My bad, but i disagree that movement is a stat that's worthless on enemy phase. Movement enables you to move into proper formations (choke points, boxing in squishy allies, cornering archers, canto-ing after hitting, etc etc) that make your enemy phase way, way easier. Advantageous positioning, most exemplified with forts, flier-only terrain, and even things as simple as forests, can at times be far more useful than stats alone. If you had a team full of one movement units, it's most likely your healers, dancers, archers, and mages would be overwhelmed by the incoming hordes on enemy phase. Movement on player phase helps you enemy phase far more comfortably.
Now here's the thing, I do see where you're coming from. But let's say you're having "downtime" on moving to the fringes of enemy phase combat. Wether you move there in 4 turns or in 3 is irrelevant, unless you're hard pressed for time, in which you could be warped in. The flier only terrain thing is definitely a point I won't contest, but that has more to do with terrain then movement, albeit they're usually tied. Phantoms could move to any terrain in FE8 (i believe) and there were still useful even though their movement wasn't as good. The statement that your team would be overwhelmed I think is not quite true, because in this video, I have a horde of enemies surrounding 3 units, yet my other units are comfortably safe just out of range. One of those was a swordmaster in the tiles as well and, again, completely irrelevant what move they had, only that they needed to wind up on those tiles to defend everything. The point I was trying to make about enemy phase is the following : Once you are IN position, movement is irrelevant because the enemy moves to you. Now, granted, getting INTO position is a playerphase portion, but again, can be subverted through the use of other tools, but I 100% agree. I use a lot of heavy movement units too, so don't think I'm not agreeing with you that movement is great ahahhaha, this is more of a thought provoking discussion on the subject and I really appreciate your feedback :)!
Speed is useful. But HP is very overlooked. It is not necessary to have in excessive quantities, but it is the determinant by which a player wins or loses. In that regard it is the most important stat to have because it is inherently tied to the win and loss conditions. From stats past HP, the importance of each stat is determined based on the growths of each unit. For example, a unit that excels in defense and resistance may not have a need for speed. The situations vary for each unit, but the stat that is always and has always been necessary is HP. Also, it is not unheard of for a person to complain about constitution. Leveling up constitution can be a bad thing for the games in which it is featured, depending on the role of the unit that levels up in it, as it may interfere with strategies the player had planned out. Movement is relevant based on the playstyle of the player or the game. Genealogy incentivizes movement for side objectives like towns and items. The issue with how people view stats is that they apply them to other games or units like they are meant to be played the same way.
100%, It is more a playstyle thing than anything else. It's funny you brought up con, because I didn't mention it in the video but should have, it can severely hamper effective AS. Something like isadora comes to mind where she has ok speed but her con is so low that her spd is virtually horrendous with any weapon either than an iron sword.
My personal thoughts on the dichotomy is that movement allows for more opportunities to contribute to the army, while stats indicate how well they can contribute. Thats why I think the answer is situational. For example, a mounted unit can visit a village one turn, and then contribute a round of combat the next turn, while a foot locked unit might have to choose one of the two. Or in a defense map, mounted units have a much easier time going to certain areas that might need more help. I guess the biggest example is FE4, with not only time-sensitive conditions with the bandits burning down villages, but also getting the jump on enemy squads to minimize the onslaught that could happen during enemy phase. But on the flip side, what good would getting that jump be if you can't one shot the enemy, making it effectively the same as enemy phasing (assuming you dont have a healer to heal you after)? And what if the enemy phase onslaught isn't as bad to where you need to get the jump, or on the opposite side, so bad to where you need to have your optimized stats general to last through it? I think it's impossible to argue what's better in a vacuum, and it needs to be argued with the context of the game in mind. From what I've experienced, I've found there to be too many opportunities and enough equivalence between the other stats to where movement is more important than the other stats, but thats based off my ow anecdotes
This is a great and valid balanced take. Ultimately, I believe all stats carry some measure of equal weight, and this can be seen by the necessaries of each individual map. I believe you are correct in your interpretation as well!
I do feel speed is a tad overrated by some players. Like you said, every stat matters, and I've seen some low-speed units that frequently outperform their faster counterparts. But speed is definitely the best stat overall. No other stat contributes directly to both offensive pressure and survivability (excluding rare cases like pavise and aegis being triggered by dexterity), plus it remains extremely relevant during player and enemy phase alike.
Interesting take. Speed is 100% the best stat, I don't think there's much contesting that. All the benefits from doubling and not being doubled are huge, and its the stat that most improves your avoid (at least in the games I'm familiar with) The counterpoint I would make is that imo movement is the most bang for your buck, it's got the highest value per 1 point. If a unit goes from 14 speed to 16 speed, it'll impact some scenarios but it won't be massive, where as going from 6 move to 8 move can be very impactful. At least for me if I could gain +1 to any stat, I'd pick movement 9 times out of 10
I personally think defense is extremely underrated, and is the second best stat in the game. Movement and defense (bulk) are inherently tied together. A unit with high movement and high defense can go wherever it wants, without fear. A high move, low defense character is significantly less valuable, due to most of its options being limited. A high defense low move character, while often bad or outclassed, shine when difficulty is very high. Fe11 h5 Wolf/Sedgar, fe12 lunatic knight Kris, and FE9 Maniac mode Brom/Gatrie. These characters are anywhere from powerful crutches to outright win conditions. As long as you can do 1 damage to enemies, with high defense you can kill them eventually. Defense on top!
In pretty much every game genre, movement (and by extension range/reach) is the best stat when you are statistically competent, but quickly become worthless when you are subpar statistically. Like in mobas or overwatch even, mobility hero gets complained a lot when they are about as good as the rest of the cast, but when you nerf their damage having mobility is never enough to save them.
If i could say something, i say i believe in roles. For example, high movement are important because certain units can do more jobs on the battlefield, they can rescue and even transport some foot units from point A to point B. Sometimes high movement units are also good for combat, others have a niche and some others are just for support. Now, if we're talking about combat, movement really doens't matter. To survive you'll need speed, HP and defense, sometimes resistance. Talking about speed, if a unit have low speed but have high HP and high defense, then they are good units for combat because if their defenses are high enough they just don't take damage, so being attacked twice its just trivial for them because 2X0 it still zero. The same goes for luck... Have some luck is important and have high luck is awesome, but have low luck its not a problem when your unit can actually take a critical hit. Again - 3X0 it still zero, so that unit doesn't need luck at all. What i'm trying to say is to not judge a valor of a character just because of his movement. Take a deep look into that character and try to envision how he/she can perform well and build that unit for fulfill that role with excellence.
Depends on the game. in GBA SPD > ATK cause enemies are not that bulky and with high end weapons usually doubling means killing. In Engage I'd say STR/MAG is the better stat cause its harder to fix and enemies get pretty hard to kill without crits or skill triggers even with doubling. Also i think IS also believes ATK to be the most powerfull stat in Heroes and Engage, since you usually get less stat bonuses from blessings, or in Engage the SP Cost being much higher.
Wail I agree with your opinion on move but I disagree with speed because it's heavily game dependent as some games the speed creep is so high on some classes( 3h swordmasters and falcon knights) that it's pointless to try to match it to prevent doubles and your better off just having 1 unit with extreme defense instead as for best stat attack /magic as you can't kill things without it
Okay, finally had time to sit down and listen in properly to really give this a go. Speed is an excellent stat in its own right as well, but having been casually involved with Fire Emblem since 2003, I feel like the best underrated stat, if I had to REALLY point to one and say it is _fundamental,_ especially when the series has long established the Rock/Paper/Scissors mentality around it for so long, is... Weapon Rank. There's ways to emulate movement, defenses, skills, even speed thresholds and so on as the games are made over time, but for the most part one _cannot_ emulate having access to certain weaponry/magic and what they can provide on a variety of situations unless you HAVE the rank or earn them soon, even if you have to use certain tools to unlock them faster. You can have higher Spd and Str and Def than your opponent, but if the weaponry your opponent has access to allows them to double _you_ no matter what (Brave, and not even Wary Fighter can stop its doubling), exploit a weakness in your class (Cavalry/Armor/Sword slayers), or even just let them lessen your aim while increasing theirs (Reavers, but the actual Swordslayer axe is a more extreme example), you find that your own stats don't quite hold you up as well as you thought. Obviously, a lot of what I just described is mitigated by having good insight and knack for strategy to avoid that having it used against you (AKA "Press the R button"), which is FE 101, but that's also the point for why Weapon Rank is so important when a lot of what you can do is limited by what you have to work with in the first place. Gaining more stats is for all intents and purposes not hard, especially when boosters are often offered for a reason, but if you have a tool that increases its power 3-fold or lets you hit twice in a row, and you LACK the ability to use it for some reason, you really feel that desire. Now, as gaining ranks isn't all that hard, and once their straightforward thresholds are attained they can be forgettable, I understand why it can be such an easy stat to overlook. But then what is one OTHER thing normally associated with the acclaimed early Paladins of the series? Their HIGH weapon ranks, meaning they have access to just about whatever you wanna put on them to kick ass with whether you use them little or a lot for the entire game... Not that Seth would struggle even if he started on Es, but Sacred Stones is a delightful Sandbox for the fun of it most days. But then what of the most _Jagen_ Jagen of all time, Marcus from FE6? He has high ranks all around, and they really show you how much it _really_ matters when you can wield Silver weaponry against tough wyvern foes in, say, Chapter 7, even on a unit whose potential is unlikely to let them see combat all the way to the end. It's also part of the reason Lords/Protagonists carry Prf weapons to help them emulate some of those more universal functions in case you just need an Ace in the Hole now and then from your most common participants till better tools can be used. ... But if we're only counting pure number stats, I just think Luck is really neat. It affects many things, and I sure as heck like it when the enemy Hit, Evasion, and Crit chances are as low as possible when in combat, and it (usually) affects all three of those. :V
Incredibly well written response and if I gotta be frank, I may have overlooked weapon rank. It is indeed fantastic. Barring arm scrolls it’s difficult to emulate and just like how certain promotion items should be given to specific characters so they can have access to a different weapon type, it is indeed super strong. Weapons can impact and allow bypassing the double with brave or even quadding, and is super powerful in terms of allow counter to siege weapons with warps/rescues and boltings.
Since this video touches on hypotheticals: If you reduced the movement stat of every character down to 1, every chapter in every game becomes *significantly* harder no matter which characters you use. And some debatably become outright impossible (battle before dawn comes to mind) Reduce any other individual stat to 1 and only some characters become useless depending on the stat nerfed and only some chapters will be significantly harder (though reducing res to 1 basically barely matters in most situations) As a direct comparison, if you reduce movement values to 1 it is almost impossible to take care of the stronger wyvern riders or paladins safely without them nuking your healers or dancers because you can't put people in front to defend those characters anywhere near as easily If you reduce every characters speed to 1, every combat encounter is now a lot worse, but unlike movement you still have a bunch of other stats to directly help compensate for your speed. It would undeniably make the game way harder if speed was at 1, but i'd argue it would also be way more doable for basically every player The obvious caveat here is that the base movement values of the cast and the different ways of increasing it make it so you can basically always reach important objectives. But I still feel like the point is clear with this example - I'd agree that movement isn't always the best stat in every situation. But in most chapters in every game in almost every type of playthrough, the movement stat will matter more often than any other stat. The reason it doesn't feel this way is because the designers weren't cruel and actually gave us usable movement values and didn't lock them at 2 or 3 max Another point that wasn't really touched on in this video is that in encounters where you need multiple units to take out an enemy, having higher movement helps more units fight that one enemy which is also another way of greatly increasing damage while protecting your weaker characters from dying due to the threat being gone sooner rather than on enemy phase - Simply put even after watching this video, I am not really convinced speed (or any other stat) offers as much utility as movement does. Combat is a huge part of the game, but as stated before movement also helps more characters get into or escape from more combat I still think movement is the best stat and they just start you off with enough movement to actually use the characters effectively
Totally a fair take! I definitely do agree with your statement about the playerphase utility of movement and am upset I didn't address that. TO be frank I don't think I can counter point that unless I just said go full enemyphase, but in practice I do a lot of playerphase strats myself and value it very highly, so it's hard to argue against something you agree with ahahah! However, speaking of hypotheticals, they're all valid and such, but the truth is you will never have reduced movement. There are only a few things that can ACTUALLY reduce movement, and then again it can't for everything. You can however get bad rolls and never gain speed, or never gain any stats (albeit very unlikely) which is why move can never be devalued "below" what it already is (i guess this is in favor of movement). What I think the real point I'm trying to hammer is and you did as well : In some scenarios, movement doesn't cut it, you need stats. You need to reach a certain threshold of speed in order to avoid a double or to be able to kill a boss, or you need a specific value of HP in order to avoid being 1 shot. We never think of, you need this specific move for this, because it can be supplanted (somebody else can carry me, warp me, repo me, move me). Combat cannot be supplanted for certain enemies, except for another unit who has BETTER combat (or at minimum enough to succeed). The reason I still think speed is more useful is because, enemy phase is just way way way too prevalent in most fire emblems. Almost all of the GBA games can be exclusively enemy phased and if Marcus had 5 move or 7, it would only make the game slower, but not impossible. Now if Marcus had significantly less spd to the point he got doubled by everything it might've made the game more difficult. But yes, speaking of extremes, 1 move and 99 everything will make it very slow, but I think doable. Now 99 move and 1 of everything.. might not be possible. Ultimately, I believe it's the balance of stats that leads to success and not just 1 stat. I do believe the games are balanced "around" spd and they are usually the benchmark trying to be achieved by LTC and most runs I see and that's basically why I made this video. Thank you for your comment and response, loving the discourse!
If you have ever played the game Pokemon Conquest, you'd know how awful low movement truly is. In that game, every unit has a base movement between 2 and 4. To tie the gameplay in with the Pokemon franchise, every unit can also evolve (essentially like promoting), but unlike in Fire Emblem, many Pokemon lose movements upon evolving. In many cases, this makes them so much worse to the point that it is often bad to evolve your Pokemon. The difference between 2 and 4 movement, and even between 2 and 3 movement, is staggering. A 2 move unit in Pokemon Conquest might never do anything at all in a map because it just doesn't get to where it needs to be, even if it has a move that can OHKO every enemy on the map.
Pretty good points overall, and also some pretty good points brought up already in other comments. I think another thing that you overlooked is how stat spreads in Fire Emblem look in practice, since we aren't dealing with hypothetical stat monoliths in the actual game. And in practice, due to Fire Emblem's tendency to not have great class balancing, characters and classes with higher movement are generally not much more deficient at combat, if at all, than their lesser movement counterparts. Combine this with the fact that actually movement is probably one of the hardest stats to augment across the series (e.g. warp staff is usually limited and/or not spammable, also you cite a lot of examples with Engage regarding movement options, but you can do almost anything in Engage to be fair), then it's no surprise many people find movement to be the most valuable stat. If Fire Emblem actually punished mounted units with tangibly less stats as a cost for their vastly superior movement (and vice versa for Generals), then I'm sure people would be singing a different tune.
This is 100% true. It is very common in fire emblem for the cavs to have or high movement units to have enough stats to be able to decently perform combat, and because of that, anything else is overkill and unnecessary. Ergo, more movement is better, because they have the necessary stats to win. However, like the Marcus example, I still think that’s the case because they reach the necessary thresholds of speed for combat. If they didn’t, I think they’d be relegated more to rescue/side objective visiting roles as opposed to actual combat viable units. People keep saying the Sigurd ring doesn’t count, but the truth is it’s a tool. It’s like super boots that you put on one character. It is a movement augmenting tool and not actual move, so much so that people usually tend to pair it with units that have lower move (or a dancer) to “fix” the stat. Fliers are also oppressive with it to due to terrain ignoring. This is all really just a provoking thought question video to be honest ahhaha and I think all stats are important to a degree! Thank you for commenting and for the discussion :)!
To use your example from the beginning of the video: a unit with 0 stats and max move can do useful things on player phase. A unit with max stats and 0 mov (who can't be rescued, which would require...movement from another unit anyway) is literal dead weight and cannot leave the deployment area.
I remain unconvinced. You don't really disprove movement being the best, since most of what you talk about is combat. You still can't fight something if you cannot physically reach it and movement helps you do that. As well, Warp and Rescue are often by far the most limited staff (durability wise), Hammerne excluded, because of how good being able to position properly is. That said, there comes a point in some games where being able to fight well is more crucial than being able to position well. But this usually applies solely to the highest difficulties and even then most mounted units have a sufficient ability to fight anyways. Damage over the kill threshold doesn't matter.
I dont' know if there are that many games in which mounted units have enough combat to beat them. Maybe you mean the GBA games and PoR, 3 houses (and 3Houses it's mostly fliers). And the famous genealogy of the holy horses. I do agree that if the mounted units do reach the specific thresholds for combat (mainly speed which is what the game is balanced around) then it is more than sufficient. I always advocate for movement being a great stat. I just think that in games were progress is done by combat, speed will on average be utilized more due to combat being the contributing factor. The rest of the games, mounts are not the best combat units by far. Echoes mounts are not that good combat wise, fates it's the units themselves not the class and the mounted classes barring maligknight and kinshi knight are pretty meh. awakening, it's the magic users, FE10 it's the dedicated combat unit + laguz royals, Engage it's magic units again. Usually it's magic units and stave utilities. In FE5 staves are basically the bread and butter. Doesn't even matter if a unit has a mount or not for the most part. It's obviously good, but staves are way way better. Also, can we please stop this misinformation that the rescue/warp staves aren't readily accessible in Fire Emblem? Because they totally are. And for at least HALF the game in most of them. In FE 1 - you get 3, one as early as chapter 3. In FE2, Silque and tatiana learn it, so you can grind it out as soon as you get them if you'd like, In FE4, you get 1 on chapter 1 that's reusable and can be fixed constantly in Fe 5 - you get one in chapter 7 and you can capture a few more if you'd like by chapter 18 the latest. There are more after that as well. In fe 6 you get warp by chapter 14 In FE 7 you get it by chapter 29 (yikes, this one is rough). in FE 8 - Chapter 15 In the earlier games it's even more readily accesible being trained on specific units. Like.. let's stop pretending it's not easily there when it de facto is easily there.
@@NarrowSpark96 Totally fair and I want to make it clear I do agree: IF a unit reaches combat threshold over the necessary amount of stats, then yes, mounts are obviously better. Nobody's gonna say not to movement lol. But usually, when people LTC or Ironman, they do it around values of spd so they can reach thresholds for doubling to 1 round bosses. On higher difficulties with more stat inflation this becomes a lot more obvious as well, hence why I advocate for spd being more useful over all. Obviously, it's all stats combined that yield units being good, not just 1 or 2 things. But for the most part it's what can they bring to the table!
The problem being that most units with high mov also have speed and armor knights have no move and no speed. Also isn't "speed best stat" an opinion shared by most fire emblem players ? If you have high move and no other stats, you can still do things. If you have only speed, the only thing you can do is hoping to dodge while not doing any damage. But characters in fire emblem have multiple points of stats distributed in every stats (with exceptions). Movement can be used in enemy phase. Imagine a scenario in which some units are being attacked in two different position. A Paladin would have a much easier time helping both positions. The movement can get you to an enemy formation to another and you enemy phase them in 2 turns. I guess you could use a warp staff in every enemy phase. But then it breaks and movement becomes good once again. While combat is important, having move + mid combat can be better than having really good combat in some situations, for example you can get to a fort before reinforcements can get out of it or get rid of a scary killer bow sniper with no risk of being critted to death. I think trying to determine a "best stat" is pointless because it will depend on the game or situation and stuff. And then someone will just be like actually weapon level is the best stat, and it can be depending on the context. In gaiden, you could say that the best stat for spellcasters is level. Anyway Marty fe5 is goated and has 0 base speed so you are objectively wrong speed is actually the worst stat HP is the only stat that matters and no character has 0 base HP so every character is usable.
I think its odd to invoke, warp, reposition, rescue etc (more strangely Sigurd?) As an argument against movement, when these are all ways that units can be displaced using an action. You say theres a difference betwen these and the literal move stat itself but in practice it feel like this is just splitting hairs. If a unit has max move like the hypothetical you gave, then the warp,repo etc actions can be omitted in favor of other productive actions. Rather than one to warp and one to attack you could just have 2 to attack and have better rng/reliability of hits. Regarding the claim of softlocks for stats. There are several zero percent growth or negative percent growth runs that suggest these stats are not mandatory and the game has ways of circumventing them. Ive yet to see a zero move clear of an fe game.
The 0% growths always aim for specific speed stat thresholds and not move thresholds, so that argument is really more in favor of speed than move. As regarding the other tools to augment move, they are indeed just that. It’s not the move stat, but things that artificially confer move. Like I said, move isn’t bad. It’s obviously fantastic. But having a warp stave is infinite times better than having a cav. One because the warp staves allows me to choose who to confer the move to and second because it allows flexibility on actions with choices for healing if so desired. It’s why dancers are so good. They don’t just confer another action. They confer another action to YOUR BEST UNIT or TO THE UNIT YOU NEED THE MOST then and there. Also I think you’re kinda distorting my max move statement. I said if they had max move but 1 in all other stats. They are not many productive actions you’ll get out of this. Yes, you can ferry someone, you can visit side objectives, but you’ll never do combat. Which is fine, many parts of the game are not combat heavy or necessary, but ultimately my point is the game will not progress forward if you rely only on that unit. You need the combat carry and that unit cannot perform that.
I think the max stat and all other stats being one argument is kind of a weak one because it applies to every other stat. If you have 99 of any non-attack based stat, but 1 attack, you aren't really going to be damaging anything, and thus, you can't complete the maps you're in. If you have 99 strength/magic, you may one-shot everything in the game ( if you even manage to hit it), but you just die instantly on enemy phase. If you don't take any damage ever, you still can't complete a map if you can't kill enemies. You need a combination of different stats to accomplish anything in this game. There are definitely stats that are more valuable than others, but that particular argument is kind of a weak one.
@@chadam917 but that’s exactly what I said In the video. You need a combination of all stats for a unit to be viable, not just 1 or 2 can carry the game.
@@FireEmbrosMy bad. I thought it was a an argument in favor of movement specifically not being the best stat. I was doing something else while I was watching the video
Regarding speed being the best stat in the game, it depends entirely on what you mean by "the game". Good luck finding 5 good units in three houses maddening that avoid doubles in the early game let alone double enemies. You are much better off focusing on mag/str. In games with high stat inflation, the all or nothing nature of the speed stat makes it way too volatile to be consistently good let alone the best stat.
for people who play the gba games, movement is still king, since unless its fe6 hard, all combat should result in a kill, and movement thus gets you more kills. in fe7 especially, the units that are bad are generally bad at strength, skill, and/or defense, AND MOVEMENT. No mounted unit in any gba game is worse than mid, even Syrene and Juno, since they still fly with 8 move and don't need a promo item. The real best stat is weapon levels. A silver sword vs an iron sword is +8 damage. with a solid 50% strength growth, that is 16 level ups worth. Also consider how being bow/sword locked in most games is such a detriment
Weapon rank is something I think is severely overlooked by the community. It’s also a determining factor for which unit I might bench in a run, particularly for staves as well! But I do agree, In the GBA games the mounted units are more than capable of doing most of the combat, it’s really all about the thresholds being met!
Im not here to defend movement supremecy, but your presuppositions on the movement stat seem off. The example of 1 in every stat, but max move is a red herring. Thats not how fire emblem characters have stats distributed and doesnt exist. Better attempt would be give lowest unit stats max move and check benchmarks. In this case, even the worst unit is going to be more effective with more movement. Next would be the ability to augment movement. Sounds like a good argument until you realize you can augment every stat to varying degrees throught the game. Movement is a special case where you need class changes or rare limited stat boosting items. It cant be gained through level up, tonics, or meals like other stats. Next would be enemy phase and combat utility. Simply put movement allows for greater control of positioning, faster movement towards objects, and the ability to run away from risky engagements. Just saying your arguments against movement are kind of weak. Speed is top teir though and can contend with movement as the supreme stat
i disagree. movement metters a lot for sustainability, even when fighting exclusively on the enemy turn. imagine for a second that one of your units wants to fight a group of enemy cavaliers. they can survive two hits for instance. on turn one movement doesn't metter. you can always put your unit exactly on the edge of the enemy range where only one or two of them can attack. on turn two however your low move unit is fucked, even if your low move unit uses their full movement, they're stuck and will be attacked by the whole group and face a chance of death (of course speed can help here, but it's risky). while a unit with at least as much movement as the enemy can fall back to the edge and only face one or two rounds of combat every turn. being on the edge of enemy range also means a healer can safely heal them. and if your units move exceeds the enemies (or they have flier movement with mountain nearby) they can even fall back entirely to a safe space
Yes, but can’t you also just rescue the low movement unit out? The same logic applies as to, if I bait at the edge but want to retreat, it’s actually BETTER to bait with the non horse you get more movement through canto with rescue when you decide to pull out. The only case this wouldn’t apply would be fliers, but as you aptly pointed out it’s because of being able to canto onto impassable terrain, not because of their move. Obviously more move and canto is better, but it’s a product of canto being really strong. Which is why in engage even though canter is little spaces it’s still worth it to take on most characters.
"Nobody would ever say getting +1 of any stat is bad." Actually getting more Con can have negative effects in the GBA games. It's harder for other units to rescue you, and if you're a mounted unit your Aid stat gets lowered. But this is a nitpick. I think you're overrating Speed and underrating Strength. You argued early on that being able to kill the enemy is the most important thing in Fire Emblem. What good is 30 speed if you can't damage the enemy? Or a more realistic scenario, the typical early pegasus knight with Strength so low that she does 3x2 damage. She's not killing anything unless you intentionally set up the kill for her. In essence, you can get softlocked in Fire Emblem if you can't deal enough damage to bosses, because then you can't finish the chapter. (Granted, rarely a boss is so bulky that no one in your army can overcome their defenses and HP regeneration, but if we're to talk about hypotheticals...) Similarly, a unit doesn't care about being doubled by every enemy if they all do 0 or 1 damage. You can have a unit that doesn't get doubled but takes 7 damage by all enemies, and that can add up to a dead unit with enough enemy density. Meanwhile a bulky slow unit can survive it just fine. You're underselling Defense in my opinion. Of course, I'm not saying Speed is bad. It's fantastic. But I think you're being reductionist, as you said at the beginning, about it. Nevertheless, this was a very interesting video! I love essays about gameplay mechanics in Fire Emblem. I will check out your other videos since Mangs recommended you.
I did bring up at one point that 2x0 is still 0 and not a fun time ahahhha, which is why Lapis isn’t an appealing character to me. However I will argue it’s usually easier to fix damage output than speed (mostly because magic also exists and is a more reliable source of damage on average). The defense argument is true in some FE, but I don’t think it’s more common on all of them. In the DS games there’s no way towards some of the endpoints that you’re taking 0 damage. As a matter of fact, for most of the games, the further into endgame you go, the more likely enemies will have more inflated stats that can kill you easily. And when they don’t, they have some shenanigans to solve that problem (hexing rod lunge trap poison strike ninjas say hello). But I do agree I may have undersold defense a bit. I guess in my experience it’s usually always magical threats that are More dangerous, but that’s probably because defense stats being higher contribute to less damage taken. Thank you for your feedback and for watching :)
Definitely a hot take I can respect...But not I agree with. On half the points you made, none of them really tackle why movement is as strong as it is and in the points you do mention it are either disingenuous in their own right (bringing up Sigurd and Warp are...Choices) or ignore why movement is king. Nobody disputes that all the other stats matter in combat, because they absolutely do, but if you don't have the means to reach a fight where your victory condition is used, you might as well have no victory condition. It's like saying Dancers are bad because they have no combat to them, that's completely ignoring the point of why they're so valued in the first place.
But you can reach every fight without cavs or anything of the sort. It’s been done by people before. You can do infantry only runs and it’ll be ok. Sigurd and warp are tools to help extend range. They are not permanent movement tied to characters, but are tools utilized for an end. I think a lot of people are blowing past the point that is: combat is necessary to beat the game. Not movement. As long as you can win fights, you can beat the game. You can always reach the objective with 5 move. If you can’t win fights without reach necessary speed thresholds or being able to perform combat at the “minimum” necessary to succeed, you’ll get softlocked.
@@FireEmbros People are "blowing through it" because combat is a given and everyone knows. It's so easily workable a unit like freaking Clarine with her 20% magic growth can become good at it eventually, think nothing of better versions of her like Priscilla and Elise. Movement isn't the same, it's stationary except for the token one pair of boots that comes around in the game. You're trying to apply modern FE, with easily accessible Warping and move shenanigans(which yeah, disingenuous to bring that up nowadays like it's always been there), to a time where that kinda stuff wasn't a thing. If maybe your take was "movement isn't king anymore and here's why" I'd agree, but it isn't. Just isn't an apt take, but I'll respect you having it nevertheless.
Warping has been in every fire emblem game since it's inception. It's not disingenuous. It's literally been a mechanic since the beginning of the series. In shadow dragon you get it by chapter 3. And it's heavily used throughout the game as well.@@mikhailthegreatestdragon3627 But I can see where you're coming from even if we disagree. I think you are doubling down exactly on the point that I'm making, that combat is taken for granted, particularly by using clarine who also has enough spd to double the majority of the cast even with pitiful magic. Especially since magic is the lower of the defensive stats on average for every game. But we can agree to disagree!
@@FireEmbros Notice I said "easily accessible", not just accessible cause that's really important. You're comparing a staff that at best has 5 uses per game(and that is usually only found lategame) to a spell that can be consistently relied upon as early as midgame. That's what's disingenuous(Mind you, I hadn't known about Shadow Dragon so I'll concede there but the point remains as that's probably the only old school Warp one can find early). It's less taking combat for granted and more giving it needless attention when everyone is aware of how important it is. Like yeah, it's important, you should have an actual strength stat if you want to put someone down, but here's the problem, that's mendable(hence why Clarine is a thing, even her pitiful magic lets her be a competent combatant). Movement is not. It's not an "agree to disagree", the whole notion you're setting is full of holes.
OK, i'm just gonna dispel your notion that warp is not easily accessible to most players in the early FE, because it is: In FE 1 - you get 3, one as early as chapter 3. In FE2, Silque and tatiana learn it, so you can grind it out as soon as you get them if you'd like, In FE4, you get 1 on chapter 1 that's reusable and can be fixed constantly in Fe 5 - you get one in chapter 7 and you can capture a few more if you'd like by chapter 18 the latest. There are more after that as well. In fe 6 you get warp by chapter 14 In FE 7 you get it by chapter 29 (yikes, this one is rough). in FE 8 - Chapter 15 So.. just pointing out to say it's not accessible in the older games.. is just flat out wrong. They are, on average, accessible for at least half the game. The harder half mind you. I will agree that it does have limited uses, but ultimately, you use it when it really matters and to give mobility for certain objectives, that you otherwise you couldn't complete with regular move (even from cavs) so, it's not really helping movements argument here. @@mikhailthegreatestdragon3627 Also combat is not "mendable". You either have a unit that can beat a certain one, or you have to bring in another one to defeat it. Movement is always static. You never lose it. Only gain. Having +5 move isn't gonna help me kill Hardin, I need the 28spd threshold. If a unit of mine doesn't have it, I have to get creative with how I want to handle him. I'll concede that it really is more about reaching thresholds than it is about the limit of the stat itself, but on average, i'd the usage of spd is more compared to move, given that if you're more likely to see more combat on enemy phase than player phase values.
I will eventually give this a proper watch and thoughts in the comments, but as an Armor/bulk enjoyer you got my support on the premise alone. Too many Speed Demons out there.
The only rebuttal to the idea of stat softlocks I can think of is really that IS just isn't sadistic, they give you ways out. Giffca can always beat Ashnard 1v1. Julia can always beat Julius 1v1. But why don't we apply that logic to movement? IS aren't sadistic, and they want you to win. But what if they set everyone's movement to 0? If that were the case, the game would either be borderline impossible or downright impossible. Just like stat softlocks, this is really just hypothetical, but if we looked at the actual games themselves, you can be screwed by low mov, and in fact you do very often, but being screwed by stats is very rare. Most "challenge difficulties" try their hardest to make you get stat screwed, but even even under 0% growths, its pretty much always possible.
I think you’re ignoring the fact that move can never be “lost” and that’s why 0%runs are possible. You could in theory never gain any stats and, If you never did, you’d probably never win any combat and defeat the game. There can be stat soft locks in specific games, but illl agree they are more rare across the series. But I do think it is a point in favor of move that if move is 0 you can’t complete certain games, this is 100% true. I just think people don’t appreciate that speed is actually contributing to the damage and viability of some of the cavs they use and think it’s because of only movement, and it’s not necessarily true
@@FireEmbros Speed, str, def, etc is definitely a huge factor in why a lot of cavs are so good, but also there's plenty of great units with high spd/str but low def, high str/def but low spd, etc. Take away 1 stat from high movement units and they are often fine. The shakiest is str but a lot of games let your play around this with with effective weapons, skills, or forges, even stuff like Battalions or Rings. Low mov is harder to play around than any of these, even str. For every Hunter's Volley, Wing Spear, or Beastfoe to remedy str, mov only has Warp. Boots if you're willing to use such a valuable resource. And admittedly there are units who I do believe would be okay even with halved mov, units like Caeda, Safy, Lysithea, etc but they have ridiculously powerful tools to the point where (Aside from Lysithea's magic for warp range) they would still be great units even if they had 0 in every stat.
@@xuanathan yeah I did bring up in the video that 1 move on average will go a long way more over +1 of any other stat due to how useful boots can be and etc. Yeah the utility characters are really fun too like Lara, safy, reyson and etc! They could have very little move and they’d still be super useful ahahh
It's worth noting that in Fates (Conquest in particular), there is a strong alternative to doubling in Attack Stance and it's the easiest way to get through the toughest enemies in the game, Master Ninjas and Generals, which are resistant or invulnerable to doubling outright. Spd is a good stat still, but not a stat that's universally applicable across every map compared to Str (or Mag if you're magical) and even Skl/Lck imo.
@@marcoasturias8520 Getting doubled is not an issue at all. Aside from the obvious 0 x 2 = 0, it's already ideal to counterattack and kill Ninjas. You kill them with your counterattack and they won't get to follow-up attack. This applies to every fast enemy, especially since all of them are frail and easy to kill. Good offense is good defense.
@@VeXJLunits won’t attack you if they do 0 damage in fates. It’s one of those weird AI things like in engage, they’ll just outright ignore you and won’t break formation, which is super annoying in certain strats for conquest ahahhah
@@FireEmbros There are exceptions of course. All Ninjas ignore this rule if you can't counterattack, and Ch.11 and Ch.25 Ninjas also flat out ignore it entirely. And there are uses for intentionally making them ignore you (so you can player phase the Duelist's Blow Endgame MNinjas, or block off a choke point in Ch.17). The point still stands, they're likely doing
@@VeXJLit’s very cool to see how many strats can develop. I usually just shuriken breaker Nina it and double them to kill them outright. The other chapter with the lunge 3 range ones I save an entrap to pull one of the chain out or I just go the right side instead. Again, love seeing different strats and the defense thing is a pretty good way to go about it too honestly!
while it's not possible to overrate tge importance of move, i believe skill is the most important stat. every attack you do does either no damage, your full damage, or three times the damage. When we exclude luck (low impact) and weapon choice (can be changed at any time) this mostly depends on the units skill. compared to STR where one point is exactly the difference of 1 to 6 (when you double and crit both times, so it also depends on spd AND SKL), a single point of skill can be the difference between 0 dmg and 99 dmg. 2% is a big difference but players don't see the random numbers being rolled so they dismiss it too quickly. but if you don't hit you can't kill the enemy.
I'd say: S: Speed A: Mag, Def, Str B: Mov, Res (by technicality, realistically, low C) C: Dex, Con D: Hp, Luck While Speed halves the amount of damage received, Defense is still necessary to survive (duh). And think about it, the defensive prowess of defense (and speed) increases with enemy density and in enemy phase, that defensive prowess is used offensively, for more units faced equals more damage dealt. So yeah, Defense is great, Speed is better and Melady with 17 Mov is a meme.
@@lspuria8440 Because +2 def is better than +7 HP when you're attacked by 4 or more enemies on enemy phase. (Assuming no magic enemies, which are few and far between.)
Depends on the game, on Radiant Dawn the General / high Def characters were absolutely required in defensive missions. If FE balance returned to the Radiant Dawn days people would stop valuing movement so much.
Honestly, I started playing FE with the old GBA games. So I play more defensively, I don't care to play toward the new "meta" where high move units have been given uncharacteristic amounts of Def and Res.
My bad, but i disagree that movement is a stat that's worthless on enemy phase. Movement enables you to move into proper formations (choke points, boxing in squishy allies, cornering archers, canto-ing after hitting, etc etc) that make your enemy phase way, way easier. Advantageous positioning, most exemplified with forts, flier-only terrain, and even things as simple as forests, can at times be far more useful than stats alone. If you had a team full of one movement units, it's most likely your healers, dancers, archers, and mages would be overwhelmed by the incoming hordes on enemy phase. Movement on player phase helps you enemy phase far more comfortably.
Now here's the thing, I do see where you're coming from. But let's say you're having "downtime" on moving to the fringes of enemy phase combat. Wether you move there in 4 turns or in 3 is irrelevant, unless you're hard pressed for time, in which you could be warped in. The flier only terrain thing is definitely a point I won't contest, but that has more to do with terrain then movement, albeit they're usually tied. Phantoms could move to any terrain in FE8 (i believe) and there were still useful even though their movement wasn't as good.
The statement that your team would be overwhelmed I think is not quite true, because in this video, I have a horde of enemies surrounding 3 units, yet my other units are comfortably safe just out of range. One of those was a swordmaster in the tiles as well and, again, completely irrelevant what move they had, only that they needed to wind up on those tiles to defend everything.
The point I was trying to make about enemy phase is the following : Once you are IN position, movement is irrelevant because the enemy moves to you. Now, granted, getting INTO position is a playerphase portion, but again, can be subverted through the use of other tools, but I 100% agree. I use a lot of heavy movement units too, so don't think I'm not agreeing with you that movement is great ahahhaha, this is more of a thought provoking discussion on the subject and I really appreciate your feedback :)!
Oh this is spicy. I disagree with you generally, but you do make several good points, keep doing what you're doing.
Speed is useful. But HP is very overlooked. It is not necessary to have in excessive quantities, but it is the determinant by which a player wins or loses. In that regard it is the most important stat to have because it is inherently tied to the win and loss conditions. From stats past HP, the importance of each stat is determined based on the growths of each unit. For example, a unit that excels in defense and resistance may not have a need for speed. The situations vary for each unit, but the stat that is always and has always been necessary is HP.
Also, it is not unheard of for a person to complain about constitution. Leveling up constitution can be a bad thing for the games in which it is featured, depending on the role of the unit that levels up in it, as it may interfere with strategies the player had planned out.
Movement is relevant based on the playstyle of the player or the game. Genealogy incentivizes movement for side objectives like towns and items. The issue with how people view stats is that they apply them to other games or units like they are meant to be played the same way.
100%, It is more a playstyle thing than anything else. It's funny you brought up con, because I didn't mention it in the video but should have, it can severely hamper effective AS. Something like isadora comes to mind where she has ok speed but her con is so low that her spd is virtually horrendous with any weapon either than an iron sword.
All stats are important
Based take.
Thanks for the shoutout and also for watching this video :)!
My personal thoughts on the dichotomy is that movement allows for more opportunities to contribute to the army, while stats indicate how well they can contribute. Thats why I think the answer is situational.
For example, a mounted unit can visit a village one turn, and then contribute a round of combat the next turn, while a foot locked unit might have to choose one of the two. Or in a defense map, mounted units have a much easier time going to certain areas that might need more help. I guess the biggest example is FE4, with not only time-sensitive conditions with the bandits burning down villages, but also getting the jump on enemy squads to minimize the onslaught that could happen during enemy phase.
But on the flip side, what good would getting that jump be if you can't one shot the enemy, making it effectively the same as enemy phasing (assuming you dont have a healer to heal you after)? And what if the enemy phase onslaught isn't as bad to where you need to get the jump, or on the opposite side, so bad to where you need to have your optimized stats general to last through it?
I think it's impossible to argue what's better in a vacuum, and it needs to be argued with the context of the game in mind. From what I've experienced, I've found there to be too many opportunities and enough equivalence between the other stats to where movement is more important than the other stats, but thats based off my ow anecdotes
This is a great and valid balanced take. Ultimately, I believe all stats carry some measure of equal weight, and this can be seen by the necessaries of each individual map. I believe you are correct in your interpretation as well!
I do feel speed is a tad overrated by some players.
Like you said, every stat matters, and I've seen some low-speed units that frequently outperform their faster counterparts.
But speed is definitely the best stat overall. No other stat contributes directly to both offensive pressure and survivability (excluding rare cases like pavise and aegis being triggered by dexterity), plus it remains extremely relevant during player and enemy phase alike.
Interesting take. Speed is 100% the best stat, I don't think there's much contesting that. All the benefits from doubling and not being doubled are huge, and its the stat that most improves your avoid (at least in the games I'm familiar with)
The counterpoint I would make is that imo movement is the most bang for your buck, it's got the highest value per 1 point. If a unit goes from 14 speed to 16 speed, it'll impact some scenarios but it won't be massive, where as going from 6 move to 8 move can be very impactful. At least for me if I could gain +1 to any stat, I'd pick movement 9 times out of 10
I personally think defense is extremely underrated, and is the second best stat in the game. Movement and defense (bulk) are inherently tied together. A unit with high movement and high defense can go wherever it wants, without fear. A high move, low defense character is significantly less valuable, due to most of its options being limited. A high defense low move character, while often bad or outclassed, shine when difficulty is very high. Fe11 h5 Wolf/Sedgar, fe12 lunatic knight Kris, and FE9 Maniac mode Brom/Gatrie. These characters are anywhere from powerful crutches to outright win conditions. As long as you can do 1 damage to enemies, with high defense you can kill them eventually. Defense on top!
In pretty much every game genre, movement (and by extension range/reach) is the best stat when you are statistically competent, but quickly become worthless when you are subpar statistically. Like in mobas or overwatch even, mobility hero gets complained a lot when they are about as good as the rest of the cast, but when you nerf their damage having mobility is never enough to save them.
If i could say something, i say i believe in roles. For example, high movement are important because certain units can do more jobs on the battlefield, they can rescue and even transport some foot units from point A to point B. Sometimes high movement units are also good for combat, others have a niche and some others are just for support. Now, if we're talking about combat, movement really doens't matter. To survive you'll need speed, HP and defense, sometimes resistance. Talking about speed, if a unit have low speed but have high HP and high defense, then they are good units for combat because if their defenses are high enough they just don't take damage, so being attacked twice its just trivial for them because 2X0 it still zero. The same goes for luck... Have some luck is important and have high luck is awesome, but have low luck its not a problem when your unit can actually take a critical hit. Again - 3X0 it still zero, so that unit doesn't need luck at all. What i'm trying to say is to not judge a valor of a character just because of his movement. Take a deep look into that character and try to envision how he/she can perform well and build that unit for fulfill that role with excellence.
Depends on the game. in GBA SPD > ATK cause enemies are not that bulky and with high end weapons usually doubling means killing. In Engage I'd say STR/MAG is the better stat cause its harder to fix and enemies get pretty hard to kill without crits or skill triggers even with doubling. Also i think IS also believes ATK to be the most powerfull stat in Heroes and Engage, since you usually get less stat bonuses from blessings, or in Engage the SP Cost being much higher.
Wail I agree with your opinion on move but I disagree with speed because it's heavily game dependent as some games the speed creep is so high on some classes( 3h swordmasters and falcon knights) that it's pointless to try to match it to prevent doubles and your better off just having 1 unit with extreme defense instead as for best stat attack /magic as you can't kill things without it
Okay, finally had time to sit down and listen in properly to really give this a go. Speed is an excellent stat in its own right as well, but having been casually involved with Fire Emblem since 2003, I feel like the best underrated stat, if I had to REALLY point to one and say it is _fundamental,_ especially when the series has long established the Rock/Paper/Scissors mentality around it for so long, is... Weapon Rank.
There's ways to emulate movement, defenses, skills, even speed thresholds and so on as the games are made over time, but for the most part one _cannot_ emulate having access to certain weaponry/magic and what they can provide on a variety of situations unless you HAVE the rank or earn them soon, even if you have to use certain tools to unlock them faster.
You can have higher Spd and Str and Def than your opponent, but if the weaponry your opponent has access to allows them to double _you_ no matter what (Brave, and not even Wary Fighter can stop its doubling), exploit a weakness in your class (Cavalry/Armor/Sword slayers), or even just let them lessen your aim while increasing theirs (Reavers, but the actual Swordslayer axe is a more extreme example), you find that your own stats don't quite hold you up as well as you thought.
Obviously, a lot of what I just described is mitigated by having good insight and knack for strategy to avoid that having it used against you (AKA "Press the R button"), which is FE 101, but that's also the point for why Weapon Rank is so important when a lot of what you can do is limited by what you have to work with in the first place. Gaining more stats is for all intents and purposes not hard, especially when boosters are often offered for a reason, but if you have a tool that increases its power 3-fold or lets you hit twice in a row, and you LACK the ability to use it for some reason, you really feel that desire.
Now, as gaining ranks isn't all that hard, and once their straightforward thresholds are attained they can be forgettable, I understand why it can be such an easy stat to overlook. But then what is one OTHER thing normally associated with the acclaimed early Paladins of the series? Their HIGH weapon ranks, meaning they have access to just about whatever you wanna put on them to kick ass with whether you use them little or a lot for the entire game... Not that Seth would struggle even if he started on Es, but Sacred Stones is a delightful Sandbox for the fun of it most days. But then what of the most _Jagen_ Jagen of all time, Marcus from FE6? He has high ranks all around, and they really show you how much it _really_ matters when you can wield Silver weaponry against tough wyvern foes in, say, Chapter 7, even on a unit whose potential is unlikely to let them see combat all the way to the end. It's also part of the reason Lords/Protagonists carry Prf weapons to help them emulate some of those more universal functions in case you just need an Ace in the Hole now and then from your most common participants till better tools can be used.
... But if we're only counting pure number stats, I just think Luck is really neat. It affects many things, and I sure as heck like it when the enemy Hit, Evasion, and Crit chances are as low as possible when in combat, and it (usually) affects all three of those. :V
Incredibly well written response and if I gotta be frank, I may have overlooked weapon rank. It is indeed fantastic. Barring arm scrolls it’s difficult to emulate and just like how certain promotion items should be given to specific characters so they can have access to a different weapon type, it is indeed super strong. Weapons can impact and allow bypassing the double with brave or even quadding, and is super powerful in terms of allow counter to siege weapons with warps/rescues and boltings.
Since this video touches on hypotheticals:
If you reduced the movement stat of every character down to 1, every chapter in every game becomes *significantly* harder no matter which characters you use. And some debatably become outright impossible (battle before dawn comes to mind)
Reduce any other individual stat to 1 and only some characters become useless depending on the stat nerfed and only some chapters will be significantly harder (though reducing res to 1 basically barely matters in most situations)
As a direct comparison, if you reduce movement values to 1 it is almost impossible to take care of the stronger wyvern riders or paladins safely without them nuking your healers or dancers because you can't put people in front to defend those characters anywhere near as easily
If you reduce every characters speed to 1, every combat encounter is now a lot worse, but unlike movement you still have a bunch of other stats to directly help compensate for your speed. It would undeniably make the game way harder if speed was at 1, but i'd argue it would also be way more doable for basically every player
The obvious caveat here is that the base movement values of the cast and the different ways of increasing it make it so you can basically always reach important objectives. But I still feel like the point is clear with this example
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I'd agree that movement isn't always the best stat in every situation. But in most chapters in every game in almost every type of playthrough, the movement stat will matter more often than any other stat. The reason it doesn't feel this way is because the designers weren't cruel and actually gave us usable movement values and didn't lock them at 2 or 3 max
Another point that wasn't really touched on in this video is that in encounters where you need multiple units to take out an enemy, having higher movement helps more units fight that one enemy which is also another way of greatly increasing damage while protecting your weaker characters from dying due to the threat being gone sooner rather than on enemy phase
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Simply put even after watching this video, I am not really convinced speed (or any other stat) offers as much utility as movement does. Combat is a huge part of the game, but as stated before movement also helps more characters get into or escape from more combat
I still think movement is the best stat and they just start you off with enough movement to actually use the characters effectively
Totally a fair take!
I definitely do agree with your statement about the playerphase utility of movement and am upset I didn't address that. TO be frank I don't think I can counter point that unless I just said go full enemyphase, but in practice I do a lot of playerphase strats myself and value it very highly, so it's hard to argue against something you agree with ahahah! However, speaking of hypotheticals, they're all valid and such, but the truth is you will never have reduced movement. There are only a few things that can ACTUALLY reduce movement, and then again it can't for everything. You can however get bad rolls and never gain speed, or never gain any stats (albeit very unlikely) which is why move can never be devalued "below" what it already is (i guess this is in favor of movement).
What I think the real point I'm trying to hammer is and you did as well : In some scenarios, movement doesn't cut it, you need stats. You need to reach a certain threshold of speed in order to avoid a double or to be able to kill a boss, or you need a specific value of HP in order to avoid being 1 shot. We never think of, you need this specific move for this, because it can be supplanted (somebody else can carry me, warp me, repo me, move me). Combat cannot be supplanted for certain enemies, except for another unit who has BETTER combat (or at minimum enough to succeed).
The reason I still think speed is more useful is because, enemy phase is just way way way too prevalent in most fire emblems. Almost all of the GBA games can be exclusively enemy phased and if Marcus had 5 move or 7, it would only make the game slower, but not impossible. Now if Marcus had significantly less spd to the point he got doubled by everything it might've made the game more difficult.
But yes, speaking of extremes, 1 move and 99 everything will make it very slow, but I think doable. Now 99 move and 1 of everything.. might not be possible. Ultimately, I believe it's the balance of stats that leads to success and not just 1 stat. I do believe the games are balanced "around" spd and they are usually the benchmark trying to be achieved by LTC and most runs I see and that's basically why I made this video.
Thank you for your comment and response, loving the discourse!
If you have ever played the game Pokemon Conquest, you'd know how awful low movement truly is. In that game, every unit has a base movement between 2 and 4. To tie the gameplay in with the Pokemon franchise, every unit can also evolve (essentially like promoting), but unlike in Fire Emblem, many Pokemon lose movements upon evolving. In many cases, this makes them so much worse to the point that it is often bad to evolve your Pokemon. The difference between 2 and 4 movement, and even between 2 and 3 movement, is staggering. A 2 move unit in Pokemon Conquest might never do anything at all in a map because it just doesn't get to where it needs to be, even if it has a move that can OHKO every enemy on the map.
Pretty good points overall, and also some pretty good points brought up already in other comments.
I think another thing that you overlooked is how stat spreads in Fire Emblem look in practice, since we aren't dealing with hypothetical stat monoliths in the actual game. And in practice, due to Fire Emblem's tendency to not have great class balancing, characters and classes with higher movement are generally not much more deficient at combat, if at all, than their lesser movement counterparts. Combine this with the fact that actually movement is probably one of the hardest stats to augment across the series (e.g. warp staff is usually limited and/or not spammable, also you cite a lot of examples with Engage regarding movement options, but you can do almost anything in Engage to be fair), then it's no surprise many people find movement to be the most valuable stat. If Fire Emblem actually punished mounted units with tangibly less stats as a cost for their vastly superior movement (and vice versa for Generals), then I'm sure people would be singing a different tune.
This is 100% true. It is very common in fire emblem for the cavs to have or high movement units to have enough stats to be able to decently perform combat, and because of that, anything else is overkill and unnecessary. Ergo, more movement is better, because they have the necessary stats to win. However, like the Marcus example, I still think that’s the case because they reach the necessary thresholds of speed for combat. If they didn’t, I think they’d be relegated more to rescue/side objective visiting roles as opposed to actual combat viable units.
People keep saying the Sigurd ring doesn’t count, but the truth is it’s a tool. It’s like super boots that you put on one character. It is a movement augmenting tool and not actual move, so much so that people usually tend to pair it with units that have lower move (or a dancer) to “fix” the stat. Fliers are also oppressive with it to due to terrain ignoring.
This is all really just a provoking thought question video to be honest ahhaha and I think all stats are important to a degree! Thank you for commenting and for the discussion :)!
To use your example from the beginning of the video: a unit with 0 stats and max move can do useful things on player phase. A unit with max stats and 0 mov (who can't be rescued, which would require...movement from another unit anyway) is literal dead weight and cannot leave the deployment area.
I'm glad to say that I'm here for Mangs' and because of the 666 views HUEUHEUAHUHEAUHEA
Suspicious indeed ahahahha!
I remain unconvinced. You don't really disprove movement being the best, since most of what you talk about is combat. You still can't fight something if you cannot physically reach it and movement helps you do that. As well, Warp and Rescue are often by far the most limited staff (durability wise), Hammerne excluded, because of how good being able to position properly is. That said, there comes a point in some games where being able to fight well is more crucial than being able to position well. But this usually applies solely to the highest difficulties and even then most mounted units have a sufficient ability to fight anyways. Damage over the kill threshold doesn't matter.
I dont' know if there are that many games in which mounted units have enough combat to beat them. Maybe you mean the GBA games and PoR, 3 houses (and 3Houses it's mostly fliers). And the famous genealogy of the holy horses. I do agree that if the mounted units do reach the specific thresholds for combat (mainly speed which is what the game is balanced around) then it is more than sufficient. I always advocate for movement being a great stat. I just think that in games were progress is done by combat, speed will on average be utilized more due to combat being the contributing factor.
The rest of the games, mounts are not the best combat units by far. Echoes mounts are not that good combat wise, fates it's the units themselves not the class and the mounted classes barring maligknight and kinshi knight are pretty meh. awakening, it's the magic users, FE10 it's the dedicated combat unit + laguz royals, Engage it's magic units again. Usually it's magic units and stave utilities.
In FE5 staves are basically the bread and butter. Doesn't even matter if a unit has a mount or not for the most part. It's obviously good, but staves are way way better.
Also, can we please stop this misinformation that the rescue/warp staves aren't readily accessible in Fire Emblem? Because they totally are. And for at least HALF the game in most of them.
In FE 1 - you get 3, one as early as chapter 3.
In FE2, Silque and tatiana learn it, so you can grind it out as soon as you get them if you'd like,
In FE4, you get 1 on chapter 1 that's reusable and can be fixed constantly
in Fe 5 - you get one in chapter 7 and you can capture a few more if you'd like by chapter 18 the latest. There are more after that as well.
In fe 6 you get warp by chapter 14
In FE 7 you get it by chapter 29 (yikes, this one is rough).
in FE 8 - Chapter 15
In the earlier games it's even more readily accesible being trained on specific units. Like.. let's stop pretending it's not easily there when it de facto is easily there.
@@FireEmbros I probably should have clarified that I meant limited USES for Warp and Rescue. Past FE5 you usually only get one or two each.
@@NarrowSpark96 Totally fair and I want to make it clear I do agree: IF a unit reaches combat threshold over the necessary amount of stats, then yes, mounts are obviously better. Nobody's gonna say not to movement lol. But usually, when people LTC or Ironman, they do it around values of spd so they can reach thresholds for doubling to 1 round bosses. On higher difficulties with more stat inflation this becomes a lot more obvious as well, hence why I advocate for spd being more useful over all. Obviously, it's all stats combined that yield units being good, not just 1 or 2 things. But for the most part it's what can they bring to the table!
The problem being that most units with high mov also have speed and armor knights have no move and no speed.
Also isn't "speed best stat" an opinion shared by most fire emblem players ?
If you have high move and no other stats, you can still do things. If you have only speed, the only thing you can do is hoping to dodge while not doing any damage. But characters in fire emblem have multiple points of stats distributed in every stats (with exceptions). Movement can be used in enemy phase. Imagine a scenario in which some units are being attacked in two different position. A Paladin would have a much easier time helping both positions. The movement can get you to an enemy formation to another and you enemy phase them in 2 turns.
I guess you could use a warp staff in every enemy phase. But then it breaks and movement becomes good once again.
While combat is important, having move + mid combat can be better than having really good combat in some situations, for example you can get to a fort before reinforcements can get out of it or get rid of a scary killer bow sniper with no risk of being critted to death.
I think trying to determine a "best stat" is pointless because it will depend on the game or situation and stuff. And then someone will just be like actually weapon level is the best stat, and it can be depending on the context. In gaiden, you could say that the best stat for spellcasters is level.
Anyway Marty fe5 is goated and has 0 base speed so you are objectively wrong speed is actually the worst stat HP is the only stat that matters and no character has 0 base HP so every character is usable.
The lapis slander was crazy
Wrong Batel berfor dawun zepiehel wil di to the mercenery
I think its odd to invoke, warp, reposition, rescue etc (more strangely Sigurd?) As an argument against movement, when these are all ways that units can be displaced using an action. You say theres a difference betwen these and the literal move stat itself but in practice it feel like this is just splitting hairs. If a unit has max move like the hypothetical you gave, then the warp,repo etc actions can be omitted in favor of other productive actions. Rather than one to warp and one to attack you could just have 2 to attack and have better rng/reliability of hits.
Regarding the claim of softlocks for stats. There are several zero percent growth or negative percent growth runs that suggest these stats are not mandatory and the game has ways of circumventing them. Ive yet to see a zero move clear of an fe game.
The 0% growths always aim for specific speed stat thresholds and not move thresholds, so that argument is really more in favor of speed than move.
As regarding the other tools to augment move, they are indeed just that. It’s not the move stat, but things that artificially confer move. Like I said, move isn’t bad. It’s obviously fantastic. But having a warp stave is infinite times better than having a cav. One because the warp staves allows me to choose who to confer the move to and second because it allows flexibility on actions with choices for healing if so desired. It’s why dancers are so good. They don’t just confer another action. They confer another action to YOUR BEST UNIT or TO THE UNIT YOU NEED THE MOST then and there.
Also I think you’re kinda distorting my max move statement. I said if they had max move but 1 in all other stats. They are not many productive actions you’ll get out of this. Yes, you can ferry someone, you can visit side objectives, but you’ll never do combat. Which is fine, many parts of the game are not combat heavy or necessary, but ultimately my point is the game will not progress forward if you rely only on that unit. You need the combat carry and that unit cannot perform that.
Oh shut up. 0% and negative doesn't even happen in non-modded gameplay.
I think the max stat and all other stats being one argument is kind of a weak one because it applies to every other stat. If you have 99 of any non-attack based stat, but 1 attack, you aren't really going to be damaging anything, and thus, you can't complete the maps you're in. If you have 99 strength/magic, you may one-shot everything in the game ( if you even manage to hit it), but you just die instantly on enemy phase. If you don't take any damage ever, you still can't complete a map if you can't kill enemies. You need a combination of different stats to accomplish anything in this game. There are definitely stats that are more valuable than others, but that particular argument is kind of a weak one.
@@chadam917 but that’s exactly what I said In the video. You need a combination of all stats for a unit to be viable, not just 1 or 2 can carry the game.
@@FireEmbrosMy bad. I thought it was a an argument in favor of movement specifically not being the best stat. I was doing something else while I was watching the video
Regarding speed being the best stat in the game, it depends entirely on what you mean by "the game". Good luck finding 5 good units in three houses maddening that avoid doubles in the early game let alone double enemies. You are much better off focusing on mag/str.
In games with high stat inflation, the all or nothing nature of the speed stat makes it way too volatile to be consistently good let alone the best stat.
That sounds less like a problem with speed and more a problem with game design, frankly. I can see why most people avoid Maddening now
@mikhailthegreatestdragon3627 haha it's fun I swear 😅
for people who play the gba games, movement is still king, since unless its fe6 hard, all combat should result in a kill, and movement thus gets you more kills. in fe7 especially, the units that are bad are generally bad at strength, skill, and/or defense, AND MOVEMENT. No mounted unit in any gba game is worse than mid, even Syrene and Juno, since they still fly with 8 move and don't need a promo item.
The real best stat is weapon levels. A silver sword vs an iron sword is +8 damage. with a solid 50% strength growth, that is 16 level ups worth. Also consider how being bow/sword locked in most games is such a detriment
Weapon rank is something I think is severely overlooked by the community. It’s also a determining factor for which unit I might bench in a run, particularly for staves as well!
But I do agree, In the GBA games the mounted units are more than capable of doing most of the combat, it’s really all about the thresholds being met!
Im not here to defend movement supremecy, but your presuppositions on the movement stat seem off.
The example of 1 in every stat, but max move is a red herring. Thats not how fire emblem characters have stats distributed and doesnt exist. Better attempt would be give lowest unit stats max move and check benchmarks. In this case, even the worst unit is going to be more effective with more movement.
Next would be the ability to augment movement. Sounds like a good argument until you realize you can augment every stat to varying degrees throught the game. Movement is a special case where you need class changes or rare limited stat boosting items. It cant be gained through level up, tonics, or meals like other stats.
Next would be enemy phase and combat utility. Simply put movement allows for greater control of positioning, faster movement towards objects, and the ability to run away from risky engagements.
Just saying your arguments against movement are kind of weak. Speed is top teir though and can contend with movement as the supreme stat
i disagree. movement metters a lot for sustainability, even when fighting exclusively on the enemy turn. imagine for a second that one of your units wants to fight a group of enemy cavaliers. they can survive two hits for instance. on turn one movement doesn't metter. you can always put your unit exactly on the edge of the enemy range where only one or two of them can attack. on turn two however your low move unit is fucked, even if your low move unit uses their full movement, they're stuck and will be attacked by the whole group and face a chance of death (of course speed can help here, but it's risky). while a unit with at least as much movement as the enemy can fall back to the edge and only face one or two rounds of combat every turn. being on the edge of enemy range also means a healer can safely heal them.
and if your units move exceeds the enemies (or they have flier movement with mountain nearby) they can even fall back entirely to a safe space
Yes, but can’t you also just rescue the low movement unit out? The same logic applies as to, if I bait at the edge but want to retreat, it’s actually BETTER to bait with the non horse you get more movement through canto with rescue when you decide to pull out. The only case this wouldn’t apply would be fliers, but as you aptly pointed out it’s because of being able to canto onto impassable terrain, not because of their move.
Obviously more move and canto is better, but it’s a product of canto being really strong. Which is why in engage even though canter is little spaces it’s still worth it to take on most characters.
Man this video is hilarious well at least you understand just how amazing speed is honestly if anything could rival movement it's speed.
Mangs squad rise up
That 5% base growth really kills it in terms of unit feel. Best to give the scroll to Dalsin for....reasons.
"Nobody would ever say getting +1 of any stat is bad."
Actually getting more Con can have negative effects in the GBA games. It's harder for other units to rescue you, and if you're a mounted unit your Aid stat gets lowered. But this is a nitpick.
I think you're overrating Speed and underrating Strength. You argued early on that being able to kill the enemy is the most important thing in Fire Emblem. What good is 30 speed if you can't damage the enemy? Or a more realistic scenario, the typical early pegasus knight with Strength so low that she does 3x2 damage. She's not killing anything unless you intentionally set up the kill for her. In essence, you can get softlocked in Fire Emblem if you can't deal enough damage to bosses, because then you can't finish the chapter. (Granted, rarely a boss is so bulky that no one in your army can overcome their defenses and HP regeneration, but if we're to talk about hypotheticals...)
Similarly, a unit doesn't care about being doubled by every enemy if they all do 0 or 1 damage. You can have a unit that doesn't get doubled but takes 7 damage by all enemies, and that can add up to a dead unit with enough enemy density. Meanwhile a bulky slow unit can survive it just fine. You're underselling Defense in my opinion.
Of course, I'm not saying Speed is bad. It's fantastic. But I think you're being reductionist, as you said at the beginning, about it.
Nevertheless, this was a very interesting video! I love essays about gameplay mechanics in Fire Emblem. I will check out your other videos since Mangs recommended you.
I did bring up at one point that 2x0 is still 0 and not a fun time ahahhha, which is why Lapis isn’t an appealing character to me. However I will argue it’s usually easier to fix damage output than speed (mostly because magic also exists and is a more reliable source of damage on average).
The defense argument is true in some FE, but I don’t think it’s more common on all of them. In the DS games there’s no way towards some of the endpoints that you’re taking 0 damage. As a matter of fact, for most of the games, the further into endgame you go, the more likely enemies will have more inflated stats that can kill you easily. And when they don’t, they have some shenanigans to solve that problem (hexing rod lunge trap poison strike ninjas say hello). But I do agree I may have undersold defense a bit. I guess in my experience it’s usually always magical threats that are More dangerous, but that’s probably because defense stats being higher contribute to less damage taken.
Thank you for your feedback and for watching :)
Definitely a hot take I can respect...But not I agree with.
On half the points you made, none of them really tackle why movement is as strong as it is and in the points you do mention it are either disingenuous in their own right (bringing up Sigurd and Warp are...Choices) or ignore why movement is king. Nobody disputes that all the other stats matter in combat, because they absolutely do, but if you don't have the means to reach a fight where your victory condition is used, you might as well have no victory condition. It's like saying Dancers are bad because they have no combat to them, that's completely ignoring the point of why they're so valued in the first place.
But you can reach every fight without cavs or anything of the sort. It’s been done by people before. You can do infantry only runs and it’ll be ok. Sigurd and warp are tools to help extend range. They are not permanent movement tied to characters, but are tools utilized for an end.
I think a lot of people are blowing past the point that is: combat is necessary to beat the game. Not movement. As long as you can win fights, you can beat the game. You can always reach the objective with 5 move. If you can’t win fights without reach necessary speed thresholds or being able to perform combat at the “minimum” necessary to succeed, you’ll get softlocked.
@@FireEmbros
People are "blowing through it" because combat is a given and everyone knows. It's so easily workable a unit like freaking Clarine with her 20% magic growth can become good at it eventually, think nothing of better versions of her like Priscilla and Elise. Movement isn't the same, it's stationary except for the token one pair of boots that comes around in the game. You're trying to apply modern FE, with easily accessible Warping and move shenanigans(which yeah, disingenuous to bring that up nowadays like it's always been there), to a time where that kinda stuff wasn't a thing. If maybe your take was "movement isn't king anymore and here's why" I'd agree, but it isn't. Just isn't an apt take, but I'll respect you having it nevertheless.
Warping has been in every fire emblem game since it's inception. It's not disingenuous. It's literally been a mechanic since the beginning of the series. In shadow dragon you get it by chapter 3. And it's heavily used throughout the game as well.@@mikhailthegreatestdragon3627
But I can see where you're coming from even if we disagree. I think you are doubling down exactly on the point that I'm making, that combat is taken for granted, particularly by using clarine who also has enough spd to double the majority of the cast even with pitiful magic. Especially since magic is the lower of the defensive stats on average for every game. But we can agree to disagree!
@@FireEmbros
Notice I said "easily accessible", not just accessible cause that's really important. You're comparing a staff that at best has 5 uses per game(and that is usually only found lategame) to a spell that can be consistently relied upon as early as midgame. That's what's disingenuous(Mind you, I hadn't known about Shadow Dragon so I'll concede there but the point remains as that's probably the only old school Warp one can find early).
It's less taking combat for granted and more giving it needless attention when everyone is aware of how important it is. Like yeah, it's important, you should have an actual strength stat if you want to put someone down, but here's the problem, that's mendable(hence why Clarine is a thing, even her pitiful magic lets her be a competent combatant). Movement is not. It's not an "agree to disagree", the whole notion you're setting is full of holes.
OK, i'm just gonna dispel your notion that warp is not easily accessible to most players in the early FE, because it is:
In FE 1 - you get 3, one as early as chapter 3.
In FE2, Silque and tatiana learn it, so you can grind it out as soon as you get them if you'd like,
In FE4, you get 1 on chapter 1 that's reusable and can be fixed constantly
in Fe 5 - you get one in chapter 7 and you can capture a few more if you'd like by chapter 18 the latest. There are more after that as well.
In fe 6 you get warp by chapter 14
In FE 7 you get it by chapter 29 (yikes, this one is rough).
in FE 8 - Chapter 15
So.. just pointing out to say it's not accessible in the older games.. is just flat out wrong. They are, on average, accessible for at least half the game. The harder half mind you. I will agree that it does have limited uses, but ultimately, you use it when it really matters and to give mobility for certain objectives, that you otherwise you couldn't complete with regular move (even from cavs) so, it's not really helping movements argument here.
@@mikhailthegreatestdragon3627
Also combat is not "mendable". You either have a unit that can beat a certain one, or you have to bring in another one to defeat it. Movement is always static. You never lose it. Only gain. Having +5 move isn't gonna help me kill Hardin, I need the 28spd threshold. If a unit of mine doesn't have it, I have to get creative with how I want to handle him.
I'll concede that it really is more about reaching thresholds than it is about the limit of the stat itself, but on average, i'd the usage of spd is more compared to move, given that if you're more likely to see more combat on enemy phase than player phase values.
More important question: why does it matter what the best stat is? FE is not a competitive game series
I will eventually give this a proper watch and thoughts in the comments, but as an Armor/bulk enjoyer you got my support on the premise alone. Too many Speed Demons out there.
Oh boy, you’re not gonna like the conclusion ahhhaha! Either way I love the discourse this video has generated and thank you for watching too :)!
The only rebuttal to the idea of stat softlocks I can think of is really that IS just isn't sadistic, they give you ways out. Giffca can always beat Ashnard 1v1. Julia can always beat Julius 1v1. But why don't we apply that logic to movement? IS aren't sadistic, and they want you to win. But what if they set everyone's movement to 0? If that were the case, the game would either be borderline impossible or downright impossible.
Just like stat softlocks, this is really just hypothetical, but if we looked at the actual games themselves, you can be screwed by low mov, and in fact you do very often, but being screwed by stats is very rare. Most "challenge difficulties" try their hardest to make you get stat screwed, but even even under 0% growths, its pretty much always possible.
I think you’re ignoring the fact that move can never be “lost” and that’s why 0%runs are possible. You could in theory never gain any stats and, If you never did, you’d probably never win any combat and defeat the game. There can be stat soft locks in specific games, but illl agree they are more rare across the series.
But I do think it is a point in favor of move that if move is 0 you can’t complete certain games, this is 100% true. I just think people don’t appreciate that speed is actually contributing to the damage and viability of some of the cavs they use and think it’s because of only movement, and it’s not necessarily true
@@FireEmbros
Speed, str, def, etc is definitely a huge factor in why a lot of cavs are so good, but also there's plenty of great units with high spd/str but low def, high str/def but low spd, etc. Take away 1 stat from high movement units and they are often fine. The shakiest is str but a lot of games let your play around this with with effective weapons, skills, or forges, even stuff like Battalions or Rings. Low mov is harder to play around than any of these, even str. For every Hunter's Volley, Wing Spear, or Beastfoe to remedy str, mov only has Warp. Boots if you're willing to use such a valuable resource.
And admittedly there are units who I do believe would be okay even with halved mov, units like Caeda, Safy, Lysithea, etc but they have ridiculously powerful tools to the point where (Aside from Lysithea's magic for warp range) they would still be great units even if they had 0 in every stat.
@@xuanathan yeah I did bring up in the video that 1 move on average will go a long way more over +1 of any other stat due to how useful boots can be and etc.
Yeah the utility characters are really fun too like Lara, safy, reyson and etc! They could have very little move and they’d still be super useful ahahh
Hi, from Mangs
Hello
My fellow Brazilian compatriot.
@@FireEmbros Lets gooooo I didn't know you were brazilian
@@HanakkoLove criado em Botafogo. Carioca de outrora ahahhaha. Nos meus tempos o Vasco nunca caiu pra série B :(. Tristeza, sinto falta do Timão.
@@FireEmbros Kkkkk, baseado.
@@FireEmbrosHmmm. I subscribed but now I'm not sure I can stay 😂
It's worth noting that in Fates (Conquest in particular), there is a strong alternative to doubling in Attack Stance and it's the easiest way to get through the toughest enemies in the game, Master Ninjas and Generals, which are resistant or invulnerable to doubling outright. Spd is a good stat still, but not a stat that's universally applicable across every map compared to Str (or Mag if you're magical) and even Skl/Lck imo.
Even if you can't double a ninja (there's so many things to patch it up) not getting doubled is still useful
@@marcoasturias8520 Getting doubled is not an issue at all. Aside from the obvious 0 x 2 = 0, it's already ideal to counterattack and kill Ninjas. You kill them with your counterattack and they won't get to follow-up attack. This applies to every fast enemy, especially since all of them are frail and easy to kill. Good offense is good defense.
@@VeXJLunits won’t attack you if they do 0 damage in fates. It’s one of those weird AI things like in engage, they’ll just outright ignore you and won’t break formation, which is super annoying in certain strats for conquest ahahhah
@@FireEmbros There are exceptions of course. All Ninjas ignore this rule if you can't counterattack, and Ch.11 and Ch.25 Ninjas also flat out ignore it entirely. And there are uses for intentionally making them ignore you (so you can player phase the Duelist's Blow Endgame MNinjas, or block off a choke point in Ch.17). The point still stands, they're likely doing
@@VeXJLit’s very cool to see how many strats can develop. I usually just shuriken breaker Nina it and double them to kill them outright. The other chapter with the lunge 3 range ones I save an entrap to pull one of the chain out or I just go the right side instead. Again, love seeing different strats and the defense thing is a pretty good way to go about it too honestly!
Movement and offensive stat better for player phase
Defensive stat and being able to hit reguliary with 1-2 range better for the enemy phase
while it's not possible to overrate tge importance of move, i believe skill is the most important stat.
every attack you do does either no damage, your full damage, or three times the damage. When we exclude luck (low impact) and weapon choice (can be changed at any time) this mostly depends on the units skill.
compared to STR where one point is exactly the difference of 1 to 6 (when you double and crit both times, so it also depends on spd AND SKL), a single point of skill can be the difference between 0 dmg and 99 dmg. 2% is a big difference but players don't see the random numbers being rolled so they dismiss it too quickly. but if you don't hit you can't kill the enemy.
I'd say:
S: Speed
A: Mag, Def, Str
B: Mov, Res (by technicality, realistically, low C)
C: Dex, Con
D: Hp, Luck
While Speed halves the amount of damage received, Defense is still necessary to survive (duh). And think about it, the defensive prowess of defense (and speed) increases with enemy density and in enemy phase, that defensive prowess is used offensively, for more units faced equals more damage dealt. So yeah, Defense is great, Speed is better and Melady with 17 Mov is a meme.
Good list, BUT why is hp D tier? It literally does the same thing as defense except it defends better against magic too.
@@lspuria8440 Because +2 def is better than +7 HP when you're attacked by 4 or more enemies on enemy phase. (Assuming no magic enemies, which are few and far between.)
Depends on the game, on Radiant Dawn the General / high Def characters were absolutely required in defensive missions.
If FE balance returned to the Radiant Dawn days people would stop valuing movement so much.
Honestly, I started playing FE with the old GBA games. So I play more defensively, I don't care to play toward the new "meta" where high move units have been given uncharacteristic amounts of Def and Res.
I'm really proud of you for being so brave and revealing these truths to all