@@chrisf.9595 probably not but the impact is lessened in the tower since the maps tend to be pretty small and you’re often not moving units their whole distance anyway. Honestly feel like a fully trained/invested Marshall might be better than Haar in the tower, as controversial as that might be lol
I feel Armor Knights have definitely improved over the years, they are generally more worthwhile units in recent games, especially in Conquest, where having a General can be a lifesaver in some situations
They've definitely done better with them lately. Effie is huge in early conquest, and Louis is really helpful in early engage too. Having good stats in games with strong enemies and either good movement tools or small maps is a big deal.
Definitely. Early game Engage on maddening is practically impossible without Louis And it goes both ways. Armors are legit terrifying if you don't have the tools to deal with them quickly in Engage
@@actuallizard Effie is huge in conquest as a whole. She was able to wall off the ninjas in ninja hell (ch17) and I was able to solo the kitsune map (ch19) with her. And if she’s accidentally left in range of a mage or armorslayer, wary fighter is gonna ensure she can’t get doubled
@@melon42301plus she makes an incredible kinshi through Mozu friendship. It makes her surprisingly good speed growth useable, keeps lances, and gives her 1-2 range control with lances + bows
I think even in games where early armours happen to be good units, its never because of their armour status, its because they can go into better classes with their statline. Effie can go fighter and do boatloads of damage, and Louis can go halberdier and double with pincer attack with his strong and bulky statline
I'd say the Pair Up system in Fates is pretty epic for Armour Knights cuz it allows them to have lots more offensive capabilities. Like using Pair Up to ferry them across the map (as mentioned in the video) and using Attack Stance's dual strikes as an alternative way to get kills without having to double. Someone like Effie or even a reclassed Arthur can be used offensively in some maps like CQ Ch.10 while still retaining those defensive qualities for maps like Ch.17. It's quite a refreshing take on the Armour Knight that improves their flexibility between maps and I hope that that dynamic could return.
Also when an armor unit is paired up as the "backup unit" they provide a great amount of bulk to the main unit as well. About 4-5 def. So they'll make great use of the deployment slots even if your strategy doesn't revolve around them by making your other units stronger.
a big downside of both fates and awakening pair up was that it felt really strange to play the game when the AI never pair ups, in awakening they couldn't and in fates they would only pair up if they spawned that way, it would have been great if ai on fates was able to effectively use the pair up system and in future games if the mechanic returns as well
@@vitortakara7090 That would be absolutely terrifying but also kinda fun. And as for the pre-spawed paired-up in Fates it can already get pretty scary when it's two General with Weary Figther or two Swordmasters.
I definitely feel that we're getting better with Armor's implementation. Fates, 3H and Engage have all made at least a few characters in the class genuinely viable at certain points in the game on higher difficulties, so I'm decently happy with where they are.
I agree, but also like to mention how much Edelgard showed good design of objectives and maps can help different classes and play styles to feel impactful. As we saw in 3H, not designing maps with considerations can make even the strongest and most focused on armor knights feel disappointing, even if they have access to one of the most overpowered tools in the game.
I felt at points armor was a NECESSITY in engage hardmode because one bad hit and your broken unit can easily just crumble or severely mess up your following turn
I wonder if just making the games more difficult also help making armor knights more relevant by simply requiring them at times to hold chokepoints until it's safe for the rest of your army to advance.
@@kambyznn149 But nobody keeps Edelgard as an armor class in 3H. They just use her as wyvern. Thus she's not really a good example of a good armor when 98% of the player base won't use her signature armored classes.
Something you didn't mention about Effie is her insane base 50 spd growth. With a little luck, I would even have _her_ start doubling some of the slower enemies.
Can confirm. In my first Conquest playthrough my Effie hit about 30 Speed with Tonics and Food Bonuses. There are a LOT of situations where Effie doubling is a damn Godsend, the most immediate example I can think of is Takumi's wall defense chapter where being able to draw out the Lancers without dying and no selling the Archers was pivotal in giving the rest of my team any approach at all.
Gilliam may be slow but I always found his character design and armor color scheme way too cool to ever bench as a kid. Even now I can't help but use him even if it takes a while lol
Gilliam also helps a lot with growing Amelia, and its so cool seeing Gilliam and Amelia create a choke hold together or double down on a difficult enemy that could kill my squishy-er characters.
I think how important the movement penalty is really depends on the game. Games like 3H have extreme speed bonuses that functionally negate the issue Armors have, whereas Fates and Awakening have Pairing up as a core fundamental of ferrying Knights. Some games could probably benefit from 5 mov over 4 mov Knights. Also, Soldiers would still retain their identities against Knights, as Knights could be considered to be soldiers with extremes, with high bulk and decent to high power in exchange for poorer speed and res. Even without the move penalty in those games, statistically and skill wise Generals play very different from Spear Masters.
The problem with general amelia is that she doesnt wear any leg armor, what is the point of slowing yourself down with heavy chest armor if you still die from getting hit in the knees?
Are you referring to Amelia in heroes? They probably want to justify giving her 35 spd for an armored unit Or they just want to put recruit design, also her damaged art is probably a reference to her recruit animation
IRL legs are the least important part to armor. Because its very easy to guard your legs. Just be a competent fighter and your legs will never be open to hit.
I see no one bitching and whining about this when it's men showing skin, including men running around fully armored except no breastplate at all. Even Guts in Berserk throughout much of the Manga and Anime didn't wear any armor on his arms, and considering you're wielding your weapon with your arms you present them to the enemy more than your legs which makes them more vulnerable. But people only notice and complain about these things when it's women... It's annoying as hell
Effie being able to carry maps like kitsune's/ninja cave and one-rounding late game stoneborns is so ridiculous. Armors feel so weak in the newer releases whenever i remember what Benny and Effie could do.
In my first play through of fe7 I must’ve gotten incredibly lucky with levelups on my oswin because at the end of the game he wasn’t just fast for an armor knight he was just fast. He consistently doubled most enemy units, was near invincible due to his massive defense, was able to retaliate and 1 round most enemy units due to his high attack, and after giving him some boots was easily able too keep up with the team and stay on the front lines. He was by far my best unit while playing the game.
FE7 enemies have really low speed overall. You don't need to be that lucky to get enough speed to double with him, just a couple of lucky level ups are usually enough. I would say that Armor Knights are at a better place in this game compared to Myrmidons for example because of that.
A lot of armors that are good are definitely good in SPITE of being an armor, not because of it, and of course a big problem is that armor knights, more than literally any other class in the series, are heavily dependent on map design to be considered favorable picks A map that's even slightly too open, or a game with slightly too weak enemies, results in the major advantages of armors evaporating and thus, they become annoying to use with little payoff because of it I think as well that one thing not touched on is that owing to the relative simplicity of FE's basic combat mechanics, there's not many ways to go about a hyper tanky unit that doesn't incentivize just using another unit who is maybe not AS tanky but is more mobile. Add on to the fact that armor knights are so extreme in their stat lines, and you end up with a lopsided class that struggles unless its extremes are actually required. One notable thing though that I think could help make armors interesting, and you brought it up yourself: giving them inherently better stats than your other allies, but specifically, do it in such a way that you unlock something that's not actually particularly common in FE: oneshotting potential. And EARLY oneshot potential at that. There's the classic tradition of the Jagen, who at least partially tends to bank on their higher weapon ranks alongside overall better stat line to provide a solid anchor for your early units to train up, but I think that armor knights, when given sufficiently high base weapon ranks, can fill this role in quite well too, and arguably better than the Jagen might. TL;DR: Give the Armor Knight a high enough weapon rank to use high power weaponry in much the same way you might give an early Paladin or similar a silver lance or sword to use.
Note that this primarily covers early game Armor Knights, but for Knights joining midgame or lategame Generals, here's a bit of a controversial pick: Introduce the Save set of skills (maybe brand them as, say, Savior) from Fire Emblem Heroes, which essentially allow an armor knight to quite literally STEP IN for another combat unit when an enemy attacks them on enemy phase. Alternatively, giving Generals something like Provoke could accomplish something similar. TL;DR: Give armor knights something that forces enemies to interact with THEM over one of your other units.
I like your solution of just buffing the stats. In a franchise where movement is so important, sacrificing it should come with some major power bonuses as a trade; and often it just.... doesn't for armor knights. They should feel like Hector in FE7: If someone is engaging them, they're either 1) A magic-user 2) Making a mistake Actually getting them into battle should be the hardest part of using one. Getting crit or doubled doesn't matter when you're not taking damage, so you would just have to keep an archer buzzing around them to pick off mages. Teamwork makes the dream work. Of course, having maps made specifically to give armor knights something to do is nice, but I bet it limits creativity quite a bit to always have to stop and ask "This is great, but what are the armor knights gonna do?". Alternatively, FE typically has the player attacking into enemies or on a time limit, so a few more defense maps would never hurt variety. As a third solution, I'd invoke a taunt ability. I haven't played all the newer games in the franchise, so maybe this is already a thing, but having an ability to force nearby units to attack the armor knight would open up a lot more strategies; both defensive and aggressive. This way, having your armor knight lag behind with the backline units wouldn't be a problem, but a feature. The cleric's best friend.
As someone who just got into fire emblem last year, I feel the armour knight is a class that just gives a feeling of safety for new players. I remember playing fire emblem awakening for the first time, when Kellam joined my army, I just felt safe. Just able to let him tanking all the give me a sense of safety, although sometime thst can be a false sense of security when a mage shows up😂, but still the idea is there. Also map where enemies reinforcement shows up behind and just started to rush your army, having a few armoured knight or 1 general to cover your flank just to make it safer, atleast for me.
Luie is awesome. Oneshots problematic targets, solos earlygame, has move to keep up with the army and great knight puts him as fast or faster than other units.
I think Oswin and Gatrie did it right in Blazing Blade and Path of Radiance respectively: They have low speed and movement, but high enough level and other stats to compensate. Leveling them up and promoting them to General isn’t nearly as much of a chore as most other Armor Knights, and I’m pretty sure that’s why.
Also the obligatory comment that you should have more defense mission. No one really cares about low move If you just have to walk eight squares to block a gate
One idea I had was to allow them to boost the defense of units around them, or protect them in some way. In my mind, armor knights are supposed to be shields, valiantly defending their allies from any (non-magical) harm. It would make sense if they could somehow protect adjacent units, either with a flat out +2 or 3 to defense, or something else. Additionally, positional skills like swap and pivot are a good idea for knights as well!
Prody do exaxtly that in Vestaria saga, and has paragon and good bases on top of that. He is still a low tier unit because when the maps are large enought 4 mov js a death sentence no matter what.
@@blazerthewyvernwriter don't design every single map around crossing an huge distance. Low mov units are dramatically better in games with small maps. Ironically even FEH is an example.
That would be way too much in a single target game and even comes with some exploits in general such as placing them on a corner tile of an enemy so the enemy's counter get reduced damage. They are a tank and giving the ability to tank to others while being able to avoid magic doesn't work well in a single target tile game. They would be so oppressive defensively that you'd have to make maps designed with the intent to invalidate them.
Another idea how Armor Knights could be buffed is by establishing Zones of Control. Basically the Armor Knight "blocks" tiles adjacent to him, requiring units to need additional move to get through these tiles. It would emphasize both Armors job of protecting allies and their role as the wall on open maps as well.
I know that in FE 12 New Mystery of the Emblem, the prologue maps are small enough for your MU Knight to get around the maps rather efficiently. It’s been my preferred class choice when playing Lunatic or Lunatic Reverse. Plus Arron gets to go General for the first 3-4 chapters pending on how often you’ll need him to take a hit.
I feel you went a little light on wolf and sedgar. they straight up break the game. They can basically solo everything and can and will tank hammers and magic attacks through shear bulk. there is only a handful of maps they can't solo, and these are either not major problems or are generally warp skipped regardless. They are horrible in the OP department.
Armor Knights are my favorite class in the game, I grew up falling in love with Oswin and thought Wallace's promotion into a General was the coolest shit ever as a kid (even if he is terrible). My only major beef is that I feel like Armors constantly just fall off into the late-game for reasons you stated, but also because there are *so many damn casters*. Sometimes I wonder if giving Generals an innate Endure ability would help, as it would still allow them to perform their primary role of baiting out enemies or locking down chokepoints, but without the risk of just getting immediately killed by a strong caster that doubles. Another alternative was giving them a skill that gives them Res based off of half or one-third of their Defense, though that is probably arguably too strong.
Obviously General Wolf and Sedgar are the most notorious fe11 generals, but there are many units who I love making armors in that game. most recently I did a harebrained Hunter->General Caesar and jt was so fun! he was doubling and not taking damage and doing that with Caesar felt so good. Darros also, hilariously, gets 0 spd base and growth as General but sky high hp and def to truly minmax. there are also just plenty of units that make goofy but fun armors, like Bord, Castor, and Gordin. underrated for sure
Shadows of Valencia made armors "balanced" on highs and lows. Random encounters were perfect size and quick. Stats were ok, but the teleporting witches would obliterate them
I think fe gaiden/echoes got the armor knights right. Give them hight hp, str, def, and skill/dex rates, and low rates on the other stats. They're supposed to give the player good positioning by creating walls to prevent your less defensive units from being ganged up on, while also softening the enemies to finish them in player phase. Usually in the hard difficulties you get to see armored knights shine because you actually have to strategize. In normal difficulty, paladins usually eclipse them in positioning, spacing, and speed
Low movement equals less opportunity to get exp which just just makes the high defense useless same with low damage especially with mages around Meanwhile calviery units are more balanced but give so much movement plus canter in the games. By the time the armor unit makes it to the end of the map they are obsolete
I think knights tend to not get exp because they are bad statswise more often than because their movement prevents them from seeing combat. Effie doesn't have too hard a time getting exp in conquest because you actually really benefit from her combat, Wolf and Sedgar are the same in Shadow Dragon, and louis does well in Engage for the same reason. When Louis does fall off, it's not primarily because of his movement or a lack of exp, it's because his combat stops being impressive. When there are strong enemies, and armors have good stats, low move doesn't stop them from getting exp imo. Knights usually struggle to get exp in games where their combat isn't good, or where enemies are so weak that you just don't need a bulkier unit. Exception for Arden. He just doesn't get to do anything even if he were really good.
@@actuallizard yeah Effie and Louise have the benefits of being early and making their high def a benefit to tank attacks Louise a bit more as playing your cards right he can be your mvp for the first maps and falls off fast after that with yunaka and co with dodge meta. Only time I do find the armor unit useful is when I make the main like byleth be armor as the boost with boosts give him a huge help in movement.
One thing I didn't hear you mention is that *new* players are among those that are going to be playing slow and not "efficiently". I think armors, even in their current state, make the game more approachable for new players. One thing that might be neat I have is based on a personal skill in engage that gives a bonus based on weapon rank of the enemy; maybe give armors an innate skill that boosts defense based on the rank of the weapon the enemy is using. This makes their defenses better against stronger enemies while not immediately making them immune to weaker enemies, and makes their defenses better in harder modes (where enemies will have higher rank weapons) without having to just outright buff their stats for hard mode.
I think they should be impeded by less terrain. Which is a change they have been going through in recent games. But I think the biggest change that would fix them would be nerfing fliers by 1 move; flyers are always going to be good. They keep getting better and have only one weakness, bows, but are also ideal for flying over and picking off lone archers. Heck, a lot of fliers in recent games are evasive enough to dodge bows reliably, so you can actually leave them surrounded by archers and they'll be ok 9 times out of 10. I love fliers as much as the next guy, but they will only be marginally worse with one less move. They already ignore all terrain, including walls. They will still be able to move so much more than other units, but not so much that all non-fliers and especially armors get left in the dust. It's good to plan situations that will be good for each unit type, but the movement disparity is really bad, not just for armors. It should be a difference of a couple turns, not the 10+ you might go through if you want an armor to finish off the boss. The next thing is just include more boots than usual so players can still make their nerfed-fliers completely broken or build a marathon runner armor. The boots are very good for strategic gameplay. There should be more, but not so many half your army can zoom around the map each turn unless they are just super expensive and buyable.
You know, favoring fliers less is an unintuitive way to boost slow classes, but I think you might be right. I feel the series has undergone something of a 'movement power creep' over the years. The stacking movement boosts of third-tier cavalry and flying classes in 3H gave them enormous mobility. When combined with that game's other tools like Stride, dancing, and Warp, the results were just nuts. I remember seeing that Hapi, a magic-user on a horse with 8 movement, got a skill that increased her attack range, and thinking, 'that's just unnecessary; give that skill to an infantry class instead.' When using Mire her range was just about the whole damn map.
I like your train of thought. I think armor knights are a fine class, but they are not well represented in terms of the characters of that class. Thinking about some of the armor knights that I am most familiar with (Wendy, Barthe, Bors, Oswin, Gilliam, and Amelia), most of them just have bad stats. Like, I wouldn’t use Barthe or Wendy if they were Mercenaries instead. Heck, I probably wouldn’t use them even if they were Cavaliers! Oswin and Gilliam get by because their personal bases are so dang high. Most of the other armor knight representatives in the series leave a bad impression of the class to their own incompetency as a character, not because of the class they are in.
Armour knights are always either the best or worst unit in any engagement. They either tank infinite amounts of damage, or get one shot because you forgot to check the map for hammers.
Armor Knights/Generals should be your Boss Killer unit. And your Boss; They are your best/most reliable unit when it comes to combat. They should have the best combat stats AND the most weapon options. Because they are Generals, Masters of War. This means they have the highest maximum Attack/Skill/Speed/Defense/HP stats. (Only being tied in specific stats against Specialist Classes. Like the Swordmaster and the Berserker). The Armor Knight/General should be beating OR, at least, rivaling every physical Class. If even in level no one alone should be able to beat them in combat. Unless, The Armor Knight/General is specifically being itemized against. Basically, to defeat them it should require Armor-Slaying Weapons, Weapon-Type Advantage, Ranged Attacks, and/or Coordinated Attacks from multiple units. If an Armor Knight/General manages to get into a fight with someone, their opponent should lose. Because the Armor Knight/General is the combat expert. And not just with any one weapon, but combat in general. Because of their Disciplined Training, Versatile Weaponry, and Superior Equipment. And because they are sacrificing everything, just so that they can be the best at fighting.
Shining Force's equivalent has an interesting solution; Guntz compensates for his low move by being good when it comes to terrain. On mountains specifically he's the only non-flier who isn't slowed. (Well, I assume Adam isn't either, but there's only one outdoor map left after he joins and he's going to be extremely underleveled for it)
Armor Knights have seperate problems throughout the game. Early Game: As tanks they are hopelessly outclassed by Jagens. Unless they are the Jagen. While they have enough defense to usually take no damage, Jagens do the same but with more movement, utility and offense. Early FE is also usually dominated by axe users. Making their 3 extra points of defense be for naught (they take 1 extra damage, while your cavs and sword lord takes 1 less). Mid Game: They compete with Cavaliers for Knights Seals. Cavaliers are the obvious pick every single time. And thus I go with paladin every single time. This results in a Roy situation where they spend most of their time unpromoted. End Game: Scaling is not their friend. Strength scales faster than Defense does in most games. Combine that with better weaponry and the defense stat gets less impactful as the game progresses. Combine that with their low speed and they end up taking more damage and being more fragile than anyone who isnt the Magical Girl (Elise, Lysithea) On a mod I made, I gave every infantry an NuXCOM style dash that increased movement by 2. Using this dash would prevent you from attacking in the same turn, and for every bonus tile moved this way, the unit takes 2 damage. Because Armor Knights had such high defense, they could utilize this better than anyone else, same with axe fighters who had high HP.
One thing FE can do is make the Jeigan a General that doesn't double but is powerful in all other stats. Low movement is not an issue at first because the maps are smaller and have choke points. Also, a good Jeigan is one that phases out around halfway and the low move would do that.
Honestly i think the 5 move aspect of armors is pretty easy to maintain and balance around over wary fighter, not only can you just not give them move on promotion if they become too centralizing which has happened in the series before, but they also suffer the most out of any class movement wise when considering terrain movement as well, which combined with low speed is pretty bad for even min maxed units, Hector has base 5 move and isnt too centralizing while also being fun to use which i think is a good base to go off of. I think wary fighter becomes alot more of an issue due to the fact enemy armored units cant be doubled which even with strong magic and effective damage makes them alot more annoying to deal with, and also makes faster physical enemies pretty obselete if armors just remove their niche. But regardless love the unique style of fe content
The smash weapons in engage are a huge boon to armors. I think generals should've had armored blow (in that game it gives +10) which would further work with those weapons. I also think Generals should be give staves. Being able to use an obstruct to help funnel enemies to them and reward to help keep up or dive bomb a pack of swordsman would be so much fun. Also a pair of them on the front lines to keep each other healthy. Sounds like a good time
We got example of armored knight with move tho. It is called black knight. Joke aside as you said take, repositioning skill and pair could mitigate its movement issue.
I gave 1 of the movement boost items to Panette in Engage and turned her into a general. She became a nearly invincible blender and didn't really have issues keeping up due to the map design being what it is in engage.
No mention of Lukas and Forsythe is odd, I think they're some of the most effective armour knights in the series both from a casual and efficient context. They do simply have much higher stats than other units, which is the main reason why they're good, but another reason is Gaiden/Echoes' speed thresholds being so wide. Most units may double them, sure, but there are also a healthy amount of enemies that they can double too, like arcanists, or zombies. Arcanists in particular are something Armour knights excel at killing, their speed is just high enough to double, and they have enough strength to 2 shot them with a good lance. Echoes in particular also does something great for them, in dungeon crawling mechanics. A huge part of why Armour Knights feel unintuitive to use is because they're front liners who can't reach the front line. If you simply hit an enemy in the dungeon, you and your armour knights will already be within attack distance of them. This subtle change makes it so much easier to get them combat and by extension exp.
I'd probably explore the concept of giving them more support-oriented options. I think being able to do something like "nearby units take reduced damage" or "enemies will prioritize the armor unit" or "enemies cannot pass through the tiles adjacent to the armor knight's position" as either combat arts or class skills would probably do nicely for armor knight units while still sticking to the general theme of the class.
NGL the first thing I did when I started making a Sacred Stones ROM was to install the Skill System patch to give Gilliam Drive Defense as his personal skill so he is useful even if he's lagging behind, because +4 Defense to all your allies within two squares helps the rest of the army enough that I want him to baby my investment projects while being one himself. (Now I have to mention that he is a poor investment target because his growths are bad... 😢)
I've only played a bit of three houses yet, but there is a bit of fun to using a gambit to make the armour knight faster and teleport it across the battlefield as well. Efficient? probably not. But is it funny to catapult the slowest unit across the board? yes.
Having bad movement is what sells Armors for me. It is part of their identity and not everything needs to be meta. I love Arden and characters like Effie and Oswin are indeed amazing. It ultimately ends up on the situation of the game (maps, objectives and enemies) and tools they have. Like with every other unit.
Bors might be the best armour in the series. If you give him the pursuit ring and max out his movement with boots from the secret shop (which he can purchase if you are willing to warp him there) then he is able to one round Idun using an Armads Triangle Attack.
Path of Radiance actually did armors quite well IMO. The biggest thing is that everyone has +1 movement, so the gap between them and other infantry doesn't feel as bad. Most of the maps aren't even that big, and the ones that are still give them lots to do with reinforcement positions. Gatrie is a fantastic early game unit who can still hold his own later on. Brom has a tougher time early, but he scales quite well and has more room to grow with the knight ward. Tauroneo is a very well balanced pre-promote who can actually take a couple magic hits, giving him a solid niche over the others. Cavalry still reigns supreme in PoR, but the armors can hold their own quite well.
Armor Knights biggest problem is that the games are too easy and fast. If you play mods with increased difficulty they're pretty serviceable. It's too easy to turn every 20/20 class into a combat god and movement is the only thing that matters.
I loved using armors when I first started playing cause every character felt so fragile. These days I rarely use them since the lower movement just feels awkward to me, even if it’s usually only one move less than the infantry. The last time I used an armor all the way to the endgame was on a conquest run. I was using Effie and she was SERIOUSLY speed screwed, like 1-2 points over her base speed after 12 levels. I was considering dropping her but I decided to hold out until wary fighter. I loved using her as a backpack for Xander, that pairing carried me through the ninja cave. As a general she sauced all over the kitsune village since they couldn’t damage her and she OHKOd all of them with the beast killer, and there she was able to learn wary fighter. I reclassed her to great knight and from there she was popping off, able to survive a round with any enemy and deal back massive damage, the occasional Luna proc also helped with one shots. She and Xander were quite the power couple, and I got a pretty swole siegbert out of it too
I honestly really love the Knight/General class because how how much hits they can take from physical attacks even dealing heavy damage back. While yes they are slow and are weak to magic attacks it atleast makes them good enough for when surrounded by physical units where as for magical units you rather avoid them as much as possible unless you can somehow 1 round them but that is highly unlikely to happen.
I think Dedue from Fire Emblem 3 Houses has one of the coolest designs for an armor knight. His personal skill increases his defense by 4 if he waits which will be extremely valuable on early maps when attacks are hitting for 10 or so damage but as you progress through the game and attacks start hitting for 30, you won't be able to rely on that. Instead, he can learn the combat art Vengeance which will increase attack based on HP lost and allow him to get some kills that other armor classes would struggle with.
armoured units are also exceptionally worse in maddening in engage, where the AI will actively avoid attacking armoured units if they will do no damage to them, which kind of negates their primary strength (they just become a slow moving wall that blocks enemy movement and only gets to attack on player turns)
That’s interesting, Engage is one of the games I found armoured knights to be the best in. There are a decent amount of maps in engage that don’t have consistent 1 tile choke points and Louis (didn’t use Jade) is good for blocking a say 2 tile chokepoint with another unit and forcing enemies to attack that unit. Basically he can serve as like a funnel so the fact he can’t counter isn’t as detrimental because another unit is doing the countering. Plus he’s the main use I found for the Ike weapon engraving since every other unit I used didn’t want the weight penalty even if they weren’t super fast but Louis is so slow he doesn’t care so can make use of it with no real downsides. (This isn’t as important though since you can just give it to another unit and have that unit only use the weapon when it’s safe to). I’ve only played Engage on maddening and I didn’t reclass much so don’t know if he’s better or worse on other difficulties or classes but Louis at least is really really good of maddening, one of my top combat units alongside Kagetsu and Pandreo.
Disgaea has an interesting approach to armor units. Some of the same issues apply, but all units can have their mobility enhanced through Lift & Throw, and armors specifically happen to be the best generic units for throwing in most games they're in. So not only are armors not really slowing the army down, they're in fact usually making the army FASTER because of their contribution in aggressive extensions and repositioning. Slower monsters can run into similar issues, and can't throw to speed up the army, but this tends to be counteracted by how absurdly strong a lot of such monsters are, and the fact that they can still at least be thrown. They're often among the only units that can take multiple attacks per turn, so throwing them to the front makes sense.
Personally I'm a slower-pace player, and what do you know, I love my big bulky Armors. A lot, Arden probably being one of my favorite characters overall even. As said, they're there to to their job and act as a bait and weaken the enemies while tanking their hits so your fragile glass-cannons can finis 'em off easy and get EXP to then in order do their job. And also grant some EXP for the healer(s) as well while on top of it. And much like you said, I feel like the simple solution of just giving 'em better stats would be all they really need, honestly. God knows why but oon my latest Engage run I ended up making Lady Anna a General... Probably for *** and giggles more than anything really. But the thing is while she doesn't necessarily transcend the armor class she makes it work surprisingly well. She has enough speed to reliably avoid getting doubled or in some cases even being able to double herself, or she can get a lucky dodge at times as well thanks to it. Not to mention it helps her actually hit something as well. But also, due her dex being pretty high she can also crit her foes reliably - even without equipping killer weapons - and at times this has resulted in her getting a much needed kill in retaliation. Not to mention (although this only more or less works for her really) she can also make use of that fairly early Hurricane Axe you get, which only adds to her capabilities o act as a wall that also breaks walls. For a something born out of a joke she sure - true to her character - made sure that I still got my investments worth though.
*The reason is obvious:* Nintendo is trying to make Fire Emblem cater more to kids now, lower attention spans / room temperature IQ so the combat has to be quicker / less strategic. Which causes tanking as a strategy to be an afterthought in favor of a "just keep attacking" speed play-style.
I disagree. Armor Knights were arguably at their worst in the earlier titles. Games like FE4 and FE5 have large maps with fairly strong enemies, and as such, Armors have little to offer. Furthermore, even when you do need a defensive wall, there's more often than not an unarmored unit that is far better at tanking than an armor (such as Sigurd in FE4 or Dagdar in FE5).
This might be a weird take, but if we're gonna go with class identity, I like to consider knights as tanks that can level light terrain obstacles just by walking over them. However, their heavy armor will weigh them down in certain terrain like sand. So if anything, maybe an armor buff would be that their movement is not affected by terrain such as brushes and forests, but get very punished by desert terrain like how the Solm quicksand works.
i actually love using sedgar in shadow dragon, everything is op in shadow dragon, the wingspear is op, forging is op, sedgar is op, ballistas are op, shadow dragon is the most fun FE game to me to play, there are so many things to experiment with. also the first few maps on merciless 5 or whatever its called are brutal, so i think its fair to have some fun after that.
I really enjoy how Armor Knights felt in Engage. not having the movement deficit kick in till general gave them a really good gamefeel, and Louis had the DEF to really make tanking work even on harder difficulties. one of the things that really frustrates me about GBA era Armors is how many weakness they have outside of speed. Their low RES and LUCK means that they're at constant risk of low % criticals and mage one-rounds, and often times the archetype gives them shaky hit rates, meaning that their ONE attack per turn has a decent chance of whiffing. it makes them downright unplayable
Knights tend to be at their best when they have more going for them beyond their statline or at least having a reasonable compromise. Being naturally unbreakable in Engage is absolutely huge given how dangerous enemies can be, the robust skill system of fates/awakening letting them compensate for their innate weaknesses/hit harder/tank better/ do whatever you need them to do (wary fighter is honestly under appreciated) the pair up systems let them work around their low movement and still provide some excellent buffs in back up. We're still a long way away from the unga bunga that is knights in Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics sure, but at least the future is looking bright for the units once stuck on "castle defense".
Good video. However, I can't help but disagree with the part that we shouldn't buff their movement. First, they won't be doing their role of protecting the rest of the army if they can't keep up. Second, better move won't alter the enjoyment slower players get out of them. Third, even with higher move, they won't be the same as soldiers thanks to stat distribution and weakness to anti-armor weapons. Even better: knights can start with a weapon that's not a lance, or with two weapons like cavaliers do! In fact, an idea I've seen thrown around in discussions is making cavs mono-weapon and knights dual-weapon.
Fire Emblem Heroes fixed Armored units, to the point of making them some of the best units in the game with just 1 thing, Savior. Savior means that the armored Unit takes ally´s unit space, enters combat in ally's place, and receives all after-combat effects in a ratio of 1 or 2 squares away from the current position of the armored dude, this means that you have to beat the armored unit first before even thinking of attacking the allies on its range, and that easier said that done, because armored units have a lot of tools at their disposal to make sure that they dont die. there is near saving with is savior in 1 ranged attacks with swords/lances/axes/beast and dragon attacks and far saving which is savior for attacks with bows/magic/daggers/staves. this fixes the problem that armored units have of having to be in the frontlines to protect the allies and the enemy simply being able to walk around the armored unit to attack the weaker friendly units, now they are a proper shield, they are your first line of defense, like they always were mean to be.
The problem is being tanky is a requirement for a good unit most of the time, not just a luxury attribute you can afford to not have. Since all FE games have good units that are not armors, armors are just obsolete. A weird example is Berwick Saga, in that game armors suck and have 3 move, but they certainly do have some ridiculous tankiness that you might find use of in certain cases.
The worst part is that armorers are so bad in the newer games. Take shadows of valentia as an example: Instead of having no damage at all, units that have higher defense than the enemy’s attacking still get 1 damage. But that’s not all. Arts or skills like armor break also damage the units resistance to other units. BUT GUESS WHAT UNITS HAVE THIS SKILL. YEAH, THE SUPER-EFFECTIVE UNITS OF ARMORERS. Like, a Pegasus knight and a cavalier, along with their class changes, make the armorers weaker. So their only advantage is swordsmen. But guess what? Skills that raise attack, the main characters and the attack stat boost on every level also make armorers weak. So armorers became from strong and op units with low speed to crappy units. Just great. And now onwards it’s the same pace.
As someone who's played a decent amount of Fates I find this an interesting look at Effie For one, she's not your tankiest early unit, Silas has 10 Defense to Effie's 12 except that Silas shortens the gap with a +3 Defense personal skill compared to Effie's class skill of Defense +2 leaning them at 13 and 14 but then notably their best defensive pair up is eachother Silas giving 2 to Effie and Effie giving 4 to Silas This means with their skills and pair ups active, Effie has 16 Defense and Silas has 17 at base Now this difference isn't actually a big deal, between this, Demoiselle/Gentilhomme, Lily's Poise, Tonics, Silas and Effie can both easily just take 0 damage from every physical enemy... which isn't a useful or good quality to begin with beyond literally their join map, you want to be taking low damage from Fates enemies, not 0, overkill defense is substantially worse than above average defense, but Effie is doing this tanking with only Lances instead of Lances and Swords, lower speed, and lower movement than everyone else, which while you can mitigate with pair up, a unit who needs that help is obviously worse off than the unit who provides that incredible movement This isn't to say Effie is bad or anything, she's actually a fairly decent candidate for investment But it has nothing to do with her being an Armor, Effie is good because she's one of the 3 units in Nohr who can access Archer easily (Her, Nyx, and Mozu all via Mozu's help) and Kinshi Knight, the promotion for Archer, is arguably the single best player phase combat class in the game, and if you've played a ton of Conquest you know how good a bow class can juggernaut on enemy phase in that game, and Effie being the highest strength unit with that easy access is a pretty notable niche even if it's not crazy strong or anything, plus even without investment she has D Lances at base and her Javelins hit incredibly hard Of course Wary Fighter gets a lot of praise, finally Armors who just will never get doubled, it seems like such a natural and strong fix to their problems Except among Efficient or LTC play Wary Fighter is pretty commonly regarded as one of the single worst skills in the game, down there with Gamble and Lethality, skills that are active detriments to your units While Wary Fighter might be a great boon to Oswin or Gilliam or Bors, it isn't on them It's on Effie and Benny As I've said before in plenty of other places, Benny can double Master Ninjas on his birthday, but even on other days he certainly won't get doubled by them because Fates is a game where you can at any time modulate your stats to insane degrees While it's unlikely anyone but the most deranged of players will bother with Benny to get him doubling, it's really not that hard to get a trained Effie to the point where she doubles, at that point Wary Fighter is entirely doing more harm than good. But this is a great video, and I think you're totally right about armors being handled pretty poorly in most games and they absolutely need fixed in some way, but Fates... as much as Fates hits the nail on the head with a lot of other design elements, Armor Knights, at least player ones, probably aren't the place to look for design choices from Fates A much more natural armor knight to look at might be Gatrie in Radiant Dawn Gatrie is what everyone thinks Effie is, an Armor Knight who just has overkill stats to compensate for his poor class, and it works pretty well even if he's not the best unit ever
Appreciate the nuance on fates. Also agree that archer is the way for Effie (I have her in archer in my current playthrough). Wary fighter does seem like it would be of more use in other fire emblems where speed is less fixable. Even if it's not ideal in Fates, I think it's a good framework for a skill that could be appropriate in other games.
I’ve been playing through path of radiance on my CRT for the first time in my entire life and have absolutely loved my armor knight Brom. I gave him the Vantage perk and having him bait attacks AND always hitting first has me outright devious with my plays
I REALLY love armour knights, they're my favourite unit type, and I make space for one in every game, they're like, bottom tier units 70% of the time and the rest they're okay/good but that won't stop me from using them just because I feel like it My favourite character from FE ever is Bors and a promoted Arden was right up there in the front lines with the cavaliers (After turn stalling for me to get him there I'm not insane enough to give him the leg ring)
There is one flaw about Generals in Conquest specifically (i dont think this applies to BR/Rev?). Despite Wary Fighter being an amazing skill for them... enemies in CQ have what I call "smart AI". This is them avoiding attacking units that they will do 0 damage to. This sucks because that means your Generals will be too tanky to do anything on Enemy Phase, so enemies will just completely ignore them and go around them
I think for a class with as many drawbacks as Armor Knights, they should have more than one weapon available to them. Being Lance-Locked on top of everything else is just too much. I've been playing through Project Ember recently, and Bors is just way more fun in that game because he has Swords and Lances. That being said, I wouldn't make Swords and Lances the standard, that's what Cavaliers have, so I'd pick Lances and Axes instead, but the bottom line is that Armor Knights need more than just one Weapon at Base, especially if they're jumping to three when they promote to General, and at best the other two weapon ranks will be D after promotion.
One idea I had for buffing Armor Knights was giving them an extra Move. Not giving them another point of Move, letting them Move *twice*, at the cost of their action. It's potentially problematic, but I'm approaching this with a lot more experience in, like, TTRPG spaces where that sort of idea is a lot more common.
Yeah I just started playing Fire Emblem a few months ago, with FE7 being my first entry into the series. I ended up taking Oswin all the way to the end of the game. The fact that every other map or so, they would spawn reinforcements to attack Merlinus's camp made me feel better about leaving him behind to guard, because he was basically a one man army. He's the only reason I managed to kill Ursula, as I had to face tank her Bolting attacks with him because otherwise she would just one shot anyone else on my roster. After his promotion to general, he managed to double many enemies, and just one or two shot them, taking hardly any damage in return. So Oswin will definitely always hold a place in my heart.
I think Engage introducing the break system fixed a huge problem with Armors, a niche. But it still had a glaring flaw. Other tanks do the job better despite the risks. Specifically Diamont, Timera and Alfred. Their unique classes are absolute walls, decent at handling magic. And if you invest in Alfred. Solid damage dealers, who don't suffer to much from being doubled. Louis creates an excellent decoy early game, so your main army can focus a point, while Louis draws fire with little risk. FE3H had their own fix... Edelgard didn't have the movement penalty. And she could tank magic. But evasion tanks were simply more efficient than bulk here. Conquest I felt like handled this better, as maps are a bit more desperate. You need someone who can hold a line. But Birthright rendered them utterly useless. I think the best fix for them is honestly: Smaller maps. The need to dash around the map kills any value an armor has, and a lot of games give us a ton of huge maps. Engage handled this a bit better by giving us a good mix of big and small maps, with great choke points. But most of the maps are still a dash across as soon as possible. =/ Rendering them pretty useless. And again, it just gives us better options for tanks that AREN'T armored.
I get making them have lower MS as an interesting balance point, but flavor wise, it makes little sense. Men layered in full plate, chain mail, gambeson plus weapons were perfectly capable of running and moving at a speed you might not think possible and the armor is so well designed it allowed almost 100% range of motion. It's also really difficult and bordering on impossible to balance a class that is missing arguably the 2 most important traits in FE, MS and Speed. Cavaliers are never a bad option because their impressive MS.
I'm fully on board with Armored Knight having normal infantry Mov but having good mobility coming more from being able to traverse different types of Terrain rather than being based solely on your Mov stat, if that makes any sense. So like, while both an Armored Knight and a Myrmidon might both have 05 Mov, an Armored Knight will get bogged down more by Forests than a Myrmidon. So the mobility can still be worse without the Armored Knight just being gimped in literally every single scenario. I dunno if you've played them, but Vestaria Saga I and II (moreso II) do this extremely well, and VS2's Armored Knights are IMO some of the best in any FE or FE-like because of it.
I think engage did armor well by just making Louis a very strong unit. He basically cannot die unless there's mages or 4-5 backup units swarming him with chain attacks. And unbreakable made him great for enemy phase. Plus, the option to fix his move with the sigurd ring is good fun.
I completely disagree with the assertion that armor knights are bad in FE 8. They are only bad when you intentionally exclude 2 entire games modes, and only care about LTC. As soon as you add Creature campaign as a mandatory thing to complete, armors immediately become good. Their are multiple maps with creatures rushing you down, and viable choke points on top of rear guard reinforcements. Add in things like Link Arena. The game is balanced around all of that. Removing 2 parts that are essential to the game design leaves you judging it based entirely on only one third of the entire game. Meaning that frankly any balance changes are complaints involving it are misinformed at best, and arguing that their preferred playstyle is balanced. This is the issue at large and a huge misconception in the FE community. There is such a huge emphasis on LTC, despite the fact the game has additional modes to be considered, other strategy based metrics in which to judge as being efficient and all of that needs to be balanced around. Sure in LTC movement is king, In link arena, movement doesn't matter. How do you balance for that while balancing for the campaign? In the creature campaign sure movement can be king, but typically the maps have choke points that holding effectively lowers it's turn count, and are large enough that when reinforcements arrive far enough away that high movement to return is slower then where you lower movement units should be to naturally catch them. You also get graded for number of units used, turns, and time. In that context playing around the lowest possible combination of those, other unit types become viable (outside of priest which class skill of slayer is just utterly broken in that mode). Armors look a lot better in that context. For whatever reason the community at large has decided that those game modes don't matter, shouldn''t matter, and that the game needs to be looked at and balance around LTC for skilled play. Which is humorous as really how much skill is involved in a warp staff kill bypass? Rushing objectives to complete the map before the challenging parts arrive how much actual skill is that? We decided a while back that speed running is skillful, which in most of other game genres I'd agree, in a turn based tactics game, No. LTC is just a style of play, that is essentially saying "I like only using flyiers and cavaliers." In that context it doesn't sound that impressive, or skillful.
My most played Fire Emblem by far is 7 and I played a ton of Link Arena in that, it was back in high school and we had a group of 4-5 people who just constantly replayed the game training new and stronger units/teams for the link arena Generals(Oswin, Wallace) always performed extremely well here with high stat caps and ability to use 2 different weapons including Vaida's spear you could get from using the glitch with the mine, Oswin in particular had really good support options too I was shocked years later to learn that the narrative is that Paladin+Fliers are the kings of the game cause low con and low stat caps always caused us to avoid them lol
Devs are definitely weary of making armors too strong, but they usually undervalue how important speed and move is, and so being a few points above-average is not emotional to be viable when your move and speed is the lowest in the game. Older games needed to just give armors better HP, Str and Def. Even better Skill than some other units. I've sometimes attempted to make a balance hack for Binding Blade, and something I like to do is give the armor trio +3 HP, and +1 to almost everything else (Barth doesn't get the +1 Res and Speed, Bors doesn't get the +1 Def, and Gwen/Wendy only gets +1 HP). I haven't playtested enough, and not at all in Hard Mode tbh, but I also make a few map changes to the early-game (add a few Myrmidons and Merc, and move Bors 1 space closer to the action) and that's usually enough for them to feel USABLE in Normal.
Armor Knights are bad - except Bosswin. Bosswin just casually tanks 50 enemys with nothing than 3 Javelins and a Vulneray before turning *insert any FE7 Boss* into kebab. I like BOsswin. I also only ever played FE7 to the end and have attempted multiple runs on FE11 aswell as a FE6 Run. So i dont know how qualified my opinion is. Still gonna leave it here.
I think the Wary Fighter skill was one of the best things to happen to armor knights. Giving them that by default, or some other unique ability, would let them have utility without busting their stats. Maybe something like the Rampart skill from the knights of Tactics Ogre LUCT?
I think a godlike way to buff armored unit is if they had a natural (not on command) Chain guard from Engage, but to any adjacent allies, 1 time per turn if their HP is above 50%. I'm baffled that the units who gets such skill are martial artists that what they should have is some kind of avoid skill not a block one. Maybe it will make them too strong, but maybe not, it could be tweaked until it finds the sweetspot of being helpful but not make your playstyle too dependant on it.
I think a cool buff they could give to armor knights would be supporting adjacent units. They could added defenses to adjacent allies or like have a % chance to block damage for allies (like Lucina's emblem ring bonded shield). I think pivoting to supportive utility would help to keep their identity as a defensive unit without also making them goated at combat. There's a srpg game called dark deity and their armor knights give adjacent allies defence.
I'd say keeping their move values close enough is important Armour 4, Foot 5 Cav 6 (all +1 on promotion) is OK, Armnour 4 ,foot 5 fast foot 6, cav 7, Light cav and fliers 8 (with some units getting more than +1 on promotion) is too harsh a penalty however no unit should be twice the movespeed of another without terrain or items involved. Good additional mitigation (immune to double, chance invul tank, etc) also helps keep them relevant.
The oldest Fire Emblem that I’ve played is Binding Blade. There is no reason to use Armor knights past chapter 2, aside from using Douglas to block a path in Sacae route. That can actually be useful. He likely won’t be hitting anything though. At least they made Oswin useful in the next game.
I find Armor Knight usefulness is directly connected to what difficulty you play on. Normal - Go for it. Good at baiting enemies, and can eat huge amounts of damage at chokepoints. Even Barth can be pretty dang useful in FE6 on normal. Hard - Little bit riskier, need to often be shown favouritism to be able to function, depending on the game of course. I remember Bors in FE6 in particular being damn near useless if his early levels get defense-screwed on level ups. Lunatic / Insane or higher - Lol. Lmao.
There's no really good reason for knights to be the only 4 movement class (when the 5 is the normal for foot units). It means they stay behind everyone.
I like to use them in some games, but I don't usually use them since they tend to lag behind due to their lower movement. Meg from FE10 sucks, and is probably the worst armour knight in the history of FE.
Something I really enjoy about hacks is how they try to fix this issue in different ways. Order of the Crimson Arm had one of my favorite solutions: it gave them bows! Armors being able to attack enemies without having to move toward them helps mitigate some of the movement issue, and gives them the ability to choke points at all stages of the game without unequipping entirely. Archers in that game are so strong that they can frequently one-round units, so it doesnt step into their design space too hard, and it means Javelins can keep their downsides.
Armored units are weird because they have slightly better defense (and sometimes strength) growth for the cost of movement, speed, and a weakness to version weapons. If you have bad bases, this growth can be too little too catch up. It can be hard to do enough damage to get exp and get those growths so other units often match or exceed your defense with 3 good levels. If you're too slow, you can get doubled and your bulk is essentially halved. If you do many rounds of combat, you're more likely to get crit, so getting doubled reduces your bulk there too. If you're in a pinch and need to escape, you don't have the movement to keep your unit alive, so that's bad for bulk too. And you have a glaring flaw in res in most games. Like you said, if you play slow, grind their levels, play safe, feed them, then their growths will usually give enough defense to tank large portions of most maps, but, that's also true for most of your other units, for most FE games. I love their flavor, but it would be great if the "armored" tag was something more than a detriment. (like, crits only do 2x damage to you, or follow ups are only half damage. Maybe effective weapons have a skill% chance to be effective to replicate a well placed rapier through armor, etc). Right now, the armored tag just makes marginally more defensive units take more damage from more weapons than they already do.
Ironically, Geneology actually makes armors pretty strong in terms of combat, it's just that Arden trying to trek across the map is like a square peg and a round hole (I gave him the Leg Ring to mitigate the problem, but he still was chasing abit without Canto + on him). Not only did both Generals and Barons have good weapon variety and strong stats, Geneology gave the advanced class armors the class skill Great Shield, meaning even with effective damage or magic, there's a percent chance it's not gonna hurt them, maximizing their tank role. They make for actually tough bosses sitting on their castles, because they don't need to worry about going anywhere. Were there more instances where reinforcements could spawn near the castle besides Ch 2, Arden would have a legitimate niche in the game. Personally, I think they do need a class skill to parallel Canto for them to blossom. Wary Fighter or Great Shield could work, but an interesting idea would be a skill that buffs terrain bonuses on them. This would give them the role of moving from terrain to terrain, as well as make enemy armors effective through sitting on their thrones or fortresses. I'm curious which class skill most people would prefer on them?
Armor Knights are good at holding their ground in most every game, at least early game. On defense maps with one to two tile wide choke points or leaving them to hold the base while the cavalry takes out the boss, armor knights are king. The problems come when they have to change where that ground is. The biggest issue armor knights have is that they're usually given horrible speed growths to compensate high health, strength, and defense growths. All the various forms of cavalry have all the same boons armor knights have without the low speed growths and poor movement. Also, those defense maps love to give enemy axe wielders Hammers for effective damage on top of the weapon triangle advantage. And early maps are usually filled with slow, inaccurate axe units to help level your sword-locked lord.
I loved playing with Effie and Benny on conquest, they were almost always on the team. Being able to carry armored around with pair up system also helps a lot, pair up with a paladin, the paladin passes to a not moved yet character and in the end, just swap and done, armored positioned much more distant than 4 tiles. In the end, I changed Effie to master of arms for fun and she became a war tank.
Strategies centralizing around armor units involves slowly going from chokepoint to chokepoint. It can be a little boring: That's me. I'm the boring one lol.
The "problem" of getting left behind is not so much an problem with armored knights and generals as it is a problem with the movement system and how it relates to horse riders in general. If you've got more than one or two mounted units, you run into that problem with literally everyone else on your team regardless. This is particularly the reason that those classes get thrown to the wayside in all of my playthroughs. They wind up being too far away to be healed until late game using physic, too far away to be reinforced by units more suited to combat, they have a whole class of weapons specifically geared towards taking them down, and they're just an all-around mid tier class tree with no particularly high stats to speak of. They have no special combat functions, do not crit reliably, and aren't particularly strong. Wverns and pegasus riders are much better as transport/rescue units as well because their increased movement ability isn't hampered at by terrain. Everything a knight somewhat suitable for, those two classes do better with only very slight adjustments in planning.
Unpopular opinion: I think movement is overrated since a majority of people don't play the game to warp skip one turn boss kill. This is one of the biggest arguments that movement is broken. Take that away and movement is much less important on non-Canto units. A simple, yet underrated, tactic is to bait out enemies with a unit and have all the others stand 1 square outside of that range. All of your allies 1 square away will reach all enemies attacking the bait outside of ballistas, onagers, siege tombs, and canto units, since their movement even at 4 is greater than the enemy movement. If the Canto units have to use all their movement to reach the bait then you will also be able to attack them with your allies. This happens WAY more than people ever seem to acknowledge in the game. People say it's better to give up the innate tomefair of Warlock for 5 move of gremory when in reality, your magic casters have at least 6 attack range which outranges their primary targets (Armored classes with 5 attack range unless they have tomahawks). They also are usually better off cleaning up baited enemies rather than initiating into a hoard of enemies by using their max range movement, only to be destroyed on the following turn. It would admittedly be faster if your whole team initiated and killed off all the enemies in a group to eliminate counterattack but in maddening, these opportunities become more rare due to the quantity and positioning of the enemies. There's always one enemy Archer, Paladin or flyer that is within range of the enemies you're initiating on but not reachable from outside the enemy range. Armored classes are less reliant on range because they are the bait. They don't need to reach the enemies. They just need to reach a spot where the enemies can reach them, which is a lot easier almost as if the game was designed with that playstyle in mind.
In Engage the only problem with them is literally their Mv. Also their dogshit speed late game is a bit of a problem because they start to lose relative bulk and get doubles by everything so they aren’t as much of a wall.
Imagine playing fe 10 and seeing your capped Marshalls having lower defense than your Wyvern who isn't even vulnerable to bows. Now that's balance.
At least BEXP exists which means the early capping isn't the worst thing
FE10 endgame is full of res-targeting enemies so the higher res caps of Marshalls actually is a boon over Wyverns.
@@alexpowell1184
But let's be honest, would you take a potential higher res cap over +3 mov?
@@chrisf.9595 probably not but the impact is lessened in the tower since the maps tend to be pretty small and you’re often not moving units their whole distance anyway. Honestly feel like a fully trained/invested Marshall might be better than Haar in the tower, as controversial as that might be lol
@@alexpowell1184canto is a thing, lol
I feel Armor Knights have definitely improved over the years, they are generally more worthwhile units in recent games, especially in Conquest, where having a General can be a lifesaver in some situations
They've definitely done better with them lately. Effie is huge in early conquest, and Louis is really helpful in early engage too. Having good stats in games with strong enemies and either good movement tools or small maps is a big deal.
Definitely. Early game Engage on maddening is practically impossible without Louis
And it goes both ways. Armors are legit terrifying if you don't have the tools to deal with them quickly in Engage
@@actuallizard Effie is huge in conquest as a whole. She was able to wall off the ninjas in ninja hell (ch17) and I was able to solo the kitsune map (ch19) with her. And if she’s accidentally left in range of a mage or armorslayer, wary fighter is gonna ensure she can’t get doubled
@@melon42301plus she makes an incredible kinshi through Mozu friendship. It makes her surprisingly good speed growth useable, keeps lances, and gives her 1-2 range control with lances + bows
I think even in games where early armours happen to be good units, its never because of their armour status, its because they can go into better classes with their statline. Effie can go fighter and do boatloads of damage, and Louis can go halberdier and double with pincer attack with his strong and bulky statline
I'd say the Pair Up system in Fates is pretty epic for Armour Knights cuz it allows them to have lots more offensive capabilities. Like using Pair Up to ferry them across the map (as mentioned in the video) and using Attack Stance's dual strikes as an alternative way to get kills without having to double. Someone like Effie or even a reclassed Arthur can be used offensively in some maps like CQ Ch.10 while still retaining those defensive qualities for maps like Ch.17. It's quite a refreshing take on the Armour Knight that improves their flexibility between maps and I hope that that dynamic could return.
Yeah Pair up feels huge for armors, it's a mechanic I think would be cool to return in future Fire Emblems.
Also when an armor unit is paired up as the "backup unit" they provide a great amount of bulk to the main unit as well. About 4-5 def. So they'll make great use of the deployment slots even if your strategy doesn't revolve around them by making your other units stronger.
Pair up is hard to balance, but with how cavalry in engage being complete garbage, making cavalry into the only unit that can pair up might be great
a big downside of both fates and awakening pair up was that it felt really strange to play the game when the AI never pair ups, in awakening they couldn't and in fates they would only pair up if they spawned that way, it would have been great if ai on fates was able to effectively use the pair up system and in future games if the mechanic returns as well
@@vitortakara7090 That would be absolutely terrifying but also kinda fun. And as for the pre-spawed paired-up in Fates it can already get pretty scary when it's two General with Weary Figther or two Swordmasters.
I definitely feel that we're getting better with Armor's implementation. Fates, 3H and Engage have all made at least a few characters in the class genuinely viable at certain points in the game on higher difficulties, so I'm decently happy with where they are.
I agree, but also like to mention how much Edelgard showed good design of objectives and maps can help different classes and play styles to feel impactful. As we saw in 3H, not designing maps with considerations can make even the strongest and most focused on armor knights feel disappointing, even if they have access to one of the most overpowered tools in the game.
I felt at points armor was a NECESSITY in engage hardmode because one bad hit and your broken unit can easily just crumble or severely mess up your following turn
I wonder if just making the games more difficult also help making armor knights more relevant by simply requiring them at times to hold chokepoints until it's safe for the rest of your army to advance.
@@kambyznn149
But nobody keeps Edelgard as an armor class in 3H. They just use her as wyvern. Thus she's not really a good example of a good armor when 98% of the player base won't use her signature armored classes.
Three houses definitely did NOT help armors. They feel about as useful as in fe6, which is to say not at all.
Something you didn't mention about Effie is her insane base 50 spd growth. With a little luck, I would even have _her_ start doubling some of the slower enemies.
Can confirm. In my first Conquest playthrough my Effie hit about 30 Speed with Tonics and Food Bonuses.
There are a LOT of situations where Effie doubling is a damn Godsend, the most immediate example I can think of is Takumi's wall defense chapter where being able to draw out the Lancers without dying and no selling the Archers was pivotal in giving the rest of my team any approach at all.
Which is why Great Knight is probably the better path for her. She’s probably the best non-royal unit.
Gilliam may be slow but I always found his character design and armor color scheme way too cool to ever bench as a kid. Even now I can't help but use him even if it takes a while lol
Gilliam also helps a lot with growing Amelia, and its so cool seeing Gilliam and Amelia create a choke hold together or double down on a difficult enemy that could kill my squishy-er characters.
I think how important the movement penalty is really depends on the game. Games like 3H have extreme speed bonuses that functionally negate the issue Armors have, whereas Fates and Awakening have Pairing up as a core fundamental of ferrying Knights. Some games could probably benefit from 5 mov over 4 mov Knights. Also, Soldiers would still retain their identities against Knights, as Knights could be considered to be soldiers with extremes, with high bulk and decent to high power in exchange for poorer speed and res. Even without the move penalty in those games, statistically and skill wise Generals play very different from Spear Masters.
Oswin and Hector are also great in FE7 because it has a lot of defense maps and a lot of maps that are small and basically force you to not move much
The problem with general amelia is that she doesnt wear any leg armor, what is the point of slowing yourself down with heavy chest armor if you still die from getting hit in the knees?
Nah, she's an anime girl. Literally no one will use that to their advantage
Are you referring to Amelia in heroes?
They probably want to justify giving her 35 spd for an armored unit
Or they just want to put recruit design, also her damaged art is probably a reference to her recruit animation
IRL legs are the least important part to armor. Because its very easy to guard your legs. Just be a competent fighter and your legs will never be open to hit.
She just doesn't want to be an adventurer anymore
...yeah I'll see myself out
I see no one bitching and whining about this when it's men showing skin, including men running around fully armored except no breastplate at all.
Even Guts in Berserk throughout much of the Manga and Anime didn't wear any armor on his arms, and considering you're wielding your weapon with your arms you present them to the enemy more than your legs which makes them more vulnerable.
But people only notice and complain about these things when it's women... It's annoying as hell
Effie being able to carry maps like kitsune's/ninja cave and one-rounding late game stoneborns is so ridiculous. Armors feel so weak in the newer releases whenever i remember what Benny and Effie could do.
Tbf those two were probably the best armor knights in the series, followed closely by early game engage Louis
@@degreeskelvin3025oswin tho
@@noukan42 kid named Dussel:
@@drawberry_jam i wouldn't count great knights in general because they don't have the usual weakness of armor knights.
wary fighter > swap fr
Feels like describing fighting-game heavies.
Makes a lumbering tank that walks while everyone else runs.
In my first play through of fe7 I must’ve gotten incredibly lucky with levelups on my oswin because at the end of the game he wasn’t just fast for an armor knight he was just fast. He consistently doubled most enemy units, was near invincible due to his massive defense, was able to retaliate and 1 round most enemy units due to his high attack, and after giving him some boots was easily able too keep up with the team and stay on the front lines. He was by far my best unit while playing the game.
You got lucky too, my Oswin is a combat machine. There weren't many enemies he couldn't at least hold off while someone else picked them off
Yeah Oswin and Pent were my best guys in that game
FE7 enemies have really low speed overall. You don't need to be that lucky to get enough speed to double with him, just a couple of lucky level ups are usually enough. I would say that Armor Knights are at a better place in this game compared to Myrmidons for example because of that.
A lot of armors that are good are definitely good in SPITE of being an armor, not because of it, and of course a big problem is that armor knights, more than literally any other class in the series, are heavily dependent on map design to be considered favorable picks
A map that's even slightly too open, or a game with slightly too weak enemies, results in the major advantages of armors evaporating and thus, they become annoying to use with little payoff because of it
I think as well that one thing not touched on is that owing to the relative simplicity of FE's basic combat mechanics, there's not many ways to go about a hyper tanky unit that doesn't incentivize just using another unit who is maybe not AS tanky but is more mobile.
Add on to the fact that armor knights are so extreme in their stat lines, and you end up with a lopsided class that struggles unless its extremes are actually required.
One notable thing though that I think could help make armors interesting, and you brought it up yourself: giving them inherently better stats than your other allies, but specifically, do it in such a way that you unlock something that's not actually particularly common in FE: oneshotting potential. And EARLY oneshot potential at that.
There's the classic tradition of the Jagen, who at least partially tends to bank on their higher weapon ranks alongside overall better stat line to provide a solid anchor for your early units to train up, but I think that armor knights, when given sufficiently high base weapon ranks, can fill this role in quite well too, and arguably better than the Jagen might.
TL;DR: Give the Armor Knight a high enough weapon rank to use high power weaponry in much the same way you might give an early Paladin or similar a silver lance or sword to use.
Note that this primarily covers early game Armor Knights, but for Knights joining midgame or lategame Generals, here's a bit of a controversial pick:
Introduce the Save set of skills (maybe brand them as, say, Savior) from Fire Emblem Heroes, which essentially allow an armor knight to quite literally STEP IN for another combat unit when an enemy attacks them on enemy phase.
Alternatively, giving Generals something like Provoke could accomplish something similar.
TL;DR: Give armor knights something that forces enemies to interact with THEM over one of your other units.
There's also the RD Gatrie approach where you slap on a 60% speed growth and let him double everything.
Due to his caps though I find he still struggles to double a lot of enemies anyways
@@portalguy2246 By endgame sure, but there's a very wide window of time where 31 speed doubles relevant targets.
I like your solution of just buffing the stats. In a franchise where movement is so important, sacrificing it should come with some major power bonuses as a trade; and often it just.... doesn't for armor knights. They should feel like Hector in FE7: If someone is engaging them, they're either
1) A magic-user
2) Making a mistake
Actually getting them into battle should be the hardest part of using one. Getting crit or doubled doesn't matter when you're not taking damage, so you would just have to keep an archer buzzing around them to pick off mages. Teamwork makes the dream work.
Of course, having maps made specifically to give armor knights something to do is nice, but I bet it limits creativity quite a bit to always have to stop and ask "This is great, but what are the armor knights gonna do?". Alternatively, FE typically has the player attacking into enemies or on a time limit, so a few more defense maps would never hurt variety.
As a third solution, I'd invoke a taunt ability. I haven't played all the newer games in the franchise, so maybe this is already a thing, but having an ability to force nearby units to attack the armor knight would open up a lot more strategies; both defensive and aggressive. This way, having your armor knight lag behind with the backline units wouldn't be a problem, but a feature. The cleric's best friend.
I think a taunt would be really good for armor knights to have at base.
As someone who just got into fire emblem last year, I feel the armour knight is a class that just gives a feeling of safety for new players. I remember playing fire emblem awakening for the first time, when Kellam joined my army, I just felt safe. Just able to let him tanking all the give me a sense of safety, although sometime thst can be a false sense of security when a mage shows up😂, but still the idea is there. Also map where enemies reinforcement shows up behind and just started to rush your army, having a few armoured knight or 1 general to cover your flank just to make it safer, atleast for me.
Luie is awesome. Oneshots problematic targets, solos earlygame, has move to keep up with the army and great knight puts him as fast or faster than other units.
I think Oswin and Gatrie did it right in Blazing Blade and Path of Radiance respectively: They have low speed and movement, but high enough level and other stats to compensate. Leveling them up and promoting them to General isn’t nearly as much of a chore as most other Armor Knights, and I’m pretty sure that’s why.
Oswin is amazing early game. Especially for HHM ironmans.
Cool video I can tell you worked hard on it!
Also the obligatory comment that you should have more defense mission. No one really cares about low move If you just have to walk eight squares to block a gate
One idea I had was to allow them to boost the defense of units around them, or protect them in some way.
In my mind, armor knights are supposed to be shields, valiantly defending their allies from any (non-magical) harm. It would make sense if they could somehow protect adjacent units, either with a flat out +2 or 3 to defense, or something else.
Additionally, positional skills like swap and pivot are a good idea for knights as well!
Prody do exaxtly that in Vestaria saga, and has paragon and good bases on top of that.
He is still a low tier unit because when the maps are large enought 4 mov js a death sentence no matter what.
I guess that is true.
Other than lowering the map size, I don't see a way to really mitigate that issue tbh-
@@blazerthewyvernwriter don't design every single map around crossing an huge distance. Low mov units are dramatically better in games with small maps. Ironically even FEH is an example.
That would be way too much in a single target game and even comes with some exploits in general such as placing them on a corner tile of an enemy so the enemy's counter get reduced damage. They are a tank and giving the ability to tank to others while being able to avoid magic doesn't work well in a single target tile game.
They would be so oppressive defensively that you'd have to make maps designed with the intent to invalidate them.
Another idea how Armor Knights could be buffed is by establishing Zones of Control. Basically the Armor Knight "blocks" tiles adjacent to him, requiring units to need additional move to get through these tiles. It would emphasize both Armors job of protecting allies and their role as the wall on open maps as well.
I know that in FE 12 New Mystery of the Emblem, the prologue maps are small enough for your MU Knight to get around the maps rather efficiently.
It’s been my preferred class choice when playing Lunatic or Lunatic Reverse. Plus Arron gets to go General for the first 3-4 chapters pending on how often you’ll need him to take a hit.
I feel you went a little light on wolf and sedgar. they straight up break the game. They can basically solo everything and can and will tank hammers and magic attacks through shear bulk. there is only a handful of maps they can't solo, and these are either not major problems or are generally warp skipped regardless. They are horrible in the OP department.
Did I play PoR/RD wrong or was Gatrie an absolute nuke? I (mis?)remember clearing a lot of the late game by just throwing Ike + Gatrie at the problem
He definitely was. Only Lance wielder that holds up whole game in dismantling (until those colored wisps show up)
Armor Knights are my favorite class in the game, I grew up falling in love with Oswin and thought Wallace's promotion into a General was the coolest shit ever as a kid (even if he is terrible).
My only major beef is that I feel like Armors constantly just fall off into the late-game for reasons you stated, but also because there are *so many damn casters*. Sometimes I wonder if giving Generals an innate Endure ability would help, as it would still allow them to perform their primary role of baiting out enemies or locking down chokepoints, but without the risk of just getting immediately killed by a strong caster that doubles.
Another alternative was giving them a skill that gives them Res based off of half or one-third of their Defense, though that is probably arguably too strong.
Maybe give them a skill that increases Res at certain Hp thesholds, but I don't know if that would be too strong.
Obviously General Wolf and Sedgar are the most notorious fe11 generals, but there are many units who I love making armors in that game. most recently I did a harebrained Hunter->General Caesar and jt was so fun! he was doubling and not taking damage and doing that with Caesar felt so good. Darros also, hilariously, gets 0 spd base and growth as General but sky high hp and def to truly minmax. there are also just plenty of units that make goofy but fun armors, like Bord, Castor, and Gordin. underrated for sure
obv not optimal but I encourage anyone to try at least hunter-general Caesar
and thanks to @Epholo8 for giving me the dumb idea too
Shadows of Valencia made armors "balanced" on highs and lows. Random encounters were perfect size and quick. Stats were ok, but the teleporting witches would obliterate them
On the contrary in Fire Emblem Heroes armored knights(units) are the most broken characters in the game Lmao
I think fe gaiden/echoes got the armor knights right. Give them hight hp, str, def, and skill/dex rates, and low rates on the other stats. They're supposed to give the player good positioning by creating walls to prevent your less defensive units from being ganged up on, while also softening the enemies to finish them in player phase. Usually in the hard difficulties you get to see armored knights shine because you actually have to strategize. In normal difficulty, paladins usually eclipse them in positioning, spacing, and speed
Low movement equals less opportunity to get exp which just just makes the high defense useless same with low damage especially with mages around
Meanwhile calviery units are more balanced but give so much movement plus canter in the games. By the time the armor unit makes it to the end of the map they are obsolete
I think knights tend to not get exp because they are bad statswise more often than because their movement prevents them from seeing combat. Effie doesn't have too hard a time getting exp in conquest because you actually really benefit from her combat, Wolf and Sedgar are the same in Shadow Dragon, and louis does well in Engage for the same reason. When Louis does fall off, it's not primarily because of his movement or a lack of exp, it's because his combat stops being impressive.
When there are strong enemies, and armors have good stats, low move doesn't stop them from getting exp imo. Knights usually struggle to get exp in games where their combat isn't good, or where enemies are so weak that you just don't need a bulkier unit.
Exception for Arden. He just doesn't get to do anything even if he were really good.
@@actuallizard yeah Effie and Louise have the benefits of being early and making their high def a benefit to tank attacks
Louise a bit more as playing your cards right he can be your mvp for the first maps and falls off fast after that with yunaka and co with dodge meta.
Only time I do find the armor unit useful is when I make the main like byleth be armor as the boost with boosts give him a huge help in movement.
One thing I didn't hear you mention is that *new* players are among those that are going to be playing slow and not "efficiently". I think armors, even in their current state, make the game more approachable for new players.
One thing that might be neat I have is based on a personal skill in engage that gives a bonus based on weapon rank of the enemy; maybe give armors an innate skill that boosts defense based on the rank of the weapon the enemy is using. This makes their defenses better against stronger enemies while not immediately making them immune to weaker enemies, and makes their defenses better in harder modes (where enemies will have higher rank weapons) without having to just outright buff their stats for hard mode.
I think they should be impeded by less terrain. Which is a change they have been going through in recent games.
But I think the biggest change that would fix them would be nerfing fliers by 1 move; flyers are always going to be good. They keep getting better and have only one weakness, bows, but are also ideal for flying over and picking off lone archers. Heck, a lot of fliers in recent games are evasive enough to dodge bows reliably, so you can actually leave them surrounded by archers and they'll be ok 9 times out of 10. I love fliers as much as the next guy, but they will only be marginally worse with one less move. They already ignore all terrain, including walls. They will still be able to move so much more than other units, but not so much that all non-fliers and especially armors get left in the dust. It's good to plan situations that will be good for each unit type, but the movement disparity is really bad, not just for armors. It should be a difference of a couple turns, not the 10+ you might go through if you want an armor to finish off the boss.
The next thing is just include more boots than usual so players can still make their nerfed-fliers completely broken or build a marathon runner armor. The boots are very good for strategic gameplay. There should be more, but not so many half your army can zoom around the map each turn unless they are just super expensive and buyable.
You know, favoring fliers less is an unintuitive way to boost slow classes, but I think you might be right. I feel the series has undergone something of a 'movement power creep' over the years. The stacking movement boosts of third-tier cavalry and flying classes in 3H gave them enormous mobility. When combined with that game's other tools like Stride, dancing, and Warp, the results were just nuts. I remember seeing that Hapi, a magic-user on a horse with 8 movement, got a skill that increased her attack range, and thinking, 'that's just unnecessary; give that skill to an infantry class instead.' When using Mire her range was just about the whole damn map.
I like your train of thought. I think armor knights are a fine class, but they are not well represented in terms of the characters of that class. Thinking about some of the armor knights that I am most familiar with (Wendy, Barthe, Bors, Oswin, Gilliam, and Amelia), most of them just have bad stats. Like, I wouldn’t use Barthe or Wendy if they were Mercenaries instead. Heck, I probably wouldn’t use them even if they were Cavaliers!
Oswin and Gilliam get by because their personal bases are so dang high. Most of the other armor knight representatives in the series leave a bad impression of the class to their own incompetency as a character, not because of the class they are in.
Armour knights are always either the best or worst unit in any engagement. They either tank infinite amounts of damage, or get one shot because you forgot to check the map for hammers.
Armor Knights/Generals should be your Boss Killer unit. And your Boss; They are your best/most reliable unit when it comes to combat.
They should have the best combat stats AND the most weapon options. Because they are Generals, Masters of War. This means they have the highest maximum Attack/Skill/Speed/Defense/HP stats. (Only being tied in specific stats against Specialist Classes. Like the Swordmaster and the Berserker). The Armor Knight/General should be beating OR, at least, rivaling every physical Class.
If even in level no one alone should be able to beat them in combat. Unless, The Armor Knight/General is specifically being itemized against. Basically, to defeat them it should require Armor-Slaying Weapons, Weapon-Type Advantage, Ranged Attacks, and/or Coordinated Attacks from multiple units.
If an Armor Knight/General manages to get into a fight with someone, their opponent should lose. Because the Armor Knight/General is the combat expert. And not just with any one weapon, but combat in general. Because of their Disciplined Training, Versatile Weaponry, and Superior Equipment. And because they are sacrificing everything, just so that they can be the best at fighting.
Shining Force's equivalent has an interesting solution; Guntz compensates for his low move by being good when it comes to terrain. On mountains specifically he's the only non-flier who isn't slowed. (Well, I assume Adam isn't either, but there's only one outdoor map left after he joins and he's going to be extremely underleveled for it)
Armor Knights have seperate problems throughout the game.
Early Game: As tanks they are hopelessly outclassed by Jagens. Unless they are the Jagen. While they have enough defense to usually take no damage, Jagens do the same but with more movement, utility and offense. Early FE is also usually dominated by axe users. Making their 3 extra points of defense be for naught (they take 1 extra damage, while your cavs and sword lord takes 1 less).
Mid Game: They compete with Cavaliers for Knights Seals. Cavaliers are the obvious pick every single time. And thus I go with paladin every single time. This results in a Roy situation where they spend most of their time unpromoted.
End Game: Scaling is not their friend. Strength scales faster than Defense does in most games. Combine that with better weaponry and the defense stat gets less impactful as the game progresses. Combine that with their low speed and they end up taking more damage and being more fragile than anyone who isnt the Magical Girl (Elise, Lysithea)
On a mod I made, I gave every infantry an NuXCOM style dash that increased movement by 2. Using this dash would prevent you from attacking in the same turn, and for every bonus tile moved this way, the unit takes 2 damage. Because Armor Knights had such high defense, they could utilize this better than anyone else, same with axe fighters who had high HP.
If every armor was as good as FE10 Gatrie we would not have this problem
In my current playthrough he is doubling swordmasters. Chadtrie my beloved 😍
One thing FE can do is make the Jeigan a General that doesn't double but is powerful in all other stats. Low movement is not an issue at first because the maps are smaller and have choke points. Also, a good Jeigan is one that phases out around halfway and the low move would do that.
Honestly i think the 5 move aspect of armors is pretty easy to maintain and balance around over wary fighter, not only can you just not give them move on promotion if they become too centralizing which has happened in the series before, but they also suffer the most out of any class movement wise when considering terrain movement as well, which combined with low speed is pretty bad for even min maxed units, Hector has base 5 move and isnt too centralizing while also being fun to use which i think is a good base to go off of. I think wary fighter becomes alot more of an issue due to the fact enemy armored units cant be doubled which even with strong magic and effective damage makes them alot more annoying to deal with, and also makes faster physical enemies pretty obselete if armors just remove their niche. But regardless love the unique style of fe content
The smash weapons in engage are a huge boon to armors. I think generals should've had armored blow (in that game it gives +10) which would further work with those weapons.
I also think Generals should be give staves. Being able to use an obstruct to help funnel enemies to them and reward to help keep up or dive bomb a pack of swordsman would be so much fun. Also a pair of them on the front lines to keep each other healthy. Sounds like a good time
We got example of armored knight with move tho. It is called black knight. Joke aside as you said take, repositioning skill and pair could mitigate its movement issue.
I gave 1 of the movement boost items to Panette in Engage and turned her into a general. She became a nearly invincible blender and didn't really have issues keeping up due to the map design being what it is in engage.
No mention of Lukas and Forsythe is odd, I think they're some of the most effective armour knights in the series both from a casual and efficient context.
They do simply have much higher stats than other units, which is the main reason why they're good, but another reason is Gaiden/Echoes' speed thresholds being so wide. Most units may double them, sure, but there are also a healthy amount of enemies that they can double too, like arcanists, or zombies. Arcanists in particular are something Armour knights excel at killing, their speed is just high enough to double, and they have enough strength to 2 shot them with a good lance.
Echoes in particular also does something great for them, in dungeon crawling mechanics. A huge part of why Armour Knights feel unintuitive to use is because they're front liners who can't reach the front line. If you simply hit an enemy in the dungeon, you and your armour knights will already be within attack distance of them. This subtle change makes it so much easier to get them combat and by extension exp.
I'd probably explore the concept of giving them more support-oriented options. I think being able to do something like "nearby units take reduced damage" or "enemies will prioritize the armor unit" or "enemies cannot pass through the tiles adjacent to the armor knight's position" as either combat arts or class skills would probably do nicely for armor knight units while still sticking to the general theme of the class.
NGL the first thing I did when I started making a Sacred Stones ROM was to install the Skill System patch to give Gilliam Drive Defense as his personal skill so he is useful even if he's lagging behind, because +4 Defense to all your allies within two squares helps the rest of the army enough that I want him to baby my investment projects while being one himself. (Now I have to mention that he is a poor investment target because his growths are bad... 😢)
I've only played a bit of three houses yet, but there is a bit of fun to using a gambit to make the armour knight faster and teleport it across the battlefield as well.
Efficient? probably not. But is it funny to catapult the slowest unit across the board? yes.
Having bad movement is what sells Armors for me. It is part of their identity and not everything needs to be meta.
I love Arden and characters like Effie and Oswin are indeed amazing. It ultimately ends up on the situation of the game (maps, objectives and enemies) and tools they have. Like with every other unit.
Bors might be the best armour in the series. If you give him the pursuit ring and max out his movement with boots from the secret shop (which he can purchase if you are willing to warp him there) then he is able to one round Idun using an Armads Triangle Attack.
Not enough movement stars. Ronan is the best armor
I never use him after chapter 2 on hard. He is useful there, then there is no reason to deploy him unless you’re challenging yourself.
Path of Radiance actually did armors quite well IMO. The biggest thing is that everyone has +1 movement, so the gap between them and other infantry doesn't feel as bad. Most of the maps aren't even that big, and the ones that are still give them lots to do with reinforcement positions. Gatrie is a fantastic early game unit who can still hold his own later on. Brom has a tougher time early, but he scales quite well and has more room to grow with the knight ward. Tauroneo is a very well balanced pre-promote who can actually take a couple magic hits, giving him a solid niche over the others. Cavalry still reigns supreme in PoR, but the armors can hold their own quite well.
Armor Knights biggest problem is that the games are too easy and fast. If you play mods with increased difficulty they're pretty serviceable. It's too easy to turn every 20/20 class into a combat god and movement is the only thing that matters.
I loved using armors when I first started playing cause every character felt so fragile. These days I rarely use them since the lower movement just feels awkward to me, even if it’s usually only one move less than the infantry.
The last time I used an armor all the way to the endgame was on a conquest run. I was using Effie and she was SERIOUSLY speed screwed, like 1-2 points over her base speed after 12 levels. I was considering dropping her but I decided to hold out until wary fighter. I loved using her as a backpack for Xander, that pairing carried me through the ninja cave. As a general she sauced all over the kitsune village since they couldn’t damage her and she OHKOd all of them with the beast killer, and there she was able to learn wary fighter. I reclassed her to great knight and from there she was popping off, able to survive a round with any enemy and deal back massive damage, the occasional Luna proc also helped with one shots. She and Xander were quite the power couple, and I got a pretty swole siegbert out of it too
I honestly really love the Knight/General class because how how much hits they can take from physical attacks even dealing heavy damage back. While yes they are slow and are weak to magic attacks it atleast makes them good enough for when surrounded by physical units where as for magical units you rather avoid them as much as possible unless you can somehow 1 round them but that is highly unlikely to happen.
I think Dedue from Fire Emblem 3 Houses has one of the coolest designs for an armor knight. His personal skill increases his defense by 4 if he waits which will be extremely valuable on early maps when attacks are hitting for 10 or so damage but as you progress through the game and attacks start hitting for 30, you won't be able to rely on that. Instead, he can learn the combat art Vengeance which will increase attack based on HP lost and allow him to get some kills that other armor classes would struggle with.
armoured units are also exceptionally worse in maddening in engage, where the AI will actively avoid attacking armoured units if they will do no damage to them, which kind of negates their primary strength (they just become a slow moving wall that blocks enemy movement and only gets to attack on player turns)
That’s interesting, Engage is one of the games I found armoured knights to be the best in.
There are a decent amount of maps in engage that don’t have consistent 1 tile choke points and Louis (didn’t use Jade) is good for blocking a say 2 tile chokepoint with another unit and forcing enemies to attack that unit. Basically he can serve as like a funnel so the fact he can’t counter isn’t as detrimental because another unit is doing the countering.
Plus he’s the main use I found for the Ike weapon engraving since every other unit I used didn’t want the weight penalty even if they weren’t super fast but Louis is so slow he doesn’t care so can make use of it with no real downsides. (This isn’t as important though since you can just give it to another unit and have that unit only use the weapon when it’s safe to).
I’ve only played Engage on maddening and I didn’t reclass much so don’t know if he’s better or worse on other difficulties or classes but Louis at least is really really good of maddening, one of my top combat units alongside Kagetsu and Pandreo.
Disgaea has an interesting approach to armor units.
Some of the same issues apply, but all units can have their mobility enhanced through Lift & Throw, and armors specifically happen to be the best generic units for throwing in most games they're in. So not only are armors not really slowing the army down, they're in fact usually making the army FASTER because of their contribution in aggressive extensions and repositioning.
Slower monsters can run into similar issues, and can't throw to speed up the army, but this tends to be counteracted by how absurdly strong a lot of such monsters are, and the fact that they can still at least be thrown. They're often among the only units that can take multiple attacks per turn, so throwing them to the front makes sense.
Personally I'm a slower-pace player, and what do you know, I love my big bulky Armors. A lot, Arden probably being one of my favorite characters overall even.
As said, they're there to to their job and act as a bait and weaken the enemies while tanking their hits so your fragile glass-cannons can finis 'em off easy and get EXP to then in order do their job. And also grant some EXP for the healer(s) as well while on top of it.
And much like you said, I feel like the simple solution of just giving 'em better stats would be all they really need, honestly.
God knows why but oon my latest Engage run I ended up making Lady Anna a General... Probably for *** and giggles more than anything really.
But the thing is while she doesn't necessarily transcend the armor class she makes it work surprisingly well. She has enough speed to reliably avoid getting doubled or in some cases even being able to double herself, or she can get a lucky dodge at times as well thanks to it. Not to mention it helps her actually hit something as well.
But also, due her dex being pretty high she can also crit her foes reliably - even without equipping killer weapons - and at times this has resulted in her getting a much needed kill in retaliation.
Not to mention (although this only more or less works for her really) she can also make use of that fairly early Hurricane Axe you get, which only adds to her capabilities o act as a wall that also breaks walls.
For a something born out of a joke she sure - true to her character - made sure that I still got my investments worth though.
*The reason is obvious:*
Nintendo is trying to make Fire Emblem cater more to kids now, lower attention spans / room temperature IQ so the combat has to be quicker / less strategic.
Which causes tanking as a strategy to be an afterthought in favor of a "just keep attacking" speed play-style.
Not to mention, in earlier FE there were more defensive battles.
So movement wasn't as vital as endurance.
I disagree. Armor Knights were arguably at their worst in the earlier titles. Games like FE4 and FE5 have large maps with fairly strong enemies, and as such, Armors have little to offer. Furthermore, even when you do need a defensive wall, there's more often than not an unarmored unit that is far better at tanking than an armor (such as Sigurd in FE4 or Dagdar in FE5).
This might be a weird take, but if we're gonna go with class identity, I like to consider knights as tanks that can level light terrain obstacles just by walking over them. However, their heavy armor will weigh them down in certain terrain like sand. So if anything, maybe an armor buff would be that their movement is not affected by terrain such as brushes and forests, but get very punished by desert terrain like how the Solm quicksand works.
i actually love using sedgar in shadow dragon, everything is op in shadow dragon, the wingspear is op, forging is op, sedgar is op, ballistas are op, shadow dragon is the most fun FE game to me to play, there are so many things to experiment with. also the first few maps on merciless 5 or whatever its called are brutal, so i think its fair to have some fun after that.
There is also rescue dropping Armors into action.
Oswin apparently can't be rescued after promotion
I really liked your fe analysis video. They're a nice change from the usual playthrough video.
You have my sub :)
I really enjoy how Armor Knights felt in Engage. not having the movement deficit kick in till general gave them a really good gamefeel, and Louis had the DEF to really make tanking work even on harder difficulties.
one of the things that really frustrates me about GBA era Armors is how many weakness they have outside of speed. Their low RES and LUCK means that they're at constant risk of low % criticals and mage one-rounds, and often times the archetype gives them shaky hit rates, meaning that their ONE attack per turn has a decent chance of whiffing. it makes them downright unplayable
Knights tend to be at their best when they have more going for them beyond their statline or at least having a reasonable compromise. Being naturally unbreakable in Engage is absolutely huge given how dangerous enemies can be, the robust skill system of fates/awakening letting them compensate for their innate weaknesses/hit harder/tank better/ do whatever you need them to do (wary fighter is honestly under appreciated) the pair up systems let them work around their low movement and still provide some excellent buffs in back up. We're still a long way away from the unga bunga that is knights in Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics sure, but at least the future is looking bright for the units once stuck on "castle defense".
Good video. However, I can't help but disagree with the part that we shouldn't buff their movement. First, they won't be doing their role of protecting the rest of the army if they can't keep up. Second, better move won't alter the enjoyment slower players get out of them. Third, even with higher move, they won't be the same as soldiers thanks to stat distribution and weakness to anti-armor weapons. Even better: knights can start with a weapon that's not a lance, or with two weapons like cavaliers do! In fact, an idea I've seen thrown around in discussions is making cavs mono-weapon and knights dual-weapon.
Fire Emblem Heroes fixed Armored units, to the point of making them some of the best units in the game with just 1 thing, Savior.
Savior means that the armored Unit takes ally´s unit space, enters combat in ally's place, and receives all after-combat effects in a ratio of 1 or 2 squares away from the current position of the armored dude, this means that you have to beat the armored unit first before even thinking of attacking the allies on its range, and that easier said that done, because armored units have a lot of tools at their disposal to make sure that they dont die.
there is near saving with is savior in 1 ranged attacks with swords/lances/axes/beast and dragon attacks and far saving which is savior for attacks with bows/magic/daggers/staves.
this fixes the problem that armored units have of having to be in the frontlines to protect the allies and the enemy simply being able to walk around the armored unit to attack the weaker friendly units, now they are a proper shield, they are your first line of defense, like they always were mean to be.
The problem is being tanky is a requirement for a good unit most of the time, not just a luxury attribute you can afford to not have. Since all FE games have good units that are not armors, armors are just obsolete.
A weird example is Berwick Saga, in that game armors suck and have 3 move, but they certainly do have some ridiculous tankiness that you might find use of in certain cases.
BABE. WAKE UP NEW LIZARD VIDEO
The worst part is that armorers are so bad in the newer games. Take shadows of valentia as an example:
Instead of having no damage at all, units that have higher defense than the enemy’s attacking still get 1 damage. But that’s not all.
Arts or skills like armor break also damage the units resistance to other units. BUT GUESS WHAT UNITS HAVE THIS SKILL. YEAH, THE SUPER-EFFECTIVE UNITS OF ARMORERS.
Like, a Pegasus knight and a cavalier, along with their class changes, make the armorers weaker. So their only advantage is swordsmen. But guess what? Skills that raise attack, the main characters and the attack stat boost on every level also make armorers weak.
So armorers became from strong and op units with low speed to crappy units. Just great. And now onwards it’s the same pace.
As someone who's played a decent amount of Fates I find this an interesting look at Effie
For one, she's not your tankiest early unit, Silas has 10 Defense to Effie's 12 except that Silas shortens the gap with a +3 Defense personal skill compared to Effie's class skill of Defense +2 leaning them at 13 and 14 but then notably their best defensive pair up is eachother Silas giving 2 to Effie and Effie giving 4 to Silas
This means with their skills and pair ups active, Effie has 16 Defense and Silas has 17 at base
Now this difference isn't actually a big deal, between this, Demoiselle/Gentilhomme, Lily's Poise, Tonics, Silas and Effie can both easily just take 0 damage from every physical enemy... which isn't a useful or good quality to begin with beyond literally their join map, you want to be taking low damage from Fates enemies, not 0, overkill defense is substantially worse than above average defense, but Effie is doing this tanking with only Lances instead of Lances and Swords, lower speed, and lower movement than everyone else, which while you can mitigate with pair up, a unit who needs that help is obviously worse off than the unit who provides that incredible movement
This isn't to say Effie is bad or anything, she's actually a fairly decent candidate for investment
But it has nothing to do with her being an Armor, Effie is good because she's one of the 3 units in Nohr who can access Archer easily (Her, Nyx, and Mozu all via Mozu's help) and Kinshi Knight, the promotion for Archer, is arguably the single best player phase combat class in the game, and if you've played a ton of Conquest you know how good a bow class can juggernaut on enemy phase in that game, and Effie being the highest strength unit with that easy access is a pretty notable niche even if it's not crazy strong or anything, plus even without investment she has D Lances at base and her Javelins hit incredibly hard
Of course Wary Fighter gets a lot of praise, finally Armors who just will never get doubled, it seems like such a natural and strong fix to their problems
Except among Efficient or LTC play Wary Fighter is pretty commonly regarded as one of the single worst skills in the game, down there with Gamble and Lethality, skills that are active detriments to your units
While Wary Fighter might be a great boon to Oswin or Gilliam or Bors, it isn't on them
It's on Effie and Benny
As I've said before in plenty of other places, Benny can double Master Ninjas on his birthday, but even on other days he certainly won't get doubled by them because Fates is a game where you can at any time modulate your stats to insane degrees
While it's unlikely anyone but the most deranged of players will bother with Benny to get him doubling, it's really not that hard to get a trained Effie to the point where she doubles, at that point Wary Fighter is entirely doing more harm than good.
But this is a great video, and I think you're totally right about armors being handled pretty poorly in most games and they absolutely need fixed in some way, but Fates... as much as Fates hits the nail on the head with a lot of other design elements, Armor Knights, at least player ones, probably aren't the place to look for design choices from Fates
A much more natural armor knight to look at might be Gatrie in Radiant Dawn
Gatrie is what everyone thinks Effie is, an Armor Knight who just has overkill stats to compensate for his poor class, and it works pretty well even if he's not the best unit ever
Appreciate the nuance on fates. Also agree that archer is the way for Effie (I have her in archer in my current playthrough).
Wary fighter does seem like it would be of more use in other fire emblems where speed is less fixable. Even if it's not ideal in Fates, I think it's a good framework for a skill that could be appropriate in other games.
I’ve been playing through path of radiance on my CRT for the first time in my entire life and have absolutely loved my armor knight Brom. I gave him the Vantage perk and having him bait attacks AND always hitting first has me outright devious with my plays
I REALLY love armour knights, they're my favourite unit type, and I make space for one in every game, they're like, bottom tier units 70% of the time and the rest they're okay/good but that won't stop me from using them just because I feel like it
My favourite character from FE ever is Bors and a promoted Arden was right up there in the front lines with the cavaliers (After turn stalling for me to get him there I'm not insane enough to give him the leg ring)
There is one flaw about Generals in Conquest specifically (i dont think this applies to BR/Rev?). Despite Wary Fighter being an amazing skill for them... enemies in CQ have what I call "smart AI". This is them avoiding attacking units that they will do 0 damage to. This sucks because that means your Generals will be too tanky to do anything on Enemy Phase, so enemies will just completely ignore them and go around them
I think for a class with as many drawbacks as Armor Knights, they should have more than one weapon available to them. Being Lance-Locked on top of everything else is just too much.
I've been playing through Project Ember recently, and Bors is just way more fun in that game because he has Swords and Lances.
That being said, I wouldn't make Swords and Lances the standard, that's what Cavaliers have, so I'd pick Lances and Axes instead, but the bottom line is that Armor Knights need more than just one Weapon at Base, especially if they're jumping to three when they promote to General, and at best the other two weapon ranks will be D after promotion.
One idea I had for buffing Armor Knights was giving them an extra Move. Not giving them another point of Move, letting them Move *twice*, at the cost of their action. It's potentially problematic, but I'm approaching this with a lot more experience in, like, TTRPG spaces where that sort of idea is a lot more common.
Yeah I just started playing Fire Emblem a few months ago, with FE7 being my first entry into the series. I ended up taking Oswin all the way to the end of the game. The fact that every other map or so, they would spawn reinforcements to attack Merlinus's camp made me feel better about leaving him behind to guard, because he was basically a one man army.
He's the only reason I managed to kill Ursula, as I had to face tank her Bolting attacks with him because otherwise she would just one shot anyone else on my roster. After his promotion to general, he managed to double many enemies, and just one or two shot them, taking hardly any damage in return.
So Oswin will definitely always hold a place in my heart.
I think Engage introducing the break system fixed a huge problem with Armors, a niche.
But it still had a glaring flaw. Other tanks do the job better despite the risks.
Specifically Diamont, Timera and Alfred. Their unique classes are absolute walls, decent at handling magic. And if you invest in Alfred. Solid damage dealers, who don't suffer to much from being doubled.
Louis creates an excellent decoy early game, so your main army can focus a point, while Louis draws fire with little risk.
FE3H had their own fix... Edelgard didn't have the movement penalty. And she could tank magic. But evasion tanks were simply more efficient than bulk here.
Conquest I felt like handled this better, as maps are a bit more desperate. You need someone who can hold a line.
But Birthright rendered them utterly useless.
I think the best fix for them is honestly: Smaller maps. The need to dash around the map kills any value an armor has, and a lot of games give us a ton of huge maps.
Engage handled this a bit better by giving us a good mix of big and small maps, with great choke points.
But most of the maps are still a dash across as soon as possible. =/ Rendering them pretty useless. And again, it just gives us better options for tanks that AREN'T armored.
I get making them have lower MS as an interesting balance point, but flavor wise, it makes little sense. Men layered in full plate, chain mail, gambeson plus weapons were perfectly capable of running and moving at a speed you might not think possible and the armor is so well designed it allowed almost 100% range of motion.
It's also really difficult and bordering on impossible to balance a class that is missing arguably the 2 most important traits in FE, MS and Speed. Cavaliers are never a bad option because their impressive MS.
I'm fully on board with Armored Knight having normal infantry Mov but having good mobility coming more from being able to traverse different types of Terrain rather than being based solely on your Mov stat, if that makes any sense. So like, while both an Armored Knight and a Myrmidon might both have 05 Mov, an Armored Knight will get bogged down more by Forests than a Myrmidon. So the mobility can still be worse without the Armored Knight just being gimped in literally every single scenario. I dunno if you've played them, but Vestaria Saga I and II (moreso II) do this extremely well, and VS2's Armored Knights are IMO some of the best in any FE or FE-like because of it.
I think engage did armor well by just making Louis a very strong unit. He basically cannot die unless there's mages or 4-5 backup units swarming him with chain attacks. And unbreakable made him great for enemy phase.
Plus, the option to fix his move with the sigurd ring is good fun.
I completely disagree with the assertion that armor knights are bad in FE 8. They are only bad when you intentionally exclude 2 entire games modes, and only care about LTC. As soon as you add Creature campaign as a mandatory thing to complete, armors immediately become good. Their are multiple maps with creatures rushing you down, and viable choke points on top of rear guard reinforcements. Add in things like Link Arena.
The game is balanced around all of that. Removing 2 parts that are essential to the game design leaves you judging it based entirely on only one third of the entire game. Meaning that frankly any balance changes are complaints involving it are misinformed at best, and arguing that their preferred playstyle is balanced. This is the issue at large and a huge misconception in the FE community. There is such a huge emphasis on LTC, despite the fact the game has additional modes to be considered, other strategy based metrics in which to judge as being efficient and all of that needs to be balanced around.
Sure in LTC movement is king, In link arena, movement doesn't matter. How do you balance for that while balancing for the campaign? In the creature campaign sure movement can be king, but typically the maps have choke points that holding effectively lowers it's turn count, and are large enough that when reinforcements arrive far enough away that high movement to return is slower then where you lower movement units should be to naturally catch them. You also get graded for number of units used, turns, and time. In that context playing around the lowest possible combination of those, other unit types become viable (outside of priest which class skill of slayer is just utterly broken in that mode). Armors look a lot better in that context.
For whatever reason the community at large has decided that those game modes don't matter, shouldn''t matter, and that the game needs to be looked at and balance around LTC for skilled play. Which is humorous as really how much skill is involved in a warp staff kill bypass? Rushing objectives to complete the map before the challenging parts arrive how much actual skill is that? We decided a while back that speed running is skillful, which in most of other game genres I'd agree, in a turn based tactics game, No. LTC is just a style of play, that is essentially saying "I like only using flyiers and cavaliers." In that context it doesn't sound that impressive, or skillful.
My most played Fire Emblem by far is 7 and I played a ton of Link Arena in that, it was back in high school and we had a group of 4-5 people who just constantly replayed the game training new and stronger units/teams for the link arena
Generals(Oswin, Wallace) always performed extremely well here with high stat caps and ability to use 2 different weapons including Vaida's spear you could get from using the glitch with the mine, Oswin in particular had really good support options too
I was shocked years later to learn that the narrative is that Paladin+Fliers are the kings of the game cause low con and low stat caps always caused us to avoid them lol
Devs are definitely weary of making armors too strong, but they usually undervalue how important speed and move is, and so being a few points above-average is not emotional to be viable when your move and speed is the lowest in the game.
Older games needed to just give armors better HP, Str and Def. Even better Skill than some other units.
I've sometimes attempted to make a balance hack for Binding Blade, and something I like to do is give the armor trio +3 HP, and +1 to almost everything else (Barth doesn't get the +1 Res and Speed, Bors doesn't get the +1 Def, and Gwen/Wendy only gets +1 HP). I haven't playtested enough, and not at all in Hard Mode tbh, but I also make a few map changes to the early-game (add a few Myrmidons and Merc, and move Bors 1 space closer to the action) and that's usually enough for them to feel USABLE in Normal.
Armor Knights are bad - except Bosswin. Bosswin just casually tanks 50 enemys with nothing than 3 Javelins and a Vulneray before turning *insert any FE7 Boss* into kebab. I like BOsswin. I also only ever played FE7 to the end and have attempted multiple runs on FE11 aswell as a FE6 Run. So i dont know how qualified my opinion is. Still gonna leave it here.
I think the Wary Fighter skill was one of the best things to happen to armor knights. Giving them that by default, or some other unique ability, would let them have utility without busting their stats. Maybe something like the Rampart skill from the knights of Tactics Ogre LUCT?
I think a godlike way to buff armored unit is if they had a natural (not on command) Chain guard from Engage, but to any adjacent allies, 1 time per turn if their HP is above 50%. I'm baffled that the units who gets such skill are martial artists that what they should have is some kind of avoid skill not a block one.
Maybe it will make them too strong, but maybe not, it could be tweaked until it finds the sweetspot of being helpful but not make your playstyle too dependant on it.
I think a cool buff they could give to armor knights would be supporting adjacent units. They could added defenses to adjacent allies or like have a % chance to block damage for allies (like Lucina's emblem ring bonded shield).
I think pivoting to supportive utility would help to keep their identity as a defensive unit without also making them goated at combat.
There's a srpg game called dark deity and their armor knights give adjacent allies defence.
I'd say keeping their move values close enough is important Armour 4, Foot 5 Cav 6 (all +1 on promotion) is OK, Armnour 4 ,foot 5 fast foot 6, cav 7, Light cav and fliers 8 (with some units getting more than +1 on promotion) is too harsh a penalty however no unit should be twice the movespeed of another without terrain or items involved. Good additional mitigation (immune to double, chance invul tank, etc) also helps keep them relevant.
The oldest Fire Emblem that I’ve played is Binding Blade. There is no reason to use Armor knights past chapter 2, aside from using Douglas to block a path in Sacae route. That can actually be useful. He likely won’t be hitting anything though. At least they made Oswin useful in the next game.
I find Armor Knight usefulness is directly connected to what difficulty you play on.
Normal - Go for it. Good at baiting enemies, and can eat huge amounts of damage at chokepoints. Even Barth can be pretty dang useful in FE6 on normal.
Hard - Little bit riskier, need to often be shown favouritism to be able to function, depending on the game of course. I remember Bors in FE6 in particular being damn near useless if his early levels get defense-screwed on level ups.
Lunatic / Insane or higher - Lol. Lmao.
There's no really good reason for knights to be the only 4 movement class (when the 5 is the normal for foot units). It means they stay behind everyone.
I like to use them in some games, but I don't usually use them since they tend to lag behind due to their lower movement. Meg from FE10 sucks, and is probably the worst armour knight in the history of FE.
Something I really enjoy about hacks is how they try to fix this issue in different ways. Order of the Crimson Arm had one of my favorite solutions: it gave them bows! Armors being able to attack enemies without having to move toward them helps mitigate some of the movement issue, and gives them the ability to choke points at all stages of the game without unequipping entirely. Archers in that game are so strong that they can frequently one-round units, so it doesnt step into their design space too hard, and it means Javelins can keep their downsides.
Armored units are weird because they have slightly better defense (and sometimes strength) growth for the cost of movement, speed, and a weakness to version weapons. If you have bad bases, this growth can be too little too catch up. It can be hard to do enough damage to get exp and get those growths so other units often match or exceed your defense with 3 good levels. If you're too slow, you can get doubled and your bulk is essentially halved. If you do many rounds of combat, you're more likely to get crit, so getting doubled reduces your bulk there too. If you're in a pinch and need to escape, you don't have the movement to keep your unit alive, so that's bad for bulk too. And you have a glaring flaw in res in most games.
Like you said, if you play slow, grind their levels, play safe, feed them, then their growths will usually give enough defense to tank large portions of most maps, but, that's also true for most of your other units, for most FE games. I love their flavor, but it would be great if the "armored" tag was something more than a detriment. (like, crits only do 2x damage to you, or follow ups are only half damage. Maybe effective weapons have a skill% chance to be effective to replicate a well placed rapier through armor, etc). Right now, the armored tag just makes marginally more defensive units take more damage from more weapons than they already do.
Ironically, Geneology actually makes armors pretty strong in terms of combat, it's just that Arden trying to trek across the map is like a square peg and a round hole (I gave him the Leg Ring to mitigate the problem, but he still was chasing abit without Canto + on him).
Not only did both Generals and Barons have good weapon variety and strong stats, Geneology gave the advanced class armors the class skill Great Shield, meaning even with effective damage or magic, there's a percent chance it's not gonna hurt them, maximizing their tank role. They make for actually tough bosses sitting on their castles, because they don't need to worry about going anywhere. Were there more instances where reinforcements could spawn near the castle besides Ch 2, Arden would have a legitimate niche in the game.
Personally, I think they do need a class skill to parallel Canto for them to blossom. Wary Fighter or Great Shield could work, but an interesting idea would be a skill that buffs terrain bonuses on them. This would give them the role of moving from terrain to terrain, as well as make enemy armors effective through sitting on their thrones or fortresses.
I'm curious which class skill most people would prefer on them?
Armor Knights are good at holding their ground in most every game, at least early game. On defense maps with one to two tile wide choke points or leaving them to hold the base while the cavalry takes out the boss, armor knights are king. The problems come when they have to change where that ground is. The biggest issue armor knights have is that they're usually given horrible speed growths to compensate high health, strength, and defense growths. All the various forms of cavalry have all the same boons armor knights have without the low speed growths and poor movement. Also, those defense maps love to give enemy axe wielders Hammers for effective damage on top of the weapon triangle advantage. And early maps are usually filled with slow, inaccurate axe units to help level your sword-locked lord.
I loved playing with Effie and Benny on conquest, they were almost always on the team. Being able to carry armored around with pair up system also helps a lot, pair up with a paladin, the paladin passes to a not moved yet character and in the end, just swap and done, armored positioned much more distant than 4 tiles. In the end, I changed Effie to master of arms for fun and she became a war tank.
Strategies centralizing around armor units involves slowly going from chokepoint to chokepoint. It can be a little boring:
That's me. I'm the boring one lol.
The "problem" of getting left behind is not so much an problem with armored knights and generals as it is a problem with the movement system and how it relates to horse riders in general. If you've got more than one or two mounted units, you run into that problem with literally everyone else on your team regardless.
This is particularly the reason that those classes get thrown to the wayside in all of my playthroughs.
They wind up being too far away to be healed until late game using physic, too far away to be reinforced by units more suited to combat, they have a whole class of weapons specifically geared towards taking them down, and they're just an all-around mid tier class tree with no particularly high stats to speak of. They have no special combat functions, do not crit reliably, and aren't particularly strong. Wverns and pegasus riders are much better as transport/rescue units as well because their increased movement ability isn't hampered at by terrain. Everything a knight somewhat suitable for, those two classes do better with only very slight adjustments in planning.
Unpopular opinion: I think movement is overrated since a majority of people don't play the game to warp skip one turn boss kill. This is one of the biggest arguments that movement is broken. Take that away and movement is much less important on non-Canto units. A simple, yet underrated, tactic is to bait out enemies with a unit and have all the others stand 1 square outside of that range. All of your allies 1 square away will reach all enemies attacking the bait outside of ballistas, onagers, siege tombs, and canto units, since their movement even at 4 is greater than the enemy movement. If the Canto units have to use all their movement to reach the bait then you will also be able to attack them with your allies. This happens WAY more than people ever seem to acknowledge in the game. People say it's better to give up the innate tomefair of Warlock for 5 move of gremory when in reality, your magic casters have at least 6 attack range which outranges their primary targets (Armored classes with 5 attack range unless they have tomahawks). They also are usually better off cleaning up baited enemies rather than initiating into a hoard of enemies by using their max range movement, only to be destroyed on the following turn.
It would admittedly be faster if your whole team initiated and killed off all the enemies in a group to eliminate counterattack but in maddening, these opportunities become more rare due to the quantity and positioning of the enemies. There's always one enemy Archer, Paladin or flyer that is within range of the enemies you're initiating on but not reachable from outside the enemy range.
Armored classes are less reliant on range because they are the bait. They don't need to reach the enemies. They just need to reach a spot where the enemies can reach them, which is a lot easier almost as if the game was designed with that playstyle in mind.
In Engage the only problem with them is literally their Mv. Also their dogshit speed late game is a bit of a problem because they start to lose relative bulk and get doubles by everything so they aren’t as much of a wall.