[What if Fire Emblem had the same growth rates for every character?]

8 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

So, this sort of change would do little to add to my enjoyment, and do a lot to make units feel more "samey" with one another. I definitely wouldn't want it to happen in a growths-heavy game, like Three Houses. Part of what distinguishes Lysithea and Constance is their high Magic growths - take that away, and they lose their "premier offensive mage" status. Likewise, if Raphael loses the ability to tank physical hits, then all of a sudden he's offering literally nothing unique.

So here's the thing, even those examples are a much smaller difference than people often think.

Raphael in particular. Let's talk about his defence growth. 45% growth is pretty cool, right? Let's say we lowered it to 30%, equivalent to someone like Felix or Petra. Is this a major nerf? Well... not really. By Level 10 he'd be 1 or 2 points below where he normally is. Armour Knight certification comes along, though, and raises his stat to 12... which is higher than either version of Raphael averages. So, unless Raphael was defence-blessed the gap's now zero. By Level 20, again he might open up a gap of 1 to 2 points... but Fortress Knight minimum comes along, and again, nope, the gap vanishes. Only after Level 34 is Raphael's supposed good defence growth resulting in more than 2-point advantage on this nerfed Raphael, at least on average.

Granted, some other examples aren't as easily fixed by class minimums. Magic is one, and Lysithea/Constance do have an edge there, though IMO one that is dwarfed by the importance of spell list differences (fortunately, both have pretty solid spell lists anyway). Speed is another; if Petra lost 15% speed growth that would be a pretty major nerf, since 5-6 less points by lategame will almost surely cost her doubles against a class of enemies, possibly multiple, and most Petra bulds rely on doubling. But overall, I still think people tend to kneejerk overrate the impact of growth differences.

[What if Fire Emblem had the same growth rates for every character?]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

Characters still don't massively deviate much from the averages we have. At least in my experience.

Yeah, that establishes that the growth rates we have are at least roughly correct. It's basically impossible that Lilina secretly only has 30% magic growth, for instance.

But smaller errors would be much harder to detect, as per the examples I gave.

[What if Fire Emblem had the same growth rates for every character?]

I was thinking about this, and honestly, if you changed it so in any given game, every character had the same growth rates... I don't think it would have a massive impact on most games.

Sure, there are one or two characters like Myrrh who would lose most of their niche. There are also cases like Bartre vs. Dorcas where now Dorcas just completely outclasses Bartre (instead of just mostly). But for the most part, the same characters would be worth using. And that kinda drives home how overly fixated people are on growths, even now.

One thing about growths I often reflect on is that we kinda take them on faith. Now, as more and more people hack into ROMs this is less likely than it used to be, but I've certainly asked myself in the past, what if the growth rates that are published are wrong? What if a bug caused e.g. non-HP growths above 50% to actually only be 50% in practice? How would we figure it out? It's actually remarkably difficult to do so, unless everyone sits down and starts carefully comparing notes... or more likely some nerd (endearing) gets in there and carefully looks at the code. Worth noting that things like this have happened in the past: in the early days of Blazing Blade, it was commonly believed that sharing an affinity with the tactician granted +5% to all growths. Turned out, this is just wrong. Another, more recent one is some people made wildly incorrect assumptions about how Three Houses ensures a two-stat minimum for characters on levelling up, resulting in Constance having (by their assumptions) an effective magic growth of close to 80% (I forget the exact number), instead of the ~64% it turned out to be. The fact that these errors can be made and not caught, potentially for years, says much.

[Is Veyle supposed to be the main female lead of Engage?]

Assuming female lead just means "most important female character", then Alear is the female lead if you choose that option at the start of the game. If not, or if we treat avatars as genderless for this conversation (which is implied by mention of Azura) then yeah, it's surely Veyle. Who else could it be?

I'm not even sure who I think the third most important character in the story is. The elder royal siblings are all kinda important but ultimately not too relevant to the "main" story. Zephia and Sombron both do some moving of the game's story but don't have that much screentime, especially Sombron.

[Ranking each game by class: Armour Knights]

I forgot about Shadows of Valentia entirely. Armour knights suck in that game, they're the worst class line and it's not close IMO. There's a meme I've seen about ranking things and it sums up how I feel about class balance in SoV, it goes something like this:

1. You can't
2. rank classes
3. they each fill
4. different
5. valuable
6. niches
7. Armour Knight

Every other class has a lot more move, a lot more utility, a lot more range, or multiple of these. As mentioned they're vaguely okay earlygame though I can't even imagine wanting to turn a villager into one. i'd probably rank them similarly to PoR.

[Is Fire Emblem mainstream?]

On 4/24/2023 at 2:35 AM, NotYourKindOfPeople said:

I've heard many fans say that Fire Emblem is a mainstream IP, but is it though? The most selling game in the series has sold 4 million copies, which is very little compared to Nintendo's other popular games like Mario Odyssey (25 mil) or TLOZ: Breath of the Wild (30 mil). Thoughts? 

I mean it's not as mainstream of those... though it is worth noting that until Breath of the Wild, Zelda wasn't that far ahead, I believe the best-selling Zelda before then was around 8M.

As others have said it's a sliding scale of what you consider mainstream.

On 4/25/2023 at 3:10 AM, Armchair General said:

Hey, it takes an while for people to draw shit. Plus, they usually have some other commissions to uphold instead of dropping everything for an new game.

It doesn't take 3 months. At this point the evidence that Engage is having a weaker fan impact is pretty clear. One data point: 3H is getting more fanfics submitted to AO3 per day than Engage is now, let alone comparing Engage to when 3H was new. Now, granted, fan works aren't the only metric of a game's popularity, and it's perhaps unsurprising that 3H, which is praised for writing/characters, is outperforming Engage, which is mainly praised for gameplay... but I still have my doubt about the legs of Engage. 3H just got so much positive word-of-mouth to draw in non-traditional Fire Emblem fans, Engage is not getting that. We'll see, I could easily be wrong.

[Ranking each game by class: Armour Knights]

I'm not particularly inclined to include Great Knight in any game outside of Sacred Stones. In SS, it actually has the bad mobility we associate with armour. In other games, it feels more like a cavalry class, so I'd rather talk about them when we talk about Paladins.

1. Fates: Possibly the best game for armours. One reason is Wary Fighter, which helps them negate their major stat weakness. But the bigger thing is that Pair Up lets them get places more easily. Not only that, but they have great synergy with fliers in particular; flier mobility lets them get where they need, and then you can switch to the armour to clown any nearby archers. Effie herself is a pretty solid unit, and Benny has his uses too.

2. Radiant Dawn: Armours are one of the few classes who get two weapons in second tier (not even paladins do!), which is a neat class advantage they don't often have (Hard Mode admittedly negates some of this advantage, RD HM is such a trashfire), and past that they're... actually reasonably speedy as a class? Except Brom. That helps a lot. Gatrie is a very solid unit, Tauroneo and Brom both have at least a map or two where they're show-stealers, Meg is... okay, pretty bad, but overhated IMO.

3t. Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones: Both of these games have one armour who is pretty good (Duessel, Oswin) admittedly more for his high base level than his class, and one who is trash (Wallace, Gilliam). It's not a great class past that, low move low speed dodgetanking superior to concrete tanking all add up. But one good unit is enough, I think. I would say SS is probably #3 on Ephraim's route, but Blazing is #3 if we're considering Eirika', so I'll call this a tie..

5. Awakening: See Fates, but Kellam isn't as impressive as Effie. And no Wary Fighter. But still, pairup is nice. If you count Frederick as armour then Awakening moves instantly to the top of the list, Freddy is the best "armoured" unit in the series and it's not close. But with 7 move, I ain't gonna consider him one.

6. Engage: Tricky one. I'll say that I'm not comfortable considering Great Knight here: it's explicitly cavalry, not armour, for class typing. For the true armour classes, they're quite good... in tier 1. Decent move, great def, and break immunity. Unfortunately General is kinda terrible, gaining no move on promotion and break immunity being far less valuable once competing classes can just choose different weapons to avoid being broken. Louis is a good earlygame unit, at least.

7. Binding Blade: I think Bors is pretty underrated. 11 defence at Level 1 is cool, and he grows well enough. But he's still not wonderful, and the other armours all suck. Lances aren't as good weapons as they often are.

8. Three Houses: Do I give credit for armour knight certification? Because armour knight certification is cool. But I'm inclined to say no. Outside that, concrete tanking is valid and they're the best way to do it, but... in practice I find that Armour Knight (the intermediate class) has somewhat overkill durability, a Brigand with Armour certification will tank things just fine, while having +1 move, much better offence, and learning the awesome Death Blow instead of the garbage Armoured Blow. And thereafter, dodgetanks start outclassing concrete tanks pretty badly, for a multitude of reasons. So in practice, armour feels pretty bad in this game. Still better than..

9. Path of Radiance: This is the game of mobile, incredibly durable paladins. Thanks to their evade and speed they're often just literally more durable, on top of +3 move and canto. So armours are just slow without much of a niche. Gatrie's okay for some earlygame maps or I'd seriously consider ranking them last.

10. Genealogy: Horse Emblem leaves these guys struggling to contribute. On top of that class issue, Arden is absolutely wretched on stats/weapons. Hannibal is... less egregious but I still basically only used him like once or twice for castle guarding.

[Fire Emblem Engage (non-DLC) popularity poll results from Nintendo Dream Magazine!]

The Alear hero worship is bad and I basically second Snowfire's thoughts on the subject. There is definitely a tendency for characters defined strongly by that to do better in JP polls than NA ones, so yeah I expect Framme to tumble once we get a stronger overall picture of popularity. Veyle I dunno, she is very plot-important so that should keep her ranking decently high, for all that I also don't think she's very popular by the standards of Fire Emblem deuteragonists.

7 hours ago, UNLEASH IT said:

He's a really good unit. Kagetsu placed low though so idk.

You kinda said it yourself in the second sentence, but unit worth clearly had little to no impact on this poll. I think Pandreo's personality definitely clicks with some people, though I was also surprised to see him this high.

8 hours ago, Mercakete said:

I was pretty surprised that the highest-ranking female character (apart from fem Alear) came in 5th, what with how much it seems pushed that female characters will always sell better than male ones.

I said it earlier but it's really worth emphasizing that the male characters doing much better is a particular bias of this poll. I'd strongly expect the actual popularity of male and female characters is relatively similar overall, as it is in most FE games.

Not sure what you meant by selling better... is that a reference to Heroes? I'm pretty sure female characters do actually sell better there, but again that speaks to specific biases, in that case, of so-called whales and who they're willing to spend huge amounts of money for, rather than of the entire fandom.

[Do you like Hilda?]

I also like 3H Hilda, though with some reservations. I love her manipulative side; she uses her emotional intelligence so well, able to key into different things on different characters. I think my favourite is the Ferdinand support where he knows he's being manipulated but he can't help but go along anyway. She ends up a weirdly good compliment to Claude because she gets people better and together their scheming feels unstoppable.

On the less positive note I find the game seems a little muddled as to whether she actually has a completely incorrect view of her own abilities or if it's all just a trick. I've found she's one of the characters I do incredibly poorly with on tea times / expeditions as a result. This is likely a me problem and I'm sure there are Hilda experts out there who "get" her more. Either way, though, I do find her fun to watch.

My unpopular opinion is that I don't really care for her dynamic with Marianne.

 

FE4 Hilda is fine. I think gen 2 does a much better job making villains memorable than PCs, so Hilda benefits from that. I kinda enjoy the subversion that she actually ends up much more notable than her husband, especially in FE4 of all things. But obviously she's not very deep or anything.

[Fire Emblem Engage (non-DLC) popularity poll results from Nintendo Dream Magazine!]

A few thoughts:

1. If I recall correctly, there was a similar poll by Nintendo Dream of Three Houses popularity early in that game's lifetime which also turned out to be wildly off from the overall fandom. This poll is Japan-only, which already biases things, but also likely has all sorts of biases past that, some obvious (preference for male characters), and some not.
2. The placement of Fogado and Timerra is embarrassing and honestly a bit upsetting. The relatively high placement of Pandreo banishes some of the possible reasons for why this happened and leaves an obvious, unpleasant one.
3. Sommie deserves any and all high placements. If there's going to be a weird meme figure for popularity again, I'm glad this is one I actually like. That dog never failed to bring me joy as I played the game.

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

21 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I don't believe any first-tier classes in Engage get higher than B rank in anything. So Vander is the only unit who can use A- and S-rank Axes (at a time when they... don't exist). And by the time you start promoting units (which, in Engage, is roughly five minutes after you start playing), your Jagen's work is done.

So no, the game's design is not especially kind to Vander, but that's not necessarily a symptom of the "fixed weapon ranks" system. They could've given him a Brave Axe or Silver Greataxe, and he'd have a monopoly over it until people start promoting.

 

For what it's worth this has changed since the update, the game added a couple A rank weapons (one of which is an axe, Revanche) which you gain when the Ancient Well updates, so only Vander can use it until others start promoting. Granted, the window between the Ancient Well opening and your first Master Seal is relatively short.

 

Separately: I think weapon exp increasing in battle based entirely on your actions is bad and I'm glad that Three Houses de-emphasized it (training between fights has a greater effect) and Engage got rid of it entirely. It rewards degenerate, grindy behaviour in battles.

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

5 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I was more thinking of everything else, largely because the other maps generally did their best to replicate the enemy lineup of the original maps

To be fair, that's just... plain not possible for Micaiah's paralogue. The enemies in the original map are entirely laguz until the final reinforcements, and there's nothing that feels remotely comparable in Engage. ... the closest would have been every single cat/tiger be a wolf knight I guess, with a few griffins to reflect the birds? But quite frankly I think this is a case where making the map more interesting with varied enemy designs was a good choice. Same with the renovations to Celica's paralogue.

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

23 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

What exactly are the enemy units in Micaiah's paralogue supposed to represent?  The Thief by her side is obvious, representing Sothe, but... then I look at everything else, and it's nothing like the enemy formation from the original chapter, as the original map had mostly laguz units, excepting Ike, Soren, and the other Mercenaries once the map dragged on long enough.

You mean the ones with revival stones? Pretty sure they represent the Dawn Brigade. You've got a Sniper (Leonardo), Warrior (Nolan), Hero (Edward, yeah he's a swordmaster in FE10 but his design is a bit more hero-ish and FE10 didn't have a Hero class), Swordmaster (Zihark), and Wyvern Knight (Jill).

If you mean the other enemies, they're just an assortment of human classes since this game doesn't have laguz.

[Alastor plays and ranks the whole series! Mission Complete! ...For now.]

On 4/11/2023 at 10:01 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Now then... how many effects over the course of the series require full HP? I can only think of 4 thus far, two in Engage (Perfectionist, Confidence, Chain Guard, and Wind God).

Engage has a third, Brave Assist. There's also Dimitri's Royal Lineage+.

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

28 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

This has Maddening in mind, right?

EDIT: Who do the Emblems have battle convos with aside from Alear? All I know is Lyn with Ivy and Hortensia, which is dangerous for the latter two for obvious reasons.

Yes, for all that I'd imagine those statements are pretty difficulty-agnostic.

It's pretty easy to get those conversations. The general strategy for bosses is to lure them in and then beat them into the ground, in Lyn's case whatever weapon she has out it'll be easy for Ivy and Hortensia to at worst just hit her with a Thunder tome safely as part of that. And surprisingly, Ivy has no problem surviving Astra Storm, even on Maddening. (Hortensia... may need some help.)

Otherwise I think most characters who have previously canonically wielded an emblem have a conversation with them. Ivy/Leif and Timerra/Ike for two I remember seeing, but I'd bet on Celine/Celica, Yunaka/Micaiah, Diamant/Roy, Hortensia/Lucina, Hortensia/Byleth, Seadall/Corrin, and Rosado/Eirika. A quick google search suggests some videos which may list all such conversations but I'm too lazy to watch one to post a complete list.

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

Tier 2 is best for profit (using well logic) and tier 3 is best for SP generation while still gaining more gold value than is put into the well on average. Tier 4 and above are only useful if you have a surplus.

edit: Someone did the math on this; I'm just reiterating the main takeaways, but I don't really want to look at the moment. It shouldn't be hard to find though.

I think this is the thread? https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/380177-fire-emblem-engage/80377290

Tier 1 = free / average gold & SP = 780 & 100
Tier 2 = 1,000G / average gold & SP = 2100 & 225
Tier 3 = 5,000G / average gold & SP = 5320 & 450
Tier 4 = 10,000G / average gold & SP = 8060 & 775
Tier 5 = 20,000G / average gold & SP = 13900 & 1100
 

Interesting. I hesitate to call what's going on at tier 3 "profit" but it's true that if you're willing to make an upfront 5000G investment (not a small thing in this game), it will probably mostly pay for itself long term... at least in terms of future well use (since many of the items you'll get that make up that value aren't good for much else, and selling them yields less value). That said you might also get unlucky and lose big.

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

24 minutes ago, Reinford said:

Hey guys. I have a question regarding the well - how do I efficiently use it to get SP Books? I'm donating items but I'm starting to run out of them. Thanks!

I often just toss in a random low-value item, even a 1-use vulnerary or torch has that 50% chance to get the basic book, for instance. I dunno that it's a great use of your money to put in more valuable things; in particular I can't ever see myself throwing in 5k at once, which is what's needed for 3-star. Your milage may vary.

One tip I have is to make sure to donate your nearly-dead Mend Staves, though, even a 1-use Mend Staff is enough to count as a 2-star item, which gives you a shot at a the 500 SP book.

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

How does Goldmary stack up?

Goldmary has a very high defence stat, the highest of any character at equal levels and in the same class. She also gets +20 evade against male opponents. So she can do well at pretty much any type of tanking role you might want. The rest of her stats are pretty unremarkable (outside of the predictable low magic). She also starts two levels away from Brave Assist.

[Promoting Units In Fe4 Question]

3 minutes ago, SuperSheepPow said:

Yeah i've only been trying to promote in base castle and oifey still says no.  I also tried with Ayra and Erin who are both level 21 or higher right now and its not working. I'm thinking this has something to do with the FE Remix patch but I can't find anyone talking about it. 😕

I'm not familiar with this patch, but usually save files can be transferred just fine between a patched and unpatched version of the game. So I'd suggest saving (properly, as if you were playing on an actual console), then loading the save in an unpatched version of the game (or one patched with a standard translation patch), and seeing if that fixes things. Depending on how you're playing the game you may need to find the save file (it'll be a srm file) and rename it.

[Promoting Units In Fe4 Question]

Sigurd counts as already promoted, but if your units in "normal" classes are level 20 and you're still getting that message, that sounds like a bug? Midir should certainly be able to promote, for instance. Note that you can only promote at the "home" castle for each chapter.

Incidentally, if you prefer Midir to Jamke, you can always move the Killer Bow over to him.

[Ranking each game by class: Nomad/BowKnight]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

The thing is, Warrior in the DS games is a Master of None; it's not as good a bow user as Sniper, and the other axe classes have better offerings, too. The result is that Warrior just doesn't have much going for it to justify its use.

SD Berserker certainly does not have better offerings, as I already outlined.

If you meant Hero and Dracoknight for axe-users, or even New Mystery Berserker, then, yeah, sure, I'll agree to that. I'm not gonna defend Warrior too much, I certainly barely used it myself.

[Ranking each game by class: Nomad/BowKnight]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Care to explain on Warrior? Because I'm of the mind that Warrior sucks in the DS games on account of being overshadowed by other classes.

Normally I'd dismiss this as you disliking axe classes, but... in one of the other threads you were going to bat for SD Berserker. Warrior is basically Berserker with +1 speed and bows in exchange for losing the +10 crit, a trade I'll take any day given how SD has no way to get crits anywhere near reliability. Both classes even have the same axe rank, surprisingly. I don't see how you can defend Berserker and then say Warrior sucks.

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Warrior has higher base Strength with the same base Speed, plus Axe is a better secondary weapon type than Swords due to the innumerable lance wielder later into the game. Really I am more pointing out how bad Bow Knight is.

Eh, the base Strength advantage is only +1, and I'd say +2 move is a lot more significant than that, personally. It's obviously fair to side with axes over swords, for all that for me at least I doubt i'd consider the gap that wide.

[Fire Emblem Three Houses Builds]

15 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Looking at Frozen Lance on a bases Mage -> Paladin Lorenz, he'll have 10 Magic and (14 + 2 😃 16 Dex. Throwing on Mag +2 and Dex +4 brings us to 12 and 20, respectively. Let's give him the Lance of Ruin (22 Mt) and a +8 Magic battalion (Nuvelle Attendants, I think it was?). His personal ability means 2 more damage, too. Lancefaire gives 5 damage, and let's say he's holding a Magic Staff for 3 more. Of couse, Fiendish Blow is 6 damage. Getting back to Frozen Lance, it adds 3 + Dex x 0.3 damage, or in this case, 9. So it looks like:

12 + 22 + 9 + 8 + 2 + 6 + 5 + 3 = 67 Attack.

That's... okay, yeah, that's probably one-shotting quite a few enemies. I was originally thinking it would only really do so with the Ridersbane. And this is ignoring that anyone in this build will realistically have higher Magic by this point.

...And now I'm just remembering that, ess than a year ago, I was defending the honor of Frozen Lance Lorenz as "totally being able to get one-shots in chapter 13". Not sure why I was doubting him (and Marianne, and Hubert) just now. Huh.

Yeah, even Lorenz without Warlock certification or a pocket Ferdinand averages nearly 16 magic at this point (assuming Monk->Mage, his average growth is a bit over 46% and 7+19*.46 = 15.74), so that's an extra 6 points, or more realistically lets him free up the Lance of Ruin for someone else. 

22 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

To the Speed Ring's credit, it's acting on both phases. If we're comparing the Speed Ring to Darting Blow, then we should compare the Accuracy Ring to Uncanny Blow. In each case, the skill is thrice as effective as the equippable, but only when initiating combat.

It's true, Speed Ring and Speed+2 do help for enemy phase unlike Darting Blow, but if you care about enemy phase offence enough for this to be a significant worry than it should be easy to see the value of Alert Stance here.

26 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Anyway, broadly agree that Death and Darting Blows are excellent on physical attackers with solid speed who initiate combat. I'm just leery of them in cases where you're Waiting (for Alert Stance) a good chunk of the time. The exact PP:EP ratio where it's better to forgo the Blow skills is subjective, of course, but I'm probably not using them if it's 50:50 or lower.

Hm, the ratio I start using Death Blow is much lower than that. I use Death(/Fiendish) Blow on virtually everyone if I'm feeling "optimal". It just takes 33% of their combat taking place on player phase for it to equal Str+2 (well, arguably a bit more, because Str+2 helps with AS in some situations), and even lower there's a case to just use both Str+2 and Death Blow. Another thing helping Death Blow specifically is that player phase actions are more likely to have multiplers, with the exception of Wrath builds, since you double more (if you have Darting Blow), and several effects (braves, gauntlets, Swift Strikes, and both Volleys) allow extra multipliers only on player phase, all of which Death Blow amplifies, and all of which are popular on units who can't get Darting Blow. I also tend to just plain value player phase actions more, even more than numbers might suggest, though I'd have to disentangle how much of that is purely psychological.

But for what it's worth I was thinking of builds which put more player phase emphasis than 50:50.

[Fire Emblem Three Houses Builds]

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Regarding many of your units one-shotting (or one-rounding), I guess it depends on which part of the game we're talking here. It's definitely feasible to get Vengeance Paladin Bernie online by chapter 11 or so. The only comparable-power tools I see you having at that point are other Vengeance users (Cyril, Dedue), Cyril's Point-Blank Volley, and Soulblade on Lysithea and Constance in particular. Maybe Hunter's Volley on Shamir. In most cases, the brave combat arts require hitting A in the specified weapon type, or else mastering an Advanced class. Either of which is gonna take a while. You can do "Darting/Death Blow Wyvern Rider with a Brave Axe", I suppose, but Hit rates become an issue against the wrong targets.

Hmm, playstyle thing here, but I definitely find I tend to easily have the A ranks I really gun for by Chapter 11 (despite my preference for spreading tutoring between around ~9 units), and certainly Frozen Lance is going to one-shot during this part of the game too, so that adds quite a few more names... and we can go back to our friendly wyvern build here too. A Wyvern Rider with Death Blow and a Silver Axe+ has a minimum of 18+3+5+6+17 = 49 atk before battalions (so 54 to 56 depending on battalion) before considering possible Str+2, stat boosters, anything less than minimum strength, and +might supports. This is already enough to 2HKO every human enemy except armours and bosses (and you could get armours with a hammer-type weapon if you wanted) until after the timeskip, at which point (non-Shamir) Hunter's Volley and Fierce Iron Fist potentially enter the fray as well.

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I do agree that getting Bernie (or any Vengeance user) to low HP is a limitation of the build. But in 3H, it may just be easier than ever to safely hit low-HP thresholds. This is thanks to Guard adjutants and the Blessing gambit. If all else fails, even the Devil Weapons can "help" toward this end.

It's absolutely doable, of course (though all those methods have downsides), but between the extra trouble, the fact that this unit now can't be left in enemy range, and the need to avoid incidental healing, I definitely don't look on it that fondly once I have so many other tools that do the same job without the fuss. I'm a much bigger fan of Vengeance around Chapter 4-8 or so when the ability to one-round isn't as widespread. That said, I think Bow Knight Bernadetta with Vengeance is still a solid build, because "can one hit kill but also has bow knight threat range and Encloser" is now good enough to justify the extra trouble once again.

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

My point with Hit +20 was not going for it in addition to Death and Darting Blows, but in place of those ones. That said, it might not be fair to imagine "if I'm including Alert Stance on a build, then I need to build around it." You can, I suppose, have a flier who is mostly-optimized for player-phase combat, but also "just happens" to have Alert Stance as an occasional EP lure. My personal preference would be to do them as two different builds (i.e. Player-Phase Wyvern Edelgard, Enemy-Phase Wyvern Petra), but you do you.

I generally think Hit+20 is less potent for this build than either Death or Darting Blow, though of course Darting Blow leaves the picture for someone like Claude or Felix, who have the right stats for the build otherwise. But for women (and Jeritza), It's just much easier to patch up hit in other ways. Siege tomes and bow knights are wonderful things, and even as far as accessories go the Accuracy Ring provides a larger share of one of these skills than does the Speed Ring or the (non-existent) Power Ring.

 

I'm not going to argue against either purely player-phase or enemy-phase focused builds for this, they're very good! To be clear I'm mostly considering this a player phase build, I'm just arguing that Alert Stance(+) is still often a good option on such a build, again mostly for Petra and Ingrid who get there with minimal trouble. At that point it becomes kinda like a breaker; in fact you could even swap it out for a breaker depending on the fight.

[Fire Emblem Three Houses Builds]

49 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

On my next playthrough (or was it my third? IDK.), I started doing just one Prowess per unit. And honestly? It felt quite freeing. All of a sudden, I had four slots for other skills, rather than three or two. I could make a unit as strong in one certain aspect as I wanted to, without any "redundancy" or "dead weight".

I think that's sort of the tug-of-war between "versatility" and "specialization". For some players, having a unit who can perform multiple functions effectively is what's preferred. For others, it's about maximizing their effectiveness at one single function.

Let's use Bernadetta as an example. Bow Knight is "suboptimal" if I'm running Vengeance, because it lacks Lancefaire. I'm missing out on sone one-shots that Paladin would achieve. Likewise, Encloser makes less sense on a Paladin, because I have less attack range (and specifically, I can't outrange Monsters). Speaking to dual proficiencies more broadly - in any given combat, at least one of them is gonna be "dead weight". It's very bad "unit feel", in my opinion, to know that I'm running a skill that does nothing for me in the given moment.

Well, having the versatility to do multiple roles well is useful. For many characters (including Bernadetta, but not just her), her best damage is done with a melee weapon, but if she can't reach targets, she'll be reaching for a bow instead (in Bernadetta's case, there are also targets where Encloser is just straight-up more useful than her other actions, like a high-HP monster you don't want to spend other actions on this turn).

Maybe it's just me, but I don't consider Paladin Bernadetta to be a very good build. She can one-shot things at range 1, sure, but so can lots of units by this point of the game, and most of them don't require low HP to do so. The nice thing about Vengeance, though, is that it isn't as reliant heavy attack investments. If you give up Lancefaire you only lose 6 damage, not 12-24 which would be common for other builds. So you can easily go Bow Knight and also have a long-range Encloser (Paladin can enclose too, but not in a way which avoids monster counterattacks, so it's not nearly as useful IMO), as well as incredible linked attack support.

I think only having one prowess is still reasonable, mind, especially if you have Hit+20, Uncanny Blow, or are otherwise happy with your level of accuracy. Maybe even zero if you either have high luck or aren't planning to take hits with this character.

49 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

My one change (if I were making the build, not saying yours is "wrong") comes with Alert Stance. It's a great skill, no questions asked, especially when you hit the + version. But if I know that's what I'm going for, then Death and Darting Blow make no sense for me, since they do nothing on enemy-phase (and if I'm using the "Wait" command, then I have no Player Phase). I would favor Hit +20 and one of (Weaponbreaker, Speed +2, Weight -3, Dex +4). Since those will all improve my combat performance on Enemy Phase.

Certainly, the other skills you mentioned are good (except perhaps Dex+4, that's a bit too small an effect for me). Hit+20 has the downside of being a third intermediate mastery but it's likely the best option if you have time. But I did forget Weaponbreaker and that can be useful in a variety of ways for certain maps, e.g. in lategame Crimson Flower the pegasus knights just have way higher evade than any other non-boss enemy so investing in Lancebreaker to assure reliable hits isn't a bad idea. It's the type of thing you can swap between maps easily, since the breaker skills are ones you pick up for free just by having a weapon rank.

As for Alert Stance, it's just a nice thing to do on turns where nothing is in range. Especially for Petra/Ingrid, this is a skill they reach very easily. It can become game-breaking if you build around it, but even if you don't, you can easily reach the point where you have a character, set up primarily for mobility and offence, who nonetheless can trade an offensive action to instead reach evade levels high enough that they can easily pull in several enemies with high reliability. It's particularly useful for maps where aggroed enemies might otherwise move in undesirable directions, such as the Mercedes/Caspar paralogue.

[Fire Emblem Three Houses Builds]

3 hours ago, Barren said:

One of my personal favorites is Vengeance Bernadetta with Lance Prowess level 5, HP+5, Strength +2, Hit +20, Movement +1 while she is a Paladin. She can also go Bow Knight for chip duty as well as freeze enemies with Encloser and just swap lance for bow prowess.

Why not both? I'd personally ditch one of the stat-ups for dual prowess (probably Str+2, funnily enough, even though I'd consider it the most valuable of the three for many other builds). Lets her be more versatile.

Anyway, the build I'm probably the biggest fan of is the generic Female Wyvern Murder Machine: Axe Prowess, Death Blow, Darting Blow, Stat+2. The last skill can be a second prowess skill (to cover more different brave weapons / monster weaknesses), Weight-3, Alert Stance (most recommended for Ingrid/Petra who get to it fastest), or Hit+20 if you have the stomach for three intermediate masteries (I rarely do). Works very well for Byleth, Edelgard, Petra, Ingrid, Hilda, Leonie, and Catherine. The build performs well at all points in the game since Pegasus Knight and Wyvern Rider are both best-in-show classes for their tier. If you're running more than one copy of this build, just be aware there's only one flying battalion prior to Chapter 8 (with one footnote exception), but this is easily remedied by going Brigand first.

Lots of magic builds work very well, I'm not sure I really have a single favourite one. Valkyrie->Dark Knight with Prowess, Mag+2, Fiendish Blow, Uncanny Blow, Move+1, and Black/Dark Range+1 (sadly you'll have to do without one of these, I often actually drop Prowess since it's only 10 hit though you have to watch out for crits if you do this) is certainly ludicrously flexible for most of the better mages and it feels very good to have all the skill slots filled with such powerful abilities.

I specifically love Bow Knight Felix and feel he gets a bit slept on. It's not too hard to get his stats to the point where he one-rounds most things with a combination of Silver/Failnaught or Brave as needed, and even if he somehow just misses you can always roll the dice on a Fraldarius proc (incredibly likely for quads, in particular). Death Blow, Hit+20, Bow Prowess, and a couple stat ups. One thing I really like about this is that Felix hands out +might supports to two people and he can basically do so permanently. It's not hard to get a Felix who one-rounds , but having that range/mobility/support definitely elevates an already good unit to the next level. Another advantage of the build is that it's flexible with the RNG, if your Felix gets bad str/spd rolls you can abandon the riding training and just stay in Sniper.