Hero Class

[RaIsMyPet]

52 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I mean, in my statement I said I clearly don't think enemy clumping is a problem, because clumps of injured enemies are the easiest thing to take out in this game. You can either pick them off if you have a lot of hands available (even weaker attacks like Curved Shot and long-distance basic spells may do), or drop a gambit on their heads and counter a bunch of them to death the next enemy phase.

As for the infinite War Master reinforcements, I pretty much always keep a unit or even two to deal with them anyway (e.g. a Sniper with a backup mage/healer should the Sniper fail to crit). Maybe this is a flaw in how I build the rest of my team, but I usually have far fewer than 12 units able to safely engage the AM final boss (33 AS + significant crit), so it's not a big deal to have a unit tied up there long-term.

I’m not sure a paladin, hero or WM with 2/3 HP left can be dealt with a curve shot or basic spell. The point is you still need to juggle your hands to deal with them and it by itself shows that BW is significant enough to be a worthy upgrade.

Edit: about AM final boss, a lot of units indeed can’t engage safely, but they can provide stride/drawback/repo/etc to help some units who can engage one round but cannot stay in range.

43 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

By that logic, Turtling is the best strategy. Suppose I have two units: one with a 100% chance of surviving against a given enemy, and one with a 95% chance. From a pure reliability standpoint, I should only draw out one enemy at a time. But by drawing out two, I can finish the map in shorter order.

Unless stated otherwise, I'm assuming that efficiency is one of the metrics by which the quality of play is assessed. It's possible to compare strategies in a "turncount-neutral" context, sure, but it's not my immediate assumption. 

The point is to get hit until you activate Defiant Avoid, then go to town.

Interesting technique, sounds like it could be fun. A link bonus from Dedue is always welcome. Still, I'd prefer having both Hit +20 and a relevant Prowess. Were you able to get this setup by the timeskip? Again, it sounds like it would demand a lot of tutoring. 

For your DefAvoid point: that’s why I recommend a sword avo combo so that no setup whatsoever is needed. Truly invincible and independent unit with basically no setup.

Edited April 12, 2022 by RaIsMyPet
add a point about AM final boss

[Barren]

57 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Interesting technique, sounds like it could be fun. A link bonus from Dedue is always welcome. Still, I'd prefer having both Hit +20 and a relevant Prowess. Were you able to get this setup by the timeskip? Again, it sounds like it would demand a lot of tutoring. 

I did do the rusted weapon exploit with the auxiliary battle admittedly in early part 1 and to some extent part 2 to get some of these weapon ranks high enough. Tutoring Dedue in riding in particular took longer because he’s not great with riding so it took until around chapter 8 I want to say before he was able to jump into cavalier. Some sauna usage for Dedue and to a small extent Dimitri was also in order so yes a good amount of work had to be done.

The chapters I was chose to do the paralogue battles since they throw a lot at you I had to be sure that my turns were deliberate while also aiming to win was a pretty delicate process.

[Bylift]

On 4/10/2022 at 6:44 PM, 5PointGordin said:

EDIT: Actually, Swordmaster Dimitri seems like a really cool option the more I think about it. Innate Sword Critical +10, + Swords higher accuracy makes him more reliable vs , rapier is a crit weapon that is effective against stuff like Cavs so he'll still KO them w/o a crit, and Astra might make his player phase a bit better, though that's more of a bonus. Dimitri's speed as a Paladin was a bit of a sticking point for me since he gets doubled by everything, but IDK if Swordmaster's speed bonus + additional growth rate will be enough to fix this issue.

This build works great with almost anyone. I've used Ferdinand and Yuri as swordmaster avoid/crit tanks and both of them were great (edge to Yuri because his high charm is better vs. gambits). Wo Dao+ is awesome but I still prefer Rapier+ for weapon effectiveness vs armor and cavs, and durability.

I think the problem with giving Sword Avo +20 to Dimitri, or anyone else, is that you probably won't be dancing with him, and dancer is very powerful on the AM final boss for helping wiggle people around and out of Hegemon Edelgard's range. I tend to make my dancer out of a unit that has fallen behind in XP and training so that they can remain relevant.

Consider using Dimitri as a brawler/warmaster instead and get Brawl Avo +20 from War Monk. It works just as well, and with quick riposte and Killer Knuckles+ you will get similar results, and won't have to worry about any breaker abilities. Quick Riposte also solves the problem you mention with Dimitri getting doubled.

[Shadow Mir]

6 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Your charm point shows you indeed never tested it yourself. Even with Petra’s mediocre charm, with dancer’s +5 charm she constantly out-charms most enemy by a large margin, especially when she kills a lot she’s naturally several levels higher than most units to further compensate. charm is not a problem once a unit has at least medium level charm growth.

Also, if you really thoroughly used dodge tanks like me, you would know that so many enemies with battalions can be baited without them gambit: like a sniper with 1-range gambit, or dark bishop with Death, or bow knights. Also, sometimes it’s desirable to deliberately let enemy have 10 hit instead of 0 so they would attack you normally, but 10 hit is 2% true hit. You are rarely in the must-risk-gambit situation.

*hysterical laughter* Why don't you go look for other discussions about dodgetanking? Because high charm is a non-negotiable part of such builds. Also, that build you have has some serious issues. Like the fact that you're shitting away your dancer, for one.

[Bylift]

20 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

*hysterical laughter* Why don't you go look for other discussions about dodgetanking? Because high charm is a non-negotiable part of such builds. Also, that build you have has some serious issues. Like the fact that you're shitting away your dancer, for one.

I have to respectfully agree with this, assuming we are talking about maddening mode. Charm stat is very important to dodge tanks. Late-game (when you really need your dodge tank) enemy charm stats positively balloon. Units like Petra and Ferdinand will get cooked by gambits. I've tried making 4 charming soups on the final map and it helps a little, but feels like putting out a fire with a squirt gun.

That's not to say dodge builds on mediocre-charm characters aren't viable; you just have to be more careful with them.

Going back to the original poster's topic:

Hero has 5mv, no axefaire, gender locked, lower stats than SM, movement hindered by everything. I just can't defend it, although I really want to like it. I wish they had made Hero a Master Class with 6mv and both sword- and axefaire, or hell, even just innate swordbreaker and axebreaker would be awesome too. Anything to accentuate the traditional versatility of being proficient in 2 weapon types. But sadly, we got what we got. 😞

 

[RaIsMyPet]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

*hysterical laughter* Why don't you go look for other discussions about dodgetanking? Because high charm is a non-negotiable part of such builds. Also, that build you have has some serious issues. Like the fact that you're shitting away your dancer, for one.

I don’t see the laughing point. I clearly said high charm is not hard on medium-growth units. Level 40 Petra on average has 26.4 charm, and Cichol Wyvern adds 10 to make it 36.4, and Dancer adds 5 to make 41.6. That’s just level 40 and at AM endgame for example a dodge tank can easily reach Level 45 so you can expect 45 charm maybe. In addition, how hard is it to have tea time? By comparison AM final map enemies with battalions has 37 to low 40 charm at level 50.

Also, I don’t see it’s a waste of dancer either. Dancer exchanges a shitty unit for a good PP unit, while sword avo makes a sometimes shaky dodge tanks into a unstoppable one. It’s more of you want a PP game or EP game. It’s dogmatic to dismiss this as “waste of dancer because no dance” without analyzing the tradeoff.

I guess you just keep quoting hearsay from past years without calculating and verifying through  gameplay yourself. This “only lords have high charm” is just a myth and excuse for lazy player. How about you go and see how people go all the way to HP-boost their Bernadetta solely for her in-my-opinion not really that great vengeance?

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by RaIsMyPet

[Bylift]

5 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

As for the infinite War Master reinforcements, I pretty much always keep a unit or even two to deal with them anyway (e.g. a Sniper with a backup mage/healer should the Sniper fail to crit). Maybe this is a flaw in how I build the rest of my team, but I usually have far fewer than 12 units able to safely engage the AM final boss (33 AS + significant crit), so it's not a big deal to have a unit tied up there long-term.

I might be misunderstanding this so please forgive me, but you guys do know that the reinforcements stop coming when you place a unit on the two stairways at the top of the map right? On AM final map that means you have to leave them sitting there, which takes them out of the boss fight, but Gremory/Bishop Mercedes can still reach the throne area with Physic, and as Dark Holy Elf eluded to, chances are you have several squishy unit who can't safely engage Edelgard. One of those units can make him/herself useful by blocking the other side where the dark knights spawn.

[RaIsMyPet]

4 minutes ago, Bylift said:

I might be misunderstanding this so please forgive me, but you guys do know that the reinforcements stop coming when you place a unit on the two stairways at the top of the map right? On AM final map that means you have to leave them sitting there, which takes them out of the boss fight, but Gremory/Bishop Mercedes can still reach the throne area with Physic, and as Dark Holy Elf eluded to, chances are you have several squishy unit who can't safely engage Edelgard. One of those units can make him/herself useful by blocking the other side where the dark knights spawn.

Yes, that's why you need to get into those two rooms in the first place. However, with vanilla dodge tanks' low kill power, sometime the dodge tank itself is the one choked at the doorway by the infinite war masters and they keep coming.

[Bylift]

1 minute ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Yes, that's why you need to get into those two rooms in the first place. However, with vanilla dodge tanks' low kill power, sometime the dodge tank itself is the one choked at the doorway by the infinite war masters and they keep coming.

I see. I guess I've never had an issue with that phase of the map.

By the time those reinforcements start spawning Edelgard's siege attack is deactivated, and you should already be pushing your entire squad towards the throne so I'm not sure how a bottleneck would form, but stuff happens on that map lol.

I will say that for all the hate Hunting by Daybreak gets, the final AM map to me is the most difficult.

[RaIsMyPet]

13 minutes ago, Bylift said:

I see. I guess I've never had an issue with that phase of the map.

By the time those reinforcements start spawning Edelgard's siege attack is deactivated, and you should already be pushing your entire squad towards the throne so I'm not sure how a bottleneck would form, but stuff happens on that map lol.

I will say that for all the hate Hunting by Daybreak gets, the final AM map to me is the most difficult.

I mean it's more like an annoying issue than strictly necessary thing. I just once get very annoyed since I entered the throne room from the other side and wanted to stop the war masters and can't do it quickly. I could have planned it better but I played the map so many times sometimes I didn't care enough (and I mostly used Petra so I didn't realize such issue until then)

Again, as I said, I only stated at very beginning I think BW dodge tanks is a significant upgrade of vanilla ones, not that vanilla ones cannot be good from time to time, and people seem to pick on me for that.

[Barren]

1 hour ago, RaIsMyPet said:

I mean it's more like an annoying issue than strictly necessary thing. I just once get very annoyed since I entered the throne room from the other side and wanted to stop the war masters and can't do it quickly. I could have planned it better but I played the map so many times sometimes I didn't care enough (and I mostly used Petra so I didn't realize such issue until then)

Again, as I said, I only stated at very beginning I think BW dodge tanks is a significant upgrade of vanilla ones, not that vanilla ones cannot be good from time to time, and people seem to pick on me for that.

Some people can be dicks about it unfortunately. It’s part of the bad from any community. I mean I think we should still agree to disagree because while our experiences with builds are different from each other’s since everyone’s milage varies.

Like I’ve said before about the Hero Class since we’ve derailed hard from the topic, I don’t typically go for defiant strength builds because not everyone can pull it off well. Like Balthus is an excellent candidate for the build thanks to his King of Grappling ability. Combine that with Vantage + Wrath as a War Master and he’ll just deal overkill damage.

I actually did try it out curiosity during my Crimson Flower run. It worked but not for very long because I didn’t get too much use out of it. I probably could have gotten a different ability for him. But in general, I would give him Brawling Prowess, Brawl Avoid +20, Vantage, Wrath and Defiant Strength. He wouldn’t need Death Blow at that point because that and Killer Knuckles and a battalion that offers high hit and crit will be enough to KO any non armored units.

[5PointGordin]

4 hours ago, Bylift said:

I have to respectfully agree with this, assuming we are talking about maddening mode. Charm stat is very important to dodge tanks. Late-game (when you really need your dodge tank) enemy charm stats positively balloon. Units like Petra and Ferdinand will get cooked by gambits. I've tried making 4 charming soups on the final map and it helps a little, but feels like putting out a fire with a squirt gun.

That's not to say dodge builds on mediocre-charm characters aren't viable; you just have to be more careful with them.

Going back to the original poster's topic:

Hero has 5mv, no axefaire, gender locked, lower stats than SM, movement hindered by everything. I just can't defend it, although I really want to like it. I wish they had made Hero a Master Class with 6mv and both sword- and axefaire, or hell, even just innate swordbreaker and axebreaker would be awesome too. Anything to accentuate the traditional versatility of being proficient in 2 weapon types. But sadly, we got what we got. 😞

 

See, I was thinking that Hero should have been made into a Master class too, but then I realized that 3 Master classes already have Axefaire, which I think is greater than other master classes. Master Class Hero would still be cool though and would give Sword users a more specialized class to slot into rather than Mortal Savant, which has only ever worked for Mages from my experience (esp if you have Viskam lol). Axefaire, Swordfaire, and something else like Lifetaker, Vantage, or even Sol would be awesome (kinda sad Heroes and Great Knights don't have Sol or Luna in this game).

[Dark Holy Elf]

4 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Yes, that's why you need to get into those two rooms in the first place. However, with vanilla dodge tanks' low kill power, sometime the dodge tank itself is the one choked at the doorway by the infinite war masters and they keep coming.

But even if Ingrid (or whoever) is choking the War Masters indefinitely, she's doing her job well, is she not? Again, if you have one person on the War Master side, and one person on the Dark Knight side*, that leaves 10 units who can deal with the final boss... which is already often more than I have for that job.

My last AM playthrough I had essentially two units devoted to killing the War Masters (a Sniper and a mage who would either finish the War Master if the Sniper failed to crit, or heal someone else who might need it). So a unit who can tie them up solo seems solid to me. In fact, if you have such a dodgetank, killing the War Masters seems rather pointless since more will just show up anyway.

*Fun fact about the Dark Knights: they only have four shots of Death. Run them out and they can't do anything. This is useful on some challenge runs because the game will never spawn more than three at once, so if you run those three out of Death and leave them alive, no more will come.

[Shadow Mir]

5 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

I don’t see the laughing point. I clearly said high charm is not hard on medium-growth units. Level 40 Petra on average has 26.4 charm, and Cichol Wyvern adds 10 to make it 36.4, and Dancer adds 5 to make 41.6. That’s just level 40 and at AM endgame for example a dodge tank can easily reach Level 45 so you can expect 45 charm maybe. In addition, how hard is it to have tea time? By comparison AM final map enemies with battalions has 37 to low 40 charm at level 50.

Also, I don’t see it’s a waste of dancer either. Dancer exchanges a shitty unit for a good PP unit, while sword avo makes a sometimes shaky dodge tanks into a unstoppable one. It’s more of you want a PP game or EP game. It’s dogmatic to dismiss this as “waste of dancer because no dance” without analyzing the tradeoff.

I guess you just keep quoting hearsay from past years without calculating and verifying through  gameplay yourself. This “only lords have high charm” is just a myth and excuse for lazy player. How about you go and see how people go all the way to HP-boost their Bernadetta solely for her in-my-opinion not really that great vengeance?

So let me get this straight: you're asking Petra to get A+ swords and flying, A authority, A axes, and C lances. That sounds like a metric ton of work, especially if she isn't part of my itinial class to begin with. Also, not everyone has the patience to savescum for tea time.

I do see it as that when more often than not, I'm better off having someone who can give an extra turn to someone else than choosing someone for it solely for the purpose of using Battalion Wrath (which isn't even that good without Battalion Vantage) on a dodgetank. 

4 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Again, as I said, I only stated at very beginning I think BW dodge tanks is a significant upgrade of vanilla ones, not that vanilla ones cannot be good from time to time, and people seem to pick on me for that.

And I strongly disagree with that, because if I have a dodgetank I'm already in good shape to clear the game. Adding Battalion Wrath makes me win in a flashier way (with lots of critical hits), but doesn't actually help me win, because I've pretty much won already with a dodgetank. Battalion Wrath in that case is more for show. Which leads me to what I've been saying all this time; Battalion Wrath is only really useful if paired with Battalion Vantage.

54 minutes ago, 5PointGordin said:

See, I was thinking that Hero should have been made into a Master class too, but then I realized that 3 Master classes already have Axefaire, which I think is greater than other master classes. Master Class Hero would still be cool though and would give Sword users a more specialized class to slot into rather than Mortal Savant, which has only ever worked for Mages from my experience (esp if you have Viskam lol). Axefaire, Swordfaire, and something else like Lifetaker, Vantage, or even Sol would be awesome (kinda sad Heroes and Great Knights don't have Sol or Luna in this game).

I dunno - what kills Hero in my book is that it's inferior to Assassin. Also, I'm not sure that Sol would be much of an improvement, especially in combat art form. I do believe that Great Knight really needs some improvements to make up for being as hard to get into as it is, though.

[Dark Holy Elf]

47 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

So let me get this straight: you're asking Petra to get A+ swords and flying, A authority, A axes, and C lances. That sounds like a metric ton of work, especially if she isn't part of my itinial class to begin with. Also, not everyone has the patience to savescum for tea time.

Doesn't look like A axes is needed to me; C+ should be fine, maybe B just to get a better PP kill option for some maps with Brave (although Thunderbrand works about as well). A+ (boon), A+ (boon), C+ (boon), C (neutral), A (neutral) is quite reasonable to have by endgame, and Petra joining slightly late does not slow this much, since she auto-trains swords/axes (two of the things you need) anyway. And if you want to make it cheaper, then swapping Cichol for Galatea is reasonable enough on a dodgetank (there's an overall loss of stats, but you gain some avo, and free up Cichol for someone else).

 

5 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Again, as I said, I only stated at very beginning I think BW dodge tanks is a significant upgrade of vanilla ones, not that vanilla ones cannot be good from time to time, and people seem to pick on me for that.

Apologies if I made you feel this way; I certainly wasn't intending to pick on you. To set the record straight: I actually largely agree with you, I just disagree on the size of the gaps (which is okay! These discussions would be pretty boring if we all felt exactly the same way about everything).

[5PointGordin]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

So let me get this straight: you're asking Petra to get A+ swords and flying, A authority, A axes, and C lances. That sounds like a metric ton of work, especially if she isn't part of my itinial class to begin with. Also, not everyone has the patience to savescum for tea time.

I do see it as that when more often than not, I'm better off having someone who can give an extra turn to someone else than choosing someone for it solely for the purpose of using Battalion Wrath (which isn't even that good without Battalion Vantage) on a dodgetank. 

And I strongly disagree with that, because if I have a dodgetank I'm already in good shape to clear the game. Adding Battalion Wrath makes me win in a flashier way (with lots of critical hits), but doesn't actually help me win, because I've pretty much won already with a dodgetank. Battalion Wrath in that case is more for show. Which leads me to what I've been saying all this time; Battalion Wrath is only really useful if paired with Battalion Vantage.

I dunno - what kills Hero in my book is that it's inferior to Assassin. Also, I'm not sure that Sol would be much of an improvement, especially in combat art form. I do believe that Great Knight really needs some improvements to make up for being as hard to get into as it is, though.

Sol could just be like Lethality, with a trigger chance of Dex/2 or Dex. Would be a good enemy phase skill, making Heroes more like Heal Tanks as opposed to dodge tanks.

Great Knight's main issue is just the weapon ranks required to get to it. High ranks in Armor and Riding, which are difficult to train otherwise, is unfeasible for most characters to get to. its also pretty weird that the class has less strength than paladin, which it has traditionally been much stronger than.

Edited April 13, 2022 by 5PointGordin

[Shadow Mir]

10 hours ago, 5PointGordin said:

Sol could just be like Lethality, with a trigger chance of Dex/2 or Dex. Would be a good enemy phase skill, making Heroes more like Heal Tanks as opposed to dodge tanks.

I don't think that'd be anywhere near useful, especially on Maddening, where by the time you get late into part 1, let alone part 2, enemy units do massive damage if they connect - most likely far more than what Sol would heal.. In fact, there's no need for theorycraft on this - several characters in this game have crests that work exactly like Sol does, and none of those crests are very useful. The logical conclusion to draw from this is that Sol would suck pretty bad in this game.

10 hours ago, 5PointGordin said:

Great Knight's main issue is just the weapon ranks required to get to it. High ranks in Armor and Riding, which are difficult to train otherwise, is unfeasible for most characters to get to. its also pretty weird that the class has less strength than paladin, which it has traditionally been much stronger than.

That... is kinda what I was saying. About the only characters that can easily get into it are Ferdinand and Gilbert.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[RaIsMyPet]

11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Doesn't look like A axes is needed to me; C+ should be fine, maybe B just to get a better PP kill option for some maps with Brave (although Thunderbrand works about as well). A+ (boon), A+ (boon), C+ (boon), C (neutral), A (neutral) is quite reasonable to have by endgame, and Petra joining slightly late does not slow this much, since she auto-trains swords/axes (two of the things you need) anyway. And if you want to make it cheaper, then swapping Cichol for Galatea is reasonable enough on a dodgetank (there's an overall loss of stats, but you gain some avo, and free up Cichol for someone else).

 

Apologies if I made you feel this way; I certainly wasn't intending to pick on you. To set the record straight: I actually largely agree with you, I just disagree on the size of the gaps (which is okay! These discussions would be pretty boring if we all felt exactly the same way about everything).

Oh, I’m not upset. English is not my first language so I guess I picked the word wrong. Just I tried to say people missed my main point and go down another path arguing the point I didn’t made or not my emphasis. If you are still playing, can I dare you (as friendly gesture) try my suggestion of the build. I used it so much and never seen anyone else mentioning it so I think it’s a bit underrated for how good it is. I’ve seen people use sword avo on Ingrid or Petra with axe and BW, but not combined. It’s really something 1+1>2 and not hard to build in NG at all (like Ch14 with almost no grinding you can hit all skill ranks)

Oh, and I don’t recommend skipping Cichol. It gives precious hit a sword build needs for lance units (so many paladins and pegasi)

11 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

So let me get this straight: you're asking Petra to get A+ swords and flying, A authority, A axes, and C lances. That sounds like a metric ton of work, especially if she isn't part of my itinial class to begin with. Also, not everyone has the patience to savescum for tea time.

I do see it as that when more often than not, I'm better off having someone who can give an extra turn to someone else than choosing someone for it solely for the purpose of using Battalion Wrath (which isn't even that good without Battalion Vantage) on a dodgetank. 

And I strongly disagree with that, because if I have a dodgetank I'm already in good shape to clear the game. Adding Battalion Wrath makes me win in a flashier way (with lots of critical hits), but doesn't actually help me win, because I've pretty much won already with a dodgetank. Battalion Wrath in that case is more for show. Which leads me to what I've been saying all this time; Battalion Wrath is only really useful if paired with Battalion Vantage.

I dunno - what kills Hero in my book is that it's inferior to Assassin. Also, I'm not sure that Sol would be much of an improvement, especially in combat art form. I do believe that Great Knight really needs some improvements to make up for being as hard to get into as it is, though.

You kept using your unfounded speculation without directly addressing any of my rebuttals.

Metric ton of work? Do you know you can recruit most people by Ch5 with eating and gifts, and by end of ch3 if you are more planned? And once Petra is on a Pegasus, she can achieve Alert Stance before ch7 ends at latest (and before battle of eagle and lion if you recruit early or in house). later give her the knowledge gem and she reaches AS+ by the end of ch10. At the time you give her sword avo too so that she rank up sword and authority exponentially for how many rounds of combats she has. If she doesn’t reach all goals except for A authority and A+ sword (still B authority and B+ sword) by timeskip you are just bad at teaching. And she reaches the remaining part extremely fast, usually before ch14 or something. During multiple plays she constantly reaches S or S+ in sword/flying/authority at the end because she just kills way too much until it’s boring.

A axe is not needed, more like B axe. D+lance.

Your “savescum for teatime” is just cringy. how hard is it for you to remember people’s preference? ginger tea and mostly “hardworking” type of answer is guaranteed charm on Petra. I’m sure you can work out other students if they are important units? Post timeskip you don’t have much to do anyway. How hard is it to try multiple teatime?

At this point you seem just wanting to beat me in the argument for the sake of it. Fine…

Edited April 13, 2022 by RaIsMyPet

[haarhaarhaar]

I basically agree with everyone's criticisms of Hero here, but note that its relative ease to class into for sword users (D+ Axes, which isn't very hard and you might want for Brigand/Death Blow anyway) might make it a fun stopgap class between Advanced and Master, once you've mastered your primary Advanced class. Even then, there aren't many male sword users who are desperate for that (Beefing up Ferdinand/Yuri? idk), and at most it'll make a point or two of difference stats-wise.

I'm also not much for builds that involve constantly keeping a character's health within certain thresholds, so I can't say I really rate Defiant Strength, or even innate Vantage. Maybe there's room for optimising Bernadetta or Dedue's Vengeance strat with Defiant Strength, although given how much extra work you'd have to do for it, it's only really feasible on NG+. I will say that of the Defiant abilities, Defiant Strength feels like the easiest to utilise (again, coming from someone who doesn't use the Defiant abilities - I've seen how destructive Defiant Avo/Crit can be, I'm just fairly allergic to leaving low-HP units out in front on Enemy Phase).

[RaIsMyPet]

31 minutes ago, haarhaarhaar said:

I basically agree with everyone's criticisms of Hero here, but note that its relative ease to class into for sword users (D+ Axes, which isn't very hard and you might want for Brigand/Death Blow anyway) might make it a fun stopgap class between Advanced and Master, once you've mastered your primary Advanced class. Even then, there aren't many male sword users who are desperate for that (Beefing up Ferdinand/Yuri? idk), and at most it'll make a point or two of difference stats-wise.

I'm also not much for builds that involve constantly keeping a character's health within certain thresholds, so I can't say I really rate Defiant Strength, or even innate Vantage. Maybe there's room for optimising Bernadetta or Dedue's Vengeance strat with Defiant Strength, although given how much extra work you'd have to do for it, it's only really feasible on NG+. I will say that of the Defiant abilities, Defiant Strength feels like the easiest to utilise (again, coming from someone who doesn't use the Defiant abilities - I've seen how destructive Defiant Avo/Crit can be, I'm just fairly allergic to leaving low-HP units out in front on Enemy Phase).

I guess I was leading people astray with heated argument about dodge tanks lol. Sorry about that.

Back to heroes. My original comments already said how I think about all these HP-related EP builds and they are indeed gimmicky to me.

BUT, I’m genuinely curious if anyone really optimized Dedue’s vengeance and onetwo punch build because I never have and it sounds at least has some depth. Vengeance and vantage+wrath, def strength , desperation with one-two punch, maybe throw in defiant crit in NG+ seems a good combo to me IF setup. I hope to hear from any people who really tried optimized Dedue. 

[Barren]

@haarhaarhaar I have used Vengeance Dedue on my maddening run as a Paladin which he was able to get by chapter 10. He was a Brigand and Cavalier beforehand for me. I never tried defiant strength Dedue but it sounds like it can be devastating.

I would think that him needing C+ in swords and C and axes sounds achievable. And needing B in lances and C+ in riding should be fine for him by maybe the very end of part 1. I suspect he would be a cavalier for the rest of part 1 unless you give him a lot of special treatment to make him a Paladin sooner. Dedue also carries battalion wrath so giving him a silver shield and duscar heavy soldiers would grant him insane bulk. Defensive Tactics also helps keeps the set up alive.

You don’t need defiant strength for vengeance to be effective imo since HP+5 basically grants him 5 extra points of damage in addition to lancefaire and death blow. Plus he’s got really good HP so would be set without it at least imo.

[Dark Holy Elf]

55 minutes ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Oh, I’m not upset. English is not my first language so I guess I picked the word wrong. Just I tried to say people missed my main point and go down another path arguing the point I didn’t made or not my emphasis. If you are still playing, can I dare you (as friendly gesture) try my suggestion of the build. I used it so much and never seen anyone else mentioning it so I think it’s a bit underrated for how good it is. I’ve seen people use sword avo on Ingrid or Petra with axe and BW, but not combined. It’s really something 1+1>2 and not hard to build in NG at all (like Ch14 with almost no grinding you can hit all skill ranks)

Oh, and I don’t recommend skipping Cichol. It gives precious hit a sword build needs for lance units (so many paladins and pegasi)

Good point about the paladins/pegasi. I should have remembered that myself. My sword-only playthrough was the single playthrough I've had the most trouble with accuracy on.

Anyway I don't doubt the build you propose would be stunningly effective, but it's a lot of good resources piled into one person, particularly the Dancer certification (sacrificing an extremely useful class), as well as Cichol Wyverns to a lesser extent.

[RaIsMyPet]

11 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Good point about the paladins/pegasi. I should have remembered that myself. My sword-only playthrough was the single playthrough I've had the most trouble with accuracy on.

Anyway I don't doubt the build you propose would be stunningly effective, but it's a lot of good resources piled into one person, particularly the Dancer certification (sacrificing an extremely useful class), as well as Cichol Wyverns to a lesser extent.

Yeah. It’s fair since I can understand people don’t want to juggernaut . It’s more of preference on resource arrangement. For me, since there are more than enough capable PP units, dancer as dancer is more of a wasted slot for me, thus not really a loss for a more reliable dodge tank. To some extent, this is like a lot of capitalism thing: you don’t know you want it until you have it, but some people can resist the flashy advertisement for sure.

I wonder what kind of sword-only play you had: did you use tricksters a lot? for me they really combo well with dodge tanks.

[Dark Holy Elf]

 

2 minutes ago, RaIsMyPet said:

eah. It’s fair since I can understand people don’t want to juggernaut . It’s more of preference on resource arrangement. For me, since there are more than enough capable PP units, dancer as dancer is more of a wasted slot for me, thus not really a loss for a more reliable dodge tank

Yep, that's fair. I dislike juggernauting in general, but I won't deny that would you propose would be effective.

For sword-only, I didn't use Trickster much (my magic sword ladies went through Valkyrie/Dark Flier for more mobility and faith spell uses, even though I wasn't allowed to use Reason) but I did use several Assassins, for the exact idea you're proposing: comboing Stealth with a Wyvern dodgetanks. I was definitely very happy with that interaction.

[haarhaarhaar]

5 minutes ago, RaIsMyPet said:

I guess I was leading people astray with heated argument about dodge tanks lol. Sorry about that

Hehe happy to talk about dodgetanks too - I hadn't read through all of that discussion yet. My two cents are:

As someone with a Player-Phase oriented play style, I don't regularly use dodgetanks. Of the dodgetanks I have used, I've found sword infantry to be less reliable than fliers and fists dodgetanks. This is probably because of who I've had/chosen to do them (Ferdinand was stat-screwed when I tried, Dancer Ignatz was quite good but too squishy to endure getting RNG-screwed). I've also never tried to make a sword flier dodgetank, just because I don't think flier dodgetanks should be using swords unless SA+20 is involved, and dancing is good enough not to lose.

As far as being unreliable to kill, that was never a problem with fists dodgetanks because of the high crit of WM and Quick Riposte. It was a bit of a problem with fliers (ie Ingrid, who in fairness always has trouble getting kills past Part 1), but if I'm fielding a dodge tank, their main role is bait and chip, rather than needing secure kills. Any kills they get are a bonus in my book. I'm also not super-aggressive with them, so take this with a pinch of salt I guess. 

Battalion Vantage/Wrath is, of course, a way to make your dodge tank do much more. But unless you're doing a challenge run, your dodge tank doesn't need to be particularly strong on offense for them to justify their role in your army. As for high Charm, I can't think of many candidates for being a dodge tank that really struggle on the Charm front (Caspar? But Ignatz has the same Charm base/growth and worked alright for me as a Dancer dodgetank). 

Thinking about all this, I imagine Hero/Dancer Ferdinand could be a decent dodgetank. Not 'optimal' by any means, but good enough Avo, and Vantage provides some cover if/when Ferdinand gets hit and his personal stops working. Might even tie in with the aesthetics of Hero.

Just now, Barren said:

I have used Vengeance Dedue on my maddening run as a Paladin which he was able to get by chapter 10. He was a Brigand and Cavalier beforehand for me. I never tried defiant strength Dedue but it sounds like it can be devastating.

I would think that him needing C+ in swords and C and axes sounds achievable. And needing B in lances and C+ in riding should be fine for him by maybe the very end of part 1. I suspect he would be a cavalier for the rest of part 1 unless you give him a lot of special treatment to make him a Paladin sooner. Dedue also carries battalion wrath so giving him a silver shield and duscar heavy soldiers would grant him insane bulk. Defensive Tactics also helps keeps the set up alive.

You don’t need defiant strength for vengeance to be effective imo since HP+5 basically grants him 5 extra points of damage in addition to lancefaire and death blow. Plus he’s got really good HP so would be set without it at least imo.

Yeah, I'd imagine Vengeance with Dedue was already good enough without Defiant Strength. C+ in Swords is definitely achievable (and I assume any non-gimmicky build for Dedue will involve some raising of Axes), but I was more thinking about his forced benching - it's relatively tight to get Dedue up to scratch for a Maddening NG endgame, even without a dip into swords and mastering Hero. Not impossible though, I guess. 

If Dedue's Vengeance skillset were Lance Prowess, Defiant Strength, Death Blow, Battalion Wrath, Defensive Tactics (which is what you're suggesting above?) then he definitely packs a wallop, but is splitting the skillset between low-HP and low battalion-HP the best way of going about things? Genuine question, from someone who doesn't do either.