lenticular

To extend your metaphor, there's a big difference between saying "I tried these fireworks and they span out of control and hit the neighbour's dog" and saying "I've never tried these fireworks because I'm worried they might spin out of control and hit the neighbour's dog". The first would be a legitimate reason to hate those fireworks and never want to use them again. The second is a reasonable enough fear to have, but is something that can be further researched. So, you're worried about the fireworks hitting your neighbour's dog and you start looking into it. First, you go online and read a bunch of customer reviews, which are overwhelmingly positive, with many people praising the vibrancy of their colour, the wonderful rooster pattern they make in the sky, and how easy they were to operate. You read through a bunch of different reviews and nobody who's actually used them seems to have any safety concerns. Then you start looking into firework regulations and you find that this particular make of fireworks has been certified as safe by regulating bodies in multiple different countries. But you're still worried, so you go to the local university and seek out a bunch of chemists, physicists and engineers, and they do all manner of calculations regarding explosive yield and aerodynamics and everything else they can think of and they reassure you that as far as they can tell, the fireworks should be perfectly safe. Having done all this research you go home and you decide that you're not going to use them after all because you think they're going to hit the neighbour's dog.

Personally, one of the reasons I'd be interested in a remake (or a remaster or a port) of the Tellius games is to get my friends to play them. I definitely have friends who are interested enough in Fire Emblem that they'd play them if there was a convenient way to pick them up on the Switch but not interested enough to go to the hassle of getting hold of a copy or setting up an emulator or whatever. Even if I can already play them as much as I want, it would be neat to be able to talk about them with my friends too.

It's fairly difficult to compare against the rest of the series as a whole, since most elements have had wild swings in their power level at some point in the series. That said, I think that Nosferatu and Astra may both be at the weakest they've ever been. Both of them are basically little more than cruel jokes in Three Houses compared to their past glory days. Though, to be clear, I'd rather have Three Houses Nosferatu than Awakening Nosferatu that could solo the game. A happy medium between the two extremes would be nice, though. For something that's at its peak in Three Houses, I'll say bows. The existence of Close Counter to make them usable on enemy phase, increased range from most bow-focused classes, combat arts like Hunters' Volley, Break Shot and Encloser, enemy fliers being both common and powerful. These all combine to put bows in a really good place.

Just out of curiosity, which characters have you actually run as Dark Knights that led you to such fervent disdain for the class?

I had been assuming that you'd keep on going for weapon prowess level 5, yes. I suppose that there is definitely the argument that if you want a low-effort Holy Knight then you could stop at C+ weapon rank with Bernadetta but not with Leonie or Sylvain. Which again goes back to how you interpret the initial question. Is the best Holy Knight the one that has the best performance once you get their full build in place, or the one that requires the least effort to make somewhat viable? For practical purposes, it's probably somewhere between the two, but figuring out exactly how to weight things is always going to be a judgement call. Though I will also note that if we're looking for the absolute minimal effort Holy Knight, then we can remove Bernadetta's Rescue from consideration, since she doesn't learn it until A rank Faith (for comparison, Leonie's Restore and Sylvain's Seraphim both come in at B rank Faith). Thinking about it some more, I suppose that one possible way to run Holy Knight Bernie would be to go for something along the lines of C+ lances, A bows, B faith, B riding, B authority, which is pretty much the same as my hypothetical Leonie build. And while you'd lose out on Rescue and Lance Prowess Lv 5, you'd gain Encloser and reliable chip damage, like you said, and would also be able to pick up Hit +20 from Archer along the way. That would more than make up for the lost hit from the lower rank of Lance Prowess, and you probably don't care a whole lot about avoid and crit avoid, since you're not likely to be putting a Vengeance user anywhere she's going to be taking hits in the first place.

I think that the problem with this approach is that it puts her into direct competition with other units who are just generically good. Let's consider a few other options who have a comparably easy time getting into Holy Knight as Bernadetta does. First, let's look at Leonie and have her use a bow. She has a comparably easy time getting into the class as Bernadetta. That she's using a bow means she's going to have to train lances up to C on the side, but she starts at D+ and has a boon, so that's a minimal effort. And to offset that, she starts at E+ riding and has it as a natural strength, so she's quicker off the ground there. In terms of magic, she's also about on par with Bernadetta. They have the same base and growth rate for their magic stat (5+20%) and they both learn Physic. However, Leonie has Restore while Bernadetta has Rescue. Both are pretty niche, both have the potential to come in useful occasionally, and which is most useful probably depends on the exact composition of your team. In terms of raw killing power, Vengeance will typically be able to do bigger numbers than Point Blank Volley, but PBV is still going to be killing a whole lot of enemies even without Bowfaire. Leonie would also have the option of doing ranged chip damage, providing utility with Break Shot, and would only need a very small dip further into lances to pick up Monster Piercer for extra even more utility and versatility. Next up, let's consider Sylvain, who's going to be a Swift Strikes user. Like PBV, Swift Strikes is also going to be able to kill most things even without Lancefaire. Maybe there are a few things that Vengeance can kill and Swift Strikes can't, but not all that many. They have a comparably easy time getting into the class; Sylvain is slightly better off due to his higher starting ranks in lances and riding, but it's nothing significant. In terms of magic, Sylvain has a slightly higher magic stat (same base, but 10% better growth). Both learn Physic, but Sylvain swaps out Rescue for Seraphim. Finally, Dimitri. He has the exact same combination of strength in lance, budding talent in riding and neutral in faith that Bernadetta has. He does have his legendary sulk in part 2 that makes him a bit harder to train, but he also has better starting ranks in lances and riding. Magically, he has base magic stat one point lower than Bernadetta's and the same growth rate. He trades out Physic for Recover, which is often a stronger choice for characters with low magic stat, especially when they have high mobility. He also trades out Rescue for Aura which is pretty much an unambiguous downgrade. When it comes to just being generically good, he still has the ability to do all the usual Dimitri things. He still hits like a ton of bricks, Atrocity still obliterates everything, and Battalion Vantage + Battalion Wrath is still a ridiculous broken combo that should never have made it into the game. And so on and so forth. Essentially, you're not just claiming that Vengeance and Bernadetta are good; you're claiming that they are better than anyone else. Or at the very least, better than anyone who has a relatively easy time getting into Holy Knight. It's possible to put anyone into Holy Knight and then completely ignore what the class does and treat them as a slightly inferior version of what they would otherwise be doing. If that's the plan, then there isn't a whole lot of difference between "who is the best Holy Knight?" and "who is the best unit in the game?" Or if you prefer, maybe "who is the best unit in the game who doesn't have a weakness in faith or riding?" While there are some builds which really rely on their class to be good, I think they're probably in the minority. Most units that are good are still going to be good even if you put them in a bad class. Not as good, sure, but still good. And yes, you can completely break a unit if you put them in a class with terrible movement or without magic access, but neither of those is a problem for Holy Knight.

I'm not going to wade into the whole "is Ignatz good" debate, but I do want to take issue with this one point. Generally, the increased accuracy that you gain from his personal is offset by his awful Charm. Typically speaking, each point of charm is worth 5% of hit, so when it comes to gambit accuracy, his personal is worth about 4 points of Charm. (The exact numbers can vary from this if you're sufficiently far ahead or behind the enemy's Charm, but 5% accuracy per point of Charm is close enough for most calculations.) Ignatz has a base Charm of 4 with a growth rate of 25%. We are looking for the level at which other units get to be 4 points ahead of him in Charm. Claude does so immediately from level 1. Hilda will do so, on average, by level 5, Byleth by level 6, Marianne by level 7, and Leonie by level 8. Compared to any of these units, Ignatz starts off at level 1 with either no advantage (compared to Claude) or only 5% advantage (compared to the rest), very quickly loses even this small advantage, and then falls further and further behind as the game progresses. If this is an advantage, it's a very small one.

What makes you say that? Personally, I think that it's a terrible class and a strong contender for the worst class in the game, so I'd be interested to hear what you like about it.

Huh. I had in my head that he did use the Rafail Gem during that paralogue. Not sure why I was thinking that. Just a brain fart moment, I guess. Or possibly just wishful thinking. My excuse is that I mostly avoid that paralogue since I'm basically never recruiting Caspar and since the reward is garbage. But yeah, you're right, he definitely should have had it, at least in some of his appearances if not all.

I don't really have a single favourite from most games, so we'll just go with one of my favourites from each game I've played instead. Our combatants will be L'Arachel (Sacred Stones), Elincia (Path of Radiance), Nailah (Radiant Dawn), Lorenz (Shadow Dragon), Cynthia (Awakening), Elise (Fates), Clair (Shadows of Valentia), and Seteth (Three Houses). The situation is that they have all been transported to the deeprealms and are being forced to fight against their will in some sort of weird Hunger Games or Battle Royale style fight to the death. To start the battle, Elincia will fly to the middle of the battlefield, dismount her pegasus, place Amiti on the ground, and make an empassioned speech about how they don't need to fight and if they all work together they can find some other way out of the situation. Elise will be convinced by this plea and will go and stand beside Elincia, placing her tomes and staves on the ground. Nailah will pretend to join them but at the last second will transform into a wolf and rip both of their throats out. A fight to the death is a time for pragmatism and doing whatever it takes to survive. With the initial talking and posturing done, everyone springs into action. Seteth, Clair and Cynthia all immediately take to the skies, leaving Nailah, Lorenz and L'Arachel on the ground, essentially splitting into two smaller sub-battles. On the ground, Lorenz would be disgusted by Nailah's underhand tactics, and would attempt to take her on in honourable single combat. This would not end well for him. She's stronger, faster and just plain better than he is. He's not as young as he used to be, but even at his peak he wouldn't have been able to keep up with her. Thanks to his experience, he manages to put up a bit of a fight, but really not much of one, and before long, he's down too. L'Arachel has been watching and evaluating the situation, and she knows that Nailah will rip her apart if she gets close. She adopts a strategy of using her mounted mobility to try to keep her distance while attackign with magic whenever available, and though she does manage to get a few hits in, it isn't enough, and before too long, Nailah manages to close in and land a single hit, which is all it takes. Maybe L'Arachel would have stood a chance if she'd known to use fire magic, but she'd never fought a Laguz before so she had no way of knowing. And let's be honest here, she probably wouldn't have stood a chance anyway. Meanwhile, in the air, the fight starts off as a free-for-all with all three units attacking each other in a dazzling display of aerobatics. However, before long, it becomes apparent that Seteth is the superior fighter. He has the most battle experience, the power of his Crest, and his personal weapon and shield. Upon seeing this, the other two form an unspoken alliance against him, and it turns into a two-on-one battle, which is much more even. Cynthia gets carried away and attacks impetuously, leaving herself open to counter-attack. Seteth takes the opportunity and buries the Spear of Assal in her chest. However, this does create an opening that Clair is able to use to also land a solid attack, knocking Seteth from his wyvern and sending him crashing to his death on the ground below. This brings us down to Nailah versus Clair, with both being a little bit worse for wear from their previous fights. Clair attempts to use her mobility to her advantage, making diving hit and run attacks from the air and tehn immediately ascending out of Nailah's reach again. For a while, it seems to be working as she lands several hits against her. Each one is only doing a little bit of damage, but if she can keep it up then eventually Nailah will succumb to exhaustion. Then, suddenly, it's all over. A single mis-timed attack and Nailah was able to time a counter-attack, leaping into the air, clearing the pegasus and slamming into Clair. A single clas to the head was all that it took. And the winner is Nailah. Was there ever any doubt? (No. No there wasn't.)

While I agree that Rodrigue should have had the Aegis shield, I don't think it would have been a good diea to give Crusher to Gilbert. Partly because he couldn't use it well since he has useless magic, but mainly because he doesn't have a Crest. And while they could have just given him a Crest, I think that having him be without one served a useful purpose in showing us (rather than just telling us) about how the Crest system is breaking down, with Crests being weaker than they used to be, skipping generations, and so on. As for other relics, there are two of them that we do see being used by family members, albeit by brothers rather than parents (the Rafail Gem and the Lance of Ruin). Of the other relics, most of them wouldn't really have made all that much sense to have been shown with another wielder. The Sword of the Creator and Blutgang just aren't family heirlooms at all, so they're out. Areadbhar's most likely previous owner is dead. Lúin doesn't have any other potential wielders, since Ingrid is the only member of her family with a Crest. Failnaught also wouldn't work since Duke Riegan is elderly and not really in a fit state to be on a battlefield. Thunderbrand is already being actively used by Catherine from the start of the game, rather than being passed down to her during the course of the game. Of course, any of these story elements could have been changed, but not trivially. There'd have been ripple effects into other elements of the story. For instance, it's a fairly central part of Ingrid's character that she is the only member of her family with a Crest and that this puts obligations on her regarding marriage and inheritance that are at odds with her aspirations to knighthood. If you change that, you change the character. However, there are two relics left that would have made more sense to show an additional wielder: Freikugel and Thyrsus. Now, for personal preference, I quite like that we never got to see Count Gloucester in battle. He always comes across more as a politician than a soldier so it makes sense to me. All of that said, I do think that this is the sort of situation where a little would have gone a long way. they really wouldn't have had to show all that many family members with relics to have cemented the idea that the relics are family weapons. Even if it had just been Rodrigue wielding the Aegis shield and Holst showing up in Hilda's paralogue and carrying Freikugel, then I think that would have been enough.

New headcanon: Largo was mostly absent from Radiant Dawn after he developed an interest in nylons and lipstick.

Herons are slight and graceful in appearance with androgynous males, they have pointy ears, they live for hundreds of years, and they have a close spiritual connection to their forest home. Are you trying to tell me that they aren't elves?

You know, I'm about to do something I never thought that I'd do: defend Defiant Res. Now, don't get me wrong, it's undoubtedly terrible, but I think it's more of a D- than an F. Which is to say that I can think of a conceivable use for it. Imagine that you are running a dodge tank build using Defiant Avoid. Further imagine that you have a sufficiently high Avoid that you are completely immune to all physical attacks. However, due to the different way that it calculates hit and avoid, there is a small but non-zero chance that magical attacks could hit you. Since you are at low HP for Defiant Avoid, this would then prove lethal. However, you might already have pretty decent res, possibly from being a Falcon Knight, so it might not be lethal by all that much. In this very specific circumstance, Defiant Res might potentially allow you to survive a hit that you otherwise wouldn't. And since you're already at low HP for Defiant Avoid, you're getting the extra res at no extra cost. Obviously, this is extremely unlikely to ever actually come up and is definitely not worth going out of your way to master Holy Knight for, but it's still something. There's something of an argument to be made for male Byleth, thanks to White Magic Avoid +20. I'm not sure it's a strong argument, but it's at least defensible. I can't help but feel that this is some sort of karma for me starting off a thread by saying how I didn't want to go off-topic.

Question for the class: Is Battalion Renewal literally the worst ability in the game, or just one of the worst? (Not including personal abilities. Some of those are doubtlessly worse. Hi, Linhardt! Hi, Raphael!) How about Ingrid? She has more uses of offensive white magic (12 Nosferatu and 8 Seraphim) than she has of black magic (10 Blizzard, 4 Thoron, 3 Fimbulvetr) and has enough Strength and Speed to have a chance (depending on build, RNG and difficulty level) to still be able to double with Nosferatu despite its weight. I'm not sure how I feel about this, given that it seems like it would mostly be a nerf to magic classes and a buff to physical classes, but if you did go down that route then you could also work rallies into the same system. Take Rallies out of the existing ability system and turn them into their own thing. Everyone gets one rally slot to be able to equip one rally (with no opportunity cost in terms of other abilities), but someone in a dedicated rallier class would have more Rally slots. Would that work at all?

As a little gedankenexperiment, let's consider what a unit would look like if it had one of its stats set to 1,000,000 and all its other stats set to 1: Speed: A perfect dodge tank who will literally never be hit. However, doing damage in return will be difficult due to the lack of strength or skill. Depending on the game, you might be able to get enough bonuses from supports, weapons, skills, etc. to actually be able to do some damage in which case you will win the war of attrition thanks to never being hit yourself. Even if you can't do any damage, you would still be able to effectively hold a choke point or perform a similar tanking role. Luck: Similar to speed but better. Not only are you never taking a hit, you also have perfect accuracy for your own attacks (in most games). You still have to get enough might from weapons, skills, etc. if you want to do any damage, but that's a lot easier than getting both might and hit that you need with speed. HP: Similar to speed but worse. You'd be hit all the time and take a ton of damage, but with that much HP you wouldn't care. Any enemy skills that do damage as a fraction of total HP (eg, Poison Strike) would destroy you. And you still have all the problems of trying to hit or do damage. Defense: A perfect physical tank, but will be instantly destroyed by a single enemy mage. And you still can't hit anything or do damage. Resistance: The mirror image of defense except worse because there are more physically attacking enemies than magically attacking one. Strength: You kill everything you hit! Except that you never hit anything and you die in a single hit. Magic: As terrible as strength for a combat unit, but would make for a fantastic healer. Get this person a physic staff, stat. Skill: You hit with all of your attacks, but then you do either no or low damage and get instantly killed on the counter-attack. However, you will also have 100% chance to proc skills, so this could be a workable build. An assassin with Lethality and Stillness could be great. Charm: On the plus side, you're great at using offensive gambits. On the minus side, you're terrible at everything else. Move: Excellent mobility could be great for picking up secondary objectives like chests, or for one-turn strategies on maps with objectives like seize, arrive or escape. Would also make for a really good dancer. Combat potential is zero. So what have we learned from all of this? Well, not very much because the whole idea was silly. But beyond that, we've learned that most attributes are largely garbage on their own and need to be backed up with other attributes if they're going to do anything. If you only have one unit and they only have one attribute, then luck is probably the best one, but speed and HP could potentially also get the job done, though not as well. Builds based entirely on skill, magic and move are also potentially viable, but only as support for other units with other attributes. In conclusion, luck is definitely, unambiguously and objectively the best stat. Maybe.

That's a fair criticism, but if I had my druthers then all the other authority skills would see a big shake-up as well. Model Leader and Defensive Tactics are both basically trash and I don't think anything of significant value would be lost by getting rid of them entirely. Then there are the Battalion [Whatever] skills which are, frankly, a mess. They mostly fall into either "allows you to break the game" or "completely worthless" depending on how you're using them, without covering much of the in-between ground. I also dislike the fiddly micromanagement of "I want to fully replenish all of my battalions except for the one that Dimitri is using" after every battle. I suspect this will be somewhat controversial, but I'd be in favour of getting rid of the Battalion skills entirely. And while we're at it, can we also add a bit of accuracy with gambits to the "Authority Lv n" skills to make them less terrible?

Yes, and that's exactly the sort of DLC that I'm most interested in as well. But let's be honest, there will always be DLC that is just raw powercreep because that stuff sells. You might not want it and I might not want it, but there are enough people out there who love that sort of stuff and I'm not about to tell them that they're having fun wrong. I would prefer if all of the DLC was stuff that I was interested in, but if I can't have that then I'm fine with DLC that I can easily ignore. Like, imagine that instead of being in a box under your bed, the stat boosters just start off in your inventory. If you wanted to ignore them then you'd have to scroll past them every time you were doing inventory management, you'd have to remember which ones were from the DLC and be careful not to use them. It would suck. It would actively make the game worse. Stat boosters under the bed don't have that problem. They don't improve the game for me, but they don't make the game any worse for me either. And given that they do improve the game for some people, I have no problem with them existing.

One way to get their recruitment pushed back a little later would be to just give them the same sort of recruitment requirements as other units rather than making them free to recruit. In which case, sure, you would be able to grab them (and potentially their relics) very early on if you chose to, but only at a fairly significant opportunity cost. I will say, though, that I actually quite like the Yuri+Constance paralogue, and haven't found it as bad as you have. Duke Gerth is robust enough to survive a hit, even on Maddening, and I've not had any problem getting to him on time if I beeline towards him with two or three fliers. The Balthus+Hapi paralogue, on the other hand, I don't care for at all. It's not so much that I find it especially hard as that it drags on too long and seriously outstays its welcome. I've never paid enough attention to notice this. Does the same restriction to which stat boosters you get apply to Anna's quests to get secrets, or only to the ones that drop directly from the yellow exclamation mark auxiliary battles?

I don't think it would really be a problem if not everyone is useful. After all, Petra (for instance) is pretty terrible as a magic user but that doesn't mean that she shouldn't learn any spells. For practical purposes, the game would be the same if she had empty spell lists, since pretty much nobody is putting her into magic classes, but I like that the option is there if you want it. It's the sort of thing that makes the game richer by existing even if I never actually use it. (Plus, it allows for the occasional surprise like how spellcaster Dedue is actually briefly used on the Azure Moon speedrun.) There are also nine different Rallies in the game and nine units on the starting team for each house. That would potentially allow for everyone to get a unique Rally in the early game, even if some of them would later fall off in utility as other units picked up the same Rally later on. As an example for what I'm thinking, let's consider the Golden Deer. Other units could follow a similar pattern, but this is mostly just intended as a proof of concept. Byleth: Rally Move (D), Rally Defense (C+), Rally Resistance (B+). Claude: Rally Dexterity (D), Rally Charm (C+), Rally Speed (B+). Hilda: Rally Charm (D). Lorenz: Rally Luck (D), Rally Magic (C+). Raphael: Rally Strength (D). Lysithea: Rally Magic (D), Rally Speed (C+), Rally Dexterity (B+). Ignatz: Rally Speed (D), Rally Dexterity (C+), Rally Strength (B+), Rally Spectrum* (S). Leonie: Rally Defense (D), Rally Strength (C+). Marianne: Rally Resistance (D), Rally Luck (C+). * I am imagining Rally Spectrum as replacing all other Rallies rather than stacking with them. I've given three Rallies to everyone with an authority boon, kept Ignatz as the best Rallier in the house by giving him Rally Spectrum at S (which I don't think would be at all overpowered by the time you get to S rank authority and given that it would still only be single target), put Rally Move as a Byleth exclusive (but made it available much sooner), and made sure that the characters who only get one Rally are at least getting one of the good ones.

I think that Three Houses is not too bad when it comes to DLC balance. Not great, but definitely could be worse. There is some random over-powered nonsense that you get at the start of the game for doing absolutely nothing, but it is mercifully segregated from everything else and very easy to just completely ignore if you don't want to break the game. (It is all literally in a box under your bed.) Then there's all the random extra monastery quests that get sprinkled throughout the game, like the one Alastor mentioned. These are power-creep, but I find them too minor to really care about. Most of them just give a few gift items and a bit of renown or something like that, which is definitely stronger than not having them, but is such a small thing that I don't think it's particularly felt either way. There is the one Alastor just did that gives three battalions, but they're all pretty bad and mostly exist for people who miss the trope and aesthetic of maid and butler from Fates. One thing that I do think is pretty broken is the ability to get stat boosters from auxiliary battles. That isn't as in-your-face busted as the stat boosters you find under your bed, but it can really add up over the course of a game. It's still possible to completely ignore it if you choose to, but it does much more to remind you of its existence at every turn. All of which is varying from bad to tolerable, but then there's the last part which is actually good, and is why I'm reasonably upbeat about Three Houses DLC in general. Namely that the units and classes of the DLC (aka, the parts I actually care about) are decently balanced. The units are all good but not great and are fun to use without outshining everyone else. (Except for Anna, who is pretty awful.) The classes are all valid options that have their own specific niche and strengths, but without being so powerful that you have to choose them.

I don't think that it's bad design, just that it's one of the contributing factors to making Rallies less powerful. I think that one interesting thing they could have done would have been to give everyone a Rally list, same as everyone gets a white magic list and a black or dark magic list. Some of the lists could have been terrible, of course, but if everyone had at least one Rally and most units had at least two, then the question wouldn't be "who has Rallies?" but rather "which combination of Rallies do I want?"

I always think of the knowledge gem as being the main reward for that paralogue. The secondary reward is the wootz steel from breaking the wolves' armour. The stuff that the game actually gives you as a reward is also a thing that exists, I guess. This is less than ideal. I do like the paralogue, though. It can be a fun challenge. Especially since there's the constant trade-off of "do I try to strip the armour on everything for ore, or do I want to just unload all my damage into a single tile to kill it as quickly as I possibly can?" It's a neat little risk/reward dynamic.

Can confirm that Broadcast Satellite was what I actually meant in this case. (And yes, I did have to go and look up what the BS in Satellaview games actually stands for.)

A third pretty major nerf is moving them from being class skills to character skills. In Fates and Awakening, if you want a specific combination of rallies on a single character, then you can probably pull it off. I tmight take some convoluted class paths or inheritance options, but it's usually possible. In Three Houses, if you want a specific combination, then tough. You get what you're given. And what you're given is usually not very good.