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Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War 2017 Tier List - Day 39: The support kids (Corple, Lene, Sharlow and Laylea)


OliKad
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Last guaranteed character of G2? Oilikad my lad, you're forgetting Hannibal and his radical beard :P

 

Anyway Altenna is a great unit with really limited availability. She comes about 1/4 into Chapter 9 and unpromoted (albeit only 3 levels from it), but she is packing the Gae Bolg as the last holy weapon you gain access to (shy of a Claude!Corple anyway), so she certainly can pack a hit. With Ethlyn's critical skill and the Gae Bolg's +10 skill along with Nova blood's skill growths, she crits like a nuclear bomb and thus doesn't have a real hard time fighting. She does have a hard time with the staff users in the middle of chapter 10 and the early game of the final chapter, but really what hurts her use in the final chapter is the simple fact Arion shows back up and you need to send her back to the home castle to stop him from instant-game overing you, even if it does give you a nice little NPC army (why couldn't we have gotten control of Arion though? Its so late I don't see what it would've hurt but eh :V) to help with the final hurdle of the game.

So yeah, she's a flying nuclear bomb that just doesn't have enough time in the game to shine, but you can get some good use for her. I like her melodrama with the Thracian story arc involving Trabant and all too, so a bit of bias there for a 6.5/10.

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She's pretty good at removing physical threats, but flier utility isn't as good in FE4 as it is in other titles and she's absent for pretty much all but the final two chapters. The Gae Bolg is really heavy and she sucks at dealing with the multitude of mages. Ironically, there are times where she does better with just a Silver Sword. If she came earlier she'd be pretty solid, but she's just kinda present without being a detriment.

4.5/10

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Altenna is great in her introduction chapter, but the next chapter cripples her due to her low Resistance. In the last chapter, she gets the last of the Thracians to join your cause, but most players will leave her behind so Arion doesn't risk throwing himself to his death. She does have good growths and stats, but the game throws a lot at you to make her undesirable. 7/10

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Altenna has the mighty Gae Bolg... but she isn't amazing, to be honest. She comes late. Very late. The final recruited unit in the game late. Around seizing Grutia Castle late, to be specific. And you might be waiting around a bit if you're playing fast, but that's not her fault, blame the map designers or something. Anyway, when you finally get her after she realises who she thought was her father actually killed her true father unless you busted out the insane rigging/luck/strats to save Cuan from his untimely fate and softlock the game in the process she's not useless or anything. As I've said, she has the Gae Bolg and all its 15 weight. But a holy weapon is a holy weapon and she'll become a physical wall with that thing equipped. However, her res leaves something to be desired and the last two chapters aren't known for their physical threats but rather the magical ones. The Wall of Edda? Mainly magical. Brian and co have physical weapons, so she can wall off the Pursuit Graunen Ritter jerks at least. Freege's army of barons? They have Thoron. Arion? Welp, she's gotta turn him green and leave the battle. But at least she can fly and might be able to catch up anyways. Did I mention she's got a pet dragon? Because she has a pet dragon. She also gets Continue and Critical, plus Pursuit on promotion. She's kinda ridiculous when you're on the receiving end of two Gae Bolg strikes, after all.

She's not awful, but when you've only got a third of the game's worth of availability, it kinda hurts. Take a 6/10 and remember you have a holy weapon, don't throw javelins at the mages. who's Hannibal again

 

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EDIT: I'm revising my score to a final 2/10 for Altenna. My original post briefly stated she was late and unimpressive, but upon further play experience, she's actually worse than unimpressive. There are so many magic-dense areas in the final two chapters that Altenna can't even engage safely without a lot of support and plenty of leeway from Canto. Gae Bolg may as well not even exist for how few its practical applications are.

Edited by Inference
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4.5/10

She'd be more appreciated if she wasn't locked to Grustia Castle. I don't know who thought that it was a good idea to do so but it's a pain in the dong to recruit her, it wastes turns to do so and doesn't even make sense storywise. She should've been locked to Thracia Castle and everything would've been fine. Probably the worst game design mistake in the whole game.

Her combat parameters are ridiculous and contrary to what people keep claiming her flying utility is a great asset. It's useful in both Ch.10 and Endgame and should totally be held in her favor. It more than compensates for her lack of road bonuses, especially if you're doing RescueDance strats and bumrush the remaining maps with Leaf, Leen, Aless and Celice - leaving behind most of the party anyway.

She's the only unit I know of that can oneround KO Alvis - with a speedring and the Gae Bolg odds are around 10%, I don't think anybody else can do that [though I personally prefer Aless taking him down to 4HP with odds around 20%].

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2 hours ago, Inference said:

Altenna has no gamebreaking utility to compensate for how late she is. At best, she becomes Fee's winglady for a couple of chapters. No innate Pursuit limits how reliably she can one-round. Not an impressive unit by any means.

4/10

 

She gets pursuit as soon as she promotes (so pretty much immediately) since it's a Dragon Master skill.  

 

Altenna also can't ORKO Alvis, she can't double him (with the Gae Bolg) even with the speed ring.

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They're referring to her continue skill with that I think, but does weapon weight take into consideration weapon weight? Because I've had freakin' Ishtore do that shit on me with his 30 ass weight bolting spell.

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Obligatory tragic wyvern rider character go!

Altenna joins in Chapter 9 after she speaks to Leaf and Trabant dies, where she'll speak to Celice (And apparently she's tied to Grutia, and thus makes things harder for those who just want to capture the northern castles quickly. Which is completely understandable). From then on, you've got a powerful lance user who can fly (And thus has FE4 canto) and is actually a pretty good tank and hard hitter, even without the Gae Bolg. She starts with Continue and Critical for skills, so while she's not guaranteed to double, she is still able to and possibly get a nuke attack. And she'll get Pursuit on promotion, which thankfully is only 3 levels away (her gains are actually really disappointing, with only defence being above 2). Her growths are also great, with only luck, magic and resistance being below 45%, making even stronger once she has levels behind her. One of her glaring issues, Resistance, does have an event to raise it, but it's not like she should be charging to the status mages to take them out. Her other issues are not so easy to fix. Of course, she doesn't get terrain bonuses and road movement, but she does have an advantage of crossing over mountains or forests, and those are still relevant in the later chapters. Her late availability is a concern for her relevance and it does make sense to not worry about using her when just playing as fast as possible. She's weak to Bows, but that's not too relevant here, with only Scorpio's retinue left. In the last chapter, she also has to talk to Areone to get him to turn ally and has to stay behind in order to do so, so she can't help as much as she should in the later parts of the final chapter. Many of the enemy formations in the last 2 chapters have many mages, putting her at risk of being easily shot down, especially with a lance in hand. And finally, the Gae Bolg is one of the worst holy weapons sadly, and so she's not the best at taking out enemy wielders herself, but it's still a powerful nuke attack, even without Critical.

Altenna inherits from Cuan, so what does she want? She;ll want a bunch of lances, like the Gae Bolg, a Sliver Lance, Steel Lance and possibly a Javelin. She can't inherit a sword without Cuan killing a guy though. One thing that she shouldn't inherit is the Silver Blade that Shagall drops, because so many other kids will want it that that are more worth having it instead of her, and she's not much good with magic swords anyway. In terms of rings, really giving her a Barrier Ring is the most obvious thing she'll want.

I'm going to rate Altenna 5.5/10, negative bias on availability aside. She's a powerful offensive unit, but she's late enough that she can't contribute as much as she likely would if she'd been recruited sooner. Of course, with suboptimal kids/substitutes, she's going to have more prevalence, but she sill won't be around for a long time. Still, her nuke attack will be helpful.

 

Also, @CappnRob, yes it does. Ishtore has enough speed that Bolting does have about 8% chance to proc.

Edited by Dayni
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5 minutes ago, CappnRob said:

They're referring to her continue skill with that I think, but does weapon weight take into consideration weapon weight? Because I've had freakin' Ishtore do that shit on me with his 30 ass weight bolting spell.

 

Even if she proc's continue, she doesn't do enough damage to kill Alvis in two hits.  The man has 80HP/40 defence.  Altenna can only do a max of 32x2 to him (if Dragon master cap is 27 strength, too lazy to check.

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4 minutes ago, General Horace said:

 

Even if she proc's continue, she doesn't do enough damage to kill Alvis in two hits.  The man has 80HP/40 defence.  Altenna can only do a max of 32x2 to him (if Dragon master cap is 27 strength, too lazy to check.

Yeah, for some reason no class has a strength cap above 27. It's not too hard to chip him into range for her to finish, but if you're doing that you might as well use somebody more reliable.

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5 hours ago, General Horace said:

 

She gets pursuit as soon as she promotes (so pretty much immediately) since it's a Dragon Master skill.  

 

Altenna also can't ORKO Alvis, she can't double him (with the Gae Bolg) even with the speed ring.

Yeah, I forgot. I have to base a lot of this on memory, since my last playthrough of the game was so long ago, and my current one has me smack dab on her recruitment chapter.

She's still almost Athos-level late and her utility is about equal to, if not slightly worse than, the units that have been there the entire time. Getting Pursuit upon promotion doesn't really change anything.

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A nice flyer to have without too much investment. Her resistance makes her shiver at the sight of magic but is still useful for picking off annoying targets that fliers can access most easily.

6/10

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Oh hey it's Altena. The sister of Leif who can use a Holy Weapon, but is still not as awesome as Leif. Still a potential waifu. 8.5/10 with positive bias.

Altena suffers from late recruitment and low res. That is not good, obviously. And is only present for the last two chapters.

 

Fortunately her bases are high except for Res, and is near to promotion. Originally, she doesn't have Pursuit, but her promotion grants it. Her personal skills ain't bad either. Her Speed is also high so expect her to dodge often. 

She can thus ORKO easily, especially when she has a holy weapon- the Gae Bolg! That one weapon you got to use by the end of Ch3! Because Ethlyn had her reasons...and it also provides bonuses, duh.

She can fly as well, so that's cool. Flying is always awesome. After all that's how Erin got some good scores along with her other useful stuff.

I...don't have much else to say. She appears late, and that sort of decreases her usefulness. But as being the only wyvern knight of the game, she has her usefulness, and thus does a good job of being a respectable member of the whole cast of wyvern knights in the series (well, it's my personal opinion so....)

Oh and she can make Arion an NPC. If the castle only had another spot, he would have been the playable Athos of this game in a way, besides Julia with Naga obviously.

 

Also, if anyone knows, does Altena ever mention the name of her wyvern?

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To wit I know everyone is pooping on Altenna's magic defense but it isn't like anyone else has spectacular resistance either. There's... Seliph and Julia, due to their Naga blood. Ares is better than most physical fighters but not great though the Mystletainn helps. And Lene/Corpul will always have alrightish resistance too due to Bragi blood, aaaand.... that's really it, save for whoever you pair Claude up with. Magic defense in pre-FE6 Fire Emblem is a luxury, nor a normality, for physical fighting units and honestly its rare for your magic users most of the time too, just not AS rare. 

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No wonder you think noone has spectacular resistance, considering Aless' 23 effective RES at Level 20 passes for "not great".

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I don't think people are really freaking out over her Res. Some people just mindlessly list traits when evaluating a unit without actually analyzing their use or performance.

"They have high Strength!" (We know.)

"They have high Speed." (We know.)

"Legendary weapon!" (We get it. How does this unit help us win the game?)

In the case of Altenna, she doesn't really. Her first chapter of real use is 10, and it's a 1-2 Magic fest right from the beginning. Only a few units are going to want to deal with that shit, and she's not one of them. Claude!Fee, on the other hand, is flying around and Silencing fools, while Seliph, Arthur, and the gang clean house.

wpLe7rJ.png

Look at this screenshot and tell me when Altenna gets to play? Fee can Silence both Sleep users and pick off that lone Sniper all by herself. Altenna can't even approach until most of the enemies are dead.

Edited by Inference
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Hannibal with wings, in possibly the worst game for fliers. It's also a game where if you take minimum (1) dmg enemies prefer to go for other targets or not attack you at all. Also bad res at a point where all the game cares about is res. It's like Gar-

This is FE10 Gareth-levels of bad. 

Wait, stop, halt. Gareth is not bad. But Altenna is.

2/10

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19 minutes ago, Refa said:

No wonder you think noone has spectacular resistance, considering Aless' 23 effective RES at Level 20 passes for "not great".

I did say the Mystletainn helps, and that Ares does better than most. i also did say it was not great and that was dumb of me because 23 RES is amazing tbh so disregard that bit

Either way, it is a point to consider that Altenna is a magic-vulnerable character who joins right before facing an absolute onslaught of magic-focused enemies and that sucks, but she can still help fight Arion's personal army, Ridale's squadron, help rescue Palmark alongside Fee due to being able to fly (as well as poke out those annoying pirates), and fight some of the Chalphy army (they're a mixed unit of magic users and physical units iirc). Edda in the final chapter is another frustrating wall, but the Dozel knights immediately after are another story, as are the cavalry right before Edda (plus the goddamn dark mages on the cliffs right outside Chalphy). Scorpio's archers are a mixed bag, they crit fliers but she can certainly hit and run them due to flying re-move. The Freege Barons pack Thorron but if I recall their base magic isn't great, although Hilda is a 30 magic Volcannon packing powerhouse so that's still a problem. Regardless, Altenna can fly and thus park herself on the mountains safely out of range and do hit and runs with the Gae Bolg. Even if her tankiness is undermined by the overwhelmingly magic nature of FE4's endgame, the immense damage it can deliver still stands strong - 67 damage with chance to crit and multiple hits is nothing to sneeze at. She isn't absolutely useless, just undermined.

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Yeah, I like how her class has one more base move than Fee's so she's better at stabbing a Sleep Bishop and retreating.

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Fee doesn't actually have to retreat because they won't kill her unless you let the entire map attack her at once for some reason. That and Claude!Fee can use Silence instead without having to get close. 1 Mov doesn't give Altenna a viable niche over Fee.

Edited by Inference
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