Reikken (Ellen) vs. Mekkah (Gonzales)

[Reikken]

Starting out on suppppports, Gonzales supports Lilina, Echidna, Dayan, Treck, Garret, and Bartre. Dayan joins uber late, and the support is slow, and he's terrible anyway, so that one may as well not exist. Lilina is his only fast support, but Lilina sucks on HM, so that one's no good either. Garret isn't as bad as Lilina but is still pretty crappy. Treck doesn't suck, but he is pretty meh. This support can't be thrown out, but it's iffy at best. He can only get one of Echidna and Bartre due to them not both existing at the same time. Bartre is pretty bad, too. Echidna is his only good supporter, sadly. And even that he might not get. Geese and Lot (and Ward, but he sucks) both support Echidna and have better affinities than Gonzales, and Lot is about Treck-level, and Geese is better than either. So one of those two is in play maybe twice as often as Treck or more, and likely takes Echidna's B. and the A is taken by Lalum since that one's easily Echidna's best (it's twice as fast as the others). So Gonzales's supports are pretty bad overall. They don't help him much and don't help others much.

Ellen supports Miledy, Zeiss, Lugh, Saul, and Chad. Zeiss joins kinda late, and he also sucks since he's so underleveled. But Miledy is pretty h4x and is always short on supports, so Ellen's helps there. Lugh is good, and he doesn't have many other good supports. His Miledy and Hugh supports are slow and start pretty late, and Hugh also sucks. Ray is meh, worse than Treck, and while the support is fast, it starts much later than Lugh's Ellen/Chad supports. And then Lugh's Chad support is pretty good. Or it would be if Chad weren't a thief. Ellen also supports Chad, but again, he's a thief, so that limits the support's usefulness. Then Saul is a pretty cool guy. His main flaw is a lack of supports, so a support with Ellen helps him out a lot. So while not uberh4xpwn like Lance's supports, Ellen's are certainly much better than Gonzales's.

K, with that done... One of Gonzales's biggest problem is that his hit is terrible. This makes him very unreliable. You can't count on him to kill anything. You plan out your strategy...but wait, Gonzales missed! That enemy that should have been killed (or weak enough for that one dood to kill) is now still alive. Stuff like that is what results in player units dying. Missing puts you in a very uncomfortable situation. Not only does it mess up strategies by leaving doods alive, but you also now have a big 500 con monster standing in the way, and he takes a counterattack that he otherwise might not have had to take and/or causes someone else to take a counterattack. And it hurts combat rank. It's much worse than if you didn't attack at all.

Anywayz, in the beginning, there was Marcus (and some other less important doods). And then next chapter, you get Ellen. This is important. Ellen is helping out right from the start. Being useful for longer = being more useful, and being more useful is obviously > being less useful.

When she joins, she's the only healer you have. No one else can help with that at all for the next two and half chapters. And this role is an extremely important one. Without someone behind them healing back lost hp, your Diecks and such have to forgo attacking and instead spam vulneraries, which may also result in taking more damage due to more enemies staying alive for longer. Or you may not be able to attack because you take too much damage from the counterattack to live through enemy phase or just to avoid coming out of enemy phase in an unfavorable position (like coming out of enemy phase with 5 hp left or something so that you have to fall back because you can't get healed enough to survive next turn is a very unfavorable situation, or just not having enough hp left to attack is also unfavorable), whereas with a dood to heal you, you can attack and then get the counterattack damage healed on the same turn. And then using Vulneraries makes you run out, so you don't have them for emergency/supplemental healing later, or you have to buy them, and they're also expensive for how little they heal. And about that... They only heal 10 hp, while a staff heals more, or much more with Mend. So you might not be able to heal enough, so in addition to not attacking, the injured unit has to break from the front line, which causes problems, and/or you need to waste multiple turns healing.

And healing is also awesome for the experience rank. Unlike exp gained by using staves, if a fighter kills something and gains exp, someone else would have killed it eventually and gained that exp, so that fighter's presence isn't helping the exp rank.

And not only that, but also, because "someone else would have killed it eventually", while attacking is indeed useful, that fighter being there and killing things means less exp for other attackers. Not so with staves. Well, it is somewhat once you have multiple staff users, but still only to a very small extent. Since even if you get all the important injuries healed, you can still heal the more minor ones or even the +1 hp level ups if it comes to that. Or even use Heal twice instead of Mend. Anyway, this means that Ellen gets you all this utility without taking any combat exp, which, though it often goes unnoticed, is extremely w1n.

Two and a half chapters where Ellen is your only healer. Very few units in this game have the privilege of not just being one of the best at something useful, or even being the best, but being the only one who can do it at all. Gonzales certainly doesn't. And then after those two and half chapters, Ellen has seven more chapters of normal staffing before Gonzales shows up.

Also, her use isn't limiting how many others you can take into the chapter for the first 5 chapters. So it's not like Treck's use before Gonzales shows up, which isn't really worth anything since you can just use someone else instead. And not even like Lance's use (for chapters after the first few), who's easily superior to the other deployment options you have, making his presence useful (like using Lance instead of using Noah is clearly beneficial). It's using Ellen vs using no one for those first 5. Even once you have to choose who to deploy, it's not as significant as it is by the time Gonzales shows up and the chapters after that since you don't have as many others you would want to bring in anyway. Ex: O noz, using Ellen means I don't have room for Bors. Who cares?

And then Gonzales joins. You could probably bench Ellen right now, and she would still be more useful than Gonzales because of how useful she was in those first 9-10 chapters, kinda like how Marcus can be benched after ch 7 yet still be better than over half the cast. Gonzales is always only one of many fighters, takes combat exp, etc.

But! Ellen still has more to offer. Also, recruiting Gonzales means you have to field Lilina for ch 10, which isn't cool at all. It's not the end of the world or anything, but it is a waste of a unit slot.

When Gonzales joins, he has . . . .

Iron Axe = 23.5 atk, 10.4 AS, 82.0 hit, 3.3 crit - - 26.9 avo, 41.7 hp, 6.7 def, 0.7 res, 6.0 critavo

. . . terrible hit, as stated before. And his 15% skl growth doesn't let his hit go up much. Note that that's 82 hit before enemy avoid is factored in. Most enemies average about 10 spd and 5 luck. After 25 avoid, his hit is 57. Granted, some of them have AS loss, but even then, hit in the low 60s is still terrible. And some of them have swords and much more spd/luck. There are some lance guys, but they average about 12 spd and 7 luck. His other stats are decent but not great. Good units have as much or more atk, more AS, and much more avoid. More def, too, but less hp so that it evens out. Avoid is the primary form of defense vs all those fighters since they have massive atk power but low hit.

Also, Ellen can promote not long after Gonzales joins. FE6 chapters are much longer than chapters in other post-FE4 games, which is good for healers since exp is more based on number of turns rather than number and level of enemies like it is for combat units. Chapters are like 20 turns each or so? Also, there isn't any ranking data up that I know of, but my testing shows that the total turn limit for the best rank for up through ch 12 is 240 turns. 14 Heal/Mends per chapter, with 1/3 of them Mends is already almost enough exp to hit 20 by the end of ch 11. And then add a few uses of higher level staves here and there, like Physic, Unlock, Barrier, Torch, and she can reach 20 even earlier than that. Or get there with fewer heals per chapter. Either way, a promotion is at hand. I don't think you can buy light magic until ch 11 anyway, so...

Also, a 20/1 Ellen gains as much exp per kill as a lv 15 unpromoted thanks to her class's exp bonus, and she still gets exp from staves. So she'll stay on a high level relative to the rest of your units. Ellen can at least have B Lugh and C Saul by then. That gives her...

Lightning: 20.0 atk, 13.6 AS, 128.8 hit, 18.9 crit - - 54.8 avo, 27.1 hp, 2.9 def, 19.8 res, 30.6 critavo

If Gonzales gained 4 levels in a chapter and a half...

Killer Axe: 28.9 atk, 12.4 AS, 83.9 hit, 33.6 crit - - 32.3 avo, 45.3 hp, 7.7 def, 0.9 res, 7.5 critavo

But killer axes are pretty expensive since you don't have the silver card yet. And they don't help his hit, and he doesn't really need atk...

Ellen doesn't really miss, and she's even slightly faster for now, so her offense is better. Even if Gonzales doubles and has enough atk to kill in two hits, the chance of him hitting is already bad, but then the chance of him hitting twice is even worse. And ch 12x has some sword guys, which Gonzales has <20% real hit on and Ellen >90%. Thieves and a couple of mymridons. For defense, Gonzales has a massive hp lead, but Ellen also has a massive avoid lead and a massive res lead and rarely takes counterattacks. There are a few shamans in these chapters with like 21 atk each, and two sleep staves in ch 12, and Gonzales is a prime target for those status staves with his 1 res, so that res lead does matter. The avoid and not taking counterattacks are the most important parts. Those steel/hand axe doods have like 70 hit, so that's about 5% real hit on Ellen. It takes 4 of them attacking at once before her chance of getting hit twice breaks 1%. After two of them, it's about 0.2% that she gets hit twice and a ~90% chance that she didn't get hit at all, thus being just as durable next turn without any healing. Gonzales has enough hp to live through two attacks, but they have more like 29% real hit on him. And he eats counterattacks. 3 doods hitting him 3 times = ~2.5% chance. 3 hitting Ellen twice = ~0.7%. So Ellen's defense is better, too. And Ellen has more move and more range and can counterattack the hand axe guys (and shamans and anything else ranged), while Gonzales using a hand axe = lol. And, of course, she has staves. So Ellen >>>> Gonzales now. Ellen can also help kill 12x's boss, while Gonzales is just lol since the boss has like 70 avo. It's a berserker, so her crit avo comes in handy, and it doesn't have enough atk to OHK her from range.

13 has a bunch of lance cavaliers, which is nice for Gonzales. Or not really, since they also have more avoid, and there's an axereaver one in every group. And one group uses swords instead. Ellen can also get a B Saul about now. There's also a killer weapon guy in every group except one, which means nothing to Ellen except more hit since she has massive crit avo. And she can counterattack the javelins, usually one-rounding them.

Ellen h4xes in ch 14. She has more move than anyone that doesn't fly, and by far. Except vs other mages. And she has staves. And then she has massive res for against all those enemy mages and those status staves, and good avoid + 5 avo from the sand to never get hit at all by the wyverns or all the axe guys. She also probably hits A Lugh about now. Lugh greatly enjoys the full offense and avo boost, and Saul would be getting pwnt without that +crit avo. And the other bonuse are very useful to him as well. Anyway, Ellen wins defense despite having like half as much hp/def. The +5 avo for everyone is also terrible for Gonzales, for obvious reasons. Enemy mages have like 32 avo. Have fun with that.

Ellen, 20/5, A Lugh, B Saul

Lightning: 24.0 atk, 14.4 AS, 142.7 hit, 27.6 crit - - 64.2 avo, 28.9 hp, 4.1 def, 23.2 res, 40.4 critavo

Gonzales, 15

Killer Axe: 31.0 atk, 15.4 AS, 86.7 hit, 34.0 crit - - 40.4 avo, 50.7 hp, 9.2 def, 1.2 res, 9.6 critavo

Offense also goes to Ellen. Enough atk to 2HK everything except mages and promoted units, massive hit, and decent AS. She has the same spd as a 20/0 Alan or 20/0 Deak. Gonzales has slightly more AS but misses in damage on things like wyverns and has fail hit.

And this is getting to be extremely tl;dr, so I'll stop now...

Just a final note that by end of ch 16, Ellen's level is very high. Doing 14 heals per chapter alone = 5-6 levels, but then she also gains combat exp pretty well, and there are more high-level staves being thrown around, so it's more like 8+. She's getting in an exp-gaining action like every single turn except the first. And sometimes even the first.

tl;dr, Gonzales gets steamrolled at least up until promotion, so he has no chance to pull out a win.

EDIT: fix'd a typo

also made a few edits that hopefully improve clarity

Edited November 14, 2008 by Reikken

[Mekkah]

Starting out on supports

As far as Gonzo is concerned we can scrap Dayan, Bartre and Garret.

Interesting how you say Lilina sucks. I suppose you are not fond of units that get one-shotted. But Ellen suffers the same fate, and Lugh has the same problem (and for Lugh x Ellen to exist, you need to use two OHKOable people, not just one). So if you're getting your Lugh, then Lilina is not completely out of the picture either.

Treck is not to be taken lightly. If you are going to assume Ellen gets Lugh in an instant, while Treck gets an "iffy" rating...

10/0 Treck

Iron Lance - 17.4 atk, 9.1 AS, 89.3 hit, 3.6 crit - - 26.2 avo, 30.1 hp, 9.8 def, 0.3 res, 8.0 critavo

11/0 Lugh (C Ellen)

Fire - 14.0 atk, 11.0 AS, 119.0 hit, 9.8 crit - - 32.5 avo, 21.0 hp, 4.5 def, 8.0 res, 10.5 critavo

It is basically offense vs durability here. Lugh hits on Res, but that mostly serves to close the attack gap. Treck wins offense against Mages, but Lugh only wins defense against those if they are taking two or more hits, since the HP gap > the Res gap. The majority of the enemies are melee though.

Assuming 30 HP/10 Def vs 21 HP/5 Def (rounding up Lugh's .5):

26 Atk OHKOs Lugh. This 2HKOs Treck.

16 Atk 2HKOs Lugh. This 5HKOs Treck.

12 Atk 3HKOs Lugh. This 15HKOs Treck.

And it's getting much dirtier from here. Treck gets +2 Def from supports, whereas Lugh gets like 1 from Chad. And Treck gets more from weapon triangle control. And with 115% combined HP/Def growth vs 65%, as well as the addition of axes later, this gets worse and worse.

You can argue semantics like level leads or support leads, but at best you will be proving Lugh vs Treck is debatable. You must not forget that Lugh spent his earlygame being a detriment. He joins at Ch4 pretty much, since in Ch3 there's pretty much no actiono for him, or if there is, he has to do it together with one other person gone to recruit him, since everyone else is attacking inside or getting another village or whatever. Everything 2HKOs him at least, and axe users OHKO him. His dying chances are ginormous. He'll only be able to attack on player phase, and only dudes with 1-range weapons.

For Echidna...Lalum and Gonzo have the same affinity, so the only reason Echidna would take Lalum is support speed. But Echidna herself doesn't care a lot, since she has the best joining situation out of anyone except Marcus, and Lot/Geese aren't very good to begin with, they're more like Mid tier. Lalum herself cannot attack, and as a result, has no reason to take hits either, so she doesn't benefit as much from a support as Gonzo does. Therefore, even if one of Lot/Geese had to be in play, switching Echidna from Lalum to Gonzales doesn't matter a lot at all.

For Saul, that means we are jampacking our team with healers. Clarine is pretty much obligatory, not only for her rape Avo and horse but also since she makes Rutger and Dieck really good, and you have Ellen and Saul fielded now, and Lugh gets heal after promotion. Fielding more healers dimnishes the worth of all those healers. Even moreso than in other games, since here, general weapon accuracy is really low, and everyone and their mom gets more Avo from their supports. And you are often dealing finishing hits on player phase, and sniping with 2-range often as well...basically, you are fielding people who only have something to do on player phase if there's a large amount of wounds, and who are dead weight on enemy phase. Not only before promotion, when half of them cannot do anything, but also on enemy phase, where they have death chances exceeding 30% whenever exposed to multiple enemies more often than not.

Saul also generally has problems finding a secondary support partner to benefit, and as you mentioned somewhere, he has huge CEV problems. A support with Ellen will aid this, but not solve it - instead Saul becomes dependent on having Ellen near him in order to not risk him getting one-shotted by something as lame as a Short Bow. This is pretty gay when you're splitting your team up, or generally when placing Saul/Ellen.

Now, you basically conceded all Ellen's supports other than Miledy (and the ones named already), so I'll just note her that Miledy likes to fly around and rape stuff on her own, whereas Ellen has to spend her time being with her support partners and behind bulky frontliners such as Gonzo to not get raped. There's quite a few opportunities where you will want Miledy to fly off.

Soz, if Ellen is helping Lugh, then Gonzo is likely helping Treck. And then he has a good shot at Echidna, whereas Ellen has Miledy who flies around, or Saul who is basically reducing the worth of every other healplox in play.

K, with that done... One of Gonzales's biggest problem is that his hit is terrible. This makes him very unreliable. You can't count on him to kill anything. You plan out your strategy...but wait, Gonzales missed! That enemy that should have been killed (or weak enough for that one dood to kill) is now still alive. Stuff like that is what results in player units dying. Missing puts you in a very uncomfortable situation. Not only does it mess up strategies by leaving doods alive, but you also now have a big 500 con monster standing in the way, and he takes a counterattack that he otherwise might not have had to take and/or causes someone else to take a counterattack. And it hurts combat rank. It's much worse than if you didn't attack at all.

Missing sux, but thankfully he's not the only one suffering from a hit problem. Even Alan has troubles hitting with an Iron Lance, especially if Roy or Lance isn't in range or hasn't built up a support yet. Even Dieck cannot reliably switch above Iron Sword unless he's attacking axe users. Some dudes you named to be stealing Gonzo's B Echidna, namely Lot and Geese, are almost as unreliable.

Gonzales personally doesn't care about taking an extra counter, since he has a million HP. If he has to idle for a player phase, he is doing no worse than Ellen, with the exception that he has no problems getting attacked on enemy phase (and he can even deter enemies from attacking him by equipping Hand Axe, so that they go for some noob like Rutger instead). And this Hit problem decreases as enemies indeed lose more AS, and lances become more common, and he gets Hit from all supports, and his promo gives him +5 Skl.

earlygame Ellen

You try to hype Ellen helping other people's durability out, but conveniently forget that she herself is the most frail unit you will ever have. Every single enemy will try to attack her if they can.

2/0 Ellen - 16 HP/0 Def/8 AS/24 Eva

Every single Fighter OHKOs her, so she has an existant dying chance everytime something attacks her (around a third for Steel/Hand Axe ones, 50% for Iron Axe). Loldiers and Archers don't OHKO her, but they leave her with the lower single digit kind of HP, so now every single thing OHKOs her, and even using a Vulnerary means she still gets OHKOed by everything.

In the next few chapters, Iron Lance Cavaliers OHKO her even if she gained one HP or one Def, and the higher leveled ones even have a shot at killing her even if she did gain both of those. And the Iron Lance ones have 84 hit, so they'd have more than those Iron Axe dudes even if she had like 30 Eva right now. Then there's those with Iron Swords, who don't OHKO, but force her into "I get killed by everything now" position, and those have >100 base hit.

In Ch5, it's all axes, but they've grown by level, so now all of them OHKO her. There's also Mercs and Nomads, who may double her, or maybe not (they have 12-13 Spd, and Ellen starts with 8 Spd), but they're still accurate, and Nomads have huge range. And even if they don't OHKO her, she has that "every single thing kills me now" thing on her head. So the few enemies that wouldn't target her now will now.

Ch6 is a little better since it has small passageways, but she has to watch out for all the Javelins walking around, since after a hit of those, even the Mages can finish her off (or vice versa).

Ch7, she might not even be fielded, since Cavs and Wyverns have such huge range since she'd be more of a burden than a help, and there's no safe spots to run to.

Ch8 perfectly symbolizes another problem with Ellen: FE6 is full of long distances with very few enemies. Your units may face only one enemies in long stretches, so people like Alan and Lance run around using their full mov, and even 5 mov units using their full mov hurts Ellen, since she has to stay one pace back behind (in fear of ranged attacks), and sometimes even more if you don't have a perfect wall formation.

8x is a mix of Mercs that double and hit, Fighters that OHKO, lava pits that put her into killing range of everything, and the long distance problem. Then on the Western Isles, there's more axes. And the first Fog of War chapter as well. Fog of War is bad news for Ellen, since you don't know where enemies may come from. And those pirate dudes think they are Jesus and walk on water, and only appear on enemy phase.

This problem lasts throughout the game. Ellen is trying to aid other people's flexibility and durability, but at the same time, she is hurting it by forcing them to be put on positions in order for her frail ass not to get mobbed. She needs 4 things around her to be safe from melee, and/or even 8 if there's like Archers or Javelin Cavs/Wyverns around. This problem fades slightly when she promotes and gains Light magic, but now she'll still be a primary enemy target due to her low HP/Def. If everyone else in an enemy's range is holding 1-2 range, she will still be attacked. If someone like Rutger or Iron whatever Alan is in range, they might go for him, but that hurts combat rank all the same.

Soz Ellen is hurting a lot and helping a lot.

And healing is also awesome for the experience rank. Unlike exp gained by using staves, if a fighter kills something and gains exp, someone else would have killed it eventually and gained that exp, so that fighter's presence isn't helping the exp rank.

Maybe this would mean something if you were debating against some EXP neutral dude like Lot, or some EXP hurting guy like Klein, but this is Gonzales. He joins at 5/0 when everyone else is what, 14/0? 15/0? 5/0 Gonzo gains 13/57 (nonkill/kill) for a L13 enemy, a 14/0 PC gains 10/27. For a kill alone, Ellen would have to heal like three times on a moment where it truly adds EXP (so Saul/Clarine would need someone else to heal, or have to be not there yet). Even if he's 12/0 while enemies are 16/0, it's still 11/43, while a 20/1 PC would gain 8/13.

And not only that, but also, because "someone else would have killed it eventually", while attacking is indeed useful, that fighter being there and killing things means less exp for other attackers. Not so with staves. Well, it is somewhat once you have multiple staff users, but still only to a very small extent. Since even if you get all the important injuries healed, you can still heal the more minor ones or even the +1 hp level ups if it comes to that. Or even use Heal twice instead of Mend. Anyway, this means that Ellen gets you all this utility without taking any combat exp, which, though it often goes unnoticed, is extremely w1n.

Note that if you're healing +1 HPs, you're just going "heh im gainin EXP", no longer increasing durability or anything.

Alsoz, in FE6, there's lots of dudes who are going to hit 20/0 or close to it until they finally get their promo item from the Secret Shop, and if they hit 20/0, they become pretty useless for EXP rank (they can still do combat, but it does nothing but removing that enemy). So you're often in an EXP surplus that's pretty useless. Gonzo joining in basically just takes a small bite of that. And then some people like Rutger cap Spd/Skl and gain very shitty level ups and don't give a damn if those levels go to someone else.

Also, her use isn't limiting how many others you can take into the chapter for the first 5 chapters. So it's not like Treck's use before Gonzales shows up, which isn't really worth anything since you can just use someone else instead. And not even like Lance's use (for chapters after the first few), who's easily superior to the other deployment options you have, making his presence useful (like using Lance instead of using Noah is clearly beneficial). It's using Ellen vs using no one for those first 5. Even once you have to choose who to deploy, it's not as significant as it is by the time Gonzales shows up and the chapters after that since you don't have as many others you would want to bring in anyway. Ex: O noz, using Ellen means I don't have room for Bors. Who cares?

BUT it also means you are stuck with her on the field if her negatives overcome her positives. Like, on Ch4, you are stuck on a bridge chokepoint for a while, with some Nomad faggot among them who can snipe Ellen if she heals your frontliner, and after that it's a big open field with more Cavs, and Pirates coming from the south, and more Cav reinforcements from behind you. In such a situation, where I have to position many PCs so that Ellen is safe from attacks, I may be better off just using Vulneraries. And if she goes to hide somewhere far from the fray, then she's not helping.

Basically, what you're saying is "there's no problem with Ellen being on the field since she never really takes someone else's spot", but it's more like a neutral rather than a positive.

And since you have unit space leftover anyway (as indicated by your "I cannot use Bors ohnos"), you may very well want to deploy both Lance and Noah, for example.

But! Ellen still has more to offer. Also, recruiting Gonzales means you have to field Lilina for ch 10, which isn't cool at all. It's not the end of the world or anything, but it is a waste of a unit slot.

Such a moot point. I may as well mention that fielding Lilina here gets you the Devil Axe, which you can sell for moneys, and it'd mean just as much. You said yourself that there's not as many people to bring out now. You have 11 non-Roy unit slots for Gonzo's joining chapter. Alan, Lance, Dieck, Clarine, Rutger is five. That leaves six for random units who are only bleh, five if you field Lilina. Ohnos, I might not get to field Marcus or "Bors".

Hell, Lilina giving Roy an instant C for this one chapter matters more than this.

Note that that's 82 hit before enemy avoid is factored in. Most enemies average about 10 spd and 5 luck. After 25 avoid, his hit is 57. Granted, some of them have AS loss, but even then, hit in the low 60s is still terrible. And some of them have swords and much more spd/luck. There are some lance guys, but they average about 12 spd and 7 luck. His other stats are decent but not great. Good units have as much or more atk, more AS, and much more avoid. More def, too, but less hp so that it evens out. Avoid is the primary form of defense vs all those fighters since they have massive atk power but low hit.

Good thing that lance users are the most common weapon type, while swordies probably the least.

I'm not seeing this 10 Spd/5 Luk average thing. When Gonzo joins, enemies average around 11-12 in level. Fighters indeed average around 9-10 Spd at L10, the only one who is higher than L11 has a Halberd. Archers are slower. Mercenaries, yes, those are evasive. Shamans have 7 Spd/4 Luk.

Also, not only is it before enemy Avo factored in, but also before real hit. 60 disp is still 68% real.

Also, Ellen can promote not long after Gonzales joins. FE6 chapters are much longer than chapters in other post-FE4 games, which is good for healers since exp is more based on number of turns rather than number and level of enemies like it is for combat units. Chapters are like 20 turns each or so? Also, there isn't any ranking data up that I know of, but my testing shows that the total turn limit for the best rank for up through ch 12 is 240 turns. 14 Heal/Mends per chapter, with 1/3 of them Mends is already almost enough exp to hit 20 by the end of ch 11. And then add a few uses of higher level staves here and there, like Physic, Unlock, Barrier, Torch, and she can reach 20 even earlier than that. Or get there with fewer heals per chapter. Either way, a promotion is at hand. I don't think you can buy light magic until ch 11 anyway, so...

Wut? 20 turns per chapter is a lot. The chapters Ellen is a lonely healer in certainly aren't that long. You also have to count out the turns Ellen's durability prevents her from healing, then the first turn often doesn't have any healing, and after Ch4, she can only heal half of the wounds, and during Ch6, she only has dibs on a third of it when you factor in Saul. You also have to take into account enemies like to focus-fire on one unit once they have wounded him, since they have priority for units that have low HP, and huge priority for those about to die.

Also, even if Ellen grew this fast, Guiding Rings are limited. There's one from Ch8, one at the end of Ch14, and then none before the Secret Shop. You're having me field Lugh, Ellen and Saul, and this is on top of the God tier Clarine, so two of them have to wait already (and the healers among them would want to promote before the end of 16 if they grow as fast as you seem to want them to). Causing others to promote later is pretty ghey, don't you think?

Of course, if Ellen gets to do this, then Gonzales gets to promote before one of Dieck/Rutger too. Or Ellen lets the team be unaffected and remains unpromoted until 16x, so Gonzo gets to catch up, and they both promote at the end of 16. I'll assume the latter for now.

But killer axes are pretty expensive since you don't have the silver card yet. And they don't help his hit, and he doesn't really need atk...

Why you even brought up funds is beyond me...

If Ellen is 14/0 when Gonzales joins (less than you'd have her at, but qua funds, the lower the better for you), she's gained 1200 EXP through staves alone. Heal is 20G per use and gives 11 EXP, Mend is 50G per use and gives 12 EXP. You said she'd be using 2/3 Heal, 1/3 Mend. For 1 EXP of Mend, she pays ~4.1G, and for 1 EXP of Heal, ~1.6. So for 800 EXP Heal and 400 EXP Mend, she uses 1333G (Heal) + 1666G (Mend) = roughly 3k. More if she uses "more expensive stuff like Physic, Unlock, etc".

Killer Axes are 50G per use, so Gonzales gets to deplete three full loads of them before he is even with 14/0 Ellen. But Ellen is obviously still around, and for every time she uses Mend, Gonzales gets to whack something with Killer Axe, and for every five Heals, he gets to whack something twice with that. But, he can often save up using Iron, which is a laughable 6G per use. And then 60 times of Lightning is slightly more than one Killer Axe, etc.

Ellen doesn't really miss, and she's even slightly faster for now, so her offense is better.

Gonzales has 30% more Spd growth, and his promo bonus alone is enough to put him only .2 behind Ellen as you have them, so when it comes to DAing, Gonzales holds the edge for a longer time.

Anyway, if both promote at the end of 16, like they should:

20/1 Gonzales - B Treck/B Echidna

Killer Axe: 33.6 atk, 18.5 AS, 104.3 hit, 80.9 crit - - 62.2 avo, 53.5 hp, 15.7 def, 3.7 res, 30.2 critavo

20/1 Ellen - A Lugh/B Saul

Lightning: 22.0 atk, 13.6 AS, 138.8 hit, 26.9 crit - - 59.8 avo, 27.1 hp, 3.9 def, 20.8 res, 37.6 critavo

There's no real words for it. Offensively, 35.5 hit is nice and fun to argue about, but nothing in the face of Gonzo's crushing Atk, Crt and AS leads.

Against weapon enemies, no contest either. Gonzo has more than double Ellen's HP, four times her Def, and slightly more Avo.

To put it this way again:

31 Atk to OHKO Ellen. This 4HKOs Gonzales.

18 Atk to 2HKO Ellen. This 24HKOs Gonzales.

Man, it even takes only 13 Atk to 3HKO Ellen, which pings on Gonzales.

I think we can safely establish taking counters matters little in the face of this. Gonzales would have to take a bazillion times more hits than Ellen for his HP to get lower than hers. And take a look at that Crt. Everytime he does that on his player phase attack, the enemy is dead. Dead enemies don't counter.

Against magic enemies, it's a little more fair to Ellen, but magic enemies are less common, and while Ellen's Res lead is 5 bigger than Gonzo's Def lead, he still keeps that 26 HP lead. And of course, the power lead swings to Gonzales in enormous numbers. Speaking of that, something I gotta address from your powerlevEllen comparison:

and two sleep staves in ch 12, and Gonzales is a prime target for those status staves with his 1 res, so that res lead does matter.

Nearly everyone else in your team has ass Res too, so while Ellen can't get hit by it, someone else will be instead, and a sleeping Alan is no less deterring than a sleeping Gonzales.

While we are speaking long distance threats though, I would like to bring up ballistae. Those things with hit as high as a Steel Bow on average, usually controlled by Archers/Snipers. Anytime those are in play, Ellen's flexibility gets hugely limited to wherever their 3~10 range doesn't go, and often they are in extremely concealed spots and you have to walk miles through their range to even reach them, if that's even possible.

I will craft my own pre-Secret Shop comparison between Gonzales and Ellen later to avoid making this more tl;dr on the notion of them making others wait for promotion, so I'll just address some minor things now.

13 has a bunch of lance cavaliers, which is nice for Gonzales. Or not really, since they also have more avoid, and there's an axereaver one in every group. And one group uses swords instead.

They don't have a lot of Avo - in fact, there's like 3 among them carrying around Steel Lances. And Killer Axe Gonzales one rounds them. The Axereaver is always the last one in line, and if you're taking on several groups of reinforcements like that (instead of going for the throne ASAP), you're obviously using the bridge as a chokepoint, making it rather easy to pick your fights on player phase.

To summarize, your comparison only holds if Gonzales gets no supports whereas Ellen gets full, and if Guiding Ringers (Saul, Lugh, Clarine) suddendly care less about having to wait until 16x to promote whereas Hero Cresters (Dieck, Rutger) do not. It also requires Ellen to grow at some kind of astonishing rate...17 levels in 11 chapters, two and a half of which she is your only healer, one and a half where she is one out of two, eight in which she is a third of your healing squad, in a game where enemy accuracy fails and enemy density is fairly low. For a unit that does not gain EXP on enemy phase, that is a fairly huge load.

For nao:

- Earlygame Ellen wants to be cool and heal stuff, but she also gets raped by everything, and cannot counterattack, and everything attacks her.

- Then Gonzales joins, and both levelcap or something, Ellen earlier than Gonzo maybe. Or they both promote to make others wait, but that fails.

- Then they both promote, and Gonzales rapes so badly.

- Ellen marries Gonzales.

- She goes to the kitchen, recognizing Gonzo's superiority, and makes him sandwich.

- Gonzales > Ellen.