Are Bows Actually Bad? A Fire Emblem History Lesson
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- Опубліковано 28 чер 2024
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Bow are bad. Its one of the fundamental rules of Fire Emblem. But...is it actually true? Join me for a deep dive into the history of bows, archers, and 2 range lock.
thanks to @casualjacob776 for letting me use FE3 Book 1 Footage, and shutouts to @Juniperjungby for making an offhanded comment in conversation with me that led to this video.
Music Used
Sea of Stars-Mooncradle (Day), Battle On (Night)
Fire Emblem-Map Theme 1
Tokyo Mirage Session-Itsuki's Theme (Smile)
Fire Emblem 4: Genology Of The Holy War-Awakening Of The Holy (Prolouge Theme)
Fire Emblem 5: Thracia 776-The Threat Draws Near, Meeting Meeting Again
Fire Emblem Enagge-Trial of Binding, Fire Emblem Theme, Trial of Blazing
Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp-Senesi's Theme, Sensei's Power Activation, Sensei's Theme (Power)
Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn-Naesala's Theme, Tibarn's Theme
Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon-Main Theme
Fire Emblem Awakening-Conquest
Fire Emblem Fates-Dusk Falls, Knowledge
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows Of Valentia-With Mila's Divine Protection
Fire Emblem 3 Houses-Fodlan Winds (Rain)
Runescape-Fire and Brimstone
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
1:26 FE1
4:35 Fire Emblem Gaiden
5:57 Mystery of the Emblem
8:23 Genealogy of the Holy War
12:24 Thracia 776
15:13 Binding Blade
19:57 The Worst Thing Anyone Has Ever Made
22:56 The Sacred Stones
24:47 Path of Radiance
26:31 Radiant Dawn
32:05 Shadow Dragon (Remake)
34:02 New Mystery of the Emblem
36:25 Awakening
41:02 Fates Trilogy
47:17 Echoes Shadows of Valentia
49:05 Three Houses
54:24 Engage
58:06 Conclusion - Ігри
so what im getting from the radiant dawn section is that crossbows are actually axes
TIL snipers can use axes
Calling Oswin a Gigachad isn't wrong. It's the straight up truth.
Bosswin
Before I watch the video, I think the main thing is the popularity of the GBA games (mainly FE7 and 8) causes the perception of bows to be a lot worse than they actually are across the series. Bows are just REALLY really bad in those two games, and they're some of the most popular among active members of the community
Its not just the gba games its more so that bows tend to not be valuable on lower difficulties in recent games such as awakening
Tellius and gba was like all the fe community talked about for a while so its understandable as to why the perception of bows exists as it does its we also should understand its mostly a western fan thing
Swords got the same treatment. They’re genuinely pretty good on average but fe7-11 gives them a bad wrap.
My bernadetta was really good in low difficulty, and i built her as a bow pegasus knight @@Juniperjungby
@@SylvainJoseGautier- watch the 3 houses section of the video and you will know my reply to that
Bows are bad on lower difficulties as you can enemy phase tank with 1-2 range. On higher difficulties bows become good because player phase mattered more. In a game where enemy phasing is more important bows will fall but in a game where player phase is more important bows show off how powerful they really are. High difficulty three houses is player phase oriented and also made bows insanely good with close counter and great combat arts but even something like conquest bows are really nice to have to safely chip while dealing good damage.
Rebecca’s Great; just reclass her into Pegasus Knight once she gets Bowbreaker.
rip fates priestess. ill always love you even if nobody else knows you exist, fates priestess
Priestess is what I promote Sakura into, she has surprisingly high Strength and Renewal is a good skill for her to pass on.
You could use Shrinemaiden well as Class for Corrin in Conquest, either you use male Corrin and give Felicia access to it,because you get Access to Rally Luck and Magic Early,which can work well with Magic Corrin,which you usually want Anyway and Odin,which really helps with Nostanking, you can improve Camilla as well and Elise once she promoted to Strategist or got the Bolt Axe. For Female Corrin it also works well, Priestess has good Bases and the option to marry Odin for example for good lategame Damagestacking is there. Kana can be used as a Rally Bot for Magic and Luck,because Izana due to his Personal is worse,because he reduces your damage as well.
Bow hate got really out of hand over the last few years. Some games they suck, some games they are great, most games they have a niche even if they aren't fantastic.
Just take a look at Swords in FE and you'll see a similar trend, with games like FE4 having swords be ideal but later games like FE9 making swords the worst weapon type, arguably worse than bows.
Bows are great for defensively weak units to help keep them safe during their training arcs. The problem with that usage is that magic is generally better at being the default training weapon for weak units.
Effective damage is important, but is very game dependent. If you provide more fliers to fight, particularly strong fliers, then bows will naturally be more valuable. If you have few enemy fliers, then bows need to find other niches like extra long range to find value.
It's funny you mention swords because I'm working on a sequel about them as well
Kinda ironic that bow hate went up since the recent games (echoes, fates and 3h mostly) have pretty good bows
@@PenguinWithInternetAccess I think it's more of a retrospective look at it. Remember, awakening and 3H brought in a lot of new ppl to the series, so some of them might take a look at older games. (which are a majority 5 vs 3)
I blame it on too much 1-2 range focus
Swords are really really bad in post FE6 games, but I'd say that up until FE11 they are better than bows in every game.
35:50 Horseman in FE12 actually has the highest speed cap in the game tied with Swordmaster at 30, so it is really great. The issue Horseman has is that its base stats are pretty low, so it has massive potential since the sword access and higher movement is super nice, but it requires a unit with massive lategame personal averages, like Luke reclassed to Hunter in chapter 1
But Sniper is also amazing lategame because you get the only Longbow in the game in chapter 20x which only they can use. This is especially amazing in Lunatic Reverse because chapters 21, 22 and 23 feature extremely dangerous Sorcerers with 42 might with Glower (Luna equivalent) tomes, they're less dangerous in regular Lunatic because a Brave weapon can kill them, but the Longbow is the only way to kill them without taking a counter on Reverse. They also have their speed capped at 25, and of course, Sniper speed cap is 29, letting them double and ORKO them. Longbow snipers can also safely chip dragons since all of them have 1-2 range on Lunatic and above
This 1-2 range on Lunatic is also an indirect buff to snipers since wyverns (the dragon ones with 12 move) all have 1-2 range, so your snipers can enemy phase them and a silver bow will usually be enough to kill
Also, Sniper has base C bows, so pretty much anyone can reclass into this for free and function decently, you only don't have access to silver, Parthia, and brave
Thanks for the insight, pinning your comment because its relevant (due to my lack of fe12 knoweldge)
Glower mages are crazy in fe12, literally no one can take two hits because they have like 40 true damage and are super accurate.
Snipers and horseman are also excellent combatants on Lunatic in chapters 19 and 20. Chapter 19 has a lot of dracoknights, which bow units can shred on player phase. It's cost effective too, since you won't need to forge their weapons to get one-rounds, since you only need 27 speed to double (25 with rainbow tonic), which is well below the 29 and 30 speed caps of sniper and horseman respectively.
Furthermore, the paladins you fight in these maps are blisteringly fast on lunatic. Chapter 19 paladins have 24 speed and chapter 20 paladins have 25 speed. The fastest class that can use the ridersbane is falcon knight, which caps at 26 speed, meaning you require the star shard to double them in chapter 19, and *cannot double them whatsoever* in chapter 20. Meanwhile, the fastest axe class, berserker, has a speed cap of 28 speed, meaning that while they can double the paladins in chapter 19 without the starsphere, they require the starsphere to double in chapter 20. You can try to shoot for the one-hit KO threshold with effective weapons, but paladins in chapter 20 can require up to 74 physical attack to one shot, so that will be a very costly forge.
Snipers and horseman, however, can double without the starsphere. In fact, they're the only classes that can double attack these enemies without taking a counter and without using the starsphere. They can reliably chip these enemies safely or, if you want to take advantage of FE12 enemies having 0 luck, can even sometimes one-round these enemies thanks to critical hits (they're especially good at using crits to kill, since they get two chances to crit instead of just one). They're extremely valuable units in the lategame, and really make me appreciate some of the design choices in FE12. If promoted bow classes' class caps were just slightly different, they'd be a lot worse off, but thankfully they are what they are, and they can make playing late game chapters a lot more interesting and fun.
bows are amazing in fe12. horseman is my preferred endgame class for chris
Even worse for the double bow is it can't even be used by Boyd, it's straight up only for the 2 awful snipers
Shinon is amazing though, only Haar and Titania are better than him for early part 3. Later, Ike starts to double and gets Ragnell, and Gatrie also arguably becomes better but still top 5
The double bow comes too late to really matter but it's still a 3 range weapon that will delete everything, and turns Shinon from one of the best beorc to a god for like 3 maps
Leo is trash though yeah
@@oscarcapac1786 this comment is about PoR not RD
@@DaniDoyle oh my bad
39:00 You forgot to mention the biggest upside of Bows on Lunatic+, which is that you can use their lack of 1-range to not suicide against enemies with Counter (which happens to be one of the randomly given skills)! Even Robin wants Bow Knight for that!
Archer the guys that are precise enough to perfectly hit the enemy should be THE dual assist bot in Engage instead of Warrior, it's the literal definition of cover fire. Let the low strength high skill guys shoot multiple arrow per turn while the high strength warrior do the one shot at vulnerable guys.
Haven't watched the video yet, but "Highs and Bows of Fire Emblem" is an objectively better eyecatcher for the thumbnail. It's just right there, you know?
I prefer the rhyme.
@@DaniDoyle "Alliteration" is the word you're looking for.
Kudos for the " A B A B" application; it's fun.
@@0ctopusComp1etely Lows Rhymes with Bows
@@0ctopusComp1etely Alliteration is when the start of the words are the same letter. that is not what this is. This is a Rhyme (the ending sounds of the words matching)
@@DaniDoyle Ah, I realized my mistake. I was looking at the video Title, "Are Bows Actually Bad", instead of the clearly stated Thumbnail, "The Highs and Lows of FE Bows".
Please ignore me, I'm just a moron.
agree with the list in general but i'd like to add that engage has constant extremely tough flier reinforcements thoughout the entire game so having a bow user to oneshot them is, i'd say, more than just a niche. like yeah you can toss a wrath-vantager their way but they'll be using bows against the ones that have 1-2 range and you're often getting pincered by them so having another bow user is still good. of course, this means that warriors are good, not snipers.
FE7 segment, "Best bow users are Rath or Louise!"
This is Geitz erasure!!!!!! :P
FE9 segment, "Boyd can use Double Bow!" Me who has done S Rank bows Boyd - "No he can't. It's sniper locked, at least in NA version."
FE10 segment: Crossbows can be used to influence enemy script decisions. Also they're still influenced by skill, and have excellent hit rates, giving them a niche for uphill fights particularly against mages. Also their limited might is useful for chip -> feed if you wanna get stronger units combat exp but still feed weaker units. I see them as a fun way to indirectly buff snipers, while being a straight nerf to Warriors (Q.Q).
for real man Geitz is the best bow user in fe7 by a mile. Sure, you need to babysit 3 lords but oh well. Other bow users either have bad strength and are very frail (Wil, Rebecca, Lyn too after promotion), or if they're warriors like Bartre and Dorcas, lack in skill and more importantly speed. This man has it all, even starts with B rank and since bows are imo very situational weapons in fe7 that you'll use on occasion, being able to use brave/killer bows without needing 7 decades of training beforehand is massive.
10:28 I gotta say,it would be really funny if the arena warrior suddenly busted out the Hellswath when you fight him with a bow
I really think Snipers should have extra range. The fact that base melee classes can throw a javelin as far as a promoted ranged specialist can shoot is really weird to me.
Completely off topic but I love the Sea of Stars background music in the start, despite not loving that game's story terribly the music and gameplay were fantastic and I wanna thank u for reminding me it exists.
Anyways yeah video is pretty accurate to my gba and modern fire emblem only experience brain
50:00 my personal gripe with close counter is that its the C rank skill. If it was something like the A rank skill so you had to be pretty dedicated to using bows regularly to get it, it would be at least partly into the midgame before you see it, and you'd probably only see it on Bow Knights and Barbarossa since they're strong enough to take 1 or 2 enemy phase attacks (assuming you aren't also doing Wrath Vantage strats), or if it was like the Battalion Wrath/Vantage/Desperation skills where only some of the cast would learn it while others would get a different skill so that there were pros and cons to having each character use bows it would be reasonable and not just warping the game around bows
I think Close Counter is fine where it is. Enemies get so strong that you’re probably getting one-rounded on all but your most bulky units, so Close Counter doesn’t see that much use.
@@AshenDust_ This matters on lower difficulties which is what Dani was complaining about in the video.
@@GKoopa you still lose the Faire damage bonus on higher classes and a skill slot just for 1-2 range on enemy phase, which is pretty nice but not super important in Three Houses imo.
It still feels jarring that Close Counter/Point Blank went from an exclusive reward for completing essentially a harder variant of the true final boss without any casualties, to a skill anyone can pick up with a little grinding at max lmao
YEAAAA BOWS :D. I love bows and bow accessories (their units)
you made me want Hank hill in a romhack.
Thank you for this video I hope it can help change the western fan perception of bows
I am the autist who cares a little to much about fe Bows btw
skibidi ohio sigma fanum tax unspoken gyatt rizzler
@@DaniDoyle NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
@@DaniDoyle none of these words are in the bible
@@funninoriginal6054 YEah they are in john 1:14
@@funninoriginal6054you cant prove they werent in the original bible, the fan translations just cut them
Lovely video, and great analysis! I appreciate that you took some time to talk about how bows perform differently on different difficulty levels. It made me feel a bit more included, as someone who rarely enjoys FE’s extreme difficulties.
I'm the guy that put the bows hot take on your post from earlier this week. We have the same take, i also forsake fe7 for what they did to archers 😢
fe7 will find no forgiveness
33:25 unsubbed
Subbed.
I do love how Fates rightfully nerfed Hand Axes and the like to be more niche tools….. and then made Daggers stupid. Bronze Medal for the attempt.
After watching the piece about FE7.. it is pretty damning than the most useful bow user you get in the entire game (Or at least the only one I used that made sense in a team) was Hector Hard Mode Geitz. He has the speed and damage necessary to be that one shot downer of flying stuff, for 4 chapters that may have wyverns. Truly a disasterclass of balance
FE5 bows are bad
FE5 Brave Bow “I’M NOT GONNA SUGARCOAT IT.” 14 might, 95 hit, 20 crit, 60 uses, strikes twice in combat.
Finally, FE5 bow (singular) is good
Bows be criminally underated
Funny story: As everyone outside of Japan, I started with the GBA games, but did actually not have a bad opinion of Bows. Quite contrary, I was really smitten with the weapon, with Rebecca still being one of my favourite units. So imagine my surprise when I learned that Bows in the GBA games are rated really low. But then I realized why I didn't have that experience.
After hearing the disapproval, I went back to check my save file and did some calcs. Turns out my Rebecca was secretly blessed with phenomenal stats, making her really fast and strong and therefore really good.
So by freak accident I turned into a bow lover in the game that tries its hardest to make you hate bows. And I couldn't be happier.
rebecca
I remember back in the Fates days, I had a really fun Sniper build for Mozu that used Spendthrift, Bowfaire, Life and Death, the skill the generated bullions, and something else. Gave her a Killer Bow and 4 bullions at any time and she'd just regularly crit for 100+ damage at any given point. Generally made back the bullion she used most of the time too. It was quite fun.
Everytime i see Etie brought up as bad, I'm always like, "my Sniper Etie was my hardest carry, idk what everyone's complaining about" before remembering that my own experience is entirely manufactured because I spent the time and resources to give her Tiki's Starsphere skill asap, which super boosted all her growths.
In defense of FE 7's bows, the change for effective damage was only implemented for international releases for some reason. Rebecca would becapable of OHKO flyers on early game if they kept how effective damage worked, and how would overall more useful. Still not that good due the game's focus on enemy phase, but definitely better than why we got
seeing the list oftopics patrons can vote on, fialure of final maps would be great. i was just discussing with a friend the other day abuout fe11, and that got me thinking about cq and fe9
I love bows and their users a lot, even in FE4. Actually especially in FE4, I don't know if my Midir has just been blessed by the RNG or something but he kills so many things that are otherwise a huge pain trying to get my other units to kill. Him and Lex have sorta been the most hilarious combination of 'the enemy doesn't go past this point' in my run through.
I love ALL Dani Doyle videos!!!! ❤
Bows have great value but being locked to bows is kind of a downer.
Etie to warrior is probably the single best reclass you can ever do. Shes so good in there its a shame it takes so long to get her there
Radiant Dawn Marksmen have one really useful niche in very late part 4 and the Tower -- attacking bosses with mastery skills without requiring Nihil or Parity to avoid a high random chance of death. Having an extra attacker who doesn't require a valuable resource to help is actually rather nice, especially against Dheginsea, who will require you to slowly chip him down with multiple units and who just one-shots anyone if he procs Ire. So Shinon is really arguably at his best in the dragon map.
35:28 Will add that on Lunatic you're going to be facing Anri's Way featuring 12 move Wyverns with 1-2 range fire breath attacks while you're locked to desert tiles killing your movement, and putting snipers on the edge of range with strong bows to one shot them in retaliation is extremely desirable and honestly might be one of the only ways to deal with these dragons on Lunatic Reverse - while Excalibur can do the same thing on a class that moves freely in the desert, you want archers and you want bow rank for so many other reasons that it ends up being the easy solution
Bows always seem like a cool weapon. I really appreciate them in games like fe6 or fe11 where you want to chip these scary enemies before 1 ranging to avoid counters
Amazing video! Thank you for offering a nuanced perspective on bows instead of “Bows bad because of FE7, 8, and 9”.
I think Engage bows can be bumped up to “good” from Niche. Enemy Fliers maintain a consistent presence throughout the game and bows even get the radiant bow as a high might option that targets resistance. The longbow is actually pretty good as well, even at +1, especially when leveraging the game’s mechanics (forges and emblems). The longbow also gives warriors 3 range chain attacks, which offer flexible positioning for all the same reasons you mentioned for curved shot. Snipers are a bit lackluster tho, but I always appreciate my bow user.
Just to add, some of the best Engage Weapons ARE bows (Parthia, Mulagir and Failnaugth) since each of those Weapons provide any Unit the potential of 2 range combat without counters, and all of them outright deletes any flying unit
Bow Knights always throwing a wrench into this is nice. Love that class.
I'll just add that Sniper in Engage also gives you the best (or 2nd best depending on your preference) Byleth's Instruct. +5 Speed is a huge asset for speed fixing in that game.
Of note is that the x3 to x2 bow nerf wasn't in the Japanese version of FE7. Why they did it, I genuinely have no clue.
It was likely because they wanted to make it easier for "Western Audiences "
@@DaniDoyle IOW, the assumption that us Americans are cowboy hothead idiots. Frankly, I've been welcoming Japan coming up with ideas in Kid Icarus Uprising and Super Mario RPG Switch for better balancing the tank via engaging gameplay.
I wonder how much bow's reputation comes from crappy early game archers giving bows a bad first impression
thats for sure part of it. the FE6 Wolt Dorothy Syndrome
Blame Gordon he started it. Good thing he is actually good in fe3 book 2
I know this is true for 3 Houses.
Bows in 3 houses look pretty bad when the game throws Ashe, Bernadetta, and Ignatz at you as your "archers", it isn't until you realize class in 3 houses is a meme, and start slapping Bows on Wyverns and Brigands that you realize how good they are.
shining bow sakura can be mega bonkers in rev wich is really really nice
i do think astrid should have come up in the path of radiance section, in that game i actually find her very useful and can come with you to the final battle if youve been training her and gives at least a little bit of usefulness to bows in that game
Fun Fact about the Weapon Effectiveness thing: Path of Radiance was developed as FE8, but got delayed to the point that Sacred Stones came out first.
That's why Blazing Blade and Path of Radiance follow the same Weapon Effectiveness scale.
Shoutout to the Sensei CO Power Theme drop, absolute banger.
I haven’t finished the video yet, but I’m already trying to figure out if a “Bows bad, archers good” tier could exist.
i saw you mention that you’re working on a sword follow up, and i’d say swords have finally decided to be pretty good come 3h and engage because of the levin sword and some other good swords
How would you rank Bows in the various post-IS Kaga games?
While I'm out of my element when it comes to fe12, sniper and horseman are nice in that they have some of the highest speed caps in the game (29 and 30 respectively) which can let them double some enemies other classes wouldn't be able to on h3/h4.
I saw what you did to Lena and Matthis in the Shadow Dragon section
I do find that in fire emblem games where player phase is more important, bows are munch better. This is due to emeney hitting harder and you don't wants enemy to attack you. I mean look at the higher difficult tier in fire emblem games and you see bow user be more useful. I think another reason why bow user get a bad rep sometimes is because in most game, your first archer is the worst bow users.
i didnt know i cared about fire emblem that much since i haven’t played it in yrs but when i saw the title of this video i got EXCITED because I’M THINKING THE SAME THING
48:46 Small correction: Snipers get Bow Range +2 already. Three Houses is where they don't yet.
So in SoV, your Bow Range increases between Archer and Sniper, whereas in Three Houses it increases between Sniper and Bow Knight.
I always mix these up myself as well😅
Ayeeee! I fellow Rolf from path of radiance enjoyer!
He is my favorite unit in the series! He saved my first ever playthrough of a fire emblem! I was way younger and never playing a strategy rpg or encountered a permadeath mechanic so when that one defend the base night mission basically every griel mercenary died! My team was basically Ike and titania, which led to me not recruiting anyone until Rolf and mist came. Titania was basically his mama, protecting him and feeding him kills. That boat mission with the crows, I fed every.one to Rolf, Rolf became so strong I eventually was able to actually learn how to play and not die lolol!
happy to see (apprehensive) support for bows in FE4, because yeah they're definitely interesting there. I think, for what it's worth, Midir is a pretty great unit because most of your mounted units in early-mid gen 1 struggle significantly to oneround or at least need skill procs to do so (or considerable resource investment) and so his ability to provide good pursuit chip with a chance to proc accost/killer bow crit is really nice. i think he definitely falls off around chapter 4 when you start getting your hands on things like pursuit ring on lex and lachesis promotion, but like at least there are some fliers going around late gen 1 for him to shoot down and it's possible for him to get a brave bow at this point if you're pairing him with aideen (but that means no rescue staff inheritance so blehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)
a strange, dareisay sinister part of me also actually thinks that jamke is lowkey one of the better gen 1 foot units because most of them are only ever doing cleanup duty on player phase and like, jamke has the best base offense out of all of them and can technically reach a little bit farther due to attacking from a range. i think this says more about other foot units than him, though...
bows definitely fell off in gen 2 though literally only meaningful bow usage in the whole gen is faval oneshotting ishtar in chapter 8, absolutely EMBARASSING showing
My favorite use of bows was when i berserk sworded ishtar and she ignored a sleeping bandit and instead suicided on red faval, who she could have attacked from one range BTW. Truly fe4 ai is brilliant beyond our comprehension
I like bows in Echoes, Fates, and 3 Houses. Bows in Echoes are uniquely amazing. Bows just feel nice in Fates Conquest. The combat arts are nice in 3 Houses.
Not a fan of them in FE7 and FE8. They just don't contribute much.
Playing Lunatic+ Awakening made me realize the value of bows in that game. Virion may not be that good but being able to chip without killing himself is nice. Don't have to worry about melee bs and can't get countered unlike mages. And having both magic and physical ranged option is valuable because of Pavise+ and Aegis+.
Essentially, bows are good in games where the player phase is more important, and when reliable 1-2 range isn't as common.
I've done FE3 bow-less
And it was a draft run too so I only had Palla for Chapter 3
Had to chip the Chapter 2 and 5 Wyverns down with Arran (and Sirius in Chapter 5) Silver Lance until I got Wendell
One of my favorite builds from Engage was sniper Lindon.
While Astra Storm Radiant Bow is well known, Lindon also brings weapon insight to the table. With the Radiant Bow being a C rank weapon, that means it will almost always get +20 crit. Sniper's ability gives him another +10 crit, and I gave the Radiant Bow a Sacred engraving for another +20, as well as +40 hit.
The sacred engraving also gives substantial penalties to avoid and dodge, making it unsuitable to melee builds, but as a strict 2 range unit, he can minimize the downside.
Of course, the radiant Bow's high Mt and his decent magic meant he can take down any non-boss flier in the game in a single shot, with the exception of the final chapter on maddening (he falls just short without a +Mt engraving.)
Emblem Lyn gives the huge Astra Storm range, as well as enough speed to patch up his normally weak stat. He generally has about 50 crit, but striking twice, this becomes about a 75% chance to kill most enemies.
Lindon is still naturally very slow, so he won't be able to double Swordmasters or Wolf Knights, but he actually still has about a 50% kill chance, and the +40 hit from the engraving means he won't struggle to hit them like most other units.
And due to his engraving making him so vulnerable to crits, anything that can counter at 2 range that he doesn't kill in 1 shot is not something you want to be attacking.
He fulfilled a unique role in my army. A strictly player phase unit that can delete most enemies, and has a solid chance of 1 rounding enemies that the rest of my army struggles with. He had plenty of weaknesses, but definitely had his niche.
Ive been going back to play the older fire emblem games for the first time, and this video almost perfectly sums up my experience with bows in them.
Fe1: they did castor dirty in this. If he could promote i think he'd actually be the best bow user in the game.
But anyway, i very frequently found myself wanting a bow unit deployed, Especially during maps with mages, because the Parthia acts as a pure water when used as an item.
Fe4: I'm playing this very different than most people i think. Instead of enemy phasing, ive been using almost every unit and smashing my entire army into enemy formations. In this context ive found bows pretty good, though they have a tendency to fall off late in either generation, mostly because the horse mounted archers stats arent good enough, and foot archers are foot archers.
The saving grace of bows is definitely the brave bow though. Since its the best bow non legendary bow youre probably feeding it kills anyway, so it will get the critical skill and help lester keep up where midir couldn't.
The yewfelle would be better than a killer brave bow, but sadly its on a foot locked unit. When you can use it, it doesnt let you down, but you cant use it as much as youd want.
the thumbnail rhymes
Ronan is a bow unit therefore it's the best weapon type
I played the DS remake of Fire Emblem 1, and the starter bow units felt so disproportionately weak that I couldn’t come up with even the slightest use case or justification to start the painful grind.
Honestly, I don't know if I've just been lucky but archers have been consistently one of my favourite unit types. I was a little worried at all the memeing on them but was only left confused after I played through the series because they were always really good. Some people seem to be especially singling out FE7, and Wil and Rebecca were literally two of my strongest units, so... 🤷♂
You forgot to talk about Sue and Shin during the FE6 section??? Why have my nomad children been neglected?
Bows shine when:
Echoes
Claude
I mean, bows are good in most non GBA games. I don't even think Claude is the main reason 3H bows are good.
@@DaniDoyle All I can say about my initial impression of 3H bows is, well... Bernie
Point Blank Skill
Always bring a couple snipers to my teams. Can't break those old habits.
A shame Berwick Saga didn't make a showing, but it would probably take it's own video to explain bows there.
Kaga Saga has some wild stuff for sure. Berwick Bows are really neat, but the video was already so long, it would take EVEN MORE for me to explain them all
I'm playing vision quest at the moment and bows have been really valuable, not only are there a lot of fliers to take down that often come at awkward angles, the easy access to longbows make them stand out for giviing extra range, add to that a significant nerf to most 1-2 weapons (which are still good just not as good) and they also become the best ranged damage option. the 1-2 weapon nerf also makes mages better on ennemy phase since they retain their power which adds really cool decisions as mages are harder to just throw in the middle of a group of ennemy safely.
Ennemies having a lot of specialized weapons also slows down the game enough for archer to contributes.
I'm really impressed with the romhack balance overall, it's very thoughtful and encourages you to use all your tools.
I really like VQs approach to bows
I’ve been saying this since 2010 if archers just promoted into fe4 arcknights they would be one of the best fighters in the series
For what it's worth, bow units are considered pretty bad in Fire Emblem Cipher. I think it's basically unheard of to make your main lord a bow unit.
i just think bottom line its way more convenient to sit a unit in defensive terrain and just enemy phase things with 1-2 range and clean up on player phase. And bows are pretty much exclusively player phase so ppl tend to not like using them. The games where they don't feel that bad are games where a. you can enemy phase with them (like 3 houses) or games where accuracy is a consistent problem (like binding blade) this is cause in most games it's easiest to make a super unit who can enemy phase even if a game is mostly player phase focused. I personally am a bow hater and rarely use them in games that don't give you a good reason to.
Generally lack of good 1-2 range weapons and enemies that are too dangerous to EP also help.
Fe 3 book 1 and 2 generally lower hp and stat caps meant that few units could tank multipile hits especially since units with higher natural defense all have effective weaknesses.
Sword infantry were especially dangerous because speed differences were so high it was basically impossible for non-sword fighters not to be doubled and Luck to Skill was one to one for critical so general enemy sword fighters had low crit chance on everyone which made it two dangerous to throw your own sword fighters so you generally hit them at 2 range on player phase then hit them with a strong up close hit to avoid counters.
Add that 1-2 range weapons like Javelin forced you to have zero speed and bows were useful. Also helps they are decent to good bow users in the game and Fe3 book 2 you fight 5 million wyverns early on who are basically promoted units so even your Jagen struggles
I actually do think that the Double Bow helps Marksmen in FE10 quite a bit, and that's primarily because it has 22 might and +3 str for the user. It is pretty much the highest damage weapon in the entire game. Plus, Marksmen are one of the few classes who can proc their Mastery Skill at 2 or even 3 range. That's not *that* important, but it can mean they can one-round some dragons without any risk sometimes.
My Point wasn't that the double boat isn't helpful I think you should use it whenever you have it my point was that people exaggerate its impact, specifically on shinon. An item that is only around for 3 maps isn't what makes a unit "good". See also FE9 Ragnel or FE6 binding blade.
@@DaniDoyle Right, I can agree there.
thank you for mentioning that they are usefull in awakening luna+ (i see nobody talking about luna + exept to say that it's unfair)
this video makes me want to play ignatz on maddening three houses, see how he turns out
He'll be a... unit, for sure
Isn't the reduce of bonus damage in FE7 is only on the american and european versions of the game ?
I wonder how interesting this look into and breakdown would be for other weapon types. Namely Magic, Axes, and Swords. Lances feel like they've been steady enough (Especially since the Jagen tends to have a Silver Lance) that the conversation would be fairly flat, I don't think Lances have ever been like, BAD. but Axes have had their "wow you suck" (FE6) as well as "Wow you rock" (FE 7 & 8) and Swords have as well. ESPECIALLY with how uncommon 1-2 Sword access is.
I do think an important part of the conversation is just what units get access or specialization in a weapon.
3 houses is a great example of this. Swords are as bad as they are in 3 houses because your choices for Swordfaire are
Swordmaster, which brings nothing of value to the table besides, and is an Advanced class that leads to nothing else
Falcoknight, which is gender locked, and is generally worse than Wyvern in every meaningful way
And Meme Savant, which is a class built for nobody.
It's not even that Swords are bad if you use them in 3 houses; there's plenty of super dodgy enemies that the accuracy would be nice for, and weight penalties are sticking around until at least midgame otherwise, it's that it's a dead end skill, no classes that are good support, buff, or want them, and all the best combat classes need other skills, and don't buff Swords.
Swords in FE7 are another good point, I think. The list of sword units mostly consists of a bunch of shaky, unreliable units, or the stable of cavaliers you have that can use whatever they want. Raven is about the only reasonable unit who is using Swords a lot, so the value of Swords in FE7 largely boils down to if you're using Raven. (Or trying to make Isadora work, I guess)
Bows are very good in Berwick Saga. They have the same enemy phase issues that they have in other games, but its somewhat mitigated because there isn't a real "enemy phase" thanks to the turn system, and most units can't counterattack that well anyway regardless of weapon. The main thing bows have going for them is that both the bow and the arrow are treated as separate equipment with their own might and combat bonuses, so you get to sort of double up and make some unhinged weapons.
I clicked on this because of Alcryst in S tier(he sucks(tragic))
I also do think that you underrate Sniper a lot. Sniper Astra Storm is extremely strong, and you will see it being used in a LOT of maps in a more efficient setting. It is fully worth dedicating Amber or Citrinne to the role, and you can either reclass them out of Sniper for maps you don't need it or just give them Byleth for Covert Instruct/Goddess Dance, as +5 speed is easily the best of the stat bonuses. And a small correction, you cannot get your bond rank with Leif to 10 not past 10, as Master Lance unlocks at 10. So just go to 9 and never view the convo.
Also I would bump up bows in Thracia. The Brave Bow is extremely good and there are a lot of situations where you can get into 2 range combat pretty reliably, especially with some bulkier units like Xavier or even Ronan who can do combat through a door in the final chapter. Ronan himself is also good in a few situations because 7 mov unit indoors is actually very useful, but thats enough of the Ronan propaganda.
The Alcryst bait worked.
Both he and Etie are just "fine" idk why people get so high/low on them, but i figured if I put one of them in S it would get some comments about how I'm either right or wrong.
@@DaniDoyle Thats actually so beyond genius lmao
Awesome. This video needed to be made to prove archers aren't always bad and why the devs need to ACTUALLY give them some strengths beyond flyer killer & +2 range and ALLOW ARCHERS TO COOK. Bring back the archer elevation mechanic from FE10 for one, it's ridiculous how that was only in one game when it makes so much sense. It's like they're too afraid of making them OP.
You mention difficulty levels a bit at the end with Awakening, but I think they might actually be part of why people think negatively of bows. I think a lot of the uses bows have in their better appearances (dealing with powerful fliers, chipping enemies who are more powerful than your units) are more important on higher difficulties than lower ones (when enemies are easier to handle without effective damage or multiple of your units). This means that people who play on lower difficulties don't see the beneficial parts of bows that much, so they're less likely to reconsider their value.
TBH, i don't think difficultly affects bows much other than in the games i mentioned. Nothing before FE6 has difficulty, and even fe6 normal enemies are threatening (especially wyverns). The Parthia comes early regardless of the difficulty for fe11, fe12 normal mode"s wyverns are still very hard to kill, Archer's skills in fates are independent of difficulty, in fe15 1-5 range is arguably even better on easy than hard, and in engage hard mode being able to bow down flyers or use strong bows for astra storm is still quite a useful niche
Not to mention alcyrst in engage basically has a better sniper case aka his personal class due to Luna
I think you're severely underestimating how good bows are in Engage. It's arguably the best weapon type in the game as Engage loves to throw bulky fliers at you especially in the endgame alongside how strong weapons like the Longbow and Radiant Bow are. Warrior being backup units also allows them to provide a very large radius of backup attacks with Longbows which can even be further increased with Claude's Bond Ring.
While I agree the Archer classes aren't that good(though Covert gives them some interesting Sync bonuses), Warrior is easily the best class in the game and a large part of that is because of their bow access.
Maybe this is a me thing but I end up playing Genealogy as one of the most player phase focused games in the series. Enemies tend to do a lot of damage to your units when they hit.
Anyways that aside I think it's worth noting regarding the Killer Bow in Genealogy that it has a fantastic hit rate of 100 and weight of only 3 thus making it arguably the best bow in the game.
In Thracia I think the only thing I'd add is that the Brave Bow is very cracked in that game, but you're either using Selphina (not great) or seriously investing in another bow unit to use it. If you're going to the trouble of investing in a bow user then Robert does end up being a genuinely elite combat unit (better than the vast majority of units after similar investment) but there are still better investment projects and yeah there isn't a lot for bows specifically to do in the game outside of the aforementioned Brave Bow being one of the best ranged weapons in the game.
Genetal buff for future sniper classes is 30% crit and the extra range just for sticking to sniper vs warrior or a funny branch class can have water, mountain and any other walk along with -1 movement cost for any terrain, both sniper and this walker class will bith be bow only thoe
I highly disagree with ranking Engage's bows as only niche. The game maintains a constant supply of incredibly strong fliers with insane bulk that only bow users can realistically one round without an Engage attack or some other psychotic way to cheat damage. I also think it's worth noting how strong Longbows can be for the purpose of Chain attacks, offering you yet another way to shred more and more of the sometimes colossal health bars bosses, and even sometimes normal enemies have.
I also wanted to say i think Sniper is more solid than you implied, because there are multiple unique options only available to Covert units, and while Thief is often the more popular Covert, Sniper offers very solid niche effects with Emblems due to being a Covert, while also still being able to offer relief from the mahoosive fliers Maddening throws at you. I do personally think Engage is an interesting blueprint for how we can potentially see Snipers continue to work in infinite reclass systems, via the subtype system. If Covert units continue to get unique bonuses, ideally ones that are generally better than the other subtypes, people would likely choose Sniper over other bow options.
I want to make some comments about FE3 Book 2
Both Ryan and Warren actually have enough weapon level to wield the steel bow. It generally doesn't matter who gets it as you need another bow user to finish off the dracoknights anyway. Gordin is the best candidate for exp funneling for early promotion by far because of his high base level and sniper being an excellent class
Speaking of which, I strongly disagree with the notion that horsemen are better than snipers. In fact, I think that horsemen are the second worse class in the game, only worse than armor knights, and it is also one of the most useless promotions in the series. Snipers, on the other hand, is one of the best classes in the game.
To start off, horses in general suck in FE3 Book 2. To briefly explain why paladins/horsemen suck in this game, past the first ~5 chapters, there are a ton of maps with either heavy terrain or are indoors giving them low movement.
Horsemen also has abysmal promotion gains, with only +2 skill and +2 defense, both of which are useless. This is Archanea so accuracy wasn't an issue to begin with, and defense doesn't help in a game filled with dragons that ignore defensive stats. Furthermore, horsemen have a poor base weapon level of 6. This isn't helped by Warren and Castor's dogshit weapon level growth of 20%. What you're left with is a unit who can't double with any good bow, can't use the Parthia or Silver Bow without the help of an arms scroll and have poor movement because horse units suck as mentioned earlier. Horsemen absolutely pale in comparison to snipers, who get an excellent indoor move of 7, +5 speed to fix any doubling issues, good terrain data such as being able to waterwalk which is relevant in some maps, and a base weapon level of 10, which lets you wield the Silver Bow at base and only 2 away from Parthia.
For these reasons, Warren is unironically better than Castor. At least Warren gets to be good for two chapters shooting down dracoknights before becoming useless starting in chapter 4. Castor does maaaaybe like one or two things before he becomes absolute garbage.
I've been modding Fates for a couple years now, and my biggest conclusion for Bows (and to some extent magic) is that the minute they gained the range to actually make them RANGED (FE15 and 16) is when it all clicked and the weapon type became what it was meant to be. Sure balancing isn't always perfect but they finally gained identity
Yeah, Engage did snipers dirty. Alcryst’s personal promoted class being essentially a “Super Sniper” that has Luna is the only real viable option over Warrior. And that’s exclusive to him.
fe7 and bows are a match made in heaven, surely. You mentioned most of the things that make bows godawful, but i also have to add something else: the other bow users, namely warriors, or promoted Lyn. Lyn shares a lot of similarities with the other archers (frail and meh strength) although other stats are good so it's slightly less disastrous (still very bad). Dorcas and Bartre have the strength to use bows, but lack in skill and really lack in speed. Geitz is the best archer in fe7, great bases and even growths, joins with freaking B rank bows so i don't need to train him for 3 years to be able to use all the good stuff like killer or brave bow. I can't believe i'm saying this but yeah, it's funny. And even the best archer comes with the requirement of babying 3 lords for enough levels to get his recruitment chapter. Fun times.
Awakening is the one game where i just,didnt have a bow user on my first playthrough
Amd it wasnt really a matter of viability,i used bows in fe7 and 8 just because i wanted to
But in fe13 there's just isnt a very big incentive due to just not having more than 1 dedicated bow guy
I didnt invest into Virion and found myself in the midgame bowless,to the point i forced myself to get Noire in my second playthrough
Dani forgetting Generals can use bows in Jugdral, not that it would change much since they aren’t particularly good units. Also, Finding Gold Bars can be useful on Revelation due to how little raw gold that route gives (you more or less need to sell things)
what do you mean? I didn't say anything about generals because I don't find them relevant to the bow niche/problem (fe4 super canto, fe5 inability to capture)
can we say that bows are kind of a meme in Fire Emblem?
Imo Virion is not good in Awakening lunatic due to the fact that it has abysmal base speed. I guess you are assuming it never gets atttacked or face a counter, in which case I guess? But that limits tactics a lot, most of the time I think he is going to end up speed screwed fast and you would be better using lonqu or gaiuss or frankly anyoone. I guess he is not useless in the chapters that he has the slots to be put in, tho, as he can chip
The big problem with archers is that they are often just shittier mages. For example, effective damage against flyers usually boils down to extra damage against pegasus riders (that are already very easy to kill) and wyverns (whose big defense stats make them easier to kill with magic). Plus they can't counter which makes them suboptimal for heavy investment. If you're playing a slower grindier game where you pick off enemies one by one archers can be solid (but even then unless accuracy is a major concern, mages are probably still better).
For fe1 you forgot about levin swords, which are pretty great during certain parts of the game due to having good accuracy vs javelins
Levin swords have fixed damage (7) so they will not be getting kills or even really doing meaningful chip
@@DaniDoyle 7 dmg, or 14 if doubling, is solid chip because enemies have low hp. In ch 16 all but one general have 28 hp or less, meaning your 2 rounding almost every enemy. Looking later in the game at ch. 23, most of the wyverns have ~31 hp except 2, but every other unit has 28 hp, except the Paladins with 25 hp.
As long as your faster, levin swords can do half an enemies health, and ignore the high defense of units like wyverns, armors, and Cavs, which are pretty common. And for comparison, against Cavs your sniper Jorge only does 9 dmg at base, using a silver bow (18mt -9 def, 22 hp)
Essentially, while levin swords get power crept by units that can one round, they can do solid chip dmg to any enemy in the game as long as the user can double, with pegs being the obvious candidates.
I love hunters volley.
While I agree with the placements since you specifically say you're taking higher difficulties into account, I feel that for a general perception of bows normal mode and hard mode should be weighted heavier than lunatic or maddening. Since often times higher difficulties must be unlocked and the percentage of people that actually play and complete said higher difficulties will be overall much lower than the percentage of people that played normal and hard.
Only going with the highest difficulty only brings in the perspective of a hardcore fan that craves the hardest tactical challenges, and general sentiment there is that bows are good, while more casual fans that still participate in the fandom generally have worse experiences with bows.
I did not just talk about higher difficulties though. On the games where difficulty affected the strength of bows, I spoke about how bows were different on lower difficulties.
but your overall placement for games such as awakening were more heavily weighted towards lunatic.
Warrior also gets ridiculous bases/growths but honestly the biggest problem with Engage sniper was that the weapon rank balance was off. In theory, Sniper gets access to more types of bows than Warrior. In practice, every single relevant bow is C rank. Killer, Radiant, Longbow, and maybe a forged Steel is all you need. Sniper gets Brave Bow but who needs to hit 2-4 times when crits do triple damage?
Late Game Alcryst on mid/high Def Foes or some bosses granted it's on his Lord class rather than Sniper. It's honestly Luna, his personal skill, and his Dex+Speed that saves his ass a lot. Etie's is a 1 turn conditional, he gets it for merely existing after turn 1 lol.
So I did a quick look at videos/playlists and couldn't find a video on your channel talking/mentioning about how you think the "Enemy Phase" and "player phase" is reductive. Personally I thought it was always a pretty accurate summary of how a lot of Fire Emblems played, with the biggest caveat being that some fire emblems changed how slanted they were depending on difficult. With challenge runs often proving that certain games were possible when restricting yourself to one phase only.
Basically. I'm really curious why you'd think it would be "reductive" and I'd like to hear more about why you think that's the case. So uh, hopefully I didn't just miss the video that already exists and make a pointless comment like an idiot xD
I do not have a video on this yet (maybe someday), but I can lay out my basic thoughts. the reason I think it is reductive is most games have high level strategies that take advantage of either phase (or even both). Often times, which of these strategies is "best" changes from map to map, or even just depending on your team composition. For example, in the early game of awakening, your actions on player phase are more important, due to how powerful enemies are relative to non Fredrick units. But, entering the early mid game, there are a lot of route maps and your carries will become strong enough to kill enemies safely on EP, if given the proper skills/forges. On kill boss maps, player phase tools like galeforce and rescue once again become the most valuable tools.
A similar thing happens in most other games. 3H has "player phase units" use powerful combat arts to kill bosses after getting warped there, or "enemy phase units" use vantage wrath or avoid/prt stacking to kill hordes of enemies with zero risk to themselves, and both strategies are equally viable, just depends on what you build towards.
Even in earlier games, like FE6, you have the early game with weak units focusing on player phase actions, then eventually your units become strong enough to handle multiple foes on EP, until the foes once again become strong and Player Phase action becomes important.
Even easy games like Sacred Stones have dynamics like this. There are maps with hordes of weak enemies to kill on EP, such as ch4 or ch12 (Both Ephraim and Eirka Mode 12 actually, in a weird coincidence), but there are also maps like ch18 where you want to rush eggs on player phase to avoid dealing with dangerous gorgons, or ch6 where Seth rushing for the boss before spiders catch civilians.
On the flip side, hard games like Conquest often are called "player phase games" but high level players of said games often develop very reliable and powerful EP only strategies. Bluecosmic has multiple CQ chapter clears without any player phase attacks, for example. And Vantage L&D is such a broken strat that many Fates players will ban it in their challenge runs for being unfun.
I don't see how challenge runs restricting you to only one phase are relevant however, as that's, well, a challenge run. Every mainline game has been beaten within a 0% growths context as well, but we don't call them 0% growths games. I beat FE4 without swords, but that doesn't prove swords are weak in FE4, just that's its possible to beat the game without them. Most challenge runs are possible on most games.