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Tino (Muarim) vs B2BD (Volke)


Vykan12
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...And the thief mugs the tiger of all his belongings, casually downs a bottle of vodka, and walks out.

Note that this is going to be brief, as this entire debate really boils down to how much I can hype Volke's thief utility.

That aside, let's look at Volke's primary counter to Muarim: Thief utility. It gets you $$$. LOTS of it. Just how much? Let's look at this tasty list of goodies provided by one Vykan:

Chapter 10: Statue frag, counter scroll, javelin, short axe, steel lance.

Chapter 13: Killer bow, elfire, laguz axe, longsword, occult, energy drop, speedwing.

Chapter 14 (desert)*: Boots, white gem, shine, physic, silver blade, statue frag, guard scroll.

Chapter 15: Ashera icon, silver lance, physic, bolting, full guard, dracoshield.

Chapter 18: Recover, wrath, silence.

Chapter 21: Stiletto, parity, energy drop, talisman, corrosion, thoron, master seal, brave sword.

Chapter 22: Sleep, nosferatu, spirit dust, silver bow, tomahawk, bolagnoe

Chapter 27: Spear, fortify, resolve, bolganoe, laguz axe, physics, silver lance.

Volke's getting most or all of this for the team, Sothe could probably get more than three or four if his durability wasn't epic blow, which means he has difficulty reaching chests in a turn-efficent manner as he absolutely cannot afford to be exposed to attack on the enemy phase. Anyway, not only does he net you about 20k for the team [And that was only counting the White Gem, two statue frags, counter and corrosion] he also gives you some really cool combat stuff [brave Sword, boots, physics, resolve] and this is just the most notable stuff he nabs you. How much of this is Muarim getting for the team? None.

[And yes, before you bring it up, other people can find crap in the desert. Volke's chance of doing this is still 100% as opposed to the meh chance of everybody else and the low movement doesnt help, so he's still going to find most of it. As for chests/chest keys, Volke's 50 a lock fee is less costly than a use of half a chest key or a door key and keys aren't even buyable like in other FEs, so don't think you can brush away Volke's pick ability just like that.]

Muarim would have to be terribly epic in combat to offset all this stuff Volke gets. Is he? Absolutely. ...When he's transformed. Tiger gauge blows something awful in this game [it takes him several turns before he can even attack] I don't know how long he lasts once he gets there, but I'm pretty sure he's going to untransform at least once a chapter, and once is all he needs to blow away a ton of his utility. This is more than offsetting his cool combat performance while he's there.

Oh, know what else you can do with all the cool funds Volke gets for the team? Forge crap. Wanna see how cool forges are?

Lvl 18 Neph, Forged Silver: 32 ATK, 17 AS

20/2 Jill, Silver Axe: 34 ATK, 17 AS

Good god, this makes Neph, an upper middle tier unit, almost identical offensively to Jill, who is two tiers up on her. And that's when Jill has a damned level lead WITH promotion bonuses. All of this for a tad less than 4500, chump change compared to the surplus Volke nets you? Sign me up!

Then you can create a crap load of uber 1-2 range weapons for guys that would need them, Neph [Vantage+Wrath+Forged Javelin=RAPE] and Oscar come to mind straight away, though others can always say yes to more uber 1-2 range goodness.

About the only thing Muarim is doing to make the team stronger like this is...sitting around in the back of your army waiting to transform, while units that are just as powerful as him thanks to the forges that you could afford due to Volke's theiving are ripping everything apart just fine. Yeah, the Demi Band. Muarim's not entitled to it at all. Lethe and Ranulf tend to untransform fairly quickly and they want it just as badly as that's just a big a problem as taking a long time to transform, if not more so.

Volke's thieving and what he does to improve the overall performance of the team via getting them stat boosters and money for forges plus all sorts of other cool weapons in chests>Muarim's inconsistent combat.

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Note: I already wrote an opener before you opened, so all I did was change this a little bit and added a few quotes at the end. It should counter everything, though.

So, manly beastman vs. thief it is. Interesting, I daresay.

Volke joins in ch 10. He can be useful there if your aim is to gain the BEXP, but it's still arguable whether the BEXP > the CEXP from that chapter, since there are quite a lot of enemies to gangrape down the road there. That's a lot of CEXP. So if the aim is not to get the maximum BEXP in this chapter, Volke's suddenly a lot less useful. His combat sucks, doors can be opened by hitting it with whatever you want, and there are two chest keys available as well. Considering those keys have two uses and there are five chests, Volke is vital to opening only one. And even then, we don't really care about that javelin so he's not necessary for anything. He's just sitting there sucking pretty hard.

Then there's ch 11, where he's but dead weight. His combat still sucks, and there's nothing he can open or whatever. The same goes for ch 12. Then he's pretty damn useful in ch 13. He won't take all credit for it thanks to Sothe's existence, though. Plus, using both Sothe and Volke to gather the items is much more efficient than using just Volke for rather obvious reasons. Plus, a raven might take one item from a chest, meaning Volke definitely won't get credit for it thanks to fail combat. Then ch 14 rolls around, where he's massive fail again.

Then ch 15 holds practically the same dilemma as ch 10 does. Is the BEXP better to have than the CEXP or not? If our aim is to get the BEXP, Volke really isn't very useful, as it means we'll probably want to beat the chapter ASAP, meaning he can probably get one item, which is probably a useless coin. And otherwise he may be able to get a physic or shine or something. No matter what he gets us, his benefit is severely limited. If our aim is not to get the most BEXP, he's not much better, really, which is the main difference between ch 10 and ch 15; his combat sucks, and he is in the middle of strong laguz, some of which can fly over his possible defenders to still attack him. Then he's not the only one who can get items, either. There's Sothe, who has the same chance to obtain items as Volke, and otherwise all other units you bring. Of course their chances of finding one of those buried items is a lot more slim than Volke's chances to do the same, but it does mean Volke doesn't get as much credit for items as people might expect him to get.

So Volke sucked royally in three chapters, got us some nice stuff in two chapters, and is good/bad dependent on what our aim is in one chapter. Overall, that doesn't sum up to something very good. Of course obtaining many items, some of which are rather valuable, is a large benefit to the team and is hard to weigh against sucking so hard in three chapters. It doesn't really matter anyway, since Muarim is pretty much guaranteed to kick Volke's ass anyway, no matter if Volke was an overall benefit to the team in those six chapters or if he was an overall average unit.

Now then, ch 16. Our furry friend has just joined. His offense looks like this with the demi band: 29 atk, 17 spd. That's pretty damn friggin' sweet, if you ask me. His offense could be the best of all units at your disposal. Stefan is probably the only one who might beat him, with 27 atk and 25 spd with a steel sword. Of course, if Muarim decides to stay away from the demi band, he'll have quite a sizeable atk lead (5, to be precise) while his 18 spd will probably be enough to double practically everything anyway. Not that 17 spd isn't, so Muarim probably still is better than Stefan offensively. Looking at some other offensively good units, lvl 18 Boyd has 29 atk/13 spd (B Mist) with steel, lvl 18 Kieran has 25 atk/13 spd with steel, lvl 18 Oscar has 23 atk/14 spd with steel and lvl 7 Titania has 27 atk/17 spd (B Mist) with steel. He's better than all of them. Now look at Volke's puny offense. At lvl 20 (which is obviously way too high for him at this moment), Volke has 19 atk/19 spd with that little knife of his. Muarim deals 20 more damage per round. Massive leads for the win. And then you still need to lower his level and Muarim wins by an even larger landslide.

So Muarim's offense is not only a hell of a lot better than Volke's, it's also better than all of your other units' offense, making Muarim an incredibly large asset to the team.

Defensively, Muarim is a beast once again. 45 hp/14 def/7 res/45 avo is incredibly. Taking some durable units like lvl 16 Brom who has 34 hp/18 def/5 res/26 avo (C Boyd/C Nephenee), lvl 18 Kieran who has 34 hp/12 def/3 res/61 avo (B Oscar/C Marcia), lvl 18 Oscar who has 34 hp/13 def/5 res/77 avo (A Ike/B Kieran) and lvl 7 Titania who has 38 hp/16 def/12 res/48 avo (B Mist), and we see that he's very close to or possibly even better than these characters. Of course, even if he would be significantly worse, 45 hp/14 def still allows for anything but facetanking. Plus, when he rips off that demi band, he gets +1 def/+1 res/+2 avo when transformed, making his durability raep even more. Volke? I find 32 hp/9 def/4 res/49 avo in the face of Muarim's defensive parameters rather pathetic. Considering he's probably like four levels lower (frankly, it could be more than that), giving him only 29 hp/8 def/4 res/43 avo, he looks even more retarder than when I made him lvl 20.

So again, Muarim's durability is pretty top-notch, while Volke's is rather puny. 23 atk 3HKOes him, while 16 atk already 4HKOes him. Those same atk values 5HKO and 23HKO Muarim respectively. Talk about a huge-ass durability lead.

So we've got Muarim's massively superior combat against Volke's thieving. Things like the dracoshield and full guard are pretty nice to have, but the ashera icon (lol +1 hit/+2 avo) is practically worthless, unless we suddenly care about getting even more money on our hands, and so is the bolting. First of all it only has five uses, and second of all it is incredibly heavy. That leaves the silver lance and physic staff. Physic is very nice, but becomes largely superfluous later on when healing in general becomes more and more reduandant, and the silver lance is more or less superfluous. The latter is not so bad, I suppose, but since it has 20 uses (like 8-10 kills), I wouldn't call it something significant.

So we have an incredibly large combat lead against netting the team +2 def and definite protection against arrows for our fliers. Well, considering we may have Jill, Marcia and Tanith all in play simultaneously, or at least two of them (the chances are rather high, since all three of them are among the best units in the game), it's still only useful for 33%/50%, since they have to trade it around all the time.

I can spend a gazzilion of pages in word on how vastly superior combat stacks up against that, but I don't think it's necessary to explain why Muarim is the clear victor here.

So let's get to the point where Volke is promoted, ch 20. Before we do that though, let's look at what he actually gets us in chapter 17 through 19. In chapters 17 and 19 he gets us nothing at all. Ch 18 rewards us with a recover and a wrath scroll. Not listing the silence since I've never found it to be really useful in this game. It's not like it's one of the older games where magic completely destroys your units in one or two attacks. Anyway, being a great combatant in three chapters is a lot better than netting the team those two things. Doesn't require any further explanation, I'd say. Ch 20 is once again a chapter where Volke isn't going to net us anything. So let's get to their stats.

lvl 11 Muarim (C Zihark): 48 hp, 30 atk, 18 spd, 15 def, 8 res, 55 avo

lvl 1 Volke: 34 hp, 23 atk, 21 spd, 11 def, 6 res, 53 avo

Looks like Volke gets raped massively. 14 hp/4 def/2 res/2 avo is a gigantic defensive lead, while 9 atk clearly > 3 spd when that 18 spd is enough to double the majority of the enemies anyway, so that's an 18 damage lead per round. Impressive. Volke managed to close that gap by a massive 10%.

Then Volke's thieving utility is great in ch 21, that I must admit. It's a lot less great in ch 22 due to the existence of two dropped chest keys (plus the sleep staff, nosferatur and the spirit dust aren't the most useful anyway), though. Then the next time his thieving utility is actually useful again is in ch 27. So overall he has two more chapters in which he can use his thieving utility. Does that > being massive superior statistically for all that time? Don't think so.

Of course, Muarim's massive offense deterioriates when nearing the getting closer to the end of the game, but he still actually has incredible durability, also because of that sexy Zihark support for +22 avo. He may also get a Largo support if he's played, giving him an additional 10 avo. That's a total of +32 avo on top of his 61 avo already. That's pretty sweet, no?

So for kicks, let's calculate the chance of Largo and Zihark being played at the same time. This is assuming Muarim is played anyway (thus reducing the amount of options to 42 characters) and that the best unit has a 100% chance of being played, and each character below it 100/42 percentage points lower chance.

So Zihark is around the fifteenth unit on that list while Largo is around the thirtieth on that list. These are rough estimations, of course, but they should do well enough. Zihark has a 0.6666667 chance of being played, while Largo has a 30.95 chance of being played. This means the chance both are played is a little over 20%. In other words, Muarim has around a 20% chance of having over 90 avo. In the other 80% of the cases, Muarim still has over 80 avo, which is still reliable.

Note: That's all without mentioning the chest keys you might've left from ch 7. So Volke realistically gains the team even less. Just one or two items, but it's still sometheing worth pointing out.

It gets you $$$.

Sorry, but since when did we care about getting even more money again?

You get a total of 90,000 funds solely from beating certain chapters: 20k from beating ch 9 and 70k from beating ch 19. Then there are also quite a few useless items you find in houses or that are dropped by enemies (or items in chests before Volke joins).

Note: useless in the sense of you being very unlikely to use them, and the items thus being a lot better to simply sell.

Note 2: Listing ch 15 as well since Volke is not the only one who can obtain items there. I'll cover this further later in my post.

ch 5: ashera icon: 4k

ch 7: miracle: 500G

ch 8: red gem: 2.5k

ch 9: arms scroll, talisman: 8k

ch 12: arms scroll, coin x 3, secret book x 2, blue gem: 22k + 3G

ch 15: coin x 2, statue frag, white gem: 9k + 2G

ch 16: gamble: 1k

ch 18: coin x 2: 2G

That totals up to 47,007 additional funds, giving you a total of 137,007 funds without Volke's help. And that's assuming Rhys is played. Since if he isn't, things like Nosferatu and Shine (of which you can find a few) also get added to it. And I also ignored some skills like shade or provoke that you may or may not use. So if anything, it can only be higher than the 137k + 7G. Not that it's necessary, but still.

Using a ten-man team, that gives every unit >13k of cash. That's more than enough to get all weapons necessary, especially since there's no such thing as a funds rank and promotion items here.

So the fact that it gets us extra cash matters nothing at all.

I guess I'll have to explain why some of those are useless.

Ashera icon: Who cares about +1 avo/+1 hit so much again?

Miracle: Terrible activation rate, and the user may still not survive the attack.

Red gem: Self-explanatory.

Arms scroll: Weapon levels rise quickly enough anyway. Mist is the only one who might really need them.

Talisman: While res is important, high HP is sufficient to survive magic attacks. And lower HP units generally have sufficient res.

Coin: Self-explanatory (but mainly listed for the lulz).

Secret book: Who cares about +2 hit so much again?

Blue gem: Self-explanatory.

Statue frag: lol @ con.

White gem: Self-explanatory.

Gamble: Unreliable hit is never good.

Tiger gauge blows something awful in this game [it takes him several turns before he can even attack]

Demi band. While it's true you need to share it, the chance that either Lethe or Ranulf is being played is a good deal lower than the chance of Muarim not being played. Besides, why would we use more than one Laguz? All it does is provide the team two inconsistent fighters. When we have just one laguz, we have one consistent fighter. Muarim is easily the best of the laguz, so it's not unlogical that Muarim is the first choice for the demi band.

Plus, it's not like not having Lethe or Ranulf is such a terrible thing that taking the demi band is a negative.

Oh, know what else you can do with all the cool funds Volke gets for the team? Forge crap.

We've got plenty of money for it anyway. Units can have two 2.3k-4.5k forges and still be able to buy more than enough normal weaponry. Volke's stealing and picking definitely isn't necessary for that.

Muarim is a superior combat unit throughout the entire game. Volke has his thieving utility in some chapters, but in most of the chapters he's available in he's mostly dead weight due to his fail combat parameters. He nets the team some valuable items, but those items can also be obtained by others in some cases, so he doesn't even get credit for all of them. Muarim's superior combat capabilities over the entire course of chapters he's available in is far superior than the items Volke nets us.

EDIT: Few typo fixes.

Edited by Tino
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  • 2 weeks later...

being busy sucks

Volke joins in ch 10. He can be useful there if your aim is to gain the BEXP, but it's still arguable whether the BEXP > the CEXP from that chapter, since there are quite a lot of enemies to gangrape down the road there. That's a lot of CEXP. So if the aim is not to get the maximum BEXP in this chapter, Volke's suddenly a lot less useful. His combat sucks, doors can be opened by hitting it with whatever you want, and there are two chest keys available as well. Considering those keys have two uses and there are five chests, Volke is vital to opening only one. And even then, we don't really care about that javelin so he's not necessary for anything. He's just sitting there sucking pretty hard.

All this being said, even if we are saying fuck it and trigger the reinforcements, Volke opening crap faster is still helping us get through the chapter faster, which means moar BEXP.

also, I feel Volke's "uselessness" is being exaggerated:

1x Soldier lv 11 (javelin)

28 hp, 14 atk, 5 AS, 80 hit, 12 avo, 8 def, 3 res, 4 crit, 2 cev

1x Soldier lv 12 (iron lance)

29 hp, 15 atk, 9 AS, 101 hit, 21 avo, 9 def, 3 res, 4 crit, 3 cev

2x Archer lv 12 (steel bow, chest key [1d])

25 hp, 16 atk, 7 AS, 99 hit, 17 avo, 8 def, 5 res, 6 crit, 3 cev

I know I know, these are actually C9 enemy stats, but Vykan doesn't have stats for C10 up, and there shouldn't be a huge variation between these two chapters.

anyway, Volke actually doubles all of these guys. Granted doubling with 14 ATK isn't anything to write home about, but it's at least enough to contribute something, like finishing off weakened units or something, so your better combat guys can kill something instead of killing something left at 2 HP or something like that. His durability's not bad either: he's getting 3HKOd at worst by the archer and gets 4RKOd by the other two enemies. 33 avo also isn't horrible: He's running 47 on the soldier and 66 on the archer, which isn't bad at all considering it's not like he's awful concretely. He's obviously no god but he's definitely not faring close to as bad as, say, Rofl, in the sense that he can actually do something in combat.

Tossing Volke a level via BEXP'ing [And probably a band of some sort since BEXP, but it won't change his level up any] him from however much EXP he got here to 100, he'll have gained HP, spd, and str.

Then there's ch 11, where he's but dead weight. His combat still sucks, and there's nothing he can open or whatever.

That's a bit too much of a generalization for me.

1x Fighter lv 1 [v] (iron axe)

24 hp, 13 atk, 0 AS, 81 hit, 0 avo, 3 def, 0 res, 1 crit, 0 cev

1x Fighter lv 1 [v] (hand axe)

24 hp, 12 atk, 0 AS, 61 hit, 0 avo, 3 def, 0 res, 1 crit, 0 cev

2x Myrmidon lv 1 [v] (iron sword)

17 hp, 9 atk, 2 AS, 100 hit, 4 avo, 3 def, 0 res, 2 crit, 0 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 2 [v] (iron sword)

18 hp, 9 atk, 3 AS, 102 hit, 6 avo, 3 def, 0 res, 3 crit, 0 cev

1x Lance Knight lv 11 (steel lance)

28 hp, 19 atk, 6 AS, 85 hit, 15 avo, 11 def, 4 res, 3 crit, 3 cev

3x Lance Knight lv 12 (steel lance)

27 hp, 20 atk, 7 AS, 85 hit, 17 avo, 11 def, 4 res, 3 crit, 3 cev

3x Lance Knight lv 13 (steel lance)

29 hp, 20 atk, 8 AS, 85 hit, 19 avo, 11 def, 4 res, 3 crit, 3 cev

1x Lance Knight lv 14 (steel lance)

28 hp, 20 atk, 8 AS, 90 hit, 20 avo, 12 def, 5 res, 4 crit, 4 cev

3x Sword Knight lv 13 (steel sword)

28 hp, 18 atk, 9 AS, 93 hit, 22 avo, 12 def, 4 res, 3 crit, 4 cev

1x Bow Knight lv 11 (iron bow)

27 hp, 16 atk, 10 AS, 100 hit, 23 avo, 11 def, 4 res, 3 crit, 3 cev

2x Knight lv 13 (steel lance)

29 hp, 21 atk, 2 AS, 89 hit, 7 avo, 16 def, 5 res, 4 crit, 3 cev

1x Knight lv 12 (javelin)

29 hp, 17 atk, 4 AS, 76 hit, 10 avo, 17 def, 5 res, 3 crit, 2 cev

1x Soldier lv 9 (steel lance)

26 hp, 17 atk, 1 AS, 88 hit, 4 avo, 7 def, 3 res, 4 crit, 2 cev

2x Soldier lv 10 (steel lance)

28 hp, 18 atk, 3 AS, 90 hit, 8 avo, 8 def, 3 res, 4 crit, 2 cev

2x Myrmidon lv 9 (steel sword)

23 hp, 16 atk, 6 AS, 97 hit, 14 avo, 5 def, 2 res, 5 crit, 2 cev

1x Mage lv 12 (fire)

23 hp, 13 atk, 9 AS, 111 hit, 20 avo, 5 def, 10 res, 3 crit, 2 cev

1x Mage lv 12 (wind)

22 hp, 12 atk, 10 AS, 118 hit, 22 avo, 5 def, 10 res, 4 crit, 2 cev

1x Thief lv 3 (knife)

17 hp, 6 atk, 10 AS, 107 hit, 21 avo, 2 def, 0 res, 6 crit, 1 cev

1x Thief lv 6 (knife)

20 hp, 7 atk, 12 AS, 112 hit, 26 avo, 3 def, 1 res, 7 crit, 2 cev

2x Priest lv 12 (heal)

24 hp, 7 AS, 20 avo, 3 def, 15 res, 6 cev

Mackoya lv 5 (laguzslayer, iron bow, master seal [d])

35 hp, 22 atk, 13 AS, 108 hit, 31 avo, 14 def, 12 res, 7 crit, 5 cev

Turn 5 Reinforcements:

2x Wyvern Rider lv 12 (iron lance)

29 hp, 19 atk, 7 AS, 100 hit, 16 avo, 14 def, 4 res, 4 crit, 2 cev

Total enemy count: 32 + 2 reinforcements + Zihark + Jill + Black Knight = 37

Note: The Black Knight comes out after Mackoya has been defeated.

Volke's one rounding the fighters and low lvl myrms, the lvl 3 thief, two rounds the soldiers and mages [but comes close on the mages] and also 2RKOs the non sucky myrmidons.

Defenisvley, the lance knights and armors are the only thing 2RKOing him. Also note there's a lot of steel weapons here, so even when Volke is 2RKOd, a slightly rare occurance, his 35 avo is still coming into play. All and all? I'd say he is doing pretty damn good for a unit who supposedly sucks at combat, seeing as how I never even intended to bring combat into this to begin with.

Hell, he does so well in this chapter, I don't see an issue with tossing him another level for C12, although that didn't really do anything for him except luck...and also he can't double any of the ravens in C12 so yeah his offense does blow here I admit, although he's still getting 3RKOd so he can function as some sort of wall, at least, meaning he's not 100% useless in this chapter.

This is a fairly CEXP heavy chapter, anybody who can fight should have gotten a ton out of it: So i'm not sure it can be considered favoritism if we give Volke a levels worth of BEXP, plus whatever he got from tanking. HP, str, skl, spd, def, woot.

2x Soldier lv 10 (iron lance)

27 hp, 14 atk, 7 AS, 100 hit, 16 avo, 7 def, 3 res, 4 crit, 2 cev

1x Soldier lv 12 (iron lance)

29 hp, 15 atk, 8 AS, 103 hit, 19 avo, 9 def, 4 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

1x Soldier lv 13 (javelin)

30 hp, 15 atk, 8 AS, 83 hit, 19 avo, 9 def, 4 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

2x Soldier lv 13 (steel lance)

30 hp, 18 atk, 4 AS, 93 hit, 11 avo, 9 def, 4 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

1x Soldier lv 14 (steel lance)

30 hp, 19 atk, 6 AS, 93 hit, 15 avo, 9 def, 4 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

2x Halberdier lv 2 (javelin)

36 hp, 18 atk, 12 AS, 87 hit, 27 avo, 9 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 3 cev

1x Halberdier lv 3 (javelin)

37 hp, 18 atk, 11 AS, 90 hit, 26 avo, 11 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

1x Archer lv 10 (iron bow)

24 hp, 12 atk, 8 AS, 109 hit, 18 avo, 7 def, 4 res, 5 crit, 2 cev

1x Archer lv 11 (steel bow)

24 hp, 16 atk, 6 AS, 97 hit, 15 avo, 8 def, 4 res, 6 crit, 3 cev

1x Archer lv 12 (steel bow)

25 hp, 16 atk, 7 AS, 97 hit, 17 avo, 9 def, 4 res, 6 crit, 3 cev

1x Archer lv 15 (steel bow)

27 hp, 17 atk, 9 AS, 102 hit, 22 avo, 9 def, 6 res, 7 crit, 4 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 11 (steel sword)

24 hp, 17 atk, 8 AS, 100 hit, 19 avo, 6 def, 2 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 12 (iron sword)

24 hp, 15 atk, 12 AS, 117 hit, 27 avo, 6 def, 2 res, 6 crit, 3 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 12 (killing edge)

25 hp, 18 atk, 13 AS, 102 hit, 29 avo, 6 def, 3 res, 36 crit, 3 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 13 (steel sword)

25 hp, 18 atk, 11 AS, 104 hit, 25 avo, 6 def, 3 res, 6 crit, 3 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 13 (iron blade)

26 hp, 19 atk, 7 AS, 97 hit, 17 avo, 6 def, 3 res, 6 crit, 3 cev

1x Myrmidon lv 14 (iron sword)

25 hp, 15 atk, 14 AS, 120 hit, 32 avo, 6 def, 3 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

1x Fighter lv 12 (hammer)

34 hp, 20 atk, 0 AS, 72 hit, 3 avo, 8 def, 3 res, 3 crit, 3 cev

1x Fighter lv 13 (steel axe)

35 hp, 22 atk, 5 AS, 85 hit, 14 avo, 7 def, 3 res, 4 crit, 4 cev

1x Mage lv 11 (fire)

22 hp, 13 atk, 8 AS, 111 hit, 18 avo, 5 def, 10 res, 3 crit, 2 cev

1x Mage lv 11 (thunder)

22 hp, 14 atk, 8 AS, 101 hit, 18 avo, 5 def, 11 res, 8 crit, 2 cev

1x Mage lv 13 (thunder)

24 hp, 15 atk, 8 AS, 103 hit, 18 avo, 5 def, 11 res, 9 crit, 2 cev

1x Raven lv 2 (beak)

28 hp, 16 atk, 13 AS, 112 hit, 26 avo, 10 def, 8 res, 5 crit, 0 cev

1x Raven lv 3 (beak, coin [d])

29 hp, 17 atk, 14 AS, 112 hit, 28 avo, 11 def, 8 res, 5 crit, 0 cev

Norris lv 5 (longbow [d], steel bow)

35 hp, 18 atk, 14 AS, 105 hit, 32 avo, 13 def, 5 res, 24 crit, 4 cev

Turn 5 Reinforcements:

2x Raven lv 2 (beak, 1 coin)

28 hp, 16 atk, 13 AS, 112 hit, 26 avo, 10 def, 8 res, 5 crit, 0 cev

Turn 6 Reinforcements:

1x Raven lv 2 (beak)

28 hp, 16 atk, 13 AS, 112 hit, 26 avo, 10 def, 8 res, 5 crit, 0 cev

1x Raven lv 4 (beak, coin [d])

30 hp, 18 atk, 15 AS, 115 hit, 31 avo, 11 def, 8 res, 6 crit, 1 cev

He won't 2RKO the higher end soldiers, ravens, myrmidons with double digit AS, halberdiers, or the high end mage. He 2RKOs everything else, and due to the dive in enemy ATK, has actually gotten better defensively. The fighter with steel is the only thing that 2RKOs him, and you'll need 17 or more just to get a 3HKO on him, which isn't all that common here. If this is 'sucking', I'd love to see what's 'good'.

Then he's pretty damn useful in ch 13. He won't take all credit for it thanks to Sothe's existence, though.

Yes, but Sothe's god awful durability as opposed to Volke's decent durability is a pretty big problem for Sothe. That and the fact that Sothe is 100% dependant on BEXP to function whereas Volke can actually get some degree of CEXP.

C14 stats aren't up, so I can't say for sure if Volke is still not "massive fail". But I will say that I doubt he's going to have too many problems, since enemies take ages to improve.

Volke really isn't very useful, as it means we'll probably want to beat the chapter ASAP, meaning he can probably get one item, which is probably a useless coin.

What, we're totally skipping over the boots?

here's Sothe, who has the same chance to obtain items as Volke, and otherwise all other units you bring.

But Sothe also has a much bigger chance of dying than Volke. He's 2RKOd by every single thing here and one-shotted by the tigers, and this does restrict his movement compared to Volke. As for our other units? Do you have any idea how bad luck in FE9 is? I don't remember if Stavers get penalties or not [i'll be VERY nice to you and assume not] but the only other guys who DON'T get raped by desert move who have anything resembling luck, in this case, Rhys and Mist, have like, a 13% chance of finding shit at best, so...yeah, you pretty much aren't finding anything ever unless you use Volke, never mind that Sothe makes Rhys and Mist look durable [lol, ORKOd by everything. At least Sothe's only taking shit from the tigers.]

Seeing all the trouble anybody else has getting to the boots square in a reasonable timeframe [it's near Muarim] in a reasonable timeframe, since Volke has the durability to rush up to where the boots are early, yes, Volke pretty much does get credit for the boots and whatever other items he finds in the desert [Probably worth having Marcia dropping him off near the white gem after he finds the boots]

So Volke sucked royally in three chapters

On the contrary, I feel I've proven he does a hell of a lot better than "suck royally" in those chapters where he has to fight.

Now then, ch 16. Our furry friend has just joined. His offense looks like this with the demi band: 29 atk, 17 spd.

WHEN he gets the demi band. Lethe and Mordecai didn't just crawl under a carpet and die, and Lethe in particular gets a lot of use out of it.

Of course, if Muarim decides to stay away from the demi band

In other words, enjoy your 6~ turns of doing absolutley nothing at all

Plus, when he rips off that demi band, he gets +1 def/+1 res/+2 avo when transformed, making his durability raep even more.

He also loses his ability to attack if he doesn't have the band.

So again, Muarim's durability is pretty top-notch, while Volke's is rather puny. 23 atk 3HKOes him, while 16 atk already 4HKOes him. Those same atk values 5HKO and 23HKO Muarim respectively. Talk about a huge-ass durability lead.

does a durability lead that big honestly matter when you aren't going to die? I mean really, you're doing something wrong if you're letting Volke die in one turn when he was just at full HP. Volke's shitty offense actually works in his favor here: He will not counter-kill everything that attacks him, meaning that he'll get hit by four melee attacks at most if for whatever reason you just tossed him into an open battlefield. Then we have Shade to take into account, meaning Volke won't get targetted as much to begin with.

So we've got Muarim's massively superior combat against Volke's thieving. Things like the dracoshield and full guard are pretty nice to have, but the ashera icon (lol +1 hit/+2 avo) is practically worthless

coughincludethebootsplzcough

no srsly, do. The boots are cooler here than in most games, because then you can toss the knight ring on whoever got the boots, and that basically gives that unit a horse minus the terrain penalties that come with it, and considering how broken mounts are in this game, that's undeniably a boon and one that no amount of money will ever be able to buy.

it's still only useful for 33%/50%, since they have to trade it around all the time.

Or we could just leave it on Marcia or Tanith and have it be useful 100% of the time [Jill doesn't need the durability boost]

lvl 11 Muarim (C Zihark): 48 hp, 30 atk, 18 spd, 15 def, 8 res, 55 avo

lvl 1 Volke: 34 hp, 23 atk, 21 spd, 11 def, 6 res, 53 avo

Looks like Volke gets raped massively. 14 hp/4 def/2 res/2 avo is a gigantic defensive lead, while 9 atk clearly > 3 spd when that 18 spd is enough to double the majority of the enemies anyway, so that's an 18 damage lead per round. Impressive. Volke managed to close that gap by a massive 10%.

Yes. Let's totally forget about Muarim's gauge. And that Volke's fighting utility isn't what makes him good anyway, so I don't really care that Muarim>Volke in combat because that's undeniable anyway. But his gauge is still a problem.

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

2x Halberdier lv 1 (steel lance)

35 hp, 21 atk, 10 AS, 97 hit, 23 avo, 11 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 3 cev

1x Halberdier lv 2 (steel lance, short spear)

34 hp, 22 atk, 11 AS, 99 hit, 25 avo, 12 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 3 cev

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

1x Sniper lv 1 (steel bow, longbow)

28 hp, 20 atk, 13 AS, 104 hit, 30 avo, 10 def, 7 res, 22 crit, 4 cev

1x Priest lv 20 (mend)

28 hp, 10 AS, 29 avo, 5 def, 20 res, 9 cev

1x Fighter lv 20 (steel axe, vulnerary)

40 hp, 27 atk, 12 AS, 92 hit, 29 avo, 11 def, 6 res, 5 crit, 5 cev

1x Fighter lv 20 (hand axe, vulnerary)

40 hp, 22 atk, 11 AS, 80 hit, 27 avo, 11 def, 6 res, 5 crit, 5 cev

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

3x Wyvern lv 15-17 (steel lance)

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

1x Wyvern lv 17 (knight killer)

34 hp, 21 atk (28 eff), 7 AS, 95 hit, 17 avo, 17 def, 6 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

2x Wyvern lv 18 (steel lance)

35 hp, 26 atk, 10 AS, 100 hit, 24 avo, 17 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

1x Wyvern lv 18 (short spear)

33 hp, 24 atk, 10 AS, 98 hit, 24 avo, 18 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

2x Wyvern lv 19 (steel lance)

35 hp, 26 atk, 9 AS, 98 hit, 22 avo, 18 def, 8 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

1x Sword Knight lv 18 (laguzslayer)

33 hp, 22 atk (29 eff), 13 AS, 98 hit, 31 avo, 14 def, 6 res, 4 crit, 5 cev

1x Sword Knight lv 19 (steel sword)

31 hp, 20 atk, 15 AS, 100 hit, 35 avo, 15 def, 8 res, 5 crit, 5 cev

1x Paladin lv 2 (killer bow)

32 hp, 22 atk, 14 AS, 97 hit, 32 avo, 14 def, 9 res, 34 crit, 4 cev

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

1x Mage lv 19 (elwind, vulnerary)

26 hp, 20 atk, 12 AS, 115 hit, 27 avo, 7 def, 16 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

1x Bishop lv 2 (shine [d], physic)

29 hp, 18 atk, 7 AS, 98 hit, 21 avo, 5 def, 19 res, 4 crit, 7 cev

1x Sage lv 1 (bolganoe, mend)

28 hp, 21 atk, 7 AS, 109 hit, 16 avo, 8 def, 14 res, 5 crit, 2 cev

1x Sage lv 1 (elfire, mend)

28 hp, 18 atk, 11 AS, 107 hit, 24 avo, 8 def, 13 res, 5 crit, 2 cev

1x Sage lv 3 (blizzard, elwind)

28 hp, 22 atk, 8 AS, 101 hit, 18 avo, 9 def, 14 res, 6 crit, 2 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

Turn 2 Reinforcmenets:

1x Mage lv 18 (elwind)

26 hp, 17 atk, 12 AS, 113 hit, 27 avo, 7 def, 14 res, 5 crit, 3 cev

1x Sage lv 1 (elwind, heal)

28 hp, 16 atk, 12 AS, 114 hit, 26 avo, 8 def, 14 res, 5 crit, 2 cev

Turn 3 Reinforcements:

4x Wyvern lv 15-17 (steel lance, 2 javelin)

32 hp, 25 atk, 10 AS, 100 hit, 24 avo, 16 def, 7 res, 6 crit, 4 cev

Turn 5 Reinforcements:

1x Knight lv 18 (steel lance)

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

He's 2RKOing everything except the wyverns higher than lvl 15 and the knights, and ORKOs the mages. Fairly consistent 2RKOing all the time versus only ORKOing some of the time is debatable, which is pretty sad considering combat isn't even a major factor for Volke.

Oh, and pretty much everybody and their mother is one rounding by now, so Muarim doing it only when he has the demi band doesn't really stand out.

Concretely, even the wyverns can only 3HKO Volke, and even then Volke's avoid's high enough to take into account [Enemies have 50-60 hit on him at best] then there's Shade, so Muarim's concrete durability win only matters so much considering how Volke's not going to die unless you're a doofus.

You get a total of 90,000 funds solely from beating certain chapters: 20k from beating ch 9 and 70k from beating ch 19. Then there are also quite a few useless items you find in houses or that are dropped by enemies (or items in chests before Volke joins).

You don't get it all in one sum. It's entirely possible to wear out 20k on steel weapons in a few chapters.

Using a ten-man team, that gives every unit >13k of cash. That's more than enough to get all weapons necessary, especially since there's no such thing as a funds rank and promotion items here.

And what about BEFORE that 70k pours in? Forged Steel Swords can cost up to 3500. The more forges we can afford, the better.

Ashera icon: Who cares about +1 avo/+1 hit so much again?

I'm Stefan. I'd like not to be critkilled.

Secret book: Who cares about +2 hit so much again?

It's +4, but whatever. And I'd say Mist might want it for the Sol Activation rate, but she doesn't get it all the time.

Then Boyd...would like Hand axe hit to suck less. lol 55 hit

Demi band. While it's true you need to share it, the chance that either Lethe or Ranulf is being played is a good deal lower than the chance of Muarim not being played.

Lethe's really not that much worse than Muarim. Better gauge, kills shit, doesn't really die easy, etc. In fact, I think Lethe's considered better than him? [could be wrong]

Besides, why would we use more than one Laguz? All it does is provide the team two inconsistent fighters.

One consistent and one not so much. One of them has to take the demi band, it's silly not to.

As for why we would play more than one lagooz...well, why wouldn't we? They're generally pretty useful as they one round stuff and have excellent durability, despite the whole transformation thing...

We've got plenty of money for it anyway. Units can have two 2.3k-4.5k forges and still be able to buy more than enough normal weaponry.

Again, it's not like the game dumps 140k on you all at once. 12 chapters in between 8 and 20, with just 2k forges...is 24k. And that's ignoring the extra cost form all the steels we're buying. It adds up quicker than you think.

Forged Javelins and handaxes cost a helluva lot more than 2k, too [and they're generally the most useful forges], considering they also might need some hit.

Muarim is a superior combat unit throughout the entire game. Volke has his thieving utility in some chapters, but in most of the chapters he's available in he's mostly dead weight due to his fail combat parameters. He nets the team some valuable items, but those items can also be obtained by others in some cases, so he doesn't even get credit for all of them. Muarim's superior combat capabilities over the entire course of chapters he's available in is far superior than the items Volke nets us.

On the contary, he also has to deal with gauge issues throughout his entire performance, and Volke even at his worst still has his uses [in C12 against the ravens]. Muarim's superior combat capabilities are also somewhat bypassed by the fact that Volke nets money for the team for expensive forged javelins/handaxes, and in addition, is pretty much the only guy getting you the boots, and the full guard for one of your less durable fliers. All of this shit creates several super soldiers to the team whereas Muarim can only be one god for about 1/4th a chapter. What Volke adds to the team with his utility>>>>What Muarim adds to the team with his combat.

[Yeah, sorry about that again...]

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All this being said, even if we are saying fuck it and trigger the reinforcements, Volke opening crap faster is still helping us get through the chapter faster, which means moar BEXP.

How is Volke "opening crap faster"? Please explain. Since the way I see it, Volke advances mainly due to others clearing the path for him thanks to his pretty bad offense and not-to-write-home-about durability. Thus he relies on others to advance. I guess you are talking about his +1 mov over the other foot units, but that's rather ballz, really, since there are enemies blocking the way as well, and to get to the north-western chests means getting through some narrow path(s) with enemies blocking the way over the entire route. So I'd say an actually good offensive unit who's 1-2RKOing would be advancing about as fast as Volke.

Not to mention the chapter needs to be beaten in 12 turns in order to get max BEXP. I personally have never had much trouble beating it in 10 turns, so even if Volke would be getting to chests faster, it's quite superfluous.

I know I know, these are actually C9 enemy stats, but Vykan doesn't have stats for C10 up, and there shouldn't be a huge variation between these two chapters.

Vykan doesn't, which is why I personally collected their stats, which are now also found in the Enemy Stats thread.

Now look at what Volke has for durability: 25 hp/7 def. Enemies average ~17 atk, meaning Volke gets 3HKOed on average. Enemies also average ~87 hit. With Volke's 33 avo, this means enemies average 54 displayed hit against Volke, or ~58% true hit. Volke's chance to die in just three hits is already ~20%. That's rather terrible. Now look at some other characters you have.

Boyd has 37 hp/7 def. Then he actually has 8 def against 71% of the enemies (and therefore also gets +10 avo against 71% of the enemies). Then he has 6 def against ~10% of the enemies (and therefore also receives a 10 avo penalty against ~10% of the enemies. Or you could add/substract those from the enemies' atk and hit values for easier calculation. This means enemies, on average, have 16 atk against Boyd, accompanied with 86 displayed hit. Boyd features 27 avo, so he faces an average of 59 displayed hit (or 67% true hit). He gets 5HKOed on average. His chance to die in those 5 hits is 13-14%. If he didn't get 37 hp by now, he still faces only a ~20% chance to die in four hits. Volke's chance to die is much, much larger. And here we're talking about a unit who's considered a less durable unit.

Now take Oscar with his 31 hp/11 def/30 avo. He gets 6HKOed on average with slightly higher hit rates than Volke. So Volke gets owned hard there. He's at least twice as bad as Oscar is durability-wise.

Soren with C Ike has 21 hp/3 def/34 avo. He gets 2HKOed on average, but faces slightly lower hit rates and has 1-2 range to prevent taking counters from the vast majority of enemies (only the javelin!knights and short spear!halberdier are able to counter him, and those are located near the escape tiles. Point being, Volke's durability is somewhat comparable to Soren's. lolol much?

Offensively, not counting the mage, I see enemies with an average of 28 hp/10 def. Considering Volke doubles everything (except for the lvl 11 myrmidon, but w/ever), that means he's 4RKOing on average. That's quite terrible. Look at Boyd, with his 20/23 atk on average, plus 1 atk against 71% of the enemies. On average, Boyd is 3HKOing with iron and 2HKOing with steel, assuming he doubles nothing at all, and obviously he's also doubling things, so those numbers can only get more to his advantage.

Obviously we're talking about a great offensive unit here, so let's look at some worse combatants. Rolf, for example, has 14 atk/7 spd if he gained two levels from ch 9 + some BEXP. That means that, so long as he doubles, his offense is equal to Volke's. Talk about pathetic. And Rolf doubles 8/21 enemies, so they have equal offense against quite a lot of enemies (both deal 0 damage against the knights, by the way, which is obviously a horrible thing).

Using Rolf as an example was mainly supposed to be a joke, but it did actually illustrate how horrible Volke's offense can be. Oscar has 17/20 atk with iron and steel, which means he's 4HKOing with iron and 3HKOing with steel. Again, that's assuming he doubles nothing, but he definitely does double. Especially if he has gained another level, or if he gained an extra point of spd without getting an extra level up (38% chance).

Now look at, say, Ilyana, who's considered a rather iffy combatant throughout the entire game. With thunder, she has 14 atk and 9 spd. Counting thee mage and halberdier, enemies average ~4 res. This means Ilyana is 3HKOing when she doesn't double. However, 9 spd is enough to double 10 enemies in this chapter, which is nearly half the enemies. This only makes this better for Ilyana.

So Volke's offense is rather crap as well, even compared to some of the worse fighters you have.

but it's at least enough to contribute something, like finishing off weakened units or something, so your better combat guys can kill something instead of killing something left at 2 HP or something like that.

Oh yes, let's shove off one of his major drawbacks just like that. Shall we also make Rolf mid tier because he can kill things that have 2 or so hp left? I don't think we're going to do that.

Yes, Volke finishing off weakened enemies allows your better fighters to actually kill something. Most often, though, it will still require two units to kill something that's not a mage or whatever weak. Soldiers tend to be strong enough defensively to withstand nearly any attack thrown at them that doesn't come from Boyd, Titania, Mordecai, and possibly Lethe. Besides, the fact that "finishing injured things off" is the only thing Volke can do when it comes to combat already speaks for itself; his combat suck big time.

Tossing Volke a level via BEXP'ing [And probably a band of some sort since BEXP, but it won't change his level up any] him from however much EXP he got here to 100, he'll have gained HP, spd, and str.

We're only giving him BEXP if he actually comes to all chapters, even to those where his ability to open chests/doors isn't required at all. If he doesn't get to all those chapters (which I'd say is rather likely, thanks to his horrible combat parameters), Muarim scores a large amount of points.

Volke's one rounding the fighters and low lvl myrms, the lvl 3 thief

Wow, that's so awesome.

Seriously, I don't even know why you're counting the weakest enemies as actual enemies. We probably have people on our team who can OHKO them, instead of ORKOing (meaning they don't even take a counter). But seriously, I wouldn't base things off of the weakest of enemies. You might as well neglect them.

two rounds the soldiers and mages [but comes close on the mages] and also 2RKOs the non sucky myrmidons.

Alright. So his offense looks rather decent against these enemies. You neglected two things. First off, his relative offense against those enemies is rather sucky, since you have a good amount of units that are actually ORKOing these enemies, which means Volke is actually twice as bad as a good amount of units. Secondly, what happened to all other enemies? The knights he can't even scratch and the twelve weapon knights suddenly have no relevance to the chapter anymore? We're talking about like half the enemies against which he sucks majorly. If we don't count failures such as these lvl 1-2 myrmidons and fighters or the thieves, it becomes a lot more. You can't just neglect the majority of enemies.

Defenisvley, the lance knights and armors are the only thing 2RKOing him. Also note there's a lot of steel weapons here, so even when Volke is 2RKOd, a slightly rare occurance, his 35 avo is still coming into play. All and all? I'd say he is doing pretty damn good for a unit who supposedly sucks at combat, seeing as how I never even intended to bring combat into this to begin with.

That 35 avo of his doesn't really make his durability reliable. The lowest hit rates he'll face are 50 displayed (from the 85 hit weapon knight) and 41 displayed hit (from the 76 hit knight). All other hit rates are over 50 displayed, which means he's actually facing rather large hit rates. Oh yeah, this is obviously not counting those fighters and other pathetic lvl 1-2/thief enemies. I see an average of ~92 hit, which means Volke is facing ~63% hit on average. Then Volke is 2-3HKOed by everything (save the pathetic lvl 1-2 enemies and thieves, obviously). This means Volke is actually facing a ~40% chance to get killed by two enemies that 2HKO him, while he has a chance of ~27% to get killed by three enemies that 3HKO him.

I doubt I'll need to go in-depth on how horrible that is, especially considering he always takes a counter (except against the bow knight).

So:

so he can function as some sort of wall, at least, meaning he's not 100% useless in this chapter.

haha

Actually, I'm more laughing at the statement that he can wall than how well he can wall. Since enemy densitity is so terribly low in ch 12 that nearly anyone can "wall". However, there are plenty of units who can also actually deal at least a decent amount of damage, whereas Volke is barely scratching the Ravens (lol @ 6-8RKOing).

He won't 2RKO the higher end soldiers, ravens, myrmidons with double digit AS, halberdiers, or the high end mage. He 2RKOs everything else, and due to the dive in enemy ATK, has actually gotten better defensively. The fighter with steel is the only thing that 2RKOs him, and you'll need 17 or more just to get a 3HKO on him, which isn't all that common here.

Actually, I see 21 enemies that can 3HKO Volke. That's over half the enemies. That's assuming a Volke with 27 hp/8 def (so lvl 13) by the way, which doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me, due to his crap combat in previous chapters.

He boasts 38 avo. Pretty nice, no? Considering the lowest hit I can find is 83 (not counting the hammer!fighter), he faces 45 hit at least. Aside of that, I see one 85 hit enemy, and all others have quite a lot more than that (all over 90 or even over 100 hit), so Volke is generally facing pretty high hit rates. If he would face 60 true hit on average, for example, he would have a ~22% chance of being killed in three hits, and a ~13% chance to get killed in four. That's rather bad. And that's when I consider a way too low true hit value. I mean. Let's say 95 hit is average for this chapter. That means he's facing true hit rates of ~63% already, and I wouldn't surprised if the average hit in this chapter is even higher than 95.

Offensively, he has a massive 15-16 atk (50/50 chance of having 13 or 14 str). Enemies average ~28 hp. That means that, for Volke to 2RKO everything when he has 16 atk, enemies need to have at most 9 def. If he has 15 atk, that's 8 def. I see an average of 8 def. Congrats. Volke is 2RKOing on average. Now look at what's enough to pull off a ORKO on a double. 22 atk is enough to pull of a ORKO. Oscar has it. Boyd has it. Kieran has it. Ike has it. Marcia might have it. Etc. So relatively, it still isn't all that great.

If this is 'sucking', I'd love to see what's 'good'.

Well, ORKOing is obviously good offensively, and there are plenty units that can pull it off. Defensively, we're talking about, say, an Oscar with 33 hp/13 def/rathersizeableamountofavo. Or a Boyd, boasting a lot of hp and a decent enough 9 def. For example, those 17 atk enemies that 3HKOed Volke actually 5HKO Boyd.

Of course that's just top tier units I'm talking about, but there are also units from other tiers that are better than him. Soren can ORKO plenty of things. Brom is great defensively. Etc. I can go on a long time and list plenty of units that are better than Volke either offensively, defensively, or both offensively and defensively.

Yes, but Sothe's god awful durability as opposed to Volke's decent durability is a pretty big problem for Sothe. That and the fact that Sothe is 100% dependant on BEXP to function whereas Volke can actually get some degree of CEXP.

What does Sothe's supposedly dependence on BEXP have to do with his performance in the chapter? Anyway, yes, Sothe's durability is a good deal worse than Volke's. The problem? They shouldn't be fighting anyway, so having worse durability isn't as significant. Obviously having better durability is a plus, but it doesn't make Volke the better guy to pick locks.

Not to mention it's nearly impossible to get them all with just one thief. So either you use chest keys or Sothe to aid. This means Volke does not get credit for all of the chests in the chapter, which was my point, and that's what you failed to address entirely.

What, we're totally skipping over the boots?

If we're going for max BEXP, I doubt we're shipping Volke all the way to the top of the map just for the sake of getting the boots.

Seeing all the trouble anybody else has getting to the boots square in a reasonable timeframe [it's near Muarim] in a reasonable timeframe, since Volke has the durability to rush up to where the boots are early, yes, Volke pretty much does get credit for the boots and whatever other items he finds in the desert [Probably worth having Marcia dropping him off near the white gem after he finds the boots]

While it's true your other characters have low chances of finding things, that doesn't mean it's impossible for them to do it. Therefore he doesn't get credit for everything. Yes, Sothe's durability is worse than Volke's. If he's lvl 15, he has 28 hp/8 def. That means 22 atk can 2HKO him. 9 of the 19 generic enemies have that. Otherwise, 18 atk is required to 3HKO him. And all but three enemies have at least that. So he gets 2-3HKOed on average. Sorry, but that's not so much better than what Sothe's featuring. So while Sothe's durability is worse, Volke's also isn't anything to write home about; it's pretty bad, actually.

So Volke's basically in the same situation you said Sothe's in.

WHEN he gets the demi band. Lethe and Mordecai didn't just crawl under a carpet and die, and Lethe in particular gets a lot of use out of it.

Alright. Let's assume Muarim doesn't get the demi band. This means he does nothing about half the time. Plus he can still shove basically anyone he wants. What does Volke do? Fail at combat and sometimes picking a lock.

Being beast half the time >> that

Of course, now we need to consider that it's perfectly possible Muarim is the only non-heron laguz being played. Let's assume Lethe is being played. She transforms on the first turn, which means she generally gets to do a fair amount of things done before untransforming. Mordecai transforms later, which means he may be able to help out during the most busy parts of chapters (middle of the chapter). When untransformed, Mordecai is still very useful through pretty good durability and being able to smite (which is immensely useful).

So even if one of them is being played, it doesn't hurt them so much if they don't get the demi band.

And laguz stones also exist.

In other words, enjoy your 6~ turns of doing absolutley nothing at all

Hmm. First Muarim needs only 3 turns to transform. Then it takes at most 7 turns for him to untransform. If he fights five things, it takes 5 turns for him to untransform. If he fights ten things, it still takes 3 turns for him to untransform, but then he's also contributed a hell of a lot to the team already, so it doesn't even matter all that much.

does a durability lead that big honestly matter when you aren't going to die? I mean really, you're doing something wrong if you're letting Volke die in one turn when he was just at full HP. Volke's shitty offense actually works in his favor here: He will not counter-kill everything that attacks him, meaning that he'll get hit by four melee attacks at most if for whatever reason you just tossed him into an open battlefield. Then we have Shade to take into account, meaning Volke won't get targetted as much to begin with.

whateverwhatever blablabla

Killing and not dying is still vastly superior to not killing and not dying. Plus, Volke's chance of dying in an x amount of attacks is still larger than Muarim's.

Or we could just leave it on Marcia or Tanith and have it be useful 100% of the time [Jill doesn't need the durability boost]

I'm not going to argue this, since it was, like, the least important part of the argument, considering I already mentioned the full guard was nice to have.

You don't get it all in one sum. It's entirely possible to wear out 20k on steel weapons in a few chapters.

...Right. Weapons that cost between 420G and 840G definitely will make us run out of that 20k soon. Heck, even a red gem (which you sell for 2.5k) plus 20G nets you one steel weapon of each type. Considering you need to buy someone a new weapon every, what, two chapters... No, I don't see money being an issue at all.

And what about BEFORE that 70k pours in? Forged Steel Swords can cost up to 3500. The more forges we can afford, the better.

The 47k you earn from selling the stuff I listed earlier.

ch 5: ashera icon: 4k

ch 7: miracle: 500G

ch 8: red gem: 2.5k

ch 9: arms scroll, talisman: 8k

ch 12: arms scroll, coin x 3, secret book x 2, blue gem: 22k + 3G

ch 15: coin x 2, statue frag, white gem: 9k + 2G

ch 16: gamble: 1k

ch 18: coin x 2: 2G

And I forgot the ashera icon in ch 16, so that's actually 51k.

There's a surplus of money indeed.

I'm Stefan. I'd like not to be critkilled.

This assumes that Stefan is being used in the first place, which may or may not happen. And even if he is being played, we may still like the money more than the +4 cev for Stefan. Anyway, let's just assume we don't sell them. We still get 43k. Still more than enough.

Then Boyd...would like Hand axe hit to suck less. lol 55 hit

lvl 5 Boyd (hand axe): 72 hit

Then there are plenty enemies with lances. Against all those lance guys (which average ~4 avo), he averages 78 displayed hit, or ~91% true hit. That's 13/21 generic enemies, too. Against the fighter, he has ~83% hit. Against the archers he averages ~74% hit. The only enemies he really has low hit against are the myrmidons, of which there are... 2.

So he doesn't really have too much trouble hitting. Then, once he gets supports, he gains hit from supports, his hit grows much faster than the enemies' avo (135% hit growth is pretty decent), etc.

So yeah, not really necessary.

Lethe's really not that much worse than Muarim. Better gauge, kills shit, doesn't really die easy, etc. In fact, I think Lethe's considered better than him? [could be wrong]

Lethe? Better than Muarim?

Lethe is good for a few chapters, then Muarim joins.

Both demi band'd.

lvl 6 Lethe: 38 hp, 25 atk, 16 spd, 13 def, 10 res, 49 avo

lvl 9 Muarim: 45 hp, 29 atk, 17 spd, 14 def, 7 res, 45 avo

Offensively Muarim is obviously better. +4 atk >>>

Defensively, 7 hp and 1 def easily > 3 res and 4 avo.

lvl 10 Lethe: 43 hp, 27 atk, 19 spd, 15 def, 11 res, 57 avo

lvl 12 Muarim (C Zihark): 49 hp, 31 atk, 19 spd, 16 def, 8 res, 57 avo

All Lethe has is 3 res. Go Muarim. Perhaps Lethe can get a 5 avo lead if she has B Jill or something.

Then Muarim has +15% hp growth, +20% str growth, +5% skl growth, +20% def growth and +20% res growth. Lethe has +15% spd and +15% luc. Lethe may be slightly better later on due to doubling more, but Muarim will always be a hell of a lot more durable. Especially if he gets A Zihark and B Largo. >90 avo ftw.

Muarim is easily better than Lethe.

As for why we would play more than one lagooz...well, why wouldn't we? They're generally pretty useful as they one round stuff and have excellent durability, despite the whole transformation thing...

First you say transformation is an issue (Let's totally forget about Muarim's gauge. and But his gauge is still a problem), now you suggest we should use two units with that handicap?

Yeah, right. That makes so much sense.

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How is Volke "opening crap faster"?

How isn't he? Instead of Boyd breaking that door, Volke can do it so Boyd can pwn that nooblet. Furthermore, not everybody can break a door in one hit. It's silly to argue that Volke does anything BUT make this chapter move faster.

Not to mention the chapter needs to be beaten in 12 turns in order to get max BEXP. I personally have never had much trouble beating it in 10 turns, so even if Volke would be getting to chests faster, it's quite superfluous.

Perhaps it is. But faster is faster and still time to nab more chests without bumping into the BEXP limit.

Now look at what Volke has for durability: 25 hp/7 def. Enemies average ~17 atk, meaning Volke gets 3HKOed on average. Enemies also average ~87 hit. With Volke's 33 avo, this means enemies average 54 displayed hit against Volke, or ~58% true hit. Volke's chance to die in just three hits is already ~20%. That's rather terrible.

I see you totally ignored Shade. Now let's look at his actual chances of GETTING attacked three times.

Turn 1, somebody whacks the soldier, reinforcements pour out of where we start. There's only two more soldiers wandering around. Logical conclusion: Get Volke the fuck out of there. Even if you stupidly let Volke hang around, who says he's going to be targeted? I've seen Shade come into play many times myself so you can't say it does nothing.

Furthermore, I know Volke's avo isn't 100% reliable at all, but it still does come into play which is why I mentioned it.

boyd and oscar pwn him loloolololololololo

Yeah. I'm kind of aware Volke sucks at combat, thanks for pointing out the obvious. What you're not getting is that Volke doesn't need to beat a top tier unit or even compare to a top tier unit or even do the same to a mid tier unit. The only thing Volke has to do to >Mwarim before he joins is to not be a detriment, and while he doesn't do that so well in this chapter, he does it in most of the rest of these.

Offensively, not counting the mage, I see enemies with an average of 28 hp/10 def. Considering Volke doubles everything (except for the lvl 11 myrmidon, but w/ever), that means he's 4RKOing on average.

"On average" is another thing that's too much of a generalization for me.

Let's look at these enemy stats of yours:

1x Soldier lvl 9 (steel lance)

27 hp, 17 atk, 2 AS, 88 hit, 6 avo, 7 def, 2 res, 4 crt, 2 cev

1x Soldier lvl 10 (iron lance)

27 hp, 15 atk, 8 AS, 100 hit, 18 avo, 8 def, 3 res, 4 crt, 2 cev

1x Soldier lvl 11 (steel lance)

28 hp, 18 atk, 3 AS, 90 hit, 8 avo, 8 def, 3 res, 4 crt, 2 cev

1x Soldier lvl 12 (iron lance)

30 hp, 16 atk, 9 AS, 103 hit, 21 avo, 9 def, 3 res, 5 crt, 3 cev

2x Soldier lvl 12 (steel lance)

30 hp, 19 atk, 5 AS, 93 hit, 13 avo, 9 def, 3 res, 5 crt, 3 cev

1x Halberdier lvl 1 (short spear)

36 hp, 21 atk, 12 AS, 99 hit, 27 avo, 12 def, 6 res, 6 crt, 3 cev

1x Knight lvl 9 (steel lance)

26 hp, 19 atk, 0 AS, 81 hit, 1 avo, 14 def, 3 res, 2 crt, 1 cev

2x Knight lvl 10 (iron lance)

27 hp, 17 atk, 3 AS, 94 hit, 8 avo, 15 def, 4 res, 3 crt, 2 cev

2x Knight lvl 12 (javelin)

29 hp, 17 atk, 3 AS, 77 hit, 9 avo, 16 def, 5 res, 3 crt, 3 cev

1x Myrmidon lvl 11 (iron sword)

24 hp, 14 atk, 12 AS, 115 hit, 27 avo, 6 def, 2 res, 5 crt, 3 cev

1x Myrmidon lvl 14 (iron blade)

26 hp, 20 atk, 10 AS, 102 hit, 24 avo, 7 def, 3 res, 7 crt, 4 cev

1x Archer lvl 9 (iron bow)

23 hp, 12 atk, 8 AS, 109 hit, 18 avo, 7 def, 3 res, 5 crt, 2 cev

1x Mage lvl 11 (fire)

23 hp, 13 atk, 8 AS, 101 hit, 18 avo, 5 def, 10 res, 3 crt, 2 cev

2RKO on the archers, 3RKO on myrm, 4RKO on high end myrm, and mages, 3RKO on the soldiers. See, I was right, "4RKO on average" was grossly overblown, and well, your Rofl comparison to him is as well. "Rolf wins as long as he doubles", well, even if we gave him THREE levels, he's still not doubling anything except the steel soldiers. As for the Myrms, Rofl still 4RKOs the low end one and SIXRKOs the high end one, so even when Volke doesn't double he's still winning, lol. Mages counter Rolf for massive damage anyway so no win over Volke there, and Rofl's still running a freaking 4RKO. on a MAGE. Then Rolf gets 2RKOs with no chance of dodging where Volke gets 3RKOd with some chance of dying. pretty massive win if you ask me.

Oh yes, let's shove off one of his major drawbacks just like that. Shall we also make Rolf mid tier because he can kill things that have 2 or so hp left? I don't think we're going to do that.

It's not something you can ignore just like that as your units will miss kills by 1 or 2 HP all too often. As for bad combat, again, how bad it actually is is being overblown, considering I just debunked your Rofl shit.

Seriously, I don't even know why you're counting the weakest enemies as actual enemies.

because they're on the map, duh

You might as well neglect them.

Why the hell would anybody do that? We're fighting these putzes. They need to be taken into consideration.

Alright. So his offense looks rather decent against these enemies. You neglected two things. First off, his relative offense against those enemies is rather sucky, since you have a good amount of units that are actually ORKOing these enemies, which means Volke is actually twice as bad as a good amount of units.

mwarim ooRKOs these enemies since he's not present yet. 2-3RKOing is MUCH better than that.

You can't just neglect the majority of enemies.

I mentioned the knights and armor knights in my durability comparison, you know. It was exceedingly obvious he wasn't going to dent anything with a "knight" in it's name while I was doing offense so I didn't bother to bring it up.

Second, most of these guys are all the way up at the top of the map, which you have no reason to bring Volke to, anyway.

That 35 avo of his doesn't really make his durability reliable.

I know it doesn't.

But not even you can dispute that getting ~55 hit rates on enemies does come into play.

Then Volke is 2-3HKOed by everything (save the pathetic lvl 1-2 enemies and thieves, obviously). This means Volke is actually facing a ~40% chance to get killed by two enemies that 2HKO him, while he has a chance of ~27% to get killed by three enemies that 3HKO him.

Again, we're not going to be kamikazing Volke or anything like that, and there's shade, so if he gets mobbed, you're doing something wrong.

Actually, I'm more laughing at the statement that he can wall than how well he can wall. Since enemy densitity is so terribly low in ch 12 that nearly anyone can "wall".

"nearly anyone" does not include "Mwarim".

Actually, I see 21 enemies that can 3HKO Volke. That's over half the enemies. That's assuming a Volke with 27 hp/8 def (so lvl 13) by the way, which doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me, due to his crap combat in previous chapters.

Count again, I counted 17 or 18 enemies with 17 or more ATK: and that was me being nice and counting the mages who 3RKO tons of guys anyway.

He boasts 38 avo. Pretty nice, no? Considering the lowest hit I can find is 83 (not counting the hammer!fighter), he faces 45 hit at least. Aside of that, I see one 85 hit enemy, and all others have quite a lot more than that (all over 90 or even over 100 hit), so Volke is generally facing pretty high hit rates.

Do you always have to keep blowing my point about his avoid out of context? I never said he was getting below 10 hit rates on things or anything. The point is that with hit rates panning on about the same as a coin toss, his avoid is going to come into play, and then factor in that Volke doesn't get attacked much to begin with thanks to shade.

And fuck, stop omitting enemies from the map just because "they suck". No shit they suck, we still have to fight them, they still need to be taken into account. FE7 HHM latergame enemies suck, do we just pretend that every single enemy on the latergame maps don't exist?

Shit, I wouldn't be surprised if you counted the hammer fighter with enough atk to 3RKO Volke in your "How many enemies have 17 or more ATK count", but just decided you could skip over him in your enemy hit rates count. You did that, didn't you? You can't just pretend enemies do exist when it benefits your argument and pretend they don't when it doesn't.

Congrats. Volke is 2RKOing on average. Now look at what's enough to pull off a ORKO on a double. 22 atk is enough to pull of a ORKO. Oscar has it. Boyd has it. Kieran has it. Ike has it. Marcia might have it. Etc. So relatively, it still isn't all that great.

You're seriously overblowing "Oh well everybody else ORKOs so Volke 2RKOing is useless" because what you're not taking into account is that no shit these units are better at combat than Volke, they're high tier for a reason, but calling 2RKOing bad is a serious stretch, and never mind that 2RKOing is beating the holy fuck out of what Muarim's offense is by this point, which would be like him untransformed: Nonexistant.

Well, ORKOing is obviously good offensively, and there are plenty units that can pull it off. Defensively, we're talking about, say, an Oscar with 33 hp/13 def/rathersizeableamountofavo. Or a Boyd, boasting a lot of hp and a decent enough 9 def. For example, those 17 atk enemies that 3HKOed Volke actually 5HKO Boyd.

...That one went right over your head. I know damn well that they beat him pretty obviously. The point of my statement was "You call THAT sucking?"

What does Sothe's supposedly dependence on BEXP have to do with his performance in the chapter?

think the fact that he might not want to get raped has something to do with it? MY main point against him was durability, btw, and also that Sothe sucks as a whole due to how slow said durability progresses since he's never getting any CEXP ever, so Sothe doesn't have as much as a claim on Volke's items as you think.

It extends beyond Volke getting 3RKOd and Sothe getting 2RKOd, as well. Volke has shade and Sothe does not, Volke has offense and Sothe does not, Volke might do the occasional dodge and Sothe can not. And yes, his offense does aid his durability as being able to kill threats that try to invade his theiving [Not like it happens often due to shade] comes into play. You could dock 1 move off of Sothe and considering how rarely he uses his full move out of fear of getting ass raped, you'd probably never notice the difference. And also most of the chests in this chapter are on the other end of the ship, actual durability is pretty much required to get them, and Sothe doesn't have any of that.

Not to mention it's nearly impossible to get them all with just one thief. So either you use chest keys or Sothe to aid. This means Volke does not get credit for all of the chests in the chapter, which was my point, and that's what you failed to address entirely.

I never said that, I said that Volke gets a majority of the chests and didn't say anything about Sothe not getting anything, and that's what you failed to address entirely.

If we're going for max BEXP, I doubt we're shipping Volke all the way to the top of the map just for the sake of getting the boots.

Why the hell not? Jill rescues him and drops him off near the spot, Volke looks around for him, on turn 2 he's fucking gone from danger. It takes like, no effort to do, and you still have plenty of time to rape Mwarim.

While it's true your other characters have low chances of finding things, that doesn't mean it's impossible for them to do it.

With 8-15% chances, it might as well be.

That means 22 atk can 2HKO him. 9 of the 19 generic enemies have that. Otherwise, 18 atk is required to 3HKO him. And all but three enemies have at least that. So he gets 2-3HKOed on average. Sorry, but that's not so much better than what Sothe's featuring. So while Sothe's durability is worse, Volke's also isn't anything to write home about; it's pretty bad, actually.

Hey, you know that thing you do where you ignore enemies when it hurts your argument? You're doing it again. You totally ignored Sothe getting one-shotted by the tigers.

And no shit Volke's durability isn't anything special in this chapter, but that along with not getting targeted in the first place beats the holy hell out of getting killed faster than 12 out of 19 of the enemies on the map.

What does Volke do? Fail at combat and sometimes picking a lock.

2RKOing=/=failing

I don't give a fuck if the rest of your army ORKOs or not, 2RKOing is anything but negative utility, and it beats the shit out of muarim does before he goes tiger.

And laguz stones also exist.

All four of them, yeah.

Hmm. First Muarim needs only 3 turns to transform. Then it takes at most 7 turns for him to untransform. If he fights five things, it takes 5 turns for him to untransform. If he fights ten things, it still takes 3 turns for him to untransform, but then he's also contributed a hell of a lot to the team already, so it doesn't even matter all that much.

Since you're hilariously fond of using the fact that everybody else on the team ORKOs to undermine Volke's not godawful combat, I'm going to use your own logic against you: Since pretty much everybody on the team ORKOs for every turn and can do it at 1-2 range too in some cases, then why the fuck do we care about Muarim's offense at all?

whateverwhatever blablabla

Killing and not dying is still vastly superior to not killing and not dying. Plus, Volke's chance of dying in an x amount of attacks is still larger than Muarim's.

Yes, totally shrug off a valid argument that a durability win is irrelevant when you never die, why don't you? And it is a valid point. I'm not interested that Muarim gets 23RKOd by the same shit that 5RKOs Volke since you have a mental deficiency if you somehow manage to get Volke killed by this point anyway.

As for dying in x number of attacks, what the fuck are you doing if Volke somehow manages to get mobbed by five...no, six enemies, since he's very likely to dodge at least one out of five attacks?

And since combat's bought up, let me ask this...is 2RKOing all the time really that much worse than having no offense for the first three turns, then ORKOing for five turns, and then back to not doing anything for the rest of the map? [Or at least close to nothing since the chapter will be almost over by the time he retransforms if it's not already]

...Right. Weapons that cost between 420G and 840G definitely will make us run out of that 20k soon. Heck, even a red gem (which you sell for 2.5k) plus 20G nets you one steel weapon of each type. Considering you need to buy someone a new weapon every, what, two chapters... No, I don't see money being an issue at all.

See, now you totally skipped over forge expenses, which alone go over 20k assuming the cheapest ones. I mentioned steels because, well, they weren't helping us stay under budget.

There's a surplus of money indeed.

perhaps, but I forgot to mention a few things.

Mainly the arms scrolls: not only does Mist want them, Soren might too just in case he needs to whip out elfire on a beast laguz. For miracle, 500G is really a pitiful sum and it's not like the skill is negative utility, seeing as how it's only going to be an extra 5 capacity on a unit with two 10 capacity skills.

This assumes that Stefan is being used in the first place, which may or may not happen.

Stefan minus his biggest weakness? Um, yes, I say that has a very good chance of being played.

like the money more than the +4 cev for Stefan.

...If we have such a surplus of funds, surely we could use them to make Stefan fight like a high tier [Well maybe not that drastic, but close]

hey, wait a fucking minute

ch 15: coin x 2, statue frag, white gem: 9k + 2G

The hell is this shit? We have time to fish around for the statue frag and white gem which are scattered in odd places around the map and it's considered slow and inefficent to have Volke just march forward to the boots? What kind of double standard is this?

Then, realistically consider who the only one is that's going to be finding those gems in any reasonable timeframe without worries of getting one shotted by tigers of anything.

Yeah.

lvl 5 Boyd (hand axe): 72 hit

Then there are plenty enemies with lances. Against all those lance guys (which average ~4 avo), he averages 78 displayed hit, or ~91% true hit. That's 13/21 generic enemies, too. Against the fighter, he has ~83% hit. Against the archers he averages ~74% hit. The only enemies he really has low hit against are the myrmidons, of which there are... 2.

So he doesn't really have too much trouble hitting. Then, once he gets supports, he gains hit from supports, his hit grows much faster than the enemies' avo (135% hit growth is pretty decent), etc.

So yeah, not really necessary.

Nothing is necessary, but it rarely hurts, especially since the earlygame lance syndrome kind of dies out after C13. Past earlygame he may need some sort of compensation beyond supports, since most of those only give half hit. If we have so much money to blow I don't see how fixing this little thing is an issue.

muarim>lethe

Cat gauge also>tiger gauge, but fine by me.

First you say transformation is an issue (Let's totally forget about Muarim's gauge. and But his gauge is still a problem), now you suggest we should use two units with that handicap?

Yeah, right. That makes so much sense.

ONE unit with that handicap. The demi band has to go to one of them, otherwise it's just a waste.

As for the other one, cat gauge>tiger gauge, as Lethe actually does something at the start of the map and Muarim doesn't. The handicap's less of an issue for one unit than the other. And no, this still doesn't entitle Muarim to the demi band at all just because he needs it more than Lethe, because Lethe wants to be transformed all the time just as badly as Muarim does. Although looking back at it with your constant "Everybody ORKOs" argument against Volke 2RKOing, I question how in the name of fuck laguz can be useful at all, especially since beroc have 1-2 range and laguz don't.

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Anything that went uncountered is because of me not wanting to repeat myself.

How isn't he? Instead of Boyd breaking that door, Volke can do it so Boyd can pwn that nooblet. Furthermore, not everybody can break a door in one hit. It's silly to argue that Volke does anything BUT make this chapter move faster.

I must admit I kind of didn't think about doors.

Obviously that's a good thing.

Though, there are still some door keys (two, in fact), so it again isn't something just Volke can do.

Perhaps it is. But faster is faster and still time to nab more chests without bumping into the BEXP limit.

If we beat the chapter within the time limit, let's say ten turns, and we still don't have all chests, I don't see how getting all of them is going to hurt us so much. Not to mention we may not care about the javelin and statue frag, which leaves only three or four chests we really want. And if we don't care about getting the statue frag, that means we don't need to worry about that lone chest in the upper right corner.

I've seen Shade come into play many times myself so you can't say it does nothing.

True. But I also can't say I've seen it be useful all the time. For example, I've seen enemies who even had but a 1% chance to pull off a critkill who would attack a unit with Shade. Enemies who can OHKO Volke at a certain point also seem to ignore shade. Even when an enemy doesn't have enough power to OHKO but, say, 3HKOes instead, shade doesn't always work. It's the same as provoke; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's quite odd, really, and definitely makes both skills rather unreliable.

Furthermore, I know Volke's avo isn't 100% reliable at all, but it still does come into play which is why I mentioned it.

Yes, it does, but when he's getting hit more often than he avoids, his chance of death after x attacks is rather high. But I already mentioned that. Basically what you did to counter his ~20% chance of death in three attacks was scream "lolshade" and just assumed that was it. His chance to die in three attacks is still the same. It may just take an additional turn for those three attacks to be there.

The only thing Volke has to do to >Mwarim before he joins is to not be a detriment

Actually, he needs to be a relative benefit over the course of those chapters. Otherwise he would be of equal value as Muarim, since Muarim is neither a benefit nor a detriment. If Volke is not a detriment, that doesn't immediately mean he's a benefit, though.

And considering the numbers I provided and all, I can conclude he's not much a benefit over the course of those six chapters.

"On average" is another thing that's too much of a generalization for me.

This "generalization" you're talking about actually does give a good view on Volke's overall situation. While he does so-so against this enemy, he does good against another enemy (bad against knights, for example, and good against priests (not like anyone sucks against them)).

Let's look at these enemy stats of yours:

Way to ignore the five initial enemies.

See, I was right, "4RKO on average" was grossly overblown

When you just look at those enemies, yes. Now let me go over all enemies.

3x soldier lvl 11: 4RKO

2x archer lvl 12: 3RKO

1x soldier lvl 9: 2RKO

1x soldier lvl 10: 3RKO

1x soldier lvl 11: 3RKO

3x soldier lvl 12: 3RKO

1x myrmidon lvl 11: 2RKO

1x myrmidon lvl 14: 2RKO

1x archer lvl 9: 2RKO

1x mage lvl 11: 2RKO

Let's see. Fifteen enemies. A total of a 43RKO. 43 / 15 = ~3.

OH MY GOD YOU WERE RIGHT

Or not. This is without mentioned the halberdier, which he 18RKOes and the knights, which he can't even hurt. And since it would be impossible to calculate his average offense by averaging the amount of rounds it takes Volke to kill (unless you want Volke to have an average offense of ∞RKO, which I highly doubt), I took the average durability of all enemies to get it. It gives a perfect view on the situation, and you make yourself look like a massive arrogant ass with the “you see?” comment, while my calculations are perfectly valid.

"Rolf wins as long as he doubles", well, even if we gave him THREE levels, he's still not doubling anything except the steel soldiers. As for the Myrms, Rofl still 4RKOs the low end one and SIXRKOs the high end one, so even when Volke doesn't double he's still winning, lol. Mages counter Rolf for massive damage anyway so no win over Volke there, and Rofl's still running a freaking 4RKO. on a MAGE. Then Rolf gets 2RKOs with no chance of dodging where Volke gets 3RKOd with some chance of dying. pretty massive win if you ask me.

Way to miss the point. My point wasn’t that Rolf was better than Volke, my point was that Volke’s offense was equal to lolRolf’s against a certain amount of enemies. If Rolf gained two levels, he has 14 atk and enough spd to double all those 3 spd dudes. That means Volke is on par with Rolf against 38% of the enemies. If that’s not terrible, I’d like to know what is.

because they're on the map, duh

Anyone ORKOes them. Fuck, even Rolf can. And that says something. That’s why him being able to ORKO them is nothing special, and why it’s best to focus on the enemies that actually form some sort of threat (i.e. all other enemies).

mwarim ooRKOs these enemies since he's not present yet. 2-3RKOing is MUCH better than that.

You’re looking at it the wrong way. There’s a whole bunch of characters available to us, including Volke, while Muarim is indeed not present yet. If all those other characters are 1-2RKOing instead of 2-3RKOing (which quite a lot of them are), Volke is relatively among the worst combatants, making him less likely to be fielded. In other words, he won’t get fielded because he is relatively among the worse, and thus a relative detriment, giving Muarim the win still.

Second, most of these guys are all the way up at the top of the map, which you have no reason to bring Volke to, anyway.

In other words… We’re fielding Volke for nothing at all? He’s just taking up a unit slot?

Seriously, I don’t know what the fuck kind of argument this is supposed to be. If we’re not bringing him to the top, he barely gets to see any combat, which makes his stats in upcoming chapters worse than they already are, worsening the situation for him even more.

But not even you can dispute that getting ~55 hit rates on enemies does come into play.

I don’t dispute it can get into play. I never said that. But facing an average of >50 hit means you’re more likely to get hit than you get to avoid the attack from hitting you. I.e. his avo doesn’t make his durability reliable, but that’s what I said already.

Count again, I counted 17 or 18 enemies with 17 or more ATK: and that was me being nice and counting the mages who 3RKO tons of guys anyway.

What?

2x lvl 13 soldier (steel)

1x lvl 14 soldier (steel)

2x lvl 2 halberdier (javelin)

1x lvl 3 halberdier (javelin)

1x lvl 15 archer (steel)

1x lvl 11 myrmidon (steel)

1x lvl 12 myrmidon (killer)

1x lvl 13 myrmidon (steel)

1x lvl 13 myrmidon (iron blade)

1x lvl 12 fighter (hammer)

1x lvl 13 fighter (steel)

1x lvl 3 raven

4x lvl 4 raven (reinforcements)

That’s 18 enemies. Then add the mages, and there are in fact 21 enemies that can 3RKO Volke, just like I said.

You did that, didn't you

I didn’t. I mentioned “not counting the hammer!fighter” as in “when you pretend the hammer!fighter doesn’t exist”, since his hit is so much lower than the rest of the enemies. And honestly, you could have figured this out yourself as well.

“Considering the lowest hit I can find is 83 (not counting the hammer!fighter)”

I’m sorry, but how was it not clear what I meant? I didn’t even calculate an average hit for this chapter (which is probably where the accusation comes from anyway), so it actually seems like a random accusation you’re throwing at me.

You can't just pretend enemies do exist when it benefits your argument and pretend they don't when it doesn't.

Please tell me, does it really make Volke look better when he can ORKO stuff everyone else ORKOes? Even if we would count those enemies, he’s still relatively among the worst fighters, and there’s nothing for him to steal that’s worth in this chapter, meaning he’s still being a relative detriment.

but calling 2RKOing bad is a serious stretch

Nu-uh, I didn’t say it’s bad.

“not all that great” =/= “bad”

My point was that a lot of fighters are better than Volke at this point. Them being high tier or not has no relevance; they’re better than Volke, so we may as well field them instead. Volke taking that slot as a fighter means preventing a better fighter from participating.

Of course this chapter is different since we want him to get some of those treasure chests, but that doesn’t quite offset the above.

That one went right over your head. I know damn well that they beat him pretty obviously. The point of my statement was "You call THAT sucking?

Considering his death chances, yes, I do. If he’s facing this average of 60% true, he’s facing a ~22% chance to die in three attacks already. Considering this number is a good deal higher, most likely, it only gets even worse. Assume it’s 65% true. It already rises with ~5 percentage points to a ~27% chance to die in three hits.

That’s rather terrible.

Sothe in ch 13

I think I’ll concede on that one, to a certain extent. Since Sothe can still be reponsible for the earlier chests.

I never said that, I said that Volke gets a majority of the chests and didn't say anything about Sothe not getting anything, and that's what you failed to address entirely.

My point was that Volke doesn’t get credit for all thief stuff such as opening chests. That was really my point about his thieving throughout the entire debate.

So I guess you just conceded that.

Why the hell not?

Because, y’know, it probably wouldn’t hurt to send someone over there who can actually kill Muarim ASAP, such as a mage with some fire tome? Shipping Volke first and then someone else only makes this process a lot slower.

With 8-15% chances, it might as well be.

Um… no. Even if we’re looking at an average of 10% for someone to find something, that already makes it an 18% chance to find something in two turns, or nearly a one in five chance. Heck, even just that lone 10% chance can’t be shoven off as an impossibility. The chance still exists. If these 8-15% chances may as well be neglected, I am also definitely allowed to neglect those lollable enemies in ch 11.

Hey, you know that thing you do where you ignore enemies when it hurts your argument? You're doing it again. You totally ignored Sothe getting one-shotted by the tigers.

How did I ignore that? I never even mentioned Sothe’s absolute durability. Just that Volke’s isn’t much better than Sothe’s. If I didn’t even provide direct numbers for how long it takes for Sothe to be killed, you also can’t claim I ignored him getting OHKOed by tigers, since I didn’t provide any numbers about him at all.

So I’ll do it now, I guess. Let’s say we’re talking about a 22 hp/5 def (lvl 4) Sothe by now. Um… Wait. That means it takes 27 atk to OHKO him, and there are no enemies in ch 15 that feature that much atk. They come close, that’s true, but it still isn’t enough to pull of a OHKO. In fact, Sothe gets 2HKOed by everything. That’s not a whole lot worse than Volke’s getting 2-3HKOed.

And no shit Volke's durability isn't anything special in this chapter, but that along with not getting targeted in the first place beats the holy hell out of getting killed faster than 12 out of 19 of the enemies on the map.

For Volke not to get targeted, he must have somebody to accompany him. This may just as well be a mage, since Jill/Marcia is probably flying someone to Muarim to beat him. This means a weak unit is drawing in all the attacks, which is obviously not a good thing, as they’re possibly even weaker when it comes to durability than Volke is.

All four of them, yeah.

Yes, there are only so many uses. That doesn’t mean Muarim can’t get at least one of them. Albeit not much, it does count for something.

Since you're hilariously fond of using the fact that everybody else on the team ORKOs to undermine Volke's not godawful combat, I'm going to use your own logic against you: Since pretty much everybody on the team ORKOs for every turn and can do it at 1-2 range too in some cases, then why the fuck do we care about Muarim's offense at all?

Haha, nice try. Look, now that Muarim and Volke both exist, we’re looking at Muarim vs. Volke. Since Muarim didn’t exist earlier, we were looking at Volke vs. the other units.

Both Muarim and Volke have only 1 range, so that’s nothing in favor of Volke or Muarim.

Yes, totally shrug off a valid argument that a durability win is irrelevant when you never die, why don't you? And it is a valid point. I'm not interested that Muarim gets 23RKOd by the same shit that 5RKOs Volke since you have a mental deficiency if you somehow manage to get Volke killed by this point anyway.

Um… I didn’t. Look closely at what I said. I said that killing and not dying is vastly superior to not killing and not dying. I don’t know how what you said addressed that, except that you probably misread my argument or something.

See, now you totally skipped over forge expenses, which alone go over 20k assuming the cheapest ones. I mentioned steels because, well, they weren't helping us stay under budget.

Which are easily covered by the other money you gain.

Mainly the arms scrolls: not only does Mist want them, Soren might too just in case he needs to whip out elfire on a beast laguz. For miracle, 500G is really a pitiful sum and it's not like the skill is negative utility, seeing as how it's only going to be an extra 5 capacity on a unit with two 10 capacity skills.

Why, just so she can use a 25 use weapon for a grand total of 12 kills? Seriously, I’d rather keep the money than that I waste a resource like that just for the sake of getting 12 kills. Not to mention Mist isn’t the only one who can use the sonic sword/rune sword adequately (Tanith, for example, isn’t the worst candidate for them).

As for Soren, it takes only 30 uses to get to D rank. Considering you get your first fire tome in ch 7, I really don’t think Soren won’t have at least a D rank in fire by the time you start facing beast laguz (ch 14).

Then I don’t really care much about miracle, but I guess you’re right on that one.

Oh noez, there goes 0.5k !! Terrible! /sarcasm

Stefan minus his biggest weakness? Um, yes, I say that has a very good chance of being played.

His durability still isn’t very good later on, even with two ashera icons. It’s not just his cev that makes his durability rather bad, but also his def. It’s not so great, really, and his avo, while decent, isn’t too reliable (like 72 avo endgame, 62 when at WTD).

The hell is this shit? We have time to fish around for the statue frag and white gem which are scattered in odd places around the map and it's considered slow and inefficent to have Volke just march forward to the boots? What kind of double standard is this?

Look at the note I provided when I first posted that list.

“Listing ch 15 as well since Volke is not the only one who can obtain items there.”

This is why I listed those items. The white gem is near Stefan, and since you want to give him those ashera icons, surely we want him to actually be there. This means it’s also perfectly possible for us to get that white gem. For the statue frag, it’s very close to our right, which is why I listed it. But I guess it’s perfectly possible to get that one off of the list.

If we have so much money to blow I don't see how fixing this little thing is an issue.

Boyd may have some trouble hitting sword users with a hand axe, but I’m not sure whether +4 hit will change that too much. Even if it would, Boyd gets bows upon promotion for a hell of a lot more ranged accuracy, meaning the item essentially goes to waste a little after we used it.

ONE unit with that handicap. The demi band has to go to one of them, otherwise it's just a waste.

If we use one laguz (the better one, thus Muarim) we have no such handicapped unit.

No handicap > One handicap

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Voting Tino.

I was expecting to mostly see Volke's thief utility vs Muarim's combat contributions, but instead the debate shifted focus almost entirely onto Volke's combat. Tino showed rather convincingly that Volke's combat was pretty terrible, so it was hard not to deem Muarim better based on the information provided by Tino's first post.

B2BD was also pretty lazy in some of his responses. In particular, this struck me as a pretty abysmal counter:

Lethe's really not that much worse than Muarim. Better gauge, kills shit, doesn't really die easy, etc. In fact, I think Lethe's considered better than him? [could be wrong]

I can obviously tell B2BD didn't even bother to compare Muarim and Lethe's averages, or even consult the latest tier list (it has Muarim well above Lethe currently).

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not being a poor sport or anything, but several aspects about Vykan's post bother me.

I was expecting to mostly see Volke's thief utility vs Muarim's combat contributions, but instead the debate shifted focus almost entirely onto Volke's combat.

Thieving was a constant factor throughout the entire debate. If I had any issue with Tino bringing up things that had better use than selling, I made that vocal. And...again, not trying to stroke my ego here, I didn't read Tino's third post so I don't know how well he rebutted my argument about Volke being anything but a failure at combat, but you can't just brush aside everything I said about Volke pulling out constant 2RKOs on most things and pretty much never dying as if I never said it, and it kind of seems like you did just that.

Second:

I can obviously tell B2BD didn't even bother to compare Muarim and Lethe's averages, or even consult the latest tier list (it has Muarim well above Lethe currently).

This is a ridiculously trivial point. I even put [could be wrong] in brackets, so not only was I not flat out saying Lethe>Muarim, the point of me bringing up Lethe to begin with is that Muarim is not 100% guaranteed the demi band.

I probably did make a more notable error than that, but do try to quote relevant points I fucked up on so people don't get the wrong idea.

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I agree that there was a lot of discussion about Volke's combat parameters, a point which I felt Tino won, I didn't see Volke's combat as being anything more than detrimental. 2-3RKOing and getting 3RKOed back is far from good.

Oddly enough there was very little discussion of Muarim's combat, a point which I feel benefitted Tino. B2BD never really bothered to counter the claim that Muarim is uber in combat forever while there are multiple points to bring up to counter this, the fact that Muarim gets weaker over time by comparison and is locked to 1 range being two of them. There was discussion of gauge, but I didn't find either side's Demi Band arguments terribly convincing.

B2BD did a good job of showing that the items Volke obtains are useful, but I felt Tino won one of the most important points in the debate, the Sothe point. While B2BD showed that Sothe is inferior durability wise, this never really countered the opint that using Sothe+ Volke> just using Volke. Even if Sothe's durability hinders him so that he only gets 30-40% of stealables/chest items, that's still a signficant blow to Volke's theiving utility.

There was the point of Muarim receiving support bonuses, but I felt Tino could have explored Muarim's outgoing support bonuses more. Muarim's supports are obviously more beneficial than Volke's (he only has lolBastian), but you can't receive credit for things never mentioned.

Overall, I'd say Tino did a better job.

Edited by -Cynthia-
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Thieving was a constant factor throughout the entire debate. If I had any issue with Tino bringing up things that had better use than selling, I made that vocal. And...again, not trying to stroke my ego here, I didn't read Tino's third post so I don't know how well he rebutted my argument about Volke being anything but a failure at combat, but you can't just brush aside everything I said about Volke pulling out constant 2RKOs on most things and pretty much never dying as if I never said it, and it kind of seems like you did just that.

You might want to read Tino's third post then, in particular the part about Volke being relatively detrimental to the team.

Anyway, if you want a bigger elaboration, then fine. Tino threw plenty of numbers showing that Volke gets 2-3HKOed at high hit rates while only 2-3RKOing in return, and gave many examples of characters who were easily superior to him in combat. Your counter-points consisted of supposing Volke's combat should be limited so that he won't face death chances and that shade helps him survive considerably better. In essence, you were only working to mitigate Tino's points about Volke's combat, not completely reverse them and make Volke look like his combat alone was worth fielding him for or something.

This is a ridiculously trivial point. I even put [could be wrong] in brackets, so not only was I not flat out saying Lethe>Muarim, the point of me bringing up Lethe to begin with is that Muarim is not 100% guaranteed the demi band.

The fact that you posed a question in a debate shows that you were unwilling to investigate this matter for yourself. That was my whole point to begin with.

I probably did make a more notable error than that, but do try to quote relevant points I fucked up on so people don't get the wrong idea.

Uh ok.

In other words, enjoy your 6~ turns of doing absolutley nothing at all

There's transformation gauge information in the POR thread and now on the site, and Tino would happen to be a contributor to that information. I'm not sure why you pulled this huge exaggeration, though Tino obviously countered it suitably.

As for why we would play more than one lagooz...well, why wouldn't we? They're generally pretty useful as they one round stuff and have excellent durability, despite the whole transformation thing...

Oh, and pretty much everybody and their mother is one rounding by now, so Muarim doing it only when he has the demi band doesn't really stand out.

What I'm quoting here is definitely significant to the debate since it ties into how useful Muarim is in combat. Instead of showing the ORKO capabilities of some of your teammates, you simply made an exaggerated assumption that the team can ORKO anything in their path without effort. I also find it strange how you could claim laguz "one round stuff" when units like Lethe and the hawks have serious atk issues lategame. Tino at least partially countered this in showing Muarim >>> Lethe while pointing out some double standards you were pulling in regards to laguz (eg/ they have a serious handicap but we want more than 1 of them fielded).

If you have any more objections to my judging, PM me about it.

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I'm not sure why you pulled this huge exaggeration

I'll admit: I didn't know gauge data was collected.

If you have any more objections to my judging

i don't

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tino

His arguments were generally more convincing because they were more detailed and realistic.

the fact that Muarim gets weaker over time by comparison and is locked to 1 range being two of them.

Similar things happen to Volke. Lolknives have 1-range and are incredibly weak.

Edited by kirsche
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Also voting Tino.

B2BD would have been better off staying away from combat altogether,but he let it become a major focus.

Tino also showed how Volke`s thieving isn`t all that useful in comparison.

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