Would you use this underachieving thing? (FE TH) Round 23: Recovery Roar

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I think if CF had the Chapter 13 that the other routes did, but said chapter 13 had battle preps (because why wouldn't they, at least for the two main characters?), I'd go with an armored Lord/Fortress Knight Edelgard for sure. In chapters like that, physical defense is king. I'm just not familiar enough with CF's unique meta other than having way less time to nab class masteries due to shorter length.

I've seen a lot of people content with armor knight Edelgard to make me wonder about her maddening mode performance for any scenario besides LTC and speedrunning. I already know Fortress Knight builds can kick ass in Maddening's mid-late game, but Edelgard's stat spread is so balanced and above average that the hit to speed and no free weight -5 to compensate hurts. The only downside to wyvern Edelgard I can think of is that flying batallions, even the high rank ones, have garbage gambits to take full advantage of her exceptional charm stat.

[Jotari]

I used it in my one Crimson Flower route and imo it completely destroyed Edelgard's usability. Well Armoured Lord did, Emperor gave enough boosts to not be completely awful, but you have it for all of five minutes before the game ends. If they could at least use magic then I'd use them for fun factor, but they can't, so they come across as rather useless. Honestly I wish the lord's in this game didn't even have a unique Advanced class. When the time skip hits they're going to be close to Master level promotion as is and by this point Byleth has already been given Enlightened One. Just give me Emperor right from the time skip, no need for Armoured Lord (or High Lord/Wyrven Master). Not like there's any fanfare at all when you get the Master Classes. It's just "BTW you can arbitrarily be a Barbarossa now."

Edited January 17, 2020 by Jotari

[Dark Holy Elf]

Cichol Wyverns is my general pick for her batallion; it gives huge atk/hit, requires A rank (which means your fliers who don't have authority boon have more trouble getting to it), and has an offensive gambit (Assault Troop is 2 shots of 1x4, it's not outstanding like the lord gambits but I wouldn't call it garbage). Black Eagle Pegasus has similar excellent stats but you probably want to give that one to someone with lower charm since it has Retribution.

I think many people will generally be content with armour knight Edelgard because Edelgard is a very good unit. But the benefit to using fliers in CF is particularly strong due to how much terrain three of the last four maps have.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Dark Holy Elf

[Jotari]

12 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

I think if CF had the Chapter 13 that the other routes did, but said chapter 13 had battle preps (because why wouldn't they, at least for the two main characters?), I'd go with an armored Lord/Fortress Knight Edelgard for sure. In chapters like that, physical defense is king. I'm just not familiar enough with CF's unique meta other than having way less time to nab class masteries due to shorter length.

I've seen a lot of people content with armor knight Edelgard to make me wonder about her maddening mode performance for any scenario besides LTC and speedrunning. I already know Fortress Knight builds can kick ass in Maddening's mid-late game, but Edelgard's stat spread is so balanced and above average that the hit to speed and no free weight -5 to compensate hurts. The only downside to wyvern Edelgard I can think of is that flying batallions, even the high rank ones, have garbage gambits to take full advantage of her exceptional charm stat.

I played Armoured Lord on maddening and yeah, she was getting doubled by absolutely everything and without the significant defenses to reliably survive even one round of combat. Emperor also got doubled all the time but it's defense boost was manageable enough to not be terrible.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

2 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Cichol Wyverns is my general pick for her batallion; it gives huge atk/hit, requires A rank (which means your fliers who don't have authority boon have more trouble getting to it), and has an offensive gambit (Assault Troop is 2 shots of 1x4, it's not outstanding like the lord gambits but I wouldn't call it garbage). Black Eagle Pegasus has similar excellent stats but you probably want to give that one to someone with lower charm since it has Retribution.

Right, thank you for the correction. Most flier batallions are assembly, lure, and reversal. Essentially draw back, reposition, and swap commands with a single enemy that only hit two spaces in a straight line. Pretty annoying in my opinion that they can't hit more spaces. But Cichol wyverns is available early (even if you won't be using it any time soon). Assault Troop is often the most I can ask for a non support gambit. And you're also right about black eagles pegasus being available from chapter 13 on CF and SS. Also an A rank batallion, though generally all my physical attackers, including wyverns, would love to take advantage of retribution, having it on a flier probably isn't much of a waste.

[Interdimensional Observer]

I don't understand why the lords needed two special promotion classes, and yet the weaker one takes far too long to master to get the very not worth it Graduation Music skill. There probably could've been a better gameplay way to express the same story sentiment. I say this having done nothing but battles between each chapter nevermind Edel went WR and Dim Pally.

[Jotari]

Just now, Interdimensional Observer said:

I don't understand why the lords needed two special promotion classes, and yet the weaker one takes far too long to master to get the very not worth it Graduation Music skill. There probably could've been a better gameplay way to express the same story sentiment. I say this having done nothing but battles between each chapter nevermind Edel went WR and Dim Pally.

There is no story sentiment. The game just informs you that you have their unique master level class on the end of the week screen and the story justification is basically non existent. Edelgard just gets some new armour sent from the capital which could be done at any time. Having them come back from the timeskip in their master class would be much more poignant. Edelgard is emperor after the timeskip after all (and well a bit before it actually), let her have the emperor class as soon as she starts doing her hair differently.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Wow, thanks for choosing my suggestion @Glennstavos! Again, I'm really enjoying this series, lots of good discussion to be had.

Perhaps it's no surprise, given that I suggested it, but I'm saying no to Armored Lord and Emperor. I found myself massively disappointed with Edelgard (supposedly an S-tier unit) on my first CF playthrough. Perhaps she got screwed on growths, but I think a huge aspect was my "mistake" of leaving her in her promoted Lord classes. Obviously, she's much better on a Wyvern (and it's her best class), but when compared to Armored Lord and Emperor, I think she'd rather be a Warrior, or a Great Knight, or even an odd build like Assassin or Dark Knight. I honestly found myself de-classing her post-skip back to Brigand, in which she has higher speed and strength (because forget giving armors acceptable attack power haha).

The classes have good defense, sure, but most enemies who double her are gonna make her suffer. Curiously, while the classes are better overall than Fortress Knight (higher movement, Charm support), they actually have less defense (and sometimes less AS, due to missing innate Weight-5). Pomp & Circumstance gives boosts in not-great stats (at a time when you have much better skills), and while Flickering Flower is a strong combat art (+10 Mt/Hit/Crit), you'll have almost no time to actually make use of it on a typical CF route. Not to mention, having to consign El to an awful class forever.

In sum, Edelgard deserved better.

[Interdimensional Observer]

15 minutes ago, Jotari said:

There is no story sentiment. The game just informs you that you have their unique master level class on the end of the week screen and the story justification is basically non existent. Edelgard just gets some new armour sent from the capital which could be done at any time.

WHAT? Claude just gets a special pigeon no-one else can ride/there aren't any others out of nowhere? No major reason?

As for the bolded, since I've almost finished my second TRS run, I'm reminded that Runan and Holmes both promote when they get new old (it belonged to their dads) armor too. The difference is they get it only after happily liberating their homes (and Holmes gets a 14 Mt 80 Hit 7 Wt 30 Uses sword that negates all enemy Def too, anyone can use it).

Edited January 17, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Parrhesia]

Armour is really cool even if it's kind of shit in most games. For Edie specifically, yeah, I'm biased in favour of any personal class. If I could put up with the fashion disaster that was Enlightened One, I can put up with massive armour, and expect to in CF.

[Jotari]

5 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

WHAT? Claude just gets a special pigeon no-one else can ride out/there aren't any others out of nowhere? No major reason?

As for the bolded, since I've almost finished my second TRS run, I'm reminded that Runan and Holmes both promote when they get new old (it belonged to their dads) armor too. The difference is they get it only after happily liberating their homes (and Holmes gets a 14 Mt 80 Hit 7 Wt 30 Uses sword that negates all enemy Def too, anyone can use it).

It's like three houses decided to take the worst from both worlds. The limitation of plot based promotions, yet the banality of standard promotions. At least you can just promote a lord into a different Master Class, but if you're going to have unique lord classes gained at a certain point in the game, then actually do something with that point in the game! They know how to do it, they did it with Enlightened One (though even there I don't think you actually promote mid chapter like the plot would suggest, which is a shame). If we had them for all of the post timeskip we could actually have fun with their personal combat arts. Fickle Flower looks great as a combat art, yet I had it for just the last few turns of a single map to use it (and because Claude doesn't have as much enemy phase, the same was true for his Combat Art even though he has access to the class for longer). At least if I play the game again I can just get the combat arts from new game+. But I shouldn't have to.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

31 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Wow, thanks for choosing my suggestion @Glennstavos! Again, I'm really enjoying this series, lots of good discussion to be had.

Thanks, I've actually gotten several good suggestions from this thread for future topics that I agreed on immediately. So I'll be going through them a while. The OP's list of potential future topics was very out of date, in particular with some bad suggestions, so I updated it. I think we do need to be careful about weapons as a topic, since inventory space is pretty lenient in my experience, so I find it pretty easy to say "yeah I'm okay with this sitting in my inventory for the day I finally use it once or twice". Keep the suggestions coming, folks.

And on that note, I am also really interested in doing Defiant ______ skills (all of them at once), but I'm not sure which of them, if any to exclude. Defiant Crit stacks very well with wrath/vantage builds, and even takes the place of battalion wrath for those units that lack that skill to pull off such a brutally effective build. However, the question is simply "would you use", and I think the reality is that a lot of people wouldn't go to the trouble of unlocking and spending an ability slot on even the good Defiant stat boosters. Personally, I would exclude none of them for the poll, but I'm curious if anybody thinks no exclusions would be a mistake for the sake of balance.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Glennstavos

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 minute ago, Glennstavos said:

And on that note, I am also really interested in doing Defiant ______ skills, but I'm not sure which of them, if any to exclude. Defiant Crit stacks very well with wrath/vantage builds, and even takes the place of battalion wrath for those units that lack that skill to pull off such a brutally effective build. However, the question is simply "would you use", and I think the reality is that a lot of people wouldn't go to the trouble of unlocking and spending an ability slot on even the good Defiant stat boosters. Personally, I would exclude none of them for the poll, but I'm curious if anybody thinks no exclusions would be a mistake.

If I'm understanding right, you want to use "Defiant ______ skills" as a single prompt? So it's all of them? Potentially, you could include a middle-ground answer ("I would use or two of them" or "Some, but not all"), but I could understand preserving the current yes/no binary. If you do choose to exclude some, Defiant Strength might be worth excluding too, since male units can get it much earlier than most other Defiant skills, and it combines similarly well with wrath/vantage on physical units. But I've never really used any of them, so ultimately I dunno.

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

Warrior is a better option than this in my opinion.

Warrior.

[Sid Starkiller]

I use it, but I LITERALLY ALWAYS use personal classes. At least the DLC Boots help with the movement issue.

On the "no story importance" thing, Dimitri's could have had story importance, but they fucked it up. Given that High Lord's armor is almost entirely black, and Great Lord's armor is a mix of white and black, they could have been used to symbolize Dimitri in crazy-as-fuck mode and Dimitri attempting to atone for his sins. Unfortunately, they give it to him before Gronder 2. They should have given it to him after retaking Fhirdiad.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Sid Starkiller

[Shadow Mir]

45 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

I think we do need to be careful about weapons as a topic, since inventory space is pretty lenient in my experience, so I find it pretty easy to say "yeah I'm okay with this sitting in my inventory for the day I finally use it once or twice". 

I dunno - I honestly think there are some real stinkers in the weapons department.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Jotari]

44 minutes ago, Sid Starkiller said:

I use it, but I LITERALLY ALWAYS use personal classes. At least the DLC Boots help with the movement issue.

On the "no story importance" thing, Dimitri's could have had story importance, but they fucked it up. Given that High Lord's armor is almost entirely black, and Great Lord's armor is a mix of white and black, they could have been used to symbolize Dimitri in crazy-as-fuck mode and Dimitri attempting to atone for his sins. Unfortunately, they give it to him before Gronder 2. They should have given it to him after retaking Fhirdiad.

I could go with after Gronder rather than before Ferdihad just to get another chapter out of it. After Gronder is when he has his turning point after all.

Another thing they could have done was make the Master classes optional and regulate them to paralogues. Like maybe there's a special cave with some legendary armour in it somewhere that Edelgard discovers and by beating the paralogue you get access to it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

51 minutes ago, Sid Starkiller said:

I use it, but I LITERALLY ALWAYS use personal classes. At least the DLC Boots help with the movement issue.

On the "no story importance" thing, Dimitri's could have had story importance, but they fucked it up. Given that High Lord's armor is almost entirely black, and Great Lord's armor is a mix of white and black, they could have been used to symbolize Dimitri in crazy-as-fuck mode and Dimitri attempting to atone for his sins. Unfortunately, they give it to him before Gronder 2. They should have given it to him after retaking Fhirdiad.

Yeah, I definitely agree; Fhirdiad would have been a great time. They could have called the class Saviour King.

Of course in this version I'd probably want Dimitri to be in his penultimate class (High Lord or whatever it gets renamed) when fought as an enemy on VW (and probably CF too, though I can see arguments there), but it's easy to juice his stats a little to compensate since boss stats are arbitrary.

[Jotari]

15 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yeah, I definitely agree; Fhirdiad would have been a great time. They could have called the class Saviour King.

Of course in this version I'd probably want Dimitri to be in his penultimate class (High Lord or whatever it gets renamed) when fought as an enemy on VW (and probably CF too, though I can see arguments there), but it's easy to juice his stats a little to compensate since boss stats are arbitrary.

Haha. Reminds me how I fought Lorenz (whom I recruited but didn't train) as an enemy and he had over 70 hp. Somehow joining Byleth's side caused him to lose half his life force.

[Sid Starkiller]

23 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I could go with after Gronder rather than before Ferdihad just to get another chapter out of it. After Gronder is when he has his turning point after all.

Another thing they could have done was make the Master classes optional and regulate them to paralogues. Like maybe there's a special cave with some legendary armour in it somewhere that Edelgard discovers and by beating the paralogue you get access to it.

True, I just thought Fhirdiad because they could have some blacksmith NPC be all "King Dimitri! We're all so glad you've returned to us! I'm gonna make you some custom armor to commemorate this joyous occasion!" Either one works.

[Jotari]

4 minutes ago, Sid Starkiller said:

True, I just thought Fhirdiad because they could have some blacksmith NPC be all "King Dimitri! We're all so glad you've returned to us! I'm gonna make you some custom armor to commemorate this joyous occasion!" Either one works.

Spoiler

Rodrigue brings Dimitri his father's armour, but Dimitri is too ashamed to use it until Rodrigue dies.

 

[Jayvee94]

Armored Lord and emperor are useful as GUARD ADJUTANTS

[Geenoble]

I actually really like Armors in Three Houses, Maddening specifically. Maddening involves lots of careful moving and reposition on fliers as well as dancing and stride can somewhat negate the crap movement, and the benefits of having a unit that can tank multiple enemies is really useful. They’re also the best unit type vs Falcon Knights which is cool.

But surprisingly I would say No to armoured lord. One of the best things about Armored units in this game is that Post Timeskip you can negate a lot of their weaknesses with QR, I’ve done this in all my playthroughs and it lets them live hits from mages and double enemies that would otherwise double them. Edelgard can’t get this skill because IS decided women couldn’t punch things in BDSM gear.

Edelgard also doesn’t have spectacular bulk, it is good in Emperor, but will almost be nowhere near as good as the ‘tanky units’ Like Raph or Alois. The negative speed modifier also really hurts her since Edelgard is a unit that even on maddening can double a lot of enemies. She is much better as a warrior for better offence, and off Wyvern is busted and that’s her best class.

If other people could use the class I would definitely use it. Emperor Dedue would be great with QR and other things, but it isn’t great on El.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

8 hours ago, Jayvee94 said:

Armored Lord and emperor are useful as GUARD ADJUTANTS

Can you even use the classes as adjutants in main story missions, though? Obviously you can make Edelgard an adjutant in paralogues and auxiliary battles, but she's obligatory to deploy in all story missions, right?

[Jayvee94]

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Can you even use the classes as adjutants in main story missions, though? Obviously you can make Edelgard an adjutant in paralogues and auxiliary battles, but she's obligatory to deploy in all story missions, right?

Oh, right. Forgot about that.