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FEH balancing issues?


Prince Endriu
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Much have been discussed lately on powercreep with the general consens that only Blyn and Rein are powercreep units. I think I can agree with this.

However, when I think about it, the problem of heroes is much deeper than that. The goal of any feh battle is to OHKO and make the battle as short as possible. In order to do that top tier units are quite handy, team composition of for example horses, blade tomes etc. come into play. The whole strategy revolves around that. True there are possibilties to won som ghb with some deeper strategy but in arena its basically OHKO.

When the game was introduced I thought having a healer around would be a good thing - healers, as we probably all agree are the worst class at all, both for battling and SI and I am not talking about an op +10 Wrys. Why were they introduced to the game when their role is so minimal, and there is so many of them?

Imo the whole OHKO rules the game and the meta revolves around it. Its not like its much of an option but rather kill or be killed. 

I also think map limitations play in favor of it. Battles are meant to be rather fast and short and bigger maps arent an option. So there isnt much room for a strategy other than OHKO. Larger teams than 4 would rather harm the flow of battle due to map size limitations.

In the end I think the game as such wasnt really thought out well (not saying it wasnt a bad decision from a financial standpoint). Now we only have to deal with powercreep and who can kill who in one shot and who can bait and counter and who will reposition him.That pretty much limits any other strategy beyond.

What do you guys think? 

 

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It could be better, but the game isn't broken by the unbalanced aspects. 

 

I see it like a cycle. A strong character is introduced which outclasses previous units, thus making them pointless (unless if you're willing to do some major investing). Then another character of a similar vein is introduced which overthrows the previous. The cycle continues. Older characters don't always become completely outclassed, just not as preferred.

Here's an example:

  • Every Archer But Takumi During Base Game - Takumi was obviously the best, but some of the archers still found some usage. But honestly, if you had a Takumi, you wouldn't need anything else. 
  • Takumi and Klein (To an Extent) - Both of these units were better than the other archers by a considerable margin at this point. Klein had an amazing kit out of the box and Takumi had Close Counter. But then...
  • Bride Cordelia - Many say that Bride Lyn redefined the meta. That is only true to an extent. By herself, she was pretty good. However, what actually redefined the meta was Skill Inheritance (which started making a difference with units like B!Cordelia). By taking Life and Death plus Brave Bow+ and slapping it onto B!Cordelia, you created a monster. With that, Takumi fell into the void of irrelevance... 
  • Brave Lyn - Then Brave Lyn came out of nowhere. Unlike B!Cordelia who relied on Skill Inheritance to make a difference, B!Lyn was amazing with her standard kit. Somehow, a unit in their base form outclassed a unit that became amazing through using aspects of other units. It didn't help that everybody had a chance at getting Brave Lyn. 

In theory, it is only a matter of time until another unit outclasses B!Lyn (if that is possible). While even units from the base game are "usable", they require much more attention than other units. Plus, since we have top-tier units that require specific  units/builds to defeat, an endless cycle is created. A unit is introduced. The meta forms around said unit/another unit outclasses it. 

IS has been doing a decent job at not completely destroying the balance (since any unit is theoretically able to defeat any unit), but it will get to a point where it must be addressed. 

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B!Cordelia never felt meta-defining to me. She just had a few stat points over Takumi (which make her better, but not grossly so) and the same skillsets which rendered Takumi irrelevant (-raven mages and OHKO first-strike magic like Reinhardt and -blade tomes) countered her too. Brave Lyn is notably better because of an extra point of range, cavalry buffs, and a pair of extra spoiling moves in Mulagir (should you keep that over Brave/Firesweep) and Sacae's Blessing.

 

44 minutes ago, Prince Endriu said:

When the game was introduced I thought having a healer around would be a good thing - healers, as we probably all agree are the worst class at all

I definitely don't; dagger-users are worse. While healers have a unique niche in Chain Challenges and Tempest Trials, daggers are basically junk; they are weaker bows and bows already aren't great because being colourless is bad. OHKO meta makes debuffing a single target really bad (debuffing defences is only useful when it's difficult to 2HKO a target). To make matters worse there are things like Clarisse's Bow and Dark Breath which are better at debuffing!

44 minutes ago, Prince Endriu said:

However, when I think about it, the problem of heroes is much deeper than that. The goal of any feh battle is to OHKO and make the battle as short as possible. In order to do that top tier units are quite handy, team composition of for example horses, blade tomes etc. come into play. The whole strategy revolves around that. True there are possibilties to won som ghb with some deeper strategy but in arena its basically OHKO.

I think that's the core problem, yes. I like that IntSys has taken some steps in making units like Sigurd and B!Ike who are more difficult to one-round. They also finally started making skills which help enemy-phase survival like Steady Stance, Close Def, and Distant Def, which were absent from the base game. Distant Def even has a seal!

 

44 minutes ago, Prince Endriu said:

In the end I think the game as such wasnt really thought out well

On the other hand I disagree with this; I think the game was thought out much better than I expected. It's obvious IntSys does care about the balance, newer units and skills released reflect this: -blade tomes and Hone Cavalry/Fliers/etc. are too good so we get units/skills which ignore the target's buffs, and more ways to inflict Panic. Mages(/Reinhardt) are too good so we get skills which specifically go after them on Sigurd and B!Lyn, and they can't inherit Cancel Affinity to overpower their hard counters.

Edited by Dark Holy Elf
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I think you've pretty much covered all of the imbalances, so I'm going to add my thoughts on something related: why this happened.

I'm guessing that FEH was balanced around similar assumptions to the main series: that the player will be outnumbered a fair amount of the time (and thus, player units need to be able to ORKO); and that never having weapon triangle disadvantage is an advantage in itself. The trouble is, they didn't really think through how the mechanical changes of FEH would shift those assumptions.

For starters, let's look at that first one. The change is obvious: you're almost never significantly outnumbered in FEH. This instantly makes healing less valuable - why waste a unit's turn restoring an ally's health when you can have that unit KO another enemy, possibly ending the map? This is half of the reason why healers suck in pretty much all of FEH that isn't defensive maps or Tempest Trials - you know, those game modes where you actually are outnumbered. (The other half of it is that non-staff-users are better healers than staff-users, but that's just standard IntSys sucking at balancing.)

Secondly, the weapon triangle. In other FE games, the weapon triangle mostly affects Hit/Avo, not damage done. Since those were excised from Heroes, and in combination with the ORKO metagame, never having weapon triangle advantage is a massive reduction to a unit's capability. There's a reason that Brave Bow builds are basically the only viable colourless builds - they do enough damage over two hits to actually kill things occasionally. Daggers have no brave option, and are thus unable to kill things reliably, making them all but useless. The dagger thing also ties back into the first point: being outnumbered lengthens battles, meaning you can afford to sacrifice a unit's turn to use a dagger to debuff an enemy to let another unit get the kill.

Now I'm going to talk about something they could have done to change this stuff. To do that, I'm going to examine the one game in the series that isn't designed to be an ORKO-fest: Gaiden/Echoes.

In Gaiden, unit stats are balanced so that you usually have to choose between doubling and doing any reasonable damage. Likewise, most units can usually survive a hit or two from most enemies, provided they're in the ballpark of the same level. There are some units that violate this (Alm, Delthea, Seraphim mages vs. Terrors), but, by and large, Gaiden requires you to think about positioning so that you can mob a threatening enemy to death while still being able to put enough units in the way to prevent your own units being mobbed.

Part of how this is achieved is the weapon system. First, weapons have weight, reducing units' attack speed if they choose to increase their Atk. Secondly, weapon Might caps out around 8 (apart from a couple of ridiculous legendary weapons which are very hard to get. Oh, and magic, which is pretty much the most powerful thing in the game because of it). This means that, if your unit's Atk is similar to the enemy's Def, you're still not doing much more than 8*2. In Heroes, the bare minimum Mt on any 5* weapon is already 10 (apart from daggers, but daggers are shit in FEH), and the weapon triangle system bumps that up significantly.

Basically, if FEH had taken some cues from Gaiden, the ORKO metagame might have become non-viable, which would in turn have increased the viability of dagger users. Staffs, not so much, given that non-staff users can be better healers, but eh.

...now to wait for someone smarter than me to come and rip my arguments to shreds.

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4 minutes ago, Seafarer said:

I think you've pretty much covered all of the imbalances, so I'm going to add my thoughts on something related: why this happened.

I'm guessing that FEH was balanced around similar assumptions to the main series: that the player will be outnumbered a fair amount of the time (and thus, player units need to be able to ORKO); and that never having weapon triangle disadvantage is an advantage in itself. The trouble is, they didn't really think through how the mechanical changes of FEH would shift those assumptions.

For starters, let's look at that first one. The change is obvious: you're almost never significantly outnumbered in FEH. This instantly makes healing less valuable - why waste a unit's turn restoring an ally's health when you can have that unit KO another enemy, possibly ending the map? This is half of the reason why healers suck in pretty much all of FEH that isn't defensive maps or Tempest Trials - you know, those game modes where you actually are outnumbered. (The other half of it is that non-staff-users are better healers than staff-users, but that's just standard IntSys sucking at balancing.)

Secondly, the weapon triangle. In other FE games, the weapon triangle mostly affects Hit/Avo, not damage done. Since those were excised from Heroes, and in combination with the ORKO metagame, never having weapon triangle advantage is a massive reduction to a unit's capability. There's a reason that Brave Bow builds are basically the only viable colourless builds - they do enough damage over two hits to actually kill things occasionally. Daggers have no brave option, and are thus unable to kill things reliably, making them all but useless. The dagger thing also ties back into the first point: being outnumbered lengthens battles, meaning you can afford to sacrifice a unit's turn to use a dagger to debuff an enemy to let another unit get the kill.

Now I'm going to talk about something they could have done to change this stuff. To do that, I'm going to examine the one game in the series that isn't designed to be an ORKO-fest: Gaiden/Echoes.

In Gaiden, unit stats are balanced so that you usually have to choose between doubling and doing any reasonable damage. Likewise, most units can usually survive a hit or two from most enemies, provided they're in the ballpark of the same level. There are some units that violate this (Alm, Delthea, Seraphim mages vs. Terrors), but, by and large, Gaiden requires you to think about positioning so that you can mob a threatening enemy to death while still being able to put enough units in the way to prevent your own units being mobbed.

Part of how this is achieved is the weapon system. First, weapons have weight, reducing units' attack speed if they choose to increase their Atk. Secondly, weapon Might caps out around 8 (apart from a couple of ridiculous legendary weapons which are very hard to get. Oh, and magic, which is pretty much the most powerful thing in the game because of it). This means that, if your unit's Atk is similar to the enemy's Def, you're still not doing much more than 8*2. In Heroes, the bare minimum Mt on any 5* weapon is already 10 (apart from daggers, but daggers are shit in FEH), and the weapon triangle system bumps that up significantly.

Basically, if FEH had taken some cues from Gaiden, the ORKO metagame might have become non-viable, which would in turn have increased the viability of dagger users. Staffs, not so much, given that non-staff users can be better healers, but eh.

...now to wait for someone smarter than me to come and rip my arguments to shreds.

Didnt really think about being outnumbered.

You are right, when it comes to ghb with reinforcements its pretty important to ORKO. The arvis battle had an option to kill all units before any reinforcements showed up but these battles are rather uncommon. Arena battles are the daily bread and sometimes you just can win a battle or at least not in a deathless fashion. Not saying that it bothers me that much but its kind of annoying that the stategy aspect revolves mainly around unit building in regard to a certain meta. Units that you may like may become less attractive with time.

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1 hour ago, Prince Endriu said:

I also think map limitations play in favor of it. Battles are meant to be rather fast and short and bigger maps arent an option. So there isnt much room for a strategy other than OHKO. Larger teams than 4 would rather harm the flow of battle due to map size limitations.

That's pretty much it, I think. FEH is a mobile game aimed at a more casual audience. It's not a game meant for long play sessions and the maps' size, ORKO meta, and stamina system pretty much reflect this, for better or worse. Even F2P no-SI strats for events such as GHBs often had to use Donnel as a damage source thanks to his native Brave Lance weapon.

Edited by Roflolxp54
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1 hour ago, Prince Endriu said:

When the game was introduced I thought having a healer around would be a good thing - healers, as we probably all agree are the worst class at all, both for battling and SI and I am not talking about an op +10 Wrys. Why were they introduced to the game when their role is so minimal, and there is so many of them?

Well, for starters, there are several Units who start out as Healers, and for the most part they've kept Units in their Base Classes, meaning Staff Units had to happen and also explaining why there are so many(every game had at least two Healers in case one died off). Also, I still run a Sakura on my Arena Team because there are times when you take an Enemy Unit out but can't get away from the followup and need just a TINY bit more HP, and Sakura's saved my bacon several times, especially after I gave her Wings of Mercy and Martyr, so Healers do have uses even in Arena.

Also,

52 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I definitely don't; dagger-users are worse. While healers have a unique niche in Chain Challenges and Tempest Trials, daggers are basically junk; they are weaker bows and bows already aren't great because being colourless is bad. OHKO meta makes debuffing a single target really bad (debuffing defences is only useful when it's difficult to 2HKO a target). To make matters worse there are things like Clarisse's Bow and Dark Breath which are better at debuffing!

My experience has been that Kagero's Poison Dagger beats out almost every other Gray Unit Weapon I've tried, though I haven't started leveling my NekoSakura yet, so Kitty Paddle may make me eat my own words, and I do like Dagger Olivia as a Unit. Other than those, though, I agree that I'll take a Staff Unit over a Dagger Unit any day.

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1 hour ago, Prince Endriu said:

In the end I think the game as such wasnt really thought out well (not saying it wasnt a bad decision from a financial standpoint).

I strongly disagree with this. If this game was not well thought out, it would not be fun or attractive to many non FE players which this game has gained.

ORKO mechanics solves 3 core issues that a lot of casual players have:

1) Time: killing instantly saves a lot of time. Killing things in 2 turns doubles the length of game play. Mobile game thrives on short bursts. People live busy lives.

2) Simplicity: ORKO is easy to comprehend.

3) Sense of empowerment: there is no kill like overkill. Using a single OP unit to delete everything is fun.

 

This greatly conflicts with hardcore FE players:

1) Time: they want to play as long as possible. Longer rounds = more investment = more enjoyment.

2) Complexity: they like to be challenged.

3) Sense of accomplishment: overcoming challenges is a great feeling.

 

Different gamers have different priorities. It is IMPOSSIBLE to please everyone. The fact that they catered balance to the more casual crowd is great planning which is why the game is successful. There is no such thing as a bad game that is commercially successful. The fact that you said agree with it finacially means that it is a well thought out game.

 

B!Ike helps against some ORKO but he still gets ORKO'ed by reds easily. Even though he can be free, most people will pick Lyn instead (the better killer). Sigurd can tank almost everything but is locked at 5* (your general F2P player won't have access to him). The same is true for Armour emblem (they require heavy investments).

The fact that all of the things that prevent ORKO are locked at 5* or high investment is a great decision since it will not affect the silent casual gamer that enjoys using their bow lyn/rein to clear everything but help the more invested people have options against them.

The balance of the game is fine for for the more casual crowd. Shifting the meta to satisfy the more invested crowd is something that is already happening and will continue to happen as IS finds ways to retain the players.

 

It is very difficult to create a game like Breath of the wild which attracts every type of gamer by containing elements for both spectrums. The game had over 300 people working on it and redefines an entire genre.

Edited by Clogon
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5 minutes ago, SoulWeaver said:

Also,

My experience has been that Kagero's Poison Dagger beats out almost every other Gray Unit Weapon I've tried, though I haven't started leveling my NekoSakura yet, so Kitty Paddle may make me eat my own words, and I do like Dagger Olivia as a Unit. Other than those, though, I agree that I'll take a Staff Unit over a Dagger Unit any day.

Paddle's nice, makes Felicia actually have a job. +Atk Felicia has 51 MT against mages before buffs and other skills, meaning anyone that avoids her double (Felicia has 37 speed) gets one shotted, and anyone who doesn't... gets two shotted. Just kind of a pity that 69 magical bulk is low enough that -blade tomers still OHKO her, which, uh, kind of means Reinhardt, for example, just tanks one hit and then OHKOs her back. (Rein has 65 physical bulk, which gives him plenty of hp to spare.)

Most people don't run -blade Leo or Rein, though, so paddle users would still be useful as a meta counter.

 

Honestly, the biggest problems with balance happens to be:

Horses are overpowered

Class buffs and overpowered

Tomes are overpowered

 

Horses because +1 move is worth far, far more than the measly BST loss, considering it barely affects their actual distributions. No point reducing a unit's BST by 10 if Reinhardt just picks spd as his dump stat.

Class buffs are +6/+6 compared to +4/+0, enough said.

Dire thunder has 9 MT, hits Res, and happens to be wielded by Reinhardt, who's a horse with class buff access.

-blade is +24 damage, enough said.

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I find it funny OHKO meta is apparently such an issue in FEH when in the main series any game that isnt OHKO meta is explicitly considered terrible. FE12 being the most simmilar to FEH in some regards being in my opinion the strongest game in the series

FE5 even had the same aspect as FEH where every unit comes with broken as hell kit that allows them to just murder everything on enemy phase, dropping Chapter 5 Brave Weapon or Guaranteed Critical on the player phase

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6 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

bows already aren't great because being colourless is bad

Being colorless is good for a nuke. You do not want to be cock blocked by the color triangle. Having nothing resist your attacks (outside of Raven mages) is much more important than dealing bonus damage to a fraction of units. Buffs and Specials are more than enough to guarantee kills. Being colorless gives you much more flexibility on offense.

Elise
Assault
Life and Death, Wrathful Staff
18/6/0/0
Player Phase 174:6:6
Player Phase [HP+5, Res-2] 175:4:7

Ursula
Blárblade
Life and Death
6/6/0/0
Player Phase 169:4:13

Elise with a hypothetical Staffblade outperforms Ursula. Modifying Elise's stats to match Ursula's only further improves Elise's ratios.

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2 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

I find it funny OHKO meta is apparently such an issue in FEH when in the main series any game that isnt OHKO meta is explicitly considered terrible. FE12 being the most simmilar to FEH in some regards being in my opinion the strongest game in the series

FE5 even had the same aspect as FEH where every unit comes with broken as hell kit that allows them to just murder everything on enemy phase, dropping Chapter 5 Brave Weapon or Guaranteed Critical on the player phase

The reason why players complain about it is because of "arena". In pure PVE, OHKO is the best. But people generally don't like being killed before doing anything.

 

6 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

Most people don't run -blade Leo or Rein, though, so paddle users would still be useful as a meta counter.

I am glad you are bringing up Blade Rein. With so many counters to Dire Thunder, I think it will gain popularity. Being able to OHKO a lot of units is great and with bow breaker, even though Bowlyn can negate buffs, she can still be killed with non buffed Rein.

Edited by Clogon
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Yeah Bow is actually a very strong class and the entire reason is because its Brave on 2 range. I always wondered why Takumi isnt S Tier when SI first released when his optimal set is stupidly strong but thats irrelevant now

 

Heck its not like Dagger was never good, Poison Dagger Kagero was a huge threat and all that was is a 5 MT Brave Bow that hits 1.5 times instead of twice

Edited by JSND Alter Dragon Boner
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13 hours ago, XRay said:

Being colorless is good for a nuke. You do not want to be cock blocked by the color triangle. Having nothing resist your attacks (outside of Raven mages) is much more important than dealing bonus damage to a fraction of units. Buffs and Specials are more than enough to guarantee kills. Being colorless gives you much more flexibility on offense.

But Raven mages do exist, so you do get cockblocked.

Additionally, FEH is a team game. If you have a red, a blue, and a green, you can claim the advantage against any enemy unit except colourless; if one of those three is a raven mage, you claim advantage over colourless as well. And since you, the player, control the matchups over the far less intelligent AI, you can ensure that it's almost always you who get the advantage, not your opponent. (This is also why Dance and movement skills like Reposition are so valuable; they let you control matchups.)

Reinhardt is the best cannon even thought he struggles with high-res greens. Reinhardt doesn't need to beat greens because your red will crush them for him.

10 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Yeah Bow is actually a very strong class and the entire reason is because its Brave on 2 range. I always wondered why Takumi isnt S Tier when SI first released when his optimal set is stupidly strong but thats irrelevant now

 

Heck its not like Dagger was never good, Poison Dagger Kagero was a huge threat and all that was is a 5 MT Brave Bow that hits 1.5 times instead of twice


Two-range brave is indeed good.

Poison Dagger is rather different from brave, since its 1.5 multiplier comes before defence, not after. So it's actually even more potent than you make it sound. The problem is that Poison Dagger is utter garbage when it doesn't hit a weakness, so if you come up against a team with no infantry, Kagero is trash. (Kittie Paddle is the same, though no-mage teams are probably rarer than no-infantry ones.)

Edited by Dark Holy Elf
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2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

But Raven mages do exist, so you do get cockblocked.

Additionally, FEH is a team game. If you have a red, a blue, and a green, you can claim the advantage against any enemy unit except colourless; if one of those three is a raven mage, you claim advantage over colourless as well. And since you, the player, control the matchups over the far less intelligent AI, you can ensure that it's almost always you who get the advantage, not your opponent. (This is also why Dance and movement skills like Reposition are so valuable; they let you control matchups.)

Reinhardt is the best cannon even thought he struggles with high-res greens. Reinhardt doesn't need to beat greens because your red will crush them for him.


Two-range brave is indeed good.

Poison Dagger is rather different from brave, since its 1.5 multiplier comes before defence, not after. So it's actually even more potent than you make it sound. The problem is that Poison Dagger is utter garbage when it doesn't hit a weakness, so if you come up against a team with no infantry, Kagero is trash. (Kittie Paddle is the same, though no-mage teams are probably rarer than no-infantry ones.)

Well said. Kagero is a great unit but powerlesa against a horsemblem for example - and that makes it quite risky to use her in arena - although I think she can beat lyn with bowbreaker.

Horse emblem is a major example of the game being unbalanced. Why does a horse emblem have a general edge over infantry? 

I dont know where this game is heading to, but the designers should really think ahead.

Imo they should create a feh 2.0 which is much better and let us transfer outmr units (no way I would start from scratch). The game has so much potential imo-it calls for largee maps, bigger teams and pvp.

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3 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

But Raven mages do exist, so you do get cockblocked.

Additionally, FEH is a team game. If you have a red, a blue, and a green, you can claim the advantage against any enemy unit except colourless; if one of those three is a raven mage, you claim advantage over colourless as well. And since you, the player, control the matchups over the far less intelligent AI, you can ensure that it's almost always you who get the advantage, not your opponent. (This is also why Dance and movement skills like Reposition are so valuable; they let you control matchups.)

Raven mages are also terrible and no good defense team is going to run them. They have low Spd, Atk, or some combination of both, and since they usually run Triangle Adept they are easy to bait and kill. Like you said, you can't trust the AI to use them correctly.

Colorless units with Firesweep / Brave and Cancel Affinity are also more consistent on a defense team, since the AI will still do full damage if you brought a Raven Adept user against them. Without TA to fall back on, nearly all of the conventional Raven users become little more than pincushions.

The "FEH is a team game" argument can be played so many ways that it isn't a very effective one.

3 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Reinhardt doesn't need to beat greens because your red will crush them for him.

I am not going to discuss how colorless units compare to Reinhardt specifically, but I will say that a unit that can cover any of the colors without assistance is going to be better than a unit that can handle at most two colors but needs another color partner for the rest.

Edited by MrSmokestack
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2 hours ago, MrSmokestack said:

Raven mages are also terrible and no good defense team is going to run them.

Good thing I wasn't talking about defence teams. Neither was anyone else until you mentioned them.

What's good on a defence team isn't what makes for a good unit for player control. What's good on a defence team isn't very important (it yields a max of 900 feathers per week, and most people will achieve it even with wildly sub-optimum defence teams), hence why it's not discussed much.

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Just now, Dark Holy Elf said:

Good thing I wasn't talking about defence teams. Neither was anyone else until you mentioned them.

Yes, you were. Colorless nukes being “cockblocked” by Raven mages implies you were discussing the matchup between colorless nukes on offense vs Raven mages on a defense team.

Just now, Dark Holy Elf said:

What's good on a defence team isn't what makes for a good unit for player control. What's good on a defence team isn't very important (it yields a max of 900 feathers per week, and most people will achieve it even with wildly sub-optimum defence teams), hence why it's not discussed much.

I took it a step further and explained that colorless nukes are not only good on an offense team but also on a defense team; on offense they are unaffected by damage mitigation other than subpar, niche Raven builds, and on defense they have Cancel Affinity to power through defensive checks and Firesweep to make baiting even harder.

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Ah, I see what you're getting at now.

All I can say is, optimum or not, I have certainly seen Raven mages on enemy defence teams, while reduces my inclination to rely on colourless units for my own (offence) teams. A lot of players don't optimise their defence teams (because the incentive to do so is not great, and of course defence teams are chosen from across the casual-hardcore spectrum).

I only have three unit slots devoted to arena offence, because the fourth will change week-to-week for bonus unit reasons. Running red/blue/green lets you check absolutely every threat, while running red/blue/colourless leaves you vulnerable to blues (et cetera for any other combination of three that isn't red/blue/green). This puts colourless units behind the eightball for general purposes; you need a particularly good one to justify their inclusion as one of your core three.

It's easier to justify a colourless in non-arena settings (including arena assault) of course, because then you can run all four colours.

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I think the biggest imbalance stems from the core system: SPD as a stat works on both sides of the spectrum. its an awesome Defensiv stat preventing your unit to eat twice the damage and an Offensiv stat allowing your unit to dish out twice the dmg.
In that regard Brave weapons come right next after SPD, because -5 SPD penalty isnt high enough for the fact that you can attack twice, thus allowing some units to run quad builts.
it basicly eliminates any meaning of a middle groudn unit with spread out stats.
 

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That would be true if Brave units had a trend where quadding is top tier though

 

But it isnt. Most of the high tier brave units are as high as they are due to high atk whereas purely Quad oriented ones tend to kinda suck. The flagship Brave attacker all are defined by sub 35 atk

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12 hours ago, MrSmokestack said:

I am not going to discuss how colorless units compare to Reinhardt specifically, but I will say that a unit that can cover any of the colors without assistance is going to be better than a unit that can handle at most two colors but needs another color partner for the rest.

Reinhardt covers basically all the greens that aren't specifically specced against him anyway. He has around 80 Atk with -blade, that's 64 after triangle disadvantage. How many greens can tank that and actually hit him for real damage? There are far more units that can tank bows than can tank Reinhardt.

 

All you need to tank bows is high defense, that's literally it. (-Raven also works, of course, but high defense is such a catchall counter that if you needed to tank bows you don't actually need to spec for it.)

To tank Reinhardt you need High Hp, High Res, and color advantage. Miss one of those and he toasts you with QP Moonbow or -blade, depending on what he feels like. Felicia has 35 res, but doesn't have high hp or color advantage, for example, so she gets toasted by every single Reinhardt set (and hits him for like 5 damage, so Reinhardt can counter-kill her with quick riposte if he felt like it).

 

That's the problem with tanking Rein, honestly---high res and high atk is another word for bad unit (unless you're a mage, who doesn't have the Hp to tank a moonbow pulse combo), whereas high atk and high def is quite common everywhere, and fairly decent as a spread.

 

To counter a unit you need:

To be able to kill him on offense.

(To not die to him on offense, this is mostly a problem versus CC sets.)

To not die to him on defense.

To, ideally, be able to kill him on defense.

 

Reinhardt is such a hard stat check that if you manage to survive him it means his min-maxed defense spread comes into play and you fail to actually ORKO him properly. Reinhardt has a lot of checks, that is, units that he threatens, but also threaten him, but his counters are absurdly specialized to the point of being below average in everything else. (Titania is basically Selena on a horse, and yes, the horse is nice, but she is not a top tier generalist unit by any stretch of imagination. Julia is a mage who fails to do the one thing mages want to do---actually kill things on offense. Fae is a bloody dragon---I rate dragons above armors, and nothing else. Etc. Etc.)

 

Bows have counters---stack Def, grab a bit of Atk, smack that idiot with 0 def silly, on this turn or the next, it doesn't matter, that bow charged your Aether for you. (Virion's the only good offensive archer with 'good' bulk, he only explodes to mages, everyone else explodes to everything.) And almost every single unit in the game checks them---because, again, bows don't have good bulk.

 

tl;dr The problem with tanking Reinhardt is that, in order to tank and be able to kill Reinhardt... you're overspecialized to the point of being, frankly, a bad unit outside of that job. Which, yeah, you can live with, but I'd much rather live with a couple Reinhardt checks (like Reinhardt himself) rather than lug Fae around, bearing in mind that if Leo is next to Rein Fae can't even do her one job properly.

 

Edit: Which means, oddly enough, that it's not that Reinahrdt is forcing you to run Leo or Selena or whatever. It's that Reinhardt makes Leo or Selena or Camus or whatever so much better just by existing that, even though Selena's a sub-optimal unit, Reinhardt's existence means that she's fighting even less optimal units. Reinhardt makes the enemy team bad just by existing.

Like, you're team is Rein/Dancer/Leo/Selena which I would rank S/S/A+/C, but the enemy team is like Julia/Fae/B!Lyn/Dancer or something, yeah, B!Lyn/Dancer ties with Rein/Dancer, but Leo/Selena, despite being a horrendous pairing at A+/C, nontheless demolishes Julia/Fae because holy shit that's a shit combo. Like, it's A+/C vs. B/D, Leo and Selena are not tip-top units! They just work because the enemy team gimped themselves because they're shitting themselves over Reinhardt.

Double Edit: 'But wait!' you might say, 'what if they don't run these shitty Faes and Julias and Titanias?' Excuse me, good sir, I have a fucking Reinhardt on my team. If you don't run those he just sweeps.

Edited by DehNutCase
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35 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

At least the Deflect Magic and Distant Def seals lets a bunch of units, notably Nino and Hector, counter Reinhardt for real now. Even more Colorless can tank him now.

My bro Virion with deflect magic is now a Reinhardt counter assuming Reinhardt got panic ploy'd

 

holy shit i love Virion now

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@DehNutCase Hence why I didn’t want to talk about Reinhardt in my post. He is an anomaly as your post demonstrates.

I do see your point about Reinhardt being harder to check when on a defense team compared to a Cancel Affinity archer. I used to run Fae for a while, until I remembered that Magic Deflect 3 is a thing and Nino has the color and Res to take a Reinhardt to the face; checks are easier to use than hard counters.

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