Dark Holy Elf

Your list excludes damage before B reason, where he's bottom of the pack. Focusing on B to A around Level 15-20 is his best time for peak damage, and yes he's #2 there by a small amount. Once others hit A he falls to middle of the pack at best, and you ignored Dorothea's A+ Agnea's Arrow or levels past 20 where superior magic growth will push Mercedes ahead and allow Annette to catch him. Comparing him individually to the other student mages: -Hubert deals significantly more damage early, then comparable damage the rest of the game (significantly more against horse opponents of course). He gets 3 range from Mire. -Dorothea deals more damage except at B to A+ Reason, has 3 range from Thoron, has Physic, has Meteor. -Linhardt is perhaps the only student mage who's clearly worse at offence than Lorenz, but you don't use him for that; you use him for Physic and Warp. -Mercedes has better offence as Lorenz outside the B to A range, and has Physic, Fortify, and Live to Serve. -Annette's one of the game's more questionable pure offensive mages, but does have Rallies, and ultimately has far more peak damage on her own route with Dust, or against fliers. -Marianne has comparable overall offence, but has Thoron, Silence, and Physic. -Lysithea is better at the pure offensive mage thing. Every one of these characters has more of a niche than him and I'd rather use any of them. You mention he has slightly better bulk and that's true, but he also has worse charm (except than Linhardt, who as acknowledged only sees play because of his faith list), which pretty much locks him into using utility gambits and also interferes with his supposed advantage in hit-taking.

Saggitae is perfectly unremarkable for power for tomes of its level (in fact both Thoron and Bolganone have slightly more, Cutting Gale is equal). Getting Ragnarok early is indeed an advantage, but it's his only one. Even baking in +2 atk (and ignoring that some of the other mages have useful personals too), Lorenz has lower magic than other mages forever. Only when he has Ragnarok and they lack a power spell of his own does he have an advantage, and that advantage doesn't apply to when they're trying to double using Wind/Fire/Thunder or even Saggitae/Bolganone/Cutting Gale/etc. Most other mages get useful utility in the form of Physic, Warp, Fortify, Rescue, Meteor, or multiple of the above. Many of them get innate 3 range from Thoron or Mire. Lorenz does not. He's a purely offensive mage (outside Ward I guess), and not a good one.

I think Verdant Winds is probably the easiest, rather than Azure Moon. Yes, BL has the strongest overall roster (Dimitri, Felix, Mercedes all outstanding as you note), but later on that gap goes away, and on VW you get Immortal Corps (insane batallion/gambit, even better than King of Lions since it's ranged and fliers can use it). And the endgame of AM is nasty, while VW's is the easiest (oh no, a map whose gimmick is a swamp... except the enemy barely uses fliers and you should have a lot of 'em). I suspect SS is probably tougher than CF. A Catherine who joins in Chapter 12 (along with Seteth) in no way makes up for the loss of Edelgard and now Jeritza. By all accounts Chapter 13 of SS is one of the single toughest things in the game, because you don't get an overpowered lord and gambit to help you out with it. I've also heard SS endgame is nasty on Maddening, but can't confirm.

Hanneman's father also had a major crest, supporting this.

Would you give Assassin Bowfaire? Because as is there's no trade involved, MS can use bows just as well as Assassin can. Master classes (Wyvern Lord aside) are generally sidegrades rather than upgrades, your proposed version of MS just renders the two Advanced tier sword classes (three, really, but nobody cares about Hero) obsolete.

Marianne has Physic which is guarantees her exp every turn, she should have a relatively easy time hitting Level 40 on non-CF routes unless we're going so fast that nobody is.

If you're meeting the trigger for vanilla Vantage, it seems easier just to get vanilla Wrath rather than trying to meet two different triggers simultaneously. Although I suppose Batallion Wrath requires less investment.

Not sure what you're implying; Crimson Flower Maddening was already plenty feasible. It even lacks the standard Chapter 13 which is seen as one of the major trouble points for Maddening by many people. That said obviously any more good PCs can only help, and it sounds like he's pretty good.

Draw Back allows you to have someone attack a problem enemy and then get them one square further out of trouble thereafter. Or it allows you to pull someone else one square towards the enemy (or towards someone you want to target with dance/rally/warp/healing/rescue/etc.). I tend to find a fair bit of use for it. Reposition is even better because it essentially extends offensive and defensive range by 2 instead of 1, and also allows fliers to pull infantry units over ledges and some walls. I can't ever imagine swapping out Reposition just to have three offensive combat arts, so to me it obviously belongs above all but the best weapon combat arts.

Growth totals are an incredibly poor way to judge units. I'd take Reina over Takumi, despite (a) the latter being a royal, and (b) the former having bad growth totals, because Reina joins at a high level in a strong class, with early access to skills like Replicate, decent weapon ranks, and growths which at least allow her to grow in the two most important stats. The royals are overall good units, to be sure, but as mentioned plot-important characters often are, especially in recent games.

Silver Snow provides 9 chapters free of Edelgard and Hubert, so if that route was being picked a lot compared to CF they'd be pushed way down. Yet Edelgard is still on the top 8 last I checked (she's the most-deployed lord despite a "get out of using her" sub-route which the others lack), and Hubert was early on as well. Beyond that it's just pretty obvious if you pay any attention to the game's fandom. Do you actually doubt this? Nemesis coming out of nowhere and being a random evil zombie. People also seem to enjoy bickering about whether VW or SS ripped the other route off. (I'm guilty of this too.) AM gets some contraversy over how Dimitri's rehabilitation is handled but overall most people have a high opinion of the route, I'd agree that it's the least controversial.

Wow, if that's true, it certainly blew up in their face. Based on both the player data (i.e. Edelgard being top 8 ) and the Reddit poll, BE players choose Crimson Flower by a large margin.

I don't have much to add for detailed analysis except to say that I feel the positioning combat arts (particularly Reposition, though Draw Back is good too, and Shove/Smite/Swap are decent enough they I'll equip them over a third offensive combat art) are incredibly potent. They're immensely tactically flexible (they can be used for offensive plays and defensive ones) and incredibly useful on Maddening where you often have many units who die in 1 or 2 combats, allowing characters to take action and then be withdrawn to safety (or, if they have canto, the reposition/etc. can be used before they move for the same effect).

I was fine with some sci-fi elements conceptually and I enjoyed the Shambhala music quite well... but I didn't enjoy the plot surrounding the Agarthians and the confrontation with Thales is disappointing.

Silver Snow has come last in every favourite route poll I've ever seen, including ones on this forum. Anyway I'd expect an anime adaptation to have creative re-writes so it somewhat follows the plot of multiple routes at once, but I imagine Azure Moon would be the primary source material, both because it's the most narratively complete story as it stands and also appears to be the most popular overall. But I'd expect far more parity between the three lords than any one route offers.

On non-Crimson Flower there should definitely be enough time to get Manuela to A Reason well before the game ends. There are ~12 chapters to tutor and it thus it only takes 110 WExp per chapter, easily doable even on Maddening and without a Knowledge Gem (it helps that the only other two skills Manuela really needs for this build, Sword and Faith, are ones she works on before joining anyway). CF would make it tougher for sure. One of those two spells is Thoron, which helps, and he does get both Recover and Restore. He loses 3 speed coming from Assassin, but gains 2 def / 2 res / 1 HP / 1 str, so it's hardly a straight loss. (Compared to Swordmaster, well, he gains 1 move, I don't think much else need be said.) That said I agree with you that MS is not a great choice for him anyway. He's a physical unit with strength in bows and no weaknesses for the most dominant physical classes (Wyvern and Bow Knight) so he should probably end up in one of those.

It's only A Sword / B+ Reason actually, which is the easiest requirement for a master class (granted, still not that easy, as you note). For the most part it's a fairly niche class, since I'd only really recommend it for characters who both have a decent magic list and a reasonable aptitude for swords (preferably with access to a magical sword combat art). Which is, generously, Edelgard, Dorothea, Felix, Ingrid, Lysithea, Marianne, and Manuela I disagree with the original post though, since I think Holy Knight is definitely more underwhelming still. Not sure who actually wants to go there, as nobody actually wants White Tomefaire besides maaaybe some cracked-out Byleth White Magic Avo Nosferatu build.

I definitely got my master tier skills later than you, @Tables. The only characters who had them near as early were ones who could heal, since they took action nearly every turn, and even then I think it was ~3 chapters left at most. My most mobile physical characters picked them up with ~1 chapter left, and my physical infantry, notably including my War Master (since that's one of the few skills we cared about), never got there at all. I didn't do auxillaries, but I did do quite a few paralogues (had about half the other houses recruited and did all paralogues I could). I didn't really optimize my Knowledge Gem use for class mastery, to be fair, since except for QR I find most of these skills pretty bad anyway.

I've never full-built the dancer as a dodge-tank, but they can certainly do it well, yes. Ferdinand and Dimitri are particularly potent at it because of their personals (though Dimitri is weak in Flying, and is so good at other roles anyway). Otherwise, generally the best characters to build as dodge-tanks are ones with high speed, and proficiency in flying is a help since Alert Stance+ is a heavy investment. Ingrid, Petra, etc. I'm not a fan of same-turn reinforcements at all but at least in this game I can divine pulse them away and look for a solution. Not optimum design by any means, but I ended up liking this hard mode more than others from games with same-turn reinforcements (Conquest's is still my favourite though).

It's pretty nasty, but you can predict who the boss will attack; it's always the lowest-def unit in range in my experience, along with one shot at the lord which hopefully shouldn't be too scary. If you gear up your lowest-def unit for critical evade (the Goddess Ring pushed me over the top IIRC), you can neutralize the worst of this threat. For the high-crit Fire Orb user (who I assume is Dorothea if she's not recruited?), I used Stride on a flier though Impregnable Wall, Blessing, Rescue/Warp are all options as well. I ignored the high-crit onager in the east by bringing Dimitri's group to the west instead. For the Bolting reinforcements (ugh) I just used a dodge-tank with Retribution and hoped for the best. Agreed that the last two maps are definitely the toughest in the route. I enjoyed 'em a lot though. (Also enjoyed reading your own log, so thanks for sharing!)

Felix/Catherine should be the last units on your team you hand a battalion to, but they should still definitely get one eventually, and "eventually" tends to mean somewhere in mid part 1, at least in my experience. As mentioned, there are tradeoffs as to exactly when is best.

Armour C takes 300 WExp, which is a drop in the bucket compared to getting Bow Crit +10, let alone non-class Bowfaire (I've personally never gotten S+ rank anything, ever, including on a Claude build where I kept him training bows the whole game). I consider Weight-3 a very standard skill for most builds, since it's relatively little investment for major payoff. Also, if you get both Death Blow and Hit+20, it significantly delays the arrival of Hunter's Volley, since you now need to master three classes all gained after Level 10. That's going to take most of the game (Knowledge Gem can help, but there are only so many of those and it removes the ability to use another accessory at the same time). Ironically it's a setup I find much more palatable on Bow Knights, because they'll almost certainly hit L30 before getting Hunter's Volley, so there's even less reason for them to sit around and wait for it. I find 84% well short of the consistency level I'd like, and even 91% is pushing it. Note that even 91% chance is what we get from 79 displayed hit (talking accuracy instead of criticals for a moment, of course), which is a range I find a bit dicy from experience. I'd want to look at enemy luck on Maddening again as well, because aside from monsters I recall that generally my (Dex+Luck)/2 was not enough to overcome enemy Luck+Prowess (i.e. I saw 0 crit very often from characters who didn't have boosts to it), but I could be misremembering. Some enemies can indeed be killed outright without crits, but of course the majority of those can also be killed by the only slightly weaker Brave Bow by Bow Knight as well.

Just a nitpick, but Felix should go Myrmidon instead of Fighter since he satisfies the prereq for it, and most units in that speed range would rather have Speed+2 over Strength+2, certainly including him. When you talk about being weighed down, what bow are you talking about? And did you account for Weight-3? I feel like the only bow anyone should be losing speed from at that point is Brave. You also don't seem to be accounting for the ability to get +2 speed from dismount. Regarding crit, I will say that (a) it doesn't seem easy to get past ~60 crit (35 killer + 10 volley + 15 batallion) without giving up the accessory slot for a meagre +5 or a skill slot for Bow Crit (the latter available only very late), and even that locks you into rather specific batallion options [in particular, the only +15 crit batallions I saw offhand have offensive gambits, which are poor choices for some of these PCs who have bad charm], and (b) I personally at least have a low opinion of crit-based builds since you pretty much always have to plan around the critical not activating anyway.

Fair points. It does still feel to me like the nukes were crafted to give the player a good scare on non-Azure Moon routes, but never amount to anything that actually matters because of a variety of reasons (which, as you pointed out, are more credible than I was giving them credit for).

Mortal Savant is a fine option for Marianne even if she's going pure magical (as she should, I agree). Blutgang and Levin Sword are both magic, as is Soulblade. Mortal Savant offers Swordfaire to buff those moves up, meaning they'll do more damage from MS than from Dark Knight or Warlock etc. Marianne's paralogue is also a great one to do and I would do it even if I weren't using her because it gives you so much Wootz Steel. Many enemies are unaggressive and it's relatively easy to distract the aggressive ones because of how monster AI works. I didn't find it too difficult myself on Hard, though I haven't done it on Maddening yet. *shrug*