hey thar sexy

Marisa's potential is almost nonexistant. She joins with horrible Atk and only has a 30% Str growth. She has to take counters when she attacks, and her 23 HP, 4 Def, and 3 Res will be very unforgiving when she gets hit, which will be often since her Evd at this point in the game is quite bad. Even the slowest units you have, like Garcia, Gilliam, and Duecel will be crushing her in this area. Marisa also has very little to look forward to in terms of supports, really. She can perhaps get one person and be their B.

Amelia joins in a very crappy state as well, but she's joining earlier than Marisa no matter what route you go on. Unlike Marisa, she can be raised without having to take counters. Yes, her offense with the Javelin is indeed massive phail right now, but she only needs to tap the enemies with it in order to gain a giant amount of EXP. If she does this several times and even kills a few things, she can reach level 10 right when she joins in Ephraim's route because there's priests and archers for her to abuse. She gets around 30 Exp just for hitting things with a Javelin, nevermind the times that she actually kills. In Eirik's route, there are two stationary archers at the end of the chapter, and about a half-dozen defensive enemies in front of them, enough to get Amelia to 10/0 for sure, and then she's promoted. My main point is that you only need to baby her for one chapter, and then she starts to hold her own. Unlike Marisa, there's definite benefits to raising Amelia. She soon promotes and will become a Cavalier, granting her swords and good mobility. She now has good WT control, access to good weapons at least in terms of lances, and mobility to help her move around more and escape things.

Amelia will already be a Cavalier by the time Marisa joins you no matter what route you're on, and then it's hardly a competition at all. By the time Marisa even joins your team, either chapter is basically lolover, so Amelia will even have a definite level lead over her. If you're on Ephraim's route, Duecel is very good, and she can support him. Ross can actually be good by now and will support her if he's being used.

Let's go the most generous route possible for her, Eirik's, because she'll join earlier in the chapter and Amelia has no Duecel. I'll even nerf Amelia's a little bit. She's still gaining huge EXP and can very well be a bit higher.

Amelia: Level 5 Cavalier
HP: 24.8
STR: 8.5
SKL: 10.2
SPD: 11.2
LUK: 12.5
DEF: 5.9
RES: 6.9
MOV: 7
Lances, Swords

Marisa: Level 5
HP: 23
STR: 7
SKL: 12
SPD: 13
LUK: 9
DEF: 4
RES: 3
MOV: 5
Swords

It's clearly no contest. Amelia is winning concrete durability in every area, and wins Evd by a lot against swords. Both can dodge axes sorta well, but Amelia can't take the blow if it connects, and Amelia can. Amelia's just doing plain better in everything but Atk Spd, and enemies in this game are quite slow, so Amelia has no doubling issues.

It's debatable in this route, but in Ephraim's route, it's ridiculously one-sided towards Amelia. When Marisa joins, there's nothing left to do, and she forces you to use Ewan to recruit her, which sucks a lot. Amelia can be like level 10 by the time Marisa even joins. On this route, she gets to support Duecel as well.

Marisa's miserable growths in Str and Def will make her a bad unit for a long time. Amelia may have worse growths overall, but her bases and class are far better than Marisa's. By the time Marisa is level 9, her Atk would have gone up by a staggering 1, and her Def may or may not have increases by 1. That's horrendous at this point in the game. Swords + worst Str ever = horrendous offense. Only Rennac is worse.

Having potential and having a horsey >>> sucking forever.

Amelia is no better off in that regard. The only unit she has available is Duessel, and that only gets to a B at best since Duessel x Ephraim is pretty much guaranteed.

Both Gerik and Tethys are available for Marisa to support, and neither of them would really prefer to support others for their B’s. Gerik has Innes, Saleh, Ross, and Joshua, none of whom are overly likely to be in play (even if Joshua *were* in play, he’s probably full, and if not, it just increases the chance that Marisa gets a Joshua support, so it’s about the same either way). Then Tethys has Ewan and Artur, lolwut. The former sucks and the latter is more than likely full.

Incorrect. On Eirika Route, Amelia isn’t joining until Chapter 13, whereas Marisa can join you by the end of Chapter 10. First, you may not be able to reach her before she leaves in Chapter 9, and second, if you have Colm steal her Speedwing in Chapter 9, you can get another Speedwing in Chapter 13, and a Speedwing >>> 3 chapters of Amelia usage.

“den Amelia get credit for speedwang”

No, she does not. A unit doesn’t get credit for what they start with in his or her inventory. You never have to use that unit at all to get those items. It’s the character that *recruits* that unit that gets credit for it. Matthew gets credit for adding Guy’s KE to your inventory, for example, and in the case of Chapter 9, Colm gets credit for stealing you a Speedwing. You never have to use Amelia at all to get either Speedwing. In fact, you have to *not* use her to get a Speedwing.

So it’s Chapter 9 for Amelia vs. Chapter 12 for Marisa on Ephraim Route, and Chapter 13 for Amelia vs. Chapter 10 for Marisa on Eirika Route. Either way, it’s the same gap in joining times, except for one thing—Amelia starts as a Trainee. On one route, Marisa joins later, and in the other route, Amelia joins later, but in both routes Amelia starts at a much lower level than Marisa does, so Marisa is already clearly in an advantage as far as joining situation.

Amelia joins in a much crappier state than Marisa, no matter what route you take. Even when Marisa joins later, she’s nowhere near as bad starting out as Amelia is.

Base Amelia has 16 HP + 2 Def, meaning something only needs 18 Atk to be able to OHKO her. When she joins in Ephraim Route, most of the Knights, the Steel Lance Cavaliers, the Steel Lance Soldiers, and all of the Fighters have more than 18, and the latter get WTA over her. Then on Eirika Route, there are also Steel Sword Nomads and Wyverns in addition to those enemies, and both of those can OHKO her as well.

It’s not just OHKO’ing she has to worry about, though--she can get one-rounded by pretty much anything thanks to her base of 4 Spd. In Ephraim Route, Myrmidons, Mercenaries, and Iron Sword/Lance Cavaliers can double her right off the bat. And then she only has 6 Con, which means that if she wants to wield anything other than a Slim Lance (and she does, or else her damage is pathetic), she can have at the most 2 AS.

lol, 2 AS.

Now she’s getting *doubled* by those Fighters that are OHKOing her, in addition to Archers, Shamans, Mages, Wyverns, and Iron Lance Soldiers--in short, everything but Knights and Steel Lance Soldiers. Not only that, but her Avo is only 10 at this point (less than the bonus granted by WTA), so it’s about a guarantee that these enemies will be killing her whenever they attack her. Even things with Hand Axes and Javelins will have good Hit on her, and they’ll be doubling, which means that she not only has to stay one space back from your frontlines, but a space back even from that, and that’s quite bad for a unit with the same Move as an unpromoted Gilliam. And this is all only on Ephraim’s Route. Consider how much worse it is for her on Eirika’s Route.

Meanwhile, Marisa never gets one-rounded, ever. It always takes two or more enemies to kill her. 23 HP + 4 Def = enemies need 27 Atk to OHKO her, and the only non-boss enemy with over 27 Atk in the first 15 chapters of the whole game is a Devil Axe Berserker in Chapter 15—lolwut. She also has a 13 AS base, which means that, unlike with Amelia, absolutely nothing can double her, not even most bosses.

But the suckage doesn’t stop there, because it’s not just Amelia’s defense that starts phail—her offense starts just as bad, if not worse. She can never double a single enemy ever in either route (no, not even Knights), and her Atk even with a Steel Lance is only 14, which comes at the price of getting doubled by even ridiculously slow stuff like Steel Lance Cavs. Marisa, on the other hand, has 12 Atk with an Iron Sword, and she’s actually doubling things—everything but Sword enemies has 9 AS or less, no matter which route you play. Then she can double a lot of things even with a Steel Sword, so she has the option of getting higher Atk without sacrificing her doubling ability.

Then, as if all of that weren’t enough, Amelia starts with 4 Move and Lances, which is bad since her Skl isn’t good yet, and she may have trouble hitting even the slow things. Marisa doesn’t ever have this problem, thanks to Swords.

Marisa beats Amelia in joining situation no matter which route you take. Even if Marisa joined later on _both_ routes, her starting state would be nowhere near as bad as this. Actually doubling (so, therefore, having some form of offense, no matter how bad) and not getting one-rounded by over 90% of the enemies makes the gap between the two start off huge initially. Amelia would have to win by a whole lot to override this gap later on.

Amelia’s joining situation is so bad, in fact, that it’s even worse than Ewan’s joining situation--yes, Ewan’s. Unlike Amelia, Ewan starts with actual offense; he’s not doubling a whole lot either, just like Amelia, but at least he attacks Res and has good weapons that have good Hit, so he can feasibly do some damage to things that actually matter. Additionally, no matter what weapon he uses, he has constant 1-2 Range, whereas Amelia has to use a Javelin and walk around with 0 AS to get 1-2 Range, so that means that he doesn’t have to pick on Archers or Priests—he can attack whatever he wants. Yeah, Ewan gets OHKO’d more, but Amelia gets doubled more, and the latter is easily worse with their awful durabilities (lol @ not avoiding).

You can see already how big of a negative this is. Marisa doesn’t start with this negative.

It’s definitely more than one chapter, considering that she gets one-rounded and never doubles. Much, much more. You either have to put her in a massive negative or you have to keep her at a relatively low level.

With 4 base Str? No way. Not unless it’s a Priest.

There’s only one Priest in the whole chapter, and there isn’t another one for the next four chapters. As for Archers…they double her, and the Iron Bow ones have 105 Hit. With an Iron Lance, she has 10 Avoid at base, so that’s >99% real hit chance on her. Basically, if they hit her, they kill her, and if she’s in range they’ll definitely hit her. Someone has to lure the Archer in and have Amelia whack it once, and then someone else has to kill it so that it doesn’t go for Amelia on the next phase. Phail.

Also, there are maybe 2 Archers alive when she joins on Chapter 9, and it’s a narrow passageway, which means that she can’t be anywhere *near* the wall or else the Archers will go after her. So, with a mere 5 Atk Range with an Iron Lance, she'll have trouble even getting near to the Archers, even after someone lures them in. In the next chapter, there’re also only 2 again, but now there are also Axes that she has to worry about.

Yes, and she has 0 AS with a Javelin, which means that even Soldiers will be doubling her. Also, if she’s using this on Archers, she can die, since her miss chance is pretty big. Even a 15-Avoid Archer gives her about a 67-68% real chance to hit, which phails massively.

In fact, that brings me to another point--Amelia can never attack anything other than Archers. If she’s attacking, say, a Cavalier, Iron Lance gives her 82.3% real chance to hit, and if she misses, you’re either forced to restart the chapter or go on without her, either of which massively hurts her case. Basically, she’s forced to use the Javelin, and not only does that increase her miss chance (and, thus, decrease her chance of getting EXP), but it gives her 0 AS, and that means you have to have absolutely nothing in range of her on the next phase, or else she dies.

“Move around and escape things.” lol @ that. As if you’re ever going to exercise that option. That’s never happening in the game, and you know it. You can’t “escape things” on Enemy Phase; you can only do so on Player Phase, and if Amelia has to do it then, she must be even suckier than I thought.

Durability comes from stats, not Move. Move does have several miscellaneous uses, but that’s not going to save Amelia in this debate.

The rest of this passage is irrelevant to this debate.

This comparison is totally out of the question on Eirika’s Route, and that’s the route you said you were comparing them on. Marisa actually joins earlier in that route, so if anything she’ll have quite a big level lead. Even if this were on Ephraim’s Route, though, Amelia being a Level 5 Cavalier means massive babying, so she’s in a pretty big negative when Marisa joins. It takes 9 levels for her to get to Level 10 Trainee, and that means about 27 hits on enemies, and she can only attack on Player Phase since her durability sucks massively. That’s 27 turns (more due to a steadily decreasing average EXP rate), and her Move also prevents her from attacking every single phase--she has Gilliam-level Move without Gilliam-level Def, phail.

Let’s check it out anyway:

By the time she joins on Ephraim Route, the chapter is more than half over, so that’s not doing much for her. She can get the Priest.
The next chapter is less than 13 turns long, and it’s mostly Wyverns/Axes, which she sucks against, so she’s not doing much there. There are only two Archers, so she’s getting at the most 4-5 hits here. Certainly not 27.
Then the next chapter is Phantom Ship, with its huge-Range enemies. No way is Amelia even getting _fielded_ here. The chances that she’ll die are way too high, especially with the fog around.
The next chapter, Marisa joins. Even if Amelia got out of her Trainee state by the end of this chapter, she can’t gain any more levels until the next chapter, so at the best she’s a Level 1 Cavalier.

So that’s the situation on Ephraim’s Route. Certainly not equal levels, as you’re suggesting. Level 5 Myrmidon Marisa vs. Level 1 Cavalier Amelia is a more accurate Eph Route comparison.

Level 1 Cavalier Amelia
7.1 Atk, 9.6 AS – 22.4 HP, 4.7 Def, 6.3 Res, 29.7 Avo

Level 5 Myrmidon Marisa
7.0 Atk, 13.0 AS – 23.0 HP, 4.0 Def, 3.0 Res, 35 Avo

Marisa easily wins offense--it’s not even close. Amelia can only double things with 5 AS or less, while Marisa can double things with 9 AS or less. Marisa can get Mages, Fighters, Pirates, Archers, Cavaliers, Wyverns, etc., and Amelia can’t get any of those. Meanwhile, Amelia’s Atk (which comes all from WTA and Lances, btw, and those aren’t constant) lets her beat Marisa against Knights (by 2), Nomads (1), Shamans (1), and weighed down Soldiers (2). Not significant at all compared to Marisa’s leads against everything else.

Defensively, Amelia has the lead. The gap isn’t as big as the offense gap, however, so w/e. Oh, she might have a level of Duessel support also, so that gives her a slightly bigger edge defensively, but she loses it once Marisa builds up her own supports, so meh.

As you can see, it’s not clear on Ephraim’s Route at all. Amelia has defense, Marisa has offense (Amelia also has mobility, but she actually _loses_ mobility after promotion, so that cancels itself out). If anything, Marisa is winning since the offensive difference is bigger than the defensive difference, but either way it’s not a big gap between the two.

For Eirika’s Route, however, Marisa joins earlier, and so her level lead will be much bigger than this. Unlike Amelia, also, Marisa doesn’t start with negative durability and 0-2 AS, so she’ll be feasibly gaining some levels before Amelia joins. Let’s say about 5, though it can easily be moar than that.

10/0 Marisa
8.5 Atk, 16.0 AS – 26.8 HP, 4.8 Def, 4.3 Res, 43.5 Avo

Base Amelia (Eir Route, Ch. 13)
5 Atk, 5 AS – 17-18 HP, 3.0 Def, 17-18 Avo (13 with Iron Lance, 9 with Javelin or Steel Lance)

lolwut

On this route, Amelia can *never* recover from this initial h4x. Ever. It simply can’t happen. Marisa maintains a huge level lead for a long while, and Amelia being stuck as a Trainee that gets one-rounded by almost everything initially doesn’t help at all. However, trainee Amelia gets big doses of EXP, so I’ll give Marisa only 5 levels while Amelia gets out of her Trainee Phase. Then she’ll gain about 7 more as a Cavalier, and Marisa will have promoted by then.

20/1 Swordmaster Marisa
13.5 Atk, 19.9 AS – 38.3 HP, 8.2 Def, 7.8 Res, 56.3 Avo

8 Cavalier Amelia
9.6 Atk, 12.4 AS – 26.6 HP, 6.8 Def, 7.4 Res, 38.8 Avo

These comparisons are total jokes. Marisa is winning _everything_, and there’s absolutely no way around it without bloating Amelia’s level, which doesn’t actually change the comparison--she sucks, so her gaining excess levels just puts her in a bigger negative.

Also, I’ve come to another important point here: Amelia never ever becomes a good unit in any way. Even at the end of the game, her offense is only “eh” and her defense is never stellar. Marisa doesn’t exactly excel in raw stats either--but she does get that juicy SM +15 Crit boost, which makes her offense h4x. With a Killing Edge, 20/1 SM Marisa has a 5 + 30 + 15 + 10 = 60% chance to Crit, which is an 84% chance to kill almost any enemy in the whole game on a double (she won’t get Generals and high-Def enemies, but she’ll do just as well as most of your good units against them thanks to her Crit). That’s also without considering supports at all, which may boost it even higher—a B with Tethys and a B with Gerik makes it +10 already, which is now 91% chance to kill an enemy on a double, rather than 84%--that’s almost Guy-level.

Amelia never has this, and she can’t get anything similar (her Crit with Killer Weapons is decidedly unimpressive, and she doubles a lot less, so her Crit chance is less by about 20-30% on things she doesn’t double). All she has to compare is mobility, and that vanishes once she promotes to GK, since she keeps the mount but gets lower Move—or, if she’s going Paladin, she keeps more mobility and loses Axes and 2 HP/1 Def, so it’s about the same overall.

Rennac and Amelia*

On Eirika’s Route, Amelia’s offense is _clearly_ worse. On Ephraim’s it’s a big enough gap to be considered decisive for Marisa, and then when Marisa promotes and gains +15 Crit, it’s no contest at all offensively.

What? If “there’s nothing left to do,” then having Ewan recruit her doesn’t suck at all. Besides, there’s no disadvantage to Ewan dying after recruiting Marisa—none at all.

5 Move vs. 4 early on.
5 Move vs. 7 after Amelia promotes.
6 Move vs. 7 when Marisa promotes.
6 Move vs. 6 Move + terrain penalties due to mount after Amelia promotes.

Looks to me like Marisa wins mobility overall. The horse actually hurts Amelia once she becomes a Great Knight (which is her better promotion either way, so if you want to go Paladin and keep a mobility lead but hurt her stats a lot moar, be my guest).

Marisa > Amelia.