ApocaLips

The DLC battalions are largely very good. I don’t know wtf the above poster is talking about. The three Nuvelle servants come early, are all C rank, and have stat totals that crush the other C rank battalions other than the battalions the lords come with in part 2. In particular, one has +8 str with +10 hit and crit, while the other has +8 mag and +10 crit and avoid. Both have +1 def and +7 res. That’s comparable to the best of the endgame battalions. What this means is characters with authority boons get an even bigger stat boost early game, and characters with authority banes (e.g., Felix, Hapi) have perfectly acceptable endgame options that aren’t too difficult to qualify for, which does a lot to offset what would otherwise be a notable weakness. They pull a ton of weight, and the two with focused stats should both see heavy use. As to the battalions obtained through the dlc paralogues, they’re also generally good. Hapi’s has stats competitive with the other endgame magic-based battalions (+8 mag, +10 hit and crit), and will likely make the cut on someone. Constance’s also has good stats and is the only flying battalion with a magic focus, meaning it’s an automatic pick if you make anyone a dark flier, and a solid pick at any rate. Both have AoE gambits as well which is nice. Balthus’s has the highest boost to both str and mag in the game, so it’s another auto-pick if you have a mixed unit. Even if you don’t, it still gives a solid +7 to whichever stat you’re using, plus a really well rounded boost to both defenses (+5), making it an attractive option for tanks or units that need a little help defensively that still want offense. Yuri’s is the only one I don’t regularly use, as +5 to str and mag is pretty mediocre, but the gambit can be good. Anna’s is also pretty niche but an upgrade to the E rank stride battalion on purely support units if you get their authority high enough. For non-dlc battalions, there are a few key gambits (the AoE dance, stride, retribution, a few others) to look out for, then you want the best stats you can get for your authority rank. Battalions to look out for include Fraldarius Soldiers (great stats), all 3 of the battalions that come with your lord unit in part 2, Gautier Knights (good stats plus stride), Blue Lion Dancers/Opera Co Volunteers (AoE dance gambit), and Indech Sword Fighters/Black Eagle Pegasus Co (good stats plus retribution).

There’s nothing to address here other than to note how amusing it is that you consider the statement “Your ratings are very off” to be “attacking,” and that you continue to demand a level of explanation to your arbitrary satisfaction when you’ve yet to provide any reasoning or analysis yourself. If you don’t want to address content within the same page as your posts, even when they are laid out for you again on a silver platter, that’s your prerogative. Just don’t be surprised when others give your assessments essentially no weight.

1) no it’s not. A characterization of data isn’t evidence. 2) I’ve already given plenty of points on this. For example, one of my posts from a page ago is copied below. You responded to only like a third of it with a bad point about Yuri’s boons and banes and haven’t addressed the rest. There’s plenty more from me and others if you actually care to look and discuss, but it seems you’d rather spout out random letters without giving a basis and then attack people when they disagree. ———————— Hapi for example is an excellent alternative to Lindhardt - she’s got mostly the same great faith list (physic, warp) but with a much, much better reason list (particularly banshee and death) and access to multiple good endgame classes (gremory, dark flier) that Lindhardt would kill for. You also don’t need to expend any resources recruiting her. All of this in exchange for an authority bane and not having a Faith boon - that slows down her access to physic and warp a bit, but I still usually get warp by chapter 8 or 9. She may displace him in a lot of runs. Similarly, I’m starting to greatly prefer Constance to all other combat mages. About 4.5 shots of bolting on average plus the best rescue user in the game (thanks to an excellent magic growth, as well as generally not being a shit unit) gives her a combination of power and utility that’s unmatched by anyone else. It’s almost as if she gets to just remove any 4-5 units from the map - not even lysithea as dark knight with Thyrsus has that kind of flexibility with her combat. She starts off fine with decent bases, gets to A rank reason pretty quickly if you invest a bit, and can make due with Thyrsus during the gap. She also doesn’t have the lull during the advanced class stage that other mages have because bolting and rescue offset the low move, and she generally gets a ton out of being a warlock (extra boltings, tomefaire). Yuri also seems great, with a growth spread comparable to Petra and Leonie, but again without the need to meet recruitment requirements. He then gets a hero relic, which pairs with his major crest for solid damage reduction as Felix’s does with his aegis shield. I usually give it to Yuri for that reason, and the relic also basically makes him a mounted unit in non-mounted classes, giving him the flexibility to use low-requirement classes like Sniper while gunning for authority rank, which tends to effectively put him way ahead on stats for a huge chunk of the game.

This portion of the chain goes back to a comment I previously made, not your list. If you’re going to make a bad technical argument, at least make sure it applies. Okay? The logic is still faulty. A lot of the female mages don’t want the class for one reason or another, and still more would just prefer Bishop. I already explained a chunk of my reasoning in this thread. You’ve yet to provide any response - you instead just slapped letter grades onto them. The ball’s in your court. I can’t respond to your rationale when I don’t have it other than to comment that the result seems very off. If this is a recurring issue, maybe it’s the rules that are a problem.

Trickster is ass. You should take a closer look, the tl;dr is sniper or dancer. I’ve tried both, they’re amazing. Yuri as a Sniper basically makes him a bowknight without the terrain problems and with hunter’s volley, and as a dancer with his authority boon he’s basically knight ring reyson but way, way tankier. And since he doesn’t need to grind toward master class requirements, he can pump authority early, giving him his choice of amazing stats or utility. All of this with a growth spread comparable to Leonie/Petra, who are supposed to be balanced around not having crests. Oh, and by the way, he also gets deadeye and has the highest strength growth among those who do. If your answer to all of this is “well, he can’t be one of the 3-5 wyverns on the team,” smh. FYI, in practice Dark Flier is being overrated. The best combat mages don’t really want it (lysithea for example doesn’t get a tomefaire out of it, Constance doesn’t need it thanks to bolting, Hubert can’t get it), which basically means you’re trading uses and possibly healing from bishop/gremory on warp/physic users, or a shot of meteor for Dorothea, just for flight - which only lets you get subpar combat units into combat more often. Not great. Also its stats are ass. As for your ratings of the dlc units - I thought you said you haven’t used them? Your ratings are very off. Hapi has the best spell list in the game hands down, Constance comes online way earlier than most mages and is a ridiculous bolting machine through endgame, and Balthus is pretty close to dedue early game, but with way better availability and a better endgame. Also, there’s zero chance they should be the same across all four routes. For example, BE and Church have access to Lindhardt by default, who steps on Hapi’s toes quite a bit since he has almost the same faith list with a faith boon, and Hubert already has Banshee for the early game, so her stock goes down there. On the two routes that otherwise would have to recruit Lindhardt to access that faith list (and can’t get Hubert at all, let alone have both by default), she’s much better.

If you’d look at the builds that people are discussing for him in this thread and the thread about best classes for the DLC units, you’d see that his proficiencies are far from a hinderance for him.

That’s a non-answer and again entirely unproductive. I happen to agree with you that War Cleric is a shit class, you shouldn’t put anyone in it, and putting Constance in that class is a phenomenal waste of her capabilities. But the topic at hand is who makes the best one, not should you use it. I’m sure you can understand that there are some people who want to try new content, even if it isn’t necessarily optimal, and thus want to discuss who would be a good fit for that new content. Picking at pieces of posts to make a point unrelated to the discussion isn’t a good use of anyone’s time, including yours.

Sounds fun, but you eventually got there so no need. Huh? The new classes are only available at level 20+.

Okay, then who do you think is the best War Cleric, and why? It’s not productive to respond as you did without making any effort to engage with the topic at hand.

I’m not missing my own point, lol. If you can take a break from trying to tell everyone how wrong they are, you might see that what I’m saying is that the existence of certain new units may stand to radically shake up the tier list because they bring similar benefits to units you’d otherwise need to spend time and resources recruiting. So they could affect the relative rankings of more than just themselves because they change the calculus as to opportunity cost. For example, the first post in this thread ranks Lindhardt at B+ in BL because of the spells he brings to the table but noting that he’s hard to recruit. With Hapi in the mix bringing the same spells and having no recruitment requirements, it obviously changes the math on whether Lindhardt is still worth the effort and thus should keep his spot. A similar thing to a lesser degree is going on with Leonie and Petra compared to Yuri, and Constance compared to any other combat mage you might consider. The benefits that you’re noting for Balthus let him just slot right in, except maybe in BL where he might push Dedue down. That’s why it’s irrelevant.

You can’t recruit Dedue. Again, he’s not displacing units that people tend to rank highly spend resources recruiting.

He’s not knocking out recruits from other houses that people are ranking highly, as the other three are.

I wonder how the new dlc characters affect these lists. Hapi for example is an excellent alternative to Lindhardt - she’s got mostly the same great faith list (physic, warp) but with a much, much better reason list (particularly banshee and death) and access to multiple good endgame classes (gremory, dark flier) that Lindhardt would kill for. You also don’t need to expend any resources recruiting her. All of this in exchange for an authority bane and not having a Faith boon - that slows down her access to physic and warp a bit, but I still usually get warp by chapter 8 or 9. She may displace him in a lot of runs. Similarly, I’m starting to greatly prefer Constance to all other combat mages. About 4.5 shots of bolting on average plus the best rescue user in the game (thanks to an excellent magic growth, as well as generally not being a shit unit) gives her a combination of power and utility that’s unmatched by anyone else. It’s almost as if she gets to just remove any 4-5 units from the map - not even lysithea as dark knight with Thyrsus has that kind of flexibility with her combat. She starts off fine with decent bases, gets to A rank reason pretty quickly if you invest a bit, and can make due with Thyrsus during the gap. She also doesn’t have the lull during the advanced class stage that other mages have because bolting and rescue offset the low move, and she generally gets a ton out of being a warlock (extra boltings, tomefaire). Yuri also seems great, with a growth spread comparable to Petra and Leonie, but again without the need to meet recruitment requirements. He then gets a hero relic, which pairs with his major crest for solid damage reduction as Felix’s does with his aegis shield. I usually give it to Yuri for that reason, and the relic also basically makes him a mounted unit in non-mounted classes, giving him the flexibility to use low-requirement classes like Sniper while gunning for authority rank, which tends to effectively put him way ahead on stats for a huge chunk of the game.

Warlock has tomefaire but only +3 magic compared to Gremory’s +5. So we’re really talking about 3 damage vs +1 move and an extra use of rescue. YMMV but I’d give the nod to Gremory. Agreed that dark flier is being overrated on her. Access to lots of bolting diminishes the flying utility, and she’ll never be as good of a combat unit as, say, lysithea.

Disclaimer: recommendations for hard, not maddening. Haven’t tried it yet, just getting back into the game after a hiatus. Yuri: sniper or dancer. As mentioned above, you really want to leave fetters on Yuri. As we learned with Felix, the pavise/aegis effect is very useful when paired with a major crest, and free canto means you aren’t forced to go mounted. Altogether, that makes sniper have fewer drawbacks than usual compared to bow knight, and you get better stats and access to hunter’s volley in return. Really nice. Dancer with canto and extra move also seems awesome, especially with the extra tankiness from sword avoid. Balthus: war master/grappler/wyvern rider. I don’t think this unit makes a ton of sense if you aren’t trying to leverage his crest. War master gives high crit, grappler for the 3x attack art, and wyvern rider for mobility. Constance: gremory. Her crest lets her really stretch those extra bolting uses, giving nice synergy and access to a niche as premiere artillery with access to rescue. She doesn’t really have the stats to excel as a pure combat class such as dark knight or dark flier in the way that lysithea does, so I’d leave her to do what she does uniquely and give thyrsus to someone else. Hapi: gremory. She feels like a way better version of lindhardt - physic and warp access, but also with a better reason list. Lindhardt would kill for gremory and she gets it. The class doubles her great faith list and some important spells from her reason list. Again, combat stats aren’t stellar, better to leave that to someone else. Anna: don’t use her much, but trickster seems fine.

Caspar - WL and war master are truly both reasonable options here depending on what you need. M Lysithea - dark knight. She’s a combat unit, give her a horse so she can do her job. Also comes with extra damage to boot. It’s IMO clearly better than giving her one more shot of warp, and it’s especially nice to be able to warp + canto forward. Leonie - she’s mostly the same as Petra and will be great at whatever class your team might need. Her real strength is her versatility to slot into whatever class is needed. Slight nod to bow knight here because point blank volley ensures you can delete almost anything that needs to die.

I haven’t finished my Edelgard run, but it’s pre-timeskip, so I assumed you only need one of the two. Is this paralogue an exception?

Assassin is an easy switch to bring her movement to acceptable levels. Just a few ranks in bows away. She’s a good unit. She’s also very straightforward, which is probably why she doesn’t get a lot of talk. There’s also only so much space for sword units in this game.

I’m surprised to see people talking up Ashe across multiple threads. His growths are mostly the same as Bernadetta’s, who is a unit many find practically unusable. 35 str is about as bad as it gets. His personal is not really that useful. You can buy chest keys at the prep screen in this game in every chapter except for chapter 13. And for that chapter, he will either automatically deploy or automatically not deploy depending on your route, so it’s not like there’s much of an option there. And for most chapters with chests, you usually need to split your team up to be efficient, so you’re going to load up your team with keys regardless. The comparisons between WL Ashe and Claude are pretty weird. I feel like I’m stating the obvious here, but since it doesn’t seem to be acknowledged, Claude’s unique class has bowfaire, giving him a big edge in damage over WL Ashe even before factoring Claude’s superior str growth. Also, Claude doesn’t have to qualify for his class and has numerous other advantages, eg inherent pass, a decently useful crest, etc. On BE Edelgard, I recruit him for his paralogue (+1 move consumable) and that’s it. Otherwise, bench and forget. Felix is a much better bowknight on BL, and plenty of other units are better WLs.

I’d do it even with an axe weakness. You only need D+ to have a decent shot at promotion to brigand. Also, the only character I can think of in this boat is Bernadetta, and she really needs the help for damage.

His shield also makes him exceptionally durable. I don’t think anyone has cracked the numbers, but in my experience it has about a 50% chance to proc on any attack and halves damage, on top of what I think is the highest stat total of any shield (6 def 3 res). The weight isn’t hard to offset with weight skills and his high str. Don’t need a second character to trigger the paralogue, and it’s available somewhat into part 1. Great unit. Also pretty easy to recruit for any Byleth running swords.

Err, no, the ‘trade the relic’ consideration isn’t at play here. Both relics restore significantly more HP on Ferdinand, and they synergize especially with Ferdinand’s superior passive. It’s not the same situation as the lance of ruin or any other relic where all you get is an okayish combat art, and any unit with a crest can use the weapon with roughly the same level of efficiency. It’s closer to giving felix’s shield to someone else - you can do it, but they won’t perform anywhere near as well with it. Sure, Sylvain is free for female byleths, but Ferdinand only requires a few gifts to get to C support and D+ in heavy armor (which I almost always have since I’m either trying to qualify for armor knight for the base 12 defense or to pick up weight -3).

Kinda off topic, but I really disagree with this. Ferdinand has a noticeably better top end thanks to two relics and IMO a much better personal skill. He uses lance of ruin just as well as Sylvain does - swift strikes is going to outdamage the unique combat art the vast majority of the time. I do recruit Sylvain, but I recruit several units I have no plans to use for their relics.

In an effort to put this thread back on track, I usually do hit S+ with a few units near the very end of the game without sacrificing anything. For me, usually the lords and Byleth will get it in the last month or so of the 22-chapter routes. Remember that setting two different skills as goals will net more total exp than setting one skill as a goal. You should have two set for most of the game. Except for when you’re gunning for promotion requirements, it helps to always have your main weapon set (a good investment anyway, the prowess skills are good), and have your second be authority or any side skill you’re trying to pick up (heavy armor for weight-3, riding for move+1, etc). For Byleth in particular, during the last stretch of the game, once you finish paralogues, you’re going to have 10 activities per explore session. Once you’ve finished feeding your team to restore motivation, there’s not much use for these activity points other than leveling byleth’s skills, so that’s a chance to crank out his/her weapon skill. You definitely do NOT want to wait on qualifying for promotions or hitting other key skill tiers, so if you’re in crunch time for those, it’s well worth switching even if it means you might not get S+ in the last chapter. Authority also takes precedence, as +5 damage is significantly worse than the numerous stats the good battalions give you. IMO, S+ rank is worthwhile as a side goal for physical weapons and reason. You’re going to want S in those anyway, so keeping them at pace is a good idea as long as you’re not delaying promotions, authority, or certain important skills. S+ in faith gives you white tomefaire which no one wants all that badly. S+ in flying/riding/heavy armor gives null weakness, which sounds nice but really isn’t good enough to warrant the investment, especially considering the 0 weight shields that do the same thing.

Don’t take the bait. This guy is saying it’s easy to hit S+ but that it’s also hard to hit C/B authority with Felix (which I do without problem every run, lol), and apparently hasn’t even read what most of the battalions do. Just ignore and move on, this conversation isn’t going anywhere useful.