Is Volug still good?

[dondon151]

some of the non-royal laguz (janaff and ulki, ranulf kind of) are really good in 0% growths but not good in normal LTCs.

there's also like, hawkeye and harken from FE7, dozla from FE8.

[Loki Laufeyson]

I wouldn't say Vika is invaluable in Part 1.

She helps kill that wyvern rider in the part 1 swamp level. Thats dang useful and shaves off a turn or two, plus makes it so you can save the NPCs for max BEXP. Thats pretty helpful. Overall, maybe not, but damn helpful. /dancey shrug

[Junkhead]

...or, she can assist Sothe at killing that one annoying Brigand at the other side of the swamp. True, there's the alternative of having her kill that one Wyvern, but Tormod can also do it (and 1RKO him).

[lordprime]

I think in the context of volug being good or not it depends on your frame of reference and your goals.

For example if we were to compare volug and sothe strictly against each other for the whole game volug is better. Sothe wins part 1 but Volug has big leads in parts 3 and 4.

However under LTC, volug being better in part 4 doesn't matter because the player has Haar, laguz royals, etc. handle all the work and both volug and sothe don't do anything meaningful despite volug being better than Sothe here. He still remains better than Sothe in part 3 but not by enough to overcome Sothe winning in part 1.

EDIT: Also would it hurt if people were more civil in this topic? It feels like every other post in this topic is a flame, troll, or snarky comment.

Edited December 2, 2014 by lordprime

[Junkhead]

Also would it hurt if people were more civil in this topic? It feels like every other post in this topic is a flame, troll, or snarky comment.

Yeah, you're right. You know there's something wrong when you come into an FE topic, expecting an arguement about FE (is that too much to ask for!?) and all you get is two pages about people insulting each other's reading comprehension. (what flag is this?)

Contributing to the topic at hand, I think it's also important to evaluate the difficulty of the "Part" the characters are better on. For example, just because Volug happens to be better at Part 3 & 4 may not mean a whole ton when you come to realize that Part 1 happens to have significant more weight. Where Sothe happens to contribute is of more value.

[lordprime]

"Difficulty of chapters" and "weight of chapters" are hard to gauge. I think "reliability" is a more accurate term even if they're meant to measure the same thing.

[Mufanda]

Let's see. He's one of your strongest units when he first appears, and remains strong throughout all of part 1. Even assuming other characters are getting EXP and you haven't touched him, he still has some use in cases. In part 1, he doesn't shift forms and remains transformed without needing to worry about the annoying gauge or the penalties that come with being shifted constantly. He also has one of the best affinities in the game with the only other one that you can really argue for being water. So even if you aren't using him to kill people, he can be a great support unit by allowing the other person in question to snag some EXP and get some evade bonuses. He's fairly durable-- far more durable than most of your units in part 1. He has high movement, and unlike mounted units, he can still make usage of shoving. And still rescue quite a few unit types... However, unlike other unit types that have high movement, he doesn't get canto like the rest of them.

The biggest problem I see with him in part 1 is that he has a glaring weakness to fire mages (which IIRC are the most common mages you fight in the DB chapters when the enemy teams have mages). Also, he cannot use forges, and he cannot use 1-2 range at all, which everyone that is beorc can. Hell, even archers can, and low damage > no damage. Especially when attacks from two range just drain the gauge and nothing good comes from it.

By part 3, I honestly never thought he was that great. He's... Salvageable if you get him a couple of levels and raise his strike, and maybe get him a couple of supports, but by then, you'll notice that if you DID use any of the DBers, most of them can hold their own fairly well. Aran shrugs off cat attacks despite getting doubled, and can get lucky and maybe double a tiger or two if he's a bit RNG blessed or the tiger isn't. Edward can realistically dodge them with supports and starts to become sturdy enough to get out of 2HKO range... The ones that can't like Micaiah and Laura can at least heal other people.

By part 4, I generally don't use Volug and think he's pretty mediocre by then. Pretty much any character that you put up with will be better than Volug by the end if it's a Beorc, and the Laguz that Volug is better than by the end, he was always better than them.

I don't know if he's super high on tiers, but honestly, he seems like he would be the best of the mid tier units. Great for when he's there, and fizzles out towards the end.

[Snowy_One]

Hey, random thought, probably stupid buuuuttt...

I was reading up on some posts mocking Ubisoft and Assassin's Creed today which got me thinking about one line in the series. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." As I was walking outside something hit me.

Is Rolf really worse than Oscar?

I know some of you are typing up a response right now, but I want you to stop and really think about it for a second.

In the hands of a skilled player, is Rolf really THAT bad? I mean, sure, he doesn't 'compare' to the likes of Shinon, but he has his uses and, as dimed and nickled as they might be, there is no denying that they are there. It's only in the hands of a really bad player or a really obsessed player that his flaws REALLY show through and, while Oscar might 'stomp' him in all regards there is no denying Rolf does things that Oscar cannot if only by the merit of being able to be fielded alongside Oscar.

This sort of lead me to another thought. 'What is the difference between trying to get as low a turncount as possible, and seeing how low a turn-count a unit can get?'. In other words...

Every unit has its place on a team. There is a reason Rhys isn't the worst unit in FE9, or Sierra, and the like despite, in theory, little to no need for healing in a LTC list. They are units that cannot attack or have weak attacks when they can, yet they are useful... Yet people love to push the paladins forwards because of their movement, but is the paladins low turncount their own? Or is it the result of an entire team working together. The people obsessed with LTC are picking a team that maximizes as low a turn-count as they can manage, but lets chop mounted units out of the game for a second.

Is Rolf better than Ike or Mia? No. Is he worse? No. He is just another unit on the field with his own, unique, contributions. Even if Ike, Mia, Zihark, Meg, and Denny's voice were physical gods of units they can only fight five units a turn, so what if you need to fight six? Is Rolf up to that task? How low can Rolf go in turncounts as opposed to how low of turncounts can we get?

Nothing is true. No unit or team is the true 'best' outside of a personal notion of what the 'best' is.

Everything is permitted. Every unit can be fielded and provide a unique advantage, if only by existing on the field and allowing the player to take down one more enemy per turn than before.

So how low can Rolf go? How many teams is he useful on and how much does he help them on?

Volug is useful. He is a good unit because the DB is understaffed and weak. In LTC he cuts out a large chunk of turns, but putting that aside, he is a solid and decently reliable combat unit, even if his movement was limited, because that movement is not the only thing he brings to the team. Even later-on he is good, not because he cuts turns, but because he is solid and reliable still and, while that does fade out towards the end, he has shown by that point that he has brought enough to the team to be good.

Does that follow? Or was I just hit by a rock thrown by dondon out of spite?

[Lord Raven]

Your premise is kinda flawed because a) not many people are arguing based on an LTC mechanic and b)

Or was I just hit by a rock thrown by dondon out of spite?

this is what indeed happened. I can't seem to get anything coherent out of your post.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Lord Raven

[-Cynthia-]

What is Rolf's 'unique advantage'? Why does Rolf necessarily allow us to "kill another enemy per turn" despite deployment slots and enemy positioning limiting this line of thinking significantly?

I think your argument here is that all units are equal to each other because all units are better than nothing? That doesn't make any sense.

[Axie]

What was I supposed to get from that post? That there is no objective way to define if a unit is good or not because you can do whatever you want? That Rolf shaves turns when mounts are not around? wtf.

Is this what Assassin's Creed: Unity do to people's heads that made it so hated???

[Baldrick]

Unless the metric by which you judge units is not based on combat performance at all, there will always be units that do better than others, be more self-sufficient, decrease your need to strategise, make your strategy more reliable, save more turns etc. etc. etc.

Exactly who those units are can be up for debate, but it doesn't all arguments are equally valid.

[Snowy_One]

What is Rolf's 'unique advantage'? Why does Rolf necessarily allow us to "kill another enemy per turn" despite deployment slots and enemy positioning limiting this line of thinking significantly?

I think your argument here is that all units are equal to each other because all units are better than nothing? That doesn't make any sense.

Rolf allows you to kill one extra unit per turn because Rolf exists on the field. If you have a team of five units you can only kill five enemies on the player-phase. If you have a team of six you can kill six. Obviously there is a lot more too it but, barring extreme situations, having more units is a positive, no?

Not all units are equal either, but that doesn't mean that a unit is, somehow, bad because they don't fit into a specific playstyle. It's a matter of how useful the unit is across multiple playstyles. Nothing is true, LTC being the only/main metric to judge a units value isn't true. Everything is permitted, every unit has some degree of value to provide to the team. Some may provide more value or offer value over a wider range of playstyles, but failure at one is not a failure of a unit.

What was I supposed to get from that post? That there is no objective way to define if a unit is good or not because you can do whatever you want? That Rolf shaves turns when mounts are not around? wtf.

Not quite... There are objective ways to define a unit and determine if they're better or not, obviously, but here's the thing. Not everyone will play the same. Good units are good because they offer a lot. Oscar is good because he can shave turns, but even with that removed, he's still a solid unit. Rolf has his flaws, but he's not suddenly the 'bottom of the barrel' for it. He still has a place and a use, just a smaller place and use.

Is this what Assassin's Creed: Unity do to people's heads that made it so hated???

No. It's the peoples heads suddenly vanishing leaving you staring at a pair of floating eyes, disembodied lips, and wigs. Plus reality suddenly warping around because the game hates you and dropped you through the floor.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Snowy_One

[bottlegnomes]

One issue with your proposition, Snowy, is assuming that all these units are used when they aren't guaranteed to be by any means. A pretty big way (arguably the only real factor) that unit worth is determined, regardless of play style, is how much they'd be missed were they not used, which your assumption ignores all together. So, given a certain play style, would Rolf or Oscar be more missed if one wasn't used but the other was? There are way more assumptions that need to be made about how that level of being missed would be judged, but that's the general idea.

So yeah, I'm gonna say you're off base.

[Snowy_One]

I'm sure Mist would miss Rolf

That's a fair enough counter-point. *sigh* Ah well. What can I say beyond 'that was so stupid of me and I partially blame the nightmares I have been having thanks to Halfassin Creed'? Do we even need to run down this road again?

[Mekkah]

Every unit can be fielded and provide a unique advantage, if only by existing on the field and allowing the player to take down one more enemy per turn than before.

No, not every unit can be fielded. There's only so many deployment slots.

[Jedi]

No, not every unit can be fielded. There's only so many deployment slots.

Unless its FE4 but I digress..

I personally feel Volug is still a solid unit. -shrugs-

Edited December 5, 2014 by Jedi