What are your three favorite advanced/master classes?

[Fabulously Olivier]

What are your 3 favorite classes to use at endgame?

 

Mine are:

 

War Master - point them at something and it dies. They're also a cool looking and unique class with interesting crit-based builds.

 

Bow Knight - just gamebreaking.

 

Paladin - for characters who primarily use lances, I really like the Paladin. The class requires less alternative requirements than the Master classes, allowing me to reinvest those resources into maxing out Lance rank, riding, and Authority. Its innate Lancefaire also allows the wielder to use Lance Prowess, Lance Critical, Swordbreaker, and Movement +1 and still have an open slot. Specialization pays off. 

[Skell_]

Gremory: Really feels like the peak of magic in the game and giving 2x Magic uses makes it downright disgusting with some characters. Double the fortifies, warps, rescues, you name it. That alone makes it feel legitimately powerful and possibly gamebreaking so I love it. They likely pale in comparison to Holy/Dark Knight though, but 

Wyvern Lord: It's up there not just because it's the most broken but because of how flying units are in this game. I only have Seteth during my first playthrough and I wished I had more of them. They ability to use bows as well makes them incredibly fun to use. Hurts that I feel obligated not to use too many though as they are gamebreaking as hell.

[BakanGin]

Gremory- Double uses of all magic. they may not have the range of the holy or dark knight, but they certainly have stronger attacks and have more usage but less movement. 

Pegasus Knight- These units seem to always make my units have the fastest possible AS. and all the females who became one couldn't die from any enemies since their aviod went to a high amount.

Bow knight- be able to shoot 4 spaces away, then move farther away. these units are powerful

[daisy jane]

Falconknight/Wyvern Lords. 
(and the fact that there is no Malig Knight/Dark Falcons - will continue to cheese my biscuit until they add those into the game via DLC. DO IT GAME). 

The first time I played (GD), I made Byleth a Pegasus knight because she had enough flying to do it, and I didn't want to do anything else it was near the end game. + it was a great way to build up supports with Claude. Byleth (via a mercenary/thief/assassin build) - was awesome. there wasn't enough time/(ability) to make her into a Falcon Knight. so in BL - I made her into a Falcon knight via a Brigand Route (with Ingrid). the two of them + Hilda, Sylvain, Ferdinand, Ashe and Petra decided to torture the skies (not to mention -  a lot of the BL maps to me needed a lot of swoop in, destroy, swoop out -i LOVE the dismount feature) - i also made Leonie a Falcon Knight. (the first time I made her + Bernie bowknights. they were good there - but amazing in the sky)

So in my BE run: everyone flies. except for the mages because they can't use magic.. and actually - I always get Bernadetta in playthroughs  - and by the time i get her she's half way down the archer line in GD i was like please just hit something. in BL - i had to stuff her full of speed and strength boosts and she still was just decent. playing BE i finally got my hands on her (and it really hit me that it was hard to make Bernie's growths the way i want in atk (because she has a weakness in both swords and axes so no thief and no brigand). i got her axe high enough so she could get fighter growths - worked on her fighting and for like several chapters she was litterally on everyones back while she passively levelled up as a Peg.. all of a sudden her speed/ was sky high w/o any help with boosts and I only needed to give her two energy drops. she doesn't really have the strength to be all lance-y but she can put all that speed behind a longbow/silver bow+ - to the point where i don't NEED Leonie as much (i got Leonie as Berniebackup).

 

Hubert is a dark knight and honestly, if i really felt inclined i would have ditched black magic on lindhardt to have him be a holy knight then regain his black magic. Even Caspar flies. he literally, swoops in, i put on gauntlets on him, and he's now part of the action. While i love the magic classes - for any and all playthroughs i have no reason why not to make everyone learn flying. (It just makes me wish there was a flight class in intermediate for the boys. i find it weird that Intermediate only has Pegs, and Advanced only has Wyvern.)

 

I do do Gremories for the magic girls (and wish there was a Gremory-ish class for the guys for the same reason)

[TrueNoble]

I've found Dark Knights, War Masters and Wyvern Lords to be a potent combination for clearing maps in which all three movement types can coordinate efficiently. 

Infantry pushes through the main cluster of enemies, acting as the primary Demonic Beast elimination unit, while the "overpowered" fliers actually make use of their higher mobility by taking off for distant corners of the map that the infantry can't immediately reach. The Dark Knight (Sylvain or Lorenz) meanwhile solo pushes side threats, since they're generally fairly bulky and hit hard both physically and magically, as well as being further blessed with access to the Lifetaker mastery ability through Dark Bishop.

Here, I would also like to give another special mention to Assassins, for their unique utility as an addition to your infantry group, and one unit who works especially well as one.

Assassin Ignatz was good to have beside Raphael, since it provided the latter vital support boosts in hit and evade, as well as blocking off enemy access to my Dance-sithea in the back line, without any risk to himself due to the nature of the Stealth mechanic, and further enhancing Raphael with his access to Speed and Dex rallies. In this way, he was providing so much utility just by simply standing there. Lethality and Poisonstrike helped compensate for his mediocre damage output when it came to combat (albeit his least valuable role by a country mile); two abilities that can be considered excessive on most other units but perfect for one such as him, with high DEX but abysmally low Strength and poor Magic to boot.

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, daisy jane said:

(and the fact that there is no Malig Knight/Dark Falcons - will continue to cheese my biscuit until they add those into the game via DLC. DO IT GAME). 

Personally, I think Malig Knight was a lousy class anyway - honestly, I found no practical reason to go for it instead of Wyvern Lord for relevant characters, and the one character who starts in it is best reclassed out of it and into Wyvern Lord stat.

Tangent aside, I like Falcon Knight (of course), Gremory (of course), and.... I'll have to decide on a third by actually playing the game.

4 hours ago, BakanGin said:

Pegasus Knight- These units seem to always make my units have the fastest possible AS. and all the females who became one couldn't die from any enemies since their aviod went to a high amount.

Speaking of pegasus knights, I find it irritating that those on the enemy side seem to be "better" than yours, so to speak, since for whatever reason they get Lancefaire and have 7 move against yours' 6 move.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[daisy jane]

4 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Personally, I think Malig Knight was a lousy class anyway - honestly, I found no practical reason to go for it instead of Wyvern Lord for relevant characters, and the one character who starts in it is best reclassed out of it stat.

Tangent aside, I like Falcon Knight (of course), Gremory (of course), and.... I'll have to decide on a third by actually playing the game.

Speaking of pegasus knights, I find it irritating that those on the enemy side seen to be "better" than yours, so to speak, since for whatever reason they get Lancefaire and have 7 move against yours' 6 move.

well i didn't do Malig Knight in Fates. (I basically farmed falcon seals) but magic flying was my jam. there's no reason to believe that Malig would have been lousy here. 

[Sire]

1. Wyvern Lords / Falcon Knights - I have seen the light, and Fliers are busted in Three Houses. Sure, they are weak against Bows, but they are easy to avoid with the flying mobility and some units can even tank arrow hits. I made my Byleth a Wyvern Lord for my GD run, and it may be difficult to return back to an infantry class.
- Also, the fact that weapons are widely available makes combinations like Bow Fliers possible. Flying Bow Bernie is fun, and Claude's unique class is amazing in its own right.

2. Gremory - Honestly, this class is best for utility as Warlock, Bishop, and Dark Bishop are better at their niche roles (Reason, Faith, Dark Magic). The main reasons I love Gremory is their extra movement and spell spam (Physics, Warps, and Meteors). If it wasn't for the extra movement and the class modifiers, Gremories would have been an excellent side-grade to the existing magic classes.

3. Bow Knights - While the growths suck, that +2 Bow Range is amazing and I get flashbacks to my spectacular Bow Knight Tobin from Shadows of Valentia. I'm still puzzled why they slapped on the Lance requirements though.

* * * * *

In the future though, I hope they made the upgrades more linear like in Radiant Dawn. While some make for logical progression (Wyvern Rider -> Wyvern Lord), others are weird (Swordmaster -> Mortal Savant? Why the sudden magic?), and others still have no equivalent (No Assassin upgrade, and Great Knights are not a Paladin upgrade).

[Shadow Mir]

42 minutes ago, daisy jane said:

well i didn't do Malig Knight in Fates. (I basically farmed falcon seals) but magic flying was my jam. there's no reason to believe that Malig would have been lousy here. 

Farming Ebon Wings sounds like it'd have been a pain in the ass. Anyway, I think just the opposite - that there's no reason to expect Malig Knight to not suck.

[Hyper L]

I wish I could say Mortal Savant (they look so cool) but alas they're not so great.

Who's idea was to give it -10% Spd growth?

Also, stupid mounted units dominating the meta.

[Spectrum]

I would say Wyvern Lord, Dark Knight, and Bow Knight. I've never liked Bow Knights in previous games, but in 3H they are really really good and useful. Mounted mages + canto are a bless. As for WL, it's always been my favorite in every game and the entire series (my most favorite characters in the series are Haar and Heath so..). 

[Ivy Wife Supremacy]

Gremory

Wyvern Lord

Bow Knight

[timon]

Halberdier.

Oh wait, I thought this game had a good class system.

That said, of the ones we have, I have fun with Bow Knights because you can cheese so much stuff with stupid range, and I do really like that they use Lances instead of Swords, makes much more sense and doesn't push sword (which got boring a while ago). Gremory (and Warlock) are another favourite, just because I love magic nukes. Paladins are fun, and it's a shame many people don't view them as endgame classes, when they're superior to GK, and 8 Mov at lv.20 is actually very nice.

Not much else, classes seem to have been thought out by a 5 year old this time around, which is a shame since the weapon freedom is a huge step forward imo.

[Shadow Mir]

6 minutes ago, timon said:

Not much else, classes seem to have been thought out by a 5 year old this time around, which is a shame since the weapon freedom is a huge step forward imo.

To be fair, the Fire Emblem series in general tends to not have good class balance. Look at the GBA games, where Paladins dominated really hard, which was especially true in Binding Blade (in this and Blazing Blade, they had full weapon triangle control) due to the large maps. Even in Sacred Stones, where they lost axes, they were still great. On the other hand, axe infantry and archers, especially the former, tended to suck.

[NegativeExponents-]

Mortal Savant for the women has got to be my favorite class. They absolutely suck as a class and the only one who actually stayed in there was Manuela because she could handle the speed growth drop while getting a boost to her mixed offense but they just look so cool in it and the way they weild magic is so extra. The men's outfit I hate because it's just an oversized samurai costume that no one looks good in.

War Masters may not have the mount that contribute to brokenness of Wyvern Lords but gosh darn do I love their free +20 critical. With killer weapons, my Cyril manages to consistently reach 80%-90% crit chance and just having him go up to a beast and crit it 4 times in a row towards its death is super fun.

Dancers are my third favorite. I'll be honest, I never use dancers. Dancers that can fight get reclassed into another class (Azura into a fighter and then Hero for example) and those that can't like Nils/Ninian get the bench. I know, an absolute travesty, a sin in the eyes of many. I know they're fantastic, not gonna dispute that, but I've never really cared for them. What manages to make me care for them this time around is that they've got some seriously good combat potential and for many of the guys, it's especially nice as a magic wielding class with more move than a warlock and better stat bonuses than Mortal Savant. I might consider Dark Knight better but not having to grind horse skill is a huge plus in my book. Of course, they still get to dance on occasions and their outfit is also one of my favorites in the game.

[timon]

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

To be fair, the Fire Emblem series in general tends to not have good class balance. Look at the GBA games, where Paladins dominated really hard, which was especially true in Binding Blade (in this and Blazing Blade, they had full weapon triangle control) due to the large maps. Even in Sacred Stones, where they lost axes, they were still great. On the other hand, axe infantry and archers, especially the former, tended to suck.

Yes but I can live with an unbalanced game. My problem here is not with balance, but with variety and logic. It's a mess.

The whole master tier doesn't make sense, it's sometimes a sidegrade and sometimes an upgrade.

It requires higher level, higher skill levels, gives more Mov. Everything points at it being a higher tier, but then you see it and find out that it completely eliminates half the archetypes of the game and it doesn't even improve stats that much (except for a couple of them, again, no consistency).

Progression is a complete mess, Pegasi being stuck for a whole tier, Assassins and Swordmaster completely stuck as well as male mages. Riding and Lance is barely considered for 3 tiers and it suddenty becomes a must have for everyone. Then there's stuff like Archers having sword proficiency while Snipers don't and Snipers having shorter range than BKs, it all looks incredibly disconnected and without much of a logic. Honestly, with weapon freedom it's not even that hard since you don't have to worry about filling every niche.

Here's a general idea of what I think would be logical (spoiler tag for length)

Spoiler

Class certification would be free for all like it is now, but here's just the "logical" progression. Movement skills wouldn't have a beginner tier, but they're still easy to access (getting to C by level 10 is easy). Also I'd rather have Reason and Faith as separate things.

• Swords: Myrmidon -> Mercenary -> Swordmaster
• Lances: Soldier -> Lancer -> Halberdier
• Axes: Fighter -> Brigand -> Warrior
• Bows: Fighter -> Archer -> Sniper
• Gauntlets: Fighter -> Brawler -> Grappler (Fighter would have the "or" requirements like it has now for Axes/Gauntlets/Bows)
• Reason: Monk -> Mage -> Warlock
• Faith: Monk -> Priest -> Bishop
• Armour: nothing -> Knight -> General
• Riding: nothing -> Cavalier -> Paladin
• Flying: nothing -> Pegasus -> Wyvern

Those would be the specialized class, for certification you'd need D, C and A respectively in their focus skill.
Then you can add in some "hybrids" in 3rd tier to fill the gaps (eg. allow magic on mounts) which would require B and B in their focus skills, plus Thief because you need thieves.

• Thief (D Swords, D Bows) -> Assassin
• Falcon Knight (Faith and Flying)
• Dark Flier (Reason and Flying)
• Holy Knight (Faith and Riding)
• Dark Knight (Reason and Riding)
• Sage (since I'd restrict Reason and Faith you gotta have a class that can focus on both)
• Dread Fighter (just to have a hybrid stat wise with both Str and Mag, since giving a sword to a Warlock is not exactly effective)

Those hybrids would obviously have less stats since you're getting utility (a Warlock should hit harder than a Dark Knight, if you want a Bow Knight you'll have to slap a Bow on a Paladin, and if you want a specialized archer you'll have to use a Sniper).

Done.

And no, I didn't actually spend much time on this, at all. It took me more to write it than to think it, because it's just the logical way of doing things, it's just cleaner and consistent.

 

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, timon said:

Yes but I can live with an unbalanced game. My problem here is not with balance, but with variety and logic. It's a mess.

The whole master tier doesn't make sense, it's sometimes a sidegrade and sometimes an upgrade.

It requires higher level, higher skill levels, gives more Mov. Everything points at it being a higher tier, but then you see it and find out that it completely eliminates half the archetypes of the game and it doesn't even improve stats that much (except for a couple of them, again, no consistency).

Progression is a complete mess, Pegasi being stuck for a whole tier, Assassins and Swordmaster completely stuck as well as male mages. Riding and Lance is barely considered for 3 tiers and it suddenty becomes a must have for everyone. Then there's stuff like Archers having sword proficiency while Snipers don't and Snipers having shorter range than BKs, it all looks incredibly disconnected and without much of a logic. Honestly, with weapon freedom it's not even that hard since you don't have to worry about filling every niche.

Here's a general idea of what I think would be logical (spoiler tag for length)

  Reveal hidden contents

Class certification would be free for all like it is now, but here's just the "logical" progression. Movement skills wouldn't have a beginner tier, but they're still easy to access (getting to C by level 10 is easy). Also I'd rather have Reason and Faith as separate things.

• Swords: Myrmidon -> Mercenary -> Swordmaster
• Lances: Soldier -> Lancer -> Halberdier
• Axes: Fighter -> Brigand -> Warrior
• Bows: Fighter -> Archer -> Sniper
• Gauntlets: Fighter -> Brawler -> Grappler (Fighter would have the "or" requirements like it has now for Axes/Gauntlets/Bows)
• Reason: Monk -> Mage -> Warlock
• Faith: Monk -> Priest -> Bishop
• Armour: nothing -> Knight -> General
• Riding: nothing -> Cavalier -> Paladin
• Flying: nothing -> Pegasus -> Wyvern

Those would be the specialized class, for certification you'd need D, C and A respectively in their focus skill.
Then you can add in some "hybrids" in 3rd tier to fill the gaps (eg. allow magic on mounts) which would require B and B in their focus skills, plus Thief because you need thieves.

• Thief (D Swords, D Bows) -> Assassin
• Falcon Knight (Faith and Flying)
• Dark Flier (Reason and Flying)
• Holy Knight (Faith and Riding)
• Dark Knight (Reason and Riding)
• Sage (since I'd restrict Reason and Faith you gotta have a class that can focus on both)
• Dread Fighter (just to have a hybrid stat wise with both Str and Mag, since giving a sword to a Warlock is not exactly effective)

Those hybrids would obviously have less stats since you're getting utility (a Warlock should hit harder than a Dark Knight, if you want a Bow Knight you'll have to slap a Bow on a Paladin, and if you want a specialized archer you'll have to use a Sniper).

Done.

And no, I didn't actually spend much time on this, at all. It took me more to write it than to think it, because it's just the logical way of doing things, it's just cleaner and consistent.

 

Makes sense. On the subject of imbalance, though, while I'm generally okay with it, some games take it too far, like Radiant Dawn for example. Most laguz units are disproportionately hard to raise because they are brittle and easily killed untransformed, and they level up like they were twice their level while transformed. As if that weren't bad enough, you get the royal laguz, which are completely broken, late in the game, which pretty much renders most non-royal laguz obsolete.

[redlight]

Wyvern line

Paladin

Pegasi line

[Landmaster]

Gremory

Wyvern Lord

Mortal Savant

[Eltoshen]

My Blue Lions run just turned into a mages run with all Gremorys minus Lysinthea lol.

Linhardt, Mercedes, Annette and Dorothea (but as a dancer because I didn't get to use her as one in my BE run. They basically provided support and nukes for my characters who can solo maps on their own.

Wyvern Lord is a given, but broken.

and...

War Masters are just really pleasing to see go crazy. Love the design as well.

[DefyingFates]

Gremories. Doubling all forms of magic is crazy and I love it. I also like putting everyone on fliers. One of my Byleths was a bow Falcon Knight (with Gauntlets on the side) and possibly the most versatile out of the four.

And I have to appreciate the common crits from War Masters. I may even make my next Byleth one (or whoever the protagonist of the DLC will be).

[Jakkun]

1. Based War Master. It gives me flashbacks of those 100% Charlotte meme builds from Fates. Also Quick Riposte is stupidly good and Raph wishes he could get it sooner.

2. Assassin. I'm a little bummed that it doesn't have a direct Master Class upgrade, but it's one of the best Footlocked classes so I can deal.

3. Wyvern Lord. Something something Haar something something game balance something something Stride something some- you get the idea.

 

[Hyper L]

Honestly, much of it would be fixed if you only needed 1 of the rank requiredments to be fulfilled in order to pass.

That way you could ignore reason when going for Mortal Savant.

And ignore flying when going for Wyvern Lord, even if the unit is bad at it.

[Flere210]

Honestly  they should consider just going the FFT way, were base classes are not necessarily wealer than advanced classes  just les specilized. Like, a soldier is more or less as good as a paladin, but paladin is more specilized in defense, so you want to go paladin whit soldiers skill more than the opposite. And wackier combos like ninja whit paladins skills are greatly encouraged.

I don't like class system were 70% of the classes are just promotions of another class, because i feel like it' not 30 classes, but 10 classes split into pieces. 

Like, holy knight has a "d&d paladin" feeling that both the healer and cavalier trees lack. While wyvern lord is just "wyvern knight but better" and coul be replaced entirely by a better stat mod on WK.