fe10 balancing ideas

[Progenitus]

paperblade and I were bored so we decided to see what changes this game would need to be so that all the characters are "balanced". Our target was for units to be about as good as the bottom of high tier/the top of upper mid (around Oscar's level or so). So, for example, mid tiers like Soren would be buffed, while top tiers like Ike would be nerfed. One day I might actually buy some kind of AR and put all of this to practice, though some changes might not be possible.

Balancing the characters is based on a chapter-to-chapter basis, not an overall basis. So for example, when you take a random chapter, every unit in it (if they were trained) should be roughly equal. If this did not happen, then units like Ilyana would be terrible (since her "usefulness" would have to be spread out over all the chapters in the game) while units like Cain would be ridiculously broken.

This does not turn it into an availability fest, since everyone will be equal and no real positive utility will be gained. For example, Ilyana will not become the best unit in the game, because whenever she's fielded, she will be among units who are just as good as her, and therefore it won't matter if Ilyana is fielded over any of the other units. Thus, she garners 0 utility. Some units won't follow this, mainly jeigans (e.g. Sothe) or ests (e.g. Astrid).

Here are some changes we made to weapons/caps/etc. before actually changing characters. Note that more are to come later.

- Weapon triangle is implemented in HM again. It is now +/- 10 hit, 1 att, 5 crit.

- Skl now gives +1 crit for every point.

- Crits now only do double damage.

- Skills only proc on the first attack, first two for a brave weapon. For example, skills like adept and masteries no longer work on the second attack.

- vantage is back to 100%

- wrath is 50% HP for +30 crit, rather than 30% HP for +50 crit.

- Counter is Skl% to deal damage equal to HP missing instead of damage taken

- Renewal is 20% HP recovery per turn.

- Fortune is 10 cap

- Shriek now reduces the enemy's hit to 0 for one turn rather than reduce their lck to 0.

- Quickclaw now reduces the enemy's AS to 0 for one turn rather than damage them.

- Maelstrom now reduces the enemy's att to 0 for one turn rather than damage them.

- Blossom's growth boost is increased. The exact amount is undecided, but we're probably going with x1.5.

- Disarm and corrosion are now skl% instead of skl/2%. Like skills such as adept, they can only proc on the first attack.

- Guard now works 25% of the time at C support, 50% at B, and 100% at A.

- Masteries are as followed. "same" means it is not changed. ??? means undecided.

Aether - same

Sol - skl% chance to recover HP based on damage done

Luna/eclipse - skl% chance to negate def.

Astra - skl% chance to do a 5-hit combo, each at 1/2 damage

Deadeye - skl% chance to put enemy to sleep

Stun - skl% chance to prevent enemy from moving for one turn

Colossus - skl% chance to add damage based on con/wt (I don't know the exact formula, but at least the whole "loltriplestr" is removed).

Impale - ???

Flare - same

Corona - same

Bane - skl% chance to reduce enemy's HP to 1

Lethality - same

Savage - skl% chance to halve enemy's skl for 3 turns

Rend - spd% chance to halve enemy's spd for 3 turns

Roar - str% chance to halve enemy's str for 3 turns

Tear - spd% chance to prevent enemy from moving for 3 turns

Ire - ???

Also, you do not automatically get the mastery upon promotion. Instead you need to use an occult skill. Satori signs now give beorcs their masteries.

Masteries also now cost 15 capacity.

Also, all generic enemies in part 4 now have their masteries.

- Most classes will get higher caps. The exact amount is still being determined, though generally, it's +2 str/spd/def to most classes in both 2nd and 3rd tier.

- Avoid and hit on non-earth/heaven affinities are increased to 4/5 respectively (since those are about half the values earth and heaven have). Heaven goes up to +10 hit.

- Att and def from supports are 0.8 a level instead of 0.5, and still round to the nearest number (so a full att or def support at A is +5)

- Cats transformation rates to the same as tigers.

- Laguz can transform into their laguz state at any gauge value, not just 30 (e.g. they can turn into a laguz even if their gauge is only 15). The exceptions are herons, who must have full gauge to transform.

- Janaff's wildheart scroll in 3-7 is now replaced with a formshift scroll.

- Satori sign can be used at level 25 (since using it at level 30, which is equivalent to beorcs being 20/20/20, is stupid). To counteract this, most laguz like Janaff and Ulki will be a lower level (and have lower stats).

- Laguz weapons have 4 weapon ranks (B A S SS). They also only scale at +4 mt per level

They are the following

Raven

6 10 14 18

Hawk/Cat

7 11 15 19

Wolf

8 12 16 20

Tiger

9 13 17 21

Lion

10 14 18 22

White dragon

10 14 18 22

Black Dragon

11 15 19 23

Red Dragon

12 16 20 24

Hit rates for the laguz weapon stay the same.

- Sages get E staves in 2nd tier (like Soren, Ilyana when she promotes, etc.). However, it caps out at C rank in 2nd tier, and can only go to A in 3rd. This gives them extra utility in 2nd tier while still not making Mist/Rhys/Laura obsolete.

- Make physic buyable when killer weapons are buyable. Likely, staves like sleep should be buyable at some point in time.

- Micaiah gets 2 authority stars

- The costs of forging are now...

25%, 75%, 150%, 250%, 375%

Also, you can only forge once per chapter.

- 1-2 range bows have their mt nerfed so they aren't useless for anything other than OHKOing pegs, and now use the user's str.

get rid of the last 2 levels (Aqqar and Arbalest).

The mt scales as 7/11/15.

All crossbows also have -30 hit.

Bowguns are forgeable the same time as javelins/hand axes.

- All Longbows have +20 hit.

- the 1-2 range swords are 6/11/16 mt (wind edge/storm sword/tempest blade).

the 1-2 range lances are 7/11/15

1-2 range axes are 8/11/14

Wind edges are also forgable the same time as javelins/hand axes.

The hit rates are as followed...

swords: 70/65/60

lances: 65/65/65

axes: 60/65/70

Their uses are also 25/20/15. This applies to crossbows too.

- Wo dao is 50 crit instead of 20.

- Killing edge, killer lance/axe/bow all have +2 mt (to make up for crits doing only double damage).

- All knives/daggers have +20 hit and +20 crit.

Iron/steel/silver daggers are forgable. Iron is forgeable at the same time other iron weapons are forgeable (1-4), steel at the same time as other steel weapons (1-E), etc.

- El-tomes and Arc-tomes follow the same forging availability as the daggers.

- Worm and Carreau forgable by the time Pelleas joins.

- Balberith is +3 mag instead of +3 str.

- All tomes have 33% more mt (round down).

- SS tomes have 50 uses instead of 15 to mimic the other SS weapons.

- Urvan is 1-2 range.

- Wishblade comes at the same time as Urvan. Levail's wishblade is no longer droppable (and is locked, so you can't steal it from him).

- Double bow is +3 skl instead of +3 str.

- Baselard is 22 mt, 100 hit, 5 crit. 1-2 range. +3 mag.

- Ragnell and Alondite both have 100 hit (other stats stay the same).

- Vague Katti is 30 mt, 90 hit, 0 crit, 3 wt. It gives +10 HP, str, mag, skl, lck, def, res, and +20 spd. Only Stefan can use it. (It's still worse than the actual Balmunk!)

- Rexflame is +3 res instead of +3 spd.

- Magic weapons now exist. e.g. Sonic Sword, Runesword, Flame lance, bolt axe, bright bow, and some knife with dark damage.

They'll all have 12 mt, 70 hit, 0 crit, 12 wt, 1-2 range, 25 uses.

They are buyable and forgeable by 4-P. 4000 gold each.

- Florete now does magic damage.

- Reaver weapons now exist. Swordreaver, lancereaver, axereaver. They all have 10 mt, 70 hit, 0 crit, 15 wt, 1 range, 20 uses. They are buyable and forgeable by 3-7. They are 3000 gold each. And like in the GBA FEs, they double the weapon triangle bonuses.

- Chapters will have slightly more BEXP so characters who cap ram can actually do some BEXP abusing.

- Tormod, Muarim, Vika rejoin in 3-4 rather than 4-4.

- The CRKs (Geoffrey, Kieran, Makalov, Astrid, Danved, Calill, Marcia) rejoin in 3-2. 3-9, which used to be a CRK chapter, is now a DB chapter.

- All DB chapters which were either "defend for X turns" or "kill X enemies" have been changed to rout. To counteract this, the following changes have been made...

Mordy and Lethe are no longer in 3-6.

Sigrun and Kieran are no longer in 3-12.

In 3-13, once Nailah reaches Micaiah, she (as well as Rafiel) will join you. After that, all of the GMs will start moving.

EDIT: Forgot about a few more changes, due to paperblade.

- 2-3's BEXP that you get from keeping enemies alive is removed.

- There is now an effect called "Ambiance". Units with innate skills give a "watered down" effect to adjacent units. For example, using Astrid who has innate paragon, units who are directly adjacent to her receive a 1.5 exp boost (Astrid still gets 2x exp). This is to make a greater incentive to keep innate skills on units, as great skills like paragon and resolve are not worth just free cap. (However, this might be hard to implement, though given how I may not even bother to get an AR, much less hack the game, this is nice as a simple hypothetical).

EDIT:

- Heal/Mend/Recover now give 15/20/25 exp respectively.

EDIT:

- WEXP gained on a kill is doubled.

EDIT:

- Class caps can be seen here

- Enemy bases and growths can be seen here

- Promotion bonuses for first tiers (males and females)...

2 HP, 1 str, 2 mag, 1 skl, 1 spd, 1 lck, 1 def, 2 res

Promotion bonuses for 2nd tiers...

4 HP, 2 str, 4 mag, 2 skl, 2 spd, 2 lck, 2 def, 4 res

Magic users have their str/mag, and def/res bonuses switched.

Edited November 16, 2009 by 8========================D

[Paperblade]

You forgot 2-3 BEXP for leaving shit alive was removed and there's supposed to be incentive to leave innate skills on units.

Edit: And I thought Part 3 and 4 enemies were going to scale up to Level 20 (instead of joke mid-low teens) rather than get Masteries.

Edited November 2, 2009 by Paperblade

[Jaybee]

Also, all generic enemies in part 4 now have their masteries.

Nihil is now the best skill in the game.

[Paperblade]

Also, all generic enemies in part 4 now have their masteries.

Nihil is now the best skill in the game.

Yeah, I'm completely terrified that that Paladin is going to heal for 10 damage, or that my staff user might have to carry Restore around in addition to 5 Physics and Hammerne.

[Jaybee]

Also, all generic enemies in part 4 now have their masteries.

Nihil is now the best skill in the game.

Yeah, I'm completely terrified that that Paladin is going to heal for 10 damage, or that my staff user might have to carry Restore around in addition to 5 Physics and Hammerne.

Aether - same

Sol - skl% chance to recover HP based on damage done

Luna/eclipse - skl% chance to negate def.

Astra - skl% chance to do a 5-hit combo, each at 1/2 damage

Deadeye - skl% chance to put enemy to sleep

Stun - skl% chance to prevent enemy from moving for one turn

Colossus - skl% chance to add damage based on con/wt (I don't know the exact formula, but at least the whole "loltriplestr" is removed).

Impale - ???

Flare - same

Corona - same

Bane - skl% chance to reduce enemy's HP to 1

Lethality - same

Savage - skl% chance to halve enemy's skl for 3 turns

Rend - spd% chance to halve enemy's spd for 3 turns

Roar - str% chance to halve enemy's str for 3 turns

Tear - spd% chance to prevent enemy from moving for 3 turns

Ire - ???

Luna can wipe off about 2/3 of a unit's HP, and 1 more mastery would probably mean instant death (I say "probably" because of Astra) and being stunned/sleeped for one turn forces your healer to use Restore on that unit instead of healing another unit.

[Mister Cold]

I would also change the mages caps,

give Wind sages more speed (Trueblade like -.-)

give Fire more Magic (warrior like)

give Lightning Balanced stats (like a Hero in FE7 not speedy not overly powerful but balanced)

Dark Magic kinda like a Berserker (they always seemed like a magical berserker in my eyes)

I don't know about Light magic, maybe tankish? more HP and DEF >.>

that's how I would do it tho

Edited November 2, 2009 by Mister Cold

[Victor Fang]

a few more DB chapters to balence out the level gap a bit.

[Anouleth]

Most Masteries suck now. It's like FE9, where you had good masteries (Luna, Aether), okay masteries (Sol, Colossus) and bad masteries (Deadeye, Stun). Especially now that you need Satori Signs for them.

I'd like to point out here that making masteries worse increases the gap between bottom tier and top tier. Many low-lowermid character rely on masteries to ORKO in Part 4, since their stats are never going to be high enough, whereas high tiers like Ike/Mia/Shinon have such good stats, they don't need their masteries to one-round. Look at it this way - a scrub low-tier like Danved is never going to match Ike/Mia/Shinon in damage output. He's barely two-rounding, while they're one-rounding everything. But if we give them all masteries, suddenly Danved has a 40% chance of one-rounding while Ike/Mia Shinon are unchanged, so he's not as bad in comparison.

[Narga_Rocks]

Most Masteries suck now. It's like FE9, where you had good masteries (Luna, Aether), okay masteries (Sol, Colossus) and bad masteries (Deadeye, Stun). Especially now that you need Satori Signs for them.

I'd like to point out here that making masteries worse increases the gap between bottom tier and top tier. Many low-lowermid character rely on masteries to ORKO in Part 4, since their stats are never going to be high enough, whereas high tiers like Ike/Mia/Shinon have such good stats, they don't need their masteries to one-round. Look at it this way - a scrub low-tier like Danved is never going to match Ike/Mia/Shinon in damage output. He's barely two-rounding, while they're one-rounding everything. But if we give them all masteries, suddenly Danved has a 40% chance of one-rounding while Ike/Mia Shinon are unchanged, so he's not as bad in comparison.

And then there are units like Lyre and Lethe that go from tinking Red Dragons to OHKOing red dragons with Rend. It is one of their few redeeming qualities.

I'd suggest leaving the mark for Laguz Satori sign at level 30 but making their level while transformed only 1.5x to make it easier to make them better. And formshift in part 3 would just make the hawks too good.

I'd suggest Half shift not be half shift but more like three quarters shift. So they get 1.75x their important stats, rather than 1.5x. It's more like the demi band from PoR that way. And probably make their level 1.4x while using it for extra experience as an incentive for using a lesser transformation.

You have a few other nutso suggestions (and some good ones as well), but I'll leave it like this for now.

Edited November 2, 2009 by Narga_Rocks

[Original Alear]

- All tomes have 33% more mt (round down).

Whoo!

Astra - skl% chance to do a 5-hit combo, each at 1/2 damage

Can we crit w/ astra hits like in FE9 again?

Corona - same

Why not just give corona HP absorb so it is actually a little more useful? Like flare?

It seems to me like Flare is now a (relatively) overpowered mastery skill since it has two fairly useful effects (res negation and healing) and the mages are now doing more damage with their more powerful tomes. But maybe it's only overpowered if you gave those two effects (but def neg instead of res neg) to a melee unit. I guess that if we aren't changing mage caps it won't matter? Not like I know shit about this game. I'm just saying that the skill seems to have too many good affects, but it may be that the difference in classes makes it irrelevant.

a few more DB chapters to balence out the level gap a bit.

With all the characters in your roster available for use (as opposed to giving an underpowered tier 1 unit 2 chapters of availability in part 1).

- Laguz can transform into their laguz state at any gauge value, not just 30 (e.g. they can turn into a laguz even if their gauge is only 15). The exceptions are herons, who must have full gauge to transform.

Would it be interesting and useful and balanced if laguz could move, use laguz stones (or another transformation item), and then attack (instead of losing a turn to use a stone?). And maybe to have olivi grass transform you if you hit 30 on your gauge like laguz stones and gems transform you?

- Laguz weapons have 4 weapon ranks (B A S SS). They also only scale at +4 mt per level

They are the following

Regardless of the mights, I think that the laguz need to get their ranks faster even in normal RD, and if you're going to make even more ranks you need an even faster weapon level rate.

I dunno, maybe I suck but I have had problems getting weapon ranks on some laguz.

- Sages get E staves in 2nd tier (like Soren, Ilyana when she promotes, etc.). However, it caps out at C rank in 2nd tier, and can only go to A in 3rd. This gives them extra utility in 2nd tier while still not making Mist/Rhys/Laura obsolete.

Can we give Sanaki staves so she at least approaches competitive w/ other mages?

- 1-2 range bows have their mt nerfed so they aren't useless for anything other than OHKOing pegs, and now use the user's str.

get rid of the last 2 levels (Aqqar and Arbalest).

The mt scales as 7/11/15.

All crossbows also have -30 hit.

Bowguns are forgeable the same time as javelins/hand axes.

This would seem to give archers pretty much the same 1-2 weapons as melee classes (except w/ significantly better hit than the A and S rank 1-2 rangers). If we're going to do this, why make them archers?

- Florete now does magic damage.

Nerf the power on that thing? Mist is now hitting res as hard as soren is with a normal wind tome at their base levels (actually, 1 less b/c wind tome has 5 power now). Maybe this is the point, but I don't want her to be anything close to a useful offensive unit. It just wouldn't feel right.

Yeah, I'm completely terrified that that Paladin is going to heal for 10 damage, or that my staff user might have to carry Restore around in addition to 5 Physics and Hammerne.

Silly question, but can restore remove the non-basic status effects caused by masteries? I've never seen the effects of skills like Corona and Stun on my allied units, so I don't know if restore can remove them.

Edited November 2, 2009 by SeverIan

[Narga_Rocks]

Silly question, but can restore remove the non-basic status effects caused by masteries? I've never seen the effects of skills like Corona and Stun on my allied units, so I don't know if restore can remove them.

Boss of 4-E-1, battle saves. Reload until he Coronas and find out. I don't think that there are any other places to test. Well, Lehran fails to KO some units with just Corona as well, I suppose. (If he has corona, not sure).

[dondon151]

As awesome as Wind Edges (and their more powerful counterparts) are for units locked to swords, including them in the game in addition to 1-2 range bows that run off str pretty much removes some characteristics of certain weapon types. All physical weapon types would be the same.

[Narga_Rocks]

As awesome as Wind Edges (and their more powerful counterparts) are for units locked to swords, including them in the game in addition to 1-2 range bows that run off str pretty much removes some characteristics of certain weapon types. All physical weapon types would be the same.

Ah, but it makes Shinon one of the best units in the game, which pleases Smash greatly. Especially with 15 mt on the last one and being able to forge them.

[NinjaMonkey]

Personally I'm against all of this, especially the 'enemies with mastery skills', 'have to use occult scrolls for masteries' and 'Baselard gets +3 magic instead of +5 critical' ideas. Why the hell would Volke/Sothe/Heather want an extra 3 points of magic, anyway?

[Anouleth]

Isn't this list supposed to make units that are already good worse and units that are bad better? Hence the topic title 'fe10 balancing ideas'.

Most of the stuff on that list doesn't do that, btw. If anything, it makes it worse. TC seems to not have noticed that the people that are in low tier are there because they have bad bases (Astrid/Fiona/Lyre), bad availability (Stefan/Tormod/Pelleas), or bad growths (Astrid/Sigrun/Leonardo). Giving them extra skills or better weapons is futile, since this is nothing that another person in high tier can't use.

[Original Alear]

Silly question, but can restore remove the non-basic status effects caused by masteries? I've never seen the effects of skills like Corona and Stun on my allied units, so I don't know if restore can remove them.

Boss of 4-E-1, battle saves. Reload until he Coronas and find out. I don't think that there are any other places to test. Well, Lehran fails to KO some units with just Corona as well, I suppose. (If he has corona, not sure).

You know, I'm in the habit of asking questions for the fun of asking them, not to find out the answers :P

Well, maybe I'll try and find out myself, but I doubt I will.

Isn't this list supposed to make units that are already good worse and units that are bad better? Hence the topic title 'fe10 balancing ideas'.

Most of the stuff on that list doesn't do that, btw. If anything, it makes it worse. TC seems to not have noticed that the people that are in low tier are there because they have bad bases (Astrid/Fiona/Lyre), bad availability (Stefan/Tormod/Pelleas), or bad growths (Astrid/Sigrun/Leonardo). Giving them extra skills or better weapons is futile, since this is nothing that another person in high tier can't use.

Pretty much the only ideas that would help chars w/ bad availability are at the end of the post:

- Chapters will have slightly more BEXP so characters who cap ram can actually do some BEXP abusing.

- Tormod, Muarim, Vika rejoin in 3-4 rather than 4-4.

- The CRKs (Geoffrey, Kieran, Makalov, Astrid, Danved, Calill, Marcia) rejoin in 3-2. 3-9, which used to be a CRK chapter, is now a DB chapter.

- All DB chapters which were either "defend for X turns" or "kill X enemies" have been changed to rout. To counteract this, the following changes have been made...

Mordy and Lethe are no longer in 3-6.

Sigrun and Kieran are no longer in 3-12.

In 3-13, once Nailah reaches Micaiah, she (as well as Rafiel) will join you. After that, all of the GMs will start moving.

There are a couple additions (bump up pwr of magic tomes, cats lose transformation more slowly) but those are fairly negligible changes. Some are almost pointless, like the dagger hit and crit rate boost. Dagger problems are damage, not hit, and a fair amount of the time rogue damage is so low that crits will barely matter anyway.

[Narga_Rocks]

There are a couple additions (bump up pwr of magic tomes, cats lose transformation more slowly) but those are fairly negligible changes. Some are almost pointless, like the dagger hit and crit rate boost. Dagger problems are damage, not hit, and a fair amount of the time rogue damage is so low that crits will barely matter anyway.

Actually, if you give Heather a base str of 17, give her a 40% str growth, and allow steel daggers to be forgeable, she'd become a decent combat unit. She still wouldn't be great or anything. I doubt she'd even be better than Neph, but I think she could easily jump to upper mid. Also it would be worth fighting for 3 levels with her and giving her the 2-E drop in order to steal bolting in 3-2. Sadly silver daggers still wouldn't be forgeable until 4-2 and by then it would almost be time for Baselard. Probably need a higher base def, too, but oh well. It's less necessary than the str.

And I understand not wanting to actually do the testing.

Oh, and make the restore staff range. Not because I think it would improve balance, just because I want it that way. Like in fe4.

Bring back Runesword and Sonic Sword. Start Mist off in 3-P with a Sonic sword that has 9mt (exclusive), then have an event give her the Florete that does magic damage with 14mt sometime partway through part 3. Maybe when the second Florete shows up normally, only make it a base conversation. Then in part 4 when she gets the Holy Crown also give her the Runesword: 19mt and Resire effect. That might be too powerful, but oh well. When you consider her magic will never be what Soren or even Ilyana have, it's fine. Besides, I'm preventing her from starting with 27 mt. I'm actually making her start at the same 22 mt, just with magic damage now.

Not that they ever fight laguz, but first weapon does fire damage, second weapon does wind damage, last one does light damage. This only ever matters for weapon triangle purposes (and pegs), and she should be using physical weapons then anyway, so it is more of a visual thing (aside from pegs). Pegs are uncommon enough that it isn't game breaking, and that's also why I avoided giving her thunder on any of the swords.

[Progenitus]

A lot of issues that people brought up were already in the OP. Granted, the OP is really long, so it's okay if people don't read/remember everything in it.

For a general response, for anyone asking for changes to specific characters, or complaining that low tiers are still useless, these aren't the only changes being made. Almost every single character is going to get altered, for better or for worse. It's even said in the OP...

Here are some changes we made to weapons/caps/etc. before actually changing characters. Note that more are to come later.

For low availability units, that issue has already been addressed in the first 3 paragraphs of the OP.

a few more DB chapters to balence out the level gap a bit.

- The CRKs (Geoffrey, Kieran, Makalov, Astrid, Danved, Calill, Marcia) rejoin in 3-2. 3-9, which used to be a CRK chapter, is now a DB chapter.

- All DB chapters which were either "defend for X turns" or "kill X enemies" have been changed to rout. To counteract this, the following changes have been made...

Mordy and Lethe are no longer in 3-6.

Sigrun and Kieran are no longer in 3-12.

In 3-13, once Nailah reaches Micaiah, she (as well as Rafiel) will join you. After that, all of the GMs will start moving.

Most Masteries suck now. It's like FE9, where you had good masteries (Luna, Aether), okay masteries (Sol, Colossus) and bad masteries (Deadeye, Stun). Especially now that you need Satori Signs for them.

Well, they're about as good as the other 15 cap skills. At least most of them are (I just realized stun kinda sucks, especially when Tear does the same thing except last longer...)

I'd like to point out here that making masteries worse increases the gap between bottom tier and top tier. Many low-lowermid character rely on masteries to ORKO in Part 4, since their stats are never going to be high enough, whereas high tiers like Ike/Mia/Shinon have such good stats, they don't need their masteries to one-round. Look at it this way - a scrub low-tier like Danved is never going to match Ike/Mia/Shinon in damage output. He's barely two-rounding, while they're one-rounding everything. But if we give them all masteries, suddenly Danved has a 40% chance of one-rounding while Ike/Mia Shinon are unchanged, so he's not as bad in comparison.

paperblade and I were bored so we decided to see what changes this game would need to be so that all the characters are "balanced". Our target was for units to be about as good as the bottom of high tier/the top of upper mid (around Oscar's level or so). So, for example, mid tiers like Soren would be buffed, while top tiers like Ike would be nerfed. One day I might actually buy some kind of AR and put all of this to practice, though some changes might not be possible.

In other words, we're not going to have any "scrub low tiers" like Danved.

I would also change the mages caps,

Your proposed changes are pretty high. We were going to boost caps, especially for magic users, but not to the point where wind sages are as fast as trueblades, etc...

Can we crit w/ astra hits like in FE9 again?

Haven't thought of that. Maybe.

Why not just give corona HP absorb so it is actually a little more useful? Like flare?

It seems to me like Flare is now a (relatively) overpowered mastery skill since it has two fairly useful effects (res negation and healing) and the mages are now doing more damage with their more powerful tomes. But maybe it's only overpowered if you gave those two effects (but def neg instead of res neg) to a melee unit. I guess that if we aren't changing mage caps it won't matter? Not like I know shit about this game. I'm just saying that the skill seems to have too many good affects, but it may be that the difference in classes makes it irrelevant.

Yeah, I looked back, Flare is fairly overpowered compared to the other masteries. But this is a first draft for ideas.

Would it be interesting and useful and balanced if laguz could move, use laguz stones (or another transformation item), and then attack (instead of losing a turn to use a stone?). And maybe to have olivi grass transform you if you hit 30 on your gauge like laguz stones and gems transform you?

...nah.

Regardless of the mights, I think that the laguz need to get their ranks faster even in normal RD, and if you're going to make even more ranks you need an even faster weapon level rate.

Most laguz are going to start at A, so they're going to build at the same rate. Though they all build fairly slowly in the first place...

Hmmm... perhaps all killing strikes (beorc or laguz) give out double the WEXP? I think that was the case for FE7.

This would seem to give archers pretty much the same 1-2 weapons as melee classes (except w/ significantly better hit than the A and S rank 1-2 rangers). If we're going to do this, why make them archers?

Their main mode of att is still 2-range.

Nerf the power on that thing? Mist is now hitting res as hard as soren is with a normal wind tome at their base levels (actually, 1 less b/c wind tome has 5 power now). Maybe this is the point, but I don't want her to be anything close to a useful offensive unit. It just wouldn't feel right.

HATING ON MIST ARE YOU???

in any case, Mist is going to get balanced.

Silly question, but can restore remove the non-basic status effects caused by masteries? I've never seen the effects of skills like Corona and Stun on my allied units, so I don't know if restore can remove them.

Not sure

As awesome as Wind Edges (and their more powerful counterparts) are for units locked to swords, including them in the game in addition to 1-2 range bows that run off str pretty much removes some characteristics of certain weapon types. All physical weapon types would be the same.

Are you implying it's better if the weapons are horribly imbalanced? The more differences you make between things, the greater the chance that something will not be balanced.

Personally I'm against all of this, especially the 'enemies with mastery skills', 'have to use occult scrolls for masteries' and 'Baselard gets +3 magic instead of +5 critical' ideas. Why the hell would Volke/Sothe/Heather want an extra 3 points of magic, anyway?

- Enemies with masteries will make part 4 outside of 4-4 actually semi-challenging, and nihil/parity will no longer be useless.

- Occults for masteries will

- Baselard got a big mt buff as well as 1-2 range. The +3 mag was for the lulz and making most all the SS-weapons have fairly useless stat boosts (wishblade/rexcalibur are lol3lck, urvan is lol3res, etc. Ragnell/Alondite have def, but they also have only 18 mt).

There are a couple additions (bump up pwr of magic tomes, cats lose transformation more slowly) but those are fairly negligible changes.

You'd be surprised how +mt on tomes will help a sage's offense, now that we're going to change them so they'll double more easily (or if they can't double they'll have other redeeming features, like lots of def).

Cat losing gauge slowly is a big boon for people like Ranulf. Ranulf would actually be a high tier candidate if he was in another laguz class. Instead he's stuck in upper mid.

Some are almost pointless, like the dagger hit and crit rate boost. Dagger problems are damage, not hit, and a fair amount of the time rogue damage is so low that crits will barely matter anyway.

You'll be surprised how much more often rogues will be critting, since daggers are not only getting a crit boost, but skl is now giving out 1 crit per point of skl (rather than 1/2). Someone like Heather will have like 40 crit before enemy lck.

If your rogue's damage is so low that crits will barely matter anyway, that's a sign that the rogue has bad stats, not because the crit is useless, so the rogue will need a buff.

Edited November 3, 2009 by 8========================D

[Paperblade]

Luna can wipe off about 2/3 of a unit's HP, and 1 more mastery would probably mean instant death (I say "probably" because of Astra) and being stunned/sleeped for one turn forces your healer to use Restore on that unit instead of healing another unit.

The Luna ones are the only ones that're an actual offensive threat to us (as Astra is actually weaker than their crits used to be unless we allow it to crit). Do you really think that being stunned for one turn (which, by the way, wears off when our turn begins due to the way it's calculated, meaning all it does is prevent counters for the rest of the turn) matters? Colossus in FE9 made you do 25% more damage if your Con was greater, and it was a % proc. That's actually pretty fucking terrible (then again, everything that wasn't Cancel, Sol, or Aether was, and the former rarely even saw use because Janaff and Ulki are like low tier and Giffca > Tibarn). Probably should be buffed somehow (maybe increase damage by 125% of Con? That'd be about +16-17 damage).

Sothe's Part 4 damage blows because whispers have a terrible cap, limiting Sothe from getting the full benefit of his Str growth. And Heather's Strength is just fucking terrible. 25% growth? Really? I'm pretty sure my mages have that much.

Stun >>> Deadeye. 1 turn disable vs ~5 or whatever it is? lewl

Flare should just steal HP and Corona should just ignore Res. No hit halving.

Roar should maybe also cut magic in half.

I want to say make them passive abilities, such as making Sol make you passively heal for 20% of damage done and Luna makes you ignore 20% of Def or something (and obviously something that would ignore 20% of Avoid just to be fair >_>). But I don't know if that's really epic enough for masteries.

Also, note that Volke's damage is great despite being locked to Knives.

Also, lol@thinking that these changes are comprehensive. Yeah, we made Volug even better by buffing his Strike damage and Laguz transformation, Ike by making Wind Edges forgeable, and Haar by buffing his affinity.

Edited November 3, 2009 by Paperblade

[dondon151]

Are you implying it's better if the weapons are horribly imbalanced? The more differences you make between things, the greater the chance that something will not be balanced.

Well, there is always a tradeoff between differentiation and balance. What's the point in having different weapon types if they're all the same?

You could try to balance by giving swords and bows a single weak unforgeable 1-2 range option, and then by giving them a bunch of good stuff to compensate for the lack of stronger 1-2 range (effective weapons against more enemy types, weapons that bestow skills, weapons that boost stats, 3x and 4x weapons, etc.). Think like the swords selection in FE5.

Edited November 3, 2009 by dondon151

[Narga_Rocks]

Are you implying it's better if the weapons are horribly imbalanced? The more differences you make between things, the greater the chance that something will not be balanced.

Well, there is always a tradeoff between differentiation and balance. What's the point in having different weapon types if they're all the same?

You could try to balance by giving swords and bows a single weak unforgeable 1-2 range option, and then by giving them a bunch of good stuff to compensate for the lack of stronger 1-2 range (effective weapons against more enemy types, weapons that bestow skills, weapons that boost stats, 3x and 4x weapons, etc.). Think like the swords selection in FE5.

I miss the wide range of sword types in fe4 and fe5. It was fun. Though swords were so very much better than axes in fe4 that it was a little ridiculous.

[NinjaMonkey]

Is this thread about balancing the game, or making the game harder? Because it is starting to look like it is the second option, rather than the first.

[Original Alear]

Yeah, I looked back, Flare is fairly overpowered compared to the other masteries. But this is a first draft for ideas.

Ya I know :P That's why I offered a possible correction.

Most laguz are going to start at A, so they're going to build at the same rate. Though they all build fairly slowly in the first place...

I figured that you would be giving B rank strike out to laguz w/ the lowest starting levels, with the possible exception of volug, and since IMO those laguz are fairly low tier, harder to use units anyway, it wouldn't help them if they take even longer to get a good weapon power.

It's not that I don't agree that strikes build slowly. But since they DO build slowly already, it's not going to help the weaker laguz to make them take even longer to get a good strike.

Their main mode of att is still 2-range.

Why would they stick to 2-range as their "main mode" when they have 1-2 wpns forgeable at the same time as the 1-2 weapons of other classes?

You'd be surprised how +mt on tomes will help a sage's offense, now that we're going to change them so they'll double more easily (or if they can't double they'll have other redeeming features, like lots of def).

Sorry. Actually I "whooed" the magic tome pwr boost earlier. I was saying that some of the other changes might have fairly negligible effects on character differences. Made a mistake when I linked those as "negligible". I agree that mage tome pwr would be significant in making mages better.

Cat losing gauge slowly is a big boon for people like Ranulf. Ranulf would actually be a high tier candidate if he was in another laguz class. Instead he's stuck in upper mid.

I also agree ranulf is better with more time shifted, but you specifically said earlier in the topic that your target was upper mid. So why would you try to boost ranulf to high when he's fine where he is?

Our target was for units to be about as good as the bottom of high tier/the top of upper mid (around Oscar's level or so).

That's what I mean about the "target". It would seem like making changes to lethe and lyre specifically would move them up while keeping ranulf in a good position.

[Allan's Aokage]

If you're fixing Radiant Dawn, I would recommend un-gimping Thunder tomes.

Give them high weight/high strength, much like they were in PoR. Not that weight matters, since Ilyana has an absurd Strength growth for a mage anyway.

[Progenitus]

So without further delay, I'll be listing changes to the characters. They'll be mentioned in the order of their joining time.