Extra thoughts

                        

                     So I was asked recently if I prefer Pair Up to Rescue. Before we answer that let's specify which version of Pair Up since there are two different versions. If it's the Awakening version of Pair Up then heck no. Awakening's Pair Up system is so ludicrously broken that it watered down the strategical aspect of the game. There was no reason to not use Awakening's Pair Up system. Fates on the other hand is an entirely different story altogether.

                  With Fates, Pair Up is much more balanced. I really love the fact that enemies can Pair Up too in Fates which means that neither side has a game-breaking advantage. Pair-Up also lets lower movement units to stay on the front lines of the battlefield more often (see the part of my previous post that talked about Armor Knights) and the fact that enemy units can do it too makes things a little more even. Plus as far as I'm aware, you can't skip the game with the Fates version of Pair Up the way you can with rescue chains so I'm more inclined to lean towards the Fates version of Pair Up than with the rescue mechanic. There might have to be some tweaking with Guard Stance, but it looks like the developers are on the right track. In games where the rescue mechanic existed it was only the player's units who could rescue which means that the player had a huge advantage over the enemy if the player could properly abuse this mechanic.

                    So the tl;dr version: Fates Pair Up > Rescue > Awakening Pair Up 

                  So DRP reminded me of a point that I forgot to bring up when I was talking about "nerfing the ponies". Archetypal Jagen and Oifey characters usually tend to be the game-breaking powerhouses that dominate the list (Seth and FE 7 Marcus say hi). In theory they're supposed to help newer players with the early-game, since the early-game tends to be the most difficult part of the game, but when done wrong they just dominate the entire game and they disincentivize the player to use other units. How do we solve this problem?

• Kill off the character: If they're not around for the entire game then the player is forced to use different characters and level them up. In order for this to work you have to kill them off relatively early on so that there's a significant portion of the game that they're not available for. You don't have to kill the character off, but at least do what Thracia 776 did and make the character unavailable for the majority of the game. That way you're forced to use your growths units (or at least it provides a pretty strong incentive to do so).    

• Make them a class other than a Paladin: A paladin with fantastic bases and weapon ranks will destroy the game. A general, on the other hand, probably won't. In case you're wondering why I'm saying a general, it's because DRP uses this idea in his game Realm of Ascension. A low movement unit with high base stats would still be useful to the player but they would have legitimate drawbacks to them. If you're going to go this route then the character shouldn't have high movement in general just to balance them out. '

•  Get rid of these types of characters and buff your growth units: I would like to point out that this idea has been done before by Gaiden. You don't get any early-joining paladins in Gaiden and I think the game did fine without it. To be fair, when you've got mother freaking Alm on your side you don't need anyone else (unless they're a lousy warp-bot) but nevertheless I think this might be the next stage in Fire Emblem's evolution. If your growth units are strong enough there's no need for a pre-promote. I think it would be better having a team of useable units as opposed to a mega-juggernaut who has to carry an entire team behind him / her. 

                    Next up I plan on discussing map design for Part 3 and I would like to know something from those of you who are reading this right now:

•                        Name 3 games that in your opinion had the best map design and why you think this way.
•                        Name 3 games that in your opinion had the worst map design and why you think this way. 

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?

• 
  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.

Ten Tips to Improve Fire Emblem # 2 - Balancing the Classes: Part One - Nerf the Ponies

              Ever notice how the same classes consistently produce top tier units while the same classes also consistently produce bottom tier ones? There’s a reason for that. One of the most important stats in the game is the movement stat. The higher the character’s movement, the quicker they can get to the enemies which means that they get to hog experience and level up faster. Take a look at some of the best units in the series:

Sigurd, RD Haar, Shadow Dragon Caeda, Seth, Miledy, FE 7 Marcus, PoR Marcia

            One of the biggest reasons why these units are so good has to do with their movement. Yes, I’m aware of the fact that there are plenty of other reasons why they’re so good, but it’s not a coincidence that the best units in so many games in the series all happen to be either mounted or flying. This has led me to the conclusion that Fire Emblem is a pretty mount / flying dominated series. Conversely, there are several different classes that tend to get the shaft in terms of usefulness. Archers, thieves, fighters and armor knights usually tend to be pretty bad due to the number of disadvantages that their classes have to deal with.

                    So how do we effectively nerf mounted and flying units while also giving archers, thieves, fighters and armor knights the love that they need? Well I’ll be tackling the first half of that question in this post by addressing how we should go about nerfing mounted units and fliers. My second post will deal with the latter end of the question.

1. Bring back dismounting: As a concept I think that dismounting is a pretty nifty feature in nerfing mounted and flying units. By forcing said units to have 5 movement in certain maps you’ve effectively stripped them of their movement bonus. In the games where dismounting has been implemented (a.k.a FE’s 3 & 5) the units usually have to switch to swords as opposed to using a lance or an axe like they normally do. I don’t think this is necessary and I’m okay with letting these units be able to use their normal weaponry indoors. That being said, I think it would be helpful in nerfing said units. This comes with a caveat however since in order for dismounting to be effective you have to have a significant number of maps be indoors otherwise it won’t do its job properly. I also do not believe that dismounting alone is enough to properly balance said units. The reason why is because Fire Emblem 3 invented the dismounting feature and Palla, Catria and Sirius are some of the best units in the game so clearly more has to be done in order for these to be balanced.

2.  Increase the frequency and quality of effective weaponry:  On paper, high movement units should be balanced out by the fact that there are weapons that are designed to kill them easily. Flying units are weak to bows and wind magic (or in the case of Radiant Dawn it was thunder magic for wyvern riders) while mounted units are weak to anti-horse weapons and in some games each physical weapon type has its own anti-horse weapons. So why don’t veterans bring this up whenever a discussion about units like Haar and Seth come up?  Well for starters, you don’t come across very many bows and anti-horse weapons are even more rare. So this means that fliers and cavaliers can charge through the battlefield without having to worry as much about the consequences. 
   
   
   
   
   

                       Instead of being weak to bows, Haar in Radiant Dawn is weak to thunder magic but who cares about that when he can one-shot most thunder mages (or comes really close in general) and the damage that he takes isn’t even that bad? Also, you don’t come across very many thunder mages either making them less of an actual threat to Haar. Same thing applies to Seth. So let me ask you this: How likely would you be to charge ahead if effective weaponry made enemies capable of one-shotting your fliers and cavaliers? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you’d be WAY more cautious about your tactics. Now, what if this happened for roughly half of the game? Suddenly, fliers and cavaliers wouldn’t be such tier dominating gods. You could say that nobody would ever use these units because why bother right? To be fair, I wouldn’t advocate going THAT far but I do believe that having effective weaponry should be a legitimate threat to the units it’s supposed to kill and it should be something that the player should have to deal with. This applies to bows as well. I won’t go into as much detail here since I plan on addressing this issue in Part 2 where I talk about how to make archers better.  

3.  Make sure the Rescue mechanic never sees the light of day again: So another mechanic that gave a disproportionate advantage to fliers and cavaliers was the rescue mechanic. The rescue mechanic made it so that fliers and cavaliers had a huge amount of utility just because they were fliers and cavaliers. This is the main reason why frail Pegasus Knights like Florina and Karin (from Thracia 776) are considered as good as they are. Despite being very frail and lacking in offensive parameters their early join time combined with this mechanic gave them a huge edge over most of the units in the player’s army. The ability to para-drop characters like Marcus, Asvel or Seth over large distances is a big freaking deal and veterans of the series like dondon151 exploit the ever-living crap out of this mechanic. The rescue mechanic also led to some insane shenanigans known as rescue-chains that basically let players skip huge portions of various maps. Dondon151 has some pretty insane rescue-chains in his Sword of Seals Hard Mode 0 % growths playthrough that you should check out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKpMIVTByRE

         On the one hand I admire the creativity and intelligence that it takes to come up with stuff like that, on the other hand there’s also a part of me that’s sickened by how much of a map one can skip when stuff like this gets pulled off. Thankfully the rescue mechanic hasn’t been in a Fire Emblem game since Radiant Dawn and personally I hope it stays that way.

4. Shrink the maps and work on the terrain: Big maps favor mounted units over unmounted units. If you want to beat a game full of big maps you basically have to have units with really high movement while units with smaller movement have to spend all-day getting dragged around the map. Sound familiar? Yeah that’s right, I’m talking about Holy War. As much as I love Fire Emblem 4 I have to admit that the gargantuan maps exacerbated the advantage that high movement units had to 11 and made it so that no matter how awesome the combat parameters of your unmounted units were they would always be held back by the sheer fact that they were unmounted units and that it took a million years to haul their butts over from point A to point B. Before you cast stones at Holy War though, remember that this is a problem that most other games have (Sword of Seals for example has a significant number of big maps as well). While I intend to cover this next point in more detail in a later post (spoiler alert) maps with terrain that slow down your cavalry and infantry tend to give fliers a huge advantage since they’re unhindered by something that affects the rest of the cast. Personally I think it would be neat to have some weather effects that solely affected flying units. It would be nice for fliers to have something else that solely affects them, but that’s just me.

                 Moral of the story: If you want to nerf mounted and flying units my advice would be to bring back the dismounting feature, increase the frequency and quality of effective weaponry, make sure the rescue mechanic stays dead and work on the maps so that fliers and cavaliers aren’t given further disproportionate advantages. In my next post, I’ll be addressing the topic of how to make some of the less useful classes better.

Ten Tips To Improve Fire Emblem: # 1 - Get Rid of Extra Movement Shenanigans

                    So my first suggestion for improving the Fire Emblem series is to get rid of the following: Warp, the Rescue staff, the Again staff and maybe dancers. All of these things (except for dancers) are extremely abusable and they promote playing the game less. In fact, pretty much anything that gives the player additional movement can and will get abused as players seek new ways to break games. First I’ll start with Warp since it’s the biggest offender here and the one that I want to see gone for good the most.

                    Ever heard of the term “warpskip”? It’s a term that applies to strategies where the player uses the warp staff to “skip” various levels in the game. The warp staff (especially the infinite range kinds) allows players to bypass entire levels which in my opinion goes contrary to the design aspect of the games. Thracia 776, the fifth Fire Emblem game, over the years has earned the title of “Staff Emblem”. Why? Well, the biggest reason why is because of how powerful staves are and the fact that over half of the game can be warpskipped.  

                According to serenesforest.net the player in theory has access to 15 warp staves. I say “in theory” because the overwhelming majority of these come from enemies and some of them are very hard to get but because the capture mechanic exists in this game the player in theory can get these. Though it is highly unlikely that the player will get all of these staves even having a third of these warp staves is more than enough to break the game (don’t forget that the player gets the Hammerene staff from chapter 3 onward). As a result staff bots are considered some of the best units in the game for the simple reason that staves are broken. Even tvtropes.org knows this:

                 “Staff range for ranged staves is unlimited in FE 5, so for the Warp and Rescue staves, the player is able to move a unit to anywhere else on the map or retrieve a unit from anywhere else on the map, respectively. This allows for game breaking strategies that, for example, essentially allow the player to defeat a boss and seize a throne or gate to end a chapter in 1 turn. Warp is useful in maps with a seize objective; Rescue is useful in maps with an escape objective. Repair allows the player to repair any weapon to its original state, which means that the player can exhaust all 5 uses of Repair on a single Warp or Rescue staff to obtain 6 times as many uses out of that staff. By extension, since Saphy is the only unit capable of using the Repair staff, she is also a game-breaker.”

                 Let’s take an example where warp “skips” a level to demonstrate its negative effects on the game. Let’s take Chapter 22 of Thracia 776 shall we? In this chapter you have a boss with an unlimited range berserk staff, another enemy with 10 leadership stars and a character named Reinhardt who has Ambush, Adept, Charge and Great Shield. Oh did I mention that he has the Dime Thunder tome, a tome that has the same ability as a Brave Weapon, and a Master Sword which is basically a Brave Sword? Also, the guy with the 10 leadership stars turns weakling enemy mooks into warriors that can actually hit your characters and have a surprising amount of avoid. It sounds pretty scary and during my first playthrough I really struggled with this level. In fact I still remember how tough and frustrating it could be. During my last playthrough this level wasn’t even remotely challenging for me. Why? Because of the warp staff that’s why. You can easily warp Asvel to the forest tile next to the boss and proceed to have Asvel annihilate said boss. During the enemy phase the guy with the 10 leadership stars will leave the map thus making the enemy mooks significantly weaker and Reinhardt isn’t very difficult for a properly leveled Asvel on a forest tile, especially if Asvel is wielding a Wind tome of some kind. So here is a level that could have posed a major challenge for the player but because of the fact that warp exists this level is pretty much a joke. Chapter 22 isn’t the only example of a level that warp completely trivializes. Experienced players could also come up with numerous examples of how warp trivializes the game, but that just reinforces my point.

              The rescue staff is more or less just a slightly nerfed version of warp and most of what can be said about warp can be said about the rescue staff. It may require a little more effort, but the rescue staff basically can trivialize games almost as much as the Warp staff can and in my opinion is harmful to the design of the game.

              As far as dancers go, I’m a little conflicted. On the one hand, they do actually add to the strategy of the game but on the other hand they can pull off some pretty crazy shenanigans as well, especially if they can refresh four units at a time. In fact, dancers are so broken that you never get more than one at a time in any game that you play. Yeah, dancers are so broken that having two of them can cause the game to break into a million tiny pieces. It’s even worse when dancers are capable of moving long distances (the rescue mechanic says hi) or when this happens: 

          -_-   Yeah way to go Fates! If you’re going to make the argument that it’s a DLC skill, then that doesn’t matter because it still exists. You don’t get a free pass for being optional. So much for balancing things out.   Moving on, I can see a good argument being made to keep dancers in the game, but my point still stands that they’re ridiculous and broken.

                Moral of the story: Extra movement mechanics are far more harmful to the game than they are helpful and should be taken out. The ability to move long distances in short periods of time has, and will continue to be, easily exploitable. Getting rid of these exploitable mechanics in my opinion will help to boost the strategy of the game significantly by making chapters harder to trivialize.

The Greatest Pegasus Knight in the Series - Caeda (Shadow Dragon)

http://www.zerochan.net/801916

                       You want to know why Caeda is # 1 on this list? It isn't because of her base stats, it isn't because of her growth rates. The only reason why Caeda is this high up the list is that freaking Wing Spear. The funny thing here is that in every other game that she's in, Caeda gets outclassed by Palla and Catria. It's funny how the one time Caeda beats Palla and Catria is the one time where it actually mattered. The best to worst versions of Caeda go like this:

Shadow Dragon Caeda >>> FE 12 Caeda > FE 3 Caeda > FE 1 Caeda

                    Just to be clear, Caeda is never bad in any of the games that she's in, much like Palla and Catria, it's more about good, better and best. Caeda's strength and defense is usually brought up as a negative for her in each of the games that she's in. How she overcomes this problem affects her overall performance in each and every game. In Fire Emblem 1 she loses 5 speed and 2 skill upon promotion. Yeah, it's pretty sad http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Shiida. Her growth rates in that game are very good however (they're certainly better than her Shadow Dragon growths) and she's part of your army from Chapter 1 onward (just like in Shadow Dragon) so she's at least got that going for her. Her Fire Emblem 3 version is only slightly better. In Fire Emblem 3 she has small Marth and Ogma support bonuses (yes they existed back in Fire Emblem 3, although they're nothing like what supports are today) and this time around her promotion bonuses are better. However, Caeda still has that strength and defense problem and this time around she has to deal with dismounting, which also causes her to lose a few stats. Her Fire Emblem 12 version has the same perks as her Fire Emblem 3 version, but this time around she has the Wing Spear. True, the Wing Spear isn't as ZOMG-AMAZING as it is in Shadow Dragon due to the fact that there aren't as many horses in this game, but it still exists and is very helpful. In Fire Emblem 12 she can also reclass to a Paladin to help out with her strength and defense, which helps her out tremendously and forges exist in this game too. Also, Caeda is very useful in the prologue of Fire Emblem 12 too, even in the Lunatic and Reverse Lunatic difficulties. That being said, she is still outclassed by a good number of units (My Unit, Catria, Palla and Marth) which looks kind of "meh" in comparison to how awesome she is in Shadow Dragon.

             

                           Caeda is simply a monster in Shadow Dragon. There is no doubt that she is in fact your best unit. As I mentioned before the reason for this is that her Wing Spear breaks the game in half, so any serious discussion of Caeda must also discuss just how game-breaking that Wing Spear is. I should also mention that Caeda can also reclass into a swordmaster so that she can eliminate manaketes who are too fast to deal with as a wyvern knight. Fortunately for Caeda wyrmslayers exist and they can be forged too. The Wing Spear is basically a spear version of Marth's rapier. Here are the stats for the Wing Spear:
Mt - 8 

Hit - 90 

Crt - 10 

Wt - 4

* Effective against armored knights and cavaliers*.

                     What's better is that the Wing Spear can be forged. Every point of might that you increase on the Wing Spear becomes three extra effective might towards the vulnerable schmucks that cross her path. According to Ronaldo Villanueva "adding six Mt points leaves the weapon with 42 effective Mt, capable of decimating enemies in one hit, essentially duplicating its durability." For the sake of craziness let's assume that you forge the Wing Spear by the maximum amount of might that you can in this game, by 10 points. That leaves you with 18 might and 54 effective might which is almost double the might of a Jugdral Regalia weapon. Remember, we only need to add six might points just to murder things in a single hit. That is the insanity that we're dealing with. A forged Wing Spear allows Caeda to kill bosses who are armor knights and cavaliers in a single round of combat with ease. I've actually gone through the trouble to count how many bosses in Shadow Dragon are either armor knights, cavaliers or manaketes. 

I've also comprised a list of chapters where a significant number of armor knights, cavaliers and manaketes make up your enemy's army and have listed how many of each appear in their respective chapters:

20 / 29 bosses (15 bosses are either armor knights or cavaliers. 5 bosses are manaketes, not counting Medeus for obvious reasons)

Chapter 4: 7 / 18

Chapter 5: 7 / 16

Chapter 6: 8 / 24

Chapter 7: 7 / 17

Reinforcements: 8 / 8

Chapter 8: 13 / 17

Chapter 12x: 11 / 17

Chapter 14: 10 / 21

Chapter 16: 11 / 17

Chapter 17x: 11 / 27

Chapter 18: 20 / 21

Chapter 19: 10 / 17

Chapter 20x: 19 / 21

Chapter 24: 9 / 19

                    If you round up, Caeda kills 69 % of all bosses in the game in a single round of combat with either her Wing Spear or with a wyrmslayer. As you can see, there are also a significant number of enemies in numerous levels where there are a significant number of enemies that she will kill in a single hit with either a Wing Spear or a wyrmslayer. No other unit in her game has that kind of an impact. What's better is that this strategy's effectiveness isn't dependent on your play-style. You want to play casually? Go ahead. Caeda's still going to wreck enemies with ease. You want to Warp-Skip the game? Well she's your go-to boss-killer. As long as you're playing with growths (could someone confirm how effective she is in a 0 % growths playthrough?) she will break your game with ease. She can even turn H5 into a joke.

Credit to SubaruSumeragi http://www.zerochan.net/1272374

              Ronaldo Villanueva also had some great insights of his own to share about her game-breaking awesomeness:

                        Base Sheeda with a +6 Mt forged Wind Spear has 46 effective Atk, 12 AS, which is more than enough to reach the OHKO to the mentioned cavaliers with 30 HP, 7 Def. (He's talking about the cavaliers in Chapter 4) Additionally, base Sheeda with 46 effective Atk can reach the OHKO to Benson, the boss of the aforementioned chapter with 34 HP, 9 Def. Each level that Sheeda gets is valuable. Her strength growth of 20% doesn't matter since the Wing Spear has massive power, and she gets +4 Str as a promotion bonus anyways, but each speed point obtained through her 85% growth allows her to double-attack even more enemies in late-game. For example, Sheeda Lv11/2 has 24 HP, 49 effective Atk, 21 AS, 13 Def with a +5 Mt forged Wind Spear. With this, she can ORKO Stallone, the boss of Chapter 18, who has 44 HP, 11 Def, 17 AS, while she gets 2HKOd by his 34 Atk. GG the rest of the game.

                                 I'll finish up with a quote from someone on serenesforest.net about Caeda's impact on Shadow Dragon: If Marth goes Murderface with Forged Rapier...then Shiida goes on a rampage equivalent to watching all the movies in the Friday the 13th series in fast-forward AT THE SAME TIME thanks to Wing Spear. (Gone2Ground, "http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=31699)

Ronaldo Villanueva's Analysis: https://www.facebook.com/notes/ronaldo-villanueva/top-15-unidades-de-fire-emblem-de-todos-los-tiempos-parte-2/851379861570794 (Translated by Ronaldo Villanueva himself. Thanks buddy. :D )