The Lunatic Club

[Ownagepuffs]

Lucina should have dibs on Laurent since they have the same support type as Chrom/Sumia. It's really fast. The +Luck from Great Lord helps with AT activation as well.

[Alastor15243]

Hate to break it to you but you're #4001.

Those three should be good, though think about how you're going to pair the kids up with 4 girls and 1 boy, and be very careful not to neglect anyone early on. Miriel and Sumia both really want training in Cht.3, and the latter has an important level threshold to reach (GF for Lucina) while the former can be an excellent contributor as early as Cht.5 with enough training.

Hm... I assumed that sibling support bonds would be enough. Is it really important to get each child a romantic partner in Luna+?

Also, is each one of the lunatic+ skills equally as likely to appear on a unit?

Edited June 4, 2015 by Alastor15243

[lacuna]

Chance of Dual Strike = 20 + 10x(support level) + (total skill of both units)/4

C rank = 1, B = 2, A = 3, S = 4

Assuming your units are optimized for in game promotes w/ no limit breaker, their skill caps should be somewhere around 45 (correct me if I'm wrong). Two units with 90 skill between them and an A rank support will have a 72.5% chance to dual strike (excluding skills like dual strike+). Two units with the same skill and an S rank support will have a 82.5% chance to dual strike. Although it may seem like a comparatively small amount, that extra 10% will potentially make or break your run.

Also, this may seem off topic, but why does Morgan's starting class (in his/her recruitment chapter) only default to tactician if the father/mother is a lord/taguel/manakete/dancer?

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Sibling/sibling or child/parent supports do tend to be adequate, yes. But getting that S is still a significant stat boost. It's not enough to be worth a complete roster rearrangement (like, say, trying to bring in more male kids), but if your current roster could planned to pick up any S supports, it's worth considering. At least, this, as far as main campaign play goes. Their value goes up even more if you're planning to take this file to post-game.

Also, this may seem off topic, but why does Morgan's starting class (in his/her recruitment chapter) only default to tactician if the father/mother is a lord/taguel/manakete/dancer?

For Lord/Dancer, it's definitely because the class is unavailabie to Morgan, so he/she gets Robin's default class, I guess. As for Taguel and Manakete, I have very little experience with male Robin, but are you sure? Seems really weird that Morgan wouldn't default, as usual, to her dad's class when they're options that are legitimately available to her.

[Ownagepuffs]

Morgan can start as a Taguel/Manakete.

[Alastor15243]

So I'm going to attempt Lunatic+ with a FeMU and Chrom pairing, hoping to get galeforce by the end of chapter 13 so Lucina and Morgan start off with it when I recruit them (I'll also try to get Laurent too). If I try to go for this, is +Def-Skill still the best option for asset and flaw, or do I want to do another combination that better suits galeforce player-phase assaults?

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

+Spd is pretty good too, but for normal runs, I'd say +Def still has the edge. -Luk can replace -Skl if you're willing to be a bit of a gambling person in the early chapters. While Galeforce is cool for Lucina, I'd recommend Veteran over it, as it helps her gets ahead of that stat curve faster (plus she can learn Galeforce herself and the pace won't be terrible with Veteran in her skillset). At least that's my experience after having passed both to her before.

[Alastor15243]

+Spd is pretty good too, but for normal runs, I'd say +Def still has the edge. -Luk can replace -Skl if you're willing to be a bit of a gambling person in the early chapters. While Galeforce is cool for Lucina, I'd recommend Veteran over it, as it helps her gets ahead of that stat curve faster (plus she can learn Galeforce herself and the pace won't be terrible with Veteran in her skillset). At least that's my experience after having passed both to her before.

But Veteran is literally a second seal away while galeforce is much, MUCH more dangerous to get in the valm arc even on lower difficulties due to the increasing prevalence of bow users there. This logic confuses me. Am I grossly underestimating how important it is to quickly chance to a class with bow access, even if you have galeforce?

Edited June 4, 2015 by Alastor15243

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

That requires reclassing Lucina to Tactician, though, which, while admittedly viable, sticks her with a 1~2 range weapon that she's not particular adept with (because Chrom Magic >.>). There's also the fact that with the way C14 and C15 terrain is, a Pegasus Knight/Dark Flier can troll them so hard and get tons of free EXP, since the enemy has very limited capacity to fight back.

As for bow access, it's actually not as important if you have Galeforce. Both are good ways to get around Counter, but it's not necessary to combine them. The reason I recommend Veteran is because once you get ahead of the stat curve, until stat caps cause enemies to catch back up again (which is only around the last 3-4 chapters), more stats is just a good way to deal with quite a few of the Lunatic+ skills. Also, Galeforce requires having surefire killing power, which, while the kids are strong, are still tier 1 and only pick up 1/3 of each parent's boosts. This makes it a bit shaky to have and reliably proc early on. Don't get me wrong: it's still viable to run a Galeforce pass, but passing Veteran and Javelin access is worth not having to drag Lucina through Tactician and Grandmaster (and believe me, I was just as surprised when I tested the results, since I was convinced on my first run that Galeforce was the ultimate all purpose pass-down).

[Alastor15243]

That requires reclassing Lucina to Tactician, though, which, while admittedly viable, sticks her with a 1~2 range weapon that she's not particular adept with (because Chrom Magic >.>). There's also the fact that with the way C14 and C15 terrain is, a Pegasus Knight/Dark Flier can troll them so hard and get tons of free EXP, since the enemy has very limited capacity to fight back.

As for bow access, it's actually not as important if you have Galeforce. Both are good ways to get around Counter, but it's not necessary to combine them. The reason I recommend Veteran is because once you get ahead of the stat curve, until stat caps cause enemies to catch back up again (which is only around the last 3-4 chapters), more stats is just a good way to deal with quite a few of the Lunatic+ skills. Also, Galeforce requires having surefire killing power, which, while the kids are strong, are still tier 1 and only pick up 1/3 of each parent's boosts. This makes it a bit shaky to have and reliably proc early on. Don't get me wrong: it's still viable to run a Galeforce pass, but passing Veteran and Javelin access is worth not having to drag Lucina through Tactician and Grandmaster (and believe me, I was just as surprised when I tested the results, since I was convinced on my first run that Galeforce was the ultimate all purpose pass-down).

So you're saying reclassing to pegasus knight, working up to a D rank in lances, and then using javelins throughout dark flier winds up being less of a hassle than going through tactician?

I've seen your livestreams, so I know you definitely know what you're talking about, but this still seems unlikely. What's the ideal class path after leaving dark flier? Maybe knowing that will help me understand why passing down veteran is more practical.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Paladin is typically one of the best places for her to go to next and for her to stay, really, especially if she ends up as a support. I guess the main selling point of Pegasus Knight Lucina is the safety of the strat. Flying in C14 allows her to fight controlled battles with the enemy Pegasus Knights to get her lance rank up. Once those enemies are cleared out, the rest of the enemy can do very little to stop her from picking them off. Inheriting Veteran allows her to also make the most out of those Pegasus Knights, so that she can reach level 10. This is so that if there's issues with Counter letting her get that D rank, she can still promote to Dark Flier and have 2 range, even if the tomes are likely to be super wimpy (worst case scenario here is that she has way better mobility and safety than Grandmaster would have in the same chapter, while being stuck with the tomes). She can continue picking off the remainder to push her stats to a point where the enemies won't be able to seriously threaten her for a while (barring Counter). Then there's safe spots fliers can take advantage of in C15 (not to mention the beach being a death trap for the enemy) and C16. Even if she had bad initial luck with Counter on the C14 Pegs, she should have plenty of opportunity to get that lance rank up, as well, so that she can transition quite smoothly to Paladin.

So I guess long story short: fliers have enough trolly safe spots in the mid-game to turn it into a loot pinata.

I've also done runs where I've actually forgone Galeforce during full deploy runs where she's been a semi-lead with Morgan, where she still inherited Veteran, but ran Lord->Cavalier->Paladin->Hero. It doesn't have that same initial safety of C14-16 enemies being food for her, but she has a stronger frontline fighting presence that way. This particular setup allows Warrior Morgan to be anti-Counter (taking the lead for EP as needed) and a Lucina with Aegis, Sol and Aether is a potent EP tank.

[Ownagepuffs]

You know, for some reason the thought of Tactician!Lucy using P Falchion is really freaking cool.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Hm... I assumed that sibling support bonds would be enough. Is it really important to get each child a romantic partner in Luna+?

Also, is each one of the lunatic+ skills equally as likely to appear on a unit?

I was more thinking that there are five children there, which is an odd number (aka one with a parent support). You'll want to know in advance how to do that.

In general I go for the S supports when I can and grab Owain if I need a spare support, but Lucina and Cynthia can use DSt+ and be even better together than a married couple. Combine this with two daughters for Avatar, and you can make a totally balanced team with either one extra boy (and Avatar supports his other daughter, benching his wife- more likely in Nowi cases), or two extras and keeping Avatar and his wife on as a pair (more likely in Cordelia cases).

[Ownagepuffs]

Just finished the casual run I started like a week ago. The team was much stronger this time around with the inclusion of Laurent and better exp management. Chrom's 60% Str growth also decided not to fuck around this time so he ended up trivializing Grima much better than my first play through.

According to the credits, bronze medal went to Clint/Stahl (early game juggernauts), silver medal went to Sumia/Chrom (mid game juggernauts), gold medal went to Laurent/Lucina (late game juggernauts).

Cordelia went Falco this time because galeforce was out of reach for her with all the units I was training. Worked well. LQ passed avo +10 to Severa and Cordelia passed Spd +2. Worked well.

Cynthia went Bow Knight towards the end of the game. Bows, 8 mov, and Galeforce are a really strong combo.

Stahl impressed me. Like a lot. He took the renown speedwings and never looked back. Aside from Fred, who doesn't actually need one until the second one that shows up in C11 (if you're pairing him and Sumia), I'd probably argue Stahl and Miriel are the best candidates for it.

[Alastor15243]

So I just finished chapter 1 on lunatic+, and HOLY SHIT was I lucky. Not only did I get some great level ups, but Frederick also dual-guarded like SIX TIMES. Twice against the same Luna+ enemy! It was ridiculous!

Anyway, I know I can't count on that sort of luck anymore, but here's my avatar:

+Def-LckAlexandria: Lvl 10.73

HP: 26

Str: 10

Mag: 10

Skill: 10

Spd: 13

Lck: 4

Def: 15

Res: 6

How good are these stats overall for a level 10?

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Luck and Res are a tad worrisome, but the amount of enemies that can take advantage of that are a lot lower than if you had poor Def. Speaking of which, that's a pretty epic Def level, with very good Spd, to boot. You're probably more or less set for a while. Just keep in mind that with a Robin that beefy, Fred is likely going to get teamed up on instead (provided he doesn't spend the entire time riding shotgun to Robin, anyway).

[Alastor15243]

Yeah, I did notice that I wasn't getting as good res as I was getting on my +Def-Lck avatar for my Rally Rangers run.

Well now that I've secured a good Robin, I think I should really stop to think about my options and really, REALLY cement my long-term plans for children.

I think I'll look over Interceptor's guide to see how he trained up Gregor, where exactly he went wrong (he says he went wrong, I just can't remember if he said how in enough detail) and then see what I want to do with Miriel.

[Bovinian]

That requires reclassing Lucina to Tactician, though, which, while admittedly viable, sticks her with a 1~2 range weapon that she's not particular adept with (because Chrom Magic >.>). There's also the fact that with the way C14 and C15 terrain is, a Pegasus Knight/Dark Flier can troll them so hard and get tons of free EXP, since the enemy has very limited capacity to fight back.

As for bow access, it's actually not as important if you have Galeforce. Both are good ways to get around Counter, but it's not necessary to combine them. The reason I recommend Veteran is because once you get ahead of the stat curve, until stat caps cause enemies to catch back up again (which is only around the last 3-4 chapters), more stats is just a good way to deal with quite a few of the Lunatic+ skills. Also, Galeforce requires having surefire killing power, which, while the kids are strong, are still tier 1 and only pick up 1/3 of each parent's boosts. This makes it a bit shaky to have and reliably proc early on. Don't get me wrong: it's still viable to run a Galeforce pass, but passing Veteran and Javelin access is worth not having to drag Lucina through Tactician and Grandmaster (and believe me, I was just as surprised when I tested the results, since I was convinced on my first run that Galeforce was the ultimate all purpose pass-down).

I'd like to add that if you do opt for the Galeforce passdown and reclass to Tactician, you could also brute force player phase kills with Eirika's Blade. It's risky, but I found that it works decently well, especially since it gives Lucina's pair up partner 4 opportunities to dual strike. Parallel Falchion is handy for healing off the Counter damage.

[Alastor15243]

Also, did I do the math correct (6/7 times 5/6) that there is roughly a 71% chance of a particular lunatic+ skill NOT being on a given unit? That only 29% of the units in any given map on average will have a particular skill, say, counter or pass?

[Bovinian]

Yeah I remember doing that calculation; theoretically only 2/7 of the units on any given map should have counter but in practice it always seems to be WAY more than that

[Czar_Yoshi]

I recall Int wanted to quick-promote Gregor to Hero since he didn't provide a good return on investment as an Assassin, but am not 100% on that. His bigger regret was on Miriel's class path- he wished he had taken her through only two of her base classes instead of all three (I think he wanted to skip DM, but again am not certain and know he loved still having her as a DM in Cht.6).

That Def is really high, though. You've got the stats to use Int's Cht.2 strat, but probably could also just facetank it with luck and resets if you want to funnel a bit more exp into Robin.

Skill distributions: if they're all equal then it should be an exactly 2/7 chance that any one skill appears on any one unit, but nobody's ever done anything to prove that they are equal. There's a decent amount of personal experience saying they don't (I know I've had bad luck finding a non-Pass Archer in Par.1 for Donnel to poke), but confirmation bias makes that worth nothing.

Edited June 5, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

I wish there were an easy way to figure out the distribution. Anecdotally, from all the setups I've seen (which, admittedly, is still be a really small sample size in the grand scheme of things), Counter and Pass do seem to show up marginally more often. Then again, low Counter distributions are uncommon, but not super uncommon. Likewise, it's rather rare for the entire enemy team to be toting it (although, those instances definitely stick me, especially since my best run had a particularly annoying C14 full of it). If I had to guess, I wouldn't imagine the skewing to be more than each of the two skill slots pre-C3 having 2/5 chance of Pass, and 1/5 chance of anything else, with C3 and onward bringing 2/9 chance of Pass, 2/9 chance of Counter and 1/9 chance of everything else.

[Alastor15243]

So I can't for the life of me figure out how Interceptor's plan is supposed to work for chapter 2. There doesn't seem to be NEARLY enough room to hide all of my units behind the same mountain Avatar's supposed to be attacking from atop. The mountain definitely makes AVATAR'S survival easier, but I don't get how I'm supposed to keep my other units out of harm's reach like this. I had always assumed you were supposed to make your squishies go RIGHT, preparing on turn one and moving on turn two, and either have the avatar attract the mercenary over there towards him/her or else take it down between my squishies. Can somebody clear this up for me? I checked Tsubasa's stream but that uses a more fragile and fast avatar, I don't think it'll translate well.

Edit: Holy shit, also, I managed to land an instance of the chapter where only two enemies, two soldiers, of the first wave actually have Luna+ on them. I... I can't proceed until I have a sound strategy. I just can't.

Edited June 6, 2015 by Alastor15243

[Czar_Yoshi]

I don't think Int's plan ever calls for Avatar standing on the mountain... But Kuroi is doing Cht.2 right now if you want to see it in action.

[Alastor15243]

Finally beat L+ chapter 3! Here's Alexandria's current stats:

Alexandria: Level 18.24 tactician

HP: 30

Str: 12

Mag: 15

Skill: 14

Spd: 14

Lck: 9

Def: 21

Res: 8

Lck and Res haven't improved much, and my speed hasn't gained much since the last fight, but HOLY SHIT look at that defense.

I also managed to train up Miriel some:

Miriel: Level 6.46 mage

HP: 22

Str: 1

Mag: 9

Skill: 9

Spd: 11

Lck: 9

Def: 5

Res: 6

I also have two second seals, the renown one and one I bought. Any advice for how I should use them?

Edited June 8, 2015 by Alastor15243