ZanaLyrander

I admit, I'm kinda bummed we don't get to see Cleobulus' true form, especially given the bombshell that he's actually male. I mean damn, we knew the Agarthians could magically disguise themselves, but Thales, Solon, and Kronya at least had similar builds to their disguised forms. Cleobulus' disguise is, uh, quite impressive.

It's more than just the teleport really. Shez's overall mobility and speed is nuts, and in terms of wracking up kills needed for an S rank, Shez can just run into a crowd, cast Essence of Dark Boosted Luna, and then zip away, picking up like 50-100 kills in the background on the way to their objective, quite possibly destroying a commander in the process. Shez's contribution to the overall success of the mission is bonkers, and really can't be beat. Even if you swap out their personal skill for Sylvain's, like I've been doing more recently, they still have excellent map presence with Shadow Slip if you make effective use of it, and they're strong enough that they don't struggle with anything Maddening can throw at you. I do think you're correct, it is unfair of me to penalize Dimitri just because there are better lance users in my opinion. I should follow my own advice from the other tier list thread, other units being better doesn't make a unit worse. It does suck that there are so many powerful lance units in AG, but that's not Dimitri's fault and I can't hold it against him as a unit. But I do stand by my rating for Dimitri. Dimitri is a powerful, reliable, one-trick pony. It's a damn good trick, but he's not terribly flexible, and he struggles against certain challenges. I suppose that's what sets Shez apart in my mind. Dimitri is damn good at what he does, but he's kinda focused. Shez may not be the best of the best in any given area aside from map presence, but they can handle anything. Still, Dimitri definitely sits at the top of A tier in my mind, and it'd be tough to unseat him from that throne. If you're better than Dimitri, you belong in S tier, no question.

Shez I'd definitely still put as mid to high S tier. Their Shadow Slip ability, Asura class, and dark magic are just so freaking powerful that any other criticisms fall by the wayside. The fact that other units might be objectively stronger seems irrelevant when discussing a unit who can be essentially everywhere and annihilate even some of the strongest commanders on Maddening with one or two spells, and carve through hordes of enemies with insane combos. Sure, in a one on one fight, there are plenty of other characters I consider S tier who would probably beat Shez, but that's not how this game works, and in terms of winning battles, in terms of completing the mission successfully (with an S rank), Shez can't be beat. It's certainly a fair point that switching Dimitri to Dark Knight or Holy Knight is essentially free, but the problem is, even while I just went on about how Dark Knight and Holy Knight are better than Great Lord, Dimitri's stats and abilities really aren't geared towards magic use, which means that as a Dark Knight or Holy Knight, he gets outcompeted by the other lance users like Sylvain, Ingrid, or even Rodrigue. Don't get me wrong, I've spent quite a bit of time with Dimitri as a Dark Knight, and given how OP spells are in this game, a Thoron from Dimitri still freaking hurts. But he's still not as good as Sylvain, and even Ingrid gives him a run for his money. Having said this, I suppose 'not as good as Sylvain' is a tremendously unfair comparison, I consider Sylvain a strong contender for the best unit in the game.

Okay, let me try my hand at a proper analysis this time.

Have you done every route? You usually get him on your third route. Yes and no. Character stat growths are apparently fixed, class stat growths are randomized like in Three Houses.

I keep going back and forth between Dark Spikes and Hades for Shez. They're both insanely high damage spells with one final big hit. The only real tradeoff is effectiveness against cavalry vs slightly better AoE.

It really is weird that they gave his son a name, but not him, when his son doesn't even show up (aside from a possible cameo in the SB route as one of the NPCs in a survey spot?), while Baron Dominic himself is a somewhat important player in the story.

Well to be fair, a lot of people in the monastery were apparently commenting that fake Monica was acting like a completely different person. I think the implication is that Kronya isn't as good an actor as Solon was.

I mean, she's pretty clearly a mage in Three Hopes. And she has an innate ability keyed to Trickster, so she'd probably have sword proficiency too, maybe a hidden talent for it.

The damage increase from effective damage is still fairly significant, but not massive. I never played the first FEW so I wouldn't know how it compares. But the stun gauge damage from effective weapons seems pretty massive, you can shred stun gauges with effective weapons.

I've heard that, and it makes me want to try giving Failnaught and the Riegan Crest Stone to Hapi, just to use her to annihilate monsters. Since Fallen Star does damage based on Mag rather than Str, she'll probably be more effective with it than Claude himself ironically, Claude's magic stat isn't great, I usually give him The Inexhaustible instead of Failnaught, unless I have multiple archers.

That's a solid point, there aren't that many missions where you have to defend a base. There are some, and I've lost missions where I wasn't paying attention and a point I was supposed to protect fell, but it doesn't happen often enough for dedicated healers to be more than a very situational niche.

Healing spells are fairly situational, it's true. But in most main missions I find that having a single unit with a healing spell, preferably one of the ones you're not controlling, can be very useful. Like, with elixirs, you don't usually need them for your own units, but there are so many "don't let X be routed" objectives that being able to heal NPCs is extremely handy.

I support the second option, for the same reason, it'd keep it much fresher to swap back and forth between houses. I might even suggest having the Ashen Wolves + Church of Seiros characters as a fourth column to iterate through, if only so we don't have to do all of them in a row once we finish with the main three houses.

Honestly just having a crest, even if it doesn't help your current playstyle, is still a big deal because it allows you to equip Hero's Relics without using a Crest Stone accessory. I feel like the difference between the best crest and the worst crest isn't huge, but there's still a very large, qualitative difference between units with and without crests, and that should definitely factor into their rating.

I swear, every time Hilda hits someone with War Strike, I feel like the game should just skip the death animation and immediately delete their character model, because that's pretty much exactly what it does to their health bar. I almost feel like War Strike was an apology from the developers to axe users for not letting them use magic. Meteor is another great opener for spells like Agnea's Arrow, and it lasts a crazy long time. The only problem I have with it is how short range it is, I don't ever want my Gremory getting that close to an enemy if I can help it. It's still a great spell, it just requires a change in mindset. Thoron is definitely the best Lightning spell imo, even if it doesn't really effectively combo from/into any other spells, it doesn't really need to, it's high damage at absurdly long range, and that's all you really need. And yeah, Excalibur juggles enemies for so long, you hardly even need a followup spell if you're playing as a sword or lance class: just cast Excalibur and then shred their stun gauge with combos while they're stuck in the air, that's what I do with Holy Knight Lindhart and the effect is devastating.

God, I can not tell you how annoyed I was about that in Three Houses. People give Fates shit, but removing weapon durability was a fantastic change imo, and one I was really hoping would stick around. Three Houses allowing you to repair weapons was a decent compromise, but they still fucked up by making the materials needed to repair the legendary weapons finite, which still lead to the absurd situation of 'oh boy I got a super strong weapon, better never use it until the last mission'. Honestly, Three Hopes has the best version of weapon durability I've ever seen, I think this should become the standard for future fire emblem games: weapon durability is only consumed by combat arts/spells, and automatically refills at the end of battle. That's honestly the perfect compromise.

My strategy in Three Hopes typically makes heavy use of combat arts and spells, so at this point I figured it was time to have a discussion on which ones I've had the most success with for each weapon type, mainly to hear which ones others have had the most success with. After all, there are a lot of different CA and spells, even after plenty of runs, I probably still haven't used them all. Let's start with Swords. Honestly, the sword combat arts kinda frustrate me, I've tried tons of them and few of them really click with me. I'm a big fan of Electric Grounder, and both Windsweep and Firesweep are very useful, but most of the non-elemental sword CA feel kinda unimpressive to me. Even Shez's unique CA, Swift Slice, while tremendously powerful and impressive, annoys me because of its insanely high cooldown and durability cost. I think the real problem I have with the Sword combat arts is that every single master sword class can also use spells, and nine times out of ten, it feels like spells deal more damage due to most enemies having lower resistance than defense. The one exception is probably Beast Fang, Blutgang's crest specific combat art: high damage, heals the wielder based on the damage dealt, and effective against cavalry. If it wasn't so short range, I'd call it completely overpowered. Axes fare much better. As far as I can tell, everyone can learn War Strike from the Warrior class, and if you're using an axe class and not using War Strike, take a long hard look at what you're doing wrong with your life, because War Strike is broken as shit. I've also made fruitful use of Armored Strike, Focused Strike, and Lighting Axe/Returning Axe, not to mention the multitude of insanely nasty combat arts keyed to the axe Hero's Relics. For Lances, leaving aside Dimitri's insanely powerful Paraselene and Atrocity, I've gotten very good use out of Glowing Ember, Frozen Lance, and Knightkneeler. Having said that, since most lance master classes can also use magic, they do still have kinda the same problem as swords, because spells are just so powerful in this game. Bow combat arts I definitely get a ton of use out of, because The Inexhaustible is ridiculously overpowered. My usual tactic is to give each archer one wide AoE combat art, such as Flame Volley, Drill Arrow, or in Claude's case the absurdly overpowered Wind God, and one long range, high damage combat art, typically Deadeye, but sometimes Precision Volley. Bows definitely support a combat art centric playstyle better than most weapon types. For a while, I had a hard time finding Gauntlet Combat arts that I liked. Obviously for Balthus, Eviscerate is a no-brainer, but for others, I haven't yet found anything that can top the Flamewhorl Kick + Duel Devastators combo, which is arguably all you need, but I haven't been impressed by most of the other combat arts for gauntlets. Finally we come to spells. Honestly, it'd probably be a lot quicker to list the bad spells than the good ones, spells in Three Hopes are crazy strong. As such, I'm going to list my favorite spell combos instead, as I have found numerous spells that work tremendously well in conjunction with each other, using one as an opener, and the other as a finisher while the enemies are still trapped in the effect of the first. Luna followed by Dark Spikes or Hades is devastating, especially for Essence of Darkness users, this is my favorite combo for Shez. Bolganone followed by Hades is also insanely strong, and both benefit from Essence of Fire. Excalibur followed by Agnea's Arrow is frankly absurd, this combo wipes out basically everything, and shreds the stun gauge of anything that miraculously survives. While not quite as powerful as the Excalibur/Agnea's Arrow combo, any spell which freezes enemies in place like Blizzard or Fimbulvetr is also a very viable opener for a Agnea's Arrow finisher, as the only real drawback of Agnea's Arrow is how easy it is for enemies to guard against it. These are my favorites combat arts and spells, please give your own recommendations, there's certainly plenty of choices, and not everyone will have tried all the options.

Nah, it's the same in Three Hopes, only Blyeth and Sothis can use the Sword of the Creator because the story demands it. It's just a shame the writers decided to do that, because Three Houses made a big deal about the fact that Edelgard also has the Crest of Flames, but she still can't use the only legendary weapon associated with the Crest of Flames, so all it really does is give Edelgard some healing now and then.

Hmm... that's interesting. I haven't played a lot of Warriors games, but I've heard DLC which (among other things) raises the level cap isn't uncommon, perhaps they're planning ahead for that?

That's fair. I also just think there are so many enemies with high defense and low resistance that having at least one character with Suttungr's Mystery to spam spells is very nice to have, but not strictly necessary. Since Dorothea can teach Agnea's Arrow to anyone if you're patient enough, having a matching crest for Suttungr's Mystery isn't really necessary, though ideally you give it to someone with at least some crest, using up your accessory on a crest stone sucks. As for Hapi vs Lysithea, unless you're playing Azure Gleam and Lysithea isn't available, I mostly agree that Lysithea is just strictly better, though Hapi does get Armsthrift which I wish Lysithea got, spamming spells is expensive in terms of durability, for some longer missions, unless you find purple pots, Lysithea is in danger of running out towards the end. And I suppose Hapi is really handy to have when fighting monsters. But other than that, you're definitely better off using Lysithea.

Yeah, Shattered Sky in theory has Cannot Guard. But either it's a bit glitchy, or in practice it does not have that attribute, because I've seen multiple enemies block the whole thing and take no damage. On the subject of combat arts, I can't help but be kinda annoyed by Swift Slice. Don't get me wrong, it's crazy powerful. It's effective against all unit types, does heavy damage in a good AoE, and factors in Shez's ludicrously high speed. And that's not even mentioning how cool it looks. And yet it still doesn't feel strong enough to justify its absurdly long cooldown and high durability cost, especially when I feel like I can get similar or frequently better results out of one of Shez's ridiculously strong dark magic spells like Dark Spikes.

Regular attacks on the Gremory are literally just a space filler while you're waiting for your spells to cool down, and if you've got Suttungr's Mystery, you usually don't even use them for that because your cooldowns are so short. Pretty much, yeah. Though I admit, I still use Annette as a Gremory because otherwise I wouldn't have any tome wielder (I have Mercedes as a Holy Knight), and leaving Suttungr's Mystery on the shelf just feels wrong, it's too powerful to not use. And while Crusher Annette is fantastic, I had Dorothea teach Annette Agnea's Arrow a while back, and discovered that Excalibur + Agnea's Arrow pretty much instakills anything and everything in the room. But yeah, in pretty much every run, I have at most two tome wielders, usually only one, and swap every other magic using character to lances or swords.

I'm convinced that the only good way to use a Gremory in this game is to hand them Suttungr's Mystery and have them go around nuking shit. Bypass the combos altogether, just spam devastating spells until everything is dead. If you ever use regular attacks with a Gremory, chances are you're doing something wrong, and you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Eugh, don't get me started on the tome movesets. Even leaving aside how many orphaned movesets they have, almost none of them feel satisfying to use. Their combos are slow and clunky, leave you open to attacks, and outside the spectacular finishers, really don't have much satisfying impact. The Dark Mage/Dark Bishop moveset is the closest there comes to a satisfying tome moveset, and even that can't compete with most other weapon types. It's why I mainly just spam spells with Gremory, their combos feel so pathetic.