Cowazon

@Aut agree 100% on clive being solid, i didnt dump any fountains into him to see what his offenses look like, and when mathilda came along i was happy for that. Despite that he still put in work just being a tanky mounted unit who ended up serving as great utility later on with swap to set up better movement for warps. Having great early use and still keeping some utility isnt bad in a game with infinite deployment slots. You dont need alm level combat to justify a slot, and even when his combat falls off later, hes still a shove/swap, could pull and tank stray mobs, and even provide chip damage when needed. Just goes to show how good an early join time is.

Video did a great job highlighting the many criteria we use to judge how good or bad a unit is, but kind of left it a vague "everything matters" instead of committing to any sort of opinion as far as what matters more. The way I see things is usually by imagining what happens when you stretch any criteria to its logical limit, and then consider its actual value in the game/map/unit in question and compare that. For example, take availability. If a game had 20 chapters and every unit joined on chapter 1 or 2, availability would count for very little. On the other hand, if unit join times were spread between 1-17 in that same game, availability all of a sudden becomes a much bigger factor. The first thing I usually ask when I evaluate a unit is what I expect out of that unit, and then take a look at how well they do that job compared to other units in the game and how the game rewards you for being able to do well in that role. I think one of the best ways to judge what "role" a unit should fit into that applies to just about every fire emblem game is whether you expect that unit to operate mainly on the player phase or enemy phase, and see units first and foremost as either offensive or defensive units. I then think of what % of the map/game they are able to take on in their respective roles. What I'm looking for is either taking on a wide variety of situations, or being able to excel in a niche role that few/nobody else can do. An offensive unit would be first judged by how much of the map they can kill, and how difficult each kill is to obtain compared to other units. An offensive unit needs to either have the firepower to kill just about everything you point them at (Arthur in CQ, Alm w/ Royal Sword in Echoes) or get a kill that is very hard to get (Bow Knights killing ninjas in CQ25, Mathilda killing Rudolf in Echoes Ch4). Past that, defensive benchmarks matter only if nobody can score the kill and avoid the counterattack. Defensive units are judged by the exact same metric, how much of the map/game they can take hits from and how comfortably they do it. It's why I think most knights are bad. Most of them simply do not take the hits from magic units well. Chip damage tends to play a major role in how easily an enemy can be killed by the dedicated PP units, which is why I consider strong 1-2 range on your defensive units extremely important. Being able to dive into huge chunks of a map, take the hits, and weaken every enemy that hit you is way better than just taking the hits without returning fire. Most disagreement on a unit'a relative strength comes down to what people are expecting that unit to accomplish in their playthrough. Figure out what you're expecting a unit to do, what resources it takes to accomplish that, and simply compare that to other units trying to do the same thing with the same resources.

https://imgur.com/a/JV2jR Both of these are obviously on Lunatic, anything under that is a joke anyways. What Mozu does is pretty obvious, it's no secret that damage stack + brave weapons put out insane damage. It might not be sorc/berserker-tier damage, but having perfect hit and tending to hit caps without too many boosters (thanks aptitude) is pretty useful. I would say Izana is the harder of the 2 to push to that point because his personal skill doesn't immediately suggest he'd be a zerk/sorc level boss killer, but he still demolishes what the rest of the BR cast can simply by being one of the 2 (other is Corrin) who can use a brave weapon and having an ideal skillset for it (natural LoD + Spendthrift + Faire). As far as specifics, Izana does take a bit of resources to get to that point, since he needs to pass through a lot of classes for LOD/Spednthrift/Faire, but BR is so easy that it's not like you really need ANY resources besides the Raijinto, so you could just funnel everything into Izana and still cruise through the game. That particular run I got Midori, Caledori and Rhajat for the sheer fun of it, and still had a bunch of other child paralogues leftover even after I was done with getting Izana to 20. Could have easily burned an eternal seal and fed him more XP to cap stats but I was too lazy and just burned boosters instead. As far as his accuracy goes...I would say 96 isn't awful. Obviously you can't get that on the first map since you need a high move pass (Shura in my case) to 1 turn, so you can't have others around Izana to provide more hit, but I was still hitting 80s on there. If I bothered to make a Bow Knight Corrin pairup instead, I could push that way higher. All things considered, I kind of slacked on his investment that run and it was still enough to get there. C-rank +Str Swordmaster Corrin (lol why did I do that) is obviously not as good a pair-up as +Mag Onmyoji Corrin, and having more than 0 +Mag or +Skl statues would have helped too. But like I said, damage stack + brave is so good that even Izana can do it in BR with a garbage (for a brave anyway) weapon like Snake Spirit and make it work. Mozu is even easier to get there than Izana since you get her early game and can take her through some of her pre-req skills pretty early compared to him. Also, she caps str/skl/spd pretty consistently without investment thanks to aptitude, so it's a lot easier on the resources compared to Izana. It's not in the screenshot dump since I forgot to take one of Garon but she's showing 20x4 @ 100hit 2crit on him and gets hit back for 31 @ 70%. In my 1 turn setup she has a pass falco pairup and access to only 1 rally (Izana because otherwise Garon shows 2% crit). Garon is still easier to kill than Takumi because hitting 20x4 is easier than 25x3. I don't understand why you seem to doubt these benchmarks can be hit by stacking damage skills and swinging a brave weapon. LoD + Spendthrift + Faire is already +25. Rallies and weapon MT already push that above 35. Pair-up and tonics should get you to at least 40. And even Mozu's abysmal Sniper cap of 30-something Str is enough to already blast through that 70 you seem to think is so hard to hit. Keep in mind we're still talking about Snipers and Onmyoji, both of which are put to shame by their Sorc and Berserker counterparts.

Since Im all about Fates, figure id chime in with my favourite underrated picks from BR/CQ: From birthright I nominate Izana for being able to grab a brave tome (snek spirit i believe its called?) and kill garon on turn1 with his absurd innate lod/spendthrift/tomefaire. Special shootouts to Shura who somehow provided better movement rigging by existing as a 9 move sneakypony rather than being converted to a pair of boots. From conquest, definitely mozu for doing the exact same thing as BR Izana to garon only at 100% hitrates (and quickdraw!!). At the mere cost of an early heart seal shes an amazing bow user on a route that heavily rewards you for riding around at 8 move shooting ninja in the face. Can also let arthur ride her to grab 3 crazy skills off an archer dip to further increase his oneshotting the world. Mozu4mvp

Before people start pointing out that Odin is the sole reason I seem to think even the nerfed tome is so good, I've seen Corrin casually waltz through the game the same way Odin does, even without bothering to get Vantage. Hell, the tome itself is so damn good that even Leo could do it off an immediate Sorc reclass, despite being flat out worse at the job than Odin in every single way. Busted tome is still busted.

As far as weapon skills go, i thought echoes was really fun because of them, but I also hated that it encouraged you to plan out a weapon for each character and rush to unlock it as fast as posible and never have it leave your hands after that, which is really clunky from a gameplay perspective, especially for a blind first run of a game. In a modern FE, I would imagine weapons might even have multiple skills that might be immediately usable upon equipping the weapon as long as you have the rank. This could make S rank classes see use outside their raw stats, caps, and pairup bonuses. S rank weapons themselves in fates/awakening really suck, and it would be nice to feel rewarded for picking an S rank class and getting the rank up in a way that isnt necesaarily just a weapon that is either garbage or completely bonkers. Balancing all of that might be complex but im sure its doable. Maybe nerf arms scrolls to gain a certain amount of WEXP instead of the full level? Personal skills from fates are really cool and i hope they're here to stay. They were really well done in terms of not only providing meaningful differences between characters, but their names and what they did generally tied into that character's quirks/personality regardless of how good or bad they were in-game. Your idea of inheriting legacy skills rather than class skills through supports is interesting, but the main problem I see is in balancing it out and making it interesting at the same time. Inheriting a class isnt just about acquiring a new skill, but also changes your weapon types, ranks, base stats, caps, and growths. The puzzle of what to give a unit is significantly less fun to figure out if its just a skill they get access to. With regards to children, while fun from a gameplay/optimization perspective, it seems like a forced idea that will never mesh well with a story in a way that doesnt require some awkward plot device. An easy way to fix this would be to simply call them "apprentices" and have them join throughout the story the same way children currently do. You could pick and choose which characters get an apprentice to train, and the mechanics could be similar to children but only being tied to one character rather than 2. Whatever changes end up happening, I think you're right about the system needing an overhaul to keep the same replay value and gameplay depth without butchering the story/writing to facilitate that.

WARNING: wall of text comparing awakening nos to fates nos, and odin to not-odin While I'm 200% on board the "give odin nos to cruise through most of the game" I find that Nos itself didnt really get much worse from Awakening to Fates. Sure, in a vacuum its power level decreased now that it can no longer double, proc skills, crit, and also gives -20 avoid. But most of the issue with those things came from the game and its exp curve actively encouraging you to funnel into a superunit instead of spreading it out. That combined with the crackhead things enemies can do on lunatic (if you look at raw stats on normal lunatic alone its insane, moreso when you consider Hawkeye, Luna, Counter, Aegis, etc). Sure, it was a more powerful tome... in a game that piled on the unfair hard enough that it NEEDED to be that good to keep up with the damage coming in. On the other hand, Conquest toned the crazy damage output down on top of giving us guard stance to negate 1 in every 2.5 attacks. Think of what would happen if we had Awakening's Nosferatu tome in Fates for Odin. Sure, 20 extra avoid might let him take on some tanky high res packs that would otherwise outdamage his healing. Chances are those would still be problematic for him given that ninjas/pegs give him trouble due to their speed and wta, not just their hit rate. I would even guess that later on in the game theyre hitting him pretty accurately despite having 20 extra avoid. Same issue goes for the doubling thing...there are plenty of things Odin cant double even if the tome allowed it, and the extra healing wouldnt even be relevant a lot of the time. One of the things that make odin so damn good is how hes able to consistently pull entire packs of enemies and finish the turn with a chunk of exp from hitting them but leave all the kill exp for the rest of your army. Once you get him rolling in the earlygame, besides his short detour to grab vantage, he can basically level to 20/20 and barely eat up any actual kills to do it. On top of that, he leaves enemies low enough to feed the kills in just about any way you choose. If your heart desired to train up a unit you havent touched since their join, picking off low health enemies with a heartseeker debuff is pretty easy. I will admit that Odin would become even more broken with the crit thing between his solid skill growth, sorc bonus crit, and personal skill. While I doubt it would see widespread use (you have to give up the 2nd nos user to forge it and activate his personal), maybe having a unit that can tank the world and then turn around and crit as if hes got a mjolnir strapped to him might be too much flexibility for one character to possess. On the other hand, once again, the extra healing probably wouldnt be too relevant, and while the raw damage increase on bulky targets might be appreciated, its still not anywhere near what Elise/Ophelia/Arthur/Camilla are doing with a Lightning or a Brave Axe. Hell, the way I use him I'm happy he cant crit...last thing I need is his overlevelled ass stealing actual kills from my PP squad by way of random crits. As for procs, Vengeance already saw a nerf to its consistency for good reason, and with the scaling down of HP pools from awakening to fates, you dont need the extra damage to keep up with healing back what comes your way. I'll admit its still a real problem if Odin could run around in awakening syle with VV and a nos tome, but the lower HP pools give him less bonus damage for doing so anyway. On top of the fact that he only has innate access to Vengeance himself, and marrying Charlotte or Selena for sol sounds silly...most of what gives him problems come from missing a nos hit, getting debuffed to squishyness, getting doubled, or getting one shot by a stray crit or just overall hard hitter. Procs do very little to help in those situations. In a game where your nos tank isnt running around with every stat capped halfway through the game, the tome itself doesnt seem half as broken. What makes Odin so good is how his bases and growths lend themselves to Nos tanking. He has solid luck to make sure hes not getting crit. He has great bulk in his high HP, def, and res to soak up damage. He has just enough mag to heal for a decent amount, especially given that Conquest enemies tend to run around with fairly low res. He has just enough speed to not get doubled by too many things. He has solid skill and heartseeker puts in work to ensure he lands the hits and heals back to full. The only way you could make him any better at his job (without just giving him MORE stats) would be to take all his str base/growth and distribute them anywhere else. As an example of what awakenings nos tome looks like in the hands of someone with a completely different stat distribution, look no further than Nyx. She can double a million things that odin could never dream of doubling. For more damage as well. But she doesnt have anywhere near the bulk or hit rate to casually stroll from one side of the map to the other with a nos tome in hand and not die a painful death.