How Good is Lyn ACTUALLY...in the Binding Blade? (Analysis)

[Music] lin is a character close to the hearts of many fire emblem players for anyone who started their fire emblem journey with fv7 also known as the blazing blade she is the first character you meet and boy does she leave a great first impression lynn's story might feel sluggish to veteran players but when i was new to the series i really appreciated the slow pace of f7's tutorial maps as well as the great amount of time spent fleshing out lin's character as well as her interactions with the people close to her like kent seine and florina lindes legion is a small group of people and the great amount of dialogue that each of them get here gives them their much needed time to shine looking back at it now i cannot come up with any other group of firemen characters quite like this other than the grille mercenaries from path of radiance gameplay-wise lynn also has some great unit feel first of all her animations just look at them they have everything that makes the gba animations so much fun they are flashy they are colorful and they are over the top and because lin mode is a tutorial the enemies are not particularly strong so lynn will double and kill just about everything she faces [Music] so if you're one of the many people who greatly enjoy lin as a character as a unit or both it can be a bit of a downer to go online and see the tier list usually put her pretty low as powerful and dominant as lynne feels in her own mode she is not without her issues no unit is perfect but lynn's problems are especially apparent if you compare her to other units on a district rule set of a tier list now before i go on to explain why lin is bad in the blazing blade let me make something crystal clear lynn might rank low on a tier list but that does not mean i'm telling you to not use her if you like lynn and you want to train her i'm not stopping you you do you it's your game it's not even that difficult to use her because even though she's relatively low compared to other units every single cast member of ip7 is usable even on the highest difficulty setting what i am saying is that when you measure lin's performance relative to other units in the context of iv7 she doesn't look so good and i'm saying it with that emphasis because there is a context where she does look good but we'll get to that later so why is lynne bad in the blazing blade what are her flaws lynn has three big flaws that hold her back her low durability her focus on swords and her late promotion lin is a contender for having the worst durability in the game that might sound like i'm exaggerating but i'm really not for hp she is looking at 16 hp and 70 growth while her base defense is only 2 with a 20 growth this is on par with mages like irk and lucius and significantly worse than characters with more average durability like kent and seine when compared to actual tanks like oswald and hector lin is made of wet paper against most enemy types in hector hard mode lin will go down in two attacks so in order to keep her safe you usually have to protect her with other characters and almost every time she takes a hit you will have to heal her hp back to full or else she will die to the next one lin's low durability limits what you can do and at times it also limits what your other units can do without putting lyn at risk it isn't necessarily difficult to keep lynn alive but it will in some way shape or form hold you back now the idea of lin's class archetype the fast myrmidon is that she compensates for this with her high avoid after all if you don't get hit who cares if your defense is low just dodge le mao but lin's avoid is not reliable in the slightest until much later in the game sure she has a reasonable chance to dodge an attack but are you willing to bet her life on it or would you rather have more concrete durability [Music] lin is often criticized for being sword locked but what exactly does that mean and why is it a bad thing after all most units are locked to one weapon type before promoting on paper all weapon types have pros and cons swords are light and have high hit rates but in return they don't do much damage axes are the opposite they are more powerful but in return they are heavier and less accurate and lances sits somewhere in the middle both have solid weapon stats all around but their drawback is that they can only be used for ranged attacks however fe7's enemy composition tips the balance in favor of lands and axe users the most common enemy type are lance users who have weapon triangle advantage against sword users like lin whenever lynn is fighting a lance user she suffers a significant penalty she does one less damage with her attacks at fifteen percent less accuracy while the enemy deals one more damage in return with fifty percent more accuracy this compounds all of lynn's durability problems as she'll get hit harder and more often in addition the loss in lin's damage output compared to other weapon types really stings because lynn's strength is on the low side 4 base and 40 growth it's not irredeemably bad but with swords being so weak she's rarely going to be able to kill an enemy in a single round of combat the theoretical upside to this low attack power is that lynn is more accurate than lance and axe users but characters with accuracy problems in fe7 are rare the enemies all have zero luck and they are often lacking in speed so unless you're fighting a boss or someone on terrain you're going to have hit rates of at least 80 or higher high accuracy just isn't in very high demand and swords have another big shortcoming while lance users and axe users have access to viable one-two range weapons in javelins and hand axes swords do not there are one-to-range swords in the game but they are rare and often impractical due to their magical properties they can work on some situations but javelins and hand axes are more universally useful even though these weapons have pretty mediocre statistics they are worth putting up with just to counter enemy archers and mages someone like dorcas or bartray who would normally be way worse than lean offensively just because of their terrible speed can do a lot more work on enemy phase just through the use of a hand axe it doesn't hurt that they're also tankier speaking of being tankier the lack of ranged attacks also makes lin's durability problem worse like i said earlier she usually dies in two rounds of combat so if she attacks someone on player phase and eats a counter-attack she immediately needs healing or foolproof protection the only enemy types that she can attack safely are axe users which are pretty rare and archers who don't counter but almost every character can fight archer safely so it's not exactly a great boon now both lin's low durability and her lack of ranged options are mitigated by her promotion to blade lord not only does she gain 3 hp 3 defense and 5 resistance but she also gets the option to use bose to avoid enemy counters ignore the weapon triangle and sometimes counter ranged attackers herself it's a pretty good promotion actually but there is one big problem the only way to promote lin is through the use of a heaven seal and the first one you obtain is in chapter 26 of hector mode unfulfilled heart every single promotion item is available at least once long before then and some of them you can even get twice before that time lin also cannot use the earth seal the universal promotion item that can promote almost everyone else that means lynn is stuck in her unpromoted class for longer than most other characters also if you are training your other lords only one of them can promote with that heaven's seal in hector mode that means you have to choose between lin and elliwood whoever draws the shortest straw is going to have to wait until the end of chapter 28 battle before dawn to promote to put that in perspective your first guiding ring user can promote at the start of chapter 19 and you get the second one from a chest in chapter 20. the first night crest comes as early as chapter 17. you can get another one in chapter 21. that is a big difference even if you don't want to promote units before level 20 the fact that she doesn't have access to her promotion gains hurts her utility [Music] of course it wouldn't be fair to rag on lin for her drawbacks without highlighting some of her good points the problem with lin's good areas is that in the context of iv7 they are either overkill or not as helpful as they could have been casein points the manicotti lynn's personal weapon this is a really good weapon it's almost as strong and crit happy as the killing edge but it's much lighter and has effectiveness against armored and mounted enemies unfortunately most enemies with those properties in fe7 wield lances so lynn is often going to fight at triangle disadvantage if she wants to cash in on this what's worse is that fe7 only has a two times might modifier for effective weaponry so lin often doesn't even wander out enemy armor knight with the manicotti this is actually a localization change the japanese version has triple effectiveness instead so between the english version and the japanese version they robbed lin of 8 potential damage and that's damage she really could have used lin's other iconic strong area is of course her speed she has 9 base speed and a 60 growth so she's one of the faster characters in the game this ups her void and allows her to double a wider range of enemies compared to slower characters while i think speed is the best stat in the game in a vacuum i think lynn's high speed doesn't really help her all that much as i've highlighted before fe7 enemies are slow even units with more average speed can double a large percentage of them oftentimes lynn's extra speed is overkill there are some enemy types that are hard to double such as mercenaries and valkyries but with her average stats lin usually doesn't double those either at that point all her high speed does is add to her avoid which is helpful ish but like i've said before it's often not reliable and you're still limited by her poor hp and defense unless you're willing to take a big risk other than the money cody and high speed lin doesn't really stand out positively in fe7 what other standout traits does she have she has high accuracy but as i've outlined before accuracy problems are rare in fe7 most axe users have no trouble hitting their targets i guess there's the fact that she gets the soul cutty in the final chapter but that sword is bad it's weaker than the silver sword and it weighs her down by a massive 8 points so lynn as a unit has her pros and cons and unfortunately fe7 highlights those cons while it renders those pros not worthless but they don't exactly give her a lot of utility she isn't terrible in a vacuum but the context of fv7 just doesn't let her shine fe7 is a game with many enemies that are weak individually but nonetheless lynne performs worse than most of her peers due to her worst durability and her focus on swords and bows which made me think what if lin was put into a different context where her issues were less pronounced but her strengths could really be shown off what if there was a game that lin could be in where swords and bows are better where weapon effectiveness was a bigger deal and where her speed and accuracy were not just relevant but legitimate claims to fame in other words what if lin was a playable character in the binding blade [Music] this is a question that's been in the back of my mind for a while one of those little projects that i was always wondering about but never really had the motivation to put into action originally i was just going to play and record footage for this to eventually turn into the video you're watching right now but then i realized it would make for a fun let's play project so i asked rom hacker amber storm also known as the developer for project amber to insert lin into the binding blade and they did and now i could test to see if my theory holds true the binding blade also known as fv6 works well as a game to trial it in for a lot of reasons for one it's on the game boy advance just like fe7 so pretty much all the mechanics carry over but more importantly fp6's hard mode provides a much better context for linda thrive in at least on paper let's take a look at all these things that make lin bad in fe7 and see if they apply to fv6 this is still a weakness of linz in the binding blade putting her in a different game doesn't change that her hp and defense are on the low end however at the very least she's not so frail that she dies in one hits even if we play on hard mode in that sense she's not much worse off than most of the units in chapter 1 like roy allen lance and walt she gets too with kyod and while her raw durability at base level is nothing to write home about the other factors at play mitigate this issue quite a bit in fe7 the most common enemy type for enemies is lance's the same is probably true for fe 6 but the numbers are a bit more even here there are more chapters where enemies are primarily using axes particularly in the early game and during the western isles arc among the lands using enemies you can also find more axe reavers what's more the weapon triangle is only ten percent in fe six compared to fifty percent of fv7 so in general this is less of an issue even ignoring the weapon triangle swords are better off in fe6 accuracy is a higher priority in this game since the enemies are dodgier they have higher speed and an actual lock stats weapons are also less accurate in general and lances and axes suffer more from this so the edge in accuracy that lane has is a real factor now this is one of the many reasons that fv6 rutger for example is much better relative to fp7's gee i'm not your buddy friend i'm not your friend guy bose have a similar niche of being accurate which is again not very helpful in fe7 but very much so on fv6 in addition since mp6 enemies are so strong it's often desirable to avoid counter attacks as to not take a lot of damage on player phase this makes a bow a much more useful tool to have in fe6 other ranged options are also much better on fv7 than they are on fv6 hand axes and javelins for example are extremely nerfed in fv6 they have 10 less accuracy at base and this is before considering that ip6 enemies are dodgier and f6 player characters often have less skill in the first place while the english fe7 has a double weapon effectiveness modifier and fe 6 hits triple instead that means the fv6 manicotti ignoring the weapon triangle has 24 mites compared to the 16 it would have in fe7 that is effectively a boost of 8 damage per hit 16 per round of combat if lyn is double attacking a big difference maker for sure this increase in damage from effective weapons also boosts lynn's performance against enemy flyers when she's using bows in 57 an effective 6 might bow has 12 might and fv6 that is 18. i mentioned before that fe 6 enemies are faster than iv7s and that increases the value of linzone speed as well a lot of player units in fv6 even once considered decent struggle to double reliably on hard mode enemy types that are normally trivial to double attack on fv7 such as mages and archers can be too fast and the faster ones like mercenaries and mermaids often double you something you will almost never see in fe7 if lynn is able to grow enough speed with her 60 growth she should be able to avoid getting doubled if not double attack most enemy types also while enemies in fe6 are stronger they are usually less accurate due to the aforementioned lower hit rates on weapons so lin's dodge tanking might actually be more reliable in fv6 i saved this one for last because it required some creative liberties on my part lin does not have economical promotion time in fv6 i could simulate her late promotion from iv7 for example by having her promote at the same time as roy in fv6 three chapters before the true end of the game but i didn't think that would be very interesting the results would be very predictable lin will probably be decent for maybe half the game and then inevitably as other units start promoting she would drop into obscurity until the last couple of chapters so i decided that lin should be able to promote with a regular promotion item that was reasonably available since your class is a clear reference to member downs you could argue it should have been hero crest but fv6 already has a lot of hero crest users so instead i asked amber to have her promote using the orion's bolt instead an item for which there is much less competition slightly unfair maybe but i thought it would make for the most interesting content the player gets a pair of orion's bolts around the western isles and it's usually not a great idea to use more than one unpromoted bow user in the first place so this makes lin's promotion relatively uncontested now i've gone over lin's most important characteristics and why they work better on fv6 than in v7 but so far this has been mostly theoretical my analysis could be incorrect there might be factors that i have overlooked if you watched the let's play you might be familiar with the little intros i made for every episode where i would pretend that i'm keeping a log of lynn's progress in the binding blade depending on the episode they varied from earnest observations about lin's performance september 24 2021 we have started testing lin in fire emblem the binding blade our hypothesis is that her offense will be very useful in the context of this game lynn is fast accurate and with her money katie she should be able to do great damage to certain types of enemies such as cavaliers and armor knights however overcoming her low durability will be a real challenge as it looks like any combination of two enemies will knock her out more patience and blatant favoritism will be needed to find out just how good lynn is and fire emblem the binding blade to a tongue-in-cheek joke about how i'm favoring lin and editing my videos in a way that makes her look good december 14 2021 we ascend the tower of heavenly arrows normally this is a very tedious affair but thanks to some interesting tactics it turns into a fun exercise in humiliation first we take control of the center area making use of lin's longbow to destroy the annoying bolting sage ellen brings in roy and lina and together they take down the annoying berserk bishop boss and by together i mean lynn just hits him nope i said lynn just hits him nope okay so lynn hits him to low hb and then yeah lynn just quits the to death and gets a perfect level up all in one try lynn is flawless in fire emblem the binding blade but that's not what this video is it's time that we looked at how accurate my hypothesis was how good was lean in the binding blade actually from the very start it became clear that lin's early game was not going to be her strong suit her durability was still really bad and her base speed was not high enough to double enemies in chapter 1 neither of these were huge problems per se because that map is all about marcus weakening enemies and then other characters finishing them off and lin did that just fine but as the early game progressed it became apparent that lin's lower durability was still relevant one problem was that once lin took a hit a single heal from ellen or a single vulnerary use wasn't enough to enable her to take another so it was generally better to not have her take hits at all this limited her to finishing off enemies on player phase whereas characters with even slightly more bulk could afford to be opened up to attacks every now and then that said this healing problem was alleviated by the men's staff obtained in a house in chapter 3 as that led me healed into full hp another issue that i didn't count on beforehand was the bad level ups i was going to get my lin got rng screwed big time particularly in speed for the entire early game my lin could not double reliably even though that was supposed to be her selling point since her bases aren't exactly stellar this really hurt her performance for the first half of the game that's all the bad news for the early game the good news is that the manicotti was really really good it did loads of damage to enemy cavaliers and it even let me one round ko armor knights triple effectiveness made a big big difference even outside of these specific enemy types manicotti was just a really nice weapon to have that gavel more attack whenever she needed it and with her low strength that was quite often still lin's drawbacks kind of overshadowed her strong points for the early game even when we could utilize the manicotti we still had to be really careful to protect her from damage as the combination of any two enemies could kill her against axe enemies her avoid was good enough to occasionally rely on a dodge but most of the time it wasn't so sometimes there just wasn't a good opportunity to use her after chapter 8 these opportunities fortunately became more plentiful as we got into the western isles arc at this point in the game the enemy focus shifts from lance users to axe users so we could expect lin to dodge a lot more her hilarious doubling problem was still present but it was easier to get her in on the action without risking her life or having to get out of my way to avoid that risk another factor that increased lynn's usefulness was her gaining a support partner lynne replaced boars and so she inherited the support list that bores had which coincidentally only has characters that join after chapter 8. while other characters such as allen could benefit from getting support bonuses liam was left alone up to this point partially due to wanting lin to be on par with the others in this regard i decided to use lolina in this playthrough and kept these two together to build support over the course of the game funnily enough this support gives lynn the same bonuses as the very fast lin florina support in fe7 since lina and florina are both light affinity that is to say the pair gets 1 attack five hits and five crits per support level now i never support abused in this playthrough meaning i never just sat there mashing and turn but i did play at a fairly relaxed pace and made sure to keep support pairs together whenever the situation allowed for it lynn's upward trend continued as we kept going through the western isles her bad rng from the early game got counter balanced by a couple of lucky level ups and boss kills this allowed her to reach level 20 at the end of chapter 11 just as we obtained the first orion's bolt this allowed me to promote her at the maximum potential on the first turn of chapter 12 giving lyne a sizable boost on all fronts her durability becomes considerably better through the addition of 3 hb 3 defense and especially 5 resistance lin was already blessed in resistance but this promotion is what maitland absolutely earned the title of magekiller she started taking negligible damage from magical enemies from here on out but the physical bulk is considerable too her offense was also improved through the gain of plus 2 attack making it easier to combine for kills on tougher enemies and sometimes even hit two at kill thresholds on weaker ones occasionally aided by the lena support unfortunately lin's promotion doesn't give any speed probably as it was designed to fix her weaknesses rather than bolster her strong points so she remained a bit speed screwed but even with her speed being about three below average lin was still fast enough to double the majority of enemies both generics and bosses she actually went on a boss killing streak for several chapters because she happened to be so proficient at dealing with him holy sh the promotion also gave lin access to bose which made her a lot more flexible she could avoid those strong counter-attacks fv6 enemies are known for attack from different positions and of course gain triple effective damage against enemy flyers lin started using bows more often than swords after promotion because it was usually more convenient and this way i could better preserve the remaining uses of the manicotti at this point i think it's good to mention that i tried to avoid favoring lin over other characters i really wanted to accurately test and depict what it would be like to use lin in a casual playthrough i made funny joke intros where i used intentionally poor editing and phrasing to make her look good but this was not the kind of playthrough where i wanted her to receive more resources than other characters i wanted to make a fair comparison with the rest of the cast however in this portion of the game i made two exceptions to this rule the first is that i gave her the chapter 13 body ring simply because i wasn't using anyone that i thought would benefit more lynn's low constitution often prevented her from using higher might weapons to their full potential especially my speed screwed addition the manicotti was the only powerful weapon she could use that wasn't weighing her down like the silver sword and the killing edge did if i was using someone else who could benefit just as much such as echidna i probably would have given it to them instead what a pity lin's body ring situationally gave her more speed when using heavier weapons though it's worth noting that it doesn't help her double an enemy that she couldn't already double with a lighter weapon the second exception was that i used a hammer and staff to repair the manicotti in most playthroughs i would save that hammer and use for a more impactful weapon or staff such as durandal or warp this didn't really impact the playthrough much because i didn't use the manicotti all that often anymore at this point in the game but it was nice to use it whenever i wanted to instead of having to be conscious about its durability overall lin was much much better in the mid game than in the early game she wasn't a slog in the early game due to poor bases and even worse level ups but thanks to a couple of boss kills some good level ups and most importantly her promotion she turned into a really good unit she feels like a hybrid of rutger and sioux which is fitting considering her sake in heritage she combines high speed with weapon effectiveness and range and as a result there's almost always something useful for her to do in addition she has more resistance than anyone i have so she is perfect for tasks involving magic users the picture i painted of lin's mid game holds up from chapter 12 onwards all the way through the uteria arc and the second route split i went through ilia rather than sake where lin's bose proved useful to shoot down enemy pegasus knights and falconites late game doesn't have a drastic change with regards to lin's performance but there are a couple of highlights that i would like to cover first off there is chapter 21 you might expect that lin helped with taking down all the enemy wyvern riders but actually left that job to gonzales since he can just pulverize them on enemy phase lin didn't do anything meaningful until i got to the shrine where the boss is i warped her in and she cleanly to hit kyo the stage inside using the manikari after that she had a fateful duel with murdoc doing massive damage with hermane cody crit but leaving him with a sliver of health to humiliate the burn general i finished him off with a purge from none other than yoder at the end do you understand chapter 21x saw lin really take the spotlight i took another big shortcut again warping her towards the boss area this time carrying roy she dropped him off and started fighting the enemies coming from all sides again benefiting from her gigantic rez her frequent use of bows paid off in this chapter as she reached s rank letting her use the mergl glaze for a significant speed boost this chapter did see the first actual lin death but that was more due to my carelessness than a shortcoming on lens part after chapter 21x the player received the apocalypse tome as well as the binding blade and roy's promotion however this patched version of the game had an additional fun surprise in store the soul cutty this weapon is almost completely useless in the blazing blade as it's too heavy for lin to use without putting her at risk of getting doubled and it's not strong enough to make up for it it has double effectiveness against dragons but that barely helps against the only dragon left in the game in f6 however there are many dragon enemies left to fight and milin is fast enough to actually use the soulcat against a couple of enemies without losing her ability to double attack this let us enjoy the flashy animations in chapter 22 lin used her various weaponry to great success with the ultimate payoff being her guaranteed and exact kill against zephiel at this point i had also given lin a load of boots obtained in the secret shop of chapter 21. that might seem unfair since earlier i said i didn't want to load limb with stat boosters but i had many boots and i also gave roughly the same amount to roy gonzalez and laram as well as a couple of other units i believe the boots are better off focused into a low number of units instead of spreading them out very thinly and at any rate boots just speed up the pace at which lin can make it to enemies they don't enhance her actual combat performance so if she wasn't any good at fighting it would show here and it did not show lin's abilities never slowed down even in the last few chapters she did well against the remainder of byrne's wife and army in chapter 23 and she was again instrumental in disposing of the boss brunia taking her down with the merc glaze i live streamed the last portion of the game where we go into the dragon temple since lin had all those boots as well as the ability to kill enemy dragons without taking a counter attack she saw a lot of play but the absolute peak was the fight against the final boss normally i dune is easily slain by roy's binding blade but my chat wanted me to kill her with lin and the perfect opportunity to humiliate one last boss presented itself as we defeated her with the light brand you what i'm sorry i don't i would have loved to get the best ending but the chat voted for this from the way i discussed lin's performance i think it's pretty obvious that i do really like the way lin plays in the binding blade while her start was rough she really came into her own when she promoted and between all the different weapons she had access to there was almost always something for her to do she reminded me very much of two other good units from the binding blade rutger and shin although she is not always able to match them due to lacking rutgers high crit rates or shin's high movements the fact that she can do both of their jobs occasionally still gives her a lot of value the ways i theorized lynn's strong points to be better in fv6 than in fe7 all ended up being true in practice and that was very satisfying to see that said before i shove lynn into an s-tier on a tier list i think it's fair to point out her very real drawbacks as well lynn's low bases particularly in hb and defense are very real problems that i had to navigate around carefully in the early game a lot of the kills that she got were weakened enemy archers simply because fighting anything else with her presented a potential danger for the first eight or so chapters lin could not fight more than one or two enemies per turn without a chance of death in addition the fact that mine got rng screwed in speed shows that lynn's speed base alone is not enough to let her double consistently on the flip side though i do want to make it clear that i don't think lynn took more than her fair slice of experience i trained many other units that joined early in the campaign such as roy allen deke wade and rutger i even ended up benching deacon wade despite having a lot of investment into them then i trained some units that joined later such as gonzalez lina and zees so even though lin ended up reaching level 20 twice there was more than enough experience to go around for everyone and then some to spare she did get a lot of boss kills which helped her snowball but since she was always one of the best units to take down those bosses in the first place i think that was fair it's also worth pointing out that mylin was receiving support bonuses from lolina from chapter 8x onwards which most notably gives her plus one attack per support level as i said i did not support grind but i also made no effort in playing maps efficiently as you can tell by the fact that i used lena at all assuming lynn inherits borsa's support list the fact that lolina is her best support partner says a lot about the viability of her other options and in an efficient playthrough she probably has no supports which will reduce her damage output a fair bit overall i would definitely recommend lin to anyone playing f6 casually looking to spice up their play through she's not as good as some of the most broken units in that game but she's definitely got advantages to put her over the middle of the pack kind of units she can feel the role of a dedicated sword or ball user and easily reach s-rank in either or both depending on what you're looking for if you'd like to try her out there is a link in the description where you can download the patch along with the instructions on how to use it anyway you see all these names scrolling by these are my patreons all of them are really awesome patreon support lets me make long videos like this without worrying too much about ad revenue or the youtube algorithm so if you would like to help me in that regard and you have the financial wiggle room please consider joining but likes comments and subscriptions are helpful too thank you so much especially to abaddon danielle rpg guru death star carrasso modi zelda d shmeep arkhold bendeon blue caterade boots 42 ice lake crimson blader moo baku florias scott mitchell and the vala agenda for maxing out their ranking y'all are asked here shout out to davis for the wonderful editing and last but not least thank you for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Mekkah

Views: 137,704

Keywords: fire emblem, lyn, fe, fe7, fe6, binding blade, blazing blade, analysis, mekkah, mekkkah

Id: n6d_tFZjBSE

Length: 36min 43sec (2203 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2022