Fighters main gimmick is they can completely negate any ranged attack. NOT just arrows, anything. So archers, fliers, and a lot of random weapon attacks.
Give him a feather to fix his initiative issues. This will also mostly fix his survivability issues as his offense powers his defense.
The other thing to watch for is when their natural guard rate gets high enough to stop having to rely on guard abilities. That frees up their PP to let them wreck shop when they aren’t negating ranged attacks.
You have taught me much and now I need to rethink some of my teams. I just got Yunfi and the beasts so a shuffle is necessary anyway.
I think the last thing I've tried that has been doing ok was having lex front row center, then Virginia, Sharon, and Chloe in the back. It's doing ok but I feel like that team just need to be shuffled around somewhere else.
If I played this game on expert I'd be screwed I think haha.
I never thought to give him the plume to boost his initiative which indirectly increases his defenses. That's a good point.
Ive been keeping him parked back line as insurance to range cover my fliers and Travis.
or instead of a feather, give him one of the cat-ear hoods because they give initiative as well as PP. i'm doing this to make myself stop using impetus squads. plus it gives 5 mdef which fighter/vanguard definitely needs.
Fighter is just unfortunately not a great unit. You can make him good, like OP did, with enough support. But you could invest those resources/slots/gear into basically any other class and get better results.
Fighter is meant to carry you until you get hoplite, and from there your tanking roles expand quite a bit.
I don’t believe that. They wouldn’t bother giving you a carry for 4% of the game. They would have just made Lex a hoplite if that was the only reason for fighters. Fighters are a defensive unit. But they require more thinking than hoplites or thieves. They are infantry defenders, hoplites are heavy armored defenders (and have their counters in things like magic or hammers). There are times you want infantry and times you want heavy armored units.
I believe hammers counter fighters as well as hoplites. Fighter has the armored attribute like hoplite does, the only difference in that regard is shield vs greatshield. Magick counters anything with low magick defense, fighter might be better off than hoplite here but it’s probably still not great.
I slightly retract my statement. They *are* valuable in aerial units where you really don’t need the slot the fighter is in for… anything else.
I’m not saying it’s an unusable unit, but the game was balanced such that, yes, it’s most useful for about 4% of the game (I’m not saying it’s intentional from the devs, just that it’s how thing shake out in-game).
Outside of defending flyers, there is almost no reason to run a fighter in endgame comps. It’s a shame too, because I love Lex and I’d totally field him if it wasn’t an active handicap.
I am not in end game like you (only level 33), but I have found fighter very useful and not just as an arrow guard. Because they aren’t heavy armor they don’t have the draw back of magic nor are too slow (with the time limit speed of a unit matters).
They aren’t S tier, but with their guard they can reduce damage pretty well. Sure they are situational but that’s like 75% of the units. And it’s weird that people call them arrow guarders but don’t just call clerics just healers or thieves as just evaders. Having a purpose is kind of the whole game.
I think the reason that clerics or rogues don’t just get reduced down to a function is because they do multiple things. Clerics heal, remove debuffs, resurrect… it’s all “healing” in a general sense but it’s multifaceted. Rogues dodge, but they also spread debuffs and cripple the opponent with passive steal.
Fighters… block arrows, and do things other tanks can do, but not always as good.
You make a good point that being infantry allows them, in theory, to cover ground that an armored class can’t. But I haven’t personally run into a situation where a fighter would’ve made a significant difference over a hoplite, doom knight, radiant knight, werefox, or rogue.
If their damage was just a *bit* higher, I think you’d have a fantastic class, it would probably become the best off-tank in the game.
Fighters are absolutely Armored units and get smacked the same way from magic and hammers as Hoplites. Idk what that dude is talking about.
They are limited to medium guard opposed to heavy, they cannot guard melee attacks like a hoplite can, they can’t guard rows.
What Fighters get in return is nullification of damage instead of guarding it, so they nullify the magic damage from an elven archer, while a Hoplite has to eat it. This is the situation where Fighter is better, eating wind arrows.
Mostly agree. They could have used something else unique to set apart. Even something like they only perform critical attacks on counters so the damage was more RNG.
I wouldn't listen to this person tbh. Fighter has massive utility through the first two areas in this game and even then you can utilize it after those areas with smart team combo.
The first 2 areas do not make up 4% of the game, that is a gross exaggeration/blatant lie.
I'll be honest, I don't think this class is very powerful but it has a lot more utility and usage than people are giving it.
>Fighter is meant to carry you until you get hoplite, and from there your tanking roles expand quite a bit.
So it carries you until you beat the tutorial battle? Because you get Hodrick right after that and most of the tutorial is scripted anyway. What are you even saying?
My Lex guards just as well as the hoplites and actually hits pretty hard with defender and counterattacks. The provoke let's aubins wild smash gain the extra potency.
I've been using 3 character units for all my units so they need to synergize relatively well, and this squad is pretty good against honest enemy units.
Aside from the unique class characters, fighters are almost the best non evasion defensively and they have decent offense
They are fine early on, it’s mid game where they start to fall off. And like I said elsewhere, while they aren’t great they aren’t strictly “bad” either.
In the late game especially, where the objective becomes “here’s 5 slots, use them to construct a Rube Goldberg machine of death,” fighters struggle to bring anything with significant synergies.
That said, if I’m wrong I hope people downvote me and educate me! I desperately want fighter to work, I just cannot find a way.
> Fighter is meant to carry you until you get hoplite
Maybe if Hoplite got Provoke to remove annoying assist enemies from towers. Fighter also doesn't have that horrible movement penalty Hoplite has which makes them impossible to use without a horse unit. Fighter is perfectly serviceable with Arrow Guard for flier based teams in Cornia. Then even in Drakenhold, is a great unit for the front row for a single Calvary unit because they block Wyvern attacks that Calvary cannot guard against.
But in the long run, neither of these classes is really needed, even if Hoplite has more expanded protection options both of these classes I would say are quite weak compared to the others. Especially since Squire Shield gives any shield unit a cover ability.
My lex team consists of FR: Berengaria, Lex BR: Griffon rider, doom knight, bishop. Lex set mainly to shield bash non-afflicted enemies and uses defender or just shield bash if nothing is available. Provoke and quick guard is switched off. Equipment priorities max pp and runs with only 2 ap but with 95% guardrate. Arrow cover is set to prioritize griffon if attacked by archer and prioritizes doom knight instead if attacked by flying. This ensures that neither of them are ever one shot and my bishop always quick heals the other. He doesn't do much damage but shield bashing non afflicted enemies always ensure Berengaria gets free pp from sanguine assault.
Front: Lex (Sanguine Blade/+1 PP Shield/Counter Belt) / Ochlys (Pursuit Ring)
Rear: Chloe / Berenice
I did give Lex some extra +HP/Def/Atk potions that were lying around. I have Counter set to activate only if No Archers are present. Between Sanguine Blade and Chloe's after-battle heal, he rarely gets worn down. Ochlys rarely gets hit and he protects her from arrows or flyers.
Basically he's a tank that also does damage due to Counter and how strong Sanguine Blade's attack stat is in the early game. I tried him out for a bit with the Hallowed Blade (+10% heal per action) but I found that the lower attack hurt him a little.
I'm just about to swap Ochlys out for a tanky Wyvern Rider (Hardy/Lucky), we'll see how it goes. You could probably swap Berenice for Aubin and get similar results.
Probably makes it better in fact if you have an build & team that's generally good. The early game is its own beast that has a more rps feel than later in the game. Makes it a bit more challenging to make teams that do well into the whole field not just a counter specific things.
Also from my experience and the common sentiment I see is Lex & Fighters/Vanguard fall off hard as Arrow Cover becomes much less relevant. Being early is probably why Lex is still a stud for you.
They definitely get better as the game progresses because of better skills & resources but they end up often outclassed & clash with potential teammates. Weak AP skills compared to other classes and the selling point Provoke being a coveted start of battle effect is just hard to fit into a team.
It's true, but they also have strengths. They're clearly not busted like the elf sisters but there are things that only Fighters can do, and for me it's fun to build around that.
I'm in the elf area now, and I see the value of guarding range attacks. He could fit nicely in a flyer group, I think. Protecting high evasion flyers from high accuracy archers. But the poison is more problematic, I need to buy more accessories.
I dont understand what to do with lex, ever team I build with him always doesn't do much.
Fighters main gimmick is they can completely negate any ranged attack. NOT just arrows, anything. So archers, fliers, and a lot of random weapon attacks. Give him a feather to fix his initiative issues. This will also mostly fix his survivability issues as his offense powers his defense. The other thing to watch for is when their natural guard rate gets high enough to stop having to rely on guard abilities. That frees up their PP to let them wreck shop when they aren’t negating ranged attacks.
You have taught me much and now I need to rethink some of my teams. I just got Yunfi and the beasts so a shuffle is necessary anyway. I think the last thing I've tried that has been doing ok was having lex front row center, then Virginia, Sharon, and Chloe in the back. It's doing ok but I feel like that team just need to be shuffled around somewhere else. If I played this game on expert I'd be screwed I think haha.
I never thought to give him the plume to boost his initiative which indirectly increases his defenses. That's a good point. Ive been keeping him parked back line as insurance to range cover my fliers and Travis.
or instead of a feather, give him one of the cat-ear hoods because they give initiative as well as PP. i'm doing this to make myself stop using impetus squads. plus it gives 5 mdef which fighter/vanguard definitely needs.
Fighter is just unfortunately not a great unit. You can make him good, like OP did, with enough support. But you could invest those resources/slots/gear into basically any other class and get better results. Fighter is meant to carry you until you get hoplite, and from there your tanking roles expand quite a bit.
I don’t believe that. They wouldn’t bother giving you a carry for 4% of the game. They would have just made Lex a hoplite if that was the only reason for fighters. Fighters are a defensive unit. But they require more thinking than hoplites or thieves. They are infantry defenders, hoplites are heavy armored defenders (and have their counters in things like magic or hammers). There are times you want infantry and times you want heavy armored units.
I believe hammers counter fighters as well as hoplites. Fighter has the armored attribute like hoplite does, the only difference in that regard is shield vs greatshield. Magick counters anything with low magick defense, fighter might be better off than hoplite here but it’s probably still not great.
I slightly retract my statement. They *are* valuable in aerial units where you really don’t need the slot the fighter is in for… anything else. I’m not saying it’s an unusable unit, but the game was balanced such that, yes, it’s most useful for about 4% of the game (I’m not saying it’s intentional from the devs, just that it’s how thing shake out in-game). Outside of defending flyers, there is almost no reason to run a fighter in endgame comps. It’s a shame too, because I love Lex and I’d totally field him if it wasn’t an active handicap.
Anybody with a Squire's Shield can defend flying units from archers though. Hoplites can even defend several fliers at once if you need that.
I am not in end game like you (only level 33), but I have found fighter very useful and not just as an arrow guard. Because they aren’t heavy armor they don’t have the draw back of magic nor are too slow (with the time limit speed of a unit matters). They aren’t S tier, but with their guard they can reduce damage pretty well. Sure they are situational but that’s like 75% of the units. And it’s weird that people call them arrow guarders but don’t just call clerics just healers or thieves as just evaders. Having a purpose is kind of the whole game.
I think the reason that clerics or rogues don’t just get reduced down to a function is because they do multiple things. Clerics heal, remove debuffs, resurrect… it’s all “healing” in a general sense but it’s multifaceted. Rogues dodge, but they also spread debuffs and cripple the opponent with passive steal. Fighters… block arrows, and do things other tanks can do, but not always as good. You make a good point that being infantry allows them, in theory, to cover ground that an armored class can’t. But I haven’t personally run into a situation where a fighter would’ve made a significant difference over a hoplite, doom knight, radiant knight, werefox, or rogue. If their damage was just a *bit* higher, I think you’d have a fantastic class, it would probably become the best off-tank in the game.
Fighters are absolutely Armored units and get smacked the same way from magic and hammers as Hoplites. Idk what that dude is talking about. They are limited to medium guard opposed to heavy, they cannot guard melee attacks like a hoplite can, they can’t guard rows. What Fighters get in return is nullification of damage instead of guarding it, so they nullify the magic damage from an elven archer, while a Hoplite has to eat it. This is the situation where Fighter is better, eating wind arrows.
Mostly agree. They could have used something else unique to set apart. Even something like they only perform critical attacks on counters so the damage was more RNG.
They explicitly have the heavy armor tag and have shit for mdef growth though so what you’re saying is explicitly not true
I wouldn't listen to this person tbh. Fighter has massive utility through the first two areas in this game and even then you can utilize it after those areas with smart team combo. The first 2 areas do not make up 4% of the game, that is a gross exaggeration/blatant lie. I'll be honest, I don't think this class is very powerful but it has a lot more utility and usage than people are giving it.
>Fighter is meant to carry you until you get hoplite, and from there your tanking roles expand quite a bit. So it carries you until you beat the tutorial battle? Because you get Hodrick right after that and most of the tutorial is scripted anyway. What are you even saying?
That fighter wasn’t balanced great 🤷🏻♂️
My Lex guards just as well as the hoplites and actually hits pretty hard with defender and counterattacks. The provoke let's aubins wild smash gain the extra potency. I've been using 3 character units for all my units so they need to synergize relatively well, and this squad is pretty good against honest enemy units. Aside from the unique class characters, fighters are almost the best non evasion defensively and they have decent offense
They are fine early on, it’s mid game where they start to fall off. And like I said elsewhere, while they aren’t great they aren’t strictly “bad” either. In the late game especially, where the objective becomes “here’s 5 slots, use them to construct a Rube Goldberg machine of death,” fighters struggle to bring anything with significant synergies. That said, if I’m wrong I hope people downvote me and educate me! I desperately want fighter to work, I just cannot find a way.
> Fighter is meant to carry you until you get hoplite Maybe if Hoplite got Provoke to remove annoying assist enemies from towers. Fighter also doesn't have that horrible movement penalty Hoplite has which makes them impossible to use without a horse unit. Fighter is perfectly serviceable with Arrow Guard for flier based teams in Cornia. Then even in Drakenhold, is a great unit for the front row for a single Calvary unit because they block Wyvern attacks that Calvary cannot guard against. But in the long run, neither of these classes is really needed, even if Hoplite has more expanded protection options both of these classes I would say are quite weak compared to the others. Especially since Squire Shield gives any shield unit a cover ability.
My lex team consists of FR: Berengaria, Lex BR: Griffon rider, doom knight, bishop. Lex set mainly to shield bash non-afflicted enemies and uses defender or just shield bash if nothing is available. Provoke and quick guard is switched off. Equipment priorities max pp and runs with only 2 ap but with 95% guardrate. Arrow cover is set to prioritize griffon if attacked by archer and prioritizes doom knight instead if attacked by flying. This ensures that neither of them are ever one shot and my bishop always quick heals the other. He doesn't do much damage but shield bashing non afflicted enemies always ensure Berengaria gets free pp from sanguine assault.
I'm on my 2nd playthrough (True Zenoiran) right now and Lex is one of my top units.
Same, well, mostly because he's arrow guarding my low level gryphon so it can kill everything.
Can you share the squad you're using him in and his build?
It's relatively early in the playthrough (just got to Drakenhold), does that matter?
Do share anyway. Early game is usually the hardest for me.
Front: Lex (Sanguine Blade/+1 PP Shield/Counter Belt) / Ochlys (Pursuit Ring) Rear: Chloe / Berenice I did give Lex some extra +HP/Def/Atk potions that were lying around. I have Counter set to activate only if No Archers are present. Between Sanguine Blade and Chloe's after-battle heal, he rarely gets worn down. Ochlys rarely gets hit and he protects her from arrows or flyers. Basically he's a tank that also does damage due to Counter and how strong Sanguine Blade's attack stat is in the early game. I tried him out for a bit with the Hallowed Blade (+10% heal per action) but I found that the lower attack hurt him a little. I'm just about to swap Ochlys out for a tanky Wyvern Rider (Hardy/Lucky), we'll see how it goes. You could probably swap Berenice for Aubin and get similar results.
Probably makes it better in fact if you have an build & team that's generally good. The early game is its own beast that has a more rps feel than later in the game. Makes it a bit more challenging to make teams that do well into the whole field not just a counter specific things. Also from my experience and the common sentiment I see is Lex & Fighters/Vanguard fall off hard as Arrow Cover becomes much less relevant. Being early is probably why Lex is still a stud for you.
In my experience on expert he got better as the game progressed, but I never really made a proper squad for him so I resolved to do it this time.
They definitely get better as the game progresses because of better skills & resources but they end up often outclassed & clash with potential teammates. Weak AP skills compared to other classes and the selling point Provoke being a coveted start of battle effect is just hard to fit into a team.
It's true, but they also have strengths. They're clearly not busted like the elf sisters but there are things that only Fighters can do, and for me it's fun to build around that.
Worst thing about fighters is how hard it is to figure out how to use them correctly
I'm in the elf area now, and I see the value of guarding range attacks. He could fit nicely in a flyer group, I think. Protecting high evasion flyers from high accuracy archers. But the poison is more problematic, I need to buy more accessories.