Czar_Yoshi

I don't think you've fed them nearly enough. Enemies are about to start promoting en masse and without a few 20/10+ units to fight with they're going to kick you in the teeth. You can still make it through, but you'll need to drop some units.

You can clear S.Apo with fixed supporting parents only (no Avatar/kids/Spotpass/Logbook) and only A supports. It's not possible to completely screw yourself out of the possibility of completion (though you can make it very hard on yourself). Spotpass don't want to be VVing in Apo because without 100% DS you need like 140+ Atk and no Aegis+ on the foe for it to be safe. Otherwise you won't do enough damage to KO with Vantage, will get hit and die. They can do it outside of Apo, but it's kind of pointless on a lot of main DLC maps.

Well, then... I'd really advise giving your first SS to Avatar (and going Merc -> Hero or DM -> DK). You get #1 after Cht.3 and #2 in Cht.8 (and also MS #1 in Cht.8). Panne will likely be hitting Lv.10 around the time the second one rolls around, so there's no reason to save the first one for her. Miriel as a Troubadour isn't the greatest thing ever (though it still is worth it if you get another from Anna)- I'd advise using the MS to get her to Sage if you want a healer.

Are you sure you want him up front? Avatar-M really likes it in the back. Anyway my first post still goes, but swap All+2 for Vengeance if he'll ever be coming up front.

Whatever gives you ten attacks per turn (two double and two single Galepairs, for example) is a good number if you don't want to make a full team. Spotpass characters are primarily for being staffbots (which you can never have too many of. If you somehow get twice as many staffbots as you have combat pairs, you'll be able to do just about anything under the sun). The reason parents aren't mentioned much is because Apo has a deployment cap of 20 and between 14 kids/Avatar, Chrom and his wife and two Rallybots, you're up to 18 units already. If you do want to use first gen units, there are a few who are notable for being 2nd gen tier: Chrom and Avatar (obviously), along with Sumia, Cordelia and (if she has a support) Aversa. Olivia is pretty good too. All of those have all the tools to perform fully in an optimized setting and won't let you down. Any males who have a Faire and a good support class will be pretty equally good at backing those girls up, too (leading well is harder than supporting well). If you do want to make a smaller team, it's almost universally better to focus on versatility than high mods, as well- keep your team options as wide as possible to make up for having fewer units.

Looks solid. You might want to consider throwing in a Sniper somewhere (60 Spd isn't as important on them) for Longbowing bosses, but other than that I think you should just make it and see how it works. Well, +Skl Avatar can make a 100% DS build with Lucina A, but that still defeats the point. You'll want to think for a while about what asset/flaw you'll use though, Nowi's mods match up really poorly with Avatar's secondary asset boosts and it's harder to make the kids come out with good mods than it is to figure out what to do with Avatar. For the other pairings, I know Yarne often used to be used to soak up Kellam, since he gets a little Str from him, doesn't care about the Spd and +Hit didn't matter back then. If you want your team to do a number of different things, it's best to keep every one of those things in mind when pairing up the children. For example, your Sumia!Lucina!Morgan may be able to be a nice Paladin/Wyvern and Fred!Inigo has Berserker/Hero to support those, but you're missing her opportunity to make use of Valkyrie (which is effectively Morgan-F's personal class) since Inigo won't be running magic. Cordelia gets Virion (very very best) or Ricken (passable, but also reddish hair), Nowi gets Henry (best) or Ricken (more niche, but still good), Panne gets Virion (best) or Henry/Libra (good). Avatar depends on asset/flaw. Cynthia doesn't come with Aether, and Lucina doesn't come with good Spd. Chrom x Sumia give both of them what they want (they have what they need, this is about what they want). Lissa x Vaike is anything but balanced, Owain's mods will be the flattest in the game (nothing above +2, which is worse than some G1 units) and his skillset is incomplete. If you want a mixed Owain, use Stahl instead- his mods will be a little less wonky and his class set will be good enough to make up for anything they might lack (it's among the best in the game). Gregor gives Inigo no new classes. He's probably his worst father behind Donnel (same, but worse mods)- I don't see Fred anywhere but he's a good unused option for Inigo. OK folks, math time. I'm going to assume the unit in question has twice as much Atk as the foe has Def (this is a pretty reasonable assumption to make for Apo), and 80 Skl (not hard to reach with decent mods and a +Skl support). Luna alone boosts damage for a single hit by 50%. It has an 80% activation rate, so running just Luna will put your average output at (.8*1.5)+(.2*1.0) =140% of normal. Chance of failure is 20%. Astra alone boosts damage for a single hit by 150%. It only has a 40% activation rate, but running just it will still put your average damage output at (.4*2.5)+(.6*1.0) =160% of normal. Chance of failure is 60%. Judging by averages alone, Astra is the superior skill. However, due to having less frequent and more powerful procs, the chance of getting the worst-case scenario is much greater than with Luna, making it a less safe option. Adding both procs together gives you an Astra proc rate of 40%, a Luna proc rate of 48%, and a whiff rate of 12%. Average damage output is (.4*2.5)+(.48*1.5)+(.12*1) =184%. Adding Luna to Astra improves your average damage by 34% of normal (22.66% of plain Astra's damage) and reduces your chances of failure to 20% of plain Astra's. Procstacking has been an extremely powerful combo that has stood the test of time for a good reason, and saying it makes no sense from a scientific perspective... Support conversation quality does in fact matter, and it matters a lot. Why does it matter? Because the majority of the people who come here for help care about them. A pairing could be as good or bad as you like, if someone wants to/doesn't want to use it due to aesthetics, it's our job to work around that limitation rather than shove "good" pairings in their face and ask people to use them or be suboptimal. If I were just here to project my gameplay ideals onto others, I'd have gotten bored and left long ago. And it can matter from a gameplay perspective, too. Know why some of Nah's sets are a thing? People wanted something other than Nah x Inigo (only physical Galeboy bar Morgan-M), and she had to adapt to support that. Now, as a result of being explored more thoroughly, she's far more versatile than she used to be, and is good for more than hogging Avatar/high Atk fathers, piling on a lot of +2 skills and sitting in the back all the time. But there would have been no reason or hurry to find those if everybody was content with their Nah x Inigo. People asking for stuff from outside the box is where most of the newer useful pairings have come from (Stahl!Owain is another example), and it's interesting to work on to boot. Honestly, when people come in and ask for "the best" with no strings attached, I usually just pull up a list of high-tier pairings and say pick-and-choose. Having a bit of aesthetic flavor adds flair and personality to a team, too (I've even got a bunch in my super-tight 100% DS team). Anyway, please no fighting in this thread. Speaking of which, there are a handful of people in Kuroi's stream chat who are uninitiated to the horrors of her hair. You should drop in some time (unless you're already there by a different name and I'm missing you?) and help me awaken them to the realities of just how bad she really looks. Well, if it's a PMU then you should be ready to expect any amount of derping and weird pairs, but you can still make something out of those ones... Especially if your asset is Spd. What's your asset/flaw?

There were three, actually. Anyway I look forward to seeing what comes up for Cht.5- I feel like having several different approaches to choose from on the spot would be really useful, because there are some cases where it's just not possible to make a stable turtle in the corner.

Hey, welcome back! Nothing much has changed in terms of what's being optimized for, we/I've mostly just been looking for ways to get more out of pairs by understanding what they can do better. Generally the focus has been on getting B-tier pairs to perform functionally on par with A-tier ones, because I'd much rather be telling people how to get the most out of pairs they want to use than telling them what pairs to use. At this point the general standards for a top-tier pair are being able to do pretty much anything you could reasonably ask of them in S.Apo (so where before it was you should keep a pair on hand to deal with Anna, now it's make your pairs so that Anna is just another enemy to them). It gives you more in-map leeway to do what you want, whether that's just boring or adds replay value depends on the player. I find it quite nice. Pair versatility is something I've also started taking into account, which is basically a combination of how many non-Apo postgame top-tier classes/skills they have available, and how many different Apo sets they can run at maximum performance. Was I making my team yet before you left? Everyone else: I've got class in the morning and need to head to bed, I'll do team critiques tomorrow afternoon sometime.

Kuroi, there was a troll. In your chat. And nobody noticed. Edit: it happened again. Edit again: you've got a serious problem on your hands. They just keep coming. Also PSA to everyone: the current run, happening right now, is the farthest Kuroi's ever gotten while still sticking to the No Deaths condition, and it's going pretty strong (Donnel just recruited). Now might not be a bad time to tune in. ...And it's over. So planning your resetless rout with a sub-par Robin certainly is a thing, but at this point I feel like having backup strats for being good is a really important idea (Cht.4 is pretty good at weeding out weak Robins anyway, so most of the ones that do make it are really good). No Deaths record updated to mid-Cht.5.

No, it's a very good pairing precisely because it can do something normally reserved for 3rd gen Morgan (procstack 75 Spd Wyvern) on two units.

Who did you swap her over? I don't recognize that mod spread (+1/-1/+2/+1/0/-1/0) as belonging to any Logbook unit (or anyone else, for that matter).

LB/GF/Luna/Ignis/Lancefaire as Wyvern Lords with Berserker supports is going to be pretty close to the best they can do. Axefaire inheritance/use over Lancefaire is possible also but they may not appreciate the drop in Hit. For S.Apo, of course.

LB3 gives like 8 levels per 3 minutes. I doubt Staff grinding is much faster than that.

+Str/-Def Avatar x Virion!Severa will give you the most gameplay mileage out of that, if you like.

Sage Ricken!Owain!Morgan will have better important stats all around (Mag/Skl/Spd) than a Sorc Ricken!Laurent!Morgan, even though Laurent's mods are superior to Owain's in all those stats, so I'm assuming you care at least a little bit about class abilities and whatnot over raw stats. With that in mind, I'd go with Owain for the more versatile parent pair.

I think you're calculating pairup bonuses wrong- a class with +0 in a stat will ultimately give +3 (stat boost alone). The +2 support level boost only applies to stats the class would normally boost. Getting Spd thresholds on non-GF males isn't actually very useful- Yarne is a special case because Anna has fairly low Def and he's got 100% DS, making it possible to have a high amount of guaranteed damage. Without that, putting your Aggressor unit up front is pretty risky, especially when lacking the Atk bonus from LB. In Laurent's case, you might actually see more damage putting him in the back than in the front and having Lucina attack at range without a Brave, since she'll be doing almost nothing either way (maybe actually nothing), so he'll be doing all the damage and needs to choose between 4 attacks against Aegis+ or two normally (the second will be slightly stronger since Aegis rounds down).

Keep in mind that the AI doesn't know it has Hawkeye.

Do one more chapter, a handful of Paralogues and ask again. You'll be getting some new units very soon who are a lot better than the ones you're using now, and they'll be more worthy of your time optimizing.

I don't have a 9.0-9.4 backup (on 7.something) but I do have a Gateway. The way Marth works is actually simpler than that, I think- ally/player Lord-Fs have no mask, and enemy ones do. There was a topic in the Awakening section a while back where someone put a Lord-F on their Streetpass team and it showed up with a mask and short hair for battles, but without them if fighitng as allies against a Risen.

I don't actually see Vaike on there... (You've also got two Miriels btw)

Merc has Patience (counteracts Hit+10 allowing you to effectively dodgetank for much longer, especially with a sword in Axe-land), AT (make Forges last longer for more effective Counter bypassing), gives very useful pairup boosts for getting other units started (particularly relevant on Vanilla where you're likely to use a slightly larger team), and has two very useful promotions (BK has 8 Mov Bows and is extremely effective at keeping Cht.9/10 under control, Hero has Sol, high Def and Hand Axes, both give Breakers). There's not really anything it gives that you can't use, just a few things it doesn't have (like Tomes, but that's hardly unique to it).

Wow, such Fred. Very Silver Lance. So DG. Seriously that run was interesting.

I've heard people go back and forth on this a lot, so solid example: If you have 7 Def and the enemy Luna has 10 Atk, will you take 6 or 7 damage?

Doesn't Basilio's eyepatch switch eyes depending on which direction he's facing? I think characters in Awakening are completely symmetrical.

Prologue: for the top wave, give Avatar both Vulneraries and a Lissa support. Have those two swim out on the water where only the Mage can reach them and duel the Mage with Thunder, healing on player phase. Since he can't have Luna+, you'll almost always win barring crits. From there, snipe all the Myrms and Barbs at 2-range so they can't attack. Fight the Boss at range with Fred supporting and Chrom/Lissa adjacent for the +10 Dge- he'll have no listed crit that way. You should be Lv.6-7. Cht.1: Use the Bronze Sword. Have Fred get you to the Fort with the Event Tile and tank there, trying to dodge everything. Use Vulneraries for healing if things get dicey. If attacking on PP instead, prioritize limiting the number of times the Mercs fight you, as they rarely miss. Having 11 Def going into the map is very good, because it means the Archer will tink you on the Fort and you can completely ignore him. Once all the 1-range enemies are dead, kill the Boss with Thunder. You should be Lv.8-9. Cht.2: Grab Virion's Elixir, throw Avatar x Fred into the middle with Thunder equipped and reset if things don't go your way. Dual Strikes are very useful for KOes and misses good for survival, try to get the enemies to not bodyblock you so you can reach the Fort on turn 2. Have the scrubs bail left, there's a Soldier they need to kill but it's very safe if they gang up on him. A Barb might break off and follow them, gang up on him too. Miriel and Virion are good. Just tank the top wave on a Fort, and start running in circles if things go sour. Cht.3: Blast through with pure stats. Fight the left side first and kill the Knight with magic, then tank the right side, then go up and clear the top from the left. You should be strong enough by now to not have much trouble. Cht.4: Bonus Box. Grab Celica's Gale, power up with Naga's Tear and clean house. Or sell the Supreme Emblem and recruit Travant if you're feeling lazy. There are much more consistent strats out there but they're usually complete overkill for vanilla Lunatic and would take more time to explain than they would save.