Just finish SS NG Maddening, share my MAD build

[RaIsMyPet]

Just finished NG SS Maddening. Here to share my team and some thoughts. Mild spoilers I guess. So don't read if you want to avoid them.

About the run:

all recruit, almost all paralogues, and no-skip at all; Kill Every Last One of Them.

About grinding:

Out of Death/Darting blows, Hit+20 and QR, if a unit needs N, I grind N-1 of them. No broken weapon "glitch", nor boss on healing tile abuse though.

About "strategy":

I already knew Maddening is pretty easy from my VW NG+ run, so I basically try to see if my brainless "strategy" in that run can work in NG, and it turned out splendidly. I clearly Had Too Much Fun ...

Not really a strategy though. The most important thing of this game is clearly neither Player Phase or Enemy Phase, but Monastery Phase. When you get MP down, both PP and EP are so breakable.

My "strategy" is to get A+ Professor level as fast as possible, and aggressively grow pale-blue flowers every exploration and dump them to Petra. Starting Ch4, the only enemy she couldn't double was Ch4 DK. By timeskip she had near 50 AS already and 85 AS by final map. By mid game I set her up for Battalion Wrath to ensure her always crits. Bring in WM Felix for monster boss kill.

Petra eventually had 140 avoid without any buff (150 with evasion ring, and 180 with AS+), and doesn't fall off damage-wise because of BW.

Team members (ordered by usefulness I guess):

Petra (WL with swords, with sword avo+20, early-mid-game PP, mid-late game EP)

I want to sell her BW build since it's so good and not many people seem to talk about it. I think she's actually one-tier better than similar units (Ferdie, Ingrid, Leonie) because Ferdie, Ingrid, Leonie have no BW, so no hope for consistently kill end-game enemies on EP. Nuking one enemy with brave art on PP is nice, but nowhere near broken as criting 10 enemies on EP, and vanilla Wrath needs setup every map and blessing for security, not to mention warrior is a subpar class to be in.

Sure in this run I gave her extreme favoritism, but BW did completely patch up the common problem for dodge tanks, which is they don't reliably kill on EP and kind of falling off late game. Basically with investment you can turn Petra into a variant of the Dimitri BV+BW build, and she also flies. Even if I kept her an Axe Wyvern and didn't do this "speed-dump", judging from Ferdie's performance on EP, I don't think Petra will have any problem killing with Killer Axe+, and keep in mind Sword Lv5 + SwordAvo+20 has the same avoidance as Axe Lv5 when facing Falcon Knights, while Assassins don't have axe breaker, and Swordmasters/Heroes are too low in mobility to be any real threat.

You can do this for Claude, Hilda, and Seteth as well, but males don't start breaking difficulty until level 20 (not to mention no Darting blow early game and Seteth's availability), and Hilda's weak early game, hit rate issue, and Authority bane make her less desirable than Petra.

Combining these characters you get a complete cheesy solution to maddening: Petra for CF/SS, Dimitri for AM, Hilda for VW. Among these Petra is the only one universally usable, but you still have to consider Ch13 though.

 

Felix (WM, boss killer)

His early game is good, but nowhere near the level as girl flyers. However, this is compensated by his immense kill power late game. Hundreds and hundreds of damage in one go is essential for those 9-tile super bosses. I'm start to think WM Felix maybe the true biggest nuke all things considered. He's also pretty bulky with Aegis shield + QR.

 

FERDINAND VON AEGIR (WL, Swift Strikes + dodge tank)

SS is nice, and late-game he could dodge very well, especially enemy swordies. If only he has BW to kill those guys. I use him on PP much more for this reason.

 

M!Byleth (test subject)

I even made him dark mage en route to get poison strike to test his viability as a support unit as EO. Because I'm curious. But EO is just so underwhelming and I changed him to WM instead. His base strength really carries him despite lackluster speed growth. But he's not as good as Felix as the latter quads a lot, and bulkier in general.

 

Lysithea (Gremory, effective damage + warp utility)

Best magic unit hands down, but definitely overrated for "one-shotting". I like her combination of low maintenance, high damage mid-game, plethora of effective damage, and warp utility. I don't warp skip maps, so I can't put her S-tier, but still solid A.

 

Bernie (BK, Encloser, can break monster armor solo)

My poor Bernie gets extremely STR and SPD screwed. Even then, Encloser alone makes her worth using. She's the only one capable of breaking monster armors solo, and completely shutting down them anytime, so that you can take on several monsters without relying too much on gambits. I don't need much such "field control" when most enemies were humanoids, as Petra will just kill 90% of them in 3 turns, but late game her utility to shut down monsters really helped to keep pace fast.

 

Seteth (WL, Swift Strikes)

Significantly less customization time really hurts him to reach higher level, but out-of-box wyvern and fast access to SS makes him a very solid unit. Not as good as Ferdie since he doesn't dodge that much, but he has some bulk. Very good unit and I like his character.

 

Linhardt (Bishop, main healer, warp, restore)

Generally underrated imo. Another warp unit makes Lysithea much better because she can't warp herself, and restore saves you Divine Pulse in case of enemy gambit. Excalibur can one-shot enemy flyers mid-game, although not game-changing, a nice bonus nonetheless. I also like his personality.

 

Dorothea (Gremory, Meteor support, secondary healer)

Good unit early-mid game, but fell off late game. Mid-game one-shotting snipers from 10 tiles away is very good. However, she suffers from no-effective-damage syndrome, much like Lorenz. Meteor-induced gambit boost and early game rally charm is also very good to have. Why people shit on her magic growth though? It's not like Lysithea can one-shot enemies without effective damage.

 

C(aspar) tier

Caspar (WM, well, he's usable I guess, not great even with QR tho)

I mean I tried to carry him along to see what happens. Spoiler: not much. I don't even need him for Ch13 as I already made Petra so broken. I can see if RNG smiles at him he could be super good, but his low base just really hurt in this run.

 

Plus-two members

Flayn (Bishop, rescue, fortify)

She's much better than Caspar despite I only used her in final two chapters and she's 15 levels lower than Caspar. Rescue alone makes her very good.

 

Manuela (Bishop, warp, I only used her in her paralogue and final map)

I mean, just another warp user, but unlike Flayn with naturally high MAG to use her rescue well, Manuela's warp range is way too small when under-leveled.

Some key points in progress

Ch4 DK kill: Petra baits, double heal from Linhardt and Dorothea, Petra chips again, miscellaneous damage (1~2) from gambits, Ferdie finish with steel lance + knightkneeler.

Ch13: wait on safe tiles until Petra arrives, park Petra in the center of enemies, others picking off one or two enemies if Petra is surrounded by gambits and stay alive for like 2 turns, then pretty much done. Seteth's high charm, Dorothea's magic damage, and Caspar being gauntlet user make survival very easy.

Final big-ass boss (pun intended): Byleth, Caspar, Felix, Petra, Ferdie, Seteth can all survive one blow. You can place them in such a way that Rhea can only hit one at most. Bring in Lysithea later to support Felix's gambit (I played too casually so mages run out of gambits prematurely). Three WMs critting, two SS's, and brave weapon from Petra brought health bar down very quickly. The best final boss for me, however with one flaw still: Rhea doesn't self-heal so even if I really want to use Petra to take her down in 40 turns with barriers up, I could.

Some paralogues that may or may not be hard from what I heard

Lorenz (no skipping): Petra being able to take on the right flank alone really helped. She doubles enemy pegasi so she could kill them really fast. This makes a huge difference for other team members so I have enough breath space and firepower to bring down foot soldiers fairly easily. I'm aware you can skip this map fast, but why the rush?

Felix (no skipping): I think things can work out if you progress slowly, because my friend beat this with a more regular team and slow progress. But I just don't trust RNG for green units. Stride, Petra flies off to the far bottom-left corner and get rid of the bulk of those enemies in 2 turns. Other green units are easy to protect.

Hilda (I did this post-timeskip): left part: Petra takes on front, then upper left group, being the strongest groups of enemies, while Seteth defending lower left corner, being relatively easy. Right part: Dorothea nuking one snipers lower right turn one with meteor, and Ferdie with march ring kill those upper-right wyverns in 2 turns.

Marianne: give Marianne Jeralt's Mercenaries so she could dodge turn 1 in forest. Bring her to the north fortress and safe. Route enemies clockwise. The right side 3-wolf reinforcement can be problematic, but Petra kept them busy relatively far away until my team can kill other monsters.

Linhardt+Leonie: Super easy actually since no enemies on this map have battalions. So I just use Petra in front and Felix at back. Throw in guard adjutant for weak units like Bernie or mages for extra safety.

Petra+Bernie: I messed up with the timing of Hubert arrival so I Divine Pulsed to adjust my formation. Caspar punched Hubie in the face. Good for him!

Afterthoughts

Three houses is just too customizable to be breakable. I wish they had thrown in more gambits for enemies so this Dodge+BW cheese won't work that splendidly. And AS=Base Avoid needs to be changed. Obscene speed basically makes a unit invincible, as long as they have OK strength.

 

[LoneStar]

85 AS on Petra...yesh

When I used her I just got vanilla Vantage and used Killer Axe+ with BW, even then her hit was a little shaky at times, by the last few maps her high avoid and Alert Stance+ was enough to cheese. Yeah dodge tanking in this game is pretty broken it should at least be base avoid = Speed / 2.

[eclipse]

Next time, try a no-grind run.  Because "grinding" and "breakable" do not belong in the same sentence.

[RaIsMyPet]

I understand my run is not impressive or anything, as I started getting bored at Ch5 or something, and I did it anyway to see if end-game would be any different.

On the other hand, I don't understand why simply growing seeds every time counts as grinding. I didn't stop normal progress like chipping enemy all day or heal spam or do excessive aux battle to raise level or weapon rank or anything. Class mastery are limited to a few units who needs multiple, and Petra for example didn't even use death/darting blow majority of the game. Sure I can refrain from doing that, like my Felix had no deathblow for a long time, but I never felt the game was that close. My team averaged at lv 40-ish, and some stronger units simply don't care about extra 5 levels anyways.

Yes in this way the game is breakable. I actually watched Mangs and Chaz LP, and their awful team planning almost liker they never used monastery and don't know how the game works, but they still beat the game. An "unbreakable" puzzle/strategy/rpg game should be (almost?) unbreakable with simply doing the same thing every time, like real world business or scientific research for instance.

Edit: For starters, when they make a sandbox strategy game, they should make sure AS and Avoid aren't correlated. The way to balance speedy character in any rpg game is either lower offense or lower defense or both, and in this game, it seems to be lower defense primarily, and they failed b/c base Avo=AS. Making, say, Avo=Dex might have been much better, because you can basically make one stat broken as hell in this game, but likely not TWO stats at once (unless you make solo run I guess?)

In Re Killer Axe+ and favoritism: I didn't test the hit rate of axe with Hit+20 and AxeLv5 and Cichol Wyvern Co and lance breaker, but I feel sword is still the better weapon for her, because her vanilla damage only falls off late-game, by which time you got BW. Definitely Hit+20 is much more important than death/darting. I kept Knowledge gem on her all time before timeskip, and she got AS+ at around Ch10 or 11 so pretty early. Sword Avo+20 makes her reliably dodge pretimeskip, and you can always use forests. Aside from Petra's speed stat, all others about my team is completely normal, and I could basically infer how Petra would have been from Ferdie's performance. I understand her "brokenness" isn't really her being a broken unit, but from my extreme favoritism, but it's the natural resource you obtain from normal progress. I can choose to spread resource evenly, and plant different seeds, or choose to dump on one stat of one unit to make him/her broken. Early game you only need a handful of carrots to ensure doubling pegasi with Darting blow, which makes a big difference because you always have to respect provoked flyers even if they are in low HP; and late game even if you don't double and stopped planting carrots and don't one-round Falcos, she is usually far away to ensure those provoked flyers don't threaten your team, in that case two-rounding is good enough, albeit slower. In fact, my strength-blessed Ferdie (roughly equivalent to a normal Petra with weaker weapon and crit, damage-wise) did this far-away two-rounding several times no problem.

Edited February 26, 2020 by RaIsMyPet