I would argue that Wolves and Foxes pair pretty well with every other unit that uses Pursuit. Wolves can howl for an attack buff for your sweeper line in the back, while Foxes can shutdown particular targets, like units relying on blocking attacks.

Went from all most all my teams clean sweeping to even to most failing to kill or one even dying 0 to skull

Yeah they really make sure your teams are optimized and the quick dispel spam can wrecked the charge-nuke teams

It did? Felt pretty fair tbh

The biggest difficulty spike I felt was in Albion where they constantly blinded my units and I was forced to run some form of cleanse every unit. I felt like Bastorias was managable if you timed day/night cycle well.

Yeah... I think for the first three nations you can make a pretty generic good team and steamroll everything without worrying about very specific counters. Suddenly in Bastorias you have a larger number of enemies that are super fast moving AND they have some things where you actually have to think more about how you're going to build to counter.

SERIOUSLY, IT'S INSANE.

For reaaaaal. I am going to take my sweet time to understand these actual beasts

In return, Owl lady dies to the first arrow assist volley

You can guard for her with a vanguard or an elven fencer if there's no true strike in the enemy

@@Jear9682 all classes have weaknesses

Any chance to share how you did it?

@@IchigoKurosaki10 basically abuse Sellsword Valor skill with gryphon knight movement speed to swamp the boss with npc summons! If you're feeling frisky, you can try and time it so your unit defeats the last enemy in the squad for big exp! Same thing with the battle to save Ramona

Never heard of the badger gauntlets, where do you get those?

@@trevorweisberg8470 That's off the unique werebear. I know you'll get both items if you recruit both him and the werewolf, not sure how it works if you only recruit one or the other.

@@altantagrin9474 So for that quest, once you finish talking to both the Werewolf and Werebear, the quest hints(and points to) a third option, where you can fight both sides to convince them both to join. It's a *really* tough battle if you try to play it straight though, it's better to fly your toughest units to the respective main bases and teleport/ conferral backup in when needed. In the end, you get both uniques and their respective equipment, so it's definitely worth the strain

Don't forget that there's also equipment specifically against Bestrals, too. The Silver-weapons, which absolutely decimates Bestrals. It's a give and take.

@@JMHenry I did that and recruited both; I was saying that I'm not sure if you get an item but not the character if you side with one or the other (like how you get items if you execute/dismiss someone rather than recruit them), or if you only get the item if you recruit the corresponding bestral.

Elves have versatility, but that is not the only thing that matters in unit construction. Every Bestral functions just fine during the day and gets better at night (statistically and with bonus skill effects.) They all fill important roles like tanking, utility/damage, raw damage, and healing/support, and in different ways than their human counterparts. They have good to great move speed on the battlefield depending on time of day, and they have some unique valor abilities. They're quite good, and bring things to the table you can't get elsewhere (a heavy tank that also has big AOE damage? Yes please.) That's why I like them, they're basically more human classes, and filling different roles. Elves are the most versatile units in the game for sure, but they also can't quite reach the highest points that other more focused classes can.

Yeah, i think Bestrals are the counterpart to Elves. Elves use magic in almost all their abilities, while Bestrals are their physical counterpart.

Albion - blind resist and being prepared to diable your magic casting abilities

Yea, the angels, you can actually use them on other teams

The game provides you with numerous items that prevent Blindness by that point. Snipers just destroy them at that point and basically one shot them.

Nope, Elheim is the "right" choice after Drakenhold, but you can approach the game in whatever order you want so long as you're succeeding. 😁

there is the fancy ring that gives for 1ap immunity to blind to all you're team +20 accuracy(it's in albion) or you can employ elfen archers with there anti debuff aura worst case you give you're man dps an anti- blind amulett.

The game stops after each ally has a chance to act. So an example would be Alain gets hit. This triggers Scarlett’s quick heal. Ramona or a different wereowl’s restore will trigger and give Scarlett back a passive point. Then lastly, Scarlett’s passive miracle will trigger and give our wereowl a passive point and heal them.

@@nebbythewhale6450 ah, right, so each would react once with the ability

It's because I have a thing I do where channel supporters get to make custom characters, designed from the ground up by them, and whatever they make I have to use. So it's a bit of a challenge run.

my only playthrough of this game so far was on expert using ONLY mercs and Alain. It was very fun and challenging because honor is very hard to come by when you have to build every unit

@@TitaniumLegman oh nice that's really cool

Yes, Elves can fill a bunch of different roles, that was never in dispute.

If you have balanced units, none of these are a spike. Each area introduces different party mechanics, and if you’ve been killimg everything with 1 or 2 units, you will likely run into some trouble. But if you have several units (i had 5 “viable” units by this point, 6 for the angel part, and had 7 ready for the last map). You can mix and match teams and just have them roll in pairs (or more) and swap in whichever one works best for each fight. I never had any issues, not even the last boss fight (which i felt was a bit of a let down). The scenario was cool, but he died way too easily. I just sent my main unit in twice and it was over. I didn’t even have to change gear, strategy etc. The game becomes a giant math problem by end game and i’m comstantly shuffling the position of soldiers per battle to produce the highest number. Rinse, wash, repeat. And spread out your kills/xp. Don’t just give it to your 2 top units.

Yeah, I had trouble utilizing a wereowl in a way that doesn't get them immediately killed. I don't know why they have such high aggro from enemies but it feels like even in the backrow they're the only ones to always die. That said, a squad of three werewolves, a werebear with wolf pack, and a werefox joining the bear in the front row makes for an amazing scout team to sneak around and take out ballistas or catapults.

I felt the same way. There werebear for example being a "good" tank is...highly debatable. They have the defensive stats of a Legionnaire (ie high physical defense, low magic defense), High strength, REALLY low accuracy and initiative. And also none of the passive skill that make Legionnaire's as good as they are. Werebears can not defend anyone. Their survivability skills are all self centered and you ultimately have to make a choice when outfitting them. You either make them as tanky as possible to survive (like with most frontliners) and then they never hit anything with their abysmal accuracy or you give them glasses just to make their accuracy average and they run the risk of getting killed before they have the chance to swing on an enemy. Not to mention their self heal only activates after they use an active skill. Which is just a worse version of gladiator/berserker healing. And that's how I view them, they are a mishmash of Legionnaire and Berserker but worse than both in how its executed. The werewolf seems balanced around the idea of getting its huge 50% damage buff from finishing stab...but its base damage is so low that it rarely is able to finish off an armored front liner. If the front liners are already dead than finishing stab just doesn't matter anymore and it should be using decimate to clean up the backline. It's follow up attack is fine, especially at night but...ultimately its just a worse version of the Landsknecht's follow up (without the insane physical attack they have backing it up). Like...its whole identity is "If you are already winning the fight, you will win harder. But if your losing a fight...don't expect much." I ended up pairing it with the werefox and giving it an upgraded venomfang and just telling it to poison enemies for the werefox to hit until the enemy numbers fell to 3, then decimate spam. It worked...fine? but ultimately if you want a unit that can just clean up fights, Great Knights and Breakers both do it better, Great Knights mop up infantry and Breakers justify their slow initiative by having enrage give them anywhere from 40%-80% more damage AND accuracy before they start caving in armor's chest plates and using that huge damage buff to carry through to the backline like a GK would. Werefox's I love though. The vemon thrust almost completely shuts down enemy clerics. Not to mention its weakness hunter follow up on any of its on attacks can almost one shot enemy armor (which is crazy for a scout). I was never scared of groups of bears, wolfs or owls... But I learned to fear a group of 3-4 foxes...

Bestrals got better for me the later into the game I got. By the final stage, they were firmly entrenched in my top 4 units Absolutely curb stomped almost every enemy from about 33-35 on The interesting positional change I made to make them really pop was putting the big tanky boys in the back, and the agile squishy ladies up front. Easy to guarantee the beefy boys stay at 100% hp for their dmg modifiers that way, and they end battles in 1 turn that way, so the ladies' survivability is rarely in question This was on expert too, fwiw. I'll have to see whether it works on TZ too, but it worked great on expert

There's no reason that Bestrals can't perform just as well for you as the can for the AI, what? LOL

@TitaniumLegman oh they were just annoying to fight against but they didn't perform well for the AI they got smoked/dog walked by what I already had going into bastoria. It was partly that joke/meme/trope that when you fight an enemy/boss in game vs when you unlock them. But also very true for the bestrals. Only good with the AI because the AI is always on the defensive against the player plowing through them. So it was cool when at nighttime they actually became a threat and did some scary damage to you units but that isn't useful for us as the player since we are fighting against a clock and aren't going to always be getting in nocturnal battles (where the AI sitting on the map at different points will always have an opportunity to use the nocturnal abilities unless you absolutely blitz the map and win before cycle changes (not always possible). You can use anything in this game and use many things in different ways/combos. The permutations are nearly endless and I like to see what other people come up with. But I agree with the first two replies and stand by my comment 👍

It would depend entirely on the team comp. If it's a squishier squad, Legionnaire. If it's a sturdier one, Werebear for the AOE damage and tankiness

Elves are countered by anything with magic defense or debuff negation.

​@@TitaniumLegman Elves aren't that easily countered because they're just kind of mediocre against everything at all times. They have a mixed offense and equally mixed defense, thats their gimmick. That doesn't actually make them all that good, unfortunately-I just found them to be the more annoying matchup. No counter against them feels as hard and reliable as the equivalent counters against bestrals. Which, in turn, made bestrals not feel like powercreep to me. By nature of this partticalur game though, your and my squads would have been so entirely different I'd have been more surprised/dissapointed if we had come out of our respective playthroughs with the same opinions and experiences. Honestly though, If anything really countered the elves, imo its that the devs seemed to forget they exist after elheim and didn't continue to support them with interesting gear into the endgame. Where's my unique split-scaling skills and split scaling weapons that aren't just stock-standard shopfare, game?

I found that I liked Clerics more than owls as well mainly because of them not having the Flier weakness. I personally don't want to be worried about my backline support getting nuked first before the rest of my frontliners.

Depends on how many units you actually use. I had everything cleared before doing any of the bastorias missions and half my army was still underleveled. Playing optimally might be just having all the most powerful classes concentrated into 3 units and they are therefore always overleveled, but not everyone wants to play that way.

I actually found a good use for Wereowls and that is for a generally slower unit composition. Aurora Veil is great for a slower moving frontline like Bears and Legionares and Night Vision when toggled to the backline can assist Archers and other Sweepers for the second wave of actions when PP for Eagle eye etc. are exhausted. A lapis/saphire Pendant for maximum PP and an item to raise Initiative (if it isn`t the highest) is all you need to have an Owl support going with their base kit.

@aureliodeprimus8018 Aurora Veil (excuse my language) is garbage. The Mag. DEF buff sounds nice, until you realize that the ones that need it most have such low base Mag. DEF that 50% boost is like...the equivalent of a circlet at best. I find regen pretty useless for the same reason i find Quick Heal invaluable; you need constant, defensive reactions to stay alive when attacks are focused into a single target. For slow units, they might be dead by the time they get the regen. I.e., in the listed scenarios, Radiant Knight would be better, negating magic damage and having higher initiative for an immediate row heal. I like Night Vision at..well, night for True Strike, but even then you need to do some initiative fixing, and then decide between that or Aurora Veil, whereas a witch can just use Focus Sight and call it a day.

@@taznkid1730To address your first point, there are mixed Greatshields that make it worthwhile. Especially on Bears or Amalia since they have guaranteed block, so the loss of physical defense is negated. Also you forgot about Barrier Circle. I strongly disagree on Regen. Regen is the go-to healing method for big HP targets like Gladiators, Morard and Bears. As great as Row and Quick heal are, they are limited in scope. Gladiators and Bears have enough bulk to share hits between them, heck a Bear has enough natural bulk to survive a fireball salvo by a Wizard, maybe a second one as well. Plus, Regen effects stack. A holy/rose brooch and Aurora Veil/ Refresh staff is enough to keep a Gladiator topped off unless he got focused down by multiple Pursuits. And again, Bears have guaranteed block against physical hits, so they can equip a mixed Greatshield for more magic defense. Regen is also great if you use Gryphons and Lindwyrms, since they also benefit from being topped off and if properly equipped dodge 9 out of 10 hits, with Regen healing the lost hp for Air Strike and Lindwyrm Reins extra effects to procc. Same goes for Night Vision. Focus is great and all, but can only be used up to four times. Once you enter the range of more than four attacks (multiple pursuits, units that have combined more than 4 AP), Night Vision becomes the go to. Even at day time, extra precision is all a sweeper needs, unless facing Scout units and their guaranteed dodge. And an Owls PP Refresh can still refund a missed Counter/Pursuit keeping the streak going.

Ouch

It's fair that they don't work for the way you play. But pound for pound Bestral units are just stronger than elves in every way. They both have their strengths but Bestrals are insane

@@TitaniumLegman i'd disagree again there. no bestral makes it into a top 10 unit in the game, like an s-tier unit. elves have at least 2 if not 3 due to the 2 elven sisters. The 2 sisters and alain are arguably the 3 best units in the game. Only elven fencer is worse than a bunch of bestral units. Morard is the only one that comes close to the top 10 as hes a board nuker (similar to your bruno's bombadiers but better). wereowls are more annoying than strong. They cant do anything better than bishops/high priestess once you've negated their dispel. The main thing wereowls have going for it is what you talked about in this vid which is the awesome flight leadership (at least for the point in the game you're in, you're going to albion next after all). I used ramona for her leadership for the purpose stated above but she quickly got powercreeped once i got the angels. The elves on the other hand, outside of the elven fencers, didnt get powercreeped and are still part of mg endgame squads. They're really just great from the moment you get them until the end. My guess is you'll probably appreciate elven archers and etolinde more once you face angels.

I'd make a case for Werebears personally, find earthshaker great to setup for killing chain and assualting blow and their bulk also helps get a lot of stacks of enrage or get following slash off. Noctunal rest is fantastic self sustain and their massive hp, great guard, and good defense just make them the bulkiest unit in the game. Used them to grab the Unicorn blade since they could easily face tank the spinning slash 10+ levels under and set up for a breaker to sweep. I think hoplite's initial issues made them look bad but they add good damage and don't need much healing to stay alive. They can still take a hit from a breaker or often 2 from a mage if they need to as well. I think evade tanks are also great, but it's nice to have a unit who doesn't care about being under a archer tower if they have to be and they easily tank the units evade tanks struggle with.

@@twigz3214 i personally dont think highly of bulk. IMO the best defense in this game is similar to what ICG says: go before enemies and kill/control them before they get any turns off. Now you do make a valid point about earthshaker. I forgot they have that physical board nuke though it does have weaknesses in accuracy and not affecting flyers. And of course theres the issue that its hard to initiative fix werebears until later on when you get more unique gear that can give the werebear max initiative to take advantage of the board nuke. But yeah at least they have a physical board nuke so i'd say they're at least good to great (b to A tier). Though of course there are other board nukers out there who are just better than them. Didnt need to face tank spinning edge. My approach was: 1. Galadmir goes 1st. Mystic conferrals hilda with dragoon spear. Tailwind afterwards. 2. Hilda goes next charges dragoon dive. 3. fran quick impetus hilda. 4. Hilda activates aerial wing. 5. Alain uses gambler's coin on hilda. 6. All enemies dead except for the vanguard who"s almost dead. 7. mopped him up due to slow initiative with fran and alain. 8. Got the flawless victory at level 30-ish. I think i had 1 or 2 units in the 31-32 range. No one for sure was above 33. So yeah no need to take hits when you can go ahead of enemies and just nuke them. On evade tanks yeah guard tanks handle their deficiencies well. Though you can say the same about guard tanks. Evade tanks can handle ignore def attacks or magic better than guard tanks. Both have their merits but IMO evade tanks cover more bases (eventually a guard tank will fall to tons of pursuits without healing support. Evade tanks stay up without healing support). They do work well together though. I typically set evade tanks in front and someone who can cover like alain in the back to handle when the evade tank is about to be hit by an sniper/swordmaster. Theres also units of course that can be both which makes them ultimate tanks like Liza. he can have very high evade (mirage greatshield, 20 evasion bow, royal scarf) and good def/guard (50+%) due to being a shield unit. can even get an offensive ring for the quick guard so she can really tank snipers/swordmasters without relying on RNG of guard rate. Berengaria and alain are the same if you want to build them for tanking. Personally, i went offense on alain.

Rosalinde and Eltolinde have unique classes and overpower generic classes, so shouldn't be considered. Elven archers want specific healing or targets to support. Werewolves are counters to lightly armored targets compared to the anti armor of breakers and the anti health/spammed attacks of Sellswords. Were foxes have a completely different, valuable kit compared to Rogues, Bears and Legionnaires have different use cases anyway, and if you think Legionnaire and Berserker are weak then I can't help you.

I have not found any real use for Elven Fencers. Elven Archers at least have built in Conferral, the Fencers are stuck with a limited evade skill. Remove Weakness is a good skill, but is very situational. Having a B in evasion and asking them to dodge tank is questionable. They aren't a Scout class so it's hard to manually target them, but I haven't noticed enemy units targeting by that. The only real use I've found for them is to slap one of the 2PP conferral books on them in the back line.

Think Rosalinde and Eltolinde are great, Elven archer is good, and Elven fencer is just kinda meh. Elven fencer really struggles with the lack of good weapon options with it's more damage orientied kit and it feels like it's trying to be a dodge tank but it's just worse at it than Rogue and Werefox. The 1 ap stun is nice but the rest of the kit feels underwhelming. I found Werebears to be fantastic, idk what game you're playing as well because thier easily the bulkiest unit in the game and earthshaker is perfect setup for attacks like killing chain and Assualt blow and they help you get use out of either following slash or enrage. They also self sustain themselves and only need minor healing on the team if any at all. I think Werewolves are fine, mainly would use them with wolf pack but not without it and the wolf pack buff on them is massive as well for werefoxes. I agree Werelion is disappointing though and I find Wereowl is indeed a sidegrade to Bishop, but both are strong classes with their own uses.

If you think Legionnaire and Berserker are bad classes that tells me all I need to know lol.

@@TitaniumLegman While I do think Legionaire is a good class later into the game when it gets its good skills. I think Berserker is the worst class in the game. I try to judge classes based on what they do and not the squads we can build around them. Like yeah Bruno's squad looks good but its supported by Sorceress and Shaman some of the best classes in the game. But how does Berserker's kit actually play without the plus 5/10's to stats that you gave it. (Cause if you give it to one class you have to give it to everybody to judge fairly) Its defenses are too poor to actually take a hit, its initiative is too slow, and its accuracy turns what could be a redeemable kit into a nightmare. I think HP tanking is the worst type as it requires you to use PP to stay alive over dodge tanking where you don't get hit or defense/guard taking where you take so little damage that you sometimes don't require healing at all. Anytime I would think to use a Berserker I would just use a Gryphon Master as it does almost the same thing just more effectively. Put it on the frontline as an evade tank. Have 150 potency High Swings against Cavs with none of the accuracy problems. Sacrifice 50 potency for the ability to hit backrow on turn 1 unlike Berserker. Not having even worse accuracy issues against fliers as they use ranged attacks/are fliers themselves. My point here is I think this guy along with others in this comment section bring up valid points about Bestrals downsides and I urge you not to dismiss them because they have a different opinion then you. Can full Bestral squads work yeah there are two items in the game that can insure that they work (Bager/Wolfpack Gauntlets). But at that point we are talking about great items in the game rather than the classes themselves.

@@TitaniumLegman Berserker and Legionnaire being low tier isn’t exactly controversial. A large majority of the tier lists I’ve seen agree, as does my own experience. They’re usable if you work at it, like every class in the game is, but you’d always be better off with some other class there instead (outside of some niche uses like sequence breaking and specific PvP builds).

@@jasongarman Its funny because I think Legionaiires/Hoplites are at their best at 2 and 5 man squads, but are pretty bad in 3 and 4 man squads. Being so slow and offering 0 offensively isnt a great combo for most of the mid game. Also them getting obliterated in Elheim is a yikes as well.

@@ironx98Because the game is wrong when they say the Berserker is an HP tank. They are a damage carry whose precious HP is to be conserved in the rear to fuel their row clears. They can only HP tank with a lot of support, but if you use that same support to stack on things like conferral, powerful call, or truestrike they delete units. Your griffon is 150 vs cav? Morard is 200 vs everyone.

Werebears are heavy tanks with big AOE damage, something Legionnaires can't. Werefoxes are dodgy scouts that spread afflictions to multiple targets at once. And a 10% stat bonus to push their past stats to the max is great. Try hitting a Werefox at night without a truestrike attack, for example.

Beast counter items are as useless as all other race specific counters, doesn't mean anything here. Bears are more than capable of landing their hits with some spectacles, easy, owls are great supporters and aging they aren't when they don't synergies with other beasts is... A really pointless argument lol.

​@@TitaniumLegman Why do you think the anti-Bestral shields are bad? It's a free heavy guard and refunds it's own PP. I feel like it's a no-brainer for Bastorias. It only activates on physical, but almost all of these units trigger it. It's not like the anti-Angel shield, where the cavalry that would want it can't actually use it because fliers get unguardable. Werefox can disable and bypass it, but they could do that against any guard comp either way.

@@orangejuice3235 Those are definitely nice benefits. It's just the "anti-race" class gear is really not needed compared to other gear that gives better all around effects.

If bestrals are as strong as you claim, then they wouldn't be item dependent. They get walled by any decent frontline and lack defense of any kind to withstand counter attacks. You go ahead and put specs on those bears so they can watch their allies get sniped off more clearly lol. @@TitaniumLegman

@@NeoNintendo In a game like UO that has so much if a characters utility tied up in items, trying to say that it's a bad thing that a class is item dependent is a fallacy. Why would I just discard a whole mechanic, lol?

Elves have versatility, but that is not the only thing that matters in unit construction. Every Bestral functions just fine during the day and gets better at night (statistically and with bonus skill effects.) They all fill important roles like tanking, utility/damage, raw damage, and healing/support, and in different ways than their human counterparts. They have good to great move speed on the battlefield depending on time of day, and they have some unique valor abilities. They're quite good, and bring things to the table you can't get elsewhere (a heavy tank that also has big AOE damage? Yes please.)

This time I actualy trying to use everything, and diferent teams on every stage Só i will use best But still, i dont expect nothing that good

Compare a wereowl to a cleric. Clerics don't make a squad either, but they make ones they fit in to better, for sure.

@TitaniumLegman Clerics are better than the wolves but still not excellent units I agree