Water Emblem

I think difficulty matters when it comes to performant units. In Maddening enemies scales up quick and does not attack if they will deal 0 damage (either by hit chance or defense). Best units: Alear with Tiki: This one is a bit of cheating: since Alear is a fixed deploy, they get quite the number of stat boosters. Tiki gives an already boosted Alear an AoE attack for a few turns which can be used to soften up a whole pack of enemies: sometimes even kill softer ones. The claw attacks also have pretty high crit rate. Panette as Warrior & Ike: Thanks to her exceedingly high strength (mid-30s vs everyone wondering in the low 20s) and high health pool, top off with a ridiculous crit rate, she everything you ask for in a frontliner. Anna: I started the game blind and went a bit too ham on donating early on. No regrets reclassing Anna to a mage then mage knight, as her high magic growth actually allowed her to keep up. Once Byleth is unlocked, she starts generating around 1.5k every map: consider that as paying for consumables. Exceeded Expectations: Hortensia: +1 range to staff and the occasional free use, on top of being a flyer makes her a lot better than I expected. While she is locked to B tomes with her unique class, her naturally high speed allows her to double enemies reliably. Goldmary: It's actually not really goldmary but the hero class. Dual assist on hero is amazing. She would otherwise struggle to keep up with damage. Kagetsu: While he may be slightly iffy when it comes to strength, his speed allows him to double enemies quite reliably. I should have swapped him out of Swordmaster earlier though: I couldnt decide upon a class. Disappointing Units: Most early game physical units: Alfred, Boucheron, Diamant, etc... after chapter 15 or so are when enemy defense spike up to the 20s with 50 hp, while my melee units have only roughly 20 str. If they cannot double an enemy, they are going to have a hard time doing meaningful damage. There will be wyvern knights and bosses in midgame with their defense in the high 20s where you units will just do no meaningful damage beside contributing to assist. They would have been fine if their def and res are a bit higher, but Diamant @ 16 str, 17 spd, 13 def and 8 res isn't going to cut it. Merrin and Yunaka: I am not quite sure about this one: their str isn't keeping up like the other units and will end up having their attacks bounce most of the time. Enemies ignore Yunaka if her avoidance is too high. Merrin doesn't quite have as much dodge but has higher str. I do always keep one of them around partner with Lucina: since it allows them to stack poison on bosses. The 3 poison stack really shine when you use multihit special attacks and brave weapons. All for one also does not quite care about your weapon damage. Daggers not contributing to the weapon triangle can be a bit annoying.