Lopsided units.

[FailWood]

What do you think of units in Fire Emblem with lopsided stats or growths, where they're great in one or two stats, but terrible in other areas (Examples are units like Marty in Thracia, Barth in Binding Blade, Nyx in Fates, Arden in Heroes and Raphael in Three Houses)?  Do you like or dislike them (and who's your favorite if you do like them)?

[AnonymousSpeed]

I like 'em, they're pretty cool. Mostly I just like guys who hit really hard at the expense of everything else, because that's what a man would do. The same applies to an immovable wall.

Dorcas is the only good thing about FE7. Eventually I will play Thracia and report back on Marty.

Units who only have a ton of speed though? Weak. Wimpy losers. Waifish fish freaks. Bulk good.

[Shadow Mir]

They tend to suck, because more often than not their high stats are undermined by their low ones. It's hard to be useful when you have blatant stat holes that compromise your ability on the battlefield, especially when alternates exist that aren't so polarized. For example, Setsuna has excellent speed and pretty much nothing else. Needless to say, she compares very poorly to Takumi. Or Nyx, who is essentially a magical Gonzales. Or how about the many fighters that manages to be huge balls of strength and HP with nothing else to back those up? Of course, they get dropped like a sack of bricks because they just can't double, dodge, hit, or take a hit. That being said, Atlas in Shadows of Valentia is one of the rare exceptions who manages to not completely suck, and that's because of the way his game is designed.

[FailWood]

36 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I like 'em, they're pretty cool. Mostly I just like guys who hit really hard at the expense of everything else, because that's what a man would do. The same applies to an immovable wall.

 

36 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Eventually I will play Thracia and report back on Marty.

If I ever do play Thracia, Marty will definitely be part of my team.  Having a base of 0 in both Skill and Speed is too funny to not use.

[LJ_Reflet]

If I really like their character, I'll use them, but most of the time I find them hard to use since their bad stats tend to hold them back. I feel like Fates had a lot of lopsided units since--for some reason--a lot of characters have weird growths for their class archetype.

But when you mention lopsided units, Kagero is the first to come to mind tbh. Kagero is definitely up there in being one of the most lopsided units in Fates since she's all offense no defense, but her skill stat is terrible. Her amazing strength and speed take her 2 steps forward, but her terrible skill and defense take her 3 steps back imo. She's not a bad unit and is usable for sure, but I tend to favor the twins over her.

Rinkah is a weird one. She has skill, speed, and defense, but nothing else. She's a pretty bad unit, only offering the Hoshidans tanking capabilities since a lot of Hoshidans don't have that. But once again, her defense and speed take her 2 steps forward, but her bad everything else take her 8 steps back. (like WHY would they think it was a good idea to give someone 45% defense but 20% HP like ???)

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Dorcas is the only good thing about FE7. Eventually I will play Thracia and report back on Marty.

Currently playing Thracia 776. Kaga finally decided to give us good Axe-users, like Dagdar, Halvan, and Osian. Hell, Dalsin the Axe Armor is one of my power-houses right now. ...And then there's Marty. There's no real motive to field him over any of the aforementioned folks, least not that I see. High Con can help him Capture more foes, but his hit rates while capturing will be bad.

Anyway, I liked Nyx in Fates, although that was more for her character than for her performance as a unit. One who fits the "lopsided" mould, and is generally regarded as good, is Niime. I remember really being skeptical of her - a level 18 Druid, with 25 HP and 5 Defense? Is this a joke? And yet, her high weapon ranks combimed with 21 Magic, 20 Skill, and 18 Res certainly gave her some respectable uses.

Anyway, how viable a "lopsided" unit can be is a question of "which stats, in which game?" Not all stats are created equal, and different mechanics or design philosophy can affect the relative importance of each area.

[Shaky Jones]

I'm all for lopsided units. Push things to the extreme. Pursue your main talent. Can't master everything, unless you're Cord. Do you know how funny it is to have 20 strength on a basic unit but 8 to everything else? I love it. Especially strength. Why does Raphael need speed? Just kill them. Don't give them a counterattack. That 85 hp means he'll take those doubles even if ya mess up. One of my absolute favorite lopsided units is Darros. That guy has a 10% speed growth in SD, but carries a damn fine strength and defense growth. Specifically, armor Darros has a 60% growth rate in those 2 stats, which is a lot in Shadow Dragon. And the best part of lopsided units. There's that small, but very real chance they'll cap their bad stats anyways! Any growth unit can cap stats. Even regular ones probably will if trained to 20/20. But when Darros somehow caps speed, that's an irreplaceable memory right there. Bord's also a funny one. Bad speed, great strength. Easy to forget a hammer and wreck havoc against armor knights. Sure there's Barst, but he's boring, and Bord can quickly wield the silver axe. And yes, Marty having zero speed is iconic. It teaches a valuable lesson. Speed sucks. Con carries. 

Thanks to AnonymousSpeed for enlightening me of General Darros btw. Never even knew that until he suggested it.

2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Units who only have a ton of speed though? Weak. Wimpy losers. Waifish fish freaks. Bulk good.

Ah. You must love Wade. Well, most fighters really. And Barth. Or maybe Zeiss. Man had 20 strength at base. Whats not to love? Even Lilina has that 70 magic growth which goes very well with Gonzalez. Huh, maybe this is a large part of why you love Binding Blade. That's respectable.

3 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Dorcas is the only good thing about FE7. Eventually I will play Thracia and report back on Marty.

Well...I'm enjoying using Will right now.

He keeps getting strength and nothing else, which is hilarious for an archer. The man still barely kills fliers. Thanks game.

15 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I remember really being skeptical of her - a level 18 Druid, with 25 HP and 5 Defense? Is this a joke?

Hey man. If you got stabbed by a lance, you'd probably die immediately too. It adds immersion and realism.

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

But when you mention lopsided units, Kagero is the first to come to mind tbh. Kagero is definitely up there in being one of the most lopsided units in Fates since she's all offense no defense, but her skill stat is terrible. Her amazing strength and speed take her 2 steps forward, but her terrible skill and defense take her 3 steps back imo. She's not a bad unit and is usable for sure, but I tend to favor the twins over her.

Speaking of, I think Kaze is guilty of being such a unit himself. Excellent speed, but pretty much everything else being lacking makes him a case of two steps forward, but 7 steps back. Poison Strike is nice, but that can only help so much... Niles is more of the same, but without Poison Strike. The result? Their only use is their daughters.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Variety in stat distribution is a good thing. Balanced vs. extreme is a simple way to attempt to create unit variety. 

This said, as said directly above, it does depend on the game, the class, and the stats. For a long time in FE, Fighters, Myrmidons, and Knights were (and remain) classes with more unbalanced stat distributions that tended to be benched in favor of Cavaliers, which had pretty balanced stats. FE rewarded having "just enough" of a stat over a certain threshold to succeed and didn't incentivize excess enough.

Ranged player phase oriented characters and classes tend to like or get away more with being lopsided. If you don't intend to be counterattacked very much, you can almost forget HP/Def/Res and focus on assuring ORKOs.

 

2 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Her amazing strength and speed take her 2 steps forward, but her terrible skill and defense take her 3 steps back imo. She's not a bad unit and is usable for sure, but I tend to favor the twins over her.

I on the other hand think all three ninjas are fairly good, an excellent case of distinctive stat spreads for a class. If anything I would consider Kagero the best, sure Kaze does a better job with magetanking and Saizo can mix up his offense with good Flame Shuriken usage, but the Ninja class like Archers and magic users is defined by player phase usage from ranges where they don't stand a great chance if you ask me, so durability is the last of their concerns. And regarding accuracy, I would agree with you -if were talking Yumi, 85 Hit on an Iron Shuriken is enough that I don't ever recall having hit issues with Kagero.

2 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Rinkah is a weird one. She has skill, speed, and defense, but nothing else. She's a pretty bad unit, only offering the Hoshidans tanking capabilities since a lot of Hoshidans don't have that. But once again, her defense and speed take her 2 steps forward, but her bad everything else take her 8 steps back. (like WHY would they think it was a good idea to give someone 45% defense but 20% HP like ???)

Rinkah isn't extreme for me. Her personal growths might be, but then you add in her class growths and bases. She has bad Str in a class that is supposed to have good Str, she has good Skl in a class with bad Skl, good Spd with bad Spd class, bad with good HP class. Things congeal positive-with-positive in Def alone.

The result, Rinkah is actually fairly balanced. But, she is bad-balanced, failing to cross the thresholds in each stat necessary to ace things, making her good at nothing.

[AnonymousSpeed]

1 hour ago, Shaky Jones said:

Thanks to AnonymousSpeed for enlightening me of General Darros btw. Never even knew that until he suggested it.

I am of the opinion that General Darros is sufficiently powerful to count as "meta".

1 hour ago, Shaky Jones said:

Ah. You must love Wade. Well, most fighters really. And Barth. Or maybe Zeiss. Man had 20 strength at base. Whats not to love? Even Lilina has that 70 magic growth which goes very well with Gonzalez. Huh, maybe this is a large part of why you love Binding Blade. That's respectable.

Don't forget Bartre and his 22 base strength, with almost everything else at 11 or lower. Wade is fun, but his base skill is pretty bad. It makes him a little trickier to use, but still kind of workable. But yeah, FE6 has a lot fun units, even if they aren't strictly practical.

Even with respect to more balanced and "good" units, bulk good. I much prefer Gerik to Joshua, that's for sure.

1 hour ago, Shaky Jones said:

Well...I'm enjoying using Will right now.

He keeps getting strength and nothing else, which is hilarious for an archer. The man still barely kills fliers. Thanks game.

>double effectiveness

lmao

[FailWood]

8 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

Do you know how funny it is to have 20 strength on a basic unit but 8 to everything else? I love it. Especially strength. Why does Raphael need speed? Just kill them. Don't give them a counterattack. That 85 hp means he'll take those doubles even if ya mess up.

Good to know someone else gets it!

[Alastor15243]

If you're playing on any difficulty that allows enough use of BEXP, Radiant Dawn makes these sorts of characters absurdly powerful. Because once they cap the stats they have crazy growths in, then they can get continuous BEXP level ups in the remaining stats they didn't, so they're just suddenly really good at everything.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Didn't one fan-game have growth rates added to other stats once one stat was capped? That seems to implicitly favor high growths outside of HP and luck, but I'm not sure it's actually in the spirit of the excess.

Unit: Chad

• HP: 34
• Strength: 16 (100% growth)
• Skill: 11
• Speed: 8
• Luck: 5
• Defense: 8
• Resistance: 7

Join level? 6. Also comes with a brave weapon.

[Jotari]

Super defense focused units tend to be the ones that work best, imo. Since it's just really useful to have a unit you can confidently put out there to lure enemies in. A unit that focuses on a singular offensive stat tends to run into issues since one stat alone is not enough to kill. A lot of strength simply won't do it if you're not also doubling. Likewise if you're doubling everything with low strength then you're just at nothing. And while it's a dump stat that I wouldn't really want a unit to be solely focused on (unless they really commited to it), some hight strength units definitely run into issues by nothing having enough skill (or just for using axes). Defense though? You don't need anything else. Even high HP is pretty optional if your defense is high enough. This kind of goes for dodge tanks too, but usually dodge tanking isn't a result of building up one stat and is more based on supports, skills and terrain stacking.

Edited February 5, 2022 by Jotari

[Shadow Mir]

20 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Rinkah is a weird one. She has skill, speed, and defense, but nothing else. She's a pretty bad unit, only offering the Hoshidans tanking capabilities since a lot of Hoshidans don't have that. But once again, her defense and speed take her 2 steps forward, but her bad everything else take her 8 steps back. (like WHY would they think it was a good idea to give someone 45% defense but 20% HP like ???)

Rinkah isn't what I'd call overspecialized, but rather, the other extreme (Master of None).

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Super defense focused units tend to be the ones that work best, imo. Since it's just really useful to have a unit you can confidently put out there to lure enemies in. A unit that focuses on a singular offensive stat tends to run into issues since one stat alone is not enough to kill. A lot of strength simply won't do it if you're not also doubling. Likewise if you're doubling everything with low strength then you're just at nothing. And while it's a dump stat that I wouldn't really want a unit to be solely focused on (unless they really commited to it), some hight strength units definitely run into issues by nothing having enough skill (or just for using axes). Defense though? You don't need anything else. Even high HP is pretty optional if your defense is high enough. This kind of goes for dodge tanks too, but usually dodge tanking isn't a result of building up one stat and is more based on supports, skills and terrain stacking.

Aren't most defense focused units also ones with high HP, though? Because when I think of defensive units in these games, many of them that come to mind immediately happen to be armored knights (or in the case of Three Houses, the units with the boons to go that route, those being Raphael, Dedue, and Balthus), and most of those also happen to have high HP as well. Rinkah is about the only defensive unit I can think of who doesn't tend to have high HP. 

[Use the Falchion]

I'm torn. Units like Raphael and Lysithea (at least to me) are fun and usually some of my best units in Three Houses. But in other games I can usually take or leave them. 

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Rinkah isn't what I'd call overspecialized, but rather, the other extreme (Master of None).

Aren't most defense focused units also ones with high HP, though? Because when I think of defensive units in these games, many of them that come to mind immediately happen to be armored knights (or in the case of Three Houses, the units with the boons to go that route, those being Raphael, Dedue, and Balthus), and most of those also happen to have high HP as well. Rinkah is about the only defensive unit I can think of who doesn't tend to have high HP. 

Yes. But likewise there are basically no units in the series so hyper focused as not to be somewhat capable in another stat.

[iridium137]

In theory, lopsided units are great. In theory, they specialize in certain situations. In theory, their teammates can help cover their weaknesses.

In practice, nearly every FE game has juggernauts that are strong in all areas. (Like FE6 Miledy and Percival, FE8 Seth, etc.) That makes units that are strong in some areas and weak in others just... bad. (Even so, I like using such units, especially when I'm not tryharding. I find it interesting to find ways to play around their weaknesses and find ways to make their strengths shine.)

The only game I can think of that rewards lopsided units is Three Houses on Maddening. The best way to succeed in that game is to have units that are extremely good at one thing. You can stack evade to create a dodgetank. You can stack defense to create a traditional tank. Stacking speed on fast units is your only hope of doubling anything other than armors. Snipers, grapplers, and magic units are player phase nukes that basically only care about str/mag. What you cannot do, is use a "well-rounded" unit, because enemies have way too high stats and will just steamroll such a unit.

EDIT: Two more mechanics in Three Houses reward lopsided units. One is the two stat minimum for leveling up. Lopsided units like Lysithea are likely to get their strong stats or force a reroll, while "balanced" units are more likely to get a bad levelup on useless stats. Another is that certifying for a class bumps your stats up to the class minimum, so lopsided units will get all their weak stats bumped up anyway.

Edited February 6, 2022 by iridium137

[Shadow Mir]

On 2/5/2022 at 12:41 PM, Alastor15243 said:

If you're playing on any difficulty that allows enough use of BEXP, Radiant Dawn makes these sorts of characters absurdly powerful. Because once they cap the stats they have crazy growths in, then they can get continuous BEXP level ups in the remaining stats they didn't, so they're just suddenly really good at everything.

Well, ya gotta admit, that's only as true as the unit's caps allow for it to be... Most of the units that I can think of that stand out as good BEXP candidates have caps that make them not that great.

[Alastor15243]

55 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Well, ya gotta admit, that's only as true as the unit's caps allow for it to be... Most of the units that I can think of that stand out as good BEXP candidates have caps that make them not that great.

Like who?

[ciphertul]

46 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Like who?

Ilyana, mine always caps her skill and str then BEXP lets her cap everything but lck. As someone who loves Ilyana I have gotten her to lv 20 Archsage a ton and that 30 spd cap is shit.

[ping]

There's a couple units that are technically very BEXP-able but still not necessarily good investments. Leonardo (caps Skl+Res at Lv.15 Archer), Ilyana (Str+Skl at 20/10 Sage), arguably Aran (Str+Skl+Def at 20/8 Halbadier) come to mind from the Dawn Brigade.

But of course, there's also Edward (his endgame performance certainly isn't where his disadvantage lies), Jill (especially w/ transfers), or Nolan, who can all be excellent in part 4 and can get some good BEXP levels on the way there.

[Shadow Mir]

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Like who?

Soren, Oscar and Gatrie, for three. While a low speed cap is to be expected from an armored unit, the fact that the former two have speed caps that are little better hurts.

[Jotari]

5 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Soren, Oscar and Gatrie, for three. While a low speed cap is to be expected from an armored unit, the fact that the former two have speed caps that are little better hurts.

When do you plan on capping their speed using bexp? Because an attack speed of 32 is enough to double pretty much everyone before the last two chapters.

[ciphertul]

7 minutes ago, Jotari said:

When do you plan on capping their speed using bexp? Because an attack speed of 32 is enough to double pretty much everyone before the last two chapters.

Something that always confused me was why does Ilyana have a better SPD cap then Soren as a Sage but a worse one as an Archsage?