SumG

If you're keeping Timerra in her unique class, you definitely want Speed+X and Build+X. The goal you should be aiming for should using a Brave Spear and being fast enough to quad with it to fish for Sand Storm procs. Sigurd also works well on her, since it also helps her build and gives her a free Canter. She ends up having pretty good damage against moderate defense units and has plenty of bulk to survive a few combats on enemy phase.

Fog tiles are like the fourth best thing you can be doing with Corrin, which is the main way you're going to run into fog tiles in the game. If you're using Fog Veins, that means you're using one of the strongest emblems in the game to enable a middling strategy with a middling unit, a strategy that many other units can do better since they'll be able to do more damage than Lapis. That's not a role, that's actively holding your team back by requiring a poor use of an otherwise strong emblem. In my mind, this is a pretty narrow application in practice. Let's say for the sake of argument you put Diamant in his unique class, so he has access to swords/axes. That means he breaks axes/lances. That also means he doesn't break swords, tomes, knives, fists, or bows. Further, some of the units that it should be 'safe' for him to attack because of access to break he may not be able to attack because of their massive defense (generals, great knights) and the fact that you have to actually do damage to get break. Now I'll grant that he should be able to attack bows safely, since he can attack from 1 range without a counterattack. But even taking that into account, here's the breakdown on which units this ability is beneficial on: Helpful: Bows, most Lances, most Axes Hurtful: Swords, Knives, Tomes, Arts, some Lances, some Axes The list of enemies that the ability is more harmful than helpful is noticeably longer than the list of enemies where its helpful. And we haven't even gotten to the consideration of scenarios where Diamant is already at (or nearly at) 100% hit with this ability, something that absolutely can arise. At that point, you're just giving the enemy a free 15% hit for no benefit. Maybe the ability would be helpful if you could elect to use it or not when attacking. Sure, then maybe there are some fringe scenarios where you'd be willing to trade 15% hit chance coming at you to make it more like you secure a hit. But when forced to use it every attack, its more harmful than helpful.

Conventionally, sword users in general lean more heavily on crit chance than most other types of units because they tend to have low base attack and utilize low might weapons. Lapis' personal ability undercuts this necessity, which effectively leaves her as an extremely low damage unit on high difficulties. And while the ability might be nice on other weapon types to make up for their inherent lower accuracy, Lapis has extremely low build which makes it hard to justify using heavier weapon types. Dodgetanking is all well and good, but this ability is a very narrow application since it requires another unit to be immediately adjacent to her. So it only works if you are exactly at the fringe of enemy range. Otherwise, the enemy will just attack the supporting unit instead. For Diamant, as you progress up in difficulties enemies will become increasingly threatening. Once you reach maddening, an average enemy is honestly going to have a higher assembly of stats than an average allied unit. Diamant in particular has issues here since he falls into that unfortunate cluster of units every game that is just barely fast enough to be competitive on hard, but just under that threshold on maddening, which leaves him with dubious survivability to begin with. Now on top of it, you want to give the extremely dangerous enemies an extra 15% hit chance? That's reckless at best, especially considering there are much safer ways to improve an unit's hit chance (engravings, inherited abilities). And again, this is for a unit that has access to swords, which should have some of the best accuracy in the game to begin with. Does Diamant even need the extra hit chance in the majority of cases? Which leaves the end result of the ability Diamant getting a benefit he doesn't really need in exchange for making an enemy already likely to seriously hurt him (if not outright kill him) even more likely to do serious damage to him. That's not good.

I don't have a strong preference for whether personal abilities are strong or weak, I'd just want them to be as balanced as possible. The real issue is when some of the abilities are fairly useful (e.g. Zelkov, Kagetsu, Panette, Hortensia), particularly on already strong units, while other abilities are not (Bunet, Citrinne, Etie, Alfred, Bucheron), and still others are outright detrimental (Lapis, Diamant).

Edelgard's (Flickering Flower, prevents movement of enemy on attack) is handy when you don't have enough emblems to deploy. Lissa (Healtouch, +5 to heals) is OK on a healer, again if no other emblem is available. And the FEH rings are not bad in the early game, so you might as well use them then.

There's not much that I think is super viable prior to Chapter 10, particularly if you don't have the DLC. Canter is the best option if you can afford it, but when I was playing on Maddening (no DLC) I didn't have anyone who could afford it by the time I got there. If you really focused on one or two units, maybe you could pick up, but that's not everyone. Picking up a staff mastery on a unit that you intend to use as healer wouldn't be a terrible idea, but really the only one who might be doing that for you might be Jean. Healers probably want Canter more, but if they can't afford it by Chapter 10 they should be able to earn enough SP to make up what they've spent by the time Sigurd comes back. One thing that could be an interesting one-off is Favorite Food from Celica. It's only 200 SP, and it effectively gives a unit a free engage meter refill. If you have a unit that shows up early that you know is going to pick up one of the first emblems in the second half of the game, maybe you pick it to be able to use the engage attack more often. But you obviously only want it on one unit, since you only get one meal per visit to the Somniel.

Right, but if you're doing this you likely can never plan around your mages taking more than one hit in combat. Realistically, you're only every going to get the base level Hold Out on a unit during a campaign (and even that is 2000 SP). That only provides protection if you're above 30% HP. Given a mage's typical low bulk and the strength of enemies, I would expect most physical attack enemies on higher difficulties to be able to get a mage below that threshold with a single round of combat, even if they are fast enough to avoid follow-up attacks. And after that single round of combat, they are going to require a heal from a healer to get back above that threshold (i.e. you may not be able to get back above from an incidental heal from something like Quality Time). To me, a 'frontline' unit that can only handle a single round of combat before a heal is a terrible frontline unit. I want them to have enough defenses (whether that be defense/resistance, avoid, raw HP, or some combination thereof) that they have a good chance of handling multiple rounds of combat before requiring assistance (barring bosses). There are plenty of abilities that are present to help out different styles of physical fighters. It's debatable whether the abilities are worth the SP cost it takes to pick them up and the benefit received, but the abilities are there. You have your classic Vantage/Wrath combo, Resolve to help physical tanks, Avoid+ abilities for dodgetanks, Pair Up if you have a single point-person, Dual Assist for Backup class units, and Alacrity for fast flankers. There's a difference between defaulting to consensus strong abilities despite alternative options and not having other options at all. I don't see why this is an issue. There's only one emblem to give avoid, or bow accuracy, or axe power, or whatever else and there's no problems there. The benefit of the abilities would be that they can be inherited, so any number of units can pick them up if they want to.

My point is that none of these abilities feel like they are intended to help mages do what they are intended to do in the game. Speedtaker can be nice, but I get the feeling it wouldn't be nearly as good on multiple units (can you guarantee you'd be able to feed enough kills to the right units to be a better option than a middling flat speed boost?). Draconic Hex doesn't seem like a great fit for mages, since they tend to be big damage dealers to begin with on mooks, while the ability doesn't stack on bosses. Mages should be able to do enough damage to a mook to make Draconic Hex irrelevant (if not killing the enemy outright), or you should have access to Corrin to land a Draconic Hex. And I think Hold Out on a mage feels more like a meme than a plan. You should be able to plan around a mage ever taking a serious hit after you get past the first handful of chapters. But if you don't want to make Echo an inheritable skill, there are other options. What about bringing in the Magic Range+1 abilities from Three Houses? If that's too strong, maybe attach the rider as with Claude's ring in the game, where the unit has to be at full health to get the extra +1 range. Or maybe you make it such that it's an elemental mastery ability. There can be a Wind Magic +1 range, Fire Magic +1 Range, Ice Magic+1 Range, and maybe even a Thunder Magic +1 range (which would have to be the most SP intensive). This provides extra utility, and can also allow for a bit of specialization between mages (e.g. one primarily deals with Fire magic while another uses Wind). Or maybe you have a series of elemental buff abilities for each element type, something like Mt+2/4/6 and Hit+5%/10%/15% for a single element of spells. Or maybe there's an ability that says attacking with a magic spell that an enemy can't counter gets some stat benefit (Mt+5, Crit+10%, Hit+10%, whatever you like), akin to the No Distractions class ability for Sniper. I think there are plenty of interesting potential abilities they could have done, but all they did was generic tome mastery to slightly improve hit chance, which feels weak to me.

The way Lyn's moveset is designed feels bad to me. Summoning the doubles feels awful because in all likelihood you're only going to get benefit from them for 1 combat. Assuming you have a standard 3 turn engage, one turn is likely to be the emblem attack (which the doubles don't chain on), one turn is summoning the doubles, and one turn is actually attacking with them. You're liable to do more damage if you just basic attack both turns instead. The doubles function better as a defensive wall than as attack support, and while from a gameplay perspective that's fine from a character representation perspective it sucks. The doubles are supposed to represent the awesome crit animations from Lyn's game, and the best use of them is as a defensive wall? Big miss. I'd say make the doubles automatically summoned when the user engages, but the tradeoff is they are incorporeal, can be dispatched by an enemy simply moving into their square, and can't block off areas. For Roy, I almost like the engage ability. It can attack units in three adjacent squares, which can be nice, and the terrain control can be handy. But the terrain control is much weaker because you can't use the emblem ability unless there is an enemy present on the square you want to use it on. All to often, I found myself having to decide between either not using the engage ability or using it in a less than ideal position because that's where an enemy happened to be. If you're giving us an AoE effect with terrain control, please just let us use it freely on any space. Given how Roy is largely considered in the bottom half of the emblems, I think he can just be given this capability. For Byleth, I wish you just got to choose what weapon you had access to when engaged instead of having it be class based. There are a bunch of times where you'd really rather have a different Hero's Relic, and it feels bad when you're halfway through a mission and engage only to find out you don't have the weapon you thought you did. And this is more of a general note, but one of Micaiah or Celica needs to have some sort of skill that an offensive mage actually wants to purchase. Seriously, what are the best abilities for a Sage, Mage Knight, or Ivy/Hortensia to pick up in the game? Canter? Staff Mastery? The Magic stat increases are comically overpriced. Magic Resonance seems fun in the first couple of chapters, but becomes irrelevant halfway through the game. My suggestion is to make Echo an inheritable ability. At least there would be some utility to being able to finish off a unit, then get some chip damage in elsewhere. Lastly, as a general idea, I would revisit the idea that you can't stack certain abilities when you've equipped the emblem ring. I really don't see why you couldn't have Resolve x2 or Wrath x2 while holding Ike (or whatever else) if you're willing to commit the SP and emblem ring to it. Maybe some abilities would be awkward to implement (e.g. Alacrity), but most should be fine. (And as a side note, imagine this combined with my proposed Echo inheritable ability. Stacking Echo would effectively allow a mage to attack twice at full power while engaged, which would definitely help with Celica's late game power issues.)

I'm not sure these differences are significant enough to seriously consider. Swordmaster gets a 5% improvement in growth rate to Speed and Dex, and a 10% improvement in growth rate for Resistance. Considering you get Kagetsu at roughly the halfway point of the game, you're looking at perhaps an extra point of speed and dexterity by the endgame and two whole points of resistance. That's not a big difference. The bigger impact between the two classes is going to be base class stat differences. It looks like Swordmaster gets +4 speed, +2 dex and +2 luck, while warrior gets +6 strength, +6 HP, and +2 build. Moreover, I think in this game Axes are better than Swords from a general perspective. Enemies are pretty darn bulky, and having the extra Mt associated with axes is a non trivial benefit. A Warrior is going to get an extra 4+ attack not evident in raw stats just by using the same tier of weapon as a Swordmaster. And there's no good 1-2 range option for swords unless you also have a good magic stat. There may be a case to being able to use S tier swords when you get to the endgame, but that's a fair distance into the game, and I'm not sure it makes up for the difference in reduced utility up to that point. I think Engage gives you enough tools that if you concentrate them all onto a single unit, you can make that unit great regardless of any other consideration. So it isn't surprising to me that you're able to make a dodgetank swordmaster function. I just doubt that there's anything particular to this build that couldn't be done with other characters in other classes. In my current playthrough, I have a wolf knight Merrin that's sitting at 120+ dodge before any terrain effects, but she gets to use 1-2 range daggers and their superior forging options instead of being stuck with swords. Your description doesn't exactly make me excite to change her out of that and put her in swordmaster.

I agree that this where the difference between the classes is. I figure the raw stats and class abilities are similar enough. My point is that in many previous Fire Emblem games, if a mage so much as looks at a general funny, the general explodes. That is not the case in this game. But I disagree with how useful having unbreakable is and think you are are vastly underselling it. First, I find that even on hard a unit without unbreakable, even with access to two weapon classes, is going to end up getting broken significantly often in the situations you actually care about (i.e. situations where you're facing a wave of enemies of mixed weapon types simultaneously, not just baiting one or two isolated units). If a unit gets broken, that means not only do they likely not counterattack (unless they managed to dodge the first hit but get hit by the follow-up, which sounds equally unlikely for both generals and great knights), but they can't counterattack during during the subsequent combat either. That means that for those encounters, the great knight's strength isn't 1 lower than a general's. It means that their strength is effectively 0. Getting broken is a huge reduction in damage capability on enemy phase. There is a significant difference in cleaning up enemies on the front line during the ensuing player phase when all the enemies are missing 20-40 HP and when they are all at full health because you didn't manage to attack due to being broken. It goes beyond that, though. I've not used Great Knight much to this point, but the little I've played with has left me deeply unsatisfied. You're extremely dependent on matching the right weapon to the right situation. That means you likely need both a Silver weapon (or similar) and a 1-2 range weapon for each of your weapon types (let's assume lance and axe, since that seems strongest and there isn't a good 1-2 range option in swords for Great Knights). That means you're going to be switching between 4 weapons pretty regularly, which makes it much less profitable to commit to any engraving for any of those weapons. Why waste one of your extremely scarce engravings, particularly one of the more valuable ones, on a weapon that's only going to be used ~25% of the time when the situation allows? But then that feeds into other issues as well. Now, if you want to use the heavier weapons (i.e. a Tomahawk instead of a Hand Axe), you're going to be dealing with a ton of accuracy issues. Hand Axes aren't accurate to begin with, and base Tomahawks are even worse. Are you going to go with the stronger tier weapons, and deal with hit rates in the 50-60% range and the inconsistent damage that comes from that even with Fire Emblem's characteristic fudging of Hit Rates? Or are you going to go with the more accurate weapons, and cede another 6-7 (or more) Mt to generals? Moreover, because generals are constantly in combat, never get broken, and are able to use whatever weapon type they want, they make for fantastic use of your engravings. My general Louis uses only two weapons for 90+% of his combat and nearly all of his tanking, a Silver Greatlance and a Spear. Because he only uses two weapons, it's easy to have them engraved, and using engravings that most of the other units don't want to begin due to their Wt penalties (Academy and Binding, respectively). Sure, nominally a Great Knight can use these engravings as well, but much less effectively, since presumably a Great Knight would only be able to use them 50% of the time for fear of being broken. Yes, in terms of raw stats Great Knight is going to be on a similar level of damage output. But I've found in practice that effective damage output of a general is so much higher than a Great Knight. You never get broken and get completely blanked for two combats. You're always able to use an amazing weapon with good accuracy to score significant damage to enemies. Yes, when you get to maddening, I'm sure the effectiveness of this type of enemy phase play will be reduced due to an increase in enemy stats. But I'd wager the difference in expected damage output between the classes (taking into account things like missed attacks due to being broke, misses due to lower accuracy, not being able to take as much advantage of engravings, and perhaps even voluntarily using weaker weapons to patch hit rate issues) is upwards of 10-15 damage/combat. That's a huge amount. The stats don't tell the whole story here. Being unbreakable is an extremely strong ability.

I think generals are pretty great in this game, and I pity anyone who changed Louis into a Great Knight. High physical defense is actually a thing in this game to reduce enemy attacks to 0, and health is high enough you likely won't get one-rounded by a single non-boss mage. There's also a huge number of tools for units to improve their resistance. Obviously there's Pure Water, though I think that's a poor option. You can buy more resistance for SP if you're desperate. You can get Resolve/Resolve+ for a healthy boost as well. And if you're using Ike, which is an obvious synergy for a general, his Great Aether will also provide an extra 5 resistance the turn you use it. You can use this to provide a bit of extra defense on the turn a mage is approaching you. And the fact that Generals can't be broken is a huge benefit for enemy phase play. I've found that my most consistent damage dealers on enemy phase are either generals or evasive, knife-wileding units (thieves/wolf knights). Other units are too easily broken, preventing counterattacks, and enemies are bulky enough that dealing 20-30 damage to them on enemy phase is a big benefit. Just slap a Spear/Tomahawk or Silver Greatweapon on them as the situation requires and let them go to town. Then the rest of the party can clean up the scraps.

I've been disappointed by the amount of equipment I've found viable. Most weakness-attacking weapons are not great. I would rather use magic weapons over armorbane weapons and anti-cavalry weapons are pretty spotty. A wyrmslayer is OK against Wyverns, but many times you're in just as good a position by using a Silver axe or a magic weapon. I also haven't found Killer weapons or Brave weapons very good, since their might is so low. I've been getting the most play out of Silver tier weapons, various flavors of 1-2 range weapons, smash weapons, and magic based weapons. As for some of the best engravings I've found, aside from the ones that modest improvements on almost any weapon: Sacred emblem (Eirika) on a Thoron tome (makes the hit rate good, and mages using this tome should never face an attack so the Avo and Ddg penalties don't matter) Radiance emblem (Ike) goes on some kind of Lightning tome (more power, can't follow up anyway, and the users should never be in combat for the speed to matter) Academy emblem (Byleth) on a Silver Greatlance or Silver Greataxe (great to give to a lance general like Louis for enemy phase or just nuking enemies on attacks) Awakening emblem (Lucina) on a Silver Dagger (Units that use daggers tend to be more evasive to begin with, and this let's amplify their strength. Geneology (Leif) emblem on a Tomahawk (to improve hit rate) Some engravings are also more unit-based to me than weapon-based: Echoes emblem (Celica) goes to weapon for a front line unit with low luck (e.g. Jade or Bucheron) Binding (Roy) Emblem goes on a General (since their defense are high enough they don't care about speed anyway). Dawn emblem (Micaiah) on a Fighting Arts (I don't think it's particularly good, but I've seen people wonder what to do with this emblem. You throw this on you Qi adept/master or dancer and give them a little bit more defense. It's not like they're doing damage anyway.)

If Engage is like other Fire Emblem games, stat gains for level ups for all units are rolled when you first enter a mission. They will not change regardless of any Time Crystal shenanigans. However, stats gains for level ups will be rerolled when you change maps. So doing things like exiting a mission to the world map, then re-entering it will reset any level ups that were in place previously. Similarly, if you get a bad level up near the end of a mission, you can use the Time Crystal to revert to prior to the level, then make sure that you don't use that unit anymore until the end of the mission (watch out for any end of mission XP you may get from Training Skirmishes). After you clear the mission, you can try your luck again at the level up either in the Arena or in your next mission. Further, level ups you get from the Arena in Somniel are also subject a similar restriction. As best as I can tell, all level ups for your party are rolled when you enter Somniel, so switching around the order that you put people into the Arena will not alter what level ups you get. If you really want to cheese it, you'll have some flexibility in avoiding terrible level ups. If a unit has a bad level up near the end of a mission, you can reroll it in the Arena. If you have a bad level up in the Arena, you can reroll it in the next mission. If you get a bad level again, then at point you likely just have unrealistic expectations about what you're looking to get out of a level. I've found a good time to do some training is after you get your first handful of Master Seals, but before enemies start classing up to advanced classes (I'd that's somewhere in the range of Ch. 12-15). You can go into a mission roughly a 50/50 split of promoted units and units to train. If you've chosen who to promote wisely, the early promoted units should be able to handle enough of the initial press to give your lower level characters some room to breath and hand any problematic press of enemies. Also bear in mind that a couple of the emblems have abilities that can be used outside of combat, and these abilities can give a *ton* of experience (area healing with Micaiah, Goddess Dance with Byleth). It can be a good way to get experience for units that are struggling to do any damage at all.

Right, I wasn't questioning whether or not this content would exist, but more how extensive it's going to be. If Engage is only going to have a single route, then one strategy the devs might use to increase the amount of content in the game to a similar level to Fates/Three Houses might be to add in more of the optional material. But in Three Houses there are 26 paralogues (albeit some are route-locked). I know I've heard that there are some people who don't enjoy the paralogues/side quests/auxiliary battles very much, so I wonder if it's feasible to expand on that number while still keeping players happy.