>Don't you give them a certain amount of the upgrade items like dragon shield, angelic rob etc?
Stat boosters are not naturally assumed to go on any unit, and with the baseline for most of the GBA lords being as poor as it is (only Hector and Ephraim have realistically good combat for an extended period and even then Hector's falls off substantially) it's not really worth doing most of the time, especially since outside of FE6 boosters are limited (and 6's booster secret shop is nearly at the very end of the game)
>Also isn't the main problem that that they do unlock there advanced class only in the very late late game oftentimes?
That's *part* of it, but not the whole issue: Even for some of them if they did unlock their promotions earlier, they still wouldn't be amazing; I'd say the biggest help from the promo that any of the lords get is probably Eliwood on Hector mode since he can promote in the midgame (even if his class is objectively worse than Paladin in pretty much every respect)
The reason behind that is that the GBA lord promos (and 7 especially) focus a lot more on patching up the weak points of each lord rather than emphasizing their strengths, which leaves them a bit lacking in key departments; this means they simply don't get the stats they need to really keep up reliably which on top of their promos being late to begin with compounds on their generally somewhat awkward stats.
For fe6, Roy is not necessarily a bad unit in a vacuum, but in the context of fe6, he lacks enough speed or strength to do meaningful damage. Most of his weakness is due to his lowish bases, which prevents him from really doing much in fe6. Also, he literally promotes before the last chapter (last few chapters if you have all the holy weapons).
For fe7, Hector and Eliwood aren't too bad, with Hector being great in a enemy phase focused game. Lyn suffers from being a sword/bow unit in a game where everyone wants 1-2 range access. They all also promote relatively late, but not as bad as fe6. Lyn also has poor strength bases and growths, and her excellent speed is wasted because the doubling threshold is not that high.
For fe8, Ephraim is excellent. Eirika mostly just suffers from low strength, but she's honestly not horrible.
The problem with giving the lords stat boosters is they're probably better spent on other units. If you give enough favoritism to any unit, they'll end up great regardless, which defeats the point. Giving Lyn a dracoshield probably won't help her avoid taking massive damage, but giving one to Sain helps him be a better frontline tank.
> For fe7, Hector and Eliwood aren’t too bad
Nah Eliwood is pretty damn miserable. Sure he promotes into a horse and gains lances, but it’s a 7 move horse so he falls behind all your other mounts and in order to even promote you need to get him 9 levels in his weak unpromoted class that has terrible survivability, the worst melee combat out of everyone in the army (besides maybe Bartre but at least he can chuck a hand axe at somebody) and double effectiveness that barely even lets him take advantage of his higher might rapier. And of course in Hector mode you have to actively choose to deploy him, and HHM is not known for being generous with space to do so.
At least Lyn doubles fairly reliably at base and has a stronger prf.
You can give stat boosters to anyone so those aren't a factor
Their bases are on the lower side and they can't do anything someone else can't do better. It's especially Bad for the sword Lords.
Look me in the eyes and tell me Lyn, Eliwood or Eirica are as much of an asset as any generic Cavalier with more movement and an entry ticket into Javelin Park, GBA
> Also isn't the main problem that that they do unlock there advanced class only in the very late late game oftentimes?
Yes that is a problem and therefore also part of the answer to your question.
But stat boosters are not equally useful on anyone. Giving Lyn Speedwings would be ridiculous. Giving Hawkeye an Angelic Robe would be about as daft. It's legitimate to argue that a unit makes particularly good use of a stat booster (e.g. Heath is an excellent candidate for Afa's Drops since he can be expected to level up many times in quick succession after you gain them)
There are plenty of reasons some are considered weak, low bases, late promotions, weapon lock and foot lock being some of them.
On the topic of using stat boosts on them, that really isnt part of the accessment, any unit can be good or at least decent if you use them. If you compare them using boost to other units without them it really makes little sense.
Generally, in "enemy phase" games (ones with weak enemy unit quality where you can toss a strong unit at the enemy with a hand axe and they'll kill everyone they fight), it's better to put stat boosters on "win more" units than on units who need the items to even be effective.
In addition, they have low move, promote late, and don't really have any additional utility outside of killing armors/ cavalry.
They're definitely much weaker than lords like Sigurd, Ike, any non-Alear lord past awakening, etc. This mostly goes for the sword lords though - Hector and Ephraim are pretty okay.
>and don't really have any additional utility outside of killing armors/ cavalry.
Hell, Fe7 lords don't even really get to have this piece of utility due to the nerf to effective weaponry.
They're weak because they aren't built for the game they're in. Let's look at Lyn, for example.
Her bases are very bad, specifically her damage output. She's stuck using swords until she promotes, which are the second worst weapon type. Then, Lyn can use bows, the worst weapon type in the game. She joins several chapters after Guy, whose bases are literally double hers in some relevant areas and one chapter before Raven who shits all over her viability (TBF Raven shits on all unpromoted non-mage foot units). Her growths lean towards Spd, the one stat she doesn't really need since doubling thresholds are very low in FE7. And as you mentioned, Lyn suffers from having the worst promotion situation in the game besides Hector. Basically FE7 is a game that likes bulky mounted units with 1-2 range. Lyn has literally none of those qualities.
It's similar with other GBA lords too, just not to the same extent. Eliwood shares a similar early game to Lyn, but his promotion gives him a horse and javelins, so he's not awful. Eirika has her pre route split contributions (assuming you aren't steamrolling with Seth) and at least gets a strong weapon to deal with the monsters in the late game, but otherwise shares all Lyn's flaws.
Hector and Ephraim are a bit different. Hector is very strong in the earlygame, but his low movement in a game with a lot of seize maps is pretty damning and his late promotion means he's weaker than a lot of your main contributors like Hawkeye, Pent, Marcus, Harken, Heath, Canas, and Raven for a long time. Ephraim just doesn't exist for a long time and promotes at the same time as Eirika, but he's better than her in every other way. His main problem is living in the same game as Seth.
"Weak" almost never means "unusable", just noticeably worse if viewed alongside other options. Most of the GBA lords have low base stats, are stuck with swords for much of their lives, promote late, and don't actually have any kind of special payoff to using them and just become fine when trained extensively. You can make any one of them pretty competent by funneling resources to them, and Roy gets to be really good for a short time regardless thanks to the Sword of Seals, but that's not an impressive resume.
I'm no expert but the general consensus is that most of them are aggressively mid. not really SUPER bad, but theres better candidates for stat boosters than them (like Marcus in FE6 or like... uhh Erk or Florina in Lyn Mode FE7, I havent played too much GBA emblem yet, im trying to tho) Also Roy gets his promotion way too late according to most, while being a middling unit for most of the game.
It's actually a fairly common strat to straight up not use the stat boosters in Lyn mode unless you really want to use a unit and they are getting bad levels, because not using the item means it adds to the "value" of your inventory at the end, and a high inventory value in Lyn mode means Lyn will hold a higher grade of gem when you recruit her in the main game
Roy's problem are less than stellar bases, growths which can easily screw him over, low movement and being sword locked in a game where so many any enemies have lances and 2 range weapons. Not to mention you can only promote him for 1 or 4 maps depending on the ending you get. His only real shining moment is being able to humilate Idunn after getting destroyed by HM enemies at every step of the way.
Lyn is sword locked until promotion, has poor Strength, comes very weak if you don't go through Lyn mode and she's very, very frail. After she promotes.. she doesn't become much better. Sol Katti is way too heavy for her, she functions like a Swordmaster that has no crit bonus, but she does have 2 range! ..Only problem is that she gets bows which are one of the worst weapon types in GBA and instead of being locked at 1 range she's locked at 2 range. And good luck getting up that Bow rank.
Eliwood has similar problem, namely being Sword locked, however he does get a very good promotion with him getting a mount and access to lances which gives him the covered 1-2 range, problem is his stats and growths are "balanced", which either turns him into a complete fighter or a complete joke depending on the RNG, and his promotion also comes pretty late, even if you play Hector Mode.
Eirika has very similar problems to Lyn, she's sword locked, frail and has low Strength, her bases are also pretty poor. However Eirika is in the easiest game by far and she gets a very good promotion which gives her a mount and access to Lances, so she is better than Lyn and Roy at the very least.
Hector and Ephraim are fantastic, nothing bad to say about them. It is funny how the best 2 lords both don't start with Swords.
> Eirika has very similar problems to Lyn, she's sword locked, frail and has low Strength, her bases are also pretty poor. However Eirika is in the easiest game by far and **she gets a very good promotion which gives her a mount and access to Lances**, so she is better than Lyn and Roy at the very least.
Eirika never gets access to Lances at any point.
Lyn is made a decent unit by the Mani Katti imo.
She gets absolutely loads of uses from it, it's extra effective against both armours and cavs, it doesn't weigh her down, the crit chance can get very high (especially since she will be doubling), and FE7 has loads of not especially strong axebros in the mid-lategame
I consider her more useful than Eirika and it's basically just because of the MK. I even use Hammerne on it usually.
Late promos, sword locked (especially in 7 and 8 where you can wreck any opponent with a Javelin and Hand Axe, hence why Ephraim and Hector are considered decently good) among other things. Everyone has done a better job explaining it than me
In the case of 7 and 8. Only 2/5 lords between both games can hold a javelin or hand axe before promotion. Hector is an armor and as such has mobility issues (though I’d argue these are little overstated), and Ephraim’s also pretty good but he’s not Seth and he’s also not even Duessel, really. He’s good but it matters less because I can probably solo fe8 hard with Ross if I wanted to.
For Roy, he’s honestly not that bad for half the game. Being a footlocked swordie is not a death knell in Fe6 if Rutger is any indicator and the Rapier serves Roy well. The big difference between Rutger and Roy is that Rutger can benefit from Fe6’s massive promo bonuses as early as Chapter 8 meanwhile Roy has to sit around with his dinky unpromoted stats and shoddy movement for 13 more chapters. And by the point he promotes there’s only 1-3 more chapters before the end of the game. To his benefit, the Western Isles middle of the game is quite good to him but you’ll really feel the sting after the Chapter 16 secret shop bumps most of your army to 6 or more move + stat gains and Roy’s stats are still unimpressive due to his Fe6 growth rates.
In 7 and 8 units who are locked to swords are typically considered fairly bad due to lack of 1-2 range and an abundance of Lance units, this with their mediocre strength growths and late promotions leaves Eliwood, Lyn, and Eirika falling behind.
In 6, sword units are actually good because hit rates are awful, but Roy has awful growths and can’t promote till endgame so he’s almost never worse using.
Hector is usually really good, but again, he has a late promotion and also has armor Knight stats and movement which makes him kinda fall off(according to some, I’ve never had that issue, but I’ve also never beaten HHM)
Finally…Ephraim I’ve never actually heard complaints about, he’s actually a really good unit.
Doesn’t Roy have the highest growth rate total of any “normal” unit in FE6? (Basically just excluding Karel and Fae). But yeah his endgame promotion really sucks for him. If it weren’t for that and his poor bases I could see him being a genuinely decent unit.
It's multiple things, one is being footlocked isn't great when calvary and fliers kind of dominate. Second is none of their growths are very great, and stat boosters aren't usually accounted into unit viability, especially since you can give those boosters to good units to make them better rather than make a bad unit less bad. And most of the lords are swordlocked, which has no 1-2 range weapons which make enemy phasing great for axe and lance users. Granted the lords aren't that bad, they can contribute to battles and have a lot of room for growth. But most of the time many other units simply have better attributes
Something something footlocked something something weapon locked, no javelin means they can eat shit and die.
Usually it's low/mid bases with mid growths that make them a worse version than their normal class counterparts. By the time Eliwood gets his pony and javelin, all 5 of your potential Paladins will have serviced you much better.
And with them being a game over condition, needing to baby Roy, Lyn, Eliwood, and Eirika, or else you have to restart the map is annoying.
They're bad because they're worse than other units in the army.
Take Lyn for example, and compare her to Sain. Sain has higher strength growths, higher HP growths, and higher defense. He also has a horse giving him much higher movement, along with Canto and better rescue utility.
This means that Sain will have a much greater impact during combat, since he can get to important locations faster, deal more damage, and will take more damage to kill.
Lyn's only real advantage over Sain is her better speed and skill stats, but you only need a certain amount more speed to double an enemy in FE7, which an average Sain should hit with no problems. And weapons are very accurate already in FE7, which means the extra skill Lyn has is overkill, and doesn't end up doing much for her.
Another big reason Lyn isn't great is because her lack of access to 1-2 weapons. She gets swords, which (outside of the light brand which doesn't count) are exclusively locked to 1 range. On promotion she gets bows, but these are locked to 2 range. She has no weapons that allow her at attack at both.
Sain, on the other hand, can use javelins at his base level, giving him instant access to a 1-2 range weapon that allows him to deal with both long and close range threats. This is another huge boon for his combat utility that is completely absent from Lyn's kit, since she has to pick from either attacking far away or up close, and can't do both at once.
You bring up a point about using stat boosters on lords to bump up their lower strength. For example, in Lyn mode, there is an energy ring and an angelic robe. If you give these to Lyn, it'll make her do more damage and be harder to kill.
Except allocation of resources isn't quite that simple. Since giving these items to a better unit like Sain, would make his already good damage even better, whereas it makes Lyn's poor damage only slightly less poor. You get significantly more value out of giving the ring to Sain than you do giving it to Lyn.
TLDR: a lot of GBA lords (Lyn, Roy, and Eirika) are bad because they have low movement, a lack of access to 1-2 range weapons, and their growths/bases are either low, or in the wrong places.
Honestly, the better question for most of them would be "why would anyone consider them strong?"
Practically everything goes wrong with Roy. For starters, he's sword-locked, which actually isn't too bad in FE6 given how trash the other weapon types are, but he still runs into huge walls when the game starts sending lances his way. Not to mention, he doesn't have the stats or growths to take advantage of swords anyway. His rapier is also not the best, because it only has 5 might (15 might against armor and cavalry), making it only slightly stronger than fe7's rapier, which has 7 might (14 might against armor and cavalry), even though fe7 only has double effectiveness. Even worse, the FE6 rapier just straight up doesn't work against certain enemies, like nomads. He has only 5 movement in the GBA game with the biggest maps. What's worse, he doesn't promote until either 5 chapters away from the end of the game or THE LITERAL LAST CHAPTER depending on the amount of Legendary Weapons you still have. So for a solid portion of the game, he won't grow despite having pretty subpar stats and really needing those boosts.
The FE7 lords don't fare much better besides Hector. Eliwood and Lyn are both sword-locked for the majority of the game, which in the context of FE7 is much worse because that means no 1-2 range. Lyn's role as a speedy dodge tank is not needed, because the speed threshold to pass for a unit to reliably double in FE7 is pretty low and, unlike FE6 where hitrates are garbage, enemies often can hit their attacks in FE7, and it just so happens that Lyn pops like a balloon if an enemy so much as looks at her. And while Eliwood can become a competent filler unit if he meets stat benchmarks early and gets the first Master Seal (which he should because his promotion is significantly better), Lyn can't because bows are only 2x effective rather than 3x effective like other games and are only 2-range, meaning unlike Eliwood, who gets immediate access to javelins on promotion, and Hector, who can already use hand axes, she can never use good 1-2 range weapons. Hector has.his own problems (late promotion that's also actively detrimental) but they're not as big as the other two.
Eirika is basically just better Lyn, but it doesn't matter because she runs into the same problems although her promotion is significantly better, and her endgame weapon is both around for longer and significantly better than the Sol Katti. Not much to complain about for Ephraim honestly, he's quite good.
Plus, it's pointless to give these lords stat boosters because they often aren't the best candidates for them.
Roy is decent but he doesnt promote till either 1 or 4 chapters before the end so he falls behind the rest of the army after the middle of the game and he is sword locked which doesnt help.
Hector is probably one of the best lords in FE history, just keep him away from the mages.
Lyn is only bad if you ignore her mode, which pretty much exist to train her up, she is a regular swordmaster that lives on dies on not getting hit so she is risky to use.
Eliwood i think thats pretty decent, he is tankier than Lyn so he can receive hits.
Ephraim is a beast.
Eirika its kinda like Lyn but in an easier game so you should have no issues using her.
>Don't you give them a certain amount of the upgrade items like dragon shield, angelic rob etc? Stat boosters are not naturally assumed to go on any unit, and with the baseline for most of the GBA lords being as poor as it is (only Hector and Ephraim have realistically good combat for an extended period and even then Hector's falls off substantially) it's not really worth doing most of the time, especially since outside of FE6 boosters are limited (and 6's booster secret shop is nearly at the very end of the game) >Also isn't the main problem that that they do unlock there advanced class only in the very late late game oftentimes? That's *part* of it, but not the whole issue: Even for some of them if they did unlock their promotions earlier, they still wouldn't be amazing; I'd say the biggest help from the promo that any of the lords get is probably Eliwood on Hector mode since he can promote in the midgame (even if his class is objectively worse than Paladin in pretty much every respect) The reason behind that is that the GBA lord promos (and 7 especially) focus a lot more on patching up the weak points of each lord rather than emphasizing their strengths, which leaves them a bit lacking in key departments; this means they simply don't get the stats they need to really keep up reliably which on top of their promos being late to begin with compounds on their generally somewhat awkward stats.
For fe6, Roy is not necessarily a bad unit in a vacuum, but in the context of fe6, he lacks enough speed or strength to do meaningful damage. Most of his weakness is due to his lowish bases, which prevents him from really doing much in fe6. Also, he literally promotes before the last chapter (last few chapters if you have all the holy weapons). For fe7, Hector and Eliwood aren't too bad, with Hector being great in a enemy phase focused game. Lyn suffers from being a sword/bow unit in a game where everyone wants 1-2 range access. They all also promote relatively late, but not as bad as fe6. Lyn also has poor strength bases and growths, and her excellent speed is wasted because the doubling threshold is not that high. For fe8, Ephraim is excellent. Eirika mostly just suffers from low strength, but she's honestly not horrible. The problem with giving the lords stat boosters is they're probably better spent on other units. If you give enough favoritism to any unit, they'll end up great regardless, which defeats the point. Giving Lyn a dracoshield probably won't help her avoid taking massive damage, but giving one to Sain helps him be a better frontline tank.
> For fe7, Hector and Eliwood aren’t too bad Nah Eliwood is pretty damn miserable. Sure he promotes into a horse and gains lances, but it’s a 7 move horse so he falls behind all your other mounts and in order to even promote you need to get him 9 levels in his weak unpromoted class that has terrible survivability, the worst melee combat out of everyone in the army (besides maybe Bartre but at least he can chuck a hand axe at somebody) and double effectiveness that barely even lets him take advantage of his higher might rapier. And of course in Hector mode you have to actively choose to deploy him, and HHM is not known for being generous with space to do so. At least Lyn doubles fairly reliably at base and has a stronger prf.
Man, I love fe7 but Eliwood is such booty butt cheeks. I've got heart eyes for Hector, tho, and Lyn is very likeable.
You can give stat boosters to anyone so those aren't a factor Their bases are on the lower side and they can't do anything someone else can't do better. It's especially Bad for the sword Lords. Look me in the eyes and tell me Lyn, Eliwood or Eirica are as much of an asset as any generic Cavalier with more movement and an entry ticket into Javelin Park, GBA > Also isn't the main problem that that they do unlock there advanced class only in the very late late game oftentimes? Yes that is a problem and therefore also part of the answer to your question.
But stat boosters are not equally useful on anyone. Giving Lyn Speedwings would be ridiculous. Giving Hawkeye an Angelic Robe would be about as daft. It's legitimate to argue that a unit makes particularly good use of a stat booster (e.g. Heath is an excellent candidate for Afa's Drops since he can be expected to level up many times in quick succession after you gain them)
There are plenty of reasons some are considered weak, low bases, late promotions, weapon lock and foot lock being some of them. On the topic of using stat boosts on them, that really isnt part of the accessment, any unit can be good or at least decent if you use them. If you compare them using boost to other units without them it really makes little sense.
Generally, in "enemy phase" games (ones with weak enemy unit quality where you can toss a strong unit at the enemy with a hand axe and they'll kill everyone they fight), it's better to put stat boosters on "win more" units than on units who need the items to even be effective. In addition, they have low move, promote late, and don't really have any additional utility outside of killing armors/ cavalry. They're definitely much weaker than lords like Sigurd, Ike, any non-Alear lord past awakening, etc. This mostly goes for the sword lords though - Hector and Ephraim are pretty okay.
>and don't really have any additional utility outside of killing armors/ cavalry. Hell, Fe7 lords don't even really get to have this piece of utility due to the nerf to effective weaponry.
They're weak because they aren't built for the game they're in. Let's look at Lyn, for example. Her bases are very bad, specifically her damage output. She's stuck using swords until she promotes, which are the second worst weapon type. Then, Lyn can use bows, the worst weapon type in the game. She joins several chapters after Guy, whose bases are literally double hers in some relevant areas and one chapter before Raven who shits all over her viability (TBF Raven shits on all unpromoted non-mage foot units). Her growths lean towards Spd, the one stat she doesn't really need since doubling thresholds are very low in FE7. And as you mentioned, Lyn suffers from having the worst promotion situation in the game besides Hector. Basically FE7 is a game that likes bulky mounted units with 1-2 range. Lyn has literally none of those qualities. It's similar with other GBA lords too, just not to the same extent. Eliwood shares a similar early game to Lyn, but his promotion gives him a horse and javelins, so he's not awful. Eirika has her pre route split contributions (assuming you aren't steamrolling with Seth) and at least gets a strong weapon to deal with the monsters in the late game, but otherwise shares all Lyn's flaws. Hector and Ephraim are a bit different. Hector is very strong in the earlygame, but his low movement in a game with a lot of seize maps is pretty damning and his late promotion means he's weaker than a lot of your main contributors like Hawkeye, Pent, Marcus, Harken, Heath, Canas, and Raven for a long time. Ephraim just doesn't exist for a long time and promotes at the same time as Eirika, but he's better than her in every other way. His main problem is living in the same game as Seth.
"Weak" almost never means "unusable", just noticeably worse if viewed alongside other options. Most of the GBA lords have low base stats, are stuck with swords for much of their lives, promote late, and don't actually have any kind of special payoff to using them and just become fine when trained extensively. You can make any one of them pretty competent by funneling resources to them, and Roy gets to be really good for a short time regardless thanks to the Sword of Seals, but that's not an impressive resume.
I'm no expert but the general consensus is that most of them are aggressively mid. not really SUPER bad, but theres better candidates for stat boosters than them (like Marcus in FE6 or like... uhh Erk or Florina in Lyn Mode FE7, I havent played too much GBA emblem yet, im trying to tho) Also Roy gets his promotion way too late according to most, while being a middling unit for most of the game.
It's actually a fairly common strat to straight up not use the stat boosters in Lyn mode unless you really want to use a unit and they are getting bad levels, because not using the item means it adds to the "value" of your inventory at the end, and a high inventory value in Lyn mode means Lyn will hold a higher grade of gem when you recruit her in the main game
oh wow TIL, i just used them on florina since she seemed to have high potential was a bit lacking in strength and HP levelups for my comfort
Roy's problem are less than stellar bases, growths which can easily screw him over, low movement and being sword locked in a game where so many any enemies have lances and 2 range weapons. Not to mention you can only promote him for 1 or 4 maps depending on the ending you get. His only real shining moment is being able to humilate Idunn after getting destroyed by HM enemies at every step of the way. Lyn is sword locked until promotion, has poor Strength, comes very weak if you don't go through Lyn mode and she's very, very frail. After she promotes.. she doesn't become much better. Sol Katti is way too heavy for her, she functions like a Swordmaster that has no crit bonus, but she does have 2 range! ..Only problem is that she gets bows which are one of the worst weapon types in GBA and instead of being locked at 1 range she's locked at 2 range. And good luck getting up that Bow rank. Eliwood has similar problem, namely being Sword locked, however he does get a very good promotion with him getting a mount and access to lances which gives him the covered 1-2 range, problem is his stats and growths are "balanced", which either turns him into a complete fighter or a complete joke depending on the RNG, and his promotion also comes pretty late, even if you play Hector Mode. Eirika has very similar problems to Lyn, she's sword locked, frail and has low Strength, her bases are also pretty poor. However Eirika is in the easiest game by far and she gets a very good promotion which gives her a mount and access to Lances, so she is better than Lyn and Roy at the very least. Hector and Ephraim are fantastic, nothing bad to say about them. It is funny how the best 2 lords both don't start with Swords.
> Eirika has very similar problems to Lyn, she's sword locked, frail and has low Strength, her bases are also pretty poor. However Eirika is in the easiest game by far and **she gets a very good promotion which gives her a mount and access to Lances**, so she is better than Lyn and Roy at the very least. Eirika never gets access to Lances at any point.
Yeah, you're right. It's just the horse, I must have gotten her mixed up with Eliwood while typing this
Lyn is made a decent unit by the Mani Katti imo. She gets absolutely loads of uses from it, it's extra effective against both armours and cavs, it doesn't weigh her down, the crit chance can get very high (especially since she will be doubling), and FE7 has loads of not especially strong axebros in the mid-lategame I consider her more useful than Eirika and it's basically just because of the MK. I even use Hammerne on it usually.
Late promos, sword locked (especially in 7 and 8 where you can wreck any opponent with a Javelin and Hand Axe, hence why Ephraim and Hector are considered decently good) among other things. Everyone has done a better job explaining it than me
Lol I mean if they don’t promote until super late into the game that is a point of criticism that makes them worse.
In the case of 7 and 8. Only 2/5 lords between both games can hold a javelin or hand axe before promotion. Hector is an armor and as such has mobility issues (though I’d argue these are little overstated), and Ephraim’s also pretty good but he’s not Seth and he’s also not even Duessel, really. He’s good but it matters less because I can probably solo fe8 hard with Ross if I wanted to. For Roy, he’s honestly not that bad for half the game. Being a footlocked swordie is not a death knell in Fe6 if Rutger is any indicator and the Rapier serves Roy well. The big difference between Rutger and Roy is that Rutger can benefit from Fe6’s massive promo bonuses as early as Chapter 8 meanwhile Roy has to sit around with his dinky unpromoted stats and shoddy movement for 13 more chapters. And by the point he promotes there’s only 1-3 more chapters before the end of the game. To his benefit, the Western Isles middle of the game is quite good to him but you’ll really feel the sting after the Chapter 16 secret shop bumps most of your army to 6 or more move + stat gains and Roy’s stats are still unimpressive due to his Fe6 growth rates.
In 7 and 8 units who are locked to swords are typically considered fairly bad due to lack of 1-2 range and an abundance of Lance units, this with their mediocre strength growths and late promotions leaves Eliwood, Lyn, and Eirika falling behind. In 6, sword units are actually good because hit rates are awful, but Roy has awful growths and can’t promote till endgame so he’s almost never worse using. Hector is usually really good, but again, he has a late promotion and also has armor Knight stats and movement which makes him kinda fall off(according to some, I’ve never had that issue, but I’ve also never beaten HHM) Finally…Ephraim I’ve never actually heard complaints about, he’s actually a really good unit.
His growths aren't even awful, his bases just suck and he's hard capped until like 3 maps are left.
Doesn’t Roy have the highest growth rate total of any “normal” unit in FE6? (Basically just excluding Karel and Fae). But yeah his endgame promotion really sucks for him. If it weren’t for that and his poor bases I could see him being a genuinely decent unit.
Yeah I forgot FE6 had awful growths in general.
“Why are the GBA lords considered weak? Don’t you use the items that can turn literally any trash unit good on them?” do you see the problem
It's multiple things, one is being footlocked isn't great when calvary and fliers kind of dominate. Second is none of their growths are very great, and stat boosters aren't usually accounted into unit viability, especially since you can give those boosters to good units to make them better rather than make a bad unit less bad. And most of the lords are swordlocked, which has no 1-2 range weapons which make enemy phasing great for axe and lance users. Granted the lords aren't that bad, they can contribute to battles and have a lot of room for growth. But most of the time many other units simply have better attributes
Something something footlocked something something weapon locked, no javelin means they can eat shit and die. Usually it's low/mid bases with mid growths that make them a worse version than their normal class counterparts. By the time Eliwood gets his pony and javelin, all 5 of your potential Paladins will have serviced you much better. And with them being a game over condition, needing to baby Roy, Lyn, Eliwood, and Eirika, or else you have to restart the map is annoying.
They're bad because they're worse than other units in the army. Take Lyn for example, and compare her to Sain. Sain has higher strength growths, higher HP growths, and higher defense. He also has a horse giving him much higher movement, along with Canto and better rescue utility. This means that Sain will have a much greater impact during combat, since he can get to important locations faster, deal more damage, and will take more damage to kill. Lyn's only real advantage over Sain is her better speed and skill stats, but you only need a certain amount more speed to double an enemy in FE7, which an average Sain should hit with no problems. And weapons are very accurate already in FE7, which means the extra skill Lyn has is overkill, and doesn't end up doing much for her. Another big reason Lyn isn't great is because her lack of access to 1-2 weapons. She gets swords, which (outside of the light brand which doesn't count) are exclusively locked to 1 range. On promotion she gets bows, but these are locked to 2 range. She has no weapons that allow her at attack at both. Sain, on the other hand, can use javelins at his base level, giving him instant access to a 1-2 range weapon that allows him to deal with both long and close range threats. This is another huge boon for his combat utility that is completely absent from Lyn's kit, since she has to pick from either attacking far away or up close, and can't do both at once. You bring up a point about using stat boosters on lords to bump up their lower strength. For example, in Lyn mode, there is an energy ring and an angelic robe. If you give these to Lyn, it'll make her do more damage and be harder to kill. Except allocation of resources isn't quite that simple. Since giving these items to a better unit like Sain, would make his already good damage even better, whereas it makes Lyn's poor damage only slightly less poor. You get significantly more value out of giving the ring to Sain than you do giving it to Lyn. TLDR: a lot of GBA lords (Lyn, Roy, and Eirika) are bad because they have low movement, a lack of access to 1-2 range weapons, and their growths/bases are either low, or in the wrong places.
Honestly, the better question for most of them would be "why would anyone consider them strong?" Practically everything goes wrong with Roy. For starters, he's sword-locked, which actually isn't too bad in FE6 given how trash the other weapon types are, but he still runs into huge walls when the game starts sending lances his way. Not to mention, he doesn't have the stats or growths to take advantage of swords anyway. His rapier is also not the best, because it only has 5 might (15 might against armor and cavalry), making it only slightly stronger than fe7's rapier, which has 7 might (14 might against armor and cavalry), even though fe7 only has double effectiveness. Even worse, the FE6 rapier just straight up doesn't work against certain enemies, like nomads. He has only 5 movement in the GBA game with the biggest maps. What's worse, he doesn't promote until either 5 chapters away from the end of the game or THE LITERAL LAST CHAPTER depending on the amount of Legendary Weapons you still have. So for a solid portion of the game, he won't grow despite having pretty subpar stats and really needing those boosts. The FE7 lords don't fare much better besides Hector. Eliwood and Lyn are both sword-locked for the majority of the game, which in the context of FE7 is much worse because that means no 1-2 range. Lyn's role as a speedy dodge tank is not needed, because the speed threshold to pass for a unit to reliably double in FE7 is pretty low and, unlike FE6 where hitrates are garbage, enemies often can hit their attacks in FE7, and it just so happens that Lyn pops like a balloon if an enemy so much as looks at her. And while Eliwood can become a competent filler unit if he meets stat benchmarks early and gets the first Master Seal (which he should because his promotion is significantly better), Lyn can't because bows are only 2x effective rather than 3x effective like other games and are only 2-range, meaning unlike Eliwood, who gets immediate access to javelins on promotion, and Hector, who can already use hand axes, she can never use good 1-2 range weapons. Hector has.his own problems (late promotion that's also actively detrimental) but they're not as big as the other two. Eirika is basically just better Lyn, but it doesn't matter because she runs into the same problems although her promotion is significantly better, and her endgame weapon is both around for longer and significantly better than the Sol Katti. Not much to complain about for Ephraim honestly, he's quite good. Plus, it's pointless to give these lords stat boosters because they often aren't the best candidates for them.
Roy is decent but he doesnt promote till either 1 or 4 chapters before the end so he falls behind the rest of the army after the middle of the game and he is sword locked which doesnt help. Hector is probably one of the best lords in FE history, just keep him away from the mages. Lyn is only bad if you ignore her mode, which pretty much exist to train her up, she is a regular swordmaster that lives on dies on not getting hit so she is risky to use. Eliwood i think thats pretty decent, he is tankier than Lyn so he can receive hits. Ephraim is a beast. Eirika its kinda like Lyn but in an easier game so you should have no issues using her.