Awakening Skills tier list

[Elieson]

Maribelle's level is lower than what Lissa is likely to be, and her stats/growths are relatively unimpressive for the mode and amount of babying she'll need, compared to Lissa who's just /slightly/ worse off in Speed/Mag. She heals for [less] for pretty much ever due to a level gain by Lissa, and eventually Healtouch. Also, while I've never really relied on Demosielle to help out my team (as Sumia, Panne, Cordelia and Robin(F) don't benefit from it at all) Healtouch benefits the team by being a reliable +5 to heal any time you need it. Lv10 Lissa outheals Maribelle unless she gets a significant level lead. That being said, Lissa->Sage with Tomefaire is more beneficial to the team as support than Maribelle!Valkyrie, because by that time, you should have easy access to Physic staves, and Lissa's tremendous magic + Healtouch will let her back up the team rather than having to have Maribelle up front providing late-game Demosielle bonuses and relatively unecessary RallyRes boost to front line males.

In Lunatic, powerhouses, fliers and Nostanks are the leading units, and those are represented by Panne, Sumia, Cordelia, Tharja and Anna (and Nowi, with investment). Others like Vaike and Lon'Qu are likely delegated as supporting units for pairup. Chrom and Robin(M) are your two main Males, with Gaius and Libra up there I support, but the top tiers are represented by the aforementioned 5 (+Nowi), and Maribelle's Lv10 skill doesn't ever help them.

Interceptor, think of how many new people come to these forums and are under the impression that Jeigans suck and Arena Abusing to 20/20 is the way to be. THink of all the love for Trainees like Amelia/Ewan. I'd be comfortable to say that the typical FE player turtles, while the typical efficiency player lives here on SF and represent about 50 or so people here. I still feel like Ch6-7 is a fair place to assume that Lissa will be at though, if only because by Chapter 5, you've got one extra heal staff and Maribelle's Mend, and may be splitting your heals up due to having two.

I can't sit on Demosielle (and thus, Maribelle) being up there in terms with Lissa.

Edited August 15, 2014 by Sara.

[Tables]

Tantivy benefits from the skills that you're likely to find it alongside: Quick Burn, Avoid +10, or (in Panne's case) Even Rhythm. That's a serious amount of Avoid if you have a couple of those, and lets a flier operate independently for a while. Avoid-based defense in Lunatic is really good, because Hawkeye doesn't exist in vanilla.

I send fliers off alone all the time; they are the best suited for it, especially if they have a solid Support partner that they can switch to in order to deal with effective weaknesses or low HP.

Sending fliers off alone is mostly an LTC type thing. It's generally not all that helpful to separate and expose our fliers. There's times we're going to do it, yes, but how often? Which chapters in particular get easier by doing things like this? I can think of a few, mostly involving killing thieves quickly, but that usually lasts a turn or two.

Maribelle is really good, I don't know why people are always shitting on her. Sure, Lissa is a better healer and has a level lead + inertia in her favor, but Maribelle brings Demoiselle without a reclass, which turns your men into Men. She's a really excellent unit for backline support if you are using guys like Gregor, Lon'qu, etc. Lissa probably edges her overall (due to easier access to good offense), but when it comes to defensive prowess, accept no substitute.

Maribelle's healing is lower than Lissa's by a significant margin, and it's not all that long until you get Libra and Anna, who outclass her healing wise. The point about Demoiselle as an option is an interesting one, and maybe worth considering. I'll have to actually try Maribelle out on a serious run at some point.

Money is not really a limiter in this game outside of the very early stages, especially if you are including Renown bullion. In my Lunatic+ run, I was grinding up Levin Swords into powder and snorting them like cocaine. By the time that Rescue staves are buyable (right after the start of Valm), you should be fine using them occasionally for bail-outs. It helps that they are good for leveling up staff-users, too.

Hm, money definitely isn't an issue by mid-game wise. It's only an issue early and slightly going into the mid game, so I suppose you probably can afford to use Rescue every now and again. Of course the more money spent on replicating Galeforce is less money to spend on braves, Anna stat boosters, forges and other such useful things, but that's not exactly a huge argument against GF.

The problem I have with putting Galeforce on a pedestal is that it has negatives associated with it (Falcos are just a better class than Dark Flier), and a lack of positives for it to leverage in this environment (not LTC, no mass Counter to worry about). When I can get Rally SPD and Lancefaire with flying staff access while retaining ~75% of Galeforce's effectiveness by using Rescue/Dance, I think I'm taking the hit and choosing Falco most of the time. It's not like DF is going to give you Nosferatu access, or anything.

Whenever I'm playing Lunatic, the moment I get Galeforce I notice a huge drop in difficulty, and for every extra GFer I get, the difficulty always drops some more. It doesn't really matter when I get it, it just drops the difficulty. The things you can do with it are very useful. The issue with staff users is, yes, you can kill something and rescue back, but that uses up your staff user's turn. How many staff users are you deploying, really? You probably want to be healing most turns as well, with them.

It's something like ~54 uses, but that's a shitload of healing. If you are breaking your Heal staff by Ch.3, that means you patched up every last scraped knee available along the way.

And if we're interested in training Lissa, why wouldn't we do that? It's not like that's a ridiculous amount of time spent, about 7-8 turns per chapter for 4 chapters. That's not unreasonable at all, those early chapters are probably taking ~10-15 turns each if we're playing safely (and since we don't care about turn count and do care about survival, why wouldn't we?).

I think that Renown makes things more interesting. Bullion (L) is kind of an arbitrary cutoff, though. I'd lean towards starting the counter at Energy Drop, i.e. one complete playthrough. That gives you the Seal, a Seed, and a good Merc weapon to work with, at least. The extra money in Ch. 4 is really helpful, though not as much as it would be if you were allowing Spotpass store items.

Yeah, the cutoff is kinda arbitrary. I think the Large Bullion is generally chosen because it's both a nice item to end of, dealing with the money glut you face early on, and it's also exactly 1K renown. An earlier point could also be fine. The Large Bullion also notably gives you a Celica's Gale, which makes a big difference to your early tome users I suppose.

[XeKr]

Demoiselle is one of the reasons I kinda prefer Wyvern!Lon’qu instead of Wyvern!Panne nowadays (among Swords vs. Plegia, more consistent avoid, Vantage, no beast weakness, etcetc).

It’s actually pretty great, but I would consider its biggest weakness that it comes on Troubadour, meaning probably Maribelle, who I don’t consider to be that good. But itt in particular, there’s not much reason she can’t get the levels she needs.

Sending fliers off alone is mostly an LTC type thing. It's generally not all that helpful to separate and expose our fliers. There's times we're going to do it, yes, but how often? Which chapters in particular get easier by doing things like this? I can think of a few, mostly involving killing thieves quickly, but that usually lasts a turn or two.

If you have some self-sufficient unit by avoidstack, why not send it off alone? More kills is more exp is more stats (concentrated) is an easier game.

Besides “lowmanning is not fun”. Isn’t it arguably not fun because it’s easy/trivial/a very strong strat?

Whenever I'm playing Lunatic, the moment I get Galeforce I notice a huge drop in difficulty, and for every extra GFer I get, the difficulty always drops some more. It doesn't really matter when I get it, it just drops the difficulty. The things you can do with it are very useful. The issue with staff users is, yes, you can kill something and rescue back, but that uses up your staff user's turn. How many staff users are you deploying, really? You probably want to be healing most turns as well, with them.

And I hardly miss Galeforce at all when I play Lunatic. Rather, I miss Rally Speed more than Galeforce, if I happen to use Sumia/Cordelia that way, for example.

It essentially makes a few lategame chapters "easier", but not substantially more than Rescue and it makes earlier chapters harder since you had to train weak units in a (fairly) weak class. And stuff with opportunity cost, etc.

Discounting turncount implications, is the convenience of Galeforce (gold-wise or w/e) really that amazing?

(incidentally I still rate it as 2nd best by a fair margin, but perhaps for slightly different reasons)

And if we're interested in training Lissa, why wouldn't we do that? It's not like that's a ridiculous amount of time spent, about 7-8 turns per chapter for 4 chapters. That's not unreasonable at all, those early chapters are probably taking ~10-15 turns each if we're playing safely (and since we don't care about turn count and do care about survival, why wouldn't we?).

Easy question to make here, do you (not) think that’s inefficient? Yes/no is fine.

There are obvious thought experiments to make here, but it’s probably not worth going into. >_>

Edited August 15, 2014 by XeKr

[Interceptor]

I think that I need to write something more broad about Maribelle, just so that I don't have to reply to three different people individually.

Lissa, as I already mentioned, has a level lead on Maribelle and is a superior healer. But these two things are pretty inconsequential over the course of the game. Lack of healing is one of the easiest things in the world to compensate for, because healing is not special. Awakening showers you in healers (Lissa, Maribelle, Libra, Anna), and Libra in particular makes for a great burst healer (comes able to use Physic, has Healtouch, and starts with excellent MAG). When there are so many chapters in this game that give you more deployment slots than you are reasonably going to use for combatants, it's dead-easy to just throw in an extra healer for emergency situations.

The level lead that Lissa has only matters from the perspective of having higher stats, and getting skills/promoted earlier. But Lissa's skills are worse. Miracle is not useful in an environment where a death is the worst possible result, and Healtouch is duplicative/overkill. Lissa can jump right to Sage, but she's as frail as a wet tissue paper, never grows out of it, and can't use Nosferatu to compensate. Lissa's best-case combat scenario is the odd Player Phase kill, or tightly-controlled Enemy Phase facings. Miriel and Tharja are far superior general magic-users, and even Henry has a better future than she does.

Maribelle, on the other hand, isn't merely a mediocre combat unit in a healer's body. She goes all-in on the support role, with skills that are actually useful and unique: Demoiselle, Rally RES, and Dual Support+. This is in addition to being a more useful Pair-up partner (+SPD > +SKL), and still being able to fulfill the role of the backup magic user. Maribelle gives you 75% of Lissa's healing and offense, while offering you useful support skills that you aren't reasonably going to get somewhere else. She's a specialist with just the right secondary roles.

Demoiselle is really useful, like a male-only defense-centric Charm. It does require that you deploy men, but the men are pretty strong in their own right. What does it matter that people can use Charlie's Angels teams? Pannecake is great, but Lon'qu has better skills for the job (Panne wishes she had Avoid +10 and Vantage). Gregor is a badass in a great class that gets exactly what he needs from Demo: crit evade (his LCK is shit) and more avoid to go with Patience. Chrom is also a dude. Either Robin or Morgan are going to be in this mix for this skill. Etc. Using Demoiselle effectively just means noticing that there are potentially strong characters for your army that don't have boobs.

WRT sending fliers out alone: why not? It's useful for training, and separating enemy groups into manageable chunks. It's so easy for fliers to disengage from bad situations, due to their superior MV and terrain-busting, that having one of them go Bulldog is a perfectly viable tactic. If they get overwhelmed, just bail out. It's more useful for Wyverns than Pegs, because of durability issues and bows, but Pegs don't have Tantivy anyway.

WRT Galefore: opportunity cost is a thing. Obviously you're better off with Galeforce than you are without it, which is why it is so noticeable when it shows up. But in order to get GF, you left easy access to Lancefaire and Rally SPD on the table, both of which are really useful abilities. Plus, your Dark Flier has no staff ability. Sure, tomes are useful, but is hitting RES and gaining another weapon type worth giving up mobile flying staff utility for? Falcos with -faire and an appropriate Pair-up partner are still able to do some serious damage. Maybe even especially so, because they are usually your best answer to enemy spellcasters, who certainly don't have low RES and high DEF.

WRT training: I am just asking what is considered reasonable for a playthrough. I squeezed as much EXP out of my run as possible, to the point where I would deliberately use weaker weapons in order to wring out the maximum amount of training. I got Miriel from base level to ~8 just in Chapter 3. If this is a sort of thing that you're assuming that people will do, that's going to have a big impact on the availability of skills for this tier list.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I think my record for super staff spam training on Lunatic is having something like 3 Valkyries by the end of Par.3 (Maribelle, Miriel and Lissa). But that involved several 200+ turn chapters to pull off and around 10,000 damage on Donnel (I broke pretty much every single weapon on several chapters on him)...

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

WRT Galefore: opportunity cost is a thing. Obviously you're better off with Galeforce than you are without it, which is why it is so noticeable when it shows up. But in order to get GF, you left easy access to Lancefaire and Rally SPD on the table, both of which are really useful abilities. Plus, your Dark Flier has no staff ability. Sure, tomes are useful, but is hitting RES and gaining another weapon type worth giving up mobile flying staff utility for? Falcos with -faire and an appropriate Pair-up partner are still able to do some serious damage. Maybe even especially so, because they are usually your best answer to enemy spellcasters, who certainly don't have low RES and high DEF.

I can say yes for Avatar, if only because it's greatly enhancing the tactical versatility of two big powerhouses, allows Avatar to keep using tomes early and the fact that Avatar actually has the stats and growths built to fully utilize hybrid classes. As I mentioned above, all the other characters are doing chip damage with that second weapon type. If they double, I guess they can 4HKO, but that's a far cry from Avatar's decisive steamrolling, not to mention almost all of those characters have classes much better suited to their growth biases (Sage, Valkyrie and Falco).

Mercenary's big selling point isn't it's stats, it's its pairup boosts. +Spd/Def (both of your survival stats) on an unpromoted class is incredible and only shared by Cavalier.

Hrm, I guess I can see the reasoning for this, but generally when I consider Merc, it's because I want fast access to Hero, which I consider to be a lead unit class. The one exception is usually with Gregor because he conveniently provides the stats that Nowi needs in addition to being able to build immediate supports with her.

I kind of wish the Demoiselle had a +hit component to it too, so as to benefit all the husbands providing combat support (they work hard too, y'know). Anyway, I do agree that it should go up. It's available fairly early (and if Lissa's gonna get semi-staff grinding, then Maribelle should too) and provides 10 avoid at a period in time when that's a pretty big deal. 10 dodge isn't as hot, but the ability should still show up before some of the supports are fully developed, giving it at least some use.

[Interceptor]

I can say yes for Avatar, if only because it's greatly enhancing the tactical versatility of two big powerhouses, allows Avatar to keep using tomes early and the fact that Avatar actually has the stats and growths built to fully utilize hybrid classes. As I mentioned above, all the other characters are doing chip damage with that second weapon type. If they double, I guess they can 4HKO, but that's a far cry from Avatar's decisive steamrolling, not to mention almost all of those characters have classes much better suited to their growth biases (Sage, Valkyrie and Falco).

Sure, Robin is a badass. But you only have the option with female Robin, who is already the most flexible unit in your army (and doesn't really have any particularly obvious optimal path, like most other units do). While you have easy Tome rank from Tactician, her killer MAG also makes Robin a great staff user if you can get the rank going (and if you can't, Rescue is E-rank and enables all kinds of shenanigans).

So if female Robin is the only character for whom you'd reasonably pick Dark Flier over Falco as your primary class (and I maintain that's debatable), where does that leave Galeforce in the calculus? It's pretty hard to assume that Robin is going any one particular direction, since her fate is tied to what the rest of the army looks like.

Edited August 15, 2014 by Interceptor

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Sure, Robin is a badass. But you only have the option with female Robin, who is already the most flexible unit in your army (and doesn't really have any particularly obvious optimal path, like most other units do). While you have easy Tome rank from Tactician, her killer MAG also makes Robin a great staff user if you can get the rank going (and if you can't, Rescue is E-rank and enables all kinds of shenanigans).

So if female Robin is the only character for whom you'd reasonably pick Dark Flier over Falco as your primary class (and I maintain that's debatable), where does that leave Galeforce in the calculus? It's pretty hard to assume that Robin is going any one particular direction, since her fate is tied to what the rest of the army looks like.

Well, it does assume Avatar and Morgan are going to be primary combat units, which, I suppose, isn't necessarily always going to be true. The reason I like to stick with tome classes early is because she's usually the main tank of my army and tomes are the only 1~2 range that are readily available from the start without delving into Spotpass and the like. This, on top of any reclass to a lance/axe class will leave her with E rank, meaning no Javelins or Hand Axes for a bit. This can, of course, be solved with Arms Scrolls, but the two guaranteed ones don't show up for a bit. What Dark Flier does is allow her to retain her utility, get Galeforce, plus train lances on those odd phases where she can get away without using a 2-range weapon, allowing her to transition rather seamlessly into Paladin.

I suppose this level of control over incoming enemy units is much less necessary in vanilla Lunatic, but it will still make feeding training kills to the other 4 combat pairs safer.

[Elieson]

I think that I need to write something more broad about Maribelle, just so that I don't have to reply to three different people individually.

Lissa, as I already mentioned, has a level lead on Maribelle and is a superior healer. But these two things are pretty inconsequential over the course of the game. Lack of healing is one of the easiest things in the world to compensate for, because healing is not special. Awakening showers you in healers (Lissa, Maribelle, Libra, Anna), and Libra in particular makes for a great burst healer (comes able to use Physic, has Healtouch, and starts with excellent MAG). When there are so many chapters in this game that give you more deployment slots than you are reasonably going to use for combatants, it's dead-easy to just throw in an extra healer for emergency situations.

The level lead that Lissa has only matters from the perspective of having higher stats, and getting skills/promoted earlier. But Lissa's skills are worse. Miracle is not useful in an environment where a death is the worst possible result, and Healtouch is duplicative/overkill. Lissa can jump right to Sage, but she's as frail as a wet tissue paper, never grows out of it, and can't use Nosferatu to compensate. Lissa's best-case combat scenario is the odd Player Phase kill, or tightly-controlled Enemy Phase facings. Miriel and Tharja are far superior general magic-users, and even Henry has a better future than she does.

Maribelle, on the other hand, isn't merely a mediocre combat unit in a healer's body. She goes all-in on the support role, with skills that are actually useful and unique: Demoiselle, Rally RES, and Dual Support+. This is in addition to being a more useful Pair-up partner (+SPD > +SKL), and still being able to fulfill the role of the backup magic user. Maribelle gives you 75% of Lissa's healing and offense, while offering you useful support skills that you aren't reasonably going to get somewhere else. She's a specialist with just the right secondary roles.

Demoiselle is really useful, like a male-only defense-centric Charm. It does require that you deploy men, but the men are pretty strong in their own right. What does it matter that people can use Charlie's Angels teams? Pannecake is great, but Lon'qu has better skills for the job (Panne wishes she had Avoid +10 and Vantage). Gregor is a badass in a great class that gets exactly what he needs from Demo: crit evade (his LCK is shit) and more avoid to go with Patience. Chrom is also a dude. Either Robin or Morgan are going to be in this mix for this skill. Etc. Using Demoiselle effectively just means noticing that there are potentially strong characters for your army that don't have boobs.

WRT training: I am just asking what is considered reasonable for a playthrough. I squeezed as much EXP out of my run as possible, to the point where I would deliberately use weaker weapons in order to wring out the maximum amount of training. I got Miriel from base level to ~8 just in Chapter 3. If this is a sort of thing that you're assuming that people will do, that's going to have a big impact on the availability of skills for this tier list.

If Maribelle's out healing, how's she giving the +Spd pairup boost? If she's giving the boost/Demosielle effect while paired up, why should she even be deployed when she'll clearly become outleveled and made obselete by units who can effectively do both?

If Demosielle were on a unit like Anna, who could romp around and hold her own against some combat, then things might be different (It'd make her pretty great actually, considering her lack of innate support options aside from Robin/Tiki) However, it's locked on a unit that needs you to slow down, when you're just getting to a stage in the game which requires you to hold back on deployment. Lissa's always got a slot for herself, from Prologue->Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 pretty much begs you to bring her, as you only have 1 extra unit (and it's probably resulting in someone like Stahl or Virion getting to warm the bench). Ricken and Maribelle come into play in chapter 5, and they're not bringing anything stellar to the table. As a healer, in such an Enemy-phase-centric game, she can't fulfill her "versatility" if she starts out early game as as level 3 Troubadour and simultaneously give respectable pairup bonuses and gain experience to keep up with the rest of the team.

Though I digress, as it feels like we're both getting into a Who's the better Unit debate, rather than what skill is better between the two. While I don't think that either healer is a necessity to the Shepards, I rely more on Lissa's flat +5 heal rather than Maribelle's 1/4 Charm. 100% to heal for +5 is something I can plan around, and use to my advantage should I get stuck in a situation where I desperately need a large heal with something like Physic. I can't plan as effectively with a 10% avoid boost when a situation comes up that brings a 84 to a 74, for instance

[Interceptor]

Well, it does assume Avatar and Morgan are going to be primary combat units, which, I suppose, isn't necessarily always going to be true. The reason I like to stick with tome classes early is because she's usually the main tank of my army and tomes are the only 1~2 range that are readily available from the start without delving into Spotpass and the like. This, on top of any reclass to a lance/axe class will leave her with E rank, meaning no Javelins or Hand Axes for a bit. This can, of course, be solved with Arms Scrolls, but the two guaranteed ones don't show up for a bit. What Dark Flier does is allow her to retain her utility, get Galeforce, plus train lances on those odd phases where she can get away without using a 2-range weapon, allowing her to transition rather seamlessly into Paladin.

I suppose this level of control over incoming enemy units is much less necessary in vanilla Lunatic, but it will still make feeding training kills to the other 4 combat pairs safer.

It's convenient to keep Tome ranks on Robin, and I like to do that myself, but I don't feel like it's necessary. If your deployed army already has magic users like Miriel or Tharja or something, chances are that you'll want to use Robin to plug a hole elsewhere. It doesn't take very long to get to D-rank Axes or Lances when you are a defensive badass; it's not like we're training Donnel, here. There are 6-10 combat units being trained in this list, so there is plenty of reason to take your time.

If Maribelle's out healing, how's she giving the +Spd pairup boost? If she's giving the boost/Demosielle effect while paired up, why should she even be deployed when she'll clearly become outleveled and made obselete by units who can effectively do both?

Don't be silly; Maribelle never loses the ability to give Demoiselle, since it works from the back line, so obsoletion is not a factor. If you train one of the other potential Troubadours while keeping Mari in the back, you derped pretty hard in the planning phases.

Maribelle's primary function is not healing or damage, it's support. It's fine to keep her deployed without giving someone a Pair-up bonus; she can use that time to heal, nuke, or Rally. But for those times when the bonus is useful, that's when you can hide her on someone and have her on the front lines (as a roving Demoiselle beacon, Dual Strike partner, and Pair buddy). The stats she gives are pretty amazing: MAG, SPD, and RES... something for nearly everyone. Dual Support+ means never having to sacrifice support bonuses for someone with whom she doesn't have a real support with.

You only need 700 EXP to make her minimally useful: that's when you pick up Demoiselle, and can promote her to Valkyrie to make progress towards Rally RES and DS+ while training tome rank. Naturally, you'll want to keep her in Troubadour longer if possible, for the stats, but she is not ruined if promoted early, because her combat potential was never that great in the first place (just like Lissa).

It's important not to lose sight of the fact that protecting people in Lunatic is not really that difficult. The player knows when and where reinforcements are coming from, and Pass isn't randomly added to dangerous enemies.

However, it's locked on a unit that needs you to slow down, when you're just getting to a stage in the game which requires you to hold back on deployment. Lissa's always got a slot for herself, from Prologue->Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 pretty much begs you to bring her, as you only have 1 extra unit (and it's probably resulting in someone like Stahl or Virion getting to warm the bench). Ricken and Maribelle come into play in chapter 5, and they're not bringing anything stellar to the table. As a healer, in such an Enemy-phase-centric game, she can't fulfill her "versatility" if she starts out early game as as level 3 Troubadour and simultaneously give respectable pairup bonuses and gain experience to keep up with the rest of the team.

What is stopping you from deploying Maribelle and Lissa (until Libra) both? Maribelle can take the majority of the healing, with the other character available for spillover or burst healing. Not even Lissa is capable of doing everything herself, and having two staff users gives you more tactical options (i.e. having someone make a deep, dangerous heal, and the other one Rescues them to safety). You can't just fill your deployment slots with nothing but combatants; there is just not enough EXP to go around to get everyone trained properly. Your 6-10 combatants are going to have to be spread out amongst early, mid-game, and child units.

Though I digress, as it feels like we're both getting into a Who's the better Unit debate, rather than what skill is better between the two. While I don't think that either healer is a necessity to the Shepards, I rely more on Lissa's flat +5 heal rather than Maribelle's 1/4 Charm.

I am only defending Maribelle because she's getting shit on by people. Since the valuation of skills on this tier list is dependent on their availability, that means that you necessarily have to analyze the chance of a unit being deployed, which is directly linked to their usefulness. In other words, arguing for Demoiselle/RallyRes/DS+ means making a case for Maribelle, like it or not.

And in this thread, making a case for Maribelle means showing that Lissa isn't stomping her into the ground.

100% to heal for +5 is something I can plan around, and use to my advantage should I get stuck in a situation where I desperately need a large heal with something like Physic. I can't plan as effectively with a 10% avoid boost when a situation comes up that brings a 84 to a 74, for instance

This is a silly example; Demo isn't bringing someone from 84 to 74, at least not anyone that you are intending to tank with in the first place. Demo is going to be applied on people like Lon'qu and Gregor, who are avoid machines. On THEM, because of the 2 RN system, Demo might actually be making them effectively unkillable: dropping from 84 to 74 is no great shakes, but going from 34 -> 24 is cutting the hit chance basically in half.

Edited August 16, 2014 by Interceptor

[Tables]

Updated the front post.

Galeforce 1>2

Healtouch 5>6

Charm 6>5

Tantivy 6>5

Hex 8>7

Wrath 8>9

Demoiselle 9>7

Demoiselle and Charm could probably go up further. Wrath could drop further.

[Shadow Mir]

Updated the front post.

Galeforce 1>2

Healtouch 5>6

Charm 6>5

Tantivy 6>5

Hex 8>7

Wrath 8>9

Demoiselle 9>7

Demoiselle and Charm could probably go up further. Wrath could drop further.

Duly noted. What about Zeal? You think it has a chance to drop further?

Also, care to explain what Bowfaire and Swordbreaker are doing where they are? I think they might have a case for dropping, but first I want to see some input.

Edited August 16, 2014 by Levant Caprice

[Tables]

Duly noted. What about Zeal? You think it has a chance to drop further?

Also, care to explain what Bowfaire and Swordbreaker are doing where they are? I think they might have a case for dropping, but first I want to see some input.

Hm, +5 crit is a generally nice bonus, it doesn't reliably get kills but increases your overall proc chance (if you want to call it that) and it's available easily to Vaike. But that's kinda it outside of kids. Robin probably has better options. Gaius might want to go Fighter > Hero (actually, that sounds like a pretty nice option for him considering he'll have raised swords as a thief), Donnel sucks and Merc is better anyway and Basilio probably isn't seeing much combat. So... limited availability and moderate effect, yeah I could see an argument for it dropping even though it's already in low.

Bowfaire: Snipers are reasonably useful in Lunatic, for good 2 range chip and Longbow usage. Bowfaire obviously then adds a fairly large chunk of damage to your Sniper's damage - without any skills, it's +10 if you're doubling, which likely gets you a number of kills more reliably - or just boosting your chip signifcantly. The options to go into Sniper aren't exactly fantastic, but there's a few reasonable characters who can go into archer. Virion starts as one, Chrom can become one although that does mean passing up Cavalier, and Stahl can go Archer as well (especially as he has Discipline). In my experience, Snipers can be fairly useful and Bowfaire makes them do their job more effectively. As a 15 promoted skill, many characters may class change soon after, but there's always Bow Knight to continue utilising bows (Stahl also has Assassin).

Swordbreaker: Wyvern Lord is a good class, and Swords tend to be accurate. Slashing that accuracy down significantly, especially when using Lances and combined with Wyvern Lord's likely other skills (Tantivy and Quick Burn) is pretty great. Even using Axes, it makes swords somewhat inaccurate against you still, which is nice. It's a fairly decent skill, with lots of characters who have a good chance of getting it. Actually... I think it might have a case for moving up? Obvious downside is it's a level 15 promoted skill, meaning it takes a while to obtain.

[Elieson]

Aside from swordmasters, I can't think of classes that are overly threatening with swords that swordbreaker will have a big benefit towards. Cherche is pretty strong and stahl is tanky and LonQu has a myrmidon skill set to balance him out. Valm faces you with more lances and bows anyway.

It'd be a good long term skill if swords were more existant in classes other than Swordmasters. I mean, assassins usually come with forged silver bows and use them on your fliers regardless, so unless the rare GK/Paladin with swords finds you...its SM or bust. Tis a niche skill...

[Shadow Mir]

Hm, +5 crit is a generally nice bonus, it doesn't reliably get kills but increases your overall proc chance (if you want to call it that) and it's available easily to Vaike. But that's kinda it outside of kids. Robin probably has better options. Gaius might want to go Fighter > Hero (actually, that sounds like a pretty nice option for him considering he'll have raised swords as a thief), Donnel sucks and Merc is better anyway and Basilio probably isn't seeing much combat. So... limited availability and moderate effect, yeah I could see an argument for it dropping even though it's already in low.

Bowfaire: Snipers are reasonably useful in Lunatic, for good 2 range chip and Longbow usage. Bowfaire obviously then adds a fairly large chunk of damage to your Sniper's damage - without any skills, it's +10 if you're doubling, which likely gets you a number of kills more reliably - or just boosting your chip signifcantly. The options to go into Sniper aren't exactly fantastic, but there's a few reasonable characters who can go into archer. Virion starts as one, Chrom can become one although that does mean passing up Cavalier, and Stahl can go Archer as well (especially as he has Discipline). In my experience, Snipers can be fairly useful and Bowfaire makes them do their job more effectively. As a 15 promoted skill, many characters may class change soon after, but there's always Bow Knight to continue utilising bows (Stahl also has Assassin).

Swordbreaker: Wyvern Lord is a good class, and Swords tend to be accurate. Slashing that accuracy down significantly, especially when using Lances and combined with Wyvern Lord's likely other skills (Tantivy and Quick Burn) is pretty great. Even using Axes, it makes swords somewhat inaccurate against you still, which is nice. It's a fairly decent skill, with lots of characters who have a good chance of getting it. Actually... I think it might have a case for moving up? Obvious downside is it's a level 15 promoted skill, meaning it takes a while to obtain.

That's exactly why I think Zeal should drop, on top of most potential Fighters either not being that good (Gaius, Donnel, Vaike) or having better options (Robin).

Bowfaire: My issue here is that given that snipers can only gain exp on player phase, Bowfaire might come too late for it to matter, and there's the part where most potential archers are better off as some other class, which mostly limits you to Virion... it just sounds like a niche skill at best imho.

Swordbreaker: In all honesty, I don't think it really has much of a case for rising - if anything, I think it has a case for going down, given that WTD does plenty to hamper swords, for one, and second, I agree with Eli.

Edited August 16, 2014 by Levant Caprice

[Tables]

That's exactly why I think Zeal should drop, on top of most potential Fighters either not being that good (Gaius, Donnel, Vaike) or having better options (Robin).

Yeah, sounds fairly reasonable as an argument that it's not that good - but the thing is that it's already in low tier, saying it's not very good isn't really quite enough to argue it down. Vaike and Gaius might not be great, but they're decent. Vaike ends up being a significant damage dealer and with his great HP can usually take a few hits, even early on. Gaius I don't actually have much experience using as a main combat unit but his growths look nice, and his class set seems pretty good, so I'd expect him to be fairly okay, with a weak start (like most earlygame units). So while they might not be the best units, they're usable, and the skill has some effect. I think you'd probably need to demonstrate it's more comparable to skills in tier 9 than tier 8.

Bowfaire: My issue here is that given that snipers can only gain exp on player phase, Bowfaire might come too late for it to matter, and there's the part where most potential archers are better off as some other class, which mostly limits you to Virion... it just sounds like a niche skill at best imho.

Snipers don't only gain EXP on the player phase. There's plenty of oppertunities to position them to counter 1-2 range enemies, to gain EXP from hitting as a support, and so on. But the rest of what you said does make me feel that it's probably a little too high.

Swordbreaker: In all honesty, I don't think it really has much of a case for rising - if anything, I think it has a case for going down, given that WTD does plenty to hamper swords, for one, and second, I agree with Eli.

Hmm, I can't say I have a great idea how many sword users there are in the late game off the top of my head. Let me think, from chapter 17 onwards...

Chapter 17: Heroes. Possibly some Swordmasters?

Chapter 18: Swordmasters, including Yen'fay, not sure if there's any others

Chapter 19: Paladins and Great Knights, plus Walhart

Chapter 20: A few Heroes.

Chapter 21: Swordmasters, Assassins

Chapter 22: Deadlords, I think there's a double forged Brave Assassin and a Swordmaster

Chapter 23: Swordmasters, Assassins, Heroes.

Chapter 24: Great Knights and some Paladins.

Chapter 25: Swordmasters and Heroes?

Endgame: Just about every class - Swordmaster, Assassin, Paladin, Great Knight, Hero and a few others

Does that sound about right? So looking over that... versus Swordmasters it can be nice, with Swordfaire they can have up to about 50 mt in chapter 21 which can be fairly significant damage, and their hit rates are still alright even with WTD due to double forges and +10/+20 hit. Paladins and Great Knights can also hit pretty hard, but are less accurate. Dropping their hit rate is gonna shoot up reliability. Heroes seem pretty scary to me, good strength and skill. Assassins as you say often have Bows, so not such a big deal as you're probably gonna avoid them mostly. Overall, it seems like a decent number of enemies it's useful against to me, but like I said I don't really know how many swords there are late.

It's also worth noting we're not necessarily staying in Wyvern Lord after getting Swordbreaker. We might switch to a class without Lances and the like, especially if we get the skill early enough in the game for switching and getting through another class to be reasonable. In that case, swordbreaker gains some more value as we can't just get WTA on them, at which point +50 avoid is much more valuable.

[Elieson]

But the point remains; swordbreaker itself comes late, and only helps against a select few classes. Assassins generally have bows and swords, and would attack your flier with a bow under normal circumstances. Heroes...well I'd say maybe 1/4 have axes, so yes, there is benefit against them. Paladins and GKs don't often have swords, and swordmasters are swordmasters without the added crit. Reclassing to a Griffon for lance breaker helps against lategane GKs, Generals, Falco/DF, Paladins and about half of wyvern lords, all of which have 2 range potential in forged Spears and Tomahawks (and Helswath on the counter Deadlord).

I don't argue that swordbreaker is bad, but it is primarily useful against some of the less threatening classes, of which can mostly be dispatched by your team of rampant lancers or mages or swordies.

[XeKr]

The point of Swordbreaker is you already have Triangle against Lances, plus avoidstack/raw Hp+Def against Axes and it essentially also gives you triangle against Swords (including Wyrmslayers), dealing with the trio of physical weapons. You can equip axes and steamroll (almost) everything, which can be important against mixed enemy composition where you can't use Lances as well (plus it starts at E rank while Axes is probably at A already). Triangle is very strong in this game as it also negates weapon rank, meaning Axes lose a lot of hit otherwise.

Axes are already one of the best weapon types otherwise, since you have Helswath for the 2 endgame routs, so maining them is useful.

Swordbreaker could go up, actually. It's at least comparable/better than Axebreaker which is not as synergistic (have Sol already, and still terrible accuracy vs. lategame Swords.) Probably better than Lancefaire, etc.

Edited August 16, 2014 by XeKr

[Shadow Mir]

Yeah, sounds fairly reasonable as an argument that it's not that good - but the thing is that it's already in low tier, saying it's not very good isn't really quite enough to argue it down. Vaike and Gaius might not be great, but they're decent. Vaike ends up being a significant damage dealer and with his great HP can usually take a few hits, even early on. Gaius I don't actually have much experience using as a main combat unit but his growths look nice, and his class set seems pretty good, so I'd expect him to be fairly okay, with a weak start (like most earlygame units). So while they might not be the best units, they're usable, and the skill has some effect. I think you'd probably need to demonstrate it's more comparable to skills in tier 9 than tier 8.

Snipers don't only gain EXP on the player phase. There's plenty of oppertunities to position them to counter 1-2 range enemies, to gain EXP from hitting as a support, and so on. But the rest of what you said does make me feel that it's probably a little too high.

Hmm, I can't say I have a great idea how many sword users there are in the late game off the top of my head. Let me think, from chapter 17 onwards...

Chapter 17: Heroes. Possibly some Swordmasters?

Chapter 18: Swordmasters, including Yen'fay, not sure if there's any others

Chapter 19: Paladins and Great Knights, plus Walhart

Chapter 20: A few Heroes.

Chapter 21: Swordmasters, Assassins

Chapter 22: Deadlords, I think there's a double forged Brave Assassin and a Swordmaster

Chapter 23: Swordmasters, Assassins, Heroes.

Chapter 24: Great Knights and some Paladins.

Chapter 25: Swordmasters and Heroes?

Endgame: Just about every class - Swordmaster, Assassin, Paladin, Great Knight, Hero and a few others

Does that sound about right? So looking over that... versus Swordmasters it can be nice, with Swordfaire they can have up to about 50 mt in chapter 21 which can be fairly significant damage, and their hit rates are still alright even with WTD due to double forges and +10/+20 hit. Paladins and Great Knights can also hit pretty hard, but are less accurate. Dropping their hit rate is gonna shoot up reliability. Heroes seem pretty scary to me, good strength and skill. Assassins as you say often have Bows, so not such a big deal as you're probably gonna avoid them mostly. Overall, it seems like a decent number of enemies it's useful against to me, but like I said I don't really know how many swords there are late.

It's also worth noting we're not necessarily staying in Wyvern Lord after getting Swordbreaker. We might switch to a class without Lances and the like, especially if we get the skill early enough in the game for switching and getting through another class to be reasonable. In that case, swordbreaker gains some more value as we can't just get WTA on them, at which point +50 avoid is much more valuable.

On Zeal: Huh. Too bad we don't have enemy stats outside of the first couple chapters, endgame, and chapter 10 for some reason... (There are also stats for some paralogue chapters, but yeah...)

Bowfaire: Well, I suppose I can concede that snipers can find other opportunities to get experience. Problem is, as a support they probably won't get enough to get to Bowfaire in any reasonable timeframe, which means they essentially need some time as a lead to get somewhere. Also, since you mentioned Chrom earlier, there's also the consideration that making him a sniper makes you lose one of your like two good answers to Grima.

Swordbreaker: You have a point, I guess. It's just that I'm not seeing Swordbreaker as being as useful as Axebreaker or Lancebreaker (admittedly, the former is already above Swordbreaker).

[Interceptor]

Grima is the least of your worries. Chrom as a Sniper will be just fine on him, because Brave Bow. The problem with Sniper is just that it's not a good class for vanilla Lunatic.

[Tables]

Lancebreaker comes from an inferior class. I'm actually not too convinced it's better than Swordbreaker, at least not by a significant margin, but the fact that Griffon Rider is a weaker class means getting Lancebreaker means having a slightly less good character for a while.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

On Zeal: Huh. Too bad we don't have enemy stats outside of the first couple chapters, endgame, and chapter 10 for some reason... (There are also stats for some paralogue chapters, but yeah...)

The data is out there and was even listed on this forum at some point, so I don't know why it hasn't be transferred to the wiki yet. I can't remember who made this spreadsheet, but it fills in most of the stats:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhpIpUc0mrHgdDBKSWYtWkp6RGVLbDdoZUpKZl9oQ1E&usp=drive_web#gid=0

And for the few chapters that that spreadsheet doesn't cover:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApH_7MMZU3kPdHJzUzM3QzNJNk1LUUJrXzBmRTdXWVE&usp=sharing

[Shadow Mir]

Grima is the least of your worries. Chrom as a Sniper will be just fine on him, because Brave Bow. The problem with Sniper is just that it's not a good class for vanilla Lunatic.

What...? I'm not seeing this when the Falchions are like your only options to do any damage to Grima, by which i mean real damage, not some single-digit crap that ain't even worth mentioning, and there's the part where Chrom's is stronger.

Lancebreaker comes from an inferior class. I'm actually not too convinced it's better than Swordbreaker, at least not by a significant margin, but the fact that Griffon Rider is a weaker class means getting Lancebreaker means having a slightly less good character for a while.

Perhaps, but I'm not very convinced that Swordbreaker is so much better as to justify a two tier gap when outside of Tricksters and Yen'fay, all sword users other than Assassins are 1-rangers, leaving them as easy pickings for ranged assaults.

The data is out there and was even listed on this forum at some point, so I don't know why it hasn't be transferred to the wiki yet. I can't remember who made this spreadsheet, but it fills in most of the stats:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhpIpUc0mrHgdDBKSWYtWkp6RGVLbDdoZUpKZl9oQ1E&usp=drive_web#gid=0

And for the few chapters that that spreadsheet doesn't cover:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApH_7MMZU3kPdHJzUzM3QzNJNk1LUUJrXzBmRTdXWVE&usp=sharing

Huh. When will that be put on the wiki...?

[Czar_Yoshi]

The data is out there and was even listed on this forum at some point, so I don't know why it hasn't be transferred to the wiki yet. I can't remember who made this spreadsheet, but it fills in most of the stats:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhpIpUc0mrHgdDBKSWYtWkp6RGVLbDdoZUpKZl9oQ1E&usp=drive_web#gid=0

And for the few chapters that that spreadsheet doesn't cover:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApH_7MMZU3kPdHJzUzM3QzNJNk1LUUJrXzBmRTdXWVE&usp=sharing

I've offered multiple times to do any work needed to get it up myself, but nobody seems to know how. Those missing chapters are the ones already on the wiki, I think.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

What...? I'm not seeing this when the Falchions are like your only options to do any damage to Grima, by which i mean real damage, not some single-digit crap that ain't even worth mentioning, and there's the part where Chrom's is stronger.

Vengeance. Depending on class, Luna might be able to do it too. Dual Strikes from anything other than Falchions are going to be pretty bad, though.

Those missing chapters are the ones already on the wiki, I think.

Nope. Both of the spreadsheets almost collectively leave out what's already in the wiki (almost, because the big set has chapter 10 in it, which is a duplicate). I made sure to check which needed filling before making the one at the second link.