So, it's no surprise that in a game with a lot of different characters, some characters will be a lot better than others, be it through special abilities or through stats. Not every character in a game can be the greatest, otherwise the differences don't matter, and you can lose something vital. That said, I think that all characters should always be somewhat usable, even if it is only for a very niche use. Unfortunately, I do not believe that Lloyd in Fire Emblem Heroes has any meaningful use, and is only maybe even touched by those looking to craft a themed team with his brother Linus alongside Nino and Jaffar. This well-loved minor antagonist has not been granted even a semblance of justice in his current FEH incarnation, and while he may never get the support he desperately needs, barring alternative versions we may get in the future, I feel like I can make an attempt to redesign him as a functional unit that would at least be able to see the FEH metagame, even if he still wouldn't get used in it very often.
To start, let me list out Lloyd's skills and stats at five stars without any skill inheritance.
Lloyd is a Sword Infantry unit available through heroic grails and his Grand Hero Battle. His stats are as follows:
- HP: 41
- ATK (no weapon equipped): 32
- SPD: 35
- DEF: 20
- RES: 30
- BST (Base Stat Total): 158
Weapon: Regal Blade
- Mt 16
- "At start of combat, if foe’s HP = 100%,
grants Atk/Spd+2 during combat."
-- Refine Effect Change: "At start of combat, if foe's HP = 100%,
grants Atk/Spd+3 during combat."
-- Refine Unique Effect: "HP +3. If unit is within 2 spaces of an infantry magic
ally, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+3 during combat."
Special: Iceberg
- Charge: 3
- Boosts Damage by 50% of user's RES.
B-Slot Skill: Pass 3
- If unit's HP >= 25%, can pass through tiles occupied by enemy units.
C-Slot Skill: Threaten Attack 3
- At start of turn, inflicts -5 Attack on enemies within 2 spaces of unit through their next action.
So, what makes Lloyd so bad? To do that, let's look at a couple other units for context (though this time I'll just summarize them)
First, his brother Linus, who is a Grand Hero Battle Axe Infantry unit released quite a while after Lloyd. Linus has a BST of 163, carries the weapon Basilikos, which has Special Cooldown Count reduction (meaning more specials) and a refine for Life and Death 3 (reducing Def and Res for bonus Atk and Spd), Luna to ignore enemy Defenses, Brazen Atk/Spd for more offensive power when missing a chunk of health, and Drive Defense for some team support.
Next, we'll look at Navarre, another Grand Hero Battle Infantry Sword Unit from roughly the same era as Lloyd. Navarre has the same BST as Lloyd, and actually had a lot of similar issues that Lloyd has, except for that Navarre got his Scarlet Sword, which on top of being another weapon that reduces the special cooldown count by 1, its refine also grants Navarre 2 points of special charge at the start of the map, allowing him to strike first with a special attack right out of the gate. This is why Navarre is considered a fun niche while Lloyd is just stuck with nothing of value.
Lastly, we'll look at Astram, the most recent GHB sword infantry unit to be put into the game, which was still a while ago at this point. Astram came with Mercurius, a weapon with an effective 18 Might and buffing abilities for Astram himself and his physical-attacking allies as long as Astram is in good health. He also comes with Wrath, a skill that, again, makes specials happen faster, and grants bonus damage when specials activate while Astram is at lower health. Both very good abilities, even if they don't always mesh together very well. Astram comes with a BST of 172.
Now that we have some comparison points, let's get back to Lloyd. Lloyd is a sword unit, so he's probably getting into a lot of fights with other melee units, however, his Defense is utterly awful, and most melee units with the exception of dragons are going to be targeting defense, so Lloyd will get taken down quickly. His Resistance, while better, still isn't really enough to take a hit from most blue mages, or even a large portion of red mages, without at best being in extreme danger if not being dead outright. He is very vulnerable, and though he does have passably good attack and speed, it isn't that good to make his frailty not matter.
Lloyd also comes with no natural Special Cooldown reduction, something that is key to the FEH metagame.
Lloyd's weapon seems pretty good on the surface, but it's really hard to actually engage with an enemy at full health reliably. You can usually get it at the start of a level, but spread chip damage is pretty good and is used widely, plus you don't know if an enemy might do something to reduce their own HP somehow, maybe they fired an arrow at something that couldn't hit back and took recoil damage from Fury. The reliance on specifically an infantry mage makes his refine pretty bad as well, it means you have to use up a second team slot just to get anything out of this refine. When most teams are only 4 units large, 2 units to make one of them a bit better probably isn't worth it.
Pass may be a quality niche in regular Fire Emblem, but in a game where most maps are something like 6x8 grids and you can only get a max of 3 tiles of movement without warping shenanigans, pass isn't very good.
Most threaten skills aren't seen as being very good, largely because if you're close enough to activate it, they can still attack you, and even when Lloyd debuffed his enemies' attacks, he still goes down in only one or two hits. Their debuff isn't even that strong anymore, given that Smoke skills are just generally better in every way.
So, how can we fix this? Well, without increasing his BST, I would say to take out a few points of Res and add them to either Def or distribute them to Atk and Spd. This either makes him a bit less frail in one-on-one melee duels or it makes him into a real glass cannon. Even if there was a BST increase, I would still say to probably focus on those areas, but we could also increase his Res even further, so he can at least take magical hits if he won't take any physical ones.
More importantly, we need to address the Regal Blade. In FE 7, the game Lloyd and his weapon are from, the Regal Blade simply had incredibly high Might for a sword, and better accuracy and weight than weapons like the Silver Blade. It had no special effects to start with, so we do have some freedom to work with here. One idea for the Regal Sword if it were new on a unit released today would be as follows:
- Mt: 16
- Grants Atk +3.
- Unit counterattacks first when attacked at HP >= 50%.
-- Unique Refine: If enemy initiates combat, grants +2 Atk/Spd/Def/Res during combat, and inflicts special cooldown charge -1 on foe per attack.
This weapon could make Lloyd into a very solid "enemy phase" unit. The reversed Vantage effect would be annoying to deal with, but it would also struggle to pair with many of the powerful skills or strategies that rely on low HP or that use skills like Fury that damage you after combat, so I don't think it's completely overpowered. The "spectrum stance" refine helps to power up his enemy phase even more, and the Guard effect included would help his survival a lot as well. He'd probably still go down to a strong sword hit, but at least now he can get at least one solid hit in before he does, and he prevents the enemy from getting special charge from hitting him to use against Lloyd's allies.
I think it's also very appropriate for Lloyd to be an enemy phase while Linus, in my experience at least, is generally built as more of a player phase unit, often being given Galeforce and Heavy Blade. Lloyd is the calm, calculating one of the pair, while Linus is a hothead, even calling himself the "Mad Dog."
As for skills I would like to give a Lloyd with this new Regal Blade, I'm not sure. He'd still be a free unit, so he probably wouldn't be getting any crazy tier-4 skills, but swapping Glimmer for Iceberg wouldn't be bad for his damage output, and switching Pass out for something like Swift Stance would be pretty good for him as well. If his Res was kept as being decent, he could maybe be given Def Ploy, but I'm not sure.
Lastly, just, change his art, maybe not completely, just enough so he looks like the "After" picture in an Anti-Drug commercial.
Let me know what you think of this idea, I may do more of these theorizing pieces, though probably a bit more brief than this one, I got a bit carried away there, oops!
But anyway, I hope you've enjoyed, and I will see you again next time.