Dire Thunder is not as good as you think

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 2/22/2023 at 10:01 PM, LukeB said:

This is only a sacrifice in chapters where you have the same number (or more) emblems then you have deployments slots. 

That is a very, very small portion of the game, unless you have all of the DLC emblems. 

At all times where you have less emblem rings then deployment slots, this is a positive - not a negative

This is only the case if we take for granted that S Olwen is the best Bond Bond Ring. Whereas, I've heard great things about S Claude (Wind God) and S Deirdre (Renewal). Even just considering Mages, there's a case for favoring S Mae (Great Thunder) or S Lilina (Raging Fire), either of which can also be acquired before chapter 10.

That said, the core point of "for most of the game, you'll have more deployed units than Emblem Rings, so Bond Rings are often just competing against other Bond Rings" is a salient one.

On 2/22/2023 at 10:24 PM, haarhaarhaar said:

Yeah I get where you're coming from here. Before Ch 11 I'm only running 2 mages in all likelihood, so they get Celica/Micaiah unless I need Micaiah to raise someone's level quickly.

Micaiah is interesting, in that I find her very... splashable. Clanne, Celine, and Citrinne are all natural picks, but options like Chloe, Alfred, and Vander are appealing for nothing else than "mounted healer!" Even Alear, it can feel neat turning into a hybrid combat/support unit. And she comes on Yunaka, so I'm sure plenty of players keep them together.

[SnowFire]

On 2/22/2023 at 10:01 PM, LukeB said:

This is only a sacrifice in chapters where you have the same number (or more) emblems then you have deployments slots. 

That is a very, very small portion of the game, unless you have all of the DLC emblems. 

At all times where you have less emblem rings then deployment slots, this is a positive - not a negative

There's another complication other than DLC: the free FE Heroes download code.  If you do that, you get 3 extremely good S-Rank rings for free, guaranteed.  This makes messing with the Bond Ring gacha even less interesting, because even if you get a great Bond Ring, is it THAT much better than a Spur Attack granting Alfonse ring or the like?

[BM-Striker]

Dire Thunder is better than   (Great Thunder)Thoron for  nuking low RES enemies. 

Thoron with Great Thunder is better for  high RES enemies 

 +8 ( (Great Thunder) Thoron and (Dire Thunder) +8 Thunder both deals 42 damage. with +8 MAG-RES. 

If the difference higher Thunder end up as batter 

If  the difference lower Thoron end up better. 

 

Thoron works better on units with low-to-mediocre MAG , while Thunder works better on units  with high MAG.

 

The main draw of Olwen's ring that it makes Citrine/Mage!Anna into  a powerhouse for the early-mid game with medium effort, before you  get other good mages.

Edited March 9, 2023 by BM-Striker

[Galap]

It's good but not amazing. I didn't use the DLC (maybe I will do a second playthrough that uses it). I ended up getting dire thunder and putting it on pandreo . It's pretty much a good thing to put on a filler magical unit once the unit cap bumps up to 14.

[Xylaugheon Daily]

This thread is far too detailed(with much of what I was going to say being mentioned in the skimming I did) to ask me to go through everything, but I would like to add a small word. Dire Thunder is great early to mid game when your mages aren't doubling with anything else. I even still find it useful late game Maddening, time to time. You also do not need to fully invest into it from the get go. Engraving alone is enough for a good portion.

[samthedigital]

22 minutes ago, Xylaugheon Daily said:

This thread is far too detailed(with much of what I was going to say being mentioned in the skimming I did) to ask me to go through everything, but I would like to add a small word. Dire Thunder is great early to mid game when your mages aren't doubling with anything else. I even still find it useful late game Maddening, time to time. You also do not need to fully invest into it from the get go. Engraving alone is enough for a good portion.

If Fire Emblem players valued real time at all I think that this would be a more interesting discussion. Your post is basically the tl;dr of this thread.

[Seafarer]

I'm now further into my Maddening run, and I'd like to add my practical experiences with Dire Thunder to the mix.

Firstly, I could afford to forge my first Thunder to +3 as soon as I got it, even after forging Libération up to make Alear good. There's no way I could have forged it up to a +3 Thoron (because of the high Silver cost), meaning Great Thunder is just straight-up worse than Dire Thunder after the two chapters where thunder tomes exist and Dire Thunder doesn't.

When I got Leif's ring, Dire Thunder cost me 3000 bond fragments and less than ten minutes to get. I gave it and the +3 Thunder to Citrinne, and she immediately became my "delete enemy" button. Every point of Mag she got turned into two extra damage, and the brave effect amplified the effect of Alear's personal and the Spur Atk skill from the Alfonse ring. Sure, I could have used a unit who doubled to also get that extra damage, but brave 1-3 range means you're only risking a counter if the enemy has 1-3 range and doesn't get ORKOed.

Dire Thunder is a godsend in C11. This is the main thing that it has over Emblem Rings - it doesn't stop existing when you really need it.

I switched to the Radiance engraving once I got Ike, and Citrinne has basically deleted everything I need her to since then. She occasionally doesn't ORKO, but I can usually get extra Atk on her with one of the support skills, or just let her chunk an enemy for another unit to take the kill on. Because she's so good at killing, Citrinne is snowballing pretty hard, which just keeps making Dire Thunder better. I'm in C16 right now, and she's ORKOing Mauvier with either Alear or Spur Atk support (not both) - I don't think you're likely to pull that off with Great Thunder Thoron. She was also pretty essential to clearing the Ike paralogue.

Side note: paralogue enemies are way stronger than main story enemies near their unlock time. Citrinne was ORKOing everything in C15, but only non-magical units in Ike's paralogue beforehand.

Thus far, I've never once thought that Citrinne needs an Emblem Ring instead, and not spending Silver on Thoron has let me do a bunch of other strong forges. We'll see how lategame goes, but right now, I think Olwen S is inarguably the best bond ring in the game.

(DLC Emblems obviously change the picture somewhat, but I think there'd still be room for Dire Thunder on a mage from C11 through to maybe C14. Besides, DLC Emblems change so much about the game's balance (read: make it significantly easier), and I don't think anyone's saying the nuking power of Dire Thunder is a strict improvement over an Emblem Ring's versatility.)

tl;dr: Dire Thunder is cheap, doesn't vanish during the rough patches where you lose your Emblem Rings, lets a mage snowball hard, kills a bunch of enemy types and chunks the rest without risk of a counterattack, and nearly doubles any Mag investment you may give its user compared to other 1-3 range options. It is in no way overrated in either the earlygame (where it doesn't exist) or the midgame, at least as far as I have seen in discussions around it.

I might come back to this thread again once I get close to the end.