Re: (Nutaku) Milenium War Aigis (English Version)
So how do I farm for Maribel? 4th mission for 3 stamina? 5th for 6 stamina? Or 2nd for 2 stamina? Anyone has any data on which one is the most-stamina effective?
Because I need Somas, but she doesn't drop on the same maps Maribel drops... and just in case, and also for the sake of completionism, I will probably want to max Maribel.
As always: If yo want the event unit: Farm the last map. It has the highest droprate/stamina. If you want silvers: Go either for the map that drops units you lack the most or the ones with lowest stamina cost (20/1 is the best) as they have the best droprate/stamina
That's why you don't use her as you would most heavy armors; you use her as a heavy blocker that can power up to take out tough mobs. HP is very important for HA's too, since they sometimes have to deal with magic damage, and should be supported by lots of healing anyway.
Timing isn't usually an issue, especially as we get to later content. Typically you want a unit to be good for specific parts of the map, such as when a boss shows up. If you need that Lich or whatever to die ASAP, and can't afford to place enough ranged DPS near where your tank is, then Maribel is pretty sweet.
Rita is a similar case but for archers. Her stats are pretty miserable for a plat archer, but her skill allows her to fill a niche that other archers can't. Also, I hear good things about Maribel's SAW, whenever we get that.
Edit: By the arguments you make against Maribel, Grace should be pretty bad as well, along with every other mage armor. They all are pretty mediocre when their skill is down. You use their skill when you need to clear stuff out fast, and don't worry about them when you don't. Maribel is kind of like a physical damage, close-range, single-target mage armor with a very nice stat buff during skill.
Of course you could use her to tear down a single strong boss "quickly". Or you could use any duelist that does the same, just better.
For example, let's compare her to Imelia:
HP: Imelia has 4352, Maribel has 3267. As you said, HP can be very important for tanks/defensive duelists. Imelia clearly wins by 33 %.
Def: Imelia has 328, Maribel has 455 (twice for both of them during their skills, so that doesn't really matter). Okay, fair enough, Maribel wins this clearly. During skill Maribel has 254 more def. This can (rarely) make a difference, it's 39 % more.
But honestly she needs to have more def as she blocks four instead of one. So if you want to fight a single strong boss and some weaker enemies spawn with him, Maribel will tank them as well, while Imelia let's them through. So basically Maribel will receive more damage, so she needs higher def to have any chance to survive. But let's ignore this for now.
Atk: Imelia has 875, Maribel 324 (again, twice for each of them during skill). And this is where Maribels problem lies. Even with her skill up she doesn't even come close to Imelias attack while she doesn't even have her skill up. During skill Imelia has 1102 atk more, this is 170 % more. Not even talking about enemies with heavy armor...
650 Atk only during skill is simply not enough to replace a duelist. You have to back up both of them with at least one healer anyways, the situations where the slightly higher defence of Maribel will make the difference between surviving and dieing are sparse at best. And chances are high she won't even deal enough damage with her low attack to kill the enemy before her skill runs out...
Comparing her with Mage armors or Samurais is pointless by the way. She doesn't even get close to being able to compete with them. Units with a decent to good defese who block multiple units and have a "high attack" are only worth it, if they attack multiple units. Which is exactly what Anya, Samurais and Mage Armors do. That's what puts them into a different niche than duelists and they are good at what they do. Maribel is just a weaker duelist that gets into serious trouble when the boss doesn't spawn alone.
Edit: About Rita. No, just no. When you ignore their skills AW Rita is the second strongest platinum archer after Spica, due to her AW ability being useful, while Bashira's and Victoria's skill are useless most of the time. Well, to be fair this is only true against units that have low enough defense that Rita's arrows don't bounce off, but you don't typically use archers against high defese enemies anyways. The only thing that differs between Bashira/Victoria and Rita is: The former have +dmg skills, Rita has a niche def skill. The raw strength of them is almost identical. Even without her AW ability Rita has only 5 % less Atk. So that argument is not really valid as the ranger situation is not comparable to Maribel and the HA situation.
