Promotion: Early or Late?

  • Early Promotion (Level 10-12)
  • Late Promotion (Level 18-20)
  • Other (Please specify)

0 voters

I’m trying to get a general feel on if people will promote their units earlier for the immediate power or wait until level 20 for the maximum potential stats.

Personally, I’ve always been a late promotion person. I want to get the most out of any and every unit. I have a few exceptions, like healers (they take too long to level up) or units that have more than 1 stat capped (typically they’re losing more by not being able to increase that stat further).

This is more or less for games with level reset mechanics and non fe2/fe15 instances (because there’s really no benefit to waiting to promote). FE10 is a bit of a wildcard because of growth overflow though.

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Give me a level 10 and a seal and you know what’s about to go down. Hint: Not my unit’s stats.

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Voted for other. If I can go for late promotions, that’s what I do. However, I prefer to promote somewhere in the level 13-16 range. If my units have leveled up poorly, I might promote them earlier for those promotion gains.

I’m of the opinion that units should be able to cap at least one/some of their stats without going 20/20 (assuming you’re not getting horribly screwed), but not be able to cap all of them without stat boosters even if you go 20/20.

I personally prefer early promotion overall, but it changes based on what I’m playing. Some hacks/games expect early promotion, some expect late promotion, and it’s often difficult to tell which is which. If I’m going to get punished for wanting to promote quickly, I’d like to be able to know that beforehand so I can plan my unit usage around that.

In my own project, at least, you’re expected to be promoting as soon as possible. You get your first Master Seal in chapter 5, and I’m expecting a team at roughly 10/10 by endgame.

Was going to comment the same thing. I promote around level 14-16 or when a facing a serious challenge.

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Generally in most FEs, promoting at lv20 is gonna give you overkill stats for most units due to how enemy scaling works. I promote at whatever point allows me to gain the most utility out of a unit, promoting later realistically isn’t giving you anymore utility in most games and for most units.

It depends on the context.

Is the game shorter/are promo items plentiful? Promoting as close to level 10 as possible
Are promo items hard to come by? Promoting as late as possible to gauge who best to use them on
Is it Tellius where you auto promote at level 21? No reason to promote early and there’s definitely not enough promo items to consistently do so
Is the game three houses? No reason not to promote there as early as you can, since reclassing and level doesn’t reset
Is the unit in question majorly/entirely a utility unit? Promoting as early as possible, no reason to wait
Do you get gaiden-style promo bonuses? Promote early, capping level first is going to give a negligible amount of extra stats compared to what promo bonuses you would get now and wouldn’t get then.

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For me, it depends on the state of the game I’m playing. Is it a demo that’s incomplete to the point that I know getting any promoted level unit to 20 is impossible? If so, I’ll promote at 10. I’ve even done this at the expense of missing out on level 15 skills in games that have those, but that’s just me forgetting about skill system mechanics most of the time. Otherwise, I’ll wait until 15 or so and promote whenever it feels right and/or the stat boost would help me to get around an obstacle. If it’s a staff-only unit, it’ll be a few levels earlier. It’s definitely more likely to happen in a fan game where there isn’t a huge amount of effort put into making sure the player levels up very slowly, but it hasn’t actually happened to me yet that I have units who are stuck at level 20 in lategame and make me suffer for it.

promotion at level 15 to death

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This thread actually shocks me. I’ve never promoted before 20, and if I did it was a healer like once.

While early promotion is definitely better in every way…I really like green numbers and overkill.

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I’d say it’s something to decide on a case-by-case basis.

Getting Level 20/20(/20) in any case is usually not realistic unless you grind. And there are times when early promotion is probably something you can get away with. I know, for example, that the regular enemies in Endgame of Path of Radiance are only promoted Level 10 on Normal difficulty, so it seems being Level 10/20 would work just as well as being Level 20/10. Either way, you’re probably going to have at least a few Levels of untapped potential no matter what you do.

But in case you don’t know what endgame enemy Levels will be, looking at average stats can help. You can subtract average stats for whatever Level you’re thinking of promoting at from average stats for Level 20 average and judge by the difference if it’s a good idea. An overall 1-2 point difference probably isn’t going to hurt you.

I’m grinding most people so I wait for level 20. Specially with units who might need more levels to try and gain stats they might suck at getting otherwise. (Lucius and other magic users have more chances to get def for example if I go for all 40 levels verses 30 if I promote at lvl 10.)

Plus usually the ones I want to bring a lot end up at those levels anyway. Assuming it’s not a shorter hack.

Depends on the unit and game.

I almost never promote right away at 10, but I don’t always wait for 20 either. 15-18 most of the time

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Skills system or not, 15 is my choice because 20 is for pussy and 10 is for God.

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I’ve always been a 20/20 guy when it comes to promotions

This. I generally like to promote later, but once a unit has their high growth stats capped, there’s not much reason to go for 20. Unless the hack/game is easy enough that it doesn’t matter (or long enough that 20/20 is viable). Exception being lords, I always try to promote the main characters at 20 and stuff them full of stat boosters to make them strong (unless the lord in question is just bad then whatever).

In traditional FE games I often promote a unit early because you’re given a Master Seal in like… Chapter 5, but it’s always a unit that I know I’m going to bench, or a utility unit. Staffers always get earlypromoted.

Context matters. If I’m playing casually, I usually will wait til they’re closer to capping. In harder scenarios, a lot depends on finding the right point where I will get the most out of the immediate gain, without risking difficulty later because i skipped out on the slow burn of more levels while unpromoted.

I’d say generally I promote between 15-19 regardless of game.

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Voted other for me it depends on the game and how you wat to play it in FE 6 I tend to go for reasonably early promotions but in the case of high growth characters or in games with easy access to grinding in runs that I allow that then I wait and get 20/20 units