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Easiest route on maddening mode?


Easiest route on Maddening Mode?  

83 members have voted

  1. 1. Easiest route on Maddening (assume recruitment is allowed)

    • Crimson Flower
      9
    • Azure Moon
      50
    • Verdant Wind
      21
    • Silver Snow
      3


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Azure Moon is the easiest, Silver Snow is the hardest.

Silver Snow final level has you surrounded by enemies, and they advanced at once from all sides. You can't bottleneck them at all.

Then there is Rhea second form with that long range AoE attacks...

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6 hours ago, Altrosa said:

Crimson Flower also has the issue of Flayn bouncing out of your team when you are already dealing with limited EXP gains.

Lindhardt’s crippled from not having access to Gremory, as his attack prowess is garbage despite warp utility. He’s as good of dancer material as Dorothea, if only for her having access to the better final class.

Petra also has the same potential but slow build quirk as Ferdinand if you direct her to becoming your main flyer. 

I actually took full advantage of Byleth’s budding talent in white magic and made her a holy knight on my CF run, and I would not have won those last maps without her. 

I don’t see how losing Flayn on CF is a big disadvantage at all considering the only useful thing she offers is Rescue, Flayn doesn’t have Physic so there’s no way she could compete healing exp with Linhardt and Dorothea. Also Flayn’s going to be a very poor offensive spell caster because she joins at chapter 7 with E rank in Reason and a mediocre spell list.

I disagree with Linhardt or Dorothea being dancer materials. Linhardt being unable to promote to Gremory is not a big deal since his Reason spell list has nothing special to take advantage of Black Magic x2. Plus Physic in this game has ridiculous range, he really doesn’t need the extra +1 mov from Gremory to get closer to the frontline to heal. On the other hand White Magic Heal + 10 combined with his crest allows him to output a lot of healing so I don’t see anything wrong with Bishop being Linhardt’s final class. Also his attack prowess is far from garbage if he has Magic+2 and Fiendish Blow which should both be very easy to get if you choose the BE house so he’s available from the beginning of the game. On top of this Linhardt also has the most broken utility spell in the game: Warp, that alone makes him a lot more useful than the majority of the playable cast. The same can be said about Dorothea because she has an amazing spell list: Thoron for 3 range option, Meteor for massive Gambit/Support bonus and Physic for amazing healing utility. 

 

Edited by Ari Chan
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1 hour ago, Ari Chan said:

I disagree with Linhardt or Dorothea being dancer materials. 

Who's the ideal dancer in CF in your opinion? I definitely agree that Linhardt should never dance, but Dorothea seems to be popular in that role. If I am not mistaken, her Meteor support links work even if she's dancing. Dancing does make it hard for her to use Psychic, though, which could be an issue if you're playing recruit-less. Don't want to go too off-topic, but I'm curious to know your opinion.

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I'm curious for all the people saying AM being the easiest, have you played and beaten it on maddening?

On hard it's a joke and the final map is very easy. On maddening, upon approaching the throne room, you get 2 siege mage reinforcements on both the left and right stairs. Oh yea, these are same turn reinforcements btw. I guess if you don't care to save everyone it is probably the easiest.

If you plan on saving everyone, I assume it's going to be VW, the final map is a joke on maddening compared to AM. Though i would have to beat CF and SS to say for sure. I honestly don't think SS will be too hard if you rush to the bottom quick and stop the reinforcements. 

My team could have also been a problem for me on AM as well since i only had 1 avoid tank and my average party level is like 36.

https://imgur.com/a/mduGkOA

There's my team for reference. I looked at the maddening topic and the guy who said he beat it looks like he mad grinded. His levels are way higher than mine and weapon/skill ranks are through the roof. My run was done as a no aux grind, only paralogue and merchant quests run.

Edited by niveklt
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19 minutes ago, niveklt said:

I'm curious for all the people saying AM being the easiest, have you played and beaten it on maddening?

On hard it's a joke and the final map is very easy. On maddening, upon approaching the throne room, you get 2 siege mage reinforcements on both the left and right stairs. Oh yea, these are same turn reinforcements btw. I guess if you don't care to save everyone it is probably the easiest.

If you plan on saving everyone, I assume it's going to be VW, the final map is a joke on maddening compared to AM. Though i would have to beat CF and SS to say for sure. I honestly don't think SS will be too hard if you rush to the bottom quick and stop the reinforcements. 

My team could have also been a problem for me on AM as well since i only had 1 avoid tank and my average party level is like 36.

https://imgur.com/a/mduGkOA

There's my team for reference. I looked at the maddening topic and the guy who said he beat it looks like he mad grinded. His levels are way higher than mine and weapon/skill ranks are through the roof. My run was done as a no aux grind, only paralogue and merchant quests run.

I will admit I have not (I'm still only on my first run), but I do believe that it has the easiest part 1 at least. Considering that Early Game Hell is in full effect, that's a big advantage imo.

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43 minutes ago, niveklt said:

I'm curious for all the people saying AM being the easiest, have you played and beaten it on maddening?

On hard it's a joke and the final map is very easy. On maddening, upon approaching the throne room, you get 2 siege mage reinforcements on both the left and right stairs. Oh yea, these are same turn reinforcements btw. I guess if you don't care to save everyone it is probably the easiest.

If you plan on saving everyone, I assume it's going to be VW, the final map is a joke on maddening compared to AM. Though i would have to beat CF and SS to say for sure. I honestly don't think SS will be too hard if you rush to the bottom quick and stop the reinforcements. 

My team could have also been a problem for me on AM as well since i only had 1 avoid tank and my average party level is like 36.

https://imgur.com/a/mduGkOA

There's my team for reference. I looked at the maddening topic and the guy who said he beat it looks like he mad grinded. His levels are way higher than mine and weapon/skill ranks are through the roof. My run was done as a no aux grind, only paralogue and merchant quests run.

 

I have been thinking this way myself.  I am on my second run personally and I grinded both times, but I am expecting Golden Deer Endgame to be considerably easier.  Dedue is an absolute beast in the beginning, which is the primary thing making the AM run easier, but that last level is insane.  I was about level 40 on that stage and I ended up losing more than half my squad just to those guys popping in and the other reinforcements taking pot shots while I tried to down Edelgard.    

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35 minutes ago, arem said:

 

I have been thinking this way myself.  I am on my second run personally and I grinded both times, but I am expecting Golden Deer Endgame to be considerably easier.  Dedue is an absolute beast in the beginning, which is the primary thing making the AM run easier, but that last level is insane.  I was about level 40 on that stage and I ended up losing more than half my squad just to those guys popping in and the other reinforcements taking pot shots while I tried to down Edelgard.    

I agree the last ch was hella hard  I have beatened Maddening Mode BL and didn't grind or lose anyone. It took me around 40-50 turns. Also around ~lv 35. But took a few tries to figure out a good strategy. 

My strat was there are two retribution uses, one for that long range dark magic and the reinforcements. 4 flyers (slyv/Ingrid/cyril/seteth) with alert stance +. Dedue and Ingrid 15 turn broke the two physical/mage ballista. Dodge tank the two meteor mages with ingrid (2 turns) And for the reinforcement, evasion ring/retrib/ sylvain with killer + axe can kill those seige mages with alert stance + by baiting them on the top platform. Then block off the dark knights with ingrid Dodge tanking on left (hilarious when all 4 waves of reinforcements run out of spells) and Cyril Dodge tanking on the right against the brawlers. Felix/Dimitri/dedue/byleth/sylvain vs Edel. Mercie and Flayn healing duties. Catherine and Shamir just standing there next to Cyril. Didn't know if their support B/A helped.

Edited by Johnzin
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1 hour ago, rocanaan said:

Who's the ideal dancer in CF in your opinion? I definitely agree that Linhardt should never dance, but Dorothea seems to be popular in that role. If I am not mistaken, her Meteor support links work even if she's dancing. Dancing does make it hard for her to use Psychic, though, which could be an issue if you're playing recruit-less. Don't want to go too off-topic, but I'm curious to know your opinion.

In my experience, Dancer Dorothea's Physic really wasn't that useful outside of clutch situations, since it didn't heal enough. She could have been magic screwed though.

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1 hour ago, niveklt said:

I'm curious for all the people saying AM being the easiest, have you played and beaten it on maddening?

I have, and the final map is fairly reasonable if you prepare in advance. My end levels were all fairly close to yours (average level for all my units was around 37), and the main difference I can see is that I funneled most of my resources into Dimitri. I see you went Bow Knight, but I personally think BK is sub-optimal for a few reasons. 

  1. Dimitri has inherent Wrath + Vantage from Battalion skills. He gets Wrath at C and Vantage at A, iirc. Along with Defensive Tactics (halves battalion damage), you can very reliably get your battalions into <= 30% of their HP and keep them there. Couple that with a Killer Lance+ and Lance Crit +10, and he approaches 100% Crit without statboosters. Focusing on Skills he's good at (Lances, Authority, Riding) allows him to get this combination ASAP and gain the most benefit out of it possible.
  2. Focusing on Strengths is a particularly good idea for him because of his period of not being able to be tutored. Investing a Neutral to A is more difficult, especially on Maddening with reduced Goals XP. Paladin Dimitri is plenty good enough, and Great Lord has a really nice Speed modifier (+4 iirc). Bow classes aren't really great until Master, and at that point, their range advantage is mostly irrelevant for him because...
  3. Retribution exists, a Gambit that gives you unlimited counter range for 5 turns. An Enemy Phase Dimitri doesn't need range because of it, so those pesky Siege reinforcements are as good as gone; I didn't even see their stats since they died on the turn they spawned. As a result, Bow Knight is fairly meh in comparison, and I think it's a waste of a unit who really doesn't need or want Bows. 

BL was pretty easy for me, personally. 

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5 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

I have, and the final map is fairly reasonable if you prepare in advance. My end levels were all fairly close to yours (average level for all my units was around 37), and the main difference I can see is that I funneled most of my resources into Dimitri. I see you went Bow Knight, but I personally think BK is sub-optimal for a few reasons. 

  1. Dimitri has inherent Wrath + Vantage from Battalion skills. He gets Wrath at C and Vantage at A, iirc. Along with Defensive Tactics (halves battalion damage), you can very reliably get your battalions into <= 30% of their HP and keep them there. Couple that with a Killer Lance+ and Lance Crit +10, and he approaches 100% Crit without statboosters. Focusing on Skills he's good at (Lances, Authority, Riding) allows him to get this combination ASAP and gain the most benefit out of it possible.
  2. Focusing on Strengths is a particularly good idea for him because of his period of not being able to be tutored. Investing a Neutral to A is more difficult, especially on Maddening with reduced Goals XP. Paladin Dimitri is plenty good enough, and Great Lord has a really nice Speed modifier (+4 iirc). Bow classes aren't really great until Master, and at that point, their range advantage is mostly irrelevant for him because...
  3. Retribution exists, a Gambit that gives you unlimited counter range for 5 turns. An Enemy Phase Dimitri doesn't need range because of it, so those pesky Siege reinforcements are as good as gone; I didn't even see their stats since they died on the turn they spawned. As a result, Bow Knight is fairly meh in comparison, and I think it's a waste of a unit who really doesn't need or want Bows. 

BL was pretty easy for me, personally. 

See, this is the type of response i would like to hear instead of people mindlessly saying BL because of the early game. I did mention how it could have been my team, and thinking about it, I've only played all the routes once till maddening came out and forgot what skills Dimitri learns for authority.

At least your reasoning makes sense. The others are just making assumptions because of early game with no mindset of the end game where i assure you, majority of players won't take advantage of his battalion vantage+wrath build. Early game it honestly doesn't make a huge difference between the 3 route. Sure Dedue can tank a little bit, but honestly he gets quickly out paced when enemies will double him and have like 30 attack with their steel weapons. I benched him at level 6 and used him as a adjutant to Dimitri because i knew you lose him in part 2 for a fair amount of time.

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2 hours ago, niveklt said:

At least your reasoning makes sense. The others are just making assumptions because of early game with no mindset of the end game where i assure you, majority of players won't take advantage of his battalion vantage+wrath build. Early game it honestly doesn't make a huge difference between the 3 route. Sure Dedue can tank a little bit, but honestly he gets quickly out paced when enemies will double him and have like 30 attack with their steel weapons. I benched him at level 6 and used him as a adjutant to Dimitri because i knew you lose him in part 2 for a fair amount of time.

The early game is probably one of the more difficult parts of the game right next to the endgame, so I understand why people focus on it. I don’t think the chapters before the first Death Knight one are significantly different between BL and GD though. BL has 1 more potential Tempest Lance user, but GD has 1 more potential Curved Shot user (although Ignatz should be using Rally Speed, so it mostly evens out). 

Dedue’s personal is very strong in the early game. In comparison to Raphael, Dedue’s taking 5 less damage per hit at base. Assuming he’s doubled, that’s 10 less overall, which is a third of their HP bars. I think that’s fairly significant, and it makes Enemy Phase easier to handle than in GD. This in turn makes Player Phase easier as more enemies can be softened up by Dedue before wiping them on your next turn. Raphael’s really not even comparable to him. 

Once you do get Rally Speed though, I think BL is significantly easier than GD because they have more tools in general. Annette has Rally Strength, Speed, and Res while pulling off a pretty good magic flier build, Dedue can tank consistently in Part 1 if he goes the Armor route, Sylvain has Swift Strikes, Mercedes has the best healing in the game, and Dimitri + Felix are great combat units. The main thing they’re missing is Warp, but it’s not really a big deal tbh. They also get one more late Wyvern candidate in Gilbert, so XP is less scarce compared to other routes. I haven’t completed GD on Maddening, so I can’t say for sure that BL lategame is easier than GD lategame, but I’m pretty sure it is. 

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12 hours ago, niveklt said:

I'm curious for all the people saying AM being the easiest, have you played and beaten it on maddening?

On hard it's a joke and the final map is very easy. On maddening, upon approaching the throne room, you get 2 siege mage reinforcements on both the left and right stairs. Oh yea, these are same turn reinforcements btw. I guess if you don't care to save everyone it is probably the easiest.

If you plan on saving everyone, I assume it's going to be VW, the final map is a joke on maddening compared to AM. Though i would have to beat CF and SS to say for sure. I honestly don't think SS will be too hard if you rush to the bottom quick and stop the reinforcements. 

My team could have also been a problem for me on AM as well since i only had 1 avoid tank and my average party level is like 36.

https://imgur.com/a/mduGkOA

There's my team for reference. I looked at the maddening topic and the guy who said he beat it looks like he mad grinded. His levels are way higher than mine and weapon/skill ranks are through the roof. My run was done as a no aux grind, only paralogue and merchant quests run.

I assume you're talking about me, and I can assure you, I did not grind in the slightest, in fact I purposedly levelled up other units aside from my main team because I had resources to spare and did not want to get overlevelled. As I wrote in the other topic, I basically never did aux battles. I did get the 10% exp bonus on 2 statues tho.

also the siege mages were certainly a surprise but you just need to use retribution on Ingrid/Dimitri and leave the rest of your team out of range. then they suicide by themselves lol (this is why I actually rate Ingrid quite high, she is an excellent mage killer, and there are tons of mages in BL lategame)

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2 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

Once you do get Rally Speed though, I think BL is significantly easier than GD because they have more tools in general. Annette has Rally Strength, Speed, and Res while pulling off a pretty good magic flier build, Dedue can tank consistently in Part 1 if he goes the Armor route, Sylvain has Swift Strikes, Mercedes has the best healing in the game, and Dimitri + Felix are great combat units.

"Shrug" Leonie and Sylvain get their brave art at the same rank, Marianne can OHKO with frozen lance, Lysithea can do the same with soul blade, Raphael gets rally strength, and they get siege dancer support through Hilda... they do suffer quite a bit in the healing department admittedly. Past ch 6 I didn't find maddening particularly taxing on GD, certain paralogues aside.

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2 hours ago, Cysx said:

"Shrug" Leonie and Sylvain get their brave art at the same rank, Marianne can OHKO with frozen lance, Lysithea can do the same with soul blade, Raphael gets rally strength, and they get siege dancer support through Hilda... they do suffer quite a bit in the healing department admittedly. Past ch 6 I didn't find maddening particularly taxing on GD, certain paralogues aside.

I did forget about Point Blank Volley, so I’ll concede that GD has that going for them. I don’t really think that Marianne or Lysithea will be in the position to use their magic Combat Arts very often if at all though. Both of them are going to be around 4 Move for the first 30 Levels, and Lysithea is probably going Gremory which is still only 5 Move. I could see it being useful somewhat early on, but I don’t see the use of being able to ORKO if the unit lags behind the rest of your units. 

Raph has Rally Strength, but he’s also terrible as a front liner. He gets doubled by just about everything, and he doesn’t have enough Defense to make up for it. He’s dead weight that should be dropped as soon as humanly possible. In regards to Hilda, isn’t it sub-optimal to have a dancer with a siege tome? Dance is more useful than any contribution Hilda could make using Bolting. She has 5 base Mag and a 25% growth. Losing Wyvern Hilda to make her a dancer who hits for like 20 HP twice per map at a far range seems pretty meh. If you were going to go Bolting Hilda though, I’d rather just leave her as a Warlock so she at least has Tomefaire and 4 uses instead of 2. 

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17 minutes ago, LegendOfLoog said:

I did forget about Point Blank Volley, so I’ll concede that GD has that going for them. I don’t really think that Marianne or Lysithea will be in the position to use their magic Combat Arts very often if at all though. Both of them are going to be around 4 Move for the first 30 Levels, and Lysithea is probably going Gremory which is still only 5 Move. I could see it being useful somewhat early on, but I don’t see the use of being able to ORKO if the unit lags behind the rest of your units. 

Raph has Rally Strength, but he’s also terrible as a front liner. He gets doubled by just about everything, and he doesn’t have enough Defense to make up for it. He’s dead weight that should be dropped as soon as humanly possible. In regards to Hilda, isn’t it sub-optimal to have a dancer with a siege tome? Dance is more useful than any contribution Hilda could make using Bolting. She has 5 base Mag and a 25% growth. Losing Wyvern Hilda to make her a dancer who hits for like 20 HP twice per map at a far range seems pretty meh. If you were going to go Bolting Hilda though, I’d rather just leave her as a Warlock so she at least has Tomefaire and 4 uses instead of 2. 

Marianne goes Paladin for tier 3(and stays there), and cavalier the moment she masters fiendish blow, she has the strengths for it. I can speak from experience, this works really well. For Lysithea admittedly you're probably better off just going mage; that being said she does OHKO with Dark spikes for a while once she gets fiendish blow.

Raph is dicey for sure, at least he can kill with gauntlets easier than most characters, but that's about it. I was just saying, in terms of rallies while you need two deployment slots, the GD gets the same selection(beside Res and Dex, but they're both roughly as important as the other)
The point of having a dancer with siege is that it gets +7 -10 accuracy/avoid to everyone within 10 tiles around them, it's not to fight with it since you'll be dancing 99% of the time. Dorothea does the same in BE, but she doesn't have many GD supports so it has to be Hilda there. BL doesn't get anything of the sort, it's one of the rare advantages they don't get at all. Hilda also has a + damage with Claude, which is pretty great since she's granting him the bonus pretty much at all times as a result.
Granted, WL Hilda is a really solid unit(not the most accurate though), but in the end, she's not massively better than other WLs, if at all, while this is a niche only she brings, and you're going to be using a dancer either way.

Looking at stats, Lorenz could be using Frozen lance too, he learns it decently early.

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6 minutes ago, Cysx said:

Marianne goes Paladin for tier 3(and stays there), and cavalier the moment she masters fiendish blow, she has the strengths for it. I can speak from experience, this works really well. For Lysithea admittedly you're probably better off just going mage; that being said she does OHKO with Dark spikes for a while once she gets fiendish blow.

Raph is dicey for sure, at least he can kill with gauntlets easier than most characters, but that's about it. I was just saying, in terms of rallies while you need two deployment slots, the GD gets the same selection(beside Res and Dex, but they're both roughly as important as the other)
The point of having a dancer with siege is that it gets +7 -10 accuracy/avoid to everyone within 10 tiles around them, it's not to fight with it since you'll be dancing 99% of the time. Dorothea does the same in BE, but she doesn't have many GD supports so it has to be Hilda there. BL doesn't get anything of the sort, it's one of the rare advantages they don't get at all. Hilda also has a + damage with Claude, which is pretty great since she's granting him the bonus pretty much at all times as a result.
Granted, WL Hilda is a really solid unit(not the most accurate though), but in the end, she's not massively better than other WLs, if at all, while this is a niche only she brings, and you're going to be using a dancer either way.

Looking at stats, Lorenz could be using Frozen lance too, he learns it decently early.

Paladin Marianne sounds decent enough, but I’m assuming you’d need to recruit Mercedes or Lindhardt to have a Physic user, right? That sounds fine since they’re both better utility units than her anyway. GD has the same important Rallies, but the units that have it are both fairly poor at combat. Rally Speed is good enough to warrant a slot without being a good unit otherwise imo, but I don’t think Rally Strength on its own is. Annette is at least ok, and she saves a deployment slot in comparison. Not really a huge deal early, but I’d still put it as a net advantage for BL in the long run. 

I see what you mean with the Bolting thing now. I could see a use for that although idk if that’s worth losing her combat capability. I’d rather use a mediocre unit like Lorenz who can get Movement +1 quickly and isn’t particularly good in the first place. 

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15 minutes ago, LegendOfLoog said:

Paladin Marianne sounds decent enough, but I’m assuming you’d need to recruit Mercedes or Lindhardt to have a Physic user, right? That sounds fine since they’re both better utility units than her anyway. GD has the same important Rallies, but the units that have it are both fairly poor at combat. Rally Speed is good enough to warrant a slot without being a good unit otherwise imo, but I don’t think Rally Strength on its own is. Annette is at least ok, and she saves a deployment slot in comparison. Not really a huge deal early, but I’d still put it as a net advantage for BL in the long run. 

I see what you mean with the Bolting thing now. I could see a use for that although idk if that’s worth losing her combat capability. I’d rather use a mediocre unit like Lorenz who can get Movement +1 quickly and isn’t particularly good in the first place. 

Yeah, I guess Flayn exist but for the most part, you do need to recruit a healer, hence why I did admit they sucked at healing with that setup.

Actually I'd argue Ignatz has pretty good combat. Mainly he cannot kill for much of the earlygame, but he provides debuffing long range chip with reliable accuracy. Then he double for a while, and finally the existence of Hunter's volley completely salvages him. His strength in authority is also really helpful to get strong battalions earlier and compensate for his middling offense. That being said, I'm not the one to talk to to hear negativity about Annette, and regardless I do think you're right.

Lorenz rant incoming:

I'll make Lorenz work someday. Actually he kinda does, as a pure mage. Gets Ragnarok abnormally early, has a very easy time into DK and can thus work towards tomefaire 2(got it on month 17 with no solo focus or grinding, I was really surprised), and he actually has an enemy phase unlike most mages, for a while anyway. The defensive effect of Thyrsus is pretty nice on him as a result, too. His combination of two strong low uses reason spells allows him to function well as a DK, as a male he gets a bonus when next to Hilda, Ferdinand is a + damage support for him(stops at B, but eh)... no he does have things going for him, he really does.
... but he's often short of OHKO without boosters in maddening, despite my best efforts. Frankly I suspect many mages suffer the same, because his numbers are far from bad. Ultimately as I said above, his magic isn't that much lower than Marianne's(and he's always at +2 thanks to his passive), so he can probably pull off the same Frozen lance build to great effect, I just haven't personally tried.


As for the actual point at hand though(sorry), I think every unit you deploy should be as good as possible. You don't have to deploy Lorenz, but you will deploy a dancer. Might as well maximize how much they contribute. That's arguable for sure, won't deny it.

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19 hours ago, rocanaan said:

Who's the ideal dancer in CF in your opinion? I definitely agree that Linhardt should never dance, but Dorothea seems to be popular in that role. If I am not mistaken, her Meteor support links work even if she's dancing. Dancing does make it hard for her to use Psychic, though, which could be an issue if you're playing recruit-less. Don't want to go too off-topic, but I'm curious to know your opinion.

Ideally your dancer should do nothing else besides dancing so Caspar seems to fit that role perfectly, that guy sucks so much even if you turn him into a Wyvern Lord and he doesn’t have any useful utility to make up for his lackluster combat.

His charm base and growth shouldn’t be a problem considering you get plenty of golden apples and tea time to fix that.

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43 minutes ago, Cysx said:

Actually I'd argue Ignatz has pretty good combat. Mainly he cannot kill for much of the earlygame, but he provides debuffing long range chip with reliable accuracy. Then he double for a while, and finally the existence of Hunter's volley completely salvages him. His strength in authority is also really helpful to get strong battalions earlier and compensate for his middling offense. That being said, I'm not the one to talk to to hear negativity about Annette, and regardless I do think you're right.

 Lorenz rant incoming:

That’s true enough on Ignatz, although I think Assassin Ignatz might be better for utility purposes. Stealth allows him to stick near the frontline and Rally/Break Shot/Ward Arrow + Seal Strength without being targeted. I imagine he’d also be a good user of a utility Gambit like Sacred Shield or Dance of the Goddess. Playing up his utility seems more useful to me than his damage contribution later on. 

Lorenz always seems to come just short in ORKOing in my experience. Eventually, I think I’ll try going Mage -> Paladin -> Dark Knight with Lorenz to see if Frozen Lance is enough for him in the 3rd tier where many mages experience a drop in usefulness. I’m starting to think that focusing on magic Combat Arts is a good idea for many mages that can afford to do it like Annette and Marianne.

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7 hours ago, AxelVDP said:

I assume you're talking about me, and I can assure you, I did not grind in the slightest, in fact I purposedly levelled up other units aside from my main team because I had resources to spare and did not want to get overlevelled. As I wrote in the other topic, I basically never did aux battles. I did get the 10% exp bonus on 2 statues tho.

also the siege mages were certainly a surprise but you just need to use retribution on Ingrid/Dimitri and leave the rest of your team out of range. then they suicide by themselves lol (this is why I actually rate Ingrid quite high, she is an excellent mage killer, and there are tons of mages in BL lategame)

I think there's something weird in terms of your characters levels/skill ranks. I'm not calling you a liar however, when I compare what I had there are somethings that feel very off. Let me explain.

For you to have 2 of the 10% exp statues, that means you had about 4-5k more renown than I did by the final map. I did skip all the quests except the two merchant ones so I'm unsure how much renown those would have given. Second off, even if you did have them, you likely had them so far late in the run that there's not way your characters have an average level over mine of about 5-6. This isn't even including that you are running 12 characters instead of 11 in my run. The few other people who I read that beat a NG maddening run with no aux grind are averaging similar levels to mine as well.

It's very possible that you did not do many if any aux battles, but it feels like you grinded on the reinforcements instead of moving forward, either that, or you took extremely slow where there was a fair build up of reinforcements. I think this is more likely the case, but combined with what you said above about the statues it leaves me concerned.

Either way, I will say and admit I might have played poorly with my characters. Having only 1 avoid tank and not taking advantage of Dimitri's abusable build probably made it much more difficult for me than some others.

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1 hour ago, niveklt said:

I think there's something weird in terms of your characters levels/skill ranks. I'm not calling you a liar however, when I compare what I had there are somethings that feel very off. Let me explain.

For you to have 2 of the 10% exp statues, that means you had about 4-5k more renown than I did by the final map. I did skip all the quests except the two merchant ones so I'm unsure how much renown those would have given. Second off, even if you did have them, you likely had them so far late in the run that there's not way your characters have an average level over mine of about 5-6. This isn't even including that you are running 12 characters instead of 11 in my run. The few other people who I read that beat a NG maddening run with no aux grind are averaging similar levels to mine as well.

It's very possible that you did not do many if any aux battles, but it feels like you grinded on the reinforcements instead of moving forward, either that, or you took extremely slow where there was a fair build up of reinforcements. I think this is more likely the case, but combined with what you said above about the statues it leaves me concerned.

Either way, I will say and admit I might have played poorly with my characters. Having only 1 avoid tank and not taking advantage of Dimitri's abusable build probably made it much more difficult for me than some others.

the first 10% exp bonus I got fairly early, around timeskip I believe, second one yes, I got late, around the last 3-4 chapters iirc
and yes, quests do give a fair ammount of renown
and no, I never grinded reinforcements, lol. I played fairly "normal", I never warp cheesed maps so I usually fought most enemies and always went for every optional objective (saving all green units (besides gilbert in chapter 5), collect all chests, kill death knight at every encounter, stuff like this I mean), so yes I did not really try to finish in the least ammount of turns, but I don't think I turtled much either (outside of the starting chapters)

Probably the biggest difference was the fact that I always took care of abusing Byleth's personal whenever possible, and I did a lot of paralogues

 

My turn count was
intro 8 - ch1 18 - ch2 27 - ch3 13 - ch4 22 - ch5 30 (goddamn gilbert aggroed the entire map and had to take it slow) - dedue paralogue 11 - ch6 21 turns - lorenz paralogue 9 - sylvain paralogue 11 -  ch7 13 - ingrid paralogue 25 - felix paralogue 8 - sothis paralogue 14 - ch8 7 - hanneman+manuela paralogue 17 - alois+shamir paralogue 9 - ch9 6 - flayn+sethet paralogue 11 - ashe paralogue 7 - ch10 11 - ch11 12 - ch12 9 - ch13 24 (first post skip chapter) - ch14 8 - annette+gilber paralogue 15 - ch15 6 - bernadetta+petra paralogue 20 (never trained both units) - mercedes+caspar paralogue 17 (never used caspar) - marianne paralogue 14 - rhea paralogue 11 - ch16 14 - ch17 13 - ch18 18 - dimitri paralogue 12 - ch19 5 - ch20 19 - ch21 21 - ch22 12

compacted just for story chapters:  (intro 8 ) 18 27 13 22 30 21 13 7 6 11 12 9 24 8 6 14 13 18 5 19 21 12

edit: I did not realize I did that many paralogues (16 in total)

not stellar but does not look too turtly to me

 

I grinded Dedue and Gilbert weapon ranks in 2 aux battles towards the end (abusing broken lance + enemy fortress knights, that's why they have S+ in heavy armor), but that's about it, every other weapon rank I got normally with no grinding or cheese

Edited by AxelVDP
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Is there any particular reason we're acting as if selecting Battle instead of Explore isn't a legitimate form of play? Explore mostly becomes useless outside of boosting Motivation and cooking Bullheads after you hit A+ rank Professor Level. Random stat boosters from gardening helps but isn't strictly necessary, and reclassing Byleth is really overrated since Enlightened One gets the job done and lets you focus on swords. Using the last week of the month to do whatever Paralogues or quests you have available and filling in the gaps with standard auxiliary battles is a great use of resources. It builds up your Renown for statue boosts and keeps your team's EXP and class mastery from lagging behind. This isn't Normal mode where you can spam free auxiliary battles until you're maxed.

Edited by Cor Leonis
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There's also the fact that if you have the DLC auxiliary battles you can get 3 stat boosters in a week compared to Explore's 1. Even 2 at Professor Level C+ is better, if we assume you don't need the motivation/cooking boosts. While I can definitely see Explore being better in Part 1 (training Reason/Faith/Riding/Flying/Heavy Armor for recruitment/class changing purposes is a thing), by Part 2 you should be well along your intended class path and recruitment is done at this point so outside Motivation and Cooking, as Cor Leonis said, Battle is probably BETTER if you have the DLC auxiliaries, especially Conand Tower (Speed Carrots)

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1 hour ago, Cor Leonis said:

Is there any particular reason we're acting as if selecting Battle instead of Explore isn't a legitimate form of play? Explore mostly becomes useless outside of boosting Motivation and cooking Bullheads after you hit A+ rank Professor Level. Random stat boosters from gardening helps but isn't strictly necessary, and reclassing Byleth is really overrated since Enlightened One gets the job done and lets you focus on swords. Using the last week of the month to do whatever Paralogues or quests you have available and filling in the gaps with standard auxiliary battles is a great use of resources. It builds up your Renown for statue boosts and keeps your team's EXP and class mastery from lagging behind. This isn't Normal mode where you can spam free auxiliary battles until you're maxed.

I wouldn't say it's illegitimate so much as way too good actually, at least post-timeskip. While exploring is tied to a bunch of key mechanics in the game and thus is difficult to strike despite being really good as well.

Auxiliary battles are pretty much grinding. Three battles a pop is not a harsh enough limitation to stop it from being that; even two probably wouldn't be despite missing out on exploration. That's especially true on maddening, where they're considerably easier than the rest of the game.

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I think it's important to point out the grind isn't infinite (99 Turn limit abuse for WEXP and class mastery notwithstanding; I can't defend anyone doing that), and the Maddening EXP nerf pretty much hard caps your Level. After a Battle session, I can confirm your EXP comes crashing to a halt once you start catching up to the recommended levels. Support spellcasters can get ahead due to an oversight in their EXP formula, but most support units already do their job effectively by the time you get A+ rank Professor Level.

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