Czar_Yoshi

No. But it is a difference in Yarne/Laurent's favor, and that's all I need to call him the worst. Actually, it will make quite a big difference if paired with Sniper Lucina fighting Apo's Throne enemies. Hit is very noticeable there. Nah has a niche that she fits into very well (female hard support). She has strong options as a Valkyrie from Henry and a Hero from Vaike and to a lesser extent Gregor, and can support pretty much any Galeboy very well. Noire can either go GF/proc and wind up with her mods outshadowed by every single other female lead thanks to Tharja's mods not matching up with her class set, or try to do the same as Nah and be a support- though if she does the latter she winds up getting outclassed due to the lack of innate Tomefaire. She still has workable sets- Gregor is probably her best bet- but she doesn't fit the role as fluidly as Nah. Nah also has ingame utility due to a very fast Nowi x Gregor support and cheesable Paralogue granting early Second Seals should Severa/Inigo either not be in use or prove too difficult to recruit immediately after Cht.13 Here you go: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=40300 He thinks Donnel's not worth the investment, by the way. So here's a method I came up with that might be useful for trying to quantify how "good" a unit is: on Hard/Cla, from their recruitment, the goal is to deploy only them and Chrom, with Chrom unequipped and at no support ranks (I don't care what his stats/class are) and have them use the auto-battle AI to clear the game. From there, total up the number of turns when you control the unit themself (excluding moving Chrom behind them), the turn counts for all chapters in which units other than the trainee and Chrom are deployed (including the recruitment chapter, unless Chrom soloed it up to recruitment) repeat several times for consistency and that's the unit's score. Lower is obviously better. Basically it's a way of measuring how much effort it takes to get a real juggernaut going. Obviously there are several big flaws (no weight is given to utility/parentage/supports, for one), but it might be an interesting baseline. Thoughts?

Ignis will be far better. Your non-attacking stat will be around 60, and there are very few enemies in the game (none outside of Apo and Streetpass) with more Def/Res than that.

Anna doesn't count, but even if she did she'd still be better.

For some reason I'm getting an impression of Donnel reaching 100 exp, but instead of the level up screen he gets a character death screen and it's oddly amusing. Dying is also pretty much all Donnel is good for, by the way. He's never capable of pulling enough weight to justify the effort of getting him started- on Normal/Hard anyone can become a juggernaut with a little investment, on Lunatic(+) you have to train him during the hardest part of the game and he never gets a chance to compensate for all the broken weapons, boxed archers and fed kills, and during postgame/grinding where he's easy to raise he literally has both the worst caps and smallest class pool in the game. *insert Insult to Rocks joke here*

Came in expecting a Sue topic. I'd like option 2 better (3 classes total though, not 4), but doesn't actually solve anything. Having a ton of classes doesn't actually matter if you can't use all of them, and if the exp formula were adjusted to be harsher on strong units, you wouldn't be able to go through more than 2/3 promoted classes ingame no matter how hard you funneled exp, so an exp formula adjustment would do more than any sort of class selection limitations.

If I remember correctly, that might have something to do with Endgame or someone pushing Gregor!Yarne really hard around then (because Sol/AT for Apo, of course).

That's actually kind of low, believe it or not. If you've only been training one other unit, you can promote at 20/20 in Cht.8.

On Lunatic(+), use them either when a tonic won't cut it or if you'd be needing the same tonic several times in a row. On Hard/Normal, use them to get a Magikarp started. For postgame, use them on stats with low growths.

Then you'll see a Tactician using an Axe/Lance/Bow.

At least you're well past the standard RPG "might need it later" phase. It's quite possible that the Mages in Cht.8 won't even be able to manage that. Seriously, they're really weak. Use whatever you need to on her to get her out of OHKO range, she's got a very large terrain advantage there and can actually get in some very good training if you play it safe and never fight more than one thing at once.

It would be cheating if the boosters were free, but since you still have to pay for them (and they're expensive enough that cost does matter) I put them in the same boat as Spotpass shops. If you're allowing those, Streetpassing yourself should be fine too.

VV is good in theory but in practice the stat combinations needed to make it useful don't match up with those present in Apo, and it usually winds up either being useless, redundant or a liability. Ask if you want elaboration, it's too late now. Miracle doesn't stop DSes. It won't save a Streetpass team against someone who's been properly prepared.

Yeah, they're actually based on the number of maps you've done. If you make it to Cht.7 and aren't having trouble because of it, then you're in the clear. But Cht.5 involves a good deal of facetanking atm and it could still give you trouble there.

1st gen male: Donnel, for reasons already stated. Terrible bases, terrible caps, terrible class set, and growing when fed is nothing special in Awakening. 1st gen female: Tiki. Like Nowi but no ingame utility outside of things like 0% growths. 2nd gen male: Gerome. No way for him to get everything he needs to properly capitalize on his Str without Avatar, and the rest of his mods are hardly spectacular. 2nd gen female: Noire. Like Gerome, no way for her to get everything she needs to capitalize on her Mag without Avatar. Character design: Tharja. She's hideous.

15 levels? Early game skirmishes have mostly high level base classes. Did you not train Avatar or something? It's normal for them to be strong, but not that far ahead that immediately. They definitely don't. Otherwise all your benched units would weigh them down, but as is they wind up ahead of anything you can possibly have normally right after they start promoting, but staff grinding and the like doesn't affect their strength.

Cordelia and Nowi are Avatar's big two for Lunatic (Sumia would be up there as well but that would involve hurting Chrom and with both of Avatar's daughters starting out as Pegs your team would become a bit of a one-trick pony). I think Olivia has potential too, but haven't figured out the best way to bring it out yet.

Agreed. FE really deserved a better showing than that SS run (openly taunting the RNG? What was the runner thinking), and RD and Gwimpage delivered. Well, on the bright side there are a lot more riders, which means Beastkiller carnage if you still have it (if not, invest in another one. You're strong enough by now not to need a max forge).

Well, I know I've been playing FE a little less than normal over the past week thanks to Awesome Games Done Quick... So you're definitely not alone. Cht.16 is actually the last chapter to have any unpromoted enemies, so enjoy them while they last. Lots of mages coming up next chapter too, and they're actually the first ones since the jerks in the Prologue to be a serious threat.

Any time you have the game running counts, provided you're not in sleep mode and don't have the software suspended. I don't know how sleep works with the 2ds though since it can't close. This includes resets, multiple files and menu stuff when not in a file.

Avatar can probably kill a good deal more stuff with a Fred or Chrom support (Chrom lets him double Fighters, Fred's DSes are usually OHKOes after Avatar's damage).

I can do it in about six hours by recruiting Wolt over and over again (done it twice, had nothing better to do in the meantime than time myself and try to go faster). That's a perfect time, though, and involves extremely fast GG clears- unless your menu management is really good (like what Gwimpage was doing to Radiant Dawn at AGDQ yesterday- major props to him btw) as well it'll take more like 8-10 hours. However, a more efficient way to do things if you're going for 100% in general is to get it from battling Spotpass teams while grinding supports at the same time. I think you can get around 65,000 from the first gen A supports alone (Airship did the math once, too lazy to do it again).

100% completion takes an extremely long time due to gathering father-child supports and grinding to max Renown. And then there are multiple regular playthroughs (this game is great with those), and a good deal of postgame grinding, and the 3ds Playlog keeps track of resets for things like Lunatic+ as well. And I know I've used Awakening as a music player for about a week shortly after I got it (road trip and all). The cutscenes add a ton of time as well if you watch them, they're quite long. All these times are mostly legit, though, since the Playlog stops counting when the 3ds is closed or software is suspended. No "left the game on overnight dozens of times so the AI could duke it out" like Smash 64 or Age of Empires or anything (though the latter is still very entertaining).

Prologue can be easy or hard depending on whether or not you know how to approach it. Cht.1 depends entirely on whether or not you trained Avatar in the Prologue. Cht.2 and 3 are the hardest, which means people have spent the most time trying to figure out how to trash them- Int has some pretty good strats on Lunatic+ (OK, they're amazing). On vanilla though they mostly depend on Avatar's growths again. Cht.4 and Par.1 are a breather for you to either get a second unit going or stuff Avatar even more. Cht.5 is hard again and is mostly about effective damage due to all the Wyverns, and will be significantly harder if you want to save Ricken and Maribelle without Rescue from Par.1. Cht.6 is made much easier if you have three capable combat pairs (Avatar, Fred and someone else) due to being a defend map. After that, you get some crazy terrain advantages in Cht.7 and 8, and after that your units are far enough ahead of the curve that they should be able to carry you with ease until Cht.12, when promotes become more common. Around then, you start getting children and everything depends on how you built your team.

You can get his stats a lot higher with two extra levels. And you'll probably need to, that post-Cht.1 Avatar won't be able to handle Cht.2. I'm not sure exactly what you're doing, but Fred can survive Luna+ from both Barbarians and the Myrmidon gets KOed before it can attack (unless it has Vantage+ as well), and the Barbs can also get killed with Thunder at range so Vantage+ doesn't matter even if both of them have it (your Hitrate will be shakier, but still in your favor). Mag+2 and Luna+ together on a Mage means trouble, but Vantage+ shouldn't stop you (I normally fight them on EP anyway, so it won't even have an effect unless you're trying to splat them with a hurt Fred).

Taguels reek. Morgan, Cynthia and Nah want to go with some combination of Owain, Brady, Laurent and Inigo (but don't pair Nah with Laurent). Gerome and Yarne want Kjelle, Noire and Severa. Since those numbers don't match up, you'll need a slightly mismatched pair- Inigo can take it the best, and most of the physical girls will be fine with him.