Generals need better caps

[Juigi Kario]

Some people consider Speed broken in general anyway. Evasion itself is inherently luck-based. That wouldn't be the problem. The problem is the double-attacking concept. You do need to deal damage, but if you can, having only 4 points more than the opponent has its definite share of value.

But yeah, I can see we're on the same page about DEF in general, Big Klingy.

Edited July 27, 2010 by Juigi Kario

[Momo]

Yes, let's just ignore the whole thing about Master Crowns, Wrath, Resolve, magical where-the-hell-did-those-come-from PRF weapons in Part 3, free forging, etc, none of which altered the difficulty of the game relative to the JP version one whit.

Yes, let's. Other than the Master Crowns, those things are all ignorable.

[Renall]

I thought General was one of the best classes in SD, since due to the new avoid formula, avo is unreliable at best, so you need to be able to take a hit. In this game, it looks like they've taken a big hit, but that's mostly due to the different style of this game. The main threat from enemies is not high str or uber forged weapons, it's that they have these AND very high speed. So basically, if you can't avoid being doubled you're basically dead. Also, Axe using enemies are stronger and more frequent.

It's an interesting change, I would argue that in SD, Generals were one of the best classes, and swordmasters one of th worst. Now, it's the reverse.

I think the only reason General is even usable in the DS games is because of its base DEF and the notion of swapping a character with a decent growth into it (like Sedgar). If it didn't have the ridiculous base, it would be far harder to recommend it as a class.

And I still think it's excessively penalized.

[dondon151]

Yes, let's. Other than the Master Crowns, those things are all ignorable.

I highly disagree. Without the epic DB weapons, Nolan has a substantially harder time reaching 3HKO'd status against tigers, plus he can no longer OHKO everything with Beastfoe (with a 16 MT Steel Axe forge, he'll come up short against the weaker level 16 tigers until 20/6 with A Leo and 20/10 against the stronger ones). Without free forging, Sothe can no longer trivialize almost the entirety of part 1 with 7 MT Iron Knives (and in fact, you'll have a substantially more difficult time in part 1 in general due to the relative scarcity of forges for DB units). Without the more lenient Wrath mechanics, chapters such as 1-P and 2-1 would be more difficult, and without the more lenient Resolve mechanics, Mordecai no longer dominates in part 3.

These aren't ignorable in the least, as they apply to characters considered staples in efficient play.

[Interceptor]

These aren't ignorable in the least, as they apply to characters considered staples in efficient play.

I think that he meant to literally pretend that those things don't exist, because it undermined his implied counter-point about NoA localization, AKA the Interwebs version of saying "not in the face!", etc.

[Icon of Sin]

Without the epic DB weapons, Nolan has a substantially harder time reaching 3HKO'd status against tigers, plus he can no longer OHKO everything with Beastfoe (with a 16 MT Steel Axe forge, he'll come up short against the weaker level 16 tigers until 20/6 with A Leo and 20/10 against the stronger ones).

Hang on a second. Can't you use Bowguns or Crossbows for that? They're even buyable in the 3-6 shop. I'm looking at the RD enemy stats right now and the 3-6 Tigers should get OHKO'ed by a Beastfoe powered Bowgun bolt, as none of them have a combined HP+Def total higher than 72. You need Crossbows for that once they reach level 17 in 3-13, though.

[grandjackal]

Hang on a second. Can't you use Bowguns or Crossbows for that? They're even buyable in the 3-6 shop. I'm looking at the RD enemy stats right now and the 3-6 Tigers should get OHKO'ed by a Beastfoe powered Bowgun bolt, as none of them have a combined HP+Def total higher than 72. You need Crossbows for that once they reach level 17 in 3-13, though.

Bowguns don't give you additional defense unlike the Tarvos, which can accomplish the same mission as said weapon.

[Anouleth]

Hang on a second. Can't you use Bowguns or Crossbows for that? They're even buyable in the 3-6 shop. I'm looking at the RD enemy stats right now and the 3-6 Tigers should get OHKO'ed by a Beastfoe powered Bowgun bolt, as none of them have a combined HP+Def total higher than 72. You need Crossbows for that once they reach level 17 in 3-13, though.

Doesn't help his durability none, though, and it's nothing a 10/1 Leonardo couldn't do.

Goddamnit Etzel, I can't turn around once without running into your hips!

Edited July 28, 2010 by Slowking

[Momo]

I highly disagree. Without the epic DB weapons, Nolan has a substantially harder time reaching 3HKO'd status against tigers, plus he can no longer OHKO everything with Beastfoe (with a 16 MT Steel Axe forge, he'll come up short against the weaker level 16 tigers until 20/6 with A Leo and 20/10 against the stronger ones). Without free forging, Sothe can no longer trivialize almost the entirety of part 1 with 7 MT Iron Knives (and in fact, you'll have a substantially more difficult time in part 1 in general due to the relative scarcity of forges for DB units). Without the more lenient Wrath mechanics, chapters such as 1-P and 2-1 would be more difficult, and without the more lenient Resolve mechanics, Mordecai no longer dominates in part 3.

These aren't ignorable in the least, as they apply to characters considered staples in efficient play.

I think that he meant to literally pretend that those things don't exist, because it undermined his implied counter-point about NoA localization, AKA the Interwebs version of saying "not in the face!", etc.

No. What I'm saying is, going "Waah these weapons make the game easier" is fixed simply by not using them.

[Interceptor]

No. What I'm saying is, going "Waah these weapons make the game easier" is fixed simply by not using them.

It's not a problem to be "fixed".

Set aside for a moment that what you put in quotes was uttered by nobody but yourself, and let's also ignore that you're doing exactly what I said that you would. The point here was that NoA Fire Emblem localization has a history of dumbing things down before we get them: PoR is well-known, and RD has now been explained to you.

This is the end of the discussion, unless you want to get into a battle of semantics, which you will lose.

[Momo]

Holy shit man, get off your high horse. Your original post implied they would take out Lunatic mode, something they have not done since PoR.

[Charpig]

It seems to me that Generals will either kick ass or suck ass. In Blazing Sword, Sacred Stones, PoR, Radiant Dawn, and Shadow Dragon, they kick ass. It seems that in the Japanese Fire Emblems (which I haven't played yet) they suck ass.

In H5 mode of Shadow Dragon, characters with 30 Defense would take little or no damage from physical enemies, exceptions being the Manaketes and Medeus himself. Both Paladins and Generals got doubled by H5 Medeus, so neither of them was particularly better for the endgame. Hell, no matter what class you are, you have to have at least 27 Spd to not get doubled by Medeus, which is a tall order for anyone considering the shitty growths that characters have in that game. With regard to Res, most people had 0% Res growth in Shadow Dragon. The Paladin base Res was 6, General was 3. That doesn't mean crap against forged Thoron mages with 30+ Atk. Even as early as Chapter 6 you are facing mages with 20 Atk, which is still enough to make a 3 Res gain moot because you are losing over half of your health (or possibly all of it) to a single hit. So, you cannot tell me that Generals particularly suck in Shadow Dragon. Their weaknesses are the same as the other units. Almost everyone gets doubled by Medeus, and almost everyone has very bad Res and takes massive damage from the magic users. With regard to Hammers vs. Ridersbanes, there are a hell of a lot more enemy Ridersbanes than Hammers, which would in fact put the PALADIN at a bigger disadvantage. I have yet to play this game, though. Does Medeus still have 50 Atk (or higher) in Lunatic Mode? There is no doubt in my mind that he would still double Generals. And, what is the average Atk of physical enemies, lategame?

Someone in this topic said that Generals need some kind of skill to benefit nearby allies. I would suggest an ability to boost the Def and Res of allied units by 3. Any unit would benefit from that, and it would make Generals more useful. I personally think that Big Shield on a General is redundant, because the whole point of a General's Defense is to already take no damage from enemies. I just want Generals to kick ass like Oswin did in FE7. Use Generals or not, it's your choice entirely. I'm gonna use 'em. That was my two cents.

One last thing: No matter how high your caps are, they are meaningless if you can't reach them.

[General Spoon]

It seems to me that Generals will either kick ass or suck ass.

Why are you speaking of it as if its in the future? The game is already out.

[Anouleth]

It seems to me that Generals will either kick ass or suck ass. In Blazing Sword, Sacred Stones, PoR, Radiant Dawn, and Shadow Dragon, they kick ass. It seems that in the Japanese Fire Emblems (which I haven't played yet) they suck ass.

What are you talking about? Gilliam was awful in Sacred Stones and Gatrie/Brom were awful in Path of Radiance.

In H5 mode of Shadow Dragon, characters with 30 Defense would take little or no damage from physical enemies, exceptions being the Manaketes and Medeus himself. Both Paladins and Generals got doubled by H5 Medeus, so neither of them was particularly better for the endgame. Hell, no matter what class you are, you have to have at least 27 Spd to not get doubled by Medeus, which is a tall order for anyone considering the shitty growths that characters have in that game. With regard to Res, most people had 0% Res growth in Shadow Dragon. The Paladin base Res was 6, General was 3. That doesn't mean crap against forged Thoron mages with 30+ Atk. Even as early as Chapter 6 you are facing mages with 20 Atk, which is still enough to make a 3 Res gain moot because you are losing over half of your health (or possibly all of it) to a single hit. So, you cannot tell me that Generals particularly suck in Shadow Dragon. Their weaknesses are the same as the other units. Almost everyone gets doubled by Medeus, and almost everyone has very bad Res and takes massive damage from the magic users. With regard to Hammers vs. Ridersbanes, there are a hell of a lot more enemy Ridersbanes than Hammers, which would in fact put the PALADIN at a bigger disadvantage. I have yet to play this game, though. Does Medeus still have 50 Atk (or higher) in Lunatic Mode? There is no doubt in my mind that he would still double Generals. And, what is the average Atk of physical enemies, lategame?

Capped strength with Silver forges, I believe. So ranging all the way up to 50 attack on Berserkers.

Edited July 28, 2010 by Slowking

[Charpig]

Why are you speaking of it as if its in the future? The game is already out.

I meant Fire Emblem in general (no pun intended), not this particular game. Besides, New Mystery is not yet out in North America, where I live. I have heard that Generals are very bad units in FE6, but in FE7 Oswin and Wallace are considered good units. Generals can either be totally invincible and own the battlefield due to absurdly high Defense, or they can get doubled by every enemy on the map due to bad Speed and easily killed, not having enough Defense to cancel out damage. The latter seems to be the case in this game if we're facing Berserkers that have 50 Atk. I've been on both ends of the stick in my Fire Emblem gaming. That's what I meant when I said that Generals either kick ass or suck ass. I'm sure there are other classes that experience these extremes, it just seems to happen most often with Generals.

Edited July 28, 2010 by Charpig

[Paperblade]

... Wallace has never been considered good by anyone other than Link Arena players.

[Interceptor]

Holy shit man, get off your high horse. Your original post implied they would take out Lunatic mode, something they have not done since PoR.

Take your own advice. Regardless of what you inferred from my original comment, the snarky follow-up post made clear precisely what I was referring to. The failure after that, is yours alone. My point hasn't changed: based on past experience with the NoA localization process, I'd consider it fortunate for us to keep Lunatic mode. I don't consider it unlikely -- the hard work is already done, after all -- but there will still be the sense of a bullet just dodged, if we so happen to get an unadulterated version.

[arvilino]

Were the Radiant Dawn changes specifically made to make the game easier? To me it just seems like they were fixing problems the game had for the localised version. The Master Crown change just allowed more third tier units, rather than limiting you to just 7.

I can't remember exactly but was Wrath and Resolve at 10% in the Japanese version? the english version made them so that they'd activate at a reasonable health percentage. The PRF weapons make up for the DB poor stats in part 3, probably for the situation in their first run in which a player doesn't get the Beast Foe skill and overuses the large number of pre-promotes that leave the DB after part 1. Also the Japanese forging mechanics were just plain bad anyway.

The changes all seem justifiable without the idea of it being specifically toning down the game for the western audience. More like the NoA localised versions are a more complete version of the game.

[Tryhard]

We're kind of going off-topic here now. >_>

[Interceptor]

Were the Radiant Dawn changes specifically made to make the game easier? [...] The changes all seem justifiable without the idea of it being specifically toning down the game for the western audience. More like the NoA localised versions are a more complete version of the game.

We're not likely to ever know what the intentions of the localization team were. However, the results are undeniable. To call it making the game "more complete" as opposed to "easier" is nothing but semantic nonsense. Substance triumphs over form; a pig in a dress is still bacon.

[Juigi Kario]

I just looked at my Stat FAQ for SD.

Oddly enough, Paladins still capped Physical Defense at 30 and needed 22 personal points to cap. Why exactly? And why I or anybody else for that matter didn't notice this earlier to begin with is beyond me. Yeah, my FAQ even made use of the personal points concept, albeit without calling it such, but it takes me until after somebody points the issue's existence in the next game to catch such a glaring balance issue? What? Just...what?

Paladins are supposed to be hit-hard-and-fast units. They shouldn't be allowed to last too long.

Though to be fair, in Shadow Dragon, gaining Physical Defense reliably with anybody but the broken duo would be a pain. In New Mystery, you know something is wrong when a MAGE setup My Unit can reliably gain good Physical Defense in a matter of level ups.

Edited July 28, 2010 by Juigi Kario

[Rodykitty]

The stat cap is weird, but they normally don't reach the cap under normal circumstances and their Def base are lower than Generals, which is why nobody except WiFi players notices it.

It's not a glaring balance issue since on WiFi there are weakness hitting weapons to fight Paladins with, and units that double them, and in single player even reaching 20 Def is hard as it is without abuse. It is just an oversight in the stat cap designs.

Defense is nowhere near the most powerful stat unless dealing significant damage is unlikely or impossible. DEF always has to face the obstacle that is STR + Weapon Mt, and unless the combined average STR + Mt is much lower than a unit can get DEF, damage is still being done. Obviously more DEF is better than less DEF, but to call it the best stat is questionable in all but a handful of entries in the series. This argument completely falls on its face in games with low caps or Mt forging, assuming enemy STR is worth a damn.

No other stat drains a game of its challenge because you're supposed to be avoid dying (which makes great offensive strategies impressive). Look no further than Sedgar & Wolf in FEDS. Yes, they lag in efficiency but they're easy mode otherwise because the game wasn't meant for you to have such high Def units. Oswin is pretty easy mode too, it doesn't help there are other early game tanks along with him.

The fact that Lunatic mode has enemies as powerful as they are is telling the kind of telling as to how good Def is.

In games with low caps, notice how one of the games Armors have 10% Def growth and in the other there are hammer enemies to remove your armor. Yeah, they're telling you not to use n00b units.

Edited July 28, 2010 by Super FE3 Player

[Juigi Kario]

That's the thing, though. Paladin has the second highest Physical Defense base/cap difference out of all the reclass options, first place going to Warrior. Even Bishop, the 4th place class (3rd place being Dragon Knight) has only 19. (Sorceror has the same freaking caps as Sages. Don't ask me why, I can't begin to think of a good answer for that.) And, of course, after the first playthrough, somebody can just Class Swap to Armor Knight and gain Physical Defense that way. Heck, if class growths aren't changed by much and the Paladin wants some functioning Speed, being a part time Sniper works to gain some Speed without losing too much Physical Defense. Though like you say, it shouldn't affect the main gameplay. But it does get bothersome now if My Unit is any indication.

Meanwhile, while Oswin and the broken duo are inherently broken, we can agree that Physical Defense could use a revamp. It even says something when LUNATIC doesn't boost the enemy's Physical Defense. Or Magic Defense but that would be to avoid making the mages useless. Yep, even Lunatic has standards.

Edited July 28, 2010 by Juigi Kario

[Narga_Rocks]

Were the Radiant Dawn changes specifically made to make the game easier? To me it just seems like they were fixing problems the game had for the localised version. The Master Crown change just allowed more third tier units, rather than limiting you to just 7.

I can't remember exactly but was Wrath and Resolve at 10% in the Japanese version? the english version made them so that they'd activate at a reasonable health percentage. The PRF weapons make up for the DB poor stats in part 3, probably for the situation in their first run in which a player doesn't get the Beast Foe skill and overuses the large number of pre-promotes that leave the DB after part 1. Also the Japanese forging mechanics were just plain bad anyway.

The changes all seem justifiable without the idea of it being specifically toning down the game for the western audience. More like the NoA localised versions are a more complete version of the game.

No, it wasn't a hp% problem for Wrath and Resolve. Well, I guess it was in part, since I think both were 20% or something ridiculously low. No, the biggest problem was that they were str/skill % activated skills. As in, even when you get down to 19% hp, Resolve might not actually happen. In fact, it probably won't, given how even with 30 strength that's only a 30% chance of even getting resolve to happen. Wrath and Resolve were terrible. Almost completely useless.

Also, there were like 13 crowns or something in the original game. They got rid of all but 5 of them (this site kinda says 7 for NA, but only 5 can actually be attained). Now, while you might think that 13 sounds like a good number and allows more than enough tier 3 units, you have to actually get all of them. Thanks to the internet, yeah you'd probably know where all of them are, but you also need to wait for them and spend turns getting them. Also you can't create Nephinel in NM until 3-4.

And how were the Japanese forging mechanics bad? It forces you to sell stuff when you get down to 5 uses remaining so that you can make forges. It's an alternative to fe9 and fe11 were you can only forge once a chapter. It allows you to sometimes forge twice in a chapter, but you can't forge like RD English crazy where you can make 4 forges in 1-4, another 3 in 1-5, and make constant iron knife forges for Sothe to tear things up. Then in 3-2 go and forge another 5+ weapons for any RD unit that needs them. Then forge multiple hand axes in 3-8. Forging in RD is insane. The only reason I would argue fe11 forging to be more broken is forging effective weapons like Wing Spear and Ridersbane and Hammers and Wyrmslayers allowing you to break the game.

We're kind of going off-topic here now. >_>

And that post is kind of mini-modding. Particularly since you didn't even bother to say anything else in your post.

As for the off-topic-ness itself, well, I can't really defend it. The original topic is complaining about Generals' caps, so really anything pertaining to Generals in previous FE games is kinda okay because it compares them in this game to other games. However, the "NoA butchers FE games" type of posts don't really have anything to do with it.

Anyway, Paladins have much too high caps. Paladins in fe4 were actually kinda balanced (aside from Aless, duh) because they had lower caps across the board. Trade stats for move. Without that kind of trade-off, you get things like fe9 HM. Generals really should have 5+ more defence than anything else (if Generals get doubled a lot), though, and have the growths to actually reach it by around 20/10 or something in 2 tier games. Or have the speed to never get doubled if they lack the epic defence (of if other units also reach similar levels of defence).

Edited July 28, 2010 by Narga_Rocks

[Momo]

Take your own advice. Regardless of what you inferred from my original comment, the snarky follow-up post made clear precisely what I was referring to. The failure after that, is yours alone. My point hasn't changed: based on past experience with the NoA localization process, I'd consider it fortunate for us to keep Lunatic mode. I don't consider it unlikely -- the hard work is already done, after all -- but there will still be the sense of a bullet just dodged, if we so happen to get an unadulterated version.

Dude, calm the hell down. You seem really worked up over nothing.

They did not take out FE10's hard mode and they did not take out FE11's H5. The only mode they took out was FE9's maniac mode. That is my point.