That's very useful for me, who chooses exclusively on which sprite I think looks cooler, which would be funnier and which would fit better my headcanons.
I know for me I tend to do General Amelia, because funny but also I guess FEH. (And for 3rd reason General Animations are really cool in GBA) Another thing about General Amelia is that due to her actually having a Speed Growth it is hilarious to watch Amelia evade almost everything thrown at her whilst in heavy duty armor.
@@astralguardian5930 i also went for general Amelia. It was priceless to imagine tini-tiny Amelia growing 3 feet taller and becoming swole as fuck in less than an year of training
Not gonna lie, I actually liked using Amelia as a Knight. Mostly because it's absolutely hilarious to watch stuff die to a little girl inside an oversized tin can. XD
It is funny, and also once you make her into a General she gets some of the coolest animations this side of GBA. (Also Boots General Amelia is actually an even greater meme, as she truly is Lightning General, in Speed stat but also movement)
I like her as a Great Knight more, it's a class that has menacing design but goofy ass combat animation. Imagine a little girl inside an armored cavalry and her horse's front hoove tap the ground two times.
@@astralguardian5930 What most people don't seem to realize about Amelia is that her base resistance is so much higher than other General candidates she can literally become impervious to all damage sans the final boss' just on pure defense and resistance if she keeps rolling RES on level ups.
1:09 To answer your question, I have three answers. 1. Making Amelia the Thunder General 2. GBA General Animations are badass. And most important of all 3. *It's funny*
I remember in FE3 Sniper was given much much better stats than horseman (granted it wasn't branched-promotion, but the two "bow classes"), it's kind of odd they knew back then and missed the boat completely in Sacred Stones.
Fe4 even tried this. Midayle is horrible but eh horse gives hit and run. Jamke is amazing at fighting enemies and bosses and getting money despite being bow locked. But he shows up to the front lines late and he’s not nearly as flexible. Same happens in gen 2. Lester can be good but can turn out awful and is dependent on jamke or midayle. Febail meanwhile can’t be fucked over and is sometimes necessary for people to deal with Ishtar. It’s just a shame the rest of fe4 isn’t real designed like that.
Neogears i wouldn’t call midayle awful, just that he doesn’t come with the killer bow. jamke has better combat by far but for the most part it’s overkill. it’s been a while since i’ve played fe4, but iirc, midayle with the killer bow slaps
An idea i always thought of but never put into practice was give general crit negation instead of great Shield might make heavy spears and armor slayers more relivent
@@Underworlder5 true but i feel not being crit leads to more thought when dealing with them since your not one shotting them reliably without effective weapons and i feel gives player controlled ones more durability
@@fernandoii8000 so in other words, there is nothing left to chance when relying on generals to tank hits. when you make the calculations, you know the results
5:59 Wow. I've been thinking this for years. I'm glad someone agrees. If the idea is that they're a fleet footed Thief, it would make a lot of sense to give them Canto. Especially if they're not gonna have the stats necessary to go toe to toe on the frontline. I especially like the idea that a Thief needs to promote to get Canto as it gives credence to the idea that the thief has honed their movements to perfection along the journey rather than being able to do it outright.
*looks at valkyrie's changes* uhhh....you may be making them supprt focused but they still need that Magic Stat to do their job well. -also, i'd ask you to not hard nerf th light rank too hard simply to give the people who can actually use Ivaldi and not shoot themselves in the foot have an actual chance of using ivaldi- also, unfortunetly, there is no real way to balance any tree with Bishop in it because slayer is just that broken in a game where the majority of lategame is either monster spam or monster spam with human dark mages
Ive always felt like the armour knight deserves the 2nd weapon type much more than the cavalier, they are supposed to be the most threatening unit in physical melee after all, whether thats axes or swords is anyones preference, but suffering from reduced mov, a typing weakness and generally low res is enough downsides id definitly be comfortable giving another weapon type
interesting balances you made there. I'd like to give my thoughts on some of them. Valkyrie: Making her a support class is nice, but the changes mostly hurt more than they help. Reducing her MAG while raising her staff rank is counter productive in terms of ranged staves, which is the main idea behind a magical support unit (especially with the high staff rank you give this class). It even negates any kind of damage she could do due to having reduced MAG when wielding the weakest kind of tomes in terms of raw power, even more so when light magic comes in handy in the late to end game with all those monsters running around. She doesn't even get the slayer bonus. Not only are light tomes the weakest, but also have the highest hit rates among them, so raising her skill doesn't do anything (especially when she has no power to fight anyways) and it also doesn't contribute to being a rescue/staff bot. 8 MOV on the other hand is nice, but not neccessary to fulfill her job as a solid support class. So is dropping her HP and DEF, which are not that relevant whit somewhat good positioning. In my opinion the best way to buff her is just reducing her survivability, and give her C staves like the bishop class. Since both Mage Knight and Bishop also get some modifications to their classes, this should balance the Valkyrie more than enough in comparison. Druid vs Summoner: Like others already mentioned, Druid with crit bonus is very strong. Not only is dark magic the strongest in the game, but it has Nosferatu. Those two in combination are very devastating and can trivialize many of the more difficult challenges the late/end game throws at you, especially when those tomes can be bought (ch. 17). All those other buffs to both Druid and Summoner are fine, but since the ability to summon is very unique and very versatile, I would suggest to cut the staff utility from the Summoner Class. This gives the player the choice between a way faster combat unit with the ability to use staves or a support unit that can temporarily deploy additional units with unique benefits no regular class in the game has. Amelia's Trainee Class: The +5 DEF buff to her Knight promotion is good, but this should apply to almost stat when MOV is left untouched. Moving almost double the distance upon horse promotion is infinitely better than being stuck with her base MOV, also getting Canto, being able to effectively contribute to rescue-dropping, doubling enemies way fast (or not getting doubled in the first place), etc. The only way for Amelia to have her second promotion branch be somewhat comparable is to ditch her Knight class altogether and giving her the Pegasus class instead. This has a nice trade-off: giving up a bit of bulk to have free reign on outdoor maps due to free movement over terrain, which results in her being potentially strong unit with great movement utility in both class branches. And if you want her to be an armored unit so badly, there is always the option to go into Great Knight (with 7 MOV due to the buffs you gave them) with great control over the weapon triangle. Wyvern Lord vs Wyvern Knight: This is just a small nitpick, but I want to mention it nonetheless. I think reducing the Speed of the W. Knights is not the best option. Most of the W. Knights are being promoted from Peg. Knights, who already have some issues doubling enemies due to their low con. In my eyes the better option would be to buff the W. Lord's speed by the amount you would drop the other class. This is also a little boost to their combat performance, like the Pierce skill is to the W. Knight.
For your Druid opinion, I would like to say that it’s balanced in terms of characters who can utilize the class. Knoll is a horrid combat unit, and Ewan is hard to train. Not to mention the fact that they risk getting doubled due to nosferatu’s high weight. They’d still be best off using flux or thunder.
@@OrlandoAguirre222 I believe originally amelia was going to be a flyer trainee. I believe amelia and tana were the same character/switched roles or something at some point in development so i guess they opted for another normal pegasus in the end.
Snipers, Swordmasters, Berserkers (and Halberdiers) all need Crit bonuses. Being any weapon locked isn't better than having multiple weapon types, so it's a decent trade. Also canto rogues is fuckin genius. Running some long game numbers would be interesting. I don't know if Excelblem's chart is publicly available, but I'm curious what end game stat spreads are for some of the more changed classes, and when/if regular characters would hit certain speed/damage thresholds now.
Considering the fact most of these classes have been good without a crit bonus besides sm (even then its less of a matter of crit and more of ep or pp games) they dont really need it, berserker is the best infantry axe class cause of the speed already, snipers in games like fe12 are generally pretty good, halberdiers don't really need it either but thats debatable due to the lack of them existing, and swordmasters dont really need it per se but i feel they should get it since the class was designed with glass canon base stats in mind
No class can become good because of critrate unless it is 100%, because you are not supposed to ever bank on a crit. It's a change that makes units flashier, not better.
Honeslty falcon knight and wyvern knight dont have much of a difference in the base game considering both will still let you double and they get similar promo bonuses
@@epicgamer6678 both are non factors, pierce is never getting any genuine use outside of rigging and swords is worthless, so unless you need to rig pierces for stuff like speedrunning, falco is just as good if not slightly better
Thanks for making this, and going over your reasoning. I was just thinking about getting back into FE8, and I often make romhacks when revisiting games like this. It's been a while since I've played this game, so videos like this are very helpful for learning what to keep an eye out for in terms of balance considerations.
Fire Emblem in general has this problem where mounts provide great benefits, and good stats provide great benefits, but Fire Emblem rreeeeaaalllyyy likes to give most units either both or neither Edit: though i am pissed that great knights always suck. Even in 3h great knight, a master class, is outdone by paladin, an advanced class. Let alone wyverns
Master Classes in general are just a mess. There are only a few classes that are flat upgrades to advanced classes, most are just lateral moves. Wyvern Lord, Gremory, and War Master are the only direct steps up, and Dark and Holy Knight are lateral moves that end up being direct because haha mounts, and dismounting removing any penalty to mounts whatsoever. The rest are just lateral alternatives to the other advanced classes, and in many ways are worse at some area of focus an Advanced class had. But, 3 Houses is poorly balanced, news at 8, and whatnot.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Gremory isn't even a direct step up, though. You lose dark tomefair or white magic heal in return for more uses of the other style of magic. I mean, with the exception that Gremory is basically a direct upgrade from Warlock for Lysithea since dark tomefair is actually useless for her and 2x warp uses is good. But yeah Three Houses just in general makes it too good to be either a falcoknight or wyvern knight.
For assasin i think it would be cool if they would have less chances to be targeted by enemies or would be hidden in forest. It fits with the whole stealth theme if you promote colm into an assasin and it fits swordmaster's gimick of being strong on player phase and weak on enemy phase + dodging alot really well.
I used Amelia as an armor knight a couple of times. It was nice having one that didn't get doubled by everything. In fact, she herself could double pretty reliably too.
I´ve too entretained the idea to give a magic class a crit boost and... its not good, at least when you go against it. High crit is countered by not getting hit by it. Therefore, the only counter to crit mages are long bows and siege tomes... not the most widespread selection of weapons. I´d suggest to give druid something else instead, like light magic, a major boost to ranks. Maybe a better movement array or just plain stats.
@@oof5992 The thing is that as is, only one units could reliably takedown crit mages and maybe a select few others with high luck, compared to almost every silngle unit in an army capable of hitting other crit units safely. Its not a matter of having a singular key to open a singular door, its to bring a kit to tackle different emegencies along a playthrough. This is why shitty map design is not fixed by slapping a warp staff along the way. Now you just added a soft lose condition that you now have to worry about. A single iron rune is now making a single unit inmune to crits, that unit can still die and you lose the rune, it can get stolen and then you can get critted to death. Getting back on track with crit mages, there´s another way to counter a crit unit and thats having enough defense to survive a crit. This is how I usually tackle the Sacae chapters in FE6, a unit needs about 18 defense to ignore all damage fron nomads, so the armor knights usually are impervious to damage there, maybe some paladin reaches that, Fae has 15 def in her stone and 2 at base, she may not counter but at least she can bait. Now all of this works because they hit on defense, if it was on resistence there´s a lot less units capable of taking on them and if the units are also capable of ignoring res with luna, now you can only take them with pure hp, if the druid had 20 mag that´s enough to be risky for every single unit in the whole game. It´s a niche issue and can be simply fixed with design, just never give luna to a druid, that´s fair, still, high res units are rarer than high def.
A critting Luna sends shivers down my spine. Edit: then again, you can still make a good game out of bad design. You can give the player Hoplon Guard/Iron Rune earlier and then make a level with a long hallway absolutely packed with the little suckers. BUT at the start of that same chapter you can also give the player a Bishop with monster Res perfectly capable of soloing that corridor if you give him time. The catch is there could be a time based side mission like a gaiden flag or an escaping thief at the end of that Druid corridor. That way it would reward the players that kept their Hoplon Guard by allowing them to blitz the shit out of that corridor with two units instead of just the Bishop while not soft locking players that don't have a Hoplon Guard. In fact, I do think players without Hoplon Guard can still have a chance if they're brave enough to send a Pegasus to chase down the Thief while dodging the critting Druids.
I've personally never liked giving Snipers crit bonus since that means a more common enemy type (depending on the game) has crit chances on your units, as opposed to Swordmasters and Berserkers which tend to be fairly rare. When you buff a class, you have to consider how it buffs the enemies as well as the player
Eeh i on one hand they only have one weapon are are offensive units like swordmaster ands berserkers but on the other hand swordmasters are countered by high defense and berserkers by dodge What counters snipers with crit ? not much other that they are much safer to handle on player phase and impossible in enemy phase Anyway I agree at looking on how it buff enemies but if snipers are uncommon I think they definitely should have the crit bonus Édit: hold on a second it’s promotion bonuses enemies will not be affected
@@thomasquesada7248 Enemies will not be affected by promotion bonuses, but will be affected if you make changes to the class itself. Enemy snipers and druids getting crit will apply to enemies too. Nearly all enemies use male class variants so if you change con or mov for a male class enemies will have that con and mov too. The swordmasters will have higher con, and enemy great knights will have higher mov. Personally, I think this is all fine for the most part. Enemy snipers can be dealt with if you play by their weaknesses and aren't too common, and enemy great knights aren't much stronger than say, paladins. Druids however, absolutely not. They get pretty common late game and they have 1-2 range and will nearly always one shot with a crit. If they have luna their crit rates get frighteningly high.
@@hajoeijgenraam295 yea I realized this not long after the edit but didn’t wanted to change it also I agree on druids, only class with one weapon should get a crit bonus so there is always a « safe » way to deal with them and Druid’s having permanent 1-2 range is already is big stop to crit bonuses
I mean, I get people like moving their units farther. Sure, the fastest, farthest moving engages building frontline strategies better. But I like my units being different so that the game has more functions to engage with, instead of optimizing all my options to be the one same thing. This game might have the most amount of mounted units ever. I mean, cool, they all have their uses and qualities, but I might not like watching horses for the whole game.
If you actually wanna balance the base classes to have pros and cons it's far more complex, due to classes being at base very poorly balanced. Like knight is typically a solider that has less move, gets stoped by armor slaying, has no weapon triangle on the high Mt axes without a reaver, lacks resistance, speed, cannot be carried easily, and typically takes around the same damage or more if not fed exp. Meanwhile cavalier is faster, bulkier in far more situations, has more move, gets added features due to being mounted, a secondary weapon for triangle manipulation, and is far easier to use, train, dominate with. On top of that the that having effective weapons against a versatile mobile unit isn't exactly a huge disadvantage. Having effective damage against a slow hard to reposition, that can't run out of any fight or be rescued easily, that's main gimmick is supposed to be incredible bulk. If you wanna balance these out you can see what kinda things need to be changed and what needs to be weakened or strengthened accordingly.
I disagree with the idea that rogue is better than assassin for two reasons. You really only need one rogue in the army. They show up when you need to steal items and/or open chests. Rennac is a rogue you get for free, so he fills that niche quite nicely without needing to make Colm a rogue, and he's simple to level up or protect. The second reason is that I feel that you're sleeping on Silencer. For assassins to function, they need high crit weapons because of how Silencer works, and when they have that, the only thing that can hurt reliably hurt or kill them are mages, but rogues don't get any true combat bonuses. Swordmaster is better than assassin, no question. But I always make Colm an Assassin and I've never had a problem with him as long as he has a high crit weapon.
@@moonmelons There's no doubt that the assassin is a niche class because it's basically a worse swordmaster with a gimmick that has a requirement. Make no mistake, if I could make Colm a swordmaster, I'd do it without a second thought. But I don't see the reason for more than one rogue that pops in when you need them and has no other reason otherwise. I just think that silencer is a better option for combat and one rogue is plenty for when you need them. Not every map has items to steal or chests to open, so I view assassin as a better class overall. I'd also trust putting an assassin on the front lines in a fog of war map to defend themselves as opposed to a rogue who may need more defending. Silencer has saved my bacon at crucial moments, especially on the harder difficulties. It's not the best practice, admittedly, but like I said, as long as Colm has a high crit weapon, I don't have an issue with him.
Honestly sir you make an excellent point. I'm playing ffxiv right now and can appreciate the job balancing. This would make a new fire emblem a much better game
About the Moulder vs Natasha thing. i think that Natasha´s main appeal is being a good support partner and having better support partners that Moulder, having support chains with boht Seth and Franz is a very good excuse to make her a valkyrie while Moulder can have problems staing in range to support of his more movile companions with the exception of Gilliam. ¿are you gonna make an update to the mod with the new feedback?
I think warrior needs to give some speed on promotion. A flat zero to speed sucks. Especially when we consider the units who can be a warrior : Garcia and Ross. 2 characters who really want speed. If you dont give warriors speed I think they deserve a big strength boost. The kind that would push Garica and Ross to one shot some squishy enemies with ease like magic units and Myrmadons. I think +4 would be justified.
I don't agree with the Hero Warrior analysis. "Both get relevant secondary weapons" only really applies in a vacuum. Axes are a handy secondary weapon. Coming off of a fighter, Swords are the secondary weapon. It's nice to start them at C rank, so they will see some use, but honestly, not much is gained. For freshly promoted units coming off of fighter: All bows offer some degree of utility for the warrior. It's an improved 2 range option, and 3 range in the case of the longbow. Plus they're handy against fliers. The useful weapons Hero gains include: Killing Edge, Axe Reaver, and later, Brave Sword and Silver Sword. The thing is, the only advantage swords have over axes is a different weapon triangle spot, and an accuracy boost. The weapon triangle advantage swords apparently bring isn't actually a big deal, because the Sword Reaver and Slayers are already usable coming off of fighter. So functionally, swords give weapon triangle advantage against axes, which axes already have a neutral matchup against. Basically, I'm of the opinion Warriors have a better weapon set than Heroes, event starting at E rank bows. Going fighter to hero is mainly to give Garcia 2 speed. Ross has the option of going the Berserker route, which would already be as fast (also gained speed from the pirate over fighter.) Water/Mountain walk +15 crit and 2 con is easily better than sword access. Sadly, this creates a dilemma: Buffing Warrior makes Hero vs. Warrior less balanced. But Berserker is generally better than Warrior. Unfortunately, I think that means the most sensible solution is to nerf Berserker (otherwise, we end up buffing Warrior, Hero and Ranger.)
I had a blast playing this game with every mounted unit I could get, and forcing myself to use every unit that has access to secondary weapons, only those weapons if any. Sages strictly light/staves, Druid strictly anima/staves, Ranger Gerik with bows, or Ranger Neimi with swords. Its actually pretty fun. Forcing promotions to play this way can add flavour to an already easy game.
I remember the first time i played sacred stones and i chose each character to promote to a different class to have all the different classes in one playthrough
Is this still a thing? Are we still here? If so: Let's not forget how these classes, for the units who undergo these class changes, have stat caps. Sure, you can balance the promotion gains and all, but you're still not going to want to make Ross a hero since he's gonna cap his strength in there pretty fast he's not really going to touch many other stats in there as much. Knight vs cav is always going to be hard to justify... To take knight is going to need even more bulk, I think. I don't think anyone would disagree to giving knight even more HP upon promotion. Or even better, as another comment mentions, just axe the knight idea altogether and give Amelia the cav v peg promote. Other things I have... Thoughts on, like messing with the promoted movement is kinda odd... But I support giving the valk their 8 movement back. Giving rogues canto is *HUGE* and I personally _love it!_ Assassins getting the extra move is kinda interesting, but I think largely unneeded. I think the utility of the assassin v swordmaster sells well. Sure silencer is mostly worthless(unless it's against you in arena), but the added lockpick use and fog-of-war vision is cool. Just giving some stat buffs, like strength, to cement it as a combat option vs the many many pros of rogue for theives would be good enough and it'd also still tempt myrmidons to promote to it. Crit bonus on druid is... _Wild._ Not only has no magic user ever gotten a crit bonus before, but no unit has ever gotten a crit bonus and used more than one weapon before! I think just giving the druid better stat promotes is enough. Oddly snipers have always deserved that crit bonus(does it apply to using ballistae?) and I'm glad they're finally getting something! I'm curious to why snipers were never given anything previously, as I don't believe any other class in the history of FE has ever been single-weapon locked upon promote and gained *nothing* like the sniper. Like, swordmasters, assassins, and berserkers all get something that make them exclusive to their weapon and it's really weird that they never got anything for them. (Sure FE8 added that useless 100% hit skill, but it also introduced wyvern knights as lance-locked and gave them the much more potent peirce!)
Personally, I thought of rounding the roster by adding characters for Sacred Stones. For example, for a Pirate character, I can imagine at least 4 chapters he can slip in for recruitment; one for Erika, and 3 for Ephraim. Gaiden chapters would also be nice to add. Maybe monsters raiding villages, or rogue armies running around...
@@RCwyatt917 Playing through it myself after greatly enjoying HM. Would be interested to hear your thoughts on the balancing there if you get the chance :)
Another way to rebalance the choices on the lower tiers might be to swap up some weapons. Fighters gaining sword access or bow access, perhaps on an individual character basis, or a level 10 bonus you get to pick, could help them stand out, especially if you cant promote right away. Same for Knight, maybe give it axes or swords for reaching level 10, making it catch up to Cavalier eventually, in a spiritual sense. Or just give Amelia a bazooka.
Adding weapon variants is ideal but the problem is you'd have to create new animations for them which isn't always easy. That's why, I think, they usually don't rebalance with new weapon variants.
I think that, instead of giving Snipers a crit bonus, it would be cool that their 2-range attack weapons become a 2-3-range weapons just like the Marksman class in Radiant dawn
I'm always hesitant to pick certain classes given that all but three of the maps are aggressive combat, making slower tank units essentially outpaced. Turning Traitor, Hamil Canyon and Last Hope are the only chapters where defensive heavy units are key, every other map is better suited to fast moving aggressive units
One thing I did nearly every run was make LArchel my Aureola user guess it would be really hard unless grinding in tower now that the purpose of Valkyrie has been set.
i always thought it was weird that the knights didn't have multiple weapon types, i would give them axes as knights, and instead of 3 extra DEF, give one to all stats except MOV and SPD, and because i like to be funny, bows on promotion to general i'm not sure how i feel about all the MOV changes
See I thought about it, and with how miserable Luna is in Fe8, the Sniper's ability would actually make some sense on druids if it procs based on crit chance. Nothing spectacular, but *some* Luna reliability would at least stand out against a few enemies in the game.
has this been updated since the video came out? some of the stats aren't as shown (pirate gets the point of def again instead of res) but others are, and things like druid's crit boost are still intact
Super trainee amelia was op in one of the hack they made super trainee useful if you wanna go that route lol yeah shes still locked to being one weapon but she has the stats of a general all but movement which means if your not picking the cav line she was not gonna get screwed with her movement plus she has the bulk of a general.... And she level up fast cause they added skills into that hack.
I'll say it now and I'll say it forever: having low speed stat is crippling enough to make the armor knight not great, so having less move is just cementing them in irrelevancy. Knights should have 5 move
No💀this is a problem i have with u and the vids creator you're thinking about gameplay but there's no actual for the units to have the buffs you're giving them. (In-universe wise outside obviously not)
@@cringekid3993 well, a lot of the assignments of statistical values are kind of arbitrary if you think about it... but I think that the armor knights, who train in big armor should be at least pretty good at wearing it enough that it doesnt slow them down while just walking
@@vaughnrudy8084 first they are definitely not "just walking" and second it doesn't really matter what the actual practicality of the action is what matters is how said action would be perceived by a player. And the average player would think the armor is hard to lug around lowering their mobility
@@cringekid3993 It kind of really does matter what the practicality of a unit is? A slow, low move unit that still gets wrecked by the nearest mage is still useless. Armor Knights have always been shit due to exactly sticking to this formula.
Regarding Gerik and the ranger promotion. How do people here feel about the class having 8 rather than 7 movement? A bunch of mounts in sacred stones have 7 rather than 8 mve.Make it more in line with the nomad trooper class from the prior 2 games. Having +2 movement over hand axe access that hero provides would make the promotion debate more interesting. Yeah swords and axes is a better combo than swords and bows but movement is one of the most important stats in the FE series.
3:46 idk if I agree with more speed being better than more constitution. sure rescue dropping becomes more difficult since the number of units available to carry the higher con unit decreases, but having more con means you're able to use heavier weapons without as much of a speed penalty, bringing your attack speed to either equal to/much closer to your regular speed stat
Speed does the exact same thing though, with more. 1 point of speed will counteract a point of weight in the same way a point of con does, but if you're wielding a weapon lighter than your con, it will also increase your AS.
I think this is the first video of yours I've seen, so no idea if missing additional context. Sniper having a unique skill is cool. That skill being basically useless is not cool. Crit chance boost for single-weapon classes makes a lot of sense. ...Honestly, as much as I love the game and they don't really ruin the overall experience, all of the skills in FE8 are half baked, both for the bad ones and the good ones. Improving both Swordmaster and Assassin the way you did is something sword locked units needed, and Rogue is actually cool now without adding any new skills like Pass. ...I do, however, feel like it's right here where there's the danger of making the Lord units and their promotions feel more like a burden than they should. They may need to be tweaked to not feel completely invalidated by the better unit feel of the normal classes. I've always felt like Wyvern Lords getting sword proficiency made especially bad sense with this game's branching, and even more so with these fixes. Even if it means needing to mess with adding animations and all that, which probably goes beyond the scope of how you wanted to modify the base game, I feel they'd make more sense with gaining Axes. You could trade out the Str boost for another point of Con if going that route, or more Skl. Just don't like them being too overly similar to Falcon Knight. (Also, visually missed making the number red on the Wyvern Knight changes compared to Falcon, unless going from 1 to 0 was the mistake.) The Valkyrie change is terrible outside looking at the class choice in a vacuum. Valkyrie is the only reason to ever use the S-Rank Light Tome in this game. Sage should be the combat focused Mage promotion, so Mage Knight needs to be the support option for both while the Valkyrie can be more combat focused. The last thing L'Arachel needs is even MORE grinding to use her Sacred Twin Tome. Have you never used this game's Troubadour before? I thought this was just going to be a fun little what-if video to check out and yet now I'm genuinely upset. I'd never play with these changes because Ivaldi L'Arachel is like the one singular thing that I never do differently in Sacred Stones. I feel like starting the Magic classes tree off with this decision led to the wrong flow of choices. Plus the changes don't actually make Valkyrie any better at support, since one of the main improvements is Staff Rank, but the only classes that can promote into it are Staff locked to begin with, so they don't need that boost, while the lost Mag negates the Mov bonus. And that's all before even mentioning Bishop. ...For units with Staff and Magic access, Skl is actually more of an offensive stat than Mag by context of how much support spells can be boosted by Mag. Giving the "supportive" builds less Mag and more Skl is backwards (technically making the Bishop more synergistic with the Slayer skill when doing so, though maybe not a bad change thematically, since it is an offensive class). Leaving Great Knight's Def unboosted compared to Paladin and maintaining the horrible 4/1 Con gap is pretty nasty even with the boost to Mov and Str. Also still not differentiated enough from Paladin, which should maybe lean a bit more Res in contrast. You're still not really gaining anything but shortcomings from Great Knight compared to Paladin since the gaps are so small between them. More Def for Great Knight and more for General so it's not matched. Not sure why General needed to lose Skl specifically, particularly since it wasn't a strong suit of Great Knight. Seems you mostly did that to crit boost weapon classes. Being a ball of stats with significant downsides is the smart easy design, though. And the Recruit to Armor Knight buff is just plain logically necessary. The main reason to choose Armored Amelia in vanilla is simply the factor that there are so many good cavalier line options that her being Armored with her stat spread is at least a decent novelty, and not much else, so it may be legit best pick for her now, but Armors are always hard sells for turn count optimizers, so it evens out. ...Or, actually, with the boost the base Armor Knight Def that would be required to make Amelia's Def promotion boost higher, maybe relative to that the chart on promoting to Great Knight or General doesn't really change for Def even if you Boost Great Knight's Def for promoting from Cavalier? Did you remember to make the promotion's base stats higher to account for tier 1 classes that were changed for Trainees' sake? Promo bonuses are derived from subtracting the previous class's base stats from the promotion's base stats in this game if I remember correctly, right? Final side thought on this video's content: Promotion bonuses should probably be balanced around every stat getting a minimum of 1 point, with good stats for that class upgrade being higher. Maybe this is more about being flashy than being objectively necessary, but it can make agonizing about if or not to early promote that much more poignant. P.S: I actually have been theory crafting a totally overhauled Fire Emblem game concept inspired by the branching promotion model for some time now, so I've thought about how to balance classes against each other to make them fun and unique quite a bit. But it probably borrows too many elements from across the series's history to be a hack of FE8, even with all the well developed patches that have been created for it over the years. For instance, I'd really like to explore iterating on Three Houses's Magic Uses, Skills gained from Proficiency Rank levels, and normalized multiple tiers of classes, all in the context of a game where units are locked to class tree advancement and can't reclass. To that effect, though, Tomes and Staves would be treated as magic using class specific accessories that contribute per-map magic uses while individual magic classes would learn individual spells (including elemental splits for Anima/Black magic mages and support/utility vs offensive variants of Light/White magic and Dark magic classes at each class tier), while units still learn spells from Proficiency Ranks, with learn lists based on GBA style unit Affinity. Lots of old classes like single weapon Horse units such tier 1 Bow Knight, Armors of different weapons including Bows, Hunter as a more Thief-leaning Bow unit while Archers are more explicitly good at Str and some survivability, more movement focused class options for mountaineering and waterwalking, Cavaliers are tier 2 and ignore movement penalties and hazards on constructed terrain while Ranger is their natural terrain equivalent, and so on and so forth. Trainee classes of each weapon type, including the "Lords" of the game being a Noble that can promote through any magic class and a Commoner that can promote through any weapon class while they're restricted from the opposite or hybrid classes. Hybrid physical/magic classes in tier 2 and tier 3. Comprehensive thematic skills for each class, such as tier 1 Armor classes having a skill that gives them stat buffs for each hit they take on Enemy Phase (each weapon type of Armor class buffs a different stat and lasts to end of Ally Phase) and a togglable Stance they can enter for bonus Def and crit evade in exchange for zeroing out avoid chance to synergize with that skill (different maps could have enemy Armor units use or not use this Stance depending on that map's objectives or circumstances). Pre-promote units might have additional personal skills instead of the skills of logical previous classes to make raised from scratch units that much different from them. ...Okay, ranted enough about that to calm down about the Valkyrie now, so just going to shut up even though I could have gone into greater and more coherent detail.
You have to remember that when discussing unit viability we're only looking at the main campaign and without tower grinding involved. In that context caps only matter if you reach them during the main campaign and are held back because they are too low. This hardly ever happens and when it does it is so late it only loses you like 1 or 2 points in the final few chapters of the game. Doesn't really weigh up to all the movement she will miss out on, not to mention canto. Besides, the only stat amelia is likely to cap through natural leveling in either class is speed which paladin and general both cap at 25. Weapon triangle is really not that big of a deal. Paladin, her actual best option, has lances and swords which is more than sufficient, especially since lances have javelins. Besides, if you go down the cavalier line she gets E swords as a cavalier and 30 sword exp when promoting to paladin. If she goes down the knight line she only gets the other weapon types once she is a general, which is quite late, and both are E rank. Good luck getting that up to usable levels in a reasonable amount of time. I would argue the paladin line has it better when it comes to the weapon triangle. So yeah paladin is objectively better unless you're discussing in different context than we are when talking about which options are better.
sniper should have pierce instead of sure shot. The whole point of a sniper is to take someone out before they know it, pierce would help provide that fantasy by giving an archer a choice between mobility and ignoring defense. If that isn't allowed I think giving a sniper an additional atk range could be a fair compromise.
I think extra atk range for snipers is generally a good way to balance them. Unfortunately it is not easy to do with febuilder. You can improve range for all bows, but not make it so any given unit or class gets more range with them than others. It is possible to give snipers pierce. I'm not sure it can be done without removing pierce from wyvern knights. I'd have to test it. That class is already too strong without pierce though so it's fine.
Valk can keep the con because light tomes are so extremely heavy in gba that you can rest assured that 1 con is 1 speed, youll need all of it. I think it would be fine to just give some con spd and crit to have a generalist light tome user counterpart to slayer bishops. Obviously sage has its thing but having anima actually does feel like a large enough advantage in this context. Holy sucks
General shouldn’t be changed but it should have a 2nd ability named redoubt. Every physical attack triggers a counter attack, always procs if in range. Something doubles it like a sword master? It gets to hit three times. 1 for standard and 2 for each attack the sword master does. Magic and armor slayer weapons do not trigger this effect allowing physical attacks some way of dealing with them. This turns general into the wall it was designed to be, and by having an useful enemy phase kinda fixes the issue of having bad movement. The ultimate choke point unit. Great shield procs further this goal and makes the unit as deadly as it needs to be to justify its slow and bulky build. This also changes the value of the speed stat for the general, making it slightly less useful, but still worth in order to take less damage. Now for fun, both units have brave weapons, how many times will the general attack? Answer 10 times
Currently playing through 8 and my Ewan has gotten one skill increase in 10 levels, guess who's making Ewan a mage now. XD My Amelia is getting pretty solid though. 14 STR, SPD, SKL, and DEF at lvl 14. Ross is going poorly, trying to make him a hero. Lvl 13 fighter with 10 speed after TWO speed wings. Kill me. Least he capped STR two levels ago
Not taking into account stat caps for any of the classes makes the video a bit flawed imo, more usually than not I'll be taking a class over another because said class has better caps
@@Meku-cq6hh we don't have to agree, I don't even play FE anymore neither do I know what the video was exactly about, anyways, stat caps are what makes a class unique, on top of their special skill, that said, it's totally irrelevant since FE8 is extremely easy with using basically anything, I suppose I was talking there about more of a min maxing perspective and having fun with the arena or something
if sniper could had able to attack at close ranged like in later games. I would had liked it a lot more. heroes > warriors. wyvern knights for pierce espcially once they get to max level. not to mention at a zero str growth run u need to have wyvern knights must have. great knights > generals. heroes cause faster and warriors been really slow. great knights over general cause higher movement. if only u could get boots really early in the game then I would had like generals a lot better. also generals dont get great shield in other games and only fe 8. but anyways overall I do agree with u
The problem with FE8 is that it has a very obvious meta, which makes logical players ask "why would i ever go for these clearly inferior options?" S being: Paladins/Wyvern Knights/Bishops
How wild. I always promoted Amelia to Knight>General and gave her a MOV boost item. The stat caps and growths just always felt right to me, she was always my best unit.
Um, why using torches for thief is a thing when it doesn't improve their sight as thief based classes has innate better vision in fog? As for CON argument will always less valuable than speed, for offensive purposes, yes. However, for mounted classes, having extra CON is more valuable as they can rescue someone who is heavier than them, especially for those who has very low CON to begin with. Also, for Axe users, CON is basically SPD, as Axes are super heavy, thus having extra CON = having extra SPD. As for Valkyrie, low Mag support unit would also struggling to support. Not only they will heal less, they also will have less range for long range staves such as Physic, Warp and Rescue. Giving Valkyrie C rank staff upon promotion means nothing LOL. Both Natasha and L'Arachel starts with D and they will DEFINITELY GET C Rank Staff when they reach lv10 for promotion. Training Staff users is not the same as training combat unit, there's almost no way of getting a bunch of exp in one go, thus a staff user will reach C rank by the time they get lv10. Unless, you set their base lv to 8/9/10. Natasha start as lv5 Cleric, L'Arachel starts as lv3 Troubadour. As for Sage 4 Def, if you make it like that, Saleh = Pent (if not exact, even closer than before) then, another broken unit. Giving Sage C staff upon promotion also discard Saleh edge in innate high weapon ranks as low growth unit vs the high growth low innate weapon ranks unit. This particular change makes some units seem repetitive. As for Druid, giving them crit bonus is an overkill. The ones who should have crit bonus are pure combat classes that are locked to one type of weapon, giving us choice between offensive vs versatility.
Thieves still get the torch vision bonus. The torch bonus vision stacks with the thief class bonus vision, so you get get super vision. Con on mounted units can actually hurt them a little in certain situations since con takes away from mounted units' aid, unlike how con increases a foot unit's aid. For example, Seth has 11 con and 14 aid normally at base. However, if you use a body ring on him and boost his con to 13, his aid will go down to 12, meaning there are certain units he can no longer pick up that he could have before. In this example, Seth would no longer be able to pick up base level Gerik as he has 13 con.
sniper still bad with crit boost & bigger stat swing. caps are the same and still no 1 range option, its only useful on player phase which is where it still falls flat compared to ranger who has the choice of which to counter with on enemy phase thanks to higher mov and access to 1 rng. even if sniper gets a confirmed kill on anything it hits, the class still has no enemy phase, and gba fire emblem is all about the enemy phase. i know this is empty criticism but honestly what else can you do considering how flawed bows are in every game where they arent utterly broken? additionally, wyvern > falcon still, perhaps even moreso with your changes. units like vanessa and tana dont go falcon because they dont need extra speed, skill, or res. all pegs should go to wyvern because it gives them two stats they dont have: def and strength. by adding more defense to wyvern promo bonuses, it becomes an even stronger option than it was before you changed it. giving the frail glass cannon class a boost to bulk is the reason wyvern is always the right choice, so a bigger stat swing in that direction only makes it unquestionably better than falcon. remember that the pegs are still going through 10+ levels gaining stuff like skill, speed, and res, which is the reason why you always go wyvern because you've already gained all those stats which wyvern is normally lacking in. the change from peg to wyvern is what makes it op for pegs. either deny that choice (maybe swap wyvern with paladin, that way you choose between better combat stats & weapons vs flying from falcon) or gimp the wyvern's strength/defense to deny the pegs what they want from it. also i dont think you properly addressed the trio of mage knight/valkyrie/bishop. larachel always goes mage knight unless you wanna use aureola because anima > light in like every scenario outside maybe purge. i know aureola is effective vs. monsters and i know there is technically only so many tomes you can have, but light is just worse than anima in every way usually, and plenty of other units could use aureola too (cough cough bishops cough cough), so it's not like it's exclusive to larachel. give mage knight 8 mov and give valkyrie the offensive boost instead to compensate for picking light magic. on top of that, there has to be some incentive to not just go bishop on everyone you can because it really is the definitive class of sacred stones. triple damage to everything in the late game on top of bonkers staff utility means stats dont matter, you have to cut one of the two off. personally i say change slayer skill to become valkyrie exclusive instead of bishop, further cementing valkyrie as the monster killing class, and give bishop innately high proficiencies so natasha and moulder arent stuck using the inherently garbage early light spells for several maps. additionally, giving valkyrie the slayer skill limits the number of innate slayer units to only natasha and larachel which prevents artur or moulder getting it, considering how good it is on them, on top of the fact that you changed valkyrie light rank to e so slayer should be less noticeable early on. you could also increase bishop caps even higher above valkyries so even without slayer they still have some power late game on top of staff ranks which valkyrie can theoretically reach.
I'm working on making my own variant of this video's concept. I was left unsatisfied with pretty much the entire magic tree. I kinda like the valkyrie idea. Both natasha and l'arachel are not that easy to get to promotion, and are both considered inferior to other options. This gives them their own niche. Also kinda fits l'arachel's whole 'I must purge evil monsters!' thing. For the bow thing my proposition would be to make the short bow 1-2 range. If longbow gets longer range then it only makes sense shortbow gets shorter range right? As for wyvern falcon i gave falcon's C swords like in the video and the following promo bonuses: Wyvern Knight (F) HP S Skl Spd Def Res 4 2 1 1 2 0 Falcoknight HP S Skl Spd Def Res 3 2 1 3 1 3 I hope the killing edge access and spd boost can somwhat mitigate the con loss. Not sure if it is entirely balanced now but should be a lot better. I could steal the pierce skill and give it to snipers but i don't want to go too crazy.
I dont know why you would ever chose Falcon over WK when WK fixes every pegasus girls cripplingly bad Con with a massive +4 bonus. ie. Allowing them to use basic iron lances with no penalty in speed.
"Why would you ever choose knight?" Because I'm not a coward. Also to answer your question. You already get: 3 cavaliers, a paladin, a troubadour, and a great knight. That's 6 mounted units already. And many more should you try to promote others into mounted units. Amelia is a good substitute and a better option sometimes than Gilliam if you got him killed early on, and since she's a trainee, she has busted growths. You could put her in either and she would do just fine. I say that because the Amelia I had, as a knight could double, and had high crit chance thanks to her 25 luck by the time she was level 20. Gave her a slim lance and she went to town. Oh and if you're wondering why she could double? She comes with a Speedwing first of all, and secondly, busted growths that upped her speed. She's a trainee after all.
You say ALL of that And yet the crux of your argument ISN'T EVEN TRUE. Have a look at Amelia's actual growths, then compare them to a unit like Seth. Seth, the prepromoted Paladin who is LITERALLY AVAILABLE TURN 1, has a far better growth spread for what he needs to do, and higher total growths besides. Also, that Speedwing she has? That's not exclusive to her, and you can absolutely toss it on a unit like Cormag or Duessel and suddenly they two start doubling everything and slaughtering hundreds. And FE is also a series that actually doesn't really bother promoting class diversity... at all, simply because some classes are better. You're not proving you're not scared of the consequences of going armor knight Amelia, you're just being idiotic and failing to recognize armor knights literally can't function with how they're designed.
@@red5t653 Okay, so you're immediately comparing her to the Jagen, that was your first mistake. Seth however is a Jagen that's really good and comparing her to him almost sounds as if I tried to make her a Paladin, which I did not. And he's already such a good paladin that's there's really no need for one, aside from Franz and Kyle of course who also are good choices imo. Two, I gave her the Speedwing anyway even if I could have given it to anyone else, because I actually like the unit. Back when I had first played she was the only trainee unit I used, but found out Ross and Ewan had their own merits too, and in a game like Sacred Stones where you can just level every unit to level 20, albeit unable to promote them all lest there's some way to get a member card, no idea if it's there. Also, being idiotic? Just because I like armor knights? Hmm, it's almost as if you want me to go all the "right" choices in your head because the units perform better as that unit rather than picking one of your choice. And that is precisely why I went knight Amelia. Because I don't want to, and it's not fun. You're right: I'm not scared of the consequences, because where's the fun in always going the same path? It's a little too boring. Sorry, whoever you are, I'm gonna keep doing as I please, thank you~
@@sixtales7681 Already having a good paladin does not diminish the need for another at all. What is the inherent value of a general over another paladin? They can use axes and have higher con and that is pretty much it. Stats are not inherent to the class but to the unit. A paladin with similar stats to a general will be much more useful. In this example there are promotion bonuses in play but those differences aren't too major either. Enemies in sacred stones are weak unless you slam a 1.3 times multiplier on every enemy growth rate like yours truly. Tbh i think the guy you were arguing with is right about all the meta things, amelia's mediocre growths, speedwings, and that there is no need for class diversity. He completely disregards the notion that you don't have to make optimal choices though and was kinda overly agressive about it. Although, if you come here arguing that you don't care about some classes being better, what are you doing on a video about balancing those classes?
@@hajoeijgenraam295 Personally speaking, considering how many paladins and horseback units you can get in the game without them being being paladins is cool, but at the same time, I like looking for other niche reasons to use characters in other ways. Call it being experimental. If I were always too focused on getting to the end of the game the most efficient way possible while using all the "meta" promotions, it wouldn't actually be fun for me. You'd be pretty much done with the game in less than day or two. I mean, sure there's post game and multiple playthroughs, but knowing you, you're just gonna use the same unit combinations just because it works. So what if I wanna use a General, I'd actually take that than most of the stuffy horseback, because we see that too much. Basically what this boils down to, is for not sticking with the meta, I'm being flamed, but I never played Fire Emblem for stupid reasons like that. You ever get the right individual character growths, and it just might work. Plus, in a way, every playthrough is unique in that instance thanks to rng hell, but I'll take it over going for which promote is the "right" choice. If they give you the chance to choose how you want to promote your characters, there shouldn't be a right or wrong answer. And yet, here we are, because meta called. How boring. I'mma say it again because you think I'm not serious, but I'm not a coward. If my choice is the wrong answer, then that's fine. I'll get through it. It's not like it's impossible if I make that choice, it'll just be harder. And that's fine.
@@sixtales7681 For the record i am no different than you in that i use classes because they fit thematically or are more fun. I just acknowledge that the meta is a thing and certain choices are better. To be blunt i disagree with all your arguments about amelia. Of course it's fine if you like using generals because oml they have a fucking chain spear and it's awesome, and of course you can use amelia just to see her turn from zero to hero. But I just get ticked off when people start making flawed arguments that those off meta choices are actually better. And when the video said "why would you ever choose knight" they were obviously talking purely from a meta perspective, and you attacked him for it which ticked me off as well. As i mentioned previously i find this especially odd since this video is inherently about meta balance. Of course you can just not care about all that but this video can help you use subpar classes without them being subpar.
Cavalier might be better for Amelia in the first choice of promotion, but Knight gets to become a General. And Amelia as a General is insane, specially the Sacred Stones general that has access to all 3 melee weapon types.
I know this is two years late but Amelia is stuck with E rank swords and axes after promoting to general and is also stuck at low mov meaning you have to sacrifice a lot of time moving her. Paladins get lances anyway which is pretty much one of the two non magic weapon types that matter. If you're really set on Weapon Triangle, just go Great Knight.
oh i just read the description... very cool! i was going to replay Sacred Stones very soon on my Steam Deck so i'll be playing this version :) i have a bad habit of falling in love with "weak" classes in Fire Emblem, not on purpose, just because i like utility/defense focused classes when the vanilla meta really favours movement and offense (essentially: put everyone on a horse ASAP)
@@sanae99.9.9 C is the correct option and we have to see how good an insta C rank is with FE7 Lucius, B is immediate physic and rescue and that is broken.
I have a bias to canon couples like Neimi and Colm or Natasha and Joshua. And I kinda do an all female run with the gba games sooo....I'm heavily biased.
That's very useful for me, who chooses exclusively on which sprite I think looks cooler, which would be funnier and which would fit better my headcanons.
I know for me I tend to do General Amelia, because funny but also I guess FEH. (And for 3rd reason General Animations are really cool in GBA)
Another thing about General Amelia is that due to her actually having a Speed Growth it is hilarious to watch Amelia evade almost everything thrown at her whilst in heavy duty armor.
@@astralguardian5930 i also went for general Amelia. It was priceless to imagine tini-tiny Amelia growing 3 feet taller and becoming swole as fuck in less than an year of training
valid and based
Well, based on her B Support with Duessel, either GK or General is probably the "lore accurate" choice
Not gonna lie, I actually liked using Amelia as a Knight. Mostly because it's absolutely hilarious to watch stuff die to a little girl inside an oversized tin can. XD
It is funny, and also once you make her into a General she gets some of the coolest animations this side of GBA. (Also Boots General Amelia is actually an even greater meme, as she truly is Lightning General, in Speed stat but also movement)
I like her as a Great Knight more, it's a class that has menacing design but goofy ass combat animation. Imagine a little girl inside an armored cavalry and her horse's front hoove tap the ground two times.
Same with Wendy as a General. How does all that girl fit in them Armor Knight jeans?
@@astralguardian5930 What most people don't seem to realize about Amelia is that her base resistance is so much higher than other General candidates she can literally become impervious to all damage sans the final boss' just on pure defense and resistance if she keeps rolling RES on level ups.
@@astralguardian5930 She becomes with the right level up stat boosts she becomes a speed general that is actually pretty scary ASF.
1:09 To answer your question, I have three answers.
1. Making Amelia the Thunder General
2. GBA General Animations are badass.
And most important of all
3. *It's funny*
General Amelia? God Amelia.
Dude unironically, My Amelia literally solo'd every late game boss as a General.
@@LuckyCombKaizer You my friend, have my utmost respect.
Just give her the boots from the desert, now you've got a paladin movement with all of generals bonuses!
@@DanielRodriguez-yi6ff but you could have a paladin with extra movement instead!
I remember in FE3 Sniper was given much much better stats than horseman (granted it wasn't branched-promotion, but the two "bow classes"), it's kind of odd they knew back then and missed the boat completely in Sacred Stones.
Fe4 even tried this. Midayle is horrible but eh horse gives hit and run. Jamke is amazing at fighting enemies and bosses and getting money despite being bow locked. But he shows up to the front lines late and he’s not nearly as flexible. Same happens in gen 2. Lester can be good but can turn out awful and is dependent on jamke or midayle. Febail meanwhile can’t be fucked over and is sometimes necessary for people to deal with Ishtar. It’s just a shame the rest of fe4 isn’t real designed like that.
Neogears i wouldn’t call midayle awful, just that he doesn’t come with the killer bow. jamke has better combat by far but for the most part it’s overkill. it’s been a while since i’ve played fe4, but iirc, midayle with the killer bow slaps
An idea i always thought of but never put into practice was give general crit negation instead of great Shield might make heavy spears and armor slayers more relivent
or wary fighter like fates did. getting doubled all the time somewhat undermines the increased bulk
@@Underworlder5 true but i feel not being crit leads to more thought when dealing with them since your not one shotting them reliably without effective weapons and i feel gives player controlled ones more durability
@@fernandoii8000 so in other words, there is nothing left to chance when relying on generals to tank hits. when you make the calculations, you know the results
@@Underworlder5 to make up for the fact there going nowhere yes
Definitely feel like this is valid
I mean seriously, the game practically tells the player "choose this one class, other option is complete garbage."
5:59 Wow. I've been thinking this for years. I'm glad someone agrees. If the idea is that they're a fleet footed Thief, it would make a lot of sense to give them Canto. Especially if they're not gonna have the stats necessary to go toe to toe on the frontline. I especially like the idea that a Thief needs to promote to get Canto as it gives credence to the idea that the thief has honed their movements to perfection along the journey rather than being able to do it outright.
*looks at valkyrie's changes*
uhhh....you may be making them supprt focused but they still need that Magic Stat to do their job well. -also, i'd ask you to not hard nerf th light rank too hard simply to give the people who can actually use Ivaldi and not shoot themselves in the foot have an actual chance of using ivaldi-
also, unfortunetly, there is no real way to balance any tree with Bishop in it because slayer is just that broken in a game where the majority of lategame is either monster spam or monster spam with human dark mages
Ive always felt like the armour knight deserves the 2nd weapon type much more than the cavalier, they are supposed to be the most threatening unit in physical melee after all, whether thats axes or swords is anyones preference, but suffering from reduced mov, a typing weakness and generally low res is enough downsides id definitly be comfortable giving another weapon type
interesting balances you made there. I'd like to give my thoughts on some of them.
Valkyrie:
Making her a support class is nice, but the changes mostly hurt more than they help. Reducing her MAG while raising her staff rank is counter productive in terms of ranged staves, which is the main idea behind a magical support unit (especially with the high staff rank you give this class). It even negates any kind of damage she could do due to having reduced MAG when wielding the weakest kind of tomes in terms of raw power, even more so when light magic comes in handy in the late to end game with all those monsters running around. She doesn't even get the slayer bonus. Not only are light tomes the weakest, but also have the highest hit rates among them, so raising her skill doesn't do anything (especially when she has no power to fight anyways) and it also doesn't contribute to being a rescue/staff bot. 8 MOV on the other hand is nice, but not neccessary to fulfill her job as a solid support class. So is dropping her HP and DEF, which are not that relevant whit somewhat good positioning. In my opinion the best way to buff her is just reducing her survivability, and give her C staves like the bishop class. Since both Mage Knight and Bishop also get some modifications to their classes, this should balance the Valkyrie more than enough in comparison.
Druid vs Summoner:
Like others already mentioned, Druid with crit bonus is very strong. Not only is dark magic the strongest in the game, but it has Nosferatu. Those two in combination are very devastating and can trivialize many of the more difficult challenges the late/end game throws at you, especially when those tomes can be bought (ch. 17). All those other buffs to both Druid and Summoner are fine, but since the ability to summon is very unique and very versatile, I would suggest to cut the staff utility from the Summoner Class. This gives the player the choice between a way faster combat unit with the ability to use staves or a support unit that can temporarily deploy additional units with unique benefits no regular class in the game has.
Amelia's Trainee Class:
The +5 DEF buff to her Knight promotion is good, but this should apply to almost stat when MOV is left untouched. Moving almost double the distance upon horse promotion is infinitely better than being stuck with her base MOV, also getting Canto, being able to effectively contribute to rescue-dropping, doubling enemies way fast (or not getting doubled in the first place), etc. The only way for Amelia to have her second promotion branch be somewhat comparable is to ditch her Knight class altogether and giving her the Pegasus class instead. This has a nice trade-off: giving up a bit of bulk to have free reign on outdoor maps due to free movement over terrain, which results in her being potentially strong unit with great movement utility in both class branches. And if you want her to be an armored unit so badly, there is always the option to go into Great Knight (with 7 MOV due to the buffs you gave them) with great control over the weapon triangle.
Wyvern Lord vs Wyvern Knight:
This is just a small nitpick, but I want to mention it nonetheless. I think reducing the Speed of the W. Knights is not the best option. Most of the W. Knights are being promoted from Peg. Knights, who already have some issues doubling enemies due to their low con. In my eyes the better option would be to buff the W. Lord's speed by the amount you would drop the other class. This is also a little boost to their combat performance, like the Pierce skill is to the W. Knight.
For your Druid opinion, I would like to say that it’s balanced in terms of characters who can utilize the class. Knoll is a horrid combat unit, and Ewan is hard to train. Not to mention the fact that they risk getting doubled due to nosferatu’s high weight. They’d still be best off using flux or thunder.
Okay, but Amelia being a pegasus knight honestly makes sense and now I wish it was a thing.
@@OrlandoAguirre222 I believe originally amelia was going to be a flyer trainee. I believe amelia and tana were the same character/switched roles or something at some point in development so i guess they opted for another normal pegasus in the end.
@@hajoeijgenraam295 cool to know
Snipers, Swordmasters, Berserkers (and Halberdiers) all need Crit bonuses. Being any weapon locked isn't better than having multiple weapon types, so it's a decent trade. Also canto rogues is fuckin genius. Running some long game numbers would be interesting. I don't know if Excelblem's chart is publicly available, but I'm curious what end game stat spreads are for some of the more changed classes, and when/if regular characters would hit certain speed/damage thresholds now.
Considering the fact most of these classes have been good without a crit bonus besides sm (even then its less of a matter of crit and more of ep or pp games) they dont really need it, berserker is the best infantry axe class cause of the speed already, snipers in games like fe12 are generally pretty good, halberdiers don't really need it either but thats debatable due to the lack of them existing, and swordmasters dont really need it per se but i feel they should get it since the class was designed with glass canon base stats in mind
No class can become good because of critrate unless it is 100%, because you are not supposed to ever bank on a crit. It's a change that makes units flashier, not better.
What the actual fuck are you talking about? Swordmasters AND Berserkers already have crit bonuses.
Honeslty falcon knight and wyvern knight dont have much of a difference in the base game considering both will still let you double and they get similar promo bonuses
Swords don't do much for PK while Pierce opens op options for boss cheese, that seems like a decent difference to me.
@@epicgamer6678 pierce is pretty whatever outside of ltc or speedrunning since its a proc skill, general combat is still for the most part identical
@@sagegang6957 Still way better than D swords.
@@epicgamer6678 both are non factors, pierce is never getting any genuine use outside of rigging and swords is worthless, so unless you need to rig pierces for stuff like speedrunning, falco is just as good if not slightly better
@@sagegang6957 Pierce still provides a passive boost to average damage, which is something swords can't say.
Thanks for making this, and going over your reasoning. I was just thinking about getting back into FE8, and I often make romhacks when revisiting games like this. It's been a while since I've played this game, so videos like this are very helpful for learning what to keep an eye out for in terms of balance considerations.
Fire Emblem in general has this problem where mounts provide great benefits, and good stats provide great benefits, but Fire Emblem rreeeeaaalllyyy likes to give most units either both or neither
Edit: though i am pissed that great knights always suck. Even in 3h great knight, a master class, is outdone by paladin, an advanced class. Let alone wyverns
Master Classes in general are just a mess.
There are only a few classes that are flat upgrades to advanced classes, most are just lateral moves.
Wyvern Lord, Gremory, and War Master are the only direct steps up, and Dark and Holy Knight are lateral moves that end up being direct because haha mounts, and dismounting removing any penalty to mounts whatsoever.
The rest are just lateral alternatives to the other advanced classes, and in many ways are worse at some area of focus an Advanced class had.
But, 3 Houses is poorly balanced, news at 8, and whatnot.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Gremory isn't even a direct step up, though. You lose dark tomefair or white magic heal in return for more uses of the other style of magic. I mean, with the exception that Gremory is basically a direct upgrade from Warlock for Lysithea since dark tomefair is actually useless for her and 2x warp uses is good.
But yeah Three Houses just in general makes it too good to be either a falcoknight or wyvern knight.
For assasin i think it would be cool if they would have less chances to be targeted by enemies or would be hidden in forest. It fits with the whole stealth theme if you promote colm into an assasin and it fits swordmaster's gimick of being strong on player phase and weak on enemy phase + dodging alot really well.
three houses has that stealth theme. an assassin will only be attacked in enemy phase if no other allies are in range
or bows, theirs some animations for assassins with bows you can use, just make bows 2-3 range do
hey just wanted to say that this is a really good video and i really like your channel.
All General Squad in a 0% Growths playthrough? Oh yeah, it's gamer time.
I used Amelia as an armor knight a couple of times. It was nice having one that didn't get doubled by everything. In fact, she herself could double pretty reliably too.
I´ve too entretained the idea to give a magic class a crit boost and... its not good, at least when you go against it.
High crit is countered by not getting hit by it. Therefore, the only counter to crit mages are long bows and siege tomes... not the most widespread selection of weapons.
I´d suggest to give druid something else instead, like light magic, a major boost to ranks. Maybe a better movement array or just plain stats.
Theres a thing called the iron rune and the luck stat. Heard about that?
@@oof5992 The thing is that as is, only one units could reliably takedown crit mages and maybe a select few others with high luck, compared to almost every silngle unit in an army capable of hitting other crit units safely.
Its not a matter of having a singular key to open a singular door, its to bring a kit to tackle different emegencies along a playthrough. This is why shitty map design is not fixed by slapping a warp staff along the way. Now you just added a soft lose condition that you now have to worry about. A single iron rune is now making a single unit inmune to crits, that unit can still die and you lose the rune, it can get stolen and then you can get critted to death.
Getting back on track with crit mages, there´s another way to counter a crit unit and thats having enough defense to survive a crit. This is how I usually tackle the Sacae chapters in FE6, a unit needs about 18 defense to ignore all damage fron nomads, so the armor knights usually are impervious to damage there, maybe some paladin reaches that, Fae has 15 def in her stone and 2 at base, she may not counter but at least she can bait. Now all of this works because they hit on defense, if it was on resistence there´s a lot less units capable of taking on them and if the units are also capable of ignoring res with luna, now you can only take them with pure hp, if the druid had 20 mag that´s enough to be risky for every single unit in the whole game. It´s a niche issue and can be simply fixed with design, just never give luna to a druid, that´s fair, still, high res units are rarer than high def.
A critting Luna sends shivers down my spine.
Edit: then again, you can still make a good game out of bad design. You can give the player Hoplon Guard/Iron Rune earlier and then make a level with a long hallway absolutely packed with the little suckers. BUT at the start of that same chapter you can also give the player a Bishop with monster Res perfectly capable of soloing that corridor if you give him time. The catch is there could be a time based side mission like a gaiden flag or an escaping thief at the end of that Druid corridor. That way it would reward the players that kept their Hoplon Guard by allowing them to blitz the shit out of that corridor with two units instead of just the Bishop while not soft locking players that don't have a Hoplon Guard. In fact, I do think players without Hoplon Guard can still have a chance if they're brave enough to send a Pegasus to chase down the Thief while dodging the critting Druids.
I like this concept a lot. I'mma try it out
I've personally never liked giving Snipers crit bonus since that means a more common enemy type (depending on the game) has crit chances on your units, as opposed to Swordmasters and Berserkers which tend to be fairly rare. When you buff a class, you have to consider how it buffs the enemies as well as the player
Eeh i on one hand they only have one weapon are are offensive units like swordmaster ands berserkers but on the other hand swordmasters are countered by high defense and berserkers by dodge
What counters snipers with crit ? not much other that they are much safer to handle on player phase and impossible in enemy phase
Anyway I agree at looking on how it buff enemies but if snipers are uncommon I think they definitely should have the crit bonus
Édit: hold on a second it’s promotion bonuses enemies will not be affected
@@thomasquesada7248 Enemies will not be affected by promotion bonuses, but will be affected if you make changes to the class itself. Enemy snipers and druids getting crit will apply to enemies too. Nearly all enemies use male class variants so if you change con or mov for a male class enemies will have that con and mov too. The swordmasters will have higher con, and enemy great knights will have higher mov.
Personally, I think this is all fine for the most part. Enemy snipers can be dealt with if you play by their weaknesses and aren't too common, and enemy great knights aren't much stronger than say, paladins. Druids however, absolutely not. They get pretty common late game and they have 1-2 range and will nearly always one shot with a crit. If they have luna their crit rates get frighteningly high.
@@hajoeijgenraam295 yea I realized this not long after the edit but didn’t wanted to change it also I agree on druids, only class with one weapon should get a crit bonus so there is always a « safe » way to deal with them and Druid’s having permanent 1-2 range is already is big stop to crit bonuses
@@thomasquesada7248 imo taking away staves from summoners goes a long way. Add some minor stat advantages and you're good to go
I mean, I get people like moving their units farther. Sure, the fastest, farthest moving engages building frontline strategies better. But I like my units being different so that the game has more functions to engage with, instead of optimizing all my options to be the one same thing.
This game might have the most amount of mounted units ever. I mean, cool, they all have their uses and qualities, but I might not like watching horses for the whole game.
FE8's reclassing was very rough and leaves a lot to be desired, but it crawled so future titles (with reclassing) could run.
If you actually wanna balance the base classes to have pros and cons it's far more complex, due to classes being at base very poorly balanced.
Like knight is typically a solider that has less move, gets stoped by armor slaying, has no weapon triangle on the high Mt axes without a reaver, lacks resistance, speed, cannot be carried easily, and typically takes around the same damage or more if not fed exp.
Meanwhile cavalier is faster, bulkier in far more situations, has more move, gets added features due to being mounted, a secondary weapon for triangle manipulation, and is far easier to use, train, dominate with.
On top of that the that having effective weapons against a versatile mobile unit isn't exactly a huge disadvantage. Having effective damage against a slow hard to reposition, that can't run out of any fight or be rescued easily, that's main gimmick is supposed to be incredible bulk.
If you wanna balance these out you can see what kinda things need to be changed and what needs to be weakened or strengthened accordingly.
I disagree with the idea that rogue is better than assassin for two reasons.
You really only need one rogue in the army. They show up when you need to steal items and/or open chests. Rennac is a rogue you get for free, so he fills that niche quite nicely without needing to make Colm a rogue, and he's simple to level up or protect.
The second reason is that I feel that you're sleeping on Silencer. For assassins to function, they need high crit weapons because of how Silencer works, and when they have that, the only thing that can hurt reliably hurt or kill them are mages, but rogues don't get any true combat bonuses. Swordmaster is better than assassin, no question. But I always make Colm an Assassin and I've never had a problem with him as long as he has a high crit weapon.
I mean silencer is pretty bad. A chance to kill the enemy on a critical hit is really bad when a good unit just kills on crit without silencer.
@@moonmelons There's no doubt that the assassin is a niche class because it's basically a worse swordmaster with a gimmick that has a requirement. Make no mistake, if I could make Colm a swordmaster, I'd do it without a second thought. But I don't see the reason for more than one rogue that pops in when you need them and has no other reason otherwise.
I just think that silencer is a better option for combat and one rogue is plenty for when you need them. Not every map has items to steal or chests to open, so I view assassin as a better class overall. I'd also trust putting an assassin on the front lines in a fog of war map to defend themselves as opposed to a rogue who may need more defending.
Silencer has saved my bacon at crucial moments, especially on the harder difficulties. It's not the best practice, admittedly, but like I said, as long as Colm has a high crit weapon, I don't have an issue with him.
I feel like horse + movement > any stat buffs you could give any non horse class
Honestly sir you make an excellent point. I'm playing ffxiv right now and can appreciate the job balancing. This would make a new fire emblem a much better game
This is a very well put together video, would love to see more like this
About the Moulder vs Natasha thing.
i think that Natasha´s main appeal is being a good support partner and having better support partners that Moulder, having support chains with boht Seth and Franz is a very good excuse to make her a valkyrie while Moulder can have problems staing in range to support of his more movile companions with the exception of Gilliam.
¿are you gonna make an update to the mod with the new feedback?
I think warrior needs to give some speed on promotion. A flat zero to speed sucks. Especially when we consider the units who can be a warrior : Garcia and Ross. 2 characters who really want speed.
If you dont give warriors speed I think they deserve a big strength boost. The kind that would push Garica and Ross to one shot some squishy enemies with ease like magic units and Myrmadons. I think +4 would be justified.
I don't agree with the Hero Warrior analysis.
"Both get relevant secondary weapons" only really applies in a vacuum.
Axes are a handy secondary weapon. Coming off of a fighter, Swords are the secondary weapon. It's nice to start them at C rank, so they will see some use, but honestly, not much is gained.
For freshly promoted units coming off of fighter:
All bows offer some degree of utility for the warrior. It's an improved 2 range option, and 3 range in the case of the longbow. Plus they're handy against fliers.
The useful weapons Hero gains include: Killing Edge, Axe Reaver, and later, Brave Sword and Silver Sword.
The thing is, the only advantage swords have over axes is a different weapon triangle spot, and an accuracy boost. The weapon triangle advantage swords apparently bring isn't actually a big deal, because the Sword Reaver and Slayers are already usable coming off of fighter. So functionally, swords give weapon triangle advantage against axes, which axes already have a neutral matchup against.
Basically, I'm of the opinion Warriors have a better weapon set than Heroes, event starting at E rank bows. Going fighter to hero is mainly to give Garcia 2 speed. Ross has the option of going the Berserker route, which would already be as fast (also gained speed from the pirate over fighter.) Water/Mountain walk +15 crit and 2 con is easily better than sword access.
Sadly, this creates a dilemma: Buffing Warrior makes Hero vs. Warrior less balanced. But Berserker is generally better than Warrior. Unfortunately, I think that means the most sensible solution is to nerf Berserker (otherwise, we end up buffing Warrior, Hero and Ranger.)
I had a blast playing this game with every mounted unit I could get, and forcing myself to use every unit that has access to secondary weapons, only those weapons if any. Sages strictly light/staves, Druid strictly anima/staves, Ranger Gerik with bows, or Ranger Neimi with swords. Its actually pretty fun. Forcing promotions to play this way can add flavour to an already easy game.
I always go for S-Rank Sword, General Amelia
I remember the first time i played sacred stones and i chose each character to promote to a different class to have all the different classes in one playthrough
Rogue’s with canto is epic, i’m actually seriously wondering why it’s not vanilla
General has always been an absolute statistical B E H E M O T H, let's be honest.
In the end I always make her a great knight cause she’s a Dussel admirer, lore wise she probably would be a great knight
Is this still a thing? Are we still here?
If so:
Let's not forget how these classes, for the units who undergo these class changes, have stat caps. Sure, you can balance the promotion gains and all, but you're still not going to want to make Ross a hero since he's gonna cap his strength in there pretty fast he's not really going to touch many other stats in there as much.
Knight vs cav is always going to be hard to justify... To take knight is going to need even more bulk, I think. I don't think anyone would disagree to giving knight even more HP upon promotion. Or even better, as another comment mentions, just axe the knight idea altogether and give Amelia the cav v peg promote.
Other things I have... Thoughts on, like messing with the promoted movement is kinda odd... But I support giving the valk their 8 movement back. Giving rogues canto is *HUGE* and I personally _love it!_ Assassins getting the extra move is kinda interesting, but I think largely unneeded.
I think the utility of the assassin v swordmaster sells well. Sure silencer is mostly worthless(unless it's against you in arena), but the added lockpick use and fog-of-war vision is cool. Just giving some stat buffs, like strength, to cement it as a combat option vs the many many pros of rogue for theives would be good enough and it'd also still tempt myrmidons to promote to it.
Crit bonus on druid is... _Wild._
Not only has no magic user ever gotten a crit bonus before, but no unit has ever gotten a crit bonus and used more than one weapon before! I think just giving the druid better stat promotes is enough.
Oddly snipers have always deserved that crit bonus(does it apply to using ballistae?) and I'm glad they're finally getting something! I'm curious to why snipers were never given anything previously, as I don't believe any other class in the history of FE has ever been single-weapon locked upon promote and gained *nothing* like the sniper. Like, swordmasters, assassins, and berserkers all get something that make them exclusive to their weapon and it's really weird that they never got anything for them. (Sure FE8 added that useless 100% hit skill, but it also introduced wyvern knights as lance-locked and gave them the much more potent peirce!)
Personally, I thought of rounding the roster by adding characters for Sacred Stones. For example, for a Pirate character, I can imagine at least 4 chapters he can slip in for recruitment; one for Erika, and 3 for Ephraim. Gaiden chapters would also be nice to add. Maybe monsters raiding villages, or rogue armies running around...
I like the changes you proposed, but without any transition slides, it was difficult to follow this video😭
Awesome video concepts here friend! Have you tried out FE6 Project Ember?
Not yet, still need to get around to finishing vanilla fe6.
@@RCwyatt917 Playing through it myself after greatly enjoying HM. Would be interested to hear your thoughts on the balancing there if you get the chance :)
Another way to rebalance the choices on the lower tiers might be to swap up some weapons. Fighters gaining sword access or bow access, perhaps on an individual character basis, or a level 10 bonus you get to pick, could help them stand out, especially if you cant promote right away. Same for Knight, maybe give it axes or swords for reaching level 10, making it catch up to Cavalier eventually, in a spiritual sense. Or just give Amelia a bazooka.
Adding weapon variants is ideal but the problem is you'd have to create new animations for them which isn't always easy. That's why, I think, they usually don't rebalance with new weapon variants.
I think that, instead of giving Snipers a crit bonus, it would be cool that their 2-range attack weapons become a 2-3-range weapons just like the Marksman class in Radiant dawn
I'm always hesitant to pick certain classes given that all but three of the maps are aggressive combat, making slower tank units essentially outpaced. Turning Traitor, Hamil Canyon and Last Hope are the only chapters where defensive heavy units are key, every other map is better suited to fast moving aggressive units
One thing I did nearly every run was make LArchel my Aureola user guess it would be really hard unless grinding in tower now that the purpose of Valkyrie has been set.
can some pls explain to me how i apply the patch to rom would really nice never did something like that befor
Really like your vids man, keep it up, you really put some effort in thos vidad we can see it
Love the video
i always thought it was weird that the knights didn't have multiple weapon types, i would give them axes as knights, and instead of 3 extra DEF, give one to all stats except MOV and SPD, and because i like to be funny, bows on promotion to general
i'm not sure how i feel about all the MOV changes
ditch general amelia, make a cavalier/pegasus knight recruit tree
That's actually what I did in my rom hack, she's surprisingly very strong as a peg knight
I always went Knight-> General for Amelia as a kid just bc it's funny
See I thought about it, and with how miserable Luna is in Fe8, the Sniper's ability would actually make some sense on druids if it procs based on crit chance. Nothing spectacular, but *some* Luna reliability would at least stand out against a few enemies in the game.
Amelia's Cavalier and then Paladin choices are objectively superior since you get to see her long woman hair.
has this been updated since the video came out? some of the stats aren't as shown (pirate gets the point of def again instead of res) but others are, and things like druid's crit boost are still intact
you make the Chevalier have the same spd than a amor knight
Super trainee amelia was op in one of the hack they made super trainee useful if you wanna go that route lol yeah shes still locked to being one weapon but she has the stats of a general all but movement which means if your not picking the cav line she was not gonna get screwed with her movement plus she has the bulk of a general.... And she level up fast cause they added skills into that hack.
I'll say it now and I'll say it forever: having low speed stat is crippling enough to make the armor knight not great, so having less move is just cementing them in irrelevancy.
Knights should have 5 move
No💀this is a problem i have with u and the vids creator you're thinking about gameplay but there's no actual for the units to have the buffs you're giving them. (In-universe wise outside obviously not)
@@cringekid3993 well, a lot of the assignments of statistical values are kind of arbitrary if you think about it... but I think that the armor knights, who train in big armor should be at least pretty good at wearing it enough that it doesnt slow them down while just walking
@@vaughnrudy8084 first they are definitely not "just walking" and second it doesn't really matter what the actual practicality of the action is what matters is how said action would be perceived by a player. And the average player would think the armor is hard to lug around lowering their mobility
@@cringekid3993 It kind of really does matter what the practicality of a unit is? A slow, low move unit that still gets wrecked by the nearest mage is still useless. Armor Knights have always been shit due to exactly sticking to this formula.
@@moonmelons You didn't even understand what im saying🤦bro is not the smartest
I'd consider taking away Summoner's staff access altogether, because of all the utility summons bring already.
Regarding Gerik and the ranger promotion. How do people here feel about the class having 8 rather than 7 movement? A bunch of mounts in sacred stones have 7 rather than 8 mve.Make it more in line with the nomad trooper class from the prior 2 games. Having +2 movement over hand axe access that hero provides would make the promotion debate more interesting. Yeah swords and axes is a better combo than swords and bows but movement is one of the most important stats in the FE series.
3:46
idk if I agree with more speed being better than more constitution. sure rescue dropping becomes more difficult since the number of units available to carry the higher con unit decreases, but having more con means you're able to use heavier weapons without as much of a speed penalty, bringing your attack speed to either equal to/much closer to your regular speed stat
Speed does the exact same thing though, with more. 1 point of speed will counteract a point of weight in the same way a point of con does, but if you're wielding a weapon lighter than your con, it will also increase your AS.
I think this is the first video of yours I've seen, so no idea if missing additional context.
Sniper having a unique skill is cool. That skill being basically useless is not cool. Crit chance boost for single-weapon classes makes a lot of sense. ...Honestly, as much as I love the game and they don't really ruin the overall experience, all of the skills in FE8 are half baked, both for the bad ones and the good ones.
Improving both Swordmaster and Assassin the way you did is something sword locked units needed, and Rogue is actually cool now without adding any new skills like Pass. ...I do, however, feel like it's right here where there's the danger of making the Lord units and their promotions feel more like a burden than they should. They may need to be tweaked to not feel completely invalidated by the better unit feel of the normal classes.
I've always felt like Wyvern Lords getting sword proficiency made especially bad sense with this game's branching, and even more so with these fixes. Even if it means needing to mess with adding animations and all that, which probably goes beyond the scope of how you wanted to modify the base game, I feel they'd make more sense with gaining Axes. You could trade out the Str boost for another point of Con if going that route, or more Skl. Just don't like them being too overly similar to Falcon Knight. (Also, visually missed making the number red on the Wyvern Knight changes compared to Falcon, unless going from 1 to 0 was the mistake.)
The Valkyrie change is terrible outside looking at the class choice in a vacuum. Valkyrie is the only reason to ever use the S-Rank Light Tome in this game. Sage should be the combat focused Mage promotion, so Mage Knight needs to be the support option for both while the Valkyrie can be more combat focused. The last thing L'Arachel needs is even MORE grinding to use her Sacred Twin Tome. Have you never used this game's Troubadour before? I thought this was just going to be a fun little what-if video to check out and yet now I'm genuinely upset. I'd never play with these changes because Ivaldi L'Arachel is like the one singular thing that I never do differently in Sacred Stones. I feel like starting the Magic classes tree off with this decision led to the wrong flow of choices. Plus the changes don't actually make Valkyrie any better at support, since one of the main improvements is Staff Rank, but the only classes that can promote into it are Staff locked to begin with, so they don't need that boost, while the lost Mag negates the Mov bonus. And that's all before even mentioning Bishop. ...For units with Staff and Magic access, Skl is actually more of an offensive stat than Mag by context of how much support spells can be boosted by Mag. Giving the "supportive" builds less Mag and more Skl is backwards (technically making the Bishop more synergistic with the Slayer skill when doing so, though maybe not a bad change thematically, since it is an offensive class).
Leaving Great Knight's Def unboosted compared to Paladin and maintaining the horrible 4/1 Con gap is pretty nasty even with the boost to Mov and Str. Also still not differentiated enough from Paladin, which should maybe lean a bit more Res in contrast. You're still not really gaining anything but shortcomings from Great Knight compared to Paladin since the gaps are so small between them. More Def for Great Knight and more for General so it's not matched.
Not sure why General needed to lose Skl specifically, particularly since it wasn't a strong suit of Great Knight. Seems you mostly did that to crit boost weapon classes. Being a ball of stats with significant downsides is the smart easy design, though. And the Recruit to Armor Knight buff is just plain logically necessary. The main reason to choose Armored Amelia in vanilla is simply the factor that there are so many good cavalier line options that her being Armored with her stat spread is at least a decent novelty, and not much else, so it may be legit best pick for her now, but Armors are always hard sells for turn count optimizers, so it evens out.
...Or, actually, with the boost the base Armor Knight Def that would be required to make Amelia's Def promotion boost higher, maybe relative to that the chart on promoting to Great Knight or General doesn't really change for Def even if you Boost Great Knight's Def for promoting from Cavalier? Did you remember to make the promotion's base stats higher to account for tier 1 classes that were changed for Trainees' sake? Promo bonuses are derived from subtracting the previous class's base stats from the promotion's base stats in this game if I remember correctly, right?
Final side thought on this video's content: Promotion bonuses should probably be balanced around every stat getting a minimum of 1 point, with good stats for that class upgrade being higher. Maybe this is more about being flashy than being objectively necessary, but it can make agonizing about if or not to early promote that much more poignant.
P.S: I actually have been theory crafting a totally overhauled Fire Emblem game concept inspired by the branching promotion model for some time now, so I've thought about how to balance classes against each other to make them fun and unique quite a bit. But it probably borrows too many elements from across the series's history to be a hack of FE8, even with all the well developed patches that have been created for it over the years. For instance, I'd really like to explore iterating on Three Houses's Magic Uses, Skills gained from Proficiency Rank levels, and normalized multiple tiers of classes, all in the context of a game where units are locked to class tree advancement and can't reclass. To that effect, though, Tomes and Staves would be treated as magic using class specific accessories that contribute per-map magic uses while individual magic classes would learn individual spells (including elemental splits for Anima/Black magic mages and support/utility vs offensive variants of Light/White magic and Dark magic classes at each class tier), while units still learn spells from Proficiency Ranks, with learn lists based on GBA style unit Affinity. Lots of old classes like single weapon Horse units such tier 1 Bow Knight, Armors of different weapons including Bows, Hunter as a more Thief-leaning Bow unit while Archers are more explicitly good at Str and some survivability, more movement focused class options for mountaineering and waterwalking, Cavaliers are tier 2 and ignore movement penalties and hazards on constructed terrain while Ranger is their natural terrain equivalent, and so on and so forth. Trainee classes of each weapon type, including the "Lords" of the game being a Noble that can promote through any magic class and a Commoner that can promote through any weapon class while they're restricted from the opposite or hybrid classes. Hybrid physical/magic classes in tier 2 and tier 3. Comprehensive thematic skills for each class, such as tier 1 Armor classes having a skill that gives them stat buffs for each hit they take on Enemy Phase (each weapon type of Armor class buffs a different stat and lasts to end of Ally Phase) and a togglable Stance they can enter for bonus Def and crit evade in exchange for zeroing out avoid chance to synergize with that skill (different maps could have enemy Armor units use or not use this Stance depending on that map's objectives or circumstances). Pre-promote units might have additional personal skills instead of the skills of logical previous classes to make raised from scratch units that much different from them. ...Okay, ranted enough about that to calm down about the Valkyrie now, so just going to shut up even though I could have gone into greater and more coherent detail.
I still think knight and general Amelia is the best because it has access to the full triangle and higher stat caps
You have to remember that when discussing unit viability we're only looking at the main campaign and without tower grinding involved. In that context caps only matter if you reach them during the main campaign and are held back because they are too low. This hardly ever happens and when it does it is so late it only loses you like 1 or 2 points in the final few chapters of the game. Doesn't really weigh up to all the movement she will miss out on, not to mention canto. Besides, the only stat amelia is likely to cap through natural leveling in either class is speed which paladin and general both cap at 25.
Weapon triangle is really not that big of a deal. Paladin, her actual best option, has lances and swords which is more than sufficient, especially since lances have javelins. Besides, if you go down the cavalier line she gets E swords as a cavalier and 30 sword exp when promoting to paladin. If she goes down the knight line she only gets the other weapon types once she is a general, which is quite late, and both are E rank. Good luck getting that up to usable levels in a reasonable amount of time. I would argue the paladin line has it better when it comes to the weapon triangle.
So yeah paladin is objectively better unless you're discussing in different context than we are when talking about which options are better.
sniper should have pierce instead of sure shot. The whole point of a sniper is to take someone out before they know it, pierce would help provide that fantasy by giving an archer a choice between mobility and ignoring defense. If that isn't allowed I think giving a sniper an additional atk range could be a fair compromise.
I think extra atk range for snipers is generally a good way to balance them. Unfortunately it is not easy to do with febuilder. You can improve range for all bows, but not make it so any given unit or class gets more range with them than others. It is possible to give snipers pierce. I'm not sure it can be done without removing pierce from wyvern knights. I'd have to test it. That class is already too strong without pierce though so it's fine.
Valk can keep the con because light tomes are so extremely heavy in gba that you can rest assured that 1 con is 1 speed, youll need all of it. I think it would be fine to just give some con spd and crit to have a generalist light tome user counterpart to slayer bishops. Obviously sage has its thing but having anima actually does feel like a large enough advantage in this context. Holy sucks
Sniper: better skill, eagle eye, grants +1 range to bows
Is it possible to do a randomizer with those stats as well?
I think level up stat %'s are more important than most other thints besides movement and con
Sacred Stones 0% growths is about to go crazyyyyyyyy
General Amelia with the Boots is underrated
General shouldn’t be changed but it should have a 2nd ability named redoubt. Every physical attack triggers a counter attack, always procs if in range. Something doubles it like a sword master? It gets to hit three times. 1 for standard and 2 for each attack the sword master does. Magic and armor slayer weapons do not trigger this effect allowing physical attacks some way of dealing with them.
This turns general into the wall it was designed to be, and by having an useful enemy phase kinda fixes the issue of having bad movement. The ultimate choke point unit. Great shield procs further this goal and makes the unit as deadly as it needs to be to justify its slow and bulky build. This also changes the value of the speed stat for the general, making it slightly less useful, but still worth in order to take less damage.
Now for fun, both units have brave weapons, how many times will the general attack?
Answer 10 times
But then ss gets even easier than it is and the balance goes out of whack again just in the opposite direction
Amelia general woth swiftsole shes worth it definitely a good investment unit
Am I the only one that likes knights and generals because they look cool?
Id actually like to try the Hack
Currently playing through 8 and my Ewan has gotten one skill increase in 10 levels, guess who's making Ewan a mage now. XD
My Amelia is getting pretty solid though. 14 STR, SPD, SKL, and DEF at lvl 14.
Ross is going poorly, trying to make him a hero. Lvl 13 fighter with 10 speed after TWO speed wings. Kill me. Least he capped STR two levels ago
Not taking into account stat caps for any of the classes makes the video a bit flawed imo, more usually than not I'll be taking a class over another because said class has better caps
@@Meku-cq6hh we don't have to agree, I don't even play FE anymore neither do I know what the video was exactly about, anyways, stat caps are what makes a class unique, on top of their special skill, that said, it's totally irrelevant since FE8 is extremely easy with using basically anything, I suppose I was talking there about more of a min maxing perspective and having fun with the arena or something
if sniper could had able to attack at close ranged like in later games. I would had liked it a lot more. heroes > warriors. wyvern knights for pierce espcially once they get to max level. not to mention at a zero str growth run u need to have wyvern knights must have. great knights > generals. heroes cause faster and warriors been really slow. great knights over general cause higher movement. if only u could get boots really early in the game then I would had like generals a lot better. also generals dont get great shield in other games and only fe 8. but anyways overall I do agree with u
The Supertrainee is actually "real choice". U just need to win the game with both Eirika and Ephraim routes, then start a completely new journey :))
The problem with FE8 is that it has a very obvious meta, which makes logical players ask "why would i ever go for these clearly inferior options?"
S being: Paladins/Wyvern Knights/Bishops
How wild. I always promoted Amelia to Knight>General and gave her a MOV boost item. The stat caps and growths just always felt right to me, she was always my best unit.
Finally Amelia is good in General.
Um, why using torches for thief is a thing when it doesn't improve their sight as thief based classes has innate better vision in fog?
As for CON argument will always less valuable than speed, for offensive purposes, yes. However, for mounted classes, having extra CON is more valuable as they can rescue someone who is heavier than them, especially for those who has very low CON to begin with. Also, for Axe users, CON is basically SPD, as Axes are super heavy, thus having extra CON = having extra SPD.
As for Valkyrie, low Mag support unit would also struggling to support. Not only they will heal less, they also will have less range for long range staves such as Physic, Warp and Rescue. Giving Valkyrie C rank staff upon promotion means nothing LOL. Both Natasha and L'Arachel starts with D and they will DEFINITELY GET C Rank Staff when they reach lv10 for promotion. Training Staff users is not the same as training combat unit, there's almost no way of getting a bunch of exp in one go, thus a staff user will reach C rank by the time they get lv10. Unless, you set their base lv to 8/9/10. Natasha start as lv5 Cleric, L'Arachel starts as lv3 Troubadour.
As for Sage 4 Def, if you make it like that, Saleh = Pent (if not exact, even closer than before) then, another broken unit. Giving Sage C staff upon promotion also discard Saleh edge in innate high weapon ranks as low growth unit vs the high growth low innate weapon ranks unit. This particular change makes some units seem repetitive.
As for Druid, giving them crit bonus is an overkill. The ones who should have crit bonus are pure combat classes that are locked to one type of weapon, giving us choice between offensive vs versatility.
Thieves still get the torch vision bonus. The torch bonus vision stacks with the thief class bonus vision, so you get get super vision.
Con on mounted units can actually hurt them a little in certain situations since con takes away from mounted units' aid, unlike how con increases a foot unit's aid. For example, Seth has 11 con and 14 aid normally at base. However, if you use a body ring on him and boost his con to 13, his aid will go down to 12, meaning there are certain units he can no longer pick up that he could have before. In this example, Seth would no longer be able to pick up base level Gerik as he has 13 con.
sniper still bad with crit boost & bigger stat swing. caps are the same and still no 1 range option, its only useful on player phase which is where it still falls flat compared to ranger who has the choice of which to counter with on enemy phase thanks to higher mov and access to 1 rng. even if sniper gets a confirmed kill on anything it hits, the class still has no enemy phase, and gba fire emblem is all about the enemy phase. i know this is empty criticism but honestly what else can you do considering how flawed bows are in every game where they arent utterly broken?
additionally, wyvern > falcon still, perhaps even moreso with your changes. units like vanessa and tana dont go falcon because they dont need extra speed, skill, or res. all pegs should go to wyvern because it gives them two stats they dont have: def and strength. by adding more defense to wyvern promo bonuses, it becomes an even stronger option than it was before you changed it. giving the frail glass cannon class a boost to bulk is the reason wyvern is always the right choice, so a bigger stat swing in that direction only makes it unquestionably better than falcon. remember that the pegs are still going through 10+ levels gaining stuff like skill, speed, and res, which is the reason why you always go wyvern because you've already gained all those stats which wyvern is normally lacking in. the change from peg to wyvern is what makes it op for pegs. either deny that choice (maybe swap wyvern with paladin, that way you choose between better combat stats & weapons vs flying from falcon) or gimp the wyvern's strength/defense to deny the pegs what they want from it.
also i dont think you properly addressed the trio of mage knight/valkyrie/bishop. larachel always goes mage knight unless you wanna use aureola because anima > light in like every scenario outside maybe purge. i know aureola is effective vs. monsters and i know there is technically only so many tomes you can have, but light is just worse than anima in every way usually, and plenty of other units could use aureola too (cough cough bishops cough cough), so it's not like it's exclusive to larachel. give mage knight 8 mov and give valkyrie the offensive boost instead to compensate for picking light magic. on top of that, there has to be some incentive to not just go bishop on everyone you can because it really is the definitive class of sacred stones. triple damage to everything in the late game on top of bonkers staff utility means stats dont matter, you have to cut one of the two off. personally i say change slayer skill to become valkyrie exclusive instead of bishop, further cementing valkyrie as the monster killing class, and give bishop innately high proficiencies so natasha and moulder arent stuck using the inherently garbage early light spells for several maps. additionally, giving valkyrie the slayer skill limits the number of innate slayer units to only natasha and larachel which prevents artur or moulder getting it, considering how good it is on them, on top of the fact that you changed valkyrie light rank to e so slayer should be less noticeable early on. you could also increase bishop caps even higher above valkyries so even without slayer they still have some power late game on top of staff ranks which valkyrie can theoretically reach.
I'm working on making my own variant of this video's concept. I was left unsatisfied with pretty much the entire magic tree. I kinda like the valkyrie idea. Both natasha and l'arachel are not that easy to get to promotion, and are both considered inferior to other options. This gives them their own niche. Also kinda fits l'arachel's whole 'I must purge evil monsters!' thing.
For the bow thing my proposition would be to make the short bow 1-2 range. If longbow gets longer range then it only makes sense shortbow gets shorter range right?
As for wyvern falcon i gave falcon's C swords like in the video and the following promo bonuses:
Wyvern Knight (F)
HP S Skl Spd Def Res
4 2 1 1 2 0
Falcoknight
HP S Skl Spd Def Res
3 2 1 3 1 3
I hope the killing edge access and spd boost can somwhat mitigate the con loss. Not sure if it is entirely balanced now but should be a lot better. I could steal the pierce skill and give it to snipers but i don't want to go too crazy.
1:15 For general Amelia.
I dont know why you would ever chose Falcon over WK when WK fixes every pegasus girls cripplingly bad Con with a massive +4 bonus. ie. Allowing them to use basic iron lances with no penalty in speed.
I think its a shame you skipped ther super trainees. They would gave been an interesting design challenge. How dyou make THAT good?
"Why would you ever choose knight?"
Because I'm not a coward.
Also to answer your question. You already get: 3 cavaliers, a paladin, a troubadour, and a great knight. That's 6 mounted units already. And many more should you try to promote others into mounted units. Amelia is a good substitute and a better option sometimes than Gilliam if you got him killed early on, and since she's a trainee, she has busted growths. You could put her in either and she would do just fine. I say that because the Amelia I had, as a knight could double, and had high crit chance thanks to her 25 luck by the time she was level 20. Gave her a slim lance and she went to town.
Oh and if you're wondering why she could double? She comes with a Speedwing first of all, and secondly, busted growths that upped her speed. She's a trainee after all.
You say ALL of that
And yet the crux of your argument ISN'T EVEN TRUE.
Have a look at Amelia's actual growths, then compare them to a unit like Seth.
Seth, the prepromoted Paladin who is LITERALLY AVAILABLE TURN 1, has a far better growth spread for what he needs to do, and higher total growths besides.
Also, that Speedwing she has? That's not exclusive to her, and you can absolutely toss it on a unit like Cormag or Duessel and suddenly they two start doubling everything and slaughtering hundreds.
And FE is also a series that actually doesn't really bother promoting class diversity... at all, simply because some classes are better.
You're not proving you're not scared of the consequences of going armor knight Amelia, you're just being idiotic and failing to recognize armor knights literally can't function with how they're designed.
@@red5t653 Okay, so you're immediately comparing her to the Jagen, that was your first mistake. Seth however is a Jagen that's really good and comparing her to him almost sounds as if I tried to make her a Paladin, which I did not. And he's already such a good paladin that's there's really no need for one, aside from Franz and Kyle of course who also are good choices imo.
Two, I gave her the Speedwing anyway even if I could have given it to anyone else, because I actually like the unit. Back when I had first played she was the only trainee unit I used, but found out Ross and Ewan had their own merits too, and in a game like Sacred Stones where you can just level every unit to level 20, albeit unable to promote them all lest there's some way to get a member card, no idea if it's there.
Also, being idiotic? Just because I like armor knights? Hmm, it's almost as if you want me to go all the "right" choices in your head because the units perform better as that unit rather than picking one of your choice. And that is precisely why I went knight Amelia. Because I don't want to, and it's not fun. You're right: I'm not scared of the consequences, because where's the fun in always going the same path? It's a little too boring. Sorry, whoever you are, I'm gonna keep doing as I please, thank you~
@@sixtales7681 Already having a good paladin does not diminish the need for another at all. What is the inherent value of a general over another paladin? They can use axes and have higher con and that is pretty much it. Stats are not inherent to the class but to the unit. A paladin with similar stats to a general will be much more useful. In this example there are promotion bonuses in play but those differences aren't too major either. Enemies in sacred stones are weak unless you slam a 1.3 times multiplier on every enemy growth rate like yours truly.
Tbh i think the guy you were arguing with is right about all the meta things, amelia's mediocre growths, speedwings, and that there is no need for class diversity. He completely disregards the notion that you don't have to make optimal choices though and was kinda overly agressive about it. Although, if you come here arguing that you don't care about some classes being better, what are you doing on a video about balancing those classes?
@@hajoeijgenraam295 Personally speaking, considering how many paladins and horseback units you can get in the game without them being being paladins is cool, but at the same time, I like looking for other niche reasons to use characters in other ways. Call it being experimental.
If I were always too focused on getting to the end of the game the most efficient way possible while using all the "meta" promotions, it wouldn't actually be fun for me. You'd be pretty much done with the game in less than day or two. I mean, sure there's post game and multiple playthroughs, but knowing you, you're just gonna use the same unit combinations just because it works. So what if I wanna use a General, I'd actually take that than most of the stuffy horseback, because we see that too much. Basically what this boils down to, is for not sticking with the meta, I'm being flamed, but I never played Fire Emblem for stupid reasons like that. You ever get the right individual character growths, and it just might work. Plus, in a way, every playthrough is unique in that instance thanks to rng hell, but I'll take it over going for which promote is the "right" choice.
If they give you the chance to choose how you want to promote your characters, there shouldn't be a right or wrong answer. And yet, here we are, because meta called. How boring.
I'mma say it again because you think I'm not serious, but I'm not a coward. If my choice is the wrong answer, then that's fine. I'll get through it. It's not like it's impossible if I make that choice, it'll just be harder. And that's fine.
@@sixtales7681 For the record i am no different than you in that i use classes because they fit thematically or are more fun. I just acknowledge that the meta is a thing and certain choices are better.
To be blunt i disagree with all your arguments about amelia. Of course it's fine if you like using generals because oml they have a fucking chain spear and it's awesome, and of course you can use amelia just to see her turn from zero to hero. But I just get ticked off when people start making flawed arguments that those off meta choices are actually better.
And when the video said "why would you ever choose knight" they were obviously talking purely from a meta perspective, and you attacked him for it which ticked me off as well. As i mentioned previously i find this especially odd since this video is inherently about meta balance. Of course you can just not care about all that but this video can help you use subpar classes without them being subpar.
Not too bad you forgot 3 classes though xD
If it has the drip sprite, idc how useless you are, you are getting in my team
Is the sprite dripping? What are you talking about?
i like these ideas. but for video quality the footage used wasn't always consistent with the build you were talking about. awesome video though!
Personally I think all classes should have six move as a bare minimum.
All second tier classes should have six move as a bare minimum. And all first-tier classes should have five base move as a minimum.
I appreciated the increased variety in Movement values among Radiant Dawn class types
No Super Trainee balancing?
Amelia Knight is so fucking based
Honestly, I just think the -1 move on Knights and Generals needs to go. It's dumb and just holds them back to a crippling extent.
1:06 Because it’s cooler.
General Amelia is the only correct answer
Yes
Cavalier might be better for Amelia in the first choice of promotion, but Knight gets to become a General. And Amelia as a General is insane, specially the Sacred Stones general that has access to all 3 melee weapon types.
I know this is two years late but Amelia is stuck with E rank swords and axes after promoting to general and is also stuck at low mov meaning you have to sacrifice a lot of time moving her. Paladins get lances anyway which is pretty much one of the two non magic weapon types that matter. If you're really set on Weapon Triangle, just go Great Knight.
id love to see a romhack with these changes in it
oh i just read the description... very cool! i was going to replay Sacred Stones very soon on my Steam Deck so i'll be playing this version :) i have a bad habit of falling in love with "weak" classes in Fire Emblem, not on purpose, just because i like utility/defense focused classes when the vanilla meta really favours movement and offense (essentially: put everyone on a horse ASAP)
D staves on Druid isn't nearly enough. it should be B.
B is too high, at least should be C so they can use Physic staff
@@sanae99.9.9 C is the correct option and we have to see how good an insta C rank is with FE7 Lucius, B is immediate physic and rescue and that is broken.
If It goes to B then the crit bonus has to go
I have a bias to canon couples like Neimi and Colm or Natasha and Joshua. And I kinda do an all female run with the gba games sooo....I'm heavily biased.