What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

One idea I had was to give each weapon type an infantry-only subtype that has additional effects: for swords, it would be greatswords (very large two-handed swords used by bodyguards in the 16th century), and the subtype for lances would be pikes, which would have an anti-cavalry effect. Ridersbane can then remain as an anti-cavalry lance that can be used by anyone.

Another possibility could be to just give it as a skill to the generic soldier class. They get beast effectiveness, but only if they stand adjacent to another member of the same class. Or maybe only if they didn't move the previous turn (so it's like they've dug into their current position). The generic soldier class has always kind of been dismissed by the series as enemy only fodder, even though people like it when it is playable (probably because it's rare). And I guess the reason why is because it Mercenary/Hero already fullfills it's niche between accuracy and power extremes of myrmidon and axe based classes. But this would be a historical realistic niche that could be very useful, but not overly centralizing for both the player and enemy.

Edited May 22 by Jotari

[Acacia Sgt]

Hmm, now I wonder. What would've happened if Radiant Dawn had gone all the way. Each Anima magic was effective against a type of Laguz, and concurrently, also to a non-Laguz mount... to a point.

Wind was effective against Bird Laguz, and also Pegasi.

Thunder was effective against Dragon Laguz, and also Wyverns.

Fire was effective against Beast Laguz, and the remaining mount, Horses... did not had the weakness.

Perhaps it was too much, if they made horses weak to Fire as well? I suppose.

[Florete]

Dancers are good, no question about that. Back in the day they used to be super underrated, yet now I'm starting to feel like we've gone in the opposite direction and they're being overrated. What's prompting this from me is the polls ActualLizard on YouTube has been doing for Sacred Stones. Here's the one for Tethys: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaLypZjyX8v5FIK2QByFn2A/community?lb=UgkxFSx2A_UL5Or6AJznBsBF1Bfc6u2oPgj-

79% gave her a top rating of "really good". Only Seth got a higher "really good" score (90%). Yeah, just Seth. Ephraim, Gerik, Vanessa, etc. all did worse.

Which seemingly makes it unpopular for me to say that I don't think a single-target, 5 move dancer is that good. Putting her in top 10 I agree with, maybe even top 5, but top 2? She can't dance for Seth if she can't keep up with him! Sacred Stones is also pretty enemy phase heavy and she has only an indirect benefit to it.

For the record, I voted "pretty good."

[samthedigital]

15 hours ago, Florete said:

What's prompting this from me is the polls ActualLizard on YouTube has been doing for Sacred Stones.

It's probably not worth reading too much into it. At a glance it looks like bulky combat units that can one round enemies and Tethys tend to get rated highly relative to other units which makes sense if the audience is a little more casual.

15 hours ago, Florete said:

Which seemingly makes it unpopular for me to say that I don't think a single-target, 5 move dancer is that good. Putting her in top 10 I agree with, maybe even top 5, but top 2? She can't dance for Seth if she can't keep up with him!

If we're looking at it from an LTC perspective Tethys is probably dancing the carry on the first turn and is then helping facilitate warp spam either directly or by giving units staff exp before chapter 16. She's doing more to save turns than almost everyone even if she joins late. I'm going to assume that the people polled don't care about that whatsoever though, and I suspect that they also don't care as much about a unit's movement either.

[Florete]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

It's probably not worth reading too much into it. At a glance it looks like bulky combat units that can one round enemies and Tethys tend to get rated highly relative to other units which makes sense if the audience is a little more casual.

I mean..."bulky combat unit that can one-round enemies" is almost always top tier, no matter who's judging.

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

If we're looking at it from an LTC perspective Tethys is probably dancing the carry on the first turn and is then helping facilitate warp spam either directly or by giving units staff exp before chapter 16. She's doing more to save turns than almost everyone even if she joins late. I'm going to assume that the people polled don't care about that whatsoever though, and I suspect that they also don't care as much about a unit's movement either.

I'm pretty confident exceedingly few people actually care about LTC. And like I said, I still rate her highly, just not as high as the units who are actually doing the work. Not second only to Seth.

[Jotari]

I've progressively seen more and more people rate Dancers using the metric Dancer/10. Which is usually done in sort of joking fashion, but it really captures the essence of the debate. Dancers are fundamentally different from other units. It really doesn't make sense to judge them by the same metric as other units. Trying to find some encompassing criteria like turns saved or combat actions is never going to be perfect. They are not doing the same thing regular units are doing, so trying to contrive them into a same values system as other units is an inherently flawed approach. If a game has multiple dancers, like Radiant Dawn, then we could certainly grade the dancers against each other on a metric, but trying to determine whether Marcia is better than Leanne is kind of missing the point of what the tier list is trying to express. It's being done purely because they're just units that exist. Coming to think of it, doesn't all this tiering stuff originally come from professional sports? How are goal keepers rated in soccer rankings? As that's probably the closest comparison I can think of in a different context, a vitally important player who is playing by rules completely different, but still interlinked, with the other players.

To a slightly lesser extent, all of this also applies to staff bots as well. Staff bots usually just have more competition than dancers and what they do can be replicated by other methods, but they're still pretty vital. A no-staffs run of Sacred Stones will probably force you to play more intensely and intelligently than a no-Seth run. I once made a thread for the best overall unit throughout the entire series, and someone layed out the criteria for a unit saying the best unit should have fantastic availability, useful throughout the entire game, equally good for new players and veterans alike, has a niche that can't be replicated by other units and the game is harder if you don't use them. I said, completely unironically, that that means Safy is the best unit in the series, because it was all completely true for her and how she functions in Thracia. But look up a list of Top 10 best Fire Emblem units and you are very unlikely to see Safy appear there.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

17 minutes ago, Jotari said:

To a slightly lesser extent, all of this also applies to staff bots as well. Staff bots usually just have more competition than dancers and what they do can be replicated by other methods, but they're still pretty vital. A no-staffs run of Sacred Stones will probably force you to play more intensely and intelligently than a no-Seth run. I once made a thread for the best overall unit throughout the entire series, and someone layed out the criteria for a unit saying the best unit should have fantastic availability, useful throughout the entire game, equally good for new players and veterans alike, has a niche that can't be replicated by other units and the game is harder if you don't use them. I said, completely unironically, that that means Safy is the best unit in the series, because it was all completely true for her and how she functions in Thracia. But look up a list of Top 10 best Fire Emblem units and you are very unlikely to see Safy appear there.

The point about Safy may have more to do with the amount of people that can rate Thracia and Geneology unity, lel.

 

And the discussion about quality of Dancers is just the aftereffect of LTC/10 discussion regarding units. Or that´s what it looks like to me at least. 

Edited May 31 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[Florete]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

 

This is a pretty fair take. I have occasionally seen tier lists where people divide units into categories like "support," "combat," "project," etc. which probably is more useful than the traditional high-low.

Regardless of comparison to other units, I do still find Tethys getting 80% top votes questionable. Oh well.

[lenticular]

53 minutes ago, Jotari said:

To a slightly lesser extent, all of this also applies to staff bots as well. Staff bots usually just have more competition than dancers and what they do can be replicated by other methods, but they're still pretty vital. A no-staffs run of Sacred Stones will probably force you to play more intensely and intelligently than a no-Seth run. I once made a thread for the best overall unit throughout the entire series, and someone layed out the criteria for a unit saying the best unit should have fantastic availability, useful throughout the entire game, equally good for new players and veterans alike, has a niche that can't be replicated by other units and the game is harder if you don't use them. I said, completely unironically, that that means Safy is the best unit in the series, because it was all completely true for her and how she functions in Thracia. But look up a list of Top 10 best Fire Emblem units and you are very unlikely to see Safy appear there.

I believe that I was that someone. And I would still broadly stand by those criteria for what makes a unit good.

I'm not sure that no-staff vs no-Seth is particularly a good comparison, though. Maybe no-Seth vs no-Moulder would be a better comparison? In which case, no-Moulder would probably be easier, since you could just stomp the game with Seth up until you get Natasha. Or the alternative comparison might be no-staff vs no-cav/paladin, where I'd go the other way and say that it'd be easier to play without cavs/paladins than without staves, though that one's probably closer?

Continuing your analogy to sport ratings, I wonder if there's any way that we could extend the idea of "Wins Above Replacement" to Fire Emblem. I intuitively feel that Tethys isn't really doing that much to make the game easier -- I can't imagine anyone thinking of no-Tethys as a notable challenge run, for instance -- but I'm not sure how we'd even try to quantify that. It isn't clear to me what would count as a "win" nor what would count as a "replacement level unit". Of course, compared to sports statisticians, we don't have nearly as much raw data. It would be really interesting if we somehow had stats for every game of Sacred Stones that had ever been played and could actaully see whether teams with Tethys in them had a better success rate than teams without Tethys in them, but we're obviously never going to get anything even close to that so we're just left with vague personal feelings and intuitions instead.

[Jotari]

25 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I believe that I was that someone. And I would still broadly stand by those criteria for what makes a unit good.

I'm not sure that no-staff vs no-Seth is particularly a good comparison, though. Maybe no-Seth vs no-Moulder would be a better comparison? In which case, no-Moulder would probably be easier, since you could just stomp the game with Seth up until you get Natasha. Or the alternative comparison might be no-staff vs no-cav/paladin, where I'd go the other way and say that it'd be easier to play without cavs/paladins than without staves, though that one's probably closer?

Well that would be the point I brushed on that staff bots generally have more competition with each other. We typically get only one dancer for an entire game while you're likely to have two staff units within the first six maps of any games, and most of your promoted tome users will be able to use staffs eventually too. So Moulder vs Seth doesn't really capture the essence of just how important staffs really are, because Moulder doesn't have sole access to them. And, indeed, that's one of the things that makes Safy so good, aside from the less reliable Nana, she does have sole staff access for a very large chunk of the game, by which point she'll probably also have a high staff rank which is very important in Thracia, only being out done by Seluf and Sety for staffing purposes.

It does bring up an interesting idea, what if dancing wasn't an exclusive ability? What if each game gave us five or six dancers? Of course, the balance would be hilariously thrown out the window if you could field six dancers at once, but, ignoring that and just focusing on the dancers themselves, if we had six dancers in competition with each other who could be simultaneously fielded, we probably would view the more like staff units and judge them more on their stats, like how well they can take a hit or how good their combat might be on promotion (even if you're probably never going to actually put them in combat), or additional skills they might have access to, resulting in them having more broad of a placement on a tier list. It's been a hot minute since I've looked at a tier list, but staff bots are not typically crowded around the same placement in a tier list, I think. Most people are probably going to place a the best staffer at the top, and the worst staffer nearing the mid bottom even though realistically, while Moulder is better than Natasha, the lead he has in actual practical utility on the battlefield is going to be pretty negligible.

25 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Continuing your analogy to sport ratings, I wonder if there's any way that we could extend the idea of "Wins Above Replacement" to Fire Emblem. I intuitively feel that Tethys isn't really doing that much to make the game easier -- I can't imagine anyone thinking of no-Tethys as a notable challenge run, for instance -- but I'm not sure how we'd even try to quantify that. It isn't clear to me what would count as a "win" nor what would count as a "replacement level unit". Of course, compared to sports statisticians, we don't have nearly as much raw data. It would be really interesting if we somehow had stats for every game of Sacred Stones that had ever been played and could actaully see whether teams with Tethys in them had a better success rate than teams without Tethys in them, but we're obviously never going to get anything even close to that so we're just left with vague personal feelings and intuitions instead.

Oh wow, the google sheets amateur statistician in me has just been very enticed by that prospect. I wonder if Nintendo might have that information. Since Three Houses the games have kind of insisted on you playing with online connectivity even without any real online features (no, I'm not counting the sparkly item pick ups as an online feature) in the general campaign. It's not inconceivable to think they could or would record unit and team performance based on some algorithm. We know Engage specifically records data on stuff since we have achievements for X number of chain attacks and things like that.

Edited May 31 by Jotari

[Etrurian emperor]

Down with dancer units! Glory to the bards! Because bards are useful to have around. 

Refreshers can be anything so I think its time to give dancers a rest. Have the refreshers be bards, or trumpet blowers instead. 

[Jotari]

18 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Down with dancer units! Glory to the bards! Because bards are useful to have around. 

Refreshers can be anything so I think its time to give dancers a rest. Have the refreshers be bards, or trumpet blowers instead. 

Hey, needn''t even be music. Let's bring back the Apothecary class and have refreshers be shady dealers who inject their allies with some Grade A Amphetamines. Or a Coffee Barista! Silly as those suggestions are...they somehow still make more sense than Dancers.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

I said, completely unironically, that that means Safy is the best unit in the series, because it was all completely true for her and how she functions in Thracia.

Safy isn't useful for new players though, because they won't know the gaiden conditions, and will therefore miss out on recruiting her in 2x.

IMO maybe SD Lena is actually a top 10 unit? Because most players can find some use for the Warp staff, even if they're not warpskipping. And 13-use Hammerne allows the legendary weapons and costly forges to keep on... well, existing.

15 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Refreshers can be anything so I think its time to give dancers a rest. Have the refreshers be bards, or trumpet blowers instead. 

Give the next bard a pan flute, you cowards!

35 minutes ago, Jotari said:

(no, I'm not counting the sparkly item pick ups as an online feature)

What a goddessawful implementation. "Here, player, have all these rusted weapons! Before you have access to the Blacksmith to repair them!"

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I'm not sure that no-staff vs no-Seth is particularly a good comparison, though. Maybe no-Seth vs no-Moulder would be a better comparison? In which case, no-Moulder would probably be easier, since you could just stomp the game with Seth up until you get Natasha. Or the alternative comparison might be no-staff vs no-cav/paladin, where I'd go the other way and say that it'd be easier to play without cavs/paladins than without staves, though that one's probably closer?

Moulder is to Seth as Natasha is to Franz.

No, I will not be taking any further questions.

23 hours ago, Florete said:

She can't dance for Seth if she can't keep up with him!

IMO Tethys benefits in a big way from GBA-style Rescue mechanics. She doesn't need to keep up with Seth, she just needs mounted allies who can keep up with him. A 5-move single-target Dancer in, say, New Mystery or Three Houses wouldn'tbe nearly as good.

All that said, I wouldn't call her "second only to Seth" in the game. I'd much more readily play a game "sans Tethys" than "sans Vanessa" or "sans Franz". Who, hey, are two potential Rescue buddies for her!

[samthedigital]

4 hours ago, Florete said:

I mean..."bulky combat unit that can one-round enemies" is almost always top tier, no matter who's judging.

Gerik and Raven are counterexamples depending on who is judging.

5 hours ago, Florete said:

I'm pretty confident exceedingly few people actually care about LTC.

Yeah, that's why I mentioned that the people who were polled likely don't care. My point is that it's impossible to tell whether someone is overrating a unit in what is effectively a random context.

[Jotari]

13 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Safy isn't useful for new players though, because they won't know the gaiden conditions, and will therefore miss out on recruiting her in 2x.

I know this is a humours jab at Thracia being Thracia, but the Gaiden requirements for that chapter are so easy almost everyone even half trying to play the game (which we would assume would be pretty much anyone who naturally somehow found themselves playing a 1999 SNES game) is going to get the Gaiden with little to no trouble.

13 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

IMO maybe SD Lena is actually a top 10 unit? Because most players can find some use for the Warp staff, even if they're not warpskipping. And 13-use Hammerne allows the legendary weapons and costly forges to keep on... well, existing.

Lena absolutely should have had warp as an exclusive niche. But they maintained fidelity to the original game, meaning not only can Wrys also use warp, but literally and character in the game class changed into a Cleric can. And for Shadow Dragon warp skips, you probably want to use two warpers anyway, one to warp Shiida to the boss, and one to warp Marth to the throne. As for her Hammerne ability...let's face it, that's the precisely the point in the game where you give up actually playing it and just warp skip the remaining maps.

...I just realize I typed all this assuming Shadow Dragon DS, as if the other games with Lena in it don't exist. I do not regret this assumption.

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

It does bring up an interesting idea, what if dancing wasn't an exclusive ability? What if each game gave us five or six dancers? Of course, the balance would be hilariously thrown out the window if you could field six dancers at once, but, ignoring that and just focusing on the dancers themselves, if we had six dancers in competition with each other who could be simultaneously fielded, we probably would view the more like staff units and judge them more on their stats, like how well they can take a hit or how good their combat might be on promotion (even if you're probably never going to actually put them in combat), or additional skills they might have access to, resulting in them having more broad of a placement on a tier list. It's been a hot minute since I've looked at a tier list, but staff bots are not typically crowded around the same placement in a tier list, I think. Most people are probably going to place a the best staffer at the top, and the worst staffer nearing the mid bottom even though realistically, while Moulder is better than Natasha, the lead he has in actual practical utility on the battlefield is going to be pretty negligible.

We do have that. Sort of. In Three Houses. We only get to field one dancer, but we have a couple dozen choices for which dancer we want. And yeah, the general consensus is that some units do make better dancers than others (due to spell lists, personal abilities, support lists, stats, crest, etc.) but that these differences are marginal and almost totally irrelevant when it comes to choosing your dancer. Instead, the best choice is usually going to be "who aren't you using for anything else?"

At the same time, though, let's do a thought experiment. Someone makes a fan game, and they implement every dancer (singer, heron, etc.) in the series into this game. Right at the very start of the game, before you know anything else about it, you get a dialogue box asking you to pick your dancer. Who do you choose? Almost certainly not Tethys. Or the related thought experiment: you have to pick one game to play without using a dancer at all, which one do you choose if you want to see the smallest difficulty increase? Possibly Sacred Stones. (Forum consensus last year was that Sacred Stones and Awakening were the series low points for dancers.)

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that for utility units, the differences within a game tend to be relatively small whereas the differences between games are considerably larger. If we're ranking staffbots, the most important consideration is how good that game's staves are. If we're ranking thieves (for their utility), the most important consideration is whether the game has a lot of stealable items, unlockable chests, etc. Other factors aren't nothing, but they're secondary. Dancers would be similar. In the hypothetical six-dancer game, the important consideration is what the core dance mechanics of the game are. Do they get to refresh multiple units in a turn? Do they get special dance? Canter? What's the class's move stat? If we're assuming that all our dancers are in the same class, rather than having Radiant Dawn style design where their abilities are all different, then there probably wouldn't be that much to choose between them.

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

(no, I'm not counting the sparkly item pick ups as an online feature)

(There is also the weird hide and seek minigame in the monastery in Three Houses. This counts even less than the sparkly item pick ups.)

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

I know this is a humours jab at Thracia being Thracia, but the Gaiden requirements for that chapter are so easy almost everyone even half trying to play the game (which we would assume would be pretty much anyone who naturally somehow found themselves playing a 1999 SNES game) is going to get the Gaiden with little to no trouble.

I think it depends on how experienced the player is with the series. If someone is playing Thracia 776 as their second or third Fire Emblem title, then I could see them letting a Village fall to the pirates.

Anyway, even if they get her... let's say, Safy gets kidnapped, so they don't get her back until the big "prison break" later down the road.

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

(There is also the weird hide and seek minigame in the monastery in Three Houses. This counts even less than the sparkly item pick ups.)

That one was actually really fun, and made the best possible case for Garreg Mach's extensive size as a hub world.

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

Lena absolutely should have had warp as an exclusive niche. But they maintained fidelity to the original game, meaning not only can Wrys also use warp, but literally and character in the game class changed into a Cleric can. And for Shadow Dragon warp skips, you probably want to use two warpers anyway, one to warp Shiida to the boss, and one to warp Marth to the throne. As for her Hammerne ability...let's face it, that's the precisely the point in the game where you give up actually playing it and just warp skip the remaining maps.

I mean, Warp is still pseudo-exclusive to Lena. Wrys is gonna need two full weapon ranks to use it, while neither Wendell nor Maria have C Staves at base. The second guaranteed Warp user you get is Boah, nearly halfway through the game.

So... Hammerne is useless if you're warpskipping... but Lena is one of your few default warp users? Either way, she comes out on top.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I think it depends on how experienced the player is with the series. If someone is playing Thracia 776 as their second or third Fire Emblem title, then I could see them letting a Village fall to the pirates.

Anyway, even if they get her... let's say, Safy gets kidnapped, so they don't get her back until the big "prison break" later down the road.

That one was actually really fun, and made the best possible case for Garreg Mach's extensive size as a hub world.

I mean, Warp is still pseudo-exclusive to Lena. Wrys is gonna need two full weapon ranks to use it, while neither Wendell nor Maria have C Staves at base. The second guaranteed Warp user you get is Boah, nearly halfway through the game.

So... Hammerne is useless if you're warpskipping... but Lena is one of your few default warp users? Either way, she comes out on top.

Huh. I thought Wrys had C rank too. Still, anyone with a C rank can reclass to cleric and use warp in competition. Of course that's kind of nitlicky because, unless Lena is dead there's really no motive to do so.

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 5/30/2024 at 6:43 AM, Florete said:

Dancers are good, no question about that. Back in the day they used to be super underrated, yet now I'm starting to feel like we've gone in the opposite direction and they're being overrated. What's prompting this from me is the polls ActualLizard on YouTube has been doing for Sacred Stones. Here's the one for Tethys: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaLypZjyX8v5FIK2QByFn2A/community?lb=UgkxFSx2A_UL5Or6AJznBsBF1Bfc6u2oPgj-

79% gave her a top rating of "really good". Only Seth got a higher "really good" score (90%). Yeah, just Seth. Ephraim, Gerik, Vanessa, etc. all did worse.

Which seemingly makes it unpopular for me to say that I don't think a single-target, 5 move dancer is that good. Putting her in top 10 I agree with, maybe even top 5, but top 2? She can't dance for Seth if she can't keep up with him! Sacred Stones is also pretty enemy phase heavy and she has only an indirect benefit to it.

For the record, I voted "pretty good."

Tethys makes really good use of the Swiftsole, which helps alleviate the move issue. Yeah I suppose if I bench her I can give it to someone else but I don't feel anyone else makes nearly as good use of it.

I wouldn't rate Tethys above Vanessa or Ephraim myself, but I can see it. On the other hand I'd unquestionably rate her above Gerik (easy comparison since they join at the same time). She's a unit who, IMO, has very little reason not to be used in every map she's available. Sacred Stones doesn't have any ambush spawns who can take advantage of her lowish durability, so she's a flexible extra player phase action every turn in whatever way you need most, and that's always great in any Fire Emblem. So really, the only units who I would rate higher than her are also units who should almost always be used but beat her at availability. I don't really feel strongly about whether she's "really good" or "pretty good" but I do feel that if she's not "really good", then the game doesn't have that many units who are.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 5/31/2024 at 9:37 PM, Jotari said:

Huh. I thought Wrys had C rank too. Still, anyone with a C rank can reclass to cleric and use warp in competition. Of course that's kind of nitlicky because, unless Lena is dead there's really no motive to do so.

I agree that it's more the strength of FE11 Warp than Lena personally, but there's still big value in being the first unit who gets to play with some broken tool with no investment. Like Jeorge with Parthia, or Minerva with Hauteclere.

On 5/22/2024 at 12:41 AM, Acacia Sgt said:

Perhaps it was too much, if they made horses weak to Fire as well? I suppose.

At that point, Fire would've just become the best (read: least bad) magic type in the game. So it makes some small sense that they held back there.

...Oh, and Thani has Rapier effectiveness already, so there's at least one effective tome against basically any enemy type.

On 5/31/2024 at 6:23 AM, Jotari said:

If a game has multiple dancers, like Radiant Dawn, then we could certainly grade the dancers against each other on a metric

I meqn, just barely. The only time they're "competing" with each other is for Tower presence. Otherwise, their value as units is inextricably linked to whichever chapters they show up in. I can claim "Leanne would be better than Rafiel on I-E, because she can fly up ledges", but... it doesn't really matter. Because she's not in I-E, so it's not anything she contributes as a unit.

Also, remember that one map in Part III where the GMs randomly got Leanne instead of Reyson? The heck was that about?

On 5/31/2024 at 11:34 AM, lenticular said:

Right at the very start of the game, before you know anything else about it, you get a dialogue box asking you to pick your dancer. Who do you choose? Almost certainly not Tethys.

Depends on the game's Dancer mechanics. If it has FE4-style dancing, then I'd assume Tethys could refresh all adjacent allies. Unless we're assuming that each Dancer would import their respective game mechanics. In which case, I can Rescue-Carry Tethys, but not Phina? Huh?

...In any case, Tethys isn't competing against other Dancers in the poll. She's competing against other Magvellians in the poll. Being the worst Dancer doesn't matter, when we're considering her against zero other Dancers.

On 6/16/2024 at 2:10 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

I wouldn't rate Tethys above Vanessa or Ephraim myself, but I can see it.

Is that Ephraim on his own route, or on Eirika's? Because I'd say on Eirika's route, Tethys blows Ephraim out of the water (it helps that she has a few more chapters). Ephraim's route, yeah, I could see it being more of a toss-up.

...Let me put it this way. Ephraim's not about to pick a fight with Tethys. Especially if he never got to borrow Seth for the midgame.

I'd also consider Franz ahead of Tethys, because Seth Jr. is still pretty cool. But, er, maybe the discourse has soured on Franz again? In which case, it'd be the perfect opinion for this thread!

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I meqn, just barely. The only time they're "competing" with each other is for Tower presence. 

Sure, but that still is competition, even if it's only for five chapters. I find "Is Reyson better than Rafiel" a more meaningful conversation than "Is Reyson better than Nolan".

Edited 12 hours ago by Jotari