Division Rankings rambling.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Well that's even less spoilable.

[Dhyerwolf]

NEB, are you not giving the bosses any penalty for the ability to brave them right at the end?

[Dark Holy Elf]

A minor one, as well as a slight one to all optional bosses for being optional.

EDIT: Though hmm I may have lowballed the respect hit somewhat. Brave-blitzing gives you 12 "free" actions at the end of the fight... but I wouldn't hold the full wrath of that against bosses, because bungling a brave-blitz is a good way to die horribly. I'd probably count half of that, 6 free hits instead which is... still a good chunk of a bar of PCHP to take off most bosses (except bosses who fight in pairs where the penalty should probably be reduced). I'd been mentally lopping off closer to a third of a bar.

[Dhyerwolf]

I guess the other thing (which Pyro can probably tell us) if the averages include buffs effect. I'm not to the point yet, but seems like there are some potent MT ones. I'm assuming that since the average he has the final is higher than the DL average that something is likely factoring in there (it could also be just assuming that classes with hideous damage are running something with decent damage as a secondary).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Pyro said that he did include buffs; in fact, the spike in damage that occurs after getting Performer is pretty much entirely due to that. (Hence the debate in the other thread as to when the Performer asterisk is earned!) Another reason the in-game average is higher than DL is because of cross-class twinking (Two Hands, Two Swords, Pierce MDef, stat boost skills, etc.) - you'd never have an endgame Spell Fencer or Valkyrie with damage anywhere -near- as bad as the one in the stat thread. The damage averages in BD are pretty fluid with your setup; I found Pyro's figures generally quite reasonable (Performer-related specifics aside) for what it's worth.


(This is one of the reasons classes like Merchant (or Salve-Maker) having good damage is something I find a bit annoying; not only does the cost make them undesirable choices for offence in-game, but they're benefiting from using fixed damage skills scaled against a number of classes suffering due to lack of cross-class twinking. And High Leverage is freaking suicide in-game unless you know you're about to win which is a much smaller % of BD boss fights than it is of DL matches. Stupid Merchant.)

[Pyro]

Regarding Bravely Default boss durability:

If you factor in Brave-blitzing a boss as soon as it can possibly be done in a perfect fashion, then it just lops off exactly 1.2 PCHP in HP off the total (this is subtractive, mind, as an otherwise 3 PCHP boss is 1.8 while a 4 PCHP boss is 2.8)

This is a little bit on the extreme side, and also assumes you scan the enemy HP bar. Assuming 6 'free' actions at the end is instead subtracting 0.6 PCHP from the total... which is considerably less than a third for most of them.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Soul Nomad! The cast is pretty much wacky Fire Emblem. Quick lowdown on my views: no generics in averages (lolno at Odie with OHKO damage, given that he was ranked in Middle...), counters are go but only against other attacks (and not MT attacks), melee attackers can only counter melee.


Revya - Average damage, melee counters, average enough stats, gets a OHKO move given time. Can buff attack then 2HKO as well. Not overly impressive. Middle. Unsure as to whether to consider her with first strike, which would certainly help if allowed... gets closer to the Heavy border then. I don't consider summon. DNR since apparently some people do and yeah no that is too large an interpsplit.

Danette - Revya trading durability for speed, damage, faster access to her special, and a significantly better speed buff. Does hate magic, though. High Middle.

Grunzford - Whoa he's good. Nice HP, 2HKO damage, a shot healing. Can OHKO after an attack buff and has good matchups against plenty of physical types. Hates magic (especially fire/lightning) but pretty badass otherwise. High Heavy.

Juno - Another standard fighter. Moderately tanky and can heal once, and her attack buff (which does the usual 3HKO->2HKO) also boosts speed a little which is a nice package. The limit is less nasty than some, but realistically if she's getting it she's winning most fights anyhow. Her weaknesses aren't too common either; a small offence hit against some physicals which she can usually manage. Middle/Heavy.

Layna - All-around impressive. 2HKO damage, or buff to a really high 2HKO, or a great speed buff... her defensive buff is also good enough to be useful too. Outstanding durability (1.6 HP, even better pdur) and great overall matchups (no real weaknesses outside MUSIC). Only downside is that her damage is merely good, and of not a great type... but still. Heavy/Godlike.

Odie - Well he's fragile, certainly. But not as much as he could be. The pdur is about 0.58 on paper but thanks to defensive matchups he's often physically tanky in practice; he has a solid 2HKO and he counters. Pretty great aside from ranged physicals (which turn him into fine powder) and lightning resistance, although he's good enough that he can often deal with mere halving. Middle/Heavy, not sure how good this package is in practice and would love to see it in proving grounds.

Tricia - Physically frail and unlike Odie matchups tend to make this much, much worse. Her damage is also really bad, low 4HKO or buff to low 3HKO. She does counter everything ST and looks really good against mages in general, but that fighter weakness is hard to deal with especially since she's in the division dominated by them. Light. A shame given her skill at mage-slaying in-game.

Vitali - The weird one. Explodes to physicals generally (bad def, bad HP, weak to a bunch of physical types). Still, he can heal once, then three more times as a free action on each attack once he unlocks his limit on turn 3-4, and he's great against magic for a huge number of reasons. For physicals... at least he has healing and counters, but they won't work well in much of Light. Oh well, works better than Raja! Light.


No estimates of squad damage for the bosses make this difficult, so I'm going off of memory.

Thuris - The tricky thing here is the speed. He's about 2x average, but can't move, so anyone with long range first strikes him. Those with short may or may not be able to... depends on move. For my sanity's sake I'll split the difference and count him as half his listed speed (206%) first turn against melee types. He's rather frail (70-80% at a guess, though untested type matchups make him worse against physicals and better against magic probably) but he has a high 2HKO of both types and constantly doubles, so you'd better make that first turn count! You need to be really fast to avoid the instant double to me, so yeah. Heavy.

Raksha - Raksha's mdur is similar to Thuris', but the pdur is about twice as good! He also regens 20% of his max HP each turn which is not negligble. Slower than Thuris, but I have to think the durability/regen more than cancels that out, especially since the no-movement thing means the speed isn't quite as good as it could be. He's not really a great place matchup-wise IIRC, losing to magic and spoiling relatiely DL-rare ranged, but eh he'll still kill some mages and he's evil against everyone else in the division. High Heavy.

Drazil - Can't bring myself to care; a more boring Raksha (no regen but better mdur). Same area?

Other bosses - Trash. No amount of support credit is going to make that HP not suck; you can OHKO them in-game. Except Gestahl, but guess what he gets no support credit and his HP is less than a quarter of Raksha's fought later. Bunch of Lights, the only question is how bad. I know some of them are memorable characters but still, don't nom 'em.

[Dhyerwolf]

Quick lowdown on my views: no generics in averages (lolno at Odie with OHKO damage, given that he was ranked in Middle

Just to note, that if you don't add in generics that are still I think...6? 8? named generics you always guess (2 Nereid, 2 Archers, 4 Knights, IIRC. I suppose you can see those like FFT (Rad/Lavian/Alicia), but given how in FFT you have 5 PCs in game and about 10 special PCs and Soul Nomad you have like 50+ PCs and about 10 special PCs, I would say that scale alone puts them in a different ballpark).

That also said, Odie was ranked Middle by the skin of his teeth (and probably also by technicality due to the misnomer that was Low Heavy equating to dead borderline instead of an actual low Heavy numeric rank. If Low Heavy was actually the more sensible 3.9375 then Odie would have been ranked Heavy. Actually, also then Middle would be 3.375 and that would boost him up more).

Thuris may have a better case than most for support credit as he can summon enemies before you can get to him, so if melee tends to wait just outside of his range and then strike the next turn, I seem to remember that his response is to summon.

Play Demon Path! See much more rankable forms for the other bosses!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, I know Odie is borderline Heavy (and I certainly agreed with that ranking, you'll note!). You know as well as I do that that ranking is completely inappropriate if he has OHKO damage.

Mm, I think the average including the likes of Agrippa and Pinot is enough average-dragging for me already, and regardless yeah, the FFT parallel holds (I also don't consider XF generics, Brig monsters, etc.). While it's true you use a large number of PCs in Soul Nomad, most of those aren't leaders, and we're clearly treating the PCs as leaders in the DL, of which you probably use 6-7... so not too different from other similar cases like FFT and XF.

Anyway I will note that I think the cast is perfectly fine (and was very well-ranked!) even with my take on the averages.

[Dhyerwolf]

In fairness, like FFT, XF generics are not a comparable situation (they are semi-standard SRPG class fare where you get enough PCs to fill your roster in the end without them. My cutoff tends to be around 50%, so no Disgaea either for me). Brig's are at least semi comparable (minus that monsters can't be used as leaders, so in that leaders are a bit separate. I know that before some special PCs were available, I would run generic variants as leaders, so it's definitely a consideration).

I would say that Pinot is pretty well balanced by Layna (Agrippa is a completely valid person to run with as a leader in game. He's a mobile Tricia, which is awesome). I guess if not including generics, I'd probably see Layna, Danette and Revya's stats a little lower (you get bonuses for running same classes in game, which is a distinct advantage that does temper Layne a bit in comparison to other special PCs). I can always respect not dragging down averages too much, minus that there are DL casts where it's not even considered because someone has a name and line of plot and never have any real reason to be used at all, but the line of plot and the name get them into the averages. Generics that have a valid reason to be still be used in game (and need to be used on some level) feel like a different case to me. The only true comparable ranked equivalent is Ogre Battle (although as noted, Brig isn't too far too. Brig of course has the advantage that monsters don't really do much to averages. I guess the flip is that Brig lets you use a good number of monsters that are better than Rune Knights, while SN doesn't have much equivalent there which is why SN specials felt so amazing (which is turn why I like rewarding that in the DL. SN special advantage felt so much more significant in game than say...Mogu/Gobi, a Suikoscrub parade, or for those two take it this way, FE 10 unshifted Laguz). So a long winded paragraph basically boiling down to if there's better in game basis, I like going with that.

[Dark Holy Elf]

(modest SN spoilers for this post)

I guess I don't get that same in-game feeling. For instance, I thought Levin was quite bad as a PC (I felt it was a Sialeeds-type case so you wouldn't feel bad when he left), but in your proposed average that includes dozens of scrubs, he actually starts to look quite good! 140% HP and 2HKO damage! I just didn't process the leaders and the generics on the same scale, same with Brig.

I guess if you take a harsher view on counters this may somewhat balance this, but I'm curious as to how you feel about the rankings of the cast in the DL now. We don't seem to think the cast is that different ranking-wise from your old notes in the ranking thread which surprises me.

[Dhyerwolf]

I actually agree on Levin...not because of his pure stats, which are awesome, but because I feel like the game gives you often short range fighters who all have advantages over him (Danette has better buffs, I like Juno's overall typing more, Grunzford smash, Revya is Revya). Looking at him again, I really don't like that typing, which goes far (Since average magic damage easily 2HKOs him, and he will not be 2HKOing back). So certainly he doesn't feel as awesome as Agrippa, Tricia and Odie did, since they generally are replacing similar generic classes. I would reward give them their due than limit him. As such, I can see the point, but just feel that there's so much more in game balance than the other casts I mentioned. Maybe it's more a matter that I tend to feel that those casts shouldn't be inflated by excesses of scrubs, so if there are better in game reasons for it, then I'm cool with that. I'm assuming for OB you only take the main PCs then also?

Counters will be a big difference between us. I only allow counters when there is a range advantage (However, when buffing there is a range advantage, so it's not like short range fighters still can't get some use of them. Also, they can generally drop a little damage to get a semi-ranged attack, which I tend to waffle back and forth on). Certainly giving them more counters certainly mitigates a lot of the effect.

The stat differences are pretty big, but typing can be somewhat overriding. So while Odie is a Heavy, he struggles against a fair amount of healers, ranged fighters, and people with Lightning resistance, so it's extremely easy to stop him (and also the cast has limited status protection that not widely allowed). The flip is that either way, SR fighters tend to hate him.

Typing can also override stats at times, and inability to deal with status tends to be a big flaw in higher divisions, so that keep really anyone from Heavy and up down regardless of stat differences. Layna especially is a big case there. Trends too nasty for Heavy, but Godlikes will often either have better slugging or some status to take her down too quickly. Even with stats, Odie is still slow and elementally dependent. Think about him versus say...Nelis or Estella. It's not like he should really be so much higher than them overall (obviously there's a bunch of factors to weigh).

(Also most minor of notes, but for me at least Odie doesn't OHKO given my accuracy factoring. Almost, but done quite).

[Dark Holy Elf]

I haven't played OB, actually! So no comments there. (Well, I've played it for about an hour, but I'm not going to weigh in anything DL-wise, beyond "boss Warren is a terrible Light".)

Fair enough, beyond that. It's possible I'm underestimating the effect of elemental defence in Odie's specific case. I think Nelis is a decent comparison for him as is, whereas if I saw him with (near-)OHKO damage I'd see him more comparable to Geddoe. His weakness to "healers" seems mostly moot because I can't think of many opponents I would class as cleric-like who are actually in Heavy, and not too many in Middle (Jessica? Whom he handles anyway surely). Most heavy healers I would class as something else offhand (Billy = guns, Artea = mage?, Nina4 = wind mage, etc. Billy of course beats him anyway). The ranged fighter weakness does suck, but he matches up so well against anyone else who lacks lightning defence, and counters help a whole lot to mitigate lightning halving.

[Dhyerwolf]

This may be another way we differ. I classify enemies as whatever the last time of move they used last was, so basically against healers, Odie gets that penalty (that way I don't have to consider which overriding trait resembles a character most). This of course, is far less beneficial to SN (since now plenty of people have two types of damage where by SN qualifications they only have one), but it prevents me needing to pin down like that. So for any enemies with both a passable magic and physical attack, it's a large advantage over SN. SN characters (well, ones which skewed typing) may prefer your scaling over mine, extra stats be damned.

[Dark Holy Elf]

That also helps explain things, yes!

The way I see it, SN characters can never, ever change their typing. When a SN soldier/etc. heals using Medication/Energize or a similar ability, their typing remains the same the next time they are attacked. I agree that it is somewhat arbitrary figuring out what typing each enemy counts as, but hey so it goes.

[Dhyerwolf]

Oh, I wouldn't see Wrath Rune or Energy Sword...etc, changing type. But for a legitimate targetable healing move (or certainly for many fully classed physical/magical splits...which is turn makes me think that Karin or Tio wouldn't apply, but any Suikoden character with an magic attack rune would. I guess Karin would be swordswoman and Tio would be... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...oh god, a Thuris robot? I don't even have typing notes on those. There's no great fit there.) there would be type changes for me.

[SnowFire]

Djinn edited into his Rondo of Swords topic thoughts on all the duelers, and they mostly look right to me.  RoS is one of the rare games that may be more votable off reading an LP rather than playing the game, since hooooly crap in-game documentation in RoS is a thing.  Now add in that if you survive a RoS playthrough, you probably have to play through the game again…  ugh.

A few things that the DL makes weird vs. in-game: I'm not sure I can easily think of another SRPG where movement is quite the god stat it is as Rondo of Swords.  High move means not only being able to attack multiple enemies at once, but also getting the drop on enemy mages before they blow you up, or successfully executing hit-and-run strikes.  Low move means moving in near the enemy lines, conceding first strike, and hoping for the best.  High move *and* threat range (True Arrows wtf) a la Ansom / Naji is insanely good, equivalent almost to a Bolting/Mire tome in FIre Emblem games.  Now add in that battles are "scored" by how fast you complete them a la Valkyria Chronicles.  Yeah, it's too bad that move doesn't mean more.  Flip side, Djinn's assumptions of maxed skill levels skips the majority of the game where skill points seem pretty tight (from Einander's LP, at least, where he built Ansom quite differently between Route A & Route B), and he doesn't reflect a few of the character's issues that would theoretically go away by endgame, sort of (Galahad's insanely late promotion that is usually impossible to access, Elmer's crippling underleveledness on join, etc.).  Oh well!  Also, the Revitalize skill of "heal 300 HP to self", which got basically no notice from Einander (slows you down when you could be pushing forward, costs a slot, use your darn healer), ends up pretty badass in the DL.

The RoS cast is also funny in the DL thanks to having 10 mage characters who generally have HP ranging from "meh" to "bad" to "pathetic" but also solid damage.  Magic counts as magic resist, too, so check out the MDef list - 10 excellent MDef characters, and 14 characters allergic to magic.  So the result is a bunch of mages with scary damage who get run over by fighters, and fighters who are very tanky (especially vs. physicals) but have bad damage.  Amusing.

Anyway, a very brief rundown of some plot-centric characters, and then a few other amusing ones, for my own thoughts (although again, see Djinn's topic for his more complete list):

Altrius / "Serdic" - Pretty good, probably the cast's best dueler.  High Heavy.  Arch Paladin has Revitalize / Vital Power / amazing defense for stall-spam - 393 RoS HP is .94 raw PCHP, which ends up as an effective 1.57 PCHP of healing a turn vs. physicals thanks to his defense, which is ludicrous.  Cold Emperor has a pile of HP thanks to Invoke Life, a shockingly relevant 10% HP regen, good damage, and Seven Sins as a nasty finisher if a battle goes long vs. a healer.  They both have the wacky MC increase trick to deal with status-slingers who are either slower than average speed or whose status is turn 2, and Arch Paladin has Angelic Word to screw up even fast turn 1 status.  His damage is okay for Heavy but not amazing, it's mostly the incredible tanking that's going to win him matches (if held to one form, he probably wants Arch Paladin, actually).  Be a mage with badass damage, or have some infinite buff / healing trick, if you want to beat him; Altrius only really fears Zerase types.

Marie - Puny.  0.27 PDurability and infinite healing, even the low-damage types who don't OHKO her heal-lock her then wait for a double / critical hit / something.  Can deal with Puny Mages, maybe, though!

Aegil - Low Middle?  Mages have authentic trouble getting damage to stick vs. her, and too many fighters in Light only 3HKO her, which is death.  She minorly spoils archers and status-slingers too, but gets spoiled by holy resistance or MP-busting (she doesn't have infinite MP like Marie, but she does have a lot of it).

Igraine - Cosmically bad vs. physicals, Igraine is still better than Marie because she actually has good damage and even better magical defense, and thus solidly spoils Light mages….  well, pure mages.  Fast mages with any sort of physical fallback that doesn't totally fail crush her anyway!  Low Light.

Less plot but interesting:

Margus - Altrius's brutal infinite stall game, except with no damage and no status resistance until his turn (although he can go immune after).  Low Heavy, like FF13 Sentinel Snow without a Summon to build into.

Arios - Somehow Heavy despite the awful HP & Defense.  Emitting a OHKO every turn is pretty good I hear.  Most lopsided stat build in the game, all the damage, gamebest magic which means gamebest magic resistance, gameworst defense, and amazingly awful HP.  He can outslug *Godlike* pure mages with that resistance, and plenty of good fighters who are nevertheless slower than average will get nuked first in the race for the OHKO.  Probably the 2nd best dueler in the cast.  Funny.

Izuna - Invoke Life / Vital Power for a pile of HP & regen, Angelic Word for status, and a powerful Overbreak she can even access faster if she gives up her damage (although 1-range-at-start-of-turn means respecting it less vs. ranged enemies).  Kind of like Cold Emperor but with much worse defense.  Low Heavy.

Naji - Djinn, RandomConsonant, and I talked out Bravely Default Performer vs. Naji in chat.  Performer probably wins, which considering Performer's performance in the Puny Proving Grounds should really say it all.  (they both give each other lots of time, Naji to get criticals off his high 37% rate, Performer to increase her stats off Buff Up + Support Amp…    but Naji probably needs ~8 shots to kill, while Performer should kill in 7 actions + finishing Brave Blitz, and will also be increasing her speed & defense the whole time.  So Naji needs to get 3 crits out of 6 or something.  An amazing Puny.  (read Einander's LP!  Despite being worse than Ansom, Naji actually has a real niche in-game, where enemy mages are made of paper but are deadly, so Naji's okay-for-a-fighter magic and super-long range make him good at mage-sniping.)

--

Also, since I was digging this up for other reasons, a guide to Tactics Ogre characters and the DL, with the focus more on "sanity for voting" rather than division rank.  Here's who's in TOPSP with the disclaimer that even those on all-routes are all missable if you get them killed before join (except for Olivya of all people, I think):

All routes:
Arycelle, Canopus, Donnalto, Gildas (L/C)*, Hobyrim, Mirdyn, Olivya, Sherri
Warrior Denam, Guest Catiua
C2 & C3 boss Vyse / Leonar [stats might change somewhat but not hugely]
C4 bosses

Splitpath:
Bayin (N/C), Cerya (N/C), Cistina (N/C), Dievold (N), Folcurt (N/C), Jeunan (L), Ocionne (L), Oelias (N), PC Ozma (L), Ravness (L), Xapan (L), PC Vyse (L)
Lord Denam, PC Catiua (Priest & underlevel Princess), boss Catiua

Postgame and/or ridiculous FAQ-bait:
Azelstan, Cressida (C), Deneb, Ganpp & pals, Lanselot, Lindl, Iuria, Rudlum, Warren; also Shaman Phoraena sisters & PC Dark Priest Catiua

Named generics, yawn:
Chamos(N), Ehlrig (N), Felicia, Phaesta (N), Sara, Tamuz (N), Voltare

Nobody plays only Neutral so Gildas seems safe to stick in "All routes".

A few of these are touchy; Ravness / Sherri / PC Ozma / Cerya-in-Neutral recruitments are FAQ-bait but they're plot relevant; Ocionne joins super-late in Law but at least is theoretically ready to go on join if you previously leveled Beast Tamer, while Lindl, who also joins super-late in the main game, has Fusilier guaranteed to be level 1, making me lean toward it being postgame.

Additionally, Lord Denam is a bit wacky in that Lord's big advantage is the ability to use a ton of normally other-class exclusive skills like Phalanx & Double Attack.  However, Lord doesn't learn these skills itself, although the cost to buy a Knight's Classmark early and grab Phalanx at least is pretty trivial (if you know to do it, since the game only gives you 1 Classmark, sigh).  It is still a pretty unique niche, more so than say the Fire Emblem Awakening Avatar or Morgan having full mix-and-match skill access in the aftergame, but another headache for the interp.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Given how important level is in TO I'll be stunned if Lord ends up worth much even if you give him highly DL-questionable skills from classes which aren't Lord or Warrior. Just look at how much Priest Catiua suffered, Lord and Princess will have it even worse.

At some point I'll be in the mood for another run through of TO and when I do I'll probably get Jeunan / Ocionne / Ozma / Ravness / Xapan / Vyse / Sherri. Neutral-only PCs can expect a long wait because as you noted yeah almost nobody does this as their only playthrough (and even as a second it's rare in my experience?) and TO isn't such a solid rank that I think Neutral-only PCs make much sense as ranking ideas.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Are we not assuming equal levels for classes? (I can certainly see the argument, but generally I figured DL still assumed equal level even for stuff like Lord and princess?)

Personally, considering how forgettable so many of the TO characters are, I feel weird not allowing the most memorable ones (Denam and Catiua) their unique classes at reasonable levels.

(Edit: hell yeah RoS analysis! What a fun DL cast)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Well if you take everyone at equal level that's your right, but that's not really the most common DL view any more.

Personally I can't say I found classes which were entirely useless the maingame due to being gained at level 1 in late chapter 4 (and split-path at that! I didn't even get Lord myself) to be at all "memorable" but hey go with what works for you.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I'm not speaking from personal experience really. I haven't beaten the game yet, but I know while playing I've been planning for using Den and Cat with their cool classes. But I dunno exactly how late that ends up being compared to endgame or how "experience deprived" it makes their classes and whether their innate cool stuff can compensate for said problem.

Also not sure whether World card stuff should be considered at all due to the path split stuff.

[hinode]

For what it's worth Denam (and Ozma, not that anyone would ever consider ranking *her*) can easily solo 2-3 random battles in his unique class at an early spot like Tynemouth Hill and get about 90% of the way caught up in levels. That's what I did when I World'd back to get the Lord class.

Princess is way too fragile to solo a fight like that, so she needs to get levels the hard way which takes forever. I swapped her to Princess ASAP and dragged her through every single optional C4 sidequest except the Palace of the Dead (which mostly gives crap exp anyways) and IIRC she didn't get fully caught up in levels until the postgame. Luckily pure healers can function underlevelled so long as you're careful about keeping them from getting too exposed.

Note that Princess isn't all that great a class in-game until you reach undead-heavy optional areas due to its Red Mage-like stat build, although I suppose it would actually be helpful in the relative to her other options for that very reason.

[SnowFire]

I probably should have been more direct and said that one of the slight goals in posting the above was a "pls no Denam" due to the awful division split.  (That and Warrior Denam, while votable, is also super-boring.)  I'd think Ozma is weirdly enough a better idea than Denam - boss Ozma is apparently a Middle, PC Ozma with equal levels is probably a Low Heavy or something a la Arycelle, PC Ozma a level or two behind is probably a High Middle, so she isn't all over the map.  Denam meanwhile is probably a calamitous split between Low Middle & Godlike...  if a topic was ever made that assumed a bit more grinding / optional content at endgame AND allowed the off-class skills for Lord.  Ozma meanwhile always has her boss form as a fallback that isn't pathsplit.

I'd actually be amenable to voting Lord Denam if we had numbers for it and people agreed it was legal, but it's very much something that's up to the person making the stat topic, so I'm happy to defer to whoever stuck in the work's set of levels.  (I suspect Lord Denam would be L19 to a L22 average or so, which is awful but not crippling.  Possibly even L23 to L24 average if you wait a bit more.  But it's moot.)

[hinode]

You are vastly underestimating how effective Knight Commander would be if taken at equal levels. It has the best all-around stats in the game (including gamebest speed for a human), great action skills (Intercession nulls the next magic attack for 50 TP, Ivory Tower is physical immunity for a whole turn for 75 TP) and a decent claim to Double Attack, although it's shakier than Lord's. Best possible interp for her would be high heavy, only worse than Lord only due to Ivory Tower's TP cost being noticably higher than Phalanx's.

[SnowFire]

I know about the awesome stats, yes, but not sure that takes her that far?  I suspect she needs to be granted Double Attack and higher levels to really get that hype going.  Elf's average damage in the stat topic is 45 - assuming hypothetically a whip does 60 damage, Elf claims that 0.25 points of damage dealt = 1 TP, so that's gaining 11 TP an attack + 6-7 TP a turn (less since she's fast, but she gets the turns more often).   I don't think she'll be able to maintain constant Intercession spam, and certainly won't be able to throw it up turn 1 even with me granting a free turn of TP & MP, which is a big problem in Heavy.  Ivory Tower is gained at level 23 so that's an issue as well.  I'll grant that equal-levels at L24+ looks good for PC Ozma as she can screw up Heavy bruisers even worse than TO characters usually do, but she already had Whip finishers, so Ivory Tower won't even make THAT much difference.

If she's granted Double Attack that'd help at gaining TP super fast but apparently getting classmarks to change back to Knight Commander involves stealing from specific enemies so screw that.  (Also she's iconically equipped with a whip so I'm not hugely hyped at allowing DA anyway.)  Anyway I for one would be happy to vote Ozma with a 1 or 2 level disadvantage anyway, which would definitely keep her out of the upper echelons of Heavy, and probably in Middle anyway.