RolStoppable said:
Are you taking Lunatic difficulty into account when you say that there's no need to grind?
Awakening features a lot of rush maps, meaning that groups of enemies come after you. That's the kind of maps where tanks are needed the most and that's what causes the problems.
Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn featured Critical Avoid numbers on the status screens, so the player has 100% knowledge if a critical hit is even possible. If it is, a unit that can absorb even a critical hit is the way to go, and if you use the weapon triangle to your advantage, you can make the attack miss, so a critical hit can't even trigger. In Awakening the luck stat is equal to Critical Avoid (which is not displayed separately), so no issues here either. Dying to a critical hit becomes impossible when you control the odds. Such control is not possible with the Dual Strike/Guard system
|
I haven't played Lunatic difficulty, so I can't speak to it, but a high failure rate should be expected on Lunatic.
Anyways, I still think that you can largely compensate for the Dual mechanic with smart play and on the normal difficulty, the game seemed to be balanced very well to take this into account. While I never had a problem with Dual mechanics, I did find trouble with getting one shot due to an extraordinary crit which was often frustrating. Theres only so much that can be done strategically when the opponent has a 3% chance of crit and is two shots away from death...
Overall, I think that perhaps more tweaking of the mechanic may be necessary to balance for this change, but I don't think this change in a vacuum is a negative one. Perhaps its more of a flaw due to the way the game structures particular encounters and I am interested to see how FE: if advances this mechanic.
I understand your point though, and I would certainly be interested in a more general discussion of random elements in video games in another thread as unfortunately I just don't have enough knowledge of Lunatic mode and previous Fire Emblems to add much more to this discussion.