Are dodge tanks too good?

[lenticular]

As per the title: are dodge tanks in Three Houses simply too powerful? By which I mean, would the game as a whole be improved if they didn't exist or if they were weaker? Or is the game more fun if you decide not to use them?

As it stands, once you have a dodge tank up to the point when they are reliably not getting hit -- typically when you pick up Alert Stance+ -- you've basically won the game. There are ways to further optimise the build, more and less efficient ways to use it, but they only really matter for style points. The game is more or less over at that point, if you want it to be.

Now, I don't know about anyway else, but personally, I find this to be an incredibly boring way to play, so I typically limit my use of dodge tanks. So in that sense, for me at least, I do find that they are too good. But on the other hand, there's nothing saying I have to use them, so does it do any harm to the game overall? And I'm in two minds over that one. On the one hand, sure, it's nice that the build exists for people who love using it, and it doesn't hurt my fun all that much. But on the other hand, it's difficult to completely ignore its existence. From an objective standpoint, ignoring dodge tanks makes levelling-up flying completely worthless if Alert Stance is banned, for instance. But there's also the subjective element where coming up with other builds just feels less exciting when I know full well that there's another build I could be running that is both easier to build and more effective.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[Armchair General]

I unintentionally turned Sylvain into one on Hard with the Gautier and most people had an 0% hit rate against him. On the other side of the coin, the sole enemy that I actually hated in the game is Petra when you storm the Imperial capital because she's an dodge tank.

 

And it's kind of fun having an dodge tank Assassin running around...Only to realize that people are ignoring her because of Stealth.

 

But these were all done on Hard, which doesn't really account for much of anything.

Edited August 30, 2022 by Armchair General

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Are they too good? Yes, they trivialize the game on every difficulty. Does that matter? No because the game doesn´t offer enough character, build and class variance to justify making dodging worse.

If you have to limit yourself from using something ingame, even more so if that thing is readily and abundantly available, to be challenged in any way whatsoever, then that thing is, as they say  O P and/or the game is in itself b r o k e n as it´s mechanics are incapable/prevented from interacting.

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

Now, I don't know about anyway else, but personally, I find this to be an incredibly boring way to play, so I typically limit my use of dodge tanks.

So you don´t use flying classes, seeing as being in a flying class automatically translates into being a dodgetank, lest you be one of the slowest characters?

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

But on the other hand, there's nothing saying I have to use them, so does it do any harm to the game overall?

The question isn´t whether or not you are forced to use something, but whether or not the possibility of the player discovering something powerful and using that has been accounted for when designing the game.

There is nothing in TH that deals with a dodgetank. Literally nothing, entirely uncontested, the fucken thing that´s supposed to counter fliers, bows, are useless. Effective weaponry? I don´t think I´ve seen a Wyrmslayer in the enemy hands.

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

From an objective standpoint, ignoring dodge tanks makes levelling-up flying completely worthless if Alert Stance is banned, for instance.

Wrong. Class with the best stat spread in the game (Wyvern - citation needed), flying mobility and movimiento.

[haarhaarhaar]

If I'm strictly answering the title question, then yes they are too powerful. 

But my issue with them is not their power itself, but only how much their power stands out amongst the builds available to you. Def-tanking isn't that viable for most characters (on Maddening), requires significant effort just to stay viable, and has an inbuilt weakness in mages, Vantage builds require finicky management of various kinds, cannons need protection and so on. Dodge-tanks are often the strongest tool you have, and by some distance. In a game like 3H, whose selling point is in the sheer variety of tools you can use for combat, having one particular build stand out like that feels wrong, or at least contra the spirit of things.

I couldn't get rid of them altogether, for the same reason - all the tools at your disposal allow you freedom, including freedom to specialise a unit in physical strength, or accuracy, or avoidance. That's a very welcome change for me, even if the result is that the game is easier/more cheese-able. 

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

From an objective standpoint, ignoring dodge tanks makes levelling-up flying completely worthless if Alert Stance is banned, for instance.

You presumably don't mind Dark Flier though, as far as flying goes?

Fliers are evasive in this game, but unless you build them to be dodge tanks, their evasion doesn't exceed (or sometimes even match) comparable enemy units. Flying is still great, even without that (actually, I rarely run Alert Stance on fliers in general).

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

But there's also the subjective element where coming up with other builds just feels less exciting when I know full well that there's another build I could be running that is both easier to build and more effective.

I get where you're coming from, but I definitely don't feel a desire to make everyone dodge tanks because I know they work well. And I still enjoy coming up with other builds, even if they perform on the whole worse than a proper dodge tank might in the same position. Optimising is fun, but it's not as if I low-man every run just so I can maximise the potential of the few units I pick for that run and cheese the game that way.  

If you're playing this game through more than once or twice, then you probably enjoy it enough to experiment despite having a good idea of the meta and what's "optimal" in a given scenario.  You end up striking a natural balance between how much power you want and how much fun you get out of it along the way, I guess. In this sense at least, I'm not bothered about dodge tanks.

[Shadow Mir]

Honestly, this is more of a series-wide issue than one innate to this game specifically. The GBA games in particular stand out for this.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Objectively are too good, I think. I still use them sometimes because it's an RPG and sometimes I enjoy crafting a powerful tool to throw at my enemies. Sometimes I don't, either because that's what my mood says or because I'm doing a challenge run which indirectly limits them in some way.

That said, one nice thing about one-player games is there really is a limit to how much damage one strong build can do. Nobody forces you to use it. There are many solutions to the problems presented by Three Houses, even on Maddening NG, even on challenge runs, that don't need dodgetanks.

If I was going to propose a change to them, I think they need more enemies they don't function well against. Most other defensive shenanigans you can pull in this game have weaknesses. Defence-tanks are vulnerable to mages (and poison strike to a lesser extent). Vantage builds are vulnerable to things they can't kill (monsters, armours) or counter (siege weapons). You can work around those weaknesses in both cases, but the key is you have to work for them. Dodgetanks are weak to very, very little. The easiest way to give them a weakness would be to give certain enemy classes some sort of Hawkeye/Certain Blow skill. And/or perhaps you could change the existing breaker+ skills to ensure a hit regardless of stats (and add enemies with bowbreaker+ and fistbreaker+).

[lenticular]

7 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

So you don´t use flying classes, seeing as being in a flying class automatically translates into being a dodgetank, lest you be one of the slowest characters?

Typically, I don't stack avoid bonuses. So I will use flying classes and thier inate +10 avoid, but I won't then stack any further avoid on them with Aler Stance, Evasion ring, etc. Similarly, I'm happy to have my Dancer use Sword Avoid +20, but won't stack that with further avoid. Basically, I avoid having a character with high enough Avoid that I can happily throw them into the middle of as many enemies as I want without any fear of them dying.

7 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

Wrong. Class with the best stat spread in the game (Wyvern - citation needed), flying mobility and movimiento.

Do you honestly think I don't know that? Really? Come on.

For weapon skills, there are inherent benefits at pretty much every single level. There are prowess skills, combat arts, breaker skills, crit +10, faire, other miscelaneous skills like Close Counter, and the ability to wield better weapons. I wouldn't swear to it, but I believe that for every single weapon type, every time you level up its associated weapon skill, you gain something of use. It's not always great, but by and large, leveling up weapon skills is satisfying because every level matters.

Magic skills are similarly good. By and large, the + ranks grant the prowess-style abilities, and the non-plus ranks (D, C, B, and A) grant spells. Not everyone learns spells at every level, but the characters who you typically want to learn the magic skills will learn spells at most if not all levels. Again, levelling these up is satisfying because (almost) every level matters.

Authority is somewhat worse, but not terrible. Everyone at least learns the Authority Lv X abilities (which are terrible, but at least exist) and has at least one other ability learned at C authority, many characters have more abilities, and there are new battalions available at the non-plus ranks up to A.

The movement skills (riding, flying and armor), on the other hand, are pretty terrible. They all offer an ability at A+ and an ability at S+. Flying also has one at B, riding has one at C, and armor has one at both B and C. If you disallow the two Alert Stance skills, then that means that leveling up flying inately gives you nothing until S+, which is a pipe-dream in most cases. Every other skill in the game has a dual purpose: it makes you more powerful as you level it up, and it subsequently allows you to certify into new classes. In a world without Alert Stance, flying breaks that pattern. It exists purely for the purpose of certification. This means that a. the only levels of flying that mean anything at all are the ones that allow certification for your class(es) of choice, b. once you are into Wyvern Lord or Falcon Knight, further skill points earned in flying become completely meaningless and c. levelling up the flying skill feels very unsatisfying -- at least to me -- because there are long stretches where it does absolutely nothing.

Do you now understand the point that I was making?

8 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said:

In a game like 3H, whose selling point is in the sheer variety of tools you can use for combat, having one particular build stand out like that feels wrong, or at least contra the spirit of things.

I would agree with this. The problem isn't so much the strength as the fact that it is such a dominant strategy that -- if it is used -- it pretty much invalidates every other build.

8 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said:

I get where you're coming from, but I definitely don't feel a desire to make everyone dodge tanks because I know they work well. And I still enjoy coming up with other builds, even if they perform on the whole worse than a proper dodge tank might in the same position. Optimising is fun, but it's not as if I low-man every run just so I can maximise the potential of the few units I pick for that run and cheese the game that way.  

This is true. And it's not as if I immediately stopped playing the game or stopped using other builds after the first time I tried stacking Avoid. I still like the game a lot, and I still enjoy coming up with other builds and other approaches to things. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a little voice in the back of my mind always reminding me that dodge tanks are better. I said it makes things less exciting for me, and I stand by that, but it is worth noting that "less exciting" is not the same thing as "not exciting".

7 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Honestly, this is more of a series-wide issue than one innate to this game specifically. The GBA games in particular stand out for this.

I am, admitedly, much less familiar with the GBA games than I am with Three Houses so anyone please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that hasn't really been my experience with them. Instead of their being a single dominant class or build, it's mostly just that enemy quality is really low, so anyone with high enough level and a hand axe or javelin is automatically a god. If anything, I'd say that the other game in the series where this was the biggest issue was probably Radiant Dawn. Tellius double-earth supports are pretty busted, and Radiant Dawn lets you have more of them and have them faster than Path of Radiance.

7 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If I was going to propose a change to them, I think they need more enemies they don't function well against. Most other defensive shenanigans you can pull in this game have weaknesses. Defence-tanks are vulnerable to mages (and poison strike to a lesser extent). Vantage builds are vulnerable to things they can't kill (monsters, armours) or counter (siege weapons). You can work around those weaknesses in both cases, but the key is you have to work for them. Dodgetanks are weak to very, very little. The easiest way to give them a weakness would be to give certain enemy classes some sort of Hawkeye/Certain Blow skill. And/or perhaps you could change the existing breaker+ skills to ensure a hit regardless of stats (and add enemies with bowbreaker+ and fistbreaker+).

I really like these proposed changes. Letting the build continue to exist but with counters of this type does sound like the best of both worlds. At least for my tastes and preferences.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

12 hours ago, lenticular said:

As it stands, once you have a dodge tank up to the point when they are reliably not getting hit -- typically when you pick up Alert Stance+ -- you've basically won the game. There are ways to further optimise the build, more and less efficient ways to use it, but they only really matter for style points. The game is more or less over at that point, if you want it to be.

I disagree with this assertion. The game isn't won by merely surviving, but instead, by killing the right foes. The question we should be asking is "does dodgetanking save me turns in achieving map objectives?" And, "does it do so to a greater degree than other tools offered by the game?"

In Three Houses, the vast majority of maps are either "Rout" or "Defeat Commander(s)", while keeping certain units alive. There are exceptions, like the Ingrithea paralogue (essentially an "Ingrid seize" map), but they are few in number. So the question is, does dodgetanking save you turns in these types of maps.

For Rout maps, I'd say potentially, yes. If you have a dodgetank, you're able to put them in range of more foes than would be possible otherwise. From there, however, there are a few questions to ask: can you counter the foes? And when you do so, are you killing them? The first depends on what enemies you face - if you're only facing melee foes, then you can counter them with a melee weapon. But ranged foes can mess this strategy up, so the Retribution gambit is an option. Even then, however, the enemy may launch an offensive gambit - those are, by their very nature, impossible to counter.

Next up - are you killing? Again, it depends. On enemy-phase, you can't benefit from powerful skills like Fiendish Blow or Darting Blow, nor from combat arts. So the only way you're one-rounding is by broadly "outstatting" your opponents, which is a tough sell on Maddening. There is another way to one-round, but it's its own strategy: the Wrath/Vantage build. With the right skills and prep, you can leave the bad guys crying like an anime fan on prom night. But it's precarious, especially where monsters or offemsive gambits show up. You can do a "Wrath dodgetank", I suppose, but at that point, which half of the strategy do we call "overpowered"?

As for "Defeat Commander(s)" maps... sure, on Maddening, you can situationally leave your dodgetank in boss range, lure them out, and finish them off on EP. But if normal enemy stat bemchmarks are a concern, then bosses are a whole 'nother beast. It's possible to one-round them, yes, but you'll want every possible advantage: the right weapon, combat art, support, and skill setup. You may be one-rounding with Death Blow Swift Strikes, but not on enemy phase. You might be slinging two spells on player phase, but not without Darting blow. And of course, the boss could just pull out a gambit, or staggering blow. Put simply, bosskill strategies are almost always player-phase affairs, because player phase has far more tools to deal with them in short order.

Let's think about it this way: I could bring a dodgetank to Chapter 11... or I could bring someone with flying mobility (the two overlap, but play along). Which one of these is getting me to defeat Edelgard faster? A flier can essentially "skip" the enemies at either side of the map, and just go up the middle to thrash the boss. But a non-flying dodgetank will have to go around, where obnoxious enemies lurk. In this context, simply having flying mobility is more "broken" than being able to dodge every hit on enemy phase, because it's getting me the quicker clear.

It's not just flying mobility, though. It's other things that get you to the boss sooner. The Stride gambit. The Dance command. Repositional spells, like Rescue and Warp. Any one of those is doing more for me to secure a quick clear of "Defeat Commander" maps. Of these, only the Stride gambit has widely been called "broken" (perhaps because players take Warp, Rescue, and Dancing for granted at this point).

So, from an efficiency-minded perspective: no, I don't think dodgetanking is "broken". I do think it's a rather strong tool, and if this were an "Ironman" discussion, I'd be singing a different tune. But in the context of getting quick bosskills, it's less broken than Stride, Warp/Rescue, or Dancing. In the context of finishing rout maps quickly, it's much better, but less broken on its own than Wrath/Vantage techs and Retribution. The bottom line? Even if dodgetank strats save the player's units from dying, they don't clear the game in their own right. And a hundred turns spent in perfect safety is still twice as long as fifty turns on the brink of death.

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I am, admitedly, much less familiar with the GBA games than I am with Three Houses so anyone please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that hasn't really been my experience with them. Instead of their being a single dominant class or build, it's mostly just that enemy quality is really low, so anyone with high enough level and a hand axe or javelin is automatically a god.

I think @Shadow Mir is specifically remembering FE6 with that remark, as weapons have noticeably lower base hit overall, leading to thing like a Myrmidon (Rutger) being considered the best unit in the game. Even then, Rutger being a dodge tank was one of the smallest features that makes him great, his high accuracy in an otherwise low accuracy game (not to mention the +30 avoid that seize points tend to give bosses), higher enemy quality and kinda bad 1-2 range physical weapons that keep Paladin enemy phasing in check, extremely high crit rates in a game with bosses tough enough to need crits to take them down in a single round, a stat buff on the higher difficulty are more notable features of his that make him shine. Even in FE6 dodge tanking never reached TH levels, it was usually still a bit of a risk there.

 

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

If anything, I'd say that the other game in the series where this was the biggest issue was probably Radiant Dawn. Tellius double-earth supports are pretty busted, and Radiant Dawn lets you have more of them and have them faster than Path of Radiance.

Yeah the Tellius games was the other Dodge-tank heavy games that come to mind, although there are others, they tend to be a bit more situational. Genealogy of the Holy War for instance, has the legendary wind tome Holsety (or is Forsetti the translation currently in vogue, I legit can't remember), and legendary sword Balmung both give absurd speed bonuses that turn their wielders into dodge tanks. I could see an argument for it in Birthright too thanks to things like Ryoma, and the pairup meter blocking extra hits to increase reliability slightly (although the Fates RN system using 1 RN below 50% does mitigate dodge-tanking shenanigans a bit).

 

Overall, I think dodge-tanking is too good in Three Houses, but a big part of the problem is with the nature of dodge tanking itself. It is either useless (because you can't hit avoid rates high enough to be reliable, see the DS games for a great example of this), or too good (as you never take any damage), with little in between. It is possible to hit dodge rates above enemy hit rates, which makes it broken in Three Houses.

8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

 

If I was going to propose a change to them, I think they need more enemies they don't function well against. Most other defensive shenanigans you can pull in this game have weaknesses. Defence-tanks are vulnerable to mages (and poison strike to a lesser extent). Vantage builds are vulnerable to things they can't kill (monsters, armours) or counter (siege weapons). You can work around those weaknesses in both cases, but the key is you have to work for them. Dodgetanks are weak to very, very little. The easiest way to give them a weakness would be to give certain enemy classes some sort of Hawkeye/Certain Blow skill. And/or perhaps you could change the existing breaker+ skills to ensure a hit regardless of stats (and add enemies with bowbreaker+ and fistbreaker+).

This suggestion is the one that makes the most sense for fixing the innate problem with dodge-tanking, having an enemy type they specifically have to play around. The solution I though up was a little different, but basically the same, is just have one weapon type (like bows, or daggers, or something new) that always has comically high hit (like in the 120-150 base hit on the weapon), as it is similar to the way I found that best deals with the enemy dodge tanks you see in Vestaria Saga (using some of the 120 hit brave profs weapons in that game...)

 

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

I disagree with this assertion. The game isn't won by merely surviving, but instead, by killing the right foes. The question we should be asking is "does dodgetanking save me turns in achieving map objectives?" And, "does it do so to a greater degree than other tools offered by the game?"

I disagree with this assertion, as you have moved the goal posts significantly. Does this lower turn count is a very different question than the one @lenticular is asking in the comment you quote, which put simply is does dodge-tanking make your victory more likely. There is almost always a tradeoff of speed versus reliability, and while you are looking at speed, Lenticular is clearly looking at reliability. With proper dodge-tanking your units are no longer hit, and thus can not die, so a vast majority of your lose-states are removed.

 

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

So, from an efficiency-minded perspective: no, I don't think dodgetanking is "broken".

The point of an efficiency-minded perspective is to balance speed and reliability, and you have done a lot to ignore the staggering reliability that dodge-tanking brings to the table, and focused a lot on speed (and even in that area, it has some benefits to it).

 

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

The bottom line? Even if dodgetank strats save the player's units from dying, they don't clear the game in their own right. And a hundred turns spent in perfect safety is still twice as long as fifty turns on the brink of death.

And if it is 50 turns in which you have a 2% chance of losing every turn means you will on average have to attempt the map roughly 3 times before you succeed. If that chance of failure gets as high as a mere 5% you are looking at about 13 tries on average for that 50 turn. That 100 turns of safety you only have to do once. Reliability is a good thing from an efficiency perspective, and I think you have focused far too much on the speed aspect of it.

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

17 hours ago, lenticular said:

But there's also the subjective element where coming up with other builds just feels less exciting when I know full well that there's another build I could be running that is both easier to build and more effective.

I don't really have this experience. Picking an un-optimized, untested build and finding that it's "good enough" for Maddening is kind of exciting to me. Presumably exciting to anybody that's ever posted "lol I'm going to build this unit this way when he has a bane in the associated skills". It's not just self-handicapping, it's an experiment. Is the build strong enough to support the unit running it? Do some Stress Tests. Do challenge runs. Ban options and methods that you think would over-centralize your run. I thought Gauntlets were the most broken thing in Three Houses, and now I'm testing that theory for real. It's been an eye opening experience. 

As for the question, not really. Sure you can avoid damage but can you kill things? Just how early does an avoid build come together anyway? Enemies are packing 100+ hit as early as chapter 1. You think the +20 avoid thickets will save you from the chapter 2 thieves? What if I told you Dedue could ORKO things without Death Blow AND heal himself up for free with an infinite use combat art as early as chapter 5, and being 2-3 points behind his average strength by level 10? Combine that with his earlier game tanking and the dude's a hero on maps where it matters most. THAT is "broken" to me, and I love it. Sure you've got sword avo +20, but wouldn't you rather field a dancer? Plus there's just extremely few batallions with good avoid bonuses. Gautier Knights (+20), Jeralt's Mercenaries (+15), that's all you get before the time skip right? And neither are compatible with Pegasus/Falco knights with their innate Avoid +10 (classes that are also gender locked). Once you're past Reunion at Dawn, what super hard maps are even left? The SS finale, and the paralogues with monster superbosses, that's it. Everything else is a victory lap with the builds you made. And Reunion at Dawn, man, no adjutants sucks. Using adjutants to boost your avoid is neat, but better than the innate effects of simply having a guard adjutant? No way. Guaranteed miracle on double attacks would be way more valuable on that map, regardless of build or stat distribution. Spending adjutant slots on your fliers is a considerable hit to the strength of your other front liners who could equip guard adjutants instead.

I think some other, less investment builds are at least as strong by the same late game point you would have gotten Alert Stance+. Alois joins your team ready to certify as a War Master, and shares the unique honor of being one of only two units in the game that will avoid being doubled on either Phase once he has quick riposte. And any other grappler doesn't have to worry about counterattacks on player phase to begin with, because Death Blow puts you in ORKO range long before you pick up FIF. You've got every potential Sniper who is a long ranged delete button who can sit back and work on S+ bows as their final upgrade - they're easier to keep out of trouble since they're that many steps away from the action. Batallion Wrath is well documented low investment enemy phase carnage. You've got the E Rank Rapier+ which is practically the best weapon in the game that any unit can use and is as cheap as an iron sword to forge/repair. There's the Thyrsus that makes combat mages not terrible. And probably a ton of DLC stuff that changed the landscape of the metagame too. The Cavalier/Paladin line was determined useless until somebody said "well what about Swift Strikes?". Siege tomes were considered useless until I asked in the Questions thread "Hey, am i crazy, or do these spells grant you linked attack bonuses when you equip them?". Play in weird ways and you see how versatile the game really is. 

[haarhaarhaar]

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

This is true. And it's not as if I immediately stopped playing the game or stopped using other builds after the first time I tried stacking Avoid. I still like the game a lot, and I still enjoy coming up with other builds and other approaches to things. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a little voice in the back of my mind always reminding me that dodge tanks are better. I said it makes things less exciting for me, and I stand by that, but it is worth noting that "less exciting" is not the same thing as "not exciting".

Yeah I can completely understand that, even if I don't feel the same.

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

I disagree with this assertion. The game isn't won by merely surviving, but instead, by killing the right foes. The question we should be asking is "does dodgetanking save me turns in achieving map objectives?" And, "does it do so to a greater degree than other tools offered by the game?"

I took @lenticular's point to be that a dodge tank (as in, even just one) removes a lot of the jeopardy from combat. As a result, the stakes of an encounter are lowered, because you know your dodge tank can likely deal with it, and the importance of building your other characters well is lowered, because they won't often need to do more than some solid chip (I'm assuming the dodge tank will at least deal some damage on enemy phase). You can say this for a couple of other builds, but those often require more investment and maintenance, so it feels less like you're cheapening the game.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

15 hours ago, lenticular said:

It's not always great, but by and large, leveling up weapon skills is satisfying because every level matters.

Again, levelling these up is satisfying because (almost) every level matters.

c. levelling up the flying skill feels very unsatisfying -- at least to me -- because there are long stretches where it does absolutely nothing.

Yeah, I´mma drop this here. This isn´t something I find comprehensible and I´m also not here to argue your satisfaction with something.

Few points tho.

If I disallow AS/AS+, Flying still certifies my units into the classes with the best stat spread (citation needed) and the highest possible combinations of mobility; a flier without AS is still a flier and with that quite a bit ahead of any other class by conventional FE wisdom. Of course, disallowing a things primary function or even only a part of it would make it significantly worse - you can also disallow swords ability to hit the enemy and evaluate them based on that. 

Yeah, faire skills, that any class past lvl 20 has by default or by getting an S+ Rank of all things, breaker skills which are situational but useful against those really dodgy enemies, crit+10??? CC and weapons fair enough but s´far as I´m aware the meta is Training, Iron, Steel and Relic for CA and Brave/Silver when you swim in money/materials which makes these ranks E/D/B.

Would you rather have Pegasus Knight/Cavalier Leonie (or any unit) with the required ranks and nothing else beyond innate skills or any other lvl10 class but with the required ranks and added skills such as prowesses? The same ofc extends to lvl 20/30.

 

 

Edit: If only there´d ever been a class specifically designed to kill fliers. Like a flier with a bow. Or with a skill to increase hit against fliers. But alas.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Imuabicus

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

13 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I disagree with this assertion, as you have moved the goal posts significantly. Does this lower turn count is a very different question than the one @lenticular is asking in the comment you quote, which put simply is does dodge-tanking make your victory more likely. There is almost always a tradeoff of speed versus reliability, and while you are looking at speed, Lenticular is clearly looking at reliability. With proper dodge-tanking your units are no longer hit, and thus can not die, so a vast majority of your lose-states are removed.

And I disagree with your assertion that I have somehow "moved the goal posts". @lenticular's promt was "are dodge tanks too good?" The matter of what makes a unit or build "good" depends upon the metric by which you view them. I selected an "efficiency" metric, and found dodgetanking to be less "broken" than other widely-accepted mechanics toward this end.

13 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

And if it is 50 turns in which you have a 2% chance of losing every turn means you will on average have to attempt the map roughly 3 times before you succeed. If that chance of failure gets as high as a mere 5% you are looking at about 13 tries on average for that 50 turn. That 100 turns of safety you only have to do once. Reliability is a good thing from an efficiency perspective, and I think you have focused far too much on the speed aspect of it.

This was a poor rhetorical flourish on my part. It's absolutely possible to walk into most "defeat commander(s)" maps with a strategy that comfortably secures a clear within the first few turns. I usually don't hold myself to this demand, and am willing to gamble on, say, 80+ Hit brave combat arts. But other players, who are better than I, can definitely increase those odds.

Also, I wasn't referring to 50 or 100 turns in one map, but over a multi-chapter stretch of a playthrough. So "something going wrong" just means turnwheeling to reset a turn or two, not overwriting hours of work. And, funnily enough, the last thing that "went wrong" for me was not rushing enough. I let reinforcements arrive on chapter 19 VW, and they slaughtered half my northern force. But I turned the wheel back and played more aggressively, to secure a 3-turn clear.

6 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said:

I took @lenticular's point to be that a dodge tank (as in, even just one) removes a lot of the jeopardy from combat. As a result, the stakes of an encounter are lowered, because you know your dodge tank can likely deal with it, and the importance of building your other characters well is lowered, because they won't often need to do more than some solid chip (I'm assuming the dodge tank will at least deal some damage on enemy phase). You can say this for a couple of other builds, but those often require more investment and maintenance, so it feels less like you're cheapening the game.

Well, I broadly agree with the notion that dodgetanking trivializes a round of combat... but so do Wrath/Vantage strats, and the Impregnable Wall gambit. What I don't agree with is the idea that this trivializes the game as a whole. The question is, am I advancing toward the map's win condition? And, how quickly and reliably am I doing so? Dodgetanking can be useful in this respect, but not as much as many other tools that I've brought up.

9 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

As for the question, not really. Sure you can avoid damage but can you kill things?

Basically the crux of what I'm trying to say, haha. Dodgetanking doesn't really help with bosskills. And while it's better on Rout maps, you still need something extra (Wrath? Defiant Crit?) to finish off most foes on EP. A dodgetank can be a great "lure" unit, to draw in foes that you then finish off on the next player phase. But so can a defensive tank, or any unit who's been Impregnable Wall'd.

[Dark Holy Elf]

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

I disagree with this assertion. The game isn't won by merely surviving, but instead, by killing the right foes. The question we should be asking is "does dodgetanking save me turns in achieving map objectives?" And, "does it do so to a greater degree than other tools offered by the game?"

 

But if your survival is guaranteed, then so is your killing of the right foes; it's only a matter of time. If you have a unit who can survive anything, the only ways to lose are as follows:

• A required deploy is killed. This is avoidable if you really want by making your required deploy a dodgetank too, but in practice it is not remotely necessary, because it's easy to keep  individual units safe in this game, especially since you have an invincible unit to distract foes with. Perhaps the single battle where it's the biggest risk is with Jeralt in Chapter 9, but "deploy a couple units with Physic, keep them out of harm's way" solves that problem at worst.
• Another, unusual loss condition is reached, such as enemies seizing a certain location. 3H hardly ever does this, and putting your dodgetank between enemies and said location tends to eliminate it as well.
• The battle times out. On most battles the limit is 100 turns, which no reasonable setup is going to struggle with.

That's it. Avoid those, and you win. You will kill all the required enemies, the question is not "if", but "when". In theory a foe could exist who regenerates and thus require offence, but in practice the only regenerating foe in the game of note is perhaps most easily dealt with by high evasion, since their accuracy is a relative weak point compared to their high atk, crit, and AS (talking about the Azure Moon final boss here). In theory the game could also spam reinforcements at you at a high rate on a rout map to force you to have high offence, but again the game does not actually do this.

I have played this game under a wide variety of challenges which reduce your offence. By and large this alone does not make the game significantly harder. Mages have relatively poor offence, but I would consider mages-only the easiest of the "challenge" runs I have done, because you keep all your utility and engage with enemies on your own terms, which is more important. Any challenge run which allows unfettered dodgetanking is more or less going to be simple as soon as you get it online. If you have someone with incredibly high levels of evasion, I'm just not sure what in the game is going to actually challenge you.

The question "does it save me turns" is almost irrelevant. We are not talking about LTCs or speedruns here, just about clearing the game. It doesn't matter whether we kill that boss on turn 1 or turn 10 as long as we're doing it safely and easily.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Dark Holy Elf

[haarhaarhaar]

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Well, I broadly agree with the notion that dodgetanking trivializes a round of combat... but so do Wrath/Vantage strats, and the Impregnable Wall gambit. What I don't agree with is the idea that this trivializes the game as a whole. The question is, am I advancing toward the map's win condition? And, how quickly and reliably am I doing so? Dodgetanking can be useful in this respect, but not as much as many other tools that I've brought up.

But those strats have greater limitations (i.e. who can use it, how often, under what conditions and so on). The conditions for dodge tanking are less severe than these, and as a result it is more flexible. @Dark Holy Elf's post above explains more fluently than I could why dodge tanking really does contribute to trivialising maps (and by extension, the game from that point on). I think describing dodge tanking's benefits solely as a lure, without acknowledging how it impacts your army/strategy as a whole, undersells what the build does for you.

[SnowFire]

Dodgetanking is too good, yeah.  I don't think it stands out particularly on Hard difficulty where lots of strategies are equally good, but Maddening stat-inflation barely touches dodgetank strats while crimping various other strategies.  THAT SAID I don't think this problem is game-breakingly bad or anything.  It's not nearly as obviously busted as, say, "make an uber overlevel FE7 character and give them a Javelin".  One of the notable aspects about the Fire Emblem series compared to others is that it tries to keep the combat "comprehensible" - minimize the amount of crazy complicated calculations going on behind the scenes, and keep things reasonably simple.  There's only so many knobs available that don't start making combat opaque and causing some players to disconnect even attempting to guess how much damage their characters do / take.  The game lets your evade stat get a little too high, oh well, use it if you want and don't use it if you want to keep some tension.

I'll just say that I agree with Elf's suggestion on how to "fix" the issue if you really, really wanted to - similar to Awakening Lunatic, hand out Hawkeye+ skills to some enemies that give them guaranteed hits.  Maybe not randomly like Awakening does, but specifically to low-attack power enemies, to create a threat that Defense-stacking tanks hardcounter and evade-stacking squishes get hard-countered by.  (Alternatively, change the archer AI to not always fire from the longest possible distance, and hand out Hit+20 to enemy Snipers / Bow Knights.) 

The larger patch would be to just make evade-stacking harder...  rework Alert Stance+ (the biggest offender) to be something like "+15 Evade and +15 Hit" rather than "+30 Evade", and make Battalion evade boosts smaller (can give compensatory buffs elsewhere).  You'd still be able to make some very dodgy units but maybe have to spend more divine pulses on lucky hits that get past if enemies have 35 Hit (=~25%) rather than 20 Hit (=~8%).

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

4 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

The question "does it save me turns" is almost irrelevant. We are not talking about LTCs or speedruns here, just about clearing the game. It doesn't matter whether we kill that boss on turn 1 or turn 10 as long as we're doing it safely and easily.

I suppose this all boils down to your precise objective, and standard for what makes something "good" or "bad". I'm using an efficiency metric, in which it absolutely matters whether we kill the boss on turn 1 or turn 10. If you're judging it by a different metric (i.e. pure reliability and survivability), then my arguments aren't likely to convince you.

I hinted at this earlier with my "Ironman" note - namely, that I think a dodgetank build is closer to being "broken" in the context of an Ironman playthrough. Especially when that build is on a "game over" character, like Teach or your Lord. In this context, the priority is not "fulfill the victory condition ASAP", but "avoid Game Over conditions at all costs". In that sense, if I get my units to a point where they cannot be touched, then I suppose the game is well and truly trivialized. 

But in a more conventional playthrough, I've gotten to the point of thinking that even Maddening NG (with DLC) isn't that tough to beat, outside of the few widely recognized "problem" chapters. There are just so many useful tools that the player has at their disposal, that they can overcome the stat margins and enemy skills. In this context, I view "quick clear" strategies as more valuable than "sure survival" strategies. If I'm only engaging a handful of enemies (at most), then being able to dodge a hypothetical horde doesn't matter. What matters is being able to reach, and defeat, the foes that sit between my army and the victory condition.

ADDENDUM: One other context in which I would absolutely go for a "dodgetank" build is a Solo run. In that context, I don't have the Stride support, repositional spells, Dances, or even Rallies that help enable quick bosskill clears. Ergo, the ability of my Solo-ing unit to survive throngs of enemies between themselves and the boss becomes quite important. And as @haarhaarhaar mentioned, the dodgetank enjoys a self-sufficiency seen in very few other builds. That's not how I generally play the game, so I didn't consider it in my general argument, but I think it merits a mention as the overwhelmingly ideal "solo" build.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Shanty Pete's 1st Mate
Addendum.

[Dark Holy Elf]

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

I suppose this all boils down to your precise objective, and standard for what makes something "good" or "bad". I'm using an efficiency metric, in which it absolutely matters whether we kill the boss on turn 1 or turn 10. If you're judging it by a different metric (i.e. pure reliability and survivability), then my arguments aren't likely to convince you.

Yeah, you clearly view fewer turns as valuable for its own sake, which is an arbitrary constraint you have placed. To be fair, I place my own arbitrary constraints on things; to me it is valuable to be able to win without doing lots of repetitive actions I would consider grinding. Still others might prefer to place value on having the most powerful possible team at the game's end (e.g. an entire party of units at Level 50+ with capped stats); this is how you get people who would rate Nino above Marcus, for instance (something I find quite alien).

At the end of the day the only thing we can all agree upon is that it's good to win. While I personally agree with you that I no longer find Maddening that tough to beat, I'm keenly aware that not everyone feels this way, so being able to recommend tools that make the game easier to win is therefore the most valuable thing in these discussions, and the only place where we can hopefully all agree on what's useful. A good dodgetank is one of the builds I would recommend most highly for this, whereas "check out this weird combination of Warp/Stride/Dance of the Goddess that lets you beat this fight quickly" does not rate as highly to me, because (a) it can't help you with Chapter 13, (b) it doesn't help nearly as much for Rout maps, and (c) it tends to ultimately be a rather specific strategy which can be hard to replicate unless you have a lot of the correct parts for it.

For what it's worth, I also think you're underrating dodgetanking's ability to help you kill things. Even if your goal is to rout a map as quickly as possible, dodgetanking is one of the easiest ways to do it. Battalion Wrath is often mentioned, but unelss your name is Dimitri, dodgetanking is the best way to protect both your EP unit themself and their battalion's durability (which is why Claude and Petra are the first characters named for this strategy). And notably, if you're only going to recommend one of B-Wrath or dodgetanking, it's pretty clear that dodgetanking is the more valuable part. Excluding Dimitri, B-Wrath without dodgetanking requires some extremely finnicky shenanigans with Vantage (which requires its own separate threshold to maintain), as well as getting down to Vantage HP range without hurting your battalion; doable, but a sticky situation at best. Whereas dodgetanking without B-Wrath is "I win, but a bit slower".

[lenticular]

20 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I think @Shadow Mir is specifically remembering FE6 with that remark, as weapons have noticeably lower base hit overall, leading to thing like a Myrmidon (Rutger) being considered the best unit in the game. Even then, Rutger being a dodge tank was one of the smallest features that makes him great, his high accuracy in an otherwise low accuracy game (not to mention the +30 avoid that seize points tend to give bosses), higher enemy quality and kinda bad 1-2 range physical weapons that keep Paladin enemy phasing in check, extremely high crit rates in a game with bosses tough enough to need crits to take them down in a single round, a stat buff on the higher difficulty are more notable features of his that make him shine. Even in FE6 dodge tanking never reached TH levels, it was usually still a bit of a risk there.

Ahhh, fair enough. I haven't played BiBl (or any of the other Japan-exclusive titles), so had no idea about that. Thanks for letting me know.

6 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Another, unusual loss condition is reached, such as enemies seizing a certain location. 3H hardly ever does this, and putting your dodgetank between enemies and said location tends to eliminate it as well.

This speaks of another way that dodge tanks could potentially be held in check in hypothetical future games that allow avoid stacking. Sprinkling in just a few chapters with defend objectives (or similar) would effectively nerf any single overpowered build, just by virtue of forcing you to train up multiple units.

6 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

That's it. Avoid those, and you win. You will kill all the required enemies, the question is not "if", but "when". In theory a foe could exist who regenerates and thus require offence, but in practice the only regenerating foe in the game of note is perhaps most easily dealt with by high evasion, since their accuracy is a relative weak point compared to their high atk, crit, and AS (talking about the Azure Moon final boss here). In theory the game could also spam reinforcements at you at a high rate on a rout map to force you to have high offence, but again the game does not actually do this.

I have played this game under a wide variety of challenges which reduce your offence. By and large this alone does not make the game significantly harder. Mages have relatively poor offence, but I would consider mages-only the easiest of the "challenge" runs I have done, because you keep all your utility and engage with enemies on your own terms, which is more important. Any challenge run which allows unfettered dodgetanking is more or less going to be simple as soon as you get it online. If you have someone with incredibly high levels of evasion, I'm just not sure what in the game is going to actually challenge you.

The question "does it save me turns" is almost irrelevant. We are not talking about LTCs or speedruns here, just about clearing the game. It doesn't matter whether we kill that boss on turn 1 or turn 10 as long as we're doing it safely and easily.

I agree with all of this, but want to add an additional point. If we're looking at real time taken as opposed to number of in-game turns, I find that dodge tank strats are usually faster, by virtue of being so incredibly brainless. Let's say there's a hypothetical map thatwould take me 30 turns to beat with a dodge tank but only 3 turns to beat with more conventional strategies. Those 3 turns will probably involve thinking through the exact tactics I'm using and the order of operations for my turns, changing my mind, doing damage calculations, double checking I wasn't leaving my squishies in danger, acually executing everything I'm trying to do, and so on. Whereas the 30 turns with a dodge will mostly involve hitting end turn and then skipping enemy phase. It wouldn't be at all unusual for the 3 turn victory to take over half an hour, but the 30 turn victory to be done in under 10 minutes.

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

I suppose this all boils down to your precise objective, and standard for what makes something "good" or "bad". I'm using an efficiency metric, in which it absolutely matters whether we kill the boss on turn 1 or turn 10. If you're judging it by a different metric (i.e. pure reliability and survivability), then my arguments aren't likely to convince you.

I would agree that dodge tanks probably aren't too overpowered under this metric. I think they're still very good, but not so far and away above everything else that I would consider them too good. This isn't a metric that I personally tend to care about most of the time, but if it's something that's important to you then I can't fault your argument. Which makes me wonder, would it be beneficial for Fire Emblem to try to incentivise people to care more about this sort of thing? It's been tried in the past (eg, ratings, awards) but the impression that I get is that most people just ignore these. Even so, having them come back would probably be nice, as they're very easy to ignore for people who don't care about them.

3 hours ago, SnowFire said:

One of the notable aspects about the Fire Emblem series compared to others is that it tries to keep the combat "comprehensible" - minimize the amount of crazy complicated calculations going on behind the scenes, and keep things reasonably simple.  There's only so many knobs available that don't start making combat opaque and causing some players to disconnect even attempting to guess how much damage their characters do / take.  The game lets your evade stat get a little too high, oh well, use it if you want and don't use it if you want to keep some tension.

I really like this point, and it makes me think about things in a different way. If the existence of occasional over-powered builds is the price we have to pay for an easily comprehensible combat system, then yeah, it's definitely one that I'm willing to pay. I also think that we actually know approximately where the line is, beyond which people will start to disconnect: it's Fates. While a lot of people love the combat mechanics in Fates, for people who don't care for it, one of the most common complaints is that there's just too much going on and calculating combat becomes a chore. I think it's a pretty safe bet that if they turned up the complications even beyond what Fates does that the ratio of fans to critics would start to look less favourable.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I would agree that dodge tanks probably aren't too overpowered under this metric. I think they're still very good, but not so far and away above everything else that I would consider them too good. This isn't a metric that I personally tend to care about most of the time, but if it's something that's important to you then I can't fault your argument. Which makes me wonder, would it be beneficial for Fire Emblem to try to incentivise people to care more about this sort of thing? It's been tried in the past (eg, ratings, awards) but the impression that I get is that most people just ignore these. Even so, having them come back would probably be nice, as they're very easy to ignore for people who don't care about them.

I would absolutely like to see a Ranking system make a return. Definitely with Survival and Turncount rankings, but possibly also EXP, Combat, and Funds. Maybe a "Completeness" ranking, that asks whether you recruited all possible units and went to every paralogue. They could even incorporate the Turnwheel, or Pulse, or whatever future substitute exists, into it. Have a rating that goes down when you use it, so players who can beat the map without a rewind get recognized for it.

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

agree with all of this, but want to add an additional point. If we're looking at real time taken as opposed to number of in-game turns, I find that dodge tank strats are usually faster, by virtue of being so incredibly brainless. Let's say there's a hypothetical map thatwould take me 30 turns to beat with a dodge tank but only 3 turns to beat with more conventional strategies. Those 3 turns will probably involve thinking through the exact tactics I'm using and the order of operations for my turns, changing my mind, doing damage calculations, double checking I wasn't leaving my squishies in danger, acually executing everything I'm trying to do, and so on. Whereas the 30 turns with a dodge will mostly involve hitting end turn and then skipping enemy phase. It wouldn't be at all unusual for the 3 turn victory to take over half an hour, but the 30 turn victory to be done in under 10 minutes.

Solid point as well. Even when I finish a map in just a few turns, there can be close to an hour of prep that goes into it. With a dodgetank strategy, I probably wouldn't need much outside of ensuring that all the right things are on the star unit.

I do wonder whether, for speedrunning, dodgetanking would be the optimal approach. Not a lot of thought goes into it, sure. But people who are experts at rapid menu navigation may be able to put all the pieces for a low-turn clear together in less time than it would take to just deal with swarms of enemies. I could see this going either way.

Oh, and thanks for doing this thread! It's been a fun discussion.

3 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

At the end of the day the only thing we can all agree upon is that it's good to win. While I personally agree with you that I no longer find Maddening that tough to beat, I'm keenly aware that not everyone feels this way, so being able to recommend tools that make the game easier to win is therefore the most valuable thing in these discussions, and the only place where we can hopefully all agree on what's useful. A good dodgetank is one of the builds I would recommend most highly for this, whereas "check out this weird combination of Warp/Stride/Dance of the Goddess that lets you beat this fight quickly" does not rate as highly to me, because (a) it can't help you with Chapter 13, (b) it doesn't help nearly as much for Rout maps, and (c) it tends to ultimately be a rather specific strategy which can be hard to replicate unless you have a lot of the correct parts for it.

I do agree that, in terms of recommending strategies to players who are having trouble even beating Maddening, recommending "train in Flight, get Alert Stance+, and stack evasion" is a lot easier to follow than "inventory all the tools at your disposal, and get ready to count squares." And either one, if followed, would help the player overcome the hurdle of simply completing the game (a solid achievement in its own right). So for that audience, "dodgetank" is a better recommendation. I don't know if that makes it a "better strategy", but it is an "easier effective strategy", and that counts for something. 

Chapter 13 is a perennially tough nut to crack. It's a "Defeat Commander" map, so in theory, just getting one unit to deliver the bosskill will finish it... except that Pallardó had to be an absolute jackass about it. Plus, you probably don't want to miss the treasure chests, including the Axe of Ukonvasara... and you can't even prep for this map independently of the last one. So all things told, this is likely one of the maps where dodgetanking is the best way to handle it. If I can get Dimitri to cross the magical line, then all his childhood buddies will show up... and it's a lot safer for him to reach that point if the enemy can't touch him. This is a map that feels very "survive first, win second", so I'll give dodgetanking this one. And if it's the best strategy for (arguably) the hardest chapter, does that outweigh it being not-as-optimal for later, easier chapters? ...Perhaps.

Still not as satisfying as opening every chest and killing Edelgard on turn 1 of VW 20, though. And if I'm not playing to stunt on the enemy characters with overpowered gimmicks that trivialize the map design, then what am I even doing here?

[Dark Holy Elf]

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

I would absolutely like to see a Ranking system make a return. Definitely with Survival and Turncount rankings, but possibly also EXP, Combat, and Funds. Maybe a "Completeness" ranking, that asks whether you recruited all possible units and went to every paralogue. They could even incorporate the Turnwheel, or Pulse, or whatever future substitute exists, into it. Have a rating that goes down when you use it, so players who can beat the map without a rewind get recognized for it.

 

Same! It's a bit frustrating to me that they haven't iterated on the ranking system. Blazing Blade's certainly has some warts (the weird interaction with the Silver Card, the buggy Hector Mode requirements) but I think it's a neat idea as an in-game challenge. They need to be balanced well (like it's the least fun thing in the world when Blazing's Hard Modes reward dragging out Victory or Death for as long as Tactics allows to farm reinforcements) but I have faith that it could be done, even if it took several games of iteration to do it.

One thing I like about ranking systems as opposed to pure LTC is that it sets a "good enough" speed. I'm not personally that interested in finding puzzly solutions to 1-turn maps, but I do like incentivizing strategies that aren't slow and grindy, and both the Tactics rank of Binding/Blazing and the bonus exp requirements of Tellius set a good speed for that, IMO. (Blitzkrieg in Echoes as well?)

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

Chapter 13 is a perennially tough nut to crack. It's a "Defeat Commander" map, so in theory, just getting one unit to deliver the bosskill will finish it... except that Pallardó had to be an absolute jackass about it. Plus, you probably don't want to miss the treasure chests, including the Axe of Ukonvasara... and you can't even prep for this map independently of the last one.

Part of the problem is the map straight-up denies you some of the usual map-skipping tools; you have nobody with Rescue, and the only units with Warp spawn on the east side of the map. Also there are two commanders to beat, instead of one (generally speaking I liked 3H's tendency to have multiple commanders, although Chapter 13's one of the more nonsensical ones storywise), so "just use stride on Claude[VW] or flying Byleth[SS]" isn't quite as easy as usual... even harder on AM where Dimitri's battalion is locked and using stride on him isn't going to get you to the boss.

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

recommending "train in Flight, get Alert Stance+, and stack evasion" is a lot easier to follow than "inventory all the tools at your disposal, and get ready to count squares."

Pretty much. It's also more flexible with different player preferences; if someone responds to my strategy to warp to the boss with "why would I use Lysithea, she was squishy and kept dying" then the strategy goes down in flames (at least for maps where the boss is very far away). Though I suppose to some extent dodgetanking is vulnerable to a similar "why would I train a flier, I think fantasy beasts are dumb".

[Zapp Branniglenn]

My question went unnoticed so I'll ask again. How early does an avoid build really come together? Most of the hardest maps on Maddening are pre-time skip, so it's a pretty vital part of the equation I haven't seen explored in all these writeups on Avoid stacking. If dodge tanking is only notable near the end of the game, at the same point or later than other finished builds, then can it really be said to be "too good" instead of just "an option"?

• The earliest you're fighting enemies with 100+ hit is Chapter 1, so you need a lot of avoid before 2RN finally swings over to the player's favor. Sure a lot of pre-time skip maps have +30/40 forest tiles, but the enemy you're luring in there will typically benefit from the same terrain bonus, and you're struggling as much as they are to hit them
  • I was piling on Fading Blows from the thicket of Chapter 2 for a combined +50 avoid, but the enemy maintained at least 50 hit on me. Good for potentially avoiding a swing, but you can't feasibly give all your units D in Brawling so early in the game. Not with so many other pressing benchmarks certain units want by that map. The other weapon types do not get Fading Blow, and are hefty enough that your avoid will be further penalized along with your AS.
• The best avoid batallions in pre-time skip are the Gautier Knights (+20+), and Jeralts Mercenaries (+15). Both of these are incompatible with fliers, so you can't combine them with the +10 innate avoid of Pegasus knights. And the later flier batallions only offer up to 10 with the lone exception of Claude's Immortal Corps offering 15. That's another post time skip tool btw.
• Evasion rings are a late game acquisition (without the DLC renown shop which lets you grab one at the cost of two divine pulses or any other goodies you might be looking to acquire). It is technically possible to steal an evasion ring off of Claude in Chapter 7 (obviously not possible if you're playing Golden Deer), but to pull off that Steal, you need a thief with 23 base speed, factoring the +2 you get from being in the Thief class. Without meticulous growing and application of speed boosters on a fast unit who did not get speed screwed, Only Catherine would feasibly have that much speed by that point of the game on Maddening, and she cannot be deployed in that map.
  • Although come to think of it, Claude only has General, not Commander, so Seal Speed will work on him, bringing his speed down by 6 if you have Ferdinand or Hilda on your roster. Or perhaps have Ignatz or Annette with Rally speed for an extra 4, it becomes more manageable. Imagine going through all this long term planning just to have Edelgard go on a rampage and kill Claude before you get to him. Nearly happened on my last run before I strided up to intercept her.
    • The next earliest evasion ring is at the last turn of Reunion at Dawn, but there's another annoying caveat. It is supposed to spawn on a thief accompanying Pallardo when he respawns. But if they respawn in the wrong direction, a programming error gives that thief a 1000G bullion in its place. If you want to reroll the dice on Pallardo spawning in the correct position (North, with the map's initial orientation), you have to reload a save and replay the entire map. Can't imagine why players wouldn't want to go through that map again. The next ring is guaranteed on all routes in chapter 15, via Anna's secret shop. That's pretty gosh darned late. Even the Speed Ring (granting just 2 avoid) is as late as chapter 10.
• Alert Stance at B is certainly attainable by the time skip but grants you nothing along the way. By pushing for it, that unit is certainly going into the Flyer line of classes, with no potential for any other Advanced Class in their early level 20s, and an iffy time getting into several level 10 classes. ideally, you would wait until chapter 5 for the Saint Statue bonus before pushing for ranks in flying. +2 on every tutor, and +2 on every round of combat as a Pegasus knight if you're a woman are huge bonuses to consider.
• Maddening enemies have higher charm than you (excepting Byleth and usually the Lord), and they'll make use of it once you start sitting in forests. Once gambitted, a dodge tank's death is typically assured if they are still surrounded. Even if you win the charm trade against enemies, they'll still go for it two or three tries at a time, and you can't dodge 30s forever, one of them is gonna hit you. Tea time helps with this conundrum, but activity points are of good value in the early game, and you need to stick with it consistently to bring a non-lord up to speed on their Charm. Again, this is an area where post-time skip is more relevant, as by that point you are generally running out of things to spend activity points on.
• Adjutant slots are not unlimited. By giving a flier an adjutant, that's one less guard adjutant for your frontliners that certainly get more out of it. Reduced damage and guaranteed survival on doubles, on top of the hit/avoid boost? Better be worth it to give that up. To say nothing of Special Ally bonuses that are easier to coordinate when the special, recruited ally doesn't require the levels/ranks to class into a Wyvern Rider.
  • Thankfully though I'll offer that adjutant slots come reasonably early. In my current run, I got my first slot just in time for Chapter 4's main mission. And the second slot I believe I got in chapter 6. Both of these were before I could recruit several extra units eligible for the Brawler/Armored knight classes, so the guard adjutant meta is not typically pertinent by this point of the game.
    • But the terrifying Reunion at Dawn offers the player no adjutant slots. Poor Dimitri's new batallion saddles him with a -5 avoid penalty and a 5 mov class without free movement in forests, so that'll hurt his performance as a dodge tank.
• The Dancer's +20 Sword Avoid is available beginning on the last week of chapter 9. The most promising bullet point on this list. Although any map with a dedicated dodge tank set presumably means that's a map where you're not using a dancer, which is a huge opportunity cost. Dancer is a 6 movement class that lets that unit never have to worry about exp gain every again. A crutch for any draft run that must use a 'bad unit'.
  • Also your most charming unit, Byleth, cannot become a dancer.
• Ferdinand. At least, until he levels up and gains HP. 

Did I miss anything?

Edited September 2, 2022 by Zapp Branniglenn

[SnowFire]

On 9/2/2022 at 2:32 AM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

My question went unnoticed so I'll ask again. How early does an avoid build really come together? Most of the hardest maps on Maddening are pre-time skip, so it's a pretty vital part of the equation I haven't seen explored in all these writeups on Avoid stacking. If dodge tanking is only notable near the end of the game, at the same point or later than other finished builds, then can it really be said to be "too good" instead of just "an option"?

Answer: It doesn't.  Building a dodgetank is something you can only do a little later.  That said, "the early game is hard" and "dodgetanking isn't available yet" are potentially linked thoughts, no?  And I wouldn't totally poo-poo the endgame, there are some nasty maps there too if you are playing straight-up and not using some of the more powerful strategies like dodgetanking, Impenetrable Wall, or some sort of Dance of the Goddess player phase killing spree.  Even if we accept that dodgetanking is only "too good" by C8 or so (some time to build flying rank on your pegasus knight), fine, it can merely be too good for 2/3 of the game rather than all of it.  People routinely consider Nosferatu tanking in Awakening overpowered, and that doesn't come online right away either (and the first four chapters of Awakening are indeed the hardest ones on Lunatic!).

On 9/2/2022 at 2:32 AM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

• The best avoid batallions in pre-time skip are the Gautier Knights (+20+), and Jeralts Mercenaries (+15). Both of these are incompatible with fliers, so you can't combine them with the +10 innate avoid of Pegasus knights. And the later flier batallions only offer up to 10 with the lone exception of Claude's Immortal Corps offering 15. That's another post time skip tool btw.
• Evasion rings are a late game acquisition (without the DLC renown shop which lets you grab one at the cost of two divine pulses or any other goodies you might be looking to acquire). It is technically possible to steal an evasion ring off of Claude in Chapter 7 (obviously not possible if you're playing Golden Deer), but to pull off that Steal, you need a thief with 23 base speed, factoring the +2 you get from being in the Thief class. Without meticulous growing and application of speed boosters on a fast unit who did not get speed screwed, Only Catherine would feasibly have that much speed by that point of the game on Maddening, and she cannot be deployed in that map.

Trusty Galatea Pegasus Co. is +10 Evade and is an amazing battalion in other stats, too, for your pre-timeskip flyers.  And you don't strictly HAVE to be a flyer, Ferdinand & Dimitri can do some legit work dodging too early-game with Jeralt's Mercs and the like as you mention.  They won't be totally invincible like lategame dodgetanks but they're also tanky enough to take stray hits that sneak through anyway.  Your Dancer can grab one of the land-based high evade battalions too if you're going the Sword Avo +20 dodgy build.

Stealing the Evasion Ring from Claude is difficult on Maddening, but it's doable.  Thief Petra & Yuri can definitely do it.  Maybe Thief Leonie / Felix as well but that's a bit more suspect a buildpath for them.  You've already mentioned that buffs / debuffs help too, so Rally Speed, Mire (EDIT: Er, Swarm), and Seal Speed can all help the cause as well.  That said, Evasion Ring doesn't make or break a dodgetank build.  It's good, but not required.

On 9/2/2022 at 2:32 AM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

• Alert Stance at B is certainly attainable by the time skip but grants you nothing along the way. By pushing for it, that unit is certainly going into the Flyer line of classes, with no potential for any other Advanced Class in their early level 20s, and an iffy time getting into several level 10 classes. ideally, you would wait until chapter 5 for the Saint Statue bonus before pushing for ranks in flying. +2 on every tutor, and +2 on every round of combat as a Pegasus knight if you're a woman are huge bonuses to consider.
• Maddening enemies have higher charm than you (excepting Byleth and usually the Lord), and they'll make use of it once you start sitting in forests. Once gambitted, a dodge tank's death is typically assured if they are still surrounded... [snip]
• Adjutant slots are not unlimited. By giving a flier an adjutant, that's one less guard adjutant for your frontliners that certainly get more out of it. Reduced damage and guaranteed survival on doubles, on top of the hit/avoid boost? Better be worth it to give that up. To say nothing of Special Ally bonuses that are easier to coordinate when the special, recruited ally doesn't require the levels/ranks to class into a Wyvern Rider.
• The Dancer's +20 Sword Avoid is available beginning on the last week of chapter 9. The most promising bullet point on this list. Although any map with a dedicated dodge tank set presumably means that's a map where you're not using a dancer, which is a huge opportunity cost.

I've gotten Alert Stance+ before the timeskip.  Granted, this was with some favoritism (I gave Ingrid the Knowledge Gem, she stayed in Peg. Knight rather than switching to Swordmaster or something, and the KG never left her pre-timeskip), but it was doable.

Gambits are indeed the most common counter to dodgetanky strats, especially if you try to build a dodgetank with meh Charm (say Catherine).  Luckily, despite being the "most" common, it's still not THAT common; many enemies don't have battalions equipped, and Divine Pulse exists when bad luck strikes.  In the version of 3H with no Divine Pulse, then yeah, ensuring that only high Charm units built dodgetank would be pretty important.

I don't think giving an adjutant to dodgetanks is that important?  In fact it's usually not optimal, give it to a squishy unit that needs to do something brave like attack the Death Knight or Nemesis.  But flying dodgetanks don't really get that much from an adjutant anyway, so no big deal.  Being self-sufficient and not needing a valuable adjutant slot is good, not bad.

For Dancer dodgetanks, they can multitask.  Dance on some turns, draw out enemies on others, sometimes do both at once (especially easy if the unit they're dancing on the frontlines has Stealth, ensuring that the attacks still come to the Dancer).  It's probably a little less efficient than flying dodgetanks, sure, but that merely means its power level is an A- rather than an A+.

On 9/2/2022 at 2:32 AM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

• Ferdinand. At least, until he levels up and gains HP. 

Shadow Mir brought this point up too ages ago, but this is more material for memes than serious concern.  XP gain in 3H is linked to damage dealt & kills.  Enemy phase Ferdie probably isn't kitted for OHKOs, he's just doing chip damage since he can't use Swift Strikes or the like.  This makes enemy phase KOs rare, so his XP gain on enemy phase is low.  If you're really concerned, you can make it rarer by not leaving around wounded enemies to charge him, or giving him an Iron weapon.  Secondly, even in the rare circumstances Ferdie does level-up on enemy phase, how often does he face a second combat?  When he does face that second combat, what are the odds that -15 Evade actually swing the difference between a hit & a miss?  When that specific margin of reduced evade swings the difference, how often does it actually result in Ferdie (whose bulk is fine) actually getting KO'd, considering he's at max HP-1?  And lastly, if the stars cosmically align against Ferdinand von Aegir, Divine Pulse still exists, so the end result is far less devastating than it would be in a GBA Fire Emblem, it becomes a crazy story rather than a serious problem.  Ferdinand will only level-up ~34-40 times the entire game, most of them will be in player phase, some of the enemy phase ones won't gain HP, and most of the enemy phase ones won't be followed by an immediate second blow that hits, let alone OHKOs.

Edited September 3, 2022 by SnowFire

[haarhaarhaar]

4 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Most of the hardest maps on Maddening are pre-time skip, so it's a pretty vital part of the equation I haven't seen explored in all these writeups on Avoid stacking. If dodge tanking is only notable near the end of the game, at the same point or later than other finished builds, then can it really be said to be "too good" instead of just "an option"?

In my experience, reliable dodge tanking has come online from anywhere between Chapter 9 and Chapter 16, depending on the run, the type of dodge tank I've tried out, and how much effort I have put into raising them. Maybe you could do it earlier, I just haven't bothered to try. But even a dodge tank that comes online at Chapter 16 (provided you're not on CF I guess) still arrives early enough to be called "too good", because you've got up to roughly a third of the game where combat lacks significant or salient risk. It might be the case that later maps don't challenge you even without a dodge tank, but that doesn't mean a dodge tank doesn't make them (even) easier. And that's all that matters, as acknowledged in the OP:

On 8/30/2022 at 3:01 PM, lenticular said:

As it stands, once you have a dodge tank up to the point when they are reliably not getting hit -- typically when you pick up Alert Stance+ -- you've basically won the game.

The original point is that the dodge tank trivialises what comes after it starts to work, which impacts the balance of the game as a whole, not that it can trivialise every level in the game. 

[Whisky]

Hello there everyone! In my opinion, dodge tanking isn’t really broken in this game. It’s a powerful build, but it requires investment and planning (as well as knowledge of the game’s mechanics). It’s not like you just get it for free and it instantly breaks the game. You have to work for it.

And it’s not the only powerful build in the game, and arguably isn’t the most powerful nor the easiest to create or to use. There are plenty of other very powerful options. Vantage/Wrath builds arguably do the same thing as dodge tanking but better. There’s multiple powerful player phase options that can one shot almost any enemy. There’s powerful Gambits that can allow for some pretty incredible strategies like Retribution and Impregnable Wall.

Personally I’ve always been a bigger fan of the more player phase focused strategies.

Dodge tanking is also not completely safe or reliable at all times. It makes your unit hard to kill but not invincible. There are enemies with high Hit rates and enemy Gambits can still hit you. When fighting large numbers of enemies per turn like that, even a small chance of getting hit becomes an inevitability. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great build, but it’s not fail proof. You still have to be careful, it’s not an instant win build once you get it. If you play carefully enough you can have safe and reliable strategies without dodge tanking too.

In regards to the efficiency discussion, I used to know a speed runner who recommended dodge tanking, so I’d say it can be pretty efficient if you know what you’re doing. Maybe not for LTC, but speed running is another metric for efficiency.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Whisky