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Mekkah (Shinon) vs Kirsche (Janaff)


Vykan12
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Shinon's availability + other people (except himself and Ike)

Ch3 - Gatrie, Titania

Ch4 - Gatrie, Titania, Rhys, Soren

Ch5 - Gatrie, Titania, Rhys, Soren, Boyd, Oscar

Ch7 - Gatrie, Titania, Rhys, Soren, Boyd, Oscar, Mia

First obvious lead is that Shinon has earlygame availability. Not only is he forced (so that he doesn't bump out anyone else), but he is also there when you have a very limited amount of other PCs to fight enemies. In Ch3, you only have three other attackers, only one of which (Titania) can ORKO anything. Ch4 isn't much better, with one more attacker (Soren), but he and Rhys are also too frail to take enemy attacks. Even Shinon getting attacked is better than one of these two taking hits, especially if it's more than one. Ch5 re-adds Boyd and Oscar, but they aren't ORKOing much either, so once again Shinon is extremely welcome. And in Ch7 Gatrie and Shinon start out pretty far removed from your main group with quite a few enemies near them.

Basically, we could continue not to use Shinon anymore at all from here, and his contribution would be quite in the positive overall.

Then Shinon leaves because he can, and rejoins one-and-then-some chapter after Janaff joins. Janaff isn't really turning any heads during that time:

8 Janaff

39 hp, 13 str, 15 skl, 17 spd, 11 def, 10 res, 16 luk

Full: +0 hp, +6 str, +5 skl, +3 spd, +4 def, +2 res, +0 luk

26 atk, 20 AS -- 56 avo, 39 hp, 15 def, 12 res

Demi: +0 hp, +3 str, +2 skl, +1 spd, +2 def, +1 res, +0 luk

23 atk, 15 AS -- 46 avo, 39 hp, 13 def, 11 res

20/1 Mia w/ Steel Sword has ~24.6 atk/21.8 AS, assuming +3 atk from supports.

Can trade atk for AS (switch to Steel Blade gives 27.6 atk/18.4 AS)

--/3 Lethe w/ Claw 26 atk/15 AS at base level. Hits Janaff's base AS at --/10 or so

20/1 Zihark w/ Iron Blade has 24.5 atk/21.8 AS with no supports whatsoever. Also Adept.

Hell, 20/1 Volke (this is after Ch19, but still) w/ Dagger has 23 atk/21 AS, and that goes to 27 atk when he gets Stiletto.

Not turning any heads imo, and those are mostly people with more bad-mediocre atk. Taking more powerful fellows:

20/1 Makalov w/ Steel Axe = 27.5 atk/17 AS, 18-19 AS with some Knight Ward use

20/1 Ike w/ Steel Blade has ~30.5 atk/19.3 AS (31/19.9 after one level-up) assuming +2 atk from supports

And all of these, except Lethe, can make use of forges for more atk. I will spare you the durability comparisons...Janaff's transformed durability is equal to base level Devdan with 3 more hp and 8 more avo but no 1-2 range, to give you an idea.

Why did I go through the trouble of showing this? Not just to show that Janaff isn't worth a dime offensively when he joins, but also that his damage output on enemy phase is abysmal. Anytime Janaff is attacked up close, that attack could have been taken by Ike, for example, and I would have done like 8 more damage. Not so the case with Shinon, since he doesn't have to be exposed on enemy phase to be useful. Most good units in FE9 have a really hard time getting killed, so they do not mind taking hits that otherwise would have gone to Janaff/Shinon.

For example, 20/1 Ike has 37 hp/15-16 def/~90 avo, plus 17-18% to Aether. Something like a Steel Lance!General with 25 atk/103 hit (after WTA) kills him in 4 hits at 3.5% real hit. Even with 10 less avo, still only ~11% real. His chance of death after four attacks doesn't even reach 1%, not factoring in Aether healing.

Now, for an actual comparison between the two. I can't see Janaff getting any more than one level with that godawful offense of his. And he also has his gauge to worry about. That, or he is causing some other laguz like Mordecai/Muarim to have gauge issues, which is just as bad if not worse.

Shinon, however, has had access to bosskills in four earlygame maps, plus he was actually one of the better units at that point, making it much easier to give him kills, which more than compensates for gaining about ~5 exp less per enemy back then than Janaff does right now.

And Shinon makes better use out of BEXP. For example, it only requires 873 BEXP to level Shinon from 3 to 8 (5 levels), whereas with that amount Janaff just goes from 8 to 12 (4 levels). Or for smaller amounts, Shinon only needs ~500 BEXP to go from 3 to 6, whereas Janaff needs 633 to go from 8 to 11, while with 500 he gets stuck at 10.5...

Growth-wise, Janaff does have 45% more hp and 5% luk, but Shinon has 10% str and 20% def. And as emphasized before, gaining more defense is less beneficial than gaining more offense for someone like Shinon, who doesn't need to get attacked (on enemy nor player phase) to contribute.

anyway, sorry if this looks a bit messy...

--/3 Shinon

33.5 hp, 10.3 str, 16.4 skl, 14.3 spd, 10 def, 6.8 res, 9.7 luk

Steel Bow: 19.3 atk, 14.3 AS, 23.2 crt -- 37.9 avo

Forged Steel: 24.3 atk

--/9 Janaff

Demi: 40.3 hp, 16.6 str, 17.7 skl, 18.6 spd, 13.3 def, 11.2 res, 16.4 luk

23.6 atk, 18.6 AS, 8.85 crt -- 53.6 avo

Full: 40.3 hp, 19.6 str, 20.7 skl, 20.6 spd, 15.3 def, 10.2 res, 16.4 luk

26.6 atk, 20.6 AS, 10.35 crt -- 57.6 avo

Comparing them straight up in combat would neglect Janaff's laguz disadvantages, so the least we can do for Shinon is giving him a Steel forge. This means he ties Demi Janaff in atk, and Janaff now only wins offense if he doubles and Shinon does not, which is only enemies between 11 and 14 AS.

In Ch20, that equals 13 of the initial enemies, out of the total of 32. If we assume 15 and 19 Spd instead for Shinon and Janaff respectively, Shinon now doubles 5 more enemies, whereas for Janaff it only adds one.

And this is not considering Shinon's practical bow monopoly. The only other viable high-level bow user is Astrid, and by now she should be mostly using axes. This means that Shinon has access to the Brave Bow for guaranteed doubles, sometimes quadruples, laguz bows which give him ~30 atk on laguz if he were to use them at this point, or Silver Bow which are close to a maxed Steel forge.

Oh, and Shinon has a crit lead. Enemies only have ~5 cev usually, some more, some less, so every time Shinon attacks he has a ~18% chance of tripled damage, which means you can use one of your worse attackers rather than one of your best to team up to kill the enemy he attacked, or maybe it means you won't have to let anyone else attack that at all. By comparison, Janaff only would have 3% or so crit. And Shinon can up his crit either through Killer Bows (53% crit, so around 50/50 chance to crit now).

Defensively, I won't deny Janaff has a concrete lead here. However, Shinon is easier to attack with on player phase without having him exposed, and Shinon player phase + Kieran/Jill on enemy phase gives me better output than Janaff player phase + Janaff enemy phase, for example. And there's other factors, such as Shinon not taking counters when he attacks on player phase. He does have Provoke, though that only hurts him if you expose him. If you don't, it's actually helpful, as a ranged enemy will now go for Shinon even if Kieran is standing in front of him with a Steel Axe.

And there's the fact that fliers get raped by bows. Janaff is a flier, and Shinon has a bow. Janaff takes ~6 more damage from a Steel Bow attack, so he is attacked by two bow users, he is now losing concrete durability to Shinon. And they love targetting him, since they put priority on both units that don't counter and that are weak to bows. The same goes for ballistae, but for a larger extent. Janaff takes ~13 more damage. Shinon actually gets like 8HKOed by a normal ballistae, so Provoke might help here too to divert attention from fliers.

And on the offensive end, Shinon has more atk with Steel Bow against fliers than fully transformed Janaff. 38 atk (12 more) if he's using forged Steel.

While Janaff has 1 more movement than Shinon when he's transformed, he also has 1 less when untransformed. Ignoring terrain when flying around is nice, I guess, though him flying ahead and doing pitful damage isn't helping much, and he has to watch out for bows/ballistae when doing that. And flying obviously also comes with the negative of not getting bonuses from beneficial terrain.

I'm not even going to bother with supports. They support each other, but they're not likely to be played alongside due to both not being very good. Janaff has Oscar, who is good, but has three better partners who are all high/top tier (Ike, Tanith and Kieran), and Lucia obviously sux. Gatrie...bleh. Rolf is bad. Feel free to argue against this if you feel like it, but I think it's a waste of time.

Summary:

Shinon has the advantage of very positive earlygame utility, whereas Janaff doesn't.

Shinon's offense is easier to utilize without hindering your army's damage output. And sometimes he wins damage output big time, with crits/brave/fliers/laguz.

Defensively, Janaff wins concretely when he's not untransformed/facing bows, but utilizing that effectively is no easy feat when you take counters and him taking on enemies instead of someone with actual good offense isn't helping your efficiency any.

Shinon > Janaff

Edited by Mekkah
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Anything I’ve left out is because it has already been countered.

*Stuff about Shinon’s earlygame*

There may be a low amount of PC’s, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Shinon’s helping him in those chapters, and what’s preventing this helpfulness is one thing: no enemy phrase.

Bows are locked onto 2-range, meaning Shinon can’t counter at close range. This means he can only kill 1 enemy per turn. To make matters worse, these chapters are quite short. Chapter 3 takes up ~4 turns, chapter 4 around 3, chapter 5 is 6 and chapter 7 is 11 or so. That’s around 7/37 enemies Shinon kills in chapters 3 and 4 and only 11/33 enemies in chapter 7, less if Shinon doesn’t ORKO which isn’t impossible.

This may seem like a lot, but in reality, Other units (Titania, Gatrie, Ike) can kill those units, and more. See, if Shinon has an enemy phrase, then he leaves enemies alive that wouldn’’t be left at full health if any other unit was in Shinon’s place. So giving him an enemy phrase actually hurts the team. This means that Shinon cannot see an enemy phrase without hurting the team, this limits his offence on the player phrase.

So Shinon doesn’t attribute to the completion of the chapters, meaning anything he does is self-improving and not an advantage for Shinon.

8 Janaff

39 hp, 13 str, 15 skl, 17 spd, 11 def, 10 res, 16 luk

Full: +0 hp, +6 str, +5 skl, +3 spd, +4 def, +2 res, +0 luk

26 atk, 20 AS -- 56 avo, 39 hp, 15 def, 12 res

Demi: +0 hp, +3 str, +2 skl, +1 spd, +2 def, +1 res, +0 luk

23 atk, 15 AS -- 46 avo, 39 hp, 13 def, 11 res

Erm, how did Janaff’s AS decrease?

Plus, this comparison is off slightly, when the bonus is halved, the number is rounded up. Meaning Janaff has 19 AS with the demi band and not 18 AS.

Besides, a lot of the units you mentioned RKO the same as janaff anyway. Check it out:

4x Soldier lv 16-18 steel lance: 34 hp, 11 def

3x Wyvern Rider lv 14-15 steel lance: 31 hp, 15 def

2x Sword Knight lv 19 steel sword: 34 hp, 14 def

4x Raven lv 6-8 beak: 34 hp, 12 def

To ORKO the weakest of these enemies (The soldiers) you need 28 Atk. Who has 28 Atk? None of the units you mentioned. You said Ike had it, but he only gets +1 Atk from his Soren support and the steel blade isn’t buyable in the shops until chapter 21. This means he has 4 less atk than what you said he had, aka 26.5 Atk. And I have no idea how makalov got 11 levels in 5 chapters when he’s nothing but sub-par and bexp isn’t even available in most of them. And an unpromoted Makalov lacks enougth Atk to get a definite kill against these soldiers.

Then, defensively, you’ll notice that the Soldiers and sword knights 7RKO Janaff, the wyvern’s 4RKO him, and the ravens 8RKO him. In comparison, a Level 19 Makalov has 14 def and 35 HP. That’s worse than Janaff. Even with the kngiht band, a heavily sought resource, Makalov still gets 7RKO’ed by the soldiers and sword knights. Durably, Janaff is quite comparable to Makalov, a unit with good durability bases for his level (30 HP, 10 Def) and good growths (60% HP, 45% Def).

With this in mind, Janaff can easily get more than just a level in chapter 18, and use bexp for the rest, much like how you bexp’ed Shinon from level 2 to level 3. In fact, it takes Janaff 158.25 bexp for him to get 75 exp as a level 9 unit, which is a mere 4.25 more bexp than what Shinon needs to get from level 2 to level 3. Not to mention, janaff has access to the bexp available at chapter 18 as well.

With this in mind, it’s not hard envisioning Janaff being level 10:

Level 10 Janaff with Beak: 42 HP, 27 Atk, 21 AS, 59 Avo, 16 Def, 12.5 Res

Level 10 Janaff with Beak + Demi band: 42 HP, 24 Atk, 20 AS, 57 Avo, 14 Def, 11.5 Res

Level --/3 Shinon with a forged Steel Bow: 33.5 hp, 24 atk, 14 AS, 38 avo, 10 def, 7 res

Janaff beats him in every parameter with the demi band save Atk, which they tie. Not that it matters since Janaff can double a whole lot more with the demi band (11/32 enemies, that Janaff can double that Shinon can’t). This means that Shinon’s wins against the 21/32 enemies they both/neither double because of crit and Janaff wins the other 11.

Now this looks like a win for Shinon. But when you consider that he can only attack enemies on the player phrase, this limits him to ~5 kills per chapter. Janaff, on the otehr hand, can kill so much more due to enemy phrase. Plus, Shinon still suffers from the inefficiency caused by being targetted on the enemy phrase so he has to once again limit his player phrase offence in order to keep any sort of efficiency.

Plus, he doesn’t actually need the demi band until he gets to turn 4 or so. This is how much combat Janaff needs to take part in in order to untransform:

Turn 1: 20 rounds of combat.

Turn 2: 17 rounds of combat.

Turn 3: 14 Rounds of combat.

Turn 4 : 11 rounds of combat.

Which only increases Janaff’s strengths and erases his weaknesses.

So, Janaff is better than Shinon both offensively and defensively at this point in time.

In Ch20, that equals 13 of the initial enemies, out of the total of 32. If we assume 15 and 19 Spd instead for Shinon and Janaff respectively, Shinon now doubles 5 more enemies, whereas for Janaff it only adds one.

Why did you increase both? Janaff is more likely to have his AS rounded up than Shinon is to have his rounded up. Shinon has a 42.25% chance of having 15 AS at level 3, Janaff has a 65% chance of having 21 AS (20 with demi band).

And this is not considering Shinon's practical bow monopoly. The only other viable high-level bow user is Astrid, and by now she should be mostly using axes. This means that Shinon has access to the Brave Bow for guaranteed doubles, sometimes quadruples, laguz bows which give him ~30 atk on laguz if he were to use them at this point, or Silver Bow which are close to a maxed Steel forge.

The brave bow is the only brave weapon at this time. And Astrid woudl like to use it. A level 20/1 Astrid with a forged steel axe has 32 Atk and 21.2 AS (12 uses of the KW). With a brave bow she has 26 Atk. With a forged steel bow she has 30 Atk. Let’s check out some enemies:

9x Raven lv 6-8 beak: 34 hp, 12 def

2x Wyvern Rider lv 16-18 steel lance: 33 hp, 17 def

1x Wyvern Lord lv 1 steel lance: 37 hp, 17 def

Homasa lv 11 sonic sword: 37 hp, 11 def

Astrid needs the brave bow to ORKO the ravens, 3HKO Homasa and the brave bow saves the team a forging opportunity against the wyverns. Not to mention that the brave bow increases her durability whilst keeping her offence (a forged hand axe has 12 Atk, meaning Astrid only deals 4 more damager per enemy. This doesn’t change any RKO’s).

Saving a forging opportunity > Not saving a forging opportunity.

And there's the fact that fliers get raped by bows. Janaff is a flier, and Shinon has a bow. Janaff takes ~6 more damage from a Steel Bow attack, so he is attacked by two bow users, he is now losing concrete durability to Shinon. And they love targetting him, since they put priority on both units that don't counter and that are weak to bows. The same goes for ballistae, but for a larger extent. Janaff takes ~13 more damage. Shinon actually gets like 8HKOed by a normal ballistae, so Provoke might help here too to divert attention from fliers.

Janaff can equip the full guard for the first few turns, plenty of time to take out the ballistae. As for bow users, you said yourself that he has to face attacks from 2 different bow users, and there are multiple fliers about and they may not all want to equip weak, 1-2 range weapons.

And on the offensive end, Shinon has more atk with Steel Bow against fliers than fully transformed Janaff. 38 atk (12 more) if he's using forged Steel.

True enougth, but it’s not like fliers are incredibly common or anything like that save in chapter 20.

Feel free to argue against this if you feel like it

Meh, I agree with you. Both suck when it comes to supports.

Shinon player phase + Kieran/Jill on enemy phase gives me better output than Janaff player phase + Janaff enemy phase

Since when did having 1 range prevent Kieran Jill from attacking. All three can easily get enemy phrases, whcih means it actually looks like this:

Shinon + Kieran + Jill on player phrase, Kieran + Jill on enemy phrase.

Vs

Janaff + Kieran + Jill on player phrase AND enemy phrase.

Janaff wins.

Shinon not taking counters when he attacks on player phase.

And the fact that Shinon attracts every enemy on the map to attack him, meaning he faces a larger enemy phrase.

terrain when flying around is nice

Oh, it’s MORE than nice. Just look at the things flying utility can do for you in the chapters where both exist:

Chapter 19: Mountains

Chapter 20: More mountains + fences, houses and trees.

Chapter 21: Water ways.

Chapter 23: Sandbags and traps. Janaff can fly over traps so others can pass over them. Shinon can’t.

Chapter 24: A river, trees and thickets.

Chapter 25: A mountain which slows down foot units movement.

Chapter 28: Trees and thickets.

Endgame: Fountains, fences, thickets etctera to fly over. Janaff can escape Ashnard qucikly, unlike Shinon.

Flying utility is indeed very useful, and you should give it a lot more credit.

To conclude:

+ Janaff has flying utility

+ Janaff has an enemy phrase.

+ Janaff can rescue better due to higher con and ability to ferry.

+ Janaff can shove better because of higher con and lack of difficulty in catching up.

+ Janaff has better durability.

+ Janaff doesn’t require fielding Rofl to recruit him and wasting a unit slot in chapter 18.

+ Janaff doesn’t leave at the end of chapter 7, meanign all exp that was given to him would be wasted until chapter 19. Shinon does.

- Janaff is weak to bows.

- Janaff lacks 1-2 range.

Janaff > Shinon.

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Anything I’ve left out is because it has already been countered.

Or because you didn't see it. Or because you didn't want to counter it. Anytime I see that, I'm going to call you out on it. Ninja'ing can be done in the

.
There may be a low amount of PC’s, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Shinon’s helping him in those chapters, and what’s preventing this helpfulness is one thing: no enemy phrase.

Bows are locked onto 2-range, meaning Shinon can’t counter at close range. This means he can only kill 1 enemy per turn.

There's a lot of wrongs and semi-wrongs here, but I'll try to get to them one at a time.

He doesn't have to kill more than one enemy per turn to be a positive contribution, because as I said he is forced, into a group of small people that simply can't do everything on its own (only Titania can ORKO). I have no idea why you said the bold part. It'd only be true if Shinon was a detriment holding people back, or if he was a perfect neutral.

Hell, he technically doesn't have to kill anything to be a positive, because of this:

with one more attacker (Soren), but he and Rhys are also too frail to take enemy attacks. Even Shinon getting attacked is better than one of these two taking hits

and that was addressed nowhere.

In addition, Shinon killing things in the chapters he's in doesn't just mean that Ike or Titania or whoever doesn't have to waste a turn to kill it, but it also means that enemy won't be there to get in the way or attack things you don't want him to attack.

To make matters worse, these chapters are quite short. Chapter 3 takes up ~4 turns, chapter 4 around 3, chapter 5 is 6 and chapter 7 is 11 or so. That’s around 7/37 enemies Shinon kills in chapters 3 and 4 and only 11/33 enemies in chapter 7

They are shorter chapters than late chapters, but we're still talking about 24 turns of a good unit. Janaff has exactly 0 of those.

less if Shinon doesn’t ORKO which isn’t impossible.

And more if Shinon counters something on enemy phase, which isn't impossible either. Think Provoking ranged threads away from dudes with 1-range equipped, perhaps by hiding behind them in a chokepoint so that the 1-ranged people go to your favourite frontliner.

This may seem like a lot, but in reality, Other units (Titania, Gatrie, Ike) can kill those units, and more.

Your point being? There is always other PCs available to kill enemy units. Not just here, but also when Janaff is around. The crucial difference of course being that Shinon is one of the *better* units to kill these enemies, since the only person who manages to consistently surpass his player phase offense is Titania.

See, if Shinon has an enemy phrase, then he leaves enemies alive that wouldn’t be left at full health if any other unit was in Shinon’s place. So giving him an enemy phrase actually hurts the team. This means that Shinon cannot see an enemy phrase without hurting the team, this limits his offence on the player phrase.

The player only has to give Shinon "an enemy phase" if that's an advantage, e.g. against an enemy he can counter, or if that enemy was otherwise going to bring another PC to lower hp than they can afford, like if it was going to attack Rhys otherwise. Shinon has no problem finding a way to attack on player phase - he has 7 movement, and then can attack one space further than everyone else without having to use a Javelin/Hand Axe. If Shinon has nothing to attack, then no one else does, except maybe Titania. And if that's the case, even then he can do something, even if it's Shoving someone.

So Shinon doesn’t attribute to the completion of the chapters, meaning anything he does is self-improving and not an advantage for Shinon.

Try saying that out loud with a straight face. A unit with better player phase than everyone bar Titania, that has an easy time staying out of undesirable enemy phases, that cannot even be replaced by another unit...how can that possibly be anything but a positive?

Shinon isn't even necessarily here to improve himself. He can also allow others to kill more easily, without taking a counter, simply by switching to Iron Bow.

Erm, how did Janaff’s AS decrease?

He's that bad. :P

Plus, this comparison is off slightly, when the bonus is halved, the number is rounded up. Meaning Janaff has 19 AS with the demi band and not 18 AS.

I was misinformed. Anyway, it's only one point in a few stats, it doesn't change anything about my core arguments.

Besides, a lot of the units you mentioned RKO the same as janaff anyway. Check it out:

4x Soldier lv 16-18 steel lance: 34 hp, 11 def

3x Wyvern Rider lv 14-15 steel lance: 31 hp, 15 def

2x Sword Knight lv 19 steel sword: 34 hp, 14 def

4x Raven lv 6-8 beak: 34 hp, 12 def

To ORKO the weakest of these enemies (The soldiers) you need 28 Atk. Who has 28 Atk? None of the units you mentioned.

Those units are Lethe, Zihark, Mia and Volke. People with atk issues. Pretty large ones. Having offense comparable to theirs is not a good thing. Never mind the point about forges you left off...Mia, for example, can reach that 28 atk treshold with a forged Steel Sword. It's weird how often you seem to mention forges normally, but they're left off the moment they're unavailable to you.

So let's say you didn't mean that, you were referring to Ike and Makalov.

To ORKO the weakest of these enemies (The soldiers) you need 28 Atk. Who has 28 Atk? None of the units you mentioned. You said Ike had it, but he only gets +1 Atk from his Soren support and the steel blade isn’t buyable in the shops until chapter 21. This means he has 4 less atk than what you said he had, aka 26.5 Atk.

Actually, Steel Blade (11 might) isn't even his strongest weapon. Forged Steel Sword (13 might) is, which also more than covers for having 1 less atk than in my comparison, so the point stands. Oh, and against things with quite a bit of def, namely armors/weapon knights, he gets to use Regal Sword (12, 14 or 16 mt depending on weapon triangle).

And I have no idea how makalov got 11 levels in 5 chapters when he’s nothing but sub-par and bexp isn’t even available in most of them. And an unpromoted Makalov lacks enougth Atk to get a definite kill against these soldiers.

This isn't helping your point any. 17/0 Makalov has about .8 less str than 20/1 Mia, so once again, you just showed Janaff is on par with people whose atk sucks.

And that 28 atk treshold is only for the weakest enemies. On stronger enemies, it's harder for Janaff to team up with others for a kill, since his atk is lower, which also means you have to use stronger people on the enemies he weakened on enemy phase. For example, there's an enemy both Janaff and Ike cannot KO, but if Ike fights it on enemy phase instead of Janaff, I can use Makalov to finish it off, whereas otherwise I have to break out Kieran or something.

As for more examples of people who do make that treshold:

20/1 Marcia with Steel Lance has 26 atk, so she only needs +2 from a forge to kill

--/9 (base) Muarim with Demi Band has 28 atk

--/2 (base) Mordecai with Demi Band has only one less atk than Muarim, so he just needs one of his 65% str level-ups, or a full transform

20/1 Kieran with Steel Axe has exactly 28 atk

20/1 Jill with Steel Axe has 28.8 atk

20/2 Oscar with Steel Axe has 27.1 atk, so a +1 forge, or another str level-up does the trick

And these are likely higher leveled at this point, so they're obviously not limited to just ORKOing the weakest enemies. This is just to drive the point home that Janaff has offensive issues.

numbers

Durably, Janaff is quite comparable to Makalov, a unit with good durability bases for his level (30 HP, 10 Def) and good growths (60% HP, 45% Def).

Once again, you've shown that Janaff is on par with a unit at an advantageous point of time. Makalov is not considered a good unit because he has "good durability bases for his level" (Farina and Nino both have great bases for their level, but what really matters is what these stats do for them against enemies), he's considered good because once he catches up and promotes, his stats simply work. I've already shown how much better Makalov is doing once he has promoted, which is only 2 levels away in your comparison.

But since you insist, look at how Janaff compares to Ike in durability.

For example, 20/1 Ike has 37 hp/15-16 def/~90 avo, plus 17-18% to Aether. Something like a Steel Lance!General with 25 atk/103 hit (after WTA) kills him in 4 hits at 3.5% real hit. Even with 10 less avo, still only ~11% real. His chance of death after four attacks doesn't even reach 1%, not factoring in Aether healing.

Demi Janaff has 39 hp/13 def/~54 avo, and no Aether, or anything like that. That same General kills him in four hits at 48% real. He is 13 times as likely to get hit as Ike here. He would have a ~5.5% death chance after being attacked four times by one of these, for example.

lv 10 Janaff comparison

Janaff beats him in every parameter with the demi band save Atk, which they tie.

One more level of Janaff growths is not suddendly going to make everything I said null. In fact, you reinforced it:

Janaff beats him in every parameter with the demi band save Atk, which they tie. Not that it matters since Janaff can double a whole lot more with the demi band (11/32 enemies, that Janaff can double that Shinon can’t). This means that Shinon’s wins against the 21/32 enemies they both/neither double because of crit and Janaff wins the other 11.

Now this looks like a win for Shinon.

However, then you try to turn it around with classic Sniper bashing:

But when you consider that he can only attack enemies on the player phrase, this limits him to ~5 kills per chapter. Janaff, on the otehr hand, can kill so much more due to enemy phrase. Plus, Shinon still suffers from the inefficiency caused by being targetted on the enemy phrase so he has to once again limit his player phrase offence in order to keep any sort of efficiency.

But I already addressed Shinon's lock to 2-range versus Janaff's lock to 1-range in my opener, and you've already provided arguments against those, so I don't know why you felt like repeating them.

Plus, he doesn’t actually need the demi band until he gets to turn 4 or so. This is how much combat Janaff needs to take part in in order to untransform:

Turn 1: 20 rounds of combat.

Turn 2: 17 rounds of combat.

Turn 3: 14 Rounds of combat.

Turn 4 : 11 rounds of combat.

Which only increases Janaff’s strengths and erases his weaknesses.

Swapping around the Demi Band is not a good idea. It reduces the gauge of whoever had it originally to zero, so someone like Muarim would only get 4 turns of kicking ass, and after that he is stuck to human form for 5 turns. Less if he enters combat, but then he is diverting attacks from people who would actually do something to an enemy, which is even worse than hiding in a corner until the gauge is filled.

Oh, and if Lethe is in play, she wants the Demi Band at the same time Janaff wants it (her starting gauge is the same), so it collides with her as well. Also, according to the data collection, if a laguz removes the demi-band in the base, they will automatically start the upcoming chapter with 4 meter. So Janaff can't even pull this trick in, say, Ch20, if he ends Ch19 with the Demi Band.

Why did you increase both [their speeds]? Janaff is more likely to have his AS rounded up than Shinon is to have his rounded up. Shinon has a 42.25% chance of having 15 AS at level 3, Janaff has a 65% chance of having 21 AS (20 with demi band).

They can both level up during the chapter, or if we have more BEXP we can give that to them. Shinon's chance to get 15 AS or more at L4 is 72%. That's what I was talking about.

The brave bow is the only brave weapon at this time. And Astrid would like to use it.

Astrid is literally the only one. This means there's the possibility of Astrid not being in play (as good as she is, she might not fit into a team's support chain, or she might be RNG screwed and dropped), so there's a chance for Shinon to have it all for himself already.

A level 20/1 Astrid with a forged steel axe has 32 Atk and 21.2 AS (12 uses of the KW). With a brave bow she has 26 Atk. With a forged steel bow she has 30 Atk. Let’s check out some enemies:

Your choices are certainly interesting. Three fliers and a completely random boss. And according to you later, "but it’s not like fliers are incredibly common or anything like that save in chapter 20.", so I'm going to guess you are just cherrypicking here.

Anyway, her 20/1 atk with forged Steel Bow on a flier is 43.6: 15.6 str + 9 base might + 5 forged might, multiply that 14 might by two for effective bonus. She's already beating Ravens within an inch of their lives (31.8/34 hp, so ~93% damage), and what's more, she's only .8 AS short of doubling them. Give her two more uses of Knight Ward, or just level her up once or twice more, and she's already KOing them, even with a normal Steel Bow (33.6 atk, so 2x21.6 dmg > 34 hp).

On to the Wyverns, they only have 10 AS. unforged Steel Bow!Astrid is already killing the unpromoted ones (16.6 dmgx2 > 33 hp), and leaves the promoted one with less than 4 hp. So it's only important for her to have the Brave Bow if there's no one else in range who can finish off that Wyvern Lord AND if she doesn't have a forge handy. You say it saves a forging opportunity, but to train her up we likely had to forge her something anyway.

That leaves that one boss. I don't know why it's so important for Astrid to take him on on her own, when bosses are usually to be ganged upon anyway, and it's very easy for Astrid to allow someone else to do that due to Canto and 2-range. If Astrid needs the Brave Bow just for this one boss, she can trade with Shinon, use it, then Shinon can easily trade it back or w/e.

So...I'm not seeing your point. Astrid is a pube hair removed from being able to kill all these non-boss enemies on her own, whereas Shinon has a lot more to gain from using Brave Bow. And even if Astrid wants it so badly, she is flexible enough to trade it when she needs it.

Saving a forging opportunity > Not saving a forging opportunity.

It's more like having the option to use the Brave Bow > not having the option to use the Brave Bow. Shinon gains much more offensive power out of using the Brave Bow than Astrid does, so he is actually using the resource better than she is.

Not to mention that the brave bow increases her durability whilst keeping her offence (a forged hand axe has 12 Atk, meaning Astrid only deals 4 more damager per enemy. This doesn’t change any RKO’s).

If you're going to harp on bows not being able to counter for Shinon, you should do the same for Astrid. Brave Bow Astrid cannot counter 1-range on enemy phase, Hand Axe Astrid does.

Janaff can equip the full guard for the first few turns, plenty of time to take out the ballistae.

Just the first few turns does not solve his problems of ballistae in every chapter...

And it also means that while Janaff is holding onto it, I cannot send other fliers into ballista range without significant hurtings.

--/10 Tanith with full guard, for example, only takes 3 damage from a normal ballista (9%), but without full guard she takes 21 (60%).

20/1 Marcia takes ~4 (13%) with full guard, but ~22 (69%) without.

20/1 Jill takes less than 1 point with full guard, but ~19 (52%) without.

And that gets worse with Killer ballistae (2 more damage without, 4 more with, and a chance to do 12 more due to crit), or Long ballistae (4 more without, 8 more with, and they restrict range by 5 more).

It's a lot like hogging the Demi Band from other laguz.

Also, you didn't address this. Shinon actually gets like 8HKOed by a normal ballistae, so Provoke might help here too to divert attention from fliers.

As for bow users, you said yourself that he has to face attacks from 2 different bow users, and there are multiple fliers about and they may not all want to equip weak, 1-2 range weapons.

The other fliers at least have the options of using Javelin/Hand Axe. Janaff's lock to 2-range making him a prime target for bows. And of course, if those Javelins are too weak for you, there's forges to make them stronger.

And on the offensive end, Shinon has more atk with Steel Bow against fliers than fully transformed Janaff. 38 atk (12 more) if he's using forged Steel.
True enougth, but it’s not like fliers are incredibly common or anything like that save in chapter 20.

They don't have to be incredibely common for it to be an advantage for Shinon. Remember that flying enemies are also the most threatening ones, since they bypass terrain and can more easily attack whichever party member they want to, likely the weakest offensively or defensively.

Shinon player phase + Kieran/Jill on enemy phase gives me better output than Janaff player phase + Janaff enemy phase
Since when did having 1 range prevent Kieran Jill from attacking. All three can easily get enemy phrases

You missed this: However, Shinon is easier to attack with on player phase without having him exposed. The only part where I said anything about 1-range or 2-range in this scenario was about Provoke: it's actually helpful, as a ranged enemy will now go for Shinon even if Kieran is standing in front of him with a Steel Axe.

The number of enemies doesn't magically multiply by exposing Janaff. On enemy phase, he is attacking enemies that would otherwise have been taken on by Kieran/Jill. If you're good at offense, being able to fight on enemy phase is good. But if you're bad, all it means is that someone else has to clean up what you left there, so you might as well not have attacked, and it might even be bad if you also require healing now. Kieran/Jill have olympic durability (not very far removed from Ike, and Kieran has Sol, and both have 1-2 range and partial WTC), so they do not really care about taking attacks that otherwise would go to Shinon/Janaff. I don't know why I'm repeating this, since I've also stated it in my opener.

And the fact that Shinon attracts every enemy on the map to attack him, meaning he faces a larger enemy phrase.

Only if "every enemy on the map" can reach him, but since 2-range in conjunction with other PCs or unpassable terrain makes it very easy to shield him, he doesn't have to fight anything on enemy phase, other than other ranged enemies (against which he does better than Janaff).

Oh, it’s MORE than nice. Just look at the things flying utility can do for you in the chapters where both exist:

[terrain]

Being able to fly over things others cannot is only really useful if you can do it to increase overall offense (by killing enemies before others can) or durability (by intercepting enemies from attacking someone less durable). However, Janaff's offensive parameters simply aren't good enough to do something like this.

Demi Janaff (24 atk/19 AS) is almost always 2RKOing Ch20 enemies, other than joke ones such as Priests, who are of no threat to anyone. And sometimes he's worse, especially against that Laguzslayer Myrmidon. If Janaff reaches enemies one turn earlier than the main group, but takes an extra round to kill them (more if there's ranged threats, each of those require two player phases to kill), then I've effectively gained nothing. If he reaches them 2 turns earlier, then those enemies were likely not going to meet up with my main group anyway for the next turn.

And in the meanwhile, he has to watch his own durability. 41 hp/13 def/53 avo gets killed in 4-5 hits by Soldiers/Halberdiers/Wyverns/Knights, 3 hits by Archers/Snipers/Fighters/Wind magic, and something like Blizzard brings him to single digit hp after two attacks meaning anything else finishes him off. And flying away limits his ability to get healed to a vulnerary (only 10 hp) or Physic (requires attention of your healer, and Physics also aren't unlimited).

To conclude:

A conclusion isn't supposed to carry new material.

+ Janaff can rescue better due to higher con and ability to ferry.

+ Janaff can shove better because of higher con and lack of difficulty in catching up.

On the flipside, it is also easier to shove or ferry Shinon, and Shinon himself can shove a fair amount of people. Most importantly those with durability issues, such as Rhys and Reyson (allows him to vigor more easily). This is an extremely minor point anyway. I can think of thousands of those, such as Shinon being able to shoot Longbows from 3 spaces away.

+ Janaff doesn’t require fielding Rofl to recruit him and wasting a unit slot in chapter 18.

This doesn't really have anything to do with Shinon's performance. And you don't need to do this for his earlygame h4x. I doubt you want to field more units than that there's unit spots in that chapter anyway, so Rolf is free to go.

+ Janaff doesn’t leave at the end of chapter 7, meaning all exp that was given to him would be wasted until chapter 19. Shinon does.

Janaff also doesn't _join_ before chapter 7...there's no way you can turn Shinon's earlygame into a disadvantage whatsoever. That goal isn't to use EXP efficiently, it's to play efficiently. Shinon increases efficiency during those earlier chapter by a load. In fact, he doesn't even have to kill for it.

My conclusion is about the same as my first post, so just refer to that. Suffice it to say Shinon is a lot easier to turn into an overall positive contribution than Janaff through his earlygame and 2-range, while the hawk only has miles of 1-range fail ahead of him while taking resources such as Full Guard and Demi Band.

Edited by Mekkah
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Or because you didn't see it.

Sorry, it seems like I missed out a lot of stuff. Whatever, I’ll just address that now:

Even Shinon getting attacked is better than one of these two taking hits

Not if Titania could be where Shinon is. To help clarify, I’ll provide a little example:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XEXXXXXXXXXXXSXX
XXEXXXXLXXXXXXXX
XEXXXXXXXXXXXRXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Now then, those three enemies (Marked as E) are going to attack whoever is at point L. Behind Shinon is Soren (S) and Rhys ®. If Shinon is on the space marked “L” then something like this crops up on the next player phrase:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXEXXXXXSXX
XXXXXXELXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXEXXXXXRXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Now, Soren and Rhys are vulnerable to attack. However, if Titania was at point “L” then this is what the battle field would look like:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXSXX
XXXXXXXLXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXRXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Wow, now there are 3 less enemies that can harm Rhys/Soren. See, Shinon may attract attention, but enemies will target Rhys for an easy kill. Meaning that the only best way to protect Rhys and Soren from enemy assault is to kill the enemies that can provide said enemy assault – who will do that? Titania.

Now you may argue that this scenario is unrealistic – and you’d be right, it is. It’s only the point that these images show that I was trying to tell you. In reality, there will be more enemies which are spread out over a wider range of assault, meaning it’s even harder to protect poor Rhys and Soren unless they’re killed.

Heck, this only applies to chapter 4, chapter 5 is a defence chapter and any unit can plug a hole to protect Soren and Rhys, Shinon doesn’t exist in chapter 6 and there are a variety of PC’s in chapter 7 and Shinon’s on the otherside of the map so it’s not like he helps out much anyway.

He doesn't have to kill more than one enemy per turn to be a positive contribution, because as I said he is forced, into a group of small people that simply can't do everything on its own (only Titania can ORKO). I have no idea why you said the bold part. It'd only be true if Shinon was a detriment holding people back, or if he was a perfect neutral.

Can you prove that? I frequently don’t use Shinon and I cope just fine. Frequent use of Shinon on the player phase actually slows you down since he’ll be subject to enemies on the enemy phrase leaving more units to kill the next turn. So yeah, is increasing the turn count > not doing so. I sure as hell can’t see why. Rofl has better availability than Janaff, Rofl > janaff anyone? See, the reason why low tier units such as Rofl and Shinon are below janaff on tier lists is because their availability hurts them more than it actually helps them. Sometimes doing nothing > Doing something.

In addition, Shinon killing things in the chapters he's in doesn't just mean that Ike or Titania or whoever doesn't have to waste a turn to kill it, but it also means that enemy won't be there to get in the way or attack things you don't want him to attack.

Way to turn the whole argument about his enemy phrase FOR him.

See, he leaves enemies others will be forced to kill later if he is subject to enemy phase. That’s the problem with using him – he slows you down.

They are shorter chapters than late chapters, but we're still talking about 24 turns of a good unit. Janaff has exactly 0 of those.

This is true enougth, but Shinon does nothing to help your team in said 24 chapters so it’s clearly not an advantage for him.

And more if Shinon counters something on enemy phase, which isn't impossible either. Think Provoking ranged threads away from dudes with 1-range equipped, perhaps by hiding behind them in a chokepoint so that the 1-ranged people go to your favourite frontliner.

Unless I’m not quite understanding or remembering the mechanics of provoke correctly, enemies don’t care if your unit has provoke if they can attack a unit that doesn’t counter attack or if they kill a unit.

Your point being? There is always other PCs available to kill enemy units. Not just here, but also when Janaff is around. The crucial difference of course being that Shinon is one of the *better* units to kill these enemies, since the only person who manages to consistently surpass his player phase offense is Titania.

Pretty much says it all really, see the main thing i keep bringing up which you seem to be ignoring/avoiding with this is that Shinon’s enemy phase hurts him and means he can’t deal quite as much damage as Shinon, which is what I meant by saying “and more” at the end of my sentence.

See, completing the chapters is just as easy with/without Shinon, or perhaps harder with Shinon, meaning taht he doesn’t help the completion of the game and isn’t useful. If we’re basing this off usefulness, Shinon isn’t useful in the early stages of the game and thus it isn’t an advantage for him to be there.

The player only has to give Shinon "an enemy phase" if that's an advantage, e.g. against an enemy he can counter, or if that enemy was otherwise going to bring another PC to lower hp than they can afford, like if it was going to attack Rhys otherwise. Shinon has no problem finding a way to attack on player phase - he has 7 movement, and then can attack one space further than everyone else without having to use a Javelin/Hand Axe. If Shinon has nothing to attack, then no one else does, except maybe Titania. And if that's the case, even then he can do something, even if it's Shoving someone.

I struggle to see how this is possible in chapters 3, 4 and 7 with enemies in groups/clusters and in order to do so in chapter 5 he has to be walled off, meaning that the advantage you claimed Shinon to have – ie, protecting weaker units – no longer exists as he’s the one being protected.

I never said he had a problem attacking an enemy on the player phase, but he does have a problem attacking an enemy on the player phase without being attacked on the enemy phase, which is my point.

Try saying that out loud with a straight face. A unit with better player phase than everyone bar Titania, that has an easy time staying out of undesirable enemy phases, that cannot even be replaced by another unit...how can that possibly be anything but a positive?

1) True enougth. Bad enemy phase though.

2) Incorrect, as shown before in this post.

3) How is this an advantage for Shinon? “He doesn’t take a unit slot.” No one takes a unit slot. Not taking a unit slot is only an advantage when there are unit slots to be fought over.

Shinon isn't even necessarily here to improve himself. He can also allow others to kill more easily, without taking a counter, simply by switching to Iron Bow.

See, this once again forces Shinon into the line of fire, increasing the likelyhood of an enemy phase and increasing the likelyhood of Shinon being a detriment.

Shinon doing ANYTHING does this except shoving, which doesn’t matter as units can easily reach enemies quick enougth and 1 square doesn’t do anything for anyone.

He's that bad.

Shinon’s worse.

I was misinformed. Anyway, it's only one point in a few stats, it doesn't change anything about my core arguments.

Some of your arguments revolved around doubling/not doubling enemies, so stuff about speed doesn’t matter.

Those units are Lethe, Zihark, Mia and Volke. People with atk issues. Pretty large ones. Having offense comparable to theirs is not a good thing. Never mind the point about forges you left off...Mia, for example, can reach that 28 atk treshold with a forged Steel Sword. It's weird how often you seem to mention forges normally, but they're left off the moment they're unavailable to you.

1) Volke and Lethe can’t get forges, ohnoes.

2) You didn’t mention forges for those units, so don’t critisize me for not responding to something you never brought up in the first place.

3) Mia should’ve never got the support bonus in the first place. Without it, a steel sword forge only gives her 26.6 Atk.

Besides, I fail to see how not being the best unit on a team makes him bad. He still 2RKO’s stuff and has decent durability, as I’ve shown. This easily equates to killing stuff and getting more than a level. This pretty much counters anything to do with Janaff’s “Offensive issues” you claim he has. Being worse than the rest of the team =/= being bad. Struggling against enemies = bad. Janaff is the former, but not the latter.

Also that “Enemy” that Janaff and Ike can’t finish off together is just one unit. Being bad against a couple of units =/= being bad most of the time. Plus, you compared him to Ike, who is by far one of your most durable units on the team due to earth x earth ownage. Is showed how he was similar to makalov, who you even admitted:

Swapping around the Demi Band is not a good idea. It reduces the gauge of whoever had it originally to zero, so someone like Muarim would only get 4 turns of kicking ass, and after that he is stuck to human form for 5 turns. Less if he enters combat, but then he is diverting attacks from people who would actually do something to an enemy, which is even worse than hiding in a corner until the gauge is filled.

I’m glad you admit that not countering on the enemy phase is a disadvantage for Muarim, which also means it’s a disadvanteous for Shinon.

I don’t know when sharing resources was a bad thing but w/e, why we’re letting such a scenario happen is beyond me. All we not have to do is field any other laguz, which doesn’t really hurt the team as laguz are generally upper mid and below tier material. That’s every other unit in upper mid – top tier that can replace these units. Heck, it’s probably more effiecient to only use 1 laguz for solo demi band usage.

according to the data collection, if a laguz removes the demi-band in the base, they will automatically start the upcoming chapter with 4 meter. So Janaff can't even pull this trick in, say, Ch20, if he ends Ch19 with the Demi Band.

He can just dequip the demi band at the end of the chapter, or trade with someone. It’s so easy to avoid this that it’s laughable.

They can both level up during the chapter, or if we have more BEXP we can give that to them. Shinon's chance to get 15 AS or more at L4 is 72%. That's what I was talking about.

MORE bexp? He’s already got to level 3, why are you pushing it futher? It takes Shinon more than a third of the bexp to get from level 3 to level 4. Add in the fact that we have other units that want it – such as Mak - who you yourself stated is good after promotion – Astrid – who you also mentioned could use 1-2 level up’s to help her RKO – heck even Janaff.

Astrid is literally the only one. This means there's the possibility of Astrid not being in play (as good as she is, she might not fit into a team's support chain, or she might be RNG screwed and dropped), so there's a chance for Shinon to have it all for himself already.

A small and unlikely chance, besides, the brave bow never solves his enemy phase issues, which is basically the main reason his offence is inferier to janaff’s. If Janaff attacks 3 people at 50% damage and Shinon attacks 1 at 100% damage, Janaff is clearly the winner.

Your choices are certainly interesting. Three fliers and a completely random boss. And according to you later, "but it’s not like fliers are incredibly common or anything like that save in chapter 20.", so I'm going to guess you are just cherrypicking here.

If Astrid struggles to ORKO Fliers of all enemies then cleary she should use the brave bow.

Anyway, her 20/1 atk with forged Steel Bow on a flier is 43.6: 15.6 str + 9 base might + 5 forged might, multiply that 14 might by two for effective bonus. She's already beating Ravens within an inch of their lives (31.8/34 hp, so ~93% damage), and what's more, she's only .8 AS short of doubling them. Give her two more uses of Knight Ward, or just level her up once or twice more, and she's already KOing them, even with a normal Steel Bow (33.6 atk, so 2x21.6 dmg > 34 hp).

More knight ward? I’ve already given her 12/20 uses – that’s already 60% of all her level up’s with the KW. That’s already bordeline favouritism and increasing the number of uses is only worse. Anyway, her being 20/1 is already 20 levels in 7 chapters (Excluding chapter 15 for obvious reasons – desert = fail for mounted units), which is already about 3 levelsa per chapter. Considering no enemy phrase and nothing spectaculer on the player phrase and you soon realise that this is plenty and reasonable for Astrid to obtain. Fact is, she doesn’t ORKO without the brave bow.

You say it saves a forging opportunity, but to train her up we likely had to forge her something anyway.

So? Any forge she got likely broke in chapter 17 which leaves a mere 2 forging opportunities, considering nearly everyone wants a forge to help ORKO (As you’ve shown with your various comparisons with Janaff and Ike/Mia/Zihark etcetera), saving a forging opportunity really is that good.

That leaves that one boss. I don't know why it's so important for Astrid to take him on on her own, when bosses are usually to be ganged upon anyway, and it's very easy for Astrid to allow someone else to do that due to Canto and 2-range. If Astrid needs the Brave Bow just for this one boss, she can trade with Shinon, use it, then Shinon can easily trade it back or w/e.

She can’t do both in one turn, it leaves either her or Shinon without ANY action on a phase whatsoever, that’s pretty bad. And I fail to see why weakening an enemy boss so he’s easier to kill isn’t a good thing.

If you're going to harp on bows not being able to counter for Shinon, you should do the same for Astrid. Brave Bow Astrid cannot counter 1-range on enemy phase, Hand Axe Astrid does.

1) See above about forges.

2) To quote yourself:

she is flexible enough to trade it when she needs it.

Except unlike when it’s just Shinon, this is any unit. These units can actually have enemy phases. Meaning that unlike with Shinon it:

a) Is easier to do.

B) Affects the unit trading with her less.

Just the first few turns does not solve his problems of ballistae in every chapter...

And it also means that while Janaff is holding onto it, I cannot send other fliers into ballista range without significant hurtings.

Perhaps not, but all these comparison miss out on one thing: Hit rates. A 20/2 Marcia (Yes 20/2, 17 levels in 12 levels is less than 1.5 levels per chapter, consider her underlevelledness at the start and it could easily be higher) with ‘B’ Kieran, ‘C’ Tanith has 62 avo, that means long ballistae, the most common type at this point IIRC , has 28 displayed hit against Marcia. Tanith has higher avoid (those types of ballistae only have 19 displayed against Tanith) and a 20/2 Jill has 22 Def which is easily enougth to survive against every other enemy on the map even after a ballistae shot.

Heck, even a demi band Janaff only faces 33 displayed. Not much when you consider real hit is lower. This is hardly an avantage for Shinon. And one i still mentioned in my summary anyway.

This also counters you’re point about Shinon redirecting fire, as it’s not really necessary and might put him in the line of fire for other enemies.

The other fliers at least have the options of using Javelin/Hand Axe. Janaff's lock to 2-range making him a prime target for bows. And of course, if those Javelins are too weak for you, there's forges to make them stronger.

Yeah, but they don’t want to equip such weak weapons or waste a forging opportunity making them decent when they can have much stronger steel and silver forges and normal weapons.

Also, Shinon’s the one locked to 2 Range, Janaff is locked to 1 range.

They don't have to be incredibely common for it to be an advantage for Shinon. Remember that flying enemies are also the most threatening ones, since they bypass terrain and can more easily attack whichever party member they want to, likely the weakest offensively or defensively.

I wouldn’t say they are the most frightening ones, they’re kinda slow and easy to kill with the right weapons.

But I suppose you have a point. Not that it makes much damage, my summary shall only have one more point for Shinon, when there are still the 7 advantages Janaff has over Shinon, and many are more important anyway.

However, Shinon is easier to attack with on player phase without having him exposed.

What kind of absurdity is this? He doesn’t have canto to escape enemy attack ranges, so idk where you got that it was easy for him to escape attacks. Heck, it’s probably easier to get Janaff out of attack ranges due to flying and higher mov.

it's actually helpful, as a ranged enemy will now go for Shinon even if Kieran is standing in front of him with a Steel Axe.

This is untrue, enemies prioritise those who can’t counter attack over those who have provoke.

The number of enemies doesn't magically multiply by exposing Janaff. On enemy phase, he is attacking enemies that would otherwise have been taken on by Kieran/Jill. If you're good at offense, being able to fight on enemy phase is good. But if you're bad, all it means is that someone else has to clean up what you left there, so you might as well not have attacked, and it might even be bad if you also require healing now. Kieran/Jill have olympic durability (not very far removed from Ike, and Kieran has Sol, and both have 1-2 range and partial WTC), so they do not really care about taking attacks that otherwise would go to Shinon/Janaff. I don't know why I'm repeating this, since I've also stated it in my opener.

This happens with every unit, including Shinon. And I’ve shown how it’s actually worse for Shinon because of not counter attacking.

Only if "every enemy on the map" can reach him, but since 2-range in conjunction with other PCs or unpassable terrain makes it very easy to shield him, he doesn't have to fight anything on enemy phase, other than other ranged enemies (against which he does better than Janaff).

What so we’re blocking him off now? Either way he doesn’t do anything on the enemy phase and we’re forcibly positioning units to protect him and/or giving him attacks which slow down the team.

Fact is, you can’t protect him agaisnt every enemy, those fliers which you said were o so scary, can easily get to him. And then high mov units liek laguz and pally’s can easily reach enemies too so really, you can’t protect him all the time without being a detriment to the team.

Being able to fly over things others cannot is only really useful if you can do it to increase overall offense (by killing enemies before others can) or durability (by intercepting enemies from attacking someone less durable). However, Janaff's offensive parameters simply aren't good enough to do something like this.

I don’t see how 2RKOing enemies is that bad considering that it leaves enemies weaker and easier to kill.

(requires attention of your healer, and Physics also aren't unlimited).

I dunno why he’s stuck there, he can easily fly back to the main group and get healed. Besides, every type of healing requires the healer’s attention. And being 3RKO’ed at worst is pretty good when no attack is definite to hit him and it gives him plenty of time to escape.

A conclusion isn't supposed to carry new material.

I was trying to reduce the amount of tl;dr in this debate.

On the flipside, it is also easier to shove or ferry Shinon, and Shinon himself can shove a fair amount of people. Most importantly those with durability issues, such as Rhys and Reyson (allows him to vigor more easily). This is an extremely minor point anyway. I can think of thousands of those, such as Shinon being able to shoot Longbows from 3 spaces away.

Those who ferry people are likely pally’s/fliers, who can all carry Janaff anyway. As for the shoving thing, the fact is that Janaff can shove more people (Including Shinon) and doesn’t usually require shoving since he can just fly over terrain obstacles.

A small advantage it may be, but it exists nonetheless.

This doesn't really have anything to do with Shinon's performance. And you don't need to do this for his earlygame h4x. I doubt you want to field more units than that there's unit spots in that chapter anyway, so Rolf is free to go.

Oh? There are 13 unit slots in chapter 18. Add Sothe and Volke for thieving utility (2 thieves > 1), and that leaves 11 slots to be filled, and a team usually consist of 8-12 people. So having 11+ units in the team isn’t impossible.

Yes it does, Shinon can’t perform after chapter 18 if he isn’t recruited, which means that any and all use of him after that requires fielding Rofl which is very bad.

Janaff also doesn't _join_ before chapter 7...there's no way you can turn Shinon's earlygame into a disadvantage whatsoever. That goal isn't to use EXP efficiently, it's to play efficiently. Shinon increases efficiency during those earlier chapter by a load. In fact, he doesn't even have to kill for it.

To play efficiently, then we’d obviously want to use our exp efficiently as well and i have shown that Shinon doesn’t increase the efficiency of those chapters as he is easily replaceable and unmissed due to not having an enemy phase.

My summary is the same as before, just add:

- Shinon is better against fliers.

To it.

7, more improtant advantages > 3, less important advantages.

Janaff > Shinon.

Edit: Fixed the underlining thing. And a few typo's.

Edited by kirsche
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  • 2 weeks later...

closerr

Sorry, it seems like I missed out a lot of stuff. Whatever, I’ll just address that [shinon protecting Soren/Rhys?] now:
Not if Titania could be where Shinon is. To help clarify, I’ll provide a little example:

The problem with your example is that all it proves is that Titania > Shinon. Yes, Titania is better than Shinon, but that doesn't make Shinon a negative (unless we only had one unit slot and only Titania and Shinon were candidates, meaning that to make use of shinon I have to ditch Titania...obviously that is not the case).

Now you may argue that this scenario is unrealistic – and you’d be right, it is. It’s only the point that these images show that I was trying to tell you. In reality, there will be more enemies which are spread out over a wider range of assault, meaning it’s even harder to protect poor Rhys and Soren unless they’re killed.

Of course it's unrealistic. There also aren't only 1-range enemies, there is also terrain, and you also have various other PCs available. And Titania cannot be everywhere at once. If we place Boyd, Ike or Oscar on your example spot "L", pretty much every enemy type is going to live and attack whoever they feel like regardless. But note how in this scenario, Shinon can at least kill one of the enemies, even if you missed against one of them (say hello to Boyd's ~5% chance to miss a 4 avo enemy with Iron Axe, ~15% with Steel, ~27% with Hand).

Heck, this only applies to chapter 4, chapter 5 is a defence chapter and any unit can plug a hole to protect Soren and Rhys

Ch5's chokepoints only work in Shinon's favor here, as it makes it extremely easy for him to attack on player phase without being exposed (even easier than normally). You have to block the enemies from getting inside anyway, so why not put Shinon on the inside as well? Shinon shooting over someone's back has obvious advantages. Besides covering up for Boyd if he misses, he can free up someone to use a vulnerary while the enemy in front of him still dies. Or he can use Iron Bow and allow someone to attack the enemy in front of them without being countered.

And I might as well say it here: Shinon's Provoke works for ranged attackers even if there's someone with 1-range in front of him. I don't know if you claim it doesn't since you've emperically seen it or because you are trying to bullshit me (seeing as I haven't played this game). In the former case, that doesn't prove it doesn't work at all (since I've had reports from others that it does work), it just proves that it doesn't always work. If it's the latter, that's a pretty low thing to do.

Also, let's not forget that enemies like to clog up in front of chokepoints, so that spots where enemies can attack an 1-range unit at 2-range could very well be taken. In which case a 2-range enemy usually has no choice but to attack Shinon, and an 1-2 range one can pick between Shinon and said 1-range (and will definitely pick Shinon because of Provoke).

and there are a variety of PC’s in chapter 7

What do you even mean by this? I can only guess at it, but there's no room to argue about it anymore since we've come at closers. Not that it makes sense to say it about Ch7 specifically, since Ch5 has the same amount of PCs, it just adds Mia.

into a group of small people that simply can't do everything on its own (only Titania can ORKO)
Can you prove that? I frequently don’t use Shinon and I cope just fine.

Of course I can prove that only Titania can ORKO, but I don't think that was your question. Or do you mean proving that you cannot neglect Shinon and still do fine? Of course that holds no water, but I never said that. No character is ever neccessary except for things like you need one of Ike/Dragon/Royal to beat Ashnard. And neccessity has no place in a debate, regardless. The point is that Shinon makes it easier and safer to complete chapters.

So yeah, is increasing the turn count > not doing so. I sure as hell can’t see why. Rofl has better availability than Janaff, Rofl > janaff anyone? See, the reason why low tier units such as Rofl and Shinon are below janaff on tier lists is because their availability hurts them more than it actually helps them. Sometimes doing nothing > Doing something.

Please, no bull.

The only way Shinon increases your turn count or decreases your efficiency is if you leave him wide and exposed when you don't want him to be. However, whenever you can protect him from 1-range threats you don't want him to face, he cannot possibly increase your turn count - in fact, he's closer to decreasing it, since he helps you kill one extra enemy on player phase. Or even if he has to face 1-range threats, it can be a good thing. For example, if Ike would face an existing death chance after 3 enemies, I would rather provoke one of them into attacking Shinon (by putting him next to Ike, for instance), making Ike safe.

The comparison to Rolf doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The only thing he has in common with Shinon is the bows lock - but you forget to take into account that his stats are also worse than everyone else's...his bases are about on par with Ike's bases (Ike has 1 more hp/spd, Rolf 2 more skl/res/luk, 1 more def), but joins like 8 chapters later, and his growths are _worse_ (10-15% lower in hp, str, def, res).

In addition, Shinon killing things in the chapters he's in doesn't just mean that Ike or Titania or whoever doesn't have to waste a turn to kill it, but it also means that enemy won't be there to get in the way or attack things you don't want him to attack.
Way to turn the whole argument about his enemy phrase FOR him.

See, he leaves enemies others will be forced to kill later if he is subject to enemy phase. That’s the problem with using him – he slows you down.

You are the one not addressing the point made (that Shinon killing an enemy means someone else won't have to) in any way whatsoever, here. I don't see how others are in any way deterred if Shinon kills an enemy for them.

If you throw Shinon into a bunch of enemies like Titania, then yes, he will slow you down. However, if you take measures for Shinon to not get attacked on enemy phase unless you want him to, he'll pay off the favour by killing or setting up a kill on one enemy for someone else, luring away enemies from people you don't want to face enemies even if they counter, or taking on ranged threats.

This is true enougth, but Shinon does nothing to help your team in said 24 chapters [turns?] so it’s clearly not an advantage for him.

You have not even shown he is doing nothing to help a team. You've just said what happens if you put Shinon in enemy range like everyone else. If you're not using a unit in a way to maximize their efficiency, then you can't expect great results. For an obvious overused analogy, look at Reyson. He has equivalent effects as Shinon on enemy phase, but his vigoring is so hax that it makes up for it. Now I'm not saying Shinon is as useful as Reyson is, since they are also quite different (Shinon's not as good as Reyson's vigoring, but then again the consequences of getting him attacked are also a lot more forgiving, particulary against ranged enemies).

I struggle to see how this is possible in chapters 3, 4 and 7 with enemies in groups/clusters and in order to do so in chapter 5 he has to be walled off, meaning that the advantage you claimed Shinon to have – ie, protecting weaker units – no longer exists as he’s the one being protected.

The enemies also come in relatively small groups/clusters, not all at once, so I'm not seeing your point. With people like Rhys and Soren on board, we pretty much have to take enemies little by little either way, making protective formations as to keep them from harm. If Boyd/Oscar/Titania/Ike are intercepting enemy movement anyway, you may as well put Shinon behind them rather than in front of them.

For a more practical example, if a group of 6 enemies is 10 spaces away from your main team, are you going to make everyone move their full movement and maximize enemy exposal? More likely, you would put Gatrie so that he faces two, Oscar for another two, and maybe Ike and Boyd for one each, for example. Then maybe 2 of those have 1-2 range, and you don't want to equip hand weapons in fear of losing damage output and avo, so those two would stay alive. Shinon allows you to kill one of these easily, so everyone else can move on to the next formation easily.

And of course, there's natural chokepoints as well where there's simply no excuse not to use Shinon fully, like the plank to the ship in Ch3, or hallways in Ch7, etc.

I never said he had a problem attacking an enemy on the player phase, but he does have a problem attacking an enemy on the player phase without being attacked on the enemy phase, which is my point.

Only if you're trying to bite off more than you can chew at once, e.g. you run Shinon into a group of enemies, kill one of them, then expect your other PCs to wrap up the rest.

3) How is this an advantage for Shinon? “He doesn’t take a unit slot.” No one takes a unit slot. Not taking a unit slot is only an advantage when there are unit slots to be fought over.

Not taking a unit slot means I can't field a high tier instead of Shinon, for example, and do better. Which is the case when Janaff is around, hence why it's an advantage for Shinon. He gets to be good without replacing someone who could have done better. In the chapters where Shinon and Janaff are being compared, we could also just fill their slot with someone like Stefan, who doesn't really require any work to be superior at that point.

This means that using Janaff/Shinon at that point comes at the opportunity cost (I know you love this term) of using a better unit, whereas Shinon earlygame is practically free other than negligible things such as weapon/vulnerary use. This could mean that if we're trying to maximize our unit's efficiency, I could only use Shinon earlygame then not use him at all later, and all he'd have is positive on his bank account. Janaff later on can try to be better than Shinon, but the team that had Shinon originally can just field Stefan or whoever instead and be much better off.

except shoving, which doesn’t matter as units can easily reach enemies quick enougth and 1 square doesn’t do anything for anyone.

Sure does. 1 square could allow someone to use Iron/Steel instead of Hand to reach some enemy, or to reach an enemy type they would rather face than the one they'd have to attack otherwise. Or you can shove Soren/Rhys out of harm's way more easily, etc. All kinds of things Shinon can do to help and Janaff cannot.

Unless I’m not quite understanding or remembering the mechanics of provoke correctly, enemies don’t care if your unit has provoke if they can attack a unit that doesn’t counter attack or if they kill a unit.

vykan tells me he did have people attack Shinon despite doing more damage to other PCs or taking a counter from him. I'll take his word over yours. Even if it doesn't work 100% reliably, it sure as hell is nice when it does.

2) You didn’t mention forges for those units [with atk issues], so don’t critisize me for not responding to something you never brought up in the first place.

Sure as hell did. In my opener, even: And all of these, except Lethe, can make use of forges for more atk. Ctrl-F it if you don't believe me.

3) Mia should’ve never got the support bonus in the first place. Without it, a steel sword forge only gives her 26.6 Atk.

What makes you say "never"? She only needs one of Rhys/Ilyana in play to ever get supports, and if we assume we're only ever using High or above units, we might as well discard tier lists altogether, and not take into account Janaff/Shinon and all since they're clearly below that cut. Or we'll look at it realistically, and take into account that any time Rhys is in play, he'll take a Mia support for lack of something better, and Ilyana might take her as well under circumstances (she has Zihark and Mordecai as good partners, but those all have other partners again, etc). Mia can definitely expect 1-2 more atk from supports on average, taking varying team set-ups into account.

But even if she didn't, she still has 3.3 more (6.6 damage per double) than Demi Janaff's ~23 atk.

Besides, I fail to see how not being the best unit on a team makes him bad. He still 2RKO’s stuff and has decent durability, as I’ve shown.

I didn't just show he wasn't the best unit on a team. His atk (and thus offense) is lower than almost everyone else's, _even units considered bad offensively at this point_. 2RKO'ing and "decent durability", as you call it, does make you bad compared to people who are ORKoing and are close to invincible. Or even compared to people who 2RKO consistently instead of borderline so, since then you can use a weaker fighter, or a weaker weapon to finish off after it's weakened, and/or avoid a counter more easily.

Being worse than the rest of the team =/= being bad. Struggling against enemies = bad. Janaff is the former, but not the latter.

All earlygame FEDS people are struggling against enemies to a large extent (whatever loose definition you use as "struggling"). Does this mean they're all bad? No, it means the ones that struggle the least are better than the others, which automatically means those others are bad relative to those.

Also that “Enemy” that Janaff and Ike can’t finish off together is just one unit. Being bad against a couple of units =/= being bad most of the time.

I haven't said anything about an "Enemy" Janaff and Ike can't finish off together, unless you mean in my generalization of Janaff having trouble teaming up with others for kills.

Anyway, I'll have a closer look at how bad Janaff is offensively. His defense is less of an issue, other than against bow enemies, as I'll show as well.

Demi!Janaff has around 26 atk and 20 AS. Also 40 hp/14 def/55 avo or so.

Samples from Ch19 (and I'll make sure to include all of them rather than just the ones that make my case look convenient like you did with Astrid):

From Ch19:

9x Raven lv 6-8 (beak)

34 hp, 20 atk, 18 AS, 120 hit, 38 avo, 12 def, 9 res, 7 crit, 2 cev

14 (41%) damage, due to not doubling

1x Fighter lv 18 (steel axe, hand axe)

39 hp, 26 atk, 10 AS, 88 hit, 25 avo, 10 def, 4 res, 4 crit, 5 cev

1x Fighter lv 18 (short axe)

40 hp, 24 atk, 10 AS, 89 hit, 24 avo, 9 def, 5 res, 5 crit, 4 cev

1x Warrior lv 3 (killer axe [d])

43 hp, 28 atk, 11 AS, 89 hit, 26 avo, 10 def, 6 res, 35 crit, 4 cev

28-32 (~73%) damage

2x Wyvern Rider lv 16-18 (steel lance, javelin)

33 hp, 25 atk, 10 AS, 98 hit, 24 avo, 17 def, 6 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

18 (54%) damage

1x Wyvern Lord lv 1 (steel lance, short spear, vulnerary)

37 hp, 25 atk, 10 AS, 97 hit, 23 avo, 17 def, 5 res, 6 crit, 3 cev

18 (48%) damage

1x Sniper lv 1 (laguz bow [d])

29 hp, 21 atk, 12 AS, 109 hit, 28 avo, 11 def, 7 res, 22 crit, 4 cev

30 (103%) damage

Takes 17 (42%) damage, at around ~58% real

To put that into perspective, 20/1 _Soren_ with his 30 hp/7 def takes 46% from this, at ~46% real hit (B Ike).

A more durable guy, like lol base level Devdan, takes 8 damage to 36 hp, or ~22%.

1x Myrmidon lv 18 (steel sword)

28 hp, 20 atk, 17 AS, 108 hit, 39 avo, 7 def, 4 res, 7 crit, 5 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 20 (longsword [d])

28 hp, 20 atk (26 eff), 17 AS, 123 hit, 40 avo, 8 def, 5 res, 8 crit, 6 cev

19 (67%) damage

3x Myrmidon lv 18 (iron blade)

29 hp, 22 atk, 14 AS, 105 hit, 33 avo, 8 def, 4 res, 7 crit, 5 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 20 (armorslayer)

30 hp, 22 atk (30 eff), 14 AS, 118 hit, 34 avo, 8 def, 4 res, 8 crit, 6 cev

36 (122%) damage

1x Soldier lv 19 (steel lance)

34 hp, 21 atk, 10 AS, 101 hit, 25 avo, 11 def, 5 res, 6 crit, 5 cev

30 (88%) damage

1x Lance Knight lv 16 (steel lance, javelin)

31 hp, 22 atk, 11 AS, 90 hit, 26 avo, 12 def, 5 res, 4 crit, 4 cev

28 (90%) damage

1x Bow Knight lv 17 (steel bow)

32 hp, 21 atk, 14 AS, 91 hit, 33 avo, 13 def, 7 res, 4 crit, 5 cev

26 (81%) damage

Same ~46% damage as the the Sniper, but with 18 less disp hit (26% real now).

2x Priest lv 14-15 (mend)

25 hp, 8 AS, 23 avo, 3 def, 16 res, 7 cev

who cares

2x Archer lv 16 (steel bow, ballista, 1 vulnerary)

26 hp, 18 atk, 11 AS, 104 hit, 26 avo, 9 def, 6 res, 7 crit, 4 cev

34 (130%) damage

Takes 14 (35%) damage, at around 48% real hit

Or if he uses the ballista, he does 24 (60%) at ~41% real

1x Archer lv 18 (iron bow, ballista, vulnerary)

28 hp, 16 atk, 12 AS, 121 hit, 28 avo, 11 def, 6 res, 8 crit, 4 cev

30 (107%) damage

Janaff 3RKOs 4 enemies, ORKOs 7 (excluding the lolpriests), and 2RKOs the other 20.

Now, how impressive is this compared to others?

20/3 Boyd with Steel Axe has 31 atk/16 AS, so he does >100% on anything except the ones with >12 AS, which includes:

- 1 Bow Knight where he does 18/31 damage, so 2RKOs anyway

- 6 Myrmidons, out of which 2 Janaff cannot double either, and he does ~21/~30 damage to both, so again, he's 2RKOing just the same on those

- 9 Ravens, which Janaff can't double either, and he does 19/34 damage, so he 2RKOs anyway

And he barely misses out on the 3 wyverns, but he leaves them with single digit HP, and he can kill the unpromoted ones with a max Steel forge, or with +3 atk from supports (Mist and Brom give him full atk, and Titania half, so that's no problem). Like +3/+4 forge + atk from supports can ORKO even the Wyvern Lord.

So Boyd is 2RKOing ~17 enemies, and ORKOing 14.

Or take Nephenee. 20/1 Nephenee with Steel Lance has 25 atk/20 AS, 30 with a max Mt Steel forge, and gets half atk from each of her 3 plausible supports (Devan/Brom/Calill). With that Steel forge, her KOing reach is very much near Boyd's, except she doubles every enemy on above list with the exception of the Raven and high end Myrmidons, though she only needs 6-7 level-ups with Knight Ward to double each of those.

Hell, take 20/1 Ilyana. 23 atk/15 AS with Elthunder, or 25 atk with forged Thunder. The def-res gap ranges from 4 to like 8 in this chapter, so she has very similar atk to Boyd, and there's only a couple of enemies that she doesn't double that Boyd does (only 2 enemies, in fact).

That's the kind of standards we're looking at. Janaff's enemy phase offense "lead" would be useful if he were the only unit in a team, or if the majority of the cast was doing worse than him. But I've shown him to do worse than people with bad atk, and I've shown him to get destroyed in damage output by these three above examples (and not just Top/High tiers, either).

The implications of this reach further than just "Janaff does something someone else would've done better". It means that if someone else would have ORKO'ed that enemy, even if Janaff was the only one who could have faced that enemy on enemy face, it didn't matter. Like, I could attack it with Janaff during turn 3, but if it would suicide into Boyd during turn 4 anyway, who cares?

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split into two because of quote box limit

Plus, you compared him to Ike, who is by far one of your most durable units on the team due to earth x earth ownage. Is showed how he was similar to makalov, who you even admitted:

I don't know what you were going to put in my mouth about Makalov, but here's what you said about him:

Then, defensively, you’ll notice that the Soldiers and sword knights 7RKO Janaff, the wyvern’s 4RKO him, and the ravens 8RKO him. In comparison, a Level 19 Makalov has 14 def and 35 HP. That’s worse than Janaff. Even with the kngiht band, a heavily sought resource, Makalov still gets 7RKO’ed by the soldiers and sword knights. Durably, Janaff is quite comparable to Makalov, a unit with good durability bases for his level (30 HP, 10 Def) and good growths (60% HP, 45% Def).

which I countered with:

This isn't helping your point any. 17/0 Makalov has about .8 less str than 20/1 Mia, so once again, you just showed Janaff is on par with people whose atk sucks.

and

Makalov is not considered a good unit because he has "good durability bases for his level" (Farina and Nino both have great bases for their level, but what really matters is what these stats do for them against enemies), he's considered good because once he catches up and promotes, his stats simply work.

Pretty much _everyone_ is durable in most instances at this point because enemy atk is so garbage. Look at Ch19, the high-end enemies have not much more than ~25 atk, and the lower end ones hover around ~20.

Take 20/1 Astrid with her 33 hp/14 def/~50 avo. That 22 atk/90 hit Lance Knight takes 5 rounds to kill her, at 32% real hit, meaning Astrid's chance of death after 5 attacks is about a third of a percent, never mind any supports or weapon triangling. Taking a more realistic situation, such as having WTA over it, means he takes the same amount of rounds, but only has 18% real. Impossible for her to die here. Or against a 25 atk/98 hit Steel Lance Wyvern where she has WTA against, that thing 4HKOs at 38% real. Chance of death only 2% after 4 attacks. Now factor in how often she can avoid counters and put herself into better positions compared to Janaff, and doesn't get raped by bows and can actually counter at range (which is both an offensive and defensive advantage)...yeah.

I'll once more emphasize why I went on and on about this: it shows exposing Janaff on enemy phase is doing your efficiency absolutely no good. All 2-range units will prioritize on him, so they'll go completely uncountered. All bow enemies and ballistae will prioritize on him, which gives him death chances, or at least need of healing. And even 1-range enemies which he counters, he often doesn't kill, whereas if I let them attack someone like Boyd or Nephenee or even Ilyana, I would kill much more of these enemies. In almost any game this has the negative of hurting these other people's durability, but in this game it hardly matters since the enemies suck too much to hurt you. I've shown Ike to be nigh invincible, and Astrid is pretty damn close to it _without her supports_. So they really don't mind taking over the enemy phase that Janaff/Shinon would have had. Which means the main contribution of Shinon/Janaff is on player phase, where Shinon is, as pretty much conceded (quote herebelow), the winner.

Now this looks like a win for Shinon. But when you consider that he can only attack enemies on the player phrase(...)

Moving on.

I’m glad you admit that not countering on the enemy phase is a disadvantage for Muarim, which also means it’s a disadvanageous for Shinon.

There's a vast difference between an untransformed laguz and Shinon. The untransformed laguz isn't contributing combat at all, whereas Shinon is. Not on player phase, and not against ranged threats on enemy phase.

I don’t know when sharing resources was a bad thing but w/e, why we’re letting such a scenario [Muarim untransforming] happen is beyond me. All we not have to do is field any other laguz, which doesn’t really hurt the team as laguz are generally upper mid and below tier material. That’s every other unit in upper mid – top tier that can replace these units. Heck, it’s probably more effiecient to only use 1 laguz for solo demi band usage.

Why do you insist on using a double standard on me? Astrid apparently wants that Brave Bow against a select few enemies she was often killing anyway so Shinon can't get it, but Janaff greatly hurting or booting off a unit like Muarim or Mordecai doesn't matter?

The opportunity cost of Janaff taking the Demi Band instead of those two tigers is a negative for him, whereas for Shinon's Brave Bow it's more like a net gain. The difference between Brave Bow Astrid and non-Brave Bow Astrid is nearly negligible, coming down to saving one or two forged Steel Bow attacks, or killing all of one boss without needing one more PC to kill it. The difference between non-Brave and Brave Shinon is huge.

To show you:

--/5 Brave Bow!Shinon has 21-22 atk/15-16 AS + Brave effect.

--/5 FrgStlBow!Shinon has 25-26 atk/15-16 AS.

Look at a few of those Ch20 samples:

2x Soldier lv 19-20 (steel lance)

37 hp, 21 atk, 11 AS, 103 hit, 27 avo, 11 def, 6 res, 7 crit, 5 cev

With Brave Bow, he makes a clean ORKO.

With Steel Bow, he leaves it with 7-9 hp.

2x Archer lv 19-20 (steel bow)

29 hp, 19 atk, 12 AS, 109 hit, 29 avo, 12 def, 7 res, 8 crit, 5 cev

With Brave Bow, he does 2x9 (62%) if he has 15 AS, 4x9 (124%) if he has 16+.

With Steel Bow, he does 1x13 (44%) if he has 15 AS, 2x13 (leaves with 1-3hp) if he has 16+.

1x Myrmidon lv 20 (laguzslayer)

30 hp, 22 atk (31 eff), 16 AS, 115 hit, 38 avo, 9 def, 5 res, 8 crit, 6 cev

With Brave Bow, he does 2x12 (leaves with 4-6hp).

With Steel Bow, he does 1x16-17 (~52%).

That seems like a much larger benefit than what Astrid's getting out of Brave Bow. Now look at what Demi!Janaff makes us lose out on.

--/11 Demi!Muarim (C Zihark)

48 hp, 17.4 str, 14.4 skl, 16.1 spd, 13.2 def, 6 res, 11 luk

Demi Transform: +4 str, +2 skl, +2 spd, +2 def, +2 res

Claw: 29.4 atk, 18.1 AS -- 56 avo, 45 hp, 15.2 def, 8 res

I don't really want to go in-depth of how badly Muarim is destroying Janaff...looking at the --/10 Janaff stats you posted, Muarim does 10 more damage in a battle where both double. So essentially we could say every time Janaff doubles something while holding Demi Band while Muarim is sitting out (for being untransformed, or not being deployed just to get Janaff the band), we're losing out on 10 damage. And if you look at Janaff's performance above, you'll see 10 more damage would improve that output a lot. Never mind Muarim benefitting Zihark, which he can't do if he's not deployed, and is harder to do if he is untransformed.

Mordecai is a similar case, though he's a lot slower than Muarim, so he doesn't double as often. But then again, he is an amazing Speedwings candidate, since making Mordecai go from not doubling to doubling means using his huge atk twice. At --/5 with just +2 atk from supports (B Mist, for example), he has 29 atk, so if we can get to double, that's destroying Janaff as much as Muarim is.

Basically, if we're only using one laguz to optimize band usage, then choosing Janaff over these two hurts our team by that much.

He can just dequip the demi band at the end of the chapter, or trade with someone. It’s so easy to avoid this that it’s laughable.

That has the minor inconvenience of preventing him from attacking on the last turn though.

MORE bexp? He’s already got to level 3, why are you pushing it futher? It takes Shinon more than a third of the bexp to get from level 3 to level 4. Add in the fact that we have other units that want it – such as Mak - who you yourself stated is good after promotion – Astrid – who you also mentioned could use 1-2 level up’s to help her RKO – heck even Janaff.

Bogus. From level 3 to level 4 takes 160 BEXP, which is half of what you get for clearing Ch18 in time alone, and about as much as you get as the clear bonus for that chapter. And as I said, it doesn't have to be BEXP, he can also level up during chapters themselves.

A small and unlikely chance [that Astrid is not in play]

It's large enough to be taken into account. There's roughly ~11 top/high tier units in the current FE9 tier list, for a quick reference, and then 11 more upper mids. Even assuming a team of 10 every time, roughly half of those would be getting the boot in any given playthrough. Astrid is good, but she's nowhere near guaranteed in play.

besides, the brave bow never solves his enemy phase issues, which is basically the main reason his offence is inferier to janaff’s. If Janaff attacks 3 people at 50% damage and Shinon attacks 1 at 100% damage, Janaff is clearly the winner.

I don't want to repeat myself on this too much, so expect this the last time I'm going to say it. The comparison only works like this if Shinon and Janaff are the only people on a team, or are the only ones capable of doing enemy phase, but they're not. In reality, Janaff is doing 50% damage instead of people who would have done 100%, or at least 70% on enemy phase. Or in the case of ranged enemies, he sometimes does 0%. Shinon doesn't do much against those enemies either, but at least in his case those enemies end up attacking whoever is in front of him instead. On player phase, however, Janaff and Shinon each have a turn of their own to attack something, and there Shinon does more damage.

If Astrid struggles to ORKO Fliers of all enemies then cleary she should use the brave bow.

It was you who picked fliers as enemies then let Astrid use axes against them, which is convenient for you since one of the flier types were Ravens (which she could barely not double), and the others are Wyverms, which have notoriously high hp/def.

Taking samples from the very same chapter (Ch20) and using your numbers...

A level 20/1 Astrid with a forged steel axe has 32 Atk and 21.2 AS (12 uses of the KW). With a brave bow she has 26 Atk. With a forged steel bow she has 30 Atk.

Here's a list of Ch19 enemies 32 atk/21 AS can not ORKO other than the ones addressed:

- Naesala.

Maybe Ch20 then?

2x Knight lv 18 (steel lance, vulnerary)

32 hp, 23 atk, 5 AS, 94 hit, 14 avo, 20 def, 7 res, 5 crit, 4 cev

Shiharam lv 10 (tomahawk [d], full guard, elixir)

45 hp, 33 atk, 14 AS, 100 hit, 29 avo, 21 def, 13 res, 8 crit, 1 cev

1x Knight lv 18 (steel lance)

33 hp, 23 atk, 4 AS, 92 hit, 12 avo, 20 def, 8 res, 4 crit, 4 cev

And the wyverns, but I've already discussed those with much elaboration in my second post. Note how none of these is KOed by 26 atk quadruppling (doesn't even do 25% to Shiharam, about 24 damage to the Knights).

More knight ward? I’ve already given her 12/20 uses – that’s already 60% of all her level up’s with the KW. That’s already bordeline favouritism and increasing the number of uses is only worse. Anyway, her being 20/1 is already 20 levels in 7 chapters (Excluding chapter 15 for obvious reasons – desert = fail for mounted units), which is already about 3 levelsa per chapter. Considering no enemy phrase and nothing spectaculer on the player phrase and you soon realise that this is plenty and reasonable for Astrid to obtain. Fact is, she doesn’t ORKO without the brave bow.

Astrid hardly has any trouble getting nearly all of her level-ups with Knight Ward. First, she can trade it to herself when she's about to level-up pretty easily thanks to huge move, and being able to attack something someone else attacked at 1-range due to having 2-range. Secondly, she uses BEXP like a train: with just your Ch12/Ch13 BEXP, around 400 total, she can skyrocket from 1/0 to 9/0 (369 BEXP). And she also gains like 30 EXP just for attacking something, which she can do pretty much free of penalty thanks to range + Canto (attack something 4 spaces ahead of Astrid, and she has 5 move leftover to move back to someplace safe).

And again, not everything has to come from past chapters. Astrid doesn't stay at whatever level she is - she still grows, and with just an extra Spd level-up, she doubles this Raven.

And again, I repeat that she is doing 93% damage per hit with forged Steel Bow to Ravens, meaning even your most failure attacker could finish them off.

So? Any forge she got likely broke in chapter 17 which leaves a mere 2 forging opportunities, considering nearly everyone wants a forge to help ORKO (As you’ve shown with your various comparisons with Janaff and Ike/Mia/Zihark etcetera), saving a forging opportunity really is that good.

A forge doesn't arbitrarily break during a Ch17 map just because it's convenient for you, so I don't know why you say that. And Astrid doesn't really have to use her forged bow often (potshots with regular Iron/Steel + BEXP net her plenty of EXP, and after that she mostly wants axes and other special bows), and in this particular case, she only needs one shot of them to kill a Raven with.

She can’t do both in one turn, it leaves either her or Shinon without ANY action on a phase whatsoever, that’s pretty bad. And I fail to see why weakening an enemy boss so he’s easier to kill isn’t a good thing.

She can attack with it, Canto one space back, then Shinon can trade it and use it on that same enemy. What a big thing to fuss about. It is a "good thing", but it is also a miniscule thing. Just like the end of chapter Demi Band thing, or just like "saving a forging opportunity", or other extremely minor points that you brought up.

I have no idea what your next point is about (something about other units having enemy phases if you trade Hand Axe to the top of their inventory being a point against Shinon?)...I can only respond to things you actually make clear.

Perhaps not, but all these [ballista] comparison miss out on one thing: Hit rates.

That's good for you, but it doesn't address the fact that Janaff holding Full Guard for a few turns does not solve his weakness on turns he is not holding it.

Also, something I forgot. Janaff cannot equip the Demi Band and the Full Guard at the same time. The problem there is obvious: he's either getting owned by ballistae, or he can't attack at all (and has untransformed stats).

What you are also missing out on is that even though hit rates by those ballistae are low, they also really really hurt. As I said in my second post, for example Marcia loses almost 70% of her hp from one, meaning she is now a unit with about ~10 hp/14 def left. Only 25 atk is now needed to OHKO her, and a combination of any two enemies is enough to finish her off. With that ~55 avo of her, she's facing about ~24% real from a 90 hit enemy, facing already 5% death chances after two attacks by those. A 5% chance of a restart, or continuing without a unit raised for that long is really bad. As opposed to almost completely negligible damage if Marcia had equipped the Full Guard.

Heck, even a demi band Janaff only faces 33 displayed. Not much when you consider real hit is lower.

Are you too lazy to calculate or too scared to face real chances? 33 disp is 22% true, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/5 chance of losing like 22 out of his 40 hp. If there's two normal ballistae, that's a 4% death chance right there.

Also, you only calculated chances for Long Ballistae, which may be the most common ones, but they're also the least threatening ones qua hit rates. But let's not forget the other problems it brings, and the existence of the other kinds:

And that gets worse with Killer ballistae (2 more damage without, 4 more with, and a chance to do 12 more due to crit), or Long ballistae (4 more without, 8 more with, and they restrict range by 5 more).

This also counters you’re point about Shinon redirecting fire, as it’s not really necessary and might put him in the line of fire for other enemies.

Nothing is necessary (necessity says hardly anything about ranking a unit's usefulness), but Shinon taking a ballista shot instead of risking Marcia/Tanith deaths or significant HP losses sure as hell is convenient. And you're underestimating ballista range, or overstating enemy range, if you think Shinon has to be in line of normal enemies to take ballista shots. Seriously, 10 range is more than any enemy's movement, and 15 is about double of most of them. And ballista firing range isn't blocked by other PCs, whereas enemy movement paths can easily be impeded by other PCs.

Yeah, but they [Tanith/Marcia] don’t want to equip such weak weapons or waste a forging opportunity making them decent when they can have much stronger steel and silver forges and normal weapons.

They sure as hell do if there's ranged enemies. Not only does it mean you don't have to waste player phases disposing of any ranged enemies that attack them, but it also makes it more likely that those bow enemies go for someone else. Maybe someone who doesn't care, like Ike. Or maybe Provoke Shinon (look, another use for him).

I wouldn’t say they [fliers] are the most frightening ones, they’re kinda slow and easy to kill with the right weapons.

What kind of vague statement is this? Nearly all FE9 enemies are "kinda slow" and "easy to kill with right weapons". However, wyverns usually have the highest atk outside of fighters/warriors and bosses, and also more hit than the former, and as I said, they have much more movement range, sometimes 1-2 range, so it's easier for them than any other enemy to attack someone like Mist when you want them to hit a pally or Boyd or whoever.

But I suppose you have a point. Not that it makes much damage, my summary shall only have one more point for Shinon, when there are still the 7 advantages Janaff has over Shinon, and many are more important anyway.

This is another problem I have with your bullet point summary: you pretend every point is equal. They're not. A wise man once said "a lead only matters as much as its implications". Imagine if we used this kind of bullet point summary for battle comparisons. "I win 3 res, 5 hit, 16 cev and 1 hp, while you only win 6 atk and 3 spd, we tie everything else. My total > your total".

What kind of absurdity is this? He doesn’t have canto to escape enemy attack ranges, so idk where you got that it was easy for him to escape attacks. Heck, it’s probably easier to get Janaff out of attack ranges due to flying and higher mov.

On chokepoints, I only need one guy in front of Shinon, and the only things that can attack him are ranged, which he can counter. Do the same with Janaff, and the enemy will attack him without being countered. In addition, ranged enemies will go for Shinon in the first situation, and non-ranged ones will go on your frontliner. So it's overall more efficient, since every enemy gets countered.

On non-chokepoints, it's still easier to protect Shinon. For example, if there's a group of somewhat spread enemies, Shinon doesn't have to move as far in as Janaff to attack an enemy, meaning he can end his turn further away from other enemies, making it easier to place others so that they can't reach Shinon (either by putting them next to them, or by obstructing their path).

And of course, Shinon can attack over walls and the like. Enemies on another side of the wall could never reach him to attack him up close.

This is untrue, enemies prioritise those who can’t counter attack over those who have provoke.

Addressed before, just FYI.

I dunno why he’s stuck there, he can easily fly back to the main group and get healed.

If he's off by himself to attack a bunch of enemies somewhere else? He can only escape if his enemies can't follow him, so basically if he's fighting wyverns they'll stick to him as they likely have no one else, and any other foot/mounted unit will do as well if they're not hindered by terrain.

Besides, every type of healing requires the healer’s attention.

Yes, but if I kept Janaff with the group like Shinon, it is easier to heal him (no need to Physic, and if he flies too far off even Physic might not reach him). Plus, among the group, I could have let other, more durable units take enemy phase, who take hits better than Janaff and also dispose of enemies earlier. An enemy that's been killed can't attack anymore, and if Janaff is 2-3RKOing enemies, with only one chance to finish off something on player phase, then every enemy he 2RKOs is getting about 2 shots at him.

And being 3RKO’ed at worst is pretty good when no attack is definite to hit him and it gives him plenty of time to escape.

It's only "pretty good" if others aren't doing better. "No attack being definite to hit him" just means he is relying in luck to survive. Dying in 3 hits to 30% real is obviously better than to 100% real, but it still means he is facing death chances. And if he flies off in ballista range, that stacks up rapidly.

I was trying to reduce the amount of tl;dr in this debate.

Then do it without sneaking a new point in a summary. Or don't make nearly irrelevant points at all. It takes up more space for me to explain why the implications of a small point are meaningless than it takes for you to bring one up.

Those who ferry people are likely pally’s/fliers, who can all carry Janaff anyway.

Yes, people who ferry are usually people like wyverns/pegs/paladins, meaning Janaff carrying people is of little use. Oh, however, those may not feel like spending another player phase to drop Janaff, so Shinon is easier to do a take -> drop with using another PC.

As for the shoving thing, the fact is that Janaff can shove more people (Including Shinon) and doesn’t usually require shoving since he can just fly over terrain obstacles.

Janaff may not "require" being shoved, but Shinon benefits quite a bit from it. He can kill an enemy, then someone can go in front of him and shove him out of enemy range, for example.

A small advantage it may be, but it exists nonetheless.

Hence: This is an extremely minor point anyway. I can think of thousands of those, such as Shinon being able to shoot Longbows from 3 spaces away.

Oh? There are 13 unit slots in chapter 18. Add Sothe and Volke for thieving utility (2 thieves > 1), and that leaves 11 slots to be filled, and a team usually consist of 8-12 people. So having 11+ units in the team isn’t impossible.

It's not impossible, but it sure as hell is spreading your (B)EXP thin. Or you can just not use Sothe, and use Chest Keys instead. There's only 3 chests with significant stuff in it according to the site, anyway. This is about as significant as Janaff's own use of a unit slot in Ch18.

Yes it does, Shinon can’t perform after chapter 18 if he isn’t recruited, which means that any and all use of him after that requires fielding Rofl which is very bad.

No, it has nothing to do with his performance itself. It is like saying FE10 Lehran or FE5 Xavier are bad units because of their recruiting requirement. Generally in a debate, you weigh performances of both units when they are both under the player's control. If this matters at all, it is so minor you might as well not have brought it up at all.

To play efficiently, then we’d obviously want to use our exp efficiently as well

For this to work against Shinon, you'd have to prove something like "Shinon killed four enemies Oscar could have taken on and got a level out of, which means Oscar now fails to ORKO this and that and promotes this much later (not even a later level's worth of EXP later, since earlygame enemies are lower leveled than later ones)" or something extremely tiny like that. Easily countered by the fact Shinon can set up kills for others, of course.

Anyway another summary for good measure:

- Shinon has earlygame utility, which can be utilized in such a way that he's a net positive rather easily.

- Both units are better off not attacking on enemy phase, since others are better at it and have the durability to. Unless the enemy is ranged, especially bow'd, in which case Shinon is much better off.

- Janaff stops us from using another laguz such as Mordecai/Muarim to their full potential because he wants the Demi Band, and is worse when using it.

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I feel sorry for you judges....

closerr

Good thing you debate better than you spell.

Sorry, it seems like I missed out a lot of stuff. Whatever, I’ll just address that [shinon protecting Soren/Rhys?] now:

Wtf?

The problem with your example is that all it proves is that Titania > Shinon. Yes, Titania is better than Shinon, but that doesn't make Shinon a negative (unless we only had one unit slot and only Titania and Shinon were candidates, meaning that to make use of shinon I have to ditch Titania...obviously that is not the case).

You completely missed the point, which was that by diverting attacks towards Shinon, you leave enemies alive, and living enemies are more of a threat than dead ones, meaning that by feeding the attacks to Shinon and not Titania, we are hurting the team. Aka, by using Shinon and having him attacked on the enemy phase hurts the team.

Sadly for him, groups are clustered in groups, meaning that to avoid enemy phase action, he has to avoid player phase action too. Want proof? Here it is

I don’t mean to point out the obvious, but the lowest the enemy density gets is pairs in this chapter, and that’s the first few enemies. Can your team beat all those enemies on the player phase to erase Shinon’s possible enemy phase? No. We have a healer, who can’t fight, a mage with loldurability, our lord who faces WTD from nearly the entire map, a low-mov knight who may face some doubling issues from time to time and Titania. Titania can’t erase every single enemy and even if both Gatrie and Shinon kill, It’s not hard to envision Shinon getting attacked.

Of course it's unrealistic. There also aren't only 1-range enemies, there is also terrain, and you also have various other PCs available. And Titania cannot be everywhere at once. If we place Boyd, Ike or Oscar on your example spot "L", pretty much every enemy type is going to live and attack whoever they feel like regardless. But note how in this scenario, Shinon can at least kill one of the enemies, even if you missed against one of them (say hello to Boyd's ~5% chance to miss a 4 avo enemy with Iron Axe, ~15% with Steel, ~27% with Hand).

We can erase 1-2 ranged units on the player phase.

Titania can easily be within the range of multiple enemies at once in this chapter thanks to the fact that she has large mov, canto and the fact that enemies are so bunched together. Using that map, it is easy to see that by putting Titania 2 squares to the left and 1 down of the 2nd closest enemy to the top-right unit spot (he’s 3 squares down, 8 squares right of the boss) can erase tonnes of units (12 out of 16 on the map, but on hard mode both figures are higher). In fact, here’s a strategy which protects every unit save Titania, but she don’t need protecting.

Poistion your units like so:

XRS
TIX
XHG

With X being a plain and H being Shinon. The rest have thier names shortened to just their first initial.

Now, move Soren 5 squares up. Have Rhys follow him so he’s directly below him then shove Soren 1 square up. Then move Gatrie below Rhys and have him rescue Rhys. Then move Ike to where Rhys was and Shinon one space left of Ike. Position Titania in the space I mentioned before and then all the enemies can easily be taken care of as none of them can attack any unit.

You might question the efficiency of this strategy but because this is a 4 turn chapter and Titania takes 2 rounds to kill the boss, there’s no other ways to meet the bexp requirement and protect Rhys and Soren effectively.

Using Shinon would only leave more enemies alive to hurt other units and may draw attention to Soren and Rhys by bringing the enemies closer to them whilst leaving them alive.

*Stuff about provoke*

It works? Didn’t know that.

Oh well, it’s not like the “advantages” you mentioned are true advantages. They’re all just self-improvement, at best. Boyd could use a vulnerary whether or not Shinon killed the enemy in front of him as he could merely kill the enemy on the enemy phase. Or better yet, have Rhys heal him, oh wait, we can’t as Shinon’s standing right behind him.

Directing attackers from Gatrie/Titania isn’t really an advanatage as neither are dying. And the enemy density to the left side of the map isn’t large enougth for Ike/Oscar to be in danger of dying, especially with the thickets found there. So yeah, attracting attacks isn’t an advantage for him either unless you play like a dumbass and Oscar/Ike/Boyd actually face trouble.

What do you even mean by this?

...... I can’t remember.

Or do you mean proving that you cannot neglect Shinon and still do fine? Of course that holds no water, but I never said that. No character is ever neccessary except for things like you need one of Ike/Dragon/Royal to beat Ashnard. And neccessity has no place in a debate, regardless. The point is that Shinon makes it easier and safer to complete chapters.

You said that they were a group of people “That simply can’t do everything on it’s own.” Can’t as in “Can not” meaning that it is impossible for them to do otherwise.

What Shinon does is largely irrelevant to the completion of the chapters. We are basing these characters for their usefulness, if Shinon isn’t useful earlygame, which he’s not as his lack of enemy phase hurts the team, then how can he get bonus points for existing yet not helping? I again point to my Rofl comparison. He’s more available, yet is below Janaff, how can that be?

Btw, Rhys is necessary to heal in chapter 8, Volke is necessary to steal from enemies in chapter 11. Healing and theiving utilities mean more than combat because it is more useful thanks to being rarer and harder to do. Shinon’s availability is a minor win for him, at best, because he just doesn’t do anything spectacular or needed.

However, whenever you can protect him from 1-range threats you don't want him to face, he cannot possibly increase your turn count - in fact, he's closer to decreasing it, since he helps you kill one extra enemy on player phase. Or even if he has to face 1-range threats, it can be a good thing. For example, if Ike would face an existing death chance after 3 enemies, I would rather provoke one of them into attacking Shinon (by putting him next to Ike, for instance), making Ike safe.

You make it sound so easy, yet the grouping of enemies in chapter 4 makes it too hard to only see 1 or 2 enemies through an active player phase. Add in that it’s impossible to decrease the turn count in chapter 5 as it’s always 6 turns, Shinon doesn’t exist in chapter 6 and, once again, enemies are usually clumped together in chapter 7 as shown here. This pic was taken before the reinforcements (And Shinon) arrived, meaning that the enemies group even more. Plus, where Shinon arrives, there are enemies which he can’t protect himself from, like the enemy 1 square right, 4 squares down of chest 3 which can attack Shinon if he’s in the room with chests 2 and 3. If he’s not in their, he’s out in the open and obviously exposed to more enemy fire. Might I add these enemies can be killed much quicker without Shinon dragging them away from the main group or Gatrie.

The comparison to Rolf doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The only thing he has in common with Shinon is the bows lock - but you forget to take into account that his stats are also worse than everyone else's...his bases are about on par with Ike's bases (Ike has 1 more hp/spd, Rolf 2 more skl/res/luk, 1 more def), but joins like 8 chapters later, and his growths are _worse_ (10-15% lower in hp, str, def, res).

Give him a bit of bexp, however, and he can start 2RKOing things. A level 6 Rofl with a forged iron bow who had 1 use with a speed boosting band has 18 Atk and 9 AS. This is enougth to ORKO 5 enemies, and to 2RKO 13 enemies. I admit he’s pretty bad against the knights (both horseback and armoured ones), but that doesn’t change the fact that against the majority of enemies, Rofl is quite good. He fails because of no enemy phase.

You are the one not addressing the point made (that Shinon killing an enemy means someone else won't have to) in any way whatsoever, here. I don't see how others are in any way deterred if Shinon kills an enemy for them.

If you throw Shinon into a bunch of enemies like Titania, then yes, he will slow you down. However, if you take measures for Shinon to not get attacked on enemy phase unless you want him to, he'll pay off the favour by killing or setting up a kill on one enemy for someone else, luring away enemies from people you don't want to face enemies even if they counter, or taking on ranged threats.

If Shinon kills an enemy, he must first get close to said enemy. Thus giving him an enemy phase in open maps like chapter 7, or in chapters with high enemy density like chapter 4.

Heck, in chapter 5, people can still counter ranged foes with the help of a ranged weapon, and if the space in front of a unit is blocked by an enemy with 2 range capabilities, then the ally in front of Shinon faces no enemy phase. This isn’t good, especially since Shinon doesn’t ORKO all the time. We lack enemy stats for chapter 5, but looking at chapter 6, there’s quite a few soldiers Shinon can’t ORKO even with a steel bow and tehse even exist in chapter 4. This slows the team down because we have a unit that now can’t do anything.

You have not even shown he is doing nothing to help a team. You've just said what happens if you put Shinon in enemy range like everyone else. If you're not using a unit in a way to maximize their efficiency, then you can't expect great results. For an obvious overused analogy, look at Reyson. He has equivalent effects as Shinon on enemy phase, but his vigoring is so hax that it makes up for it. Now I'm not saying Shinon is as useful as Reyson is, since they are also quite different (Shinon's not as good as Reyson's vigoring, but then again the consequences of getting him attacked are also a lot more forgiving, particulary against ranged enemies).

That’s the problem – it’s difficult for Shinon to escape enemy phase action which hurts the team if he has an active player phase due to enemy density of map layout/enemy positioning. With Reyson, after vigoring, enemies are killed and thus Reyson is easily protected. This is not the case in this scenario.

The enemies also come in relatively small groups/clusters, not all at once, so I'm not seeing your point. With people like Rhys and Soren on board, we pretty much have to take enemies little by little either way, making protective formations as to keep them from harm. If Boyd/Oscar/Titania/Ike are intercepting enemy movement anyway, you may as well put Shinon behind them rather than in front of them.

For a more practical example, if a group of 6 enemies is 10 spaces away from your main team, are you going to make everyone move their full movement and maximize enemy exposal? More likely, you would put Gatrie so that he faces two, Oscar for another two, and maybe Ike and Boyd for one each, for example. Then maybe 2 of those have 1-2 range, and you don't want to equip hand weapons in fear of losing damage output and avo, so those two would stay alive. Shinon allows you to kill one of these easily, so everyone else can move on to the next formation easily.

And of course, there's natural chokepoints as well where there's simply no excuse not to use Shinon fully, like the plank to the ship in Ch3, or hallways in Ch7, etc.

We can, you know, just move Rhys + Soren out of the way. It’s just not possible to keep Shinon out of said enemy movement ranges. Your example is more unrealistic than my example. There’s never any enemy formations as linear as that, whereas my example fits in with any group situation where Shinon is near Rhys/Soren as you say he is in order to divert enemy attention.

Um... yes there is, being able to be attacked from more than one side is nice whihc can’t be done if we line up our units onthe plank. Plus, it limits player phase options if we do things your way. Now we can’t position Titania near the bandits, heck, it’s impossible for Gatrie/Ike/Titania/Shinon to all attack on the player phase if Gatrie has an enemy in front and to his right side of him whilst being placed on the square just north of the square on the plank, meaning someone gets the short straw, which doesn’t happen without Shinon around to force us to choke hoel everything.

Not taking a unit slot means I can't field a high tier instead of Shinon, for example, and do better. Which is the case when Janaff is around, hence why it's an advantage for Shinon. He gets to be good without replacing someone who could have done better. In the chapters where Shinon and Janaff are being compared, we could also just fill their slot with someone like Stefan, who doesn't really require any work to be superior at that point.

This means that using Janaff/Shinon at that point comes at the opportunity cost (I know you love this term) of using a better unit, whereas Shinon earlygame is practically free other than negligible things such as weapon/vulnerary use. This could mean that if we're trying to maximize our unit's efficiency, I could only use Shinon earlygame then not use him at all later, and all he'd have is positive on his bank account. Janaff later on can try to be better than Shinon, but the team that had Shinon originally can just field Stefan or whoever instead and be much better off.

Shinon does have an opportunit cost when used, and that is the exp he gets. The reason why taking a unit slot from another character is bad is because we are preventing that character from making kills/attacks which outnumber the kills/attacks made by the unit taking the slot. Whilst Shinon doesn’t take a slot, he certainly takes the kills/attacks, making him just as bad, if not worse as the exp given to him is never used again until chapter 19, meaning these resources that we give him are just wasted for 14 chapters.

Sure does. 1 square could allow someone to use Iron/Steel instead of Hand to reach some enemy, or to reach an enemy type they would rather face than the one they'd have to attack otherwise. Or you can shove Soren/Rhys out of harm's way more easily, etc. All kinds of things Shinon can do to help and Janaff cannot.

I’m going to go with a “No u” reply as you seem to have ignored the “Units can reach enemies easily enougth” bit. Shinon’s shoving does nothing for the team that no one else can do.

vykan tells me he did have people attack Shinon despite doing more damage to other PCs or taking a counter from him. I'll take his word over yours. Even if it doesn't work 100% reliably, it sure as hell is nice when it does.

Really? How odd. I could’ve sworn that they didn’t.

Not that it changes anything, as I’ve shown before.

I didn't just show he wasn't the best unit on a team. His atk (and thus offense) is lower than almost everyone else's, _even units considered bad offensively at this point_. 2RKO'ing and "decent durability", as you call it, does make you bad compared to people who are ORKoing and are close to invincible. Or even compared to people who 2RKO consistently instead of borderline so, since then you can use a weaker fighter, or a weaker weapon to finish off after it's weakened, and/or avoid a counter more easily.

Shall I compare Janaff to these great units then? A 20/2 Oscar with a steel lance has the same Atk as base Janaff. Yet has less AS. A level 8 Titania with a steel axe has the same Atk as base Janaff, yet has lower AS. A level 20/1 Marcia with a steel lance has ow.the same Atk as base Janaff yet has 0.25 more AS. A level 20/2 Zihark with a forged iron sword has the same Atk as him and an almost completely superfluous speed lead. Etcetera. These are all great units, albeit without supports. Yes they can be stronger, but the fact is Janaff has his uses in chapter 18 solely for being good. His availability victory almost completely cancels out Shinon’s availability lead as Janaff never hurts his team in the time he’s there and Shinon isn’t, Shinon , however, can hurt the team.

The italisised sentance erases all those enemy stats you provided as they were there so that you can prove that Boyd/Neph/Ilyana are better offensively. As long as Janaff does something that doesn’t negatively impact the team’s turn count, he’s useful in that chapter. This means that janaff is useful in that chapter, whilst Shinon, who’s lack of enemy phase hurts others and the turn count, isn’t as useful.

I'll once more emphasize why I went on and on about this: it shows exposing Janaff on enemy phase is doing your efficiency absolutely no good. All 2-range units will prioritize on him, so they'll go completely uncountered. All bow enemies and ballistae will prioritize on him, which gives him death chances, or at least need of healing. And even 1-range enemies which he counters, he often doesn't kill, whereas if I let them attack someone like Boyd or Nephenee or even Ilyana, I would kill much more of these enemies. In almost any game this has the negative of hurting these other people's durability, but in this game it hardly matters since the enemies suck too much to hurt you. I've shown Ike to be nigh invincible, and Astrid is pretty damn close to it _without her supports_. So they really don't mind taking over the enemy phase that Janaff/Shinon would have had. Which means the main contribution of Shinon/Janaff is on player phase, where Shinon is, as pretty much conceded (quote herebelow), the winner.

So your saying that the fact that Shinon doesn’t have an enemy phase doesn’t matter despite the fact that Janaff is durable enougth to have one?

Bullshit.

Lack of enemy phase limits Shinon’s player phase just as much as it did in the earlygame. In chapter 19 the majority of the enemies are located in the middle of the map (around the central ballistae) and there’s even a group of 4 myrmidons, all aggressive, that are right next to the boss. Chapter 20 has tonnes of fliers and paladins which can easily bypass your front lines thanks to their high mov and the fliers’ ability to bypass terrain. Chapter 21 has various paths, meaning your units are spread out, limiting defensive lines, plus, these multiple pathways allow routes for enemies to sneak behind your frontlines. Chapter 22 has tonnes of priests which limit your allies movement, and is likely 1 turned anyway to get the Ashera stave with ease. Chapter 23 has tonnes of traps which stop you units advancing, making it easy for defensive formations to be prevented if the unit you would have put in a chokehole gets caught by a trap, which Janaff can allow you to bypass by hovering over it, something Shinon can’t do. In chapter 24, Shinon suffers the same problems he did back in chapter 20 – high mov enemies and fliers. In chapter 25, there are boulders which limit where you people can go without getting hurt, not to mention there are still 1-2 fliers about. Chapter 26 is really open, so it’s hard to chokehole and protect Shinon/Janaff on the enemy phase. Chapter 27 may be inside, but there are groups of warriors to the left of your starting positions and a group of generals to your right. Not to mention that the area with the boss in also has quite a few enemies in. I’ve already shown how the multiple routes thing hurts Shinon’s chances of being protected in my discussion of chapter 21. Chapter 28 also has quite a high enemy density, with a good portion of the enemies bundled up in the clearing outside the tower. Finally, come endgame, tehre are various paths to go down and quite a few high mov units like laguz and pallys to bypass defences.

This is ignoring stuff like reinforcements, which can appear behind front lines and force you to alter strategies and noone can remember every little detail about them either. See, we don’t have to alter our positioning and strategy for Janaff as it matters not if he gets an enemy phase as he’s still quite durable, we do for Shinon. Thus an advantage forJanaff, and a pretty big one at that, as creating defensive lines makes turns go longer, and, as you said yourself, units are very, very durable at this point, meaning there’s nothing to stop them just rushing at full pace, Shinon slows you down, Janaff doesn’t.

What you said about Janaff doing absolutely nothing good on the enemy phase is bull too, hurting and killing enemies helps your efficiency, and the rest of your team just can’t do everything on it’s own – maps are too big, too open and have too many enemies for that, unlike what they were in the earlygame.

There's a vast difference between an untransformed laguz and Shinon. The untransformed laguz isn't contributing combat at all, whereas Shinon is. Not on player phase, and not against ranged threats on enemy phase.

However, there are benefits to taking combat, they transform faster. Getting a h4x unit faster is w1n, Shinon is fail all the time.

Why do you insist on using a double standard on me? Astrid apparently wants that Brave Bow against a select few enemies she was often killing anyway so Shinon can't get it, but Janaff greatly hurting or booting off a unit like Muarim or Mordecai doesn't matter?

The opportunity cost of Janaff taking the Demi Band instead of those two tigers is a negative for him, whereas for Shinon's Brave Bow it's more like a net gain. The difference between Brave Bow Astrid and non-Brave Bow Astrid is nearly negligible, coming down to saving one or two forged Steel Bow attacks, or killing all of one boss without needing one more PC to kill it. The difference between non-Brave and Brave Shinon is huge.

My point was that we shouldn’t be using more than one laguz each PT, much like shouldn’t be using both Shinon AND Janaff. Why? It’s inefficient to field a bad character – laguz untransformed are bad and so are both Janaff and Shinon (Though Shinon is worse). However, you could just let these two laguz face enemy phase exposure, and the inefficiency they build up from facing these untis is quickly erased after tranformaing when we’re given hax units. It’s not like they’re not durable enougth to do so, as you agree taht enemy Atk in this game sucks balls.

Besides, the brave bow has limited uses (30) and because he attacks 3-4 times with it, it’s likely to break quickly (in 8-12 rounds o combat), meaning that it’s a small advantage for Shinon, at best.

That has the minor inconvenience of preventing him from attacking on the last turn though.

You coudl have someone else do it, seize/arrive chapters only require 1 unit anyway, and it doesn’t take all of your units to kill a boss, so another unit trading with Janaff matters less.

Bogus. From level 3 to level 4 takes 160 BEXP, which is half of what you get for clearing Ch18 in time alone, and about as much as you get as the clear bonus for that chapter. And as I said, it doesn't have to be BEXP, he can also level up during chapters themselves.

The maximum amount of bexp from chapter 18 is 450. 160 is 35.555% of 450, or “more than a third of the bexp.” I only meant Ch18 anyway.

So can Janaff.

It's large enough to be taken into account. There's roughly ~11 top/high tier units in the current FE9 tier list, for a quick reference, and then 11 more upper mids. Even assuming a team of 10 every time, roughly half of those would be getting the boot in any given playthrough. Astrid is good, but she's nowhere near guaranteed in play.

She’s not guaranteed but she’s pretty close to it. According to this tier list she’s the 10th best unit in the game, so using her doesn’t even have an opportunity cost as she’s considered one of the best. Even if there are good units, she’s better than most of them. Not to mention she’s one of Makalov’s better support partners so if he’s played there’s a good chance we’re playing Astrid to support him. If we were to calculate her chances of being played, I’d say it is around 43/52% considering Titania as 52 and subtracting one for each character down the list. That’s about an ~82.5% chance of her being played. That’s quite a bit.

And the wyverns, but I've already discussed those with much elaboration in my second post. Note how none of these is KOed by 26 atk quadruppling (doesn't even do 25% to Shiharam, about 24 damage to the Knights).

You forgot the bonus damage against Shiharam. She needs the Brave bow or forged bow to kill Shiharam (15*4 = 60 damage overall with brave. 23 * 2 = 46. Bordeline. If Astrid is str screwed, then she needs the brave bwo to kill him) and we all know not needing forging opportunities > needing forging opportunities.

Astrid hardly has any trouble getting nearly all of her level-ups with Knight Ward. First, she can trade it to herself when she's about to level-up pretty easily thanks to huge move, and being able to attack something someone else attacked at 1-range due to having 2-range. Secondly, she uses BEXP like a train: with just your Ch12/Ch13 BEXP, around 400 total, she can skyrocket from 1/0 to 9/0 (369 BEXP). And she also gains like 30 EXP just for attacking something, which she can do pretty much free of penalty thanks to range + Canto (attack something 4 spaces ahead of Astrid, and she has 5 move leftover to move back to someplace safe).

If she has to trade with someone, she has to waste her only time for combat – the player phase. In that turn of the KW doing nothing, Brom/Gatrie/Kieran/Makalov/Oscar/Nephenee/Ike can get a level-up, which now can’t include the KW. And these guys don’t double everything, as the laguz in chapter 15, for example, have high AS, myrmidons are obvious (10+AS) and even some weapon knights has 11-12 AS and then you start getting promoted units.

She’d have probably got no more than 12/20 levels of bexp anyway.

And again, not everything has to come from past chapters. Astrid doesn't stay at whatever level she is - she still grows, and with just an extra Spd level-up, she doubles this Raven.

And again, I repeat that she is doing 93% damage per hit with forged Steel Bow to Ravens, meaning even your most failure attacker could finish them off.

What happens if she doesn’t get this speed up? What happens if she doesn’t level up until all the ravens are killed anyway? Etcetera.

She still doesn’t kill them though. 2 dead enemies or 1 dead + 1 severely weakened enemy > 1 dead enemy.

A forge doesn't arbitrarily break during a Ch17 map just because it's convenient for you, so I don't know why you say that. And Astrid doesn't really have to use her forged bow often (potshots with regular Iron/Steel + BEXP net her plenty of EXP, and after that she mostly wants axes and other special bows), and in this particular case, she only needs one shot of them to kill a Raven with.

Chapter 17 is a 30 turn long chapter. That’s 30 rounds of combat for Astrid. Considering she usually doubles, and how fail her Atk is without a forge (A level 15/0 Astrid with a steel bow has 20 Atk, which is only 2 more than a level 6 Rofl has with a forged iron bow), that forge will erode very quickly.

She can attack with it, Canto one space back, then Shinon can trade it and use it on that same enemy. What a big thing to fuss about. It is a "good thing", but it is also a miniscule thing. Just like the end of chapter Demi Band thing, or just like "saving a forging opportunity", or other extremely minor points that you brought up.

If Astrid uses the brave bow, she’s highly likely to kill the enemy. Not to mention to get it back Astrid then has to trade to get it back, limiting her player phase. Plus, her enemy phase is also limited as if there are too many enemies; Shinon’s lack of enemy phase gets in the way. Which is what i said about hand axes.

Saving a forging opportunity is not minor.

That's good for you, but it doesn't address the fact that Janaff holding Full Guard for a few turns does not solve his weakness on turns he is not holding it.

Also, something I forgot. Janaff cannot equip the Demi Band and the Full Guard at the same time. The problem there is obvious: he's either getting owned by ballistae, or he can't attack at all (and has untransformed stats).

What you are also missing out on is that even though hit rates by those ballistae are low, they also really really hurt. As I said in my second post, for example Marcia loses almost 70% of her hp from one, meaning she is now a unit with about ~10 hp/14 def left. Only 25 atk is now needed to OHKO her, and a combination of any two enemies is enough to finish her off. With that ~55 avo of her, she's facing about ~24% real from a 90 hit enemy, facing already 5% death chances after two attacks by those. A 5% chance of a restart, or continuing without a unit raised for that long is really bad. As opposed to almost completely negligible damage if Marcia had equipped the Full Guard.

True enough. Hit rates are low though.

Or he’s transformed. Or he dodges the ballistae. Or the ballista attacks a different flier. Or the ballista attacks Oscar with provoke etcetera.

5%? Excuse me for not being blown away by the massive number in front of the question mark. That’s 5 out of 100 PT where I have to reset the game. Considering Shinon’s less durable against every other enemy, I’d say he forces us to reset much more times, especially when you consider he attracts enemies like a magnet. Take chapter 19 as an example. Using his defensive stats of 33.5 hp/ 38 avo/14 AS/10 def/ 7 res/10 Ddg at level 3 and Janaff’s 41 HP/20 AS/57 Avo/14 Def/11.5 Res/17 Ddg at level 10:

9x Raven lv 6-8 beak: 34 hp, 20 Atk, 18 AS, 120 hit

Shinon is 2RKO’Ed at 82 displayed. Lol. Janaff is 7RKO’Ed at 63 displayed. Massive win for Janaff here, if you want an exact win, Shinon has a 77.0829564961% chance of death in 2 rounds, Janaff faces 11.03680947571331300975961099% chance of death. Gotta keep Shinon away from these ravens, eh? Shame there’s a tonne of them and due to their high mov and ability to bypass terrain it’s hard to escape them.

1x Warrior lv 3 killer axe: 43 hp, 28 atk, 11 AS, 89 hit, 35 Crit

Shinon is 3RKO’ed at 51 displayed hit and 25 crit. That means he has a 13.1175% chance of dying after the first round of combat. After 2 rounds of combat this jumps to 24.5143119375%. Janaff is 4RKO’ed at 32 displayed and 18 crit. That means he can’t be OHKO’ed unless he’s RNG screwed. His chance of being 2RKO’ed is 4.66292736, just more than a sixth of what Janaff faces. If you thought 4% and 5% chances of death was bad, these numbers must be terrible.

1x Wyvern Rider lv 16-18 steel lance: 33 hp, 25 atk, 10 AS, 98 hit

Shinon is 3RKO’ed at 60 displayed, facing a 32% chance of dying after 3 rounds. Janaff is 4RKO’ed at 41 displayed, meaning his chance of death after 4 rounds is 1.34105872607281%. You say these units are dangerous? They sure aren’t against Janaff, but they are against Shinon.

1x Sniper lv 1 laguz bow [d]: 29 hp, 21 atk, 12 AS, 109 hit

Shinon is 4RKO’ed, Janaff is 3RKO’ed. Yeah i admit Shinon’s better, but the whole idea that Shinon can hide behind others and face ranged enemy has to stop here. He has a 48.54244575863281% chance of dying in 4 rounds, which isn’t great. In fact, it’s less than half the chance that Janaff dies after facing 4 shots from a ballista (21.40123918222323%). Lol.

3x Myrmidon lv 18 iron blade: 29 hp, 22 atk, 14 AS, 105 hit

Shinon has a 38.07016486050625% chance of dying in 4 rounds, Janaff faces a 1.0187739460263588397056% chance to die after 6 rounds.

2* Archer level 16-18 ballista: 18 (36 eff), 100 hit.

Shinon wins(he’s 5RKO’ed, Janaff is 2RKO’ed. Nuff said).

Whilst Shinon is the winner against ballistae and archers, Janaff crushes Shinon when it comes to Fliers. Which are common in the next chapter and in chapter 24. Plus, his higher Ddg comes into play more often once myrmidons start promoting. So yeah, it’s a double standard if you are criticizing Janaff’s weakness to bows when Shinon is so bad against everything else.

Because of this, I’m skipping stuff about ballista, which means I’m straight onto your point about Tanith/Marcia wanting ranged weapons.

They sure as hell do if there's ranged enemies. Not only does it mean you don't have to waste player phases disposing of any ranged enemies that attack them, but it also makes it more likely that those bow enemies go for someone else. Maybe someone who doesn't care, like Ike. Or maybe Provoke Shinon (look, another use for him).

So if they’re not getting attacked by these bow enemies, there’s no harm in giving Janaff the full guard for his first few turns on the map. Having 1 unit that’s fine against both ranged and ballistae and another fine against only ranged > having 1 unit that’s bad against both and one who’s good against both.

Provoke also attracts normal enemies. Plus, Shinon isn’t immune to said bow enemies in the first place – he does care.

What kind of vague statement is this? Nearly all FE9 enemies are "kinda slow" and "easy to kill with right weapons". However, wyverns usually have the highest atk outside of fighters/warriors and bosses, and also more hit than the former, and as I said, they have much more movement range, sometimes 1-2 range, so it's easier for them than any other enemy to attack someone like Mist when you want them to hit a pally or Boyd or whoever.

Slow compared to other units. Warriors/SM’s/Halbs lack the weaknesses to common weapons like bows and wind magic, even pally’s, who have similar mov yet are faster and their major weakness (Horseslayers) aren’t very common. What about siege tome mages? What about feral ones? Heck I’d consider generals better as they are better defensively yet have similar Atk. SM’s can have crit and can double, making the quite deadly also. Etcetera.

This is another problem I have with your bullet point summary: you pretend every point is equal. They're not. A wise man once said "a lead only matters as much as its implications". Imagine if we used this kind of bullet point summary for battle comparisons. "I win 3 res, 5 hit, 16 cev and 1 hp, while you only win 6 atk and 3 spd, we tie everything else. My total > your total".
But I suppose you have a point. Not that it makes much damage, my summary shall only have one more point for Shinon, when there are still the 7 advantages Janaff has over Shinon, and many are more important anyway.
On chokepoints, I only need one guy in front of Shinon, and the only things that can attack him are ranged, which he can counter. Do the same with Janaff, and the enemy will attack him without being countered. In addition, ranged enemies will go for Shinon in the first situation, and non-ranged ones will go on your frontliner. So it's overall more efficient, since every enemy gets countered.
On chokepoints, I only need one guy in front of Shinon, and the only things that can attack him are ranged, which he can counter. Do the same with Janaff, and the enemy will attack him without being countered. In addition, ranged enemies will go for Shinon in the first situation, and non-ranged ones will go on your frontliner. So it's overall more efficient, since every enemy gets countered.

On non-chokepoints, it's still easier to protect Shinon. For example, if there's a group of somewhat spread enemies, Shinon doesn't have to move as far in as Janaff to attack an enemy, meaning he can end his turn further away from other enemies, making it easier to place others so that they can't reach Shinon (either by putting them next to them, or by obstructing their path).

And of course, Shinon can attack over walls and the like. Enemies on another side of the wall could never reach him to attack him up close.

You know what’s even more efficient? Putting a guy with good 1-2 range on the choke point. Like Jill with a forged hand axe, who has 31 Atk at level 20/1 with a Mist support. Heck, the guy in front of Shinon could be Janaff, who has now saved you from an inefficient enemy phase,

Way to overrate 1 square. Honestly, If a group of enemies surrounds you, it’s too difficult to do so, and if these enemies have high mov (Wyverns, laguz, pallys etcetera), may god help Shinon, as he simply won’t be able to evade everything.

Enemies on the other side of a wall usually have ranged attacks. I strictly remember 2 magic users in chapter 21, for instance, which are blocked off from melee users by the river. I can also recall a mage hiding behind sandbags in chapter 23, and archers are on the other side of things like ballistae and onagers.

If he's off by himself to attack a bunch of enemies somewhere else? He can only escape if his enemies can't follow him, so basically if he's fighting wyverns they'll stick to him as they likely have no one else, and any other foot/mounted unit will do as well if they're not hindered by terrain.

Yes, but if I kept Janaff with the group like Shinon, it is easier to heal him (no need to Physic, and if he flies too far off even Physic might not reach him). Plus, among the group, I could have let other, more durable units take enemy phase, who take hits better than Janaff and also dispose of enemies earlier. An enemy that's been killed can't attack anymore, and if Janaff is 2-3RKOing enemies, with only one chance to finish off something on player phase, then every enemy he 2RKOs is getting about 2 shots at him.

He can fly back so he isn’t too far off from a physic, besides, there is likely to be other units (Jill/Marcia/Tanith) which can help protect him in the rare case of him being in danger of dying.

If Janaff and another flier flew on ahead, the enemies they reached are obviously ones blocked by terrain otherwise the rest of the group would be there are well. If you claim that being able to go off on your own a little bit and weaken some enemies is worse than not being able to, I call bullshit.

It's only "pretty good" if others aren't doing better. "No attack being definite to hit him" just means he is relying in luck to survive. Dying in 3 hits to 30% real is obviously better than to 100% real, but it still means he is facing death chances. And if he flies off in ballista range, that stacks up rapidly.

Shinon’s player phase is only better because of crit, which is essentially relying on luck to deal superior damage, and for the first 3-4 turns, Janaff beats Shinon anyway because of his Atk lead (~6 more damage per attack). So with your logic that “Non-definite stuff doesn’t matter,” we might as well call Shinon’s player phase overall Superior to Janaff’s for having a definite offensive lead and not affected by any enemy phase possibility.

Yes, people who ferry are usually people like wyverns/pegs/paladins, meaning Janaff carrying people is of little use. Oh, however, those may not feel like spending another player phase to drop Janaff, so Shinon is easier to do a take -> drop with using another PC.

What the hell is this?

Because Janaff takes 2 player phase to be picked up and dropped off, Shinon wins because he takes 2 player phases to be picked up and dropped off.

Whilst others can ferry others, Janaff can do it and Shinon can’t. Stop comparing Janaff to the team, this isn’t a tier list. Janaff can do something, Shinon cannot. Janaff wins.

Janaff may not "require" being shoved, but Shinon benefits quite a bit from it. He can kill an enemy, then someone can go in front of him and shove him out of enemy range, for example.

That wastes a player phase, which isn’t wasted with Janaff. Janaff wins.

such as Shinon being able to shoot Longbows from 3 spaces away.

This is no different than Shinon having 2 range whilst Janaff has 1, except Shinon’s Atk takes a turn for the worse with it. A level 3 Shinon with a longbow has 15 Atk.... lol. Janaff’s now crushing Shinon offensively.

It's not impossible, but it sure as hell is spreading your (B)EXP thin. Or you can just not use Sothe, and use Chest Keys instead. There's only 3 chests with significant stuff in it according to the site, anyway. This is about as significant as Janaff's own use of a unit slot in Ch18.

We’re not giving Sothe/Volke bexp. Which means we have 11 units fighting for bexp. Giving each an equal share, we have ~14570 bexp /11 = ~1324 bexp for each unit, or about 10 levels. This is more than enougth.

For this to work against Shinon, you'd have to prove something like "Shinon killed four enemies Oscar could have taken on and got a level out of, which means Oscar now fails to ORKO this and that and promotes this much later (not even a later level's worth of EXP later, since earlygame enemies are lower leveled than later ones)" or something extremely tiny like that. Easily countered by the fact Shinon can set up kills for others, of course.

Conceded, though it was minor.

- Shinon has earlygame utility, which can be utilized in such a way that he's a net positive rather easily.

- Both units are better off not attacking on enemy phase, since others are better at it and have the durability to. Unless the enemy is ranged, especially bow'd, in which case Shinon is much better off.

- Janaff stops us from using another laguz such as Mordecai/Muarim to their full potential because he wants the Demi Band, and is worse when using it.

- Janaff has utility in chapter 18 and doesn’t slow the team down.

- Janaff can actually help the team on the enemy phase. And weakening enemies without any negative implications other than “Other units could have done it” is a positive. Shinon hurts enemy phase early game, so it is different.

-Mordy/Muarim can take attacks for an actual payoff, meaning it isn’t a negative like with Shinon.

And some of my own:

- Janaff can fly.

- Janaff rescues allies better yet can still be rescued.

- Janaff shoves allies better.

-Janaff has 1 top tier bond support (Reyson), Shinon has a bottom tier bon support (Rofl)

Janaff > Shinon.

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I have voting privileges, right?

kirsche really seemed to be harping on some really minor points [EXP Shinon eats earlygame, Rolf needing to recruit Shinon, etc] and as a whole seemed kind of scatterbrained/misinformed on a few things [The provoke thing mainly stands out] His attempts to undermine Shinon's earlygame also looked kind of desperate more than anything else.

Voting Mekkah on this one...

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In kirsche's defense, we really have no idea how Provoke works. Sometimes it draws enemies that wouldn't normally attack Shinon to him, sometimes it doesn't. I haven't found any way to predict when it activates and when it doesn't.

I felt Mekkah argued the earlygame better. Sure, Shinon not attacking on the enemy phase isn't as great as what Titania and possibly people like Gatrie do, but that doesn't mean he isn't helpful. Like Mekkah said, Shinon getting attacked is better than Rhys or Soren getting attacked. All kirsche really succeeded in showing was that Titania> Shinon IMO, which doesn't make Shinon useless by any stretch of the imagination. kirsche also let Mekkah get away with some offensive exaggerations, such as no one other than Titania ORKOing. Enemies are often weighed down earlygame, allowing even Gatrie/Boyd to double , and Ike/Oscar can often kill weaker enemies like mages or myrmidions, however kirsche didn't really point this out.

Then there were a lot of comparisons that were included that I felt were pretty unecessary IMO. Since there's only one(slightly more but w/e) chapter between Janaff's jointime and Shinon rejoining, you could have just compared the two directly and skipped the comparisons to the rest of the team entirely. I understand these comparisons when one is available for a long period of time where the other isn't, but this is a very short period of time. I'm going to call Mekkah as the culprit on this one, since it was in his opener. There were a lot of arguments about Mia and forges and yadda yadda yadda, but honestly, it didn't really serve a purpose. The important thing is whether Shinon is better offensively than Janaff, not how "good" Janaff is. kirsche touched on this, "other units can do it better" isn't really the best argument, especially since this was a debate of Low tier characters. We're probably better off not using either of them on the enemy phase(or the player phase frankly), but that's a reason to put Janaff in Low, not Shinon>Janaff.

Then came the direct comparison, which is the most important part of a character comparison IMO. I didn't find Shinon's offensive "leads" very definite at all, he's losing AS, tying or losing Atk, and only winning crit and effective damage on fliers. Mekkah's argument hinged on Shinon having a significantly better player phase than Janaff, but I felt kirsche showed that they were not very far apart.

Then came the discussion of the enemy phase. I didn't find Mekkah's counterargument against Janaff's enemy phase advantage very convincing. Yes, Janaff does less damage than people like Kieran and Jill on the enemy phase, but that just shows he's worse than them, not that he's worse than Shinon. Like kirsche said, Janaff+ Kieran + Jill on the enemy phase > Shinon + Kieran + Jill on the enemy phase. Granted, Janaff's poor offense makes his enemy phase a smaller advantage, but it's better than what Shinon does, except when he Provokes archers and such I guess, but Provoke is unreliable, archers makes up 10% of enemies at best, and Shinon's offense isn't that much better anyway.

There was a discussion if flier utility, which kirsche showed to be generally useful I suppose. I didn't find Mekkah's statistics against bows against Janaff particularly terrible, especially when kirshe showed Shinon's durability is much worse against anything else.

I didn't find kirsche's arguments on Shinons bow monopoly very convincing, Astrid maybe needing the Brave Bow for a few enemies doesn't really cut down on Shinon's options significantly. This took up a lot more of the debate than it should have IMO.

This is very tough to judge overall. I feel Mekkah won the earlygame and some of the less important arguments, but kirsche won the direct comparison between the two. I think I'm going to go with kirsche, I just felt Mekkah's arguments were too centered around Janaff not being the best unit on the team, not Janaff being worse than Shinon.

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Yes, Janaff does less damage than people like Kieran and Jill on the enemy phase, but that just shows he's worse than them, not that he's worse than Shinon.

I'm under the impression that you can't really use that point against Mekkah even if it IS kind of true, because Kirshe never pointed out the flaw in that logic. At least I never saw him do so.

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I'm under the impression that you can't really use that point against Mekkah even if it IS kind of true, because Kirshe never pointed out the flaw in that logic. At least I never saw him do so.

Not exactly the same point, but several statements allude to this:

Besides, I fail to see how not being the best unit on a team makes him bad. He still 2RKOs stuff and has decent durability, as Ive shown. This easily equates to killing stuff and getting more than a level. This pretty much counters anything to do with Janaffs Offensive issues you claim he has. Being worse than the rest of the team =/= being bad. Struggling against enemies = bad. Janaff is the former, but not the latter.
Since when did having 1 range prevent Kieran Jill from attacking. All three can easily get enemy phrases, whcih means it actually looks like this:

Shinon + Kieran + Jill on player phrase, Kieran + Jill on enemy phrase.

Vs

Janaff + Kieran + Jill on player phrase AND enemy phrase.

Janaff wins.

This happens with every unit, including Shinon. And Ive shown how its actually worse for Shinon because of not counter attacking.

kirsche probably should have been more up front about how comparing Janaff to Kieran/Jill/whoever doesn't really matter becuase the only person he has to be better than is Shinon, but the point was in there, to an extent.

Edited by -Cynthia-
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Not trying to change anyone's votes, just pointing out stuff:

Yes, Janaff does less damage than people like Kieran and Jill on the enemy phase, but that just shows he's worse than them, not that he's worse than Shinon.

I'm under the impression that you can't really use that point against Mekkah even if it IS kind of true, because Kirshe never pointed out the flaw in that logic. At least I never saw him do so.

the fact is Janaff has his uses in chapter 18 solely for being good.

Which is saying "Janaff is good in chapter 18, so he is useful."

As long as Janaff does something that doesn’t negatively impact the team’s turn count, he’s useful in that chapter.

This is obvious.

So your saying that the fact that Shinon doesn’t have an enemy phase doesn’t matter despite the fact that Janaff is durable enougth to have one?

This might seem less obvious but it's pointing out that the debate is Shinon < Janaff, so I compared the two by saying one has an enemy phase, the other doesn't. And saying that it is an advantage for Janaff later on:

See, we don’t have to alter our positioning and strategy for Janaff as it matters not if he gets an enemy phase as he’s still quite durable, we do for Shinon. Thus an advantage for Janaff.
What you said about Janaff doing absolutely nothing good on the enemy phase is bull too, hurting and killing enemies helps your efficiency, and the rest of your team just can’t do everything on it’s own – maps are too big, too open and have too many enemies for that, unlike what they were in the earlygame.

This is saying that it doesn't matter if he's worse than everyone else, Janaff still contributes on the enemy phase.

going over to my second post....

I fail to see how not being the best unit on a team makes him bad. He still 2RKO’s stuff and has decent durability, as I’ve shown. This easily equates to killing stuff and getting more than a level. This pretty much counters anything to do with Janaff’s “Offensive issues” you claim he has. Being worse than the rest of the team =/= being bad. Struggling against enemies = bad. Janaff is the former, but not the latter.

The bolded bit should look familiar. It's saying the same thing as the point in my first extract says.

Edited by kirsche
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Voting Mekkah.

I agree with Cynthia about earlygame. For lategame:

There were a lot of arguments about Mia and forges and yadda yadda yadda, but honestly, it didn't really serve a purpose.

Yes it did.

Mekkah’s argument was that we try and maximize enemy phase by having our best units take enemy phase counters. Thus Janaff having “subpar” offence heavily reduces the value of his own enemy phase.

IMO Kirsche seemed to miss this point entirely. For example:

Janaff+ Kieran + Jill on the enemy phase > Shinon + Kieran + Jill on the enemy phase.

Mekkah is saying that in the former case, all (or at least most) enemy attacks are being diverted to Janaff. In the latter, Shinon is protected, so Kieran + Jill are the ones taking counters. Thus, Shinon could beat Janaff in such a scenario even if he had a weaker player phase unless Janaff himself got protection. That’s why Mekkah placed emphasis on Shinon being able to avoid counters easier (eg/ attacking at range, easier to shove and rescue).

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Mekkah’s argument was that we try and maximize enemy phase by having our best units take enemy phase counters. Thus Janaff having “subpar” offence heavily reduces the value of his own enemy phase.

This kind of thinking leads to a lot of issues though, really to "maximize" player and enemy phases we should only use units that have the best offense available with enough durability(like the top 10 offensive units) and anything that falls below this threshold now receives no credit for their enemy phase, because someone else could have done it better. Well yeah, to maximize efficiency we shouldn't be playing either Shinon or Janaff on either phase, but since we're comparing the two we can't simply replace them with other units.

It's still much better for a 1 range enemy to attack Janaff on the enemy phase instead of Shinon, we lose a lot less efficency by Janaff being attacked than if Shinon is(Janaff bringing them down to 1/2 ish is fairly useful, especially in cases where it's a general or something that we likely aren't ORKOing anyway). Having to form a wall around Janaff because his damage output is a little lower than other characters (a lot of characters still 2RKO some enemies as shown, so it's not that different in some situations) is borderline ridiculous IMO. If we leave Janaff out on the enmy phase, 1 range enemies get 2RKOd if we leave Shinon out they get 0RKOd, which gives us a lot more flexibility with Janaff.

@Mekkah Is there a time Vykan hasn't voted for you? I just think some debaters see more eye-to-eye with each other, so their arguments are more palatable. If you're trying to declare me biased or somesuch, I'd be happy to discuss my vote with you.

Edited by -Cynthia-
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Well yeah, to maximize efficiency we shouldn't be playing either Shinon or Janaff on either phase, but since we're comparing the two we can't simply replace them with other units.

You're mixing up 2 separate issues. To maximize overall efficiency, we wouldn't use either character. However, if we assume they're fielded, we then attempt to optimize their usefulness. There's nothing wrong with either character attacking on player phase since damage > no damage. However, the second either character has an enemy phase, they're hurting the team's overall damage output. There are cases where this isn't true, such as if Janaff is dealing with reinforcements or killing enemies that aren't interfering with the map's goal (eg/ Ike seizing), but of course that's minor.

It's still much better for a 1 range enemy to attack Janaff on the enemy phase instead of Shinon, we lose a lot less efficency by Janaff being attacked than if Shinon is

There are less repercussions for Janaff facing enemy phase attacks, but mistakes are something we aim to minimize.

Mekkah Is there a time Vykan hasn't voted for you?

I've voted against Mekkah in Janaff vs Volug and would probably have voted against him in Eirika vs Joshua on FEP if he didn't forfeit.

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So if someone isn't ORKOing, they must avoid all enemy phase action or they're hurting efficiency? This seems a little harsh, since FE9 is not so easy that everyone ORKOs consistently, even the high tiers, but I suppose we can agree to disagree.

I tried to apply the same logic to Shinon's earlygame that I did to Janaff's lategame. Sure, Shinon< Titania, but that doesn't mean he's worse than an empty slot. Janaff< [insert higher tier character here] offensively, but that doesn't make him worse than Shinon.

Edited by -Cynthia-
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So if someone isn't ORKOing, they must avoid all enemy phase action or they're hurting efficiency? This seems a little harsh, since FE9 is not so easy that everyone ORKOs consistently, even the high tiers, but I suppose we can agree to disagree.

In ideal circumstances yes, but your guys split into groups, one of your better units might’ve started in an awkward position in the beginning formation, and what have you. Moreover, having the 15th best offensive unit take counters isn’t much different from the 9th best, so it’s an acceptable loss usually. The problem is, Janaff’s offense is nowhere near such a level, so giving him an active enemy phase isn’t ideal.

I never said Janaff’s enemy phase wasn’t an advantage, but it shouldn’t be blown out of proportion, such as using that alone as a reason for Janaff being better.

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I'm not going to bother to try to change Cynthia's vote but I'm mildly irritated to say at least at the shit you're letting kirsche let off with in his closer without giving it any consideration at all.

First, Shinaraniram or whatever the wyvern boss' name is has Full Guard, so he doesn't take effective damage from bows. kirsche insisted he did.

Second, look at this:

Whilst others can ferry others, Janaff can do it and Shinon can’t. Stop comparing Janaff to the team, this isn’t a tier list.

The standards for debating a unit on a tier list and in an official debate have always been the same, except for the part where in an official debate you can get away with bullcrap if the opponent doesn't catch it. In this case, kirsche posted bullcrap in his closer, but nobody calls him out on it.

Or:

kirsche:

except shoving [earlygame], which doesn’t matter as units can easily reach enemies quick enougth and 1 square doesn’t do anything for anyone.

me:

Sure does. 1 square could allow someone to use Iron/Steel instead of Hand to reach some enemy, or to reach an enemy type they would rather face than the one they'd have to attack otherwise. Or you can shove Soren/Rhys out of harm's way more easily, etc. All kinds of things Shinon can do to help and Janaff cannot.

kirsche:

I’m going to go with a “No u” reply as you seem to have ignored the “Units can reach enemies easily enougth” bit. Shinon’s shoving does nothing for the team that no one else can do.

I explained exactly what one extra square can do for someone else. Why does he get to go "no u" at this?

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First, Shinaraniram or whatever the wyvern boss' name is has Full Guard, so he doesn't take effective damage from bows. kirsche insisted he did.

Whoops.

The standards for debating a unit on a tier list and in an official debate have always been the same, except for the part where in an official debate you can get away with bullcrap if the opponent doesn't catch it. In this case, kirsche posted bullcrap in his closer, but nobody calls him out on it.

Whatever, it's minor, and the point was that comparing units to the team doesn't show their usefulness compared to another unit, and this was Janaff vs Shinon.

I explained exactly what one extra square can do for someone else. Why does he get to go "no u" at this?

Because you didn't bother to show that enemies actually needed the square after I said they didn't. Not to mention that it was kinda of a bullcrap statement anyway, it was more about what shoving others could do for the team (Getting soren/Rhys out of the way, helping otehr units choose which enemy to kill) and you agree'd (Or at least didn't refute) that Janaff was the better shover, so you just gave me a tonne of reasons why Janaff > Shinon.

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First, Shinaraniram or whatever the wyvern boss' name is has Full Guard, so he doesn't take effective damage from bows. kirsche insisted he did.

It's a pretty minor point overall, considering it's how Astrid does against Shiharam, which didn't have much relevance in Shinon vs. Janaff and I credited you with Shinon having a bow monopoly regardless. Shiharam having Full Guard is a point against Shinon anyway, for obvious reasons.

Whilst others can ferry others, Janaff can do it and Shinon can’t. Stop comparing Janaff to the team, this isn’t a tier list.

The standards for debating a unit on a tier list and in an official debate have always been the same, except for the part where in an official debate you can get away with bullcrap if the opponent doesn't catch it. In this case, kirsche posted bullcrap in his closer, but nobody calls him out on it.

Judges can't really be expected to quote every line of the debate they had issues with, I try to just focus on the major points. And he actually makes a good point here, yet again you're comparing Janaff to everyone else--not Janaff to Shinon. I saw a lot of Janaff is worse than X unit in this debate, but very little Shinon>Janaff considering those were the two characters you were comparing. Ferrying is indeed an advantage for Janaff over Shinon, and the number of units that can do it is fairly limited, at least compared to Shoving which Janaff can also do.

I explained exactly what one extra square can do for someone else. Why does he get to go "no u" at this?

He apparently covered it earlier by saying that shoving utility isn't very unique. Again, I didn't feel this point was very important, sure Shinon can Shove earlygame, it's vaguely useful sometimes, lots of people can do it, and that means Shinon doesn't attack that turn. It's a very minor point.

@Vykan There were also Janaff's flight and durability leads to consider, not just the enemy phase.

Edited by -Cynthia-
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@Vykan There were also Janaff's flight and durability leads to consider, not just the enemy phase.

I'm quite aware of that. His opening post alone covers earlygame utility, faster levelling, growth rate advantage, bow monopoly, crit lead, better offence against fliers, and a couple other things. I don't need to bring up every argument from both sides to say that I thought Kirsche didn't address some of Mekkah's core points.

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I agree, just wanted to say enemy phase wasn't the sole reason I thought kirsche's arguments are better. Differences of opinion are whyw e have multiple judges I suppose.

Edited by -Cynthia-
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It's a pretty minor point overall, considering it's how Astrid does against Shiharam, which didn't have much relevance in Shinon vs. Janaff and I credited you with Shinon having a bow monopoly regardless.

It was about justifying Shinon getting the Brave Bow. kirsche insisted he couldn't because Astrid wanted it for Shitheadriram.

Shiharam having Full Guard is a point against Shinon anyway, for obvious reasons.

This was never ever ever brought up in the whole debate, so you have no reason at all to say it.

Judges can't really be expected to quote every line of the debate they had issues with, I try to just focus on the major points. And he actually makes a good point here, yet again you're comparing Janaff to everyone else--not Janaff to Shinon. I saw a lot of Janaff is worse than X unit in this debate, but very little Shinon>Janaff considering those were the two characters you were comparing. Ferrying is indeed an advantage for Janaff over Shinon, and the number of units that can do it is fairly limited, at least compared to Shoving which Janaff can also do.

To evaluate how useful Janaff's enemy phase is, I have to look at how my team would fare if Janaff was not running enemy phase. The results are better. This is a perfectly viable point that I feel kirsche never addressed properly.

He apparently covered it earlier by saying that shoving utility isn't very unique.

No, he didn't. I ctrl-f'd "shov" and here's all the things he said about shoving:

except shoving, which doesn’t matter as units can easily reach enemies quick enougth and 1 square doesn’t do anything for anyone.
Those who ferry people are likely pally’s/fliers, who can all carry Janaff anyway. As for the shoving thing, the fact is that Janaff can shove more people (Including Shinon) and doesn’t usually require shoving since he can just fly over terrain obstacles.
Now, move Soren 5 squares up. Have Rhys follow him so he’s directly below him then shove Soren 1 square up.

Only the final sentence has anything closely resembling "shoving is not unique". You are reading things that aren't there. You're a judge. You can't do that.

Again, I didn't feel this point was very important, sure Shinon can Shove earlygame, it's vaguely useful sometimes, lots of people can do it, and that means Shinon doesn't attack that turn. It's a very minor point.

These are your arguments. Not kirsche's. You're not supposed to judge on what you think, but what kirsche wrote.

In addition, it may have been a minor point, but he handled it terribly. And in addition, it was in his closer, meaning as a judge you should see that for yourself, as I have no way to point it out in the debate itself. Judges are supposed to check the last post for bullshit, but I'm getting the idea you only skimmed it at most.

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