Why don't people use Nino?

[Alertcircuit]

I never used her because I already had a sage in the form of Erk usually, or Pent if I bothered with him. And I didn't feel the need to train another one up.

[momogeek2141]

Personally, I like using Nino. She's a great character. She does join late, but there is something about my playing style that allows me to train such characters without too much difficulty. (I promote tiltyu at the beginning of chapter 4.) Certain characters (*cough*Sophia) are exceptions, but not Nino.

[Mekkah]

Every time I consider training Nino, I compare her 20/1 stats to Pent's base stats, and realize it's just not worth it.

[Baldrick]

You'll train Sophia and you'll like it, boy!

[Paper Jam]

Plus she gets your Tactics rank to take a dive

Not necessarily. In Night of Farewells alone on Hard Mode, the par for a 5-star Tactics rank is 28 turns: plenty of time to level Nino up.

Not enough to fight Sonia, but certainly enough to hold her own against the mooks.

Edited September 22, 2014 by Paper Jam

[Snowy_One]

Course I use her. I use the units I like and don't give two ***** about tiers when it comes to playing. Have fun!

[VS Angel]

I personally don't use her.

[Parrhesia]

Using child soldiers is a war crime.

[Mekkah]

Not necessarily. In Night of Farewells alone on Hard Mode, the par for a 5-star Tactics rank is 28 turns: plenty of time to level Nino up.

Not enough to fight Sonia, but certainly enough to hold her own against the mooks.

Tactics is evaluated at the end of the game by your turn total though, not whether you met the individual requirements. This means you have to compensate for all of the zero-turn chapters in Hector (and there's 5 of those). You don't have 28 turns for one chapter and 0 for another, you have to look at the bigger picture.

Sure, the turn requirement for A tactics is rather easy to meet overall with all the LTC knowledge of today, but then you gotta wonder why you would even use Nino to begin with.

Edited September 26, 2014 by Mekkah

[lazydoggamer]

On my first playthourgh I did and I will never again. Before playing I had heard about how "amazing" she was so I gave her the afa drops and raised her. The result? Canas, Lucius, and Pent all had better stats than her.

[Blaze The Great]

I use Nino every run. She has solid magic and great speed, like Lute. I never use prepromotes, Erk always fails me (seriously, I can't remember the last time he got over about 15 magic) and I always want a magic user of every school. So yeah, not sure why you wouldn't use her.

[Smiley Jim]

When I read this thread, the question I asked myself was "Why do people use Nino?"

While Nino has good stats if given investment, the thing is that I can put an equal amount of investment into another unpromoted unit (let's say Canas, Erk, or Lucius), and I can get more or less the same fucking result. Of course, most unpromoted units join way earlier than Nino does, and Canas, Erk, and Lucius are stronger relative to their enemies for a longer period of time. So in that sense, investing in a unit like Lucius is way more efficient than investing in Nino.

And this is not even getting to Pent. While his potential isn't as good as hers, he still holds multiple insurmountable advantages over her. First off is the fact that Pent joins two chapters earlier with RNG proof stats. In order for Nino to roughly match base Pent, she would need to be 20/6 on average. And that's just stats. Pent also has superior weapon ranks (c'mon, do you really think Nino is gonna reach A staves without massive favoritism, considering she starts at E rank?), doesn't need to consume a guiding ring to be useful (and let's not kid ourselves, guiding rings are somewhat contested), and even has a built in A support with Louise (compare this to Nino, whose fastest support takes 18 turns for a C and 72 turns to max it out.)

In other words, if you like Nino and want to use her because she's your favorite unit, who am I to stop you? But calling her a good unit is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard (Right up there with GrayLu being valid).

Have a nice day.

[Kirie]

I've never used Nino and I don't plan to. In short, she's simply too much work in too short a time for too little reward (others have already gone into this in detail, so I won't bother). If I need another magic user late-game (if Erk got screwed or whatever), I'll turn to Pent, who is already solid and dependable when you get him and doesn't need any babying, but usually I don't bother with either of them since my team tends to already be good enough by then.

[Klokinator]

If Nino had 100%+ growths, she'd be very useful.

However, vanilla FE7 does not do this, therefore she is terrible. Chaos mode does though.

[Paper Jam]

Tactics is evaluated at the end of the game by your turn total though, not whether you met the individual requirements. This means you have to compensate for all of the zero-turn chapters in Hector (and there's 5 of those). You don't have 28 turns for one chapter and 0 for another, you have to look at the bigger picture.

Sure, the turn requirement for A tactics is rather easy to meet overall with all the LTC knowledge of today, but then you gotta wonder why you would even use Nino to begin with.

True, but there are plenty of chapters before you get Nino, and most of them are generous enough that you can compensate for all of the zero-turn chapters in Hector's tale.

And even disregarding that, you don't need all 28 of those turns in "Night of Farewells" to level Nino up. 20 is plenty. (The last time I played through HHM, I beat that chapter on turn 22 and had leveled Nino up to 14.)

As for why someone would use Nino, it's easier to get 5-star Experience (and thus S-rank) if you use her than if you don't. By the time you get her, nobody else will be getting much experience from the rank-and-file enemies.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Paper Jam

[Mekkah]

This is why talking about a character's worth in a ranked playthrough is so silly: there's not really a choice to make between characters. You use all of them at some point. Can't believe we used that as the gold standard for years.

But some of them are a bigger pain in the butt than others.

[Shadow Mir]

I use Nino every run. She has solid magic and great speed, like Lute. I never use prepromotes, Erk always fails me (seriously, I can't remember the last time he got over about 15 magic) and I always want a magic user of every school. So yeah, not sure why you wouldn't use her.

First off, personal experience means nothing whatsoever. You can't guarantee that Nino will turn out good. Second, she's hard to train. The chapter right after you get her is pretty annoying, especially to dedicate to being a Nino training ground. And even if I were to suffer through the agony of training her, it isn't likely that she'll outclass Erk or Pent by enough to make it worth it.

[momogeek2141]

And this is not even getting to Pent. While his potential isn't as good as hers, he still holds multiple insurmountable advantages over her. First off is the fact that Pent joins two chapters earlier with RNG proof stats. In order for Nino to roughly match base Pent, she would need to be 20/6 on average. And that's just stats. Pent also has superior weapon ranks (c'mon, do you really think Nino is gonna reach A staves without massive favoritism, considering she starts at E rank?), doesn't need to consume a guiding ring to be useful (and let's not kid ourselves, guiding rings are somewhat contested), and even has a built in A support with Louise (compare this to Nino, whose fastest support takes 18 turns for a C and 72 turns to max it out.)

Much of what you say is true. However, if you train Nino efficiently, she will easily get to that level. Promote her at the end of Cog, and there is a chapter right after in which she is easy to train. As for A with Louise, barely anyone considers using her, as she is not a good pre promote. I do agree with your point about Nino taking forever to build supports though. Same with her staves rank

First off, personal experience means nothing whatsoever. You can't guarantee that Nino will turn out good.

You're right, it doesn't. Although you can't guarantee she will be good, you can't guarantee she will be bad either. Looking at averages, she usually turns out very good. At 20/6, her stats compared to Pent: same HP, same MAG, 2 less SKL, 6 more SPD, 5 more LCK, 1 less DEF, and 4 more RES.

Edited October 8, 2014 by momogeek2141

[Shadow Mir]

Much of what you say is true. However, if you train Nino efficiently, she will easily get to that level. Promote her at the end of Cog, and there is a chapter right after in which she is easy to train. As for A with Louise, barely anyone considers using her, as she is not a good pre promote. I do agree with your point about Nino taking forever to build supports though. Same with her staves rank

You're right, it doesn't. Although you can't guarantee she will be good, you can't guarantee she will be bad either. Looking at averages, she usually turns out very good. At 20/6, her stats compared to Pent: same HP, same MAG, 2 less SKL, 6 more SPD, 5 more LCK, 1 less DEF, and 4 more RES.

How can you "train Nino efficiently", though??? As stated earlier, NoF is irritating enough without the added stress of training Nino, and CoD isn't exactly a good training ground either in you're in HHM. And the chapter after THAT one gives you very few unit slots.

This falls victim to the fallacy of assuming that Pent's still gonna be at base level when Nino's 20/6. Oh, and that speed lead isn't as impressive as it looks at first glance when you factor in Nino's lousy 4 con.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Levant Caprice

[lazydoggamer]

Much of what you say is true. However, if you train Nino efficiently, she will easily get to that level. Promote her at the end of Cog, and there is a chapter right after in which she is easy to train. As for A with Louise, barely anyone considers using her, as she is not a good pre promote. I do agree with your point about Nino taking forever to build supports though. Same with her staves rank

You're right, it doesn't. Although you can't guarantee she will be good, you can't guarantee she will be bad either. Looking at averages, she usually turns out very good. At 20/6, her stats compared to Pent: same HP, same MAG, 2 less SKL, 6 more SPD, 5 more LCK, 1 less DEF, and 4 more RES.

We have very different definitions of the word of efficient if you're spending an entire chapter getting Nino to level 20. Also how are you training her in Cog when every enemy there has high res? More importantly if we are talking efficiency how is she keeping up with our army of fliers and mounts that we have by this point?

Like mentioned above her con is so terrible that her SPD lead is meaningless. A thunder tome drops her AS by 2 and elfire drops it by 6. Also Nino's slight lead in Res< Pent's A staves.

Edited October 8, 2014 by lazydoggamer

[momogeek2141]

We do have different definitions. What I meant by efficient training is giving her enough training to get to a decent level on cog. As for training Nino on cog, I have my methods. Her con can be helped (but not totally fixed) with a body ring. And even then, some players choose to put it on a different player, such as Eli or a peg knight.

[Elieson]

We do have different definitions. What I meant by efficient training is giving her enough training to get to a decent level on cog. As for training Nino on cog, I have my methods. Her con can be helped (but not totally fixed) with a body ring. And even then, some players choose to put it on a different player, such as Eli or a peg knight.

Give me all your Body Rings

A Body Ring is not meant for Mages, when you have other units that accomplish SO much more with it. Enemy res in this game is awful in general, so mages function well with simple Fire/Thunder tomes. Dark Magic is where it's at. Athos makes good use of it (giving him -1AS instead of -3AS while using Luna), and it gives Canas -2AS instead of -4AS with Luna as well. Athos!Speedwing[or]Body Ring can double both Nergal and Dragon at base on Normal modes, and needs 1 speedwing[or]body ring beyond that first body ring to achieve the same on Hard modes.

[Refa]

There's no point in giving Athos resources that can be better used elsewhere; it saves like a turn if you do (and if you really care about turns, then just rig a 13% crit), and doesn't make the battle significantly easier in any way.

Edited October 9, 2014 by Refa

[Elieson]

There's no point in giving Athos resources that can be better used elsewhere; it saves like a turn if you do (and if you really care about turns, then just rig a 13% crit), and doesn't make the battle significantly easier in any way.

I'm just pointing out how useless it is to give a mere mage a Body Ring,

[Paper Jam]

Nino only suffers a 1-point speed penalty when wielding Fire tomes before promotion (and not even that after promotion), her Speed growth is good enough that she can usually afford that penalty, and her Magic growth is good enough that she can generally do decent damage even with a Fire tome.

Anyway, I'd say that level 15 is a decent level on Cog, and as I said, it's pretty easy to get her up to level 15 in Night of Farewells.

If nothing else, Nino can easily handle the wyvern reinforcements that come with Vaida.

Edited October 9, 2014 by Paper Jam