Rate the Unit, Day 28: Devdan

[ZemZem]

Dat Rules (stolen/borrowed from Integrity)

- Ratings are assumed to be on Hard Mode+Fixed Mode.

- Votes need some explanation regarding their gameplay performance to be counted. If somebody else said what you want to already, quote them explicitly.

+/- ≤1 point extra regarding personality/appearance is encouraged, but no more. If you exercise your bias privileges, please do so explicitly.

- Numerical votes out of 10, or something proportional to it. Make it easy to calculate for my sake.

- Every ranking phase ends whenever I get out of bed, between 0700 and 0800 EST. Do the math for your timezone, Brits.

- I will insist you do not use the "Not X" reason on any character, where X is another unit. If you do, your vote will be thrown out.

- "Recruits X" or "takes you to X chapter" arguments are explicitly banned. C'mon, people, this shouldn't need to be a rule. That's not gameplay performance.

- Assume that the character in question is being recruited.

- Similar to the "Recruits X" rule, do not use "he brings the Demi Band" or any other justification as an argument.

- BEXP is free to be used in any quantity on any character.

- Rating a unit too low because you think its overrated will make me throw away your vote without mercy public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif.

- I withhold the privilege to tell you your rating is bogus and demand you revise it if it breaks any of the above. I will not throw out votes anonymously, you will be informed and given a chance to revise.

Averages:

Rolf: 1.15

Sothe: 2.03

Brom: 2.32

Shinon: 3.00

Volke : 4.82

Ilyana: 4.98

Soren: 5.15

Rhys: 5.31

Gatrie: 5.46

Mia: 5.71

Muarim: 6.19

Mist: 6.41

Mordecai: 6.55

Makalov: 6.59

Tormod: 6.62

Zihark: 6.65

Lethe: 6.75

Nephenee: 6.79

Stefan: 7.40

Astrid: 7.76

Boyd: 8.29

Ike: 8.57

Oscar: 9.08

Kieran: 9.23

Jill: 9.31

Marcia: 9.36

Titania: 9.91

Only 8 votes were tallied for Muarim. I guess no one likes laguz.

Edited May 2, 2012 by ZM456

[Elieson]

Better than FE11 Draug :/

[MacLovin]

5/10

Arms scroll, early silver lances, Knight ward and some nice supports can salvage him

But, for efficient play, he costs turns.

[Lord Raven]

4/10

generally pretty mediocre, but is good for giving fire support to you-know-who and has a decent amount of str. Knight Ward can help his speed quite a bit, but he's nothing special

+1 for affirmative action

[Samias]

Pros:

+Once you recruit him, you can make good use of him killing armors.

+Well-rounded

+Good growth rate in HP and strength.

Cons:

-Well-rounded. By end-game, there is nothing remarkable about him.

-Lance locked footie with no crit bonus.

-Decent affinity, but shallow support pool. Tormod outpaces him with superior mov. If you have Nephenee, Devdan is redundant. Largo... :|

I never found a place for Devdan in my team. IS gave absolutely nothing special to halberdiers in this game, and Devdan is not exactly exceptional. He's not particularly better or worse than Nephenee except in the skills department, so if you want to use a halberdier, there isn't anything particularly wrong with Devdan. It's just a shame that halberdiers just don't get anything appealing in this game, unlike their Radiant Dawn counterparts.

4/10

[Renall]

A purely average Halberdier type. There's not a whole lot wrong with him other than his, well, general averageness.

The one cool thing about him, if you want to call it that, is a fast Fire/Fire support with Tormod. That could boost Tormod a bit, I guess.

5/10

[NTNP]

Devdan is probably the most unremarkable of the soldiers and halbediers that have existed within the recent FE games. He has nothing unique about him as a unit, he isn't particularly powerful, durable, quick but also is rarely falling behind in stats either and joins at about the middle of the game. Unfortunately, so many of the other units in FE9 are very powerful, excel in one or two areas without really suffering in another stat enough for it to make much of a difference. At his core, our good old mentally unwell, ambiguously black guy (which is admittedly really freaking unexpected and probably one of FE's more memorable characters) is an extremely average unit in a game full of exceptional to pretty good units who have some unique niche that can be used for which is really disappointing. If he would have existed in other games (like FE1, 2, 6, 7, 11 or 12) with comparable bases and growths for that game he probably could have been pretty useful due to either the number of niche units in those games that do have problematic stats which might make mister average pretty useful, the difficulty of the enemy units and everything like that he could have been a lot better. All in all he should be a five out of ten in any other game, but here it is a lot closer to 3/10.

[Loki Laufeyson]

Devdan. Seems to be a gardener and loves kids. Has a hidden talent in entertaining.

Pros:

Prepromote.

Ok bases.

Great personality.

Cons:

Ehhh.

Pretty unremarkable growths.

Supports arent awesome.

To be honest, i havent really used Devdan outside maybe one or two chapters. Hes just so unremarkable and mediocre in terms of growths and stuff. Hes not like, unbadass or anything but just not amazing. His speed is not as good as Neph's nor his skill. Devdan's got some ok weapon ranks though. Hes just so...middle ground. I guess if you like average or really balanced dudes, hes ok but yeah. He never makes it on my team.

4/10. 5/10 bias because Devdan is hilarious.

[Silent Mercenary]

Pros:

+Knight Ward access

+Good strength and HP growths

+B rank in lances

Cons:

-.25 foot soldier move

-2 for mediocre bases at midgame including bad speed, although salvageable

-.75 for the hit giving part of the affinity + support options

-.5 for no impacting skill to offer (Serenity only alters his Hit/Avoid by ~3 pts, it's like it wasn't even there)

-.5 lance lock when he could really use something else

-2.5 for below averageness up to endgame and nothing new to offer

He really brings nothing you didn't already have or need, aside that Heavy Spear, which the rules say we can't take into account. He's not a bad unit by FE standards, but compared to other units in this game, he doesn't stand out in anything.

3.5/10 with no +/- bias since I'm neutral towards his personality

I used Devdan for the first time last run and gave him Luna (better to make use of his space). He activated it a few times when he was short of strength (I recall him needing it during ch. 17) because he rarely doubled, and I had the Knight Ward almost exclusively on him. I was in plans of transferring him and maybe using him more in RD, but I was running out of BExp and around chapter 27, I just benched him close to maxing Str/Spd and reaching lv17. The whole experience seemed like babying an adult child that would never grow up.

[DarthMikey]

He's pretty bulky in general, with nice HP, STR, and DEF. While lances are a good weapon to be locked to, I would argue that it hurts him to be a lance-locked foot soldier, with rather mediocre bases when he arrives. His SPD in particular is rather lacking, what with him losing 4 AS to his Heavy Spear, and it will not be getting much better unless you have him hold the Knight Ward.

In short, a below-average foot soldier that you don't need. Blah.

4.5/10

Edited May 2, 2012 by Cosmic_Harold

[Snowy_One]

Devdan... Sucks. From the moment he joins he outright sucks. Coming in as a late-joiner to the team who is prepromoted you would expect him to be at least somewhat good, right? Stefan was acceptable, Muarim was acceptable, Calill will likely be acceptable... So Devdan should at least be passible, right? Wrong! First off Devdan is SLOW! This is not a minor thing. Within a chapter or two most of your units will likely start promoting and promoted Rhys can tie him in speed! His base stats are awful! To make it worse, with a unit like Tormod, you can at least expect that dumping a load of BEXP into him will cause him to end the game as an average or above average unit, but not so with Devdan! Devdan's stats are, at best, average. Except for his Speed! At endgame it's 18-19 at best. The only way to 'fix' this is to give him a speed boost via the KW or wings (bands give too little). Yay! Giving him limited resources to get a unit who is only average at best for half the game! At least Muarim could claim to be above average before silver weapons came along and took a resource only a few other units could use (two of which sucked and one of which won't likely be fielded in the endgame anyways and may not be using it even if she is). I can't even claim he's a good supporter unlike Ulki and Janaff!

Pretty much the only positive I can think to say about him is this: If you're willing to give him the resources to work with, he can be average for the rest of the game.

3 (3.5-.5 personal)/10.

[ZemZem]

Snap, I'm sorry.

Tallying.