PAIRINGS The Pairing Thread

[Ownagepuffs]

So if I pair Fred and Olivia which sounds great for a physical Inigo, who would be good to pair with Cherche, Kellam?

Thank you for the tips. I never thought having a smaller team would be beneficial, but it makes perfect sense to have a few good elite units. Having six Galeforce units by chapter 14 sounds amazing, I'll definitely try that when I start Lunatic. When would you recommend adding more people to the roster (by level, chapter, etc.) and what is a good final size for the team? Lastly is + Speed/- Luck still a good choice for Lunatic/Pairing with Cordelia or is there a better choice?

Fair warning on the 6 Galeforce units. That requires some pretty precise exp funneling. It's easy enough to get it for Sumia (10/1 Sumia + S Chrom shits all over the midgame from C8-C17 and remains a strong combatant until the end), but for both Sumia and Cordelia is much more tricky. If you want, I can show you an L+ run that pulls it off.

Also missing from Czar's advice is Sully and Miriel in my opinion. Both are great units with tons of availability and great starting classes for Morgan (Cavalier gives Morgan two C weapon ranks and discipline for very flexible reclassing, Mage transitions very well into Dark Mage).

[Alastor15243]

Typical good assets for Lunatic(+) are Def and Spd. Spd lets you do more if you know what you're doing, Def makes the mode less of a headache if you don't. -Lck and -Skl tend to be the least intrusive flaws, but even if you're good at stacking Dge to negate enemy crits, -Lck will still annoy you earlygame, and come back to haunt you midgame if you want to pick up Armsthrift.

I didn't have this problem at all. With a Def asset and a Lck Flaw, I got plenty of luck between my multiple reclasses to be 100% armsthrifting with great lord Chrom support by the halfway mark, and Morgan and Lucina also got plenty of Luck, and Morgan, thanks to rightful king and a 45 luck score, 100% armsthrifted too.

[TheBakonBitz]

It's easy enough to get it for Sumia (10/1 Sumia + S Chrom shits all over the midgame from C8-C17 and remains a strong combatant until the end), but for both Sumia and Cordelia is much more tricky. If you want, I can show you an L+ run that pulls it off.

Would you reccomend promoting at 10 or 20? Also when should I pick up the child units, or are they not one of the 6 GF units? I would love to see the run, I've only seen some of shadowofchaos's videos, I could find others I liked.

Edited June 26, 2015 by TheBakonBitz

[Czar_Yoshi]

I didn't have this problem at all. With a Def asset and a Lck Flaw, I got plenty of luck between my multiple reclasses to be 100% armsthrifting with great lord Chrom support by the halfway mark, and Morgan and Lucina also got plenty of Luck, and Morgan, thanks to rightful king and a 45 luck score, 100% armsthrifted too.

Hence it only being a problem midgame- you'll grow out of it (it helps that +Def and +Spd both boost Lck), just a little slower than you would otherwise. The difference is most notable right when you reclass to Merc.

Would you reccomend promoting at 10 or 20? Also when should I pick up the child units, or are they not one of the 6 GF units? I would love to see the run, I've only seen some of shadowofchaos's videos, I could find others I liked.

Depends how confident you are in your ability to funnel exp. The later you promote, the stronger they'll be later.

The kids do count. You'll be using Sumia, Cordelia, Lucina, Cynthia, Severa and Morgan as your GF units. Typically the parents will reclass to Falco after you get the kids and switching to offensive staffbot duty, and the kids will either stick with themselves at A or you can pick up Owain and Yarne and have just one pair of sibling As (though getting Yarne makes exp even tighter).

[Vascela]

Finished grinding out the calcs and turn limits for waves 4/5. Starting up a new game for my [probably and hopefully] last Apo challenge.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Good luck, then.

[xirei]

I've made a few changes to my team, here are the pairings I have now:

Physical:

Gaius!Kjelle X Virion!Yarne

Lon'qu!Severa X Henry!Gerome

Stahl!Inigo X Vaike!Nah

Magical:

Sumia!Lucina X AvatarM(+Mag/-Def) VVDS

Sumia!Lucina!MorganF(+Mag/-Def) X Ricken!Owain

Sumia!Cynthia X Libra!Brady

Donnel!Noire X Gregor!Laurent

I'm looking for any suggestions on these pairings to improve everyone's performance. Also can you recommend me class combinations for the pairs above? Thanks!

[Czar_Yoshi]

Kjelle and Yarne are going to be a Paladin/Wyvern and Berserker combo almost for sure. Severa and Gerome will likely do the same (Wyvern and Berserker) unless you want to make Severa a Hero with All+2 so Gerome can be in a non-+Spd class like Warrior... But since he's got Henry and not Stahl or Virion, there's not much reason for that outside of just getting more Skl for 3 extra DS%. Inigo can do pretty much whatever he wants- his odds of hitting 75 Spd are poor and 69 good, and Nah has both a +Spd option in Hero and a 0 Spd option in General to support.

It sounds like you're pretty set on VV for Avatar, so you'll want Sage x Sage. Morgan's mods are well set for Sage x Valkyrie (she'll be using Aether/Ignis/TF). With a Brady support Cynthia's arm is slightly twisted into Sage x DF, but you can use Sage x Sniper if you don't mind dropping 75 Spd. Noire is out of luck due to having no Sage/Tomefaire and only a +3 Mag mod, which leaves her with pretty poor magical potential and not a lot she can do to make herself shine.

[xirei]

Thanks for that, are there any pairings I should switch around to make Noire more useful/ make Cynthia a sniper? I mainly chose Donnel to give her a Galeforce, is that worth the drop in power or should she become physical instead?

[Alastor15243]

Anyone have any advice for me on my no DLC run?

My current plans are Virion!Yarne!Morgan @ Assassin paired with some version of Nah who has hero (probably Vaike), and equipped with Galeforce, Luna, Ignis, Defender and Deliverer. If I did the calculations right, he'll have JUST enough defense to just barely survive an aether attack from Anna with 1 HP, and enough speed to double her. This makes him definitely by far the most powerful member of my team.

I'm planning on having my avatar and Virion!Yarne be a sniper berserker pair, fast enough to double the only enemies who generally MUST be confronted at 3-range, the invincisorcs. I also have Henry!Gerome planned to be Sumia!Lucina's husband for another sniper-berserker pair, and I'm considering trying out Sniper + Sage for Cynthia, but I might be better off making Gregor!Laurent into a berserker too because speed is so critical here.

beyond that... I've got no ideas for pairings. Any advice?

[Bunselpower]

Anyone have a good pairing suggestion for +Mag/-Def Sumia!Lucina!Morgan? Is a hard support like Gregor!Laurent a good idea or would someone like Ricken!Owain or Virion!Brady be better?

[Alastor15243]

Anyone have a good pairing suggestion for +Mag/-Def Sumia!Lucina!Morgan? Is a hard support like Gregor!Laurent a good idea or would someone like Ricken!Owain or Virion!Brady be better?

Depends on what class you're having Morgan be. Decide on her class and then work out if a galeboy would be effective with her in back. Otherwise, Laurent might be the best bet.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I'd go with Gregor!Laurent, Henry!Gerome or Stahl!Owain- someone who can do both. Morgan will be predominantly magical (Valkyrie) but being able to switch to physical would be useful sometimes.

[Bunselpower]

I'd go with Gregor!Laurent, Henry!Gerome or Stahl!Owain- someone who can do both. Morgan will be predominantly magical (Valkyrie) but being able to switch to physical would be useful sometimes.

Cool, I don't have that Owain, already have plans for Gerome, so Laurent it is.

And yes, as czar noted, she will most often be a Valkyrie.

[Nobody]

So, these are the pairings I went with:

The second gen pairings I did were:

Severa x +STR -SKL Avatar

Noire x Owain

Kjelle x Yarne

Morgan x Gerome

Lucina x Inigo

Cynthia x Brady

Nah x Laurent

What would be the best classes for them?

Edited July 3, 2015 by Nobody

[Alastor15243]

So, these are the pairings I went with:

The secong gen pairings I did were:

Severa x +STR -SKL Avatar

Noire x Owain

Kjelle x Yarne

Morgan x Gerome

Lucina x Inigo

Cynthia x Brady

Nah x Laurent

What would be the best classes for them?

Shame, neither Inigo or Brady are ideal partners for a sniper princess, and ideally you would've wanted at least one. Cynthia or Lucina probably would've also been a good partner for your avatar, and it would've made Morgan better. But if these things cannot be changed:

Nah x Laurent: they get the bench, neither one has galeforce so they'll just be dead weight unless you MAYBE make Laurent do VV, but that doesn't play well with a team.

Severa and Avatar: Definitely Wyvern Lord and Berserker, that's one of the main points to having lon'qu!Severa, being able to hit 75 speed as a wyvern lord with AS+2 and a +3 speed support. Shame you chose a skill penalty though, but with hit+20 I think he should be fine hitting things.

Gaius!Noire makes the game's absolute best thronie-slaying dark knight barring a female morgan with the right mods, and she'll be extremely useful in that class to take down Thronie if you ever decide to do a no-brave-weapon run. Make Owain a dread fighter and he'll be able to help her out with the thronie-lites that tend to hang around him, but he won't be fast enough to handle thronie himself, leave that exclusively to her.

Morgan's gonna want to be your sniper. Gerome has berserker but no new +hit skills, but Tantivy might work in a pinch if you keep away from your allies when you attack things. Morgan will have more than enough speed with Gerome's berserker support to double everything in the game, and trust me, you want at least one sniper.

Lucina and Inigo, and likely Cynthia and Brady too, are probably gonna want to be Dark Flier and Dread Fighter respectively, so the two girls can hit 75 speed each, and this also means the girls might be able to make some use out of their lances (though it's not overly likely considering the strength difference). Their boyfriends will definitely be able to take care of the aegis enemies if the girls can't, though just make sure you know what you're doing with vengeance, it can be pretty tricky to use, especially on boys.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Alastor15243

[Nobody]

Shame, neither Inigo or Brady are ideal partners for a sniper princess, and ideally you would've wanted at least one. Cynthia or Lucina probably would've also been a good partner for your avatar, and it would've made Morgan better. But if these things cannot be changed:

Nah x Laurent: they get the bench, neither one has galeforce so they'll just be dead weight unless you MAYBE make Laurent do VV, but that doesn't play well with a team.

Severa and Avatar: Definitely Wyvern Lord and Berserker, that's one of the main points to having lon'qu!Severa, being able to hit 75 speed as a wyvern lord with AS+2 and a +3 speed support. Shame you chose a skill penalty though, but with hit+20 I think he should be fine hitting things.

Gaius!Noire makes the game's absolute best thronie-slaying dark knight barring a female morgan with the right mods, and she'll be extremely useful in that class to take down Thronie if you ever decide to do a no-brave-weapon run. Make Owain a dread fighter and he'll be able to help her out with the thronie-lites that tend to hang around him, but he won't be fast enough to handle thronie himself, leave that exclusively to her.

Morgan's gonna want to be your sniper. Gerome has berserker but no new +hit skills, but Tantivy might work in a pinch if you keep away from your allies when you attack things. Morgan will have more than enough speed with Gerome's berserker support to double everything in the game, and trust me, you want at least one sniper.

Lucina and Inigo, and likely Cynthia and Brady too, are probably gonna want to be Dark Flier and Dread Fighter respectively, so the two girls can hit 75 speed each, and this also means the girls might be able to make some use out of their lances (though it's not overly likely considering the strength difference). Their boyfriends will definitely be able to take care of the aegis enemies if the girls can't, though just make sure you know what you're doing with vengeance, it can be pretty tricky to use, especially on boys.

Thank you very much :D

BTW, I still haven't married Morgan to Gerome and Kjelle to Yarne. Would it be better to shift these two, considering Yarne has sniper and therefore hit rate+20 while still having berserker?

Edited July 3, 2015 by Nobody

[Alastor15243]

Thank you very much :D

BTW, I still haven't married Morgan to Gerome and Kjelle to Yarne. Would it be better to shift these two, considering Yarne has sniper and therefore hit rate+20 while still having berserker?

Oh shoot, totally forgot about Kjelle and Yarne.

...I don't believe a switch would be better, or a few reasons:

1: Tantivy is passable for hit boosts and Longbow users have the most spaces to attack an enemy from, so it'll be easier for her to fight while staying out of range of allies for Tantivy to activate.

2: Both of them will want to be berserkers anyway, since Kjelle can hit 75 speed with AS+2 as a wyvern lord if she has a berserker partner, and quite frankly Gerome has no better options than Berserker, he's got quite the crappy hard support class set to be perfectly honest.

3: Aesthetic: FeMorgan and Yarne's supports are awful.

Edited July 5, 2015 by Alastor15243

[Czar_Yoshi]

Gaius!Noire makes the game's absolute best thronie-slaying dark knight

It's probably not a good idea to assume everyone's doing a No Braves run unless they specify otherwise...

[Alastor15243]

It's probably not a good idea to assume everyone's doing a No Braves run unless they specify otherwise...

It's a fun and useful build otherwise too, having high movement, well-rounded attack and magic, and sufficient speed to double everything but Anna and NS. But fair point. But to be fair I did clarify that that particular utility is for no-brave runs.

Edited July 4, 2015 by Alastor15243

[onionkiri]

Hi guys! First time posting, although I’ve read a bunch of this thread :-) I have most of my parent pairings but would love some remaining pairing/class suggestions — this is for a no LB Apo run but I’ll probably try different restrictions later, so versatility > strictly optimizing for no LB for the rest of the pairings.

Right now I’ve got:

+Spd/-Def Avatar x Cordelia

Chrom x Sumia

Maribelle x Lon'qu

Gaius x Sully

Gregor x Miriel

Lissa x Stahl

Olivia x Libra

I really like Galeforce, so I’m probably going to do Donnel!Noire — even if she gets benched for Apo, I’ll use her everywhere else (she or Nah will have to be forever alone anyway). None of the kids are paired up yet, but I kind of love Owain and Morgan’s S support so will probably do that.

So that leaves Nah, Gerome, Yarne; possible dads Henry, Ricken, Vaike, Fred, Virion. And all the kids except for Owain and Morgan. Thoughts?

(Edit: ...forgot Kellam. That was not on purpose, I swear.)

Edited July 4, 2015 by onionkiri

[Alastor15243]

So that leaves Nah, Gerome, Yarne; possible dads Henry, Ricken, Vaike, Fred, Virion. And all the kids except for Owain and Morgan. Thoughts?

(Edit: ...forgot Kellam. That was not on purpose, I swear.)

Kellam's a crappy dad for any unit except Laurent, for whom he is merely blandly passable.

I'd do Vaike!Nah, Henry!Gerome, and Virion!Yarne. Gerome and Yarne want to be berserker hard supports with hit rate boosting skills most of the time, and Henry gives Gerome both berserker and Anathema, while Virion gives Yarne hit+20.

Czar_Yoshi, the resident Apotheosis master, likes Stahl!Owain, but be warned that his mods are absolutely inexcusable, with nothing higher than a 2. I usually go for Ricken so he at least has high magic.

Oh, and be warned that vengeance is VERY tricky to use, and you probably should avoid it for your first time doing apotheosis. I'd go with a luna dad for Inigo, either Stahl or Frederick. Either one works, really, though I think Stahl will be slightly better by virtue of being faster.

Finally, I'd have Yarne and Gerome marry Lucina and Severa respectively, and have Lucina be a sniper and Severa be a wyvern lord. if you give the latter AS+2, they'll both be fast enough to double anything in the entire game, and with berserkers backing them up, they'll both be absolutely devastating. Wyvern lords have high attack, and snipers are extremely useful for their ability to bypass counterattacks entirely.

P.S.: Has anyone else noticed how insane of a coincidence it is that all four units generally destined to be hard supports have access to the "offensive stat + 2" skill giving class for the stat they're most likely to be using? And the one who might be using either, Nah, has BOTH? I mean the makers of the game couldn't have predicted the metagame so I don't think that was even intention. All physical hard supports have wyvern rider as a base class (well, Panne does, Yarne might not but he still always can have str+2 regardless of his father thanks to inheritance) and all magical hard supports have mage.

Edited July 4, 2015 by Alastor15243

[onionkiri]

Kellam's a crappy dad for any unit except Laurent, for whom he is merely blandly passable.

I'd do Vaike!Nah, Henry!Gerome, and Virion!Yarne. Gerome and Yarne want to be berserker hard supports with hit rate boosting skills most of the time, and Henry gives Gerome both berserker and Anathema, while Virion gives Yarne hit+20.

Czar_Yoshi, the resident Apotheosis master, likes Stahl!Owain, but be warned that his mods are absolutely inexcusable, with nothing higher than a 2. I usually go for Ricken so he at least has high magic.

Oh, and be warned that vengeance is VERY tricky to use, and you probably should avoid it for your first time doing apotheosis. I'd go with a luna dad for Inigo, either Stahl or Frederick. Either one works, really, though I think Stahl will be slightly better by virtue of being faster.

Finally, I'd have Yarne and Gerome marry Lucina and Severa respectively, and have Lucina be a sniper and Severa be a wyvern lord. if you give the latter AS+2, they'll both be fast enough to double anything in the entire game, and with berserkers backing them up, they'll both be absolutely devastating. Wyvern lords have high attack, and snipers are extremely useful for their ability to bypass counterattacks entirely.

Ah, I should have mentioned that I'm about 3/4 through the main game and those pairings I mentioned are already set. This is actually my third playthrough so I've done Apo a few times, but it was with LB/braves/rallies, so lots of room for error. It was getting a bit old though, so figured I would stop being wussy and try no Limit Breaker or no braves or something. (After asking for advice, of course. :-) )

I've gone through a lot of this thread so I'm somewhat familiar with game mechanics by now, just... kind of derpy at actually playing the game compared to most people here, I guess. :-) Lunatic owns me pretty hard. (Hell, Hard owns me pretty hard.) And I could be wrong but I don't think Wyvern Lord Severa would hit 75 speed, no? She has 45 base so she would with LB, but not without...

I do kind of regret the Libra!Inigo -- I wanted to run him and Owain mixed and didn't want to reuse a previous dad (Fred and Chrom). But he's almost a clone of Gregor!Laurent, class-wise, so it's a bit of a waste. Pretty sure I don't want to set up Vengeance and/or Vantage/Vengeance -- should I run Astra on him instead, or use Vengeance anyway (without the setup)?

[Alastor15243]

Ah, I should have mentioned that I'm about 3/4 through the main game and those pairings I mentioned are already set. This is actually my third playthrough so I've done Apo a few times, but it was with LB/braves/rallies, so lots of room for error. It was getting a bit old though, so figured I would stop being wussy and try no Limit Breaker or no braves or something. (After asking for advice, of course. :-) )

I've gone through a lot of this thread so I'm somewhat familiar with game mechanics by now, just... kind of derpy at actually playing the game compared to most people here, I guess. :-) Lunatic owns me pretty hard. (Hell, Hard owns me pretty hard.) And I could be wrong but I don't think Wyvern Lord Severa would hit 75 speed, no? She has 45 base so she would with LB, but not without...

I do kind of regret the Libra!Inigo -- I wanted to run him and Owain mixed and didn't want to reuse a previous dad (Fred and Chrom). But he's almost a clone of Gregor!Laurent, class-wise, so it's a bit of a waste. Pretty sure I don't want to set up Vengeance and/or Vantage/Vengeance -- should I run Astra on him instead, or use Vengeance anyway (without the setup)?

Astra by itself is pretty crappy, you want to have Luna on it too. You might as well use vengeance. Ask Czar about how it's done properly, I can't really explain it that well, as I don't much understand it myself.

If you decide no braves like you said you might, talk to me, that challenge run is pretty much my specialty, I'll have tons of useful advice for you.

Edited July 4, 2015 by Alastor15243

[onionkiri]

Astra by itself is pretty crappy, you want to have Luna on it too. You might as well use vengeance. Ask Czar about how it's done properly, I can't really explain it that well, as I don't much understand it myself.

If you decide no braves like you said you might, talk to me, that challenge run is pretty much my specialty, I'll have tons of useful advice for you.

Oh. I was under the impression that you could run Vengeance as part of a regular Apo skillset, so if you don't kill the mob by the time it gets a chance to counterattack, it attacks, drops your HP, and then you have Vengeance damage on your next attack (within the same round). But I could be getting that completely mixed up. Guess I'll wait for Czar to comment. (Hi Czar! :-) )

I'll definitely hit you up if I decide to do no braves -- will see how hard I get stomped by no LB first. Thanks for the advice :-)