6 replies to this topic

[CATS]

And I open.

[CATS]

For my opener, Vyland will be going Mage -> Sage, although this is subject to change depending on how the debaet plays out.

In terms of pure offense, there's almost no difference between Mage Merric and Mage Vyland. Both have 0 base Mag, and while Merric's base Spd is higher, it won't double jack squat anyways (never reaches 14 average Spd as a Mage). Merric just has 10% higher Mag growth, which eventually earns him 1 more point of average Mag, big whoop, and starts with D Tomes, which also barely does anything (Vyland can get D aswell by the time Blizzard is available in Ch 8 and then C by the time Bolganone comes in Ch 12). The only significant difference in their offense is Merric's Excalibur, which is indeed a pretty big point, but then again, Merric is the third best unit in the game, so he's got to have something to justify that ranking over a mere lowtier such as Vyland.

Let's go from looking at the 3rd best unit to looking at some upper mid units. What about Hunter Bord/Castor? By the time Mage Vyland shows up, they should have around 16-17 Atk. Cavs and Archers have 7 Def, while Armors have 11-12; they're doing 9-10 damage on Cavs/Archers, vs Vyland's 8, and they do ~5 damage to Armors or ~10 if they're able to double (which they may or may not be able to do), so Vyland's damage is similar against those aswell. Their Str growths are a little higher than Vyland's Mag growth (5/10% for Bord/Caster respectively), but Vyland's on a lower initial level aswell, and will make some gains in Atk as he catches up to them. And once again, none of them will double shit before promotion anyways.

Thus, as you can see, Vyland's pretty cool as a chip damage unit and stuff. Yeah, his durability is total balls, but that's not the point. Chip damage units are just as useful as tanks for taking down enemies while minimizing the damage taken in return. While tanks are useful for luring enemies in or blocking them off from more vulnerable units, the chippers are useful to wear an enemy's Hp down without taking anything in return, so that someone else can then finish it off before it can counter. And Mages are very nice chippers; compared to bow or sword units, their perpetual 1-2 range lets them chip freely against either melee enemies or bow enemies, and compared to Javelin/Hand Axe units, they're considerably more accurate.

So Vyland is cruising along, casting spells, and eventually his archnemesis Palla shows up.

L15 Mage Vyland, C Tomes: 8.2 Atk, 9.3 Spd
Base Palla, B Lances: 8 Atk, 13 Spd

Well Palla's stomping Vyland in Spd, but does her 13 Spd actually double anything? Well, it doubles Armors, but Vyland wins against those anyway for obvious reasons. They generally have 12 Def and 4-5 AS; Vyland does 12 damage with one hit from Fire, while Palla does 5x2 doubling with Steel and gets countered more often. Palla can go with the Javelin to fix that last part, but Palla w/ Javelin might as well not even bother attacking at all, doing a massive double 3's.

We can see that Thoron conveniently arrives from the Village at the start of this chapter. Thus, it's likely that Vyland will be able to get his hands on either Thoron or Bolganone, considering that you'll only have 2 other magic attackers at most (a recently promoted Merric and possibly Shiida). 2 power tomes, for 3 casters; I'll give him Bolganone, the lesser tome, as a middle-of-the-road sort of deal. Vyland can do 20 damage to the Archers/Cavs with Bolganone, or 15 with Blizzard.

Palla meanwhile is doing just 10 to Archers or 8 to Cavs w/ Steel, once again I won't bother giving damage for Javelin as it's even more pathetic. Even if she can get her hands on a Ridersbane, she only does 23 to Cavs, which sounds like a lot until you realize it's only 3 more than Vyland is capable of, and you still have to consider that you get only two Ridersbane for many units capable of using them (Cain, Abel, Hardin, Zagaro, Wolf). It's indeed better to hand the Ridersbane off to one of those other units if they're capable of OHKOing with it.

So they keep going along and then voila, time to promote, I'll arbitrarily peg this time as Ch 17.

20/1 Sage Vyland, A Tomes: 11.7 Atk, 12.55 Spd
13/1 Sniper Palla, C Bows: 13.75 Atk, 16.25 Spd

Damn, Palla's Atk went up alot. That manly 55% Str growth. Too bad Vyland's still better.

Oh look, Excalibur. You've got only two units who can use it, and it has 33 uses, so Vyland can totally get some mileage out of that. And if he's not using Excalibur, then he can get him some Thoron or Bolganone anyways. Palla on the other hand just really doesn't have any cool weapons to use at all. Killer Bows aren't buyable until Ch 22.

Palla continues to not do much against Armors. Steel is only doing 9x2. Meanwhile Vyland is able to one-round.

It would be really cool if Palla could attack that Forged Killer Bow Sniper. Too bad she can't because he'll threaten her with a possible critkill on the counter. Meanwhile Vyland just lols and hits him at 1 range after Zagaro or w/e lures him in.

There's a Silver Axe Hero here that you definitely want to chip down from 2 range, considering his counter hurts and you have no effective weapons to hit him with. Vyland's way better at this; neither double, but Palla does 11-12 damage, whereas Vyland does 13 with just Fire. He can do up to 20-21 damage by equipping high-end tomes.

Then there's Mamkutes whose counter is even worse than that Hero's (lol, 25-26 AS + 36 Atk), and whose Def is more than twice their Res, when Vyland's Atk is already higher than Palla's (Palla + Steel = 21.75, Vyland + Bolganone = 23.7).

But wait, there's enemy Mages in this chapter! Won't Palla's offense be better against those? Nope. Vyland is still able to steal their virginity, able to 2HKO with just Blizzard.

And now Vyland can heal your guys, which is useful for obvious reasons. Not to mention that it allows him to gain a level lead, since he now has an extra Exp pool to draw from which Palla lacks.

Your turn.

Edited by CATS, 18 November 2009 - 05:47 PM.

[Momo]

For my opener, Vyland will be going Mage -> Sage, although this is subject to change depending on how the debaet plays out.

In terms of pure offense, there's almost no difference between Mage Merric and Mage Vyland. Both have 0 base Mag, and while
Merric's base Spd is higher, it won't double jack squat anyways (never reaches 14 average Spd as a Mage). Merric just has 10%
higher Mag growth, which eventually earns him 1 more point of average Mag, big whoop, and starts with D Tomes, which also
barely does anything (Vyland can get D aswell by the time Blizzard is available in Ch 8 and then C by the time Bolganone
comes in Ch 12). The only significant difference in their offense is Merric's Excalibur, which is indeed a pretty big point,
but then again, Merric is the third best unit in the game, so he's got to have something to justify that ranking over a mere
lowtier such as Vyland.

Merric also has something resembling durability once he promotes to a Sage, and considering Vyland's is lol compared to
Merric's (when he goes Priest -> Sage), I'm gonna have to say there's more to it than just Excalibur.

Let's go from looking at the 3rd best unit to looking at some upper mid units. What about Hunter Bord/Castor? By the
time Mage Vyland shows up, they should have around 16-17 Atk. Cavs and Archers have 7 Def, while Armors have 11-12; they're
doing 9-10 damage on Cavs/Archers, vs Vyland's 8, and they do ~5 damage to Armors or ~10 if they're able to double (which
they may or may not be able to do), so Vyland's damage is similar against those aswell. Their Str growths are a little higher
than Vyland's Mag growth (5/10% for Bord/Caster respectively), but Vyland's on a lower initial level aswell, and will make
some gains in Atk as he catches up to them. And once again, none of them will double shit before promotion anyways.

Once again, neither of these guys get killed as quickly as Vyland. Even if he's doing similar chip damage, it's not gonna
matter a whole lot if he's getting killed on the enemy phase.

Thus, as you can see, Vyland's pretty cool as a chip damage unit and stuff. Yeah, his durability is total balls, but
that's not the point.

Oh, I think this is a huge deal. Early on your dudes are gonna have a hard enough time protecting themselves, having to block people so Vyland doesn't get hurt at all is a huge pain in the ass.

As an example, let's see just how badly he does in a couple chapters...

Chapter 6
Armor:
33 (34) HP
22 (23) atk
92 (93) hit
3 (4) AS
11 (12) def
0 (1) res

This one-shots mage-Vyland. Since he doesn't double, Vyland takes 5 rounds just to kill this guy, at a whole 8 damage a round. And this is the enemy he's supposed to be good against.

Lvl 3 archer:
30 HP
19 atk
93 hit
9 AS
7 def

28 HP
18 atk [steel bow]
93 hit
8 (9) AS
6 def

More single rounds, and these guys are two range. Vyland four-rounds them.

Chapter 6x

Archer:
25-27 HP
16 atk iron bow, 19 atk steel bow
104 hit iron bow, 93-94 hit steel bow
9 AS
6 (7) def

Vyland really pisses his pants over simple enemies, don't he?

Pirate:
33 (34) HP
Iron axe: 20-22 atk, Steel 23-25, Hand 21-22
Hit: Iron 100-101, Steel 90-91, Hand 80-81
8 (9) AS
5 def
0 (1) res [....lol]

Chapter 7

Wyvern:

38 HP
23 atk
93 hit
15 AS
10 def
3 res

lol

I could go on and on, but the simple fact is Vyland has to be protected from absolutely everything.

Chip damage units are just as useful as tanks for taking down enemies while minimizing the damage taken in return.

And they're never able to kill on their own, dampening their EXP gain.

You see, that is the difference between Palla and Vyland. While Vyland can provide chip damage, like lots of people (including palla) can, Palla is actually able to kill things. She's got instant access to the silver lance and ridersbane, giving her a great player phase, but she doesn't just roll over and die when stuff takes a stab at her.

While tanks are useful for luring enemies in or blocking them off from more vulnerable units, the chippers are useful to wear an enemy's Hp down without taking anything in return, so that someone else can then finish it off before it can counter. And Mages are very nice chippers; compared to bow or sword units, their perpetual 1-2 range lets them chip freely against either melee enemies or bow enemies, and compared to Javelin/Hand Axe units, they're considerably more accurate.

Accuracy is pretty low on your priorities in H5, considering how enemy dodge is never going to get very high, not to mention
the added accuracy characters get from higher weapon ranks. But hey, a win is a win I guess.

So Vyland is cruising along, casting spells, and eventually his archnemesis Palla shows up.

L15 Mage Vyland, C Tomes: 8.2 Atk, 9.3 Spd

Vyland joins on chapter 5 at level 1 and sucks balls. No way is he getting 14 levels in 11 chapters. Being generous, I'd peg him at about level 11.

Level 11 Mage Vyland, C Tomes: 6.7 Atk, 3.5 Spd

Archers and cavs can now double him if he's unlucky, which means death for our red-haired mage. He'd have to level up twice more to avoid that, which I just don't see happening.

Base Palla, B Lances: 8 Atk, 13 Spd

Well Palla's stomping Vyland in Spd, but does her 13 Spd actually double anything? Well, it doubles Armors, but Vyland wins
against those anyway for obvious reasons. They generally have 12 Def and 4-5 AS; Vyland does 12 damage with one hit from
Fire, while Palla does 5x2 doubling with Steel and gets countered more often. Palla can go with the Javelin to fix that last
part, but Palla w/ Javelin might as well not even bother attacking at all, doing a massive double 3's.

Why in the world is Palla using Steel? She has B lances for a reason. Make that 9x2 to armors. She's doing better than him on
the enemy he's supposed to be good at. Great job, Vyland.

We can see that Thoron conveniently arrives from the Village at the start of this chapter. Thus, it's likely that
Vyland will be able to get his hands on either Thoron or Bolganone, considering that you'll only have 2 other magic attackers
at most (a recently promoted Merric and possibly Shiida). 2 power tomes, for 3 casters; I'll give him Bolganone, the lesser
tome, as a middle-of-the-road sort of deal. Vyland can do 20 damage to the Archers/Cavs with Bolganone, or 15 with Blizzard.

By chapter 14, you only have one Bolganone tome, which you got two chapters ago. The tome's only got 13 uses, just how much
chip damage do you expect him to do with that thing? Not to mention the thing weighs him down by 4 until he's level
15, that's just asking for all kinds of trouble.

If he's using Bilzzard, that 13 damage (with my adjusted leveling) falls just short of Palla's 14 damage she does with a
Silver Lance. Cavs obviously can be blown off the map with ridersbane, no contest there.

Palla meanwhile is doing just 10 to Archers or 8 to Cavs w/ Steel, once again I won't bother giving damage for Javelin
as it's even more pathetic. Even if she can get her hands on a Ridersbane, she only does 23 to Cavs, which sounds like a lot
until you realize it's only 3 more than Vyland is capable of, and you still have to consider that you get only two Ridersbane
for many units capable of using them (Cain, Abel, Hardin, Zagaro, Wolf). It's indeed better to hand the Ridersbane off to one
of those other units if they're capable of OHKOing with it.

Level 16 Abel 37 Mt, 14 AS
Level 16 Cain 37 Mt, 13 AS
Level 16 Hardin 38 Mt, 13 AS
Level 11 Sedgar 40 Mt, 8 AS
Level 13 Wolf 43 Mt, 10 AS

If the cavs have 11 AS, only Abel can one-round it, as he doubles. Everyone else falls short, leaving the cavs with about ~10
HP each. If they get a forge, Palla should also get a forged Ridersbane, letting her one-shot all of them.

So they keep going along and then voila, time to promote, I'll arbitrarily peg this time as Ch 17.

20/1 Sage Vyland, A Tomes: 11.7 Atk, 12.55 Spd
13/1 Sniper Palla, C Bows: 13.75 Atk, 16.25 Spd

Vyland's only had four more chapters to grow, I'll give him six more levels from my previous revision, due to their being
more promoted enemies and all, and...

17/1 Sage Vyland, A Tomes: 10.5 Atk, 11.2 Spd

I gotta say, Vyland, that +3 strength on promotion sure helped. Your speed's not completely laughable with stronger tomes now.

Since Palla's got comparable offense and has ridersbane to take out those pesky horsemen, I'll make her level 15 before promoting.

15/1 Sniper Palla, C Bows: 14.9 Atk, 16.8 Spd

She's beating him in both attack and speed.

Damn, Palla's Atk went up alot. That manly 55% Str growth. Too bad Vyland's still better.

Oh look, Excalibur. You've got only two units who can use it, and it has 33 uses, so Vyland can totally get some mileage out
of that. And if he's not using Excalibur, then he can get him some Thoron or Bolganone anyways. Palla on the other hand just really doesn't have any cool weapons to use at all. Killer Bows aren't buyable until Ch 22.

Excalibur's likely still useable, but don't forget Wendel (and hell, Merric) being able to use it early on. If Vyland is using it, it won't be for very long.

Thoron? Probably almost broken by now, it only has 21 uses afteral.. He can have Bolganone.

You get two killer bows by chapter 17. One is in chapter 14, and the other is in chapter 17 itself. Who's really going to miss the things? There's Draug, sure, but he can live without it. Sedgar and Wolf sure as hell don't need it, they want forged javalins on the enemy phase. Killer Bow to Palla.

It would be really cool if Palla could attack that Forged Killer Bow Sniper. Too bad she can't because he'll threaten her with a possible critkill on the counter. Meanwhile Vyland just lols and hits him at 1 range after Zagaro or w/e lures him in.

So Vyland finally wins against something he should, great.

There's a Silver Axe Hero here that you definitely want to chip down from 2 range, considering his counter hurts and you have no effective weapons to hit him with. Vyland's way better at this; neither double, but Palla does 11-12 damage, whereas
Vyland does 13 with just Fire. He can do up to 20-21 damage by equipping high-end tomes.

Palla can actually take a hit from this guy, at least. Poor lil Vyland gets doubled and dies. But eh, moot point. Palla's got crit, at least. Pretty much the same for the mamkute.

But wait, there's enemy Mages in this chapter! Won't Palla's offense be better against those? Nope. Vyland is still able to steal their virginity, able to 2HKO with just Blizzard.

The mages? You mean the ones Palla doubles and thus murders? She also one-rounds all the bishops, meaning she one-rounds 7 to his... 4 (the armors), while doing better on 5 more. He's doing a tad better, but definitely not a huge gap.

And now Vyland can heal your guys, which is useful for obvious reasons. Not to mention that it allows him to gain a level lead, since he now has an extra Exp pool to draw from which Palla lacks.

Oh boy, I'm sure everyone will just be loving that... 11 HP he heals. This late into the game, such healing is probably useless.

Your turn.

No yours. (sorry if this is kind of awkward, it's my first time)

[CATS]

Merric also has something resembling durability once he promotes to a Sage, and considering Vyland's is lol compared to
Merric's (when he goes Priest -> Sage), I'm gonna have to say there's more to it than just Excalibur.

Speaking of Curate, there's even less difference between Curate Merric (his typically assumed first tier class) and Curate Vyland. Once again, both have 0 base Mag and they both have base E Rank in staves. Merric just has 10% more Mag growth which matters even less with staves than it does for tomes.

So if you must, you can make Vyland a Curate and he's doing almost exactly the same as the 3rd best unit up until promotion. There goes any complaints about Vyland sucking before Palla joins.

Once again, neither of these guys get killed as quickly as Vyland. Even if he's doing similar chip damage, it's not gonna
matter a whole lot if he's getting killed on the enemy phase.

Neither of them should be getting attacked either, on account of not being able to counter anyways. When melee enemies attack them, they take no damage in return, whereas if those enemies had gone after someone who can counter they would've taken damage in return and died faster on the following player phase. Thus, it's in your best interest to guard your Hunters from enemy attack regardless of how good their durability is. Even if they had 2 billion defense, you'd still protect them from melee enemies.

Vyland is played in the same manner. Their enemy phase is similar in the sense that none of them have any sort of enemy phase to speak of; all they have is player phase, and Vyland's similar on that aswell.

Oh, I think this is a huge deal. Early on your dudes are gonna have a hard enough time protecting themselves, having to block people so Vyland doesn't get hurt at all is a huge pain in the ass.

No, it's not. Vyland can attack an enemy from up to 8 spaces away. He can be left many spaces behind your melee units and still be able to attack on player phase. Now, this wouldn't be viable in a game like FE7 where your PCs are godly compared to the enemies, so that you're able to rush forward, rape everything on enemy phase, and rush forward again.

However, FE11 is the complete opposite situation. During earlygame, the enemies are godly compared to your PCs, 2HKOing everyone (with precious few exceptions) with massive accuracy. The majority of your damage must be dealt on player phase because your units simply don't have the durability to take lots of attacks on enemy phase. You need to wait just outside enemies' range, or lure them in with one of your few tanks, and then gangbang them on player phase before they have a chance to move again and rape someone. You should never, ever be rushing headfirst into the enemies, rather, you have to let the enemies come to you more often than not. And in that situation, Vyland's durability is of no concern. It's not preventing him from moving forward, as you're not rushing into the enemies regardless, nor does he require large amounts of inconvenient walling, as you're most often waiting just at the edge of an enemy group's range anyways, and it doesn't prevent him from attacking, as he's not getting countered.

*stuff about Vyland 4 or 5 rounding enemies*

Outside of effective weapons, your other units are not doing much better. L7 Steel Lance Abel does 5x2 to that Armor, also 4RKOing, and gets countered on top of it (if he goes to Javelin to avoid a counter, now Vyland actually does more damage than him). L6 Steel Axe Cord 3HKOs that Archer. Vyland does only 6 damage to that Draco you listed, which sounds horrible, but let's see how well Hardin is doing; he has to attack with the Javelin because that thing doubles him, and w/ the Javelin he does 7 damage, 1 more than Vyland (with displayed hit in the lower 70's, vs Vyland's in the high 80's, I might add). Awesome. And these are the high tiers.

With everyone's offense being this shitty, Vyland's accurate 1-2 range chip fits right in.

And they're never able to kill on their own, dampening their EXP gain.

Correction: No one is able to kill on their own. Everyone needs other units teaming up with them to bring down an enemy. Thus, it's no more difficult to give Vyland kills than it is for anyone else.

You see, that is the difference between Palla and Vyland. While Vyland can provide chip damage, like lots of people (including palla) can, Palla is actually able to kill things. She's got instant access to the silver lance and ridersbane, giving her a great player phase, but she doesn't just roll over and die when stuff takes a stab at her.

Wtf? No, Palla is not able to kill things. Go compare Palla's base stats to the enemy stats again. With the Silver Lance she's 4RKOing Cavs, and let me remind you that's with the Silver Lance. She needs Silver to have the same offense that everyone else had 10 chapters ago. She's doing the opposite of killing things.

Indeed, Palla doesn't just roll over and die when she gets attacked, but she's pretty damn close. Any enemy attack she takes will leave her with single digit Hp, and prevent her from attacking again without lowering her offense by equipping the Javelin. Now she needs to be healed before she can use her good weapons again, and that's not good because healing is highly demanded in this game. It takes 2-3 heals to bring PCs back to full health after taking a hit, and there's lots of non-aggressive enemies with absurd accuracy who must be lured in by placing units in their attack range. Not to mention that someone like Merric is among your better offensive units right now, and it's best if he's free to attack rather than heal.

Vyland doesn't run into this issue, as all of his weapons are 1-2 range.

Accuracy is pretty low on your priorities in H5, considering how enemy dodge is never going to get very high

The hit formula in FE11 emphasizes base weapon accuracy, as Skl + Lck are able to add very little to your hitrate. And Javelin/Hand Axe have 70/60 hit respectively. A 9 AS enemy has Avo roughly equal to L8 Cord's base Hit, so when Cord goes to attack with his Hand Axe, his hitrate is equal to 60 + weapon rank (he might get +5 from a C) + supports (+10 if both are in range). So he's looking at ~70-75 displayed hit. Vyland, meanwhile, has 91 displayed hit against that enemy without considering Skl/Lck, weapon ranks or supports at all.

Vyland joins on chapter 5 at level 1 and sucks balls. No way is he getting 14 levels in 11 chapters.

Saying this without giving any sort of evidence? You'll have to do better than that.

14 levels in 11 chapters is 1.27 levels per chapter; 127 Exp.

Discounting some late reinforcements that you probably won't fight, there's ~240 enemies from Ch 5 up to Ch 14. If we have about 8 units to divide those kills between, then each unit gets 30 kills. ~2.7 kills per chapter. Vyland's getting liek 35 Exp per kill when he starts off, and around 15 Exp per kill when Palla shows up, so his average Exp gain per kill is ~25. In any given chapter, give him his 2.7 kills and he gains 67.5 Exp. So it looks like he's falling way short, right?

Nope, there's many additional factors to consider. Roughly 1/10 of those enemies are promoted. Promoted kills give ~60 Exp, so that drives average Exp gain per kill up to 28.5.

Then you have to add in boss kills (which Vyland is actually decent at getting thanks to high accuracy + hitting on Res). With 11 bosses and 8 units, you get average 1.375 boss kills per unit, and they're worth liek 80 Exp. Adds about 110 total Exp per unit, so spread that out and it's about +11 to average Exp per chapter.

Now taking those into account, Vyland gets on average 88 Exp per chapter from kills alone. Exp from just chipping is about 10, so Vyland needs to do damage 4 times per chapter in addition to getting 2-3 kills in order to gain those levels. He needs to attack on 6-7 turns per chapter and kill on under half of those attacks. Quite reasonable considering that turncounts are high in this game and you often need multiple chip attacks before making a kill.

Also, I should note that your numbers on Vyland's Spd are way off. 3.5 Spd at L11? lol, his base is 3 and he has a 45% growth.

Why in the world is Palla using Steel? She has B lances for a reason. Make that 9x2 to armors. She's doing better than him on
the enemy he's supposed to be good at. Great job, Vyland.

You get only two free Silver Lances up til now, and one of them comes very early + needs to be used alot in early chapters, so it's probably already broken or nearly broken (had 4 uses left in Ch 14 on my current game). So in reality, you've got one free Silver Lance here, among a possible 6 units capable of using it (Cain, Abel, Hardin, Wolf, Zagaro in addition to Palla). Dividing that out evenly gets you a whopping 3 and 1/3 uses for each unit, except that it's actually going to be less than that, as you've definitely used some charges of it before now considering it's been around since Ch 5. Palla's not going to get any mileage out of that when so many other units are wanting it.

By chapter 14, you only have one Bolganone tome, which you got two chapters ago. The tome's only got 13 uses, just how much
chip damage do you expect him to do with that thing?

He's not using it constantly. Most of the time he won't need the extra 3-5 damage over Blizzard/Elfire. The point is that it's there when he really does need it. And it becomes buyable a long time before the first one should run out.

Not to mention the thing weighs him down by 4 until he's level 15, that's just asking for all kinds of trouble.

That would really suck if it mattered at all.

If the cavs have 11 AS, only Abel can one-round it, as he doubles. Everyone else falls short, leaving the cavs with about ~10
HP each. If they get a forge, Palla should also get a forged Ridersbane, letting her one-shot all of them.

The important difference is that the others are able to OHKO with a lesser forge than Palla needs. You'll almost definitely forge your early Ridersbane, because OHKOing Cavs is awesome during the earlygame, but it only needs +3 Mt to OHKO, and that +3 Mt is still enough for Cain/Abel/Hardin to keep OHKOing with it in Ch 14. Palla on the other hand needs +5 Mt with her 5 lower Str, and there's no reason to forge +5 Mt onto the Ridersbane and hand it to Palla when you can just forge less Mt onto it and give it to someone stronger to achieve the same effect.

Since Palla's got comparable offense and has ridersbane to take out those pesky horsemen, I'll make her level 15 before promoting.

Her offense is not at all comparable, and the Ridersbane is not Prf to her.

L15 means you gave her 7 levels in 2-3 chapters (considering she joins well into Ch 14, it's questionable how much fighting she'll be able to do there). That's almost 3 levels per chapter. Her higher Exp gains aren't nearly enough to justify that, not to mention she's worse than Vyland at actually getting kills in the first place.

Thoron? Probably almost broken by now, it only has 21 uses afteral.. He can have Bolganone.

Probably almost broken after 3 chapters?

You get two killer bows by chapter 17. One is in chapter 14, and the other is in chapter 17 itself. Who's really going to miss the things? There's Draug, sure, but he can live without it. Sedgar and Wolf sure as hell don't need it, they want forged javalins on the enemy phase. Killer Bow to Palla.

Draug can live without it, sure. Guess who else can? Palla. Both of them want it, and Palla doesn't automatically get to claim it over Draug.

Wolf and Zagaro may prefer Javelins on enemy phase, but what does that have to with them wanting to use a Killer Bow on player phase?

Then you have Sniper Minerva, whom you still have room to field.

Palla can actually take a hit from this guy, at least.

She takes a ton of damage and doesn't counter, which is slowing you down as compared to letting the Hero attack a melee unit that can counter. So if you have her getting hit, that's just hurting her case.

The mages? You mean the ones Palla doubles and thus murders?

Yes, ofcourse Palla one-rounds them. So does Vyland.

Palla only does better against the Bishops, but those are considerably outnumbered by the rest of the enemies, and winning against them is less significant since almost all your units can effortlessly buttrape them anyways. Vyland helping you kill the enemies that are actually somewhat tough to bring down is much more significant.

Oh boy, I'm sure everyone will just be loving that... 11 HP he heals. This late into the game, such healing is probably useless.

Healing, useless? On the contrary, healing is in high demand in this game, as outlined earlier. Any extra healing you can get is quite useful. Plus, there's the whole extra Exp pool thing. Let's see how that plays out......on account of Vyland's extra Exp pool, let's give him 5 levels for every 4 that Palla gets. So looking at things around, say, Ch 20:

20/5 Sage Vyland: 12.7 Atk, 15 Spd
13/4 Sniper Palla: 16 Atk, 17.45 Spd

Pretty straightforward. Vyland wins hilariously against the Generals and Ballisticians, nearly one-rounding Generals and easily one-rounding Ballisticians, while Palla is only able to shave off about half the Generals' health even with Silver, and isn't close to one-rounding Ballistas (once again, even with Silver). Neither one can double those blazing fast Paladins, and Vyland does slightly more damage even if Palla has Silver. And Camus is a bastard, doubling both of them with 1-2 range, so they probably just don't want to attack him at all (though Vyland would do more damage if they did).

And Vyland still has healing which Palla doesn't, neener neener.

Your turn again.

Edited by CATS, 19 November 2009 - 04:23 PM.

[Momo]

[quote name='CATS' date='19 November 2009 - 02:21 PM' timestamp='1258658469' post='686430']Speaking of Curate, there's even less difference between Curate Merric (his typically assumed first tier class) and Curate Vyland. Once again, both have 0 base Mag and they both have base E Rank in staves. Merric just has 10% more Mag growth which matters even less with staves than it does for tomes.

So if you must, you can make Vyland a Curate and he's doing almost exactly the same as the 3rd best unit up until promotion. There goes any complaints about Vyland sucking before Palla joins.[/quote]
You used mage Vyland in your comparisons, not Priest. If you're gonna switch him to priest, then that whole chip damage thing is gone.

[quote]Neither of them should be getting attacked either, on account of not being able to counter anyways. When melee enemies attack them, they take no damage in return, whereas if those enemies had gone after someone who can counter they would've taken damage in return and died faster on the following player phase. Thus, it's in your best interest to guard your Hunters from enemy attack regardless of how good their durability is. Even if they had 2 billion defense, you'd still protect them from melee enemies.

Vyland is played in the same manner. Their enemy phase is similar in the sense that none of them have any sort of enemy phase to speak of; all they have is player phase, and Vyland's similar on that aswell.
[/quote]
It's in your best interest to protect them, sure, but they can survive a round of getting hit. Vyland needs protection, or he's toast.

Their lack of an enemy phase is a lot more forgiving in this game than others. You generally don't want to kill on the enemy phase early on, because then some other guy swoops in and kills you.

[quote][quote]Oh, I think this is a huge deal. Early on your dudes are gonna have a hard enough time protecting themselves, having to block people so Vyland doesn't get hurt at all is a huge pain in the ass.[/quote]

No, it's not. Vyland can attack an enemy from up to 8 spaces away. He can be left many spaces behind your melee units and still be able to attack on player phase. Now, this wouldn't be viable in a game like FE7 where your PCs are godly compared to the enemies, so that you're able to rush forward, rape everything on enemy phase, and rush forward again.

However, FE11 is the complete opposite situation. During earlygame, the enemies are godly compared to your PCs, 2HKOing everyone (with precious few exceptions) with massive accuracy. The majority of your damage must be dealt on player phase because your units simply don't have the durability to take lots of attacks on enemy phase. You need to wait just outside enemies' range, or lure them in with one of your few tanks, and then gangbang them on player phase before they have a chance to move again and rape someone. You should never, ever be rushing headfirst into the enemies, rather, you have to let the enemies come to you more often than not. And in that situation, Vyland's durability is of no concern. It's not preventing him from moving forward, as you're not rushing into the enemies regardless, nor does he require large amounts of inconvenient walling, as you're most often waiting just at the edge of an enemy group's range anyways, and it doesn't prevent him from attacking, as he's not getting countered.[/quote]
If you take time gangbanging single enemies, other enemies in the same group have a chance to attack on the enemy phase. They're typically in pretty big swarms too, there's no way you're gonna be able to kill them all in one player phase. And since those groups usually also have ranged weapons sprinked within them, that means Vyland has to have twelve people surrounding him, just so he doesn't get hit.

[quote][quote]*stuff about Vyland 4 or 5 rounding enemies*[/quote]

Outside of effective weapons, your other units are not doing much better. L7 Steel Lance Abel does 5x2 to that Armor, also 4RKOing, and gets countered on top of it (if he goes to Javelin to avoid a counter, now Vyland actually does more damage than him). L6 Steel Axe Cord 3HKOs that Archer. Vyland does only 6 damage to that Draco you listed, which sounds horrible, but let's see how well Hardin is doing; he has to attack with the Javelin because that thing doubles him, and w/ the Javelin he does 7 damage, 1 more than Vyland (with displayed hit in the lower 70's, vs Vyland's in the high 80's, I might add). Awesome. And these are the high tiers.[/quote]
Other than Abel 4 rounding and Vyland 5 rounding, Abel doesn't get one-shot by the armor. He can afford to let it attack him on the enemy phase and then retreat afterwards. Vyland on the other hand, dies in one shot.

Since it's an archer, Cord can smack it on the player phase, get hit on the enemy phase, get healed, smack it again, and so on. Vyland is one-rounded once again on the enemy phase.

As for Hardin and the Draco, do you want me to compare the two against all the other dudes on this map? That I only stopped at it because I didn't want to bore you with examples.

[quote]With everyone's offense being this shitty, Vyland's accurate 1-2 range chip fits right in.[/quote]
And with that accurate 1-2 range comes absolutely no enemy phase, which brings me to my next point:

Just because he's frail, does not mean he's entitled to protection. Everybody and their mother would love to be able to attack on the player phase, take no damage and have people block them on the enemy's turn. Vyland however, has an absolute need for this. If there's ever a time he can't have people in front of him, he simply can't risk getting near enemies.

So with his accurate chip damage comes having to arrange your entire army around him. Not good.

[quote]Correction: No one is able to kill on their own. Everyone needs other units teaming up with them to bring down an enemy. Thus, it's no more difficult to give Vyland kills than it is for anyone else.[/quote]
You said he provided chip damage, which is typically done before an enemy dies. For him to get kills, other people have to attack first, endangering themselves just for him to get some more EXP. I thought that's what using Vyland was supposed to prevent?

[quote]You see, that is the difference between Palla and Vyland. While Vyland can provide chip damage, like lots of people (including palla) can, Palla is actually able to kill things. She's got instant access to the silver lance and ridersbane, giving her a great player phase, but she doesn't just roll over and die when stuff takes a stab at her.[/quote]

[quote]Wtf? No, Palla is not able to kill things. Go compare Palla's base stats to the enemy stats again. With the Silver Lance she's 4RKOing Cavs, and let me remind you that's with the Silver Lance. She needs Silver to have the same offense that everyone else had 10 chapters ago. She's doing the opposite of killing things.[/quote]
Good thing we have those trusty ridersbanes that Palla has every right to use.

[quote]Indeed, Palla doesn't just roll over and die when she gets attacked, but she's pretty damn close. Any enemy attack she takes will leave her with single digit Hp, and prevent her from attacking again without lowering her offense by equipping the Javelin. Now she needs to be healed before she can use her good weapons again, and that's not good because healing is highly demanded in this game. It takes 2-3 heals to bring PCs back to full health after taking a hit, and there's lots of non-aggressive enemies with absurd accuracy who must be lured in by placing units in their attack range. Not to mention that someone like Merric is among your better offensive units right now, and it's best if he's free to attack rather than heal.

Vyland doesn't run into this issue, as all of his weapons are 1-2 range.[/quote]
Being two-rounded is still better than being one-rounded. No way is Vyland better than Palla in terms of taking hits.

Like I said before, stuff like archers love to pick on him. He's not very safe, even when someone's in front of him.

As for healing, mend is buyable starting in chapter 11. That right there is worth two heals, there's no reason to still be using heal by now.

[quote]Accuracy is pretty low on your priorities in H5, considering how enemy dodge is never going to get very high[/quote]

[quote]The hit formula in FE11 emphasizes base weapon accuracy, as Skl + Lck are able to add very little to your hitrate. And Javelin/Hand Axe have 70/60 hit respectively. A 9 AS enemy has Avo roughly equal to L8 Cord's base Hit, so when Cord goes to attack with his Hand Axe, his hitrate is equal to 60 + weapon rank (he might get +5 from a C) + supports (+10 if both are in range). So he's looking at ~70-75 displayed hit. Vyland, meanwhile, has 91 displayed hit against that enemy without considering Skl/Lck, weapon ranks or supports at all.[/quote]
~70-75 displayed is ~82-87 real, good enough to rely on decently. Vyland's higher hit is good early on, but it's pretty worthless after a while.

[quote]Vyland joins on chapter 5 at level 1 and sucks balls. No way is he getting 14 levels in 11 chapters.[/quote]

Saying this without giving any sort of evidence? You'll have to do better than that.[/quote]
I already gave proof that he's doing badly against enemies and getting one-rounded. I think that's evidence enough.

[quote]*stuff about the number of enemies and such*[/quote]
Uh huh...

[quote]In any given chapter, give him his 2.7 kills and he gains 67.5 Exp. So it looks like he's falling way short, right?

Nope, there's many additional factors to consider. Roughly 1/10 of those enemies are promoted. Promoted kills give ~60 Exp, so that drives average Exp gain per kill up to 28.5.[/quote]
I just counted, and there are 14 promoted enemies, almost half of 1/10.. That gives him an additional 15 or so EXP, an average of 82.5 a chapter. That's nine levels, even less than the 10 I gave him. If we count thieves, there are 13 from chapters 6-13. Keep in mind though, with his mighty 5 move, Vyland probably won't see very much thief action, if any at all.

[quote]Then you have to add in boss kills (which Vyland is actually decent at getting thanks to high accuracy + hitting on Res). With 11 bosses and 8 units, you get average 1.375 boss kills per unit, and they're worth liek 80 Exp. Adds about 110 total Exp per unit, so spread that out and it's about +11 to average Exp per chapter.[/quote]
A bunch of these bosses have existant res, and Vyland won't double any of them. Only with extreme chipping (and the endangering of his fellow units) would he be able to kill a boss.

[quote]Now taking those into account, Vyland gets on average 88 Exp per chapter from kills alone. Exp from just chipping is about 10, so Vyland needs to do damage 4 times per chapter in addition to getting 2-3 kills in order to gain those levels. He needs to attack on 6-7 turns per chapter and kill on under half of those attacks. Quite reasonable considering that turncounts are high in this game and you often need multiple chip attacks before making a kill.[/quote]
If enemies need multiple chip attacks, that means you won't be killing a bunch in a single turn, which also means Vyland is once again putting himself in danger on all these turns. Since I've shown that he takes 4+ rounds to kill, that's going to happen a lot to him.

[quote]Also, I should note that your numbers on Vyland's Spd are way off. 3.5 Spd at L11? lol, his base is 3 and he has a 45% growth.[/quote]
He has 7.5 speed at level 11 and Bolganone weighs him down by 4, thus giving him 3.5 AS.

[quote]Why in the world is Palla using Steel? She has B lances for a reason. Make that 9x2 to armors. She's doing better than him on the enemy he's supposed to be good at. Great job, Vyland.[/quote]

[quote]You get only two free Silver Lances up til now, and one of them comes very early + needs to be used alot in early chapters, so it's probably already broken or nearly broken (had 4 uses left in Ch 14 on my current game). So in reality, you've got one free Silver Lance here, among a possible 6 units capable of using it (Cain, Abel, Hardin, Wolf, Zagaro in addition to Palla). Dividing that out evenly gets you a whopping 3 and 1/3 uses for each unit, except that it's actually going to be less than that, as you've definitely used some charges of it before now considering it's been around since Ch 5. Palla's not going to get any mileage out of that when so many other units are wanting it.[/quote]
You can buy Silver lances in chapters 8, 11, 13, and 14. No reason at all for Palla not to have one.

[quote]By chapter 14, you only have one Bolganone tome, which you got two chapters ago. The tome's only got 13 uses, just how much chip damage do you expect him to do with that thing?[/quote]

[quote]He's not using it constantly. Most of the time he won't need the extra 3-5 damage over Blizzard/Elfire. The point is that it's there when he really does need it. And it becomes buyable a long time before the first one should run out.[/quote]
If he's not using it constantly, than how often IS he using it? 12 uses (one used by the boss) in the four chapters before it's buyable means he's only using it three times a chapter. The two ridersbanes you tried to deny Palla have way more uses than that.

[quote][quote]Not to mention the thing weighs him down by 4 until he's level 15, that's just asking for all kinds of trouble.[/quote]

That would really suck if it mattered at all.[/quote]
It does when anything ranged leaves him in a pile of blood.

[quote]The important difference is that the others are able to OHKO with a lesser forge than Palla needs. You'll almost definitely forge your early Ridersbane, because OHKOing Cavs is awesome during the earlygame, but it only needs +3 Mt to OHKO, and that +3 Mt is still enough for Cain/Abel/Hardin to keep OHKOing with it in Ch 14. Palla on the other hand needs +5 Mt with her 5 lower Str, and there's no reason to forge +5 Mt onto the Ridersbane and hand it to Palla when you can just forge less Mt onto it and give it to someone stronger to achieve the same effect.[/quote]
Are you really quivering over two extra might? For being able to one-shot cavs, I think it's worth the investment.

[quote]Her offense is not at all comparable, and the Ridersbane is not Prf to her.[/quote]
It's also buyable in chapter 15. Once again, no reason for her not to have one.

[quote]L15 means you gave her 7 levels in 2-3 chapters (considering she joins well into Ch 14, it's questionable how much fighting she'll be able to do there). That's almost 3 levels per chapter. Her higher Exp gains aren't nearly enough to justify that, not to mention she's worse than Vyland at actually getting kills in the first place.[/quote]
Crap, I was thinking there was a 16x. Sorry about that. One level less for Palla, then.

14/1 Sniper Palla. C Bows: 14.3 Atk, 16.5 Spd

Which is... not different at all. To justify the 6 levels, she's got stuff like the silver lance and her own ridersbane come chapter 15, plus loads of reinforcements that you can't ignore in 14.

[quote][quote]Thoron? Probably almost broken by now, it only has 21 uses afteral.. He can have Bolganone.[/quote]
Probably almost broken after 3 chapters?[/quote]
Again, was thinking 4 chapters instead of 3. Thoron would be about half broken, at least.

[quote][quote]You get two killer bows by chapter 17. One is in chapter 14, and the other is in chapter 17 itself. Who's really going to miss the things? There's Draug, sure, but he can live without it. Sedgar and Wolf sure as hell don't need it, they want forged javalins on the enemy phase. Killer Bow to Palla.[/quote]

Draug can live without it, sure. Guess who else can? Palla. Both of them want it, and Palla doesn't automatically get to claim it over Draug.[/quote]
Draug can have the first one then. Then one in chapter 17 (right when she promotes, in fact) goes to her.

[quote]Wolf and Zagaro may prefer Javelins on enemy phase, but what does that have to with them wanting to use a Killer Bow on player phase?

Then you have Sniper Minerva, whom you still have room to field.[/quote]
So they can use some of both Drag's and Palla's. Sedgar and Wolf get no class crit bonus, so it's better in Palla's hands most of the time.

[quote][quote]Palla can actually take a hit from this guy, at least.[/quote]
She takes a ton of damage and doesn't counter, which is slowing you down as compared to letting the Hero attack a melee unit that can counter. So if you have her getting hit, that's just hurting her case.[/quote]
I realize mentioning that didn't really do anything, I just wanted to say something, so it wouldn't look like I was simply ignoring it.

[quote][quote]The mages? You mean the ones Palla doubles and thus murders?[/quote]

Yes, of course Palla one-rounds them. So does Vyland.

Palla only does better against the Bishops, but those are considerably outnumbered by the rest of the enemies, and winning against them is less significant since almost all your units can effortlessly buttrape them anyways. Vyland helping you kill the enemies that are actually somewhat tough to bring down is much more significant.[/quote]
The Hero and Mamkute were already going to be swarmed by two range, Vyland's moderately higher damage isn't going to be a huge help. I also notice you don't give her the killer bow. With that, and her crit bonus, she's definitely doing much better than Vyland.

[quote]Healing, useless? On the contrary, healing is in high demand in this game, as outlined earlier.
[/quote]
Your units have much more HP now, 11 damage isn't helping all that much.

Since we seem to be stuck at chapter 17, allow me to continue on.

17x, Vyland continues to never double attack, and Palla can now use the longbow. With that, she can attack absolutely anything (other than other longbows of course) and never take a counter. Since it has a good amount of uses (25) and you can buy three of them at 1k each (due to the silver card), Palla will never be without them. Before you bring Minerva up (probably the only other person to use the things), you get a fourth longbow in a chest in chapter 17x, and again in 20x. That's five bows between two snipers, not at all a problem.

Anyway, the horsemen one-round Vyland, he can't kill the archers, Palla can weaken the Killer Bow sniper without getting hurt, mages they both kill, Palla murders the bishops, same deal as normal really. All that's changed for Vyland is that cavs no longer one-round him (though they come dangerously close).

Chapter 18 has loads of cavalier reinforcements, lots of javalins ready to hurt Vyland and his 3 defense. Since Palla doubles these and he doesn't (also doesn't take counters from the javelins), she's definitely doing better here. Then there are the dreaded Paladins that have almost as much res as defense and double Vyland, not cool.

Chapter 19 is probably Vyland's win, since they both double the same amount of things, and there's a distinct lack of 2 ranged physical weapons.

Chapter 20 they're probably pretty even offensively, since there's lots of Paladins and they probably won't be going near the armors near the armory. Defensively though...

17/6 Vyland: 33 HP, 3.2 def
14/5 Palla: 37.7 HP, 12.5 def

Vyland gets killed in two shots of the weaker shooters, while Palla survives. Palla can also attack Camus without fearing a counter, which is... something, I guess.

I'll stop for now.

[CATS]

Vyland's earlygame durability/performance:

If you take time gangbanging single enemies, other enemies in the same group have a chance to attack on the enemy phase. They're typically in pretty big swarms too, there's no way you're gonna be able to kill them all in one player phase.

Typically in pretty big swarms? Are you sure you've played this game? Groups of more than 5 enemies coming at you together is extremely rare. Off the top of my head I can only think of two chapters where this happens early on, Ch 8's upper left area and the reinforcements in Ch 10. Both of those include a mix of 1 and 2 range enemies, and there's way too many to eliminate them all on a single player phase while most of your guys are getting 2-3RKO'd, so you can't fight them in the open anyways. You'll have to hold them off at a chokepoint or someone's going to get teamed by Cavs + Horsemen and die. In which case, covering Vyland's ass doesn't even matter because you're at a chokepoint. The action of placing Wolf at that one square covers your entire team, all by itself.

And since those groups usually also have ranged weapons sprinked within them, that means Vyland has to have twelve people surrounding him, just so he doesn't get hit.

12 people? Placing 8 around him at the 2 range squares prevents anything from ever attacking him, so 12's wrong just on principle alone, but 8 units guarding him is still lol and never going to be necessary. That's only if the enemies are close enough that they can actually reach all 8 of those spaces even if the ones closer to them are blocked off, which won't ever be the case. It might be if you were rushing deep into enemy ranges on player phase, but that's suicide for anyone during earlygame, not just for Vyland, so ofcourse you won't be doing that.

Instead, you need to stay just at the edge of an enemy group's range to arrange a formation where no one has to take more than 1 or 2 enemy attacks. Or in some cases you might want to avoid damage by just waiting entirely outside of a group of aggressive enemies' range, or having one durable unit antagonize the group, since taking lots of damage on several units sucks and will take multiple turns to repair with how weak your healing is. When you're doing this, Vyland can simply sit a couple spaces behind the melee units, obviously beyond enemy range, and then move up to attack after the enemies have been lured in.

Following that, there won't be enough enemies left alive on the next enemy phase for Vyland to need any significant amount of protection. Most of your team is 2RKO'd so you generally can't afford to leave more than one enemy alive anyways. Again, units like Vyland are essential to this step. You need as much player phase damage as you can get to safely eliminate that enemy group before they can move again and rape someone. After taking care of maybe one enemy that was left, you move up to the next group of enemies and repeat.

Vyland should never, ever find himself in a situation where there's a large number of enemies nearby who will be acting on enemy phase. If you're in that situation, then either you're walling them at a chokepoint anyways, or someone is going to die regardless because you screwed up and left alot of enemies alive and near your army so they can team up and 2HKO someone on their phase. So no, Vyland does not slow you down with needing to be walled or w/e. If he had this kind of durability in a game like FE7, where alot of your can safely rush deep into enemy range, then it would be a problem, but that's not the case. Everyone's durability (with a few exceptions) sucks in this game, not just Vyland's, so you have to keep the enemies at a distance regardless.

If you take time gangbanging single enemies, other enemies in the same group have a chance to attack on the enemy phase.

I'm referring to using 3-4 units out of your 10+ to attack an enemy and bring it down in one turn, not using your entire army to attack one enemy, lol. You have enough PCs (along with effective weapons for OHKOs or near OHKOs) to do this to multiple enemies on any given turn.

Other than Abel 4 rounding and Vyland 5 rounding, Abel doesn't get one-shot by the armor. He can afford to let it attack him on the enemy phase and then retreat afterwards.

Yes, Abel can deal damage to an enemy on enemy phase. Afterwards, though, he needs to be healed, either that or he has to reduce his offense by using the Javelin. Vyland doesn't face this as all his weapons are 1-2 range.

Since it's an archer, Cord can smack it on the player phase, get hit on the enemy phase, get healed, smack it again, and so on. Vyland is one-rounded once again on the enemy phase.

Why are you talking about this situation as if it's Cord + a healer fighting one enemy archer with nothing else (no other PCs or enemies) nearby? This isn't representative of the actual game at all.

~70-75 displayed is ~82-87 real, good enough to rely on decently. Vyland's higher hit is good early on, but it's pretty worthless after a while.

It's enough to miss nearly once per chapter on average (on average 1 miss per 6-7 attacks). Indeed Vyland's hit lead becomes irrelevant after a while, but so does the whole question of his performance before Palla joins, since you know, Palla joins.

You said he provided chip damage, which is typically done before an enemy dies. For him to get kills, other people have to attack first, endangering themselves just for him to get some more EXP. I thought that's what using Vyland was supposed to prevent?

When it comes down to the wire and you need every last advantage (i.e. your melee guys need their good weapons to finish that enemy off), yes, this is the case. However, there's plenty of situations where your team has a surplus of damage-dealing capacity, i.e. your melee guys can go to a Hand Axe and the enemy will still die, or your ranged chip damage group is enough to finish an enemy by itself, or etc, and you use these situations to make up kills for the chip units such as Vyland and your Hunters.

---

Vyland/Palla's level gap:

I already gave proof that he's doing badly against enemies and getting one-rounded. I think that's evidence enough.

Simply stating that he has low durability is meaningless. You need to also show how that would lead to his level falling beneath my estimates, considering I've explained in detail how it doesn't.

I just counted, and there are 14 promoted enemies, almost half of 1/10.. That gives him an additional 15 or so EXP, an average of 82.5 a chapter. That's nine levels, even less than the 10 I gave him. If we count thieves, there are 13 from chapters 6-13. Keep in mind though, with his mighty 5 move, Vyland probably won't see very much thief action, if any at all.

Indeed Thieves, and also Manaketes, not sure if you counted those. As for his "thief action," while some thieves indeed require high-move units to chase down, others come past your army on their way to the exit and can be killed by anyone.

And mage has 6 move, not 5.

A bunch of these bosses have existant res, and Vyland won't double any of them. Only with extreme chipping (and the endangering of his fellow units) would he be able to kill a boss.

Def is significantly higher than Res in all cases with the sole exception of Ch 12 and alot of people have to get countered to use good weapons, so your other guys are hardly any better off. Here's a list of Def/Res gaps for bosses:

Ch 6: 11 points
6x: 8 def, no res listed so I assume it's either 0 or 1
7: 12
8: 15 def, once again no res value listed
9: 6
10: 12
11: 8
12: -4
12x: 3
13: 16 def, no listed res value
14: 13

And of those bosses, I count only one of them with 1-2 range (the Ch 12 Bishop boss). With Def-Res gaps this ridiculous (average ~9 point Def/Res gap), it's perfectly reasonable for Vyland to nab just 1 or occasionally 2 boss kills.

Crap, I was thinking there was a 16x. Sorry about that. One level less for Palla, then.

14/1 Sniper Palla. C Bows: 14.3 Atk, 16.5 Spd

Which is... not different at all. To justify the 6 levels, she's got stuff like the silver lance and her own ridersbane come chapter 15, plus loads of reinforcements that you can't ignore in 14.

One more level, sure. It's not going to change anything much, so w/e.

---

Palla/Vyland's arsenal:

You can buy Silver lances in chapters 8, 11, 13, and 14. No reason at all for Palla not to have one.

And they cost lots of cash and are in high demand, so there's a significant opportunity cost associated with Palla using one. For example, Silver is +4 Mt for Palla, and instead of using that money to buy a Silver for Palla, I can forge a +3-4 Mt Fire tome for Vyland to use during earlygame, which is about the same cost per use.

Indeed Palla will be my last choice to receive a Silver, as other units are able to double with it and thus put its higher Mt to better use (Cavs, +1 Atk is +2 damage when you double), or are attacking more often due to a significantly better enemy phase (Zag, Wolf, Darros) and thus putting the higher Mt to better use as it's being applied to more enemies per turn.

Eventually, as you keep getting money, the opportunity cost goes low enough that you can reasonably assume Silver for Palla, but definitely not right when she joins and not for a while afterwards. Ofcourse, by that time, she's promoted to Sniper and lowered her weapon rank back down to C, so she'll then still have a ways to go yet.

If he's not using it constantly, than how often IS he [Vyland] using it [Bolganone]? 12 uses (one used by the boss) in the four chapters before it's buyable means he's only using it three times a chapter. The two ridersbanes you tried to deny Palla have way more uses than that.

He's using it however often that extra Mt is actually needed. It's only +3-5, so in many cases it won't be necessary in order to bring an enemy down. Then in the few cases where the extra damage actually matters, it's there.

Are you really quivering over two extra might [on a Ridersbane for Palla to be able to OHKO]? For being able to one-shot cavs, I think it's worth the investment.

Going from +3 Mt up to +5 Mt makes the cost go up from 4200 to 9600. It more than doubles. And that's not an investment to let you one-shot Cavs, you can do that already with just +3 Mt by giving it to a good unit. That +5 Mt is an investment to let Palla specifically OHKO Cavs, which doesn't increase your actual efficiency at all, and indeed lowers it because you're blowing ~5000G. Trying to give Palla a Silver Lance and also arguing for her to have a +5 Mt Ridersbane is hilariously biased. That's approximately enough money to forge a +9 Mt Fire tome for Vyland's earlygame, or a +5 Mt Elfire tome for his midgame.

Ridersbane is buyable in 15, but it's the same thing as buying Silver Lances. Admittedly the opportunity cost is lower here since Ridersbane is cheaper, but at the same time it only makes Palla's offense comparable to Vyland's (won't get the 15 AS needed to double Cavs before it's time for her to promote out of her Lance rank) and she's still getting countered, so w/e. Even if she gets one, she's still worse.

So they can use some of both Drag's and Palla's [Killer Bows]. Sedgar and Wolf get no class crit bonus, so it's better in Palla's hands most of the time.

Crit bonus is irrelevant when talking about who wants to use Killer. +20 crit is +20 crit. A class crit bonus doesn't mean that Palla suddenly gains more crit from equipping Killer than Wolf/Zag would. 2 Killer Bows for 4 units. And again, Sniper Minerva may be hanging around. Palla gets some single-digit number of uses for it, w/e.

---

Moving on to actual Palla vs Vyland stuff:

Being two-rounded is still better than being one-rounded. No way is Vyland better than Palla in terms of taking hits.

Vyland is better at not taking hits in the first place, which trumps getting two-rounded and getting countered when you have shitty offense. Palla's enemy phase is absolute garbage and not worth utilizing (much better to have enemies attacking your decent units and taking more damage/dying instead of attacking Palla), so the advantage of having more durability doesn't apply for her, while the disadvantage of getting countered in order to use your decent weapons is still relevant. And Vyland's built up enough durability to take a hit from some enemies at this point anyways, such as Archers or Javelins.

As for healing, mend is buyable starting in chapter 11. That right there is worth two heals, there's no reason to still be using heal by now.

You can buy Mend in Ch 11, but you can't get infinite money. The Silver Card hasn't even entered the scene yet, so money is still a very relevant issue, and it's unlikely that you'll be able to equip your healers with a constant supply of Mend staves (or if you do it'll come at the cost of losing something else, like not being able to buy a Silver weapon for someone).

Even if you could use Mend all day, not needing a heal is still > needing one.

The Hero and Mamkute were already going to be swarmed by two range, Vyland's moderately higher damage isn't going to be a huge help.

Yes, you want to hit them at 2 range, and Vyland does more damage from 2 range. Hm.

As for Palla's crit bonus, it's +5. 1/20 higher chance to do triple damage equates to 15% more average damage. Whereas here Vyland's doing nearly 10 more damage to the Hero and 10+ more damage to the Mamkute, exceeding Palla's base damage by more than 50%. So yeah, Vyland still wins.

As for your direct comparisons, you lowered Vyland's level, so w/e. Alot of the things you mentioned don't happen with the levels I gave (like getting doubled by Pallies, although I still don't see how you figure that, Ch 18 Pallies are 16 AS vs Vyland having 12-13 AS even at 20/1), and you even still admitted one chapter as Vyland's win. Bringing up Longbows for Palla prompts me to once again mention Vyland's 1 range, allowing him to attack enemy bows without having to use a weaker weapon to avoid counter, and giving him an enemy phase of some sort (since now he has enough durability to take a hit from most things), so that's not anything significant. You also brought up defense for a pair of units who are rarely countered and have little to no enemy phase; offense is more important for them, and whoever wins offense is more useful overall.

As far as offense goes, Vyland hits 16 AS at 20/7 or 8, which is around Ch 18-19, and starts doubling Cavs so that turns into a blowout (ORKO w/ liek Elfire vs Palla not ORKOing even with Silver; Palla will have enough Atk in a few more chapters, but after Ch 18 Cavs basically disappear). Against other stuff, neither one doubles (except Armors/Ballistas which Vyland obviously wins against) while Palla's Atk is only slightly higher and that's if you assume Silver, meanwhile Def is still higher than Res on the enemies. Liek, 20/7 Vyland has 11 Mag + 2 weapon rank bonus + 13 Mt Thoron/Excalibur for 26 Atk, while 14/5 Palla has 15.5 Str + 1 weapon rank bonus + 12 Mt Silver (if she has B yet) for 28.5 Atk. However, Def/Res gap on Pallies is 4 points, giving Vyland a slight edge in damage, and then there's Generals and Ballistas with stupid high Def/Res gaps, exaggerated even more by the fact that they're getting doubled.

Ch 19, Mercs and Heroes have a 7 Res gap, and the Sniper has 6. Ch 20, Pallies have a 4 Res gap, and then there's Generals/Ballistas which once again have roflcopter gaps (double-digit Def/Res gaps ftw). 20x, Cavs, Armors and Generals all running around with 9-10 point gaps, and the Pallies still have a 3 point gap while Mamkutes have a 6 point gap and the boss is a 13 point gap. etc, etc. This never changes, right up through the end of the game. Even in the final, Snipers still have a 6 point gap, Generals have a 13 point gap, Pallies have a 4 point gap, etc.

Ofcourse, Palla's Atk growth is higher, but she can't ever overcome the Def/Res gaps. Starting at Ch 20 and factoring in Vyland's faster levelling speed, it takes her 5 more levels to increase her Atk lead by 1.5 and do similar damage on Pallies, so obviously she's never catching up on all those other enemies with higher gaps.

Then, as for Palla's Spd, she'll never double anything significant which Vyland won't also (i.e. Mages, Armors, Ballistas). Non-General promoted enemy AS is like 16 at the lowest for Pallies. Palla needs to be L11-12 as a Sniper before she doubles that. By then, Vyland has almost the same Spd (a fraction of a point less and he'll catch up entirely with 1-2 more levels), and Paladin AS will have gone up before she gets that anyways (if she's ever getting that high, it's around the Final, where Pallies have gone up to 19 AS). She has a brief window of time right after promotion where she's doubling Cavs and Vyland isn't, but that's also before she has the weapon rank for Silver, so their damage is similar regardless (and Vyland does better vs everything else), then Vyland starts doubling and wins.

Point is, Vyland wins post-promo offense and obviously wins before Palla promotes.

Your units have much more HP now, 11 damage isn't helping all that much.

On the contrary, precisely because PC Hp values are getting higher, additional healing is quite helpful since you can't bring them all the way up even with Mend. 15/6 Barst has ~40 Hp, while a Mend from 10 Mag Merric restores only half of that. However, adding in Vyland's Heal you're able to restore over 30 Hp to him, which is enough to cover almost any injuries he would incur. And after a short time Vyland's using that Mend staff aswell.

Writing off healing is pretty lol if you just take a moment to think about how the game would be without it. Enemy offense is ridiculous in this game and remains so throughout. Units like Barst and Cord can only function normally for like 2-3 turns before they'll be needing their Hp back in order to take more hits or counterattacks from the enemies. Without healing, you'd have to rely on your dedicated tanks like Zagaro and Darros to lure enemies instead of using units with better offense like Barst or Cord to one-round or nearly one-round them on the counter, and your non-General melee units would only be able to attack with their good weapons 2-3 times before they'd have to revert to 1-2 range for the rest of the chap. Overall efficiency goes way down.

And don't bother to mention the alternatives to healing staves. Vulneraries are much, much worse, taking 3 turns to restore less Hp than Merric + Vyland can in a single turn, and fort abuse is even worse yet.

Palla and Vyland might lack an enemy phase, but Vyland contributes more towards the team's enemy phase in general by healing your good melee units and allowing them to keep taking hits on enemy phase.

Add this on top of Vyland's superior offense, and a winnar is him.

Edited by CATS, 24 November 2009 - 12:58 AM.

[Momo]

Not the best of posts, but eh.

[quote]If you take time gangbanging single enemies, other enemies in the same group have a chance to attack on the enemy phase. They're typically in pretty big swarms too, there's no way you're gonna be able to kill them all in one player phase.[/quote]

[quote]Typically in pretty big swarms? Are you sure you've played this game? Groups of more than 5 enemies coming at you together is extremely rare. Off the top of my head I can only think of two chapters where this happens early on, Ch 8's upper left area and the reinforcements in Ch 10. Both of those include a mix of 1 and 2 range enemies, and there's way too many to eliminate them all on a single player phase while most of your guys are getting 2-3RKO'd, so you can't fight them in the open anyways. You'll have to hold them off at a chokepoint or someone's going to get teamed by Cavs + Horsemen and die. In which case, covering Vyland's ass doesn't even matter because you're at a chokepoint. The action of placing Wolf at that one square covers your entire team, all by itself.[/quote]
Are you sure you played this game? I can give lots of examples.

Chapter 5 has all those cavaliers, the pegasus reinforcements, the archers that are likely come and murder Hardin and his gang (of which Vyland is one).

Chapter 6 has Archers protecting the knights at the begining. Wiping them all out in one turn is ridiculous, Vyland certainly isn't safe at all here. Him attacking a knight would get him a face full of arrows on the enemy phase.

Chapter 7 has twelve cavalier reinforcements. "But Sal, you'll be using a chokepoint" I'm sure you'll say. To that I point out that four of them have javelins, which I'm sure Vyland doesn't want to see.



You mentioned 8, Vyland doesn't have a chance against those horsemen.

Chapter 9 has lots of pirates coming out, but they're on water.

You already mentioned chapter 10, same story as 8

Chapter 11 has the pegasus enemies that can go right toward you at the start, and murder anyone unlucky enough to be in their way. Other than that though, Vyland has to stay far, far away from the shooters. It's not safe for him to go near the throne.

Chapter 12 has, once again, cavs and horsemen coming from behind and in front. Sedgar and Wolf can't be everywhere.

Chapter 13 is lol for him, he can't even think about getting near the shooters.

Chapter 14 has pegasus guys, half of which have javelins. There's also that group of archers you'll want taken care of, so Marth can go get that precious Thoron tome.

Discounting gaidens (since they're easy) I can give you examples from almost all the chapters Vyland takes part in, in which he is in constant danger.


[quote]And since those groups usually also have ranged weapons sprinked within them, that means Vyland has to have twelve people surrounding him, just so he doesn't get hit.[/quote]

[quote]12 people? Placing 8 around him at the 2 range squares prevents anything from ever attacking him, so 12's wrong just on principle alone, but 8 units guarding him is still lol and never going to be necessary. That's only if the enemies are close enough that they can actually reach all 8 of those spaces even if the ones closer to them are blocked off, which won't ever be the case.[/quote]
Yes, almost as if there's a certain class designed for moving in large areas. Hmm... Oh right, the cavaliers and horsemen they love to throw at you. He needs to be protected from this constant threat, and I don't think surrounding Vyland so he never gets attacked is a very good strategy.

[quote]It might be if you were rushing deep into enemy ranges on player phase, but that's suicide for anyone during earlygame, not just for Vyland, so ofcourse you won't be doing that.

[quote]Instead, you need to stay just at the edge of an enemy group's range to arrange a formation where no one has to take more than 1 or 2 enemy attacks.[/quote]
This is the problem. I've proven that Vyland can take zero attacks. He won't be able to safely attack with enemies in range. Since this is very common, he will spend many turns trying to stay away from the action.

[quote]Or in some cases you might want to avoid damage by just waiting entirely outside of a group of aggressive enemies' range, or having one durable unit antagonize the group, since taking lots of damage on several units sucks and will take multiple turns to repair with how weak your healing is. When you're doing this, Vyland can simply sit a couple spaces behind the melee units, obviously beyond enemy range, and then move up to attack after the enemies have been lured in.[/quote]
Once he attacks the enemy, he's in their range. Since these guys are tough, you're not likely to kill them all in one turn, leaving Vyland vulnerable to getting killed. I don't know about you, but I'd rather just ignore him than arrange my entire army just to accomdate him.

[quote]Vyland should never, ever find himself in a situation where there's a large number of enemies nearby who will be acting on enemy phase. If you're in that situation, then either you're walling them at a chokepoint anyways, or someone is going to die regardless because you screwed up and left alot of enemies alive and near your army so they can team up and 2HKO someone on their phase. So no, Vyland does not slow you down with needing to be walled or w/e. If he had this kind of durability in a game like FE7, where alot of your can safely rush deep into enemy range, then it would be a problem, but that's not the case. Everyone's durability (with a few exceptions) sucks in this game, not just Vyland's, so you have to keep the enemies at a distance regardless.[/quote]
I've already proven that there are lots of times in which many enemies are in the same area as Vyland, if he's attacking. If he isn't, he's far, far away from the action, not helping in any way.

[quote]If you take time gangbanging single enemies, other enemies in the same group have a chance to attack on the enemy phase.[/quote]

[quote]I'm referring to using 3-4 units out of your 10+ to attack an enemy and bring it down in one turn, not using your entire army to attack one enemy, lol. You have enough PCs (along with effective weapons for OHKOs or near OHKOs) to do this to multiple enemies on any given turn.[/quote]
If we're taking 3-4 units just to kill one guy, that means our team of 10 kills at most, three enemies a turn. They definitely come in larger groups than that, pretending they don't doesn't change anything.


[quote]Yes, Abel can deal damage to an enemy on enemy phase. Afterwards, though, he needs to be healed, either that or he has to reduce his offense by using the Javelin. Vyland doesn't face this as all his weapons are 1-2 range.[/quote]
And you know what happens on the enemy phase?

"Rrgh! Coyote..."

[quote]Why are you talking about this situation as if it's Cord + a healer fighting one enemy archer with nothing else (no other PCs or enemies) nearby? This isn't representative of the actual game at all.[/quote]
How often is Vyland around a lone archer, with no other enemies around? Almost never, unless it's the last enemy. In which case, he's pretty worthless, since everyone can attack it.

[quote]It's enough to miss nearly once per chapter on average (on average 1 miss per 6-7 attacks). Indeed Vyland's hit lead becomes irrelevant after a while, but so does the whole question of his performance before Palla joins, since you know, Palla joins.[/quote]
Not at all. If Vyland has been hurting your team, the entire time before Palla is brought into the picture, her being merely average would still be enough for her to be better.

[quote]When it comes down to the wire and you need every last advantage (i.e. your melee guys need their good weapons to finish that enemy off), yes, this is the case. However, there's plenty of situations where your team has a surplus of damage-dealing capacity, i.e. your melee guys can go to a Hand Axe and the enemy will still die, or your ranged chip damage group is enough to finish an enemy by itself, or etc, and you use these situations to make up kills for the chip units such as Vyland and your Hunters.[/quote]
These chippers would still be getting much less experience than anyone else, since they still need others to do their work for them. Since Vyland is part of team chip, he has to split those kills with everyone else in team chip. Because this isn't a very common occurance, each member of team chip would be getting MAYBE a kill per chapter (depends on how many people you're using for such a task).

---

[quote]Vyland/Palla's level gap:

Simply stating that he has low durability is meaningless. You need to also show how that would lead to lower Exp gains, considering I've explained in detail how it doesn't.[/quote]
Since this game is so defense oriented, it makes the phrase "a good defense is a good offense". And boy, does Vyland's defense suck. Since he can't even take single rounds of combat, he's constantly forced to stay behind others on the enemy phase, so that he can't get attacked. Now, typically a chipper would stay directly behind the front lines, but since things like javelins and bows are common, he can't afford to do that. It's mop-up duty for old Vyland, exposing himself only when the enemy group's almost dead.

He's only able to attack when there's absolutely no risk of counterattack, which is almost never. Less attacking obviously means less EXP gain.

[quote]Indeed Thieves, and also Manaketes, not sure if you counted those. As for his "thief action," while some thieves indeed require high-move units to chase down, others come past your army on their way to the exit and can be killed by anyone.[/quote]
There are only two manaketes before chapter 14. Both of which Vyland is much more likely to chip, rather than actually kill. Not even four chips would kill the things, meaning you'd have someone attack it at one range for Vyland to have one of those.

As for thieves, the exits are almost always far away from your group, that's why they're so elusive. You're better off warping someone tough to block them from leaving. By the time Vyland can get there, the thief is probably dead.

[quote]And mage has 6 move, not 5.[/quote]
My bad, but it doesn't make much of a difference.

[quote]*stuff about the levels*[/quote]
Considering the boss kill(s), I'll give him level 13 halfway through chapter 14.

Level 13 Mage Vyland, C Tomes: 7.3 attack, 8.4 spd
Not a very large difference, since he's still weighed down by 4 from bolganone.

---

Palla/Vyland's arsenal:

[quote]And they cost lots of cash and are in high demand, so there's a significant opportunity cost associated with Palla using one. For example, Silver is +4 Mt for Palla, and instead of using that money to buy a Silver for Palla, I can forge a +3-4 Mt Fire tome for Vyland to use during earlygame, which is about the same cost per use.[/quote]
So we're playing that game? You only get one bolganone and you probably have three mages (Vyland, Sage Sheeda/Merric). Since opportunity cost apparently means "you're never getting this weapon" than Vyland can have fun using fire while Sheeda and Merric use Bolanone.

Since we're penalizing for weapon cost, all the weapons Vyland has used until now means Palla can spam Silver and ridersbane all she wants.

[quote]Indeed Palla will be my last choice to receive a Silver, as other units are able to double with it and thus put its higher Mt to better use (Cavs, +1 Atk is +2 damage when you double), or are attacking more often due to a significantly better enemy phase (Zag, Wolf, Darros) and thus putting the higher Mt to better use as it's being applied to more enemies per turn.[/quote]
Ok then, I want Sheeda and Merric to have Bolganone since they doubles with it, while Vyland gets doubled with it.

Level 13 Mage Vyland, C Tomes (Blizard): 14.3 attack, 7.4 spd
Level 9 Palla, B Lances (Silver Lance): 20.6 Attack 13.3 spd

Nickel and dime me, I nickel and dime you.

[quote]Eventually, as you keep getting money, the opportunity cost goes low enough that you can reasonably assume Silver for Palla, but definitely not right when she joins and not for a while afterwards. Ofcourse, by that time, she's promoted to Sniper and lowered her weapon rank back down to C, so she'll then still have a ways to go yet.[/quote]
Chapter 1: 10,000 gold for free
Chapter 2: 5,000 gold for free, a steel sword you won't have to buy
Chapter 3: 15,000 gold for free, a devil axe and mend you won't have to buy
Chapter 4: 5,000 gold for free, a ridersbane and silver sword you won't have to buy
Chapter 5: Free silver lance
Chapter 6: A 10,000 bullion, a physic staff and armor slayer you won't have to buy
Chapter 7: Free silver axe
Chapter 8: Free Levin Sword
Chapter 9: A 15,000 bullion, a goddess icon you can sell, a free wyrmslayer
Chapter 10: A Master Seal, Silver Bow, Levin Sword, Speedwings and Physic for free
Chapter 11: A Spirit Dust and Energy Drop
Chapter 12: A 20,000 bullion, Silver Sword, Dragonpike, Warp staff, Armorslayer, Elfire, Silver Bow, Master Seal, Bolganone
Chapter 12x: Free Killer Lance and Blizzard
Chapter 13: Free Hoistflame and Ridersbane
Chapter 14: Thoron, 10,000 buillion, Silver card, Silver Sword, Stonehoist, Killer Bow

There not being enough money is absolutely ridiculous to claim.

[quote]He's using it (Bolganone) however often that extra Mt is actually needed. It's only +3-5, so in many cases it won't be necessary in order to bring an enemy down. Then in the few cases where the extra damage actually matters, it's there.[/quote]
You used it in your comparisons against Palla. If he's not using it all the time, then those comparisons are only at Vyland's strongest point, while at Palla's normal one.

[quote]Going from +3 Mt up to +5 Mt makes the cost go up from 4200 to 9600. It more than doubles. And that's not an investment to let you one-shot Cavs, you can do that already with just +3 Mt by giving it to a good unit. That +5 Mt is an investment to let Palla specifically OHKO Cavs, which doesn't increase your actual efficiency at all, and indeed lowers it because you're blowing ~5000G. Trying to give Palla a Silver Lance and also arguing for her to have a +5 Mt Ridersbane is hilariously biased. That's approximately enough money to forge a +9 Mt Fire tome for Vyland's earlygame, or a +5 Mt Elfire tome for his midgame.[/quote]
Then let's not give Vyland any good weapons, since he wastes uses on it and doesn't even come close to killing.

[quote]Ridersbane is buyable in 15, but it's the same thing as buying Silver Lances. Admittedly the opportunity cost is lower here since Ridersbane is cheaper, but at the same time it only makes Palla's offense comparable to Vyland's (won't get the 15 AS needed to double Cavs before it's time for her to promote out of her Lance rank) and she's still getting countered, so w/e. Even if she gets one, she's still worse.[/quote]
You got the silver card last chapter, you're telling me Palla can't have an 1,100 Silver lance, but Vyland can have all the bolganones he wants? The sandbagging is strong here. Even in the strange world where she didn't get an extra ridersbane forge (your other units have definitely spent more cash on stuff) she's chipping them for much better damage than Vyland. With +6 more might, she'd be killing them on her own. Let's see chapter 16...

Level 15 Mage Vyland, C Tomes (Bolganone): 19 attack, 6 AS
Level 11 Pegasus Palla, B Lances (Ridersbane +3): 40 attack, 13 AS

Against the horsemen, Vyland does 16/15 damage to them, and Palla does 33/32 attack against them.
Against the cavaliers, Vyland does 18/17 damage, Palla does 32-30. Some of these guys even have javelins.
Against the paladin, Vyland does 12 damage, Palla does 30.

Considering these guys outnumber anything else, Palla's win is obvious.

[quote]Crit bonus is irrelevant when talking about who wants to use Killer. +20 crit is +20 crit. A class crit bonus doesn't mean that Palla suddenly gains more crit from equipping Killer than Wolf/Zag would. 2 Killer Bows for 4 units. And again, Sniper Minerva may be hanging around. Palla gets some single-digit number of uses for it, w/e.[/quote]
Crit bonus means she's criticaling more, thus putting the weapon to better use. How likely is it you're using five people that want the same two weapons? Since Wolf and Sedgar have other things they can use, they can take 5 uses each. That leaves 30 uses for Draug/Minerva and Palla to fight over, giving them both 15 uses each. Even if both are involved, that's still 10 uses for each.
---

Moving on to actual Palla vs Vyland stuff:

[quote]Vyland is better at not taking hits in the first place, which trumps getting two-rounded and getting countered when you have shitty offense. Palla's enemy phase is absolute garbage and not worth utilizing (much better to have enemies attacking your decent units and taking more damage/dying instead of attacking Palla), so the advantage of having more durability doesn't apply for her, while the disadvantage of getting countered in order to use your decent weapons is still relevant. And Vyland's built up enough durability to take a hit from some enemies at this point anyways, such as Archers or Javelins.[/quote]
That's the beauty of being a pegasus knight, she can fly to where there are accomodating enemies for her mighty silver lance and ridersbane. Vyland and his terrain can't do this. Palla is in complete control of whoever gets near her, and you can strategize as such. As there seems to be no bow users in Chapter 16, this might seem like a win for Vyland, but check this out:

Level 15 Mage Vyland: 23.8 HP, 2.2 def

Cavalier (Forged Javelin): 26 atk

lol, he juuuuust barely gets one-shot by this guy. Them's the breaks, Vyland. Palla has the same HP (down to the decimal, strangely), but much more defense. There's also the whole "fly away from this guy" thing she can do.

[quote]You can buy Mend in Ch 11, but you can't get infinite money. The Silver Card hasn't even entered the scene yet, so money is still a very relevant issue, and it's unlikely that you'll be able to equip your healers with a constant supply of Mend staves (or if you do it'll come at the cost of losing something else, like not being able to buy a Silver weapon for someone).

Even if you could use Mend all day, not needing a heal is still > needing one.[/quote]
You then go on to say...
[quote]Writing off healing is pretty lol if you just take a moment to think about how the game would be without it.[/quote]
Why would you purposely shoot yourself in the foot by not buying the much-appreciated Mend staves? Not to mention, Marth is swimming in money right now, with a big payoff coming next chapter. You can definitely afford to stock up on mends.

[quote]As for your direct comparisons, you lowered Vyland's level, so w/e. Alot of the things you mentioned don't happen with the levels I gave (like getting doubled by Pallies, although I still don't see how you figure that, Ch 18 Pallies are 16 AS vs Vyland having 12-13 AS even at 20/1)[/quote]
Other than me lowering his level (why would I do that and then use your stats?), Vyland has 12 AS at level 20/1. 16 AS paladins double him.
[quote]...and you even still admitted one chapter as Vyland's win. Bringing up Longbows for Palla prompts me to once again mention Vyland's 1 range, allowing him to attack enemy bows without having to use a weaker weapon to avoid counter, and giving him an enemy phase of some sort (since now he has enough durability to take a hit from most things), so that's not anything significant.[/quote]
Vyland attacking at 1 range on the enemy phase? Are you trying to get him killed? Even if he can finally take a single attack (he can't take a round of paladins, Palla's still crushing him though), he definitely can't take two. Since he's in a very weakened state after just one hit, a 2-ranged guy is gonna see the perfect opportunity to finish him off. Palla however has no risk at all of this. She laughs at Vyland's odd attempt to frontline, and snipes from three spaces away. That makes her absolutely invulnerable to enemy attacks.

[quote]You also brought up defense for a pair of units who are rarely countered; offense is more important for them, and whoever wins offense is more useful overall.[/quote]
Defense is still a very big part of this. Remember: Them being protected isn't a positive, it's a negative.

[quote]As far as offense goes, Vyland hits 16 AS at 20/7 or 8, which is around Ch 18-19...[/quote]
Whoah, whoah, whoah, what? Even in your inflated levels, he was level 20/1 in chapter 17. No way is he getting 6-7 levels in that timespan. He's stuck using heal a good two chapters (like 15 uses til mend) and those are spent not attacking at all.

20/4 Sage Vyland, A tomes (Bolganone): 24.2 attack, 14.5 Speed
14/3 Sniper Palla, B tomes (Silver Bow): 26.3 attack, 16.5 speed

There's that magic 16 AS, too bad it's on Palla.

So Vyland does slightly more damage against stuff, but it's negligible since neither are killing. Palla also one-rounds the mages without taking a counter, something Vyland can't pout. Considering they do 21-23 damage, and he only has 33 HP, any other attack will kill him. This will continue to be a problem with him, something I've been drilling this entire debate.

[quote]...and starts doubling Cavs so that turns into a blowout (ORKO w/ liek Elfire vs Palla not ORKOing even with Silver; Palla will have enough Atk in a few more chapters, but after Ch 18 Cavs basically disappear).[/quote]
So he does better against one type for one chapter. When Palla was possibly one-shotting these same people, you tried to ignore it.

[quote]...Against other stuff, neither one doubles (except Armors/Ballistas which Vyland obviously wins against) while Palla's Atk is only slightly higher and that's if you assume Silver, meanwhile Def is still higher than Res on the enemies. Liek, 20/7 Vyland has 11 Mag + 2 weapon rank bonus + 13 Mt Thoron/Excalibur for 26 Atk, while 14/5 Palla has 15.5 Str + 1 weapon rank bonus + 12 Mt Silver (if she has B yet) for 28.5 Atk. However, Def/Res gap on Pallies is 4 points, giving Vyland a slight edge in damage, and then there's Generals and Ballistas with stupid high Def/Res gaps, exaggerated even more by the fact that they're getting doubled.[/quote]
There are almost no generals or shooters on any of the next maps. The shooters will be dealt with before Vyland can even get to them (high move guys, and such), and neither Vyland nor Palla are likely to even go near the Generals.

[quote]*res gap stuff*[/quote]
Neither of these units is killing stuff on their own, what will they be doing? That fabulous chip damage thing you mentioned earlier. Considering Palla's attack is higher than Vyland's, and she has access to stuff like the longbow and killer bow and Paritha, still making her stronger than he is when fighting most things. Even using Excalibur, the strongest tome you have access to, a tome he's stealing from Merric, he still doesn't match her strength. Since I've already shown that Palla can indeed outspeed Vyland for a while (she has 16 AS at 14/3), she'll be doubling before he is.


[quote]Ofcourse, Palla's Atk growth is higher, but she can't ever overcome the Def/Res gaps. Starting at Ch 20, it takes her 5 more levels to increase her Atk lead by 1.5 and do similar damage on Pallies, so obviously she's never catching up on all those other enemies with higher gaps.[/quote]
Great job Vyland, on that 2 or so extra damage you've got going for you. Now just wait for the enemy turn and- oh whoops, you died.

Even with his easily ignorable damage output, the two are still killing in the same rounds.

[quote][quote]Your units have much more HP now, 11 damage isn't helping all that much.[/quote]

On the contrary, precisely because PC Hp values are getting higher, additional healing is quite helpful since you can't bring them all the way up even with Mend. 15/6 Barst has ~40 Hp, while a Mend from 10 Mag Merric restores only half of that. However, adding in Vyland's Heal you're able to restore over 30 Hp to him, which is enough to cover almost any injuries he would incur. And after a short time Vyland's using that Mend staff aswell.[/quote]
Barst: Gee, thanks Vyland for that 11 HP you healed.
Lena: *uses recover*

So now he's doing chip healing, when nobody needs it? Recover is buyable starting in chapter 16, before Vyland even promotes. His awful healing is absolutely unneeded.

[quote]Writing off healing is pretty lol if you just take a moment to think about how the game would be without it. Enemy offense is ridiculous in this game and remains so throughout. Units like Barst and Cord can only function normally for like 2-3 turns before they'll be needing their Hp back in order to take more hits or counterattacks from the enemies. Without healing, you'd have to rely on your dedicated tanks like Zagaro and Darros to lure enemies instead of using units with better offense like Barst or Cord to one-round or nearly one-round them on the counter, and your non-General melee units would only be able to attack with their good weapons 2-3 times before they'd have to revert to 1-2 range for the rest of the chap. Overall efficiency goes way down.[/quote]
I like how you bring up durability and try and write it off whenever I mention Vyland's is awful. You've been saying you should be taking chapters at a snail pace, and then bring this up. Which is it? Should we be bruting it out, healing when needed, or should we only have one person in enemy range at all times?

[quote]And don't bother to mention the alternatives to healing staves. Vulneraries are much, much worse, taking 3 turns to restore the same amount of Hp that Merric + Vyland can in a single turn, and fort abuse is even worse yet.[/quote]
Vyland and Merric are not one unit. Promoted Vyland heals 11 HP with heal, one more than using a vulnerary.

Yeah, I'm not seeing much of a differece.

[quote]Palla and Vyland might lack an enemy phase, but Vyland contributes more towards the team's enemy phase in general by healing your good melee units and allowing them to take hits on enemy phase.

Add this on top of Vyland's superior offense, and a winnar is him.[/quote]
Palla can actually stand to be near enemies, while Vyland is felled by the very sight of them. He's dragged the team down for so long, just being on par with Palla means he still loses. Palla is da winnar.