Czar_Yoshi

Rescue just tends to be the more common application of Staffbots. Also, two uses of Fortify pretty much always heals everyone to full, while if someone's very damaged one use often won't cut it either way, so small healing boosts aren't as big of a deal. For healing individual units, Recover always heals them to full anyway. Or you could use a Longbow instead and leave off AT. That's very much preferable to the Barracks, and Longbow+proc will be outdamaging just Double Bow most of the time anyway. And strictly speaking, there are other ways to get her to 75 Spd with a proc and no Barracks as well- give her a SM support or swap GF for the proc. Those are pretty bad options, but they do exist.

"even" Chrom? No, Chrom is at the top of the heap in terms of not being fresh. You've no need to worry about offending anyone by insulting Awakening's plot/characters here.

Here's another way to look at it: it's impossible to find a set of pairings that makes it impossible to clear S.Apo with a 0% chance of death, assuming the player's tactics are sound and there are no other restrictions on preparation. Basically, "bad" pairings don't exist- only ones that are much worse than the alternatives.

Since when does Awakening take place on Akaneia?

Gaius!Kjelle gets 5/5 Spd/Skl mods, which is on par with the better Severas- and enough to be a 75 Spd Wyvern (she'll have to forgo procstac for that though, but Luna by itself is still very potent). Donnel!Noire loses out on Astra, so she'll have to choose between Vengeance and just Luna- and she's one of the only children in the game with a negative Skl mod, which isn't very impressive. She does get AT for AN outside of Apo though, so it's not all bad. She also gets Valkyrie for another magical option. Doing Gaius!Kjelle and a non-GF Noire is also possible, and depending on your purpose for Noire could see her being more useful than with Donnel as a lackluster GF unit (especially if you've got an Avatar-F in the mix). She'll never be as good of a hard support as Nah due to lacking Tomefaire from her mother, but she has natural Sniper and Vengeance so you can still make something interesting out of her (Vaike makes a good father for her here). Whether or not either of these is worth it is up to you, but I usually do it (I prefer one great unit and one odd one than two lackluster ones).

Interesting? Potential? Yes. Has even a remotely feasible chance of happening? Nope. Because Awakening runs on Black and White Morality and even remotely considering the chance that Plegians could be good guys without openly defecting to Ylisse would ruin it in the dev's eyes. Unless they openly start disliking Awakening for some other reason, they're not going to make a game that throws its sequel under the bus (Awakening to SD's lore is different- it's rude and disrespectful to the lore, but doesn't change the light the story is portrayed under).

It's not as important as it was before, but there are still a few reasons to consider it. If for any reason you want Nah to be up front when your turn ends- maybe she's got Deliverer or something- then it might be worth it. If you're using a magically attacking Nah and physically attacking husband (or vice versa) then giving Nah a proc would allow you greater versatility against PavGis. Or you could leave it off for an extra skillslot for Auras.

Can they solo RaR3 with the right skills? If so, I think that's pretty good. Awakening gives you the potential to turn every single unit you have into a lawnmower, they're just different grades of lawnmowers. This is why it's so common to see people respond to pairing questions with "I used X, they worked great for me"- they probably did. Just not as great as they could have been.

Anyone who tries Lunatic(+) without knowing what they're up against will get hammered by the Prologue, no exceptions. Most of the people who do know what they're up against, especially if they're packing a -Def Avatar, will get a headache from Cht.2 and 3. Any chapter in Lunatic(+) where you realize you've been overleveling Fred and now must either restart or use DLC. And any chapter you manage to die on after turn 3 with Battle animations on, due to them taking quite some time. Restarts are much more tolerable if you turn them off. I have quite a bit of patience for this game, but these are some of the most common ones people fall into.

Because I've used the same attack over and over and it does the same amount of damage each time. Works in Online -> For Glory, at least. Funny story about spam: I was playing Pikachu against a Robin, he was trying to recover and I kept knocking him out of Elwind with Thunder Jolt (neutral B) by sending it down the side of the stage. His Elwind broke. He died.

Do you have an Ambassador Certificate? Sacred Stones is on there. If not, it's one of the cheapest FEs to get used online, so no big deal. It's also probably the most similar FE to Awakening in terms of gameplay (a lot of features from that game returned in Awakening, such as branching promotions, a world map with skirmishes and a postgame) but has one of the best villains in the series and is well regarded for it. Shadow Dragon is a little funky. I usually don't recommend looking up spoilers for RPGs before playing them, but in its case there's so little exposition you're more likely to wind up a little confused if you go in blind (especially if you've been playing Awakening. Awakening's lore acts like it's a sequel to SD, but it's not- different dark dragon, different hero, different geography, different everything). Anyway, enjoy your stay!

Even though the game says Stale Moves are still in, they don't seem to reduce damage anymore.

Nope, Auras never stack with themselves.

I think you're speaking to thin air, it's been almost two months... I support signing petitions for the lulz.

EXPonential growth is a very slow way of grinding units. You really should be using LB3, even with 8 exp for every single enemy you get 400 exp normally, 800 with Paragon and 1200 with paragon+Veteran. Since you'll get a little more than 8 when you're at Lv.1 promoted (Lv.50 on hard with a capped IL), it should be easy to go through one promoted class per clear there. Just grind Chrom up and give him DG+, LB and a good support class, run through CoY3 once if you're not sure you can take it and tank the map out on Leif's Gate. When I was making one of my Streetpass teams, I was able to get each Avatar from a new file to minmaxed with all stats capped and all five skills in around an hour each, earning their skill books along the way (earlygame -> CoY3 -> LB3 -> LB3 -> RaR3 was enough to cut it, and I used statboosters to polish off the odd uncapped stats).

Crash course on Nah: she can't have both GF and a proc without Avatar as her dad, and she can't have GF at all without either robbing Kjelle or Noire of it (both of them can use it better than her) or giving Avatar one of Sully/Tharja/Nowi. So, she's a female hard support. That's a niche that's unique to her, actually, and it plays very differently than male hard support if you want it to. Nah's only really unique father is Henry (I hold her to be the best Nah, but there are others that are pretty good)- Virion, Vaike and Stahl all make good choices for her as well. So basically, when you've got a male hard support, they've got Agg, and with Braves you get twice as many attacks in back as you get up front so it makes sense to keep Agg in the back as much as possible. But with Nah, if she stays in the back then Agg will always be up front- so in her case, it's both possible and useful to put a proc on her. Usually hard supports don't want this because they'll never be up front and it's useless, but in Nah's case she can always take the last turn, and have it be just as effective as the normal GF girls. The other notable difference with female hard support is the Spd pairup bonus- Dark Flier is a +3 Spd class with huge distribution and the general go-to answer for this, but Nah doesn't have that. Henry!Nah is good here because Henry passes Valkyrie (which has very similar pairup boosts to DF). The Henry!Nah build I usually go for is LB/Vengeance/TF/Anathema/Wrath. With a +15 crit Celica's, Nah's crit is high enough to count as an asset, and Vengeance+Wrath is pretty potent. Non-Henry!Nahs can still give a +Spd support through Bride- Virion and Stahl are good here for Bowfaire. Stahl in particular also offers Luna and Astra for a semi-standard set of LB/Luna/Astra/BF/Deliverer. Virion!Nah will have to make do with stat boosting skills: LB/Faire/All+2/Atk+2/Skl+2, as a Bride, Sage or Sniper. Stahl!Nah can also make a great Sniper, by the way, and she has Assassin/SF if you prefer that. Vaike!Nah will want to go Hero or Wyvern with Axefaire, usually. Hero is nice if you want to stay in the back because it gives Sage that +3 Spd without providing an offensive boost clash (allowing Nah much more freedom in who she marries- non-Henry!Nahs often find themselves stuck with Inigo), while Wyvern is great if she manages to score a Str-heavy husband (she'll need an Assassin support, or a Berserker and All+2 to hit 69 Spd) and wants to be up front. Vaike also gives AT if you have a spare slot. Brave forges: first make sure you hit whatever Hit threshold you're going for, then put the rest into mt. S-rank bonus matters only to the lead unit, supports don't get it. Don't forget WRB and WT stuff either (Axes get +10, Tomes/Bows/Lances get +5, WTA gives +15, WTD gives -15 and you lose your WRB). Also don't overlook enemy terrain bonuses, your forges, or the presence of stuff like Anathema and Charm. Don't be shy throwing Hit+20 around to patch stuff up, it's a great skill. 220 is the threshold for all non-boss enemies, there are a couple you'll need a lot more than that for though.

Ingame, I don't get all the kids. Aesthetically, I kill Tharja and thus never get Noire. When running a full team for Apo, you either marry Avatar 2nd gen or leave Lucina unpaired and then have her fight with Avatar at A using DS+ to get the same effect as an S support (there are a couple different ways to set up this workaround, but all of them involve using DS+ between a first gen unit and the unpaired 2nd gen one).

For what it's worth, they're actually very different- all of the Lunatic+ skills have 100% activation rates. They may be devastating, but they're also completely reliable after they've been rolled- which is the basic principle behind the idea that Lunatic+ can be mastered. Mastery skills, meanwhile, have low activation rates and devastating effects. They're basically giant, flashy +crit skills, and there's not very much you can do to prepare for them aside from stockpiling HP and Def.

Maybe. Maybe not. The title of this thread is "best"- but Awakening's metagame is a game of good and better, not bad and good. So while Vaike!Brady may be one of the worst Bradys, he's still got 51 Str as a Berserker/47 Mag as a Sage. Compared to Ricken!Laurent's 52 Mag and Vaike!Gerome's 57 Str, he's only down 10.53% from optimal 2nd gen Str and 9.62% from optimal 2nd gen Mag, which isn't actually that bad. Once you add LB, Rally, Agg and a forged Brave, he's at 99/105 Str and 88/94 Mag, a 5.71%/6.38% drop from maximum 2nd gen performance. Additionally, since even the best Brady can't reach Ricken!Laurent's Mag, it makes more sense to judge him against himself- most good Bradys get a Mag mod of 0, 1 or 2 from their dad. The best case Brady for Mag has 93, so he's actually only 5.38% worse than optimum. Do you want to reset over that much relative performance? It's your call. If time or aesthetics are factors, maybe you don't. If you do decide to reset again, swing by The Pairing Thread to make sure your plan is solid enough for your tastes so you don't find out about something else you overlooked much later.

Nope. Maribelle has a -3 Str mod and a +2 Mag mod. Vaike has a +3 Str mod and a -2 Mag mod, giving you some of the worst offensive mod clash in the game. Axefaire doesn't make up for any of that, since Brady already has Tomefaire and all the good Berserkers (Gerome, Yarne) will have it as well. I've no beef with your aesthetics, but this is a gameplay thread (unless TC says otherwise) and Vaike!Brady is going nowhere here.

That would just make it easier for Staffbots to get infinite exp, and reduce the odds of more dangerous skills appearing.

Exactly. But one could assume he is if only told about his other reclass options, knew Nowi and Tiki's class set, and accepted the similarity as proof. I was demonstrating exactly how silly it's possible for those kind of assumptions to make one look.

You know what? I did this too, and I'm proud of it. Technically I mistook her as Aversa and Impaled her with Extreme Prejudice, but whatever... And third, Laurent can get Counter on his own no matter who his dad is. If you really want it, get it without stomping his mods.

You want to hear Cervantes talk about his mustache. Just go with that. Seriously, the best line in the game just so happens to be one that was voice only...

Ingame, postgame or Apo? Normal, Hard, Lunatic or Lunatic+? Any special restrictions/goals? What pairings are being used? All of those questions have the potential to completely change this list, so I'm going to have to disagree with all of those (except Brady. He's pretty much always at his best as a Sage in remotely normal conditions).