A2ZOMG

It's not nearly as huge of an opportunity cost with instruction as you're implying when the vast majority of that Authority rank you can easily farm in normal gameplay with Heal/Physic spam. It is considerably less practical for Archer Ignatz, which on top of slower EXP gains, Mage class having better bases/growths + Fiendish Blow, and magic classes not stopping you from using Break Shot anyway...yeah. Archer/Sniper Ignatz is pretty meh and demands too many resources to maintain. Again though considering the practicality of healing in mage classes and that Physic is on Ignatz's faith list, magic classes basically do the Authority instruction for you after you at least get a D in Faith.

+20 means consistent hitrates with Steel Bows, which means Ignatz actually is a better damage dealer than most of your team in the earlygame. Being able to safely and consistently hit enemies from 3 range with Steel even if they have terrain advantage (which isn't actually uncommon earlygame) is really useful. Also I don't get why you would say team synergy doesn't matter. Team synergy is literally a huge part of playing this game and making the most of your units. The fact of the matter is earlygame is significantly easier with Male Byleth on GD Maddening because Leonie and Hilda exist. Leonie is one of the few other units that makes a reasonable frontline in GD other than Byleth earlygame, and Hilda's personal skill is +3 damage for males. You're going to tell me that doesn't drastically affect earlygame performance, where survival in general is actually a real issue? That I would argue significantly outweighs access to Pegasus Knight class, where by the time you actually have access to this, your team in general has more options to not die. I also don't know where you get that Mages are somehow underwhelming in this game. Magic literally saves you gold earlygame and lets you hit lower enemy Res stats. Access to Heal spam means you get an earlier power spike with quick access to Fiendish Blow and more EXP for levels/Authority a lot faster than other classes. This is on top of keeping your team alive and also building supports. The only thing not making Mages outright gamebreaking is the lack of a non-DLC flier class. Being a Mage in this game also doesn't stop you from using tools like Break Shot to cripple enemies. Yeah Ignatz has bad Str/Mag growth. He also excels in Authority and gets Rallies from ranking Authority, keeping in mind lategame Battalions can offer up to +8 atk that can't be RNG screwed. Considering that a lot of how you don't die in this mode is carefully picking enemies off on the player phase, I'm not seeing where Ignatz magically falls off lategame in terms of overall usefulness. Sure if you go Archer/Sniper route then his bad attack matters because you're limiting him from an avenue of utility and accelerated EXP gains, but you don't have to sacrifice his useful Bow combat arts in the Mage route, and his spell list is more than good enough. Yeah but that's not the only reason Ignatz is super good. He's generally one of the strongest earlygame characters in GD thanks to super reliable hitrates even with Steel. Annette also doesn't get Physic but instead gets Recover, and she's also generally a lot slower. Having incentive to rank an Authority strength is good, since lategame Battalions can offer highly competitive combat stat bonuses anyway.

In all seriousness, I would actually put Ignatz in S-tier in GD Maddening. +20 unconditional accuracy is GODLIKE earlygame and makes Ignatz one of your strongest units especially considering he starts with D bows, giving him immediate access to Curved Shot and Steel Bows. The only units who are potentially outperforming Ignatz in the first 3 or so chapters are basically Byleth (especially Male Byleth in this route), Leonie, and Claude, and even then Ignatz has better hitrates with Steel Bows than these characters do with Training Weapons. That's nothing to sneeze at. He falls off in combat a bit lategame due to his below average Str, so I would argue in general the best way to build him is with an emphasis on Magic. Keeping in mind Budding Talent in Reason gives him Seal Strength, which is valuable in boss battles. By going the magic route though, you can get access to another Physic user at C Faith, and Mage mastery ability Fiendish Blow can easily patch up his offense in the midgame especially since his speed is actually decent. As an added bonus, having another Heal spammer makes it easier to train Authority on Ignatz making the prospect of the ultra desirable Rally Strength far more realistic. tl;dr even though Ignatz has below average Str/Mag growths, his incredible earlygame and even better utility scaling on top of having reasonable access to Lategame Battalion stat bonuses makes him a very good unit at all points of the game, which I think is grounds for S-tier. Other things I would suggest for GD Maddening: Male Byleth is better than Female Byleth in this route. Early flying utility is not nearly as impressive when for starters, getting nearly 1HKOed by 3 range Steel Bow Archers is a real issue. Furthermore for a good portion of earlygame, there's only one Flying Battalion to share, which means having more than one flier earlygame prevents one of your teammates from equipping a Battalion for combat bonuses. Male Byleth most importantly has significantly better synergy with GD house personal skills, in particular Hilda and Leonie which in turn gives him a much more stable earlygame. Hilda is absolutely not A tier. She's actually by far your worst unit earlygame when basically for the entirety of 5 chapters she struggles to break accuracy higher than 80 with her preferred weapons, and unlike Lorenz she doesn't start with D Lances, meaning Tempest Lance is not available from the get go. And yes Hilda's personal skill is extremely valuable, but I need to stress that Hilda herself is a HUGE combat detriment earlygame. Not fast enough to avoid being doubled when using Lances, hitrates are terrible, and Faith demerit means trying to pad her resource requirements with Heal spam is significantly less viable on her. Authority demerit even hurts her in combat significantly when promoting to Pegasus Knight because it actually takes extra investment to get D Authority on her, which is the requirement for the lowest ranked Flying Battalion. Speaking of Lorenz, in GD Maddening I would put Lorenz in A tier. Lorenz is actually a strong unit earlygame thanks to D Lances, personal skill being EXTREMELY easy to use for a free extra 2 damage in combat, and because he's male which means he actually gets to use the free damage from Hilda's personal skill as well as benefit Leonie directly when frontlining. Easy proficiencies for Magic class progression only makes things better early to midgame, especially since Fire has a very good hitrate for a Ranged attack. Also feel Lysithea is overrated. Yeah she has great offensive growths and Mastermind has some rather incredible exploits for gaining class mastery abilities, but she struggles immensely for the first two chapters due to a lack of physical weapon proficiencies and because Miasma's hitrate is terrible earlygame. Her lack of durability and being weighed down by Dark magic also generally prevents her from doing anything on Enemy phase against anything that isn't a Mage. Contrast to Lorenz who is pretty durable meaning he occasionally can avoid being 2RKOed on the enemy phase. Sure Lysithea picks up mid to lategame, but by that point Lorenz has already carried a lot of weight earlier on, and it's even debatable that he's strictly outclassed given he's among a minority of magic specialized units that actually is reasonably effective on Enemy phase. Marianne I would argue is better than Lysithea overall. Physic >>> Warp for both surviving and for farming EXP (which also means earlier access to high tier promotions), and Marianne's slightly higher durability is also significant in avoiding 2HKOs. Until Lysithea hits the threshold where she starts doubling enemies that Marianne can't, they generally do pretty similar damage and do about equally well deleting armor knights.

I notice this on Shocking Sheet vs Shocking Cape, but not on default Sheet vs Cape. If it exists, the horizontal range difference is really tiny and basically doesn't matter, but rather the lack of stalling property and better vertical hitbox makes Super Sheet by far better for edgeguarding.

Mario B-air doesn't kill except at like 150% with 100% Rage. It's a horrible KO move. Neither Mario or Doc should be landing F-air in a serious match, given thing is like what, frame 18? You can airdodge that on reaction. U-smash is a good move, but Mario cannot punish a ledge reset directly, nor can he reach a platform with his U-smash. Mario's ability to score KOs is extremely bad against anyone that actually knows the matchup, while Doc actually has an answer to kill people in almost every common negative state situation in the game. Doc's recovery is passable when you use Tornado to stall outside of the range of edgeguard attempts. More importantly, as I stated earlier, Tornado and D-air are actually incredibly good moves for killing low recoveries because they actually beat out most recovery specials easily, or even if they trade, the opponent risks getting semi-spiked to death. And furthermore they can be spaced in a way that prevents the opponent from wallteching them. And yes, Doc's sheet has a better vertical hitbox. Horizontal range is actually the same, so it's by far a superior edgeguard move, especially since not having the stalling property means you can better chase recoveries with it. Mario actually in contrast just can't do anything to a low recovery generally speaking except try to stage spike you with B-air.

Doc is super underrated and isn't really significantly worse than Mario when you factor the following things: *Mario literally can't kill you in the air without Shocking Cape. Doc's 3 frame Up-B and significantly stronger B-air however are great aerial KO moves. *Mario literally can't kill you for recovering low and hugging the stage as long as you tech stage spikes. Doc's D-air and Tornado are two of the better attacks in the game for killing low recoveries. *3 frame Up-B out of shield from Doc is THE BEST reversal in the game *Doc has a Jab cancel game that gives him frame advantage on hit and can combo into Up-B on some characters. Mario's is negative on hit. *Doc has a lower short hop, and can do rising B-airs against the entire cast, while Mario can really only hit tall characters with rising B-airs Honestly Mario is overrated like hell. Once people start realizing he can't really do anything to a ledge reset, and his options for dealing with platform camping are Mac tier bad (actually probably worse, Mac at least has Up-B to kill people), and then start abusing buffed swordsmen like Link and Marth to wall him out and edgeguard him, he's not that exceptional. Doc isn't great, but his advantages are by no means insignificant, and give him matchups where he works better.

Ganon's Jab is 8 frames, and generally speaking one of his worst moves given in most situations, a F-tilt or D-tilt is more rewarding and safer, both being 10 frames startup. There's only a few situations where the slightly faster startup of Jab actually helps, but most of the time you really should be trying to use something else.

True combos: D-throw -> DA D-throw -> U-air/N-air D-throw -> F-air (if they DI towards you, very easy to set up by the ledge) Flame Choke -> D-tilt on most characters if they don't techroll N-air -> D-tilt (especially if frame canceled, which can be buffered out of fullhop airdodge + fastfall N-air) D-air -> stuff (especially if frame canceled) Late DA -> U-air Tipman U-air -> footstool -> aerial wizkick Wizkick ledge cancel -> U-air/N-air And that's only just true combos. Ganondorf allows a lot of creativity for followups when you read airdodges and jumps, and can end a stock instantly when he does so. Watch Pon play Ganondorf. He's really good at making gamechanging reads offstage. And being a "beginner's guide" is no excuse for having blatantly incorrect information.

I main Ganon and find your guide pretty horribly short sighted. You really just don't seem to know anything about the character, given your lack of detail of Ganon's followups, pressure options, trap setups, and everything. You probably haven't bothered watching any of the good Ganon mains for that matter like Ray_Kalm, Vermanubis, and Gungnir, all who have placed top 4 in large tournaments as Ganon. I imagine though given your tone in this guide you probably aren't interested in learning anything and just assume Ganondorf is bottom tier (he's not, judging by tournament results he's solidly mid tier). But you can prove me wrong.

Believe it or not, I'm actually a pretty big Fire Emblem fan, even if I'm not obvious about it every day of the week. =P Roy probably will get some good results relatively soon under a pro level player who is enamored with him (I wonder if ZeRo will do that, he previously said he felt Roy could be top tier). He has the reward to be a threat at all times, but once people learn the matchup, he'll probably just be upper mid tier. Not unviable, just not much reason to really use him when other characters clearly are safer than Roy. I know a lot of people are excited about Roy's grab game. It's good, but it's clearly not overpowered. He doesn't get nearly enough frame adv to true combo into his KO confirms, so ultimately he has to guess for the kill. Not that reads are bad, but the better characters in this game don't always need to make as many to end the stock. And Roy's kill options are sorta unsafe without his D-throw oki setups. Edgeguarding is kinda weak not unlike Ike given he can't cover that many options offstage, so even though his aerials can certainly kill offstage, he's a bit telegraphed when edgeguarding. Marth probably does better in certain matchups like Rosalina and maybe Luigi compared to Ike, but some of the good characters in this game like Sheik and Fox also happen to be easily killed off Ike's throw combos. It's kinda debatable if either Marth or Ike are better, but again I think Ike's grab game probably tips things in terms of specific matchups.

I agree with most of this post except I personally think Ike is better than Marth, if marginally. There's honestly not much reason to play Roy when Ike exists imo. Ike's close range and negative state are both better than Roy's, and Roy fundamentally has to make a guess to kill someone (even if his mixup game is very strong), while Ike has legitimate KO confirm combos out of throw. Roy is very slightly more versatile in midrange due to his mobility and faster aerials, but his hitlag modifiers make him deceptively unsafe. Marth is pretty solid, but overall I put more weight on Ike's really strong grab game and general damage output compared to Marth's edgeguards and Jab game. And wtf at people saying Lucina is worse than Robin. Lucina doesn't have any of Robin's extremely glaring weaknesses. Her negative state and midrange options are about the same as Marth's, so she doesn't really suffer from anything crippling, while Robin has nearly Bowser tier bad options for recovery and getting out of juggles. Plus Robin suffers from that problem where he fundamentally has trouble actually hurting you if you don't commit outside of his sword range, making him very vulnerable to being baited.

This and Smash Bros Wii U...I'll try to find time for both. Funny enough, I don't really care for Roy specifically in either of these games. I guess at this point I'm more curious to know if there's anything in specific you would want people to try out. I personally think you've done a pretty good job meeting your goals. I very much appreciate that Murgleis and Maltet were toned down, given in retrospect I did feel they sorta trivialized the lategame to a degree. I think once I get to this, I'll deliberately mess with Ogier at least given I suspect he's probably Bors most viable support which in its own way is pretty useful. Dunno if he might actually be secretly OP...that will remain to be seen.

Promoted Eliwood can rescue promoted Oswin ftw. Also the Rapier in FE7 is also waaaaaay better, and you actually need that to kill some bosses in a few chapters. Uhai off the top of my head is nonsense to beat without Eliwood, nobody else is nearly as reliable for finishing him off.

Jahn and Idun are pretty funny to fight against now that they probably don't die in one round (a Sniper with Murgleis and full supports though probably can make a joke of Jahn). Idun probably doubles Roy unless you use a Speedwing on him, though doesn't matter much when you can attack from range to kill her. Anyhow I completed the game, I'll try to sum up stuff I did and noticed throughout my run as quickly as possible. Took Western Isles route B + Sacae Notable support conversations achieved: A Roy Wolt Deke Shanna Lot Wade Support Square A Elen Saul A Noah Fir Bors Wendy Lilina Barth Support Square A Elphin Cecilia A Sophia Igrene Earlygame MVPs Bors, Marcus, Alan Midgame MVPs Jerrot, Saul, Astore, Shanna Endgame MVPs Saul, Bors, Milady, Wendy, Sophia I'm open to questions about my opinions, or stupid things I did throughout my run for experimental purposes, though I think I've already covered mostly everything that I think is important. In this game, high defenses and big heals help you a lot more. That represents most of how the game flow feels different. I think the main previously high/top tier unit that probably is liable to be used a lot less is Deke, given his speed nerf is really noticeable midgame when he fails to double a lot of enemies around that point of the game, and he's also a lot more fragile with both his speed nerf and enemy accuracy going up. He's still good for killing bosses though, especially with Durandal.

Maltet having like 21 MT is kinda crazy, now that I think about it. Sure it's really late in the game, but that's almost as much raw damage as Durandal (but better for killing Dragons). Furthermore it doesn't weigh nearly as much as either Armads or Durandal. So yeah honestly I would argue that particular Divine Weapon is kinda OP, especially since you don't exactly have a shortage of great lance users in this game. Not sure about Murgleis. 20 MT and 5 spd is a kinda crazy combination, but then again you only get to take advantage of it on the player phase for the most part.

Okay, got to Zephiel. Dunno how you define excessively difficult, but I would say normally, killing him with someone like Bors or Miledy using Maltet is not exactly hard. By this point of the game, Maltet can easily do about 20 damage and maintain about 75% displayed accuracy assuming you have something like 22 STR and 20 SKL (before stat modifications factored). Even if you are fairly liberal with using Divine Weapons to kill Wyverns and bosses, I don't think it's unreasonable to save a few uses of something like Maltet to kill Zephiel. Aside from strong lance users (note: weapon accuracy buffs in my opinion actually help a lot in this boss fight when something like a Silver Lance has about 4 more displayed hit after factoring Zephiel's speed buff), Swordmasters with supports still can do the job as well with either Silver or Killing weapons. I would honestly argue Murdock can be more annoying given his physical durability, even if Armorslayers are great against him (personally me, I killed him with a General Triangle Attack using a Hammer for style points). The Bishops reinforcements with Physic can be a little annoying when they heal Zephiel, but honestly by this point of the game, most of your units equipped with good weapons probably should be strong enough to find a way through. Try to have Warp Staff saved to send someone to kill the Druid and Snipers hiding behind walls to make things less annoying early in the level. I would say honestly Zephiel is pretty fair. Even if fewer of your non-swordmaster units can double him, he's not too difficult. Really not the most intimidating part of the level by any stretch.

Not entirely sure how you are using the word "best". At any rate, I would mostly agree for the most part Bow users are by design in a fairly decent spot in FE6 where the average enemy unit does a crapton of damage, which makes having good backline units more important, and of course when enemy flying units are also pretty serious business in FE6. Also the rebalance patch is totally optional, and realistically to be fair, other FEs in fact got (admittedly minor) gameplay changes when localized. This in no way is trying to claim that FE6 isn't great the way it was made, of course. That being said, rebalancing is an interesting goal when you consider that even for normal ranked runs, FE6's balance is pretty sketchy. Off the top of my head just looking at FEs 7-9, it's evident FE6's character balance was probably experimental in several ways.

Probably the most absolutely radical change I'd be okay with for this game is making the Short Bow a 1-2 range weapon. They're expensive as hell to actually purchase and only available to buy on Chapter 17B and Chapter 23. And they generally suck even with that little 10% bonus crit. Then after giving Snipers the crit bonus and maybe give either Bartre or Shin a Long Bow in their starting inventory, there! Now Archers are balanced when they have the most accurate physical 1-2 range in the game as well as access to 2-3 range, but only in limited supply. I think statwise aside from Sue getting unnecessarily nerfed they're pretty fine otherwise. Klein and Igrene are pretty solid when they join, and the other Archers join early and have good overall growths. As for other character balance issues, off the top of my head, Garret's huge durability buffs are a bit nonsensical when what he probably really wants are more practical support options...or higher Skill so that his hitrates (and crit rates for that matter) are respectable. I have no idea though if it's even possible to change support growth rates, but aside from weapon levels it's probably the one other thing worth considering on a fundamental level for balancing character usability. Bartre especially compared to someone like Garret is still pretty underpowered, and really only as a Fir support and access to Bows to barely save his niche usability (though with my suggested Bow changes, he'd be a very interesting user of the Short Bow given his really high Str). In Bartre's case, since he's a manly guy with a mustache, he should have 16 Con so that he doesn't lose AS from the Brave Axe. He probably also wants some of Garret's base durability buffs. I mean come on, Bartre joins one level higher than Garret, but Garret has 14 starting defense (15 factoring HM bonus) while Bartre only has 10? I actually watched Bartre almost get killed during his joining chapter before I recruited him. Yeah I think more logically, these are the kind of stat spreads I would give Garret and Bartre. Garret: 49 HP (55 HM, original value) 17 STR (21-22 HM, original value) 15 SKL (18 HM) 10 SPD (11 HM, original value) 12 LUK (14 HM, original value) 11 DEF (12 HM) 5 RES (6 HM) 13 CON (original value) Bartre: 48 HP (original value) 22 STR (original value) 12 SKL (recent patch) 11 SPD (recent patch) 14 LUK (original value) 12 DEF 5 RES 16 CON Echidna has generally been a great unit thanks to her good base speed, skill, and weapon levels, but since the S-ranked weapons all got heavier and since enemies also got more accurate, I think giving her 1 more Con wouldn't be an unreasonable compensatory buff. If we want to be extra funny about differentiating the Western Isles routes, changing her starting inventory could be considered, but I don't have any really serious ideas for that currently. Anyhow I'm currently around chapter 20 Sacae. I don't know if I have any other really creative impressions at this point, so I'll just see how the final bosses turn out.

The Sniper's critical bonus probably is something they should have, if it actually can be programmed back into the game. They probably could also use easier access to Longbows, given you get only one for most of the game. But I doubt there's an easy way to implement this. Also, I think you might be underestimating just how drastic of a change getting 2-3 range universally would be, when you consider enemy Archers. There's several chapters with narrow corridors which were probably explicitly designed around the power of 2 range. I kinda doubt you want to play around a Steel Bow archer killing your mages almost instantly from an uncounterable range.

53, 42, and 46 playable units in FE6, 7, and 9 respectively (50, 40, and 43 when you factor mutually exclusive recruitment). FE6 is pretty darn huge. Having 7 more units than FE9 in a game that has fewer classes is pretty overloaded. For that matter, 11 more units than FE7 literally allows the game to almost have basically one extra unit for every class. Not sure how else to explain this is why it feels like the game gives you way too many units for some people.

Don't completely agree. Enemies in FE6 aren't a joke, and Bows are still the most cost efficient ranged weaponry. In any FE game where enemies are a serious threat, not taking a counter on the player phase is pretty important, especially when enemies actually have respectable accuracy. Tanking the enemy phase is not something you want to do as much with most characters except with like Zealot or Bors. Even Marcus runs into difficulty tanking around chapter 5. Shin is pretty good even after nerfs thanks to HM bonuses giving him kinda ridiculous bases. Wolt joins early, isn't super frail, and has access to great supports and C bows giving him access to the Killer Bow from chapter 8. Dorothy probably wants a minor speed buff, while Sue really needs her original speed values. Then the prepromote Snipers to my recollection are pretty decent thanks to their strong bases. Enemy flying units are also a fairly big deal in this game, and you need mages or Bows to easily take them out. Bow users don't have to be god tier amazing from the get go when they have a niche. On the player phase they're your most efficient units from 2 range aside from mages, and all the mages except for Hugh are a lot squishier and don't want to take random hits from enemy Javelins/Handaxes. Especially for Wolt, this helps him develop supports easily when you can have Roy, Allen, or Lance attack something in 1 range, and have Wolt behind that unit in 2 range on the player phase. EDIT: New impressions up to chapter 14 I just noticed now that FE6 generally doesn't give you very many Guiding Rings early (Chapter 16x is a bit late for an extra ring if you want to play a Mage heavy run, though I guess arguably Staves are OP given how much EXP you can get from them). Putting the Elysian Whip on the ch 13 boss was a bit awkward, especially since it's not a drop item. There isn't much incentive to use any Thieves that chapter given all the lance wielding enemies, so I skipped acquiring it. For the record, not including that one, you have access to at least three Elysian Whips, one from chapter 8, another from chapter 11A/10B, and one more from chapter 12 (and you get another from chapter 20A if you go that route). Unless you want to go crazy with all the flying units in the game, this is already pretty overkill in a normal run. I would personally recommend putting a Guiding Ring on the Chapter 12x Druid. You probably will field a thief on this chapter anyway. Getting a support for Bors is really important. Even though he should be practically invincible upon promotion (I promoted him Chapter 12x, a more optimized run probably could get him promoted by possibly chapter 10? He only takes single digit damage from Silver Lance Paladins on chapter 13) he REALLY wants a support to improve his offense, given his hitrates are not perfect (especially when chucking Handaxes and Javelins). Wendy and Lilina are the fastest options and also provide the best bonuses. Barth is possible to work with as well. Ogier is less than ideal due to being slower and also because Ogier gets no early defensive stats from it. Sophia is...undoubtedly the worst unit in the game, probably to nobody's surprise. Having the best growths in the game is pretty funny, but unlike Wendy's joining situation, enemies actually have decent evade by this point of the game. Wendy also can at least support Bors for a nice full offense bonus or pick off a few enemies with the Triangle Attack on her joining chapter. Wendy actually has semi-existent base stats that make her more difficult to oneround, while Sophia gets killed by anything sneezing on her when she joins, and struggles a lot to maintain hitrates above 50%. Oh also, according to your excel document, Snipers gain 5 res on promotion? From what I've observed, this is false (it's +2 on your most recent patch).

I think Bors's base stats are perfectly fine and his base 13 defense at level 4 is good enough to bring consistency to the earlygame, but arguably his Def growth is overkill. His original 35% Defense growth rate I think is balanced on him and averages about 29.25 Def at 20/20. Anyhow, the real issue that I'm bringing up is Barth is sorta pointless, outside of Bors getting majorly RNG screwed. Barth's big niche is his defense, but Bors gets so much Def anyway that he's not really losing out by much once they both easily reach caps, and more importantly Bors is more likely to reach critical speed thresholds that prevent him from being doubled by things like Armorslayer Mercs (there's a few in chapter 8). Another thing to consider is by the time Barth joins, Bors is likely to be beating out Barth in weapon lvls by a pretty significant margin. iirc when I got to chapter 8, Bors was pretty close to A lances if I'm not mistaken. There's two things that can be considered. Either a weapon level nerf to Bors, or a weapon level buff to Barth (or both, maybe. Barth having noticeably later access to Silver Lances is a kinda non-trivial disadvantage). The armors imo are pretty close to where they need to be, honestly. It's okay for Bors to be really strong when you still have to find a way to keep him in position of all the important stuff. If our goal is to give Barth a niche other than replacing RNG screwed Bors, looking at Defense or weapon levels is the way to go. As for Archers vs Nomads, honestly I think the Archers are probably okay right now given their join time. Dorothy's 5% defense buff as well as her base Luck buff seems random when her original shtick in FE6 was having better offensive growths than Wolt but slightly fewer defensive stats, so it likely would make more sense to move that buff to her Speed, to improve her chances of taking advantage of the higher speed caps as a female Archer. Could give her 1 point in base defense if you want to be in line with the base buffs Wolt got. Even if the Archer class is a bit strategically weak, I'd say Wolt is actually pretty good given his join time, good base durability (20 HP and 30% defense growth = surprisingly hard to twoshot), and access to highly desirable supports + having time to reach C bows earlier than the other Bow units. Sue out of all the Bow units is the main one that's seriously underpowered. She has Wolt's starting speed and str 6 chapters into the game but nowhere near his tankiness or strength growth. While nerfing her Skl is probably fine, she should still be a really fast unit to justify her really low Str. Probably buffing her Luck isn't out of the question either. Shin has HM bonuses on top of passable bases so he's decent though, just not super crazy anymore. imo, well-designed Knights are fair when you actually need to use other units to efficiently transport them into combat where they can own things. Wendy obviously doesn't own things until babied, so that sucks for her in a serious run (story of every Est archetype ever). However post promotion she's the only General that can be rescue-dropped by mounts (and from that point, she's strong enough to kill most things she touches), so I think that works out.

Okay so, I'm at chapter 11B right now. Rough tier impressions of the numbers patch incoming. Bors is TOP TIER. The only unit who comes close to Bors's raw effectiveness at guaranteeing a safe earlygame is Marcus, who actually is less durable. Marcus has the advantage of onerounding slower enemies who get doubled by him earlygame, wielding axes, and the Silver Lance, and he is slightly more accurate and can snag an early support, but against enemies that he fails to double, Bors is generally better because he takes less damage. I would say the best overall unit is still Lance. Being the fast cavalier is simply too huge of an advantage to not use for killing distant enemies faster and generally owning for most of the game, though Allen is also pretty amazing once he starts doubling enemies. Having mounted units to help transport Bors to where he needs to be in the earlygame is also pretty important. Honestly if you aren't using Bors, Allen, and Lance (as well as Marcus and Zealot), you're going to have a really, really hard game. Deke's nerfs are pretty significant when it means he has trouble doubling consistently during the Western Isles, however he benefits from both Lot and Wade being buffed and thus being more desirable support options. Yes, Wade is pretty useful when his hitrates don't fail. Even though Lot is overall more useful thanks to his durability and speed, there's some situations where he outperforms Lot such as doubling Knights, Soldiers, and Steel Fighters to my recollection. Sue really is not very good. The only reason to even field her at this point is if you deliberately want to put yourself in Sacae. She doesn't hit very hard though (only 18 str at level 20/20), she's fragile, has situational supports, and it takes a long time for her to get fast enough to double enemies that aren't weighed by Steel. Honestly her stats are just kinda...laughable. Ogier, Wendy, and Lilina all are similar in a way. They're relatively weak units that all can support Bors and have a shot at stealing kills and then hitting a decent mid to lategame from there. Ogier has the advantage of using Swords in chapters that have lots of Fighters, but Lilina hits Res (and recruits Gonzales). Wendy is probably overall worst off, however has a really fast support with Bors and she's statwise better around promotion time. Noah isn't awful, but he's pretty pointless compared to the other Cavaliers. He can support Zealot and Fir at least. Treck has nice growths, but he gets easily killed if you aren't quick about recruiting him, which is pretty annoying. Fir actually...is surprisingly hard to use. Even after joining a few levels higher with better base stats, she's still pretty fragile, and taking random hits from fighters and archers is tough on her low defenses. She has really high offense but needs to be protected a lot. Recruiting Elphin instead of Lalum might actually be an interesting option this time around. He joins with a Seraphs Robe. Considering that enemies are more accurate, having a Bard with an extra HP buffer is actually something to consider.

Thanks for the response. Overall, I would say I definitely like the work you've done. Even little things like the character descriptions are great. And yeah, I'm increasingly noticing in the numbers patch that hitrates actually being good universally means while it's easier to train low level units in short skirmishes (which I guess could explain Zeiss's small nerfs, especially since he's on the tankier side of things anyway), it's a lot harder to survive extended engages. Especially for gameplay like this, it truly helps a lot when the Armor Knights actually don't suck and when several units of different classes are differentiated to be tankier than their faster counterparts. Actually Wendy sucks (but is usable), and Barth is kinda pointless when Bors exists (notably, he's more likely to get doubled by things like Armorslayer Mercs while lvl 14 Bors on average can reach 8 AS to avoid that), but I think it works out. Running three Armor Knights is still a terrible idea given how much it slows down your team, but at the moment I would definitely recommend running Bors (or Barth if the RNG is unfriendly) on a typical team. Anyhow to be in line with the theme of differentiating units, there isn't much reason to use Noah if you already invested in the other Cavaliers. All he really has that stands out 10 Con, C Swords, and support with Fir. I guess the most obvious thing that hasn't been touched for the Cavs is Res, and given we have Treck who has high Defense and Luck, Alan who has high Attack and above average skl/spd, Lance who has high Speed and Skill, it seems to me the only remaining thing missing is a Cavalier who has above average Resistance. Hmmm, speaking of Weapon Levels, are you able to edit those? Hugh imo should start with at least B in Anima given how late he joins. It seems questionable likewise that Juno only has E Swords when she joins.

Was there an explanation for the name changes, such as those of Zealot/Jerrot, OJ/Ogier, and others? I sorta got that some of the name translations are based on scant localization data from either SSBB or FE Awakening, but some like the ones I mentioned I'm not sure where those came from. Anyhow I was slightly more interested in the numbers patch, which I just started to try out and got to Chapter 4 so far. Trying out Hard Mode, I wasn't particularly happy with how weak enemies were in chapters 1 and 2 (they should have slightly more HP so that they're more difficult to two hit with Marcus and Bors). Although I am quite satisfied with Bors and Wolt actually being usable. I'm not completely sure I understand the nerfs to Zeiss, who even factoring his HM bonus was already a pretty underwhelming unit due to his join time and low speed. And the buffs to Marcus have me a little confused given the lowered difficulty of the first few chapters (I assume later chapters are supposed to become harder?) Was there any explanation for Sue's nerfs other than outclassing the already weak Archer class? Other than that checking over the Excel document, I like a lot of the changes even if they're fairly inconsequential for low turns runs. Especially the ones that differentiate units of the same class. So now I can play Zealot later in the game as a tankier Paladin compared to Percival (Noah probably could use a QoL buff to something like Res, though I guess Fir getting buffed is also a buff for him). Looking over the stat changes to the Armors generally makes me really happy. Increasing Bors and Barth's level and base stats was really smart, especially after weapon accuracy changes, Bors is actually a really safe unit to use earlygame to hold off multiple enemies. I dare say he's almost too good now (13 base defense and 9 str is a lot for the earlygame), though low mobility is still a problem.