Rate the Unit threads: Gauging Interest

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

So, SF has had topics dedicated to the evaluation of units and we don´t yet have these for Engage and I thought it might be interesting to have these discussions; as such I wanted to ask

1) to begin with if there´d be any interest in doing these 

2) confirming and establishing rules:

2.1.) I´d ask people to simply mention the diffculty on which they rate the unit (i.e. I used Panette on Maddening and [...]); if the TH threads are anything to go by, Maddening and Hard will be discussed interchangeably anyway

2.2.) what classes your unit went through, what skills they had and so on

2.3.) what to do with DLC rings: I think it´d be better to exclude them (alongside other, non-unit DLC bonuses) because having them is no guarantee

2.4.) no grinding

2.5.) I´m not at all certain in regards to lesser rings - I understand some of them (such as Olwen) are quite performance altering but I´d exclude them, for reasons of no rng abuse

2.6.) no Somniel minigames, no cooking

2.7.) ratings to be given in the format X/10

 

As for the topic itself, obviously I´d throw in the unit itself and if I can at all format, join chapter with class, base stats, growths and the amount of skill currency, i.e.:

 

Unit: Alear

Join-Chapter: 1

Class: Dragon Child

Base stats and growths:

Lvl HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES BLD 1 22 6 0 5 7 5 5 3 4 / 60% 35% 20% 45% 50% 25% 40% 25% 5%

SP: 300

 

 

Unit Ratings:

Alear	7.6
Vander	5.2
Clanne	5
Framme	6.25
Alfred	3.75
Etie	4.25
Boucheron	3.67
Céline	6.4
Chloé	9
Louis	7.4
Yunaka	5.75
Alcryst	5.5
Citrinne	5.5
Lapis	5.8
Diamant	5.67
Amber	5.75
Jade	3.7
Ivy	9
Kagetsu	8.58
Zelkov	5.38
Fogado	7.1
Pandreo	8.21
Bunet	2
Timerra	5
Panette	9
Merrin	8.19
Hortensia	7.5
Seadall	9.57
Rosado	4.92
Goldmary	6.29
Lindon	5
Saphir	5
Mauvier	5.1
Veyle	6.4
Jean	2.75
Anna	4.5
Nel	TBD
Nil/Rafal	TBD
Zelestia	TBD
Gregory	TBD
Madeline	TBD

Edited October 12, 2023 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[Dark Holy Elf]

Sounds good, I'd participate. I agree with most of your rules. The only one I might quibble slightly is no cooking. I don't think it's a big deal either way, but I'd personally assume cooking is occurring, but not being rigged, so you're at the mercy of the RNG for specifics. Tonics provide the same type of boost as cooking anyway, so it doesn't make much difference in practice.

Any feelings on fixed mode vs. random?

If it's not too much work I'd recommend putting the character's true bases along with the bases in their starting class, since it helps for direct comparisons post-reclassing.

[Barren]

I think it’s okay to include fixed mode as you would get to see how a unit typically performs whereas random one could rig for a RNG blessed unit based on their personal bias.

 

Plus it makes more fair side by side comparisons between two units that function similarly i.e a level 10 Lapis and a level 10 Chloe.

Also we should include cooking because some units could really benefit from the bonuses and they aren’t all that bad either. Alear may have an edge though because you can choose HP, strength or dex to increase for the next battle depending on which work out session you choose to do.

 

I would also add that I think doing the sominel activities is fair game because on maddening mode (at least as far as I’m aware) there are no skirmishes for you to farm more bond fragments and the amount you get can do quite a bit for you. So limiting how you get bond fragments further can basically have a negative impact no matter how small on how we rate units overall.

Edited June 6, 2023 by Barren
More info

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

14 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I don't think it's a big deal either way, but I'd personally assume cooking is occurring, but not being rigged, so you're at the mercy of the RNG for specifics. Tonics provide the same type of boost as cooking anyway, so it doesn't make much difference in practice.

5 hours ago, Barren said:

Also we should include cooking because some units could really benefit from the bonuses and they aren’t all that bad either.

yeah, but with using averages one tries to eliminate the randomness - to me cooking looks like adding a factor of randomness back in

embrace the certainty of tonics, reject the rng of perishables

14 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Any feelings on fixed mode vs. random?

6 hours ago, Barren said:

I think it’s okay to include fixed mode as you would get to see how a unit typically performs

unit discussion as per tried and true stat averages, so fixed I´d say

5 hours ago, Barren said:

Alear may have an edge though because you can choose HP, strength or dex to increase for the next battle depending on which work out session you choose to do.

huh, reading up on it the actual stat amount is based on how well you do? not that I found the max in min amounts anywhere... I´d be inclined to disregard this because the degree of success can´t be guaranteed and fgailure does eem an option, unlikely it may be

I also don´t think there´ll be much per chapter analysis.

14 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If it's not too much work I'd recommend putting the character's true bases along with the bases in their starting class, since it helps for direct comparisons post-reclassing.

soooo. true bases = unit base stats - class bases they are in right now, no? So, if that´s the case...... pinch me, does Alear just have 3Dex/3Lck base stats? because it´s severly confusing me.

6 hours ago, Barren said:

I would also add that I think doing the sominel activities is fair game because on maddening mode (at least as far as I’m aware) there are no skirmishes for you to farm more bond fragments and the amount you get can do quite a bit for you. So limiting how you get bond fragments further can basically have a negative impact no matter how small on how we rate units overall.

as I understand, only engaging with Sommie gives bond fragments? Point 2.6. was just blanket statement to try and eliminate randomness

 

I´ll also throw in proficencies as per: Other Data - Serenes Forest and put the Personal Skill in there as well.

 

Also some tools I found:

FE Engage Stat Calculator

Average Stats - Fire Emblem: Engage (FE17) (triangleattack.com)

[Dark Holy Elf]

10 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

soooo. true bases = unit base stats - class bases they are in right now, no? So, if that´s the case...... pinch me, does Alear just have 3Dex/3Lck base stats? because it´s severly confusing me.

Yep, that's correct.

I've used this for quick comparisons / considering which units to use for certain builds: Engage Numbers . There's a page of true bases.

17 hours ago, Barren said:

I would also add that I think doing the sominel activities is fair game because on maddening mode (at least as far as I’m aware) there are no skirmishes for you to farm more bond fragments and the amount you get can do quite a bit for you. So limiting how you get bond fragments further can basically have a negative impact no matter how small on how we rate units overall.

I would consider most somniel mini-games to be far too slow in terms of reward:time to consider seriously. Things I would personally consider are the ones which are very fast, i.e. cooking / forging / well / leisure activities / picking up ore from your army of dogs. But I wouldn't personally consider wyvern ride or fishing.

That said I don't think it's a big deal if each voter considers slightly different things. The nice thing about a community project like this is that we don't need to agree on every little detail.

[SnowFire]

I'll just echo others and really don't think a "no cooking" rule is necessary for such threads.  It's one of the fastest Somniel events and often gets you a Packed Lunch + a notable support boost of your choice.  I highly doubt it will actually matter much for character-vs.-character rankings with the obvious exception of Bunet, who is even more screwed over by a no-cooking rule since there won't be any Packed Lunches for his passive to use.  But...  are you really using Bunet and then refusing to ever cook?  (Of course, if someone wants to rate under assumptions of "no cooking", more power to them, but it feels jarring to require such a rule - I don't get the impression it's a particularly common restriction.)

I'm also not sure rule 2.4 on grinding is necessary - or more specifically, that it's opening a can of worms that isn't easily solved via "Grinding" or "No grinding."  There are a LOT of Paralogues, and even more if some of the DLC is done.  Even in a no-skirmish playthrough, there's gonna be a fair amount of variance between "skipping all, some, or none" on the Paralogues which can have quite significant impact on expected level of your team, despite not exactly being "grinding."  Mostly matters for the later recruits like Rosado / Goldmary / Lindon / Saphir, I guess, who run into tougher competition if the player has been aggressively doing Paralogues.  Just something to acknowledge some variance on, I suppose.

Edited June 7, 2023 by SnowFire

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

4 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I've used this for quick comparisons / considering which units to use for certain builds: Engage Numbers . There's a page of true bases.

I´ll use this then and throw the stats in the relevant character topics. That´s gonna look like this:

Spoiler

										Unit: Alear                                           Join-Chapter: 1 Class: Dragon Child                                     Base stats, true base stats and growths:                                       Lvl HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES BLD Bases 1 22 6 0 5 7 5 5 3 4 T. Bases / 0 0 0 3 0 3 0 0 0 Growths / 60% 35% 20% 45% 50% 25% 40% 25% 5%                       Personal Skill: Adjacent allies deal +3 damage and take 1 less damage.         Innate Proficiency: Swords                 SP: 300                                           Support Bonus:                                          C Hit+10, Avoid+5                 B Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+5               A Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+5, Dodge+5               S Hit+10, Critical+6, Avoid+5, Dodge+5

Anybody know if and how I can copy the framing from an excel table to SF? Just to make the numbers part easier to look at.

26 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

I'll just echo others and really don't think a "no cooking" rule is necessary for such threads.  It's one of the fastest Somniel events and often gets you a Packed Lunch + a notable support boost of your choice.  I highly doubt it will actually matter much for character-vs.-character rankings with the obvious exception of Bunet, who is even more screwed over by a no-cooking rule since there won't be any Packed Lunches for his passive to use.  But...  are you really using Bunet and then refusing to ever cook?  (Of course, if someone wants to rate under assumptions of "no cooking", more power to them, but it feels jarring to require such a rule - I don't get the impression it's a particularly common restriction.)

That´s the thing though... if it isn´t actually gonna matter why include it? Packed Lunch is nice, but how would, what amounts to essentially a better vulnerary, affect unit rankings. Sad noises for Bunet, but when we get to him I´d throw in a mention...

Actually scratch that, there is theoretical synergy of packed lunches with Citrinnes and Celines Personal Skills too, so imma change the rulings to allow cooking. 

39 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

I'm also not sure rule 2.4 on grinding is necessary - or more specifically, that it's opening a can of worms that isn't easily solved via "Grinding" or "No grinding."  There are a LOT of Paralogues, and even more if some of the DLC is done.  Even in a no-skirmish playthrough, there's gonna be a fair amount of variance between "skipping all, some, or none" on the Paralogues which can have quite significant impact on expected level of your team, despite not exactly being "grinding."  Mostly matters for the later recruits like Rosado / Goldmary / Lindon / Saphir, I guess, who run into tougher competition if the player has been aggressively doing Paralogues.  Just something to acknowledge some variance on, I suppose.

I´d be in favor of allowing the paralogues, because unlike the Fates or Awakening paralogues, where you get almost exclusively new stuff, the paralogues are 

1) nessecary to make preexisting things - namely the Emblems - better (excluding Anna/jean paralogue) and

2) they at best aid closing the gap between early characters and later joiners. This doesn´t strike me as the game where the early character is statwise strictly better than the potential later replacement. At the same time, if I´m reading it right the paralogues unlock all the way till chapter 23 so technically even the latest joiner should be able to partake in one or two. And the DLC levels technically scale with the army.

Tbh, I was mostly thinking about skirmishes when writing that.

[Barren]

7 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yep, that's correct.

I've used this for quick comparisons / considering which units to use for certain builds: Engage Numbers . There's a page of true bases.

I would consider most somniel mini-games to be far too slow in terms of reward:time to consider seriously. Things I would personally consider are the ones which are very fast, i.e. cooking / forging / well / leisure activities / picking up ore from your army of dogs. But I wouldn't personally consider wyvern ride or fishing.

That said I don't think it's a big deal if each voter considers slightly different things. The nice thing about a community project like this is that we don't need to agree on every little detail.

That I can agree too. We have our opinions and have valid reasons why we feel that way. Plus we don’t need to be at each other’s throats too just because of a disagreement. 

[lenticular]

I prefer a "come as you are" approach to rules for this sort of thing, because having more stringent rules applies a false veneer of objectivity that isn't really warranted. We're mostly going to be going off our own experiences combined with a bit of theorycrafting. I would feel disingenuous about contributing to a thread that was supposed to be more objective than that. I also like letting people talk about their own play-style and own experience because it gives a better impression of how people are actually playing the game, and it can also be enlightening sometimes to see how these different play-styles can result in different experiences of different units. If everyone who savescums/rng-manips to get certain bond rings rates a given unit highly and everyone who doesn't gives them a low rating, then that tells us something useful and interesting that we'd miss if we were enforcing a standardised set of rating criteria.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Rules as per discussion as of yet, uncertainties marked red:

 

2.1.) mention the diffculty on which they rate the unit 

2.2.) what classes your unit went through, what skills they had and so on

2.3.) no DLC rings, no non-unit DLC bonuses

2.4.) no grinding in skirmishes

2.5.) no rng abuse (no resetting for bond rings)

2.6.) cooking is allowed

2.7.) ratings to be given in the format X/10

2.8.) if it isn´t mentioned above, it´s fair game

2.9.) no "Kagetsu exists and obsoletes Lapis, 0/10" or any of the like

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

I prefer a "come as you are" approach to rules for this sort of thing, because having more stringent rules applies a false veneer of objectivity that isn't really warranted. We're mostly going to be going off our own experiences combined with a bit of theorycrafting. I would feel disingenuous about contributing to a thread that was supposed to be more objective than that. I also like letting people talk about their own play-style and own experience because it gives a better impression of how people are actually playing the game, and it can also be enlightening sometimes to see how these different play-styles can result in different experiences of different units. If everyone who savescums/rng-manips to get certain bond rings rates a given unit highly and everyone who doesn't gives them a low rating, then that tells us something useful and interesting that we'd miss if we were enforcing a standardised set of rating criteria.

I´m honestly just copying the stuff from the TH treads. Very obyiously noone can be stopped from posting with anything gasps "forbidden" mentioned above (and I nwouldn´t have it that way either), it´s more so an attempt to have a minimal common ground to start off with what´s agreeable and what´s not, so as to avoid having these discussion in the actual unit threads themself and derail the thread.

 

 

Unless grand disagreements be discovered, I´d start making threads... let´s say sometime on Friday and wait around 3 days before posting the next thread?

[SnowFire]

On Paralogues & grinding: Oh, I agree Paralogues are "fair game".  I just brought that up because a no-Paralogues run that does 2 skirmishes on the side for some reason is going to actually have less XP than an all-Paralogues run that does 0 skirmishes, so it ends up a bit weird.  (And even less XP than an all-DLC, all-Paralogues run of course!)

On 2.9: This might be a nitpick, but maybe a different example?  Units with similar builds "competing" with each other kind of *is* a relevant thing to take into account, IMO, especially once more units start getting benched if you aren't taking casualties.  (Take poor FE12 Samto / Samuel - he joins literally right before Navarre who has better stats in everything than him and the same rough build type.)  I think the usual phrasing is "don't consider obviously suboptimal and unintended builds" i.e. the "Dedue is a bad mage" example....  for all that Emblems can help you get away with a lot of weird builds if your heart is set on making Citrinne a Flame Lance Paladin or Boucheron a Mage Knight or whatever.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

16 hours ago, SnowFire said:

On 2.9: This might be a nitpick, but maybe a different example?  Units with similar builds "competing" with each other kind of *is* a relevant thing to take into account, IMO, especially once more units start getting benched if you aren't taking casualties.  (Take poor FE12 Samto / Samuel - he joins literally right before Navarre who has better stats in everything than him and the same rough build type.)  I think the usual phrasing is "don't consider obviously suboptimal and unintended builds" i.e. the "Dedue is a bad mage" example....  for all that Emblems can help you get away with a lot of weird builds if your heart is set on making Citrinne a Flame Lance Paladin or Boucheron a Mage Knight or whatever.

Changed as follows:

2.9.) no "Kagetsu exists and obsoletes Lapis, 0/10", explain your rating

I feel unit build is mostly covered with 2.2. and I think falls in line with lenticulars reasoning about rng abuse and bond rings; who knows, much like Vengeance Bernadetta or Frozen Lance Lorenz, which if memory serves weren´t the most easily accepted idea, a mage ButcherOne could be slept on? I doubt it but alas.

Changed as follows:

2.2.) what classes your unit went through, what skills they had and so on; don´t consider obviously suboptimal builds.

 

 

As for the people present in the thread @Dark Holy Elf, @Barren, @SnowFire, @lenticular unless any concerns be voiced I´d put up Day 1 with Alear sometime tomorrow and leave open for counted votes till Monday where the second one will go up and so on and so forth.

Edited June 8, 2023 by Imuabicus

[Barren]

Awesome. I’ll mostly comment on hard and some of the early game maddening with fixed growths in mind but I’ll contribute to the discussion as best as I can.