The brokeness of Astra.

[DarkDefeater]

The other day I was playing awakening on Hard/Classic and generally having a good time. I have mixed feelings about the game in general. Fates was my first ever Fire Emblem game, so getting used to all the 'downgrades' in gameplay was a bit of a shock and is still an irritant at times. But the game still does give a lot of fun. 

For example, I had Say'ri ( I think that's her name), the Chronsin princess faces walhart on that level outside his castle. The custom dialogue was nice and then she soundly defeated him with a critical hit. Nice. I then had Say'ri face Walhart again inside the castle with a brave sword. Astra, then astra again - she then takes a hit despite only having a 20% chance of being hit. Boo. and then....another astra. Ultimately, every hit, (15 hits) connected. Walhart was amazingly satisfyingly defeated on the 15th hit.....I knew she wanted revenge but...wow.

 

I was truly amazed...and was sad I was not able to record what just happened. Never I expected to get more than 10 hits while playing with any unit with Astra. And then Say'ri comes (vengeance incarnate) killing Walhart slowly with 15 astra hits. Death from a thousand cuts....or at least 15.

 

I'm now curious as to what the record is with Astra. There's probably players out there who have been able to land all 20 hits. Anyone else have a similar experience? I've never been able to get more than 7 astra hits in fates.

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

1 hour ago, DarkDefeater said:

The other day I was playing awakening on Hard/Classic and generally having a good time. I have mixed feelings about the game in general. Fates was my first ever Fire Emblem game, so getting used to all the 'downgrades' in gameplay was a bit of a shock and is still an irritant at times. But the game still does give a lot of fun. 

For example, I had Say'ri ( I think that's her name), the Chronsin princess faces walhart on that level outside his castle. The custom dialogue was nice and then she soundly defeated him with a critical hit. Nice. I then had Say'ri face Walhart again inside the castle with a brave sword. Astra, then astra again - she then takes a hit despite only having a 20% chance of being hit. Boo. and then....another astra. Ultimately, every hit, (15 hits) connected. Walhart was amazingly satisfyingly defeated on the 15th hit.....I knew she wanted revenge but...wow.

 

I was truly amazed...and was sad I was not able to record what just happened. Never I expected to get more than 10 hits while playing with any unit with Astra. And then Say'ri comes (vengeance incarnate) killing Walhart slowly with 15 astra hits. Death from a thousand cuts....or at least 15.

 

I'm now curious as to what the record is with Astra. There's probably players out there who have been able to land all 20 hits. Anyone else have a similar experience? I've never been able to get more than 7 astra hits in fates.

with high Skill and stats boosts via Rally skills, it could eventually happen. it would still be a rare situation, but i think it's possible to proc Astra 4 times in a row.

as for me, i never went past 2 procs. however, that's probably because the units i used that had Astra on them were also built around either stacking damage boosting skills and/or improved critical chance skills, so by the time Astra finished its animation, the target was already dead most of the times after just one proc.

[Hawkwing]

Astra is good, but far from the most broken skill in the game. "Five hits at half damage" is just a fancy way of saying "you do 2.5 damage this round". That is nice and useful, and the animation is neat, but there are some skills that are more impressive to have from an offensive standpoint. Although because activating most of those skills is chance-based, it is difficult, if not unwise, to base a strategy around them.

[Gannondworf13]

Astra is powerful in that each hit can proc other offensive skills or crit so while a standard astra is only 2.5 times damage you could do 7.5 times damage if all crit, or increase your likelihood of proccing other damaging skills.

[Shadow Mir]

9 minutes ago, Gannondworf13 said:

Astra is powerful in that each hit can proc other offensive skills or crit so while a standard astra is only 2.5 times damage you could do 7.5 times damage if all crit, or increase your likelihood of proccing other damaging skills.

No, the individual hits cannot proc other offensive skills. Also, if you're facing something that lives 5 crits, you'd be better off using Luna instead.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

The pseudo formula for Astra comparison is 1.5 of damage have to be > 1/2 of your STR/MAG/Enemy DEF

So the thing is if you do 40 Base damage with Astra, that means half your stats/your enemy defense have to be 120 or higher

Assuming enemy have 80 defense(idk whats the highest def is in Awakening), Astra need to be 27 damage to match it and IDK the value if we add "on average

 

So yeah its genuinely very strong, but whether its worth the rate is another question(for the most part it isnt)

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

on a side note: there's also people who prefer to use Killer swords rather than Brave swords due to higher critical rates by default, since the main strength of Astra comes from the critical hits that proc during the skill animation.

it's also worth to mention that Astra always helps against targets with Miracle, since they have even less chances to survive due to multiple hits.

however, Astra still has to go through the enemy's defence/resistance, while another skill like Luna will always ignore half of that, so in the end a single proc of Luna can potentially be more devastating than Astra depending on the enemy stats.

[Tediz64]

On 3/26/2019 at 2:01 PM, DarkDefeater said:

Fates was my first ever Fire Emblem game, so getting used to all the 'downgrades' in gameplay was a bit of a shock and is still an irritant at times. But the game still does give a lot of fun.

If adjusting to FE awakening is an irritant, I can't imagine you like other older FEs. Have you tried any yet?

[DarkDefeater]

Yep. I'm loving blazing sword. Solid gameplay and seeing all the characters and hearing all the themes I've heard from other games for years, particularly smash bros (Show me your moves! Show me your moves! Show me your moves!) is highly satisfying. < If you don't know what I"m talking about, take a look at this. 

My main irritant with awakening is that tag team and dual guard are entirely rng based. Instead of being a strategy game, sometimes it feels like Awakening is nothing more than 'put your strongest units on the front lines and may the odds be ever in you favor.' Hunger games ftw. Yes,  I know that rng is an element of all the fire emblem games, but I feel that Awakening takes things to an extreme. 

Your pair up partner can guard twice and attack twice if rng feels like it....or your partner can do absolutely nothing despite having a high support rank if rng feels like it.