Magic Build for Byleth?

[Barren]

Hey guys, we all know that Byleth performs very well in physical base classes like Grappler, War Master, Falcon Knight, etc. Has anyone ever tried a mage Byleth or at least a magic based build for Byleth? I have dabbled in a part magic build for Byleth as EO with a Levin Sword, Even with their magic being considerably lower than their strength stat, Levin Sword still can rock enemies with low res even without Fiendish Blow or even magic +2. I remember using Macuil Evil Repelling Co. for the magic +7 and hit +30 and it works very nicely with Levin Sword and Swordfaire.

So I am wondering that if anyone has every tried a full on magic based Byleth? I was watching Zoran's playthrough and he was doing a magic based Byleth throughout his playthrough. He even showed off how useful Dark Mage's Heartseeker ability is or how useful Trickster's stealth ability can be very helpful at avoiding enemies entirely. That's where I got the idea to be asking this.

If a magic based Byleth has or hasn't worked for you, let's discuss why. Oh and I as a disclaimer I am prepared for this to be another derail of the topic.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

28 minutes ago, Barren said:

Hey guys, we all know that Byleth performs very well in physical base classes like Grappler, War Master, Falcon Knight, etc. Has anyone ever tried a mage Byleth or at least a magic based build for Byleth? I have dabbled in a part magic build for Byleth as EO with a Levin Sword, Even with their magic being considerably lower than their strength stat, Levin Sword still can rock enemies with low res even without Fiendish Blow or even magic +2. I remember using Macuil Evil Repelling Co. for the magic +7 and hit +30 and it works very nicely with Levin Sword and Swordfaire.

So I am wondering that if anyone has every tried a full on magic based Byleth? I was watching Zoran's playthrough and he was doing a magic based Byleth throughout his playthrough. He even showed off how useful Dark Mage's Heartseeker ability is or how useful Trickster's stealth ability can be very helpful at avoiding enemies entirely. That's where I got the idea to be asking this.

If a magic based Byleth has or hasn't worked for you, let's discuss why. Oh and I as a disclaimer I am prepared for this to be another derail of the topic.

I made Teach a Gremory on my SS Maddening NG+++ playthrough. If I recall, I "bought back" Sacred Power and Darting Blow from previous playthroughs. She did... fine. Pretty unexceptional. Thyrsus or Caduceus could help elevate her rather basic offensive spell list. Her high Strength was nice at times, both to offset spell weight, and to keep dealing solid damage with the Sword of the Creator. Her Charm was solid as ever, making her great with either physical or magical gambits. Her Magic never climbed much above average, but she could still one-round any low-Res foes that she was able to double.

[lenticular]

I've dabbled with magic builds for Byleth, and by and large, they're fine but unremarkable. You can get some decent use out of them, especially on lower difficulty levels, but when I've played about with them, they mostly leave me feeling that I wish I had a physical Byleth instead.

The two main things that Byleth has going as a magic user are White Magic Avoid +20 and high strength score, both of which are nice enough but not great. High strength score is nice to counteract the weight of heavy tomes, and White Magic Avoid +20 has niche uses for dodgetank style purposes but is prevented from being actually good by the underwhelmingness of offensive white magic.

[SumG]

Byleth's magic stat is not going to be anywhere near what units that are intended to be mages are going to be able to do on a per hit basis.  While Byleth should have a higher speed than most other mages, and reduced Action Speed penalties due to a higher strength than most mages, it is likely not going to be enough to enable follow-up attacks on anything except normal.  Byleth also has a much worse spell list than most intended mages: Reason list is all 1-2 range generic attack spells and there's nothing particularly useful in Faith beyond Heal.

If you try to make Byleth a magic unit, you'll just end up with a bad mage.  it might be fine on Normal, but you're liable to be disappointed with it on any higher difficulty.  The best way to take advantage of Byleth's respectable magic stat is through using magic weapons (Levin Sword, Bolt Axe, etc.), though that is not required to make the unit good.

[Barren]

It is rather disappointing that a typical customizable avatar should in theory be good at anything you want them to be like Robin from awakening. With Byleth having 13 base strength as their starting stat and 6 base magic, this is hard to get behind the idea of a mage Byleth from the onset.

Plus their spell kit isn’t the best as you guys pointed out other than maybe nosferatu tanking. I can still see this being pulled off on hard mode. It’s still astonishing that on maddening someone dared to go down the magical path. But yea. I do kind of wish that Byleth’s starting base stats could better suggest they can do whatever role you want rather than what’s obviously the optimal way to go. I mean I suppose you still could but Byleth would rather stay in any physical class.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I did an all magic run of Maddening and Byleth was definitely towards the lower end of the team in terms of usefulness (which, granted, was mostly natural mages, but also included folks like Edelgard and Sylvain, who both very clearly outclassed Byleth). She mostly had the duty of using her strength stat to shoot down pegasus knights with a steel bow+, which doesn't speak that highly to her magical prowess. Their magic stat, reason list, and faith list are all underwhelming. The magic stat is ultimately less bad than it looks because of class minimums and their post-timeskip personal but it's still not great. I really wish their spell list had had some unique teach-appropriate utility like Rescue.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

3 hours ago, Barren said:

It is rather disappointing that a typical customizable avatar should in theory be good at anything you want them to be like Robin from awakening. With Byleth having 13 base strength as their starting stat and 6 base magic, this is hard to get behind the idea of a mage Byleth from the onset.

Ironically, there's a case for Teach being the least customizable character in the game. For one, they're the only real user of the Sword-of-the-Creator, which pushes the player into a "sword build" for them. Second, the teaching system leaves them with a harder time building skill ranks than their students - especially in movement types, and especially in the earlygame. I find them to be "plain, but passable" in anything other than a Sword-oriented build.

3 hours ago, Barren said:

Plus their spell kit isn’t the best as you guys pointed out other than maybe nosferatu tanking. I can still see this being pulled off on hard mode. It’s still astonishing that on maddening someone dared to go down the magical path. But yea. I do kind of wish that Byleth’s starting base stats could better suggest they can do whatever role you want rather than what’s obviously the optimal way to go. I mean I suppose you still could but Byleth would rather stay in any physical class.

I do kind of like them in Enlightened One - moreso for another healer than any offensive magic support, though. They could do the same in Mortal Savant, but raising their Reason up is... a chore. Honestly, the best "Mage Teacher" is probably just the one with a Levin Sword+ and the Blutgang in a Swordfaire class. Or else have them set a bad example in Trickster or War Ascetic.

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I did an all magic run of Maddening and Byleth was definitely towards the lower end of the team in terms of usefulness (which, granted, was mostly natural mages, but also included folks like Edelgard and Sylvain, who both very clearly outclassed Byleth). She mostly had the duty of using her strength stat to shoot down pegasus knights with a steel bow+, which doesn't speak that highly to her magical prowess. Their magic stat, reason list, and faith list are all underwhelming. The magic stat is ultimately less bad than it looks because of class minimums and their post-timeskip personal but it's still not great. I really wish their spell list had had some unique teach-appropriate utility like Rescue.

I remember a proposal, that they could've allowed the player to affect their avatar's spell list based on the questions Sothis asks when the game begins. Say, one answer gives an all-Fire list, while another gives one with Dark magic. And similar for Faith: one could be healing-oriented, another mainly offensive, and so on.

Also, would've really been nice to have some measure of control over their growth rates and boons/banes, but... oh well.

[LJ_Reflet]

I've done a full mage build for M!Byleth (so no Gremory/Dark Flier/Valkyrie), going down the Monk>Mage>Warlock>Dark Knight path. Overall, he was pretty unimpressive as his magic stat was relatively low, but somehow his strength always seemed to be on par with his magic for some reason.

I agree with several of the above comments stating that magic-Byleth is overall underwhelming, but the build does have a few perks. I tried this build for Blue Lions, and since Annette is the only designated mage (minus Mercedes, who's geared for healing) having a second magic user was really helpful. Mercedes actually has the same exact Reason spell list as Byleth, but she kinda wins over them due to her having a superior Faith spell list. White Magic Avoid +20 can be useful, but is more often situational over anything. I found little use for it and much rather would have used the skill slot for other more useful skills.

Low move until Dark Knight was kind of annoying too, and once I got to Dark Knight, the halved spell-uses was just as much of a burden as 4-move of the previous classes. Levin Sword became of more use than actually spells.

It's not that I wouldn't recommend this build, but don't expect Byleth to be great or anything LOL. But if you would like to try it out just cause, it'll be a nice change of pace from the usual physical builds. I definitely recommend this build the most for the Blue Lions since they only really have Annette (who's also kind of underwhelming herself LOL). I would see Byleth getting overshadowed by the mages of the Black Eagles, and Lysithea for the Golden Deer (maybe even Lorenz? Cause he actually has magic Combat Arts too).

Edited October 19, 2021 by LJ_Tenma

[vanguard333]

I haven't really done any pure magic builds for Byleth, but my preferred setup for Byleth that I like using a lot is a hybrid build where I mainly train him in swords, faith and authority, I keep him as an Enlightened One, and I give him a rapier+ and a levin sword+.

Since Byleth learns the Grounder and Bane of Monsters combat arts, that plus the rapier+ means he can deal effective damage against any unit that can take effective damage. Him having a levin sword+ gives him 1-3 range and a magic attack (as does aura, but that's only 1-2 range and doesn't utilize Swordfaire). Byleth's white magic spells are very unremarkable: heal, nosferatu, recover and aura. But, since Enlightened One Byleth can dodge frequently (and because I like giving him the Shield of Seiros and Weight -3), he can be a front line unit that can also heal, which is very useful.

I did try training him in reason after training everything else, but I never ended up using his reason spells; he gets far more mileage out of healing and using a levin sword+.

[SnowFire]

I've mentioned it a bit before here, but Mage Byleth is...  workable, but requires effort for what is a sidegrade at best.  That said, it's certainly not "bad" or anything.  I did Bishop->Gremory mostly to optimize the uncommon White Magic Avo +20 skill.  The main thing I'll authentically hype about Mageleth is that they'll be very good in Bishop at Reunion at Dawn.  And that's worth real praise, since it's one of the hardest maps in the game!  Stick Bishop Byleth in a forest with Nosferatu, and they can survive the raging thief hordes quite well as the rest of the team whittles down stragglers - tons of evade, Byleth is bulky even when they do take a hit.  Lategame, Byleth eventually got White Magic Range+1 thanks to the Faith boon, and that enables some nice shenanigans too (and lets a better mage use Thrysus / Caduceus).

My main complaint is that training Byleth requires a toooooon of Faculty Training, so prepare for lots of thrilling gameplay of running around to all the teachers every monastery phase (at least if done on a normal file - probably more feasible in NG+ of course).  EO Byleth just cares about hitting A Swords for Windsweep as the only remotely high-investment thing you'd care about, but Mageleth proooobably wants you to hit both A+ Reason and A+ Faith, at least if you're doing the WM Avoid build, and Reason will just be a slog getting there.  Not a lot of skill slots as usual - Faith Prowess, Reason Prowess, WM Avo+20, Fiendish Blow (absolutely required due to Byleth's suspicious Magic stat), and that's room for just 1 free slot (Mag +2?  A Range increaser lategame?  Sword/Bow Prowess?).  So it goes.

Edited November 11, 2021 by SnowFire

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, SnowFire said:

EO Byleth just cares about hitting A Swords for Windsweep as the only remotely high-investment thing you'd care about, but Mageleth proooobably wants you to hit both A+ Reason and A+ Faith, at least if you're doing the WM Avoid build, and Reason will just be a slog getting there.

Would you go that hard into Reason, necessarily? It's nice to have higher-damage spells than Nosferatu, but Reason spells won't trigger White Magic Avoid for the enemy phase. Moreover, by C Reason, Teach already has 3 of their 4 potential spells on that front. Ragnarok will dish out more damage than Aura, sure, but how essential that is can vary with the intent of the build. If I'm trying to construct an enemy-phase dodgetank, possibly providing limited support on player-phase, I could see doing something like a Bishop with {Faith Prowess, White Magic Avoid +20, Magic +2, Speed +2, Alert Stance}. Maybe subbing in Sacred Power for Mag/Spd +2 if you mastered Enlightened One and want the support. I could certainly see favoring Gremory on female Teach, but even that one is certifiable by C+ Reason.

[SnowFire]

I didn't *always* dodgetank with Mageleth that playthrough- plenty of times I just wanted to kill something, and Black Magic can score some kills that Nos (weak Mt + bad base Magic) and Aura (hard to double,  limited charges) won't.  I'll grant that stopping at B Reason or so wouldn't be THAT bad (if doing a Holy Knight build, say?), but Byleth does appreciate Ragnarok to compensate for the low mag stat.

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

I think, in @Zoran’s playthrough of the Golden Deer on YouTube, he went with a more magic-focused build. Not fully Magic, as there was still a focus on swords and stuff, but he made it work.