Ten Tips to Improve Fire Emblem # 2 - Balancing the Classes: Part 2 - Buff the Lamer Classes

                Okay so before I begin I’d like to recognize the fact that Fates has more or less addressed a lot of the issues that this post is meant to cover so it’s only fair to talk about those changes while adding some of my own thoughts to the mix as well.

               So in the previous post I mentioned that in addition to nerfing ponies we needed to buff some of the classes in the series that have traditionally gotten the shaft. I identified four classes that get this shaft: Archers, Armor Knights, Thieves and Fighters. The topic of this post is to come up with ways to buff and revamp these classes.

Archers

                 Why they suck: Archers are traditionally considered lame because bows are considered lame so it’s only pertinent that we should discuss the weaknesses behind bows. The purpose behind bows seems to be free chip damage at range behind the front lines. While this is neat in theory in practice this function is ultimately worthless in most games. The reason why is because archers lack an enemy phase which lowers the amount of experience they can receive and puts them at a HUGE disadvantage that the other classes don’t have. What’s worse is that hand axes, javelins and magic can basically do the same job that bows can while also protecting the user during the enemy phase. In essence, hand axes, javelins and magic do the same job as bows in addition to being able to do more so bows are basically rendered obsolete. Heck, even their ability to deal extra damage against fliers is relatively meaningless because most enemy fliers are pretty easy to kill so the extra damage is simply overkill most of the time. So how do we make archers more useful?

• Give Bows 1 range: Since the biggest criticism of bows comes from their lack of an enemy phase it only makes sense to give bows 1 range in order to solve this problem. Giving bows 1 range means that archers can defend themselves during the enemy phase. That’s the easiest solution to the problem but there are other alternatives.

• Give Bows Uber Range: So DRP came up with a wonderful idea in his game Realm of Ascension where bows can get some really good range. Longbows can attack from up to 10 spaces away and the rest of the bows in that game can attack from 4 spaces away. This means that bows can actually snipe enemy units without worrying about a counterattack which is how bows are supposed to function in the first place. The rationale behind this is that in medieval times archers could snipe people from super long distances away so naturally he decided to try and reflect that in his game. Congratulations Based Cat Commander, you’re better at designing bows than “Intelligent Systems”.

• The Fates Solution: So the way Fates solved this problem was to give hand axes and javelins an uber nerf while magic doesn’t seem to be anything spectacular. This makes bows look good by comparison. Also, bows beat Hidden Weapons on the Fates’ weapon triangle which means that archers are anti-ninja units. Based on what I’ve heard thieves (and therefore ninjas) “are the bane of everyone’s existence”. Based on what I’ve seen from people who play the game hidden weapons enemies whose debuffs are capable of stacking are legitimately difficult to beat.
  
  
  
  
  

• Make a higher percentage of enemy units fliers: This one is pretty obvious, but it’s worth mentioning. More fliers means that bows have a better chance of dishing out bonus damage which would make them more valuable.

• Buff Enemies: The tougher the enemies, the more necessary chip damage becomes. Tougher flying enemies with higher defense and HP stats (basically tougher wyvern knights) make bows necessary because their bonus damage against fliers actually means something. This doesn’t have to apply only to fliers, but you get the point. Case and point: Fire Emblem 12.

• Buff the class stats: Another major weakness that archers tend to face is that their base stats usually suck. Think about Rolf in Path of Radiance for example. His base stats are atrocious in addition to all of the other weaknesses associated with the archer class. The sad thing here is that he’s not the only example of a crappy archer that joins the player relatively early. It seems to me that if you want archers to be better it would be prudent to improve their base stats so that they start out better from the get-go. To go along with this, I also suggest that you make caps of the Sniper / Marksman class better as well. This is something that Fire Emblem 12 did really well. I would also like to add that giving Snipers / Marksman extra range like how they did it in Radiant Dawn would also be a good idea as it would make them even more unique / useful. 
  
  
  
  
  

• Overall Recap: Overall, the best way to fix archer problems would be to make them like they were in Gaiden while making their caps like they were in Fire Emblem 12. In Gaiden archers consistently had 1 - 3 range at the start and then got 5 range upon either promotion to their third tier class or upon equipping a Steel Bow. In Fire Emblem 12, the Sniper class caps were actually pretty good so statistically speaking there’s a reason to use them. By increasing their stats and giving them additional range archers could be a force to be reckoned with. The question remains if the game designers are able to see this.

Armor Knights

                    Why They Suck: The two most important stats in Fire Emblem are speed and movement. Speed lets you dodge enemy attacks in addition to being able to double attack. Double attacking equates to killing things faster which is a huge metric for determining unit worth. Guess which two stats armor knights fail at the most? Yep. The two most important stats. Their extra defense is also superfluous since most paladins and wyvern knights can take hits well enough while also being able to provide so much more. Also, in many instances there are plenty of examples of armor knights who fail to have sufficient defense whether it’s a player controlled armor knight or an enemy armor knight. Meg and Wendy are premier examples of this. However, they don’t fail to lack speed so they end up getting 1 round KO’ed by enemy units (or by the player units if we’re talking about enemy armor knights) thus failing to be effective at anything other than getting killed. So how do we solve this problem?

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  The Fates Solution: The movement issues that Armor Knights face can be solved with the Pair-Up system. Pair Up lets Armor Knights get out on to the battlefield quicker. Also, Defensive Formation exists.

• Increase the Enemy's ability to deal damage: Extra defense is usually considered extraneous because enemies are weak and other classes can take hits well enough in addition to bringing something else to the table. If enemies dealt more damage as a whole then the extra defense provided by Armor Knights would actually mean something.

• Decrease the number of effective weaponry against them and make defensive skills more reliable: Think of how many weapons are effective against armor knights: Hammers, armorslayers, heavy lances, your lord’s rapier / rapier knock-off prf weapon. That’s a lot of easily accessible anti-armor weaponry. Plus armor knights usually have low resistances so mages can usually wreck them as well. An easy solution to this is to cut down on the number of anti-armor weaponry and make the weapons less accessible. Combine that with the increased defense of armor knights and they’ll be much more likely to be a threat to the player. Also, another idea is to make skills like Pavise (the Awakening and Fates version) and Aegis have a 100 % activation rate which will help augment the defensive capabilities of Armor Knights. 
  
  
  
  
  

Thieves

                  What holds them back: Thieves tend to play like swordmasters with all the strengths and weaknesses of a swordmaster amped to 11. They have low defense and low strength while having super high speed and skill. Usually thieves come with a one hit KO ability that is balanced out with an unreliably low activation rate. The utility that thieves bring is ultimately superfluous since door and chest keys can be bought and usually the things that they can steal are nice but unnecessary. The amount of stuff you can steal is nice, but again ultimately fluffy and unnecessary. So how do we solve these problems?

• The Fates Solution: Hidden Weapons say hi. Hidden weapons give stat debuffs to enemy units. Even if your thief doesn’t kill an enemy they still weakened said enemy and made a valuable contribution. Plus in Fates hidden weapons have consistent 1 - 2 range that you can double attack with unlike axes and lances.

• Bring back the Thracia 776 version of stealing stuff: In Thracia 776 thieves can steal equipped weapons under certain circumstances. I don’t know how that works specifically (I’m guessing it has something to do with constitution) but it’s really cool being able to steal a mage’s weapons and watch them meander aimlessly since they can’t do anything. Obviously there would need to be a way to balance this out. Thieves couldn’t do this to everyone in Thracia so I’m assuming that constitution had a role to play which could work when it comes to balancing this stuff out.

• Overall: Despite what I said in my last post I don’t think that thieves suck per se but I do feel like the additions made above should come back into future games. While we’re at it, I also think that thieves shouldn’t need a lockpick to do what they do. It limits their utility to a certain number of uses and I think it hurts them, even if only by a little bit. 
  
  
  
  
  

Fighters

                           The issues that hold them back: Fighters usually lack speed and skill in most Fire Emblem games. There are exceptions of course Othin, Halvan, Dagda, Boyd, Barst and Nolan) but in most games in the series they aren’t that good. I think another major issue has to do with an axe’s accuracy. Since the weapon triangle predominantly affects accuracy axes tend to get the shaft since their accuracy is traditionally lower than the other weapons. In games where the weapon triangle can give a 15 - 20 boost to accuracy that can translate into a low hit rate for the axe user. In games where the weapon triangle doesn’t give as much of a boost (or where the avoid formula gets screwed over like the DS games) axes tend to do better as a weapon type overall. So how do we fix fighters:

• Give them better speed and skill: This one’s a no brainer but it needed to be said. All the best fighters have a lot of speed and skill, the worst ones don’t. They don’t need to be swordmasters with axes, but they need to able to double attack for a good portion of the game.

• Buffing Axes: Axes are kind of tricky to make due to their higher might. If you make their accuracy too good then they start to become some of the best weapons in the game. If they’re too inaccurate they suck and wielding them becomes a negative (Fire Emblem 6 says hi). Axes are also traditionally heavy weapons in games that employ the weight system. Fire Emblem 12 did away with weight and Fates and Awakening have continued this trend so this might not be an issue. 
  
  
  
  
  

Overall: So to finish this tip, the overall point here is that nerfing traditionally powerful classes and buffing traditionally less useful ones will make better games because ideally you would have more useful characters to rely upon and encouraging people to use multiple different characters is always a good thing.