Whatever happened to the usefulness of archers?

[Integrity]

Shin's a top (?) tier unit and archers still suck in FE6. :P

[Refa]

Really? I thought archers were generally better in FE6. I mean I get your point and it totally applies to FE4 where for the most part, archers aren't really all that necessary.

[General Banzai]

Klein is good too

[General Horace]

fe6 archers are bad but the nomads and snipers are decent at worst

really most snipers in fe are actually pretty decent but archers are just trash

[Rewjeo]

FE6 archers are bad, but its not really the class's fault there. Wolt has 4 STR and 5 SPD. And 18 HP/4 DEF defensively. Even if you made him a cavalier, he wouldn't be good.

Edited November 19, 2013 by Rewjeo

[DomesticHausCat]

I'd have to say the only game that handled archers perfectly was RD because they got crossbows. And also they got 3 range when they promoted which gave you incentive to use them than say, another unit with throwing weapons. Plus they got the double bow which was a godsend at the end of the game. FE2 from what I heard handled them pretty well because they had a lot of range. That's not a bad idea to go with either.

Didn't realize how weak Tellius mages were till now. Whenever I used them they always seemed to kick more ass than the physical units aside from the heavy hitters like Ike and Boyd for me. Maybe I just got lucky with their speed and magic growths though.

Edited November 19, 2013 by DomesticHausCat

[dondon151]

archers were also trash in RD in spite of crossbows, and shinon is barely usable in the long term.

Eliwood has 15% Str and 10% Spd over Lowen, but Lowen has 10% HP and 10% Def. The growth differences are small enough not to make much difference in the long run.

yes they do

lowen loses to both sain and kent in the offensive stats that they are weak in, so you bet a 10% difference makes a difference in the long run.

[eclipse]

You get it like in Chapter 12 or something, and I'm pretty sure Gordin would get better stats than Jeorge at that time. FE12, I don't know shit.

Horsemen do get swords after promoting from hunters. Oh wait we're talking about archers.

OKAY, here's some FE11 data.

- Gordin will forever win in HP/Str/Luck/Defense (three of which are fairly irrelevant), and assuming he's on average and promotes at level 10, ties Skill/Speed. That means that Gordin will have a whopping two Strength on Jeorge, on average. Hardly something to celebrate over, IMO.

- If Gordin were to straight-promote without getting a single WEXP in bows, he'd have 106 WEXP in bows, total. Jeorge STARTS with 105 base Bow rank (that means it doesn't count his class rank in). Both are short of Parthia at base. . .but Gordin needs 45 bow attacks, while Jeorge needs all of eight (if I've messed up my calculations, please let me know).

- From my old draft data (granted, it's on Normal, but I need a frame of reference), it takes 41 turns to get to Chapter 9; this will be less if there's warp involved. Even with Prologue 4, it's highly unlikely that Gordin will reach Jeorge's weapon ranks before he joins; blame archer movement.

- No, I am NOT burning the Chapter 12 Arms Scroll on Gordin. Most of the army makes better use of it.

Now, if you're into babying units, Gordin will have more opportunities to do something about his awful growths. Unless I'm in a draft, that's usually never.

EDIT: The reason why I bring up weapon ranks and Parthia is because when the two are combined, it's a cool +6 MT boost that makes flying units cry. I wish the other games had overpowered bows available that early.

Edited November 19, 2013 by eclipse

[dondon151]

or you can forge +9 MT onto an iron bow

[TheBigDipper]

OKAY, here's some FE11 data.

- Gordin will forever win in HP/Str/Luck/Defense (three of which are fairly irrelevant), and assuming he's on average and promotes at level 10, ties Skill/Speed. That means that Gordin will have a whopping two Strength on Jeorge, on average. Hardly something to celebrate over, IMO.

- If Gordin were to straight-promote without getting a single WEXP in bows, he'd have 106 WEXP in bows, total. Jeorge STARTS with 105 base Bow rank (that means it doesn't count his class rank in). Both are short of Parthia at base. . .but Gordin needs 45 bow attacks, while Jeorge needs all of eight (if I've messed up my calculations, please let me know).

- From my old draft data (granted, it's on Normal, but I need a frame of reference), it takes 41 turns to get to Chapter 9; this will be less if there's warp involved. Even with Prologue 4, it's highly unlikely that Gordin will reach Jeorge's weapon ranks before he joins; blame archer movement.

- No, I am NOT burning the Chapter 12 Arms Scroll on Gordin. Most of the army makes better use of it.

Now, if you're into babying units, Gordin will have more opportunities to do something about his awful growths. Unless I'm in a draft, that's usually never.

EDIT: The reason why I bring up weapon ranks and Parthia is because when the two are combined, it's a cool +6 MT boost that makes flying units cry. I wish the other games had overpowered bows available that early.

Babying pls. I always do that. My first NM run had Gordin being the highest leveled unit.

[The Void]

Man, seeing how bad Archers have been in FE makes me look to Tactics Ogre and it's Archers. Who were actually good.

[Garland Chaos]

Man, seeing how bad Archers have been in FE makes me look to Tactics Ogre and it's Archers. Who were actually good.

Not to mention Shining Force's Archers. I particularly have a liking towards Hans from Ressurection of the Dark Dragon.

[The Void]

I say Archers just haven't really worked well in FE.

What with the lack of attacks on the enemy phase, repeatedly having worse bases than other combat units (especially in Strength) including characters who join at the same time or later, etc.

Archers are good in Tactics Ogre since:

A: They one of the better units when it comes to doing damage in the earlygame and have enough going for them that they don't fall down.

B. They can and will hit enemies before other units.

[Naglfar94]

Hmm..In my opinion Archers went back and forth from game to game I have to say though Archers began really losing how useful they were after the NES SNES era of Fire Emblem games especially snipers! when I played FE1~FE5 mostly FE1~3 I actually feared snipers on the battlefield more than a Swordfighter or even mercenary! all and all though archers are not that bad it all depends on who that archer is and though not everyone will agree with this but the characters stat growth rates too. Being how most of them are they really need good growths to boost them up. Look at Gordin and Ryan for instance terrible just terrible and both barely grow at all especially in speed that they badly need I`m not sure if they were made better in FE12 or not though. And then you have archers like Wil and Rebecca heh in my opinion those two were pretty awesome! Tanya from FE5 too was good she is a speed and critical hit master! so yeah depends on the game really I see a pattern though with archers one game they are bad then next they are good then after bad again then good again heh anyone notice that? anyone?

[The Void]

Does somebody at IS think Archers would be overpowered if they regularly had bases that weren't joke worthy.

[GerikTheHero]

IMO archers are quite useful. They can kill wyverns with easy and can use balista!

[The Void]

Does anybody at IS know how lethal Medieval Archers were.

[Rewjeo]

Didn't a lot of that have to do with the fact that a huge number of archers were all firing at a huge number of enemies, rather than one shooting at one, though?

[Integrity]

Does anybody at IS know how lethal Medieval Archers were.

Real life has a bad tendency to not make for fun gameplay :P

EDIT:

Didn't a lot of that have to do with the fact that a huge number of archers were all firing at a huge number of enemies, rather than one shooting at one, though?

One archer will still fuck your day if he gets a single arrow into you, pretty much irrespective of where it hits. Formations of archers were of the principle that more of a good thing = a better thing, and it was true.

Edited November 25, 2013 by Integrity

[dondon151]

One archer will still fuck your day if he gets a single arrow into you, pretty much irrespective of where it hits. Formations of archers were of the principle that more of a good thing = a better thing, and it was true.

well no shit, but archers couldn't realistically 1v1 people in battle. you rained arrows and then either pulled out your sword or ran the fuck away.

[Aurath8]

well no shit, but archers couldn't realistically 1v1 people in battle. you rained arrows and then either pulled out your sword or ran the fuck away.

Depends. On an open battlefield where the archer can see you coming, you're dead. Even if you're wearing plate armour, a longbow's arrow or crossbow bolt can pierce it. There were no guns, or any decent projectiles bar arrows and nothing short of a heavy shield will stop them. Even if the archer misses, they can still get off several shots before you get close. If you do get close, as you mentioned the archer probably has at least a dagger on his person.

Literally, the only reason guns overtook the bow is that it takes years to train an archer, but only a day at the very least to train someone to shoot a gun.

[The Void]

Can we all agree that the DS FEs are the only games in the series where Sniper is actually one of the best classes to promote or swap to.

Just those.

Edited December 3, 2013 by The Void

[Diddy Kong]

Shinon was the best Sniper ever. There'll simply never be another Shinon cause he choose boose over women as his love in life. Can't really blame him for that choice either.

[PKL]

Shinon is overrated.

[-Cynthia-]

FE10 Shinon kinda falls into mediocrity after 3-2 until 4-E, which is a pretty long stretch.