What's the consensus on these weapon stat penalties?

[Superfan959]

Posted this on GFAQs awhile ago and nobody cared.

I've been trying to avoid pretty much all specific info about this game, but after seeing people debate about weapon effectiveness due to self-inflicted debuffs, I decided to check it out.

This basically seems like the "replacement" to weapon weight, except different stats besides speed, and everyone is impacted equally. At a glance, I love this. I've wanted weight or some similar mechanic to return for awhile, because the lack of any drawbacks when selecting weapons was really simplifying the gameplay.

So my question is: how does this work out in practice? Is it as good as it seems on paper, or are there some serious balance issues as a result of the seemingly somewhat random allocation of stat penalties?

[CocoaGalaxy]

Note that I don't think we've gone through all the mechanics of how the weapons works (cough debuffs cough)

Bronze Weapons are largely "useless", well compared to Iron anyway. They're really only used if you really, really need the +10 accuracy over Iron.

Or, you know, are paranoid about 1% Crits or something. Or just want to cut that 11% crit to a 1%

Irons are Irons, the standard

Steel is basically either

1: I'm so fast, I can still double you even with the penalty, sucks to be you

2: I can't double you anyway, might as well hit you for 3 more damage

Silver is basically "Hi there you're gonna die now", and then you go back to using something else. Continuous consecutive rapid uses of silver is just a silly idea, Silver is basically a "(mini) nuke" option to kill something.

Warrior Weapons are...not so good. If you can stomach the -20 Avoid, they're technically Steel weapons without the drawback, with the added bonus of ~ +10 damage during enemy phase

Brave Weapons are still really strong, except when your strength sucks or something, since they all have ~Iron levels of strength, and the fact that Brave Axe has only 55 hit is a bit bad. The Brave Tomes/Bow/Kunai as well

3 Range Bow/Kunai are still good, the drawback is "understandable", though I feel they're mostly used for cheaping 1-2 range stationary bosses or just as extra covering fire, though they can only do so much as they can't double.

(I wonder if can't double, or can't crit + can't trigger skills, is more debilitating)

1-2 Range weapons are fairly nerfed, you have to be careful when using them, or you know, op. OP Characters can just use them to weaken mobs of enemies.

2 Range weapons...honestly speaking I don't think they're worth being used over the 1-2 Range weapons, though if you have the inventory space you might as well carry them I guess? The fact that you can trigger skills can be beneficial if you stack skills, I suppose...

For the magic weapons...they're still quite powerful, and they can double at range, so it's mostly a question of do you care about the skills. Not entirely but..eh.

For the anti monster weapons, I don't know what the HP recovery is, but I think I'd still use Iron weapons normally.

Aside from the Brigand series, the joke weapons are still largely jokes...though the "Name" weapons seem to have even more fancy effects

E.G. Pieri's Little Lance is basically a Javelin, trading might for ability to crit and trigger skills

Effie's Big Lance is ...kinda broken on a fast unit, or a unit with Defensive Formation. Same deal with Ryoma's Practice Club

Berserker Axe, Deathbringer Kunai, and minor spoilers, Demon Ganglari, are OP, but at the cost of you losing HP, which "will" be fatal if you fight too much in enemy phase, so it's again, a form of "nuke button"

Nosferatu has been hit quite alot with the nerf bat, but it's still a viable option, just not a "broken" one anymore

Katana/Naginata/Axe S Ranks basically have one additional attribute, in addition to the shared "deal massive damage in half your battles"

Yumi/Shuriken/Tome S Ranks turn you into a Glass Cannon

I forgot to mention about Dragonstone vs Dragonstone+ , Beaststone vs Guard Beaststone vs Beaststone+, but those are kind of self explanatory

Edited July 23, 2015 by CocoaGalaxy

[Superfan959]

Wow, that's a lot of detail. So would you/others consider this to be a step on the right direction?

Edited July 25, 2015 by Completely InShane

[Othin]

Wow, that's a lotof detail. So would you/others consider this to be a step on the right direction?

Definitely. There are more improvements to be made but it's a great start.

Bronze weapons are pretty weak but if you have enough power, they can be nice to have on hand for the extra accuracy or if you want to be sure you don't take a crit. You have a bunch from earlygame that will never break because weapons don't do that anymore, so unless you need to sell them you can just keep them on hand for any characters that have inventory space. Iron is pretty basic, all-around solid. Steel is great when the penalties don't matter and bad when they do. Killer is a good substitute for Iron; it has as much strength and minimal downsides, and increasing crit damage from 3x to 4x can actually be relevant. Silver is hard to use but if you need the damage you'll be glad you have it. Be wary of enemy phase when using Silver; if you get into a few fights you'll rack up penalties that will stay noticeable for a long time and that power drop will tempt you to keep relying on Silver to make up for it even though it'll just keep getting worse later on if you do. Thrown weapons are balanced now; they're much weaker than before but they still have their uses, especially when you can use them to set up a powerful Dual Attack since that option can really make it important to hit from a specific spot. Just be aware of the penalties. It's odd that the B rank thrown weapons are range 2 only but they have such a huge power boost with virtually no other downsides. I generally prefer them for their player phase effectiveness even though they don't have the universal effectiveness on enemy phase; thrown weapons are much more a player phase thing than enemy phase now. Kunai have much more taken over the past role of thrown weapons; they're VERY effective even if you don't need the debuffs. You can also just use magic, or magic weapons, or the ridiculous personal weapons Ryouma and Marx have. That's the other thing, personal weapons are REALLY overpowered; I'm not quite sure what they were thinking on that front. Ryouma, Marx, Takumi, and Leon will rarely need any other weapon, but at least the weapon selection matters for other characters.

[Psyruby]

I think the bronze weapons are actually meant to weaken enemies so another unit can kill them. Low Power, High Accuracy, and impossible to crit or use skills makes it pretty hard to accidentally kill the enemy unless your unit is way way over-leveled.

EDIT: Besides just being an E rank weapon.

Edited July 25, 2015 by Psyruby

[Othin]

They can do that too, yeah.

[Zerosabers]

So silver weapons are like drugs?

I really like this change though, I really hated it in the earlier games when you get some legendary sword and then its like; "Oh yea by the way this thing will break after like 25 uses."

[Pepper]

Posted this on GFAQs awhile ago and nobody cared.

I've been trying to avoid pretty much all specific info about this game, but after seeing people debate about weapon effectiveness due to self-inflicted debuffs, I decided to check it out.

This basically seems like the "replacement" to weapon weight, except different stats besides speed, and everyone is impacted equally. At a glance, I love this. I've wanted weight or some similar mechanic to return for awhile, because the lack of any drawbacks when selecting weapons was really simplifying the gameplay.

So my question is: how does this work out in practice? Is it as good as it seems on paper, or are there some serious balance issues as a result of the seemingly somewhat random allocation of stat penalties?

GameFAQs that was your first mistake.

[Blue Sun]

GameFAQs that was your first mistake.

I laughed at this much harder than what I normally should have.

[Sunwoo]

The weapon stat penalties make me not want to use anything other than iron (or iron equivalents).

[astrophys]

Is that perhaps an overreaction to shy away from the strong weapons just because of a penalty?

Its just a question of judicious use.

[Sunwoo]

Is that perhaps an overreaction to shy away from the strong weapons just because of a penalty?

Its just a question of judicious use.

To be fair, even in the previous games I really only ever used iron and steel weapons or equivalents. Even in Awakening where I hoard weapons so much I have like 85 silver swords, I almost rarely ever use them. So in retrospect the weapon penalties didn't actually change my normal use of weapons much.

[CyborgZeta]

I don't use silver weapons at all, myself. Never needed them in any of my Fates playthroughs.

[PuffPuff]

I think the bronze weapons are actually meant to weaken enemies so another unit can kill them. Low Power, High Accuracy, and impossible to crit or use skills makes it pretty hard to accidentally kill the enemy unless your unit is way way over-leveled.

EDIT: Besides just being an E rank weapon.

^ This.

We do need to spood feed our favorite characters as I hated them critting and killing the opponent that I wanted to feed to someone else.

The weapon stat penalties make me not want to use anything other than iron (or iron equivalents).

With 1~2 ranged weapons making it worse.

Only going to use once to view the animations then letting it collect dust afterwards.

-----

Legends/Silvers having penalties now making it only usuable during Player Phase and having to trade and switch to an Iron/Killer weapon or something since only those are any good to use during enemy phase.

[The DanMan]

...I don't think there is a general consensus. Some love it, some dislike it, and some are neutral to it.

[astrophys]

In all fairness, Silver is also usable during an enemy phase if you've cleared out the enemies enough so that you're only likely to be facing say 1 opponent.

[Psyruby]

I, for one, love the weapon penalty idea.

All standard weapons have their use. 1-2 Range physical weapons(not including Kunai) are bad unless very strict stipulations are met. Which this should be true, cause if they aren't worse, then you pretty much destroyed the advantage of magic/kunai/bows(especially bows). The Magic weapons are good, but you actually have to have a magic stat to use them. You are rewarded for *cough* multiclassing *cough* your unit. Also, the penalty for using finishers is usually very fair.


Also, there is a very valuable focus on player phase attacking. This is really important in a strategy game(especially one that will have PvP) as the best strategy before was a reactionary method. You'd always let the opponent attack first cause the only benefit of attacking first was killing an opponent before they could damage you. So you'd go into their range, let them attack you, then finish them off on their turn. One problem with this method in PvP... both players would be attempting this strategy if you couldn't OHKO the other unit. So PvP would just be a big game of chicken. Now, with the rewarding skills and weapons on player phase, you are encouraged to attack the opponent and take an aggressive mindset(or you can be defensive with certain units and skills). I can't stress the importance of this aspect enough.

Edited July 26, 2015 by Psyruby

[Bovinian]

I, for one, love the weapon penalty idea.

All standard weapons have their use. 1-2 Range physical weapons(not including Kunai) are bad unless very strict stipulations are met. Which this should be true, cause if they aren't worse, then you pretty much destroyed the advantage of magic/kunai/bows(especially bows). The Magic weapons are good, but you actually have to have a magic stat to use them. You are rewarded for *cough* multiclassing *cough* your unit. Also, the penalty for using finishers is usually very fair.

Also, there is a very valuable focus on player phase attacking. This is really important in a strategy game(especially one that will have PvP) as the best strategy before was a reactionary method. You'd always let the opponent attack first cause the only benefit of attacking first was killing an opponent before they could damage you. So you'd go into their range, let them attack you, then finish them off on their turn. One problem with this method in PvP... both players would be attempting this strategy if you couldn't OHKO the other unit. So PvP would just be a big game of chicken. Now, with the rewarding skills and weapons on player phase, you are encouraged to attack the opponent and take an aggressive mindset(or you can be defensive with certain units and skills). I can't stress the importance of this aspect enough.

Yeah pretty much this. Though IS's reasoning of "we're going to remove durability so people will no longer be afraid of using powerful weapons", which was probably mainly directed at casual players, ends up being questionable if said casual players will now not use them because they are afraid of the penalties.

[Psyruby]

Yeah pretty much this. Though IS's reasoning of "we're going to remove durability so people will no longer be afraid of using powerful weapons", which was probably mainly directed at casual players, ends up being questionable if said casual players will now not use them because they are afraid of the penalties.

I hope people aren't too afraid to take advantage of a statistically better weapon for the current situation. I'd feel rather sad for humanity.

[PuffPuff]

I hope people aren't too afraid to take advantage of a statistically better weapon for the current situation. I'd feel rather sad for humanity.

4x crit damage with killers, or other weapons like Mjolnir are kind of scary now since the enemies will use these too. :/

Edited July 26, 2015 by Princess_Florina

[Bovinian]

I hope people aren't too afraid to take advantage of a statistically better weapon for the current situation. I'd feel rather sad for humanity.

Yeah, I really like that the weapons have been balanced to favor player phase a lot more. Unfortunately the Awakening crowd is largely used to having enemies suicide on their super units on EP, so they are a lot more likely to despise things like Silvers and nerfed Javelins that don't allow them to do that anymore

[Psyruby]

4x critting with killers, or other weapons like Mjolnir are kind of scary now since the enemies will use these too. :/

You could say the same for Awakening. Killing Edges had more power than steel swords, 5 more crit, 5 more acc, and no avoid penalty. I think the difference is that IS is no longer scared to put good weapons in enemy hands cause they are generally more balanced overall.

[Othin]

Do Fates enemies even ever have Killer weapons? I don't remember any.

Enemies with Silver can be scary at first, but they just keep using it so if they survive a couple fights they quickly turn pathetic. I've seen it happen a few times and it's always pretty funny.

[Minischew]

Do Fates enemies even ever have Killer weapons? I don't remember any.

Enemies with Silver can be scary at first, but they just keep using it so if they survive a couple fights they quickly turn pathetic. I've seen it happen a few times and it's always pretty funny.

If an enemy uses a Silver weapon and he misses, does he still suffer the Str/2 debuff? Can I send my dodge tanks to enemies with Silver weapons to weaken their damage output and have other characters finish them up?

[Othin]

If an enemy uses a Silver weapon and he misses, does he still suffer the Str/2 debuff? Can I send my dodge tanks to enemies with Silver weapons to weaken their damage output and have other characters finish them up?

I think so, but I'm not certain. Defense tanking is more reliable, anyway, especially in Guard Stance.

I haven't found myself really planning to keep fighting non-boss enemies for several rounds; it's just something that's happened a couple times when I've been able to hold them off but not kill them for some reason.

Edited July 26, 2015 by Othin