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I was definitely thinking of using Shamir. I remember her having some supports with GD, and I figure supports will be useful for increasing the awful hit rates in Maddening. Is Cyril any good? He also has a bunch of GD supports. I've never really tried using him.
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May 8, 2021 17:41
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Cyril's pretty good on Golden Deer and Blue Lions. He gets Point-Blank Volley super early, and his starting skill ranks make it easy for him to certify in Armored Knight (for 12 base Def off the bat) plus Brigand and Archer.
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May 8, 2021 17:43
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Cyril is ok. Point-blank Volley is great and he's the earliest character to learn a Brave combat art, but long term he's kinda outclassed by Leonie, who is statistically very similar but has a better personal skill and is usable in Reunion at Dawn. If you do want to use Cyril make sure you recruit him ASAP. He autolevels as a commoner and that will destroy his stats if you wait until later game to pick him up.
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May 8, 2021 18:11
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I don't know if you care about GD recruitment very much but I'd say the priority order is something like: Sylvain (FByleth, free)>Constance (free)>Catherine (early)>Dorothea (As early as possible)>Sylvain (MByleth)>Ingrid (early enough to get Luin, late enough to get as many pegasus knight levels as possible)>Shamir (early). Sylvain has incredible synergy with Hilda and Leonie and if he's free you need to get him straight away because of that. Constance is free and is arguably the only offensive mage in the game that can compete with Lysithea for overall power and utility. She gets Bolting on an excellent magic stat which makes sniping problematic enemy siege units and formations a real possibility. Catherine has thunderbrand which snaps the game in two, she levels as a swodmaster which means she just gets better stats than everyone for ages. Dorothea is incredible early because free healing means you can a) Beat maps through attrition b) Save a lot of money on vulneraries c) Create easy enemy traps for skill farming. She falls off the later you recruit her because she's an offensive mage not named Lysithea. Ingrid gets a solid bonus from levelling in the enemy pegasus knight class and comes in with higher stats as a result. You can recruit her and immediately get Luin which is a very big power boost early in the game to any of your favourite lance units. Shamir levels in sniper which again is a significant bonus over time. I find she's less good in golden deer because of how amazing their general archery options are though. Beyond that all the others have their uses but I don't think anyone is particularly outstanding, perhaps Yuri, but honestly as long as you get the Fetters of Dromi he's replaceable. Golden Deer is good at the very least because you have easily the most powerful house baseline in the game.
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May 8, 2021 18:38
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I think even on Male Byleth it's worth rushing Sylvain if you can get him before Chapter 5. Getting to keep the Lance of Ruin is super useful.
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May 8, 2021 20:59
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So after three playthroughs (working on my fourth now, finally doing church path) I find myself always gravitating towards an army of all flyers. Just falcon knights, wyvern lords, and dark fliers all day long. I've tried going with paladins, sword masters, war masters, and gremories but every time I do it always feels strictly worse than just using flying units. Additionally I have literally never tried using armored classes (armored knight, ect...) and I don't feel like I am missing anything by not using them. Like, I get that they are supposed to go in first and tank things while your other guys kill everything but they just don't seem to be needed. Things that fly seem to tank well enough already. (Maybe this is because I am not playing on maddening.) And the low movement speed of armored classes really makes me worry about how usable they would be, especially on the couple of maps where you either need to chase down a target or reach and then kill something before the infinitely spawning reinforcements overwhelm you. Am I doing something wrong? Am I just not building my non flying army properly? I mean, I'm not trying to make caster leaning characters into melee units or anything. The game seems to actively punish you for using non flying units an awful lot. If I want to keep all my units on the ground, what should I make? A pile of war masters backed up by bow knights and gremories? I'm willing to bring in a ton of front loaded win via new game plus.
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May 10, 2021 18:27
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Wyverns are literally the best class, this was discovered 2 years ago and still true today.
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May 10, 2021 18:54
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Fortress Knights do have uses on Maddening because some enemies are really, really fast, to the point where it’s hard to avoid getting doubled by them, and so one of the best ways to reduce damage taken is to stack Defense. But on lower difficulties, pretty much every unit is best as some kind of flier unless they need to use a gambit that’s not available on flying battalions.
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May 10, 2021 18:58
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Antillie posted:So after three playthroughs (working on my fourth now, finally doing church path) I find myself always gravitating towards an army of all flyers. Just falcon knights, wyvern lords, and dark fliers all day long. I've tried going with paladins, sword masters, war masters, and gremories but every time I do it always feels strictly worse than just using flying units. No you've understood it, the flying classes not only have the best mobility but also get bonus growths compared to most other classes and are just sort of strictly the most optimal choice for your non-mage units with some rare units you might want to keep unmounted for ground-locked Battalions Armored Knights are terrible and basically only have a niche in that they'll boost anyone who passes their cert to 12 def which can be huge for units with terrible defense growth.
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May 10, 2021 19:38
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Yeah. although there are a few more possible exceptions to the rule: sniper, trickster, enlightened one. trickster yuri with good/boosted stats and fetters of dromi can anchor/push an entire flank.
Zane fucked around with this message at 20:01 on May 10, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 19:53
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Flyers just break the game. But every FE has broken units/classes. You pretty much have to force yourself to not break the game.
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May 10, 2021 20:08
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Its almost always fliers. The FE design team has never made a game where they're bad and usually gives them some absolutely ridiculous bonuses. Historically this was mostly offset by the fact you got very few of them (which increase over time especially once they introduced reclassing) but 3 Houses has removed even the very generous limits that other modern games have had and now you can just make almost everyone a flier with no downside. Like the devs at least usually pay some lip service to balancing mounted cavs to unmounted foot units even if its just a slight trade off like barely lower growths that don't really matter. With Fliers they seem to think having the most move in the game also deserves getting stat and growth bonuses to account for the horrible drawbacks of *checks notes* a weakness to an enemy weapon type that can't counter attack and you can literally run in from out of the range of to murder them. Still not as bad as armored knights, especially in 3 Houses, who trade off better defense with awful res, move and a special status that makes them extra vulnerable to armor slayer weapons because gently caress you. Also you need to train in an extra skill that does literally nothing to qualify for the class. Zore fucked around with this message at 20:30 on May 10, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 20:24
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3H's version of wyvern lords is overkill but i don't think it's an accident that they've never "really" balanced flyers. like, they could give them awful stats to compensate for the unbeatable movement utility, but then the class would just be no fun to use for 95% of the playerbase.
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May 10, 2021 22:00
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Radiant Dawn Wyvern is still wild for just removing bow weakness for some Thunder thing when magic's at its weakest in the franchise.
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May 10, 2021 22:12
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I think armor knights might work at least a little better if you gave them normal unmounted movement and they all had inherent Wary Fighter or something like that. Anyone else got any ideas?
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May 10, 2021 22:17
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yeah i got an idea: they're fine actually (in this game), i don't know why everyone says they're terrible defense stacking is very possible and very effective, and way more reliable than dodgetanking on maddening
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May 10, 2021 22:31
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Amppelix posted:3H's version of wyvern lords is overkill but i don't think it's an accident that they've never "really" balanced flyers. like, they could give them awful stats to compensate for the unbeatable movement utility, but then the class would just be no fun to use for 95% of the playerbase. What even is this argument, considering 3 Houses is the same game where they completely nuked the growth rates of non-flying mounted units - presumably for that exact reason - and they still see some niche use. Given fliers have even better mobility, they'd still see use even if their growths were just as bad as cavalry, so trying to claim bad stats would lead to them being unused is incredibly silly. Tae posted:Radiant Dawn Wyvern is still wild for just removing bow weakness for some Thunder thing when magic's at its weakest in the franchise. I mean, here we've got all mounted units able to easily dismount whenever you want - completely removing their weaknesses. And it's almost exclusively a benefit to fliers, given anti-cavalry weapons are incredibly rare. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 22:35 on May 10, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 22:32
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I feel most players will never go beyond the "normal" classes for each character on their first playthrough so balancing the flyers would probably just make the game worse.
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May 10, 2021 22:34
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"nuked" is some pretty strong language to describe what amounts to mounted units having completely competent stats. if fliers had similar growths they would indeed still be OP (and i think that is fine) when i said awful i meant awful
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May 10, 2021 22:36
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-10 SPD is incredibly bad, and it's something that 3/4 of the physical-locked cavalry units are saddled with; all other cavalry units are still at -5 SPD. The only other classes with SPD penalties (also at -10) are the Knights, who at least balance it out with very high DEF growths, and Mortal Savants for... some reason. Basically it's not just that cavalry have fairly low overall growths, it's that they have a heavy penalty in a critical stat as well. As opposed to something like the hilariously irrelevant -5 MAG Wyverns get as a "counterbalance" to their good growths. And yes, some characters can deal with that penalty, but the problem's made worse because so many of the characters that seem to be built to be cavalry classes have incredibly shaky or mediocre SPD growths already.
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May 10, 2021 22:53
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Amppelix posted:defense stacking is very possible and very effective, and way more reliable than dodgetanking on maddening Zane fucked around with this message at 00:20 on May 11, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 23:39
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I got through map 2 on Maddening! It actually wasn't that bad. It definitely felt easier than the first map. I just turtled like crazy to make sure I didn't get overwhelmed by enemy units. I'm really noticing the hit to experience gain though. I still only have two characters who have gotten to level 5 and reclassed, and they're Byleth and Claude.
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May 11, 2021 01:08
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Zane posted:i really can't agree. you can only make a couple dodgetanks with items and boosts. but they can typically dodge a lot. an armor tank--unless i'm wrong by orders of magnitude--really can't stand up to more than two or three dudes. and he'll be outranged and outpaced on a map with any kind of time pressure or priority for area control. and impregnable wall is a more effective alternative. When most characters are getting doubled anyway, and you probably aren't dodging, defence is obviously the way to go. Ferdinand (having gone through the entire knight class line) was one of my only units who i could actually let face any amount of enemy phase combat besides isolated single units towards the end of crimson flower. The playthrough wasn't even close to being optimised though, most of my units were kinda bad because i played around with classes and such instead of just putting people in the obvious good choices, so that might have affected my experience with this.
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May 11, 2021 09:52
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It's definitely possible to evasion tank on Maddening, but it requires pretty specific setups. Like, a character with Prowess 5, Alert Stance +, a +20 Avo Battalion and Defiant Avoid is 100 Avoid while below 25% HP before even factoring in stats, breakers or terrain. Ferdinand and Dmitri's personal skills give +15 and +20 Avoid respectively while they're at full health so they can hit comparable Avoid with Brawl Avoid from War Monk or Sword Avoid from Dancer. That said, even these setups will probably be facing non-zero hit rates at least some of the time.
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May 11, 2021 11:06
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Yeah. The real thing to do is, on top of everything else, to feed your evasion unit a bunch of speed boosters from the garden; certain characters have much higher speed caps. Also, ideally, to tank in the woods. This will get you down to 10-20% hit without much trouble. You can then combine this with the retribution gambit--counter attack from any range for a turn--to take care of whole waves of reinforcements. This is the ideal way to deal with some of the most horrible kinds: like the buffed peg knights and bow knights that sometimes turn up. The great thing about speed is that a whole range of different character/class builds can have high speed growths; so an evader will also typically have more flexibility and utility: with the ability to project ranged support and possibly heals and other spells further out on the map.
Zane fucked around with this message at 17:23 on May 11, 2021 |
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May 11, 2021 17:11
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I was thinking Hilda seemed pretty strong in this playthrough, and I checked out her strength, and it's 19 at level 8. She's like 5 points above average. Hilda rules.
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May 12, 2021 23:34
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Inu posted:I was thinking Hilda seemed pretty strong in this playthrough, and I checked out her strength, and it's 19 at level 8. She's like 5 points above average. Hilda! Hilda! Hilda!
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May 12, 2021 23:42
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Inu posted:I was thinking Hilda seemed pretty strong in this playthrough, and I checked out her strength, and it's 19 at level 8. She's like 5 points above average. Hell yeah https://twitter.com/coucou_art/status/1390359645433303044?s=21 https://twitter.com/feliahanakata/status/1390185059450191872?s=21
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May 13, 2021 00:34
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if we're posting pics of hilda
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May 13, 2021 02:50
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I think the artist was going for something artsy about having to murder a lot of people in order to fulfill their dreams (well, Claude's dreams, Hilda's is 'I never have to work another day in my life
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May 13, 2021 04:53
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Hilda was ~my waifu~ on the first playthrough and I regret nothing. Not the most powerful character in my team (that was Lysithea) but certainly the most fun.
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May 13, 2021 07:23
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Are there a lot of FE characters that fill the same character archetype as Hilda? I know Charlotte from Fates, but that's about it. I was gonna say Serra but on reflection that's a pretty different fit and it's more similar to characters like L'arachel and Constance.
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May 13, 2021 10:35
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not really because until recently FE has been too cowardly to let women be stronk in the first place so they can't be ineffectively hiding it either
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May 13, 2021 10:44
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Maybe Flavia from Awakening? But she doesn't try to hide it.
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May 13, 2021 15:17
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I'm most of the way through the tower map and about to fight the brother-turned-monster. Honestly, I still feel like the most challenging map in Maddening so far was the three-way map in the beginning. The only time I really ate poo poo on this map was when the thieves appeared right near me (which I knew was coming) and then ran right through all of my units to murder Marianne. (Whoops! I forgot thieves all have pass.) It helped that Gilbert retreated to the first group of enemies to appear from behind, so he didn't have a chance to walk into the range of the archers in the middle and make my life hell. I'm really enjoying this maddening playthrough though. I feel like I'm getting a better appreciation for the differences in the units. Like, Leonie's extra bit of speed actually matters because she's the only one who might sometimes double enemies. Ignatz's rally speed, similarly, is actually useful. And I never noticed before just how tanky Lorenz is. He's become my go-to unit to use when there is a slow enemy who hits hard. Even though he's a mage, he's got more defense than anyone else in my class, and is probably second in HP only to Rafael. (I think maybe I've been blessed with defense for him like I've been blessed with strength for Hilda.)
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May 18, 2021 02:11
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Lorenz has a 30% Def growth by default, which isn't stellar but a lot better than most of the other mages who sit around 15%. Raphael has 45%. Going into a mage class clips it to 25%, but it's still a 1 in 4 chance.
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May 18, 2021 05:36
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https://twitter.com/ilvernaa/status/1394489096551026688?s=21
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May 18, 2021 05:37
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"And here we have a painting of Marianne von Edmund and Hilda Goneril on their wedding day, done by Ignatz Victor. The matched wedding rings Goneril made for the two of them are among the greatest treasures from their era, and their wedding was officiated by Archbishop Eisner and her wife directly. As you can see, they are clearly not gay and merely excellent friends." - The writer of the Marianne/Hilda epilogue
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May 18, 2021 12:35
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So, a glitch has been discovered for 3H that well, does some things: https://twitter.com/ClarisTheGirl/status/1396208886802223110 https://twitter.com/ClarisTheGirl/status/1396254225018114053 What things can this glitch let you do, you ask? https://twitter.com/ClarisTheGirl/status/1396210765472825346 Oh, just celebrate Seteth's birthday like it was a normal day. Nothing big.
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May 23, 2021 04:21
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For anyone who's never tried Maddening because of the reputation, just get yourself through the first map. It's totally worth it. I just finished Lorenz's paralogue (which was actually one of the harder maps I've done so far, at least in the beginning when you get swamped by enemies on 2 sides) but at this point, the game is challenging, but still reasonable; a fun challenge. (We'll see what happens when I get to chapter 13. I've heard that one is enough to end some people's runs.) Chapter 1 makes it seem like the whole game will be a huge slog, but it really isn't. Chapter 1 is a bit of a slog because you have so few movement and attack options, and you have to be so precise about exactly what you do, and where you move. It gets way better once you're past that map though. My MVPs right now are Hilda, Leonie, and Lysithea. Lysithea is doing exactly what you would expect her to do by deleting units when needed. Hilda has insane strength and speed. Ironically, I think she may have gotten charm screwed in this run though, because she's been a bit vulnerable to gambits. Pegasus Knight Leonie is actually my strongest defensive unit. She got lucky with defense this run I think. I'm getting a new appreciation for Lorenz and Ignatz though. Ignatz always hits. He isn't generally killing anything, but he consistently gets chip damage because of his personal skill. Lorenz, too, is just really consistent for chipping, and he is strong enough to take a hit without folding like Lysithea. I got Petra to recruit herself into my class, and she has unusually high charm, so I might have her do the dance contest just for the sword avoid. I'm planning to make her an assassin, so I figure with high charm and that skill, she might be good for dodge-tanking later in the game. The fact that I'm even thinking about the charm stat is what's fun about this maddening run. On lower difficulty levels, it practically doesn't matter because it's so easy to out-charm most of the enemies in the game.
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May 23, 2021 13:23
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