Silly

Darting Blow should be in tier 1. I can't even find it in the list, and it's a big omission. Alert Stance should move down to tier 2. It's a fairly good ability but it both comes later and isn't as game changing as the other abilities in tier 1. All the beginner class abilities should be in the same tier. Tier 2 is probably fine because of how empty that tier currently is, though I wouldn't be opposed to them all being in tier 3 either. HP +5 should also be here due to how early it comes and how impactful it is in the first third of the game. These are all very solid abilities that you shouldn't go out of your way significantly to learn, but if you learn them they end up being very helpful. Also Speed +2 is much better than people think. Imagine that it is two-thirds of Weight -3, except you don't need to go out of your way to get C armor. Authority should move down to tier 3 or 4. If this skill added hit to your gambits, it would be much, much better, since it would increase the reliability of your gambits substantially. Adding damage is much, much worse, and I often find myself replacing this ability for more important things. Rally Strength should move up to tier 3. It's fairly important for reaching ORKOs in the early game, and is accessible by both Raphael and Annette early on. Even later, +4 strength is not negligible. Rally Magic should also move up to tier 3. It's easy to learn and nice filler if you need some more damage on your mage or need to extend your range on warp (or fortify/rescue). Battalion Vantage should be added to the same tier as Battalion Wrath (currently tier 3). They're both fairly decent abilities that are replacable by better abilities. Vantage is actually probably better than Wrath. Alert Stance+ should probably move to tier 3 or 4. It's actually a pretty big upgrade over Alert Stance, since 3H uses 2RN for its hit rate. Making the enemy lose 15 displayed hit actually reduces their hit rate even more substantially. It comes fairly late in the game, but given that the best class in the game requires A flying anyways, getting to A+ is fairly low opportunity cost, and should be doable by all of your fliers. Movement +1 should be placed where Alert Stance+ is. Again, it's a powerful ability that comes late but is fairly low opportunity cost for anyone that is planning on going into a riding class anyways. Rally Defense can move to tier 5. It's pretty useless most of the time, especially since the earliest it comes is chapter 12. Pass and White Magic Avoid can move down to tier 5 as well. Pass is honestly not that useful in this game on a frail unit. White Magic Avoid would be a lot better if offensive white magic didn't suck terribly.

21/22 AS on the Wolves and Birds. They're not bad if they don't double you. Also, the reinforcements on that map are not ambush spawns, so they're considerably easier to deal with.

I like focusing on roughly 4 frontline units in the very early stages in the game. Around chapter 6 you should consider expanding your roster to around 6 frontliners, and slowly add more as you feel comfortable. You should probably end with around 8ish frontline units, give or take. If you're planning on using one of them, recruit Catherine, Cyril, and Shamir as early as possible. Catherine is recruitable as early as chapter 4, though a chapter 5 recruit is likely more realistic. Cyril is recruitable starting chapter 5. Shamir is recruitable starting chapter 6. For students, you usually want to hold off on recruiting them as long as possible, since they get bigger stat bonuses the longer you wait. Chapter 6 is when you can consider expanding your main squad with some cross recruited students, as this is the first chapter where they will experience significant stat bonuses. So if you need a few more units to fill out your roster (say you're not using Catherine, for example), consider recruiting them in chapter 6. If you don't need to though, hold off on cross recruits as long as possible (I would recommend recruiting somewhere around chapter 10 or 11). As for your team now, Byleth, Dimitri, Felix, Sylvain is currently your core. You already have Hilda so I would probably add her and one more unit to your team (it can be Catherine, or you can go find a different unit). For the remaining two or so slots on your team, you can either cross recruit additional students around chapter 10 or 11ish, such as Leonie if you want to use her (note that her C support locks after chapter 9, so if you're planning on recruiting via B support rather than training your lance rank, you need to start building support earlier). Or you can stick with one or both of Seteth/Gilbert, who are pretty good prepromotes. (Gilbert's start is kind of mediocre because his base speed is horrendous, but he can go Wyvern Rider to fix it.) You also probably want some support units. A dancer, at least one or two healers/mages, and anybody else who can contribute decently without getting too much exp. The thing is though, there aren't enough resources to go around that you can make everybody overpowered. Experience, stat boosters, and in this game tutoring sessions are all limited. And in Three Houses, just like in most Fire Emblem games, your units tend to snowball statistically: to the point where it is much more efficient to have one overpowered unit with double the resources and one unit with little resources, rather than two mediocre units with average resources. Because this is the case, units that can still contribute while taking up minimal resources become valuable. They're good because you can still have a functional unit while freeing up extra resources for the units that need it. Sure, it's best to have ten overpowered units, one of which is a dancer. But that is somewhat unrealistic unless you allow for significant grinding. Instead, we're generally choosing between having ten average units who have each received some attention, or having seven or eight stronger units who have received the majority of your focus along with a couple of supporting units such as your dancer, or your healers. They're not super bad. I believe on Maddening the Ch 9 beasts have about 50ish HP (70ish for the final bar), 14 AS, and attack in the high 30s. At this point your faster units can double them, and while they're bulky and hit somewhat hard, they're not overwhelming statistically compared to early game enemies. (Did you know that chapter 2 thieves also have 14 AS?) EDIT: Just checked HM stats and it looks like the biggest difference is approximately +5 or so AS, +7ish Attack, and a bit more defensive bulk.

If someone seems like they're falling behind in the early game I would definitely consider benching them. I feel like the first third of the game becomes considerably easier if you focus your exp onto a smaller group of people instead of spreading it among your whole team. In my BL run I gave exp to Byleth, Dimitri, Felix, and Dedue in the early game. Dedue specifically I feel works pretty well as a Wyvern, since the promotion to Wyvern Rider will drag his speed up to 17 regardless of how awful it was before then. Though if you haven't been training flying since basically the start of the game it might be too late for you, due to his flying weakness. Afterwards, I strongly recommend that you supplement your team with cross recruits as necessary. Some of them join with really competitive stats, and you don't have to waste any exp training them before you recruit them. At the point in the game where you are now, you should definitely add both Catherine and Shamir to your team. They both have fairly good bases, and will be far better than whoever your two worst deployed units currently are. Later on you can also add extra students to your team as well. I would recommend Ferdinand, Petra, Hilda, and Leonie as the best physical units to recruit onto the BL. Additional deployment slots that aren't dedicated to your physical combat units can be filled with utility characters, such as healers, dancers, someone with an important support gambit, etc. These units don't need as much exp to function, so they don't really compete with your physical units for kills, but are important enough that you should usually deploy them. He joins with B+ lances and learns Swift Strikes at A. You probably won't have it for Ch 13, but you can realistically have his combat art around Ch 14 or 15.

If you're doing this I honestly prefer Assassin over Swordmaster by a lot. Swordmaster growths only average out to one extra point of strength compared to Assassin over the course of ten levels, which is technically a small advantage, but doesn't matter too much in the long term. (There are other stat differences but they matter even less than the one strength does.) Ultimately, after you reclass out of Swordmaster/Assassin to your master class, there isn't too much of a difference. While you're spending your ten levels as a Swordmaster or an Assassin, however, you have the following notable differences, which I think makes Assassin more preferable. Swordmaster has +2 Str, -1 Spd over Assassin statistically, so you're slightly stronger but slower. Assassin has +1 movement and completely ignores terrain penalties, so it is much more mobile on many maps. Assassin also has a bow proficiency, which is important. Sword proficiency is not something that most characters want to actively be building, since it doesn't really translate well to any of the best endgame classes. However, Bow proficiency is actually useful, since Bows are relatively important on Maddening and high Bow proficiency translates well to Bow Knight. Compared to Assassin, Swordmaster is just a lot more awkward of a class to fit into most character's class progressions because its requirements are so far out of the way.

It's 2RN, like most other modern games.

Battle of Eagle and Lion is a pretty interesting map in my opinion. The one major thing that I found annoying is that units that aren't in your "class" are not deployable. This means no mission assistance and you can't use Catherine or Shamir, who are likely some of your better combat units in this game mode. So you're likely rolling into the map with a much worse team than you had on the previous map. Also, the cool thing is, currently the very rough LTC strategy for clearing the map on Maddening involves suiciding less useful units to aggro both enemy sides into attacking each other. The important thing though is that you need to aggro specific clusters of enemies such that both sides are relatively equal, rather than having one army overwhelm the other one.

The first few chapters are definitely when your units are the weakest relative to the enemies. After about chapter 3 or so, enemies don't actually seem to grow too significantly in power. A big reason for this is that their AS remains relatively stagnant for a long time, since they start picking up steel weapons, which means that you don't get doubled for massive damage nearly as often and can actually start to double some enemy types and therefore ORKO them. Also bows are definitely pretty valuable in this mode. Your units take significant damage when getting hit by enemies, so if you're getting into a reasonable amount of combat you won't have enough healers to ensure everyone is topped off all the time. Chipping with a bow/curved shot allows you to weaken an enemy without taking a counterattack, which takes some of the burden off of your healers. Most of your weapon exp comes from weekly study anyways, so using a bow occasionally doesn't really affect that much.

Charm is a nice stat to have but it's not super important like speed or strength is. If you don't have high charm you can easily work around that. With that being said, stacking Charm on Byleth is pretty easy even without spending any activity points, because you get a free tea party every birthday. So by the end of the game Byleth should have more than enough Charm.

To be honest, explore is a much more efficient use of time compared to literally everything else you can do. I battle to get paralogues and missions done, but otherwise every other time is explore. Exploring gives you more weapon exp, because you can motivate your students and get faculty tutoring. It gives you additional stats via gardening. It gives you gold through the arena. It builds support with other units so that you can recruit them more easily. And most importantly, it gives you more professor level, which snowballs in a big way. More professor level means more activity points (which makes explore even better to select), more battle points (so later on when you have to battle for a paralogue/whatever you're making better use of your time), access to adjutants (which means more total exp for your team), and access to better items in the shop. Most of the time with explore, your priorities are: Garden, because it costs 0 activity points and gives big benefits. You might as well do it. Ensure everyone that you are actively training is fully motivated. This can be via either meals or gifts, if you don't want to burn activity points. In the early game, get faculty tutoring in particularly important weapon ranks (for example, if you are going to reclass into pegasus knight soon and do not have the appropriate weapon ranks, you should focus on faculty that can teach you lance + flying). Later in the game when you already have good weapon ranks there is not too much point in doing this. Fight in the arena for professor exp and money. Build support with students. This is lower priority because you can always spam them with gifts, which takes no activity points.

I'm not going to go through every ability and see whether it gets better/worse on the new mode, but I will point out specifically that AS feels a lot more important on most characters, so access to Darting Blow/Speed +2 early on becomes nicer. By far the biggest "buff" to enemies on Maddening is a massive AS increase, which indirectly translates to a huge bulk/offensive increase as well. If you no longer double the enemy, they become much bulkier. If you get doubled by the enemy, then your own survivability goes way down. The AS benchmarks required to double generic enemies are significantly higher, and many units that were comfortably doubling on Hard are very borderline at doubling now. The extra speed really helps in the mid-game, since it turns many 2RKOs into ORKOs. For example, in the Shamir + Alois paralogue, enemy Wyvern Riders have 22 AS and are way too bulky to be one-shot (outside of a really high strength unit with a Silver Bow). At the point in the game that you probably are at, these Wyverns are impossible to double without Darting Blow, but a Darting Blow unit can double them and possibly get an ORKO. For reference, level 15 Pegasus Hilda has roughly 19 AS, which puts her only 1 speed away from doubling Wyverns with Darting Blow. With a single stat booster, a cooked speed meal, one or two more levels worth of exp, or just above average level ups previously, she is at the doubling benchmark. Without Darting Blow, she is incredibly far from doubling.

Note that late game enemies will likely have around 30 crit avoid (~20 luck + weapon prowess rank 5), while you will likely have less base crit than that (level 40 Felix averages approximately 22 crit, for example). Also, I'm not sure how reliable S rank is. You have slightly reduced weapon exp on Maddening, and I found that it's much more valuable to invest in other skills rather than spend the insane amount of exp it takes to get to S and S+ ranks. (Ignoring grinding here.) You'll likely have 20 crit from your class, 35 crit from a Killer+, and approximately -10 crit from the enemy's crit avoid versus your base crit, so I would expect 45%. Throw in a battalion if you can afford to use a +crit battalion instead of a different stat stick.

Are you sure the interaction between vantage and quick riposte isnt: Player attacks, enemy attacks, player attacks? I don't personally know what it actually is, but that seems a lot more logical than: Player attacks, player attacks, enemy attacks.

Do you know how much HP Edelgard has on her final bar?

For utility, Stride is purchasable early, usable by everyone, and really good. BL actually gets a second stride battalion at D rank in the shop (post ch 7), and you can get yet another one from the Sylvain Paralogue (B rank). Retribution is also very helpful, but its only easily accessible for BL (D rank, shows up in shop post ch 7). BE route has a retribution battalion but its A rank, and all routes gain access to another one from the Manuela + Hanneman paralogue, but again it's an A rank. Dance of the Goddess is good, but comes pretty late. BL gets one in the shop at A rank, and you can get one on most routes in Enbarr by having Manuela or Dorothea visit the Opera (note that BE route does not have an Enbarr chapter). --------------------------------------------------------- For combat battalions, I usually just pick the highest stat sticks. This is attack/defense/avoid depending on what kind of benchmarks I'm looking to hit. Note that flying battalions here are particularly valuable. They usually give desirable stats, and you need them for your flying units. I particularly like the battalion from Ingrid's paralogue (you need Ingrid recruited to get it). It's a flying battalion that is obtainable fairly early on and gives a big boost in a bunch of important stats (7 Str, 5 Hit, 10 Avoid, 5 Def, 6 Res, 8 Cha). Level requirements can be reduced by support. It's fairly easy to recruit Catherine by Ch 4/5 and Shamir by Ch 6. Just give them a few gifts to get to C or C+ rank. Early recruiting Catherine and Shamir is also very recommended. The way that the game treats cross recruit bases, you don't get much benefit from waiting. For an extreme example, Shamir has 14 base speed when you recruit her in Ch 6 as a level 11 Sniper. Her actual base speed at level 11 is a lot lower than this, but when you recruit her, the game bumps up her speed to 14 (the Sniper base), so she effectively gains a ton of speed. If you wait and let the game autolevel her, the first point of speed she gains isn't until chapter 12, at which point she will join as a level 23 Sniper with 15 base speed.

The super fast enemies with high attack you probably need one of the following tactics: War Master with class mastery grinded out Some sort of very high defense stacking (Dedue can almost certainly get to the point where he's completely fine taking hits from that, for example) A lot of avoid (enemy hit isn't insanely high and you can easily stack a ton of avoid on the right units) A defensive gambit that lets you survive Just killing the enemy first on player phase Conveniently, Bow Knight and fliers are the best at doing point 5. Fliers are also good at point 3, so they actually serve double duty here. Great Knight is probably the best class to do point 2 if you're interested in that though.

I've factored in that bonus already. 6 (base) + 9 * 0.35 (first nine levels) = 9.15 Promoting to Armored Knight sets her base defense to 12. 12 (level 10 base) + 10 * .45 (10 levels as armored knight) = 16.5 Promoting to Fortress Knight sets her base defense to 17. 17 (level 20 base) + 10 * .5 (ten levels as fortress knight) + 15 * .4 (fifteen levels as great knight) + 8 (great knight class bonus) = 36 defense ----------------------------------------------------------------- Also Great Knight struggles to double anything without a looooooot of speed investment. Mid-slow enemies you will likely need around 30 AS to double, and mid-fast enemies you will likely need 40 AS to double. Slow enemies you can probably always double because enemy armors are sloooooow, and the blazing fast enemies you will never double.

High defense is good, but in many situations the speed you sacrifice is not worth it. Against strong enemies, the extra defense is far outweighed by the fact that you're getting attacked twice for significant damage. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For example, let's be generous and assume Edelgard finishes the game at level 45, going Noble -> Fighter -> Armored Knight -> Fortress Knight -> Great Knight for maximum defense growth. She ends with the following average stats: 61 HP, 36 Def, 18 Res, 18 Spd (rounded to the nearest whole number). Let's throw in 6 extra defense and res from a battalion (which is roughly what Supreme Armored Co provides.) First off, let me say that pretty much every endgame enemy will double you (outside of armored knights). Even if you trade some defense for speed by going into something like Brigand instead of Armored Knight, you're still getting doubled by most enemies. Next, let's establish that most endgame enemies hover around the 50-60 attack mark, with many in the mid-50s. This is mostly true from what I've seen. This means that physically, Edelgard is taking 16-36 damage per combat. This puts her in the 3RKO range, with a 2RKO or 4RKO being possible if the enemies are particularly strong or weak. Magically, mages will likely ORKO her, or come close if they are weak, given that they double her and target her much lower Res. Now lets assume you go Noble -> Fighter -> Brigand -> Wyvern Rider -> Wyvern Lord. Now at level 45 you average 59 HP, 26 Def, 18 Res, 31 Spd. Again, let's throw in roughly 6 defense and res from a battalion (for example, Black Eagle Pegasus Co). Enemy AS at this point kind of varies wildly between routes, and nobody has posted pictures of endgame BE yet, but based on other routes 31 AS means you either don't get doubled by mid-speed enemies at all, or are a couple of stat boosters away from not getting doubled. This means that you take 18-28 physical damage per round of combat from all but the fastest enemy types, which is actually quite comparable to what the Great Knight takes. On the magic side, mages don't actually come close to ORKOing you, since they're on the slow side and don't double you. The one thing to note though is that stat boosters do change the math defensively. The Great Knight benefits a lot more from stacking defense from other sources, such as shields, stat boosters, etc. For example, if you scrape up an extra 5 defense, all of a sudden enemies are dealing 6-26 damage to you, and you're quite tanky. If you find an extra 10 defense, now enemies are mostly scratching you physically (you still get wrecked by mages though). However, agaisnt boss enemies, the math works in the opposite way. A 70+ attack boss, for example, looks really scary when they double you, and a lot less scary when they don't. For example, think of the Death Knight. When you fight him early on, he ORKOs even your tankiest units if he manages to double, but high speed units can actually live a round of combat against him. The higher the enemy's attack is relative to your defenses the worse getting doubled is. This especially true for Rhea, who always targets the weaker of your two defensive stats (which means she almost certainly ORKOs you because every physical class has shitty res). On the other end of the spectrum, offensively it's clear that the Wyvern is better. It obviously has more mobility, and more damage output due to its higher strength and ability to actually double slower enemies. The Great Knight is going to struggle to get ORKOs, whereas the Wyvern is actually able to meet or come close to the benchmarks necessary to do so. Here, it's clear that the Wyvern has a much bigger benefit from stat boosters and other sources of +damage and +speed, as it better allows it to meet these benchmarks.

Str and Spd are by far the best rallies. Mag is also situationally useful, but is generally less so because your physical units tend to see more combat. The other rallies aren't usually worth giving up a player phase action, but can maybe help in rare circumstances. The exp it takes to reach each new skill level scales pretty exponentially, so S rank is pretty out of the question, especially on Maddening since weekly study weapon exp is reduced. You're either not going to hit it, or will hit it way too late for it to make a big difference. I would primarily focus on skills that are at roughly C rank and below, as well as skills that are on a character's natural progression path.

I think that BK and Wyvern/Falco get even better on Maddening, to be honest. Bows are better in this mode than on Hard, since avoiding counters is so valuable. And Canto is more important because you want to be able to attack enemies, but also really want to be able to reposition yourself afterwards, since you can't usually take many hits on EP without dying. Not having canto restricts who you can attack, since some targets are unsafe to engage without being able to retreat afterwards. War Master is probably the best footlocked class. If you're find with grinding a little for Quick Riposte, it's a useful skill. And the damage output lets you snag some KOs that you might not otherwise be able to get cleanly. In terms of magic classes, it's pretty much the same as on Hard. Bishop/Gremory for utility. Dark Knight for damage.

Grounder sucks. Just use a bow. Grounder Iron Sword has 16 might vs fliers. A regular attack from an Iron Bow has 18 might. Steel is 22 vs 27 might. Silver is 30 vs 36 might. And the bow can double (if you're fast enough) or combine with a bow combat art to do even more damage. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Most effective combat arts aren't actually that great. Grounder is worse than just attacking with a bow most of the time. Helm Splitter is bad because it actually doesn't ORKO armors a lot of the time (due to not doubling). It also happens to be given to the one weapon type that already has a plethora of options for dealing with armors. If you really need to kill an armor just use a hammer (or one of the hammer equivalents). Armors are super slow, even on Maddening, so doubling them with a Hammer will do more damage than Helm Splitter. Monster effective combat arts can shieldbreak, but are worse at doing this than just using a gambit, and at dealing raw damage they are usually worse than attacking regularly (assuming you can double). They can be situationally useful but they aren't always good and monsters are rare enough that I don't think they're a high priority. Knightkneeler is actually pretty decent though, specifically for killing the Dark Knight. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In terms of combat arts that gain a lot from the difficulty increase: Tempest Lance: This is the best combat art by a country mile for the early game. It's still situationally useful later on. +8 damage is a lot and helps you snag kills you might otherwise miss. Combat arts that double: Stuff like Swift Strikes and Point Blank Volley. Being able to double attack something in a pinch is very helpful. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The good skills on Hard are still good on Maddening, with a few things that get better. Reliable chip damage is more important, which makes Reason D and Bow ranks up to C even better, but they were already very good in the first place. Healing is also more important, which makes Faith C (Physic) and even Faith D (Heal) important to hit on units that can cast spells. If you have a rally bot, getting the proper authority rank to gain access to the important rallies is your number one priority on them, since it allows you to meet certain benchmarks you would otherwise miss out on. For example, Annette really wants to hit C+ Authority ASAP, because Rally Speed is so important for some of the earlier chapters.

Training+ is important for maximizing your AS. If they don't take any AS penalties, your faster units can actually start to double most mid-speed enemies. I also find Iron+ to be useful for extra might, while only minimally impacting AS. In situations where I can afford to take less AS penalties, Iron is sometimes useful. Steel weapons are situationally useful, but I've used them a lot less. They weigh soooooo much and their hit isn't as good, so they're really only good for attacking with a combat art on player phase, and then you usually have to trade the weapon away for EP or eliminate most of the enemies in the area so your steel weapon user doesn't take too many attacks. As far as weapon types go, axes are kind of bad in the very early game because you eat so much AS loss from using them, and their hit rates are kind of shaky. After you gain access to the forge, however, this problem is mostly fixed, and axes have high might and lead into some really good classes. Lances are the best early game weapon for raw damage because Tempest Lance is really good, but there isn't a huge reason to invest in lances past C rank (outside of a few units who get good combat arts) because most important classes do not require more than that. Also, lances are statistically very similar to bows, but bows have 1-2 range, so given the option to use either I would rather just stick with bows (and maybe keep a lance as backup in case I really need to hit something with Tempest Lance). Swords are good early game weapons since they are the lightest and most accurate, and those two qualities are in high demand in the first few maps, but I find that they fall off heavily in terms of desirability past the early game because none of the really good classes want sword rank. Bows are obviously very good, and even if you don't train bow rank at all, it's good to have one as a backup. They are probably the one weapon type that basically everyone should have access to. I never really liked fists, but I can see that they could be situationally really useful to meet benchmarks. A lot of the times I'm slightly pinched for item slots so it's usually the situational stuff that gets cut. Note that in my current maddening run I'm basically only using "excellent" units. My party currently has the AS necessary to double most enemies. But if your units are slower/worse I could see fists being better. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyways, overall past the early game most weapon types are actually pretty close in terms of how well they function (with bows being the big stand out exception). Which weapon ranks you actually train is more of a question of which of the strong classes you want to go for rather than which weapons are best. For example, swords aren't actually bad statistically, but I don't really like them because they don't lead into any particularly desirable classes.

A lot of the time you need two rounds of combat to take down enemies. If you attack with a melee weapon then you eat a counter, which can be less than ideal when there are so many enemies attacking you and you only have so many healers available per turn. Chipping at 2 range before finishing off the enemy lets you preserve HP, which is definitely relevant. Hand Axes and Javelins suck, so bows are the way to go if you need to chip at 2 range.

Currently playing through BL Maddening on NG. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the game, but so far I'm getting a pretty decent sense of what its like. So far every unit that I expected to be good has been good for me. I'm rolling with 4 primary combat units from my starting house: F!Byleth, Dimitri, Felix, Dedue. Byleth is good, as expected, given her good bases, boosted exp growth, and fairly easy access to Pegasus Knight. Dimitri and Felix have excellent offensive growths, and can actually get to the point where they can ORKO certain enemies. The fact that these two are barely getting ORKOs doesn't bode well for units with worse growths, however. Dedue is really slow, and therefore doesn't really double or ORKO anything, but he hits relatively hard and his high defense has actually been quite useful in many situations. He doesn't like taking on mages or enemies that have a ton of attack though (for example, Ch 7 Edelgard), since he generally gets doubled by these for a looooooot of damage. He's closing in on level 20, and I'm hoping that the promotion to Wyvern Rider will patch up his speed issues (I'm not expecting him to double but he hopefully won't be molasses) while still retaining his better qualities. Mercedes is pretty good since she's a healer, and you kind of need healing in this difficulty. Annette is only an okay combat unit (good chip but poor move and dies to literally everything), but she's been really useful utility-wise. I recommend training Authority to C+ right away, as Rally Speed is really, really important for meeting certain benchmarks. I benched Ashe, Sylvain, and Ingrid. Ingrid in particular really suffers from her low strength growth in this mode. I imagine that she would be a lot better as a cross-recruit, since she can benefit from the broken enemy Pegasus growths when she isn't on your team. But on the BL route she really has issues meeting offensive benchmarks. I added Catherine and Shamir to my team in Ch 5 and Ch 6. They've both been quite good for me, joining with competitive bases without needing much investment. Shamir's bases are notably a bit rough (reclass to Pegasus Knight ASAP for slightly more speed and flying utility), and she is statistically currently my worst unit, but they're still good and I needed to invest very little into her. Catherine is my strongest unit statistically (besides Byleth, who has been eating stat boosters), but her main drawback is that her weapon ranks are really bad in everything important (E rank Lance, Bows, Flying). Current plans for future team composition is: Wyvern Byleth + Dedue Bow Knight Dimitri + Felix Falcon Knight Catherine + Shamir Will be filling the remaining combat slots as needed with Seteth, Gilbert, and cross recruits. Support units will likely be a minimum of one healer, a Dancer, Annette as a rally bot, and other utility units as necessary.

I can agree with this point. A benefit you get for actively using/investing in a unit can be counted toward's their usefulness, but a benefit you get just by having access to your unit (but not necessarily using them) doesn't feel right to include.