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Both Mia and Soren are generally considered fairly capable units, and I have to say that's true for both of them. However, that doesn't mean they don't have their flaws. Who has the largest flaws? Soren, quite easily.

I'm going to ignore anything about Soren's early game existence. He's really not too useful in those chapters, so I'm also not going to bother making this longer than necessary by talking about it.

So Mia joins in ch 7. Soren has been available for a few chapters in which he's either not been able to do more than firing pot shots at enemies, or he's gotten a few kills due to the occasional finishing off of an enemy, or maybe the occasional adept activation or whatever. Either way, due to there being a time (turn) limit on all chapters, I think he won't have gained more than 3 levels.

lv 4 Soren

wind: 9.8 atk, 8.3 spd, 125.3 hit, 4.4 crt -- 19.4 hp, 22.5 avo, 2.4 def, 8.7 res

9.7% adept

lv 6 Mia

iron: 12.0 atk, 13.0 spd, 116.0 hit, 5.0 crt -- 21.0 hp, 32.0 avo, 7.0 def, 2.0 res

steel: 15.0 atk, 8.0 spd, 101.0 hit -- 22.0 avo

armor: 15.0 (23.0) atk, 3.0 spd, 106.0 hit -- 12.0 avo

vantage

Mia with steel is still just as fast as Soren is when she uses steel, and is still more durable against physical enemies despite having her avo reduced by 10. An initial 10 avo + 4-5 def lead is that cool : 3 Oh, and she could also use iron to double something if that yields better results.

Soren with his wind needs more than 2.5 rounds on average to kill something physical (he needs 25 rounds or something to kill even the weakest mage, and inf-RKOes the stronger mages, the priest and Balmer, so I didn't count them for Soren to keep it 'fair'). Maybe that, due to adept, this is slightly less, but it's still well over 2. Mia is in the same situation - she needs around 2.5 rounds to kill something on average. So they are pretty much even offensively, despite Soren hitting on res and Mia being able to use a more wide variety of weapons.

Defensively, Soren gets ~2HKOed on average while facing ~65% displayed hit, which equals ~76% true hit. So if he gets attacked two times, the chance he's going to die is effectively ~58%. That's pretty large, really. Mia gets killed in ~2.6 rounds on average while facing, if she has something like 27.0 avo on average due to varying which weapon she uses, ~68% displayed hit, which converts to ~80% true hit. So Mia's chance to die in those 2.6 rounds is .8^2.6 = ~56%. So they're about even defensively.

"But Soren has 1-2 range!"

True, but Mia has vantage, which is more of a defensive skill than an offensive one. If something has been weakened already, Mia's vantage can allow her to get that kill without taking any damage at all, so that sort of cancels Soren's 1-2 range out.

So who's better? Very difficult to say. I think it would be a bit better if we would look a bit into the future, say when they're promoted.

lv 1 Soren, B Ike

elthunder: 26.3 atk, 14.5 spd, 19.2 crt -- 30.6 hp, 54.7 avo, 6.8 def, 19.3 res

staves, 20.2% adept

lv 1 Mia, B Rhys

steel blade: 26.6 atk, 18.4 spd, 24.2 crt -- 32.0 hp, 49.1 avo, 11.8 def, 7.5 res

armorslayer: 23.6 (31.6) atk

vantage

Mia can very safely equip that steel blade. She still has plenty of durability (more than Soren, anyway), and even if she would be in trouble she could just shift to an iron blade, have some more avo, and still have plenty of offense. But with a steel blade she has more atk but still enough spd to double everything in ch 16, so it's preferable for her to equip steel.

Anyway, Soren 1.5RKOes the dudes in this chapter. That's pretty sweet, huh? Not good enough, though. Mia 1RKOes everything on the map but 2 of the knights, Kimaarsi and the halberdier, so she, like, 1.1RKOes everything. And she has slightly higher crit than Soren. Soren does have adept, so that makes it a little bit closer, but the gap between 1RKOing half the enemies without a crit or adept and 1RKOing nearly everything without a crit is pretty damn large, so Mia is definitely better than Soren offensively. Apparently 14.5 spd doesn't double enough.

(The following is not counting the priests and thief, because they either won't attack you anyway, or they can't attack at all - just pointing out the obvious.)

So, some numbers. About 14% of the enemies uses magic, so it's logical 86% of the enemies doesn't use magic (just some more pointing out the obvious : p). The physical enemies average 16.4 atk and 100.6 hit against Soren, and 16.7 atk and 103.5 hit against Mia. The magical enemies average 16.8 atk and 109.6 hit against both Soren and Mia.

So, the physical enemies 3.2HKO Soren at ~43% true hit. Those same enemies need more than twice as many rounds to kill Mia, namely 6.5. Mia does face slightly higher hit rates, I guess, but unless Soren faces twice as low hit rates, that really doesn't matter. And does he? Are the hit rates Mia faces twice as high as the ones Soren faces? No, Mia faces ~58% true hit. So Mia is vastly superior defensively against the physical enemies.

Then I guess Soren is better against the magical enemies defensively, but it really doesn't matter a lot in the face of vastly superior offense and vastly superior defense against the vast majority of the enemies.

And I'm just going to be lazy here and say this trend continues like this, and then say it's your turn.

Sorry for the walls of numbers.

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Both Mia and Soren are generally considered fairly capable units, and I have to say that's true for both of them. However, that doesn't mean they don't have their flaws. Who has the largest flaws? Soren, quite easily.

It's not enough to talk about who has the biggest flaws here. It's also who excels more in his or her area of expertise, and even if Soren has a couple of flaws, he's doing a lot more exceling than Mia will be.

I'm going to ignore anything about Soren's early game existence. He's really not too useful in those chapters, so I'm also not going to bother making this longer than necessary by talking about it.

I'll agree, he doesn't do a whole lot there, but he does enough. He can pick off kills in chapters 4 and 5, and is starting to be more useful come 6, where he can 2RKO the knights and be shielded by Ike, Oscar, or Titania. Titania can't even ORKO them at base (and honestly, I don't see her any higher than base by chapter 6).

So Mia joins in ch 7. Soren has been available for a few chapters in which he's either not been able to do more than firing pot shots at enemies, or he's gotten a few kills due to the occasional finishing off of an enemy, or maybe the occasional adept activation or whatever. Either way, due to there being a time (turn) limit on all chapters, I think he won't have gained more than 3 levels.

lv 4 Soren

wind: 9.8 atk, 8.3 spd, 125.3 hit, 4.4 crt -- 19.4 hp, 22.5 avo, 2.4 def, 8.7 res

9.65% adept

lv 6 Mia

iron: 12.0 atk, 13.0 spd, 116.0 hit, 5.0 crt -- 21.0 hp, 32.0 avo, 7.0 def, 2.0 res

steel: 15.0 atk, 8.0 spd, 101.0 hit -- 22.0 avo

armor: 15.0 (23.0) atk, 3.0 spd, 106.0 hit -- 12.0 avo

vantage

Level 5 seems more reasonable here, since he and Ike are going to get a LOT of kills in chapter 4 (the player benefits most by giving kills to Ike and Soren above other units here), and he's going to get some pickoff kills in 5 and 6 as well. Furthermore, Soren can get the mage band as well for those four levelups as well, since he has no competition for it. Let's see his true stats at this point:

19.8	0.2	8.8	10.2	9.6	6.2	2.6	9.2
10.2% adept

With wind: 10.8 atk, 8.6 speed (technically 8.8 since he has ~20% chance of Str by now), 126.7 hit, 19.8HP, 23.8 avo. Well, that may not seem like a lot, but it's a full point of attack difference, and gets him exceedingly close to doubling the 5AS soldiers. Maybe not, but he'll hit level 6 sometime in the chapter and be able to then if not already. With that stated, and the fact that most enemies having 5AS or less (the boss and one archer being the exceptions), he's going to be 2RKOing just about everything and not taking player phase counters as well. Mia? 3RKOing with iron, 2RKO with steel. And while Soren is guaranteed to hit, Mia is facing as low as 75 displayed (87.7 true) against some enemies, not to mention taking player phase counters with around 77 displayed due to WTD against the many soldier units. That's quite a big difference right off the bat, both in terms of durability and attack.

Mia with steel is still just as fast as Soren is when she uses steel, and is still more durable against physical enemies despite having her avo reduced by 10. An initial 10 avo + 4-5 def lead is that cool : 3 Oh, and she could also use iron to double something if that yields better results.

See above. It's meaningless when she's taking lances to the face due to WTD. Plus, Soren has a huge hit advantage too and never has to take counters except against 1-2 range enemies, which aren't too common for a good while.

Soren with his wind needs more than 2.5 rounds on average to kill something physical (he needs 25 rounds or something to kill even the weakest mage, and inf-RKOes the stronger mages, the priest and Balmer, so I didn't count them for Soren to keep it 'fair'). Maybe that, due to adept, this is slightly less, but it's still well over 2. Mia is in the same situation - she needs around 2.5 rounds to kill something on average. So they are pretty much even offensively, despite Soren hitting on res and Mia being able to use a more wide variety of weapons.

I already showed that this is really a 2 round for Soren due to doubling, though adept isn't going to make it a one round unless he double adepts (~1% chance).

Defensively, Soren gets ~2HKOed on average while facing ~65% displayed hit, which equals ~76% true hit. So if he gets attacked two times, the chance he's going to die is effectively ~58%. That's pretty large, really. Mia gets killed in ~2.6 rounds on average while facing, if she has something like 27.0 avo on average due to varying which weapon she uses, ~68% displayed hit, which converts to ~80% true hit. So Mia's chance to die in those 2.6 rounds is .8^2.6 = ~56%. So they're about even defensively.

Again, player phase hits add up. Rhys can't be everywhere, and this isn't RD where healing items are super great either.

"But Soren has 1-2 range!"

Way to gloss over the second most important reason why Soren > Mia (I'll get to the first reason later). Besides avoiding player phase counters, Soren can easily pick off weakened enemies from behind player lines. This is critical in chapter 8, and an advantage that Mia just doesn't have. It comes back to help him out later as well.

True, but Mia has vantage, which is more of a defensive skill than an offensive one. If something has been weakened already, Mia's vantage can allow her to get that kill without taking any damage at all, so that sort of cancels Soren's 1-2 range out.

No, it doesn't. Not when dealing with anything that has 1-2 range, at least, and also not when dealing with enemies that can resist one attack from Mia, either. In other words, Vantage isn't helping much unless she gets a critical hit, which isn't something to rely on.

So who's better? Very difficult to say. I think it would be a bit better if we would look a bit into the future, say when they're promoted.

lv 1 Soren, B Ike

elthunder: 26.3 atk, 14.5 spd, 19.2 crt -- 30.6 hp, 54.7 avo, 6.8 def, 19.3 res

staves, 20.2% adept

lv 1 Mia, B Rhys

steel blade: 26.6 atk, 18.4 spd, 24.2 crt -- 32.0 hp, 49.1 avo, 11.8 def, 7.5 res

armorslayer: 23.6 (31.6) atk

vantage

Again, you're misusing Soren. Soren doesn't need or even want Elthunder. He only needs Elwind at most. Let's redo this comparison properly:

Soren 20/1 Elwind:
30.55	2.95	18.4	22	17.6	10.7	6.85	19.45

Again, assuming mage band, since he's still the prime candidate for it, meaning less opportunity cost. Mia benefits from a lot of different bands, but I'll assume Sword band since it's the natural choice. Fair is fair, and I don't want to be accused of hobbling Mia when she's got claim to a band as well.

Mia 20/1 Steel Sword
32	13.6	6.2	19	22	13	11.8	7.5

There's one very big difference between the comparison you try to make and the one that the smart player will be confronted with: 3 speed for Soren. That means a lot of extra doubling, as there is a HUGE number of 11-13 speed enemies in this part of the game. I think chapter 20 is a fair enough place for their promotions, so let's look at a typical enemy there: the level 17 wyvern rider (steel lance):

32 hp, 24 atk, 10 AS, 98 hit, 24 avo, 16 def, 6 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

Soren's going to one round this guy and never have to see a counter. Mia? Well, she two rounds, but faces WTD, and is facing ~50 displayed (~50 true as well) against them. Plus, she'll probably have to take two hits from them as well to beat them. She can't rely on 3HKOing, so a critical isn't sufficient either, meaning she's taking a hit either way. But what if the enemy has 1-2 range also? Example from Chapter 21:

Halberdier level 4 (short spear):
37 hp, 21 atk, 12 AS, 102 hit, 28 avo, 12 def, 8 res, 7 crit, 4 cev

Then Soren still beats the stuffing out of him in two hits and take one counter while Mia has to take one hit, attack, take a second hit, and then... wait he's not dead. So, she takes ANOTHER hit before finally finishing him. Vantage isn't doing her one lick of good here, and WTD isn't helping her case, either, since she's facing higher hit rates as well.

Mia can very safely equip that steel blade. She still has plenty of durability (more than Soren, anyway), and even if she would be in trouble she could just shift to an iron blade, have some more avo, and still have plenty of offense. But with a steel blade she has more atk but still enough spd to double everything in ch 16, so it's preferable for her to equip steel.

Well, except for all those 1-2 range enemies where vantage doesn't help and she has to take that many more hits to finish the job. If she's taking 2x as many hits, it doesn't matter that she's marginally more durable than Soren.

Anyway, Soren 1.5RKOes the dudes in this chapter. That's pretty sweet, huh? Not good enough, though. Mia 1RKOes everything on the map but 2 of the knights, Kimaarsi and the halberdier, so she, like, 1.1RKOes everything. And she has slightly higher crit than Soren. Soren does have adept, so that makes it a little bit closer, but the gap between 1RKOing half the enemies without a crit or adept and 1RKOing nearly everything without a crit is pretty damn large, so Mia is definitely better than Soren offensively. Apparently 14.5 spd doesn't double enough (The following is not counting the priests and thief, because they either won't attack you anyway, or they can't attack at all - just pointing out the obvious.)

Well, I don't know why we're talking about Ch 16 after we discussed promotions (as neither one is promoting until 20 or so), but anyway, I'll give you that Mia does better for a couple of chapters here between 15 and promotion, but Soren does better from chapters 4-6 where Mia doesn't exist. I'd call it a wash between them at best for Mia, and a slight advantage for Soren between all of these chapters myself.

So, the physical enemies 3.2HKO Soren at ~43% true hit. Those same enemies need more than twice as many rounds to kill Mia, namely 6.5. Mia does face slightly higher hit rates, I guess, but unless Soren faces twice as low hit rates, that really doesn't matter. And does he? Are the hit rates Mia faces twice as high as the ones Soren faces? No, Mia faces ~58% true hit. So Mia is vastly superior defensively against the physical enemies.

Then I guess Soren is better against the magical enemies defensively, but it really doesn't matter a lot in the face of vastly superior offense and vastly superior defense against the vast majority of the enemies.

And I'm just going to be lazy here and say this trend continues like this, and then say it's your turn.

Well, like I've been trying to say: Mia does face twice as many hits, so it's actually an advantage for Soren: namely, all those hits that Mia has to absorb during player phase that Soren can laugh at because he doesn't have to face them. They really add up, especially for two units that have to rely on avoid as their method for defense, since it's fair to say that neither of them can eat many hits. Really, Soren has better offense against physical units and equal defense to Mia, while Mia has an attack advantage against mages but vastly inferior defense.

But even in all of this, you've failed to consider the number one thing that Soren has going for him: he can use staves and heal other units. This gives him two advantages here. First, he can heal other units, which allows you to save your elixirs for later in the game (BK, Ashnard), and also gives him more experience. Especially once he gets C staves and can use Physic. That's 22 EXP, plus a very big healing range, and 30+ recovery, not to mention that he can still leave his weapon equipped for enemy phase as well (this isn't RD, again...) and stay near Ike to get the support boost. Yes, Rhys can do the same for Mia, but Rhys is far more frail due to having a lot less speed and no good +Avo supports. And Rhys won't double either. Not to mention, that the SEXP is exclusive to a very few characters, meaning that Soren is drawing on a virtually unlimited pool of EXP. The result being that he can level up far faster and more efficiently than Mia can, which draws out his lead substantially over the final few chapters.

I could go on more about this, but I think it's pretty obvious here that Soren > Mia. Anything you'd like to add?

And:

Sorry for the walls of numbers.

Nah, it's fine. I'm in college and double majoring in math and econ. Walls of numbers are something I see every day.
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It's not enough to talk about who has the biggest flaws here. It's also who excels more in his or her area of expertise, and even if Soren has a couple of flaws, he's doing a lot more exceling than Mia will be.

Bah. Semantics. Sort of.

I'll agree, he doesn't do a whole lot there, but he does enough. He can pick off kills in chapters 4 and 5, and is starting to be more useful come 6, where he can 2RKO the knights and be shielded by Ike, Oscar, or Titania. Titania can't even ORKO them at base (and honestly, I don't see her any higher than base by chapter 6).

Pick off kills in ch 4? How do you want him to do that? You only have four turns to achieve the goal of the chapter, which requires you to rush forward so that you don't have the time to properly protect Soren, which is - perhaps not surprisingly - pretty much essential for Soren to pick off kills, because he's going to get killed if he's not protected unless he's very lucky. I mean, look at Soren's defensive parameters: 18.0 hp, 19.0 avo, 2.0 def. Now look at enemies: 13.0 atk, 91.8 hit. Or more accurately, 18 enemies 2HKO him, 4 enemies 3HKO him. So on average Soren is getting 2.2HKOed on average while facing ~86% true hit. So his chance to die in 2.2 rounds is .86^2.2 = ~72%. Pretty damn huge, if you ask me.

In ch 5, yes, he can do a little bit more, but there it's probably still preferable to have him weaken enemies to let somebody else take the kill, because so many enemies are being thrown at you that you don't want to take any unnecessary risks with the units you choose to defend the gates with. If you let one of those attack first, that unit may very well get wounded, and if Soren might then be able to kill that bastard, the defending unit may take another hit. Or maybe Titania and Gatrie are defending the gates, in which case the charging enemies will either die before Soren can get to them (they'll likely target Titania primarily, who will kill everything that comes at her, and if they attack Gatrie, he either kills them or leaves them with a: a fair amount of hp left so that Soren can't kill, or b: just enough hp so that Soren can kill). Long story short, the chance that Soren's getting any kills is small to nil. And only, or almost only getting in pot shots doesn't gain you much exp, I can tell you that.

As for ch 6, I can easily see Titania higher than base due to boss kills (if you want to beat chapters within the turn requirement for maximum bexp, it's often preferable to let Titania kill the boss, as she can do so the quickest). Plus, there's a hammer available which you obtained in ch 5.

lv 3 Soren w/ wind: 9.2 atk, 7.9 spd

lv 2 Titania w/ hammer: 32.5 atk, 7.0 spd

lv 7 Ike w/ regal sword: 22.0 atk, 10.3 spd

lv 7 Boyd w/ hammer: 30.0 atk, 0.0 spd

So here we have four units who might do pretty well against those knights. Looking at those knights, they have 26 hp, 13 def and 4 res. Nobody but Ike can double them.

Soren deals 5.2 damage, which is a 5HKO.

Titania deals 20.5 damage, which is a 2HKO.

Ike deals 8 * 2 = 16.0 damage, which is a 2RKO.

Boyd deals 18.0 damage, which is a 2HKO.

What if Soren would be lv 4 here? He would deal 5.6 damage twice for a total of 11.2 damage, which is still a 3RKO, so he's still worse than everyone else. And on top of that, the knights in ch 6 have javelins, so he's also facing some real danger. I mean, he does get 2HKOed by them while facing ~58% true hit rates. That's still quite dangerous, if you ask me.

So yeah...

Level 5 seems more reasonable here

I think my lv 4 is perfectly justified.

he and Ike are going to get a LOT of kills in chapter 4 (the player benefits most by giving kills to Ike and Soren above other units here)

May I ask why? As far as I'm concerned, we're talking about beating ch 4 in 4 turns, and there's no way Soren's going to get a kill every turn. One kill is probably the most he's getting.

Besides, why would the player benefit most by giving Ike and Soren kills over the other units? I do believe giving Ike and Soren those kills instead of others doesn't really help us beat the chapter with that fairly sick turn requirement.

Furthermore, Soren can get the mage band as well for those four levelups as well, since he has no competition for it.

Yeah, sure, whatever. Too bad that entire mage band doesn't exist until after ch 7.

Oh, since I already covered why lv 4 is fine in ch 7, I'm not going to bother going over your stat analysis, since I'd just be repeating myself, which is kind of pointless.

See above. It's meaningless when she's taking lances to the face due to WTD. Plus, Soren has a huge hit advantage too and never has to take counters except against 1-2 range enemies, which aren't too common for a good while.

Huge hit advantage? Nah, if Mia has ~87% true hit at the very least, she'll have much more than that the vast majority of the time, so she'll still have something like well over 90% true hit on average. That doesn't really bother me too much. It's a slight advantage for Soren, granted, but it's really not very significant.

1-2 range and vantage cancel eachother out, sort of.

Way to gloss over the second most important reason why Soren > Mia (I'll get to the first reason later). Besides avoiding player phase counters, Soren can easily pick off weakened enemies from behind player lines. This is critical in chapter 8, and an advantage that Mia just doesn't have. It comes back to help him out later as well.

Okay... Bexp for the win, by the way.

lv 10 Mia

iron: 13.6 atk, 15.4 spd -- 23.0 hp, 38.6 avo, 7.8 def, 3.0 res

steel: 16.6 atk, 12.0 spd -- 31.8 avo

Mia gets 3.1HKOed here (at high hit rates, I know). That's really not half bad, since it means she can take some hits before getting killed, and vantage helps quite a bit here, too, because it means she may finish something off on the enemy phase without taking the hit she would have taken without it. So yeah, Mia doesn't really need that 1-2 range in order to be useful for defending. I mean, cool, Soren has it. Does it give him a real advantage over Mia? No, not at all. Mia can't attack from a distance, but Soren can't actually defend.

No, it doesn't. Not when dealing with anything that has 1-2 range, at least, and also not when dealing with enemies that can resist one attack from Mia, either. In other words, Vantage isn't helping much unless she gets a critical hit, which isn't something to rely on.

To use your own words: ... 1-2 range enemies, which aren't too common for a good while.

So 1-2 range enemies shouldn't really post that much of a problem. I mean, hey, you said so yourself!

Again, assuming mage band, since he's still the prime candidate for it, meaning less opportunity cost. Mia benefits from a lot of different bands, but I'll assume Sword band since it's the natural choice. Fair is fair, and I don't want to be accused of hobbling Mia when she's got claim to a band as well.

Okay, so you give Soren a band he can really make use of, and Mia gets the band she desires probably the least? Heck, she'd even benefit more from a priest band or something. It's not like hit is a problem for her. She'd benefit a lot more from something that gives her more offense, too. And it's not like Soren is the only one contending for the mage band, either. True, there's less opportunity cost and whatnot, but that doesn't mean he's guaranteed to get it. Or if he does, Mia is basically guaranteed to get wrath, in which case she'll beat Soren easily.

I think chapter 20 is a fair enough place for their promotions

I promoted them at ch 16. What makes you think this should happen so much later? I mean, there's bexp for a reason, and there's tons of it. Why would you not use it, when it can make your units promote by ch 16 (perfectly possible) and make everything much easier? And yeah, ch 16 gets us back to my previous comparison, and whether Soren has used the mage band full time or not, Mia will still be superior there.

Well, except for all those 1-2 range enemies where vantage doesn't help and she has to take that many more hits to finish the job. If she's taking 2x as many hits, it doesn't matter that she's marginally more durable than Soren.

First of all, it's not like Mia's taking 2 times as many hits due to avo and there not being that many 1-2 range enemies. In ch 16 I count 6 enemies with 1-2 range, and 3 dudes with a bow, which means not even 25% of the enemies uses a ranged weapon. Not very worrysome once again. Second, her concrete durability is two times as good as Soren's at this point in the game, so she would have to take twice as many hits in order to make that equal. But since that doesn't apply, her durability is quite significantly better, despite the existence of a handful of ranged enemies.

since it's fair to say that neither of them can eat many hits.

I do believe being able to survive at least 7 rounds or something on average (still talking about ch 16 here) is pretty darn good in combination with her avo. Yeah, Oscar, Ike, Gatrie and whoever else have better durability, but that doesn't mean it's terrible. Her avo is nice indeed, but she doesn't quite have to rely on it. Soren, who is getting 3-4HKOed instead of 6-7HKOed, does (1-2 range or not).

But even in all of this, you've failed to consider the number one thing that Soren has going for him: he can use staves and heal other units.

You're making it seem far better than it really is. Exp is plentiful in this game, and units can (and probably will) promote very early. This means units can become pretty darn durable very early, which means the value of healing drops fairly quickly. It's nice that he can do it, and it's useful from time to time, but really nothing too exciting.

Besides, another thing I didn't mention in my previous post is that Mia may very well get wrath for that vantage/wrath combo, which is probably about even in usefulness to staves, or a little bit better (because it may very well take some time for Mia to drop below half health).

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Bah. Semantics. Sort of.

But it's still a key distinction that needs to be addressed.

Pick off kills in ch 4? How do you want him to do that? You only have four turns to achieve the goal of the chapter, which requires you to rush forward so that you don't have the time to properly protect Soren, which is - perhaps not surprisingly - pretty much essential for Soren to pick off kills, because he's going to get killed if he's not protected unless he's very lucky. I mean, look at Soren's defensive parameters: 18.0 hp, 19.0 avo, 2.0 def. Now look at enemies: 13.0 atk, 91.8 hit. Or more accurately, 18 enemies 2HKO him, 4 enemies 3HKO him. So on average Soren is getting 2.2HKOed on average while facing ~86% true hit. So his chance to die in 2.2 rounds is .86^2.2 = ~72%. Pretty damn huge, if you ask me.

Well, I'd actually argue that this is a rare case where losing 2 turns here is so beneficial to an efficient run that it actually justifies the loss of 60 BEXP to do so. In other words, Soren and Ike would benefit from a 6 turn run of this chapter and more EXP that it's actually better in the long run to drop a little BEXP here. You've got 6 units, and 2 of them need to be defended. The max BEXP way of doing things would involve Titania rushing to the boss while everyone else guards Soren and Rhys, but is that actually the long run efficient way of beating this level? I'm not so sure.

In ch 5, yes, he can do a little bit more, but there it's probably still preferable to have him weaken enemies to let somebody else take the kill, because so many enemies are being thrown at you that you don't want to take any unnecessary risks with the units you choose to defend the gates with. If you let one of those attack first, that unit may very well get wounded, and if Soren might then be able to kill that bastard, the defending unit may take another hit. Or maybe Titania and Gatrie are defending the gates, in which case the charging enemies will either die before Soren can get to them (they'll likely target Titania primarily, who will kill everything that comes at her, and if they attack Gatrie, he either kills them or leaves them with a: a fair amount of hp left so that Soren can't kill, or b: just enough hp so that Soren can kill). Long story short, the chance that Soren's getting any kills is small to nil. And only, or almost only getting in pot shots doesn't gain you much exp, I can tell you that.

Oscar and Boyd on the left side, Shinon and Soren get the long range, and Gatrie and Titania down the middle, with Ike helping out and Rhys healing as needed. I'd love to see how that's particularly risk for anyone. And you put Titania on a diagonal behind and to the side of Titania so they focus on Gatrie. He weakens, Soren takes the kills. If I interpolate the stats between the chapter 4 and 6 enemies, I can take a good guess that they are around 24 HP, 3-4AS, 6 def, 1 Res. Gatrie at base with steel does 17 damage, and Soren at 2 does 7 damage, with a 60% chance of doing 8 and a ~45% chance of doubling.

As for ch 6, I can easily see Titania higher than base due to boss kills (if you want to beat chapters within the turn requirement for maximum bexp, it's often preferable to let Titania kill the boss, as she can do so the quickest). Plus, there's a hammer available which you obtained in ch 5.

lv 3 Soren w/ wind: 9.2 atk, 7.9 spd

lv 2 Titania w/ hammer: 32.5 atk, 7.0 spd

lv 7 Ike w/ regal sword: 22.0 atk, 10.3 spd

lv 7 Boyd w/ hammer: 30.0 atk, 0.0 spd

So here we have four units who might do pretty well against those knights. Looking at those knights, they have 26 hp, 13 def and 4 res. Nobody but Ike can double them.

Soren deals 5.2 damage, which is a 5HKO.

Titania deals 20.5 damage, which is a 2HKO.

Ike deals 8 * 2 = 16.0 damage, which is a 2RKO.

Boyd deals 18.0 damage, which is a 2HKO.

What if Soren would be lv 4 here? He would deal 5.6 damage twice for a total of 11.2 damage, which is still a 3RKO, so he's still worse than everyone else. And on top of that, the knights in ch 6 have javelins, so he's also facing some real danger. I mean, he does get 2HKOed by them while facing ~58% true hit rates. That's still quite dangerous, if you ask me. So yeah...

Once again, I ask if max BEXP is always worth it if it means that you have to dump EXP on a character who doesn't need or want it, especially when you have many characters who do want the CEXP and can easily get more EXP total that way than by BEXP. In addition, the only viable strategies for 4 turning that map involve rushing through with Titania, and that's going to leave your other units open to attack. Of course, if it's for abuse, that's another question, but we've assumed that away. And when did this become a debate about Ike, Titania, or Boyd? We're talking Soren v. Mia here. And with 7.9 speed, that's effectively a double against the 4AS knights, since we can assume a band here as well, we may well just round that up to an average of 8 speed, especially since he will get there (1 - ((.95)^2 * (.6)^2)) = ~67.5% of the time, which is a lot better than the 5RKO you were going for there. A speed band raises it to 73% and a strength band makes it ~70.8% of the time. That's a ORKO if any of those three people attacked first, and he's not in any danger of a OHKO either, plus you've got Rhys to heal. Not the greatest of course, but still far beyond what Mia is doing here (not existing)

Level 5 seems more reasonable here

I think my lv 4 is perfectly justified.

I've justified a level 5 here on the basis of long run efficiency instead of trying to ram through while only caring about BEXP. Efficiency entails other things besides bum-rushing every chapter.

May I ask why? As far as I'm concerned, we're talking about beating ch 4 in 4 turns, and there's no way Soren's going to get a kill every turn. One kill is probably the most he's getting.

Besides, why would the player benefit most by giving Ike and Soren kills over the other units? I do believe giving Ike and Soren those kills instead of others doesn't really help us beat the chapter with that fairly sick turn requirement.

THAT CHAPTER being the key phrase there. Efficiency isn't looking at a single chapter at a time; this is not a debate as to who does best in each chapter, but rather over the whole game. If I spend 2 turns here to give Soren a little babying and get an extra 3-4 kills, but later shave three turns off as a result in later chapters, that's an efficient investment of time, not a poor use of a unit. Soren has the growths to be one of the best units in the game - and a little help in the early game is all he really needs to be a lot better. Yes, I admit that he does get a little babying in the early game (hence, he's upper mid, not high or top), but given how much he benefits from a couple of extra levels in the early game, I see it being far more than what Mia will accomplish.

Yeah, sure, whatever. Too bad that entire mage band doesn't exist until after ch 7.

Oops, I thought that Soren came with it. Call it a mistake. But since you'll never be using all of your units in any chapter but 5, he can swipe the archer band (Shinon won't need it) for skill/speed growth until he gets the mage band in CH 7.

Huge hit advantage? Nah, if Mia has ~87% true hit at the very least, she'll have much more than that the vast majority of the time, so she'll still have something like well over 90% true hit on average. That doesn't really bother me too much. It's a slight advantage for Soren, granted, but it's really not very significant.

Yes, but still, the 1-2% chance is still significant. That's one of the main reasons why Aran isn't ranked higher in FE10 (1-2% chance of getting criticaled.) I'd rather take the sure shot (not the skill) than the SM who misses one time in 10 here.

1-2 range and vantage cancel eachother out, sort of.

Except of course for all those player phase hits that Soren will never have to face due to attacking at range. As you yourself keep saying, most enemies have one range only, meaning that Soren never has to take any attacks on enemy phase. Mia not having any 2 range options here (besides sonic sword -- going to Mist -- or Runesword -- which appears with 3 chapters to be used and 1 or 2 other people, Mist and possibly Elincia, to use it, or maybe even Tanith, etc.) is the reason why she's not nearly as durable as you claim she is. Remember, the AI always prioritizes the enemy that can't counter, and when she does face 1-2 range enemies, they will prioritize their attacks on her over the other units who do have the ability to counter.

Okay... Bexp for the win, by the way.

lv 10 Mia

iron: 13.6 atk, 15.4 spd -- 23.0 hp, 38.6 avo, 7.8 def, 3.0 res

steel: 16.6 atk, 12.0 spd -- 31.8 avo

Mia gets 3.1HKOed here (at high hit rates, I know). That's really not half bad, since it means she can take some hits before getting killed, and vantage helps quite a bit here, too, because it means she may finish something off on the enemy phase without taking the hit she would have taken without it. So yeah, Mia doesn't really need that 1-2 range in order to be useful for defending. I mean, cool, Soren has it. Does it give him a real advantage over Mia? No, not at all. Mia can't attack from a distance, but Soren can't actually defend.

You need three people to actually do the defending in chapter 8. Oscar on the right, Ike down the left, and Titania down the middle. Everyone else is just getting pickoff kills. Soren and Boyd have 1-2 range options at this point. Rhys can heal. Mia is just utility here, and certainly contributing far less than Soren would be. But anyway, let's look at Soren's stats at level 10 (fair is fair, right?):

HP	Str	Mag	Skl	Spd	Luck	Def	Res
22.05	0.45	11.4	13.45	12.1	7.7	3.35	11.95

(assuming archer band for all levels, which I explained is perfectly reasonable above). He's got 11.55 speed, deals 13.4 damage, and has 134.6 hit, which is immune to WTA/WTD and biorhythm as well. He also avoids at 30.8 as well, which is almost as good as Mia with steel. When you factor in the fewer attacks that Soren has to take to be effective here, it turns into nearly an advantage for Soren, since he doesn't need to stay in range of enemies and Mia does if she's going to be doing anything.

To use your own words: ... 1-2 range enemies, which aren't too common for a good while.

So 1-2 range enemies shouldn't really post that much of a problem. I mean, hey, you said so yourself!

I did say that, but now you're trapped, because you freely admit that Soren rarely if ever has to take a player phase counter, and has more than enough speed to double just about everything.
Okay, so you give Soren a band he can really make use of, and Mia gets the band she desires probably the least? Heck, she'd even benefit more from a priest band or something. It's not like hit is a problem for her. She'd benefit a lot more from something that gives her more offense, too. And it's not like Soren is the only one contending for the mage band, either. True, there's less opportunity cost and whatnot, but that doesn't mean he's guaranteed to get it. Or if he does, Mia is basically guaranteed to get wrath, in which case she'll beat Soren easily.
You've got Mist, Ilyana, and Rhys that all make decent use of that band. Of them, Rhys doesn't need it, Ilyana wants something with more speed or skill instead (She's not as fast and thunder magic has lower hit), and Mist can really take any band, though the mage band, I'll admit, helps her somewhat. As for Mia, there are lots of good characters that could make use of a strength band. Oscar, Ike, Marcia, etc. would all like that band as well and are all considered better overall as well. Clearly a +speed band is being wasted on her, so her best choices are either knight or wyvern (both +Str/Def). But giving her that band has a lot of opportunity cost, while Soren isn't hurting anyone too much by always getting the mage band.
I promoted them at ch 16. What makes you think this should happen so much later? I mean, there's bexp for a reason, and there's tons of it. Why would you not use it, when it can make your units promote by ch 16 (perfectly possible) and make everything much easier? And yeah, ch 16 gets us back to my previous comparison, and whether Soren has used the mage band full time or not, Mia will still be superior there.
Only the fact that there are several other units that could also get the BEXP and neither of them are going to be on the front line due to movement reasons and durability issues. I've already shown that Soren wins in the case of a later promotion except during a few chapters, and I'll show why he does better with an earlier promotion as well.
First of all, it's not like Mia's taking 2 times as many hits due to avo and there not being that many 1-2 range enemies. In ch 16 I count 6 enemies with 1-2 range, and 3 dudes with a bow, which means not even 25% of the enemies uses a ranged weapon. Not very worrysome once again. Second, her concrete durability is two times as good as Soren's at this point in the game, so she would have to take twice as many hits in order to make that equal. But since that doesn't apply, her durability is quite significantly better, despite the existence of a handful of ranged enemies.
Let's take a look at a 20/1 Soren in chapter 16:

HP	Str	Mag	Skl	Spd	Luck	Def	Res
30.55	2.95	19.4	20.95	18.1	10.7	6.85	19.45

(Archer band from 1 to 10, then Mage band from 11 to 20). His proper weapon here is Elwind, not Elthunder, which weighs him down by 3 points, makes him fail to double, and hurts his avoid and hit as well. Making this comparison we see that enemies cap at 14 AS, meaning that he is doubling EVERYTHING in this level, like Mia. He attacks with 23.4 might, which is 3HKO on the boss and ORKO on all physical units, plus nearly a ORKO on all mages (he will if he switches to Elthunder instead, since they top at 11 speed and he would have 15.05 here, so still doubling on average).

I do believe being able to survive at least 7 rounds or something on average (still talking about ch 16 here) is pretty darn good in combination with her avo. Yeah, Oscar, Ike, Gatrie and whoever else have better durability, but that doesn't mean it's terrible. Her avo is nice indeed, but she doesn't quite have to rely on it. Soren, who is getting 3-4HKOed instead of 6-7HKOed, does (1-2 range or not).
Soren has B Ike by now, and has 62 avoid to boot. The enemies have ~100 diplayed (mages have more, but he's not hurt by them), so 38 displayed hit = ~29 true. As for Mia, she has no avoid supports, so she's stuck with 57 avoid and a fair amount of WTD from lance users. In other words, she's facing 53 displayed, or ~57 true against them (and just as much against the mages, which deal 8-10 damage to her instead of none). Not to mention both that Mia still has to take player phase hits and counters from 2 range against those units, and I must ask you to show me where this durability lead is, because I'm not seeing it.
You're making it seem far better than it really is. Exp is plentiful in this game, and units can (and probably will) promote very early. This means units can become pretty darn durable very early, which means the value of healing drops fairly quickly. It's nice that he can do it, and it's useful from time to time, but really nothing too exciting.
Of course that may be true, but it also helps him to stay higher leveled while another character levels up as well. Plus, he can still use enemy phase to counter and gain more experience, and he's going to be a ORKO machine during the last few chapters. Mia will be too, but she's got shaky attack and needs forges to reach her true potential, while Soren needs nothing more powerful than Elwind for the whole game due to enemies having less RES than DEF. It's about 5 difference on average, which means that Soren + Elwind at max magic (entirely likely) is doing as much damage as Mia would with 39 might. Given her strength cap (22), she needs a maxed silver (B Ike is also +1 might) or A Rhys and partially forged silver to match his Mt. Needing a forge < not needing one due to cost (in G and the lost utility to another player who wants a forge)
Besides, another thing I didn't mention in my previous post is that Mia may very well get wrath for that vantage/wrath combo, which is probably about even in usefulness to staves, or a little bit better (because it may very well take some time for Mia to drop below half health).
Do you really feel comfortable leaving her in Wrath territory? I don't. She doesn't have the concrete durability (specifically HP) to be super great with Wrath, since she has to be down to 18 HP and 13.4 defense (I'm assuming 20/9 here, so maybe chapter 23 or so?) Lance units in that chapter have around 25 Atk after WTD, so that's a 2HKO with 70 avoid. Thankfully, they only have ~40 displayed (32.4 true), but given the difference in likelihood between 2 hits connecting (~10%) and 4 hits (~1%), I don't feel confortable leaving her out there with 18 HP.

Alright, your turn.

Edited by Randomly Predictable
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