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Cysx

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Posts posted by Cysx

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

    On 4/4/2020 at 11:43 PM, Yexin said:

    this is a completely different situation for me: a brand new mechanic, whose damage, accuracy, avoidance and defense are ALL determined by ONE single stat

    If you mean Charm, it doesn't affect defense and barely does attack.

  3. 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).

    Spoiler

    I thought Rhea and Seiros were the same person. Then I changed my mind.

    ... 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 30 minutes ago, Wishblade said:

    I don’t think 1-turning the Immaculate in SS is practical, especially in maddening. It’s not particularly useful either. You see, I’m an advocate of nuke build myself, and it took me 3 turns to finish her off with 2 gauntlet users (Constance and Balthus).

    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.

     

  6. 54 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

    I don't see why you're going on and on about crit since unless you build around getting really high crit scores, you'll have to plan around them not getting invoked anyway. Also, monsters are generally not the highest priority on my kill list; like I said, those would be assassins and swordmasters, which can double pretty much everything. I don't see most monsters as threatening enough to warrant something specialized in killing them when they're easy pickings for a turn once all their armor is gone, which is usually all I need to put them down. Well, that, and most of them aren't that threatening anyway

    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".

    1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

    if you're going to be one-dimensional, it'd help if, you know, the one thing you're good for isn't replicatable by other means that have other uses in addition to your one good point (in this case, brave weapons). . .

    We've been over this already... And yes, gauntlets do have shortcomings, it's a fair thing to say.

    1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

    At the same time, I'd argue them needing to reach an advanced class to stop sucking only showcases just how bad they are, with Caspar in particular often considered as arguably the worst student in the game. I mean, would YOU be willing to drag Raphael along for that long despite the fact that he's pretty much going to be the worst unit on your team??? What's more, I'd correct your point about there being quite a few candidates for gauntlets to pretty much require favoring male units, thanks to nearly all the gauntlet specialist classes being male only.

    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.

  7. 12 hours ago, UNLEASH IT said:

    3H reused way too much stuff between routes, which are already short to begin with. I genuinely believe that there are more unique maps between BR and CQ alone than all the routes in 3H. Which is important because 3H cost $60.00, which is same price you would've paid for BR and CQ combined.

    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.

  8. 1 hour ago, Ari Chan said:

    You also only get 4 free Abyssian Exam Passes (DLC class promotional item) from recruiting all Ashen Wolves Units (each come with 1 in their inventory), if you want more you have to spend 500 Renown to unlock the shop and then 750 Renown for each Pass.

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

  9. 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.

  10. 54 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

    So do braves.

    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.

  11. 3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

    I disagree with the part in parentheses - brave weapons beat the shit out of gauntlets and take their lunch money. I mean, sure, gauntlets get more benefit out of Death Blow and such, but so do braves, except they aren't saddled with their strongest weapons having less might than an iron sword without DLC. Gauntlets' already shitty case isn't helped by the fact that they cannot be used by mounted units, and some of the better classes in this game are mounted.

    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.

  12. 16 minutes ago, LegendOfLoog said:

    Bolt Axe doesn’t use the Magic Hit formula. Both magic weapons and magic Combat Arts use the Physical Hit formula and Magic Avoid. 

    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.

  13. 2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

    Which completely ignores that you won't be waltzing around with level 5 prowess skills for most of the game.

    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.

    2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

    weight is a thing

    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.

  14. 15 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

    I'd say they're still better than axes magic weapon wise, considering that the only magic axes murder your AS and are deplorably inaccurate to boot - a losing combination when missed attacks cost you durability. This isn't helped by the only feasible users of them being weak in bows.

    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.

  15. 19 hours ago, Etheus said:

    I'd add Marianne as one of the best magic weapon users. She has a prf magic sword. Her offensive spell list is pretty mediocre and Levin Swords give her 1-3 range. She also has a great Mag growth that far outshines her Str growth.

     

    Plus, she's one of the best dancers in the game.

    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.

  16. 5 hours ago, NolanBaumgartner said:

    Balancing Faith spells is a crapshow because anyone can have access to heals so long as they have enough skill, meaning it's easy to litter a roster with healers - and by extension, white magic. Whereas black magic is generally useless without sufficient Mag, even moderate amount of healing can make a big difference if enough people in your roster have it. And because of the incentive to have as many people in your roster with access to heals, white magic has to be tuned down.

    ... 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.

  17. 29 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

    What makes you say that? Because about the few relics I found worthwhile are swords.

    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.

  18. 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.
     

  19. 1 hour ago, LegendOfLoog said:

    Old habits die hard. Though on a more serious note, I could have used any of the late game Maddening maps to make the same point (that Constance doesn’t need +60 Hit for Bolting to hit things). The list of BE Maddening mode stats here seems to be mostly consistent with that. I just lead with the BL map because it’s the one I have on hand. 

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

  20. 14 minutes ago, LegendOfLoog said:

    I brought up Maddening because the original post was

    So I used the latest Maddening game map with the most stat inflation to make a point that Uncanny Blow is enough to fix Constance’s Hit rate issues with Bolting. What did I say to elicit a “Come on” reaction? 

    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.

  21. 16 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

    Just using final map stats from BL Maddening

    Oh come on.

    10 hours ago, Wishblade said:

    A glass cannon is useless if it can’t delete everyone.

    I’m probably going too far for a glass cannon build. Feel free to judge me.

    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.

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