Cysx

Hmmmm kay, let me try to format this as simple as I can. Note that I'm just rating the change in opinion itself. Winners: Edelgard. Pre-release material left me a bit underwhelmed. In the end I really like what they did with her... but also I don't, on Crimson Flower. Still a win overall. Hubert. Expected a bit of a walking trope, his post-mortem letter basically single-handedly salvaged his character for me. Still a bit repetitive. Sylvain. His family drama was really interesting. I had a good impression but he went beyond. Lorenz. Was expecting him to be entertaining, turns out I adore the guy. Hanneman. Better than expected! His past and perspective are welcomed, even though he's a bit repetitive otherwise. Big winners: Dedue. What can I say, bros are no stranger to Fire Emblem, but this guy... he's almost Finn tier. Took me by surprise. Rhea. Expected them to miss the mark on this one, and they didn't, she's truly interesting and layered. Seteth. Judging from popularity polls I'm not alone here. They did nothing to make him look interesting pre-release. In the end he's important, complex, and has some of the best supports in the game, both for him and the characters he's being associated with. Losers: Petra. Black Eagles students suffer a lot from how the branching path deals with their character imo. She in particular is here because I had high expectations, and in the end she's largely just serviceable. Dimitri. Yup. Basically his path evoked feelings of "I guess I'm too jaded a person to be emotionally invested right now...?" He's still okay though. I do still like him. Mercedes. High expectations, but I just don't feel like there's that much to her in the end. I know it's partially her character but, I don't like how... emotionally monotone she is. Hard losers: Caspar. The kind of characters where you tell yourself "nobody will like them, but I will" Turns out... I really kinda don't, which is a bummer. Ingrid. I... I mean she's a nice girl but... why did they let her fight Faerghus? Why is she so static a character? Others have problems similar to hers, but she in particular disappointed me perhaps the worst. Catherine. So I didn't actually have high expectations here or anything, but... I mean I haven't seen many of her supports so this one is potentially unfair. From what I do have seen however she's one of the very few I actually dislike a little, and she just has less of a place in the plot than it feels like she should. Something happened but I'd ultimately rate them the same: Lysithea. What can I say? Her overwhelming popularity got to me, it really did. Especially because it felt very much unwarranted, from the start. Yet, I greatly enjoy using her as an unit, as she's very flexible. Her backstory is also pretty good and I have nothing against her character. So I pointlessly fought against the wave many times(only for FE youtubers to comparatively effortlessly fix the problem, as usual), but... I still like Lysithea, ironically. Jeralt. Expected a badass for lack of a better word, which he really isn't. But he's a genuinely caring dad, which I didn't see coming, so I still like the guy. Also while he's the worst part of Leonie, she's actually a pretty good part of him, if that makes sense. Cyril. He could be up there in big winners because I was blindsided by aspects of his personality, but, you guessed it, Rhea Rhea Rhea Rhea Rhea. He has great supports, but is arguably among the worst outside of them. So I'm still kinda neutral on the little dude. Leonie. I expected to adore Leonie. I do adore Leonie. She's better than I expected, some of her exchanges with Byleth just work on every level for me. But Jeralt Jeralt Jeralt Jeralt Jeralt. ... so overall I adore Leonie, but she's still a missed opportunity somehow. It's weird.

Broken ones notwithstanding, I really like the flexibility that they give the player. But really, in general limited uses aoe/buffs are a pretty cool idea for FE, be it from battalions or something else. I did welcome that shakeup of the formula in any case, it made 3H's gameplay feel very fresh. If you mean Charm, it doesn't affect defense and barely does attack.

I just recalled, there are griffons here and there in this game's imagery, and as such, myself and a bunch of others were pretty positive griffon rider was making a comeback. Which reminds me that some around here really wanted them, so... yeah, apologies for the false hopes.

I said the sauna was basically going to be post-release fanservice because they just couldn't help themselves. That was incorrect! I also thought map and dialogue locations, as well as other details such as the weird homes in the background in the lava chapters, or the house that healing tiles are stuck to on a bunch of maps... all of those would be way more meaningful than they ended up being. Lesson learned, don't read too much into that stuff! Oh, and most of us assumed Byleth's... "talents" would come directly from one of their parents(and I was one of the few Jeralt-strongest-knight-ever/looks-remarkably-like-Nemesis supporters, which makes me even more wrong). ... also, not a jab against the guy but, just watch any of the Mangs' pre-release videos. He got very prediction-happy, and it's almost uncanny how much he got wrong.

Y... yes. I'm willing to say TC knew that much though?

Yup. Brought her up because they're the same effect.

Not to my knowledge. For what it's worth, I'd never have said Annette's was 10% either until I actually tested it. If you really want to make sure, whenever a magic tournament comes up you can take advantage of that, since tournaments allow characters to attack a lot in a relatively small amount of time. A set of 100 should give you a decent idea, and that shouldn't take more than 20 minutes.

Did you take advantage of a dancing battalion? I've only roughly theorycrafted it, to be honest(and done it on hard, but that's pretty different obviously). I am aware of the stats though.

Well, here's the thing, you'd think a 60% crit rate is unreliable, but when applied twice it becomes a 84% chance to get at least one crit, and thrice is ~93%. Crits are strong enough in FE that even getting one makes a massive difference. I get the feeling you're going to tell me that's not reliable enough, and to that I'll say, it's plenty for me! Also note than WM may only hit twice, but they get +10 crit than FIF users, so it evens out the odds. Now admittedly it takes a bit of effort to get to 60% displayed crit with FiF, but it's doable. The reason I brought up monsters is because Assassins and SMs are comparably something more builds can reasonably ORKO(including gauntlet users). It's not necessarily about monsters being dangerous either(although they can definitely be very problematic if you have many other things to deal with, play maddening, etc), the goal is clearing them faster. As for endgame bosses, I'm unsure how easy it is to take down the final boss of SS in particular in one turn without gauntlet users(again, all is possible with nigh infinite stat boosters, though), and they're really helpful for the AM one as well. I hear both are pretty tough maddening chapters when cleared "normally". We've been over this already... And yes, gauntlets do have shortcomings, it's a fair thing to say. The argument still stands, though; if you put Caspar on a Wyvern on madd, he'll still be pretty awful, many have tried. Grappler on the other hand, salvages him, proving that it's an effective class. Doesn't mean you have to use Caspar, it's an example(although if you're going SS, he's one of your key units in ch 13. So it's a pain, but it's not pointless at least). And I did drop Raphael on my VW run so I can't really defend him. Competent male units with a gauntlet proficiency are Felix, M!Byleth, and Alois. If you're BL, there's Dedue. If you have the dlc, there's Balthus. If you absolutely want more, well, Caspar and Raphael can generally work as late recruits(no blow, but better base strength). Is that less than other weapon types? Yes, yes it is. But you do have options still, and either Grappler with FIF or WM tend to be the best builds of most of these characters(Felix being very debatable). ... About Alois, he joins with Grappler all but unlocked and a solid strength base. He's no Seteth but he ORKOs things with even less investment. He's not a bad unit.

I think there's more in a single version of Fates really. Counting stuff like a certain map on fire/not on fire and forest maps w/without fog of war as one each time, I believe 3H has 34 unique maps with paralogues included. Either of Br or Cq have 28 chapters and 13 children paralogues(shared + exclusives) + Mozu's. 3H's map models are more elaborate though, and bigger as well since every tile is much wider. Logically every single map took more work, so it might not be the most fair of comparisons.

But, the DLC also allows you to sell items for renown now, so it's much easier to acquire on paper.

They did say they were done in their recent interview. Yokota: Even after the game released, we continued developing new content for it. Finally, after the year came to an end, I realized “it’s over, isn’t it?” During that time, though, it really made me happy seeing how all the players seemed to be enjoying the game. Soon the side story will finally be released too, so I’m hoping fans will enjoy that as well.

Well not really. There's no brave weapon/art with crit outside of gauntlets - edit: What is Hunter's volley - for starters(and any of them would take a 3 mt brave with 30 crit, simply because that's genuinely valuable), and while monsters are generally slower, it takes a lot of speed to quad with a brave. Varies from one monster type to the other. As for endgame bosses that's generally out of reach. It's true that Raphael and Caspar are among the worst characters in the game(then again Felix and Byleth are among the best, it's not very different from bow strength distribution in that sense), but if anything, the fact that even they become useful almost magically the moment they get access to Grappler is a pretty good indication that gauntlets are a very exploitable weapon type. As for females not really being able to use them and War Monk being a bit of an awkward class(Constance, and maybe Catherine aside), that is unfortunate, but kind of unrelated...? There's still quite a few candidates in any case; you can't make an entire team out of them, but you're unlikely to run short on a regular playthrough.

Are you currently praising a weapon category that has low accuracy and high weight over a weapon type that doesn't? Yes I am absolutely being cheeky. With Death blow and faire, Gauntlets kill stuff dead, low mt or not, and while they're much less effective before lv20, other brave weapons/arts don't really exist either(outside of the Thunderbrand) so they still have a purpose for high strength units. Braves are awesome too, mind you, although limited in the sense that they're difficult to forge/repair. Also the Killer gauntlets(+) is a pretty dumb item that makes Grapplers/Warmasters just eat through monsters/endgame bosses lifebars in a way pretty much nothing else in this game can(at least not without the weed). Honestly, if fliers could use them mounted, or worse yet, if we had a gauntletfaire flier class, I can guarantee you that every cynic out there would do a 180 on them. It's not a shortcoming that they can't, if anything it's pretty decent balancing.

They do, though! As for Combat arts it just depends on the weapon type, if it's magical, magic accuracy, if it's physical, physical accuracy, both targeting magic avoid. From what I can tell anyway.

A'ight, I can give you that it varies depending on build. But, proficiency 4 is + 8 accuracy vs +16, and proficiency 3 is +7 vs +13. I think it's fair to say C+ is achieved by the time magic weapons become relevant, and B+ is generally something that you want to reach before level 20 for certification purposes, if nothing else. So realistically at worst, the Levin Sword has +4 accuracy for a while as a result, and then +2. Weight used to matter a lot on hard(or so we thought) because being weighed down would make the difference between doubling or not in many situations. On maddening, armors aside, enemies are now too fast for mages(as well as most units) to get ahead of the curve, whether they're weighed down or not. Even getting doubled matters less for tanks because of guard adjutants, and mages tend to not want to get hit at all in the first place; weight doesn't affect magic avoid, meaning what's left is regular avoid, which can be important, but again, not so much for mages. In general you'd think most units are garbage if they can't double, but that's not really how it works in 3H in the end, since we've been given some new, very effective tools to work with.

Regularly used, magic weapons are largely about chip anyway, since its very difficult to double with them, meaning their weight is largely moot. Magic combat arts(or combat arts made magic through magic weapons, but the former is generally stronger) are where it's at since they can realistically OHKO throughout most of the game, and it's also where swords falter because they lack practical ways to exploit them as said above. This is not the case for axes, as they get very high mt weapons and Axefaire is on WL(we even get a magic flying battalion now, though it'll probably be in high demand), and they at least cover 2/3rds of the triangle fine. As I've already told you, due to the Axe proficiency giving +10 hit compared to the sword one at lv5, the Levin Sword and the Bolt Axe end up with the same accuracy past the midgame or so.

Swords are honestly inferior magic weapons. The only exception is a really fast unit with tons of magic doubling(and thus ORKOing) with the Levin Sword, and without tons of weeds, that's basically just Assassin/Swordmaster Lysithea(w/Darting & Fiendish blow). The Blutgang is only good for rigging crits or killing cavalry, otherwise it just deals chip, and one range chip on maddening is not the slightest bit desirable, especially for frail magic users. They're in an awkward place in the triangle because lance units have a breaker against them and they lack an answer to enemy sword users having higher magic avoid; and unlike axes, the selection of swordfaire classes is a limitation in and of itself. Then unlike lances, they get no high might relics to OHKO bosses/beast lifebars with.

... but considering most classes don't have access to magic at all, I don't think that's actually a problem; with that being said, that's not really what my criticism was. To be honest, support being a resource that recharges every map is a considerably more player friendly system than what we usually get and that's reason enough to rebalance... yet, a few key spells are almost better than they've ever been. Thus, either you have one or several of these few and you're amazing, or you don't and you're comparatively next to worthless(at least when it comes to support). And there's no real excuse for Faith combat magic largely being a waste of space.

That's because you care about accuracy more than most people, you've made that pretty clear. With that being said, I didn't have the Thunderbrand in mind, and it's pretty great, so I retract that statement.

Training, Iron, Steel, Silver: There's some redundancy between Iron and Training as they tend to serve the same purpose, but otherwise giving steel higher durability in a game with weapon weight and combat artswas a good call. I'd say they did a pretty good job here, none of these feel like a waste of space. Mace, Horseslayer, etc: Hurt by the existence of specialized weapon arts, clearly, but there's also the fact that the Spear of Assal and Axe of Ukonvasomething exist, both of which can be repaired and are laughably strong (57 might vs armors, sure why not). I do like Maces being actually practical to use in regular combat, but overall, meh. ... however, if this encompasses Blessed weapons, well insta breaking monster armor remains useful throughout the game, and the healing is nice too. Those are fine. Magic Weapons: They're definitely worth using, especially once forged. The ability to turn physical combat arts into magic through these, and the fact that they ignore terrain avoid bonuses are pretty nice too. But as always, weapon users generally have poor magic. At least it gives magic users something to do in classes where they don't get access to their spells. I'd say these are right where they should be, to be honest. Relics: Apart from the fact that swords got the short end on those, they're cool. Especially appreciate the timeskip auto-repair, makes them in particular much more fun to use. Magic: Not balanced, but then again, spell lists are personal leading to characters with middling stats getting better spells(Dorothea), so on paper it's fine. But yeah some spells are clearly better than others and there's quite a bit of repetition, kinda wish they brought back the Tellius effectiveness(wind/ice beats fliers, thunder beats dragons, fire beats horses) to help with that. That was for Reason though, Faith is much more problematic. Offensive spells being x2 against monsters globally with Seraphim alone at x3 would probably have been a pretty good idea, since as they are right now, they all tend to be pretty useless. Support wise, it's even worse, with Warp predictably being incredibly valuable in a context where its uses are recharged every new map, and there being no competition in terms of healing between those who have Physic/Fortify, and those who don't. This would be the one aspect of "weapons" where I'd say they really messed up, too many Faith spells suck while a few are amazing, leading to very lopsided spell lists as said above.

Yeah, that wasn't me disagreeing with the conclusion itself. Could definitely have made that clear.

When you and I debated a few months ago, you kept bringing up that map specifically(but on hard), and basing your analysis of units on it. I just found it funny that you'd do it again after all this time.

Oh come on. I don't think it's "going too far" in the sense that this isn't that complicated a build to achieve. That being said, the first sentence of that quote is quite the exaggeration for sure. I agree with you that there are several tiers of ORKO in this game however, as a result of beasts and the aforementioned bosses existing. Not quite sure Aura Knuckles!Constance belongs at the top. She has limited crit potential and will always only hit twice; granted a brave magic attack is extremely good in the first place, but still.

Unlike Aegis, I think Pavise can be really valuable in this game, but, unless you aux grind, as others have said you need to heavily invest into a class that will ultimately not have as much use for it. ...then again, I don't use FK so maybe I have a wrong impression of how much additional physical protection they want on maddening.