Gaming Tips. Micaiah Usefulness, Advantages and Disadvantages

Welcome again to the Dawn's Historian. 

This time we have a different type of article, one that can be useful for you future plays if you are unsure how to use Micaiah in Radiant Dawn.

First of all, I'm going to explain Micaiah's main Advantages and Disadvantages

Disadvantages

Her endurance is really poor: She is a magician after all. She's expected to have really bad HP and defense, but this game towards characters with Low HP. Some weapons like some Lances and many Axes are able to One Hit K..O her.

Her speed is always... underwhelming: While Micaiah has a similar Speed Growth than other characters in the game (like Leonardo, Ilyana and Aran that are slow characters but have their own niches), there is one difference between Micaiah and all of them, Micaiah has even lower Base Speed. 

Micaiah has the second lowest base speed between the Beorcs (only Laura has a worse speed base). In a game where pretty much everyone else start with 10 Speed, she has 7 Speed as her base. This is can be really problematic some times, because the difference between be doubled or not are that 3 Speed points.

Her availality is proportionally low: Technically Micaiah is the character who appears in more chapters, but this actually delusive because most of the chapters are with LightMage!Micaiah. After the Part 1 she promotes, but now there are only 6 chapters left to use her before the Endgame (and her second promotion). This is also even worse when you know that she probably will be the last character you promote.

But even with flaws. Micaiah is able to still be really useful unit in the whole game.

Micaiah, the Wii Lord

Advantages

Great Magic + Thani = Overkill: Like most of the Lords in Fire Emblem, Micaiah has her own rapier-like weapon. In her case, this weapon is Thani. And like the other Rapiers, it is effective against Horse-mounted Units (except the Pegasus) and Armored Units.

Thani is particuarly powerful with good MT... In fact, it's the second most powerful Light Magic: 

8 MT, 100 Hit, 45 Uses. That is pretty cool for a Magic Tome in this game.

Think about it for a moment... Unlike the Localized Version of Path of Radiance. in Radiant Dawn the weapons get their power multiplicade by three when they are effective. Micaiah has a Weapon with 24 MT against many tough enemies.

Micaiah base power with Thani is 15 (31 against Armour/Horse) make it able to OHKO the next enemies:

Note: Sothe A Support gives Micaiah +2 Atk, +8 Hit and +15 Avo

• Armour Knights in the Chapter 1-3 (28 HP, 5 Res) with only +2 Atk (Micaiah Lv 3 Average or Micaiah Base with Sothe's Support).

• Burton, the Chapter 1-3 Boss (29 HP, 7 Res) with +5 Atk (Micaiah Lv 7/8 Average or Lv 5 Average with Sothe's Support)

• Armour Knights in the Chapter 1-6-1 (32 HP, 6 Res) with +7 Atk (Micaiah Lv 10 Average or Lv 7/8 Average with Sothe's Support)

• Many miscellaneous Mounted Knights in the Chapter 1-6-2 (26-29 HP, 4-5 Res) with +0-3 Atk (Micaiah Lv5 Average or Lv2/3 with Sothe's Support)

• Laverton, the Chapter 1-6-2 Boss (33 HP, 6 Res) with +8 Atk (Micaiah Lv 11 Average or Lv 9 Average with Sothe's Support)

• Armour Knights in the Chapter 1-7 (32-33 HP, 6-7 Res) with +6-9 Atk (Micaiah Lv 12/13 Average or Lv 10 with Sothe's Support)

• Armour Knights in the Chapter 1-E (37 HP, 7 Res) with +13 Atk (Micaiah Lv 18 Average, or Lv 15 with Sothe's Support)

Enemies stats: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=14643

Micaiah's Stats: http://serenesforest.net/radiant-dawn/characters/average-stats/micaiah/

You can find two Thani tomes in the game, both appearing in the Part 1. One in the Chapter 1-2 in a Chest, and another in the Chapter 1-E in a Base Conversation (only if Fiona is still alive).

Early Paragon Access: Paragon is a skill that doubles the EXP gained, you can obtain the Paragon Skill after defeating Laverton (the Chapter 1-6-2 Boss). This skill needs 15 Free Capacity to be used. Your unpromoted units are unable to use it because they only have 10 Free Capacity.

Except Micaiah, that has +5 extra Capacity as Light Mage. This skill can help you to raise levels fast and gain more magic, speed or other stats that may be useful to her.

Promotion C Staff Rank at promotion: After the Forced-Promotion in the End of Part 1, Micaiah will able to use Staves, but unlike your typical Magic Unit that has to deal with E Staff Rank after their promotion to Sage, Druid, etc.

Micaiah is already able to use Heal, Mend, Unlock, Torch, Restore and Physic. The last one is probably one of the most useful because you won't need to put Micaiah in a dangerous situation to try to heal someone. Some ocassional use of the staves will make Micaiah reach soon the B Rank (Recover) or maybe even the A Rank (Rescue, Silence, Sleep)

Tips

Resolve: In the First Chapter where is possible to use Micaiah in the Part 3 (Chapter 3-6) it's full of Cats and Tigers with a lot of HP and high defense. 

With stats like these: 

• Cat lvl 14
• HP 41, Atk 22, AS 20, Hit 136, Avo 46, DEF 12, RES 10, Crit 10, Ddg 6
• Cat lvl 15
• HP 42, Atk 27, AS 20, Hit 137, Avo 47, DEF 14, RES 10, Crit 10, Ddg 7
• Cat lvl 16
• HP 43, Atk 29, AS 22, Hit 141, Avo 51, DEF 14, RES 10, Crit 11, Ddg 7
• Cat lvl 17
• HP 43, Atk 31, AS 22, Hit 142, Avo 52, DEF 16, RES 10, Crit 11, Ddg 8
• Tiger lvl 14
• HP 48, Atk 32, AS 16, Hit 132, Avo 38, DEF 18, RES 4, Crit 9, Ddg 6
• Tiger lvl 15
• HP 48, Atk 39, AS 16, Hit 136, Avo 38, DEF 18, RES 6, Crit 10, Ddg 6
• Tiger lvl 16
• HP 50-52, Atk 39, AS 16, Hit 137, Avo 39, DEF 20, RES 6, Crit 11, Ddg 7
• Tiger lvl 17
• HP 51-52, Atk 41, AS 18, Hit 141, Avo 43, DEF 20, RES 6, Crit 11, Ddg 7

LightSage!Micaiah has a Average 31 Atk (with Thani) and 14/15 Spd, she can defeat the Tigers (the toughest ones) with two hits (She does 25-27 damage to them), but is really dangerous to try to fight them in the Enemy Turn... So

There is a interesting tip for deal with some of them:

1. Took the Tauroneo's Resolve, anyway, is impossible to use him in this map.
2. Teach it to Micaiah.
3. Heal what ever you want with Sacrifice, and put her HP under the half.

Now Micaiah has 21/22 Spd and is able to ORKO the Powerful Tigers, if you need a little extra damage to deal with the Tigers with 51-52 HP you can always use Sothe's Support.

Some extra Staff Utility: After the Second Promotion, Micaiah is able to Reach S and SS Rank in Staves. It's possible to use the Arms Scroll and give her a easy access to the Fortify Staff. With her great magic it'll be easy to heal your whole team.

Base Experiencie: The BExp works in a interesting way in this game, the character who uses the experience will get 3-Stats Level, always unless it is completely impossible to gain 3-Stats in one level. This can be especially useful for character that maxed early in some of their stats.

Micaiah has some extremely high growths (in Magic, Luck and Resistence), if she maxed two or three of these stats you can train to give her BExp to reinforce her weakness.

- Troykv (The Dawn's Historian and Micaiah4Smash Main Admin)

Micaiah & the Character Selection in Brawl (from the original Twitter's Version)

Hi Dawn Brigade! After I know about the Sakurai's Criteria about how he selected characters in Super Smash Bros Brawl (the selection was finished in late-2005). I started thinking about how this theorically affect Micaiah's Chances.

Reference link: http://www.sourcegaming.info/2015/07/11/gdc-2008-translation/

The criteria for choosing a character is as follows:

The character must have a personality in their game.

She is passionate and visionary, is also a good-hearted girl, will do anything to help their people and achieve what she proposes.

It's important to have something a character can do.

This is simple. Micaiah have access to various spells (their animations for both movements and the magic itself from her game and other Fire Emblems) and Staffs.

Development issues.

Micaiah doesn't need transformations or other overly complex mechanics (like the Ice Climbers's Gimmick) to be true to her character in Smash Bros.

Franchises distribution taken into consideration

Of the four points this is the most problematic. Fire Emblem has two Veteran Character (Marth, Ike), a Normal Newcomer (Robin), a Veteran DLC (Roy), and Newcomer DLC (Corrin) and a filler (Lucina). 

This makes a total of five characters (and a filler would not consider his own character by the negligible development time used in Lucina).

Fire Emblem is the third most represented franchise in Smash Bros Character-wise.

However, I don't know the latter point continue to implement since Smash Bros. Wii U / 3DS introduced two new characters Mario considerably extending the limits for original characters... Or at least no completely if the character is original enough (Sakurai himself would be opposed to put Corrin in Smash 4 if she/he doesn't have unique traits like happen before with Chrom) 

Moreover, while Fire Emblem sales haven't Mario or Pokemon level is a franchise full of characters with very different styles and personalities of each other, and incredible world with a lot of possibles ideas, and I think that even with all the representation problems Micaiah is a good choice... in fact, the best choice between everything Fire Emblem has to offer.

Thank for your attention.

- Troykv (The Dawn's Historian and Micaiah4Smash Main Admin)

Opinions. Why Micaiah isn't a Mary Sue (from the original Twitter's Post)

Micaiah, the controversial main character from Radiant Dawn was and is accused of being a Mary Sue for whatever reason. We're here to show you that actually she ISN'T a Mary Sue and why.

First we need to understand the basic elements that make up a Mary Sue, these are five elements:

1.- They are a selfinsertion, usually an idealised vision of the author.

We can't really answer this honestly, we would have to interview the storyboard writer to get that detail and even then, I don't think this is the case so we can discard this point.

2.- Are overpowered in everything, they know everything, they can do everything.

Micaiah has some abilities because her Laguz heritage, 

Sacrifice: She can heal allies but she has to give her own life force, she can't abuse this ability, it has a price she has to pay, it's not something she can do whenever she wants, it has a cost.

Micaiah's Sacrifice Skill

Galrds: As an apostol she can sing the galrd of release to free Yune from the Lehran Medallion, she also serves as an avatar for the Goddess.

All of these abilities are her role in the story and it doesn't really give her an edge or an advantage over the other characters

She also has foresight abilities, but they aren't exactly precise and are threated in a vague way, so the advantage she gains over enemies with this ability is really not that spectacular or cool.

3.- All characters adore her regardless of what she does

Everyone? At the begining it makes sense for her to be adorered, she became a symbol of hope in Daein, a thing that escalated once she was put in charge of Pellea's group, a comander of noble heart and one that risks her life in the heat of battle, that is a quality to be admired and something that many Lords in the franchise have.

Now on the subject of the Beorc and Laguz war...
Even thought no one deserted from the army and remained by choice, there is always people questioning Micaiah's decisions, with the exception of generic soldiers which don't really hold much plot relevance and already hate the Laguz Alliance to begin with.

Micaiah goes from being a savior to a figure to characters the game threats it as such, the game does not sugarcoat her actions.

In the end all was explained with the Blood Pact which does put them into a thight spot, but in no way the game portray or excuses Micaiah's actions as a story with a Mary Sue would, you are free to decide wheter her actions are good or bad or if she did the right thing by going with it instead of looking for a plan C, there is no definitive answer in that regard.

4.- Ultra Tragic Past, the more tragic the better

The Brand

Micaiah is a branded like Soren, but unlike him, Micaiah experienced more loneliness than rejection like Soren did.

Making her life a bitter and miserable, but not as tragic as other branded characters had it.

5.- The story is molded to the Mary Sue's advantage, without care for the consistence.

To Micaiah's advantage? The only thing than we see "convenient" to her is Yune's revelation, that managed to unify the 3 groups, but that was neccesary (the Blood Pact makes really difficult to her group to go against Begnion), and it was beneficial for everyone, not just Micaiah.

And that's it, there aren't other elements in the story that can be seen as "especially convinient for Micaiah".

There is another thing usually related with the Mary Sues (a typical trait with Self-Insertions): Take the whole story in their side... But there is a little irony.

Micaiah doesn't stole anybody spotlight as a Main Character... In fact... Someone actually "stole" Micaiah's Spotlight...

and Yune too

(Nothing against Ike, just the way he appears in the Story is like "go to the war because I fight for my friends")

And those are the reasons why Micaiah ISN'T a Mary Sue. 

Thank for your attention.

- Troykv (The Dawn's Historian and Micaiah4Smash Main Admin)