes (Lord, Great Lord, Tactician, Grandmaster, Cavalier, Paladin, GK, Myrmidon, Thief, Assassin, Trickster, Mercenary, Hero, Bow Knight, Dark Knight, Dancer, and Dread Fighter).

There are 12 lance using classes (Great Lord, Cavalier, Paladin, Knight, GK, General, Pegasus, Falco, DF, Wyvern Lord, Bride, and Villager).

There are 7 staff using classes (Trickster, Falco, Priest, Monk, Troubadour, Valkyrie, and Bride).

Tomes being overpowered aside, I hardly think the game has too many of them.

Note: I'm not counting Lodestar and Conqueror because they're character specific, or Merchant and Soldier because they're enemy only.

Wow, I didn't know there was that many axe wielding classes...I was pretty sure that there were more tome classes... hmm, interesting. Also there are way too many sword users in the game.

Swords: 12 (+2 if Conqueror and Lodestar are counted)

Axes: 9 (+1 if Conqueror)

Lances: 8 (+1 if Conqueror) (won't count villager)

Bows: 5

Tomes: 7

Staves: 5

Sure there's more tomes than Staves or Bows, but There's 9/10 Axe classes, 8/9 Lance classes, and 12/14 Sword classes.

Bishop over War Cleric/Monk would make Tomes even with Axes.

... As a look, there needs to be more Bows.

I agree, they need more bow classes. Bows can be awesome. I like using staves too, which there aren't many classes with staves... (Compared to swords, tomes, axes, etc.)

[Czar_Yoshi]

Fun fact: there are only 4 Staff classes in the game that males can access, and Avatar and Kellam are the only gen 1 units who can get all of them (Priest, Sage, Monk, Trickster). Conveniently, both of them arrive before cht.4, in which there is an infinite-use enemy weapon to grind on...

[Shadow Mir]

Swords: 12 (+2 if Conqueror and Lodestar are counted)

Axes: 9 (+1 if Conqueror)

Lances: 8 (+1 if Conqueror) (won't count villager)

Bows: 5

Tomes: 7

Staves: 5

Sure there's more tomes than Staves or Bows, but There's 9/10 Axe classes, 8/9 Lance classes, and 12/14 Sword classes.

Bishop over War Cleric/Monk would make Tomes even with Axes.

... As a look, there needs to be more Bows.

Bishop would also be extremely redundant with Sage around.

I agree, they need more bow classes. Bows can be awesome. I like using staves too, which there aren't many classes with staves... (Compared to swords, tomes, axes, etc.)

The problem with bows, as I see it, is that these games are too enemy phase focused. So I'm not very sure what we'd hope to gain by having more bow classes.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Levant Fortner

[Czar_Yoshi]

Bishop would also be extremely redundant with Sage around.

The problem with bows, as I see it, is that these games are too enemy phase focused. So I'm not very sure what we'd hope to gain by having more bow classes.

Weapons redundancy doesn't stop Wyvern Lords/Generals, Assassins/Bow Knights and Sages/Valkyries. And Bishop would have different caps (probably +skl/spd and -mag/res) that would set it apart.

Bows are excellent for any time counter is an issue or you have enough staffbots/room to play Player Phase Only. (Apotheosis, Lunatic+, Streetpass skirmishes...) They're also nice for chapters like 6 and 17 when there are walls to shoot through, and Longbows speed up killing the Mire goons in cht.21 by letting you skip opening the doors.

[Magical Glace]

The point of the Magic split into light, dark, and anima (which is sometimes split further into wind, fire, and thunder) is specifically to allow there to be more magic weilders without being redundant. And FE11/12 had both Sages and Bishops without being too redundant, since Bishops were better magic tanks while Sages were better at attacking.

[Shadow Mir]

Weapons redundancy doesn't stop Wyvern Lords/Generals, Assassins/Bow Knights and Sages/Valkyries. And Bishop would have different caps (probably +skl/spd and -mag/res) that would set it apart.

Bows are excellent for any time counter is an issue or you have enough staffbots/room to play Player Phase Only. (Apotheosis, Lunatic+, Streetpass skirmishes...) They're also nice for chapters like 6 and 17 when there are walls to shoot through, and Longbows speed up killing the Mire goons in cht.21 by letting you skip opening the doors.

Why would I use a Bishop when the same class that promotes into them also has Sage as a promotion option??? It just smacks of redundancy to a large degree, given that Bishops and Sages are the same class, essentially.

The point of the Magic split into light, dark, and anima (which is sometimes split further into wind, fire, and thunder) is specifically to allow there to be more magic weilders without being redundant. And FE11/12 had both Sages and Bishops without being too redundant, since Bishops were better magic tanks while Sages were better at attacking.

Which never really materialized, short of their caps, since Bishop bases aren't that different from Sages, for one, and second, most characters in SD had crap for Resistance growth. Also, you had one unppromoted class for each magic type in GBA. Given that you only have one promoted class who has access to Dark magic in this game, I think your idea would be awful for balance.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Levant Fortner

[Czar_Yoshi]

Why would I use a Bishop when the same class that promotes into them also has Sage as a promotion option??? It just smacks of redundancy to a large degree, given that Bishops and Sages are the same class, essentially.

Which never really materialized, short of their caps, since Bishop bases aren't that different from Sages, for one, and second, most characters in SD had crap for Resistance growth. Also, you had one unppromoted class for each magic type in GBA. Given that you only have one promoted class who has access to Dark magic in this game, I think your idea would be awful for balance.

Why would you use a Sage when the same class that promotes into them also has Bishop as an option??? Because they have different caps and different uses. And different skills. Or maybe because the game gave you a prepromoted Bishop and you don't want to waste a Second Seal on them.

Dark Magic is broken anyway.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Czar_Yoshi

[Shadow Mir]

Why would you use a Sage when the same class that promotes into them also has Bishop as an option??? Because they have different caps and different uses. And different skills. Or maybe because the game gave you a prepromoted Bishop and you don't want to waste a Second Seal on them.

Dark Magic is broken anyway.

Either way, it sounds rather redundant when both only have caps to differentiate themselves. Also, I actually like how this game had a lot of unique weapon combinations. Replacing War Monks in favor of Bishops would just feel wrong to a large extent. And unless they had a huge advantage in their advantageous stats, Bishops would likely be obsoleted by Sages.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Levant Fortner

[LuigiandShadowGirl]

Fun fact: there are only 4 Staff classes in the game that males can access, and Avatar and Kellam are the only gen 1 units who can get all of them (Priest, Sage, Monk, Trickster). Conveniently, both of them arrive before cht.4, in which there is an infinite-use enemy weapon to grind on...

That's interesting an interesting fact. Only 4 staff classes for males, huh?

Bishop would also be extremely redundant with Sage around.

The problem with bows, as I see it, is that these games are too enemy phase focused. So I'm not very sure what we'd hope to gain by having more bow classes.

I don't know, I just really like bows. It's helpful to have a different projectile and that's increased attacks against Pegasus Knights and Wyvern Riders. Archers start out fragile but get stronger later on (at least, in my game). Plus you can use Longbows that attack much farther away and bows can shoot through walls. I find that strategy extremely helpful so I don't have to worry about opening doors first.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Yes, only 4 male staff classes. That came to my attention when I was playing with using Marth's infinite use Parallel Falchion in cht.4 as a source of infinite damage for my healers to heal to circumvent anti-grinding measures on Lunatic(+). Turns out the best two units for doing that have already joined your team at that point.

You don't get another source of infinite damage (without skirmishes/*pass/DLC) until cht.18 (or Nah's Paralogue), so the timing is very handy.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Czar_Yoshi

[Magical Glace]

That's interesting an interesting fact. Only 4 staff classes for males, huh?

I don't know, I just really like bows. It's helpful to have a different projectile and that's increased attacks against Pegasus Knights and Wyvern Riders. Archers start out fragile but get stronger later on (at least, in my game). Plus you can use Longbows that attack much farther away and bows can shoot through walls. I find that strategy extremely helpful so I don't have to worry about opening doors first.

I actually found bows UP on lower difficulties this time. Now, I don't always hate bow users (you can thank Wolt's looks and FE9!Rolf's RNG blessing for that). Though, they're good for dealing with counter, I'll give them that much..

[IceBrand]

I say Renweal since it works automatically every turn and dosen't require a kill. Also Lifetaker dosen't work on the enemy phase.

[Shadow Mir]

I don't know, I just really like bows. It's helpful to have a different projectile and that's increased attacks against Pegasus Knights and Wyvern Riders. Archers start out fragile but get stronger later on (at least, in my game). Plus you can use Longbows that attack much farther away and bows can shoot through walls. I find that strategy extremely helpful so I don't have to worry about opening doors first.

Ehhh. I like bows too, but I hesitate to consider longbows useful in games before Shadow Dragon (and that goes double for Radiant Dawn).

I actually found bows UP on lower difficulties this time. Now, I don't always hate bow users (you can thank Wolt's looks and FE9!Rolf's RNG blessing for that). Though, they're good for dealing with counter, I'll give them that much..

I like some bow users, but FE9 Rolf is NOT one of them - hell, I consider him the worst archer in the series. At least Wolt, while awful, has the luxury of being in a game where effective damage is triple Mt. FE9!Rofl has nothing.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I actually found bows UP on lower difficulties this time. Now, I don't always hate bow users (you can thank Wolt's looks and FE9!Rolf's RNG blessing for that). Though, they're good for dealing with counter, I'll give them that much..

Probably because they can't fight on enemy phase and are thus only useful if you aren't getting attacked then, or if you don't want to retaliate (Counter). On lower difficulties, how good a character is is dependent on how easily you can throw them into a mob and watch them clean house, and bows simply can't do that.

And I frankly never want to see Wolt's face again after watching him cart off so much of my gold on my quests for max Renown.

[Magical Glace]

Eh, even on lower difficulties in some games (FE7 with Rebecca and FE9 with Rolf come to mind) I've found use in Archers. Rolf comes very close to capping most stats if the Goddess looks at you even normally. FE10 Rolf is good too, he just has a pretty bad case of Overshadowed by Awesome thanks to Shinon's rediculous stats (not to mention, Marksmen were rediculously broken.)

All I mean is that they aren't very good on lesser difficulties in comparison to the past.

And Wolt's face is beautiful! Why didn't you just summon someone else like, I dunno, Dierdre when you got sick of seeing him?

[Czar_Yoshi]

They're better on past FEs because past FEs didn't have FE13's ridiculous enemy density, and it was reasonable to expect to fight ~50% of your battles in EP. In Awakening, charging one enemy puts you in range of about 5 more, and without Rescue or Galeforce you'll be seeing a lot of EP combat. In earlier FEs, having one or two goons who came after your archer(s) on EP isn't a problem either, because the rest of your team is right there to mop them up, but in Awakening you can't do that because most chapters huge enemy aggro radii and your entire team is needed to either rush the next wave of foes (who are right next to you) or pull back, in which case you can't pick off the leftovers. The net effect is that Archers don't pull their weight in FE13.

Now, Wolt: I have two copies of Awakening. That means I need 199998 Renown to max out both of them. Hiring a spotpass team gives 50 Renown, so I need to hire 4,000 characters to get my Renown.

Wolt, with the Silver Card, costs 600G to recruit. That's a grand total of 2,400,000G. Excluding the time it takes to get that gold, it takes about 20 hours to actually recruit him that many times.

Dierdre, with the Silver Card, costs 2,100G to recruit. That's a grand total of 8,400,000G. For comparison, Golden Gaffe with Despoil yields ~80,000G per run.

So basically using Dierdre instead of Wolt would cost me ~75 extra Golden Gaffe runs, which would probably add on about 3-5 hours. Now do you see why I use Wolt? Because he's the cheapest, and over 4,000 recruitments even a small difference becomes huge.

[Airship Canon]

Silver Card doesn't affect Recruit costs. Only item purchases.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Were you recruiting them directly, or from the logbook? It does for me.

But if that's really the case and I somehow haven't noticed (I should have, I'm already halfway done) then Deirdre would cost an extra 150 Golden Gaffe runs, which is even more ridiculous.

[Shadow Mir]

Eh, even on lower difficulties in some games (FE7 with Rebecca and FE9 with Rolf come to mind) I've found use in Archers. Rolf comes very close to capping most stats if the Goddess looks at you even normally. FE10 Rolf is good too, he just has a pretty bad case of Overshadowed by Awesome thanks to Shinon's rediculous stats (not to mention, Marksmen were rediculously broken.)

All I mean is that they aren't very good on lesser difficulties in comparison to the past.

And Wolt's face is beautiful! Why didn't you just summon someone else like, I dunno, Dierdre when you got sick of seeing him?

Rolf also suffers from Overshadowed by Awesome in FE9 (though it's Astrid who outclasses him there), in addition to generally requiring too much effort to justify the payoff. =/

They're better on past FEs because past FEs didn't have FE13's ridiculous enemy density, and it was reasonable to expect to fight ~50% of your battles in EP. In Awakening, charging one enemy puts you in range of about 5 more, and without Rescue or Galeforce you'll be seeing a lot of EP combat. In earlier FEs, having one or two goons who came after your archer(s) on EP isn't a problem either, because the rest of your team is right there to mop them up, but in Awakening you can't do that because most chapters huge enemy aggro radii and your entire team is needed to either rush the next wave of foes (who are right next to you) or pull back, in which case you can't pick off the leftovers. The net effect is that Archers don't pull their weight in FE13.

Also, some FEs (primarily 6 and 12) had a lot of fliers that a bow would be good against (and in the latter, chip damage was especially useful as you couldn't really hope to dodge the counterattack most of the time).

[Magical Glace]

Why didn't you just give a well-leveled Chrom Falchion, or, even better, a 50+ Luck Armsthrift character Ragnell, Set enemy phases to skip and just fight them? No gold needed, pardoning the grinding cost. That seems a bit more practical if you're that worried about Gold. At least, that's how I see it.

In my expirience, Astrid is even more trouble than Rolf since: 1. Rolf joins earlier at the same level as her. He could be miles ahead of her by her jointime, if you put in the effort. 2. Rolf starts with a strong personal weapon to help make up for low starting stats. Astrid... not so much. 3. The chapter just before Astrid joins is all flyers. Easy EXP for Rolf if he's been trained a little. 4. Correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked Snipers have more skill capacity than Paladins. 5. Snipers get an automatic critical bonus just for being snipers. Swordmasters do too.

The only thing that makes Astrid remotely better than Rolf is Paragon, which doesn't do much since she starts so behind she can't really kill enough enemies to get a lot of EXP.

[Shadow Mir]

In my expirience, Astrid is even more trouble than Rolf since: 1. Rolf joins earlier at the same level as her. He could be miles ahead of her by her jointime, if you put in the effort. 2. Rolf starts with a strong personal weapon to help make up for low starting stats. Astrid... not so much. 3. The chapter just before Astrid joins is all flyers. Easy EXP for Rolf if he's been trained a little. 4. Correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked Snipers have more skill capacity than Paladins. 5. Snipers get an automatic critical bonus just for being snipers. Swordmasters do too.

The only thing that makes Astrid remotely better than Rolf is Paragon, which doesn't do much since she starts so behind she can't really kill enough enemies to get a lot of EXP.

Conceded, Rolf does join earlier, but it's not like he's going to be doing much damage, other than to Myrms and Mages. Second, his special bow doesn't "make up for low starting stats". 3. True, but since you got a Laguzslayer last chapter (and maybe two if you jacked the boss of the last chapter), whoops, there goes Rolf's niche. 4. True, but what would Snipers want that someone else couldn't make better use of? 5. Snipers may get an innate crit boost, but that doesn't do nearly enough to save them from completely sucking in Path of Radiance. Swordmasters are little better off. And this is coming from someone who actually used Rolf (and found him rather lacking for all the input needed to make him anything resembling decent, at that). And the nail in Rolf's coffin? Longbows and the Double Bow both completely suck, so not having a sniper means I'm not missing out on much, and this is on top of PoR being exceedingly unkind to mono-bow units.

Bold: Uhh, better class? Not being bow locked forever like Rolf is? Hello?!

Also, I apologize for the derailment.

Edited December 9, 2013 by Levant Fortner

[Czar_Yoshi]

I tried that, it's slower. GG with battle scenes off, Galeforce, OHKOs on everything takes ~4 minutes (haven't actually timed it, but I'd guess at least 1 min of that is accessing the map and deploying my characters), and gets me at least 50 Wolts. If I fought every Wolt instead, I'd probably take two/three turns depending on the map, maybe five seconds per turn, so a best case scenario of 500 seconds per 50 Wolts- and that's not even counting the time it takes to deploy my characters, load the map, etc. GG also helps break up the monotony a bit, which is important if you're doing the same thing for ten hours.

I wonder how long it will be before you ask how much Renown I could have farmed if I had been farming instead of arguing here...

[nflchamp]

Right... I don't really see Lifetaker as all that great when the situations where it would shine are the same ones where you're risking taking even more damage or dying.

I know the thread has left this point, but I feel like I need to explain why Lifetaker can be considered a good skill. From full health you can attack on player phase, doubling and killing but taking a counter attack, but remain at full health or close to full health thanks to Lifetaker. With this you can still have an enemy phase without a staffer healing you, or galeforce into another attack without worry. On paper its a good skill. The problem is that it only matters in specific situations. If you aren't in those situations, the consistent healing of Renewal will be more useful to you than Lifetaker's healing.

Either way, healing skills are bad altogether.