How does my GD Maddening NG+ plan look?

[haarhaarhaar]

38 minutes ago, paladin21 said:

During my playthroughs, Deadeye had been somewhat useful for me with both Bernardetta and Ashe. It would deal more damage than Curved shot at 3 range, and if needed, it could get greater reach. Since I used them as chippers before my main units would go in to finish the enemy off, I found its utility good enough to propose it. However, I always relied on Hit+20 and Bow Prowess for it to work, otherwise it's a terrible waste.

I really wish bows weren't punished this much on Maddening for extra range, though I do get why - either way, Deadeye tends to require linked attack boosts, gambit help, or some situational advantage to consistently hit beyond 3 spaces on Maddening.

Am incidentally wondering if I could fix Deadeye on Bernadetta in my upcoming BL run by having her master Valkyrie. Uncanny Blow would offset the initial hit penalty for 3 spaces and Hit +20 would offset the hit penalty increase from 3 spaces to 4 spaces. Which means that in theory, a Deadeye hit from 4 spaces shouldn't be innately lower than a normal 2-space attack. Add to that a high-hit battalion, Accuracy Ring and BP5, and I might potentially be able to hit from 5 spaces or even 6 as a Bow Knight? She still probably won't hit sword users, but maybe she has a chance against everything else.

37 minutes ago, paladin21 said:

Yeah, I suppose we have different approaches here, since I'd be using bows more often than you, but I'd give him a Levin+ for sure, like I do to every mixed character I get (like Ingrid or Manuela). However, reaching B in bows would make Yuri eligible for a Magic Bow/Magic Bow+ as well. Did you try using him that way? I think it would be useful for Wyverns at least. I used Mercedes with bows instead black magic in a run, and if she attacked, she would wreck havoc (she's way stronger magically anyway)

So in this run I actually had Hanneman specialise as a Magic Bow Sniper, and his performance was absolutely outstanding - see my thread on mixed builds for details. Even without Hunter's Volley Hanneman did great chip, and I'm sure Yuri could do the same (although of course his magic is worse than Hanneman's). However, unlike Hanneman, Yuri shouldn't tolerate an enemy phase with the avoidance/AS that Magic Bow gives him. Yuri has little problem with dodge-tanking Wyverns with swords anyway. And assuming all other things are equal, the Magic Bow+ will only outclass Levin Sword+ on Yuri when attacking Falcon Knights on player phase - I can understand the impulse to use them, but since Yuri tended to be in range of enemies already, leaving Magic Bow equipped on him is an active demerit for me compared to swords. But yeah, this is clearly just a difference in approach.

[samthedigital]

Quote

I agree that Impregnable Wall is a brilliant gambit for this, but getting overwhelmed happens a lot in Part I, especially with the early game and the first few paralogues you do.

I tend to save the difficult paralogues that can't be cheesed for later on in part 1, so I have not personally had this experience. I find that the normal chapter maps are tame by comparison; all of the usual tools have been enough to finish without needing many dedicated dodge tanks. I've used Ferdinand and Dimitri, but it takes a lot of time to make their dodge tanking reliable, and I still wouldn't be comfortable pulling in too many more enemies than I could with a unit that tanks an enemy or two.

Quote

Edelgard's paralogue or Petra's paralogue are good examples (in fairness Edelgard's paralogue is rough full stop). If you are ever attacked from multiple fronts (which happens at least sometimes on Maddening) then only having multiple Impregnable Wall users will save you. And offensive gambits don't solve everything, because some tough units will have high enough charm (or you'll have too low a charm stat) to reliably hit enemies. 

The Petra/Bernie paralogue is a map that spreads resources thin, but it is manageable without a dodge tank. Having a unit with high charm and/or accurucay boosting skills along with the 2x4 gambit helps a lot on that map. If I remember correctly the only tough spot comes after getting in range of the fake escape tile though, so most of the resources can be saved for that. I don't have a lot of experience with the Edelgard paralogue because it's a defeat boss paralogue, and naturally I would rather just cheese it to get the goodies and move on.

[paladin21]

6 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said:

Am incidentally wondering if I could fix Deadeye on Bernadetta in my upcoming BL run by having her master Valkyrie. Uncanny Blow would offset the initial hit penalty for 3 spaces and Hit +20 would offset the hit penalty increase from 3 spaces to 4 spaces. Which means that in theory, a Deadeye hit from 4 spaces shouldn't be innately lower than a normal 2-space attack. Add to that a high-hit battalion, Accuracy Ring and BP5, and I might potentially be able to hit from 5 spaces or even 6 as a Bow Knight? She still probably won't hit sword users, but maybe she has a chance against everything else.

Marianne's batallion grants hit+40 and damage+5 (physical and magical). I usually run it on Ashe and Bernie to fix the Deadeye art accuracy. I already thought of the Valkyrie mastery skill, but it's a big detour from her usual bow class path (B reason, B riding). It could be achieved for NG+, but not really viable for a regular NG.

Edited June 14, 2020 by paladin21
I wrote the wrong requirements (bolded). I still think, however that B reason is a big detour for her.

[haarhaarhaar]

3 hours ago, paladin21 said:

Marianne's batallion grants hit+40 and damage+5 (physical and magical). I usually run it on Ashe and Bernie to fix the Deadeye art accuracy. I already thought of the Valkyrie mastery skill, but it's a big detour from her usual bow class path (B reason, B riding). It could be achieved for NG+, but not really viable for a regular NG.

Yeah Marianne's battalion is great, but it isn't obvious that Ashe/Bernadetta should be the ones to get it - Deadeye just isn't good enough on its own to justify it (compared to, say, a non-flying axe user, a less accurate mage, or even a different archer). I would also note just from personal experience in my last run that Edmund Troops and Hit +20 still don't give Bernadetta enough of a chance at hitting sword users or fliers beyond 4 spaces away. By enough I mean that while she was at around 60-70 hit with a Killer Bow from 4 spaces against late-game Paladins (which is enough for me), she was only at around 40-50 against late-game Falcon Knights from 4 spaces, and the same against Swordmasters/Assassins (worse if terrain disadvantage). So Deadeye is still a bit too much of a gamble under those circumstances. Perhaps Edmund Troops, Uncanny Blow, Hit +20 and an Accuracy Ring (which together will give +100 to her base hit) are all needed to make Deadeye a consistent threat

For my purposes Valkyrie is completely fine because my next run is gonna be a sandbox run (NG+, and my NG+ chain has a ridiculous amount of renown). But while it's true that Reason is a detour, at most it would mean sacrificing a Bow rank overall. It'd definitely be possible for Bow Knight Bernadetta to run through even on NG, with a bit of advance planning around unlocking her hidden talent and training riding (you only need C Reason and B riding to get the opportunity to qualify into Valkyrie, and Bernadetta wants to get A+ Riding on a Bow Knight even on NG so will be training Riding anyway). Not an issue if you're thinking ahead, hopefully.

[Barren]

Would having both Bernie and Claude be a good idea to have on a GD maddening team? Because I know both of them learn Encloser at rank A bows. So maybe Barbarossa Claude and Bow Knight Bernie both rocking hit +20 and maybe accuracy ring using encloser could help make maddening easier somehow. Freezing two enemies in place seems to be better than one. I didn't consider Valkyrie Bernadetta until now. While it seems more possible on NG+, Uncanny Blow plus Hit +20 looks to be pretty much a surefire way to land high accurate hits from attacks and combat arts.

[samthedigital]

7 hours ago, Barren said:

Would having both Bernie and Claude be a good idea to have on a GD maddening team? Because I know both of them learn Encloser at rank A bows. So maybe Barbarossa Claude and Bow Knight Bernie both rocking hit +20 and maybe accuracy ring using encloser could help make maddening easier somehow. Freezing two enemies in place seems to be better than one. I didn't consider Valkyrie Bernadetta until now. While it seems more possible on NG+, Uncanny Blow plus Hit +20 looks to be pretty much a surefire way to land high accurate hits from attacks and combat arts.

If you're going to use Bernadetta you might want to try out Vengeance. It's one of her strongest skills; she can one shot quite a few enemies with it provided you keep her at low HP and out of range of enemies.

[Barren]

I'm considering a vengeance bernadetta myself on my Black Eagles/Church of Seiros run when I try it on maddening. I saw Mekkah's video on Bernie and he actually detailed on how to make the vengeance strategy work and even shared his set up using vantage and battalion wrath. Something of which I was considering for some other units on the squad as well. 

I was also experimenting around with Holy Knight Bernie on normal mode just to see how it would work. Rescue is nice on her with high move but seems impractical to bring on a serious team

[Shadow Mir]

43 minutes ago, Barren said:

I was also experimenting around with Holy Knight Bernie on normal mode just to see how it would work. Rescue is nice on her with high move but seems impractical to bring on a serious team

You ask me, it's impractical, period. Rescue only has Magic/4 for range, and Bernie's doomed to have suck for magic.

[Barren]

23 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

You ask me, it's impractical, period. Rescue only has Magic/4 for range, and Bernie's doomed to have suck for magic.

Yea that's what I figured. So she's really better as a Paladin or Bow Knight pending on what your team needs. Either killing bosses in one hit or freezing them in place

[samthedigital]

2 hours ago, Barren said:

Yea that's what I figured. So she's really better as a Paladin or Bow Knight pending on what your team needs. Either killing bosses in one hit or freezing them in place

She makes a good Falcon Knight too, but just about everyone makes a good flier. It really depends on what units you're willing to handicap in order to have access to some gambits and utility spells.

[Barren]

4 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

She makes a good Falcon Knight too, but just about everyone makes a good flier. It really depends on what units you're willing to handicap in order to have access to some gambits and utility spells.

The only thing about Falcon Knight Bernie is that you really need the blessing gambit in order for her to safely reach 1 HP and achieve max damage vengeance. At least with a guard adjutant she can survive follow up attacks which fliers can't equip. Though I guess the best alternative is for her to have a devil weapon (probably sword since she needs to get at least a D+ rank in them and she has a bane in swords). Defiant Avoid though at least gives her some longevity pending on her avoid.

[samthedigital]

Just now, Barren said:

The only thing about Falcon Knight Bernie is that you really need the blessing gambit in order for her to safely reach 1 HP and achieve max damage vengeance. At least with a guard adjutant she can survive follow up attacks which fliers can't equip. Though I guess the best alternative is for her to have a devil weapon (probably sword since she needs to get at least a D+ rank in them and she has a bane in swords). Defiant Avoid though at least gives her some longevity pending on her avoid.

In some maps dismounting and taking damage from terrain probably also works if you really need to hit 1HP.

[Barren]

2 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

In some maps dismounting and taking damage from terrain probably also works if you really need to hit 1HP.

That's a good point. Dismounting is useful especially against enemy archers and snipers since it neutralizes the flying weakness

[TriforceLegend]

So I'm coming up on level 20 with most of my team at this point (Marianne being the exception at ~25 due to healing -I'll be recruiting Mercedes once Marianne becomes a dancer). The difficulty has been pretty variable. Having access to battalions right away definitely made the early game very easy. I pseudo low-manned the first few months by utilizing the characters I knew were going to remain in my core team, assigning the house members that weren't (Lorenz, Hilda, Raph) as adjutants and then filling the remaining spots with recruits and only using them for battalion utility. So I had characters like Sylvain, Ingrid, and Constance providing impregnable walls, strides, etc but not interacting with enemies on the map. This helped me maximize experience gains early on.

Once I started recruiting my final team members things became a bit more difficult because some of the characters I was swapping in didn't have access to impregnable wall and/or stride and experience is spread more thinly. Now I've gotten most of the group trained up in authority and need to re-assess who has which battalions. I also haven't been equipping items like staves or shields. The difficulty may be ramping up enough now with the paralogues that it's worth taking a look at some of that stuff.

I've only completed two paralogues so far, Lorenz's and Sothis' -both of which I thought were fairly easy. I later read about the warp trick with Lorenz's mission, but I routed all enemies as I hadn't thought of warping (in fact I didn't actually have warp learned at that point). I attempted Balthus' and it felt damn near impossible so I'm going to wait until I have more of the group on mounts at level 20 so I can try to get my guys grouped up faster.

I've mostly stuck with the class progression I posted above with a few exceptions: (1) I put Lysethia in Valkyrie. I may actually keep her there as the extra movement, canto, and +1 range seem really nice. I know it's a trade-off with her maybe not being quite as powerful as if she were a Gremory, but I'm enjoying it so far so we'll see. (2) I also took -or am in the process of taking- Felix and Yuri through Brigand. (3) Since Leonie was a Pegasus Knight in my BE run, I took her through Brigand as well and just spent the 500 renown to give her the mastery abilities from PK.

I'm not sure what everyone's final skill set will be, but it seems that there's more than enough time to master several intermediate classes with how slow regular exp is gained.

The biggest benefit to NG+ so far (other than Battalions) was getting my professor level up early for the extra points. It's been great to be able to utilize the extra activity points for additional battles for leveling up class experience and for keeping everyone motivated for lessons. 

I'm enjoying the run so far, not regretting doing NG+ at all as I like skipping some of the grindy bits. I do sort of wish I'd had the guts to go with Classic as I'm playing as though deaths are permanent -just couldn't bring myself to actually make it so as I'd be pissed if a character I worked hard on died. I may even do my BL run on NG+ Maddening/Classic. I'm considering some sort of "theme" like all horse-mounted classes. Was considering doing an all Bow Knight run with the exception of a couple of healers (also horse-mounted). 

 

Edited June 20, 2020 by TriforceLegend

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, TriforceLegend said:

Was considering doing an all Bow Knight run with the exception of a couple of healers (also horse-mounted). 

 

Personally, I wouldn't feel the need to have my healers on horses - the mounted magic classes are rather underwhelming imho.

[TriforceLegend]

6 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Personally, I wouldn't feel the need to have my healers on horses - the mounted magic classes are rather underwhelming imho.

Yea it would be more for the fun of having everyone on horses. Just figured when I do my BL run rather than min/max I'd just do something different. I've been looking up some other ideas for meme/challenge runs. I want it to be something that's doable and won't make me want to bang my head against a wall because I made it too hard.

[Barren]

The only riding classes I feel are worth going for are dark knights and bow knights. Black/Bowfaire respectively and canto are good hit and run options for those classes and helps their mobility and allows them to inflict extra damage on top of that. Paladins while I acknowledge that Ferdinand and Sylvain brings out the best of these classes thanks to swift strikes and lancefaire, the speed drop could be the biggest issue here. But having 8 move is hard to turn down. Then there's Wyvern Lord which is harder if not impossible to turn down because fliers are great, unless you would rather have extra damage from lancefaire instead of axes.

[Shadow Mir]

11 hours ago, TriforceLegend said:

Yea it would be more for the fun of having everyone on horses. Just figured when I do my BL run rather than min/max I'd just do something different. I've been looking up some other ideas for meme/challenge runs. I want it to be something that's doable and won't make me want to bang my head against a wall because I made it too hard.

The thing is, most of the mounted classes are not that good; Bow Knight, Paladin and Valkyrie are about the only ones that are worth anything.

[Barren]

What about Dark Knights? I know that their movement/range compared to Valkyries are evened out. Dark Knights have 7 move Black/Dark Tomefaire and Valkyries have 6 move and Black/Dark Magic Range +1. I feel as though Valkyries are stepping stones to become a Dark Knight because you could combine Fiendish Blow + Uncanny Blow for maximum damage and hit. Couple that with Movement +1 and Black/Dark Magic Range +1 and better stat growths and you can hit something for high damage then run. 

Of course that combo is for females only so maybe characters like Annette or Marianne come to mind when being Dark Knights. Yeah the drop in speed sucks but it's only 5%. To me getting Reason to Rank S while it does take a long time I felt was worth it. Especially when you combine it with Thyrsus Staff. 

Dark Fliers though are lower requirements and has transmute which comes in handy at times and you can always go pegasus knight beforehand and get darting blow but you're limited to flying battalions which is my gripe with them. Other than the Nuvelle Flying Co. which boosts magic and hit, most other flying battalions focus more on the physical side of things.

[Shadow Mir]

20 hours ago, Barren said:

What about Dark Knights? I know that their movement/range compared to Valkyries are evened out. Dark Knights have 7 move Black/Dark Tomefaire and Valkyries have 6 move and Black/Dark Magic Range +1. I feel as though Valkyries are stepping stones to become a Dark Knight because you could combine Fiendish Blow + Uncanny Blow for maximum damage and hit. Couple that with Movement +1 and Black/Dark Magic Range +1 and better stat growths and you can hit something for high damage then run. 

Of course that combo is for females only so maybe characters like Annette or Marianne come to mind when being Dark Knights. Yeah the drop in speed sucks but it's only 5%. To me getting Reason to Rank S while it does take a long time I felt was worth it. Especially when you combine it with Thyrsus Staff. 

Dark Fliers though are lower requirements and has transmute which comes in handy at times and you can always go pegasus knight beforehand and get darting blow but you're limited to flying battalions which is my gripe with them. Other than the Nuvelle Flying Co. which boosts magic and hit, most other flying battalions focus more on the physical side of things.

Personally, I find Dark Knight underwhelming for all the effort needed to get into it. I mean, it's better than Holy Knight, but that's saying very little.

[Barren]

15 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Personally, I find Dark Knight underwhelming for all the effort needed to get into it. I mean, it's better than Holy Knight, but that's saying very little.

I can understand that. Riding does require a lot of investment for those who don't have a boon in it. The only exceptions I can think that can get into Dark Knight easily are Sylvain (provided you go for his budding talent) and Lorenz who can become a Dark Knight naturally. I personally don't think they are that bad but on some maps I can definitely agree that they would have a hard time getting around because of horses not being able to climb stairs really well for example.

Would Dark Flier be a better choice then? Considering that if you master Warlock first to get Bowbreaker then go to Dark Flier you can at least give yourself an extra layer of protection especially since you'll just be spamming magic anyways

[AC6]

By start of chapter 17, you want 5 movements per turn minimum. Dark knight is almost mandatory for male mage.

 

Dark flier is an option for female mage, just remember Dark flier does not have any ability bonus for using dark magic or white magic. Dark flier will work nicely for very fast female magic units or female tank magic units.