ApocaLips

I’m going to say this a bit more forcefully - Felix’s personal is absolutely a blank by midgame. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply not paying attention. Even mid-tier battalions can offer more than +5 damage on top of numerous other benefits. Even with his authority weakness, you are going to want to raise authority to hit the B rank battalions (or at least take over one of the top tier C rank battalions). I do this every time I run Felix and it is not difficult - even glancing at the exp required makes clear that it’s significantly easier than hitting S+ in a favorable skill. On topic, if you’re running reasonably efficiently, S+ is not “easy” to get. And it’s not a matter of ease, it’s a question of opportunity cost. I usually get S+ in the main weapons of my byleth and lord unit (except edelgard) near the very last chapter because they have much relaxed class requirements and can thus afford to always be cranking up their weapon. Near the end of the game, there’s also not much better to do than train byleth’s main weapon. For everyone else, they usually do not ever get there.

Is it a given that you are using these units? IMO both of these units kinda suck and should be replaced if possible. Mercedes is all around much better than Flayn (I don’t find rescue to be anywhere near as good as it was in fe15 due to decreased range). For Ashe, almost any decent physical unit will do better at whatever it is you were trying to do with him.

These are good points, and I’ll add that Petra can show up twice, and is a problematic enemy both times. Well worth it to take her off the table.

I agree that lysithea is overrated for many reasons, but this comparison doesn’t really say much. I think we’re all aware that warlock has good bases, and warlock’s base speed is offsetting Anette’s bad speed growth here and is warping this comparison. As is this being the only period where black tomefaire is available but dark tomefaire is not. Even with that, five to ten levels in either direction will reflect a disparity as lysithea’s superior growths take over. I’ll also note that the level 20-30 range is the shortest due to time skip exp, so having an advantage here is the least worthwhile of any specific period, and most mages hit a trough here anyway and need some babying because they can have a hard time keeping up with advanced tier mounted classes.

Good analysis, but some additional considerations noted above.

I’m shocked by the amount of people picking holy knight. It does pretty much nothing for these characters (or anyone really, since there isn’t anyone interested in attacking with white magic). If you want it only for the horse, there are better options, especially since most casters will bag C reason early on for fiendish blow. Lindhardt is perhaps the biggest victim to the gendered classes. He really wants gremory but IS wont let him put on the dress. That leaves him with a bunch of bad fits by default. Dark Knight gives him a horse and helps out his offense, but his combat will still be mediocre thanks to bleh growths and a mediocre reason list. It’s also hard to qualify for if you’re trying to get faith up ASAP for warp. Bishop is a legit option to crank up the healing on physic and give him another shot of warp. It has obvious issues with low move, but you usually warp allies pretty early in the map, and from then on really only need to keep up within physic range. Holy knight basically only provides a horse and abandons the benefits of bishop. It’s an option if you desperately want a horse (not sure why, his combat is pretty bad in this class, his only faith attacking spell is the mediocre nosferatu, and he otherwise only needs to stay within physic range which isn’t hard even when footlocker), but you should probably be looking to switch to dark knight at some point. There’s really no reason to invest further than A in faith, he has a strength in reason, and you’ve met the lance and riding requirements if you have this class anyway. You’ve also probably already gotten C reason for fiendish blow. It’s for this reason that I think dancer is his best bet. He has a great faith spell list loaded with situationally useful spells. Dancer lets him keep those to use when they come up and otherwise gives him something more productive to do than chip at stuff with Excalibur. For Marianne, I am surprised people are picking holy knight over gremory. She has a good reason list with two high-crit spells and thoron. Gremory gives her extra uses of fimbulvetr, thoron and physic, and gives a 5-magic boost compared to holy knight’s 1, which almost completely offsets white tomefaire. If I really want a horse, dark knight is the better bet thanks to boosting better spells than aura/nosferatu. Mortal savant is kind of an option if you want to use her relic or a Levin sword, but gremory is noticeably better imo, and MS will seriously hinder her speed Can’t speak to Annette, haven’t done BL yet and have never recruited her. Edit: I see a lot of discussion of Nosferatu. That spell is not great in this game, and even if it were, both Lindhardt and Marianne have bad defenses. That spell is not realistically going to keep either of them alive.

Looks good. I usually like to get lords to B or A authority since they have the time, and pass off their C battalion to someone who needs it more or has a weakness in authority and thus will take a while to get to the best battalions in B and A tier. It’s worked very well for me over several runs, worth considering.

I’m going to shortcut this and say you should go for deathblow. Even if you make a beeline for S+ you’re still only going to get it near the very end of the game. Getting to D+ axes isn’t too bad even with the weakness, and you’ll have deathblow for about 3/4 of the game. +6 str on player phase isn’t so far off from +5 damage that the difference in availability is worth it. Thats not even considering the fact that being hyper-focused on S+ lances can make you miss other important skills, like authority for the primo battalions and heavy armor for help with weight, which lords are usually in an excellent position to get because they don’t have to meet master class requirements. You’d be sacrificing some of that by gunning for S+ lances for a benefit you’ll only get near the end of the game.

Her strength growth is 35%. It’s nice that you got rng-blessed, but that’s not particularly relevant to the topic at hand.

I never touch flying on him, as it has little utility in the long run and is unnecessary. He doesn’t even qualify for a flight class until tier 3, which by then you’re pretty close to getting his unique class. I can put up with running sniper for a few chapters (which is a completely fine class, and with bowfaire and bowrange+1 is arguably better than wyvern rider at that point) for the very significant benefit of raising whatever secondary skills I want. Other than C axes for death blow/brigand, I gun for A authority right away to switch him to the Cichol wyvern battalion (the extra crit is better for him than the avoid imo, and it frees up his unique C rank battalion for Hilda, who has a hard time qualifying for good battalions otherwise with her authority weakness). Then I get weight -3 if I need it, and otherwise go for riding for move+1 (and dex+4 if needed).

I’ll push back on this is a bit. Agreed that they’re similar units, but ferdinand’s top end is imo noticeably better than Sylvain’s. Ferdinand has a passive that is much nicer in practice than it appears on paper. He also has two relics that restore a ton of hp for him (seteth is the only other character that gets the bonus from lance of assal, and imo Ferdinand is a much better unit). By contrast, Sylvain has a small damage boost that drops off in relevance pretty fast, and a magic-using route that, if we’re being honest, probably isn’t stellar. If you’re counting Sylvain’s relic (which Ferdinand can use almost equally well, unlike Ferdinand’s relics) and his easier join for f!byleth, that could push them closer, but I can definitely see a worldview where you don’t consider those for the tier list. They don’t really have much to do with how he performs as a unit, and the recruitment is of course irrelevant on BE route. I do agree that for female byleths on a non-BE route, Sylvain is the lower-fuss option and may be worth choosing over Ferdinand if you want to allocate your resources elsewhere. Otherwise, I’d usually end up using Ferdinand.

Would be interested to see some defenses stats too, as part of the draw to DK is the +20 avoid from his budding talent. But this is good research.

I agree with most of this, but for Mercedes reason is still her best bet even though her spell list kinda blows. The low tier spells really aren’t too different, so it doesn’t matter much, and ragnarok (and bolganone) are fine. Ultimately, she wants gremory to double up her uses on her fantastic faith list, so it makes sense to go reason over any weapon for some semblance of offense.

Agreed. Swift strikes is a game changer. I also like getting Ferdinand/Sylvain to B authority ASAP to run Gautier knights for stride+canto+hella avoid. The problem with great knight for them isn’t so much the stats, but rather the need to get near A in axes.

Great knight is the only other one. It’s an underrated class for him, as the existence of swift strikes makes speed less important, but I agree Paladin is better. I’ve done both, I much prefer Paladin over WL on both Sylvain and Ferdinand.

Getting magic “almost every level-up” is not even remotely close to the average outcome for a character with 30 mag growth. Congrats on getting lucky with him, but that doesn’t speak at all to how good the character or setup actually is. Yes, you are missing quite a bit by leaving authority at rank C. The B rank (and some A rank) battalions generally have substantially higher stats and some excellent gambits, particularly on BL route. You’ve left that all on the table. As an aside, no one can ever verify on an internet forum whether someone truly thinks a playthrough “was a breeze” or not. Usually, though, when someone feels the need to start making that assertion to support their points, it’s not a good sign for their argument.

QFT, idk why people are so slow to pick up on how good Paladin is. They probably just see the speed penalty and get scared off, but they’re really missing how much weight that class pulls. (Disagree that war master is necessarily worse, though. It’s a good class and is trying to do something pretty different than what Paladin is trying to do.)

Huh? BE had edelgard, Caspar, Ferdinand, and even potentially Bernadetta (as you mentioned) as potential WL candidates. I agree Petra is best in a vacuum as WL, but BE has an embarrassment of riches for WL candidates, so I usually feel the need to move her to bow knight on that route.

Mortal savant is terrible for Petra. Her reason list is wind and saggitae - yes, that’s really it - and she has no noteworthy faith spells. So there’s absolutely no reason to tank your speed growth by 30% (among other drawbacks) by going MS over swordmaster or assassin. MS is iffy even on units that may want the casting benefits, but for Petra it is certainly a no-go.

I suppose it’s possible that for some of them, they take effect but the UI doesn’t update. Bernadetta’s passives certainly doesn’t take effect until combat ends, though. I suspect it works as I previously described, but more testing would be welcome. Agreed that Petra’s personal skill is bad. It is already trivial to finish off enemies at <50% hp.

Almost nothing that occurs during combat that would affect combat calculations will take effect during that combat in this game. The only exceptions I’ve seen are a unit dying (of course, won’t counterattack), or occurrences that only function if they take effect during the combat that they are triggered, eg crest activations. Things like Bernadetta’s personal will not take effect until combat resolves if she takes damage partway through. Likewise, ferdinands’ personal doesn’t drop until after combat ends - if the enemy is doubling and hits with the first attack, his avoid stays the same for the second attack.

On the first post-timeskip map I tried roughly testing it. It was triggering well after just one attack/combat round (you can see the effect activate on the left) but stopped abruptly partway through the enemy phase. He did start taking hits after a certain point, and dodges didn’t show the effect triggering anymore. I think it dodges everything over the next enemy phase, but has a 5 or 10 dodge cap or something.

I’ll add that his budding talent, +20 avoid while using black magic, is better than it looks and combined with his other stats makes him a more frontline-capable mage than most. I also lean toward Paladin for him, but he has enough interesting things going on as a mage that you can’t really stop the analysis at ‘lol 30 mag growth,’ especially in a game where classes bring you up to reasonable minimums automatically. And after all, Ingrid is a perfectly serviceable unit with only 35 in str and mag.

If we’re talking strictly what’s best for each individual unit in a vacuum, WL for Petra. Bernadetta and Sylvain are closer calls, but I’d lean toward bow knight for B and Paladin for S. Could make a case for WL as Bernadetta notwithstanding the axe issue, as she desperately needs to go brigand for death blow anyway, and it does a lot to patch up her str. One important thing to keep in mind though is that part of the reason Petra is so good is that she can excel at most any physical class and plug gaps in your team. So stopping there leaves a lot of the actual decision-making to be done in game out of the conversation. She is almost as fantastic as a bow knight (although her middling strength will be more of a problem in that class line - be sure to go through brigand first), and she’s excellent as an assassin or paladin/great knight as well if you need to go that route (she will still have amazing speed even with the cavalry penalties, and it does a lot to round out her stats). I’m glad Petra and Bernadetta ended up in the same week, as it’s important to consider their classes together. Edelgard’s route has a bunch of units that make good fliers, but not a ton that are inclined to be bow knights. If you want at least 1-2 on your team, odds are good it’s going to be one or both of those two, notwithstanding whatever you think is best for them individually and in a vacuum.

There’s a clear design push to move away from proc abilities like sol, luna, aether. Look at the difference in the skill lists between this game and fe13, especially the difference in how Astra works. If they did put sol in this game, it would be a combat art (and therefore would be a mastery class skill, perhaps limited to hero a la hunters volley and Astra) and probably would recover much less than 50% of the damage dealt.