Czar_Yoshi

Maribelle's pairing depends on whether you want Brady using Vengeance or Luna as his offensive proc. Vengeance is 100% consistent, but you lack Vantage to use it with, so I'd advise Luna (this means Virion).

That two damage makes the difference between ORKO'ing the Nightmare Sniper and not doing so, and there are no fliers in Apo that require the extra damage from the bow to ORKO. Berserker also gives +Spd instead of +Def, which is way more useful. SoC, Bowfaire isn't useless, it's merely outclassed on a pairup Warrior by Axefaire on a pairup Berserker. It has plenty of other uses, namely on lead units.

Depends what you want to do. Golden Pack is for grinding if you're lazy or don't like Armsthrift but still want to use the Double Bow. Future of Despair and Scramble Pack are good for story/dialogue, SB2 and LB2 for classes with epic weapons/useful growths/uber skills, LB3 for lategame grinding, RaR3 if you want Limit Break (only recommended if you want to do Apo/Challenge Pack/Streetpass), CoY3 for All Stats+2 which is decent early on and helpful for threshold breaking later, and the Challenge Pack/Apotheosis for, well, a challenge. SB3 gives an almost useless skill, and CoY/RaR1/2 and LB/SB1 give only characters. CoY2 and RaR2 have cool music, but it's all on Serenesforest anyway so that's a silly reason to buy a map. Personally, I got it all, and LB3/Apo (for challenge runs) and FoD/Scramble (character development and hours of cutscenes) are my favorites. The only one I wouldn't recommend is EXPonential Growth as it's useless late game (all the Entombed give 8exp on hard eventually), can't be sat out by letting stuff mob you on the enemy phase, and has random Counter generation.

Then you're going to look pretty silly because that math proves that Berserker's Axes are better than Warrior's Bows.

Additionally, there's a ledge on the cliff to the north you can fly to and be safe from everything bar three Pegs and two Wyvern Lords, and proceed to siege everything with Mire/Longbows.

This is Virion!Yarne, not Lon'qu!Yarne. Their Str is the same, but Virion!Yarne@Berserker has 44(class)+6(mods)+10(LB)+10(Rallies)+2(Tonic)+2(All+2) = 74 Spd, one short of what he needs to double said Sniper (and everything in the game). That can still be fixed with a pairup or Barracks Boost, but both of those could also be used to patch up Warrior's Str. This is significant because Lon'qu!Yarne@Warrior has 4 less Spd than Berserker, making it fall short of that threshold. Also 19*4=76, not 78. It doesn't matter, just pointing it out.

Just saying, but the Risen in Lunatic are very possible if you know what you're doing and make use of the Bonus Box weapons, Renown items, and a little bit of Lethality abuse (and plenty of resets). I ground up a team on Lunatic and defeated Normal Apo using the Risen as my only source of extra exp without hiring any *pass units or doing any other DLC maps. Lunatic+ is a different story that takes a lot more Lethality (especially early on), but is still doable if you're very patient.

More of to go through classes for skills he wanted/needed (Mercenary) without insane anti-Counter manipulation. The objective of his playlog was to make Lunatic+ as consistent as possible without grinding, and I think he did a pretty good job.

Yarne naturally gets Berserker, why would you use Warrior over that? Berserker gives better pair up boosts and has two more Str.

You mentioned a specific chapter, and the only specific chapter brought up in the thread so far was Lunatic+ cht.2. My bad, I guess.

But he asked why there were two instead of one, not why there were only two. Here's what I have to say. Partially because of big money and corporate donors, partially because of certain traits of the mass media, the Parties in America don't represent different viewpoints- they represent different degrees of extremism on the "issues" of the day. On this one-dimensional scale, there's no room for different angles of view- you can be very adamant that climate change is real, accept it but not do anything about it, not give a hoot, deny it and ignore it, or go on talk shows and yell about junk science, but all of those responses are just answers of different severity on the question, "Do you believe Climate Change is real?" They all congeal into two sides: one who says it's real, and one who says it isn't. There's a third group who doesn't care, but it's made up of the kind of people who don't vote and there isn't a non-voter party for obvious reasons.

You've never played Lunatic+, have you? Cht.2 has an incredibly high chance of giving you a situation unwinnable with any tactics. Even with perfect tactics and perfect skill distribution, those "fresh units" are so weak it takes all of them teaming up just to take down one foe, and most of them will be left with a pile of damage. On classic they're more of a burden than a boon because ~6 enemies start out right next to you and it's very difficult to get them to safety (you need to have them fight at least two foes).

So once everyone's compiled a ton of data, does the site get updated? Who's responsible for that?

There's a difference between good ideas and good implementation.

They wouldn't so much as be harder as be much more RNG based. Consider the case of the prologue: with Fatigue, you couldn't use the water trick without wrecking your stamina. Cht.2 is already barely possible with an overleveled Avatar, and if Avatar either can't come or had to sit out cht.1 because of fatigue, you won't have that and will have to waste exp on Fred, wrecking your longterm potential. Actually, you can't even choose who to deploy until cht.3, so it doesn't matter, but this is a prime example of why this wouldn't work. Here's another reason why this wouldn't work in Awakening: every time you want a free restore, fight a weak spotpass team or Golden Gaffe/EXPonential Growth to reset your fatigue meter. Mow it's even more of a problem for the early chapters (which are hard enough as is) and completely irrelevant later. Min deployment is already in this game: Chrom. He's that troll who wrecks your attempts to solo RaR3 with anyone but Avatar when grinding for LB, and requires a place to hide when you're turtling in Lunatic+.

That sounds nice, but in practice it wouldn't really be any better than 1-2 range unless the map design changed to suite them more. Archers are bad main game (outside of Lunatic+) because there are a lot of enemies and a lot of open fields for them to charge you in.

I agree with Airship Canon on the skills to pass down. Hey DG+ people: Consider a scenario where I have a pair of characters who can ORKO a Helswath Berserker, but not before he hits them. They have a decent DG rate, can double him, and will lose more than 50% of their health to a hit. I'm going to attack him anyway because I'm guaranteed a KO with a 0% chance of death. Assume that the DG failed. Now, there's another Berserker and I have this pair, but they don't have enough HP left to take an attack and DG isn't reliable enough to kill him. At this point, I could bring over a Staffbot to heal them, Rescue them back for healing, or move them out of harm's way and settle for killing the other Berserker later. All of these situations have a 0% chance of death, and are acceptable. However, consider that I got my DG and my attacking pair now has an extra turn and full HP- everything they need to take on the other Berserker with a guaranteed win. I can do this, and whether I get a second DG or not I'll have cleared them out much more efficiently than if I had to bring more Staffbots into the mix. Either way, I would have had a 100% chance of winning, but the latter way is simply nicer. DG+, therefore, is not a skill that increases your chances of winning- they're 100% if you're playing right anyway- it's a skill that increases your chance of having more/better options, and in a game that's about character customization that's something I like. I seem to recall a topic a while ago in which someone advised Axefaire be passed to a Morgan the TC wanted as a Grandmaster for the purpose of "keeping options open." DG+ is the same way. So are Aegis and Pavise, for that matter, except they're less useful because skillslots on lead units are more valuable than ones on support units. So Luna/DG+ are from the "Neo-dark ages", eh? Look, if I never leave my units in enemy range during enemy phase and only enter battles with a 0% chance of death, I have a 100% chance of victory because there's no way for me to die. Considering that can be done in a worst-case scenario where the RNG goes in the enemy's favor every time it can, and I'll always have an answer for missed procs (even if it's "run away with Rescue"), why not use skills that increase chances of things going further my way and allowing me to do more on my turn? Obviously, because VV can mangle anything the game has to throw at me. I've got several beefs with this strategy, though. 1. It's not 100%. Dual Guards can mess up your attempts to set up Vengeance properly. Even if you've been avoiding gaining +Def on your level ups and only have it at ~20% or so, that's still a 20% chance of killing the guy you needed to achieve the critical value, and getting mauled somewhere else. 2. It's boring. Strats that consist of "set up units, soften up tough things from afar, let everything die on EP" may be quick and easy to perform, but they aren't very interesting. I can't speak for others, but I personally would get bored very quickly of turning battle animations off and watching stuff charge into my units and die. That turns the game from a lawnmower simulator to a video of a lawnmower. 3. Irrelevant from a strategic standpoint, but I don't like deliberately dropping my units to <10HP and then sending them into combat like that for the rest of the map.

My advice on skills is the same as last time. In general, for Apotheosis the classes you'll mostly be using are Sniper/Assassin, Sage/Dark Flier, and Berserker, with your Bots as Falcos/Sages. Dark Flier, Assassin, and Berserker are your supporting classes, and Sniper/Sage are good leads. Stick with Braves as your main weapons, but it could be useful to pack a Double Bow as well for certain enemies that require a bit of softening up.

TC inflated everyone's stats. Snipers would probably get a boost too. And 42 Str (+4) is really underwhelming when you consider that he gave Wyvern Lord (which started with the same amount of Skl as SMs had of Str) +10 Skl. They shouldn't be stronger than Snipers, but they should also not be so weak as to still stink. And the game already has some weird stat comparisons, you know. GKs have less Mag than Myrmidons and the same as Villagers, while Great Lord M has the same Res as Falcos. Think about that for a bit.

How exactly did you manage to do that?

Not mediocre. Simply not enough to make Sol worthwhile in Secret Apo. To an extent, that's true- The hardest DLC in Awakening can be beaten with whatever pairings you like. However, TC seems to want a decidedly above average team, and it would be silly to settle for things that can easily be improved. Parents who are the same gender as their child don't need to worry about passing anything down. For male children, they should inherit Galeforce from their mothers if possible, and if not it doesn't really matter (Dual Support+ is OK, but you won't be using anything they can give in the long run). The one oddity here is Yarne; Wyvern Rider isn't a gender-exclusive class, and yet he doesn't inherit it. You say you'll be going with Kellam!Yarne (Kellam doesn't pass it down either), so you should have Panne pass down a Breaker or Deliverer (or change the pairing to someone like Lon'qu!Yarne, who passes it down and is currently free). Female children depend on what you want to use them for; Axefaire is great if they want to be in an axe using class (probably General or Hero), Despoil is nice for grinding but won't help you in combat, Counter is fun for Streetpass but useless in the final DLC, Wrath/Gamble/Zeal can be fun to play around with but aren't reliable, and HP+5 is nice for uber tanks if you have nothing better to pass down. In the event that a father has Fighter (and thus Hero access) but the daughter won't get Mercenary, consider passing down one of the Hero skills- they're both excellent for Rouges and Redeemers 3, a map you'll be playing very often (Sol is probably better). Neither of them will be of much use on the final DLC map, though. One more thing: never pass down gender-specific Rallies. On a grind run, you have spotpass units to do all your rallying for you. As for your individual pairings... There's my two cents. Hopefully it was useful.

Restoring half the damage you do against an enemy with huge Def and an x.25 damage multiplier is completely insignificant. What do you expect to gain from using Sol in Apotheosis (especially with a mere +4 Attack mod)? Alright. So your Chrom!Morgan has +1 Str, +4 Mag, +2 Skl, +4 Spd, -1 Lck, 0 Def, and +2 Res. None of his mods are over 4. Meh. My Panne!Morgan (+Str/-Mag) has +7 Str, -3 Mag, + 5 Skl, + 3 Spd, 0 Lck, + 4 Def, and -1 Res. Sure, you can get by with Chrom!Morgan, but please don't call him amazing when this exists (and mind you, this is only a 2nd Gen Morgan I have. 3rd Gen is vastly superior if you know what you're doing. Lonqu!Severa!+Spd/-Def Morgan has +2 Str, +8 Skl and +10 Spd). +1 Str, +5 Mag, +1 Skl, +2 Spd, -3 Lck, +2 Def, +2 Res. My +Spd/-Lck Avatar!Nah beats you in every stat but Str and Mag (Str is a tie), but Nah is probably going to wind up as a physical tank so Mag doesn't matter. Don't like my comparing Avatar!someone to NotAvatar!someone? Look at Gaius!Nah instead. Now she has one less Spd than you, but still retains that Galeforce and has +3 Str to boot (and has Spd+2 from Peg if it's that important).

I'm pretty sure there's a section of the forum dedicated to Romhacks. If you went there, you might get more relevant traffic. So, uh, your method for balancing things is to inflate everyone's stats? If I were trying to balance the game with simple hacks, the first things I'd do would be to change what classes get what skills, who gets what classes, what classes promote into (mostly so some promotions make more sense), and bring back personal skills. And wow, you gave SM the same skill as Wyvern Knight.

I tried that, it's slower. GG with battle scenes off, Galeforce, OHKOs on everything takes ~4 minutes (haven't actually timed it, but I'd guess at least 1 min of that is accessing the map and deploying my characters), and gets me at least 50 Wolts. If I fought every Wolt instead, I'd probably take two/three turns depending on the map, maybe five seconds per turn, so a best case scenario of 500 seconds per 50 Wolts- and that's not even counting the time it takes to deploy my characters, load the map, etc. GG also helps break up the monotony a bit, which is important if you're doing the same thing for ten hours. I wonder how long it will be before you ask how much Renown I could have farmed if I had been farming instead of arguing here...

The tag battles restrict a ton of your skills and have next to no strategy involved. If there's going to be co-op, I want a real map and two player phases.