FE Armor knights are usually balanced around normal mode, where they take single digit damage, 2hko most enemy types at the cost of having low move. These are good traits, if not for other unit types being broken and can one round in most FE games.
While on normal mode they take reasonable numbers like 5 or 1x2, on hard or lunatic with enemies gaining say a moderate 6 damage and some speed, they take 11x2 or 7x2 respectively, they can not safely go up against anything anymore. Enemies also gain a lot of HP to avoid being 2hkoed by armors.
Solution: Give armors appropriate defense on harder difficulties and stop inflating enemy bulk or give them higher damage options.
Give them Wary Fighter or another skill that, by default, halves incoming damage. Getting doubled means that you will take twice as much the damage you would otherwise receive and this slightly hinders or directly nullifies an Armor Knightâs main perk.
I like when Armor Knights can use another weapon at base. Iâd give them Swords, simply because you often get an Armor Knight in the first few chapters of the game and these chapters are usually filled to the brim with Fighters. Facing Weapon Triangle disadvantage doesnât only make Armor Knights less reliable when it comes to hitting, but sometimes means that they will take more damage, again nullifying their selling point. Upon hitting their promotion to General, Iâd give them access to Axes, letting them have full control of the Weapon Triangle.
Buff their base stats and donât give the player a mid-to-late game unpromoted or trainee Armor Knight. Armor Knights should feel like Oswin: impregnable walls that can staunchly stop enemies from advancing. Iâd probably give an Armor Knight very early to the player (like Oswin, Draug or Bors) and then, if a new Armor Knight were to surface, theyâd either have a very high level (around 10, near promotion) or even be a pre-promoted General, joining the likes of Jerrolt as an early-mid game pre-promoted unit.
One thing I would not do however is to buff their movement: yes, I know that by merely giving them 1 more point of movement you would basically solve almost all the problems that plague the class, but I feel that it would make Armor Knights less unique. Iâd rather have Armor Knights be strong members of my army due to their other merits than by merely having them move as fast as other units.
Although I have yet to try it myself, I have considered keeping their movement at 4, but reducing their terrain movement cost for passable terrain to 1.
Slow.
Steady.
Inevitable.
(Terminator music starts playing)
Not a whole âfixâ on its own, but just an idea to play with.
Easy solution? 5 movement, works for mant hacks, but personally I donât find it that interesting and imo at that point just make soldier a slower bulkier class or something and abolish knights entirely. Plus I find knights with 5 mov, unless your game is a doubling fest, can get too powerful as they are so hard to kill.
I actually think most of the issues come from the rest of the game not knights themselves. Though Iâm a strong advocate for multiple weapon types at base, I like sword/lance esp cuz sword helps them deal with axes which are the most damaging weapon type.
As for game specific issues. Their problems come from enemy density and quality. If enemies are weak their bulk is meaningless, this Iâm pretty sure is well established and known. But density is just as important, if your maps lack density their movement becomes an issue, but if theres enough enemies a) map design is generally improved cuz you wont have empty turns of movement and b) knights should always be able to find a way to contribute even with lesser movement. Skills like shove, reposition, pivot etc either on them or other units help too. But if either quality or density isnât present low mov knights can become a bit of a liability.
I also feel a big part of it is that 4 mov is inherently kind of unpleasant due to the difficulty of maneuvering. Personally 4 mov with pivot I find good but many donât enjoy it. For this reason I believe infantry with 6 mov and knights with 5 is much more enjoyable. This way you preserve that âheavy specialistâ feel while having a unit that is more tolerable to manuever. Ofc even with this they probably wont be the most metagaming friendly class but they wont be a burden in less stringent styles of play either. Either way I donât think theres any wrong way to do knight balance its up to the designers preference as theres no ârightâ solution. You can have 5 mov bulkier infantry or 4 mov unkillable tanks or something else entirely. It depends on you and your game and how you envision the class.
tldr; make their bulk valuable via strong enemies, make maps dense so theyre always contributing, and consider a 6 movement standard. Or if you want a quick fix just give them standard infantry movement.
alright fellas yâall are missinâ some straight fire
There are four mainline weapon weakness types in fire emblem: armor, horsey, winged horsey, and scaley winged horsey, with an occasional fifth for like monsters n stuff. Now, what do horsey, winged horsey, and scaley winged horsey have in common? At least two games where they can (or are forced to) dismount. This leaves armors as the only mainline weakness type that cannot dismount.
Therefore, the solution is to merge armors and soldiers into armors that can disarmor. By disarmoring you temporarily lose some DEF/CON, maybe RES and your MOV goes up by 1. Then you can either move around or be picked up by someone who is not necessarily a horsey because you are no longer EXTRA THICC. Then when itâs combat time the armor can just re-armor up.
If you wanna be extra meme, consider this: what really defines classes with armor weakness? If we look at armors, generals, and great knights, itâs: less mov, big DEF, THICC, and usually ability to use more weapon types than their normal counterparts. Get rid of armors and great knights and just have a passive holdable item that does all those things that you can trade around. Long have we awaited ARMOR PEG KNIGHTS. You want armor bows? Just slap that armor on a regular sniper. This will also save you time looking for or developing an armor animation you like.
The fact is, armor isnât real. Itâs in your mind. Like horses. Does the horse factor into a unitâs CON when being rescued? No, because the horse isnât real. The armor isnât real either. Disrobe the armor around your heart and embrace modality.
Five movement
You wouldnât even need to add anything else, but if you wanted to you could also raise the res of your armor units, or remove armorslayer weapons
Armor Knight usually wears heavy armor and has a lot of strength, so there were works with the setting that they are not affected by the weather of rain or snow.
I think it interesting to give a particular class the character of being strong against the weather and certain terrain.
I was trained to believe that the strength of Armor Knights (and Generals) are their Defense. But once l got to mid-late game in FE7, l noticed both my and the enemyâs promoted units had greater defense and resistance than any armor unit of mine who wasnât Oswin. In my one-full-game FE experience, it felt like armor units lost their niche once other classes could beat them in damage, defense, and resistance just by being high level. I wouldâve felt more willing to use armor units other than Oswin if they had the defense to withstand enemy damage.
Perhaps they should be specialized to actually be tanks? Which probably is to say, be more like Oswin (but not exactly like him, I noticed he was solving mostly all of my problems).
I do like the ideas of playing with their terrain costs and other stuff mentioned in this thread, though. This was just my observation from when l had played FE7.
I see this could be an issue with the armor knights. Once other units start to double consistently, their damage output starts to become higher than the one hard hit armor knights gives you. At this point, why tank enemyâs attacks when you could just one round with your paladin and heal with another?
Luckily Oswin doesnât run into this issue because he can still reliably double enemies that arenât promoted swordies. (He have doubled some mercenaries in my playthrough)
Iâm not sure what you mean here? The only other armor knight in the game is Wallace and he is laughably bad (matter of fact this topic is perfect for him) so who else are you comparing it too?
If you were talking specifically about Wallace then ignore this whole section lol
Edit: Fe 7 in particular is such an enemy phased game and javelin and handaxes dominate the game. Armor knights arenât going to get the job done nearly as well as Marcus or Harken.
Furthermore, the other (and I think much more important difference) between armors and other weakness types is that the other weakness types actually have advantages to compensate. Having more move or flying are independently desirable. Having less move is not.
What armors really need is some advantage to being an armored unit as compared to having the same stats in a different class. Maybe some sort of innate damage reduction (a percent increase to their defense stat, a flat â-X damageâ, pretty much any intrinsic advantage to the class), perhaps with armor-slaying weapons ignoring this rather than having traditional effectiveness.
I donât like giving them 5 move though. Why even have armor knights at that point? Instead of working around their weaknesses, you just ignore them. I personally find it distasteful.
