I think it's wort it to look at equipment before starting something massive related to levels and xp.

The single biggest factor in making my heroes godlike are their axes and shields and armor pieces. They are all so tanky and do so much damage.

When I look at their stats when they are equipped with normal, tech-tree, gear, they are much more down to earth. Particularly heroes like Relias and Verga are sent over the top by good gear since they already start with a pretty hefty advantage. I soloed everything on the map with Verga and one side-kick up until I got bored and decided that wasn't very fun. While he certainly was powerful in his own right, he would not have been anywhere near as powerful if he wasn't covered in top notch gear. And then it becomes a matter of cycling your excess gear down to the other heroes.

It is a pretty fool-proof tactic, and the gear is at the center of it at all times.

When I remember back on my MoM memories I think about the work it took to get my heroes up to that OP level where they could solo everything on the map. There were literally spells that made weapons and items make your character untouchable. This was part of MoM's charm honestly. Heroes should be OP at a certain level....eventually.

I think what it boils down to with FE's heroes is they get a little too OP too fast. Then again I haven't played on the hardest level either.

I agree some balancing is still needed particularly where heroes are concerned. I just don't want to see them get super-nerfed as getting a God-like hero in MoM was half the fun when you reached the beginning of the end game.

I am all for nerfing the damn axes! I just think that a few of them should exist with more powerful/pwnerful guardians. I would rather they be untouchable but available for the endgame. I just did a test to see if giving my heroes less powerful armor and weapons made any difference and the result was still overpowered heroes with mundane weapons.

It really comes down to whether we want to have heroes get their low level equipment from cities or from cities and loot. I would prefer dungeons having super strong but immobile defenders and be able to spawn weaker units to roam and harass us. Then they could be a factor until the late to endgame, but also have some really nice loot. 

What are the other options?

lol champs in mom were much more op than here, in 3 4 lvls and few items they exploded and could kill everything

here the problem imo is another

they are IMMORTAL

this is too easy, ofc melee are op if you can tank with them, take dmg, EVEN DIE and nothinig happens

they should really remove the immortality to everyone, just the sovereign can respawn then when your beloved hero is at 2 hp you will think twice b4 attacking again

apart from that the other problem is ai using bad the champions

i dont really think they are so op, to get to lvl 15 you either abuse the ai weakness or just farm quests and easy monsters risking to be backstabbed

ofc if ai doesnt do that... its easy

Heroes may be tough early on, especially with a lot of successful adventuring, but if you're up against tough monsters before you're ready, champion growth isn't very fast. And later in the game, when you can equip your units well and can train them in groups or squads, heroes greatly decrease in comparative viability.

Heroes might be immortal, but since there seems to be a good chance of them picking up injuries when they fall in combat it's not that big an issue. Let your hero fall once too often and they'll (literally) be too crippled to be much use.

lol thats the main problem man

injuries COULD be a problem IF anyone would abuse the lack of defenses to attack

but since no one does anything like that death is basically a free heal with a chance to buy few items etc

you die, take a rest and start again

even monsters are too much passive right now

I theorize that once they stop leveling so quickly, enchanted armor and weapons will be impossible to get. I would like to see one of these two issues dealt with at a time. 

I still would like to have an option to create uber-heroes which can face whole armies. Balancing -- yes, but not at cost of narrowing playing styles. Just leveling hero to uber-state should be hard.

It's a very slippery slope to adjust something like this.  Baby steps are what's needed.

2 Item solutions:

1) Item Level Restriction - such and such item requires some sort of power to wield/use (character level, character statistic (mana in the piggy bank, strength, dexterity, research tree (in order to be trained with axes one's society must be able to produce axes to acquire the requisite institutional knowledge of axe-proficiency) etc.)).

2) Changing item awesomeness to item-potential awesomeness.  Since this is supposed to be a magic-centric sort of world how about an awesome item isn't one that is imbued with fire, but rather, /can/ be imbued with fire - but doing such requires a resource (such as a fire-shard, foundry, etc), or a spell (imbue weapon with fire spell).

Balance on the 1st option is probably easier than the 2nd, as the 2nd gets away from adventuring as a game mainstay and toward civ building; if the intent was to let players to do either an rpg style game or 4x, this would be an rpg that requires a 4x foundation.

-tid242

This is the XML that will decide leveling:

<!--** LEVEL UP **-->
<!-- ** combat rating -> experience control ** -->
<CombatRatingToExpMultiplier>0.1</CombatRatingToExpMultiplier>
<!-- <StatPointsPerLevelUp>3</StatPointsPerLevelUp> (Obsolete) -->
<MaxExpFromCombat>-1</MaxExpFromCombat> <!-- set to -1 to disable -->
<MinExpFromCombat>1</MinExpFromCombat>
<MultiplierOnPointsToLevelUnit>4</MultiplierOnPointsToLevelUnit>
<ExpBaseOnPointsToLevelUnit>2.0</ExpBaseOnPointsToLevelUnit>
<ExpMultiplierOnDesignedUnits>0.5</ExpMultiplierOnDesignedUnits>
<UnitLevelUpPerkOfferCount>5</UnitLevelUpPerkOfferCount>
<CityLevelUpPerkOfferCount>5</CityLevelUpPerkOfferCount>

It looks like this is the first way to try to balance things: <MultiplierOnPointsToLevelUnit>4</MultiplierOnPointsToLevelUnit> and <ExpBaseOnPointsToLevelUnit>2.0</ExpBaseOnPointsToLevelUnit>

I would also like to try setting this to prevent those Wildland armies from giving two or three levels: <MaxExpFromCombat>-1</MaxExpFromCombat>

I hope it is as simple as a few tweaks. 

Heroes that fall in a battle that you won do not recieve scars. THAT right there is an issue. You shouldn't be able to treat them as fodder to win battles.