FE4: Who Has Experience With the Substitute Characters?

[FionordeQuester]

I'm doing an FE4 LP right now; and I give an indepth overview for every character as I run across them. And when I say "indepth", I mean this...

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Overview of Jamka: http://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=146326

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Now, here's my current predicament; I've never actually PLAYED with any of the Substitue characters. I just got the children character each and every time I played this game; so I'm not in the position to be talking about any of them. So I was hoping someone like General_Horace would be able to do that in my stead, so that my readers will still be able to get advice on how to use them.

Is there anybody who would be willing to write those up for me? If not, I understand; I'll just go ahead and continue the LP without them. Thank you so much, and God bless you!

EDIT: Oh, and don't worry; I'll take care of the JPG image and growths. Anyone who takes me up on my offer needn't worry about that.

Edited December 29, 2016 by FionordeQuester

[Tetragrammaton]

Why not start a Substitute LP yourself?

[ZemZem]

Linda is amazing. That's all there is to be said!

Oh, and Tristan's pretty cool. Roddlebad is awful.

[Baldrick]

Even if you've never used them, you could probably write an overview from their bases, growths, class and skills.

[Shin]

It's probably worth grabbing a gen 2 save just to at least try them if you want to mention them. Most of the subs are pretty passable, roughly on par with some of the less stellar pairings. The only ones who need any real mention are Hawk, Sharlow and Laylea. The rest aren't particularly noteworthy.

[FionordeQuester]

Alright, well...I dug around some FE4 drafts for a bit...would this be an accurate summation of the Sub characters?

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Roddlebad and Badney: Terrible units. They have Pursuit, but their stats and Move stink too much to be of much use.

Tristan: Not that good. He's somewhat tanky due to having an unusually high HP growth; but aside from that? He's basically an even weaker version of Noish.

Dimna: Not that good. He's basically a slower, tankier version of Midir; except he doesn't have Charge.

Femina: Somewhat decent...ish. She's mostly inferior to Fury and doesn't have Pursuit...but she can still lure some enemies toward her every once in a while, especially in Chapter 10 and the Epilogue. Plus she can assist the Lenster trio in Chapter 7.

Amid: Decent enough on his own. He's basically a budget Levin, and doesn't have critical...but he DOES get Tron upon promotion! However, Hawk completely outclasses him by the time he gets promotion, so he still doesn't have too much use.

Daisy: Decent...ish? The Give command is always great, and Prayer allows her to get through Arenas...IF you're willing to put up with her 10% STR growth. Her lack of Bargain also really hurts her compared to Dew.

Janne: Does what you need her to. She's a miserable combat unit, but she's still handy as a 9 Move healer.

Laylea: She's a miserable combat unit, but who cares? She's a dancer; and Charisma is quite nifty!

Linda: She's really good! In fact, she's the first truly GREAT Sub character you get! She's got automatic Elite + Wrath, so promoting her is easy as pie. After that? Well, she can use ALL the important staves (except Rescue) AND can use Tron w/Wrath! How awesome!

Asaello: Meh. He's just a weaker version of Jamka, at a time when even Jamka isn't looking so impressive anymore.

Hawk: Ridiculous. I mean, ok, he's a bit fragile; but his offense and staff utility is still absurdly good for someone you put no investment into. The guy can even survive a Falaflame from Alvis so long as you stick a Barrier Ring on him and get lucky with his growths! You can tell he's kind of a "crutch character" for those who screwed up their Gen 2 preparations.

Sharlow: Auto Elite is pretty good. Aside from that though, he's kind of a generic staffer.

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Does that sound about right to you all?

Edited December 30, 2016 by FionordeQuester

[Valkama]

Radney can get a guaranteed 12 extra strength points through all her strength+ conversations and promotion which is really silly That's like 21 strength in 0% growths which would be higher than every other unit on your team. Femina is actually really good with her biggest flaw being the lack of pursuit so she's going to be a pursuit ring hog but it's worth it. Amid has the interesting quirk of being one of a handful of units with decent hit and damage on Arvis. Daisy's problem is actually her low bulk since she gets 1 shot quite often. Sharlow gets you the Berserk staff and is honestly better than pretty much all versions of Corpul.

Edited December 30, 2016 by Valkama

[FionordeQuester]

Radney can get a guaranteed 12 extra strength points through all her strength+ conversations and promotion which is really silly That's like 21 strength in 0% growths which would be higher than every other unit on your team. Femina is actually really good with her biggest flow being the lack of pursuit so she's going to be a pursuit ring hog but it's worth it. Amid has the interesting quirk of being one of a handful of units with decent hit and damage on Arvis. Daisy's problem is actually her low bulk since she gets 1 shot quite often. Sharlow gets you the Berserk staff and is honestly better than pretty much all versions of Corpul.

I see...so Radney can actually end up becoming really effective in one-on-one combat it sounds like. And what about Femina being "really good"? That surprises me; are there any specific instances where she ended up wowing you? If so, how?

[Tetragrammaton]

I see...so Radney can actually end up becoming really effective in one-on-one combat it sounds like. And what about Femina being "really good"? That surprises me; are there any specific instances where she ended up wowing you? If so, how?

While they have lower growths, base stats or without any boost from minor/major holy blood, they do have secret events to make up for that.

http://serenesforest.net/genealogy-of-the-holy-war/miscellaneous/secret-events/

[Valkama]

Femina usually isn't better than Fee but being a flier in Gen 2 gives you a lot of opportunities to help out. In particular my LTC run I've been working on I'm planning on using her over Levin!Fee because she has a higher base strength and strength growth and she needs to hit a benchmark of 18 str that Levin!Fee can't do without extensive rigging.

Radney still isn't good mind you because her only skill is pursuit and she's on foot but her strength is silly.

Edited December 30, 2016 by Valkama

[FionordeQuester]

I gotcha...and what specific instances are you planning to use her for?

[Valkama]

Fighting Draco's in chapter 8 and 9.

[Yojinbo]

50kill+ Hero Weapons can help you out a great deal and turn underwhelming/mediocre substitute characters into quite useful ones and help them grow fast. Tristan, Femina and Janne benefit from them a great deal. They are alright for substitute characters. Tristan is a pure combat unit, that sets him back a bit being surrounded by OP units like Celice, Oifey, Aless, Fin and Leaf but he can still help out. Femina and Janne can do both fighting and utility stuff which is always good. Obviously, they're not as good at it as Fee and Nanna are but they are still fairly useful overall.

Daisy, Laylea, Linda, Hawk and Sharlow are strictly utility units. Hawk is a very good fighter but he's footlocked and joins essentially in Ch.9 so it'd be best to treat him -as well as Linda- as a staffbot. Those are quite useful in gen 2 anyway with Warp being much more important and Libro, Silence, Berserk and Sleep freely available to heal or take dangerous magic-based enemy out of commision. Dancing is OP in gen 2 and if Laylea can get her hands on the Prayer Sword she'll have no worries about survival either. Daisy is an interesting case - she's the substitute of Patty who is considerably less useful than Dew because inheritance is a thing and ressource management in gen 2 is nowhere near as strict as in gen 1. That makes Patty somewhat useless. But since substitute charaters don't inherit anything Daisy actually becomes fairly important to distribute money among units who needs lots of them, specifically Mana and Laylea. A good strat would be to pair Linda up with Shanan asap so she can pass around money he makes in the arena. A magic sword also makes her task of stealing gold easier. Linda's easy and straightforward: use Wrath to crithax her way through the arena, make use of Elite to have her promoted by Ch.9 and then reap the rewards of having a B-Rank staffbot just at the right time.

The remaining substitutes are fairly useless. They are footlocked combat units which is pretty much a deathspell in gen 2. Asaello in fact is not even worth recruiting imho - the experience you get from killing him is worth more than whatever he'll end up doing in your party.

Dimna is a loser. You'd think having bows on a horse could be useful but since when do you need to do chip damage in gen 2? It's kind of nice in Ch.6 to set up kills for Tristan [Oifaye has a high cance of accidentally crithaxing enemies] but that's pretty much it. As nice as Midir's ability to chip damage was in gen 1, as little will you ever need Dimna's in gen 2. He seems helpful on paper, in practise he's kinda useless.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I couldn't pair up Fury, so I had Femina and Hawke.

Hawke was pretty damn good all around. Not really worse than Ced in terms of bases.

Femina was alright. Her main weakness was that she had no pursuit.

[ZemZem]

My only experience with Tristan was using him for a draft. I gave him a brave sword and he actually held his own quite well. He's not as good as Noish!Delmud, but he's still pretty decent. Helps he can actually keep up.

Femina's lack of Pursuit is painful, but she isn't useless. If she had it she'd be MUCH better, but alas.

[sirmola]

Even if you've never used them, you could probably write an overview from their bases, growths, class and skills.

I personaly find that it's hard to tell how good a charcter is without actualy using them, if only because how good a character is involves things like how they fare in the situations the game throws at you, and how good characters are reletive to each other. So for example, you get situations like rolf in fe9 being better than raw stats would suggest (although arguably still not very good) because he has better avalability than shinon and can equip the dual bow, unlike astrid. Things like that are hard to tell without playing through with the character.

[FionordeQuester]

I personaly find that it's hard to tell how good a charcter is without actualy using them, if only because how good a character is involves things like how they fare in the situations the game throws at you, and how good characters are reletive to each other. So for example, you get situations like rolf in fe9 being better than raw stats would suggest (although arguably still not very good) because he has better avalability than shinon and can equip the dual bow, unlike astrid. Things like that are hard to tell without playing through with the character.

Me too Sirmola; that's part of the reason why I made this thread. But, I also understand that I'm asking for a lot. I'm basically asking for someone to make a lengthy post for each substitute character, only for their own work to be used in someone else's LP; so I don't mind making the summaries myself if no one is available.