How do you like/ how should classes to be distributed within the games?

[Zerxen]

Never heard anyone discuss this before. Normally within the games, I would like for there to be at least 2 units of each class. I'll take FE7 for example. As much as I love that game, I can't deny that there are way too many Cavaliers you can potentially recruit in comparison to the number of potential Shamans you can get, RIP Canas. However for classes like Dancers, obviously the player should be limited to only one for balance reasons.

[FranRedStar]

i always go for one of each class since in almost every fire emblem game, i always have one of each in my party ( like 1 merc, one cavalier, one fighter, etc.). But in terms of distribution, i agree with the 2 of each class at least.

[Extrasolar]

I definitely don't want to oversaturate the cast of future FE games. Radiant Dawn, and to a lesser extent, Fates Revelations had huge problems with this, when you had a ton of bench warmers that you flat-out ignored because of deployment limitations..and the fact that some units were just flat-out unusable due to weird join times and being pitifully underleveled notwithstanding...

This is speaking without reclassing being involved at all, of course, though I personally doubt they're going to drop the mechanic from the series as a whole, even with my distaste for it.

I'd say that two per class is a good ratio, preferably with both having viable growths in the areas they need to be competent in their class (no armor knights with a 10% defense growth, please...), but having variable growths in other areas. Kind of like the Christmas Knights, maybe you'd have one mage that's full on glass cannon, with astronomically high magic but nonexistent defenses, and one mage that was a juggernaut - high resistance and defense, but mediocre-ish magic. That way, you could pick and choose which one suited your playstyle and situation the best. Part of this conversation for me is unit balance - I'd rather not have situations where one is blatantly the more useful/better choice than the other.

Like, in RD, why would you bother using Jill as your wyvern knight when Haar exists? That's not saying Jill doesn't have a couple of advantages over Haar (her speed is better), but when Haar exceeds her in each of the areas wyvern knights specialize in (and he's is more than enough to carry the game) there's no reason to bother with Jill for the lategame at all.

I'll agree that the cavalier oversaturation is a little tiresome. I partially understand it, since a lot of the FE kingdoms that the protagonists hail from have horse-mounted knights as a staple of the army, but pegasus knight oversaturation is sometimes a problem as well.

Some classes were always meant to be rarer than others (the infinite grinding thing is why we never had two dancers/bards), but they could just as easily fix it by making dancers/bards unable to refresh each other.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

I think 2~3 units of the same class is a good number. However, I think with with how FE is designed, there's no real way to achieve good balance with units. Ideally, everyone in your unit pool should be useful because even if two peeps are in the same class, one of them does different things from the other. However, since benched people don't get EXP, the one you don't pick early on just gets left behind, and you end up using the same unit for every situation, despite the benched one being better for some chapters if trained.

[Slumber]

If there are multiple cavaliers, have them do what they did in PoR/RD, where they're stuck to a primary weapon, and you can sort of pick their roles based on what weapons they obtain as they promote(FE4/5 had these separations, too, but RD/PoR is more recent and more people know about these). But there still shouldn't be more than 5 or 6 cavaliers(Assuming the army size is at least 60-70 units). As much as I like Thracia 776, we don't need 50 cavaliers like we had in that game(Especially since Fergus was really the only good one besides Finn, since he didn't lose his primary weapon upon dismounting). I think one for each weapon type(Lance, sword, bow, axe), and then maybe one or two Paladins. Basically exactly what RD/PoR did.

Other than that at least two of each class. For classes that use rare stuff like dark magic, one unpromoted, and one promoted.

[Interdimensional Observer]

2-4 is ideal per normal class. The setup of "2-3 unpromoted, 1 promoted" works well.

Ironman is the exception in FE, contrary to what the developers originally thought with the first game. Thus, we needn't the 11 Cavaliers/Paladins of FE1 anymore. Nor anywhere near such a profusion of any one class. And speaking of realism, horses shouldn't be that high a percentage of your army- why don't we try reducing them to a specialty for once? Not that such a restriction alone would necessarily balance them (nor would adding more Berserkers reduce the mediocrity of Dozla and Largo).

Nor do we need male and females of every class (though I do support relatively equal and fair representation of the sexes). The bloated roster of FE6 was done partly out of a desire to have a female for every class- and while I cannot definitively say who was added as a result of this- Gwendolyn was in all probability one of them. And IS, you forgot to add a female Cavalier/Paladin! So much for that idea.

1 hour ago, Extrasolar said:

(no armor knights with a 10% defense growth, please...)

Shall I introduce you to Derrick the lone Armor Knight of Berwick, who has a 0% defense growth? (Though the highest is only 18%.)

1 hour ago, Extrasolar said:

Like, in RD, why would you bother using Jill as your wyvern knight when Haar exists? That's not saying Jill doesn't have a couple of advantages over Haar (her speed is better), but when Haar exceeds her in each of the areas wyvern knights specialize in (and he's is more than enough to carry the game) there's no reason to bother with Jill for the lategame at all.

Jill and Haar service totally different teams until you get to Part 4 (don't bother recruiting her to the GMs during Part 3- they don't need her). Jill's higher Speed cap lets her double some important endgame things that Haar cannot (like Auras). Also, you really want good flyers for Part 4. Micaiah's team is stuck with a 100% desert chapter, and Naesala is afraid of crossbows and can't be everywhere, the Hawks fear crossbows the same and have to deal with their gauges, while the Pegs have no gauge to fear and are fairly weak. And even if you send Haar to the Dawn Army, the Hawk Army has to trudge through bushes and then swamps. It's not as bad, but Tibarn still has his crossbow weakness and Elincia needs babying to get out of her "3rd tier class, 2nd tier stats" dilemma. So Jill could be a serious contributor here. You do get a Nullify, but it's only one and there are a lot of contenders for it.

Jill is no goddess in RD, I understand if you're reacting against that. In Part 1, she needs babying and starts weak, but the payoff is a flying juggernaut for Part 4, which makes her inherently better than other growth units. Part 3, if you dump enough into her, maybe she'll steamroll 6-12-13, but I doubt the feasibility of it unless shown evidence otherwise. Unless Aran is getting doubled, she is not that much different from him. They're just holding chokepoints, counterattacking, killing for fatal blows, and waiting for the turns/kill count to pass while squeezing some levels from it all.

[Extrasolar]

3 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

[snip]

I'm not saying that Jill is useless. I'm not saying that Jill can't be useful, or even good.

But the point is that Haar exists in the same game as her.

Plus the fact that Jill is heavily, heavily outclassed by a good portion of the flying units in the game. Crossbows are already rare enough that they're almost a non-issue. When I'm using Haar, Tibarn, Naesala, and the like, I'm definitely not even glancing in Jill's direction.

When I'm looking for a flying unit, Jill is in the same camp as Ulki and Janaff. Far, far outclassed.

Jill's amazing strength-screwage is the biggest problem with her. People make a big deal about Haar's speed, but his speed is more than decent enough to double most enemies in the game, and even if he doesn't double, his strength is high enough that he one-shots weaker defense or low HP enemies anyway.

It's effort versus reward. Haar is much, much more useful much more consistently, with far less effort than Jill. His availability is only a little bit worse, he has better bases and better growths in most areas, and when you have unit limits, there's no reason to try to train Jill when Haar does her job much more competently. Thus I say there's no real reason to use Jill.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

I haven't played RD personally, but I thought I heard Jill could basically solo that game as long as you have her around.

[Interdimensional Observer]

5 hours ago, Extrasolar said:

It's effort versus reward. Haar is much, much more useful much more consistently, with far less effort than Jill. His availability is only a little bit worse, he has better bases and better growths in most areas, and when you have unit limits, there's no reason to try to train Jill when Haar does her job much more competently. Thus I say there's no real reason to use Jill.

I never disputed Haar's supremacy over RD- I've put to action plenty before. Jill I acknowledge is a ton of effort with her shoddy bases (that Strength is bad) and she is much inferior overall to Haar. But within the context of the DB, she's probably one of the better units in the long run to invest in. Sothe, Volug, Nolan, and ZIhark all outdo her in Part 1, but none of them will be quite as good in Part 4 (well Zihark can double everything sure- but Stefan exists).

Only Naesala, Tibarn and Haar outdo Jill regarding flying units. Elincia really needs babying in Part 4, and BEXP neuters her growths.  On the other hand if you've gotten Jill to ~20/10, feasible, you can chuck a boatload of BEXP, which is a boon at that point, to her to buff her Strength, Crown her, and have her Hand Axe things (and this is a far better use for BEXP than having it all sit there or giving it to Haar so he can cap Luck and Resistance). The rest of the flyers I think we can agree are subpar.

As wickedly powerful as they are, Tibarn and Naesala lack 1-2 range. Meaning if neither Hand Axe Jill nor Naesala/Tibarn have any problems one rounding or surviving the enemy phase, Jill is better. 4-P, 4-2, and 4-3 are all routs with 1-2 range foes and it is here where a trained Jill could seriously help, particularly seeing how the enemies are spread out. Technically, even if do the Haar-Jill split with the Hawk and Dawn Armies we could just toss everyone else in the direction our royal is not going, but it'd be easier to just toss one overpowered unit that way, and Jill can be just that, and be a highly mobile one at that. What she can do for one or two chapters in Part 4 is more than what a majority of units can contribute in RD, Haar being the exceptions of exceptions to this "majority of units".

RD Jill is like Sain and Kent, or PoR Oscar and Kieran. Technically they're superfluous to the nth degree when Sothe-Haar-Naebarn, Marcus, and Titania-Marcia-Jill exist, but she's one of the best extraneous units around. If you've got the experience to spare, might as well give it to Jill.

[Extrasolar]

@Interdimensional Observer You're just affirming my point. You yourself call Jill superfluous in the presence of other units, with one of them being Haar. You yourself admit that Jill is inferior to Haar,

My point is that I don't like that. I don't like when one unit is the unambiguously better option, and if you intend to use the other and make them comparable to the first, you have to invest a ton of time and resources in them, whereas the other is great from the out the gate.

In future FE games, that ideally wouldn't be the case. That's what I'm saying.

The cavalier example is also plagued by the cavalier oversaturation.

Edited April 17, 2017 by Extrasolar

[ping]

3 hours ago, Extrasolar said:

You're just affirming my point. You yourself call Jill superfluous in the presence of other units, with one of them being Haar. You yourself admit that Jill is inferior to Haar,

Yeah, no. Jill is one of the best unit in the game that aren't Haar, hardly what I would call superfluous. Haar brings a lot more to the table than Jill over the course of the game, but there are only a few chapters in the game in which both of them are available. You can't use Haar in the DB chapters, and you shouldn't recruit Jill to the GM because she is a lot more valuable in Micaiah's team.

Would you call RD!Sothe worthless because Volke is the stronger fighter in all of the 5 minutes he exists? Or FE6!Marcus compared to Perceval (which might be a better example because they're both awesome units)? Jill only has to compete with Haar in pt.4 in which she actually can stand up to him thanks to her better caps as a tier 3 unit. And even then - there is little to no downside to just fielding both of them.

That said, I would agree that FE often has a lot of units that are strictly worse than others. I just don't think that RD is particularly bad at this point - because of the different groups, most characters have at least one or two chapters to shine. It gets worse the more the game progresses, but that's probably true for every title in the series.

--

10 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

2-4 is ideal per normal class. The setup of "2-3 unpromoted, 1 promoted" works well.

@topic: This, basically. I'm okay with having more Cavs on the roster because they're a good all-around class and I don't mind having more than one of them on my team, but having too many of a more specialized class (myrms because they're swordlocked, mages because they're usually more of a player phase unit) means that most of them will just be benched immediately.

Edited April 17, 2017 by ping

[FiboSai]

I think 2-3 units per class is a good ratio, for some basic classes, like cavalier, I'm also OK with there being more, provided they are not too similar in terms of stats or weapon use (FE6 is a bad example of this, with there being 7 cavaliers/paladins and the 4 basic cavaliers are almost the same in terms of stats.)

What I would like to see is getting some of the rarer classes (like dracoknights and shamans) a little earlier. 

[Extrasolar]

5 hours ago, ping said:

Yeah, no. Jill is one of the best unit in the game that aren't Haar, hardly what I would call superfluous.

Except I wasn't the one who called Jill superfluous in the first place?

And secondly. Pretty much every single time I used Jill (later playthroughs I ended up dropping her completely after a certain point in the game), she just ended up as a worse Haar - she lacked the strength do do any reasonable amount of damage to things with more than paper-thin defenses. Sure, she was faster, but speed doesn't equal everything in RD, because plenty of enemies pack on the defense and high HP. You can look at the non-Ranulf cats to see that. And Haar was more than fast enough to double the majority of things in the first place.

The Greil Mercs, the laguz royals and Haar are among the best units in the game. Jill is alright, if babied and sunk a lot of effort into, whereas those other guys are strong from the gate and dominate far harder than Jill ever does.

5 hours ago, ping said:

You can't use Haar in the DB chapters, and you shouldn't recruit Jill to the GM because she is a lot more valuable in Micaiah's team.

So...? Haar still comes in at the front end of the game, with better bases (thus being easier to use right off the bat), as well as better growths in almost all areas than Jill. He will turn out a better and more useful unit than Jill. Sure, you can't use them in the same army, but that doesn't mean anything.

There are plenty of other strong characters to cover the armies, meaning Jill is not needed, nor a go-to choice whereas Haar most definitely is.

5 hours ago, ping said:

Jill only has to compete with Haar in pt.4 in which she actually can stand up to him thanks to her better caps as a tier 3 unit. And even then - there is little to no downside to just fielding both of them.

Yes, there is. You lose a spot that you could use for a better unit than Jill. Haar carves himself a spot automatically, simply because of how great a unit he is.

Jill? There are many better options.

5 hours ago, ping said:

Haar brings a lot more to the table than Jill over the course of the game

...which is just my point.

This isn't arguable: Haar is a superior unit to Jill. If you wanted only one wyvern rider in your party (to make room for other units), you would not choose Jill over choosing Haar in any circumstance, unless you mean for a self-imposed challenge run or personal preference is making you ignore the better option mechanically.

5 hours ago, ping said:

Would you call RD!Sothe worthless because Volke is the stronger fighter in all of the 5 minutes he exists?

Except I literally never called Jill worthless? Or any other unit for that matter? And Sothe is hopelessly inferior to Volke in the first place, but here's the thing.

Sothe is a forced unit, and a Jagen, so like it or not, you'll be using him, unless you manage to shove him into a corner and ignore him or something in the chapters he's forced. And that's borderline impossible in the earliest chapters, since he's a lot of the Dawn Brigade's raw firepower and a nigh-untouchable dodgetank when the majority of your DB units can't dodge or tank a hit.

Jill isn't a forced unit. Meaning she can be benched at the first opportunity should the player choose. Sure, she'll more than likely be trained early, but the moment Haar appears, he outshines Jill in pretty much every way. Jill takes much more effort to train and turns out worse than Haar in most ways no matter what you do.

That. Is. My. Point.

Let me reiterate since people seem to be reading this into my words. I have never said that Jill is useless. I have never said that she's an awful or bad unit. I said that as a unit, she's inferior to Haar in almost every way, and takes much more effort to become even somewhat comparable to Haar (which she still falls short of, no matter what you do). And that's a bad thing, in my opinion.

I would hope that would be changed in the future series.

5 hours ago, ping said:

That said, I would agree that FE often has a lot of units that are strictly worse than others. I just don't think that RD is particularly bad at this point - because of the different groups, most characters have at least one or two chapters to shine.

RD is worse in this regard because of the character oversaturation. When you've got 60+ characters, a lot of them are flat-out inferior choices to others. Like, you would never take Leonardo to the lategame over Shinon, or even Rolf, unless, again, you mean for a self-imposed challenge run or it's personal preference.

And even if you have different groups and characters available, you use most of them for, what, a couple of chapters before ditching and ignoring the hell out of them in favor of other, better members of their class? I kinda see that as a problem.

Especially when there are certain characters that you use the entire game long and remain strong. The Greil Mercs, Haar, the laguz royals.

Edited April 17, 2017 by Extrasolar

[Reality]

I'd like 2 of each class, except cavaliers, of which there should be 5-6.

People complain about this being lopsided, but I like this system because of having to work within FE's specific mechanics, in other srpgs, where  something like Canto is given to all units as a default mechanic rather than only mounted units or games with a zone of control mechanic more advanced than having to form a complete wall, then I can find a balanced cast worth using.

A FE game with evenly represented cast and the current FE mechanics would simply have less readability.

[Interdimensional Observer]

20 minutes ago, Extrasolar said:

Especially when there are certain characters that you use the entire game long and remain strong. The Greil Mercs, Haar, the laguz royals.

Except the "entire game" you're referring to isn't the entire game. The royals only show up in Part 4, the GMs don't show up until Part 3, and Haar not until Part 2. And guess what? You don't actually have Jill or any of the DB members for any of Part 2, and most of Part 3- you can't compete if you're not present. It'd be like trashing Lex for being worse than Ares- why does this matter if they don't share a single chapter? And, if you want to be most efficient, you'll leave Jill with the DB in Part 3 because they need her more, so in this case she won't be competing with Haar or the GMs until Part 4.

I acknowledge there is great unit imbalance in RD. And pointing out the Part structure giving many (but not all- Lyre, Kyza, Fiona) characters at least a chapter or two is merely to show a silver lining to the whole thing, Geoffrey is subpar, but Geoffrey's Charge and 3-9 have him meaningfully contribute. Tis still better than SD or Revelation or New Mystery where there will be a much higher percentage of units who don't get even that.

I completely understand what you're saying Extrasolar. I think your problem was picking RD with its rather nonlinear character availability structure for your game of choice. If you had said Camilla vs. Beruka, or Milady vs. Zeiss, or Deen vs. Eda, then there would be no argument. In the first case, the two wyvern riders join up at the same time and share every chapter together, and it is an incontestable fact that Camilla trounces Beruka. Eda and Deen are practically the same way.

[ping]

28 minutes ago, Extrasolar said:

That. Is. My. Point.

Calm down a bit, maybe? -.- I'm not trying to be hostile here.

I think you put way too much focus on the endgame. Jill has 4 maps in pt.1 (counting 1-6 as two maps) and 3 in pt.3 in which she is the only flyer you have; then 2 maps in pt4 with its three groups (so you really don't have too many characters in that part), and then the 5 endgame maps which tend to be rather short anyway. So basically 7 maps in which she's your only flyer, 2 maps in which there is more than enough room for her, Haar and probably another Peg knight or three, and then the endgame in which she arguably has more potential than Haar thanks to her higher speed. But even if you don't use her, that's still 7 maps of exclusive flying utility Jill has to offer.

Anyway, I apologize if I did not catch what exactly your problem with Jill is. I understood it as "Jill is worse than Haar, so there is little point in using her", and my counterpoint is "While Haar has more contributions than Jill, giving her some stat boosters, combat XP, BEXP and/or forges is still a worthwhile investion because not only makes it the DB chapters easier, but it also allows her to be more than competitive when the groups join, resplit and rejoin."

55 minutes ago, Extrasolar said:

[...] And Sothe is hopelessly inferior to Volke in the first place, but here's the thing.

Sothe is a forced unit, and a Jagen, so like it or not, you'll be using him, unless you manage to shove him into a corner and ignore him or something in the chapters he's forced. And that's borderline impossible in the earliest chapters, since he's a lot of the Dawn Brigade's raw firepower and a nigh-untouchable dodgetank when the majority of your DB units can't dodge or tank a hit.

I would strongly argue that Sothe is better than Volke by a few orders of magnitude exactly because of that. Sothe is amazing when you're rather short on amazing units, while Volke is kinda meh compared to your other available units when he joins. Quite a bit stronger than Sothe, sure, but that's hardly a benchline at that point. I chose this example because as with Haar and Jill, Volke being stronger in the endgame does not invalidate Sothe's performance in pt.1 and (to a lesser extend, but still present) pt.3. Obviously, it's not a perfect analogy since unlike Volke, Haar is actually your best unit when he's present, but point is, he is not present for most of Jill's existance.

--

I was planning to add a bit more, but the Observer ninja'd me to it.

[Extrasolar]

36 minutes ago, ping said:

Calm down a bit, maybe? -.- I'm not trying to be hostile here.

I don't mean to be hostile, but it's frustrating when it seems like people are misconstruing my point into "Jill is worthless" when my point is "Jill is an inferior unit to Haar in most every way, and I don't like that fact."

36 minutes ago, ping said:

I think you put way too much focus on the endgame.

That's when you have all of your units available to you, and the ultimate goal is beating the final boss and winning the game. And when raising units, you're generally aiming to take them to the lategame.

It's easy to say "x unit is good because they're available to be trained every map," but I don't agree. Leonardo's availability is better than Shinon's, but does that mean Leonardo is a superior unit to Shinon?

No. It doesn't, because Shinon starts off much stronger, takes much less effort to train, and turns out better pretty much all of the time.

36 minutes ago, ping said:

and then the endgame in which she arguably has more potential than Haar thanks to her higher speed.

Highly, highly disagree disagree. Speed in RD is less important than strength or damage. There are some units that have it all, like Tibarn. But generally, the highest tier units in RD all have great strength.

But I'd much rather have a slower unit that I know will deal decent to great damage (Haar) than a faster unit that, despite doubling, will at most scratch the enemy.

Like I said with the cats. Amazing speed, awful strength. They're widely considered worthless because they just can't kill anything. At least Swordmasters and Assassins, with their sub-par strength, are crit/Lethality/Astra monsters whose low damage doesn't mean anything because of the multipliers.

36 minutes ago, ping said:

Anyway, I apologize if I did not catch what exactly your problem with Jill is. I understood it as "Jill is worse than Haar, so there is little point in using her", and my counterpoint is "While Haar has more contributions than Jill, giving her some stat boosters, combat XP, BEXP and/or forges is still a worthwhile investion because not only makes it the DB chapters easier, but it also allows her to be more than competitive when the groups join, resplit and rejoin."

No. That wasn't my point at all.

My point is that I don't like it when one member of the class is clearly the inferior choice, or the choice that gives a much better performance without as much effort.

Not saying she's useless. Not at all. Not saying that she's a bad unit. Not saying she doesn't help out.

But at the end of the day, Haar does Jill's job better pretty much all of the time.

36 minutes ago, ping said:

I would strongly argue that Sothe is better than Volke by a few orders of magnitude exactly because of that.

I think this is our disconnect. You argue that a unit is "better" on virtue of having more chapters, but not only are Sothe's stats worse by far, but by he falls off hard in usefulness by midgame. (And again, not saying that Sothe is useless. He's definitely not. But he's not a great unit, nor is he better than Volke.)

Sure, Volke's stats aren't amazing, but as an assassin, he's meant to be a dodgetank that, while failing to kill anything with his base damage, procs Lethality and one-shots due to his high skill activation.

Sothe has a similar job...but his own Mastery skill, Bane, is inferior to Lethality, as other than providing fodder for other units to kill, what's the point of leaving the target at 1 HP? I've had it proc so many times on the second attack, and have to spend time finishing off the unit. Not only is Bane by all means worse than Lethality, but Sothe does not activate his Mastery skill nearly as often as Volke, and Sothe's strength is even worse, meaning that he'll be failing to finish off most of anything by midgame after he one-shots everything in the early game.

Volke's availability is worse, true, but he does Sothe's job infinitely better is what I'm saying.

Sothe in general isn't even a good example, because again, he's a Jagen, and forced. You more or less have to train him for reasons I already went through.

45 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Except the "entire game" you're referring to isn't the entire game. The royals only show up in Part 4, the GMs don't show up until Part 3, and Haar not until Part 2. And guess what? You don't actually have Jill or any of the DB members for any of Part 2, and most of Part 3- you can't compete if you're not present. It'd be like trashing Lex for being worse than Ares- why does this matter if they don't share a single chapter? And, if you want to be most efficient, you'll leave Jill with the DB in Part 3 because they need her more, so in this case she won't be competing with Haar or the GMs until Part 4.

But there's limited experience to go around in the later game (I know BEXP is a thing, but I'd rather use it on units I actually intend to use), and limited spots for units.

There's a huge, huge difference in Lex and Ares. Lex is an axe fighter. Ares is a cavalier. Two very, very different units, and two very, very different roles on a team.

Haar and Jill are both wyvern knights. They ostensibly have the very same job and general role on a team. But one is clearly the superior choice for lategame.

I don't know about you, but I was 100% fine benching Jill as soon as I got access to Haar. I trained her up for the early chapters in my first playthrough, but that was before I knew Haar was a thing.

The moment I started using him, her presence was not missed in the least. There were plenty of other strong units of other classes to fill the void.

Flying units in general are good, sure, but they're most definitely not needed in RD.

It's like the difference between Aran and Nephenee. Aran was absolutely invaluable in Part 1 as DB tank, but Nephenee is as a whole the better unit. Once I got access to them both, I dropped Aran in favor of her.

45 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I think your problem was picking RD with its rather nonlinear character availability structure for your game of choice.

But my point still stands. Generally when you're talking about a character being superior to another, you're talking about general stats and performance.

Like, Ryoma is pretty clearly a superior unit to Hana. He does the "glass cannon swordmaster" job far better than she does. But does that mean Hana is better than Ryoma simply because she has better availability?

Especially because you're planning and playing for the lategame. When someone talks about raising a unit, they talk about using them for the endgame. I never understood the mentality of better availability = better unit that some people have.

Edited April 17, 2017 by Extrasolar

[ping]

1 hour ago, Extrasolar said:

My point is that I don't like it when one member of the class is clearly the inferior choice, or the choice that gives a much better performance without as much effort.

Well, I can partly agree on that. I don't expect every unit to be equally viable and I even enjoy Est-y characters such as Nino, Zeiss and Est herself, even though I'm aware that their shiny green numbers don't matter all that much in the endgame. My wish is rather that every unit has something that differentiate it from the rest of the roster in a positive way, even if it's just a bit better averages at a given level or a bit higher caps. But I wouldn't restrict that on units of the same class - I have more of a problem with the nomads in FE6 outclassing the two archers in every concievable metric than I have with Fir being worse but potentially slightly more dodgy than Rutger despite the avoid advantage being mostly inconsequential. Still, I highly disagree with how you put Jill and Haar into this category at all.

1 hour ago, Extrasolar said:

It's easy to say "x unit is good because they're available to be trained every map," but I don't agree. Leonardo's availability is better than Shinon's, but does that mean Leonardo is a superior unit to Shinon?

No. It doesn't, because Shinon starts off much stronger, takes much less effort to train, and turns out better pretty much all of the time.

That is not a fair comparision. Training Leo is not that useful because it's more difficult and you get less in return compared to Jill, Nolan, Edward or Aran (although I still haven't tried to early-promote Leo to gain another beastfoe-nuke in pt.3's laguz maps), thanks to his bowlock and generally meh stats. Training Jill otoh pays off pretty quickly, _before_ Haar comes into the equation, because it gives you a highly mobile, strong fighter.

It's even more important with Sothe vs. Volke. Sothe isn't better because he has 'time to train', he's better because he wrecks shit in part 1 and should still be able to hold his ground in part 3. That's obviously infinitely more than Volke does during that part of the game, and the way I see it, it's much, much more valuable than Volke being a bit less shitty in the tower. (And while I would love if Sothe's spot in the tower was free for someone else, I would almost always pick a better combat unit than Volke to replace him)

1 hour ago, Extrasolar said:

Haar and Jill are both wyvern knights. They ostensibly have the very same job and general role on a team. But one is clearly the superior choice for lategame.

This applies to Sothe and Volke as well, but having the same class does not mean that two units have a similar role. Sothe is, as you said, more of a Jeigan who just didn't find his horse in the morning, while Volke is just some random combat unit with a horrible weapon type. Volke has nothing of the stuff that makes Sothe great, and he's just a bit better than Sothe at a point of the game when Sothe's main job is done. Similarly, Haar and Jill play rather differently simply because the DB in general has a much harder time just stomping the opposition than GM have. Arguably, Jill beating two enemies is a lot more valuable than Haar beating for, because while Haar's combat is still impressive, it's a lot easier to replicate in the GM chapters. His main strength in part 3 is his mobility, not as much his combat. And as a third example, I'd like to use FE6 once again: While Marcus and Perceval are both Paladins, their contributions are completely different - Marcus carries the team while they're still too weak to function well on their own (on hard difficulty, that is), while Perceval is an amazing, but still replaceable, unit in the midgame.

1 hour ago, Extrasolar said:

That's when you have all of your units available to you, and the ultimate goal is beating the final boss and winning the game. And when raising units, you're generally aiming to take them to the lategame.

But you can't just ignore the whole game before that. Ashera is a rather difficult boss, especially if you don't know what she'll throw at you, but it's still a very small part of the game. It's like saying that everyone on a soccer (football if you're wrong American) team is less important than the strikers because in the end, it's all about scoring goals. It's technically true, but good luck getting to that point without thinking how to bring the striker into a good position, or getting through the more difficult parts (read: the DB chapters) before.

Bad analogies aside, I don't see the logic behind valueing the endgame any higher than the parts before. Once again - FE6 gives the best example I can think of right now. Sure, it's hilarious how Roy can one-round the final boss without any fancy tricks involved. But in the end, that feat only saves a turn or so because Idoun is a chump even without the Binding Blade's effective damage on her, while units like Marcus or Deke (who are really bad and kinda OK respectively, if used) are borderline required to get through the earlygame. Basically, Roy's sword makes an easy task completely trivial, while your earlygame nukes make a nigh impossible struggle doable.

€: Sorry for quoting you out of order here. I was trying to keep this post coherent and put in the quotes when I was getting to that point, instead of answering to your points individually.

Edited April 17, 2017 by ping

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, Extrasolar said:

There's a huge, huge difference in Lex and Ares. Lex is an axe fighter. Ares is a cavalier. Two very, very different units, and two very, very different roles on a team.

That's a bad example since Lex and Ares are never playable at the same time. Also, Lex is an axe knight.

[ping]

@Levant Mir Celestia - that's part of the point Interdimensional Observer was making:

5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Except the "entire game" you're referring to isn't the entire game. The royals only show up in Part 4, the GMs don't show up until Part 3, and Haar not until Part 2. And guess what? You don't actually have Jill or any of the DB members for any of Part 2, and most of Part 3- you can't compete if you're not present. It'd be like trashing Lex for being worse than Ares- why does this matter if they don't share a single chapter? And, if you want to be most efficient, you'll leave Jill with the DB in Part 3 because they need her more, so in this case she won't be competing with Haar or the GMs until Part 4.

I'm not too familiar with the Jugdral games, but I assume it's an extreme example of two units not competing with each other since they're at their strongest at different points of the game.

[Slumber]

1 hour ago, ping said:

@Levant Mir Celestia - that's part of the point Interdimensional Observer was making:

I'm not too familiar with the Jugdral games, but I assume it's an extreme example of two units not competing with each other since they're at their strongest at different points of the game.

Bit more extreme than that.

You literally never have Ares and Lex in your army at the same time.

[Extrasolar]

5 hours ago, ping said:

That is not a fair comparision. Training Leo is not that useful because it's more difficult and you get less in return compared to Jill, Nolan, Edward or Aran (although I still haven't tried to early-promote Leo to gain another beastfoe-nuke in pt.3's laguz maps), thanks to his bowlock and generally meh stats. Training Jill otoh pays off pretty quickly, _before_ Haar comes into the equation, because it gives you a highly mobile, strong fighter.

I disagree. It's the same principle. Leo is inferior statwise to Shinon, but available much earlier, and more difficult to train. Is he useless? No. But there's no denying he's a worse unit than Shinon.

Jill is inferior statwise to Haar, but available much earlier, and more difficult to train. Is she useless? No. But there's no denying that she's a worse unit than Haar.

I would argue against the whole "strong" part. Jill's rather low strength is the biggest hindrance. I should go on the record by saying that a technically worse unit can have their uses, but still be a worse choice for a final team than another unit. Jill falls into that category.

5 hours ago, ping said:

But you can't just ignore the whole game before that. Ashera is a rather difficult boss, especially if you don't know what she'll throw at you, but it's still a very small part of the game.

I don't ignore the rest of the game. Like I said, I used Jill for Part I, and once Haar got in the picture, I ditched her. I was absolutely fine after that. Didn't even miss her. Even when the army split, I didn't use her.

I didn't need to. Not saying that she didn't have her uses, but when you've got a guy that does her job better, there's not much point in sticking with her, when you can diversify your roster a little bit.

5 hours ago, ping said:

Bad analogies aside, I don't see the logic behind valueing the endgame any higher than the parts before.

Well, I'm not necessarily valuing the endgame over the parts before it, but pointing out that just because a unit may have certain uses/more availability than another, it by no means makes them a better unit on paper. In this example, Haar and Jill's availability is very similar anyway.

5 hours ago, ping said:

Sothe isn't better because he has 'time to train', he's better because he wrecks shit in part 1 and should still be able to hold his ground in part 3.

I disagree with this. Sothe only wrecks in Part 1 because he's overleveled as hell, and still with awful bases for his level. His stats are still extremely poor, as are his growths. Sure, he...is approaching decent in Part 3, but he's nowhere near as good because his poor stats are starting to show through. By the time you have all of your units, the only reason there is to use Sothe at all is because he's forced. Volke is a far, far better choice in every way.

And sure, he's a Jagen early game, but at the end of the day his job is still the same. He's still a Thieflike. He's meant to dodgetank and assassinate...but fails at doing that in comparison to Volke.

5 hours ago, ping said:

That's obviously infinitely more than Volke does during that part of the game, and the way I see it, it's much, much more valuable than Volke being a bit less shitty in the tower.

I disagree. Sothe is a Jagen, and you're meant to use him as sparingly as possible, especially in the early game. And he's not even the Jagens that continue to wreck face. Later game he's mediocre at best, and only sees use because he's a forced unit.

Volke at the very least can kill things reliably.

3 hours ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

That's a bad example since Lex and Ares are never playable at the same time. Also, Lex is an axe knight.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. I was saying it was a bad example.

Edited April 17, 2017 by Extrasolar

[Interdimensional Observer]

I think our logics differ significantly on several points. Rather than attempt to overhaul each other's opinions, it'd be for the best to cease this dispute and conclude a peace. Shall we agree to peacefully disagree?

Edit: I do concede my Lex/Ares example wasn't the best.

Edited April 18, 2017 by Interdimensional Observer

[ping]

Yeah, guess you're right. At this point, we were just derailing the topic.