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An Extremely Close Look at Soren
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- Опубликовано: 16 авг 2024
- / danidoyle
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Thanks to @casualjacob776 for the Mist solo footage!!!
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Soren is a unit I fairly frequently see praised as high tier, but I've never bought the hype. In a game that has it out for mages, Soren seems to have even more working against him than most. He's got a very rough start, demands heavy investment, and remains somewhat sub-par long term even if given the favoritism he desires... So, in celebration of Pride Month, I'm making a 40 minute hit piece on everyone's favorite gay mage...Am I doing this right?
Videos I mentioned
@CaptainAstronaut's Ike Video: • Is Ike...You Know - Fi...
@actuallizard's Soren video • Are Path of Radiance M...
Music Used
Path of Radiance-Ike's Resolution, Plight, The Greil Mercenaries, A Battle and a Beginning, The First Fight
Fire Emblem Engage-Trial of the Pact
Cuphead-Botanic Panic
Kirby Air Ride-Nightmare in Dreamland: Dreamland
Sea of Stars-Teaks the Traveling Historian
Donkey Kong Country Returns-Boulder Roller
Runesacpe-Camelot
Tokyo Mirage Session#FE-Itsuki's Theme
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
1:33 PoR Difficulty Modes
4:09 Tellius Mages
9:35 Soren's Early Game
15:39 Bonus Experience and Early Investment In Soren
24:29 Other BXP Targets
29:17 Staffs
36:56 Siege Tomes
39:48 Role Compression
41:18 Concluding Thoughts
Soren’s support bonuses 21 minutes in were calculated using Radiant Dawn support levels. Actual boons would be
C: +7 avoid
B: +15 avoid, +1 dmg
A: +22 avoid, +1 dmg
It’s also worth noting that Ike protects Soren from critical hits when they are adjacent, making him one of the better options for dealing with killer weapons.
I'll be real, I find the crit negation supports to be a meme since it requires adjacency and this is super situational (especially with Ike since he's not a unit typically near the frontlines) There aren't many killer weapons in PoR, and the ones that exist are easily dealt with using a tanky unit (like the paladins or wyverns).
You're absolutely right about the supports, which means sorens avoid is slightly lower than I gave it credit for. 3/5/8 points isnt huge and probably doesn't impact my overall evaluation, but with a unit who's defensive bulk is as rough as Soren, every point of avoid matters. I'm Pinning your comment to help correct this error, thanks!
That would've been better in RD honestly with how many generic class types get crit bonuses later in the game and how easier it is to build their support there
Fake gaymer, not focusing exclusively on the masochist difficulty mode.
I wish I didn't have a comment correcting my mistake/misinformation, i would totally pin yours as a joke.
Can't wait for genuine comments like this XD
@@theghostcreator776 I've gotten some on previous videos about how I'm just a fake gamer who needs to play on the highest difficulty... Which is funny to me because with 3 maddening playthroughs under my belt, I'm fairly confident I've played maddening mode more than most people. I just don't find it fun.
@@DaniDoyle oh fun
Yeah i don't like maddening that much it kind of feels like forcing difficulty in a way that just makes the cast feel worse instead of making units feel more unique
Instructions unclear. Bonus exped rhys and solo’d chapter 9 with him.
I love him
Running Vantage on him with a 255 crit Thunder tome in the Japanese version of Path Of Radiance is fun.
I see that the fact I feed as much as possible of early chapter 4 to Soren has an extensive snowball effect. I also tend to keep my units around even, rather than trying to make a single combat god, and focus on player phasing most things. I can be quite fast doing so, blasting through midgame chapters with turns to spare for max bexp, while also getting every single optional objective -- including stealing every staff (and siege tome!) on the map. You _can_ go all-in on making the most mindless and boring strategy work, and near-obesess over low numbers of turns and very high movement, but I really disagree with the notion that it's actually optimal. You can about as easily build your entire army into an unstoppable ball of death by just not overfocusing on a small number of very high move units, and in that context, if you just train Soren on his join map, he won't even need to use stronger tomes to tear through everything he needs to.
If you assume moving maximum range every turn, then yes, Soren will struggle to keep up. If you assume enemy-phasing everything humanly possible, then yes, Soren will get overrun. If you assume that creating a single combat god to throw into the middle of as many enemies as possible is the sole purpose of bonus experience, then yes, Soren will fall short. But none of those assumptions need to be made at all, and you certainly don't need to double and triple down on them when looking at units who struggle in the context of those assumptions. Different units want you to play in different ways in order to use them optimally. Of course a mage won't do a cavalier's job as well as a cavalier, but that's not the problem. The problem is that too many people seem to think optimizing for cavs is the singular optimal way to play at all times, regardless of who you use, and will attempt to brute-force that playstyle into being good at all costs. Relying on mages means you need to be a little more slow and methodical, yes, but their style is more effective at getting the most out of each map in any case, and when you do need to move fast, you have the tools to do so for the relatively brief time when it's necessary.
All of this is to say, I think the assumptions this discussion rests on are badly flawed. Soren is a great unit when what you're looking for is a delete button, which he can become with absolutely minimal bonus experience by chapter 8, if you just don't play like everyone you're using is being chased by half a dozen angry bears. Later in the game, he can even reach deep into enemy territory and simply remove a problem at will. He's also probably your best choice for any sort of challenge where you're trying to only defeat Muarim in the desert map. If you don't care about any of that, and want a wholly self-sufficient tank instead, then sure, Soren isn't going to do well, but likewise, Oscar will seriously struggle if you expect him to fill Soren's niche of just removing whatever unit is currently being a problem, because Oscar's strength and speed are both bad (mediocre growths that simply are not enough to compensate for his low bases in any sort of timely fashion). People have found a way to brute-force Oscar into something vaguely approximating that space with bonus exp, is all, and have now decided that this is the singular optimal way to play Path of Radiance.
I'm about to eat and looking for a video and this just uploaded. Came in clutch
Glad to help 😊
As a proud Soren stan, this video is based and twink-pilled. He’s an edgy boy and really REALLY needs a hug, atleast in PoR.
him and Ike defo banged though
As if Soren would allow anyone to ever hug him (unless it's Ike with his strong arms).
your looking to close at soren give him some space
Sure Soren may not be the best unit, may have a lot of weaknesses, but he's an edgy gay twink so you have to understand why I still use him every single playthrough
I would love to see a video detailing why you think bonus Exp is such a bad mechanic, especially since most of the community loves it
Eh I don't like how bexp pushes the player to play in a very specific way, it makes maps feel more linear and it just isn't satisfying to use. You just dump it into someone and they're better. I prefer something like three arena uses in Engage on hm at least where there's a bit of tension as to how much exp you'll get and you can't power level anyone
Path of radiance is so gay coded. The lord is gay coded. We have a furry gay and an edgy skinny gay. Now, we need lesbian coded fire emblem. FE7 lyn mode is counted but it is not mainly focused.
Lyn x Florina, my OTP
i've done the Super Soren thing twice, early bexp dump and staff grind and everything, and came to the same conclusions as this video. so much of his existence felt like i was doing little chores to facilitate soren's self-improvement, and that this outweighed his actual impact. training a mage instead of Paladin 3 sounds more interesting, but then u remember that this is tellius. i found myself wishing that ike and soren got an instant pent-and-louise-style support (+3 def) to help soren's early combat... but ultimately both of my sorens finished the game with like 9 def, so, lol.
I actually find Calil to be a really solid B to A tier unit in PoR. She lacks staff access but she has a decent magic stat and I believe she has C rank in all magic types, meaning even if you don't want to train Soren or Ilyana to have C rank in everything, you can still have a dedicated Siege Tome User(TM)
I know that's not the point of this video but I just love pointing out how much I like Calil as a unit. I think she's really well-designed. I always end up using her for at least a few chapters in the midgame, particularly the one where you have to yeet the priests, cuz she can thundersnipe the boss lol
Her ranks are even better, B in everything. That said, she still has mage issues (low move, bad weapon types) so I find her performance to be more filler/niches. Seige tomes are the big attraction.
Spotted the TMGC plug 👍
I haven’t finished the video yet, so idk if you’ve touched on it. But I do want to point out another nerf that kinda hits mages in the tellius games.
FE9 and 10 changes the original Attack Speed formula. In FE6-8 it is:
If Constitution
True. That does hurt them although id argue not much since as you say tome weight is quite low. 3H mages on the other hand... Yeah... Heavy spells AND a harsher formula plus kind of low speed already. Yikes
He also only can support with Ike & Easter Egg badass Stefan, that puts him at a disadvantage to most other units as well. I love using him, though, for Adept progs, physics, siege tomes, and the great animations of the magic tomes in Path of Radiance.
Soren is a good unit.
Just like Ike, just like Boyd, just like anyone really. The biggest problem with ranking these characters has got to come from the fact of how "professional" Fire Emblem players play these games to begin with.
Yes, Titania is a good unit. Everyone knows this. Yes, clearing maps faster grants you more bonus exp. We get this, too.
The problem stems from how overvalued pre-promote braindead units are. Yes, Titania can clear the entire early maps by herself. Yes, Titania is insanely powerful and trashes the game. However, all these videos, this one included, just seem to mindlessly give her a hand axe, throw her in the battle, and let her do everything. This is why most of the others units fail.
Titania does eat up exp. I'm not saying to completely not use her, but early game, she gets 1 Exp per enemy on hard mode. The most she'll get is one level up when Chapter 8 finally arrives.
Letting Titania sit around with no weapon allows her to be an efficient meat-shield, and still allows her time to get those 1 exp points. While actively using the others memebers with get you alot more exp for them. Using all three units on Chapter 1 will get Ike, Boyd, and Oscar to all atleast level 2 and 3 for one of them, whoever gets boss.
Not using Titania as an attacker and focusing Boyd and Oscar on Chapter 2 will get them to around Level 6, each. (About) Rhys has more time to heal, as well. More exp for him. Best case, he gets a level.
Not using Titania on Chapter 3, nor Shinon, will get Gatrie to around level 10 or 11, depending. Using Ike for almost everything will get him to about 8 or 9.
Chapter 4, babying Soren and using Ike and Gatrie to weaken enemies and Soren to kill them will get Soren to around 4 or 5. Rhys to 6, Ike to around 11 or 12, and Gatrie to 11 or 12.
Chapter 5, No bonus exp time limits either, using Shinon and Gatrie as a wall for the front, and letting Boyd, Oscar and Ike deal with the left, making sure Boyd and Oscar always get kills, will push them to about level 8. Ike can stay at 12, but might get 13. Soren bounces between the two groups and gets any kills he can, so he'll be about 6 or 7. Gatrie will get about 13 or 14. Titania can kill the boss for the Ashera Icon, if noone else is able to in time, though with some teamwork, Ike or Gatrie can easily get the kill when they and Soren start pushing ahead. Rhys probably won't get a level here.
Chapter 6, Ike is a healthy level now, 12, and can't promote for ages, so focus on giving Oscar, Boyd, and Soren kills, this will get each to about 11. Titania can lure enemies out, Ike can weaken when need be.
Chapter 7, Titania as a shield, Ike, being good enough, stays behind for Mia. Boyd, Titania, Oscar, and Soren go left to get kills, kill that pesky thief, and get the fire tome. Shinon also shields, Gatrie gets some exp. Ike, Boyd, Oscar, and Soren can all hit about level 13 or 14, here. Titania will still be level 1, Shinon, too. Gatrie might be about 14 or 15. Mia will probably be 7 or 8 (if you want to use her.)
Now when you reach Chapter 8, you'lll have Ike, Oscar, Boyd, and Soren all at around 13 or 14. You'll have significantly less Bonus Exp, but that Bonus will be worth losing for 4 good units. Instead of bonus exp dumping into a unit, you now can spread it out evenly, or save it for Marcia. Boyd at level 16 will be able to clear the entire front of the castle with the poleaxe, Oscar and Soren can defend and pick off targets at the right side, Ike with the Regal Sword can defend the left himself with a Vulnerary, then hire Ilyana around the end. Rhys can continue healing, with or without bonus exp. Titania can help Boyd at the front and team up on the boss. Base Titania does 10 x 2 on the boss with steel axe. Boyd at 16 does 23 damage with hammer.
Now instead of having all these "Bonus Exp dump" bullsnap for 1 specific character, and a level 2 Titania at most for Chapter 8, you have a still-useful base Titania for Chapter 8, and 5 more great units to help out with the defending. Sure, you have 700 bonus exp instead of 1400, but all the exp that did matter went where it'll actually matter. And bonus exp can't train Weapon level.
Soren using all 40 wind tome uses will get him to C rank, by itself. and you forgot to even mention forging. In the footage you showed, Oscar was allowed to have a forge, but not the unit you were showing off...? Soren would have C Wind, which is all he needs for the whole game at Chapter 8, and with a small price of 294 Gold, Soren could have a 1 weight Fire Tome forge. At best, it'd have about 6 might, too.
A forged Wind will massively hurt and chip enemies for others to kill, is as strong as Tornado, and helps with the Ravens.
A forged Fire can have up to 8 might, trashes beast laguz, and compliments Soren's high Magic stat while also being able to be 1 weight, meaning Soren loses no speed.
And giving Soren an Elthunder when he promotes at about Chapter 12 ~ 13, will make training his Thunder rank from D to C easy. With just 20 uses (about 10 ~ 15 attacks), he'll get C rank for Bolting. And getting C rank for Fire will be easy with forged Fire tomes. And he'll have C Wind done as early as Chapter 8, as mentioned before.
A level 15 Soren with one rigged level up to get 1 Strength on Chapter 8 would have 20 attack, 13 speed, no speed lost, and be able to one round everyone minus the boss with a forged fire tome. Not only all this, but you'd have a decent leveled Ike, Boyd, and Oscar on top of all this, and be able to still save bonus exp for Mist and Marcia.
Thank god someone can look at Soren for me after I've been doing this for YEARS
One thing I was wondering about is why you dislike BEXP so much? Personally I felt it was good and I've never heard anyone talk about it so negatively
just finished my first PoR run, was waiting to watch this video until i did, and oof. i really tried to give soren a chance, he was the only mage i ever fielded, my first promote, i fed him kills, but around midgame when i started forging and having more mounted units he just stopped being useful. no siege either because i couldn't get him to skill up any tomes; he just wasn't getting access to enemies. even after all my investment he just spent the last half of the game benched as i moved over to mist.
I thought this video was about soren's character XD
Considering how much different your views on BEXP are than most people I have seen, how would you change BEXP to be better designed? Most people seem to appreciate it as far as I see it, though they probably may not factor in the fact that you can just funnel everything into one op unit (like Oscar or Titania). But the fact that you can use it to invest in lower-leveled units with little short-term stress, it still feels like something that has merit.
Put a cap on how many times you can level a single unit between chapters
I don’t care how bad of a unit he is, I’m using Ike’s twink lover every playthrough and you cannot stop me.
Nor would I want to :)
I am not a Soren stan, but I knew I wasn't hallucinating when I had a bad first impression with Soren in FE9. People kept telling me he was good when my Soren ended up being speed screwed and him being made of wet tissue makes it so frustrating to use him.
10/10 watched it at 4x speed to finish in time
I've not seen many people call him good ngl. Still baby him every run because Soren :)
24:40 "The Big Dump" xD
💩
Soren hate? During Pride???
Jokes aside, great analysis. Ike deserved better (gameplay wise)
Attack of the magical twink!!!!!
I love ALL Dorkly videos!!!! ❤
Not Mia's armpits! 🤦🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️
I guess I'll have something to look forward to in my next playthrough. 😂🤣
Its actually a subreddit r/miasarmpits
I wish i was joking
@DaniDoyle I wish you were joking, as well.
Well, not my proudest fap, but I'll give it a squirt.
For science.
@@DaniDoyle
Oh, my reply isn't showing up.
Weird.
i gotta disagree on maniac mode, Hard mode is just so easy to play . Like you i played the game alot and i can agree with you that its tedious to siege tank for 5 turn. Maniac give difficulty to the game that is clearly needed . I feel like path of radiance is one of the easiest game in the franchise, maniac mode bring a good set of difficulty that's not making the game extra difficult for nothing (looking at you Awakening Lunatic) But still gives you a challenge. Overall, i probably will never play hard mode again unless i want to transfer unit to radiant dawn
See, I don't find Maniac hard after the early game. Once you get to around chapter 12/13ish it becomes more tedious than difficult (in a similar vein to how i feel about Awakening Lunatic/Lunatic plus). Enemy Spam and especially Status Spam aren't things i find it tricky to handle, they just require taking things slowly, which makes the maps even less fun and more time consuming without adding to the challenge (especially since very few PoR maps have any anti-turtle incentive). PoR hard has its own flavor of issues (the enemies are weaker and your units snowball more easily) so at this point I don't especially find either difficulty super engaging, though if i had to "pick my poison" I'd probably pick hard since I find it less tedious personally.
@@DaniDoyle Most challenging obstacles in fire emblem are easier to deal with upon taking them slowly though. Trying to deal with the siege tome spam whilst also maintaining good pace did make dealing with more interesting for me personally. One does not need to play too slowly if you just dive into and kill the siege tomes with your high move units, while controlling what the siege tomes user left alive will attack. I found that it definitely helps to give the boots to a combat flier when trying to speed up dealing with them.
I can’t fully agree about there being no anti turtling incentive, due to the existence of bonus xp, which is usually desirable due to it allowing you to give controlled knight ward levels. These are nice because doubling thresholds can be very tough to reach on maniac mode. However, I can admit that it’s not nearly as effective as an anti turtling incentive as it is in radiant Dawn, as the xp does not cut off sharply after a certain point, like it does in that game. Maniac mode does help with this though, as the bonus xp for clearing a map was removed. If you don’t play at a decent pace, you will get very little bonus xp and will not be able to abuse the knight ward nearly as well. That’s usually been a good incentive for me.
I can agree about tedium spiking after a certain point, but not as early as chapter 13/14, more like chapter 18. Chapter 19 and 20 aren’t so bad though. Tedium really takes off with chapter 21 and onward though.
Oh I agree that slowing down makes anything easier, the issue is PoR Maniac doesn't give you a huge reason not to once you hit midgame. Maniac Mode's BXP gains are minimal, especially once you have your squad online, and aside from the treasure in ch16, no side objective is tight enough to rush you, meanwhile sleep staff spam and enemy density all but forces you to slow down (especially since no one is one rounding due to class caps, (unless you use the forge glitch which I don't), so even if you have enough bulk to safely push forward, you get bogged down by enemies blocking your path). While its true you can use BXP to rig more easily or abuse the knight ward, I just haven't found that is a huge dealbreaker (and unless you go very slow, you have some bxp to work with anyway)
I would agree with the fact that chapter 12 to chapter 19-20 are kinda easy, but i really dont believe that the late game is ''easy'' i can think of alot of chapter pass the 20th chapter that are actually hard, like talrega, clash, and the two last map are hard if you dont know how to pilot them, (and these are example, i think there are a few more map that are actually hard) i think what i dislike more about maniac mode is the unnecessary nerf to swordmaster, halbardier and sniper 15%crit , cavalry in this game are so good and yet they nerf the grounded one lmao
For me FE9 is kind of like FE4 when it comes to discussions like these because the actually good units dwarf everyone else so severely that talking about their utility is kind of a waste of time. Like FE4 though, it's really easy to have any unit you want keep up experience-wise regardless with bexp and Soren has a bunch of free deployments where I always found it was really easy to get him kills, so I basically always use him just because he's fun what with the Ike support and killing enemies before they can attack with vantage and a lucky crit/adept proc.
This is unrelated to the video, but WHY ARE THE GRAPHICS SO BAD. I don't know what i am looking at right now. (this is why GBA emblem is the best, clear defined sprites)
Gamecube was 20 years ago. Believe it or not, these were considered good at the time. I remember my mom walking in on Oscar throwing a javelin and getting upset at how realistic the violence looked LMAO
@@DaniDoyle I really fw the GameCube aesthetic. ngl.
@@DaniDoyleomg Oscar in real life 😱
What do you mean, "bad"? Sure, you can definitely see the technical limitations of the time, but in terms of style, the game aged much better than plenty other games from back then.
@@corhydrae3238 I mean the spirtes suck and I can't what the classes are of the units I am looking at.
15:40 "Bonus experience is one of the worst mechanics fire emblem has ever implemented"
What? It kicked ass. I absolutely loved it.
"In general it is ideal to dump large amounts of bonus experience into single units in order to create overpowered demigods that can wreck the rest of the game"
.....oh. ya know i never considered using it like that. I always just used Bonus experience to level up lower level units i wanted to use and to keep my army even in strength. But. Yeah if you can just dump it all into one unit without much drawback and trivialize the game with them then it is kinda poorly designed.
I also think the ability to raise training projects without the effort limits unit design. Nino may be a bad unit, but she's much beloved because you have the zero to hero training arc. If FE7 had bonus experience, she wouldn't have that gameplay based journey and instead would have "ok how much bxp do we give her to make her function" which to me is a lot less interesting.
You forgot about resetting thousands of times to make sure he gets defense on every level up.
I don't agree with that Tier List nor Rolf statement.
I still enjoy watching someone's opinion.