Mounted pairs and a wall rune?

[Pesmerga VS. Yuber]

I have a question. Is it possible to attach a wall rune to a beast in a mounted pair, and still be able to attack with the pair? I'm early in the game, and if anyone could check it for me (someone who has a beast with a rune lot opened up), I would be more than grateful.

[eldrasidar]

whichever character has the wall rune definitely will not attack, so you cannot get the combined attack at all. I believe if only the rider has a wall rune, the beast will still attack, but it doesn't work the other way around though. so no you couldn't put a wall rune on a beast and have the mounted pair attack(the rider could still use runes though)

[KFCrispy]

i know if the beast is unbalanced (like Rubi using her special rune), the pair can't attack the next round, so the Wall Rune may prevent regular attacks as well but possibly let the rider take actions like Item... if the rider has Wall Rune I am thinking the pair's turn is automatically skipped because you are really commanding the rider and relying on most of the rider's skills (like Swing, possibly Accuracy). i hope someone can check it out!

[Pesmerga VS. Yuber]

I checked it out yesterday. You can only defend with the pair, no items, runes or anything.

[ninjaluc79]

But, characters on defense position can still counter-attack, right?

[KFCrispy]

yeah counter-attacks are still performed. but pretty much useless..

[ninjaluc79]

Why useless? I assume Swings don't count for counter-attacks?

Well, I was actually thinking of the so-called "Phalanx Formation", where the Wall pair employs turtling, then counter-attacks at a high probability. But it's not like 90% of players favor defense over offense anyway. After all, defense is useless if you can't defeat the enemies fast enough. As you know, defensive battles usually take REALLY long.

[KFCrispy]

exactly.. and swings aren't used in counter-attacks

[eldrasidar]

yeah, checked it out myself. If the mount has a wall rune, the entire mounted pair cannot do anything except counter attack. If the rider has the wall rune though, the mount is still able to use runes and items, but cannot attack(the rider can still make counter attacks).

with regards to counter attack, I should point out that with the right character using firefly and counter runes, counter attacks can actually give a character a lot of attacks, particularly as a lot of the best counter attackers have a small number of regular attacks. It's a great way strategy for thomas or mua to get a few extra attacks. but this should only really be done by one character in a party, and doesn't involve using wall on that character (Mua wouldn't really benefit from it anyway).

the strategy ninjaluc suggests, of a "phalanx formation" doesn't really work for several reasons. First off, there are very few characters that can consistently counter attack(say around 75% of the time), in fact I can only think of 5 that could potentially do it: Thomas, Augustine, Cecile, Fred, and Nicholas). Most of these characters have limited rune space that needs to be filled by counter runes in order to bring up their counter rate up to that reasonable rate, so they can't take a wall rune(which they don't need in most cases). another problem is that there are many enemies who will purposely go around your wall character to get at the unwalled character behind, wholly defeating the point. The next problem, is that you cannot counter magic attacks, which make up a large number of enemy attacks, particularly late game, so your offense starts to seriously suffer then. Finally, given that a single tank character with a firefly rune is just as effective defensively as 6 characters with wall runes, there's no viable defensive reason to do it.

[ninjaluc79]

So Firefly is indeed more effective than Wall for tanking. You will only need to buff the tank's defenses to work and yet the Firefly pair can still do anything, unlike Wall which 2x DEF bonus is not really worth it since the Wall pair can't do anything.

[gildedtalon]

pair wall and firefly then you have a tank, I usually did this to useless characters like Roland

[ninjaluc79]

Now THAT is how you build a tank.