HM Gonzales

[General Horace]

honestly as good as he is, with growths you really don't need to promote rutgar to actually kill bosses and stuff, he's actually pretty awful past midgame

but pretty much what people are saying is yeah, he's obviously not very good if you're playing fast, but he's pretty awesome if you're just playing at a casual pace. Sure, you could have Garret tank on a mountain, but he's not even doubling some of the unpromoted wyverns and Niime is far from reliable in tanking the wyverns later on considering she's OHKO'd by some of the unpromoted dudes without investment

I do agree if you're going sacae you probably shouldn't promote gonzo though, he's honestly awful there.

It's also pretty easy to say "but Percival can do it" to any arguement that doesn't involve staffs, it's almost an irrelevant point.

[dondon151]

with growths you still want to promote rutger for henning and scott, those guys are true assholes.

[General Horace]

i mean sure they're assholes, but if you promote dieck instead he can definately still tangle with them

rutger is definately your best bet, but its not like they're unbeatable without him, and even with Rutger, Henning is a pain

scott isn't that much of an asshole either, just make him switch to his hand axe and he's a chump, although Dieck might not double him

[Carmine Sword]

Playing through Hard Mode without characters who have hard mode bonuses has given a greater appreciation for Dieck and his access to 1-2 range over Rutger. I still think Rutger is better for killing bosses though.

[Yojinbo]

Henning alone justifies promoting Rutger imo. Unless you have a promoted Lance with C-Rank Swords [which is possible but inconvenient] and a support with Alan you'll have no unit that can double Henning without facing a weapon triangle disadvantage and you kinda need that Killing Edge to actually have a chance to hurt him. And since there is no real competition for the Ch.7 Hero Crest there's literally no reason to not promote Rutger before Ch.8 in a non-casual playthrough. Ch.12 is still early enough for Dieck to promote and if you want to use that Hero Crest on somebody else for whatever reason than Dieck can be ditched in favor of Echidna anyway. Dieck isn't really a substitute for Rutger when it comes to killing bosses, at least not against Henning.

Rutger's not awful 'past midgame' imo. He's still a very good bosskiller, especially when you go to Sacae.

Why would you promote Gonzales over Dieck if you're going to Sacae?

... that's exactly my point.

[General Horace]

dieck has better hit and does more damage to henning than lance (even with the support), if you're assuming lance is doubling Henning (he does at 15/1) it's not unreasonable for me to assume that Dieck is promoted at the same level (even with his 4 level lead)

a 15/1 Dieck does 30 damage with a crit at 65 hit against Handaxe Henning (which isn't hard to arrange), 8 damage can come from a light brand or something

75 true hit at 31 crit really isn't that bad against henning

Lance doesn't double Henning if he has the hand axe, so he can either do 24 damage at 5 less hit with a crit, so he pretty much needs two crits to kill him

He does double against Steel Blade Henning at 50 hit, but the crit damage is knocked down to 21.

it's not even a contest really.

Even Rutger at an equal level only has 10 more hit. He does have about twice the amount of crit, but he needs two of them. The gap really isn't as big as it seems.

Even in Sacae, Rutger isn't even the best option against most bosses. Even assuming if he's a super high level like 15/10.

- He has below 50 hit on Arcard, and does five damage with the killing edge, dudes like Miledy and Percival can tangle with him better with effective weaponry.

- he's pretty good at killing Monke, but there is a chance that even he won't double him, in which case his usefulness plummets

- It's very likely he won't actually be fast enough to double Gel, he needs to be 20/15 to do so (which isn't happening).

- Roartz is kinda shitty, anyone with an armourslayer and decent skill will kill him eventually

it's pretty much just Monke that he's actually good at killing, and other units like Shin are just as good at bosskilling later in the game while still being more of an asset against generic enemies and having more movement in general

after sacae Rutger is a total nonfactor though. I'm not denying he's the best bosskiller in the early and midgame (by a good margain) but he's not irreplaceable by any stretch.

,

EDIT: Does Zephiel seriously have 14 speed on Hard mode? What a chump

This is purely theorycrafting, and the inital levels are probably inflated a bit. I honestly haven't played FE6HM in quite some time though, so I might be off base a little bit. You're just not losing a Percival or a Miledy tier unit by not promoting Rutger.

Edited January 17, 2015 by General Horace

[Vennobennu]

King class has all 0% growths except for 10% HP, so Zephiel doesn't benefit from HM bonuses.

Henning again might have been a more challenging foe, he'd be getting 15 bonus levels in Hero class!

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

It's very likely he won't actually be fast enough to double Gel, he needs to be 20/15 to do so (which isn't happening).

Rutger cannot double Gel at all, because he has 27 speed and Rutger has a swordmaster cap of 30. However he can easily oneshot him even with a killing edge, if he has maxed strength. The only scary thing is that Gel can oneshot him with a critical hit, if Rutger hasn't enough defense.

Rutger was the best bosskiller in my FE6 HM run. He killed almost 75% of the bosses. Murdock was beaten with the armorslayer in one turn. Same goes for Zephiel by two critical hits with Durandal.

Axeusers don't play a role for me on hard mode regardless whether they're good . Axes are absolute inaccurate and I truly wouldn't have the time and patience on hard mode till Gonzales hits an enemy sometime.

Edited January 18, 2015 by The Taninator

[momogeek2141]

Rutger can pwn Zephiel with a killing edge.

[Yojinbo]

I'm not trying to argue that Lance is a good choice for killing Henning if that's what you think. My point is that nothing comes close to a promoted Rutger against him. 31 crit @75 true hit is actually a lot better than I thought as far as Dieck is concerned but Rutger having the chance to crit twice with much better accuracy [75 displayed hit = ~88 true hit] and a higher crit rate to begin with seems like a better deal to me. Dieck's superior str only really becomes a factor if he manages to crit Henning, but Rutger with a crit and a regular hit does about the same damage and is more reliable.

You're right though, that Dieck is a lot better than Lance for that purpose and I did underrate what Dieck is able to do against Henning.

- He has below 50 hit on Arcard, and does five damage with the killing edge, dudes like Miledy and Percival can tangle with him better with effective weaponry.

- he's pretty good at killing Monke, but there is a chance that even he won't double him, in which case his usefulness plummets

- It's very likely he won't actually be fast enough to double Gel, he needs to be 20/15 to do so (which isn't happening).

- Roartz is kinda shitty, anyone with an armourslayer and decent skill will kill him eventually

He's admittedly a poor choice against Arcard but he poops on Monke, who has 20 AS with the Brave Sword equipped. 14/7 Rutger can already double him.

Gel can't be doubled as you need 29 AS to do so but there are still only few options to deal with him effecively if you don't use Rutger. Gel actually doubles Percival before he reaches -/11 so the only Lance user who has a realistic chance to not get doubled by Gel is Lance [i don't know if average Percival can OHKO Gel with a Killer Lance crit]. Lugh is actually surprisingly good against Gel because he faces WTA against 2-range Light Brand for some reason and only takes 20 damage even if he gets doubled. I guess if you can throw in a mix of Forblaze + Killer Lance crit / Silver Lance / Brave Lance to take care of Gel without Rutger but I don't actually know the hitrates. The safest way to kill Gel safely with relative easy would probably still be Forblaze + Rutger critting.

You also forgot the bosses in 20x where Rutger's bosskilling services are definitely very welcome. He's also one of the best options against Murdock, makes short work of the boss in 21x [no biggie] and he has no issues with the lategame dragon bosses. So calling him 'awful' after mid-game sounds like an exaggeration to me. There's no doubt that he's getting overshadowed by other units who are able to do the same as Rutger but that doesn't make him awful. You're not losing a Percival / Miledy by not promoting him but to me it seems pretty pointless to not just promote him with that Hero Crest from Ch.8 and use that Hero Crest from Ch.11 as you please.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Yojinbo

[MacLovin]

Horace is talking from a low-turn playstyle, which means that Rutger isn't going to be moving fast enough later on to get the levels.

[Yojinbo]

Horace is talking from a low-turn playstyle

And I'm talking from an efficiency playstyle which is more or less the same.

[dondon151]

1. 15/1 deke doesn't do 10 x3 HP damage against hand axe henning; he does 9 x3 HP damage unless you manipulate henning to roll low on def.

2. numbers just look like numbers until you run the calcs. "75 true hit at 31 crit really isn't bad" is a misleading statement.

3. calcs are also misleading when you make inadvertent computation errors...

suppose for a moment that henning really does have 12 instead of 13 def. in order to do at least 28 HP damage for a KO after a light brand hit, deke needs a crit and rutger needs a crit + hit.

deke's chance of hit: 80 + 38 + 10 - 39 - 30 = 59 hit (66.8 true)

i'm not sure what horace did to get 75, maybe he forgot to multiply henning's AS by 2.

deke's chance of crit @ 59 hit, 31 crit = 20.7%

rutger's chance of hit: 80 + 47 + 10 - 39 - 30 = 68 hit (79.8 true)

rutger's chance of crit + hit @ 68 hit, 64 crit = 55.4%

rutger's chance of 2 crits @ 68 hit, 64 crit = 26.1%

this puts things in perspective. for the specific light brand + swordie strategy to work, assuming that zealot or marcus hit with the light brand, rutger is almost 3 times as likely to kill henning than deke. even if the paladin missed with the light brand, rutger's chance of destroying henning outright is still greater than deke's chance of finishing the KO on henning.

also i'm actually pretty sure that rutger @ durandal has a better, or at least comparable, chance of ORKOing sacae arcardo than either horseslayer milady or horseslayer perceval. 15/9 rutger has 90 + 59 - 48 - 20 - 10 = 71 hit, perceval has 75 + 39 - 48 - 20 = 46 hit at base and it's probably around 50 at best. rutger just needs to hit + crit at 27 crit.

EDIT: the definition of a perceval/milady tier unit is a unit who saves turns in multiple chapters throughout the game. obviously if you're just rigging the RNG to get your KOs, then rutger's useless (and lilina becomes high/top tier, go figure), but sometimes we forget that chance of success does matter and that greater reliability translates to turns saved on average.

Edited January 17, 2015 by dondon151

[General Horace]

Horace is talking from a low-turn playstyle, which means that Rutger isn't going to be moving fast enough later on to get the levels.

I honestly wasn't, assuming a 15/1 Dieck at chapter 8x is pretty unreasonable for a low turn playthrough (I think anyway...)

1. 15/1 deke doesn't do 10 x3 HP damage against hand axe henning; he does 9 x3 HP damage unless you manipulate henning to roll low on def.

2. numbers just look like numbers until you run the calcs. "75 true hit at 31 crit really isn't bad" is a misleading statement.

3. calcs are also misleading when you make inadvertent computation errors...

suppose for a moment that henning really does have 12 instead of 13 def. in order to do at least 28 HP damage for a KO after a light brand hit, deke needs a crit and rutger needs a crit + hit.

deke's chance of hit: 80 + 38 + 10 - 39 - 30 = 59 hit (66.8 true)

i'm not sure what horace did to get 75, maybe he forgot to multiply henning's AS by 2.

deke's chance of crit @ 59 hit, 31 crit = 20.7%

rutger's chance of hit: 80 + 47 + 10 - 39 - 30 = 68 hit (79.8 true)

rutger's chance of crit + hit @ 68 hit, 64 crit = 55.4%

rutger's chance of 2 crits @ 68 hit, 64 crit = 26.1%

this puts things in perspective. for the specific light brand + swordie strategy to work, assuming that zealot or marcus hit with the light brand, rutger is almost 3 times as likely to kill henning than deke. even if the paladin missed with the light brand, rutger's chance of destroying henning outright is still greater than deke's chance of finishing the KO on henning.

also i'm actually pretty sure that rutger @ durandal has a better, or at least comparable, chance of ORKOing sacae arcardo than either horseslayer milady or horseslayer perceval. 15/9 rutger has 90 + 59 - 48 - 20 - 10 = 71 hit, perceval has 75 + 39 - 48 - 20 = 46 hit at base and it's probably around 50 at best. rutger just needs to hit + crit at 27 crit.

EDIT: the definition of a perceval/milady tier unit is a unit who saves turns in multiple chapters throughout the game. obviously if you're just rigging the RNG to get your KOs, then rutger's useless (and lilina becomes high/top tier, go figure), but sometimes we forget that chance of success does matter and that greater reliability translates to turns saved on average.

i just went by the onsite data for Henning (which lists 12 defence)

I think I forgot to halve Dieck's luck by 2, giving him 17+17+8+80+10 (132 hit) vs Hennings theoretical 15+15+7+30 (67 avoid) (going off the onsite listing of 17 speed and 7 luck and knocking of 2 AS because of his shitty con) which pans out to 65 hit (or 75 true)

So i'm guessing Henning has 18 speed and not 17 at the first chapter load and I just fudged halving the luck

but I've said many times that Dieck isn't better or comparable to Rutgar at killing said bosses, and that Rutger is better at killing bosses in general. I'll admit I was kinda making shit up about the Sacae bosses and was just looking at numbers. I never considered using Durandal on Arcard tho.

tl;dr the onsite boss data wasn't consistant with your data and luck is a stupid stat ;(

I still maintain he's not a bad option to kill Henning.

[dondon151]

deke is still probably second best next to rutger, i agree. the gap between them is huge, though.