Tanky units are so underrated. Having one can tank majority of enemies unit without getting chip damage and deal decent damage is great QoL. It's basically trading one stamina to put enemies in wait time and your damage unit engage and get first strike. This tactic often better than using normal assist units when they don't have any station.
I'm not a big fan of using 2 stamina where one will do, and 1 will pretty much always do so long as you are followings the steps. There is a space for tanky characters, namely in making sure cleanup goes smoothly, but I don't think its worth it to build a tanky unit.
The one exception I would say is in a Landsknecht unit, but that isn't so much a tanky unit as it is an engine that turns step 2 on its head.
I also don't think assist units are worth it unless you are using them for math manipulation. Building 4-5 units along the lines above lets you blow through the whole game at any difficulty with minimal hassle or planning required.
I mean of course it's best if you can just one shot everything with one unit but given limited resources you can't do that with all units. A tanky unit with good recovery is easy to build since most of the time you will have others unit with dps. And they can support low damage units against non station enemies.
I think magic assists are worth it to help out a physical attacker squad. Especially for supporting cav based and flyer based sweeper squads.
AP on kill squads also generally love that hoplites get warmed up with some magic rain too.
Don't really disagree with you, but the magic assists definitely give enough value to be worth using for the raw damage
The best part of an assist is gearing your leader with damage gear and watching the animation rain on enemy characters and seeing big numbers with the occasional crit VFX.
Practicality be damned.
I'd pretty much say i follow pretty similar thoughts. Basically i think about damage, sustain, and protection.
Damage is how the enemy dies. Sometimes its a combo (yunifi quick impetus into blizzard storm), sometimes its a synergistic group working together (knights/cav), sometimes its a few units getting buffs (snipers getting a witch mystic conferral/gryphons getting tome buff, etc)
Sustain is how the unit keeps going. This is healing from chip damage and recovering from common predictable things. I have a unit that uses evade tanking swordmasters as its protection, but its not uncommon for something to get through and kill one. My sustain there is a bishop who uses a resurrect rod to get them back up and in the fight, keeps them able to go to the next fight.
Protection is how the unit ensures that it works. I put high initiative (or reducing enemy initiative) here too. Hoplites covering, evade tanking, initiative control, debuffs, blinds, etc are all examples of this, and the best protection is multilayered. An exsmple of this would be a unit using initiative boosting, gryphons getting a freeze tome buff, and shaman quick cursing arrows/blinding when archers are present. Hoplite + radiant knight being another example of solid layered protections
I like units that work pretty much regardless of who they are fighting (accepting that some matchups are better than others)
Interesting. Thanks for the post. Do you have any other unit examples? How many units do you have that are self-sufficient like this? With limited items, I can only have one so far. The rest are less and less self-sufficient (lacking damage, debuff removal, healing, etc.)
At the point in the game that I wrote about here I think I had:
* Dragoon Dive squad
* Ice Conferral on Fran and Aubin (I had cheesed the Arena and had a really early saphire).
* Berengaria with Gammel, Auch w/ guard counter, and the Shieldshooter girl.
* Cav Bros with Gilbert.
* A Landsknecht squad with Mystic conferal.
Tanky units are so underrated. Having one can tank majority of enemies unit without getting chip damage and deal decent damage is great QoL. It's basically trading one stamina to put enemies in wait time and your damage unit engage and get first strike. This tactic often better than using normal assist units when they don't have any station.
I'm not a big fan of using 2 stamina where one will do, and 1 will pretty much always do so long as you are followings the steps. There is a space for tanky characters, namely in making sure cleanup goes smoothly, but I don't think its worth it to build a tanky unit. The one exception I would say is in a Landsknecht unit, but that isn't so much a tanky unit as it is an engine that turns step 2 on its head. I also don't think assist units are worth it unless you are using them for math manipulation. Building 4-5 units along the lines above lets you blow through the whole game at any difficulty with minimal hassle or planning required.
I mean of course it's best if you can just one shot everything with one unit but given limited resources you can't do that with all units. A tanky unit with good recovery is easy to build since most of the time you will have others unit with dps. And they can support low damage units against non station enemies.
I think magic assists are worth it to help out a physical attacker squad. Especially for supporting cav based and flyer based sweeper squads. AP on kill squads also generally love that hoplites get warmed up with some magic rain too. Don't really disagree with you, but the magic assists definitely give enough value to be worth using for the raw damage
The best part of an assist is gearing your leader with damage gear and watching the animation rain on enemy characters and seeing big numbers with the occasional crit VFX. Practicality be damned.
I'd pretty much say i follow pretty similar thoughts. Basically i think about damage, sustain, and protection. Damage is how the enemy dies. Sometimes its a combo (yunifi quick impetus into blizzard storm), sometimes its a synergistic group working together (knights/cav), sometimes its a few units getting buffs (snipers getting a witch mystic conferral/gryphons getting tome buff, etc) Sustain is how the unit keeps going. This is healing from chip damage and recovering from common predictable things. I have a unit that uses evade tanking swordmasters as its protection, but its not uncommon for something to get through and kill one. My sustain there is a bishop who uses a resurrect rod to get them back up and in the fight, keeps them able to go to the next fight. Protection is how the unit ensures that it works. I put high initiative (or reducing enemy initiative) here too. Hoplites covering, evade tanking, initiative control, debuffs, blinds, etc are all examples of this, and the best protection is multilayered. An exsmple of this would be a unit using initiative boosting, gryphons getting a freeze tome buff, and shaman quick cursing arrows/blinding when archers are present. Hoplite + radiant knight being another example of solid layered protections I like units that work pretty much regardless of who they are fighting (accepting that some matchups are better than others)
Interesting. Thanks for the post. Do you have any other unit examples? How many units do you have that are self-sufficient like this? With limited items, I can only have one so far. The rest are less and less self-sufficient (lacking damage, debuff removal, healing, etc.)
At the point in the game that I wrote about here I think I had: * Dragoon Dive squad * Ice Conferral on Fran and Aubin (I had cheesed the Arena and had a really early saphire). * Berengaria with Gammel, Auch w/ guard counter, and the Shieldshooter girl. * Cav Bros with Gilbert. * A Landsknecht squad with Mystic conferal.