Redwall

Lunatic LTC with unrestricted unit deployment involves a lot of flier-ferrying/Rescue chains, and I can't see Nosferatu helping much outside of Chs. 23 and 24, both of which are rout maps with rather strong enemies. And yeah, training other combat units is, I think, something that would feature in the absolute fastest LTC run. But if we're restricting ourselves to an Avatar+Chrom solo, I think Nos-tanking would result in the lowest turncount possible under that restriction.

No duh, I think Legault! realizes that. Yet you have folks like Doofina and PKL arguing that Galeforce/Rescue chains with Cordelia et al. are more efficient because they cost fewer turns. Although they're certainly correct about the lower turn counts resulting from such tactics, it certainly requires more planning to beat levels with a convoluted Galeforce/Dance/Rescue chain than it does with a Nosferatu-fest. If "efficient play" includes thinking / human time as a resource, then Nos-tanking is by far the most efficient thing to do since it requires absolutely no thought whatsoever. On the other hand, if "efficient play" considers only virtual resources (in-game wallet, turn counts), then yes, Nos-tanking is totally inefficient. Someone ought to flesh out for me what specifically distinguishes efficient from inefficient play in this tier list.

Ugh, Nah's Paralogue is such crap. I never actually finished that one--didn't have the patience to turtle everything and deal with the vanishing walls. Accuracy troubles with Grima can be handled really easily by parking Henry or Tharja right next to him. Anathema and Hex should allow Chrom's accuracy to go way up, and giving someone a Brave weapon (when Chrom is the secondary unit) further increases your expected damage by giving you up to four Dual Attacks with the Falchion.

Pretty much everyone is usable as a combat unit if you invest enough effort. With Henry, you'll want to feed him a lot of kills during Chs 13-15, as the enemy strength increases noticeably as soon as Ch 16 starts. I'm lazy, so I don't use Henry as a combat unit, but instead promote him immediately to Dark Knight for the +1 Mov from his Pair Up (he's also great as a Hex/Anathema bot for Grima, who otherwise has rather high Avoid). If you're satisfied with your team composition sans Henry, you may benefit from not feeding him any kills at all and just using him as occasional support.

The Physic staff obtained in Paralogue 2 isn't necessary to quick-clear Chapter 7. Minimizing cumulative turn count would probably be easier if you first do Chapter 7, which should be easily cleared in three turns with your current team and which I think cannot be cleared below three turns if you opt for full recruitment (people have cleared it in two turns on Hard mode, but I'm not sure if you'll recruit Cordelia that way). The more you postpone Paralogues, the faster you'll be able to clear them once you attempt them. My Chapter 8 clear was rather slow, so I can't say if the Physic staff might be important for a quick clear of that stage.

Forged bows/Wind magic only really become a threat in the last third or so of the campaign, so it's not really a dealbreaker to use fliers, who obviously can pay off big time with Galeforce and simply being able to move over otherwise untraversable [sic?] terrain. However, from poring over others' draft logs, it seems like in Hard mode (and possibly Lunatic, I dunno) it is not difficult to play around these things with flying units.

I wasn't flaming you, but I'm still disappointed at the lack of any support options, be they "family talk" or just basic interactions of the kind seen in the Platonic friendship supports.

being siblings does not preclude "deep relationships" that are non-incestuous

Counter seems like it would be counterproductive (no pun intended) on a Nosferatank. For Nosferatanking to work, you've got to be dealing lots of damage specifically with Nosferatu. Having Counter means that enemies whom you would ORKO with Nosferatu (and use to heal enemy_max_HP/2) would still get ORKOed, but at the cost of your Nosferatank only healing enemy_max_HP/2 - Counter_dmg. Against enemies with low offense, this isn't a problem, but against things like, for example, Berserkers with 74 HP who deal 34 damage to your Nosferatank, having Counter means that on you'll only heal (74-34)/2 = 20 HP compared to 74/2 = 37 HP without Nosferatu. The sorts of situations in which Nosferatanks find themselves mean that they can potentially get worn down much more easily with Counter equipped, though I guess these sorts of situations would not occur until late in the game when enemies have high Atk and Hit.

A lot of people swear by Lon'qu/Panne and like to use both in combat while building up that S support. In that pairing, I like to have Panne as the lead combat unit exclusively since she makes a better lead combat unit than...almost everyone not named Avatar. Any child character who inherits Veteran or Rally Spectrum is pretty much a showstopper, whether on Hard or on Lunatic. Lucina with Veteran needs almost no investment to become better than Say'ri since she gains nearly 100 EXP per paired-up kill for a long time. Although it sounds effective, I've never tried sticking Veteran on Yarne since Lucina comes a bit earlier and has many easy opportunities to get kills in the midgame chapters--Chs 14 and 15 feature a lot of weak mounted/armored units that she can ORKO. As for Rallybots, I'd say they're comparatively less useful on Hard since your other units are generally going to be pretty capable fighters with or without that +4 boost, but they're still really handy. From a HM LTC standpoint, getting a child Rallybot is probably not worth the turns, but Lucina needs no turncount investment and hence works great as the daughter of Avatar.

With Morgan on your team, the skirmish should be doable if you've got a lot of Rescue staves for guerrilla tactics. If you choose to avoid the skirmish, then you may as well use the Second Seal on Lon'qu to let him grow stronger.

on turn 1 I like to have Fred and Kellam team up to OHKO the Myrm and then have Virion transfer Kellam, trade-equip Frederick an Iron Sword, and attack the Myrm. As a result of this, the Barbarian will die from Fred's enemy-phase counter, but more importantly, the Dark Mage will position himself 1D from the fort and attack Virion. On turn 2 (might be turn 1; I can't remember, but if Fred can't complete the KO on the Barbarian, then you ought to have Sumia pair with him on turn 1), I have Sumia pair up with Fred, who moves to the fort and KOs the Dark Mage. From there it's pretty easy, as Fred/Sumia can dodge the axe-users reliably while taking next to no damage from the sword-users. I've never actually had a problem with the Mages when doing this because of the Res and Avoid granted by both Sumia and the Fort.

Yeah, the wide-open maps tend to put Olivia at a disadvantage if you adopt the tier list playstyle of eschewing Rescue-skipping, since you could instead field capable combat units. Olivia is comparatively more useful in Lunatic due to the smaller number of viable combat units you're likely to have, but I feel her position here is fair.

I played the hell of the demo and saw the 20%-accurate Hammer bandit in Chapter 1 hit Frederick well under 20% of the time, suggesting either a) small sample size or b) a two-number RNG. Unless "rather often" means "well above 30%" then it's hard to say that the game is outright lying to you wrt hit rates.

There are a few bosses who are on thrones: Chs 3, 17, and 20, off the top of my head, though the Ch 20 boss will move off the throne if you enter his attack range. Skills are not difficult to work around if playing at a difficulty below Lunatic+. If you're doing a LTC run of some sort, certain boss abilities (Pavise, Aegis) may make things slightly less reliable on Lunatic (and maybe Hard), but it's nothing that can't be dealt with. Gamble is only annoying if the enemy has something like Hawkeye to go along with it (which will only occur on Lunatic+). Enemy avoid is not unreasonable, and the player has many options to stack avoid on playable units: Tantivy, Quick Burn, etc. People have reported facing 0% hit rates against lategame bosses even on Lunatic and without -breaker abilities.

Why would you ever put a 1-range attacker, whether it's an Astra user or a Lethality user, in range of a Warrior with Counter? Either take him out on player phase with 2-range attacks or stay out of his range during the enemy phase.

The barrier to entry for effective Nosferatanking is practically nonexistent; Avatar will likely have passed Lv 10 Grandmaster by the time Nosferatu is purchasable, and can use the Ch 12 Second Seal for a seamless transition. In contrast, getting Sol on Avatar requires you to either be locked into 1-range attacks until Lv 5 Hero or burn an Arms Scroll, neither of which is as painless as the steps needed to get Nosferatanking quickly. And although Sol is a really good skill in general, characters like Vaike probably aren't going to break the game with it the way Avatar can.

Yeah, I'd reclass Olivia to Dancer--not sure why you reclassed her out of it to begin with (postgame prep?). Did you just reclass Avatar out of Grandmaster? If so, I'd be surprised if he had the Spd to double Yen'fay for the one-turn clear. If I were you, I'd just recruit Morgan (you probably won't miss Rally Strength since having Rally Love from the Bride class combined with Rally Spectrum on her should be pretty effective) and clear Chapter 18 the normal way in order to get your team some experience, as Chapters 23 and 24 are rout maps that can get annoying without either an overleveled Avatar (which you don't seem to have) or a balanced team with generally high levels (which you will probably have if you avoid completing assassination missions on turn one). The EXP from Ch 18 certainly isn't required, but it might save you some headaches in the later chapters.

You haven't really given an objective metric of "usefulness." Something like, for example, saving turns, is more well-defined than "being useful throughout the game," in which case Rescue users with high base Mag and Galeforce-capable units would be high tier.

FoD = Future of Despair, a forthcoming DLC set.

Just curious, OP, what stage are you on currently? I haven't tried solo Avatar myself, but it seems like there aren't too many options near the beginning: giving +Def to Avatar as the asset and pairing him with Frederick seems like the consensus when it comes to making the game as easy as possible. If you indeed are losing simply because of bad RNG rolls, then all that remains is to keep trying until you don't get terrible luck. I stopped using him as a lead combat unit after Chapter 12, but he does work well until about Chapter 16 or so, by which time the stat curve really shifts and makes it difficult to justify continued usage of Frederick as anything other than a (really solid) support partner.

Yarne's sidequest should be enough for support grinding, as you'll have a lot of combat if you choose to engage both teams. I really don't think two Nosferatankers are better than one if your goal is to make the game as easy as possible. If you just have Avatar as a Sorceror and field no-one else but Chrom, you can quite literally mash start to skip the enemy phase, whereas having two Nosferatu users means that experience gets split and neither one receives as much EXP as he or she could otherwise. Additionally, Chrom wants some Str for the final boss, so fielding Avatar and him exclusively gives him many opportunities for Dual Attacks that would fetch him some EXP; this is important since Nosferatu won't do crap against the final boss. That said, the total absence of difficulty resulting from soloing the game with Nosferatu Avatar+Chrom support makes things...not that fun.

Merely using 1-2 range weapons doesn't seem like it would directly benefit you during the enemy phase, when enemies with Counter and 1-range Silver weapons charge at you with reckless abandon. Likewise, although Galeforce helps you take out an extra enemy during player phase, you'll still have to tank a decent number of enemies during the enemy phase, and abilities like Counter and Aegis+ present huge challenges to Nosferatanking. How prevalent would you say Counter was during the last few chapters? I'm also wondering how you got Henry and Tharja to become decent combat units. That seems kind of challenging, especially after having reclassed them to Dark Knight for Lifetaker. Because of their mediocre Spd, they would presumably be finishing kills set up for them by someone like Avatar, which doesn't seem a great way to quickly gain experience.

Wait, Chapter 16 gave you trouble? I'm surprised you didn't just Rescue-skip it; you don't even need Galeforce. I would have expected stages like Chapters 23 and 24 to be a bit more challenging on Lunatic+ due to the high enemy density (which becomes much more of a threat when a good chunk of the map has Counter, preventing an Avatar dodgetank bonanza). I never got past Ch 5, but I'll probably resume Lunatic+ at some point. Why not just try it out? If you don't want Donnel, then it's less annoying of a level. If you do want him, then feeding Donnel a Str Tonic might give you some more options, and giving him a +Hit Bronze Lance forge can save you some resets.

The enemy stats increase sharply around Chapter 17 or so; 30 Spd won't let you double very many enemies, and Libra's Mag stat is probably mediocre enough that the enemy phase healing won't generally be enough to sustain his middling Def+HP. If you want to use Nosferatu, you may as well go all out by using Avatar, whose large level advantage grants him the numbers needed to solo entire stages.