Whisky

Yeah, the Chapter 6 ambush spawns are stupid. If you know about them, you shouldn’t even open those doors, but the ones you can’t avoid are the ones by the boss, and since they appear on 3 different turns with huge gaps in between them, it’s very difficult to approach the boss without getting ambushed. It’s dumb. The ones from the bottom of this map are fine though. They’re only triggered when all of your units move past a certain point, so the game doesn’t spawn them until it knows that your units aren’t in range. Unlike 3H spawning ambush enemies with Pass on top of your starting point on turn 2 -_-

In general, I’m really not a fan of ambush spawns. I agree that FE games really shouldn’t hide informaron from the player (I hate FOW in FE. It can work in some games, but FE is not the right game to have FOW in). That being said, I don’t think player phase spawns are a complete improvement from ambush spawns. Enemy reinforcements are easy to kill before they even get a chance to move if they appear on player phase so there’s almost not much point in even having them at that point. Between the two, I would pick player phase spawns for sure, but I think ambush spawns could work if the game told you when and where ambush spawns were about to appear from. There are a lot of ambush spawns that are perfectly fair in FE6, ones that you are given warning about or that appear far enough away to not kill anyone. It depends on how the specific spawns are designed.

Ambush spawns really need to be all or nothing. In other words, either in both modes or not in the game at all. Being in HM only would actually make them more unfair because they would come as a surprise to people that played NM.

I don’t think it is, but you can buy Fires in Ch 7. I said before that Henning can be pretty brutal of you don’t prepare for him but there are a few ways to beat him if you know how, so you aren’t restricted to only one option (Mekkah only mentioned one way to fight him).

Lugh is pretty good. He deals decent chip early on due to enemies having low Res. He has a good Spd growth and will start doubling slow enemies pretty quickly. He gains 4 Mag when he promotes and becomes pretty powerful. He also becomes an extra healer. I think he’s the best candidate for the first Guiding Ring. Lilina starts too under leveled with too low base stats to compete. Aside from being able to surpass Lugh’s Mag, her Skl, Spd, and durability will be significantly worse throughout the game. - Back on topic, the magic tactic can work against Henning. It might not be the most effective strat against him, but it can work. I’ve done it. We’re talking about how unfair this boss is and how many options there are for beating him, so it doesn’t matter if it’s not greatly effective, as long as it works. If you don’t have promoted Rutger or Dieck, I think promoted Lugh with his magic is the next best option. - Both of these two can easily reach higher level by this point. Lugh should still be more accurate. Lilina/Roy C Support only adds +5 Hit. Lugh’s 4 more Skl would add +8 Hit.

I’ve never had much issue with Murdock. He’s strong, but he can be killed pretty easily with an Armour Slayer. He doesn’t double most units. I don’t remember Crits being an issue. As long as you don’t fight him with someone with particularly low Luc, I don’t think he will have a Crit chance.

I think the video exaggerates him a bit, but Henning can still be pretty brutal. The video basically implied that you need promoted Rutger to fight him, and I’ve seen other people more or less claim the same, which is not true. I’m not sure if the video was trying to imply that you needed promoted Rutger or if it was just assuming you would have him, but either way, the video wasn’t thorough. The video claimed that Henning would have a low % chance of killing Rutger with a Crit. That’s true, but there are ways to reduce that chance. You get a Goddess Icon you could use on Rutger to reduce Henning’s Crit chance against him, possibly to 0. You also get an Angelic Robe that could potentially allow Rutger to survive a Crit from Henning. Maybe most people would prefer to use it on other units, but the option should be mentioned if it makes the “terrible boss” more manageable. Another option is promoted Dieck, which Mekkah did not mention at all. Promoted Dieck will not be as effective at killing Henning as quickly as Rutger, but he’ll get the job done eventually. Dieck has more Luc, HP, and Def, giving him a higher likelihood of having either enough bulk to survive a Crit from Henning, or enough Luc to reduce the Crit chance to 0, especially with the previously mentioned stats boosters. This can actually make him more reliable than Rutger. And others have already mentioned promoted Lugh being able to slowly whittle away at his HP from range until he dies, via Rescue/Dropping, another tactic that Mekkah did not mention. Now, the reason I say that Henning is still rather brutal, is because these options are rather limited, especially without foresight about the fight. What if you don’t want to promote Rutger or Dieck, or even Lugh? What if you want to promote Lott and Clarine? Promoting the ‘wrong’ unit can result in Henning being nearly unbeatable. Even Marcus and Zealot don’t do well against him so you’re in for a rough ride if you aren’t prepared for this boss.

That is legitimately hard to do. Like, are there any steps that can be assumed? Do you have to show literally every step, down to explaining how you adde 2 + 2 to get 4? Does showing all of the steps mean to give a math lesson of everything you used back to elementary?

Hahaha. I love this reply. I am also confused by what it was responding to. Binding Blade, a test of patience? Binding Blade plays so smoothly though. FE7 has Battle Before Dawn, Sands of Time, mass enemy spam in a lot of maps, and a lot more FOW maps too. I don’t understand the love for that game. I of course agree with you that Binding Blade is the best game. I don’t like the idea of Turn Wheel being in Binding Blade, but maybe if it’s optional. I’ve played an Ironman of Binding Blade fairly recently. I lost some really good units like Miledy and Lalum (which forced me to kill Percival), it was more challenging moving forward but I still beat the game (not the secret ending, but I beat Zephiel). The game is designed well for permadeath. You can lose units and continue on without them. If Divine Pulse was in the game, I probably wouldn’t have lost any units at all. It would become easy.

I’ve been staying quiet because I’m waiting for a reply form AnonymousSpeed myself (though we might need to create a new topic thread for that or take it to PMs), but this idea reminded me of an idea I thought of before. So, Roy doesn’t actually gain much from his promotion. The stat bonuses are fairly small, he doesn’t gain any new weapon type, no Crit bonus, no mount, he doesn’t even get a new sprite or attack animation. The Sword of Seals is what makes Roy good, not the promotion. If Roy didn’t promote at all, he probably wouldn’t be much worse. So as an idea to for an ability that Roy could gain on promotion, I thought of a SpellBlade type ability. Roy channels magic into his sword in order to attack at 1-2 range with any sword he wields.

Oh, that might be true. I don't know which route is more popular or why. For me personally, I have played A route more times than B route, but not for any particular reason, that's just how it ended up. I sometimes use an RNG from google to decide which route to go. I don't mind route B. The smaller corridors in Ch 10B compared to 11A once caused Tate's squad to get in my way when trying to recruit her so I had to kill her squad, thus missing out on the Elysian Whip. That could probably be avoided just by moving further south though, as long as you don't get over whelmed by the Cavalier reinforcements. Well it's relative. Some units join more under leveled than others. I think Wendy and Lilina join early enough that it doesn't matter as much, especially for Lilina. Wendy is so weak that she would be bad even if she joined in Ch1. I do think that Sophia, as well as Ewan, Amelia, and Marisa join a bit too late for my liking, but none of them are as extreme as Nino. There's like 3 or 4 battles left when Nino joins. That's not enough time left to enjoy a unit in my opinion, especially if they join weak. It wouldn't work exactly like Civ. The details would need to be worked out. How about just take Fire Emblem, but make the maps much larger, and allow the player to control green units with unique blue units as the squad leaders? Depending on how the maps are designed, this could potentially be interesting, and Armour Knights could be useful. The Guts Machine Gun isn't that useful anyway, especially with Agua style which has a very quick charge shot. If you know the code for Super Armour in mod tools, there probably isn't much point in Guts Style really. But you could want Super Armour while using the Mod Tools for an error code. Since Guts Style is Red, then I think that would only be useful for Shadow Style, the only other Red Style I can think of right now. I think Super Armour is one of the best things you can get from the Mod Tools. Reflect is great too if you don't have the program yet or for some reason can't equip the program at the time. Reflect comes with the glitch of Cust -2 which is pretty bad, but Reflect is so strong that it can actually be worth it sometimes. Reflect can be very effective against some enemies and bosses. If you practice the timing of it, Shield can be a great way to block attacks and restore HP if you're in Shield Style. Reflect is the same thing that also deals pretty good damage back to the enemy, and is an easy way to get Bug Frag from a lot of enemies. I'm not sure if you can get V4 Navi chips from the chip trader, but you can from the Bug Frag trader. True. I don't know why I forgot about the element+ chips while typing that. Atk+30 and Navi+40 are good for DarkMan and YamatoMan though, and a few others. It was funny when you could have 5 Full Custs and 5 Atk +30 in the second game. I love making OP folders in that game (and in 3 too actually). FolderBack, anyone? Another thing you can do with Team Style is having more Navi chips. Most don’t come in the same code but a few do. There’s ProtoMan and BowlMan or BubbleMan, DrillMan and DarkMan, or FlashMan and FlameMan. I find it hard to utilize due to the stricter timing, and the counter attack has a huge delay compared to Reflect that instantly damages the enemy in front of you. I guess it could be useful against attacks that pierce through guards. It also turns your charged attack into an Invis so you can avoid any attack by timing a charged Invis, and can do that indefinitely. The SetStages are the main point of it. I don't know how useful cracking panels actually is but it seems like an interesting Style to use in a multiplayer battle. Well using Percival and Wendy would make your team weaker than if you used Percival and a better unit. Playing quickly does have advantages in a lot of maps and using better units makes that easier to do. In Battle Network, you can create a variety of downright OP builds like Gator and BodyGuard in 2 or FolderBack and PlantMan in 3. You don't need to use OP builds to get S ranks though. You can still attain S ranks with comparatively weak builds. In fact, it can be fun to try to get S ranks with a weaker build, or just different builds. In regards to Styles, Cust or Shield Style are probably better than Guts, but it is certainly still possible to get S ranks with Guts Style too. I've played around with a lot of different builds in Battle Network. I'm still amazed at the amount of customization available in Battle Network. From your Style which is made up of a type and an element, your Navi Customizer including various useful program blocks and Mod Tools, and obviously how you build your Folder. I absolutely love the amount of variety available in these games. There are numerous ways to create over powered builds, or any other level of build which have varying effectiveness but also force you to actually form completely different strategies during battle and play very differently. It can be a lot of fun to use over powered builds, but if you don't want to make the game too easy on yourself, then you can use a weaker build. Either way allows for a ton of customization and variety, depending on your preferred play style. You don't always need to prioritize Busting Level. Sometimes, I try to delete the enemies as quickly as possible. Sometimes I try to get a Double or Triple delete even if I know it will take too long to be a good Busting Level. Sometimes I prioritize getting counters for Bug Frag. And sometimes I just feel like fighting the enemies in a particular way, such as killing all the enemies with Reflect or only using my buster, or purposely setting up for some cool combo. I have played through each game in the series limiting myself to only using A code Chips. I did it again for B, and then C. Personally, I find this to be a very interesting and fun way to play the game. I don't even do this as a challenge run but because it forces me to use different builds and strategies. There were some Battle Chips I didn't know how to utilize as well before playing this way. I recently figured out a new combo in 2; Zap Ring paralyzes the enemy long enough to hit them with a slower attack such as Quake or TreeBomb. Simple. It is paralysis after all. But did you know that TreeBomb stuns bosses for a few seconds? I didn't (AirShot does too by the way). So the full combo I discovered was Zap Ring -> Tree Bomb -> something else, in my case Cutman or Life Sword. And speaking of AirShot, you can use an AirShot or a GutsPunch to push a RockCube into an enemy for 200 damage. The thing about Styles is that you get the style that reflects your actual play Style. A lot of novice players don't realize how good it is to make a uni-code Folder, instead just putting their strongest chips in. From my understanding, a lot of people get Guts Style as their first Style (both of us did apparently). For a less skilled player that doesn't understand how to make a great Folder, Guts Style may benefit them more. The game gives you the Style that reflects how you actually play, and I think that's really cool. Someone that likes to use a lot of Navi chips will appreciate being able to put more of them into their Folder. Someone that likes to play Defensively with Barriers and Guards automatically gets a Barrier and a Shield to use. Players that create a strong uni-code Folder and like to utilize combos get Cust Style. Different builds allow for such different strategies and play styles that I really can't mind if they're not perfectly balanced, as long as they allow for a different way to approach battles. But you may have been talking more about the later games with the Souls? You mentioned Colonel not being good enough, and you're probably right about that. Some of the Souls in 5 are good, at least situationally, which is all they really need to be. You can choose to not activate them if they aren't good for that situation, but there are situations when they are worth you using, at least for a lot of them. Same for Crosses. Maybe I need to get better at getting counters to see that they aren't balanced, but Crosses are powerful enough to S rank some bosses and enemies without any battle chips anyway so I think they're fine. I really do think the Souls in 4 should have much stronger charge attacks though. If you have a good folder, you won't have many chips of a particular type to be able to utilize the Soul's chip bonuses much anyway, and you have to sacrifice one of your limited chips just to activate the Soul in the first place. I could be wrong, but Folder building options seem much more limited in 4 than in other games. But yeah, I could agree that Full Sync is too powerful and shouldn't have been added. It's also annoying when stunning an enemy with a counter can actually mess up your timing. I didn't even realize it did that lol. Yeah, that is interesting. It makes it even more situational though because you might not have Grass panels to use, so even more reason to argue that the Souls are unbalanced. You can attack more quickly though since you don't need to charge up, as long as you have Grass Panels. Too bad SetGrass isn't in this game. Don't forgot that it also can double the damage of a non-elemental attack once, and once you use one Wind chip, you keep the double damage with each Wind chip you use until you use a non-element attack. But yes, the selection of Wind chips is limited. I managed to get pretty good at the timing of VarSword's Sonic Boom but not anything else. There's a Double Life Sword effect from Var Sword? I didn't know that. I don't think I've ever used NeoVari but combining that with ProtoSoul sounds really good. Again, maybe I need to get better at getting counters for Full Sync. I can definitely see how good it could be. Fortunately, there isn't a time incentive on the strongest bosses like Bass and Bass Omega. You don't need to worry about S ranking them, just winning the fight. I wonder if Meddy Soul could actually be good for the WhiteCapsules? Are there? I didn't know of any other than Star Force. Do you know the names of some of them so I could check them out? It seems like discussions about bad units usually end at "X unit is bad, worse than most units, and not worth using". But why does it end there? We all know people will use bad units anyway even knowing that they're bad, so why not discuss ways to get the most out of them? Even bad units still have certain strengths and weaknesses.

[Phasing], as in, can move through solid matter. [Air Bending]

They are bad on lower difficulties too. They perform better in combat but so do other units, and if every unit is good in combat then mounts, utility, and 1-2 range become the primary factors in determining overall unit quality. Being Sword locked is really bad in this game. Actually, now that I think about it more, +5 damage seems like a lot but I don’t think it would make Lyn too good. She would still have a lot of weaknesses so it probably would be fine. Oh wait, you said 10? Yeah, that’s a lot.

+10 and +5 damage seems huge. Maybe tone down the numbers a bit? Lyn relies on terrain like Forests since she really does like getting hit. So, I actually like the idea. It makes enough sense with her background and it makes you think about whether you need the defensive bonuses from the forest or the damage boost from her ability more. Gives you something extra to consider and strategize around.

I was having trouble figuring out how that would work narratively. It wouldn't make sense for her to start shooting out lightning bolts like Retribution in 3H. But I think I figured it out. She can create shockwaves when she swings her sword. So basically every Sword becomes a Wind Sword in Lyn's hands. That would definitely make her a lot better. It would make Bows even less useful for her than they already are if they game plays similarly to how it is now. Bows need to be buffed in some way. 3 Range or something.

That sounds super interesting. Probably not very practical in most cases but definitely fun. Alternatively, I always imagined Karel as a masochist. So a Vengeance or Persecution Complex type ability. For Raven, something to make him less susceptible to getting RNG screwed. Personal Abilities could be a great way to balance weak units, such as the Nino Paragon idea. Wallace - Juggernaut - Breaks enemies like twigs beneath his boots. Lyn - Sacaen Pride - I don't know what it would do but the name seems appropriate.

I'n not sure why that would make a difference? Fair enough. For me, I can enjoy using weak units and watching them grow stronger throughout the whole game, but if a unit joins later in the game under leveled, I don't care about them as much, unless they have something unique about them. Some units can be good despite being under leveled like Zeiss. I'm talking about units that join late and weak like Nino. I prefer Wendy and Sophia over Nino because Nino just isn't around for long enough in my opinion. Oh, I've never seen that term. I like Civilization. Some sort of cross between Fire Emblem and Civilization would be cool. I've 100%ed 1, 2 and 3 (with cheat codes only for the things that I needed to trade for because I had no one to trade with), and 6. I've like, 99%ed 5. 4 is the only one I haven't completed as much of. I have fought Bass though (only the first version). Yes, because of Super Armour. I'm more thinking of 2. I guess it doesn't matter as much in 3 since you don't actually need to be in Guts style to have Super Armour. I love Shield, but I like using mostly every style. I think they're balanced pretty well in 2. 3 is more complicated. It's complicated, but it depends on what type of build you're going for. What kind of play style you prefer or want to try out. etc. There's the question of what program blocks you want to prioritize unlocking, and then which style itself is actually better to be in. I think Shield Style is good. Reflect is really powerful. In Shield Style, you can block attacks, damage enemies with Reflect, and heal yourself, and you have an instant Barrier which not only blocks an attack but also prevents things like Flash Bulbs from paralyzing you or wind effects from pushing you around. You can get Reflect without Shield Style from Mod codes (which I use very often), but it comes with the bug of Cust -2, so actually unlocking the Reflect program block might allow for better builds. Custom Style is of course really good. I don't need to go into that one. Guts Style is probably worse in 3 than it is in 2. It doesn't give you Super Armour automatically in this one right? So you actually have to equip the program block which might not be worth it most of the time, especially when you can get Super Armour from Mod Codes if you need it. Depending on your play style, you might like Break Charge, but you can also get an Orange version of that without Guts Style, and it's highly situational. Guts Style is probably one of the worst ones in 3, but it can be fun to play around with. Team Style is needed for getting the V4 Navi chips. Well, not needed, but it makes it easier. Other than that, Mega Folder+. How useful is that? It can be good for specific builds though I think Cust is generally better. In 2, you can have 5 V3 Navi Chips and then with Team Style you can have an additional (is it 2 or 3 in that game?) V2 Navi chips which can be powerful for certain Navi builds, though again, Cust may generally be better. The enemies will probably be dead long before you've gone through all of your Navi chips. Just the fact that Team Style lets you break the normal Folder building rules is interesting. In 3, you can only have 1 of each Navi chip anyway, which is only 4 of a particular Navi chip. You obviously want FullCust, so if you want Atk +30 or Navi +40, then you need Team Style. Those atk boosters go very well with some of the best Navi chips including PlantMan. 3 also has a few new Styles. Shadow Style can use an infinite number of Invis and gives you the FloatShoes program. Ground is the Style I've used the least of but it seems interesting to play around with for various Stage controlling options. This one seems more interesting in NetBattles, which I haven't done much of. I've mostly played the single player. Bug Style has some very powerful program blocks and gives you random glitches every battle, some of which are very powerful. It's funny actually that you value balance more in Battle Network, whereas I value it more in Fire Emblem. Maybe you've played more multiplayer battles than me? I don't think balance matters much for the single player. Overpowered builds can be a lot of fun, but you can also choose to not use them if you don't want to. Weaker builds are different enough that they can be fun to use, and weaker builds are good enough for the single player for the most part anyway, with very few exceptions if any. To clarify, as I mentioned before, I don't think that all units should be equal in FE, just that they should have some advantage. There are alot of weak units in almost every FE game that are just completely outclassed by most other units. Yeah, I can definitely see an argument for these two being the best. Number has diminishing returns depending on how many Custom program blocks you already have equipped, whereas Search is good no matter what, and has a better charge attack. Other Souls can be situationally good though, and their better charge attacks can be fun to use. You don't need to try to S rank enemies every battle. But yes, having a strong Folder does make charge attacks mostly pointless. I haven't used Tomahawk much in 5. I've used it more in 6. Gyro is fun. AirWheels, I forgot what they're called. AirSpins? They can be pretty good but you're right that there aren't very many wind chips. Gyro also gives you AirShoes and FloatShoes so that can be very useful in some cases. ProtoSoul can instantly clear out a lot of battles with a charged MoonBlade3 and charged VarSwords and MoonBlades deal a lot of damage. I agree, ToadCross would be interesting. KnightSoul is great. DrillArms can deal a lot of damage, and of course AirHockey is famous. As good as Full Sync is, you don't need to worry about getting counters with every attack if you can charge up for double damage anyway. I think Knight Soul also has Super Armour. In 4, and to an extent 5, I agree. Souls have a lot of limitations and restrictions including removing the ability to use Full Sync, and Souls have terrible charge attacks in 4. In 6, you can choose to activate Crosses whenever you want, so you will only use them when they are useful. Crosses are situationally useful even with Full Sync being a thing, and aside from Full Sync, they're basically just a huge improvement. For Agua and Tomahawk, there are times when you don't have Full Sync active and can easily clear out all viruses with a charged CornShot or BubbleStar or something. Again, you can also double the damage of each of your attacks without needing to counter with every attack. Agua can also heal you, and Tomahawk gives you immunity to Paralysis. Crosses also have very strong charge attacks. The charge attacks on their own are often strong enough to easily clear out viruses and bosses without even using battle chips. I should probably try them out actually. I love Battle Network and Star Force seems like the most similar thing. True. There's nothing wrong with liking a bad unit. You should argue based on what advantages units actually have and what things they can do instead of just denying when another unit clearly has them beat in certain areas. I find it interesting to discuss how to get the most out of bad units.

True. Echidna is pretty cool. True. The majority of Villagers in Echoes join early though, with only one exception. I haven’t gotten around to playing FE4-5 yet. I plan to soon. What is 4x? Which is why it’s nice to have a huge variety of games for people to choose from. Dude, seriously! It’s my favorite game franchise too! I replay through the series every few years or so. There really is a lot to think about with the styles. Custom might be the best but personally my favorite is Shield. Guts is great too because it makes it easier to get S ranks. I think Team is the worst but it’s still fun to create Navi heavy folders with it, some of which can be very potent. Oh I see, yeah you might be right about that. I think there are at least a few Souls and Crosses that are competitive with each other. Some of them have clear situations that they are useful for. In my most recent playthrough of 5, I got a lot of use out of Napalm, Magnet, and Proto Souls. I’m not a fan of Meddy Soul. I do like Gyro and Search Souls. I think Knight, Toad, and Tomahawk are all pretty good. Number is inherently useful if you have nothing better to do for a turn or two. For the Crosses in 6, most are very good depending on the situation with clear strengths and advantages, but a few of them seem pointless/redundant. The Souls seem rather disappointing in 4. Often times, I feel like it’s more effective to not use any. They have a ton of limitations and restrictions and they’re still weaker than the normal buster, and can’t activate Full Sync. I have yet to play any Star Force games? Are they any good compared to Battle Network. Yeah, nothing wrong with being passionate as long as you don’t ignore facts.

people might like her because she would be the only female Warrior in the series, maybe. Oh, if that’s what they were going for then I think she needs to start with high base Spd or much higher growth. But as you’ve been saying, people still like to use her as she is anyway, and maybe it is okay to have really bad units, so this is a moot point. She does become the fastest if trained to high level, you’re right about that. I guess. Personally, I think them joining late rushes the growth process which makes it less satisfying, but that’s subjective. If people like how they are then that’s fine. The changing maps idea is something I’ve played around with in my mind a lot. FE could be very different.. but that’s not how it is. I’ve imagined a much larger scale game where you control an entire army at a time across a very large map. I wonder if a game like that exists? The closest thing to it I can think of would be Ogre Battle I think. I see. So this is more of a conclusion rather than a separate point? Yeah, you can find fun from imbalance like you pointed out earlier. Are you talking about Megaman Battle Network? I love that series. I think the Style Changes are balanced pretty well though. Would you be interested in that discussion? That’s true, but people rarely do. There isn’t even anything wrong with being biased, the issue is with people being unable to separate their bias from the discussion.

I wouldn't say that Bors tanks well against Cavaliers, but like you said, that's sort of off topic. Yeah, that's true. I've seen people say that they prefer playing through Sacred Stones without Seth to make the game more challenging, and I recently met someone that said the same thing about Marcus in FE7. FE games give you a lot of choices for units. Some people may prefer to only use the best options but you don't have to use only the best units, especially across multiple playthroughs. However... I agree with this. I do not think that every unit needs to be equal. But I do think that every unit should have something to offer. It doesn't have to be a good enough something to make them as good as other units overall. As long as it gives them something unique or allows for a different playstyle or something. It could be a lot of different things. A different spread of stats, a unique ability, for certain classes it could be unusual weapon ranks such as Echidna specializing in Axes instead of Swords like most Heroes. I I do think that there should be a little bit of balance between units. I don't personally see any reason to have units that are too extreme in either direction like Seth or Wendy. What is Wendy's niche anyway? The Triangle Attack? That is an interesting ability, but its's so hard to surround an enemy with 3 Armor Knights and their 4 Move each. It's much more useful for Pegasus Knights. For the trainee units in Sacred Stones, I think their niche could be considered having more promotion choices than other units, which I think is enough, though I also don't see any reason why Amelia and Ewan don't join earlier. Some people enjoy raising weak units to a high level and watching them grow stronger, but wouldn't they have more fun if they had more time with the unit instead of them not joining until around half way through the game? I don't really see any benefit to them joining late. Anyway, I'm getting off track... Most definitely. I like playing ironmans myself. I don't understand why people complain that Cath is too weak and unbalanced. She is an extra Thief in case one of the others died. Chad especially can die very easily. The game didn't need to give us another one, we should be happy that it was nice enough to instead of complaining that she's too weak. Why does a Thief need to be strong anyway? This same type of situation can apply to a lot of units. decent to medicore units can become genuinely useful if some of your units die. Yeah, I'm sure we all have a list of bad units that we like using. In fact, there's another topic about this exact thing. I agree with this. Like I said earlier, I think that units should have something to offer, whether or not that something actually out weighs their weaknesses, like I mentioned with Bors. I don't think he should more Move, I think he should have more Def.It seems like such a simple concept to me. Take any strategy game. A unit with higher Move will need to be weaker than those with less. Armor Knights having particularly low Move should be super strong. My problem with Armor Knights is that they very often aren't much stronger than other units. Even if they were super strong, their low Move would likely prevent them from ever seeing any efficient play (with a few exceptions), because Movement allows for so much more efficient playstyles, but I would have no problem with Armour Knights if they were super strong to make up for their low Move, kind of like Oswin and Gatrie. I don't know about this one. The games could surely be more balanced then they are. In regards to your Marcus example, yes, I do consider that a type of balance, same with Roy, but like you said, the whole point of your post was to explain why you don't care about that lol. Balance can mean a lot of things. I would say to not get caught up on only one specific definition of it. Units can be balanced in different ways, so the games may be more balanced then you think depending on how you look at it (obviously I'm not really talking to you here). As for fun being more important than balance, yes, but I don't see why those are necessarily mutually exclusive. I know, you just explained it in your post, but does that mean that you can't find a balanced game to be fun too? I think it can work either way. Especially with something as subjective as fun. If the argument is that spending too much time trying to balance the games better would take away from other aspects of them, since development resources including time are limited, then yeah, if that's true, then I agree, balance might not be worth it. - Oh, I almost forgot to add something that you didn’t mention. bad units do not hurt the experience of people that don’t want to use them, but they’re there for the people that do enjoy using bad units. For people that don’t like bad units, there are plenty of good units to choose from. They can just ignore the bad units. I can’t take credit for this argument. Credit goes to @ping. He’s the one that mentioned it in an earlier thread. - For the record, I just find the topic interesting to discuss and seeing other peoples’ thoughts about it. I’m really not invested in either side of the argument.

I think tier lists are completely worthless without a very clear explanation for exactly why each unit is where they are. Character Ratings shouldn't tell the player which units are better than which others or which ones should be used over others. They shouldn't say "use this unit", "don't use this unit", "Always promote this unit first", "never promote this unit". A unit rating should provide players with all relevant information they need to make an informed decision. Is Roy good? Is Roy bad? Is Marcus good? is Marcus bad? is Karel good? Is Karel bad? The answer to all of these questions is potentially yes. The only way for a tier list or unit rating to be useful for anyone is to explain all of the strengths and weaknesses of each unit, and what they are capable of doing at different points in the game to allow players to make their own informed decisions. This isn't really true, unless you are referring to them having used Boots to increase their Move. Their stats will probably be kind of similar and Karel might be stronger if Rutger isn't high enough level. If Karel can kill dragons, then you can't consider him much worse than Rutger. Also, you don't need to give him the Durandal. You can give him a Wrymslayer and hope for a Crit. It's not the most reliable or safest method, but it's a way for Karel to be useful with no investment and with someone else using the Durandal. Not necessarily. Garret is better at killing most enemies than Lance is. Even if Lance doubles, Garret will be more likly to Crit with a single attack than Lance is to Crit once with his two attacks. 30% Crit bonus is pretty big. I couldn't agree more. I've seen someone say that the only value of a tier list is the discussion around it. I did find a tier list made by Dondon one time that actually explained why each unit was rated how they were and what each unit was able to do to be useful. It was the best tier list I've ever seen. I'm surprised more tier lists don't do this. In defense of Mekkah's tier list videos, he talks about units for hours in his videos while making the tier list, explaining why he is placing them where he is.

Oh I see. I misunderstood you. That’s an interesting opinion, and dare I say, an unpopular one. I’m interested in seeing you elaborate on your perspective on this subject. I’m a little unsure how I feel about that myself. I don’t think that all units need to be equal but I think they should have something to offer, rather then just being inferior versions of other units. I’ll use Bors as an example actually, the game literally tells you that Armour Knights have “impenetrable defenses”, but Bors gets ORKOed by early game Fighters, and can’t take too many attacks from other enemies either with them always doubling them. I don’t mind if he would still be bad due to low Spd and Move, as long as he could actually take hits like the game tells you he’s supposed to be able to.

It is lame. Roy really doesn’t gain much of anything from his promotion, not even a new sprite or animation. It just comes at the same time that he gets the Sword. If Roy never promoted, he probably wouldn’t even be much worse.

I love playing randomizes of FE games. Having an official randomized mode is a great idea. I’ve played several randomizers of the GBA games, particularly Binding Blade. You can get some pretty fun game modes. I thought when promoted Roy attacks with a regular Sword he just looks like normal un-promoted Roy?

Fair enough. The weird thing is that there’s a part that would make sense for him to promote at, story wise, but he doesn’t. It’s when he is ‘promoted’ to be the leader of the Eturian-Lycian Alliance Army. I forget the details, but I think it would make more sense for him to promote there than when you gets the Sword. No one else needs a legendary weapon (in this game) to promote, so what’s Roy’s deal? I mean, they are interesting. Changing up unit quality between game modes is interesting and not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just not balanced well. Some of the already best units in the game get even better while some bad units get even worse by comparison. There are some characters that are balanced better because of the hard mode bonuses but then those units maybe should have been better to begin with and aren’t good enough on Normal mode.