Fantastic Dodge Tanks and Where to Find Them

[RaIsMyPet]

## Disclaimer
This article is the first of a planned series and written in a relatively short time. I will keep updating with new details. Suggestions welcome.

## Aim of the article
We aim to provide a hyper-optimized dodge tank build that is:
- New Game
- No grinding or almost not grinding: my proposal requires one intermediate class (archer) mastery only with no other class mastery required
- Available early: at least available immediately after timeskip or maybe one chapter later, and a mostly reliable but weaker form should be available before timeskip.
- Universal survivability: untouchable outside gambits by any enemy (with like about 10 or so outlier enemies with extreme hits); still untouchable by normal attacks even when rattled; most gambits should have 20~30 hit rate depending on their base hit rate (50~60). In other words, outside of consecutive gambits and basically non-existent outlier enemies, it should be completely safe, ever.
- Universal kill-power: outside of superbosses, monsters and certain extreme outliers (e.g. heavy armor with effect null), 95% of the enemy should be one-rounded upon counterattack with near 100% guarantee, the remaining should be 2-rounded and very close to be one-rounded.
- Universal Availability: such build should be available in all routes.
- No stat boosters/cooking outside of fixing RNG screwed unit

- Edit: Near-no-setup: no constant setup needed (like Def-Crit, Def-Avo, etc.) One-time setup is OK like battalion skills.

All things are academic so if you don't like this playstyle or don't like hyper-optimized builds, great!

## Concepts
Soft Avo vs Hard Avo
When the avo is provided by battalions, it’s soft because the moment you are rattled, the avo bonus is lost during that turn. It has NOTHING to do with battalion retreating.

Soft/Hard Mt/Charm/etc.
Similar, but not as important as Avo, since being rattled mostly has to do with survivability, and double-gambits are rare if you play carefully

Range-mismatch
When an enemy unit has more attack range than gambit range, we call it to have a range-mismatch. Another type of range-mismatch comes from ballistas, but we will illustrate with direct example later. Range-mismatch is important because it is a great way to deal with enemy gambits, and you will be surprised although it looks situational, it's actually common enough to be a worthy trick to keep in mind.
Common examples of Range-mismatch
- Snipers with 1-range gambit
- Any bowknight
- Any mage with Death, Thoron, Meteor, or Bolting
- Armor/warrior with 1-2-range axes and 1-range gambit
- CF enemy Shamir with 5 range (lol, you would think more range = more power, but no, it just turns her into a fodder)
(I remember a youtube video proposing Claude's Father as VW final boss instead of Nemesis, and they give him 5 bow range, I instantly was like: please no, don't trivialize your boss for me; but no offense, because of course nobody could think through everything.)

## Build Proposal

Components
class: Wyvern Lord
weapon type: sword
abilities: Sword Prowess, Sword Avo (Dancer cert), AS+, Hit+20, Battalion Wrath
battalion: Cichol Wyvern Co
inventory: Rapier+, Wo Dao+, Evasion Ring, others to consider: Silver Sword+/Brave Sword+/Some Bow for utility
adjutant: A-rank adjutant, but B is also serviceable

Unit
A unit at least should have above average speed and passable luck and charm, no weakness in flying and chosen weapon type, and has the ability needed.
Recommend units:
Petra, Claude: the best candidates. Petra has better speed and Claude has better charm, but in practice they are not that distinctive. Petra’s main appeal is her universal availability and better class progression, while Claude has Pass built-in, may survive more gambits when rattled and it’s situationally more useful. Both have excellent utility combat arts like Bane of Monsters
Hilda: subpar for her boon/bane compared to the former two, stats is also less ideal, and she doesn’t have good utility combat arts.
Seteth: no Sword Avo unfortunately.

## Q&A (with some tricks)
Q: Isn't the teaching requirement too high?
A: No. It should be available relatively early as I said earlier. For example, Petra can be recruited at Ch3~4, reaching Alert Stance and Lance Breaker at Ch6 (from this point she's semi-reliable EP already) Give her Knowledge Gem at all time and teaching and Group Task she can reach AS+ at Ch10 (Ch9 also possible), and Sword Avo available at that point already. You are basically done. The remaining part is to increase Authority from B to A, and Sword Prowess.

Q: Why not use a higher avo battalions like Galatea or Immortal?
A: For one, the avo is soft avo, and for two, neither provides notable Hit to help reliably hit Lance users

Q: What's wrong with grounded dodge tanks?
A: First, the movement is subpar; secondly, ground classes do not provide innate avo +10, and can suffer terrain penalty; thirdly, give me any ground build I could give you a rather major flaw compared to a flying build.

Q: I'm not willing to give up a Dancer
A: It's up to you. It's all just battle field economy. Dancer basically lets you trade a underwhelming PP unit for a good one, i.e. one more kill each turn perhaps, or maybe less, because there are enough capable PP units out there already. On the other hand, a more reliable dodge tank does so much more, and you have to make them ironclad, because we are talking about hundreds of battles deep in enemy territory here, not fishing crits with your snipers.

Q: I thought sword is a pretty underwhelming weapon type? What about lance users?
A: With Sword Avo, sword user has only 5 less avo than a Bow dodge tank (actually no, since Wo Dao is much lighter than Killer Bow), and a lot higher avo everything else. It's specially important for dodging magic. For hitting lancers, with everything in this build, you are still looking at about 80% hit against Falcons on average late game, which is 92% true hit (i.e. 92% chance one-shot with somewhat-high but not-sky-high strength)

Q: What about gauntlets? QR?
A: Grounded is still an issue. Also, I don't see it without heavy grinding with several class masteries AND alert stance/alert stance+; if it happens naturally, probably much later than my proposed build; also, heavy armors are hard to deal with (I tried NG+ Felix, but no, still not 100% kill, I guess only Dimitri can do it, but that's too deep in NG+ territory)

Q: Petra's mediocre charm?
A: vanilla Petra has mediocre charm, true. But Dancer cert gives much needed 5, and Cichol Wyvern gives another 10. On average, you are looking at around 43 charm at Level 45 endgame (dodge tanks tend to overlevel other units by several levels), which is enough to keep gambit hits low. As long as you are careful not putting her into multiple gambits and risk being hit by 2, you are fine. Also, Divine Pulse is a thing, since you mostly won't need them for other things now that you have a strong dodge tank.

Q: BW is annoying to setup
A: Early in timeskip, enemies are not that strong, so you can be more reckless with your dodge tank and let it be hit with gambit, and gradually setup BW when the battle gets tough. Alternatively, do an aux battle, let your Byleth or someone to take the Cichol and gets hit multiple times, and return it to your dodge tank. Since dodge tanks basically never gets hit, you are looking at setting it up only once per playthrough (or maybe 2~3 max if you are too reckless)

Q: Gambits everywhere, do I really have no means to deal with them?
A: Yes you do, actually quite commonly you can deal with them with dodge tanks. When an enemy has a range-mismatch, park your dodge tank at the edge of their range, they will attack you normally and die.

Q: Can ballistas be dealt with similarly?
A: Yes. A lot of notable ballistas in later maps can (e.g. VW final map, AM Fort Mercius map, etc.). Many places you can see Sniper Ballistas with 1-range Gambits. Park dodge tank at 2-range, they will shoot you normally, since ballista has minimal 3-range.

Q: I don't like juggernauting
A: You do you. I'm not arguing this playstyle is the best, but I don't think it's necessarily juggernauting. Dodge tank needs a lot of investment anyway, why not go an extra mile and get the best? I already showed that there is basically no grinding involved. You can still have a usual full team of capable PP units, a secondary dodge tank like Ferdinand and you have basically doubled your military strength with a strong dodge tank. In AM, Dimitri has no conflict with this build, so you can have a Dimitri and a better Dimitri.

I will add more if things are brought up.

## Next (to come up): supportive teammates that are good with dodge tanks, and what is a typical flow of play like

 

Edited April 16, 2022 by RaIsMyPet
add a point under "Aim" section about setups

[Shadow Mir]

I'ma be honest - I disagree that Battalion Wrath is essential, largely because it's only really useful with Battalion Vantage. Otherwise, it's a win-more ability at best (by the way, that's something you have yet to actually counter).

Edited April 16, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[Dark Holy Elf]

Good work putting this together!

Obviously my general previous comments stand that I don't think killing things on EP is nearly as valuable as you do, and I do think Dancer is quite a bit to give up, but dodgetanks are an extremely effective build in this game and it's nice to see a particularly potent version laid out so cleanly.

7 minutes ago, RaIsMyPet said:

(I remember a youtube video proposing Claude's Father as VW final boss instead of Nemesis, and they give him 5 bow range, I instantly was like: please no, don't trivialize your boss for me; but no offense, because of course nobody could think through everything.)

I think such a boss would work as long as he had some sort of Bow Accuracy Penalty Null skill. Shamir doesn't, which just ends up in her having terrible hit near the edge of her range, so as you note, makes her actually easier to bait.

14 minutes ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Seteth: no Sword Avo unfortunately.

Also starts with only C flying in Chapter 12 so Alert Stance+ is quite a slog compared to Petra/Claude who could quite possibly already be there as you note. No Hit+20 either (not sure how much it matters, but worth noting). And poor base speed for what it's worth. Even after reaching B flying he'll be over 40 evade down on your proposed Petra/Claude.

22 minutes ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Universal kill-power: outside of superbosses, monsters and certain extreme outliers (e.g. heavy armor with effect null), 95% of the enemy should be one-rounded upon counterattack with near 100% guarantee, the remaining should be 2-rounded and very close to be one-rounded.

I'm kinda surprised Petra/Claude are able to one-shot bulkier non-rapier-weak enemies (Wyverns, Heroes, War Masters, etc.) with a crit. I remember needing to dump Atk-boosters into a Killer Gauntlets version of this build to get the likes of them, and Fistfaire Killer isn't much below non-Swordfaire Rapier/Wo Dao for power.

[RaIsMyPet]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I'm kinda surprised Petra/Claude are able to one-shot bulkier non-rapier-weak enemies (Wyverns, Heroes, War Masters, etc.) with a crit. I remember needing to dump Atk-boosters into a Killer Gauntlets version of this build to get the likes of them, and Fistfaire Killer isn't much below non-Swordfaire Rapier/Wo Dao for power.

Ah! I would be lying if I say unconditionally they one-shot them. Let me explain:

For one, I did say mostly one-shot and a few 2-shots, and the few would including VERY late-game WMs.

For two, Heroes and Wyverns, I'm not confident enough about Claude, but Petra during my multitude of playthrough of obsessively using her (assuming a little bit overleveling of her being dodge tank) would either double Heroes and Wyverns, or very close to (like 1-2 speed short). So such a small bump at specific point of the playthrough I think is completely warranted. Especially the earlier part of post-timeskip. Wyvern RIDERS are easy to double actually, LORDs are admittedly harder, and Petra does need a bit of overleveling from her dodge tank job (i.e. keep using her as your main force).

For three, I usually don't use the "naturally-gotten" stat boosters at all during play until final mission (or final 2 missions). At that point I check my Petra and give her the exact needed boost and sometimes she would even be able to one-shot WMs with like silver sword (60% crit). Needed a bit help towards the end, yes, but being able to reach there with a SWORD and without really grinding is not small feat at all.

Edited April 16, 2022 by RaIsMyPet

[RaIsMyPet]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

I'ma be honest - I disagree that Battalion Wrath is essential, largely because it's only really useful with Battalion Vantage. Otherwise, it's a win-more ability at best (by the way, that's something you have yet to actually counter).

Let me ask you this first: how many NG Maddening have you beaten at this point? How many harder maps have you routed (i.e. not relying on Warp skipping?) Like AM&SS Final maps, CF Claude/Nader chapter, several paralogues like Edelgard, Ferdinand/Lysithea, Linhardt/Leonie, Petra/Bernadetta, Anna/Jeritza? How easy did you beat it? Can you beat them with basically no stressful unit shuffling and constantly stay in offensive?

If not, then I must say I'm sorry we are talking about very different things here.

I'm NOT trying to convince you this build is "worth it for you", but to say this is overall most efficient and effective dodge tank build out there with relatively low investment.

Edited April 16, 2022 by RaIsMyPet
typo

[Shadow Mir]

30 minutes ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Let me ask you this first: how many NG Maddening have you beaten at this point? How many harder maps have you routed (i.e. not relying on Warp skipping?) Like AM&SS Final maps, CF Claude/Nader chapter, several paralogues like Edelgard, Ferdinand/Lysithea, Linhardt/Leonie, Petra/Bernadetta, Anna/Jeritza? How easy did you beat it? Can you beat them with basically no stressful unit shuffling and constantly stay in offensive?

If not, then I must say I'm sorry we are talking about very different things here.

I'm trying to convince you this build is "worth it for you", but to say this is overall most efficient and effective dodge tank build out there with relatively low investment.

...and that is important why??? I and several others have said stuff along the lines of "if you have a dodgetank, you've pretty much won already" multiple times over, but it seems to not stick no matter how much we try. My point is that if I'm trying to build a dodgetank, Battalion Wrath isn't that useful, as their primary job is luring enemies out of position for my other units to take out; once again, this is a team game, and my dodgetank is only one unit out of up to 12. AS a result, having my dodgetank able to KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM, which you seem to think is oh so vital, isn't that much of a necessity. Also, I fail to see this as "efficient" when it involves foolishly squandering a one-of-a-kind resource (dancer certification).

[RaIsMyPet]

12 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

...and that is important why??? I and several others have said stuff along the lines of "if you have a dodgetank, you've pretty much won already" multiple times over, but it seems to not stick no matter how much we try. My point is that if I'm trying to build a dodgetank, Battalion Wrath isn't that useful, as their primary job is luring enemies out of position for my other units to take out; once again, this is a team game, and my dodgetank is only one unit out of up to 12. AS a result, having my dodgetank able to KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM, which you seem to think is oh so vital, isn't that much of a necessity. Also, I fail to see this as "efficient" when it involves foolishly squandering a one-of-a-kind resource (dancer certification).

OK, fine, by your standard, it’s not vital, happy? If you watched Mangs’ VW play through years ago, he beat NG Maddening with Ignatz and Lorenz, basically no dodge tank, MVP is heavy armor Hilda with pure water. So by your logic everything people talk about is just win-more. Forget about swift strikes, forget about PBV, or even forget about Death Blow on Leonie for a long time. Nothing is “vital” by your standard. Playing this game isn’t vital, it’s just silly.

Is that how you deal with real life as well? I got C from my class, that means I passed, the end. I got this mediocre job to keep me alive, I survived, the end. Everyone is going to die, so better material doesn’t matter since it’s not vital. People just have different preferences, and you can choose yours. Why jump to my case every time you have the chance to speak? Go write a separate post detailing your reasoning then. All the reasons you can find.

I don’t want to argue this point anymore. If you are determined to play your way, thinking dodge tank is just a glorified bait-and-switch, and thinking Dancer has to be Dancer for no reasoning and squandering a one of a kind ability not reaching it’s full potential and a super OP combat art, I won’t convince you anyway.

I only know I found this extremely OP build, without much grinding, relatively low investment, and hope more people can enjoy the fun of breaking the game and feel empowered, not agonized. That’s it.

Edited April 16, 2022 by RaIsMyPet

[Bylift]

This is pretty well thought out, thanks for posting. I've always liked sword avo tanks because sword prowess gives a little more avo than other weapons besides gauntlets. IMO Rapier+ is probably the overall most effective weapon in the entire game for its low weight, crit, high durability, ease of repair with regular smithing stones, and effectiveness vs. some of the tankiest units (armor/horse). It's a natural choice for an avoid tank if you want them to also kill.

For those of us who are reading and not doing the math, what do the Avo, Hit, and Crit values end up being with your build at around Lv. 40? Just a range is fine. In my mind I'm thinking this is probably between 110-120 Avo without AS+.

I think once you reach about 110-120 avo, you're pretty much out of any danger, facing 0-10% hit rates on final maps. Some exceptions being the highly accurate sniper turrets.

12 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

...and that is important why??? I and several others have said stuff along the lines of "if you have a dodgetank, you've pretty much won already" multiple times over, but it seems to not stick no matter how much we try. My point is that if I'm trying to build a dodgetank, Battalion Wrath isn't that useful, as their primary job is luring enemies out of position for my other units to take out; once again, this is a team game, and my dodgetank is only one unit out of up to 12. AS a result, having my dodgetank able to KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM, which you seem to think is oh so vital, isn't that much of a necessity. Also, I fail to see this as "efficient" when it involves foolishly squandering a one-of-a-kind resource (dancer certification)

It's true that once you have a dodge tank it's GG. I also don't like battalion abilities but that's in large part because I don't like menuing and hate having to individually select which battalion to replenish. (Lazy, I know.).

Lots of things on the build where you could say "yeah, but this and that is more optimal/unnecessary/doesn't do X in Y situation." Also lots of other weapons/units/battalions that work just fine.

But overall I think it's a great build and a fun thought experiment.

I have to say that for dancer, I use one on about half of my runs and on the other half I give someone Sword Avo. Dancer class is awesome but Swo Avo +20 is also a one-of-a-kind resource and if you are using the dancer class, then Sword Avo+20 is being squandered because you'll likely never attack or defend with a sword (you'll be dancing!).

15 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Recommend units:
Petra, Claude: the best candidates. Petra has better speed and Claude has better charm, but in practice they are not that distinctive. Petra’s main appeal is her universal availability and better class progression, while Claude has Pass built-in, may survive more gambits when rattled and it’s situationally more useful. Both have excellent utility combat arts like Bane of Monsters

Thoughts on Ferdinand? His personal ability is very strong on an Avo Tank.

[RaIsMyPet]

14 minutes ago, Bylift said:

This is pretty well thought out, thanks for posting. I've always liked sword avo tanks because sword prowess gives a little more avo than other weapons besides gauntlets. IMO Rapier+ is probably the overall most effective weapon in the entire game for its low weight, crit, high durability, ease of repair with regular smithing stones, and effectiveness vs. some of the tankiest units (armor/horse). It's a natural choice for an avoid tank if you want them to also kill.

For those of us who are reading and not doing the math, what do the Avo, Hit, and Crit values end up being with your build at around Lv. 40? Just a range is fine. In my mind I'm thinking this is probably between 110-120 Avo without AS+.

I think once you reach about 110-120 avo, you're pretty much out of any danger, facing 0-10% hit rates on final maps. Some exceptions being the highly accurate sniper turrets.

It's true that once you have a dodge tank it's GG. I also don't like battalion abilities but that's in large part because I don't like menuing and hate having to individually select which battalion to replenish. (Lazy, I know.).

Lots of things on the build where you could say "yeah, but this and that is more optimal/unnecessary/doesn't do X in Y situation." Also lots of other weapons/units/battalions that work just fine.

But overall I think it's a great build and a fun thought experiment.

I have to say that for dancer, I use one on about half of my runs and on the other half I give someone Sword Avo. Dancer class is awesome but Swo Avo +20 is also a one-of-a-kind resource and if you are using the dancer class, then Sword Avo+20 is being squandered because you'll likely never attack or defend with a sword (you'll be dancing!).

Thoughts on Ferdinand? His personal ability is very strong on an Avo Tank.

Really appreciate the detailed reply and thoughts.

For the first question, I usually ended with level 45 or so but it's not so different from level 40 since you are only like 3 avo different. So endgame the avo (displayed + A adjutant) will be around: 40+ attack speed, 20 Sword Prowess, 20 Sword Avo, 10 Evasion Ring, 10 Wyvern Lord innate, 5 Cichol, 10 adjutant = 115 avo (without alert stance), most of which is indiscriminate against physical or magic attacks. For magics, Petra usually reaches high 20 or 30 something Luck, so maybe subtract 5~8 avo from calculation, and non-outlier mages don't have nearly enough Hit, and even outlier mage would only have like 15 Hit or something, or 30~40 from outlier mages when rattled (iirc)

For Hit, it's around 170 + 10 adjutant I think, so against enemy Falcons who roughly has 70 something avo + sword breaker+ = 100 avo, you are still looking at 80 Hit (92% true Hit), and Paladin is near 100% Hit. Everything else is 100%, sometimes even when they are in forests.

For Crit, Pre-BW displayed value I don't remember, but when facing enemies, Wo Dao basically always 100% (I think it's around 90 or so facing Gronder Field Claude), Rapier can guarantee 80% (when doubling, that's 96% at least 1 crit), Silver Sword 60% with a lot more Mt, and in AM you can get Sword of Moralta which is at least 85 Crit. Endgame Petra outgrows a lot of enemies in dex+luck, so it's quite likely that it's higher than that (I frequently gets like 90 crit on Rapier for example). Note that Petra has more crit with plain silver sword than Ingrid with WoDao, and more Mt too.

For Ferdinand, he doesn't have BW unfortunately, and for two his HP growth rate is too high on a Wyvern. In practice, you will observe this: Petra kills fast and leveling fast at first, and after certain point, she levels slowly because of overleveling. But Ferdinand doesn't kill that easily, so no overleveling for him. That causes Ferdinand to leveling up in some occasions way more often than Petra in a kind of unexpected way, so his Personal would catch you off-guard. Every male doesn't have pegasus, so Petra's SPD growth is much more stable than males too.

As a bonus, you mentioned "highly accurate Sniper", but Snipers always have 0 Hit on me after waiting, with possible exception of enemy Ignatz maybe (but range penalty is a thing to fix that).

 

[Dark Holy Elf]

Ferdinand's big problem is that he isn't +Flying, so it takes him longer to reach Alert Stance and Alert Stance+. When he is there, though, he's extremely good. While he'll trail Petra by maybe as much as ~8 speed (giving him a level disadvantage), he does have +15 evade at full health, and since he's not worried about crit rate you might as well give him Galatea, which pushes the evasion lead into double digits. His charm's a bit higher too (though not than Claude's, of course).

Gaining HP isn't a huge concern because it's pretty easy to just equip a weak weapon and you'll gain very little exp that enemy phase, if the thought of gaining HP worries you. He's a different style of dodgetank than Petra; he's focused entirely on surviving, not killing. But he is extremely good at that. He's also probably the best dodgetank Dancer (since they don't rely on Alert Stance). I'm not a fan of giving up my Dancer entirely, but they can still be outstanding dodgetanks, allowing them to play a double role of drawing fire when necessary.

[lenticular]

One thing that I will say about dodge tanks is that there are different ways that they can be used, and I think it's important to clearly establish what type of dodge tank we're talking about before we get too deep into the weeds of discussing a given build. The two extremes are what I will call the baiting dodge tank and the soloing dodge tank.

For the baiting dodge tank, the typical use case is something like the following: the baiting dodge tank moves out slightly in front of the rest of the player's army, standing just in range of enemy attacks, while the rest of the army remains safely out of range. The enemy moves in to attack the baiting dodge tank, misses, and is then in range of the rest of the players army who can deal with them on the following player phase.

For the soloing dodge tank, on the other hand, the use case looks more like this: the rest of the army either isn't deployed at all, is left at the starting location, or runs away to some out-of-the way corner of the map. The soloing dodge tank then wades neck deep into the enemy, gets attacked by everything, and then kills it in retaliation, essentially winning the game on their own.

Other than wanting to get a very high Avoid stat, these two builds are quite different, with different requirements and priorities. For the baiting dodge tank, I would be looking for excellent survivability, low investment (ie, not requiring use of limited resources), and the ability to also contribute on player phase. Somewhat counterintuitively, I would also not want this character to be routinely killing things. If the idea is to draw in enemies for other units to kill, then I want for those other units to be able to earn experience as well.

For the soloing dodge tank, my priorities are shifted. I no longer care about using limited resources and I no longer care about having a player phase, but I absolutely do care about being able to secure kills.

Of course, these are only two extremes of a wider spectrum of use cases, and many dodge tanks will lie somewhere between the two. The exact perfectly optimal build is going to vary from player to player, because different people are going to be using their dodge tanks differently and wanting different things out of them. I don't doubt that the build that's presented here could be extremely effective, and would not be surprised if it is the perfecly optimal build for the way that the OP uses dodge tanks.

That said, let's look a bit more closely at the build. I think that it's clear that this is much closer to the soloing dodge tank end of the spectrum. It's using two extremely valuable resources, in Dancer certification and Cichol Wyverns; it requires a decent amount of tuition and use of the knowledge gem, which is certainly doable but does mean that other units aren't getting that training; and it's also heavily focused on securing kills, with Hit +20 and Battalion Wrath to make sure that very little survives. So far, so good.

However, I don't personally value skills like Hit +20 and Battalion Wrath on this sort of build. They definitely allow the dodge tank to get kills in fewer turns, but that isn't something that I care about. It takes seconds to hit "End Turn" and then press + to skip the enemy phase, so it doesn't matter to me personally if I take one turn to kill everything, or three turns, or five turns.

There definitely are circumstances in which the number of turns matters, and in these circumstances it is important to be able to secure the one turn kill. Here are a few possibilities, and why I don't tend to care about them:

If you have other units following close behind the dodge tank, having the dodge tank might leave them in danger. This is true, but if I'm using a soloing dodge tank then my other units aren't going to be anywhere near. If I do want everyone else contributing, then I'm going to build my dodge tank very differently. However, I will admit that for maps where you start off surrounded (eg Silver Snow endgame, Lorenz's paralogue) then it isn't always possible to keep other units out of the firing line.

The second potential problem is with infinite reinforcements, such as the ones in Azure Moon endgame. These don't bother me at all. If it means that I can't reliably block off the reinforcements, then so what? Let them come. What are they going to do? Slowly suicide on my dodge tank? Slowly trickle back to the start of the map where the rest of my party can kill them?

Finally, there's the issue of the Retribution gambit running out. I can definitely see how this can be an issue. Retribution has only 2 charges and each charge lasts only 5 turns. If it takes you more than 10 turns to kill everything then you're out of Retribution (unless you have multiple Retribution users, which is possible, but even then, there is always going to be a time limit). However, Retribution is not the only way to kill things. Any sword is enough to deal with melee enemies. A Levin Sword+ can deal with everything except for Bow Knights (it also can't counter attack siege tomes, but these can easily be exhausted). Fortunately, Bow Knights are fairly rare in most maps, and it isn't typically difficult to deal with them. Options include having a Retribution gambit just while you're killing bow knights, letting the rest of your party deal with the bow knights, or just have your dodge tank kill them on player phase and trust that you won't need the +30 avoid of AS+ when you're dealing with attacks from 4 range.

So, that's why I'm not too worried about lowering my dodge tank's damage output, but what are the advantages of doing so? Well, for starters, not needing Battalion Wrath increases the number of units who can make the build work. This is nice just from the perspective of being able to have more variety, but also opens up the build to units with higher Charm and higher Magic (useful if you're using a Levin Sword at all). It also requires less training: if you aren't using Cichol Wyverns, then you can drop from Authority A to B, if you aren't getting Hit +20 then you don't need to invest in bows at all, if you don't mind slightly lower strength (and are using a female unit) then you can shift from Wyvern Lord to Falcon Knight, which replaces the axe training with lance training but removes the secondary lance training since you're already training in swords. Finally, it frees up two extra ability slots, that you can use for whatever else you want, which will vary depending on exactly how you're planning on using the dodge tank.

This is getting long and rambly and I'm not really sure if I'm going anywhere with it. I guess my ultimate point is this: because there are multiple different ways to use a dodge tank, there is no such thing as the single best dodge tank build. Rather, it's important to know what you're wanting to use your dodge tank for, where you need it to be able to excel, and where you're willing to make sacrifices. Because every build will have to make sacrifices somewhere.

[haarhaarhaar]

22 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Q: What's wrong with grounded dodge tanks?
A: First, the movement is subpar; secondly, ground classes do not provide innate avo +10, and can suffer terrain penalty; thirdly, give me any ground build I could give you a rather major flaw compared to a flying build.

22 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Q: What about gauntlets? QR?
A: Grounded is still an issue. Also, I don't see it without heavy grinding with several class masteries AND alert stance/alert stance+; if it happens naturally, probably much later than my proposed build; also, heavy armors are hard to deal with (I tried NG+ Felix, but no, still not 100% kill, I guess only Dimitri can do it, but that's too deep in NG+ territory)

I've done dodgetank M!Byleth on Maddening NG with the DLC - I imagine he loses out a bit on Avo compared to the build you've laid out above, but he needed almost no extra investment beyond mastering War Monk to be a good enough dodge tank (in both of @lenticular's senses of baiting and soloing). By good enough I meant Killer Knuckles/Aura Knuckles dealt with quite a lot, and I can count the number of times he got hit after Ch. 11 on one hand. Ch. 11 is when he mastered War Monk - it's been a while, but I don't think he used much of the Knowledge Gem before that point, although I did fight a lot on weekends (all the available paralogues/merchant quests, and one or two red marks to get ahold of rare weapons). Of course, eventually getting QR made his EP much better, and that only happens late on. Being a dodge tank though, he just needed more time to get the kills, on the admittedly few occasions nobody else was anywhere near him. 

I would say that I don't think Alert Stance was ever necessary, and the only particular flaw with that Byleth, if you can call it a flaw, is that he didn't fly. I think flight is more important for dodge tanks than for your regular unit, whether they're there to bait or kill. But because flying is already quite broken in 3H, it feels a little miserly to dismiss non-flying builds solely on the grounds that they can't fly. 

Big takeaways are: even less investment than the build you've labelled above (I suppose not counting buying the DLC hehe), is available to more people, and doesn't suffer from the breaker skills. The other thing is that you get a Player Phase with that unit, which I guess isn't essential for dodge tanks generally, but I guess this build is already for a different kind of play style to the one you've hinted at above (ie one which is more concerned with kill efficiency and EP effectiveness). Ultimately, the point about comparing these has already been made:

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

This is getting long and rambly and I'm not really sure if I'm going anywhere with it. I guess my ultimate point is this: because there are multiple different ways to use a dodge tank, there is no such thing as the single best dodge tank build. Rather, it's important to know what you're wanting to use your dodge tank for, where you need it to be able to excel, and where you're willing to make sacrifices. Because every build will have to make sacrifices somewhere.

I really appreciate this discussion from the theory-crafting perspective, especially since I wanted to justify Claude raising his Sword rank to use Sword of Begalta, but couldn't when Barbarossa exists.

Bit of a tangent, but if you get a kill with FK Shamir (built like a standard dodge tank, with lances/bows), then dance Shamir and make her wait for her next turn, her personal kicks in alongside AS+. It's more gimmicky than standard dodge tank builds, because you're not guaranteed Shamir is in kill range and can Canto to dancer range every turn, but was a lot of fun to make work.

EDIT to avoid doubleposting - I meant to second @Dark Holy Elf's point about dancers being decent bait-type dodge tanks just by themselves. They weren't good enough in my experience to deal with FKs and some late-game sword users, but very many other units were fair game. If you can get a Dancer who dances and utilises SA +20, then maybe that's a benefit that's at least competitive with investing everything into a dodge tank?

Edited April 16, 2022 by haarhaarhaar

[Shadow Mir]

22 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

For example, Petra can be recruited at Ch3~4, reaching Alert Stance and Lance Breaker at Ch6 (from this point she's semi-reliable EP already) Give her Knowledge Gem at all time and teaching and Group Task she can reach AS+ at Ch10 (Ch9 also possible), and Sword Avo available at that point already. You are basically done. The remaining part is to increase Authority from B to A, and Sword Prowess.

I'm gonna have to call BS here - I don't see Petra being recruited before chapter 5 unless you use faculty training that early, which I find extremely hard to justify because my activity points are better spent motivating my students, among other things. This means that this is only really viable if you started with the Black Eagles or have NG+ assistance. And even then, I take issue with the blatant favoritism this needs. What's next, throwing every stat booster her way? Oh, and by the way, Lancebreaker only works if you're using an axe, unlike was the case in Fates and Awakening. This means a sword-focused build, which this is, doesn't benefit from it.

7 hours ago, Bylift said:

It's true that once you have a dodge tank it's GG. I also don't like battalion abilities but that's in large part because I don't like menuing and hate having to individually select which battalion to replenish. (Lazy, I know.).

Lots of things on the build where you could say "yeah, but this and that is more optimal/unnecessary/doesn't do X in Y situation." Also lots of other weapons/units/battalions that work just fine.

But overall I think it's a great build and a fun thought experiment.

I have to say that for dancer, I use one on about half of my runs and on the other half I give someone Sword Avo. Dancer class is awesome but Swo Avo +20 is also a one-of-a-kind resource and if you are using the dancer class, then Sword Avo+20 is being squandered because you'll likely never attack or defend with a sword (you'll be dancing!).

I don't dislike battalion abilities (except for Battalion Renewal, which is just plain useless), but in general, unless your name is Dimitri (thanks to BV/BW being an insanely broken combo), odds are you're better off running something else in the slot they take up.

8 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

OK, fine, by your standard, it’s not vital, happy? If you watched Mangs’ VW play through years ago, he beat NG Maddening with Ignatz and Lorenz, basically no dodge tank, MVP is heavy armor Hilda with pure water. So by your logic everything people talk about is just win-more. Forget about swift strikes, forget about PBV, or even forget about Death Blow on Leonie for a long time. Nothing is “vital” by your standard. Playing this game isn’t vital, it’s just silly.

Is that how you deal with real life as well? I got C from my class, that means I passed, the end. I got this mediocre job to keep me alive, I survived, the end. Everyone is going to die, so better material doesn’t matter since it’s not vital. People just have different preferences, and you can choose yours. Why jump to my case every time you have the chance to speak? Go write a separate post detailing your reasoning then. All the reasons you can find.

I don’t want to argue this point anymore. If you are determined to play your way, thinking dodge tank is just a glorified bait-and-switch, and thinking Dancer has to be Dancer for no reasoning and squandering a one of a kind ability not reaching it’s full potential and a super OP combat art, I won’t convince you anyway.

I only know I found this extremely OP build, without much grinding, relatively low investment, and hope more people can enjoy the fun of breaking the game and feel empowered, not agonized. That’s it.

Spoken like someone who probably doesn't even know what "win-more" means. Well, it's time for your education. The concept of "win-more" refers to a card (or in this case, ability) that, while it has a powerful effect, is only really useful in situations where you already had the advantage. Ergo, it won't turn a loss into a win, but it's good at turning a win into a blowout. THat kind of stuff is something I only see as a trap.  For example, Defiants. The effect is pretty powerful (+8 for the ones that boost stats, with Defiant Crit giving a massive +50 crit), but the problem is that the HP threshold for them to be active is very narrow (1/4 HP or less), making the risk very high (that being said, Defiant Defense and Defiant Resistance are useless, largely because a defense boost that requires the user's HP to be very low to begin with probably wouldn't save them from dying on enemy phase. Though to be frank, I'd say the Defiant series of abilities is all useless).

That's blatantly off topic, so I won't dignify that with a response.

The thing is, this supposedly OP build requires blatant favoritism, massive sacrifices, very specific conditions (be leading the Black Eagles or be playing on New Game+, because otherwise, you won't get Petra as early as you claim without making questionable decisions), AND high investment (including limited resources). In addition, the sandbox nature of the game is bound to complicate things further.

22 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

Q: What's wrong with grounded dodge tanks?
A: First, the movement is subpar; secondly, ground classes do not provide innate avo +10, and can suffer terrain penalty; thirdly, give me any ground build I could give you a rather major flaw compared to a flying build.

On the flipside, grounded units get more choices in terms of premium battalions (as opposed to the very limited set of premium flying battalions) and get terrain benefits. It feels really narrow-minded to dismiss non-flying builds just because they don't fly.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[Dark Holy Elf]

14 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

On the flipside, grounded units get more choices in terms of premium battalions (as opposed to the very limited set of premium flying battalions) and get terrain benefits. It feels really narrow-minded to dismiss non-flying builds just because they don't fly.

Dismount exists. Fliers' ability to benefit from this is precisely why they're so dominant as dodgetanks in this game. Paradoxically it means they're better at using terrain benefits, since they can actually reach useful terrain at no movement penalty.

The battalion point is fair but on every non-Lions route I'd say there's generally enough premium flying battalions to go around. AM is admittedly a bit limited (there's a pretty significant drop after Cichol and Galatea for physical fliers. Secret Transport's decent if you have DLC, having 15 avoid and Stride, though it's not great for Atk/Hit/Crit).

[Shadow Mir]

3 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Dismount exists. Fliers' ability to benefit from this is precisely why they're so dominant as dodgetanks in this game. Paradoxically it means they're better at using terrain benefits, since they can actually reach useful terrain at no movement penalty.

Fair enough. while we're on the subject, though, does their innate Avoid +10 stay intact when dismounted?

Edited April 16, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, the Avoid+10 stays. They do lose 2 speed (and hence 2 avoid), though.

[Barren]

This is a good write up on dodge tanks. I’m impressed to the lengths you went to write this. I did something similar a while back comparing paladins and wyvern lords when it came to player phase nuking with Swift Strikes. I recall it got a mixed response, maybe I could have done something better at the time but, hey shit happens.

 

I would also like to add that Dark Fliers can also dodge tank a bit and even nab bowbreaker to bait in snipers and bow knights. Give them thyrsus or caduceus staff and they can actually retaliate from longer range. Flayn for example can benefit from the DLC class since she gets Pegasus Knight at base and she has a budding talent in reason. Work on her axe rank while flying and she can certify into a wyvern rider with 18 base strength by level 20. 
 

It’s beneficial because higher strength means less weight penalty when using a tome. Annette can pull off the same thing except she has a boon in axes but neutral with flying. If you choose the Blue Lions house and want to make her a flier then you would have to set that as her goal pretty much from the start.

[lenticular]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Spoken like someone who probably doesn't even know what "win-more" means. Well, it's time for your education. The concept of "win-more" refers to a card (or in this case, ability) that, while it has a powerful effect, is only really useful in situations where you already had the advantage. Ergo, it won't turn a loss into a win, but it's good at turning a win into a blowout. THat kind of stuff is something I only see as a trap.  For example, Defiants. The effect is pretty powerful (+8 for the ones that boost stats, with Defiant Crit giving a massive +50 crit), but the problem is that the HP threshold for them to be active is very narrow (1/4 HP or less), making the risk very high (that being said, Defiant Defense and Defiant Resistance are useless, largely because a defense boost that requires the user's HP to be very low to begin with probably wouldn't save them from dying on enemy phase. Though to be frank, I'd say the Defiant series of abilities is all useless).

No need to be so condescending about it. It was only 7 months ago that I was explaining the concept to you. With some remarkably similar words to the ones you've just used, I might add. That you have since latched onto the concept and enjoy throwing the term about whenever you get the chance, even when it only very loosely applies, does not mean that you get to act as if people who aren't familiar with the concept are beneath you.

[RaIsMyPet]

Oh dear. Didn’t realize in such short time such wonderful wellspring of thoughtful replies! Very flattered and it’s the kind of theory crafting I hoped to see.

I haven’t got time to read everything except fro the earlier replies, and I still have next part on teammate compositions. I’m quite busy over the week so the write up has to wait for next weekend, but I will try to reply to some of you guy’s point over the week.

@lenticular very good explanation on two types of dodge tanks and really appreciate the help here. A small thing I want to quickly throw out though: I actually use both types, like Petra+Ferdinand. You do realize that the two types of dodge tanks virtually have no conflict in resources right? Like one wants cichol and the other wants galatea. The best example is perhaps Ferdie/Lysithea paralogue, where I always try to occupy the 4 spots as early as possible so a single solo dodge tank usually doesn’t cut it. I will try to explain my playstyle more when I get time and yes of course people do use what fits best their style.

[RaIsMyPet]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

I'm gonna have to call BS here - I don't see Petra being recruited before chapter 5 unless you use faculty training that early, which I find extremely hard to justify because my activity points are better spent motivating my students, among other things.

I don’t see why you need to train horse rank to recruit Petra when you just shower her with gifts and meals for B support.

[Barren]

8 minutes ago, RaIsMyPet said:

I don’t see why you need to train horse rank to recruit Petra when you just shower her with gifts and meals for B support.

The only time I would think one would train in riding if you were making Byleth a Dark Knight or Valkyrie if female on route to being a Dark Knight. What doesn’t make sense to me is needing a riding rank to recruit Petra if she doesn’t have riding as a boon. It should have been flying like how you would get Ingrid.

[RaIsMyPet]

2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Spoken like someone who probably doesn't even know what "win-more" means.

I guess I indeed didn't know what it exactly means before. Thanks for the info!

[Dark Holy Elf]

4 hours ago, RaIsMyPet said:

I don’t see why you need to train horse rank to recruit Petra when you just shower her with gifts and meals for B support.

You still need to train riding 4-5 times or get lucky with her asking to join your class. In general I'd personally consider chapter 4 recruits to be a not insignificant investment (likely eroding your professor rank a bit). I've never actually recruited anyone in chapter 3 (besides trivial cases of course)... I can see how it's possible, but it's too big an investment for me, and not remotely necessary. Chapter 5 is dead easy though, and isn't that big a loss, especially since Petra actually auto-trains two relevant skills for this build.

[RaIsMyPet]

13 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Spoken like someone who probably doesn't even know what "win-more" means. Well, it's time for your education. The concept of "win-more" refers to a card (or in this case, ability) that, while it has a powerful effect, is only really useful in situations where you already had the advantage. Ergo, it won't turn a loss into a win, but it's good at turning a win into a blowout.

Now that I learned, let me try again: it’s not a win-more because it doesn’t apply. First you have to be already in the game or hypothetically in the game with a fixed playstyle, which isn’t true. You assumed that I use dodge tank only for baiting, and assumed I have enough PP units to take enemies out. For the latter, it is the case if I play optimally, but not if I try to do a challenge run. I did a NG SS run when my team is one Warmaster, two snipers, and all mages plus a final dodge tank, meant to challenge the final map. In this situation, I don’t see how vanilla dodge tank is an automatic win when enemies already surrounded your units and basically none of your units can take even one hit, and most mages don’t have enough fire power. If the dodge tank can’t take out enemies fast, it’s a possible casualty. As I mentioned earlier, there are other maps you can’t play bait and switch if you want all the rewards.

[RaIsMyPet]

12 hours ago, Barren said:

This is a good write up on dodge tanks. I’m impressed to the lengths you went to write this. I did something similar a while back comparing paladins and wyvern lords when it came to player phase nuking with Swift Strikes. I recall it got a mixed response, maybe I could have done something better at the time but, hey shit happens.

 

I would also like to add that Dark Fliers can also dodge tank a bit and even nab bowbreaker to bait in snipers and bow knights. Give them thyrsus or caduceus staff and they can actually retaliate from longer range. Flayn for example can benefit from the DLC class since she gets Pegasus Knight at base and she has a budding talent in reason. Work on her axe rank while flying and she can certify into a wyvern rider with 18 base strength by level 20. 
 

It’s beneficial because higher strength means less weight penalty when using a tome. Annette can pull off the same thing except she has a boon in axes but neutral with flying. If you choose the Blue Lions house and want to make her a flier then you would have to set that as her goal pretty much from the start.

You can see this write up is also sort of mixed response. My goal is to stir thoughtful discussion and expose my build to more people. For that it’s achieved I think. Hey, some people even if they disagree with my philosophy might still try it, who knows? I appreciate all the participation here and I will have next part on teammates next week.

You mentioned Annette as a more gimmicky? example, which I have yet to try. I have heard it before. Now that Three Hopes is around the corner, I might try it some day. Cheers!