Silly

I think axe weight isn't a huge deal. (Except in the first few chapters, where it is kind of a big deal.) Past the early game you get access to Training Axe+, which has 1 less weight than Iron Sword+ with the same might (though 20 less hit). Iron Sword is not a particularly heavy weapon, so axe users get something reasonably light for most of the game. Training Axe+ is honestly a good enough weapon to be your bread and butter for all of pre-timeskip, and maybe even a bit into the time skip. Towards the end of the game, your axe users are probably at 35+ strength. Combined with Weight -3, you can wield Silver Axes without weight penalty at this point. Axes are heavier than the other options, but the bread and butter ones are manageable weight, in my opinion. Some of them are kind of heavy for what you get, but there are strangely heavy weapons in most weapon types that are probably not worth the AS loss (for example, blessed lance weighs 14???)

Gauntlets would be better if player phase combat was harder. But their niche of being "good" player phase weapons isn't a very exciting one, given that past the first few chapters other weapons have good enough player phase combat to kill enemies reliably as well, while also having better enemy phase combat. If the game was harder then it's possible that they'd be better, but it's questionable given the other point that was brought up, which is that none of the "best" classes are particularly interested in using gauntlets (given that most of the best classes are mounted).

To be honest, most of the unit imbalances are largely due to classes being very imbalanced. Any unit balance i would ideally like to see tied to a class overhaul as well. Working on class balance would likely improve the viability of many "less good" units. For example, a big downside of Alois is that he joins in a subpar class and it is probably too late to get him to a better one. If warrior were better and wyvern worse, that would already go a long way to making him comparatively more viable.

Yeah. The LTC strategy actually technically takes 2 turns. But the game counts it as 1, because the first turn of the "Kill the Black Beast" half of the chapter is counted as the same turn as the last turn of the "kill Miklan" half in the logs, so if you clear both stages in 1 turn then the log shows a 1 turn clear for the whole map.

Bows/Axes as the best weapon imo. Bows are the best all-around weapon type, and in a vacuum I would say they were the best. But Axes have the advantage of the best class in the game being good at them, plus high might which allows you to sometimes snag ORKOs on bulkier units. It helps that a fair number of axes are effective versus armor knights, which are the only enemy type that you actually need effective damage to ORKO sometimes. I actually think Swords are pretty decent statistically as a weapon type, but they really suffer from the fact that all of the classes with Swordfaire are kind of underwhelming. (Compare Assassin, the best sword class, to Falcon Knight, for example). Basically, the weapon itself is fine but the users aren't as good as the users of other weapons.

A lot of this can be patched up via linked attacks (which I believe grant up to 40% hit, with 3 A supports in range + an adjutant). Getting the full 40% might be a bit unrealistic, but you can definitely get 20-30% extra hit relatively easily. Also the Death Knight in particular starts on an avoid tile, I believe, in a fair number of his maps. Baiting him off the tile would also help your hit rate.

I don't think Ignatz is particularly better suited towards crit builds than many other students. I do think that stacking crit is reasonable enough in this game so if that's what you want to do with a unit it will be fine, but most units can get into reasonable crit builds because so much crit comes from your weapon/battalion, etc. rather than any differences in growths. Each point of Dex and Luck only contributes 0.5 to your crit rate, so Ignatz's higher growths here means that crit rate at level 40 is only going to be roughly 2% higher than say, Leonie's and Ashe's crit rate (assuming they all follow the same build path).

Player phase combat is also a thing. Having a good enemy phase does not mean you fight every enemy on enemy phase. Your player phase action should be for killing enemies that are high priority player phase kills, and you leave the other enemies to enemy phase. You also probably misunderstand me. This game isn't ideal for sending one unit in and pretending they're invincible while they kill everything. However, you are still able to position units in a way to maximize enemy phase combat within reason. Like I said, if your unit dies to 5 hits, then the optimal position is a place where you can fight 4 enemies at once. If your unit dies in 4 hits, then position them forward enough such that they can fight 3. (Heck, often times your unit is going to dodge some of these enemy hits, because enemy hit rates in this game are trash, so you won't even have to heal. But it's best to be safer and not have to rely on a dodge.) Charging into the middle of all of the enemies is likely not going to end well (unless you have a really good unit or are stacking dodge, which is a possibility, but not one I'll necessarily cover here). But it's completely reasonable to engage in a fair amount of enemy phase combat while progressing through the map at a relatively fast pace. Also, if you want stats, let's take a look at some stats. For example, Chapter 21 GD has the following generics on hard mode, order in terms of how fast they are: Swordmaster x4 - 39 AS Falcon Knight x1 - 35 AS War Master x1 - 33 AS Hero x2 - 31 AS Wyvern Lord x1 - 30 AS Grappler x2 - 27 AS Dark Knight x1 - 24 AS Warrior x3 - 23 AS Mortal Savant x1 - 22 AS Sniper x1 - 22 AS Boss - 21 AS Paladin x2 - 21 AS Dark Bishop x5 - 20 AS Miniboss - 19 AS Bishop x2 - 16 AS Holy Knight x1 - 16 AS Miniboss - 4 AS These enemies are all level 41 (with the boss being level 43), so it should be reasonable to assume that your good combat units are level 41+ here. Let's take Hilda as an example of a generic "high" tier Wyvern Lord. Assuming you went a fairly reasonable path of Pegasus Knight -> Wyvern Rider -> Wyvern Lord, then Hilda has on average 34.1 Speed at level 41, with just level up stat gains. If you went through Brigand instead of Pegasus Knight, subtract one point of speed here. This number can be higher if you give her a Speed Ring or stat boosters. Hilda doubles every enemy here besides the Swordmasters, the Falcon Knight, the War Master and the Heros (Hilda is only 1 point away from doubling Heros, so it's very reasonable for her to get to doubling threshold if she has a Speed Ring/one stat booster/one or two extra levels of exp). Let's ignore the Heros for now, since it's not unreasonable to say that you've gained +1/2 speed from one of the other factors that I brought up. Every enemy that Hilda doubles she will kill, with the exception of the 4 AS miniboss (who you can probably tell is an armored unit). The miniboss guarding a door who is a Great Knight, with 40 Protection and 67 HP (these numbers are equal to what you would be seeing on the Fortress Knights in Chapter 22 as well). With these stats, a typical level 41 Hilda is hitting a 2RKO with a regular weapon (such as Silver Axe) and is borderline for ORKOing with a Hammer. (If you have some extra strength from somewhere, or a stronger weapon such as Axe of Ukonvasara or Axe of Zoltan then the ORKO is very guaranteed). So depending on whether you are allowed freedom in your weapon selection, then this can either be an ORKO on enemy phase, or somebody that you deal with on player phase. But let's call this a problem enemy as well. Also as a side note, if you have to fight these enemies on EP and you know it, there's always equipping a forged Killer Axe and fishing for a 40+ crit. Either you hit the crit and the enemy dies when they wouldn't normally have, or you don't crit and you just kill the enemy on player phase like you normally would have anyways. But let's ignore that for now. Given the above enemy distribution, the "high priority" targets to kill on player phase the 4 Swordmasters, the 1 Falcon Knight, the 1 War Master, the 1 Sniper (since you cannot counterattack these), the GK miniboss, and I guess the boss (even though he's pretty weak on this specific map), since you normally kill those on player phase. These enemies are for the most part not all clumped up in the same place, and you should probably have multiple units with good player phase combat at this point, which means that it is very possible to kill the "problem" enemies on player phase and leave the weaker enemies to fight on enemy phase. I don't find it too unreasonable to claim that you have enough units that you can safely deal with 9 of 30ish enemies on the map during your player phase actions. Chapter 20 is fairly similar, with about 11/32ish enemies being "deal with on player phase" type enemies, and the rest being squishy enough that you can kill pretty easily on enemy phase. Chapter 22 (the endgame) has a fairly high density of problem units, making it a more player focused map, but that's largely because the map is full of relatively strong minibosses. But then again, that map also has some of the most awful terrain of any chapter, which means that your fliers are very important here for taking out said minibosses. This is a fair point. But I do want to bring up that the thing that started this discussion was me bringing up that I didn't think Lysithea was a top tier unit in the context of a non-LTC efficiency run. I didn't even call her a bad unit. She's high tier on my list, and I can fully admit that she is still very good. I just said that she was overrated by many people, and didn't measure up to the level that the absolute top tier units do (which on my current list is like... 6 units). Being in the tier right below the six best units in the game is not a bad thing. I think we can all agree on that. These units literally have the best and easiest combat in the game. And when it boils down to it I'm going to maintain that Lysithea's contributions (especially towards combat) are worse than someone like Claude's or Byleth's or Edelgard's (assuming you put them into their best classes). But I do think that Lysithea has an important niche that she occupies very well, making her a very good unit. For some reason people think that "here are the places where the mage class is flawed" is some sort of grand attack on the existence of all the non-fliers, when I personally have multiple characters that are best as mages in high tier. They're a good class with their uses, and you should deploy them because there is a real niche that they occupy that is more valuable than whoever your "seventh best flier" is. It's just that when you look at all things, it's very clear that they are a much less well-rounded class than the absolute best classes in the game. If you want to talk about other classes specifically, here's some pretty straightforward rankings. Generally the best class for any unit is whatever class they can realistically get into, going down the list: Wyvern Lord (Falcon Knight), Bow Knight, Dark Knight (Holy Knight), Dancer are the best classes in the game (classes in parentheses are slightly subpar options, but are close enough in strength that if you find they're easier to get into due to your weapon ranks, you should just go for it). Gremory/Bishop/Warlock is also a very acceptable class if you want to fulfill a few specific niches (basically doubling the use of super low-usage spells like Warp and Meteor). War Master, Great Knight, Assassin, Paladin are acceptable, though there is usually a better class to be. If you have to end up in one of these though, it's not the end of the world. They still have good combat, they're just missing something that the more OP classes have. Mortal Savant is sort of on the border between "I think this class sucks" and "this class isn't one of the best but is acceptable". It really has nothing particularly special going for it, and is instead just very okay. Everything else is strictly outclassed by another class (for example, Wyvern Rider < Wyvern Lord), or just kind of poopy (such as Fortress Knights having the double whammy of being ridiculously slow and having no move).

I think you have a big misconception here. LTC in this game is primarily player phase focused, given that the majority of the maps can be cheesed in a single turn. This means that your units never have to worry about what is going to happen on enemy phase. But here as we can clearly tell, high mobility units are the superior player phase units, since they're the ones that enable you to pull off these one turn clears in the first place (given that most good units can reach the ability to ORKO on player phase, the one with the mobility to get to the important targets is clearly better). If you're playing quickly but are not implementing LTC strats, then EP will be a significant portion of your combat. Of course, not all combat should be done on EP. There are situations where PP combat is the right call. But much of the combat that you think should get done on PP can actually be more efficiently done on EP. Why kill 8-10 enemies on PP and none on EP when I could kill 8-10 enemies on PP and then position myself to kill 8-10 more enemies on EP? This frees up many PP actions that would otherwise be spent killing those 8-10 enemies that are already dead, which allows them to attack more important targets that should be dealt with on PP (such as beasts), heal, open chests, or do whatever else the unit wants to do with their PP action. Plus, as I brought up previously, high mobility units with canto are superior with stride. Yes, stride gives mobility to foot units, which really helps fix their first one or two turns, but as I pointed out it also gives mobility to your mounted and flying units as well. And mounted/flying units actually make better use of the movement buff than foot units do. Even including stride, the mounted units that have gotten strided will be further ahead of the foot units, unless you're intentionally holding them back. Also, to your point, "it's a valid efficient playstyle and shouldn't be discouraged in any way", I point you to this. If the discussion is supposed centered on what is "best", which is presumably what the criteria here is... then yes, being good but worse than other options does mean that something should not be considered. This is in no way disparaging a playstyle. This is a single player game and players are allowed to do whatever they like without impacting the experience of any other player. But at the same time saying "everything is the best and nothing matters because the game is sunshine and roses" is not very conducive to discussion. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Are you going to actually address anything in my post rather than calling me names?

My point is that benchmarks for player phase combat in this game are not super high. The existence of stronger player phase weaponry (Brave weapons and gauntlets), Darting/Death/Fiendish Blow, plus access to combat arts on player phase means that your units will gain the ability to ORKO enemies on player phase earlier than they would the ability to ORKO on enemy phase. Lysithea is good at ORKOing enemies on player phase, but so is Byleth, your main lord, Felix, Catherine, Shamir, any of the good Wyverns (such as Sylvain, Hilda, Ferdinand, Seteth), etc. If all of the top and high tier units are consistently putting out ORKOs on player phase, which one has the best player phase combat? They're mostly the similar in this department. I will bring up a minor difference, in that Lysithea usually doesn't take a counterattack when attacking weaker enemies on player phase (which is a good thing because she is so frail), whereas your good frontline units will take counters and occasionally get hit by a random 40% hit rate from an enemy for some damage. But on the other hand, these front line units can afford to take the hits while Lysithea can't, which makes them better at engaging endgame boss enemies with Counterattack, that cannot be easily one-shot. (I'll also bring up that if you heavily min max/grind then Lysithea can actually one shot some of these tougher bosses, but I'm not going to really count 107 attack Lysithea one-shotting Nemesis as a big positive for her because in the standard use case she is not going to realistically get to that high of a benchmark, and if she doesn't reach that benchmark then Nemesis just one shots her back in return). This is a very, VERY slow way of playing. Forcing your high movement units to constantly be next to your 4 move units is terrible in any sense of the word "efficiency". The fact is that many of the best Wyverns (and other top/high tier units) are mostly self sufficient. They can reliably ORKO enemies on player phase and usually (or always, depending on how good they are) ORKO enemies on enemy phase. In addition, they are generally bulky/dodgy enough to fight multiple enemies on enemy phase without dying. One of the biggest things about efficient play is fighting as many enemies per turn cycle as possible. A unit that fights and kills an enemy on player phase and then does nothing on enemy phase is usually going to be slower at accomplishing an objective than a unit that fights and kills an enemy on player phase and then fights and kills two more enemies on enemy phase. On a rout map, one of these units is only killing one enemy per turn cycle while the other is killing three. On a map that wants you to press forward towards some objective (such as a boss or a capture point or whatever), one of these units needs to end their movement outside of enemy range, whereas the other one can move forward additional tiles into enemy range, meaning they will get to the objective sooner. Fighting enemies on enemy phase is not a downside in efficient play. It is a GOOD thing. You want to maximize the amount of combat you see per turn cycle, conditional on your units not dying. If your unit can safely fight 3 enemies on enemy phase but not 4, then putting him in range of 2 enemy units that he can kill when you could have moved the additional tile to put him in range of 3 is inefficient. If you do not agree on this, then you fail to understand one of the most important aspects of efficient play, and I don't believe we will ever reach an agreement, as your criteria for evaluating a unit is too far removed from what I (and many others) use to judge quality. THIS is the true benefit of canto. You can kill an enemy of your choice on player phase, and then reposition yourself FARTHER FORWARD into the appropriate square for the most optimal amount of enemy phase combat. Without canto, you are at greater mercy of enemy positioning, because often times the optimal square for enemy phase is not a square that you can attack somebody from on player phase. Canto is usually NOT used to run all the way back to your team. This is also why low move in this game is such a weakness. (As it is with many fire emblem games.) If your strong, high move units are good enough to take on multiple enemies, then they will leave your lower movement units behind unless they intentionally slow themselves down (WHICH THEY DO NOT HAVE TO DO). This is also why Physic is so valuable, as it prevents mages (who have awful move) from being left behind, because even if they fall behind movement-wise, they can still contribute each turn. Also, you claim to want a varied roster that can respond to "a variety of situations", but the fact is that this claim is a huge pitfall. Class variety for the sake of variety itself is not a good argument. It has been the case in many Fire Emblem games in the past where specific classes were much better than others, and running multiples of that class at the expense of others was not a bad thing, it actually made the game significantly easier (for example, Paladins in FE7 or FE9 were king). There is room for other units that cover different niches, but the primary objective that your army needs to fill, and usually needs a lot of units that can fill this criteria, is "kill enemies, preferably a lot in a short time span". Whether the best combat units are Wyverns or Paladins or Dark Fliers or Swordmasters or whatever really doesn't matter. If they all mostly do this same primary task, they are all interchangeable in terms of team composition. If Wyvern Lord is the best class for killing enemies efficiently in this game (which it so obviously is), then having a roster of primarily Wyvern Lords is technically optimal. That's not to say that you should have a roster of 12 Wyvern Lords, because even with how big current maps are you don't need 12 Wyverns to clear them out quickly, so the added value of the last few Wyverns is actually quite small. Instead, deploying units that can occupy a different space than the first 6 or 7 Wyverns is more valuable. (Though 12 Wyverns honestly would not even be bad, and would likely make the game pretty easy). But the niche that the Wyvern Lord clearly fills is "most efficient general all-around combat", so claiming that another class is superior in this use case is pretty disingenuous. The fact of the matter is that mages are generally less efficient at killing enemies than Wyverns. And you know what? That's completely fine. What makes them worth deploying is the other stuff that they can do that Wyverns can't, which is primarily utility (healing, warp, rescue). Thrysus is not unique to Lysithea (or even Lorenz). It is usable with no drawbacks on every mage with a crest, which is most of them (and still technically usable on mages without a crest if you're willing to accept the drawback, but I don't see why you would need to do this). It's not something to specifically consider when talking about Lysithea, but rather something that I have already factored into the evaluation of mages as a whole. Thrysus is very good and generally serves to fix the first two or so turns of combat on a mage, ensuring that they can usually attack somebody on these turns. But it still does not fix the lack of movement in the long term. Extra range is very, very good, but is not a perfect substitute for extra movement. On the third turn, for example, your mage has only moved 12 tiles away from their starting location, which means the enemies that they could have possibly engaged is a lot more limited than say, for example, a Wyvern Rider, which has already moved 21 tiles unhindered by walls or terrain (which means that for a mage to catch up to this point they often need to move a lot more than 21 tiles). This mostly comes up when you follow the guidelines of efficient play above, of actually moving forward aggressively with your canto units to maximize enemy phase combat, which might not be something that you have implemented in your play. Also, tanking with Lysithea is a bit sketchy. It's possible sometimes, but relying on Thrysus procs to not die is certainly far from reliable. And Nosferatu is both incredibly weak (with 1 might) and very heavy (weighing 8 versus her super poor strength), which means that with Nosferatu equipped Lysithea will sometimes find it difficult to double enemies (due to its weight) or kill them in a single hit (due to its low might). This would put her enemy phase performance below units with good enemy phases, that can take multiple hits from enemies and survive while ORKOing them back. Speaking as a side note, there does exist movement boosting effects in this game, as you have brought up here: But the fact of the matter is that movement buffs are the strongest on fliers. First of all, fliers are unimpeded by any sort of terrain, which makes the extra point of movement count for a full tile more often than it would on a ground unit. This is important if you're progressing through maps efficiently. Secondly, fliers have canto, which also means they make better use of movement than non-canto units. If your foot unit stops to fight somebody on player phase that you need dead in particular, that's it. They're done. Any remaining movement that they might have had is wasted. If you gave extra movement to a foot unit, they will sometimes not be able to utilize it properly due to needing to participate in player phase combat. Extra movement on mounts is much less often wasted, because after you kill that guy that really needed to die on player phase, you can canto further ahead with your remaining movement. If you want to move forward with your full movement, then you have the option to do so. Lastly, movement bonuses on your high move units usually matters more than on your low move units, because more movement on the highest move units translates to more options. If your 4 move unit gets the +1 move stat booster, this allows them to now move 5 tiles away and reach enemies from there. However, the thing is that most of your army has 5+ move, so if you needed a particular unit at that distance dead, then you likely already had plenty of ways that you could have planned for to make that happen. On the other hand, if you have a plan that involves somebody moving to kill an enemy 9 or 14 tiles away, well that plan isn't even an option unless you have an 8 move unit with movement boosting effects. It's usually better to use your stat bonuses to accentuate a unit's strengths, not try and patch up their weaknesses. Giving a Dragonshield (+2 def) to your mage may turn an enemy 2HKO into a 3HKO, but it might not even make the difference a lot of the time because the second hit overkills you by enough that the Dragonshield doesn't matter. On the other hand, that same Dragonshield might always turn a 4HKO into a 5HKO when given to a tankier unit (because rather than mitigating 2 damage from 2 attacks it's now mitigating 2 damage from 5 attacks). In the same way, movement boosters also work like this. Also, as a side note, other than your already high mobility units, +movement is effective on a dancer, especially in this game where you can't fix dancer mobility with rescue/drops. These are all prime candidates for extra move over your 4 movement unit.

Just saying, it takes 50 actions to master an intermediate class (assuming you've purchased the Cethleann statue reward). Depending on your pace of play this could take a long time, or be reasonable. If you're finishing maps faster and mostly killing enemies in one round of combat, then it will take a long time and you will definitely not hit two class masteries in a reasonable time frame. If you are not killing enemies when engaging in combat with them (either intentionally or not), then you will build class mastery quickly in relation to your level.

In this case: "This unit's best class as a dancer" is literally every single lower tier unit, which is not very interesting or helpful in my opinion. Heck, Dorothea is actually not even as bad as some other students, so she probably shouldn't actually be your dancer. She provides useful utility as a regular magic class, and making her a dancer means you either sacrifice the ability to use spells freely on her or you give up dancing for the turn (which is not something that should really be done in an efficient strategy). To be honest, the ideal traits for "best dancer" are kind of dumb: 1. Be a bad unit. Either you got stat screwed on this particular run, or your growths/strengths/etc were never good to begin with. 2. Preferably have a strength in riding. This point isn't 100% necessary, but it's nice. Everything else is mostly irrelevant. You don't need to be good at swords or magic or whatever, your dancer should be dancing pretty much every turn, because that is by far the highest value option in the vast majority of situations. Likewise, your dancer should not be positioned somewhere where you have to see enemy phase combat. Even if your dancer doesn't die to an enemy when attacked, they likely do not have nearly as good EP combat compared to your dedicated combat units, so you should just position in a way such that the enemy is aiming for you stronger units. She has a good player phase, but so do other high/top tier units. This is especially true given that player phase combat is considerably easier than enemy phase combat due to the potential existence of combat arts, and of skills like Darting/Death Blow (every one of your Wyverns should ideally have at least one of these skills). However, those other units also have much better enemy phases, due to having much better bulk. Also, she is stuck in a class that has 4 movement, no canto, and takes terrain penalties for the first 30 levels of the game. Whereas physical classes become a lot more mobile as time goes on. Healing with her is very hard for this reason if you're playing efficiently, as trying to make sure your 4 move unit is usually next to one of your frontline units with 5/6/7/8 move is a huge hassle, and slows you down/causes you to move inefficiently. She's a good unit, and definitely in the running for best magic user, but unless you place an absurdly high importance on Warp (for example, in the context of an LTC run), then she isn't "the best" unit in the game.

Saying somebody is "best" as a dancer is dumb. Literally everybody is good as a dancer, and has almost the exact same usefulness in the class. It shouldn't even be an option on there.

I really don't think "think of the lost exp" is a good argument. No Fire Emblem game has been so difficult as to require you to have perfect "let me wring every bit of exp out of this map possible" play. Does potential lost exp matter if your characters are still strong enough to clear maps? If extra exp at this point is a big factor, why are we not grinding extra kills on reinforcements? That technically results in even more exp gain on your units. Or heck, why are we not doing auxiliary battles to get more exp? In the two runs that I have done, I've skipped maps that either didn't look very interesting to play or looked particularly vulnerable to skipping (kill a single boss that was within easy access). In other maps I played relatively efficiently towards the objective (usually 5 turn clears or less) but I still took the time to kill units and get chests and stuff. My units mostly ended the game in the low 40's in terms of levels, which was more than enough to beat the game. I spoke to someone who had done a LTC run and their highest leveled unit going into the endgame was level 36, and that map was still completely doable. So my team of units in the 40's should have been fine. Sure, I could have gotten more exp, and leveled my people up to the high 40s or low 50s, but the lost exp from the occasional map that I skipped really isn't such a "terrible idea" if it wasn't super necessary in the first place. ------------------------------------------------ With that being said, I don't think the average tier list assumes absolute LTC. Generally I have seen lists run with the (somewhat hard to define) assumption of relatively efficient play. In many aspects efficient play shares a lot in common with LTC, but you don't run into some weird LTC quirks (like Ross technically saving turns because he is the only early game FE8 unit that can walk on water). You are probably not routing maps in efficient play if the objective is not rout (doing so is dumb, as often maps have out of the way enemies that actually cost a lot of time if you want to go kill them), but you are not necessarily warp skipping unless the skip in question is incredibly obvious to do (ex. single relatively weak boss in range of a warp). It just so happens that many of the things in this game that are good in LTC are also good in efficient play. Wyverns are not only the best LTC class, but they're also the best if your goal is to just play relatively efficiently and kill enemies.

The thing to note here is that a unit doesn't need a matching crest to use a crest weapon. You just need literally any crest at all. You could even use the weapon without a crest as long as you're willing to take 10 free damage afterwards (essentially turning the crest weapon into a Devil Axe). The 10 damage can't even kill you, so it's usually not a big deal. You lose out on the combat art, but the combat arts that crest weapons unlock are generally very situational or not that great. Sure, Lorenz gives you access to Thrysus, but should that really count towards Lorenz's viability? What if I just recruited Lorenz and then immediately stuck him on the bench?

Most of the time your physical units are bulky enough to take a few hits. The first stride turn (if you're not just killing the boss) is mostly a planning problem dedicated to setting up a situation in which your units take as many EP attacks as possible (to maximize your EP combat), but no one unit takes enough hits to die. The player phase action is usually for removing "problem" enemies that will ruin your plan, and then you canto into the appropriate spot to do EP combat. For example, if your position is a good one, but has you attacked by four enemies when you can realistically safely take on three, then you can and should still go to that position. It's just that one of the four enemies is a target that you should aim to remove first on player phase. Death is definitely a possibility with poor positioning (fliers for the most part aren't literally invincible), but the chance of death is pretty easy to mitigate by picking your spots well. Also, Wyverns and other fliers are bulkier than they seem, given how weirdly dodgy they are. Often times I'll put a Wyvern in the range of 3 or 4 enemies knowing that if they get hit with everything they'll be coming out of it alive but with really low HP, and then they'll just dodge everything and ORKO the enemy back, meaning I don't even have to burn a Physic to heal them.

I just stuck him in the face with the Spear of Assal, which has effectively 42 might versus cavalry (obviously not with Claude, but with one of my other fliers). You're definitely overkilling him with that weapon. Brave Axe technically works here as well if you're on the strong side, or if you're average but you picked up Death Blow along the way. Heck, Claude could fairly realistically manage a kill with Brave Bow and Death Blow. Not to mention the fact that you should have access to multiple fliers. Strided fliers can reach the DK in the first turn, so you attack with one and if for some reason he doesn't die (either your guy is on the weak side and doesn't have good weapons, or you missed a hit) then a second flier can come and finish him off. Even if your flier took a counterattack, you can always just heal them up with Physic and they likely won't die, or you can just end the map by warping somebody to kill Hubert on the same turn (also accomplishable turn 1), since Hubert is really weak and dies to basically everything.

Unfortunately stride cannot cover your whole team, and happens to be much better on mounts due to the existence of canto (plus the fact that mounts naturally have more move, but canto is the big one here). If a foot unit stops to kill someone, they're stuck there, whereas if a mount does the same, they can kill the enemy and then re-position further ahead to aggro additional enemies to fight on enemy phase. This is particularly relevant when you have 10+ move because of stride.

I haven't confirmed this myself, but I think people have found the cause of the Fortify crash. It seems to happen if you use Fortify with the Desperation skill equipped. If you would like to test this yourself, equip Desperation, go into a map, and then cast Fortify. Reload your save, unequip Desperation, and do the same thing. See if there is a difference.

So one thing that was brought to my attention recently that I wasn't aware of before, is that Shamir actually makes a very good Pegasus Knight. She starts with the appropriate lance rank for the class so all you need is D flying (which is incredibly trivial to get). If you want to you can continue to use bows while on a Pegasus, and you can always reclass back into Sniper in battle preps if you really need to trade movement for extra range. She's already pretty good going for Bow Knight, but Falcon Knight might be equally as valid. At the very least it gives her even more mid game options and flexibility, and I could see this being a big positive for her (it's definitely not enough to bump her up a tier, but it should maybe be mentioned somewhere).

When speaking about Lysithea vs Lindhart, one thing to keep in mind is that the difference between B rank and A rank is actually massive. It takes 640 weapon exp to go from E+ (Lysithea's base Faith rank) to B. It takes 640 weapon exp to go from B rank to A rank. Just think about that for a second.

Growth difference is a somewhat relevant factor. You should probably be spending 10 levels in Wyvern Rider and 10 in Wyvern Lord, vs 20 in Assassin, so there will be a statistical difference at 40 of a couple of points here and there (+3 speed growths on assassin, -2.5 strength, and a few other stat differences). Lethality and Seal Defense are both pretty garbage skills. Most of the time if you attack someone they should just be dead. The enemies that might not die to a single attack are generally boss type enemies, who are immune to both. For the most part, with the exception of certain intermediate tier classes, mastery skills aren't impactful enough to influence the viability of a class in any meaningful way for me. (Also for some reason, two of the best intermediate tier class masteries come from classes that lead into Wyvern Lord...) Also, ironically Wyverns are probably better suited for dodgy builds compared to assassins, which also doesn't really make much intuitive sense but hey, that's just the way the game is. The slightly higher speed that assassins have doesn't nearly make up for the fact that Wyverns get +10 avoid innately and basically get Alert Stance for free along the way to Wyvern Lord.

Dodgetanking is fine once you get to the later 1/3 of the game when you can stack enough avoid, though you are limited in the number of dodge tanks you can field. It's perfectly doable if you build with it in mind. You have to not play like an idiot (your dodgetanks aren't literally invincible), but it does make them very hard to actually kill for most enemies. Some units do get a boost to their ability to dodge tank, but for the most part its doable on every good unit.

I was mostly comparing assassin to wyvern lord because the talk was focused on endgame classes, but they don't really compare that favorably to wyvern rider either, to be honest. You're trading swordfaire and +2 speed, +2 dex for axefaire, +3 strength, slightly higher bulk (+1 hp, +2 def, +10 avoid), and importantly +1 flying movement and canto. To be honest, if there were no master tier flying classes (the line stopped at Wyvern Rider), then Wyvern Rider would still arguably be in the running for top tier endgame class. The fact that there is a promotion that is strictly better in multiple ways is insane.

Nobody knows what Lunatic mode actually is going to be like, considering the developers have not said any details and its not released yet. Evaluating something based on what it may or may not do in Lunatic is a bit pointless. Though to be fair, master tier class mastery is already unfeasibly difficult to hit on hard mode most of the time.