is it just me or is resonance (from Celica emblem) a very poorly designed skill?

[AstraProc]

I am currently doing a maddening iron man with dlc emblems but no dlc bonuses and just lost Celine in the tiki paralogue in perhaps the dumbest way possible, so stupid in fact that I want to share it here. As many probably know, the ice dragons do flat, true damage. My Celine had 22 HP and I knew she would take 21 damage in enemy phase. What I did not know, is that resonance subtracts one HP at the start of combat, before you cast a spell and EVEN if it literally gets you killed. This means resonance dropped my Celine to 21 HP and got her killed in enemy phase, before she ever got the chance to attack.

I find this very questionable for multiple reasons. First reason is that the HP cost for magic does not even work that way in echoes, where it subtracts health when you cast magic. Second, this seems like an oversight by the game developers to me. Why did they not implement some code that prevents resonance from activating if it puts you into kill range in enemy phase, before you can even attack. It is especially strange since a mechanic was implemented that prevents it from killing you in player phase, where you actually cast the magic but not in enemy phase, where you don't. Does anyone know if the unit needs to be able to counter attack for resonance to activate? My Celine had a thunder tome on her, meaning she could counter attack. Would it not have activated if she had a fire tome on her? I couldn't test it myself since divine pulse is banned in my current playthrough. Maybe part of me thinking this is me still being salty about the loss of Celine but as it stands I find the way resonance works to be quite stupid. I guess the devs expect you to not equip a tome so the ability doesn't get you perfectly killed in enemy phase, even though one would want to usually counter with a tome or can literally only use tomes.

[Original Alear]

This is kinda like saying that criticals or offensive prowess during enemy phase is bad because you can kill an enemy and make room for another enemy to attack you and do even more damage. It's just part of how the game was designed. If you had noticed it and accounted for it, it wouldn't have been a problem for you. Sometimes I do feel like the number of doodads and doohickeys and skills that add little bits of complexity to the game here and there are bad compared to older and somewhat more simpler FEs, but honestly I think the game is the better for it more times than not.
An HP tonic on Celica will account for 5 procs of resonance (and that HP can be restored too), and HP tonics are not in extremely short supply, especially since at some point the shop starts selling an infinite quantity of them. Also, there are plenty of enemies Celica may want to attack who might not even be able to counter (though maybe not quite as much in Tiki's chapter specifically).
Finally, plenty of people complain about the Tiki chapter without mentioning Celica's resonance, I think it's just a hard chapter to beat.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Original Alear

[AstraProc]

3 minutes ago, Original Alear said:

This is kinda like saying that criticals or offensive prowess during enemy phase is bad because you can kill an enemy and make room for another enemy to attack you and do even more damage. It's just part of how the game was designed. If you had noticed it and accounted for it, it wouldn't have been a problem for you. Sometimes I do feel like the number of doodads and doohickeys and skills that add little bits of complexity to the game here and there are bad compared to older and somewhat more simpler FEs, but honestly I think the game is the better for it more times than not.
An HP tonic on Celica will account for 5 procs of resonance (and that HP can be restored too), and HP tonics are not in extremely short supply, especially since at some point the shop starts selling an infinite quantity of them. Also, there are plenty of enemies Celica may want to attack who might not even be able to counter (though maybe not quite as much in Tiki's chapter specifically).
Finally, plenty of people complain about the Tiki chapter without mentioning Celica's resonance, I think it's just a hard chapter to beat.

I would agree if Celine had taken a hit, then killed the enemy with a counter attack, losing one HP from resonance when the spell was cast as a counter attack. This would make making room for another enemy to attack and then she would be killed because resonance (resulting from the counter attack occurring and at that point) from the previous encounter put her in range of death. That is how it could have occurred in echoes/gaiden. However, this was only one enemy and resonance activated before I even attacked or was attacked. Had it worked like echoes or just logically, I would have been attacked and left at 1 HP. Resonance would not have activated on my counter and I would have dealt less damage. I am pretty sure in echoes you just don't attack if you don't have the HP left for it. I guess this game just really hates you fighting in enemy phase, though chain attacks do feel pretty fair at least. I just find this to be an illogical and inaccurate implementation of a mechanic from gaiden.

[Armchair General]

Resonance is an pretty weird skill in the sense that it's one of the few that you can actually kill yourself with, the game doesn't really factor in if you would have survived or not. And I'm not sure if Echoes does the same thing, considering how it's entirely possible for an Arcanist to lose his counterattack if you push his health below an certain threshold

[Fabulously Olivier]

Honestly, I think Celica's a massively overrated Emblem in general. Echo and Seraphim are good skills, but people inflate her worth based on Warp Ragnarok's mobility which just... teleports your mage to the enemies and forces you to use one particular spell that probably isn't going to kill them. She's like a significantly worse magical version of Sigurd, if Sigurd could only move your unit once, and aggressively tickles your foe when he does.

Spoiler

Might be good on Veyle because of the Range +1. 

 

Edited February 13, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[AstraProc]

11 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

Resonance is an pretty weird skill in the sense that it's one of the few that you can actually kill yourself with, the game doesn't really factor in if you would have survived or not. And I'm not sure if Echoes does the same thing, considering how it's entirely possible for an Arcanist to lose his counterattack if you push his health below an certain threshold

 

Just now, Fabulously Olivier said:

Honestly, I think Celica's a massively overrated Emblem in general. Echo and Seraphim are good skills, but people inflate her worth based on Warp Ragnarok's mobility which just... teleports your mage to the enemies and forces you to use one particular spell that probably isn't going to kill them. She's like a significantly worse magical version of Sigurd.

  Reveal hidden contents

Might be good on Veyle because of the Range +1. 

 

The way Celine died in my run would never happen in echoes since logically the HP is deducted when you actually cast the magic in that game, not at the start of combat, even in enemy phase.

I agree that Celica is not very good, aside from in some of the early game maps. It seems to me that the Olwen S rank ring is better than Celica in most situations, though perhaps warp ragnarok has a niche use in assisting with warp skipping maps.

[lenticular]

I'm not sure that there's any way it could have been designed that wouldn't have had some sort of weirdness to it. For any way of designing it, there's going to be some sort of weird edge case where the design that's chosen is exactly what you don't want it to do. Like, take your suggestion:

40 minutes ago, Ⱥstra said:

Why did they not implement some code that prevents resonance from activating if it puts you into kill range in enemy phase, before you can even attack.

Imagine that an enemy is doubling you and each attack has a 1% chance to hit and a 1% chance to crit. And the only way that you die is if the enemy lands a crit. At the same time, you exactly get the kill if you have the extra damage from Resonance, but just miss out if it doesn't activate. And then there's some circumstance where failing to get the kill would actually be relevant (let's say it body blocks you, stopping you from ending the map on the next player phase, which means you lose a unit). It'd be pretty frustrating if the game chose not to activate it because of the 0.01% chance it would get you killed, but that would be the logical consequence.

Or if it worked the way it does in Shadows of Valentia, it could still get you killed on any enemy phase where the opponent doubles you.

As is, I can't think of any implementation that doesn't either overcomplicate the UI or have a chance for this sort of frustration.

I think the biggest problem here is probably that the way that the mechanic worked was not the same as how you thought it worked. Which isn't a fun experience and is something that designers typically strive to eliminate, but is also not something that can be completely eliminated. From what you've said, it sounds like you were expecting it ot work the same way that it did in SoV and were caught out when it didn't. which is fair! But at the same time, I'd be shocked if there aren't some people out there who found the SoV implementation confusing but find the Engage implementation intuitive and easy to understand. Pleasing all of the people all of the time remains an inexact science, and what have you.

For myself, I found the SoV system easy and intuitive, but I also find the Engage system easy and intuitive. I actually had a situation last night where the 1hp from resoance made a pretty significant difference to my strategy (I had to stall out a boss for several turns when I could have killed him quickly otherwise). It was a little bit frustratring, but not something that I had any problem understanding or predicting.

So, TLDR: it sucks to lose a unit like that in an ironman, and I would absolutely be salty as well if it happened to me, but I don't particularly think that it's bad design.

[AstraProc]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

Imagine that an enemy is doubling you and each attack has a 1% chance to hit and a 1% chance to crit. And the only way that you die is if the enemy lands a crit. At the same time, you exactly get the kill if you have the extra damage from Resonance, but just miss out if it doesn't activate. And then there's some circumstance where failing to get the kill would actually be relevant (let's say it body blocks you, stopping you from ending the map on the next player phase, which means you lose a unit). It'd be pretty frustrating if the game chose not to activate it because of the 0.01% chance it would get you killed, but that would be the logical consequence.

If it was simply done on cast like in echoes, then this would not be a problem. I think the downside of getting put into kill range when being doubled is a lot more fun and fair, since magic is actually cast by your unit. My Celine died because the skill took off HP without any purpose, since she never got to counter attack in the first place due to the skill putting her into kill range. I suppose they did not want players to lose 2 hp when doubling, though the 1 hp could have just been subtracted on the first magic cast instead then. Perhaps int systems compromise for reducing the HP penalty  was always subtracting 1hp even when you have not casted magic. I imagine there could have been a better way to do it that would not lead to the situation I found myself in. Or maybe they really couldn't find a better way to do it.

TLDR. Celica bad, Olwen ring good

[Original Alear]

Oh. So the HP is deducted at the beginning of battle even if enemy attacks first? Sorry for not reading more carefully. Ya I agree it'd be better if it did it when Celica attacks for the first time in a given round of battle.

[Armchair General]

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

As is, I can't think of any implementation that doesn't either overcomplicate the UI or have a chance for this sort of frustration

Leave it as player-phase only?

Edited February 13, 2023 by Armchair General

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Armchair General said:

Leave it as player-phase only?

That's not a bad solution, and I can see why people would like it, but it's not one that I'm personally a fan of. I generally dislike player-phase only abilities and owuld like to see them kept to a minimum because I have a habit of -- where possible -- previewing a combat on player phase to see how it will pan out on enemy phase. It's a lot quicker and easier than checking and comparing stats between units. The more player-phase only abilities there are, the less that works out. Which means a. more probability of me being caught out by a gotcha moment when the combat didn't behave like I expected, and b. more time spent looking up stats and less time (as a percentage of the whole) thinking about tactics and strategy.

[Armchair General]

21 hours ago, lenticular said:

more time spent looking up stats and less time (as a percentage of the whole) thinking about tactics and strategy.

Isn't sizing up your opponent the main selling point of an strategy game?

 

Plus, keeping whatever player-phase only kind of helps prevent you from breaking the game. Like Sol or Great Aether consistently proccing in Awakening

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah I'd share your frustration upon learning this in your situation. I guess I just assumed it worked like Echoes and dealt 1 damage to you whenever you cast a spell on the enemy; to me that's the most intuitive thing, and would never directly get you killed. (Yes, I know it could still get you killed due to an attack which comes later, but that's a given for any sort of self-damage.)

1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

Isn't sizing up your opponent the main selling point of an strategy game?

 

Plus, keeping whatever player-phase only kind of helps prevent you from breaking the game. Like Sol or Great Aether consistently proccing in Awakening

I don't think any argument was made that nothing should be player-phase only, just that the extra time spent on calculation is a negative that should be considered in any balance choices. Obviously some player- and enemy- phase only abilities are fine.

On 2/13/2023 at 1:47 PM, Ⱥstra said:

TLDR. Celica bad, Olwen ring good

"Olwen good" isn't exactly a radical statement, for all that I think I'd be happier if it didn't exist, since it rewards abusing a strange gacha system I'd personally prefer wasn't in the game.

On 2/13/2023 at 12:05 PM, Fabulously Olivier said:

Honestly, I think Celica's a massively overrated Emblem in general. Echo and Seraphim are good skills, but people inflate her worth based on Warp Ragnarok's mobility which just... teleports your mage to the enemies and forces you to use one particular spell that probably isn't going to kill them.

I don't really know what the consensus opinion on Celica is an emblem. Personally I'd probably rate her in the lower half, above Leif and perhaps Marth and/or Roy depending on my mood (what's up with the older games' emblems outside Sigurd, seriously). Warp Ragnarok is insanely useful; it does pretty comparable damage to other emblem attacks (honestly more than most for a few reasons) but "teleport 10 squares for free, and then hit an enemy within 2" is way way way better than most of their other random added effects. It offers incredible flexibility, a guaranteed hit on pretty much any enemy on the map whenever you need it, and I found it pretty game-changing in a bunch of earlygame maps. That said, the rest of what Celica Emblem offers is rather mediocre IMO.

[FashionEmblem]

Honestly didn't notice this in my game until fighting a boss with Celica equipped. Easier to catch over multiple rounds of combat for multiple HP bars.

[lenticular]

7 hours ago, Armchair General said:

Isn't sizing up your opponent the main selling point of an strategy game?

 

Plus, keeping whatever player-phase only kind of helps prevent you from breaking the game. Like Sol or Great Aether consistently proccing in Awakening

I don't want to go into this too much since it's getting pretty off topic. Put very briefly, appraising the situation is an important part of strategy and tactics games, but doing basic arithmetic to figure out whether unit A can kill unit B is not. Many, many games manage to have deep strategy and tactics with no arithmetic required at all. I have much less fun figuring out exactly which of my units the boss can kill in a single round than I do in figuring out exactly how I position my units so that the boss is bodyblocked from reaching those units it can kill.

And yes, I know that some abilities do need to be exclusive to player phase for balance reasons. I'm not saying they should go away entirely, just that I would prefer for them to be used only when they're strictly necessary.

6 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I don't really know what the consensus opinion on Celica is an emblem. Personally I'd probably rate her in the lower half, above Leif and perhaps Marth and/or Roy depending on my mood (what's up with the older games' emblems outside Sigurd, seriously). Warp Ragnarok is insanely useful; it does pretty comparable damage to other emblem attacks (honestly more than most for a few reasons) but "teleport 10 squares for free, and then hit an enemy within 2" is way way way better than most of their other random added effects. It offers incredible flexibility, a guaranteed hit on pretty much any enemy on the map whenever you need it, and I found it pretty game-changing in a bunch of earlygame maps. That said, the rest of what Celica Emblem offers is rather mediocre IMO.

I tend to think of Celica as being somewhere in the middle, probably lower middle. I'd definitely rate her above Leif and Roy and roughly equal to the likes of Marth and Lucina. She's been in the "always nice but seldom gamechanging" tier for me. Warp Ragnarok is exceptional early on, but not as useful in the late game. By the late game, you have other ways to effect the battlefield at a distance (eg, Astra Storm from Lyn) or move long distances (eg Warp and Dance) so it feels less special. More dangerous enemies also means that more audacious warps are more likely to end up being suicidal.

Echo is theoretically nice for situations where you just need to do a little bit of chip to two different enemies to finish them off, but I've found that it comes up less often than I would expect it to. Seraphim can be nice against corrupted, but you aren't always fighting corrupted. The Recover staff is nice in theory for the ability to give emergency healing to someone who doesn't otherwise have access to it, but most magically-inclined Advanced classes already have staff access and don't get that much out of it. Somewhat ironically given this thread, Resonance is probably the part of her kit that I've got the most use out of. Having +2/3 damage on all tome attacks is always going to be good, and has been relevant and useful for me more often than Echo has.

One part of her kit that I haven't experimented with is Favourite Food, mostly because re-adding a packed lunch to someone's inventory after every single battle sounds like a lot of faff. Being able to get an extra free engage per battle does seem like it might be potentially powerful, though, even if it does cost an inventory slot. Has anyone played around much with this?

[AstraProc]

11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

"Olwen good" isn't exactly a radical statement, for all that I think I'd be happier if it didn't exist, since it rewards abusing a strange gacha system I'd personally prefer wasn't in the game.

I think I do agree with this to some extent. I am currently doing an iron man meaning no ring resetting allowed and whether or not I get lucky with Olwen is literally game changing. This is not only the case because its a rare, extremely strong gacha ring but also because you only have about 2 chapters where you can pull for Olwen and if you don't get it you are screwed over. I have already blown 10k bond fragments and still have not gotten Olwen and probably won't before Leif turns into a red unit. I don't think this kind of thing is very healthy for consistent strategy and planning, especially when wanting to iron man. Then again, int systems seems to be very willing to throw balance out of the window this time around, with how they hand you a crap load of resources with no effort required in the DLC and with how the DLC rings destroy the entire gimmick of a part of the game (having little or no emblem ring) and also replace main game rings in terms of effectiveness.  I suppose this is off topic however.

4 hours ago, lenticular said:

Put very briefly, appraising the situation is an important part of strategy and tactics games, but doing basic arithmetic to figure out whether unit A can kill unit B is not.

Do you mean to say you consider having to do basic arithmetic a negative? I have personally always enjoyed busting out the calculator when I am tryharding in FE.

[Armchair General]

11 hours ago, lenticular said:

but doing basic arithmetic to figure out whether unit A can kill unit B is not

This is an core part of the XCOM experience, and probably an number of straightforward RPGs that I haven't heard of. Along with an shitload of tabletop games. And Yu-Gi-Oh, if you want something that's still around (somehow).

11 hours ago, lenticular said:

Many, many games manage to have deep strategy and tactics with no arithmetic required at all.

This is technically true, because the stats on your character's spreadsheets get fed into an slightly complicated formula that the average person doesn't really care about because it's usually balanced to where there's usually an way to hurt something. But Fire Emblem isn't one of those series.

Sure, you really shouldn't be overly concerned about the exact DPS rate in an RTS because your dudes are supposed to die...Eventually. And the other stuff doesn't offer as much feedback as FE does. But if you want to be that guy who was angry that his Louis died to an mage, then go ahead. It's not like that the game is passively warning you by displaying the opposition's stats or anything.

11 hours ago, lenticular said:

I have much less fun figuring out exactly which of my units the boss can kill in a single round than I do in figuring out exactly how I position my units so that the boss is bodyblocked from reaching those units it can kill

Yes, but have you ever reached an point where the boss has to die within an certain timeframe? And the only way to do accomplish it is to dive with an certain unit or two.

18 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I don't really know what the consensus opinion on Celica is an emblem

She never really had much of an chance to be useful. But outside of thinning the heard or assassinating an certain enemy, she really isn't all that great. I kind of hate Lyn more, tbh

 

[Armchair General]

11 hours ago, lenticular said:

Has anyone played around much with this?

Never made it that far. It might be interesting if Bunet was magically inclined. But an free engage with Celica means sounds kind of useful, because hey, you have an boosted mage, it's time to keep blasting stuff.

 

6 hours ago, Ⱥstra said:

Do you mean to say you consider having to do basic arithmetic a negative? I have personally always enjoyed busting out the calculator when I am tryharding in FE.

It's kind of one of those things where you need an certain skillset in order to thoroughly appreciate things. Like you need an good sense of spatial reasoning to handle most of the Zelda games and nearly anything that doesn't have an map. Math is generally used for RPGs and min-maxing shit. Hand-eye coordination is for platformers and action games...

Edited February 15, 2023 by Armchair General

[lenticular]

3 hours ago, Armchair General said:

But if you want to be that guy who was angry that his Louis died to an mage, then go ahead. It's not like that the game is passively warning you by displaying the opposition's stats or anything.

Nice strawman you've got there. Have fun arguing with it.

10 hours ago, Ⱥstra said:

Do you mean to say you consider having to do basic arithmetic a negative? I have personally always enjoyed busting out the calculator when I am tryharding in FE.

Again, I really don't want to go into too much detail here because of how off topic it is, but the summary version is that I consider -- and this is my preference only and not something I hold as an objective truth --  a moderate amount of arithemtic to be an overall neutral (eg, doing a quick calculation of attack - defense and then multiplying by two to account for a follow up attack) but consider more extensive arithmetic (eg, having to manually add together contributions from multiple different weapons, skills and effects) to be an overall negative.

And that's the last that I'm going to say on this subject in this thread. If anyone wants to continue the discussion, I'd suggest starting a new topic for it.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I mean are any of us actually surprised that a mechanic made to reference one of many dead-end mechanics from the worst mainline, non-Heroes game in the franchise, is still bad? 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[Armchair General]

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

And that's the last that I'm going to say on this subject in this thread. If anyone wants to continue the discussion, I'd suggest starting a new topic for it.

I would, but it would result in me calling an imaginary person lazy for being unwilling to do the legwork. Plus, there really isn't an argument to be made about it outside of explaining why you shouldn't be complaining about something that the game technically gives you the answer to.

 

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

but consider more extensive arithmetic (eg, having to manually add together contributions from multiple different weapons, skills and effects) to be an overall negative.

Engage in 3H actually lists the characters Hit and Avo, it's just hard to notice with how cluttered the UI is in Engage. Come to think of it, I think the combined weapon Mt & attack stat thing is kind of new; can't really remember if 3H did the same thing

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I mean are any of us actually surprised that a mechanic made to reference one of many dead-end mechanics from the worst mainline, non-Heroes game in the franchise, is still bad? 

Which is what, exactly? 

[Fabulously Olivier]

22 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

Which is what, exactly? 

Health draining magic from Gaiden.

[Armchair General]

20 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Health draining magic from Gaiden.

I never played the original; but I never really had any crippling problems in the remake. 

[AstraProc]

11 hours ago, lenticular said:

a moderate amount of arithemtic to be an overall neutral (eg, doing a quick calculation of attack - defense and then multiplying by two to account for a follow up attack) but consider more extensive arithmetic (eg, having to manually add together contributions from multiple different weapons, skills and effects) to be an overall negative.

I do agree with this actually and resonance definitely adds another layer of annoyance to it. But I dislike the skill not because it makes for more annoying math but just because I find it stupid, as I already went over earlier in the thread so I won't repeat myself.

 

9 hours ago, Armchair General said:

I mean are any of us actually surprised that a mechanic made to reference one of many dead-end mechanics from the worst mainline, non-Heroes game in the franchise, is still bad? 

Well it seems to me they actually made it worse in engage, hence why the thing that happened to me in engage due to resonance, could never have happened in echoes.  I am not sure if you are referring to echoes or gaiden here but if you mean echoes, I would agree.