wissenschaft

@jonnymac110 I would just add that Lorenz was one of the MVPs for my GD maddening run. You need him to learn Fiendish blow and C+ Lances which takes awhile so hes just tanky chip damage in the early game. But once he has his frozen lance build up and running he will carry you all the way to the late game. With JUST his average growths, its very easy to get him to one hit KO enemies even in hard maps like Hunting by Daybreak. The ability to use Frozen Lance to one shot sword units in a forest with really high accurate is just amazing. Frozen Lance is just nuts. Its so strong I'd consider making Hubert into a Frozen Lance spam bot and even Marrianne. Its shocking how many times I see people claim Lorenz is just a unit to bench or just replace him with Sylvain. Lorenz is the one of if not the most consistent GD student given his frozen lance build will reliably one shot enemies almost regardless of his growths in magic. I find Hilda worked great for me, of course I made her a wyvern Lord, but her main weapon was actually a mini bow+. She was fantastic as a hit and run unit and latter on she can use axes and Freikugel to secure tough kills. She absolutely wants +20 hit to make up for the accuracy issues of axes. Bows are so strong, I ended up giving most of my team a Minibow+. Even units with a bane in bows end up being instructed in bow just enough to gain access to Curved Shot and minibow+.

Shez > Byleth in every way. I hope the devs see just how much people are going to love Shez and write MC with personality because that makes for a far more interesting story than a blnak bland protagonist.

Agree. Its one of the great and pleasant surprises in 3 hopes.

Hard disagree. I think the writing is fantastic. Not only is the game's dialogue and plot living up to 3 houses' standard, but its actually filling in holes that game's story had. How the world is set up to start has far more nuance this time. Also, Claude feels more relevant as well, which is amazing. As for how Shez join, it feels about the same as how Byleth joined. At least this time, Shez joins as a student and not the ridiculousness of a stranger suddenly becoming a teacher. Also:

I can't expressed how HYPED I AM FOR THIS GAME. I got the demo downloading right now, I'll be able to play latter tonight when I get off of work.

That just the last 2 to 3 chapters. Lysethia has trouble OHKO on those maps so basically EVERYONE DOES. It takes crit fishing to secure kills on those last maps. Do not judge characters based on the last 2 to 3 maps, those maps feature extreme HP bloat. For the rest of the game Lorenz is a OHKO champ whos one of the most RNG proof characters in the game. And yes, its a good plan to switch Lorenz into Dark Knight for the last few maps so he can better deal chip damage and recover his access to healing magic.

Crimson Flower: Edelgard. As you can guess, my favorite. Her white hair, violet eyes are just stunning. I like her personally quite a lot as well. (Her obvious crush on Byleth helps too) Azure Moon: Dorothea (because the AM girls are all boring) Shes a good dancer pick for AM and doesn't get overshadowed by best girl over here. Very flirty and cute personality. At first you might think she was a gold digger but shes not. Shes a real sweetheart at her core. I love her English VA, she did a great job. Verdant Wind: Shamir. She is our resident stoic goth hottie. Fantastic design (bonus points for the choker) #1 Runner up: Hilda. Shes my favorite Golden Deer girl and I'd be strongly tempted to pick her except that her ending with Claude is too perfect. And yes, her noble lady look for 3 hopes is fantastic.

Nothing will beat frozen lance spamming Lorenz. Its trivial to get him into OHKO benchmarks for frozen lance. Maddening melts to Frozen lance once Lorenz learns Fiendish blow. Levin Sword+ for Marianne and Lysithea have utility. Though more often I'll have a steel sword+ for Lysithea when soul blade can secure a kill without using up limited magic spells like dark spikes. Very situational but fun to use, not like theres really anything else to learn once she gets A in both magic skills.

Death Knight? Who that?: Assault at the Rite of Rebirth (BL Ch 4) - Commoner/Noble Only Maddening - YouTube Theres more than one guy whos cleared maddening with just the base classes but this guy shows some of the strategy to do it. Basically his strat involves grinding weapon ranks and he LTC several maps.

I try to get armor knight cert. for every unit without a bane in Axe/heavy armor just because the increase in defense is really nice in the early/mid game. Its helps that I get D+ axes anyway for almost all physical units just for deathblow so D armor is a pretty easy additional goal to reach. For example, its great when your going into GD Maddening ch 7 and Claude, Hilda, Leonie, Sylvain, Raphael, and Ignatz all have def 12. It helps your team survivability quite a bit, often its equivalent to giving a free silver shield to each unit. I ignore giving armor knight cert to my squishy mages, they will still get ORKO post time skip and before then Its not that hard to ensure they never get attacked. The delay in spell progression is not worth 12 def on a unit I never wanted attack. Though you can do amusing stuff like Lysithea Nosferatu tanking with 12 def + vantage + 20 hit (people have made some weird and funky builds and still beat maddening). The other great benefit to armor knight cert, is that it unlocks using Guard Adjutants which are a fantastic survival tool on maddening. My Ignatz ends up using a Steel Axe+ (you get one early game from a tournament) as his preferred weapon just because of its high might (he can accurately use it with his personal + linked attacks). Add Rapheal as an adjutant and Ignatz becomes decently tanky (he'll have 12 def as well from armor knight cert.) When I don't need Ignatz's speed rally, I can just switch this around and have Rapheal use Ignatz as a Guard Adjutant. This pair gives +3 MT to each other so its works great.

To be fair, this game is LOADED with mechanics that are easy to misunderstand or forget about.

Oh typo, I meant people dismissing Vantage/wraith builds as if they are too much trouble to set up. Though my point is still the same. Dodge tanks nor Vantage/wrath are necessary. But its not that hard to set up either. There are some maps vantage builds will be weak on but many others where you'll just wipe the map clear with them. They are not THAT hard to set up either. Any more than setting up Vengeance to one shot a boss.

I don't get why dodge tanking is being dismissed. Its not hard at all to make a dodge tank. Its also not necessary to use a dodge tank. Maddening is very flexible in what you can do. The more I play it the more open ended it feels. If you don't like the idea of using a dodge tank you don't have to use it. On the other hand its not hard to set up and you'll easily have AS+ in time to trivialize hunting by daybreak. But thats just one way to clear that map.

Its still a good idea to let Byleth pull out a Silver Shield to give to Seteth. Additional tankyness will help him survive.

AM Ch 13 is by far the hardest because you don't get either Felix or Slyvain on the left side to help out Byleth and Dimitri. For AM, your best bet really is a dodge F!Byleth with Alert Stance+. GD is by FAR the easiest version of the map. Claude starting as a flyer with a large AoE gambit trivializes the first group of enemies. Byleth doesn't matter as much on this route. He can be a ground based Grappler and used Blaze to help out. This map really wants you to use AoE Gambits. Hilda and Leonie coming in at the bottom left gives you two of your power houses. You'll want to make sure someone has impenetrable fortress gambit to making pulling groups of enemies easier. Frozen lance Lorenz can easily one shot a lot of those thiefs even with average growths in magic (Frozen lance is a pretty nuts combat art). Ignatz provides utility just by being another option for accurate Blaze use. Basically, with GD is very easy to set up several gambit nukes for quickly wiping out groups of enemies in a turn or two. And because of the gambits lock enemy movement, it feels pretty safe as well. You don't have to worry about pass when the thieves are rattled.

Rally Charm is pretty powerful since it can make characters with low charm hit with their gambits. Normally its just linked gambits from your lord, Byleth that are accurate. Ignatz has another great use, his personal affects his gambits, hes another accurate blaze user. Blaze is amazing. Use blaze. One upside to using a ground Byleth is they can use blaze accurately. The best house for maddening is easily Golden Deer. Blue Lions does have a strong start but it has some meh units (Ashe, Mecedes not learning Physics in time for Ch2, the lack of warp). On the other hand, you can keep every unit in Golden Deer. They all work well on maddening. Even Lorenz, people over do the hate on him. You can have both Fire and Heal on Lorenz by chapters 3 and with enough instruction you can potentially have Frozen Lance by ch 4 but most certainly ch 5. Once you get Frozen Lance hes pretty damn good. Its a valid option to replace him with Slyvain but its not necessary. As for how to spend your time, meals. Eat meals for restoring motivation and building supports. Once your D+ professor rank you can spend 1 AP on Faculty Training. Once your C+ rank you can spend two AP on Faculty Training. Save bait for Fistful of Fish days if you ok with fish grind.

I agree with Shanty. Bow users are SO annoying on maddening that building Sylvain just to counter them is a perfectly valid build option. Honestly, Maddening is not that hard that you need to build the most optimal builds all the time. There is plenty of room for niche builds and off meta shenanigans. The keys to Maddening are: 1) proper positioning and baiting of enemy groups. 2) knowing effective builds/combat arts/gambits 3) cheating by checking out all the ambush spawn triggers before playing a map. (screw ambush spawns) 4) having a plan for difficulty maps like ch 13 and the final maps.

I'll just copy what Rengor says about hero: Generally regarded as the worst of the sword-focused classes, it’s ironically the best one. The trick to its success is that innate Vantage – while it is true mastering Mercenary can give you Vantage too, this way you don’t have to grind class mastery and/or can equip some other skill in its place. This combined with Battalion Wrath can create a really low investment unit with a large enemy phase killing potential – examples include Alois, Seteth and Jeritza, all of whom start with Battalion Wrath and join late, so not requiring mastering Mercenary is a good boon. Other than this, the other reason to go into this class is for the useful mastery ability: Defiant Strength’s 8 Str boost is very significant when a large portion of offense happens on Player Phase, or just to boost a wrath/vantage setup. You can calculate damage taken or use something like Blessing to get within the threshold then just don’t get hit and reap the benefits with something like Hunter’s Volley or Fierce Iron Fist. Overall, a really good situational class that gets underrated. Regor is the type of player to switch into a class temporarily just for a mission to exploit their advantages. Examples include changing into thief for ch 6 and ch 7 for the good items you can steal and switching to Hero when a map can be handled well with a Vantage/Battalion Wrath combo. Its also great for low investment high reward builds for units you dont want to waste time grinding for better builds. As Rengor points out, Hero is a great way to make some late joining units have a very powerful Enemy Phase. In short, Hero is the type of class people that obsess with optimization will switch into when its optimal for a map. They will then switch back to another class for other maps. If that sound tedious to you then just ignore the class. Hero is at its a core a low investment class for creating a strong Enemy Phase unit. Its not necessary to use but it can be hella strong on maddening as long as you avoid the weaknesses of a vantage/wrath build.

Apparently, someone beat this game on maddening never leaving the beginner "noble/commoner" class. And of course, we also have 0% growth clears on maddening. So yeah, anything is possible. lol 3 Houses is a TOTALLY balanced game.

I actually think building Lorenz as a mage is a trap. Its a very mediocre build (warlock Lorenz will just feel subpar) meanwhile frozen lance + high MT lances will let him OHKO even on maddening in the midgame. Lorenz should be spamming Frozen Lance the moment its unlocked. He should learn Fiendish blow and then just spam Frozen lance. You can dumb mag+ stats into him to keep the one shot gravy train going if you want but late game its fine to just let him deal strong chip damage as a dark knight. If you've gotten to the point where frozen lance's damage is falling off then congrats, you can beat the rest of maddening no problem. Lorenz weakpoints are the early game before his frozen lance nuke build is complete and the late game where his OHKO potential drops off. But again, the final maps of maddening GD are not as hard as just reaching them in the first place. I don't think Lorenz is worth using outside GD but damn, hes an MVP of GD maddening just because Frozen lance is SO good. People usually say just use Marianne Frozen Lance build but to that I say, what if I want her to be GD's dancer? Also, you can just use both Lorenz and Marianne as Frozen lance spammers. Mariane can also use Soulblade in an assassin/Mortal Savant build for similar results. It can be a bit tricker to hit OHKO benchmarks with swords and Soulblade but its perfectly doable. Oh and people point out that Lorenz and Marianne will be too squishy on maddening for such builds. To that I say, the key to maddening is making sure only your designated tanks (dodge tank, Impregnatable wall, or Vantage/Wrath bot) are ever attacked by enemies. So its actually perfectly fine for your whole team to be super squishy since they are never going to be attacked. All of maddening is pulling small groups of enemies and killing them all in your player phase. Use gambits to lock enemies in place if you can't kill a whole group in one turn.

Edit: I wish I could delete double posts myself.

Ah I mean, I've used Lorenz in a Maddening clear to OHKO consistently throughout the mid-game. *shrug. I'd count that as excelling at something. He requires some babysitting to get there but Tempest Lance is pretty strong even on maddening. If you need Lorenz to take a hit in Enemy Phase then unequip his weapon and enemies shouldn't be able to double him anymore in ch 2. Lorenz's build is mage into cavalier (instruct his Reason to get into Mage and then lance until he gets C+ to unlock Frozen lance). Oh and what possessed me to try using Lorenz on maddening is a youtube video of a player using Lorenz to one shot everyone in ch 13. lol The point of the video was that Lorenz didn't need any stat boosters to be able to do this. His average growths with Frozen Lance leads pretty easily into OHKO benchmarks. That peaked my interest. As for Dimitri retribution strategy, Yes it does require luck but its doable. There are various ways to stack evasion on dimitiri to get this to work. And yeah this build is very much designed to help those getting soft locked with their Battalion Vantage/Wrath build. It requires a whole bunch of resets for sure but its help people clear the map when they thought they were soft locked. Its not the best option but its an option that has worked for people.

Thats not at all what I meant to imply. But you seem very fixed on viewing Caspar as not worthy of the position so eh. I'll just leave this at that. We are not going to see eye to eye on this.

I'd agree with that. I'm not against making Dimitri less of a goodie two shoe but I do agree changing his character is not necessary for fixing Grondor. Its just a personal preference for the lords to hold more bigoted views because it would make Claudes quest for a less racist world have some more impact. As it is now, it feels kind of hollow since theres just very little racism. Dimitri has a Duscur man as his #1 and Edelgard respects Petra.

You can't give a minister position to people who refuse to take the position and leave politics all together. Caspar likely got the position because 1) Eldelgard knows first hand his combat and command ability and so knows hes qualified. 2) hes actually willing to take the job when many of her classmates seem to just retire right after the war or have personal business to take care of. 3) Edelgard would not have personal experience with anyone outside her classmates and therefore she wouldn't be able to check her merit based tests on them do to lack of knowledge. It just feels like a big strech to say that Caspar is unqualified and I don't buy that his ending should be ignored because he wasn't fighting any really worthy opponents. Thats just negative speculation with a bias looking to confirm the premise that Caspar didn't earn the job. Is Caspar perfect for the Job? No. Is he worthy of the job, yes. Caspar not being perfect for the Job doesn't mean hes not qualified or that this is nepotism. His ending implies he grows into the position just fine and does an excellent job. I'm willing to take that ending at face value.