LoneRecon400

While you could definitely argue Reese for A Tier, I don't think Furniture is a point in his favor at all. Most of the benefits he gets are either niche (bird figurine, +13 hit in Forests), not great (Hope, +3 Avoid), or complete memes (Deer Mount, +3 Crit Avoid) for prices that completely rip you off. Armsthrift ain't exactly great since it only has a flat 20% of working, so it really doesn't boost durability that much. Extra Gram uses are good, but I wouldn't say they're worth 22k worth of gold. About the only good pieces are the Tapestry and potentially the Vase depending on who you want to recurit. And I can't deny, those can be pretty great. Still, Reese just doesn't have good combat in general outside his Prfs. His bulk is actually rather low at a base 26 HP and 5 Def, with promotion only bumping it up to 29 and 7 Def. That's what less than what someone like Arthur starts with. Combined with his relatively low skill rates and high brackets, I'd actually say Reese is more on the bottom half of the list when it comes to combat. He at least makes up for it utility though.

Flourish is pretty good since it just adds a flat +33% chance to injure. You can also combine it with an Estoc to get 2 chances at wounding a target with high accuracy, which is neat. Maim is a meme. It does nothing when the enemy is wounded, and it only gives around ~40% at best chance to cripple. It's also completely random as to when it procs, so it's pretty useless. Blizzard can run into the problem where it does too much damage and can cause issues with one shotting without mercy. It also can't be repaired for one repair stone use like the Bolt Knife can. It does have some pretty good applications with wounding riddel since he has a ring to resist the wind damage. But that's really the most note worthy case I could find for it. But yeah. Crippling is definitely a dice roll that you can lose out on. It's just the rewards are so good that it's still worth the gamble even if they don't work out.

Yeah, that's why getting the Bolt Knife and Aperion/Lighting are pretty important if you're going for Captures. There's no consistency elsewise. And being able to capture enemies like Riddle for 12k gold is really nice. As are some non bounty captures like Empire boss in Food Supply who has a knight sword/shield and 3 Vulnearies.

They do work, it's just the base chance is really low it doesn't make a difference. The way cripple works is it that it divides the hp the enemy has at the end of combat with how much they had at the start of combat. It then takes that amount and subtracts by 75% and then halves it. So if an Enemy has 10 HP and you do 9 Damage: 9/10 = (90% - 75%) = (15% * 50%) = 7.5% ...You have a 7.5% chance of cripple, or 15% chance using a double cripple weapon. You can see how bad that is. What wounding does is reduce that 75% chance to instead 30% and removes the 50% multipler. So if you instead attacked a wounded enemy for the same amount: 9/10 = (90% - 30%) = 60% So now instead you have 60% chance to cripple instead and lighting will have a guaranteed cripple chance. TL:DR: less than 12.5% to cripple at best unwounded. Around a 60% chance to cripple at best wounded. 2x cripple weapons guarantee cripple if they do 80% of the enemies health while wounded.

Impossible Dream is actually one of the better maps for Owen. The dragons will berserk after attacking once, so it's important to dispatch them as quickly as possible. Holy is really useful as it counters their high evasion and deals a pretty good amount damage with the Divine Barce. It also really shows off the difference in magic between Izerna and Owen. Actually the opposite occurs in Heathen God. Owen transforms early if you do get his happiness high enough, but he still follows his 20 turn rule if he doesn't. You really need to wound enemies to have a decent chance at crippling. If you don't, you're pretty much stuck with a less than a 10% chance to cripple, even going from full health to 1 HP. It's why the Bolt Knife is real important. Cripple chance is also based on current hp. So even if Percy deals 4 damage to a wounded 5 HP enemy, it's still a guaranteed cripple with lighting.

Some thoughts: -Izerna does not need to be promoted to promote Dean. Just her being alive is enough. -Thaddy has some pretty great utility with Provoke. Not only can he really mess with the AI using hide, he can also use Evasion to boost his avoid to 80 at base for 2 turns. Combined with Bolt Knife (42% chance to wound) and the fact that enemies with 0 hit on him will still attack while provoked, he becomes really good at wounding bounties and other capture targets. Steal is also pretty nice with a Estoc Flourish from Arthur. -Owen's 20 turn limit can actually be a boon in some cases. If he transforms during escape map, rather than being crippled if he doesn't escape, he returns to base safe and sound. That's pretty nice compared to izerna who is just spending those last turns walking to the escape point. Theres' also nothing about his recruitment that's particularly complicated. Just use him enough and he joins without any issue. 81 base hit and 21 atk with fire also ain't that bad. He two shots the armor Knights in Children's Hero, which is pretty nice with Provoke. -Percival has a niche in being able to guarantee cripple as well as consistently boost his hit rate. Lighting doubles cripple chance. So if you drop 80% of a wounded target's current HP, that's a 100% guarantee to cripple a foe which is easy to do with mercy. Really helps aganist capture targets with Arrowbane. Him and Enid also have a +4 hit support that activates whenever they are in 2 tiles of another. So if you combined that with a Tiger Brace, Reese's Commander, and Enid's Charisima, that's 96 base hit in his join chapter alone. It's not the most practical thing ever since deployment slots are pretty contested. But just the fact he can zap Theodore pretty consistently is pretty cool. -Marcel ain't great. L Shields are quite exensive and have very limited durability, draining funds pretty fast. He also reaches a 100% guard rate pretty easily, which can cause enemies to ignore him if they deal 0 damage to him. He also can't cross cliffs at all until level 15. And to top it off, Zewihandler is only a 20 rank prf sword. So anyone can use it once they hit level 20. -Daoud can be interesting if you get him to promotion. At that point he can reach a 100 hit with Commander and a 60 hit axe like a Battle saw. He can do stuff like tank two lance charges and guarante one shot a lance knight on 9-m Really takes a long time get there and really isn't worth it, but it's just funny turning him into the world's strongest man. -Adel has much more of a problem with his Spear Rank rather than Shield Rank. Having only a 30% Spear Growth Rate means he needs on average 400 attacks to reach 30 Spear Rank before level ups. That's a bit much. And then he promotes to a worse movement type. Kaga really was scared of Vantage. -Arthur can strangely enough be called a growth unit. With tight brackets and high promo gains, he's guaranteed to be as strong as Ward by as soon as level 12. At that level he is guaranteed to have 34 HP - 11 Str - 9 Def compared to Ward's 38 HP - 11 Str - 10 Def. And those are his bottom brackets, he can easily have +2 over those. Also you haven't lived until you see a Level 30 Arthur skewer someone using Fauchad with Desperation. It is glorious. ...And that's about it. While I don't necessarily agree with some placements, (Aegina too high, Sherlock too low) those are some of my main impressions looking at your list.

I always found healing to not be useful by the time advanced classes show up since you can simply negate damage with gambits, avoid it entirely, or defeat the enemy before they even have a chance to strike. Spells can have increased range, but Marianne struggles to one shot when only advance class enemies show up and chip damage ain't really needed by that point. You could just master Archer instead of Valkyrie for accuracy if you wanted less skill rank investment. C Bows only takes 6 weeks to train even with a bane with Sauna, or 4 weeks for D+ if you don't mind rigging for certifications. Fighting in Archer ain't too bad for her with the Lighting axe or the Bolt Axe. Annette also doesn't really need Wyvern Lord to function. She can stay in Wyvern Rider just fine, so she really only needs B Axes, C Bows, and C Flying, which is pretty economical in terms of skill exp. She don't even need Nuvelle for the majority of the game as Lightining Axe and Dust is pretty overkill most of the time. It's really only for endgame where enemy HP sky rockets that she needs it. Wyvern Annette isn't some game breaking option that's going to outpace Dimitri, but it's a decent high mobility option that can delete armors at range while also capable of deleting some enemies other units have a hard time with. I'd say it's better than Valkyrie Marianne since I value the movement substantial more, but it's admittedly arguable.

I posted an example of an average Mag Wyvern Annette one shoting endgame enemies with 100% Hit Rates while also having 8 movement and a 3 range attack option. I don't see how that's a scam considering even Lysithea can't one shot the War Masters on average. What would even be Annette's strength otherwise? Put in Gremory or Warlock? Being locked 4-5 movement with weak spells doesn't seem like it'd play to her strength.

I'm surprised you didn't have much success with Wyvern Annette but had success with Soul Blade Marianne. With Nuvelle Fliers, Annette is capable of straight up one shot enemies at Endgame. Not a whole lot of magic units can say that one. If you ever do try Maddening again though, I'd recommend focusing more heavily on support battalions. Like you mention how Dimitri is weak to balistas, but with the Sacred Shield Gambit you can nullify any attack that's not at 1 range. Support gambits and Dancers are some of the strongest tools you can use in this game, so it really pays off to abuse them even if their stats on the battalion or combat are not the greatest. Take Dedue for instance. You found him to be mediocore, but he could put in a ton of work as a Assassin using Vengence and Impregenable Wall. Vengence makes him capable of one shoting the majority of enemies while Stealth makes enemies not target him as long as he's not the only unit in range. Combined with Impregenable Wall making other units effectively invincible, you can probably see why this setup can be really good. Finding out powerful combinations like that is why I like playing through Maddening. Enemies are admittedly quite bloated in stats, but you have intreseting tools to play around with to make those stats a non issue.

It depends. Most maps either relied on a lot of player phase action that relied on one shoting the enemy with dual strikes or heavy enemy phase moments where most enemies attacked normally rather than use dual strikes. So Dual Striking wasn't that much of a issue. There were some maps were they were a problem though, such as the left side of Chapter 16, Ch 19 Life and Death Kitsune, and the Ch 26 reinforcement Sorcerers. But those issues were caused because I either lacked skills like Auras, mage killers, or both. Really stacking Defense made enemy dual striking a lot less threatening. That's mainly I how I got though most maps without any issues.

Alcryst ain't great at taking down corruputed wyverns, especially in his personal class. Like the Corruputed Wyverns in Ch 17 have 33 Defense and 57 HP. Even with his endgame stats, he'd only have 30 attack with a +2 Brave Bow. So while severely overleveled, he would do no damage against them without Luna and would require require 4 Luna procs to one round it. Even using something like a Silver Bow +1 would only result in 6 damage and 22 damage with Luna. So even if he gets a double Luna proc, he still wouldn't be able to one round them. When you can instead do things like one shot them with 100% Wrath Crits, have effectively 50 might on them with Sieglinde, or use Seraphim with Holy Stance++ to one round them, having to rely on Luna to do any meaningful damage aganist them is pretty lame. Though I will agree that he has no problem surviving them. Even if did, you could do something like Divine Pluse + Hortensia and have them use a fracture staff. With that skill she would have a near 90 hit rate against every wyrm in the game at base.

Veronica is really broken on her if go all in on Reprisal +. With 3 Seraph Robes, you can have her reach the High Preist HP Cap of 55. Combine that with Hp +15 and Hp Tonic, that'll add +37 Damage to every attack if you can get her to 1 HP, which is easy with Corrin's Fire Dragon Vein. At level 10/30 High Preist, Citrinne will have 36 Magic. Combined with a Ike Engraved Thoron +1 for 22 Might and Veronicas +5 Magic, that's 99 Attack. That is enough damage to one shot every enemy at Endgame except for Somborn. Now imagine that with Vantage. It's a rather asinine combination.

You still need to face the general group and berserker group together. I suppose you could just turtle them out all the way to Hero room. But I've never been a fan of turtling, especially when you don't have to. There's actually a strategy that can skip both the Hans Room and Sorc Room entirely, but likewise i'm not a fan of strategies that just skip sections maps entirely. There are a couple of strats of getting the Spy Shuriken. Typically the strategy is using Pass or Lunge and simply completing the map on the same turn as you get the chest to avoid fighting the room. There's also the other option of baiting the faceless away from the stoneborn with a very durable tank and then splitting the Stoneborn up, but that takes quite a while. The most unique strategy would have to be using Keaton though. Stoneborne in the room will attack anyone in their range, but they're stationary until the door is broken. So what you can do is just have Keaton get attacked by them and apply Grizzly Wounds from 5 tiles away until they only have 1 HP. Then you can open the door and easily sweep through them. It is quite the dumb strategy, but it's so dumb it warps around to being ingenious.

You can definitely get Citrinne to double without compromising other unit's Speed. A base Mage Knight Citrinne has 13 Speed and 6 Build. By using a Speed Tonic, Chaos Style, Byleth Covert Instruct, Spd +3, that's 26 Speed at base. That's enough to double most enemies in Corrins Paralogue at base, and can one round them pretty easily with Celica Engraved Bolganone at the recommended level. When the Corruped start showing up she becomes even better as she can rely on Seraphim. With the orbs from the free update, you can augment that spell to have an effective 30 might on all enemies in the lategame. Combined with its low weight it makes one rounding trivial for her so long as she can double. It can make Griffin a viable lategame class for her. There's also a niche in being able to use a mounted class as it allows for other mounted units to benefit from Bonded Shield. That can be very useful in taking use of Sigurd Engage bonus or Erika's Twin Strike.

Even if you didn't want to Kaze or Silas, you could still get both sol and ninja on units that are naturally bulkier than either such as Beruka, Corrin, Camilla, and whole plethora of kid combos that can out perform either units. No one goes through the Faceless room in Chapter 26 on Lunatic. They're 3 Stoneborn who deal 51 Attack that also have Seal Skills, Wary Fighter / Counter Magic, Poison Strike, and just as bulky as Generals. Faceless also have Poison Strike with Savage Blow with 52 HP and 31 Def. You're not getting the Spy Shuriken unless you have some esoteric strategies in mind.

Running is not an feasible solution considering there's two freeze staff maids that'll freeze anyone near the door. That means to run you need 4 units that are capable of surviving 49 attack generals in Attack Stance, one of which includes a brave lance. That's a big ask without defense stacking. Even if you could manage that, attacking at range from the hallway is not ideal considering it's in range of both Iago's staff range and the freeze maids. Most units are not going to be able to survive an attack while Hexed and/or Enfeebled without lots of investment. Enemy AI priorities dealing the most damage to units and does not account for undisplayed damage reduction like auras or personals. Its not hard to have a unit that's bulkier than a ninja, especially considering they're not accounting for 9 of Silas' Defense. I also dont even know how can consider the Spy Yumi as a legitimate strategy. If you don't consider cooking, how can you consider a strategy that 99% of players will never have acess to?

Only cleared out the initial enemies in the hallway for some Exp on Charlotte in case she needed to one shot enemies in endgame, but that turned out to be unnecessary. I could've cleared out the Faceless room by turtling and having corrin take the stoneborne hits in the center room to seperate them and the faceless. But that takes way too long for my liking and most of my units were already capped out. I seriously stand by that statement. On a run like this, Berserkers are pretty vital. Not only are they the ones dishing out the most damaging dual strikes, they're also pretty easily capable of being boosted into doubling range, arent affected as much by the Hexing Rod, and can obtain really accurate one shots on tricky enemies like ninja. Endgame would've been so much more of a hassle if I didn't have a unit who could one shot the Enfeeble maids. Outside of reclass shenanigans, Berserkers are the only ones who can do so.

How is Ike not impactful? Even putting aside the fact he can make anyone take hit that wouldve been elsewise be lethal for them, he can do things like make Fliers take normal damage from archers, one shot things with Great Aether, put out terrian hazards, and can enable units to safety utilize Wrath. All of those can be very valuable niches that can easily change the way you approach maps. There's no way Ike isn't one of the more impactful emblems in the game.

A lot of the later maps were pretty interesting. Like this was my first beating Chapter 21 without using any of the Dragon Vein. Doing the Right Side of Chapter 25 wthout Shelter in particular was quite the doozy. It's the entire reason why I raised Charlotte even though she was more of liability than anything else for a lot of maps and had to be fed 2 Arm Scolls to really be useful. Could've also probably done without shuriken breaker, but wanted to have some insurance. As for insights, knowing how the AI targets units and how it sometimes doesn't include blocking other enemies off was key for some areas like the top of Chapter 24. Also knowing how they don't account for Aura skills was required for strats such as luring the stoneborn away from someone it could combine to kill for Chapter 26. But if I had to say one thing, it'd be this: Berserkers are the strongest in the entre world.

Recently beat this challenge and figured I may as post it here. Here's a link to the playthrough. Be warned the gameplay will be a little rough until Chapter 13 which was when I started playing chapters in advance. It was a fun challenge outside a few chapters like 20, but it really goes to show how much Attack Stance falls off in the late game.

4 turns is more than enough to clear out the majority of maps easly, espically when accounting for engage pools. Even if they werent, you can easily refill their gauge in a single turn with a brave weapon and Dance/Dance of the Goddess. Dodging in Engage is pretty unreliable without the tools such as engravings or skill slots to make it work. And since those tools are finite, you're not going to waste them on someone who doesn't need them. Even if you wanted a unit in a bulky class, anyone can become that extermly easily. Like reclassing Veyle into a Great Knight gives her 41 HP and 28 Def at base. That's enough Defense to make some endgame enemies just ignore her outright since they deal 0 damage to her. In short, try actually using it before you make a judgement on it. From what you've written above, it seems like you haven't gotten to the point where you actually can even use him.

You don't even really need to do that. Just passively unlocking fragments from achievements is more than enough so long as you're not buying really expensive skills.

No, Ike enables anyone to tank with high enough bond. At max bond, he just passively provides +5 Def. Adding Ragnell and Resolve+ to the mix, that's +17 Def before even considering the 50% damage reduction. Put it this way. Veyle has a base 35 HP and 17 Defense. Endgame Bersekers deal 85 damage with Ukonvasara. With Hp +7 and Tonics, Veyle can potentially tank two hits to the face by something that should have well one shot her. It pales in comparison to Bonded Shield, but Ike can enable anyone to become pretty durable.

It's pretty easy to take out the Generals in 1 turn by attack stancing them with a hammer, as that'll only leave 2 Spear Generals left. Likewise there's, only two Tomahawk users. One of which comes very close to the door while the other can be attacked with a bulky unit which will still enable the other Berserkers to attack Silas, since enemy AI doesn't acknowledge aura skills. It's not like she's essential to this anyways. You can add more Def from other sources, such as Supports, Food, or a more Defensive Pair Up such as Great Knight or General. Even just using a sword would add effectively 4 defense. But tell me, if you're not stat stacking, what is your strategy for taking on the bottom room?

Sol is just an extra bonus to avoid needing to be healed. Defense Stacking is what truly enables Master Ninjas to juggernaut. Take the chapter 26 Berserkers for instance. They're some of the hardest hitting enemies in the game, dealing 54 Attack with their Silver Axes. There's a total of five of them that swarm anyone who enters the room. To provide an example, an average 20/18 Master Ninja Silas hovers around 37 HP and 24 Def along with 31 Spd and 27 Str. That may not seem like much, but that can be boosted to where he can one round all five Berserkers with a Iron Dagger. By adding: A Defense Tonic (+2), Rally Defense (+6), Wyvern Pair Up (+9), Defender (+10), Vow of Freindship (+13), Demoiselle w/ Inspiration (+17), Voice of Peace (+19), That equals to 43 Defense, with more ways to add Defense such as using a General pair up, Support bonuses, and Food. But we'll just use that number for reference. Using a Dagger adds effectively adds +2 attack and Def to those Berserkers, so Silas will be taking 13 damage a hit from each hit from a Silver Axe. That leaves him being 4 hit Ko'd, which when combined with the Dual Guage is enough to survive the 5 Berserkers being thrown at him. Now you may say that with any this much support any class will be able to survive, which is somewhat true. But no non-mage class will able to compete with the 1-2 range, as even with weapon triangle disadvantage Silas is easily capable of hitting the 49 Attack needed to one round them very easily. So he can enemy phase some of the toughest enemies in the game and deal with one of the most problematic sections of the game. And most enemies are a lot weaker than this. Like the Heroes in the same chapter only do effectively 36 damage with a Silver Sword, which does zero damage even without Aura Skills. TL:DR; Sol is just a bonus, stat stacking is what enables units like Silas to facetank 5 Berserkers in a single turn. Also yeah, offensive proc skills and dodging are pretty lame in most games.