Czar_Yoshi

Might as well talk about this bit, then. When capped, your units have 80 HP (85 with a tonic). This doesn't change based on class or mods, so it's very reliable. For you to die, you're going to need to lose every bit of that. Assuming you have a minmaxed team, you'll have a lot of units with a lot of Galeforce and Rescue backing them up, and enough killing power that you have a very low chance of dropping kills. There is no point in the game, DLC or otherwise, where you are faced with a bigger flood of enemies than this can hold back (RaR3 on Lunatic is the closest it gets), so you can always keep your area of the map safe by virtue of killing anything that comes near and then running away. Because of that, you can fight all your battles on Player Phase, and because of that you can control exactly what who fights. Thus, you should never be in danger of dying from attrition. As a result, RNG-based anti-damage skills like PavGis, DG+ and Sol have relatively little application. In an event where you can live without them activating, they effectively do nothing for your survival and at the very best give you more options for your next turn (due to having more HP than expected). In an event where you require them to activate to not die, you've placed your fate in the hands of the RNG, which is something you should never deliberately do. And in the event where you'll die whether or not they activate, well... Since perfect Player Phase Offense (PPO) gives you map control and allows you to engage in only safe battles, the meta is thus about maximizing your chance of killing stuff through more and more RNG-based overkill. And about doubling everything, because why not. As a side note, since you can heal to full after every battle should you want to, exactly how much damage you take from an enemy doesn't matter so much as how many hits it takes for them to kill you. There's really no difference between getting hit by a 30 damage attack at 1HP and 30HP after all, you're still dead. And when you're trying to make a build with the stats to survive a particular encounter, it turns out there's a really big difference between how little Def you need to be OHKOed and how much you need to not be 2HKOed- so big that, in the case of Apo's Helswath Berserker (the best example of this), it's not possible for a minmaxed unit to have so little Def that they get OHKOed (assuming LB, Rallies and a generic pairup- less than 30 Def would be required) and also (barely) not possible to get one so tanky it can take two hits (110 Def with HP+5 and an HP tonic), outside of niche 100% PavGis builds. That is to say, Def isn't really important. It's perfectly fine to use it as a dump stat in favor of boosting others; a +Str/-Def Lon'qu!Severa!Morgan has a +6/0/8/6/-1/-2/-3 mod spread and it's one of the best in the game. A 5-10% loss in defenses is typically worth a 15-20% increase in offense.

Eh, my Wii U is pretty much just a really, really big GBA. I have it hooked up to a TV, but almost always just use it for gamepad-only stuff like VC, TWW and occasionally SSB4 (it could really stand to have better singleplayer). And Tropical Freeze. Nobody ever mentions TF, and it's such a pretty and fun game. They sold like crazy because they're merch, something Nintendo in all their money-grubbing ways have not realized the value of, not because of their game compatibility, so they're a flop in that they completely failed to do what they set out to do. I picked up Shulk because he's pretty much the only bit of official Xenoblade merch in existence, not for another AI in SSB4. Once the devs start realizing more applications of figurines that can store game data (and making enough of them), they could become so much more.

Expanding GCN support to Brawl? Maybe. But who would play Brawl when there's SSB4 anyway? Probably someone who wants a working Vault.

Manaketes in general just aren't too good in Apo (you didn't specifically say you were focusing on that, but it's what everyone here assumes unless specified otherwise). Nah can still make herself useful, just in another class. If you like Manaketes and want to see them be really good, though, it's better to just do something else they are good at. Nowi in particular shines the most on vanilla Lunatic as a frontliner with a Seraph Robe, Dragonstone+ from spotpass and a Merc Robin husband- she takes very little time to get going, is incredibly destructive, and Morgan/Nah with Veteran inheritance are even better. Fred is fairly low demand, actually. His most common use is on Inigo, who doesn't really mind the Spd/Mag drop and gets Paladin and Luna out of the deal. He's sometimes used as a filler option on non-GF Noire thanks to his good Str/Skl mods, and similarly for Yarne when no Sniper dads are available. Outside of that, not many want him. He's probably the second least wanted dad in the game, behind Kellam and ahead of Donnel and Libra. That is... Quite possibly the flattest mod spread I've ever seen on a Morgan. He'll be stuck with +2/1/2/2/1/2/2 Str/Mag/Skl/Spd/Lck/Def/Res (I think, +HP isn't a common asset so I might be remembering it wrong). I legitimately can't think of any way to put that to use. Uhh... Maybe as a Grandmaster with All+2 supporting a Sage? A Dread Fighter with All+2 supporting a Dark Flier? Really haven't got a clue. Eheh, my name is a pun on a boss from Super Mario RPG.

I assume Jedi was talking about Melee having a more advanced metagame, not more advanced mechanics. Individual buffs and nerfs don't have anything to do with game mechanics, but they do influence (and mainly slow down) the development of refined playstyles. Melee is a very old, very good game with well-established methods of play. I have absolutely no problem with preferences for the Old Ways and people who would rather keep playing the game the way it's always been played. Just don't get confused over why you like what you like. And if I'm wrong about that and there really is some massive gameplay gulf between the two (I like to think I'm good enough at both to have noticed it if there was), I'd appreciate someone explaining specifically what it is, and not just "Melee has more advanced mechanics". 10? MK's one and only method of dispatching his opponents was to exist.

I was going around on various forums being salty and complaining about how bad Sticker Star was, and someone told me the reason it stank was because IS put all their energy into Awakening instead.

It's because Manaketes are treated as base classes and Paladins aren't, so your Lv.1 Nowi is effectively Lv.15 and your Lv.1 Fred is effectively Lv.40 (assuming he got reclassed at GK 20).

I don't think it'll grow that big either, but do keep in mind that prior to this SSB4 was ignored in part because it was less likely to attract Nintendo's attention, and that's less of a reason now.

I can't help but notice that a few hours after this happened, brawlcustommusic became smashcustommusic. With PM dead, methinks the smash hacking community is going to start shifting to SSB4 much faster than it's been doing.

Cool! Everyone else please revote since you can select more than one option now. I'll vote for Chrom, Virion, Lon'qu, Ricken, Gregor, Libra and Henry. Gregor is a bit of an odd choice, but I think he has some interesting non-standard potential that I want to play around with sometime, so he gets a vote.

Kinda wish it was "good" instead of "best" so we could vote for multiple options, but my money's on Lon'qu. Brady is the only galeboy (aside from Morgan) who can have both a proc and some semblance of speed, so you might as well go all out.

Those three switches are pretty important, definitely do them (Fred most of all, Fred!Gerome is a practical joke played by an infamous troll on the Gfaqs community years ago where he tried to convince people that a bottom-of-the-barrel pairing was top tier, and succeeded). From there, if you wanted to, you could switch Gregor and Virion to get Hit+20 on Yarne and Berserker on Gerome, but it's not strictly beneficial unlike the rest of those changes. What Asset/Flaw are you using? And welcome to the Forest, by the way!

If you want to organize your list, a better way to go about it would be to list children along with their alternate parent (eg Sumia!Lucina). Otherwise I have to look in two different places to see what your options are and what you've chosen to do. Snipers and BKs are both good and both have their uses. Snipers are very important in challenge runs and other situations where it's difficult to engage certain enemies directly and/or you need a poke to get a guaranteed kill, and also have better Skl. BKs are slightly faster, have more Mov and give better pairup bonuses. I generally use some of both of them, but keep in mind that poking is less important when you're not doing a challenge run because stuff dies to six hits anyway. DSt+ is Lucina's best skill, it's more important than LB. Definitely don't get rid of it. What you should do, though, is make sure you know why you're using VV- unless you have a particular situation in mind that you need it for, it'll never help (and there aren't many situations in Apo where it's even the best answer).

Nobody's mentioned Tropical Freeze, I had fun with that... Meh. The GCN adapter only works with SSB4 unless you hack your Wii U, and that puts a pretty big damper on a lot of backwards compatibility (especially some VC stuff).

1. Awakening 2. Age of Empires II 3. Project M (SSB4 if that doesn't count, but it'll be way lower on the list) 4. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky 5. Xenoblade 6. Paper Mario TTYD 7. Donkey Kong 64 8. Ocarina of Time 9. Pokemon X&Y 10. Minecraft Same-series HMs to Shadow Dragon, Brawl (for the vault and SSE, not the gameplay), Super Paper Mario/PM64, TWW and FRLG/DPPt. Also Mario Kart DS, though there isn't already a MK game on my list.

Vantage and Agg don't mix, get rid of Vantage on Kjelle and give her Astra instead. Same goes for Inigo, give him a Faire instead. Laurent and Noire as well, they're especially problematic since you've got Vantage on both units (it's a bad skill in the first place, but you're really using it everywhere). Noire is also lacking Tomefaire, so you should probably consider running her physical instead for better damage output. +Spd on Robin will do nothing with your current setup, as VV units don't use their Spd and Morgan can't reach 75 even with it with that setup (I'd advise making him +Mag and doing something else with Morgan, such as Valkyrie). Robin's VV also is questionable because Sniper Lucina's DSes will be very weak and you won't be able to kill anything useful. Finally, you've got a ton of pairs with only 6 Mov, which is really underwhelming. You've got so many good potential Paladins and Bow Knights, use some! Don't put too much stock in what Reddit says. As for Laurent x Nah, pairs without a single GF user can't move around properly and just get benched, so stay away from that.

Gregor isn't for Vantage, he's for Sol or AT. He gives pretty nice pairup boosts as a prepromote if you give him an instant MS and Miriel is really good early on, so as long as you don't need the parents lategame he'll work fine.

Veteran and staff grinding. That's how you'd do it without DLC.

Probably GM. He'll want a Dark Flier pairup either way, but it's very hard for a DF to hit 75 Spd with a +0 pairup and keep TF (2nd gen, only Gaius!Cynthia can do it) and very easy to reach that with GM's +2 Spd- notably sibling Lucina/Cynthia and Virion!Severa can do the job. GM's +Str/Mag is also more useful than DK's +Def/Res, and since DFs have 8 Mov anyway DK's ferrying ability wouldn't see much use. Mind you, though, having both sides of a double Galepair hit 75 Spd is almost completely pointless. It's technically still a good thing because it lets you choose which side you fight with and still get the double, though, so I do consider it an improvement over the alternative and thus grounds for being "better". But this is still one of those scenarios where you're optimizing for optimization's sake alone. He's stuck with the painful combination of a +3 Spd mod, a base 40 class and no room for All+2, unfortunately. But if you upgraded to Lon'qu!Brady, he could hit 69 Spd with no All+2 and a +0 support, and that could be very useful. Female Sages don't see much use, and this is a decent spot to put one. Ricken!Noire would be a great choice, as she both gets a Galeboy and doesn't have a high Spd mod to waste (but still hits 69 without All+2). Another good choice for a DK could be Ricken!Owain with a Bride pairup- perhaps another Noire (Vaike? They'd have the option of switching to Sniper x Sage/Berserker). His Wyvern isn't actually prohibitively slow- with any +Spd support, he hits 66, and he doesn't mind missing 69 because there's no way you'd attack Thronie with a melee male (if you do mind it, though, a Falco support can fix things up with no need for All+2). Swapping to Griffon yields +3 Spd, which does allow for 69 with any +Spd support. He'll be packing Axes either way, so you're mostly looking at a trade of 6 Str for 5 Skl and +1 Mov on pairup. That's what's on the table, you decide if it's worth it.

Yeah grinding on Lunatic kind of removes the point of playing Lunatic in the first place. All the enemies have on you are stats, and you're taking that away- why not just play Normal instead? If that's fun for you, then go right ahead. Nobody will mind, enjoyment of the game comes first and foremost. Just keep in mind that it's not representative of the real difficulty and your experiences won't line up with those of others.

-1/-2 defenses are nicely distributed? They don't really matter, but they're definitely not a selling point.

It would be, but it has the wrong distribution to be used as a lead and doesn't give the right bonuses to make a good support. DKs are a class that should be good but just don't fit anywhere (+Spd Robin!Owain is probably the best candidate for one).

Your pairings are really solid but those class sets are gross. You need to use more than one or two different unit combinations or you'll get bored with the map before even finishing your team's inaugural run and all your work grinding the team up will go to waste. Get more Snipers, Paladins, Wyverns, Bow Knights, Warriors, Valkyries, even Assassins etc in there to make things less generic- don't try to make every pair conform to an "optimal" strategy, try to figure out strategies that bring out the best each pair has to offer. Like, take Severa and Gerome in the second set. As is, they're really fast, and can drop quite a lot of Spd without failing to double anything. If you give Severa All+2, you could switch her to Wyvern Lord- a loss of 4 Spd from Hero- and she'll gain a ton of Str and Mov from it with no losses (her Hit will be fine with Gerome's Hex, and she uses Vengeance so she doesn't have to worry about proc rate). Or, if you keep her as a Hero (with All+2), she can't even use a +Spd pairup, so you could give her something much more accurate instead- say, a Warrior (pass Gerome Bowfaire from someone like Stahl and put Henry elsewhere, maybe) or a Sniper for very high DS.

Or for players for whom Lunatic's level scaling isn't quite high enough. I did a playthrough where I fought and beat every single one that appeared, and while it was fairly difficult I also made some fairly bad long-term planning derps because I wasn't planning on doing it at the start. I don't recommend it, though. The stat curve is so restrictive that until you start getting endgame level stats and skills, only Robin can keep up, so there's pretty much no short-term strategy to it.

Mind you, if you fail to get a kill and activate GF, it'll still be there after you dance, so that does work both ways.