MaskedAmpharos

So I did some number crunching for fun just to see if it were possible to kill Zephiel in a single hit (not in a single round but with only one hit). And the answer is: yes. tldr - blade tomes are broken

Very nice. Good luck to you on the GHB :D

So I actually checked, and yeah he can :P A sword user would need 52 atk to ORKO your Alm (assuming they also double him, which most of them will), and my Ryoma has 53 lmao

I hope you also have a +Atk buff of some kind ready for him, otherwise it won't be enough to OHKO Zephiel (you need 50 total atk on Reinhardt, so you need to get to 46 before Death Blow 2 somehow).

Your calculations are correct (or we're both wrong). That said, I feel like it'd be a lot easier to take Zephiel out with a blue mage rather than a heavy spear user, personally (but if you wanted to use a Heavy Spear or if that's all you have, then by all means go for it).

"I'm gonna find SOME way to beat Zephiel with Windsweep." *Doesn't have Windsweep equipped* Nice Alm though :D

Honestly, in most cases Luna is better than Aether because of Aether's ridiculously long charge time. You're better off skipping Aether entirely. Spur Atk is fine as a skill but is super low priority. In my opinion, you should give her a better A-skill, then B-skill, then Assist skill, and then finally C. Ideally, I wouldn't bother with Defiant Spd at all and would save my SP to spend on a better A-skill (either Fury or Life and Death). She's also in need of a good B-skill, which takes priority over finishing Spur Atk. Swordbreaker is a solid option on her, and if you're running with Life and Death, then Desperation is worth considering as well. After you've given her A and B skills, I would look to giving her an assist skill. I personally favor movement skills such as Reposition, but you can go with Reciprocal Aid (or Ardent Sacrifice if your Lucina is -HP) to get her into Desperation range if you decided to go with a LD/Desperation set. And then after all of that, I would finish off Spur Atk.

That...makes logical sense, I suppose. In any case, thanks for doing the experiment!

Nino's best partner is Ephraim because he can give her a total of +14 bonus damage (+3 atk from Siegmund which adds an additional +3 to the tome, +4 from a Hone skill of your choice, +4 from a Rally skill of your choice) while Sharena cannot give more than +12 bonus damage (Hone/Fortify +4 and Rally Atk +4). The difference is small, but it can sometimes make the difference between securing a KO or not. And even if it doesn't make a difference, Ephraim still invalidates the statement that Sharena is the best partner.

In the name of science!

Fitting, no? Also, his res is 20, which means you'd need to have a blue mage with at least 82 atk (lol) to OHKO him (70 atk with Triangle Adept 3). Or you can just have a +Atk Reinhardt with Death Blow 3. Also, Swordbreaker would indeed cancel out Wary Fighter and allow you to double him, provided your speed is at least 5 higher than his (which seems to be 21).

Huh. I didn't even think about scenarios where your own unit had Wary Fighter, but that's good to keep in mind.

You can if you're running Swordbreaker, which I believe he said he was. Breaker skills, Wary Fighter, Brash Assault, and Quick Riposte cancel each other out, making the battle sequence going back to the default "double if your speed is 5 or more higher".

@ILikeKirbys Double dancer is a bit unorthodox, to be sure, so I'm really hoping it pays off. Unfortunately, this is the best I can do without knowing more. Something as simple as the axe armor having Ward Armor (for Zephiel) would throw a wrench in my plans, as would the axe armor's stats being different from what Smoke posted (since my Julia barely ORKOs as is). The armored units besides Zephiel having Wary Fighter would also screw things up. So we'll have to see :/

Barst, Olwen, and Selena. EDIT: Ninja wishiwashi

@ILikeKirbys Oh whoops, I misread and thought you said Nino would tank the blue armor, not the blue mage. That's my bad. Yeah, she should be fine. Also, I typed up a tentative strategy for my own team using the numbers @MrSmokestack posted for the enemies. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated. Obviously this is a WIP and may not work out depending on enemy skills and stats (however, I did calcs using the stats Smoke posted, and my Reinhardt is capable of OHKOing Zephiel, just as my Julia is capable of ORKOing the axe armor).

@ILikeKirbys I'm going to wait until I know for sure what the enemy stats and skills are before coming up with any concrete strategies, but what you have seems reasonably solid. The only problem is that there are too many unknowns. I won't bother going through all of them, but your strategy has a lot of assumptions about how the enemies will move (though I don't claim to be an expert at AI manipulation, so if you're reasonably sure you know more about it and that you're right, I have nothing to counter with at the moment). Also, there are some other assumptions at play, such as Nino surviving the blue armor. Fypo's Nino is a 4* -HP Nino, who at level 40 would have 28 HP and 17 Def. The armored unit has a Brave Lance, so he'd hit twice. He would only need to deal 31 x 2 damage to OHKO Nino, which he can achieve with 38 attack, which is not unreasonable at all. And this is before knowing any other skills he may or may not have, such as Death Blow. That said, your strategy is overall detailed and well thought-out, and I'm open to talking it over in more detail once the map actually comes out.

I'm not sure I agree with Takumi, but Reinhardt, Olivia, and Nino are definitely among the units I'd have recommended as well. I can't remember who else you have off the top of my head.

Though there's no free unit with Draw Back, you can still use dance support from Olivia to poke and kite, as you said (assuming no Distant Counter, of course). I doubt they'll have Distant Counter though, as DC doesn't have much synergy with the Brave weapons that the two armors have.

I'd probably still go with Subaki over Est, yeah. Probably Subaki, Olivia, Sophia, and Narcian? Something like that anyways. We'll see when the time comes though.

Oh yeah, I completely forgot about the Whitewings since I was only thinking about free rotation heroes, but Est would definitely be great here.

@Anacybele Honestly I think what I'm most excited about is a potential future GHB with the Black Knight.

Given how ridiculously powerful Zephiel is in his own game, it honestly makes sense he'd be tougher to take down than other GHB bosses like Narcian or Ursula. But yeah, it is rather unfortunate :/ EDIT: I'm really curious to see how mkv manages to take down this map on Lunatic with only 3* free units.

That's fair. But in that case, you're best off just using Olivia's help, since even your Robin and Fred combined won't be able to take down Zephiel (unless I messed up in calcs somewhere, which is of course perfectly possible).

These are all so perfect. Chrom's felt like a stab to the heart though.