Character viability impressions (gameplay spoilers)

[Thor Odinson]

Alright, thanks! I'll probably give Charlotte a shot, then. I got Sully to work in 13, so I think my babying game is pretty solid as long as I like the character enough.

Yeah, I heard Camilla's pretty great.

[Eriotto]

Well usually children characters are good for pvp since they have higher caps and a wider skill pool. Since braves exist, the unrestricted meta probably is just a “first move” thing with Rescue staves. Copycat gives plenty of units to swarm with. Maybe niche vantage builds could result in stall wars too? Potentially lots of randomness with Lethality builds and such as well (or does Astra counter it, with Dual Guards?). tbh I don’t find FE the best competitive game (due to some intrinsic things about it), but to each his/her own, and still can be interesting to muse about.

I see, well we'll see when game will come out, i think i'll find someone on change if this won't work, both nishiki and flannel seems good, i like thier class or rather that type of class (more nishiki cause can't stand the werewolf animation) Also evetually marry flannel with someone with good str and promote Velour to one of berseker or those slow high defense knights.

As i said i'll have chance to test everything i wanted when game will come in english and i'm excited if i'll make even only sakura viable as offensive magic unit, but who knows maybe i'll change my mind. : P

[-Cynthia-]

Charlotte's hit rates also seem not great, especially if you keep Roundhouse on her. It can probably be worked around though.

Curious about Nohr!Asyura- is he worth giving up the Speedwing for or does Zero fill that niche well enough?

[Azz]

Charlotte's hit rates also seem not great, especially if you keep Roundhouse on her. It can probably be worked around though.

Curious about Nohr!Asyura- is he worth giving up the Speedwing for or does Zero fill that niche well enough?

Zero is just better cause availability.Unless, you take the DLC into account, there is no grinding in Nohr, so it would be hard to train a unit that is not the best who joins in Ch.16(I think)when you have a unit who can be just as good who is available much earlier.That's not to say Asyura is useless he has his uses, but Zero is just better.(Bias aside of coarse)

[XeKr]

Yeah, some of the bow users’ most useful chapters are before he joins so if you’ve used Zero already, he probably has better stats. And you also get Eponine. Still if not using Zero, then probably should use Asyura for the Pass/Kunaibreaker reasons. I think you get boots (+1 move) actually, if you refuse him? though I haven’t done it myself since recruit all and such.

I don’t know if I’d use a Speedwing on him, if that’s what you were talking about. Xander, Corrin (non-Spd asset), Camilla all may want it and they are much (much) more important. Maybe even Leo/Foleo if it gives them enough Speed to double/quad some key enemies. Enemies are pretty fast in general, since you fight a lot of Hoshido classes and then a good number of Heros/Berserkers late.

[Carter]

So how would Charlotte then be rated? Use? Maybe use? Don't use? My Charlotte works rather well, and because she has access to Tomebreaker, it's easy to shrug off magic attacks. Sure, tomes have an advantage over axes, but I've equipped Charlotte with a Reverse Club to deal with that problem.

She's also very fast, and I don't find her skill THAT bad. I just took out Roundhouse to help out, since she has naturally high critical rates. Also, she has an insane HP growth rate. As a Berserker, 95% growth for HP! That's insane, considering the low amount of HP my other units have!

[arvilino]

Charlotte's hit rates also seem not great, especially if you keep Roundhouse on her. It can probably be worked around though.

Curious about Nohr!Asyura- is he worth giving up the Speedwing for or does Zero fill that niche well enough?

Asyura is pretty usable even in Lunatic. I immediately made him a puppeteer for the extra Str and Def though because I had Zero already. A forged(+1 or +2) Bronze Kunai complements his personal skill and Snake Venom helps his offense a little, I'm unsure about the impact a Speedwing would have on him, I'm not sure it'd be worth it in the long run.

His growths meant he dropped off towards the end though. He's decent filler up to chapter 25 if you want to wait and recruit certain children at a higher level but need a unit for the meantime.

[XeKr]

So how would Charlotte then be rated? Use? Maybe use? Don't use? My Charlotte works rather well, and because she has access to Tomebreaker, it's easy to shrug off magic attacks. Sure, tomes have an advantage over axes, but I've equipped Charlotte with a Reverse Club to deal with that problem.

She's also very fast, and I don't find her skill THAT bad. I just took out Roundhouse to help out, since she has naturally high critical rates. Also, she has an insane HP growth rate. As a Berserker, 95% growth for HP! That's insane, considering the low amount of HP my other units have!

I think “don’t use (unless you like her)” is a decent assessment of her viability in Lunatic, for a few of the aforementioned reasons. Using her results in a harder midgame training her, and she doesn’t impact the lategame significantly. If everyone was rated “use” because yes they’re all usable, that doesn’t distinguish characters very well. Again, the point of the topic mainly being impressions is they are highly opinionated as to what would make lunatic easier for a newer player.

Still, I’ll put other impressions like yours for Charlotte in the op, so that readers get a few perspectives, perhaps different from the one I focus on detailing.

Edited August 22, 2015 by XeKr

[-Cynthia-]

Yeah, some of the bow users’ most useful chapters are before he joins so if you’ve used Zero already, he probably has better stats. And you also get Eponine. Still if not using Zero, then probably should use Asyura for the Pass/Kunaibreaker reasons. I think you get boots (+1 move) actually, if you refuse him? though I haven’t done it myself since recruit all and such.

I don’t know if I’d use a Speedwing on him, if that’s what you were talking about. Xander, Corrin (non-Spd asset), Camilla all may want it and they are much (much) more important. Maybe even Leo/Foleo if it gives them enough Speed to double/quad some key enemies. Enemies are pretty fast in general, since you fight a lot of Hoshido classes and then a good number of Heros/Berserkers late.

Apparently in Nohr you choose whether to recruit Asyura or not as a dialogue box(kinda like PoR Sothe). If you don't recruit him, you get a Speedwing- hunch is that the Speedwing might be more valuable even though his bases are pretty good.

[XeKr]

Right I thought that was the boots though, not a Speedwing?

[-Cynthia-]

A redditer who did a unit review said it's a wing, that's my only source though. https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/3f2pcf/nohr_unit_review/

[XeKr]

The Japanese wiki all say Boots afaict. Again I haven't verified myself.

http://hrs-game.main.jp/fe-if/data/chapter-01-11.html

http://kamigame.xsrv.jp/fireemblemif/?%B9%B6%CE%AC%A5%C1%A5%E3%A1%BC%A5%C8%B0%EC%CD%F7

http://www2.pegasusknight.com/wiki/fe14/index.php?%E3%83%9E%E3%83%83%E3%83%97%E6%94%BB%E7%95%A5%2F%E6%9A%97%E5%A4%9C%E7%8E%8B%E5%9B%BD%2016%E7%AB%A0%20%E7%99%BD%E5%A4%9C%E4%BE%B5%E7%95%A5

[avengerfive]

Have you ever tried using the restaurant? It seems like the dishes are like free tonics. And if they stack with regular tonics that could be really good.

[XeKr]

Played around with most of the My Castle stuff. For the restaurant the thing is you need to visit other castles to get different ingredients and the character that does the cooking, as well as who gets the boosts (until level 3), is random. So I don't think it's really something to rely on, though yes it gives some nice situational boosts.

Also they do stack with tonics.

Edited August 22, 2015 by XeKr

[Gwimpage]

I can confirm not choosing to recruit Asura results in a Speedwing rather than a pair of boots. The only set of boots you get in Nohr outside of the Link Bonus/Castle Visit awards is in Chapter 23 inside of a chest.

If you keep Saizou alive in Chapter 17 (which is a huge pain on Lunatic since he has a death wish) you also recieve another Speedwing in the span of 2 chapters. I can see people foregoing recruiting Asura simply because they could just load up Xander or another unit with speedwings and steamroll the midgame while having a very strong unit in the lategame.

Edited August 22, 2015 by Gwimpage

[Zerosabers]

How big is the jump in usable units from hard to lunatic? Is it as bad as Awakening where you go from ever character can be used easily to some units becoming totally useless?

[Gwimpage]

Invisible Kingdom Lunatic is horrible for characters without high bases for their joining chapter as enemy stats are inflated and some of your units stats aren't properly adjusted for the inflation. Yuugiri has really good bases for her joining chapter (Ch11) on lower difficulties, however her stats are comparable to the several promoted enemies scattered in the map. She's still a fantastic unit, but her start is a lot less crazy compared to what it was on HM. One of my favorite examples for how unbalanced IK Lunatic is Odin who joins in Ch.17 where about 50-70% of the enemies are promoted (every enemy next map is promoted)

Ch.17!Paladin stats: 41/23/1/16/16/10/21/17 32Atk 16AS

Base Odin : 24/8/12/12/10/12/7/10 18Atk 10AS

Odin deals 1 damage while getting 1HKO'ed and doubled.

Nohr Lunatic doesn't have a dumb inflation and pretty much everyone is usable to some extent.

[Dark Sage]

So IK Odin is Sophia level bad while Nohr Odin is just Lute/Ilyana level bad?

[Zerosabers]

Wait how is Lute bad?

Also, it sounds like IK isn't very good in gameplay or story.

[XeKr]

The reason I don’t consider Odin and friends as bad as Sophia and friends is you have attack stance/buffs/debuffs here, so it’s easy for them to kill stuff and get lots of exp. Sophia has like no hit, so she’s (imo) way more painful to train. Also, there’s skirmishes as an option, at least in IK, that seem to be much easier than the chapters you’re on (like unpromoted units there even in the 20s chapterwise). This seems to specifically designed for the underleveled units, as your other units pretty much just get 1 exp because of how things work.

I used IK!Odin (no skirmishes or grind) and it wasn’t that bad to train. Enemies aren’t very easily oneround so he can pick up kills with some favoritism, finishing off stuff. He’s not very good even when trained, obviously, but I’d say he’s more Ewan.

The only Hard mode I’ve played is Nohr Hard, and it was after I did most of Nohr Lunatic (a blind run). So it did feel a lot easier (relative to Lunatic, while still harder than I expected, weirdly), but I suspect some of that was because I got used to the mechanics and gimmicks. Hard doesn’t have any of the really broken stuff (negative chain, etc), but most of the difficulty in Lunatic is tweaked skills/density/sometimes AI, so units are not really unusable statwise.

Edited August 22, 2015 by XeKr

[-Cynthia-]

Nohr!Odin might be able to work as a Dark Falcon. His offensive growths still aren't as good as Elise/Nyx/Leo, but he can probably double at base hitting Res and his durability and skill are a bit better than Nyx/Elise. Other than that, not sure what to do with him to make him worth using.

[lysander]

He doesn't have a niche as a Nohr Samurai/Weaponmaster or is he decidedly not worth the early seal? I'd think the +4 spd from samurai pair-up alone would be fairly valuable.

[Leif]

It's a pity he isn't good since he has the innate class skills to make him dangerous.

You could have a pretty good Vantage!Vengeance Sorcerer build.

1.) Flowing Strike (for more avoid during player phase). Bind works too, but I like the +30 evade so I can have him survive longer.

2.) Vantage

3.) Line of Death (more damage output)

4.) Vengeance

5.) Devilish Wind (of course aggressor is better, but I'm assuming the Dread Fighter scroll is not available in this build).

Nyx doesn't have the best skills available to her innately. She would have to marry Tsukuyomi for better skills...

Edited August 23, 2015 by Leif

[-Cynthia-]

He doesn't have a niche as a Nohr Samurai/Weaponmaster or is he decidedly not worth the early seal? I'd think the +4 spd from samurai pair-up alone would be fairly valuable.

Meh seems like there are other Pair Up options in Nohr that give +Spd- Felicia/Jakob, Arthur, Zero, Kaze, Luna, Lazward, Charlotte, Flannel- without needing a Seal.

Reclassed to Samurai, he'd have 9 base Str and 12 base Spd, E swords with a 45% Str growth and a 55% Speed growth total. His durability pretty much stays the same, a little more avoid but now he takes counters and stuff probably still 2HKOs him. Not terrible, but pretty underwhelming looks like.

[The Fir Coat]

Invisible Kingdom Lunatic is horrible for characters without high bases for their joining chapter as enemy stats are inflated and some of your units stats aren't properly adjusted for the inflation. Yuugiri has really good bases for her joining chapter (Ch11) on lower difficulties, however her stats are comparable to the several promoted enemies scattered in the map. She's still a fantastic unit, but her start is a lot less crazy compared to what it was on HM. One of my favorite examples for how unbalanced IK Lunatic is Odin who joins in Ch.17 where about 50-70% of the enemies are promoted (every enemy next map is promoted)

Ch.17!Paladin stats: 41/23/1/16/16/10/21/17 32Atk 16AS

Base Odin : 24/8/12/12/10/12/7/10 18Atk 10AS

Odin deals 1 damage while getting 1HKO'ed and doubled.

Nohr Lunatic doesn't have a dumb inflation and pretty much everyone is usable to some extent.

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.