How Fire Emblem Fixed The Problem With Bows

when I was sitting down to decide what I wanted to do a the problem with video on after armor nights my mind jumped to the next class that people love to joke about which is archers and bow units in general but then when I was looking at the games I realized archers have been decent to good in almost every game for the last 10 years still prior to Fire Emblem Fates bow users struggled more often than not so instead of talking about a problem that currently exists and how to fix it I'm going to talk about what the issues with bow users were and how more recent Fire Emblem games have resolved some of those issues in each game where bows are good there's a slightly different reason why bows are good so I think that's interesting to look at if you started playing Fire Emblem when it came West with Fire Emblem 7 you might remember archers being a bit of a meme class and Bose being a bit of a meme weapon if you wanted to use an Archer you were locked to weak units like will and Rebecca who are stuck at two range and this often meant that they were reduced to providing weak chip on player Fizz this was the Archer status quo for a while early game chip Bots that you usually benched at your earliest convenience on the other hand if you've played more recent Fire Emblem games you probably think of Bose as a pretty good weapon type in engage pretty much every team wants a bow user and bow access is a legitimate Boon to the warrior class in three houses bows are an important part of your army and in conquest and shadows of Valencia bows are strong enough that you actively want an Archer on your team so how did we get from Bose being a bit of a joke to being an important part of our armies let's start by looking at what the basic strengths and weaknesses inherent Dubose are as that will be important to see how the context of the different games emphasizes the strengths and weaknesses of this weapon type in most games bows are a two-range only weapon with flyer Effectiveness the obvious strength of this is that you can Attack One range enemies without getting countered so the role that archers can fill is to safely attack enemies especially strong enemies where eating a counter-attack could be dangerous bows also tend to get flyer Effectiveness meaning they deal bonus damage to Flyers like Pegasus and wyvern Knights so it seems like they're meant to be a go-to option to deal with those enemy types having two range also means that archers can take advantage of impassable terrain to attack enemies that have no way of reaching the Archer so this means they can benefit from indoor maps with winding corridors they can shoot over or city maps with walls they can hide behind and those are the basic strengths of the Archer us the obvious weaknesses for Archers are that they're helpless at one range so you either need to protect them or use terrain to keep enemies away from them the other big weakness of archers is that they have very little enemy phase potential sometimes you can position an Archer such that they get attacked at two range on enemy phase and then they counter but often if you want to enemy phase a bunch of enemies you're gonna have to find someone with access to one two range to do the job so that they can hit all the enemies that hit them archers can't provide this service in most games so those are the basic pros and cons of archers and Bows in general but bows work a little differently in each game and the design of each game can impact how important the pros and cons of the weapon type are so let's look at some games where archers struggle and how those struggles were resolved in games where bows are good there are many games where bow users have issues but these issues are really apparent in Fire Emblem 7 and 8 for the TBA and the big reason Bose struggle in this game is because enemies are weak and player units are strong this affects bow users in two ways first when your units are way stronger than the enemies attacking without receiving a counter-attack isn't a big deal one of the big benefits of Bose on paper is that they get to attack and not take damage in return but when enemies are weak enough that units like Seth and Marcus can fight three plus enemies per turn without breaking a sweat avoiding counters doesn't seem like such a big deal because counter-attacks aren't scary additionally in games where enemies are weak enemy phasing tends to be more valuable in something like Sacred Stones you don't really want to be a unit that kills one enemy per turn on player phase because the best units in Sacred Stones can wade into a group of six enemies and kill all of them on enemy phase in Sacred Stones your units are just way stronger than the enemy and good one-two range weapons like javelins and hand axes exist so there's just not much need for a unit whose job it is to kill one enemy per player phase in these games the only Niche archers hypothetically get to fill is killing flying enemies but even that is of limited value when enemies are weak or when weapon Effectiveness is weak like it is in Fire Emblem 7. in fe7 weapon Effectiveness only doubles might instead of tripling it which means often bow users just can't one-round wyverns even with weapon Effectiveness for example if you promote Lin at level 13 in chapter 26 she can barely one round wyverns with a steel bow and if they roll up on speed or defense she can't do it archers and fe7 do fare better against Pegasus Knights but Pegasus Knights aren't too difficult for non-archers to kill so it's not a super valuable Niche for Bose to be good in fe7 you would need more scary flyers for them to kill and you'd have to make sure they actually have the stats and weapon Effectiveness to kill them archers face a similar issue in Sacred Stones where often your non-archer combat units just do okay against the game's Flyers are pre-promoted sniper and is occasionally has use in helping out with a death coil or even a gargoyle if Seth failed to get the speed that he needs to double them but there aren't many situations where you find yourself thinking man I really wish I had a bow user bows are so unimportant in Sacred Stones that Garrick trades a point of move on a horse just to get axes instead of bows on promotion it's worth noting that you can't even solve these issues by just making the archers better Innis actually has good combat stats and Sacred Stones it's just hard for him to perform well due to the way the maps play out there aren't many scary flyers and you don't want a unit that's just going to kill one enemy a turn giving a sniper incredible stats in this game would enable them to find a niche where they could help with more difficult bosses but I truly believe that you could give Innis some of the best stats in The Game and his performance would still be heavily limited just because he's too range locked so that's the pattern in games where enemies are weak the pros of archers are really de-emphasized because you're not so worried about counter-attacks and your other units are doing okay against enemy Flyers so the pros aren't such a big deal in these games but the cons still matter in fact they might matter more than usual because games with weak enemies tend to be enemy phase focused games and Bose struggle in those since they can't counter at one two range the easiest way to resolve this issue is just to make enemies tougher especially enemy Flyers to take a look at fire emblem shadow dragon in its harder difficulties shadow dragon is loaded with difficult enemies your stronger units can take a couple hits but your weak units can take one if you're lucky the result is that in Maps where you aren't just warp skipping a unit that can hit someone without getting hit back is actually pretty valuable units like Gordon don't seem impressive at first glance but being able to chip away at an enemy without getting hit so that one of your Cavaliers can finish them off is incredibly helpful in Hard 5 shadow dragon especially during the early game where there are limited ways to restore health so every enemy attack you take is just that much more devastating the strong enemies in Shadow Dragon prevent strategies like having Jake and fight a bunch of enemies on enemy phase so in this context it's not a big deal that bow users do most of their Combat on player phase because you want to be avoiding enemy phase combat where possible because the enemies are very scary and you don't want to take too many hits from them even in a game where the enemies aren't quite as strong as they are in shadow dragon strong Flyers can still provide an important dish for bow users as well a great example of this is in Fire Emblem gauge in engaged wyverns can get pretty tricky to kill in the late game look at how thick this late game wyvern is 71 HP 35 defense 22 res and they've got 29 speed so doubling them isn't even trivial so let's assume we are doubling you still need 71 physical attack or 58 magic attack to one round them not impossible especially with a crit but we need a pretty strong unit to do it probably one of our better units will have to take them on alternatively we could just slap a Celica ring on a cupido Fogo that hasn't leveled up at all and he can kill the wyvern with a radiant bow in engaged bow users provide this Niche where they can take care of a tricky enemy type with very little investment leaving our strong combat units free to go kill other units instead engage throws a lot of Flyers at you and you will often want a bow user with a radiant bow to kill them you may have also noticed that I didn't mention Fire Emblem 6 with the other GBA fire emblems and that's because unlike 7 and 8 Fire Emblem 6 has difficult enemies and strong Flyers the bow users present in fe6 are also just a bit better than what 7 has on offer so they actually have good performance against the game's Flyers so Bose do a lot better in six compared to 7 or 8 just because the enemies and flyers are tougher another way you can ensure that archers have a good chance to perform is by designing a few maps that help them out Fire Emblem Conquest has a couple good examples of this where bows are a godsend the first is chapter 17 also known as ninja Health this map is loaded with one to two ranged ninjas and a bunch of walls that allow a two-range unit to take shots at enemies over the walls in Fates both have weapon triangle over shuriken so a strong bow unit can be a great help here they perform well against the ninjas and they'll often be able to enemy phase as you need them to because they can use the walls to force enemies to attack from two range another map chapter 24 hinoka is also good for Archers this map is jam-packed with flyers and in my run I actively benched some units I was using just to get an extra Archer on the team to deal with all the Flyers so map design that favors archers can create situations where they can succeed even if they haven't been regular members of your team it also helps that Fates weakened one to two range options like javelins and hand axes so a great two-range physical combat is harder to come by if you aren't using a bow Conquest is actually a perfect example of how the context of a game can totally change how good our tears are because it shares its mechanics with Birthright but Birthright being loaded with route maps and pushing you to do more combat on enemy phase makes archers less valuable compared to Conquest so that's a few ways you can make archers stronger without changing their fundamental qualities in games where enemies are very strong or where Flyers are frequent and hard to kill archers have a role to fill however some Fire Emblem games have made bows Stronger by changing the fundamentals of how they work either to give them a new strength or to reduce an area of weakness and sometimes Fire Emblem games add a feature that impacts all classes and weapons such as combat arts and they can benefit bow users disproportionately at times the biggest example of this is Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valencia in sov there aren't a ton of flyers and frankly not a lot of terrain on maps to shoot over at too ranged but sov buffed bows in a few ways to compensate the most obvious one is is Archer range being huge and includes one range snipers can shoot enemies anywhere from one to five tiles away and they can counter on enemy phase this is really nice on desert Maps where you can just plink away at dudes from a mile away while they futile try to get to your Bowman but these strengths are counterbalanced by low move before their final promotion and accuracy problems without accuracy increasing bows like the iron and Killer Bow and a lack of flyers for them to shoot what really makes archers stand out in sov though are the combat Arts curved shot on the iron bow provides some much needed accuracy in the early game but the real star of the show is the killer Bose combat art Hunter's volley this combat art always hits twice and adds accuracy and crit in many Maps this just allows your Archer to delete a unit from five squares away once per turn there's an HP cost but who cares you're five squares away and the enemy you're hitting is probably dying Shadows of Valencia gives you a ton of new tools for Archers to use and it allows them to be a useful part of every team particularly once the Killer Bow makes its appearance three houses brought back a lot of the features for bows from Shadows of Valencia bow users can get additional range one range counter attacks and two powerful combat arts in Hunters Valley and point-blank volley curved shot also makes a return and it's a big deal in the early game as it provides plus one range and adds accuracy in the early game where hit rates are often shaky being able to curved shop for more reliable hit is really nice and being able to hit from one range further is nice too particularly when your unit might not even be able to take one counter-attack from the enemy so staying far away can be a boon these games show that another way Fire Emblem has made Buzz good is to just buff them if two ranged lock isn't hacking it make the range bigger allow one range counters and provide access to powerful combat Arts these are all ways that you can make bows stand out and eradicate some of their cons personally I am mixed on these types of Buffs for Archers I don't mind range increases but 5 range feels a little excessive to me especially because it makes enemy archers really annoying to fight plotting your way through the desert while enemy archers take shots at you isn't exactly my favorite part of Shadows of Valencia I also don't like one range counters to me not being able to attack at one range feels core to what the bow is if a bow is one two range it's just a fancy Javelin to me however I think adding three range for bows is cool and I love the combat Arts Point Blank volley and Hunter's volley are some of my favorite combat arts in three houses and they're a really satisfying payoff for investing in bows for a unit Beyond directly buffing bows or providing strong enemies engage takes an interesting approach by adding some game mechanics that just synergize well with bows and bow users mainly I'm talking about the Lin ring and the backup unit typing Lin's engage attack Astra storm allows you to hit an enemy from 10 spaces away anybody can use this ability but if you use it on a covert unit that Bonus Goes from 10 up to 20. in practice this makes a good magical bow unit one of the best users of the Lin ring a unit like sniper citrine can grab a radiant bow and either nuke Anatomy or completely remove a health bar from a boss you can get the 20 range with the thief class too but they won't be able to do it with a radiant bow basically the Lin ring is really strong and snipers make great use of it so it provides a good reason to use a sniper without directly buffing pose similarly Bose also synergize well with the backup unit type backup units can provide chain attacks against any enemy in their range so a weapon with increased range gives you more opportunities to chain attack the noteworthy Synergy here is with the Longbow with the Longbow units can chain attack from up to three spaces away so giving your Warrior a longbow to hold on to can help you set up a bunch of chain attacks engage actually has my favorite approach to making bows good bows still have clear weaknesses in their lack of one range but enemies not being pushovers Flyers being hard to kill and some good mechanical synergies make Bose an important part of your army I think the solution is a lot more elegant than just giving Bose a bunch of extra range or letting them counter at one range in summary historically the issues with archers have been a lack of one range that makes it difficult for them to contribute on enemy phase Plus in many games there either Aren't Enough strong Flyers to justify bringing in Archer or The Archers you get don't perform well enough against them to justify bringing them instead of just another good combat unit this can be resolved by adding more flyers and just making sure the archers are actually good enough to kill them and making sure enemies are strong enough that your non-arturers can't just fight dozens of them per enemy phase without worrying about losing HP one last note I want to make on archers is that I think they can at times be hurt by the way in which we tend to evaluate units commonly we use the standard of efficient play which is a somewhat vague set of criteria but one of the things that concerns itself with is speed of play this makes sense as you have to have some sort of criteria when evaluating units but it does ignore some things an Archer can bring to the table in slower contexts take this moment in Gray Heritage my Archer can kill enemies over this wall without any risk of a counter-attack it's a 100 reliable way to deal with these enemies requires no setup and takes basically no thought to do think there's value in a unit that provides an easy answer to questions even if other reliable solutions to those questions exist if we aren't concerned about time archers can often be a very easy solution to a one-range enemy or they can slowly chip away at some tricky enemy with a longbow and while this isn't important for efficient play I do think that it's a useful thing to exist in a game since most playthroughs aren't exactly worried about their turn count what do you think though what game has your favorite version of Bose and what game do you think they're weakest in let me know in the comments or check out the community Discord in the video description if you want to chat about it further lastly if you enjoyed the video consider giving it a like or subscribe so that you never miss an upload and have yourself an awesome week

Channel: ActualLizard

Views: 11,751

Keywords: fire emblem, archers, bows, fe, fire emblem engage, fire emblem three houses, 3h, Sov, echoes, sacred stones, actuallizard, actual lizard

Id: Va1v_It-43I

Length: 17min 0sec (1020 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 25 2023