my honest reaction before watching: LOL LYRE THINKS SHE'S ON THE TEAM edit post-watch reaction: LOL LYRE THINKS SHE'S ON THE TEAM But really you all made good points, but Lyre and Zihark only got bumped up a little in my estimation (but I think I rated Zihark a lot better than most already). I'm now a proud passenger on the Tauroneo express though!
Zihark feels miscasted here, He's always a character I hear people say who's good, if anything he might be slightly overrated considering the amount of times I've seen "Zihawk/Volug/Jill/Nolan are the only good DB units" I can't recall the last time in my 16 years of having talked about this game, say something negative about the guy. EDIT: with that said the entire zihawk section was really fun to listen to back and forth.
I kind of took the Raisin approach of , he's obviously not bad, he's just WAY better than you think he is (kinda what he did with Catherine in our other video).
Lyre's biggest issue is being laguz. They're fun units but RD doesn't have time for fun; it wants you to suffer. My best girl, Vika taught me that lesson.
Zihark with astra,adept,renewal, crit+20 and forged silver sword with max crit on it, and in the tower alondite. I’ve had level 20 trueblade zihark with everything except magic capped (seriously blessed run tho) I actually had a hard time having him NOT kill ashera in 2 rounds of combat without even factoring in astra. Seriously he became my strongest unit standing on par with transfer bonus all capped ike. Zihark with a few boosters not even all of them just 1 drop and a robe became able to 1 round most of the game. Jill was just kinda faster haar with poor durability despite getting a Dracoshield and a robe. Zihark actually ended up with more defense hp and res than her. I ended up bringing him over to the greil mercs and sending him against Every single enemy basically alone in chapter 3 endgame. I should not as a rule I don’t use promotion items at all. Every single unit is leveled up all the way through via bexp and grinding. And if we bring my cheated runs into account lol Zihark 2 rounded dighensia that shit was hilarious lol. I’ve seen adept and astra proc in the same round of combat with every hit being a crit… it’s honestly kind of hilarious how broken sword masters/trueblades can get in RD. I love doing cheat runs where I max characters out via bexp and seeing what happens. But cheats or not Zihark may very well be one of the best combat units in RD imo. Oh I think I had him support with either brom or Jill in my last run, and the amount of times I saw him able to take 0 damage… was impressive given his choice in armor
Zihark remains my favourite unit in RD, absolutely busted with resolve and I love sending him to massacre dragons in hard mode with the alondite and when they have 0 hit even before his support bonuses. To this day, he is the only person I have ever seen dodge a hit while asleep. I unironically believe that he is stronger than laguz royals as he has something that they never will: 1-2 range. With avoid that makes enemies never hit him even BEFORE an earth-earth support, and watching all the skills proc before he nukes a dragon will never not be satisfying. No stat boosters needed, all you need is to support him with nolan or volug and turn on animations and watch enemies get obliterated. He alone makes me 3-6 a map I enjoy because its so satisfying giving him a killing edge and watching my invincible swordmaster 1-round enemies. Oh also on hard mode he is even better because he can never get weapon triangle disadvantage from lances so there's that too. In summary: Zihark is perhaps the only invincible unit in RD and he does it with style. Give him vantage (which you get in 1-E) and resolve and watch the cool animations.
The one downside is when I face him in 3-7, if he ever gets into resolve he becomes scarier than the black knight. At least the black knight only moves 3 spaces. He will walk around, get hit, proc adept, crit twice and laugh while you miss every attack.
I agree with a lot said here. Zihark is fantastic, but perhaps the least talked about DB member. He has issues but he's a big crutch for the DB. He's arguably the best DB unit at securing kills, but often he'll end up getting himself killed because of that if used as a wall in a choke, he'll overwhelm himself so he needs a but more thought in his placement. Swords are fine in RD and Swordmasters finally got range, but ranged is very unreliable with low hit compared to other weapon types. I think Sothe and Jill are more reliable and useful because of these and their other utilities. I wouldn't take him into the endgame over Mia or Stefan if I wanted a Trueblade unless I really wanted to, but the DB desperately needed units like him and he puts in work. Lyre can be used with a lot of favoritism but it requires too much resources for less output. Same for any laguz so ig she's underrated sure. You could use stat boosters but you could use them on Lethe, Mordecai, Ranulf, etc, and it takes more for her to hit her benchmarks than the other Laguz. She is better in combat than other shit units. She's not unsalvageable and doesn't require BEXP to do something like a unit like Fiona would (although it helps a lot ofc). Although, she competes with so many others for a deployment slot, something some shit units in P1 and P2 don't need to worry about. Imo this drops her lower than some of them like Meg and Astrid since at the very least they're free portable light runes. Tauroneo is extremely good in the maps he's in. 3-12 and 3-13 are much easier because of him. I think the Crown is best used on him to give him the stats he needs for 3-13. He won't solo but it's damn close. He's near unkillable in 1-6, but his movement has him lagging behind Sothe/Volug/Zihark/Jill. Same in 1-E but in that he's outshined by BK. P4 he's kinda bad tho. He's fine in 4-2 but can't keep up with Tibarn who can actually solo everything except crossbows, but he's great at taking out the reinforcements. 4-5 he sucks because swamp :/ I don't participate in a lot of discussions, but I don't think people talk about Brom often. He's not great and falls off a cliff in P3, but he is a very useful unit in Part 2, being an excellent wall on all 3 maps. He's not going to wipe out armies, but he'll draw enemies at a choke and create opportunities for a quick cleanup after his enemy phase, and doesn't compete for deployment so he comes at no cost.
Yooo Brom is a pretty solid choice. He can do a lot in part 2 as well and with some resources can actually provide a consistent wall. I do like Mordecai’s base 32 def over him, but then you'd have to deal with the Laguz gauge and no 1-2 range, but he definitely is underrated as well!
Oh boy a subject I'm actually qualified to comment on! In general You guys (other than raisins) place too much emphasis on tower, tower is trivial after 4-e-1 because of Caineghis Naesala, Tibarn, Nailah, Giffca and Rafiel, Volke/Stefan also exist if needed Tower is basically complettely ignorable, consider the game finished after 4-5 for the most part. On Zihark I agree with raisins that you have to basically use one of 2 frames, and the frame I'll pick is the zihark with early master crown frame To go over Zihark in general he has about 10 maps before tower, 1-6-1 He's a strong combat unit in line with Tauroneo, his strength is ok, but with a +5 iron sword he holds his own, 1-6-2 he's farming exp while tauroneo/jill clear the map 1-7 same thing but tormod/maurim/vika are doing the clearing this time 1-8 he kills the top crew very nicely with a brave sword and wind edge 1-E he can shove rafiel and farm exp while Nailah/The black knight/rafiel do almost all of the heavy lifting 3-6 it's at this moment that we look at various distributions of stat boosters and what they mean for Zihark There are roughly 2 worth discussing bulk wise The first is 0 boosters full yolo The goal here is that with a promotion + careful positioning+ aran or Jill C support you can survive 2 hits 1 from a cat and 1 from a tiger This requires zihark to have 71 2 hit bulk (base zihark has 64 after promo) so he'll need 3 hp procs if he has reed tile+Jill or he'll need 1 def 1 hp, or he'll need 1 def 3 hp if he's doing the stand in the swamp strategies. Zihark with 1 seraph robe and 1 dracoshield will want to hit 83 2 hit bulk, as this will let him survive 2 tigers on enemy phase. A note on dodgetanking Dodgetanking kind of works but it's super risky To explain, enemies have 139 hit, and Zihark will most likely be on worst biorhythm unless you wasted turns in 1-7 waiting so his biorhythm will curve up in 3-6 (this is what the speedrun does). I'll assume for the sake of argument you are going for real time oritented strategies rather than for turn oriented ones. level 10 Zihark has about 26-28 speed and 14 skill, he can reach Volug A support if you stall in 1-7 and 1-E for a bit to have him ride on volug's back. Zihark has 111 avoid before resolve and 137 avoid after. Meaning that you can reach "invisible" status with zihark but you need Resolve volug A support and to stall out his biorhythm (which comes with volug A support) However turn oriented playthroughs are going to have zihark in worst biorhythm with C support from their preferred partner so dodgetanking is off the table. Offense Zihark offensively can be broken down into a few categories, for all of these assume you forge 5 might and 15 crit on the steel sword Cats have 44 hp and 14 defense, meaning it takes Zihark an adept proc or a crit to kill a cat. Tigers have 52 hp and 20 defense meaning Zihark needs either a Crit OR an astra to kill a tiger if he has 19 or more attack or a double crit/adept proc with 18 or less attack 1. Wrath (typically used with 0 boosters or with uninvested Zihark), Wrath allows Zihark to ORKO cats and tigers with 99% probability. These strats are only used in turn oriented playthroughs because time oriented ones prefer to sit and use resolve 2. Energy drop, an energy drop makes it easier to KO tigers, in fact if you have an energy drop AND a promotion you can even get to the elusive adept proc kill on tigers, so this is good for resolve zihark builds even in turn oriented playthroughs, 3. Resolve without an energy drop, this is mostly used in speedruns, it has less of a chance of ORKOing tigers, but if you instant promote zihark it'll work fine, the main issue with this is that zihark will be garbage in part 4, but that's probably ok 3-12 :: It's important to mention 3-7 here, as 3-7 allows you to manipulate zihark's biorhythm so that he will be at the start of best at the start of 3-12, just memorize his biorhythm chart, or put every turn you spent on every map in a notepad and then do the modulo arithmatic from there (it's actually pretty simple math). With those things out of the way let's go on to Zihark's offense the critical benchmark in 3-12 is 39 attack, The silver blade has 16 attack so Zihark needs 23 strength to reach the ORKO benchmark. Energy drop Zihark easily reaches this benchmark,but non energy-drop builds will need to do a different route. Note that roughly half the enemies in 3-12 are unpromoted scrubs that Zihark without an energy dorp will trivially ORKO Zihark can use the Forged steel sword for proc=based offense instead, relying on the yellow units to clean up scraps he leaves behind, Zihark has a 42% adept (per hit) a 22% astra proc rate (again per hit) and 35% crit rate (again per hit) for a total chance of "proc something" of 91.35%, now the next key is to realize that resolve triggers before these procs bringing the total odds of "just proc something" to 97.5% which is much higher. On the defensive side enemies in 3-12 have lower hit rates, BUT the catch is that it is much harder to protect your support bot, so you'll probably have to solo the enemies with your giga carry. Zihark with 32 speed 15 luck resolve and best biorhythm has 120 avoid, the high hit enemies have 135 hit, meaning Zihark isn't able to always dodge everything, however Zihark in resolve range will be able to tank 1 hit, and 2 if you gave him bulk boosters. (however bulk boosters probably means that he can't get into resolve in the first place so you'll need to give him an e drop and the silver blade most likely). With this setup Zihark will go HARD on 3-12. 3-13 There's literally 1 enemy that matters in 3-13 and Zihark has 1 good way to kill him Wrath+Forged Steel sword gives Zihark a 99.1% chance of ORKOing bronze sword ike, without requiring boots. He also needs 25 hit forged on this steel sword because ike is a dodgy boi with his leadership stars 4-2 Zihark in 4-2 is like another copy of lucia, he'll be decent but not nearly as good as tibarn, but he'll contribute to the cause. Tauroneo Tauroneo needs boots to do the 3-13 strat which was unmentioned. Tauroneo's issue comes from 2nd order effects, specifically on the boots, the speedwing and his lack of contributions in 4-2. Boots are a surprisingly low yield resource due to the large amount of tiny maps and rout in the rest of the game, but Nailah can make good use of them especially with pass and celerity. Speedwings however are much more valuable, Haar is very speed poor and every little bit you can give to his cause helps a lot, Haar can cap his speed before promo sometimes without needing wings, but if he doesn't boy his speed growth is pitiful, and every bit of speed he gets is super critical to ORKOing 4-3 enemies (you need 30 speed for that) The other key user of speedwings is Skrimir who needs them again for 4-3, the 3-9 wings has his name on them, so it's really mostly about Haar, haar needs the speedwings so badly that any unit not named Haar needs to have a damn good reason to take them, tauroneo does but the risk to haar is real, haar will probably be level 20/12 by the time you make it to 4-3, so he's often going to be cutting it extremely close to the 30 speed threshold. Any speed he can get is extremely critical as he won't likely gain any speed through BEXP. Tauroneo's other 2nd order effect is needing to get another unit in 4-2, typically you want about 4 good combat units per army in part 4, Janaff, Ulki, Skrimir, Sanaki, Naesala, Tibarn and nailah all come for free, but you need to train about 4 more to get a real army, Haar+Titania+Ike is 3, so you really need 1-2 more , without another 4-2 carry you'll probably need to BEXP elincia and a foot unit to get a complete army for part 4. Tauroneo does save BEXP for elincia but what foot unit can you combo with Tauroneo? Gatrie? Mia? it's unclear. Lyre:: I'm extremely unsure about how to think about lyre, even with an energy drop she still has pretty bad attack of 26, when you compare it to base mia with a steel blade base mia has 30 attack. Lyre also does not gain STR very often from BEXP. Cat gauge is annoying but not AS bad as it is memed on. The issue is that Fiona for example is really good at carrying the black knight in 3-6 and can do some other ferrying tasks in 3-12 and 1-E (though 1-E she is typically not deployed) Meg typically gets deployed to Shove sothe can do chip in 1-4 and can break gauges in 3-6, again training her is a massive chore, but her free utility is quite good. Astrid is actually mildly trainable, and can do some rescue chains in 3-9 but she's super reliant on getting an absurd amount of BEXP to reach silver knight. Lyre has 0 maps where she is a free deploy
I loved the Lyre Argument and I feel that they hit it with her, she is not as hopeless as Fiona, Meg or Astrid, and while she gets stumped by every other Laguz, that is not for her to be out that bad. Tauroneo’s analysis was perfect and something about Zihark is that when I have played him on RD runs, he is an amazing unit to train since with Iron sword he does not kill stuff in the latter stages of P-1, and with Nolan or Volug they solve every problem you might face in P-3, creating a 2 unit wall that has +60 avoid is insane, and with those contributions is not hard to get him to tower potential. I feel he is often a victim of “there are better units in DB” or “Give everything to Jill” but he is extremely solid and useful in more than just combat for a daunting portion of the game
Astrid can attack from range and canto away allowing her to gain XP (at an increased rate with Paragon) meaning she isn't nearly at the same level as Meg or Fiona.
With regards to non-royal and heron Laguz being underrated in general, I can honestly agree since I think the vast majority of them at least have short-term usefulness. I think anyone can agree that Volug is actually quite good for most of the Dawn Brigade maps, Muarim and Vika are quite good in the Part 1 maps they're in (heck Muarim isn't even dead weight in 4-4), Nealuchi, Lethe and Mordecai have a fair amount of potential usage in Part 2, Janaff and Ulki are outright pretty awesome for much of their appearances before the tower, and Skrimir is basically Caineghis lite for two chapters. One of the only ones with really questionable usefulness is in fact Lyre, but I think it's a fair point that she's not unsalvagely bad if you really wanted to use her, it's just hard to justify since Ranulf is basically a better version of her that is force deployed for a lot of maps. And yeah, I can definitely agree that Tauroneo is awesome in the few Part 1 and 3 chapters he's available for. He might have a claim to being one of the best armor knights in the series just because of that TBH!
One unit I loved using in my last RD draft was Vika. Of course you need grind and bexp to level up her to use in tower due to her low availability and low xp gain in part 1. However, it was very funny grinding her strike rank on two 4-4 generals near Oliver and bishop. And i didnt realize before that not royal bird laguz has interesting caps. Trained Vika and Ulki and saw their cap speed being above 40, basically my trueblade substitute from my draft run
Lyre for life!
Ngl you lost this one man.
"Tauroneo is the goat in 4 maps. In my mind that's a Laguz Royal!"
Definitely the best quote of the video ahahahha!
so true!
my honest reaction before watching: LOL LYRE THINKS SHE'S ON THE TEAM
edit post-watch reaction: LOL LYRE THINKS SHE'S ON THE TEAM
But really you all made good points, but Lyre and Zihark only got bumped up a little in my estimation (but I think I rated Zihark a lot better than most already). I'm now a proud passenger on the Tauroneo express though!
Tauroneo is the best but he is not the most underrated. I can see Lyre being the most overhated
Zihark feels miscasted here, He's always a character I hear people say who's good, if anything he might be slightly overrated considering the amount of times I've seen "Zihawk/Volug/Jill/Nolan are the only good DB units" I can't recall the last time in my 16 years of having talked about this game, say something negative about the guy.
EDIT: with that said the entire zihawk section was really fun to listen to back and forth.
I kind of took the Raisin approach of , he's obviously not bad, he's just WAY better than you think he is (kinda what he did with Catherine in our other video).
Lyre's biggest issue is being laguz. They're fun units but RD doesn't have time for fun; it wants you to suffer. My best girl, Vika taught me that lesson.
Watching a guy level lyre live and shes so good
Zihark with astra,adept,renewal, crit+20 and forged silver sword with max crit on it, and in the tower alondite. I’ve had level 20 trueblade zihark with everything except magic capped (seriously blessed run tho) I actually had a hard time having him NOT kill ashera in 2 rounds of combat without even factoring in astra. Seriously he became my strongest unit standing on par with transfer bonus all capped ike. Zihark with a few boosters not even all of them just 1 drop and a robe became able to 1 round most of the game. Jill was just kinda faster haar with poor durability despite getting a Dracoshield and a robe. Zihark actually ended up with more defense hp and res than her. I ended up bringing him over to the greil mercs and sending him against Every single enemy basically alone in chapter 3 endgame. I should not as a rule I don’t use promotion items at all. Every single unit is leveled up all the way through via bexp and grinding. And if we bring my cheated runs into account lol Zihark 2 rounded dighensia that shit was hilarious lol. I’ve seen adept and astra proc in the same round of combat with every hit being a crit… it’s honestly kind of hilarious how broken sword masters/trueblades can get in RD. I love doing cheat runs where I max characters out via bexp and seeing what happens. But cheats or not Zihark may very well be one of the best combat units in RD imo. Oh I think I had him support with either brom or Jill in my last run, and the amount of times I saw him able to take 0 damage… was impressive given his choice in armor
Zihark remains my favourite unit in RD, absolutely busted with resolve and I love sending him to massacre dragons in hard mode with the alondite and when they have 0 hit even before his support bonuses. To this day, he is the only person I have ever seen dodge a hit while asleep. I unironically believe that he is stronger than laguz royals as he has something that they never will: 1-2 range. With avoid that makes enemies never hit him even BEFORE an earth-earth support, and watching all the skills proc before he nukes a dragon will never not be satisfying. No stat boosters needed, all you need is to support him with nolan or volug and turn on animations and watch enemies get obliterated. He alone makes me 3-6 a map I enjoy because its so satisfying giving him a killing edge and watching my invincible swordmaster 1-round enemies. Oh also on hard mode he is even better because he can never get weapon triangle disadvantage from lances so there's that too.
In summary: Zihark is perhaps the only invincible unit in RD and he does it with style. Give him vantage (which you get in 1-E) and resolve and watch the cool animations.
The one downside is when I face him in 3-7, if he ever gets into resolve he becomes scarier than the black knight. At least the black knight only moves 3 spaces. He will walk around, get hit, proc adept, crit twice and laugh while you miss every attack.
I agree with a lot said here.
Zihark is fantastic, but perhaps the least talked about DB member. He has issues but he's a big crutch for the DB. He's arguably the best DB unit at securing kills, but often he'll end up getting himself killed because of that if used as a wall in a choke, he'll overwhelm himself so he needs a but more thought in his placement. Swords are fine in RD and Swordmasters finally got range, but ranged is very unreliable with low hit compared to other weapon types. I think Sothe and Jill are more reliable and useful because of these and their other utilities. I wouldn't take him into the endgame over Mia or Stefan if I wanted a Trueblade unless I really wanted to, but the DB desperately needed units like him and he puts in work.
Lyre can be used with a lot of favoritism but it requires too much resources for less output. Same for any laguz so ig she's underrated sure. You could use stat boosters but you could use them on Lethe, Mordecai, Ranulf, etc, and it takes more for her to hit her benchmarks than the other Laguz. She is better in combat than other shit units. She's not unsalvageable and doesn't require BEXP to do something like a unit like Fiona would (although it helps a lot ofc). Although, she competes with so many others for a deployment slot, something some shit units in P1 and P2 don't need to worry about. Imo this drops her lower than some of them like Meg and Astrid since at the very least they're free portable light runes.
Tauroneo is extremely good in the maps he's in. 3-12 and 3-13 are much easier because of him. I think the Crown is best used on him to give him the stats he needs for 3-13. He won't solo but it's damn close. He's near unkillable in 1-6, but his movement has him lagging behind Sothe/Volug/Zihark/Jill. Same in 1-E but in that he's outshined by BK. P4 he's kinda bad tho. He's fine in 4-2 but can't keep up with Tibarn who can actually solo everything except crossbows, but he's great at taking out the reinforcements. 4-5 he sucks because swamp :/
I don't participate in a lot of discussions, but I don't think people talk about Brom often. He's not great and falls off a cliff in P3, but he is a very useful unit in Part 2, being an excellent wall on all 3 maps. He's not going to wipe out armies, but he'll draw enemies at a choke and create opportunities for a quick cleanup after his enemy phase, and doesn't compete for deployment so he comes at no cost.
Yooo Brom is a pretty solid choice. He can do a lot in part 2 as well and with some resources can actually provide a consistent wall.
I do like Mordecai’s base 32 def over him, but then you'd have to deal with the Laguz gauge and no 1-2 range, but he definitely is underrated as well!
Oh boy a subject I'm actually qualified to comment on!
In general
You guys (other than raisins) place too much emphasis on tower, tower is trivial after 4-e-1 because of Caineghis Naesala, Tibarn, Nailah, Giffca and Rafiel, Volke/Stefan also exist if needed
Tower is basically complettely ignorable, consider the game finished after 4-5 for the most part.
On Zihark
I agree with raisins that you have to basically use one of 2 frames, and the frame I'll pick is the zihark with early master crown frame
To go over Zihark in general he has about 10 maps before tower,
1-6-1 He's a strong combat unit in line with Tauroneo, his strength is ok, but with a +5 iron sword he holds his own,
1-6-2 he's farming exp while tauroneo/jill clear the map
1-7 same thing but tormod/maurim/vika are doing the clearing this time
1-8 he kills the top crew very nicely with a brave sword and wind edge
1-E he can shove rafiel and farm exp while Nailah/The black knight/rafiel do almost all of the heavy lifting
3-6
it's at this moment that we look at various distributions of stat boosters and what they mean for Zihark
There are roughly 2 worth discussing bulk wise
The first is 0 boosters full yolo
The goal here is that with a promotion + careful positioning+ aran or Jill C support you can survive 2 hits 1 from a cat and 1 from a tiger This requires zihark to have 71 2 hit bulk (base zihark has 64 after promo) so he'll need 3 hp procs if he has reed tile+Jill or he'll need 1 def 1 hp, or he'll need 1 def 3 hp if he's doing the stand in the swamp strategies.
Zihark with 1 seraph robe and 1 dracoshield will want to hit 83 2 hit bulk, as this will let him survive 2 tigers on enemy phase.
A note on dodgetanking
Dodgetanking kind of works but it's super risky
To explain, enemies have 139 hit, and Zihark will most likely be on worst biorhythm unless you wasted turns in 1-7 waiting so his biorhythm will curve up in 3-6 (this is what the speedrun does). I'll assume for the sake of argument you are going for real time oritented strategies rather than for turn oriented ones.
level 10 Zihark has about 26-28 speed and 14 skill, he can reach Volug A support if you stall in 1-7 and 1-E for a bit to have him ride on volug's back.
Zihark has 111 avoid before resolve and 137 avoid after. Meaning that you can reach "invisible" status with zihark but you need Resolve volug A support and to stall out his biorhythm (which comes with volug A support)
However turn oriented playthroughs are going to have zihark in worst biorhythm with C support from their preferred partner so dodgetanking is off the table.
Offense
Zihark offensively can be broken down into a few categories, for all of these assume you forge 5 might and 15 crit on the steel sword
Cats have 44 hp and 14 defense, meaning it takes Zihark an adept proc or a crit to kill a cat.
Tigers have 52 hp and 20 defense meaning Zihark needs either a Crit OR an astra to kill a tiger if he has 19 or more attack or a double crit/adept proc with 18 or less attack
1. Wrath (typically used with 0 boosters or with uninvested Zihark), Wrath allows Zihark to ORKO cats and tigers with 99% probability. These strats are only used in turn oriented playthroughs because time oriented ones prefer to sit and use resolve
2. Energy drop, an energy drop makes it easier to KO tigers, in fact if you have an energy drop AND a promotion you can even get to the elusive adept proc kill on tigers, so this is good for resolve zihark builds even in turn oriented playthroughs,
3. Resolve without an energy drop, this is mostly used in speedruns, it has less of a chance of ORKOing tigers, but if you instant promote zihark it'll work fine, the main issue with this is that zihark will be garbage in part 4, but that's probably ok
3-12 ::
It's important to mention 3-7 here, as 3-7 allows you to manipulate zihark's biorhythm so that he will be at the start of best at the start of 3-12, just memorize his biorhythm chart, or put every turn you spent on every map in a notepad and then do the modulo arithmatic from there (it's actually pretty simple math).
With those things out of the way let's go on to Zihark's offense
the critical benchmark in 3-12 is 39 attack, The silver blade has 16 attack so Zihark needs 23 strength to reach the ORKO benchmark. Energy drop Zihark easily reaches this benchmark,but non energy-drop builds will need to do a different route. Note that roughly half the enemies in 3-12 are unpromoted scrubs that Zihark without an energy dorp will trivially ORKO
Zihark can use the Forged steel sword for proc=based offense instead, relying on the yellow units to clean up scraps he leaves behind, Zihark has a 42% adept (per hit) a 22% astra proc rate (again per hit) and 35% crit rate (again per hit) for a total chance of "proc something" of 91.35%, now the next key is to realize that resolve triggers before these procs bringing the total odds of "just proc something" to 97.5% which is much higher.
On the defensive side enemies in 3-12 have lower hit rates, BUT the catch is that it is much harder to protect your support bot, so you'll probably have to solo the enemies with your giga carry.
Zihark with 32 speed 15 luck resolve and best biorhythm has 120 avoid, the high hit enemies have 135 hit, meaning Zihark isn't able to always dodge everything, however Zihark in resolve range will be able to tank 1 hit, and 2 if you gave him bulk boosters. (however bulk boosters probably means that he can't get into resolve in the first place so you'll need to give him an e drop and the silver blade most likely). With this setup Zihark will go HARD on 3-12.
3-13
There's literally 1 enemy that matters in 3-13 and Zihark has 1 good way to kill him
Wrath+Forged Steel sword gives Zihark a 99.1% chance of ORKOing bronze sword ike, without requiring boots. He also needs 25 hit forged on this steel sword because ike is a dodgy boi with his leadership stars
4-2
Zihark in 4-2 is like another copy of lucia, he'll be decent but not nearly as good as tibarn, but he'll contribute to the cause.
Tauroneo
Tauroneo needs boots to do the 3-13 strat which was unmentioned.
Tauroneo's issue comes from 2nd order effects, specifically on the boots, the speedwing and his lack of contributions in 4-2.
Boots are a surprisingly low yield resource due to the large amount of tiny maps and rout in the rest of the game, but Nailah can make good use of them especially with pass and celerity.
Speedwings however are much more valuable, Haar is very speed poor and every little bit you can give to his cause helps a lot, Haar can cap his speed before promo sometimes without needing wings, but if he doesn't boy his speed growth is pitiful, and every bit of speed he gets is super critical to ORKOing 4-3 enemies (you need 30 speed for that)
The other key user of speedwings is Skrimir who needs them again for 4-3, the 3-9 wings has his name on them, so it's really mostly about Haar, haar needs the speedwings so badly that any unit not named Haar needs to have a damn good reason to take them, tauroneo does but the risk to haar is real, haar will probably be level 20/12 by the time you make it to 4-3, so he's often going to be cutting it extremely close to the 30 speed threshold. Any speed he can get is extremely critical as he won't likely gain any speed through BEXP.
Tauroneo's other 2nd order effect is needing to get another unit in 4-2, typically you want about 4 good combat units per army in part 4, Janaff, Ulki, Skrimir, Sanaki, Naesala, Tibarn and nailah all come for free, but you need to train about 4 more to get a real army, Haar+Titania+Ike is 3, so you really need 1-2 more , without another 4-2 carry you'll probably need to BEXP elincia and a foot unit to get a complete army for part 4. Tauroneo does save BEXP for elincia but what foot unit can you combo with Tauroneo? Gatrie? Mia? it's unclear.
Lyre:: I'm extremely unsure about how to think about lyre, even with an energy drop she still has pretty bad attack of 26, when you compare it to base mia with a steel blade base mia has 30 attack. Lyre also does not gain STR very often from BEXP. Cat gauge is annoying but not AS bad as it is memed on.
The issue is that Fiona for example is really good at carrying the black knight in 3-6 and can do some other ferrying tasks in 3-12 and 1-E (though 1-E she is typically not deployed)
Meg typically gets deployed to Shove sothe can do chip in 1-4 and can break gauges in 3-6, again training her is a massive chore, but her free utility is quite good.
Astrid is actually mildly trainable, and can do some rescue chains in 3-9 but she's super reliant on getting an absurd amount of BEXP to reach silver knight.
Lyre has 0 maps where she is a free deploy
I loved the Lyre Argument and I feel that they hit it with her, she is not as hopeless as Fiona, Meg or Astrid, and while she gets stumped by every other Laguz, that is not for her to be out that bad. Tauroneo’s analysis was perfect and something about Zihark is that when I have played him on RD runs, he is an amazing unit to train since with Iron sword he does not kill stuff in the latter stages of P-1, and with Nolan or Volug they solve every problem you might face in P-3, creating a 2 unit wall that has +60 avoid is insane, and with those contributions is not hard to get him to tower potential. I feel he is often a victim of “there are better units in DB” or “Give everything to Jill” but he is extremely solid and useful in more than just combat for a daunting portion of the game
Astrid can attack from range and canto away allowing her to gain XP (at an increased rate with Paragon) meaning she isn't nearly at the same level as Meg or Fiona.
Yeah people underrate Astrid a bit much she is bad but not on the level of Fiona and Meg.
With regards to non-royal and heron Laguz being underrated in general, I can honestly agree since I think the vast majority of them at least have short-term usefulness. I think anyone can agree that Volug is actually quite good for most of the Dawn Brigade maps, Muarim and Vika are quite good in the Part 1 maps they're in (heck Muarim isn't even dead weight in 4-4), Nealuchi, Lethe and Mordecai have a fair amount of potential usage in Part 2, Janaff and Ulki are outright pretty awesome for much of their appearances before the tower, and Skrimir is basically Caineghis lite for two chapters. One of the only ones with really questionable usefulness is in fact Lyre, but I think it's a fair point that she's not unsalvagely bad if you really wanted to use her, it's just hard to justify since Ranulf is basically a better version of her that is force deployed for a lot of maps.
And yeah, I can definitely agree that Tauroneo is awesome in the few Part 1 and 3 chapters he's available for. He might have a claim to being one of the best armor knights in the series just because of that TBH!
Haven't played RD yet but this was informative and entertaining, very nice! Would love to see a fates criminally underrated
I wonder hiw Donlot would react to Adam saying Lyre is better then Meg. 😂
Lol their is people that think that mia > zihark wtf
Criminally underrated time, nice o/
One unit I loved using in my last RD draft was Vika.
Of course you need grind and bexp to level up her to use in tower due to her low availability and low xp gain in part 1. However, it was very funny grinding her strike rank on two 4-4 generals near Oliver and bishop.
And i didnt realize before that not royal bird laguz has interesting caps. Trained Vika and Ulki and saw their cap speed being above 40, basically my trueblade substitute from my draft run
No, just no.
Don't use Lyre.