Tharja/Donnel and Sully/Gaius or Tharja/Gaius and Sully/Donnel?

[dochisan]

For my third playthrough of Awakening (hard classic mode), I've picked out pairings that I think would create ideal children. Donnel and Gaius can pass down the Pegasus Knight classes to Noire and Kjelle (who can't get Galeforce any other way). I just can't decide who would be better for who.

So Tharja/Donnel and Sully/Gaius or Tharja/Gaius and Sully/Donnel? Or if you have a completely different opinion, please share!

Please help me decide >.<

[Alastor15243]

Well, when talking about Apotheosis, whoever Gaius fathers will be awesome, whoever Donnel fathers will be mediocre at best.

Gaius!Kjelle will be VERY fast and can make excellent use of the wyvern lord class to hit 75 speed with AS+2 and a berserker support. Great physical unit.

Gaius!Noire will be the best Thronie killer in the game apart from Morgan, because she has access to the dark knight class, enough speed to hit 69 in it (enough to double thronie) without any speed bonus on her husband, swordfaire to use with levin swords, luna and astra for an excellent proc rate, and thus will be devastating against Thronie with levin swords, piercing both his Aegis+ and his really high defense. With Sage Laurent as her hard support she can one-round Thronie and his clones even when brave weapons are banned.

However, Gaius!Noire's thronie-killer niche is less crucial when you're using brave weapons. However, since Kjelle already has luna and astra access, she can handle having Donnel as a father much better than Noire can, so if you pick Gaius!Kjelle, Noire will suffer more than Kjelle would if you picked Gaius!Noire. Ultimately it's up to you.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Alastor15243

[dochisan]

Well, when talking about Apotheosis, whoever Gaius fathers will be awesome, whoever Donnel fathers will be mediocre at best.

Gaius!Kjelle will be VERY fast and can make excellent use of the wyvern lord class to hit 75 speed with AS+2 and a berserker support. Great physical unit.

Gaius!Noire will be the best Thronie killer in the game apart from Morgan, because she has access to the dark knight class, enough speed to hit 69 in it (enough to double thronie) without any speed bonus on her husband, swordfaire to use with levin swords, luna and astra for an excellent proc rate, and thus will be devastating against Thronie with levin swords, piercing both his Aegis+ and his really high defense. With Sage Laurent as her hard support she can one-round Thronie and his clones even when brave weapons are banned.

However, Gaius!Noire's thronie-killer niche is less crucial when you're using brave weapons. However, since Kjelle already has luna and astra access, she can handle having Donnel as a father much better than Noire can, so if you pick Gaius!Kjelle, Noire will suffer more than Kjelle would if you picked Gaius!Noire. Ultimately it's up to you.

Gaius!Noire seems to gain a lot more from her dad than Gaius!Kjelle...

[Alastor15243]

Gaius!Noire seems to gain a lot more from her dad than Gaius!Kjelle...

Note that her thronie-killer niche only applies when you do a no-brave weapons challenge run, but then, I recommend doing a challenge run, because if you do no-holds barred than pretty much anybody can kill anybody regardless of optimization.

All in all though, whatever mode you pick I generally stand by this decision, because again, Donnel!Kjelle is perfectly usable, while Donnel!Noire is... kinda... not.

There's always the option to turn Noire into a female hard support by using a father other than Gaius or Donnel, but be warned that this will limit you to having exactly one galepair unless you use a female avatar (in which case you'll have two), because then both Noire and Nah will have to pair up with two of your three galeboys, leaving only one left to pair with a girl with galeforce.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Alastor15243

[Czar_Yoshi]

I use Gaius!Kjelle and non-GF Noire. Gaius!Kjelle is easily top tier with her Wyvern and Paladin sets, while Donnel!Kjelle is B tier at best (good skills, poor stats). Gaius!Noire is also only B tier at best, but non-GF Noires can be very good (especially Vaike, Ricken, Lon'qu and Fred!Noire).

If you're not optimizing for anything and jut care about general play, though, it more likely comes down to giving Donnel to whoever you want to have AT.

Edited July 1, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[Ebony]

I did Gaius/Noire and Donnel/Maribelle... and Vaike/Sully. I can't say much for the Donnel situation, but I really like Gaius!Noire, from a story standpoint and statwise tbh. As an Assassin (I don't have dlc so no limit breaker for me) she hit the caps of 50/50 for Speed and Skill.

[JediZelda]

Gaius!Noire is also only B tier at best, but non-GF Noires can be very good (especially Vaike, Ricken, Lon'qu and Fred!Noire).

Okay, now I'm curious...how is Gaius!Noire only B tier? I'm still trying to familiarize myself with the current meta, but last I heard Gaius!Noire was the best non Avatar!Noire. I can see an argument for Vaike or Lon'qu, but how does Frederick make for a better Noire than Gaius?

Edited July 3, 2015 by JediZelda

[Alastor15243]

Okay, now I'm curious...how is Gaius!Noire only B tier? I'm still trying to familiarize myself with the current meta, but last I heard Gaius!Noire was the best non Avatar!Noire. I can see an argument for Vaike or Lon'qu, but how does Frederick make for a better Noire than Gaius?

I contest this too, especially because, since most people seem to make their avatar male, it leaves you with exactly one galepair, which is... restrictive... shall we say.

I've already stated Gaius!Noire's advantages above, so really the question is: what benefit does Frederick!Noire have over Gaius!Noire in, say, no rally or no DLC challenge runs? Because Gaius!Noire has the clear advantage in no-brave runs and any difference between them is meaningless in no-holds-barred.

Oh, and also, one other, aesthetic, disadvantage to using a non-gale noire: Noire is ANOTHER girl with really unpleasant supports with Inigo, though not to the same horrifying extent as Nah, which basically means if that sort of thing matters to you, you HAVE to put Brady and Owain with Noire and Nah.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Alastor15243

[JediZelda]

Oh, and also, one other, aesthetic, disadvantage to using a non-gale noire: Noire is ANOTHER girl with really unpleasant supports with Inigo, though not to the same horrifying extent as Nah, which basically means if that sort of thing matters to you, you HAVE to put Brady and Owain with Noire and Nah.

I'm not as bothered by this (Noire and Inigo are married in my current file actually), simply because almost all of Inigo's supports with the ladies are terrible in one way or another. I got really tired of seeing perfectly nice S supports that are ruined by Inigo making some comment about other women. Especially Cynthia's, I think that was the worst of them. Since I'm not going to marry him to Severa or Kjelle every time, sometimes he'll have to suck it up and deal with it. That's not to say the Nah support isn't terrible (because it is) but I'd feel worse about marrying Inigo to her if he had lots of better options aesthetically. Unfortunately, IMO he doesn't.

[Alastor15243]

I'm not as bothered by this (Noire and Inigo are married in my current file actually), simply because almost all of Inigo's supports with the ladies are terrible in one way or another. I got really tired of seeing perfectly nice S supports that are ruined by Inigo making some comment about other women. Especially Cynthia's, I think that was the worst of them. Since I'm not going to marry him to Severa or Kjelle every time, sometimes he'll have to suck it up and deal with it. That's not to say the Nah support isn't terrible (because it is) but I'd feel worse about marrying Inigo to her if he had lots of better options aesthetically. Unfortunately, IMO he doesn't.

He has three actually: Severa and Kjelle, as you said, but also female Morgan. That S support is friggin' adorable. All of those are great, though I mostly prefer Severa for some reason. Maybe because Severa's extremely difficult to get along with too, and they seem to magically cancel each other out into a stable, functional relationship. Female Avatar would be fine except he's statistically a poor father for Morgan and his event conversations with morgan imply he broke his promise to FeMU.

And actually, to be fair about his support with Cynthia, she says "A future where you don't talk to any girl but me!", which is... excessive.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Alastor15243

[eclipse]

If Lucina isn't his sister, he can go with her. . .mostly because it shows a very interesting side of him, and his flirting with other women isn't brought up for most of it. I think that makes all the girls whose names don't begin with the letter "N" (I have yet to find a S support where I don't feel like slapping Nah).

Alternately, he can support his parent. But I'm not sure how vital the extra boost from S supports is to your plans.

[JediZelda]

He has three actually: Severa and Kjelle, as you said, but also female Morgan. That S support is friggin' adorable. All of those are great, though I mostly prefer Severa for some reason. Maybe because Severa's extremely difficult to get along with too, and they seem to magically cancel each other out into a stable, functional relationship. Female Avatar would be fine except he's statistically a poor father for Morgan and his event conversations with morgan imply he broke his promise to FeMU.

And actually, to be fair about his support with Cynthia, she says "A future where you don't talk to any girl but me!", which is... excessive.

Oh yeah, Morgan is usually male in my playthroughs, so I forgot about the Morgan/Inigo support. I like that one a lot, too. So that's three good S supports for Inigo, then. I didn't mention Female Avatar for the event conversation you mentioned. As far as Inigo and Cynthia, I originally thought that when she said "talk" what she meant was "flirt with/come on to." Then again, it is the same girl who was tricked into thinking that some random bandit was her father (they could've at least made the guy look like Chrom!), so maybe she did mean it literally. But the ending of that conversation is what bothered me the most. "Sorry, my love! You'll always be my number one! But there are so many other lovely numbers out there!" That doesn't really sound like he just meant talking.

I have a hard time liking Severa, since it seems like a lot of people bend over backwards to placate her in their supports. They've all had a hard life, why does she deserve such special treatment? If I recall correctly, I think Laurent calls her out on some of it? Go Laurent. I do like her with Gerome and Inigo, too. The Gerome supports made me laugh- one sourpuss deserves another.

If Lucina isn't his sister, he can go with her. . .mostly because it shows a very interesting side of him, and his flirting with other women isn't brought up for most of it. I think that makes all the girls whose names don't begin with the letter "N" (I have yet to find a S support where I don't feel like slapping Nah).Alternately, he can support his parent. But I'm not sure how vital the extra boost from S supports is to your plans.

I like that Inigo tries so hard to get Lucina to smile, but then he flubs up the S support (as per usual) by talking about other girls. At least their ending seems to be happy, though.

Nah's good supports are also few and far between. I like her with male Morgan and Yarne, and her support with Owain is all right. Too bad there is no support that calls her out on her behavior. As it is, we all have to either make do with what we have or leave her forever alone.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Okay, now I'm curious...how is Gaius!Noire only B tier? I'm still trying to familiarize myself with the current meta, but last I heard Gaius!Noire was the best non Avatar!Noire. I can see an argument for Vaike or Lon'qu, but how does Frederick make for a better Noire than Gaius?

I won't contest that Gaius!Noire is the best non-Avatar Noire. She's a world ahead of Donnel!Noire, just like Gaius!Kjelle is much better than Donnel!Kjelle.

However, Donnel!Kjelle is better than non-GF Kjelles by a good margin (Kjelle is set up to lead, not support, and already has everything she wants except GF- she doesn't gain anything from non-GF dads), while Donnel!Noire is less useful than many non-GF Noires. So it comes down to getting a good Noire and an OK (but very slow) Kjelle, or getting a great Kjelle and doing something else with Noire. In fact, since Gaius!Noire's role is very telegraphed (she makes a good BK, Sniper, Assassin... All Bow classes, always), another father might even give her a role that fits your team better. The notable ones:

-Ricken!Noire: Noire comes with a +3 Mag mod at base, and never gets to do anything with it due to lacking TF. Ricken fixes that, giving her a +6 Mag Sage and turning her into a female Laurent. She works well with Owain and Brady, so if you want to avoid Inigo it's easy to do so.

-Lon'qu!Noire: Grants Wyvern and a +5 Spd mod (hits 75 with All+2)... But since she has no GF to fill a slot with, she can run All+2, Luna and Astra all at the same time. With her +1 Str mod, this gives her even more damage output than most Severas and Kjelles.

-Vaike!Noire: Premiere Sniper Noire. Has AT for the Double Bow, a +4 Str mod and enough Spd to hit 75 with All+2 and a Berserker support (same stuff Gaius!Noire needs for 75), making her generally better at it than Gaius!Noire.

-Fred!Noire: No special tricks like the other three, but Fred gives solid +2/2 Str/Skl mods and has excellent availability. This one is mostly here since I'm using her on my current ultimate team and if she can get a spot there, she can get a spot on this list.

I contest this too, especially because, since most people seem to make their avatar male, it leaves you with exactly one galepair, which is... restrictive... shall we say.

Not one Galepair, one Double Galepair. There's a big difference.

Namely, GF is primarily a mobility skill. In Apo, enemies are placed in tight-knit clusters, and those clusters are relatively spread out. There's not enough stuff in each cluster to warrant a full turn to take them out if you're playing with a full team, otherwise half of your team will have nothing to do even if you're not using any GF units. GF isn't useful at all for taking down those clusters- it's useful for killing one nearby enemy and then moving farther away, so you can spread out your kills and not have units consistently doing nothing because they have no target.

Having one GF unit allows you to move roughly one cluster away from where you started. If you went in at the right point, there should be enough enemies so all your units have something to do. But you can't get enough double Galepairs, or find enough enemies at once, for doubles to do anything except get two kills once they reach where they're going- so the extra GF does very little to make sure its pair gets to help out.

It's still useful, and I'll (usually) use it if I have it. But its value is low enough to be on the table for dropping in exchange for more combat performance.

Of course, having that extra killing power becomes really nice once you're not playing with a full team, something I like to do. But there are a lot of good girls, so Noire rarely makes it onto my roster for those in the first place and it's back to not mattering.

any difference between them is meaningless in no-holds-barred.

Not really. If your units are in competition for kills, it becomes readily apparent if one pair isn't as good as they should be because they'll always be getting left behind. Why is this a problem, if you're still easily clearing the map? Because if they're doing nothing, then a) you've ground them up for nothing, b) you could be deploying a staffbot, rallybot or something helpful in that slot instead, and c) they're clearly not perfect, which bugs me given how long I spend working on teams.

[Shadow Mir]

Oh yeah, Morgan is usually male in my playthroughs, so I forgot about the Morgan/Inigo support. I like that one a lot, too. So that's three good S supports for Inigo, then. I didn't mention Female Avatar for the event conversation you mentioned. As far as Inigo and Cynthia, I originally thought that when she said "talk" what she meant was "flirt with/come on to." Then again, it is the same girl who was tricked into thinking that some random bandit was her father (they could've at least made the guy look like Chrom!), so maybe she did mean it literally. But the ending of that conversation is what bothered me the most. "Sorry, my love! You'll always be my number one! But there are so many other lovely numbers out there!" That doesn't really sound like he just meant talking.

I have a hard time liking Severa, since it seems like a lot of people bend over backwards to placate her in their supports. They've all had a hard life, why does she deserve such special treatment? If I recall correctly, I think Laurent calls her out on some of it? Go Laurent. I do like her with Gerome and Inigo, too. The Gerome supports made me laugh- one sourpuss deserves another.

I like that Inigo tries so hard to get Lucina to smile, but then he flubs up the S support (as per usual) by talking about other girls. At least their ending seems to be happy, though.

Nah's good supports are also few and far between. I like her with male Morgan and Yarne, and her support with Owain is all right. Too bad there is no support that calls her out on her behavior. As it is, we all have to either make do with what we have or leave her forever alone.

Bold: Stop at "Double the Grumpy Cat + One Spin"!

I don't really have much else to say, other than I have a hard time liking Yarne, in no small part because of his cowardice (admittedly, it's a legit excuse on paper, but when you consider just how bad things are in the future, it becomes less so).

As to the question... I'd say Gaius!Kjelle and a non-GF Noire.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Levant Colthearts

[Alastor15243]

Not really. If your units are in competition for kills, it becomes readily apparent if one pair isn't as good as they should be because they'll always be getting left behind. Why is this a problem, if you're still easily clearing the map? Because if they're doing nothing, then a) you've ground them up for nothing, b) you could be deploying a staffbot, rallybot or something helpful in that slot instead, and c) they're clearly not perfect, which bugs me given how long I spend working on teams.

I mean that when everyone has maxed stats, limit breaker, rallies, AND brave weapons, nobody's going to be any more efficient at killing anything than anyone else, because they won't even be getting to their second set of 6 attacks most of the time, the enemy will already be dead.

Admittedly, I haven't actually tried out Gaius!Kjelle on a no-brave run, I probably will at some point to make absolute sure, but on paper, I feel fairly confident in saying that Gaius!Noire is superior to her when brave weapons are banned, because she has a far more useful niche that she happens to be the absolute best non-morgan unit at.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Dropping kills can be taken off the table, but what about things like reaching the enemies (hence my preference for 8-Mov classes) and how much gold (in terms of weapon uses) it takes to kill them? The latter sounds superfluous but if presented with two choices to kill the same enemy and one was slightly more expensive than the other (took one more hit, maybe), wouldn't you pick the cheaper one every time?

My experience says it's fairly easy to make units that tend to pick up more or less kills than others.

[Alastor15243]

Dropping kills can be taken off the table, but what about things like reaching the enemies (hence my preference for 8-Mov classes) and how much gold (in terms of weapon uses) it takes to kill them? The latter sounds superfluous but if presented with two choices to kill the same enemy and one was slightly more expensive than the other (took one more hit, maybe), wouldn't you pick the cheaper one every time?

My experience says it's fairly easy to make units that tend to pick up more or less kills than others.

Granted, but my point is that such differences are utterly trivial compared to the differences between units on challenge runs, so I consider a unit who's better at a harder challenge to be superior to one who's better on an easier one.

[Vascela]

Granted, but my point is that such differences are utterly trivial compared to the differences between units on challenge runs, so I consider a unit who's better at a harder challenge to be superior to one who's better on an easier one.

Certain units that seem critically important on certain challenge runs can be completely worthless in another. For example, I use Ricken!Severa for no dlc/no rally 100%, but she would be worthless, unusable trash [hyperbole] for no dlc/no braves 100%. I won't say that one challenge was actually harder than the other; both had their ups and downs in difficulty (and I had more experience under my belt for the latter planning since it came after the former).

What does that say about Ricken!Severa? Not much, imo, you should just take it for face value that characters thrive in different conditions and different setups. To say that Gaius!Noire holds this extra value doesn't mean much when a) the challenge in specific isn't being used and b) that units value in the challenge run might be obsolete in the run actually being made.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I consider unit rankings to be 100% exclusive to the context they're used in. It's a big part of why tier lists always fail, and also why I like No Holds Barred so much- it's a fairly safe assumption to make when someone's asking an Apo question.