Hey all! We're back after a few weeks since the last video. I've been really busy with work IRL but I'm glad to present a fun little video about Fire Emblem and poison. I hope you enjoyed it! Please leave a like and comment down below to show your support to help boost this video in people's recommended tab! What was your favorite version of poison so far in the series?
@@thedutchlander572 Glad someone recognized it! It's definitely one of her older ones, so I wasn't sure if it would just fly over people's heads or not...
If Lord Hausen can survive multiple chapters of being poisoned off-screen and just walk it off the next day I think that's a safe story connection to just how weak GBA poison is. Or maybe beds just give Throne bonuses.
@@Alban_Blade_Memer if I remember correctly it does not get applied until combat ends so you won’t do the extra damage it in that combat. Still very useful on wolf knights
@@samuelniesen8929 Found it nice to do on hard, on Maddening though Wolf knight desperately needs more strength to be relevant and Warrior is a far better combat option. Can be ok if they're just a bounded shield bot for a cav unit (likely a mage knight) with Miaciah engrave to avoid being targeted.
@@twigz3214it’s less that wolf knight is bad and more that most of the physical cast needs strength fixing much more then speed fixing. Wolf knight is fine on units like amber or pannette. It’s roughly equal to a fast noodle arms character in warrior. And the 1-2 range option that can’t be broken is also a nice bonus for enemy phase based builds. Both are similarly effective it’s just warrior fixes the more common problem. You can count on one hand the units who just innately have good strength as opposed to needing a strength fix class. Louis Amber pannette etie and If you wanna stretch a bit alfred. Everyone else needs strength fixing to a decent degree in the physical end for long term use. Even Kagetsu is somewhat disappointing if you don’t reclass him to wyvern or warrior. Meanwhile Someone like etie who really needs speed and hit support is pretty bad in warrior as opposed to something like wolf knight or bow knight ( which eventually makes her faster then alcryst and keeps her speed in line with his most the game when normally people cite alcryst speed as an advantage when really in practice at best he’s pretty much the same the same and etie has a 5 percent growth advantage so after 20 levels in the class she gains a speed advantage. And realistically if you want a cav bonded shield setup well since there’s nothing with a minimum of 20% strength growth for the speedy but strength insufficient crowd it’s either stacking mage knights and you at least want some of your magical units to have staff rank or high strength units in wolf knight/bow knight and barring etie who really needs the hit from bow knight too wolf knight performs the better of the two. And sometimes if a warrior stops doubling wolf knight can be a good transition to help get their speed back to a reasonable level to tweak their speed up a bit ( axe wolf knight obviously makes the most smooth transition here). Though honestly I’d generally prefer halberdier for Louis in particular
@@HelloSayEm6 3 Houses story discussion or Engage unit comparison for hot topics in specific, but the relative toxicity around LTC/"Efficiency" runs is gaining traction, both in defending them and attacking them.
2:01 : "how are you doing that?" Excelblem losing freaking CED to poison damage on his thracia series: "My goals are beyond everyone's understandings, even my own."
It's definitely the most likely in Thracia. The sheer number of enemies who can inflict Poison and also reduce your HP directly to 1 is a scary combination.
@@Fin0fLenster well to be fair excelblem losing ced to poison damage wasn't because of the jormungand/hel combo and was almost entirely the result of his own hubris (it happened because he fast forwarded through a bunch of idle turns to exploit enemy warp behaviour and wait out reinforcements, and in doing so, forgot that ced had been hit by jormungand earlier in the map; it didn't help that he was also explaining his strategy to his viewers and thus was more distracted than normal)
Engage has such an amazing poison system, I'm amazed at how they managed to make it such an interactive effect for for and against the player. Also making antidotes heal you in addition to curing the status is such a simple and genius move, it's crazy they never made them that way before.
I think it's fine, but it's largely ignored past early game and you can just one round without it at all, kinda making debuffing them with it pointless unless it's the boss of the map and if they are affected by it. Enemy Wolf knights can be annoying, but more so due of their high speed. The poison is an afterthought since there are never so many to make it matter. Thief and Wolf knight are also just outclassed by better combat classes on Maddening, low strength and lower weapon might compared to their peers sucks. Zelkov prefers to just go Warrior, Yunaka falls off hard and Merrin would also generally prefer to go Warrior if you make them a combat carry, but can stay on wolf knight if you plan to have her for a few chapters then bench her.
Poison preventing or weakening healing is one thing that immediately came to mind. In my own RPG Maker project, it cuts healing (including regeneration) to a quarter of the usual effect AND does nonlethal percent damage, forcing Brill to spend time curing it, end a battle fast, or overspecialize in healing. But a game like Fire Emblem doesn't even necessarily need the damage; turning off Physic and Vulneraries would potentially be dangerous on its own, once other threats get involved.
That's a good idea, usually I see it put on "bleed" type aesthetics, but I think poison is a more fruitful aesthetic for that sort of anti-buff effect because it's a more unique kind of damage - it's hard to imagine what would apply "bleed" statuses except attacks that are already high damage themselves, but poisons could come in all sorts of packages without needing to be tied to aesthetics of dealing weapon damage.
This is the same system that works on Guild Wars 2. Healing effects on the poisoned target reduce any source of healing by 33%. It is deadly, since you can ignore the chip damage, but you cant ignore the fact that you can't heal that unit properly.
A theoretical disadvantage of using poison against enemies in the older games: If they actually die of the poison, no one gets the experience for the kill, probably.
That's prolly what happened, but imagine if *everyone* got the ExP. You could base your whole strategy around getting that ExP bonus, though that'd be soo tedious. Poison would still need a rework to become viable. Hmm, what if there were more mechanics for stalling, though? Like, better mobility after an encounter for hit-and-run, or bunkers where you can't do anything but can't be touched either while the enemy withers away just outside. Could be boring, but there may be a way for it to work
Lots of "toxic" discussions in each community im in this week. Strange how it happens all at once Yet somehow this is the least contagious one as it's about poison
Meanwhile Heroes' powercreep has made poison become part of the silly "deal damage before the first hit" kind of skill Enjoy having half you HP gone before the combat even starts! Without needing to charge an AoE special!
The damage over time version of poison always felt more like something designed to be used against the player, rather than be a useful tool for the player to exploit as well. If you take the time to attack an enemy, generally you want to eliminate that enemy asap before they do too much damage to you on EP. Meaning you kill them before the poison effect would really do much to help. I really liked how Engage implemented the poison mechanic, it feels they finally struck a balance to make it both a threat and a useful tool for the player. Fates wasn't bad, but it didn't really feel like a poison mechanic, moreso considering it shared the same effect as other skills, like the ones mentioned in the video. But it did synergise better with ninja's compared to the other skills, because of the debuff mechanics of throwing weapons.
The one thing I think you missed was the poison strike ability in Three Houses. It’s pretty similar to its usage in conquest, but it’s pretty much only useful for enemy units (I’ve seen some arguments for its use on Ignatz, but death blow with hunter’s volley generally seems more useful) since in 3H you really want to be one rounding as much as possible. However, enemy archers with poison strike are super common on maddening, and especially in the early game will really frequently bring a unit to 1HP, it’s another interesting use, but once again it really only benefits the enemy.
I love the perfect cut at 7:59 before Zelkov’s demise😢 it took me until recently to properly understand how poison worked in engage but I think doing more damage per attack feels better than taking damage every turn as long as you plan properly your unit can’t die from it.
It is interesting how, while the end result is the same (enemy takes a flat increased amount of damage over time) the Engage version feels so much better. I think it’s because the old style was very linear in its effect: there was no interaction with the poison effect after application. Meanwhile in Engage you have to plan to maximize the effectiveness of the poison condition, and plays an active role in the turn’s combo.
Poison status in thracia is very deadly as it can last the whole map without a restore status, the tellius one is also deadly cuz the chip dmg can be deadly
Man, this gave me a lot of ideas for Poison mechanics in our new game. Absolutely brilliant analysis. Fates and Engage did it best, yeah. However I feel like the passive damage wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't the ONLY thing that poison did.
I think the general issue with Poison is both how readily available things are to counteract it, as well as it generally doing very little to affect your overall performance with offense and defense. Poison doing very little would make sense in the scope of having really low amounts of access to healing to deal with it. Something like having your inventory stolen, and needing to fight your way through a map finding new resources. Or restricting your inventory amongst the army, so you can't easily access your stores of medicine. Also doesn't really help that Poison Weapons are treated like joke weapons, and have really bad stats that don't complement the ability to try and status something reliably. I could see them swing stronger, or weaker with higher accuracy. But even when you get poisoned, it really doesn't hinder anything about a unit that wouldn't already kill them anyway. If they were low on HP, chances are you overextended or positioned yourself poorly. And in those rare cases, yes, poison can be dangerous. Considering it's poison though, I feel like it should either weaken your offence or your defense. To better tie in with a unit's survivability, and not be some extraneous status that happens after the fact. Honestly feel like Poison is an RPG artifact they haven't touched since the beginning, as it falls more in line with that style of game.
the most creative use of poison in old games I've seen was Excelblem's 0 strength strat to kill Lyon, because you can steal poison weapons with enemy control glitch and Lyon has massive defenses but no throne to heal him. As you pointed out, players using poison sucked, no wonder there weren't legit poison weapons available.
I feel like a neat idea for poison would be lowering physical attack and attack speed of the poisoned unit. Perhaps it could also make the unit weak to a certain magic type (fire probably) in order to make it an actual obstacle. Imagine your mage dying to an enemy mage because they were poisoned, negating their typically high resistance, or being unable to deal with armored units because the poison makes you unable to deal meaningful damage. It would also turn it into a useful resource for players, making venin weapons or daggers actually valuable for once. It has the potential to be a little busted if the debuffs are too powerful, sure, but I really feel like they could be the key to making poison a good, meaningful mechanic.
Engage has by far the best concept of poison, it's interesting and meaningful to play with but also not mandatory. Sadly it is a bit overshadowed by how overtuned daggers are. Often dagger units just delete enemies themselves rather than act as a strategic setup unit.
Maybe try playing on Maddening, you are rarely going to be one hit killing enemies, ESPECIALLY towards the late game where even Archers can't one shot late game fliers.
@@shinobus.2654 Fair enough. I only got to around chapter 16 when I played maddening, which was still at the point where Pannette could pretty reliably take tough enemies down in one round.
@@shinobus.2654 You can still easily one round on maddening. If your archer can't one shot late game fliers you're probably using a bad one. Fogado with a Radiant bow has little issues doing so and it's not hard to get Clarine/Ivy one rounding with enough resources and making them your main combat carry. Any wrath/vantage user won't have many issues one rounding most enemies either. It's harder to one round, but daggers with their awful str in wolf knight and thief and lower base might are often not helping you kill chunky enemies anyway.
@@twigz3214 Maybe if you're cheesing with DLC or cheesing level ups with non-fixed growths. Fogado simply does not get anywhere near enough magic to one shot end game fliers, not even Warrior Anna has enough magic to pull that off with the Radiant Bow so you're simply wrong there. Citrine (not Clarine) needs some support to one round end game enemies as well, Ivy doesn't come remotely close to doing it unless you're roiding the hell out of her with stat boosters..
@@shinobus.2654 been awhile, my b on Citrinne. Yes units indeed don’t one round without support from emblems and forges, but they are there so why not use them. If there are specific instances where it’s hard fair enough but one rounding throughout the game isn’t. I’ve only played on fixed growths and did maddening twice. The path of least resistance usually has Ivy or a mage knight just murder things while bonded shield is active while you have a vantage/wrath user do things elsewhere. Getting Citrinne or Ivy to double is trivial with the massive speed boost from Lyn. If you mean specifically the end of the game I have less memories of that so if they massively stat inflate there fair enough. Either way I don’t think poison is helping with the lackluster damage thieves and wolf knights are doing, which was the original intent of the comment.
I definitely think they've done a better job at making poison threatening, I definitely used the Enemy Control Glitch in Sacred Stones to use some weapons I didn't get to use like Poison and Monster weapons , It definitely sucked knowing that the poison weapons were garbage though 😅
Poison is one of those statuses in Fire Emblem where the player is either scared of it, doesn't think much of it, or abuses it to gain an advantage. I personally have abused poison in Fates, Three Houses, and Engage to basically turn a very scary enemy into a joke.
In Engage you get your first dagger unit (hiya papaya girl) pretty early so you get a lot of time to toy with it. Also, if i remember correctly, the status effect is inflicted even when the unit chain attack. Meaning that you can give them the Emblem Lucina ring for more utility
I was thinking the same, but in retrospect I think he meant that the unit has to do damage just in general in a chain attack. The poison effect will trigger if the unit enters in someone else's chain attack (as in Yunaka doing 5 damage in a chain attack to an armored unit, before Jean does 0 damage normally), but won't trigger if that unit did 0 damage in that phase (as in Jean doing 5 damage in a chain attack to an armored unit, before Yunaka does 0 damage normally).
Tbh I loved how engage handled poison. But I think it stopped too short... 0 damage daggers should be able to poison It should have gotten way worse as the stacks happened (2 damage per node seems fine) Healing it should have been easier. Anti toxin just becomes the new vulnerary after a while. And I wish it could limit normal healing by 80% (so instead of 10 hp gained make it 8,6,4,2,0 at max poison (to clarify I'd only want 20% reduced healing per tick. Strong enough healing would mitigate it but it's a drain on resources to ignore it.))
Personally, it can go. The idea of poison only really works logically on the massive maps of Jugdral where travel & combat are blended thereby suggesting enough time passing for a poisoned/diseased wound to develop complications. Even in that kind of case, it seems better as a purely writing based concept and left out of gameplay, outside of having to go thru a level with reduced stats.
I think it might be a neat idea to try giving poison a base HP debuff effect rather than one that damages/increases damage taken. The wolves in the Engage DLC were a good idea imo
I remember a rom hack, fe7 if, I think, which just tripled the damage dealt by poison, this made it legitimately fatal when suddenly at the start of a turn you could take like, 15 more damage.
6:38 - Have I mentioned how freaking amazing 3H is for its map interactivity? It still takes my breath away to see characters running through the map at their perspective level. Literally, I swear I thought it was Three Hopes for a minute!
I'm fairly certain Kaze also refers to the debuffs that shurikens give as poison when you fight him in chapter 2, but I may be misremembering that. Also, while Three Hopes wasn't mentioned (probably for being a Warriors game), it does use a unique version of poison, having the usually passive damage while also reducing either strength or defense; I can't remember which one. Granted, it's not that useful as the poison weapons are equal to iron when it comes to might and durability in Three Hopes, and I don't recall there being any poison skills, combat arts or magic, but it does help out in the early game, especially since I'm pretty sure Kronya always drops a free poison weapon in chapter 2.
The stat drops on hidden weapons is absolutely meant to be poison and what i thought hed mention for fates because its really engaging and makes any ninjas you face a genuine threat even if they dont have skills
I'm a bit surprised 3H is the only case so far where it features poison that follows the rules of "poison for thee, healing for me" through Verdand Wind's poisonous magic swamp gimmick, as anyone not affiliated with Nemesis' liberation army is inmune to the poison and gets some free healing instead (rip that one Agarthan from the start of the map tho).
The fact there's an entire character in Elibe dedicating to humiliating Poison in the games that make it a buff to Healers at the highest convenience is truly comical. Months appearantly aren't enough to poison a man to death, should've just hired an assassin to script Silencer.
Poison worked really well with Break in engage. In most games you'd probably not want to send your low health thieves at a big threat because well... They'd get killed. But giving them a free combat to apply their status after breaking an enemy always felt so damn good to do. Makes the order in which units attack a boss matter as well
Correction. Not only can you get venom stones from breaking all barriers on specific demonic beast but you can also get them from cats or dogs using the feeding mechanic. They are much more common there.
Actually that type of ore is still very rare and the one instance of it not being guaranteed on a specific enemy. The majority of the time I still get Umbral Steel.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 it is nearly 100% on posion beast. While I can't remember the exact name both it and the umbral beast look really similar and are at times on the same maps here and there.
I just hate poison because in Sands of Time (Blazing Blade, 29E/31H) it took forever for the NPC guards' poison damage to play out at the start of each turn, and I restarted the chapter a couple of times after goofs.
I absolutely love how poison works in engage, otherwise poison is only effective as a chip tactic- and fire emblem rarely has situations where extended chip is useful. I will never stop thinking those weapons aren’t cool and fancy tho
Man… it’s baffle me how much anti-poison that we used in engage if they have the darn item some hp restoration( but still bothers me that is the same hp recover as a normal elixir)
So true that poison isn't at all threatening in GBA FE through Tellius. Anytime I get hit by poison in those games I never bother to remove the status. If poison damage was percentage based back then it would be a lot more threatening.
Poison is just a kind of annoying mechanic is most RPGs it appears in for me and I ignore it if the game allows for it. I do like the twist with Engage though. Makes it a bit more viable to go up against armored units without needing a massive weapon advantage in many cases. Just sucks that the best way I've found to use it is with the Mage Cannoneer so I have to go through those crappy dlc maps if I want to dot everything up before they get in range of my other units. Also MC works great with Claude's gambit since you don't even have to land a hit to apply a stack of poison.
As I play and learn more about this series I see that Fates and Engage have great gameplay ideas no other game has ever tried. That makes them not only stand out but have some of the best FE gameplay you can get. Now if only they could they could get that with a decent story and cast. Then we'd have peak Fire Emblem.
We love radiant dawn requiring disarm and stealing to get Venin Weapons and funny enough Venin Axe was actually unobtainable in radaint dawn since it doesnt exist outside of enemies with only 1 weapon in part 1, (it can be stolen in path of radiance techincally)
Tbh while I see why Engage’s poison is meaningful and dangerous to face. It never bothered me at all mostly bc it was so obvious who has it, combined with Engage more player phase instead of tanking style with the break mechanic. I never had to bother healing it it was too easy to plan around and counter. I think it could’ve been more spread out to more unit types so you actually can be caught off guard when it’s inflected
Kinda underselling Thracia’s poison a tad. It’s applied by dark mages who hit pretty hard and never heals on its own. Those two things make a massive difference compared to how effective it is compared to other entries. There are definitely times when a unit who’s far away gets hit by an attack that takes 75% of their health and now they’re on a timer or they just die on player phase.
Honestly, the GBA poison is the best. It isn't a major threat on its own, but it's a a small consistent bit of damage, and it will wear the player down if you aren't paying attention. It's a great way to give cannonfodder in the late game a relevant attack without just massivly inflating the stats of every enemy. And importantly, since its a DOT, and only a small DOT, it gives you the time to react. This makes it minor enough to not be frustating, but major enough that you do need to actually react to it at some point. Which is exactly what you need for stuff like Brigant cannonfodder in the lategame. Also, the fact that it's limited to the AI is fine. Videogames thrive on assymetrical gameplay. Its one of the easiest ways to ensure the experience is (somewhat) balanced & fun. Engage's poison is the worst because it fluctuates wildly between completly irrelevant and absurdly overpowered. This is especially frustrating when the game doesn't give you the time to react due to how quickly the stacks can spiral out of control in a single turn.
For as long as I've known it, Fire Emblem has had a bit of a problem with meaningful negative effects. The way damage calculation works means that for the most part, units take so much damage proportional to HP from any one attack that if they're going to die then they're going to die in one or two rounds, and if they're not going to do that then there's nothing poison can do to change it. Most negative conditions only have an impact in edge cases where two attacks would leave about 15% or less HP remaining, and even that's only for seal skill type effects, poison is even more niche. It tends to result in negative statuses just feeling like an alternative to magic as a tool for taking out super-high DEF units. An interesting consequence of this is that negative statuses feel like their value relative to other tools depends a lot on the difficulty, especially when difficulty is just the result of higher enemy stats. 10% of HP lost to a poison tick is a lot more meaningful when your units' regular attacks are doing 20% damage than when they're doing 70% damage.
Pretty cool, the way I saw Engage's poison is like a reimagination of Fate's DEF/RES debuffs for knives/shuriken attacks. But yeah for most of the series history poison has been ridiculously ineffective when dealing passive damage. I'd wonder if it was more like Pokemon's toxic and the damage doubled every turn it was in effect, it'd probably have been threatening enough to actually warrant anti-venoms even if it couldn't kill a unit.
If you drink an antitoxin, shouldn't you develop antibodies that would prevent you from being affected by that poison going forward? And if the enemy is just using a different kind of poison, then why does the same antitoxin still cure it. I'm pretty sure that's not how that works.
in radiant Dawn poison could overwrite a previous status condition as I've learned the hard way. so I put a red dragon to sleep and I had one or two turns left before it woke up so I had to kill it now while it's asleep so Micaiah who would normally be one hit killed by it can safely hit it, double to finish it off, and the prediction screen showed that he was not fighting back (cuz sleep) well she hits once with Valaura and suddenly big fucko attacks and one hit kills my bloody Micaiah sending me directly to game over. Now Y'all know that radiant dawn has that extra layer of fuck you inside of it. Enjoy the info.
I know it's not technically poison, but since it has a very similar utility compared to Engage's poison I think it's fair to talk about the stat debuffing weapons from Fate. Sure they work differently when it comes to enabling damage from your units and it has the added utility of decreasing the offensive capabilities of the enemies but I think it's fair to say that Engage's poison is derived from Fate's debuffing weapons. On that note, these two debuffs (Fate stat debuff and Engage poison) are definitely my favorite status effects we had in the series so far. It truly adds a new layer of utility to some classes/units you can't really find in the rest of the series.
Honestly Fates had my favorite version of poison. It really allows you to build a character that splashes damage around even if they can't deal it out themselves. I appreciate the versatility of Engage's poison though, allowing your whole team to make use of the damage buff. Perhaps a combination can be done in the future, but i think that may be too strong.
I’d like a small percentage chip + combat stat debuff combined. That should balance out urgency (my lord is getting hit harder and does no damage now! But they at least won’t die yet immediately, so I have a bit of time, phew) with a real consequence to letting it linger.
Toxic swamps in Echoes Shadows of Valentia differ from how you describe them in Gaiden, in that it is the female saint (promoted cleric) who is herself immune to terrain damage and who auto-heals everybody next to her by an amount (5 HP) that happens to exactly equal the swamp damage. (Flyers also are unaffected by the swamp, of course.) Am I right in thinking healing spells in Gaiden did not earn any EXP for their casters? In Echoes they do, making it easy enough for the cleric to promote before the first swamp map.
One series of videos i think could be really fun to see from your perspective, is what would happen if different lords were just dumped into the shoes of another, isekai style! How would Leif do at replacing Byleth? How would Ike fare if he replaced Corrin? For the sake of argument, let's assume they keep their growths, personal skills (if any), and they start in the class closest to the lord they replace... As faithful to their old self as possible, while following the new games rules. Would they tend to carry the entire game or fall behind?
Poison in Engage is almost perfect. The only change I'd make is to have it so that 0 damage still applies Poison, since Covert units tend to be lacking in damage compared to other combat units
@@AkameGaKillfan777 is that even true? I haven't played every FE game, but avoid tanks are absolute unreliable garbage in most of the games I've played. Armor knights specifically aren't usually great, but I personally think Engage's changes to the archetype managed to make them very strong, and there are definitely other classes that can defense tank
@@juicyjuustar121 Both unit types when executed correctly take 0 damage from attacks themselves, but unlike dodge tanks that avoid everything, slower defense tanks can still suffer from status effects that only need attacks to land rather than deal damage.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 that's true, I just think the issue with dodge tanks is that they tend to be unreliable. It's the same reason you wouldn't want to use an axe fighter in something like FE6, yeah they could be great, but you have to rely on RNG. With defense tanks, their ability to tank is entirely determined by your strategy. So I guess it could be argued that dodge tanks get worse and defense tanks get better the better you are at the game, but it does depend on the game. Dodge-tanking in Engage was a legitimate strategy (though still not as good as defense if you as me)
i feel poison just kinda doesnt work most of the time when tied to weapons, because hp values are not that big and also that the weapons are worse than IRON weapons. using as hazard makes more sense to me but it needs to not completely suck so that it's at least mildly threatening
I utterly hated poison in fates; if a dagger plinks off my general's armor, how the hell did it poison me? It has to enter the bloodstream to "poison me", that's how it works, yeah? Is it radiating a literal aura of poisoned ill-will? It just made the already frustrating mechanic even more of a headache, nevermind the fact all three routes are LAZY with ninjas, poison abilities, and the like. It's a game of such great status effects as "poison", and "the ones poison's disgusting viability generously allows to exist"; all of which include more stat lowering, such as with enfeeble, and the very rare freeze or entrap. If there was a character in fates immune to poison, they'd be my instant favorite, no question. If that exists, then that's hilarious, I missed them :3 But good lord, it makes me never want to return to any route in fates.
Poison Strike in 3H took effect as long as the unit was hit by it, even if the attacker with the ability dies from counterattacks. I thought status effects were completely overkill in Fates. Debuff stacking, Hexing Rods were permanent, and there wasn't any way to get rid of them or block them completely. Everything wearing off after one turn is all that's needed, Antitoxins, Antidotes or whatever should cure every status effect, be sold in unlimited quantities at shops, and I would like to see more items in the future that give units a skill when used, even if it's only one per file. Immune Status would be really nice.
debuffs in fates didn't stack unless they had inevitable end, which is only in one map on optional enemies for extra loot. The Ninja's can be annoying, but I think it's balanced by the fact they don't inflict debuffs if they die. I agree the learning curve can be rougher for those new to fates, but I think how much it encourages aggression by making you remove the source of these debuffs makes the maps generally play better.
@@twigz3214 On Lunatic, enemies have Inevitable End on Chapters 17, 25, and Endgame. Staff Savant is on every Staff wielder in Chapter 26 and Endgame, and Chapters 11, 14, 20, 23, 26 and Endgame have Hexing Rod enemies. Stat debuffs on shurikens/daggers always trigger if the attack lands, even if they die, and it's especially tricky on Endgame since the Master Ninjas have Duelist's Blow.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 was mainly ignoring endgame maps altogether because frankly just skip them, I agree playing those straight up is annoying but don’t find it an issue in other maps at all. You’re better off clearing the map as fast as possible anyway and the fact that inevitable end is in endgame doesn’t matter at all. If you don’t know ltc strats it’s still not hard to 2-3 turn with minimal setup. Daggers/Shurikens still debuff but poison strike, grisly wound, seal skills, etc all don’t. If Inevitable end is an issue on chapter 17 I’d recommend actually playing the map and not spamming end turn, 25 is really the only map it practically exists in. Hexing rod can be annoying but you can often just kill the enemy with it before you get in range and if you can’t it’s really heavily telegraphed and having 1 unit get their hp halved halfway through the map isn’t going to make it unplayable.
@@twigz3214 Why did you need backhandedly assume my playstyle with 0 evidence whatsoever? Though it seems like I'm not the only person here that you decided to start an argument with completely unprovoked.
Honestly I feel like passive damage would be scarier if it was like 6-8 at the top of the enemy phase. That way there's nothing between the enemy units and the poison damage. When the damage is passive on player phase its essentially ignorable.
Facts no one cares about: all poison weapons in Fire Emblem should really be venom. Poison is ingested, venom is injected. They get this right sometimes by calling the weapons Venom weapons. One of the correct uses of poison is the most well known: “I put poison in his mutton!” Poor Dork-ass
Fun fact, due to Engage being delayed so long, it was actually supposed to be released BEFORE Three Hopes initially, which is really funny because Poison works very similarly in that game as it does in Engage. In Three Hopes, Poison is a debuffing status that lowers enemy defense and resistance drastically which allows you to deal more damage to them, rather than dealing damage to them over time. Three Hopes being released first unintentionally hinted at how Engage poison would work lmao
Hey all! We're back after a few weeks since the last video. I've been really busy with work IRL but I'm glad to present a fun little video about Fire Emblem and poison. I hope you enjoyed it! Please leave a like and comment down below to show your support to help boost this video in people's recommended tab! What was your favorite version of poison so far in the series?
Enemy: i poisoned you
Healer:(kira face) just as planned(starts gaining levels)
Enemy: impossible your a Saiyan 😮
Fire Emblem Zenkai force
Erk: "WOULD YOU JUST HEAL THE POISON ALREADY?!" 💀
Serra: "Are you kidding? This is such a great way to practice healing spells!" 😁
LALALALALALA.
An Awkward Zombie reference. I see you're a man of culture as well!
@@thedutchlander572 Glad someone recognized it! It's definitely one of her older ones, so I wasn't sure if it would just fly over people's heads or not...
The comic wasn't a Blazing Game reference? I've seen it, and honestly can't remember if it was an FE comic. Especially since it fits them so well.
@@EthanKironus8067 Yeah, it was a Blazing Blade comic.
If Lord Hausen can survive multiple chapters of being poisoned off-screen and just walk it off the next day I think that's a safe story connection to just how weak GBA poison is. Or maybe beds just give Throne bonuses.
I really like Engage's use of Poison. I always like to give my dagger units Draconic Hex just to pile on more debuffs.
I love to put Lucina on a dagger unit so they since you can apply poison stacks through chain attacks
@@samuelniesen8929I didn't know poison could be inflicted in chain attacks 😮
@@Alban_Blade_Memer if I remember correctly it does not get applied until combat ends so you won’t do the extra damage it in that combat. Still very useful on wolf knights
@@samuelniesen8929 Found it nice to do on hard, on Maddening though Wolf knight desperately needs more strength to be relevant and Warrior is a far better combat option. Can be ok if they're just a bounded shield bot for a cav unit (likely a mage knight) with Miaciah engrave to avoid being targeted.
@@twigz3214it’s less that wolf knight is bad and more that most of the physical cast needs strength fixing much more then speed fixing. Wolf knight is fine on units like amber or pannette. It’s roughly equal to a fast noodle arms character in warrior. And the 1-2 range option that can’t be broken is also a nice bonus for enemy phase based builds. Both are similarly effective it’s just warrior fixes the more common problem. You can count on one hand the units who just innately have good strength as opposed to needing a strength fix class. Louis Amber pannette etie and If you wanna stretch a bit alfred. Everyone else needs strength fixing to a decent degree in the physical end for long term use. Even Kagetsu is somewhat disappointing if you don’t reclass him to wyvern or warrior. Meanwhile Someone like etie who really needs speed and hit support is pretty bad in warrior as opposed to something like wolf knight or bow knight ( which eventually makes her faster then alcryst and keeps her speed in line with his most the game when normally people cite alcryst speed as an advantage when really in practice at best he’s pretty much the same the same and etie has a 5 percent growth advantage so after 20 levels in the class she gains a speed advantage. And realistically if you want a cav bonded shield setup well since there’s nothing with a minimum of 20% strength growth for the speedy but strength insufficient crowd it’s either stacking mage knights and you at least want some of your magical units to have staff rank or high strength units in wolf knight/bow knight and barring etie who really needs the hit from bow knight too wolf knight performs the better of the two. And sometimes if a warrior stops doubling wolf knight can be a good transition to help get their speed back to a reasonable level to tweak their speed up a bit ( axe wolf knight obviously makes the most smooth transition here). Though honestly I’d generally prefer halberdier for Louis in particular
I love the disclaimer that this isn't about community toxicity 😂
What is the biggest example of community toxicity in FE?
@@HelloSayEm6say literally anything about 3 Houses or Engage. Mentioning both makes the effects even worse.
@@HelloSayEm6 3 Houses story discussion or Engage unit comparison for hot topics in specific, but the relative toxicity around LTC/"Efficiency" runs is gaining traction, both in defending them and attacking them.
Honestly, as someone who is a fan of just watching the games and not playing, I'm more interested in the stories than the gameplay.
@@HelloSayEm6 play the game on normal mode. Or don't ltc
2:01 : "how are you doing that?"
Excelblem losing freaking CED to poison damage on his thracia series: "My goals are beyond everyone's understandings, even my own."
I see someone beat me to it, lmao. I was wondering if Ghast himself was about to show that clip or something
It's definitely the most likely in Thracia. The sheer number of enemies who can inflict Poison and also reduce your HP directly to 1 is a scary combination.
@@Fin0fLenster well to be fair excelblem losing ced to poison damage wasn't because of the jormungand/hel combo and was almost entirely the result of his own hubris (it happened because he fast forwarded through a bunch of idle turns to exploit enemy warp behaviour and wait out reinforcements, and in doing so, forgot that ced had been hit by jormungand earlier in the map; it didn't help that he was also explaining his strategy to his viewers and thus was more distracted than normal)
@@ryangallagher9723 Okay that's very funny.
The deadliest poison in the series was the one in Dorcas's mutton
Engage has such an amazing poison system, I'm amazed at how they managed to make it such an interactive effect for for and against the player. Also making antidotes heal you in addition to curing the status is such a simple and genius move, it's crazy they never made them that way before.
I think it's fine, but it's largely ignored past early game and you can just one round without it at all, kinda making debuffing them with it pointless unless it's the boss of the map and if they are affected by it. Enemy Wolf knights can be annoying, but more so due of their high speed. The poison is an afterthought since there are never so many to make it matter. Thief and Wolf knight are also just outclassed by better combat classes on Maddening, low strength and lower weapon might compared to their peers sucks. Zelkov prefers to just go Warrior, Yunaka falls off hard and Merrin would also generally prefer to go Warrior if you make them a combat carry, but can stay on wolf knight if you plan to have her for a few chapters then bench her.
Poison preventing or weakening healing is one thing that immediately came to mind.
In my own RPG Maker project, it cuts healing (including regeneration) to a quarter of the usual effect AND does nonlethal percent damage, forcing Brill to spend time curing it, end a battle fast, or overspecialize in healing. But a game like Fire Emblem doesn't even necessarily need the damage; turning off Physic and Vulneraries would potentially be dangerous on its own, once other threats get involved.
That's a good idea, usually I see it put on "bleed" type aesthetics, but I think poison is a more fruitful aesthetic for that sort of anti-buff effect because it's a more unique kind of damage - it's hard to imagine what would apply "bleed" statuses except attacks that are already high damage themselves, but poisons could come in all sorts of packages without needing to be tied to aesthetics of dealing weapon damage.
This is the same system that works on Guild Wars 2. Healing effects on the poisoned target reduce any source of healing by 33%.
It is deadly, since you can ignore the chip damage, but you cant ignore the fact that you can't heal that unit properly.
A theoretical disadvantage of using poison against enemies in the older games: If they actually die of the poison, no one gets the experience for the kill, probably.
That's prolly what happened, but imagine if *everyone* got the ExP. You could base your whole strategy around getting that ExP bonus, though that'd be soo tedious. Poison would still need a rework to become viable. Hmm, what if there were more mechanics for stalling, though? Like, better mobility after an encounter for hit-and-run, or bunkers where you can't do anything but can't be touched either while the enemy withers away just outside. Could be boring, but there may be a way for it to work
Lots of "toxic" discussions in each community im in this week. Strange how it happens all at once
Yet somehow this is the least contagious one as it's about poison
Something about footwear, and not the Movement stat booster.
Meanwhile Heroes' powercreep has made poison become part of the silly "deal damage before the first hit" kind of skill
Enjoy having half you HP gone before the combat even starts! Without needing to charge an AoE special!
The damage over time version of poison always felt more like something designed to be used against the player, rather than be a useful tool for the player to exploit as well. If you take the time to attack an enemy, generally you want to eliminate that enemy asap before they do too much damage to you on EP. Meaning you kill them before the poison effect would really do much to help.
I really liked how Engage implemented the poison mechanic, it feels they finally struck a balance to make it both a threat and a useful tool for the player. Fates wasn't bad, but it didn't really feel like a poison mechanic, moreso considering it shared the same effect as other skills, like the ones mentioned in the video. But it did synergise better with ninja's compared to the other skills, because of the debuff mechanics of throwing weapons.
The one thing I think you missed was the poison strike ability in Three Houses. It’s pretty similar to its usage in conquest, but it’s pretty much only useful for enemy units (I’ve seen some arguments for its use on Ignatz, but death blow with hunter’s volley generally seems more useful) since in 3H you really want to be one rounding as much as possible. However, enemy archers with poison strike are super common on maddening, and especially in the early game will really frequently bring a unit to 1HP, it’s another interesting use, but once again it really only benefits the enemy.
Poison Strike archers make physical tanks pretty useless on maddening.
@@GeraltofRivia22 You really have to place people carefully, but you do tend to get worn down. Part of what makes Mercie super useful.
I love the perfect cut at 7:59 before Zelkov’s demise😢 it took me until recently to properly understand how poison worked in engage but I think doing more damage per attack feels better than taking damage every turn as long as you plan properly your unit can’t die from it.
It is interesting how, while the end result is the same (enemy takes a flat increased amount of damage over time) the Engage version feels so much better. I think it’s because the old style was very linear in its effect: there was no interaction with the poison effect after application. Meanwhile in Engage you have to plan to maximize the effectiveness of the poison condition, and plays an active role in the turn’s combo.
Classic engage moment a unit getting killed by a low chance crit. An enemy with the 1% crit on Jade landed and killed her in one shot.
Poison status in thracia is very deadly as it can last the whole map without a restore status, the tellius one is also deadly cuz the chip dmg can be deadly
Man, this gave me a lot of ideas for Poison mechanics in our new game. Absolutely brilliant analysis. Fates and Engage did it best, yeah. However I feel like the passive damage wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't the ONLY thing that poison did.
Alfred!!!
The man! The myth! The legend!
Buona fortuna con lo sviluppo di Path of the midnight sun❤️
I think the general issue with Poison is both how readily available things are to counteract it, as well as it generally doing very little to affect your overall performance with offense and defense.
Poison doing very little would make sense in the scope of having really low amounts of access to healing to deal with it. Something like having your inventory stolen, and needing to fight your way through a map finding new resources. Or restricting your inventory amongst the army, so you can't easily access your stores of medicine. Also doesn't really help that Poison Weapons are treated like joke weapons, and have really bad stats that don't complement the ability to try and status something reliably. I could see them swing stronger, or weaker with higher accuracy.
But even when you get poisoned, it really doesn't hinder anything about a unit that wouldn't already kill them anyway. If they were low on HP, chances are you overextended or positioned yourself poorly. And in those rare cases, yes, poison can be dangerous. Considering it's poison though, I feel like it should either weaken your offence or your defense. To better tie in with a unit's survivability, and not be some extraneous status that happens after the fact.
Honestly feel like Poison is an RPG artifact they haven't touched since the beginning, as it falls more in line with that style of game.
I appreciate that in most romhacks I’ve played, they just omit poison completely
the most creative use of poison in old games I've seen was Excelblem's 0 strength strat to kill Lyon, because you can steal poison weapons with enemy control glitch and Lyon has massive defenses but no throne to heal him.
As you pointed out, players using poison sucked, no wonder there weren't legit poison weapons available.
I feel like a neat idea for poison would be lowering physical attack and attack speed of the poisoned unit. Perhaps it could also make the unit weak to a certain magic type (fire probably) in order to make it an actual obstacle. Imagine your mage dying to an enemy mage because they were poisoned, negating their typically high resistance, or being unable to deal with armored units because the poison makes you unable to deal meaningful damage. It would also turn it into a useful resource for players, making venin weapons or daggers actually valuable for once. It has the potential to be a little busted if the debuffs are too powerful, sure, but I really feel like they could be the key to making poison a good, meaningful mechanic.
I didn’t even know poison was a mechanic in 3 houses
It took IS a while - a loooong while - but I agree, they've finally figured out how to impliment "poison" as an interesting mechanic for FE.
0:49 Miyazaki's favorite.
Engage has by far the best concept of poison, it's interesting and meaningful to play with but also not mandatory. Sadly it is a bit overshadowed by how overtuned daggers are. Often dagger units just delete enemies themselves rather than act as a strategic setup unit.
Ive played FE for like 12 years and not once have I paid attention to this status debuff.
I used Zelkov all the time, yet never really got much use out of poison. Engage really seemed to focus on one-shotting enemies
Maybe try playing on Maddening, you are rarely going to be one hit killing enemies, ESPECIALLY towards the late game where even Archers can't one shot late game fliers.
@@shinobus.2654 Fair enough. I only got to around chapter 16 when I played maddening, which was still at the point where Pannette could pretty reliably take tough enemies down in one round.
@@shinobus.2654 You can still easily one round on maddening. If your archer can't one shot late game fliers you're probably using a bad one. Fogado with a Radiant bow has little issues doing so and it's not hard to get Clarine/Ivy one rounding with enough resources and making them your main combat carry. Any wrath/vantage user won't have many issues one rounding most enemies either. It's harder to one round, but daggers with their awful str in wolf knight and thief and lower base might are often not helping you kill chunky enemies anyway.
@@twigz3214 Maybe if you're cheesing with DLC or cheesing level ups with non-fixed growths.
Fogado simply does not get anywhere near enough magic to one shot end game fliers, not even Warrior Anna has enough magic to pull that off with the Radiant Bow so you're simply wrong there.
Citrine (not Clarine) needs some support to one round end game enemies as well, Ivy doesn't come remotely close to doing it unless you're roiding the hell out of her with stat boosters..
@@shinobus.2654 been awhile, my b on Citrinne. Yes units indeed don’t one round without support from emblems and forges, but they are there so why not use them. If there are specific instances where it’s hard fair enough but one rounding throughout the game isn’t. I’ve only played on fixed growths and did maddening twice. The path of least resistance usually has Ivy or a mage knight just murder things while bonded shield is active while you have a vantage/wrath user do things elsewhere. Getting Citrinne or Ivy to double is trivial with the massive speed boost from Lyn. If you mean specifically the end of the game I have less memories of that so if they massively stat inflate there fair enough. Either way I don’t think poison is helping with the lackluster damage thieves and wolf knights are doing, which was the original intent of the comment.
I definitely think they've done a better job at making poison threatening, I definitely used the Enemy Control Glitch in Sacred Stones to use some weapons I didn't get to use like Poison and Monster weapons , It definitely sucked knowing that the poison weapons were garbage though 😅
Poison is one of those statuses in Fire Emblem where the player is either scared of it, doesn't think much of it, or abuses it to gain an advantage. I personally have abused poison in Fates, Three Houses, and Engage to basically turn a very scary enemy into a joke.
In Engage you get your first dagger unit (hiya papaya girl) pretty early so you get a lot of time to toy with it. Also, if i remember correctly, the status effect is inflicted even when the unit chain attack. Meaning that you can give them the Emblem Lucina ring for more utility
I was thinking the same, but in retrospect I think he meant that the unit has to do damage just in general in a chain attack. The poison effect will trigger if the unit enters in someone else's chain attack (as in Yunaka doing 5 damage in a chain attack to an armored unit, before Jean does 0 damage normally), but won't trigger if that unit did 0 damage in that phase (as in Jean doing 5 damage in a chain attack to an armored unit, before Yunaka does 0 damage normally).
1:44 if poison dealt 5-15 damage I don’t think anyone would let venin weapons touch them lmao
Tbh I loved how engage handled poison. But I think it stopped too short...
0 damage daggers should be able to poison
It should have gotten way worse as the stacks happened (2 damage per node seems fine)
Healing it should have been easier. Anti toxin just becomes the new vulnerary after a while.
And I wish it could limit normal healing by 80% (so instead of 10 hp gained make it 8,6,4,2,0 at max poison (to clarify I'd only want 20% reduced healing per tick. Strong enough healing would mitigate it but it's a drain on resources to ignore it.))
Poison? More like, free healer exp
Ah, I wanted to see the fanbase eat each other in the comments section
Personally, it can go. The idea of poison only really works logically on the massive maps of Jugdral where travel & combat are blended thereby suggesting enough time passing for a poisoned/diseased wound to develop complications. Even in that kind of case, it seems better as a purely writing based concept and left out of gameplay, outside of having to go thru a level with reduced stats.
Man this is literally so toxic
I think it might be a neat idea to try giving poison a base HP debuff effect rather than one that damages/increases damage taken. The wolves in the Engage DLC were a good idea imo
I remember a rom hack, fe7 if, I think, which just tripled the damage dealt by poison, this made it legitimately fatal when suddenly at the start of a turn you could take like, 15 more damage.
6:38 - Have I mentioned how freaking amazing 3H is for its map interactivity? It still takes my breath away to see characters running through the map at their perspective level. Literally, I swear I thought it was Three Hopes for a minute!
Too bad the maps are mediocre
I'm fairly certain Kaze also refers to the debuffs that shurikens give as poison when you fight him in chapter 2, but I may be misremembering that.
Also, while Three Hopes wasn't mentioned (probably for being a Warriors game), it does use a unique version of poison, having the usually passive damage while also reducing either strength or defense; I can't remember which one. Granted, it's not that useful as the poison weapons are equal to iron when it comes to might and durability in Three Hopes, and I don't recall there being any poison skills, combat arts or magic, but it does help out in the early game, especially since I'm pretty sure Kronya always drops a free poison weapon in chapter 2.
The stat drops on hidden weapons is absolutely meant to be poison and what i thought hed mention for fates because its really engaging and makes any ninjas you face a genuine threat even if they dont have skills
I'm a bit surprised 3H is the only case so far where it features poison that follows the rules of "poison for thee, healing for me" through Verdand Wind's poisonous magic swamp gimmick, as anyone not affiliated with Nemesis' liberation army is inmune to the poison and gets some free healing instead (rip that one Agarthan from the start of the map tho).
Ah poison the damage that I literally used to farm exp for my healers and always complained when it was gone ;P.
The fact there's an entire character in Elibe dedicating to humiliating Poison in the games that make it a buff to Healers at the highest convenience is truly comical. Months appearantly aren't enough to poison a man to death, should've just hired an assassin to script Silencer.
I’ve never seen a fire emblem video but I thought the joke with the title was funny so I watched and enjoyed it. Thank you.
Poison worked really well with Break in engage. In most games you'd probably not want to send your low health thieves at a big threat because well... They'd get killed. But giving them a free combat to apply their status after breaking an enemy always felt so damn good to do. Makes the order in which units attack a boss matter as well
Correction. Not only can you get venom stones from breaking all barriers on specific demonic beast but you can also get them from cats or dogs using the feeding mechanic. They are much more common there.
Actually that type of ore is still very rare and the one instance of it not being guaranteed on a specific enemy. The majority of the time I still get Umbral Steel.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 it is nearly 100% on posion beast. While I can't remember the exact name both it and the umbral beast look really similar and are at times on the same maps here and there.
You forgot about dark mage in 3 houses having access to poison strike
I was shocked there's toxicity then I reread the title.
I just hate poison because in Sands of Time (Blazing Blade, 29E/31H) it took forever for the NPC guards' poison damage to play out at the start of each turn, and I restarted the chapter a couple of times after goofs.
I absolutely love how poison works in engage, otherwise poison is only effective as a chip tactic- and fire emblem rarely has situations where extended chip is useful. I will never stop thinking those weapons aren’t cool and fancy tho
You actually can steal and use a poison weapon from a warrior in path of radiance during the chapter where you have to shove the monks.
Man… it’s baffle me how much anti-poison that we used in engage if they have the darn item some hp restoration( but still bothers me that is the same hp recover as a normal elixir)
So true that poison isn't at all threatening in GBA FE through Tellius. Anytime I get hit by poison in those games I never bother to remove the status. If poison damage was percentage based back then it would be a lot more threatening.
Poison is just a kind of annoying mechanic is most RPGs it appears in for me and I ignore it if the game allows for it. I do like the twist with Engage though. Makes it a bit more viable to go up against armored units without needing a massive weapon advantage in many cases. Just sucks that the best way I've found to use it is with the Mage Cannoneer so I have to go through those crappy dlc maps if I want to dot everything up before they get in range of my other units. Also MC works great with Claude's gambit since you don't even have to land a hit to apply a stack of poison.
As I play and learn more about this series I see that Fates and Engage have great gameplay ideas no other game has ever tried. That makes them not only stand out but have some of the best FE gameplay you can get. Now if only they could they could get that with a decent story and cast. Then we'd have peak Fire Emblem.
it is funny just how scared they where of giving the player poison
I wish there was something in Engage that tells you what poison did. It took me forever to figure it out.
We love radiant dawn requiring disarm and stealing to get Venin Weapons and funny enough Venin Axe was actually unobtainable in radaint dawn since it doesnt exist outside of enemies with only 1 weapon in part 1, (it can be stolen in path of radiance techincally)
Tbh while I see why Engage’s poison is meaningful and dangerous to face. It never bothered me at all mostly bc it was so obvious who has it, combined with Engage more player phase instead of tanking style with the break mechanic. I never had to bother healing it it was too easy to plan around and counter. I think it could’ve been more spread out to more unit types so you actually can be caught off guard when it’s inflected
So overall, Engage litteraly makes poison a Player character utility instead of a threat. Damn.
Kinda underselling Thracia’s poison a tad. It’s applied by dark mages who hit pretty hard and never heals on its own. Those two things make a massive difference compared to how effective it is compared to other entries. There are definitely times when a unit who’s far away gets hit by an attack that takes 75% of their health and now they’re on a timer or they just die on player phase.
Honestly, the GBA poison is the best.
It isn't a major threat on its own, but it's a a small consistent bit of damage, and it will wear the player down if you aren't paying attention.
It's a great way to give cannonfodder in the late game a relevant attack without just massivly inflating the stats of every enemy.
And importantly, since its a DOT, and only a small DOT, it gives you the time to react.
This makes it minor enough to not be frustating, but major enough that you do need to actually react to it at some point.
Which is exactly what you need for stuff like Brigant cannonfodder in the lategame.
Also, the fact that it's limited to the AI is fine. Videogames thrive on assymetrical gameplay. Its one of the easiest ways to ensure the experience is (somewhat) balanced & fun.
Engage's poison is the worst because it fluctuates wildly between completly irrelevant and absurdly overpowered.
This is especially frustrating when the game doesn't give you the time to react due to how quickly the stacks can spiral out of control in a single turn.
For as long as I've known it, Fire Emblem has had a bit of a problem with meaningful negative effects. The way damage calculation works means that for the most part, units take so much damage proportional to HP from any one attack that if they're going to die then they're going to die in one or two rounds, and if they're not going to do that then there's nothing poison can do to change it. Most negative conditions only have an impact in edge cases where two attacks would leave about 15% or less HP remaining, and even that's only for seal skill type effects, poison is even more niche. It tends to result in negative statuses just feeling like an alternative to magic as a tool for taking out super-high DEF units.
An interesting consequence of this is that negative statuses feel like their value relative to other tools depends a lot on the difficulty, especially when difficulty is just the result of higher enemy stats. 10% of HP lost to a poison tick is a lot more meaningful when your units' regular attacks are doing 20% damage than when they're doing 70% damage.
Pretty cool, the way I saw Engage's poison is like a reimagination of Fate's DEF/RES debuffs for knives/shuriken attacks.
But yeah for most of the series history poison has been ridiculously ineffective when dealing passive damage. I'd wonder if it was more like Pokemon's toxic and the damage doubled every turn it was in effect, it'd probably have been threatening enough to actually warrant anti-venoms even if it couldn't kill a unit.
If you drink an antitoxin, shouldn't you develop antibodies that would prevent you from being affected by that poison going forward? And if the enemy is just using a different kind of poison, then why does the same antitoxin still cure it. I'm pretty sure that's not how that works.
in radiant Dawn poison could overwrite a previous status condition as I've learned the hard way. so I put a red dragon to sleep and I had one or two turns left before it woke up so I had to kill it now while it's asleep so Micaiah who would normally be one hit killed by it can safely hit it, double to finish it off, and the prediction screen showed that he was not fighting back (cuz sleep) well she hits once with Valaura and suddenly big fucko attacks and one hit kills my bloody Micaiah sending me directly to game over.
Now Y'all know that radiant dawn has that extra layer of fuck you inside of it. Enjoy the info.
I know it's not technically poison, but since it has a very similar utility compared to Engage's poison I think it's fair to talk about the stat debuffing weapons from Fate. Sure they work differently when it comes to enabling damage from your units and it has the added utility of decreasing the offensive capabilities of the enemies but I think it's fair to say that Engage's poison is derived from Fate's debuffing weapons.
On that note, these two debuffs (Fate stat debuff and Engage poison) are definitely my favorite status effects we had in the series so far. It truly adds a new layer of utility to some classes/units you can't really find in the rest of the series.
Honestly Fates had my favorite version of poison. It really allows you to build a character that splashes damage around even if they can't deal it out themselves. I appreciate the versatility of Engage's poison though, allowing your whole team to make use of the damage buff. Perhaps a combination can be done in the future, but i think that may be too strong.
Did Zelkov die from that?
YES LMAO
I’d like a small percentage chip + combat stat debuff combined. That should balance out urgency (my lord is getting hit harder and does no damage now! But they at least won’t die yet immediately, so I have a bit of time, phew) with a real consequence to letting it linger.
This video would be so much cooler if the disclaimer wasn't in title
You can steal the poison ax in the Shaffer map / bishop shove with volke in path of radiance tho
There is at least one spell in Shadow of Valentia, but it might have been gained from the DLC healer promotion.
Alfred getting hit by a 40% dagger and being too far to pass along an antitoxin.
Fire emblem also has a toxicity problem, it just isnt potent enough. Still waiting for fire emblem to go viral
Toxic swamps in Echoes Shadows of Valentia differ from how you describe them in Gaiden, in that it is the female saint (promoted cleric) who is herself immune to terrain damage and who auto-heals everybody next to her by an amount (5 HP) that happens to exactly equal the swamp damage. (Flyers also are unaffected by the swamp, of course.)
Am I right in thinking healing spells in Gaiden did not earn any EXP for their casters? In Echoes they do, making it easy enough for the cleric to promote before the first swamp map.
What about Fe3H bringing back poison strike?
Keep in mind that in path of radiance there's a stealable poison sword... However it's not worth the trouble lol
your videos always make me so impatient for the next FE game lol
One series of videos i think could be really fun to see from your perspective, is what would happen if different lords were just dumped into the shoes of another, isekai style!
How would Leif do at replacing Byleth? How would Ike fare if he replaced Corrin? For the sake of argument, let's assume they keep their growths, personal skills (if any), and they start in the class closest to the lord they replace... As faithful to their old self as possible, while following the new games rules. Would they tend to carry the entire game or fall behind?
My first fe7 iron man Eli wood died to poison bc I forgot he was low
Poison in Engage is almost perfect. The only change I'd make is to have it so that 0 damage still applies Poison, since Covert units tend to be lacking in damage compared to other combat units
Welp, guess defense tanks will still be inferior to avoid tanks as usual
@@AkameGaKillfan777 is that even true? I haven't played every FE game, but avoid tanks are absolute unreliable garbage in most of the games I've played. Armor knights specifically aren't usually great, but I personally think Engage's changes to the archetype managed to make them very strong, and there are definitely other classes that can defense tank
@@juicyjuustar121 Both unit types when executed correctly take 0 damage from attacks themselves, but unlike dodge tanks that avoid everything, slower defense tanks can still suffer from status effects that only need attacks to land rather than deal damage.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 that's true, I just think the issue with dodge tanks is that they tend to be unreliable. It's the same reason you wouldn't want to use an axe fighter in something like FE6, yeah they could be great, but you have to rely on RNG. With defense tanks, their ability to tank is entirely determined by your strategy. So I guess it could be argued that dodge tanks get worse and defense tanks get better the better you are at the game, but it does depend on the game. Dodge-tanking in Engage was a legitimate strategy (though still not as good as defense if you as me)
i feel poison just kinda doesnt work most of the time when tied to weapons, because hp values are not that big and also that the weapons are worse than IRON weapons. using as hazard makes more sense to me but it needs to not completely suck so that it's at least mildly threatening
Everyone always talks about the wyvern spam in FE6. but by GOD was the poison bandits annoying as hell
I utterly hated poison in fates; if a dagger plinks off my general's armor, how the hell did it poison me? It has to enter the bloodstream to "poison me", that's how it works, yeah? Is it radiating a literal aura of poisoned ill-will? It just made the already frustrating mechanic even more of a headache, nevermind the fact all three routes are LAZY with ninjas, poison abilities, and the like. It's a game of such great status effects as "poison", and "the ones poison's disgusting viability generously allows to exist"; all of which include more stat lowering, such as with enfeeble, and the very rare freeze or entrap.
If there was a character in fates immune to poison, they'd be my instant favorite, no question. If that exists, then that's hilarious, I missed them :3 But good lord, it makes me never want to return to any route in fates.
That's why I uses my Powersaves device to give my units Immune Status
I can't believe the wild things people come up with when they break these games. The lvl 1 Jean beating the final boss is nuts.😂
Now see I heard you say Panuhseeuh is the cure to poison
But I'm pretty sure you meant Puhnaeshuh
They could do it like in DnD and give poison an accuracy minus. And the engage version of poison could be put on a new status like bleed maybe?
Poison Strike is one of the worst skills this series has ever had. May as well be enemy exclusive for how little benefit it offers players.
The thumbnail is perfect and yeah I always disliked that status so much
I am there is not some kind of poison that reduces the amount of healing a unit gets.
Poison Strike in 3H took effect as long as the unit was hit by it, even if the attacker with the ability dies from counterattacks.
I thought status effects were completely overkill in Fates. Debuff stacking, Hexing Rods were permanent, and there wasn't any way to get rid of them or block them completely.
Everything wearing off after one turn is all that's needed, Antitoxins, Antidotes or whatever should cure every status effect, be sold in unlimited quantities at shops, and I would like to see more items in the future that give units a skill when used, even if it's only one per file. Immune Status would be really nice.
debuffs in fates didn't stack unless they had inevitable end, which is only in one map on optional enemies for extra loot. The Ninja's can be annoying, but I think it's balanced by the fact they don't inflict debuffs if they die. I agree the learning curve can be rougher for those new to fates, but I think how much it encourages aggression by making you remove the source of these debuffs makes the maps generally play better.
@@twigz3214 On Lunatic, enemies have Inevitable End on Chapters 17, 25, and Endgame. Staff Savant is on every Staff wielder in Chapter 26 and Endgame, and Chapters 11, 14, 20, 23, 26 and Endgame have Hexing Rod enemies.
Stat debuffs on shurikens/daggers always trigger if the attack lands, even if they die, and it's especially tricky on Endgame since the Master Ninjas have Duelist's Blow.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 was mainly ignoring endgame maps altogether because frankly just skip them, I agree playing those straight up is annoying but don’t find it an issue in other maps at all. You’re better off clearing the map as fast as possible anyway and the fact that inevitable end is in endgame doesn’t matter at all. If you don’t know ltc strats it’s still not hard to 2-3 turn with minimal setup. Daggers/Shurikens still debuff but poison strike, grisly wound, seal skills, etc all don’t. If Inevitable end is an issue on chapter 17 I’d recommend actually playing the map and not spamming end turn, 25 is really the only map it practically exists in. Hexing rod can be annoying but you can often just kill the enemy with it before you get in range and if you can’t it’s really heavily telegraphed and having 1 unit get their hp halved halfway through the map isn’t going to make it unplayable.
@@twigz3214 Why did you need backhandedly assume my playstyle with 0 evidence whatsoever? Though it seems like I'm not the only person here that you decided to start an argument with completely unprovoked.
If anyone ever tells you fates poison strike isn't good, make them sit through the map with a million poison strike trample ninjas in conquest.
Honestly I feel like passive damage would be scarier if it was like 6-8 at the top of the enemy phase. That way there's nothing between the enemy units and the poison damage. When the damage is passive on player phase its essentially ignorable.
What if poison cut your hit rates for a set number of turns?
7:59 Skipping your Zelkov getting absolutely destroyed, huh?
Facts no one cares about: all poison weapons in Fire Emblem should really be venom. Poison is ingested, venom is injected. They get this right sometimes by calling the weapons Venom weapons.
One of the correct uses of poison is the most well known: “I put poison in his mutton!” Poor Dork-ass
Is it an emulator you use for Fates? If so, which one is it? Cause It looks amazing
Wonder if this guy has played a game called Smash Remix as Marth is in there?
Fun fact, due to Engage being delayed so long, it was actually supposed to be released BEFORE Three Hopes initially, which is really funny because Poison works very similarly in that game as it does in Engage.
In Three Hopes, Poison is a debuffing status that lowers enemy defense and resistance drastically which allows you to deal more damage to them, rather than dealing damage to them over time.
Three Hopes being released first unintentionally hinted at how Engage poison would work lmao
If this was a community toxicity video, it'd be a documentary-lenght video lmao