What's the point of Build stat?

[Alef Zero]

Maybe I didn't catch something, but bld seems to me, like a strictly inferior speed stat. It has the exact effect, increasing AS, but only matter if unit's current weapon is too heavy, while speed matters always.

What I mean is, imagine unit has 10 speed and 10 build and uses 15 weight weapon, so 5 AS. Increasing bld gives the same result as increasing spd, up to fifth point, by which, further increasing bld gives no benefit, while increasing spd, does. So why would anyone choose to build bld+ passives instead of spd+ passives, aside from availability of course.

I'm aware, that in some older games constitution existed, but it also had other functions. Build does not seem to have them.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

diversifying units

Somewhat sure the og build stats (body?) where used to calculate the effects of rescuing a unit on the rescuers speed stats (rescuer body - rescuee body = potential penalty to speed)?

i think it´s a shit system, that just narrows down the group of units into the sqaud of those who do and those who don´t double, but the wheel hath turned and here we are again

It´d obviously be pretty cool if it was incorporated through means of skills, personal or class, or weapons effects, but let´s not get ahead of ourselves. Weight +3/5 is the current upper limit of IS daredevilism.

[Florete]

You are correct, it's a strictly inferior Spd stat, in that sometimes it is Spd and sometimes it is nothing. I don't think the devs even realized this, considering the Bld+ skill costs the same amount of SP as Spd+ and there are a few high Bld units (like Louis) who don't have any Spd to make use of it. And there's not even a stat booster for it.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Florete

[Armchair General]

I think it was an attempt to keep the AS penalty relevant, in a way. It's something that can't be artificially inflated, early on, there's quite an few classes that can freely use  the most powerful weapons, and Bld isn't something that rapidly improves over time

[Shadow Mir]

Availability is the main thing, really. Also,for what it's worth, Build +4 is cheaper on bond fragments than Speed +4.

EDIT: @FloreteI would consider the lack of a stat boost item for build to be a missed opportunity. The last games with such items made them useless.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[Barren]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Availability is the main thing, really. Also,for what it's worth, Build +4 is cheaper on bond fragments than Speed +4.

EDIT: @FloreteI would consider the lack of a stat boost item for build to be a missed opportunity. The last games with such items made them useless.

I agree that build + x has it’s niche as a cheap skill to inherit. What can make it better is if their emblem was Lyn since speed and build can go hand in hand.

[Eltosian Kadath]

Technically you also need higher Bld to use the Shove skill on another unit, but that is really minor.

[Jotari]

Build is, essentially, an attempt to nerf units with high speed by limiting what weapons they can most effectively use. This is true when it was first introduced as Constitution and remains true even without it pulling double weight for the other stuff constitution did. How effective it actually nerfs fast units varies by game and individual opinion, but that's the intention. The best way of seeing this is actually the GBA games where they seemed to actually have it in mind with the slim and blade weapons. A mercenary like Gerrick can afford to use the more powerful Blade weapons without it reducing his speed, though his lower speed than a unit like Marisa means he won't double as often. Meanwhile, Marisa is fast she effectively doubles her damage against everything, so a blade weapon on her would be much better than a blade weapon on Gerrick, hence blade weapons become heavy so Marisa is forced to stick to weaker weapons that still allow her to double. That's the theory, at any rate.

[Barren]

49 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Build is, essentially, an attempt to nerf units with high speed by limiting what weapons they can most effectively use. This is true when it was first introduced as Constitution and remains true even without it pulling double weight for the other stuff constitution did. How effective it actually nerfs fast units varies by game and individual opinion, but that's the intention. The best way of seeing this is actually the GBA games where they seemed to actually have it in mind with the slim and blade weapons. A mercenary like Gerrick can afford to use the more powerful Blade weapons without it reducing his speed, though his lower speed than a unit like Marisa means he won't double as often. Meanwhile, Marisa is fast she effectively doubles her damage against everything, so a blade weapon on her would be much better than a blade weapon on Gerrick, hence blade weapons become heavy so Marisa is forced to stick to weaker weapons that still allow her to double. That's the theory, at any rate.

That’s a very plausible explanation I feel. I’ve actually been playing Sacred Stones now that you’ve brought it up. It’s actually pretty fun but even that game’s hard mode isn’t really that hard mostly because the enemies for the first half of the game are incredibly weak. But it’s a great game for newcomers so I can’t fault it for that.

[Samu_77]

The fact that this game's weapons have no durability means you need to give a reason for the player not to use the weapon with the most damage all of the time, so weapon weight exists, so then you need to give a way to offset that weapon weight. Just increasing the speed of every unit in the game to be proportional to what you would think their build would be is... a pretty sloppy and lazy solution, so the build stat exists. In theory this allows players to strategize what weapon to use and what characters can have what weapons be allocated to them based on their minimum speed penalties, for example Panette has less of a speed penalty for using the base Steel Axe then Anna does in their base classes. It also contextualizes the size of characters, Lapis going around swinging a sword that looks like it weighs 30 Kg and still being way faster then Diamont who's built like a brick house is kinda silly.

 

That said it is strictly worse then speed and the SP Cost greatly confuses me, but I suppose it is a way to make allocating resources towards characters with different builds marginally more interesting. I certainly prefer it to there being weightless weapons ala Awakening, and I'm also not too wild on weapon weight being offset by Strength in games like 3H.

[Cysx]

Stealth "people still haven't played Thracia" thread

It is inferior to speed, but speed is a top 2 stat in most FE games, so, there are worse things to be worse than. Basically putting in place two requirements to dealing twice as much damage isn't a particularly bad idea. And, it's good for character variety, which has been a recurring problem in FE as of late.

Then as Samu_77 said, there would be little reason to use steel if not for the weight of silver. Iron is already basically pointless because of how light steel is, and we don't even have weapon ranks to really keep things in check, since very few classes have lower than B in anything.

Should they have made build better, sure(though if you ask me it's not Leif's skills that should have been cheaper, it's Lyn's that should have cost more), but I wouldn't say it's pointless at all.

Edited October 12, 2023 by Cysx

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Stealth "people still haven't played Thracia" thread

I do like how they select Leif to represent Build, as his game introduced it and actually had it as a growth. Engage is full of little things like that which, compared with the more obvious fan service makes me think it's not coincidence.

[Cysx]

18 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I do like how they select Leif to represent Build, as his game introduced it and actually had it as a growth. Engage is full of little things like that which, compared with the more obvious fan service makes me think it's not coincidence.

Yeah, it was a nice touch. I kinda wish build growth is here to stay, to be honest. Even I was skeptical before, but I think this game has proven that it works perfectly fine. They can even let loose a little bit and have more characters with 10-20% rates. Just as long as many others don't.

Also it's been a while, I'm a newbie now I guess? Oh well.

Edited October 12, 2023 by Cysx

[Barren]

On 10/12/2023 at 7:46 AM, Cysx said:

Yeah, it was a nice touch. I kinda wish build growth is here to stay, to be honest. Even I was skeptical before, but I think this game has proven that it works perfectly fine. They can even let loose a little bit and have more characters with 10-20% rates. Just as long as many others don't.

Also it's been a while, I'm a newbie now I guess? Oh well.

Or if they had a stat booster that increases a unit’s build by 1. That might have also been nice. I think it was the body ring iirc?

[Jotari]

53 minutes ago, Barren said:

Or if they had a stat booster that increases a unit’s build by 1. That might have also been nice. I think it was the body ring iirc?

Well unless you're in Tellius where it's Statue Frag for some inexplicably reason. If I were to guess it's because they had those Bands in Path of Radiance, though only the Knight's Ring was referred to as a ring.

[Barren]

On 10/13/2023 at 9:37 AM, Jotari said:

Well unless you're in Tellius where it's Statue Frag for some inexplicably reason. If I were to guess it's because they had those Bands in Path of Radiance, though only the Knight's Ring was referred to as a ring.

That’s interesting to note for sure.

[SlumLordDaddy]

It's a tool from the devs to nudge you towards certain weapons types or limit your use of higher tier weapons earlier on. 

It's inferior to Speed.... Well yeah.