LukeB

At launch, on a fresh Maddening run Alear would always get HP Dex and Spd on his first level up. My spouse just started a Maddening run for the first time, and their Alear got HP STR, SPD, and DEF instead. Did they change something about fixed fixed growths? Or did they make Maddening default to random growths?

This is only a sacrifice in chapters where you have the same number (or more) emblems then you have deployments slots. That is a very, very small portion of the game, unless you have all of the DLC emblems. At all times where you have less emblem rings then deployment slots, this is a positive - not a negative

This whole stretch of the game is 4 chapters lol. And even if you feed her everything, she will still likely be a lower level with weaker offense and weaker defenses then Kagetsu joins with at base. Which is like, the definition of Kagetsu being a better unit. Lapis IS a good unit, and it is possible that the "optimal team" runs both, but she is not as good as Kagetsu. Unless you are giving her points for subjective things like appearance/personality/being your waifu.

I have, across multiple playthroughs, forced Dierdre once, Claude twice, and Owlen three times. The longest it has taken me to pull a ring was 10 mins. Most took around 5 or so

The fact that you used this conclusion as a negative when comparing Chloe to Lapis. But then dismissed the same thing when comparing Lapis and Kagetsu shows favoritism in your comparisons. Even if you are using her consistently, she is almost certainly going to be a lower level then Kagetsu when he joins, something that you did not acknowledge at all. But even if you show her hyper favoritism, and you fed her basically every kill you could from the moment she joined to the moment Kagetsu joined, and she managed to be at his level (so 10/7 to his prepromoted 15/1) he would still have +4 HP, +3 Str, +5 Dex, +4 Def, +3 Bld. That is a big difference. Or, just like you said for Chloe, "you can feed your other units then get a level 15/1 (with higher stats) Lapis for free" I personally think that Kagetsu and Merrin are a tier above the other speedsters, while Chloe and Lapis and StrClass!Clanne are all fairly interchangeable once reclassed. -- But you are right that all these speedy units, if given all tools to succeed, can likely carry your playthrough.

If you know how to manipulate the rng, forcing out the Dire thunder ring is trivial but tedious. Takes about 5 mins (10 max), and 1,000 bond fragments.

For most of the game (and I mean like, all except for literal endgame) Dire Thunder will do more damage to every unit you want your mage to attack, and Thoron (+ magic emblem ring) will do more damage to The Enemies You Don't Want Your Mage To Attack. For reference, I went back to that chapter 17 save file, it had Citrinne, Anna, and Ivy all on the team. Ivy had the lowest magic, so I did some comparisons for her. I gave her a +4 Thunder Tome (Ike) and Owlen. Then I gave her a +4 Thoron (Ike) and Byleth. Ivy did more with Dire Thunder to every Berserker, Halberdier, Paladin, and General on the map, while Thoron would do more damage to the Royal Knights, High Priests, and Sages. (For Citrinne, Royal Knights actually moved over to Dire Thunder Group) Do you really value doing more damage to High Priests and Sages over doing more damage to The Units You Want Your Mage To Kill? And the damage difference on the lower res enemies is significant. (Again, all numbers with Ivy, the numbers are even better for Citrinne) 52 damage vs 39 damage to a berserker 50 damage vs 38 to a general 44 damage vs 35 damage to snipers 42 damage vs 34 damage to Halberdiers Dire Thunder Ivy can one shot all of these enemies, either on her own [Snipers] or with a little support (standing next to Alear or instruct from Byleth or a chain attack) [Berserkers/Generals/Halberdiers]. And Dire Thunder Citrinne one shots all with no help -- where as Thoron Ivy one shots... none of them... even with help. And this is comparing +4 to +4, and that is a LOT more resources for thoron to get there then it was for Thunder to get there, and it is substantially behind. Dire Thunder is very powerful. I also don't think that it is unexpected that eventually, at the very end of the game, your A rank weapon starts out scaling the D Rank weapon -- but that does not diminish the power and usefulness that that D rank weapon brought to all other stages of the game.

I feel like if we start with the premise of: If we start with a premise that it will cost all of your bond points, and still will require luck to get it, then I agree with the conclusion : it is not worth blowing all of your bond fragments just for a *chance* at getting the Owlen ring when Thoron will be a functional alternative. It is just that given the amount of manipulation we actually have, the base premise it wrong.

I think that you have hit a key note, which is that Dire Thunder's efficacy is limited on high resistance enemies. But I think that your conclusion that it is over rated is flawed. If you get it, it is your single best enemy killing tool for a substantial portion of the game, and likely your most consistent way to one round over half of all units on any given map. You are correct that doing so offers less utility compared to the Emblem rings, but for most maps of the game you do not have enough to even go around - so having an optimized damage dealer not require one is a plus for the ring. I ran some numbers a while back, and on Chapter 17 (was just arbitrarily where I was at the time) If my Citrinne had Dire Thunder, she did more damage then Thoron +great thunder on almost every normal enemy (excludes a couple mages), whole Great Thunder wins against almost every boss/wyrm (excluding Marni). Both of those options were substantially more damage then if Citrinne had an actual Emblem Ring. This is a general trend that holds true for several more chapters, before enemy stats just hit the point that you would do more with Great Thunder against most enemies except Generals. If you are optimizing for a nuking character (say Citrinne) then the best thing that you can do likely Dire Thunder early/mid game -> Great Thunder for the end game.

I am reading along, and am interested in the part where you get to the bond ring's effect, but this first section leaves me with the impression that you do not have a full understanding of how much we can manipulate the bond rings. Actually getting the Dire Thunder is trivial, but a little tedious. You can get it, or any other ring, in about 5-10 mins only spending enough bond fragments for a single 10 ring pull. I have done it personally multiple times across multiple playthroughs. I made a post a while back walking through the most efficient way to do it

Celine's base strength is fairly low, and her strength growth, while higher then her magic growth, is not amazing. So switching her to a physical unit will result is a fairly fast (but not even as fast as say Kagetsu/Merrin/Chole), but low strength unit. The closest unit to compare her to would probably be Chloe. So IL 30: Chloe would have +8 hp, +2 Magic, +4 Dex, +4 Spd, and +1 Bld Celine would have +1 Str and +4 Res. I don't think that I would recommend going this route personally. You would just end up making a physical unit entirely outclassed by all of your good physical units. Celine's biggest pro, and basically the only reason to use her imo, is the Vidame class. It has: some of the best base stats in the game, sword access for levin sword, the mystic tag, and Ignis. No other class is giving you anywhere near as much as Vidame will give you, and Celine's stats seem balanced around the assumption that that is where she is going to be. Taking her out of it feels worse then just benching her tbh.

I do wish Alear was less whiney as it happened though. His reaction to being robbed was pretty badly done imo

This would be a functional option, slowing down the ring acquisition. However, I think it would be worse. I feel like how few chapters we would have access to Byleth/Corrin would feel pretty bad. Of the options between: Slowing down ring acquisition - so some rings are only avaliable for a very limited number of chapters Same rate of acquisition but never lose them - so our ring to deployment slot is much higher How it is, losing them half way I think losing them is the best option. There are likely other options that would [skip being robbed + allow limited rings avalaibke at once pre end game + let each ring be avaliable for enough chapters] but they would likely require massive overhauls of the narrative steucture [Like, a Alm/Celica situation where one party find half and another finds the other half], but anything like that is going to have more implications then just "let's not take away the rings" Obviously, having the rings stolen does not *feel* good, but I think it is good for the game play of the game. And I don't think games owe it to us to feel good, when narratively we are suffering a set back.

Thieves are good, so he will probably be a solid unit. His speed should be insane, so nothing should be able to touch him. However, the strength growth on Thief is fairly low, so he might struggle for damage. For reference, even if you managed to get him caught up to yunaka in levels, he be slightly below her on strength. And his growth will be lower (In thief, Jean will have 40% while Yunaka and Zelkov have 45%) so he will start out behind in strength AND will have lower growth. Again, he will probably be a good unit because covert and daggers and speed are good, but might not be the best choice.

Things that I would change: -Give us arts proficiency from someone, somewhere, in the early parts of the game. Having the Martial Monk / High Priest / Martial Master line completely unavailable for reclass until Byleth feels bad. -Celica's self damage should happen when the Celica unit attacks, not at the start of combat. -Make Leif's Adaptability actual smart. -Not something I actually thought of, but I will second the person who said Byleth should give Fetters over Raphael Gem for Qi Adepts. If I actually sat and thought for a bit, I might have more thoughts on the weapon choices Byleth gives out.

I think that the game is better for it. In my first playthrough, I was already thinking that I seemed to be rapidly approaching the point where everyone would be able to have a ring, and thought that that was bad from a strategic choice perspective. Losing your starting rings fixed that issue. The other alternatives like not giving you half the rings until the very end of the game, feels much worse then what is currently implemented.

Kagetsu with a max killing edge is the person that I used for that, he was pretty good at it one rounding a lot of unit types. The issue with avoid stacking is that enemies will just ignore your units, but with bonded shield the units do not care that they have a 0% chance to damage you

I think that my only real complaint* is having Lucina at the bottom (*there are likely others that I would go up or down 1/2, but are in the right ball park) I think that you are greatly diminishing the support power of her bonded shield. While yes, it can be described as " A more reliable Chain Guard when engaged that you can use multiple times, oh wow, nice..." the difference between Chain Guard and Bonded Shield are vast enough to completely change the options you have to approach a scenario. Hypothetical scenario: A choke point in range of 5 enemy units. Kagetsu can double, and kill all 5 of them, but dies to 2 enemy hits. Louis can survive multiple hits, but cannot kill any of them. Chain guard - Kagetsu cannot hold the choke point, he will die. You have to put Louis in that choke point instead, and he damages but does not kill, 3 of the units. 2 units left unscratched Bonded Shield = Kagetsu can hold the choke point, and all 5 enemies will suicide into him. He takes 0 damage, and killed all 5 enemies. That is A LOT of increased offense for that turn, that only happened because of Lucina. Obviously, in game scenarios are usually more complex, Lucina + 2 good offensive units can make an L formation, blocking a 2 tile wide choke point being the one that I had come up - and Lucina can do that! Guard two different units for the entire enemy phase, while Chain Guard turns off after the first hit. Lucina makes Enemy Phase Plays possible in a game where it is often hard to make enemy phase plays. She has a lot of other nice touches, like granting Backup attacks to units who would not other wise get them, ranged chain attacks, and using all for one to quickly rack up multiple stacks of poison on a boss I feel like your reaction to her looks like it is saying that she lacks a delete button, and is therefore bad, but she is an excellent support, so damage is probably a poor way to evaluate her.

I think that the gatcha mechanic having game changingly powerful rings was a poor game design. When I first saw the mechanic, and it was just a different arrangement of stats, I thought it was innocuous enough. Everyone can get rings, and the differences between them were small stat bonuses. But once I saw that they had Dire Thunder and Wind God and other powerful abilities, I changed my mind. If Dire Thunder is a mechanic I should be able to rely on, then I should be able to get consistently. If Dire Thunder is not a mechanic I should be able to rely on, then I should not have randomly achieved access to it. In a game where they changed growth rates to fixed growths to minimize randomness, this design decision seems very silly. Given that sentiment, I think that rigging the rng for the rings that you want is fine in a normal run. They are a mechanic in the game that you could feasibly have if you were lucky (I pulled an S ring on my first ever pull lol), so having access to them is not "cheating." However, I feel like in an ironman run, it feels like resetting for better RNG is basically The Thing that you don't do in an Iron Man lol

I am exclusively talking about maddening, because that is the only difficulty which I have played. I am happy to concede that on all lower difficulties, the unbreakable feature will be much more beneficial, and therefore the balance between generals and great knights is going to be very different. Just to offer some in play notes, I am on Chapter 17. From the starting positions There are 4 units to the north, and there are 3 units to the west. The 4 units to the north, have 40-45 physical attack. Louis dies to 3 hits. He can only safely go into the enemy range of TWO units. The 3 units to the west all have 47 physical attack, and all double regardless of his weapon. He can only safely go into the range of ONE unit. Being a general WOULD NOT allow me to take on more units then being a great knight. It is fairly easy, in my opinion, to make sure that Louis is not getting broken in either situation, because he is not facing down a ton of different weapon types. Also, units tend to be broken up into pairs/triples with the same weapon type. In this example, the west units all have axes, while the northern units have 2 lance fighters, whose ranges largely over lap and then 2 axe fighters a couple of squares behind. Either way that I go, I will only be facing a single weapon type on the baiting round of combat. This is not a fair assessment of how often they can use their best weapon. You can use your best weapon against 2 of the 3 weapon types as a great knight, meaning you are using it 66% of the time. Once again, I am happy to admit that not being broken is strong, but I also find a 2 move difference to be fairly large, so I am willing to make that trade to have to keep up with 2 weapons on him.

I was annoyed when the Queen of Solm offered to come with us, and Fogato told her no She had a super cool character design, and the reason presented behind her not joining (Fogato not wanting his mom hanging around) was silly.

I don't think that comparing max strength is very useful, given Louis seems unlikely to hit max strength before the end of the game. So, it is a strength difference of 2. Which I found the 2 move way more beneficial then I think that 2 damage on a unit that will never double could ever be. Once you get the S tier weapon, that is probably a different story? At that point, the damage difference might be enough to consider Do you realize that most of what you said about General Louis is also true about Great Knight Louis? lol Pure waters, Resolve, Ike - they all work on a great knight The def difference between the two is...1. The Def growth rate is a difference of 0.05%, in other words, at level 20...1 point in defense. So the real difference between the two, for most of the game, is : cannot be broken vs 2 move I have found that with Great Knights getting two weapon types, avoiding getting broken is not usually too hard. Although, I can see this being a distinction in this game from hard to maddening. In Maddening, you cannot send even a great knight louis into a hoard of enemies in the late game, just because enemy damage is so damn high. He can bait a couple, but that is it. Making it easier to account for at most 2, maybe 3, units' weapon types. If as you say, in hard, you can send him into a hoard of enemies, then the unbreakable passive might be more valuable then my experience on maddening

As several people have said, promoting ASAP is always better in this game. And this is coming from someone who generally like to push up to 20. This game lets you infinitely level, so there is no reason to grind out the 20 in the prepromoted class. In other games, if you went 10/20, then you were capped and missed 10 levels of growths. That is not a thing in this game, because you can just second seal back to level 1. So, instead of going 20/20, you should dedicate that same exp to going 10/20/10. You pushed those ten levels to the back end, with promoted class growths. So, if you are planning on using a unit long term, you should promote them as soon as you have the master seals to spare. In reality, you should likely spend every master seal the moment you get it, up to the moment all of your units are promoted. As for reclass, I would recommend someone going Warrior early. This will turn any unit with a decent strength into the best archer you have. Warrior is a better archer then sniper, bow knight, Cupido, or Alcryst's class. It comes with a noticeable bonus to strength and gaining the back up tag while wielding a longbow makes for one hell of a unit. If you want to use Anna, she really appreciates a reclass as well. If you have the DLC, I would recommend promoting her to a second Warrior for another Bow user during Tiki's paralogue, and then reclassing her after beating Tiki's map. Just on the base stats of Warrior alone, wielding a steal bow, she will do a lot of damage there. Alfred feels a little lacking in his personal class imo. If you like him, he is a solid choice to be your warrior, but if you want to make use of him closer to how he presents (bulky, spear, horse unit), great knight feels good too. [+1 HP, +1 Str, +5 def -- and the speed is a wash, because it is -1 Spd +1 Bld]. Priority for promotion are the units that might stay on your team long term: Prioritizing Your Warrior Choice, and if you are using her, Anna. Then your second (and third if not using Anna) should just go to who ever you think will be with you for the long haul.

It is less that the class itself is at a huge speed detriment (it is only 1/2 speed slower then warrior/berserker) but Axe Classes give your units more build, which then help offset that weight difference. But the thing is that the arts calculation IS the limiting factor here. The Average of two stats can never be more then the best of those same two stats. So, if you are looking at a unit, and think "their strength is middling AND their magic is middling" then the average will be middling. In order for the arts calculation to be good, you would need a unit with Great Strength and Great Magic, but units are not made that way. In general, you are getting units with Great Strength and Bad Magic, or Bad Strength and Great Magic, or Passable Strength and Passable Magic. Which makes the average... Passable. Even if we stop for a minute, and imagine a DLC class that shows up. It uses arts, and it has higher bases in both Strength and Magic, and has a better Speed. Yeah, that will probably be Chloe's best offensive class at that point, but that is just not going to catch her up to someone with a Great Strength score.

The numbers just really don't work out this way. Again, I like arts, they have an interesting niche, but they are just not optimal if you want to maximize a units damage. I ran the numbers for Framme, Celine, and Cloe (skipped Rosado because he starts much later, so I could not match him to the control). Here is each of them at level 10/20, in Martial Master wielding silver weapons vs 10/20 in Warrior wielding a brave axe vs 10/20 in Sage with Dire Thunder - To stay consistent, I kept each of them in their base class to 10, promoted, then second sealed. Celine Martial Master 31.4x2 at 18.1 Atk Spd Warrior 37.5 x 2 at 17.1 Atk Spd Sage 32.2x2 Chloe Martial Master 32.1x2 at 22 Atk Spd Warrior 36 x 2 at 22 Atk Spd Sage 35 x 2 Framme Martial Master 31.6 x 2 at 22 Atk Spd Warrior 36.1 x 2 at 20.2 Atk Spd Sage 34 x 2 Celine has +6 damage for -1 speed Chloe has +4 damage and the same speed Framme has + 5 damage for -2 speed. All three do more damage with Dire Thunder. The only one even worth debating the merits to here is Framme... maybe? I mentioned before, that super balanced units will approach breaking even with arts vs brave weapons, and here are those units. They are approaching breaking even. And so yeah, they can do about the same, but they are not surpassing themselves, and therefore are not coming close to the damage of units with a dedicated attack stat. And once again, this is before factoring in diminishing returns on stat bonuses from meals / energy drops / ring bonus / + Str skills.