Burklight

Seriously, just ignore him. I'm not entirely sure he can read. He also hasn't beat the game yet, or played maddening. The flaw from my experience against using someone like Ignatz is that your plan requires getting Ignatz to level 20ish, which in my run was a serious struggle. Either he gets str screwed and you cant make him a passable combat unit, in which case he may not get enough levels for the charm, or he does end up getting enough str to be helpful, in which case he's better as a sniper. Also he has strength in authority, which makes him one of the better candidates in golden deer to try and rush A rank for retribution (Indech Sword Fighters iirc). I think Lorenz makes a lot more sense, as he's less likely to get totally screwed on the leveling aspect, as well as a strength in riding for an easier +1 move.

I actually think Claude is incredibly well written. I did read your entire post, but I'm only quoting this because it's a pretty good summary of what you said. I'm not disputing any of the points you're making about him not thinking his plans through, or that a lot of the things he doesn't seem to be entirely disconnected from his goal. However, as a character, he is very believable and realistic. Without getting too into real world politics, there is one party who generally believes boarders are bad, excluding people based on race is bad, and that religion generally gets in the way of social progress. Also, relatively harmless schemes in the pursuit of those goals tends to be looked at as a positive. Particularly if used to avoid violence, which if I'm remembering correctly was the case for every one of Claude's "schemes." I'm using very sweeping statements here, but I'm trying pretty hard not to derail this entire thread. That said, Claude is the picture perfect example of what people who share those beliefs want their leaders to act like. So in that way, he's written perfectly. Honestly, if you had a character who was totally logical and never took any actions that contradicted their end goals, that to me would be less believable and realistic than someone like Claude. How many people do you know personally, or even in history books, who 100% of the time only do things that are aimed towards their ultimate goal and do nothing to shoot themselves in the foot along the way? If any exist at all, they're the exceptions to the human race.

Marianne makes a good dancer in general, particularly because she can get +1 move from cavalry rank more easily then most. The reason not to do it would be if she's your primary healer, and you didn't recruit another dedicated healer. You want your dancer to be dancing every turn. You want to avoid a situation where you have to make a choice between healing to save someone and dancing. If you recruited Mercedes, or maybe Dorothea/Linhardt you should be good.

I'm actually pretty excited to see how Edelgard does as a dark flier. Now she finally has a magic class that doesn't suck.

According to the screenshot, it doesn't look like War Monk/Priest require any class unlocks. Just Brawl and Faith.

Sure, and it's totally possible I'm reading too much into this. I just think it's odd that of everyone in the entire game, Felix and Catherine are the only ones who just "inherited" a major crest. Over half the cast is a distant descendant, but only those two got major crests. Literally all the other major crests have some kind of special reasoning for it. Makes me a tad suspicious.

Remember that time you admitted you haven't beaten the game or even played maddening mode yet? I'm going to remind you of this every time you respond to actual late game or maddening experience with whatever baseless theory you have.

I would only disagree with the first part of your statement. They're pretty solid early game, particularly with units who can't double without them. Also the low weight with very high accuracy makes them pretty reliable early game. The main criticism most people have of gauntlets in general is their lackluster enemy phase, but maddening is centered around player phase, which gauntlets are great for. Towards the end of my maddening BL run, Felix with Training Gauntlets+ was one of my more reliable ways to delete things.

If you really want to go into conspiracy land, it almost looks like you have to get blood directly to have a major crest...

I did all that. My renown accumulated the way it should. This would obviously not happen if I did something stupid like start two separate NG+ off the same clear file and assume they were connected. I did not play all routes at once. I played on after the other, and started a NG+ from the clear file of the previous. I have 8 S rank supports I think.

I have some questions about this. In addition to the fact that it's kind of confusing to begin with, I think they coded this stupidly. So I have a "chain" of 5 full game clears. I picked a lot of different classes and weapon ranks in each clear that didn't match the previous one. Each time I beat the game, I was only able to buy weapon and class ranks I had unlocked from the previous run. Now, in my particular case, I was using a different "slot" for each of these saves. I can tell you with 100% confidence that it only carried over the most recent clear's unlocked weapon ranks, classes, and skills. However, grade kept carrying over for the entire chain. I had no idea the save slot had anything to do with anything, but it's pretty clearly different from using the same chain.

Having just completed a BL NG maddening run, I can compare Raphael to Dedue to give a pretty good estimation of what Raphael is good at, and the answer is not much. Dedue is amazing right out of the gate as literally the only unit in any house who can tank stuff at base thanks to his passive. Raphael can't do that. Beyond the early game utility that Dedue gives, they're essentially the same unit. If you can get him to 40~45 defense, which isn't totally unreasonable, He can safely tank non bow physical damage. Bows will wear anyone down thanks to poison strike. Magic will probably ORKO him. If he goes WM and gets QR, will possibly survive one round vs magic damage. So basically, he's good at a very specific niche if you're willing to put in the work. I'd recommend dodge tanking, as it's significantly more reliable than someone who will get worn down quickly by poison strike and instant killed by magic. He's good as a brawler adjunct.

This was similar to my experience. I started out assuming I'd have to dump her later on, as I've got wildly different results with Ingrid on various runs. Was using her for bow chip + Tempest Lance and she kept getting ridiculous levels, so I kept using her. At level 20 she had 23 str 16 def 29 spd. I can't say I'd recommend her for a BL run (probably fine if you late recruit her), but sometimes you've just got to use what the stars aligning gives you.

Well, considering the criteria you used to say EO was better than a class I didn't mention was because the class I didn't mention (WL) takes too much effort in a NG+. So I assumed you were trolling and dismissed it. Are you suggesting you aren't trolling, and instead don't read?

Even Swordmaster is better than Enlightened One. Enlightened One is just awful. However, the TC said this is a NG+. On NG+ it shouldn't matter how hard things are to get because everything is free.

Catherine can't be a War Master, it's gender locked. Holy Knight seems like overkill on Mercedes. x2 uses is better than movement on someone who's only job is using Physic, Restore, and Fortify. She'll always be in range for those things even while footlocked. Not sure if you're using male or female Byleth, but EO kinda blows. I'd use female and go peg knight. If you really want to use male, War Master is probably best because QR is nuts.

I just now got around to reading some of that. I'm not through with it yet, but, as someone who works in software development, this sort of thing is fairly common. If your sales rep isn't lying, they probably aren't very good at their job. None of the mismanagement or communication stuff would look out of place on a dilbert strip.

Is anyone else getting some serious Bravely Default vibes from this? It's starting to feel that in more ways than one to me.

What? Sylvain is easily one of the best paralogues to do, especially on maddening. Early Lance of Ruin, Energy Drop, Speedwing. You cant cheese his paralogue in one turn with warp+stride like a few of the other ones, but it gives you a huge amount of early game benefit in a mode where that's the hardest part of the game.

Basically, yeah. I have this headcannon where in an alternate universe where Sigurd somehow doesn't die, he's probably just running around murdering everyone even loosely connected to it. Fits pretty well.

I thought Dimitri fit the Camus/Eldigan type far better than Marth. He is by far the most "honorable" character in the game, which he arguably dies for in 3/4 of the routes.

Totally agree that you only need one, but you still REALLY need the one. And there's only three battalions in the entire game that give it to you. So those battalions should be looked at for more than just mediocre stat bonuses.

I basically agree with your rankings, especially when it comes to evaluating them on a statistical level. HOWEVER, I think "Retribution" should be looked at with almost the same level of importance as Stride. Which more or less means that Kingdom Archers should make the cut for D rank, Indech Sword Fighters should be looked at more highly at A rank, and the already very strong Black Eagle Pegasus Co. should probably be looked at as the strongest A rank. As far as smaller nit picking comments, you put some decent comparisons between Cichol Wyvern Co and Goneril Valkyries without pointing out that Goneril Valkyries cant be used by fliers. I also think Royal Guard should make the cut for B rank ones based on how strong offensively the gambit is. Two use 2x3 that does effective damage on cavs is approaching the same level of goodness the lord C rank ones offer.

Well, the "Abyss-Mode" thing sort of fits. If they're referring to putting it at the end of BE. I mean, it's outright stated that they kill TWSITD after the last chapter, and they all live underground, or in an abyss, so to speak.

100,000. I actually started my most recent maddening run with 54,000 that carried over + 50,000 from multiple clears.