Unit Practicality Thread

[avengerfive]

So what's a good team size? You get so many combat units its hard to pick which ones to use.

Looking at Nohr, I would say Kamui, Xander, Camilla, and kinda Leon are givens, along with their pair-up partners. That's already 8 units. For utility, we have Azura, Elise, and Luna bringing the unit count to 11. Honestly, I think you only have room for one more combat pair(I would go with Zero, for Endgame cheese, little healing, and he's a good unit). The team is now 13 units. Is it worth it to use another combat pair?

[Ownagepuffs]

You've still got units like Effie, Belka, Silas, and Flannel who could be a part of the action. You can do with or without them if you want.

[Tooru]

"4 unit with pair-up partners" can be 5 or 4, as well as more than 10 units.

Even when it is 8 units, when you are counting 1 more unit the number may not increase by 1.

Any unit can be used as any other unit's pair-up partner when it is necessary.

Endgame chapters allows 16 units. All of them can reach lv18~20 if they are not used too munch as healers/pair-up fodders.

Edited December 23, 2015 by Tooru

[CocoaGalaxy]

It depends on how much you spread the exp really

For Hoshido and Revelations, you'll get less exp as the enemies are lower leveled.

Keeping up isn't really that bad, since the game does (somewhat, but probably not a lot) give more exp for defeating enemies higher leveled than you, so if you fall behind you can catch up fairly easy.

The catch is actually letting those units do the killing.

If you just stick everyone into guard stance then some units will just be left behind forever or so I guess

Also healing exp quickly drops off into more or less nothing after promotion, so Sakura/Elise/Healers will fall behind as well

For 16 characters, if we were to go the whole hog in simplifying, assuming they fight enemies of equal level (30 exp per kill) and 1 round everything, for them all to get a level per chapter would require ~48 enemies per chapter, which I'm not so sure about

Before counting reinforcements, each chapter has an average of, let's say, 20+ enemies.

It might be a bit much to assume 20 reinforcements in every chapter though.

I suppose if you really go all out and do all the paralogues it should be possible to get ~16 characters to 20/20

Edited December 24, 2015 by CocoaGalaxy

[Espinosa]

You can also finish the game without anyone getting to lv. 20 promoted...

[CocoaGalaxy]

Ryoma is probably the most used unit (I've yet to see players use crimson for some odd reason) on Hoshido, Xander on Nohr, though Ryoma might still have his work cut out for him to cap

The main thing is that, paralogues aside, generic enemies cap at Level 15 in Hoshido 27 (Hoshido E is Level 18 but ...well what can I say) and Revelations 27 and Endgame, and the exp falls off quite quickly regarding that, so it's still not likely you'll hit Level 20 really.

[Dämonplay]

One question I still don't know is:

Does the logbook work between different games or only savefiles of one game?

For example if I want Azura to get rally skill and just marry her to a MU in nohr who has mercenary. And that way get rally skill. Save her at the end and then buy that skill in the 3rd path?

[CyborgZeta]

I have a question. Is it practical to deploy a unit, even if you don't use them, just for the sake of pairing them up with another for Guard Stance and bonuses?

[Tooru]

It depends on how much you spread the exp really

For Hoshido and Revelations, you'll get less exp as the enemies are lower leveled.

Keeping up isn't really that bad, since the game does (somewhat, but probably not a lot) give more exp for defeating enemies higher leveled than you, so if you fall behind you can catch up fairly easy.

The catch is actually letting those units do the killing.

If you just stick everyone into guard stance then some units will just be left behind forever or so I guess

Also healing exp quickly drops off into more or less nothing after promotion, so Sakura/Elise/Healers will fall behind as well

For 16 characters, if we were to go the whole hog in simplifying, assuming they fight enemies of equal level (30 exp per kill) and 1 round everything, for them all to get a level per chapter would require ~48 enemies per chapter, which I'm not so sure about

Before counting reinforcements, each chapter has an average of, let's say, 20+ enemies.

It might be a bit much to assume 20 reinforcements in every chapter though.

I suppose if you really go all out and do all the paralogues it should be possible to get ~16 characters to 20/20

Nohr 11: 38.

Nohr 12: 42.

...

Nohr 22: 33 + reinforcements.

Nohr 23: 45 + reinforcements.

Nohr 24: 40 + reinforcements.

Nohr 25: 49.

Nohr 26: 50 + reinforcements.

Where did the number "20+" come from?

Edited December 24, 2015 by Tooru

[CocoaGalaxy]

Hmm well it's true when you put it that way, since I never really went to count.

I'm still not sure though.

Update:

From what data I have so far (only hard mode and it's also missing some), initial enemy counts gives an average of 29, so that's one thing.

For the reinforcements side, I honestly don't know how many they could pile on in each chapter.

Well when I think about it, most Fire Emblem games don't have all the characters hitting the level cap anyway, so it's no real surprise that it's not easy to make it happen.

Edited December 24, 2015 by CocoaGalaxy

[Ownagepuffs]

I have a question. Is it practical to deploy a unit, even if you don't use them, just for the sake of pairing them up with another for Guard Stance and bonuses?

Absolutely. What do you think Charlotte and Rinka are for? Even Arthur earns consistent deployment because his pair up bonuses are so good early on.

[CocoaGalaxy]

One thing I've been "reminded" of, is that.

Pairings aside (which probably influence the question, but that's hard enough as is), I wonder what would be the best time to recruit the children.

...That's assuming that people want to in the first place.

On the other hand, with no grind rules in place, it's...well, still going to be even less accessible.

I'm also still not very well informed about the paralogues, so I have no idea which of them are considered too difficult to do later or something else.

(From what little I've seen so far, late game children tend to have solid base stats? While earlier game children...are more "susceptible" to rng screwage, lol rng. Though honestly speaking I'm still so confused)

With regards to the deployment question, I'm actually a little bit confused because, while I have left slots empty because I didn't want to deploy people in other games, I'd think that you could just deploy people to fill in the gaps and just stick them in a guard stance the whole time, the only thing you lose is the ability to attack stance and mayyyybe having slightly less of guard stance bonuses, some strategic movements that you might be able to think of, but honestly I think it's still mostly nothing to lose.

Edited December 24, 2015 by CocoaGalaxy

[Tooru]

[Ownagepuffs]

I usually do paralogues after chapter 20 because that's when they get autoleveled to 20/6 (gaining their promoted level 5 skill) and, if they get a secondary weapon rank, it gets bumped to D rank. The ones that provide items are probably worth doing earlier (Dia or Ophelia, for example). Considering how quickly you can get Dia or Shigure's Paralogues, you could even do them immediately for a nice extra bit of exp which could be helpful.

[astrophys]

On this note, would you do Matoi's paralogue early or not?

Rally Speed (or Soar) + D rank secondary weapon after Ch. 20 [as you said] or early Swordslayer?

I'm guessing you'll say early given the item example you cited, but I'd just like to double check.

[Ownagepuffs]

On this note, would you do Matoi's paralogue early or not?

Rally Speed (or Soar) + D rank secondary weapon after Ch. 20 [as you said] or early Swordslayer?

I'm guessing you'll say early given the item example you cited, but I'd just like to double check.

I guess if you did Oboro/Tsubaki you could get her early because she would make for a good replacement if Baki is faltering. Early Swordslayer is also nice.

[astrophys]

As a point related to general practicality, have we figured out how the base stats of the units are influenced by parental stats yet? I think its pretty clearly established that it doesn't work like Awakening and isn't remotely as huge of an effect, but it still seems to be there.

This could be relevant for predicting stat averages…. if a character is on average a point or two ahead of what we'd expect, then in some cases that might make the different between their average outcome breaking some benchmark or another.

It probably won't make a huge difference from practicality, but in some cases it might influence how easy or hard it is to train a particular child, or stuff like that.

For example, according to Serenes' data, Matoi has default personal + class base stats of 24 HP, 11 Str, 3 Mag, 10 Skill, 13 Speed, 13 Luck, 7 Defense, and 12 Res at level 10, plus an unknown amount of extra base stats from her parents.

And we know that there can be a variation. For example, another user (perhaps it was Arya?) some months back provided me data on level 10/0 Rinkah!Midoriko and Hana!Matoi. The former had +2 Spd/+2 Res higher than class base + default personal base would suggest, while Hana!Matoi had +1 Skill/+1 Defense above the class base + default personal base. If we could find the rules, the rhyme and reason behind how these extra stats get assigned, we could apply this knowledge to all of the children and to all of their variants.

But in the meantime, we're in a situation were we don't necessarily know what level of extra stats a child like an Oboro!Matoi will have compared to these bases vs. what a Hinoka!Matoi or a Selena!Matoi will have, for instance. Is there any insight on this question?

These effects will ultimately increase the anticipated endgame stats achieved in no-grind, by elevating a few stats above the original expectations.

[Espinosa]

Is Leo better as a Strategist or as his default DK? On the one hand, I find that losing 6 points of defence hurts his enemy phase, but on the other hand it really helps having a unit who is healthy enough to take just about any enemy attack and still function effectively as a healer (even with only Heals for a while, but he has the magic for it). He gets a bit more speed and magic as a result, too, and Battle Command is pretty handy support.

Losing swords isn't a big deal when he takes forever to wield Levin Swords anyway, and with swords being as ineffective against lances and daggers as tomes, you hardly find yourself using them (which is just what, iron and armourslayer?) more often than his prized Prf tome.

[Ownagepuffs]

I'd say he's better as a Dark Knight. Bulk mage is his defining niche, and on average Leo is fast enough to double what you need him to. The extra magic from Strategist is superfluous since Leo overkills anything he doubles anyway except Falcoknights. This goes double for IK where Leo needs that bulk because IK enemies are very strong. Pairing off Leo with a good magic waifu (Felicia or Nyx) will give you a high magic Foleo anyway who can serve your mounted healing needs and Elise has been with you forever. Out of curiosity, is there a situation where you need a healer to take a hit? I'd be lying if I said I didn't have Sakura get whacked here or there in the Hoshido early game, but I don't think I've ever taken a healer to the front unless I need to use a status staff (fun fact: did you know base Elise can take one hit from Flora in chapter 8? It's important because the tile 1 south of Flora is just barely close enough to use Freeze on the Soldier who targets the middle left village).

[Espinosa]

Well, Nohr sometimes makes me appreciate having a healer who can not die (and also counter). There's Fuuga's map where the wind mechanic is irrational when it leaves your healers alone with an enemy they can't escape from, so it'd be good if they could take an attack while your fliers position themselves to come to rescue next turn. C24 (Hinoka's map) is another chapter where not playing carefully / not activating Dragon Veins in a timely manner can seriously endanger your weaker units. Both Fuuga and Hinoka are notoriously difficult to one-round KO, so the fancy 2-3 turn strategies designed for getting to the seize point ASAP on those maps won't do it for the regular player seeking reliability.

Mostly, I just find Leo's chip extremely meaty when finishing off weakened enemies with Brunusuififo, which I can hardly say about Felicia's combat with the Exploding Shuriken or Elise's combat with lolFire, so if he could be the healer I take along with me, there is more than one thing I'd have him contribute.

If you don't choose Strategist Leo, Asura in his default class also makes a great healer who can counter at 1-range with the Short Bow and at 1-2 range with the Shining Bow (I've got him to one-round enemies with it before through Attack Stance in spite of his low magic). Of course, LTCers trade him over for a pair of Boots.

[Tooru]

Why not beat the ch8 Soldier before his visiting instead of just Freeze him?

Strategist Leo with base stats will be 1HKO by Giant Boulder Golems in Ch21. Growth as a Strategist may or may not save him.

Of course you can let him stay out of range, or skip all the enemies and be proud for it so nobody knows if you are good enough to deal with them. I just want to show that -6 Def hurts him so much.

Strategist Leo leans Distinguished Son which you may not have in a Mamui playthrough, and this is one more reason for him to not to take a hit.

[Espinosa]

Yeah, not many characters are that good on that map. If Leo has trouble surviving as a Strategist, then what does that say about Felicia and Elise? I think the inability to double the Golems and the constant waves of reinforcements giving 0 experience is more than enough incentive to flierskip that map even if you're not LTCing.

I never considered Freezing the Soldier on that map though. Isn't visiting 3 villages the same as visiting all 5 in terms of the reward you get?

[Duke of Dozel]

The main gripe is that even though Leon can cap speed even as a dark knight, his speed cap is unbelievably terrible at 25. That means he has to rely on a fast support (Maid Felicia/Adventurer Nyx) to be competent by late to end game. But if you like bulk enough, he's still pretty fantastic most of the Nohr route.

[Espinosa]

The average Leo fails to cap speed at /20 actually... But yeah, he's slow and the extra 2-3 points of speed as a Strategist can be quite helpful. Dark Knight Leo is also a great defensive support partner for a mage unit, too, providing magic, defence and mobility - basically everything a mage wants. Strategists aren't bad pair up partners either, though luck is nowhere as welcome as phys defence is. Still, you gotta wonder who Leo will be supporting - Bolt Axe Camilla or what? I mean, MU would rather have their servant as a pair-up partner because of the servant's individual skill.

Has anybody really managed to turn Leo into a second Xander of sorts anyway? He hasn't been as good as the other siblings in my experience, and maybe that's why I'm thinking a utility role for him would be more effective to the army.

[Tooru]

Yeah, not many characters are that good on that map. If Leo has trouble surviving as a Strategist, then what does that say about Felicia and Elise? I think the inability to double the Golems and the constant waves of reinforcements giving 0 experience is more than enough incentive to flierskip that map even if you're not LTCing.

I never considered Freezing the Soldier on that map though. Isn't visiting 3 villages the same as visiting all 5 in terms of the reward you get?

Felicia and Elise can help other units' surviving, so can Strategist Leo with Distinguished Son.

A Golem can always counterattack, so you need to take 1 hit to beat one (+1 hit if you need to aggro it) and Defensive Formation doesn't make a big difference.

Bad for surviving doesn't equal to bad for using. Strategist Leo can be helpful in this map if you decide to beat and get everything except some reinforcements.

"I just want to show that -6 Def hurts him so much."

You won't get more rewards by visiting 4~5 villages so it is not necessary to waste Freeze for it.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Tooru