It's not really related at all to the fact that he's a thief, but Gaius is one of the dads that gives his daughter's pegasus knight as a class, therefore giving them galeforce, so like, he's a pretty insanely useful unit for that alone. On his own actual ability though yeah he's not anything crazy
@@DaniDoyle there should be a caption in that minigame saying something like "when you use adaptability to de-equip the best weapon (it's okay leif grinded tempest trials to not use the master lance)"
When it comes to engage thieves I’m unhappy with their decision to make them not promote. Not for gameplay reasons, but for flavor reasons: They really made the silliest thief in the series and made her unable to promote to trickster
Yeah, really wish they just kept Trickster and Assassin in the game! Hell I'm wonder why Halberdier and Trickster CAN'T STAY IN THE SAME FUCKING GAME! I mean when Trickster came into existence! Halberdier became a lost class for a while (sans Fates, but can you really call Spear Master Halberdiers!). Now the class comes back and Trickster goes into the Wind, while they decided to just make Thief and Assassin One and tell Lethality Skill to "FUCK OFF!" Hopefully next Emblem doesn't do that and lets the Thief promote again! I think they only did that for the sake of "nodes" (Like only the Lord gets a Paired ending is from Binding Blade for example. And Thieves never promoted till Blazing Sword or did they promote in Thracia 776....I tend to forget as I'm more memorable to the US released Emblems and New Mystery then the Jap ONLY. At least they can FUNCTION for combat compared to how they did in Shadow Dragon/Mystery at least, but that's likely because they lost their function as "free Chest-pick" since anyone can open chests! All they do is save you time chopping up a Door! And seriously why bother when durability doesn't exist! That's why I'm happy they gave them more utility and kept the Knives Debuff function to instead Poison as long as they do a Sliver of damage) even if it's the the game's DETIRMENT sometimes (Engage reminded me of WHY I hope to NEVER see Skirmishes again. They should just 3H it and let you grind as you wish or limit it per chapter because I don't want the CALANDER and Skill system of 3H back either! I'm fine leaving that "unique" for 3H. Some functions are best left in their Fire Emblem's and no other!). But yeah Trickster needs to be the Magic Thief who can do SOME combat, while Assassins need to be Thieves who can use Swords AND Knives (Stick Trickster to Tome, Staff and Knives and Assassin to Knives, Swords and Bows! I really didn't like Engage LIMITING of Three Weapon Type classes. But I guess that was nodding to Path of Radiance with how Knights were stuck to one weapon type for a while.....despite the fact Paladin should have expanded that like they did in Path of Radiance instead of just being able to use the S rank of that weapon type) And Thieves in Engage don't even STEAL! What's the point of calling yourself a THIEF THEN (Doesn't help that the two MAIN thieves Yunaka and Zelkov are more Retired Assassins then Thieves anyway LOL)
Trickster is such a flavor W for FE in general I'm glad it was a mainstay for a little bit If only enchanter was a normal class, I like the silliness of that class but that PRICE DEAR GOD
I think you missed an important element of GBA thieves in that they have a meaningful boost to combat EXP gains. They have a different "class power" than most units, so their EXP calcs are boosted. Killing a Brigand gives them more than it would for other classes; and I'm positive this was intentional to support the lack of XP from chesting and (the small amount) from stealing.
Every GBA thief has flaws in some way for combat, 6 can't promote, 7 promotes like a few chapters before the end of the game with bad caps, 8 has colm who sucks and has bad caps
"this probably sounds like a meme," she says, after explaining that you can have your Thieves litterally steal a guys only weapon and have them be unable to fight.
You could probably do it earlier but in chapter 22 (or any chapter with shops I assume (I only did it on 22)) most enemies without a weapon will rush to a shop and buy a new weapon however enemies don’t have gold so using one poor sod you can easily extract more wealth then in the entirety of path of radiance or at least get more killing edges then you know what to do with.
@@Birbles-birbingtonThracia is really unlike anything else. Imagine playing Binding Blade and there are sorcerers warping dancers and enemies walking into a shop and buying new weapons.
I’ll go to bat for FE1 thieves honestly. Sure Marth can open chests too, but Marth is also an insane combat unit, both in terms of stats and being able to draw fire, and you constantly want him moving towards either villages to visit (though I think there’s only a couple maps with both chests and villages) or the seize point of the map. Meanwhile, if enemy thieves in FE1 get to chests, the item inside is functionally gone, not dropped. That one map where you have Julian, get Rickard, and don’t have the fire emblem even teaches this; without some careful routing and probably at least one Warp, you’ll almost definitely lose some treasure. His high demand and other time pressures mean you often can’t just send Marth to clean up chests, and enemy quality in FE1 is low enough that your army doesn’t really hurt for fielding one or even both of your thieves; in most maps with chests I generally will just to speed things along.
Capturing in Fates is my favorite implementation of it, it's just fun getting a generic with a random name to train up and have bad stats but good skills and/or weapon ranks
21:59 ‘Unless Matthew has been trained to an extreme extent’ When I played the game on NSO, Matthew was my favourite and he was the first character I got to 20, so I never really had that issue
1:11:36 Actually there is one unit in TearRing Saga who can make effective use of the Mug Skill: Sierra, the Witch (her class in-game), a unit *who CAN LITERALLY WARP AROUND THE MAP AT-WILL.* If you user this to your advantage she'll be FAR away from your other units and won't hurt their hit rates. She may start near your other units, however she'll probably have warped across the map right away with her first action and do her own thing, removing the debuff right away. A powerful lone-wolf unit is a pretty good use of it, they'll be on their own most of the time so they won't get in the way. Sierra is the poster-child of this with her ability to Warp around the map and selectively pick off targets.
Yeah I have to agree, sometimes it's just the only reliable way to obtain very fundamental resources-- oh, in Fire Emblem, you say? ...Well, I still agree.
An interesting way they could make stats matter for Thieves in the rumored upcoming FE4 remake would be making the amount of gold thieves steal scale with their skill/dex, which would make their stats/level matter while also upping the usefulness of one of the generally worst stats in the series (and making you reconsider whether or not you want to sell skill stat boosters)
Sure the Fell Contract sucks from a gameplay perspective but that is not the point, its existence allows you to head cannon tragic character trajectories for Matthew or Legault and that is way more important than any statistical significance.
41:22 Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU. I could kiss you for that. I have been saying FOREVER that Bane won't activate and prevent a kill, but I always got pushed back with "Oh, I'm pretty sure I saw it happen before," and when I ask for proof? One instance, when literally one is all it would take to prove me wrong? Nothing, from anyone. Hopefully people are willing to believe it from you if not me. Thank you so much. Another point against promoting a Thief in Blazing is the Fell Contract sells for 25K Gold. Enough to outfit a good chunk of your army instead of downgrading a member of your side crew. I would love to see Thieves come back to weak in direct combat, but there being a lot of goodies to yoink. The enemy gold thing from GotHW would be a lot of fun to mess around. Knives could go back to their weaker roots (as much as I love Fates hidden weapons, they're kinda super busted), but maybe always do at least 1 damage? This way a weak Thief isn't completely screwed if they get caught, and maybe get a nice cleanup kill occasionally. This one is tricky, I want Thieves to be weak combatants, but seeing 0 x2 is a real FeelsBad. Shade/Stillness coming back and Pass being more readily available would be wonderful. Opening chests definitely needs to come back to being Thief dependent. Keys can exist, of course, but it feels like they are super easy to always on hand in recent games, or in Engage's case, are wholly unnecessary. And 200% agree that Thieves need to get meaningful Exp from doing Thief work. Staff Exp got its glowup back in Awakening, where Thief Exp glowup, IS???
I am a thief enthusiast and I will say that I'm sad you didn't include the most over the top way of stealing a weapon in Path of Radiance(the S Light tome) because that's still one of the funniest shit I've ever done.
39:00 that's not quite right: if you go to Serenes Forest> Radiant Dawn> Miscellaneous> Calculations, you can find the formula for finding items. I'll swiftly report it here: Success rate= Skill + Thief Bonus + Biorhythm bonus [%] Thief Bonus: 60 if user is a Thief, Rogue or Whisper. Biorhythm bonus: +20 if arrow is pointing at highest, +10 if pointing at high, -10 if pointing at low and -20 if pointing at lowest.
I love using Radiant Dawn Heather simply because it's one of the only ways to get Bolting and slamming dragons with it feels so good, especially since for story reasons I always take Soren up the tower
Great video. Learned a lot that I didn’t know before about some of the older thief iterations. Appreciated that breakdown! I was thinking about your suggestions for future thief iterations. Shade as you mentioned or 3H Stealth are good ideas that can further reinforce utility. 3H Stealth is one of my favorite abilities in the entire series. The combat nerfing makes conceptually, and perhaps makes their combat far more niche as the game goes on. I find that debuffing tends to be a superfluous effect when you reach a point in the game where you can consistently hit ORKO benchmarks which often happens right after early game. So I wonder if thieves won’t fall off super hard combat wise after early game but perhaps that is your intent.
One important note about the GBA thieves is that they get more XP from combat, so yes while you need to have them train in combat its not as bad as you think.
34:08 Objection: There are plenty of valuable stealable items later in the Path of Radiance. Case in point: Chapter 26 Clash. You can steal an extra Spear from the Boss while he's using his Runesword (which he was going to drop anyway). There are also Sage Reinforcements that come out of the castle which have stealable siege tomes (and some have Elixirs). There is a Bishop on the map that you can steal a Sleep staff (or a Silence staff, I forget which). Many Paladins (among other units) on the map have two weapons in their inventory. I know for a fact that you can steal a Short Axe from a reinforcement Paladin before he even gets to move. Chapter 27 Part 1 has the best stealable item in the game--A BRAVE LANCE! Just bait the Boss into using his Spear, and take the brave lance from him at the start of the next turn. You don't even need to put that much effort into Volke to get him to steal these items. If you cap his Speed and Strength while unpromoted, his Promotion gains will carry his utility for the rest of the game. If you don't want him to hog too much bonus experience, that's okay too. Get him to roughly 80 experience in each chapter and top him off at the next base. An honorable mention goes to the fact that you can manipulate the AI into letting you steal Rexaura in the Final Chapter. Only Rhys can use it, so it's only worth it if you're using him. However, that's one extra S Rank weapon in a game where half of them only exist as Unused Data!
only 7 minutes in. i imagine that a lot of the video will be about how Thief is a weird class cause it changed a lot Engage made them go from pure utility class to an interesting physical 1-2 range debuffer with Daggers ... thaaaaaaaaaat's definitely worse than Wolf Knight. oh well. at least Ninjas and Outlaws were great in Fates
This video made me more impatient for a fe4 remake (shadows of valentia style)/translated port (like they did for fe1 on the switch) than I already was. I seriously need a way to play fe4 outside of translated emulator roms.
If we're experimenting with thieves I think it would be interesting to do branching promotion and have something like trickster and rogue being branches, where trickster is your utility unit with staff access and rogue becomes a combat unit with a mug-like ability where it can steal and attack at the same time, maybe differentiate between the two further by having Tricksters able to steal any unequiped item with 100% chance while Rogue has a percentage chance to steal on that special attack influenced by weight but can even disarm enemies and steal equiped weapons (with a penalty to chance for equipped weapons)
I've played FE5, but the segment with dancing Leif went on so long I had to google to confirm if thieves actually existed in FE5 or if this was an elaborate bit cause playable thieves weren't in the game.
A good video! I honestly like using thiefs in conbat in earlier games, actually feels like thiefs, chipping away or finishing off an enemy rather than being the main fighter. I kind of want a future game to redux the ninja, carry over the stat debuffs but lower their attack. Give them utility in combat rather than either utility or combat.
personally, i'd probably want to combine the thief and dancer class then give acess to warp, which would result in an incredibly overpowered unit that functions purely for utility. the idea here is role compression, where your theiancerper has so many good things they want to do on any given turn that you'll be have to choose which utility to prioritize. then i'd make them a game over condition and force deploy them, similar to a lord, that way the levels can be designed with the assumption that the player will be deploying this unit.
tho, this is with the idea being that they'd be in a setting where classes are designed to excel in one or two areas but have a fatal flaw. so, this class would excel in infinite value utility at the expense of everything else.
Marie from Esperia uprising of the scarlet witch is one of my favorite thieves in a Srpg her stats are mostly dodge based, gold is pretty scarce so stealing items to sell is more valuable, plus if i remember correctly there was a lot of good items to steal( stat boosters and promotion items) her secret promoted class gets access to buffing spells(the game has those mages are op as heck) or if she gets standard promotion bows which are 2-3 range making her personal skill that debuffs enemies easy to use and she can steal a bit of gold every map
its just too bad that in the english version thats only double might and not triple where it might have finally given enough damage for a theif to deal more then single digit damage to armors
Thracia truly did do it best, especially since capturing is kind of a counterpart to stealing and actually showcases the utility of deploying a thief. The problem is that good thieves necessitate a learn in-game economy, and player access to items and money (and dlc items) only keeps ballooning. Something you didn't touch on that I think is integral to Thracia's thief gameplay feel is the fact that Thracia throws escape map after escape map at you for a good while. Having to deal with escape (and specifically Thracia's implementation of escape) also adds tension to the experience of playing with Lifis. Do I have enough time and hp to go for those chests? It makes getting all the chests a mark of skillful resource and unit management rather than a checklist item. I appreciate the occassional rival theif they give us to echo what Thracia achieves, and I really like the challenge of going for the chest in Fates' opera house chapter, but we need more variety overall to make thieving feel like an accomplishment. It'll be interesting to see how an FE4 remake will fare, and I wonder what they'll choose to keep.
Fun fact: Patty can inherit the prayer sword via a glitch, break the prayer sword and you can sell it broken to a sword using father can repair but not use it (besides even wonkier glitches)
I want bad units but not bad classes, and it's crazy that there has been decades of fire emblem and some classes have still not had their time in the sun
Fun fact about Fire Emblem 3H stealing: For some reason, the bonus auxiliary battle maps for gold/material from the DLC actually has 3 units maximum that you can steal concoctions from. This is a way to get money and some pretty high tier healing items for your units. This is funny since on Maddening because how worthless Vulneraries are when everyone gets smacked for 20 damage anyways, healing for 30 HP is absolutely amazing. I don’t remember any other main instance of stealing in 3H outside of niche cases like Ironman run and you lost your Death Knight killer or something, iirc most enemies don’t have any real important or cool item to steal outside of niche cases like billions which most drop anyways.
1:13:31 Yeah, but how should the scaling work? An amount of XP equal to a %of the items value, an XP point for every X amount of gold in the items value (like every 10 gold=1XP) , or something else entirely?
I like how thieves were implemented in Engage, *except* for the weird stuff around their promotion, or rather their lack of a promotion. Being a weird hybrid class absolutely ruined what would otherwise be a very interesting combat utility class imo. Instead they end up just being replaced by wolf knights once you get the ability to use promoted classes
Great video, really fun watch. One question though, what makes thieves in Thracia 776 so good? Sorry if I missed something, I was too distracted by Leif dancing.
Gotta say I disagree with you about Yunaka. Stick her in a bush with one of the crit knives and she becomes much more able to kill reliably. She legitimately saved my army from a lot of grief on chapter 11. Granted, I only played the game on Hard so maybe the experience is wildly different on Maddening.
I would argue that theft in fire emblem engage is good but then I just now its daggers and the unit makes the theft good in engage because true damage that stacks saved my run lots of times and it was the dagger that did that and not the theff i still use them though
Great video, probably my favorite of what you’ve done. Thieves change a lot game by game so it’s super interesting to hear it summarized. And yea they are definitely at their coolest and most fleshed out in FE5. I really like Cath as a unit. I think I may have overrated her slightly in the past for just being a thief, even on this channel (but maybe not, still something I’m thinking on). But I just love that being using her is punishing enough to be annoying and rob you of some usefulness (Astolfo’s bulk), but at the same time does not meaningfully hamper your ability to do thief things (thanks to stats not mattering for her). And she’ll always have some sauce on chapter 16 🙏🙏🙏
Do you think julian could make for a good combat unit with the manual? Julian's average growths will put him at 15 strength near the end (unless im horribly stupid)
Mmmmh actually thieves in fe6 can also deactivate the traps in chapter 21x is weird that they even bothered to program that but they can for some reason. Also you can get the first knight crest in fe7 without Matthew you can just kill the thief that takes it before it takes the silver sword.
The build (or I guess con) stat determines what you can steal, the three thieves don't really get much to work with however there are still some weapons they can steal, in particular Lifis is able to steal tomes during a section of the game where there's a lot of mages so it's pretty neat and you do get a build ring later in the game if you wanna give it to your favorite thief and steal even more weapons
You spend a fair bit of time in each section saying theives shouldnt have combat utility and i disagree. Every other utility class in the series(Clerics, Dancers, Merlinius) have utility on every single map, while Theives are intentionally niche in application, if theres not a steal target or chest on the map they dont have utility and for both balance and story reasons it makes sense for them not have that utility every map, if were attacked by bandits in the mountains there really shouldnt be a chest for my theif to open. Instead they get some combat utility, less than Mercenaries or Myrmidons, but more than a Dancer. They can provide valuable chip damage and dodge tanking to support the army. I think Awakening Theives and Outlaws are the best version of the class, as they fit this role perfectly, both by staying in the class and fitting into the 3DS era's very fluid class systems. Most the utility parts of the class are attached to their skills(Locktouch, Mov +1, Pass and Lucky 7) which any character can take advantage of even after switching out, but if you stay in you get the same valuable utility of Trickster. You mentioned that they were worse than Archer and Myrmidon and thats intentional, as the units who go into Theif and Outlaw(naturally) dont have access to those classes(as Archer is Hoshidan exclusive and in Conquest your only archer is Mozu), or intentionally switch out of Myrmidon in the case of Lon'qu. They're intentionally worse than the pure combat class. I think that if Ninjas used Katanas theyd also fit into this idea perfectly(and would make Hidden Weapons worth their bustedness by being promote only). Mind i dont think Theives should be a pure combat class and i dont think their combat utility should come at the cost of their actual Theif skills, like in 7, but i think they should have some merit in combat so youre incentivized to level them alongside the rest of your army. I dont think alone they should be able to take out more than a normal trash unit, at least not without support or weapon advantages. I dont think a class should exists to do nothing but its one utility unless that one utility is super valuable(Dancer) or it grows into doing multiple things(Cleric).
I think I just adjusted the settings? I don't remember though... This video took like 2 months to make so maybe I got a new mic during that time period and just don't remember
Can anyone tell me what's the game, or I supposed the rom hack at 3.03? with matthis and Ronaldian? It reminds me of Sacred echoes but looks a bit different
Honestly got to disagree on take for fe4 theifs there promotion and growths on the dew and patty are useful for there utility because they can safely steal more on enemy phase which especially with a magic sword also for gen 1 standards dew actually has good growths and for patty growths though theycdon't stand out for gen 2 if not below average for child units in gen 2 she still has serviceable growths.
Yeah, fe7 being bad as always Colm in the Japanese version has 2 extra speed so he is 1/2 speed below to steal lockpick on hard mode. The funniest thing i did in fe9 is using provoke on sniper at 1 range sages to make them use elthunder instead of bolting. Then I use Volke to steal bolting (he has enough str at base after promotion )
im only 9 minutes in watching the FE 4 segment and, having not played many of the games, why didn't they just give them adequate stats and then base gold stolen off of damage dealt? (gold stolen probably ignoring defense tho) and if you do a crit attack you steal all of it. then you have a reason to grow so you can do more dmg->more gold, especially wanting to have a high skill/luck so you can fully steal a unit's value in one attack. like making thief progression matter seems pretty simple from my ignorant perspective
If they had competent combat stats that would remove their utility rule however they would simply become combat units with upside, instead of where they are right now which is a unit you use for the utility but not for their combat. I prefer them having good utility but bad combat
It's not really related at all to the fact that he's a thief, but Gaius is one of the dads that gives his daughter's pegasus knight as a class, therefore giving them galeforce, so like, he's a pretty insanely useful unit for that alone. On his own actual ability though yeah he's not anything crazy
Error 776: Thracia footage not found
What are you talking about, I used footage from the secret dancing mini-game you need to win to recruit Reinhardt
@@DaniDoyle there should be a caption in that minigame saying something like "when you use adaptability to de-equip the best weapon (it's okay leif grinded tempest trials to not use the master lance)"
When it comes to engage thieves I’m unhappy with their decision to make them not promote. Not for gameplay reasons, but for flavor reasons: They really made the silliest thief in the series and made her unable to promote to trickster
True, yunaka SCREAMS trickster, she even has a staff emblem ring forced in her join map
Yeah, really wish they just kept Trickster and Assassin in the game! Hell I'm wonder why Halberdier and Trickster CAN'T STAY IN THE SAME FUCKING GAME! I mean when Trickster came into existence! Halberdier became a lost class for a while (sans Fates, but can you really call Spear Master Halberdiers!). Now the class comes back and Trickster goes into the Wind, while they decided to just make Thief and Assassin One and tell Lethality Skill to "FUCK OFF!"
Hopefully next Emblem doesn't do that and lets the Thief promote again! I think they only did that for the sake of "nodes" (Like only the Lord gets a Paired ending is from Binding Blade for example. And Thieves never promoted till Blazing Sword or did they promote in Thracia 776....I tend to forget as I'm more memorable to the US released Emblems and New Mystery then the Jap ONLY. At least they can FUNCTION for combat compared to how they did in Shadow Dragon/Mystery at least, but that's likely because they lost their function as "free Chest-pick" since anyone can open chests! All they do is save you time chopping up a Door! And seriously why bother when durability doesn't exist! That's why I'm happy they gave them more utility and kept the Knives Debuff function to instead Poison as long as they do a Sliver of damage) even if it's the the game's DETIRMENT sometimes (Engage reminded me of WHY I hope to NEVER see Skirmishes again. They should just 3H it and let you grind as you wish or limit it per chapter because I don't want the CALANDER and Skill system of 3H back either! I'm fine leaving that "unique" for 3H. Some functions are best left in their Fire Emblem's and no other!). But yeah Trickster needs to be the Magic Thief who can do SOME combat, while Assassins need to be Thieves who can use Swords AND Knives (Stick Trickster to Tome, Staff and Knives and Assassin to Knives, Swords and Bows! I really didn't like Engage LIMITING of Three Weapon Type classes. But I guess that was nodding to Path of Radiance with how Knights were stuck to one weapon type for a while.....despite the fact Paladin should have expanded that like they did in Path of Radiance instead of just being able to use the S rank of that weapon type) And Thieves in Engage don't even STEAL! What's the point of calling yourself a THIEF THEN (Doesn't help that the two MAIN thieves Yunaka and Zelkov are more Retired Assassins then Thieves anyway LOL)
Trickster is such a flavor W for FE in general I'm glad it was a mainstay for a little bit
If only enchanter was a normal class, I like the silliness of that class but that PRICE DEAR GOD
I think you missed an important element of GBA thieves in that they have a meaningful boost to combat EXP gains. They have a different "class power" than most units, so their EXP calcs are boosted. Killing a Brigand gives them more than it would for other classes; and I'm positive this was intentional to support the lack of XP from chesting and (the small amount) from stealing.
Every GBA thief has flaws in some way for combat, 6 can't promote, 7 promotes like a few chapters before the end of the game with bad caps, 8 has colm who sucks and has bad caps
"this probably sounds like a meme," she says, after explaining that you can have your Thieves litterally steal a guys only weapon and have them be unable to fight.
"This may sound like a joke but you have to take it seriously" she says, narrating a 4:3 gif of leif doing the gangam style
Its also not the first timei hear an fe youtuber call say "it sounds like a joke but its an actual mechanic" about thracia
You could probably do it earlier but in chapter 22 (or any chapter with shops I assume (I only did it on 22)) most enemies without a weapon will rush to a shop and buy a new weapon however enemies don’t have gold so using one poor sod you can easily extract more wealth then in the entirety of path of radiance or at least get more killing edges then you know what to do with.
@@Birbles-birbingtonThracia is really unlike anything else. Imagine playing Binding Blade and there are sorcerers warping dancers and enemies walking into a shop and buying new weapons.
Dancing is one of the best abilities: *Leif busting it down in the background*
I’ll go to bat for FE1 thieves honestly. Sure Marth can open chests too, but Marth is also an insane combat unit, both in terms of stats and being able to draw fire, and you constantly want him moving towards either villages to visit (though I think there’s only a couple maps with both chests and villages) or the seize point of the map. Meanwhile, if enemy thieves in FE1 get to chests, the item inside is functionally gone, not dropped. That one map where you have Julian, get Rickard, and don’t have the fire emblem even teaches this; without some careful routing and probably at least one Warp, you’ll almost definitely lose some treasure. His high demand and other time pressures mean you often can’t just send Marth to clean up chests, and enemy quality in FE1 is low enough that your army doesn’t really hurt for fielding one or even both of your thieves; in most maps with chests I generally will just to speed things along.
Capturing in Fates is my favorite implementation of it, it's just fun getting a generic with a random name to train up and have bad stats but good skills and/or weapon ranks
21:59 ‘Unless Matthew has been trained to an extreme extent’ When I played the game on NSO, Matthew was my favourite and he was the first character I got to 20, so I never really had that issue
1:11:36 Actually there is one unit in TearRing Saga who can make effective use of the Mug Skill: Sierra, the Witch (her class in-game), a unit *who CAN LITERALLY WARP AROUND THE MAP AT-WILL.*
If you user this to your advantage she'll be FAR away from your other units and won't hurt their hit rates. She may start near your other units, however she'll probably have warped across the map right away with her first action and do her own thing, removing the debuff right away.
A powerful lone-wolf unit is a pretty good use of it, they'll be on their own most of the time so they won't get in the way. Sierra is the poster-child of this with her ability to Warp around the map and selectively pick off targets.
Yeah I have to agree, sometimes it's just the only reliable way to obtain very fundamental resources-- oh, in Fire Emblem, you say? ...Well, I still agree.
21:42 How did I never realise that Thief and Torch vision stack? Gonna be remembering that for future GBA FE runs.
6:53 That Wyrmslayer icon is literally just Soul Edge.
(it even still has the eyeball)
Currently memeing with disarm and flourish in my current Radiant Dawn playthrough. I love bootleg Thracia capture.
An interesting way they could make stats matter for Thieves in the rumored upcoming FE4 remake would be making the amount of gold thieves steal scale with their skill/dex, which would make their stats/level matter while also upping the usefulness of one of the generally worst stats in the series (and making you reconsider whether or not you want to sell skill stat boosters)
Me over here, who missed Gaius on my first Awakening run and barely used Anna on subsequent runs because she has almost no supports: “Huh”
Sure the Fell Contract sucks from a gameplay perspective but that is not the point, its existence allows you to head cannon tragic character trajectories for Matthew or Legault and that is way more important than any statistical significance.
41:22 Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU. I could kiss you for that. I have been saying FOREVER that Bane won't activate and prevent a kill, but I always got pushed back with "Oh, I'm pretty sure I saw it happen before," and when I ask for proof? One instance, when literally one is all it would take to prove me wrong? Nothing, from anyone. Hopefully people are willing to believe it from you if not me. Thank you so much.
Another point against promoting a Thief in Blazing is the Fell Contract sells for 25K Gold. Enough to outfit a good chunk of your army instead of downgrading a member of your side crew.
I would love to see Thieves come back to weak in direct combat, but there being a lot of goodies to yoink. The enemy gold thing from GotHW would be a lot of fun to mess around.
Knives could go back to their weaker roots (as much as I love Fates hidden weapons, they're kinda super busted), but maybe always do at least 1 damage? This way a weak Thief isn't completely screwed if they get caught, and maybe get a nice cleanup kill occasionally. This one is tricky, I want Thieves to be weak combatants, but seeing 0 x2 is a real FeelsBad.
Shade/Stillness coming back and Pass being more readily available would be wonderful.
Opening chests definitely needs to come back to being Thief dependent. Keys can exist, of course, but it feels like they are super easy to always on hand in recent games, or in Engage's case, are wholly unnecessary.
And 200% agree that Thieves need to get meaningful Exp from doing Thief work. Staff Exp got its glowup back in Awakening, where Thief Exp glowup, IS???
Also in real life!!!
*shoplifting is cool
it's all free if you're brave enough !
you forgot about my favorite thief in fe5: Tina with the thief staff lol
Miss. Movement Star! Miss. Dance! Movement star. Miss. Movement star. Yoink. Dance. miss. Movement star. Miss. My favorite 💜
Over an hour of Thief talk? Sign me up!
I am a thief enthusiast and I will say that I'm sad you didn't include the most over the top way of stealing a weapon in Path of Radiance(the S Light tome) because that's still one of the funniest shit I've ever done.
Thieves have always been one of my favorite FE classes. I always feed them way too much EXP and set them up as a (usually subpar) combat unit.
39:00 that's not quite right: if you go to Serenes Forest> Radiant Dawn> Miscellaneous> Calculations, you can find the formula for finding items. I'll swiftly report it here:
Success rate= Skill + Thief Bonus + Biorhythm bonus [%]
Thief Bonus: 60 if user is a Thief, Rogue or Whisper.
Biorhythm bonus: +20 if arrow is pointing at highest, +10 if pointing at high, -10 if pointing at low and -20 if pointing at lowest.
Ah gotcha, thanks! (I will forget this information before the next time it would be useful to me 😔)
@@DaniDoyle you're welcome! (Also, don't worry about forgetting, it's ok ;) )
Just a correction: the stilleto is a knife exclusive armor effective weapon. Volke can actually do decent damage with it.
44:10 Xane, the Manaketes, and the ballisticians can't reclass either
🤓 Xane can reclass by transforming 🤓
…did you not have Thracia footage? Not complaining, the gif is funny, but I’m just slightly confused.
I had thracia footage but i thought leif dancing was funnier
Matthew was probably my fav character in Blazing Blade. He was just so cool
Correction on Path of Radiance's Stiletto : it does in fact have a secondary effect, which is that it deals effective damage to armored ennemies
I'm glad you specified in FE and not elsewhere.
An hour of content exclusively about thieves? This is gonna be an awesome video
"[In fe5] You can sometimes steal vulneraries and elixirs in order to make some money" Silly dani you forgot that vulneraries in thracia ARE elixirs
Making promoting thieves a nerf is a funny joke that I think IS should keep
Just a lil trolling
Thanks for this detailed and entertaining video - subbed!
I love using Radiant Dawn Heather simply because it's one of the only ways to get Bolting and slamming dragons with it feels so good, especially since for story reasons I always take Soren up the tower
valid!
I love using her as a dodge tank ngl
I have been binging your videos. they are very funny and informative. one of my new favorite channels!
Great video. Learned a lot that I didn’t know before about some of the older thief iterations. Appreciated that breakdown!
I was thinking about your suggestions for future thief iterations. Shade as you mentioned or 3H Stealth are good ideas that can further reinforce utility. 3H Stealth is one of my favorite abilities in the entire series.
The combat nerfing makes conceptually, and perhaps makes their combat far more niche as the game goes on. I find that debuffing tends to be a superfluous effect when you reach a point in the game where you can consistently hit ORKO benchmarks which often happens right after early game. So I wonder if thieves won’t fall off super hard combat wise after early game but perhaps that is your intent.
20:40 He also gets you your only Myrmidon :)
Karla fans in shambles (i know shes a swordmaster, but she has myrmidon tier stats)
Came for the discussion about thieves, stayed for Sea Shanty 2
One important note about the GBA thieves is that they get more XP from combat, so yes while you need to have them train in combat its not as bad as you think.
Funny enough if you change Kellam into a thief he still has a high defense growth
I love ALL Dani Doyle videos!!!! ❤
34:08 Objection: There are plenty of valuable stealable items later in the Path of Radiance. Case in point: Chapter 26 Clash. You can steal an extra Spear from the Boss while he's using his Runesword (which he was going to drop anyway). There are also Sage Reinforcements that come out of the castle which have stealable siege tomes (and some have Elixirs). There is a Bishop on the map that you can steal a Sleep staff (or a Silence staff, I forget which). Many Paladins (among other units) on the map have two weapons in their inventory. I know for a fact that you can steal a Short Axe from a reinforcement Paladin before he even gets to move. Chapter 27 Part 1 has the best stealable item in the game--A BRAVE LANCE! Just bait the Boss into using his Spear, and take the brave lance from him at the start of the next turn. You don't even need to put that much effort into Volke to get him to steal these items. If you cap his Speed and Strength while unpromoted, his Promotion gains will carry his utility for the rest of the game. If you don't want him to hog too much bonus experience, that's okay too. Get him to roughly 80 experience in each chapter and top him off at the next base. An honorable mention goes to the fact that you can manipulate the AI into letting you steal Rexaura in the Final Chapter. Only Rhys can use it, so it's only worth it if you're using him. However, that's one extra S Rank weapon in a game where half of them only exist as Unused Data!
only 7 minutes in.
i imagine that a lot of the video will be about how Thief is a weird class cause it changed a lot
Engage made them go from pure utility class to an interesting physical 1-2 range debuffer with Daggers
... thaaaaaaaaaat's definitely worse than Wolf Knight.
oh well. at least Ninjas and Outlaws were great in Fates
This video made me more impatient for a fe4 remake (shadows of valentia style)/translated port (like they did for fe1 on the switch) than I already was. I seriously need a way to play fe4 outside of translated emulator roms.
If we're experimenting with thieves I think it would be interesting to do branching promotion and have something like trickster and rogue being branches, where trickster is your utility unit with staff access and rogue becomes a combat unit with a mug-like ability where it can steal and attack at the same time, maybe differentiate between the two further by having Tricksters able to steal any unequiped item with 100% chance while Rogue has a percentage chance to steal on that special attack influenced by weight but can even disarm enemies and steal equiped weapons (with a penalty to chance for equipped weapons)
I've played FE5, but the segment with dancing Leif went on so long I had to google to confirm if thieves actually existed in FE5 or if this was an elaborate bit cause playable thieves weren't in the game.
Fortnite Leif gaslights the fire emblem community into believing thracia has theives, more at 11
17:51 Sly 1 jumpscare
Devil sword theif in FE1 is pretty poggers actually
A good video!
I honestly like using thiefs in conbat in earlier games, actually feels like thiefs, chipping away or finishing off an enemy rather than being the main fighter.
I kind of want a future game to redux the ninja, carry over the stat debuffs but lower their attack. Give them utility in combat rather than either utility or combat.
personally, i'd probably want to combine the thief and dancer class then give acess to warp, which would result in an incredibly overpowered unit that functions purely for utility. the idea here is role compression, where your theiancerper has so many good things they want to do on any given turn that you'll be have to choose which utility to prioritize. then i'd make them a game over condition and force deploy them, similar to a lord, that way the levels can be designed with the assumption that the player will be deploying this unit.
tho, this is with the idea being that they'd be in a setting where classes are designed to excel in one or two areas but have a fatal flaw. so, this class would excel in infinite value utility at the expense of everything else.
Marie from Esperia uprising of the scarlet witch is one of my favorite thieves in a Srpg
her stats are mostly dodge based,
gold is pretty scarce so stealing items to sell is more valuable, plus if i remember correctly there was a lot of good items to steal( stat boosters and promotion items) her secret promoted class gets access to buffing spells(the game has those mages are op as heck) or if she gets standard promotion bows which are 2-3 range making her personal skill that debuffs enemies easy to use
and she can steal a bit of gold every map
I acknowledge the warping thief supremacy that is Narcus
Hes so cool (and in a future video)
43:14 "Mist Best" "Mist S+ Unit" Yeah this is a great video and all but any time I see Mist love I have to super-smash that like button immediately
31:19 incorrect, the stiletto has an effective against armor effect in path of radiance, it loses it in radiant dawn.
its just too bad that in the english version thats only double might and not triple where it might have finally given enough damage for a theif to deal more then single digit damage to armors
Thracia thieves will always be the most fun, thieves going "YOINK" to the only tome a mage is holding is the funniest thing ever
Silly mages, so lost in their books they don't even notice it's being stolen
Thracia truly did do it best, especially since capturing is kind of a counterpart to stealing and actually showcases the utility of deploying a thief. The problem is that good thieves necessitate a learn in-game economy, and player access to items and money (and dlc items) only keeps ballooning.
Something you didn't touch on that I think is integral to Thracia's thief gameplay feel is the fact that Thracia throws escape map after escape map at you for a good while. Having to deal with escape (and specifically Thracia's implementation of escape) also adds tension to the experience of playing with Lifis. Do I have enough time and hp to go for those chests? It makes getting all the chests a mark of skillful resource and unit management rather than a checklist item.
I appreciate the occassional rival theif they give us to echo what Thracia achieves, and I really like the challenge of going for the chest in Fates' opera house chapter, but we need more variety overall to make thieving feel like an accomplishment. It'll be interesting to see how an FE4 remake will fare, and I wonder what they'll choose to keep.
Lief dancing should be a game, make it Dani.
This is one of my many bad jokes.
worth noting irt Bane is it CAN give you kills where you otherwise wouldn't have them, but only if it procs on your first hit of two
Yes that is true
Fun fact: Patty can inherit the prayer sword via a glitch, break the prayer sword and you can sell it broken to a sword using father can repair but not use it (besides even wonkier glitches)
Honestly with fe5 so many things sounds like memes with Mechanic and strategies.
I want bad units but not bad classes, and it's crazy that there has been decades of fire emblem and some classes have still not had their time in the sun
Fun fact about Fire Emblem 3H stealing:
For some reason, the bonus auxiliary battle maps for gold/material from the DLC actually has 3 units maximum that you can steal concoctions from. This is a way to get money and some pretty high tier healing items for your units. This is funny since on Maddening because how worthless Vulneraries are when everyone gets smacked for 20 damage anyways, healing for 30 HP is absolutely amazing.
I don’t remember any other main instance of stealing in 3H outside of niche cases like Ironman run and you lost your Death Knight killer or something, iirc most enemies don’t have any real important or cool item to steal outside of niche cases like billions which most drop anyways.
Yunaka is one of my favorite units to use in Engage but oh my GOD trying to figure out how I want to reclass her is always a nightmare
1:13:31 Yeah, but how should the scaling work? An amount of XP equal to a %of the items value, an XP point for every X amount of gold in the items value (like every 10 gold=1XP) , or something else entirely?
I like how thieves were implemented in Engage, *except* for the weird stuff around their promotion, or rather their lack of a promotion. Being a weird hybrid class absolutely ruined what would otherwise be a very interesting combat utility class imo. Instead they end up just being replaced by wolf knights once you get the ability to use promoted classes
Great video, really fun watch. One question though, what makes thieves in Thracia 776 so good? Sorry if I missed something, I was too distracted by Leif dancing.
Gotta say I disagree with you about Yunaka. Stick her in a bush with one of the crit knives and she becomes much more able to kill reliably. She legitimately saved my army from a lot of grief on chapter 11. Granted, I only played the game on Hard so maybe the experience is wildly different on Maddening.
59:29 that killed me ngl
I would argue that theft in fire emblem engage is good but then I just now its daggers and the unit makes the theft good in engage because true damage that stacks saved my run lots of times and it was the dagger that did that and not the theff i still use them though
Hope you're having a good day c:
What game is playing during binding blade? The fused characters are really funny
it's called no redundancy, Dani made a lets play of it a while back
Great video, probably my favorite of what you’ve done. Thieves change a lot game by game so it’s super interesting to hear it summarized. And yea they are definitely at their coolest and most fleshed out in FE5.
I really like Cath as a unit. I think I may have overrated her slightly in the past for just being a thief, even on this channel (but maybe not, still something I’m thinking on). But I just love that being using her is punishing enough to be annoying and rob you of some usefulness (Astolfo’s bulk), but at the same time does not meaningfully hamper your ability to do thief things (thanks to stats not mattering for her). And she’ll always have some sauce on chapter 16 🙏🙏🙏
"No, I'm not calling it Rogue; the old translation was better."
HERESY!
Incredible opening
Do you think julian could make for a good combat unit with the manual? Julian's average growths will put him at 15 strength near the end (unless im horribly stupid)
No mention of 3h ashe.....wait who? The real big problem of 3h and keys is the I'll be generous and guess 8 chests in the whole game
I love stealing
I don't know what you're talking about, thieves are great combat units
Mmmmh actually thieves in fe6 can also deactivate the traps in chapter 21x is weird that they even bothered to program that but they can for some reason. Also you can get the first knight crest in fe7 without Matthew you can just kill the thief that takes it before it takes the silver sword.
How is stealing weapons a meme? That sounds very useful.
Likely just for con reasons
The build (or I guess con) stat determines what you can steal, the three thieves don't really get much to work with however there are still some weapons they can steal, in particular Lifis is able to steal tomes during a section of the game where there's a lot of mages so it's pretty neat and you do get a build ring later in the game if you wanna give it to your favorite thief and steal even more weapons
thief talk is cool and all but I really wanna know what kind of wild fe6 hack you are playing, I wish to use Allance
Stealing Is Cool
You spend a fair bit of time in each section saying theives shouldnt have combat utility and i disagree. Every other utility class in the series(Clerics, Dancers, Merlinius) have utility on every single map, while Theives are intentionally niche in application, if theres not a steal target or chest on the map they dont have utility and for both balance and story reasons it makes sense for them not have that utility every map, if were attacked by bandits in the mountains there really shouldnt be a chest for my theif to open. Instead they get some combat utility, less than Mercenaries or Myrmidons, but more than a Dancer. They can provide valuable chip damage and dodge tanking to support the army. I think Awakening Theives and Outlaws are the best version of the class, as they fit this role perfectly, both by staying in the class and fitting into the 3DS era's very fluid class systems. Most the utility parts of the class are attached to their skills(Locktouch, Mov +1, Pass and Lucky 7) which any character can take advantage of even after switching out, but if you stay in you get the same valuable utility of Trickster. You mentioned that they were worse than Archer and Myrmidon and thats intentional, as the units who go into Theif and Outlaw(naturally) dont have access to those classes(as Archer is Hoshidan exclusive and in Conquest your only archer is Mozu), or intentionally switch out of Myrmidon in the case of Lon'qu. They're intentionally worse than the pure combat class. I think that if Ninjas used Katanas theyd also fit into this idea perfectly(and would make Hidden Weapons worth their bustedness by being promote only).
Mind i dont think Theives should be a pure combat class and i dont think their combat utility should come at the cost of their actual Theif skills, like in 7, but i think they should have some merit in combat so youre incentivized to level them alongside the rest of your army. I dont think alone they should be able to take out more than a normal trash unit, at least not without support or weapon advantages.
I dont think a class should exists to do nothing but its one utility unless that one utility is super valuable(Dancer) or it grows into doing multiple things(Cleric).
1:00:54 new mic?
I think I just adjusted the settings? I don't remember though... This video took like 2 months to make so maybe I got a new mic during that time period and just don't remember
Stealing Is Cool (in real life)
hey whats the hack right at the end of the video?
Bells of Bylen
@@DaniDoyle ty
Can anyone tell me what's the game, or I supposed the rom hack at 3.03? with matthis and Ronaldian? It reminds me of Sacred echoes but looks a bit different
Code of the burger king
Honestly got to disagree on take for fe4 theifs there promotion and growths on the dew and patty are useful for there utility because they can safely steal more on enemy phase which especially with a magic sword also for gen 1 standards dew actually has good growths and for patty growths though theycdon't stand out for gen 2 if not below average for child units in gen 2 she still has serviceable growths.
Yeah, fe7 being bad as always
Colm in the Japanese version has 2 extra speed so he is 1/2 speed below to steal lockpick on hard mode.
The funniest thing i did in fe9 is using provoke on sniper at 1 range sages to make them use elthunder instead of bolting. Then I use Volke to steal bolting (he has enough str at base after promotion )
I love how fe7 allows thieves to promote to assassin. Promoting to rogue alwaus seems so pointless to me.
helloo, can someone tell me what was that gba hack rom at the end of the video?
Bells of Beylen
Fun fact: mugging in trs is objectively funny, and if you dont think so you hold one of less than ten wrong opinions in the world.
im only 9 minutes in watching the FE 4 segment and, having not played many of the games, why didn't they just give them adequate stats and then base gold stolen off of damage dealt? (gold stolen probably ignoring defense tho) and if you do a crit attack you steal all of it. then you have a reason to grow so you can do more dmg->more gold, especially wanting to have a high skill/luck so you can fully steal a unit's value in one attack. like making thief progression matter seems pretty simple from my ignorant perspective
If they had competent combat stats that would remove their utility rule however they would simply become combat units with upside, instead of where they are right now which is a unit you use for the utility but not for their combat. I prefer them having good utility but bad combat