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Why maximizing skills is not always a good idea

The main trend is going always for the third tier skill. After all, it's the strongest and most useful, right?

WRONG

I have seen many cases of a unit that, had it NOT had Vantage, would have won a duel. The most common case I find are LA!Hectors: My Corrin hits with his AoE, they trigger vantage, and hit me for about 26-30 damage, wich I can easily take. Then I double and kill them.

Had they not had Vantage, their Glimmer would have triggered between my attacks and likely OHKOed Corrin (49-55 damage with Berserk Armands) instead.

A case I know well is Fury, namely on Xander. Xander needs Quick Riposte to work, but assuming he takes no damage on combat (either by engaging an opponent unable to counterattack or by getting attacked by an axe user) Fury 3 will knock him out of QR range a 50% faster than Fury 2. With a single point in stats difference, it's easy to see which one will be better in the long run.

A similar case is Triangle Adept. The bigger the effect, worse you will have it if you get forced to tank a hit with triangle disadvantage. If you are doing like 20 more damage than needed to the enemies with triangle advantage, consider downgrading it.

If you have any toughts on the subject, or know of any other skill that should be better off left in low tier, please mention it.

Asked by SJMistery8 months 4 weeks ago

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Answers

I would say I disagree with hectors running vantage being a bad thing.
-i mean sure, your corrin survived it but that doesn’t mean it’s true for every unit it faces. With it’s high atk combined with it’s special, it is guaranteed to bring down a lot of the FEH cast(especially mages) and imo it’s better to deal damage than not being able to deal anything.
There are certain situations where having vantage on hector can singlehandedly win you a matchup.

On the other hand, I completely agree with fury and TA.
-I have Lv.3 skills of both on Camus and Xander( but both use the Lv.2 versions) respectively and they both give me more tanking ability than if they had their lv 3 ones. However, in certain situations like if it was an infernal challenge. I would sometimes change it to lv.3 to avoid getting KO’d for one turn.

I disagree with the LA!Hector Vantage example. No one really uses Vantage on him, not to mention Glimmer. More common choices are Wrath, Bold Fighter, or Wary Fighter. Even if they are running Vantage, the skill probably has saved the unit more frequently than it has doomed them. The example you gave is quite niche, and unlikely to happen very frequently.

In addition, it's well known that Fury in general is counterproductive with QR, but often, the unit running both skills benefits from the ability to double and the boost to stats across the board, so it's a necessary sacrifice. Units running skillsets like this often have a healer unit, or run a skill like Aether and Sol to keep themselves at high health.

Why would you use a unit with not only a weapon triangle disadvantage, but a TA user on top of that to tank a unit? Position yourself so you don't end up with an unfavorable matchup.

Overall, no. There are almost no skills that should be left at a lower tier. The full effect of the skill is often better than only a partial skill. There are, however, some skills which can be left at a lower tier for budget reasons, for example, Quick Riposte. The difference between 80% and 70% is almost entirely negligible, so inheriting just QR 2 when on a budget is okay.

These were pretty much my thoughts on the matter too.

I completely agree with you. You said it better than me lol.

Same but i got triggered what i had just read and didnt have the patience...

It's not a question of whether you WANT to take the hit, but instead a question of. "What if you NEED to take the hit? What if there is no other option?" In that case, if the third tier Triangle Adept is essentially overkill, there is little reason to keep it. It's not a question of NEVER using this skills. It's a question of NOT ALWAYS using them.

You have a very interesting stance but I disagree. I think its almost always best to inherit the third tier skill on any unit. Not only is it maximizing your resources but it can mean the difference between a win and a loss.
A lot of Hectors still do run vantage so its pretty easy to manipulate/plan for but I have had more times where their early vantage saved them rather than hurt them.
Running fury and QR on Xander has always been dumb imo. He's better off with close/distant defense or his native armored blow (for budget reasons). But if your running fury w/o QR, fury 3 > fury 2 always. It's +4 to all stats for only an extra 2 non lethal damage. It can also bring desperation users into desperation range faster and safer (provided you have desperation 3 and not 2)
With TA it's almost always beneficial to have TA3 than just the TA2. First off, you should always avoid fights against units you have weapon disadvantage with (unless you can secure the kill with minimal damage). It's kind of a given but with that said TA is more for units who need to do more damage to or take less damage from units they have weapon advantage against. Take for example M!Robin. When he's attacking, his attack is so low he can't one shot a lot of reds and his speed is so low he doesn't double. On defense, he takes more damage than he should from red mages because his res stats is so low. If given TA3 he'd be able to one shot more reds and survive more hits from reds than if he only had TA2. With or without TA, he has no business fighting green units or being within range of green units.

Dude! If ur runing fury on xander.....which in all likelyhood will ALLWAYS get doubled. The extra +1 to defenses cancels out the extra 2 NON-LETHAL fury damage.

The ONLY TIMES his comes into play is when you are geting hit with less than 1 dmg OR when you are makibg him speedy enough to avoid doubles

Fury and qr on him are staples for a reason

Like ???????????????????

That is, of course, unless you bothered to boost his speed, and assuming Xander does get attacked by a blue or magical unit ( with Fortify Cavalry active, physical red and grey units will rarely do damage, never mind green ones) does not get the KO on the first hit, wich if he baits a green unit, is quite likely.

Plus, Fury will still drink HP after, say, you kill on Player Phase an archer or a mage without Close Counter, or a Firesweep weapon user, and thus donesn't take any combat damage at all. THAT is what I meant when I said that it will SOMETIMES be more beneficial to have Fury 2 instead, that deals a 33% less recoil damage.

I would like if someone bothered to look at the part of TA that describes perfectly that TA2 is only better if the extra damage from TA3 is completely overkill.

You say that from the perspective of you playing against a CPU, but immagine it from your perspective, if your unit run vantage or fury 3, although granted, TA is not the best on a defensive team most of the time. However, when I play my team, I get to choose my MU, and most often than not, I do not need to beat 2 units with my single melee unit with all of his skills activated. TA units are hyper specialised unit that wants to avoid their bad color anyway, as they are for most of them very slow. A good example of this is Adult tiki, while it might be sometime important to tank a strong blue unit(she's probably able to do it against some anyway...) you REALLY need to OS deirdre and Julia with her, and only TA can give you that shot unless they run like L&D or in weird circonstances.

What you claim can be said for many skills with some sort of side effet, like L&D, the second version makes you "gain" 1 more defence, and sometime this can let you win a random matchup, but should you really do it? I think the extra offence is what will make the most diffence overall.

However, when you are building unit on a budget, like myself as a f2p player, it is very usable and reasonable to give TA2 and reposition to xander(or any other unit of this type) from a 4* Selena!

If I run fury on a xander, I would run the third version of it because I would run a healer with him for AA and TT, even for the main quests. Heck, I would run fury 3 on him regardless of the game mode, I would just consider the downside and play accordingly.

Just remember to look things from the player perspective and not the CPU one. Imagine you run the build, since you get to choose your battle with how bad the CPU plays, could you make a better use of it? I believe that answer should be yes

I do talk from my perspective. I have considered droppping Triangle Adept entirely on Cordelia, as she ends up killing reds in a single hit of her Brave Lance instead of two, messing up with the Galeforce timing. And I have lost count on how many times my Ryoma or Camus died to a hit they WOULD have been able to survive had Vantage not triggered, simply because that extra hit loaded a Bonfire or an Aether. And the last time, it was with Camus already having been dropped to Vantage 1 to try to avoid that exact scenario from happening again.

And in your "arena defense team" scenario, it's probably the ultimate example of how badly can TA3 backfire. The bigger grade, the easiest it is to bait that unit with anything that has color advantage, regardless of how low their defenses are.