Weapon Durability vs Weapon Effects

[NekoKnight]

That's not unique to Fates. It used to be known as Weapon Weight. shotsfired

I know but they did more with it here to make it balanced, interesting and better explained than in previous titles. With weapons that affect doubling rates, you have weapons that slow you down, weapons that speed you up and others that increase the likelihood of you AND the opponent doubling.

[Baldrick]

I know but they did more with it here to make it balanced, interesting and better explained than in previous titles. With weapons that affect doubling rates, you have weapons that slow you down, weapons that speed you up and others that increase the likelihood of you AND the opponent doubling.

Mechanically, it's similar to the older games in the series. Stuff like the Silver weapon penalties are more progressive.

[Great Geargia Gateway]

Which FE had the best balancing?

[Jedi]

Which FE had the best balancing?

FE's never been balanced really. The answer to that will be quite different from a number of people.

But there has never been a truly balanced FE, in terms of classes I could maybe argue FE12, but meanwhile the character balance was horrendous.

[Psyruby]

Which FE had the best balancing?

Too many factors. Difficulty, the fact that none of them are really balanced, and that balance wasn't important cause there was no one to PvP. Like there was never a reason to balance the games other than to make it feel like you were progressing through the story, and that's progression balance, and not real balance.

[Jedi]

Too many factors. Difficulty, the fact that none of them are really balanced, and that balance wasn't important cause there was no one to PvP. Like there was never a reason to balance the games other than to make it feel like you were progressing through the story, and that's progression balance, and not real balance.

I will say, balance or at least knowing the best units, is pretty key to those who like LTC runs, but they are a smaller bunch of course, I mean I do those types of runs. It becomes obvious who the best units are for an overall fastest progression this way, but at the same time it's a single player game where the player is the variable on who is used and who gets the resources, attention and bias yeah.

Edited July 23, 2015 by Jedi

[Psyruby]

The S rank weapons do have their uses, but being better than Iron over the course of two rounds of combat isn't great, especially if you need more consistent damage output that you could get with something like Steel. Furthermore, I might be wrong, but comparing over the course of two rounds of combat like that doesn't seem like an entirely fair comparison because if you use the weapon again on the second round, your Strength will still be halved on the third round, so you have to keep accounting for that until a round where you don't use the S rank weapon.

Silver weapons seem much easier to use than half Strength weapons for "need high damage now" purposes.

So, I have gotten confirmation that after the second round when using an S rank weapon, your Str is returned to full power. Which means, my methods would work. The S rank axe has the same power as a steel axe(on average), 5 more acc than an iron axe, and 15 more critical.

[astrophys]

A S-rank weapon would basically be the choice for doing something like "I want that enemy dead NOW". It sacrifices power in one round to stack on the power into the first round, a round which may leave there no enemy left to fight back if it kills them off the bat.

[CocoaGalaxy]

So, I have gotten confirmation that after the second round when using an S rank weapon, your Str is returned to full power. Which means, my methods would work. The S rank axe has the same power as a steel axe(on average), 5 more acc than an iron axe, and 15 more critical.

They halve strength, not weapon might. You'll be losing (since you are a berserker) about 15-20 damage or so

[Psyruby]

They halve strength, not weapon might. You'll be losing (since you are a berserker) about 15-20 damage or so

I know, I took 20 Mt(cause you lose 20 Str) away from the S rank Axe in the second swing to simulate the effects, and if you average the first and second swing, it has 12 Mt, which is the steel axes Mt.

(22 + 2)/2 = 12 Mt, 75 acc, 15 Crit

Edited July 23, 2015 by Psyruby

[CyborgZeta]

I don't really have a preference either way. After all, I love FE4, and durability might as well have not even existed in that game.

While I think Fates removing durability turned out better than expected, I find Silvers and S rank weapons to be generally useless. I've never needed the extra strength that would make those debuffs worth it.

[MCProductions]

I've yet to play the game, 2016 cannot come soon enough, but on paper at least, I love the new weapon mechanics. I can actually use the legendary weapons now before the last chapter, and that is awesome to me. The debuffs are a perfectly reasonable trade-off for a system that is not a detriment whatsoever in FE1, FE3, FE4, FE8, FE11, FE12, and FE13 due to how much money those games give you anyway. Discounting the 2 remakes, that's 5 out of 10 games with durability as a mechanic where it felt tacked on, and completely pointless.

Heck, this is also the first game where all archers seem viable as units since Gaiden due to how awesome bows are.

[Kurrin]

I prefer effects over durability.

All these effects in, well, effect allow for more strategy. Do I take a risk with the negative effects of the stronger weapons?

Do I play it safe and stick with weaker weapons? What are good ways to use both effectively? Also, when there's durability in play,

I'm way too paranoid with losing rare weapons to the point that if a character can't use Armsthrift to guarantee 100% that

a weapon wouldn't be used up, the weapon will sit in my inventory collecting dust.

[Othin]

So after playing through all three Fates stories, I've started replaying Sacred Stones and it's really funny how hard it is to care about durability now.

"Use an Iron Sword? Why? I have this Rapier. It's better."

[GoXDS]

if we wanted more realism but not completely flawed, we can combine durability with shatter chance. while a weapon is in good condition, it'll use up durability. once that reaches 0, the weapon is now damaged (possibly weakened) and thus may break upon use. repairing it outside battle to restore it to normal. shatter chance by itself is completely flawed because 1% break can happen and potentially devastating. imagine prologue, your weapon breaks...

as for durability itself, Awakening definitely made it trivial. it shouldn't be brought back for the sake of it. if it's being brought back and is meaningful (limited stores and/or money) then, sure. otherwise, it's simply a nuisance. the mechanic itself also becomes meaningless in the last few chapters

Wt in the only other games I played (PoR/RD) were eh. in PoR, it was more relevant, but towards the second half of the game, it didn't mean anything except hinder a few of my enemies. it's also inherently unfair to Mages since they'll now care for every stat vs a physical unit that doesn't care for Mag at all. in RD, it was a non-issue. most if not all units past Dawn Brigade had enough Str to wield steel or heavier without consequence from recruitment. even in Dawn Brigade, the ones that wouldn't be able to use the Steel ones had really bad Str and/or growths and shouldn't be used anyways

as for Con-based Wt, that's probably better but has its own share of problems. it's now inherently unfair against female units (at least the way it's been implemented in the past). it makes character balancing a whole lot more important, and more likely to leave a much larger portion of recruits unusable.

Edited August 5, 2015 by GoXDS

[Dark Sage]

So after playing through all three Fates stories, I've started replaying Sacred Stones and it's really funny how hard it is to care about durability now.

"Use an Iron Sword? Why? I have this Rapier. It's better."

Counterpoint, I've been playing Radiant Dawn recently and I've had to plan and budget my weapons and gold for the Dawn Brigade to get them to function effectively while making sure I have enough uses of my best weapons (Brave Axe) to deal with key threats (Ike).

Even the GMs need some planning and intelligent play to avoid going broke when outfitting them. I've also had to think about how to best conserve some of my special weaponry like Hammers while still making the most out of them in the short term. I think main reason why weapon durability often doesn't mean that much is because the game tends to throw too much money at the player. In games where resources are more limited or where you have more stuff you need to budget for (like FE10 or FE12), durability can be an effective mechanic.

Plus you can do some fun things like deliberately equip a weapon about to break to keep a certain enemy alive, prevent the unit's death from swarming, etc.

Edited August 5, 2015 by Dark Sage

[Fujin]

I don't have the game but from what I've seen I like penalties better because in Awakening I had to slap Armsthrift on every unit to keep a powerful weapon from breaking. That's already one skill slot taken up for every unit if you want to keep your powerful weapon. 2 skill slots if you include Limit Breaker to ensure the weapon never breaks. Hammernes are so rare. Not much variety left with 2 skill slots available since another will definitely be taken up by an offensive proc skill. The new system also balances broken weapons like braves because they don't activate when you defend and they reduce your stats.