Czar_Yoshi

The way stats are calculated, your unit's actual stats are added to the bases of whatever class they're in, and then lowered if they're above the class caps- so basically your Mag will go up again once you switch to a class with a higher Mag cap. The only downside is that it can't keep growing while you're in Merc, so even once it goes back up it might be kind of underwhelming compared to your other stats. If you go through enough classes they'll all eventually get high enough, though.

Good about LB, but remember that Rouges and Redeemers 3 isn't a cakewalk and you'll have to do it ~15 times if you want LB on all your units. Apo doesn't change with the difficulty of your file but RaR3 does, so hopefully you're not playing Lunatic. Severa can try Vantage/Vengeance as a Dark Flier, but the main problem is that VV means you die if you miss a Dual Strike, and thus 100% DS is required. Your Severa is an Assassin, right? I'd use LB/GF/SF/Vengeance/AT. Vengeance is a much better proc than Astra due to its higher activation rate. You should be able to do Secret with LB, but you'll have to be careful since you don't have Aggressor (the bosses will probably require several units attacking to take down).

Should be, as long as you're careful- mine were basically redundant protection against player error. As long as you either realize you've overcommitted and draw back early or risk a rush and succeed, you'll be fine- the only trouble will be if you risk a rush and it turns out not to be enough, you won't be able to get all your units out there.

If this was real life, taking him down might work. Unfortunately this is a story, and it makes a pretty uninteresting story if the villain dies right at the start (not to mention that FE is a game about epic battles, and there needs to be a source of battles). Sure, there could be another source, but it would change the story enough that it might as well be about something else entirely. It's not about whether we think Emmeryn is a good leader (I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that she made a huge mess), it's about whether the game acknowledges that she made a mess, or claims that the bad stuff she did was actually good while ignoring realistic consequences (basically whether or not the game is poorly written).

Yes, you can bench him- or use him as a Staffbot/Rallybot if you still want to deploy him but don't want him fighting. With the exception of Wave 5, all the enemies come in well-spread-out groups of five (in Normal). To be honest, when I first did Apo (both paths) I only had 3 combat pairs (and like 7 Staffbots) and it worked out fine. I was using LB, though.

It's a good strategy, but the reason I didn't recommend it here is because then Avatar would get benched (Tharja is a bad support) and an Avatar pair + a 100% Dual Strike pair is better than a single normal pair. It's worth it if Avatar is married to Sumia or Cordelia though, especially if Chrom is supporting Inigo (then you get Agg on both units, which is very fun). Chrom could also fight at A with Avatar, but that pair would have no Galeforce.

No, I get it.

She could be. Falcos have fairly low Str, though. Combine that with their low DS rate and Nah's lack of a good proc, and they might not get many kills- but it should be OK. Make sure to give Nah Lancefaire.

This thread is almost a year old. Trying a group effort to condense it would be chaotic and probably involve a lot of outdated stuff getting in. No, if an updated guide is made it'll probably be done by just a small handful of people (if not one) and written from scratch so nothing outdated slips in. I might just do it myself, post a draft here so people can check my work for errors, revise it, and repost it, though I'm not sure what would happen to it from there. Ideally it would be stickied (or even be put on the mainsite), though I have no idea how to get that to happen. If I did make one, would people rather have me make it a "how to make a good team" guide, or a "how to make your favorite pairings good" guide?

Grandmaster has no standout stats and isn't that good. If you want to use a Sword, be a Hero/Paladin/Assassin. If you want to use Tomes, be a Sage. Those procs only work if you're leading, Avatar is probably going to be supporting someone with Galeforce due to having none himself. You could also put him with Cordelia at A if you don't like Nah. Especially if Chrom's wife is Sumia or Avatar, it's a good idea to have him fighting. Give Chrom Bowfaire/DS+/Charm/DG+/Skl+2 as a Sniper or Bow Knight and give Sumia GF/Luna/Tomefaire/Renewal/Pavise as a Dark Flier (Pavise isn't that good in Apo, but Sumia doesn't have much else and if it activates, it might save a staffbot a turn thanks to Renewal healing all the damage). They should be powerful enough to have a guaranteed 6HKO on any enemy though, so Sumia might never take damage. Who knows. Use Spotpass/DLC units as your rallybots/staffbots. Rallybots should be Falcos, Staffbots should be Falcos/Valkyries.

I'm pretty sure you said "you can count the bodies." If you get to take everything super-literally, take yourself the same way and prove it. And those soldiers would have died anyway if they had been ordered to march off to war. Please don't call me adorbs. I haven't insulted you yet in this thread, and I'll thank you not to take the first shot. I actually said the exact opposite, that nonfiction is inherently biased in some form, while all bias in fiction is intentional and used to portray the world the way the author wants you to see it. In Awakening's case, the bias is obviously pro-Emmeryn. Do you really think the devs would have spent the resources to include that CGI if it's really as meaningless as you say it is?

+Lck/-Spd Tiki!Morgan is as close as you can get to wrecking Morgan- Avatar has a useless wife, Morgan has bad mods and a permanent weakness, and there's a pairing imbalance without even giving Morgan a sibling.

The forum automatically shortens really long URLs to make them more readable. Don't forget that there's a slight random variation in enemy stats on Normal/Hard. It's not too big of a deal, but could be problematic if you're looking at, say, exact values for doubling.

There are currently no guides out there that are both current and good. Challenging Apo in the first place automatically assumes that you have been grinding. A lot. Do you have Aggressor/Rally Heart/All Stats+2?

That should be good, yes. The way people usually get around only having 13 children is having Avatar marry a child (yes, you can do that) so there are 7 2nd gen pairs. If Avatar marries 1st gen, someone's going to get benched, and most of the 1st gen units are pretty bad so Avatar will probably be out of luck as well (the only partners good enough for Apo are Chrom, Sumia, Cordelia and Aversa). Avatar could go with Nah at A, though their dual strike rate will be very shaky. Anyway that should be enough for combat pairs. Except for the final wave, enemies come spread fairly thin in Normal Apo so you won't be in too much danger of getting overwhelmed. Make your other units be Chrom, Olivia, two Rallybots and as many Staffbots (for Rescue) as you can fit. Good luck.

Virion!Nah is actually really good (for Nah, she's a special case)- as a Sage with LB/TF/All+2/Mag+2/Skl+2, she's the highest DS boosting magical support Nah out there. Class overlap is bad in general, but if you already have everything you're going to use and know you don't need anything else, it doesn't actually matter.

I was specifically talking about Sorcs. And just so you know, there are two different Sage models. In total you've got 7 girls and 6 boys. The one who gets benched should either be Nah or Kjelle- if you want to bench Kjelle, just swap her with Cynthia. If you want to bench Nah, put Kjelle where Nah is now and Cynthia where Kjelle is. The fastest unavoidable enemy in Normal Apo has 57 Spd. Owain is one away from the 62 Spd needed to double with a tonic, Dark Flier pairup and Rally, so he misses that one but can double everything else. I wouldn't worry too much about his Spd. If you fight any of the fliers, he won't be able to double their bosses, though (you get to choose between two sets of enemies on waves 2 and 4).

If you want Severa as an Assassin, then consider changing Inigo to a Berserker instead so your offenses remain intact- have him use Galeforce/Axefaire/Hit+20/Luna/Astra or Armsthrift. RK sounds cool, but when you bring out the math it doesn't pull it's weight. Here's a little comparison so you can see what I mean. I'll use Aether and Luna, vs an enemy with 55 Def, Dragonskin and no PavGis+. I'll also assume my Skl and Atk are 70 (they should both be higher, but you're not using other DLC- it won't change the results significantly if they are). Damage from one normal attack (no Faire/Luna) is 7. Faire adds 3 damage, Luna adds 14 damage (so 24 damage with Luna+Faire). Aether rate with no RK is 35%, Luna rate with no RK is 45.5%, whiff is 19.5%. Aether with RK is 45%, Luna rate with RK is 44%, whiff is 11%. With RK, average damage output per swing is thus 7*.11 + 21*.44 + 28*.45 = .77 + 9.24 + 12.6 = 22.61 average damage per swing. With Faire, it's 10*.195 + 24*.455 + 34*.35 = 1.95 + 10.92 + 11.9 = 24.77 average damage per swing. That's more than 2 more damage per swing in favor of Faire, and over 4 swings it's 8 damage, which amounts to 10% of an enemy's HP. What's more, the minimum amount of damage a Faire can do is higher, so the worst case scenario is better. If you do eventually get DLC and want to revise your skillsets, this also holds true for RK+Luna vs Aether+Luna, though the difference there is a lot more pronounced. Sorc is considered OP because it walks right over stuff on enemy phase thanks to its HP restoring abilities. However, in Apo things have much higher Atk then elsewhere and Dragonskin effectively cuts the amount of HP you recover in half, not to mention that maingame enemies have very bad Res in general. As for Waste, it's generally hurt by its poor Hit compared to Celica's Gale, which is made worse by Sorc's low Skl. Finally, Sorcs give worse pairup boosts than Sages for when they're in the back (less Mag, and +Def instead of +Skl). This last bit is subjective, but I also think they're ugly. I actually find Nah really interesting because, by virtue of being so bad, she can do things that all the other girls are too important to do (female dedicated support). Of course, she's still the first one to get benched if Avatar-M marries first gen... Unless he married Nowi. Kellam actually doesn't hurt Owain's Mag- it's his Spd that will suffer.

This might be useful to you: http://serenesforest.net/wiki/index.php/Awakening_Enemy_Data:_Apotheosis For an in-depth readup on how pairup boosts work, look here: http://serenesforest.net/fe13/double.html Severa and Inigo: Severa might fare better as a Wyvern Lord with Lancefaire- she's fast enough not to care that Wyvern is slow (on Normal Apo, at least. On Secret she'll want LB to do Wyvern). Also switch Astra for Vengeance, without LB Astra won't have a very high activation rate (even with it, it's pretty low), but Vengeance almost always works 100% of the time. Inigo is good, but you may want to replace one of DG+/AT with Astra for a higher chance of activating a proc. Give Lucina Lancefaire over RK, it'll boost her average damage output a lot more. Luna does nothing on supports, so swap it on Gerome for something like Outdoor Fighter. Swap Astra for Ignis on Morgan. Sorcerers are generally outclassed by Sages and Dark Fliers, so consider one of those for Noire instead (much more Skl and better pairup boosts). Swap her Hit+20 for Ignis as well. Brady has Luna and should use it over Hex or Mag+2 (probably Hex, magical units don't like to fight at 1-range). Manaketes are OK in Normal Apo if you take care of them (thanks to no Counter/Luna+) but for an offensive Nah setup you'd be better going as a Swordfaire Assassin or a Lancefaire Falcon Knight. If you can give her a magical husband, she could also make a good Dark Flier. For Yarne, Astra does nothing in the back- give him Str+2 (inherited from Panne) and Axebreaker or Bowbreaker instead. Owain is usually better as a Sage- Kjelle can support him as a Dark Flier or Valkyrie (though she'll lack Tomefaire). Instead of Miracle/Vantage give Owain Mov+1 or Renewal or something (or give him DG+, and then give Kjelle Underdog in it's place). Chrom!Cynthia is actually really strong. If you don't mind swapping Kjelle for her, she'll more than pull her weight- make her a Sage/Dark Flier and give her Aether/Luna/Tomefaire/Galeforce/either DG+ or Renewal.

If I may add one more thing, Awakening is a work of fiction. This is an important distinction because an account of real events may very well be just that way: it's told from the point of view of the author/protagonist, and while there's inherent bias coming from that direction it's both possible and likely that things aren't quite how they're described to be. If Awakening were nonfiction, Emmeryn would be a bad leader and the tale could be told exactly how it is, leaving a discerning person to read between the lines and notice that no, she wasn't actually all that good. Awakening is not nonfiction. It's not an account of the events in Archanea during a certain time period from a potentially biased point of view, it is those events. Since exposition is delivered entirely through characters, their views are going to be exactly how the author intends the world to be seen, unless the character is shown to be untrustworthy (and, since Awakening has clear cut Black and White Morality, it's pretty obvious who is trustworthy and who isn't). Anyway, if Awakening's version of a narrator isn't enough to convince you that she's portrayed as perfect, check out her nifty character description in the Barracks. That's the dev's own summary of her character, unbiased by potential character viewpoints. Are you going to deny that too?

You've got a 5/3 female to male ratio there. That won't match up for S supports. In this case, I'd recommend benching Nah (she has no Luna/Venegance to go with her Galeforce) and pairing your Avatar with a 2nd gen unit to get four pairs. That should be enough for Normal Apo if you're careful, but Secret will still be tough without LB. Avatar x Lucina, Owain x Cynthia, Severa x Stahl!Inigo, and Noire x Virion!Brady should work out well.

Most of the guides out there are outdated. This forum is good, though. Assuming you meant Nowi!Morgan, Vaike!Owain seems to be the only eyebrow raiser- Owain needs either Libra or Ricken. If you give him Libra, give Brady Virion instead. If you give him Ricken, you might have to do a bit more shuffling to free up someone good for Laurent. Be aware that you will have to bench a child by marrying Avatar first Gen, but that's not too bad. Have Olivia pass Lck+4 to Lucina, Donnel pass Underdog to Kjelle, Henry pass Despoil to Cynthia, and Gaius pass Sol to Noire. Everyone else doesn't matter, though passing Veteran to Avatar's children will speed up their training a little.

Sully x Donnel Miriel x Lon'qu/Gregor/Stahl Maribelle x Chrom/Henry/Libra/Ricken/Virion/Lon'qu Panne x Stahl/Frederick/Virion/Gregor/Vaike Olivia x Chrom/Stahl/Ricken/Libra/Frederick Those are commonly recognized as good pairings for the girls you have left. Since Donnel is already taken, Kjelle is kind of in trouble, but you don't have to field all the children (in fact, it's probably a bad idea on a first Apo run). Dunno who your Avatar is married to, but he could save Kjelle at the cost of having a bad wife.

If you can, do yourself a favor and get Limit Breaker. It took several months after Apo's release for people to even realize it was possible to do without LB, and that's with fully optimized pairings. If you can't get it, at least do Normal Apo first. Anyway, here's a rough estimate of what you're up against. There are five waves of enemies, defeating one brings out the other (you don't get automatically healed) and all of them have capped stats at minimum. It's not uncommon to see enemies with stats 20 above their caps, and some of them go even further. 80+ Atk is the norm here, everyone has hackforged Silver weapons at the least. Every single enemy also has Dragonskin (the final boss's signature skill). Lunatic+ skills are everywhere- Hawkeye is very common, on the Normal path pretty much everyone has either Aegis+ or Pavise+, on Secret some enemies have both of them. There's an enemy in Secret with Aegis+, Pavise+ and Dragonskin- a 75% damage reduction- on top of 70 Def and 70 Spd, and his attack is a guaranteed ORKO if it hits. And he's the boss of the second wave. Secret goes further with the Lunatic+ skills, throwing Counter and Luna+ around like toys. Some enemies even have Vantage+. Normal has lots of Longbow Snipers and Vengeance, Secret has Dark Fliers with Shadowgift and Mire. There are also enemies in Secret with 65% Aether activation rates. To add a cherry on top, the last two waves of Secret have a turn limit. To access Secret, all you have to do is clear the first wave of Normal in two turns or less. Anyway, as for your team, you're going to want to pair your units with an emphasis on some units be designated leads and some being designated supports- this lets you be much more specific with your skills. The main rule of this is to always have Galeforce on your lead- so Gerome, Yarne and Laurent are going to always be in the back. That means they don't need any sort of defensive/healing/proc (Luna/Sol/etc) skills, so give them Atk/Skl boosting skills, Dual Guard+, Anathema, etc. Leads want procs (usually Luna), Galeforce, and if you're going to use defensive skills use them there (though they usually don't do much good). For whom to pair whom with, just try to pair up units who's support bonuses will compliment eachother (Sage x Dark Flier is pretty popular). For actually playing the map, bring a ton of Valkyries and Falcon Knights from Spotpass armed with Rescue Staves. Your general strategy should be to advance, kill as much stuff as you can with Galeforce, and then use your Staffbots to get out of enemy range so you don't take a beating on enemy phase. As long as you fully heal each turn, it's pretty hard to die while fighting exclusively on Player Phase (unless you get careless around Vengeance). having Rallybots from Spotpass is also important- there are ten Rallies in total, so you can give five each to two units and cover them all. All Rallies combined equals Limit Breaker and 4 Lck and 2 Mov, which is pretty major. Also bring Olivia as a Dancer. You may have to leave a few children behind to bring more Staffbots (Apo has a deployment cap of 20), but enemies are spread fairly thin in Normal Apo so those extra combatants would usually do nothing anyway (leave out the ones with the lowest Mov, because they're likely to contribute the least otherwise).

If this is your first playthrough, go with whoever you like best and worry about optimization later. Anyone but Sully can be made good with enough time.