ZanaLyrander

I suppose that's possible, yeah. You could just cram a ton of abilities and combat arts into one class for War Cleric. Seems a bit forced, but I guess it would work. Honestly feels like a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist, there's no reason for Brawler and Grappler to be male only aside from them being male only in Three Houses, and it was dumb then too.

Huh. Do archers even benefit from Essence of Ice? I don't think there are any ice type combat arts for bow users unfortunately. Not that Bernie needs it, she can spam her combat arts all day anyway. Funnily enough, I tend to make Lysithea a Dark Knight or Mortal Savant, because she gets Proficient Witstrike, and thus can use her magic stat for everything regardless of what class you put her in or what you equip her with. I love the pink coloration on Constance's armor in Holy Knight and Dark Knight, it looks so cool.

I'm curious about what classes other people have been choosing for their favorite characters. Each character has a favored class line, so for characters where you choose not to keep them in that class line, which class do you prefer and why? For my part, I've been using the Dark Knight a ton. This is partially because I find most of the tome classes kinda sluggish, but also just because I love Dark Knight's combos. Dark Knight has become my main class for Shez, mainly because I love Shez's dark magic spells. Between Essence of Darkness, Fiendish Blow, Cornelia's staff, Dark Magic+, and a spear with Boost Combat Art/Magic lvl 3, my Shez's spells are absolutely devastating. For a while I was using Dark Spikes and Hades (learned from Lysithia), but I eventually realized with this setup, having both of those was overkill, and I replaced Hades with Luna. The massive AoE and crowd control of Luna combined with the insane damage boosts Shez has allows me to oneshot many commanders and whole armies of basic enemies with one Luna. On some more densely packed maps I've seen one cast of Luna rack up over 100 kills. I've also been having a lot of fun with Marianne and Dorothea as Tricksters, a good Witstrike weapon like Blutgang or Ridill, and suddenly they do a ton of damage (plus the added utility of Locktouch is really nice to have). What are some other character/class combinations that surprised you?

Shit, maybe Caspar is just weak. Shame he doesn't learn Eviscerate. But I will have to give that Essence of Fire Flamewhorl Kick thing a try, he can do that.

Fierce Iron Fist doesn't seem to hit as hard as I'd like, but I should probably go back to Dual Devastators, Mighty Blow has been kinda underwhelming.

I haven't used Balthus much, my exposure to gauntlets has pretty much just been War Master Caspar. I don't hate it, he just feels kinda sluggish compared to my favorite classes. Any tips on your favorite combat arts for gauntlets? I've been trying out a few of them and none of them have really clicked for me so far.

I'm of two minds about magic gauntlets. As you say, if it had the same moveset, it'd just be War Master but better. But at the moment, gauntlets kinda get the shaft in Three Hopes. They have minuscule weapon variety compared to most other weapon types, they have only one master class, including unique classes, and are only usable by half the cast. And their moveset and combat arts honestly doesn't even feel all that good to me. I loved gauntlets in Three Houses, but in Three Hopes I feel like they're not powerful or fast enough to compensate for their short reach and limited utility. A magic gauntlet class would at least provide them with some versatility, even if it did make War Master kinda redundant.

Yeah, I heard about that, it's kinda neat that combos are based on weapon rank like that. It'd be nice to have a mounted sword class anyway. Weird to think that this would be the first non magic sword master class. Magic using master classes were handed out in a really lopsided fashion. All the final evolutions of Myrmidon and Monk and all but one of the final evolutions of Soldier are magic users, but none of the final evolutions of Fighter are.

...Huh, it literally just occurred to me that Three Hopes quietly removed the Hero class. I mean there was really never any reason to use the Hero class in Three Houses, which is probably why it took me this long to notice. That might be a cool thing to add back in at some point, with an upgraded version of the Mercenary's combos perhaps?

I kinda like the idea of a bard class that uses bows and has access to magic.

Well that's nice at least. Though honestly with how quick it is to master those, that barely saves any time.

That's honestly fair. At that point you've already been through the story 'pure', there's no need to be so strict with it. Let the player choose their own level of immersion at that point.

Let me start by saying that I totally understand why the units you unlock with renown after beating the game can't be used in story mission or auxiliary battles, and why they don't show up in the camp. It just wouldn't make sense from a story perspective. What frustrates me is the inability to train those units via the Training Instructor. You can level them up, you can purchase upgrades for them at that Tactics Instructor, but you can't train them to give them class experience directly, which is a pain in the ass.

That would be very nice to have. And yeah, most of the Divine Weapons aren't great for much other than defense, with a few notable exceptions that actually get secondary weapon abilities. Give Bernie The Inexhaustible, and she turns into a killing machine. And some of the Divine Weapons look like they only have one effect, until you realize they're effective against cavalry or armored units. But most of them are pretty basic. It kills me how bad the legendary tomes are, the vast majority of them are really unimpressive, and the divine tomes are all the exact same thing linked to different crests.

Yeah, these days I frequently brute force all of a monster's health bars. Like, I'll break shields if I can, but if not I just go "Don't care, didn't ask, plus Dark Spikes T" and nuke their health bars directly with magic and combat arts. Still, I will agree that gender lock classes were annoying in Three Houses, and have only become more annoying now that every class is restricted to a single weapon type and abilities and combat arts are all tied directly to classes.

I'd be all for female units getting access to gauntlets, but given how classes work in this system, introducing a single class that can use gauntlets for female characters wouldn't work well. Unlike in Three Houses, abilities and combat arts are entirely linked to classes, so a single female class with access to gauntlets would leave female units with no levels of Gauntlet Proficiency, and hardly any combat arts for gauntlets. They'd have to remove the gender-lock from Brawler and Grappler for that to be viable (which hey, I'd be all for). But unless they do that, War Cleric as a gauntlet class for female units wouldn't be very useful on its own.

Honestly, it kinda fucks me up to realize that essentially everything wrong with Fodlan can be traced back to TWSITD or Rhea. The sum total of those two basically accounts for 99% or more of the problems with Fodlan. This entire continent is being ruined by two factions of immortal assholes who have decided they know better than everyone else, and are fighting over who gets to rule the world, all while referring to themselves as saviors.

I'm a bit unclear on if those elemental personal skills benefit from the Essence of [Element] skills. Some people seem to indicate that they do, but the description at least doesn't seem to include abilities in the list of effects that it empowers, so I'm uncertain. But if they do, pretty much anyone with Essence of Fire, Lightning, or Wind could get some serious benefit out of those abilities. Honestly, Essence of [Element] are some of the best abilities in the game, they dramatically improve a ton of combat arts, spells, and combos.

Possibly. As you say, we'll never know since it never happened. But I do think Claude in Three Houses initially underestimated just how much of an impediment to his plan Rhea would have been. He was only just starting to uncover the level of shady shit the church had been up to prior to the war, he was investigating, but he'd only scratched the surface. I have to wonder if as he investigated further and learned more, perhaps he too would have come to the conclusion that the only way to make his dream a reality was removing Rhea from power, Edelgard just beat him to the punch. He's not a fan of the war in Three Houses, but he's definitely a fan of a Fodlan without Rhea in control, even if that would never have happened without Edelgard starting the war.

Exactly. Rhea has been in power for over a thousand years. She pretty clearly has no intention of stepping down any time soon. She has maintained her power that long, and in fact her grip on Fodlan has only increased with time. She is deeply entrenched in the very fabric of Fodlan, an intrinsic part of Fodlan culture. No matter how you do it, removing her from power is not going to be an easy process, and she's going to fight you every step of the way through every underhanded tactic in the book. As we see in Three Hopes, the church is not above assassination. Between that and manipulating public opinion through lies and deceit, honestly a war is probably the only way Fodlan is ever going to be free of Rhea's control. And as long as Rhea is in control, equality, social mobility, cultural exchange and cooperation with countries outside Fodlan, and basically everything else the protagonists are striving for is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible. People see Edelgard's war as drastic and excessive, but I see more as that dog in the comic finally going "THIS IS NOT FINE! HOW DID I LET IT GET THIS BAD?!" Yeah, at this point, drastic options are all we have left, because we've let things go on like this for a literal millennium without stopping it, and now the problem is completely intractable and can't be fixed without violence.

This statement bothers me, because on the one hand, I agree with it, and think starting a war is a bit drastic, but on the other hand... what 'better way' is there? Rhea basically controls all of Fodlan. I honestly can not envision a non-violent way to remove her from power and hold her accountable for her crimes. And any attempt to do so basically forces you into direct conflict with the Kingdom. Rhea has taken great pains to create a stable, unchanging system by which there is no real method of replacing her, her system is self-perpetuating, her edicts written in stone and unquestionable, because they're taken as the word of the goddess. It's something that bugs me about the story of Three Houses and Three Hopes. Both Claude and Dimitri agree with Edelgard's goals, but not her methods. Yet in terms of dealing with the central church and the shady shit they do, neither of them seem to have an alternative method. It's really easy to point fingers and say 'you're doing this wrong', much harder to say 'here's what you should be doing instead'.

Agreed. And the best case scenario is still a total lack of social mobility, religiously enforced xenophobia, massive inequality, and tremendously falsified history. It's as good as theocracies get, and it's still pretty bad.

The rest of the Ashen Wolves DLC classes are a must, though at this point I hope they make War Monk/Cleric a magic axe class instead of a magic gauntlet class. I honestly don't know how else they'd implement War Cleric in the game's current state, since there'd be nothing for it to evolve from for female units, and no way for female units to get the Gauntlet Proficiency abilities. I'd also kill for S rank supports. Subtracting the romance from Fire Emblem still feels wrong to me, let the ships sail. And yeah, some sort of randomly generated campaign mode allowing you to use any characters would be a welcome addition that would add a ton of replay value.

I was of two minds about Dimitri in Three Hopes. He doesn't get to quite the same heights as his character in Three Houses, but he also doesn't get to quite the same lows either.