Hero Class

[haarhaarhaar]

2 hours ago, DaveCozy said:

Actually, it's chapter 14 where I find the highest reward for Jeritza as Hero. Half the enemies in that chapter have axes (the other half bows) and a handful of them are Wyvern Riders and Wyvern Lords. The reinforcements are also Wyverns, and they're relentless. They fly straight towards the city where your grounded units are moving towards as well.

This is where the setup and planning comes into play, and why I understand some folks not liking all the pre-amp that comes with it. But with all the work, you can make dealing with those wyverns pretty easy at the end of it. It's just one possible solution, but it's a viable one. That's what I've been getting at.

Let me demonstrate:

Jeritza as Hero with Axebreaker, Sword prof, Defensive Tactics, Mastermind and B. Wrath is what I usually run for abilities at that point of the game. The crit boosts respectively come from B. Wrath (+50), critical ring(+5), Fraldarius Soldiers (+20 max level, I recruit Felix late and cheese his paralogue tbh) and a forged Wo Dao+ (+40) with a forged Killer Edge (+35) as backup. Aside having good hit rate since we know there's a large amount of enemies wielding axes, he also has 115 crit rate (110 with the latter). Taking one hit from an enemy is enough to activate vantage and that's all he needs - Jeritza has 27 speed at base as Hero, Warriors and Snipers do not double him. You don't even need Retribution because almost none of the axe enemies have 2-range. The Wyvern Lords with 21 luck drop that to 94 displayed crit... the risk you're taking is very small here to not crit. Worth noting; Nader has 15 luck only in Maddening, so he gets 100% critted, guaranteed. This build makes him a non-issue.

Black Sand steel is all you need to maintain the above weapons, which is infinite to buy from the east merchant in the monastery and you get a ton of gold in this game thanks to fishing. The rest of the bow enemies can be dealt with other units too, and in fact you don't even need Jeritza to hog all the experience either if you don't want to. You could just let him take on one or two Wyverns to minimize getting overwhelmed, and let the rest of the other enemies that approach be dealt with other units.

Just because you build a unit to function like a crit block doesn't mean you have to use them to kill everything. In fact, that's actually pretty hard to build because enemy breaker skills and weapons are much more varied. Battalion Wrath works for more specialized, but still relevant cases like what I described above. That's just one e.g. that is fresh off my head, since it's the route I literally am doing right now on Maddening.

And yeah, admittedly, a lot of prep work goes into something like described above. Low-investment abilities doesn't mean no skill or forethought is involved either. I'm just demonstrating how it all comes together to show how it can be a viable option. In particular before Falcon Knights and Wyvern Lord certifications are possible to help make avo-tanking more reliable with avo+10, because your units are not likely at level 30 on Maddening at chapter 14 either since EXP gain is nerfed.

I'm actually past chapter 15 and I've already mastered Hero with Jeritza and ditched the class. I swapped him to Death Knight and gave him darting blow to be more player phase focused 😛 again, Hero and B. Wrath for that matter are not something I stick with till the end, just tools that are useful for a part of the game.

Interesting! Thanks for doing the numbers as well. The level of set-up you've described here isn't anywhere near ridiculous - in fact, I'd say its relative ease here is a selling point (maybe some people don't recruit Felix on a BE run, but I normally do so that isn't an issue for me, and everything else there, including D+ Axes, because Jeritza still wants Death Blow IMO, is very achievable). Nader is also a fairly serious threat, where there aren't that many ways to deal with him - bow flier(s) +Stride, or baiting with a dodge-tank/Petra/someone with Impregnable Wall up are the two methods I use, because I never attempt to pass through the ships. 

I quite like this as a build, and I probably undervalued the possibility of this because I don't play Enemy Phase tactics in general. I'm still not totally convinced that I'd choose it over Death Knight here, though. Hero has Swordfaire (although would it get kills that a critical build DK won't on this map?) and of course Vantage gives him a life on Enemy Phase that he wouldn't otherwise have. However, the extra range of DK makes capturing Derdriu before reinforcements arrive that much easier, netting you the stat boosters, and puts you that much closer to A+ Riding (if you don't grind, you don't actually have much time to get it, even with Mastermind). There's not much in it though, and the Hero build is definitely worth thinking about!

[DaveCozy]

21 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said:

Interesting! Thanks for doing the numbers as well. The level of set-up you've described here isn't anywhere near ridiculous - in fact, I'd say its relative ease here is a selling point (maybe some people don't recruit Felix on a BE run, but I normally do so that isn't an issue for me, and everything else there, including D+ Axes, because Jeritza still wants Death Blow IMO, is very achievable). Nader is also a fairly serious threat, where there aren't that many ways to deal with him - bow flier(s) +Stride, or baiting with a dodge-tank/Petra/someone with Impregnable Wall up are the two methods I use, because I never attempt to pass through the ships. 

I quite like this as a build, and I probably undervalued the possibility of this because I don't play Enemy Phase tactics in general. I'm still not totally convinced that I'd choose it over Death Knight here, though. Hero has Swordfaire (although would it get kills that a critical build DK won't on this map?) and of course Vantage gives him a life on Enemy Phase that he wouldn't otherwise have. However, the extra range of DK makes capturing Derdriu before reinforcements arrive that much easier, netting you the stat boosters, and puts you that much closer to A+ Riding (if you don't grind, you don't actually have much time to get it, even with Mastermind). There's not much in it though, and the Hero build is definitely worth thinking about!

thanks, it's moreso the setup that is a learning curve. Resources aren't actually expended much.

Just to explain a few things: the selling point of Hero is Vantage, not Swordfaire necessarily. I choose Sword Prowess and Axebreaker for two reasons: Wo Dao+ has the highest crit rate of any weapon in the game, and a sword+axebreaker is necessary to get good hit rates on the wyvern lords. Vantage is what makes the build reliable. You could also run Death Knight (or Wyvern Rider) but you likely won't have Vantage either. I'd be wary of trying to bait and crit Wyverns at that point - they're very fast, and even though Axebreaker helps, they still have around 50ish displayed hit (to my recollection) which is an iffy dodge. That's why I stick with Hero for Vantage to hit and kill first.

I don't go through the ships either, I stick to the straight path through the city. This is what the map looks like when the ships come:

The Sniper in the bottom right of the city is where I put Hero Jeritza, since the Wyverns from the ship and their spam of reinforcements fly straight towards that spot and sit just out of reach in the water before they get close. A handful of them will target him if he's the only unit in range and the rest of the reinforcements will fly close to him because he'll be the closest unit. So he doesn't have to really move from that spot much until you've cleared out enough enemies to safely start approaching Claude and Nader.

You'd think the 5 move on Hero would be a constant issue, but it really isn't as bad since there's enough ways to play around it. Stride in turn 1, take care of Lysethia's/Gremory commander's group first with a handful of units and a gambit to assist, set up my low HP units (Jeritza and Bernadetta) and send Edelgard on a Wyvern to get near the enemies guarding the gates. Then turn 2 is to position all my units (Jeritza included) within the city and handle the ship enemies that flew close + get ready for their reinforcements - including the bow knights that are hot on my tail from the bottom right ship using the other units that didn't get strided - and start killing the enemies guarding the gates with Edelgard. This way I simultaneously take care of both sets of reinforcements before turn 4 ends, and don't give the city reinforcements any chance to spawn.

Once all enemies in the city are taken care of, you can move Jeritza near the group of War Masters and Warriors and in Nader's range near his ship; just stay out of the nearby Sniper's range. For that you use something like Warp or a flier with Reposition; note the top wall above the bottom right sniper in the city is only one tile. And again, you can just choose to have Jeritza bait a few of the axe enemies, and have your other units going around the buildings through the straight path kill the rest if you want to share the EXP.

EDIT: if you don't feel like mastering Hero, you can also go with Dex+4 instead of Mastermind for perfect Enemy Phase crit rate on the Wyvern Lord enemies too.

Edited May 5, 2022 by DaveCozy

[haarhaarhaar]

1 hour ago, DaveCozy said:

Just to explain a few things: the selling point of Hero is Vantage, not Swordfaire necessarily. I choose Sword Prowess and Axebreaker for two reasons: Wo Dao+ has the highest crit rate of any weapon in the game, and a sword+axebreaker is necessary to get good hit rates on the wyvern lords. Vantage is what makes the build reliable. You could also run Death Knight (or Wyvern Rider) but you likely won't have Vantage either. I'd be wary of trying to bait and crit Wyverns at that point - they're very fast, and even though Axebreaker helps, they still have around 50ish displayed hit (to my recollection) which is an iffy dodge. That's why I stick with Hero for Vantage to hit and kill first.

What I meant before was that you can still run swords on Death Knight, it's just that because Hero has Swordfaire, it's a better fit for swords than Death Knight. I agree with having Jeritza run swords on this map (unless you have him primarily use gauntlets, which is viable too), and Death Knight can still run all the other skills apart from Vantage, so you still have available a sword crit build that will be good enough to kill wyverns on Player Phase at least. Building Jeritza for Enemy Phase is fine, but it will take a while for him to get to a position where he can bait Nader, and I've never been that worried about baiting the other Wyverns - at least, there are plenty more tools for that.

1 hour ago, DaveCozy said:

The Sniper in the bottom right of the city is where I put Hero Jeritza, since the Wyverns from the ship and their spam of reinforcements fly straight towards that spot and sit just out of reach in the water before they get close. A handful of them will target him if he's the only unit in range and the rest of the reinforcements will fly close to him because he'll be the closest unit. So he doesn't have to really move from that spot much until you've cleared out enough enemies to safely start approaching Claude and Nader.

You'd think the 5 move on Hero would be a constant issue, but it really isn't as bad since there's enough ways to play around it. Stride in turn 1, take care of Lysethia's/Gremory commander's group first with a handful of units and a gambit to assist, set up my low HP units (Jeritza and Bernadetta) and send Edelgard on a Wyvern to get near the enemies guarding the gates. Then turn 2 is to position all my units (Jeritza included) within the city and handle the ship enemies that flew close + get ready for their reinforcements - including the bow knights that are hot on my tail from the bottom right ship using the other units that didn't get strided - and start killing the enemies guarding the gates with Edelgard. This way I simultaneously take care of both sets of reinforcements before turn 4 ends, and don't give the city reinforcements any chance to spawn.

Once all enemies in the city are taken care of, you can move Jeritza near the group of War Masters and Warriors and in Nader's range near his ship; just stay out of the nearby Sniper's range. For that you use something like Warp or a flier with Reposition; note the top wall above the bottom right sniper in the city is only one tile. And again, you can just choose to have Jeritza bait a few of the axe enemies, and have your other units going around the buildings through the straight path kill the rest if you want to share the EXP.

EDIT: if you don't feel like mastering Hero, you can also go with Dex+4 instead of Mastermind for perfect Enemy Phase crit rate on the Wyvern Lord enemies too.

Yeah, so with the above I was trying to say that I don't bother clearing out many of the dragons around Nader (they're limitless, and like you say, they're tough enough to be able to cause issues). Most efficient is to Stride one or two fliers (ideally carrying bows, or maybe a Dark Flier if you have DLC) and have them beat Nader when it's convenient. When I get my positioning right, I beat Claude and Nader (and finish the map) on the same turn. You can clear them out if you want - I did the first time I played this map - but this method is just as powerful, while getting a lower turn count. 

When I play this level, I otherwise do very similar things to you, but the extra movement/Canto still matters (in your case, with that positioning in Turn 2, or for making sure you can position units to beat Hilda safely). It's entirely reasonable to leave Jeritza behind in the city if you want to, but after you deal with the first couple waves of reinforcements you don't have to - you can be in position to beat the map at that point, so enemy baiting isn't particularly important. Higher-Mv Jeritza allows for more flexibility in what he deals with (he can run down the Bow Knights once they get to the city, deal with the Warriors at the other city entrance alongside your main group, and/or kill the final city guard). To me, that flexibility is more valuable than the benefit Vantage gives to Jeritza's EP, as I'm not expecting anyone to have a significant EP on this map. Which, I guess, boils down in part to a play style preference - but I do still think Death Knight has the edge.

[DaveCozy]

2 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said:

Death Knight can still run all the other skills apart from Vantage, so you still have available a sword crit build that will be good enough to kill wyverns on Player Phase at least

Note that Battalion Wrath and Wrath only work on enemy phase, not player phase. You don't get +50 crit if you engage enemies, only if they engage you. You need defiant crit to reach 100 or more crit on player phase and that requires Wyvern Lord mastery, which is realistically not happening chapter 14 in any route.

Hence why I go Vantage + B. Wrath for this chapter. Just as my preferred solution anyway. Definitely not the only one out there, just the one I prefer for dealing with the Wyvern Lord reinforcements and Nader. The latter who otherwise becomes untouchable if his defiant avoid activates and it's a struggle at that point to do much.

Edited May 5, 2022 by DaveCozy

[haarhaarhaar]

25 minutes ago, DaveCozy said:

Note that Battalion Wrath and Wrath only work on enemy phase, not player phase. You don't get +50 crit if you engage enemies, only if they engage you. You need defiant crit to reach 100 or more crit on player phase and that requires Wyvern Lord mastery, which is realistically not happening chapter 14 in any route.

Fair point, but since Jeritza doubles a lot of people on this map, and many of them are low-hit axe users, I think the Player Phase crit build is more than serviceable without Battalion Wrath. Wrath isn't even viable for Jeritza at this point (reaching B Axes and Warrior mastery in 4-5 weeks is ridiculous, unless you're grinding).

I suppose you can guarantee doubling too with Killer Knuckles, although I wasn't thinking about that when I commented before, and it clashes with the benefit of being mounted.

[Barren]

What I actually did with Jeritza one time was getting him to War Master to learn Quick Ripsote. It was obviously effective because he had a boon in brawling and combining mastermind with a knowledge gem during a auxiliary battle meant that he was going to shoot up from a C+ rank in brawling all the way to A in one battle. He was facing an enemy fortress knight that I forced him to break his silver axe on since I also gave Jeritza a battalion that offered 9 protection. Had two healers around too. 
 

This was effective into making the generic Fortress Knight target only Jeritza because he had a pair of rusted gauntlets equipped. 
 

I did try a Defiant Strength set on Balthus during my Crimson Flower run as a War Master with Vantage and Hit +20. It got the job done against generic units and monsters with their barriers down but I didn’t get too much mileage off of him because I got to actually go for it on the final two maps. Plus I didn’t nab Brawl Avoid +20 like I wished I did because I didn’t think that far ahead with him at the time until later. But I did see him gain a +14 strength thanks in part to his King of Grappling ability.

I did finally try Brawl Avoid +20, Quick Riposte, Battalion Wrath on Alois for Silver Snow and he was surprisingly effective with it considering that I didn’t train him to get hit +20. He had over 45 strength as a level 40 War Master and had about I think 24 or 26 dex so his hit rate was a bit shaky. I had to patch it up with Goneril Valkyries but he was good in this role.