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Anyone else find Julius underwhelming?


Jotari
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Julius is the third final boss we've gotten in Heroes. Grima, the first, is an armored dragon with absolute maxed out attack and Vengeful Fighter guaranteed to kill absolutely anything that can't one round him if he has full health (there's also flying female Grima but I never got her so don't know how impressive she is or isn't, though at least she has the whole colourless Manakete thing to make her special, though I do find Dragonskins effect questionable). Takumi has his cool unique area of effect skill. Julius...he's sort of just another Saias and Alvis. I mean, he's not a bad unit, but I don't really feel like he stands out. The idea behind his tome is cool, but in practice, it doesn't really seem to work due to his meager defenses. Even in his Grand Hero Battle the Dead Lords are way more of a threat than he is. I'm not sure how one could accurately represent Julius, since in his own game he's basically invincible, but I am sort of disappointed. Maybe I just have to play around with him a bit more. What does everyone else think?

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He's a good hero. Doesn't really feel like Saias or Arvis since he's way more specialized in Attack and Resistance. His weapon initially underwhelmed me, but after using him a bit, I think its pretty good. His mediocre speed means that he's effectively taking 12 less damage from most foes (22 if they've been ployed) which is incredibly good and lets him take negligible damage from most mages and, at times, even take a physical hit from  weaker / slower units.

My only gripe with him is his speed. For a character with a poor speed tier, he waste quite a few points in the stat when it could have gone to more useful places like his Defense. Personally, I would have loved to see his Defense and speed swapped. Beggars can't be choosers though.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I'm not sure how one could accurately represent Julius, since in his own game he's basically invincible...

I dunno, man.  It'll be a while before I get to that point, but...well, suffice it to say, FE4's glitchiness means that he's a chump with or without Julia or Celice :P: 

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Not his fault, gameplay wise. IMO Julius is a symptom of how weirdly behind tomes are despite having OPBlades. By creating Bladetomes, they couldn't quite figure out how to do better without going to that specific direction. Sometimes they suceed, sometimes they don't. On the oldie days i PERSONALLY think Cellica is OPBROKEN BS but now that bulk have went up she's not as BS as she used to be. Also the whole low stats total = need lopsided spread to do much issue

Thats how i see it anyway. As a unit he's prob fine because of how crazy you can stack his magical bulk

 

Compared to his "final boss peer" Lyon had the same issue(he's a Raven Legend, which is a strong role back in 3 months ago or something). Zephiel is a min maxed Armor. Grima is a min maxed armor. Hardin is a min maxed mix bulk armor. Yeah the trend is kinda clear there

 

As for final boss power, idk, FE4 is kinda too clowny for him to really be threatening. Reinhardt suffers from the same issue, really(ok lets be real here narratively speaking Reinhardt and Saias is the real final boss of FE5 with Raydrick really as a bonus. Nobody gives a shit about Veldt). Hardin isn't really that hard of a boss in FE3, but he was cited as the game's biggest flaw in 0% growth apparently, and FE12 Hardin is a mess to fight in harder difficulty. Zephiel is unremarkable.

I've run Grima enough in Lunatic to know he's actually pretty threatening but honestly he's mostly lolgrima(Grima is literally the reason why Frederick can't pure solo Lunatic)

 

Edited by JSND Alter Dragon Boner
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7 hours ago, FoxyGrandpa said:

He's a good hero. Doesn't really feel like Saias or Arvis since he's way more specialized in Attack and Resistance. His weapon initially underwhelmed me, but after using him a bit, I think its pretty good. His mediocre speed means that he's effectively taking 12 less damage from most foes (22 if they've been ployed) which is incredibly good and lets him take negligible damage from most mages and, at times, even take a physical hit from  weaker / slower units.

My only gripe with him is his speed. For a character with a poor speed tier, he waste quite a few points in the stat when it could have gone to more useful places like his Defense. Personally, I would have loved to see his Defense and speed swapped. Beggars can't be choosers though.

His weapon doesn't nerf magic attacks though. And given that he barely has double digit defense, 12 less isn't much.

Edited by Jotari
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Hmm, sort of yes in that I have no incentive to promote him myself. But also sort of no in that he's actually quite fine compared to the competition in his class. The problem for me is more of a general one with infantry, really. The infantry pool is so saturated that a new unit has to be truly exceptional to carve themselves out a role. Enemy phase magic tank? Eh, I'll just use a dragon instead in the vast majority of situations.

Even recent "premium" infantry units - like say if I had gotten Ishtar - I couldn't see myself using all that much, they'd be AA specialists like most recent acquisitions. Julius would be the same ...if he didn't cost 20k feathers to use. Maybe that's something they need to look at, the limitations of GHB units in terms of power and mergability mean it's fairly rare for me to ever want to promote them to 5-stars, the payoff generally isn't quite there. I've promoted a grand total of 7 of them, and of those, only three really see any use. Of the others, Arvis and F Robin were only because of them being TT bonus units, Lyon as a Bowlyn counter that I've almost never used, and Kana to buff the dragon B-team. The other three, Xander, Camus and Michalis, have one thing in common - not being infantry. I would happily take a feather refund on Arvis, Robin and Lyon if such a thing were possible.

To be honest though, I kinda like villain characters being somewhat mediocre. I mean, like most people I want characters I like to be good, and characters like Julius and Ishtar give me no reason to like them.

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He can be a bit underwhelming without a relatively expensive build, yeah. But he can also be cancer to just about any magic user ever. That res is S T U P I D high. He might be able to deal with Julia or Dierdre despite Naga tomes. Loptous rips through atk (unless dragon effectiveness) and stacks with atk ploy. Its nothing to sneeze at tbh. It does help mitigate that def of his. My only beef, is Julius' speed. Hes slow and that can be an issue. Guard is a great skill, and is quite cancerous on ranged doods. But a close counter/vantage build can be a real pain in the fanny. 

Im just super glad he was free because i would have gone barking mad trying to pull him. 

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. . .what the. . .

Slap Fury 3 on him, get them into Atk Ploy range, and neutral mages can't kill him.  Blue mages can with TA.  Ishtar needs to be +Atk (I think).

. . .this is bonkers.  Time to raise him!

Edited by eclipse
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I think we're simply getting to the point where we have characters to fill most niches for each specific weapon type: glass cannon, nuke, DEF tank, RES tank, mixed tank, etc. A lot of characters already overlap a bit with the roles they can play. Some characters play certain roles better than others. Some play multiple roles. And some roles are really, really niche. 

State-wise, Julius is pretty solid. His weapon's got an interesting effect, and he can be a valuable mage check. Could he be better? Probably. But a lot of units could be better. To me, it feels like many of the GHB units aren't as formidable as they are in their home games. I know a lot of people were expecting Berkut to be crazy powerful. (Haven't played Echoes that far, so I couldn't tell you.) Odds are, if you've been playing the game for a while, you probably have characters to fill most niches, so spending the feathers to upgrade Julius doesn't seem worth it. I know I've got an army of red mages I can use, including his father. XD 

But personally, his art and his voice acting are enough to make me want to promote him eventually. 

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Like most GHB units, he's serviceable, but really demands to be pigeon-holed into a clearly defined role if he's to be worth the player's while.  In this case, Res-stacking as much as possible so as to check nearly all but the strongest blue mages.  That being said, I was a little underwhelmed with him given how strong Loptous is supposed to be in Genealogy.  Can't really fault anyone here though -- the Heroes format isn't well suited for translating some of Genealogy's more broken weapons and features.  Perhaps if they had taken a few liberties and made Julius a Armor Mage for the BST-buff, plus maybe a special skill that nullified Armor weakness like F!Grima's Dragonskin, he could have been a bit more threatening.  As it stands there's only so much they can do with an Infantry Mage to make them stand out in this meta. 

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Green Mage? Blue Mage? Red Mage? All are dead mage vs Julius.

I have a simple fury/QR build and he has no trouble at all clearing magic users. He's been really pulling his weight since I build him.

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I mean looking at Fallen Robin yes very underwhelming as a final boss.  If only he was an armor mage (maybe armor dragon mage?) then he could have much more defense and thus greater mixed bulk and that tome would be bonkers.  

Cause his weapon is so cool I did 5 star him and ally support him with Ishtar which is a lot of fun.  I made a really cool team with a +HP Fae (55 HP!) running infantry pulse in C slot and Panic ploy seal.  This means Ishtar doesn't have to run Quickened pulse, she can have moonbow (double moonbow if they survive) ready and put attack+3 (mine is currently +2) in that slot instead.  Lene has firestorm dance and drive speed in C slot as well as drive attack seal.  The pulse allows her to run Luna instead of Moonbow and TA3, should help her low attack deal with greens at least.  Julius will proc Iceberg first time he is attacked even if he isn't doubled thanks to pulse.  Julius has rally def/res so my team can beef that up when needed.  Anyways it obviously doesn't score well but works great.  

However I love Genealogy it is my favorite game in the series.  So that is a big reason I splurged the 20k feathers to promote him.  I will make him do work and do it well.  However favoritism aside, he is a good free unit and I think a bit underrated.  He isn't an exceptional unit however, though his art and voice acting certainly are.  

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Honestly, I feel most units in the game are far less frightening in AI hands compared to player hands, where we have the ability to nudge units wherever we want without feeling like we NEED to go the full 2/3 permitted movement spaces and then use our Assist even if doing so either does nothing or literally infinitely stalls the game.

At worst, AI Julius will walk right into a unit he can't kill and will be counterattack killed by in an instant just because they're in his range of attack, and at worst he will do that to a unit who can't counterattack, but will be more than glad to melee kill him in an instant. Plus we can more or less pick and choose who gets to counter him, and all AI Julius can do is wander where his AI tells him to.

But player controlled Julius is far more frightening because we know where we want Julius, and that is usually "in the range of that mage, who will be killed by Iceberg because the mage is fast but can't hurt Julius with all his Res plus Loptous, and Julius is slow but has QR3 and a lot of Resistance."

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5 hours ago, DLNarshen said:

Like most GHB units, he's serviceable, but really demands to be pigeon-holed into a clearly defined role if he's to be worth the player's while.  In this case, Res-stacking as much as possible so as to check nearly all but the strongest blue mages.  That being said, I was a little underwhelmed with him given how strong Loptous is supposed to be in Genealogy.  Can't really fault anyone here though -- the Heroes format isn't well suited for translating some of Genealogy's more broken weapons and features.  Perhaps if they had taken a few liberties and made Julius a Armor Mage for the BST-buff, plus maybe a special skill that nullified Armor weakness like F!Grima's Dragonskin, he could have been a bit more threatening.  As it stands there's only so much they can do with an Infantry Mage to make them stand out in this meta. 

Negative six attack on all combat sounds good, but when his defense is sixteen all it really means is that his defense is at the still massively underwhelming 22. And I think that's the crux of my issue. It's a really cool effect, but it's basically useless on him, because he's never going to be a physical tank. It practically doesn't help him at all, any decent physical unit is going to one round him due to the lack of speed too. Hell with defense, speed and HP that low, you could probably retain the original effect of Loptyr and half attack before damage calculation and he'd only be slightly broken (units with 50 attack would be dealing around 10 damage without specials).

Over on the Create a Unit Thread, I created a Julius that had the Move Ring as his B skill, so he'd be an infantry that moves like a mounted unit. That could have been interesting.

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I am almost done building him with iceberg, repo, Fury3, QR3, his native atk ploy and he will have res ploy 3 ss I just need the SP to finish off learning the skills.  He is pretty good, and I plan to use him a fair bit since my Arvis is at almost max HM I need a replacement.  I really wish he had been an armor, but I am happy with him as is since he can be my second string red mage.  I find Julius to be quite useful and it helps him that his Heroes art work looks a lot like a character in my favorite anime so I am one step closer to a look alike team in Heroes:)

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33 minutes ago, EricaofRenais said:

I am almost done building him with iceberg, repo, Fury3, QR3, his native atk ploy and he will have res ploy 3 ss I just need the SP to finish off learning the skills.  He is pretty good, and I plan to use him a fair bit since my Arvis is at almost max HM I need a replacement.  I really wish he had been an armor, but I am happy with him as is since he can be my second string red mage.  I find Julius to be quite useful and it helps him that his Heroes art work looks a lot like a character in my favorite anime so I am one step closer to a look alike team in Heroes:)

I like that he looks so young in Heroes, like his original sprite. A lot of his other artwork, particularly his Awakening one, focus too much on the whole evil sorcerer look and make his age more ambiguous leaning slightly older.

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56 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I like that he looks so young in Heroes, like his original sprite. A lot of his other artwork, particularly his Awakening one, focus too much on the whole evil sorcerer look and make his age more ambiguous leaning slightly older.

Yeah his Heroes art is my favorite of his, his art work is very close to Gojo from Saiyuki and I really like it.  His art work in Awakening was rather meh IMO, I understand where the artist was going but he is a teenager so he should look the part.

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6 hours ago, Jotari said:

Negative six attack on all combat sounds good, but when his defense is sixteen all it really means is that his defense is at the still massively underwhelming 22. And I think that's the crux of my issue. It's a really cool effect, but it's basically useless on him, because he's never going to be a physical tank. It practically doesn't help him at all, any decent physical unit is going to one round him due to the lack of speed too. Hell with defense, speed and HP that low, you could probably retain the original effect of Loptyr and half attack before damage calculation and he'd only be slightly broken (units with 50 attack would be dealing around 10 damage without specials).

Over on the Create a Unit Thread, I created a Julius that had the Move Ring as his B skill, so he'd be an infantry that moves like a mounted unit. That could have been interesting.

Just because it doesn't allow him to adequately tank physical attacks hardly makes his tome effect useless.  It is functionally a free +9 on top of his already high 35 Res.  44 Res before applying any kind of buff, seal, or A skill is nothing to sneeze at.  With even minimal investment in the form of Res+3/Fury and DD3 seal, even Reinhardt has a hard time bringing him down.   

Without dumping both Atk and Spd stats, reliable mixed bulk is difficult to achieve on Infantry Mages.  Focusing instead on making one form of defense, Res in this case, as high as possible, is a good compromise.  Thinking about it more, it's not a bad way to translate Julius's Genealogy  incarnation into Heroes.  Julius's Def in Genealogy can be considered a weak point, and units like Seliph and Faval who reach upwards 60+ attack power can potentially muscle through Loptous's effect.  Meanwhile, no mage can even hope to scratch Julius (except Zehn I guess LOL). 

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I feel like it would impossible for Julius to not be at least a little disappointing when one remembers him from Genealogy, but that goes for all the weapons from that game. Take Naga for example, which went from giving +20 Skill and Speed and Defense and Resistance while also nullifying Loptous' defense, to either giving +2 to Defense and Resistance on the enemy phase or the ability to ignore on-field buffs. Nevertheless, Julius is still excellent as a magic tank. He has the highest res in the game with Loptous, so his ploys should always go off if somebody is in range. Because of that, he's really giving a debuff of -11 Attack most of the time, which bring his Defense to an effective (and still not impressive) 27, while his Resistances rises to an effective 49 before any buffs. 

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I definitely find him underwhelming.  I haven't promoted any of the GHB characters since Arvis, actually.  Oliver, Lyon, Saias, and Julius are more or less the same unit; a slow mage that is mostly good for tanking (the dwindling amount of) mages and for ploying.  Why waste 20k feathers promoting a slow mage when I can promote Hawkeye to give Death Blow 3 to my +Atk Bridal Sanaki?

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@Jotari I don't know that I agree about retaining the original effect and him not being particularly broken. For a point of comparison, L&D Firesweep Cordelia is netting 66 attack against him. That means she does 17 damage a hit, not enough to ORKO him. If one of the stronger physical blues in the game needs +atk and an attack boosting skill to ORKO him, that's pretty ridiculous. Think about how well reds or greens would do, and mages would be screwed beyond belief.

Anyway, he's not the greatest unit in the world, but I do have to agree that his weak point is that both speed and def are low. If one or the other were better than he'd improve quite a bit. But even with that, he's still plenty solid and I've enjoyed using him. I do also agree that a big part of the issue is infantry mages have trouble being mixed tanks or even standing out in general.

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He is good at what he does. He can hold a round against units like a +10 Reinhardt with bonuses and end the battle alive, even when having the WTD. He can kill almost everything with an Glacies proc (or even a simple Iceberg). Even with an underwhelming defense he can tank even blue hits if ployed.

Yes, his speed is bad and will be mostly doubled by anything (reducing his capacity to tank hits) but with that insane resistance (and defense to a lesser extent) he'll be receiving 0x2 most of the time.

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6 hours ago, bottlegnomes said:

@Jotari I don't know that I agree about retaining the original effect and him not being particularly broken. For a point of comparison, L&D Firesweep Cordelia is netting 66 attack against him. That means she does 17 damage a hit, not enough to ORKO him. If one of the stronger physical blues in the game needs +atk and an attack boosting skill to ORKO him, that's pretty ridiculous. Think about how well reds or greens would do, and mages would be screwed beyond belief.

Anyway, he's not the greatest unit in the world, but I do have to agree that his weak point is that both speed and def are low. If one or the other were better than he'd improve quite a bit. But even with that, he's still plenty solid and I've enjoyed using him. I do also agree that a big part of the issue is infantry mages have trouble being mixed tanks or even standing out in general.

Oh yeah, it'd still be broken if he retained his original effect. I was being literal when I said slightly broken. Still legitimately broken, but not as massively powerful as the effect is in his own game.

9 hours ago, AndrewMcC00l said:

I feel like it would impossible for Julius to not be at least a little disappointing when one remembers him from Genealogy, but that goes for all the weapons from that game. Take Naga for example, which went from giving +20 Skill and Speed and Defense and Resistance while also nullifying Loptous' defense, to either giving +2 to Defense and Resistance on the enemy phase or the ability to ignore on-field buffs. Nevertheless, Julius is still excellent as a magic tank. He has the highest res in the game with Loptous, so his ploys should always go off if somebody is in range. Because of that, he's really giving a debuff of -11 Attack most of the time, which bring his Defense to an effective (and still not impressive) 27, while his Resistances rises to an effective 49 before any buffs. 

Naga at least still feels special given it's Dragon Slaying properties. That's actually pretty rare (at least until Wyrm Slayers come on the scene as an inheritable weapon) and Naga serves as both the only tome and green weapon that does the job. So I have a reason to want a Deirdre or Julia in my army. That's a role only they can play. While Julius is just a res tank, yes, a pretty good res tank, maybe even the best in the game, but not something that seems like a vital niche.

9 hours ago, DLNarshen said:

Just because it doesn't allow him to adequately tank physical attacks hardly makes his tome effect useless.  It is functionally a free +9 on top of his already high 35 Res.  44 Res before applying any kind of buff, seal, or A skill is nothing to sneeze at.  With even minimal investment in the form of Res+3/Fury and DD3 seal, even Reinhardt has a hard time bringing him down.   

Without dumping both Atk and Spd stats, reliable mixed bulk is difficult to achieve on Infantry Mages.  Focusing instead on making one form of defense, Res in this case, as high as possible, is a good compromise.  Thinking about it more, it's not a bad way to translate Julius's Genealogy  incarnation into Heroes.  Julius's Def in Genealogy can be considered a weak point, and units like Seliph and Faval who reach upwards 60+ attack power can potentially muscle through Loptous's effect.  Meanwhile, no mage can even hope to scratch Julius (except Zehn I guess LOL). 

It's a plus 3 res. His weapon only nerfs attack during combat. I kind of wish his res was six lower and got boosted in combat by the tomes effect, just so it was doing more (even though that would actually make it weaker, as his Res wouldn't be effected by combat bonuses if he was already receiving a +6 automatically, of course, I'm not sure you'd ever have much reason to boost his Res even further as is, maybe for an Iceberg or something).

EDIT: Wait a second, I am completely wrong and your right. I don't even know why I cam to the conclusion that it only applies to physical attacks. I guess I'm still in the regular fire emblem mindset of expecting magic to be a stat. That does boost his res to much higher than I supposed.

Edited by Jotari
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If you want Julius to tank you have to work at it.  Firstly a big thing is how slow he is meaning he has to take 2 hits by many units without help.   If you want him to take anything that hits his pitiful defense stat you have to help him out here, I think that is the most important thing.  So Speed tactic, okay now he is at 33 speed, then drive speed....well that is 36 speed.  If you really wanted to go out you could have all 3 teammates drive speeding him so he is at 42 speed.  Now he won't be doubled by anything.  Can he survive just a single hit?

Yes.  If you give him Distant Defence.  Then he with the tome effect he is now at 28 def, if he got a ploy off it is 33 def.  If you go double distant defense, you can get that to 39 def.  He will take that hit, then attack back (in a tactics team he will have +6 attack from something, maybe +3 attack from an ally with drive atk seal, and +2 atk with S ally support ally nearby, bringing him to 60 atk X 2, with one of the shots possibly being Iceberg.  

So its possible to make him to a deadly all around tank, but note the amount of work one must put in for that to happen and team set up and all that.  You can really do this with a lot of characters though, however cause of Julius's tome I think it makes it a bit easier to pull off.  

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On 5/21/2018 at 9:55 PM, Jotari said:

His weapon doesn't nerf magic attacks though. And given that he barely has double digit defense, 12 less isn't much.

his weapon definitely nerfs magic attacks. gives -6 to anyone who doesn't have effectiveness vs dragons. if atk ploy is on the foe that's -11. Give him Brazen def/res from your M!kana you aren't using now that's -18. at base he's chilling at 16 defense add those in and he's at 34 defense, and that's for physical threats. we aren't even talking about the realm of mages that literally can't even light a butthair on him on fire. All he needs is 1 ardent sacrifice to be in brazen range. you could give him QR seal or DD seal to make him even more tanky with +6 more putthing him at 40. He's definitely got a crazy tome effect, since it's in-combat like blow skills it stacks with smokes and ploys. It's quite powerful. His speed is pretty average, but if he had good speed he'd actually be completely bonkers.

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