Czar_Yoshi

She's going to be a very different kind of hot wearing black in a desert.

Yarne pretty much always wants to be a +Hit Berserker, it's what he's made to do. Virion!Yarne will do that, just like Henry, only with Hit+20 instead (he's generally considered one of the best Yarnes). With Cynthia, you could try making her a Wyvern Lord instead- it'll drop you down to 69 Spd, but you'll get 8 more Str which is a pretty good deal. She'll still need Lancefaire and Luna (and LB and GF), and has one free slot you can do whatever with. Maybe Deliverer for even more Mov? If you do want to use her as a Falco, try giving her All+2, and make Virion!Yarne a Sniper with All+2 and Skl+2 instead of his +Hit skills. They'll hit 100% DS that way, so while Yarne's attacks will be weaker they'll always connect (and you'll have a nice 82% Luna as well). If you used Laurent with Lucina, he'd be a hard support Sage. Like before, Lucina can be in any magical class she likes and hit the same Spd threshold- I recommend DK since it has a strong Ignis and more Mov than Grandmaster, but since Lucina never will be in the back, you won't miss GM's good pairup bonuses.

Idunno, I've always found Hard to be easiest at the start and then get harder as the enemies catch up (aka a real difficulty curve, unlike Lunatic(+)).

Maybe. If a version of the GW menu does come out that supports the latest system menu version, there's a lot you'll be able to do, and a lot more if you have a gateway itself. But there's no promising anything, so don't jump any guns.

I'm fond of sending Lissa to Troub, because Valks are nice and Rally Res is going to be more useful lategame than Rally Mag (in my experience). Don't worry too much about her Def, she's more of a dodgetank and will soon have enough HP to take a few hits should that fail. Lv.8 Sumia after Par.1 is really good, she's already ahead of Cord and three chapters earlier. If she has C Lances (she better), give her the Killer Lance for an extra power boost. The Pegs can feast very easily in Cht.8 and 9 due to their terrain, weapon and stat advantages, so levels now are just going to give her an earlier promotion. She can't meaningfully contribute before Cht.6, but if you get her strong enough to snipe a few things in Cht.5 that'll be great. How's her support with Chrom? Lon'qu and Vaike? Is Robin out of Tactician already (and not going Merc)? Vaike supports Cord well, but slightly limits Severa's early reclassing options. The units worth investing in really should be the ones you've already invested in (don't give exp to short-term units where avoidable).

Damage avoidance isn't so helpful because pretty much nothing can OHKO you, and you can heal with staves after each battle. Thanks to Luna+ and Hawkeye, a lot of conventional tanking skills don't even work, either. In Apo, heal using ranged Staves like Fortify and Physic to keep your healers away from battle. In the main game, try to protect your healers by having the combat unit stand on the very edge of an enemy's range, so the healer can heal them while staying out of range (and then build a little support from the battle, too!). If you want to run your healers out to the combat units instead, you'll be at risk of losing them unless you know you'll have enough power to kill everything around them before enemy phase, or if they're strong and can take a few hits. Another benefit of using Logbook units- and you don't need to do this, but it's helpful- is that since you can transfer them between files, you can use Boots on them without needing the two pairs you get normally. If you're patient enough (or get to 50,000 Renown) you can have boots on all your Staffbots. Fred!Cynthia probably is your best bet, since her other two dads are in pretty high demand. She's a little slow, but you can still make something like Wyvern or Falco work well. Gaius!Noire is pretty good, she has both Luna and Astra for high damage output. Her main classes are Sniper and Bow Knight. What Yarne really wants is a +Hit skill. Henry offers him that in Hex and Anathema, so he'll work fine. However, Henry has a lot of good pairs and is usually in high demand, so he's not usually used here. This Yarne will always want to be a Berserker. You said your Asset/Flaw was +Mag/-Str, right? Since Yarne is a physical support, Lucina will want to be physical too, unfortunately. You might want to change this one. With Morgan and Noire, Sage x Sniper is a powerful combo that they'll be able to do well. Noire will want LB/GF/Bowfaire/Luna/Astra, and Morgan will want LB/GF/Agg/Tomefaire/Ignis. This should be a good pair. Fred!Cynthia is physical, Lon'qu!Owain is magical- similar to Lucina and Yarne, you'll want to switch this up. Since Lucina is magical and Yarne is physical, doing Owain x Lucina and Cynthia x Yarne is the quickest fix. If a pair's low Mov means that another pair gets to a fight before they do and all the kills are gone by the time they arrive, it won't matter how strong they are because they won't get to fight. If you're not doing a full 8 combat pairs, this won't matter much because you have staffbots to lug your units around, but when you are there's both no room for Staffbots and not enough kills to go around, so some pairs are always going to be idle- and usually they'll be the ones who can't move around. Boots are fine, but you only get two pairs, so they can't fix everything. Not that much has changed in how things are done since the last time you were here. Mostly there are just a few more B-tier pairs that are a little better understood than they used to be. It's still procs, GF and hard supports all day long. I've been spending more time on Lunatic+ myself, there's more stuff happening over there.

That would be extremely slow, both Owain and Robin would fail to hit 69 Spd without All+2 (and Robin wants to procstack). Well, it'll have to stay disorganized for a while longer. I'm not going to care about optimization for a while after the game comes out, and even once I do I'll probably be testing stuff in a closed circle to avoid post-release weirdness like Awakening's. BK and Sniper for Bowfaire use, or GK for high Str regardless.

If you like him, you can use him. The reason he's not on the list is because he lacks Luna or Vengeance, so he has no reliable way to boost his damage up front. He's the weakest father out of fathers that are really good, though. He'll still give you a Severa with everything needed to be good, but she'll merely be average instead of above average where Severa belongs (she has very high potential). For healers (staffbots), use Logbook Avatars, Spotpass/Streetpass units, and DLC characters. It's usually far better to have some units that are dedicated to combat and others that are dedicated to healing (and mostly Rescuing, since Fortify heals everyone) than it is to have your combat units perform mixed roles- for the same reason, self-healing skills aren't too important. Enemies in Apo spawn in 5-man clumps that are very spread out, so you shouldn't ever have to fight on enemy phase if you don't want to, and this means you have the option of healing with a staff after every fight. Deliverer is occasionally a good skill and I've used it myself several times, but not on Lucina. Her skillset is probably the fullest in the game. Having lots of Mov is very nice though since the map is big and the enemies spread apart- odds are, your faster units will reach the enemies first, get all the KOes, and be much more useful than your slower ones simply by being the first on the scene. Stahl!Owain is actually pretty good, he's by far the best physical Owain. I don't usually advise Assassins, they're extremely tilted toward Spd/Skl at the cost of everything else, but the way the meta is set up, you can already get enough Spd/Skl that more doesn't matter on slow, strong classes instead. Their strengths are redundant, and they mostly wind up without any as a result. You may want to try Owain as a Bow Knight instead (Robin as a Paladin with Ignis/Astra, I think). He'll have less Str, but do better up front himself and give the same Spd.

Oh nice, screenshots. You should talk a little about the story, the goal of the project, what the title is- nothing in particular, just info in general!

Since when is that kind of dress appealing, though? It's basically a big, fat beacon advertising impending disloyalty! That's supposed to be a turnoff! Concept art is made at all stages throughout the design process- the more different Tharja art could be older than the Miriel art, or it could be an indicator some artist spent more time revising her. I do recall some translated interview somewhere where one of the lead devs said Tharja was his favorite character...

Don't worry, there's a lot we can do to help. First, a few things to keep in mind. Apo doesn't change based on difficulty (outside from a single forge, which doesn't matter) so it'll be the same no matter how you do it- beat it on Normal, it'll be the full experience. Second, the enemies' stats are completely static (and in a link in my sig). They don't shift around every time you reload the map like in Normal and Hard regular chapters, so you can know ahead of time exactly what you can and can't double through careful calculations. We can do all those for you, so just remember to go in with all your stats completely capped, all Tonics used on everyone (especially Spd, HP, Skl and Atk), and your full skillset. Also forge all your weapons with +5 Mt and +15 Hit unless specifically stated otherwise. Skillsets themselves should be handled on a case-by-case basis, but in general everyone should have LB and everyone who gets it should have Galeforce and Aggressor. The way enemy Spd is laid out is fairly straightforward: Having at least 60 Spd (40 before LB and Rally, which is very hard to miss with a pairup and Tonic) allows you to double all non-boss enemies, and from there there are only a handful of fast things to worry about: three Berserkers with 64 Spd, and two Snipers and Anna with 70. So there are a few fairly big windows where Spd increases don't actually give you anything to double, and it's also not that big of a deal if you fail to double something. Most of these setups are geared to give you 75 or 69 Spd- only the slowest units aim for 66 (not getting doubled by the 70 Spd units). So, for Chrom and Robin: Chrom's DSt+ is one of the best skills in the game for Apo, and it's going to make him and Robin likely your best pair. Why? Because it gives him guaranteed Dual Strikes (with LB and Rallies and that stuff), which often takes away chances for the RNG to make you drop kills and take damage. So you'll want to put Chrom in the back and let him focus on strong Dual Strikes, and Robin up front for leading. +Mag Dark Flier with a Great Lord support will hit 75. You'll need LB and GF, want Tomefaire for extra damage, and ideally Ignis and Astra for a ton more power. Since random damage boosters like them (procs) can't activate in the back, you'll want to keep Robin up front where hers can activate, and not give Chrom any since he'll be in the back. He should use LB/Agg/DSt+, and probably some +Hit moves or maybe All+2. If you want to get rid of a skill on Robin for Lifetaker, Tomefaire would be the first to go, but she's so strong you should be killing everything before it can hurt you anyway. Lucina's Spd is a little awkward- every single Tome-using class, All Stats+2 or no, and she'll hit 69 Spd but not 75. You can make her whatever you want, then, though Dark Knight/Grandmaster for a stronger Ignis and Falchion access might be nice (even if you don't attack with Falchion, it's also an infinite-use Concoction). Her skillset should always be LB/GF/Aether/Ignis/DSt+. She'll probably want a Sage partner- a Galeboy will let her use DSt+ more, but her Dual Strikes are really weak because she lacks Aggressor, a Faire and a high class Mag cap so it's not always a good thing. As for the rest, here's a list of generally good husbands for each mother with regard to Apo. Take a look and see what you like, and remember that you don't need a full team, only an equal number of 2nd gen boys and girls (and the fewer you use, the faster your team will be to train. Above three or four pairs, and you start seeing a reduction in how helpful it is to add more, as well). Sully x Gaius/Donnel Miriel x Stahl/Lon'qu/Ricken/Gregor/Libra Sumia x Fred/Gaius/Henry Maribelle x Virion/Lon'qu/Ricken/Gregor/Libra/Henry Panne x Fred/Virion/Vaike/Stahl/Libra/Henry Cordelia x Virion/Vaike/Stahl/Lon'qu/Ricken Nowi x Vaike/Stahl/Gregor/Henry Tharja x Vaike/Ricken/Gaius/Donnel Olivia x Fred/Stahl/Ricken/Libra/Henry Cherche x Virion/Vaike/Stahl/Ricken/Gregor/Henry All of those will work, none are bad, while some are better than others there's nothing there I'd rate below B tier (except maybe Donnel!Noire). Most people dislike Stahl!Severa's hair enough that I've considered removing her from the list, too (he's already Cord's weakest pairing on there). If you want to take another look at Lissa, her good pairs are Ricken, Libra, and Stahl. The former two are great at magic, the latter can do magic decently but is also your best shot if you want Owain to use his sword hand. None of them are particularly fast, but he can make up for it with a speedy support.

Well, let's keep this thread about Awakening. FE14 has its own section for optimization threads, and I'd prefer to go in as blind as possible.

Be that as it may, last I checked FE14 lacks a DLC equivalent to Apo to optimize for.

There's a big difference between keeping your entire team the same level, and having all the members be relevant and able to contribute meaningfully. If you want the later, you're going to have to forget about the former, and if you want the former, you're going to struggle to keep any of your team relevant. What you need to do in order to highman Lunatic(+) is get a few units who are able to take map control and make some safe space, which allows you to field units who are strong enough to fight, but not strong enough to take exposed enemy phases. This usually involves starting small, with Robin as your main combat unit (for the first four chapters), adding as much non-combat exp as you can (staves), and using your other deployment slots for units who can run interference, maybe sponge some damage and provide useful pairup bonuses (the back of a pairup is an extremely safe place to be, use pairup liberally to field more units). Once Robin is strong enough to hold off foes without fighting for his life, you can add in one or two more- pick strong mothers with spread out recruitment times for best results. Sumia, Cordelia, Miriel, Panne and Nowi are usually the best- you'll want Chrom with Sumia, Robin with another and maybe one more. Also raise Lissa and possibly Maribelle, and be as aggressive as possible getting staff exp for them. If you want to do Robin x Cord and do a quad Galeforce passdown, you'll need to leave it at those two pairs (plus staffbots), if you don't care about GF then you can add one more, maybe two. Always reclass Panne to Wyvern asap if used. After Cht.13, you can pick up the children. They'll go in any auxiliary slots you were using for pairup/thieves/etc, and you should be at a full party. From there, just play offensively and don't get cornered, and leave your strongest units forward to take the bulk of enemy aggression.

The DLC can't be easily patched yet, no.

Perhaps. But there are much more creative (and less offensive, and more geographically correct) ways of making something attractive than making it wear less.

It's kinda hard to build their supports, but when you're minmaxing they can do nicely.

Yeah, but she's not exactly memorable in a good way...

Never go for anything but your personal favorite on your first playthrough.

You put 36 levels on Taguel Panne, you really deserve to feel accomplished. For future reference, Second Sealing early instead of promoting right away lets you stay in base classes longer, which is really good for your stats since you gain exp so much faster. It might not have worked like that since you probably needed the promotion boosts to stay afloat, but it's a good idea for the long term. Most highmanning strats for Lunatic(+) involve getting someone ahead early on, and then progressively increasing the size of your team as you go along- you won't hit full deployment until the kids start showing up, but having some true tanks and sweepers to take some map control allows you much greater freedom in who you else you can use and how they can help (since you don't have to worry about them surviving Enemy Phases), and also gives you the power to take on child paralogues (which are massive sources of midgame exp). That might not fit your definition of a true highman, but once you get it going, it allows all the extra units to be a net asset to your team (as in you wouldn't suddenly do better if you dropped them all and started snowballing).

You might want to try asking here. Chrom and Robin are the G1 units you really want to use, and their spouses by extension. Dancer Olivia is good too. Other than that, stay away from using the parents aside from Staffbots- let the kids do the heavy lifting. The pairs are mostly fine, for skills keep in mind that offense > defense so don't focus on things like DG+. For skills, run LB on everyone, GF and Agg wherever possible, one Faire on everyone, and at least one proc (Vengeance/Luna, or Ignis if possible) on anyone who will ever come up front. After that, use spare skillslots for a second proc (Aether when possible, otherwise Astra, never stack Vengeance with anything else) or All+2, and +Hit skills on hard supports. Anyone who gets DSt+ absolutely must use it, it's better than LB. On leads, All+2 placement is a little quirky because the fastest enemies in Apo are fairly far apart in Spd, so sometimes it'll let you double something strong, but most of the time it won't. I'll focus on it on a case-by-case basis. So, for a rundown of what your units are good at and what they'll want to be doing: Chrom x Sumia: Chrom is usually a hard support with LB/Agg/DSt+. Bow Knight, Sniper and Great Knight are his preferred classes- the former two have Bowfaire, the latter is just really strong (but needs Hit+20). Consider All+2 in the last slot for more damage, or Hit+20/Prescience for more hit. Sumia will want to be a high-Mov class to lead- her options are DF, Falco and GK. Watch out for possible Hit issues if you take GK x GK, though- Sumia will want a +Hit forge, most likely. She'll take LB/GF/Faire/Luna/All+2 (you'll want All+2 for GK x GK and Paladin x DF, otherwise it's OK to go without). Yarne will typically want to be a Berserker with LB/Agg/AF/All+2/Hit+20 (with All+2 optionally switched for Prescience). He can also be a Sniper for high Dual Strike purposes, but it doesn't look like you've got any good places for that. Goes best with a high-Spd Wyvern Lord or Paladin- Lucina and Cynthia are your best bets here. Kjelle would also work out, so would Noire. Noire is going to want to be a Bow Knight or Sniper to best put Gaius's mods to use. She'll want to use a Luna/Astra procstack and no All+2 in both cases, and have a +3 Spd support (Hero, BK, Berserker) for BK and anything for Sniper (probably a Sage, like Laurent). Brady will be quite speedy. He's always going to be a Sage with LB/GF/Agg/Luna/Tomefaire no matter who his dad is, and in this case a DF or Valkyrie support would compliment him well. Morgan as a Valkyrie is one of the best choices here provided you're using +Mag/-Def (one of the best asset/flaws for Apo, and extremely useful for Lucina/Cynthia!Morgan as it sets her up perfectly for Valkyrie). If that's not happening, you're a little low on options, Lucina/Cynthia might be your best bet. Both Lucina and Cynthia can be Sages, so that's not much to go on. But it's useful to have at least 8 Mov somewhere on your pairs, so if they're Sages, they'll have more limited mobility. Additionally, unless Robin is a Grandmaster, that +5 Spd mod would go to waste... Consider Dark Flier x Grandmaster, Paladin x Berserker or Sniper x Berserker/Sage for extra Spd, power and/or mobility. The girls will always use a Luna/Aether procstack, with Lucina forgoing a Faire for DSt+. Fred!Inigo makes a nice Paladin. There are other things he can do too (Hero), but male Paladins are so rare that he's most useful as one (LB/GF/Agg/Luna/SF). He doesn't need a +Spd support, so you could use him to soak up Nah (she'd be a Sniper with All+2 and a Luna/Astra procstack, which she has room for due to no GF). Laurent is going to want to be a hard support Sage. The best place for that is behind a slower Dark Flier (you have none) or a faster Sniper (you have three). He'll want to go with Noire, Lucina or Cynthia. Kjelle is a little slow, and will want to either run Wyvern/GK (Wyvern is usually better) with a Berserker support, no All+2 and a Luna/Astra procstack, or Paladin with a +0 Spd support, All+2 and just Luna. You don't have any physical +0 Spd supports, so she'll be going Wyvern and taking Yarne or Gerome. Severa is a little awkward because Gregor leaves her with very few ending classes. It's a shame because you could really use another magical girl (your team is currently very physical on the female side and mostly magical on the male). She's set up to be a Hero with Vengeance and no All+2 (which leaves her with a hole and nothing to fill it) and a Berserker support- you'll probably want Gerome for the +Hit if running Axefaire. Owain is exactly the same as Brady, but without the potential for speediness. Lucina and Cynthia are pretty in demand, though, so hopefully Morgan can help out as a magical unit. He's a great unit, but not looking good in terms of places to go. Finally, Gerome is a standard hard support Berserker with Hex and Anathema for support skills. Kjelle, Severa, Noire all want that (though watch out, Hex won't work with BK Noire- use Yarne for that).

Libra!Inigo is pretty good, he won't let you down. You can use him as a Sage, keep him physical, or even make him a Dread Fighter if you want one of those.

Here's something to put the difference in perspective: +Spd and Tomefaire gives +0/5/2/4 Str/Mag/Skl/Spd, and +Mag and All+2 gives +2/6/2/4 to the same stats (and though they're not as important, the same Lck, 2 more Def and 4 more Res). It should go without saying, but +Mag and Tomefaire is thus even better, provided you don't need the Spd boost. +Spd really actually isn't all that good for Apo, unless you're doing a challenge run and need both it and All+2 for something (in which case it's indispensable). As for what you run on them, what were you planning to do with Yarne? Female Robin is fairly poor at Apo next to juggernauts like Severa, Lucina, Cynthia, Gaius!Kjelle, Gaius!Noire and Morgan-F- the only 2nd gen girl she's really better than is Nah, her mods limit her options quite a bit. With Laurent, at least, +Mag and DF x Sage will net you 69 Spd and room for a procstack (or double AT, if that's your thing).

But Lucina has a procstack, and running that up front will far outdamage anything Morgan can offer while up front, so why are you focusing on his Spd and not hers? Dunno about any Laurent!Yarne!Morgans, but +Spd Stahl!Yarne!Morgan has -1 Mag, while +Mag Gregor!Laurent!Morgan has +7 and +Mag Ricken!Laurent!Morgan has +10. Both of them keep 75 Spd with a DF or Valk pairup, and there is no way a +4 bonus from going DF -> Sage outweighs a +11 bonus from mods- especially if Morgan is in the back where he should be.

Why are you using Yarne!Morgan if you want him to be magical? Yarne is an extremely physical father, use Laurent or a Galeboy if you want magic. Is that +50 Spd before or after pairup?