Rate the Unit 10: Louis

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Guidelines:

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

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

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", explain your rating

 

Unit: Louis

Class: Lance Armor 

                     Lvl   HP    STR   MAG   DEX   SPD    LCK   DEF    RES     BLD

Bases:          6     30      13       0        11       3        4       16        1         8

T. Bases:      6      5       5        0         5        2         2       4          1        1

Growths:      /     75      40       0       25      25      20     50       20       15

 

Personal Skill:  If two female allies are adjacent within 2 spaces, this unit takes 2 less damage during combat.

Innate Proficiency: Lance

SP: 300

 

Support Bonuses:

C    Hit+10, Critical+3
B    Hit+10, Critical+3, Dodge+5
A    Hit+10, Critical+6, Dodge+5
S    Hit+10, Critical+12, Dodge+5

 

Tools and mo stats:

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

Engage Numbers - Google Tabellen

 

Rating: 7.4

Next unit on Thursday

Edited July 13, 2023 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[vanguard333]

1st playthrough, currently at chapter 21, Lance Armour -> General, normal difficulty:

Louis, like Chloe, is one of two early-game units who continues to remain very useful, entirely because of a particular niche that he fulfills extremely well: being a brick wall. His only stats that can be expected to regularly increase are HP, strength, and defense, but those are the only stats that he needs to fulfill the role of a brick wall, and he fills that role extremely well because those stats will almost always increase with every level if kept as an armour/general, so being a brick wall is the only thing he can do, but he can do it extremely well for the entire game.

By the midgame, some competition starts appearing in the form of dodge-tanks such as Yunaka, Kagetsu and Zelkov, but dodge-tanks aren't as reliable in my experience, even on normal. I don't know the RNG was changed in this game, but in this game, and only in this game, I have regularly seen enemy attacks hit with less than 30% chance to hit while also regularly seeing my units miss with 75-90% chance to hit, so having a unit to whom all physical-damage enemy units will reliably deal 0 damage is very useful even after dodge-tanks appear.

Louis possesses two main weaknesses: low movement, and enemy magic units. For the latter, the player does need to keep him away from enemy magic units, though he does usually have enough HP to survive one magic unit on enemy phase. For the former, there is one remedy: early access to Emblem Sigurd.

Up until chapter 10, Louis with Emblem Sigurd has high movement, canter and momentum, which, combined with his almost-monstrous strength, means he will travel far, take no damage, inflict a ton of damage, and be able to reposition afterwards. Not only that, but unpromoted Louis' movement is the same as that of other unpromoted infantry units; his movement will only appear low once everyone promotes. The loss of Sigurd from chapter 10 to chapter 17 does hurt Louis a bit, but access to Sigurd before chapter 10 means an opportunity to inherit canter; an opportunity I used. Having Sigurd be able to reposition after each fight more than makes up for his movement remaining the same after promotion.

I can't give Louis a 10/10, as enemy magic units are a big weakness, but 9/10 is still excellent.

Edited July 10, 2023 by vanguard333

[Hrothgar777]

Louis is the GOAT. This shut-eyed man (a pervert in the original Japanese, and "people watcher" in the English localization) on horseback, wrapped in gleaming armor, equipped with a Ridersbane+5 and a Spear+3, is a sight to behold.

He is the glue keeping my Hard Mode playthrough from completely unraveling. Lately (I'm on Chapter 15 now) he's been somewhat less useful because the enemy is diversifying and has more mages on hand for when they swarm me, and because an excess of ranged units compels me to equip him with the less powerful Spear. That being said, I also haven't been using Pure Water at all. Maybe now would be a good time to start, and maybe this one trick will give him a second wind for the second half of the journey. Thankfully he now has a buddy in Jade, the other rising star of my party, who admittedly didn't start off strong at all and took me a lot of frustration to get to where she is now.

 

Unfortunately I can't rate him according to the guidelines of this thread. I don't have all the information needed to do so, and I've been level grinding up a storm through this playthrough (with Louis as the main beneficiary of these efforts). I'm just taking this chance to share my casual thoughts on the character.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Hrothgar777

[lenticular]

Similar to Chloé, Louis benefits a lot from being an early unit who stays good into the late game. Not only does this give the inherent advantages of being useful and relevant for longer, it also means that he has little competition for resources early on (since the player will be dropping many other units), which puts him in a prime position to start getting kills and resources early and start to snowball.

And like Chloé, he does start to drop off a little late on, but unlike Chloé he has a few too many weaknesses to be able to realistically patch up all of them. These are: bad res, bad speed and (if in the General class) bad move. And if you're hoping to tank, with him, he also needs a way of dealing with enemy chain attacks. And there are ways to address each of these through emblems, skills, items, and the likes. But addressing all of them would take more resources than it's reasonable to throw at a single unit so you pretty much just have to accept that there is going to be some drop-off eventually.

Still a very strong unit overall, though. 8/10.

[SnowFire]

Level 20 Lance General Louis:

65 HP, 35 Str, 1 Mag, 24 Dex, 12 Spd, 40 Def, 13 Res, 13 Lck, 19 Bld, 4 Move
Check out that HP, Strength & Defense!  Acceptable Dex, too.  Ignore everything else.

--

Louis is the other of the two most important early-game recruits, as the absolute champion tank.  Unless they have armor-slaying weapons, physical-based enemies are going to be stuck with Chain attacks if trying to damage Louis.  As such, as the first map he joins on demonstrates, he makes an absolute champion "distraction" for swarming enemies.  His Strength is such that he can threaten enemies, too, whether with one-shots are just safely finishing off low-health enemies - a problem Etie had where she was supposed to be able to do this, but came up a bit short in the "one powerful attack" club.  His passive is fairly easy to setup for boss fights, if a tad overkill, too.  While natural chokepoints aren't very common in most Engage maps, this is a game that lets you make unnatural chokepoints with the Obstruct Staff and Corrin Fire Veins and such, and Louis will plug 'em.

Unfortunately, Louis starts falling off in the second half of the game.  The biggest thing is that Ike Emblem exists, and Ike makes *any* unit a champion tank.  (To a lesser extent, in the very lategame, Roy after doing his Paralogue and getting to Bond Lvl. 15 for Binding Blade can do something similar.) More importantly, once you've made an Ike tank, you want Speed to make doubles less common.  A random unit with average speed & Ike can shrug off any collection of units, while Louis's tragic Speed & Res means he deeply fears mages.  At least his HP is good, but magic still thrashes him.  Even if you give Ike to Louis, his terrible speed + resistance means that mages still threaten him even through damage-halving + Resolve, which is not great given that other Ike units can make bold plays putting them in range of a ton of units of mixed offense, but Louis can't really do that.  Does this mean Louis is unusable in the backhalf?  Of course not, but it changes how you use him.  Louis starts being more about his Strength instead, and you're using him for one-shots with goofy tricks, like a Momentum-powered Sigurd Great Knight charge or a Halberdier forced double with a Brave Lance.  And that's part of why Louis is good - that backup great Strength really saves his usability.

It's been said before, but General is really not a good promoted class.  I guess you'll get slightly more Str & Def than Great Knight or Halberdier, but not increasing in move from promotion sucks.  No Wary Fighter means that the painful Speed hurts, and bad move means it can't get to the front in time, or escape.  The Armored gimmick, can't be broken, is arguably even a negative - the enemy AI targeting is really hungry for breaks and likes to fish for them.  But Louis is a super-tank; you WANT those axe-enemies to try their luck against Great Knight Louis and waste their attack on him to score the break. General Louis can't be broken and thus will attract less aggro sometimes.

I gave Chloé an 8/10.  Louis falls off harder than her in the second half of the game, being very replaceable by Your Favorite Unit With A Speed Stat And Ike, but a great first-half performance + usable with some role-swapping & investment in the second half still adds up to a great, important unit.  Louis gets a 7/10.

Edited July 10, 2023 by SnowFire

[Bartozio]

Maddening difficulty:

Louis is honestly a very interesting unit in this game. He joins with an insane Defense stat that makes him basically unkillable in the early game unless he faces mages or armor slaying weapons. That's an amazing trait, but in maddening mode you start noticing his first issue: enemies ignore you if they can't deal any damage.

A lot of sword wielding enemies only have around 16-18 attack, meaning they will straight up ignore Louis. This makes the big guy a lot trickier to use, since he can't just deal with a bunch of those enemies over two turns or damage several on enemy phase for your other units to clean up. Of course he's still great for protecting some of your frailer units or driving more enemies into your training targets. And hey, there's also plenty of enemies, mostly axe users, who can damage him. He also makes a pretty solid Sigurd user early on, as he can quite boldy charge into enemy lines without a care in the world to secure side objectives or mess with enemy ai.

Past the early game he starts to run into another huge issue though. Simply put, you don't have any real need for a unit with overkill bulk. Beyond chapter 11, you'll likely be running only units you seriously invested in or some of the amazing prepromotes you get, all of which can likely take a few hits or offer something more important. That alone wouldn't be a huge loss, since Louis can do a lot better that just taking a few hits. But you also get the Lucina ring at this point, and Bonded Shield is pretty much the strongest enemy phase tool out there. Know what's better than having a virtually invincible tank who gets ignored by several enemies and deals decent damage to the ones that do attack him? Making one of your glass cannons invinsible for a few turns, so all enemies will still want to attack them and all die for trying, that's what.

A few chapters later you also get Ike, who can turn any unit into a great tank, Corrin, who can lock down groups of enemies hard enough you don't even need to face them on enemy phase, and Byleth who lets you kill enough enemies on player phase you don't really need to worry about enemy phasing either.

Between all of those tools, there's very little reason to still use someone just because they have good bulk.

Of course, as mentioned above, he can still be made useful in the late game. Halberdier, Great knight with Sigurd equiped or potentially just a warrior build focussing on bows can all make use of his great strength stat. None of those build will really make him the star of the show (unless you're going for 1-turn clears, maybe), but a good early game performance and still being usable later on is a lot better than most of the early cast can claim

So in the end, I'm giving him a 6/10

Note: I do think Louis is likely a lot better on lower difficulties, but I haven't played those, so I can't really take that into account for his ranking.

[Barren]

Time to talk about Louis. This is assuming Maddening but will mention Hard.

 

Louis joins you along with Chloe turn 1 of chapter 4. He also makes a good first impression because he can body block the archer from reaching Chloe by parking onto the healing tile while Chloe ORKOs the mage that threatens him. His defense is solid enough for him along with Vander to endure hits for you and his strength is high enough to smack them around in return with an iron lance.

 

He like Chloe can make a good candidate to use Sigurd as the extra movement is really appreciated since being stuck at 4 move, while not terrible in this game as it might sound since they nerfed move for basically all mounted classes. The 5 extra move from gallop can allow him to chase down targets and then if they line up he can hit them all with override. Louis can even hold his own during the Brodia arc in case you need to him to take a few hits from other enemies as long as they are not mages since they could probably ORKO him. As the game goes on, his defense becomes less impressive because his speed growth or rather lack thereof is going to catch up to him.

 

Louis can certainly go general if you want to double down on his defense and ensure that he can’t get fractured from being attacked. Great Knight does improve his mobility and adds another weapon type which helps him get around enemies better. Halberdier can allow him to double with Pincer attack, funnily enough, if you give him Micaiah Emblem early on, and he remains in a armored class, he can use Great Sacrifice to restore HP and add defense+1 to all allies for that one turn of combat. It’s a small detail but it can be helpful from time to time. 

As far as other emblems in the mid to late game, Ike can improve his durability as well as grant him Wrath if he was someone like a Great Knight or Wyvern Knight with an Axe. Byleth can give him the Aegis Shield if he is an armored unit when engaged. Or Luin if he changes to a flier. Or if you happen to make him a Royal Knight, the Areadbhar.

 

Overall, I’d say 7/10 seems good. He’ll probably have trouble contributing further past or during the Solm arc but in the early game he is very good. On hard mode he’s way better from my experience.

[Shadow Mir]

On 7/10/2023 at 5:06 PM, SnowFire said:

Level 20 Lance General Louis:

65 HP, 35 Str, 1 Mag, 24 Dex, 12 Spd, 40 Def, 13 Res, 13 Lck, 19 Bld, 4 Move
Check out that HP, Strength & Defense!  Acceptable Dex, too.  Ignore everything else.

--

Louis is the other of the two most important early-game recruits, as the absolute champion tank.  Unless they have armor-slaying weapons, physical-based enemies are going to be stuck with Chain attacks if trying to damage Louis.  As such, as the first map he joins on demonstrates, he makes an absolute champion "distraction" for swarming enemies.  His Strength is such that he can threaten enemies, too, whether with one-shots are just safely finishing off low-health enemies - a problem Etie had where she was supposed to be able to do this, but came up a bit short in the "one powerful attack" club.  His passive is fairly easy to setup for boss fights, if a tad overkill, too.  While natural chokepoints aren't very common in most Engage maps, this is a game that lets you make unnatural chokepoints with the Obstruct Staff and Corrin Fire Veins and such, and Louis will plug 'em.

Unfortunately, Louis starts falling off in the second half of the game.  The biggest thing is that Ike Emblem exists, and Ike makes *any* unit a champion tank.  (To a lesser extent, in the very lategame, Roy after doing his Paralogue and getting to Bond Lvl. 15 for Binding Blade can do something similar.) More importantly, once you've made an Ike tank, you want Speed to make doubles less common.  A random unit with average speed & Ike can shrug off any collection of units, while Louis's tragic Speed & Res means he deeply fears mages.  At least his HP is good, but magic still thrashes him.  Even if you give Ike to Louis, his terrible speed + resistance means that mages still threaten him even through damage-halving + Resolve, which is not great given that other Ike units can make bold plays putting them in range of a ton of units of mixed offense, but Louis can't really do that.  Does this mean Louis is unusable in the backhalf?  Of course not, but it changes how you use him.  Louis starts being more about his Strength instead, and you're using him for one-shots with goofy tricks, like a Momentum-powered Sigurd Great Knight charge or a Halberdier forced double with a Brave Lance.  And that's part of why Louis is good - that backup great Strength really saves his usability.

It's been said before, but General is really not a good promoted class.  I guess you'll get slightly more Str & Def than Great Knight or Halberdier, but not increasing in move from promotion sucks.  No Wary Fighter means that the painful Speed hurts, and bad move means it can't get to the front in time, or escape.  The Armored gimmick, can't be broken, is arguably even a negative - the enemy AI targeting is really hungry for breaks and likes to fish for them.  But Louis is a super-tank; you WANT those axe-enemies to try their luck against Great Knight Louis and waste their attack on him to score the break. General Louis can't be broken and thus will attract less aggro sometimes.

I gave Chloé an 8/10.  Louis falls off harder than her in the second half of the game, being very replaceable by Your Favorite Unit With A Speed Stat And Ike, but a great first-half performance + usable with some role-swapping & investment in the second half still adds up to a great, important unit.  Louis gets a 7/10.

Hmm... I dunno that I'd say Ike makes anyone a champion tank. Imo, they'd need to be reasonably durable WITHOUT him first.

[LoneRecon400]

2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Hmm... I dunno that I'd say Ike makes anyone a champion tank. Imo, they'd need to be reasonably durable WITHOUT him first.

No, Ike enables anyone to tank with high enough bond. At max bond, he just passively provides +5 Def. Adding Ragnell and Resolve+ to the mix, that's +17 Def before even considering the 50% damage reduction.

Put it this way. Veyle has a base 35 HP and 17 Defense. Endgame Bersekers deal 85 damage with Ukonvasara. With Hp +7 and Tonics, Veyle can potentially tank two hits to the face by something that should have well one shot her.

It pales in comparison to Bonded Shield, but Ike can enable anyone to become pretty durable.

Edited July 14, 2023 by LoneRecon400

[SnowFire]

2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Hmm... I dunno that I'd say Ike makes anyone a champion tank. Imo, they'd need to be reasonably durable WITHOUT him first.

There's some hyperbole (okay, don't give Hortensia Ike), but not that much.  See LoneRecon's example.  Take a unit like Goldmary, considered a pretty good tank: 55 HP, 28 Spd, 30 Def, 19 Res as a Lvl 20/3 Hero.  Now suppose you gave Alcryst Ike for whatever reason.  Alcryst is 51 HP, 29 Spd, 22 Def, 14 Res - pretty average defensive stats, comparable speed.  And yet Alcryst is now a way better tank than Emblem-less Goldmary thanks to the +3-+5 Def from Ike, potentially way more from Resolve / Resolve+ / Ragnell, and damage-halving while engaged.  (In practice, you'll give Goldmary some Emblem too of course for a fair comparison, but...  still.)  People don't hype Alcryst as a tank in general (tankier than Etie, sure, but that's a low bar), but Ike!Alcryst can absolutely tank stuff up.  (And, importantly, probably survives better vs. mages than Louis simply by dint of being doubled much less offense.)

[Barren]

10 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Hmm... I dunno that I'd say Ike makes anyone a champion tank. Imo, they'd need to be reasonably durable WITHOUT him first.

As others have mentioned you would have to use Ike regularly and invest bond fragments to reach max bond with him which is very much doable even on maddening. Do you do activities around the somminel? Do you cook? Buy stat tonics? And so forth

[LoneRecon400]

35 minutes ago, Barren said:

Do you do activities around the somminel? Do you cook? Buy stat tonics? And so forth

You don't even really need to do that. Just passively unlocking fragments from achievements is more than enough so long as you're not buying really expensive skills.

[Barren]

24 minutes ago, LoneRecon400 said:

You don't even really need to do that. Just passively unlocking fragments from achievements is more than enough so long as you're not buying really expensive skills.

That’s a good point. I just figured that doing activities can grant you extra bond fragments for the sake of insurance.

[SnowFire]

I find the game so incredibly floods you with Bond Fragments that doing or not doing stuff around the Somniel doesn't really matter.  The only thing you need is the "Achievements" board and to click to collect the rewards from that every so often, which takes ~5 seconds, and to know not to bother with attempting to farm fancy Bond Rings.

Even Lvl. 1 Ike still offers Laguz Friend damage-halving, which is the most important part of the set.  (Or even damage reduction by 60% for Dragon typing, for all that giving Alear or Veyle Ike is fairly cursed.)

[Shadow Mir]

On 7/14/2023 at 12:35 AM, LoneRecon400 said:

No, Ike enables anyone to tank with high enough bond. At max bond, he just passively provides +5 Def. Adding Ragnell and Resolve+ to the mix, that's +17 Def before even considering the 50% damage reduction.

Put it this way. Veyle has a base 35 HP and 17 Defense. Endgame Bersekers deal 85 damage with Ukonvasara. With Hp +7 and Tonics, Veyle can potentially tank two hits to the face by something that should have well one shot her.

It pales in comparison to Bonded Shield, but Ike can enable anyone to become pretty durable.

 

On 7/14/2023 at 12:47 AM, SnowFire said:

There's some hyperbole (okay, don't give Hortensia Ike), but not that much.  See LoneRecon's example.  Take a unit like Goldmary, considered a pretty good tank: 55 HP, 28 Spd, 30 Def, 19 Res as a Lvl 20/3 Hero.  Now suppose you gave Alcryst Ike for whatever reason.  Alcryst is 51 HP, 29 Spd, 22 Def, 14 Res - pretty average defensive stats, comparable speed.  And yet Alcryst is now a way better tank than Emblem-less Goldmary thanks to the +3-+5 Def from Ike, potentially way more from Resolve / Resolve+ / Ragnell, and damage-halving while engaged.  (In practice, you'll give Goldmary some Emblem too of course for a fair comparison, but...  still.)  People don't hype Alcryst as a tank in general (tankier than Etie, sure, but that's a low bar), but Ike!Alcryst can absolutely tank stuff up.  (And, importantly, probably survives better vs. mages than Louis simply by dint of being doubled much less offense.)

The issue is that being dependent on engaging to tank makes this dicey from the word go. Also, Laguz Friend runs into the same issue that plagues Pavise and Aegis - and makes it worse by making it such that you cannot dodge, period. A tank that does not need to engage to do their job is better and more reliable. 

On 7/14/2023 at 8:45 AM, Barren said:

As others have mentioned you would have to use Ike regularly and invest bond fragments to reach max bond with him which is very much doable even on maddening. Do you do activities around the somminel? Do you cook? Buy stat tonics? And so forth

The only thing I do in Somniel is feed and pet Sommie. I find it hard to understand how cooking works, and money tends to be tight.

[SumG]

23 hours ago, SnowFire said:

I find the game so incredibly floods you with Bond Fragments that doing or not doing stuff around the Somniel doesn't really matter.  The only thing you need is the "Achievements" board and to click to collect the rewards from that every so often, which takes ~5 seconds, and to know not to bother with attempting to farm fancy Bond Rings.

I found this to be the case until they introduced the well.  But the well gives you so much SP that you can be more ambitious in the abilities that you buy for your units.  The downside being that you do need significantly more Bond Fragments to get access to those skills for your entire party.  In my last Maddening playthrough, which was just after the well was released, bond fragments were the chokepoint of resources for getting skills for my units, and that was even with doing the tedious time wasters between every battle like fishing and Wyvern riding.

I swear, I have no idea what game people are playing when they say the Somniel is less of a time waster than the Garreg Mach.  It is so much worse.

[LoneRecon400]

2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

The issue is that being dependent on engaging to tank makes this dicey from the word go. Also, Laguz Friend runs into the same issue that plagues Pavise and Aegis - and makes it worse by making it such that you cannot dodge, period. A tank that does not need to engage to do their job is better and more reliable.

4 turns is more than enough to clear out the majority of maps easly, espically when accounting for engage pools.  Even if they werent, you can easily refill their gauge in a single turn with a brave weapon and Dance/Dance of the Goddess.

Dodging in Engage is pretty unreliable without the tools such as engravings or skill slots to make it work. And since those tools are finite, you're not going to waste them on someone who doesn't need them.

Even if you wanted a unit in a bulky class, anyone can become that extermly easily. Like reclassing Veyle into a Great Knight gives her 41 HP and 28 Def at base. That's enough Defense to make some endgame enemies just ignore her outright since they deal 0 damage to her.

In short, try actually using it before you make a judgement on it. From what you've written above, it seems like you haven't gotten to the point where you actually can even use him.

Edited July 15, 2023 by LoneRecon400

[SnowFire]

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

 

The issue is that being dependent on engaging to tank makes this dicey from the word go. Also, Laguz Friend runs into the same issue that plagues Pavise and Aegis - and makes it worse by making it such that you cannot dodge, period. A tank that does not need to engage to do their job is better and more reliable. 

Have you beaten Engage yet?  And on what difficulty?  I'm not normally a difficulty shamer but I want to establish some consistent mode of talking here, because it sounds like you're playing a different game. 

(Pavise & Aegis are conditional skills in older FEs, Laguz Friend is on 100% of the time.  And if you've played the game, you'll know that "Emblem Energy" squares are everywhere which refill your Emblem gauge.  And that like most games in the series, difficulty by turns is not the same, but rather you're likely to have certain decisive turns with heavy combat that matter a lot, not a flat difficulty each turn.)

[Shadow Mir]

On 7/15/2023 at 3:15 PM, SnowFire said:

Have you beaten Engage yet?  And on what difficulty?  I'm not normally a difficulty shamer but I want to establish some consistent mode of talking here, because it sounds like you're playing a different game. 

(Pavise & Aegis are conditional skills in older FEs, Laguz Friend is on 100% of the time.  And if you've played the game, you'll know that "Emblem Energy" squares are everywhere which refill your Emblem gauge.  And that like most games in the series, difficulty by turns is not the same, but rather you're likely to have certain decisive turns with heavy combat that matter a lot, not a flat difficulty each turn.)

I cleared it on Hard. 

You missed the point there; what I was getting at was what @lenticular said in Celine's thread about the likes of Golden Lotus only really being impactful if they turn a calamitous outcome (ergo, taking a lot of, or lethal damage) to only moderately bad. Whilst it's not chance based, Laguz Friend is no less guilty of this too; honestly, most of the few times I see it help much are against wyrms and their defence ignoring breath.

On 7/15/2023 at 2:10 PM, SumG said:

I found this to be the case until they introduced the well.  But the well gives you so much SP that you can be more ambitious in the abilities that you buy for your units.  The downside being that you do need significantly more Bond Fragments to get access to those skills for your entire party.  In my last Maddening playthrough, which was just after the well was released, bond fragments were the chokepoint of resources for getting skills for my units, and that was even with doing the tedious time wasters between every battle like fishing and Wyvern riding.

I swear, I have no idea what game people are playing when they say the Somniel is less of a time waster than the Garreg Mach.  It is so much worse.

Yikes. At least it didn't have features that forced very heavy use of online to get any real use out of.

On 7/15/2023 at 2:17 PM, LoneRecon400 said:

4 turns is more than enough to clear out the majority of maps easly, espically when accounting for engage pools.  Even if they werent, you can easily refill their gauge in a single turn with a brave weapon and Dance/Dance of the Goddess.

Dodging in Engage is pretty unreliable without the tools such as engravings or skill slots to make it work. And since those tools are finite, you're not going to waste them on someone who doesn't need them.

Even if you wanted a unit in a bulky class, anyone can become that extermly easily. Like reclassing Veyle into a Great Knight gives her 41 HP and 28 Def at base. That's enough Defense to make some endgame enemies just ignore her outright since they deal 0 damage to her.

In short, try actually using it before you make a judgement on it. From what you've written above, it seems like you haven't gotten to the point where you actually can even use him.

You know what they say about assume... anyway, more often than not, if there's an emblem I really need back online, it isn't Ike. Most of the other emblems in the second set had some crazy stuff that could easily turn a bad situation around, which is rather unfortunate for Ike.

[LoneRecon400]

How is Ike not impactful? Even putting aside the fact he can make anyone take hit that wouldve been elsewise be lethal for them, he can do things like make Fliers take normal damage from archers, one shot things with Great Aether, put out terrian hazards, and can enable units to safety utilize Wrath. All of those can be very valuable niches that can  easily change the way you approach maps.

There's no way Ike isn't one of the more impactful emblems in the game.

Edited July 17, 2023 by LoneRecon400

[SnowFire]

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

You missed the point there; what I was getting at was what lenticular said in Celine's thread about the likes of Golden Lotus only really being impactful if they turn a calamitous outcome (ergo, taking a lot of, or lethal damage) to only moderately bad. Whilst it's not chance based, Laguz Friend is no less guilty of this too; honestly, most of the few times I see it help much are against wyrms and their defence ignoring breath.

I'm not missing the point.  Golden Lotus / Pavise / Aegis are chance based, as you agree, so therefore you can't plan around them, so therefore they only really come through in clutch when you've made a catastrophic error but get bailed out by them.  Laguz Friend isn't chance based (in fact, even in the "bad" way of turning off your evade), so therefore you *can* plan around it, and make plays that would get your unit killed without Ike but just slightly dent the bumper with him.  I would agree that Ike wouldn't be very impactful if you somehow didn't know which unit had Ike equipped and thus couldn't take advantage of him, but you do know. 

(And going back to the main point, this is true of Louis as well - his high def is something you can plan around using, as long as you keep an eye on chain attacks.  So even if you're taking a very allergic to enemy phase approach, which is actually fair given how much broken player phase stuff you can do in Engage, it'd apply to Louis as well.)

[lenticular]

5 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

You missed the point there; what I was getting at was what @lenticular said in Celine's thread about the likes of Golden Lotus only really being impactful if they turn a calamitous outcome (ergo, taking a lot of, or lethal damage) to only moderately bad. Whilst it's not chance based, Laguz Friend is no less guilty of this too; honestly, most of the few times I see it help much are against wyrms and their defence ignoring breath.

I was staying out of this discussion, but since I'm being invoked, I suppose I ought to say something. I think that Ike is pretty great and that Laguz Friend is vastly better than Aegis, Pavisse and Golden Lotus since it's guaranteed and not just a percentage chance to proc. And I'd go so far as to say that if you think that what I said in any way supports the idea that Laguz Friend is weak then you were probably misunderstanding my point to begin with.