Best Classes of your Students (and Faculty) Encore: Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude

[Jayvee94]

Due to some varying strategies that players do in their play-through, I would like to see what you think is the best class for each student.

Don't forget to vote for the characters for the next poll.

Next poll starts when this disappears on the first page or when 4 days has past whichever comes first.

Edited September 21, 2019 by Jayvee94

[redlight]

Can't speak for Hubert.

Dedue loses relevancy post-midgame because of his availability, but if you stick to him then go Brigand (Death Blow)->Grappler->War Master because of it's decent move compared to other footlocked classes. This line since he has bad affinities to with mounts. Gauntlets salvage his player phase and I still found him to be tanky enough midgame. Another scratch on his record as to why I don''t consider him to be good endgame material is enemies starting to use more powerful weapons that make slow tanks pretty much useless if they can double which they will.

Wyvern Lord obviously for Hilda, but I don't know if you want to stick around for the mastery skill for Wyvern Rider which is Seal Defense.

[Jayvee94]

Come to think of it, if one puts effort towards Great Knight for Dedue, he may end up only as a Fortress Knight in the Final Chapter due to it's sheer difficulty.

[timon]

Hubert is quite amazing as a Dark Knight, but if you're a man of culture you keep him as a Dark Bishop because it's objectively cooler.

Dedue I've used as Knight>Warrior>WarMaster, because I straight up refuse to use Gauntlets (they're too dumb), but going Grappler into WM is probably better? idk, anyway he's most useful early game, and a Knight is better than a Brawler at that point imo.

Hilda is always on a Wyvern, if you have too many of them and want variety I guess Great Knight is an option as well?

[Dandy Druid]

For Hubert, it's either Dark Bishop or Dark Knight. I heard Dark Bishop has a nice spell list, but nearly all of his spells are dark spells already? I think Dark Knight would suit him best. He has budding talent in lances (albeit, not that great of one) but getting up his lance rank is pretty easy. Riding is a problem, but it's problem for most characters anyways.

For Dedue, it's hard to say. Theoretically, I'd say Great Knight, but his weakness in riding makes it an absolute pain since riding is the most annoying thing to level up. You can get it by save scumming with those small percent chances though. Dedue is a hard character, because he does lose some viability unfortunately. I'd say War Master may be the most practical/easiest choice, given his talents in axes and gauntlets.

For Hilda, I'd say Wyvern Lord. Sure, Great Knight is great option with her strength in axes and budding talent in heavy armor, but I think she's better utilized as a Wyvern Lord. It fits well with her strength in lances and I just simply like the idea of Hilda on a wyvern. She goes from student Serra to Jill Fizzart. Other than those 2, keeping her at Warrior is a good option. Next playthrough of GD I plan on making her a Bow Knight just to see how it will do.

[Silly]

Hubert - Dark Knight

Dedue - Bench (War Master if you have to)

Hilda - Wyvern Lord

I don't know if there is significant discussion to be had here. The class list for this game is not particularly balanced. Pretty much every unit that has a realistic chance of certifying into one of the better endgame classes should just pick that class.

Expect to see a lot of Wyvern Lord and Bow Knight for physical classes, with the occasional Falcon Knight maybe thrown in. For magic classes expect to see a lot of Dark Knight, with the occasional Holy Knight or Gremory (and the rare Bishop) when Dark Knight is hard to certify for.

[Shadow Mir]

14 minutes ago, Silly said:

Hubert - Dark Knight

Dedue - Bench (War Master if you have to)

Hilda - Wyvern Lord

I don't know if there is significant discussion to be had here. The class list for this game is not particularly balanced. Pretty much every unit that has a realistic chance of certifying into one of the better endgame classes should just pick that class.

Expect to see a lot of Wyvern Lord and Bow Knight for physical classes, with the occasional Falcon Knight maybe thrown in. For magic classes expect to see a lot of Dark Knight, with the occasional Holy Knight or Gremory (and the rare Bishop) when Dark Knight is hard to certify for.

To be fair, class balance being pretty lousy tends to be a thing more often than not. Look at FE4, where mounted units dominate really hard due to the maps. Or FE6, where mounted units also dominate really hard, while axe infantry are crap. Or the fact that swordies, axe infantry and archers tend to get shafted in a lot of games.

[TrueNoble]

Hubert: Dark Knight because he looks sick as hell, it makes it easier for him to keep pace with Edelgard, apply that res buff to stack with her passive, as if she wasn't already unstoppable enough. He's the glassiest glass cannon ever so the mobility and canto also helps him in that regard (in future runs I'll be sure to get him the Dark Bishop mastery skill as well, since killing in one turn is something he has absolutely no trouble with). He's also a great user of the Magic lance you get in the BE route, but gets good damage on Frozen Lance even before that.

Dedue: War Master for the mobility, and so he can reliably one-shot pretty much everything as his physical tankiness starts to become less and less relevant further into the game, and that minus in riding hinders his growth into a Great Knight. And besides, in Dedue's absence I came to prefer Great Knight Gilbert as a tanky initiator for his better mobility and more flexible defensive trait, death squadding very nicely with Dancer Annette and Bow Knight Ashe all the way up to the final map.

Hilda as a Wyvern Lord is just soooooooooooooooooooo good, on my current first Golden Deer run. Gets MVP almost every match, for what it's worth. Good support pair with Claude, as she can keep pace with him, following up with a sick Killing Blow and Strength + 2 ability boosted smack after he draws in enemies with alert stance and chips them, while also having nice synergy with Seteth since they have Supports AND mutually beneficial traits. Because of her low accuracy, I find supports all the more valuable, and the evasion they grant also works well off of her decent Speed.

[Wolfen09]

Can't say anything for Hubert yet, but I'd probably stick him on dark bishop

Dedue so far is a beast as a warrior, working my way towards war master.  I got decent speed out of him so he's usually a 1-1 trade with everybody if not a double on the slow units, plus his personal skill is good for drawing units out.

Hilda I'm running as a fortress knight with the goal of getting her to great knight, I have way too many flying units, so I'm changing it up a hair.  Shes got like a 15 spd for a fortress knight and high 20s defense, she's pretty good

[Shadow Mir]

Hard for me to say on the other two, but I like Hilda as a Falcon Knight (I find axes to be a load of crap in this game, so sue me).

[Cysx]

Hubert is Dark knight, because male and bad at Faith. Dark Bishop brings extremely little in comparison.

Dedue I'm low key thinking Grappler over Warmaster. I think many people haven't realized, but Grappler ignores terrain restrictions, while Warmaster does not, making it considerably less mobile on some maps. Its unique art can be pretty nice, too, though losing out on +3 str and +20 crit for +1 spd and that is questionable for sure. Oh and axefaire, but eh. Wyvern lord works too by the way, even with a weakness, but you do have to start working on it immediately.

Hilda is Wyvern lord, like half the roster. Great knight is a terrible class(+5 def isn't worth -8 speed, -3 str, -1 mov and no flight) that you should never put anyone in, novelty aside(which is why I did it and know how bad it is).

Voted Lysithea because she's less straightforward than others, though I think the 3 units at once thing is perfectly fine.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Cysx

[Dark Holy Elf]

Hubert - Dark Knight for the mobility is a pretty easy choice (plus he looks awesome as one). Can someone explain to me the appeal of Dark Bishop? With 4 move and no Tomefaire, it looks terrible, completely outclassed by Warlock. If its Fiendish Blow stacked with the one you learn from Mage it would have a niche, but as is I just can't see one.

Hilda has all the tools to excel as a Wyvern Lord, and that's the best class anyway.

I'm unsure on Dedue, Wyvern Lord might honestly still be the right answer the way it is for everyone, but I voted Warmaster just because after a certain point you run out of batallions for fliers, so passing on someone who is weak in flying AND misses a bunch of training time to get there seems like the correct choice.

[timon]

1 minute ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Hubert - Dark Knight for the mobility is a pretty easy choice (plus he looks awesome as one). Can someone explain to me the appeal of Dark Bishop? With 4 move and no Tomefaire, it looks terrible, completely outclassed by Warlock. If its Fiendish Blow stacked with the one you learn from Mage it would have a niche, but as is I just can't see one.

It's just that Hubert is literally Dracula with his timeskip Dark Bishop outfit tbh.

Also for Hubert specifically Warlock is literally useless, Black tomefaire and Black Magic x2 don't serve any purpose with his spell list. Another niche you could consider is that by getting Fiendish Blow as a class skill you free up 1 slot for a custom skill.

But then again, if you're going for optimization there's just no reason to not go Dark Knight, he even gets a talent in Lance, and a quite useful one, too.

[Cysx]

8 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If its Fiendish Blow stacked with the one you learn from Mage it would have a niche, but as is I just can't see one.

That's not a thing. I tried. When you change into Dark Bishop with Fiendish Blow learned from Mage, the one you learned disappears from your list, as if already equipped(which is technically the case). At best what it does is save a slot for it in that situation.
However, keep in mind that Black tomefaire doesn't apply to Hubert's spells(outside of Fire, which is not the worst thing ever granted), so Warlock isn't that good for him either. Tier 3 just kinda sucks for him.

Edit: ninjad

Edited August 19, 2019 by Cysx

[Dark Holy Elf]

13 minutes ago, Cysx said:

However, keep in mind that Black tomefaire doesn't apply to Hubert's spells(outside of Fire, which is not the worse thing ever granted), so Warlock isn't that good for him either. Tier 3 just kinda sucks for him.

Ah yeah, good point.

Fire is a sneaky good spell IMO because of its low weight (certainly better than Miasma), but yeah I always forget that Dark and Black Tomefaire are separate. I really wish they'd named Black Magic something else.

[Cysx]

25 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Ah yeah, good point.

Fire is a sneaky good spell IMO because of its low weight (certainly better than Miasma), but yeah I always forget that Dark and Black Tomefaire are separate. I really wish they'd named Black Magic something else.

Agreed, although getting weight -3 on more people has made me gain a new appreciation for Sagittae as well. In general reliable spells with high amounts of uses are really important outside of LTC.

A bit of a tangent but, I take the fact that someone like Annette is widely considered to have a bad spell list(although I'll agree on the Faith side of things) as a sign that people kinda underrate weight, and awareness of Black tomefaire not affecting Dark magic is still relatively limited.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Cysx

[Silly]

5 minutes ago, Cysx said:

A bit of a tangent but, I take the fact that someone like Annette is widely considered to have a bad spell list(although I'll agree on the Faith side of things) as a sign that people kinda underrate weight, and awareness of Black tomefaire not affecting Dark magic is still relatively limited.

Annette does have a bad spell list though.

For the most part, the basic spell at Reason D is going to be your bread and butter spell. Everyone learns one of these spells at D rank and they're relatively close in terms of how good they are. In addition, basically every unit learns more powerful 1-2 range magic, which is just a heavier, stronger version of your basic spell.

Any extra spells you learn should mostly be judged on what situations they cover that your basic reason spells don't. Things like Thoron, Meteor, Bolting have extra range, which is nice when you can't reach with your other spells. Annette really has none of that.

Also her Faith list is bad, because of no access to Physic.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Silly

[timon]

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

However, keep in mind that Black tomefaire doesn't apply to Hubert's spells(outside of Fire, which is not the worst thing ever granted), so Warlock isn't that good for him either.

Hate to nitpick, but you don't get Fire as Warlock, only as Mage.

That said it's not that tragic for Hubert to go Warlock if you really don't have access to another Dark Seal (and I'm talking from personal experience here...), by the time you reach A Reason you have more than enough spells to last you a battle, and Dark Magic is already more powerful than usual Black, so you don't feel the lack of -faire that much.

It still bothers me that the one and only route where you have an actual use for Dark Seals is the one that gives you the least. Also if they really wanted to have Black and Dark as two different things (which I think it's pretty dumb and confusing) they should've spread out Dark more, give it to some other mages (possibly males, if you're going to lock up the class).

Edited August 19, 2019 by timon

[Cysx]

19 minutes ago, Silly said:

Annette does have a bad spell list though.

For the most part, the basic spell at Reason D is going to be your bread and butter spell. Everyone learns one of these spells at D rank and they're relatively close in terms of how good they are. In addition, basically every unit learns more powerful 1-2 range magic, which is just a heavier, stronger version of your basic spell.

Any extra spells you learn should mostly be judged on what situations they cover that your basic reason spells don't. Things like Thoron, Meteor, Bolting have extra range, which is nice when you can't reach with your other spells. Annette really has none of that.

Also her Faith list is bad, because of no access to Physic.

The thing is, blaming a character for not having situational spells only goes so far, because most situational spells in this game really give new meaning to the word, as they have extremely limited use counts on top of other caveats(accuracy for Thoron, limited OHKO potential for the other two). And she does get most of the best black 1-2 range spells in terms of combat(better crit, uses, weight, and accuracy so good she doesn't need to spend a slot on the black magic prowess) plus one of the three effective spells there are, allowing her to take out fliers on enemy phase while getting doubled, among other things like sniping flying beasts, or just ORKOing pegs period. Magic range is also fairly flexible in this game, since you get a +1 range accessory on every route and +1 range at S; and of course, the master class has canto. So not having 1-3 or above is manageable in a general sense.

And in terms of pure damage because I assume that's where we're going next, It's easy to say "she doesn't have Ragnarok, thus she sucks", but Ragnarok has 3 uses. You'll use it once or twice per chapter past tier 3.

1 minute ago, timon said:

Hate to nitpick, but you don't get Fire as Warlock, only as Mage. 

Not at all, that's my bad, genuinely thought you did.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Cysx

[Flere210]

You can oneshot whit excalibur 95% of the things that you can oneshot whit ragnarock, and there is crusher for the 5%.

That said, Dedue has strenght in lances and axes, wich make up for the weaknesses in flying an riding. You don't really need A to take the test, because you can buy seals and have 3-4 attemts per month.

[Shadow Mir]

44 minutes ago, Silly said:

Annette does have a bad spell list though.

For the most part, the basic spell at Reason D is going to be your bread and butter spell. Everyone learns one of these spells at D rank and they're relatively close in terms of how good they are. In addition, basically every unit learns more powerful 1-2 range magic, which is just a heavier, stronger version of your basic spell.

Any extra spells you learn should mostly be judged on what situations they cover that your basic reason spells don't. Things like Thoron, Meteor, Bolting have extra range, which is nice when you can't reach with your other spells. Annette really has none of that.

Also her Faith list is bad, because of no access to Physic.

Bad by what standards, though?  The situational spells like Meteor are really situational on account of being extremely limited (you only get one cast of Meteor per battle unless you're a Warlock or Gremory, for whom it's two, which isn't much better), among other factors (like accuracy for pretty much every single dark spell).

Edited August 19, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Silly]

Just now, Shadow Mir said:

Bad by what standards, though?  The situational spells like Meteor are really situational on account of being extremely limited (you only get one cast of Meteor per battle unless you're a Warlock or Gremory), among other factors (like accuracy for pretty much every single dark spell).

Literally everybody gets:

• Lightweight 1-2 range spell at D Reason.
• Stronger 1-2 range spell if you need it at some higher Reason level.

Some of the spells in the above categories are slightly better than others, but they mostly function the same in the majority of situations, so it's not a huge difference whether you have Fire or Thunder as your basic spell, for example. Having spells that fall into the above two categories does not really give you a particularly special niche, as that role is filled by literally anyone with reason training. The good reason spell lists generally have something else that occupies a different niche outside of the above two categories. Most commonly this is 3 range, but sometimes there are other niche spells like Meteor.

This is not even touching on faith magic, which is the category that I actually think makes or breaks a magic user. Not having access to Physic is a pretty big death sentence for dedicated mages, to the point where I would really prefer not to even use a mage without access to Physic.

[Landmaster]

I have only just started BE so I won't speak yet for Hubert. Even I have no idea what I'm gonna make him~ Dark Knight maybe if I can't get him a Dark Seal.

Dedue's is easily War Master for me. Constant Quads with Gauntlets in itself is enough reason for him to be War Master. I didn't even end up using Axes much simply because he almost always got off 4 hits with Gauntlets that he didn't even need another weapon~

Hilda as a Wyvern Lord; she enjoys that Flier mobility and it gives her some added tankiness in exchange for (I assume) more crits as a Warrior. And I surely prefer my units being able to live longer~

[Cysx]

21 minutes ago, Silly said:

This is not even touching on faith magic, which is the category that I actually think makes or breaks a magic user. Not having access to Physic is a pretty big death sentence for dedicated mages, to the point where I would really prefer not to even use a mage without access to Physic.

I won't deny that her Faith list is awful; however, I think as time goes on it's going to be assumed more and more that mages meant for long term use will focus on riding on top of reason, not only because of Dark knight, but also because they really want both S-rank reason and A+ rank Riding asap, leaving limited place for the rest. Even if C Faith isn't a huge investment, it's still a while without a strength. Having +1 range/+1 move a month earlier as opposed to Physic isn't a horrible choice.

Also, Excalibur fits an effectiveness niche. I don't think that can be denied.

[Silly]

7 minutes ago, Cysx said:

I won't deny that her Faith list is awful; however, I think as time goes on it's going to be assumed more and more that mages meant for long term use will focus on riding on top of reason, not only because of Dark knight, but also because they really want both S-rank reason and A+ rank Riding asap, leaving limited place for the rest. Even if C Faith isn't a huge investment, it's still a while without a strength. Having +1 range/+1 move a month earlier as opposed to Physic isn't a horrible choice.

Later ranks take a lot more exp than earlier ranks, so getting to C Faith is not a big investment. Going from E rank to C takes less exp to get to than going from B+ to A rank, let along going from A to A+ or A+ to S.

Also, there is a big, BIG difference between having Physic for almost the entire game, and having S rank reason or A+ riding for maybe the last few chapters. Physic provides utility for the entire game, and even if it actually meant that getting +1 range was delayed for a chapter, I would much rather have 15 chapters of Physic compared to one extra chapter of +1 attack range. That's not even accounting for the fact that mages without Physic are more limited in their exp gain because of how slow they are, so if you're playing relatively quickly you'll need to either accept that they'll fall behind, or intentionally go out of your way to feed them kills. Mages with Physic can kill enemies on the first two or so turns, and when they fall behind can still build exp by healing members that are further ahead, which means that they hit level 30 faster and can transition to a class that doesn't have awful move.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Silly