How Should IS Fix the Power Creep?

[Ice Dragon]

9 minutes ago, Hilda said:

The main stat everyone is looking out for in a Character is SPD.

That's a way too narrow way to look at it. Looking at each stat individually is meaningless.

Having all the Spd in the world doesn't help you if you aren't doing damage or if you die in a single hit. Furthermore, having low Spd is advantageous for extremely bulky units since it allows them to charge up one more point of special gauge before their second counterattack with Quick Riposte.

The units that have trouble in the current metagame are those that severely lack in Atk and units with balanced stats all-round.

Opponents are most dangerous when they are alive, meaning the most effective way to win is to play one-round-one-kill. This can be accomplished in many ways, but the they generally revolve around a few strategies:

• High Atk and high Spd with Brave Desperation or a Firesweep weapon to safely take a kill without taking damage.
• High Atk with a Brave weapon and Death Blow to kill an opponent in two hits.
• High Def and Res with Quick Riposte, a Killer weapon, and a 3-cooldown special skill (4-cooldown if your unit is sufficiently slow) to take minimal damage and kill an opponent on the second counterattack.
• Distant Counter, Triangle Adept, and Quick Riposte to take zero damage and demolish enemies using weapon triangle advantage.
• Litrblade.

Units with low Atk have the issue that they simply cannot deal enough damage to one-round kill an opponent, even with massive Spd, because increasing your Spd when you already double attack doesn't increase your damage.

Units with balanced stats have the issue where they aren't fast enough to double attack naturally, they aren't strong enough to use a Brave weapon to make up for their lack of Spd, and they aren't bulky enough to be used on the enemy phase, which puts them in a position where they are out-performed in every possible role by a unit more specialized for that role.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

9 hours ago, Arcanite said:

 

Roy though.... he can galeforce sweep teams. And as Bartozio said he's a great offensive sword cav. He's actually one of the best player phase sword units in the game now.

Ike on the other hand.... I'm not so sure.

Ike is Kektor+

 

As for Roy calling him the best player phase sword is severaly understating how good he really is

[Kruggov]

1 hour ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Ike is Kektor+

Well, try as he might, he can never run DC+QR+Vantage like Hector can.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

48 minutes ago, Kruggov said:

Well, try as he might, he can never run DC+QR+Vantage like Hector can.

Hector, without any support actually did not use the Vantage all that well. Most unit who he would handle is likely to double him, forcing an early Bonfire. With that used up Hector's 52 base isn't too strong. Camus have 51 ATK and he had his issues in offensive front

Ike is Hector+ essentially because, imo his chance to die to stupid shit that is buffed Rein is lower than Hector because of Urvan, while they functions the same 90% of the time.

[Hilda]

11 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

That's a way too narrow way to look at it. Looking at each stat individually is meaningless.

Having all the Spd in the world doesn't help you if you aren't doing damage or if you die in a single hit. Furthermore, having low Spd is advantageous for extremely bulky units since it allows them to charge up one more point of special gauge before their second counterattack with Quick Riposte.

The units that have trouble in the current metagame are those that severely lack in Atk and units with balanced stats all-round.

Opponents are most dangerous when they are alive, meaning the most effective way to win is to play one-round-one-kill. This can be accomplished in many ways, but the they generally revolve around a few strategies:

• High Atk and high Spd with Brave Desperation or a Firesweep weapon to safely take a kill without taking damage.
• High Atk with a Brave weapon and Death Blow to kill an opponent in two hits.
• High Def and Res with Quick Riposte, a Killer weapon, and a 3-cooldown special skill (4-cooldown if your unit is sufficiently slow) to take minimal damage and kill an opponent on the second counterattack.
• Distant Counter, Triangle Adept, and Quick Riposte to take zero damage and demolish enemies using weapon triangle advantage.
• Litrblade.

Units with low Atk have the issue that they simply cannot deal enough damage to one-round kill an opponent, even with massive Spd, because increasing your Spd when you already double attack doesn't increase your damage.

Units with balanced stats have the issue where they aren't fast enough to double attack naturally, they aren't strong enough to use a Brave weapon to make up for their lack of Spd, and they aren't bulky enough to be used on the enemy phase, which puts them in a position where they are out-performed in every possible role by a unit more specialized for that role.

well yes I oversimplified it. Fact still stands that SPD is an excellent Defense and Offense Stat though, which is really the root of the problem.
I think an alternate form of B-Slot Windsweep/Watersweep skill would help very Slow units. While those 2 Skills were answers to Distant/Close Counter, they are very niche, because they require high Speed for usage and thus cut your offense in half for a safe attack.
Some kind of Reverse B-Slot skill for slow units like Earthparry: "If Unit is attacked and oponnent SPD is >5 Unit SPD oponnents follow up attack will be parried (0 dmg). If Unit DEF > 5 oponnent DEF potential follow up attack damage will be reflected. Unit can not Counterattack." Infantery users only
Waterparry: "If Unit is attacked and oponnent SPD is >5 Unit SPD oponnents follow up attack will be parried (0 Dmg). If Unit RES > 5 oponnent RES potential follow up attack damage will be refelected. Unit can not Counterattack." Infantery users only
Worst case scenario: your follow up attack is a Special skill that activates and you basicly just killed yourself by getting the potential damage reflected back at you.
This is just an example, where a low SPD very bulky unit with shit Spd stat can actually benefit from their weakness. I am not the best in creating skills, but passives that turn low SPD/Attack units into something usefull are severly lacking in this game.

[Ice Dragon]

4 minutes ago, Hilda said:

well yes I oversimplified it. Fact still stands that SPD is an excellent Defense and Offense Stat though, which is really the root of the problem.
I think an alternate form of B-Slot Windsweep/Watersweep skill would help very Slow units. While those 2 Skills were answers to Distant/Close Counter, they are very niche, because they require high Speed for usage and thus cut your offense in half for a safe attack.
Some kind of Reverse B-Slot skill for slow units like Earthparry: "If Unit is attacked and oponnent SPD is >5 Unit SPD oponnents follow up attack will be parried (0 dmg). If Unit DEF > 5 oponnent DEF potential follow up attack damage will be reflected. Unit can not Counterattack." Infantery users only
Waterparry: "If Unit is attacked and oponnent SPD is >5 Unit SPD oponnents follow up attack will be parried (0 Dmg). If Unit RES > 5 oponnent RES potential follow up attack damage will be refelected. Unit can not Counterattack." Infantery users only
Worst case scenario: your follow up attack is a Special skill that activates and you basicly just killed yourself by getting the potential damage reflected back at you.
This is just an example, where a low SPD very bulky unit with shit Spd stat can actually benefit from their weakness. I am not the best in creating skills, but passives that turn low SPD/Attack units into something usefull are severly lacking in this game.

It's not low-Spd units that need help, though. Units with low Spd have advantages that they can utilize, most notably being

• Their low Spd means you can rely on them to be double attacked, allowing them to use a special skill with a higher cooldown.
• Their low Spd means you have no reason not to run -Spd on them.
• Their low Spd means those stat points went elsewhere, resulting in units that can tank hits and hit extremely hard.
• Quick Riposte fixes most of their remaining problems. Weaponbreakers are also a good choice.

Units with middling Spd lose out on the top three points. They cannot be relied on to be double attacked by slow opponents, meaning using a stronger special skill with a higher cooldown loses them kills against the slow opponents that are bulky enough to survive. And, because they have points in Spd, they are either less bulky or less powerful than those that dumped Spd completely.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I could see them doing a killer/slaying replacement for -Wolf tomes. Especially since they have 4 less MT than their melee counterparts instead of the typical 2 or 1. They also only have one wielder per tome, and all three of those characters are free units, so it makes sense for them to be one upped by some shiny new focus units.