Czar_Yoshi

Virion doesn't give Gerome anything he needs for Wyvern, though. If that's what you want him to do, you might be better off giving him a dad who gives Axefaire. The thing about Awakening is that it's not a game of good and bad, it's a game of good and better (except on Lunatic+). So it's pretty common to find pairs that work well for everyday usage, but without a good deal of experience and/or collaboration with an online community, all you know is how those pairs stack up to enemies (always good) and not how their performance compares to that of other units and pairings.

Here's the thing about Lunatic+ high deployment: units don't necessarily have to be high leveled to be useful. Enemies bring more than just stats to the table, so you should too: while it's certainly important to have some sweepers with high stats for taking EPs and securing important kills, they're not the only thing that matters. Inigo can contribute nicely as a hard support. He won't have the damage output to ORKO stuff by himself, but he will have the output to help out through DSes. He won't have the stats to last against multiple enemies, but he can provide pairup boosts that will allow someone else to. And even though his bases are bad, his fast exp gain and a promotion after two base classes will make that up pretty fast, if you can spare exp to train him. Skill-wise, he can also be helpful, with AT to conserve money and Anathema from Henry (don't use anyone other than Chrom/Henry!Inigo for Lunatic+ ingame, other supports build too slowly for him to be useful) for more Hit/Crit. So it's not like you'll miss him if you don't get him, but I think he has enough stuff to be a net positive to the team, especially considering that Olivia can build support without fighting or taking exp so he's very low-impact to get. As for quad GF passdown, you need to give Sumia as many chip kills as you can early on while doing the bulk of the fighting with Robin, get her to S with Chrom around Cht.6, and then retire Robin to the back after Cht.7 and use only Sumia and Cord up until Cht.13 or so (it gets a little hard for them around Cht.11 if they aren't both promoted, so I let Valk Lissa do a bit of fighting as a distraction and tank to make things easier). Sumia needs to take the lead at the end because Cord can get her final level in Cynthia's Paralogue, you'll want to give them all the earlygame Paralogues (saving 2 for when Cord shows up is a good idea though), and picking up Owain is very useful for getting more Cord exp too. It's very tight and I don't think you can train much more without sacrificing 20/15 on both of them, and getting Peg 20 is really important so they can keep helping after the children show up (some chapters, especially 18, four GF users just isn't enough for). Robin will be fairly weak for a while doing this as he gets essentially no exp after Cht.7, but mine was still strong enough to come back in at Cynthia's Paralogue, promote to Hero after a few kills (around Lv.15) and start helping again. Not enough exp. You'd have to promote both Pegs at 10 to have a chance, and Lissa is already too weak to duo- even if you somehow get her to Peg 10 by Cht.8 (which won't happen, as Cht.8 is the first place you can feed the Pegs kills that aren't set up, and Sumia already needs 100% of those), your run will sink due to not enough power. You can try to transition back into Robin carrying to get through Plegia, but then you won't have GF for later. Sending Lissa through Troub -> Valk with a lot of staff spam will work, though. You'll have to heavily favor Sumia to make sure she stays on track (try for a mid-late Cht.9 promotion at 20, without Paralogues), but you'll have enough EXP to train another low-impact unit as well. Not sure who that would be, as getting Miriel going usually requires the kills Sumia needs- probably Robin, I guess. You could also give Chrom a bit more exp, though I haven't had problems with mine when using both Sumia and Cordelia.

Fred!Owain works pretty well and is low-impact to get, provided you give him enough exp to promote early. It's a nice team, but there's not enough exp in the game to get Lissa to pass down GF, so you'll have to have Morgan get it herself and either not recruit Owain or give up on it on him. You could shave off a bit of the overhead by having Lissa go through Peg instead of Sage on her way to DF, but she really wants to go Troub/Valk anyway, and Peg Lissa sounds terrible in Lunatic+. Quad GF is already really tight with Sumia/Cordelia, but switching to Lissa (and adding Miriel on top of that) just isn't happening.

How about Virion?

Renewal/Pavise are already really bad in Apo, but Laurent shouldn't even be coming up front there (he has Agg, when both units in a pairup have Braves the rear unit gets to attack twice as many times, thus twice the Agg boost from being in back, thus he should always be in back since he can't contribute nearly enough up front to make up for that), so they won't actually do anything. Same goes for Luna/Sol, he can have them or not but he won't ever use them. Apo Laurent usually wants to be a hard support Sage, and if his mods are right (Gregor or Stahl), hard support Berserker is also useful. He just runs a bunch of flat +Damage/Hit skills, most of which he comes with at base, so don't worry about passing him anything other than good mods for Apo. Unless you mean using them only while grinding for Apo, in which case sure, go ahead. But Sol will still be better than Luna for that, and I usually load my grinding teams out with money skills instead.

If you're going for a quad GF passdown, you've probably overleveled Robin. You really want to stop around 10 in your second base class to focus on giving the pegs all the exp, otherwise you'll never make 20/15 on both of them (and if you promote them too early, especially Cord, there's a big risk of falling off right before getting GF and having to delay Morgan and Severa). Do use the earlygame Paralogues for the pegs, as long as you get GF the kids will do just fine on their own. It's a bit of a shame you have to promote Robin now, as the flexibility of choosing your promote on the spot can be a pretty handy trump during the child paralogues. I'd probably go for DK though; Cord could really use the +1 Mov to make up for that early, early promote. You might want to focus a little less on her and more on Sumia for now as well, then get her the last bit to 15 during Cynthia's Paralogue (and any other kids you happened to pick up, it's a good idea to grab a few boys for Morgan and Severa to marry) once you have the extra power from Lucina and Cynthia's GF.

Luna, Renewal and Pavise? How's he gonna get that and have time left to use it? I mean, I guess you could pass Renewal from Miriel with enough staff abuse, but General 15 is a lot of levels, a lot of E weapons and a very low class Mag growth. Sounds like way more trouble than it's worth, especially since Nos only heals you when you're weak enough to take damage and strong enough to deal it. Just use Gregor!Laurent, pass down AT (and Tomefaire or DSp+, depending on which way you go) and get to DM immediately if you really want to Nostank. He's way better than either of those. Probably no need to restart unless you didn't train Miriel in Cht.3 or something, and even then that's far from a game over. You can. It's really monotonous and I don't recommend it. If you want to anyway, Gerome already comes with Sage so he's mostly set (Henry for mods, maybe). Give Yarne Ricken, Severa Virion, Inigo Libra and Owain Stahl- you'll get your magic Yarne that way, and the rest of your team will stay strong (Hit+20 Yarne and a proc for Inigo). Try to set it up so you can switch your classes later to reuse the pairs for something else, so you don't spend all the grinding for just one run. They're very important, much moreso than without restrictions, but you'll want to do Hit calcs on a case-by-case basis, rely more on Breakers and avoid making assumptions. Wyverns sometimes are, but it becomes an active sacrifice of Spd/Skl in exchange for the high Mov/Str (and sometimes Def) instead of the best-of-both-worlds scenario it is with everything on the table. Like everything else, they're good if you're careful with them and a liability otherwise.

The 3ds had it even worse, though, and look at where it is now (pre-alpha menu with most features disabled, and a launch library of 2 games that weren't even from established series- why Nintendo didn't hold Gen 5 for a month or two and release it for the 3ds is beyond me). It's definitely possible for a system to overcome a weak start with proper support.

Snipers don't use Axes though. Hit+20 Yarne doesn't need any of the things exclusive to Panne, so it doesn't really matter. Deliverer for easier training, maybe. I don't recommend using Sniper x Sniper pairs, though, especially when Sniper x Berserker is available instead. Despite the high DS%, the pair tends to wind up slow and with weak hits both on the front and back.

Are you talking about this?

Best to go +Spd and use Morgan as a Valkyrie (if you're going to use Luna, don't go for it ingame. Ignis is both stronger and safer to get there). If Owain uses a second proc, it should be Astra instead of Luna. -Def is definitely doable. Use Int and Kuroi's Lunatic+ strats if you're nervous, and since it's vanilla even if you're not grinding you'll be strong enough to stomp once Cht.3 is over with anyway. For most of Plegia Robin relies more on dodgetanking than Deftanking, and once that's through you'll have so many levels that low growths won't matter too much.

Maybe it would make more sense to count the (non-legendary) pokes whose names aren't either portmanteaus, misspellings or reversals of real words? I have a pretty hard time taking Dragalgae seriously. Klink and its evolutions also sound like an enemy from Banjo more than a pokemon, they're pretty out of place here.

Yes, Vengeance for Owain. Good catch.

Good question. Let's take a look. Ignis gives a alt Atk/2 boost, while Luna gives a Def/2 boost, so Ignis will do better when the attacker's alternate Atk stat is higher than the foe's Def. Since only GKs have an alt Atk lower than 30, and LB/Rally/Tonic/Pairup provide a flat 25 boost, it's reasonable to expect an alt Atk of at least 55 (up to 65 on Brides, DFs, GMs, DKs, and Monks, and a little less on Dark Fliers), and even more if a +Str/Mag pairup boost was snagged, so maybe 70 max. Enemy Def distributions have an average around 50 and rarely go above 60, so a low-powered Ignis is around equal to or slightly better than Luna, and a higher powered Ignis is definitely better. I prefer Ignis myself. So Ignis/Luna vs Ignis/Astra, then. Let's look at a pair with 90 Atk and 80 Skl on the lead (not unreasonable with a good Morgan and good support), an Ignis boost of 25, and a target enemy with 50 Def. A whiff does 40 damage, Ignis/Luna do 65, and Astra does 100. Just Ignis: (0.8 * 65) + (0.2 * 40) = 60 Ignis/Luna: (0.96 * 65) + (0.04 * 40) = 64 Ignis/Astra: (0.4 * 100) + (0.6 * 0.8 * 65) + (0.12 * 40) = 76 So there you go, Ignis/Astra is pretty similar to Luna/Astra, maybe slightly better, and a lot better than Ignis/Luna or just Ignis. As a side, the reason Galeboys tend to run a Faire instead of a second proc when available, even though the latter is much stronger, is because procs can't activate on DSes and they spend 2/3rds of their time in the back. While a single 15-point damage increase is roughly the same as three 5-point increases, the latter are more spread out and burst damage usually isn't as helpful. Procstack Galeboys definitely aren't out of the realm of plausibility, but that's why they're not common, despite the increase. Well, let's look at what conditions you might see a higher damage from Luna than from Astra. Astra provides a flat 2.5x damage multiplier (a 1.5x increase). Luna just boosts by half of the foe's Def. So for Luna's boost to be superior, the foe needs at least three times as much Def as you're doing damage- the foe's Def must be at least 3/4ths of your Atk. So how often is this scenario likely to come up? Well, let's look at the main Luna/Astra users: Stahl!Severa, Gaius!Kjelle, Donnel!Kjelle and Gaius!Noire. Severa doesn't have a standard set (in terms of class/support) so she's harder to compute, but the latter three will usually be running LB/GF/Luna/Astra/Faire as a Paladin/Wyvern/BK respectively with Berserker supports. This gives us 97/101/96 Atk, still respectively- so that 3/4ths Def threshold is going to be around 72/75. How many enemies have that much Def? ...Well, none. So there aren't any scenarios where Luna is stronger than Astra, and as a result, adding Astra onto Luna to make a procstack will never lower the average damage output (and on enemies with 20-30 less Def, will increase it by a lot). So in the end, even if higher Def affects Luna less than it affects Astra, Astra is never weaker so there's never actually any asynergy. And keep in mind that while Luna's boost does get higher the more Def an enemy has, a Luna hit against an enemy with high Def will still do less than the same hit against one with low Def.

Depends who those pairs are, how many of them are staff users, exactly how much you're training each one, what part of the game you're in and mostly how good you are at the game. I'd stick to 3 if you haven't done Lunatic before, 4-5 if you have.

For non-Apo postgame frontlining, Sol+Astra is far better as a healing/damage combo than Sol+Luna. It's still not that reliable either way, but I wouldn't advise against it.

Brandon Sanderson is pretty epic.

Kellam!Nah was a thing due to having +7 Def, which was once so desirable that it was worth marrying Robin to a non-GF wife just to pass on to Morgan when there were plenty of perfectly fine options with 2 or 3 less. Sort of like how Vaike!Gerome's Str was once so desirable that it was unquestionably worth 50-60 listed Hit. She really has nothing going for her besides that, unless maybe Pavise and Renewal fulfill some sort of tanking fantasy for you (it's not like she'd be able to get them in any situation where tanking would still be useful...). Ricken!Nah as a Bowfaire Bride? I guess. She'd need a DF support to hit 69 Spd (no All+2). But Bride x DF has always felt a little flimsy without a huge amount of procstacking on a double galepair to me.

Oh, Nowi's perfectly fine (maybe not with Kellam though, she needs Spd much more). It's just that you're trying to train quite a lot of non-Staff earlygame units, and that's hard to get going.

I killed another run ^_^

Hmm, Lon'qu, Kellam and a Cav is quite a lot of earlygame units to take along, especially since Lon'qu isn't ranged and you only have one Javelin to share between two units who need it. It's vanilla so you could make it if you know what you're doing, but I wouldn't consider that to be a beneficial plan.

Let the wolf in anyway and just have it bark and howl and stuff, and make villager reactions be exactly the same as normal! I've seen games that do that before and it's generally really hilarious.

Libra!Noire is pretty good, but I prefer Ricken!Noire (trades WC for Paladin and +1 Mag- both of them have a lot of class overlap, unfortunately). Kellam!Noire also exists and is actually not as bad as she sounds. I think she could go well with a Ricken!Inigo. I wouldn't use Virion!Noire though, she has no use for Wyvern without the Faires and +4 Spd isn't really useful to a Sage, and Virion is better used elsewhere. Maybe as a DK with Deliverer she would work?

Gaius!Kjelle is better than Donnel!Kjelle and Gaius!Noire is better than Donnel!Noire (Donnel stinks). Gaius!Kjelle is also better than Gaius!Noire, but Donnel!Kjelle is also better than Donnel!Noire- and the improvement between Donnel!Noire and Gaius!Noire is much bigger than the improvement between Donnel!Kjelle and Gaius!Kjelle. Also, Noire handles not having GF a lot better than Kjelle does, so using Gaius!Kjelle and benching Donnel is an option too. There's no clean best option, but that's how they stack up. I prefer Gaius!Kjelle and non-GF Noire myself (for Apo).

Assassin's Spd is wasted on Gaius!Kjelle, make her a Paladin or Wyvern instead. But in general you should figure out your child ending classes while/after pairing the children up; most (good) kids have several classes they can run well and the best will depend on what they're leading/supporting.