Affinity Tier List

[Interceptor]

If I were going to re-factor the bonuses from supports, I'd bring back some of the old support system. Suppose that Wind had no hit/avo, but instead gave +2.5 crit and +2.5 dodge, for example. Now we'd have a way to augment the power of crit-based units, as well as some ability to mitigate the problems of units with low LCK stats.

[Rewjeo]

now all we have to do is stick Aran next to Sothe for a bunch of turns in 1-3 and he'll have no problems

So would we want them to meet at a midway point, or above, or below? You could completely change the usefulness of supports.

[Interceptor]

So would we want them to meet at a midway point, or above, or below? You could completely change the usefulness of supports.

Sorry, could you rephrase that question in English?

[Rewjeo]

If we're changing support bonuses to balance them, we could just make them average out, or we could improve the worse ones to the level earth, or we could make them worse to the level of wind. You could completely change how useful supports are.

[dondon151]

Thoughts? Does this make the affinities balanced? Does it just help a little? Have I made something too good?

Water sucks now.

I think as far as balance goes, hit bonuses should be +3 or +4 for most supports. Earth needs to be reduced to +5 avo, and heaven could use something else but is fine as it is. Also, +crit supports would have been nice as well, but alas, they were relegated to bond supports...

Edited July 1, 2010 by dondon151

[Interceptor]

If we're changing support bonuses to balance them, we could just make them average out, or we could improve the worse ones to the level earth, or we could make them worse to the level of wind. You could completely change how useful supports are.

I'd personally prefer something that's not as game-changing as Earth, but not as pointless as Wind. I want a reason to keep support partners together, but I also don't want supports to be so extremely powerful that it sidelines the situations where you'd want to split people up.

Actually, if I was king for a day, I'd make support bonuses decay based on proximity to the partner. With plateaus of course, so as to not make it too irritating.

[Fenrir]

Water sucks now.

The entire problem with your idea...

every other affinity aside from earth gets bettter, while water now sucks. Earth is still good, just not totally dominating everything. two water people still give the same bonuses as they actually do interestingly enough.

I don't think affinities are a problem, characters with earth(except ike) usually have a character of the same class that would have a big lead on them without the affinity, Fiona would suck scrotum all day AND all night, instead of just all day. Zihark has jill/eddy to compete with and this is his biggest edge on them. Volug isn't great lategame so this gives you a reason to keep him around. Tanith beats sigrun even worse, but is comparable to marcia with earth. Oscar, aside from tirangles, has a spot he's clearly better than titan. Nolan...why does he have earth? Lucia, same as Fiona. Ena...makes you realise units don't have to be good at combat or healing to be helpful. Renning, similar to fiona/lucia, but he doesn't have time to build support so the game was like, well let's add one more, how about renning? ok he is AWESOME, and he can always build support...-.-

[Zkirsche]

every other affinity aside from earth gets bettter

Actually, dark and thunder both got worse (-2 avo at A support).

[Tables]

Yeah, the top four got weakened, the bottom four got raised, and of those the middle four only had small changes. It's really hard to balance Water, actually ¬_¬. Here's a compilation of it's bonuses effects as I changed them:

Water x Water

Was / Now

C: +1 / +1

B: +2 / +2

A: +3 / +3

No change there, although Water/Water wasn't ever the best use of Water supports

Water x other atk/def boost:

Was / Now

C: +1 / +1

B: +2 / +2

A: +3 / +3

Again, no change, making it still a perfectly viable option.

Water x non atk/def boost:

Was / Now

C: +1 / 0

B: +1 / +1

A: +2 / +1

A drop of one point of atk/def at level C and A, and in fact this is only difference between water now and water then. What does that mean in context? If paired with Wind, Earth or Heaven, it's not great, but if paired with anything else it still gives pretty good results. Observe Water x Thunder, and the same result is seen with Dark, Fire, Light and Water:

Water x Thunder:

Was / Now

C: +1 atk, +1 def, +3 avo / +1 def, +2 avo

B: +1 atk, +2 def, +5 avo / +1 atk, +2 def, +4 avo

A: +2 atk, +3 def, +8 avo / +1 atk, +3 def, +6 avo

In other words, it drops a point of attack at level C and A and 1-2 points of avoid - certainly, it's weaker, but it needed to be. I'd say in these cases it's still one of the better affinities to have, but being that much weaker with three affinities does limit it that little bit it needs to be.

That's my thoughts on it. If you still think Water is too weak, tell me what you'd do to it, because I'm not 100% happy either.

[Anouleth]

How exactly would you define 'balanced' here? Are you suggesting that any given character in any given chapter should desire all support bonuses equally? Because a character like Mia is always going to desire Earth or Thunder over Heaven, and nobody is going to want to support Rafiel or Leanne, ever. Unless every support gives the exact same bonuses, you will never truly 'balance' them, and even then some supports will still be more desireable than others due to greater speed or shared movement/role.

And affinities simply cannot be broken by their very nature. An individual character might be broken, and their affinity might contribute to that, but changing the affinity around will also affect all other units with that affinity. Even if you feel that Laura needs to give stronger support bonuses, giving stronger bonuses to Haar and Sothe will simply make them more broken. I Eat Tables implies that a WaterxThunder support is somehow broken, but I don't see Mordecai/Kyza or Mist/Shinon being catapulted up the tier list as a result.

Edited July 1, 2010 by Slowking

[Narga_Rocks]

I looked at the boost to earth as an acknowledgment that you can't get 5x2 total support bonuses and only 3x2 in this game. Frankly, everything should be boosted. In PoR you could have up to +5 atk/def and +50 hit/avo if you chose certain supports. Water could get AB with two water units and have +5atk/def/res. Heaven could go with AB Heaven/Heaven and get +50 hit. etc etc. (ignoring for the moment that there weren't any characters that could get 3 sets of heaven). In this game the max you can get for atk and def is +3, but avo is 45 and hit is 54. Frankly, they should've upped the boosts from everything, not just Heaven and Earth. I can actually live with the idea smash put forth: .8 is the standard for atk/def/res and +4 is the standard for hit/avo, with heaven and earth getting +8 hit/avo (not sure what he had for heaven and earth, but that's what I'd go with). This way you get a max of +5 atk/def, just like PoR, and you get +48 as the max for hit/avo. Also you get +24 avo for Micaiah x sothe rather than +15. That's the easiest way to balance earth (though heaven is still undesired mostly).

The other option is to simply go with GBA supports (and still turn .5 into .8 and 2.5 into 4). Earth and Heaven become Anima. Or you can turn them into +8 avo or +8 hit and give them 2 of the other 5 options for bonus. Earth could become +.8 atk, +4 crit, +8 avo. Okay, yeah, I know that's insane, but Fire would be +.8 atk, +4 crit, +4 hit, +4 avo. Not all that much different.

(Mia x Ike becomes +5 atk, +24 crit, +12 hit, +36 avo. Yeah I know that's insane but so are a lot of other match ups. Turning Earth into Anima would still result in +5 atk, +2 def, +12 crit, +12 cev, +12 hit, +24 avo for a Fire x Anima pairing. For the record, Lance with A Alan B Roy was still getting +5 atk, +2 def, +12 crit, +12 cev, +12 hit, +25 avo. That's actually better than what Fire x Earth would give, aside from the fact Lance needed to hang with two units while Mia x Ike would only need to hang with one.)

[Tables]

How exactly would you define 'balanced' here? Are you suggesting that any given character in any given chapter should desire all support bonuses equally? Because a character like Mia is always going to desire Earth or Thunder over Heaven, and nobody is going to want to support Rafiel or Leanne, ever. Unless every support gives the exact same bonuses, you will never truly 'balance' them, and even then some supports will still be more desireable than others due to greater speed or shared movement/role.

And affinities simply cannot be broken by their very nature. An individual character might be broken, and their affinity might contribute to that, but changing the affinity around will also affect all other units with that affinity. Even if you feel that Laura needs to give stronger support bonuses, giving stronger bonuses to Haar and Sothe will simply make them more broken. I Eat Tables implies that a WaterxThunder support is somehow broken, but I don't see Mordecai/Kyza or Mist/Shinon being catapulted up the tier list as a result.

IThe aim is simply that the affinities will, in general, give boosts balanced enough that if characters could choose their affinities then the choice would be very open and perhaps 1/8th of characters would choose each affinity (give or take) - I suppose if we could be bothered we could go through, decide what each and every character wants in terms of boosts, then balance the affinities around that. I know that it's impossible to completely balance them, but you can at least make them a lot closer in terms of usefulness - after all, the difference between Earth/Water, and Heaven/Wind is pretty big.

I never implied anything about individual characters, in fact, I was pretty much adhering to the implied rules in the first post: Balancing based on their boosts and not quantity or quality of characters. I never implied Water x Thunder is broken - I simply stated it gives well above average boosts which should be reduced if things are to be balanced (Water x Thunder/Dark gives perhaps the best boost outside of Earth supports, and it's arguably better than Earth x Fire/Light and probably better than Earth x Wind/Heaven). Not to mention I never said anything about support boosts being big enough to completely change the tier list - although I expect a few changes might occur with my noted changes, especially where Earth or Water affinities are just above Wind/Heaven affinitier.

Edit: Regarding what Narga just said: I think part of what IS did to balance that was the rounding up rather than down of boosts, plus the fact that supports are MUCH easier to make, given that each person had a lot more options and they're a lot quicker. I'm not so sure on FE6 or 7, but in FE8 it was hard for most supports except the very fastest to reach above a B rank by the end of the game - here you can have A ranks in about 6 chapters, with anyone in your team.

Edited July 1, 2010 by I Eat Tables

[Narga_Rocks]

Edit: Regarding what Narga just said: I think part of what IS did to balance that was the rounding up rather than down of boosts, plus the fact that supports are MUCH easier to make, given that each person had a lot more options and they're a lot quicker. I'm not so sure on FE6 or 7, but in FE8 it was hard for most supports except the very fastest to reach above a B rank by the end of the game - here you can have A ranks in about 6 chapters, with anyone in your team.

I still like the idea of PoR Mia getting GBA affinities. It translates decently to Ike x Mia in RD depending on what you do to Earth, but it's especially fun in PoR where she can get +5 mt and +25 crit with her A Fire x Fire and B Fire x Light. Even gets +20 avo from that.

[nflchamp]

Heaven being undesired is a direct effect of hit rates not being a big factor in the game. At least not by the time a support comes around.