Czar_Yoshi

More like the DLC wasn't a thing yet when the game was first released, so they had no way to see what would happen when you inflate enemy stats to huge degrees and try to fight them with the game's present balance.

All right, have fun.

There's no such thing as a powerful Taguel. Lon'qu gives 1 more Skl for DS thresholds and 3 more Spd for Spd thresholds than Gregor, but if you won't be shooting for either of those then Gregor will give 2 more Str, and is the better option.

Then Yarne will serve you better. Yes.

So first off that's including their class caps, and classes have vastly differing totals because stats alone don't determine class balance: how do you factor in movement, weapon types, weaknesses and overall statistical synergy in determining how good a unit is (this is largely why the game's rating system is bogus)? For example, General has the highest stat total in the game of any class, but due to giving slightly lackluster pairup bonuses, having 5 Mov and not existing on anyone fast enough to use it well bar Morgan, it's not used very often. On the other hand you have the likes of Dark Flier, which has its highest non-Lck stat cap at 42 (after Grandmaster, tied for lowest highest non-Lck cap with a bunch of classes, including Paladin, DK and Bride)- but it's regularly considered to be one of the best classes in the game due to giving Galeforce, having excellent 2nd gen distribution, and having 8-Mov flying Tomes. If you look at the mod totals of individual units, they're a little more balanced numbers wise. You've got a net +5 on the three transforming girls, +3 on all variants of Robin, and +1-2 on most of the others (except Olivia and Vaike, who have +0). However, this doesn't add up to gameplay balance, due to Skl and Spd being much more important than Lck, Def and Res, and having something like +3/-3 Str/Mag is a lot better than having +0/0 Str/Mag. As a result you get units like Vaike (+0) who is incredibly good due to giving +3/1/1 Str/Skl/Spd, and Nowi (+5) who is really lackluster due to giving -1/-2 Skl/Spd, on top of having her strengths and weaknesses not matching up well with any of Robin's possible combinations. Another example would be Robin's constant +3: even though mod totals are always the same, there are some sets that are undeniably better than others.

3rd gen Morgan has lower growths than 2nd gen Morgan and comes really late. Never go for 3rd gen ingame unless it's Lucina!Morgan. +Str Avatar!Yarne, on the other hand, has pretty incredible physical growths. Postgame though Lon'qu!Yarne!Morgan will definitely be superior due to Panne being really bad there. It completely depends on whether you care more about ingame or postgame, and there's no happy medium.

Then it's his fault this topic got bumped. Donnel does generate loads of money but the game already gives you so much later on that it barely even matters (and he won't be giving as much at the very start due to needing to get his Swd rank and Lck going), and I'd still be going through Merc anyway on Robin (strong promotion options and gives good pairup boosts to get other units going). Having forges is nice but KOing power generally isn't a problem either way once units can use Braves, and Donnel doesn't really have any way to help with weapon rank gain on other units which is what's really lacking. Money for expensive Staves to train healers? If you're going to spend 200+ turns breaking weapons (a strategy I've used that definitely has its uses), you should be getting plenty of damage from the Luna+ enemies anyway for the staffers to heal off, giving boatloads of exp anyway with much cheaper and higher useage staves. Even without Aptitude the children grow insanely fast due to their low ILs. It might make them become invincible a few levels earlier, but they'll become invincible and get those levels with relatively similar amounts of effort whether they have it or not. I don't think it's nearly as big of a deal as, say, giving Cordelia the ability to pass GF to two children at once, or starting Laurent with Vantage.

The children start far behind but they come with an IL of 0, meaning they can catch up with the rest of your team with about 1 chapter's worth of kills and be unstoppable from there. Morgan, Lucina and Laurent are typically the best. You should use the Second Seal on Avatar (either Peg, Merc or DM if you feel like Nostanking). If you have a MS already, use it on Chrom or Lissa, or save it if it looks like Avatar will be ready to promote before Cht.8 (not likely if Fred is Lv.7).

He's got like three promoted classes, compared to the standard up to six for first gen units and up to twelve for 3nd gen units. That's pretty much nothing when a long-term non-Veteran Lunatic+ combat unit is expected to be in their third promoted class by endgame- other than different class paths he's got literally no variation in what his set allows him to do. All of the classes he does have are mostly ending classes on top of that- he doesn't really have room to take a class path other than reclassing back into what he already is. His skill pool as a result is very small and doesn't compliment him well- you can throw together a few that are good/decent on paper but never get any combos going. Sol Warrior is definitely his best option on Lunatic+ nogrind but he'll be reaching Bows A fairly late (he doesn't really want to go through Fighter and has no Discipline), and with a Spd cap of 39 he'll run into some trouble doubling stuff lategame depending on his pairup. If you can show me a Lunatic run that never has any chance of a bad hit/miss killing you, then I'll take that. But as-is dodgetanking is an extremely powerful method of survival, and I'd rather have a small% chance to get bad hit RNG and die than be restricted to one or two units who can survive Lunatic through Def alone (namely Nowi and +Def Robin). Just because it has a chance of failing doesn't mean it's not good. A note on Swordbreaker: guess what weapon type Paladins, Bow Knights and Dark Knights all have in common, and guess which major boss is incredibly fond of spamming huge waves of those at you?

No, the only time parent classes ever matter is in determining Morgan's starting class. Chrom doesn't give Morgan Aether and has no mods greater than +1, which is pretty much as low as you can get. He also locks Morgan out of marrying Lucina, which is something Morgan-M is often fond of (though I tend to prefer Severa/Nah for him instead). I hate to tell you this but if you're playing Frederick Emblem that's not the hump. The game gives you a hard first four chapters (Pro-3) to scare away folks who aren't up to the task, then an easy(er) Cht.7-11 to give you time to train a team, and then a hard midgame/endgame to see what your team is made of. While Fred can be made helpful later on, he's not capable of reaching the critical mass needed to act as a guardian during Cht.7-11 while the rest of your team trains and you'll mostly be relying on him taking kills to get through there reasonably... And then you'll be screwed once promotes start showing up en masse in Cht.12. Basically, just start pumping as much exp into your Avatar wherever possible- forge a Wyrmslayer would be a good idea if you've got D Swd, otherwise a decent mt Wind Tome from Spotpass will do, and go to town on Wyverns to catch up. If you can get to Tactician Lv.20 by the end of Cht.5 and haven't done any of the Paralogues yet, you'll still be in good standing for training later if you reclass immediately from there. If not, you might have to make do with one or no other pairs outside Avatar/someone and Fred for utility. Should you get set up in time to train them, Panne, Nowi and Cordelia all make good female additions to the team that can come in later without hogging any of the exp Avatar needs now. Fred can support all of them well, too. If you're trying to get all those ingame, you won't have enough deployment slots to build all the pairs at once and will wind up not being able to train everyone. Are you using/do you care about DLC, or are you just trying to get a good playthrough of the game?

Here

On Normal and hard Donnel performs very well if you get him going... But he's the hardest unit in the game to get going. You're pretty much paying a higher price for the same thing. On Lunatic and Lunatic+, he takes a huge amount of effort in the beginning to get going, does well midgame (if he avoids getting his face blown up by Counter, which I'll talk about soon), and then utterly tanks lategame due to bad caps and no class options. Considering as those difficulties start out hard, lighten up a bit to let you train up a team, and then get hard again to test that team, his bad points correspond with when the game is hard and his good points correspond with when it's easy (and his highs and lows aren't linked to the enemy power, this is completely coincidental), which makes him incapable of pulling any real weight and being a net drag on your team. As mentioned he has a bigger problem with Counter than most on Lunatic+: due to Aptitude giving a flat boost instead of a multiplier, his Str growth winds up being uncomfortably close to his HP growth. Add on weapon mt and low enemy Def, and he's often at risk of one-shotting himself on enemy Counter, whereas most units, by the time they're strong enough to do any real damage to themselves with it, will have at least enough HP to take two or so hits back. Bowbreaker: It's pretty great on Lunatic+ Cht.22. Bovis always spawns with it and if he gets Counter and you have no Bowbreaker of your own to fix your Hit against him, he'll be a huge pain to take down.

Any passdowns I didn't mention do not matter when grinding. The child will be able to get all the parent's skills in those cases and you won't permanently miss anything by passing the wrong one or save more than a few minutes by passing the right one. For ingame, just pass the best thing you have. Barb as in Barb and its promotions. Axefaire is good for Heroes/Wyverns, Despoil is fun for non-serious play and usually better than Armsthrift as a money skill. Henry!Nah can make some use of Wrath as well. You pass them because if the child is female she otherwise can't get them but could get anything else that parent could pass.

Weaknesses honestly don't make much of a difference postgame, especially in Apo (there are only three Beastkillers in the entire map).

No, +Def and +Spd are typically better than +HP. HP doesn't have a variable cap so picking it as an asset doesn't make a difference in the long run.

Honestly they're hardly being pushed given that people didn't even know about them until the ROM was decrypted. They're just... there.

So when fighting the top, you go around left and kill the Knight, then kite everything in circles around the map, engaging foes 1-2 at a time on enemy phase as safe with lots of adjacent units to negate crits, healing with Lissa on PP. Doubling with Fred and the Iron Sword does pretty good damage against everything that lacks Pavise+. Archers aren't too threatening without Luna+ and can mostly be ignored. Fighters without Hawkeye rarely hit and aren't too bad either. If you have to take Counter, double with Fire/Thunder and attack once more on EP for a 3HKO (no Counter damage). You should only have trouble if you're somehow forced to engage two Counter foes at 1-range on the same EP (which almost never happens); if they ever stack up like this then facetank unequipped in a chokepoint for 1 turn to get everything stacked up behind you and fight it the same way you handled the RHS.

Programming wise it would probably be easy enough to even implement in a patch once those are a thing. Making the alternate cutscene would be more work than the support check. I'd take it one up to 17 just to ensure that it can't be done with supporting just three units (Chrom, Fred or Lissa, husband/wife?) but yeah scaling supports could be a thing. Alternately, while spamming C supports would certainly be easier from a gameplay perspective, how different would it be for the story? Still a ton of bonds.

No Cynthia?

Gregor is epic for Laurent, good for Cherche and sometimes good for Yarne if either filler or for a +Str Morgan. He can also go on Noire if not going for GF, and makes a pretty good ingame support for Nowi due to the support speed granting early Second Seals and giving exactly the boosts she wants (and Nah does well with his Hero if he passes Axefaire).

Skill passing: GF where possible, DSp+ where possible and GF isn't. Sol from Gaius, any Wyvern skill from Panne, Aether from Cynthia, and your choice of Barb skills for other male-only cases. Everything else doesn't matter. Avatar-F still goes good with Yarne, Owain and Laurent. Stahl!Owain can be a physical lead pretty well. Fred!Owain might be slightly underwhelming due to his low Spd, though. There's no such thing as a defensive set in Apo- try running PavGis and see exactly how much they do. Yup, Ricken does ride a pony.

Oh, he could definitely ORKO Lunatic+ Grima. 4x25 damage needed, for 25 against Grima you need 100 more than his Def. Luna Def is 28, so Fred needs 128 Atk. He probably can't reach that with a Brave, but if he gets one crit out of 4 he only needs to do 17 base (96 with Luna) which he can definitely reach with DLC. Without DLC he's actually still capable of perfectly reaching it with a +9 Str support (GK): Atk: 48(base) +2(mods) +8(Rally) +9(Wyvern Lord pairup) +2(tonic) +2(Special Dance) +2(Str+2) +1(Defender) +4(Barracks) +18(5/15 Brave Axe) =96 Spd: 37(base) -2(mods) +8(Rally) +3(pairup) +2(tonic) +1(Defender) =49, which is 1 short. He thus needs a double perfect Barracks Boost (+Def/Spd) to do this. Crit shouldn't be a problem, Avatar gives +35 from combined DSp+/Solidarity/Anathema/S support and he can make up the other 10 needed for listed crit from his own Skl. Hit rates, however, likely will be- he'll want to pack Quick Burn for sure. All this is also assuming Avatar isn't DSing. If she is then he'll go down a lot easier. I've already OHKOed Lunatic+ Grima both through Pavise+ and with Mire before, so it can definitely be done. Your Avatar's asset/flaw don't actually change what stats they give on pairup. Those are based on their current class, support rank and current stats- but adding extra stats over 30 has no further effect.

Well, that's why it matters. There in fact is a difference between difficulty levels in Awakening.

Because Lunatic(+) Grima has 99/53/53 defenses, 45 Lck (crits? Not often), 110 Avo, Dragonskin and 80-100% Pavise (capped GK Fred@Silver lance with no boosts/pairup does 3 damage to him). It gives a ton of respect to get rid of him in one shot. Normal/Hard Grimas have much lower Lck and defenses making things like that fairly common if you can get a proc+crit on a capped unit.

Avatar-F is usually preferred for Lunatic(+) ingame due to being able to marry Chrom, but Avatar-M works too with GF stacking strats. If you're grinding, though, nothing matters. Avatar x Chrom gives Chrom a slightly better wife than Sumia, gives Lucina slightly better mods than Sumia, and gives the worst Morgan-M in the game. It's up to you. Ricken is used as a father due to having the highest Mag mod of any father (+2), as well as giving Luna (and Bowfaire/Hit+20 in niche cases). Axefaire if Morgan plans on running Hero or Wyvern Lord, otherwise it doesn't matter. On aesthetics runs I usually pass Despoil because it's really fun to play with. When I originally made my 100% DS team it was just because I was looking for something interesting and unique that would be a challenge to make (and to see if it was possible). I wasn't actually intending for it to take off and become a thing, but it did, so I just help people who want to make them (I've never actually encouraged someone to go for all 8 pairs unless it was their idea in the first place). Likely the reason it caught on so much is because enemy data has nothing to do with whether or not it works- it's just that 160 Skl threshold. Since Apo isn't very hard if you have the enemy data and know that Rescue is good, teambuilding for non-challenge runs (for people who aren't concerned about aesthetics, as well) mostly just revolves around hitting thresholds, no matter how arbitrary, because it's a quantifiable measure of how much a team can do (again, even if it's a completely arbitrary one. 75 Spd on all units is heavily emphasized but doesn't actually do anything in practice). The reason I don't tend to like VV is that it's not plug-and-play. I want to be able to have a team where all calculations and setup are done with before battle that can stand firm as I do whatever I want in the map- while it's very possible to get guaranteed 1HP setups for Vengeance, they require me to do a specific thing mid-map that causes multiple runs to turn out pretty much exactly the same. This is probably a matter of taste, but if I spend a bunch of hours grinding up a team ingame, I want to get more than one run out of it (my 100% DS team has at least two completely different sets that are above average and suitable for both Apo and non-Apo postgame). That's my reason for not liking it. But the real reason why I don't recommend it here is simple experience: most/all of the people who come here, build teams with it, do Apo and come back afterword just didn't like it. Usually it either came down to having to choose between doing some calcs to set up Vengeance to clear out a squad of mooks and blasting them with GF (guess which is easier) or having RNG (DGs, misses etc that can be mitigated but just take more time to do so) get in the way of setups. Again, Apo is pretty easy so I'm not going to recommend a set that most end users find to be actively useless (regardless of what it does in theory/in practice by people who really know what they're doing).