@Gheb: I am in a good mood and sort of want to hear you rant on how good mia is lol
Mia is aaaaaa~wesome! I always give her Soren's Adept skill which is initiated by the percent number of a characters's speed value ... which is pretty useless on Soren, who starts with 18 and has whack speed growth and cap. Mia has base spd of 28, that means from the time she joins she has a nearly 30% chance to get another hit in ... once she has 33% she gets an additional hit in for every 3rd attack she uses. Couple that with Vantage and a support that boosts her attack and you have a saxyass Swordmaster. Like all Trueblades, she has fine endgame stats too and she's not hard to get strong until that point at all.
Difference between her and Zihark is that she's a godess among god in GM whereas Zihark is a god among dwarfs in DB.
@zyth: That's the problem. When I was going through hard mode. I was only using about 6 key figures for exp gain. They still do not get enough exp. I never gave leonardo or edward a single kill. They were used for weaking enemies so the others could get the experience. Maicaih, Nolan, Jill, and Aran were my targets for exp gain. Sothe and Zihark received the rest. Optimizing the exp at hand the best I could, I could only manage these characters to about lv 1-2 by end of part 1.
By making sure no laguz were killed in human form, I maxed exp. gain I could get. Aran ended up lv 12, noland lv 15, jill, lv 13, sothe lv 10, zihark level 11 or so, and Micaiah lv 8 by the end of the part 3. But, once I got into part 4. Aran would die from being doubled if attacked by two opponents faster than him. Sothe was seeing about 50% hitrate from those attacking him and would die in 2-3 hits. Zihark had better evade, but still say decent hitates against him. lol Micaiah as mage and no speed, nothing more need be said. And Nolan simply does not have the defence nor evade. Jill was beefier in defence than nolan, but still killed easily.
So my main complaint about dawn brigade was they need help from better units all the time to get any good. Its only once they reached the tower that finally could work by themselves pretty much.
In hard mode it's straight-up unrealistic to attempt getting any non-promoted DB unit combative from 3-6 onward. Every single one of them devours an unforgiveable amount of exp to get that strong during part 1 and I fail to see how it's even supposed to be possible to make Edward, Leonardo, Meg and Fiona that strong at all. I can see how it works for Aran but that requires you to neglect a lot of other units ...
If you want a successful part 3 and some useable DB units in part 4 you kind of need part 1 as preperation to meet a few conditions to make that possible:
Double Earth support between Zihark, Nolan or Volug at B level to dodge most of the Laguz' attacks in 3-6 [especially if you're hiding among the reeds]. Zihark x Nolan is prefered, for mobility reasons and because Volug can hold his own in fullshift even without the Earth support from Nolan / Zihark [I couple him up with Laura, who still gives a boost for avo anyway]. Volug should get enough attacks in during part 1 to reach S-Rank for his strike.
For Nolan I just give him all kills possible until Volug joins and I also give him the Energy drop early to avoid getting outweighed by the Steel Axe so badly [he gets doubles a lot because he loses +3 Spd with it on base str
]. When I invest resources like that into him I usually manage to get him to lvl 15 or 16 by the time 1-4 ends and I give him a master seal asap for better mobility and instant +2s on a lot of stats. From then on I don't have to worry about him being able to keep up anymore [especially with Zihark's support]. Normally I use Paragon on Zihark because that's really all he needs [and he doesn't actually 'need' it but I found it more helpful than anywhere else].
Finally, Jill may be leveled up a bit during the few chapters she's there in part one and give her a master seal asap as well. Be warned though, she's still hardly any good from part 3 onward. You'd need to give her Paragon and like every potshot possible during 3-6 to make her useful later on.
So 3-6 mainly comes down to Sothe [with Micaiah support + heal] and Volug [with Laura support + heal as well as Olivi Grass support] covering the northern chokepoint and the NPC units as well as Zihark x Nolan [with Tarvos ofc] taking the eastern part of the maps by supporting each other and hiding among the reeds for additional evasion. If you have the starting area generally cleared, Leonardo and Jill are optional additions that may help some to weaken untransformed Laguz' from the distance.
From 3-11 onward I virtually ditch Sothe entirely and only let him throw knives and Jill is amost guaranteed to not cut it. Volug, Zihark, Nolan with supports on each other will keep the choke point covered easily and Tauroneo with Imbue [taken from Fiona] is virtually immortal - that guy heals himself for 12HP every turn due to his abnormally high base mag! 3-12 is all about covering the right tracks and can be done with your 3 or 4 decent units around just fine.
Zihark x Nolan will be ready for part 4, Volug most likely will be as well, Tauroneo is pretty good and underrated and perfectly useable if you give him a master crown. Micaiah / Laura can be used as filler healers and by the off-chance you managed to get Jill strong I guess you can use her [although it's still inefficient].
Wow, that was a pretty long read, huh? tl;dr have Zihark support Nolan [or at least Volug] and try to not waste any exp on Eddy, Leonaro, Aran or any other non-promoted unit. Zihark, Nolan, Volug and Tauroneo can be viable in part 4 without wasting any ressources and Laura / Micaiah are good filler units to have around. Probably the most you can get out of the pawn brigade.
You're probably talking about easy mode here? Any unit can be good in that <_<
I've always heard that Laura is amazing but there's not much incentive to play her with Micaiah and Elincia both being soooo good. I reiterate that I would have picked Micaiah first in any kind of draft had she not been made standard.
Laura isn't amazing. She's good to have around if you avoid combat situations. More useful than most other DB units and can virtually be used during the entire game. Always handy to have as a healer ... but she's not amazing ... at all.
i like gheb's list the best by a lot. going in hard on that earth/earth. i also would have gone for shinon early.
Aye, I looked out for both things a lot. Earth x Earth makes 3-6 tolerable and allows for late-comers such as Lucia and Tanith to become actually good units. And Shinon is just sooooo reliable. Like, I've never had a Shinon that didn't turn out incredibly good. Also really glad that I got Gatrie because he's so damn efficent. Really with I would've gotten Reyson or at least Rafiel though. Still think I got the best team by far
