Cavalry Need Help - Agree or Disagree?

[Anacybele]

I do think cavalry need help in this game right now. Yeah, I'm kinda biased towards them because horses, but I'm also biased for Pegasi and I'm not saying fliers need help.

I only think cavalry (and healers, but that's another category, I'm only talking movement type here) need a boost right now. For several reasons.

- Their utility is hindered by the many maps that have trees and trenches since they cannot pass through the former and can only move one space in the latter.
- They have the lowest BST of any movement type (I think. Either way, they have lower BST than some)
- They score low in arena and aren't as useful in some infernal and abyssal maps because of the lower BST
- They have access to fewer skills than the other movement types

Yeah, cavalry can't even get high enough scores in arena because they lack enough BST due to that dumbass factor. They haven't even gotten duel skills to help with that while infantry and fliers did get them! They can't even get as many dragonflower boosts as some units because that only applies to gen 1 infantry and any ranged infantry. When they need it just as much.

So my suggestions are:

- Let cavalry access more dragonflower boosts (technically, this is going to be a thing due to the Feh Channel announcement, but everybody's getting more dragonflowers, not just them, so it doesn't really solve the issue).

- Introduce R/G/B/C Duel Riding/Cavalry skills PLEASE.

- Introduce some more exclusive skills for them as well. They basically have none beyond cavalry buffs! I can't think of any others. Let's work stuff like Canto into the game. Canto can generally be used by fliers as well, but that's still something. Bring in a skill akin to Iote's Shield and Grani's Shield, but for cavalry. This doesn't exist yet either!

- Introduce a cavalry refresher. Cavalry is also the only movement type that has not gotten a single refresher.

I don't get why IS hasn't done some of this already, particularly duel skills for cavalry. Are they afraid of Reinhardt or something? Reinhardt is really good and is probably at least a big part of the reason for cavalry nerfing over this game's more recent years, but he's not difficult to counter. Throw in Brave Ike, female Robin, somebody like that. Any good green mage or mixed tank can deal with him. He's only potentially dominant in the hands of the player, not so much the AI. When I face an enemy cavalry team these days, it's too easy to defeat them unless there's some crazy combination setup with legendary Leif and Brave Veronica or something like that. And even then, I still don't have as much trouble dealing with them as I do certain armored, infantry, and flier teams. Even when I see a cavalry team in AR, I can typically handle them with a lot less trouble than a team that has, say, laguz fliers, Ophelia, or armored dragons.

And even though Reinhardt would be able to use some cavalry exclusive skills, he wouldn't be able to use all of them since some could be melee cavalry only, and other cavalry could access them as well. He wouldn't be THAT much better compared to other units.

Now, I realize a cavalry refresher could potentially be pretty broken. But hey, we've seen broken shit in this game already, haven't we? Nothing stopped IS from making stupid stuff like Surtr. Adding a cavalry refresher might actually balance out things a bit rather than totally break the game because of that. The best thing to counter something that's broken is to use something else that's broken, I'd say. Also, with how difficult abyssal maps can be, this might even be a godsend. Also, of course, this refresher would be 5 star exclusive, not easy to get.

Feel free to discuss these suggestions and/or provide your own!

Edited August 14, 2020 by Anacybele

[Fabulously Olivier]

Agreed. They've been overzealous in their approach to tackling a small minority of strong cavalry units, through excessive anti-cavalry terrain, strong skills that are disabled for the unit type, power creeping BSTs to high heaven, stronger anti-buff skills that eliminate the main blade tome cavalry playstyle, lackluster weapon refines for most f2p cavalry, etc.

 

The strongest cavalry units - the Reinhardts, Eliwoods, Brave Veronicas, etc. - are very much capable of competing with modern units.... but most aren't.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Fabulously Olivier

[Anacybele]

6 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Agreed. They've been overzealous in their approach to tackling a small minority of strong cavalry units, through excessive anti-cavalry terrain, strong skills that are disabled for the unit type, power creeping BSTs to high heaven, stronger anti-buff skills that eliminate the main blade tome cavalry playstyle, lackluster weapon refines for most f2p cavalry, etc.

 

The strongest cavalry units - the Reinhardts, Eliwoods, Brave Veronicas, etc. - are very much capable of competing with modern units.... but most aren't.

Yeah, exactly! And I honestly want to blame those few really good cavalry units for the lack of help for the others. IS is too afraid of combining exclusive skills and stuff with those Reinhardts, Eliwoods, Veronicas, etc. But why when they're apparently okay with crap like Surtr and all...

[Fabulously Olivier]

Also, I'd say that cavalry being dominant was good for the health of the game. They are substantially more fun to use due to their high mobility and reliance on buffs. Whereas the armor units that the game shoves down our throats are by far the least fun units to use with their low mobility and sledgehammer approach to combat. The game has been actively encouraging its least fun playstyles.

[Othin]

I'd definitely be on board with more cavalry-specific skills, especially Cavalry Duel skills. Not sure why they've been dragging their feet so long on those.

I think the main issue with a cavalry refresher would be frustration in PvP modes. I don't want to have to fight against them.

[XRay]

Cavalry are fine as they are now.

BST does not matter for most units. Stat distribution matters more. Player phase units do not care about bulk, and most tanks do not use all their stats. The only meta relevant units that need all stats to be high are Spd super tanks. For player phase cavalry, especially ranged ones, mos of their stat distributions are fine. The only tanks that use all their stats are Spd super tanks, and even then, a significant portion or their stats come from buffers, so having low BST is not a huge detriment. Cavalry super tanks still have access to Lulls and Stances, so while they lack variety, the options they have are not bad.

Scoring low in Arena does not matter either unless the player is playing competitively. Players can still bounce between Tier 19 and Tier 20 with the lowest scoring units with minimal score optimization so having high BST is not going to help cavalry players go any higher unless they go all out on SP scoring skills.

1 minute ago, Anacybele said:

Yeah, exactly! And I honestly want to blame those few really good cavalry units for the lack of help for the others. IS is too afraid of combining exclusive skills and stuff with those Reinhardts, Eliwoods, Veronicas, etc. But why when they're apparently okay with crap like Surtr and all...

Surtr is not good. He is pretty pathetic and easy to kill. A blade mage can overwhelm his bulk and Firesweepers can quickly whittle him down.

Just because a tiny minority of players have issue with bulky units does not mean most players have issues with them. Armor units are not that relevant in the meta.

[bottlegnomes]

I feel like a lot of it is really more holdover from year 1-2, not so much recent. I can honestly get where they were coming from then. Reinhardt was a problem. Like sure we can complain about Surtr, Tibarn, or Ophelia, but Reinhardt and Brave Lyn were way more dominant in their heyday.

Currently, they are still lacking in skills, but they at least have lulls which are pretty nice and it seems like IS is starting to loosen up there.

I think the biggest issue is that basically anyone without a good personal weapon and/or skill is going to be mediocre. Sure Quan is terrible, but Perceval and Sirius are both pretty solid--Perceval can even be a solid mixed tank from what I hear. Compare that to infantry, who are probably the best overall type at this point. Legendary Roy's statline isn't too far off Larcei's, but he's mediocre because his weapon isn't anything special. Then take Echidna and Gerik who also have good statlines but are even worse off because they're stuck to generic weapons. At least Echidna has the benefit of being easily mergable.

I do agree cavalry could use some more toys, and the lack of a dancer is weirdly conspicuous, but I don't think they specifically are in need. Fliers could use some help too IMO, and actually armors a bit now that BF/VF aren't as uniquely powerful and infantry has basically the same BST with just as many, if not more, powerful skills. I say this as someone whose favorite movement type is cavalry. I think the bigger issue is the power gap between the best personal weapons and everything else. And then I mean there are the ever present issues of the lack of easy-access premium skills and how ridiculously far behind early gen units are.

[Anacybele]

22 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Also, I'd say that cavalry being dominant was good for the health of the game. They are substantially more fun to use due to their high mobility and reliance on buffs. Whereas the armor units that the game shoves down our throats are by far the least fun units to use with their low mobility and sledgehammer approach to combat. The game has been actively encouraging its least fun playstyles.

I agree with this too. I hate using armors. I find cavalry and fliers more fun to use. Infantry I'm just okay on.

14 minutes ago, XRay said:

Cavalry are fine as they are now.

And I greatly disagree.

14 minutes ago, XRay said:

BST does not matter for most units. Stat distribution matters more. Player phase units do not care about bulk, and most tanks do not use all their stats. The only meta relevant units that need all stats to be high are Spd super tanks. For player phase cavalry, especially ranged ones, mos of their stat distributions are fine. The only tanks that use all their stats are Spd super tanks, and even then, a significant portion or their stats come from buffers, so having low BST is not a huge detriment. Cavalry super tanks still have access to Lulls and Stances, so while they lack variety, the options they have are not bad.

Scoring low in Arena does not matter either unless the player is playing competitively. Players can still bounce between Tier 19 and Tier 20 with the lowest scoring units with minimal score optimization so having high BST is not going to help cavalry players go any higher unless they go all out on SP scoring skills.

An infantry or flier unit with similar stat distribution to a cavalry unit will still have better stats and usage for many game modes. And what if someone does want to be competitive in arena? As someone that finds armors unfun to use, I don't want to be forced to use them if I want a crown or something. BST should've never been a factor in arena to begin with, but now we're stuck with it because of the duel skills. You remove the BST factor, those skills are completely useless.

Also, there's the matter of bonus units for arena. Not all of them will be armors. Sometimes there will be none. Sometimes some will be low-scoring cavalry. You can't always use an armor as a bonus unit and you need a bonus unit for scoring.

14 minutes ago, XRay said:

Surtr is not good. He is pretty pathetic and easy to kill. A blade mage can overwhelm his bulk and Firesweepers can quickly whittle him down.

Except I most often see him in AR where I wouldn't use those unit types since mixed tanks are best for AR offense. At least for me. And I was moreso talking about when he first came out. He was ridiculous then.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Anacybele

[bottlegnomes]

I think we should shy away from making anything more than subjective opinon statements on which unit types are fun to use. I also love cavs and fliers, but IIRC @Ice Dragon enjoys EP units and armors far more.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I laughed at the notion of Ophelia being better for the game than Reinhardt.

 

Ophelia is actual, factual cancer and is one of the single most damaging units in the game to AR especially. You have to have a supertank to deal with her in a competent defense setup. And hell, even characters who are literally built to counter her (like Repel Brave Ike) will often still lose that matchup.

[Humanoid]

For me it'd mostly be about providing more up-to-date 3-4* options for them that aren't Gen 1. And having something better than QR2 to give enemy phase horses (and fliers), even if it is only QR3.

Then why are all the ranged cavalry additions green and grey? And why are all the melee cavalry additions red and blue? Actually add a range of new cavalry units with a good variety of weapon types thanks.

[Fabulously Olivier]

2 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

I think we should shy away from making anything more than subjective opinon statements on which unit types are fun to use. I also love cavs and fliers, but IIRC @Ice Dragon enjoys EP units and armors far more.

I made a poll on that a while back and armor had by far the lowest popularity. So yes, we can make that claim.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

I disagree. I'd go as far as saying horses are probably the second best movement type in the game right now, simply because they get Lulls. They don't have much variety in toys, but this one B is so ridiculously broken (and "versatile" since you can choose whichever one fits your unit the best) that Spd stack Walhart isn't actually a joke anymore. Cancelling enemy buffs AND debuffing them is so strong, especially since you still have access to your own visible buffs. There's nothing to be done about LLeif killing you in two hits when he has Lull Atk/Def unless you happen to have a lot of Drive Def, and half the time there's nothing you can do about Sirius outspeeding you with Lull Atk/Spd.

[Anacybele]

Yeah, just because Ice Dragon enjoys armors doesn't mean a lot of other people do. I'm also getting tired of constant seasonal armors. Why do Christmas and Halloween always have to be full of armors? Christmas is the worst, that one's never NOT had an armor.

[bottlegnomes]

23 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I laughed at the notion of Ophelia being better for the game than Reinhardt.

 

Ophelia is actual, factual cancer and is one of the single most damaging units in the game to AR especially. You have to have a supertank to deal with her in a competent defense setup. And hell, even characters who are literally built to counter her (like Repel Brave Ike) will often still lose that matchup.

Do you even remember year 1? Cool, Julia can counter Rein. Oh, wait Brave bow B!Lyn kills her. Or better yet, Rein's got 10 merges on her because she's 5* and he actually can bust through her res and kill her. You built a TA3 gronnraven mage to deal with both? Whelp, CA Firesweep Lyn doesn't care. You can't out-range them unless you brought a dancer and are using a ranged or cavalry unit, and even if you do snipe one, the other is probably going to nuke you on the next turn. I get it. Other units are a pain. But it's like people just forgot how oppressive the pair was.

 

22 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I made a poll on that a while back and armor had by far the lowest popularity. So yes, we can make that claim.

Sure, if you want to discount sampling and response bias, use a miniscule section of the overall playerbase, and make unsafe extrapolations from that data.

 

21 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Yeah, just because Ice Dragon enjoys armors doesn't mean a lot of other people do. I'm also getting tired of constant seasonal armors. Why do Christmas and Halloween always have to be full of armors? Christmas is the worst, that one's never NOT had an armor.

I'm not saying we should say people prefer every play style equally or that another is the most preferred. I'm saying we should avoid the subject entirely because it'd be making unsafe assumptions regardless of what claim is put forward as we don't have the necessary data to make an informed decision.

I do agree with the seasonal armors entirely though. Some variety would be nice.

Edited August 14, 2020 by bottlegnomes

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm not bothered by cavalry having the lowest BST. Some class has to, and it being the one with 3 move seems like good game design to me. A cavalry with the same stats as an infantry or armour will almost invariably be better than said infantry or armour.

I do think there's truth to the fact that some cavalry units have suffered over the years, simply because Reinhardt (and to a lesser extent Bow Lyn and her successors) was sooo dominant that from around mid year 1 onwards they started barring powerful new skills from units if they were cavalry, or ranged, or both. That said, you'll note in recent months that has finally eased off, with the Lulls being a big example of strong new skills available to cavalry.

I'm not really a big fan of trenches, they feel like a very artificial nerf to a class whose claim to fame is supposed to be mobility. I think they're fine in hand-crafted maps like GHBs especially as a way for the map designers to secretly constrain their own units and make them harder to bait, but I'd like to see them eased off in other modes.

Overall I'm not sure I agree that cavalry are the weakest. They still have nearly-exclusive access to brave tomes (a couple people with a dancer stat penalty notwithstanding), extra move is still really good in a tactical grid game, and the Lulls mean they're no longer way behind on B skills. And they're certainly capable of making clearly busted new cavalry, like pirate Veronica/Xander. FEH is waaay better balanced than it was early so even if you think cavalry are the weakest, it's not by much.

[bottlegnomes]

16 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

FEH is waaay better balanced than it was early so even if you think cavalry are the weakest, it's not by much.

I agree with most of what you said, including trenches, but I feel this needs special mention. People forget how absolutely garbage armors were prior to armor march and the fighter skills. There was a bit of a point where it seemed like armors were getting a ton of favroritism but right now I'd say the ranking goes infantry > armors > cavs = fliers and it's fairly close. Compare that to year 1 where it was Reinhardt and Lyn >>>>> every other even remotely decent cav > fliers and awful cavs >> infantry >> armors.

Personal weapons though, have gone the exact opposite way. It used to be that a lot were straight up worse than a refined slaying weapon. Now the gap is so far the other way that there's virtually no way for generics to compete with the better ones.

I also kind of feel like people are under valuing Brave Lyn now. Sure, she didn't warp the meta the way Rein did, but that was solely because she filled the same dominant niche as he did. There's a reason she was the sole S+ tier unit on Gamepress's tier list for a bit.

Edited August 14, 2020 by bottlegnomes

[Fabulously Olivier]

21 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

Do you even remember year 1? Cool, Julia can counter Rein. Oh, wait Brave bow B!Lyn kills her. Or better yet, Rein's got 10 merges on her because she's 5* and he actually can bust through her res and kill her. You built a TA3 gronnraven mage to deal with both? Whelp, CA Firesweep Lyn doesn't care. You can't out-range them unless you brought a dancer and are using a ranged or cavalry unit, and even if you do snipe one, the other is probably going to nuke you on the next turn. I get it. Other units are a pain. But it's like people just forgot how oppressive the pair was.

 

Sure, if you want to discount sampling and response bias, use a miniscule section of the overall playerbase, and make unsafe extrapolations from that data.

 

I'm not saying we should say people prefer every play style equally or that another is the most preferred. I'm saying we should avoid the subject entirely because it'd be making unsafe assumptions regardless of what claim is put forward as we don't have the necessary data to make an informed decision.

I do agree with the seasonal armors entirely though. Some variety would be nice.

I do remember those times, and your argument isn't taking into account some very basic premises.

 

1) This was pre-Aether Raids. Meaning that there was NO mode in which players could explicitly engineer their defense setup with those characters to eliminate as many potential counters or circumventing outplays as possible.

 

2) Counterpicks to said characters were far more prevalent than you give them credit for. For example, any Raven tome could shut down Brave Lyn, and this gave this type of unit (which is very available to F2P players) an edge that they struggle to find now. Pick TA Female Robin, and you've successfully countered both. Congratulations. There is no f2p unit that can comparably shut down Ophelia while dealing with other threats in a competent AR defense setup, and certainly not without high end fodder.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Fabulously Olivier

[NSSKG151]

I was pretty much going to say what @SatsumaFSoysoy said. Lull skills alone helped cavalry units out. I think cavlary units are not in as bad a position as people are trying to make it out to be. If the developers think cavalry need a boost they will probably introduce some new skill for them to take advantage of like Lull did. Not to mention having three movement is kind of fair trade for lest bst with how small Heroes' maps are.

Pretty much every ranged cavalry unit can still be good with generic stuff like Bladetomes, Brave/Firesweep Bow, Pain/Gravity Staff etc. (Unfortunately daggers are out of luck but there has only ever been one dagger cavalry in Summer Linde) Really it's just gen 1/2 sword, lance and axe units that struggle but even then they are some decent ones like Eliwood, Ares, Cain, Abel, Roderick and Frederick that I can name off the top of my head.

Really my only problem is that the new maps in Arena Assault are not very cavalry friendly with all the trenches and whatnot placed in just a way that frustrates me at times.

Edited August 14, 2020 by NSSKG151

[SuperNova125]

What I believe is that infantries have gone way too far for anyone to try to catch up to them. They have nul skills, luls, Special Spriral, Time's pulse and most importantly Spurn/Close Call/repel. An infantry of any playstyle has way more toys to play with than any other movement type.

Fliers for example have Pegasus flight that is utter garbage for most units, Guard Bearings (I think it's called) that protects from only a single attack and dive bomb that is available to only melle. Ranged fliers and Dragon fliers don't have anything at all. Even non ranged ones have mediocre options. A unit like Hel can protect herself from only a single attack in the enmy phase, if she was infantry she would be able to reduce every attack for pretty much the same damage. The difference is there. 

Armors have low Spd and that means that most follow up related effects will shut down stuff like VF, BF and similar skills immediately, also they have extremely bad movement that in modes like Arena where you can't run stuff like Reposition that easily they hinder the entire team's movement. Why use them while infantries have pretty much the same BST and don't have these flaws? 

Cavalries for me are in a similar spot but not as bad. Even if they have a good statspread their extremely low BST hinders them that I do believe. For example a gen 5 cavalier will have around 167 BST while an infantry would have around 178. And while player phase units can get away with a min-maxed statline, enemy or mixed phase units will suffer. Skill wise they do have Luls and that's why I believe they are better than others, also their good movement in modes like AR does shine especially on defense. Also the good cavalies like Eliwood, Rein, Veronica are some of the most scary units in the game. Horse beasts like Panne, Yarne and the Lethes are really scary units that I hate facing. New additions like Pirate Veronica and Legendary Seliph do make things better as they are unique and good at the same time. Also the weapons that are effective against them are not so common/used only Michys and now Lysethea will do effective damage against them most of the time. Their problem is low BST that more flowers and the new gen might help somehow and annoying terrain, for me at least. 

[Anacybele]

Well, at the very least, cavalry should still get duel skills. Why can fliers and infantry get those, but not cavs? This makes the least sense to me.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Anacybele

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

16 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

There is no f2p unit that can comparably shut down Ophelia while dealing with other threats in a competent AR defense setup, and certainly not without high end fodder.

Unless DC also counts as high-end fodder, this is definitely not true anymore. Half the time Ophelia is the least of your worries in a good AR D, especially in Light season where you can stack double Eir for +10 Res to make AoE damage low. If you have Pulse Smoke she gets defused, of course, but stuff like Libra and now Echidna are popular choices for just eating her AoE. Sophia and Lyon can easily eat the AoE and be fine too, and the in-combat hit will be manageable despite WTD. I use Hilda as a substitute for the former two, and I run Sophia.

Edited August 14, 2020 by SatsumaFSoysoy

[Ice Dragon]

Armors are fun. I think armors would be more fun for the average player if they made Armor March more accessible. They should give us an Armor March Sacred Seal already.

I personally find cavalry to be the least fun unit type to play with. Mobility is somewhat pointless if you don't have the combat performance to back it up, and there simply aren't all that many cavalry units that have exceptional combat performance. Additionally, cavalry have very little skill diversity in the B slot because most of the recent B skills are unusable by cavalry, meaning they basically only have the common-to-all-movement-types skills and Lull skills. And individual Lull skills are still rare because they are stat-specific.

 

28 minutes ago, XRay said:

Surtr is not good. He is pretty pathetic and easy to kill. A blade mage can overwhelm his bulk and Firesweepers can quickly whittle him down.

Surtr is still the best Arena babysitter in the game. Sinmara is still busted as a support skill, and he's still a massive stat stick.

 

12 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

That said, you'll note in recent months that has finally eased off, with the Lulls being a big example of strong new skills available to cavalry.

Lulls being the only strong new skills available to cavalry that aren't available to nearly everything.

 

14 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

They still have nearly-exclusive access to brave tomes (a couple people with a dancer stat penalty notwithstanding)

You realize that the two dancers with Brave tomes have 42/34 and 43/16 offensive stat spreads with their weapons whereas the two cavalry with Brave times have 37/31 and 41/18 offensive stat spreads with their weapons, yes?

 

5 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

People forget how absolutely garbage armors were prior to armor march and the fighter skills.

Armors were actually broken from the get-go due to the fact that they could easily stack Ward Armor to oblivion and take virtually no damage outside of armor-effective weapons. The problem was not their mobility, but the fact that players didn't have the resources to actually build them. Distant Counter and Quick Riposte were not easy to come by back then.

There were a few times when armors began to fall off due to skills being added that had no counter available to armors, but those were usually short-lived as armors would get a new toy shortly after, either in the form of a skill or a stat distribution.

 

2 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Well, at the very least, cavalry should still get duel skills. Why can fliers and infantry get those, but not cavs? This makes the least sense to me.

I feel like they gave just up on Duel skills or something. We still haven't even gotten C Duel Flying.

[bottlegnomes]

1 minute ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I do remember those times, and your argument isn't taking into account some very basic premises.

 

1) This was pre-Aether Raids. Meaning that there was NO mode in which players could explicitly engineer their defense setup with those characters to eliminate as many potential counters or circumventing outplays as possible.

 

2) Counterpicks to said characters were far more prevalent than you give them credit for. For example, any Raven tome could shut down Brave Lyn, and this gave this type of unit (which is very available to F2P players) an edge that they struggle to find now. Pick TA Female Robin, and you've successfully countered both. Congratulations. There is no f2p unit that can comparably shut down Ophelia, and certainly not without high end fodder.

I'll refer you back to CA3 Firesweep Lyn. She had no counter. Your gronnraven Robin is SOL. Sure, it took one premium skill, but Ophelia takes investment too. Or Heck, Xander. He was free, strong, and made short work of those mages. Okay, yeah, Ophelia is oppressive, but it takes comp, positioning, and resources to get her there. Plus she can still be blitzed. There's nothing saying you have to tank her and she crumbles really quickly when she's initiated on. The same was true of arena and AA teams back in the day except it was a bunch of open fields, two nukes, a free tanky-ass red cav that covered the nukes weaknesses, and whatever filler to make it even more toxic.

As to who's more dominant, I can't answer that beyond IS's reaction. They spent the better part of a year trying to clean up after Lynhardt and did to the point that we have people still complaining about cavalry being nerfed literally years later. Ophelia, Lysithea, and the other haven't been met with nearly that response. Whether that's because it was earlier and they didn't know what they were doing, because they stopped caring, or because Lynhardt was more dominant, I can't say, but to say IS's back-pedaling on cavs was "just because of Reinhardt" is glossing over the fact that he literally warped the entire PvP section of the game around his existence to the point that the options were 1) score high enough to get away from him, 2) embrace the meta and use him to counter him, or 3) invest in anti-meta units. Ophelia is one of many dominant units, not the sole one.

@Anacybele No arguments on that or even the dancer cav. Heck, I don't even think they'd be all that broken anymore. We've had flying dancers and they have better mobility due to significantly fewer movement restrictions. My only point is that I don't think cavs are as far behind as they were. If you'd asked me 1.5 years ago, I absolutely would've agreed, but IS seems to be easing up on their anti-cav kick more recently which I'm a fan of. Still want an easy to build dual phase cav though. Maybe Kent or Sain?

[Anacybele]

15 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I feel like they gave just up on Duel skills or something. We still haven't even gotten C Duel Flying.

Yeah, it does seem that way, actually, now that you mention it.

13 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

No arguments on that or even the dancer cav. Heck, I don't even think they'd be all that broken anymore. We've had flying dancers and they have better mobility due to significantly fewer movement restrictions. My only point is that I don't think cavs are as far behind as they were. If you'd asked me 1.5 years ago, I absolutely would've agreed, but IS seems to be easing up on their anti-cav kick more recently which I'm a fan of. Still want an easy to build dual phase cav though. Maybe Kent or Sain?

Yeah, and then there's the fact that skills like Flier Formation and stuff exist, which those flying refreshers can make use of too.

And YES, GIVE ME SAIN. Especially if he can get a Forging Bonds conversation with Sylvain. Or even better, a harmonic duo unit with him! Womanizers gotta stick together! XD

Edited August 14, 2020 by Anacybele