Twin

I was just thinking about this earlier and I figured I'd post about it since I think it's an interesting topic. In short, I don't really like Byleth. For me, both Byleth and Bylass are By-land (sorry) and I wish that we had a different character as the main character instead of a silent protagonist. So here's what I was thinking, what if Byleth didn't exist and we followed Jeralt as the main character? So in this scenario, you're Jeralt, a traveling mercenary who has to face the shadows of his past after stepping in to save three young lords. Jeralt is convinced to be the new teacher at Garreg Mach, leads the house, and you as the player slowly learn more about the dark secrets of the Church of Seiros and the history of Fodlan through your interactions and experiences with students. Students are drawn to you based on your experience and adept military prowess and charm, instead of your "personality" like Byleth. Then, after your untimely demise at the hands of TWSITD, you then follow your house leader as the main lord post-timeskip. Obviously this would require huge changes to the story, but I think it would be a different direction that would be a lot different to conventional FE. No more Byleth (sorry to the fans), maybe get rid of the awkward post timeskip tutoring, and shake things up a bit. Plus this way, you have an older, grizzled main chatacter who serves as a mentor to the rest of the cast. Then following his death, his former pupils are left to pick up the pieces and push forward upholding the values and morals he taught them. But like I said, just a thought.

Personally, I'd suggest swapping Hilda into a Wyvern, mostly for ease of promotion/training and you can use her relic at full effectiveness. Plus its just generally better that Falcon if you can easily get into it. That being said, personally I'm not a huge fan of Hilda since her accuracy is butt, especially in Maddening where enemy avoid is so much higher Secondly, you're super low on Faith magic, so Dorothea ends up being your only Physic user (and sometimes Marianne if you aren't dancing with her for some reason). So unless you're relying heavily on healing battalions and consumables, I'd suggest dropping one or two physical units for a dedicated Healer like Linhardt or Mercedes. You already mentioned you don't like footlocked units so I won't bother talking about Gremories and all that. Also if you're gonna get Lysithea, make sure you also recruit Lorenz (you don't need to deploy him) to give her that Thyrsus boost. The last thing I'll say is that you have a couple people (Annette, Lysithea, Felix) that all want to be recruited sooner than later so that you don't waste their passive growths into things you dont want (Felix and Swords/Brawling), or poopy enemy growth rates (Mages). So you can definitely do it, but sometimes its nice just to make it easier on yourself and give up one or two of them for in-house or other units that early recruitment isn't as important.

Honestly, the most recent Chaz Aria video on Youtube explains the whole thing pretty well, so I would suggest watching it to help clear things up. He goes pretty in depth about the whole thing, how often they proc, which classes they are linked to and which ones he would suggest deploying.

I'll toss out 3 that I would think would be interesting to see: War Mage Requirements: A Axe , A Reason Skills: Axefaire, Black Tomefaire, Dark Tomefaire Mastery Skill: ? Everyone (myself included) seems to want some combination of Reason and Axes for our main girls Edelgard and Annette to make use of their wonky dual strengths in those two areas. And rather than losing the physical -faire skills like Dark and Holy Knight do, keep the consistent damage in exchange for mounted move. Sure, it knocks it down a peg, but we all know fliers are a little on the strong side, and magic would probably push them over the edge. Sorry Malig Knight fans. So Warmage would provide a somewhat bulky mixed or magic attacker. However, I couldn't figure out what mastery skill I'd want them to have, so brainstorm away. War Monk Requirements: A Bow, A Faith Skills: Bowfaire, White Tomefaire, White Magic Uses x2 Mastery Skill: Seal Res The Faith alternative to Warmage, this gives some of the more offensively minded Faith users an alternative to Holy Knight and Bishop that can simulatenously heal and provide valuable chip and support to their squad if they don't feel like hopping on a pony. Plus who doesn't like a good Magic Bow on Mercedes. Plus, in Fates we had Priests with Bows, so why not now as well? Gladiator Requirements: A Sword, A Brawling Skills: Swordfaire, Fistfaire, Vantage Mastery Skill: Defiant Crit It always seemed weird to me that there were multiple people with Sword and Brawling strengths (Byleth, Felix, Catherine) but no way to utilize both. And with War Master being male-only, it would make sense to have a neutral alternative to it for female units utilizing Gauntlets. So for me, Gladiator would be a convergence of Mercenary and Grappler, making a high damage physical unit with moderate bulk that destroys player phase, and makes good use of Vantage/Defiant shenanigans on enemy phase.