Your ideas about Shapeshifters and Laguz in FE Heroes

[Tenzen12]

Just give laguz higher stats and dagger level claws/beaks. Weapon skills can also be similar to classic versions like anti-whatever or - 1 trigger. 

Edit: as for herons they would go by Ninian route and attack with beak like everyone else. 

Edited September 18, 2017 by Tenzen12

[Yexin]

59 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

As for some actual critique of the opening post. Because there's a lot to say.

 

Makes more sense to just give them colors, as discussed above. That's kind of the point of colors.

 

The lowest possible 5-star level 40 neutral stat is 13, which comes from a base stat of 3 and a growth rate of 25%.

 

Melee cavalry is in the 153-155 range. Melee infantry is in the 156-158 range.

 

Draconic Aura is a 3-cooldown skill that adds +30% Atk. Dragon Fang is a 4-cooldown skill that adds +50% Atk. A 5-cooldown skill that adds +100% Atk and paralyzes the opponent is absurdly broken.

Actually, paralysis as a status effect is broken to begin with when you're only allowed to field 4 units at a time.

 

Melee flying is in the 156-158 range.

 

This is a weapon with FIVE fully leveled skills (Death Blow 3, Darting Blow 3, Armored Blow 3, Warding Blow 3, Distant Counter) and the same base Atk as a Slaying or cavalry-effective weapon.

Legendary weapons have a maximum of either one second-tier skill or one single-tier skill plus effective damage. CYL weapons have two fully leveled skills.

 

Draconic Aura is a 3-cooldown skill that adds +30% Atk. A 3-cooldown skills that adds +50% Atk and inflicts Seal Spd 2 is also broken.

 

Ranged flying dancer is in the 139-141 range.

 

This is a legendary weapon with FOUR fully leveled skills (Death Blow 3, Darting Blow 3, Armored Blow 3, Warding Blow 3) and one partially leveled skill (Poison Strike 1.7).

yeah, i had quite a hard time balancing those characters, and i must say i miserably failed

if you're interested in why i made them so broken/unbalanced, that's my explanation

my first idea was to make them as similar as possible to the way they work in fe9/10, but for obvious reasons, they can't implement their peculiar gauge, so i tried to make them useful and useless alternatively, and i decided to make them basically player phase only, aside from naesala

my idea was to make them transform only if initiating combat, thus the absurd darting warding armored blow of death 3 to represent the stat bounses laguz gain while transformed (i just couldn't make them like in RD, where their stats double if transformed, they would've had an extremely low raw rating): in order to balance them, i decided to give them a really low raw rating: my idea was that the player would've wondered whether using them given their being broken, while having quite low raw rating

ranulf's 10 res is indeed stupid, he should have like -1hp/atk/spd/def and +4 res

reyson's stats are indeed a bit too high, due to his huge utility (flying unit, refresher), he should have less hp, atk and def, but since we don't have flying refreshers, i just didn't know how to balance him

naesala's great beak would be a legendary weapon with 14 mt in my mind, just like legendary bows, and yes, naesala would be the most broken thing we'd ever see, and vantage doesnt' help at all...

tear and rend are indeed broken as well, i just don't know what i was thinking about

but HEY, at least i'm not part of fe heroes' staff! cries in fanboy-ese

btw, you all can completely forget about that part of the original comment; i won't take it away, since doing it would make these last comments useless

EDIT: @Hilda they could make a Radiant Dawn banner with sothe wielding peshkatz, or even beastkiller, effective against laguz (i know beastkiller is effective only against beast tribe duh but they could make it effective against every laguz, because it being effective against one type of laguz out of 3 would be quite useless), along with 1/2 laguz

Edited September 18, 2017 by Yexin

[Tenzen12]

Laguz are basically manaketes that transform into beast rather than dragon. So there is no reason create different rules for them. 

As for claws and beaks, their Mt should be 11 at most. 

Edited September 18, 2017 by Tenzen12

[Interdimensional Observer]

So many many choices as to what they can do... Which lot should I throw myself with? 

Maybe Laguz should be whatever color they want on an individual basis, barring the Dragons (Red Red, White Blue, and Black Gree works for me here), to diversify them.

But then again, there is a strong argument make them colorless instead, since Colorless currently lacks Melee access. And since Laguz and shapeshifters in general are finite in number compared to the conventional weapon types, making all non-dragon shapeshifters Colorless wouldn't result in a pool of sameyness relative to everything else but Dagger users. As for the Laguz magic weaknesses- the Birds and Hawks would count as fliers, so there would be no issue with them. Sure Beasts would lose their Fire weakness, but is such a small sacrifice of accuracy to the base game really all that bad? And last time I checked, shouldn't Ninian be weak to Durandal, Armads, the BB and Mugalir? Heroes cuts corners on base game accuracy when it wants to already. Whats another snipped?

For the weapon type matter- just make one for all and call it Strike, give it things like Brave Strike, Slaying Strike etc.. The Laguz Royals can get personal Strikes called "Great Whatever-They're-Mauling-You-With".

 

2 hours ago, LuxSpes said:

Though I'd like to see Dheginsea as an armored breath user because the BST boost armored units have would help him emulate how broken his stats were in RD.

The Black Dragons do lose a point of Move on shifting- something no other Laguz class endures. Black Dragon also counts as flying movement however, which puts a twist on things. I do think Dheg would be cool with a higher BST though. Add Dragon Fang as an Ire replacement (or Blazing Light since he has his Light AoE) and do something about Mantle and he'd be set.

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

the Birds and Hawks would count as fliers, so there would be no issue with them.

Excalibur is the only non-bow weapon that has effective damage against fliers. None of the other green tomes deal bonus damage to fliers.

 

3 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And last time I checked, shouldn't Ninian be weak to Durandal, Armads, the BB and Mugalir?

Ninian's Dancer class in FE7 was not vulnerable to dragon-effective weapons.

 

5 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

The Black Dragons do lose a point of Move on shifting- something no other Laguz class endures. Black Dragon also counts as flying movement however, which puts a twist on things. I do think Dheg would be cool with a higher BST though. Add Dragon Fang as an Ire replacement (or Blazing Light since he has his Light AoE) and do something about Mantle and he'd be set.

No unit in Heroes walks around on the map transformed, so only the non-Rafiel birds would have a flying movement type.

 

I already tried my hand at Mantle:

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

Excalibur is the only non-bow weapon that has effective damage against fliers. None of the other green tomes deal bonus damage to fliers.

 

And yet I don't hear you demanding that all those human mounted fliers suddenly get a Green Tome weakness. If Excalibur could do it, I don't see why Rexcalibur can't or Wind can't. And Excalibur already interferes with the whole Color Triangle thing. If you wanted to be accurate to effective weaknesses, all Fliers should be Green in Heroes, but instead they chose to blend effective weakness with the Weapon Triangle. Even if it means TA Caeda can shrug off Excalibur.

 

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Ninian's Dancer class in FE7 was not vulnerable to dragon-effective weapons.

Yet she is an Elibean Manakete and in Heroes shifts into dragon form in combat.

 

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And yet I don't hear you demanding that all those human mounted fliers suddenly get a Green Tome weakness. If Excalibur could do it, I don't see why Rexcalibur can't or Wind can't. And Excalibur already interferes with the whole Color Triangle thing. If you wanted to be accurate to effective weaknesses, all Fliers should be Green in Heroes, but instead they chose to blend effective weakness with the Weapon Triangle. Even if it means TA Caeda can shrug off Excalibur.

Wind magic in general is only effective against flying units in Tellius and Awakening, so there exists precedent for wind magic that isn't effective against flying units.

On the other hand, Laguz only exist in Tellius and their magical weaknesses were a somewhat defining factor of their class (to the point where dragon knights in FE10 weren't even weak to bows because they counted as dragons and not flying).

 

As for the actual issue at hand if you actually read what I was responding to before you went off on your tirade:

27 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

As for the Laguz magic weaknesses- the Birds and Hawks would count as fliers, so there would be no issue with them.

Wind magic isn't effective against flying units in Heroes, meaning birds wouldn't take effective damage from wind magic, meaning there would be an issue because if I understand you correctly, you do want birds to take bonus damage.

[Othin]

Maybe non-Tellius elemental magic isn't effective against Laguz, and that's the version of the magic that gets used in Heroes.

Heroes has made far stranger changes. Hell, FE10 completely changed the way effective damage works against wyvern riders. If Fae takes normal damage from Armads and Mulagir, it's fine for some beast Laguz to be in red and take normal damage from fire magic.

[Interdimensional Observer]

55 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Wind magic in general is only effective against flying units in Tellius and Awakening, so there exists precedent for wind magic that isn't effective against flying units.

Thracia. Excalibur and Shaver in FE3 and 12. Aircalibur in FE6 (but not Fimbulvetr, but by FEH standards thats Blue, and Blizzard wasn't effective in Archanea either). Excalibur in FEs 7 & 8. Fates only has Excalibur for wind and it's effective (that junk Disrobing Gale lacks it but who cares?). So barring the glaring exception of FE4, and the minor exceptions of FE1 and Valentia, Wind has always been effective on fliers.

 

55 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Wind magic isn't effective against flying units in Heroes, meaning birds wouldn't take effective damage from wind magic, meaning there would be an issue because if I understand you correctly, you do want birds to take bonus damage.

They have bow weakness too. And as I stated in an earlier post, I'm okay if they cut a couple corners, which they are oft to do. Excalibur and Bow weakness is enough for me.

Edited September 19, 2017 by Interdimensional Observer

[LuxSpes]

2 hours ago, Tenzen12 said:

Just give laguz higher stats and dagger level claws/beaks. Weapon skills can also be similar to classic versions like anti-whatever or - 1 trigger. 

Edit: as for herons they would go by Ninian route and attack with beak like everyone else. 

1 hour ago, Tenzen12 said:

Laguz are basically manaketes that transform into beast rather than dragon. So there is no reason create different rules for them. 

As for claws and beaks, their Mt should be 11 at most. 

I find these two posts perplexing since in the second one you say Laguz shouldn't have different rules created for them, yet in the first one you want them to have the weakest weapons in the game by a large margin in exchange for a higher BST. I don't get why Laguz couldn't just follow the standard of melee weapon capping at 16 atk and having BSTs based on their movement type. And it would be very difficult to balance the amount of stats you give to them in exchange for their lesser weapon might. If it's 5 or lower, you'd probably wish all those points went into Atk to counteract how weak the weapons are. If it's more than 5 points, then Laguz would just end up stronger than standard unit for no good reasons. I think it's much simpler to have them follow the same rules as the other melee units.

48 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I already tried my hand at Mantle:

 

Your build of him at 5* is pretty much what I thought would be fitting, but Mantle and Dragonskin would probably need to be toned down a bit, especially Mantle. Three level 3 skills  built in one is a bit extreme considering the strongest weapons in the game at the moment combine two level 3 passives. That's the problem with Heroes, player units can't be absurd, which is a shame for absurd units like the Laguz kings.

Edited September 19, 2017 by LuxSpes

[Ice Dragon]

12 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Thracia. Excalibur and Shaver in FE3 and 12. Aircalibur in FE6 (but not Fimbulvetr, but by FEH standards thats Blue, and Blizzard wasn't effective in Archanea either). Excalibur in FEs 7 & 8. Fates only has Excalibur for wind and it's effective (that junk Disrobing Gale lacks it but who cares?). So barring the glaring exception of FE4, and the minor exceptions of FE1 and Valentia, Wind has always been effective on fliers.

Fimbulvetr is wind magic. We're talking about wind magic, not green magic, and Fimbulvetr is clearly wind magic. Rexcalibur, which is literally 3D Fimbulvetr, is both wind magic and effective against flying units.

Blizzard in Akaneia therefore also counts as wind magic due to the fact that Rexcalibur in Tellius and Blizzard in FE4 count.

Excalibur in FE7 and FE8 are not effective against flying units. In FE7, it deals no effective damage. In FE8, it deals effective damage to monsters, not flying units.

 

11 minutes ago, LuxSpes said:

Your build of him at 5* is pretty much what I thought would be fitting, but Mantle and Dragonskin would probably need to be toned down a bit, especially Mantle. Three level 3 skills  built in one is a bit extreme considering the strongest weapons in the game at the moment combine two level 3 passives. That's the problem with Heroes, player units can't be absurd, which is a shame for absurd units like the Laguz kings.

There's a reason those are 6-star exclusive skills. In a world where 6-star units exist (and are reserved for final bosses), you can expect other 6-stars to be on a similar level... and probably restricted to 1 per team.

And probably not allowed in certain challenge content.

That said, Mantle really could just be Cancel 3 + Renewal 3.

Also, now that Steady Breath exists, there's really no reason not to run Steady Breath instead of Dragonskin. Double special charge rate is huge when you have such a powerful special skill stuck behind a cooldown of 6, and the +4 Def on enemy phase is plenty good enough.

[Interdimensional Observer]

23 minutes ago, LuxSpes said:

That's the problem with Heroes, player units can't be absurd, which is a shame for absurd units like the Laguz kings.

Sounds nice, but it ma

 

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

Fimbulvetr is wind magic. We're talking about wind magic, not green magic, and Fimbulvetr is clearly wind magic. Rexcalibur, which is literally 3D Fimbulvetr, is both wind magic and effective against flying units.

Blizzard in Akaneia therefore also counts as wind magic due to the fact that Rexcalibur in Tellius and Blizzard in FE4 count.

Excalibur in FE7 and FE8 are not effective against flying units. In FE7, it deals no effective damage. In FE8, it deals effective damage to monsters, not flying units.

Fine, I made some real factual errors which I shouldn't have and concede defeat. Rather that than continue this argument. No hostility here.

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Fine, I made some real factual errors which I shouldn't have and concede defeat. Rather that than continue this argument. No hostility here.

No problem. I like to argue. It keeps my brain from molding.

[LuxSpes]

7 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

There's a reason those are 6-star exclusive skills. In a world where 6-star units exist (and are reserved for final bosses), you can expect other 6-stars to be on a similar level... and probably restricted to 1 per team.

And probably not allowed in certain challenge content.

That said, Mantle really could just be Cancel 3 + Renewal 3.

Also, now that Steady Breath exists, there's really no reason not to run Steady Breath instead of Dragonskin. Double special charge rate is huge when you have such a powerful special skill stuck behind a cooldown of 6, and the +4 Def on enemy phase is plenty good enough.

I just imagined him at 6* with Steady Breath and buffed by Fortify Dragons. Though a +Atk Brave units with color advantage, Death Blow and goad as well as Blade mage can kill him before he can counter.. Make Dragonskin gives Urvan's damage reduction on consecutive attacks and Mantle negates buffs from mages instead of giving Renewal and it'd probably become impossible of killing him without giving a chance to counter. Though Steady Breath and Cancel+Renewal Mantle is probably better if you have something to handle those counters since he'll be able to wall and kill everything else.

22 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Sounds nice, but it ma

It looks like part of your sentence is missing.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Just now, LuxSpes said:

It looks like part of your sentence is missing.

I was rushing that post I admit (hence my factual errors on magic effectiveness, I didn't have time to check completely).

All I was going to say is that it sounds nice to absurd player units, at the same time it'd be unfair to non-absurd units. If there is something Heroes shouldn't borrow from standard FEs, its total imbalance.

They could still make the Laguz Royals very awesome though, as broken as Heroes will permit. Just give them some nice exclusive weapons and skills and maybe CYL type boosted BSTs. If they have great starting skill kits, all the better it'll make them compared to units who have to inherit a bunch of things.

[LuxSpes]

1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I was rushing that post I admit (hence my factual errors on magic effectiveness, I didn't have time to check completely).

All I was going to say is that it sounds nice to absurd player units, at the same time it'd be unfair to non-absurd units. If there is something Heroes shouldn't borrow from standard FEs, its total imbalance.

They could still make the Laguz Royals very awesome though, as broken as Heroes will permit. Just give them some nice exclusive weapons and skills and maybe CYL type boosted BSTs. If they have great starting skill kits, all the better it'll make them compared to units who have to inherit a bunch of things.

That's why I said that player units can't be absurd, if the Laguz Kings had the exact stats they had in RD, they'd be the best units hands down, especially Dheginsea, who'd be sitting pretty with a 276 BST. 

And I agree the most plausible way of making them stand-out would be to give them the Brave Ike and Lyn treatment.

[Jayami]

4 hours ago, Hilda said:

Can we just fix Dagger users first before we throw in another class XD?

EDIT: oh and healers

I like the general direction of the Laguz envisioned here, just wanted to add an easy fix here for the other classes

1) dagger units: just don't use them

2) healers: use Lissa because she's cute, also give her rehabilitate

with that done, I think the Laguz could have a real opportunity to act as specialist units against meta. Perhaps beast units could operate off the model of the Taguel and include specific anti cavalry skills and abilities in compensation for overall lower stats as a means of introducing new units and classes while avoiding further power creep.

[Tenzen12]

7 hours ago, LuxSpes said:

I find these two posts perplexing since in the second one you say Laguz shouldn't have different rules created for them, yet in the first one you want them to have the weakest weapons in the game by a large margin in exchange for a higher BST. I don't get why Laguz couldn't just follow the standard of melee weapon capping at 16 atk and having BSTs based on their movement type. And it would be very difficult to balance the amount of stats you give to them in exchange for their lesser weapon might. If it's 5 or lower, you'd probably wish all those points went into Atk to counteract how weak the weapons are. If it's more than 5 points, then Laguz would just end up stronger than standard unit for no good reasons. I think it's much simpler to have them follow the same rules as the other melee units.

No? Sorry if I am wrong but isn't that exactly thing with dragons? 

[Asumi]

Quote

Just make them dragons with different transformation sprite, who can't inherit classic breaths. 

Job done. 

This. Tellius dragons stay dragons, to not overcomplicate stuff.  I can see Tibarn being Green, Naesala blue and the lion i never remeber the name Red, but then they could totally give ranulf a blue attribute and lethe a green one...i mean just balance the game..

Edited September 19, 2017 by Asumi

[LuxSpes]

5 hours ago, Tenzen12 said:

No? Sorry if I am wrong but isn't that exactly thing with dragons? 

Nope. Dragons obey the same rules as infantry melee units when it comes to BST and weapon Mt.

For the BST, Tiki!A and Corrin!F have BSTs of 157, which is in the 157-158 range of regular infantry units, Ninian has one of 149, which fits in the 149-150 norm for dancers and Nowi, Tiki!Y and Fae have BSTs of 163-162, which is appropriate for trainee infantry units.

And as for weapon Mt, we currently have 4 different final Breath weapons, Lightning Breath, Dark Breath, Light Breath and Flametongue. Lightning Breath has the lowest Mt at 11, Dark and Light Breath have 13 Mt and Flametongue has 15 Mt, which is the standard for Silver melee weapons. They could probably go up to 16 Mt, but we don't have a Legendary Breath weapon yet.

[Tenzen12]

My bad then. 

[Ice Dragon]

50 minutes ago, LuxSpes said:

They could probably go up to 16 Mt, but we don't have a Legendary Breath weapon yet.

Still waiting for green Book 2 Divine Dragon Tiki with legendary-tier Mist Breath...

[Jingle Jangle]

11 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Still waiting for green Book 2 Divine Dragon Tiki with legendary-tier Mist Breath...

I'm waiting for trainee dragon, high bst Kurthnaga with Black Breath as an exclusive Breath.