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Definitely avoid tanks have been key for me, Hilda in both my Hard and Maddening runs was beastly - hit 89 Avo + 30 with Alert Stance+ in Maddening (as well as having massive defense for any physical hits that made it through and high strength and speed do actually do damage back in enemy phase). Recommended!

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I prefer to have options for both forms of tanking : while not numerous, there's definitely enemies that are specifically designed to counter one form or the other.

Having a diverse army is key to not smash your head against an eventual roadblock.

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Some enemies have hit+20 which not only sort of counters avoid tanking, but also makes their gambits more likely to hit. Also enemies with an insanely high amount of Dex will still hit through 100+ Avo builds.

I don't know if these skills are maddening only though

Edited by Fire Flower
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Regarding Felix, I want to ask, is it worth keeping him without a battalion on this mode to keep his personal active? Because I saw stuff about it not really being that great on hard mode.

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49 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Regarding Felix, I want to ask, is it worth keeping him without a battalion on this mode to keep his personal active? Because I saw stuff about it not really being that great on hard mode.

Considering that even average battallions give 5-6 extra atk + other bonuses like extra prt/hit/avoid... you should reach the answer on your own

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6 minutes ago, AxelVDP said:

Considering that even average battallions give 5-6 extra atk + other bonuses like extra prt/hit/avoid... you should reach the answer on your own

Figures. That's what I thought too. But some of the Maddening runs I saw on YouTube keep him without one, which was why I asked.

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11 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Figures. That's what I thought too. But some of the Maddening runs I saw on YouTube keep him without one, which was why I asked.

Do note that few rank E battalions give 5 physical atk (I just loaded a Chapter 6 file and none of mine do), so at least for the first few chapters there is definitely a tradeoff to consider between ATK, Gambits, other bonuses and leveling up Authority in battle (which you can't do without a Batallion).

But yeah once you get a few good battalions, there is no reason to keep him without one forever.

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Felix's Personal (and Catherine's) are good for early NG (when you have a severely limited number of low level E-rank battalions) but mid and late game, their only use is if the Battalion retreats (0 durability) mid-battle. Considering even some E-rank battalions give 5 Attack at level 5, once you hit the point where your battalions can match their Personal bonus, there's no reason not to have such battalions on them.

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Felix/Catherine should be the last units on your team you hand a battalion to, but they should still definitely get one eventually, and "eventually" tends to mean somewhere in mid part 1, at least in my experience. As mentioned, there are tradeoffs as to exactly when is best.

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6 hours ago, Fire Flower said:

Some enemies have hit+20 which not only sort of counters avoid tanking, but also makes their gambits more likely to hit. Also enemies with an insanely high amount of Dex will still hit through 100+ Avo builds.

I don't know if these skills are maddening only though

I've mostly seen hit +20 on Axe users, which more or less just brings their hit to 100. I've only finished Crimson Flower, though, and it's the shortest route, so maybe other routes have people with better hit rates. Bow users are the ones most likely to have accuracy battalions, but they also lose 20% hit per range above 2, and they prioritize not being countered over having positive hit rates, so holding a 1-2 or 1-3 range weapon means they start shooting at you with 0% hit rates.

 

For gambits I solved the problem by having the Avatar be the main tank, since they can spam tea parties for Charm. Having convoy access was also convenient to replace the weapons they broke counter-killing everyone, but it's not strictly speaking necessary, just nice. Chugging a bunch of Speed Carrots and Speed Wings meant they were looking at 100+ avoid before Alert Stance and Defiant Avoid, so an enemy would need 130+ hit to see positive hit rates in most situations (where she can just Wait) and the Avatar would need to fight multiple enemies with 160+ hit to have a realistic chance of dying.

Spoiler

5edpUKs.jpg

There should be 15 avoid flying battalions out there, I was using Cichol because it had 15% crit, which saves weapon uses. So she can easily hit 113 avoid with a battalion change, 118 if she swaps to a sword (since Sword Prowess is 20 Avoid vs. Lance's 15), 148 if she chooses to Wait rather than kill something. And Three Houses seems to use a 2 roll system, so anything below 20% is more or less 0% for practical purposes. How many people with 168 hit have you ran into? Much less in situations where you had to tank multiples in a single enemy phase.

 

The only time I was forced to have the Avatar fight about a dozen enemies in a single enemy phase was Petra's Paralogue, but that map had tons of forests. So while she was fighting a lot of enemies the vast majority of them also have 0% hit rates, and I also had Gradivus by then, so she pretty much counter-killed everyone but the archers. But again, this was in Crimson Flower, maybe the other routes are different.

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On 10/25/2019 at 10:13 PM, Shadow Mir said:

How bad was it? Did you have the same crap that @zuibangde had happen to him happen to you too?

If you mean the enemies getting boosts, yes. I quit after the Black Eagles got to +6 and the second time finished the map with both sides only getting a boost each. Not sure how I still got the "most enemies defeated" award, but I ain't complainin'.

Speaking of, I literally just finished my Maddening NG run (no amiibo or DLC) so want to give some thoughts while they're fresh in my head (also, I can finally contribute outside theory crafting!)

First off, thanks to everyone on this thread I knew what the early game difficulties were, so stuff like enemies outspeeding me wasn't too big a deal in the early game. It was still pretty difficult though. This extends to the Paralogues; the first I got was Dedue's but I had no way of finishing it so left it until I was at the advised level - and did the same for all the others too. The end result is that I had to do all the Paralogues at the very end of Part 1 (I did 4 in February), but as a result I finally got above the "recommended level" for the next chapters.

Reunion at Dawn is another Chapter I think would have been worse if I hadn't been here before. Luckily my m!Byleth was a Wyvern Rider at the time with a 1x4 Gambit and Swap, so I was able to get Dimitri into a bush on Turn 1 and use their Gambits to chip away at the early swarm of enemies and keep them in place (the end result was Dimitri forming a square with all of them). Mercedes had Physic, so even though the Brawler at the south of the map had her and Annie pinned, she was still able to keep Dimitri healthy while Gilbert protected Ashe and Byleth picked off enemies from a distance.

Overall, I agree with everyone that this mode finally got me to pay attention to my Battalions and Abilities, and most of the maps were fine. The last two chapters (among a few others) were a nightmare though. Having a ton of ballistas/ Boltings/ Meteors is bad enough, but why on earth do they have non-zero crit rates?! Same for the final boss: it can literally snipe you from across the map and it can deal critical hits? Who thought that was a good idea?!

Anyway, some rapid-fire thoughts:

  • I game-overed in the first mock battle because I underestimated Ferdinand's speed. I lost two people during the round but pulled through once I learned to turtle better.
  • I had to reset the "save Flayn" chapter a twice, because I split the team up to get the March Ring. Those evasion tiles were a nightmare to deal with...funnily enough, Lysithea got Dark Spikes during this map but came up just too short to use it on DK, so I used Lance of Ruin!Knightkneeler instead. Don't worry though, she destroyed DK in all their other encounters.
  • I think I got most of the optional objectives actually, the only exceptions being losing a student in "Cause of Sorrow" and one of Catherine's lackeys in the Lonato chapter. I refuse to accept responsibility for that though - I'd already used Divine Pulses and Heals to keep him alive and he still decided to Leeroy Jenkins into Lonato even though he only had a sliver of health left.
  • Ashe and Catherine's Paralogue...screams. Let's see, Fog of War, tiny map, having to protect someone, fast and ranged enemies and same-turn reinforcements? I know it's already been said, but it really feels like the devs just turned the enemy stats up for Maddening without stopping to consider certain battles. After a bunch of resetting I managed to Stride/ Dance my Wyvern Rider Byleth over to the two reinforcement-callers in the first three turns and "Rescued" Rhea to the bottom of the map after clearing it out so I could get her Shoes of the Wind. I hate that she counts as being hurt even if an enemy does no damage...
  • It took me 60.5 hours to finish Crimson Flower (Normal), which was also the time it took to finish all of Part 1 here.

Now for Part 2 stuff:

  • I didn't Support Rhea so didn't get her Paralogue, and unfortunately I only recruited one half of most other Paralogues' requirements (e.g. Leonie but no Linhardt), so the only two I could do were Marianne's and Dimitri's. I needed to wait a while before I could manage the former, but the latter I could do right away. Speaking of Dimitri though, thank you to everyone who mentioned his Battalion Wrath/ Vantage build. I have no idea how I could have done this Paralogue or the last three chapters (including Fort Merceus) without it.
  • I don't know if anyone noticed this, but Claude's reinforcements in "Blood of the Eagle and Lion" come in two waves. He calls both sets (three fliers from the north and three horses from the right) if you move to the ballista, but if you move everyone to the left and attack the Alliance first, he calls in the horses to deal with you and the fliers later on to attack the Empire. I failed to protect my mages a few times before figuring this out, but once I did the match became much more manageable (I'm so sorry Raphael...)
  • I'm surprised at how manageable the majority of the maps were, actually: this applies to the final map of Part 1 too, but once I let go of the notion to "kill every last one of them" for EXP, things got easier to manage. The Deirdriu and "Protecting Garreg Mach" chapters are good cases of this.
  • I wish I recruited Petra simply so I didn't have to fight a dodge tank. Even on a plain square she'd dodge anything that wasn't a Gambit. Fighting her in Gronder was bad enough, but in Enbarr too? shudders
  • The final two maps: I spent half a day in Enbarr, dealing with the same-turn reinforcements and finally finished it by moving everyone to the main part of the map (directly north of Hubert) and waiting for the monsters to show up, killing them with archers and Seraphim before killing the mage at the Opera House, then hiding all my mages, Dedue and Gilbert in a corner so that the Varley reinforcements didn't insta-kill them. As I mentioned before, Dimitri was incredibly useful in this map due to all the long range mages.
  • And the final boss...I spent maybe 6 hours trying to kill it. If it wasn't strong enough already, her throne gives her +40 avoid!! After stressing a few years off of my life I pulled it off by funnelling everyone up the left side of the map, killing the monster and mages in the way before letting Dimitri enter the throne room alone to Retribution/ Wrath/ Vantage everyone inside so everyone else could enter. Meanwhile, I had Sylvain, Gilbert and Dedue stand in the way of the Dark Knights that spawn in the top left with Annette casting Impregnable Wall on them each turn for as long as she had it. Once she ran out I swapped the latter two with Annette and Mercedes. Thankfully the War Masters coming from the right didn't have much Mv so I only had to deal with one of them while Dimitri, Byleth, Felix and Shamir dealt with Hegemon El.
    • Unfortunately, Sylvain died on my last turn. I had two Divine Pulses left so I figured I could save him and still be able to finish the map...but this cost me those last Pulses, Sylvain and Dedue and Felix. Great. I still have the Preparation screen in a separate save file if I ever want to try again, but...we'll see if I can bring myself to do so.

Speaking of Sylvain, I forgot how much I hated him. I know he has a good natured side and does what he does due to trust issues and possibly depression, but there's a distinct difference between "I'm acting out because I had a bad childhood" and "I'm using my family issues as an excuse to be a misogynistic prick". I'm still sad he died, but still... (Why did he have to take Felix and Dedue with him?!)

My team in the end was the Blue Lions minus Ashe and Ingrid (I used her until early Part 2. While she was a good Res tank until then, her inability to deal damage to anything wearing more than a robe meant I had to bench her), Dorothea, Lysithea, Gilbert, Shamir and Flayn:

  • Byleth: Wyvern Lord
  • Dimitri: Great Lord
  • Sylvain: Wyvern Lord
  • Felix: Swordmaster
  • Dedue: War Master
  • Gilbert: Great Knight
  • Mercedes: Gremory
  • Annette: Dark Knight (While I often forgot to use her Rallies, it's amazing how much difference +4 Speed can make. The strength is just icing on the cake!)
  • Dorothea: Gremory
  • Lysithea: Gremory
  • Shamir: Bow Knight/ Falcon Knight
  • Flayn: Dancer

I know these aren't original, but this is actually my first time going for the "top tier/ most efficient" classes and I have to admit the lack of Flying and Magic Battalions really hit me hard while building my team. Hopefully the DLC fixes this (maybe with some flying magic Battalions)?

Also, I had terrible luck farming Speed Carrots, and only battled once a month in Part 2 after seeing so many people say the EXP gain wasn't worth it. I think the red exclamation mark Battles are worth doing though, and the trouble I had with Merceus convinced me to battle twice for the last month (not to mention how only fighting once a month left me near-penniless quite a few times). In terms of difficulty, I think the perfect one is just one or two notches below Maddening (...at least it stays true to its name?) I like that I have to pay attention to my Skills and Battalions - and that I actually used Relics; Felix did great with Thunderbrand, for example - but the stat inflation is too absurd, especially for late-game monsters. And...does anyone out there actually like same-turn reinforcements, and how much are you being paid to say that? Maybe they could add a Lunatic difficulty later? I doubt it, but some of these maps were really quite fulfilling to complete (whereas others just left me thinking "finally!")

Huh...I started writing as soon as I finished yet find details escaping my grasp. Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

Edited by DefyingFates
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5 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Overall, I agree with everyone that this mode finally got me to pay attention to my Battalions and Abilities, and most of the maps were fine. The last two chapters (among a few others) were a nightmare though. Having a ton of ballistas/ Boltings/ Meteors is bad enough, but why on earth do they have non-zero crit rates?! Same for the final boss: it can literally snipe you from across the map and it can deal critical hits? Who thought that was a good idea?!

It's pretty nasty, but you can predict who the boss will attack; it's always the lowest-def unit in range in my experience, along with one shot at the lord which hopefully shouldn't be too scary. If you gear up your lowest-def unit for critical evade (the Goddess Ring pushed me over the top IIRC), you can neutralize the worst of this threat.

For the high-crit Fire Orb user (who I assume is Dorothea if she's not recruited?), I used Stride on a flier though Impregnable Wall, Blessing, Rescue/Warp are all options as well. I ignored the high-crit onager in the east by bringing Dimitri's group to the west instead. For the Bolting reinforcements (ugh) I just used a dodge-tank with Retribution and hoped for the best.

Agreed that the last two maps are definitely the toughest in the route. I enjoyed 'em a lot though. (Also enjoyed reading your own log, so thanks for sharing!)

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33 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

It's pretty nasty, but you can predict who the boss will attack; it's always the lowest-def unit in range in my experience, along with one shot at the lord which hopefully shouldn't be too scary. If you gear up your lowest-def unit for critical evade (the Goddess Ring pushed me over the top IIRC), you can neutralize the worst of this threat.

That makes sense; I noticed she always aimed for my mages but never made the connection. To be honest I only realised she targeted Def once all my other units were in the bottom left corner and she could only attack Dedue (and only did 11 damage, which gave me a vindictive sense of satisfaction) 😛 She always aimed for my mages though, she only targeted Dimitri once he got close enough, but after I gave him an Evasion Ring she only had a 17% chance of hitting him (and only did 9 damage), so he was safe for the most part. If anything the biggest problem was that his Battalion only had 5~7 members left, so all she had to do was hit him twice (I had Defensive Tactics equipped) and he was dead in the water. Yeah, I definitely could have handled that part better.

33 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

For the high-crit Fire Orb user (who I assume is Dorothea if she's not recruited?), I used Stride on a flier though Impregnable Wall, Blessing, Rescue/Warp are all options as well. I ignored the high-crit onager in the east by bringing Dimitri's group to the west instead. For the Bolting reinforcements (ugh) I just used a dodge-tank with Retribution and hoped for the best.

I assume so, since she's in front of the opera house. I dealt with her by Warping Byleth right next to her, which meant he could kill her with a Brave Axe and had more than enough Mv to Canto back to safety. I also dealt with the Onager by moving everyone west, and used the aforementioned Dimitri build to deal with the Bolting mage to Hubert's left. I then positioned my fliers and Annette at the edge of the small area Hubert hides in before rushing in on my next turn. I planned on killing everyone to his right for some extra EXP, but he calls in 2 Gremories(?) and 2 Dark Knights if you leave him alive, so that didn't happen.

By the way (and this is for everyone), who makes the best dodge-tanks, and is your Dancer a good choice (because of Sword Avoid +20)? When I made Flayn my dancer I also decided to raise her Sword level for the proficiency. Not sure if it did anything, but I thought it worth asking. I assume Alert Stance+ is a must, in any case. Also, are there any other good Battalion Ability-based builds, or is Dimitri's the only good one? I know he's the only one to get Vantage and Wrath...

33 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Agreed that the last two maps are definitely the toughest in the route. I enjoyed 'em a lot though. (Also enjoyed reading your own log, so thanks for sharing!)

You must have the patience of the Four Saints 😛 If there was just an option to disable same-turn reinforcements, I think I'd have enjoyed my time far more.

And I'm so glad you enjoyed reading it, thank you so so much!!

Edited by DefyingFates
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On 10/31/2019 at 12:23 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Regarding Felix, I want to ask, is it worth keeping him without a battalion on this mode to keep his personal active? Because I saw stuff about it not really being that great on hard mode.

The trick is to keep him and Catherine without a battalion until mid-late part 1. After that and you've upgraded battalions on the others, you hand over a previously used battalion (a max level E battalion can have both +2/3 strength and defense so the trade-off from losing their passive won't be as harsh and sometimes even a boon) to them as a way to raise their authority up to standards and start equipping the stuff that'll far outclass what they would have with just their passives

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8 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

By the way (and this is for everyone), who makes the best dodge-tanks, and is your Dancer a good choice (because of Sword Avoid +20)? When I made Flayn my dancer I also decided to raise her Sword level for the proficiency. Not sure if it did anything, but I thought it worth asking. I assume Alert Stance+ is a must, in any case.

I've never full-built the dancer as a dodge-tank, but they can certainly do it well, yes. Ferdinand and Dimitri are particularly potent at it because of their personals (though Dimitri is weak in Flying, and is so good at other roles anyway). Otherwise, generally the best characters to build as dodge-tanks are ones with high speed, and proficiency in flying is a help since Alert Stance+ is a heavy investment. Ingrid, Petra, etc.

 

8 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

You must have the patience of the Four Saints 😛 If there was just an option to disable same-turn reinforcements, I think I'd have enjoyed my time far more.

I'm not a fan of same-turn reinforcements at all but at least in this game I can divine pulse them away and look for a solution. Not optimum design by any means, but I ended up liking this hard mode more than others from games with same-turn reinforcements (Conquest's is still my favourite though).

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9 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I'm not a fan of same-turn reinforcements at all but at least in this game I can divine pulse them away and look for a solution.

 

44 minutes ago, iavasechui said:

Yeah turning back time for unexpected reinforcements is much better than having to reset the entire chapter if they catch you off guard and kill your backline.

Yeah, Divine Pulse definitely helps, but it's limited and I'd rather use it for my own mistakes than the game being cheap 😛 It's fine in the early maps since there's only one batch of reinforcements every so often, but when later maps start churning them out almost every turn, that's when it gets frustrating 😕 @Dark Holy Elf, you're a Saint for enjoying Conquest, I must say!

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Ambush spawns are definitely heavily mitigated by Divine Pulse. You can usually just rewind and put your guy out of range of the spawn.

The only map with ambush reinforcements that I found particularly dumb was BL endgame, because the ambush spawns have siege tomes, and when you trigger them your entire army is probably in range.

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21 hours ago, Silly said:

The only map with ambush reinforcements that I found particularly dumb was BL endgame, because the ambush spawns have siege tomes, and when you trigger them your entire army is probably in range.

It's possible to prevent those ambush from triggering, but I'm not sure of the exact condition : I basically split my team in half to cover both side, while ignoring the center room for the most part. Upon entering the throne room, the only reinforcements I had to deal with were from the center room (which didn't have any meteor or bolting).

Edited by Modirufa6317
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2 hours ago, Modirufa6317 said:

It's possible to prevent those ambush from triggering, but I'm not sure of the exact condition : I basically split my team in half to cover both side, while ignoring the center room for the most part. Upon entering the throne room, the only reinforcements I had to deal with were from the center room (which didn't have any meteor or bolting).

Wait, can you stop reinforcements by parking someone on the stairs of the top left and right rooms? I could have sworn that didn't work the first time I played BL...

Edited by DefyingFates
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22 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Wait, can you stop reinforcements by parking someone on the stairs of the top left and right rooms? I could have sworn that didn't work the first time I played BL...

You can do that for the central staircase (the game can even hint at it with dialogues), but not for the 2 north corners rooms. Like I've said, I'm not sure how I managed to prevent the latters.

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On 10/31/2019 at 5:58 AM, Modirufa6317 said:

I prefer to have options for both forms of tanking : while not numerous, there's definitely enemies that are specifically designed to counter one form or the other.

Having a diverse army is key to not smash your head against an eventual roadblock.

I highly disagree in needing a diverse army as I had a silver snow comp run 0 dedicated sword or lance users and got by very smoothly. It focused on 4 bow knights with 3 wyvern lords and the rest being mages or support units and one war master if I really need to kill a monster. which is good because no enemy runs bowbreaker and the only thing you might worry about is keen intuition but you can probably gambit someone like fake Petra in Edelgard's level then finish them off with a curved shot. 

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33 minutes ago, Modirufa6317 said:

You can do that for the central staircase (the game can even hint at it with dialogues), but not for the 2 north corners rooms. Like I've said, I'm not sure how I managed to prevent the latters.

That's what I thought (it's the opposite in the other routes). Maybe you skipped whatever flags those reinforcements to start appearing?

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4 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

That's what I thought (it's the opposite in the other routes). Maybe you skipped whatever flags those reinforcements to start appearing?

I did see someone accidently skipping an event that despawn TWSITD members after killing Myson by focusing on the left side, then, retreat back to the start to take care of the right, while baiting enemies from the center & throne rooms without stepping foot in them.

However, the Bolting/meteor reinforcements are triggered after Edelgard does her monologue and switch her weapons (after you enter the throne room). So that seems a lot harder to skip.

Maybe I just somehow forgot about it, but that's hard to believe...

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11 hours ago, Modirufa6317 said:

However, the Bolting/meteor reinforcements are triggered after Edelgard does her monologue and switch her weapons (after you enter the throne room). So that seems a lot harder to skip.

I know, that's what confuses me too. Maybe a lucky bug? 😛

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