LoneStar

Yeah this round is going to be rough. Having to deal with Caineghis when your guys have no Close Counter, and you have to use range units for bonus. Then there are other broken units like Edelgard and Dimitri. So much for this game mode being fun.

It’s the first run you do each day. Kind of like with Tempest Trials.

So, annoying enemies so far are Rhajat and Fallen Ike. Other than that this is pretty fun. Galeforce is actually usable here unlike a certain other game mode. Stuff like Threaten seals and Breath of Life can get some use here, which is kind cool.

Manuela is a unit that isn’t very outstanding. She starts of as a Priest, but her growth rates are similar to Ingrid’s. She has some nice support spells like Ward, Silence, and Warp. But her low magic makes her Warp range short, so you will have to use her in conjunction with another Warper to do some one turn cheese. Dorothea and her grant each other extra might, so that can help with both of their low offensive stats. She learns Hexblade, which does a good chunk to most enemies, but she won’t be one shotting anything without a crit. Rally Charm can be nice to make your gambits more accurate. She learns Bolting, but her weakness in Reason and it being learned at A rank makes it impractical to aim for. For classes Bishop is okay, it lets her just provide support. Classes like Assassin and Falcon Knight can be decent on her, but when she joins she is focused on being a Bishop, and misses out on some Strength auto levels. She will need a good amount of focus to change her course. DLC Trickster is okay too, Foul Play will probably have the same range as her Warp, and the Swordfaire can let her Hexblade do more. My Rating: 2.5/10.

What are you trying to do? I guess Oboro could use Cavalier. I would say Oni Savage for Death Blow and Counter, but they both support with Rinkah. Usually you can’t go wrong with +Spd-Luck, +Str could be good too.

“Age is but a number”. Hanneman is a decent mage. In Hard mode he isn’t too great because of his low speed. However in Maddening where the enemies are fast and your other mages struggle to double as well, he is able to compete. He supports with most of the other natural mages so he can provide linked attack support to them when equipped with Meteor. For combat arts he has Schism Shot and Ward Arrow. Schism Shot rebuffs an enemies Res, which unless it is a monster, I think you’re better off just attacking. Then he learns Ward Arrow at A rank bow, so unless you are using him as a Sniper I don’t think it is worth getting. His personal skill is Rally Magic, so he supports other mages well. He learns some nice spells like Thoron and Meteor. Then the rest have good enough might for him to chip at enemies. For classes wants to aim to be a Dark Knight, he even has a strength in Riding. Then there are some decent Meme builds like Sniper, and War Master, now War Monk is available through DLC. He can make good use of the magical weapons for those classes, still lame that Aura Knuckles are A rank for whatever reason. My Rating: 5/10. Good chipping unit. I should get around to using one of those meme builds if I pick the game back up.

Flayn is alright. Kind of a mix between Marianne and Mercedes. She has strengths in Faith, Lance, and a budding talent in Reason. I think when you just get her you want to focus on Faith so she can get Rescue, which is pretty clutch on that chapter’s map in Maddening. She provides extra might to both Seteth and Byleth from support, which is pretty nice. And her personal skill lets your unit take hits better. She has Frozen Lance, but she learns it at A rank Lance. I don’t think it is worth wait that long to get, but it can be a decent nuke, especially with horseslayer for those Paladins.She gets Rescue and Fortify which are great Faith spells. Excalibur can nuke those enemy Wyvern Riders. You get Caduceus Staff from her paralogue, which is a nice Thyrsus lite. Cethleann Monks, kind of sucks for an A rank battalion, another case of waiting too long to be worth using. For classes she does fine as a Bishop, Warlock, or Gremory. Not too strong of a unit but she can take some magical hits, and do decent chip. DLC Dark Flier can give you some flexibility. My Rating: 4.5/10. Nothing too ground breaking, but she provides decent support.

Shamir is a pretty nice archer. Because she joins in an advanced class, she will be stronger than your other natural archers. You can even get Hunter’s Volley sooner than the students, so she’ll be able to one round stuff sooner than most. Her speed growth isn’t as good as the other Archers, but she can get Darting Blow from Pegasus Knight. Her combat arts are good for heavy chip on enemies. Most of them aren’t anything crazy. She has Lance Jab, but her speed growth isn’t that high. Of course she’ll have Curve Shot to hit from 3 spaces. She works great as a Sniper, plus for having a good looking outfit. Bow Knight can work in Hard mode. Her personal skill isn’t too practical most of the time especially as an Archer, but as a Flier she can definitely make good use of it. She can finish of a weakened enemy then be able to handle a few enemies on enemy phase afterwards. Starting out in an advanced class gives her good stats, but you will have to retroactively train her in lower tier classes to get their mastered skills. She and Catherine give each other extra might from support, so they make good partners. My Rating: 6.5/10. Good chipping unit, and also a crit machine.

Has the auto confirm for quest just started to work? I was auto battling the tempest and just noticed that I didn’t have to tap confirm the quests. I don’t know if I hadn’t noticed before.

Catherine is a pretty strong unit you can get about half way through part 1, technically sooner. She comes in an advanced class so her stats will be pretty high. She grants extra might from supporting with Shamir. Her relic Thunderbrand is a 13 night Brave Sword, so it’s pretty strong the only thing is it’s 70 base hit which is pretty shaky. The Major crest of Charon that she has grants her a 40% chance of boosting a combat art’a damage by 5 which is pretty nice. Astra kind of sucks in this game, but she’s technically the best user of it. Bombard and Nimble Combo are nice Brave combat arts that will be more accurate than Thunderbrand. I’m not too sure about Foudroyant Strike, it doesn’t really one shot armors in Maddening and for frail enemies Gauntlets do fine, it can still get a solid hit off with +30 crit. For classes Swordmaster is fine, it’s best at enemy phasing IMO, and she’ll be fast enough to not get doubled by most things. Falcon Knight or Wyvern Rider can let her be more robust, her high Spd and Str lets her do well in these classes. She doesn’t have any strengths in the required skills, so it will take a good amount of focus to get her into them. She’s another female unit that would like War Master, but the DLC War Cleric can do something I guess. My Rating: 8.3/10. A pretty strong unit that you can get decently early, and can carry her weight through the rest of the game.

Cyril can potentially be a strong unit, as he has the proficiencies to be in some pretty strong master classes. The main issue with him are his stats. He stays as a Commoner and doesn’t upgrade over time like other unrecruited characters, so he doesn’t benefit from auto level ups very much. This means you have to get him ASAP if you want to use him. Those factors nukes his viability with the Black Eagles. They even went as far as making his base growths bad, then using Aptitude to get him to Leonie’s standard basically. Anyway, he has some excellent combat arts. Vengeance is a strong nuke when set up. Point Blank Volley has more might than Hunter’s Volley and can be used in any class. Lance Jab and Armored Strike can one shot low Defense enemies, and others when used with a type effective weapon. Battalion Desperation is nice for safely, unfortunately he can’t get Darting Blow, so he’ll struggle to double some things in Maddening. For classes he has proficiencies in Axe, Bow, Lance, Riding, and Flying. So he can get into Wyvern Lord or Bow Knight no issue, and both are superb classes. My Rating: 6.5/10. He’s pretty solid, but like I mentioned you want to recruit his ASAP for him to be viable.

“Judgement is pass!” Seteth joins late, but he picks himself up rather quickly. He starts off as the ever so great Wyvern Rider. His personal skill grants a bonus to female units, and he supports with pretty much all of the ones you would make a Wyvern or Pegasus. When he joins he is decently bulky, but kind of slow. Then his growths will favor him gaining more Atk and Spd. His combat arts are pretty good. He has the ever so great Swift Strikes. Monster Piercer can be a nuke to monsters if he can’t double them. Focus Strike is decent to guarantee a hit until you can get better means of boosting his accuracy. The rest are kind of whatever. Also his Major crest has a good chance of preventing an enemies counter attack, so that can be good to save you a turn from healing him. He comes with Rally Defense, so that is good for support. And Model Leader is good for him to train some battalions, although he will miss out on a bunch of them because he naturally a flier. For classes Wyvern Lord is excellent, and he’s already naturally on the road there. One issue is that you need A rank in Axes for the best off of passing the Wyvern Lord certification, but you also want A rank in Lances for him to learn Swift Strikes, so there is a bit of awkwardness when training him up, unless you grind I guess. Paladin can be decent for more damage on his Swift Strikes, but he has a bane in Riding, so that will take sometime. Because he has Battalion Wrath and access to good Battalions with his high Authority, he can do the Wrath+Vantage combo as a Hero. Since he joins late you missed most of the time to get him stuff like Death Blow and Reposition, so you will have to set aside some time to regressively train him. Other good things is his support bonus with Flayn, granting him extra might, and his personal Battalion, which is very powerful. My Raiting: 7.5/10. He will need some extra training at a time when you should be done with most of that, but he’s still a solid unit regardless.

Yeah! Good luck.

I have beating Awakening Lunatic on my bucket list of things to do. So from what I kind of know and what you said, +Def Robin is really good, and Nosferatu is cheese. How did you go about your reclassing? Just second seal Robin into pegasus as soon as you get the first second seal. Then you pretty much only use a few units so that they can keep up with the enemies. From the no grind Hard mode run I was doing, Nowi and Panne definitely fell off because everything was promoted, and it took too long for the +stones to show up, so reclassing them is the best thing to do, I see. Anyway congrats.

I get to use that Florina I just started training, what a coincidence, and Laev can get off of the bench. Normally I’d merge the Hana, but that axe looks really good, even though I don’t know who to give it to.

What? I think it her art looks cool, even though her fingers in the thumbnail look weird. I forgot their name, but that user who really likes Zihark is going to have a field day. Hope they have better luck with 4 star focus than I do.

Leonie is a pretty solid unit. Her growth rates are pretty nice. Her personal skill is really good especially early on when your units are huddled together, deals +2 damage and receives -2 damage when adjacent to a male ally. Strength in Bows so she can get through Archer pretty quick, or just be one long term. No weakness in Axes or Flying so she can get into classes like Brigand, Pegasus Knight, and Wyvern with a little investment. Her combat arts are really good. Break Shot hits from 3 spaces and lowers the foe’s defense. Lance Jab scales off of her speed so she can nuke lower defense enemies or cavaliers with a Horseslayer. And there is Point Blank Volley, it has higher might than Hunter’s Volley so you can more consistently kill things without relying on crit, and it can be used in any class. She has Battalion Desperation, which is good to safely attack and one round an enemy with her high speed. For classes she does well in any melee class that she can get into. Her strength in Lances and Riding inclines her to be a cavalier. She’s one of the best Bow Knights because of Point Blank Volley, and her high speed. She makes a great Falcon Knight, again because of her speed, she can double a lot of those Maddening enemies with Darting Blow and a Speed Ring. Other miscellaneous details. She gets extra might from supporting with Alois so her can be a good back up for her as an adjutant. The stats from Sauin Militia isn’t the best, but it does have Poisoned Arrows, which is a great gambit. Her only real downside is her middling strength where she can get strength screws at times, but other than that she’s great. My rating: 9.1/10. Can’t really go wrong with this girl.

Marianne is a pretty versatile unit, she can do well in a bunch of class. She starts of as your Golden Deer healer, but can she do more than just be a dedicated healer. She has strong combat arts in Soulblade and Frozen Lance. Soulblade doing more damage off of her Resistance is nice because her Res growth is high. Then Frozen Lance comes off of higher might Lances. Beast Fang from Blutgang is pretty strong too. For spells she has Physic and Silence in her Faith list. Thoron is nice from her Reason list. Unfortunately she is neutral in Reason, so getting those higher ranks take a while. Most of her other spells have low base accuracy so taking a while to get Reason Level 5 hurts, of course there is Hit+20 from mastering Archer if you want to do that. And I really like Edmund Troops, giving +40 Hit. She probably won’t be the one equipping it, but it’s nice to have. For classes she does well in a bunch of them, even some that are rated lowly. Her standard line is Bishop, heal and hit hard with her combat arts. Mortal Savant isn’t too bad with Swordfaire for her Soulblade. Holy Knight is pretty cool, extra damage on Aura. She has really good Res so she can tank and get use out of Dark Flier’s Transmute skill. Then she can also get Uncanny Blow from Valkyrie. You can also use Falcon Knight for the Lancefaire with Frozen Lance. I’m now getting into how of a great if a Dancer she is. Thoron, Physic, and a strength in riding for Mov+1, she’s great. A downside to her is as I mentioned neutral in Reason, but that’s minor. Her crest is like Felix’s, but it is a minor creat so it doesn’t activate often. It will rarely active when she’s chipping away with a Levin Sword or Arrow of Indra(curse this thing for not being more accessible). My Rating: 7.7/10. Marianne in Heroes when?

Ah yes the gremlin, even when she gets taller than Hilda still a gremlin. So Lysithea is a very notorious character in this game for her nuking potential. Her magic growth is really high and her speed and skill are pretty good, but everything else is kind of low. She can deal heavy chip early on, and can eventually one round or just one shot many enemies. She learns the Soulblade combat art through a budding talent in swords, and this is a pretty strong attack coming off of her high magic. The issue is her Res growth is low so she doesn’t get as much as some other characters get out of it, and she has to get close to the enemy, which might be risky at times. Her minor Charon crest can boost the damage, but again really risky. Strangely she has a strength in authority, but out side of getting good magical battalions quickly, she doesn’t get any support skills from it, which is fine. Her spell list is excellent. She has Warp for support, effective damage in Seraphim and Dark Spikes, and strong spells like Luna and Hades. Her personal battalion gives +8 Magic, which is great for her to hit harder, or to allow another mage to be better. She has the major Gloucester crest, so she will quite often gain a +5 to her magical damage. For classes she wants either Gremory or Dark Knight. In lower difficulties she hits hard enough or is fast enough to one round a lot of enemies, but in Maddening she probably just misses out on getting kills that aren’t from Dark Spikes’ effective damage. Defiant Magic from Gremory is pretty decent at her to help her one shotting potential in a this case. She makes excellent use of Thysus/ Caduceus Staff because of her low bulk, she can chip enemies safely. She can be decent in the DLC Valkyrie and Dark Flier, however the big issue with Dark Flier is that it doesn’t have Dark Tome faire for her to make use of. My Rating: 8/10. She falls off with her damage in Maddening, otherwise I’d give her a 9, but she’s an offensive mage that is paramount at her role.

Good ol Iggy. Ignatz is a pretty decent unit, my favorite out of the Archer gang. His personal skill is Hit+20, so he will land his attack. As a natural Archer he has a strength in Bows so you can double up on Hit+20 and mitigate most of the Bow range penalty. No weakness in Axes so getting Death Blow isn’t too much of a hassle. He has a strength in Authority so that lets him get access to strong battalions early on like Leicester Mercenaries from his paralogue, and Indech Sword Fighters. He gets some nice combat arts. There is Break shot that hits from 3 spaces and lowers foe’s defense, so this is good for chipping and helping another unit to finish off a foe. Ward Arrow inflicts silence, but you have to get so close to the enemy compared to the Silence spell, so this will rarely be useful imo. Haze Slice is whatever, his strength is kind of low and you’re better off using Break Shot. He also learns a bunch of Rallies so he can support his allies pretty well. Raphael and him give each other extra might from supports, so they help with each other’s damage output. For classes he is great as a Sniper. Hunter’s Volley lets him delete things. And he can use support gambits like Impregnable Wall and Retribution to help out his allies. Other classes that are decent are Assassin and Bow Knight, but in Maddening he’ll have a hard time being anything but a Rally bot in those classes. My Rating: 6/10. He provides great support to the team and Sniper does what it does.

Raphael is a pretty decent unit, but he doesn’t really stand out until later in the game. He has pretty high HP and good defense, so he can take most hits, but he’s slow and will probably get doubled. His personal skill is basically useless. He has a strength in axes so getting into Brigand isn’t too much effort, but to get Hit+20 from Archer will take some time because of his bow weakness. He doesn’t get too many great combat arts, and that’s my biggest issue with him compared to other Brawlers. Monster Crush can deal heavy damage to monsters, but Death Blow with Gauntlets out damages it soon enough. He gets Rally Strength to help out his allies. Unlike Caspar and Felix he doesn’t have a flaw in Authority, so he can get good battalions to help him out sooner than they do. From his paralogue Leicester Mercenaries is pretty good. He and Ignatz give each other extra might from supporting each other, and you get Hilda with him in Golden Deers, so that helps with his damage output. For classes Grappler and War Master are excellent classes. Death Blow and Fierce Iron Fist is a delete button. In War Master, War Master’s Strike is another delete button, and Quick Reposte makes him a dependable tank. In low difficulties his Gauntlet attacks should be able to one round most things early on, and he can Mace Armored units. My Rating: 4/10. He needs some attention to be good, but he can get the job done.

They actually gave him extra movement, I kinda theory crafted that Areadbhar would have something like armor stride, but they made an inheritable skill instead. And he can kind of check those special spamming mage teams in AR, he just needs Distant Ward, and someone to deal with Brave Ike. Kinda cool to see the 3H artist in Heroes now.

Right so Lorenz is a pretty mediocre unit. He has pretty good HP growth, but everything else is mid. In Maddening he can be an okay 3rd magic user, he has the bulk to take some hits compared to your other mages. Recover is a nice healing spell to have, and he learns Ward, but I haven’t raised his Faith higher than C in any play through. His Frozen Lance can do pretty decent damage, but it’s hard for him to one shot most things. He gets hard hitting spells like That Ragnarok and Agnea’s Arrow; he won’t be doubling much, but he can do some nice chip. The the one major benefit from him is his paralogue. Here you get the amazing Thyrsus, and his battalion is pretty nice with its balanced boosts, not to mention that it is probably the most trivial map to clear. He has gets extra might from supporting Ferdinand, but they only get to B rank, and really he’ll be the adjutant for Ferdie. For classes he’s best going as either a Warlock, Dark Bishop, or both, then getting into Dark Knight. You’ll probably have S rank reason on him at this point, or even Thysus/ Caduceus Staff, so he can safely chip enemies and Canto out of there. My Rating: 4/10

It’s time for Killda, I mean Hilda. She’s pretty strong, being able to chunk any enemy. Her personal skill grants make allies extra might, so a lot of her golden deer friends can benefit from this, which is very useful in early game Maddening. She has a strength in axes, so Brigand is a natural choice. Going into Pegasus Knight is really good too. Her budding talent in heavy armor lets her get weight -3 relatively quick and she can be a decent Armor Knight if you want. Her biggest flaw is her low dexterity, especially with axes, but she can get Hit +20 to patch it up. With the high might of axes, Spike does a lot of damage. Apocalyptic Flame from Freikrugel is a nice delete button. Shatter Slash with seal speed can be nice to debuff monsters. You get Gonreil Valkyries from her paralouge, and it is one of the best battalions. Too bad she has a flaw in authority so she needs a lot of focus on training authority to be able to equip it. For classes Wyvern Lord is too good, Falcon Knight is fine too. Her good speed and strength growth lets her use the class very well. Again her authority is bad so she won’t realistic be able to get stuff like Cichol Wyvern Co. Sucks that she can’t get into War Master, because that would be great on her as well. She can probably be a decent dancer, she learns Bolting for the wide range Linked Attack bonus and her personal skill is good for support. My Rating: 7.6/10. A little bonus for being best friends with Marriane.

The man with the scheme. As one of the lord characters Claude has pretty good base stats. Hilda can give him more might from her personal skill and from support bonus. So as an archer or dodge tank he does pretty good damage. He has strengths in Bow, Flying, and a budding talent in Axes so he already has aptitude for the things that are meta. His personal class is pretty cool and has strong utility from being a flier. He has pretty decent combat arts. 2 of them are effective against monsters, so if he wants to finish one off without risking a counter attack he can do that. Enclosed is really good, especially with his Flying class to hold an enemy still. Fallen Star can nuke things then gives him invulnerability from one attack during enemy phase, so that can help with moving your guys forward and not needing to turtle too much. Battalion Desperation can be good to avoid counter attacks from other archers in Maddening, since they have pretty good bulk to not die from swords without sword faire. For classes his Wyvern Master/ Barbarossa are really great, they are very flexible and can let Claude do a lot of things. Paired with his personal battalion that has a ranges AoE gambit, you can get out of many oppressive situations in the game. Before he gets those he can function as a Sniper, Assassin, or Wyvern Rider. It sucks that he can’t get Darting Blow, that would make him a lot better in maddening, but he should double just fine in hard mode. His personal skill gains Pass, which augments his play style of doing whatever he wants. My Rating: 9/10. Really solid and flexible and unit.