Advice on Golden Deer Maddening (no NG+)

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

16 hours ago, hdawgsizzle said:

I think I initially considered using Lorenz as a Dancer, but I think I'm most intrigued by Marianne as a dancer since I've used her twice now and never as a dancer. 

Since you've actually finished the run you can definitely better attest to this than I can, but from the videos I've seen of people playing GD maddening Ch. 13 it seems as though Ignatz and Lorenz are going to be stuck in that corner where they spawn in for at least a few turns and the ideal scenario is to lure enemies away from them.

...

I had dancer Dorothea the first time I played and I've heard good things about her as a Gremory. I'm not sure that I fully understand the obsession with Meteor. You only get two uses of it. This isn't Radiant Dawn endgame infinite use Meteor. I guess it can be nice to maybe get a unit out of a tight spot sometimes... Siege tomes are fun in general though and Constance looks really cool.

Well, the way the AI works, if you aggro them, unless you're jumping straight out into the middle of them every turn to learn them over (which is going to chain aggro stuff even faster), it's very, very likely that the newly aggroed stuff is going to be heading over toward Ignatz and Lorenz (probably sees them as the easier targets). Fortunately, that groups them all up in that death hallway in the north side, which is basically just begging Claude to eat them alive with Ashes and Dust. Seriously, with GD, I just aggroed that entire from part of the map and burned them down. Now, if you want to pull them more piece meal, you're best off making sure you're actually pulling them toward the top. The AI chain triggers once you aggro the battalion Snipers (as long as they're alive and aggroed, all the crap near them will aggro the following turn), who will set off the other battalion enemies (who will also aggro stuff). Bring in a flier Byleth (though you can sneak past the Sniper aggro range with movement Arts and Byleth as a mobile enough class, like Paladin or Assassin). Start aggroing stuff up there and they'll come in 3-4 at a time. Between Ignatz, Lorenz, Claude and Byleth, you should be able to wipe them. As long as you leave the middle Sniper alone, about half the front actually won't attack you, so once the north runs out of enemy steam, you can push hard from that side and be at the advantage.

The hilarious thing about Meteor (or other siege magic) is that its value is in not being used. Providing 10-11-range link boosts with no risk is a pretty notable boon.

16 hours ago, hdawgsizzle said:

Oh there's one more option:

F!Byleth - Falcon Knight

Petra - Assassin

Byleth would have better Res. Petra would become my sword unit and would get some better combat arts. Byleth uses lances and loses ability to Windsweep. Petra's strength becomes a bit shakier.

I'm not sure Windsweep is that big of a deal here. I say it's more important to Silver Snow, and mostly for one particular super boss there. Super boss targets in VW are typically more fragile, to the point that just having Blessing in place is enough (Byleth quads and survives, then gets a minimum of two more attacks to finish the job; or Byelth quads to soften, then Lysithea picks up the kill). I ran Falcon Byleth for my go at this (and plan on doing it against for Lions), and she was basically a truck on a flying fluffy horse. She did have some AS issues against late Swordmasters and Assassins, but she otherwise quadded anything else and her tendency toward Str meant she had no issues securing kills (and this was without Death Blow). It's notable that I was abusing flier bows with her 90% of the time and didn't feel the lack of Bowfaire (likely largely because I could quad with the Brave Bow).

I've also run Petra as a Falcon. She needs at least some Str stat booster help, which is a little annoying. Death Blow is also basically mandatory in the later game. That said, it's really convenient how easily she can run around with a Silver Bow+ and casually one-round enemy fliers (even moreso than Byleth thanks to her heavy Spd slant).

Can't comment on Ingrid, since I haven't used her as anything other than a green Maddening unit and that's really not a good measure of her actual strengths.

[hdawgsizzle]

Thanks so much everyone! I have a lot to consider still, but I think things are shaping up

19 hours ago, SpiceMan said:

The Anna paralogue is pre-timeskip for Blue LIons and Golden Deer, but post timeskip for Crimson Flower.

Silver Snow however, is unable to play the paralogue at all.

😕 Might just say fuck it and do the Anna paralogue for the challenge. Maybe when I do SS I'll be really strict about no online/no DLC/no amiibo or something. I don't want to "pay to win" but it's not like any of the stuff is really game breaking (maybe putting that +2 mov on your dancer w the march ring is). 

17 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I think Lorenz is not a good addition - He's liable to underperform.

Yea... the issue is that since I cut Linhardt and I'm using Marianne as a dancer I might be a bit lacking on magical damage. Lorenz does seem mediocre, but I'd be a bit less stressed out over Ch. 13. There's the option to recruit Ferdie to give him a guard adjutant and a bit more damage output, but Ignatz and Sylvain probably need the adjutant slots more for the damage/hit respectively. Not too many 12 deployment/3 adjutant maps to actually take advantage of Ferdie. Plus the issue w/ recruiting him.

9 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

Felix: I actually think Bow Knight Felix is significantly better than War Master Felix. Range penalties do hurt a bit more on Maddening because enemy units have higher Avoid, but BK Felix is still very strong, imo. It gives him the capability to counter mages and archers on Enemy Phase, and Canto + 4 Range + 9 Move (with Move +1) gives Felix the safety to take more risks and attack more often. War Master does a ton of damage, but I think it's unnecessary since Felix can already ORKO most units in other classes as well. I've tried both, and I liked BK a lot more. 

I was going to use Felix as a Bow Knight in SS. His high str with bows sounds really great. I don't really want to give up on a War Master for GD though and I already have a ton of bows on the team between Claude, Leonie, and Ignatz. On SS I'll have... Bernadetta... what a downgrade.

9 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

Petra: I'd still recommend Petra as a Wyvern Lord because her Strength can be really shaky, speaking from personal experience. Wyvern Lord gives her higher Mt weapons with Axes and very good Strength/Speed bonuses (+4 each). It also matches up a lot better with her Skill Proficiencies, making it lower investment overall. If you want a Falcon Knight, Catherine is certainly a good option, or you could just have Byleth do it instead. Petra is definitely better off as a Wyvern, though. 

Yea from my experience she's pretty godlike as a Wyvern Lord so I definitely want to keep her in that class if I can

9 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

Lorenz: If you are going to use him, I think he's fine as is, but I recommend doing a specific build, Mage -> Paladin -> Dark Knight. Basically, you pick up Fiendish Blow and use Frozen Lance instead of spells until you can certify as a Dark Knight. I mainly recommend doing this because doubling your Move is pretty cool and probably worth losing a small amount of damage for that period of the game since otherwise, mages tend to fall far behind from Level 20-30. 

Okay cool - I hadn't considered that but this sounds like good advice. What are your thoughts on Dark Mage? I've heard Poison Strike isn't really worth it, but since this is GD this is also the route where Dark Seals are the easiest to get. 

9 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

As for how annoyed you'll be when someone tells you to use Ingrid... probably not as annoyed as I am when someone says that Ingrid is good in BL Maddening, lol. 

Haha yea I feel a bit burnt by Ingrid's low strength and it just being so much effort to get her to a point where she's really contributing anything. She's basically the only potential FK in the game with much resembling resistance  (Catherine, Shamir, Leonie, Petra, Hilda all have 15% or 20% growths compared to Ingrid's 40%) but goddamn her strength sucks. And that's on Hard Mode. I have no plans of finding out how bad it is to deal with on Maddening. I imagine it's even worse on BL maddening because you can't recruit her late for better base stats. Now that I look at it, Byleth really does have the best potential for FK out of any of the units in the game... 

3 hours ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

The hilarious thing about Meteor (or other siege magic) is that its value is in not being used. Providing 10-11-range link boosts with no risk is a pretty notable boon.

Thanks for the explanation on Ch. 13! I hadn't thought about the link boosts - that's pretty genius. It's a bummer that the game fucked up and didn't give Dorothea and Hilda their support convo because that'd be real dangerous with their linked attack (and would help Hilda's hit rate). 

3 hours ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

I'm not sure Windsweep is that big of a deal here. I say it's more important to Silver Snow, and mostly for one particular super boss there. Super boss targets in VW are typically more fragile, to the point that just having Blessing in place is enough (Byleth quads and survives, then gets a minimum of two more attacks to finish the job; or Byelth quads to soften, then Lysithea picks up the kill). I ran Falcon Byleth for my go at this (and plan on doing it against for Lions), and she was basically a truck on a flying fluffy horse. She did have some AS issues against late Swordmasters and Assassins, but she otherwise quadded anything else and her tendency toward Str meant she had no issues securing kills (and this was without Death Blow). It's notable that I was abusing flier bows with her 90% of the time and didn't feel the lack of Bowfaire (likely largely because I could quad with the Brave Bow).

Yea looking at the stat spread FK Byleth seems insanely good. She already has a massive base Strength and a 55% strength growth is pretty great on top of that. She also has some semblance of a Res stat which Leonie/Petra/Hilda don't really have.  As for the AS issues with Swordmasters/Assassins - don't the late game Swordmasters have Quick Riposte anyways? Or at least I thought I read that somewhere. 

3 hours ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

I've also run Petra as a Falcon. She needs at least some Str stat booster help, which is a little annoying. Death Blow is also basically mandatory in the later game. That said, it's really convenient how easily she can run around with a Silver Bow+ and casually one-round enemy fliers (even moreso than Byleth thanks to her heavy Spd slant).

Okay cool - people who have run her as a Falcon have told me that it's certainly workable. No matter what I do with Petra I'd pick up both Death Blow and Darting Blow. That goes for Byleth and Hilda too.

My main issue is that it seems like there's just one slot too few on the team to do everything that I want to do.

If I ran everyone in their "optimal" class, this is what the team would look like:

F!Byleth - Falcon Knight

Claude - Barbarossa

Hilda - Wyvern Lord

Marianne - Dancer

Lysithea - Gremory

Leonie  - Bow Knight

Ignatz - Sniper

Lorenz - Dark Knight

Mercedes  - Bishop

Sylvain - Paladin

Felix - War Master

Petra - Wyvern Lord

 

And here's where the issues come... 

-If I run the team as is I have no sword user which will hurt for (a) breaking monster armor (b) missing out on some of the sword combat arts that could be very helpful (c) missing out on some really great weapons e.g. wo dao+, the cursed one, etc that could really help out

-If I switch Byleth to Enlightened One then I get a sword user, an easier time recruiting units for paralogues, get a bit of extra healing if needed, a 1-2 range sword user, and Windsweep. I lose out on using a Falcon Knight though, and this might make it more difficult to deal with Mages and endgame Mortal Savants

-If I keep Byleth as a Falcon Knight and switch Petra to Assassin/Swordmaster I get a sword user, but she will (a) not have 1-2 range (b) struggle with strength as as Assassin even more than as a FK (c) only have 5 movement as a Swordmaster. I could try for crit builds with her I guess...

-If I switch Byleth to Enlightened One, and swap Petra to FK, Petra might have some strength issues and her res isn't great either, so the team might still struggle with mages. Petra won't get any special lance combat arts, but since she's doubling most everything she's probably not going to use combat arts as often as the other units. On the plus side,  nothing would be able to hit Petra at all, so she'd be pretty great at baiting enemy units. 

-If I switch Byleth to Enlightened One, and swap Hilda to FK, I get my sword user, Hilda gets shatter slash which is... fine, I think. She'll have better strength than Petra and a bit better Res as well. Her res still might be a bit shaky - it's not going to be Ingrid or Byleth's, but no one's is. Since she has a crest I could give her Luin if she needs a high might weapon, and it has a high hit rate too which would help her out. Going this route seems to work out pretty well for the most part, which the biggest issue being that Hilda loses Axefaire/Axe Prowess Freikugel. 

-If I switch Byleth to Enlightened One, drop Lorenz, pick up Catherine as a FK, I'll get a Sword User and a FK, but I'll miss out on magical firepower and I'll only have Mercedes and Lysithea as far as magic users go (not counting Byleth and Marianne)

-If I keep Byleth as a Falcon Knight, drop Lorenz, pick up Catherine as a Swordmaster/Assassin, I'll have a great flying squad. Catherine would be locked to 5 mov with 1 range as a SM which is... yikes, and might be a bit better as an Assassin. Still losing out on mages

 

I don't know why this has been so hard to plan out this time. I'm usually not the type of FE player to stress out about having 1 of every class or anything like that. It's probably due to having played twice through already and getting attached to what works well/what didn't work well in previous runs. Plus GD has a much different set of skills - I never ran more than 1 bow user in the other routes but bows are so much more optimal for GD and Maddening that it's had a big effect on team composition

[Crysta]

I mean... my FalcoKnight!Byleth is still pretty much a sword user. You don't need to suddenly stop using swords because of the class - in fact, you need to train Swords up lol.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

1 hour ago, hdawgsizzle said:

Yea looking at the stat spread FK Byleth seems insanely good. She already has a massive base Strength and a 55% strength growth is pretty great on top of that. She also has some semblance of a Res stat which Leonie/Petra/Hilda don't really have.  As for the AS issues with Swordmasters/Assassins - don't the late game Swordmasters have Quick Riposte anyways? Or at least I thought I read that somewhere. 

Yeah, they do. That was more to give a benchmark than anything.

I think you'll also find that FK Byleth is less of a mage killer and more of a "murders everything" kind of unit. Quadding is brutal enough that she can typically muscle through full Maddening bulk in one go. Super bosses excepted, of course, but sometimes even then (if she scores a crit).

I wouldn't worry too much about the swords. Bows and lances are so much better that it's rarely a concern. You can sidearm it on Byleth if you really want, but I feel it's generally not worth the effort (there's exactly two instances where I swapped Sword Prowess back in for Armorslayer/Levin usage, but it was in retrospect, it probably wasn't even necessary).

As far as Dark Mage Lorenz goes, I wouldn't master it, but I think it's worth having the certification in your back pocket. Heartseeker is actually a pretty good ability, and it can be worth considering pulling out with him in order to deal with particularly dodgy enemy comps (I personally deploy one for Remire just to ensure Lys hits 100% hit on DK). In general, he'll want to stay Mage for a while simply because keeping Fire lets him sneak just enough AS to double some of the slower enemy Cavaliers (in addition to the usual Armor Knights), which can be really handy early. That will fall off pretty quickly, but when it does, you can start working him toward Dark Knight.

[LegendOfLoog]

7 minutes ago, hdawgsizzle said:

Okay cool - I hadn't considered that but this sounds like good advice. What are your thoughts on Dark Mage? I've heard Poison Strike isn't really worth it, but since this is GD this is also the route where Dark Seals are the easiest to get. 

Dark Mage is not great, imo. It's not necessarily that Poison Strike is bad, but Fiendish Blow is better, and most mages can't master two classes before Level 20. You could always keep Lorenz as a 4 Move unit for longer to get both of them, but I don't really think it's worth it, tbh. I'd rather just get Lorenz on a horse so he can keep up with the rest of the mounted units. 

26 minutes ago, hdawgsizzle said:

Haha yea I feel a bit burnt by Ingrid's low strength and it just being so much effort to get her to a point where she's really contributing anything. She's basically the only potential FK in the game with much resembling resistance  (Catherine, Shamir, Leonie, Petra, Hilda all have 15% or 20% growths compared to Ingrid's 40%) but goddamn her strength sucks. And that's on Hard Mode. I have no plans of finding out how bad it is to deal with on Maddening. I imagine it's even worse on BL maddening because you can't recruit her late for better base stats. Now that I look at it, Byleth really does have the best potential for FK out of any of the units in the game... 

Yeah, when Maddening came out, I jumped right into BL, and Ingrid was so bad I just made her a Dancer. Her Str is bad pretty much until her Advanced class boosts it, and even then, it's just kind of mediocre. And since enemies on Maddening have high AS, she can't even double very often like she did on Hard. I used Byleth as a FK in that same playthrough, and she did great, so I'll echo everyone else saying FK Byleth is great, lol. 

I think the final lineup you have there is good. Having a dedicated sword unit isn't really necessary from my experience, particularly because the final sword classes are mostly bad. FK Byleth does the job good enough, imo. 

[hdawgsizzle]

1 hour ago, Crysta said:

I mean... my FalcoKnight!Byleth is still pretty much a sword user. You don't need to suddenly stop using swords because of the class - in fact, you need to train Swords up lol.

Yea I think I'm a bit worried about losing the -faire skill. Plus if I'm using my academy time training up lances to hit that benchmark then I'm not using the time training up swords/will have a harder time reaching S+ to eventually get the -faire. Plus the extra time grinding up Lances/Flying would make it a bit trickier to deal with getting Caspar/Ferdinand for their paralogues. If I go for Death Blow, then it's at least D+ axes, B+  lance, B flying, D+ sword (I'm not sure how many of the requirements you can skimp on actually. FK is A lance, B+ flying, C sword). Then it'd be D+ Brawl for Caspar, D+ Armor for Ferdie. That's kinda a mess... I suppose I could do the knowledge gem/broken weapon/stick Byleth in a thicket weapon grinding strat to get lances or swords up. Post Time Skip she'll have more options to train weapon ranks: Sylvain could help lances, Claude could help flying and probably authority, Petra would help with flying and maybe swords depending on how recruitment plays out (Felix, too). 

11 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

I think you'll also find that FK Byleth is less of a mage killer and more of a "murders everything" kind of unit. Quadding is brutal enough that she can typically muscle through full Maddening bulk in one go. Super bosses excepted, of course, but sometimes even then (if she scores a crit).

Yea her stat spread seems pretty great for FK. Sounds like a ton of fun to use. If she's quadding things then I probably shouldn't worry all that much.

11 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

I wouldn't worry too much about the swords. Bows and lances are so much better that it's rarely a concern. You can sidearm it on Byleth if you really want, but I feel it's generally not worth the effort (there's exactly two instances where I swapped Sword Prowess back in for Armorslayer/Levin usage, but it was in retrospect, it probably wasn't even necessary).

Ok that's good to hear. I didn't have a sword unit on CF and felt like I was kinda missing out on good weapons/combat arts/breaking monster shields more easily. But when I went to try to fix that on BL it was really hard to justify making anyone a Swordmaster/Assassin in the long run. I ended up training Dimitri in swords so he was a Swordmaster for a bit before his unique class. He was absolutely ridiculous but I'm sure he's great pretty much no matter what you do with him. The sword classes in this game are just so trash... No strength boost/no strength growth boost for Assassin vs 5 movement Swordmaster. Enlightened One seems like the best of the Swordfaire classes. The healing utility is nice, I suppose. But EO also feels like it's falling short of using Byleth to her fullest potential. We really could have benefitted from a Trueblade class or some flying sword class or something. 

It's kinda weird to think about but if Swordmaster had one extra mov or if Leonie or Petra had just a bit more Res then I probably would have resolved all of this a long time ago. 

35 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

As far as Dark Mage Lorenz goes, I wouldn't master it, but I think it's worth having the certification in your back pocket. Heartseeker is actually a pretty good ability, and it can be worth considering pulling out with him in order to deal with particularly dodgy enemy comps (I personally deploy one for Remire just to ensure Lys hits 100% hit on DK). In general, he'll want to stay Mage for a while simply because keeping Fire lets him sneak just enough AS to double some of the slower enemy Cavaliers (in addition to the usual Armor Knights), which can be really handy early. That will fall off pretty quickly, but when it does, you can start working him toward Dark Knight.

Smart. I'll get the certification and go from there. I'll probably follow the advice from @LegendOfLoog to have him go Paladin for a while at least through advanced classes. Keeping him in Dark Mage for a bit might help his magic marginally. It's only a 10% magic growth difference, but with 7 base Magic and only a 40% growth, doing anything to hurt his magic growth is suspect. At least his spells are pretty high Mt and with Frozen Lance he can use some high Mt lances. Probably better to get him out of 4 mov ASAP. 

40 minutes ago, LegendOfLoog said:

Yeah, when Maddening came out, I jumped right into BL, and Ingrid was so bad I just made her a Dancer. Her Str is bad pretty much until her Advanced class boosts it, and even then, it's just kind of mediocre. And since enemies on Maddening have high AS, she can't even double very often like she did on Hard. I used Byleth as a FK in that same playthrough, and she did great, so I'll echo everyone else saying FK Byleth is great, lol. 

Okay perfect - FK Byleth it is! Byleth/Hilda/Petra triangle attack... That's the dream. I'm pretty sure triangle attack is more of a meme than anything though. Killing Edelgard on BL w a triangle attack was lulzy

I think I may misunderstand  how the class boosts work - I thought that the class boosts only work when you're in that class. Then there's also the minimum base stats for said class and if you're not at the minimum the class will boost your stats until you are - those boosts are permanent. Is Ingrid's str really so low that it doesn't even hit 18 by level 20 (for wyvern rider)? Yikes. I never went out of my way to make her a wyvern rider and after brigand I just left her as a pegasus until Falcon Knight. So maybe that's part of my issue. But still that's so much investment...

Okay Final Team:

F!Byleth - Falcon Knight

Claude - Barbarossa

Hilda - Wyvern Lord

Marianne - Dancer

Lysithea  - Gremory

Leonie - Bow Knight

Ignatz - Sniper

Lorenz - Dark Knight

Mercedes - Bishop

Felix - War Master

Sylvain -  Paladin

Petra - Wyvern Lord

 

Super excited to try this team out. Thank you all so much for the advice!

[Shadow Mir]

9 hours ago, hdawgsizzle said:

Plus if I'm using my academy time training up lances to hit that benchmark then I'm not using the time training up swords/will have a harder time reaching S+ to eventually get the -faire.

Any reason why you want S+? Because frankly, getting S+ in general is a very impractical notion.

[LegendOfLoog]

11 hours ago, hdawgsizzle said:

I think I may misunderstand  how the class boosts work - I thought that the class boosts only work when you're in that class. Then there's also the minimum base stats for said class and if you're not at the minimum the class will boost your stats until you are - those boosts are permanent. Is Ingrid's str really so low that it doesn't even hit 18 by level 20 (for wyvern rider)? Yikes. I never went out of my way to make her a wyvern rider and after brigand I just left her as a pegasus until Falcon Knight. So maybe that's part of my issue. But still that's so much investment...

No, you have it right; Ingrid's Strength is just that bad. She has base of 8 and a growth of 35%, so assuming Soldier -> Pegasus Knight, Ingrid's Strength will be 14.65 at Level 20. Even if you go Fighter -> Brigand, it's only 15.9, so on average, she'll get a boost no matter what physical class she chooses. So getting a certification for Wyvern is basically a statbooster for Ingrid most of the time, and when added to the Strength modifier, Axefaire, and the difference in Mt (+3 for Silver Axe over Silver Lance), Wyvern basically fixes her Strength issues. She's really bad until then though, and the XP investment on BL Maddening to get there isn't worth it when there are other units who can do more with it. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

Ingrid's low Str is helped by the fact that Tempest Lance offers +8 might (the most powerful of the initial combat arts) and she starts with it; in practice I certainly found she had a much easier time gaining exp than similar-str archers (Ashe, etc.). And even compared to, say, Sylvain, she only trails by 1 base + 10% growth = 1-3 points before the Wyvern patchup; notable, but not a deal-breaker. Didn't have any trouble using her on Maddening myself.

[Burklight]

17 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Ingrid's low Str is helped by the fact that Tempest Lance offers +8 might (the most powerful of the initial combat arts) and she starts with it; in practice I certainly found she had a much easier time gaining exp than similar-str archers (Ashe, etc.). And even compared to, say, Sylvain, she only trails by 1 base + 10% growth = 1-3 points before the Wyvern patchup; notable, but not a deal-breaker. Didn't have any trouble using her on Maddening myself.

This was similar to my experience. I started out assuming I'd have to dump her later on, as I've got wildly different results with Ingrid on various runs. Was using her for bow chip + Tempest Lance and she kept getting ridiculous levels, so I kept using her. At level 20 she had 23 str 16 def 29 spd. I can't say I'd recommend her for a BL run (probably fine if you late recruit her), but sometimes you've just got to use what the stars aligning gives you.

[kremelover]

I just finished Blue Lions on maddening (no new game plus)!  I reccommend Sylvain as paladin into great knight!  Also, Ingrid > Linhardt, she gets amazing stats if you go priest/cavalier>paladin>holyknight.  Take her to choir practice, trust me!  Finally, I used Ferdinand dancer, Cyril bow knight, and Catherine mortal savant, but if you use Ignatz, maybe try making him a debuffer with poison strike/seal skills.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, kremelover said:

I just finished Blue Lions on maddening (no new game plus)!  I reccommend Sylvain as paladin into great knight!  Also, Ingrid > Linhardt, she gets amazing stats if you go priest/cavalier>paladin>holyknight.  Take her to choir practice, trust me!  Finally, I used Ferdinand dancer, Cyril bow knight, and Catherine mortal savant, but if you use Ignatz, maybe try making him a debuffer with poison strike/seal skills.

Sorry, but Holy Knight is just not a good class, especially compared to pretty much any other Master class. So I don't see what you're aiming for here...

[iavasechui]

Ingrid gets Seraphim so she does get more than nosferatu to take advantage of the white magic damage boost.

[Shadow Mir]

16 minutes ago, iavasechui said:

Ingrid gets Seraphim so she does get more than nosferatu to take advantage of the white magic damage boost.

Sure, but Holy Knight is still a terribad class and not something I could recommend in good faith.

Edited January 29, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Sure, but Holy Knight is still a terribad class and not something I could recommend in good faith.

I see what you did there.

While I agree that Holy Knight isn't great, simply saying that it's bad isn't much of a case against it. Ingrid would probably enjoy a physical build in Paladin/Falcoknight/Assassin more, but if you want her using Seraphim from the back of a horse, it's technically her best option for that. And she gets Physic, so it's not as though her Faith options are limited.

On the flip side, while her Reason list is short, it does include Thoron at C-rank, and getting a Faire on that (and Blizzard, and Fimbulvetr) would be welcome as well. She's neutral in both magic proficiencies. In most cases, I think she'd rather go for Dark Knight (assuming we're putting her in a magic-using class, for whatever reason), but Holy Knight may make a case for itself in monster-heavy maps.

[hdawgsizzle]

Honestly I never thought I'd find Great Knight, Holy Knight, and Mortal Savant all recommended in the same post, but here we are.

As for progress on the run - it's going really great so far. It's still early days, as most of my units are somewhere around levels 11-13. I just finished the Miklan chapter last night and I've heard that things calm down after that, so I might be able to start cruising for a while. I haven't gotten to paralogues yet though and I've heard those can be real annoying to deal with.

Maddening Mode is the most fun I've had with a Fire Emblem game in a long while and has definitely been the most fun I've had with Three Houses so far. It's only my second game playing on a difficulty higher than hard (the other being Radiant Dawn Maniac) and it feels like a really excellent level of challenge. I've really fallen in love with the Golden Deer. The challenges can be really tough, but the GD always seem as if they have just enough resources to handle the challenges thrown my way. On the last map with Miklan, Gilbert dodged a 92%(!!) from one of the reinforcements meaning that he actually survived the wave of reinforcements when it's definitely in your interest to let him die. So of course Gilbert did the worst possible thing he could do and walked right into the enemy archer range, setting off a massive chain reaction that caused the entire map of enemies to go after my units all at once. I was way too stubborn to reset so I decided to meet the challenge head on. Those turns when my units had to take on 7+ units all at once have been some of the most tense and gratifying and sometimes hilarious turns in my time playing FE. But really maddening mode often feels so tailored to the Golden Deer I question if I'd be able to handle something like that massive enemy swarm with either of the other houses. I really adore these units (+Sylvain and Mercedes) and I wanted to thank everyone again for your help putting this team together.

I had a few questions that I was hoping someone here might be able to answer:

1) When do you get more divine pulses? I currently have 5 (3 from start, 2 from statues) and that's enough for most maps for sure, though I had to use all 5 on the Miklan chapter. There are two more from statues, and one from the Sothis paralogue coming up. There should be 5 more though. Everywhere I look online just give the vague "you earn divine pulses from clearing story chapters and max out at 13" which isn't super helpful

2) Any advice for recruiting other students I want for their paralogues? As in - should I try to recruit them all as late as possible in part 1 so they aren't completely dead weight? With someone like Caspar it'd be hard to actually get him to kill the Death Knight if I recruited him on the early side. At least with someone like Linhardt he can just stay on he sidelines during his and physic people

3) Does a guard adjutant's stats affect anything? I know that for an attack adjutant they will do 1/2 of the damage they would normally do. Basically I want to ask if it matters whether Raphael becomes a grappler or a armored knight as a guard adjutant for Ignatz

4) Claude's class path - He's currently a Brigand to pick up Death Blow, and then he'll be an Archer to pick up Hit+20, but then I don't know what to do until he gets his personal class. Sniper would help his Bow rank and get him to Encloser ASAP, but Wyvern Rider would probably provide more utility in the meantime and help his Flying rank (quicker Alert Stance(+))

5) Ingrid's recruitment - I see a lot of conflicting information if I need C rank Flying or D rank Flying to recruit her

Thanks so much again for the help

[Shadow Mir]

6 hours ago, hdawgsizzle said:

1) When do you get more divine pulses? I currently have 5 (3 from start, 2 from statues) and that's enough for most maps for sure, though I had to use all 5 on the Miklan chapter. There are two more from statues, and one from the Sothis paralogue coming up. There should be 5 more though. Everywhere I look online just give the vague "you earn divine pulses from clearing story chapters and max out at 13" which isn't super helpful

You get three more from Sothis's paralogue (WARNING: This expires earlier than most paralogues) and 3 more after chapter 10.

6 hours ago, hdawgsizzle said:

maddening mode often feels so tailored to the Golden Deer I question if I'd be able to handle something like that massive enemy swarm with either of the other houses

 

6 hours ago, hdawgsizzle said:

The challenges can be really tough, but the GD always seem as if they have just enough resources to handle the challenges thrown my way.

Funny you say that, because I think just the opposite - that they have it the worst for Maddening mode. The Blue Lions have no obvious weak links, whereas the Golden Deer have two (arguably three) and are in REALLY dire need of recruits to bolster their roster.

Edited January 30, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

The Deer do have easy access to early Curved Shot spam. The damage output can be a little on the low side, but it's almost completely safe. They do, however, lack Deadeye for early (pre-Canto) on-demand AI abuse.

For Claude, I ran him as a Sniper and had no issues. I tend toward hit-and-run Canto bow abuse, though, so I had little use for Alert Stance+, so keep that in mind.

I don't believe a Guard Adjutant's stats matter. The block is just a percentile reduction.

As to when to recruit a unit if it's just for their Paralogue, I don't think it's a big deal if you just get most of them whenever. They're typically not going to be that helpful even if their stats are pretty close to up-to-date (mostly because their class and skill EXP is going to be extremely stock build), so just do whatever. For someone like Caspar where you need him to contribute, you'll probably still be better off recruiting him earlier and tailoring a build to letting him accomplish what he needs to. In this case, you may need to consider putting him into Lance training and set him as an Adjutant in order to pick up EXP of both kinds. I say this because your best bet for a low-effort build that reduces the headache against Death Knight would be to get Knightkneeler and nail him with it with the Lance of Ruin (Gambits will still almost assuredly be required to set this up, though).

[hdawgsizzle]

9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

You get three more from Sothis's paralogue (WARNING: This expires earlier than most paralogues) and 3 more after chapter 10.

Thanks! That's a ton more so it seems in my best interest to do it ASAP. It's one of the hardest pre-timeskip ones though so maybe i'll do it after Lorenz's and Raphael/Ignatz's.

9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Funny you say that, because I think just the opposite - that they have it the worst for Maddening mode. The Blue Lions have no obvious weak links, whereas the Golden Deer have two (arguably three) and are in REALLY dire need of recruits to bolster their roster.

Hmm I definitely wouldn't say that the Golden Deer have three weak links. The weakest is Raphael, whose stats are just not good and are completely built around getting Quick Riposte and I'm never going to train him all the way up for that. The next weakest is probably Lorenz, who really doesn't excel at anything, but he's been helping out a lot more than I ever thought he would. His high Mt spells are really nice, and he's a mage that can actually take a single hit which gives him a nice niche. It's definitely a lot safer to bring him in to kill a high Def enemy on the front line than it is to use any other mage. I assume Ignatz is the third weak link and I wholeheartedly disagree. Ignatz might be one of my most valuable players in all honesty. Hit+20 is such a simple skill but it helps so much on early game maddening. You can depend on him a lot more than any other unit because everyone else has hit rates that hover around 70%. Hit+20 also affects gambits which is insanely useful. Having four units (Byleth, Claude, Hilda, Ignatz) that will actually hit their gambits without boosts is so helpful. When I talk about the golden deer having a lot of options available to them I'm referring to Hit+20 or Lorenz being a mage who can take a hit or Hilda and Leonie's personal skills. Those are things I can't make use of on other runs.

Here's my impressions of the units so far:

F!Byleth - first time using female byleth, but I haven't put her in any female exclusive classes yet so she's still pretty par for the course with my other Byleths. She's really fucking good. GD are a little low on firepower so having a high Str unit 

Claude - Hard to know what to say other than that he's really great. Bow proficiency, high charm, good combat arts... He's really everything you want out of a unit on maddening. 

Hilda - She's great. Her hit rate leaves a lot to be desired, but with so many enemies having gambits now her high charm stat is more appreciated than ever. She has decent def and high charm and you really need both to tank anything on Maddening and it's so rare to find any unit with both. So she's pretty special. It's going to be a bitch to get her Death Blow, Hit+20, and Darting Blow, but hopefully worth it in the end. 

Leonie - She's really excellent! Out of the "cavaliers" (Ferdinand, Sylvain, Leonie) in each house she seems like she probably is going to have the best early game. She hits really hard with tempest lance and it's easy to get her curved shot too, so she has a lot of options for attacking depending on the situation. She can actually double a lot of enemies as well, and with tthe slower enemies she'll be able to throw on a shield and still double too. Definitely great both offensively and defensively.

Marianne - She's about as good as always. Slight nerf because mages are harder to use on maddening and slight buff because healers don't have their exp gain nerfed so she's one of my highest level units. She has thoron right now which gives her a nice niche over the other mages, and I'm going to start switching over my training of her to swords so she can use the levin sword which is coming up

Lysithea - I used her twice on hard and she was phenomenal but... she's so much worse on Maddening. I definitely won't be able take anyone who says she's the best unit in the game seriously ever again. While still being a very very heavily Player Phase focused game, Maddening definitely is a bit more enemy phase focused than the easier modes and that hurts her a lot. Often your band of units won't be able to defeat all of the enemies coming at you so it's just not safe to bring her in. This is especially amplified with what seems like every sword unit having pass, so she can't even sit towards the back and heal or anything either. She can't actually one shot anything anymore unless it's a cavalier, and even then she couldn't one shot the Death Knight in Ch 4. I'm also very confused as to what her skill set is supposed to be - she has really low defenses so she wants to stay towards the back of the pack, but she also gets warp which would be most helpful to warp a frontliner up further(??). She has seraphim which can break a monster's armor but they have to be both confused while she's attacking and either completely stunned or dead by the time the turn is over for them to not completely rock her shit. None of her abilities seem to mesh well. Also who the hell are you even supposed to warp on Maddening? Sending someone into a pack of enemies is a death sentence. It will definitely be more useful after getting more units with Canto, but that's a while off from now. Her main utility is basically just hit things really hard from range. So...... she's Shinon from Radiant Dawn.  Don't get me wrong - she's still a really great unit and I'm sure that she'll get better in time as her magic really starts to take off and I get Thyrsus to keep her a bit safer. But I also can't see how you could ever say that she's on par with Byleth, Edelgard, Dimitri, or Claude. She's definitely worse than all of them and there's a few other units (Felix, Petra, Leonie) that are probably better than her too. 

Ignatz - The 3-13 archer wants what Ignatz has. Seriously this dude is so fucking good in the early game. He comes with curved shot which is very nice, especially in the first chapter and first auxilary battle because it gives him a safe way to hit units in the bushes. And because he has Hit+20 he can actually hit them. Curved shot does a great job of keeping him in a safe position, so he's usually able to use Steel Bow+ for extra damage too, while most everyone else is stuck with training weapons. Like I said earlier, the Hit+20 applying to gambits is really nice too because Ignatz actually has the authority to use the best gambits. I gave him the pegasus gambit just to make sure it's leveled up for when I eventually have to pass it off to a flying unit and the few extra points of res means that mages don't even damage him anymore. He's truly so much better of a unit that I ever could have imagined.

Lorenz - Like I said earlier, he's much better than I thought. I think he'll start to drop off towards the midgame because he just doesn't have high enough growths to really keep up. High mt spells are nice though and because he has more strength than most mages that can help offset the weight of the tomes by a few AS which is nice. He's currently stuck in Dark Mage right now which is icky but it's only because I ran out of seals for him. 

Raphael - benched

Sylvain and Mercedes - Still too early to tell but they've been contributing a lot for sure. It sucks Sylvain has a bow weakness because I he really needs that Hit+20. Training him in bows right now. It's just going slowly.

 

10 hours ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

As to when to recruit a unit if it's just for their Paralogue, I don't think it's a big deal if you just get most of them whenever. They're typically not going to be that helpful even if their stats are pretty close to up-to-date (mostly because their class and skill EXP is going to be extremely stock build), so just do whatever. For someone like Caspar where you need him to contribute, you'll probably still be better off recruiting him earlier and tailoring a build to letting him accomplish what he needs to. In this case, you may need to consider putting him into Lance training and set him as an Adjutant in order to pick up EXP of both kinds. I say this because your best bet for a low-effort build that reduces the headache against Death Knight would be to get Knightkneeler and nail him with it with the Lance of Ruin (Gambits will still almost assuredly be required to set this up, though).

Thanks!! Someone recommended Devil Axe and hoping for a crit but this seems way more reliable!

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Lysithea takes a little time to get rolling, but she still gets to a point where she one-shots stuff or leaves it almost dead (early on it'll takes Hades, but as things progress, the other spells will join in). Thyrsus gives her absolute safety to just nuke whatever she feels like. Mind, I play a very PP-heavy strategy where after a certain point, my army simply never gets touched by anything due to being out of enemy attack range 95% of the time and Lysithea's raw power is often pretty integral to obliterating the current pull.

As for Warp, it's for assassinations, then retreating (or winning the map, if you kill the commander). There's a thing I like to do that I call "Surprise Pegasus". I Warp a Pegasus/Falcon Knight within two tiles of a key target (usually a siege enemy, but often times I'll also do it to highly mobile enemies or bosses), shoot them in the face with a bow, then Canto back. This tends to render a number of otherwise dangerous formations harmless.

Don't get too used to Ignatz hitting offensive Gambits. His Charm growth is pretty bad, so there's going to come a point where his personal Hit +20 can't overcome that deficiency. However, his strength in Authority means he can seamlessly transition into running utility Gambits.

[Shadow Mir]

13 hours ago, hdawgsizzle said:

Hmm I definitely wouldn't say that the Golden Deer have three weak links. The weakest is Raphael, whose stats are just not good and are completely built around getting Quick Riposte and I'm never going to train him all the way up for that. The next weakest is probably Lorenz, who really doesn't excel at anything, but he's been helping out a lot more than I ever thought he would. His high Mt spells are really nice, and he's a mage that can actually take a single hit which gives him a nice niche. It's definitely a lot safer to bring him in to kill a high Def enemy on the front line than it is to use any other mage. I assume Ignatz is the third weak link and I wholeheartedly disagree. Ignatz might be one of my most valuable players in all honesty. Hit+20 is such a simple skill but it helps so much on early game maddening. You can depend on him a lot more than any other unit because everyone else has hit rates that hover around 70%. Hit+20 also affects gambits which is insanely useful. Having four units (Byleth, Claude, Hilda, Ignatz) that will actually hit their gambits without boosts is so helpful. When I talk about the golden deer having a lot of options available to them I'm referring to Hit+20 or Lorenz being a mage who can take a hit or Hilda and Leonie's personal skills. Those are things I can't make use of on other runs.

On the other hand, Ignatz's poor charm means his personal ability won't be enough to salvage his gambits' hit rates, and he hits like a wet noodle. Being accurate doesn't help much when you don't do much to the enemy to begin with... and it doesn't help that Ignatz doesn't have much in his corner that would convince me to stick with him instead of just recruiting and using Bernie instead. Also, Hilda's and Leonie's personal abilities aren't much good when you only have ONE male unit that's not complete garbage (two if your Byleth is male). Which goes back to "better start recruiting from other houses if you don't want to suffer!".

Edited January 31, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[SpiceMan]

On 1/30/2020 at 9:33 AM, hdawgsizzle said:

But really maddening mode often feels so tailored to the Golden Deer I question if I'd be able to handle something like that massive enemy swarm with either of the other houses.

While I don't agree with Shadow Mir that Golden deer have the worst group, that honour is on the Black Eagles, I do think that the Blue lions have the easiest early game by far. If you look at the bases of the group you'll see that often they just have better base stats than their counterparts in other houses. Bernie has +2 hp and +1 cha on Ashe while he has +1dex +2spd +1lck and +2res over her and higher growths and a strength in axes for death blow. Ignatz vs Ashe is similar, Ignatz has +2hp and 2+lck vs Ashe's +1dex +1spd +1def and +1cha. Sylvain and Ferdinand show this too with Sylvain having +str and better growths over Ferdinand's 1 hp and dex. Dedue vs Raphael is a sad example where Dedue beats or ties Raphael on almost everything except 1 lck. Blue lions get early Lance of ruin and Luin which kick ass midgame, Annette's rallies are the best in the game and I don't need to say how strong Felix and Dimitri are. Dedue is the biggest reason Blue lions have the easiest early game by far because he can easily tank multiple thieves at once which would kill any other unit in the start. You can clear chapter 1 and 2 so much faster than in other routes because you don't have to cower in fear every-time enemies approach and can just send Dedue in to chip them on EP.

Golden Deer has a solid early game though and complemented by them having the easiest post timeskip makes me consider them overall the easiest route in the game. The units are good enough to do their job and while Blue lions may have stronger units the maps also get much harder for them later on the make up for it.

Black Eagles early game f**king sucks though. Caspar can't do any damage with gauntlets, Ferdinand can't avoid tank yet and lacks Dimitri or Sylvain's strength for one shots with Tempest Lance, Hubert and Dorothea have shit accuracy and Dorothea doesn't have more than 4 thunder uses until C rank (from D) or level 5, which she won't reach before then because she can only kill 4 times a map with 70 accuracy. Bernie's alright but all she does is curved shot which anyone can do. Your only reliable units are Byleth, Edelgard and Petra. 

 

[Crysta]

I just finished my Golden Deer maddening game and uhhh you’ll appreciate Lysithea a lot more by endgame.

Glad Iggy and Lorenz are getting more props, though. Maddening is pretty much the only mode that highlights their niches.

[Dark Holy Elf]

4 hours ago, SpiceMan said:

While I don't agree with Shadow Mir that Golden deer have the worst group, that honour is on the Black Eagles, I do think that the Blue lions have the easiest early game by far. If you look at the bases of the group you'll see that often they just have better base stats than their counterparts in other houses. Bernie has +2 hp and +1 cha on Ashe while he has +1dex +2spd +1lck and +2res over her and higher growths and a strength in axes for death blow. Ignatz vs Ashe is similar, Ignatz has +2hp and 2+lck vs Ashe's +1dex +1spd +1def and +1cha. Sylvain and Ferdinand show this too with Sylvain having +str and better growths over Ferdinand's 1 hp and dex. Dedue vs Raphael is a sad example where Dedue beats or ties Raphael on almost everything except 1 lck. Blue lions get early Lance of ruin and Luin which kick ass midgame, Annette's rallies are the best in the game and I don't need to say how strong Felix and Dimitri are. Dedue is the biggest reason Blue lions have the easiest early game by far because he can easily tank multiple thieves at once which would kill any other unit in the start. You can clear chapter 1 and 2 so much faster than in other routes because you don't have to cower in fear every-time enemies approach and can just send Dedue in to chip them on EP.

Golden Deer has a solid early game though and complemented by them having the easiest post timeskip makes me consider them overall the easiest route in the game. The units are good enough to do their job and while Blue lions may have stronger units the maps also get much harder for them later on the make up for it.

Black Eagles early game f**king sucks though. Caspar can't do any damage with gauntlets, Ferdinand can't avoid tank yet and lacks Dimitri or Sylvain's strength for one shots with Tempest Lance, Hubert and Dorothea have shit accuracy and Dorothea doesn't have more than 4 thunder uses until C rank (from D) or level 5, which she won't reach before then because she can only kill 4 times a map with 70 accuracy. Bernie's alright but all she does is curved shot which anyone can do. Your only reliable units are Byleth, Edelgard and Petra. 

Some counterpoints:

Sylvain is a free recruit for the other houses with FByleth, which actually weakens BL's case for being the strongest a bit since it means BE and GD get an extra PC, and one who happens to be reasonably solid at that. And even for MByleth, it's not hard to have him recruited by the time you get the Lance of Ruin, and even easier to have Ingrid recruited by the time you can get Luin (Ingrid's recruitment requirement is borderline trivial).

Sylvain might be overall better than Ferdinand, but it's not the strict win you make it look, because Ferdinand's personal skill is outstanding. He also has a measly 1 less strength than Sylvain, so don't act like Sylvain is reaching lots of OHKOs that Ferdinand isn't.

As far as earlygame mages go, Lysithea has the same accuracy as Hubert/Dorothea (actually fractionally lower due to luck), and Marianne's is lower since Blizzard is trash. Fair that Annette / Mercedes are more accurate, I suppose (as is Linhardt). I find 4-5 uses of offensive magic adequate for earlygame maps but I play pretty quickly.

It's also worth noting that Edelgard has the best bases of the lords (13/8 in the key stats compared to 12/7 and 11/8; not huge, but similar to the advantages Dedue and Ashe have which you noted).

In general I think the differences between the houses are often exaggerated (because tribalism, I assume?). I didn't find any of my Maddening playthroughs to feel vastly easier or more difficult early on. I do agree that BL has it easiest overall because Felix and Dedue are both strong starters, but it's not a wide gap.

[Axel987]

Done GD and CF maddening so far, currently on BL Maddening, only up to chapter 6 in that though.

CF Maddening felt a lot easier since I knew what I was getting into now and I was entirely spared the actual killer of Maddening; Chapter 13. CF also likes having quite a few "Defeat all Enemy Commanders" maps but Raging Storms on a Wyvern completely neutralises that, especially with Stride, Warp and all that nonsense. Black Eagles are definitely the weakest house overall IMO but they're quite capable nonetheless. Oh and Jeritza is free, very low investment and stupidly good out of the gate. God bless.

BL Maddening so far has been very smooth because Dedue and Dimitri can consistently tank hits well and hit back like trucks. Ingrid is the only real dead weight so far and I'm contemplating either putting her through Brigand for Death Blow for some time or dropping her down the line, but the latter idea doesn't seem attractive what with Chapter 13 forcing in-house only.