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Buff and Nerf in Three Houses ?


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It's fairly difficult to compare against the rest of the series as a whole, since most elements have had wild swings in their power level at some point in the series. That said, I think that Nosferatu and Astra may both be at the weakest they've ever been. Both of them are basically little more than cruel jokes in Three Houses compared to their past glory days. Though, to be clear, I'd rather have Three Houses Nosferatu than Awakening Nosferatu that could solo the game. A happy medium between the two extremes would be nice, though.

For something that's at its peak in Three Houses, I'll say bows. The existence of Close Counter to make them usable on enemy phase, increased range from most bow-focused classes, combat arts like Hunters' Volley, Break Shot and Encloser, enemy fliers being both common and powerful. These all combine to put bows in a really good place.

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Pretty much everything @lenticular said is true. I tend to have half of my army use bows in each playthrough. They're really buffed. As for nerfs, many cav classes have been made to be pretty slow. Canto+ is nice, but since everyone can class into anything, you'd usually settle for flying instead. There's also a lot of tiles in outdoor maps that slow them down a lot. I'd say wyvern have been buffed, since a lot of FE games have them be tanks, but slow, like in the tellius games or fates. They're fast in the DS games, but have a low speed cap, and you can forge bows however you want to make them cry. In 3H, I just can't find a downside. At least in maddening, enemy wyvern excel in every major stat. They feel like the faster enemies, have good defense and amazing strength. Canto+. You can make your wyverns dodge tanks with alert stance+ and some help from batallions and a dodge ring. Their advanced base stats are pretty good, so anyone will at least start off well as one. Pegasus knights are also pretty good, so I guess I should say fliers in general have been buffed. 

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Like stated, most elements have had swings in power from game to game. Anyways, throwing weapons in general, as well as Astra and Nosferatu, are pretty laughable in 3H. The former two in particular are at their lowest point in the series. Class wise, 3H is pretty much the lowest point for the Hero class; it's locked to male characters, whereas Swordmaster and Assassin, both of which are better, are not. Another facet of 3H's design also hurts the Hero class, that being the ability for any class to use any weapon (gauntlets being the exception, as mages and mounted classes cannot use them), which takes away their main selling point over Swordmaster. Cavalry classes in general are just not as good as they were in past titles, mostly because of the fact that many of them are slow (as in, all of them save for Bow Knight have negative speed modifiers unless dismounted, and all of them have negative speed growths), and cavalry-impeding terrain being frequent, as well as there being terrain that slows cavalry down while leaving infantry unaffected really does not help their case (this being said, Bow Knight is still a great class). On the flipside, bows are better than ever.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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Mostly agreed with the others. Shout-out to bows, and Sniper in particular, which is almost always one of the worst classes in other games and one of the best in this one.

Evasion as a survival mechanism, and critical hits as a valid method of offence, are also noteworthy as being better in this game than at least most others.

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1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Like stated, most elements have had swings in power from game to game. Anyways, throwing weapons in general, as well as Astra and Nosferatu, are pretty laughable in 3H. The former two in particular are at their lowest point in the series. Class wise, 3H is pretty much the lowest point for the Hero class; it's locked to male characters, whereas Swordmaster and Assassin, both of which are better, are not. Another facet of 3H's design also hurts the Hero class, that being the ability for any class to use any weapon (gauntlets being the exception, as mages and mounted classes cannot use them), which takes away their main selling point over Swordmaster. Cavalry classes in general are just not as good as they were in past titles, mostly because of the fact that many of them are slow (as in, all of them save for Bow Knight have negative speed modifiers unless dismounted, and all of them have negative speed growths), and cavalry-impeding terrain being frequent, as well as there being terrain that slows cavalry down while leaving infantry unaffected really does not help their case (this being said, Bow Knight is still a great class). On the flipside, bows are better than ever.

Honestly, the "use whatever weapon that you want" scheme is what killed 3H. Nothing stopping you from turning your cav units into a mage that serves as an counter for nearly anything.

 

Of course, this means that you'll have to be ready to sweep the enemy on your phase.

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36 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Mostly agreed with the others. Shout-out to bows, and Sniper in particular, which is almost always one of the worst classes in other games and one of the best in this one.

Evasion as a survival mechanism, and critical hits as a valid method of offence, are also noteworthy as being better in this game than at least most others.

Care to explain the bold? Because I don't quite follow.

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1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Care to explain the bold? Because I don't quite follow.

I think it's to joke about how critical hits never work when you want them to in most FE games. 3H is one of the only games where you could reach up to 100 critical chance reliably through skills and such. I've had Hero Gilbert reach 100 crit with wrath and defiant crit.  Combine that with the free hero class skill, vantage, and that gambit that gives you counterattack for 5 turns, and he could solo most scenarios, expect for herds of gambit users. You also have critical bonus as a skill for reaching S rank, and war master gives you 20 crit right off the bat. Orher FE games just have something like Swordmaster 30 crit +killing edge. Sure it will have a decent chance, but the unit is still squishy and you could still screw it up. Also, you probably don't have a lot of killer weapons in other games, while 3H lets you infinitely repair with materials you can buy off the market. Killer Bow+ with hunters volly is a classic. 

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One other change I can mention is that forging weapons and repairing said forged weapon makes the game regardless of difficulty a godsend because then you can just keep abusing them. The Rapier in particular got a big buff since it’s no longer just a lord exclusive weapon. Anyone can use it and when forged has a Mt of 9, hit rate of 95 and a critical hit rate of 20. 45 uses is also the icing on the cake.

Edited by Barren
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2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Care to explain the bold? Because I don't quite follow.

Shaky Jones already largely explained it, but basically, FE3H is one of the few games where you can stack crit to the point where it's either 100 or very close, at which point it's actually reliable.

In, say, Radiant Dawn, it's very difficult to get a crit rate higher than 40 or so (outside Wrath which is difficult to use and requires an HP threshold... and a lower one than this game, to boot). So while i might attack an enemy with a Killing Edge doing a listed 11x2 to its 40 HP and hoping they will die, I can't really be confident this will happen. Many other FEs do a little better than this (due to enemy luck being lower than it is in RD) but not much. In FE3H you can easily get a Hunter's Volley with 80 crit by lategame (e.g. 10 HV + 35 Killer Bow + 20 Fraldarius + 10 Bow Crit + 5 Critical Ring) at which point you have a 96% chance you get at least one crit... not perfect, but good. And it's far from the only way to do this (just the best IMO because it's high range).

(And to be clear, there are other games where near-100 crit is achievable, for instance a supported and promoted Rutger/Fir with Wo Dao. But FE3H has more opportunities for it than most.)

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1 hour ago, Shaky Jones said:

I think it's to joke about how critical hits never work when you want them to in most FE games. 3H is one of the only games where you could reach up to 100 critical chance reliably through skills and such. I've had Hero Gilbert reach 100 crit with wrath and defiant crit.  Combine that with the free hero class skill, vantage, and that gambit that gives you counterattack for 5 turns, and he could solo most scenarios, expect for herds of gambit users. You also have critical bonus as a skill for reaching S rank, and war master gives you 20 crit right off the bat. Orher FE games just have something like Swordmaster 30 crit +killing edge. Sure it will have a decent chance, but the unit is still squishy and you could still screw it up. Also, you probably don't have a lot of killer weapons in other games, while 3H lets you infinitely repair with materials you can buy off the market. Killer Bow+ with hunters volly is a classic. 

The thing is, that's a lot of setup (including mastering a Master tier class), and by that point, the game is nearly over, meaning even if you managed to get everything to make it work, you don't get to enjoy it for very long. And this is ignoring the fact that it's not completely infallible; you'd have to worry about gambits, as if they connect, you are significantly weakened, among other stuff that might happen to make you fail to kill your attacker (especially since you're at 1/4 HP or less). Also, killer weapons are buyable in most games, so I don't understand what you're trying to get at with the bold (about the only exceptions to this are Gaiden/SoV, Genealogy, Path of Radiance and Fates).

26 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Shaky Jones already largely explained it, but basically, FE3H is one of the few games where you can stack crit to the point where it's either 100 or very close, at which point it's actually reliable.

In, say, Radiant Dawn, it's very difficult to get a crit rate higher than 40 or so (outside Wrath which is difficult to use and requires an HP threshold... and a lower one than this game, to boot). So while i might attack an enemy with a Killing Edge doing a listed 11x2 to its 40 HP and hoping they will die, I can't really be confident this will happen. Many other FEs do a little better than this (due to enemy luck being lower than it is in RD) but not much. In FE3H you can easily get a Hunter's Volley with 80 crit by lategame (e.g. 10 HV + 35 Killer Bow + 20 Fraldarius + 10 Bow Crit + 5 Critical Ring) at which point you have a 96% chance you get at least one crit... not perfect, but good. And it's far from the only way to do this (just the best IMO because it's high range).

(And to be clear, there are other games where near-100 crit is achievable, for instance a supported and promoted Rutger/Fir with Wo Dao. But FE3H has more opportunities for it than most.)

You gotta admit, Radiant Dawn is a poor comparison, as it was one of the worst games to rely on critical hits due to enemy luck being crazy high (at least, barring Wrath, which while it had a lower HP threshold than Wrath in this game, still has a higher one than Defiant whatever).

Speaking of which, Defiants got nerfed to the point of being practically useless.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

The thing is, that's a lot of setup (including mastering a Master tier class), and by that point, the game is nearly over, meaning even if you managed to get everything to make it work, you don't get to enjoy it for very long

I don't think there's any FE game where you could reach that point early on. I guess if you early promote Rutger and grind for A support with Clarine, you could get to that crazy crit rate somewhat early in the game. The master class definitely isn't necessary for crit builds, but it's an easy way to reach crazy high crits. Advanced classes could definetely be enough to get those critical skills, like with the Warrior's wrath, or the sniper's hunters volley. I wasn't trying to say that the guaranteed crits of 3 Houses are super easy to get. It's just possible. There's a reliable way to reach 100% so you don't need to cross your fingers and pray like with the GBA or DS games (not counting Rutger). I'd say reaching crit build can usually be done about 2/3 into the game. It's definitely not a lot, but that's not what I'd call nearly over. That's plenty of hard chapters you could make much easier, like Blood of the Eagle and Lion. 

8 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

And this is ignoring the fact that it's not completely infallible; you'd have to worry about gambits, as if they connect, you are significantly weakened, among other stuff that might happen to make you fail to kill your attacker (especially since you're at 1/4 HP or less). Also, killer weapons are buyable in most games, so I don't understand what you're trying to get at with the bold (about the only exceptions to this are Gaiden/SoV, Genealogy, Path of Radiance and Fates).

Enemy gambits were probably made to prevent you from trying to cheese the game this way. Criticals in 3 Houses aren't the game ender that will trivialize the game. But it still helps a lot to have. I'd still say using a 100 percent crit unit who can die to gambits is more helpful than a unit who has a 60% to ohko an enemy, but will easily die if not landing enough of them. At least I know for a fact when there are enemy gambits, so I know not to do wrath+vantage, whereas I don't have much control over having someone like Swordmaster Joshua getting a crit on a Berserker. Besides, wrath+vantage is just one way to crit enemies. The killer item thing always just feels easier to use in 3H, since I feel like you get decent money in that game and you can get them at any month, where some FE games like binding blade will only offer them on occasions.

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The first thing that came to mind was that Bows are possibly at their best in this game, as others have already said. Everything about them is great, Close Counter, extended range, Hunter’s Volley and Point Blank Volley. They’re great, and they used to suck in most FE games. They were also good in Echoes.

Super Canto is back from the Tellius games which is great. Mounted units have generally been good with or without that but it definitely helps. Flying classes are really good in this game, but they were never bad, and have also been really good in some previous games too.

In general, I much prefer Combat Arts over the unreliable chance based skills from previous games, but Astra is just really disappointing as someone else already mentioned.

Stealth is more reliable in this game than it was in POR.

1-2 range weapons like Hand Axes and Javelins seem a lot worse than they have often been in previous games.

In regards to the crit rates, I agree that you can reach much more reliable Crit rates in this game than in most previous ones. I’ve seen builds that reach 100% Crit rates with Wrath but not Defiant Crit, so you don’t need to master a Master class for it. You can also reach 100% Crit rate with Smash as a WarMaster. You can also reach pretty high Crit rates with Hunter’s Volley and Fierce Iron Fist, since they give you multiple chances.

Killer weapons have had various amounts of availability in previous games, but they are often buyable at some point so depending on the game, They’re plenty available, but ~30% Crit rate is pretty unreliable. You can go higher than that in some cases but generally won’t be nearly as high as you can go in 3H with the right set up.

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1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

You gotta admit, Radiant Dawn is a poor comparison, as it was one of the worst games to rely on critical hits due to enemy luck being crazy high (at least, barring Wrath, which while it had a lower HP threshold than Wrath in this game, still has a higher one than Defiant whatever).

Yeah, RD is on the low end for reliable criticals for sure, but generally most games in the series are closer to RD than to this one.

 

44 minutes ago, Whisky said:

Stealth is more reliable in this game than it was in POR.

Oh wow, forgot this one, and seconded for sure. I did a PoR challenge run where I had Rhys with Stealth and the number of times he died on me anyway because the enemies just ignored it is a trauma I won't soon recover from. I'm not sure exactly how it works in Tellius, but it's way better in this game. It being something you can actually rely on is so much more tactically interesting (not to mention useful).

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2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I'm not sure exactly how it works in Tellius, but it's way better in this game. It being something you can actually rely on is so much more tactically interesting (not to mention useful).

Yeah, I hated that skill that in POR. When I first saw it on Ilyana, I tried it out and she got killed anyway, so I immediately wrote it off as being useless. What the heck is the point in a skill like that in a strategy game if there’s no way to plan a strategy around it. If the concern is for it being too OP then it could have limitations, maybe it only works if you’re at full health or something (on top of other units needing to be in range obviously), but it needs to be consistent.

I haven’t actually used it 3H, but I’ve heard that works reliably and I think that’s really cool. At first I didn’t trust it because of my experience in POR.

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One that I haven't seen mentioned are siege spells. You only get a couple available to the player, in Meteor and Bolting. Each is restricted to just a handful of units, and they come with very few uses. So, why are they good here?

For starters, while the spells have 1 or 2 uses each (Bolting gets the better end of this deal), this can be doubled to 2 or 4, in classes like Warlock or Gremory. And since spell uses refresh after every battle, gone are the days of worrying about needing to conserve my siege tome, for what the next fight may hold. Meteor offers 10 Might and 80 Hit, while Bolting has 12 Might and 65 Hit, plus 15 Crit. So pretty respectable damage, and as 3H spells, they ignore enemies' terrain-based evasion boosts. But they're even useful aside from actually attacking with, thanks to the "Linked Attack" and "Gambit Boost" system. Simply by having Meteor or Bolting equipped, my mage can provide an offensive boost to any supporting ally who's in their range. If I've gotten Hilda to learn Bolting, and Claude goes against a target in her range, then he's getting up to 3 extra Attack and 10 extra Hit. And this boost goes even further when it comes to gambits. It's to the extent that one of the arguments in favor of Dancer Dorothea is that she can simply keep Meteor equipped all the time, and provide a consistent passive boost to all supported allies in range, while still Dancing every turn.

The one instance I can think of wherein siege tomes might be better is Radiant Dawn - and even then, it's a very specific context. Basically, have Yune "bless" a Bolting tome, and give it to your favored mage or Sanaki. Congrats, now you can deal effective damage against the Dragons from far enough away to fear no counter-attack. That said, this is a very niche case toward the endgame, while in 3H, it's possible to get some siege spell uses about halfway through the game (and keep them for the remainder of the game).

4 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Oh wow, forgot this one, and seconded for sure. I did a PoR challenge run where I had Rhys with Stealth and the number of times he died on me anyway because the enemies just ignored it is a trauma I won't soon recover from. I'm not sure exactly how it works in Tellius, but it's way better in this game. It being something you can actually rely on is so much more tactically interesting (not to mention useful).

I'm pretty sure RD!Volke's "Stillness" ability works basically identically to 3H's "Stealth". Which is to say, "never get targeted unless you're the only potential target in the enemy's range". Tellius Shade is pretty trash.

1 hour ago, Whisky said:

What the heck is the point in a skill like that in a strategy game if there’s no way to plan a strategy around it.

Prays in Miracle

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In terms of something that's really bad, I'd argue any armored class.  Armored Knight has appalling movement and not enough bulkiness to deal with more than one combat per turn.  Great Knight gets more movement, but even more reduced bulkiness and has such imposing weapon proficiency requirements that getting into the class isn't worth the effort.  The only unit I can see an argument for going into either of these classes is Gilbert, and even he isn't very good in those classes.

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47 minutes ago, SumG said:

In terms of something that's really bad, I'd argue any armored class.  Armored Knight has appalling movement and not enough bulkiness to deal with more than one combat per turn.  Great Knight gets more movement, but even more reduced bulkiness and has such imposing weapon proficiency requirements that getting into the class isn't worth the effort.  The only unit I can see an argument for going into either of these classes is Gilbert, and even he isn't very good in those classes.

You can definitely make the right unit bulky in the Armored classline, but it involves a good deal of min-maxing:

- Master Noble/Commoner for HP +5 and Soldier for Defense +2

- Certify as an Armor Knight ASAP for 12 Defense at level 10

- Equip them with a Shield

- Let them lead a Protection-boosting battalion

Generally, this all works best on units with a good innate Defense growth - people like Dedue, Raphael, or Balthus. But ones like Edelgard, Hilda, or Sylvain can also succeed in this line. I've found Armored units generally great for baiting high-Speed, low-Might foes, like Assassins or Grapplers. It's very plausible to hit 0-damage-per-hit from enemy Gauntlet users, even on Maddening.

At the very least, I would consider Armors better in 3H than they were in either Genealogy or Roy Emblem.

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1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

For starters, while the spells have 1 or 2 uses each (Bolting gets the better end of this deal), this can be doubled to 2 or 4, in classes like Warlock or Gremory. And since spell uses refresh after every battle, gone are the days of worrying about needing to conserve my siege tome, for what the next fight may hold.

A comparable argument can be made for Warp and Rescue. I don't think they're at their absolute high water mark in Three Houses (that would probably be Shadow Dragon Warp, at least of the games I've played) but they're certainly strong in Three Houses, just because of availability.

49 minutes ago, SumG said:

In terms of something that's really bad, I'd argue any armored class.  Armored Knight has appalling movement and not enough bulkiness to deal with more than one combat per turn.  Great Knight gets more movement, but even more reduced bulkiness and has such imposing weapon proficiency requirements that getting into the class isn't worth the effort.  The only unit I can see an argument for going into either of these classes is Gilbert, and even he isn't very good in those classes.

I don't really agree with this. Armor and Fortress Knights certainly aren't great, but that's fairly typical across the series. I don't think that they're that much significantly worse than they've historically been. I also think that they're still usable in Three Houses. On lower difficulties, it typically isn't too difficult to create a highly effective physical tank, and even on Maddening, you can still get them to the point where you can put them into situations where you're other units would just die.

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6 hours ago, SumG said:

In terms of something that's really bad, I'd argue any armored class.  Armored Knight has appalling movement and not enough bulkiness to deal with more than one combat per turn.  Great Knight gets more movement, but even more reduced bulkiness and has such imposing weapon proficiency requirements that getting into the class isn't worth the effort.  The only unit I can see an argument for going into either of these classes is Gilbert, and even he isn't very good in those classes.

Honestly I think armors are actually underrated especially early game. I made armor Ingrid in one run and she was actually pretty good at fighting foe like the deathknight early on. I don't think Ingrid is particularly built for the armor knight class given she is pretty much the stereotypical Pegasus knight. 

And if we are talking about the dlc content and Cindered shadows armor access alone makes me feel like Edelgard is one of the most important units if not the most (Lindhart might slightly edge her out by being the best healer in the dlc by a wide margin but its close imo). Mainly because there are points where there are so many enemies the extra bulk comes in clutch like nothing else will on enemy phase and drawing them into fight your armor unit can save you some headaches for future turns. Sometimes you even save time/turns when you can bait more units in. Honestly I find offense pretty interchangeable in the dlc from the main game charcters for the most part other than Hilda and Claude being able to fly. However I do think the map design for the dlc does slightly favor more defensive playstyle with how often the dlc maps have multiple attackers approaching your units in the same turn.

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Not to mention that certifying someone as a armored knight can grant anyone’s base defense to be increased to 12 by level 10. Similar idea for Fortress Knight jacking up your defense to 17 by level 20. Or Thief for a Dex and Speed stat of 11 by level 10, and so forth.
 

So I think that having these stats even for maddening combined with shields for protection, forged training/iron weapons for general melee and weight -3 for reduced equipment weight can be very advantageous for your team. Especially if you know who you want from the start.

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

I've found Armored units generally great for baiting high-Speed, low-Might foes, like Assassins or Grapplers. It's very plausible to hit 0-damage-per-hit from enemy Gauntlet users, even on Maddening.

I'll cede that armored units are one of the better ways of dealing with enemy gauntlet users on Maddening, who's attack isn't very high per hit, but can some times get 4 attacks on even middle-tier speed units.  But Assassins and Swordmasters hit way too hard to be grouped together here.  And putting a unit into a class because it is good against one or two particular classes of enemies is just too narrow.

And it still doesn't answer two of the big problems with armored units.  Extremely low mobility in a game where most endgame classes have mounts (if not flying mounts), and extremely low damage output due to average strength and abysmal speed.  You'll be lucky do deal 30 damage per combat consistently as an armored unit, and that's just not acceptable.

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While I agree that armoured units in this game are pretty bad due to low move and other valid ways of tanking, I don't think they're epsecially worse than the FE norm. They're worse than Awakening/Fates imo (since in those games you can use Pair Up to gain temporary mobility, then switch to the armour when you need to tank a lot), and worse than Radiant Dawn as well (where some armours just straight-up had very good stats, and only -1 move on other infantry classes / equal to mages), but comparable or superior to those of some other games (FE4 and FE6 having particularly bad ones as mentioned).

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17 hours ago, SumG said:

In terms of something that's really bad, I'd argue any armored class.  Armored Knight has appalling movement and not enough bulkiness to deal with more than one combat per turn.  Great Knight gets more movement, but even more reduced bulkiness and has such imposing weapon proficiency requirements that getting into the class isn't worth the effort.  The only unit I can see an argument for going into either of these classes is Gilbert, and even he isn't very good in those classes.

I'm not sure I'd agree - I highly doubt they're worse off here than they were in Genealogy of the Holy War or Binding Blade, where they were completely devoid of usefulness. Though that's largely because the map design in those games is just not kind to them at all.

EDIT: Speaking of stuff being worse in his game than in others, rallies got severely downgraded from Awakening and Fates.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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24 minutes ago, SumG said:

I'll cede that armored units are one of the better ways of dealing with enemy gauntlet users on Maddening, who's attack isn't very high per hit, but can some times get 4 attacks on even middle-tier speed units.  But Assassins and Swordmasters hit way too hard to be grouped together here.  And putting a unit into a class because it is good against one or two particular classes of enemies is just too narrow.

If you take Raphael through the class progression Commoner -> Soldier -> Armor Knight -> Fortress Knight, he ends up with an average def of 39.5 at level 40. Let's call that 39. To this, you can very easily add +2 (def +2 skill) +8 (Alliance Pavise Co.) +5 (Seiros Shield) for a prot of 54. Going by the figures at fireemblemwiki.org, a Swordmaster in the final chapter of Verdant Wind Maddening has a strength of 41 plus a silver sword (+12) and Swordfaire (+5) for an overall might of 58. Given that it would definitely be doubling, that would be 8 damage total. Even something like an end-game Warrior is only hitting with 68 might, which would be a total of 28 damage, even after accounting for the follow-up attack, which is easily tanked by Raphael at an average of 74hp (including hp+5).

And keep in mind that this is a very low-effort physical tank build. If you really want to go all-in on physical tanking and are willing to expend resources on it, then there are other ways to boost your defenses even further. Rally Def, Flayn's personal, cooking together and stat boosters are all available possibilities, and if you commit to it then it really isn't hard to get to the point where even the attacks of Warriors and Wyvern Lords are tinking harmlessly.

Outside of their bad mobility and susceptibility to magic attacks, I think the biggest impediment to physical tanking as a viable strategy is actually enemy Snipers, since Poison Strike doesn't care how high your Def and HP are and can very quickly bring you to your knees regardless.

1 hour ago, SumG said:

And it still doesn't answer two of the big problems with armored units.  Extremely low mobility in a game where most endgame classes have mounts (if not flying mounts), and extremely low damage output due to average strength and abysmal speed.  You'll be lucky do deal 30 damage per combat consistently as an armored unit, and that's just not acceptable.

I don't think that an armour unit necessarily has to do a lot of damage to be valuable. If they're able to mitigate damage, protect other units and safely draw in the enemy, then they're still performing a valuable role. Nobody much cares that a Bishop doesn't deal much damage, since that isn't what you're deploying them for.

Mobility definitely is an issue and I'm not going to claim that it isn't, but I will say that Three Houses has a lot of decent mobility options. Through a combination of Stride, Warp, Rescue, Dancing, positional Combat Arts, and so on, it really isn't that difficult to get a Fortress Knight where you need them to be. Certainly, high movement is better than low movement and not needing to use these options is better than having to expend them, but low mobility doesn't make a unit completely worthless.

None of this is to say that I think that Fortress Knight is secretly a great class. I don't. But I think it's at least viable and better than some people give it credit for.

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