Conquest cavaliers

[mangasdeouf]

Hi!

I like to talk about Fates more than I like to play the games, blame map gimmicks and incentive to pair up, bad forging system and weird high rank weapons (oh, and underleveled units who keep joining with underwhelming base stats in a game where you can't grind). But I still like to discuss units and all that.

Today, I wonder what the community of Serenes Forest thinks about this game's (natural) cavaliers. Class set, skill access, base stats, growths, archetype, if they're overall good, excellent, okay, passable, mediocre, really bad.

My PoV:

Silas: early joining, serviceable, bases are nothing special, not amazing offense, not amazing defense, not amazing weapon ranks. In Conquest, the hardest game, Silas was sent to you at his lowest (in Birthright, he at least had good weapon ranks). His growths are quite good, but they're suited for a character with good base stats and Silas has 2 more base speed as a cavalier than Effie as a knight, which I take insult for in a game where defense isn't magic and where most generics have middling to good speed. With a seal speed that some of the hard/lunatic faceless carry, Silas falls down to a wonderful...2 speed. In his join map. Applaud the greatness of cavalry! Silas' 50% growths in speed and defense mean that he will never excell at anything, his strength growth of 60% is good but far from Effie's 80% (which means 4 points of strength more for every 20 levels). You could marry Silas and Effie, promote her to GK until level 5, get her all the cavalier skills plus luna and reclass her to paladin and she would blow Silas to another dimension (her personal skill is also 10x more practical to use than Silas' and combines well with elbow room and they have the same personal base speed with Effie having +10% str AND spd growths). Silas is ultimately replaced with Xander who does everything Silas does but better, costs less than Silas (if you focus on OHKO, Xander doesn't even need speedwings).

Silas' best part is that when you stop using him, you're probably close to an S rank support, which grants you Sophie, a more mercenary-like cavalier. Sophie can be recruited early for good experience on her map and totally amazing captures that put all of your team other than Camilla to shame for most of the game (amazing wyvern lords, a slightly worse Camilla in the boss of the paralogue, Nichol), or late to give her the offspring seal and get a free lv 10 promoted unit for low effort.

Peri: join time isn't amazing, but her chapter has boosting pots which can be used to bring her up to the standards of this map. She also comes with a free backpack (Laslow) who helps her a lot (especially if you promote him to hero). On Reddit most people seem to somehow not like Peri as an unit despite praising other similar cavaliers in other games for being exactly like Peri unit-wise. She has the best speed of the 3 cavaliers who don't need marriage to exist and her growth makes sure to keep it that way. Her skill is not amazing, but she can spend one level in Dark Knight to get heartseeker if you're so desperate about it (or take a skill tome that will make it around the same as Effie's). Peri comes at level 10 with 13 speed in a map where it is usable, has a ready pair up partner who gives speed and skill and lots of mechanics to make her competent. Her growths make sure her offense never falls off (unless heavily RNG screwed, 65% str and 60% speed in cavalier/paladin is pretty good with a base of 13 at level 10 and elbow room). Her issue, defense, is a promotion to GK/a tonic/a rally def away from being on par with a level 14 Silas' (rally def = lv 14 Silas average def of 14). There are lots of ways to use her in her join map without needing to turtle (like you'd need to in order to make Charlotte do anything other than get herself killed). Peri has decent weapon ranks unlike Silas, making her able to use all of the good lances at base and at least iron swords at base (no bronze hell). Pairing her with Laslow gives her access to a class that Silas has in his set, bow knight, that make all of her good points even better while avoiding to address her worst one (defense, thanks to bows), so if she gets def screwed you can always send her to a ranged class in which she has at least one weapon rank.

Silas vs Peri (availability vs competence):

Stats-wise, a level 10 Silas has 24 HP/13-14 str/11-12 skl/10 spd/12 def/6 res. That's...that's serious crap especially in a game where it's hard to gain 2 levels per map past your recruitment chapter unless you're underleveled. Let's say he's level 14: 26 HP/16 str/14 skl/12 spd/14 def/8 res. He's 4 levels higher than Peri, which is possible due to availability and not absurd like it would be to expect him being anywhere higher than 16 (which would give him 1 more point everywhere but in res). He's still inferior to base Peri by 1 speed and 2 res, has just passed her in HP by 1, has more str (3) and def (4).

If we're being super generous to Silas and manage to reach level 20/20 with him by endgame, he has 40 HP/32-33 str (capped?)/28-29 skl/26-27 spd/28-29 def/18-19 res. The bulk part is...average. Serious lack of HP for a tank, res lagging behind, def is nothing special. Offensively good strength but speed is on the low side, probably can't double anything but the slowest Hoshidan classes and none of the bosses. In range of being doubled by the fastest Hoshidan classes. Speed pair ups are harder to find than def pair ups in Conquest.

With the same generosity let's see Peri after such an exp investment in paladin: 38-39 HP/33-34 str (capped?)/22-23 skl/32-33 spd (capped?)/22-23 def/28-29 res. The bulk part is unimpressive, but as you can see their HP is nearly the same. The offense part is a gigantic win for Peri to the point where she doubles Silas in endgame if her spd cap allows it (or if you improved your spd statues). Their strength is virtually the same but her speed is just grossly superior to his. Her skill is certainly not amazing but you could reclass for 1 level to dark knight to grab heartseeker without hurting her speed (5% growth for one level won't change anything, make sure to raise her sword rank to C so that she can at least use decent weapons for this single level) and remove 20 to enemy avoid in melee range. Their bulk: She's better in defense than he is in res (by 4 points no less) and defense pair ups are the easiest to find in Conquest. Hero gives 3 skl/spd/2 def and Laslow even gives 2 str at S support. Personal skills put Peri even higher as now she's a simple tonic away from doubling the slowest enemies able to double Silas (without pair up). Generic knights/wyverns/great knights/generals fix Peri's biggest  problem, defense, if her speed is high enough not to need a speed pair up to double. Peri allows you to use your offensive rally bot on someone else while Silas asks for a dedicated rally speed just to be in the same tier as Paeri without her personal, rally def is the easiest good rally to get as all of your wyvern lords learn it at level 5 and Peri is a much better offensive unit than Beruka so when your Beruka gets rally def she can become a support and stop stealing resources from competent units who start out with double digit speed or have a weapon that allows them to double at 1-2 range.

If you choose GK, Silas goes down to 24-25 spd while Peri goes down to 30-31, which is still capped (or overcapped). Silas' res sinks to 13-14 which is what you'd expect from a res screwed Xander, while Peri gets down to 23-24 res, 10 points higher.

Silas' HP goes up to 44-45/str 35-36/spd down 24-25/def 32-33/res 13-14. It kills Silas' speed and res and makes him Xander bis, without Siegfried. Silas has no reason to stay GK long term, he's desperate for speed and res and his def is not good enough to be a conventional tank.

Peri gets 42-43/str 36-37/30-31/def 26/res 23-24. Peri gains a lot of HP/def that help her, doubling with that strength and potentially activating luna is good. She's still faster than paladin Silas but now she's also bulkier than him with better HP/res and not enough def to make a big difference.

Is Silas more likely to reach 20/20 stats? Probably, but let me remind you that for the whole game he has less than or equal to Peri's speed without her personal skill active and that with her personal she always has superior offense to Silas to the point that she can take the slow promotion and still double enemies paladin Silas can't. She starts 3 points higher than him at the same level and in the same class ends 5 points higher than him, making it 1-2 points for early-midgame, she claims an unwanted support partner (Laslow) who can pass down sol to Soleil while making her a bow knight, a much better class than hero (bows>axes when you're not a high skill juggernaut, 2 extra movement is good, bow knight is faster than hero, the ultimate offense) and Peri gets a free self rally by killing one unit each turn (which cumulates with tonics and Azura's dance but not with rallies). More speed=easier to reach killing thresholds=more exp to Peri=catches up during midgame (especially since overleveled exp is garbage).

Xander: GK Silas with better HP/res and Siegfried, 8 movement, better defense forever. Lv 20 stats as a paladin: 46-47 HP/33-34 str/26 skl/22-23 spd/31+4 def/15 res. If Xander didn't have Siegfried he'd be worse than Silas (his speed is beyond garbage without heavy investment). His personal is obviously better than Silas' since it's super easy to use in any situation and doesn't need set up (on the contrary it's automatic, just slam your metal chunk into fresh enemies' heads to profit). Xander's reclass into wyvern lord lets him clap Kitsune hell low effort with a beastslayer and to fly over map skip #XYZ). Xander has the best weapon in Conquest by far and thus is a better unit than both Peri and Silas can ever hope to be. He has natural access to rally def, savage blow, swordbreaker and trample, 10 dodge just by using his sword (bye bye random crits, screw luck stat nerfs into oblivion) and never has to use inaccurate weapons. His favorite pair ups give him hero and two of them give him bow knight, which gives him +2 spd, +5% spd growth and shurikenbreaker. The other one gives him HP +5. All of them give him axebreaker, the bane of berserkers.

Sophie: the only easy to get 2nd gen cavalier. Basically cavalier Mozu but you don't need to train her at all if you use the offspring seal, get free good weapon ranks and good stats at no cost, she benefits from her parent's skills on top of that. A nice filler unit that is competent without being gamebreaking. Much more useful than Silas beyond earlygame when you have no choice anyway, better stat distribution unless you ruin her with a crappy mother.

Edited June 8, 2023 by mangasdeouf

[Armchair General]

I never really cared much for cavaliers in Conquest. They've always felt an little bit unreliable in comparison to Kaze, Effie, and Charlotte, in the long run . But the skills that learn with either promotion are certainly impressive, though.

[mangasdeouf]

1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

I never really cared much for cavaliers in Conquest. They've always felt an little bit unreliable in comparison to Kaze, Effie, and Charlotte, in the long run . But the skills that learn with either promotion are certainly impressive, though.

The skills they learn with promotion? Do you mean paladin's +1 to every stat when they're the front unit of a pair (lame, why not simply have +1 to all stats from the beginning and has an actual skill?), luna (nice when it helps, most of the time it does nothing because the activation rates of skills in Fates are garbage due to low stats and sometimes luna can hurt your tactics more than it helps) and aegis (the worst damage reduction skill in the game)? I agree on GK level 15 skill, it's useful, but the rest of their skills...cavalier skills are much better than any of the promoted skills and bow knight has the best level 15 skill, shurikenbreaker, or how to get back at this *ing game's unfairness of spamming shuriken debuffs, creating game breaking skills like inevitable end and making shuriken and knives forgeable when they're already the best physical weapons even without forging.

I think Fates failed at bringing back a lot of the great class designs from older games and it certainly affects cavaliers (promoted skills are mediocre or situational, stats are alright but paladin doesn't have enough of an edge in skill/speed and res on GK to be the absolute right choice except for Silas who's crap as a GK in CQ when mages start to pop with 26-30 atk and 2HKO Silas and later Xander too). Heroes used to have great stats and be one of the best unmounted class with great looks? Well too bad, Fates heroes have only 1 more spd than paladins and their skills are alright but sol is nerfed by low stats, lack of good 1-2 range that procs skills (basically useless on anyone but master ninjas and Xander), axebreaker comes too late to really matter, berserker is faster, has so much more HP that hero's slightly better defense doesn't matter and has grossly higher strength to be able to ORKO more effectively.

Dark Knight used to be a primarily magic hybrid class but it's now just a slightly worse GK with +1 movement, worse stats all around and only one good skill, sadly learnt at level 15 and not 5. 5% magic growth is the same as wyvern rider, completely ignoring the fact that DK is a completely magic-oriented class who just has superior bulk and mobility at the cost of speed and nosferatu.

Bow knight is the only horse class that escaped the nerf hammer.

Adaptation of other classes that are considered inferior are sometimes actually better than classes with the usual name: blacksmith actually has a better stat distribution than hero and growth rates, salvage blow would be more useful in CQ than it is in Hoshido and lancebreaker is a good skill but not top tier due to the lack of extremely dangerous lance users in CQ. Blacksmith is the best warrior class I've played if we consider RD's warriors to be more berserkers than warriors (mercenary/hero speed, final class crit bonus). Thieves promoting to bow knight with movement +1 and pass from adventurer makes them more than walking lockpicks and bows make them actually threatening, while res at least gives them a favored target. Master of Arms is the hero class without the name, decent bulk, above average speed (higher than hero), good strength and HP, average skill, life and death is a good mercenary themed skill.

I think this game suffers from having too many classes and thus not enough class identity (63 playable classes IIRC, more than there are playable characters FFS...). Too many classes that do the same thing. I'm all for a game where classes and promotions are more like in SoV, where your class is more important than your character and not the other way around (all knights are tanky and hit hard, all cavaliers are average, all swordies are fast, magic doesn't have staff/weapon uses but a cooldown/cost based on how useful and practical it is, like excalibur that has high crit, lightning that has 2-3 range but slows you down...) while the character only gives a small variation on the class (while in Fates Subaki and Hinata are not variations of their class, they're just units that have nothing to do with their class identity and overall mediocre at best at what they do and at what their class does due to bad bases and even wrose growths despite already being overshadowed by the royals, Xander being a paladin but having the stats of a great knight, he's literally Duessel's reincarnation, Odin not deserving the title of mage since his magic is pitiful and all his stats are mediocre, his potential is negative as the further you get into the game, the more unusable he becomes and Leo instantly ridicules him). Which ends up making most individual classes less impactful than they used to be.

[Shadow Mir]

6 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Sophie: the only easy to get 2nd gen cavalier. Basically cavalier Mozu but you don't need to train her at all if you use the offspring seal, get free good weapon ranks and good stats at no cost, she benefits from her parent's skills on top of that. A nice filler unit that is competent without being gamebreaking. Much more useful than Silas beyond earlygame when you have no choice anyway, better stat distribution unless you ruin her with a crappy mother.

Offspring Seals are a trap and a ripoff, to be blunt.

2 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

The skills they learn with promotion? Do you mean paladin's +1 to every stat when they're the front unit of a pair (lame, why not simply have +1 to all stats from the beginning and has an actual skill?), luna (nice when it helps, most of the time it does nothing because the activation rates of skills in Fates are garbage due to low stats and sometimes luna can hurt your tactics more than it helps) and aegis (the worst damage reduction skill in the game)? I agree on GK level 15 skill, it's useful, but the rest of their skills...cavalier skills are much better than any of the promoted skills and bow knight has the best level 15 skill, shurikenbreaker, or how to get back at this *ing game's unfairness of spamming shuriken debuffs, creating game breaking skills like inevitable end and making shuriken and knives forgeable when they're already the best physical weapons even without forging.

Defender is better than Sol, among other skills.

FYI, Inevitable End is only a thing on Lunatic, and even then, you don't see it until very late in the game.

2 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

I think Fates failed at bringing back a lot of the great class designs from older games and it certainly affects cavaliers (promoted skills are mediocre or situational, stats are alright but paladin doesn't have enough of an edge in skill/speed and res on GK to be the absolute right choice except for Silas who's crap as a GK in CQ when mages start to pop with 26-30 atk and 2HKO Silas and later Xander too). Heroes used to have great stats and be one of the best unmounted class with great looks? Well too bad, Fates heroes have only 1 more spd than paladins and their skills are alright but sol is nerfed by low stats, lack of good 1-2 range that procs skills (basically useless on anyone but master ninjas and Xander), axebreaker comes too late to really matter, berserker is faster, has so much more HP that hero's slightly better defense doesn't matter and has grossly higher strength to be able to ORKO more effectively.

Sol is useless anyhow, to be blunt. A 20-30% chance to drain half the damage dealt isn't really worthy of a skill slot. And anyone who has the durability to make use of it doesn't really need it.

Berserker is even worse; high HP does jackshit to make up for poor defenses, and being axe-locked isn't something I'd want to be in Fates. Oh, and if you want to complain about class designs, Berserker is one of the worst there, too.

2 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Adaptation of other classes that are considered inferior are sometimes actually better than classes with the usual name: blacksmith actually has a better stat distribution than hero and growth rates, salvage blow would be more useful in CQ than it is in Hoshido and lancebreaker is a good skill but not top tier due to the lack of extremely dangerous lance users in CQ. Blacksmith is the best warrior class I've played if we consider RD's warriors to be more berserkers than warriors (mercenary/hero speed, final class crit bonus). Thieves promoting to bow knight with movement +1 and pass from adventurer makes them more than walking lockpicks and bows make them actually threatening, while res at least gives them a favored target. Master of Arms is the hero class without the name, decent bulk, above average speed (higher than hero), good strength and HP, average skill, life and death is a good mercenary themed skill.

Blacksmith isn't that great, and its distribution is poor too; only six characters have access to it. Salvage Blow is not very good, either: a chance to get an iron weapon isn't that useful at that stage of the game when my units have graduated to steel, and it'd be even more useless in Conquest, as it gives Hoshidan weapons. Life and Death pigeonholes the user into being a glass cannon, as the +10 to damage taken seriously compromises their bulk.

2 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

I think this game suffers from having too many classes and thus not enough class identity (63 playable classes IIRC, more than there are playable characters FFS...). Too many classes that do the same thing. I'm all for a game where classes and promotions are more like in SoV, where your class is more important than your character and not the other way around (all knights are tanky and hit hard, all cavaliers are average, all swordies are fast, magic doesn't have staff/weapon uses but a cooldown/cost based on how useful and practical it is, like excalibur that has high crit, lightning that has 2-3 range but slows you down...) while the character only gives a small variation on the class (while in Fates Subaki and Hinata are not variations of their class, they're just units that have nothing to do with their class identity and overall mediocre at best at what they do and at what their class does due to bad bases and even wrose growths despite already being overshadowed by the royals, Xander being a paladin but having the stats of a great knight, he's literally Duessel's reincarnation, Odin not deserving the title of mage since his magic is pitiful and all his stats are mediocre, his potential is negative as the further you get into the game, the more unusable he becomes and Leo instantly ridicules him). Which ends up making most individual classes less impactful than they used to be.

Too many classes is the one thing I might agree with you on; Oni Chieftain, Basara and Malig Knight stand out like sore thumbs in that regard.

Edited June 9, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Offspring Seals are a trap and a ripoff, to be blunt.

How on earth do you come to that conclusion? They're frankly necessary if you want to use a child character obtained late in the game; I can't imagine trying to throw a 20/1 character into the last few maps of Conquest (really anything from Takumi on), that sounds awful.

Even midgame, they're nice for saving you money; if I unlock a child character around e.g. chapter 17 or so I often just wait a map or two so I can promote them for free.

Only if you unlock a child character relatively early (and/or their paralogue has extra incentives to do early, like Ophelia's) does it makes sense to forgo this option.

4 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

I think Fates failed at bringing back a lot of the great class designs from older games and it certainly affects cavaliers (promoted skills are mediocre or situational, stats are alright but paladin doesn't have enough of an edge in skill/speed and res on GK to be the absolute right choice except for Silas who's crap as a GK in CQ when mages start to pop with 26-30 atk and 2HKO Silas and later Xander too). Heroes used to have great stats and be one of the best unmounted class with great looks? Well too bad, Fates heroes have only 1 more spd than paladins and their skills are alright but sol is nerfed by low stats, lack of good 1-2 range that procs skills (basically useless on anyone but master ninjas and Xander), axebreaker comes too late to really matter, berserker is faster, has so much more HP that hero's slightly better defense doesn't matter and has grossly higher strength to be able to ORKO more effectively.

Dark Knight used to be a primarily magic hybrid class but it's now just a slightly worse GK with +1 movement, worse stats all around and only one good skill, sadly learnt at level 15 and not 5. 5% magic growth is the same as wyvern rider, completely ignoring the fact that DK is a completely magic-oriented class who just has superior bulk and mobility at the cost of speed and nosferatu.

Mm, I'd say Cavalier is still very good in Fates: 7 move, two weapons, Elbow Room gives them great all-around stats in the majority of situations, and Shelter is great utility especially thanks to its synergy with Dance. There's no question that the characters who join in Cavalier would largely be worse if they joined in other classes.

I must say, I'm not sure what your issue with Dark Knight is, or why you think it's nerfed from Awakening (the only earlier game that had it, so I imagine that's implicitly your point of comparison, unless you're bringing in all cavalry mages?). Its stats are basically the same in Fates as they are in Awakening, relatively (a little slower, I suppose, though slightly tankier), but "no Nosferatu" is a far bigger downside in Awakening than it is in Fates. I have definitely seen DK suggested more often in Fates class discussions than I have in Awakening, personally.

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

On Reddit most people seem to somehow not like Peri as an unit despite praising other similar cavaliers in other games for being exactly like Peri unit-wise.

Leave it to Reddit to disappoint.

I basically agree with you, I think Peri is quite solid. While I'm not sure about her vs. Silas in a tier sense thanks to Silas's early contributions, I do think Peri is overall better in their shared availability; I value her extra speed more than his extra defence by a fair bit. Her skill also has wonderful synergy with Dance, or even just some clever enemy phase shenanigans.

Xander is obviously extremely good when he exists. It's always interesting to think about what he'd be like without Siegfried, but Siegfried is functionally part of him and is very good.

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

How on earth do you come to that conclusion? They're frankly necessary if you want to use a child character obtained late in the game; I can't imagine trying to throw a 20/1 character into the last few maps of Conquest (really anything from Takumi on), that sounds awful.

Even midgame, they're nice for saving you money; if I unlock a child character around e.g. chapter 17 or so I often just wait a map or two so I can promote them for free.

Only if you unlock a child character relatively early (and/or their paralogue has extra incentives to do early, like Ophelia's) does it makes sense to forgo this option.

Because the reward doesn't really increase, but the risk does. It doesn't help that some kids' paralogues are flat-out poorly designed for lategame play (you like trying to get to Ignatius lategame? How about Shiro? Or Siegbert?)... also, I find that the results of using Offspring Seals are hardly worth the wait in practice.

Edited June 9, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[mangasdeouf]

9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

FYI, Inevitable End is only a thing on Lunatic, and even then, you don't see it until very late in the game.

I know, but it exists. Although I thought it was also present in hard and I'm glad to learn that it's not the case. Fck that skill.

9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Defender is better than Sol, among other skills.

Sol is certainly underwhelming, but I don't like pair up so I don't give a lot of credit to defender which only has any effect when the unit is the front of a pair. To me it's a pointless crutch skill for a class that is simply mediocre aside from movement. Paladin's weapons aren't helping either, none of them has good 2 range. Bow knight is strictly superior in every meaningful way. Hero is paladin without res and with only a good level 15 skill, coming too late to be useful in most cases.

9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Berserker is even worse; high HP does jackshit to make up for poor defenses, and being axe-locked isn't something I'd want to be in Fates. Oh, and if you want to complain about class designs, Berserker is one of the worst there, too.

Berserker's problem is negative dodge more than bulk (hero has even less magical bulk than berserker due to crap res AND lower HP and the HP difference makes up for the defense one against 1 or 2 enemies). Offensively berserker completely annihilates hero and it also has 2 useful skills. It's only issue is that axes are nearly as bad as they were back in Binding Blade, 5 hit rate away from that garbage and don't have good 1-2 range to make up for it.

9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Blacksmith isn't that great, and its distribution is poor too; only six characters have access to it. Salvage Blow is not very good, either: a chance to get an iron weapon isn't that useful at that stage of the game when my units have graduated to steel, and it'd be even more useless in Conquest, as it gives Hoshidan weapons. Life and Death pigeonholes the user into being a glass cannon, as the +10 to damage taken seriously compromises their bulk.

Blacksmith is more interesting than hero though. It fixes the FFF tier skill of oni savage, keeps the high HP, gives slightly more speed than oni chieftain and has functional weapons. For a juggernaut oriented class, its' speed is average and its' def is better than average, it has the best HP of these classes or one of the best HP. It's fine and serviceable and I'd rather have middling speed and above average def and HP than have middling everything like hero. Salvage blow still gives you free money or Hoshidan weapons (and if you're OK with castle visits you can forge them in BR/Rev castles). Since iron is the best default weapon type, it basically gives you free forging materials. CQ is kinda short on this so it can use the free stuff.

Life and Death is a skill meant to be used in conjunction with vantage or by PP units who don't take counterattack damage (or who have PP damage reduction skills). It actually is the best way to break the game with Jakob, Vantage+LaD+Elbow Room+1-2 range weapon=free 13 damage per hit. If you add swordfaire it's 18 free damage. A lethal combo if there is one (especially on Jakob with the Levin Sword's 10-11 base damage or in GK with a kodachi).

9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Too many classes is the one thing I might agree with you on; Oni Chieftain, Basara and Malig Knight stand out like sore thumbs in that regard.

I don't think we have the same targets to terminate, but at least we can agree that the number of (playable) classes is way too high. I think oni chieftain needs a stat fix (more skill, a little less def, more HP to play on the hybrid bulk theme and an actual skill at level 5 because I find Death Blow completely crappy since it's PP only, it could have been a sniper skill with certain blow becoming a level 1 skill instead of lolskill+2, making Setsuna and Mozu much easier to train and fixing the accuracy issue of yumi). Basara just need better pair up bonuses and a better growth distribution, their bases are super good.

Spear master, wyvern lord and blacksmith to a lesser extent need more distinctive stats from their hybrid counterparts. +1 HP/str/spd/def is not enough to make a difference when most of the time the hybrid class has better skills (except oni that could as well not have any for how useless they are to their class). Seal speed is more useful to the enemies who don't care what class they are, there are units with skills that absolutely don't belong to their class. Lancefaire comes super late and is not that great considering the fact that lances don't have good 1-2 range anymore and that the only good one is magical, making basara effectively better with lancefaire than spear master due to having the base magic to use bolt naginata effectively.

Wyvern lord has skills that don't belong to the class: rally def? Is wyvern supposed to be a support class? No, it's a frontline juggernaut class. Swordbreaker? Just use lances instead of axes and things will go smoother. It's not like you want to fight a dragonslayer hero/swordmaster/MoA with a wyvern anyway (or you go in with a swordcatcher and you one shoot them before they get to hit you anyway so...lances are all you need). Swordbreaker is really only useful against Ryoma and one or two sword bosses who have stupid avoid (the same kind of game design that made swordies useful in FE6 due to throne evasion, that made some SD and FE4 bosses frustrating to deal with...just bad map design for the boss fight, could be fixed by not having the boss stack free avoid and instead have them...move to face you with their own bodyguards?).

7 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

How on earth do you come to that conclusion? They're frankly necessary if you want to use a child character obtained late in the game; I can't imagine trying to throw a 20/1 character into the last few maps of Conquest (really anything from Takumi on), that sounds awful.

I agree, with offspring seals you basically get lategame prepromotes for free. And Sophie is basically Mozu with better skills and slightly less stats (due to lacking aptitude...like 2 points of stats everywhere? 2 dragon herbs do the trick). Sophie=Awakening Sully.

7 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Mm, I'd say Cavalier is still very good in Fates: 7 move, two weapons, Elbow Room gives them great all-around stats in the majority of situations, and Shelter is great utility especially thanks to its synergy with Dance. There's no question that the characters who join in Cavalier would largely be worse if they joined in other classes.

Cavalier is okay, it trades good stats for good skills and has sufficient stats to get by. Both Silas and Peri would certainly be better units if they wee wyverns though, and Peri would be better if she was in a 1-2 ranged physical class or a bow class (anything with range). Her mage killing usefulness would be better used in such a class and it would avoid the need for her to gain defense.

 

7 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I must say, I'm not sure what your issue with Dark Knight is, or why you think it's nerfed from Awakening (the only earlier game that had it, so I imagine that's implicitly your point of comparison, unless you're bringing in all cavalry mages?). Its stats are basically the same in Fates as they are in Awakening, relatively (a little slower, I suppose, though slightly tankier), but "no Nosferatu" is a far bigger downside in Awakening than it is in Fates. I have definitely seen DK suggested more often in Fates class discussions than I have in Awakening, personally.

I mean that DK is supposed to be a magic class before a physical one. Leo is a mage before being a knight. The 5% magic growth of the class while it has 15-20% strength is totally absurd and breaks class identity. It butchers mages' main attack stat for a completely pointless one.

7 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I basically agree with you, I think Peri is quite solid. While I'm not sure about her vs. Silas in a tier sense thanks to Silas's early contributions, I do think Peri is overall better in their shared availability; I value her extra speed more than his extra defence by a fair bit. Her skill also has wonderful synergy with Dance, or even just some clever enemy phase shenanigans.

Xander is obviously extremely good when he exists. It's always interesting to think about what he'd be like without Siegfried, but Siegfried is functionally part of him and is very good.

Yup, Peri completely overshadows Silas if the player is not a complete newbie at Fire Emblem. It's well-known that more speed has almost always been better than more defense and in CQ it's made absolutely obvious by the ridiculous speed of the enemies compared with the player's units. When Silas might need a speed pair up not to be doubled, it tells a lot about his effectiveness on the battlefield. Ch9 paired up samurai have 19 speed. They double Silas up to level 20 on average, up to 16 with a tonic speed. That's chapter 9 when Silas is barely level 10-11. Even without pair up they double him. Peri at base would not be doubled by this duo just by popping a tonic speed...if she was available. At the same level, the difference is just grossly shooting Silas down. Silas needs to be paladin level 15 just to double a duo of ch9 samurai. Please...never seen a paladin so slow that isn't a jagen (I think Silas should not exist and be replaced by Gunter and Sophie should simply be a mid-lategame replacement, Gunter's daughter who comes to take over once he retires, she would be in her late twenties-early thirties and not be a 5th dimension fast grown baby bred for war).

Or Silas could be Gunter's son and have been sent by his father to assist you, he'd be a prepromote like Seth, with serviceable bases and good growths that carry him for most of the game. He'd fall off lategame and be easily outclassed by a trained Peri as well as by Xander. Jakob can go die in a fire for what I care about his character.

Xander without Siegfried is actually surprisingly mediocre. His def suddenly isn't as impressive, his strength is slightly above average but both Silas and Peri can easily reach the same strength at the same level, his res actually sucks more than I thought in a game where onmyoji from chapter 20 onward have 30-36 attack...

 

I think Fates' exp system would be better if the units had better bases or growths. give everyone +15-20% growths or +2 in every base stat and the exp system would be justified. As it is, it just makes the royals grossly superior to the other units because their base stats and growth rates are so much better than everyone else's that they're the only units able to deal with the enemies without pair up above normal mode. Elise is literally the only gen 1 tome wielder worth using in CQ. Whoever tells me how great Odin is with Nosferatu can keep it to themselves, I've tried it and he was barely surviving enemies any decent mage would one round, he even died in Percy's paralogue with the best backpack I could give him and tonics. Odin is garbage, his offense is non-existent, nosferatu drains HP based on damage done and Odin does no damage because he has as much magic as a wooden chair (not Suzume's, just a regular wooden chair) so nosferatu Odin has always made me ROFLMAO and his great performance on the left side of ch10 is not any better than what anyone with a sword can do, but anyone with a sword has superior stats and snowballs better than him. Instant promoted Bow Knight Selena is a better unit than Odin can ever hope to be. Silas the Mediocre himself is ten times more useful than Odin and doesn't start with stats that get him ORKOd a few chapters after his recruitment. Odin's only possible comparison is Mozu because they both start like crap but at least Mozu has actual growth rates and enough levels with fast exp gain to benefit from them.

[mangasdeouf]

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Because the reward doesn't really increase, but the risk does. It doesn't help that some kids' paralogues are flat-out poorly designed for lategame play (you like trying to get to Ignatius lategame? How about Shiro? Or Siegbert?)... also, I find that the results of using Offspring Seals are hardly worth the wait in practice.

Which is another issue with the overall game design, stat inflation coupled with absurd difficulty scaling quickly frustrates more than it makes it funny. They went way too far with the "challenging" and just made an "infuriating" game.

[Shadow Mir]

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Berserker's problem is negative dodge more than bulk (hero has even less magical bulk than berserker due to crap res AND lower HP and the HP difference makes up for the defense one against 1 or 2 enemies). Offensively berserker completely annihilates hero and it also has 2 useful skills. It's only issue is that axes are nearly as bad as they were back in Binding Blade, 5 hit rate away from that garbage and don't have good 1-2 range to make up for it.

The -5 Cev is another issue, yes, but you're *dead* wrong about the higher HP making up for the poor defenses. Look at Charlotte. She has rather high HP, so she can take hits, right? WRONG!! She also has poor defenses, which means that her high HP disappears faster than a puff of smoke.

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Blacksmith is more interesting than hero though. It fixes the FFF tier skill of oni savage, keeps the high HP, gives slightly more speed than oni chieftain and has functional weapons. For a juggernaut oriented class, its' speed is average and its' def is better than average, it has the best HP of these classes or one of the best HP. It's fine and serviceable and I'd rather have middling speed and above average def and HP than have middling everything like hero. Salvage blow still gives you free money or Hoshidan weapons (and if you're OK with castle visits you can forge them in BR/Rev castles). Since iron is the best default weapon type, it basically gives you free forging materials. CQ is kinda short on this so it can use the free stuff.

Very funny, given you whine about axes earlier, but then turn around and say Blacksmith gets "functional" weapons... Which is it?!!? Also, you bash Hero for supposedly having middling everything, then turn around and sing Basara's praises later despite it being guilty of the exact same thing. What the hell.

On Salvage Blow: The problem is that it's not reliable; the chance of it working is based on the luck stat. Not only that, it only works when initiating combat and defeating the enemy. 

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Life and Death is a skill meant to be used in conjunction with vantage or by PP units who don't take counterattack damage (or who have PP damage reduction skills). It actually is the best way to break the game with Jakob, Vantage+LaD+Elbow Room+1-2 range weapon=free 13 damage per hit. If you add swordfaire it's 18 free damage. A lethal combo if there is one (especially on Jakob with the Levin Sword's 10-11 base damage or in GK with a kodachi).

This only works if you're one-shotting the enemy before they get to attack, else it's not helping much, as you're prolly dying to their attack anyway... also, some of the damage reduction skills are ALSO level 15 skills. What, you expect to combine Armored Blow, Warding Blow, and Life and Death all on the same set? lol, good luck with that when the game is over by then.

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

I don't think we have the same targets to terminate, but at least we can agree that the number of (playable) classes is way too high. I think oni chieftain needs a stat fix (more skill, a little less def, more HP to play on the hybrid bulk theme and an actual skill at level 5 because I find Death Blow completely crappy since it's PP only, it could have been a sniper skill with certain blow becoming a level 1 skill instead of lolskill+2, making Setsuna and Mozu much easier to train and fixing the accuracy issue of yumi). Basara just need better pair up bonuses and a better growth distribution, their bases are super good.

lol
Saying Basara has "super good" bases when it's the exact opposite; they're a Master of None bases wise (and in general, for that matter). On Certin/Death Blow: Aside from being excessive, I'd still say Setsuna and Mozu wouldn't be worth bothering with if that were the case.

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Spear master, wyvern lord and blacksmith to a lesser extent need more distinctive stats from their hybrid counterparts. +1 HP/str/spd/def is not enough to make a difference when most of the time the hybrid class has better skills (except oni that could as well not have any for how useless they are to their class). Seal speed is more useful to the enemies who don't care what class they are, there are units with skills that absolutely don't belong to their class. Lancefaire comes super late and is not that great considering the fact that lances don't have good 1-2 range anymore and that the only good one is magical, making basara effectively better with lancefaire than spear master due to having the base magic to use bolt naginata effectively.

Disagree - I don't consider the Basara or Malig Knight skills better (except Trample, but that's a level 15 skill). Also, it's not like going Basara is gonna make the Bolt Naginata good on someone like Oboro... and on the few characters that do have the magic to make it work, there are better options for lance classes. Anyway, Seal Speed is much more useful than you're letting on...

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Wyvern lord has skills that don't belong to the class: rally def? Is wyvern supposed to be a support class? No, it's a frontline juggernaut class. Swordbreaker? Just use lances instead of axes and things will go smoother. It's not like you want to fight a dragonslayer hero/swordmaster/MoA with a wyvern anyway (or you go in with a swordcatcher and you one shoot them before they get to hit you anyway so...lances are all you need). Swordbreaker is really only useful against Ryoma and one or two sword bosses who have stupid avoid (the same kind of game design that made swordies useful in FE6 due to throne evasion, that made some SD and FE4 bosses frustrating to deal with...just bad map design for the boss fight, could be fixed by not having the boss stack free avoid and instead have them...move to face you with their own bodyguards?).

SOMEONE has blatantly unrealistic expectations... one-shotting enemies with a weapon that only has 7 base might is a clear case of your mouth writing checks you can't cash. Anyway, I'd rather have Rally Defense than Savage Blow, which is much more useful for the enemy. I can't speak for Genealogy, but the real problem with SD is that bosses healed 20% of their health.

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

I agree, with offspring seals you basically get lategame prepromotes for free. And Sophie is basically Mozu with better skills and slightly less stats (due to lacking aptitude...like 2 points of stats everywhere? 2 dragon herbs do the trick). Sophie=Awakening Sully.

I wouldn't exactly call it "free" when you make the chapters themselves much harder... especially when the offspring seals are a Powerup Letdown in the first place - emphasis on "letdown".

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Which is another issue with the overall game design, stat inflation coupled with absurd difficulty scaling quickly frustrates more than it makes it funny. They went way too far with the "challenging" and just made an "infuriating" game.

You want frustrating? Go play Binding Blade, THEN we'll talk. I'd consider the challenge in this game far more legitimate in comparison, with some exceptions.

...also,you forgot Siegbert. Not that I blame you, since there's pretty much no way he's gonna outclass Xander.

Edited June 9, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[mangasdeouf]

18 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

The -5 Cev is another issue, yes, but you're *dead* wrong about the higher HP making up for the poor defenses. Look at Charlotte. She has rather high HP, so she can take hits, right? WRONG!! She also has poor defenses, which means that her high HP disappears faster than a puff of smoke.

A berserker with tonic def/res still has 4 more HP/str than a hero, 1 more spd and the same def/res, the difference in def res is literally 1 tonic. The crit evade is really much more problematic than the def/res since hero is just a footlocked paladin. A berserker, unlike a hero, can go into a fight and expect to ORKO their target even before considering the fact that 20% crit for free (as a base stat, not a PP skill) gives you a chance to shorten the fight to a single blow. You can miss one hit and crit withthe second and still win. Hero has shitty offense and mediocre defenses, it's the worst physical footlocked class except for LOLHoshido Noble (the class with absolute trash stats and no interesting weapon as well as gimmick skills).

18 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Very funny, given you whine about axes earlier, but then turn around and say Blacksmith gets "functional" weapons... Which is it?!!? Also, you bash Hero for supposedly having middling everything, then turn around and sing Basara's praises later despite it being guilty of the exact same thing. What the hell.

On Salvage Blow: The problem is that it's not reliable; the chance of it working is based on the luck stat. Not only that, it only works when initiating combat and defeating the enemy. 

Blacksmith has 9 base skill. The class alone has as much skill as lv7 Arthur. It has +1 over berserker, -1 from hero. It has the highest HP base in Hoshido, equal to Great Knight's and only lower than Wolfssegner, general by 1 and than berserker by 3. It has +HP/1 def base over hero which only has +1 skl over blacksmith. as for growth rates, it has -5% skl/spd and +5% def. Let me also remind me that having the same base speed, more base def and slightly better bulk overall in Hoshido is better than being short of every important threshold in CQ. Blacksmiths have like 10 potential speed pair ups while heroes cruelly lack offensive pair ups that give str and spd since they lack in both against Hoshidan classes that tend to have +2-3 base speed over it (and generic Hoshidan enemies have +2-4 speed over generic Nohrians).

Basara happens to actually have some magic and res. Magic that allows to use an 11 Mt weapon that hits the res stat (that's silver rank tome power without the downsides) and res that gives mixed bulk. Spear master has -2 HP, +2 str, +1 skl/spd, = def and -3 res compared with basara. I'd rather have mixed bulk and a good 1-2 weapon than a skill that slows down enemies who are already slow if they survive a round with my units and only 2 str/1spd more in compensation. Basara stays bulkier all game long (+3 HP -1 def +4 res at max level) than having +3 strength when I have access to a plethora of attack boosting options and all the speed bonuses I can need in Hoshido and when bolt naginata is better than 90% of the physical alternatives.

18 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

This only works if you're one-shotting the enemy before they get to attack, else it's not helping much, as you're prolly dying to their attack anyway... also, some of the damage reduction skills are ALSO level 15 skills. What, you expect to combine Armored Blow, Warding Blow, and Life and Death all on the same set? lol, good luck with that when the game is over by then.

I'm not getting warding blow and armored blow on one unit. Jakob can easily get armored blow and LaD early on any route, vantage comes even before LaD. He even gets duellist blow if I want to push the disrespect further. And yes, it's a one shot build. Tested in CQ hard and trivialized ch12, soloed Ryoma so easily that I had to slow down to get the chests. GK Jakob has 14 base strength at level 1 and 50% growth. By level 15 GK, he has 21 str and elbow room. 3 levels in MoA push give him +1.35 str and vantage LaD, or you could marry earlier to get LaD and then reclass to GK for mobility and higher str. Jakob also has higher skill than any of the CQ earlygame losers at the same level and stays that way. With a kodachi/javelin, he blitzes CQ early-midgame by one shooting every enemy once his skillset is rolling (and we all know pal/GK Jakob is a great help in early CQ, it's not like he's useless before he gets these skills).

Ryoma also likes vantage LaD and is already level 4 in the beginning of midgame. Easy to get him to level 16-17 before endgame since he hard carries Hoshido.

18 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Saying Basara has "super good" bases when it's the exact opposite; they're a Master of None bases wise (and in general, for that matter).

Basara doesn't have amazing bases, it has paladin bases with more magic and bolt naginata advantage over spear master. Spear master is simply an underwhelming class that gets way too much praise for having 1 more str/res than hero and ok class bonuses.

18 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Disagree - I don't consider the Basara or Malig Knight skills better (except Trample, but that's a level 15 skill). Also, it's not like going Basara is gonna make the Bolt Naginata good on someone like Oboro... and on the few characters that do have the magic to make it work, there are better options for lance classes. Anyway, Seal Speed is much more useful than you're letting on...

To each their own. Rally def is a great skill to have, it's just a waste to put it on a frontline juggernaut class that has nothing to do with support skills that use up a turn with attacking. Swordbreaker is simply on the wrong class. Savage blow doesn't waste a turn from a good combat unit, reduces the damage you have to deal to kill nearby enemies by 20% of their max HP and is basically an AOE attack for free that bypasses defenses. You should try it against ninja groups when it works, it makes it easier to OHKO them.

Oboro has 0 base magic, of course I don't expect her to be ORKOing with bolt naginata. She's not the only potential basara and diviners get mag +2 on top of basara's bases. Hayato might be a decent basara if his strength is enough to raise his weapon rank to D and use an arms scroll to bump it to C. Basara is far from the worst Corrin reclass option when Hoshido Noble is their default promotion (the literal worst promoted class in the game).

18 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Anyway, I'd rather have Rally Defense than Savage Blow, which is much more useful for the enemy.

Trample is still one of the top tier lv 15 skills and Camilla has free access to it in her base class and starts promoted in ch10. Jakob and Felicia can also easily grab it. Even Gunter can obtain it early and pass it down if you're ready to butcher a kid's stats.

18 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

SOMEONE has blatantly unrealistic expectations... one-shotting enemies with a weapon that only has 7 base might is a clear case of your mouth writing checks you can't cash.

When your midgame enemy has 10-11 def and 25-30 HP, a 7 base Mt weapon that goes up to 21 is already doing 10-11 damage by itself before accounting for your unit's strength. With his average strength alone, without any damage skills, Jakob reaches 20 strength at level 13 as a GK, level 18 as a paladin. With Elbow Room, he reaches 20 attack at level 7 GK and 12 paladin. You have it, a level 7 GK or 12 paladin Jakob with a swordcatcher OHKOs midgame samurai and a level 15 GK Jakob with 21 str, ER and swordcatcher has 45 attack, should be enough to OHKO a swordmaster without support or tonics. So yes, I expect a 7 base Mt super effective weapon to OHKO it's designated target when it's wielded by someone halfway competent like reclassed Jakob. By the way, if you add LaD it makes 55 atk, which OHKOs ch12 Ryoma and if you add swordfaire it's 60 attack. That's close to what level 20 Xander without a reclass can deal with Charlotte berserker backpack, tonic strength, his personal and ER can deal. And that's a level 15-18 Jakob (depending on reclass levels and if you go for swordfaire or not). A level 30 GK Jakob without any reclass other than this one has 28 str, ER gives +3. Now if you reclassed for LaD, that's 41 attack before weapon damage. With a catcher weapon, that's 62 damage, +5 with swordfaire (one shoots berserkers?) before tonics and supports. Don't diss effective weaponry just because the losers you get in ch7 can't make proper use of them. Allyou need is the weapon rank (and I didn't even count WR bonus).

18 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I wouldn't exactly call it "free" when you make the chapters themselves much harder... especially when the offspring seals are a Powerup Letdown in the first place - emphasis on "letdown".

Of course the chapters are harder, but I don't think doing Sophie's paralogue with Camilla as your only promoted unit is much easier than doing it with a promoted team with better staves at your disposal, better captures to help you and getting high level captures as well as a lv 10 promoted Sophie as a reward. I don't understand what you mean by Powerup Letdown.

18 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

You want frustrating? Go play Binding Blade, THEN we'll talk. I'd consider the challenge in this game far more legitimate in comparison, with some exceptions.

...also,you forgot Siegbert. Not that I blame you, since there's pretty much no way he's gonna outclass Xander.

I've played Binding Blade. The most frustrating part is accuracy being crap and then it's enemy phase reinforcements. And chapter objective being the same all game. And Gaiden chapters needing a guide open to be sure not to miss them. The gameplay itself is straight forward like it has always been in GBA Emblem.

Siegbert is recruited late anyway and I've heard he's a PitA to keep alive because he's a suicidal dumbass who rushes the hero nearby to get a sword embedded in his chest as soon as he moves. And we've got enough bulky slow cavaliers for one game anyway, not helping that he's unable to use Siegfried (while he fckin can use it in the DLC chapters, seriously IntSys?). For me he's not cost-efficient at that point. I only value Sophie because she's at least fast enough to reach offensive benchmarks without needing 5 different sources of speed and strength to one round anything like her father and she's easy to recruit (and her map gives wonderful captures so I'm playing it anyway). Silas can also marry before you even recruit Xander.

[Shadow Mir]

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

A berserker with tonic def/res still has 4 more HP/str than a hero, 1 more spd and the same def/res, the difference in def res is literally 1 tonic. The crit evade is really much more problematic than the def/res since hero is just a footlocked paladin. A berserker, unlike a hero, can go into a fight and expect to ORKO their target even before considering the fact that 20% crit for free (as a base stat, not a PP skill) gives you a chance to shorten the fight to a single blow. You can miss one hit and crit withthe second and still win. Hero has shitty offense and mediocre defenses, it's the worst physical footlocked class except for LOLHoshido Noble (the class with absolute trash stats and no interesting weapon as well as gimmick skills).

bruh
All the power in the world means nothing if you can't land a hit. While Berserkers have a crit bonus, that means little because I tend to not rely on crits anyway. The thing is, Berserkers here are unreliable glass cannons that are really volatile and risky to use. I don't need or want that on a team. It doesn't help that the characters who start as Fighters are among the worst in the game...

On Hoshido Noble: I'd consider it far batter than Basara and Oni Chieftain.

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Blacksmith has 9 base skill. The class alone has as much skill as lv7 Arthur. It has +1 over berserker, -1 from hero. It has the highest HP base in Hoshido, equal to Great Knight's and only lower than Wolfssegner, general by 1 and than berserker by 3. It has +HP/1 def base over hero which only has +1 skl over blacksmith. as for growth rates, it has -5% skl/spd and +5% def. Let me also remind me that having the same base speed, more base def and slightly better bulk overall in Hoshido is better than being short of every important threshold in CQ. Blacksmiths have like 10 potential speed pair ups while heroes cruelly lack offensive pair ups that give str and spd since they lack in both against Hoshidan classes that tend to have +2-3 base speed over it (and generic Hoshidan enemies have +2-4 speed over generic Nohrians).

It's also got very poor distribution, as only 6 characters have access to it, with one of those being Revelation exclusive, and the rest (Rinkah, Hayato, Hinata, Rhajat, Hisame) not exactly being good...

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Basara happens to actually have some magic and res. Magic that allows to use an 11 Mt weapon that hits the res stat (that's silver rank tome power without the downsides) and res that gives mixed bulk. Spear master has -2 HP, +2 str, +1 skl/spd, = def and -3 res compared with basara. I'd rather have mixed bulk and a good 1-2 weapon than a skill that slows down enemies who are already slow if they survive a round with my units and only 2 str/1spd more in compensation. Basara stays bulkier all game long (+3 HP -1 def +4 res at max level) than having +3 strength when I have access to a plethora of attack boosting options and all the speed bonuses I can need in Hoshido and when bolt naginata is better than 90% of the physical alternatives.

Oh wow, 5 magic. That is gonna make enemies sooo scared... But honestly, I can only see going Basara for Bolt Naginata to be a meme at best, as far as Oboro and Shiro are concerned (and maybe even in general). Also, is Basara's bulk advantage really significant enough to matter??? My gut is saying no.

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

I'm not getting warding blow and armored blow on one unit. Jakob can easily get armored blow and LaD early on any route, vantage comes even before LaD. He even gets duellist blow if I want to push the disrespect further. And yes, it's a one shot build. Tested in CQ hard and trivialized ch12, soloed Ryoma so easily that I had to slow down to get the chests. GK Jakob has 14 base strength at level 1 and 50% growth. By level 15 GK, he has 21 str and elbow room. 3 levels in MoA push give him +1.35 str and vantage LaD, or you could marry earlier to get LaD and then reclass to GK for mobility and higher str. Jakob also has higher skill than any of the CQ earlygame losers at the same level and stays that way. With a kodachi/javelin, he blitzes CQ early-midgame by one shooting every enemy once his skillset is rolling (and we all know pal/GK Jakob is a great help in early CQ, it's not like he's useless before he gets these skills).

Ryoma also likes vantage LaD and is already level 4 in the beginning of midgame. Easy to get him to level 16-17 before endgame since he hard carries Hoshido.

Only if you picked a female Corrin with Samurai talent. Which I don't, because I think there's better out there. Talent-wise. And because I don't care enough for the male portion of the cast to want to have a female Corrin. Otherwise, he can only get it from Hana, and there's a good chance that she marries someone else before he joins if your Corrin is male (of course, at that point, running Jakob would likely be a tough sell). Long story short, I look down on it because it forces a very, very specific style of play.

I've gotten by on Birthright without him, which means his supposed "hard carrying Hoshido" isn't needed. Anyway, I frown on "oneshot or die", because it's too risky.

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Basara doesn't have amazing bases, it has paladin bases with more magic and bolt naginata advantage over spear master. Spear master is simply an underwhelming class that gets way too much praise for having 1 more str/res than hero and ok class bonuses.

Still better than the Master of None that is Basara. I have better things to do with my units than to make them a half-assed magic knight that doesn't bring anything of note to the table.

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

To each their own. Rally def is a great skill to have, it's just a waste to put it on a frontline juggernaut class that has nothing to do with support skills that use up a turn with attacking. Swordbreaker is simply on the wrong class. Savage blow doesn't waste a turn from a good combat unit, reduces the damage you have to deal to kill nearby enemies by 20% of their max HP and is basically an AOE attack for free that bypasses defenses. You should try it against ninja groups when it works, it makes it easier to OHKO them.

Sounds like you are more into "Attack! Attack! Attack!" than actual tactical thinking. Charging in like a boar only gets you so far before it starts handing you your ass. Anyhow, I can see the value of support skills, unlike you. RE: Savage Blow, it mostly barely helps unless I put my unit in a perilous position for a few points of chip damage. That doesn't exactly scream "good".

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Oboro has 0 base magic, of course I don't expect her to be ORKOing with bolt naginata. She's not the only potential basara and diviners get mag +2 on top of basara's bases. Hayato might be a decent basara if his strength is enough to raise his weapon rank to D and use an arms scroll to bump it to C. Basara is far from the worst Corrin reclass option when Hoshido Noble is their default promotion (the literal worst promoted class in the game).

Oboro is not the only potential Basara, yes, but I'd consider Basara as a class to be mediocre at best even for Diviners. Outside of specific Corrin builds, no one excels as one. And I'd disagree on Basara being better for Corrin anyway (and especially on Hoshido Noble being the worst promoted class in the game, for that matter, because Basara exists).

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Trample is still one of the top tier lv 15 skills and Camilla has free access to it in her base class and starts promoted in ch10. Jakob and Felicia can also easily grab it. Even Gunter can obtain it early and pass it down if you're ready to butcher a kid's stats.

I'm not denying that, but that doesn't change the fact that I look down on Malig Knight for being a half-assed magic knight class next to no one excels in. Camilla is better as a Wyvern Lord, whereas justifying Gunter's use is a tough sell at the point he comes back.

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

When your midgame enemy has 10-11 def and 25-30 HP, a 7 base Mt weapon that goes up to 21 is already doing 10-11 damage by itself before accounting for your unit's strength. With his average strength alone, without any damage skills, Jakob reaches 20 strength at level 13 as a GK, level 18 as a paladin. With Elbow Room, he reaches 20 attack at level 7 GK and 12 paladin. You have it, a level 7 GK or 12 paladin Jakob with a swordcatcher OHKOs midgame samurai and a level 15 GK Jakob with 21 str, ER and swordcatcher has 45 attack, should be enough to OHKO a swordmaster without support or tonics. So yes, I expect a 7 base Mt super effective weapon to OHKO it's designated target when it's wielded by someone halfway competent like reclassed Jakob. By the way, if you add LaD it makes 55 atk, which OHKOs ch12 Ryoma and if you add swordfaire it's 60 attack. That's close to what level 20 Xander without a reclass can deal with Charlotte berserker backpack, tonic strength, his personal and ER can deal. And that's a level 15-18 Jakob (depending on reclass levels and if you go for swordfaire or not). A level 30 GK Jakob without any reclass other than this one has 28 str, ER gives +3. Now if you reclassed for LaD, that's 41 attack before weapon damage. With a catcher weapon, that's 62 damage, +5 with swordfaire (one shoots berserkers?) before tonics and supports. Don't diss effective weaponry just because the losers you get in ch7 can't make proper use of them. Allyou need is the weapon rank (and I didn't even count WR bonus).

What gave you the idea I was dissing effective weaponry? I know they can be useful, but that's dependent on them having good base might in the first place. Look at the Kris Knife. Its pathetic 3 base might means that even against the enemies it's meant to be used on, it is still weak... which isn't helped by said enemies having good defense. Oh, and FYI, you don't get a swordcatcher in Conquest under normal circumstances (and even if you did, the the weapon it's meant to hit is the one that's mostly used by enemies in fast classes). And there you go again, pushing a very, very specific playstyle that not everyone is willing to do (female Corrin with Samurai talent).

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Of course the chapters are harder, but I don't think doing Sophie's paralogue with Camilla as your only promoted unit is much easier than doing it with a promoted team with better staves at your disposal, better captures to help you and getting high level captures as well as a lv 10 promoted Sophie as a reward. I don't understand what you mean by Powerup Letdown.

I don't do it that early; in general, I find the sweet spot for playing paralogues is around chapters 14 to 18, as that's when my units are starting to get promotions while the enemies are still unpromoted. And I meant exactly what I said when I said it's a Powerup Letdown - ergo, that it looks like a good powerup if and ONLY if you look at the surface, but the moment you stop settling for superficial thinking, the problems become apparent. You mention that doing it later means having better and higher level captures, but I don't bother with capture, not just because I hate Niles's guts, but also because capture is one of the most poorly designed aspects of Fates.

16 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Siegbert is recruited late anyway and I've heard he's a PitA to keep alive because he's a suicidal dumbass who rushes the hero nearby to get a sword embedded in his chest as soon as he moves. And we've got enough bulky slow cavaliers for one game anyway, not helping that he's unable to use Siegfried (while he fckin can use it in the DLC chapters, seriously IntSys?). For me he's not cost-efficient at that point. I only value Sophie because she's at least fast enough to reach offensive benchmarks without needing 5 different sources of speed and strength to one round anything like her father and she's easy to recruit (and her map gives wonderful captures so I'm playing it anyway). Silas can also marry before you even recruit Xander.

That's Shiro you're talking about; Siegbert is already under your control (that said, he's another reason I refuse to wait until after clearing chapter 18). The issue with his paralogue is the infinite reinforcements and the truckload of forests. I never played it after enemies promote, and I don't intend to, ever. Also, I fail to see how Sophie's paralogue has "fantastic" captures when the one notable capture is a unit that is outclassed by one I get just by playing the goddamn story.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[mangasdeouf]

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

On Hoshido Noble: I'd consider it far batter than Basara and Oni Chieftain.

Hoshido Noble: 19 HP (-1 compared with basara, +1 with spear master, = paladin)/10 str (+3 on basara, +1 on spear master, =GK)/4 mag (worse than basara)/5 skl (garbage)/6 spd (GK tier)/4 lck (who gives a shit about it?)/7 def (=basara/paladin/spear master)/3 res (=spear master, -3 compared with paladin/basara). The ONLY good stat Hoshido noble has is strength. It doesn't help that in this class there isn't a single good 1-2 range weapon in BR. The worst weapon type to be locked into, considering dragonstones are mediocre if not straight up garbage.

Basara: 20 HP/7 str/5 mag/7 skl/7 spd/5 lck/7 def/6 res. 2 weapon types that have good 1-2 range accessible in Birthright, potential magic +2 if coming from diviner, okay mixed bulk (paladin +1 HP), the biggest issue is the growths that are a bit weird but they don't butcher any stat. Master of none...considering paladin is exactly the same without the decent magic stat to exploit the bolt naginata...if basara is mediocre, then paladin is even more mediocre with more mobility. Both of the class skills are useful while Hoshido Noble's class skills are not amazing (+30% skill activation and hit rate? good in my book, it's not like I'm expecting a basara to avoid attacks anyway and very few enemies have active skills).

Oni Chieftain: 19 HP/9 str/5 mag/2 skl (the worst part of the class)/7 spd (even oni chieftain, the armorless knight class, has more speed than HN)/10 def (=GK)/5 res (right behind paladin/basara). The bulkiest Hoshidan class, it's a GK with mixed attack, bulk and slightly more speed at the cost of some HP. Quite decent in my book. Don't let units with below average personal growth rates dictate your opinion of a class, if every character was Hinata, would you consider every class garbage?

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

It's also got very poor distribution, as only 6 characters have access to it, with one of those being Revelation exclusive, and the rest (Rinkah, Hayato, Hinata, Rhajat, Hisame) not exactly being good...

Again, just because Hinata can be a blacksmith doesn't mean blacksmith is a bad class. Hinata is just a bad unit whatever class he's in, he cruises on his base stats for most of the game, hoping they're enough or that he gets RNG blessed to stay relevant without gross amounts of favoritism. Does't help that there's no Levin Sword in Birthright and that unlike the ruin weapons, it takes years to get the combat points for the Levin Sword while it can be done super fast (a few months) for the ruin weapons since visit points are 3x faster to get and you don't need to reach any power level to gain them.

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Oh wow, 5 magic. That is gonna make enemies sooo scared... But honestly, I can only see going Basara for Bolt Naginata to be a meme at best, as far as Oboro and Shiro are concerned (and maybe even in general). Also, is Basara's bulk advantage really significant enough to matter??? My gut is saying no.

5+11=16. With 0 personal magic any unit deals 16 base damage as a basara with the bolt naginata, 18 if they have magic +2. If their magic growth is between 30 and 50%, they should be totally good enough to ORKO most enemies at 1-2 range with the decent bulk basara gives. It's Hoshido, speed is easier to fix than bulk. I'd rather have more mixed bulk than pointlessly high speed that doesn't change anything against units that have low speed anyway.

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Only if you picked a female Corrin with Samurai talent. Which I don't, because I think there's better out there. Talent-wise. And because I don't care enough for the male portion of the cast to want to have a female Corrin. Otherwise, he can only get it from Hana, and there's a good chance that she marries someone else before he joins if your Corrin is male (of course, at that point, running Jakob would likely be a tough sell). Long story short, I look down on it because it forces a very, very specific style of play.

I've gotten by on Birthright without him, which means his supposed "hard carrying Hoshido" isn't needed. Anyway, I frown on "oneshot or die", because it's too risky.

Knowing that F!Corrin is the most efficient way to beat CQ, it's the default setting. You do things however you want, doesn't change the fact that Jakob stomps early-midgame CQ as a paladin/GK and that samurai on Corrin gives him amazing skills with a marriage seal. I find Corrin very hit or miss due to super low base stats, reclassing a character with low base stats is not very useful because in the new class with E-ranks what is Corrin gonna do? Less than level 1 paladin Jakob for sure. F!Corrin can also get all the useful classes through friendship seals and not waste an early second seal. Maybe your Corrins are good, mine are garbo most of the time so I never count on them to carry my game.

You can beat CQ without Camilla and Xander. Does it mean they don't carry CQ?

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Still better than the Master of None that is Basara. I have better things to do with my units than to make them a half-assed magic knight that doesn't bring anything of note to the table.

A magic knight that is more effective at everything than the alternative class and has better skills. It's not like you can't go to spear master to get lancefaire and back to basara to use its' superior stats with +5 damage for the bolt naginata if you're reaching that level anyway. If you're not reaching level 15, well, spear master doesn't get lancefaire and is totally inferior to basara. Master of none has better stats where it matters. Having higher useless stats doesn't make spear master better. With forging, it only takes +1 on any naginata to match spear master's attack and it would take spear master a bolt naginata +2.5 to match basara's base magic. You don't get 8 bolt naginatas. You can get an infinite amount of iron naginatas (you can even get them for free with...salvage blow! 1 per map on average means lots of forging materials).

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Sounds like you are more into "Attack! Attack! Attack!" than actual tactical thinking. Charging in like a boar only gets you so far before it starts handing you your ass. Anyhow, I can see the value of support skills, unlike you. RE: Savage Blow, it mostly barely helps unless I put my unit in a perilous position for a few points of chip damage. That doesn't exactly scream "good".

I'm more of a turtling/rushing/turtling/rushing type actually, trying to get enemies in a good position to gangbang them when they're dangerous or numerous like they are in ch14 BR (the one with paladins with 30-ish attack in hard mode and 16-17 in almost every stat and 30-ish HP). I think tactically actually. But more in a Roman army tactics way than in a puzzle game tactics way.

And I've played Dofus for years, a game much more tactical than Fire Emblem will ever be, only that game actually has different classes and instead of stats each class has different spells that have different ranges, effects and all that, notably ones that teleport the user, exchange positions, add movement, make you or an ally invisible, steal "stats" (stats that have different effects, each one increasing the damage of 1 element and having a secondary effect like intel boosts fire and healing, agi boosts air and chances of fleeing melee range or keeping enemies in melee range and chances of avoiding movement points reductions, luck boosting water and reducing chances of action points reductions, str boosting earth and neutral damage and carry capacity, wis boosting exp gains and chances of reducing movement/action points, vita increasing max hp and some HP based effects), resistances to each element including neutral damage, fixed damage, multiple damage sources on one spell/weapon...and action points, movement points and tackle/avoid (which determines if you can leave enemies' melee range or if they can leave yours) are some of the most tactical features, it allows you to do more than a single action per turn and to have much more impact with each character and each monster than what FE allows (a support can boost action points, heal an ally and repel an enemy in a single turn, that's what a tactical game should aim for, it makes support classes more than staff bots with limited utility, there's a class that can carry an unit and throw them on a desired tile in a straight line, modifying the lines of sight, target access and all that, that can reduce its' movement to increase its' resistances and get access to different spells than in its' normal state, a class that can swap positions, attract a target over several tiles, deal damage based on its' HP, dealing more damage as it receives more, with a spell that deals 30% of its' max HP when at 50% HP and less the more/less HP it has, considering it gains twice as much HP as other classes per point spent it can really use it to 2HKO an enemy...).

Whatever, I'm used to much more tactically advanced games than FE (and with better execution than Fates on the tactical skills) so I'm not a monkey rushing in and knocking my head against the enemy's. I just find that tactics in FE are super limited due to the lack of good tactical tools in general and when there are, they're half assed or massively in favor of the more numerous enemies (lunge ninja chains? sure, wait for me to make one...crap, I only have 2 ninjas and I need to go out of my way to get them lunge and I also happen to have 1/3rd as many units as there are opponents so I can't really spend their turns doing lunge chains).

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Oboro is not the only potential Basara, yes, but I'd consider Basara as a class to be mediocre at best even for Diviners. Outside of specific Corrin builds, no one excels as one. And I'd disagree on Basara being better for Corrin anyway (and especially on Hoshido Noble being the worst promoted class in the game, for that matter, because Basara exists).

Onmyouji is only useful for staffbots. It's stats are strictly inferior to basara and it's not even a contest. Orochi going Onmyouji is alright because she's not a good combat unit due to lacking any useful combat stat outside of magic and skill. Hayato would be wasted as an onmyouji, he should go basara or oni chieftain, but oni butchers his skill and scrolls already have mediocre accuracy, the bolt axe has crap accuracy, so basara is safer.

Basara has bolt naginata and horse spirit. What does Hoshido Noble have? Nothing useful. It's the 25th staff class of Birthright and lacks the magic to be good at staves anyway. Hoshido Noble has mediocre stats where it matters on top of shitty weapons and is footlocked, so it's the shittiest class. Hoshido has lots of good classes, HN just happens to not be part of them. Even Nohr Noble has mediocre base stats but it gets tomes and more spd/res in CQ and draconic hex which is 10x better than Hoshidan unity and the other HN skill and is valuable in CQ. It also has access to Levin Sword.

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I'm not denying that, but that doesn't change the fact that I look down on Malig Knight for being a half-assed magic knight class next to no one excels in. Camilla is better as a Wyvern Lord, whereas justifying Gunter's use is a tough sell at the point he comes back.

What does Camilla gain from reclassing to WL? 1 spd? 1 str? 1 HP? 2 def? 3 lck? Wow, color me impressed. Camilla won't be your rally def bot. Camilla is the bulkiest and fastest unit of your army for a while, she can make use of savage blow much better than anyone else (It's not like Beruka joins as a 20/1 wyvern lord/malig knight to be tankier than Camilla). Malig knight offers Camilla passable 1-2 range, 5 more res than WL in a game where magic hits super hard to stay polite, can use your spirit dusts to boost her magic to good levels and have a viable alternative to physical damage that has more accuracy than axes. Trample and savage blow are both more useful to her than rally def and swordbreaker.

Gunter is actually a decent support unit as far as Fates makes them useful. He can even be a multibreaker unit with catcher weapons or something like that. He has easy access to all level 15 skills. He's a more useful long term unit than Silas who can't get good skills as easily and lacks support skills to stay useful when his stats inevitably end (hohoho dat pun) being good enough. Gunter is also the best pair up for Corrin (+3 atk +15 hit is very useful in CQ and pal/GK/WL/MK have useful pair up bonuses for Corrin).

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

What gave you the idea I was dissing effective weaponry? I know they can be useful, but that's dependent on them having good base might in the first place. Look at the Kris Knife. Its pathetic 3 base might means that even against the enemies it's meant to be used on, it is still weak... which isn't helped by said enemies having good defense. Oh, and FYI, you don't get a swordcatcher in Conquest under normal circumstances (and even if you did, the the weapon it's meant to hit is the one that's mostly used by enemies in fast classes). And there you go again, pushing a very, very specific playstyle that not everyone is willing to do (female Corrin with Samurai talent).

Sorry, are you comparing a weapon with 3 base might (a bronze shuriken-tier weapon) with a 7 base might one (steel shuriken tier)? Of course when you tripple damage one is steel level while the other is +3 silver weapon level. Beaststone's 6 base might x2 already has steel axe's damage on cavalry while increasing speed and skill. Beastrune with x2 has 18 damage on cavalry. Catcher weapons with their WTA advantage and 21 damage against their desired targets are amazing.

I didn't remember if you got them normally in CQ, but you can always get them via visit points. I've been using Wi Fi very little (mostly due to making long pauses from Fates) yet I've gotten sword catcher and axe splitter over the time I've had the game and started using the Wi Fi functionalities (so not from year 1, and I haven't gotten a new one in 1 year because I don't use Wi fi enough anymore since when I want to play I'm better off using an emulator and hacking in the good 1-2 range weapons to actually not be at a constant disadvantage, and stat boosters to push the units to stats that fit them without using pair up which I despise). Someone actively collecting them would have taken much less time than me to get there. They're certainly easier to get than the Levin Sword and Bolt Axe in battle points (still trying to get them myself, so many worthless items before them it's frustrating, who even uses Selena's sword that is just a worse version of a steel sword? Or Niles bow? just GTFO joke weapons that hurt my units more than their targets).

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

You mention that doing it later means having better and higher level captures, but I don't bother with capture, not just because I hate Niles's guts, but also because capture is one of the most poorly designed aspects of Fates.

That's your choice. The fact is that the 2 wyvern lords that come near Nichol are easy to capture with Niles and have stats comparable to a 20/1 Beruka if not higher from the get-go and are close to rally def, so when their stats fall of later in the game you can still use them as rally bots with 8 flying movement. Nichol is inferior to Camilla, but so is every unit not called Jakob (if you use seals to make him gamebreaking). Nichol is still the 3rd best combat unit in CQ hard for a while if you get him early. Certainly more useful than Silas.

The most poorly designed part of it is needing 3 battles to recruit them for free. Haitaka is in ch9 for a reason, otherwise he could be recruited in ch11 for all it changes. Screw My Castle, I'd rather have PoR/RD style battle preparations back. Less fluff more war. Fire Emblem is not a walking simulator or Animal Crossing (never played it, just making stupid comparisons).

[Shadow Mir]

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Again, just because Hinata can be a blacksmith doesn't mean blacksmith is a bad class. Hinata is just a bad unit whatever class he's in, he cruises on his base stats for most of the game, hoping they're enough or that he gets RNG blessed to stay relevant without gross amounts of favoritism. Does't help that there's no Levin Sword in Birthright and that unlike the ruin weapons, it takes years to get the combat points for the Levin Sword while it can be done super fast (a few months) for the ruin weapons since visit points are 3x faster to get and you don't need to reach any power level to gain them.

News Flash: It's not just about Hinata. Rinkah and Hayato are rather bad in Birthright too (however, the latter is much better in Revelation).

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Hoshido Noble: 19 HP (-1 compared with basara, +1 with spear master, = paladin)/10 str (+3 on basara, +1 on spear master, =GK)/4 mag (worse than basara)/5 skl (garbage)/6 spd (GK tier)/4 lck (who gives a shit about it?)/7 def (=basara/paladin/spear master)/3 res (=spear master, -3 compared with paladin/basara). The ONLY good stat Hoshido noble has is strength. It doesn't help that in this class there isn't a single good 1-2 range weapon in BR. The worst weapon type to be locked into, considering dragonstones are mediocre if not straight up garbage.

Basara: 20 HP/7 str/5 mag/7 skl/7 spd/5 lck/7 def/6 res. 2 weapon types that have good 1-2 range accessible in Birthright, potential magic +2 if coming from diviner, okay mixed bulk (paladin +1 HP), the biggest issue is the growths that are a bit weird but they don't butcher any stat. Master of none...considering paladin is exactly the same without the decent magic stat to exploit the bolt naginata...if basara is mediocre, then paladin is even more mediocre with more mobility. Both of the class skills are useful while Hoshido Noble's class skills are not amazing (+30% skill activation and hit rate? good in my book, it's not like I'm expecting a basara to avoid attacks anyway and very few enemies have active skills).

Oni Chieftain: 19 HP/9 str/5 mag/2 skl (the worst part of the class)/7 spd (even oni chieftain, the armorless knight class, has more speed than HN)/10 def (=GK)/5 res (right behind paladin/basara). The bulkiest Hoshidan class, it's a GK with mixed attack, bulk and slightly more speed at the cost of some HP. Quite decent in my book. Don't let units with below average personal growth rates dictate your opinion of a class, if every character was Hinata, would you consider every class garbage?

High magic is a luxury when you use staves, as most of the healing comes from the staff being used. On the other hand, it's not a luxury if you're an offensive unit.  So I don't give a crap that HN has lower magic than either, as Corrin is generally physically oriented, unless you're using a magic boon. Of course, if I was doing that, I'd pick a class that actually specializes in magic rather than trying to go the hybrid route. That being said, I don't pick a magic boon for Corrin because... the Yato's upgrades boost stats, which discourages me from reclassing Corrin out of their default class for long, if at all (and magic is NOT one of the stats boosted). And once again, it's not Hinata, it's all the units that have Oni Savage access except the one who is Revelation exclusive. Running an Oni Chieftain is a hard sell when all the units that can access it have severe problems.

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

5+11=16. With 0 personal magic any unit deals 16 base damage as a basara with the bolt naginata, 18 if they have magic +2. If their magic growth is between 30 and 50%, they should be totally good enough to ORKO most enemies at 1-2 range with the decent bulk basara gives. It's Hoshido, speed is easier to fix than bulk. I'd rather have more mixed bulk than pointlessly high speed that doesn't change anything against units that have low speed anyway.

Against what, level 1 armored knights? By the time you're promoting, enemies will actually have resistance. This isn't (insert FE game where most enemies have low resistance here). 16 magic attack does not look so impressive when you're hitting for like 5 damage, now does it??? Also, having mixed bulk doesn't mean much when most of the time you see all-physical or all-magical formations.

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Knowing that F!Corrin is the most efficient way to beat CQ, it's the default setting. You do things however you want, doesn't change the fact that Jakob stomps early-midgame CQ as a paladin/GK and that samurai on Corrin gives him amazing skills with a marriage seal. I find Corrin very hit or miss due to super low base stats, reclassing a character with low base stats is not very useful because in the new class with E-ranks what is Corrin gonna do? Less than level 1 paladin Jakob for sure. F!Corrin can also get all the useful classes through friendship seals and not waste an early second seal. Maybe your Corrins are good, mine are garbo most of the time so I never count on them to carry my game.

According to who, you, yourself, and you? Because you are the absolute last person I'd take advice from. I haven't seen that recommended since what, 2016? Also, lol at getting all the useful classes through friendship seals. You expect me to waste time building supports with everyone of the same gender as Corrin? That's a laugh.

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

A magic knight that is more effective at everything than the alternative class and has better skills. It's not like you can't go to spear master to get lancefaire and back to basara to use its' superior stats with +5 damage for the bolt naginata if you're reaching that level anyway. If you're not reaching level 15, well, spear master doesn't get lancefaire and is totally inferior to basara. Master of none has better stats where it matters. Having higher useless stats doesn't make spear master better. With forging, it only takes +1 on any naginata to match spear master's attack and it would take spear master a bolt naginata +2.5 to match basara's base magic. You don't get 8 bolt naginatas. You can get an infinite amount of iron naginatas (you can even get them for free with...salvage blow! 1 per map on average means lots of forging materials).

Spoiler alert: Being balanced is not a good thing. It just means you're outclassed by specialists. Unless you're like, Arceus, who has balanced stats while ALSO having high stats, it's always better to specialize. For example, no one in the know would try to argue Glalie (which has balanced stats) is a better ice type than Weavile (which is a speedy glass cannon sweeper that is meant to blow holes in enemy teams). Also, LOL at Basara being better because it has "higher stats where it matters" as though magic and resistance are important. If I'm promoting a Spear Fighter, it's not even a contest: Spear Master is just better. Asserting that Basara has better skills is also laughable. I'd rather have Seal Speed and Lancefaire than a wonky proc that is dependent on the enemy's offensive stats (which most classes have next to nothing in either one of) and lolquixotic (by the way, that only gives +15 to skill activation rates). Oh, and it seems you forgot the part where Salvage Blow is unreliable, and IF it procs, which is a big if (Spoiler Alert: Not even Midori can make Salvage Blow reliable), the weapon you get is dependent on the class of the defeated enemy unit. So no, you're not getting "lots of forging materials" with Salvage Blow.

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Onmyouji is only useful for staffbots. It's stats are strictly inferior to basara and it's not even a contest. Orochi going Onmyouji is alright because she's not a good combat unit due to lacking any useful combat stat outside of magic and skill. Hayato would be wasted as an onmyouji, he should go basara or oni chieftain, but oni butchers his skill and scrolls already have mediocre accuracy, the bolt axe has crap accuracy, so basara is safer.

Going Basara for Diviners makes as much sense as picking knives over staves, to be blunt. 

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Basara has bolt naginata and horse spirit. What does Hoshido Noble have? Nothing useful. It's the 25th staff class of Birthright and lacks the magic to be good at staves anyway. Hoshido Noble has mediocre stats where it matters on top of shitty weapons and is footlocked, so it's the shittiest class. Hoshido has lots of good classes, HN just happens to not be part of them. Even Nohr Noble has mediocre base stats but it gets tomes and more spd/res in CQ and draconic hex which is 10x better than Hoshidan unity and the other HN skill and is valuable in CQ. It also has access to Levin Sword.

lol
Most of the stats Basara wins in are narrow wins and in unimportant stats; when is 1 magic gonna matter? Or 3 resistance, knowing that Corrin is generally going to have crappy resistance anyways?

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

What does Camilla gain from reclassing to WL? 1 spd? 1 str? 1 HP? 2 def? 3 lck? Wow, color me impressed. Camilla won't be your rally def bot. Camilla is the bulkiest and fastest unit of your army for a while, she can make use of savage blow much better than anyone else (It's not like Beruka joins as a 20/1 wyvern lord/malig knight to be tankier than Camilla). Malig knight offers Camilla passable 1-2 range, 5 more res than WL in a game where magic hits super hard to stay polite, can use your spirit dusts to boost her magic to good levels and have a viable alternative to physical damage that has more accuracy than axes. Trample and savage blow are both more useful to her than rally def and swordbreaker.

And lances, which work much better for her than tomes given her strength is far, FAR higher than her magic. Malig Knight's higher resistance doesn't help much when she is disadvantaged against mages in that class anyhow (axes have WTD, and they laugh at her low-level parlor tricks), and the other stuff that magic can counter is either stuff that one would do well to keep her well away from (bows) or has WTA over it (ninjas). Also, her personal is a support skill, and Rally Defence synergizes with it.

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Gunter is actually a decent support unit as far as Fates makes them useful. He can even be a multibreaker unit with catcher weapons or something like that. He has easy access to all level 15 skills. He's a more useful long term unit than Silas who can't get good skills as easily and lacks support skills to stay useful when his stats inevitably end (hohoho dat pun) being good enough. Gunter is also the best pair up for Corrin (+3 atk +15 hit is very useful in CQ and pal/GK/WL/MK have useful pair up bonuses for Corrin).

Gunter is an excellent support unit.... for Corrin and Corrin alone, that is. That's not enough to justify benching someone else who can support Corrin, as well as others if needed.

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

That's your choice. The fact is that the 2 wyvern lords that come near Nichol are easy to capture with Niles and have stats comparable to a 20/1 Beruka if not higher from the get-go and are close to rally def, so when their stats fall of later in the game you can still use them as rally bots with 8 flying movement. Nichol is inferior to Camilla, but so is every unit not called Jakob (if you use seals to make him gamebreaking). Nichol is still the 3rd best combat unit in CQ hard for a while if you get him early. Certainly more useful than Silas.

The most poorly designed part of it is needing 3 battles to recruit them for free. Haitaka is in ch9 for a reason, otherwise he could be recruited in ch11 for all it changes.

bruh
The problem is that I have to use a lackluster unit, build a prison when there's better uses for my Dragon Vein points, AND persuade them several times... That's a lot of hoops to jump through for not a lot of profit. I mean, Haitaka is useful in chapter 10... on paper. In practice, there is a good chance I've already cleared it by the time I can get him. Also, FYI, the wyvern lords you're talking about don't show up until turn 10 and 16... and odds are the chapter is over by then because there is no incentive to stall that long.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[mangasdeouf]

You're straw manning my points to try and discredit them, it's jarring.

So in Birthright, an EP-centric game, you prefer to have +1 spd and +2 str over better mixed bulk (which allows to fight more diverse enemy formations and YES there are formations with mixed damage, starting from chapter 5, back in chapter 8 and that's just the beginning of the game, it's a constant due to overlapping attack ranges being favored similarly to FE13) and 1-2 range? Okay, your choice. I'd rather have an unit able to kill 3 enemies on EP and 1 on PP than an unit who takes shots for free.

Aren't you one of the people who dislike classes locked to 1 range because they can't counter at 2 range on EP? Then why do you willingly choose the class that doesn't have the stat to use the good 1-2 weapon when your unit can choose which path to go? That's contradicting yourself.

You prefer to have +2 str (inferior attacking stat) and +1 spd (in Free Speed: The Game) over +5 magic (the superior attacking stat) AND 2 HP/3 res? What does basara do worse than spear master exactly? They both have lances and basara gets tomes on top of that, horse spirit boosts skl/spd/def/res by 3 at D rank. Oboro makes a bad use out of the bolt naginata because she has 0 personal magic base, not because basara is a bad class. Would you make Azama an Onmyouji to make him a combat unit? No, because Onmyouji is not a combat class and has bad stats except for magic (basara is >= in every other stat and only loses 2 magic compared with onmyouji).

I literally showed you how bad Hoshido Noble is, it has good strength, middling def, everything else is mediocre and 4 magic is pointless because by then you're not even using the dragonstone anymore. It can't make decent use of its' magic stat and staves, pardon me, have much better users than HN Corrin, users who have been using staves before promotion or who have the same magic with superior movement (falcon knights, strategist Felicia). HN is the ultimate garbage class for a lord, it's worse than Mist's version of valkyrie because it's not even mounted in a game full of unmounted units, so it's just another footlocked class with staff access that doesn't have any use on a combat unit with 2.25x more strength than magic. It doesn't even have access to Levin Sword unless you've been grinding battle points for a looong time. No good 1-2, no good stat other than str, not even good skill, it's like a fighter class with swords instead of axes but instead of having bows it has staves and dragonstone in a game where bows are useful and staves are plentiful since 1/3rd of Hoshidan classes has staff access and you have 3 staff users as soon as chapter 8 in a game where 1 or 2 are enough.

I'd rather have middling balanced stats than middling unbalanced stats: spear master's only good stat is...strength. You criticize blacksmith yet like spear master, which has +1 str/res at the cost of -3 HP (that's huge)/-1 skl/-1 def and only one weapon. I'd rather have rend heaven than seal speed because rend heaven does something when it activates, in combat, and has a good activation rate unlike most activable skills (50% more than most skills, 200% more than Astra IIRC). Seal speed sees use...when exactly? Rarely, since it's likely to be obtained in the second half of mid game and by then your units should be far faster than enemy units. Oh! and it's BR so they also have access to ruin weapons without relying on visit points! So you can even OHKO fast enemies instead of doubling them (or you can double them while OHKOing them).

But this is getting irrelevant to the topic anyway. Cavaliers in CQ. Silas the filler, Peri the only fast cavalier with a good personal skill that is super easy to activate and Xander the tank. Sophie the weaker but more accurate cavalier compared with Peri. That's the object of the topic, let's not get derailed too much.

[Shadow Mir]

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

So in Birthright, an EP-centric game, you prefer to have +1 spd and +2 str over better mixed bulk (which allows to fight more diverse enemy formations and YES there are formations with mixed damage, starting from chapter 5, back in chapter 8 and that's just the beginning of the game, it's a constant due to overlapping attack ranges being favored similarly to FE13) and 1-2 range? Okay, your choice. I'd rather have an unit able to kill 3 enemies on EP and 1 on PP than an unit who takes shots for free.

Aren't you one of the people who dislike classes locked to 1 range because they can't counter at 2 range on EP? Then why do you willingly choose the class that doesn't have the stat to use the good 1-2 weapon when your unit can choose which path to go? That's contradicting yourself.

Because it's better to play to my unit's strengths. Duh! I literally just said that in my last post. 

On range-lock: The only time that is really notable is with Radiant Dawn's laguz... who have far more going against them than being range-locked. Anyhow, some of the more recent Fire Emblem games have made it such that having 1-2 is not the be-all and end-all (like this one!). Hell, much as I hate the game, Binding Blade is one game where one of the best units is foot-locked AND range-locked, so not having 1-2 isn't an inherent death sentence for a class's or unit's viability; in fact, I generally would avoid using hand axes and javelins in that game because their lack of accuracy means that I actively question if countering archers and mages is worth it when I'm likely not killing them anyway. As far as this game goes, 1-2 range has been nerfed, which limits my options, with javelins and the like being unable to double, and magic and shurikens generally being weak. This means I cannot expect just anyone with 1-2 range to be a walking death zone in a fashion like in, say, Blazing Blade... with ONE exception, that being Ryoma. Who is only one unit. Regardless... If I'm in a situation where I'm about to face attack from melee enemies and ranged enemies, I'd consider it better to kill some enemies on enemy phase than chip a bunch of enemies but kill none of them.

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

You prefer to have +2 str (inferior attacking stat) and +1 spd (in Free Speed: The Game) over +5 magic (the superior attacking stat) AND 2 HP/3 res? What does basara do worse than spear master exactly? They both have lances and basara gets tomes on top of that, horse spirit boosts skl/spd/def/res by 3 at D rank. Oboro makes a bad use out of the bolt naginata because she has 0 personal magic base, not because basara is a bad class. Would you make Azama an Onmyouji to make him a combat unit? No, because Onmyouji is not a combat class and has bad stats except for magic (basara is >= in every other stat and only loses 2 magic compared with onmyouji).

Your logic is wrong. 5 magic isn't gonna be much help when the unit in question already has a much lower magic score than their strength. This is exactly why I reclass Camilla out of Malig Knight into Wyvern Lord; I'd rather optimize her strengths. Regarding Azama: I wouldn't make Azama an Onmyoji because his stats are such that he wouldn't excel in it. Which is glaringly obvious from his growths; 50 str and 20 mag is as subtle as a jackhammer (and besides, pretty much make it obvious he's meant to be n a physical class anyway... like Great Master). And those are his base growths. Magic being the so-called "superior attacking stat" doesn't mean much on its own. Look at Radiant Dawn. Would you argue that mages are good there? I wouldn't, because while most enemies have lower resistance than defense, mages are stuck with weak weapons for the majority of the game (not to mention almost all of them are slow to the point they almost never double anything. Oh, and enemy resistance is actually high in that game). You call Birthright "Free Speed: The Game", but that, too, is wrong, EXCEPT for Corrin due to the Yato upgrades.

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

I'd rather have middling balanced stats than middling unbalanced stats: spear master's only good stat is...strength. You criticize blacksmith yet like spear master, which has +1 str/res at the cost of -3 HP (that's huge)/-1 skl/-1 def and only one weapon. I'd rather have rend heaven than seal speed because rend heaven does something when it activates, in combat, and has a good activation rate unlike most activable skills (50% more than most skills, 200% more than Astra IIRC). Seal speed sees use...when exactly? Rarely, since it's likely to be obtained in the second half of mid game and by then your units should be far faster than enemy units. Oh! and it's BR so they also have access to ruin weapons without relying on visit points! So you can even OHKO fast enemies instead of doubling them (or you can double them while OHKOing them).

You didn't read, did you. I literally told you why that's a big mistake. Having balanced stats only leads to being outclassed by specialists. Being able to do multiple things is nice... except when you are horribly outclassed at all of them. And I already stated my problem with Blacksmith: the units that can get into it all have issues. I'd think most, if not all, of them would be lower tiers on a tier list. What's more... what in the name of Anankos are these "ruin weapons" you speak of??? Unless you mean the Swordcatcher, Axe Splitter, and Pike-Ruin Club (which I really think you are overhyping; them only being good against ONE weapon type out of 6 doesn't sound like an excellent weapon, but rather a highly situational one)... except whoops, you end up getting the Nohrian slayer weapons, which are overall better and aren't dependent on the enemy using a specific weapon, anyway (and of the Hoshidan anti-weapons, only the Pike-Ruin Club is respectably strong). And since you still seem to fail to understand this: ORKO != OHKO. The latter doesn't take a counter.

On Rend Heaven: It has a higher activation chance than most other such skills... except the stat it uses is dependent on the weapon you're using. That's not reliable, especially since there's always the chance that it's a dud (because most enemy units have 0 in one of the two stats it can use, or if not, what they have might as well be zero).

On Seal Speed: What do you think the Nohrian army is made of, slugs?

20 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

I literally showed you how bad Hoshido Noble is, it has good strength, middling def, everything else is mediocre and 4 magic is pointless because by then you're not even using the dragonstone anymore. It can't make decent use of its' magic stat and staves, pardon me, have much better users than HN Corrin, users who have been using staves before promotion or who have the same magic with superior movement (falcon knights, strategist Felicia). HN is the ultimate garbage class for a lord, it's worse than Mist's version of valkyrie because it's not even mounted in a game full of unmounted units, so it's just another footlocked class with staff access that doesn't have any use on a combat unit with 2.25x more strength than magic. It doesn't even have access to Levin Sword unless you've been grinding battle points for a looong time. No good 1-2, no good stat other than str, not even good skill, it's like a fighter class with swords instead of axes but instead of having bows it has staves and dragonstone in a game where bows are useful and staves are plentiful since 1/3rd of Hoshidan classes has staff access and you have 3 staff users as soon as chapter 8 in a game where 1 or 2 are enough.

All you "literally showed me" is that you are really, really, REALLY narrow-minded and petty. You constantly contradict yourself, too (and yet you have the gall to accuse me of contradicting myself); you bash Hoshido Noble for not having the magic to make good use of the Levin Sword, then turn around and mention you can't get it in Birthright anyway (which would make the former point moot). Honestly, though, I think you overhype the magic weapons. They're very, very limited in who can use them. FYI, the healing formula for staves is Mag/3; this means one would need 30 magic to add 10 points of healing to what the staff itself would heal. That's not a lot...

On Hoshido Noble: You underestimate how useful dragonstones really are; has it never occurred to you that when most of what you're working with is glass cannons and fragile units, someone who can actually take hits and hit back hard is appreciated because most of the few Hoshidans who can actually take hits hit like wet noodles? Also, I'd hard disagree on it being the worst lord class in the series.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[mangasdeouf]

22 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

You didn't read, did you. I literally told you why that's a big mistake. Having balanced stats only leads to being outclassed by specialists. Being able to do multiple things is nice... except when you are horribly outclassed at all of them. And I already stated my problem with Blacksmith: the units that can get into it all have issues. I'd think most, if not all, of them would be lower tiers on a tier list. What's more... what in the name of Anankos are these "ruin weapons" you speak of??? Unless you mean the Swordcatcher, Axe Splitter, and Pike-Ruin Club (which I really think you are overhyping; them only being good against ONE weapon type out of 6 doesn't sound like an excellent weapon, but rather a highly situational one)... except whoops, you end up getting the Nohrian slayer weapons, which are overall better and aren't dependent on the enemy using a specific weapon, anyway (and of the Hoshidan anti-weapons, only the Pike-Ruin Club is respectably strong). And since you still seem to fail to understand this: ORKO != OHKO. The latter doesn't take a counter.

+2 str +1 spd vs +2 HP/+5 mag/+3 res. What are you achieving with +2 str/1 speed that you can't achieve as a basara? Just for the additional HP/res basara is aleady a better class in Fates because getting closer to resistance thresholds is more important than saving a forge or a strength tonic. The bolt naginata is a bonus, the horse spirit gives a defensive option at 1-2 range that will deal more damage to a general than the guard naginata will at 1 range...situational or not, I find basara to be the best class between Spear Master, Basara and Onmyôji. Paladin is spear master on a horse, trading 1 str/spd for elbow room that adds 2 damage over spear master's base str.

Hoshidan anti-weapons are worse than Nohrian ones? How often do you even use the armorslayer you get in ch7? I bet not often if ever past this chapter. The hammer has better stats than the pike-ruin club, but it's only effective against 2 classes that aren't the most common while pike ruin club destroys all enemies with lances (and 30 weapon damage is good enough, Scarlet is probably OHKOing most lance wielding enemies with that at base for several chapters). Beast killer has 30 weapon damage and good accuracy but only affects beast units (and you only get one per file in BR, AFTER the cavalry rush of ch14). Sword catcher has 21 weapon damage and like all the similar weapons, it has WTA over all of it's intended targets (otherwise there's no point using it). Let's see how many regular enemies it can catch: mercenaries, most heroes, some cavs/paladins, Xander (an important boss), some bow knights and some dark knights (maybe?). That's a lot of enemies. With pike ruin club covering the rest of the cavs/paladins, some GKs, some WL, most knights/generals and the axe splitter that is strictly better than the swordcatcher (+10 accuracy without downsides) that covers the rest. Basically all the common enemies and most bosses are covered by these 3 weapons, since you barely ever fight knife users in BR and you can deny most magic damage with a few units designed to hunt mages (Hinoka, Kaden, Kaze, Felicia) while doing well enough with your mixed bulk units to take 1-2 hits without dying while taking physical attackers too. Nohrian anti-weapons are class based, which limits their usefulness much more than the Hoshidan ones. The beast killer only affects the sky knight line and the Kitsune which appear in a single chapter, that's straight up garbage against Hoshidan units due to how limited it is (and you can kill pegasi without needing the beast killer, so it's only really useful against Kitsune).

22 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

On Seal Speed: What do you think the Nohrian army is made of, slugs?

Yes. It helps that you have 2 native sky nights able to learn rally speed and cover a 2 paths with it, offering +4 speed to multiple units in 2 different parts of the map just by using the 2 sky knights enough to promote them and reach lv 5. You also have speed tonics, all the spd pair ups you need and more, the practice katana, shuriken give spd+2, most Hoshidan classes give +2-4 in speed upon promotion. Just from these, you can boost speed by 12-14 on multiple units, bringing Silas' base speed to 20-22, 25-27 with practice katana without a single speed level up. Sorry but I don't give a damn about the 10-16 speed of Nohrian enemies except when I'm playing an archer because I don't want to give pair ups, tonics and all to an unit that only attacks 1 enemy per turn (which is why I value Setsuna's speed more than Takumi's atk past ch11 since yumi can easily give enough atk not to need Fujin Yumi but Takumi's 19 spd as a 20/1 sniper isn't exactly convincing when Setsuna with only 9 level ups already has 1 more speed than him, as a level 12/1 sniper, which requires like 50% of the exp 20/1 Takumi requires due to how exp works in Fates, and from there she's gonna stay ahead of him by a mile since she gains 1.5 x as much speed per level as he does, only widening the gap, a 20/1 Setsuna has 26.75 speed on average, 7 more points than Takumi at the same level and he needs to be level 20/14 just to reach the same speed as 20/1 Setsuna). So yeah, unless I'm talking about archers due to not liking to waste money/backpacks on units that see little combat, speed is the easiest stat to fix.

22 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

All you "literally showed me" is that you are really, really, REALLY narrow-minded and petty. You constantly contradict yourself, too (and yet you have the gall to accuse me of contradicting myself); you bash Hoshido Noble for not having the magic to make good use of the Levin Sword, then turn around and mention you can't get it in Birthright anyway (which would make the former point moot). Honestly, though, I think you overhype the magic weapons. They're very, very limited in who can use them. FYI, the healing formula for staves is Mag/3; this means one would need 30 magic to add 10 points of healing to what the staff itself would heal. That's not a lot...

Hoshido Noble has bad weapons, even if it had 90 magic it would be pointless because it can't use it effectively. It has middling defense, GK speed and bad HP/res. The only good stat it has is str and even then I'd rather use a spear master than a Hoshido Noble. About staves: it's not even about healing amount, it's just that I don't want to be healing units with one of my main fighters, so it will take forever just to get out of E rank and start to heal for two digits. Staves in BR are not what they are in like...the rest of the series, since they have trash tier base healing, take forever to rank up and barely gain any bonus healing with stats, the worst iteration of staves in probably the whole series with FE5 staves that could miss.

22 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

On Hoshido Noble: You underestimate how useful dragonstones really are; has it never occurred to you that when most of what you're working with is glass cannons and fragile units, someone who can actually take hits and hit back hard is appreciated because most of the few Hoshidans who can actually take hits hit like wet noodles? Also, I'd hard disagree on it being the worst lord class in the series.

I've barely ever used it past chapter 7 and that's because in ch7 your only recruits are even worse than what you already had up until there. I mostly use katana because they have more useful features and allow to double. And about glass canons, if you don't like them, just pick the bulky promotion? If you diss all the tanky units because they have "bad offense" then don't complain all you have is glass canons, you specifically benched your tanks because youdon't like their offensive stats. Well, Scarlet exists, Silas, Oboro, they all have above average def without suffering from weak attack or low speed. Scarlet is probably the best 1 range locked Hoshidan unit (if we don't count throwing clubs), She has okay speed while most of your units are unpromoted, has good atk and def, middling HP, good offensive growths, her bulk falls off but is still better than any glass canon's due to her bases (she's the Wyvern Knight Cormag of Birthright). Hinata's base speed with the same treatment given in the paragraph on speed boosting can reach 26 (MoA)-29 (SM) without a single speed level up or permanent stat booster, 30-32 with practice katana. Just boost his atk with a forged steel or iron and he's got enough offense while being the least glass canony of the Hoshidan sword users despite being in a class that doesn't give lots of def. At that point you can even make his MoA and fix his HP/str/def over SM's overkill speed. Hana is just overkill in offense while sacrificing all bulk.

[Shadow Mir]

On 6/13/2023 at 3:52 PM, mangasdeouf said:

+2 str +1 spd vs +2 HP/+5 mag/+3 res. What are you achieving with +2 str/1 speed that you can't achieve as a basara? Just for the additional HP/res basara is aleady a better class in Fates because getting closer to resistance thresholds is more important than saving a forge or a strength tonic. The bolt naginata is a bonus, the horse spirit gives a defensive option at 1-2 range that will deal more damage to a general than the guard naginata will at 1 range...situational or not, I find basara to be the best class between Spear Master, Basara and Onmyôji. Paladin is spear master on a horse, trading 1 str/spd for elbow room that adds 2 damage over spear master's base str.

You're *sorely* mistaken. What difference is Basara's MARGINALLY higher bulk going to make? You think it makes a difference, so... The burden of proof falls on you, not me (thinking about it, I probably asked you this before... and you didn't say so much as a peep in response). Far as I'm concerned, making the likes of Oboro a Basara for a slight resistance boost when I already have hard counters to mages (Hinoka and Felicia say hi) is doing nothing but shooting myself in the foot (and no, the +5 magic doesn't help her in any meaningful fashion). Picking it for the sake of "resistance thresholds" is as big a joke as the Bolt Axe Berserker in chapter 14. Also, bringing up Paladin is just fluff when almost no one can have both it and Spear Master as class options. Getting back to the point: Why the hell should I buy into Basara being better than either of the other two classes you mention?

On 6/13/2023 at 3:52 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Hoshidan anti-weapons are worse than Nohrian ones? How often do you even use the armorslayer you get in ch7? I bet not often if ever past this chapter. The hammer has better stats than the pike-ruin club, but it's only effective against 2 classes that aren't the most common while pike ruin club destroys all enemies with lances (and 30 weapon damage is good enough, Scarlet is probably OHKOing most lance wielding enemies with that at base for several chapters). Beast killer has 30 weapon damage and good accuracy but only affects beast units (and you only get one per file in BR, AFTER the cavalry rush of ch14). Sword catcher has 21 weapon damage and like all the similar weapons, it has WTA over all of it's intended targets (otherwise there's no point using it). Let's see how many regular enemies it can catch: mercenaries, most heroes, some cavs/paladins, Xander (an important boss), some bow knights and some dark knights (maybe?). That's a lot of enemies. With pike ruin club covering the rest of the cavs/paladins, some GKs, some WL, most knights/generals and the axe splitter that is strictly better than the swordcatcher (+10 accuracy without downsides) that covers the rest. Basically all the common enemies and most bosses are covered by these 3 weapons, since you barely ever fight knife users in BR and you can deny most magic damage with a few units designed to hunt mages (Hinoka, Kaden, Kaze, Felicia) while doing well enough with your mixed bulk units to take 1-2 hits without dying while taking physical attackers too. Nohrian anti-weapons are class based, which limits their usefulness much more than the Hoshidan ones. The beast killer only affects the sky knight line and the Kitsune which appear in a single chapter, that's straight up garbage against Hoshidan units due to how limited it is (and you can kill pegasi without needing the beast killer, so it's only really useful against Kitsune).

You chose... Poorly. Chapter 9 has armored knights, as does chapter 12, where you get the hammer, 13, 14, 16, 19, and every chapter from 23 to endgame (Hint hint: Great Knights count as both armored units and cavalry units!) The Beast Killer has use in 15 (which just so happens to be right after when you get it), and the 23-endgame stretch too. The only Nohrian weapon that isn't that useful is the Wyrmslayer, which comes too late. And again, the Swordcatcher, Axe Splitter, and Pike-Ruin Club only being useful against one weapon type out of 6 is a negative (where I come from, I call that Crippling Overspecialization), whereas the Nohrian weapons are effective against their designated targets regardless of what they use; I don't have to worry about the enemy swapping to another weapon and rendering them completely ineffective. Oh, and FYI, you mentioning mage killers makes your already flimsy argument for Basara even weaker than it already is.

On 6/13/2023 at 3:52 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Yes. It helps that you have 2 native sky nights able to learn rally speed and cover a 2 paths with it, offering +4 speed to multiple units in 2 different parts of the map just by using the 2 sky knights enough to promote them and reach lv 5. You also have speed tonics, all the spd pair ups you need and more, the practice katana, shuriken give spd+2, most Hoshidan classes give +2-4 in speed upon promotion. Just from these, you can boost speed by 12-14 on multiple units, bringing Silas' base speed to 20-22, 25-27 with practice katana without a single speed level up. Sorry but I don't give a damn about the 10-16 speed of Nohrian enemies except when I'm playing an archer because I don't want to give pair ups, tonics and all to an unit that only attacks 1 enemy per turn (which is why I value Setsuna's speed more than Takumi's atk past ch11 since yumi can easily give enough atk not to need Fujin Yumi but Takumi's 19 spd as a 20/1 sniper isn't exactly convincing when Setsuna with only 9 level ups already has 1 more speed than him, as a level 12/1 sniper, which requires like 50% of the exp 20/1 Takumi requires due to how exp works in Fates, and from there she's gonna stay ahead of him by a mile since she gains 1.5 x as much speed per level as he does, only widening the gap, a 20/1 Setsuna has 26.75 speed on average, 7 more points than Takumi at the same level and he needs to be level 20/14 just to reach the same speed as 20/1 Setsuna). So yeah, unless I'm talking about archers due to not liking to waste money/backpacks on units that see little combat, speed is the easiest stat to fix.

Of which one is pretty much a joke character who won't last on the team unless you like torturing yourself, AND gets rendered obsolete after his join chapter to boot (that said, he's better off in Revelation... mainly because Hinoka doesn't join the chapter right after he does, and thus he isn't outclassed immediately). Speed pair ups have a significant cost (and in general, I mostly reserve pair up for when I think I'm really gonna need it as opposed to wasting unit slots on backpacks), the practice katana is weak, and the only shuriken user I actually find useful is Felicia.

On Setsuna: She doesn't hold a candle to Takumi because he actually has this thing called good bases. One with good bases has an easier time getting rolling. Not only that, Setsuna puts all her eggs in the speed basket and sacrifices literally everything else. Speed is the most important stat in this series, BUT... She's pretty much proof that good speed alone doesn't absolve you of having shit stats everywhere else (sound familiar? That's what we call Crippling Overspecialization). Trying to argue she's better just because of better speed when she has nothing else to back it up is utterly laughable. Good luck trying to get her caught up when she not only has problems with damage, but she also misses her attacks quite often (which isn't helped by yumi hit rates generally being low). You. Are Gonna. Need It. Hell, I've constantly complained about the same thing with regard to Niles in Conquest. As if she wasn't already bad enough on Birthright, where she's an obvious bottom-feeder, she's even worse in Revelation. And it's already a Herculean labor to work with her in Birthright...

On 6/13/2023 at 3:52 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Hoshido Noble has bad weapons, even if it had 90 magic it would be pointless because it can't use it effectively. It has middling defense, GK speed and bad HP/res. The only good stat it has is str and even then I'd rather use a spear master than a Hoshido Noble. About staves: it's not even about healing amount, it's just that I don't want to be healing units with one of my main fighters, so it will take forever just to get out of E rank and start to heal for two digits. Staves in BR are not what they are in like...the rest of the series, since they have trash tier base healing, take forever to rank up and barely gain any bonus healing with stats, the worst iteration of staves in probably the whole series with FE5 staves that could miss.

Bold: Funny thing is, Thracia is where staves were at their most broken. I don't like the fact that they could miss when healing either (in fact, that's one of many reasons why I refuse to have anything to do with the game!), but that doesn't take away from how overpowered they are in that game. Also, I'd note that rods have 1-2 range, unlike staves.

And yet you have no issue defending Setsuna, whose only good stat is speed... Hmm... seems that having only 1 good stat isn't as much of a problem as you seem to act like it is if you're defending her despite her literally having the same issue, no? Also, Hoshido Noble doesn't use clubs, last I checked.

On 6/13/2023 at 3:52 PM, mangasdeouf said:

I've barely ever used it past chapter 7 and that's because in ch7 your only recruits are even worse than what you already had up until there. I mostly use katana because they have more useful features and allow to double. And about glass canons, if you don't like them, just pick the bulky promotion? If you diss all the tanky units because they have "bad offense" then don't complain all you have is glass canons, you specifically benched your tanks because youdon't like their offensive stats. Well, Scarlet exists, Silas, Oboro, they all have above average def without suffering from weak attack or low speed. Scarlet is probably the best 1 range locked Hoshidan unit (if we don't count throwing clubs), She has okay speed while most of your units are unpromoted, has good atk and def, middling HP, good offensive growths, her bulk falls off but is still better than any glass canon's due to her bases (she's the Wyvern Knight Cormag of Birthright). Hinata's base speed with the same treatment given in the paragraph on speed boosting can reach 26 (MoA)-29 (SM) without a single speed level up or permanent stat booster, 30-32 with practice katana. Just boost his atk with a forged steel or iron and he's got enough offense while being the least glass canony of the Hoshidan sword users despite being in a class that doesn't give lots of def. At that point you can even make his MoA and fix his HP/str/def over SM's overkill speed. Hana is just overkill in offense while sacrificing all bulk.

Funny. I've always felt that katanas are overall worse than Nohrian swords. +1 speed for -1 to defensive stats is such a bad trade-off. ANYWAY... Oboro and Scarlet are about the only tanky units that actually have potential in Birthright (and they can actually kill enemies without needing to hit them like 10 times, unlike a certain sky knight who serves under Sakura and a certain oni savage, both of whom struggle to kill, and thus struggle to stay relevant. Neither of them can cut it as anything beyond earlygame tanks that you drop once the actually good units come along, especially the latter. While she does have some playtime pre-split, the deck is stacked against her there, esp. in chapter 5 thanks to her having WTD against literally everything there, meaning she's pretty much relegated to being a pairup bot for Kaze there; speaking of which, that's another problem for her).

On Hinata: To be honest, I'd consider it a problem if he needs that much attention just to function. Especially when there are others who only need a fraction of that investment.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[mangasdeouf]

On 6/14/2023 at 6:32 PM, Shadow Mir said:

You chose... Poorly. Chapter 9 has armored knights, as does chapter 12, where you get the hammer, 13, 14, 16, 19, and every chapter from 23 to endgame (Hint hint: Great Knights count as both armored units and cavalry units!) The Beast Killer has use in 15 (which just so happens to be right after when you get it), and the 23-endgame stretch too. The only Nohrian weapon that isn't that useful is the Wyrmslayer, which comes too late. And again, the Swordcatcher, Axe Splitter, and Pike-Ruin Club only being useful against one weapon type out of 6 is a negative (where I come from, I call that Crippling Overspecialization), whereas the Nohrian weapons are effective against their designated targets regardless of what they use; I don't have to worry about the enemy swapping to another weapon and rendering them completely ineffective. Oh, and FYI, you mentioning mage killers makes your already flimsy argument for Basara even weaker than it already is.

The armor slayer is a sword, has disadvantage against like 70% of its' targets and until ch 9.5 your only users for it are Corrin, Hana and Silas. Silas comes after the last knight is killed before Hinata is recruited, so his armor slaying is the same as Hinata's but with 6 less base speed, Hana gets "nearly" one shot by knights with any other weapon than a javelin until promotion and Corrin has other ways to kill knights depending on their class and weapon rank (magic Corrin doesn't need anarmor killing weapon). The next one is Ryôma and he doesn't need an armor slayer to wipe the floor with knights, he can also use a hammer or tome attack stance to ORKO generals.

Over specialization? Being effective against 2 classes of the same line is much more overspecialized than being effective against 1/3rd of the classes the enemy will use against your army. The hammer is still a very useful weapon. The catcher/ruin/splitter are fine weapons that come right in time to defeat the promoted enemies that start appearing more and more often in the mid game. Denying their defense and still dealing more damage just with the weapon's might before factoring in the unit's strength is quite useful. Otherwise bows would be pretty useless against wyverns, but they're actually the best weapon to kill them thanks to high weapon damage against them.

On 6/14/2023 at 6:32 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Of which one is pretty much a joke character who won't last on the team unless you like torturing yourself, AND gets rendered obsolete after his join chapter to boot (that said, he's better off in Revelation... mainly because Hinoka doesn't join the chapter right after he does, and thus he isn't outclassed immediately). Speed pair ups have a significant cost (and in general, I mostly reserve pair up for when I think I'm really gonna need it as opposed to wasting unit slots on backpacks), the practice katana is weak, and the only shuriken user I actually find useful is Felicia.

Subaki isn't a beast but with an early promo he easily gets by until rally speed. At that point he falls off but his utility makes up for it. Speed pair ups cost a slot but most classes give at least 2 spd in BR so it's not like you're short on options and you can always pair up for a specific opponent and unpair afterwards. I just don't find a point giving a pair up to an archer who won't be making much use of its' stats unless it's a life or death situation. Practice katana is weak but Silas doesn't lack str, he lacks spd. He's got 13 spd and 21 atk at base with it IIRC (6+11+3). Felicia's only good once you get the flame shuriken, before that she hits like wet noodle. That's why I prefer Felicia 2, no need to grind her shuriken rank, she comes with C rank about when her weapon becomes available and is 1 level away from tomebreaker. Overleveled + Rinkah pair up Kaze or trained Kagero are better overall killers than Felicia. Kagero's strength is great, shuriken have innate super high accuracy and give more speed and she has 70% speed growth, so she's guaranteed to be fast after a few level ups to fix her base speed.

On 6/14/2023 at 6:32 PM, Shadow Mir said:

On Setsuna: She doesn't hold a candle to Takumi because he actually has this thing called good bases. One with good bases has an easier time getting rolling. Not only that, Setsuna puts all her eggs in the speed basket and sacrifices literally everything else. Speed is the most important stat in this series, BUT... She's pretty much proof that good speed alone doesn't absolve you of having shit stats everywhere else (sound familiar? That's what we call Crippling Overspecialization). Trying to argue she's better just because of better speed when she has nothing else to back it up is utterly laughable. Good luck trying to get her caught up when she not only has problems with damage, but she also misses her attacks quite often (which isn't helped by yumi hit rates generally being low). You. Are Gonna. Need It. Hell, I've constantly complained about the same thing with regard to Niles in Conquest. As if she wasn't already bad enough on Birthright, where she's an obvious bottom-feeder, she's even worse in Revelation. And it's already a Herculean labor to work with her in Birthright...

Setsuna requires initial investment, indeed. But an iron yumi has the same stats as a steel bow in FE8, archer has skl+2, sniper gives 10 accuracy and hit +40 on PP and Kinshi gives +30 hit/avoid against fliers. Whatever the class she chooses, Setsuna is guaranteed to have enough hitrate to be a good offensive unit. Takumi's bases and growth spread actually sacrifices good stats (strength and speed) for a secondary stat (skill) in a class that naturally guarantees to fix hitrates and his yumi has the hit rate of a brass yumi so it's mostly wasted. Takumi starts with 14 str but Setsuna at level 11 is expected to have 10-11 strength, which makes her attack 19-20 with D rank yumi, 20-21 with C rank. You can also use her lack of skill to forge her bronze yumi instead of iron since they cost nothing, a brass yumi +2 has 11 mt and 80 acc. With 12+2 skill, Setsuna has 21 additional accuracy without counting her not amazing luck. At that point she has 16 expected speed to Takumi's 11. Her better speed far outweighs his better skill and strength, quick draw, yumi's might and forging largely make up for the damage she's missing on and that's without using any tonic on her. Also in the long term Setsuna's better res is more useful than Takumi's better def as an archer, she also has a more useful reclass option (lockpick, poison strike, puppeteer, shuriken).

Give a promotion to puppeteer to Kagero and she is Takumi but better and with more movement, her monstrous strength quickly makes up for Fujin Yumi and she retains shuriken. Since Kagero has a good stat and growth spread, she's definitely a better unit than Takumi (who doesn't have 1-2). Sure that's not her best promotion until master ninja fixes her speed to be able to take the drop for extra bulk and strength, but 7 movement and flier OHKO is valuable. If she benefits from rally speed, puppeteer Kagero is a rollercoaster (give her a general/GK/WL pair up).

Saizo replicates Ryôma's performance with as much ease as Kagero, his stats needing fixing being speed and res that are everywhere in BR.

On 6/14/2023 at 6:32 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Also, Hoshido Noble doesn't use clubs, last I checked.

Too bad, it would have allowed Corrin to use the bolt axe, a magic weapon that actually exists through normal ways in BR. Levin sword needs a shit ton of online battle grinding to unlock. So clubs>katanas that are just worse naginatas that give 1 stat by taking 2 instead of giving 2 stats, making a -1 stat instead of a +2. Clubs don't reduce your defenses, have 5 free crit and the steel club is actually a good weapon (the iron one sure is crap, just forge a brass one until you reach C and profit from better accuracy than the brass one). Katanas are literally THE worst weapon type in BR because lots of enemies have lances and mounts so they have the initiative of rushing you and choosing a weapon. Ryôma is your best anti axe guy and you don't really need another one. Sword Corrin in BR is pointless. Corrin in BR is pointless because Saizo, Kaze, Kagero, Ryôma, Scarlet and Hinoka (with Takumi for 2-3 chapters) are more than enough to carry the game and they don't have to wait I don't know how many chapters to get their weapons upgraded, while the Yato is just a steel katana without the drop until then and then you have access to +4 iron katanas with better accuracy and hit/crit bonuses and +3-4 steel katanas with 15-17 atk. Hoshido Noble is the worst possible sword class while offering nothing else worth staying in this class for.

Rinkah certainly could be better but she's serviceable, a mid-tier unit with a mediocre start (like most non-royal non-prepromotes in BR).

Hinata is functional, he doubles all the non-outlaws in his intro chapter with an iron katana or with a +2 spd pair-up (or a tonic) with the steel katana he joins with. By comparison Oboro misses any enemy over 9 spd (what the cavaliers have in hard) with an iron naginata AND a tonic. She needs 3 speed boost just to reach Hinata's base. His slightly inferior str/def is more than made up for by his doubling potential (with tonic speed and +2 pair up he stands at 16 with steel and 19 with iron), and with a promotion to SM he has +3 spd (17+1, tonic spd +2, pair up +2=22 spd). You recruit him with Corrin, give him a master seal and a tonic speed, he pairs up with Oboro who carries him, in 2 turns he's close to the action and ready to double even the oulaws (who have 14 or 16, I don't remember). Most units are unable to reach the outlaws' doubling threshold in ch9 and the ninjas' 16 in ch10, Hinata does it at base with a suboptimal pair-up.

[Shadow Mir]

19 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

The armor slayer is a sword, has disadvantage against like 70% of its' targets and until ch 9.5 your only users for it are Corrin, Hana and Silas. Silas comes after the last knight is killed before Hinata is recruited, so his armor slaying is the same as Hinata's but with 6 less base speed, Hana gets "nearly" one shot by knights with any other weapon than a javelin until promotion and Corrin has other ways to kill knights depending on their class and weapon rank (magic Corrin doesn't need anarmor killing weapon). The next one is Ryôma and he doesn't need an armor slayer to wipe the floor with knights, he can also use a hammer or tome attack stance to ORKO generals.

I usually don't have Corrin leave this initial class, so there's one option. Also, all the knights in that chapter are paired up with either outlaws or dark mages, meaning that magic won't be doing better against them (oh, and by the way, tomes ALSO have WTD vs lances). Not to mention that your mage options at that point are rather poor anyhow, as Hayato starts at level 1 and Orochi is slow to the point she can't even double them unless they're using javelins (and as mages, they're gonna get hurt really badly when the knights use javelins). I'd likely be able to one-punch them with the armorslayer, though.

19 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Over specialization? Being effective against 2 classes of the same line is much more overspecialized than being effective against 1/3rd of the classes the enemy will use against your army. The hammer is still a very useful weapon. The catcher/ruin/splitter are fine weapons that come right in time to defeat the promoted enemies that start appearing more and more often in the mid game. Denying their defense and still dealing more damage just with the weapon's might before factoring in the unit's strength is quite useful. Otherwise bows would be pretty useless against wyverns, but they're actually the best weapon to kill them thanks to high weapon damage against them.

And again, the Nohrian effective weapons don't care about what my opponent is using, whereas most of the Hoshidan effective weapons become next to useless against any weapon other than the one they're meant to counter (this especially stands out with the Spellbane Yumi, which has poor might, poor hit, AND has WTD against the weapons it's meant to be used on to boot); about the only classes I can safely say they're effective on are weapon-locked classes. Also, bows are the best weapon against wyverns because the other effective options against them are more limited; Dragon Spirit comes late and halves magic after attacking, the Wyrmslayer comes really late, and Excalibur is class-locked, and unavailable in Birthright besides (contrast Awakening, where wind magic was also effective on fliers, and Chrom, as well as Lucina, came with an infinite use wyrmslayer). I know full damn well that effective weapons need to have good might for them to actually be worth it. Look at wind magic in Path of Radiance. Not only was effective only double might in that game, its poor might meant that it only barely outperformed thunder against the units it was effective against.

19 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Subaki isn't a beast but with an early promo he easily gets by until rally speed. At that point he falls off but his utility makes up for it. Speed pair ups cost a slot but most classes give at least 2 spd in BR so it's not like you're short on options and you can always pair up for a specific opponent and unpair afterwards. I just don't find a point giving a pair up to an archer who won't be making much use of its' stats unless it's a life or death situation. Practice katana is weak but Silas doesn't lack str, he lacks spd. He's got 13 spd and 21 atk at base with it IIRC (6+11+3). Felicia's only good once you get the flame shuriken, before that she hits like wet noodle. That's why I prefer Felicia 2, no need to grind her shuriken rank, she comes with C rank about when her weapon becomes available and is 1 level away from tomebreaker. Overleveled + Rinkah pair up Kaze or trained Kagero are better overall killers than Felicia. Kagero's strength is great, shuriken have innate super high accuracy and give more speed and she has 70% speed growth, so she's guaranteed to be fast after a few level ups to fix her base speed.

That's pretty telling that I have to give Subaki undue preference for a promotion just for him to be "passable". Especially when getting him to promotion is like pulling teeth in the first place because he hits like a wet noodle against anything that isn't a mage. Not to mention that master seals are limited for most of the game. I've never had a good time making any of the ninjas work, either; Kaze is super fast, but enemies that aren't mages tend to laugh at his offense (oh, and you aren't helping his case by adding qualifiers; it says nothing good of Kaze if you're saying he needs to be overleveled AND have a Rinkah pair up to look good). Saizo is really slow for a ninja, and Kagero tends to have hit problems despite using shurikens. At least Felicia also has utility; a combat unit with poor combat and nothing else is tantamount to a liability.

19 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Setsuna requires initial investment, indeed. But an iron yumi has the same stats as a steel bow in FE8, archer has skl+2, sniper gives 10 accuracy and hit +40 on PP and Kinshi gives +30 hit/avoid against fliers. Whatever the class she chooses, Setsuna is guaranteed to have enough hitrate to be a good offensive unit. Takumi's bases and growth spread actually sacrifices good stats (strength and speed) for a secondary stat (skill) in a class that naturally guarantees to fix hitrates and his yumi has the hit rate of a brass yumi so it's mostly wasted. Takumi starts with 14 str but Setsuna at level 11 is expected to have 10-11 strength, which makes her attack 19-20 with D rank yumi, 20-21 with C rank. You can also use her lack of skill to forge her bronze yumi instead of iron since they cost nothing, a brass yumi +2 has 11 mt and 80 acc. With 12+2 skill, Setsuna has 21 additional accuracy without counting her not amazing luck. At that point she has 16 expected speed to Takumi's 11. Her better speed far outweighs his better skill and strength, quick draw, yumi's might and forging largely make up for the damage she's missing on and that's without using any tonic on her. Also in the long term Setsuna's better res is more useful than Takumi's better def as an archer, she also has a more useful reclass option (lockpick, poison strike, puppeteer, shuriken).

"Initial investment" understates how much she needs. Skill+2 gives a whopping... drumroll please... 3 hit. It takes more than that to fix yumi hit rates; FYI, almost all yumi have hit rates of 70 or less. When you're an archer with low skill, that's troubling. Also, I find extremely telling that I have to babysit her up to promotion AND learn the promoted class skills before she looks even half-decent. Also, her better resistance isn't that useful, as it only comes into play vs mages, which not only is she WTD'd against, such a confrontation will rarely end well for her anyway. Her ninja subclass doesn't help her much either, as you only double down on her one good point while not addressing the problems that make her bad, especially her damage, which you make even worse as shuriken are weak, like Setsuna herself.

On Takumi: His much higher skill means much less inopportune misses - something that is a constant worry with Setsuna. And unlike her, he can actually kill or at least chunk enemies off the bat. Also, comparing her to Takumi when they're both at the same level is flat-out wrong. She starts at only level 3, which means she'd need 4(!!!) levels a map to be at the same level as Takumi before he joins. Yeah, that ain't happening without massive favoritism at the expense of everyone else. And I consider it telling that you have to do that just to make her look competitive. Also, Takumi gets Quick Draw too. Except he starts with it.

TL;DR Setsuna needs too much investment for too little profit.

On forging: That's if your castle allows it, which I'm not readily assuming given the 5/6 chance your castle's ore ISN'T for yumi.

19 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Give a promotion to puppeteer to Kagero and she is Takumi but better and with more movement, her monstrous strength quickly makes up for Fujin Yumi and she retains shuriken. Since Kagero has a good stat and growth spread, she's definitely a better unit than Takumi (who doesn't have 1-2). Sure that's not her best promotion until master ninja fixes her speed to be able to take the drop for extra bulk and strength, but 7 movement and flier OHKO is valuable. If she benefits from rally speed, puppeteer Kagero is a rollercoaster (give her a general/GK/WL pair up).

Saizo replicates Ryôma's performance with as much ease as Kagero, his stats needing fixing being speed and res that are everywhere in BR.

Very funny, given they have the problems stated above.

19 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Too bad, it would have allowed Corrin to use the bolt axe, a magic weapon that actually exists through normal ways in BR. Levin sword needs a shit ton of online battle grinding to unlock. So clubs>katanas that are just worse naginatas that give 1 stat by taking 2 instead of giving 2 stats, making a -1 stat instead of a +2. Clubs don't reduce your defenses, have 5 free crit and the steel club is actually a good weapon (the iron one sure is crap, just forge a brass one until you reach C and profit from better accuracy than the brass one). Katanas are literally THE worst weapon type in BR because lots of enemies have lances and mounts so they have the initiative of rushing you and choosing a weapon. Ryôma is your best anti axe guy and you don't really need another one. Sword Corrin in BR is pointless. Corrin in BR is pointless because Saizo, Kaze, Kagero, Ryôma, Scarlet and Hinoka (with Takumi for 2-3 chapters) are more than enough to carry the game and they don't have to wait I don't know how many chapters to get their weapons upgraded, while the Yato is just a steel katana without the drop until then and then you have access to +4 iron katanas with better accuracy and hit/crit bonuses and +3-4 steel katanas with 15-17 atk. Hoshido Noble is the worst possible sword class while offering nothing else worth staying in this class for.

I was more thinking about how Hoshidan weapons in general are overall inferior to Nohrian weapons; compared to axes, clubs mostly exchange might for crit - a poor tradeoff when the extra crit is not enough to bank on (also, clubs got shafted weapon wise, with almost no noteworthy weapons). Katanas, as I stated earlier, give +1 speed for -1 in both defensive stats... which is not worth it. Yumi have 1 more might for 10 less hit; the lower hit causes more problems than the 1 might solves, and the 2 resistance doesn't help much. Naginata and shuriken are the only Hoshidan weapons to compete with the Nohrian equivalents. Anyhow, I'm not stupid enough to entertain the thought of *foolishly* neglecting my protagonist when he's one of the few reliable units you have early on. Also, almost none of those units you mentioned are the kind I can indiscriminately throw into a bunch of enemies and expect to kill everything. ESPECIALLY the ninjas, who drop to a couple good hits. Even the one who comes closest is far from invincible. What's more, I wouldn't consider the Bolt Axe worth using on Corrin unless they were a magic boon, which is a very specific build. Though I generally never bother with it anyway because good users for it are extremely scarce to nonexistent. I must ask... What are you doing to get +4 iron and steel katanas, shitting away your money? You forget the part where ore is a thing, too and for that matter, the fact that Fates's forging system is just bad; if your castle's ore is not for katanas... sucks to be you.

19 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Rinkah certainly could be better but she's serviceable, a mid-tier unit with a mediocre start (like most non-royal non-prepromotes in BR).

You're very, very, VERY generous to say that. She's more like a low tier letdown who comes THIS close to being a joke character. Her start is shit, with her having two consecutive chapters where she cannot do anything because everything (everything of note in the latter) has WTA over her. Her offense is such that she mostly subjects enemies to a death of a thousand cuts. Her ability to tank, which she should do well, is ruined by garbage HP. The one thing she's good at is being a pair up bot... which ALSO hurts her because that means she's not improving quickly. Is it any wonder that I have Corrin run an HP boon and just use him as my tank instead??

19 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Hinata is functional, he doubles all the non-outlaws in his intro chapter with an iron katana or with a +2 spd pair-up (or a tonic) with the steel katana he joins with. By comparison Oboro misses any enemy over 9 spd (what the cavaliers have in hard) with an iron naginata AND a tonic. She needs 3 speed boost just to reach Hinata's base. His slightly inferior str/def is more than made up for by his doubling potential (with tonic speed and +2 pair up he stands at 16 with steel and 19 with iron), and with a promotion to SM he has +3 spd (17+1, tonic spd +2, pair up +2=22 spd). You recruit him with Corrin, give him a master seal and a tonic speed, he pairs up with Oboro who carries him, in 2 turns he's close to the action and ready to double even the oulaws (who have 14 or 16, I don't remember). Most units are unable to reach the outlaws' doubling threshold in ch9 and the ninjas' 16 in ch10, Hinata does it at base with a suboptimal pair-up.

Hinata being able to double ninjas sounds impressive at first... until you remember that he has WTD against them. And the investment for this involving sacrificing one of the better units on the route to being a pairup AND a master seal...

Edited June 27, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[mangasdeouf]

On 6/27/2023 at 8:09 PM, Shadow Mir said:

And again, the Nohrian effective weapons don't care about what my opponent is using, whereas most of the Hoshidan effective weapons become next to useless against any weapon other than the one they're meant to counter (this especially stands out with the Spellbane Yumi, which has poor might, poor hit, AND has WTD against the weapons it's meant to be used on to boot); about the only classes I can safely say they're effective on are weapon-locked classes. Also, bows are the best weapon against wyverns because the other effective options against them are more limited; Dragon Spirit comes late and halves magic after attacking, the Wyrmslayer comes really late, and Excalibur is class-locked, and unavailable in Birthright besides (contrast Awakening, where wind magic was also effective on fliers, and Chrom, as well as Lucina, came with an infinite use wyrmslayer). I know full damn well that effective weapons need to have good might for them to actually be worth it. Look at wind magic in Path of Radiance. Not only was effective only double might in that game, its poor might meant that it only barely outperformed thunder against the units it was effective against.

Nohrian effective weaponry is far more limited than Hoshidan effective weaponry because it's only useful against a small amount of enemy classes. You can pretend the armorslayer is a good weapon but I'm gonna continue blasting knights with tomes/scrolls that also have WTD but hit their MUCH LOWER res. And with a samurai pair up Orochi doubles the ch9 knights. Anyone else doesn't even need that much help to double them (or any at all) and Orochi herself gives 4 magic and 2 spd without any support rank as a backpack so anyone with scrolls easily destroys these guys. Spellbane yumi is one of the worst weapons in Fates (with a great number of crappy weapons that could have been never introduced to focus more on things far more useful like better class balance rather than making 50 joke weapons no one ever uses). To fight magic I'd rather use a mirror yumi (the one that gives 8 or 10 res), with an accurate archer (Kinshi Subaki or Takumi, or any sniper with the level 5 skill).

Path of Radiance wind literally has 1 damage. FE9, FE10 and FE13 wind magic isn't even worth using under D rank. Mages also happen to have shitty base stats in all these games (even in Awakening).

On 6/27/2023 at 8:09 PM, Shadow Mir said:

That's pretty telling that I have to give Subaki undue preference for a promotion just for him to be "passable". Especially when getting him to promotion is like pulling teeth in the first place because he hits like a wet noodle against anything that isn't a mage. Not to mention that master seals are limited for most of the game. I've never had a good time making any of the ninjas work, either; Kaze is super fast, but enemies that aren't mages tend to laugh at his offense (oh, and you aren't helping his case by adding qualifiers; it says nothing good of Kaze if you're saying he needs to be overleveled AND have a Rinkah pair up to look good). Saizo is really slow for a ninja, and Kagero tends to have hit problems despite using shurikens. At least Felicia also has utility; a combat unit with poor combat and nothing else is tantamount to a liability.

Kagero uses shuriken and starts with 10 skill, 1 less than Silas has at her level on average. She has 20% personal skill growth and 20% from ninja and master ninja, 15% from mechanist, master ninja gives +2 and mechanist +1. Iron shuriken have 85 base hit, her skill alone pushes it to 100 without adding luck. Steel shuriken have 80 base hit, barb has 80 and sting has 90. Unpromoted enemies have 35 avoid max until halfway through the game (and that's ninjas and samurai, the latter of which she has WTA over and she'll never fight a ninja in BR). She has 16 expected skill as a 20/1 or 10/11 master ninja (if you want to intant promote her to fix her speed, which might be a great benefit since shurikenfaire makes up for the lost damage in lategame, while the immediate boost to her offense is quite a boon if you're not using pair up) and the class gives 5 hit, which makes it 29 hit with an iron shuriken (by then you'll have a +1 or +2, if she's 10/11 you probably have a +3 or +4 that gains some accuracy too). Pair up/attack stance gives 5 or 10 hit, tonic skill gives 3 so you're around 40 additional hit. She won't be using any weapon under 80 hit rate unforged. She has a combination of highest strength and good enough speed, making her a killing machine. With the sting shuriken she has 21+15+1=37 base damage on knights, at base, and she doubles them. She's probably not the unit you'll be sending after an axe hero, but she's not the only unit you can use.

Saizo with any speed pair up, a master ninja promotion and a def tonic, easily gets close to Ryôma's performance. I don't see how his speed is a problem since shuriken basically all give 2 speed and he has 50% speed growth with a base of 11+2=13. He's faster than Takumi at every stage of the game, especially if you make Takumi a flier for better movement. Saizo can enemy phase juggernaut thanks to defense stacking, guard gauge and easy access to vantage astra just like Ryôma (also his weapons can be forged, a +4 steel shuriken has the exact same damage as Raijinto including the +4 str boost at the cost of 3 speed, which is nearly fixed with a single tonic).

Basically you give Rinkah to mechanist Kaze, Hana or Hinoka to MN Saizo and MoA Hinata to Kagero, a tonic HP each and a tonic str/spd/def and you have 4 Ryômas (maybe you should give a seraph robe to Kagero too). At that point you put the game in auto and you win without playing.

Subaki doesn't receive preference, he levels up 5x (which is super easy since you barely have any units worth using until chapter 10 so everyone is free deployment and he has 1 less strength than Hinoka so if Subaki can't kill anything then Hinoka can't either), gets promoted for free (you loot a master seal in ch9) and then gets to level 4 (staves, jagen job) and at that point you don't even have to make him do anything but rally speed so his stats are as relevant as a refersher's (and he has 8 movement and flight over them).

On 6/27/2023 at 8:09 PM, Shadow Mir said:

"Initial investment" understates how much she needs. Skill+2 gives a whopping... drumroll please... 3 hit. It takes more than that to fix yumi hit rates; FYI, almost all yumi have hit rates of 70 or less. When you're an archer with low skill, that's troubling. Also, I find extremely telling that I have to babysit her up to promotion AND learn the promoted class skills before she looks even half-decent. Also, her better resistance isn't that useful, as it only comes into play vs mages, which not only is she WTD'd against, such a confrontation will rarely end well for her anyway. Her ninja subclass doesn't help her much either, as you only double down on her one good point while not addressing the problems that make her bad, especially her damage, which you make even worse as shuriken are weak, like Setsuna herself.

On Takumi: His much higher skill means much less inopportune misses - something that is a constant worry with Setsuna. And unlike her, he can actually kill or at least chunk enemies off the bat. Also, comparing her to Takumi when they're both at the same level is flat-out wrong. She starts at only level 3, which means she'd need 4(!!!) levels a map to be at the same level as Takumi before he joins. Yeah, that ain't happening without massive favoritism at the expense of everyone else. And I consider it telling that you have to do that just to make her look competitive. Also, Takumi gets Quick Draw too. Except he starts with it.

TL;DR Setsuna needs too much investment for too little profit.

On forging: That's if your castle allows it, which I'm not readily assuming given the 5/6 chance your castle's ore ISN'T for yumi.

Iron yumi has 70 hit. Brass yumi has 2 less Mt for 10 more hit, actually it has the same stats as...oh yeah! the steel shuriken! Forged +1 (which is super easy and costs 500 or 1k if you don't get a free brass yumi, and since you can sell your iron yumi, it pays for half the price of the forge) has 9 mt and 80 hit. That's 27 base damage against the fliers of ch11, she has WTA against the pegasi and OHKOs them at base. She, just like Takumi, can get 2-3 level ups in that map. 3 level ups for Setsuna is 2 speed. From base level she would already get 1 more speed than base Takumi just in this map, that's an untrained Setsuna. A Setsuna who gained 3 levels has 12 speed at the beginning of the map and 14-15 at the end of it. Takumi with his OHKOs of ninjas in ch10 gains 1-2 levels, which gives him 0-1 spd. With 3 levels in 11 he reaches 13 speed at the end of the chapter.From that point onward, a barely trained Setsuna is faster than Takumi and since she gains 2 more speed than him every 10 levels (or 1 every 5 levels), her double attacks are way easier to get than his (a 10/12 sniper Setsuna has 10+4+13.5=27.5 spd, an 11/15 Takumi has 11+4+7.7=22.7, notice the difference? With 5 more levels, Setsuna has 31 spd while Takumi has 25, not even as much as a 10/12 Setsuna).

From level 5 sniper, Setsuna can use whatever bow she wants to, she will be close to 90-100% hit rate in most match ups. 10 from sniper, 40 from certain blow, 65 from steel bow, 115 base hit. Even with 16 skill that's still 139 hit. She starts with 9+2 and has 45% GR as an archer and 20% as a sniper. Where Takumi's atk is often overkill except for OHKOs, Setsuna's attack is sufficient with the appropriate weapon and all the free damage she gets (+4 with QD, +2 with sniper, 35% str growth, yumi's absurd base damage). Setsuna is Hana with a bow. You can always make a priestess Hana if you prefer but make sure that her skill is good enough for yumi (priestess has 6 base skl, 1 less than SM and 3 less than sniper). Takumi is a good crutch for ninja hell and the boat map but he falls off like a rock in the sea due to his abysmal base speed for his relatively high base level. He'd be much more usable long term with 2 more base speed. A level 10 Setsuna is already 3 points of speed over Takumi, that's quite insulting.

On 6/27/2023 at 8:09 PM, Shadow Mir said:

I was more thinking about how Hoshidan weapons in general are overall inferior to Nohrian weapons; compared to axes, clubs mostly exchange might for crit - a poor tradeoff when the extra crit is not enough to bank on (also, clubs got shafted weapon wise, with almost no noteworthy weapons). Katanas, as I stated earlier, give +1 speed for -1 in both defensive stats... which is not worth it. Yumi have 1 more might for 10 less hit; the lower hit causes more problems than the 1 might solves, and the 2 resistance doesn't help much. Naginata and shuriken are the only Hoshidan weapons to compete with the Nohrian equivalents. Anyhow, I'm not stupid enough to entertain the thought of *foolishly* neglecting my protagonist when he's one of the few reliable units you have early on. Also, almost none of those units you mentioned are the kind I can indiscriminately throw into a bunch of enemies and expect to kill everything. ESPECIALLY the ninjas, who drop to a couple good hits. Even the one who comes closest is far from invincible. What's more, I wouldn't consider the Bolt Axe worth using on Corrin unless they were a magic boon, which is a very specific build. Though I generally never bother with it anyway because good users for it are extremely scarce to nonexistent. I must ask... What are you doing to get +4 iron and steel katanas, shitting away your money? You forget the part where ore is a thing, too and for that matter, the fact that Fates's forging system is just bad; if your castle's ore is not for katanas... sucks to be you.

Something we mostly agree on. Clubs have better accuracy than axes though. I'd rather use a killer axe anyway or a steel club and I keep using the brass club until I can make good use of the steel one, it's simply better than the iron club. Axes/clubs are both bas weapon types if you're not Jakob (I swear this guy is a skill beast, rocking 18-20 skill as a lv 15 GK on the regular in my playthroughs) or Scarlet (whose base stats are bonkers).

On 6/27/2023 at 8:09 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Hinata being able to double ninjas sounds impressive at first... until you remember that he has WTD against them. And the investment for this involving sacrificing one of the better units on the route to being a pairup AND a master seal...

My problem with WTD: hit rate, taking more damage. The damage part for SM Hinata (12 base def, 14 with a tonic) is obviously not a big issue, the hitrate can be worked around. Ch10 is a very tactical chapter where you must use your units to maximize the number of enemies killed on PP. Hinata killing 1 or 2 ninjas per turn makes it easier to clear the most infuriating part of the map, the first half. Takumi kills 1 or 2 per turn but is missing on t1 and can't be refreshed on t2 because of course it had to be your dancer who was forced to stay behind to cleanse him of his curse...fck that map (I enjoy using a busted logbook unit to braindead my way through this idiotic map).

Anyway, we have disagreements, you value things that I don't and I and other players value things that you don't. Seems like we won't agree anytime soon so let's agree to disagree. And when I tell you that the 3 ninjas can replicate Ryôma's performance, you shouldn't be telling me that they're weak, you should ask me how can they get so close to the god of BR. Do you shit on Franz because he doesn't start with Seth's stats? I doubt so, then why do you diss the ninjas who can replicate the Seth of BR (and unlike Franz, they've got the availability advantage)? BR without grinding is harder than TSS where Seth can solo 95% of the game (he's not playable in 5x but he's got an inferior clone) and making an early mini-Ryôma for the chapters in which he doesn't existisn't something you should mock but something that shouts "hey! I'm a good unit! not THE best but top 5! Use me!"

People legit consider giving 3-4 stat boosters to Jill as THE right way to play RD but when you talk about giving the appropriate resources to an unit in BR to replicate the best unit in this game, some of the same people suddenly feel revulsed. That's literally the same thing, maximizing the effectiveness of a good unit, only Saizo and Kagero can do fine without these resources (they won't replicate Ryôma but they'll be decent A-B tiers). With the resources allocated to them, the 3 ninjas are S tier units, maybe A tier for Kagero since she needs a marriage seal to get vantage astra (but her best partner, short and long term, is Hinata, samurai gives 3 spd, pushing her to 17 base, MoA gives 2 str/spd/def which largely fixes her issues, with a tonic def she gets to 13 def and with a dragonshield 15, promo 16...wait, Ryôma has 15 base def at level 4 SM! Incredible! Yep, Kagero isn't the glass canon she's promoted to be due to stats stacking, and with an instant promo she has amazing bases except for HP, but with a tonic HP she's a mini-Ryôma, with 14 str gain and shurikenfaire in her 19 remaining level ups, she more than makes up for early promo with a whooping 31+5 str=overcapped berserker tier strength, with 13 spd by level up she reaches 30, with 5 def she reaches 21, with 6 HP by level up she reaches 29, 34 with a tonic, 39 with a seraph robe). Yep, a 10/20 Kagero has amazing offensive stats that few BR units can hope to reach, most of which don't have 1-2 range anyway, and that's without using any other permanent stat booster than a single seraph robe and missing on 10 level ups (that would push her HP to 33-38-43 depending on tonics and seraph robe usage, her speed would cap, her def would reach 24), but since you have more chance of ending before getting most of your units to 20/15, you don't even lose that much in stats by promoting early and getting promo bonuses and late game skills earlier. With a tonic def and MoA Hinata pair up she has 25 def without support bonuses. Lv 20 Ryoma has 44 HP and 20 def (21-1). If Ryôma is OP, so is Kagero. Saizo is legit bulkier than them (10/20 Saizo has 23 def, +2 HP than Kagero, 25+5 str and 25 spd before stat bonuses, Hana gives 6 or 7 spd and 2 str as a SM). Kaze is way weaker but has slightly more HP (10/20 has 35/40/45 HP as a MN, 18 str+5 which actually sucks so you might want to use his availability to give him 5 more level ups to reach 20-21+5 str and 37/42/47 HP, he doubles every enemy in existence and...a whooping 12 def, 13 with 5 more level ups...what a loser...) okay, Kaze sucks past midgame and is better dropped for the other 2, I admit. I don't like him anyway, Kagero does everything he does better with the right resources and doesn't get power crept in endgame.

[Shadow Mir]

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Nohrian effective weaponry is far more limited than Hoshidan effective weaponry because it's only useful against a small amount of enemy classes. You can pretend the armorslayer is a good weapon but I'm gonna continue blasting knights with tomes/scrolls that also have WTD but hit their MUCH LOWER res. And with a samurai pair up Orochi doubles the ch9 knights. Anyone else doesn't even need that much help to double them (or any at all) and Orochi herself gives 4 magic and 2 spd without any support rank as a backpack so anyone with scrolls easily destroys these guys. Spellbane yumi is one of the worst weapons in Fates (with a great number of crappy weapons that could have been never introduced to focus more on things far more useful like better class balance rather than making 50 joke weapons no one ever uses). To fight magic I'd rather use a mirror yumi (the one that gives 8 or 10 res), with an accurate archer (Kinshi Subaki or Takumi, or any sniper with the level 5 skill).

I prefer quality over quantity; the Hoshidan weapons have quantity, but the Nohrian weapons have quality. While the Hoshidan weapons hit more classes, that's if AND ONLY IF they happen to be using the weapon they counter; anything else, and you might as well be fighting with a cardboard tube. Sure, the Armorslayer and the like are situational, but so are the likes of the Axe Splitter. That said, the Spellbane Yumi is one of the weapons where I actively question what they were thinking, because it has so many downsides. If I really wanted my archer to fight mages, I'd be better off using the dual yumi instead.

On Orochi and the chapter 9 knights: To be blunt, I consider it rather telling that she NEEDS a pair up just to double effing armors. And what makes this even more laughable is that she STILL fails to double the ones that are paired up with outlaws without them using javelins. And even then, she doesn't come close to one-rounding them, esp. on Lunatic, where all enemy units have max weapon ranks, as she loses 1 might from WTD. Also, I hesitate to say that anyone with scrolls "destroys" them when they still are paired up with resistance boosting units (also, one, the only scroll users you have at that point are Orochi herself and Hayato, who has his own problems, and two, as mentioned earlier, some of them are paired up with outlaws). Unless your definition of "destroying them" is "barely 3HKOing while not even doubling unless they use javelins, in which case they 2HKO you". Or in Hayato's case, "4HKOing while still needing them to use the javelin to double, and you very nearly get OHKOed". I'ma be blunt, this is goddamn Radiant Dawn levels of bad, considering your absolute(ly groundless) confidence that mages are THE go-to answer for knights. . . And it's not like they're THAT slow; they have 6 speed, meaning unless they equip javelins, doubling them is not effortless like you think it is.

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Path of Radiance wind literally has 1 damage. FE9, FE10 and FE13 wind magic isn't even worth using under D rank. Mages also happen to have shitty base stats in all these games (even in Awakening).

It's 2 in PoR. But I was talking about the magic type as a whole - and honestly, wind magic in general sucks in PoR anyway (for the record, the supposedly ultimate wind tome has a measly 6 might, which is comparable to an iron bow - and this is in a game where effective is double might, which means it's not even that great against fliers). Also, it and Radiant Dawn were low points for mages, especially the latter.

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Subaki doesn't receive preference, he levels up 5x (which is super easy since you barely have any units worth using until chapter 10 so everyone is free deployment and he has 1 less strength than Hinoka so if Subaki can't kill anything then Hinoka can't either), gets promoted for free (you loot a master seal in ch9) and then gets to level 4 (staves, jagen job) and at that point you don't even have to make him do anything but rally speed so his stats are as relevant as a refersher's (and he has 8 movement and flight over them).

The problem is, Hinoka does pretty much everything Subaki can, and better (and she comes only 1 chapter later). That is very damning, and makes investing that much in Subaki (except for marrying him to someone else to get his infinitely better daughter) a VERY hard sell, largely because she's not so slow that her doubling is restricted to player phase only, AKA once per turn, and she has better stats almost everywhere else too. It doesn't help Subaki's already flimsy case that Hinoka actually has a good personal skill, whereas his is garbage. Also, a Master Seal is not exactly a trivial investment, and you're advising me to give it to a third-rate scrub that has the misfortune of getting powercrept almost immediately over someone who actually has future prospects. 

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Basically you give Rinkah to mechanist Kaze, Hana or Hinoka to MN Saizo and MoA Hinata to Kagero, a tonic HP each and a tonic str/spd/def and you have 4 Ryômas (maybe you should give a seraph robe to Kagero too). At that point you put the game in auto and you win without playing.

On what, Normal Phoenix mode? Also, again, needing to field a scrub for his sake does not make Kaze look good. And you're asking me to do the same for Kagero as well. AND asking me to sacrifice a better unit to be Saizo's pair up. Two words: H-e-two hockey sticks no. You ask too much for units that aren't even that good. Also, playing the game in auto is foolish, given the AI is suicidal. If I don't even trust the real Ryoma to survive heavy fire, what possesses you to think these poor man's Ryomas are gonna be any more trustworthy??? 

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Kagero uses shuriken and starts with 10 skill, 1 less than Silas has at her level on average. She has 20% personal skill growth and 20% from ninja and master ninja, 15% from mechanist, master ninja gives +2 and mechanist +1. Iron shuriken have 85 base hit, her skill alone pushes it to 100 without adding luck. Steel shuriken have 80 base hit, barb has 80 and sting has 90. Unpromoted enemies have 35 avoid max until halfway through the game (and that's ninjas and samurai, the latter of which she has WTA over and she'll never fight a ninja in BR). She has 16 expected skill as a 20/1 or 10/11 master ninja (if you want to intant promote her to fix her speed, which might be a great benefit since shurikenfaire makes up for the lost damage in lategame, while the immediate boost to her offense is quite a boon if you're not using pair up) and the class gives 5 hit, which makes it 29 hit with an iron shuriken (by then you'll have a +1 or +2, if she's 10/11 you probably have a +3 or +4 that gains some accuracy too). Pair up/attack stance gives 5 or 10 hit, tonic skill gives 3 so you're around 40 additional hit. She won't be using any weapon under 80 hit rate unforged. She has a combination of highest strength and good enough speed, making her a killing machine. With the sting shuriken she has 21+15+1=37 base damage on knights, at base, and she doubles them. She's probably not the unit you'll be sending after an axe hero, but she's not the only unit you can use.

That don't impress me much when most other shuriken users tend to not have imperfect accuracy all the time. Also, the sting shuriken, much like the armorslayer, is situational, and the barb shuriken isn't worth it.

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Saizo with any speed pair up, a master ninja promotion and a def tonic, easily gets close to Ryôma's performance. I don't see how his speed is a problem since shuriken basically all give 2 speed and he has 50% speed growth with a base of 11+2=13. He's faster than Takumi at every stage of the game, especially if you make Takumi a flier for better movement. Saizo can enemy phase juggernaut thanks to defense stacking, guard gauge and easy access to vantage astra just like Ryôma (also his weapons can be forged, a +4 steel shuriken has the exact same damage as Raijinto including the +4 str boost at the cost of 3 speed, which is nearly fixed with a single tonic).

bruh
A +4 anything is too expensive and too impractical to make. That alone is asking too much. Especially with the forge system being what it is; to be frank, anything over +2 requires too much resources for too little reward.

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Iron yumi has 70 hit. Brass yumi has 2 less Mt for 10 more hit, actually it has the same stats as...oh yeah! the steel shuriken! Forged +1 (which is super easy and costs 500 or 1k if you don't get a free brass yumi, and since you can sell your iron yumi, it pays for half the price of the forge) has 9 mt and 80 hit. That's 27 base damage against the fliers of ch11, she has WTA against the pegasi and OHKOs them at base. She, just like Takumi, can get 2-3 level ups in that map. 3 level ups for Setsuna is 2 speed. From base level she would already get 1 more speed than base Takumi just in this map, that's an untrained Setsuna. A Setsuna who gained 3 levels has 12 speed at the beginning of the map and 14-15 at the end of it. Takumi with his OHKOs of ninjas in ch10 gains 1-2 levels, which gives him 0-1 spd. With 3 levels in 11 he reaches 13 speed at the end of the chapter.From that point onward, a barely trained Setsuna is faster than Takumi and since she gains 2 more speed than him every 10 levels (or 1 every 5 levels), her double attacks are way easier to get than his (a 10/12 sniper Setsuna has 10+4+13.5=27.5 spd, an 11/15 Takumi has 11+4+7.7=22.7, notice the difference? With 5 more levels, Setsuna has 31 spd while Takumi has 25, not even as much as a 10/12 Setsuna).

Never mind the fact that I get Reina in that chapter, and Takumi does the same thing, but better, and with zero investment needed. And again, if I have to drag Setsuna all the way to level 5 Sniper just for her to look good, let alone even remotely near Takumi's level, that only shows she is not. Especially when the good units generally manage to make themselves useful before promotion and without situations that are tailor-made for them to overperform. FFS, as an example, Hana has her share of problems, but she eventually manages to establish herself as a glass cannon before promotion. Also, chapter 9 is when one starts needing to cut units from the team - and an inaccurate archer who has trouble killing enemies is a prime benchwarmer.

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

From level 5 sniper, Setsuna can use whatever bow she wants to, she will be close to 90-100% hit rate in most match ups. 10 from sniper, 40 from certain blow, 65 from steel bow, 115 base hit. Even with 16 skill that's still 139 hit. She starts with 9+2 and has 45% GR as an archer and 20% as a sniper. Where Takumi's atk is often overkill except for OHKOs, Setsuna's attack is sufficient with the appropriate weapon and all the free damage she gets (+4 with QD, +2 with sniper, 35% str growth, yumi's absurd base damage). Setsuna is Hana with a bow. You can always make a priestess Hana if you prefer but make sure that her skill is good enough for yumi (priestess has 6 base skl, 1 less than SM and 3 less than sniper). Takumi is a good crutch for ninja hell and the boat map but he falls off like a rock in the sea due to his abysmal base speed for his relatively high base level. He'd be much more usable long term with 2 more base speed. A level 10 Setsuna is already 3 points of speed over Takumi, that's quite insulting.

You know what else is insulting? Needing to be level 5 promoted to not suck, which Setsuna does. Except that's even worse. Also, Setsuna's speed is nigh meaningless when she is garbage nearly everywhere else. Last I checked, you yourself said speed is easy to fix. Because that makes her look even worse:

On 6/11/2023 at 5:08 AM, mangasdeouf said:

It's Hoshido, speed is easier to fix than bulk. I'd rather have more mixed bulk than pointlessly high speed that doesn't change anything against units that have low speed anyway.

 

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

I don't see how his speed is a problem since shuriken basically all give 2 speed and he has 50% speed growth with a base of 11+2=13.

And yet now you're turning around and bashing Takumi on account of his speed... Very funny. You go from "speed is easy to fix" to bashing one of the better units because his speed isn't as good as someone who has excellent speed and pretty much nothing else.

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Something we mostly agree on. Clubs have better accuracy than axes though. I'd rather use a killer axe anyway or a steel club and I keep using the brass club until I can make good use of the steel one, it's simply better than the iron club. Axes/clubs are both bas weapon types if you're not Jakob (I swear this guy is a skill beast, rocking 18-20 skill as a lv 15 GK on the regular in my playthroughs) or Scarlet (whose base stats are bonkers).

But is it by enough to matter? I don't think it is, because it's only by 5.

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

Anyway, we have disagreements, you value things that I don't and I and other players value things that you don't. Seems like we won't agree anytime soon so let's agree to disagree. And when I tell you that the 3 ninjas can replicate Ryôma's performance, you shouldn't be telling me that they're weak, you should ask me how can they get so close to the god of BR. Do you shit on Franz because he doesn't start with Seth's stats? I doubt so, then why do you diss the ninjas who can replicate the Seth of BR (and unlike Franz, they've got the availability advantage)? BR without grinding is harder than TSS where Seth can solo 95% of the game (he's not playable in 5x but he's got an inferior clone) and making an early mini-Ryôma for the chapters in which he doesn't existisn't something you should mock but something that shouts "hey! I'm a good unit! not THE best but top 5! Use me!"

The difference between Franz and the ninjas is that Franz has actually been good for me before, unlike Saizo, Kaze, OR Kagero (and unlike the latter three, he is in the same class that promotes to Seth's initial class). Also, Sacred Stones is much more lenient than either Fates game. Regardless, what makes Ryoma good is a combination of factors, some of which are exclusive to himself. One of the ninjas is too weak, another is too slow, and they're all significantly more brittle than he is (and that's ignoring how almost all shurikens and daggers are weaker than Ryoma's personal weapon). And yet you expect me to blindly and unquestioningly buy into these three units being able to replicate what he can do. Are you kidding me?

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

My problem with WTD: hit rate, taking more damage. The damage part for SM Hinata (12 base def, 14 with a tonic) is obviously not a big issue, the hitrate can be worked around. Ch10 is a very tactical chapter where you must use your units to maximize the number of enemies killed on PP. Hinata killing 1 or 2 ninjas per turn makes it easier to clear the most infuriating part of the map, the first half. Takumi kills 1 or 2 per turn but is missing on t1 and can't be refreshed on t2 because of course it had to be your dancer who was forced to stay behind to cleanse him of his curse...fck that map (I enjoy using a busted logbook unit to braindead my way through this idiotic map).

I'd also add that WTD nullifies weapon rank bonuses, and the bonuses and penalties from weapon triangle are dependent on the weapon rank of the advantaged side. Again, this is more important in Lunatic, where enemy weapon ranks are always maxed. Anyway, I'd think the real reason you're willing to use a logbook unit for that chapter is because the moment you face something even remotely challenging, you have to cheap your way through it instead of earning your win. Second, Hinata would likely be unreliable at taking out ninjas, given he's on the bad end of the weapon triangle (to say nothing of the fact that he needs a non-trivial amount of investment for that... when I get someone who does ninja killing better for no investment needed).

On 6/28/2023 at 8:12 PM, mangasdeouf said:

People legit consider giving 3-4 stat boosters to Jill as THE right way to play RD but when you talk about giving the appropriate resources to an unit in BR to replicate the best unit in this game, some of the same people suddenly feel revulsed. That's literally the same thing, maximizing the effectiveness of a good unit, only Saizo and Kagero can do fine without these resources (they won't replicate Ryôma but they'll be decent A-B tiers). With the resources allocated to them, the 3 ninjas are S tier units, maybe A tier for Kagero since she needs a marriage seal to get vantage astra (but her best partner, short and long term, is Hinata, samurai gives 3 spd, pushing her to 17 base, MoA gives 2 str/spd/def which largely fixes her issues, with a tonic def she gets to 13 def and with a dragonshield 15, promo 16...wait, Ryôma has 15 base def at level 4 SM! Incredible! Yep, Kagero isn't the glass canon she's promoted to be due to stats stacking, and with an instant promo she has amazing bases except for HP, but with a tonic HP she's a mini-Ryôma, with 14 str gain and shurikenfaire in her 19 remaining level ups, she more than makes up for early promo with a whooping 31+5 str=overcapped berserker tier strength, with 13 spd by level up she reaches 30, with 5 def she reaches 21, with 6 HP by level up she reaches 29, 34 with a tonic, 39 with a seraph robe). Yep, a 10/20 Kagero has amazing offensive stats that few BR units can hope to reach, most of which don't have 1-2 range anyway, and that's without using any other permanent stat booster than a single seraph robe and missing on 10 level ups (that would push her HP to 33-38-43 depending on tonics and seraph robe usage, her speed would cap, her def would reach 24), but since you have more chance of ending before getting most of your units to 20/15, you don't even lose that much in stats by promoting early and getting promo bonuses and late game skills earlier. With a tonic def and MoA Hinata pair up she has 25 def without support bonuses. Lv 20 Ryoma has 44 HP and 20 def (21-1). If Ryôma is OP, so is Kagero. Saizo is legit bulkier than them (10/20 Saizo has 23 def, +2 HP than Kagero, 25+5 str and 25 spd before stat bonuses, Hana gives 6 or 7 spd and 2 str as a SM). Kaze is way weaker but has slightly more HP (10/20 has 35/40/45 HP as a MN, 18 str+5 which actually sucks so you might want to use his availability to give him 5 more level ups to reach 20-21+5 str and 37/42/47 HP, he doubles every enemy in existence and...a whooping 12 def, 13 with 5 more level ups...what a loser...) okay, Kaze sucks past midgame and is better dropped for the other 2, I admit. I don't like him anyway, Kagero does everything he does better with the right resources and doesn't get power crept in endgame.

Bold: Wow, a total 180 from your earlier "4 Ryomas" comment. Can't say I didn't see that coming. 

So it's not enough that I waste some of my limited unit slots on inferior units for them to be pair up bots for their sake, I also have to give them a lot of very valuable resources for them to be anywhere near as good as you claim? Are you joking? Anyway, Vantage doesn't help much unless you happen to kill your attacker before they attack you. Also, I disagree on promoting early being a good move. 

On Jill in RD: I don't really know (I also hold a rather big grudge against her for the many times I tried to work with her but she never panned out).

 

Edited July 1, 2023 by Shadow Mir