Post-Maddening Debrief

[hdawgsizzle]

I just finished my first run of Engage a couple of days ago on Maddening and wanted to share a little bit about what worked, what didn't etc. I think it's too early to really be making tier lists or anything like that - most of the tier list videos I've seen have mostly felt... anecdotal? circumstantial? incoherent? They aren't great is what I'm getting at. I think there's still a lot to learn about this game, and I'm very skeptical of anyone who insists they know the full potential of every unit in this game. I've been enjoying the more casual posts where people talk about their experiences with various chapters, characters, skill builds, etc. These have felt really collaborative and helpful. 

I tried to play the game as "in a vacuum" as I could, meaning no DLC/Online/Heroes/Amiibo support. What worked for me should work no matter how you play the game, and there's probably lots of room to optimize what I did

Also I wanted to give shoutouts to a couple of channels that I found extremely helpful as I played through the game. Linkmstr finished the game a while ago and was so far ahead of me the whole time. I found it very helpful to see what was coming down the line far in advance. Tastymond is another channel I found very helpful. He's very knowledgeable and has quite a few Fire Emblem LPs on his channel. Lastly, Zoran was also incredibly helpful to my playthrough. He's still streaming the game (up to Chapter 24 at the moment) so go check out his streams. His stream chat was a great resource to ask a quick question or two of a pool of other knowledgeable players e.g. "what should I do with this extra 500 SP?" I've been enjoying his streams so much that I'm actually going back and binging his Conquest videos now. Also I'd love to give a big thank you to anyone on this forum who has answered my questions or discussed the game with me over the past few weeks - this forum has been a great resource and everyone has been so helpful

[hdawgsizzle]

I'll share the units I used in the order in which they are recruited (for transparency, the meal that they had provided 1 Str, 1 Spd, 2 Def. Alear has 2 extra Dex from Squats):

Marth!Alear (Hero)

Coming off of units like Robin, Corrin, Byleth, it's a pretty big adjustment back to a lord this underwhelming. Maybe someone has really figured out how to make the most out of Alear, but I think that my experience with him has been pretty typical so far. He's decent in the early game, probably even one of the better units in the first few chapters. In the midgame though, wow is he dead weight. As a combat unit, losing that strength and speed from Marth he just can't do much of anything. Even with an energy drop those noodle arms just couldn't do it. As a Divine Dragon, he was able to run Byleth and make good use out of Goddess Dance/Rally Spectrum, and that's pretty much all he did for a while. Around ~Ch 18 or so I decided to make the full commitment to Alear as a Hero - I'd be losing Rally Spectrum in favor of Rally Str +4 (not great, but still helpful) but would let him become a Backup unit with Dual Assist, and we'd be working towards getting Brave Assist ASAP. I'm not sure when would have been the best time to commit to the switch - should I have made him a Hero much earlier? Or is Rally Spectrum valuable enough that I should have held onto it for longer? The Brave Assists felt well worth the investment for me. For skills, I got him Avoid +10 early on because that's what Three Houses taught me to do, but I'm not sure that was a great decision in the long run - Canter would've been the best choice probably, and I was trying to save up for it towards the endgame but didn't quite make it there and ended just short at 872 SP.

Alear got much better after getting Marth back - those boosts to Str and Speed help him out immensely, though he's still not phenomenal as a combat unit. Engage+ is really fantastic, to the point where I'm wondering whether keeping Marth on Alear is at all worth it. If I'm going to engage, I'm going to engage+, so really Marth is just providing stat buffs and passives.

Ike!Diamant (Successeur)

Diamant was an incredible unit for me, start to finish, arguably the best unit overall. Of the units I used, I think he's the only one that I would really insist is a top pick. The arguments I've seen against him are just so incredibly flimsy? Some people seem to be intent on pointing out that he caps his Dex at 22, as if this is something that matters for anything other than the final map or two. Even then, it's not like his Dex is so low that it really impacts him all that much. He has a personal skill that improves his hit rate, you can engrave (that Lyn engraved Tomahawk gave him lots of extra hit and crit), he can fall back on using swords which have higher hit, you can give him Hit+ skills if you really want to... I really never had any problems with his hit rate at all. Sure, off 22 dex he's not proc'ing Sol super often, but the design ethos of this game really doesn't seem to be built around procs. If you're trying to make a Sol build, I think you're playing the wrong game. Sol's nice when it happens.

As for why he's valuable, he's just incredibly good at pretty much everything - hits super hard (and has the build to wield those weapons), tanks both kind of hits pretty well - physical hits exceptionally well, and doubles a lot more than I'd expect him to. The single biggest return on investment I got out of a stat booster this run was giving Diamant a single speedwing (the second one you get). He starts in a decent speed tier where he isn't really getting doubled by much (except maybe the wolves and the swordmasters) and can double a decent amount of the slower enemies. With just 2 extra speed, he's doubling a lot more of the map. Probably the biggest niche he has is that he's really one of the only units that could consistently enemy phase things. While engaged with Ike, he's absolutely insane on enemy phase, but even unengaged he was still able to take quite a lot of hits. I gave him Ike because there's a nice synergy between both his stats - taking his extremely solid natural bulk to extraordinary levels - and his personal skill, which loses any downside while engaged. For the majority of the game, the only skill he was running was Dual Assist. After that initial purchase, I started saving for Pair Up, thinking it'd be necessary to continue his ability to enemy phase deeper in the game. It took a very long time to earn the 2000 SP for Pair Up and I'm not sure it was ever worth it. The scariest set of backup units (y'know, the ones from the meme) can and probably should be skipped over entirely w/ Warp/Rewarp/Rescue and other than them, I don't think there are enough Brave Assist Heroes to justify the need to save up for a 2000 SP skill. It's nice in theory, but think of how much better that 2000 SP could have been spent over the course of the playthrough. It's a testament to Diamant that while only running a single Dual Assist skill the vast majority of the game, he still was outperforming nearly everyone else on the squad. 

Celica!Ivy (Lindwurm)

For as much as I've seen about how Ivy is an SSS+ tier g.oddess, I left the run pretty unimpressed by her performance. That Build, that Speed, that Luck stat, that Hit Rate... it's just all so abysmal and there just aren't enough resources or skill slots to patch it all up. I gave her 1 Seraph Robe, 2 Spirit Dusts, 1 Speedwing, and 2 Goddess Icons and she's... above average I guess? I understand the value of a flying magic user - there's really no other unit in the game that can do what she does - and so I feel almost obligated to recommend her as a unit, but wow does she need a lot of investment to keep up. There's an argument for Lyn!Ivy (and the game even defaults to it) - she'd get a nice Spd +5 bonus as well as any speed she can accumulate through Speedtaker, and that might be enough to help her, but Lyn is a pretty popular emblem and I'm not sure that Ivy is really the best choice for it. Those Astra Storms would be useless, and the (literally, in terms of SP) most valuable skill, Alacrity++ is pretty much wasted on a character who is going to be attack at range most of the time. Celica is alright on her, the Magic bonus is nice at least. Probably the best she performed for me though was when she was using Dire Thunder. 

For skills, she really wants Canter, Canter(+) if you can get it. Being able to hit and run give her so much more utility, since she doesn't want to enemy phase much. I thought about Speedtaker for a second, but in terms of price, Canter and Spd +4 seemed like a better choice for 2000 SP, especially since you can accumulate Spd +1/2/3/etc as you earn the SP. Even with Spd +4 and a Speedwing it really just wasn't enough for her though... Oh and we haven't even gotten into her hit rate issues! I never saw a hit rate above 60% from her post Ch 22. She didn't have a skill slot to patch up her shaky Hit and I struggled to find an engrave to give her that could give her Hit and not torpedo her already low speed. Alear's engrave (maybe Lyn's or Lucina's?) was probably the correct choice for her, but no one else wants/can make use of Celica's so I fell into that temptation. I guess her personal skill is supposed to help her out, but honestly I could count on one hand the amount of times I saw that skill come into play over the course of my run. I saw someone try to argue that her personal skill is good because "when she misses you can just dance for her and she'll hit the second time." That's bad. We understand that that's a bad line of thinking, right? Why would I waste 3 of my actions (including my Dancer's action!!!) when I can just have a better unit (Pandreo - we'll get to him) do the job in the first place. 

I think the hype around Ivy might be a bit of magical thinking. We see this flying unit that can use magic and we think that she must be good, so we all invest in her until she outperforms; or, conversely, when she underperforms, we blame ourselves, as I'm doing now - it's a flying mage, somebody surely has figured out how to make this unit work, I must be the problem.

Lyn!Kagetsu (Hero)

Pretty much no matter what you do with Kagetsu - unless you go completely off the rails - he's going to be an excellent unit. Great bases, great growths, some exceptional speed. Not sure that Swordsmaster really gives him anything he wants, so I made him into a Hero and got Brave Assist/Dual Assist+ on him. He really doesn't need both skill slots since he doesn't need help patching up any stats or anything. Even with just the one free slot, I really struggled to decide what to do with it. I bought Mentorship on a lot of my units at one point so that filled the second skill slot for a lot of the game (I think someone did the math on this and determined that Mentorship isn't optimal). I tried out Favorite Food for a little bit but didn't like using it - I found it hard to get damage on him (partially bc of Alacrity++ from Lyn) and that I really didn't want to get him damaged bc of Brave Assist, so he never really had an opportunity to eat the food and recover his engage. I ended up putting Reposition on him which was fine - probably only got a handful of uses since I got it so late. His damage started to falter slightly at the very end of the game, but I'm not sure there's anything I could have done with SP to really improve that much.

I gave him Lyn early on, which was exceptionally good in the midgame. He had tons of speed and made great use out of Alacrity to get kills before he could get counter attacked. His Astra Storms were great and giving him access to some bows was useful as well. Towards the endgame, I started to wonder if I was making a mistake by keeping Lyn on him. As Kagetsu's damage started to fall off a bit, he wasn't often able to one round enemies from full health, making Alacrity++ slightly less valuable. It still helped him kill weakened enemies and there's a lot of synergy there with him being a Brave Assist Hero and not wanting to take damage at all. Lyn is just an emblem that a lot of characters want to use, and Kagetsu was so fast by endgame that I'm not sure he really needed her help as much as some other characters might have. 

Lucina!Fogado (Cupido)

It's difficult for me to assess the performance of Fogado. I feel on some level that I am more assessing the performance of Radiant Bow +5, an excellent weapon that allows him to one shot enemy fliers for the vast majority of the game. Even when not attacking fliers, Radiant Bow allows Fogado to do great damage on low Res enemies, especially with his really great spd. For the vast majority of the game, he did exactly what I wanted him to do, so I can't complain too much. The issue is that with 15 mag at endgame, the Radiant Bow +5 is 5-6 points short of one shotting the fliers. Without that utility, his usefulness nosedives. On the physical side, his performance is very lackluster. For a large portion of the late game, he won't be able to damage physical enemies at all with physical bows, and his damage against mages is pretty abysmal too. Sometimes taking a 0 damage longbow shot is worth it just to see how many Dual Assists you can rack up, but that's pretty niche. You may want to invest in his physical bows more than I did - perhaps you can make something out of them, but it always seemed better to invest into weapons/characters that were already working than trying to salvage something that wasn't working at all. This is why I'm skeptical of the advice that Warrior Fogado is a better choice for him - why ruin the one thing he has going for him (magical damage) in hopes that something else will work out (physical damage)?

I paired Fogado with Lucina pretty early on with the thought that a high movement unit with 2-3 range gives a lot of potential for Dual Assist(+). This is a pretty okay strategy, though I'm not sure it's the best use of her emblem. The stat boosts she gives are fine, but the best use of Lucina seems to revolve around the use of Bonded Shield. As only one of two Cavalry units on the team, the only reliable Bonded Shield strategy I have available is to Bonded Shield for Pandreo. Luckily, this itself is extremely effective - Pandreo is fast enough to not get doubled by most everything (he has 36 speed when not wielding the heavy Thoron) and can usually hit really hard back with Bolganone. 

Corrin!Pandreo (Mage Knight)

Pandreo was a bit of a last minute decision for me. Up through Ch. 17 I was using Yunaka, Timerra, and Alcryst, all of whom were struggling immensely. With other units like Merrin and Panette also starting to fall behind, I had to make some decisions about who I thought could be patched up and who I would be better off benching. One of the weaknesses of my team that Ch 17 made apparent to me was that I did not have enough magic users and that this put an immense strain on Ivy, Fogado (w/ the Radiant Bow), and Hortensia to be dealing out magic damage and also be using staves. I brought Pandreo on the team, not expecting much since I had him benched for 3 chapters, and he performed right off the bat. I saw a tier list put him in S tier w/ the reasoning "just a really solid staff bot" which just does not even begin to scratch the surface of what this guy can do. He actually had Build, can hit super hard, has decent enough Dex to hit most things (Thoron is a little shaky), and as a Mage Knight he's super fast and mobile (plus, since he only ever really wants to be attacking physical units, Chaos Style gives him a mini Darting Blow). With Corrin, he was running around freezing huge groups of enemies giving me so much crowd control (he also likes her stat buffs a lot). I gave him Canter (super helpful for hit and runs) and some extra speed. Super low investment and probably the MVP of the third act of the game.

Leif!Panette (Warrior)

Panette struggled for me early on but I was eventually able to get her to a place that I was happy with. The big issue right off the bat are the extremely low hit rates. I was a little too eager to fix them and I bought her Hit +15 as soon as I possibly could. I probably should have settled for Hit +10 and started to use the remaining SP to patch up her low Spd. Eventually, I was able to get her to both Hit +20 and Spd +4, so these are minor issues with regards to pathing. Berserker really didn't do all that much for her - especially Smash+, which is a skill she just doesn't have the accuracy to do anything with. I tried her as a Wyvern for a while and she has the notorious distinction of being the only unit in FE that I've tried as a Wyvern and wasn't good. She really wants at least an A in axes - Brave Axe is pretty good for her since she has a lot of strength and can hit pretty hard. As a Warrior, bow access is also pretty nice. She's not often killing much with the low Mt Longbow, but she was able to often get a pretty big chunk of damage off and set up a lot of chain attacks in the process.

I gave her Leif to patch up one of her biggest issues in the midgame, which is her low Build. With an already pretty low speed stat and heavy weapons, she doesn't want to be slowed down any more. By endgame, she actually had quite a lot of natural Build, 14, so Leif wasn't strictly necessary by the end. There wasn't really much reason for her to ever Engage, or at least I didn't find that many opportunities to. 

Eirika!Merrin (Griffin Knight)

Ostensibly, Merrin as a Griffin Knight performs pretty similarly to Chloé, if you've used her. I myself didn't compare their stats or anything, so I'm not sure exactly what the pros/cons are or who is worth the long term investment. Merrin comes with insanely good bases as a Wolf Knight, but I was surprised how short the honeymoon period was. By chapter 17 she was struggling to do any meaningful damage, with Lunar Brace being the only thing holding her together. After Ch 17, I regrouped a bit and made some team changes. I swapped Merrin over to a Griffin mostly to get an extra staff user on the team. This ended up being mostly meaningless - I almost never had to use her staves - but she did perform really well as a Griffin Knight with some more attention. Forging up a Silver Sword helped her physical damage output, and forging up a Levin Sword helped her deal some nice magic damage as well. Getting Sigurd back was good for her because she got Canter, and then I spent the rest of her SP during the playthrough on Sword Power, which made sense for her since it buffs her damage on both sides. By virtue of Eirika's emblem, she just kept getting better as the game went on. Lunar Brace upgraded to Lunar Brace+, she got access to Sieglinde... She ended the game in a really good place. A very solid unit at endgame. 

Micaiah!Hortensia (Sleipnir Rider) 

She does exactly what you want her to do, does that job better than anyone else, and requires very little investment. That's a pretty great deal, especially in a game where so many of your units go through rough patches and growing pains and require a lot of attention. For skills, Canter+ is definitely the skill that's going to help her out the most. That extra bit of movement helps her get to unsafe positions to heal and then get away, do some chip damage and then get away, or better move into the correct position to set up some Warp/Rewarp shenanigans. For her second skill, I gave her Staff Mastery. It's pretty low investment both in terms of SP (200 for each level, which will accumulate over time) and Bond Fragments (she's already leveling up Micaiah anyways). There's some tradeoff here though - I believe divine pulse is better if you really care the most about staff hit rate. On the other hand, staff mastery provides extra healing, which is nice because Hortensia's magic isn't extremely high or anything - she often appreciates the extra bit of healing. 

It's a little difficult to disentangle how good Hortensia is from how good Micaiah is. As an emblem pairing, it makes sense and it gives Hortensia all of the stat buffs she would want, though some players might appreciate the utility of giving Micaiah to a unit who can't naturally wield staves. 

Seadall (Dancer)

Seadall is the unit I feel most comfortable saying will be remembered for being exceptional. In terms of dancers, he's at least in the same conversation as the Herons, which is pretty incredible. Canter(+) is great for both dancing a unit in enemy range and then getting out, or dancing and then getting into formation for a Goddess Dance. I also got him Quality Time(+) which is a nice help in terms of passively healing a few units or topping up Heroes with Brave Assist without wasting an action healing them. I saw someone say that you shouldn't run Quality Time because units like Panette don't want the healing. I think that's way overthinking things. Not only are those units/skills pretty rare, but Quality Time only activates when Seadall waits, not when he dances. With Canter, you can very easily dance for Panette and move out of the way so you aren't standing right next to her. 

While pulling for Dire Thunder I found a Miracle ring, which I put on Seadall for the lulz. He never saw a single round of combat so it did not matter in the slightest. I'm kinda curious if there's an animation for the skill though - I haven't been able to find anything. 

Sigurd!Goldmary (Wyvern Knight)

I've talked about this build a little bit - it's probably the least conventional of my builds (which also makes me the most proud of it) though it's not insanely out of the box or anything. In my view, it's actually pretty low investment. After Ch 17, as I planned to regroup, my party was in pretty desperate need of Lance units. Alear had lances as his secondary weapon in Hero, but Timerra was my lance unit and she really wasn't cutting it. I was deciding between adding either Rosado or Goldmary, and someone pointed out to me that Goldmary as a Wyvern has better bases than Rosado does, so Goldmary made it on the team. 

With Sigurd, Goldmary gets a few extra points of Build, which helps her out and lets her wield some heavier weapons more comfortably. She gains a point of extra movement, which is helpful as a flier. She gains a bit of dex to patch up her hit rate slightly, and she gains defense which helps her become even tankier. Notably, she also gains momentum, which helps her damage slightly, and most importantly, she gains Canter(+). Having Canter without investing SP is a major boon to Goldmary because it means that she can spend her pretty large 1800 SP elsewhere. With her SP, we'll patch up her only stat that still needs help, by giving her Speedtaker with her first 2000 SP and then adding Spd +1/2/3/etc as the rest of her SP rolls in. This can take her from an average to slow unit to a unit that can actually double pretty often. Also, Air Raid is there as well which is situational but does help her. I've seen a lot of people recommending Great Knight or General Goldmary, but I think that might be overkill. Why completely tank her passable speed for some extra defense when she already has more than enough defense as a Wyvern? With this build she became a 7-movement flier that hit hard, could double, took little to no damage from any enemy, and was also pretty dodgy (Lucina's engrave helped). In the final few chapters, pretty much every enemy was coming up to her with single digit damage and single digit hit rates. Haar who?

Goldmary tells you she's perfect at every opportunity she gets. It's your fault if you don't listen to her.  

Roy!Saphir (Hero)

I think Saphir is an example of a unit where I prioritized what was best for the team over what was best for her individually as a unit. Having another Brave Assist Hero on the team made a huge difference, and I think it's nice that that's a potential fallback you can use these late-joining units for. However, as a combat unit herself, I never really figured out how to make her work. With Roy, she hit decently hard, but her speed and her hit rate were both pretty atrocious and because she only had one skill slot left, it was hard to patch up both. I tried to give her speed and then use engraves to fix her hit rate, but this didn't really work all that well - her speed still wasn't great and her hit rate was passable. If I really wanted to make her into a better combat unit and invest more heavily in her, there's probably something I could have done with her. I think she has Panette upside? Both need help with their speed and hit rate, both hit pretty hard...

Mauvier (Sage)

Without DLC, there are only 12 emblem rings to distribute in the game, but you can bring 14 characters to the final few chapters. Seadall doesn't need an emblem, so one person's getting left out. My thinking was that the best case scenario for an emblem-less unit was to go Dire Thunder, and that's what I did with Mauvier. Good decision? I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, changing him into a class with a better magic base actually allows him to contribute as a combat unit, which is way more than I could say for him as a Royal Knight. As a Sage, he's also a pretty good staff bot. I'd also be remiss not to mention that as a Sage, Mauv's looking low key daddy af tbh lol. The downside of this plan is that his stat spread is... kind of insane? Upon reclassing he caps HP, Def, and Build, making him the bulkiest Sage you can ever want. But those caps are pretty low so it's hard to really make much out of them. I used 500 SP on some extra HP so that he could kinda-sorta enemy phase some stuff with Excalibur, but opportunities to do so aren't that common - his speed isn't good enough for that option a lot of the time. With the other 2000 SP, I bought Draconic Hex, which I think was a worthwhile investment. From 3 range I could hit for some good damage and a debuff and it allowed other units to go in and finish the job.

I should also mention that he is insanely hard to train. If you want a class skill from any class other than Royal Knight, you pretty much have to reclass him immediately and also take him to the arena a few times. 

Byleth!Veyle (Fell Dragon)

Veyle took over Alear's role and became a superdancer/rallybot for the rest of my squad. I think it would be extremely difficult to make her into a dedicated combat unit. She has some nice magical chip damage - and that knife gets pretty powerful with some forging, but... I'm not sure that that's really enough to make something out of. That HP/Defense is just abysmal, so she really cannot attack anything that can counterattack her at all. I gave her Canter+ so she could hit and run or dance and run, and this felt like a good choice. Notably, you cannot use Canter after using Instruct, so do be careful about that. The other 500 SP were probably a waste - her hit rate isn't very good so I got her Hit +10, but I completely forgot that with Byleth, she's running Divine Pulse+, which would fix her hit rate already. I'm not sure where the other 500 would be better spent. 

-----------

Alright - thanks for reading any or all of this post! Thanks again to this community for the help along the way - I hope that this helps even slightly give back to people looking for some help or guidance with this game. Maddening was pretty brutal! 

[DefyingFates]

Thank you so much for this write-up! Reading your thought processes for all of these decisions was really helpful and this definitely feels like a post I'll consult when it comes my turn to do Maddening. Thanks again!

[LoneRecon400]

Some thoughts:

Alear: While not great out of box, they can actually snowball pretty hard with Marth in the beginning. Get them to Bond 10 after Chapter 5 and they can use Mercurius for double EXP gain, which provides quite the notable bump in EXP gain. Makes them capable of getting Cantor faster than anyone else to better use their personal. And yeah, Engage + is the way to go with them. It effectively provides +8 Spd and Def with +4 to all the other stats after a kill on top of just passively providing +30 Hit and Avoid to every unit. It can be worth not even giving them a ring since engage + replaces the ring you're wearing.

Diamant: I'd say the power you're seeing is more from Ike rather than Diamant. Ike just makes anyone incredible, as effectively giving +12 Def on top of a 50% damage reduction is already amazing. But adding a way to gain an additional +5 Def, naturally giving +4 Str, all on top of Wrath and Reposition? That's just insane. It was enough for Merrin on the first playthrough to have near 40 Defense while maintaining the speed to double the majority of enemies and had near 100 Crit rates on enemies. Who you put Emblems on makes a huge difference which is why...

Ivy: ... You were not impressed with Ivy. People who praise her combat potential typically either give her Olwen or leave Lyn on her. Lyn is actually not bad choice, since her magic is good enough to one round the majority of enemies in the game, but it is a pretty in demand ring. Her Hit rates can be pretty easily fixed with engravings like Lief. Failing that you could always rely on Bond forger in the lategame.

Kagatsu: It is indeed not worth putting Lyn on him. He really wants something that gives him strength so that he can cleanly one round in the lategame. Ike and Roy are a pretty good fit for him instead.

Fogado: There's no reason to keep him in his personal class since it only gives him 13 Strength. Promoting him to warrior gives him 19 base Strength and 18 Speed, which is higher strength than what Kagatsu has while having the same speed growth at 70%. He can still use the Radiant Bow as well, as a maxed Ike Engraved Radiant Bow has a massive 81 Might. That's enough to one shot all but endgame Griffons even with 7 base magic. 

Pandreo: Yeah, his combat is pretty slept on since it doesn't look too impressive at base and requires losing staves to really utilize. He's probably the best combat mage in the game though.

Panette: There's really no salvaging her speed since she starts slows and doesn't have a good growth. But having the highest Strength in the game gives her the opportunity to make good with brave weapons or utilizing Wrath + Vantage. Halberdier is also a really good option for her    

Merrin: A good way of using her would be to focus on being an Axe Wolf Knight. She has 9 build at base and 21 base speed, which lets her use a Lyn Engraved Killer Axe for only -1 Speed. That makes up for her low strength pretty well while still retaining a good 1-2 range option.

Goldmary:  I could see such a setup working well. But I gotta ask, was she able to double the really fast things like Heroes or Griffins in your experience? I'm unsure if she could or not.

Saphir:  One setup you could've tried is using her with Ike as a Halberdier. She can inherit Axe power +2 at base. Combine that with Urvan, she can swing around a 25 might weapon that requires nothing to forge and doesn't require any levels to hit 53 Atk.

Edited February 14, 2023 by LoneRecon400

[FashionEmblem]

I appreciate this post because I just beat Chapter 17 and upon regaining Sigurd I'm debating skill inheritances. Mostly, which character does Sigurd go on whom gets to save 1000 SP on Canter. Also, that chapter really taught me the value of Draconic Hex and that skill now needs to get added into the list of skills I distribute around.

 

Alear - I'm ok with Divine Dragon Alear not having great combat because the utility I am getting off Byleth's dance is crazy. Granted, the dance is good on anyone, but my other characters who want Byleth are mysticals for Thyrsus, and Rally Spectrum >> Rally Magic. I'm using the DLC, so if that ever changes I'd probably go Camilla and stay in Divine Dragon (Corrin is glued to Yunaka forever more, that fog is so useful).

Ivy - It's good to hear that Celica!Ivy was disappointing because that was my original plan for her and I may change course. I was tempted by the extra range on Warp Ragnarok on a flier, but I hear it falls off hard in the late game. Maybe Ivy gets Sigurd for some build and to spend her SP on Speedtaker and not Canter? Then remaining SP can go towards some form of magic boost she's missing out on the emblem. Draconic Hex would be lovely with flier mobility + 3 range magic, but that's so expensive alongside Speedtaker—maybe Speed +4 and Draconic Hex is the way to go.

Goldmary - I'm not surprised she worked—she has great stats. I just hate her so much that I refused to use her and am getting by with Rosado and Great Knight!Jade instead. I do think without DLC I would feel the pain of my stubbornness much more acutely.

Fogado - Currently running Warrior!Fogado, and while I understand it makes his Radiant Bow worse the chain attack utility with the Long Bow is great. And while Long Bow is available to all Warriors, Fogado gets B bows for the Silver Bow, which is nice. You got chain attacks through Lucina, but in my opinion that is better applied to a dagger user like Merrin for chain attack poison. So, reversing what you did Fogado gets Eirika, which is nice since it helps bolster that magic alongside Lunar Brace improving physical combat.

Merrin - As mentioned, Lucina for chain attack poison utility, and the high mobility wolf knight pairs well with Dual Assist +. Since her job is mostly to get in on a chain attack early for poison, I'm now thinking she's a good Draconic Hex user.

Lyn - Lyn!Kagetsu strikes me as overkill, but Lyn is good on any character really. Doubles are such important defensive utility and Astra Storm is nice for baiting or attacking those pesky thieves in flight. I like the covert bonus so I've glued her onto Alcryst for extra Astra Storm range and it's nice that each hit of Astra Storm can proc Luna off his high dex stat. You said your Alcryst fell off, which I haven't noticed almost certainly thanks to Lyn's boosts to speed.

Pandreo - I'm using him and loving it. I've given him Soren as his main emblem, though he occasionally runs Camilla, and have reclassed him to Sage for a better tome rank. I haven't reached a point yet where I'd like to convert him to Mage Knight for the Chaos Storm speed because his staff utility is quite helpful. Maybe after getting Micaiah, though I was planning to give her to my Wyvern!Chloe (her combat has held up way better than expected so this plan may also need some rejiggering since giving up weapon slots for staves seems like a true opportunity cost now).

Seadall - I can see why he was one of the characters left ringless. I like that he can equip Shielding Art for some bulk and inherit Canter. I'm wondering what the better emblems for him are since you have plenty with the DLC. Maybe Sigurd and Camilla for mobility and Roy for Hold Out survival? I would have greatly appreciated a flying Seadall with Camilla over the flames of Chapter 17.

P.S.

Forgot Diamant, mostly because I agree with what you said. He does have low dex, in the sense that you can't rely on Sol, which I imagine is disappointing for people who see the skill on his reclass sheet and don't look up his growths ahead of time. The cap gets brought up a lot which I think is odd—yes it's low, and in a theory crafting sense you can say his BEST chance to proc sol is ~1/5, but in practice you hit that internal level ~37, right near the end of the game. He synergizes well with Ike since he doesn't care about avoid, but I do get paranoid that he can't run a Vantage/Wrath build with Sol. The odds of catastrophic failure are low since the odds of activating Sol are low, but I do NOT trust my luck. I'm instead running him with Hector and it still works quite well.

Edited February 14, 2023 by FashionEmblem

[hdawgsizzle]

Wow thanks so much for the thoughts @LoneRecon400! There's so many great optimizations and things I hadn't thought that much about. For example, Halberdier was a class I completely ignored on my playthrough. I feel really good about the team I created - I was able to get from Ch 18 to the end of the game without any time crystal usage, so the builds definitely worked for me, but if there's ways to make the endgame easier? I'm all for that!

3 hours ago, LoneRecon400 said:

Alear: While not great out of box, they can actually snowball pretty hard with Marth in the beginning. Get them to Bond 10 after Chapter 5 and they can use Mercurius for double EXP gain, which provides quite the notable bump in EXP gain. Makes them capable of getting Cantor faster than anyone else to better use their personal. And yeah, Engage + is the way to go with them. It effectively provides +8 Spd and Def with +4 to all the other stats after a kill on top of just passively providing +30 Hit and Avoid to every unit. It can be worth not even giving them a ring since engage + replaces the ring you're wearing.

This is good to know - I've seen a few people insist that Alear is the best unit in the game... I'm still very skeptical of that but it's good to know that there are other things I could have done that would've made using Alear less annoying. Good to confirm that Canter is the way to go with them - that was my hunch. I'm still not super clear on how the Alear ring works - does it provide passives like the other rings but those passives get overwritten if you put another ring on Alear? I really like the extra points of strength from Marth... without those extra points of strength Alear just seems so useless. I wasn't super aggressive about using Engage+ during the chapters, mostly using it as a boss killer, so thanks for pointing out some of the benefits of popping that early.

3 hours ago, LoneRecon400 said:

Ivy: ... You were not impressed with Ivy. People who praise her combat potential typically either give her Olwen or leave Lyn on her. Lyn is actually not bad choice, since her magic is good enough to one round the majority of enemies in the game, but it is a pretty in demand ring. Her Hit rates can be pretty easily fixed with engravings like Lief. Failing that you could always rely on Bond forger in the lategame.

Since finishing the game and since posting I've thought of so many ways that I could have shifted around my engravings or done something different to fix her hit rate. Pre-chapter 10 I think it'd be most beneficial to engrave Celica on an Elsurge tome or something like that. I didn't get much use out of Elsurge bc she doesn't take hits very well, but it definitely would've helped in a lot of situations. I'm a little skeptical of Leif as a good option since she gets slowed down by nearly every tome she actually wants to use and I don't want to make that any worse but Lyn engraving, Lucina, Alear... I had some options I could've shifted around.

I was actually impressed by her when she had the Olwen ring on - I just didn't consider it as much of a late game option for her since I thought an emblem would be a better option. I'm still pretty skeptical of giving her Lyn

3 hours ago, LoneRecon400 said:

Kagatsu: It is indeed not worth putting Lyn on him. He really wants something that gives him strength so that he can cleanly one round in the lategame. Ike and Roy are a pretty good fit for him instead.

I really hadn't considered putting Roy on him but that seems like a good choice! I agree that he definitely wanted something that'd give him some extra strength in the lategame. I felt a little bit entrenched in using Lyn!Kagetsu since that's what I'd been using for so long and had built up to 20 - sunk cost, y'know? I did at one point consider swapping Lyn and Ike for Ike!Kagetsu and Lyn!Diamant and I kinda want to see how that'd play out. I wasn't sure that Kagetsu had enough bulk to make Ike work the way Diamant did, but your comment re: Merrin convinces me it'd work out. Lyn!Diamant I think could be absolutely insane - w/ her passive he'd be boosted up to 36 speed before speedtaker - that's a pretty good place to start at, esp considering meals/tonics could boost that even further. Those would be some insanely strong hits coming off Alacrity++

3 hours ago, LoneRecon400 said:

Fogado: There's no reason to keep him in his personal class since it only gives him 13 Strength. Promoting him to warrior gives him 19 base Strength and 18 Speed, which is higher strength than what Kagatsu has while having the same speed growth at 70%. He can still use the Radiant Bow as well, as a maxed Ike Engraved Radiant Bow has a massive 81 Might. That's enough to one shot all but endgame Griffons even with 7 base magic. 

Is the 6 extra strength enough to do much of anything though? By the end of the game that Longbow was doing like... 2 damage to most enemies and the Silver Bow wasn't that much better. I've seen some arguments for giving him Eirika because of this, but I think she's too valuable (esp in the lategame) to just help him do a little extra damage. Ike engraving is something I also completely ignored - I definitely see the use here with the extra Mt but do I want to lose the ability to double enemies with the Radiant Bow for some extra mt? I'm not sure that's a good trade, esp since the main issue I had was that Fogado stopped being able to one shot the Griffins around Ch 24, so if switching him to warrior and engraving still doesn't fix that, I'm not sure I see the upside

3 hours ago, LoneRecon400 said:

Goldmary:  I could see such a setup working well. But I gotta ask, was she able to double the really fast things like Heroes or Griffins in your experience? I'm unsure if she could or not.

29 base + 2 meal/tonic + up to 10 speedtaker + maybe 5 from Air Raid - if it all aligns, or even if just most of it aligns (Air Raid isn't all that common), then yea she's able to double even some of the fast enemies like Heroes (I forget exactly how much spd Griffins had at the end). The ultra fast enemies like Swordmasters and Wolves, she's not doubling them. I've seen this weird insistence like "the final chapters have 44 spd swordmasters, your units won't be able to double anything" as if Swordmasters are the only enemies on the entire map. There's a pretty big variety in enemy types on the final few maps and this gives her the tools to double 80%+ of them - that's pretty good IMO. Especially coming off a hard hitting unit that's not "supposed" to be able to double this much

[DaveCozy]

Tier lists should be done from a specific standpoint imo, like for LTCs, speedrunning, ironman, etc. But as you stated, most of the early release ones don't divulge into the intended use of their list. It really feels more like it's for the sake of views or clicks unfortunately.

I agree that we can't possibly know everything in less than a month from release. I was sleeping hard on the Halberdier class myself personally, until someone else showed me how easy it is to set up Pincer Attack and how silly true damage with it gets with Eirika's emblem engage skills active. I wouldn't be surprised to see 0% growth hack runs use something like that in the future, and wouldn't be surprised if more crazy stuff is found too.

[hdawgsizzle]

1 hour ago, DaveCozy said:

Tier lists should be done from a specific standpoint imo, like for LTCs, speedrunning, ironman, etc. But as you stated, most of the early release ones don't divulge into the intended use of their list. It really feels more like it's for the sake of views or clicks unfortunately.

I fully agree with this. From most of the early ones I've seen, it's not even that they don't divulge the intended use of their list, it's that I don't think there even is any use to their list. So many of them are like "idk this character's spd growth is kinda average so idk maybe b tier or something" as if that's at all useful information to anyone. They don't really talk about how to patch up Spd or Hit Rate or any other stat and which units it's worth investing that time and energy into. It's like... oh you ranked all of the cute girls S tier? I'm sure that list will really be a big help to someone who wants to play Maddening for the first time 🙄

One of the best examples to focus in on would be Anna: I've seen a lot of S tier placement for Anna and the reasoning is usually like "I got 2500 gold from Anna on Chapter 17 and that's really good, S." That's just not an adequate level of detail IMO. Is Anna worth running in the early game? Does it hurt your other early game units' exp gain to field her? Are you feeding lots of kills to her to try to get her skill to proc, and is that a detriment to your army? What's the opportunity cost of fielding her over another unit? And lastly, what exactly are you doing with that 2500 gold? When you're limited by ingots, the amount of staves you can buy, etc. is that 2500 gold worth running Anna?

None of this is to say that Anna is bad or that I think her skill is bad or anything like that. I've seen what she can do and she probably is as good as others insist. I just want a lot more detail out of these discussions, especially from people who insist that their opinion is so valuable. 

[Scaramuccia]

36 minutes ago, hdawgsizzle said:

I fully agree with this. From most of the early ones I've seen, it's not even that they don't divulge the intended use of their list, it's that I don't think there even is any use to their list. So many of them are like "idk this character's spd growth is kinda average so idk maybe b tier or something" as if that's at all useful information to anyone. They don't really talk about how to patch up Spd or Hit Rate or any other stat and which units it's worth investing that time and energy into. It's like... oh you ranked all of the cute girls S tier? I'm sure that list will really be a big help to someone who wants to play Maddening for the first time 🙄

 

The biggest issue with tier lists right now - people don't differentiate based on the level of investment. In engage the difference between invested and underinvested unit could be huge. And we are not talking about growth units like Anna - Ivy is a perfect example as you either invest into fixing her flaws and get a great flying mage or get a mediocre units with low hit and low speed.

But I saw many people saying Anna is great as you give her Micaiah, when forge, engrave, good emblem and she is S tier. And Boucheron(many early units could be in this place) is terrible as he falls back without enough experience and are not doing enough damage mid game with a +1 steel weapon and no emblem. Both statements are technically correct, but they don't mention that if you give Boucheron Micaiah, forge, engraving and emblem he will be quite OK in mid game.

I think any reasonable tier discussions should involve two tier lists - for an "invested" performance and "non invested" performance. As investment is so powerful in Engage.

[Dark Holy Elf]

4 hours ago, DaveCozy said:

Tier lists should be done from a specific standpoint imo, like for LTCs, speedrunning, ironman, etc.

I don't think I agree with this.

Very, very few people will do any individual one of these runs. They're all incredibly specific challenge runs. Maybe such tier lists are useful for people planning such runs, but when the intended audience is so tiny, and some of that small intended audience probably would want to figure things out on their own, I don't really see the point. Obviously folks who feel differently than me can work on and discuss these tier lists, that's fine, but I suspect they won't get much discussion (or in the case of a Youtube video, many clicks).

To me the most useful tier list, by far, is one that is just based around playing the game "normally" on a high difficulty (although people may disagree with what normal means). Lots of people do that and want advice on who to use. Being able to tell people that "use Seth to make Sacred Stones an easier game" is probably more useful information than "Seth saves time on a LTC" for the overwhelming majority of players.

22 hours ago, hdawgsizzle said:

I think the hype around Ivy might be a bit of magical thinking. We see this flying unit that can use magic and we think that she must be good, so we all invest in her until she outperforms; or, conversely, when she underperforms, we blame ourselves, as I'm doing now - it's a flying mage, somebody surely has figured out how to make this unit work, I must be the problem.

 

Yeah I'm kind of in the "Ivy is SSS tier goddess" group (well, no, that's going way too far, but she is the most important unit on my team), so a thought for consideration: Corrin Ivy. You did the same thing with Pandreo, and i'm sure he's great because Corrin is just a great emblem, but Ivy does the "run around freezing everything at 3 range" thing with extra move and wings and this has felt gamebreaking to me on many maps. As a bonus Corrin raises magic and gives a huge boost to HP, which Ivy is well-set to make good use of whether it's avoiding one-shots from bows or just using her surprisingly high bulk to soak multiple hits while doing way more counter damage than most other units can manage (tip: put a +dodge engrave on her basic weapon like Elfire or whatever). Obviously Lyn on her is also pretty ridiculous, but Lyn makes anyone with high atk and shaky speed good.

Celica by contrast just feels like a mediocre emblem for her. Celica's biggest thing is increasing flexible move options via Warp Ragnarok. Why give that to someone who already has the most flexible move options of any mage? Feels like overkill, and your experience kinda confirms my suspcions. Celica also boosts two of the least useful stats for Ivy (granted, and magic).

[FashionEmblem]

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yeah I'm kind of in the "Ivy is SSS tier goddess" group (well, no, that's going way too far, but she is the most important unit on my team), so a thought for consideration: Corrin Ivy. You did the same thing with Pandreo, and i'm sure he's great because Corrin is just a great emblem, but Ivy does the "run around freezing everything at 3 range" thing with extra move and wings and this has felt gamebreaking to me on many maps. As a bonus Corrin raises magic and gives a huge boost to HP, which Ivy is well-set to make good use of whether it's avoiding one-shots from bows or just using her surprisingly high bulk to soak multiple hits while doing way more counter damage than most other units can manage (tip: put a +dodge engrave on her basic weapon like Elfire or whatever). Obviously Lyn on her is also pretty ridiculous, but Lyn makes anyone with high atk and shaky speed good.

Celica by contrast just feels like a mediocre emblem for her. Celica's biggest thing is increasing flexible move options via Warp Ragnarok. Why give that to someone who already has the most flexible move options of any mage? Feels like overkill, and your experience kinda confirms my suspcions. Celica also boosts two of the least useful stats for Ivy (granted, and magic).

Question, how do you feel about the healing glow Dragon Vein on Ivy? I ran Camilla on Ivy as a speed stat stick for a bit and was unimpressed with the Dragon Vein; personally I'd be hard pressed to take it off my thief for that sweet avoid fog.

Myself, and I imagine others, thought Celica could synergize well with Ivy (or Hortensia) because flying gives a type bonus to increase Warp Ragnarok. I haven't experienced it myself yet, but apparently Warp Ragnarok falls off? Plus, with Astra Storm and Soren's Bolting you actually have my primary use-case for Warp Ragnarok, killing thieves/brigands before they achieve their objective, with the bonus of not finding yourself surrounded by enemies. I imagine there will be some LTC strats at some point that combine Warp Ragnarok, Micaiah AoE Warp/Rewarp, and dancing (including of the goddess variety) to pull off some shenanigans with the extra unit teleported to their destination. The final utility I can think of is that Echo can combine with chain attacks to do more damage, especially using a three range tome that can't double, but that job is better done by a mystical unit (and probably not much, if at all, better than Dire Thunder).

---------

Tier lists are likely premature. I think this game is kind of a weird game to digest because the power-scaling of characters is different from other fire emblem. In typical fire emblem, you get replacement units as you go in case you let characters die, but often they have somewhat worse stats than the units you've been using. I figured this is a bit of an RPG element of training up your army and the gameplay rewarding you for keeping allies alive. This isn't always true, Xander and Ryoma join later in Fates, for example, and the Gotoh archetype exists. But, I expect more later joins to be like Jesse, Luthier, and Nomah than Zeke, Tatiana, and Mycen from Echoes—usable but a bit worse than a character you've trained without RNG screwing.

This game really feels like optimal play is to bench everyone as new units come online. The new units have equivalent or better stats, more SP than you've likely been able to scrounge up, and don't cost Master Seals if they come prepromoted (which are finite for way too long into the game, in my opinion). Like I've put in enough favoritism to make a good Warrior!Boucheron, but I could have forgone him for an earlier Hand Axe Diamant and just spent a Heart Seal on Panette. I could continue to use Jade or Louis, or I could put in Goldmary who has better stats for tanking than them if she reclasses and easily more SP. I've chosen to use the characters I like instead of the characters that are better, but I do feel punished for this choice. That doesn't mean you can't tier, but any list that references character growths but doesn't bring up the base stats and base SP of later joins hasn't reworked their mindset.

The other odd thing about tiering the game is how you disentangle all the favoritism you give characters. Once again I like Warrior!Boucheron, but is he the actual best use of your third Master Seal? Because, if he doesn't promote after Chapter 8 I'd say he's ending on the bench because you are likely giving his experience to Etie instead (who then gets replaced by Fogado). Tome!Anna has absurd offensive stats, and costs 5k and you have to power level her from 5 to 10. (Which is quite doable with Micaiah Great Sacrifice spam, but that experience is appreciated by any unit, why does Anna get to monopolize it?). I always bench Etie, but I've never tried not to and she does her job, one-shot kills on fliers with a Steel Bow, quite well until Fogado can take the mantel. There's so many variables and it's this big entangled optimization problem since resources are finite and favoritism to some means neglecting others. I have a tough time making a tier list that wasn't much more than 2-3 tiers of worth investing into vs. not.

Edited February 15, 2023 by FashionEmblem

[Dark Holy Elf]

25 minutes ago, FashionEmblem said:

Question, how do you feel about the healing glow Dragon Vein on Ivy?

It exists. I rarely use it, since Ivy never lacks a useful action; even if she decides to spend an action going to a emblem energy circle to recharge Dreadful Aura juice she can throw out Physic. Still, it can clear 13 squares of miasma, which is on the high end (the highest, actually, I think?). Obviously a dragon-type is the best choice for dragon vein, I just don't find dragon vein nearly as useful as 3-range Dreadful Aura. Mystics, admittedly, have 3 range too, as do longbow users (although they benefit less from Corrin's stats), but I've found the mobility very useful for this strategy. Your milage may vary. There are obviously lots of ways to use Corrin effectively.

31 minutes ago, FashionEmblem said:

Myself, and I imagine others, thought Celica could synergize well with Ivy (or Hortensia) because flying gives a type bonus to increase Warp Ragnarok

Warp Ragnarok already expands your threat range to 17 on a mystic or 18 on a mage knight (terrain permitting, but thereabouts). It's true that in Ivy/Hortensia's hands that's 23, but I guess that feels like overkill to me. How often can you not reach your desired target with even regular Warp Ragnarok? I'm sure there are some specific LTC-type strategies where it might be crucial but for general use, it doesn't really feel like the difference is that notable to me. And Corrin offers +15 HP in place of +1 magic and +1 res, and that's ignoring that you'd have to spend time or resources raising Celica's bond level starting in Chapter 21 (and clear her paralogue). Granted, if you haven't kept your earlygame Celica user (which is reasonable, because both Ivy and Pandreo might take their job), then everyone else will face that disadvantage too.

[Shadow Mir]

25 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

It exists. I rarely use it, since Ivy never lacks a useful action; even if she decides to spend an action going to a emblem energy circle to recharge Dreadful Aura juice she can throw out Physic. Still, it can clear 13 squares of miasma, which is on the high end (the highest, actually, I think?). Obviously a dragon-type is the best choice for dragon vein, I just don't find dragon vein nearly as useful as 3-range Dreadful Aura. Mystics, admittedly, have 3 range too, as do longbow users (although they benefit less from Corrin's stats), but I've found the mobility very useful for this strategy. Your milage may vary. There are obviously lots of ways to use Corrin effectively.

How ya feel about Blaze?

[Dark Holy Elf]

7 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

How ya feel about Blaze?

I haven't used it. But my feeling is that it's not as good as Dreadful Aura. Slowing down enemies is good, but stopping them entirely AND either killing or crippling one of them is better.

Dreadful Aura is Fusillade except with perfect accuracy and works on bosses (granted, it can be countered, but very little counters at 3 range), and you can use it as many times as you like instead of twice per battle. And Fusillade was already really good.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Dark Holy Elf

[Shadow Mir]

Just now, Dark Holy Elf said:

I haven't used it. But my feeling is that it's not as good as Dreadful Aura. Slowing down enemies is good, but stopping them entierly AND either killing or crippling one of them is better.

Dreadful Aura is Fusillade except with perfect accuracy and works on bosses (granted, it can be countered, but very little counters at 3 range), and you can use it as many times as you like instead of twice per battle. And Fusillade was already really good.

Wait, was I talking about the fire Dragon Vein effect or something else? Because I meant the former.

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

Wait, was I talking about the fire Dragon Vein effect or something else? Because I meant the former.

Yep, I understood what you meant; see above for my answer.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Keep in mind I´m yet still only on chapter 18.

On 2/14/2023 at 4:21 AM, hdawgsizzle said:

There's an argument for Lyn!Ivy (and the game even defaults to it) - she'd get a nice Spd +5 bonus as well as any speed she can accumulate through Speedtaker, and that might be enough to help her, but Lyn is a pretty popular emblem and I'm not sure that Ivy is really the best choice for it.

8 hours ago, hdawgsizzle said:

I didn't get much use out of Elsurge bc she doesn't take hits very well, but it definitely would've helped in a lot of situations.

High Mag (17 Mag, 4th highest base, unpromoted and if I´m reading that right an instant promotion puts her at 19Mag, the same as Lindon 7 chapters later?) + Elsurge + Alacrity seems the secret sauce. Did Ikes paralogue and Ivy casually 1rko-ed Ike and she also doesn´t take damage, same with ranged tomes but hitrate and less might. For reasons I don´t follow, my Ivy at lvl 17/10 has 9 Build (no skills involved) which means uninhibited El-tomes barring Thunders.

Her luck is a problem, because goddam she gets crit to hell and back.

Then again, I imagine any mage with a reasonable Mag stat could pull this off.

4 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I don't think I agree with this.

To me the most useful tier list, by far, is one that is just based around playing the game "normally" on a high difficulty (although people may disagree with what normal means). Lots of people do that and want advice on who to use. Being able to tell people that "use Seth to make Sacred Stones an easier game" is probably more useful information than "Seth saves time on a LTC" for the overwhelming majority of players.

Pretty sure that´s the reasoning behind Mekkah´s unit/chracters guides as opposed to the tier lists?

Another thing in Engage will be the discussion and or separation of character, emblem and character + emblem; I don´t think this will go beyond Fates discussion of "Charlotte stat stick extraordinaire, done." Granted, Emblems are distinctly stat sticks, but also skill sticks.

How many times you see a breakdown of what a unit can do, in it´s available classes, usable weapons and potential stat boosts throughout the part of a campaign they are available? The closest seems PoR/RD discussion, because these games enforce that line of thinking, by virtue of having fucky availability.

[hdawgsizzle]

6 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Being able to tell people that "use Seth to make Sacred Stones an easier game" is probably more useful information than "Seth saves time on a LTC" for the overwhelming majority of players.

Yea I think this is really what I want both to provide by starting this thread and also what I want to receive by asking for feedback. There's that bit of writing advice when you need to keep something simple and direct: "write it like it's an email to a friend" and I actually think that's a pretty good line of thinking for what tier lists/unit reviews etc should aim to do. Your friend wants to play the game and wants to know which units will make their life easier - what do you tell them?

4 hours ago, FashionEmblem said:

Myself, and I imagine others, thought Celica could synergize well with Ivy (or Hortensia) because flying gives a type bonus to increase Warp Ragnarok. I haven't experienced it myself yet, but apparently Warp Ragnarok falls off? Plus, with Astra Storm and Soren's Bolting you actually have my primary use-case for Warp Ragnarok, killing thieves/brigands before they achieve their objective, with the bonus of not finding yourself surrounded by enemies. I imagine there will be some LTC strats at some point that combine Warp Ragnarok, Micaiah AoE Warp/Rewarp, and dancing (including of the goddess variety) to pull off some shenanigans with the extra unit teleported to their destination. The final utility I can think of is that Echo can combine with chain attacks to do more damage, especially using a three range tome that can't double, but that job is better done by a mystical unit (and probably not much, if at all, better than Dire Thunder)

Yea, my thinking for Celica!Ivy was that it makes sense to pair Ivy w/ Celica for the magic boost, there aren't that many other characters that really want Celica other than maybe Pandreo, and that maybe the Flying bonus will come in handy at some point for Warp Ragnarok. To answer your question - Warp Ragnarok retains the same amount of Mt when you regain it as it had at the beginning of the game, so it's just not one-shotting anything anymore. There are still situations where you want its range, or you want an attack that's guaranteed to hit and have no counterattack (both the Ch 21 boss and Ch 24 boss are ultra dodgy)

A thought that just came to me... What if I switched Fogado and Ivy? Fogado takes Celica which boosts both his attack and magic slightly, as well as a nice little boost to his res. Resonance goes down the drain, but I'm not sure that's a massive loss. His Warp Ragnaroks will kinda suck but he at least gets some warp utility. Ivy gets three stats she really wants in Spd, Dex, and Luck. Her magic probably doesn't even need a boost since I gave her 2 Spirit Dusts. With her range, I get even better Dual Assists, and I have more targets that I can Bonded Shield in Hortensia, Merrin, and Goldmary. There's a lot of upsides to this trade... 

I don't think the Corrin suggestion is bad at all - I was running Corrin!Ivy for at least a few chapters and it was working pretty well. I think I moved Corrin to Pandreo  post-Ch 17 bc I rolled for Dire Thunder after getting Leif back. Ivy's low speed made her a better candidate for Dire Thunder than Pandreo. I kinda like the HP+ on Pandreo a little more than Ivy, since 26 vs 36 spd he's not get doubled by nearly as much and can make more of enemy phase. 

It'll probably be a while before I go back and mess around with the DLC and swap around skills and such, but I did look at Soren and wonder if he's a better Ivy candidate. 3 Dex isn't much but it's better than 3 strength, so already the stats are off to a better start. I don't really know how his skills work or anything...

DLC opens up a whole can of worms when it comes to thinking about how I would swap around emblems or inherit new skills. I don't think there are any 14-deployment chapters so I'm not sure it's worthwhile to keep training Mauvier or Saphir... Panette probably drops Leif for... Hector? I probably need to get Tiki somewhere on the squad but not sure who that would go to... Marth's on Alear which, maybe? Celica gets dropped for Soren or swapped to Fogado... Sigurd I can't really disentangle from Goldmary's skill set, nor would I want to... Leif's prime to drop... Roy gets dropped with Saphir... Lyn is in high demand so she'll find a home even if it's not Kagetsu... Eirika I really like on Merrin a lot, but she could maybe move around, she's too good to drop though... Ike I really like, giving a reliable enemy phase tank is basically giving this team the glue that holds it together, so I don't think he's a good choice to drop... Micaiah is absolutely not worth dropping... I don't think Lucina's a good choice to drop bc bonded shield is great, her stat boosts are great, and I like the extra Dual Assist+... Corrin is like, the emblem I engage with the most often and rush to the energy points to refill solely for dreadul aura... Byleth is the other most engaged emblem for obvious reasons and he's pretty stuck to Veyle now...

I don't have a good sense of what the DLC emblems actually do - the 3H one I'm so confused about since I haven't touched it at all and every description of it is novel-length explaining what happens when you're engaged with Edelgard vs Dimitri vs Claude... Camilla apparently lets you fly, so if nothing else, Seadall can take that. I'm not sure what I'd really even be training and optimizing for, so not sure what I should even be considering. Lvl 50 Trials? Yikes... that's not very exciting. Give me a Thabes 2!

19 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Thank you so much for this write-up! Reading your thought processes for all of these decisions was really helpful and this definitely feels like a post I'll consult when it comes my turn to do Maddening. Thanks again!

Thanks so much to anyone who has read this thread at all! Wasn't sure it was a great idea to post such a massive block of text but it's been great trading ideas back and forth. I've gotten a lot of ideas for post-game stuff I'd like to do when I get back into it, and theory-crafting how to optimize the main game has been 

[lenticular]

30 minutes ago, hdawgsizzle said:

Yea I think this is really what I want both to provide by starting this thread and also what I want to receive by asking for feedback. There's that bit of writing advice when you need to keep something simple and direct: "write it like it's an email to a friend" and I actually think that's a pretty good line of thinking for what tier lists/unit reviews etc should aim to do. Your friend wants to play the game and wants to know which units will make their life easier - what do you tell them?

One thing that I don't see mentioned often in tier list discussions is how much weight is or should be given to ease of use. Which is better, a unit who's incredibly strong in one specific niche build or a unit who can't reach the same height but is still going to be pretty great no matter what you do with them? And if a unit is only good in one build, should it matter whether or not it's their default build?

I'll use Three Houses as an example because I don't know Engage well enough yet. How good is Edelgard? Well, if you turn her into a wyvern lord, she's incredibly strong and one of the best units in the whole franchise. If you leave her in her unique Emperor class then she's fairly mediocre. So, where does she belong on a tier list? If I'm talking to a friend, then I'm telling them that they should definitely use Edelgard but they really should put her on a wyvern. But on a bare tier list, there isn't the space for that sort of "yes, if..." type of judgement. We just get a single letter grade.

So any sort of tier list or other advice as to which are the best units to use needs to consider how much game knowledge the hypothetical reader is expected to have. If someone is presenting a lengthy unit analysis with discussions of various build options, I think it's reasonable to assume that the reader will be playing that unit to its full potential. But if it's just a bare list that says "these are the best 12 units that you should use", then if that's to have any use at all then they need to be units that work well out of the box and are hard to mess up.

And I would not be surprised if this turned out to be more of an issue in Engage than in other games in the series, because there isn't really a default way to build most characters. Some get handed a specific emblem by default, but most don't. And if you're actually using a character longterm, then you're probably giving one to them.

[SnowFire]

11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I haven't used it. But my feeling is that it's not as good as Dreadful Aura. Slowing down enemies is good, but stopping them entirely AND either killing or crippling one of them is better.

Dreadful Aura is Fusillade except with perfect accuracy and works on bosses (granted, it can be countered, but very little counters at 3 range), and you can use it as many times as you like instead of twice per battle. And Fusillade was already really good.

While Dreadful Aura is indeed insane and flat-out the best Engage ability of the non-DLC emblems, Mystical Dragon Vein for Flame Vein is still bonkers.  Just a bit of a different use case.  Flame squares are an amazing 3 movement a pop - for 5 move promoted infantry, that's a single flame square's worth of movement.  Flame Vein doesn't require being Engaged, which is fantastic.  And flames can be something of a...  preemptive Dreadful Aura if you will?  Maybe you're concerned about enemies that are currently a bit far off with high move but that sending your Corrin user over to Dreadful Aura would be risky, because they wouldn't be able to tag them all / aren't engaged / need to kill someone in the first clump you're fighting now / etc.  This happens a lot, some cluster of enemies with a second nearby bunch of enemies - your team jumps the first group and Corrin sets flames in the path of the second group.  Or maybe there is no group and you're just having to deal with an extremely scary charging enemy pack of cavalry.  The other use case is that in the rare times the game gives you a powerful chokepoint for free, the damage part of the flames can add up, because you can just toast the enemies waiting in line while the front guy tries to struggle with your juggernaut.  Doesn't come up THAT often but it's there.  (Same with stuff like turning off enemy Qi Adepts that happen to walk into the flames, a nice niche benefit.)  Anyway, I've done more "disrespectful" plays too of just directly setting a pack of enemies next door on fire that I know I can't kill all of, just that will require Reposition or Rescue to get back, but it's still an option.

Basically Corrin gets one of the strongest Engage abilities AND (conditionally) one of the strongest basic abilities, because that's totally fair.  Corrin-Ivy sounds great if you're keeping her Engaged all the time though, for sure.

[samthedigital]

Quote

I think the hype around Ivy might be a bit of magical thinking. We see this flying unit that can use magic and we think that she must be good, so we all invest in her until she outperforms; or, conversely, when she underperforms, we blame ourselves, as I'm doing now - it's a flying mage, somebody surely has figured out how to make this unit work, I must be the problem.

I find that this is the case with a lot of different kinds of units in modern Fire Emblem. In this game in particular a character's usefulness is often tied to the emblem they're using and the skill setup; Byleth and Corrin are two easy examples because Dreadful Aura and Goddess Dance are good regardless of the unit that's using the skills.

I do find that Ivy is a worthwhile investment though; she's decently bulky and has an amazing class type. Without Lyn she can probably function with Dire Thunder, Sigurd, or a lot of speedwings. Sigurd is probably best left to someone that needs help with damage; I find that physical units need more help in that regard. I paired her with Lyn and gave her Canter and Hit+X to fix her accuracy issues personally, but she performs well enough without Lyn when needed. I swapped Lyn to another unit to make use of Astra Storm only a handful of times. Alacrity seems pretty situational to me since it's a player phase only skill; there are other ways of avoiding damage, so it would require a specific build to make good use of it while only ever being useful on player phase. 

[FashionEmblem]

On 2/13/2023 at 10:21 PM, hdawgsizzle said:

Oh and we haven't even gotten into her hit rate issues! I never saw a hit rate above 60% from her post Ch 22. She didn't have a skill slot to patch up her shaky Hit and I struggled to find an engrave to give her that could give her Hit and not torpedo her already low speed.

Question, what tomes were you running on her? Bolganone has base 85 hit and seems like it should be fine? Thoron coming in at 70 hit I could see ending up unreliable, and offensive staves too. Through Chapter 17 I haven't noticed her having particular hit rate problems, so I'm concerned for an incoming avoid jump (presumably makes Corrin even more useful, but I'm concerned if a bunch of my combat turns into an RNG fest). Maybe she's a good candidate for Hit +15 from Sigurd, she can get Canter and some Bld and Dex from having him equipped.

[samthedigital]

23 minutes ago, FashionEmblem said:

Question, what tomes were you running on her? Bolganone has base 85 hit and seems like it should be fine? Thoron coming in at 70 hit I could see ending up unreliable, and offensive staves too. Through Chapter 17 I haven't noticed her having particular hit rate problems, so I'm concerned for an incoming avoid jump (presumably makes Corrin even more useful, but I'm concerned if a bunch of my combat turns into an RNG fest). Maybe she's a good candidate for Hit +15 from Sigurd, she can get Canter and some Bld and Dex from having him equipped.

Not TC, but to answer your question: There are some fast swordmaster and wolf knight type enemies that she has problems hitting, and if you're using a variety of tomes you won't always have a good engrave for the situation. I used +hit from Sigurd myself to fix it. It doesn't help for offensive staves, but I find that other units make better use of them.

[Acacia Sgt]

Lucina's Engrave is certainly one that Ivy can use nicely. +30 Hit and even -1 Wt, specially for when you get Bolganone. Before that you can put it on an Elfire. It'd also free up the need to use SP on Sigurd's +Hit skill and the slot for something else. Only downside is the -1 Mt, but it's negligible on Ivy.

[hdawgsizzle]

2 hours ago, FashionEmblem said:

Question, what tomes were you running on her? Bolganone has base 85 hit and seems like it should be fine? Thoron coming in at 70 hit I could see ending up unreliable, and offensive staves too. Through Chapter 17 I haven't noticed her having particular hit rate problems, so I'm concerned for an incoming avoid jump (presumably makes Corrin even more useful, but I'm concerned if a bunch of my combat turns into an RNG fest). Maybe she's a good candidate for Hit +15 from Sigurd, she can get Canter and some Bld and Dex from having him equipped.

The tomes I used were the ones that I linked in the image - Bolganone w/ Celica's engrave, an Elthunder +1 w/ no engrave, and Nova w/ Marth's engrave. I think Celica's engrave is very tempting for her because it gives so much dodge, but her primary tome really needs a lot of extra hit. Like @samthedigital said, engraves aren't a perfect solution because sometimes you really need a specific tome and it just doesn't have the right engrave - a problem I ran into trying to switch between Bolganone and Nova. I do think Lucina's emblem is a good candidate for her. Lyn's is also good but I don't love the -3 mt penalty on her primary weapon and I think the crit is better used elsewhere. Alear's would be a really good choice, though it's one of the better ones so it seems more in demand. It doesn't give quite as much hit rate as Lucina's, but it also gives dodge.

Her luck is bad enough that it impacts her hit rate as well - Luck/2 is calculated into your hit rate, and even by giving her multiple Goddess Icons, she's still down 4 or 5 points of hit rate compared to nearly everyone else in the party, which is a deficit she either needs to make up with her Dex (unlikely) or weapon accuracy. In the endgame, her hit rates hovered at a nice ~47% on a lot of enemies. I think at this low of hit rate Divine Pulse from Byleth actually ends up better than Hit+ skills.