Character viability impressions (gameplay spoilers)

[GoXDS]

It's almost as if IK is a shameless cashgrab that they didn't even bother to balance. You get to play the "best version" after paying for the game again and then you get lazy copypasta gameplay for your troubles.

The worst part is, unlike the plot or the maps, changing a character's bases would literally just involve changing a few numbers. You can say "but they would need to test it and that would add more time", but they clearly didn't test the IK that they released.

even better, they changed a few char's bases. just a few

[Wayward Alchemist]

What about the children? Are they usable with the Child Seal or better off left alone because of their bases?

[Azz]

What about the children? Are they usable with the Child Seal or better off left alone because of their bases?

If a child has a Child Seal, use it.There is really no point not to.

[CocoaGalaxy]

I don't think there's any real problem with the children, uh....though it may depend on the parents as well

The children often seem to have similar stats to the parents, I think, so as long as the parents are doing well the children should be fine as well

..In fact, the children might actually end up higher Levelled (because in all honesty not everyone, like, hits 20/18 by Endgame)

The Child Seal also boosts weapon rank, but..I dunno as much about that.

(Or maybe it's just the weapon rank going up after promotion? I'm not sure..)

Edited August 24, 2015 by CocoaGalaxy

[-Cynthia-]

It does seem like the general consensus in terms of gameplay (map quality, character balance etc.) seems to be Nohr>Hoshido>IK overall, with more casual players preferring Hoshido most likely.

[lysander]

even better, they changed a few char's bases. just a few

I think IK is kind of funny in that it's still better than Awakening to the point that people would be happy with it if Nohr/Hoshido weren't better to an even greater extent. Awakening only touched the base stats based on difficulty in cases where it'd literally be impossible to recruit a character otherwise. Did nothing for usability. Sounds like IK skirmishes are also not "1 exp against super units" affairs either, allowing you to level a unit to whatever base stats you think they should have had if you really wanted--to do that for Awakening lunatic you really needed DLC.

[XeKr]

If Corrin isn’t +Spd, Odin is the one of few fast swordman using Braves and such in Nohr. Attacking some axe enemies can be scary, but triangle, class avoid, and flowing strike works. He also has fairly good magic for the Levin Sword, which has better mt than most tomes, so can attack Def or Res as needed. E rank tho. :\

He really should have his invisible history stats, at least. >_>

It's almost as if IK is a shameless cashgrab that they didn't even bother to balance. You get to play the "best version" after paying for the game again and then you get lazy copypasta gameplay for your troubles.

The worst part is, unlike the plot or the maps, changing a character's bases would literally just involve changing a few numbers. You can say "but they would need to test it and that would add more time", but they clearly didn't test the IK that they released.

IK plays different enough from the others, though I suspect they focused on developing and especially marketing map gimmicks in IK to kinda handwave the design elsewhere. A bit too transparent imo, but maybe that’s just some cynicism.

I don’t really understand the unit balance complaint though. There’s quite a few weird decisions like Hana’s nerfed Str, Hinoka’s nerfed Hp, Yuugiri’s very slight buffs, Silas’ bulk vs his Spd, but there are equally mysterious cases of “what is IS thinking?” in past games. In a series where we’ve had Arden, Hannibal, Sophia, Karla, Ewan, Rolf, Meg, Fiona, etcetcetc, it’d be unfair to characterize every FE game as a cashgrab because of questionable balance issues. I mean, FE12 was clearly deliberately and cleverly designed in many ways yet a huge majority of the cast can be summarized as essentially extraneous “free silvers” (sure they could statbooster up and forged effective damage stuff but it’s not really a comparison vs the good characters.).

Invisible Kingdom serves an obvious purpose, ostensibly because some significant portion of fans would find it unsatisfying and unfun that you have to lose so many characters and can’t team up otherwise.

The “cashgrab” accusation is thrown around pretty trivially, for almost anything that is paid for in every industry (especially entertainment ones). Here the reason it’s paid dlc is likely just a business/economic one. In the present vg market they usually can get away with it; more revenue is better than slightly worse pr (only “bad” insofar as it hurts revenue). I won’t comment on the principle of the matter.

they definitely trolled us on the deployment slots though.

What about the children? Are they usable with the Child Seal or better off left alone because of their bases?

The children scale in level and weapon rank depending on what chapter the main story is at, so they can be useful whenever you want to pick them up. The other advantage is they can get skills from classes that would be otherwise awkward to grind levels through, or sometimes ones they just don’t have access to (from parents’ secondary classes).

It seems that their bases are affected very marginally by the parents’ bases, but their growths are affected significantly by the variable parent’s growths. So as long as there isn’t too much clashing there (low def parent for a frontliner child), they’re usually worth adding to the team in the maingame.

I think IK is kind of funny in that it's still better than Awakening to the point that people would be happy with it if Nohr/Hoshido weren't better to an even greater extent. Awakening only touched the base stats based on difficulty in cases where it'd literally be impossible to recruit a character otherwise. Did nothing for usability. Sounds like IK skirmishes are also not "1 exp against super units" affairs either, allowing you to level a unit to whatever base stats you think they should have had if you really wanted--to do that for Awakening lunatic you really needed DLC.

I thought FE13 was fairly homogenous about the usability of its characters (except Veteran because lol). Basically in Lunatic everyone unpromoted is a growth unit that needs some babying but then steamrolls once they get enough durability (Veteran people are much faster to that point). Everyone prepromoted is good at base and filler. Tiki is a lategame crutch if needed.

The thing with IK is you blatantly get characters like Xander and characters like Odin in the same chapter, which is awkward.

[avengerfive]

What do you think of these teams? Are they lunatic viable? (Classic/No grind/No deaths. Also, I don't really care about turn count.)

Nohr:

Main Team: Corrin, Kaze, Silas, Elise, Effie, Camilla, Charlotte, Leo, Zander, Maybe Children?

Utility/Staffbot: Azura, Felicia, Jacob

Hoshido:

Main Team: Corrin, Kaze, Sakura, Hana, Hinoka, Oboro, Takumi, Ryoma, Children?

Utility/Staffbot: Azura, Subaki, Felicia, Jacob, Yuugiri

Obviously there are some characters that might not be usable; Charlotte, Hana, maybe Kaze, Silas. I could drop them/swap the for someone else.

[CocoaGalaxy]

Everyone is more or less always viable with babying (you don't necessarily need to grind, it just makes them less viable)

Paralogue exp also "may or may not" fall under your definition of grinding, since the paralogues give "substantial" amounts of exp

Edited August 25, 2015 by CocoaGalaxy

[lysander]

Yeah, I just imagine they did it with "you can use the skirmishes" in mind if those battles are still around Odin/Zero/Lazward/Pieri's levels at the time. On the one hand, that makes most of those characters hard to use if you're strictly doing a no-skirmish run and likely not worth even trying. But on the other, if you are using skirmishes or at least wouldn't be opposed to using them to catch up otherwise nothing characters, it gives you the opportunity to let them grow in whichever class you wanted for them rather than them getting bases to suit a specific one. If I had to guess that was their design impetus there given those are actually popular characters they'd have otherwise been incentivized to pre-promo or at least set at a higher level with higher bases. 3/4 also happen to be characters with both magic and physical class options so it makes even more sense in that regard. Hoshido mostly dodged this issue by giving you characters earlier.

I'd classify that level of design decision a bit differently from some of their past "why did you do that" stuff. And I'd also, more generally speaking, weigh late-game base stat mistakes less heavily than early game "how did anybody approve of this" because the former come up after you've, hopefully, been able to have real choice in forming your party whereas the latter limits your initial choices fairly heavily. Like Awakening was definitely better than part 1 RD on maniac due to being more homogeneous and thus giving you more choice, but was still heavily limited compared to the GBA games. Ricken remains a mystery to me.

The main weakness of having "you can do extra battles to gain exp" is less than tight design overall. I think PoR and RD having bexp was the better method, overall, since they largely accounted for and balanced it properly based on difficulty at least compared to FE8, FE:A or FE:F.

Edited August 25, 2015 by lysander

[XeKr]

What do you think of these teams? Are they lunatic viable? (Classic/No grind/No deaths. Also, I don't really care about turn count.)

Nohr:

Main Team: Corrin, Kaze, Silas, Elise, Effie, Camilla, Charlotte, Leo, Zander, Maybe Children?

Utility/Staffbot: Azura, Felicia, Jacob

Hoshido:

Main Team: Corrin, Kaze, Sakura, Hana, Hinoka, Oboro, Takumi, Ryoma, Children?

Utility/Staffbot: Azura, Subaki, Felicia, Jacob, Yuugiri

Obviously there are some characters that might not be usable; Charlotte, Hana, maybe Kaze, Silas. I could drop them/swap the for someone else.

I would recommend either Zero or Bowman!Mozume (or both) as it’s very useful to oneshot fliers that swarm you in the midgame. Having Pass also simplifies Nohr’s endgame significantly, though you could always buy it too.

Other than that, siblings + who you like is typically fine.

Yeah, I just imagine they did it with "you can use the skirmishes" in mind if those battles are still around Odin/Zero/Lazward/Pieri's levels at the time. On the one hand, that makes most of those characters hard to use if you're strictly doing a no-skirmish run and likely not worth even trying. But on the other, if you are using skirmishes or at least wouldn't be opposed to using them to catch up otherwise nothing characters, it gives you the opportunity to let them grow in whichever class you wanted for them rather than them getting bases to suit a specific one. If I had to guess that was their design impetus there given those are actually popular characters they'd have otherwise been incentivized to pre-promo or at least set at a higher level with higher bases. 3/4 also happen to be characters with both magic and physical class options so it makes even more sense in that regard. Hoshido mostly dodged this issue by giving you characters earlier.

I'd classify that level of design decision a bit differently from some of their past "why did you do that" stuff. And I'd also, more generally speaking, weigh late-game base stat mistakes less heavily than early game "how did anybody approve of this" because the former come up after you've, hopefully, been able to have real choice in forming your party whereas the latter limits your initial choices fairly heavily. Like Awakening was definitely better than part 1 RD on maniac due to being more homogeneous and thus giving you more choice, but was still heavily limited compared to the GBA games. Ricken remains a mystery to me.

The main weakness of having "you can do extra battles to gain exp" is less than tight design overall. I think PoR and RD having bexp was the better method, overall, since they largely accounted for and balanced it properly based on difficulty at least compared to FE8, FE:A or FE:F.

I largely agree, though bexp can be exploited by funneling it all into 1 unit (Marcia/Jill/Haar). FE9 Maniac was kinda good about this admittedly, but more because siege/status hinders lowmanning to a large extent. And it did have a ridiculous amount of combat exp if one stayed to rout everything.

It’s generally been easy in FE history to turtle and safely farm exp from initial enemies, reinforcements (most prominently on defend maps with very high density that could be otherwise trivialized), bosses, arenas, etc. It’s a tricky issue, without imposing turn limits, which FE14 does do occasionally, both hard and soft. Some people (vocal complainers) also tend to dislike very tight design, see early FE13 lunatic(+).

A related note: Nohr does give the 0 exp skill to infinite reinforcements on a few chapters. And the exp dlc seems kinda annoying to actually train with. <_<

[Wayward Alchemist]

How is Zero x Mozume for a mutually benificial marriage? Bowfaire and Perscient Victory for Zero and Pass, Lucky 7, and Kunaibreaker for Mozume. Keep in mind Eponine is not figured into this equation, she doesn't appeal to me much unlike her parents.

[Azz]

How is Zero x Mozume for a mutually benificial marriage? Bowfaire and Perscient Victory for Zero and Pass, Lucky 7, and Kunaibreaker for Mozume. Keep in mind Eponine is not figured into this equation, she doesn't appeal to me much unlike her parents.

Eh.If we are not taking children into account then I guess it is fine but other then that, Mozume is better else where and Zero is better with others.

[Tooru]

If Corrin isn’t +Spd, Odin is the one of few fast swordman using Braves and such in Nohr. Attacking some axe enemies can be scary, but triangle, class avoid, and flowing strike works. He also has fairly good magic for the Levin Sword, which has better mt than most tomes, so can attack Def or Res as needed. E rank tho. :\

If I want a Brave Sword user in Nohr, I will choose Silas(Mercenary).

[XeKr]

How is Zero x Mozume for a mutually benificial marriage? Bowfaire and Perscient Victory for Zero and Pass, Lucky 7, and Kunaibreaker for Mozume. Keep in mind Eponine is not figured into this equation, she doesn't appeal to me much unlike her parents.

For funsies I like either ZeroxMozume for those reasons (though also for Aptitude!Eponine) or JakobxMozume for Tomebreaker!Aptitude!Deere (reclass to pally or something. Meh weapon ranks without a scroll, but high stats and magic dodgy).

I'm unsure by what “objective” standard other pairings are better, considering Nohr isn’t the best postgame/pvp environment.

If I want a Brave Sword user in Nohr, I will choose Silas(Mercenary).

So would I, or use Luna/Lazwald/swordchild, but Odin still has pretty high speed (12 at level 5, 55 growth, trueblade has 3 over Brave Hero) and better magic. Some people might want to use him as something other than a worse Leo (well I suppose he has slightly higher skl/bulk), despite how much work it takes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited August 26, 2015 by XeKr

[Dark Sage]

Do you often deploy units as pair up fodder?

If so, would you say the best use for units like Charlotte, Luna or Harold is to pair up with Kamui, Camilla, Belka, or Xander so they can rape face?

Edited August 27, 2015 by Dark Sage

[GoXDS]

Do you often deploy units as pair up fodder?

If so, would you say the best use for units like Charlotte, Luna or Harold is to pair up with Kamui, Camilla, Belka, or Xander so they can rape face?

omegaevolution did it in his Nohr run (Lol Harold forever in Effie's shadow). it's probably fine to do it for one or two characters, especially a front runner that you expect to take many attacks (you'd Guard Stance to prevent Attack Stance anyways). doing it for multiple or half your units is questionable but debatable

especially if you're using Guard Stance a lot, you don't need both the Lead and the Support units to be able to attack since only one of them can attack at a time anyways. the only times where you'd really want to swap and attack is for triangle (somewhat limited)/effectiveness (also limited depending) or Flight

Edited August 27, 2015 by GoXDS

[Ryo]

Who is the most useful non-Leo magic user in each route (not counting children and reclassing)? I've looked up their bases and growths but I'm not sure what exactly do I need...

[CocoaGalaxy]

It depends on a whole number of factors, and what not

Sakura: Requires promotion (and even then requires Exorcist).

Orochi: Starts decent, but her fail speed will be the death of her, so to speak. At least she hits hard

Tsukuyomi: Balanced stats

Asama: He's more cut out to be a physical unit if you ask me -_-

He is still "usable" as an Exorcist but....really, as an Exorcist he has more strength than magic

Others: Either they're Basara (which even then technically only Oboro has access to from the start), Shura (again, only Rinkah), or they're child characters

Out of these three, I personally would prefer Sakura, but she doesn't actually use magic unless and/or until you promote her.

Statistically I'm inclined to say Tsukuyomi is the best

Nohr/Invisible Kingdom? Dark Blood Kamui>The rest, "srs"

If that's not counted, in Nohr, it depends if you want glass cannon one rounders (Elise/Nyx, although Elise can only use tomes when she promotes to strategist), or some semblance of defence (Odin/Owain)

I'm not entirely sure of the ATK values, but 20/20 Elise is 1hko'd by a 40 ATK, Nyx by a 42 ATK, so.....

20/20 Stats

Dark Blood Kamui (+Spd/-Luck): 42 HP, 21 Mag, 36 Spd, 23 Def (+2/4 Def from Yato)

Dark Blood Kamui (+Mag/-Luck): 42 HP, 31 Mag, 31 Spd, 23 Def (+2/4 Def from Yato)

Exorcist Sakura: 33 HP, 34 Mag, 29 Spd, 17 Def

Exorcist Orochi: 32 HP, 36 Mag, 17 Spd, 15 Def

Basara Orochi: 40 HP, 33 Mag, 16 Spd, 20 Def

Exorcist Tsukuyomi: 36 HP, 28 Mag, 29 Spd, 21 Def

Basara Tsukuyomi: 43 HP, 24 Mag, 29 Spd, 26 Def

Strategist Elise: 30 HP, 36 Mag, 32 Spd, 10 Def

Sorcerer Odin/Owain: 40 HP, 28 Mag, 25 Spd, 23 Def

Dark Knight Odin/Owain: 45 HP, 23 Mag, 23 Spd, 28 Def

Sorcerer Nyx: 30 HP, 36 Mag, 31 Spd, 12 Def

Dark Knight Nyx: 34 HP, 31 Mag, 29 Spd, 16 Def

I'm not counting Izana because...well ......

(It's totally not like I don't know anything about Izana or anything)

Statistically speaking, Basara>Exorcist simply because Basara has superior HP/DEF at the expense of...not much else.

Magic using classes got the short end of the growths stick anyway, and Basara has pretty good (that is, balanced) growths anyway

Exorcist does gain the staff usage which..is probably more useful than Lances/Shinrai Naginata usage from Basara

Edited August 27, 2015 by CocoaGalaxy

[Ryo]

Thanks, I guess I'll go with +Mag Kamui, Sakura, Elise and Nyx on the routes they're available in. Though Nyx comes pretty underleveled in IK and would require some babying to catch up, so I'll probably not deploy her there.

[CocoaGalaxy]

Well they did kind of crap all over magic in this game, it seems like they tend to flip flop between "one magic to rule them all" and ....things like this, so to speak

I suppose if you rush (the fact is that healers can technically spam heals to level up, maybe not so much on Nohr) you can promote them really early like...I dunno...Chapter 14-16 maybe?

The main "balancing" feature of magic is that enemies have poor resistance usually.

The main problem with this is that the melee weapons have stronger might, and generally I think you'll have more strength than magic.

That being said, none of the magic characters are really that bad (Odin/Owain only gets the "shaft" because his stats are overly balanced)

Kamui is really the only one who is fast and "durable". And strong actually, you don't need "that" much magic to smack people hard

Leo is basically a stronger Odin/Owain, but he's actually not fast enough (He'll be fast enough to double slow enemies anyway, which is usually all that matters..somewhat)

Sakura and Elise "can" "comfortably" 1rko enemies, and since you can just outrange them (it's rare that all the enemies have 1-2 ranged weapons anyway) Sakura can take a hit, but Elise..not so much. Same applies to Nyx, I'm not sure if Nosferatu can help her that much since you kind of need defense, and it kills the point of her high speed.

Edited August 27, 2015 by CocoaGalaxy

[Wayward Alchemist]

See, the problem with Ricken 2.0 (Who's name I'm not even going to attempt spelling) is that he has bases comparable to Mozume's and has abhorrent Hit due to his bad Skl when he joins. At least Orochi starts decent enough, has the Capture gimick, and can provide an amazing Attack Stance.

Edited August 27, 2015 by JothTheConqueror

[Luninareph]

If you can drag Orochi to the endgame, she can then dip into Great Merchant for Extravagance and instantly become far more powerful and survivable than she was before. She also does great things with Breaking Sky, and also any spell that thinks "Double attack threshold -3" or "Can't double attack" is a penalty (i.e. the Old Book or Izana's Ancient-Spell).

[GoXDS]

If you can drag Orochi to the endgame, she can then dip into Great Merchant for Extravagance and instantly become far more powerful and survivable than she was before. She also does great things with Breaking Sky, and also any spell that thinks "Double attack threshold -3" or "Can't double attack" is a penalty (i.e. the Old Book or Izana's Ancient-Spell).

eh, Breaking Sky is much less useful on a Magic user since enemies are mostly Physical and thus low Mag stat and thus low Breaking Sky boost. Orochi's Spd is still a huge liability gotta deal with that somehow

[-Cynthia-]

omegaevolution did it in his Nohr run (Lol Harold forever in Effie's shadow). it's probably fine to do it for one or two characters, especially a front runner that you expect to take many attacks (you'd Guard Stance to prevent Attack Stance anyways). doing it for multiple or half your units is questionable but debatable

especially if you're using Guard Stance a lot, you don't need both the Lead and the Support units to be able to attack since only one of them can attack at a time anyways. the only times where you'd really want to swap and attack is for triangle (somewhat limited)/effectiveness (also limited depending) or Flight

Theoretically speaking, pairing up still seems better than not doing so most of the time. The offensive boosts can be better than a half strength attack, particularly if they enable doubling and obviously it's better for defense. Guard Stance is also better against pairs of enemies(negates attack stance, attack stance doesn't work on paired up enemies). It does 'cost' a deployment slot, which is a resource of a sort I suppose.