Mekkah vs Tino

[Mekkah]

we don't know who will open yet

also this one is about ranked, but without EXP rank.

Edited November 21, 2008 by Mekkah

[Mekkah]

When Holyn joins, Jamka likely either gained ~2 levels in the Ch1 arena, or maybe ~2 from fighting the army he was recruited from, but he likely won't have both (due to time restrictions). So he's around L8, and Holyn joins at L12, and they can both gain two more levels from the Ch2 arena, putting Jamka at 10 and Holyn at 14.

10 Jamka

Killer Bow: 27 atk, 11.2 AS, 128.8 hit -- 27 avo, 39.6 hp, 10.2 def, 0.2 res

14 Holyn

Steel Sword: 24.6 atk, 15.6 AS, 117.2 hit -- 32.6 avo, 42.2 hp, 11.6 def, 1.1 res

Iron Blade: 26.6 atk, 12.6 AS, 97.2 hit -- 26.6 avo

Steel Blade: 30.6 atk

So when Holyn uses Steel Sword, he wins every defensive parameter, and with a blade, he wins everything except .4 avo. Offensively, they have pretty much the same Atk with Iron Blade, and Holyn wins by 1 AS. Holyn can also choose to increase his Atk with Steel Blade, or trade Atk for 3 AS by going back to Steel Sword.

Now, they both have Pursuit, and while Jamka has more skillz (Berserk, Continue, Charge), Holyn still has Moonlight Hit. And skills are luck-based, so you can't rely on them, making them less valuable than concrete stat leads.

And Jamka relies on Killer Bow for these statistics. The other bows have 4 more wt and 30 less hit, and no Berserk skillz, so whenever Lachesis/Midir/Brigid pops in, he might have to give that weapon away. Before you go "but Ichieval", Brigid would prefer not to fire 1000G every shot sometimes.

The finishing blow for Jamka is that he cannot do close range, unlike Holyn and nearly every enemy. This means he only gets enemy phase action against bow enemies...there really aren't any bow armies except Andre's small squad in Ch5. Holyn gets to do enemy phase everywhere else, which means he will grow faster and promote earlier, and it means he doesn't leave enemies alive when they attack him, or at least he does damage if he doesn't one round. This is good, because if an enemy stays alive, someone else has to waste their turn to kill it, and that hinders your progress, and causes other people to take damage. In exchange, all Jamka gets to do is not take counters on player phase. A rather poor trade, especially since Holyn has no trouble with counterattacks to begin with (he has as much HP/Def as L11 Sigurd). And if not taking counters is a huge necessity, magick swords can do that. They're not that great, but it's better than Jamka's options for close range (none).

Graciously allowing Jamka to promote at the same time as Holyn...

20 Jamka

Killer Bow: 37 atk, 16.2 AS, 134.8 hit -- 42 avo, 48.6 hp, 15.2 def, 3.7 res

Silver Bow: 41 atk, 14.2 AS, 104.8 hit -- 38 avo

20 Holyn

Steel Sword: 31.4 atk, 18.4 AS, 130.8 hit -- 39.4 avo, 48.8 hp, 15.4 def, 4.4 res

Silver Swrd: 35.4 atk

Iron Blade: 33.4 atk, 15.4 AS, 110.8 hit -- 33.4 avo

Steel Blade: 37.4 atk

Silver Blade: 41.4 atk

They're eerily similar overall - Holyn has more flexibility with weapons, which ensures that whenever the focus of a battle is on one stat (need x Atk to 2HKO an enemy, x AS to double, or need all Hit they can get), he can match or surpass Jamka. The problem isn't that Jamka loses at stats, it's his range problems.

Obviously, in reality, Jamka promotes much later than Holyn, since Holyn had a level lead to begin with, and much more enemy phase action, so the stats shift more towards Holyn's side there, and Holyn obviously wins.

Long story short - Jamka can't win stats, and 1-range with a slight option of 1-2 range >>> lock to 2-range.

EDIT: typo

Edited November 21, 2008 by Mekkah

[Tino]

Ugh... This debate seems to be a fuckton about the 1 range vs. 2 range issue...

When Holyn joins, Jamka likely either gained ~2 levels in the Ch1 arena, or maybe ~2 from fighting the army he was recruited from, but he likely won't have both (due to time restrictions). So he's around L8, and Holyn joins at L12, and they can both gain two more levels from the Ch2 arena, putting Jamka at 10 and Holyn at 14.

This all seems fairly reasonable to me, so I won't counter it at all. Good luck, Mekkah, and may the best debater win :)

So when Holyn uses Steel Sword, he wins every defensive parameter, and with a blade, he wins everything except .4 avo.

When looking at raw numbers, we indeed see Holyn win everything. However, is his durability indeed so much better?

Assuming chapter 2, there are about 25 enemies which can counter Jamka's attacks. There are about 75 enemies which can counter Holyn's attacks. In other words, Jamka's player phase durability is around three times as good as Holyn's simply due to the fact that he doesn't get countered as much. Enemy phase durability? Jamka will rarely get attacked on the enemy phase, while Holyn is out there frontlining and taking hits, and thus has a bigger chance to actually die.

Offensively, they have pretty much the same Atk with Iron Blade, and Holyn wins by 1 AS. Holyn can also choose to increase his Atk with Steel Blade, or trade Atk for 3 AS by going back to Steel Sword.

Now, they both have Pursuit, and while Jamka has more skillz (Berserk, Continue, Charge), Holyn still has Moonlight Hit. And skills are luck-based, so you can't rely on them, making them less valuable than concrete stat leads.

True. What he can't do, however, is get a nice Atk boost against flying enemies. Nor can he get a nice Hero weapon. No wait, he actually can. Point is, he isn't going to get it. Why not? Because Ayra, who Holyn receives the Hero Sword from, has much better pairing with Lex/Dew/Noish.

Jamka, however, has a good chance of receiving that nice Hero Bow from Aideen. That's pretty sweet. Of course, this all applies to later in the game, but it was worth pointing out anyway :)

But to actually get to your point, indeed, Holyn has better concrete offense. However, let's actually go over their skills.

Jamka: Pursuit, Continue, Charge, Critical

Holyn: Pursuit, Moonlight Sword

Critical is in italicized characters because he gains that skill from his awesome Killer Bow. Both have Pursuit, and both will be doubling a lot, if not all things, so that's not the problem. Then there's Continue, Charge and Critical vs. Moonlight Sword.

I must admit, Moonlight Sword is quite a good skill and has a 17% chance of activating upon joining. Jamka has a 31% chance to activate Continue, for a grand total of three attacks, easily giving him superior offense, about a 29% chance to activate Charge, for at least three attacks as well (putting average enemy AS at 2, but it might as well be a bit higher or lower, although neither alterations will have a significant difference) and then a 25-ish% chance to pull of a Crit, also likely killing the enemy (whether in that one Crit or in another hit before or after the Crit). Either way, the chance of Jamka not activating anything is ~36%, so he has a 64% to activate at least something and therefore kill the enemy immediately. Holyn's chance of activating is almost four times as small, and he isn't guaranteed to kill with activating it once anyway.

No, I don't see Holyn win offense at all, even though he has some small concrete stat leads. Jamka's epic skillz actually do help him beat Holyn, since he almost has a 2/3 chance of something activating, which is fairly reliable already, actually.

And Jamka relies on Killer Bow for these statistics. The other bows have 4 more wt and 30 less hit, and no Berserk skillz, so whenever Lachesis/Midir/Brigid pops in, he might have to give that weapon away. Before you go "but Ichieval", Brigid would prefer not to fire 1000G every shot sometimes.

Seriously, why would Jamka give his Killer Bow away? Because somebody else can use it? Sure, but what if Jamka can actually use that Killer Bow better, which he likely can? And even if he would give it to someone else, then he still has the Hero Bow to rely on, which makes up for the loss of Critical easily. And it only costs a lot of money to switch it like that, although I realize that there's plenty of money available in this game. Still, spending 10,000 gold on it <<< spending no additional money on it, and Jamka does the latter very effectively.

The finishing blow for Jamka is that he cannot do close range, unlike Holyn and nearly every enemy. This means he only gets enemy phase action against bow enemies...there really aren't any bow armies except Andre's small squad in Ch5. Holyn gets to do enemy phase everywhere else, which means he will grow faster and promote earlier, and it means he doesn't leave enemies alive when they attack him, or at least he does damage if he doesn't one round. This is good, because if an enemy stays alive, someone else has to waste their turn to kill it, and that hinders your progress, and causes other people to take damage. In exchange, all Jamka gets to do is not take counters on player phase. A rather poor trade, especially since Holyn has no trouble with counterattacks to begin with (he has as much HP/Def as L11 Sigurd). And if not taking counters is a huge necessity, magick swords can do that. They're not that great, but it's better than Jamka's options for close range (none).

And that was of course to be expected. That you used this as an argument against Jamka, that is.

Holyn is locked to 1 range, while Jamka is locked to 2 range. And no, Holyn won't be getting any of the magic weapons due to him having lollable magic and there's also those things called Master Knights and Mage Knights who would really like to use them, as well as others, who have better magic. He has an incredibly pathetic 16 Atk with it, which isn't worth the 1-2 range, if you ask me.

As for Jamka seeing no enemy phase action, that's quite a load of bull. Even though the majority of the enemies has just 1 range weapons, giving Jamka wtfmassive enemy phase durability, there is also a decent amount of enemies with just 2 range or 1-2 range. Jamka always counters the 2 range enemies, while Holyn does not, and he can easily be positioned so that he can counter the 1-2 range doods as well.

Then there's also the fact that Jamka has quite a bit more flexibility. Being able to attack from a total of 8 spaces > being able to attack from a total of 4 spaces. Plus, Holyn can get attack from 8 different spaces without countering, while Jamka can only be attacked from 4 spaces without countering.

Holyn sucks with magic swords. It's only detrimental towards the team (lol @ 16 Atk). Jamka's 1 range option or 1-2 range option, which he doesn't have, is never detrimental towards the team, since it doesn't exist. No detrimental effects >>> Detrimental effects

They're eerily similar overall - Holyn has more flexibility with weapons, which ensures that whenever the focus of a battle is on one stat (need x Atk to 2HKO an enemy, x AS to double, or need all Hit they can get), he can match or surpass Jamka. The problem isn't that Jamka loses at stats, it's his range problems.

Range issue countered above...

Where's Jamka's Hero Bow? Does he for some reason not get it? It's easily possible for Jamka and Aideen to be lovers by the start of Chapter 4, which I assume is the chapter around which they'll promote? Anyway, I'll assume that those promotion stats are at the start of Chapter 4. And since the Hero Bow is obtained in Chapter 4, where is it? The Hero Bow easily gives Jamka the edge, due to the 2 range vs. 1 range issue I explained above.

Obviously, in reality, Jamka promotes much later than Holyn, since Holyn had a level lead to begin with, and much more enemy phase action, so the stats shift more towards Holyn's side there, and Holyn obviously wins.

Even if Holyn would have that level lead, which he indeed will likely have, he doesn't have something we call uber player phase durability, since he can usually attack some dood without getting countered. Not to mention that he has uber boosts against flying enemies, which is pretty dang awesome. What does Holyn have? Lolswords. There's nothing wrong with swords in themselves since they're so lightweight, but 2 range with no other option >>> 1 range with another uber fail option, as I explained above.

[Mekkah]

Ugh... This debate seems to be a fuckton about the 1 range vs. 2 range issue...

cough neimivsjoshua cough

Good luck, Mekkah, and may the best debater win :)

I agree. But it has to finish first!

Assuming chapter 2, there are about 25 enemies which can counter Jamka's attacks. There are about 75 enemies which can counter Holyn's attacks. In other words, Jamka's player phase durability is around three times as good as Holyn's simply due to the fact that he doesn't get countered as much. Enemy phase durability? Jamka will rarely get attacked on the enemy phase, while Holyn is out there frontlining and taking hits, and thus has a bigger chance to actually die.

Not taking counters, yes, that is true, but I already conceded that.

What is bullshit, however, is the bolded part. Jamka is the most likely dude to get attacked on enemy phase by any enemy with access to 1-range (and that is the vast, vast majority). This is bad news for him, because it also means he isn't countering etc.

"but he be shielded so nothing can reach them!"

Take a look around. This is FE4. Huge open fields, with enemy concentration divided in huge squads you face all in one shwoop, and what's even worse, many enemies are mounted and can move after attacking. This means life sucks for Jamka even moreso than it does for, say, FE8 Innes, since an enemy that bats him in the face can move away and some other noob can attack him. Like, Voltz's Free Knight army can get away completely unharmed if they get to attack Jamka.

So Jamka often has to be shielded on like all sides, which may not be possible, and it surely hinders your team's flexibility. Like in Ch3, I have awesome people with lots and lots of move like Sigurd and Cuan. I'd like to run as far as possible with them to engage enemies earlier and rape stuff, but since Jamka never learned how to use non-pussy weapons, I need to restrict them to shielding him. Lame.

And then you have the balls to try and make it seem like a negative thing for Holyn to be on the frontline taking hits? Sorry to break it to you, but if Holyn isn't taking them, someone else will be. Nubs like Jamka, Ethlin and Azel surely will appreciate some 40 HP monster standing in front of them taking hits. "Being on the frontline" can only be a good thing. If it's not, Holyn can be "on the backline" just as well. He won't get any enemy phase action that way, but neither is Jamka, so they'd be tied there. Does Jamka have the option of going to the frontline? Lolno.

True. What he can't do, however, is get a nice Atk boost against flying enemies.

Not like flying enemies are a net benefit for Jamka, since they have the easiest time out of any enemy to pick on his non-existant 1-range.

Also, you hardly run into fliers in this game's first gen. Ch2 has the Fury Squad, which is a laughable group of four which Levin is probably taking all for himself, since Holyn and Jamka are too busy killing Augustrian lord armies (well, Holyn moreso than Jamka). Ch3 has a small group of Wyverns, but in order to face them, you have to be with the non-main group (since Silvail is next to be seized, and you need quite some people for that since there's a lot of Armors, and Shagaal himself can be an ass to take down). And you have very little flexibility when standing there, since it's a rather small peninsula, with Madino fort taking up a lot of space, so Jamka needs a lot of dudes with him in order to not get attacked up close.

Then Ch4 comes, and it comes with a nice number of Pegasi. Good for Jamka? Well, the Pegasi have 53 HP/10 Def, so it only takes 37 Atk to one-round them. Which is exactly what Steel Blade Holyn has at 20 (though he's prolly a lot higher).

And then there's Ch5, which has some Wyverns. Holyn can't one round those without Moonlight Hit (though it does have a 47% chance to activate on a double attack right now). But it doesn't matter, because he has the HP/Def to be exposed to all of them if he wants to. They have 25 Atk, and Holyn has like 55 HP/17 Def, so it takes seven of them to kill him...that's over half of the squad of 13 already, and some of them will have been killed by Cuan/Ethlin/Lanceritter. Jamka gets to kill one on player phase, but Holyn can severely wound like six on enemy phase, and will prolly kill 2-3 with Moonlight Hit. And since Jamka can't counter, he has to wait for those Wyverns to get into his range anyway. Wounding six Wyverns > picking off one, obviously. If Holyn even kills one, he's even with Jamka already (which Holyn can actually do simply by player phase killing one he lured), and from there he just stacks on the win.

This applies to non-fliers too of course, which is why I bothered to write it all out here. Jamka's player phase offense when using his skillz looks nice and all, until you realize Holyn does more overall damage anyway by being there on enemy phase.

Nor can he get a nice Hero weapon. No wait, he actually can. Point is, he isn't going to get it. Why not? Because Ayra, who Holyn receives the Hero Sword from, has much better pairing with Lex/Dew/Noish.

Holyn actually gives Ayra the Hero Sword, not vice versa, since he's a nice guy. Only Jamka is enough of a noob to have to send a girl to the armory to get him his weapons. Not that it matters.

You can still get the Hero Sword by talking with either Lex or Holyn, even if you plan to pair Ayra with Lex or anyone else. In fact, the requirement for that convo to exist is for Ayra not to have fallen in love already. Nobody really gets credit for getting you that Hero Sword (it's a lot like FE9's base convos, except you have to step a few feet out of the base to do them). What matters is that Holyn can indeed use the Hero Sword if he wants to.

Jamka, however, has a good chance of receiving that nice Hero Bow from Aideen. That's pretty sweet. Of course, this all applies to later in the game, but it was worth pointing out anyway

Yes, let's totally ignore the fact that Jamka's Hero weapon arrives a whole chapter later than Holyn's. If it even exists. For the Hero Bow to be there, you have to _pair_ Aideen with Jamka or Midir. The Hero Sword is always there, whoever Ayra gets to do the tango with. The Jamka/Aideen pairing sucks anyway. The stats for the kids aren't amazing enough to compensate for the lack of Pursuit. Pursuit is like, the most important thing in this game to have. Except maybe a mount. Or lol 1-range.

Jamka's epic skillz actually do help him beat Holyn, since he almost has a 2/3 chance of something activating, which is fairly reliable already, actually.

No, 2/3 is not reliable at any rate. Something like 90% would be reliable. You can't rely on a 66.66666(...) chance. That would mean that if you attack three enemies, you find it reliable that most of the time, you'll kill two or less.

Seriously, why would Jamka give his Killer Bow away? Because somebody else can use it? Sure, but what if Jamka can actually use that Killer Bow better, which he likely can? And even if he would give it to someone else, then he still has the Hero Bow to rely on, which makes up for the loss of Critical easily. And it only costs a lot of money to switch it like that, although I realize that there's plenty of money available in this game. Still, spending 10,000 gold on it <<< spending no additional money on it, and Jamka does the latter very effectively.

Just because the Killer Bow starts on Jamka doesn't mean it stays on him. Other people want it just as badly as he does. Midir does, for example. The only difference is that he doesn't have to pay gold for it...though it clearly isn't 10k. If you know you're going to trade the Killer Bow to someone else, you obviously aren't going to repair it to full 50 uses everytime. It's more likely that Midir or someone else will be buying it for like 6000G, which is 2 villages or so, or half a run in the arena.

For him using it the best...no, not at all. Where are you getting that idea? Sure, he has more skillz to stack on it, though that often overkills (no need for a crit if 2 hits + one Continue kills anyway). It does, however, make a great difference for Midir, who doesn't one round anything but fliers without his Charge activating.

And no, Hero Bow is not going to compensate. Its issues with availability have been addressed, but besides, it gives Jamka hit issues (30 less hit ftl), and this game has a single RN system rather than a double one.

And no, Holyn won't be getting any of the magic weapons due to him having lollable magic and there's also those things called Master Knights and Mage Knights who would really like to use them, as well as others, who have better magic. He has an incredibly pathetic 16 Atk with it, which isn't worth the 1-2 range, if you ask me.

lolplural. There's only one Master Knight and one Mage Knight.

Why the hell would Azel want to use a magic sword? To make use of that awesome 7 Str at L20 and let him hit on Def instead of Res whenever he uses close range? If he wants to have a sword on enemy phase for WTA over axes or something, he can just equip a Slim Sword or something after attacking (mounts can do that).

For Lachesis, she has all of 9 Mag after promotion (it's 5-6 more than Holyn, but still pathetic), and she has access to...every single other weapon to do more damage. If she wants to do magix, she can use Elwind or Elfire, and switch to anything else. But tbh, she'll get much more milage out of Hero Axe...or Killer Bow.

Everyone else who has access to swords doesn't want to use them, or has equally as lolable magic as Holyn, so it doesn't matter.

And if it's not worth having access to ranged for, then Holyn can just stick to his melee weapons. What the magic swords do is discourage ranged enemies from attacking him, and do more than 0 damage at any rate if he does get attacked (0 damage is what he would do with a normal sword).

Having the ability to use these things is an advantage, no matter how you slice it.

As for Jamka seeing no enemy phase action, that's quite a load of bull. Even though the majority of the enemies has just 1 range weapons, giving Jamka wtfmassive enemy phase durability, there is also a decent amount of enemies with just 2 range or 1-2 range. Jamka always counters the 2 range enemies, while Holyn does not, and he can easily be positioned so that he can counter the 1-2 range doods as well.

wtf? Jamka is an enemy magnet with worse defensive parameters than Holyn. No matter how hax that is (I'd call it quite bad, but that's me), Holyn is doing better. If you're referring to "lulz others are covering me", that's been addressed, and I don't want to repeat myself about it, since it makes this debate tl;dr.

Ah, good old "I can put myself on the edge of the movement range of an 1-2 enemy so that, if they choose to attack me, I will counter, never mind that if any other dude is in range who does not counter an 1-2 range dude, this plan is flawed, and the enemy may not attack me to begin with if there's dudes in range who do counter" argument. Doesn't work in FE4 anyway. As I said, enemies come in large groups and on open fields (hardly any chokepoints), so you may be able to get like two enemies with this trick, but against every other member of said army, Holyn is superior.

Yes, Jamka counters enemy Archers on enemy phase now. The roles are simply reversed though, since Jamka is now also taking counters from them. Now, countering on enemy phase >>> not taking a counter, sure, but enemy Archers are in a minority anyway.

Then there's also the fact that Jamka has quite a bit more flexibility. Being able to attack from a total of 8 spaces > being able to attack from a total of 4 spaces. Plus, Holyn can get attack from 8 different spaces without countering, while Jamka can only be attacked from 4 spaces without countering.

This is great when there's lots of impassable terrain in the way for Jamka to duck behind and attack enemies over, but there isn't. Enemies are in such large clumps that you only get to choose from very few spots to begin with. And Jamka can't be very picky about that anyway, since he has to choose a place where other PCs can stand around in order to not get him attacked. That, or he becomes huge ass enemy phase liability.

Where's Jamka's Hero Bow? Does he for some reason not get it? It's easily possible for Jamka and Aideen to be lovers by the start of Chapter 4

Oh, sure it is. If you turn abuse. Or if you restrict Jamka's movement to 5 rather than 6 to stay with Aideen all the time. I didn't think it possible, but you managed to find a way to limit his flexibility even more - now he is glued to someone who cannot counter anything at all and has absolutely retarded physical durability, and has even less Mov than he does.

Everything else is a repeat, so I won't get into that.