General Weapon Refinery discussion/speculation/creation thread

[Zapp Branniglenn]

11 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

They haven't avoided this at all though. This time it's Fates and Archanea. Last time it was Fates and Archanea.

Last time it was Echoes and Binding Blade. The month before that was Fates, Awakening, Sacred Stones, and FE7. They're doing decently well spreading the love around game by game. I don't even remember the last time it was Archanea. 

[Anacybele]

1 minute ago, Glennstavos said:

Last time it was Echoes and Binding Blade. The month before that was Fates, Awakening, Sacred Stones, and FE7. They're doing decently well spreading the love around game by game. I don't even remember the last time it was Archanea. 

Last time it was Fates and Archanea, actually, because Linde got a third refine for whatever reason and the Whitewings got their weapons. Fates included a refine for Hinata, I believe.

[X-Naut]

Technically Merric and Linde were in the last update (again) but that was only because they were piggybacking off Sonya and Delthea's refines. They weren't on the summoning focus and I question why they were even in the announcement. Hinata and Oboro were two refines back.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 minute ago, Anacybele said:

Last time it was Fates and Archanea, actually, because Linde got a third refine for whatever reason and the Whitewings got their weapons. Fates included a refine for Hinata, I believe.

Oh yeah, Linde and Merric for some reason having another unit's personal weapon. I forgot about that. Okay, I guess you can call them on a technicality. The Whitewings were December though.

[Anacybele]

10 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Oh yeah, Linde and Merric for some reason having another unit's personal weapon. I forgot about that. Okay, I guess you can call them on a technicality. The Whitewings were December though.

I thought the Whitewings were Feb or March? Well, whatever the case, I feel like lately most of the units getting refines are from Fates or Archanea.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Anacybele

[Ottservia]

11 hours ago, Stroud said:

Me: Beruka and Selena please!
Them: You mean Peri and Hana? Here they are.

This this right here is a BIG mood. I just want my Selena to be better. I mean if they're not gonna give me her OG version might as well at least give me a refine

Edited April 5, 2019 by Ottservia

[Ice Dragon]

Selena with maybe Sagittae's effect and sword Missiletainn's Breath-without-stats effect would be pretty cool, considering her Spd tank stat spread.

[Interdimensional Observer]

48 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

I thought the Whitewings were Feb or March? Well, whatever the case, I feel like lately most of the units getting refines are from Fates or Archanea.

To be fair, they made up a lot of the roster at launch for this game, alongside Awakening. Older units being in more need of refines makes sense, although some older characters probably didn't need the refines they got as soon as they should've I guess.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Forgive me for not changing my position on this in the last year, but I'm still weird about the idea of giving EVERY unit a personal weapon. When everybody's got something special, nobody's got something special. 

[Interdimensional Observer]

21 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Forgive me for not changing my position on this in the last year, but I'm still weird about the idea of giving EVERY unit a personal weapon. When everybody's got something special, nobody's got something special. 

Unless you built the game around non-inheritance. Perhaps SI was a mistake and instead, the game should've had all fixed characters. I'm not seriously arguing for this though, and it is much too late to change course.

[NSSKG151]

5 hours ago, Anacybele said:

Last time it was Fates and Archanea, actually, because Linde got a third refine for whatever reason and the Whitewings got their weapons. Fates included a refine for Hinata, I believe.

Last month actually was Valentia and Binding Blade which had Sophia, Klein, Delthea and Sonya getting their weapons refined. Linde and Merric were only included because the weapons getting the refines were Dark Aura and Dark Excalibur which they have access to. The month before, February, did have characters from Fates (Hinata, Oboro and Niles) alongside Awakening (Tharja), Blazing Blade (Eliwood and Nino) and Sacred Stones (Amelia and Seth) and the reason so many characters got refines was because it was the anniversary month. Also, if we want to go further back in January the only characters who got refines were from Jugdral (Tailtiu, Seliph, Julia and Deirdre) so no, it is not always Fates and Archanea characters getting refines.

[bottlegnomes]

7 hours ago, XRay said:

But being able to provide support cannot be the only logic behind it. Klein would have never gotten Chill Def in the first place since Argent Bow [Spd] already makes Klein comparable to top Brave archers.

Camilla's Axe is not comparable to something like Basilikos (Slaying effect with Life and Death is too good), but it is comparable to Beach Banner and Hauteclere.
Camilla:
96:139:13 [special]
108:132:8 [Spd]
SA!Innes:
112:131:5
Minerva:
113:116:19
Raven:
186:59:3

Challenger List: Against Hard List, both sides +10 with 6/6/6/6 buffs, and Challengers have 1 HP.

  Reveal hidden contents

CHALLENGER LIST  
Camilla (5*+10 +atk)  
Weapon: Camilla's Axe  
Special: Moonbow  
A: Life and Death 3  
B: Desperation 3  
S: Atk Spd 2  
Upgrade Path: 5  
  
Camilla (5*+10 +atk)  
Weapon: Camilla's Axe  
Special: Moonbow  
A: Life and Death 3  
B: Desperation 3  
S: Atk Spd 2  
Upgrade Path: 2  
  
Innes (SA) (5*+10 +atk)  
Weapon: Beach Banner+  
Special: Moonbow  
A: Life and Death 3  
B: Desperation 3  
S: Attack 3  
Upgrade Path: 2  
  
Minerva (5*+10 +atk)  
Weapon: Hauteclere  
Special: Moonbow  
A: Life and Death 3  
B: Desperation 3  
S: Atk Spd 2  
Upgrade Path: 5  
  
Raven (5*+10 +atk)  
Weapon: Basilikos  
Special: Moonbow  
A: Life and Death 3  
B: Desperation 3  
S: Atk Spd 2  
Upgrade Path: 5  

 

The logic behind it is that it has a third effect so it gets a penalty to offset the third effect. Camilla's Axe has two effects: pseudo-hone fliers and the self-buffing effect. Basilikos has two effects: slaying and L&D3. Warrior Princess has two non-free effects: spd +3 and ally buff. Depending on how you look at it, Gae Bolg has any of one effect, two effects, or three effects and a penalty. The effects are not created equal; not even close to it. The mistake you're making in these comparisons is thinking the designers judge worth using the same metrics as the player base. Similar end goals, sure, but it's pretty readily apparent that they don't run these characters through combat sims to decide what the effects should be.

The two best arguments for giving a weapon 3 effects without docking it in some way are actually Argent Bow itself and Niles's Bow. Niles's Bow is obvious, but Argent Bow is a bit less so. Compared to previous ranged personal brave weapons, it has two extra beneficial effects, chill def and spd +3, and one detrimental effect -1 attack. That said, there's nothing save Dire Thunder to indicate that 9 mt is the ranged personal standard, which isn't enough of a trend to say whether that's the rule or the exception. So 8 mt might be the the actual ranged brave personal standard and Dire Thunder is actually Brave and +1 attack like how Sigurd was the first seemingly gen 2 cav, but then all subsequent gen 2 cavs had lower BST. That would mean Argent Bow actually has three effects with no drawbacks, same as Niles's Bow. The thing is, bows have been in a bad spot for a while, all basically being outdone by firesweep and brave bows, so those two were attempts to see what it'd take to make a personal bow stand out.

They aren't opposed to making changes that break tradition, e.g. Blade-type weapons formerly giving +1 cooldown or personal weapons having one level 2 effect, but as is personal brave weapons fall into one of three possible categories:

1. 11 mt melee with -5 speed and an additional effect
2. 8 mt ranged with -5 speed with somewhere with either 1 or 2 additional effects
3. 9 mt ranged with -5 speed with a net 0 or 1 additional effects (positive + negative = net 0)

The thing is, in none of those does there exist a precedent for an 11 mt melee brave weapon with two additional effects. That said, maybe Cain and Abel are unimpressive enough to warrant the special treatment. Klein, Niles, and bows in general were. But the point of this whole conversation was not what Cain and Abel should or will get based on their existing performance. It was why @X-Naut gave Cain's and Abel's weapons 9 mt instead of the typical melee brave 11 based on existing precedent.

[Humanoid]

11 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

I want Bull Sword and Panther Shovel to come with Brave as their primary effect and the cavalry beast transform effect

I thought you were going to say "...where they turn into an actual bull and panther if they start the turn next to only cavalry units".

[Corrobin]

11 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

I see that the localization team is still allergic to the word "sword". I guess allergy season is coming up, though.

 

The reason we got Bull Blade and Hana's Katana is simple: Alliteration and rhyming are cool.

[Ice Dragon]

46 minutes ago, Corrobin said:

The reason we got Bull Blade and Hana's Katana is simple: Alliteration and rhyming are cool.

Swords with "sword" in their name (generics in gray):

• Brave Sword
• Dark Greatsword
• Firesweep Sword
• Royal Sword
• Ruby Sword
• Scarlet Sword
• Silver Sword
• Wing Sword

Swords with "blade" in their name (generics in gray):

• Ayra's Blade
• Barrier Blade
• Binding Blade
• Bull Blade
• Gladiator's Blade
• Heart's Blade
• Nameless Blade
• Regal Blade
• Resolute Blade
• Solitary Blade
• Vassal's Blade
• Whitewing Blade

Swords with neither "sword" nor "blade" in their name and are not "proper nouns" (generics in gray):

• Armorslayer
• Armorsmasher
• Dragonbind
• Geishun
• Golden Dagger
• Hana's Katana
• Hinata's Katana
• Kadomatsu
• Killing Edge
• Light Brand
• Meisterschwert
• Safeguard
• Silverbrand
• Slaying Edge
• Wo Dao
• Zanbato

Heck, they even retconned Blazing Sword into Blazing Blade.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Ice Dragon

[Jotari]

 

I'm procrastinating, so I've decided to make up a refine affect for every weapon with Distant Counter because why not.

Alondite: Guard 3 (based on it's ability to negate critical hits in Path of Radiance)

Divine Mist: DEF/RES Bond 2 (based on this Tiki's With Everyone theme)

Dragonbind: Renewal 3 (because it's the only part of the Binding Blade that hasn't been referenced yet)

Expiration: If special triggers before combat (like Blazing Thunder, Rising Flame etc), deals+10 damage when special triggers (based on the prebattle attack Grima uses in Awakening. Neither Grima comes with the aoe attacks for some reason, but I don't think it's too weird to give a bonus effect you need something other than the default kit to make use of. In any case it achieves my goal of buffing Female Grima slightly more than Male Grima since he's more of an enemy phase unit than she is).

Gradivus: Renewal 3 (because it can restore health in game).

Leiptr: Special Spiral 3 (making Fjorm a more complete anti range unit, although if you want you could take Ice Mirror off her and double down on Special Spiral with something like Galeforce or Aether. That could be cool).

Ragnell: Dull Close (Comes from the fact that it Ignore's the Black Knight and Ashnard's blessed armour).

Raijinto: Death Blow 3 (because it has an atk+4 affect in game and a plain stat increase is already an option for other refines).

Siegfried: Armoured Blow 3 (because of it's def+4 affect and to mirror Raijinto).

Stout Tomahawk: Armoured Stance 3 (because it's what comes to mind when I think Stout and would pair well with his default Fierce Stance).

 

Edited April 6, 2019 by Jotari

[XRay]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Expiration: If special triggers before combat (like Blazing Thunder, Rising Flame etc), deals+10 damage when special triggers (based on the prebattle attack Grima uses in Awakening. Neither Grima comes with the aoe attacks for some reason, but I don't think it's too weird to give a bonus effect you need something other than the default kit to make use of. In any case it achieves my goal of buffing Female Grima slightly more than Male Grima since he's more of an enemy phase unit than she is).

That is too weak and Weapons with incompatible effects, Enemy Phase Distant Counter and Player Phase weak Harmonic in this case, are not good in my opinion. I would just give it regular Harmonic effect so it is active on both phases.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Raijinto: Death Blow 3 (because it has an atk+4 affect in game and a plain stat increase is already an option for other refines).

Similar to above, I am not a huge fan of incompatible effects, so I will go with Fierce Stance to match with Distant Counter or a flat Atk+6 for dual phase use.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Siegfried: Armoured Blow 3 (because of it's def+4 affect and to mirror Raijinto).

I would turn that into Steady Stance or a flat Def+6.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Leiptr: Special Spiral 3 (making Fjorm a more complete anti range unit, although if you want you could take Ice Mirror off her and double down on Special Spiral with something like Galeforce or Aether. That could be cool).

Special Spiral does not work with Galeforce. Special Spiral only affects Specials that activate before or during combat. Galeforce activates after combat.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

That is too weak and Weapons with incompatible effects, Enemy Phase Distant Counter and Player Phase weak Harmonic in this case, are not good in my opinion. I would just give it regular Harmonic effect so it is active on both phases.

I think male Grima is already pretty damn great, so I didn't want to give him something that'd make him more broken. Plus I thought it an interesting and fitting effect we haven't seen yet. If it's too weak the damage level could be increased to give it an edge over Harmonic Lance. My other idea was to give it a Raven tome affect as (like all breath weapons) it ignores defense in Echoes and the weapon triangle doesn't really exist there.

1 hour ago, XRay said:

Special Spiral does not work with Galeforce. Special Spiral only affects Specials that activate before or during combat. Galeforce activates after combat.

Ah, never actually paired Galeforce with Special Spiral, though I suppose I could have presumed that. Still, knocking Aether down from five charge to one after it's first use would be pretty cool  (she'd want a pair up with Velora and Quickened Pulse and maybe Ostian Pulse too in order to more quickly pull it out the first turn though. Either that or just leave it as a build for Tempest Trials/Chain Challenge).

Edited April 6, 2019 by Jotari

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I think male Grima is already pretty damn great, so I didn't want to give him something that'd make him more broken. Plus I thought it an interesting and fitting effect we haven't seen yet. If it's too weak the damage level could be increased to give it an edge over Harmonic Lance. My other idea was to give it a Raven tome affect as (like all breath weapons) it ignores defense in Echoes and the weapon triangle doesn't really exist there.

AoE Special skills are extremely niche and require a very specific set of skills to work. No matter how much damage you stack on them, they will be completely useless if you can't activate the skill consistently, and this is why the only units that AoE Special skills are at all viable on are those that can make use of Special Spiral (or are being used for a challenge map solo clear).

A unique refinement that lacks viability simply means that the player will opt for one of the stat refines instead, which defeats the purpose of making the refinement in the first place.

 

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

Dragonbind: Renewal 3 (because it's the only part of the Binding Blade that hasn't been referenced yet)

It's actually referenced by the fact that Legendary Roy comes with Renewal on his base kit.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

It's actually referenced by the fact that Legendary Roy comes with Renewal on his base kit.

Oh, I didn't pull Legendary Roy. Only thing I remembered from his base kit was bonus doubler and racism (more research should have been done). I guess giving it Bracing Stance like the normal Binding Blade would best replicate all its in game effect then. Either that or something special based to reflect it's increased Crit.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Jotari

[Ice Dragon]

5 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Oh, I didn't pull Legendary Roy. Only thing I remembered from his base kit was bonus doubler (more research should have been done). I guess giving it Bracing Stance like the normal Binding Blade would best replicate all its in game effect then. Either that or something special based to reflect it's increased Crit.

Special Fighter.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

Special Fighter.

Special Fighter on a weapon would be pretty bawlin. Especially one with distant counter. Might be a bit broken though, but I'd have no qualms with Roy being broken. He's our boy after all. Although realistically speaking if or when Distant Counter weapons start getting refines, Binding Blade and Divine Mist 2.0 will probably be pretty far down the list due to sort of already having an extra affect already (I could see Expiration being left as is as well).

Edited April 6, 2019 by Jotari

[DLNarshen]

I'm a little loopy right now, but I'd been thinking about what kind of refine Loptous would get in the distant future, if it happened at all.  I thought of refines like a Res version of Myrrh's Great Flame.  While it would be strong, there's no game-lore to support such an ability, besides just being boring.  Then it hit me: a conditional Bold Fighter refine.  Sounds super dumb, but it makes more sense than one might initially think.  It would emulate two of Julius's Genealogy skills at once: Charge and Wrath.  Charge would occasionally extend combat (follow-up attack portion of Bold Fighter), giving Julius's opponent more chances to hurt and knock him into Wrath range (cooldown acceleration).  Conditional because FE4 Charge stops working if the user's HP dips below 26. 

So something like:

Loptous
Grants Res+3.  Skills with "effective against dragons" are effective against unit.  If foe has no skills with "effective against dragons," inflicts Atk-6 on foe during combat.
If unit's HP ≥ 50% and unit initiates combat, grants Special cooldown charge +1 per unit's attack, and unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack. (Does not stack.)

I can't recall if there's any precedent for giving an otherwise class-restricted skill on a weapon refine to a unit not of that class, but I don't care.  I'm crazy and I want Julius to be the best damn infantry red mage there is. 

[Ice Dragon]

51 minutes ago, DLNarshen said:

I can't recall if there's any precedent for giving an otherwise class-restricted skill on a weapon refine to a unit not of that class, but I don't care.  I'm crazy and I want Julius to be the best damn infantry red mage there is. 

Dark Mystletainn has Special Spiral as its base effect, which is otherwise restricted to infantry. Wing Sword and Rhomphaia have Flashing Blade as their refine effect, which is otherwise restricted to infantry and armor. Tome of Thoron has Wrath as its base effect, which is otherwise restricted to melee infantry and armor.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Ice Dragon

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, DLNarshen said:

I'm a little loopy right now, but I'd been thinking about what kind of refine Loptous would get in the distant future, if it happened at all.  I thought of refines like a Res version of Myrrh's Great Flame.  While it would be strong, there's no game-lore to support such an ability, besides just being boring.  Then it hit me: a conditional Bold Fighter refine.  Sounds super dumb, but it makes more sense than one might initially think.  It would emulate two of Julius's Genealogy skills at once: Charge and Wrath.  Charge would occasionally extend combat (follow-up attack portion of Bold Fighter), giving Julius's opponent more chances to hurt and knock him into Wrath range (cooldown acceleration).  Conditional because FE4 Charge stops working if the user's HP dips below 26. 

So something like:

Loptous
Grants Res+3.  Skills with "effective against dragons" are effective against unit.  If foe has no skills with "effective against dragons," inflicts Atk-6 on foe during combat.
If unit's HP ≥ 50% and unit initiates combat, grants Special cooldown charge +1 per unit's attack, and unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack. (Does not stack.)

I can't recall if there's any precedent for giving an otherwise class-restricted skill on a weapon refine to a unit not of that class, but I don't care.  I'm crazy and I want Julius to be the best damn infantry red mage there is. 

There's no lore basis for giving him a Res version of Grest Flame, but there's also no Lore basis for Great Flame's effect in of itself, so giving it to Julius wouldn't be too weird in my book. It'd also help fix Julius's biggest problem which is that he's seriously lacking in durability.

Of course just straight up giving him Bold Fighter would be pretty useful too.