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Why is Forsyth considered the worst unit in Echoes


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I really don't get why this is the case due to other characters, like Mycen being playable at all.
Mycen joins at the end of the game, when there's a 10 character limit to bring him into the next chapter, even if you skip Zeke and Tatiana you still have 14 other characters (with Alm being forced) to bring into end game/the dungeon besides him as keeping characters alive in this game is easy as hell with the turnwheel. And since you can deploy Celica's army instead of some of Alms in the final chapter I don't see any reason to use him, personally in my run everyone else surpassed him/was more deserving of a deployment slot by the time you get him. And while Forsyth isn't exactly good (still towards the bottom of any tier list of course) he contributes significantly more just from being present in so many chapters for free rather than being unusable.
And on the off chance you do choose to deploy him, what's the chances he contributes much, if at all, due to Alm's and the Killer Bow's dominance?

Feel like in general this is because for pretty much all players he isn't present so they don't remember Mycen being useless but more so Forsyth because they saw him in every chapter

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Mycen has a horse and a high defence stat. I deployed him in the final dungeon because I personally thought he was better than several other options available at the time... such as Forsyth, who has the high defence stat without the horse.

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at the time you get him, Mycen will be better than Forsyth, pretty much no matter what unless you grinded Forsyth as he'll be stuck as knight otherwise by the time you get to the final shrine, even if you deploy him in the dungeon. But the amount he'll contribute in that final dungeon is gonna be pretty low, overall you can avoid every fight in the final dungeon (apart from Alm's fight but no one but Alm can fight there so no use counting) and be completely fine, it's not like doing that is impossible either, and unless you get jump attacked you're just gonna clear most of the dungeon units in your player phase at the start (if you hit them with your sword attack) and you can do this with your other units that aren't Mycen and it would be better to do so with due to them actually growing from the exp you get (RIP 10% in all stats but HP) and 1 rounding them with at least 5 of your units shouldn't be hard at this point. In terms of the final level even then his use would be minimal if at all if you do decide to deploy him as Alm and bows dominance there is high and you'd have at least 3 bows spare Alm and at least 1 teleport.

Forsyth is definitely worse in the last chapters and literally anyone would be better than him, but he definitely contributes more before hand to be better than Mycen.

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I'm not exactly a fan of bringing Mycen to the final dungeon. Poor guy faces critical hit chances from everything. And he is really not durable enough to shrug those off.

Edited by BrightBow
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Availability is a weird thing. On the one hand you can say "yeah the unit is bad but he's there for a long time and unit slots don't matter so he can probably chip damage somewhere". On the other hand you can say "Forsyth is bad for more chapters than Mycen who is also not great but only around for a few battles, therefore Forsyth is worse overall". While most players attempting to play optimally would deploy neither of these guys beyond Final Battle filler in Mycen's case.

I think that final battle is what it comes down to. Mycen wont one-round enemies, but his high movement helps him contribute something. Some decent chip damage or a finishing blow. Meanwhile Forsyth is either a level 4 soldier sitting on the bench, or this Baron that you sunk a ton of exp into and only performs okay on enemies when he can reach them. I don't think either scenario is reasonably better than Mycen. The experience you spent on Forsyth could have gone to other units throughout the game, but Mycen has no opportunity cost, he's free filler.

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The biggest difference is Mycen requires zero investment to function. He's not going to be amazing in the final dungeon, but he has serviceable strengths such as high base Str and high Mov, despite his many weaknesses and shortcomings. Requiring investment doesn't always mean a unit is bad, but requiring investment to "perform" at the level Forsyth ends up performing is pretty damn bad. Especially since Forsyth joins at a time when EXP is very competitive on Alm side. Gray and your archer of choice have a great need for EXP to get ready for Act 3, and will continue to desire EXP, and you want to funnel some to Alm and Clive too. Fielding and using Forsyth to engage in combat can potentially be detrimental by taking EXP away for little gain.

Edited by SatsumaFSoysoy
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Exp isn't something that people struggle for like ever throughout the game, beyond promotion exps and for forsyth to contribute anything he doesn't need any levels at all, having an extra unit is better than having a none existent one and I gotta be honest with personal experience Mycen would be theoretically useless in the final chapter, due to warp existing and Alm being able to kill so much shit in the final chapter. Mycen can't be used for rescuing and maybe hitting 2 people once for half their HP in the final chapter. Witches do exist and Forsyth is pretty good at dispatching them, Forsyth has a marginal effect but he has almost 0 opportunity cost, and Mycen's effect is marginal even if at all, because I myself while I did grind towards the end to see everyone in their final class, I didn't use any of those that I grinded in the final chapter and struggled to find a slot for Mycen.
While most of this is based off of personal experience I don't think that much of it would be different on any different playthroughs except if my Alm got stat blessed without me realizing so he was way better in the final chapter than for everyone else.

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Most character tiering is based on efficient play, which means clearing the game as quickly and comfortably as possible. Forsyth joins underleveled in a class line that is strapped for movement, ranged options, and speed. Soldier line has a tough time reaching the action with a perpetual 4 Move and harsh terrain costs, javelins don't cut it when bows and magic frequently hit 3+ range, and lances have the worst combat art options. He also doesn't have much defense until he hits Knight.

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when you get him the rest of your army is also moving at 4 speed with the exception of Gray, Clive, Alm, and Clair, and only 1 of those are have good enough combat to 1 round (being Alm or Gray with the thunder sword), you could be getting tier 2s on some of them after the siege but I don't see it before meaning he can keep up with your army at that point and contribute something rather than whatever Mycen has. Also vs witches Forsyth actually works quite well, he doesn't get 1 rounded like Lukas vs them allowing him to be left reliably at the back of your army to bait them. While this isn't much, again I feel it contributes more than Mycen ever will.

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EXP is only a non-issue if you choose to grind and/or fight everything in dungeons in Echoes, as otherwise competition is a big thing to plan ahead for on Alm side. I'm not really considering grinding and dungeon EXP because pretty much everything is viable when that's added to the mix. There is a very real opportunity cost for actively using Forsyth in the context of no dungeon EXP on Hard, and it's hard to call the occasional poke to chip things or the facetank on a single map to be any noteworthy contribution throughout the campaign.

Forsyth has 1) poor bases and base level, 2) low Mov, 3) low Res and 4) uses Lances. So when you field him without investment:

- If you want to tank with him, he has a very realistic chance of getting killed by early Act 3 enemy formations because of the sudden jump in enemy strength

- His Mov is too low when you have Gray, Clive, Clair, and later Mathilda leading the way, and you have to spend time Warping him instead of someone else

- His low Mov means he will be left behind and thus aggro Witch teleport AI (they target isolated allies at the corners of your formations)

- He will die if hit by a Witch, maybe two, and you have to use a healer turn to heal him or use rations

- Teleporting Witches will be drawn away from the rest of the army and he will have to kill them (if he can), denying another member some kill EXP

- If you want to chip with him, he has only 1 range (2 with a Javelin and 3 with Saunion, both requiring you to divert marks and/or take the Javelin from Celica side), which he has to use his low Mov/get Warped to even attack with

Even if you choose to use him, it's pretty unrealistic to get him 6 levels in the final fight of Act 1 without a lot of babying that slows down your progress and takes EXP away from your other units. Just simply giving him some EXP and having Clive miss level 7 or your archer miss levels will dent those other units' usability a lot.

Mycen is hardly strong, of course, and will hardly be a major unit, but it's better to be useful sometimes while costing nothing than to actually create problems while requiring investment.

Edited by SatsumaFSoysoy
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On my run of Echoes I didn't do any dungeon grinding until Act 4 on Alm's side and on Celica's side only did it for Atlas to make him fun to use and never encountered any exp problems from using Forsyth a little. For someone to have some level of usefulness it doesn't require them to be uber powerful or anything or having to contribute more than a smige, he doesn't need to promote by end of Act 1, I promoted him Act 3 myself by barely using him, I didn't slow down for him at all really and even dying to a witch is better than doing whatever Mycen does as he doesn't make anyone else get damaged and need healing or anything (as pretty much anyone will take damage from witches due to res being low all throughout the game), even if you used Mycen in terms of efficiency he won't gain you anything due to not being able to 1 round and being doubled by mages and as someone said earlier, have a high chance of crits against him making him more of a liability than an asset. Forsyth shares his 4 move with every mage in the game except lacks the range they do and I don't see them being held back as much even on any sort of ranking.

In general I'd like to say however that you're right, Forsyth isn't a good unit at all, but since there's no opportunity cost unlike other games and having him get a random kill here or tank a witch means that he contributes more overall than what Mycen would, as I can't see how he'd contribute anything if at all during where he's available, he just seems like an awful unit due to this, and if you got Zeke and Titania then you'd miss any deployment slots for him at all, and idk why'd you miss those except for LTC. With the dungeon and maybe final chapter (assuming you do 10 units from each side), idk why'd you deploy him over the villagers, Silque, Titania, Mathilda, Clair or Python as they're so useful, or any of Celica's route unless they got incredibly RNG screwed but in terms of a units quality it'd be debatable if you'd include that since it's usually based upon averages.

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Idk what you guys have experienced, but my Forsyth always turns out as one of my best units. Grinding in this game isn't an issue as it is encouraged through side quests and exploration, so it's not like the man is going to be a waste of exp. It's not really grinding, it's playing the game. In my opinion, Forsyth is actually the best out of all the armors, as he hits harder than Lucas, and Valbar has a whole ton of issues from the desert and his terrible speed. Mycen isn't any good on top of all this. Mycen has pretty okay bases, but his growths are bad and he has no room for any growth because of his join time.  Everyone has bad res unless you are a mage, healer, peg knight, or dread fighter, so his resistance is to be expected. He has low mov but that isn't a huge issue, warp exists, and he makes up for it with his stats and availability. I can understand how he isn't the best unit in the game in a tier based setting, however, I think there are far worse characters, and he gets a bad rep for no reason.

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Forsyth is slow and unlike mages he isn't as good at dishing out damage as them, he also joins a bit late for his level and bases making him less useful than other units. It's mainly important to compare units to everyone else while trying to make more quantitative judgements rather than just those in their class, as armour knights in general are worse than every other class just due to their class which needs to be kept into account when judging them. Also compared to the other armour knights while he turns out the best eventually Lukas is better just due to joining earlier and being able to get more levels.

Also grind is an important thing to take into consideration as while units aren't rated by LTC or speedruns, they are measured by their efficiency to clear the game faster/easier and how much they help with that, grinding of course adds turns onto the total game turns meaning you're less efficient, meaning that you'd want to avoid that typically.

In grinding every unit becomes quite boring as it's pretty much just rating off of growths and removes much of the difficulty the game has removing much of the challenge and making it less interesting to rate units on, to play depending on the person it can be more fun or whatever but that's a different matter.

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As someone who used both Forsyth and Mycen in the final chapter (I beat it twice to hear all the final map dialogues), Mycen performs better with no effort required. I got really rng screwed with my units and Mycen tied with Forsyth for 5th place in def of all my units. I raised Forsyth to level 1 Baron. He and Mycen tie in def and atk but Mycen has better HP, skill, speed, res and, most importantly, movement.

 

So, think of it like this: even if all your cavs get rng screwed, Mycen still has decent enough bases to provide some assistance.  He basically solo'd those 3 enemies in the top left corner in Endgame. However, if all your other tanks get screwed, you have to pour in a lot of time and energy to make Forsyth usable. It doesn't help that 2/3 support bonuses are with horse units that'll always outpace him.

 

That being said, while I rate Mycen higher than Forsyth, I still wouldn't call him the worst. I think that goes to Nomah. He comes late as a sage to a route that really doesn't need more magic users. He has no special white magic and his hp (and bases in general) is too low to really abuse his black magic. He has high res but Celica has 3 pegs, 3 dread fighters and Conrad so he's very redundant. Moreso than Mycen, I'd argue.

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I'll use Forsyth when he can get to the frontlines.  And Silque has better things to do with her time than cart him there.

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He is considered the worst ? Huh.

It's relatively simple why Forsyth would be low on the tier list though, he is a Soldier/Knight/Baron, the more you advance in the game the more this class fall, because it's slow as heck and have low mov. You'd rather wants Dread Fighters and Gold Knights, well I say 'you', it's more like 'me' and 'others'.

I never used Mycen, because I had better.

Edited by B.Leu
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Soldiers were shafted hard in this game and forsyth is the worst of the bunch when it comes to bases. And to top it off, kliff can blow hin out of the water if you want to grow a baron in the endgame.

Forsyth imo ia not that bad because he has lots of potential when forked, but Lukas has too. Still, he is very useful for a bottom tier units, wich is telling on how everyone is at least usable in echoes. 

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Forsyth always turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag for me. First playthrough he was actually really good, a lot better than Lukas, but then on my second playthrough he was really, really bad. Overall, his issues just boil down to his class line, really. Reclassing him would probably make him much more useful, though I haven't tried. 

I never used Mycen in my first playthrough, I literally forgot I could use him until the credits, where he was listed with zero battles. I used him on my second playthrough, but he was just... underwhelming. He was about on par with Zeke, though I wanted to try Mycen out, so I brought him only to have him occasionally be used to finish off enemies if I was feeling generous, and then for me to bang my head against the wall when he missed. Mycen always seemed to miss with high-ish hit rates for me lol.

Just because Forsyth has contributed for me before, I'd say he's a decent enough unit- not high tier by any means, but not at the bottom. If not for characters like Nomah, Mycen would be at the bottom of my personal tier list (though Nomah at least provided an additional healer, so maybe Mycen is at the bottom. Hmm...). Then again, this is coming from someone who dread fighter looped Atlas only to make him into a Baron and bring him into Thabes. I kind of have a soft spot for armour knights.

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59 minutes ago, Jingle Jangle said:

Quick questions about SoV tier lists. Generally, are Alm and Cecilia sides separate or both groups are in one list? What does an Echoes usually look like (who are the best and worst units)?

They should be separated. You only get access to the entire roster at the very last chapter so it's better to treat each group separately.

Good Units (Alm):
- Alm (very strong start, falls off during late Ch.3/early Ch.4 due to low movement and being dependent on his growths, picks up again in the lategame after promotion to Hero, getting access to Bows)
- Merc!Grey (Levin Sword carries him throughout the game and Dread Fighters are very useful in Ch.4)
- Silque (Warp)

Good Units (Celica):
- Saber (perfect availability, solid start, Dread Fighter are (again) a very strong class)
- Palla (flier are so valuable on Celica's chapters because of the constant sand and swamp terrain, Falcon Knight also gains bonus damage against terrors)
- Catria (Palla-lite but still very good)

Generally considered "Bad Units":
- Forsyth (underwhelming base level, Knights have low mov in a game that heavily favors mobility, bad res will get him killed against witches)
- Boey (very weak start, doesn't get his good spells until much later and even then he is not great)
- Est (while she is a flier she comes horribly underleveled to the team)

Edited by Magus of Memery
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I suppose this is more just a discussion of if average stats should be taken as the golden standard and RNG screwing should be taken into account or not. Because if you go by average stats there's no reason to use Mycen pretty much ever as all your other units are more deserving of the slots and even if you do choose to he won't contribute much as your other units can already do that far easier. In a 0% growths run for example Mycen would be amazing compared to normal play because bases are literally everything but how much do you want to take that into account really in terms of ranking units as it would be so minor. In the case that you happen to take both Mycen and Forsyth into the last chapter of course Mycen would perform better, even if you got Forsyth up to a Baron/lvl 7 same as him as he'd have more mobility but you probably won't deploy him over anyone else unless they did get RNG screwed, and if they did how much would he really contribute? Forsyth will always contribute doing at least something over the course of a playthrough as he's just there for so much longer it's almost impossible for him not to when his stats aren't exactly just dirt so he can damage something every playthough rather than Mycen which might every 10 playthroughs or so if you want to use him for his actual filler utility rather than just interest over how good he is. Basically what Forsyth contributes is not negligible, it is just a small amount, but what Mycen contributes is.

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4 minutes ago, Azure in a Roundabout said:

Forsyth is not the worst unit in Echoes.

Soldier Atlas is.

He is, but it's his worst class and he is at least useable in any other one. I went cavalier in my original gaiden playtrought and he sucked tho.

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Just now, Flere210 said:

He is, but it's his worst class and he is at least useable in any other one. I went cavalier in my original gaiden playtrought and he sucked tho.

Might be due to how low his movement options are, what with the arbitrary terrain in both the desert in Act 3 and the swamps in Act 4.

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In terms of actually playing efficiently though atlas is pretty low down there maybe even at the bottom because first shrine if you don't go out of your way for him is in sluice gate (there is a shrine there right?) and he prolly won't reach tier 2 by lost woods. Archer does salvage him though as archers at that point are always good (and you have excess bows iirc in Celica's route), 4 range is pretty strong, which is prolly his saving grace.

Edited by Super Potat
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