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[CATS]

So, we have Jaffar, and we have Louise. Louise is known mainly for being Pent's wife. She is sort of like his shadow, she's an accessory to someone bigger and more important. Jaffar on the other hand isn't willing to put up with such rubbish. He decides that he's tired of being Nergal's bitch and turns on him, and gets a shot at killing Nergal and all his henchmen in the chapters afterward. We can already see that Jaffar > Louise. Not to mention that Jaffar has a much cooler critical animation.

Louise has 3 chapters before Jaffar joins.

What does she do in Ch 26? Nothing important, since she is frail and 1-range, and starts in the upper portion of the map. The enemies up there are almost entirely wyverns in frightening numbers, and these enemies have lots of move and ignore terrain, making it difficult to engage them while keeping weaker units protected from their large attack ranges, and the situation is made even worse by the fact that you only have 5 units up there in the first place, as opposed to most chapters where you can start with your whole army together. If you send Louise in, the wyverns will just target her instead of tougher units with melee counters such as Eliwood, Lancereaver Lyn, Pent and Hector. They'll not only have a weaker character to pick on, but they'll also be able to do damage to your team on their phase without taking any in return, since Louise isn't countering. Fail. It's better to just hold her back in a forest and let the men (or even the other woman, since she can hold a lancereaver) do the work here.

What about Ch 27? Unfortunately this one features snow. Adverse weather slows your units to a crawl, with foot units only moving forward at 2-3 squares per turn; thus your flexibility in who you can keep in front is more limited. In a map with normal movement, you can have a group of units 3 squares deep, lure a group of enemies in, and still have room for almost all of your PCs to reach and attack those enemies. With snow in play this isn't the case. After luring in enemies, units in the back won't be able to move up far enough to attack the enemies lured in by the frontline PCs, or will only be able to reach the very frontmost enemies. Since Louise is definitely one of your weaker attackers (12 Str/17 Spd is quite bad by this point in the game), you want to keep her in the back and reserve the front spots for more powerful units. Unfortunately, thanks to the snow, this results in her not being able to contribute much as outlined above. I probably just wouldn't use her at all here. You're better off fielding her husband as a backup Physic user or something.

Then Ch 28, which is a rush-like-crazy chapter, meaning that only mounted units can really be useful. There is room for some foot units to be rescued and transported by mounts, but again Louise as one of your weaker attackers will not get this ferrying service.

Then 28x and voila Jaffar.

Base level Jaffar: 19 Str, 25 Skl, 24 Spd----34 Hp, 15 Def, 58 Avo
Base level Louise: 12 Str, 14 Skl, 17 Spd----28 Hp, 9 Def, 50 Avo

Jaffar's stats as you can see are hilariously higher. He blows Louise out of the water. 7 more Str and Spd, nearly double Skl. 6 more Hp and Def and 8 more Avo. Statistically he is much better, there's just not much more to say about that. So what advantages could Louise have that might possibly make up for this?

Well, she is ranged, but that's both a blessing and a curse, probably a curse moreso than a blessing. Louise as mentioned above is a magnet for 1 range enemies since she can't counter them, and needs to be guarded from them else they are able to take free potshots at her during enemy phase, which is undesirable. If they had gone after a 1 range unit like Jaffar they would've gotten countered or even died instead. This is a particularly large issue on Night of Farewells which features many 1 tile wide paths (i.e. it's impossible or difficult to cover all the squares around Louise while she's going across them) and large numbers of flying enemies.

Oh, I forgot Jaffar's other advantages. Namely, he has Silencer. The advantages of Silencer are twofold. First, it gives him a way to kill enemies that are otherwise very tough and difficult to bring down. The best example is Sands of Time, which has a large number of high level Generals with Hp in the 40's and ~20 Def. Even with the Silver Bow Louise can only do 6 or 7 damage to them, taking 3 or possibly even 4 rounds of combat to kill them. Jaffar on the other hand can go in with the Killing Edge and have around ~40% odds to activate Silencer and immediately kill his target, regardless of how high its Hp or Def might be. He has ~3/5 odds of activating Silencer at least once after two rounds of combat, thus making his overall combat efficiency against those Generals much better than Louise's.

Second, it nearly doubles his Exp gains when it goes off. Exp for a Silencer kill is multiplied by 1.8. Nice. So Jaffar can run around with the Killing Edge and activate Silencer on nearly half of his kills, growing at the same rate as Louise or nearly so despite his considerably higher base level. Speaking of growths, let's see how they do in that respect.

Jaffar
65% Hp 15% Str 40% Skl 35% Spd 20% Lck 30% Def 30% Res

Louise
60% Hp 40% Str 40% Skl 40% Spd 30% Lck 20% Def 30% Res

Offensively, Louise wins Str by 25% and Spd by 5%. Despite the fact that her Str growth is over double Jaffar's, though, she will never catch up in that stat. After 8 levels for both of them, a 25% higher growth only results in +2 more Str for Louise over what Jaffar gains during those 8 levels (of course due to his high base level Jaffar can't actually gain 8 more levels, but you get the point). Jaffar's base Str lead is 7 points. Louise will never close the gap. Her average Str at L20 is still less than Jaffar's base Str. She'll be lucky if she can even whittle it down to a 3 or 4 point lead. On Spd, 5% higher growth is insignificant.

Defensively, Louise wins Avo growth by 20%, but she loses in Def growth by 10% and Hp growth by 5%, so w/e. They're effectively tied here. The defensive comparison between them will not change much as they gain more levels.

So as you can see, those massive leads Jaffar starts with aren't going away any time soon. Since there is only a few chapters left in the game Louise has no opportunity to try and close those gaps with her slightly better growths.

Your turn.