Critless and removing proc skills is the way to go. I think they already hit hard enough/don’t need a Mt increase (even aside from proc skills, mages/sages/mage knights have Opportunist which already adds +4 damage). Wt increase won’t really have any significant effect. They’re already heavy enough since they aren’t doubling your units anyway and when you attack them while they’re wielding a siege tome, you’re doubling them.
I think you and adalvar are looking at stat caps too hard rather than thinking about benchmarks. You don’t need to hit caps to ORKO most enemies or be able to take 1-2 more hits (which is significant).
She does not need buffs in her current state. If anything, she needs to be nerfed. On the other hand, I think giving her access to anima and light magic wouldn’t make her much better than she already is. So I’m not strongly opposed to your idea.
Not commenting on everything you said, but I will cover most of it.
Units
Roy
He was buffed hard obviously. He could use a minor nerf, but Roy being on the strong side doesn’t bother me much because he’s the main lord. Plus if you use him for combat, you’re giving up Rally Spectrum usage.
I don’t think he really needs to have 1-2 range, when you have a billion other units that can do that for him, nor does he need a mount when you can Rescue him. Not everything needs to be buffed. That just ends in powercreep while also destroying any feeling of vanilla.
Lilina
I can agree with this analysis. Even though she was given a special promotion class with access to a lot of weapons types and given 2 Prfs, she’s kept in check by her Spd and Con.
Wolt
Ok I feel like you’re calling me out here since you said “People keep saying he’s busted” and by “people” I assume you mean me.
Relative to enemies: He’s extremely powerful against early game enemies. You can’t just say he’s not that good “aside from his weapon” when early chapters are full of armor/cavs (including bosses) which his weapon is effective against and he has a 40 use Prf compared to the usual 25. Compare his performance in vanilla vs. now. His role used to be chip (no doubling) → someone else attacks → someone else attacks → enemy dies. Now it’s chip (double attack that takes out more than enemy’s HP) → someone else attacks → enemy dies. Or if he’s using his Prf against armor/cavs, he can straight up ORKO. He used to be the designated early game boss killer (and he probably still is) prior to the 3/14 patch, where ZeN actually nerfed him so his bow no longer gives +3 Spd and no longer has 2-3 Range (but he didn’t stat adjust him for his decrease in level from 3 → 1), and where ZeN removed Luna from Legance in C8.
In early midgame, he suffers like most playable characters due to entering “not doubling” range, but Ranger (which Klein and Igrene do not have access to and Dorothy, while she can promote to Ranger, is more difficult to train due to getting none of the stat and Prf favoritism that Wolt did despite Wolt and Dorothy having very similar stats in vanilla) gives him a horse, swords, and helps him back into doubling range.
Later in the game, Snipers do get Bowfaire, but fyi Rangers get Quickdraw and Trample for up to 4 + 5 = 9 damage stack.
Relative to similar playable characters: I’ve already posted this before, so the tldr; is that Wolt is far better than Dorothy, Klein, and Igrene. Klein might have a usable gimmick if Desperation double attacks both occurred before enemy attack does, but that’s not the case (I tested this).
Bors
It’s fine that his skills are for different phases. I can agree that Full Metal Body isn’t very useful even if it’s theme-fitting. And you didn’t mention it but I would like to see Great Shield removed.
Overall, in the 3/14 patch, I would say he’s more-or-less fine. I had asked for a nerf and ZeN delivered. Now I think he’s slightly under par. He’s still good in early game but struggles a little too hard in midgame. I think he could get +1 Spd back and a +5% at least in Def Growth.
Lance/Alen/Noah/Trec
Sorry but this is one of your worst takes by far. Trec’s personal (Relief) is not as good as Chivalry, Pragmatism, Gentilhomme and generally a terrible skill. He’s also way too slow, and he doesn’t have Alance’s availability and support level lead. He’s actually one of the worst playable units. You need a 19/0 Cav Trec, 14/1 Great Knight Trec, or a 12/1 Paladin Trec on average to just not get doubled by most enemies in C9, two chapters after he joins. And good luck ever getting him to double enemies.
Relying on Luna, a proc skill, to kill things, especially if you’re not doubling enemies, is questionable.
Marcus/Zealot
Marcus doesn’t even fulfill a Jeigan role anymore since he still ORKOs things starting from C1. That needs to be fixed.
Lugh
Another take I have to strongly disagree with. He’s actually one of the most OP playable characters. His Spd is insane for his damage and he starts to double everything pretty quickly. He acquires Opportunist (+4 dmg if enemy can’t counter) by just leveling up once after he joins. That’s +8 damage stack because he doubles. Later in the game he gets horse from Mage Knight and Tome Range +1, not to mention 20 Mag worth of Spirit Dusts from sending home characters.
Saul/Elen
How do you tell them apart? Elen actually has a Mag stat and gets a horse by promoting to Valkyrie. Saul is just kinda bad in this hack. Even his Con/Aid was nerfed to a laughable 5 so you can’t even help Take and Drop units that were Rescued since most playable characters have 6+ Con.
War Monk doesn’t give Saul anything useful. It’s just a meme promotion. He doesn’t have the Con for Axes or the natural Str to use physical weapons effectively and Bolt Axe is exclusively Lilina’s Prf for now.
I do want to say Saul’s personal skill/aura (Drive Speed) is very nice though. At least he has that going for him.
Dorothy
I don’t have a problem with her personal being an aura. It’s ok for everything to not look like the player optimized the skillset.
I mostly have a problem with Wolt getting a ton of favoritism over her. If the rationale was “ok we’re remaking the game, let’s make trash units better” than why was Wolt buffed mega hard but Dorothy was essentially overlooked? It’s the inconsistency/lack of even-handedness that probably bothers me the most.
Rutger
I’ll refrain from commenting too much on Rutger as I haven’t used him extensively in my 3 playthroughs and I haven’t really took a hard look at his stats compared to vanilla or compared to how enemies grow.
All I know is that in early game his bosskilling niche was taken over by Wolt.
At 1 range, his offense seems fine. He has enough Str and good Spd as well as Life and Death and a strong offensive personal skill. He does start with a Wind Sword now so has some 1-2 range access, but his low base Mag and Mag Growth of 10 means he can’t make much use of magic swords in general. This is still true after promotion where neither class (SM or Assassin) grant him a new weapon type. With lack of access to effective 1-2 range, I think “busted to infinity” is hyperbolic.
Defensively, Life and Death hurts Rutger/Fir a lot if you’re ironmanning. But on normal playthroughs, I guess it’s fine to gamble on just not getting hit/Spd/Avo stacking.
Fir
Compared to enemies: Slower start combat wise than she in vanilla (her level was increased so she’s closer to promotion) due to enemies being so fast around her join time.
Compared to Rutger: I think you’re correct on this. At some point they’ll both ORKO things pretty reliably regardless of the difference in personal skill, but that point comes pretty late.
Clarine
Powerstaff was already a huge buff. Not everybody needs to be great at combat, especially not mounted/flying units with 1-2 range.
Cecillia
She’s a top tier playable character and obviously mega buffed from vanilla but that’s very much warranted in this case. Zephiel owns her, but she’s still the bleeping Mage General. The player expects her to be good.
Percival
He’s not as amazing as in vanilla but that’s fine. At 18 base Spd, he doesn’t double many enemies but neither does he get doubled. I haven’t looked into this specifically yet, but probably feeding him 1 Speedwing could get enable him to meet many more doubling benchmarks. And he has Galeforce, which is obviously a great skill and none of the other cavs have access to it.
Astolfo
I get what you’re saying about the “clash” between Resourceful and Lethality. But as with your comment on Bors, I don’t necessarily think everything needs to be min-maxed and every character does not need to be extremely gimmicky/some sort of one-trick pony.
If anything, there’s an argument to be made that Resourceful should be kept rather than Lethality (if you had to keep one), as proc-based skills are already highly unreliable let alone one that has a proc rate of Skill% divided by 2 when Assassins cap out at 30 Skl. So at maximum, if we use the current Assassin skill cap, there’s a 72.25% chance that if Astolfo doubles, on both attacks Lethality will not proc. Just highly unreliable gaming. Lethality is just around for flavor/fun factor and precedent from Awakening/Fates. Player isn’t really supposed to plan around it proccing and you’ll just end up accidentally killing things sometimes.
Keeping both skills isn’t a problem from a pure gameplay perspective as it gives him reliability in dealing with certain types of enemies. The problem to me is just whether Resourceful fits his character/backstory, in which case I don’t know if it does or whether it would fit better on a different character.
Barth
He’s better than he was in vanilla and Barthe isn’t actually any worse than Bors in early-mid game (in fact I think Barthe is slightly better). Knights/Generals still don’t stand out in this patch despite 4 → 5/5 → 6 Mov, additional weapons access, and skillsys aside from Bors earlygame, and that’s mainly because of Spd, but they’re definitely usable. Again, I want to avoid powercreep. Something’s always going to be low tier and if this is the new low tier, then it’s acceptable.
One buff I’d like to see him receive though is a “nerf” to his Con to make him rescuable by unpromoted Shanna.
Gwendolyn
Same comment as before. Not everything needs to be min-maxed. Even 1 stat point could differentiate the usage of different units. You don’t need min-maxed skillsets to force a certain usage.
To be clear, I’m not saying that skills distribution does not need work in general or that Gwendolyn’s skills should not be changed at all.
Ogier
Don’t agree with your take. He’s in a good spot actually. Dieck has availability on him (not including early promotion anymore) and early axes, but Ogier does actually have better stats and a better personal. If you check the stats, like say compare them both at Lvl 14, you’ll see that Ogier has on par or better everything statwise than Dieck except for Skl, and that’s not even accounting for his personal.
Dieck
See Ogier.
Melady
She’s fine.
Zeiss
I don’t see these as “issues”. Units not all being good at everything/having some weaknesses makes them more interesting to use as units and gives them more character.
His “weakness” of not being speedy (I think he joins with ~14 Spd at base in HM) is countered by being a freaking GBA wyvern rider. He’s a flier, hits hard as hell, physically tanky as hell (extremely high HP and Def), has very high Skl, and got a great alternative promotion option. Not to mention he’s not so slow that he gets doubled by many enemies around his join time, and the enemies that do double him don’t hurt him much. Offensively, he can OHKO Ilian PKs/FKs despite not being able to double and I believe there’s some slower/frailer enemies he can ORKO/OHKO that aren’t PKs/FKs (e.g. archers/shamans) thanks to his sky high strength and Death Blow (+6 damage when initiating attack).
I agree on maybe giving him a new personal simply to distinguish him from Melady. But his overall power level is fine and he doesn’t need further buffs.
Douglas
He’s fine, although I wouldn’t oppose reducing his level slightly simply because players tend to not like deploying units that don’t grow much. Same for Niime, Yoder, Karel.
Elffin
I think it’s consensus he needs buffs, someway or another.
As with Roy, I don’t think he needs a mount. There’s certainly other ways to make him decent.
Larum
Dancer makes her automatic S tier.
Sophia
Already went over this before, but she’s actually too good now rather than the opposite (ZeN did nerf her slightly in 3/14 patch, but I think it wasn’t quite enough).
Stat caps are kind of a moot point when she gets to the point of ORKOing most enemies anyway, and can already player phase and enemy phase extremely well due to her high mixed defenses.
Niime
Noticed the same thing about her Str. Weird.
Otherwise, she’s more-or-less fine.
Raigh
This is not aimed at you, but just for future reference, this is base Raigh with HM bonuses (obviously buffed hard compared to vanilla):
I disagree that Malefic Aura is a bad skill. +2 damage for yourself if not for others as well is good. This also applies to magic swords, if he’s using them. And he might be the best user of them.
Overall, he’s fine. Not having high Spd keeps him in check.
Fae
She’s fine. I’m not opposed to the Dragon Fang change since it would only affect her. I assume we’re not giving enemies a proc skill.
Igrene/Klein
I don’t know how you’re simultaneously praising Klein and saying Igrene “has no use” when they have similar performance.
Klein has better mixed defenses and Skl, while Igrene has a Str/Spd lead which is more important.
Klein can use Longbows with only 1 AS loss (Igrene loses 4 AS), so he has that going for him. Klein can also use Steel Bows with no AS loss while Igrene loses 3 AS respectively. But it’s not like Killer and Silver Bows are difficult to obtain in this hack.
Meanwhile, Igrene has a Prf with 2-3 range and extra crit, so she’s strictly better than Klein as long as her Prf is available, and without her Prf, she’s slightly better offensively than Klein aside from Longbow usage. If she’s given a Body Ring, then she’s probably at least on par as a Longbow user (haven’t looked into the benchmarks yet) and if Igrene’s using a Longbow, then Klein’s Def/Res doesn’t matter much. I don’t think it even matters that much regardless of Longbow usage because they both probably still get 2HKO’d anyway and generally you’re not using Snipers to enemy phase because you have better units for that.
Igrene is also more RNG-proof since she has higher bases but with fewer levels to grow. Klein joins with something like ~16 Str, ~15 Spd as a Lvl 1 Sniper while Igrene has 19 Str, 18 Spd as a Lvl 7 Sniper.
If you want to compare personal skills, yeah Acrobat isn’t as useful as one would think. But, Desperation is terrible.
Klein does have an availability lead joining in C11 vs. C15 so that point does go in his favor.
By your phrasing, it seems like you just looked at your probably RNG blessed stat-capped Klein and thought “that’s a really good unit” instead of looking at stat averages and at benchmarks or considering many other things besides stats. Same with your analysis of Igrene.
Gonzales/Geese/Garret
I don’t mind if Armsthrift is replaced per se but I don’t agree with your rationale for replacing it. It’s not black-and-white: The # of uses Armsthrift boosts by is more granular than “weapon use never decreases” vs. “weapon use always decreases”.
I kind of like that Gonzelez, Geese, and Garrett have a Capture gimmick. Whether they’re actually good at it and whether they should be good at it is a tangent I don’t want to get into at the moment.
Statwise, Gonzalez, Geese, and Garrett feel fine for the most part. Currently, I believe Geese is better than the other two. For now, the only change I would definitely make regarding any of these three chracters is increase Garrett’s base Spd so he doesn’t get doubled in his join chapter.
Thea
Her combat is too good, regardless of her comparison with Shanna.
Fliers aren’t really in competition with each other. You have enough slots to field them all and they also happen to have supports with each other.
Bartre/Axe Bros
Already wrote about this.
Sol is a proc skill and he’s not fast enough to double aside from his Prf. 17% chance life leech IF you land the hit on the enemy doesn’t make a good skill. I’m not saying to change it btw just pointing out it’s not really that great of a skill in this context, and on Bartre. It was good in Awakening during the main story, but that’s a different context.
As I mentioned before, trained Lot/Wade are actually comparable if not better than Bartre statwise. Lot is significantly faster than Bartre, while having less Str, but the point is Lot ORKOs stuff that Bartre doesn’t. Both Lot/Wade have better mixed defenses than Bartre. Not to mention due to the massive availability lead (C2 vs. C11) they can have A support with each other by the time Bartre even joins.
Lot/Wade Hero promotions I’ll refrain from commenting on since I haven’t tried it at all yet.
The only thing notable about Bartre is his Prf and his stache. Like honestly, actually use Lot/Wade before rating them and just calling them trash.
Guinnevere
She’s top tier. But it’s fine.
tldr; I agree with some things. With some other things, I’m not sure if we’re playing the same game.
Either way, what we have in common is we’re all here to make the hack better, so whether I agree with you completely or not, thanks for the effort you put into the writeup and I hope other people will do the same. We don’t all play the same way or value the same things and it’s interesting to read other POVs.
