I can see how one could feel this way but personally I see armors being slow hulking walls that can destroy opponents as really cool and using weary fighter allows them to keep this vibe while also allowing armours to be more easily viable, by doubling down on this aspect of their theming.
I don’t think what you’ve suggested is bad I’m just making a case for why I think weary fighter generals work.
Speed is a swingy stat that makes armour knights get doubled when they’re supposed to take less damage than everyone else and have more HP than everyone else. Perhaps knights “meant” to have low speed should have skills keeping them from being doubled. Even if this also makes them unable to double others.
How often does the Armour Knight’s inability to KO foes negatively influence their EXP gains in games without Attack Stance? How quickly do they fall off? How often are they statistically inferior in the early game, and in the late game, to stronger tougher juggernaut units, perhaps even the Jagen given to you at the game’s start?
Sometimes an Armour Knight can be so tough, enemies won’t want to attack him because he won’t take any damage from the attack. They should really have some sort of “Taunt” ability.
The General’s control of the weapon triangle rarely means anything significant for the outcome of battles. Perhaps that weapon triangle should mean more than +1 damage dealt and -1 damage taken. Perhaps 2x damage dealt and 0.5x damage taken. It would keep the weapon triangle relevant the whole game.
Movement? Does it really make sense that a unit strong enough to wear the Armour Knight’s armour would be significantly slowed by it, in a setting where all sorts of units, even small children, can have super strength absurd enough to kill evil gods? Armour Knights should have 5 move like the other footsoldiers. Maybe Generals should have 5 move instead of 6, but if they can’t keep up with the units they’re supposed to be defending, they can’t do their job without being babysat by a faster rescuer.
Finally, “Zone of control” should really be a thing. Or perhaps “Attacks of Opportunity”. If you move a 4 move unit to an enemy with 5 move, just going around your armour knight invalidates him. And that’s easy unless the map design gives you chokepoints. Needing multiple tanky units to wall chokepoints and protect squishy units reduces the usefulness of individual tough units.
The typical Fire Emblem game’s design inherently weakens Armour Knights and reduces the value they could have.
I agree Provoke on armours is generally another good skill if we desire to doubble down on armour’s current character
The issue with this is that it over centralizes the Weapon Triangle, engage’s break system focused the WT without making it too centralizing I think ideas that produce similar effects would be better.
Honestly not really [especially in GBA], the bigger issue for most armours is that they have sucky stats.
Oswin is actually a very good unit [unless you’re going supa fast] having great stats, and good weapon type, while not the best unit [he still gets doubbled late game lol] he will have competent throughout the whole game if you decide to use him.
I think this depends on your design, in a game with reliable rescue dropping or warping a powerful armour will be seen as a great strategy, look at gaiden Luka [Lukas] he is very good often being warped to do things because he is very strong, despite having 4 MOV from base class to fully promoted.
Effie also a very good armour as she exist in a game that has these types of options and has good stats.
I’m a believer in that giving Armor Knights an extra point of move is the way to go.
In all my time playing Fire Emblem, having one less movement compared to the rest of my army was always extremely detrimental. But if I had to find a different solution, I’d go further into a knights strengths, with high strength, defense, and skill for example. While also giving low stats to speed, resistance, and luck.
I would also recommend against a low level knight in general. Knights excel when they have the bulk and stats to cover for their glaring weaknesses, so having them come at a higher then average level, with average or above average stats compared to the rest of the army, they’ll succeed with tanking enemy units, and dishing back a lot of damage. Mid-game to late-game should probably be promoted, or at least above level 10 for an early promotion.
Also:
I’ve played FE7 over dozens of times and I’ve only had one bad Hector, where I got seriously unlucky with Skill level ups. But other then that, Hector is a very solid unit in my experience.
Abilities are the only way to save these godforsaken chunks of scrap. Fates gave them the highest sum of growths and base stats of all, that didn’t matter. But Wary Fighter makes them at least usable. So more abilities it is…
Some ideas:
Blocade: The unit has an action to “occupy” another adjacent tile.
Speartip: The unit has an action to move again, but only that. Therefore, no attacking, using items, etc.
Inspired by Canons in The Banner of the Maid.
Guard: Aura. Allies in a 2-tile radius are guarded by this unit. Everytime they’re about to receive an attack, the armor takes it for them. Can’t avoid, ofc.
Inspired by Bone Guards in Fae Tactics.
Reinforcement: Tiles occupied by allies and adjacent to them (cross shape) have reduced movement cost and no terrain movement cost. Think of FE4 road tiles and or Engage’s Griffon ability.
Now stuff to fix their combat, because not doubling sucks.
Deflect: The attack from the enemy that was blocked increase the unit’s own damage. By half or one quarter.
And I guess If the enemy attacks multiple times, they all should count. Smash weapons ftw.
…
And so on.
We could even mix and match to have plenty of “types” of armored knights, hell, look at Unicorn Overlord, they have the anti arrow armor and the regular chunky boi!
The Mov. +1 going like:
→ So better chokepoint holding (which is left for people that can either sweep heavily or units that won’t kill), which is entirely dependant of map design. Occupying an extra tile (or making it untraversable) otherwise is a more niche use that hardly justifies it being the “fix” for armors.
→ Armors when they run
So you either turn armors into the whackiest Hit and Run units ever, or by your words of armors being terribly slow and weak, make them march into their death faster. Alright. Can’t even heal after combat.
→ Removing the ability for other units to counter and retaliate on enemy phase
→ Adding extreme stress on a specific armor
→ Conflicting overlapping auras
→ Removing avoid altogether so they cant even benefit from WTA bonuses (Hammers beware)
Provoke exists and it’s a skill, certainly.
Hear me out. Is it the armor’s fault that you gave them 2 base speed and 5% spd growth?
Their class caps can entail one thing, but further on that point you could move towards an Armor Knight that can naturally double (or at least not make them a laughing stock against any mage).
Fire Emblem on a standard (if all them ‘anti-turtling’ and turn limits are to say anything) wants you to move swiftly - and being bound to a low movement unit can make that fairly difficult - which then brings the thought that what if how the game is designed is what essentially alters what unit types are getting more out of the game?
If I need to keep rushing and move my units about (rescue chains, cavalier/fliers combos) and armors, whose high con often exists only to justify a 5 Con Pegasus - hardly are being helped by it.
Not necessarily only that. There’s a quiet interesting effect when moving a Unit into enemy territory, they cut the enemy’s movement short, creating this sort of “umbrella” behind squishier units can use to creep forward.
What comes to my mind is Izana’s chapter in Fates, where the blocky layout of the map, makes it easy for a single unit to cut a lot of enemy movement.
By blocking twice as much ground, a similar effect can happen even in open terrain.
That would still heavily fall into relying on map design - as well as the though of “well, go around the other way”.
And has about the same effectiveness as plopping a Light Rune as part of your personal skill.
That wasn’t the idea and I didn’t say that, though that’s how it works in Fae Tactics.
So no, the unit that got attacked should be the one retaliating.
Is that even possible with FE’s engine - has wizardry gone that far to make one unit take damage and the other deal it
keeping in mind the limitations of GBA (and whether or not such skills should be made on Lex Talionis or other adjacent systems instead) should be a relevant point
You can’t turn a GBA game into Unicorn Lord
Taking hits is what they’re supposed to exist.
There’s where positioning matters, fitting the effects you want on the units you want should be rewarded.
They’re armors, they are incapable of avoiding and shouldn’t rely on that.
…
At least it makes thematic sense. Otherwise, why even making them look like that?
If you are making a character who’s supposed to be slow and hit hard, why fixing them by making them fast? Banking on what makes them unique seems a better solution than being the discount version of another class.
Yet you can do that by tying it into the character’s identity, not the class’ itself. You can make a slow but heavy hitting mage, brigand, cavalier, etc.
the class itself will already be doubled by endgame due to their low speed cap, so them being “fast” early isn’t that much trouble. You want to justify making a unit hardly combat-capable (despite stating that that’s their problem) by making them hardly combat capable. And Kaga forbid mages hit your Generals.
You can make units be the unique factor by themselves, not make every armor knight essentially the same by giving them all piss low speed growths.
I think ComputerHead (Dies Emblem) showcases the real fix armors need to be good.
They just all need 1-3 range swords and enough armor to weigh em down to a single tile of movement.
The way for armors to be good is to enable me, Lesk, out of D Tier.
ComputerHead, if you read this, I know that you’re hiding Monsters away from me.
I’ll crack you open and take them all away.
At least yer not benched like me lmao
Guys please don’t turn this into a Dies Emblem sub-thread lmao
Easy answer, give them +9 move.
Jokes aside, I like the archetype, a slow but powerful and durable unit that can take damage.
It’s useful in the early game (ex. Oswin) but as the maps progess, they become wider and wider.
Here’s my tips to (try) to fix armors knights (you don’t have to use all of them):
I’m fine when armor knights have 0 speed or res, as long as they survive and deliver big chip damage, I can use them. The thing that makes armors tricky is that if they have too much defense
compared to the enemies attack power, they make the game (or at least the early game) too easy, and if they have too less, other units will surpass them in the tank role. You can cirmuvent their high defense issue with armor slayers and mages, but this might prove too much if the dev exgiaggerate with the presence of anti armor units, especially since many armors cannot escape said units and they have high con that often they can’t be rescue dropped. Also using armor knights doesn’t require much tought, and often incentivize the player to turtle.
As others said, no need to reinvent the wheel. Give them better stats. Make them excel in their niche. High Def Str Skl. If you’re going to make then miserably slow give them wary fighter.
My solution for fixing the archer is they A. Should not miss. And B. Always kill something or chunk something on player phase.
A similar but inverse mentality with an armor.
They should A. Nearly negate the attacks of lower str physical classes. And B. Chunk enemies on enemy phase.
It’s ok of they are not good in every situation, they are a specilaist class. Cavs are a generalist class.
Another thing that helps them is if they are in a game with no reclassing. Yes the cavs are good but you only get a limited amount in a linear traditional fire emblem.
One other thing I give them is reposition as a class skill. (Taking inspiration from Emblem Ike) Its a good “get behind me option” and even outside of combat situations giving the player more movement utility is always good. There’s a lot of times a unit is 2 squares short of reaching a target or door or some other square and having the armor be able to repo gives you more options.
Yes you could give any class repo but by that logic you could give any class brave lion no? Let repo be armors thing, as canto is to mounts.
Or idk just bench them if you’re an elitest.
I’ve thought a lot about this topic, and I think it really comes down to two things that mainline FE rarely does, despite them being wholly in-flavor for armor knights.
The first is really simple, armor knights need to be able to tank. What this also means, is that standard enemies should be dangerous enough to make armor knights viable. If Effie and Arthur both get three shot, it doesn’t matter which one I use, so I’ll pick Arthur for better move and no armor weakness. If Arthur gets two shot and Effie gets four shot, very different story.
The second thing is that armor knights should be able to support the party. This is something that Unicorn Overlord, for example, does very well. Your armors can jump in front of hits meant for your weaker characters, which gives them really nice utility, especially in the earlygame. Similarly, Server 72 gives all armored units skills that force enemies to prioritize them. This, along with point 1, gives them a powerful niche on your team, they divert attention from your main combat units. A few of your armors also have buff skills, so even when they aren’t tanking, they get to provide some benefit from being near your other units.
So yeah, easiest way to fix armors is by giving them things that they are actually good at
I don’t believe it’s possible to balance any singular aspect of game design in a vacuum. Are armour knights taking low damage from anyone? Then what kills them? Mages oneshotting them? Armourslayer and Hammer and Heavy Lance users oneshotting them?
If that’s not intended, you need to diagnose the specific problem before you know how to treat it. Are they meant to require two Player Phase or Enemy Phase attacks to destroy? Three? Are they being doubled by basically everything or ignored by everything? What is their role and how can they perform that role?
Do they need Skills to violate the rules of the game that inherently hurt them? Wary Fighter so their low speed doesn’t matter, Unbreakable so their single weapon type or how regularly they will be hit during someone else’s turn doesn’t matter, maybe even a new Skill that limits how much HP% they can lose from a single attack?