My favorite thing with Fortress Knight is making Hilda into one. Not because it's the best class for her or anything, but because the visual of this small cute pink haired anime girl with massive armor tanking everything is just really fun. Plus, it does actually work pretty well with her, even if most people would recommend putting her into something else.
I actually think fortress into great knight is the best class for Hilda actually. As long as I had range to take out mages nothing even hit Hilda and if they did it'd be laughable damage.
She's generally just a great axe fighter, as long as sh's got an axe she'll be fine no matter the class really. She's a bit of a glasscanon though, hits hard but can't really take a hit herself with the abyssmal defence stat. But Fortress knight might just compensate for that.
I actually love using fort knight dedue, he walls stuff for the early game, and later you can reclass him into warmaster or wyvern lord and he can ohko nearly all enemies with a combat art or like a brave axe
I went all in with Armor on Dedue for my first playthrough (of any FE game) and made him a great knight. He literally walked up to the final boss of Blue Lions on hard mode and said "No Damage".
I'll never understand why people sing praises to Catherine for being a strong option in the early game when Dedue is practically the only non-lord that doesn't die in the early game on maddening and people consider him a bad unit.
Ward Arrow, Silence and Ingrid helped keep my Dedue alive during those chapters. Maybe also Retribution but you'll be chain-spammed to hell from my experience so I wouldn't rely on it.
im gonna say it straight up, your best 3h content (aside from streams) is when you use your platform to shine a light on things that people overlook in this game. to this day learning how assassin's stealth works has completely changed how i play the game. your stealth video, cyril video, and this one are all top tier. bulk boosting is an extremely underrated tactic that i've been doing recently, usually on seteth. also very much agree that extremes are a very good thing in maddening. one day your third eye will open about ingrid, but until then keep up the great work lol idea for future video: take another look at mortal savant lysithea. if you have your warp uses covered (linhardt for example), mortal savant lys is actually insanely strong.
Yea but there is also the argument of why would i waste precious items just so fortess knight can still lag behind even with a march ring and and the movment boosting item chances are he still either barley keeps up or is still falling behind your better classes such as wyverns or falcon knights hell even mages have technically better movement late game becuase 1 they get plus 1 range at s rank easy to get and 2 by then you have thrysus and cadues so yea lystheia can only move 5 spaces and a fortress knight has 6 lysithea will have attack range of 5 so yea no matter what argument people try to make for fortress knight its still in my opinion a not optimal class for a optimal playthrough if you wanna have fun sure or meme around sure but the fact still stands that fortress knights need alot of investment to be good when other class are just as good with almost zero investment and fortress knight isnt even good enemy phase either just decent its better to invest in dodge tanking with is alot more reliable i mean dimitri only hits 145 avo with wyvern lord and alert stance plus and a decent battalion hell i got my ingrid petra and dimitri to all get over 100 avo fortress knight is a fun class i love having lystheia and hilda there but it still lowkey sucks
Movement increasing items are, without any doubt, better to use on high mobility units. Increasing their range is far more effective, giving them a better enemy phase, letting them take different strategic points faster, carry units further etcetc. It's simply better. That doesn't mean giving an armor knight a mobility buff is /wrong/ per say, it's just not as good. But if you enjoy using that class of unit, then by all means go for it. It may be worse, but it's still fine.
Because why woukd you use those items on a fort knight when you could use them on a wyvern lord. With the exception of dancers, extra movement is always gonna be more useful on a a unit that already has high movement than one with low movement.
I heard someone mention getting quick reposte unlocked and then classing back to fortress knight for the final few maps(on madding azure moon) If you get that to work it sounds pretty interesting.
@@paladinslash4721 More like sending Dimitri with battalion vantage wrath and retribution is the best idea xD That how I cleared both AM maddening runs final chapter
Best enemy phase unit by far and is insanely carried by quick riposte. Having this skill you can ignore your attack speed stat altogether. And oh boy that is nuts. Because of this you can stack shields and batallions that increase your protection to skyrocket high levels as you dont care about missing avoid or speed at all. Units with insane health and defense growth like dedue and raphael become god tier because of it I always have at least 1 male fortress knight in every run and it hasnt dissapointed me so far.
Reposition really helps with their mobility issues, sadly Dedue won’t be able to use his amazing personal. And Although it’s a late game option quick riposte makes an armor’s speed issues non existent.
What do you mean by "Dedue won't be able to use his amazing personal?" If reposition(or some other movement ability) is going to be used on a low mobility fortress knight like him it's not going to impede him from waiting his turn for the free enemy phase defense if preferable.
@@hanzou1238 It's really good for the first few maps. Pretty much everyone else in the BLs can't take more than 2 rounds of combat and maybe not even that much. Dedue stands out a lot as he is by far the best earlygame tank and van hit back hard too so that you can finish off enemies with your other characters or buff him with Annette for extra damage on counterattack. It does become kinda useless once your units start snowballing, but still said skill isn't to be underestimated.
On my Blue Lions playthrough Dedue virtually couldn't die. Even after time-skip he was still unkillable. Fortress Knight is kinda broken on Dedue, he had like 62 defense for something by the end of the game.
@@josephzeigler6853 Kill the mages in advance and you'll never have to worry about them with him. He moves slowly enough that by the time he gets within Bolting range you can kill them with someone else and have Dedue deal with the stragglers, monsters and reinforcements. Also a short trip down the Priest Line does wonders for Res and you can even grab Renewal as a bonus.
I still don't like they changed General to Fortress Knight (or how the developers in Three Houses treated Great Knights). On another note, there needs to be both Marshall and Baron for the next installment. Before the new weapons leveling system, I would have said for Marshall to wield axes/lances/swords/bows and Barons to wield axes/lances/tomes. However; with the introduction of the new class promotion system and weapons leveling system, they instead need to focus on what skills they have to provide. Like Barons having a skill that emphasis on additional tome power and to punish units that have high resistance (though doesn't completely ignore it unlike FE7 Luna) or bow users in general.
The only thing more mistreated than GK is sword classes. Hero is meh, they gutted Astra, they only have 1 master class which only 3 characters can make it work, Assassin is good though. And where the hell is Aether?
@@paladinslash4721 1. Hero is good, actually. 2. Astra was never a good skill, then making it not worth using in this game was just driving that point home (not that Swordmaster needs Astra to be a competent class anyway). 3. Mortal Savant may not be a great class, but it has some niche uses on magic characters that appreciate the higher movement without having to deal with the terrain penalties mounted units often struggle with. 4. Aether was a promoted Lord thing, which there is only one promoted Sword Lord class and it’s more magically-oriented. 5. Not ever class line needs a Master class. The three Advanced sword classes are all competent at different things and a Master Class wouldn’t be adding anything new or interesting.
@@aljien19 Any class that has Vantage as a passive class skill is great, especially for units that get Battalion Wrath in their Authority tree, plus Defiant Strength is the best of the Defiant Masteries by far and can lead to such hilarious damage-stacking that certain units like Balthus can become unstoppable killing machines. Even with the 5 move compared to Assassin’s 6 and being locked to the men, Hero is the third-best physical Advanced infantry class (after Grappler and Sniper) and it’s easier to qualify for than either of them.
I did it once. Went the extra mile and made the entire run a love letter to Wendy, Amelia, Meg, and the rest of the trash female armor knights, by using only females, and generally only those with poor stats for the job. And Dancer Dimitri, since I still needed to do BL. Mercedes was probably the worst I tried (I wound up dropping her completely for Manuela at some point), Lysithea was, perhaps shockingly, the best. Ingrid wasn't the worst, but was the most surprisingly bad, being generally unable to meaningfully do anything, despite including her with the idea that she'd be one of the better units I'd be using. Bernadetta was also surprisingly good. Horrible initially, but being in a class that actually lets her use her innate ability aggressively picked up speed fairly quickly.
@@q-tip9962 The Aegis and Pavise effects of Fetters of Dromi would only be active on Yuri, unless you are using NG+ crest items. But now picture this: Fortress Knight Yuri running a Brawl Avo or Sword Avo set. He is fast, tanky, dodgy, and also has Canto, Aegis and Pavise.
@@vinceuy6751 More like the Op Dimitri is 20 levels above the rest player with Chalice + Battalion wrath + Battalion Vengeance + killer spear, he's never died, and he's always on the murderpath
@@vinceuy6751 not really, Dimitri can still dominate on maddening, at least from personal experience. You dont need that much investment, because you should be training authority anyway and Id argue that avoid stance+builds take a lot more investment because of the high threshold for speed rank. Also, giving Dimitri Dedue as pair up fodder just protects Dimitri from doubles just in case you miss a 60-80 percent crit. Vantage Wrath builds have been broken for a long time (Nephanee lol) and its one of the only ways you can EP in 3H.
Fortress hilda in a chokepoint is so good. Not to mention, using ab armor knight as a partner can save your life. Defensive partners are by far the best.
Certifying into Armor Knight is super easy. You can do it as early as Chapter 6 with anyone. It's just a matter of setting Armor as one of two goals during Chapters 2 and 3 (while doing the Weeding activity if they have a bane in Armor), then swapping that goal to Axes during Chapters 4 and 5, and instructing on Axes during Chapter 5 after restoring the statues and visiting the sauna. During Chapters 2 through 4, you can instruct on anything that is not necessarily Axes nor Armor. So it's totally feasible to certify units like Lysithea or Bernadetta into Armor Knight without making them miss important early benchmarks in their conventional weapon ranks. Another cool advantage of certifying into Armor Knight at the start of Chapter 6 is that on that chapter, you get a chance to do a quest battle to farm WExp on a certain day without sacrificing student motivation replenishment. On that day, you do a quest and solo-deploy with an adjutant, both of them certified as Armored Knights. As long as the deployed unit is able to eventually clear the map, you can extend the battle until both units get A+ rank in Armor and at least B rank in Axes (the deployed unit can also get lots of Authority WExp too). Getting A+ rank in Armor gives them access to an equippable Weight-5 and also Smite. Getting B rank in Axes allows them to certify into Fortress Knight whenever they become level 20. More Axes ranks can allow them to become Warriors, to get even more extra Str from the certification bonus. This is the secret technique that allows you to unlock the powers of fearsome units such as BULKY FRONTLINE LYSITHEA and BULKY FRONTLINE MARIANNE. Having 12 Def and 30 HP at level 10, and then 17 Def and 35 HP (and also 17 Str) at level 20 makes them the bulkiest units on your party for a very large portion of the pre-timeskip chapters. After that, even if they have low growths on those stats, the bulk they got just from those bases allow them to be decently bulky for the rest of the game, even if they are no longer your bulkiest units. Also note: 17 Str and Weight-5 allows them to equip Nosferatu without getting slowed down. And if they reach 20 Str, they can equip Nosferatu and Caduceus/Thyrsus without losing any AS at all. With high Spd growths and potentially also Spd class modifiers (such as Dark Flier's), BULKY FRONTLINE LYSITHEA and similar units are able to Nosferatu tank while doubling many enemy types (like cavalry, axe users, bow users, and some magic users) on Enemy Phase. And that is ONLY from having invested on Armor ranks in the early game. As the game progresses and you get more chances to give lots of mastery abilities (like Hit+20) to all the units on your core team, BULKY FRONTLINE LYSITHEA and other female units can gain easy access to Darting Blow. With Darting Blow and Weight-5, BULKY FRONTLINE LYSITHEA is able to double and one-round-kill Grapplers (which are quite fast) and anything that is slower than them. Basically, BULKY FRONTLINE LYSITHEA can double and one-round-kill anything except Falcon Knights (Swordmasters and Assassins are still one-shot by the harder-hitting spells, despite not getting doubled).
Something else to add. Gauntlets are a game changer for fortress knights. On the offensive side, they give fortress knights guranteed brave weapons from the beginning of the game which really helps out their offense. There’s also the fact that enemy gauntlet users are terrifying as they are almost guaranteed to quad you and if they are a war master they will have notable crit as well. Fortress/great knights are pretty much the only units that can consistently survive combat with enemy gauntlet users.
@@l.n.3372 That’s not how the stat system works. Three houses effectively has two class base systems. One that activates when you qualify for the class, and then a modifier system for when you are in the class. Fortress knight has the highest modifier of any class in the game by far with a +10 def bonus. You can see this in game by taking any unit that has qualified for the fortress knight class, switching them to noble/commoner (which have no modifiers) and then comparing the stats. Serenes forest is a good resource if you want to see all the modifiers in one place.
@@bhizzle64 That's exactly what I said: you can certify fortress knight for the class bases, so your frail units have higher def. There's no reason to stay in fortress forever because def isn't as useful as you think. It's actually better to be fast and avoid doubles than be slow and get hit twice anyway.
Certifying Armor Knight on most units is so worth it in Maddening for the Defense base, the only way most of them can survive one round of combat, really. Fortress Knight is also the absolute best class for grinding skills. Gather a bunch of enemies that deal 0 damage (sometimes their weapons have to break first) and just wait 90 turns.
After doing an all-Armor Knight run, I can confirm a lot of this. I would also say that having Sylvain & Ferdinand with Swift Strikes basically ignores the doubling problem, since the game is so player-phase heavy. All the movement skills help a lot, and armored units learn good ones. The biggest problem is that they become pretty squishy in the late game (except Byleth & Edelgard/Dimitri, go figure), which kind of defeats the purpose of having a high-defense unit. But that's also 3H late game in general. They're not amazing, but nothing beats watching my chunky bois go to town.
Fortress Knights are great in 3H. The issue is this game is centered around movement that they fall off so short. They can't keep up with your strided wyvern lords who 1-2 turn the maps.
Yeah, everyone talks about how you can work around movement options, but I'd rather stride/dance a good flier to take out important threats than have to use half my team to reposition my fortress knight
1-2 turning the maps goes directly against your best interest in pretty much every conceivable case. LTC is not indicative of normal play, nor is it anywhere near replicable. when you 1 turn a map all you are left with is a weaker army for a number on the screen with *ZERO* objective value. unless you can make the case to me why it matters literally ever?
@@personontheinternet2164 Yeah, 1-2 turns is definitely a stretch. For me though, by the time I get advanced classes it's all about being able to respond to threats *efficiently* (ambush spawns, ballistae, waves of enemies that include mages), and fortress knights have such crappy movement that it's hard to set them up correctly when I could just have fliers to take care of threats before they touch me, or send someone else who can bait them with decent defense or dodge tanking. The only tank I find worth his salt in maddening is Dedue, and I find he falls off *HARD* once you can have a ton of great mounted units and the enemies start having a ton of mages and mounted units (and his personal starts to be a little less amazing). He is still serviceable, but using a FK effectively is so much work.
I used Ferdinand for the first time before picking Black Eagles, so that means I actually raised my Byleth's armor rank and even put him into Armor Knight for a bit. Three Houses is already focused on player phase and Armored Blow is a good skill I think. I like Pavise but it's better on other classes like a Paladin
I really really enjoyed using Ferdinand as an Armor Knight and Fortress Knight in Maddening. Unlocking Seal Speed early and giving him a guard adjutant was great to put on the front line to slow enemies. His avoid was a touch crippled but his personal helped. After recruiting Lorenz for the linked bonus he was a front liner for sure. Not too worried about speed too, with the Swift Strike combat art. I had him equip and March Ring and a Goddess Ring for luck and recovery. I was very happy with him. He was an MVP of the run for sure.
The great thing about Fortress Knights is you don't even have to get them to the frontlines to put in work, they make for some of the best units for dealing with reinforcements. Keep them out of Gambit range and they'll clean house of anything physical. As a bonus they make Grapplers look like chumps so they can keep your Gremory safe.
I'm actually doing a Maddening NG run with no spellcasting allowed (No Magic Gambits either), so now that I'm actually forced to play the chapters instead of Stride+Warp+Dance skipping every objective, I've found that having some Dummy Thicc units is REALLY valuable. Being able to use Fortress Knight Dedue and Annette to pull enemies with a hand axe and no fear is a really empowering experience. Even without the busted magic, it's so easy to get Reposition on a cavalier or flier, and Smite on every armor Bro, so you can easily move those chunky friends across the map.
Anyone with the proficiency in 3 houses at lvl 10 on maddening I put them into armor knight to get that defense, don’t keep them there though (Cyril, Sylvian, edelgard, hilda)
It's not that Fortress Knights are bad. It's just that flying dodge tanks are so ridiculously overpowered in this game and are far better than Fortress Knights at literally everything. -They are better as tanks because they don't get hit at all. -They are better at managing aggro thanks to having better mobility and Canto. -They have better mobility and Canto. Literally twice the Mov. -They can double things and be offensive powerhouses. -They can fly. Like what If flyers were somehow nerfed, Fortress Knights would see a lot more use for sure.
Fliers are OP in 3H but that's pretty much the common complaint of almost every FE. Why use armor when cavalry and fliers can do the same things in half the time because of higher movement.
@@l.n.3372 IDK in Awakening, it was Nosferatu tanking that was op. Galeforce was op, but fliers in general weren't that special other than the obvious utility of flying. In Fates, fliers were definitely not op. Flight was good utility as always, but you wanted to go for things like Swordmaster or Spearmaster for the stats. Then there is 3H where flying is good utility AND amazing stats, hence no reason to not be a flier. Flying should be a trade off between mobility/utility and sheer power like it was in Fates, but in 3H fliers get the best of both worlds.
@@InkWavve If you've played any of the FE with canto, then you'd know why cavalry and fliers are often too OP. Fates and Awakening are among the few without canto ironically so yes here they aren't as broken.
@@youtubedeletedmyaccountlma2263 If you'd read my previous comment about Fates, then shouldn't it be obvious that I've played it? Generals aren't broken in Fates: only wary fighter was broken because it took away your ability to double the enemy generals. Such as that annoying paired up boss on conquest chapter 18.
i love protection stacking on maddening, very good with battalion wrath, take nothing then clap back with killer axe near 100% crit, it's very easy to do since no one in 3 houses rly wants shields so those are uncontested and prt stacking battalions are in abundance also i wouldnt care about getting doubled by physical units since you plan on taking little to no damage, and taking damage from mages should be avoided in armor classes anyways so weight-5 is whatever since part 2 gives you the monastery with nothing can do, can go for great knight at level 30 too, as long as the unit doesn't have riding bane
I unironically used Gilbert in Azure Moon Hard Mode on a regular basis. He’s not the best unit ever, but he still has a lot of utility, even if his only 3 good stats are HP, Str, and Def.
If you are gonna pick 3 stats to have, those aren't the worst lol. I have always thought that Armor knights aren't nearly as bad as people say they were if you aren't rushing/ltc'ing. They are definitely better than ok in Three Houses overall.
You could also just promote him to Wyvern Lord after a bit to get his speed back up while retaining his bulk. Suddenly he becomes a pretty capable combat unit.
Given how hard hitting enemies can be in the second half in the game, he can decent at tank physical damage(but magic destroys him). But as people said, if going to use him for the rest of the game, you should wyren lord to patch up his speed and movement.
I like Great Knight in Fates and Freedy was a reliable Great Knight in Awakening, but the class got hit hard in Three Houses. As for General; the name I prefer, there have been better ones in Fates, Radiant Dawn, Sacred Stones, and Blazing Sword.
@@tidepoolclipper8657 Gilliam still wants Great Knight because he still gets WT control and 1 more move than he would as a General. The enemy quality in FE8 is low enough where having a max Def General is totally unnecessary. Edit: Also, bullshit on Generals/Marshals being good in RD. PoR, maybe, but in RD WTA matters so little on the modes it’s actually allowed on that their proficiency isn’t totally necessary when they’ll just be using Axes most of the time anyway, and their stat caps are still garbage in a game where those actually matter. Conquest Generals are okay, but they’re still outclassed by GKs and WLs as tanks and Wary Fighter only really works for Benny - Effie is actively hampered by it more often than she benefits. Not that Effie wants to stay an Armor long-term anyway; she’s way better as a Berserker or Kinshi Knight.
and even in like the maps that you may not want to be armer you can just be a guard adjtaunt witch are great or even reclass into a dracoknight because they both use axes if you plan well enoph the class is solid because taking hits in madding from more then 2 enemies is nie impossible for some classes/charchters
My dedue on maddening didn't take physical damage outside of poison damage and bosses. Put him in a hoard of enemies to draw them in and do chip damage allowing weaker units to finish them off without retaliation.
FE7 and SS are probably the 2 games where armors are just... OP. Even on the highest difficulty it's weirdly not that hard to get them to double, and REALLY easy to get them to not BE doubled, especially Oswin. At most he needs 1 speedwing and he's good... and he'll usually cap nearly all of his stats - I think I've only had like 2 runs where his strength and defense weren't capped, with no stat boosters, and his HP is often 53+ so 1 angel robe and that's capped. Three houses... REALLY brought them back though. Dedue in particular is just stupid. His personal is so ridiculous. Literally by chapter TWO you can stack +7 defense on him. PLUS SEVEN - +4 from personal, +1 from shield, +2 from battalion. It literally doubles his base defense. By endgame you can EASILY boost this up to the double digits, with stuff like +5 prot battalions existing, and better shields. And magic damage isn't even common, for once, which makes his lower res really not matter that much. And this is without any skills taken into account. I've never been one to obsess over LTCs. I'm fine with low mov speed units if they're actually GOOD, and don't prevent you from clearing optional/primary objectives. I've also always just kinda seen them as "why warp/rescue/dancers exist, as well as why stuff like shove and rescue tech were things". Most enemies won't have significant damage over the defense cap in a game, ESPECIALLY in games like Three Houses and Fates. And for the first 2/3 of the game, you can generally manage an armor to just be invincible. Literally. Characters like Oswin were always extremely safe units to just send off on their own across the map, or to push into those spots where they're going to get attacked by 20 paladins on the same turn. Because they took literally no damage from 90% of enemies. Three houses, with all of it's changes, has honestly just made armors ~even better~. You can now, optimally speaking, have a Dedue Armor that has the same mov as a cavalry (dlc mov booster + move+ + mov+ ring), +9 or more defense before terrain or rallies, decent res from rally res and perma ward, and can easily be temporarily reclassed into wyvern lord or something similar with minimal investment for the couple of stages where armor mov speed just doesn't work. Or y'know, just spam warp instead. Because yeah. You can just spam chain warp, so that mov never matters. I ALWAYS use at least 1 in my FETH playthroughs. Just like the good ol' FE7 and SS days. They're also absurdly good at utilizing the 99 turn skill leveling cheese strats. Which is just another huge bonus to using one. Probably the most annoying to play through single class challenge run though. Because you can make ONE really good... but 10? Yeah....
The biggest issue with knights is the movement in a game where fliers are such a good option. It’s easy to patch up knights movements but that doesn’t make up for ignoring terrain penalties while being able to take advantage of their benefits.
Funny thing is, you only need E+ to have a reasonable shot at Armor Knight, and you're going to need axes anyway if you want to go the wyvern route (a good one for most physical units), so going Armor Knight early game is actually not much of an investment.
Fortress Knights and Generals in general are always in my time especially in modern fire emblem games. And I very appreciate the Xenoblade music in the background.
my problem with fortress knight is aesthetics... hate how to armor looks. although you can fix that with setting their outfit to the monastery suit, at least.
Everyone is really discounting the fixed bases of some classes. Getting into armor knight at lv 10 is supper easy at the 12 defense it gives is crazy. Nothing is more fun then throwing a mage into a group of enemies killing everything and taking no damage. Base 30 hp is supper nice too. Keep training to get 17 def for free as well as 19 strength from warrior as well. All you need is C armor and B+ axe to get into both. B in axe with a high enough luck skill for warrior
Did you finally finish Xenoblade Chronicles? I’d assume so since you’ve used the Agniratha night theme in your videos. If so, what did you think of the game?
@@AdamWithFED _Xenoblade Chronicles_ is my 5th-favorite video game of all time, and the Definitive Edition made it even better with its quality-of-life upgrades. If we don’t count FE7, Awakening, and The Sacred Stones as “large JRPGs” (since I played those first), Xenoblade was my first true JRPG back in 2015, so it was a major influence on how I view video games as a medium. XC is to me what FFVII was to ‘90s kids.
Actually useless in maddening, sword guys walk through you, fliers go around you, poison strike leeches your HP even though archers do 0 damage, and mages melt you. You get doubled by axe lads unless you get quick riposte, but by then you're in the endgame. I mean sure you can bait sword guys and knuckle lads towards you, but you have to kill them quick or they'll walk through you and double-quadruple your squishies the turn after
Enemies can't walk through you if you carefully clump up walkable spaces with your units that actually need to be protected. Having Armors to mitigate the enemy phase is absolutely a good strategy in Maddening, just it's not as braindead as having a single unit block off a chokepoint. Also fliers being cancer to wall out is not really an Armor specific problem I'd argue. If anything that makes it even more important to have an extra phase to force a damage interaction on them. Assuming you have no durable units who can afford to be doubled by a flier, your only other response would be to plan around moving your **entire** team away from them to later interact with them on player phase when they get close enough to walk towards. Not being required to move **every single unit on your team** to that position is something an Armor unit can enable.
i think they are better in maddening for sure. on normal and hard, they just get left behind by your faster units who have enough defense anyways. That being said, i still prefer to just use the unbreakable wall gambit as it protects from magic as well.
I think Armor Knights are under preciated as a class. I know you ideally want them to choke points and their shaky reliability (Either by getting crit/ Not hitting) sucks, There is nothing wrong with having a meat shield decoy absorbing blows in the middle of the Battlefield.
I think they're appreciated accordingly to what I think they should, really. I don't know about 3H armor knights (ain't getting a switch, nuh uh), but yeah. Having a unit that excels at choke points, but only if there's no magic users and only if you actually get to the choke point in time is overall worse than simply having a fairly balanced stated Paladin cover the same choke. As long as whoever covers the choke survives the Enemy Phase, you've succeeded in doing what an armor does. So yeah, their role isn't that critical or important, but I agree it's satisfying to see a horde of enemies ping your unit for 0 damage. Use them if you wish, but accept that they have an opportunity cost to them.
Something else that helps them a bit is that, with combat arts, the difference between doubling and not doubling is not as great. Combat arts usually don't do as much as doubling would, but at least their damage output isn't entirely halved.
and in some cases they do do more damage than doubling. Ferdinand is basically made to become a fortress knight -> great knight with boons in lances, axes, riding and a hidden talent in heavy armour. Meanwhile his personal skill encourages him to actively take 0 damage per hit early on, offsetting Axes' shaky hit rates, and later on Swift Strikes offsets the lack of doubling entirely with lances.
Have archers back up fortress knights and have a mage protect the archer from any that make it pass the knights. The archer snipes the enemy mages and let's the knights walk in like they own the place
Naw, the black knight zelgius, gatrie and toureno in the path of radiance and radiant dawn, Forsythe and Lukas in shadows of Valentina, Gilliam in sacred stones 8, plus he wields all Swords axe and lances. Do your math buddy
Yah there big adventage is that in this game they actually got good DEF onlike in other game where they got like 1 to 3 more DEF and your like yah... But I could also go paladin and have like 8 move insteed but get only - 3 def. I think that the big thing they got for them and the weird - X is also a good way to give them a free Sheild to carry makeing them extra tanky. (sur they are slow but they can get like +13 DEF compare to the other classe? +10 whit a space for sheild that can give up to 4 DEF or 2 DEF/6RES I think) That a +14 DEF compare to the second best Physical tank being at a +3 DEF. Any way It does make them really tanky like surpriseingly tanky. They get - 6 SPD is not more compare to a classe that gain SPD but still overall the extrem DEF is really nice. SORRY FOR THE BAD ENGLISH
Move isn’t at important in 3H also because the maps are pretty small by FE standards. Idk why everyone harps on having high movement on every unit. Wyvern Lord is good for a lot of reasons but the movement doesn’t make it. The maps just aren’t that big.
hardmode in FE games is the reason why dodgey swordman that's powerful and snowballs hard becomes lackluster and redundant because hardmode enemies tend to have higher accuracy even with weapon triangle disadvantage, that you can no longer dodgetank reliably like you used to on normal mode.
*stares at FE7* Except there. Because clearing 80% of the second to last stage with Jaffar/Matthew/Guy in 90% of my HHM runs is totally balanced. Granted, there was obviously something seriously wrong with FE7's avoid vs accuracy formula. A S in swords char with 30 speed was basically untouchable by anyone that didn't have swords or lances. Which was why Matthew was actually absurdly good if you did the cheese strategy of leveling him to a level 20 thief during Lyn's story.
@@AtomicArtumas Thieves are important but doesn't need the Exp priority. You ended up crippling the rest of the gang if you investing on swordlocked units. Also FE7 enemy distribution are just spraying over your unit with countless weaklings that chip you up with no rhyme and sound, which is the reason why the game aged like milk.
Yeah statistically they are good. But do you really want to babysit a 4 movement fortress knight for the entire run? sure you could find ways around this flaw... OR you can use a dodgetank and get the same effectiveness (in fact more) out of your character but on a flying class. Not disagreeing with the fact they can be good but for me they are tedious to deal with.
dodgetanks really don't have more effectiveness though. And take a LOT longer to get working. Unless you're doing no DLC non-BL. Dedue for BL and Balthus for anyone makes a AK/FK that's literally functional from chapter 2 on, and essentially never drops off. Additionally, since most maps require TWO tanks, you just run a dodge AND a bulk tank. Send the Bulk tank to wherever there's less mages. And warp is, y'know, a thing. Just warp your tanks ahead of the group. What's the point in using a tank if they can't survive half the map in one turn, exactly?
I mean you also have Dancer class in 3H, which funnily enough is probably one of the better classes for magic units. Due to Dancer class having 6 move, which compared to Warlock or Gremory having 4-5 move that can mean a difference. Also the boon of course in dancing for re-move.
Eh Tried to use a Armored Knight Hilda for a while and it's so bad. She wouldn't able to keep up with rest and terrible speed.. If we got Pair up someday back, that would make them actually good again because you just pair up with wyvern lord or cavalier and bring the tank where it needs to be. On the frontline.
Get her both cav and armor at the same time. After you master fortress knight, go to cav classes. Then eventually reaches great knight. Great knight will have more movement. And remember, tank is being a fucking tank. You love the 0 damage or 2 damage by the enemies XD. This game is so playerphase centric, putting fortress knight for enemy phasing is literally the best thing.
My current SS NG+ Maddening run has a fortress knight balthus as my main tank. I'll get him to warmaster for quick riposte and then depending on the map will reclass accordingly
"almost everything else" being basically exclusively wyvern and mage units. Warp a properly built dedue FK halfway across the map, have him move a couple spaces and wait, and boom, half the map is dead. On Maddening. Stop caring about LTCs and cheese boss sniping and you'll enjoy this game a lot more. Dedue is consistently my 3rd highest level unit in my BL runs behind Byleth and Dmitri and I don't even try to use him to the best of his ability most of the time. Most maddening runs he's the only unit that can survive triggering various groups, especially on P1 paralogues. He gets more exp than 1-shot-everything Lysithea, more exp than my healers, more exp than my dancers, more exp than my non-byleth fliers. Because he can just face tank. Having a unit that takes 0-5% of their max health/combat is insanely useful. And unlike Dodge tanks, FK builds are literally usable from chapter 2 on - You can get Dedue up to 14 defense without even leveling up once you unlock battalions. And for every other route, you have Balthus the "wtf is this character's passive", the best DLC character. Take a couple hits and.... +6 defense!?!? AND STRENGTH!? wtf is this guy. He's better than Dedue! And unlike Dedue, he can even attack and use movement tech! and he only has -5% def growth compared with dedue, but +20% res and +10% speed, making him actually overall more durable. Dedicated, properly built armor units in three houses are extremely good. People are just obsessed with LTCs and Warp Sniping. It's the only reason anyone in the community actually thinks it's a bad class. ...and most people don't even have the knowledge or skill to actually make effective use of LTC/Warp sniping oriented play, which makes their opinions on the matter even more ridiculous.
Made lysithea a fortress knight, and I named her Thiccsithea becuz damn she's unkillable (•ﾟдﾟ•) (she has like 33 def right now), she even resisted a crit from the death knight and lived, that probably broke his spirit XD.
I like Armor/Fortress knight because of how easily accessible they are. One thing I don't understand, though, is why Armor/Fortress knights lose speed growth. When you carry heavy armor everywhere, you are going to get faster, it makes no sense why they lose speed growth.
playing hard i never needed a fortress knight even once and they were always lagging behind the good characters with slow movement. I suppose they could be ok in maddening but maddening seems like an unbalanced and frustrating clusterfuck so i dont really care about maddening
Maddening is more like where the game is actually balanced, rather than being absurdly in the player's favor. On Hard you can literally just face tank the entire game with a duo of Byleth and route main lord. No thought, no strategy, just straight face tank everything. I've done it when the game first came out. Both Dmitri and Edelgard have the stats to full face tank everything, and Claude gets there after like 2 chapters of sitting behind Byleth shooting things. And it just gets so much easier to do this with actual knowledge of the game. I can still have Byleth go 1 on 1 v Death Knight 1 in Maddening and win with very minor setup and support. It's not unbalanced at all. It's just not face tank easy like the other 2 difficulties.
maddening is not that hard. Lunatic conquest still harder and more fun to play. Once you get the trick of this game, you will understand what to do. Aka make everyone into wyvern lords
Good joke 4 movement is trash when you only have 1 range attack. They also not only don't double but get doubled on hard mode never mind maddening. Yes there defense is high but there residence sucks so in maddening they will just die to a basic mage. But that's not all because they don't even hit that much harder then most units.
Fortress Knights can have good res like everyone else though. Bad res is a thing on enemies for game balance but there's nothing stopping your fortress knight having magical bulk too. -6 speed modifier can hurt but Weight -5 helps a good amount.
