A2ZOMG

It's not nearly as huge of an opportunity cost with instruction as you're implying when the vast majority of that Authority rank you can easily farm in normal gameplay with Heal/Physic spam. It is considerably less practical for Archer Ignatz, which on top of slower EXP gains, Mage class having better bases/growths + Fiendish Blow, and magic classes not stopping you from using Break Shot anyway...yeah. Archer/Sniper Ignatz is pretty meh and demands too many resources to maintain. Again though considering the practicality of healing in mage classes and that Physic is on Ignatz's faith list, magic classes basically do the Authority instruction for you after you at least get a D in Faith.

+20 means consistent hitrates with Steel Bows, which means Ignatz actually is a better damage dealer than most of your team in the earlygame. Being able to safely and consistently hit enemies from 3 range with Steel even if they have terrain advantage (which isn't actually uncommon earlygame) is really useful. Also I don't get why you would say team synergy doesn't matter. Team synergy is literally a huge part of playing this game and making the most of your units. The fact of the matter is earlygame is significantly easier with Male Byleth on GD Maddening because Leonie and Hilda exist. Leonie is one of the few other units that makes a reasonable frontline in GD other than Byleth earlygame, and Hilda's personal skill is +3 damage for males. You're going to tell me that doesn't drastically affect earlygame performance, where survival in general is actually a real issue? That I would argue significantly outweighs access to Pegasus Knight class, where by the time you actually have access to this, your team in general has more options to not die. I also don't know where you get that Mages are somehow underwhelming in this game. Magic literally saves you gold earlygame and lets you hit lower enemy Res stats. Access to Heal spam means you get an earlier power spike with quick access to Fiendish Blow and more EXP for levels/Authority a lot faster than other classes. This is on top of keeping your team alive and also building supports. The only thing not making Mages outright gamebreaking is the lack of a non-DLC flier class. Being a Mage in this game also doesn't stop you from using tools like Break Shot to cripple enemies. Yeah Ignatz has bad Str/Mag growth. He also excels in Authority and gets Rallies from ranking Authority, keeping in mind lategame Battalions can offer up to +8 atk that can't be RNG screwed. Considering that a lot of how you don't die in this mode is carefully picking enemies off on the player phase, I'm not seeing where Ignatz magically falls off lategame in terms of overall usefulness. Sure if you go Archer/Sniper route then his bad attack matters because you're limiting him from an avenue of utility and accelerated EXP gains, but you don't have to sacrifice his useful Bow combat arts in the Mage route, and his spell list is more than good enough. Yeah but that's not the only reason Ignatz is super good. He's generally one of the strongest earlygame characters in GD thanks to super reliable hitrates even with Steel. Annette also doesn't get Physic but instead gets Recover, and she's also generally a lot slower. Having incentive to rank an Authority strength is good, since lategame Battalions can offer highly competitive combat stat bonuses anyway.

In all seriousness, I would actually put Ignatz in S-tier in GD Maddening. +20 unconditional accuracy is GODLIKE earlygame and makes Ignatz one of your strongest units especially considering he starts with D bows, giving him immediate access to Curved Shot and Steel Bows. The only units who are potentially outperforming Ignatz in the first 3 or so chapters are basically Byleth (especially Male Byleth in this route), Leonie, and Claude, and even then Ignatz has better hitrates with Steel Bows than these characters do with Training Weapons. That's nothing to sneeze at. He falls off in combat a bit lategame due to his below average Str, so I would argue in general the best way to build him is with an emphasis on Magic. Keeping in mind Budding Talent in Reason gives him Seal Strength, which is valuable in boss battles. By going the magic route though, you can get access to another Physic user at C Faith, and Mage mastery ability Fiendish Blow can easily patch up his offense in the midgame especially since his speed is actually decent. As an added bonus, having another Heal spammer makes it easier to train Authority on Ignatz making the prospect of the ultra desirable Rally Strength far more realistic. tl;dr even though Ignatz has below average Str/Mag growths, his incredible earlygame and even better utility scaling on top of having reasonable access to Lategame Battalion stat bonuses makes him a very good unit at all points of the game, which I think is grounds for S-tier. Other things I would suggest for GD Maddening: Male Byleth is better than Female Byleth in this route. Early flying utility is not nearly as impressive when for starters, getting nearly 1HKOed by 3 range Steel Bow Archers is a real issue. Furthermore for a good portion of earlygame, there's only one Flying Battalion to share, which means having more than one flier earlygame prevents one of your teammates from equipping a Battalion for combat bonuses. Male Byleth most importantly has significantly better synergy with GD house personal skills, in particular Hilda and Leonie which in turn gives him a much more stable earlygame. Hilda is absolutely not A tier. She's actually by far your worst unit earlygame when basically for the entirety of 5 chapters she struggles to break accuracy higher than 80 with her preferred weapons, and unlike Lorenz she doesn't start with D Lances, meaning Tempest Lance is not available from the get go. And yes Hilda's personal skill is extremely valuable, but I need to stress that Hilda herself is a HUGE combat detriment earlygame. Not fast enough to avoid being doubled when using Lances, hitrates are terrible, and Faith demerit means trying to pad her resource requirements with Heal spam is significantly less viable on her. Authority demerit even hurts her in combat significantly when promoting to Pegasus Knight because it actually takes extra investment to get D Authority on her, which is the requirement for the lowest ranked Flying Battalion. Speaking of Lorenz, in GD Maddening I would put Lorenz in A tier. Lorenz is actually a strong unit earlygame thanks to D Lances, personal skill being EXTREMELY easy to use for a free extra 2 damage in combat, and because he's male which means he actually gets to use the free damage from Hilda's personal skill as well as benefit Leonie directly when frontlining. Easy proficiencies for Magic class progression only makes things better early to midgame, especially since Fire has a very good hitrate for a Ranged attack. Also feel Lysithea is overrated. Yeah she has great offensive growths and Mastermind has some rather incredible exploits for gaining class mastery abilities, but she struggles immensely for the first two chapters due to a lack of physical weapon proficiencies and because Miasma's hitrate is terrible earlygame. Her lack of durability and being weighed down by Dark magic also generally prevents her from doing anything on Enemy phase against anything that isn't a Mage. Contrast to Lorenz who is pretty durable meaning he occasionally can avoid being 2RKOed on the enemy phase. Sure Lysithea picks up mid to lategame, but by that point Lorenz has already carried a lot of weight earlier on, and it's even debatable that he's strictly outclassed given he's among a minority of magic specialized units that actually is reasonably effective on Enemy phase. Marianne I would argue is better than Lysithea overall. Physic >>> Warp for both surviving and for farming EXP (which also means earlier access to high tier promotions), and Marianne's slightly higher durability is also significant in avoiding 2HKOs. Until Lysithea hits the threshold where she starts doubling enemies that Marianne can't, they generally do pretty similar damage and do about equally well deleting armor knights.

I notice this on Shocking Sheet vs Shocking Cape, but not on default Sheet vs Cape. If it exists, the horizontal range difference is really tiny and basically doesn't matter, but rather the lack of stalling property and better vertical hitbox makes Super Sheet by far better for edgeguarding.

Mario B-air doesn't kill except at like 150% with 100% Rage. It's a horrible KO move. Neither Mario or Doc should be landing F-air in a serious match, given thing is like what, frame 18? You can airdodge that on reaction. U-smash is a good move, but Mario cannot punish a ledge reset directly, nor can he reach a platform with his U-smash. Mario's ability to score KOs is extremely bad against anyone that actually knows the matchup, while Doc actually has an answer to kill people in almost every common negative state situation in the game. Doc's recovery is passable when you use Tornado to stall outside of the range of edgeguard attempts. More importantly, as I stated earlier, Tornado and D-air are actually incredibly good moves for killing low recoveries because they actually beat out most recovery specials easily, or even if they trade, the opponent risks getting semi-spiked to death. And furthermore they can be spaced in a way that prevents the opponent from wallteching them. And yes, Doc's sheet has a better vertical hitbox. Horizontal range is actually the same, so it's by far a superior edgeguard move, especially since not having the stalling property means you can better chase recoveries with it. Mario actually in contrast just can't do anything to a low recovery generally speaking except try to stage spike you with B-air.

Doc is super underrated and isn't really significantly worse than Mario when you factor the following things: *Mario literally can't kill you in the air without Shocking Cape. Doc's 3 frame Up-B and significantly stronger B-air however are great aerial KO moves. *Mario literally can't kill you for recovering low and hugging the stage as long as you tech stage spikes. Doc's D-air and Tornado are two of the better attacks in the game for killing low recoveries. *3 frame Up-B out of shield from Doc is THE BEST reversal in the game *Doc has a Jab cancel game that gives him frame advantage on hit and can combo into Up-B on some characters. Mario's is negative on hit. *Doc has a lower short hop, and can do rising B-airs against the entire cast, while Mario can really only hit tall characters with rising B-airs Honestly Mario is overrated like hell. Once people start realizing he can't really do anything to a ledge reset, and his options for dealing with platform camping are Mac tier bad (actually probably worse, Mac at least has Up-B to kill people), and then start abusing buffed swordsmen like Link and Marth to wall him out and edgeguard him, he's not that exceptional. Doc isn't great, but his advantages are by no means insignificant, and give him matchups where he works better.

Ganon's Jab is 8 frames, and generally speaking one of his worst moves given in most situations, a F-tilt or D-tilt is more rewarding and safer, both being 10 frames startup. There's only a few situations where the slightly faster startup of Jab actually helps, but most of the time you really should be trying to use something else.

True combos: D-throw -> DA D-throw -> U-air/N-air D-throw -> F-air (if they DI towards you, very easy to set up by the ledge) Flame Choke -> D-tilt on most characters if they don't techroll N-air -> D-tilt (especially if frame canceled, which can be buffered out of fullhop airdodge + fastfall N-air) D-air -> stuff (especially if frame canceled) Late DA -> U-air Tipman U-air -> footstool -> aerial wizkick Wizkick ledge cancel -> U-air/N-air And that's only just true combos. Ganondorf allows a lot of creativity for followups when you read airdodges and jumps, and can end a stock instantly when he does so. Watch Pon play Ganondorf. He's really good at making gamechanging reads offstage. And being a "beginner's guide" is no excuse for having blatantly incorrect information.

I main Ganon and find your guide pretty horribly short sighted. You really just don't seem to know anything about the character, given your lack of detail of Ganon's followups, pressure options, trap setups, and everything. You probably haven't bothered watching any of the good Ganon mains for that matter like Ray_Kalm, Vermanubis, and Gungnir, all who have placed top 4 in large tournaments as Ganon. I imagine though given your tone in this guide you probably aren't interested in learning anything and just assume Ganondorf is bottom tier (he's not, judging by tournament results he's solidly mid tier). But you can prove me wrong.

Believe it or not, I'm actually a pretty big Fire Emblem fan, even if I'm not obvious about it every day of the week. =P Roy probably will get some good results relatively soon under a pro level player who is enamored with him (I wonder if ZeRo will do that, he previously said he felt Roy could be top tier). He has the reward to be a threat at all times, but once people learn the matchup, he'll probably just be upper mid tier. Not unviable, just not much reason to really use him when other characters clearly are safer than Roy. I know a lot of people are excited about Roy's grab game. It's good, but it's clearly not overpowered. He doesn't get nearly enough frame adv to true combo into his KO confirms, so ultimately he has to guess for the kill. Not that reads are bad, but the better characters in this game don't always need to make as many to end the stock. And Roy's kill options are sorta unsafe without his D-throw oki setups. Edgeguarding is kinda weak not unlike Ike given he can't cover that many options offstage, so even though his aerials can certainly kill offstage, he's a bit telegraphed when edgeguarding. Marth probably does better in certain matchups like Rosalina and maybe Luigi compared to Ike, but some of the good characters in this game like Sheik and Fox also happen to be easily killed off Ike's throw combos. It's kinda debatable if either Marth or Ike are better, but again I think Ike's grab game probably tips things in terms of specific matchups.

I agree with most of this post except I personally think Ike is better than Marth, if marginally. There's honestly not much reason to play Roy when Ike exists imo. Ike's close range and negative state are both better than Roy's, and Roy fundamentally has to make a guess to kill someone (even if his mixup game is very strong), while Ike has legitimate KO confirm combos out of throw. Roy is very slightly more versatile in midrange due to his mobility and faster aerials, but his hitlag modifiers make him deceptively unsafe. Marth is pretty solid, but overall I put more weight on Ike's really strong grab game and general damage output compared to Marth's edgeguards and Jab game. And wtf at people saying Lucina is worse than Robin. Lucina doesn't have any of Robin's extremely glaring weaknesses. Her negative state and midrange options are about the same as Marth's, so she doesn't really suffer from anything crippling, while Robin has nearly Bowser tier bad options for recovery and getting out of juggles. Plus Robin suffers from that problem where he fundamentally has trouble actually hurting you if you don't commit outside of his sword range, making him very vulnerable to being baited.

This and Smash Bros Wii U...I'll try to find time for both. Funny enough, I don't really care for Roy specifically in either of these games. I guess at this point I'm more curious to know if there's anything in specific you would want people to try out. I personally think you've done a pretty good job meeting your goals. I very much appreciate that Murgleis and Maltet were toned down, given in retrospect I did feel they sorta trivialized the lategame to a degree. I think once I get to this, I'll deliberately mess with Ogier at least given I suspect he's probably Bors most viable support which in its own way is pretty useful. Dunno if he might actually be secretly OP...that will remain to be seen.

Promoted Eliwood can rescue promoted Oswin ftw. Also the Rapier in FE7 is also waaaaaay better, and you actually need that to kill some bosses in a few chapters. Uhai off the top of my head is nonsense to beat without Eliwood, nobody else is nearly as reliable for finishing him off.

Jahn and Idun are pretty funny to fight against now that they probably don't die in one round (a Sniper with Murgleis and full supports though probably can make a joke of Jahn). Idun probably doubles Roy unless you use a Speedwing on him, though doesn't matter much when you can attack from range to kill her. Anyhow I completed the game, I'll try to sum up stuff I did and noticed throughout my run as quickly as possible. Took Western Isles route B + Sacae Notable support conversations achieved: A Roy Wolt Deke Shanna Lot Wade Support Square A Elen Saul A Noah Fir Bors Wendy Lilina Barth Support Square A Elphin Cecilia A Sophia Igrene Earlygame MVPs Bors, Marcus, Alan Midgame MVPs Jerrot, Saul, Astore, Shanna Endgame MVPs Saul, Bors, Milady, Wendy, Sophia I'm open to questions about my opinions, or stupid things I did throughout my run for experimental purposes, though I think I've already covered mostly everything that I think is important. In this game, high defenses and big heals help you a lot more. That represents most of how the game flow feels different. I think the main previously high/top tier unit that probably is liable to be used a lot less is Deke, given his speed nerf is really noticeable midgame when he fails to double a lot of enemies around that point of the game, and he's also a lot more fragile with both his speed nerf and enemy accuracy going up. He's still good for killing bosses though, especially with Durandal.

Maltet having like 21 MT is kinda crazy, now that I think about it. Sure it's really late in the game, but that's almost as much raw damage as Durandal (but better for killing Dragons). Furthermore it doesn't weigh nearly as much as either Armads or Durandal. So yeah honestly I would argue that particular Divine Weapon is kinda OP, especially since you don't exactly have a shortage of great lance users in this game. Not sure about Murgleis. 20 MT and 5 spd is a kinda crazy combination, but then again you only get to take advantage of it on the player phase for the most part.