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30 minutes ago, Crysta said:

I mean you just talk to them and dump a bunch of flowers you naturally get from gardening onto them. It's not a huge investment or waste of time: it's literally just using what you're given.

Doesn't change the fact that I give it a big fat F in terms of practicality. Of course, I'll be gardening every time I explore, but who's to say I won't be gardening with, say, Nordsalat Seeds instead?

30 minutes ago, Crysta said:

Not sure if your assessment of a LP is really a good source, particularly because you still seriously make arguments like "Lorenz has bad base charm so he's a bad dancer" or "Ignatz has noodle arms so he's a bad unit".

Hey, I admit I only use the videos for strategies I could use (and to see how different people tackle it), and the other stuff comes from using this site. If you are dead set on Lorenz as your dancer, I won't stop you, but I won't be doing it because I honestly think Lorenz is one of the most cringe-worthy characters in the entire series (that's a discussion for another topic, of course).

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37 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Doesn't change the fact that I give it a big fat F in terms of practicality. Of course, I'll be gardening every time I explore, but who's to say I won't be gardening with, say, Nordsalat Seeds instead?

Gardening with anything other than pale blue flowers (speed) or purple flowers (str) is probably wrong. At least after you get the merchant who sells you the seeds. The drop rate on stat up items from the flowers is higher than it is on other stuff, and you also get flowers to give to people for support points. Guess they didn't cover that in the LP you watched. 

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21 minutes ago, Burklight said:

Gardening with anything other than pale blue flowers (speed) or purple flowers (str) is probably wrong. At least after you get the merchant who sells you the seeds. The drop rate on stat up items from the flowers is higher than it is on other stuff, and you also get flowers to give to people for support points. Guess they didn't cover that in the LP you watched. 

actually, you get the highest drop rates from stat boosters by mixing those seeds you mentionted with other stuff, can't really recall on the top of my head, iirc for speed carrots it's like 3 pale blue seeds and 2 morfis seeds, but don't quote me on this (I believe there's a topic somewhere here with all the numbers tho)

magic stat boosters are also useful if you're going the ltc route since it helps with your warp range

 

btw I'd be curious which LPs he follows, I sure hope it's not Mangs' or Chaz's lol (I don't think there's a single let's play on youtube with actually competent people tho, most good players post single chapters and not full on let's plays) (it's quite understandable tho, in a LP the focus is first and foremost to be entertaining, so gameplay has to be worse than their usual)

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12 hours ago, Burklight said:

When I say "decentish," I'm basically saying he's going to be able to do serious PH damage with hunter's volley eventually, and he's going to have access to excellent utility battalions. Absolute crap enemy phase, and you need to keep him protected. So he'll almost never have a dead turn, but he's also never going to be your MVP. If I had to rank all the golden deer units, he'd be somewhere near the middle.

I'd also rank Ignatz around the middle of my units. Definitely agree with everything you said here. I think I objected to calling him "decentish" because all of the units this run have been really impressive so far - I've definitely enjoyed using them more than the BE or BL. 

7 hours ago, Burklight said:

inb4 "Why in the seven hells would I invest that much time in playing a mode that takes more time and investment and time than posting nonsense on a form with zero point of reference to any of the things I'm pretending to be an expert on?!?"

LMAO. Honestly reading anything written by @Shadow Mir has been truly exhausting. Seriously, I truly wonder if there's even another person on the other side of that account. The posts read like someone got a bot to read 10000+ pages of arguments on Serenes about unit viability and the bot is now trying to regurgitate the most basic lines over and over again. "Investment is bad!" "Not feasible!" "You have to invest too much in that unit so they aren't good!"

Brain worms.

6 hours ago, Burklight said:

I'm going to go against my better instincts and humor you here with an actual argument. Given that you haven't played maddening, you wouldn't know that weapon ranks are significantly easier to unlock than in normal or hard, simply because you end up going through so many more rounds of combat on everyone. So the guy who's talking about maddening mode S+ ranks not being a problem that you're arguing with stating that it takes too long and can't be done. Yeah, that comes off as super ignorant, because what you're saying is basically true for NM and HM, but this topic is on MM, which you have zero frame of reference on. And yet you keep doubling down as though you're an expert.

I have no doubt you're going to cherry pick this and claim you know better than everyone who has actual experience, or say something about how you play the game differently, or some other bit of nonsense about how what you're saying is an exception. I'm just pointing out that a tiny bit of humility from someone with absolutely no knowledge of the mode you're giving advice on would go a long way.

Thank you. 

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

That’s simple logic. Even knowing that it takes more rounds of combat to down enemies and you overall see more combat rounds, which is as simple as watching someone else on YT, which I do for the sake of learning what I can do to give myself an advantage for when I do tackle it (which means I’d say your assessment about me having no knowledge is incorrect, especially since it implies that hands-on experience is the only way to learn about something)

There's a very massive difference between watching someone play and making a decision like "S+ ranks aren't feasible" or "Lorenz isn't feasible" versus actually playing and arriving at that conclusion. If you actually play the mode and go through the experience of managing units' weapon levels you'll put a LOT more thought into it rather than watching some videos on YT of people who might not attempt to go for S+ or might not even plan out their weapon levels or classes very well at all. Hands on experience is definitely preferable here because it requires so much more active thought on your part.

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

 I don’t consider it very reasonable unless you either glue the Knowledge Gem onto someone instead of passing it around so multiple units can benefit and/or do auxiliary battles, which the OP admitted he did. He also admitted to recruiting everyone, which I would consider impractical as fuck on a non-NG+ run no thanks to Ferdinand. You might need to focus exclusively on one skill to the exclusion of everything else, which I do not find reasonable either. Logically speaking, I would consider it more feasible to just raise Authority and use a higher-end battalion instead, considering E to B authority takes about 1/3 the effort it would take to go from A+ to S+.

I s2g if one more person brings up participating in battles once a month as a negative... Yes I admitted to doing paralogues. You caught me. I am guilty. I am so ashamed that you've found out that I have done the paralogues when I've said a number of times that I plan to do all of the paralogues. How will I ever recover from my shame and humilitation? 

Let me spell this out VERY clearly so that hopefully we don't need to keep having the same conversation here. I am playing on Maddening Mode which is a difficulty that you are unable to beat. You are implying that I have tainted this run and turned it into EZ baby mode because I've done the number of battles that the game heavily implies you should be doing and the online stats suggest that the vast majority of people playing the game are also doing. I seriously think I might have a migraine. 

And as for recruiting everyone being impractical... yea... it's called a challenge run. No NG+ is a challenge run. No Online is a challenge run. No DLC is a challenge run. I've been very clear about these being restrictions, and I've talked at length about how it's made the run a lot more exciting because I'm constantly so low on cash due to having to buy items from the shop to build support with people. I don't know what you're trying to prove here. That I'm an impractical player or something? Or that I have bad Fire Emblem instincts? None of those restrictions are remotely the same thing as thinking that an S+ weapon rank is viable.

Also you just straight up don't understand the resources that are available to you or the decisions you'd actually have to make if you played the game. You say that going from A+ to S+ in a weapon rank is three time the effort of raising an authority rank from E to B, but that's not a decision you're ever going to actually have to make in the game. It's just an argument that's completely irrelevant. Ignatz hit A in authority 3 chapters ago. He's done. There's nothing left to do with him but raise his bow rank now.

I just cannot for the life of me understand how you play. Do you just skip every single week and never instruct your students? Have you never done a single paralogue? I truly don't understand. You say that S+ takes too much effort, and that mastering War Master for Quick Riposte (arguably the best ability in the game...) is too much effort, using Raphael at all is too much effort, getting faculty training is too much effort, using the 4 activity points it takes to recruit Caspar is too much effort, spending a single week of gardening to farm a single charm stat booster is too much effort, but also having a single tea party with Lorenz on the odd chance he gets charm screwed is all too much effort... This is just comical. Like what do you do with your activity points? You must have a lot of activity points since you said you want to plant Nordsalat seeds. Is dining with students to get their motivation back too much effort? Is fishing too much effort? I don't understand where the limits are with this nonsense. 

3 hours ago, Crysta said:

I mean you just talk to them and dump a bunch of flowers you naturally get from gardening onto them. It's not a huge investment or waste of time: it's literally just using what you're given.

Not sure if your assessment of a LP is really a good source, particularly because you still seriously make arguments like "Lorenz has bad base charm so he's a bad dancer" or "Ignatz has noodle arms so he's a bad unit".

This is such a great way to phrase a lot of what I've tried to say in so many conversations about FE. I think people really like to lean on the argument that anything you have to invest in is automatically evil and unviable, but so many times it really just comes down to using the resources you already have. Like I don't understand what the criteria is for some people to consider a unit good - they'll criticize every unit who can't one round the final boss at base and also happens to have great availability. There's maybe 5 of those units in the whole series. It's truly baffling.

Also I did the math on Lorenz's "low charm stat." The odds that Lorenz doesn't reach 13 charm and needs a Tea Party or a Golden Apple... 11.83%. It actually should be slightly lower than that if we factor in the fact that every student in three houses comes with a built in Blossom skill, but that's not going to have a major effect or anything like that. 

3 hours ago, Sid Starkiller said:

...I do...*cries*

I like Caspar too. He's a good boy.

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Doesn't change the fact that I give it a big fat F in terms of practicality. Of course, I'll be gardening every time I explore, but who's to say I won't be gardening with, say, Nordsalat Seeds instead?

Lol. Good luck finding them. You can't buy them and so you'll have to farm them by planting other seeds first and then hoping you collect enough. They give a lot in professor experience, but by the time you've planted all the other seeds to farm them you'll probably be behind where you could have been if you just planted flowers.

2 hours ago, Burklight said:

Gardening with anything other than pale blue flowers (speed) or purple flowers (str) is probably wrong. At least after you get the merchant who sells you the seeds. The drop rate on stat up items from the flowers is higher than it is on other stuff, and you also get flowers to give to people for support points. Guess they didn't cover that in the LP you watched. 

Agree for the most part - Yellow is also good for Mag esp on GD where Lysithea spends a lot of the early game ~2-3 damage away from one shotting most things. Pale Blue is less valuable on Maddening (though still great) since most units seem to fall into two categories: doubles everything, gets doubled by everything. Fast units like Felix and Petra probably don't need the Pale Blue seeds. Units like Lorenz are too slow to salvage. There's not that many units right in the middle that can really make best use of Pale Blue. White for Charm isn't terrible if you have a front line unit that you're worried about getting gambited. Though there's always tea parties. 

2 hours ago, AxelVDP said:

btw I'd be curious which LPs he follows, I sure hope it's not Mangs' or Chaz's lol (I don't think there's a single let's play on youtube with actually competent people tho, most good players post single chapters and not full on let's plays) (it's quite understandable tho, in a LP the focus is first and foremost to be entertaining, so gameplay has to be worse than their usual)

Definitely curious as well. But I'm also curious to hear if there's any sort of general consensus regarding Mangs and Chaz or even just that let's play in general. I've watched most of it and it's kind of a beautiful disaster. There are so many places where they zigged where I would have 100% zagged and so it can often be a frustrating experience to watch them. The episode where they are unable to kill the Death Knight in Ch. 6 and waste like 4 Divine Pulses trying... I felt so much anxiety. But I guess that's kind of every Mangs let's play. The Radiant Dawn one he did around this time last year was also really difficult for me to get through (though very entertaining). That's my favorite FE game and I know it inside and out and front and back and there was just SO MUCH that he and Mekkah got wrong about how various mechanics worked and how different units performed and such. 

If you're looking for a good Maddening playthrough I'll shoutout this guy:

I haven't watched much of the early game - I mostly have seen timeskip onwards - but he's a good player and doesn't get enough views. He was also super friendly on twitter when I asked him a question about Maddening Mode. Other than him I've struggled to find good Maddening LPs. 

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11 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Doesn't change the fact that I give it a big fat F in terms of practicality. Of course, I'll be gardening every time I explore, but who's to say I won't be gardening with, say, Nordsalat Seeds instead?

Hey, I admit I only use the videos for strategies I could use (and to see how different people tackle it), and the other stuff comes from using this site. If you are dead set on Lorenz as your dancer, I won't stop you, but I won't be doing it because I honestly think Lorenz is one of the most cringe-worthy characters in the entire series (that's a discussion for another topic, of course).

how is bloody nordsalat more practical than planting flowers for stat boosters?

if you're dead set on snorfing nordsalat, by all means you do you, but if we're debating optimal play or practicality... you're coming up short.

glad you've finally admitted you just don't like lorenz, though.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I finished my Golden Deer Maddening run this past weekend! Thank you all so much for the advice and support you gave me - really helped out a lot. I'll give some rapid fire thoughts about Maddening Mode and the Golden Deer route and I'll show off my units and discuss each of them a little bit

Maddening Mode + Golden Deer:

-Super fun overall! Some of the most fun I've had playing Fire Emblem in a very long time - that being said I'm very relieved to be done and I'm feeling a bit burnt out as well

-For many many reasons, the pre-timeskip phase is a much more exciting and interesting part of the game (can't decide if this is a Maddening issue or GD issue)

-Hate ambush spawns always. I'll never find them to be a good mechanic. They completely ruin chapter 19 in my opinion because you are forced to send your units around a much much longer path and that map ended up taking nearly two hours

-Difficulty takes a sharp nosedive after Ch. 5, with the most difficult parts after that being the pre-timeskip paralogues (though these kinda depend when you choose to do them). Post-Timeskip was comparatively lax. The only chapter I found difficult post timeskip was the Mercedes/Caspar paralogue and that's because I specifically was trying to get an untrained Caspar to kill the Death Knight

-If I do Maddening SS the two areas that I'll want to pay more attention to will be ore and when it's available, and tournaments and which weapons have their tournaments when

-The hardest enemy to face in the entire run was not Edelgard, Dimitri, Thales, The Death Knight, The Wind Caller, the Turtle, or Nemesis, but was actually Petra in chapter 7 lmao

-Favorite Chapters: Pre-timeskip i've always really liked Ch. 6, Ch. 8, Sothis Paralogue, and Ch. 11. Not sure if those are popular at all. Post Timeskip I loved Ch. 14 and thought it was ingenious and different and brilliant. I also really liked Shambala, dubstep and all

-Least Favorite Chapters: Pre-Timeskip: Ch. 3, Ch. 5, Ashe+Catherine Paralogue, Post-Timeskip: Ch. 18 (Death Knight runs away so early that I didn't really even get to engage with half of the map), Ch. 19 (god awful)

-I married Felix 🙂

My Units:

I took these screenshots just before the final chapter - I have a save there so if anyone has any specific questions about their weapon levels or such I could answer those too. I think I'm going to attempt to rank the units while I still have them fresh in my mind, though I'm probably going to exclude Marianne, my dancer, and Mercedes, my healer, since they aren't really in competition with the combat units. I also have the data from the end  of the game (Battles, Victories, MVPs). Also I should mention that the cooking buffs for this month were +1 HP, +1 Str, +1 Def, +1 Dex, +1 Spd, and +2 Cha.

Here is my team!

(Dancer). Marianne

https://imgur.com/j4n66Dy

40 Battles, 18 Victories, MVP zero times

Marianne was a very solid unit throughout the early game - absolutely no complaints. She's been the best dancer I've had so far, but I think that's mostly just because I put in the effort to train her sword rank. She danced nearly every turn, so she never used swords, but the extra dodginess from an A+ sword rank and Sword Avo +20 helped... for only like two turns in the entire playthrough, but hey that's something! I also went through the annoying task of dragging Dorothea with me through Ch. 19 in order to get the four person dance gambit. I used the gambit maybe three times, but that's only because you get the gambit so incredibly late into the run, and even once I got it I had a tendency to forget about it. Riding proficiency was nice for Mov+1

(Healer). Mercedes

https://imgur.com/wSr3OII

53 battles, 39 Victories (including Nemesis!), MVP zero times

I probably don't have to say much about Mercedes. She's an excellent healer and an excellent unit overall. I was a bit annoyed throughout most of the game that I didn't have a good "build" for her. All of my other units had meticulously chosen skill sets and Mercedes couldn't even round out her list of 5 skills with anything decent so she had garbage like renewal and defensive tactics, which are two skills that make zero sense on Mercedes. At the very very end of the game I decided to force her through the monk class, and I guess it was worth it? Mag+2 was nice and I used draw back a few times. I just wish I had mastered the class way earlier. Black Magic Range+1 came in clutch though, when Nemesis was down to just 3 HP, all of my units had moved that turn except for Mercedes, and from 3 spaces away she fires off a buzzer-beater Ragnarok to win the game. GOAT.

10. Lorenz

https://imgur.com/PHCxwSH

285 battles, 169 victories, MVP two times

I want to make clear that just because I've ranked Lorenz last of my combat units does not mean I think he's a bad unit. I think he's fantastic, in all honesty. He had a decent time as a mage, was absolutely amazing as a Paladin, and struggled as a Dark Knight, though he certainly had his uses. The main issue with Lorenz on this team by the endgame was that every other character either (a) had a brave combat art, (b) was fast enough to double, (c) was Lysithea. He simply couldn't one round anything in the end and everyone else could. He did have a lot of nice niche uses though, and definitely contributed a lot to the team, right up until the very end (he was particularly good on the final chapter). Between Black Magic Range+1 and the Caduceus Staff he was able to chip at a lot of enemies from a safe distance. This was especially useful with the Quick Riposte Swordmasters, since I didn't want to approach them with many other units unless they were under half HP. Recover is a great spell, and Ward was useful for Shambala, so he could also help out there. Additionally, he also has some very nice and balanced defenses, so giving him the Gloucester Knights for +6 Def and +6 Res created an absolute tank. I gave him Ferdinand for a Guard Adjutant but he almost never needed Ferdinand to save him. He most just tanked hits. 

9. Hilda

https://imgur.com/FwG3BA1

416 battles, 180 victories, MVP three times

A LOT of people who have played GD are going to be shocked to see Hilda so low, but this was an incredibly competitive set of units and Hilda was pretty disappointing by the end. It's a bit of a bummer since I really put a lot of effort into Hilda. Getting her Death Blow, Darting Blow, Hit+20, and Reposition took a ton of investment and I'm not sure I really saw that much benefit. Hit+20 was an absolute necessity and i want to thank whoever suggested it 1000x over because even with Hit+20 her hit rate was shaky. As I mentioned with Lorenz, most of the units ether had a brave combat art, could naturally double, or were Lysithea. Hilda falls into the "can double" camp, but that's very shaky... With only 31 speed, even with darting blow she's still going to be slower than Felix, Claude, and Leonie, none of whom have darting blow. Hilda unfortunately also had to be on the same team as Petra, who really just did the same job but better most of the time. Hilda's one big niche was having a high charm stat. This is boosted due to the fact that you have literally ~nothing~ to do with your explore points in the last few chapters of the game and so you can drink tea with anyone who has even a salvageable charm stat (Claude, Leonie, Hilda, Sylvain). I guess the other thing she had going for her was that since I raised her bow ranks to give her Hit+20, I was able to have another unit who could fly and use bows. She still couldn't kill Pegasus/Falcon knights, but it was something. 

It's a bit strange. When I used Hilda on BL Hard, I also had her fall off towards the end. I thought I had done enough to correct for my mistakes of the last run, but I still ran into major issues with her.

8. Sylvain

https://imgur.com/3j3F5TC

261 Battles, 136 Victories, MVP four times

Sylvain was insanely good by the end of the run, so he only ranks so low because getting him there was a bit of a chore. I was worried about his hit rate based on experience in a past run, so I got him Hit+20 which was pretty annoying to do in all honesty. He's also very slow, so using him in the early game was difficult and he was more of a liability than anything. But then Sothis herself came down from heaven and blessed Sylvain with an ability called Swift Strikes and he became the greatest unit in Fire Emblem history. It's actually pretty comical if you look at the list of MVPs over the course of the game - you can pinpoint the exact moment that Sylvain got Swift Strikes because he gets MVP for the next three chapters in a row. Sylvain also has good charm and so after feeding him all of the tea in Fodlan he was able to do some real damage with gambits. 

7. Lysithea

https://imgur.com/bwKnQwJ

284 Battles, 221 Victories, MVP four times

If ranking Hilda that low didn't cause your head to spin, then this should do it! I think this playthrough has thoroughly convinced me that Lysithea stans either don't play Maddening or are charmed enough by her character to ignore her shortcomings by the time that they get around to playing Maddening. Her start is pretty meh - she can't one shot anything, she's slow, and she has absolutely no enemy phase. Then something happens from roughly chapter 8-19, where her magic has started to outpace enemy resistance, and she's able to one shot every enemies and she finally lives up to all of her hype. But then that came crashing down in the final few chapters when she's not able to one shot anymore and she's so slow that doubling even Fortress Knights can be questionable. I also found it really difficult for her to keep up with such a mobile team, so for the final chapters in the game she'd get usage in the first three turns or so and then be so far behind everyone else that she wouldn't be able to contribute much. I think there's Lysithea the meme, who one shots the Death Knight and is a "tactical nuke" and then I think there's Lyisthea the unit. Those things are not the same.

6. Ignatz

https://imgur.com/YA03NPV

420 Battles, 221 Victories, MVP Eight(!!!!!!!!) Times

The award for the biggest surprise of the run has to go to Ignatz. So many people have said that he's mediocre or on the weaker side of the GD and I just can't agree with that at all. I mean, ranking Ignatz above Hilda and Lysithea? That's sacrilege! But if I were to rank him any lower, that just wouldn't be honest and it wouldn't reflect my experience with Ignatz this run. I think he's held back from the upper echelons because he lacks enemy phase, but of the real ORKO nuke units (Sylvain, Lysithea) he was certainly the best. I could gush about his early game and how much Hit+20 contributed to his usability and how he was so great for chipping down enemies, or I could gush about his midgame where he was able to use strong gambits consistently and use rally speed to help my units out in some difficult chapters, or I could talk about his endgame where Hunter's Volley allowed him some absolutely insane damage output, coupled with a crit rate that more often than not hovered above 80%. He was simply a fantastic unit, beginning, middle, and end. 

5. Petra

https://imgur.com/TnAcqam

259 Battles, 132 Victories, MVP two times

Of course Petra was an incredible unit. I'd actually say that Petra, Leonie, and Felix are all pretty interchangeable in terms of how great they were. I'm ranking Petra the lowest of the three because I'd say she probably had the most speed bumps along the way, even if some of those were my doing. Petra of course was my fastest unit, and was an invaluable dodge tank. Plus, her speed meant she doubled nearly everything except for Assassins and Swordmasters, which she wouldn't attack anyways because of axebreaker. Her strength was also quite good this run. For a unit with only 40% strength growth, I really didn't struggle with her at all. I think I may have only given her one Rocky Burdock, but since I planted purple flowers nearly every week that's hardly an investment. 

I think the main thing holding Petra back on this run was mistakes that I personally made. I didn't give her the Brave Axe until the final chapter, and seeing the absolute havoc that she was able to wreak with that thing, I feel a weird sense of regret as if I should go back and play the last 10 chapters with Petra wielding the Brave Axe just so I can feel like I've really used her to her full potential. On top of that I can't help but feel as if I messed up her build. I gave her the standard skills I'd give most of my units: Axe Prowess, Death Blow, Darting Blow, and Alert Stance+. Her fifth skill was Axe Crit+10, which isn't a terrible skill or anything, but I'm not sure her build worked as intended. Petra has some very slight hit rate issues, and so I elected to give her the accuracy ring. I'm very glad I did - going from 78% hit to 88% hit is a very big deal, especially with double roll RNG. But this meant not giving her the critical ring. Plus, since so many of my units are focused on trying to ORKO enemies, I hardly ever made use of her personal skill, so it's not as if Petra had the high Crit build I intended for her. I think maybe a different skill in the fifth slot could have done more for her. Even without any training past S rank, she ended up ~200 WEXP away from S+. So maybe on Silver Snow Axefaire is more viable. 

4. Leonie

https://imgur.com/x2kLRAM

427 Battles, 210 Victories, MVP six times

I ranked Leonie here because I think I have a tendency to forget about Leonie or to underrate her.  I want to emphasize her consistency throughout the entire run. Just very solid throughout the whole run, and definitely at her most valuable before I had Felix and Petra around. I do admit I had a bit of a tendency to forget how good she was though. She might have shined a bit more had I given her the Blessed Bow instead of Ignatz, but it made more sense to me to keep it on the high crit unit. I have surprisingly little to say about Leonie, considering how good she was. I consistently felt like there was something holding both her and Claude back, and I spent a lot of the endgame trying to figure out if I was misusing them somehow. 

I'd really like to try her out as a Falcon Knight if I do Silver Snow.

3. Felix

https://imgur.com/ITjv864

230 Battles, 148 Victories, MVP one time

Now THIS is an incredible FE unit. I recruited him in Ch. 10 and I was a bit worried about his weapon ranks for a while, and I admittedly did have to give him some special attention during tutoring sessions for a couple of chapters to get him caught up, but every ounce of investment I gave him paid off tenfold. By the final chapter attacking with Felix would give some absolutely insane numbers like Dmg: 34 x 4, Hit: 85, Crit: 54. He just murdered everything... And on the off chance that he wasn't projected to do enough damage to fully one round an enemy, they'd usually just be one Crest of Fraldarius proc away from death. And that's not even mentioning the insane crit rate either. And if that's not good enough, Felix is also pretty great on enemy phase as well. He's super fast so he's not really in danger of much doubling him, and the extra def and res from the Aegis shield helps out too, as well as the proc. I wasn't always putting him on the front lines or anything - his charm is low so I had to be careful of that, plus it's just easier to dodge tank with Petra/Byleth/Claude - but having another unit around that you don't have to worry about is really great. I should also give full disclosure - I gave Felix the Shoes of the Wind. I was initially going to give them to Leonie since someone said that'd help her with Point Blank Volley, and I like that suggestion, but when I look at my team, every unit except Felix either had 3+ attack range, could fly, or had Mov+1 already. With 6 movement and only 1 attack range, I think Felix desperately needed the little bit extra to keep up. 

I do have to admit that with both Petra and Felix I have a weird sort of guilt that I maybe didn't use them to their fullest potential. I recruited Petra in Ch. 8 and Felix in Ch. 10, and so I spent a large portion of the game without them on my team. I was a lot more limited with what I could do with their weapon ranks and such, and so I question if maybe I should have recruited them earlier. At the same time though, their base stats were absolutely insane and we're still talking about two of the best five units in my army, so maybe I shouldn't have regrets. Additionally, the one upside of recruiting Felix so late was that he comes with Sword Prowess 3, which allowed him to be my one student capable of doing the Ultimate Sword Tournaments during the last three explore months. That really helped out a ton with having cash on hand for the final few chapters.

2. Claude

https://imgur.com/TETWfQn

593 Battles, 214 Victories,  MVP four times

Even at the end of the route, I still don't totally know what to think of Claude. Is he the worst lord of the three? No wait, is he the best lord of the three? Ashes and Dust is incredible and having a lord that flies is really nice, but he doesn't quite have the raw strength the other lords have. But he's super fast! He's a dodge tank! Encloser is so great for bullying units like swordmasters!

I really struggle to come up with a conclusion about Claude or write anything pithy about what he is like as a unit. Like Leonie I always had a hard time deciding how he ranks amongst my units. I always got the sense there was something holding both units back, though if I look at their stats, they are fantastic and I'm not able to pinpoint what that is. Both were incredibly consistent, and that's why I've valued each of them so highly here. Maybe in my mind I've overvalued the ability to do things like ORKO the falcon knights or the paladins the way that Sylvain and Ignatz are able to with their brave combat arts, and that units like Claude and Leonie that are just very consistent across the board feel underwhelming by comparison. I don't totally know

1. Byleth

https://imgur.com/MKqDxdE

641 Battles, 278 Victories, MVP seven times

And finally we get to Byleth herself, the absolute greatest unit I've used in Three Houses so far. Byleth's stats are just set up so well to go Falcon Knight. It's hard to even begin to describe what Byleth was capable of because the short answer and most appropriate answer is simply: everything. She dodged everything! With Wo Dao+ she'd have 60+ crit! She was super strong! She was super fast! With a brave sword she'd ORKO even the bulkiest enemies in the game! With Windsweep she wouldn't need to! She was simply an incredibly unit. Haar/10. Also she drank enough tea to qualify for whatever the Tea equivalent of a sommelier is. She's the g*ddamn queen of Fodlan and she absolutely deserves to be.

Alright that's it for this run and these units! I really loved this run a lot and I'm a bit sad to be done with it. Please comment if you have any suggestions for stuff I could have done differently or if you have better builds to suggest, etc. I learned a ton about this game from this most recent run. I think it's going to be hard to move on from this run and these units and to do SS. That being said - I'm feeling really burnt out on FE and Three Houses, so I think I'm going to take a break. More accurately, I think I'm burned out on these 100+ hour RPGs. I absolutely adore games like this and Persona 5 and such, but I just really can't tackle another one of these for a little while, especially since this year's going to have a bunch of these massive RPGs between P5R, FFVII, Cyberpunk, and Xenoblade. I need like a "palette cleanser" game - something fun and laidback but still with a bit of a structure to it - I keep replaying Katamari Damacy, but I feel like I need something a bit longer - maybe I'll finally get around to playing Super Mario Galaxy 2. Something of that ilk at least. Please feel free to rec me something if you have something that comes to mind. 

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  • 2 months later...

May be too late to jump into this topic, but I wanted to thank you for sharing your maddening run.  I am new to fire emblem.  Am finishing my second run through (ng+ hard) on BE.  Will do ng hard on BL next and then want to return to GD for a try at maddening.  I've learned so much more about this game from reading the thread. I really do not optimize adjutants or gambits because I don't think I realized all they can do until I read this thread (sad), which I can get away with at the difficulties I'm running, but that won't work on maddening. 

I did want to ask about this --

Quote

When I played CF and AM I had a hard time hitting any S+ ranks so I made major adjustments this time around to how I was tutoring and what I was doing with units’ goals and I’ve seen better results.

I feel like I am very weak at tutoring.  I'm kind of all over the map.  What changes did you make?

And I'm a bit like you - I play the heck out of one of these long games (last one was XCOM 2) and then hit a wall and have to go do something else for a bit.

Thanks again.

Edited by bluedevilblue
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Well done! I really enjoyed VW as well, and a lot of your comments about unit playability are really insightful. I've heard FalcoByleth hyped a lot before, but this gets me really excited to play with that build!

On 2/26/2020 at 10:29 AM, hdawgsizzle said:

It's a bit strange. When I used Hilda on BL Hard, I also had her fall off towards the end. I thought I had done enough to correct for my mistakes of the last run, but I still ran into major issues with her

I had the exact same issue with Hilda on VW, to the point where I was wondering what I was doing wrong, that she was performing nowhere near as well as the Internet claimed she did. I did run her as a GK in VW (obviously completely different role to your run, GK is a worse class and less optimal for Hilda), but I also played her as a Peg Knight in CS and a Wyvern in SS (the SS run was incomplete though), and my feedback is exactly the same - she was a brilliant tank in VW, accuracy ring + hit battalions (and occasionally smash/spike) just about kept her in the running for hitting things, but she fell off in the late game and I'm not sure what I could have done. Being on Peg Knight in CS saved her accuracy/avoid, enough to be worth losing Axefaire, and she got enough speed to double a lot of the time, so I will definitely run her on a flier in the future and see what happens (I've scrapped my SS run because I let Ashe die in Ch.15 and accidentally saved over it, this was before the joy of 25 save files).

On 2/26/2020 at 10:29 AM, hdawgsizzle said:

I think this playthrough has thoroughly convinced me that Lysithea stans either don't play Maddening or are charmed enough by her character to ignore her shortcomings by the time that they get around to playing Maddening

As someone who has used Lysithea on every playthrough of 3H and will continue to, I'm happy to admit that she's flawed (awful speed, charm is meh, god forbid she's unprotected when reinforcements turn up) but she's never not been a cannon for me. I actually made her dancer on VW (just cos I felt like it, as you can tell I wasn't optimising on my VW play through) and gave her a march ring, and she's still throttling most things. Although her heavy magic wasn't doubling the elites, I think I just got lucky with her mag cos she's been ORKOing armours and cavalry from start to finish on literally every playthrough.

On 2/26/2020 at 10:29 AM, hdawgsizzle said:

The award for the biggest surprise of the run has to go to Ignatz. So many people have said that he's mediocre or on the weaker side of the GD and I just can't agree with that at all.

Agreed, Ignatz is criminally underrated. On my NG+ chain he is the most qualified member of my army, and there is a lot to be said for someone who just about always hits, has good crit, physical and magical functionality as well as both rallies and seal abilities. I would say though that VW has no shortage of good crit units who can wipe out enemies, so I understand why he gets overlooked.

On 2/26/2020 at 10:29 AM, hdawgsizzle said:

(Claude) doesn't quite have the raw strength the other lords have.

I found Claude was critting so much it didn't matter. At all. Even on the endgame, elites were getting OHKO'd even though I was setting up for other units to have the kill. I accidentally finished the Edelgard chapter because of a Parthia crit. As a player who heavily favours player phase strategies, Claude was golden.

 

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