astrophys

I recently settled on the following 1st generation pairings for the playthrough I'm working on. I've played through the game several times already (including Apotheosis) and thus know from firsthand experience that I have lots of leeway, even for doing things that aren't particularly optimal or for a few things motivated primarily by aesthetics. That said, I did make sure to cover my bases such a Kjelle/Noire's Galeforce access, etc. 1. Male Avatar (+Mag/-Str) x Cordelia This one is for aesthetics and personal preference; I know there is a bad mod class with Cordelia here; the asset and flaw are reflective that I like magic and its association with books (tomes) and that I'm very lacking in physical strength in real life. Cordelia is motivated mainly by simply preferring her as a wife, although of course she's also one of the stronger 1st gen pairings. 2. Chrom x Sumia Probably Chrom's strongest combat oriented pairing. That and I like the aesthetic of a pair of friends (Avatar and Chrom) being married to another pair of friends (Cordelia and Sumia respectively). 3. Kellam x Miriel I liked the support and it does fill in the Cleric/War Monk classes that Miriel doesn't give Laurent normally, plus it enables Laurent to pull off a bunch of rallies (Strength/Magic/Luck/Defense/Resistance). And he also gets Healtouch if he wants to do staff support. 4. Donnel x Sully This is one of the classic ones for Galeforce optimization. Actually really liked their support when I tried it. 5. Gaius x Tharja The same 6. Maribelle x Brady Mainly for a really fast and skillful Brady… Brady has all the key skills he needs for a Sage role, after all. 7. Panne x Virion For a support Yarne with high skill (higher accuracy from the rear, slightly better dual strike rate) and useful rear skills like Hit+20, etc. 8. Nowi x Vaike I planning to leave Nah as the unpaired one, so this gives her Thief/Trickster access (as well as several other classes, such as the Knight/General/Great Knight lines), in addition to her pre-existing Sage, so she can function as a utility unit. 9. Lissa x Frederick I know that Ricken is a better choice for Lissa so that Owain will excel at Magic and not take a speed penalty. But aesthetically I wanted to have Owain take on physical classes in this playthrough (using his Sword hand). That and I found out when reading transcripts of the supports that Frederick was Lissa's first crush, so that added to the aesthetic motivation to pair them. 10. Olivia x Stahl Back in my 2nd playthrough, when I last did Apotheosis, I used a Chrom!Inigo as a Sniper to great effect for picking off enemies without threat of a counterattack. I want to use Inigo in this capacity again, so I went with Stahl to provide him with both the Archer/Sniper tree and Luna. With his Natural Armsthrift he'll also let me exploit the Double Bow without breaking it. 11. Gregor x Cherche They have their shared history over Minerva. Gregor also provides Gerome with a bunch of -faire abilities, such as Swordfaire and Axefaire. Could be useful for a support Berserker or Hero. Also grants Armsthrift, also its more of an afterthought. Still have not decided how I'm going to pair up the children that result from this, except for leaving Nah unmarried.

Well, yes, I'll admit that mods are one of the weaknesses of Avatar x Cordelia. Specifically, Cordelia has a -1 Magic mod, which works against a +Mag/whatever asset somewhat (the children will only be as good as the Avatar, mod-wise, at magic, namely at +4 if using a flaw that doesn't hurt magic and at +3 if using one that does hurt it). Naturally, this is less than what results from other pairs. Also, Cordelia's +1 strength isn't something that improves magic, although it does help mixed offense. That said, Cordelia still offers some helpful mods. Namely, she offers skill +2 and speed +2, both of which are valuable modifiers to have. A +MAG Avatar with Cordelia will have +5 speed children, putting Morgan and Severa at 47 speed as Dark Fliers. This is enough such that any class that gives a +SPD pair-up bonus (beyond the generic bonus) will let them reach 75 speed after Limit Breaker, Rallies, and Tonics, enough to double the fastest enemies in the Apotheosis DLC. The skill mod (+3, or +2 if you take any flaw hurting skill except for a skill flaw itself) is also good. If you've chosen to use one of the children as a Sorcerer then a +2 mod will get them up to 40 skill (edited: corrected from typo of "speed") unpaired before Limit Breaker or other boosts. This means that Limit Breaker will let them get up to 50 skill (51 if you have the +3 mod) without any further assistance (pair-up, Rallies, Tonics, etc.), giving them a 100% Vengeance activation rate without any further assistance. As for Cordelia's flaws: Magic is already addressed. Her luck -1 and her resistance -1 overlap with the -1 luck and -1 resistance caused by a defense flaw (if that is what you go with). That's useful for avoiding mod conflicts there.

Yes, basically marrying any first generation character will generate a pairing imbalance in the form of a 2nd gen being unable to marry, as Czar noted above. Now, this isn't necessarily the end of the world, so to speak, if you don't plan on using a particular 2nd gen of the opposite gender of your Avatar in the first place; you could always leave them as a spare. But even so, there are other considerations to account for. Particularly, on one hand we often have people who focus their considerations primarily on how the pairing effects the children. But another aspect of the pairing is how the married units fight together. After all, they will be each other's only S-rank, which will significantly promote having them fight with each other (including a higher dual strike rate than A-rank pairs would yield). Due to having customizable mods and huge class access the Avatar tends to be one of the best units, particularly with respect to the first generation. As such, you want to be able to use him effectively. So that means you also want to try pairing up the Avatar with a wife who can help leverage his advantages. If you're going to be going with a first gen wife, you want to pair up the Avatar with one of the units who is already really good at combat. The wife having Galeforce is also a huge plus, letting the Avatar's pair contribute twice the number of attacks per turn. Sumia and Cordelia are among the better 1st gen wives. They both have Galeforce/Dark Flier and generally very good skillsets, including offensive activations skills (Luna and Vengeance respectively). Maribelle and Lissa are also Galeforcer units and have a better magic stat than Cordelia does, but they're lacking in activation skills or other useful combat abilities that Cordelia and Sumia have (Cordelia's Vengeance/Sol, Breakers, Sorcerer access for Nosferatu Abuse, Armsthrift, etc.; Sumia's Luna, Pavise, etc.). Basically, Cordelia and Sumia are the Galeforce wives who really are built like heavy combat units. Maribelle and Lissa's skills and classes make them lean more heavily towards support units. As such, Cordelia and Sumia tend to be among the better 1st gen wives in terms of contributing to fighting alongside the Avatar. Olivia is also a Galeforce wife, but many will prefer her to fulfill her unique role as a Dancer. Aversa, Say'ri, and Emmeryn also have Galeforce access, but you miss out on getting to pass Avatar genes down to an extra child if you marry these units. In contrast, marrying Cordelia makes Severa stronger (Avatar-like) while marrying Sumia makes Cynthia stronger. Of course, in terms of absolute stats for Morgan and combat abilities of a wife you'd be better off with a second gen. But if you want to go first gen (which gives you an extra Avatar-like unit at the cost of some stats), I'd suggest that Cordelia and Sumia are the soundest bets.

What I was getting at is that while statistical improvement is possible (even by significant margins), it isn't particularly NEEDED either. Therefore, this emphasizes the vast degree of flexibility that one has. You don't need to make the optimal pairings. If he likes a certain couple together and they produce a certain units then that units will STILL do fine. This yields a much wider wide space to mess around with things like shipping, "waifu" considerations, and other generally suboptimal team and still do perfectly fine. So yes, something like the earlier examples of Stahl!Severa and Cordelia being bad at magic are true…. they're 10 points behinds a +Magic asset Tomefaire Avatar, for example. But even in spite of this they still do perfectly fine on the map. Granted, I've assumed DLC, but I would imaging that a good fraction of Apotheosis players have and are using the Limit Breaker skill from Rogues and Reedemers 3 anyways. And if the player in question isn't playing high end DLC it will matter even less given how strong your characters get in relation to the enemies. Granted, there is always the no-Limit Break challenge run, but that's really just the really hardcore who do that and is probably not typical for Apotheosis. So if he wants to use Stahl!Severa in Apotheosis, even if in a magical capacity, he'll probably do fine. He can use such units in confidence. As such, its pointless to worry that much about things or about technical improvements that just result in overkill.

As it happens, the magical husband I normally give Cordelia IS the Avatar. I tend to run Chrom x Sumia and Avatar x Cordelia. Yes, I know that's not an "optimal" pairing in terms of the children, although it works well as an in-game couple for me.

It is a very bad growth rate, but growth rates don't matter to final classes (at max stats) because they'll reach max eventually. Particularly, as I noted before, her magic stat will get capped thanks to Spirit Dusts and grinding. By all means, I get your sentiment that the magic isn't impressive during the main game (no grind), but in terms of final classes (post grind) its only a -1 she has to her cap. But that still leaves her with 41 magic as a Dark Flier, more than enough to work with. And even in the main game you can actually get her doing good magic damage by giving her the Spirit Dusts you get during the campaign and then giving her a magical husband and having Cordelia lead.

While its true that its far worse than a character with a positive mod + Tomefaire, the fact remains that EVEN -1 Mag mod characters can do well enough on Apotheosis with Limit Breaker and Rallies. Example: I ran a Dark Flier Cordelia supported by a Gradmaster (+MAG/-SKL) Avatar in the Secret Route of Apotheosis as one of my three attack pairs. As we know, Cordelia has as -1 Mag mod and no Tomefaire, just like this Severa does. Yet this pair I ran, which was "sub-optimal" by all means ended up doing quite fine. It was even capable of reaching 75 speed with the All Stats+2 skill. So it really doesn't matter all that much. While that magic might be underwhelming, its more that than sufficient.

This is a tricky one. You see, in terms of raw statistical leans, the answer would at first look like Falcon Knight. In terms of modifiers Cordelia has +1 to strength and -1 to magic. So that at first seems to lean her towards the Falcon Knight. But then you consider that Falcon Knights have low base strength (38), which becomes 38 + 1 = 39 with her modifier. Dark Fliers have a higher base magic (42), which becomes 42 -1 = 41 with her modifier. But then we consider that Cordelia has Lancefaire from Falcon Knight level 15. This increases her effective strength by 5 when using a lance at the cost of a skill slot. So that gives her 39 + 5 = 44 strength as a Lancefaire Falcon Knight. But again, this requires the commitment of one of her five skills to achieve. However, Dark Flier is also capable of using lanes, although not as well. She would have 36 + 1 + 5 = 42 strength as a Lancefaire Dark Flier (as well as her 41 magic). Both classes have access to brave weapons. Brave Lances have significantly higher might than Celica's Gale. Falcon Knight or Lancefaire Dark Flier does more damage than Celica's Gale Dark Flier PRIOR TO considering defensive stats. That said, its not that clear cut because many enemies have weak resistance stats throughout the game. Any foe with a sufficiently low resistance stat will tip the balance back into the favor of a Celica's Gale Dark Flier. There is also the issue that Celica's Gale has positioning advantages as it can attack from 1-2 range, while a Brave Lance is limited to 1 range only. Sure, one can use Javelins/Short Spear/Spear/Gradivus to get a 1-2 ranged lance attack, but these don't have a Brave weapon effect like Celica's Gale can. Another point is the pair-up bonuses. Dark Flier gives a magic bonus which can be quite valuable, in addition to the speed and resistance bonuses. Falcon Knight, if I recall correctly, gives larger speed and resistance bonuses but no special magic bonus. Finally, Cordelia's magic stat grows very slowly during leveling, so she doesn't really get good with magic unless you grind her a lot or give her lots of Spirit Dust. But if we're considering final classes I suppose we can assume that she has received that grinding. Overall I'd go with the Dark Flier. You still get your spears, you can exploit tomes against enemies with bad resistances or when you want to avoid 1 range counterattacks, and you can grant a magical pair-up bonus to another unit. If she has a magical husband, I'd definitely go Dark Flier. Falcon Knight is still worth consideration if she's in a strictly physical pairing, that said.

So I'm trying to brainstorm things for my newest (7th) playthrough. I did Apotheosis back in my (2nd) playthrough but haven't done it again since, with most of my runs being quick blitzes through the story in Hard (and once in Lunatic). I'm thinking maybe I'll do another Apotheosis run this time. I know that there is no "optimal" per se, nor am I necessarily aiming for it (as my asset/flaw and Avatar/spouse choice will make clear). And I do have a decent idea of how I want to pair up four of the females. But I'm having trouble making up my mind about what to do with the remaining females. So I thought that I might bounce it off the people on this forum to brainstorm for ideas. These are my restrictions: 1. I will be running a +Mag/-Str Male Avatar as a point of personal preference because I feel it is most fitting to represent myself (I am associating magic with study/intellect, particularly because they use tomes [books], while I'm also quite physically weak by my own admission). 2. Said Avatar will be marrying Cordelia (despite the mod clash) because I simply prefer her. Cordelia has often been used as a postgame Armsthrift Sorcerer outside of Apotheosis (because I felt like it), although back in the old Apotheosis run I switched her over to a Dark Flier for that map. 3. Chrom and Sumia will be paired. 4. Donnel and Gaius will go in some combination to Sully and Tharja; I do want Kjelle and Noire to have Galeforce, while I don't particularly care so much about Nah. 5. Lissa, Olivia, Maribelle, Cherche, Panne, Miriel, and Nowi are not yet assigned. These are the ones I'm brainstorming for. 6. While I have an overall preference for magical units, it would be nice (from a aesthetic standpoint) to have a mix of magical and physical units among the children rather than just going pure mage for everyone. I already have some thoughts for these (although I'm not sure yet), but I'll refrain from mentioning them for now to avoid biasing the responses/suggesting. I'll be interested in seeing to what extent people suggest things that align (or oppose) with the ideas I've been contemplating and the reasons they give for the various pairs.

I would like a sword-tome hybrid class that's unmounted like the Tactician to return, yes. I don't care so much whether its still called the Tactician class. And to be honest as much as I like using them I admit that Veteran and Rally Spectrum are ridiculously overpowered. A Tactician/Grandmaster type class tree that kept Solidarity and Ignis and replaced Veteran and Rally Spectrum for more balanced skills would be an improvement in terms of game balance.

They can't. Like Chrom, Lucina has a special inheritance. She always gives Morgan the skill "Aether" instead Inheriting Dual Strike+ is not an option.

Regarding the question of whether MU would be the king/queen of Pleiga (depending on their gender)…. Probably not. Validar is basically a regent king, a placeholder for Plegia in the absence of its leader after Gangrel's defeat (and of course this more importantly, from the Grimleal perspective, served their ends to control the country outright in the final years of their plan). So Validar wouldn't really have any nature of inheritable claim that could be passed onto the Avatar. Not to mention the Plegian populace is probably unaware of the Avatar's status as the son of their king and thus probably wouldn't appoint or accept him as such. And then there is the issue that an indeterminately large amount of the Plegians were sacrificed to Grima via the Dragon's Table. Can Plegia even function as an effective country in the aftermath in the first place anymore?

Well, if we're trying to tone down Dual Guards, I don't think making the rear unit take damage is the way to do it, as that defeats the point of wanting to keep a squished unit in the rear. Instead, if we're talking about ways to approach it without granting automatic immunity, perhaps some fraction of the rear ally's total relevant defensive stat could be added to their ally when Dual Guard triggers in addition to any existing pair-up bonuses. Although I really don't mind the Dual Guard system as it is now.

That's actually a decent idea - the Avatar themselves being the Lord. And given the whole idea of "choices" that they're talking about and also looking at the Analysis that has now been posted here on Serene's Forest based on the trailer, that might actually be surprisingly close to what's happening. But we'll see how it actually turns out.

The point is that the DLC is overpriced unless perhaps if you have all of the multiple games it affects, plus some might not want to have to deal with the clutter of an amiibo. Traditional DLC really is far more convenient. Not to mention that as its digital there is an unlimited supply of it, rather than there only being finite amiibos out there.

I basically agree with BrightBow here….. Using Amiibos as a vehicle for DLC would be highly inefficient for the player. I wouldn't have a problem if you could buy the DLC separately OR get it as an unlock tied to the Amiibo, with both options unlocking the same content. That way, if you just wanted the DLC you could get that without the hassle and expense of dealing with an unwanted Amiibo, while if you actually wanted the figure you could grab the amiibo and still get the DLC that's tied to it. But the issue is this is not how Amiibo is currently seeming to shape up to work.

Although I wouldn't expect children to show up two games in a row, if they did they could always do it in a more straightforward manner via the Genealogy of the Holy War approach rather than by time travel. Although perhaps they could implement it this time without the big twist at the end of Gen. 1 of Genealogy of the Holy War. But even such ideas aren't likely to happen in the fist place.

Libra does provide Sorcerer and Sage's Tomefaire to units like Inigo, who can then do a Vantage+Vengance+Tomefaire setup if he wants to.

Because Awakening was highly successful and they don't want to alienate their newly found audience by removing a popular feature? I wouldn't have minded it one way or the other if it was here or if it was gone. I'm fine with pair-up, but if they wanted it to be exclusive Awakening's gimmick I'd have been fine with that too.

Okay, so I cleared Lunatic. I did grind a few of my weaker characters slightly, but gave up doing so and actually ended up benching them, so it didn't make a terribly impactive difference in most cases. Oh, and I did Nosferatank through 2 random battles. Basically I just ended up Armsthrift Nosferatanking (altering Aversa-tanking) with the Avatar. Chrom ended up horrifically under leveled, as did basically all other characters, so I ended up only deploying the Avatar (and the forced Chrom deployment) in battles and hiding Chrom behind the Avatar in pair-up. In that respect I should have played as the female Avatar instead of the Male Avatar so that I could have benefited from an S-rank over an A-rank. The dual strike increase would have helped me defeat Grima more easily. Avatar ended up capped in all of his stats by the end of the playthrough. Chrom could manage about 14-15 damage against Grima with the Exalted Falchion, having been poorly trained. He actually gained a few level ups during Endgame because I was taking too long and he got so many dual strikes against the other enemies I was nostanking. I had to take down Grima's health several times due to the physics staves. I needed to use tonics so that I could double Grima….. I also used tonics on my other key stats as well. That made a big difference. All in all, Lunatic was an interesting experience, particularly for the first several levels. I'm glad I tried and overcame the challenge of the first several levels. And I'm glad that I can say that I did Lunatic/Classic, although its was not strictly a Lunatic no-grind play through (and therefore not as significant) due to slightly leveling a few of the other characters in the grind before giving up on that as a waste of time. That said, I think I found Hard Mode to be somewhat more fun overall. Its way easier, but I liked being able to use the characters more freely than in Lunatic and actually being able to fight random battles without having to resort to a Nosferatanking method because the enemies are getting too strong too fast for the other characters. Well, admittedly I could just get better at feeding experience. But all in all, I'm still glad to have done Lunatic at least once.

(Re)-started Lunatic/Classic a few days ago. After some experimentation had the best success getting through the opening chapters (particularly Ch. 2) with a +Def/-Skl Avatar. Things started becoming substantially easier after that. Just beat Ch. 8. The team I've been using so far is: Avatar Chrom (because you have to have him) Frederick Lissa (strictly staff support) Sumia Kellam (strictly pair-up support for +3 Str/+5 Def, has been reinforcing Frederick's defenses) Cordelia Avatar is now a Dark Mage (having gone through Tactician 20 -> Mercenary 10 -> Dark Mage). Planning to promote him to Sorcerer. I should probably have no more than 3 combat pairs, I'd guess. Considering whom I've been using and who is coming, I guess that it might fall along these lines: Chrom x Sumia Avatar x Cordelia Frederick x Cherche (when she comes along) Cherche because she has similar pair-up bonuses to those Kellam gives at the moment (+STR/+DEF) but will actually be able to form support ranks with Frederick.

Why do you suggest Nowi as a possibility? Chrom x Sumia and Avatar x Cordelia make sense to me. The character you're forced to deploy and the character who is likely leveled the most paired up with (eventual) Galeforce wives. Not to mention that both Sumia and Cordelia are fast and are likely to be able to double quite a lot. And if for some reason you recruited the children you'd be able to grab 4 Galeforce girls from the children of these two couples (potentially passing Galeforce itself immediately down to them). But what's so great about Nowi as a unit (as I assume we're only considering gameplay here) to make it as Avatar x Cordelia/Nowi? I mean, sure, Avatar can grant Nah Galeforce, but then I see topics arguing that even then that Avatar!Nah is still not that great of an idea. You seem to be more knowledgeable about the game's theory than I am, so I'm interested in hearing what your reasoning is. I could very well learn something.

Yes, it could be, and I myself like using it as a convenience tool, but there are plenty of quite legitimate reasons for wanting to use another skill, at least in some maps. But yes, Armsthrift could be the "free slot" skill. As could many others.

You've indicated its a male unit. You've also indicated that you'll be doing DLC maps, so I'll assume (eventual) access to the DLC skills - Limit Breaker - Tomefaire/Swordfaire/Axefaire - Aggressor - Ignis/Luna (unless you plan for this unit to always be in the rear of the pair-up with their wife at the front at all times, in which case its a "Free Slot") - Free Slot You want to stack your damage as high as possible (you can get by with less, of course, but something like this would be a very good set-up).

Its basically a trade-off. Marrying a first generation female gives you access to two "Morgan" units (or more specifically, Morgan and a sibling who has an Avatar-sized class set). Marrying second generation gives you only Morgan herself, but her net stats will tend to be a few points higher. Also, it allows you to have all the 2nd generation characters get married, as otherwise you'll have one unpaired female (in the case you're playing as a Male Avatar). Morgan herself primarily cares about stat points, as she automatically has an Avatar class set, but her sibling can greatly benefit from gaining an Avatar class set and the great versatility that results from it. The game is easy enough that in most cases the extra stat points on a 2nd generation Morgan aren't going to be a huge deal. But in the end statistically speaking she is going to tend to be superior that way. It comes down to how much you care about this and if there are any specific benchmarks you really want Morgan to hit. That, and how much you value these considerations against the possibility to grant another child the Avatar class set. I myself tend to prefer marrying first gen females, although a large part of that is motivated by favoritism for Cordelia. But I do honestly agree with a prior post that indicated that she was one of the good first gen wives, from a gameplay standpoint, at least from the perspective of wanting to use the Avatar. You see, if you marry a Galeforce-less wife, then the Avatar (if taking advantage of their S-support) is only going to be contributing to the team once per turn. If you marry a wife with Galeforce, they can contribute twice per turn. Cordelia is one of the Galeforce wives.