LegendOfLoog

It just depends how many Aux battles you do. If you do a lot, you can probably get nearly as many skills as you want. If you're doing none, maybe 4 or 5 depending on the unit. Aux battles are basically side battles you can do on the weekends with your Activity Points.

Oh yeah, I just forgot about it. I’d probably just cut Provoke, move Canto to class skills, and have Staunch Shield as a mastery skill (maybe an improved version would make sense since he’s the OG).

Definitely like the Hubert and Catherine ones since they don't get full usage of their skill setups as is. This sounds fun, so I guess I'll throw a couple units I like into the ring: Stormcaller (Annette) Cataphract (Gilbert)

EO being 0 investment and Byleth's questionable magic capabilities have been mentioned already, but some other factors I can think of: EO is one of only a few classes that give a boost to Authority Skill XP, which makes reaching higher ranks of battalions quicker for better stats/gambits. And in conjunction with requiring less investment in other areas, EO can get high Authority very quickly compared to other class setups. Sacred Power isn't too bad either. I can't say I found much use for it on Hard, but if you do use EO on Maddening, the +3/-3 damage for adjacent allies is probably useful, or at least more so than Warding Blow. Both are not what I'd recommend, but I can see many more applications for EO than MS in general. Mortal Savant is pretty bad in general outside of a few edge cases, and that still applies to Byleth, imo.

The best option for F!Byleth is Wyvern Lord. Having a unit with fairly easy access to Death + Darting Blow is very helpful on Maddening, and Byleth is strong enough to get both by the time she certifies for an Advanced class. As always, flight and Canto helps out a lot as well. Assassin would help boost Lorenz’s Speed so he at least isn’t doubled, but once he promotes to Mortal Savant, he’ll lose 4 Speed and 30% of Speed growth. Lorenz isn’t a particularly fast or strong unit in the first place (not enough to double consistently), so his mixed offense will be fairly weak. You’re better off going full mage into Paladin with Frozen Lance (Dark Knight at the end optional). Ignatz’s ability to deal damage in the late game without Hunter’s Volley is questionable at best (even on Hard), so Death Blow + a Brave Combat Art is the way to go. Sniper is better, imo. I’d go Brigand -> Grappler for Raph and stay there. Raphael won’t quad very often if at all (maybe against beasts), so Grappler with Fierce Iron Fist is his most reliable way of dealing damage. He’s too slow to reliably tank against enemies, so I don’t think the armor -> Great Knight route will work well. Sylvain is best as a Paladin with Death Blow + Swift Strikes. Lancefaire helps quite a bit in securing one rounds, and having an 8 Move unit (eventually 9 with Move +1) who can ORKO anything in sight is super useful. I’d add that if you’re looking for more units, Cyril can be very good with proper investment. He learns Point-Blank Volley at C+ and joins with about a C rank in Axes and Bows, which makes him the first Brave Combat Art user that you get, and he has easy access to Death Blow.

I dunno, it's alright. I liked Marianne x Dimitri better. I used Caspar in the same way (leveled him enough to get the Scythe of Sariel and then benched), so it seems like your plan would work out.

I'm interested in playtesting if spaces are still available.

Yeah, they have an A-support.

Definitely recruit Marianne. The Dimitri support is great, and Marianne is a fairly versatile unit. She has good Reason and Faith spell lists if you want to go the typical mage route, or you can use Frozen Lance as a Paladin or Falcon Knight for a highly mobile OHKO machine on Player Phase. I prefer the latter because it's more fun, but either option works well, imo.

1. Not really a big concern. Assuming you recruit Ingrid, you have about 5 good flying Battalions, so you should be fine. 2. I haven’t had too much trouble with that, and I use F!Byleth as a flier pretty much every playthrough. Faculty Training is pretty effective, and Byleth naturally gets a lot of Skill XP from fighting more often. As for the roster, I wouldn’t use more than 12 units since you don’t really benefit from spreading out your XP, particularly on a mode that has fairly large XP penalties. I’d cut Mercedes since you don’t need two healers. Ingrid is also not necessary and isn’t that great imo, even if you wait to recruit her (I’d still do it to get Luin and her Battalion though). She’d be useful as an Adjutant to Sylvain or Felix though to boost their damage. I personally wouldn’t use Ignatz in the long run either. He’s really good early on for his accuracy and Rally Speed, but being stuck as a Sniper isn’t great, and he’s fairly weak as a Bow Knight. Probably best to just bench him once he starts falling off.

Yes

Eh, don’t worry too much. Hillary was up by 20 points there in 2016 in the polls leading up to the primary, but Bernie ended up winning by a point and a half. Biden’s average lead per Real Clear Politics is +22, so it’s pretty much the same scenario.

You could try Bow Knight Dimitri. It’s probably the second-best option for Dimitri since it gives him a lot of range and movement to utilize with his high offensive stats.

Sort of, but there are a few reasons I think it’s different from most other examples of team synergy. Siege magic is not only useful for the actual spell. A significant part of why it’s good is the ability to provide Linked Attacks and Gambit Boosts to your units without having to be anywhere near the target. Constance doesn’t provide her “peak” level of utility from this spell unless she’s in CF since Jeritza and Edelgard are exclusive to those routes. So to me, it’s more of a situation where she doesn’t get the full value of the spell unless you’re in CF, so naturally, the value of Constance’s Bolting should be higher in CF as a result. And Rescue on an actual good unit is fairly useful in either getting units out of a jam or speeding up maps by bringing units pursuing side objectives (chests, siege weapons, etc) back to the main force quickly. I found it pretty great personally, particularly in saving green units and safely eliminating threats, but your mileage may vary on that.

Fair enough, the Hapi part is based off team synergy, so it’s fine to disregard that. The Constance part isn’t, though. She’s the only mage who can use Rescue on CF. Her utility with Bolting is always better on CF because two of her support partners are exclusive to that route. Those bonuses are inherent to that route only, so I stand by rating her higher on CF than other routes.