With all that in mind, I'd like to unironically strike a lot of the royals from the Gamebreaker list (Timerra is also bad for similar reasons to Alcryst, and then she has worse availability than he does)
And add Wyvern Knight, Griffin Knight, and Mage Knight to the Gamebreaker class list, for the reasons mentioned above.
Oh, and speaking of which, Pandreo has been underestimated back then and is seen as rather average, but after I talked with the other people, he's actually a lot more powerful and have good ease of usage and viability. He just outstrips most other magic units. Just look at how Clanne and Framme can't even compare to him, and by extent, he even just outshines Citrinne, and the main reason is due to his ridiculous bases (yes, it's also part of the Solm arc powerspike), with 16 Mag, 18 Dex, 17 Speed, and 22 Res. He also has actual build growth too, at 15%, more than any magic-based unit should normally have. Magic is also seen as the best overall weapon type in the new metagame. Basically, some people really compared him as a magic counterpart to Kagetsu. If that wasn't bad enough, reclassing him to Sage makes his magic attack power even stronger, and already comes with plenty of SP to learn skills. I expect significant arguments to tell why he isn't in the game-breaker list.
Edited by JustNormalMusicLover How many games got ported into Nintendo Switch? A lot of them.
Ferdinand Von Aegir fan
I've heard that Alfred is a pretty bad unit, so I would call into question him being here.
Not sure though.
Muramasa got. Hide / Show Replies
Yeah, I honestly thought that too. My personal experiences with him, is he's genuinely pretty bad...and honestly, so are the Solm royals. Sure you can equip them with a lot of bullshit to offset their weaknesses, but they just aren't too good stat wise across the board. Reducing the enemy's critical hit rate isn't actually that great compared to just avoid altogether I feel. And not many enemies even have high crit weapons or classes to begin with.
Alfred though, his unique skill should theoretically help, but he's way too fragile and it requires him not to attack for a full turn. I don't feel like he's really all that good, personally.
Like sure you can give him an emblem and an overpowered smith weapon but....you can just give them to units that are already good even without them, I feel.
And personally, the other one I would call into question is Alear themselves whose Divine Dragon class is honestly....bad. Just bad.
Edited by Auraicide To do what other people do. To look at the future, and say "It gets better." How badly I want that.
The entries at the moment dont even explain why they are really Game Breakers either. I kinda just describes their personal skill, unique class, and the emblem to use.
Unlike the Fates royals, I dontsee evidence of them being OP.
Muramasa got.
I'm not really qualified to talk about what is "broken" necessarily as I haven't even fully finished my first playthrough (and only on Hard at that), but the only units I've used that have really overshadowed my others in terms of growths and number of kills are Yunaka (with the Dragon Vein strategy), Ivy and Griffin Knight Chloe. My Fogado has been very useful, but that might be more down to me having had the luck of getting a S-rank Claude ring and putting it on him as well as spending SP to get him Canter. If I'd invested in Alcryst I'd wager he would be better thanks to how easy it is to activate his personal skill.
Edited by Perentie
The main point is that the current entries, especially the Lords, don't really seem to fit, and they barely explain why.
Muramasa got.
I’m also going by a lot of what I see or can gather is general consesus(always going to be sampling fallacy). Characters like Yunaka, Louis, and Chloe are consistently referred to as good unless someone gets unlucky with them, but I see very little from anything I read that really point to Alfred or Timerria being particularly good and Alear’s personal skill is only really sort of useful for the very early game before +1 and 2s become completely negligible differences and Alear doesn’t have the stat line to keep up with most without massive amount of item and weapon investment.
I just don’t know if they’d fit.
Ivy is a fairly alright option as a ranged magic flyer…but she’s still kind of outclass in magic by any of the land mages. She’s not a bad unit, but not nearly the kind of bullshit like say…dark fliers were. Her unique ability isn’t even especially useful for a fragile unit that requires them to get into drawn out fights.
I dunno. I think a better consensus is needed.
Just seems a bit reaching with a few of them to try and present them on the same tier of the Nohr and Hoshido Royals but, I really have a tough time thinking it’s the same here.
To do what other people do. To look at the future, and say "It gets better." How badly I want that.
Part of where the issue might be that, because of the Emblem system, characters can get skills, stats, and additional weapons, which is why growths might be so low.
Since it seems most Emblems give raw stat bonuses as skills, that might be where the idea some are OP comes in. I'm not sure though as I'm going off of what I hear, and see outside the game.
Muramasa got.
Aight, Diamant is not a gamebreaker, full stop. Most of the information under his heading is inaccurate. He's described as a "sturdy lightning bruiser" but in reality, in Maddening, he consistently struggles with doubling mid-tier speed enemies as the game progresses, and his only stand-out stat is his admittedly monstrous build, with his hp, strength, and defense all being around average with units who join after him.
Sol is listed as an advantage, but his dex is so terrible that it never has a reliable activation rate.
The Emblems listed as being good for him are either DLC, come late in the game, or are tightly contested by more-specialized units who use their qualities better than he does (for example, Ivy all but requires Lyn to function and Goldmary becomes an unbreakable wall and Panette a crit machine with Ike). Additionally, his actual growths and bases are not very good and are propped up by his personal class line, which itself isn't great since it lacks the positive qualities Hero, Warrior, and Wyvern Knight have, meaning he's trapped in a class that doesn't do much beyond being a solid footlocked combat unit.
In reality, Diamant has the same problems Céline has (lack of specialization, getting outclassed by specialized units, his proc is not at all reliable) and she's not on the page anymore.
I'm less concerned about her, but I do think Ivy needs to be kept under the radar, since, as I mentioned, she basically requires Lyn, one of the strongest Emblems in the game, to function properly with her bad speed and dex. Her terrible luck also compromises her good bulk.
Edited by Raxis
I mostly agree but is 40% Speed growth really low enough to call "bad"? I get that Lindwurm doesn't boost that stat's growth, but that's a problem of the class rather than Ivy herself.
Ivy's unique classes have terrible speed modifiers (Lindwurm has the same speed base as Great Knight) and are some of the only classes in the game to provide no boost to speed growth. Ivy's personal speed growth isn't bad, but her personal classes do nothing to help her with it.
Okay, I adore using her and I'll never not baby her into relevance, but Celine's not a game breaker T_T Her speed and magic are too low to really help unless you seriously grind her in Firene and Brodia.
Addressing the points: Ignis's damage amp is not reliable (Celine's dex cap in Vidame is lowish at 27) and the damage boost isn't going to be very impressive until late. Her growths are also not really good.
Edited by Raxis
Sorry, I added her based on my own experiences (and had no idea this was even being discussed, I almost never see this happen on this site). Magic is really strong in this game and my Céline has been a monster, but I forgot that I spent the downtime where Sigurd's ring wasn't available having Tiki stapled to her. I'll clean that up.
I will say though that Override with a magic weapon and the Mystical bonus is something that shouldn't be underestimated. Céline is the only unit with this combo and it definitely carried me through the early game.
She can be added back at a later point if the meta decides she's actually good :)
Backup classes are more powerful and useful than you think. I might be a bit zealous in reintroducing Diamant and Timerra but any character who can Chain Attack is that much more helpful even in Maddening. Emblem Lucina has also suddenly become not just useful but OP when factoring Backup classes (Dual Assist).
Diamant and Timerra's prf classes do not stand out in any way in terms of chain attacking (well they're better than Swordmaster, I guess). They don't get Brave Assist like Heroes do, nor do they get 1-3, potentially 1-4 range chain attacks like Warriors do. And the problem is, if you remove them from those classes their stats tank because their bases and growths are tied to being in their prf classes. If you wanna see something quite depressing, look at this:
https://i.imgur
. com/h7N2Le2.png
(You'll have to recombine the link because tv tropes doesn't allow hotlink images, sorry)
Edited by Raxis
So, after Engage having been out for close to 6 months, and the meta having started to shake itself out, I'd like to make a few notes:
Firstly, Alfred, Celine, and Alcryst are all varying degrees of relatively mediocre.
Alfred, for his part, is basically proto-Amber who is himself proto-Panette, although reclassing out of his personal class Avenir is in fact viable (he's one of a few units who appreciate's Paladin's balance)
Celine falls far behind every single other mage in the game in some category, and her only saving grace is something literally any unit could do as a Martial Monk: B staves. For instance, she's slower than both Clanne and Pandreo (significantly, I might add) and is weaker than Ivy and Citrinne, and in general just... doesn't catch up very well. Ignis is also just not a valid factor considering most of the time it barely adds more than 10 damage on a proc rate that might only barely break 25%.
Alcryst is the absolute king of unreliable shenanigans. It's FUNNY when it works, and it's certainly possible to form a build around him, but it's inherently a bit jank to try and finagle something useful out of it. Being in the only good Covert class is pretty nice though, and gives nice utility with certain Emblems.
Other than that, I'll say that about half the units mentioned in the "Other Characters" section are just... not that great? Tanking in general is a bit overstated as a necessary role to have, be it face- or dodgetanking, and then Jean and Anna have the perennial problem of "I need giant amounts of XP dumping to be worthwhile" and then they don't even turn out particularly interesting.
Before anyone mentions Anna's money generation... she has a base Luck of 3. And costs 5000 gold just to make her a USABLE COMBAT UNIT. It takes 10 procs of her personal to BREAK EVEN and her absolute max luck by the end of the game barely even breaks 30 half the time, so unless you staple Byleth or Tiki to her the whole damn game, she's not proccing it often enough for it to matter.
Finally, a note on classes.
Specifically, flying classes and mage knight.
Wyvern, Griffin, and both Ivy and Hortensia's personal classes, as well as Melusine (Zelestia's personal) are all, quite frankly, utterly amazing classes, beating out Warrior pretty damn handily by my estimation, due not just to their stats (which are excellent) but also the fact that they, well, fly, and thus have major mobility advantages.
Mage Knight is the other absolute best cavalry class, being the absolute PREMIER magic combat class for every single unit in this game (if combined with Celica, for instance, literally every unit, even if they have no innate magical prowess whatsoever, can be boosted up to the point where a single augment or Seraphim can two-shot every single enemy in the entire game on Maddening)
But the real cherry on top for mounted dominance is quite simple.
Bonded Shield.
See, Bonded Shield has a rather unique mechanic where if the unit using it is a certain unit type, (cav, flying, or armor) ANY UNIT whose unit type matches the user's unit type will gain *100%* Bonded Shield proc rate, guaranteed.
This means that a fast enough unit in any of those classes is literally 100% invincible on enemy phase, and it's quite common for many maps to devolve into complete and utter deathballs wherein you have a group of 5 cavs or fliers in a Bonded Shield formation charging headlong towards the enemies and just... not taking any damage whatsoever.
This is aided by the fact Speed is one of the easiest stats to patch up in Engage, with tools like inheriting Speed +5, speed boosting tonics and/or meals, and Emblems which grant anywhere from +3 to +5 Spd, alongside other tools like Byleth's Covert instruct (for +5 Spd) and with DLC, Chrom and Robin's Rally (for +3 to all stats)
Hide / Show Replies