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Flying classes kinda suck on Maddening. Change my mind.


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10 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Just as a clarification, I think you've gotten some bad info here.  For whatever arcane reason (probably unintentional), unrecruited students level with enemy class growths of their "favored" class.  However, these are NOT necessarily "better".  Most of the time it's a wash, and for a few unfortunate characters they actually get worse stats than if they were leveled normally (Enemy Brigands actually lose Resistance compared to PC Brigands - sorry Caspar!).  There's only a few characters for which this is a notable stratagem - enemy Pegasus Knights & Cavaliers are significantly tankier than PC versions, so Ingrid / Leonie / Ferdinand / Sylvain all get improved tankiness if you wait.  That said, if you're recruiting Sylvain out of house, you're usually doing it in C2 anyway with F-Byleth, so it's really only relevant for the first three.  For everyone else, recruiting units sooner rather than later is usually better, although for the Ashen Wolves, waiting for C3 or so for Balthus / Hapi / Constance will get them better skill ranks than recruiting them in Commoner.

Also, if you wait as late as possible (C12 on most routes, C11 on Crimson Flower) you won't really have time to do Paralogues - most of them are in White Clouds as a warning.

Well I mean as late as possible including paralogues. So I will look up when each character's paralogue is and recruit them the month beforehand. Also not necessarily to maximize stats vs raising them myself but I plan to recruit everyone and use only a few of them so I want everyone to be somewhat combat viable without having to grind them up at all. Since having a level 5 unit in a paralogue will no be good.

Edited by Quickpawmaud
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2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I strongly second SnowFire's comments there. To add on to what he said, some extra thoughts:

  • characters who go through Fighter or Monk (which is anyone whose primary weapon is anything except swords or lances) benefit from having their ranks in axes/bows/brawling (for fighters) or reason/faith (for monks) raised to D, which is actually a notable boon in the earlygame. This makes it easier for e.g. Ignatz/Bernadetta to qualify for Brigand, gives Raphael/Hilda/Balthus/Caspar/etc. immediate access to Curved Shot, and means all your mages will have access to both Heal and their first offensive spell immediately. It's better to recruit these characters in chapter 4-5, if you plan to use them.
  • If you do want to benefit from better growths (the biggest example is Ingrid, because enemy!pegasus is silly), then you start getting those in Chapter 6. I don't recommend waiting much longer, though, as every chapter that goes by is a chapter that they're not working towards class masteries like Death Blow and Darting Blow, and a chapter you can't tutor them. While their stats do continue to improve marginally from there, it's not worth it. e.g. if you wait 5 more chapters for Ingrid, she'll have about +1 str/HP and +2 def/res on an Ingrid who went through player class growths (depending on the exact classes you chose). That's way too little to justify what you're missing out on.
  • Shamir and Catherine are a special case where, due to a quirk of how class minimums work, their stats are almost the same regardless of their join chapter, but their level gets higher the later you get them (this is bad!). Recruit both as early as you can if you plan to use them (6 for Shamir, 4-5 for Catherine).
  • Student characters who are recruited very late for the purpose of stats are by and large just inferior to the likes of Alois, Seteth, and Jeritza, since the students will only have two ranks above E+ (the ones they auto-train), whereas those characters have several because they're actually designed to join later (e.g. Alois, the worst of the three in this regard, has C authority / C armour / A axe / B brawling, while a student recruited then will have just two ranks around high C+ or low B, and most have E authority).

I realize I made all these comments without considering NG+. It's possible that NG+ may make late recruitment more palatable, though as a warning, I believe you can only buy skills and ranks you've achieved on that particular character in a previous playthrough. I've never done NG+ myself, so someone might want to clarify.

I plan to just pay renown to unlock Death Blow on characters rather than going into Brigand. As well as any other skills so them training their default skills is totally fine for me. I can get about 50k renown in a playthrough pretty easily and it is only like 500 for a skill. I can also pay renown to get A authority on characters I want to use or anything else I want since I pregrinded everyone in previous playthroughs since I went Silver Snow (first playthrough so Black Eagles may no be properly grinded definitely don't have Hit+20 unlocked on people), Azure Moon, Verdant Wind getting everyones skills up and mastering all the classes I want.

Edited by Quickpawmaud
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Yeah, if you're recruiting a unit solely so you can play their paralogue then plan on benching them forever afterward, then recruiting them right before you want to do the paralogue is good.  Although for one character at least even that is a bit shady!  I have never seen a more pathetic Shamir than when I waited until C10/11 or so to recruit her so that she can be used at a reasonable level in her & Alois's paralogue once Alois is recruited - it might be non-ironically better to C6 recruit her anyway just so she can level up more on that chapter, she gets insanely little from extra levels.

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44 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

Yeah, if you're recruiting a unit solely so you can play their paralogue then plan on benching them forever afterward, then recruiting them right before you want to do the paralogue is good.  Although for one character at least even that is a bit shady!  I have never seen a more pathetic Shamir than when I waited until C10/11 or so to recruit her so that she can be used at a reasonable level in her & Alois's paralogue once Alois is recruited - it might be non-ironically better to C6 recruit her anyway just so she can level up more on that chapter, she gets insanely little from extra levels.

I will probably recruit Shamir ASAP just because she can instantly become my best unit since she starts in Sniper. In New Game+ I think Shamir, Cathrine, Alois, and Seteth are better than in New Game where they are already really good since you can just get all the skills you need right away. Pretty sure I can only use Shamir in Crimson Flower though. All the other characters start in worse classes with worse growths.

Edited by Quickpawmaud
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59 minutes ago, Quickpawmaud said:

Pretty sure I can only use Shamir in Crimson Flower though.

Alois is recruitable before that point too.

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20 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Alois is recruitable before that point too.

I thought you just straight up could not recruit any of the knights besides Shamir if you were Black Eagles until part 2 when they auto join on Church route.

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1 hour ago, Quickpawmaud said:

I thought you just straight up could not recruit any of the knights besides Shamir if you were Black Eagles until part 2 when they auto join on Church route.

Fortunately the game still allows you two church members. Shamir obviously is a good choice for an archer replacement or at least if you need hunter’s volley asap. Getting her at chapter 6 is easy as long as you’re level 12 and your support rank with her is at C rank so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Alois is a good axe/brawler replacement if you happen to lose caspar for example (not sure if you’re doing classic mode or not). One-Two Punch is a good combat art for him and his bulk even on maddening is respectable. Getting him at chapter 11 is a disadvantage for him but considering what he brings to the table he can actually still contribute to your team. Plus he gets Battalion Wrath and Rally Strength so that is nice as well.

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On 8/28/2021 at 7:44 PM, Barren said:

Fortunately the game still allows you two church members. Shamir obviously is a good choice for an archer replacement or at least if you need hunter’s volley asap. Getting her at chapter 6 is easy as long as you’re level 12 and your support rank with her is at C rank so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Alois is a good axe/brawler replacement if you happen to lose caspar for example (not sure if you’re doing classic mode or not). One-Two Punch is a good combat art for him and his bulk even on maddening is respectable. Getting him at chapter 11 is a disadvantage for him but considering what he brings to the table he can actually still contribute to your team. Plus he gets Battalion Wrath and Rally Strength so that is nice as well.

I didn’t think Alois would betray the church. I probably won’t play Classic because of all the BS ambushes and Pass enemies. Alois has Vantage, Wrath, Death Blow, and Hit+20 unlocked though so I just need the renown for it.

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1 hour ago, Smokie1437 said:

I did feel that Wyvern Lords struggle against the many archers, but Falcon Knights do fine since they dodge everything anyway. Overall flying is a big advantage so they are still useful even despite the bow weakness.

It is not just the bow weakness but that in Maddening you rarely double and fliers tend to have bad strength. Infantry classes don’t have a weakness, have combat arts to double, get crit bonuses, and with Stride can still move a lot. With all the enemies you don’t want to be in range of more than one at a time anyway so the movement isn’t as useful. I still want at least one flier on my team but I see a lot of people saying to use only fliers. I use like 8 infantry 1 cav and 1 flier. Although I would use more cav if I had the ranks in riding to upgrade my mages. Cav have bad speed though so I only used Sylvain as a Paladin and Sniper is way better than Bow Knight.

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9 minutes ago, Quickpawmaud said:

It is not just the bow weakness but that in Maddening you rarely double and fliers tend to have bad strength. Infantry classes don’t have a weakness, have combat arts to double, get crit bonuses, and with Stride can still move a lot. With all the enemies you don’t want to be in range of more than one at a time anyway so the movement isn’t as useful. I still want at least one flier on my team but I see a lot of people saying to use only fliers. I use like 8 infantry 1 cav and 1 flier. Although I would use more cav if I had the ranks in riding to upgrade my mages. Cav have bad speed though so I only used Sylvain as a Paladin and Sniper is way better than Bow Knight.

That has been my experience as well in regards to Wyvern Lords, their power isn't enough to make up for the lack of double attack and iirc i often barely missed out on a oneshot with them. But I still think Falcon Knight is ridiculous, I could hurl my Ingrid into enemy territory and she'd just 100% dodge and kill everything with double attacks. I did feed her all my STR buffs though to be fair, but if you used someone like Leonie who was better growths she'd probably do well even without strong feeding.

Swordmasters imo are very strong, but I never really felt like more than 1 was necessary because they are better defensively (Vantage) than offensively.

All the horse units are terrible though, especially the mages.

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In terms of raw power, Sniper is better than Bow Knight because Hunter’s Volley is an incredibly strong combat art to delete enemies on player phase and you can get anyone to be a good sniper.

Bow Knights don’t have the best growths (in fact, their growths are nearly non existent), but with 8 move and canto and in some instances Encloser or Point Blank Volley allows for more effective hit and runs.

It honestly depends on the map you’re deploying your archer on. You can even switch in and out of bow knight or sniper pending on what you need.

As far as Wyvern Lords not being able to avoid being doubled, sometimes that happens because compared to Falcon Knights they are slower with a slightly worse speed growth. Even then enemy Falcon Knights, Swordmasters and Assassins will generally double you no matter what because they are too fast.

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9 hours ago, Quickpawmaud said:

It is not just the bow weakness but that in Maddening you rarely double and fliers tend to have bad strength. Infantry classes don’t have a weakness, have combat arts to double, get crit bonuses, and with Stride can still move a lot. With all the enemies you don’t want to be in range of more than one at a time anyway so the movement isn’t as useful. I still want at least one flier on my team but I see a lot of people saying to use only fliers. I use like 8 infantry 1 cav and 1 flier. Although I would use more cav if I had the ranks in riding to upgrade my mages. Cav have bad speed though so I only used Sylvain as a Paladin and Sniper is way better than Bow Knight.

The bow weakness is basically not an issue, due to dismount. Even a flier who dismounts frequently has significantly more mobility than infantry. Dismount is an incredibly powerful tool and if you're not using it then fliers will seem worse. It's also a nice option for cavalry, since they gain speed when dismounted (and can avoid horseslayer weakness, for all that enemies hardly ever use those).

Wyvern Lord has the second highest strength mod (and the highest growth, for what little that's worth) of any class, and the highest out of classes available to women.

The only doubling combat art unique to infantry is Hunter's Volley, which admittedly is great, and you'll never see me say a bad word about Sniper (unlike most other physical infantry classes). And the brawling ones kinda, though you can dismount to use them - I've certainly gotten good results out of flying Catherine who can still dismount to Nimble Combo or quad things.

Fliers benefit immensely from Stride as well. In fact, the thing you described where you don't want (most) units to be in range of many enemies is why they're so good, with the extra movement they can canto back to where only a manageable number of units can target them, if necessary. If you send in a swordmaster or war master to hit something instead they just have to take all that punishment, so there are fewer places you can use them and/or you need to do more to support them (Reposition, Rescue, Impregnable Wall, etc.). Speaking of Reposition, fliers make incredible use of that since they can reposition someone to safety and then easily get out of trouble themselves with canto. They can also reposition people across walls and cliffs.

I don't think many people would recommend using only fliers. The battalion situation just doesn't support that - many units will either have to settle for a mediocre battalion or even none at all, and you'll miss out on a bunch of effective gambits. All fliers is amusing and shockingly workable despite the battalion situation from all accounts, but it's definitely not optimum.

For the last comment, Bow Knight is actually the fastest of the three classes you listed. For all that I wouldn't make Sylvain a Bow Knight (or Sniper) anyway, since he has a bow bane and a good lance combat art. However, it's a very useful class because of its high mobility, canto, and threat range for linked attacks (a bow knight with a longbow can threaten anything within 5 squares, giving everyone s/he supports 10 hit and 20 gambit hit, kind of like a mini siege tome). Characters with high offensive stats (like Felix and Claude), Point-Blank Volley, or Vengeance can make particularly good use of it.

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13 hours ago, Quickpawmaud said:

It is not just the bow weakness but that in Maddening you rarely double and fliers tend to have bad strength. Infantry classes don’t have a weakness, have combat arts to double, get crit bonuses, and with Stride can still move a lot. With all the enemies you don’t want to be in range of more than one at a time anyway so the movement isn’t as useful. I still want at least one flier on my team but I see a lot of people saying to use only fliers. I use like 8 infantry 1 cav and 1 flier. Although I would use more cav if I had the ranks in riding to upgrade my mages. Cav have bad speed though so I only used Sylvain as a Paladin and Sniper is way better than Bow Knight.

The issue with using only fliers is that flying units can only use flying battalions, and there are only so many premium flying battalions to go around. Therefore, most people wouldn't recommend it. Also, personally, I don't consider putting mages on a horse to be worth the investment, UNLESS they're male (and even then, Holy Knight is best avoided like the plague).

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6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

The issue with using only fliers is that flying units can only use flying battalions, and there are only so many premium flying battalions to go around. Therefore, most people wouldn't recommend it. Also, personally, I don't consider putting mages on a horse to be worth the investment, UNLESS they're male (and even then, Holy Knight is best avoided like the plague).

I was trying to make Annette either a Dark Knight or Valkyrie but I wasn’t able to do it before the end of the game. She just stayed as Warlock.

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1 hour ago, Quickpawmaud said:

I was trying to make Annette either a Dark Knight or Valkyrie but I wasn’t able to do it before the end of the game. She just stayed as Warlock.

If I was going for either of these classes I tend to make it their goals from the very beginning. Of course while everyone has their own way on dealing with maddening mode, I tend to maximize my grinding with auxiliary battles (at least as many as this modes allows me, infinite tutor glitch not withstanding).

That’s just me personally. It’s what helped me get through maddening mode for both blue lions and golden deer so far.

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On 9/1/2021 at 10:06 AM, Quickpawmaud said:

It is not just the bow weakness but that in Maddening you rarely double and fliers tend to have bad strength. 

Not to pile on, but this is just..  really, really wrong.  The stat charts don't lie, check them out:

https://serenesforest.net/three-houses/classes/growth-rates/

The class-adjusted growth rates don't really matter that much, but to the extent they do, Wyvern Rider / Wyvern Lord / Falcon Knight all have perfectly normal Str boost rates (10 or 15).  Pegasus Knight doesn't, but it's also an Intermediate tier class where most other Intermediate classes don't sport Str boosts either.

What you might be thinking of is that Ingrid, the cast's most default Peg Knight, has weak Str growth, which is fair.  But it's definitely not true of flying classes in general - stick your Ferdinands / Hildas / Seteths / etc. on Wyverns, and they'll hit just as hard as normal.  And stick Annette as a Wyvern Lord or the like and you won't even care about her Strength that much (which will be brought up by class mins anyway to something vaguely respectable), you'll just Lightning Axe everything using her Magic stat.

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Claude's flying bow offense + dodge-tanking  survivability is bonkers. 

Ingrid, Leonie, and Petra are consistent top performers in the Seraph Knight line.

Wyvern Lord Edelgard is an underused variant of her standard armor builds, but lowkey her best class and arguably the most broken unit in the game. (amyr to begin with is basically psuedo-galeforce on the armor builds, but being able to use it in conjunction with flying movement + canto is where the real silliness starts)

Being able to dismount and use terrain bonuses makes it easier than its ever been to play around snipers (although you eventually get to a point where you can just dodge-tank them in the air with alert stance + evasion ring, so w/e) 
___

There has never been a Fire Emblem where fliers are bad.

And they're damn near the best they've ever been in Three Houses. 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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8 hours ago, Quickpawmaud said:

I was trying to make Annette either a Dark Knight or Valkyrie but I wasn’t able to do it before the end of the game. She just stayed as Warlock.

I don't consider Dark Knight worth it - compared to Gremory, you only get 2 extra damage, which imho is not nearly enough to justify the extra investment.

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5 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I don't consider Dark Knight worth it - compared to Gremory, you only get 2 extra damage, which imho is not nearly enough to justify the extra investment.

Politely, I'll disagree in the case of someone like Annette. You don't just get 2 extra damage, but 2 extra move as well, particularly valuable since Annette is a short-range mage in a lot of ways and thus needs move to reach her targets - her healing and buffing effects are range 1 (i.e. no Physic), her spells are all range 2 (i.e. no Thoron), Lightning Axe/Dust are range 1.. And it's not actually that much more investment. If we're willing to settle for 50% certification rate, then Annette needs C+ riding, C lances, which is 720 weapon exp on top of her reason/authority investments. This isn't much of an ask to have by Level 30. Gremory's Spell uses x2 also isn't very useul for Annette, as she favours spells which have plentiful uses already, unlike units such as Lysithea or Dorothea.

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38 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Politely, I'll disagree in the case of someone like Annette. You don't just get 2 extra damage, but 2 extra move as well, particularly valuable since Annette is a short-range mage in a lot of ways and thus needs move to reach her targets - her healing and buffing effects are range 1 (i.e. no Physic), her spells are all range 2 (i.e. no Thoron), Lightning Axe/Dust are range 1.. And it's not actually that much more investment. If we're willing to settle for 50% certification rate, then Annette needs C+ riding, C lances, which is 720 weapon exp on top of her reason/authority investments. This isn't much of an ask to have by Level 30. Gremory's Spell uses x2 also isn't very useul for Annette, as she favours spells which have plentiful uses already, unlike units such as Lysithea or Dorothea.

Personally, I'm just not convinced - for all that investment, I'd expect better than 2 extra might, and 2 movement that might not always be available with how prevalent cavalry-impeding terrain is... as I see it, if I want to put a unit in a cavalry class, it must have something that actually makes it worth it, and far as I'm concerned, Dark Knight is too much investment for too little profit. So sorry, but I much prefer convenience here.

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22 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Personally, I'm just not convinced - for all that investment, I'd expect better than 2 extra might, and 2 movement that might not always be available with how prevalent cavalry-impeding terrain is... as I see it, if I want to put a unit in a cavalry class, it must have something that actually makes it worth it, and far as I'm concerned, Dark Knight is too much investment for too little profit. So sorry, but I much prefer convenience here.

Dark Knight is the same investment as Gremory for Annette. Either class choice she can reach without any actual individual training, just set goals to Reason/Riding in the background.

The two movement is incredibly relevant for her to secure kills with her 1 range Lightning Axe or support the team with the Dance battalion. Even on rough terrain she can still dismount and have 6 move.

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Plus if Dark Knight doesn’t tickle your fancy, there is Dark Flier. Dark Flier won’t boost Annette’s magic as much as a Gremory or Dark Knight would, but it does give a boost to her speed growth and flight as well.
 

Yes the only flying magic battalion is only accessible when you reach authority rank B, but consider this: Annette has a boon in authority plus she can pull off being a rally bot. And it doesn’t require as much investment as a dark knight or even Gremory would.

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On 9/2/2021 at 7:41 PM, Objeckts said:

Dark Knight is the same investment as Gremory for Annette. Either class choice she can reach without any actual individual training, just set goals to Reason/Riding in the background.

The two movement is incredibly relevant for her to secure kills with her 1 range Lightning Axe or support the team with the Dance battalion. Even on rough terrain she can still dismount and have 6 move.

It still sounds like a massive rip-off, given that if I'm building someone as a mage, they are going to get investment in both reason and faith, and given how much of a boon high rank battalions are, authority is also a priority for investment. Adding lances and riding to that forces me to spread myself thin for marginal gain at best. If I have a choice between having a very good chance of being able to access my desired master class the moment I hit level 30 and a much lesser chance of being able to get into my desired class when I hit 30 because it takes much more investment, I'll take the greater chance, thank you very much. 

On 9/2/2021 at 7:56 PM, Barren said:

Plus if Dark Knight doesn’t tickle your fancy, there is Dark Flier. Dark Flier won’t boost Annette’s magic as much as a Gremory or Dark Knight would, but it does give a boost to her speed growth and flight as well.
 

Yes the only flying magic battalion is only accessible when you reach authority rank B, but consider this: Annette has a boon in authority plus she can pull off being a rally bot. And it doesn’t require as much investment as a dark knight or even Gremory would.

Now this, I'm more receptive of. It only needs heavy investment in 4 skills instead of 5.

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