Class Mastery guide/tier list

[Dark Holy Elf]

2 hours ago, Tables said:

Hunter's Volley for Sniper, I think part of the issue is that there's a very limited time between mastering Sniper and being ready for Bow Knight. But I can see the argument of it being useful for that short period, I did make some use of it with my Ignatz, it's true (also on the Wind Caller mission, since I swapped classes back to Sniper there). I'm still kind of undecided on this one - it does have its uses, even if it's only something you use for a while.

I think it's a weird case since as mentioned, Shamir does actually get to enjoy it for a fair bit of time. So it's probably a High Tier skill for her or so. But on everyone else, the window it's good in is a bit too small for me.

[arem]

You all realize you can just stay in sniper and that Maddening gives you a lot of reason to do so right?  You are basically trading three move and canto for better growths, more hit, more crit, and the ability to double anything in the game on player phase.  I admit losing canto sucks, but the ability to gain what was effectively thirty points of speed and double an assassin more than made up for for me. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 hour ago, arem said:

You all realize you can just stay in sniper and that Maddening gives you a lot of reason to do so right?  You are basically trading three move and canto for better growths, more hit, more crit, and the ability to double anything in the game on player phase.  I admit losing canto sucks, but the ability to gain what was effectively thirty points of speed and double an assassin more than made up for for me.  

You say "more hit" and "more crit" but you realize the gaps are a paltry +2 hit and +1 crit, right? Barely worth anything, and certainly worth less than Bow Knight's +1 speed (which becomes +3 if they dismount), +1 def, and +2 HP, as far as small stat differences go.

Sniper's growth advantages are utterly laughable especially considering you're unlikely to gain more than 10 levels in the final tier. That works out to +2 dex and maybe +1 to one of str or spd, at most, and only at the very end. Growths should almost never factor into your final class decisions.

So really, the trade is "give up canto AND 3 move AND Bow Range+2 AND some stats". Which is a losing trade for sure. And the ability to double fast enemies on the player phase can be mimicked by anyone with a Brave Bow.

[arem]

No,.  Snipers pretty much hunter's volley 24/7.  I am referring to the really quite substantial plus fifteen to hit and ten to crit you get with hunter's volley.  It also gives extra range to make up for the bow knights range and more than makes up for the plus three to speed the hypothetical dismounted bow knight gets.  Yes, you can still double with a brave bow, but that requires a semi rare resource you might prefer to go to someone else and you will do significantly less real damage than a forged killer or silver bow,. 

I am kinda with you on growths, but I still think it is advantage worth mentioning, and people seem really invested in growths.  One of the reasons the Wyvern Lord is considered the end all be all is its excellent growths, for example. 

[Johnzin]

25 minutes ago, arem said:

No,.  Snipers pretty much hunter's volley 24/7.  I am referring to the really quite substantial plus fifteen to hit and ten to crit you get with hunter's volley.  It also gives extra range to make up for the bow knights range and more than makes up for the plus three to speed the hypothetical dismounted bow knight gets.  Yes, you can still double with a brave bow, but that requires a semi rare resource you might prefer to go to someone else and you will do significantly less real damage than a forged killer or silver bow,. 

I am kinda with you on growths, but I still think it is advantage worth mentioning, and people seem really invested in growths.  One of the reasons the Wyvern Lord is considered the end all be all is its excellent growths, for example. 

I completely agree with this. I been keeping my bernie/Shamir on CF/SS as snipers. There are times I'm banking on them to Hunter volley + killer +. Or needing that +2 dmg to a silver+. Or can burn iron+ rather than rare brave bow. The brave bow is just used if I really need to double before getting Hunter Volley. 

Baiting with BK is great and all, but I have yet to have my bow users double anything on maddening besides armor knights. I can just bait with an WL alert+. Since everyone has WL anyways

And as snipers, all I needed was to train bow ranking, and got Shamir and Bernie to S/S+ around Ch 16. The crit +10 and bowfaire are nice bonuses 

[Silly]

I think the best summary would be that being a Sniper is good when you're bad.

The difference in damage output between Sniper and Bow Knight is actually considerable if your unit is not statistically great. If you have a shitty Bow Knight that doesn't double naturally and doesn't do much damage per attack, then being able to double guaranteed with a Silver Bow or a Killer Bow will be more damage than attacking normally with anything. In this case, Sniper is better. Having an 8 move unit with canto that does no damage is much worse than having a 5 move foot unit that can actually kill things.

However, the better your unit is, the smaller the damage difference between the two classes is. If your unit is fast enough to double most enemies naturally, then Hunter's Volley has very little usefulness. Likewise, if you're one-shotting everything anyways (say you have a Wrath build or something), then there is also not much point to Hunter's Volley. If Bow Knight and Sniper are getting the same kills, then you obviously pick the class with 1 extra range, 3 more movement, and canto. These are all ridiculously huge upsides, and make the Sniper class look laughable in comparison.

If your unit is a core team member, and is likely getting levels and stat boosters to ensure their stats are always competitive, then I would say Bow Knight is the better choice by far. Even on Maddening, if you're using good units, then the team members who get the majority of resources can very realistically stay above the threshold to double everything (besides the ridiculously fast enemies).

If your unit is less good though... either they're falling behind or weren't given any stat boosters or they were adjutant leveled for most of the game (and therefore aren't as high leveled as your core team members) or whatever... then I think that you might be able to consider putting them in Sniper so that you have an extra filler combat unit.

[arem]

19 hours ago, Silly said:

If your unit is a core team member, and is likely getting levels and stat boosters to ensure their stats are always competitive, then I would say Bow Knight is the better choice by far.  Even on Maddening, if you're using good units, then the team members who get the majority of resources can very realistically stay above the threshold to double everything (besides the ridiculously fast enemies). 

I think this is where we are having a disagreement.  Everyone prepare yourselves I am going to try to use numbers.

Let's assume we are playing on Maddening (no new game plus).  I am using Shamir as my hypothetical archer because she is the stereotypical three houses archer for me and she has already come up in this thread.  She also has great bases, which really helps in Maddening.  According to a spreadsheet I downloaded a while ago, a hypothetical level 40 Shamir who was mostly a Sniper then changed to a Bow knight at level 30 has 26.5 speed on average.  That number may be wrong, because I am not completely sure of her joining level (she starts at sniper base speed) and also because I am kind of a moron, but it is the best number I have right now.  I will round up to 27 to be charitable, but I think at her strength is low enough that she will lose at least two attack speed due to the weight of her bow.  That's how much she loses from a forged silver bow in my game and I don't want to go learn the weight formula.  That brings her to 25 attack speed. 

Looking at enemy stats on Path of the Dagger, the only convenient Maddening endgame save I have right now, enemy attack speed ranges from 14  to 57.  However, the 14 is on a lone, stationary fortress knight who you are probably not going to attack with an archer and is pretty irrelevant anyway.  The 57 is on a single assassin, that I will also just ignore as an outlier.  The slowest enemy unit there are multiple copies are gremories and beasts with 30 attack speed.   With default speed, Shamir is going to be doubled by all of the enemies on this map.  You probably are not actually being retaliated against as a bow knight, but I am just trying to illustrate how far we are from doubling.  However, I suppose you are going to want to have darting blow, because Shamir can get into Pegasus knight pretty easily and that skill is ridiculous.  That brings her up to 31 speed, which still can't double anything but the fortress knight.  If you want to double anything else, you going to have to give her two speed carrots.  That's really doable, I admit, although we already have to move Shamir into flying lessons, grind out some experience in Pegasus knight, and use two stat boosters that could have gone to someone else.  Also, It's important note you can't rely on this. My Shamir would have actually needed seven carrots to reach this threshold, because stat gains are random and you occasionally get cursed, but on average that's what it takes.  Also that is only enough speed to double the slowest enemies.  To double most of the enemies you  are going to need 37 attack speed.  That is enough to double all of the mages and mortal servants as well as Edel, assuming her attack speed does not change when she switches weapons.  That takes 6 speed carrots to reach.  That's about two months of active farming.  Still pretty doable, but this route only has 20 months, I think.  Plus you are probably going to be doing some quests and prologues for some of that time. 

Even with that investment, however, there are still plenty of enemies you can't double.  The level has thirteen war masters (plus reinforcements) and their speed ranges from 40 to 49.  To double the slowest war master, you need 43 speed.. That's twelve carrots, or about four months of your academy life with restarting every time you fail to get a carrot.  To double the fastest war master, you need another 9 carrots, or 21 carrots total.  That's really a lot of investment and I don't think you can make that without significant favoritism.  Also note it is going to be harder for dudes who can't go darting blow.

Alternatively, you can run a Sniper.  The Sniper can double everything with absolutely no speed gains, even the assassin.  Its a zero investment character who is also going to hit with more crit and accuracy than a bow knight.  Then you can take all those stat boosters you did not use and pour them int your lord or Byleth and laugh as they become an unstoppable god.  Up to you.    

 

 

Edited October 31, 2019 by arem
typo

[AxelVDP]

8 minutes ago, arem said:

I think this is where we are having a disagreement.  Everyone prepare yourselves I am going to try to use numbers.

Let's assume we are playing on Maddening (no new game plus).  I am using Shamir as my hypothetical archer because she is the stereotypical three houses archer for me and she has already come up in this thread.  She also has great bases, which really helps in Maddening.  According to a spreadsheet I downloaded a while ago, a hypothetical level 40 Shamir who was mostly a Sniper then changed to a Bow knight at level 30 has 26.5 speed on average.  That number may be wrong, because I am not completely sure of her joining level (she starts at sniper base speed) and also because I am kind of a moron, but it is the best number I have right now.  I will round up to 27 to be charitable, but I think at her strength is low enough that she will lose at least two attack speed due to the weight of her bow.  That's how much she loses from a forged silver bow in my game and I don't want to go learn the weight formula.  That brings her to 25 attack speed. 

Looking at enemy stats on Path of the Dagger, the only convenient Maddening endgame save I have right now, enemy attack speed ranges from 14  to 57.  However, the 14 is on a lone, stationary fortress knight who you are probably not going to attack with an archer and is pretty irrelevant anyway.  The 57 is on a single assassin, that I will also just ignore as an outlier.  The slowest enemy unit there are multiple copies are gremories and beasts with 30 attack speed.   With default speed, Shamir is going to be doubled by all of the enemies on this map.  You probably are not actually being retaliated against as a bow knight, but I am just trying to illustrate how far we are from doubling.  However, I suppose you are going to want to have darting blow, because Shamir can get into Pegasus knight pretty easily and that skill is ridiculous.  That brings her up to 31 speed, which still can't double anything but the fortress knight.  If you want to double anything else, you going to have to give her two speed carrots.  That's really doable, I admit, although we already have to move Shamir into flying lessons, grind out some experience in Pegasus knight, and use two stat boosters that could have gone to someone else.  Also, It's important note you can't rely on this. My Shamir would have actually needed seven carrots to reach this threshold, because stat gains are random and you occasionally get cursed, but on average that's what it takes.  Also that is only enough speed to double the slowest enemies.  To double most of the enemies you  are going to need 37 attack speed.  That is enough to double all of the mages and mortal servants as well as Edel, assuming her attack speed does not change when she switches weapons.  That takes 6 speed carrots to reach.  That's about two months of active farming.  Still pretty doable, but this route only has 20 months, I think.  Plus you are probably going to be doing some quests and prologues for some of that time. 

Even with that investment, however, there are still plenty of enemies you can't double.  The level has thirteen war masters (plus reinforcements) and their speed ranges from 40 to 49.  To double the slowest war master, you need 43 speed.. That's twelve carrots, or about four months of your academy life with restarting every time you fail to get a carrot.  To double the fastest war master, you need another 9 carrots, or 21 carrots total.  That's really a lot of investment and I don't think you can make that without significant favoritism.  Also note it is going to be harder for dudes who can't go darting blow.

Alternatively, you can run a Sniper.  The Sniper can double everything with absolutely no speed gains, even the assassin.  Its a zero investment character who is also going to hit with more crit and accuracy than a bow knight.  Then you can take all those stat boosters you did not use and pour them int your lord or Byleth and laugh as they become an unstoppable god.  Up to you.   

remember: you can (and you should) cook in the monastery to give everyone +2/3 speed every month, only 2 story missions iirc don't have access to atleast +2 speed from cooking

attack speed formula is also super easy, it's just 1 less weight (=extra AS) every 5 point of STR you have

[arem]

Cooking bonuses don't work on the last level because it is one of those double levels.  At least you can save.   Maybe it is unfair of me to pick the level where cooking is not a factor,  but I found it significantly harder than the levels that came before and optimizing for it seems ideal.  It also resolves the issue of people arguing that you should be cooking for magic or strength or whatever to hit OHKO thresholds or something.  Thanks for the weight formula.  It looks she should have thirty one strength.  A forged silver bow has a weight of 8, so its looks like my  guess was right.   A brave bow weighs twelve by the way, so you would have to increase all the above numbers by four to get to the quad hit number. 

[rocanaan]

This is an interesting discussion, and, while I haven't finished Maddening yet, based on those numbers it seems both sides have a point. Specifically, I think a reasonable argument could be made that Sniper!Shamir is optimal for her, but that BK > Sniper overall

Points in favor of Sniper!Shamir:

- All that arem said

- Instructing her on Riding takes a long time for zero gains on most of the game. Shamir joins at E riding, and it takes... 1320 WEXP to get A riding? I am not 100% sure of the numbers, but my Shamir on hard only enjoyed a few months  as a BK, and that's with some active training, and Madness has lower XP. That's a lot of lessons and passive XPthat could have gone towards Authority for better batallions and/or Bow for earlier Crit/Dmg bonus, and that would have helped a bit over the course of the whole game, not just after hitting A (or something like a B/B+ as you don't need the full requirements)

- Shamir has not very high Speed Growth (40) and will spend a lot of her time as a Sniper, which adds no growths. This makes it very hard to hit the speed benchmarks that would make BK have comparable damage as Sniper.

 

But most for most of the students that could make decent BKs (e.g. Leonie, Bernie, Sylvain, Petra, even some of the Lords and Byleth)

- Most of of these have at least 50 Speed growth. Leonie and Petra have 60. That's 4/8 more SPD at lvl 40 (maybe a bit less because Shamir has her high Sniper base that some students might not reach by lvl 11).

- Many of them have Strength in Riding, and an extra 5 chapters to train Weapon XP than Shamir (some of those are Neutral in Bows, but that would apply to making them Sniper as well and is not a dead investment for 80% of the game like Riding)

If we accept that a doubling BK with good stats is better than a sniper, then any of these with a not so extreme investment as Shamir would probably be happier as a BK than a Sniper. I will definetly try the pure Sniper route for Shamir though on my current play through (just got her at Chapter 6, so I only wasted 2 lessons worth of passive WEXP on Riding at the moment)

Edited October 31, 2019 by rocanaan

[Dark Holy Elf]

I agree that Shamir is better-fit for Sniper than most, because she has bad speed and starts behind on skills so BK's requirements aren't as easy to satisfy. Most other archer candidates tend to be quite speedy, enough that they should be able to double the slower monsters, paladins, great knights, warlocks, warriors, etc.

(I also don't have a very high opinion of Shamir as a lategame unit; her stats do not compare well to most students who and her early advantage of having an Advanced class as early as Level 11 (or even 9?) does eventually wear off.)

The thing is, if someone's stats are really bad, I might still prefer them as a filler Bow Knight instead of a filler Sniper. Neither is going to kill much (the sniper will kill more, I'll concede), but the bow knight can get away to safety after providing chip damage, use strategies like Reposition/Swap/Shove with Canto, provide massive threat range for linked attacks (second only to Meteor/Bolting). Basically I value their far greater tactical applications more than Sniper's slightly better combat, even if their speed is bad enough that we can say Sniper's combat is better.

[arem]

Okay, I think I've sold some of you on Sniper Shamir.  Now let's try some other characters.  I first picked Felix because he was my other Sniper and I thought his 55 speed growth and high base speed would make him a clear bow knight.  I ran the numbers though and for noble, fighter, archer, sniper bow knight Felix and I get 31 speed. (actually 30.95)  That's good, but without darting blow (he can't get it) he is at 29 effective speed after being weighed down.  You actually need to more carrots to hit the doubling thresholds I was talking about earlier.  Sylvain is worse off in that he has only 28 speed and lower strength for an effective speed of 27.   Looking at the games other natural male archers, Ashe has 29 speed, Ignatz has 28 speed, and Cyril has 30, but I don't think that is right because he is stuck as commoner forever.  Either way, none of those guys are going to be doubling without investment.  Bernadette has 27 speed, but only 25 strength, which weighs her down and makes her doubling ability the same as Shamir's

Now Leonie does makes a fantastic bow knight.  That I won't deny.  She's rocking 33 speed.  With darting blow that's 39 speed, although only 36 attack speed with weight due to lower strength.  You could hit the doubling thresholds with considerably less investment, although hitting the fastest war masters will be tricky.  Then again, she also has point blank volley for those edge cases.  Petra has 34 natural speed, although if you have Petra I don't know why she is not a wyvern rider.  Ingrid also favors bow knight with a natural 32 speed, although again I think I would rather have her on a flying mount.

Again, I am not trying to argue that snipers are always better than bow knights.  I really like them personally because they feel like a diamond in the rough to me, but a bow knight is an incredible class too.  I am just trying to ague that hunter's volley should not be evaluated as something you use for two or three levels until bow knight, because lots of characters are going to want to stay there.

 

55 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

The thing is, if someone's stats are really bad, I might still prefer them as a filler Bow Knight instead of a filler Sniper. Neither is going to kill much (the sniper will kill more, I'll concede), but the bow knight can get away to safety after providing chip damage, use strategies like Reposition/Swap/Shove with Canto, provide massive threat range for linked attacks (second only to Meteor/Bolting). Basically I value their far greater tactical applications more than Sniper's slightly better combat, even if their speed is bad enough that we can say Sniper's combat is better.

That's a choice I guess, although I think you are really underselling the killing ability here.  I agree Shamir is not a statistical powerhouse, but she was still a very efficient killer for me.  Just pass her a killer bow and watch what two shots at 80 percent crit can do.  I was usually able to take a whole life bar off beasts if their armor was out of the way and 75 hp war masters were no problem.  I don't think I had any chip characters in my run.  I used a couple characters taught were almost entirely defensive (dedue and a strength screwed Ingrid whose only use was avoid tanking) but for the most part I just had Byleth and Dimitri lure then one rounded anything that got pulled forward.  Rinse and repeat

Edited October 31, 2019 by arem
Added Sylvain because I noticed rocanann mentioned him.

[Silly]

I'll point out that Shamir's poor speed growth does mean that she will fall off in the AS department unless you take measures to keep her up, but Shamir also has really bad speed growth for this game so she is maybe not the best representation for a typical bow unit. 

Take Leonie, for example, who is a relatively good candidate for the BK class. She averages 33-34 speed at level 40, and can gain +2 speed by dismounting (if necessary). Between stat boosters, cooking, and a potential Speed Ring, it's very realistic to hit speed thresholds with this unit to double everything besides the super fast enemy classes (you generally need 35-40 AS to double most generic enemies towards the end of the game). If we just assume something like 2-3 meals before every story mission (which should be what you're doing, barring one or two specific missions), then that already puts you at basically doubling things. A slightly slower unit like Ashe averages about 29-30 speed at level 40, which is farther from doubling on Maddening but still doable with a bit of help. (Though I personally think you should just bench Ashe and pick a better unit.)

Subtracting AS due to weapon weight also shouldn't be as relevant as you make it seem because by the endgame you should have more than enough wexp to get Weight -3 on the relevant units if you're smart about optimizing.

Also, I'm going to point out that competition for speed boosters is lower than it first seems, as long as you're mostly using good units/classes. Your dedicated support units (such as staff bots and dancers) do not care about AS at all. Speed boosters are usually wasted on mages because they tend to be slower than physical units across the board and tend to get involved in less combat on average, so salvaging their speed is likely not worth it. You good fliers, surprisingly, don't need much help in the speed department, because flying classes have ridiculous speed for some reason. Average Wyverns like Ferdinand/Hilda/Sylvain will hit 33-34 speed at level 40, which means that it's not very difficult to push them to the point where they are doubling (you usually just need to cook some speed meals and you're there). And if you have Darting Blow (easy pickup for female fliers), then that does it as well. This means that most of your speed boosters are probably going to be going to the units that can use them the most, which are your non-flying core combatants. This is typically your Bow users, or maybe a War Master or something.

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Also, to people trying to say that training riding is a waste on Shamir, I'm also going to point out that BK Shamir actually takes less weapon exp to get into than for any student, because she starts with so much free wexp allocated to the right spots. Shamir is going to join with A Bows and C Lances at base, which means that literally the only thing she needs to certify for BK is a riding rank. At minimum she only needs C+ Riding to pass the certification, which only requires 460 wexp in a neutral skill. Compare this to someone "well suited" to being a BK like Leonie. Minimum certification ranks for her would be C Lance, B+ Bow, B Riding, which requires 1680 wexp, even if we generously assume that having a strength makes you gain wexp 50% faster (which is definitely not the case), this still means Leonie needs to gain 1120 wexp to Shamir's 460. Adding in a potential 5 months of tutoring for Leonie closes the gap, but Shamir is still winning, and if you cross recruit Leonie then the difference in wexp needed is vastly more apparent.

Even if we redid the numbers assuming we wanted a 100% pass rate instead of the minimum required pass rate, Shamir requires 1220 wexp to get to BK, whereas Leonie requires 2480. Again, making the very generous assumption that Leonie's strengths means she gains wexp 50% more quickly, this still means she needs to gain 1650 wexp for BK certification, which is again still significantly more than Shamir. Not to mention that Shamir starts with base D authority, which is another 100 wexp head start.

You wouldn't think that the above numbers would be the case, but having a base weapon rank of A is a huge deal, because if you can make use of it, it is so much free wexp. This also applies to Alois, by the way. Despite having no base flying rank and a flying weakness, his base A Axe rank means that it's actually pretty easy to get him into Wyvern Rider, and not super difficult to get to Wyvern Lord.

[Dark Holy Elf]

9 hours ago, arem said:

Okay, I think I've sold some of you on Sniper Shamir.  Now let's try some other characters.  I first picked Felix because he was my other Sniper and I thought his 55 speed growth and high base speed would make him a clear bow knight.  I ran the numbers though and for noble, fighter, archer, sniper bow knight Felix and I get 31 speed. (actually 30.95)  That's good, but without darting blow (he can't get it) he is at 29 effective speed after being weighed down.  You actually need to more carrots to hit the doubling thresholds I was talking about earlier.

Just a nitpick, but Felix should go Myrmidon instead of Fighter since he satisfies the prereq for it, and most units in that speed range would rather have Speed+2 over Strength+2, certainly including him.

When you talk about being weighed down, what bow are you talking about? And did you account for Weight-3? I feel like the only bow anyone should be losing speed from at that point is Brave. You also don't seem to be accounting for the ability to get +2 speed from dismount.

Regarding crit, I will say that (a) it doesn't seem easy to get past ~60 crit (35 killer + 10 volley + 15 batallion) without giving up the accessory slot for a meagre +5 or a skill slot for Bow Crit (the latter available only very late), and even that locks you into rather specific batallion options [in particular, the only +15 crit batallions I saw offhand have offensive gambits, which are poor choices for some of these PCs who have bad charm], and (b) I personally at least have a low opinion of crit-based builds since you pretty much always have to plan around the critical not activating anyway.

[rocanaan]

So, regarding the Riding requirements,  in my opinion the relevant metric is not how hard it is to reach BK from scratch, but from Sniper, since what we're discussing is basically "when is it worthwhile to promote a Sniper to BK". So one way of looking at the problem is that Shamir needs nothing at all to be a sniper, and 460/1220 to be a BK. While other students would need X to be a Sniper and X + 460/1220 (plus whatever it takes to get C lances) to be a BK. And they might benefit from strengths at that.

The students can also choose to train for those requirements in Parallel, whereas Shamir can't, so you would get BK Shamir at approximately the same month as any other student. Of course you could focus Shamir purely on Riding and get there a bit faster but then she's getting less overall WEXP than a student.

The overall point is that Shamir can be a decent Sniper with zero investment, and even get an early-ish S/S+ rank and good battalions along the way, so her opportunity cost is comparatively higher than for other students. 

Surely, it is totally valid as well to argue in absolute WEXP terms, so "BK!Shamir is bad cause Riding is hard" is not a hill I'm particularly willing to die on, but I think adds some merit to the possibility of just leveling Bows/Authority on her an leaving her as Sniper (an possibly benching in the late game if you so wish).

 

[arem]

18 hours ago, Silly said:

Take Leonie, for example, who is a relatively good candidate for the BK class.

I have acknowledged Leonie as a good Bow Knight before, but you  are really selling her short here.  Leonie is probably the best bow knight in the game,  Seriously, she has the highest speed growth (60 percent) and the second highest speed base of the starting characters (9 just one less than Petra).  She is the second fastest character in the game (again only one point behind Petra), and you probably want to do something with that speed, not put her in sniper where her speed is ignored.  She also has her own built in double hit technique.  If you want to to call her a relatively good bow knight, I would like to know who you consider to be a great or excellent bow knight.  Leonie is also one of the most difficult students to recruit early since you can't just gift spam her support to B and will probably have to put Byleth on a horse for a while to get early recruitment.   Shamir, by contrast, can easily join any route.  Her growths are low, but considering her good bases she ends up looking like an average bow knight, as I showed above.

 

18 hours ago, Silly said:

Subtracting AS due to weapon weight also shouldn't be as relevant as you make it seem because by the endgame you should have more than enough wexp to get Weight -3 on the relevant units if you're smart about optimizing.

 

8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

When you talk about being weighed down, what bow are you talking about? And did you account for Weight-3?

No I did not.  I kinda assumed the average bow knight would not be training  heavy armor.  I am also curious as to your skill layouts.  My snipers had bow prowess, death blow, hit plus 20, bow crit, and bowfaire.  Bowfaire and Bow crit take a while, but having almost everything in bows helps and you can use close counter and strength plus two before you get them.  When I was making my examples, I tried to pick the most obvious and likely choices, not the super optimum ones, to make a generic character, and that build is just the bow line skills, plus death blow, which seems like an obvious pick up.  I am kinda wondering what you would want to give up to put weight minus three on instead.  I assumed darting blow would take the place of bow crit on a bow knight, as they are less likely to be a crit build, but i don;t know what you want ot give up for weight minus three.  Bowfaire?  Anyway, weight -3 reduces the weight of silver bow down to nothing, so that's two less carrots in the analysis above if you want to assume its in the builds.  Still 19 left to get the fastest war master.

I am also kinda wondering what your skill acquisition looks like.  You guys seem to be raising lances, flying, bows, axes, riding, and now heavy armor.  I guess you will also want some authority at some point.

8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Just a nitpick, but Felix should go Myrmidon instead of Fighter since he satisfies the prereq for it, and most units in that speed range would rather have Speed+2 over Strength+2, certainly including him. 

Again I was trying to make a generic progression and fighter can be gotten into with bows and helps raise bow rank.  Five levels of Myrmidon does not raise his average speed materially, but the two speed skill puts him at the same break points as darting blow Shamir and takes the same number of skills slots, so that is probably better. 

 

8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Regarding crit, I will say that (a) it doesn't seem easy to get past ~60 crit (35 killer + 10 volley + 15 batallion) without giving up the accessory slot for a meagre +5 or a skill slot for Bow Crit (the latter available only very late), and even that locks you into rather specific batallion options [in particular, the only +15 crit batallions I saw offhand have offensive gambits, which are poor choices for some of these PCs who have bad charm],

I got 35 killer + 10 volley + 20 battalion Fraldarius + 5 (crit ring)+bow crit skill + natural Dex.   That adds up to 80-100 crit on Shamir for me.  Sometimes her crit chance is higher than her hit chance.  The battalion has an offensive gambits, but hitting is not that hard with gambit boosts and I almost only use them for things like armor breaking.  Its really not the most optimum gambit, but I already have characters with stride, retribution, and invincible shield (or whatever it is) and I did not really need  more support gambit.   Indech Sword fights have 10 crit and the retribution skills, so that's another option.  You could argue that the ring and plus a 20 crit battalion is a more limited resource, but the are two of both of them (Goneril Valks also have 20 cirt)  andshe ended up with her equipment because everyone else on my team took their favorite stuff and she grabbed the best of what was left.  If she needed a flying battalion or a  speed ring she would be kinda SOL.   

8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I personally at least have a low opinion of crit-based builds since you pretty much always have to plan around the critical not activating anyway. 

Its okay to feel that way, but mathematically speaking its very consistent.  You really aren't going to need to crit twice to kill so you are just hoping to get at least one crit from the two shots of Hunter's volley.  If you get up to eighty crit like I did, you have a 96 percent chance of getting at least one crit.  With a somewhat more manageable 70 crit, you have a 91 percent change of getting at least one crit.  Even at 60 crit you are looking an 84 percent chance to get one crit.  Also,  you don't need to go crit for sniper, I am just making the best of the free crit that comes with the volley.  Lots of enemies can still be killed with just a forged steel or silver bow or something.  

Edited October 31, 2019 by arem
typos

[Dark Holy Elf]

25 minutes ago, arem said:

No I did not.  I kinda assumed the average bow knight would not be training  heavy armor.  I am also curious as to your skill layouts.  My snipers had bow prowess, death blow, hit plus 20, bow crit, and bowfaire.  Bowfaire and Bow crit take a while, but having almost everything in bows helps and you can use close counter and strength plus two before you get them.  When I was making my examples, I tried to pick the most obvious and likely choices, not the super optimum ones, to make a generic character, and that build is just the bow line skills, plus death blow, which seems like an obvious pick up. I am also kinda wondering what your skill acquisition looks like.

You guys seem to be raising lances, flying, bows, axes, riding, and now heavy armor.  I guess you will also want some authority at some point.

Armour C takes 300 WExp, which is a drop in the bucket compared to getting Bow Crit +10, let alone non-class Bowfaire (I've personally never gotten S+ rank anything, ever, including on a Claude build where I kept him training bows the whole game). I consider Weight-3 a very standard skill for most builds, since it's relatively little investment for major payoff.

Also, if you get both Death Blow and Hit+20, it significantly delays the arrival of Hunter's Volley, since you now need to master three classes all gained after Level 10. That's going to take most of the game (Knowledge Gem can help, but there are only so many of those and it removes the ability to use another accessory at the same time). Ironically it's a setup I find much more palatable on Bow Knights, because they'll almost certainly hit L30 before getting Hunter's Volley, so there's even less reason for them to sit around and wait for it.

33 minutes ago, arem said:

Its okay to feel that way, but mathematically speaking its very consistent.  You really aren't going to need to crit twice to kill so you are just hoping to get at least one crit from the two shots of Hunter's volley.  If you get up to eighty crit like I did, you have a 96 percent chance of getting at least one crit.  With a somewhat more manageable 70 crit, you have a 91 percent change of getting at least one crit.  Even at 60 crit you are looking an 84 percent chance to get one crit.  Also,  you don't need to go crit for sniper, I am just making the best of the free crit that comes with the volley.  Lots of enemies can still be killed with just a forged steel or silver bow or something.   

I find 84% well short of the consistency level I'd like, and even 91% is pushing it. Note that even 91% chance is what we get from 79 displayed hit (talking accuracy instead of criticals for a moment, of course), which is a range I find a bit dicy from experience.

I'd want to look at enemy luck on Maddening again as well, because aside from monsters I recall that generally my (Dex+Luck)/2 was not enough to overcome enemy Luck+Prowess (i.e. I saw 0 crit very often from characters who didn't have boosts to it), but I could be misremembering.

Some enemies can indeed be killed outright without crits, but of course the majority of those can also be killed by the only slightly weaker Brave Bow by Bow Knight as well.

[Silly]

Assuming you're finishing maps relatively quickly and do minimal/no grinding, a somewhat realistic skill setup for a typical Bow Knight towards the end of the game would probably be:

Bow Prowess
Close Counter
Death Blow/Hit +20
Weight -3
Move +1

This only requires you to grind one class mastery. Everything else you should just naturally pick up at some point while training weapon ranks, and with the exception of Move +1, everything comes relatively early in the game. If you took the time to grind a second intermediate class skill, that can replace something on the list (or be the filler skill that you use before you learn Move +1).

For reference, I would assume a typical Wyvern/Falcon Knight to have something along the lines of the following skill set:

Axe/Lance Prowess
Death/Darting Blow
Weight -3
Alert Stance
Filler

With the filler skill being whatever you happen to find most useful (there are a lot of different options depending on the situation).

Also, in terms of which skills to tutor in, I think it's pretty commonly accepted that you should periodically dedicate some training to work towards grabbing C armor and B authority. These are two of the most useful "extra" weapon ranks you can train in, and don't take too much work to grab.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Silly

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

Is getting both Death and Darting Blow a thing in Maddening?

[Silly]

It's possible with some grinding. And I would assume that many people (including myself) typically do play this way.

But I feel like when talking about tier lists and rankings it is usually best to assume minimal or no grinding.

[Johnzin]

2 hours ago, Azure, Roundabouted Out said:

Is getting both Death and Darting Blow a thing in Maddening?

Yeah. Ive done this with petra and edel on CF and SS. I go brigand -> Peg. For me, without grinding and playing optimally, I usually get the darting blow early to mid lv 20s. A little bit before /after tme skip with knowledge gem . you do lose out on the better damage as wyvern with the faire and an extra mov but totally worth

[Ivan Tridelan]

For those who say Bow Knights > Sniper is an easy call, I question that.

Hunter's Volley is guaranteed double with extra hit, crit, might AND range. Very few people in either class are doubling naturally in Maddening.

Brave Bow? You get maybe 2 naturally, need 4 Wootz Steel to make a new one from a Silver, and 2 more Wootz Steel per repair. Without the ability to farm those mats.

Overall, BK is probably better, but Sniper is a reliable performer that can double without relying on a very rare and expensive weapon, which is not to be dismissed so easily. the stats are irrelevant outside of movement (especially speed given the guaranteed double) and the extra range square costs you 20 accuracy to use, and is thus highly situational. To me, it comes down to accessibility (Silver Weapons are very easy to accrue in large numbers, does not require Riding or Lance ranks and is open at level 20) vs mobility

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

19 minutes ago, Johnzin said:

Yeah. Ive done this with petra and edel on CF and SS. I go brigand -> Peg. For me, without grinding and playing optimally, I usually get the darting blow early to mid lv 20s. A little bit before /after tme skip with knowledge gem . you do lose out on the better damage as wyvern with the faire and an extra mov but totally worth

I would still get into Wyvern upon Mastery, but yeah.

Would the same work if I gave Ignatz a Dark Seal To Master Dark Mage and get Poison Strike and then have him master Archer to get Hit +20?

I doubt it.

[Johnzin]

1 hour ago, Ivan Tridelan said:

For those who say Bow Knights > Sniper is an easy call, I question that.

Hunter's Volley is guaranteed double with extra hit, crit, might AND range. Very few people in either class are doubling naturally in Maddening.

Brave Bow? You get maybe 2 naturally, need 4 Wootz Steel to make a new one from a Silver, and 2 more Wootz Steel per repair. Without the ability to farm those mats.

Overall, BK is probably better, but Sniper is a reliable performer that can double without relying on a very rare and expensive weapon, which is not to be dismissed so easily. the stats are irrelevant outside of movement (especially speed given the guaranteed double) and the extra range square costs you 20 accuracy to use, and is thus highly situational. To me, it comes down to accessibility (Silver Weapons are very easy to accrue in large numbers, does not require Riding or Lance ranks and is open at level 20) vs mobility

The range is really important. 

Pumping speed carrots into BK to me feels like a waste. I rather have WLs who are dodge tanking in the front lines with higher Str with Rocky +1 Str than giving characters such as Shamir/Bernie the needs to have longer range. I think farming for the front line units or Lys for warp for 1 turning is way more important than pumping a chip damager. The Str + 1 is really necesary to swift strike and 1 turn a lot of the bosses in SS. The only time i needed to bait that wasnt dodge tanking was if the enemy had a batallion. 

I also dont think its reasonable to make an example of Shamir/Leonie hypothetical lv 40 for comparison. I just finished SS maddening and the only characters that are lv 35+ are byleth/ferdie/seteth/Petra who are wyverning around with alert stance + and killer + for EP. The archers (leonie BK, Sniper Bernie/Shamir) around lv 30. Inexhaustable / brave bow at longer range is not a reliable way to chip. Leonie has point blank but the range cuts into the canto/leave your self open to an attack back.

If this was GD, the final map is full of terrain that a BK wouldnt be that useful in because theyll lose out on Volley.

[PPPPPPP270]

As for my maddening run. I ran 4 bow knights in the late game and barely used hunter's volley as my units either weren't snipers like recruited Leonie and Felix and my bow Byleth. I didn't use Shamir for long as her stats started falling behind and the deployment slots really don't help her. 

I used most of my strength and speed stat boosters and abused the kitchen and garden on my bow Byleth and Bernadetta in Silver Snow. They could always double with their iron bows and pick off low speed mages and murder monsters and fliers with brave bows. Brave bows are kind of hard to make requiring 4 wootz steel and 6 to upgrade. The best sources of wootz steel is the Marianne paralouge and Sothis paralouge. With the former being a rather easy paralouge for a maddening map. The Sothis paralouge is actually pretty hard but if you give everyone a bow (should be doing this regardless) and manage monster aggro it's doable.

In my 4 playthroughs and one of them being maddening silver snow, I think bows are easily the best weapon in the game. Early game it's extremely useful for link attacks and weakening much stronger enemies of the early game. Units that go to non bow classes in advanced can probably switch to hand axes/javalins as they do more damage or just use retribution gambits. Late game the 4 range on bows can really break several enemy formations as you aggro an enemy then kite back with canto because how much range you have.

Things I could've improved on was having an actual lance user. My team consisted of 4 bow knights, 3 wyvern lords, 1 war master, 1 dancer, 1 gremory, and 1 dark knight. Would've been really good to have for those overstatted sword units but they get pelted by arrows and magic regardless. Some things i wonder when do you get swift strikes on your Ferdinand if you made him a wyvern? I never got that combat art and a brave axe probably does more damage. I made it a high priority to get alert stance+ than some combat art.