Ari Chan

Yeah I feel like you can throw Dedue in whatever classes (Warrior, Mercenary, Archer, etc) and he’ll still wreck stuffs cause of his high HP ATK DEF and good CA list (Vengeance and One-Two Punch), he pretty much has the easiest path to become a VanWrath unit and that setup also synergies with his Vengeance as well. Vantage + Battalion Wrath best works on Hero since it requires little investment to create an emergency EP unit, it’s not worth using long-term though cause the players have to consistently maintain their battalion HP which can be annoying.

1) Usually when people make Warmasters on Maddening for their Wrath-Vantage build (Axefaire + 20 crit combo is perfect for this) quick riposte just doesn’t make any sense in this build considering VanWrath can kill a lot more on Enemy Phase. 2) Your grapplers should be oneshotting with FIF and avoid getting hits if possible, Avoid on Warmaster also doesn’t make much sense cause they want to stack high Hits and Crits for VanWrath and they should be equipping Axes most of the time.

I feel like it’s pretty much up to the players if they want to transition Mercedes into a Sniper by late-game or keep her as a healer, if they are running all “meta” builds that either want to stay in low health or not get hit at all (Dodgetank, VanWrath, Sniper, Grappler, Brave CAs, etc.) then she’s gonna see little to no use as a healbot and the players might want to start building a Magic Bow Sniper Mercie who can keep up with other units here. On the other hand if the player is running a team that want to utilize more healing then she is fine staying as a Bishop/Gremory. Mire actually debuffs def iirc but agree with this, Banshee and Mire drop off in effectiveness, Hubert also learn Dark Spikes which allow him to reliably OHKO Cavs but a Magic Bow Sniper Hubert will oneshot them just fine. I should’ve clarified this better, I did say in my original post that Lysithea becomes pretty mediocre combat-wise after she runs out of Luna and Dark Spikes, I agree that it’s a combination of good spell list + Mag lead + Warp that makes her better than Dorothea in the late game.

That makes sense, Hapi seems like a much stronger unit if you spend a little bit more resources investing on her. Yeah but Constance also needs to be put in Dark Flier to make full use of her Rescue which can take more time than putting Linhardt in bishop, she’s a much better unit overall though especially if you funnel mag stat boosters into her though thanks to her high base Mag and access to Bolting. I used Flayn on my last VW NG+ run as a Rescue flier bot and I pretty much only used her Fortify like a bootleg Physic, also Vengeance and VanWrath starts also make it a lot harder to utilize the spell as well. Agreed, mages offence aren’t great unless vsing Armors, you also only have enough stat boosters around to allow 1 mage to reliably OHKO (unless the player use gardening but there are better stat boosters to farm from there) and even then only Lysithea and Constance are really worth getting funnelled. I actually had Lysithea as a Valkyrie in a lot of maps and she ended up being MVP in most of them, the extra mobility really helped if I didn’t need extra Warp, Luna or Dark Spikes uses.

Lmao I brain farted and completely forgot Gremory existed lol (even though I made Lysithea one), yes he would’ve been much better as a Gremory. Linhardt should also spend more time using his faith spells compared to Dorothea though so the gap is a bit closer than that, usually getting to A rank with a boon doesn’t take that much time and even if I bench Linhardt mid-game he can still rejoin the team later the moment he gets Warp. (I usually have enough room for both anyway, considering out of the BE cast only Caspar is truly garbage and not worth salvaging when you can grab Balthus who immediately outperforms him out of the gate) Asides from Lysithea, Linhardt is pretty much the only other easy way to get more Warps without spending lots of resources on tutoring (Hapi is neutral in Faith and doesn’t autolevel if you recruit her later, Manuela’s Warp range is trashy and her Warp also comes later). Although I don’t value Physic that much, running no Physic at all is a bit too risky for me so I didn’t use Constance (or Flayn), plus Dark Flier Rescue Constance also requires more resources to train than warpbot Linhardt. Dorothea is definitely pretty much my #1 go-to pick for Dancer even OOH, I’m just saying that her and Linhardt fulfills different niche for me, one gives additional Warp and the other provides linked attack boost for the entire, I don’t care much about their offense cause there are better units for that role.

Even if Linhardt had access to female classes, Bishop would still be his best class since Warp + Physic are his biggest assets and none of the female mounted class has x2 white magic or white magic heal + 10 for Linhardt to take advantage of, plus Physic usually has enough range that he doesn’t need the extra mobility to reach people to heal. Offensive-wise Linhardt has exactly one good spell by late-game which is Excalibur and that is nowhere as useful as Warp. Mercedes also doesn’t benefit much from Female-exclusive class as well, she has a bad Reason list and would much prefer having stronger heals and extra Physic usage (or ditch healing altogether for a Magic Bow Sniper build that can actually kill on player-phase). Marianne and Flayn are the designated healers that benefit greatly from DLC classes since they have the tools to take advantage of their mobility and skills. Hubert is the one that got majorly fucked by being a male mage, he had a good Reason List + Frozen Lance so Valkyrie would’ve been the perfect class for him, Dark Bishop is a bad class and if he goes Paladin to spam Frozen Lance he has to forgo his spell list. By the time he reaches Dark Knight, late game CF is really anti-cav which limits his overall usefulness.

I guess my playstyle is completely different than yours hence why I didn’t value her personal lol. I didn’t use her to tank at all since my Dedue was already good at drawing aggro from most units already and I would much prefer if she got 3 additional Physic uses for ch.2 without having to rig lectures and spend activity points on choir. I also tend to make use of those free vulneraries that you get early on whenever possible. While I agree that Dorothea becomes better than Linhardt mid-game, it won’t take that much time before Linhardt reaches Warp after she got Physic (Dorothea starts at E rank and has a bane in Faith before it becomes a boon via budding talent). Dorothea also falls off hard unless you make her a dancer, she has a good list but lacks the Magic to take advantage of it unlike Constance and Lysithea. Hexblade is also a pretty mediocre magic combat art compared to Frozen Lance. Also towards lategame I barely use Physic so having my healer be able to do something asides from healing is a huge plus in my book, for example Linhardt can reposition my less mobile units or let Sylvain oneshot annoying siege weapon users. His Warp certainly isn’t as gamebreaking as Lysithea’s but combined with Stride it was still very useful to me.

Mb, should’ve clarified the first part, I was comparing in house Linhardt vs in house Mercedes for chapter 2 and why her starting faith rank makes her early game worse than in house Linhardt and Marianne. I actually fielded Mercedes in ch.2 + 3 and she failed to reach C rank for Physic by ch.4, guess I need to spam all of her heal usage. I also should’ve made this part a bit clearer, I used Linhardt’s spells mainly to chip so I value the accuracy more (occasional crit is nice as well) and most of the time he did enough damage for my other units to finish the enemy off but will give Mercedes a try whenever I got a chance if she’s reaching ~90 hit and can OHKO enemies with Annette support like you said! Tbh I stated it above that Bishop’s low mobility only became a problem when he got ambushed by reinforcements but this was more on me for not looking up ambush spawn locations whenever I attempted a map. Usually after casting all 2 warps and blessing I had him sit back and use physic whenever needed (rarely happens anyway since I don’t have my units use heal much post-time skip) Accuracy + Crit from Wind spells > slight damage advantage from Fire Spells especially when you mostly use your healers to do chip damage and Linhardt always did enough for my other units to finish the enemy off anyway (and if he crits then my damage dealers can focus on other enemies instead). Later on they’re both gonna see little to no combat at all cause mid-late game maddening meta is all about oneshotting the enemies with stuffs like Swift Strike, Hunter’s Volley, FIF, etc.

Yeah I realized my Felix got spd-screwed hard, fortunately his strength remained high so he was still useful to me (Leonie on the other hand still managed to gain a lot of spd even in Bow Knight lmao). Thankfully the Aegis Shield did help him survive a couple of hits whenever he got doubled by enemies. Linhardt getting Physic earlier than Mercie means he takes less xp to reach monk for double spell usage which is huge (also no Physic in ch.2 is a pretty big disadvantage for Mercedes), Mission Assistant Linhardt becomes available from ch.3 and most likely comes with higher lv for double spell usage and Physic which Mercie struggles to get unless you spend lots of resources tutoring her. He also has a better reason spell list compared to Mercie, Hapi is pretty high investment since she doesn’t have a boon in Faith and has a bane in Authority. I also find it easier to just solo ch.13 using Byleth and only plan to have Linhardt use utility gambits (Stride, Blessing or DoTG), him not having a lot of supports with the Lions didn’t affect me much since mid-late game he often got left behind lol. I also tend to not spend much resources tutoring the healbots on the team and uses Warp a lot which makes Linhardt the perfect unit for my playstyle.

It’s weird that the Faire Skills stacked but not Blow Skills it would’ve made Dark Bishop viable lol. I do use PBV when needed but there are situations where it is safer to kill enemy from a safe distance that’s why I put Darting Blow on Leonie, also it allows her to quad slower but tankier enemies using brave weapons especially monsters who have gigantic health pools.

Close counter was definitely very useful on Leonie since she has the spd to double and bulk to survive a few hits. I put the skill on Shamir cause I had nothing else better to put on (she didn’t need hit + 20 as her accuracy was always at 100 without it anyway), it did end up saving her from an abush spawn cause her counterattack crit’d.

Yeah Blue Lion just has a lot of great Lance user and I also wanted to make a Falcon Knight Byleth lol. I didn’t give Dedue any more hp boosts aside from the +7 hp dlc item so he did naturally gain a lot of them from levelling up which is nice cause it makes running VanWrath and Vengeance really forgiving on him. I just saw your post lol you had a really nice team as well!! I tried to make the most use out of the 2 Knowledge Gems lol, I also abuse broken weapons to quickly master class and grab necessary skills. I can see myself doing another NG+ Maddening run but not NG, it’s nice to play it once to understand why people rate characters like Dedue so high on tier lists but I definitely won’t do it again!

Hi everyone. Long time lurker here, after a long break I finally decided to get back to this game and finish a NG Maddening run just to get that shiny golden home screen (I’ve only done NG+ Maddening playthroughs before), there were lots of frustrating moments (especially early game when I’m still struggling to manage my resources, recruitments and buildpaths) but I’m happy that I beat it! This was my final team (screenshot taken before I started ch.21 mission): Byleth: She definitely was a powerhouse, went with F!Byleth cause I wanted to grab Darting Blow and have at least one Flier early on (In house Ingrid sucks a lot and mine also didn’t gain a single point in Str for 5 levels straight). I only let her use sword in the first 2 chapters cause of their low Wt and high accuracy, once she got Tempest Lance she pretty much ditched swords completely and focus on leveling Axe, Lance, Authority and Flying. I fed her a bunch of statboosters in fear of ch.13 and my HBD did end up being a Dodgetank Byleth solo map cause footlocked Dimitri without Battalion VanWrath was horrible. Byleth ended up being my main carry lategame, she was a super effective Enemy Phase magnet cause of her crazy dodge and pretty much everything had 0 hit against her once she got into Defiant Avo range. I also hosted a lot of tea parties with her to ensure all of my offensive gambit holders had decent Charm so she ended up having like 67 Charm lmao. My only gripes with Byleth is that she doesn’t learn B.Wrath which would’ve made her dodgetank build even more awesome. Dimitri: His combat was very good in the early game (third best imo behind Byleth and Dedue). Mid game he became a monster the moment you hit B.VanWrath, his biggest advantage is not having to master several classes to gain access to VanWrath or enter low health to use it which makes him the best EP unit in the game, he can also do some PP nuking with a Brave Lance when needed. His one big flaw is that once he lost access to B.VanWrath he became pretty mediocre, ch.13 is a good example of this, the player not being able to tutor him for several chapters wasn’t a big deal since he isn’t a super high investment unit. I fed him a few Rocky Burdocks and Ailell Pomegrantes so he can reliably kill enemies with 1 crit attack. Dedue: Dedue was easily the MVP of my run, my guy just has everything that makes a unit good on Maddening, he carried my early game Azure Moon hard while still being extremely strong in the late game, Dedue can safely bait out enemies in the early game thanks to his base stats and personal. Him getting Vengeance means he can murder anything on playerphase (I used him to bait Death Knight in ch.4 and instantly oneshot him the next turn with a Training Lance lol), even if I didn’t want to get him to low health, One-two punch + Death Blow also ORKO enemies. I fed Dedue my DLC statboosters (asides from the speed one which went to Byleth) to make his early game even stronger. He did go missing for a few chapters post time-skip but at that point I had plenty of ways to cheese the maps so it didn’t affect me much. Felix: Felix was a pretty straightforward unit, his crest and personal makes him a killing machine with Gauntlets, not much to say here since he’s pretty much the best Grappler you can get in the game. My only problems with Felix is his Authority Bane but that was easy to work around, the lack of Darting Blow does suck though cause he would’ve been a lot better with the extra 6 speed on PP combat. Sylvain: Sylvain started off pretty weak but he managed to get some good level ups early on which made his path to Wyvern a lot smoother, Lategame he was my go to unit to murder those annoying siege weapon users, he also made a good bait with Alert Stance+ when needed. The bow bane was annoying though cause he really needed that hit +20 from mastering Archer. Dorothea: Not much to say about Dorothea here since I made her my dancer, Meteor was nice at providing linked attacks and her Rally Charm was situationally useful. I never used her for combat so the Blutgang and Levin Sword just sat there collecting dust in her pocket lol, pretty much had her gambit once to break monster barriers and that was it. Linhardt: Since the so-called best healer Mercedes sucks horribly thanks to her starting Faith Rank and not learning anything useful asides from Physic, Mission Assistant Linhardt became my main healer for Blue Lion starting from ch.3, he is low investment since all he does is using Physic and Warp, his wind spells are very accurate and good for doing chip damage, the occasional crit is also very nice and Excalibur is effective against fliers, later on I rarely even used him to heal so he pretty much only existed to Warp + Blessing. I do wish he had access to high-mov class like the female mages though cause those ambush spawns always jumped on his fragile 4-mov ass. Lysithea: B rank Warp + Mastermind combo is ridiculous, Lysithea helped me trivialize so many difficult maps (Felix’s Paralogue for example), her Warp and spell list makes it optimal to dump all Mag statbooster on her so I gave her all the Spirit Dusts/Magic Herbs that I found, by endgame she had enough mag to yeet Byleth into the throne room which immediately shut down the boss infinite range attack as well as allowing Byleth to murder all the siege tome users in that room. I had her switch between Valkyrie and Gremory depending on whether I needed the +1 range and mobility or the extra spell usage (she became pretty mediocre combat-wise once she ran out of Luna and Dark Spikes). Her accuracy was questionable early on for me but thankfully this is FE3H and there are plenty of ways to consistently get 100 hit on her. Leonie: You really can’t go wrong with Leonie, she has strong bases + growths, a brave combat art that allows her to work well in a high move class. I ran dual blow skills on her so she can abuse her range and double most enemies without having to rely on Point-Blank Volley or Brave Weapons. I recruited her at around chapter 8 so it took quite some time for her to catch up but she ended up being one of my better units in the end so it was worth it. Balthus: The only DLC student that I used cause I heard lots of good things from him, grabbed Balthus pretty early so I can have another meatshield early on, despite not getting lots of attention from me his performance was really solid. Late game him and Felix were pretty much just there to gambit and kill a couple of enemies with FIF cause of Grappler’s short range and being footlocked. Shamir: I got Shamir as soon as she became available and she was really good, early Hunter’s Volley makes her the best Sniper by Default, pretty much only needed to grab Death Blow and she was good to go, her high bow Rank was also very convenient cause she can grab Bow Crit and Faire way earlier than anyone else. Alois: Alois base ranks and stats makes him an excellent filler unit, even though I mostly had him as adjutant he still performed well when I needed a 12th unit, he can do dual-phase pretty well thanks to One-Two Punch and VanWrath, Seteth would’ve prolly made a better filler unit thanks to flight + swiftstrike but I liked Alois more so I went with him. Overall I think NG Maddening is only really difficult in the early game, later on it’s just a test of how well you understand the meta, a well-built team can trivialize most post time-skip maps, I definitely believe it would’ve been harder for me if I didn’t have access to DLCs, the Charlice of Beginnings, Stat Boosts and Loots I get from the extra Aux battle all made the early maps a lot more bearable. I would definitely not do another NG Maddening run again after this cause I really dislike White Clouds and only enjoy the Post-time skip maps.

Tbh I used to think Gilbert is the worst unit in the game until I saw how players like Mekkah made full use of him, he makes a good emergency Wyvern/Paladin filler that is decently bulky, can do damage with Brave Weapons, use smite/rally defense so he does have a place in LTC and he's certainly better than Ashe or Caspar who does nothing at base and requires resources to become usable later on. Anyway worst unit in each game I've played imo: FE6: Wendy/Gwendolyn: Joins late in the worst class in the game with unusable bases. FE7: Karla: Ridiculous recruitment condition, horrible base level performance, only available for like 3-4 chapters. FE8: Amelia: at least Ewan has 1-2 range, hit res and can eventually heal/summon, I certainly do not need a 5th Paladin that takes forever to promote and is unusable at base. FE9: Rolf: Shitty archer in a game where archer is one of the worst classes, no thanks. FE10: Lyre: gets outclassed by like every other Laguz units in the game. FE11: Bantu: like many people here said he recruits Tiki for you but that's kinda it. FE13: Donnel: starts off too weak and requires too much babying to become usable. FE14: RV!Odin: Joins too late and underleveled to be of any use, CQ!Mozu: a villager unit in a difficult game with limited resources, BR!Hayato: Join late with worse bases than Orochi who is already a meh unit herself. FE15: Forsyth: 5 base speed and 4 mov are just pathetic, no reason to use him when you get a large number of strong mounted/flying units in Alm route. FE16: Ashe: At least Anna can be recruited late as a filler and have Flying Rescue utility, Caspar will eventually become a decent Warmaster/Wyvern. Ashe however just sucks from start to finish, bad bases/growths, no good Combat Arts/Skills, and he also leaves your army for 3 chapters in 3 out of 4 routes in the game

Imo vanilla Vantage/Wrath is just easier to set up, more reliable and the game throws at you good candidates for that build from the get go (stupid strong units like Dedue and Balthus or usable ones like Raphael) so I don't see the need to class someone into Hero for an emergency EP unit.