Individual Unit Focused Runs - What I've Learned

[ZanaLyrander]

I've honestly lost count of how many runs of Three Hopes I've done at this point, and by now, most of the units belonging to the main three houses are in the 80s or 90s in terms of level. Shez, the house leaders, and Byleth meanwhile are all at max level. As a result, in my past couple of runs, I've barely been using Shez and the other characters I've already maxed out, because they have nothing to gain from more experience, I only use them during main story missions. What I do instead, is pick one character who is not yet 120, and play as them almost exclusively until they hit 120, then pick someone else. This gives me a pretty in depth understanding of these characters as I inevitably experiment and gravitate towards strategies and builds that work well. So I figured I'd share what I've learned about the units I've done this with so far, as well as what it's taught me about the game in general. I'll likely add more to this as I complete this journey with more characters.

Sylvain -
What I learned from leveling up Sylvain to 120 is that he's overpowered as hell. Seriously, Sylvain has, in my opinion, the single best personal skill in the game. It drastically increases his range, damage, and the AoE of his spell/combat arts as he builds up the hit counter. His skill is essentially the only one I think is good enough to make it worth replacing Shez's own personal skill with, mainly because Shez, as an Asura, can rack up hits so fast that they can actually make use of this ability even better than Sylvain himself can. Sylvain's journey to level 120 also really drove home something I already knew: hybrid attackers are insanely strong in Three Hopes. A unit that can target either defense or resistance with their combos and spells/combat arts has a much, much easier time than a unit that can only target one or the other. Magical attackers suffer from this less than physical attackers, as enemies with very high resistance are rare, and often don't have much hp compared to more physically sturdy enemies like Fortress/Great Knights. Dark Knight Sylvain is frankly one of the strongest units in the game, and I don't say that lightly.

Petra -
Most players I've talked to here seem to really underestimate Petra. It's probably because Petra has almost no abilities that boost her damage, and her personal ability is fairly defensive in nature, so everyone mistakenly assumes she's weak. But Petra's journey to level 120 taught me another valuable lesson: do not underestimate stun gauge builds. While Petra has very few abilities that boost her damage, she has access to Death Blow, Heavy Hitter, Patience, and a number of abilities that increase her Awakening Gauge fill rate, including her own personal support ability, which is basically just a stronger version of Burst of Resolve. Combined with Essence of Wind boosted Excalibur (learned from Lindhardt) and Agnea's Arrow (learned from Dorothea), Petra has all the tools she needs to absolutely devour enemy stun gauges and slaughter her foes with critical rushes. Though to be honest, the Excalibur + Agnea's Arrow combo is so strong that even with Petra's mediocre magic stat, few things survive it, and given that she can reach A rank support with both Lindhardt and Dorothea, learning the spells needed for this combo was trivial. Stun gauge builds are criminally underrated, and Petra might just be one of the most powerful exemplars of such a build. Combined with her incredible defensive mobility from her personal ability and the excellent combos and class action of the Trickster, I'm honestly prepared to declare Petra to be high tier, if not top tier material. Flame spirit, protect everyone else.

Hilda -
Hilda is definitely closer to a more traditional damage build, and watching her absolutely delete enemies with War Strike certainly leaves little question as to why damage boost abilities are so highly valued. Offensive Tactics, Big Game Hunter, Luna, Undaunted... make no mistake, you get hit by Hilda, you're probably not getting back up. Honestly, Hilda's journey to 120 didn't teach me quite as much as Sylvain or Petra's, mostly because what makes Hilda good is fairly obvious. But to be honest, that taught me a good lesson by itself: interesting, creative builds are all well and good, but sometimes it's good to remind yourself a straightforward approach can be very effective. Hilda is a blunt instrument, and a very, very effective one at that. Hilda's playstyle is obvious and simple, and it works. And you know what? That's good enough for me.

Dorothea -
Dorothea plays a lot like a magic focused version of Petra. Not many damage increasing abilities, but she has Death Blow, and a ton of abilities that increase her Awakening Gauge fill rate, allowing her to be fairly effective as a stun gauge build. Still, while she can use Awakening even more than Petra, and can utilize the same overpowered Excalibur + Agnea's Arrow combo as Petra (learning Excalibur from Lindhart is trivial since they can have A rank support), she's not quite as good at destroying stun gauges as Petra is, at least when not Awakened. On the other hand, her magic stat is better than Petra's so it's rare that she needs to break stun gauges, most enemies don't survive her spells. While Gremory is her preferred class, Dorothea is quite potent as a sword user as well, especially when equipped with a Witstrike weapon like Blutgang or Ridill. Her ability list is fairly disappointing, yet it doesn't seem to impair her much oddly enough. She also one of the only units who can teach Agnea's Arrow, so she's incredibly handy to have around. Really, Dorothea's journey to 120 has taught me just how overpowered magic is in this game. Her ability list is fairly lackluster, her stats aren't tremendously impressive, her personal skills aren't bad, but they're nothing tremendously exciting either... so why does playing as her on Maddening still feel so easy? And the answer is simply that magic is tremendously overpowered in Three Hopes, and as a magic user, Dorothea has very little difficulty dealing with even the hardest challenges the game has to offer.

Bernadetta -
Bernie is the queen of Combat Art spam. Spamming combat arts is par for the course in this game, especially for units with Armsthrift like Bernie. But Bernie's crest giving all her combat arts a 20% chance to just not have a cooldown puts her on top of the heap when it comes to abusing combat arts. Equip her with The Inexhaustible or (for added hilarity) Thunderbrand, you really do get a feeling of "what cooldowns?" I also think people really underestimate her personal skill. An area denial zone that enemies can't enter without getting frozen is tremendously powerful, even discounting the fact that Bernie gets boost to her crit chance while standing in it. The fact that she gets Forethought on top of all this, filling her Warrior and Awakening Gauges a bit every time she uses a combat are (which if you've been paying attention is all the time) is just plain silly. Honestly the only drawbacks she has are being slightly lacking in non self-damaging damage boost abilities. She has Lifeforce, but given the rate at which she spams combat arts, I wouldn't recommend it, you'll kill yourself real quick. She does get Luna, so if you swap over to Thunderbrand Bernie, she can make use of combat arts that hit resistance for some pretty serious damage, but still be warned that a lot of enemies are going to take a few CAs to take down, she's a machine gun, not a nuke.

Ferdinand-
I am speed. Ferdinand's personal action ability is second only to Sylvain's in my mind, he gains momentum throughout the fight, getting faster and faster until he's practically a blur. Having the Crest of Cichol makes Ferdinand ideal for using the Spear of Assal and Ochain Shield, making him tremendously durable and the worst nightmare of enemy cavalry units. This, combined with Rejuvenation, makes him one of the few units who can make use of Lifeforce without even really having to pay attention to your health, he heals so fast it doesn't matter. He's also well suited to using Járngreipr as a War Master, since it too is keyed to the Crest of Cichol. That said, given its effectiveness against cavalry, the Spear of Assal is pretty much objectively better, so unless you really hate using Caspar or Balthus for some reason, you're probably better off keeping Ferdinand as a lance user, and he's definitely one of the strongest lance users in the game. Really what I learned from Ferdinand's journey is to appreciate the value of effective weapons. Cavalry units are extremely common, and Ferdinand goes through them like a hot knife through butter. Even without any abilities equipped to make him better at dealing stun gauge damage, anyone with the Spear of Assal can pulverize the stun gauge of anyone on horseback, which is definitely a massive advantage, even if the damage increase isn't huge.

Edited August 3, 2022 by ZanaLyrander

[Armchair General]

Anything about Felix? Sure, he can't compete with Sylvain's crowd control; but I find that the attack spam he has is perfect for shredding just about anything that isn't on an horse.

[ZanaLyrander]

9 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

Anything about Felix? Sure, he can't compete with Sylvain's crowd control; but I find that the attack spam he has is perfect for shredding just about anything that isn't on an horse.

Haven't done one of these level to 120 runs with him yet, he's on my list. The Blue Lions are tough because of how many of them are route exclusive. But he's definitely one of the better sword units in the game.

[Fabulously Olivier]

14 minutes ago, ZanaLyrander said:

Haven't done one of these level to 120 runs with him yet, he's on my list. The Blue Lions are tough because of how many of them are route exclusive. But he's definitely one of the better sword units in the game.

I mean, he's amazing for a lot of the same reasons Ferdinand is. Life Force and Impossible Feat on a unit with attackspeed boost and ample healing. Also Luna and Stalwart Stance of course.

[ZanaLyrander]

2 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I mean, he's amazing for a lot of the same reasons Ferdinand is. Life Force and Impossible Feat on a unit with attackspeed boost and ample healing. Also Luna and Stalwart Stance of course.

Yeah, in some sense, that's kinda why he's lower on the list: I'm doing this partially to get everyone to 120, but also partially to learn more about each unit and what makes them strong if anything. And what makes Felix strong is... kinda obvious.

[Archeleon]

I am almost done doing 1-120 runs on all the Black Eagles units. A unit I see go underrepresented despite his power is Hubert. He can pretty much annihilate maps on any class that can make use of his Mag. Dark Conjuration is strong in any build and Perception lets him targets Stun Gauge a lot easier which goes well with his relatively high Dex. He has access to Absorb Mag and Armsthrift which give him scaling and longevity in long maps along with a bunch of "free" damage boosting skills (Big Game Hunter, Underdog, Offensive Tactics, etc.). He has access to Essence of Darkness, which is great considering he naturally learns Dark Lance, Shadowblade, Banshe Theta and Dark Spikes Tau. He also learns Frozen Fist and Frozen Lance. He is less effective on Axe and Bow classes, requiring a bit more set-up to make him work. Overall, I think he is just under the Lords in terms of power.

[ZanaLyrander]

11 hours ago, Archeleon said:

I am almost done doing 1-120 runs on all the Black Eagles units. A unit I see go underrepresented despite his power is Hubert. He can pretty much annihilate maps on any class that can make use of his Mag. Dark Conjuration is strong in any build and Perception lets him targets Stun Gauge a lot easier which goes well with his relatively high Dex. He has access to Absorb Mag and Armsthrift which give him scaling and longevity in long maps along with a bunch of "free" damage boosting skills (Big Game Hunter, Underdog, Offensive Tactics, etc.). He has access to Essence of Darkness, which is great considering he naturally learns Dark Lance, Shadowblade, Banshe Theta and Dark Spikes Tau. He also learns Frozen Fist and Frozen Lance. He is less effective on Axe and Bow classes, requiring a bit more set-up to make him work. Overall, I think he is just under the Lords in terms of power.

Yeah, Hubert is awesome. I think for some people he gets overshadowed by Shez because they're both dark magic users, but Hubert is honestly incredibly powerful. Plus he's one of the only character who can take full advantage of the Dark Bishop class, being one the only male units with dark magic. He also makes for a very effective Dark Knight. I admit, I use Hubert very similarly to how I use Shez, my opening move in most fights is Luna, followed by either Hades or Dark Spikes, it tends to work very well.

Edited August 2, 2022 by ZanaLyrander

[ZanaLyrander]

I added my thoughts on Dorothea as well. Dorothea is a weird character. On a personal level, she's one of my favorite characters in the game, but from a mechanical standpoint, she really seems like she should be weak... and yet, she's not.

Dorothea -
Dorothea plays a lot like a magic focused version of Petra. Not many damage increasing abilities, but she has Death Blow, and a ton of abilities that increase her Awakening Gauge fill rate, allowing her to be fairly effective as a stun gauge build. Still, while she can use Awakening even more than Petra, and can utilize the same overpowered Excalibur + Agnea's Arrow combo as Petra (learning Excalibur from Lindhart is trivial since they can have A rank support), she's not quite as good at destroying stun gauges as Petra is, at least when not Awakened. On the other hand, her magic stat is better than Petra's so it's rare that she needs to break stun gauges, most enemies don't survive her spells. While Gremory is her preferred class, Dorothea is quite potent as a sword user as well, especially when equipped with a Witstrike weapon like Blutgang or Ridill. Her ability list is fairly disappointing, yet it doesn't seem to impair her much oddly enough. She also one of the only units who can teach Agnea's Arrow, so she's incredibly handy to have around. Really, Dorothea's journey to 120 has taught me just how overpowered magic is in this game. Her ability list is fairly lackluster, her stats aren't tremendously impressive, her personal skills aren't bad, but they're nothing tremendously exciting either... so why does playing as her on Maddening still feel so easy? And the answer is simply that magic is tremendously overpowered in Three Hopes, and as a magic user, Dorothea has very little difficulty dealing with even the hardest challenges the game has to offer.

Edited August 2, 2022 by ZanaLyrander

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah Dorothea strikes me that she should be one of the weaker characters (the lack of good offensive skills stands out) but I used her a lot out of favouritism and she kinda just carves through maps with her spells anyway? Helps that basically every attack spell she learns is really good (maybe not Saggitae?).

[ZanaLyrander]

1 minute ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yeah Dorothea strikes me that she should be one of the weaker characters (the lack of good offensive skills stands out) but I used her a lot out of favouritism and she kinda just carves through maps with her spells anyway? Helps that basically every attack spell she learns is really good (maybe not Saggitae?).

She's definitely still quite potent. Agnea's Arrow is one of the most powerful spells in the game, and Dorothea is one of the few characters that learns it, and the only non postgame character who can teach it. It really does come down to her spell list, she lacks a lot of advantages that other units have, yet her spell list is extremely powerful, and she forms high rank supports with characters who can teach her a fair number of other extremely powerful spells, and that's apparently all she needs to succeed, she doesn't even struggle on Maddening. We're all discussing how best to create optimized builds and Dorothea is just over here face-rolling through Maddening on her spells alone, and she's not even having a hard time, it makes me feel a little silly for putting so much thought into the builds of other characters.

[Archeleon]

True about spells and combat arts. A lot of the time it just feels like if you can simply drop them on enemy clusters and walk away, it makes movesets feel irrelevant. Kind of sad in a way as it makes everyone play the same.

[ciphertul]

4 hours ago, ZanaLyrander said:

and the only non postgame character who can teach it.

Constance can as well you know.

[Fabulously Olivier]

4 hours ago, Archeleon said:

True about spells and combat arts. A lot of the time it just feels like if you can simply drop them on enemy clusters and walk away, it makes movesets feel irrelevant. Kind of sad in a way as it makes everyone play the same.

This was also a problem with Warriors Orochi 4's magic.

 

They definitely overtuned the combat arts and spells. And maybe one way they could amp up a free Lunatic mode would be to reduce CA/spell damage by like... a third. Or shoot costs up.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Fabulously Olivier

[ZanaLyrander]

2 hours ago, ciphertul said:

Constance can as well you know.

Huh, if that's true, someone should edit the wiki to reflect that.

[ciphertul]

1 hour ago, ZanaLyrander said:

Huh, if that's true, someone should edit the wiki to reflect that.

Constance learns it as a Gremory which is her preferred class, hits all the check marks of a teachable spell.

[ZanaLyrander]

Alright, just finished leveling Bernadetta to level 120, so here's what I've learned.

Bernadetta -
Bernie is the queen of Combat Art spam. Spamming combat arts is par for the course in this game, especially for units with Armsthrift like Bernie. But Bernie's crest giving all her combat arts a 20% chance to just not have a cooldown puts her on top of the heap when it comes to abusing combat arts. Equip her with The Inexhaustible or (for added hilarity) Thunderbrand, you really do get a feeling of "what cooldowns?" I also think people really underestimate her personal skill. An area denial zone that enemies can't enter without getting frozen is tremendously powerful, even discounting the fact that Bernie gets boost to her crit chance while standing in it. The fact that she gets Forethought on top of all this, filling her Warrior and Awakening Gauges a bit every time she uses a combat are (which if you've been paying attention is all the time) is just plain silly. Honestly the only drawbacks she has are being slightly lacking in non self-damaging damage boost abilities. She has Lifeforce, but given the rate at which she spams combat arts, I wouldn't recommend it, you'll kill yourself real quick. She does get Luna, so if you swap over to Thunderbrand Bernie, she can make use of combat arts that hit resistance for some pretty serious damage, but still be warned that a lot of enemies are going to take a few CAs to take down, she's a machine gun, not a nuke.

[Archeleon]

26 minutes ago, ZanaLyrander said:

Alright, just finished leveling Bernadetta to level 120, so here's what I've learned.

Bernadetta -
Bernie is the queen of Combat Art spam. Spamming combat arts is par for the course in this game, especially for units with Armsthrift like Bernie. But Bernie's crest giving all her combat arts a 20% chance to just not have a cooldown puts her on top of the heap when it comes to abusing combat arts. Equip her with The Inexhaustible or (for added hilarity) Thunderbrand, you really do get a feeling of "what cooldowns?" I also think people really underestimate her personal skill. An area denial zone that enemies can't enter without getting frozen is tremendously powerful, even discounting the fact that Bernie gets boost to her crit chance while standing in it. The fact that she gets Forethought on top of all this, filling her Warrior and Awakening Gauges a bit every time she uses a combat are (which if you've been paying attention is all the time) is just plain silly. Honestly the only drawbacks she has are being slightly lacking in non self-damaging damage boost abilities. She has Lifeforce, but given the rate at which she spams combat arts, I wouldn't recommend it, you'll kill yourself real quick. She does get Luna, so if you swap over to Thunderbrand Bernie, she can make use of combat arts that hit resistance for some pretty serious damage, but still be warned that a lot of enemies are going to take a few CAs to take down, she's a machine gun, not a nuke.

Lifeforce is not too bad on her if you use small mt CAs. Remember that LF takes health based on the size of the CA not how much damage it does. Given all the other stuff she has she really does benefit from using the smaller CAs most.

[IonicAmalgam]

Dorothea is really strong imho as a sword or lance user since her passive causes magic explosions that break guard and interrupt enemy attack animations. You can spam light attacks to spawn more of her passive magic orbs and if you are using a melee weapon pretty much always trigger them

[Fabulously Olivier]

I actually think Lifeforce Bernie is great. It's at least partially offset by her weapon. You can make up the defecit with a healing accessory, and/or set Marianne as her pair up. And she'll be getting iframes from CAs so often that she isn't even particularly vulnerable.

[ZanaLyrander]

I think I've never really adjusted to the self damage abilities like Lifeforce, there's just something about them that goes against my gaming instincts. Even having said that, given that my strategy with Bernie is spamming Drill Arrow and Deadeye, Lifeforce is extremely costly. I'm sure swapping to smaller Might CAs would probably make it a bit more viable, but for my current strategy Bernadetta practically empties her hp bar in less than a minute, even with the healing from The Inexhaustible.

Anyway, since he was already fairly close to 120 and I just finished leveling him up, here are my thoughts on the man, the myth, the legend, Ferdinand von Aegir.

Ferdinand-
I am speed. Ferdinand's personal action ability is second only to Sylvain's in my mind, he gains momentum throughout the fight, getting faster and faster until he's practically a blur. Having the Crest of Cichol makes Ferdinand ideal for using the Spear of Assal and Ochain Shield, making him tremendously durable and the worst nightmare of enemy cavalry units. This, combined with Rejuvenation, makes him one of the few units who can make use of Lifeforce without even really having to pay attention to your health, he heals so fast it doesn't matter. He's also well suited to using Járngreipr as a War Master, since it too is keyed to the Crest of Cichol. That said, given its effectiveness against cavalry, the Spear of Assal is pretty much objectively better, so unless you really hate using Caspar or Balthus for some reason, you're probably better off keeping Ferdinand as a lance user, and he's definitely one of the strongest lance users in the game. Really what I learned from Ferdinand's journey is to appreciate the value of effective weapons. Cavalry units are extremely common, and Ferdinand goes through them like a hot knife through butter. Even without any abilities equipped to make him better at dealing stun gauge damage, anyone with the Spear of Assal can pulverize the stun gauge of anyone on horseback, which is definitely a massive advantage, even if the damage increase isn't huge.

[Tediz64]

Just for reference, when y'all say you are doing 1 to 120 runs, are you talking about doing multiple playthrus over and over again on higher difficulties to get them to max level or are any of you making use of the Records Keeper (RK) by just spamming a high level map filled with loads of exp to get the character up to 120? I see some people talk about doing multiple runs just simply for harvesting and farming the stat-boosters but i was always under the impression making use of the RK was better for farming exp even if it meant not gaining much in the way of rewards.

[ZanaLyrander]

9 minutes ago, Tediz64 said:

Just for reference, when y'all say you are doing 1 to 120 runs, are you talking about doing multiple playthrus over and over again on higher difficulties to get them to max level or are any of you making use of the Records Keeper (RK) by just spamming a high level map filled with loads of exp to get the character up to 120? I see some people talk about doing multiple runs just simply for harvesting and farming the stat-boosters but i was always under the impression making use of the RK was better for farming exp even if it meant not gaining much in the way of rewards.

Oh, I'm sorry if I gave the impression I was starting at level 1. Most of my characters were in the 80s or 90s when I started doing these leveling runs. I'm just focusing on one character at a time and leveling them up to 120 by continuing to go through the main campaign. The record keeper is indeed better for farming exp, but as you say, the stat-booster items are tremendously valuable, and can only be acquired by progressing through the campaign, so I prefer to do that.

[Archeleon]

1 hour ago, ZanaLyrander said:

I think I've never really adjusted to the self damage abilities like Lifeforce, there's just something about them that goes against my gaming instincts. Even having said that, given that my strategy with Bernie is spamming Drill Arrow and Deadeye, Lifeforce is extremely costly. I'm sure swapping to smaller Might CAs would probably make it a bit more viable, but for my current strategy Bernadetta practically empties her hp bar in less than a minute, even with the healing from The Inexhaustible.

Anyway, since he was already fairly close to 120 and I just finished leveling him up, here are my thoughts on the man, the myth, the legend, Ferdinand von Aegir.

Ferdinand-
I am speed. Ferdinand's personal action ability is second only to Sylvain's in my mind, he gains momentum throughout the fight, getting faster and faster until he's practically a blur. Having the Crest of Cichol makes Ferdinand ideal for using the Spear of Assal and Ochain Shield, making him tremendously durable and the worst nightmare of enemy cavalry units. This, combined with Rejuvenation, makes him one of the few units who can make use of Lifeforce without even really having to pay attention to your health, he heals so fast it doesn't matter. He's also well suited to using Járngreipr as a War Master, since it too is keyed to the Crest of Cichol. That said, given its effectiveness against cavalry, the Spear of Assal is pretty much objectively better, so unless you really hate using Caspar or Balthus for some reason, you're probably better off keeping Ferdinand as a lance user, and he's definitely one of the strongest lance users in the game. Really what I learned from Ferdinand's journey is to appreciate the value of effective weapons. Cavalry units are extremely common, and Ferdinand goes through them like a hot knife through butter. Even without any abilities equipped to make him better at dealing stun gauge damage, anyone with the Spear of Assal can pulverize the stun gauge of anyone on horseback, which is definitely a massive advantage, even if the damage increase isn't huge.

I actually enjoy Ferdinand more as a War Master. The WM moveset feels pretty good with the speed increase but he also gets access to Shatter to reveal gauges easily. On top of that he learns Fierce Iron Fist which lets him make use of his naturally high Spd and Absorb Spd ability.

[Archeleon]

17 minutes ago, Tediz64 said:

Just for reference, when y'all say you are doing 1 to 120 runs, are you talking about doing multiple playthrus over and over again on higher difficulties to get them to max level or are any of you making use of the Records Keeper (RK) by just spamming a high level map filled with loads of exp to get the character up to 120? I see some people talk about doing multiple runs just simply for harvesting and farming the stat-boosters but i was always under the impression making use of the RK was better for farming exp even if it meant not gaining much in the way of rewards.

I am resetting them to 1 and leveling them up to 120 as a certain class to fish for stat increases that I'm interested in. For this I do use RK. For booster farming you do want to do campaign runs.

[Sire]

While I haven't gotten Lysithea to 120, I have mastered all of her classes. (Shez was naturally the first, even after I changed genders for the 4th playthrough.)
-- This is leveling Lysithea as my main character when playing through the campaigns, with the other slots filled as normal.

Honestly, I'm struggling on what exactly to do with Lysithea. Her personals are amazing, but the skills she gets from classes is just average. (A Spellcaster without Fiendish Blow or Elemental Essence? Why?)
-- I'm trying to keep her as a Gremory since its her canon class and she gets a unique special attack animation, but the default Gremory moveset is just not as enjoyable as other classes. (Dark Bishop may be slow, but it feels good to play. Gremory feels weightless and floaty.) // Now, having an Elemental Essence does make the Gremory more enjoyable since one can spam Magic and the Strong Attack resonating with that Element, with the augmented Class Action being a sight to see. Alas, Lysithea does not have an Elemental Essence skill...
-- Also, Thyrsus isn't as impressive as it is in Three Houses, as the "Far-Reaching Magic" just applies to the normal attacks of the Magic (Tome) classes, meaning it only grants +6 Mag and a chance for damage negation. I guess the extra range on normals can be nice, but it seems to offer nothing for proper Magic or Strong Attacks which I frequently use. // I'm tempted to just place the Crest of Gloucester on her for a better proc chance, or maybe just a standard Magic Staff for "increased damage with magical attacks (Asclepius is slated to be on Gremory Hapi once she mastered her classes).
-- As for Lifeforce, I'm not the biggest fan of the skill. It takes away too much HP for my tastes, especially when spamming skills. Some characters work better with it as they have access to equipment that regenerates their health, or have synergy with the Holy Knight class (which grants easy self-heals with its attacks). Sure, technically the Gremory (and Bishop) have self-heal options on their attacks, but Holy Knight just does it better. // Impossible Feat is much more easier to manage, since its just a constant tick over time.
== I could try to change her class to a physical one to take advantage of Luna (class skill), but doing this will require a lot of investment in terms of Stat Boosters and potentially resetting her level and leveling Lysithea again.
== I guess Lysithea is the "jack of all trades" spellcaster, considering she can easily fill up her Warrior and Awakening gauges and has synergy with Magic/Combat Arts dealing more damage on the rare occasion. She's not a bad unit, but I guess I wish her standard gameplay was more than "Spam Magic/CA so you can spam Warrior Specials and Awakenings."

* * * * *

As for Shez (who is 120), I'm kept them as the Asura and focus on their swordplay instead of magic. I use the Warm Cloak (Sylvain's Merc Whistle Item) with the Dark Creator Sword and just annihilate anything in Shez's way.
-- I could try a Dark Knight Magic build since Shez has Essence of Darkness, but I feel like Jeritza fulfills a similar role, even though he gets the Death Knight class instead of Dark Knight (Chance to instant kill enemies instead of increased damage with black/dark magic).