Bartozio

Welp, guess I'll play the bad guy then: 3/10 I'll say up front that compared to units in the entire franchise, Caspar deserves higher, but I think he's without a doubt one of the worst units in the game. A lot of people quote his bases as being the reason he's bad, but while his bases certainly aren't good my main issue is more that... he just doesn't have anything to compensate. Almost every unit in this game gets something: a broken combat art, a strong personal, a good spell list, insane bases, anything. Caspar is one of the few units who just feels... overlooked. Having easier access to Grappler and Warmaster is nice, but most physical units can get to that class if they focus on it (well, male units anyway) and he's not all that much better in those classes than said other units. That still makes him a good unit when he gets there, sure, but that's because Grappler and Warmaster can make anyone look good. I will admit Bombard is nice to have before mastering Grappler (or to use in warmaster) and he's probably your best bet for creating a tank in CF (if you don't have DLC for Balthus). It just feels very undewhelming compared to what everyone else gets in this game.

7.5/10 Honestly, Linhardt isn't the most exiting unit to talk about, since his qualities are pretty obvious. His faith list is amazing, his magic is good and his other stats aren't amazing, but anything a mage cares about is passable at least. Some things people haven't said yet: He starts out with D+ faith, which means he can have physic as early as chapter 2. That's pretty big, since going from 5 heals to 8 and having to care a little bit less about positioning when healing is incredibly nice. It also helps that he doesn't have to compete for experience with other units in maddening. In terms of offense, he's never amazing, but he can chip and nuke enemies from the armor knight line just fine in my experience. Basically, he does the bare minimum you'd want of a offensive mage, but not a lot more. He's also a bit bulkier that some other mages like Lysithia, which means he can survive a stray hit once in a while, although he should still stay away from the frontline as much as possible. All in all, I find Linhardt a very useful unit. He never outright steals the show in any map (like units like Edel can do), which is why I'm not rating him higher, but he contributes greatly all game long without a lot of investment.

6/10 I think most things have already been said but: Early game everyone wants to get 3 range asap, and he gets there pretty easily, only needing to train reason from D to D+. His 3-range spells having debuff effects is great as well, and they do a solid amount of damage compared to what your other units are dishing out at that point in time. He also has an authority boon, so between that and his personal skill, he's pretty nice to use gambits with as well. He falls of a lot later on though, because he gets no good faith spells, and when other units start one rounding enemies, magic chip becomes a lot less useful. He can still be made to work with frozen lance (which he can start using pretty early), but then he just does what other units can do as well, only with less bulk. He could become a gambit bot I guess, but his weakness in flying hurts a lot in that regard... Basically, good early game, but he becomes more of a filler later on.

Grinding supports isn't all that difficult in 3H I feel, and if you're not playing maddening, keeping 14 units at a level where they can be useful in a chapter isn't difficult either. If you have all 28 characters, you can pretty easily make a matching I think (as in, make 14 pairings), and from there, if you only let them get an A-support with the character you want to end up with, it should be pretty easy. So the only real issue I think is recruiting everyone. I can see that being a challenge, but I highly doubt it's impossible. You can always use the trick where you enter auxilary battles with broken weapons to farm weapon ranks, and get a few students to B-support so you don't need to meet their requirements.

That or Wyvern knight are probably your best bets. Be careful with Fortress knight though, since while it'll allow Caspar to tank enemies pretty well (if you give him a good shield and defensive battelion he can become near invincible) it doesn't protect Dorethea from the enemies you aggro'd.

I think there's a requirement on support level to be able to go with her. Not 100% sure that it's related to support, but in my current playthrough of SS I didn't even get the option to go with her when I talked to her during that month, and she just left on her own. I have barely used her, which is why my support level with Edel was so low.

But useful while they still do that.

I think you're overestimating how hard enemies hit in Maddening. Getting out of one shot territory is doable for most units. Besides, the whole point of magic combat arts is to one shot enemies with it. If your units can't reach that, there no real reason to use them over something like a sniper or a grappler.

You can consider me semi-Intrigued.

Just wanted to point out that if you're not looking forward to chapter 13, there's a clear strategy by Rengor that uses very few units and resources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdodbGxx_EI I do respect wanting to play it normally, but just wanted to point out you don't need a full squad of good units for that chapter. Yes. He could probably still get there if you really wanted him to, but it's not the easiest thing. I mean, if Bernadetta can make a Vengeance build work, why would a magic combat art build be any more difficult? Most units can tank at least one hit from enemies anyway, and in the right class they can canto away from any danger.

Units who automatically become monks or fighters are best recruited when they are in that class I think, because it means they join with at least a D in all of the relevant weapon ranks (so as an example, Bernie would join with a D in Brawling and Axes if you recruit her as a fighter, but E in both when you recruit her as an archer). Of course, some units automatically train the right ranks anyway, so they don't really care about it (Mercedes trains both Faith and Reason, so she doesn't need the bump to D that Monk would give in either). Ingrid likes joining as a pegasus knight because of the bases. Outside of that, I think most units just like to be recruited as soon as you can get them so you have more time to customize them. If you're not planning to use them besides a paralogue, recruiting them just before you do so is a nice way to get them leveled without it costing you anything though.

My thoughts on her are basically the opposite. She can be a decent mage, sure, but she's probably not going to be a decent mage while also being a good physical unit on the same run. As a mage, she'd start behind on weapon ranks (hard E/E in Reason/Faith when you get her) and even when you grid her up, she's comparable to most other magic inclined units at best (most of which I have in midtier). There's several classes that carry a unit, so her being decent as those classes isn't really a strong argument I feel. I'll admit I was mostly considering Maddening, but in hard I found most units can double reliably, which makes Ingrids lower damage output stand out more. I mostly put him in mid because he can still be great with vengeance and PBV. I was already debating whether he'd be low or mid tier though. I think they still give a nice niche, but arguably not enough to justify using him on this route. I don't dissagree that Ingrid can double in maddening, but mostly because I got people like Dimitri and Byleth to double those same enemies you describe. Darting blow can push a lot of people into the doubling midrange enemies range, and a lot of units get ways to kill enemies regardless of having the speed to double. Ingrid being able to deal with them isn't all that special, especially near endgame. This I can see. I feel like Vantage+Wrath builds are better, but it's easier to get I guess. Still though, she'll get it a little earlier than most units (Petra actually also has a strength in flying btw), but that doesn't mean other units can't do it as well. I'd argue someone like Ashe would on average be, what, 3 to 4 points slower than her by endgame? That's 3-4% less hit on enemies, which is nice to have, but not exactly game changing. And that's endgame, the difference will be less before then. Just for my understanding, what do you mean by a good unit in this context? I'm definitely not arguing Ingrid is unusable or will never contribute meaningfully to a party, but I feel like she doesn't really do anything to stand out. I could see her be on the lower end of midtier for dodgetanking and doubling things a little earlier than other units maybe, but not much higher than that.

High tier: Byleth, Bernadetta, Shamir, Felix, Ferdinand, Leonie, Sylvain, Linhardt, Lysithea Mid tier: Seteth, Petra, Dorothea, Marianne, Flayn, Mercedes, Alois, Catherine, Ignatz, Annette, Cyril Low tier: Caspar, Raphael, Ingrid, Hanneman, Lorenz, Manuela, Ashe, Hilda Some comments about the big differences: Seteth and Catherine: My main issue with them is that they join pretty late, and they still need some tutoring to get to the level of the units you've been using. They can become really great later on, especially Seteth, they'll be good for shorter than units like Bernie and Sylvain, which I feel makes them deserve a lower tier. Linhardt: getting physic in chapter 2 is really sweet to give Byleth a bit more flexibility, and healing and warping is just really nice overall. Sylvain: He has a similar passive as Leoni that makes him a decent tank and damage dealer early on, and later on swift Strikes is just amazing. Ingrid: Not really sure what people see in her tbh. Her bases aren't great, she doesn't get any great combat arts unique to her, and I don't think she serves any other particular niche? Hilda: Joins late with bad weapon ranks, and honestly doesn't have many things going for her anyway beyond giving people a bit more damage (at a point where most of your units will be one rounding). I'd rate her higher in GD and BL, but here she's pretty bad.

Sure, but he can just get the through armor knight and Fortress knight/Grappler. My main point is that he doesn't need more investment to be a good war master than anyone else. Hitting twice when you have high strength, death blow and a faire skill does more damage than hitting once. A forged silver lance has 14 mt, which is only a difference of 10 mt. Just getting to apply Death Blow and Fist Faire twice compensates for that difference. So unless other units are doubling, they're doing less damage than Raphael. I will grant you that most units can be build to one round most enemies. My main point though, is that Raphael isn't worse at doing it. I'm honestly not sure if we're arguing about the same thing at this point. Yeah, in terms of investment needed vs what you get in return, Raphael comes out as one of the worst units in this game. But if that alone is an argument for not using him, does that mean you basically use the same students for every run? Raphael isn't going to be part of any optimal run in any route imo (at best you use him when you don't have alternatives to deploy and make him somewhat usuable in GD for chapter 13, then bench him afterwards). But using him isn't a huge deteriment to your team. It's less like using Wendy and more like using Noah over Alan or Lance. It's not optimal, but it's not going to make the game a huge pain to clear either.

I mean, Raphael can fairly easily become a good grappler or warmaster if he masters them. Both classes only really require good strength and maybe good bulk in the case of warmaster, which are his strong points anyway. And getting him there either requires you to actively use him in your party when most of your units aren't amazing yet, and he at least hits harder than most, or have him as an adjutant instead to get him to lvl 20, and go crazy in Grappler afterwards (combining fistfaire with deathblow and a high strength stat is pretty insane). And otherwise he's the best bet GD has for a good armor knight/Fortress knight as well (they can actually take hits pretty well even in Maddening if you give them a good battelion and shield for it). Of course, none of these make him an amazing unit, and yes there's other units who can do the things he does better with similar investment. But it's not like using him instead of those other units is going to make the game that much more difficult for you.

Getting to a C-support isn't that difficult I think, and that lowers it all the way to only needing lvl12, which I think is fairly easy to reach by that point. I'm not sure how much you need for a C-rank, but I think we're talking about sharing a meal with her once, and 2 gifts or something?

This is nice if you don't really know the game too well and what is good or bad, but on a replay this can be very not optimal. For instance, in FE7 to 9, bows and swords just aren't that good, so forcing yourself to invest in a sword user who can only kill on player phase and has to rely on dodging to survive is a lot less useful than just training up another lance/axe user. Fire Emblem very rarely punishes you for a lack of diversity, so just use the best units, even if those are all the same class with the same weapon type. I mostly meant using other people as utility, not training them up for later maps. For instance, in PoR in the boat map where you get Gatrie back, I love to use both Volke and Sothe, because having two thieves makes getting all of the chests quickly a lot easier. Doesn't mean I'm planning to use two thieves for my entire run, or even that Sothe is ever going to see combat or get exp, but it's still great to use him for that map, and some others with a lot of chests. You also get a lot of great units later on during the game (at least in the older games), so it's fine to focus on only a few units early on (as in, a lot less than 13) and just slowly fill those slots with later additions. It'd be a shame to let those slots go to waste though, so until you get those later units, you can just deploy some units you don't plan to use long term, but have them help out for a bit. That doesn't mean you should feed them kills, but they can still help set up kills for the unit you do plan to use, and in a pinch them getting a kill isn't the worst.

Well..., that just means warping those units ahead to that place wasn't a good strategy. Sometimes warping a flyer instead can help, since they might be able to canto out of range. Sometimes however... you just need more than one unit to deal with a certain area, so warping one unit ahead isn't worthwhile. You can try warping them first, and then rescueing them back if there's something there you really need to deal with, or maybe try to bait some of the enemies away with other units, but sometimes you'll just have to focus on killing other things first. In that specific chapter, I generally just send Dimitri ahead so he could deal with everything with Battalion Wrath+ Battalion Vantage.

For 3 houses in particular, some skill combos are really good. Wrath+Vantage and retribution (or the battalion counterparts) give a lot of units the ability to clear out entire sections of maps at once (even on maddening), or at least deal with a lot of enemies that don't try to gambit them. Dimitri is by far the most potent user of this (he get gets both battalion skills and has high Strength and Charm), but it's good on basically everyone. Dodge tank builds can also work really well for enemy phasing (basically just stack a lot of skills that boost avoid and place someone in a forest). More general, a good way to deal with the phobia of "but what if people die from this" is planning things out. If you're scared someone might not survive being warped ahead, check who will be in range and how much damage enemies will do against them. Abusing Stride and the dancer battalion is also a good way to just kill certain groups of enemies before they even get a chance to hurt anyone. And as people said, don't worry too much about not figuring everything out at once. I hardly used combat arts or battalions in my first playthrough lol, and it took me a few more to notice the actually broken combinations (most of which I looked up anyway). It does. Not sure if you include it as mounted, but flying is still really incredible in this game. Otherwise, canto and more movement is still really good, especially if you want to play faster, the speed drop and the terrain in some maps just make it not as broken as in other games.

My main tips for getting better would be... challenge yourself by either requiring yourself to finish maps early (basically reset until you get it) or playing on a higher difficulty. It can be tedious and boring, but forcing yourself to think things over tends to be fastest way to improve. Going on youtube and watching speed runs, low turn count runs, or just runs on higher difficulties can also give you some great insights in what is possible and how you can use certain units/mechanics. Some other common things: Don't be too conservative with your resources. If you have a good weapon, just use it now, you'll get plenty of good things to use later on. Bonus experience is best used early on as well, because why wait with having a unit become good when you can have them be good earlier? And you get enough money that you can go pretty crazy with forging. Giving other units an extra turn (Reyson in Path of Radiance) is stupidly good and the better you get at planning ahead, the better it becomes. I half agree with this, but I was to mention that you shouldn't take this too far. There's enough experience to go around that someone who you're not planning to use later on getting experience in a map isn't going to seriously hurt you later on. Obviously, don't go out of your way to set up kills for them, and if you have the option, give the kills to people who you plan to use longterm, but feel free to use whoever you have available. Also, don't feel like you have to stick to a certain group for the whole game. If one of your units has been getting aweful level ups for a while now, don't feel bad about benching them and replacing them with units you get later on. Also, some maps may favor having another flier (even if they have horrible stats) over another good combat unit, because there's just so much space to cross and not so much enemies that you'll miss the extra combat unit. I feel like this only really holds for the gba games tbh, and even then a lot of them are actually pretty good in the early game (Dorcas, Hector and Garcia specifically).

Sully please... you know gingers don't have souls... She might have some spare ones though.

A peace loving one? Or maybe a forgiving one? Or just one that thinks about the lives of her other childeren before she thinks about avenging someone that's already dead?

If those secrets are considered evil and the murderous rampages are fine, I question the morals of whoever is watching over us tbh...

Off to a good start it seems. Ike's getting all these great levels as well, wish mine became a lucky magic unit like that... When will we ever find out how to lift this curse? What's all this talk about hoarding anyway? He just brought a normal weapon, a spare for his normal weapon, a spare for his spare, and one he can loan to others should they need it. The real question is what all these "profesional" mercs are doing without spares tbh.

So do deaths transfer between games, or does it all reset after you guys finish PoR? Anyway, good luck with this, really intrested to see how this turns out!