Rate the routes on difficulty

[Ari Chan]

The problem with Lorenz is that anything he can do someone else on his house does it better. Lysithea and Marianne have far better stats and spell list as pure mages, Leonie is vastly superior as a Physical Mounted unit and Marianne is a much better Frozen Lance spammer. So it make no sense to spend your resources and time on training Lorenz when there are better options even in his own house, and training Lorenz into a usable unit takes a lot more effort than simply recruiting great units from other houses.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

51 minutes ago, Ari Chan said:

The problem with Lorenz is that anything he can do someone else on his house does it better. Lysithea and Marianne have far better stats and spell list as pure mages, Leonie is vastly superior as a Physical Mounted unit and Marianne is a much better Frozen Lance spammer. So it make no sense to spend your resources and time on training Lorenz when there are better options even in his own house, and training Lorenz into a usable unit takes a lot more effort than simply recruiting great units from other houses.

It's hard to beat Lysithea's Luna, though I feel people gloss over her low hit rates. But Marianne? Also very inaccurate spells. And relying on high crit rates is very iffy. Lorenz' natural access to Fire and Sagittae are ideal to ensure you land a hit. Marianne's most accurate spells are nosferatu and thunder at 80 hit until she picks up cutting gale at rank B. Marianne also doesn't have proficiency in Reason so you have to invest more in her to get those spells compared to Lorenz. Marianne's main utility is having the quickest access to Physic in the game, only requiring one rank up, if I recall. 

Lorenz is definitely benchable, but there's no hard cap on how many mages you need, especially since faculty provide you with little in the way of workable magic attackers.

Edited November 27, 2019 by Glennstavos

[Silly]

50 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

there's no hard cap on how many mages you need

I kind of actually think there is, to be honest. Mages are just nowhere near as good as the best physical units in terms of killing enemies in a quick and efficient manner. They're slower, have less movement, and are more vulnerable to attacks (and therefore cannot be positioned as flexibly) compared to a good frontliner. Your mage generally makes up for their worse combat with their extra utility, but there is only "so much" utility that you need. For example, one healer is really important, and maybe a second healer is nice to have, but is training a third or a fourth healer that much better than just having two?

You can definitely field 4 mages if you want to and still beat the game completely fine, but I think it's far from "needed". In my opinion the upper limit for mages before they start hitting significant diminishing returns is like 2 or 3 (barring very specific strategies).

[Dark Holy Elf]

4 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

It's hard to beat Lysithea's Luna, though I feel people gloss over her low hit rates. But Marianne? Also very inaccurate spells. And relying on high crit rates is very iffy. Lorenz' natural access to Fire and Sagittae are ideal to ensure you land a hit. Marianne's most accurate spells are nosferatu and thunder at 80 hit until she picks up cutting gale at rank B. Marianne also doesn't have proficiency in Reason so you have to invest more in her to get those spells compared to Lorenz. Marianne's main utility is having the quickest access to Physic in the game, only requiring one rank up, if I recall. 

In addition to this, Marianne has Thoron. Extra range is huge; hard to argue that Lorenz's Reason list is better than hers as a result, even though it's literally her only standout spell. If the choice is between the two of them, Marianne offers both Physic and Thoron, so the choice is obvious.

Lorenz has similar problems compared to many other mages, who almost invariably provide more utility than him, leaving him as a pick purely for power, and Lysithea crowds him out at that role.

[Ari Chan]

7 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

It's hard to beat Lysithea's Luna, though I feel people gloss over her low hit rates. But Marianne? Also very inaccurate spells. And relying on high crit rates is very iffy. Lorenz' natural access to Fire and Sagittae are ideal to ensure you land a hit. Marianne's most accurate spells are nosferatu and thunder at 80 hit until she picks up cutting gale at rank B. Marianne also doesn't have proficiency in Reason so you have to invest more in her to get those spells compared to Lorenz. Marianne's main utility is having the quickest access to Physic in the game, only requiring one rank up, if I recall. 

Lorenz is definitely benchable, but there's no hard cap on how many mages you need, especially since faculty provide you with little in the way of workable magic attackers.

Lysithea’s Luna (or Hades) are late game spells where you stack enough Mag and Hit to reliably OHKO some of the most threatening enemies in the game. What makes her stronger than Lorenz early on is her superior Mag base + growth, Dark Spikes T  (13 Mt on a spell you get that early is no joke even when you don’t use it against horse units) and Warp.

Marianne’s way better mag stat, Thoron and Physic are the reason why she is vastly superior to Lorenz, he basically is Dorothea without anything that makes her good (Thoron, Physic and Meteor). Plus on Maddening Magic units that can cast Physic + other utility spells are always going to be better than the ones who can’t due to the nerfed combat EXP, Lorenz will have a very hard time leveling up because there are a lot of units that are better than him combat wise.

 Lorenz as a Mage is just meh early game and scales very poorly into late game since he learns 0 effective, utility or 3+ ranged spells and his Mag is among the worst out of all the main Magic Units.

Any Magic Units can get Fire as Mages, there’s no reason to turn them into Monks when Fiendish Blow is much better than Miracle.

Edited November 28, 2019 by Ari Chan

[PPPPPPP270]

Mages have a weird bell curve in this game. 

Early on they kind of suck because they don't have enough spell uses. Mid game is probably their peak as their damage is pretty potent and maybe even one shot.

Late game especially maddening, expecting a mage double enemies isn't happening unless you give extensive speed carrots. Mages are still useful for their white magic and won't get anywhere. Physical units especially does with really strong combat arts shine here or super cheesy strats like battalion vantage/wrath Dimitri. Along with well trained bow knights with superior mobility over mages.  

[Dark Holy Elf]

22 hours ago, PPPPPPP270 said:

Early on they kind of suck because they don't have enough spell uses. Mid game is probably their peak as their damage is pretty potent and maybe even one shot.

If by "early on" you mean Chapter 1 I kinda agree, but honestly that's about it: after that one fight where the mage is expected to shoulder 20% of the action I rarely found it a big problem even on Maddening, just meant that for once I didn''t waste Heal on curing 1-2 HP chip and levelup damage like normal. Otherwise I found mages quite useful early, because being able to do damage from range 2+ without being countered is great, and early physical options for this are lacking (bows struggle to deal nearly as much damage both because enemy res is lower than def AND because every PC mage starts with double-digit magic while most physical units start with 8-9 str, so Tempest Lance/Smash are needed to compete and those are range 1), and they aren't yet falling behind on move.

[msterforks]

4 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If by "early on" you mean Chapter 1 I kinda agree, but honestly that's about it: after that one fight where the mage is expected to shoulder 20% of the action I rarely found it a big problem even on Maddening, just meant that for once I didn''t waste Heal on curing 1-2 HP chip and levelup damage like normal. Otherwise I found mages quite useful early, because being able to do damage from range 2+ without being countered is great, and early physical options for this are lacking (bows struggle to deal nearly as much damage both because enemy res is lower than def AND because every PC mage starts with double-digit magic while most physical units start with 8-9 str, so Tempest Lance/Smash are needed to compete and those are range 1), and they aren't yet falling behind on move.

My four Thunder five Heal Dorothea cried trying to make it to level 5. Doesn't help that I didn't do any auxiliary battles.

Back to the original topic, I'm playing through CF atm and it seems a lot easier than AM. AM is only really "easier" if you warp skip, as it has access to fairly early Blue Lion Dancers and easier bosses on defeat commander maps. On the other hand, ch13 Claude is a pretty big bully if you try to fight him head on, but is pretty easy if you play it slow and abuse his lack of counterattack.

[Shadow Mir]

On 11/18/2019 at 8:59 PM, Silly said:

Note that Raging Storm has 70 base hit (there is basically zero reason to use Aymr outside of the combat art, because wasting even a single attack means you have one less use of Raging Storm before you need to repair). If we assume weapon prowess level 3 immediately post-timeskip, then you have 83 hit before stats are factored in.

This is roughly the same as other powerful weapons that you would be using around this point. For example, look at brave weapons. With weapon prowess factored in... Thunderbrand has 77 hit. Unforged Brave Lance/Bow have 80 hit. Unforged Brave Sword has 82 hit. (I'm assume you would rather get decent use out of your brave weapons before forging them, because their repair material is so rare. Also, no combat arts because using a combat art with a brave weapon is big dumb.)

Counting other weapons, with weapon prowess... Silver Bow has 85 hit. Failnaught and Areadbhar have 85 hit. Lance of Ruin is at 75 hit. A lot of other good Swords/Bows/Lances sit at roughly 90 hit. Note that you can boost these numbers with combat arts (for example Swift Strikes Lance of Ruin is 85 hit), but that could come at the cost of being able to double (and therefore ORKO) from most combat arts, as most combat arts don't boost might enough to compensate for not doubling. Also keep in mind that the Bows will suffer -30 hit per tile beyond the second on Maddening.

The point is that accuracy on Raging Storm is not significantly lower than accuracy on other important weapons. More powerful weapons are generally less accurate, so if you don't need that Brave Bow to kill then you should use that Iron Bow instead because it's more reliable (70 vs 95 hit). But if you need that extra damage, feel free to pull out that Brave Lance, or Swift Strikes Lance of Ruin, or Raging Storm Aymr. You lose a bit of hit, but it's not so much that you're likely to miss. You are still probably very likely to hit (especially on 2RN, and even more so once Divine Pulse is factored in).

That sounds okay at first, but when I consider that it's coming from a combat art, I rapidly find myself backpedaling and thinking otherwise. Especially since the relic combat arts in general have a huge issue with this trope, ESPECIALLY Crusher's Dust (Crusher itself is Awesome But Impractical, too); not that I think Aymr's Raging Storm is an exception, because I don't.

[Flere210]

Quoting tropes is not an argument. Accuracy is stupidly easy to get in this game, and the weight of axes is a non issue when you are too slow anyway, wich happen to be the case for most people on maddening. 

Relic combat arts are not to be spammed, they are to be used in certain moments. For example, you have more than enought uses of atrocity if you consider it as a warpskip enabler.

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

That sounds okay at first, but when I consider that it's coming from a combat art, I rapidly find myself backpedaling and thinking otherwise. Especially since the relic combat arts in general have a huge issue with this trope, ESPECIALLY Crusher's Dust (Crusher itself is Awesome But Impractical, too); not that I think Aymr's Raging Storm is an exception, because I don't.

So your counterargument now is "it's a combat art"? When pretty much everyone who has actually played Maddening can tell you Combat Arts are really useful in that mode, certainly including Relic Combat Arts?

Even if you literally never repair Aymr, its five uses of Raging Storm are a big deal. And since Chapter 16 throws some Agarthium at you unless you're warpskipping, that five uses is better thought of as "five uses for the first four maps, then five more for each of the last two". When every use is essentially a free action, even a small number can be decisive.

[Silly]

Raging Storm fills a similar niche to brave weapons. It's a tool you bust out on player phase when you need to kill an otherwise too-strong enemy (or in the case of Raging Storm, possibly multiple enemies). Accuracy is lower than something like Iron weapons, but that's okay because there are both plenty of ways to patch accuracy and also because these weapons can deal with important enemies that Iron weapons cannot actually kill.

These tools obviously have an important niche. Nobody is really arguing that brave weapons aren't good in this game, and Raging Storm can function basically identically (use it for the first attack and then kill on the second attack with a different weapon), but also has additional uses, such as killing two different enemies in the same turn or using it to smack the final boss five times in one turn.

Edited December 2, 2019 by Silly

[Shadow Mir]

13 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

So your counterargument now is "it's a combat art"? When pretty much everyone who has actually played Maddening can tell you Combat Arts are really useful in that mode, certainly including Relic Combat Arts?

Even if you literally never repair Aymr, its five uses of Raging Storm are a big deal. And since Chapter 16 throws some Agarthium at you unless you're warpskipping, that five uses is better thought of as "five uses for the first four maps, then five more for each of the last two". When every use is essentially a free action, even a small number can be decisive.

Correction: My argument is, "it's a combat art with shaky hit". I know full damn well combat arts are useful in Maddening - I'm just not okay with using one where I have a non-trivial chance of accomplishing a fat load of nothing. Especially in this case because it's tied to a relic weapon, which is very expensive to repair. A 10 hit increase when the weapon only has 60 base hit to begin with ain't enough by my standards.

Edited December 2, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Flere210]

Because your standard are biased. There are lots of battalions whit 20 hit, 16  hits whit prowness is easy and you are going to have some archer or Dorothea giving support for at least another 10% and 20 dex should be very plausible for endgame. That's more than enought to hit most things that you want to hit whit Edelgard.

 

This game award optimization, if you don't optimize everything looks bad on Maddening. If you use sword you still need to feed her a bunch of energy fluids because otherwise she wouldn't kill the things she kill whit axes. Why is optimizing for damage ok but doing the same for hit is impractical?

[Cysx]

On 11/28/2019 at 4:24 AM, Ari Chan said:

Dark Spikes T  (13 Mt on a spell you get that early is no joke

Do note that Lorenz is the only character who gets Ragnarok at B.

[PPPPPPP270]

3 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Because your standard are biased. There are lots of battalions whit 20 hit, 16  hits whit prowness is easy and you are going to have some archer or Dorothea giving support for at least another 10% and 20 dex should be very plausible for endgame. That's more than enought to hit most things that you want to hit whit Edelgard.

 

This game award optimization, if you don't optimize everything looks bad on Maddening. If you use sword you still need to feed her a bunch of energy fluids because otherwise she wouldn't kill the things she kill whit axes. Why is optimizing for damage ok but doing the same for hit is impractical?

I heavily agree on optimization being very important. Having characters mastery more than 1 intermediate class can really make a unit much stronger than they normally should. The question is how much do you have to go out of your way to get said masteries or certain skill ranks? I would discourage grinding heavily, I do encourage finding ways to strengthen units quickly without many spending turns to milk for more EXP.  Strategies that require very few turns to pull off or low skill investment is the name of the game. 

 

[Shadow Mir]

6 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Because your standard are biased. There are lots of battalions whit 20 hit, 16  hits whit prowness is easy and you are going to have some archer or Dorothea giving support for at least another 10% and 20 dex should be very plausible for endgame. That's more than enought to hit most things that you want to hit whit Edelgard.

 

This game award optimization, if you don't optimize everything looks bad on Maddening. If you use sword you still need to feed her a bunch of energy fluids because otherwise she wouldn't kill the things she kill whit axes. Why is optimizing for damage ok but doing the same for hit is impractical?

Rewarding optimization is one thing, but it's never made clear as to how to optimize. And one thing I've learned from the many RPGs I've played is that stats alone aren't everything. The strongest weapon might not necessarily be the best one. Likewise the best armor might not necessarily be the one with the best defense. Which begs the question, what comes to mind for you when you think of optimizing?

[Flere210]

26 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Rewarding optimization is one thing, but it's never made clear as to how to optimize. And one thing I've learned from the many RPGs I've played is that stats alone aren't everything. The strongest weapon might not necessarily be the best one. Likewise the best armor might not necessarily be the one with the best defense. Which begs the question, what comes to mind for you when you think of optimizing?

Getting to the point of doing what you need to do in some way. For example, if you need a tank you either stack defense untill they don't damage you or evasion  untill they can't hit you. If a build can achieve that whitout grinding, it's good. And most of the build you deem impractical can actually do that if you focus the character into pulling those off from the start. 

For Edelgard,  raging glames is potentially the best thing she can do, so the question is "if using that normally has issues, there is a practical way to fix those issues?" And there is, because raising hitrates is easy. Also, wyvern lord is the best class, so i find way more practical to fix axes hitrate than trying to make a lesser class as good as WL. 

 

 

[Ari Chan]

21 hours ago, Cysx said:

Do note that Lorenz is the only character who gets Ragnarok at B.

Fair point. Lysithea gets her B rank spell + Fiendish Blow sooner than Lorenz thanks to her personal and her base mag + growth is a lot higher than his tho.

[Cysx]

3 hours ago, Ari Chan said:

Fair point. Lysithea gets her B rank spell + Fiendish Blow sooner than Lorenz thanks to her personal and her base mag + growth is a lot higher than his tho.

To be honest, while the above is true this is around the time where mage Lorenz can reasonably have an enemy phase, and there's his own passive to consider. As a result, while Lysithea is ahead(10 to 12 + 15 + 2 vs 16 to 19 + 13), it's not actually by that much, and Warlock down the line grants him damage +5(on top of bumping his mag stat up a little). B rank Reason is also very dependent on whether or not you focus on getting Warp on Lysithea/ Frozen Lance on Lorenz. It can happen sooner on Lorenz, just as it may not.

There's no argument to be made there though, she's definitely the superior mage by quite a bit.

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

I think a minor thing to consider is how a lot of the Blue Lions exclusive B-rank battalions lower avoidance. I kind of see that as a no-no for any real combat unit other than the most physically-tanky of Fortress Knights. Which you can get in Dedue with some luck and investment. Not like it would help against mages, though.