scarfanatic

I've found it helpful for Battalion Wrath + Vantage builds on maps with ballista and its variations, since those can't be countered. Other than that though, don't see much point in it.

I just finished a Golden Deer no NG+ run and I gotta say, you don't really need Mercedes and Linhardt both. I had a similar roster- Claude - Barbarossa - Just try get A+ flying for Alert Stance+ as soon as you can. Solid and reliable for chip damage; Encloser is often overlooked but really helpful too. Hilda - Wyvern Lord - Don't really need to say much, pretty much any physical unit is good as a Wyvern Lord. Lorenz - Dark Knight - I wasted a bunch of time mastering Dark Mage and Dark Bishop lol, but I don't think Poison Strike / Lifetaker are really worth it. Just go Mage -> Warlock -> Dark Knight. I actually had 0 Bishops and just 1 Gremory at the end (Lysithea obv) and I pretty much got by by having Heal / Recover on both Lorenz and Byleth. Ignatz - Sniper - The biggest gem in the rough for me. Once you get Hunter's Volley, that's all you need. Seriously, all you need to train is enough Axe for Brigand and then just Bows and Authority till the end of the game. Rally Speed is also invaluable to survive Death Knight by avoiding getting doubled. Leonie - Bow Knight - Frankly Leonie is another unit that will do pretty well no matter what you do with her. I only ended up getting Darting Blow on her and no Death Blow and she was still fine. Leonie gets Point Blank Volley so I think that synergises better with getting +1 Movement, and she has a proficiency in Riding so it makes more sense to make her a Bow Knight and have Ignatz stay a Sniper. But you could argue that Ignatz' personal skill of +20 Hit helps more with abusing Bow Knights greater range. Can't go wrong either way IMO Lysithea - Gremory - Nothing needs to be said here. Just make sure you get B Reason for Dark Spikes in time for the first Death Knight chapter; you might have to change goals to just Reason for the 1.5x boost for a bit. Marianne - Dancer / Bishop - Solid, really anyone makes for a good dancer. Can really fuck up enemy magic units with Soulblade (or Hexblade, whichever the one that works off your Res is) I benched Raphael in favour of Felix, who is probably just my favourite unit. War Master Felix good, of course. Sylvain - Paladin - Honestly, I just got Sylvain for the early Lance of Ruin. He performed similarly to Ignatz - just go straight for Swift Strikes and that's all you need (detour for Death Blow of course). One dimensional, but good enough at it. Catherine - Falcon Knight - Now this was a damn treat to use. She starts off really strong, then had a small dip for me but, my god, she was a resurgent force late game. I built her like a flying Swordmaster pretty much, gave her a Wo Dao+ and Sword Crit +10 etc. She and Leonie were the only two of my units that could actually double most enemies. Seriously, use her. You get enough Umbral Steel to not worry about using up Thunderbrand. I even recruited Ingrid just so I could pick up Luin for a high Mt Lance to give her midgame. Seteth - Wyvern Lord - I'm not sure why Seteth often gets a bad rap. He gets Swift Strikes which is especially good with Spear of Assal for dealing with the strong Paladins you encounter (they're tanky as fuck and also ridiculously fast so it's nice to be able to delete them on Player phase with no danger). Stat wise he eclipsed Sylvain on my run, but perhaps I just had a blessed Seteth / cursed Sylvain so I won't speak to that. Again, can't go wrong with Wyverns. Byleth - I just went with Enlightened One so that I could have a frontline Recover unit + Swordfaire without having to grind for S+ swords. Try to get to A Swords ASAP for Windsweep; with something like a Wo Dao+ or a Cursed Ashiya Sword+ you reach 70ish crit, which basically lets you one shot most bosses. For all the above, I'm assuming all physical units get Death Blow (although I didn't bother for Leonie and Catherine and just got Darting Blow for them instead). A+ Flying for Alert Stance+ is also an important target for your fliers. Again, you might think having no dedicated healers was problematic but between Physic on Marianne and Recover on Byleth, Lorenz and Lysithea I managed just fine. IMO, its better to have a greater number of solid combat units so you can clear out more enemies on Player Phase than use healers to sustain fewer frontline units. But that's just my approach, and I'm sure you'll be fine using more Bishops / Gremories for healing and general support. There were definitely a couple of instances where I would have appreciated someone having Restore, for example. As for general advice- make sure everyone has Iron / Training bows early game for chip damage. Carry Steel weapons for combat art spam, and probably training+ weapons to avoid getting doubled early game. Train authority on everyone to get good Battalions as soon as you can. Midgame is probably the easiest since by then your units have good skills / levels. Even the endgame was pretty cruisey to be honest, just be wary of ambush reinforcements. Another really helpful strategy is to certify 3 extra units as Brawler / Armor Knight for Guard adjutants since those were big lifesavers for my squishy / slow units (they basically prevent you from dying to an enemy's follow up attack on both player and enemy phase). Also remember, you have insane range with Lysithea Warp + Stride so don't feel compelled to fight through huge maps in the endgame / certain paralogues if you can just warp and one-shot the commander. Also, this is more of a reply to the previous poster- I actually went through the pains of trying Wrath / Vantage on Warrior Felix with a Killer Axe+ equipped and everything and it was honestly underwhelming and unreliable. You have to go put in so much effort to master these unrelated classes that it's just better to go straight War Master and get Quick Riposte that much faster. Wrath / Vantage looks cool on paper, and it probably works a lot better on Hard but it's just too shaky for Maddening IMO.