#he could’ve been a really good foil for Ryoma

[passports-pls]

I just finished Ishin and I have like, a million and one thoughts on Hijikata and how dirty they did him

[crystalelemental]

Ranking the Legendary Heroes - Water

Ah, the cursed season.  The season of additional movement, impossible to tank powerhouses, and unparalleled support.  God I fucking hate this season.

Let’s be clear, all of those things count in AI hands.  In your hands, it’s a cute little gimmick, but on defense teams, it’s all just bastardry.  Anyway, 7 Water legends, ranked by combat potential and effectiveness in Arena.

7) Ryoma.  Hey, if you ever wanted to know what a completely useless unit looks like, here you go.  Flying unit, no adjusted BST, only effect from the weapon is DC, B-slot is just Wrath for some reason.  I guess it’s not all bad.  Guidance is still good, and he has that as a C-skill, so like...that’s something to fodder him for.  At least his refine will be good?

6) Eirika.  Listen, I love Eirika, but oh my god with this.  Her weapon has some interesting effects, but only if she’s near more enemies than allies.  So away from team support again, great.  Sped up cooldown charge and extra defense is nice, but overall insufficient to manage her Book 2 cav BST.  Lunar Brace with Luna is hilarious as a gimmick, but that’s all it is, a gimmick.  Yes, you negate all their defense, and hit for her raw attack stat in damage, OHKOing pretty much everything in the game.  Was it worth it to run a unit so thoroughly outclassed?  No.  It was not.  Great speed and the ability to just deal absolute damage is cute, but she lacks any defensive presence, running Galeforce makes Lunar Brace worthless and takes away her entire niche, and Eliwood still exists in the common pool.  Sorry Eirika.  I love you, but there’s a reason you’re not finished as a merge project yet.

5) Fjorm.  Believe it or not, I think Fjorm has usefulness, even now.  It’s not...good usefulness, but it counts.  Ice Mirror is just a shitty Negating Fang, but it does work against ranged foes, which means it works against some of the other Water legends.  Sure, she’s going to deal 0 damage to Chrom and Leif’s second attack will blow her face off.  Sure, across seasons, Alm and Celica will annihilate her, and I doubt she can handle Julia either.  But she’s trying okay? 

4) Leif.  Okay, and like the flick of a switch, we have gone from utter disappointment to absolute horror.  Everything past this point should be considered one of the best units in the game without question, and a reason why Water season is outright intolerable.  Let’s start with our good pal Leif.  Leif is #4, technically the exact halfway point, not because he has any particular flaws, but because he’s not as disgusting as everyone else.  Leif is stupid good.  Brave Bow effect, and a signature special that gives him a second action, but restricts his movement to one.  Yeah, that’ll definitely stop him blowing my asshole out, thanks game.  Leif is stupid versatile, too.  Death Blow 4 with a Lull for max damage?  Push skill or Fury 4 with Escape Route to hit and run really effectively?  Close Counter/Vantage for dual phase bullshit?  Leif is stupid good.  Which makes it all the more horrifying he’s only number goddamn four.

3) Dimitri.  The most recent newcomer, and already making his awful, awful mark on the meta.  I don’t like Dimitri, his toolkit is ridiculous.  Speed-based damage reduction built into the weapon, on top of +5 to all stats, all for the low low price of being above 25% HP, the easiest HP threshold to maintain.  And that’s just the weapon.  Atrocity gives him omni-Smoke and Seal effect, for -5 to unit and all units in 2 spaces after combat.  Oh, and also it does Pulse Smoke.  Oh, and also, he gets true damage based on 25% of his attack stat, which cannot be reduced in any way.  Because balance!  Oh, and we threw in Odd Tempest, which is an infantry and flying skill that gives them an extra movement every odd-numbered turn.  Because why not!  Seriously, why only eliminate the use of armor units in the game when you can also render cavalry completely ineffective?  Just slap this shit on a melee dancer and bam, what the fuck is Duo Sigurd?  Dimitri is obscenity incarnate, a living monolith to everything wrong with powercreep in this game.  The only respite we have is that he can’t run Null Follow-Up, so a unit like L!Edelgard can, and will, body him.  Celica and a fast Julia also handle him well thanks to his low Res, but your options are limited even with cross-seasonal comparison.  Dimitri’s just disgusting and I hate his legendary form so much.  And again, this is only #3.

2) Chrom.  Listen.  Fuck this guy.  No one pisses me off quite like Chrom.  I think it’s the armor effectiveness.  If he didn’t have that, we could talk.  But no, he got armor effectiveness on top of getting like -9 attack and defense on foes all the time.  He’s excellently min-maxed, but has a superboon in speed that actually makes fast Chrom a thing, because god wasn’t dead enough, we had to dig up the corpse and shit on it.  I’ve been Chrom beat L!Edelgard, a unit with color advantage and massive defense.  I’ve seen Chrom beat a +10 Cecilia with her weapon refine.  Double Triangle disadvantage, and he not only survived her Close Foil boosted retaliation, but annihilated her outright.  What actually stops something like this?  When your biggest, toughest green units are bodied because of armor effectiveness, and double weapon triangle disadvantage isn’t enough to OHKO him or stop him from killing you, what works?  What actually stop him?  Well, nothing.  Nothing stops him.  Not even necessarily getting to him first, because Close Counter.  Now even your melee units who got to him first somehow get bopped.  Not that this is all her runs.  Attack/Speed Push 4 for the speedy builds works great.  Mirror Impact shuts down faster mages who could’ve been a threat.  And for all of this, we haven’t even touched on the strongest aspect of Chrom.  To Change Fate.  His signature assist skill, which not only acts as a Reposition that gives him a second action (but inflicts Isolation, which is totally relevant because he can’t just move again and have that status wear off or anything), but gives him Attack +6 afterwards.  As alluded to with Lucina, movement assists that score for Arena are the most devastating thing in the world, and Chrom is proof positive of that.  Oh, but as an added fuck you?  It’s 500SP.  That’s right!  Chrom can score 185BST without even needing a 300SP C-skill!  So if you were looking forward to the day L!Chrom is score crept, keep dreaming, because he’s going to be here forever.  And yet somehow, despite all of this, he’s only #2.  What unspeakable horror could possibly outrank this garbage?

1) Azura.  Take a look at the last three entries.  Now go check the best legendary units across every other season.  Azura is better than all of them combined.  Because she is all of them combined.

Azura is not a fighter.  Not that she can’t kill when needed, but she’s not meant to.  No, she’s support.  A dancer, specifically.  But hey, we’ve had tons of dancers, what’s the big deal?  Sure, she gives infantry and flying units an extra space of movement, and takes any buff in one stat and applies them to every other stat after dancing so not even Panic can stop it.  What’s the big deal?  Well, it’s that every single top threat in every single season is enabled by Azura.  Any level of power they have on their own is jacked up exponentially by her presence.  What was just L!Alm or L!Celica needing to be avoided now becomes a round of The Most Dangerous Game, as Azura can, at any time, send them hurtling toward your team with an easy +6 to all stats, and if they get the drop on you you’re dead already.  L!Chrom used To Change Fate, but didn’t quite reach your allies?  That’s okay, she danced him, now he has three more movement, and now he can, and will, kill something.  Leif got his special off, but at least his attacks are over and he only killed two of my units.  Oh, right, Wings of Mercy, now he’s killed a third, haha fuck me.  Oh hai Legendary Dimitri.

Every top meta threat, in every game mode, is made worse with Azura present.  She is, to this day, the single greatest instance of powercreep in the entire game.  Nothing has even come close.  Surtr was more immediately obnoxious at the time, but a few good red counters get added and you make Null Follow-Up more common, and he’s suddenly not so bad.  L!Azura, though?  We introduced Lulls to counter her visible buffing bullshit, and she’s still supreme.  We included Isolation effects, and she’s still chosen over other dancers due to the power of her effects.  Even now, as new, powerful dancers like Peony and Triandra are added, they have to face competition from Azura.  Peony escapes this by being essential to scoring for AR, but Triandra?  What luck is she going to have?  Why run a less impressive dance to mitigate lift loss when you do lose matches, when you can just bring Azura for a higher win-rate that loses you nothing?  Even as they’re actively trying to bring in other dancers with unique effects and abilities, it doesn’t even come close to the level of devastation L!Azura inflicted on this game.

“But she only scores 170BST, she can’t be that reliable!”  Actually...that’ll do you just fine.  Especially with two matched blessing legendary units.  Especially with Dimitri or Chrom, who score like 185BST.  That’s plenty to even maintain T21, all you need are two higher scoring allies with that blessing and you’re easily hitting 756+ matches to maintain.  Score creep may some day phase her out of the meta, but I can promise you, it won’t be soon enough, nor severe enough.  All but the top-most matches will still spam her.  We will never be free from Original Sin.  Azura isn’t just the best Water legendary unit.  She is the best unit in the entire game.  She’s so dominant that having a forced blessing doesn’t even stop her being run, to this day, on most AR-D teams.  A mode she’s not even optimized for, she still runs.  That alone should tell you how ridiculous she is.  And with each new threat?  With each skill buff to infantry and flying units?  She only gets stronger and stronger.

[beyblaiddyd]

I’ve ranted to Arden about this at length and I’m so sorry to everyone who is tired of me constantly going on long rants about fictional characters from games I hate but Ryoma had a lot of potential to be an interesting character if they’d just let him... Be a bit of a dick. 

Like he’s meant to be a foil to Xander and Xander’s character is that he’s a duty-bound man who cares deeply about his nation and is willing to do what he must even if he hates it in order to guard his country. And he keeps a distance but he still cares deeply and strongly for his family members and wants to protect them and know everything about them and help them do the right thing. 

So if Ryoma had been a stark contrast to that... if Ryoma had put up a front of caring about his country and his family but if he only cared about the CONCEPT of them instead of the people there within. If he was a little immature and a little selfish. Like in his supports with Hinoka he says he just wishes they were at peace already and is already talking about going on vacation after the war is over and that could’ve been... such a pivotal character component. Ryoma not caring about his country so much as caring about the idea of being the Peaceful King of a Peaceful Nation with all his nice pretty Peaceful People and getting to have a Peaceful Time with his Peaceful Family and being willing to do anything to get there. 

Being passive aggressive and subtly manipulative. Being bitter about Sumeragi’s death and kind of being selective about who he likes and who he keeps in his company because he feels sort of isolated from the rest of the family because he’s one of the only kids old enough to remember both his mother and Sumeragi dying and losing your “entire” family and being transplanted into a “new” one with a new ruler at a very young age could be really stressful. It’d explain why he tends to favor Hinoka so much... And that could’ve been a jumping off point for character growth and him being called out and forced to become Better and to get a chance to recover but also be made to Care and I just. Fates. Fates You Could’ve Written A Good Complex Boy but instead he’s a cardboard lobster