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That's fair enough. As for the rest, I did say that Wyvern Lord was his best class, but regardless, there are a few things I think you didn't properly consider here: - Brigand requiring lower investment would only matter if getting into Mage was difficult, which it really isn't. Reaching D+ requires only 180 exp, and funneling that amount into something else will make limited difference. Similarly, using lances until you reach D on month 2 isn't exactly a big deal and he may not even participate in ch1. - Enemies have on average 10 to 15 less Res than they have Def, making magic comparatively much stronger than with a straight mt comparison. The lance of ruin is always nice though. - Magic allows 1-3 range fairly early on(1-4 if he's your main magic user, though that's unlikely I feel), which is quite useful, and not something lances get. - While the bolt axe is super strong, it's nigh impossible to double with(armored classes aside indeed, but very few classes struggle against them in the first place, there are just too many available tools to take them down), so you'll mostly be aiming at OHKO, which Sylvain will struggle with. - Everyone wants King of Lion corps, it's not exactly something you can assume will end up on him; it's also unusable if he's a Wyvern Lord. Magic battalions are in considerably lower demand, though admittedly you want B authority for them. The additional range from magic accessories is pretty useful for supports actually. This compensates for lower flexibility in positioning quite well. Yeah, getting to A is doable for sure, it just takes a while. That's 1320 exp from E and your average month gives around between 150 and 200(depending on blessings mostly) without a strength, so mainly I was just saying that it wouldn't happen anytime soon. Similarly, a cavalier with meh combat... idk, might as well waste a bit of time to get into pegasi really. Also my bad, I meant to write Mag. Rescue is Mag/4 rounded down, and transports to the closest tile, making its effect typically 1 tile less than its range. Not much to say on the other part, I can only agree mostly; her combat is very limited. She also does somewhat okay with brave bows(enemy phase will be your death however, so only on Bow knight), and it's worth mentioning that she can freely dismount for +2 AS, and in practice, spd food(which I find is the best choice for a bunch of reasons) can make things less bad than they seem for her. But at least Sniper is reliable and nothing really stops her from grabbing Mov +1 anyways, since she has a (hidden)strength and all.

Sylvain easily doubles with magic due to his high speed, strength, and reasonable access to weight -3(compared to most mages), which coupled with Fiendish blow allows him to be still ORKOing consistently; he's also arguably the best Seraphim user in the game, as Lysithea seriously struggles to double with it. And his spell list is not bad. I'm not claiming it's better than Paladin though.

Hm... I don't know, that does sound interesting but quite niche compared to even a mediocre combat unit. You brought up averages, Bernie has around 19 Spd at level 30. That's 4 Rescue range, soon to be 5, and probably never more. Which isn't... that great. It's also A rank without a strength, so she's not getting it for a while. To keep access to Physic she needs to be in low move classes, limiting how good reposition will be for most of the game... and Physic on its own is bad. It gives very low exp and recruiting Mercedes early lowers its utility tremendously. That being said, I agree that she's highly unimpressive as a Bow knight as well, from recent experience. I think that's as a result of me realizing too late that I didn't have enough time left to get her to D+ rank axes with a weakness for Brigand access and death blow, though, which she direly, direly needs. I think if you work on it early enough, it improves her performance significantly, Deadeye be damned. And frankly, sniper with hunter's volley access might be better for her because she struggles to double as a bow knight, as you said. In general Bernadetta is a limited character. It's almost unfortunate that she has a crest, too, as using relics could allow her to trigger her P.skill manually otherwise. I guess I'll say Bow knight still? Idk. Petra is wyvern lord. I like her as an assassin(even though she has many better options). Sylvain is wyvern lord. I like him as a dark knight, like quite a few people apparently. But yeah, he can be almost anything.

Nope. If the character doesn't appear in the support list, then you either need to recruit them, or it's impossible on that route.

That's likely dual guard/adjutant defense, or whatever it's called. It's always been that for me.

+Mt supports are rare, and Dorothea only has one with Manuella, to my knowledge(Edit: Apparently with Hilda too). Also, assistant boosts only happen on player phase(in fact on EP enemies get their own assistant boosts, it's pretty funny), so the +10 avoid in particular is less useful than it could be. The added accuracy+gambit boost is indeed really good regardless of that though, only things that can compare imo are characters with a strength in riding(for dancers with move +1) and authority(for easy A rank dancer battalion access on BL route, though this is arguably best left to other characters either way).

I don't think 20% Dex is better than 10% Str. Even the game acknowledges the Dex is unimportant this time around, by making its rally +8(which is always very telling). None of these sword classes have accuracy issues either, and one point of dex is only worth 0.5 crit, meaning from level 20 to 40, Assassin will get +4 Dex aka +2% crit. I'd much, much rather have +2 strength, and as a result, I'd say growth is a win for Swordmaster, actually. Assassinate cannot be evaluated without an accurate idea of what its rate is, but it'd have to be really good to be worth taking the chance, and that's only when you have no other option to ORKO/OHKO an enemy. Yes Astra is bad, but it seems quite hasty to declare Assassinate better; as for Lethality, it's dex/4, it's an incredibly awful rate and takes a skill slot. I'd still give it to Assassin because stealth is really cool though, and locktouch is nice to have. Finally, bases don't matter nearly as much as mods, and to its credit, SM has pretty decent ones as said above. Assassin wins here as well because of +1 move, but SM is a fairly close second. In a nutshell yeah, things are pretty bad, but if you want to feel better, find someone who cares for Fortress Knight and discuss it with them for half an hour, I think that'll help.

I frankly think Darting blow belongs where you originally put it. Maybe lower even, it suffers from redundancy much more often than the other relevant blows, and brave weapons do exist past the midgame whenever doubling is an issue. I'll have to defend Grappler' case(because who else will?). Warmaster has better stats, but less mobility(Grappler ignores a majority of terrain restrictions outside of sand and water which are fairly rare; Warmaster does not, and if you're primarily using gauntlets you care about mobility a lot); its unique art also can compensate quite nicely on targets neither double, making their combat relatively close still. Also, the Retribution gambit, which gives unlimited counter range, can be used at the start of chapters(it lasts 5 turns) to make gauntlet users really good against mages with tomebreaker+ the 20 avoid from their prowess and accessible doubling. It's niche, but it's perhaps the best counter I've found to siege tomes, that's something. And really retribution is good to use on anyone and highly underrated at the moment, so it's not too big a commitment. Gambit accuracy cannot get above or under 30 hit from base; outside of assistant/adjutants and skill bonuses. And indeed, the lords already reach the cap against 99% of targets due to it only requiring +6 Cha over the enemy's. Someone brought up Poison strike already. Maybe you're a bit tough on poor Astra, too, SM isn't that awful of a final class; I'd also hesitate to put Assassin that high, especially without an Assassinate formula, and Lethality will struggle to reach a 10% trigger rate at the very end of the game, making using up a slot on it at any point extremely questionable. One can see it as a safety net, but it's not exactly a great one. I think I agree with most of it outside of that. I'm almost surprised how much in agreement we are on beginner classes, if anything.

I think this kind of arguments really isn't helping. Warmaster has the highest crit rate in the game, with brave weapons that will apply the rate twice before counter, and the only crit brave weapon the series has ever seen outside of like, Dime thunder?(Edit: it only has 10 crit actually, then again most brave weapons are crit weapons in FE5, #JustThraciathings) Demonic Beasts also take inspiration from monsters in Echoes in the sense that a majority of them have 0 Lck, making crits a genuinely reliable source of damage vs them(outside of when their shields negate them and are up). Furthermore, if we're going to say bad hit rates don't matter because of Divine Pulse, then similarly >40 crit rates *2 are plenty reliable because of it. And not every enemy dies reliably to WLs all the time, that's hyperbole, even without considering Demonic Beasts. Hey, apologies I didn't address your answer to my post. I took too much time and it didn't feel worth it anymore, especially since I didn't have that much to say apart from talking class balance directly, which wasn't the original purpose. Also I get that you don't make the conversation, and you have enough people on your back as of late anyway. So moving on. It is true that gauntlets struggle with armors to an extent(it's typically fine but might require a crit or two), and have bad EP. I do think it's a disservice to anyone trying to be better at the game however to pretend everything gets ORKOed with ease with axes though, as said above. We're talking stats so let's do that Swordmaster, lv 30, ch 15: 45 HP, 21 Prt, 29 AS, 42 Avo Reaching the 33 AS required to double might be troublesome even with darting blow. Safe to say that without it(aka any male, or on EP), WLs aren't doubling. OHKOs are dicey, 66 atk is high for that point in the game. Weapons that would allow for a ORKO are generally either relics/devil or a brave, all of which can be expected to have ~70 displayed hit, and most being very bad for EP. This is of course made even worse with any kind of avoid terrain, but basically, suffice to say axes aren't the best way to deal with them. A gauntlet user needs 44 Atk instead. The common deathblow warmaster build provides 36, before battalions, weapon, or character stats. Accuracy is in the 80s, crit rate >40%, making the kill reasonably reliable even on a miss. Hero, lv 30, ch 15: 51 HP, 24 Prt, 23 AS, 36 Avo This one is interesting, because Death blow WLs can easily struggle with doubling with weapons strong enough to get the kill(speedsters like Petra aside), and Darting blow ones need 50 Atk to kill. Which might seem easy, but characters will rarely have more than 25+9(from WL) base Str at lv 30, meaning most accurate axes won't cut it and there's a hit problem here too. Either way, they'll likely eat a counter. In comparison with a Darting Blow WL, a Warmaster will have better Str(about +2 thanks to a consistent +10% growth throughout their class progression), +1 from class base, and of course, +6 from Death Blow, for a combined +9. Meaning that despite weaker weaponry, they'll still have an easier time reaching the 50 atk threshold with respectable accuracy, and much better crit. In fact, with a Killing gauntlet+, ~70 crit rates become possible, which results in a >90% chance of a crit if both attacks hit; this is also a factor vs armors, by the way. Those two are just examples of speedsters because that what WLs struggle to kill the most, but another thing to address is their EP; gauntlets users have perhaps the worst EP in this game, unless they're given infinite counter range through gambits, and even then, they'll need to crit and/or double to take down a good amount of threats. However, I take issue with the pretense that WLs are that much better, because to put it simply, 1-2 range sucks in this game. It has low enough Mt and hit, as well as high enough Wt that it's highly impractical when it comes to killing anything that isn't a mage. It also doesn't counter bow users. The real enemy phase units in this game are bow classes, and magic users when used carefully. Using WL de-facto because they're the best class in the game doesn't change the fact that this isn't something they're particualrly stellar at, not enough to make gauntlet users blush. And: The above is also why this quote is incorrect. Axes provide very little to a WM outside of mediocre 1-2 range on enemy phase and armor effectiveness it may or may not need with gauntlets, and since they don't get a free 20 base +4 speed(16+2 instead, yeah welcome to the world of non wyvern lords)and cannot get Darting blow no matter what, their AS can easily be lacking with anything above an iron axe; gauntlets will most always avoid a counter either way, and their inherent brave effect applying crit chance twice is a great fit for them, as a safety net for misses, to save up durability, and to kill tougher targets such as the above two examples. R-right, but hm, in Felix's case both WL and WM can be argued to be his best classes, so it's still relevant maybe...?

Well that makes more sense. But early on, since 300(flowers) vs 500(5 stars seed) exp is often the difference between one more activity point(leading to more opportunities for choir and eating, even + speed cooking), I assumed one'd want that more. Also fishing is extremely limited early on, as I'm sure you know, there's no way to grind with it. Even later really. You can get a lot at once with multifish, but that's maybe relevant twice in a playthrough, and can be expected to give you ~2000 exp? That's actually not that big a deal when first week questions quickly start giving 1000+. In my experience you mostly want fishing for +spd cooking, but I guess that doesn't matter much when it comes to LTC.

No flier class has swordfaire, unfortunately. But Levin Sword is a great weapon too, and yeah, probably a better one all things considered since it's easier to double with. Though; the accuracy is 70 vs 60, and Axes get +20 from their lv 5 prowess as opposed to +10 for Swords, meaning for all intents and purposes they have the exact same accuracy. It's mostly the weight.

I didn't mean that LTC was EP focused, I meant that turns mattered more with that mindset. And yes, fliers win LTC(and everything else), that is undeniable. Though a lot of maps are rout too, but that's really not what I want to discuss at all. You're also not killing nothing on EP with a PP focused playstyle, and I need to stress out that my main point here is how negligible the difference is. Which leads us to... Well, that's the big thing isn't it. I don't think discussing strictly what is best is ultimately that interesting, especially when the barrier between optimal and sub-optimal is clear, but thin. Which is not to say that the extreme opposite is any better; I'll be the first to admit that certain classes in this game are redundant, or even straight up bad, and not all characters are equal. My problem is that exclusively discussing what's the greatest can easily leave what's just "great" in the dust, in terms of being discussed, explored, understood, for no good reason. And why this is relevant here -and this is where you stop me if I'm wrong- is because I see shades of that in your posts. Not only that, of course. I think we can do better than to recite "use wyverns" until the next FE happens, yet I can shake the feeling that we're well on our way to doing exactly that.

I mean, she's never going to be the best wyvern around, at least I don't think. But you seemed to think it was a terrible idea(I did it on a whim myself), and it kind of isn't. Keep in mind it's really easy to stack Atk in this game. And yeah upgraded Levin Sword and Bolt Axe have 1-3 range. It's also pretty nice because the comps to repair them(arcane crystals) get buyable lategame, and they're fairly inexpensive considering how few you need.

Additionally, magic classes cannot use gauntlets either. Not that they'd want them.

Well, Mekkkah would be proud. Which is not a criticism by the way, and his pitfalls videos have a very good reason to exist; I'm not blaming the process here. This also was a very well written post. I can't shake the feeling though, that we're essentially pretending this is PoR since it generally works, so why fix ways of play that aren't broken? The fact of the matter is, stride despite unarguably being a huge boosts to canto units, makes quite a few changes for footlocks: - They do not need several turns to reach the enemies anymore - Those with range can usually pass the enemies and hit from there while being relatively safe since with a good team everything around them will die; this allows them better positioning - Stride has two charges and the user will inevitably fall behind, meaning it can be activated on units that are lagging to allow them to immediately catch up. Yes, that's only once. We also both know that's enough in a majority of cases because maps aren't that incredibly massive And you said it yourself, one can only canto so far ahead. You have to show some restraint, meaning there is a limit on how much move a unit really needs. That's really, really important. There's also a point to be made that clears with primarily a PP phase mindset(or at least a general balance of both phases) are remarkably faster in this game than most previous entries, since thanks to stride, many more of your units can fight immediately and constantly. Killing 8 to 10 enemies on every PP is a really big deal. Demonic beasts are also best dealt with on PP. Units that don't die to a juggernaut on EP that cantoed ahead will instead be taken down on the next phase invariably, all of them without slowing down your clear by more than 1 or 2 turns overall. Which, unless we're going for LTC, is nothing. It's peanuts, it doesn't matter, it's a valid efficient playstyle and shouldn't be discouraged in any way.

I've done it, actually. It works better than you'd think. First because Wyvern lord fixes her speed, second because a flier with 1-3 range literally cannot be bad. Also because anyone can kill with death blow and a brave. She has a talent in axe, and is neutral in flying. It works.

Can confirm, currently on chapter 8 BE route and I've had Hilda at B rank support(as in I've triggered the conversation) for a while by now. She did not offer to join up until now, I doubt she will.

That third one(in contrast with the first one) makes me wonder, did they ever address the fact that heroes are being grabbed from their world and responsibilities and not a one of them seems to have a problem with it? I have a suspension of disbelief problem here:x I agree with the general sentiment though, those are nice.

I was going to vote Gremory, but you made a compelling case and I agree. Warlock for Dorothea. It doesn't help that her actual combat magic isn't stellar and she needs extra uses bad enough that Dark Knight would probably not work that well for her. Ferdinand I like as a Bow knight due to the extra accuracy. But it's Wyvern Lord. Felix I like as a Warmaster/Grappler. But it's Wyvern Lord.

I really need to stress out, there's no argument to be had here. Magic accuracy is (Dex+Lck)/2. Crit is also (Dex+Lck)/2. Lysithea's growth total between Dex and Lck is 75. Lorenz' is 70. Both of their base totals are the same at 11. They pretty much have as close to the exact same accuracy and crit as possible. If anything, Lysithea is the less accurate one, because her all purpose magic has 80 hit, while Lorenz' has 90; but she also gets access to Magic battalions that boost accuracy earlier than he does.

I can't help but wonder if that accessory doesn't have some other use, but to my knowledge, it doesn't. That being said, there are some fairly hidden things in this game, like that battalion you get for bringing Manuela(or Dorothea?) in front of(light post timeskip spoilers) So maybe, just maybe.

I am biased here, but I think it should. That's value he has others don't, and makes his recruitment a higher priority than most others, if you want the Thyrsus that is. By being recruited earlier, he makes other get recruited later and gets more availability and room to grow. Though his case is particular and doesn't necessarily weakens your point about relics, just, incentives to recruit should naturally factor in when it comes to a "recruited" list.

Even a simple knightkneeler in conjunction with a relic tends to be enough to take down the Death Knight. With the lance of ruin it has (22 +5)*2 = 54 attack before character stats, skills, battalions, etc. Effectiveness is really strong in this game in general. Edit: Correction, effective arts don't double their own might. Or at least not this one. So it's (22*2) +5, or 49.

Okay, I just entered and cleared it from the exploration of the 28th, and I again didn't get the accessory or the affinity. Note that I killed the Death knight on every clear I did of this chapter(beginning of the month or not), so that's not a factor.

Can now confirm. If you do the chapter at the start of the month, you get the White Dragon scarf(+2 Charm), and affinity for both Flayn and Seteth right after the final choice where you accept Flayn in your class. If you do the chapter at the end of the month, you get neither of those things.