For Ayra, Lex, Noish, or Holyn?

[Lantairu]

I'm doing another playthrough of FE4, and I want to try something new for most of the people, mainly Ayra. I've already done Holyn and Lex, and they turned out great, but I've heard good things about Noish. I kind of want to pair Holyn with Briggid this time around, so which is better? Or which is the best husband for Ayra overall?

[Thor Odinson]

If you haven't done Noish then do Noish. He won't disappoint.

Holyn's my personal favorite, but I'm also guilty of heavy lakche favoritism (hero sword stays on her, knight leg combo, gets to 50+kills) so she'll be critting anyway in my playstyle, and while Lex is good I also find Elite is overkill on the swordtwins since they're not exactly in short of exp just from the arena alone. I liked Noish more than Lex for them, honestly, but I also use swordtwins very heavily, and last time I used Lex on Lakche she capped level by the middle of chapter 8 and felt like a goddamn waste. Most people don't use Lakche AS heavily as I do, though.

Edited September 28, 2015 by Thor Odinson

[Baldrick]

Both Noish/Ayra and Holyn/Briggid have good synergy. Noish's skills increase the swordkids' killing power, and Holyn helps Patty and doesn't hurt Faval.

[Refa]

Also he gives Faval ridiculous HP/Skill, the former is nice but mostly unnecessary and the latter helping out with bows' shaky hit rates.

Edited September 28, 2015 by Refa

[Naglfar94]

Do it Holyn/Briggid do it now not later Lol Lol just joking. But in all seriouness Holyn/Briggid is a great pairing that won`t upset you Patty will survive better and be able to use the hero sword since Celice should not need it you do get the 50 kill silver sword right? critical hit silver sword is win but it requires someone in the 1st gen to kill a lot of stuff.

I have seen many people pair Noish with Ayra I personally prefer Ayra and Lex but I supposed Noish works good too from what I have seen it gives the sword fighters critical and since the Odo blood gives boost to skill growth they will have high skill stat which= more criticals. Also like Refa said Faval will have high HP... But eh may I add in Faval will max his HP 100% of the time with that pair up he won`t just have high HP it will max every playthrough trust me I have played FE4 over 10 times and used that pairing and let`s be honest not many units will ever max HP and having someone running around with 80 HP is awesome Faval will hit hard and be hard to kill.

Edited September 28, 2015 by Naglfar94

[Zasplach]

Arya's best pairing is very dependent on your play style. Considering her children are mostly used for filler, horses being the best way to beat Mount Emblem. Basically depending on how I'm going to play the 2nd generation affects the choice.

My preferred pairing is Lex, I kind of feel like it is cannon and I really don't get a ton of use out of the twins, minus the arena and some chipping, so getting them to 30 easily is nice.

Holyn, always feels like a Larcei centered pairing, she likes the extra hp and she actually has the caps for the obnoxiously high skill growth and throw the Balmung on her and let her go to town.

Noish seems to balance out the twins pretty well, crazy good skills, though Larcei gets continue to herself and the growths are alright, minor holy blood from fathers mostly help the daughters out.

And a fun wildcard pairing, Jamke, I feel like this is the most Ulster oriented pairing, it gives him continue, which unlike Larcei, he won't gain upon promotion and that wonderfully high strength and defense growth augments well with his Odo holy blood.

[Psych]

I like Dew/Ayra and Holyn/Brigid myself, as it makes Patty useful with the Hero Sword and Luna and it allows the sword twins to sustain a lot as well as save money for passing around rings.

[Yojinbo]

Noish is arguably the best father for Aira's children but recently I've been of the opinion that it's a waste because a.) Aira has a lot of good marriage options and b.) NoishxFury is the greatest pairing ever. Holyn and Dew are both good options for Aira and you can just have the other pair up with Briggid. AiraxLex is quite overrated, AiraxArdan may actually be better.

[Lantairu]

Noish is arguably the best father for Aira's children but recently I've been of the opinion that it's a waste because a.) Aira has a lot of good marriage options and b.) NoishxFury is the greatest pairing ever. Holyn and Dew are both good options for Aira and you can just have the other pair up with Briggid. AiraxLex is quite overrated, AiraxArdan may actually be better.

I agree that AiraxLex is overrated, having used him in my first playthrough and then enjoying HolynxAira much more, but I wouldn't say Ardan is better than Lex.

[Duke of Dozel]

When pairing Ayra, you mostly have to consider skills. Even with Lex, one of the slowest fathers, Larcei will cap speed on average, as well as STR, SKL, and DEF.

For Noish, his main squeeze is continue and critical. Critical can be overlooked because that brave sword should easily have 50 skills by then, if not, soon enough. Continue will help Ulster, but considering that he's hardly bad anyway, it's not needed, but appreciated. Inheritance is also there.

Dew/Ayra gives good growths, but sol is wasted on them since they already have Astra. Two procs can't activate. It's the reason why pairing her with Holyn is a waste as well.

[Lantairu]

Dew/Ayra gives good growths, but sol is wasted on them since they already have Astra. Two procs can't activate. It's the reason why pairing her with Holyn is a waste as well.

I got a lot of use out of Luna on Larcei and Ulster. Maybe it's because I got so unlucky with Astra.

[Phantom037]

AiraxLex is quite overrated, AiraxArdan may actually be better.

Elite>whatever swords Ardan can pass down

I personally find Noish to be the best father, his skills are basically built for the myrmidon class. Though to be fair, her kids are basically unscrewable.

[Baldrick]

Elite isn't terribly useful on Ayra's.

Though the reason Lex/Aira is popular is for convenience more than anything else

[Thor Odinson]

Even if 2 Procs can't activate at once, having 2 is not really a waste, unless you literally have a 100% chance or at least a very high chance for a proc to happen. Multiple Procs bring up the chances of any one given proc happening instead of no proc.

Lakche needs it a bit less since she has innate continue which gives her up to 4 shots of trying to proc something and most things would prolly die by then anyway (honestly lakche is like impossible to fuck up and really so is ska except idk claude maybe?), but assuming Ska doesn't get Hero sword, with only Astra he has only 27% of having a proc happen per hit (given that he doubles, it'd be 1-(1-.27)^2 =46.71% chance that Ska gets a proc per round of combat. With procstacking with Luna, Ska boosts his per hit chance of proccing something up to .27+.73*.27 = 46.71% per hit, which means that his chance of proccing something in 2 hits goes up to 1-(1-.4671)^2 = 71.6%.

Patty does benefit from Luna, so she's not a bad option for Holyn's daughter. She is also a fine recipient of Sol, but she can only have one. Who else IS going to even get the other anyway? Leen? I mean if you want a dancer killing things for hilarity I /guess/ but why is Leen even in combat otherwise

Nobody else can even have those procs other than them

Edited September 29, 2015 by Thor Odinson

[bottlegnomes]

Provided you don't care about playing quickly, I'm going to throw my hat in for Jamke x Ayra. Odo blood patches up Jamke's only issue and he has pretty good skills. Larcei loses out a bit since she gets redundant continue on promotion, but that's still 20 extra levels of a good skill. Charge is also pretty good for them; most of the time they'll benefit more than they'll suffer. Only issues are Ulster doesn't inherit any weapons and it takes a while.

I liked Dew x Briggid. Patty and Faval can abuse their weapons to their heart's content, and they have good growths all around.

[Zasplach]

For Noish, his main squeeze is continue and critical. Critical can be overlooked because that brave sword should easily have 50 skills by then, if not, soon enough. Continue will help Ulster, but considering that he's hardly bad anyway, it's not needed, but appreciated. Inheritance is also there.

Noish has charge not continue, not much difference, but a small distinction.

[Yojinbo]

Elite>whatever swords Ardan can pass down

Nope. Elite doesn't actually do a lot for Aira's kids. If you plan to actually use both of them then inheriting swords > inheriting elite.

[Damosel]

Holyn/Briggid is really nice for boosting Faval's shakey skill growth- let's him actually hit things with Ichival. The boosted sword rank on Patty means you can hand her a Herosword for the battle (in the arena all she needs is her sleep sword then something cheaper).

I'm on the Verdane bandwagon myself- Jamke gives Skasaha both Continue and Charge, which combined with Astra means you can hit the enemy for days. His strength growth is pretty good too for Lakche's sake, and just have him nab the Silver Blade from Chagall. While Dew's insane growths is a hilarious combination with the wondertwins, and free healing is always nice- let's them run at the frontlines and possibly not even need a healer.

But if you don't like those, Noish isn't a bad choice at all. I just agree with the other that once you get the 50+ kills swords, you don't need the Critical skill. Lex and Holyn I personally think make better fathers for other units- IN FACT you could try Briggid/Lex for a defensive Patty that'll promote extra fast.

Edited September 29, 2015 by Damosel

[Cymbalina's Revenge]

Holyn/Briggid is really nice for boosting Faval's shakey skill growth- let's him actually hit things with Ichival. The boosted sword rank on Patty means you can hand her a Herosword for the battle (in the arena all she needs is her sleep sword then something cheaper).

I'm on the Verdane bandwagon myself- Jamke gives Skasaha both Continue and Charge, which combined with Astra means you can hit the enemy for days. His strength growth is pretty good too for Lakche's sake, and just have him nab the Silver Blade from Chagall. While Dew's insane growths is a hilarious combination with the wondertwins, and free healing is always nice- let's them run at the frontlines and possibly not even need a healer.

But if you don't like those, Noish isn't a bad choice at all. I just agree with the other that once you get the 50+ kills swords, you don't need the Critical skill. Lex and Holyn I personally think make better fathers for other units- IN FACT you could try Briggid/Lex for a defensive Patty that'll promote extra fast.

I did Noish/Ayra and Jamke/Ayra in back-to-back playthroughs. Noish!Larcei was marginally better than Jamke!Larcei and Jamke!Ulster beat out Noish!Ulster but it was really close regardless and I'd recommend either pairing.

Noish!Larcei was a beast.

[Chalis]

Another Jamka/Ayra fan here. They suit each other's stats almost perfectly. Their movement ranges match up, meaning mounted units can go on ahead instead of waiting up in chapter 2 where they're most needed. Lakche gets Continue early, Skasha getting it all is a blessing of its own. Due to the way Hero weapons work, they're redundant on characters with the Continue skill freeing up the initial Hero Sword Lakche may be carrying to someone like Delmud or just passing it down to a Holyn fathered Patty straight away.

[Katie]

Dew is also worth considering. As mentioned before, he gives sol and good growths, but he also gives bargain, which is a nice skill to have because it helps them save money.

[sirmola]

Dew is also worth considering. As mentioned before, he gives sol and good growths, but he also gives bargain, which is a nice skill to have because it helps them save money.

Swords are extremely cheap to repair, and the swordtwins are tend to trivialise the arena, so bargen isn't super necessary (although it does help for elite ring usage), don't let one of the skills being questionably nessesairy stopp you though. I hear that they are still awesome.

[Ownagepuffs]

Another vote for Jamke/Ayra here. It's the one pairing where Ulster achieves parity with Larcei and damn if their skillset isn't ridiculous at base. Also 60% average strength growth between them (65/55 Ulster/Larcei) lol. Considering their same move and similar join time, it's an easy pair to make too.

[DarthMikey]

Jamke/Ayra is hilarious since the skill-set it passes down gives the swordtwins the ability to ORKO pretty much anything as long as they do even a tiny amount of damage to their target. But from the available choices I'd probably go for Noish, both because Ayra's pairs with Lex and Holyn are overdone and because Noish's tanky stats and Charge + Critical combo are pretty potent stuff for the swordtwins. I guess he can also pass swords down to Ulster, though that doesn't really matter much since I think his rank is capped at B.