Best Weapon Usage?

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Chaotix said:

Deadeye is definitely more situational, but most archers have high Dex and +20 Bow Accuracy is a thing. I'd argue there are situations where without Deadeye, your archer wouldn't be attacking at all, in which case it's good to have it even if you only have 50% chance to hit.

Example: Dedue's and Manuela/Hanneman's paralogues, where the map is split vertically down the middle by two tiles and you're unlikely to have a Bow Knight yet.

It still sounds like a massive case of "Awesome, but Impractical", especially if you didn't go out of your way to master Archer. And this isn't even talking about if you're trying to attack something on terrain... Oh, and Bernadetta and Ashe are the only ones that get it, meaning that unless you recruited one of them, you won't have it on a Golden Deer run. In addition to all this, 5 durability is a lot to spend on an attack that is far more likely than not to whiff (assuming that combat arts drop durability even on missed attacks).

Edited August 12, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[dragonlordsd]

1 hour ago, Silly said:

Thrysus and Caduceus Staff should be enough for your dedicated mages. I haven't found it very good to have more than 2-3 core magic users on a team (since while magic utility is very important, the mage classes themselves are pretty terrible and need to be worked around until you get to master tier). Throw Thrysus on one, Caduceus Staff on the other, and if you happen to have a third mage they are likely a bit more utility focused or already innately have 3 range and can get away with not having a staff. Plus leveling Reason to S rank also comes with +1 range innately.

Well, a lot of it comes down to playstyle. I prefer to have at least 1-2 dedicated healers depending on how many units I'm fielding and how big the map is. I also prefer to run 1-2 dedicated nukes, so that's around 4 mages at max.

I mean, you're not wrong. It's just that there's not much harm if you have the weapons lying around, and it gives you more options in general. 

[Chaotix]

8 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

It still sounds like a massive case of "Awesome, but Impractical", especially if you didn't go out of your way to master Archer. And this isn't even talking about if you're trying to attack something on terrain... Oh, and Bernadetta and Ashe are the only ones that get it, meaning that unless you recruited one of them, you won't have it on a Golden Deer run.

That's a fair point, I haven't played GD yet and didn't realize that none of Claude, Ignatz, or Leonie get Deadeye. Kind of a weird design choice given they are supposed to be the house with the best archers.

I will say from my own experience (Hard/Classic) that I haven't found it impractical to use with either Bernadetta or Ashe. Hit rates were acceptable even before Hit+20, and there was no Combat Art they got that I'd rather replace it with. I consistently found myself using it once or twice a map.

Trying to attack someone on terrain, I agree. It's just the wrong tool for that. I stuck to magic or hit-raising combat arts.

[Shadow Mir]

2 minutes ago, Chaotix said:

That's a fair point, I haven't played GD yet and didn't realize that none of Claude, Ignatz, or Leonie get Deadeye. Kind of a weird design choice given they are supposed to be the house with the best archers.

I will say from my own experience (Hard/Classic) that I haven't found it impractical to use with either Bernadetta or Ashe. Hit rates were acceptable even before Hit+20, and there was no Combat Art they got that I'd rather replace it with. I consistently found myself using it once or twice a map.

Trying to attack someone on terrain, I agree. It's just the wrong tool for that. I stuck to magic or hit-raising combat arts.

Define "acceptable", because obviously you and I have different standards for "acceptable".

[Burklight]

7 minutes ago, Chaotix said:

That's a fair point, I haven't played GD yet and didn't realize that none of Claude, Ignatz, or Leonie get Deadeye. Kind of a weird design choice given they are supposed to be the house with the best archers.

I will say from my own experience (Hard/Classic) that I haven't found it impractical to use with either Bernadetta or Ashe. Hit rates were acceptable even before Hit+20, and there was no Combat Art they got that I'd rather replace it with. I consistently found myself using it once or twice a map.

Trying to attack someone on terrain, I agree. It's just the wrong tool for that. I stuck to magic or hit-raising combat arts.

Well, Leonie gets Point-Blank Volley and Claude gets Wind God. Bernadetta and Ashe wish they had bow abilities that strong.

[Chaotix]

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Define "acceptable", because obviously you and I have different standards for "acceptable".

50-60 hit. If it's below 50 I don't even try. If it's below 75 I usually look for a better option, but the best usage of Deadeye is for when there is no better option, in which case I take the shot.

[Chaotix]

2 minutes ago, Burklight said:

Well, Leonie gets Point-Blank Volley and Claude gets Wind God. Bernadetta and Ashe wish they had bow abilities that strong.

Oh, Wind God is basically just a better version of Deadeye. Just looked it up. That explains a lot.

[virtu333]

Iron Bows are busted - 5 weight, 7 might. Compare that to any other forged iron and it looks great - compare that to handaxes and javelins and it's kind of "lol"

Close Counter at C makes getting C rank bows extremely valuable for 1-2 range. Even though archers/snipers outrange you later, it's still worth it for the ability to counter monsters and mages all game long.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Chaotix said:

50-60 hit. If it's below 50 I don't even try. If it's below 75 I usually look for a better option, but the best usage of Deadeye is for when there is no better option, in which case I take the shot.

That doesn't sound reliable enough to be worth it to me. Especially knowing that Deadeye uses up 5 durability, which is a lot to use on an attack that has non-trivial miss chances, mind you.

1 hour ago, Chaotix said:

Oh, Wind God is basically just a better version of Deadeye. Just looked it up. That explains a lot.

Until you realize that you have to master said class, which might not happen by the time the game's over (I'm not sure how long it takes to master the unique classes for the protagonists).

[Flere210]

Honestly, i don't even know if i m playing the same game anymore. My Ashe for example is oneshotting everything whit deadeye with accuracy rarely going below 90%. Am i super blessed or what?

[Burklight]

3 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Until you realize that you have to master said class, which might not happen by the time the game's over (I'm not sure how long it takes to master the unique classes for the protagonists).

50 Fights. Pretty reasonable if you're doing auxiliary battles. And by 50, I mean you need 200 points, 1 per fight, but then +1 from the statue x2 from knowledge gem, so 4 per fight into 200.

[Silly]

Well there's a big issue with that, and it's that if you play Aux battles to grind then your units end up overleveled. At that point whether you've mastered your class or not isn't super relevant, because you can just straight up outstat enemies.

[dragonlordsd]

15 minutes ago, Silly said:

Well there's a big issue with that, and it's that if you play Aux battles to grind then your units end up overleveled. At that point whether you've mastered your class or not isn't super relevant, because you can just straight up outstat enemies.

Hard mode limits them, but there are still ways around that.

But yeah, that'll always be an issue. It's also extremely easy to farm stat boosters (literally. from the green house)

[DragonFlames]

19 hours ago, Silly said:

When have you ever run out of magic...

Not to mention that the Levin Sword, the lightest magic weapon (outside of the gauntlets, which are terrible) weighs 9. Which means that outside of seige magic, the only Reason tome that is heavier than it are the super high level ones (Agnea's Arrow, Dark Spikes, Hades). Don't even get me started on the Bolt Axe, which weighs 15!

Yeah, that's a good point, actually.
I was just making suggestions when/how magic weapons on magic users might be of some semblance of value, but if they weigh that much, I immediately retract my statement.

19 hours ago, Silly said:

There's a lategame quest that lets you access a shop where you can buy arcane crystals.

At least, it existed on the BE route. I'm not there yet on my second run so I can't confirm that it exists on all routes.

There is? That's nice, then.

18 hours ago, dragonlordsd said:

Yeah, I'll chalk that up to general difficulty lack. It's really a balance issue.

Murdock, in Binding Blade, had 25 base defense on normal mode, plus throne bonus. The MAX strength for a hero is 25. This means that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a hero with a brave axe to do more damage to Murdock than a hero with Armads, even though the brave axe has 10 might to Armads' 18.

Since the stat caps are much higher in this game, it's harder to balance the bosses to appropriately ceiling out, but even so, most enemies could use some extra stats.

That said, what else do you use umbral steel for?

Indeed.

[Shadow Mir]

On 8/12/2019 at 10:25 AM, dragonlordsd said:

Yeah, I'll chalk that up to general difficulty lack. It's really a balance issue.

Murdock, in Binding Blade, had 25 base defense on normal mode, plus throne bonus. The MAX strength for a hero is 25. This means that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a hero with a brave axe to do more damage to Murdock than a hero with Armads, even though the brave axe has 10 might to Armads' 18.

Since the stat caps are much higher in this game, it's harder to balance the bosses to appropriately ceiling out, but even so, most enemies could use some extra stats.

That said, what else do you use umbral steel for?

I dunno why you'd be using the brave axe, with its amazing 55 base hit, on a boss on a throne...

[DragonFlames]

1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

I dunno why you'd be using the brave axe, with its amazing 55 base hit, on a boss on a throne...

Something, something example. Or something.
Obviously, no one in their right mind would do that. I think. I hope. FE6 axes are garbage!

More on topic: what's the point of the scythes the goons DK brings with him in that one Chapter with the burning village drop? They're B-rank lances (higher than you'll ever need your lance rank to be except if you want to be a Paladin or are Dimitri), but is there any advantage to using them over, say, a Silver Lance? Because from my experience, they're not much stronger than Silver Lances, and slow you down by a lot, so you shouldn't expect to double anything with the things. Rather, the opposite.
I could be wrong, of course (as per usual). Feel free to correct me on this.

[timon]

1 hour ago, DragonFlames said:

Something, something example. Or something.
Obviously, no one in their right mind would do that. I think. I hope. FE6 axes are garbage!

More on topic: what's the point of the scythes the goons DK brings with him in that one Chapter with the burning village drop? They're B-rank lances (higher than you'll ever need your lance rank to be except if you want to be a Paladin or are Dimitri), but is there any advantage to using them over, say, a Silver Lance? Because from my experience, they're not much stronger than Silver Lances, and slow you down by a lot, so you shouldn't expect to double anything with the things. Rather, the opposite.
I could be wrong, of course (as per usual). Feel free to correct me on this.

I made great use of the scythe, as my Sylvain was too slow to double anyways so he just needed raw power, and at that point IIRC Silver is not yet easily available. Also Paladins are quite a good class imo, so I wouldn't rule out high Lance level (and there are some really, really good lances in the game).

They also have crazy durability which makes for good combart art spam.

Last but not least, if you give it to a Dark Knight it's basically a cosplay.

[Sire]

Scythes are basically better Steel Weapons, especially if you want to be using Combat Arts regularly. However, as doubling or critical hits tend to be more effective for me than using Combat Arts, they are a bit "meh" unless you want to use them for the cool factor. (I find Killer Weapons to be better Steel replacements.)

I had Edgy Dimitri wield a Scythe to great effect. I did eventually replace it with a Silver Lance+ though.

[Flere210]

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Something, something example. Or something.
Obviously, no one in their right mind would do that. I think. I hope. FE6 axes are garbage!

More on topic: what's the point of the scythes the goons DK brings with him in that one Chapter with the burning village drop? They're B-rank lances (higher than you'll ever need your lance rank to be except if you want to be a Paladin or are Dimitri), but is there any advantage to using them over, say, a Silver Lance? Because from my experience, they're not much stronger than Silver Lances, and slow you down by a lot, so you shouldn't expect to double anything with the things. Rather, the opposite.
I could be wrong, of course (as per usual). Feel free to correct me on this.

Mostly style point, but they come out earlier than silver.

[ra2bk]

On 8/12/2019 at 2:18 PM, Shadow Mir said:

It still sounds like a massive case of "Awesome, but Impractical", especially if you didn't go out of your way to master Archer. And this isn't even talking about if you're trying to attack something on terrain... Oh, and Bernadetta and Ashe are the only ones that get it, meaning that unless you recruited one of them, you won't have it on a Golden Deer run. In addition to all this, 5 durability is a lot to spend on an attack that is far more likely than not to whiff (assuming that combat arts drop durability even on missed attacks).

In my normal difficulty playthrough, Bernadetta with a very average dexterity growth still had 80-100 to hit (and usually 100) from max range with Deadeye every time. Helps that she's in 80th %tile for character growth dex in general in the game, but also forged Iron Bows+ were my most common weapon and they have 95 hit, Bow Prowess adding +6-15 to hit, the Archer +20 to Hit ability, supports, and a battalion boosting hit equipped. I'm guessing her raw accuracy was often like 160-170 before penalties and enemy avoid.

I did not need to expend any significant special treatment or waste any levels to have her master Archer for that +20 to hit, and it was extremely useful. 5 weapon durability is worth hitting someone when you normally wouldn't be able to do anything, even if it's just chip damage or getting a stationary target to aggro.

I don't know if this changes with hard difficulty, yet.

Edited August 13, 2019 by ra2bk

[Peck]

A few people were saying hand axes and javelins are bad so I wanted to add some useful points about these and/or anything with 2+ range.

Supports, their hit/avoid bonus (and in much more relatively rare cases, MT) are all gained by the linked attack system. Being adjacent to an allied unit does nothing in 3 houses in regards to the support system. Having your target be within attack range of an allies’ currently equipped weapon is what builds support amongst all eligible allies and gives stacking hit, avoid and MT bonuses. (Up to +9 MT and +30 hit/avo) an example of where this is most useful:

-lord and Byleth are usually more survivable than most. If you give them ranged options they will build support and give it constantly while being pillars of strength to be adjacent to for 20% bonus exp, and -3/+3 attack skills. Having a lower weight/MT option is ideal because they can soften things up without killing them while avoiding attacks and not getting doubled so they can get much needed class exp while everyone else takes the greater kill exp. All of this stacks additively with itself and adjacent unit skills like charm, advocate, sacred power etc.

In short, If your army favors 1 range attacks you will build support much slower and enjoy its benefits much less often.

 

[Silly]

10 minutes ago, Peck said:

A few people were saying hand axes and javelins are bad so I wanted to add some useful points about these and/or anything with 2+ range.

 Supports, their hit/avoid bonus (and in much more relatively rare cases, MT) are all gained by the linked attack system. Being adjacent to an allied unit does nothing in 3 houses in regards to the support system. Having your target be within attack range of an allies’ currently equipped weapon is what builds support amongst all eligible allies and gives stacking hit, avoid and MT bonuses. (Up to +9 MT and +30 hit/avo) an example of where this is most useful:

 -lord and Byleth are usually more survivable than most. If you give them ranged options they will build support and give it constantly while being pillars of strength to be adjacent to for 20% bonus exp, and -3/+3 attack skills. Having a lower weight/MT option is ideal because they can soften things up without killing them while avoiding attacks and not getting doubled so they can get much needed class exp while everyone else takes the greater kill exp. All of this stacks additively with itself and adjacent unit skills like charm, advocate, sacred power etc.

In short, If your army favors 1 range attacks you will build support much slower and enjoy its benefits much less often.

 

A lot of this requires you to intentionally slow down, which is not really a good thing when much of the metrics that the community tends to judge performance by involve at least relatively efficient clears. 

For example, softening up enemies for other units to kill when you could just have killed them outright is only really optimal if your other units weren't doing anything anyways. If they could have been doing something else productive, then you should just take the kill and have your other units do something else useful. Grinding class skills is also assumed not to happen, because grinding is not a thing that we generally take into account when rating things, given that with enough grinding everything becomes good enough to trivialize the game. Ranged weapons like Hand Axes and Javelins are specifically bad because if you use them on player phase you will often miss out on a kill, which is really bad.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, ra2bk said:

In my normal difficulty playthrough, Bernadetta with a very average dexterity growth still had 80-100 to hit (and usually 100) from max range with Deadeye every time. Helps that she's in 80th %tile for character growth dex in general in the game, but also forged Iron Bows+ were my most common weapon and they have 95 hit, Bow Prowess adding +6-15 to hit, the Archer +20 to Hit ability, supports, and a battalion boosting hit equipped. I'm guessing her raw accuracy was often like 160-170 before penalties and enemy avoid.

I did not need to expend any significant special treatment or waste any levels to have her master Archer for that +20 to hit, and it was extremely useful. 5 weapon durability is worth hitting someone when you normally wouldn't be able to do anything, even if it's just chip damage or getting a stationary target to aggro.

I don't know if this changes with hard difficulty, yet.

I call bullshit on this - there's no way in the seven hells that Bernadetta is gonna have max accuracy from max range when you're taking a hit of 80-100 hit. It just ain't happening. Not when each point of dexterity is only worth one point of hit.

Edited August 13, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[0 Def Cleric]

5 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I call bullshit on this - there's no way in the seven hells that Bernadetta is gonna have max accuracy from max range when you're taking a hit of 80-100 hit. It just ain't happening. Not when each point of dexterity is only worth one point of hit.

You only take a hit of 20 hit per tile past your normal range, so with normal range being 1 and 2, Bernadetta would only be losing 60 hit when firing from 5 tiles away. That adds up with the ~170 max hit given giving her 90 displayed hit. With true hit, that is extremely reliable, and even without, it's well worth the 5 durability. Of course, we'd need to calculate max hit properly here, but given correct max hit, their calculations would be accurate. 

[ra2bk]

47 minutes ago, 0 Def Cleric said:

You only take a hit of 20 hit per tile past your normal range, so with normal range being 1 and 2, Bernadetta would only be losing 60 hit when firing from 5 tiles away. That adds up with the ~170 max hit given giving her 90 displayed hit. With true hit, that is extremely reliable, and even without, it's well worth the 5 durability. Of course, we'd need to calculate max hit properly here, but given correct max hit, their calculations would be accurate. 

Bingo. Not sure why he's arguing so hard against actual evidence when he seemingly hasn't tried it. There are a million ways to boost Hit in this game. I forgot the accuracy ring in my list, too, that's another +10.

Edit- Looked it up for fun. Lvl 44 Bernie. I forgot I even took off +20 to hit in favor of +10 to bow crit, because I wasn't having any trouble with accuracy.

Iron Bow+ 95, Dex 41 (34 natural, 3 bow knight, +4 dex riding ability), Accuracy Ring +10, Bow Prowess 5 +15, Empire Snipers lvl 5 +10 is 171 to hit without supports (which often add +10-30 hit) or the +20 ability. Theoretically above 200 hit.

I equipped the accuracy ring pretty early on, iron bow+ is early, bow prowess 2 or 3 still gets you +8-10 hit, empire snipers is 'C' level authority, but you can actually get more +5 more hit from D level Serios/Empire/Alliance Archers. Enemies have much less speed/avoid early on as well. So not just a late-game situation.

Edited August 13, 2019 by ra2bk