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Meg or Fiona?


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This is a horrible question. Meg is the best unit int he Dawn Brigade and you cannot convince me otherwise.

I've used Meg a few times for the funnies Well, it's actually every run, but I can't seem to get bad Megs. I cannot use Fiona no matter how many times I try. For God's sake, you cannot train that who does not show up to training. She doesn't get enough time to be used. Meg being sword locked isn't a big deal because RD has wind edges. The low move Meg has is still much better than Fiona who hardly shows up at all in part 1. Hell, her horse hinders her. Indoor maps, aka 2 of the 3 maps she can be used on, reduce her move, and she can't go through ledges. 3-6 is a swamp map. Meg can also be easy to cap for those who actually invest in her because her growths let her quickly cap stats that don't require much to be capped out given that she's an armor knight, allowing for bexp to give her growths in the stats you actually want them to be in. Fiona is, for the most part, just normal (aka bad) across the board with her stats. They all suck and do not get high enough to cap any stats for part 3, even if you gave her all the kills you could possibly try to feed in p1 endgame. 

But seriously. Meg good. She was better than my Nolan by the end of part 1 once. She laughs at the other Dawn Brigade members who need personal weapons to catch up.

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Meg. She's an armored unit that fails at what is supposed to be the role of armored units (being able to take hits). That's already off to a bad start. Then you consider that her best growths are HP, Luck, Speed and Resistance, only one of which is a really important stat. You'd expect her to at least have a kick-ass skill to help her get going, right? Wrong. Her innate skill is... Fortune. Which is made redundant by her high luck growth. Well, if she can't frontline, maybe she can contribute with ranged combat, right? Not really, as she has to use inaccurate wind edges, with which her accuracy is such that she'd either need her opponent to be below her near a ledge or she'd need a meadow's worth of 4-leaf clovers to actually land a hit.

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Both of them are equally useless in my head, but Meg is completely free to recruit and has a bit more opportunity for deployment. Fiona is also free, but her AI in the map you recruit her on has been irritating for me (poor positioning relative to her pursuers), and there's less room to use her at all, let alone well. So Fiona gets my vote - which is a shame, because I actually like her design.

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Fiona is definitely more difficult to use. Meg, I find, is pretty bad when she joins (even worse on hard difficulty, iirc, with the Laguz hitting even harder) and then grows into a very underwhelming character. Fiona has an absolutely horrid start, remains bad for a good while, but then becomes good eventually. Her endgame package is honestly very nice - Earth affinity, innate Imbue and Saviour, good bulk (plus said Imbue), acceptable Spd cap (enough to double auras with Nasir support), Canto - but it's a huge pain in the butt to get her there.

Edited by ping
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Fiona is worse than Meg and it isn't even particularly close. They have basically the same base stats, but Meg joins 4 maps earlier. And then Fiona can't be used in her second potential map, so it becomes a 5-map gap.

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51 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

They have basically the same base stats, but Meg joins 4 maps earlier. And then Fiona can't be used in her second potential map, so it becomes a 5-map gap.

I don't know what they were thinking with Fiona's bases.  Even on Normal, she can be one rounded by enemy Myrmidons in the first map you can use her, and switching the Steel Lance she comes with for an Iron Lance doesn't stop her from getting doubled by them.

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Meg isn't very good at all, but she is fun to train up. If nothing else, she can be a Shovebot to your lighter units in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of Part I. She can survive most enemies in chapter 4 (excepting Tigers who double her), and she can block the ledge in chapter 5. She can also use her Heaven affinity to give slightly higher Hit rates to one of your scrubs who hasn't started building a support yet. With enough training in Part I, she can get to a place where she's not doubled by beast laguz in Part III, becoming a half-decent frontliner.

Compare to Fiona - she gets no free deployments in Part I (even in her joining chapter, 6-2, she remains a green unit), can't be used in chapter 8, and suffers movement penalties and ledge issues in chapters 7 and Endgame. She does have her uses in Part III, as a Rescue-carry bot, and she can throw a Javelin at enemy Laguz to get them to revert. Still, the ledges in III-13 constrains her mobility. The Earth affinity is nice, but quite a few DB units (Nolan, Zihark, Volug) already have it, and it'll take a while for Fiona to be able to support anyone.

They're both almost certainly "bottom 5" units within Radiant Dawn, but I'd say Fiona is the worse one between the two. Where Meg can be vaguely okay with training, Fiona simply doesn't have time to get trained up. If you do severely baby her, her growths are good enough that she'll probably do decent. But it'll take a serious amount of work.

1 hour ago, FailWood said:

I don't know what they were thinking with Fiona's bases.  Even on Normal, she can be one rounded by enemy Myrmidons in the first map you can use her, and switching the Steel Lance she comes with for an Iron Lance doesn't stop her from getting doubled by them.

It's as though they designed Fiona's statline for GBAFE, and somehow expected her to hold up in a game where enemy stats rise at a much steeper pace.

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

It's as though they designed Fiona's statline for GBAFE, and somehow expected her to hold up in a game where enemy stats rise at a much steeper pace.

Which is weird because of Meg having similar bases yet joins 4 chapters earlier.  Then there's having other units like Nolan, Jill, and Zihark on the same squad who can stay on par with enemies or be ahead of them with little to no extra investment.  When it comes to unit balance, Radiant Dawn is one of the worst in the series.

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

It's as though they designed Fiona's statline for GBAFE, and somehow expected her to hold up in a game where enemy stats rise at a much steeper pace.

I could say the same of Meg, tbf - it's like they learned nothing from Gwendolyn and how terrible she was.

1 hour ago, FailWood said:

Which is weird because of Meg having similar bases yet joins 4 chapters earlier.  Then there's having other units like Nolan, Jill, and Zihark on the same squad who can stay on par with enemies or be ahead of them with little to no extra investment.  When it comes to unit balance, Radiant Dawn is one of the worst in the series.

I'd say it's still better than Binding Blade, which has more throwaway units than RD did (which, considering that RD has far more units, says a lot about its unit quality) or Holy War, where cavalry are pretty much head and shoulders above everyone else.

Anyways, trying to use Meg is like trying to summon the likes of Gate Guardian in Yu-Gi-Oh! - and as worthwhile, too (aka, not at all).

16 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

This is a horrible question. Meg is the best unit int he Dawn Brigade and you cannot convince me otherwise.

I've used Meg a few times for the funnies Well, it's actually every run, but I can't seem to get bad Megs. I cannot use Fiona no matter how many times I try. For God's sake, you cannot train that who does not show up to training. She doesn't get enough time to be used. Meg being sword locked isn't a big deal because RD has wind edges. The low move Meg has is still much better than Fiona who hardly shows up at all in part 1. Hell, her horse hinders her. Indoor maps, aka 2 of the 3 maps she can be used on, reduce her move, and she can't go through ledges. 3-6 is a swamp map. Meg can also be easy to cap for those who actually invest in her because her growths let her quickly cap stats that don't require much to be capped out given that she's an armor knight, allowing for bexp to give her growths in the stats you actually want them to be in. Fiona is, for the most part, just normal (aka bad) across the board with her stats. They all suck and do not get high enough to cap any stats for part 3, even if you gave her all the kills you could possibly try to feed in p1 endgame. 

But seriously. Meg good. She was better than my Nolan by the end of part 1 once. She laughs at the other Dawn Brigade members who need personal weapons to catch up.

On the flipside, I've actually made Fiona work. Meg... not so much. Anyway, everything about Meg makes me question her existence.

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Meg is worse, because she has crap move and no Canto (and thus no real rescue utility).

If you're using either as a combat unit, you've probably moved beyond a playstyle where any unit can really be considered "good" or "bad". I found that Meg takes less BEXP to become a viable combat unit for part of the game (specifically, ORKOing Tigers in 3-6 with the Brave Sword), but Fiona can probably become just fine if you really invest in her.

I took Meg to the tower in my (very recent) first RD run - I'm honestly biased towards her, so you should be able to trust my assessment at the top there.

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I value Fiona more than Meg because if I'm going to use a bad unit I want them to at least turn out good. Fiona takes more work, but ultimately gives more back. Meg will always be held back by low move, bad caps, and worthless affinity. Meg starting with swords is also not doing her any favors as she can't get forged 1-2 range weapons before promotion and probably needs to reach tier 3 to actually be able to use them.

5 hours ago, FailWood said:

I don't know what they were thinking with Fiona's bases.  Even on Normal, she can be one rounded by enemy Myrmidons in the first map you can use her, and switching the Steel Lance she comes with for an Iron Lance doesn't stop her from getting doubled by them.

I once heard a theory that Fiona's bases are lv 1 bases and they forgot to finalize her with lv 9 bases. Seems legit.

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59 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I'd say it's still better than Binding Blade, which has more throwaway units than RD did (which, considering that RD has far more units, says a lot about its unit quality) or Holy War, where cavalry are pretty much head and shoulders above everyone else.

That is a discussion for a different topic.

19 minutes ago, Florete said:

I once heard a theory that Fiona's bases are lv 1 bases and they forgot to finalize her with lv 9 bases. Seems legit.

I checked her averages, and if she had those first 8 level ups (level 17 averages with what we got), she'd have 3 or 4 more points in all stats besides Magic.  Those bases would feel a lot more reasonable for her join time, so I find that theory believable.

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Fiona borders on unsable, every map of her team hates her and doesn't have like 7-8 extra maps to work on herself. Hell, my disc can't even read her promotion... if that doesn't scream "unusable", I don't know what does.

I always found people overexaggerated her "mobility problems" (just Armours in general) and her supposedly bad Str/Def, which start out pretty solid bases that carry her decently. Even her 22 Spd doesn't start kicking her until 3-12, which is only one out of her 3 Part 3 maps.

Edited by ♠Soul♠
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4 minutes ago, ♠Soul♠ said:

Fiona borders on unsable, every map of her team hates her and doesn't have like 7-8 extra maps to work on herself. Hell, my disc can't even read her promotion... if that doesn't scream "unusable", I don't know what does.

Well, I've used her, so...she's not unusable.

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1 minute ago, Florete said:

Well, I've used her, so...she's not unusable.

Well, I didn't, and I still can't. I'm sure you didn't go through the hell that is 1E HM only for the game to kick you in the balls like that.

good times

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3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I could say the same of Meg, tbf - it's like they learned nothing from Gwendolyn and how terrible she was.

 

Meg's raw bases are waay better than Gwendolyn's, though. Not even close. She has +6 str, +4 skl, +5 spd, +2 luck, +2 def, +4 res, and +2 HP. She is 2 levels higher, granted, but she also joins earlier. If Meg had the same raw stats in GBA FE she'd be really good (well, within the limitations of being an armour knight, anyway).

By contrast, Fiona's stat build would not be out of line for GBA FE considering her level. e.g. Comparing her to a Level 9 Kent, she has 1-2 points less of Str/Skl/Spd/HP, in exchange for slightly more defences and luck. Since RD enemy stats are much higher, that's not good.

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Comparing Meg to Wendy is absolutely ridiculous, let alone in a game like FE6 where hitrates are awful as they are, and she joins way underleveled and literally a chapter before Axe Fest Saga begins. She gets murdered, at least Meg has some degree of durability, and gets out of doubled territory as easy as 1 Spd level (even in HM). She has 7-8 chapters before Part 1 ends, and that's a lot more other characters can say.

I always felt confident I could build a really good Meg in HM with solid turncount and take her to 3rd tier before Part 4 begins. I can't say any of that for Fiona, let alone freaking Wendyknight.

Edited by ♠Soul♠
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15 hours ago, ♠Soul♠ said:

Fiona borders on unsable, every map of her team hates her and doesn't have like 7-8 extra maps to work on herself. Hell, my disc can't even read her promotion... if that doesn't scream "unusable", I don't know what does.

I always found people overexaggerated her "mobility problems" (just Armours in general) and her supposedly bad Str/Def, which start out pretty solid bases that carry her decently. Even her 22 Spd doesn't start kicking her until 3-12, which is only one out of her 3 Part 3 maps.

The problem with Meg is, she has all the bad points of being an armored unit without any of the perks of one (she's a knight that plays and grows more like a myrmidon). And while she has more availability than Fiona, that just means she spends longer dragging my team down. Worst of all, for how much effort she needs to get anywhere (I swear, making her work is the Fire Emblem equivalent of a Herculean labor), she doesn't pay off well enough to justify it. 

It doesn't have anything to do with her being armored. It has everything to do with her failing at her role and her bases and growths being completely counter to said role (I'd expect an armored unit to be able to survive more than 1 round of combat at base). Mobility issues just make her already flimsy case worse.

13 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:
Meg's raw bases are waay better than Gwendolyn's, though. Not even close. She has +6 str, +4 skl, +5 spd, +2 luck, +2 def, +4 res, and +2 HP. She is 2 levels higher, granted, but she also joins earlier. If Meg had the same raw stats in GBA FE she'd be really good (well, within the limitations of being an armour knight, anyway).

By contrast, Fiona's stat build would not be out of line for GBA FE considering her level. e.g. Comparing her to a Level 9 Kent, she has 1-2 points less of Str/Skl/Spd/HP, in exchange for slightly more defences and luck. Since RD enemy stats are much higher, that's not good.

That's true, but you DO realize that's saying, very, VERY little, don't you..?  Also, she's still egregiously underleveled, and in a game where enemies have better stats.

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2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

That's true, but you DO realize that's saying, very, VERY little, don't you..?  Also, she's still egregiously underleveled, and in a game where enemies have better stats.

"Egregiously" underlevelled is going a bit far, considering the comparisons. Fiona is more underlevelled, let alone rejoin!Tormod, or cases from other games such as Gwendolyn and Sophia.

I'm not trying to say that much, just that she's better than Fiona (as well as Gwendolyn, since you brought her in). Of course that isn't much of an accomplishment, but that's what this thread is about. The thread is not "is Meg better than Nolan".

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6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

The problem with Meg is, she has all the bad points of being an armored unit without any of the perks of one (she's a knight that plays and grows more like a myrmidon). And while she has more availability than Fiona, that just means she spends longer dragging my team down. Worst of all, for how much effort she needs to get anywhere (I swear, making her work is the Fire Emblem equivalent of a Herculean labor), she doesn't pay off well enough to justify it. 

It doesn't have anything to do with her being armored. It has everything to do with her failing at her role and her bases and growths being completely counter to said role (I'd expect an armored unit to be able to survive more than 1 round of combat at base). Mobility issues just make her already flimsy case worse.

I've never really liked the "Armor Knight who's bad at being an Armor Knight" argument. Like, if Meg joined with 3 more points of Speed (8 -> 11) and 3 fewer points of Defense (10 -> 7), I would argue that she would actually become better overall. She no longer has to fear getting doubled, and her physical bulk is enough to survive anything shy of a 9-Strength Tiger. She'd have an easier time keeping pace with enemy Speed stats, too, rather than having to catch up. She still wouldn't be a good unit by any stretch, but she'd be slightly less bad.

And it's not like there's no one else in your army filling an "physical tank" role - Aran has absurd growths in Strength and Defense, Nolan has high HP and gets Defense later from Tarvos, and Sothe can take a hit better than anyone else for most of Part 1.

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

That's true, but you DO realize that's saying, very, VERY little, don't you..?  Also, she's still egregiously underleveled, and in a game where enemies have better stats.

It at least says that your original analogy of Mag to Gwendolyn was "egregiously" unfair. Let's not let the superficial similarities (low-leveled female Armor Knight in pink) distract us from actual gameplay function.

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4 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

"Egregiously" underlevelled is going a bit far, considering the comparisons. Fiona is more underlevelled, let alone rejoin!Tormod, or cases from other games such as Gwendolyn and Sophia.

I'm not trying to say that much, just that she's better than Fiona (as well as Gwendolyn, since you brought her in). Of course that isn't much of an accomplishment, but that's what this thread is about. The thread is not "is Meg better than Nolan".

Well, it kinda fits imho, given that she needs more effort to get anywhere than any other beorc unit in the game. Being level 3 in the 5th chapter of the game is way better than being level 1 in the 8th, of course, but still, this is the same game that gives us a level 12 unit in the chapter right before... and that's when I start to question what in the seven hells the developers were thinking with regards to her, if they were even thinking at all.

Believing she's better than Fiona is a very hard sell imho, largely because Meg's class is an active hindrance. She's better than Gwendolyn, sure, but that's not something to brag about, especially considering how badly the latter has the deck stacked against her (underleveled, lance-locked, comes right before a section of the game where most enemies use axes).

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

I've never really liked the "Armor Knight who's bad at being an Armor Knight" argument. Like, if Meg joined with 3 more points of Speed (8 -> 11) and 3 fewer points of Defense (10 -> 7), I would argue that she would actually become better overall. She no longer has to fear getting doubled, and her physical bulk is enough to survive anything shy of a 9-Strength Tiger. She'd have an easier time keeping pace with enemy Speed stats, too, rather than having to catch up. She still wouldn't be a good unit by any stretch, but she'd be slightly less bad.

And it's not like there's no one else in your army filling an "physical tank" role - Aran has absurd growths in Strength and Defense, Nolan has high HP and gets Defense later from Tarvos, and Sothe can take a hit better than anyone else for most of Part 1.

I disagree - she'd be even more of a disgrace than she already is. Personally, when a unit comes in a tanky class, I at least expect that unit to have decent concrete durability at base, otherwise it just looks silly. And in this case, even disregarding Sothe, she is curbstomped by Nolan in that aspect. A speedy armored knight is a novel idea, but if they cannot fulfill the typical role that an armored knight is supposed to fulfill, I ain't gonna even give them the time of day. Or are you saying that I've been spoiled by Oswin and PoR Gatrie???

I'm not saying that no one else in the Daeins can fill the tank role - only that Meg not being able to despite being being in a class that's meant to do so is an embarrassment.

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1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

I disagree - she'd be even more of a disgrace than she already is. Personally, when a unit comes in a tanky class, I at least expect that unit to have decent concrete durability at base, otherwise it just looks silly. And in this case, even disregarding Sothe, she is curbstomped by Nolan in that aspect. A speedy armored knight is a novel idea, but if they cannot fulfill the typical role that an armored knight is supposed to fulfill, I ain't gonna even give them the time of day. Or are you saying that I've been spoiled by Oswin and PoR Gatrie???

By this line of logic, two units could be numerically and mechanically identical, yet you'd assess them differently based on their class. Like, suppose you had a Level 5 Mercenary with 9 in all stats (including Con), and a Level 5 Myrmidon with the same. You would call the Myrmidon bad, by merit of having low Speed and Skill for its level (relative to class standards), but the Mercenary is alright, because you expect it to be well-balanced. Two units are providing an identical gameplay function, but because of the templates associated with said classes, you assess one to be worse than the other.

Meg isn't bad because she's a "bad Armor Knight", she's bad because of inferior bases and poor mobility. Fiona has fewer mobility problems, but throws "severely curtailed availability" into the mix. She's not bad because she's a "bad Cavalier", she just sucks.

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