Redwall

I don't disagree: Lucina's not as good a candidate as Morgan (and reclassing her is not productive at all in, say, LTC).

No escaping your pedantry. Although there's no objectively "best" decision since the criteria people like to use to judge units (turncounts, reliability, hair color) are arbitrary, we can in principle show, given most combinations of characters, that using a Second Seal on Lucina or Morgan will in general not be as harmful to your turncounts and/or reliability as will using it on Virion. If you're not rating units according to TCs or reliability, then that's fine since the RTUs are ultimately our opinion; nonetheless, there's no denying that a good chunk of the ratings are written with semi-efficient play in mind, and that most people are going to be assuming Second Seals on the Morgans as opposed to the Virions.

It is not a net negative. Besides the Avatar and Panne (who should already have reclassed), the other units competing for Second Seals don't have Veteran.

You need 16 PAtk or 13 MAtk to cleanly ORKO the boss with the Avatar when aided by a Frederick Dual Attack. Not sure if that's gonna happen without additional +Str rigging and a +Str asset.

Using the Second Seal on Lucina has no opportunity cost when abiding by the tier-list playstyle.

Für Elise

A capped +Def/-Lck Sorceror with a Mag Tonic has 52 MAtk when equipped with a Nosferatu tome. This is enough to reliably ORKO every enemy in C23 save for the Sorcerors, who are no threat due to the Avatar having Tomebreaker. The only remotely threatening enemies are Validar and Sorcerors who also have Tomebreaker, but the latter don't hit nearly as hard as you'd think. The Generals require a single Dual Attack from Chrom at high odds.

Thanks to an availability lead, Ricken can promote for Rescue staff access or a horse. And unlike Henry, Ricken comes in time for ferrying your guys through the desert chapters.

Location was part of my rationale, but I was also thinking that the Energy Drop would also have been a waste on Lucina since it would have boosted her damage on Grima by only a point per hit. Although if Chiki uses it on a physical Morgan, then yeah, I suppose the Energy Drop may lessen the amount of rigging needed, and possibly wind up cutting forge expenses by more than the worth of the Bullion (M).

Independently figuring out how to trivialize FE 13 earlygame with a +Def Avatar requires a nontrivial amount of FE knowhow. The water trick wasn't uncovered until recently, AFAIK; even those players who realize the Avatar can traverse water tiles won't necessarily put two and two together in that particular context. Putting the water trick aside, you can plan out a clear that feeds all but one or two kills to the Avatar, but the players who are clever enough to figure that out on their own are unlikely to struggle with the remainder of the earlygame with or without the Avatar. That said, it's definitely true that post-C13 Lunatic is a joke since having a strong Avatar by that point requires much less planning than would having a strong Avatar by the end of Prologue.

I only see two Energy Drops being practical: Chapter 8 and Renown. There's one in Chapter 18, but it's probably preferable to shoot for the Bullion (M) instead.

FE11 H5 isn't difficult at all unless you're LTCing (which I haven't tried in H5). Mostly it's just tedious since average damage output (accounting for hit rates) against bosses is really low.

I don't think Short Spear Sumia will find much use in C6. The Fighters OHKO her at base even after a Def Tonic and Frederick C-supported Pair Up. If you postpone the reclassing for too long, it's possible that getting Galeforce may not be worth the turns. Not too sure.

The decision hinges on C5. The lowest turncounts I'm aware of under your ruleset for Prologue through C4 won't change whether you go with +Spd, Mag, or Def. The C5 Wyverns have 11 Spd (the stats don't vary in LM)...I suppose it may be possible to scrape by in that chapter with either +Str (to boost Bronze Lance damage since you'll have WTD, or alternatively Bronze Axe if you go with Wyvern) or +Mag if you rig enough Spd. You need 1-2 range on the Avatar to do C6 quickly; for this reason, the Second Seal will probably be used after C4 to build up weapon rank in C5. Either that or you'll postpone reclassing until sometime after C6 to preserve access to tomes as a Tactician.

I don't understand your concern about high variance, eclipse. If my math is right, the variance for a 60% growth is 0.24, and the variance for a 50% growth is 0.25. Not really a big difference, imo. I think the only competitive character for whom Speed is a problem is Nowi, though her problem is mitigated if she gets enough P4 kills. With a C-support from Cordelia and *no* Spd Tonic, after 16 gained level-ups Stahl (and Vaike) has a 77.28% of doubling the Cavs in C12. A Spd Tonic pushes this higher, and if worse comes to worst, Stahl can just cross his fingers for a good level-up during the enemy phase.

Helswath was the only weapon I bothered with in my run, and C24 was the only reason I wanted it at all. My plan was to have Flavia/Basilio tank the entire top portion of the map. Without them, I suspect my clear would have taken a great deal longer since durability is a problem; the enemies are all rather beefy and all have Hit+20 by that point in the game, so dodge-tanking with a Dark Flier would probably require more resets than you have the patience for. I don't see the Valflame being useful on anyone besides Validar, but you can just forge Celica's Gale for him, no?

Chapter 15 has an Arms Scroll in one of the houses. It might cost a turn or so to get it, but I'm 99% sure it's worth the turn(s).

Getting Cherche levels in her join chapter is relatively painless (assuming the tier list playstyle) if Lon'qu has a Spd Tonic in his inventory. After using the Tonic during the player phase (not a big deal since it's an EP-heavy chapter), she ORKOs Cavaliers and Knights with the Hammer. I don't see a need to penalize Cherche for needing a Spd Tonic if feeding her that Tonic has no opportunity cost, which it won't in a brisk playthrough since money will be abundant.

Any particular reason for +Spd? Not sure if it makes any difference since in principle you could just rig growths, but I think +Mag might lessen the rigging you need, since you'll be gaining at least 28 levels in the Pegasus branch, which has naturally high Spd growth. In C3, I believe a +Mag Avatar requires about one-tenth the resets for the four-turn clear than does an Avatar with any other setup. Hmm...I guess without Rally Spectrum, Lucina is probably better at Grima-killing than Chrom is simply due to (likely) needing fewer resets. The issue is that training both Lucina and Morgan makes it harder to get them to A support. What are you thinking about wrt reclassing Morgan? XeKr brought up the possibility of a Griffon in my topic, but E-ranked axes might be a problem. I like to save the Arms Scroll for Flavia to allow her to tank the top half of C24 with the Helswath and Basilio Dual Attacking with a Killer Bow to finish off Wyverns; it's possible that the Arms Scroll might go better on Morgan, though.

Very solid unit. With a Spd Tonic and Lon'qu Pair Up, base Cherche doubles every unpromoted enemy in her join chapter, and every non-Myrmidon unpromoted enemy in the next, allowing her to grow just as well as any other unit. I prefer her as a staffbot ferry since she can insta-promote to Griffon Knight. 6/10, 7/10 with bias because rest in pieces. [spoiler=I challenge you to look her in the eye and tell her she's overrated. Can't do it.]

I'm liking FE12 H3 so far; it's definitely more of a team game than FE13 Lunatic, which is basically "go bananas with Fred and the Avatar earlygame, then replace Fred with Morgan lategame." Thank goodness DS games aren't region-locked.

There is no difference between a LTC tier list with completion and a completionist tier list performed in the minimum TC. In both cases, the goal is to complete the game (where "complete" may adopt one of several meanings) in the lowest turncount possible under those constraints. There exist many chapters that are made much less interesting this way. I got FE12 in the mail recently, and I can confirm that C10 on H3 is absolute crap if you go for all the treasure chests; on the other hand, if you simply gun for the throne and recruit Ellerean, it permits a rather clean two-turn clear that requires a bit of thinking. In FE13, Chiki mentioned C17 and C20, both of which become a lot less fun if you go for every treasure chest due to the poor enemy placement. Both stages have a severe case of enemy diarrhea, and stair-blocking in C17 is more tedious than difficult, in my opinion. Adding more arbitrary criteria than we need is not the right course of action unless you can show it brings a worthwhile element (thinking, for example) to the game. I admit that in my efficiency run of FE13, I made a point to recruit every first-generation character; however, this was in some sense contrary to the goals of LTC, and a LTC without a full-recruitment requirement can in general be logically preferable. I remember watching one of dondon's H5 videos and seeing him wait for several turns just to recruit Est when he knew he could have cleared the stage much more quickly had he not recruited her at all. Again, all tier lists assume the player is completing the game.

Yeah, it's very possible that much of the regret borne out in that study is due to the old "he's a stud, she's a slut" belief, and not due to the males making any deliberate effort to mistreat the females.

Is it bad that that made me think of this? Also, I totally messed up the title. There goes my serious post.

How do you prefer to eat yogurt? Serious question, obviously.