Putting Triangle Adept 3 on my Robin was the best thing I could have ever done to fight Taco... but now my Robin can't even dink the dragon loli.
Ah well, worth it.
I've said as much before, but the thing is, Triangle Adept is really the crutch for characters that aren't viable any other way. It's a skill that lets characters be better at killing the subset of enemies they already should have been able to kill, while being a liability against all other enemies. This is also why non-inherited **breaker skills are so weak, while inheriting swordbreaker onto a sword user is useful - it actually helps you expand the list of units you can counter. Going so far as Blarraven plus Traingle Adept PLUS Bowbreaker basically amounts to declaring "I am burning this character slot SOLELY to kill Takumi, and he will be useless against basically every other enemy besides a low-res red physical or any idiot that brings a rod user." By contrast, a unit like Hector is capable of simply powering through physical reds that don't have high enough ATK or DEF. (Plus there are better Takumi-killers out there to start with before resorting to massive overspecialization on a 5*...)
Why would you bring up Hector? Hector is nearly a god in all respects you know.
Besides, I have Triangle Adept on Robin because it lets him take out AND tank colorless and reds with no problem, being a really tanky mage himself. I know he's not the best mage out there, sure, but I want a mage who can take a hit and can reliably kill, Regular M.Robin can't hack it but Triangle Adept Robin can. Greens? I wasn't gonna send him out against those anyways, I got Hector with his laser beams or Lucina for that.
Why would you bring up Hector? Hector is nearly a god in all respects you know.
Besides, I have Triangle Adept on Robin because it lets him take out AND tank colorless and reds with no problem, being a really tanky mage himself. I know he's not the best mage out there, sure, but I want a mage who can take a hit and can reliably kill, Regular M.Robin can't hack it but Triangle Adept Robin can. Greens? I wasn't gonna send him out against those anyways, I got Hector with his laser beams or Lucina for that.
I bring up Hector because that's an example of a unit that's decent. And I'm not saying a blue should be able to kill a green, I'm saying a blue should be able to kill a blue.
Besides, the problem I have is that 4* Robin can't even take out reds and greys reliably, making him utterly useless. As you say yourself, it takes a 5* AND Triangle Adept JUST to be viable against less than half of the units you'll face... provided they don't have too much magic power.
Compare this to, say, Olwen, who is also a blue, and can ORKO Robin and only take 5 damage from his attack. With a Hone Cav, she can wipe out greys (including Takumi) without using a Triangle Adept, and also clean up blues while she's at it.
Or, how about, say, Gronnblade Cecilia, which can take out anything but a red, and can even take out plenty of reds, at that. (Especially if you trigger a special; eat it, Zephiel.) A fully optimized Ceci can OHKO Hector, which is, I'll again remind you, her own color. She can easily take down 80% of anything you'll face in one shot, and simply needs a bufftank backup to reposition her from counterattack.
Likewise, enjoy Lunatic maelstrom trying to tank damage when you need to be averaging 3 kills of 50% overstrength units in a turn if you're just barely managing the regular enemies you have advantage to.
I bring up Hector because that's an example of a unit that's decent. And I'm not saying a blue should be able to kill a green, I'm saying a blue should be able to kill a blue.
Besides, the problem I have is that 4* Robin can't even take out reds and greys reliably, making him utterly useless. As you say yourself, it takes a 5* AND Triangle Adept JUST to be viable against less than half of the units you'll face... provided they don't have too much magic power.
Compare this to, say, Olwen, who is also a blue, and can ORKO Robin and only take 5 damage from his attack. With a Hone Cav, she can wipe out greys (including Takumi) without using a Triangle Adept, and also clean up blues while she's at it.
Or, how about, say, Gronnblade Cecilia, which can take out anything but a red, and can even take out plenty of reds, at that. (Especially if you trigger a special; eat it, Zephiel.) A fully optimized Ceci can OHKO Hector, which is, I'll again remind you, her own color. She can easily take down 80% of anything you'll face in one shot, and simply needs a bufftank backup to reposition her from counterattack.
Likewise, enjoy Lunatic maelstrom trying to tank damage when you need to be averaging 3 kills of 50% overstrength units in a turn if you're just barely managing the regular enemies you have advantage to.
Hector is not 'decent', Hector is universally considered a top tier green.
More importantly, TA is not just used to do more damage, it's also used to take less damage, which is particularly useful with tanky characters with relatively low attack values.
And you're comparing him to Olwen, who has Dire Thunder and has a horse, which are the two only reasons she and Reinhardt are considered top tier (Reinhardt more so, because he's got more atk). It's a fact that Reinhardt is Not Actually Good at 4* because he doesn't get Dire Thunder unless you build horse emblem. (Moreover, the fact Olwen needs Hone Cav just to kill Takumi shows her weaknesses as a unit)
Then you compare with Gronnblade Cecilia, which is literally nothingmore than maximum horse+blade cheese and has nothing to do with Cecilia's own value as a unit (because her stats actually suck)
It's particularly disingenuous when one remembers you're comparing a natural 5* with a top-tier weapon & statline and horse emblem cheesemakers with a 4* of all things.
Hector is not 'decent', Hector is universally considered a top tier green.
More importantly, TA is not just used to do more damage, it's also used to take less damage, which is particularly useful with tanky characters with relatively low attack values.
And you're comparing him to Olwen, who has Dire Thunder and has a horse, which are the two only reasons she and Reinhardt are considered top tier (Reinhardt more so, because he's got more atk). It's a fact that Reinhardt is Not Actually Good at 4* because he doesn't get Dire Thunder unless you build horse emblem. (Moreover, the fact Olwen needs Hone Cav just to kill Takumi shows her weaknesses as a unit)
Then you compare with Gronnblade Cecilia, which is literally nothingmore than maximum horse+blade cheese and has nothing to do with Cecilia's own value as a unit (because her stats actually suck)
It's particularly disingenuous when one remembers you're comparing a natural 5* with a top-tier weapon & statline and horse emblem cheesemakers with a 4* of all things.
5* Robin dies to (5*) Olwen taking only 5 damage. (Reinhardt takes a little more because of his lower Res.)
And it's, to use your words, particularly disingenuous to ignore the nature of this game when talking about whether characters are useful or not. You only get four at a time, so if they aren't the best half-dozen or so units of a particular movement type (thanks to those annoying "all armor" quests) they're useless. Saying Ceci isn't any good because it takes inheritance and team design to bring out her full potential is basically just complaining that a strategy game has strategy. (If Ceci's such crap, please explain my months-long win streak on offense, and half-dozen defense victories a week in the arena using a team built around her...) Saying Olwen is weak because you want to buff her just raises the question, why wouldn't you use every buff you can every chance you get? (But you're right, a character that needs a skill to insta-gib the "best unit in the game" as well as over half the rest of the roster is clearly inferior to a character that needs TWO skills to defeat just that one character, while doing nothing to increase versatility against other units.) NO character is good without a proper build or a team that takes advantage of their abilities. That's literally the whole strategy in this fairly streamlined and simplified strategy game. And a big part of the reason why Robin is so weak is that no builds really capitalize upon what strengths he has to a satisfactory degree without exacerbating his weaknesses.
So yes, Hector is good. Not great, good. He's a minimum baseline for competency. (Two of my four standard units definitely kill him, and my tank might or might not win depending upon circumstances, but at least tanks/stalls him.) He's way too weak to magic, and that painful slowness means that he's too difficult to ensure will always be at a tactical advantage to really make his stats shine as well as they otherwise could. (Even the BS 77 HP super-Hector in the final map of the top-tier Maelstrom just takes either Desperation or accepting the first counter for Ceci to kill... and yes, you absolutely need "horse cheese" characters to win those maps.)
Saying Olwen or Reinhardt are top tier "only" because they have great skills, high power, are capable of wiping out a majority of the other top-tier units, all WHILE being able to use much better mobility that gives the tactical flexibility to press those advantages to maximum effect is like saying they're "only" the best units in the game. I bench Hector and take Olwen for a reason.
Besides, if we're talking about "a tank that also deals tons of damage", that applies to Ceci to a greater degree than Robin, since Ceci has a pretty decent stats distribution for a pure mage: High attack, decent speed, high res, and screw def. I frequently throw Ceci out as bait to tank a blue or green mage's attack and kill in return. And that's actually more useful than tanking physical more often than not, since it's far easier to just stay out of the range of non-cav melee units and wipe them out with magic before they get a chance to fight back. (Part of why ranged counter is on nearly any "good" melee unit. Also, there's a reason they introduced a new super-powerful +6 Def&Res skill ONLY for ranged attacks - it's not because melee's so powerful...) If your mages need Def for anything but archers and ninjas, you're doing it wrong.
To be a good unit, it has to be able to counter at least half of all the enemy units you are going to face. A great unit like Ceci will take out even units she's at a disadvantage to in a single shot.
And again, if you're going to talk as though I don't know what I'm talking about, there are far better units that make use of Triangle Advantage than Robin for damage mitigation, such as (to take another blue), Subaki, who can basically take 0 damage from reds, if you're willing to spend a slot SOLELY upon reds. (And look, Subaki's BALANCED defenses means he can tank red mages AND melee, unlike Robin who still takes significant damage from red mages.) The problem is, again, you still need to have redundant characters taking out all other colors. I use Subaki for something like the defense mission where you have to tank an invincible Ike because LOL no damage, but that's a rare event where I have a guaranteed beast red I need to spend a slot to tank.
Robin is roadkill in the rare event I actually see him in any arena lineup. Again, my usual lineup has three of four units that can one-hit-kill him, and take negligible damage even if they let him get the first shot because Triangle Adept does nothing if he doesn't have triangle advantage. Again, the goal isn't to be "totally invincible" against just a couple units, it's to be capable of defeating the widest range of possible enemies, so hyper-specializing upon defeating just one unit is a weakness when you come across teams that only have blues and greens.
5* Robin dies to (5*) Olwen taking only 5 damage. (Reinhardt takes a little more because of his lower Res.)
And it's, to use your words, particularly disingenuous to ignore the nature of this game when talking about whether characters are useful or not. You only get four at a time, so if they aren't the best half-dozen or so units of a particular movement type (thanks to those annoying "all armor" quests) they're useless. Saying Ceci isn't any good because it takes inheritance and team design to bring out her full potential is basically just complaining that a strategy game has strategy. (If Ceci's such crap, please explain my months-long win streak on offense, and half-dozen defense victories a week in the arena using a team built around her...) Saying Olwen is weak because you want to buff her just raises the question, why wouldn't you use every buff you can every chance you get? (But you're right, a character that needs a skill to insta-gib the "best unit in the game" as well as over half the rest of the roster is clearly inferior to a character that needs TWO skills to defeat just that one character, while doing nothing to increase versatility against other units.) NO character is good without a proper build or a team that takes advantage of their abilities. That's literally the whole strategy in this fairly streamlined and simplified strategy game. And a big part of the reason why Robin is so weak is that no builds really capitalize upon what strengths he has to a satisfactory degree without exacerbating his weaknesses.
So yes, Hector is good. Not great, good. He's a minimum baseline for competency. (Two of my four standard units definitely kill him, and my tank might or might not win depending upon circumstances, but at least tanks/stalls him.) He's way too weak to magic, and that painful slowness means that he's too difficult to ensure will always be at a tactical advantage to really make his stats shine as well as they otherwise could. (Even the BS 77 HP super-Hector in the final map of the top-tier Maelstrom just takes either Desperation or accepting the first counter for Ceci to kill... and yes, you absolutely need "horse cheese" characters to win those maps.)
Saying Olwen or Reinhardt are top tier "only" because they have great skills, high power, are capable of wiping out a majority of the other top-tier units, all WHILE being able to use much better mobility that gives the tactical flexibility to press those advantages to maximum effect is like saying they're "only" the best units in the game. I bench Hector and take Olwen for a reason.
Besides, if we're talking about "a tank that also deals tons of damage", that applies to Ceci to a greater degree than Robin, since Ceci has a pretty decent stats distribution for a pure mage: High attack, decent speed, high res, and screw def. I frequently throw Ceci out as bait to tank a blue or green mage's attack and kill in return. And that's actually more useful than tanking physical more often than not, since it's far easier to just stay out of the range of non-cav melee units and wipe them out with magic before they get a chance to fight back. (Part of why ranged counter is on nearly any "good" melee unit. Also, there's a reason they introduced a new super-powerful +6 Def&Res skill ONLY for ranged attacks - it's not because melee's so powerful...) If your mages need Def for anything but archers and ninjas, you're doing it wrong.
To be a good unit, it has to be able to counter at least half of all the enemy units you are going to face. A great unit like Ceci will take out even units she's at a disadvantage to in a single shot.
And again, if you're going to talk as though I don't know what I'm talking about, there are far better units that make use of Triangle Advantage than Robin for damage mitigation, such as (to take another blue), Subaki, who can basically take 0 damage from reds, if you're willing to spend a slot SOLELY upon reds. (And look, Subaki's BALANCED defenses means he can tank red mages AND melee, unlike Robin who still takes significant damage from red mages.) The problem is, again, you still need to have redundant characters taking out all other colors. I use Subaki for something like the defense mission where you have to tank an invincible Ike because LOL no damage, but that's a rare event where I have a guaranteed beast red I need to spend a slot to tank.
Robin is roadkill in the rare event I actually see him in any arena lineup. Again, my usual lineup has three of four units that can one-hit-kill him, and take negligible damage even if they let him get the first shot because Triangle Adept does nothing if he doesn't have triangle advantage. Again, the goal isn't to be "totally invincible" against just a couple units, it's to be capable of defeating the widest range of possible enemies, so hyper-specializing upon defeating just one unit is a weakness when you come across teams that only have blues and greens.
This comment is now HILARIOUS because Robin is extremely meta.
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