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Bartozio

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  1. 1st playthrough (can't remember my third, lol): - Chloe to Wyvern knight. I was honestly pretty happy with the results I got from this, though I did give her Lyn for most of my playthrough. I've also heard she does really well as sword griffin knight or even a mage knight. - Alear. I honestly wasn't too impressed with them in their promoted class, so halfway through the game I reclassed them to Wyvern and had them use Lucina to guard the rest of my flyer squad. Honestly, they get decent combat stats as a Wyvern, but I think they're far more useful in a support role. Which means I don't they're a priority to promote, but if you're dreading chapter 11 it would help with that. 2nd playthrough - Lapis. I instantly used a second seal to get her into Wyvern, and dumped a bunch of sp books and levels on her for Sword power 2 and Canter. Later I gave her Lyn and a good forged sword. She was easily one of my hard carries, though as you can probably tell, most physical units could likely do similar when giving that much resources. I would highly recommend focussing your resources on making a few good combat units though, considering there's only so many good emblems to go around and things like a dancer and the Byleth ring strongly favour having a strong unit to get more turns. - Anna to Warrior and then straight to Mage Knight. With a Levin sword and some speed support from meals she could one round basically every enemy throughout the whole game. Well, later on she needed some procs to get speedtaker going. I paired her with a cavalry unit using the Lucina ring, and she could usually clear out entire parts of the map on enemy phase. I've heard most mage knights can do this, so I'd highly recommend getting one and trying it at least once, lol. - Celine. Getting an extra staff user was nice, though I don't think it should be a high priority for your first 3 master seals at least. She's very useful as a support character, either just using staves, or when making use of Corrin or Micaiah later on, but none of that requires her to have good stats or promote early. In general, I'd recommend using the first 3 master seals on whoever you want to matter the most in combat, since they'll need the stats the most. I think using more than 6 units from the early game isn't too great, considering the low number of deployment slots in Solm and the fact that you get some really strong prepromotes. So the second batch of master seals can just go to whoever is left that you're planning to use.
  2. Pretty much, though keep in mind other classes can still have useful niches. For instance, I think Hero is inferior to Wyvern Rider when it comes to direct combat, but it's class mastery skill (two hits on chain attacks instead of 1) can be very useful. So if you have a unit who you're mostly using as filler anyway, getting them into Hero can actually be very useful. The three I mentioned are mostly better for units who will see a lot of combat. It's a bit more nuanced, sadly. Mage Knight is the class that will give you the best combat for your magical units. Sage being able to use staves makes them a better support class though. It can be important to make a distinction on your team between which characters you want to only use for combat, and which characters will (at least partially) fill a more supportive role.
  3. Happy to see you're enjoying the game. I'll mention up front that Engage usually revolves more around using good skill combinations and using Emblems on right class and/or in the right way than that it cares about what units you use. It's also not so difficult a game that you need to use all the best options to clear it on maddening, so feel free to experiment and use the units you think are fun to use with the strategies you find more enjoyable. That said, I'll answer your questions with the options I think make the game the easiest and most fun, since I can't really speak for other people :P. I'll echo Eltosian Kadath in saying that not promoting before level 20 and not using staves other healing ones will likely become a pretty big hinderance. The units that join unpromoted already tend to fall behind the prepromotes in terms of stats, and waiting longer with promoting them will only make them fall even farther behind. You also don't really gain much from promoting them later anyway, since as mentioned, you can just reset levels by the time they reach level 20 promoted. Status staves can also be absolute life savers in difficult maps, especially with the right build and Micaiah equiped. as you can suddenly just freeze or silence 3 to 5 enemies. Warp and rescue can also be great, even if you're not using them to 1-turn entire maps. For the record, I'm pretty confident you can clear the game on maddening while following these two rules, but I feel like they heavily restrict your options which might make the game less fun that it could be. In general, I think most physical units you intend to use for combat work best in either Wyvern, Warrior or Wolf knight, which Alear is no exception to. Reclassing them to any of those classes after they promote will likely make their combat seem a lot better. As mentioned above though, Alear also functions really well a support unit. You can keep them in their main class and eventually have them use Byleth to boost all stats, or have them reclass to martial master and use Lucina. Lucina can use Bonded Shield when engaged, and when you use this as a qi adept, it means you're guranteed to block every first attack on every adjacent unit. Alear is especially great for this, because they also support everyone and they give adjacent units a damage buff as well. The Lucina strat also works when you reclass Alear into a flying or cavalry class, but then the 100% activation only applies to units of the same type. I think you're honestly on the right path with her. Her main issues are that she can have some issues with doubling without help and her accuracy can be lower than you'd want. If you fix those, you have a unit that can one round most enemies, take a hit or two and flies around while using staves. Usually it doesn't get much better than that 😛 I think this build can work fine on maddening but I'm usually not a huge fan of using high defense units past the early game. Basically, between Bonded shield, Ike and Vantage builds is pretty easy to have units survive enemy phase whitout investing in their bulk, and that means you can make them better at killing enemies instead. And by making liberal use of Corrin and freeze/silence/obstruct staves it's also possible to just not let enemies attack entirely. For this reason, most people give Panette vantage+Wrath so she can just one shot every enemy that tries to attack her (the least dangerous enemy is a dead enemy after all). If you do want to use a high defence unit though, I'd recommend getting them the pair up skill from Corrin somehow. It tends to be the main way enemies still break through your defenses. I think putting Diamand in A or S tier is severely overrating him. In my experience, beyond the early game he needs a good amount of investment to stay relevant in combat, and he doesn't offer too much outside of combat. Granted, you do have the resources to give some of your units some strong forges and boost their speed up a good bit and give them Canter and I highly recommend using them. But there's several units you can make good like that (Lapis, Amber, Chloe, Alear, Clanne or Jaune reclassed to a physical class), and Diamant isn't that much better than any of those other options in long run. In general I think mages work best in mage knight for combat, though Sage can still be better for more utility. Pandreo's main claim to fame tends to be that he's a magic unit that comes with good bases in a game where magic is really good. He's faster than Citrinne and Ivy and he needs a lot less investment than the other early game magic units. I personally like using her in her default class with either Byleth or Corrin. Byleth for the stat boosts she gives to other units, whereas Corrin lets her use all dragon vein options while also stunning enemies from 3 range. If you already have good options for those roles though, don't feel like you need to use her. She can be trained to a good magic unit as well, but there's no harm in just continuing to use the units you're already invested into. With enough help she can be made to double a decent amount of units in the midgame as mage knight I think. The main benefit is that she has a sky high magic stat, so once she doubles, she'll deal more damage than most other units. The other option is going Sage and either hoping you luck out and get the Olwen S-rank bond ring, or just use her for chip damage and healing. Jean can honestly go for almost any build, and his personal skill will give him good growths in the stat his class tries to focus on. Keeping him in his base class will have him headed for a magical class, but if you class change him early he can do physical classes just as well. A quick tip for training him: If you equip Micaiah on him early, he can gain a top of experience from mending/great sacrificing several units at once in a turn. That way, he can easily gain several levels per map, so he'll catch up pretty fast to the rest of your units. You can also use that method for other units that might fall behind of course, like Clanne or Framme.
  4. I might have worded it badly, but I basically meant to just say I disagreed with the rating of these two. I haven't really used Alcryst long term yet, so I'm not too confident about how good he could be later on. I mostly just doubt he's much better than Etie overall, if he's even better at all. In terms of the best bow unit in the game though, I don't really consider either of these two as real options. Fogado has a much easier time staying relevant and between his high speed and better magic he's a better user of the Radiant bow for killing wyverns or dealing chip damage to non-flyers. Warrior Anna is probably an even better user of the Radiant Bow and she can come with Canter into the Solm arc. And there's always options like Warrior Pannette with a killer bow if you really want to snipe down everything under the sun.
  5. Just going to drop my takes then: For starters I want to mention that all of these are more nitpicks that huge disagreements. There's very few scores I'd change more than 1.5 points, but talking about units is fun, so I'm going to share all of them anyway: Alear: Considering they're probably the easiest combat unit to get going in the early game because of Marth basically getting glued to them and the fact that they have some really good support builds for the late game makes me think they deserve a 9 tbh. Reclassing Alear to Martial Master basically gives you the best Lucina user you can get, and just keeping them as a Divine dragon gives you arguably the best Byleth user until Veyle joins at the end of the game. Their growths are also on par with the other speedsters in the 8-9 scoring range, and considering Alear has the best SP situation in the game they should be coming into the Solm arc with some pretty good skills to compensate for the better bases some of those other units might have in case you're using them as a combat unit. Louis: I think he's a bit high tbh. He's great during the Firene and Brodia arcs (though he starts getting some competition during the Brodia arc), but he really drops of when you enter Solm and tanking based on having good defense starts to become almost irrelevant. That's not a terrible performance or anything, but I think Vander is better during the time Louis is good, and his score is a full 2 points lower. I don't think the fact that Louis can do some filler combat during the mid to end game really justifies that difference, considering how many units you get who can fill that role better. I'd lower his score to at least a 6. Goldmary: I mentioned it in the previous thread, but I don't think Goldmary deserves to be full point ahead of units like Rosado, Saphir and Lindon. She serves a similar role as being decent filler, but joining after several better units. Basically, she should get 5 just like those 3 did. Alfred: I think people neglect how he's actually a pretty good unit during the Firene and Brodia arcs. On maddening Louis runs into the problem that sword units often won't attack him because they'd do 0 damage, whereas Alfred is tanky enough to survive a few hits but not soo tanky they avoid him. He's also one of the best Sigurd users during the early game, especially if you plan ahead to make good use of Momentum. Basically, I think he's fairly comparable to someone like Diamant (both struggle to find use once you enter Solm and Alfred is around for a lot longer) and yet they're a full 2 points apart. I'd give both a 5. Etie/Alcryst: I honestly don't think Alcryst deserves to be more than a full point ahead of Etie. If you're not planning to bring either of them to Solm, Etie has about as many chapters of being your sole archer as Alcryst does (depending on when you play the paralogues) and she can still pick up a steel bow and act like a secondary archer when he is around. If you are planning to bring one of them to Solm, Etie has a much easier time grabbing Canter because of Alcrysts terrible SP situation and her better strength give her, imo, better build options than Alcryst having to gamble for luna procs. I do get how Alcryst having better bulk is an advantage for him, but I really don't think it justifies them being more than point apart. Anna/Jean: I get that trainee units have a bad rep in other games, but I also think they're a lot better of in Engage. Realisticly speaking, you're fairly unlikely to take more than 6 early game units to the Solm arc, simply because of the deployment limit and the lack of master seals. Alear and Chloe are the two units considered to be really good for this, and both can reach their SP/level benchmarks by just using Marth for a few chapters (even if you train both this way, you can likely spare Marth for a chapter or two to someone else). Assuming you don't play either paralogue before you get Micaiah, that leaves you with 5 chapters of Micaiah and some chapters for Marth to distribute over at most 4 units. Anna and Jean need about 2 chapters of using Micaiah to reach Canter and grow into their own as competent combat units. That's an investment, but it's one of resources you have available anyway (someone is using Micaiah for those chapters) and there's not many units who make better use of them. I don't have any experience using Jean, but I remember in my last playthrough I got Anna to lvl 11 as an Axe Fighter with Micaiah, and once I promoted and second sealed her to Mage Knight she was already one of my better units. I think she honestly deserves at least a 6, and potentially even a 7. My main point though, is that this isn't Awakening or GBA emblem where getting a trainee unit going means surrounding an archer so your project unit can hit them repeatedly for exp. It just means your support unit is less bulky for a few chapters.
  6. Pretty much this, yeah. I mostly just think of both Goldmary and Saphir as physical filler characters who are unlikely to become the main stars of someones team. In that sense they're basically the same character, so there being 10 characters between them felt odd. You do make a good point about availability though. I usually don't think about that too much when ranking characters, but it's fair that other people would. And I guess 1.24 points isn't as big of a gap as it seemed.
  7. It has been quite the ride, huh. For starters, major thanks to @Imuabicus der Fertige for running this, it has been a ton of fun. I personally don't have the DLC, so I won't be voting for any dlc characters regardless of the form this takes. I second this. I overall like how the rankings came out, but there's several placings that I feel would at least be interesting to discuss (Goldmary having a considerable higher score than Saphir and Lindon for example). A single thread is probably fine though, since there's likely a lot of units people just agree on.
  8. Ah, and finally we get to talk about Anna..., excuse me, lady Anna. So lets start with the good. Anna has the highest magic growth in the game (not counting dlc), along with high speed and dexterity growths. In my own run I made her a Mage Knight (I just got her to lvl 10 axe fighter, then dumped a master and second seal on her), and she pretty much dunked on everything with a Levin sword, all the way up to the final chapters of the game. Which is to say, she two shots everything, even enemies with high res, and is fast enough to double most enemies. This makes her an ideal Bonded Shield sweeper, especially since her bulk is low enough most enemies will prefer targeting her. With that setup, she has claimed mvp for almost every map I played after her promotion. Obviously a good part of that performance is just the Levin Sword, Bonded Shield and Mage Knight all being really good, but Anna's stats still make her arguably the best unit for that role. Not all units with high magic have the speed to double most enemies, and not all fast units have high enough magic to two shot all enemies. Anna has both, and with speed taker she can double even the really fast enemies like sword masters. Even if you don't go for that specific setup though, she doesn't need Bonded Shield to destroy enemies on player phase. And even if you don't feel like using a second seal on her, she can make for a pretty good bow unit as a Warrior. Most flyers die to a hit from steel bow, regardless of the strength from the unit wielding said bow, so Anna's low strength isn't really a big issue there. And once she gets the Radiant Bow, she'll actually deal more damage than most other bow units. In particular, Wyverns are very difficult to kill with physical bows, but with a forged Radiant Bow it's fairly doable. I managed to hit those thresholds with Lindon reclasses to Warrior, so I have little doubt Anna can reach them as well. So now that we've talked about the good, lets talk about the bad. When Anna joins she's underleveled compared to the rest of your army, and her stats as an axe fighter are all around lower than Boucheron's bases, despite him joining at a lower level. In most games that would a death sentence in terms of usability in an optimal run, though in Engage it only really means she needs about 2 good chapters of having the Micaiah ring equipped to reach promotion level and enough SP for Canter. That might sound reasonable enough, but keep in mind that depending on when you play Anna's paralogue, you might not even have 2 chapters left before chapter 10. If you're not planning to use Jean or any characters from Brodia youshould be just fine, but otherwise it can become a bit of a puzzle on how to get everyone ready for the midgame. Still, considering you'll likely want to have someone spamming Micaiah when the ring is available anyway, and Anna turns into an amazing unit with some investment, I don't think she's a bad unit. Just one that comes with a bit of a prize tag. So I'll give her a 6/10
  9. I'm giving Veyle an 8/10. Honestly, her magic is high enough that when she joins she can become one of your better mages with some investment (most notably a class change). You probably already have a few amazing combat units though, so you might not really want more. That's fine, because she can also play as a great support unit. Byleth lets her boost every stat by 3 with either a Godess Dance or a Rally. The only other unit who can do this is Alear, and they don't like the boost to magic nearly as much as Veyle does. If you somehow prefer having Byleth on someone else though, she's also pretty good at using Corrin. Her personal is pretty useful as well, though mostly for filler combat. All in all, she's the best user of a support Emblem (similar to Hortensia and Micaiah) while also having the option to be build as a strong combat unit. Only reason I'm not giving her a 9 is because she's going to be lagging behind units you already invested a lot into, and investing too much into her can be a hard sell so late in the game.
  10. 3/10 (based on maddening) I'm gonna be honest, I really like Saphir as a character, but as a unit she just doesn't feel all that special. She has decent strength, but she falls well short of units like Pannette and Etie. She has decent speed, but not at the level of monsters like Chloe and Kagetsu. She does have decent bulk, but Engage honestly just has too many ways to make bulk completely irrelevant in the later half of the game. I'll also note that I'm giving her a lower score than Lindon, despite him serving a very similar role as late game filler. The main difference is that Lindon is a magical filler instead of a physical one, and that brings a lot more utility with it. There's also just a lot less competent magic units in this game than physical ones. Finally I want to mention that me giving her a low score doesn't mean I think she's unusable or anything. I'm using her in my current run and she's scoring one rounds on several enemy types with a Brave Axe and a few levels of Axe Power. And if that doesn't work she can always go for Killer Axe crits, or just set up kills for other filler units. The issue is that most other units you recruit past chapter 10 can do the same thing or something more useful. If I compared her to other units in the whole serie she'd be a 6, but that would also mean every character in this game would get a rating between 6 and 8. I prefer using the full scoring range, which inevitably means some characters are going to get a low score. Other people are free to use their own criteria of course, I just wanted to point out why my score might seem so much harsher than the others.
  11. 4/10 (Maddening) He's basically a free magical filler unit. By the time he joins you've already been deploying 12 characters for a bit, and you probably have some mages who are a lot better than him by now. If one of your units is dropping off though, he can easily fill a slot. I'm giving him a 4 instead of the 3 I give to other filler units because being a magical filler is a lot better than being physical. He can use staves and Thoron without needing a second seal, and he has enough base magic to one shot wyverns as a warrior with a Radiant Bow. That's not amazing, but it's better utility than most physical units are going to reach without investment. He can also just equip Corrin and start spamming fire dragon veins to stall a bunch of enemies while your trained mages focus on combat.
  12. 9/10 Maddening. I think most post before mine outline pretty well why Seadall is amazing, so I'm not gonna go into it too much here. I do agree that dancers are amazing, but I don't really consider Seadall a 10/10 unit. My main "issue" with him is that all of the truly broken/amazing strategies you can pull with him rely on there already being a broken/amazing unit on the field. Giving your best player phase nuke a second (or even 3rd or 4rd) turn is amazing, but it requires you to actually have an amazing player phase nuke in the first place. So in the end Seadall doesn't get sole credit for those plays. The main argument I can think of that bypasses that logic is having him dance for the Corrin or Micaiah users, since neither of those put any real requirements on their users stats. Even there though, Seadall is just making broken things more broken, not turning something mundane into a broken tool for you to use. If you could actually make him an amazing (or honestly even just a good) enemy phaser in his dancer class he'd be a 10/10 no questions asked, but that remains a 3 houses thing it seems. Still an amazing unit that will always improve your team, just one that will never be the absolute star of the team.
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