Koko585

I have to agree that the sword classes are in a really weird spot in this game. 5-move swordmaster why? It seems like assassin is the best choice in most cases, with the others being fairly niche. Would love to see an echoes dreadfighter as a masterclass, that would have been something worth pursing. I would like to point out there is a silver-lining to your class progression ending in an advanced class (particularly assassin, +1 to that class again). The requirements to get into the advance classes aren't super high, so once you get certified you can redirect goals/tutoring to pick up some nice skills. I'll use Assassin Felix as an example: At only B swords and C bows (technically lower if you don't care about the 100%), the requirements to certify are really easy to hit in a timely fashion. Since Felix has a strength in both areas, he will easily meet the criteria before 20 as long as you aren't doing anything weird. Once he has passes the exam, further ranks in these areas aren't super important, meaning that you can now swap his goals without any real consequence. He can now do authority and heavy armor, picking up weight -3 and access to stronger battalions. These directly effect his combat parameters and make him even better at killing stuff, especially when he gets access to some of the late-game battalions. He may have a weakness in authority, but you now have the rest of the game to work on it since he doesn't need anything else. He also wont really need any tutoring unless you just want to speed things along, so he frees you up to focus on making other units stronger since he's already fine.

I tried making Marianne a dancer in the run I just finished. She worked out well, no regrets. Between Sword Avoid +20 and Axebreaker, axe units pretty much couldn't hit her, and she wasn't really scared of mages due to her high res. In theory should have had decent combat with her relic/sword dance/high charm. However, I don't think she ever saw combat, aside from blicking some random armor with her relic on enemy phase once. The riding proficiency is cool, but she never did make it to A+ for that sweet movement +1, so I don't know if I would count that in her favor or not. I guess without the proficiency you are even more unlikely to reach it. Anyways, after giving the topic much thought I think Annette is probably my vote for best dancer. She seemed really mediocre as a combat unit in my BL run, but had some really nice rallies and a strength in authority. In my experience with the game so far, rallies have been really useful early-game for hitting 1RKO benchmarks quicker to help units snowball. However as you progress into the mid-game they lose a lot of value due to the combination of being locked to a 4 move unit and generally not being needed to 1RKO things. You will also notice that if a unit is using their turns to rally, they are probably not gaining much exp. So if you are using Annette for rally support, you should end up with an under-leveled unit with lackluster combat, a mediocre spell list, and low move (unless you make her a cav/peg for pure support). What a perfect dancer candidate! Icing on the cake is that focus on authority to get rallies is now going to help you get the required authority for the "dance of the goddess" battalions faster. The timing works out pretty great too. Once rallybot Annette starts falling off in usefulness, the dance competition is just around the corner to make her viable again. Her combat will still suck as a dancer and she won't make great use of its sword skills, but is she ever actually going to fight anyways? Even if a dancer CAN fight, are you ever actually going to use them to kill an enemy instead of refreshing an ally?

Hello, I'm new to the forums here but I've been reading them for ages. Thought it would be fun to join in on the discussions. I've only played 3/4 routes on hard/classic (starting BE church tonight), but of the ones I played I had the most trouble with BE-Edelgard. Mostly due having some really terrible hit rates against many of the enemies after the time-skip. Also those 4 range light spear golems that started showing up later were pretty annoying to deal with sometimes. Final boss was epic, but pretty easy with Edelgard's special combat art. The lack of early relics also gives you less tools to work with at the start, though this is really pretty minor all things considered. I can definitely see why you would pick BL. BL was my first route, and if I hadn't gotten lucky with my experimentation throughout the game, that last map would have been a nightmare. It can be cheesed pretty effectively though with the Retribution gambit. Swordmaster Byleth with a killing edge+ and vantage got sent to stand in the middle of siege magic central with retribution gambit up. Was surprised how well that worked out. I will also say that BL lacking a good warper makes it a bit harder as well. Sure Manuela can warp, but her range isn't very good and it comes fairly late vs the other routes (or not at all if you don't end up using her or recruiting someone else who can). However the early access to most of the relics do make the route a little easier in my opinion since they can help their users snowball in the early game and/or one-round tough enemies they probably shouldn't be able to. GD is kind of hard for me to rate since I wanted to check out the NG+ features and such. I didn't abuse the features too hard, but I'm sure it would have been more difficult than I remember it being. I agree with you that the final map wasn't really that hard, but definitely the most epic final battle so far. This is a bit unrelated, but I think GD had the most satisfying conclusion of the routes I played. Anyways, those are my thoughts so far, interested to see what other people have to say on the matter.