A Whaler on the Moon

Best: Haar FE10 Worst: Zeiss

Although the lact of 1-range (and in extension, enemy phase) doesn't make bow users auto-suck, it certainly is a disadvantage. If the bow users have amazing player phase they can still be awesome, like FE10 Shinon. In games like FE6 in which the difficulty isn't piss-easy bow users can be useful if they are decent, but in games like FE8 where you can 1RKO basically everything except maybe a few armours and swordmasters bow users are simply horrible for the fact that 95% of the action there is enemy phase.

I was also a bit curious about Sain's rating, so I quickly sped through LHM to look at enemy stats in the chapter I got Sain to lvl 8 in. I ended up at the beginning of 5. I favoured Sain quite a lot - Lyn was only at lvl 5 and Florina only at lvl 3, but in the end, I got Sain to a point in which he could double, admittedly borderline. In the chapter I came across only 1 brigand (not including the boss) that hit 6 spd. Since Kent reaches 7 str at say lvl 3, he'll have around 1-1.5 chapters where Sain is beating him in offense (2HKO vs 3HKO) whilst Kent gets around 2 chapters where he beats Sain in offense. This means that up to chapter 6, Kent is beating Sain by basically no margin. However, afterwards Sain begins to be able to 1RKO (or simply beat in offense) things that Kent cant, like Knights and some Bosses. Suddenly, the two cavaliers are now equal, maybe with Sain being a little better. With this in mind, how the hell is Kent half a point in front of Sain? It should be the opposite, maybe equal if you really like Kent that much.

I tried the link you gave for the patch, but it doesn't seem to work. I tried both hard and soft patching, but all the enemies have normal HM stats. Does the patch work for anyone else?

What the hell is Moulder doing so low? IMO, at least an 8.5 Moulder has incredible early game utility and is a hell of a lot more durable than Natasha, your other earlygame healer (IIRC). His supports are great, and he is a competent fighter later on in the game, when he isnt healing people. Lute and Saleh both gain staves/join rather late-ish in the game, when everyone is starting to rape the enemies, and Lute will definately be killing, not healing (especially as a mage knight). Lute also only gets an E staves on promotion (IIRC as well, I havn't played FE8 in a while), which means she has to run around instead of sitting at the back using physic, like Moulder can. Saleh on the other hand is generally outclassed by most of the people you've been training and will probably be killing more than healing. He's the only real competition, but he should really be killing on the frontlines more often than healing. And theres no real incentive to use Artur over Lute unless you want a bishop (which Moulder can pull over prefectly anyway). All of this is not even really showing earlygame utility, in which your units (except Seth) aren't really raping as hard as they are when Saleh joins/Lute or Artur promote.

I love Lilina - always gets speed blessed for me~ She basically rapes the whole game after she promotes (for me, anyway) But Lugh is the better mage, I guess

Really, Marcus is kind of a failsafe if you seriously get screwed over in the early chapters - you really don't need him in a first playthrough. In my opinion, take your time. It's your first FE game, and you really get screwed if you rush in with pallies and stuff. Use Oswin and his invincibility and slowly work your way throught the game. Some awesome units to consider are Hector, Raven and Sain/Kent. All the mages are good, but don't waste your time babying Nino unless you find that sort of thing fun.

I can never really finish something more than twice (except RD for some reason) 1,2,3,5: Never played, plan on playing 2/3/5 someday 4: Got to 2nd gen, never had time to finish 6,7,9: Finished twice 8: Finished once 10: Finished around 5 times