# 2 - Arthur (Genealogy of the Holy War)

Bytheway, the chick in this picture is Ishtar, not Tinny. I know it's weird to have Arthur and Ishtar holding hands, but I thought the picture looked cool seeing as how Arthur doesn't look like some innocent little kid so I decided to use it anyway.

                         So this is one of the least surprising entries on the list so far. Arthur is the best Holsety user in Fire Emblem 4. The main reasons behind this come from the fact that Arthur manages to avoid all the issues that plague your other Holsety users. Levin, Sety and Corpul are all foot units in a mount dominated game with availabilities that are lackluster at best. Arthur, by contrast, joins your army in Chapter 6 of the second generation which means that he has perfect availability for a second generation unit. Arthur has a whopping 2 chapter lead on Sety which is HUGE in Fire Emblem 4, and by pairing Levin with Tiltyu you basically get to use the Holsety from the end of Chapter 4 until the end of the second generation. More Holsety is pimptastically awesome. While Arthur may start out on foot, he eventually does get a horse after promotion so it is in the player's best interest to get this guy promoted as soon as humanly possible.

 
As far as Arthur's combat is concerned, it's true that he's statistically inferior to Sety, but this isn't a Deadliest Warrior battle so that doesn't matter. Levin!Arthur is your best candidate for the Pursuit Ring in the second generation so naturally he's going to get it. I mean, who deserves it more than he does? Almost all the kids in the second generation inherit, or at least can inherit, Pursuit from their parents so they don't need it. The only possible competition Arthur may have for the Pursuit Ring is Leif, but then again Leif gets Pursuit (and a whole bunch of other nifty perks) after promotion so it's better to just get Leif promoted earlier and to give Arthur the Pursuit Ring, so for the remainder of this post, I'll be making the assumption that Arthur is getting the Pursuit Ring, and will therefore get the ability to double attack every enemy schmuck in sight.



                         Before I get into the numerical side of things let me ask you a question: Is there an enemy that Sety can kill that Arthur can't? I can't think of one, but even if there is such an enemy, how many of them are there? Chances are even if you can find enemies that Sety can kill that Arthur can't there won't be very many. That basically means that Arthur's combat ability is as good as Sety's, for all intents and purposes, while he comes with the added bonus of perfect Generation 2 availability and a horse. I could end the post here, because these reasons are sufficient for Arthur to have the # 2 spot on this mages list, but posts like these need numbers and I've already put the time and effort in to look up the data that Mekkah has provided so here we go. (Quote Source: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=25746#entry1530652)

                        Arthur starts out with "40 Atk, 26 AS -- 31 HP, 2 Def, 6 Res, 62 avo
46% Continue, 20% Critical". Give Arthur a magic ring and he OHKO's the Axe Fighters of Sophara have 42 HP/0 Res and the Axe Knights with Schmidt have 42 HP/1 Res.
With these bases, Arthur "only" has a 43% chance to whiff an ORKO on something he 2HKOs. Arthur is reasonably around L10 right now if not higher, with the EXP from last chapter and the arena. I rounded the numbers a little:

10 Levin!Arthur w/ Holsety (Magic Ring, Bargain Ring, Pursuit Ring)
48 Atk, 35 AS -- 41.4 HP, 4 Def, 7 Res, 83.6 Avo
55% Continue, 26.8% Critical 

                       Bow Armors have 86 hit, so they can't touch him. Lance Armors have 96, so they probably won't hit him. Thunder Mages have 84 after WTD. Liza has 140 hit though, so you will want to KO her on player phase. Ishtor has 96 with Bolting, you can probably take him out from above or beside the castle. Why am I saying all this? Because I think Arthur can, with some careful risk management, solo Melgen. It might take some try-outs to see what works and what doesn't, though.

                From there, Arthur needs to go east to recruit Tinny. Unless you don't really care about recruiting her...but he's still very good at killing her army so that just makes him look better. Once again, his low movement is rather immaterial because Celice needs to seize Melgen and Darna. He should be able to get where he needs to be. He makes a good candidate for killing Blume. Shannan actually isn't too great at it: Blume has 46 Atk, and Shannan has 38 HP/4 Res. He does have 120% HP growth, but only 5% Res, so he probably can't avoid the OHKO. It's safer to have Arthur and his 48+ total HP/Res take him on. Aless could do it as well, of course, but he also has to visit Darna. Blume has 9 AS, whereas base Mistolteen!Aless has 8 and only 30% Speed growth. So Arthur is definitely the best choice to take him on.

                Mekkah goes on to talk about Arthur's ability to obliterate the mage sisters and Ishtar: Meanwhile, this is Arthur:

20 Levin!Arthur w/ Holsety (Magic Ring, Bargain Ring, Pursuit Ring)
55 Atk, 37 AS -- 54 HP, 10.5 Def, 10.7 Res, 92 Avo
57% Continue, 32% Critical

He can run into one of them and kill them with his huge proc rate (roughly 70% chance of proccing either of these on his first attack). Aless could try the same, but I think killing one of them might disable the triangle attack AI. Anyway, Arthur is virtually guaranteed to dodge the Thunder one (92 hit after WTD) and will easily survive two hits (27 and 30 Atk on his 10-11 Res wouldn't kill him), so he's safe.

Then there's Ishtar. He's probably the only person that doubles her other than Shannan, and like with Blume, Shannan won't survive Thor Hammer. You can also get Arthur into Wrath range for her to guarantee killing her before she can attack. There's also a large group of Javelin Lance Knights, and the Elthunder Mage Knight captain Ovo to take care of. Then there's Blume's castle full of Bolting threats he can just ignore and waltz through, countering anything in there at 2-range, etc. He's an expert at cleaning a path for Celice.

From here Arthur just proceeds to be nearly invincible, and a fail-safe mounted kill on pretty much everything. His current Atk is already sufficient to 2HKO Arion without triggering Prayer (70 HP, he does 46 damage per hit), which is ridiculous. You have two more encounters with Ishtar, there's the dreaded Earth Sword Falcoknights, etc etc. He's a beast."

             So yeah, Arthur wrecks face and makes a great usage of the resources you give him. Also, here's a final Mekkah quote about Arthur's awesomeness:
 
                "Arthur is so uber that enemies sometimes refuse to attack him due to them having 0% hit, but thankfully if you want him to slaughter those enemies anyway you can place him on a road tile. It's kind of like putting on one of those training capes in DBZ. Or like Goku throwing the enemy a senzu bean. It's just too unfair otherwise."