Res: the true Fire Emblem meme stat

[@akirasou]

Okay so clarification re the third thing against Res being that HP works well as a bulk stat, since I worded it badly: - Though I did say one-shottable bulk, the Engage example was not good since while I do think it's a common trend, high Res units often having low HP isn't a property of Res itself. HP working as a Res salve works better for the examples of Archanea and Valentia that I mentioned later - I neglected to mention that I value one-shottable bulk more highly than bulk from getting doubled, since by now, many FE games have ways of patching up Spd to the point where you won't get doubled (e.g. Wary Fighter, Spd stacking through tonics, meals etc) or avoiding taking damage on a first hit entirely (in Chain Guard and Bonded Shield). And also that if your low Res unit must be in range of such a unit, they should either KO on counter or you don't get doubled anyway - I ended up conflating the two without actually explicitly stating my priorities from the second point, leading to the overall confusion and bad point made Since there are a few comments like this and I'm working on responding to some comments now, I figured that I would write this to preempt any future comments about it. Thanks to everyone to pointed this out, I really appreciate it and hope to continue to have your interest :>

[@MrMarket1987]

Can't say I'm very familiar with newer or even some much older FE mechanics to make sense wholly about this, but I am at least familiar with stat debuffs and Wary Fighter through a hack and discussions with folks now and then to grasp some of it. Can't be surprised with being one-rounded as much if you have the means to drastically reduce crits and doubling, unless someone hits so hard with an ability that you just lose a unit through some other BS anyway. I am familiar with the fact some older FE games also had even higher HP caps, often for warriors, which I guess lends credence to the fact that if you are a physical unit, more often than not you'll survive better not only because enemy magic isn't frequent enough to threaten it when it does hit as there's ways to mitigate it, but by virtue of your own mages just plain being under MORE threat from things (often not far off) that aren't casting the magic they are being expected to be good at enduring.

[@user-pp5qg6ip5x]

The final kels in the cofien is that of the 3 stats you maition res is the only one wich is sitlaitonla Luk and res doent ned a specific tipe of unite to be usful reglete sof seng of tha enamy alsw tomes have normaly lower might than weposn of siliarar wepen leel claival if not comper the might of fire to a iron srot or and iron axe res cin aosw be negiede buy fler and luna but you cna't neget luk or skill wiont usig a stuats befor hand like stone

[@actuallizard]

Luck: This does.... something Thanks Fire Emblem for your excellent stat descriptions

[@akirasou]

Me when the stat does something, maybe, possibly

[@onwithmarie6769]

It affects many things. You know what those things are, right?

[@Aego384]

The only game where Luck was relevant to me was Awakening with Armsthrift.

[@ZX-Gear]

I love how Berwick Saga took out the Luck stat but instead made a whole new mechanic based on it. Basically blank level ups increase the luck tier and it can give you the ability to tank a hit that would kill you otherwise.

[@akirasou]

@@ZX-Gear oooooooooooo that is really cool! Thanks for the cool fact :>

[@justinhatguy]

You forgot the best attribute of Luck the ability to use the best axe in the game the devil axe without nuking yourself

[@akirasou]

So trueeeeee, definitely should have mentioned that

[@reicherwallace6774]

The Devil's luck. Best luck.

[@soapsatellite]

1% minimum tho

[@oEllery]

I think it's useful to have a select unit, or specific units, with high Res to deal with certain situations. If there's one point that I could make in favor of Res being a useful stat... I can't really picture a situation where I am thinking "I wish I had trained a unit with really high Luck!" but you can definitely say that about Res. If you don't have Kaze to deal with large groups of enemy mages, it may limit the ways that you can approach that encounter. I think all of the other points made in the video greatly outweigh this factor, though. I agree that "Some Skill and Luck are useful on almost every unit, Res is only useful on specific units" is a strong argument at its core.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

In the GBA games, it double as Status Staves Avoid, so there's a few times it's useful. I remember it being particularly important in SS, but it makes FE7's endgame go more smoothly. It's one more reason that makes Marcus good. In Thracia, it's also useful against the tons of Dark Mages you face near the end (Status Staves too, but only if you have really high Res).

[@klodpraisor]

3H DLC is the one time I coped because the bolting mages have a crit chance on most of the Ashen Wolves; I legit had to reroll all my divine pulse and reset SIX times before I said fuck it and lower the difficulty. Engage is also a case where high luck work against one of the unit being Ivy, who is actually quite bulky but has abysmal luck to the point enemies regularly hit >10% crit on her for her to enemy phase effectively with 1-3 thunder tomes.

[@akirasou]

Yes, I agree, especially on the Kaze example as the specialist magekiller, as it were. Like you said, the thesis of the video is that I think Res can be useful as a specialist stat on like one or two units, but it's not a generally useful stat in my opinion in the same way as Skl or Lck

[@noukan42]

​@@akirasouDex in most games is just as specilist and less impactful in the situations that call for it. You can hit 90+ accuracy, if not 100, againist most enemies with all but the least accurate weapons even with low dex. High evasion enemies are rarer than than magic enemies by far. If your strategy linger on never missing a single 90% you are probably playing on the kind of challenges that doesn't reflect normal play at all. And when you do fight evasive enemies, dex only makes it more reliable, res makes unwinnable fights winnable. There is never an enemy againist wich you have 0% hitrates unless your dex is good. Honestly lately i had enought suffering from sucess crits that i concluded that unless you are going for a crit build the crit rates on dex is actually a negative more often than a positive.

[@lagspike7763]

I think the existence and value of Kaze in CQ is an argument for why res is IMPORTANT in CQ than how you can get away with low res. You NEED *some* form of high res in CQ. If Kaze was gone (like in an iron man) you’re going to hate your life on CQ 26 because it’s just going to be way way way way way way way more annoying to get through it (not quite impossible but much harder)

[@noishfanboy1141]

Brainiac destroyed fr

[@akirasou]

Yo LagSpike! So I don't disagree - if anything, I agree. That's why I said that Res can be helpful as a specialist stat where you do sometimes want one or two units with high amounts. Still, I think that Lck and Skl are more likely to be stats that any general unit would prefer having

[@noishfanboy1141]

@@akirasou also not to mention that for some reason kaze also has an insanely high hp growth it's like 70 percent which puts him around like Arthur tier of hp so yeah kaze is really just him when it comes to magical bulk

[@lagspike7763]

@akirasou That's fair, I suppose.

[@ndimensional15]

I really dislike the trend that high-res units almost always get a debuff in HP. It’s surprising that there aren’t many (if any) classes that have a high HP and Res growth rates/bases. Fates probably had this best. Kaze, Kaden, Azama and Priestess Sakura actually had somewhat solid growth rates in both HP and Res, giving them an interesting niche as mage tanks, and actually makes Res feel useful.

[@akirasou]

Yeah, in hindsight I think that I worded my HP/Res point poorly, but this was kind of what I was trying to get at. Like I'm mostly concerned with one-shot thresholds since by now, many games have ways of patching Spd to the point where you don't get doubled, or other ways of preventing you from taking damage, so I appreciate one-shottable bulk a lot Fates I think is an interesting example since HP generally is low, so oftentimes the difference in one-shottable bulk between your magic tanks and your physical tanks isn't as large, as you've highlighted. Fates does also benefit from not having Pure Water or Barrier, though there are, of course, other ways of stacking Res if you really wanted to, like cooking, tonics, Res+ and the Rally

[@Illusion517]

My opinion of res is that though it's not a stat you need often, it's a very nice stat to have when you do. Especially in the games that actually have threatening mages such as binding blade and the radiance games. Having to restart a map because a resless goober got one shot by a siege tome despite the hit chance is hardly my idea of a good time.

[@akirasou]

Yeah, I don't think that anyone will complain about having too much Res, other than perhaps in the games where 0 damage sighted by the AI means they won't attack you at all, like with Maddening Engage and with Conquest. Still, I would generally say that if I were to patch up getting oneshot by a siege tome in any way, I would prefer for it to be with additional HP rather than with the same amount of Res. Of course, that changes if there are multiple siege tomes involved, but we are discussing oneshots and all

[@muddak3292]

Luck is the best stat because it gives Finn a 90% chance to straight up be invincible in Thracia Anyway, something else about luck that Akira didn't explicitly mention: in a lot of games, it is one of the very few ways to affect magic avoid. In addition, because it also directly boosts your 'normal' avoid, it serves as an all-purpose stat that actually greatly boosts the power of certain units. A good example to me is Clarine in FE6. A mounted staff unit you get early is great, she has high speed too. But because her luck is so high, she gains even more avoid to the point she can be a very effective dodgetank despite her pitiful HP and defense. On the whole I actually think Thracia wasn't far off the mark with res, having it integrated into your magic stat. Thracia stats (caps) as a whole are of course not perfect, they have plenty of issues, but the way it interacts with items like Barrier or Pure Waters make it very dynamic.

[@akirasou]

Finn gaming hours I did actually mention the magical avoid point, albeit really briefly during the exceptions section. You're right though, it does help the dodgetanking potential of various units to have Lck, since it provides that extra boost And yeah, I think that Thracia handled it relatively well, not least because high Mag enemies often have high Res anyway, and physical units with high Res in games with the Str/Mag split generally don't use Mag offensively. I always find it impressive how boring FE has managed to make mage vs mage battles... But yeah, I think the partial redundancy could just be folded in properly, and as you mentioned, the interactions with things like Barrier, Pure Waters and the Flame Sword (+5 Mag moment) are funny and interesting

[@growasowa3444]

I'd unironically love to see a modern take on stat caps of 20.

[@akirasou]

@@growasowa3444 I imagine there probably are some hacks out there that are about low caps. You're right though, it sounds interesting and it would be cool to see how IntSys proper would handle 20 caps rather than the stat inflation that we've seen in recent entries

[@A_Person_64]

​@@growasowa3444same or going even further with Berwick Saga tier stat deflation.

[@NarrowSpark96]

I'm actually of the same opinion. Res is usually the one stat a unit doesn't necessarily need. Having no Skill is awful for reliable kills, and having no Luck is a death sentence at worse, or a source of annoyance and constant paranoia at best. Meanwhile, Mages are often rare, and even if not you have ways to counter them as you said.

[@NarrowSpark96]

And then, on other opposite side: High skill means misses are rare and gives you a crit chance. High luck means being crit is rare, but it often contributes to high avoid and also slightly to hit. Res just means you don't take as much damage from a less common enemy type which items can already help against.

[@akirasou]

Wooooooo agreement. Yeah, that was basically my point. Thanks for watching and commenting :>

[@saltyralts]

alla this

[@fayizfz]

In my opinion res is an underrated stat. The problem is there is more physical enemies throughout the game. Res in my opinion is the achilles heel on heavy tanks and wyern riders. Do a 0 res playthrough and see how hard it can be vs 0 luck/0 speed.

[@pandabanaan9208]

I feel this goes for all of these bad stats, like you don't really care much if it is high but you do feel it when it is low, like madeline's low dex in engage being her biggest problem and low lck and res also sucking in certain situations

[@fayizfz]

@@pandabanaan9208 I get that. It is like speed too much speed is not very good compared to strength/magic but a minimum speed is required to double. It is like the old saying you don't realize how important something is until you lose them.

[@pandabanaan9208]

@@fayizfz especially when the siege tomes suddenly show up and you don't have anyone who can safely approach them

[@xaropevic7918]

​​@@pandabanaan9208Those other ones are easier to work around imo. To low skill, the problem is low hit, which can be worked around with fast units that will have as much tries as possible to eventually hit anyway, and the ones with high dodge is usually a thief, so nor much damage either. Low luck, you can use bulkier units that will take 2 dmg crit so it will do just 6 dmg, so not mattering as much. Meanwhile, low res, sure you can pure water or barrier, but those are most efficient on high res units to make them take 0 damage, on units with low res you will still take accurate and menacing damage if on mage focused chapters (which are the exception but still exist), the first two will just slow down your play (at worse), and the last one will make you have a lot of retries in certain chapters. Also pure waterand barrier falls down pretty quickly

[@pandabanaan9208]

@@xaropevic7918 funnily enough thieves are actually pretty bulky in engage when compared to other enemies combined with 1 2 range poison and becoming near invincible on avo tiles they are a pain to deal with at least for me especially when compared to other prepromoted enemies wich go down really easily, anyways you yeah are probably right when it does matter having low res is hard to work around, hel if a unit is bulky enough you can even work around low speed, though in more recent titles they do hive you tools to fix many weaknesses, take madeline's garbage hit for example you can put her in great knight with a silver sword wich deals good damage and has 90 base hit and then give her the hit + skills emblem hector and a brave axe and she is actually pretty good

[@NarfIarg]

I was on team luck as being the worst stat, but yeah i can get behind the enemy stat perspective. High luck would make me hesitate and check battle forecast screen to see what im dealing with lol.

[@akirasou]

Thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts, I'm glad to have provided a perspective that you can get behind!

[@ivanbluecool]

Enemy with magic:armor units melt You against armor unit:tis but a scratch

[@akirasou]

Ahaha I would say that in some of the games at least, your Magic users can shred Armours pretty well. Mind, a lot of them your physical units can also do the same, but...

[@HoChiPro]

Saw the thumbnail, pondered, and yeah, can’t argue with that. Every RPG contains stats that make up offense, defense, and accuracy. Three Houses made me realize how much HP is really slept on, and I end up preferring it as a defensive role over res. Also on the topic of Three Houses, Luck is better than both Dex and Spd. The two got nerfed while Luck remained consistent. With hit and avoid modifying skills and QR for speed control. Luck becomes the better of the three for once. Epic

[@akirasou]

Yeah, I definitely think that HP works really well as a bulk stat. Helps that in 3H, it can also be an offensive stat proper for Vengeance users lol Hmm... Spd in 3H is weird, because of how tiered it is. Like definitely even from the midgame onward, it's either you one-round the opponent or they one-round you a lot of the time, but it's definitely still a really valuable stat in the earlygame as a means of avoiding getting doubled. Though weapon trading may still be required for that for anyone who isn't incredibly speedy like Petra or Felix

[@lspuria8440]

Resistance stat peaked in Thracia 776 smh.

[@akirasou]

Res, huh??? But I only see Mag here! /j

[@Yuri_notooserio]

1:20 i swear i'm starting to think that luck is probably the stat that i care the most since most of my game over comes from crit with 4%

[@A2ZOMG]

Yeah unironically luck is actually extremely important if you're doing Ironman runs. Randomly getting OHKOed or 2RKOed in a situation you couldn't afford it is absolutely worth mitigating.

[@akirasou]

Yeah it's sooooo annoying when you're Ironmanning. Things like the Chapter 2 enemies having 1% crit on Alear and therefore being able to potentially oneshot them (at least in Maddening, I don't know about the lower difficulty settings) is so cruel

[@redfoxoffire]

Even the "exception," FE7's Cog of Destiny, barely counts. Unpromoted magic enemies are so laughably weak that even low Res units don't perceive them as much of a threat *before* getting a Barrier or Pure Water boost. Even Bishops aren't all that strong. It's really just the Valkyries that pose a noteworthy threat. And this is ignoring how potent dodge-tanking is in FE7.

[@akirasou]

Yeah, for sure the only ones who are threatening in Hector Cog before Pure Water is the Valks, and then the Pure Water helps a lot lol

[@GODHAND42]

I agree with all of this, though I’d contest that I wouldn’t decisively say it’s the worst. It really depends on the context of the game. Its definitely more important in a game like FE7 HHM where there are a lot more dangerous magic enemies late game and pure waters/barrier staffs have relatively low availability, or Engage maddening where enemy stats are so inflated that +7 on a low res unit is barely making a difference.

[@akirasou]

Yes, I agree that it depends on specific context. I will say that FE7 HHM I don't really think of as being one of the 'inherent Res is important' moments, since Pure Waters make a huge difference there for the Cog Valks (who are like 80% of the threatening magical enemies). Then Engage is a setting where I think the HP as bulk salve applies pretty well, in addition to all of the tools at your disposal that mean that you can avoid taking that magical damage to begin with. Still, as I said, I agree with the general point. Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts!

[@ivanbluecool]

You fight brigades early on. Magic units are usually sparce with how they counter your forces And even when you do get a high res character it doesn't mean anything as they just send the physical units. Units like tharja and def high magus are good exceptions when you get good growths but that's a small number

[@akirasou]

Basically, yeah. Tharja especially I feel like is a weird unit to talk about because the nature of Nostanking means that your most important bulk stat provided that you don't get oneshot and that you can oneround in return is HP. You're right though that it's only a small number of magical units where it becomes a serious consideration for them to be able to tank physical hits in any meaningful fashion

[@ivanbluecool]

@@akirasou I feel awakening gives enough magic units to be somewhat afraid early on for Fredrick to get koed by one hitting him a few times in the higher difficulties. Makes me wish for a magic triangle to just make Levin sword bolt axe and the thunder lance more available and useful

[@akirasou]

@@ivanbluecool yeah I'd agree with that assessment of Fred's bulk on the higher difficulties. Re the magical triangle point, I don't think it would make a difference, personally, unless it worked dramatically differently from how it has in the games where it has existed in some form. I broadly believe that in FE, mage battles are pretty boring (me when high Res unit attacks high Res unit), so I don't see how it would help

[@ivanbluecool]

@@akirasou i mean robin is pretty close with the Levin sword but it should be like the engage system where carrying a magic based physical weapon can have it's benefits. Engage almost got it perfect and I rather they make these weapons a bit more available and could easily be useful to get more dodge or hit with the weapon triangle too. It will add a bit more stragety as I feel each Fe does something good but the new games should learn from each of those positives.

[@akirasou]

@@ivanbluecool yeah, I see what you mean about Engage's system. Engage's weapon system I definitely think is a good step forward for the series, so I also think it would be great if FE kept at least some of its good points

[@mpnuorva]

Skill is the counter-Speed with knobs on. It's true that most of your hit rate comes from the weapon but the rest comes from the skill-speed difference. Thus the usefulness of skill is dependent on the speed of the enemies and basic hit rate of the weapons available: you only need enough to counter enemy speed, give or take a weapon triangle and terrain bonuses. This can have a large eeffect in games like Jugdraal or Tellius series where the stat variance is large. I think Tellius series tried to build Thunder Magic to something that would benefit from hgh Skill, but the results were not great.

[@akirasou]

Yes, I agree with that assessment of things, with the caveat that I don't personally think of Jugdral as being games that have that large stat variance. It's definitely true of Radiant Dawn at least though, and I agree that Thunder Magic is... certainly a line of magic that they did make

[@fen6300]

kinda disagree at 12:00, you can't just go hp + res = magical bulk, for example if an enemy does 45 damage, the sage can tank up to 42 magic attacks while the berserker only tanks 2, since the same res stat is applied for every fight/every attack. Res is still useless tho, for having played the Archanea/Valentian sagas a while ago, i didn't have any problem getting no res (except maybe lower floors of Thabes Labyrinth in Echoes)

[@akirasou]

This is true. In the script I did say "one-shottable" magical bulk, so... I agree with you lol. For what it's worth, anything past one- or maybe two-shots I don't tend to factor into my calculations when playing, so I could definitely have mentioned the two-shot ORKO benchmarks. That's because I generally don't think that a high HP low raw defensive stat unit like your Engage Berserker is taking more than two hits on the Enemy Phase anyway unless you have something planned to prevent them from taking grievous damage in the first place, like Bonded Shield or even Chain Guard

[@JonoabboFE]

Sunday is becoming the day where Akira drops a banger. Good video. I think one point worth raising is the volume of enemy Siege Tomes, and having a high res can have a lot of impact on how flexible a units positioning can be when these are present.

[@akirasou]

Jono!! Thanks for the kind words, it means a lot since I really enjoy a lot of your analytical content! Time to respond does not indicate relative value of comments, KZbin comments section moment (responded to most of the ones for this video before it hits Friday and I decide that any comments from then onward can sit without my response if I don’t want to lel) Yeah, having high Res does definitely help with the positioning in those kinds of situations. Though I do still generally think that the difference between being able to tank 0 and 1 hits is bigger than higher numbers, since provided that there isn’t perfect range overlap, there’s usually some counterplay

[@glassofmilk9489]

I personally feel like Fire Emblem Fates Conquest is one of the few games where resistance is actually decent. In the mid to late game there are a number of maps that either have areas of the map mostly consistenting of mages, enemies that have the option of doing physical and magic damage or physical and magical enemies with overlapping ranges. So simply having your low resistance units not fighting mages is a much less viable strategy.

[@akirasou]

Yeah, it does help that Fates doesn't have Pure Waters and Barrier Staves, so while there are ways of patching Res, the methods of stat stacking it aren't unique to Res. So while I do think it's still ultimately more of a specialist stat still, I do agree that it's more valuable in Fates (especially Conquest, as you've said) than it is in many other Fire Emblem games

[@TommySkywalker11]

Every unit wants dex some want a lot of it, every unit wants a certain amount of luck some benefit from extra Only 1-2 units need res to be your magic tanks, and sometimes they can do that without high res anyway

[@akirasou]

Basicallyyyyyy the TL;DW version of this, yeah. Thanks for watching and commenting!!

[@example868]

In FE7 specifically, I think res is an OK stat whereas luck is really bad. The tactician stars provide enough crit avoid for most/all situations and many mid-late game chapters have dangerous enemies that target res, like 23x and cog.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

Luck is actually very good in FE7 (GBA FE in general). Up to 30 points of Avoid is huge! It's the game where Avoid is so good after all (The worst stat here is Def anyway. This isn't even a contest)

[@example868]

@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 Fair point about the avoid. Dodge-tanking is very effective in FE7, and stacking all the avoid onto one unit solves the game. I wouldn't agree it's approaching the value of +30 avoid though, since each individual point is only +1. I've found that the gold value of +1 luck on my dodgiest unit is not worth $2500 (half the statbooster sell price), but maybe I'm undervaluing it. Funny thing, I was actually going to say skill was the worst stat. This is me evaluating stats as if everyone has their medians and trying to determine the value of additional stats above that. Hector and Oswin are #2 and #3 in the early game due to their ability to actually take hits, and you don't have super dodgy units online yet. I've also never sold the Sealen dracoshield, its value on Marcus at the very least is higher than the gold value. On the other hand, the early secret book is an instant sell, the only decent unit I can think of who needs more skill is Sain. Other units that need more skill have bigger issues. So def is useful, until it suddenly falls off because you have a better option.

[@akirasou]

Er so I don't agree with the other commenter that Def is the worst stat, but I do think that the threat level of the 23x and Cog enemies is sometimes overstated. Imo the only threatening ones are the Cog Valks, and they're handled pretty well with a unit with a Pure Water in their inventory You're right about the tactician star moment covering your Dodge needs though should you make one. I usually don't personally, and so I have to admit that I don't know whether you still get tactician stars and points in that setting (I know you don't get given the Afa's Drops). Still, I imagine most folks do make a tactician so that was an oversight on my part

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

@@akirasou That may have been exaggerated on my part. Res is probably worse than Def, since it's way more situational (having one or two high Res units is good, but you get one for free for the final chapter, which is arguably the only one when Res would be useful, so it's not that relevant to the discussion.). I would still argue than Luck is way better than Def though in the long term. It does way more for your survivability. (in a similar way than Speed>Def, though obviously way less important) Enemy having 0 luck is one of the reasons they're so easy (not the main one, indeed, but it helps).

[@akirasou]

@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 My thoughts on the Lck vs Def thing (because I agree with the situational Res part, so there isn't anything for me to say on it) is that most units aren't going to be getting Lck to the point where it boosts their Avo so significantly that I wouldn't rather just have the Def so that I can survive their attacks if they land for sure I agree that enemies having 0 Lck makes them easier to fight, both because it makes them less accurate and more liable to getting crit. But like... it's far down on the list of reasons. Going with the FE7 example, the main reason why they're so easy is that they hit for noodle damage, once. So it doesn't matter whether they hit at all on your dece Def / Pure Water-augmented Res

[@cameronbarry198]

I'm glad to see some of the points I made on the Discord echoed here so far. Good work as usual Akira.

[@akirasou]

Your YT and Discord usernames must be really different, because not gonna lie, I can't identify you exactly from this alone. Thanks for your kind words though, and also for contributing to discussion over in Akiracord!! I appreciate it :>

[@maxpower004]

I'm very sorry but your point is invalid since the Res stat allows more damage with Glacies on Rebecca, therefore it's clearly a good stat

[@akirasou]

You are completely right, obviously I have to issue a public apology video now for saying anything that goes against COTBK Rebecca

[@maverick5169]

Counterpoint: Sigurd and Lumera got killed due to their poor defense against magical attacks. Res is clearly the best stat in canon

[@akirasou]

Why was Sigurd cooking with the Tyrfing in his possession at that point, one has to wonder

[@MisterSpeedStacking]

the goddess icon sprite looks like the p word

[@akirasou]

Y E A H now that's been pointed out by a couple of folks, I can see it lol

[@pandabanaan9208]

So one thing I find really funny is that in the first fire emblem warriors(the one nobody cares about except warriors enthousiasts) lck was one of the most important stats, this is because many of the best skills in the game like lethality or luna triggered based on lck, ironically frederick isn't bad because of his low res and spd but his low lck, xander can actually be a better tank due to aegis and pavise wich when combined reduce damage from all weapons also rely on lck and xander has really good lck, mages also had a hard time as while they definitly do shine when put against monsters and dragons there are so many enemy mages that the res of those enemies really makes them hard to play in those instances due to dealing so little damage, res is also a bit better due to many enemy mages and most of the boss npcs(specifically validar who the game really seems to love putting on every map) being mages, lck +20 was also one of the only multiplier skills to ad more then 10 excluding hp +, spd is a bit more hit or miss as it extended your awakening mode wich is definitly good granting you many buffs like universal weapon advantage but unless it's one of those rack up your kill count levels you don't get a lot of long runs of awakening unless your name is tiki, dex was also pretty good as it in increased weakpoint break damage, flying units were pretty good due to invincibilty while flying the highest movement staff access for the pegasus ones being able to pair up switch to unlock shortcuts who are supposed to be guard3d by archers but with pair up can be cheesed wyvern slam attack spam was broken The second warriors game lck wasn't as good since the amount of skills that benefit from it was heavily reduced but otherwise I'm less familiar with the stat meta of three hopes, I do know what builds are good and from what I could tell str and mag were very sought after, mag especially because of how good spells are meaning dven physical units like catherine might still run something like bolganone in combination with essence of fire just for the huge area of effect, I do think it is really funny that in three hopes hybrid classes actually did become meta unlike three houses with mortal savant doing a complete 180 from considered bad to really good, flying in this game also kinda sucked as you have less movement then horses no spell access as dark flier was never added there are very few opportunities to fly over the designated flying locations no invincibility while flying weakness to bows wich are pretty common meaning you have to dismount and lose what makes you special as well as a bit worse to control

[@akirasou]

I have to be honest, I have no idea about anything relating to the original Warriors game, having never played it despite the fact that I made the... interesting decision to 100% Three Hopes. Well, that's probably why I'm never getting the OG Warriors, because there's a strong chance I never want to play a Warriors game again lmfao The Warriors meta stuff is interesting though, since it's obviously such a huge departure from the vanilla FE mechanics. So as you said, it's definitely funny that Lck is considered to be such a good stat in the OG Warriors. Thanks for sharing that knowledge and perspective!

[@pandabanaan9208]

@@akirasou the only thing most people know is that the roster wasn't that good, wich is true though the movesets were a lot better balanced then the first hyrule warriors, wich sucks because the soundtrack is extremely underrated, I used to listen to the extended versions for so long but now those are gone, anyways to each their own, I personally really like warriors games but I can see why people wouldn't like them, for me they are just easy pickup and play games if I just wanna have fun for a bit in a relaxing way, though ironically I haven't 100% three hopes yet, I 100% age of calamity but not the og fe warriors because with the dlc that's a big task and offcourse not the og hyrule warriors(or more specifically definitive edition) because I'm not insane

[@akirasou]

@@pandabanaan9208 huh, there are no longer any extended versions of the songs? Did they get copyright claimed? And that makes sense, I think it's cool to have a game that you can just relax to without having to think about it too hard And yeah, I remember that The Completionist spent apparently hundreds of hours working on the definitive edition. So I think that's a wise decision for sure

[@pandabanaan9208]

@@akirasou well there are still some left but some of my favorites like requiem and this precious world(both of wich have long intros so youtube looping doesn't work either) were copyrighted but unlike other osts were usually someone else will replace the old video these still don't have a new extended version to this day yeah I saw that review it took him actual months to do it, I suppose you really do get your money's worth as acoustic harmonia said, as the comments on the completionist's video pointed out it is best to just get the stuff you want and not try to actively get everything, though honestly modern games aren't that friendly to completionists like korok seeds and such

[@akirasou]

@@pandabanaan9208 ahhhhhh I see, so it's an extended track that would also require additional effort. That's a shame :< And yeah, I subscribe to that mindset personally. I usually find that if there's a game that I decide I wanna 100%, then I get started on it, and if I get bored/sick of it, then I stop lol. So there's a fair few games that I started tryna complete and stopped midway

[@macmac8222]

I've been waiting for a vid like this for years to confirm my own opinion that I've already had. (I'm an ironman player so luck is cool and stuff)

[@akirasou]

Glad to have delivered, as a fellow fan of Ironmans!

[@brendanwiley253]

Woe; luna tome upon ye

[@akirasou]

Luna tome and true damage moment

[@courtneys.7113]

i’m actually doing a run of -skill/+luck in fates and holy is it bad. like at least goddess icons give you +4 luck. I can’t get past 20 skill on my corrin even after wasting secret books on them. i was honestly a luck defender but sheesh the impact luck has in fates is pitiful. like the game even tries to work with you for low luck units giving your healers rally luck and rally luck will give you +8 instead of the standard +4 of other stats. it really feels like you can get away with less luck than you can any other stat besides def/res or str/mag depending on what you’re building your unit for. like is it a coincidence that high speed and avoid units counter enemies like high crit berserkers? like what does it matter if a berserker with death blow, gamble, holding a great club with a high rank in axes has like a 100% crit on you if they literally can’t hit you.

[@akirasou]

Oooooo -Skl sounds like pain... Fates being a Lck/2 Dodge game does mean that the Goddess Icons/Rallies etc giving you double compared to other stats just leads to the same end result, but yeah, pain. I agree on the not getting hit part though, if you're not getting hit, then there's no risk to you. So best of luck (haha) with your -Skl/+Lck Fates run!

[@therepeat]

Can't believe I was agreeing thinking "yeah at least in gaiden luck is definitely better than res" just for you to shoot down SPECIFICALLY THAT GAME at the end lmfao. Res is very... not manipulable in gaiden. It's rare to be able to boost it and you can't grow it, and there aren't even any lion statues that let you patch it up. The Dragon Shield is iirc the only item in the game that buffs it at all. Magical defense is consistently very low and hard to fix, and even decent res stats like Kliff's tend to become completely unmanageable vs the chapter 5 hard hitters. On the other hand, magical AVOID is VERY manipulable. Luck grows, for one, but more importantly it can be boosted to the max with the very available Angel Ring that gives the holder tradeable +40 Mag Avo (and remember spells have fixed accuracy that does not scale with enemy stats - Speed+40 MAvo is great at any point in the game). It's like a discount Magic Shield on top of its other effects. And the Magic Shield itself is obviously a much better answer to magic than Luck and Res combined, but that's neither here nor there. In any case, I think luck not factoring into crit avo isn't much of a factor when the stat can influence lategame magic hit rates so hugely. Though I'll concede that an enemy having high Res in FE2 is much more annoying than an enemy with high Luck. Still, I think the impact it has on player units gives Luck the edge for me as the better stat.

[@akirasou]

Lmaoooooooooo fair enough. I do think that in order for Res to be meaningful in both Valentia games, you need to have significantly more of it than other units. So I can completely understand that point of view It's worth noting that in the same way that I consider Pure Waters/Barrier/Tyrfing/Warding Blow to be augmenters of Res, I also consider the Angel Ring to be an augmenter of Lck. The Angel Ring being good doesn't mean that the unit's Lck itself is good, so I mentally separate it out, if that makes sense?

[@therepeat]

@@akirasou That's fair. Luck is only important when you have it in huge quantities while Res always contributes somehow. But even though it requires an item to max out normally, the fact that Luck CAN have such a big impact while Res falls off hard, and irreparably, makes me give Luck the edge. Love the videos btw

[@akirasou]

@@therepeat do you mean the reverse for Lck and Res in the second sentence? But yeah, I'm glad that you like the videos! It means a lot that you expressed it as well, and I hope to continue to have your interest going forward :>

[@g.n.s.153]

I agree with most of this video. Only small thing is that I really appreciate avoiding status staves. Things like Berserk or Silence can cripple my turns heavily. Res would still be last place for most useful but I'd still give it that honorable mention.

[@akirasou]

Yo G.N.S, thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts! Yeah, I definitely agree that it's better to avoid the status staff hit than to not, outside of some weird attempt to route Staff WExp better (which... doesn't even work, since Mend and Restore both give 3 WExp in FE8, for instance). So I can see the honourable mention, though as I said in the video, I don't personally consider it since I think it's easier to just assume that it'll hit. Completely valid though!

[@Hebleh]

Luck saves you in an Ironman but there are so many games where Res is useless or barely exists (Shadow Dragon, Echoes)

[@akirasou]

Basically the long and short of my thoughts on it, yeah

[@MythrilZenith]

Res is definitely the most specialized stat in FE, which seems odd considering defense is one of the strongest general stats in FE, and Res is just magic def, right? Well it's tricky, but with the way mages are designed, you're generally not going to notice a unit's Res unless it is exceptionally high, like Est or Mathilda in SoV. Units with middling res are not significantly different to units who are very low in res unless that is combined with low hp or speed, and in that instance hp and speed are the more meaningful things to increase. This is why your talismans should always go to a combat unit with already high Res if that small increase isn't the strict difference between a low-res unit getting 1-shot, kind of like how your angelic robes are better spent on frontline units with middling HP over units who are significantly low unless that difference is enough to avoid a 1-shot from a difficult to avoid Bolting or the like.

[@akirasou]

Basically my thoughts on it, yeah - it can be useful as a stat to have on a specialist, but I don't think of it as being nearly as helpful generally as any of the other stats

[@Posby95]

Interesting. Normally when I think about meme stats in Fire Emblem I think of luck, but you make a good case. However, I have a few nitpicks: 1) 2 points of luck give 2 avoid, not 1, in most games. This means you get +1 avoid if you level up luck, which can be handy in a tense enemy phase. 2) The magical version of Cog of Destiny is only in Hard mode. Hector Normal Mode is physical. 3) 84 HP and 11 Res result in 95 magical bulk only when considering one attack. When considering two, berserkers have 53 magical bulk to sages' 66. With three, berserkers have 39 and sages 59. The gap widens the more enemies there are. I read your pinned comment about doubling being rare, but I'm referring to several enemies each attacking once, which does add up in favor of the unit with higher resistance. It's true that magic enemies are scarce, but this matters when you send one unit to take care of a group of mages. In general, HP is good for one or two attacks, while Def and Res are better for several (hence why a dracoshield is better than an angelic robe if the unit often sees a lot of enemies on enemy phase).

[@felikatze]

luck is good bcuz my 10/20 clarine in fe6 has max speed and max luck so she's invincible to everything except swordmasters ngl your points are very well made. in some games i see my unit have 0 res and i just do not care - because most units barely had over like, 4 base res to begin with. whereas lacking skill you feel immediately.... one pegasus knight with high res is enough to deal with everything in most games, and even without, just rushing them aggressively work, as you pointed out that mages typically have very low physical bulk. well made vid! lots of good points.

[@akirasou]

The Clarine dodgetanking moment is real, for real for real In actual seriousness though, yeah, that's basically how I feel when I see that a unit has 0 Res. Like unless units have to get into siege tome range and they'll get oneshot (since typically they're so heavy that you don't get doubled by them), I don't care, and then I'd rather the HP as bulk anyway Thanks for watching, and for your kind words! I appreciate your continued interest and comments :>

[@AllBeganwithBBS]

Skill and luck are heavily underrated and I will never, ever move on that. Units that are severely lacking in either simply do not perform well in combat. Even without factoring in crit rates of either side, a good luck generally means way higher hit rates and way less chances to get hit. Knoll has good stats, but actually his 0 luck makes him too inaccurate despite it all. In that same vein, Gonzales is an axe user with awful skill, only patched because his promotion all but hands him +5 skill, without which no one would really use him because 50% displayed hit rates are just not attractive even if you double, have a respectable crit chance and hit like a truck. Funnily enough his decent luck helps him ever so slightly achieve respectable hit rates. Those two stats just matter way too often to be worse. I would say that lowish max HP is actually one of the things that least matter unless it's as abysmal as, say, Engage's Hortensia or rebalanced Fe6's Roy. In fact, Fe8's Seth has pretty low max HP for a promoted unit, and no one ever needs to point that out because it just doesn't matter, but if he'd had 4 res, people would have talked about it because it's a hindrance against mage swarms. The berserk vs sage calculation from Engage also only works if there's a single attack to be tanked, because res counts more for every hit.

[@akirasou]

Yes, I would agree that in order to do well without Skl or Lck as a unit, you either have to be explicitly not a combat unit, or you need to have a fix for it in place. By comparison, I think that the Res fix of Pure Waters and Barriers is generally easier to attain I do value HP more than Res - with physical enemies being more common generally, I would prefer the general bulk stat rather than the magic-specific one. I do also think that if Seth had 4 Res, especially with the Pure Water from Chapter 2 being as easy to attain as it is, it wouldn't actually affect anything. The mage swarms aren't common, and the singular Pure Water you have is sufficient up until the point where you can buy them. So it would be a moment where it looks bad, but doesn't have a meaningful impact You're right as well about the calculation, though I did specify one-shottable bulk in the script, so that's the single attack to be tanking. Generally I don't tend to think of bulk thresholds for high HP low defensive stat proper units like Berserkers, since if they're seeing multiple rounds of combat, they're taking a lot of damage unless you have something in place that stops them from taking that damage anyway, like Bonded Shield or a Vanwrath build, which renders it moot to begin with But yeah, I mostly agree with what you've said. Thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts, as well as corroborating that I coulda worded the HP moment better...

[@austinhensley6553]

My thoughts, every stat is a threshold stat. A unit with 30 strength vs a unit with 25 strength usually wont matter, as both are generally going to 1 round. Speed only matters to the extent of doubles, whether thats inflicting or avoiding them. Skill, and luck only matter in the point of reliably hitting or not dying. And the bulk stats only matter to make units reach x amount of combats. If a unit can survive 3 combats per health bar then increasing their bulk only matters if that increase allows you to take 4 combats. The difference in surviving with any amount of hp between 1 and the next combat threshold is pointless. Defense and hp are almost always better than res the earlier in a playthrough it is. Radiant dawn haar for example is almost always the best unit due to him reaching every threshold naturally but then the endgame comes and suddenly hes one of the worst units on several maps because of his low res and speed. Tldr, no stat is ever bad unless that stat is wasted due to thresholds necessary for the given context.

[@akirasou]

Yes I completely agree, though generally I would venture that Res thresholds tend to be the least important. It's even funny because there can be anti-benchmarking in some games, like Engage Maddening and Conquest where enemies won't attack you if they do no damage to you, so you often don't want your defensive stata of Def, Res and Spd to be *too* good, and this is also something that shows up in some LTCs

[@Great-in-General]

Axe Unit: "Well I thought Skill Books were cool!"

[@akirasou]

Hahaha funnily enough, I find that Generals often like having a Skill Book or two under their belt as well

[@radiata5149]

You said a lot here so I can't respond to everything but there was a point I felt like bringing up within the context of "standard play" whatever that means. My intuition is that res is better than Luck because when a unit has a high/low luck stat I rarely notice it, and the important threshholds for luck are often met by "low luck" units, where low res can mean when I'm not paying my utmost attention to what enemies are around my units sometimes get killed much more quickly than I would assume. Maybe luck provides a lot of dodges I don't end up noticing, but it's really easy to feel is when Oswin, Dorcas, or for a more recent examples Raphael or Louis die out of nowhere. In fact I'd say wanting to just have an average res is often what makes a character unable to properly tank certain maps. Obviously though the better at FE the less severe this gets, but I think having an average res or better (or an incredibly high avoid so that being hit is less of a concern) is often a requirement for a combat focused unit to be able to tank 2-4 units. There's probably a lot that could be said about marginal utility about all 3 of these stats at different quantities and how it impacts gameplay honestly

[@radiata5149]

For example if your low Dex means your hit is 70 rather than 90 that's a pretty big loss of reliability (82% vs 98% true hit) and if it's causing you to go from 50 to 70 that's an even bigger jump (50% to 82%). On the whole Dex is a lot worse when it's being "wasted" though, characters in relatively high hit rate FE's having say, 20 vs 30 skill is often not a big deal other than a few more points of crit, but even still that often won't be the difference between being able to reliably crit or not, and the hit rate will often be 100% regardless, and would stay in the 90's (where it's at least a 98% true hit no matter what) regardless.

[@akirasou]

Yeah, as you alluded to, I think one of the reasons why Lck has historically been discounted as a useful stat is because you don't know whether the reason you didn't get crit is because of Dodge itself or because of simple RNG rolls. The same also applies to Skl with both accuracy and crits, especially since so much of Hit and Crit comes from either the weapon of the unit or Skills of some description. So I do wonder if both stats would be valued more if the game actually told you what the enemy's Hit and Crit rolls were in the same way that they often get manipulated for speedruns or LTCs of the GBA games with the Lua script that tells you the RN values, for instance Whereas you're right that Res you can predict the amount of damage you'll take. In a way, that's actually part of why I value Lck as much as I do - since you don't know the exact reason you're not getting crit, it both allows a simultaneous devaluation and overestimation of Lck's contribution, since you can attribute avoiding getting crit to Lck both always and never. Not simultaneously, of course, but as two different perspectives of evaluating the stat. And well... taking triple the damage isn't something you can work around in your plans as easily often as getting hit for a set amount of damage But yeah, there's definitely something to be said about how overkill Lck and Dex both don't really do that much, especially if you're thinking about reliability more so than possibility, except at the extremes where it enables reliable dodgetanking and crit/Skill builds, respectively. I'm planning on doing a video eventually on when overkill is detrimental, so maybe there will also have to be one about how overkill is also often not actually helpful Thanks for commenting even on that small point I made! It's always cool hearing other people's perspectives, so I really appreciate the time you've taken to write out this response :>

[@abbieburton2794]

As someone who's first game was binding blade, hearing that skill isn't highly rated was a surprise. In terms of game design, I think it'd be interesting if they combined these stats in a future game, IE luck now reduces magic damage, crit chance, and improves certain proc skills

[@akirasou]

Yeah, FE6 is definitely one of the games where you appreciate having high Skl since the weapon hit is lower, especially if you don't use a really accurate weapon type such as Swords There are FE hacks that exist where they combine some stats, like Blade and Claw: feuniverse.us/t/complete-blade-and-claw-full-length-23-chapters/17017. A friend of mine was playing it on vc sometime, and it combines Str and Wt offset (like in Tellius), Mag and Res (as in Thracia), and Dex and Lck, with Dex also boosting your growths. So it's neat in that way, in addition to also having the pair up system. So you may want to check it out!

[@abbieburton2794]

@@akirasou very cool! Been meaning to try out some rom hacks

[@haleyc2962]

no but you see forsyth's base 5 res stat means he can face tank 5 mire shamans with the saunion, trust

[@akirasou]

Soooooooooo true bestie

[@TuskyBaby]

Just curious, how do you feel about magic and res being combined as a stat in Thracia?

[@akirasou]

Oh I think it's a great idea overall, since mages have never had the most exciting battles in FE anyway, and it means that physical units actually derive some value from having Mag. Plus I think that it ends up with some funny results, like Pure Waters or the Flame Sword also increasing your Mag for cool use cases, which I find interesting. If you did want for mage battles to still sometimes be interesting in such a context without stat deflation (since it doesn't seem like the FE games are going to move away from the big funni numbers), then there are also ways of working around that, like having tomes that specialise in killing other mages The combination of stats is something I generally think is cool, and I know has been done in some hacks. Like there's one made in the Lex Talionis engine called Blade and Claw where Mag and Res are combined, as are Str and Con (so mages appreciate having it to help them double/not get doubled) and Dex and Lck, with Dex now also increasing your growth rates by 1% with each point. So I think it could be a fun concept for sure in a future FE game proper

[@itsmothafuckingrimbus]

I think magic and strength are actually the worst stats because it means you can't get as much wexp off of enemies while res does no such thing

[@akirasou]

I feel I should ask: serious or joking

[@MrMarket1987]

@@akirasou It's the wisdom of the insane and/or patient (like me sometimes). If you don't mind grinding a lot, you DO get more exp in the long run if you damage enemies WAY more than you are spending time killing them; It is therefore easier to do if your might is weaker to assure this. If you kill an enemy in most FE games, you get more based on _their_ level and class/tier, and _your_ level and class/tier, with diminishing returns the higher you are generally. But there's almost ALWAYS a small gain to be made when you deal no damage (1exp) or a little damage (1-10+ exp) that don't account for the enemy HP unless a game intentionally codes against it. In other words, the same kind of logic that would let an entire team grind to very high levels against Caellach, as he cannot be critted with his special guard item, and being on a Fort restores his HP indefinitely.

[@renren5660]

I agree. The better you are in FE, res is kinda useless. Low luck stat is more annoying in iron man run than low res. I think luck was overlooked because of how vague the stat description in the game. It was also funny how luck actually boost the certification chance in 3h but i never saw the game explain it.

[@akirasou]

Glad to hear that you agree! I do definitely think that the vagueness of Lck in terms of what it does contributes, since Res at least does a specified thing (in addition to a bit of extra stuff like Staff Avo in some games). I agree as well that the cert chance moment is funny, when I noticed Shamir able to gamble certifications other people couldn't despite being deeply unqualified, I was like... wait a second

[@marcoasturias8520]

In older games, say, before 3ds, yeah, Res is worse. After that... The games have steadily increased the ways to have 100 hit and 0 crit received... Up to a point I really don't like it, because now Luck and Dex feel literally useless. For example, in Engage, Ivy is God. She can easily have 2hko and doubling ranges on every enemy up to endgame and her only two weaknesses are Dex and Luck. Both are completely negated by the Awakening Engrave, or Luck can be saved with Eirika and then any other Engrave patches hit rate. Also, recent games have made that small hit increases almost op. In 3h and SoV, since there's no Weapon Triangle, any 10 hit CAs make any attack incredibly reliable. Then 3h tried to offset this with high avo units, just to distribute hit +20 as an intermediate class ability... Basically free. So yeah, nowadays dex, luck and Res are all the same trash

[@akirasou]

Yeah, definitely the games from Awakening onward I would say often have ways of patching Hit and Dodge easily, in a less time consuming fashion than the GBAFE end turn simulator to build supports. As you've mentioned, things like Engage's Engraves, Combat Arts, and Mastery Skills in Three Houses count. Even something like the Prowess Skills for Dodge as well, or Eirika's Dodge+ as you said So yeah, definitely I can see the argument for the stocks of both Lck and Dex having gone down. Still, I think there is often a part of the game before you're able to augment Dodge and Hit fully where you really appreciate having them both in a way that I don't really think is the same for Res (not least since so many early arcs in FE are dominated by bandits...), so I think overall they're still more valuable stats

[@idreadFell365]

Remember when Ivy from the other world in Engage Fell Xenologue had super high Def.

[@akirasou]

That would require me to remember the Fell Xenologue, and I've locked those memories to the deep recesses of my subconscious

[@17Master]

Makes me wonder how much stronger and present magical enemies need to be for Res to be equal to Def, without becoming overly annoying to play against as player units tend to have lower Res across the armies.

[@akirasou]

My instinct is something like a 1:2 ratio of magical to physical enemies, and probably also a setting where there aren't Res-exclusive ways of stat-stacking like Pure Waters or Barrier Staves. But obviously it would depend on the exact context of the game and how scary the mages are, because generally I would say that they are... not that

[@xsmu1729]

Nice mention of Timerra’s (semi) unique turnsave in C19 :) I agree RES is least important when pure water, barrier and even Parthia exist lol. But on the flip side, RES becomes quite valuable in games where those tools don’t exists, like CQ

[@akirasou]

Yo XS, funny to see you here! Yeah, I remember Priestess saying a while back that you and her figured that out together, so I wanted to try mentioning it in a video sometime lol. So it's cool that you ended up watching it! Yeah, definitely the stocks of Res go up slightly when those tools don't exist, like in Conquest. That being said, there are still methods to augment it (albeit broadly similar to the methods for other stats, unlike Pure Waters/Barrier being uniquely different for Res in others), and I do value both Lck and Skl highly for the reliability and possibility reasons I said. So even in that context, I probably still consider Res to be the general dump stat (though there is merit to Res specialists like Kaze for sure)

[@xsmu1729]

@@akirasou That's fair. I have secretly watched a number of your videos -- little do you know :)

[@akirasou]

@@xsmu1729 kehhhhhhhhhhhh I hope that you've enjoyed them!

[@1337treeckolol]

Your evaluation of magical bulk is at worst misrepresented entirely and at best misspoken, in my opinion. 87 magical bulk is an absurd statement, because you and I both know that you're not getting struck by 87 points of magic in a single go. You're going to be struck by (in some bizarre scenario) 45x2 and 44 res would make that 1x2. This makes the bulk they would actually have 40+ turns of walling, and the Berserker 2 turns. This being said, res is the worst stat by design. It's a dump stat generically for physical units in a physical focused game, because magic is meant to be stand out. I agree with you generally, I think that one argument was very wrong.

[@akirasou]

You're right, I think I misspoke very badly. My intended point was more that HP works very well as a Res salve since it contributes to one-shottable bulk, which I think is better highlighted by the example I later gave of the Archanea and Valentia games. Plus at least on the player's end of things, it is possible to damage stack to that kind of absurd number. And then I'm usually focused on one-shottable bulk since I'm of the opinion that if your Berserker must get hit by a magical attack, they should ideally be countering and killing before any doubling can occur. I ended up conflating the two without actually explicitly stating the last two points, leading to that admittedly bad argument, which has been stated in a few other comments as well So yeah, thanks for saying, I appreciate it!

[@ghable23]

How's your take on pure water? When I watched youtube videos of people years ago I think they were memeing as I never use it but then they also use it like it's nothing. I've no idea whether is good, whether is bad because ward could be used instead or bad because I could think of a way to deal with any map without this res boost.

[@akirasou]

For some reason, this got held for review... anyway, I like Pure Waters a lot. +7 boost is huge, it can be more places than the Barrier/Ward staff a lot of the time, and it's just one singular inventory slot. So it's a big increase in bulk and it's pretty convenient to tote around. I'm a fan

[@ghable23]

​@@akirasou I had a hunch. It happened with another comment. Maybe they did that because I left a lot of comments on both channels. That you like it means resistance has some use. That aside I like to point out that barrier or ward is cheaper, gives experience for staff units, probably the main reason I have against the pure water, and then some games have this as a range tool. We, of course, have the point of being able to do a different action with that unit as with vulnearies. It could be attack or pop a healing item if you're also injured. Most games money isn't a problem nor is the number of item slots, that one is a guess, so having vulnearies OR pure waters on your units might be beneficial. It's just, it feels as an expensive exp thief.

[@akirasou]

It got held again, how strange :/ Differently depends on the game. Like I don't really think about Barriers as being that big of a thing in FE8 as some other games, because you only get it from Secret Shops and one other location, so the Pure Waters are much more of a thing in my mind. Like the staff and weapon experience is real and does get missed out on, but Pure Waters are just so portable and often far more plentiful in number than the Barrier Staff. So I still like em

[@chungus1149]

What's funny is I believe engage is the game where I truly believe res is more important. Thoron mage knights will prison yard jump you and you can actually use this to your advantage with some smart use of pure water to keep yourself alive

[@SleepyBrady]

I think the point where Res matters most is in the endgame as mages are actually strong. The only issue in most maps is they tend to nerf mages making them not as bulky which is fine since I don't think anyone wants to deal with Uber powerful units with high speed, def, and res which are generally saved for boss units but like.... If they made mages fast and threatening then it'd be valueable to have res as a stat simply because its used more often. It's worse that they're nerfed with low move as well. I mean just look at Tellius mages. Weak, slow, and no move in a game where 99% of enemies are physical only to suddenly switch at the very lasy maps to lots and lots of magic attacking units. I think they should buff mages to be more powerful and have as many mobile options as physical classes to encourage more team variety. Really there's only like 2-3 mages on a single team because 90% of the enemies are physcial. Even worse if they're slow and weak

[@akirasou]

I can agree with that for sure, and I definitely don't think that we need a bunch of magical units with high Def either. It's one of those things where if making them, you've got to be really careful about how you stat and threshold them, because if they hit on the generally weaker defensive stat on enemies, take attacks better on the defensive stat most of them target, and also don't get doubled or god forbid double the enemies... at that point, you probably have an extremely overcentralising unit on your hands

[@Oracle_of_Apollo]

You didn’t mention how, similar to speed, high skill means high enough hot to retain reliability with higher might weapons. Surprisingly High dex/skill units end up being stronger for me due to typically also having high speed so I can slap a strong inaccurate and heavy weapon(relative to what a low dex unit could reliably wield.

[@plentyofpaper]

There's actually a really big reason that I think Res isn't very good that wasn't touched on here. Due to magic having almost universal 2+ range, you can rarely use Res for effective body blocking. Lets use an example where there's an enemy Myrmidon. You've got a unit A you want to protect at the edge of the myrmidon's movement range. You place unit B 1 space in front of unit A. The myrmidon can now only attack unit B. Now lets say that enemy is a mage. You place unit B 2 tiles in front of unit A, plus unit C and D on each of the tiles diagonally in front of unit A. Now the mage can attack units B, C or D, but not A. You now need 3x the number of units to protect unit A, and they need to move further. It's more unit intensive, harder to set up, and even if you do, you're now letting the enemy choose the weakest of 3 targets as opposed to forcing them to choose 1 target. The same reasoning applies to archers of course, but most weapons, especially on enemies, are 1 range only, while only surge and elsurge are 1 range magic. So defense, and HP are valuable stat for keeping your units alive, as well as keeping allies alive. While res is really only good at keeping your unit alive. Overall, I think Res is still generally better than Skill/Dex (I'm open to this being game by game though.) FE1, 2 and 3 Houses in particular only give 1 hit per dex (or 1/2 for mag) and rely heavily on weapon and weapon skills (for 3 houses.) Engage has a lot of high hit engravings, as well as engage attacks that can bypass hit checks, and has plenty of powerful backup plans for when things do miss. Luck... if I were to have a unit with terrible luck, skill or res, I think Luck would be the most painful.But as long as luck is decent, any more luck isn't worth much.

[@wolftamerwolfcorp7465]

There's a big flaw in your comparison since unit a is at the edge in the myrm case but not the mage case, even if we were to assume that your unit was exactly the same distance away from both enemies rather than at the edge of both enemies attack range, the same method of bodyblocking would prove effective, you'd just have to move the body blocker 1 tile farther forward against the mage to have the same effect as long as it's only a 1-2 range tome. Where this does have potential for a sizable effect is the potential number of enemies that could attack the blocking unit, thus increasing the danger to them

[@plentyofpaper]

@@wolftamerwolfcorp7465 I'd like to clarify that I was referencing unit A at the edge of the enemy's movement range rather than their attack range. I had no intent to be unclear on this point, so I wouldn't consider it a flaw. I don't believe we have any factual disagreements, but we may place value on different things, or have misunderstood a point or two. But I can see how it could be difficult to understand precisely what I'm talking about without visual aid, and that can definitely make it look like I'm overstating my point. I've included a link to a simple visual aid for clarity. I've also swapped Myrmido to Fighter to avoid having classes that start with the same letter. If unit A is at the edge of the enemy attack range, a single blocker (B) will suffice in either case, although B needs to be 1 space deeper in the case of 2 range enemies. On the surface level, not a huge deal. But with a few exceptions, most high res units aren't front liners, and don't have great mobility, so covering that extra tile can come up more often than one might expect. Looking at 5 movement enemies, if you have only units A and B, you can safely move A 5 or 6 tiles away from a 1 range enemy, or 6 tiles away from a 2 range enemy. If you want to move unit A 5 tiles away from a 2 range enemy, you would require 3 blockers. Which was the point I was initially emphasizing. You can assign value to this as you see appropriate. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14T0iNNf4vMmZ0kM3K_3MyZXM5ovE4fwOXd3_dm8PhB8/edit#gid=0

[@akirasou]

So I can understand what you're going for, but I would say that's a point in favour of Res being a more generally useful stat since then you appreciate having it on more units. So in a strange way, it's almost... an argument for Res being on more units? Definitely there are games where Hit is really easy to patch, with 3 Houses and Engage I think specifically having a ton of easily accessible ways of doing so, so I can see Dex being less of a requirement for reliability in that circumstance. I'm glad that you agree on the point of Lck though, god I hate using units with abysmal Lck...

[@plentyofpaper]

​@@akirasou That's an interesting perspective that having it on more units is good. I don't agree with that, as I think the dynamic makes it so there are fewer opportunities to leverage res for body blocking. And since there are fewer opportunities, it is used less frequently, and therefore, worse. But this is actually very similar to a discussion I recall about the best stat in Engage, and whether it was speed or strength. I found this interesting, as we largely brought up the same points, but came to opposite conclusions, and needed to refine our criteria. Some key points included that it's easier to hit the necessary doubling thresholds than strength thresholds, and it's cheaper to patch speed (speed+, wt-) than strength (Str+, Weapon Power, Mt+.) Since hitting the doubling threshold is easier, this means a unit with good speed can have better matchups against a larger number of enemy units. But on the flip side, a unit with good strength can have good matchups against the units your fast units struggle with. Giving them value by scarcity in a sense. The debate never got settled, but it was interesting to see even if all points are agreed on, the answer isn't cut and dry. One conclusion that was agreed on though is that since speed is relatively easy to fix using skills, light weapons, and weapon enhancements, that makes those the preferred speed source, while character stats are the preferred strength source.

[@akirasou]

@@plentyofpaper yeah, I think this is a case where it becomes less useful as a specialist stat, but more useful as a generalist one And yeah, I've seen the Atk/Spd moment be brought up for Engage. Which is partly why in this video, I tried to distinguish between a character's stats themselves and the means of augmenting them, since the whole reason why you could devalue Spd so much (pre-Well, anyway, with the increased access to Power Skills...) is because Lyn provided such easy ways of augmenting it But as you've mentioned, nothing is cut and dry. Thanks for commenting though, I've found this conversation fun!

[@ness6099]

These stats have a weird inverse trend with each other. 1 luck I'd say really sucks and doesn't contribute much or impact the unit, but 30 luck I'd say is really damn good for the hit, avoid, and dodge boost. Res meanwhile can sometimes get you over thresholds to do unique tanking that other units can't, but gets redundant in too high quantity. Ares from FE4 is a great example, he has decent base res (well above average for physical units) at 4, a great res promotion giving him +5 over the usual +3 of physical units, a 30% growth, and Mystletainn which gives him +10 res. This makes him, your Pegasus Knight, and anyone who's father is Claud your only stand out unit to tank magic and avoid spells like sleep before Seliph gets Tyrfing, and Ares is going to always be more capable combat wise than any of those early alternatives. This seems like a great defense of the Res stat in utility, especially since Luck is only +1 avo in FE4. Unfortunately, the truth of the situation isn't as nice as this portrays. With 4 base res, +5 from promotion, and +10 from Mystletainn, Ares needs a whole 2 res to get past the threshold to not be slept, anything else is just a niche biproduct and only impacts fights against people like Ishtar and Julius. He has a 30% growth, so he should easily hit this stat threshold, but if he had a 5% chance would it make Res any better or would it just make Ares less consistent and slightly worse off? I'd go with the latter. Basically, everyone can appreciate luck, while res is needed for someone to pass thresholds sometimes but generally isn't too important. Marcus for instance I'd say has plenty of Res at base to get by in all of FE7, letting him not only excel in those situations but even take pressure off Hector, your other great early hand axe user, to perform in these roles and makes his lack of Res not matter too much. It's also ironic that the games where Res is most abundant (Tellius) are also the games where Magic tomes and units are at their weakest.

[@akirasou]

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with you. The fact that for instance, Seliph would be able to avoid the status staves on endgame if he just had 2 Res, which is only one more than his base Res of 1 with a 30% growth, or literally 0 if you give him the Barrier Ring, just makes it... really inconsequential as a stat for him to actually have himself, rather than a stat that gets augmented. As you've highlighted, Ares is also a very good example of this Marcus' Res is also great yeah, and especially with Pure Waters, is more than sufficient. And yeah... Tellius magic is... I don't know what they were thinking. It's like in every way, they were trying to make magical units not good

[@ImportedCheese]

Even if Res is bad, at least Special Defense in Pokemon is good, right?!?!

[@akirasou]

Surely! After all, Hoothoot is proof of that, right?!?!?!

[@NightZap]

I feel a lot of things that are generally thought to be "true" about certain gameplay stuffs in Fire Emblem comes from being more likely to be true in earlier games, especially the GBA games which were the starting point for many western fans and thus discussion. Enemies there tend to be weaker, with less hit, avoid and crit, so player units can already easily get 100 % accuracy while facing 0 % crit chances without needing extra help from the luck stat. In games where enemies are actually formidable enough to have some crit on them from stats alone, suddenly a unit with below average luck does regularily see crit rates above 0, and thus suddenly dies as a result. But the idea that you don't need luck still sticks around from those earlier games. Another factor contributing to luck being conceived as the worst is how bitterly ironic it is to get a level up where your only stat gain is luck.

[@akirasou]

Yes, I would say that there's definitely a lot of FE tenets that apply mainly to the GBA games and then get applied more broadly elsewhere. Things like good 1-2 range being the requirement to be a good unit, or ideas like "they're a Cav, so of course they're good to some extent" like with all of the GBA cavs. The Lck thing I think can be a particularly sticking point because in GBA, outside of like, the crit numbers on tomes like Thunder or the Light family Tomes, until the crit bonus enemies like Swordmasters or Berserkers start appearing, there really aren't crit chances present on most of your units, even when most of the cast has abysmal Lck like in FE8 And yeah, for sure, it does feel real bad and is deeply ironic when that happens. So I think it's the kind of event that sticks with people and so gets told in their stories and narratives around Fire Emblem lol

[@MrMarket1987]

Mainline FE games really ought to be sending out more mages and the like. If Res is to be respected as a stat, you need more scenarios where it shines or is being put to the test; Sacred Stones' Chapter 19 is a decent example of this I find, where there's a fairly strong Mage Knight coming out every turn for many turns in one side of the map and Druids in another. Even if you CAN mitigate it with Barrier or Holy Water, those are usually very limited resources, or pricey, so they get a lot more dire to use when there's more mages to deal with. I feel hacks at least understand that well enough, not only sending out ample mages but also mages with _somewhat_ higher bulk, and even some with brave spells also which IS something magic as a whole is almost always lacking compared to warriors and even archers that makes them less threatening. Of course, Siege tomes and tomes with high crit are also things you WANT to be very careful against. I don't think anyone's denying any time soon that Roy is very quickly put on the Endangered Species list every time those come up. And Pablo surprising me with a crit when he spawned as reinforcements on Eirika route for a crit on my very first time was something I'll never forget in terms of a mage being actually kind of a threat when they are strong and slightly bulky, while also just plain being put in a good formation that forces you to be more clever on how you position and prioritize your forces and decision-making to mitigate or neutralize threats. That being said, kinda surprised you didn't bring up Luck in terms of digging up treasure, which is normally how it gets done. Only Thieves/Rogues assure findings unless a game is coded otherwise. But it should go without saying that Skill (and Speed) and Luck just plain compliment each other well in ways that the other stats don't quite do so readily, as these affect the most immediate statistics involving _probability,_ rather than raw stats. You can have all the right math with the raw stats and gear, but misses and crits and all that suck when they are against you whether you did or didn't do supports. Aside from that? I feel you really need to revise the HP + Res math you wrote somehow. It's just weird, because if an enemy has an attack damage of 53Mag in that example, the one with lower Res would just straight up die in 2 hits exact HP loss (42 damage each blow), while the former would still have 25HP left. HP isn't a substitute for Def and Res after all, but Def and Res _are_ an HP substitute for each point of damage that DOES get mitigated on hit.

[@akirasou]

Yeah, the stocks of Res definitely rises in situations where magical enemies are both more frequent and actually threatening. Hacks express an understanding of that much more, I agree, and also tend to have more differentiation of magic from other weapon types. Like Engage I would say is an improvement on the magical differentiation front in having 1-3 Range that cannot double, and then the 1-range locked Surge Tomes, but IS could stand to do much more with magic still I feel. At least they did clock the Siege Tome possibility really early on in the series, as you said So yeah, I didn't mention Lck for digging up treasure because I think that Lck-based desert items are a terrible mechanic. In the RD review (which will be out soon), I am particularly scathing about how that game handled its hidden items. So I just tote around my Thief characters to pick them up, or depending on the context (like the Oops All Archers FE8 run), I outright edit the ROM so other classes can also collect the item in question Yeah, I think I worded that point badly. I've since made a pinned comment outright explaining my thought process in more detail, because I think that the example was poor and slightly devalues my actual point, which is that HP works very well as an HP salve without such an extreme example. So I'd be curious what you think about that. Though I will say that for the most part, I tend to only really think about one-shottable bulk in most contexts But yeah, thanks for the detailed comment and thoughts as is often the case with you! That includes the revision point, I do appreciate having poor wording/points/etc pointed out to me. This is not least since I think(?) that you mean it not in a malicious way, but rather out of a genuine wish for clearer points and better reasoning, which I also value

[@MrMarket1987]

@@akirasou As we just went through Halloween, I'm gonna say it was malicious for the Trick. :V But yes, it always helps to clear up math related to games when possible, lest newcomers and old timers get doubts where there should be next to none. And goodness, a review on PoR's mechanics soon? I expect a rollercoaster of emotions, for Tellius always manages to invoke many out of people whether they like the games or not. Especially relating to the desert.

[@captainrumia2607]

There are some many times when I wish my units would have a point or two more of Res, and there are times when a character gets a point of Res and I'm happy for it (though when a mage with already high Res gets more, I kind of don't care). Unless a character has an ability that procs based on Luck, I generally don't care if a character gets another point of it.

[@akirasou]

That's fair. There are definitely situations where you wish your unit has a point or two more of magical bulk, and that can come from Res just as well as HP. My thoughts are more that having the Lck at all on average tends to contribute more over the course of the run in avoiding getting crit than a similar situation with Res

[@captainrumia2607]

@@akirasou Good point. I see what you mean. Part of it is that you never know when the extra few percent of Avoid or Hit comes into play. When a unit gets a lucky dodge, it's hard to attribute that to the points of luck they got the last few levels. When Res comes up, it is easy to recognize its' influence in things, or curse bad res level ups when a unit gets badly hurt or killed by magic.

[@akirasou]

@@captainrumia2607 oh for sure, I definitely agree on that. Like not knowing whether your Lck stat proper, a crit-lowering Skill or just the RNG roll stopped you from getting crit contributes to it feeling bad for sure

[@GaiusTulliusCatallusXXC]

In LTC Enemy Luck is really annoying. This is compounded further in 3H where Prowess skills give enemies even more Dodge. I’m having to reroute my Ch. 2 skip clear because I forgot about Kostas’ prowess skill giving him Dodge. The man has 16 crit avoid in Chapter 2. Legitimately painful.

[@akirasou]

While I don't have LTC experience of Three Houses specifically, I can see it for sure with the Prowess Skills, yeah. And I agree that enemy Lck is really irritating in LTC contexts generally. So 16 Dodge... you have my condolences and my best wishes dealing with that

[@sohn7767]

Res doesn’t matter until it does

[@akirasou]

Factual information (also I recognise you from Fishcord and the CQ relay that Zoran took part in, yo!)

[@ultimaterecoil1136]

I’d argue defense is the worst stat in 3 houses in particular. Notably due to the magic avoid formula being different a dodge tank usually still needs res because you will still have the chance to be hit by either magic enemies or gambits but the enemies who have gambits are more likely for you to be able to knock them out before they have a chance to hit you. Plus dex and luck are already more valuable then both in 3 houses by miles since you just simply don’t get hit late game in 3 houses because of how potent gambits are. The enemies are either stunned or you have a defensive status that prevents you from being at risk of lethal damage like impregnable sacred shield or blessing. And hp sees very significant offensive value on units with vengeance. There is also the factor that soul blade has a much higher chance of relevancy then armored strike since it can allow magic units to keep doing magic damage even after using all their spells and either improve their might with high might weapons or use effective damage even without an effective spell to their advantage with a rapier. It’s definitely a small distinction but bulk is just entirely unnecessary after a certain point in 3 houses you can just not get hit in the first place and of the bulk stats defense has the least niche use cases where the stat would be used.

[@akirasou]

So I agree that once you get to a certain point in the game, the non-HP bulk stats don't do very much. But the importance of Def in the earlygame of Maddening Three Houses is huge: Dedue makes the earlygame of BL WC so much simpler, and having a prot tank for the ambush spawns in Chapter 5 is really helpful. So I can't agree overall

[@gulliverswift2358]

Clearly the true worst stat is weapon level.

[@akirasou]

Funnily enough, I value having high weapon ranks, so eventually I'm considering making a video on the concept of weapon ranks/level lol

[@mithos789]

me who loves skill and luck. probably because i dont like resetting.

[@akirasou]

Yeah, Skl and Lck I definitely value a lot as reliability stats. Whereas Res like... you're expecting to get hit for a certain amount of damage, Res just changes how much of it you're expecting to take, from a less common enemy type

[@brennantmi5063]

Okay, you raise good points. However, I raise you berserked Rutger. No amount of goddess Icons can bring Shanna back.

[@tjroybaker7964]

I don’t disagree, but I do think Resistance is a much more interesting stat in the FE universe, which I think makes it harder for people to call it the worst stat even if it is. At least, that’s how it is for me. As an example, Resistance in shadow dragon is often nonexistent for non Magic characters. When I first played the game this seemed more like an oversight than anything else, but eventually I appreciated it as a subtle story element (regular humans are near defenseless against magic) tied to a gameplay mechanic (using items and staves to protect units from magic). There’s also Tyrfing, which in the context of the gameplay and story of FE4 completely turns the tables of the adventure by changing your otherwise low resistance main character into an effective magic tank. Even high resistance (non magic) classes like Pegasus knights, dread fighters, and Kitsune benefit at least a little bit from the distinction of having high resistance (even if it’s effectively worthless in gameplay) as it can imply a special or mystical element is in play to protect them from magic. Again, none of this makes resistance a better stat, but I have been impressed and felt empowered by high resistance before. I’ve never felt that from a unit having high luck.

[@victorvaquer94]

I started FE with Awakening so for me Luck is invaluable beacause of Armshift and of the Leif's Sword.

[@akirasou]

The money grind is real

[@otbgoat5498]

you make sense and i agree with you to some extent but i like kaze so at least in fates i have to disagree.

[@akirasou]

I am glad that I made sense, and yeah it's cool to agree to disagree! Kaze has been mentioned in the comments a few times, and I do think he's a good unit. I think of him as being a Res specialist and thus a reason why Res on units generally isn't a high priority for me

[@rhettmitchell]

Why didn’t I know luck did so much in specifically 3H 😭😭 this explains so many things

[@akirasou]

Yeah Lck does a bunch of stuff in 3H, between Dodge, Hit, Avo, Mag Avo, Crit and gambling certifications! So you can end up with really funny moments like Shamir being able to gamble the cert for Monk at base, because her base Lck is just high enough for her to gamble it (and also the reason why I had to specify that Skills don't count is because Anna's Business Prosperity personal doesn't increase her cert chance...)

[@SweaterPuppys]

Thinking about how you want your unit with the lowest res to get hit by the sleep staff in chapter 2 of FE4 just so Sigurd can run in and kill Clement. Even then you have the silence staff that can completely ignore that situation and the calculation uses your magic against their res which is always 13

[@akirasou]

Yeah, the AI manipulation moment is real for that kind of moment. Plus it helps that you know it's gonna hit, because that also removes a form of uncertainty

[@kirbymastah]

2:18 - those 8% of votes againar skill need to try ironmans or speedruns

[@akirasou]

For sureeeeeeeeeee (also hi Kirby Mastah!)

[@user-uk2td7sz2f]

I agree. i think i rather have a unit with 0 res than 0 luck or 0 skill.

[@axelblz8876]

People have done things like FE8 with 0 str/mag, it'd be interesting to see some playthroughs with 0 luck/skill/res and seeing which ones have the least problems

[@akirasou]

Funnily enough, right now, I'm personally streaming an ironman of FE8 with 0 Spd, though it isn't any of Lck/Skl/Res lol, which (though I didn't start it for this reason) I later am planning to use as a case study for a future video analysing the value of Spd as a stat. It's... pretty painful lol Mind, I don't think I'll be doing the same for all of Lck/Skl/Res because uh... doing a full playthrough intentionally purely for a video is a lot of work. Let alone three, even for an FE game as short as FE8. So it would be interesting to see what happens if you were to remove em from games where you should have them, but I'm not gonna be the one to make that video, at least not anytime soon

[@TheJadeknight7]

The obvious issue with the luck stat is that you have to get out of the game to even know what it does, while res is completely straightforward, and thus it's perceived as more useful, but yeah, luck does contribute a lot more to your units' survivability than res, cause it works all the time and not only when attacked by magic.

[@akirasou]

Yeah, that's definitely a big issue with Lck. Strategy games generally withholding information is something that I don't love, since the additional information does inform both your tactical choices in the moment, and your strategic investments in the long term. But especially when there's a lot of battle calculation stuff not explained, it's really irritating imo

[@empressnemesis]

yeah 👍

[@akirasou]

Surprise empress Nem appearance!!

[@empressnemesis]

@@akirasou i have deep thoughts i must share

[@akirasou]

@@empressnemesis what a mooddddddddd, but yes algorithm-boosting comment always appreciated :D

[@renegaderaven3777]

On average the units that have high res aren’t going to be fighting each other. Mages in general are less common than physical fighters. Having low res where an enemy is using multiple siege tome is scary of course.

[@akirasou]

Basically, yeah. I agree on the many siege tomes moment being scary, but there's usually some counterplay involved

[@Zyaire286]

Res is not needed as much when compared to the other stats (unless they are running both def+res build) but I find it ironic that res is not needed for magics or clerics as they find hp or speed more useful than res. But that just me

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

Cleric should never see combat, so Res only helps against the rare long range spells (but HP and Spd are more useful). Res is actually better on archers, since mage killer is generally their main use

[@akirasou]

Clerics don't really benefit from getting hit by things (outside of FE1, where that's the only way that they gain experience...) so yeah, I definitely don't think that they need Res. And then Mages, HP is more useful since it contributes to physical bulk as well as magical, and, well, most enemies do be physical. Generally I prefer it when mages have lower Res, even, since then it means that the mage battles can actually be exciting and have some stakes, rather than two units just doing no damage to each other lol

[@caliburnleaf9323]

I already gave my thoughts on this on the poll, so instead I'll say something about the video editing: Please do not blow up sprite images to such an extent in future videos. Pixel art looks considerably worse when you can make out each individual pixel, to the point it was hard to tell what I was looking at sometimes.

[@akirasou]

Yo, yeah I remember reading your thoughts on the poll, thanks for giving em! Thanks also for the feedback on the sprites - I don't personally see it, but if it's something that can affect the viewer experience, then I'll do my best to avoid doing the same thing in the future. So I appreciate you telling me :>

[@noukan42]

I disagree on the fundamental level that doing something big one is better than doing something barely noticeble frequently. Having low res mean you can't fight certain bosses. Ever. Having low skill or low luck means you can still defeat any enemy, just a bit less consistently. It is also worth mentioning that maps having more phisical units is not an inherent quality of maps. You never have to ask yourself the question "how do i fix Res" because Res already do something that is useful in a vacuum. Fixing dex and luck so they are as good as the other stats is a far grander problem that has few good solutions.

[@akirasou]

That's fair, we can agree to disagree on that. Like I think that the role Lck plays in avoiding you getting crit over the course of a run is a big one overall, but it's definitely true that it isn't that noticeable, partly because you don't know when precisely it helps to avoid you getting crit It's definitely true that maps having more physical units than magical ones isn't a quality inherent to the map itself, though I would say that the enemy formation and distribution is inherent to the map's overall design and experience. So while the vacuum point is true in theory, it just doesn't work out a lot of the time in practice due to the layouts proper of maps

[@leaffinite2001]

I still think luck or dex are less valuable but res is pretty bad. Its just that res is one of those stats the games forget to use Edit: after thinking about it more i do think its more up in the air.

[@akirasou]

I appreciate the edit lol

[@HenriqueRJchiki]

You know res is a worthless stat when fe3h gives you an item that boosts it by SEVEN(!!!!!), costs almost nothing and it's available from the moment the shop unlocks in infinite supply... yeah...

[@akirasou]

Pure Waters when impactful are for sure a really useful item, like you said, +7 Res is a huge amount to have basically on tap

[@WanOlDan]

Half the video and nothing about the RES stat. Just defending other "meme" stats. All stats are useful, just some more than others. And if you think res is a meme stat, have fun dealing with sages with bolting in the GBA games. Let's see how much of a "meme" stat it is when your units get 1-shot by them.

[@auraguard0212]

No, Magic is the worst. We should bring back Magic being absent, from FE1.

[@auraguard0212]

Wait, am I Mandela-ing?

[@shansheenly]

No, you're correct. Theres no magic stat in fe1, and strength doesnt contribute to magic, so tomes do fixed damage

[@akirasou]

I can't really respond to this in any meaningful sense, since you haven't explained why you think that. As someone else has said though, you're not Mandela-ing

[@auraguard0212]

@@akirasou Resistance exists solely to counter Magic. Any problem Resistance has can be traced back to Magic being mishandled, or being used at all in place of Strength. This was largely a joke, though.

[@akirasou]

@@auraguard0212 gotcha gotcha lol, thanks for the clarification

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

Sneaky of you to use GBA FE, since it's some of the rare games were Res is somewhat good. Probably better than Death ever (FE7!Marcus is good because of his higher Res is my personal hot take.) Because GBA FE is a weird bizarro version of FE when they tried really hard to nerf Defense as much as possible for some reasons (I think someone just really hated Armored units. Using your dancer as a choke point shouldn't be a conscious choice someone make, but it actually works). Its the only time I really looked at it outside of Thracia though (and when chosing which units to train in Gaiden/SoV) That being said, even in GBA FE, while the worst stat is obviously Def, Skill and Luck are still above Res.

[@akirasou]

I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea how you came to the conclusion that Def is the worst stat in GBA FE. Like Armours are indeed not comparatively good units, but that doesn't mean that having good Def, which they often do, is bad, when most enemies are physical. So I would be interested in hearing the reasoning. I'm also intrigued as to what Dancer you were using as a choke point because I don't see it

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

@@akirasou Ninian at level 20 has 80+ Avoid without Terrain Bonus. So she's not going to be hit often. And she's pretty easy to level up in naturally. It's not necessarily a good idea (it's more for the meme), but the simple fact it can works is telling I'd say Res and Def are almost equal, or Def is slightly better, but it's still not that great. Definitely one of the bottom 3 stats. The best stat in those games (in general actually, but especially here) is Speed. And one of the thing it gives you a lot of is Avoid who's extremely good. I'd argue, Avo Tanking may be even better than regular tanking. At the very least a viable alternative. You prefer a unit with high Speed but only average bulk in both Def and Res than a Defensive specialist in those games (Marcus is a good example actually. His Def isn't that great, but it start but it start high enough to last long). It's definitely an argument made from a more casual approach though. In LTC/Speedrun, def may be more important. But on a regular playthrough, not so much

[@akirasou]

@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 like you said, I guess it does work, if you were to get her to Level 20, somehow? I don't think that happens naturally though, and if it's happening in an arena context, then I think you'll have other units who are capable of tanking properly... I'm glad to hear the concession that Def is better than Res, though I disagree that it's one of the bottom three stats still. Spd is obviously good, but it does take time to build up to dodgetanking reliably. So given that physical enemies are more common especially early on... the Def is kinda important? I'm not saying that the especially high Def units are the best units or anything. But you know, you do want it

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

@@akirasou Well, I can agree that Avoid isn't the main reason Speed is good. Attack Speed is way more important here. Still, it's good to see. It's less reliable, but it save your bacon a few times (and since you want speed anyway, better take it). Defense is closer to Skill to me, honestly, if I really try to be honest. It's good to have, but not the most relevant stat. It's way below Speed and Power (not that it's not important as any Gonzales users know) As of Ninian, in FE7, I always play Lyn Mode first and train her at least for 19xx if I go Hector Mode. Also, while this isn't the most practical, I also get her a few Exp in 22/23 to get to 22x/23x. Again, not the best strategy I admit. Arena Grinding helps (I like to do it for getting 19xx, or to get the Lords enough Exp to get Geitz chapter), but it's mostly while I decide to waste hundred of turns to get supports. Even without Arena, Healers and Dancers often ends up my highest level units.

[@akirasou]

@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 yeah, I can definitely agree that if stacked high enough, Avoid can be a real thing Then on the Ninian point, more than anything, I'm just amazed at the patience lol. The sole time that I've played 19xx was in a mod that enforced it and also didn't let me play Lyn Mode (so I didn't have to decide whether I was gonna play it). I do need to actually do the FE7 support grinding moment sometime for a video on another character analysis... I'm dreading it lol

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

HP being the worse stat is true, yeah. That's part of why Dorcas (or GBA FE Warriors in general) so bad. No speed and low defense renders his high HP useless, because he's not going to tank anything. Seth and Marcus having average to low HP, but good general bulk throughout makes them way more useful overall.

[@akirasou]

I agree with the Seth and Marcus and also the Dorcas point, though I will say that I don't know what the "HP is the worse stat" comment is a response to, nor also what you mean it in comparison to. So I can't comment further

[@Rezkeshdadesh]

Pixilated Goddess Icon is looking a lot more phallic than I remember it being.

[@akirasou]

Yeah, you're not the only one who's pointed that out... now that it's been pointed out, I can see it lol

[@augustus_paddle]

good video although counter argument, i disagree

[@akirasou]

And we can exist perfectly peacefully while disagreeing :>

[@liengandriod55]

But the 3rd best in heros!

[@akirasou]

Huh really? I've never played Heroes, so you could honestly make me believe anything about that game, but if true, that's interesting! What do you think the 1st and 2nd best are?

[@liengandriod55]

@@akirasou It is either atk or spd depending on the situation

[@akirasou]

@@liengandriod55 ahaha that checks out. Out of interest, how come Def is less valuable in your estimation there?

[@keldeo05]

The worst stat is def, just dodge lmao

[@akirasou]

B-but we can just dodge magical attacks as well for Res!

[@keldeo05]

@@akirasou but in some games magic ignores terrain

[@akirasou]

@@keldeo05 then we should dodge better :P (for real though, magical enemies are still less common than physical enemies, and Avo-boosting terrain isn't everywhere)

[@xenofes2]

I think a lot of people over-estimate the need for hit rate. It's something you should always be strategizing around. If you put a unit in a situation where they need to get the hit or everything falls apart and their hit rate isn't 100%, that's a failure of your strategy. As you say yourself at 4:14, you're probabilistically going to miss eventually if your hit rate is below 100%. It's a stat that you practically have to ignore, because the only safe way to play is to assume you're always going to miss if you can miss.

[@caliburnleaf9323]

If anything, you're making an argument for valuing hit rate *more*. If you're assuming you're going to miss whenever possible, then in a worst case scenario, you can never actually win. There is no such thing as a strategy that will work if every attack misses. In real gameplay, we aim to minimize the probability of failure, even if it's not always possible to reduce said probability to 0. Having a higher hit rate increases your probability of success, which is what any good strategy attempts to maximize.

[@akirasou]

I agree with Caliburn, I interpret what you're saying as an argument for valuing Hit rate (and therefore things that contribute to it) more. Like I agree that in the most optimised reliability context, you assume you're always going to miss if you can. Where I disagree is that I would extend it to say "ergo you try to minimise the number of situations where you can miss, and also reduce the chances of missing"