dragontamer

Hollywood does this a lot too. Marni Nixon sang the lead roles of many big Hollywood movies, most noticeably My Fair Lady (1964: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady_(film)#Dubbing). Directors liked how Marni Nixon sang, but wanted other actresses to be in various roles. Less commonly known is Lea Salonga (Singing voice of Princess Jasmine (1992)) vs Linda Larkin (Speaking voice of Princess Jasmine (1992)). I'm pretty sure Aladdin himself was also voiced by two different people (singing voice vs speaking voice yet again). Its surprisingly common. The voice actors + directors usually do a good job at making it sound like they're the same person. I mean, after all, "singing voices" always sound a little bit different than a person's actual voice, so its believable when the singing voice is a completely different person.

The biggest fault of Mortal Savant is the low class bonus for speed. Swordmaster and Assassin are somewhere around +5 speed, but Mortal Savant was somewhere around +1 speed. So you basically lose 4 speed just switching over to MS, on top of the -10% speed growth (so another 1-ish speed lost by endgame). In contrast, you could turn into a Wyvern Lord (+4 speed) or FalcoKnight (+5 speed), which is part of the reason why those flying classes are considered overpowered in this game.

I'm pretty sure that Hilda can't be cross-recruited.

Its still a long long time since the absolutely awful PoR (FE9) animations.

Koei Tecmo showing off their animation skills here 🙂 This is standard "Dynasty Warriors" style animation, just keep the same poses even for grossly different weapons. Oh, and copy maps all over the place too. If I really didn't like this, I probably wouldn't have bought so many Dynasty Warriors games 🙂 (4, 4 Empires, 5, 6, 7, and 8). The main issue with Fire Emblem is that the voice actors are all really good, its hard to make fun of things. But there's still some Koei / Tecmo stuff going on here and there that long-time fans can catch.

I remember two Knowledge Gems: is the Sothis Paralogue the only knowledge gem pre-timeskip? Either way: Knowledge Gems are rare. The Knowledge Gem may help your first recruit, but your 2nd recruit (and onwards) is now competing for the gem. IIRC, Silly was advocating for route-specific tier lists to account for this... using the units associated with your house has a lot fewer resource constraints than using units from outside your house.

Across story, gameplay, and map design... Three Houses is above average in story and gameplay, but below average in map design for sure. Honestly, a lot of the map balance issues (ie: fliers being overpowered) is mostly due to unrestricted flying and a general lack of enemy archers. Monsters are nice however: their multiple lives prevent OHKO or ORKO strategies, and force the player to think around various issues (barriers, wide-aoe attacks, etc. etc.). Three House's story is certainly better than Fate and Radiant Dawn. But gameplay is worse than Fates (and also Radiant Dawn). Fates had intelligent enemies who knew how to use skills (swap ninjas of great annoyance). Radiant Dawn has a similarly "dumb AI" which runs into you, but the addition of Cliffs had an element of true defensive gameplay that few other FE games have had. Tactically, Three Houses is pretty bad (and the lack of weapon-triangle really hurts this game), only Monsters really provide a difference in tactics. And with a rewind-button + future-sight (the red-lines that automatically show you the computer's next turn...), there is almost no brain power of mine going into prediction or tactics in this game. Strategically: with the skill ranks, classes, level ups, etc. etc... Three Houses is pretty damn good. Three Houses has the deepest "strategy level" Fire Emblem in a while, althogh the system is easily optimized. I think with a bit more balance to map design, Three Houses could have been even better, but I'm not disappointed with what we got.

+10 Crit is available on Swordmaster and Warrior. +20 Crit is available on War Master. You need to master Warrior for (Non-battalion) Wraith anyway. If the strat is anywhere as good as you claim it to be, the goal of optimization is to make it relevant sooner. Warrior still has Axefaire and Killer Axe+ is reasonable, since it can be crafted from the Eastern Merchant. I'm assuming your Dimitri build uses Battalion Vantage / Battalion Wrath? Normal Vantage / Normal Wrath requires Hero mastery and Warrior mastery respectively, but would be applicable to more characters.

The units I posted earlier have Proficiency 5 weapons (-10 Crit). EDIT: I see you already factored in Luck. I'll have to double-check to see if anything was missed. EDIT2: I don't really like the idea of relying on S-Rank Crit+. Not only does this come online super-late, but it requires a lot of investment to get to S-rank, investment I'd rather spend in other stuff (Ex: Authority ranks or anything else really). War Master gets +20 Crit however, although there's no axe with the same +100 Hit that the Scythe can do. I'll pretend your numbers are on a War Master candidate (Caspar, Alois, Cyril), but your point otherwise stands, albeit with a slight +Hit deficiency compared to the Scythe. Worst case scenario, +20 Hit isn't too hard to grab (just dip a few dozen combats + Knowledge Gem on Archer somewhere in the training path)

Okay, that's where I was messing up. Because it was coming in way easier and I didn't want to give you "freebie points" unless I knew for certain the math was right. Cool. That matches my math and is easier than what I was saying earlier. +10 Atk from a battalion really helps and +5 from Lancefaire is also very relevant. Note that this is only with a Crit-proc, so its somewhat unreliable, but Dimitri only needs to kill "enough" enemies to survive enemy phases for it to be an effective strategy.

I was rereading your post (and the post that previously was here), and noticed my numbers don't match up. I'll come back once I study the damage formulas again.

Armors are easy to one-shot. They have low speed, low RES, and specialized weapons that deal incredible damage to them. And yes, I'm thinking 80% of enemies can't be one shot in Church Mode Endgame unless you have 48+ Str: https://imgur.com/a/YBRhYnc I mean, take a look at this Gremory for goodness sake. You need 33 STR + Silver Lance+ x3 Critical to one-shot it (lets ignore Miracle). And Gremories have the lowest defense of all of the enemies. Upgrade to a Sniper, and you need 43 Str to one-shot with Wrath+Vantage + Silver Bow. And apparently everyone has Miracle in this route's endgame.

Dancer Ferdinand being immune to these units means that he's dancing on the front lines (or Gambit-ing), contributing to Player Phase. Alert-stance builds lose their player phase, which means no gambits, no rallies, no player phase attacks. Alert Stance is useful only for the "draw enemies in maneuver", which is helpful but there are many more situations where the high-avoid is needed. Second: as soon as you need to deal with more than 1 weapon type (ex: Sword Hero + Gauntlet War Master), your "breaker" skills become useless. I think there's plenty of good opportunity to use "breaker" skills, but they simply aren't as reliable as a catch-all +20 avoid when holding a sword. At a minimum, Dancer Ferdinand can be dancing on the frontlines, unafraid of any foe that comes near to him. In weird cases, he may even serve as primary lure as you can send him in deep with lots of avoid. Dancer gives +20 Sword Avoid skill, the only skill that you can "slap" onto any unit in the game. This is by far the most limited "avoid" resource in the game. Your dancer should become a dodge-tank to take advantage of this incredibly rare resource. The only other "unconditional" avoid skill in the game is White Magic +20 avoid from Byleth and Dorthea's white magic. Dorthea seems like a bad idea, but I've been arguing for Holy Knight Byleth dodge-tank (useful for front-line Byleth healing duties). All other resources are common. All fliers have +10 natural avoid and a natural path for Alert Stance. Evasion Rings can be bought from Anna's shop by endgame, and stolen from multiple enemies in the early game (pre-timeskip). +Evasion battalions are a dime-a-dozen: Brigid Hunters, Jeralt's Mercinaries, Aegir Astral Knights, Opera Co. Volunteers, Gautier Knights, and more have +15% or +20% avoid Battalions. Immortal Corps is also a 15-avoid flying battalion, with Galatea Pegasus Co. okay at 10 Avoid (but flying) Hmm... I'll give you this point for sure. I guess "Poking" enemies and then delivering the final blow with Wrath + Vantage is turn efficient.

Cross Vantage+Wrath off your list of strategies in Maddening. If you need to tank a hit, you can't rely on Vantage + Wrath one-shotting enemies anymore. In any case, enemies tend to come at you in groups. You probably will need to have a consistent enemy-phase plan when the aggro group charges together into your units. I mean, sure, Dodge-tanks aren't "necessary". But... its nice to have someone who is literally immune to these kinds of enemies. 115 Avoid Ferdinand is again, literally immune. So Ferdinand is a braindead easy way of handling that kind of enemy.

Felix has +10% speed growth over Byleth and +1 speed. Pre-battalions (which happen to be unusually more difficult than later maps...), Felix gets +5 from his personal (up against Jeralt's Mercinaries which starts at +1 might and caps off at +3 Might IIRC), so I'm going to give the overall win to Felix frankly. Byleth gets better in the midgame as better battalions come online, but then Felix's superior STR and Speed growths just take over from there on out. Extrapolating over the Blue Lions: Dimitri, Felix, and Catherine (with a bit of abusive early-recruitment) will likely be physically stronger than Byleth. Byleth is certainly "good", but I wouldn't call him "best" or even "great". Whatever the #1, #2, or #3 enemy threats are, I've got the 3 characters who will probably deal with them better than Byleth. Speaking from experience: even normal mode enemies will out-damage the healing of Physic, especially Gremory Physic (lacking the +10 boost). You really want Healing Staff + Bishop + Physic to minimize the turns healing, and maximizing your killing. You're one-shotting this guy with Wrath + Vantage? Even WITH a 3x Critical, you need 61-might (12 Silver Bow + 49 Strength) to one-shot him. And even then, that Miracle may cause an issue. Your Bow Knight also needs 34 AS or greater to not get quadruple-hit (that's a 55 Attack x4 Brave Sword) (EDIT: woops, I was reading speed stat. 34 AS, not 43 as initially reported) Lol at 114 Hit though. Dancer Ferdinand is literally immune to him. 4x Attacks with 0% chance of hit is 0 hits.