niveklt

I've read through pretty much the entire thread, and I think OP has a huge bias for Lapis, and I like her a lot myself. OP even mentioned how Chloe would have to be fed 'every kill you can to let her reach level 10 by the time we reach chapter 7' which is complete BS. As someone else pointed out, Chloe has 4 maps, because we aren't including her join chapter per OP, to get exp for level 10 before chapter 7. On every playthrough I've done, Chloe gets to level 10 just as I am finish Anna's paralogue for the first master seal. Sure you could argue it is favoritism to give it to Chloe, but for me personally, she is the only one who is generally fast enough to double and kill enemies and reaches 10 first. This has happened with me not giving her an emblem ring before too. Now we get to chapter 7, for me personally, Chloe is a newly level 1 Wyvern Knight with whatever emblem of choice. For later playthroughs this is now Sigurd because I tend to start getting ready to bench Louis. At this point in the game, Chloe completely outclasses Lapis in every stat. Lapis here is good herself as well and can handle her own quite well, but that doesn't mean that Chloe isn't just straight better. Yea, there's 3 archers sitting on this map, however, not a single one of them can 1 shot Chloe. As I said, with the way I play now, knowing what I like and how I play, Chloe has Sigurd and can usually sweep up an archer and then hide back around because of the walls, so she doesn't die from another archer + other enemies. Pretty much from here on out, you get your second seal. Yes you can give it to Lapis, which is fine, however, it is either Swordmaster or Hero at this point for chapter 8 because there are no second seals available till after chapter 8. In either case, Lapis is still outclassed by Chloe for chapter 8. Like I said, I like Lapis and have made her work. I do no think she is better than Chloe or Kagetsu.

I think there's something weird in terms of your characters levels/skill ranks. I'm not calling you a liar however, when I compare what I had there are somethings that feel very off. Let me explain. For you to have 2 of the 10% exp statues, that means you had about 4-5k more renown than I did by the final map. I did skip all the quests except the two merchant ones so I'm unsure how much renown those would have given. Second off, even if you did have them, you likely had them so far late in the run that there's not way your characters have an average level over mine of about 5-6. This isn't even including that you are running 12 characters instead of 11 in my run. The few other people who I read that beat a NG maddening run with no aux grind are averaging similar levels to mine as well. It's very possible that you did not do many if any aux battles, but it feels like you grinded on the reinforcements instead of moving forward, either that, or you took extremely slow where there was a fair build up of reinforcements. I think this is more likely the case, but combined with what you said above about the statues it leaves me concerned. Either way, I will say and admit I might have played poorly with my characters. Having only 1 avoid tank and not taking advantage of Dimitri's abusable build probably made it much more difficult for me than some others.

See, this is the type of response i would like to hear instead of people mindlessly saying BL because of the early game. I did mention how it could have been my team, and thinking about it, I've only played all the routes once till maddening came out and forgot what skills Dimitri learns for authority. At least your reasoning makes sense. The others are just making assumptions because of early game with no mindset of the end game where i assure you, majority of players won't take advantage of his battalion vantage+wrath build. Early game it honestly doesn't make a huge difference between the 3 route. Sure Dedue can tank a little bit, but honestly he gets quickly out paced when enemies will double him and have like 30 attack with their steel weapons. I benched him at level 6 and used him as a adjutant to Dimitri because i knew you lose him in part 2 for a fair amount of time.

I'm curious for all the people saying AM being the easiest, have you played and beaten it on maddening? On hard it's a joke and the final map is very easy. On maddening, upon approaching the throne room, you get 2 siege mage reinforcements on both the left and right stairs. Oh yea, these are same turn reinforcements btw. I guess if you don't care to save everyone it is probably the easiest. If you plan on saving everyone, I assume it's going to be VW, the final map is a joke on maddening compared to AM. Though i would have to beat CF and SS to say for sure. I honestly don't think SS will be too hard if you rush to the bottom quick and stop the reinforcements. My team could have also been a problem for me on AM as well since i only had 1 avoid tank and my average party level is like 36. https://imgur.com/a/mduGkOA There's my team for reference. I looked at the maddening topic and the guy who said he beat it looks like he mad grinded. His levels are way higher than mine and weapon/skill ranks are through the roof. My run was done as a no aux grind, only paralogue and merchant quests run.

Yes, its very possible because of mastermind. I set her goals to reason and faith asap. Once she learned warp, I set it to reason + authority. Towards the last few chapters I instructed her to get tomefaire. Hey look, I'm not trying to disagree with you, but did you look at my Lysithea in the screenshot? At the end I showed her potentially hitting Nemesis for 71 damage. I didn't give her any favoritism, it's just that early game magic is quite powerful because it doesn't calculate hit rates the same as physical damage, meaning it is easier for people to use her to either kill or damage other enemies to gain exp. Also because she is so easily able to kill the death knight on chapter 4 compared to any other strategy, she just gains a fair boost there as well. I agree other mages can weaken enemies, that's exactly what my Marianne did when she didn't heal, which was a huge majority of the time late game. I had 1 sniper in Leonie who spammed hunters volley with a killer bow+ which resulted in a kill almost always. And I know about wyverns and dodge tanking. If you look at my team, I had 3 of them, each with a different weapon main with a breaker skill to go along with it. I mean, I admit to giving her my magic stat boosters, but who else is going to be a better choice? If you think giving them to someone with low magic, you aren't dealing any damage with that character to anything late game. If you decide to give them to a healer then...??? That's literally gimping your team, so okay, sure that's favoritism to give them to your mage.

I just made a serenes account just to reply to you here. I normally prefer to just browse and read and see what people think but here's my endgame team for NG maddening on GD. No aux battles unless they were quests (which i still skipped a few) and paralogues. https://imgur.com/a/h7VDtYQ My Lysithea literally is about average on speed and mag (Food giving +2) and her mag is only average because I ended up giving her all of my magic boosters that are given by chests/paralogues. Any seeds that ended up being magic (I think 1 or 2 that run) were given to her as well. If she were to be average on level ups, along with given all my magic boosters (which is favoritism I know) she would be able to 1 shot almost everything there with Luna. The exceptions being the warmasters, heros, and great knights. Even if she didn't 1 shot enemies here, she would weaken them enough that anyone else could kill them and not take a counter attack which is much better than most characters on a player phase. In my opinion, ideally you want to be healing as few times as possible and killing during player phase.