Hazeel

1) Besides Lorenz (mainly due to Lysithea) who has paralogues worth recruiting for in and of themselves if we're looking at this through an optimal lens? Ferdinand/Lysithea: OK battalions that come very late and you will have superior alternatives to. Linhardt/Leonie: It's basically a Brave Bow that's harder to fix. Again battalions that come very late and are outclassed. Caspar/Mercedes: Lol. Bernadetta and Petra: I'll admit, Petra's battalion is good--but only slightly better than Jeralt's mercenaries and it comes really late. Dorothea: Lol. Felix: He's the only one the Aegis Shield is good for. If you're recruiting Felix, it's for Felix. Sylvain: Lance of Ruin is OK, but not worth recruiting for. Ashe Definitely worth it...except you could just recruit Catherine for free. Still, fair paralogue recruit for CF. Annette: N/A Ingrid: Same as Sylvain. Raphael/Ignatz lol Marianne: Near useless relic and outclassed battalion that comes really late. Hilda: Better than Sylvain and Ingrid, but really questionable recruiting just for her relic. 2) Maybe early on that might be a bit of an issue, but by Chapter 5 you can just get gifts. And it doesn't take many activity points to feed your students to begin with. Had no trouble training my students whatsoever.

They have...no value at all unless they offer faculty training, and the only ones who do are free recruits anyway. You only need the 10 units you plan to use plus maybe one or two backups for 11-12 deployment maps. And there aren't that many characters worth going out of your way for. Recruiting everyone is a complete waste of resources.

Yeah, but if you're going to recruit everyone, you've kinda given up on playing optimally...and at this point, you may as well just play on NG+ to save yourself the tedium and unlock more supports.

I would say it's the exact opposite. Byleth is so much easier to raise skills for due to faculty training. Maybe it's different in NG+ if you're doing sauna 7 times on the first week or something, but even then I'd expect Byleth to raise his skills faster. I mean this is only Chapter 10 and he's more or less almost done. Only needs a B in axes, S in Brawling, and A+ in Flying. The former two were both achieved by Chapter 13 and the latter of which is achieved between Chapters 15-17. That's around the time Lysithea finishes and one of her main traits is learning skills faster than other students. Most units don't even have their fully optimized skill set at Chapter 20.

10/10 for male. 8/10 for female. While Byleth doesn't have any major weakness, as a PP unit I'd only put them as a little above average. Fairly reliable, but not as good as Felix, Lysithea or...a fair number of mages, really. Where they truly shine is as an EP unit, easily getting their avoid up to 140 without stat boosters. Their high charm also makes them fairly safety against gambits, which are generally the bane of any EP unit. Byleth performs best as a War Master dodge tank with both high crit and QR making them a reliable killer. Although Dimitri is more reliable at killing, I feel that Byleth is a much better EP unit simply due to his lack of weaknesses. Monsters, ballista, armored units, and high avoid enemies are all a threat to Dimitri since he can't crit/hit/oneshot them. And if he gets damaged at all, his battalion is at risk. If you lose his battalion, he's not only useless for the rest of the map, but you have to restore it and whittle it down again. And from my own experience, I actually managed to get QR faster than I could whittle down Dimitri's battalion to 1/3 when I was setting them both up. By comparison, Byleth is very safe to use. If I put him in the middle of a horde of monsters, it doesn't matter if he can't kill them immediately, since they won't be hurting him either. Even if he does get hit by a gambit, his avoid is so high that he can reasonably survive the next turn, preferably with physic help. And since his battalion's health isn't relevant to the build, I don't have to treat him like a piece of tissue paper the way I do for Dimitri. Unfortunately F!Byleth can't get access to War Master and, in her case, you're basically left with another Ferdinand. A unit with a lot of avoid, but not that much killing potential.

It's actually as simple as stacking on AS along with everything else. Just by consistently using Flying faculty training, I can get to A+ by Chapter 17 with Seteth and Manuela as the only instructors. The fastest I've gotten it was Chapter 15, because two of my students were able to get ahead in flying and I had four instructors. I don't remember when I got normal AS, but based on my progress log, It was definitely before Chapter 10. My units and Professor Level seemed to be going at a reasonable pace for me, so I don't feel like I even had to sacrifice much of anything in that department either. As far as killing goes, I would say that Dimitri is the more reliable killer but, again, the issue I have with him is that I can't send him out as brazenly as I send Byleth. Dimitri can't hit ballista, he can't crit monsters, armored units might survive, and there's always the potential of him missing. I think the saddest moment in my BL playthrough was watching him missing his vantage shot in Chapter 17 against Ignatz, who was hiding in the bushes and then proceeded to two-shot kill Dimitri. In contrast, Byleth doesn't face these risks. Even if he failed to kill Ignatz due to hit rate, there's a very low chance he would have gotten damaged. And even if he did, it wouldn't matter. In part because QR prevents enemies from doubling and in part because he doesn't rely on his his battalion's health. If Dimitri's battalion dies, he's borderline useless for the rest of the map and I have to spend another week whittling it down. Again, for reference, mastering WM actually took less time than whittling Dimitri's battalion to 1/3 and I don't have to worry about losing QR from damage.

I'll give her...a 7? Never got her to work as a PP unit because her crit rate wasn't that impressive. As an EP unit, she does her job and lures in enemies for the other units to kill, but she struggles to do any damage as a Falcon Knight and as a Wyvern Lord, her damage isn't that impressive. She lacks the stats and skills to reliably kill like other EP units such as Byleth or Dimitri and she doesn't have BW to at least do good chip damage or score a few kills like Petra or Claude.

Uhhh... 1) That's...higher than axes. And on par with or higher than lances. 2) Early game is when your units will be grouped together and constantly feeding each other support bonus hit. It's late game where being inaccurate really hurts you. 3) Your mages shouldn't be attacking early game unless absolutely necessary. Obviously Chapter 1 (2 for non-healers) is going to be the exception to this rule due to limited spell usage, but from Chapter 3 onwards, they should be letting other units get kills and focus on healing whenever possible, even if the other units don't particularly need it. On Chapter 5, you will be able to use your free DLC renown on the statues and ease the scarcity of Maddening exp a bit, but until then your overall team will get more exp if the mages focus on healing in battle and reason via instruction, while the physical units are fed more kills. How do you make an EP Raphael? He's slow, going to constantly get doubled, and I can't see him getting that much AVO. Felix can get a decent bit of AVO and avoid doubling due to his speed and, with his relic, might have a little bit of EP utility, but I will agree he isn't suited for it either. Byleth on the other hand is definitely suited for it. Due to sheer speed that he can level up skills, I would even argue he's the best EP unit in the game. I realize this isn't the most impressive showcase since it's only a quest battle, but it's still early TS Maddening and he's very reliable. Nearly as good at getting kills as Dimitri, except I don't have to constantly worry about sending him into an area with monsters he can't crit or ballista he can't fight. And because Byleth's EP build doesn't rely on a gambit, I don't even need to worry about him getting hit that much since his battalion's health isn't that crucial. With about 110-130 avoid, depending on your progress and setup, I'd say he's suited for EP. War Master has no effect on his avoid, obviously, but the reason you go Grappler is for Fierce Iron Fist, which is exclusively PP oriented. The reason you go War Master is partly for crit, and partly for QR, which is EP oriented. And I know some people like to act like getting QR is really difficult or something but...it's not. This is from my recent BL run, during one of Chapter 14's other quests. I just popped on Knowledge Gem and let Byleth dodge all the others while Dimitri was on the other side, getting his battalion whittled down for his own EP build. Only took a few turns to master and Byleth actually got done faster because I could only let Dimitri take a few hits without killing him.

Even then, opening the fight with sepharim or swarm is still useful IMO.

The problem with Felix is I can't always send him in. If there's too many enemies, he'll die whereas Lysithea can attack from a range, kill pretty much anything that isn't an end-game brawler/monster, and then canto away. And the problem with PP Wyvern Lords is that they are much less likely to kill with a bow and with an axe, they only have a 5 space safety range. 6 if you give them Galewind Shoes or some other means to boost their MV by two. Meanwhile Lysithea has a 9-10 space safety range with no hit penalty based on range. Of course, this isn't exclusive to Lysithea since you can give other mages Thrysus and a mounted class, though the others won't get the additional safety net against STRs from Thyrsus and either have a worse magic growth, spell list, or both. Male mages also miss out on the DLC classes entirely. Obviously EP units are going to kill more because that's their job. But they all have some limitations (especially Dimitri) and need support from PP units to deal with these. Common among all of them are enemies with gambits. And when it comes to LTC, which is the only performance measure the game offers, PP units are generally more crucial since most maps end once you kill the commander(s). Even with "rout the enemy" maps, Warp is still very useful for placing your EP units to kill as quickly as possible.

10/10. Best Player Phase unit in the game. Consistently kills, does so from a long range, ridiculously accurate, and gets the earliest and longest range warp, which is crucial for LTC. She's no good as an Enemy Phase unit, but that's simply not her job. Leave that to someone like War Master Byleth while Lysithea warps him around or takes care of the enemies with gambits. EDIT: This is assuming Maddening. Hard is the same as Normal to me and frankly anyone can kill outside Maddening so Lysithea isn't quite as special there, though Warp is still nice.