Light Magic & Mages Discussion

[TheWill]

Recently playing Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, I can't help but notice the huge similarities between Micaiah and Linde's Fire Emblem: Heroes skillset. I can't see Micaiah serving any other role than damage dealer and she'd obviously have her iconic ardent sacrifice mechanic, so I wondered what they could even do to differentiate them? At first, I thought they could just make Micaiah a different coloured unit, however with the treatment of Linde, Julia and Lucius, I actually get the impression the developers don't really no what to do with light magic in general. Thus, I wanted to discuss other people's opinion on this matter. First and foremost, if memory serves correct, the primary light-magic wielders in the Fire Emblem series are: 

• Linde (FE1) Not really recognized as a light magic user, just Aura is her signature weapon.
• Deidre & Julia (FE4)
• Linoan (FE5)
• Lucius (FE7) Now relegated into a healer. 
• Artur (FE8)
• Micaiah & Sephiran (FE10)

I assume we could also assign other units such as Gotoh and certain Bishops into this category, but I'm unsure where we should draw the line since a lot of them are commonly recognised as healers over magicians. Similarly, characters like Lekain and Valtome are likely not going to be featured in the game, at least for a very, very long time. Micaiah will most likely get Rexaura as her final weapon, removing any desire for Lekain anyhow. Now with that out of the way, onto the discussion.

First, the current in-game examples of light-tomes we have are Julia's Book of Naga and Linde's Aura. This instantly raises eyebrows as both units belong to different coloured groups. Their colours were chosen based on their prior accessible skills (in Linde's case, lightning and thus blue and for Julia, she got wind spells and thus green). Simply put, it doesn't look like light magic has any delegated colour for units to be assigned to. This is weird because of the fact that dark magic users (the counterpart to light magic) are located only in the red group, allowing us to hypothesize future dark magic users such as Canas or Lyon will also belong to the red-class group. If dark mages are assigned to a particular group, why aren't light magic users? I think this colour differentiation is mainly due to the fact that there are no weaker variants of light magic such as Lighting or Divine currently in the game like Flux is. Whilst these may be accessible in future content, for units that are already released such as Julia and Lucius who should be apart of this supposed group, they likely won't be changed due to changing units of whom people have already invested in is a bad practice.

Next, that raises the question of what's going to happen in the future? Will the future light mages get a colour associated with them? What will happen to the remaining light mages? These are the first discussion points I thought of, however I'm sure there are more anyone else is free to raise, discuss and the like. 

There are a few options they could do. They could keep the 'light mage system' as it currently is and pass them to various colours and just have their final tomes be the light tome or delegate the monk/light mage into a healer like Lucius. I can see this for Linoan or Sephiran (although, I also funnily can't because of his iconic tome Creiddylad) and would be outraged by some such as Lucius or Arthur. Initially, people had argued light mages were in the blue colour because of the fact that they counter reds (dark mages), however there isn't enough evidence to suggest this with Julia going against it and there being no weaker-level light spells. We can assume Linde and Julia's colours were specified based on their prior accessible spells. To be honest, I'd prefer if they treated light mages similar to how they treated dark mages and assign them a particular colour, at least for the remaining monks/light mages. What does everyone else think?

[Hawk King]

Micaiah seems to me like she will end up a red tome user in Heroes. If she does end up blue, I would imagine her stats will be very close to Lilina and Sanaki. Extremely high Atk with mediocre Spd, Whereas Linde has both high Atk and high Spd. Plus, she will have her own special tome with an added effect to it. 

10 minutes ago, SlipperySlippy said:

This is weird because of the fact that dark magic users (the counterpart to light magic) are located only in the red group

Odin says hi.

[De Geso]

Considering that Odin is a blue dark mage, I think IS is sort of treating magic like a universal weapon type regardless of the type of spell (as in, regardless of anima/light/dark) and unless it's very obvious (Fire is red afaik) the color will just be assigned based on balance/convenience/whatever, or depending on their lower-tier spells (a unit starting with Fire will be red, etc.)

It could also have to do with the specific unit or spell but I don't know about that to be honest as there's not much indication there. 

Edited March 31, 2017 by YouSquiddinMe

[TheWill]

15 minutes ago, YouSquiddinMe said:

Considering that Odin is a blue dark mage, I think IS is sort of treating magic like a universal weapon type regardless of the type of spell (as in, regardless of anima/light/dark) and unless it's very obvious (Fire is red afaik) the color will just be assigned based on balance/convenience/whatever, or depending on their lower-tier spells (a unit starting with Fire will be red, etc.)

It could also have to do with the specific unit or spell but I don't know about that to be honest as there's not much indication there. 

21 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

Micaiah seems to me like she will end up a red tome user in Heroes. If she does end up blue, I would imagine her stats will be very close to Lilina and Sanaki. Extremely high Atk with mediocre Spd, Whereas Linde has both high Atk and high Spd. Plus, she will have her own special tome with an added effect to it. 

Odin says hi.

I actually wanted to ask you guys if I missed any dark mages who aren't under the red category, however done a quick check with Sophia/Ray/Henry/Tharja and though I was good and of course, I embarrassingly miss Odin! My aplogies, Fates is the only game I haven't played. 

However, I would like to note a particular distinction. Odin in Fire Emblem: Heroes is a thunder mage, not a dark mage. Similar to how Lucius is a healer, not a monk. This is likely due to the fact his starting weapon in Fates is the Thunder tome. The dark-mage tomes such as Flux & Fenrir are specifically only located in the red-colour section.

Edited March 31, 2017 by SlipperySlippy

[LuxSpes]

I personally really hope they don't make Micaiah into a staff user like they did to Lucius. My hope for her would be like a blue version of Sanak and Juliai. Sky high Atk and Res, but low Def, Spd and HP. Rexaura would be nice, but I can't shake the feeling that they might give her Thany (if they do, I hope they don't remove the horse effectiveness and only keep the armor one since armors already have sub-par res for the most part, so effective magic damage is kind of overkill). 

11 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

Micaiah seems to me like she will end up a red tome user in Heroes. If she does end up blue, I would imagine her stats will be very close to Lilina and Sanaki. Extremely high Atk with mediocre Spd, Whereas Linde has both high Atk and high Spd. Plus, she will have her own special tome with an added effect to it. 

Odin says hi.

Odin has thunder tomes before getting Blarblade, unlike the red dark mage who get Flux and Ruin as their first two tome.So technically, Odin is a thunder mage in Heroes.

[De Geso]

2 minutes ago, SlipperySlippy said:

I actually wanted to ask you guys if I missed any dark mages who aren't and of course, I embarrassingly miss Odin! My aplogies, Fates is the only game I haven't played. 

However, I would like to note a particular distinction. Odin in Fire Emblem: Heroes is a thunder mage, not a dark mage. Similar to how Lucius is a healer, not a monk. This is likely due to the fact his starting weapon in Fates is the Thunder tome. The dark-mage tomes such as Flux & Fenrir are specifically only located in the red-colour section.

Fair point. I actually have never used Odin in Heroes so I didn't know that he only had Thunder tomes before Blarblade - that's interesting. Makes me wonder why they chose Odin over the litany of non-dark mages and didn't just give Odin a few dark tomes and have him take Henry's spot...

[Hawk King]

7 minutes ago, LuxSpes said:

Odin has thunder tomes before getting Blarblade, unlike the red dark mage who get Flux and Ruin as their first two tome.So technically, Odin is a thunder mage in Heroes.

It doesn't matter what he was made in Heroes. In his game he is a dark mage and they made him blue color in Heroes. Lucius was a light mage in his game and they made him a healer. It just goes to show that the color they assign characters in Heroes has no rhyme or reason in conjunction to their classes in their respective games.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Hawk King

[Troykv]

I think Micaiah will be the Sanaki/Julia Blue Mage equivalent

In the other side, probably we don't have a dedicated spot for Light Magician because prior to Julia's Release, pure light-based character weren't a thing (unlike the Dark Mages that include characters like Tharja, Sophia and Raigh).

Well... at least the remaining Actual Dark Mages that left aren't a lot (Salem, Niime, Canas, Knoll and Pelleas), the other can be associated to another color if it's neccesary.

[TheWill]

3 minutes ago, LuxSpes said:

I personally really hope they don't make Micaiah into a staff user like they did to Lucius. My hope for her would be like a blue version of Sanak and Juliai. Sky high Atk and Res, but low Def, Spd and HP. Rexaura would be nice, but I can't shake the feeling that they might give her Thany (if they do, I hope they don't remove the horse effectiveness and only keep the armor one since armors already have sub-par res for the most part, so effective magic damage is kind of overkill). 

Odin has thunder tomes before getting Blarblade, unlike the red dark mage who get Flux and Ruin as their first two tome.So technically, Odin is a thunder mage in Heroes.

That'd sounds great to me. If they continue their current trend towards light mages and only make their final tome a light magic spell, I can see Micaiah fitting well as the red alternative. With the current system however, characters such as Linoan or Arthur are in a very peculiar spot and will likely be shafted into staff users. That's probably the main reason I'd prefer if they took a similar approach to dark magic like they do for light magic. Blue is quite fitting since it beats reds, so I'd probably place it there. 

As for your idea with Micaiah, that sounds great to me. Making her a magic nuke would akin to Lilina would definitely differentiate her from Linde whilst keeping her ardent sacrifice. I wouldn't be surprised to see some ally buffs on her too similar to Eirika. 

I honestly thought Thani would be the choice too since it's her iconic weapon, but isn't it similar to placing a rapier as ones final weapon? If it had less might than other final weapons with horse effectiveness similar to Naga being good against dragons, it'd still be very worth it. 

2 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

It doesn't matter what he was made in Heroes. In his game he is a dark mage and they made him blue color in Heroes. Lucius was a light mage in his game and they made him a healer. It just goes to show that the color they assign characters in Heroes has no rhyme or reason in conjunction to their classes in their respective games.

The difference is, they didn't make Odin a dark mage in this game. I was speaking in the context of only Fire Emblem: Heroes on what they'll do. For example, Aversa is a dark mage and a flier. We'll likely see her become a flying red mage who uses dark tomes. Odin was originally a dark mage, however in this game they changed his class to be a thunder mage. It's true that Odin is a dark mage who had turned blue in the overall context, however he's more align with a less extreme version of Lucius where they changed him from his initial class.

They didn't create a blue dark mage, is what I'm trying to say. They changed a dark mage to a blue unit.

[Othin]

It's weird how there's no Lightning/Shine/Divine alternate weapon tree in blue or green to match the alternate dark weapon tree in red. It makes it trickier to make light mages feel implemented right: both Linde and Julia have to use elemental magic on their earlier weapon levels (not that they're ever available below 5* anyway), and while Linde can use elemental magic from the start, Julia can't. Which I guess means there would be nothing stopping Micaiah from using wind or thunder magic either before learning a personal light tome at 5*, I guess. Either Thani or Rexaura could work, but I'm inclined to lean Rexaura because the personal ultimate weapons in Heroes so far have included weapons that in the original games were ultimate weapons but not personally locked (like Parthia) but not weapons that were personally locked but not ultimate weapons (like Wolf Beil). Thani could work as green, but Rexaura would probably have to be blue because of the association with Linde and her regular Aura.

[Vaximillian]

I hope Micaiah will be blue, and her signature weapon will be armour-effective Thani.

[DraceEmpressa]

19 minutes ago, Troykv said:

 

Well... at least the remaining Actual Dark Mages that left aren't a lot (Salem, Niime, Canas, Knoll and Pelleas), the other can be associated to another color if it's neccesary.

Keep in mind that in Heroes, we can also summon characters that normally shouldn't be playable on our side.  We can't say if they are enemy, they are automatically put into Grand Hero Battle as we see Eldigan and Reinhardt in the normal gacha pool. That said, major dark mages like Lyon and Julius could also be red. 

Lyon is red... Ephraim is blue.... Oh IS why must you do this to me. 

But then this way the fact Loptyr is advantageous to Naga is hilarious. 

[Troykv]

18 minutes ago, DraceEmpressa said:

Keep in mind that in Heroes, we can also summon characters that normally shouldn't be playable on our side.  We can't say if they are enemy, they are automatically put into Grand Hero Battle as we see Eldigan and Reinhardt in the normal gacha pool. That said, major dark mages like Lyon and Julius could also be red. 

Lyon is red... Ephraim is blue.... Oh IS why must you do this to me. 

But then this way the fact Loptyr is advantageous to Naga is hilarious. 

Oh, you're are right, but I thing the only viable options are Lyon, Julius and Aversa...

Oh gods no... I haven't though in that possiblity... dude, the simple idea of freaking Julius and his Loptyr having advantage against Julia makes me cringe... a lot... It doesn't make in my mind in any form... and this mistake can't be fixed... freaking Green Julia and the Julius's complete red association (red hair, fire and dark are his main weapons).

Edited March 31, 2017 by Troykv

[Vaximillian]

17 minutes ago, DraceEmpressa said:

But then this way the fact Loptyr is advantageous to Naga is hilarious. 

Well, Eliwood can't one-shot Ninian anymore, iykwim.

[TheWill]

37 minutes ago, Troykv said:

I think Micaiah will be the Sanaki/Julia Blue Mage equivalent

In the other side, probably we don't have a dedicated spot for Light Magician because prior to Julia's Release, pure light-based character weren't a thing (unlike the Dark Mages that include characters like Tharja, Sophia and Raigh).

Well... at least the remaining Actual Dark Mages that left aren't a lot (Salem, Niime, Canas, Knoll and Pelleas), the other can be associated to another color if it's neccesary.

I agree with that assumption for Micaiah, it'd be nice. Although I don't think she'd be as slow as them two. I think she'd be closer to a supporty glass canon, maybe with some nice hone skills or something that naturally fits with ardent sacrifice (like desperation or vantage). 

As you said there's no association with pure light magic. If they treated dark magic like light magic and future dark mage units like Canas, Niime, etc become different coloured units, I suppose the incentive precedence for light magic to be its own distinguished colour but I don't see them making a blue-unit with flux for example.  

25 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

I hope Micaiah will be blue, and her signature weapon will be armour-effective Thani.

I can see everyone wanting Thani to be apart of her kit, I'd acutally like if they let her have either Rexaura or Thani so you could choose between the two. I don't see any other light mages using Rexaura sadly, so I'd like if Micaiah got it.

[salinea]

I feel like they care much more about overall balance than lore.

Someone pointed out to me on tumblr once that so many female character had been shifted to Green Mages (Nino, fRobin, arguably Julia) because of the amount of Green axe using units were male (and even there, they had to shift Raven to Green because there's just not a lot of popular axe using characters!)

It's obvious they took great care about spreading the special tomes across all three colours too (the Raven, the Wolf, and the Blade tomes I mean), and to also spread out different stat builds for mages.

What does that mean for Micaiah, I do not know. Maybe blue, maybe green depending on how they want to balance out various Lord characters I presume. And other minor light mages might end up as healers like Lucius which is :/

[Hawk King]

46 minutes ago, SlipperySlippy said:

The difference is, they didn't make Odin a dark mage in this game.

That's because there are no classes in this game. Only weapon types, and movement types. Just because some red tomes are called flux and ruin, it doesn't mean that those Heroes that use them are dark mages. They are simply red tomes used by some of the red tome users in this game. Flux and Ruin are the exact same as Fire and Elfire just different names, and they have the same attack power as their counterparts for green and blue. They messed up by choosing not to or not being able to have a green and blue version Flux and Ruin. They should have just made the Flux and Ruin users have Fire and Elfire, and scraped Flux and Ruin altogether.

[TheWill]

Just now, Hawk King said:

That's because there are no classes in this game. Only weapon types, and movement types. Just because some red tomes are called flux and ruin, it doesn't mean that those Heroes that use them are dark mages. They are simply red tomes used by some of the red tome users in this game. Flux and Ruin are the exact same as Fire and Elfire just different names, and they have the same attack power as their counterparts for green and blue. They messed up by choosing not to or not being able to have a green and blue version Flux and Ruin. They should have just made the Flux and Ruin users have Fire and Elfire, and scraped Flux and Ruin altogether.

Yeah but creating flux/ruin was meant to be used as an indication that they are dark mages, not fire mages. There aren't official classes, but characters can be categorised based on their skill set. I do agree however, there's not much point outside of thematic & visual appearance. 

[MaskedAmpharos]

I just don't understand why they don't have a weaker weapon branch for light magic (Lightning -> Shine) as I don't imagine it'd be difficult to implement. I'm just hoping Micaiah is a magic nuke and not a healer; past that I'm not particularly picky about color (hoping for blue though). 

[Ice Dragon]

47 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

It doesn't matter what he was made in Heroes. In his game he is a dark mage and they made him blue color in Heroes. Lucius was a light mage in his game and they made him a healer. It just goes to show that the color they assign characters in Heroes has no rhyme or reason in conjunction to their classes in their respective games.

The name of the class doesn't matter. Odin's Dark Mage class is not functionally different from a standard anima mage with access to Nosferatu.

The thing that determines the color of a (non-dragon) unit in Heroes is not their class, but the weapon they are holding. Because Odin uses Thunder instead of Flux as his first-tier weapon, he is a blue mage. It doesn't matter if you can use a particular weapon type, all that matters is what weapon you are holding right now.

 

My assumption is that Heroes will eventually add Lightning, Shine, Divine, and Divine+ as the vanilla light magic tree, though it would be kind of funny if they added Aura and Aura+ as the top-tier spell since their names are technically distinct from Linde's Aura in Japanese (Linde's Aura is just "Aura" whereas the generic Aura in the GBA games is "Argyraurae"). Of course, they might also use Rexaura and Rexaura+ considering wind magic uses Rexcalibur and Rexcalibur+.

My prediction is that the Lightning tree will end up being blue. This gives it weapon triangle advantage over dark magic and matches the color of Linde's Aura.

Until the developers do something to the contrary, I'm convinced the reason Naga is green is due to its association with divine dragons. Fae is the only dragon that transforms unambiguously into a divine dragon and is green.

[Hawk King]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Of course, they might also use Rexaura and Rexaura+ considering wind magic uses Rexcalibur and Rexcalibur+.

There is no Rexcalibur+ in this game (yet at least) Merric's 4th tome is the Excalibur and Julia's is Naga. All other green tome users have the wolf raven and blade tomes. And then bunny Camilla with the green eggs.

[Ice Dragon]

14 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

There is no Rexcalibur+ in this game (yet at least) Merric's 4th tome is the Excalibur and Julia's is Naga. All other green tome users have the wolf raven and blade tomes. And then bunny Camilla with the green eggs.

I'm pretty sure I've seen a generic enemy mage with Rexcalibur+. Generic enemies exist and have feelings, too.

[Hawk King]

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

I'm pretty sure I've seen a generic enemy mage with Rexcalibur+. Generic enemies exist and have feelings, too.

Damn, I totally forgot about them. I feel so ashamed.

[Vaximillian]

14 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I'm pretty sure I've seen a generic enemy mage with Rexcalibur+. Generic enemies exist and have feelings, too.

I'm pretty sure I haven't seen a generic enemy mage with Rexcalibur+, only with Excalibur, flier effectiveness and everything.

Guess I need to look at them generics more carefully.

[Arcanite]

17 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I'm pretty sure I've seen a generic enemy mage with Rexcalibur+. Generic enemies exist and have feelings, too.

Saw a generic with gale force once. 

Didn't really go too well, that's for sure XD