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Why Eliwood is so hated?


Altha
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Just finished my 2nd playthrough in general and 1st HM playthrough of FE7. So I have a question, why Eliwood is so hated? Don't get me wrong, guy is worse than than Hector and a bunch of cast, but he is not bad, at least at HM. Yeah, he have poor bases, not enough good Rapier, ok for this game standarts growths and late promotion, but on top of that he have some qualities.
First off his promotion. Yeah it's late, but it's a good one. His promo gives him a horse and access to javelins and lances(which are way better than swords). His promo bonuses are also good, giving him access to more enemies, who he can double. His damage output is also good and on that point of the game he becomes good and goes on par with other Paladins(don't kill me for that sentence).
The fact that no one besides Marcus and sometimes Hector cannot kill properly. So in order to get exp you most of the time would damage an enemy with one unit and then kill with another. If keep that in balance beetween units all of your units including Eliwood get enough exp to get a several levels, so it's easy time for him to level up(looks like a Leif FE5 situation). 
His utility in the game after promotion is very good, he literally becomes a Paladin without axes to access(sorry). And that already pulls him above a bunch of scrub like Lyn or Bartre(or name another meme characters). And at that point he even become better than Hector because Spd and horse. 
Mention that I did not slow myself down in order to get exp for Eliwood, heck I even gave Marcus almost solo some chapters. So I want to you to correct me, because it's looks like something wrong with me that I found Eliwood not a bad lord. How does it changed in HHM? What was your expirience with Eliwood?

Edited by Altha
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He's not Lyn tier but there's just no reason to use him other than it's fun to watch him grow. His promotion is the best of the three lords, but you have to appreciate that his promotion is just "cavalier that can use the rapier". And by that point, even on Hector mode, your cavaliers have become paladins. Even if Eliwood had an earlier promotion he still would struggle against high tiers in usability since FE7 gives you so many awesome pre-promotes that require no investment.

I think Eliwood has become less hated over the years, though, especially in terms of character.

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13 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Being sword locked for most of the game hurts when the game heavily favours lances.

Yeah, that's hurts. But even in that moments he can do a cheap damage because most of the lance users are cavs or armors, he can also kill them with Rapier, when he comes to double area. Like I said before in the early game only 2 units can reliably kill enemies, so it's an easy time to level him up to lvl 9-10 and then give him kill few enemies per chapter and he'll be fine by chapter when first Heaven Seal comes

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The problem Eliwood has is that his stats need to be within a certain threshold for him to perform well, and there's a limited amount of time for him to gain those stats before we get a plethora of other units that have the stats, movement, or weapons to do whatever he can do better. If he does grow well initially that might not be true; Eliwood can snowball into a decent unit, but if it takes effort to train him his utility doesn't outweigh the time it takes to train him.

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10 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

He's not Lyn tier but there's just no reason to use him other than it's fun to watch him grow. His promotion is the best of the three lords, but you have to appreciate that his promotion is just "cavalier that can use the rapier". And by that point, even on Hector mode, your cavaliers have become paladins. Even if Eliwood had an earlier promotion he still would struggle against high tiers in usability since FE7 gives you so many awesome pre-promotes that require no investment.

I think Eliwood has become less hated over the years, though, especially in terms of character.

But you can also deploy him with those great pre-promotes. I've never asked myself "should I deploy Eliwood instead of X character?", most of the time I asked myself "who I gonna use to not deploy Lyn". I used most of the pre-promotes except Wallace, Louise, Jaffar and Hawkeye(I somehow forgot about him on some point) and I've never have a problem with Eliwood deployment

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2 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

The problem Eliwood has is that his stats need to be within a certain threshold for him to perform well, and there's a limited amount of time for him to gain those stats before we get a plethora of other units that have the stats, movement, or weapons to do whatever he can do better. If he does grow well initially that might not be true; Eliwood can snowball into a decent unit, but if it takes effort to train him his utility doesn't outweigh the time it takes to train him.

That's fair, I see the point. Does the situation in HHM is much different from HNM?

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That's fair, I see the point. Does the situation in HHM is much different from HNM?

I haven't played HNM in a long time, but I'd imagine that Eliwood would have more opportunites to level efficiently in HNM. That is also true of other characters to be sure, but HNM Eliwood should be better than HHM Eliwood.

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2 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

I haven't played HNM in a long time, but I'd imagine that Eliwood would have more opportunites to level efficiently in HNM. That is also true of other characters to be sure, but HNM Eliwood should be better than HHM Eliwood.

I see , thanks.

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Eliwood is unique in the fact that he can kill the dragon in one turn (not one battle) without a crit.  It takes a bit of RNG luck to get there, since he needs to cap one of his stats to pull it off.

His stat caps are decent, but not great.  His growths are decent, but not great.  His bases are nothing to write home about.  In a game where bases can carry a unit a very long way, he's not in a good spot.  Couple it with swords-only and a late promotion on his own mode, and yeah. . .

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52 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Eliwood is unique in the fact that he can kill the dragon in one turn (not one battle) without a crit.  It takes a bit of RNG luck to get there, since he needs to cap one of his stats to pull it off.

His stat caps are decent, but not great.  His growths are decent, but not great.  His bases are nothing to write home about.  In a game where bases can carry a unit a very long way, he's not in a good spot.  Couple it with swords-only and a late promotion on his own mode, and yeah. . .

Getting Athos to crit is waaaay more reliable and easy than getting Eliwood to max one of his stats 

Edited by Gordin
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Because at the beginning he doesn't hit hard (except against cavaliers and knights thanks to rapier) and he's not fast enough to doublt most of the enemies and to dodge has often as we want.

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2 hours ago, Altha said:

Yeah, that's hurts. But even in that moments he can do a cheap damage because most of the lance users are cavs or armors, he can also kill them with Rapier, when he comes to double area. Like I said before in the early game only 2 units can reliably kill enemies, so it's an easy time to level him up to lvl 9-10 and then give him kill few enemies per chapter and he'll be fine by chapter when first Heaven Seal comes

The problem is, his situation is not like that of Ike, who's one of the very few units who can damage the final boss in Path of Radiance, and thus would actually warrant investment - I have Hector, who's going to be better against it barring extreme (and I do mean extreme) RNG luck on Eliwood's part, and Athos, who does 30 damage to it guaranteed.

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The problem is, his situation is not like that of Ike, who's one of the very few units who can damage the final boss in Path of Radiance, and thus would actually warrant investment

FE9 is a bit of a special case to be fair. Growth units in that game are at a significant advantage over every other Fire Emblem game because of the bonus exp mechanics. Eliwood is going to compare at least somewhat more favorably to units that aren't going to be good from the get-go.

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He got 2nd in this year's CYL3, though.

Assuming you mean historically, I think it's less hate and more indifference. Of the 3 FE7 lords Eliwood has the most basic character and the worst combat, so most people end up latching onto either Lyn or Hector over him. Time seems to have done him favors, though, as he's gotten quite a lot of love from the fanbase in the past few years.

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On 11/27/2019 at 11:16 AM, Gordin said:

Getting Athos to crit is waaaay more reliable and easy than getting Eliwood to max one of his stats 

I mean, it's not like you have the entire game to plan this out.  Stat manipulation is a thing, just like crit manipulation.

In other words, if you're going to make a flippant comment, I expect a little bit of knowledge.  The fact that you're assuming that this is hard shows me that you probably don't know what I'm referring to.

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1 hour ago, eclipse said:

I mean, it's not like you have the entire game to plan this out.  Stat manipulation is a thing, just like crit manipulation.

In other words, if you're going to make a flippant comment, I expect a little bit of knowledge.  The fact that you're assuming that this is hard shows me that you probably don't know what I'm referring to.

Yeah Stat manipulation is a thing but it's just way more trouble than it's worth than just getting Athos to crit. With Athos you don't need the entire game to plan it out. You can do it the chapter he joins with not much effort. The exp you even spend on Eliwood is better used on others but that's beside the point

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I think combatwise Eliwood isn't too terrible, even though he is (basically) swordlocked for the entire game. To me, Eliwood's  As mentioned before by @eclipse, Eliwood can kill the Dragon in one turn. But in general, he's average. I really don't think Eliwood is a hated character at all in FE7, it's just that a lot people are either indifferent or don't have a real opinion of him. He's... average. He's definitely the most boring lord out of the three, both in story, personality, and combat. I mean combat as in, Eliwood is just that one lord with a sword. Lame. Meanwhile, you have Hector, the most badass character in FE7, wielding an axe and shitting on the enemies. And then you have Lyn, who I'm sure was every male FE player's first crush. Yeah. Eliwood is totally the middle child here. 

 

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On 11/27/2019 at 12:55 PM, Altha said:

But you can also deploy him with those great pre-promotes. I've never asked myself "should I deploy Eliwood instead of X character?", most of the time I asked myself "who I gonna use to not deploy Lyn". I used most of the pre-promotes except Wallace, Louise, Jaffar and Hawkeye(I somehow forgot about him on some point) and I've never have a problem with Eliwood deployment

That's actually part of the difference. In HHM, they give you fewer deployment slots. I find it very hard to justify bringing Eliwood instead of any of the number of characters that are better than him. Others have said that he's Sword locked but even then, there are other Sword locked units that outperform him. Guy is noticeably one of the strongest units early on in HHM, and Raven is much better than Eliwood. They don't get horses, but neither does Eliwood until later in the game, and they are a lot stronger early on and can promote much earlier. You have to use him when he is at his weakest and bested by so many other units in order for him to become good later on. And even then, I don't think he can be as good as many other units later either. He takes too much investment to train early on and doesn't really yield any better results than other characters. I wanted to train both Eliwood and Lyn when I recently played HHM in order to get Geitz, but I used other units instead because they helped to make the game easier, since they were already stronger than Eliwood. Just to be clear, Eliwood can be used, and he might end up good. I just don't think that he as good as most other units in this game.

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On 12/10/2019 at 9:34 PM, Whisky said:

That's actually part of the difference. In HHM, they give you fewer deployment slots. I find it very hard to justify bringing Eliwood instead of any of the number of characters that are better than him. Others have said that he's Sword locked but even then, there are other Sword locked units that outperform him. Guy is noticeably one of the strongest units early on in HHM, and Raven is much better than Eliwood. They don't get horses, but neither does Eliwood until later in the game, and they are a lot stronger early on and can promote much earlier. You have to use him when he is at his weakest and bested by so many other units in order for him to become good later on. And even then, I don't think he can be as good as many other units later either. He takes too much investment to train early on and doesn't really yield any better results than other characters. I wanted to train both Eliwood and Lyn when I recently played HHM in order to get Geitz, but I used other units instead because they helped to make the game easier, since they were already stronger than Eliwood. Just to be clear, Eliwood can be used, and he might end up good. I just don't think that he as good as most other units in this game.

Thank you for your respond. So, deployment slots is a problem. I'm yet to play HHM, but in HM it was not a problem for me, most of the time I thought who I gonna pick to bench Lyn and I ever have deployment slots for most units I wanted to use, so it's wasn't an issue to me to use Eliwood. But I see now what's the problem with him in HHM. Also, yeah, there are a lot of units that outperform him being in HHM. I saw Guy and Raven bases on HHM, so it's no wonder to me why Eliwood is not even a good sword-locked unit. Again, thank you very much for explaining why Eliwood isn't that good in HHM. Sadly this is not explaining for me why he get so much hate, while being better than some units that are not hated

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22 hours ago, Altha said:

Thank you for your respond. So, deployment slots is a problem. I'm yet to play HHM, but in HM it was not a problem for me, most of the time I thought who I gonna pick to bench Lyn and I ever have deployment slots for most units I wanted to use, so it's wasn't an issue to me to use Eliwood. But I see now what's the problem with him in HHM. Also, yeah, there are a lot of units that outperform him being in HHM. I saw Guy and Raven bases on HHM, so it's no wonder to me why Eliwood is not even a good sword-locked unit. Again, thank you very much for explaining why Eliwood isn't that good in HHM. Sadly this is not explaining for me why he get so much hate, while being better than some units that are not hated

I don’t think I can help you with that, sorry. Is Eliwood even hated, generally? Maybe that’s just the perception you have from your experiences? I have a friend that loves him. Is he hated for being a ‘bad’ unit, or for his character/personality? I know that some people find him boring. 

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Just now, Whisky said:

I don’t think I can help you with that, sorry. Is Eliwood even hated, generally? Maybe that’s just the perception you have from your experiences? I have a friend that loves him. Is he hated for being a ‘bad’ unit, or for his character/personality? I know that some people find him boring. 

Both actually. But I see more often people claim him being bad unit rather than a bad character. Maybe I percieve this situation too radically, but if I go to other forums, I see that people really don't like him. I see why he may not be liked as a unit, since not that good bases, overall ok growths, poor mobility, etc. And I sympathize his place in the tier lists, but there is also other units or lords that waaay worse than him and they're just ignored. 

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1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

What lords are you talking about that are way worse than him?

Lyn, Eirika, Roy, Marth(FE11), maybe even Ike from FE9(the lack of 1-2 range option is really hurts him in such an easy game), Celica(but there I might just nitpicking to Celica route in general). Ike and Eirika not way worse than Eliwood since they're both in a much easier games, but the lack of mobility and/or lack of 1-2 range option really hurts him which make them worse imo

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