Mistakes: Windsweep can be gotten by Yuri, Byleth, Dimitri, and Jeritza. (I forgot the two latter characters in the list) I said that Petra's damage output was bad, but some of you correctly pointed out that she has similar strength to someone like Sylvain or Leonie. What I didn't get across well is that her lack of damage stems from a lack of other factors that increase damage output. Her combat arts are lacking compared to those two and her personal skill doesn't buff her damage at all either. I also forgot to mention that, yeah, every unit in the game can be great. This list is focused on making the game as easy as possible. Those in higher tiers require a lot less investment than a character in a lower tier on maddening to be good.
absolute delusion with Petra. she will end up with around the same strength with the mightier killer axes (even more when you realize crits do x3 damage) you are comparing 3 player phase units with an enemy phase unit. you over evaluate the use of player phase combat arts- you don’t need one if you have batt wrath. reminding you how garbage of a take was a year ago
Petra synthesizes with Hit +20 gained by mastering the archer class and Lancebreaker to easily land hits with Wild Abandon and Diamond Axe, she can negate the hit penalies of those combat arts with the abilities mentioned, including hit bonuses from Axe Prowess, gambits and supports. Dedue has the highest Def growth of 65% as a Fortress Knight, giving many Giant Shells and Ambrosias will make him easier to tank even the powerful hitting physical enemies such as War Masters and increase the damage he deals with Armored Strike. His Defense cap is 75, and it can be increased further by the Fortress Knight modifiers, his personal ability, Rally Defense. Shields and Gambits increase his protection further. Ingrid makes a good choice as a Dancer, since her amazing speed growths will help avoiding hits thanks to Sword Avo +20, Axebreaker, Alert Stance+ and Defiant Avo. Her Charm growth is good too, she can use Sword Dance effectively, since its power can be increased thanks to her crest. Pro tip: use dancer when it's really needed, becuase the class growths aren't impressive.
Spells like Bolting/Meteor are very good because they can increase the hit rate of all teammates with support with that character if they are in range. That alone is amazing in Maddening. That makes Dorothea even better as a Dancer cuz all she needs to do is have it equipped, focus on dancing while passively increasing everyone's hit rate
@@someonespc269 yah, sniping ballista archers is nuts, especially if you employ lots of fliers or vantage wrath tanks. It’s why I think Constance and Dorothea have legitimate niche use for Bowbreaker.
Yeah but Constance > Dorothea in that role 💯 . Bolting is as good as meteor for linked attacks/gambit boosts specifically; but Constance can make use of the sword avoid with Soulblade if she’s stuck frontlining
I don't understand the logic or math behind some of the points here. If Petra's strength is so bad to the point where she is hitting 2x2 or 0x2, then units like Ferdinand, Sylvain, or Leonie would have to be 20 or 30 points of strength higher than her to be able to oneshot a 40-60 hp enemy - which would mean they need to have a 50-66% *higher* strength growth than her even if we only look at the last couple of chapters. Anything earlier and it would have to be a lot more than that. But that isn't the case. Sylvain has a 5% higher growth than Petra, for example, with the same base. Ferdinand has 1 less strength at base, and a 5% higher growth, meaning that at level 41 he will average 1 point of strength more than petra, assuming they go through the same class pathing - however Ferdie is locked to Lances for Swift Strikes whilst Petra can make use of the higher might Axes, and higher strength classes such as Wyvern Lord whilst still getting a Faire skill. Yet Ferdinand "Really Shines as a combatant" whilst Petra's damage is "Not even worth mentioning" If Petra is hitting 2x2, then for a unit to oneshot that same enemy - which is more than possible, any enemy can be oneshot on the player phase, then a unit must be 20-30 strength higher than Petra, which just doesn't happen. Not to mention she makes use of axes, the highest might weapon types, before factoring in things like crits which she can hit extremely reliably. All of this is just on the Player Phase, not even mentioning her BatWrath fuelled EP crits which can - like any wrath unit - take out basically any non-monster. Edit: Just ran some numbers - if Petra *does not gain a single point of strength throughout the entire game from her level ups or stat boosters*, she still hits AM22 War Masters (35 Defence) for 18x2 even if she doesnt naturally double, whilst using a Brave Axe. 18 (WL/WR Base Str) + 4 (WL Class Mod) + 13 (Brave Axe +) + 5 (Class Axefaire) + 6 (Death Blow) + 7 (Cichol Wyvern Co). = 53 53-35 = 18 This is still leaving out things like a higher might axe (Silver Axe +) should she naturally double (expected), Strength +2, temporary buffs such as cooking, and of course, gaining strength on her levelups throughout the game. Giving her a relatively conservative Level 41, Petra would be expected to be at 33 strength. If we factor that in, along with the higher might Silver Axe + and the Strength +2 ability, we get 33 (Expected Str) + 4 (WL Class Mod) + 17 (Silver Axe +) + 5 (Class Axefaire) + 6 (Death Blow) + 7 (Cichol Wyvern Co) +2 (Strength +2). = 74 74 - 35 = 39, 39*2 = 78 More than enough to see off some of the tankiest enemies the game has to offer - and there are still a lot of things you can do to amp her PP damage up past this, and again, her PP isn't her strongest use-case, her EP Batwrath usage is.
In any SS run I've done my Petra tends to have good strength, I think she's at least A/A+ tier. Also has absurd speed growth so generally doubles consistently.
Petra has always ended up with excellent strength for me as well. 40% growth is not bad at all. And due to her boons, she is able to get in all the best classes for mastery skills. Easily gets death blow, darting blow, and hit +20
I was not expecting to see this but I should have expected it I remember the love you have for Petra good on you homie got the maths for his girl and everything 😭
You can do all of that work for any unit in the game to make them good. I get where you are coming from, but this misses the point of the list. The big thing separating Petra from Sylvain, Ferdinand, Leonie, and others is the lack of a solid combat art. You can go to all the trouble of giving similar treatment to so many other units and they will out preform Petra.
@@AdamWithFED >You can go to all the trouble of giving similar treatment to so many other units and they will out preform Petra. How do you out-perform killing the strongest enemies in front of you, whilst in an eight move flying class with Canto for great mobility? Like what performance is surpassing that? You could look at other stages of the game, but Petra has one of the strongest midgames amongst physical units, with great speed, solid strength, Battalion Wrath, incredible boons and easy access to the most desirable classes (Armor Knight, Pegasus Knight, Brigand, Archer). If anything, Ferdinand is the one requiring more work here. Also again her PP isn't her biggest boon, her EP is. With her dodgetanking, easy access to Wyvern Lord, Hit +20, Alert Stance, Axe Prowess, and also getting Battalion Wrath. She also has boons to access both Vantage and Wrath.
I am pretty shocked to see Petra so low. I think you make valid points, but Wyvern Knight Petra has been a HUGE carry for me personally in most of my playthroughs. It might just be that I got lucky with Strength growths, but I’ve played through Maddening enough that I would think I would get stinker luck on her eventually.
No, he just made her suck by making her a Falcon knight, which is probably the worst master class Plus the master classes (for the most art) are kinda just worthless
You still need a modicum of strength for crits to matter. Arguably, she gets a bit more strength than Ingrid from her base and growths, but more often than not her crits will deal less damage to tankyish units than a normal attack from your heavy hitters.
@@jierdareisa4313In my experience, I’ve never had Petra’s crits fail to kill regular enemies (not bosses or armoured enemies) once she’s on a wyvern. The class bases and growth rates are enough to patch up her lower innate growths. I could see that not being the case in her canon assassin class, which in an of itself could be a reason for ranking her lower. A new player may not know how to make her into a dodgetank with bat wrath in wyvern lord. That’s fair. I still think it would have been helpful to mention this potential in the video.
@@OperaQueen85 After working out the maths, I realised I was wrong in the previous message: her crits are usually more powerful than normal attacks, even from stronger units with a Hero's Relic. Overall I also do agree Adam should have ranked her higher than he did: Wyvern Lord Petra's crits get the job done on a lot of enemies. However I still have a few issues with this strat': - it runs into the issue of choosing between Silver Axes + and Killer Axes +, the formers being just enough to kill non-armoured units on crits but being unreliable, whilst the latters crit more reliably but are often too weak to seal the deal - most importantly, the strategy fully comes online fairly late: it can be used with Wyvern Rider but she really wants the +6(x3) damage and the Alert Stance + for offensive and defensive reliability I'm not spitting on the strat': it's still solid, but I don't think it's always the best late-game enemy phase option. Other units can make better enemy phase swipers, especially if we're venturing into (battalion) vantage-wrath territory.
I'm doing a skip only maddening run and have done Rest/Seminar only runs on different routes and every unit is viable. In house ingrid can be fixed with REST ONLY RUN by getting her STR+2, deathblow, and classing her into either Wyvern Rider to fix her strength or Paladin to go Wyvern Rider -> Lord or Paladin -> Falcon Knight. Ingrid can be fixed on a chill maddening run with purple flowers. Petra is a fantastic unit not sure why she's in makes maddening harder. Generally has good STR growth and can be fixed with Wyvern route, purple flowers, or Paladin thing similar to Ingrid. Caspar gets a lot of flak but he's a solid unit. He has a passive that gives himself and other units ACCURACY RING, make him a Wyvern and how is he bad?
I hear a lot of bad things about Caspar, but he's always been one of my solid front runners especially when in a Brawling Class such as War Master or Grappler. I personally prefer Grappler over the former because of "Fierce Iron Fists" Combat Art which allows x3 consecutive attacks (Gets better use and full value on Maddening). Also have to mention he has early/earlier access to the Combat Art "Bombard" which gives a guaranteed double against even the fastest Maddening Units such as Swordmasters, Assassins, Pegasus/Falcon Knights (whether it hits or not is another story, but it's still a Brave Attack Combat Art).
Caspar really isn't bad once you get him to higher level, but getting him out of the early levels in Maddening is physically painful. I had to drag him kicking and screaming up to level 10, and him getting killed was the cause of over half of my divine pulses. At late game, he is a great crit machine, and as a War Master he can be one of the best dual-phase characters in the entire game, but I just wish his early game wasn't such hot garbage.
@@jamesoakes4842 agreed. Caspar is hard to rate, because he ends up great but starts off garbage. Also nobody mentioned Wild Abandon and it’s insane damage. The hit penalty is fully negated by hit +20 and his personal, so you can use linked attack, a battalion, and maybe an accuracy ring to still have a 100 hit chance with it. Once he’s in Warmaster, getting to 100 crit chance isn’t unreasonable either.
I don't personally go the white magic avoid route but in all seriousness it is very good late game. You can just send byleth off into a forest with the entire maps worth of maddening enemies, slap nosferatu on to them and their damn near impossible to kill. It's pretty slick.
One thing I’ll say for Ingrid is that she has a might support with Felix and Sylvain so she’s prime adjutant material and she gives the Galatea Pegasus Co. and Luin from her paralogue. She’s worth getting into PK and like you mention her spell list is pretty wild so I really want to try her out in Dark Flier or Valkyrie and see how she’ll perform.
Petra’s strength growth is 5% lower than sylvains so you don’t really notice it. Plus she’s easily one of the best out of house recruits as she levels in enemy thief which boosts her strength up to 50% and speed up to 75%!!!
One thing to note about Bernadetta: putting her into an Assassin is one of her best choices. She can use her personal skill and even vengeance without having to worry much because of stealth
Petra's damage output is way better than you are giving her credit for. Petra and Leonie have the same growth and base. And Ingrid makes an excellent dark flier, perhaps the best. The lower magic growth doesn't matter much when you can double basically everything. And frozen lance makes up for the lowish magic uses. Both Petra and Ingrid are definitely too low. Petra is at least bottom of almost perfect, Ingrid is top of decent. Spot on list overall, besides those two.
I've found that Petra and Ingrid, are really temperamental. Either they're fantastic, or I really gotta tailor them to be good. If they can get good growths in strength early on, speed and dex take care of themselves.
reason dorothea is considered the best dancer is high charm and her passive healing that she can use while still dancing and for some maps being able to hide away and rebuild hp can help a ton and then meteor makes her a great support.
Good list! but I’d move these units up: Bernadetta: One of the most reliable player phase units in the game. Her boons makes it where she can get every good tool she wants without much investment (vengeance, Hit+20, Tempest Lance, curved shot, pass, Peg knight, Rider etc). Peg knight with vengeance by chap 5 is ridiculous especially in black eagles early game. It makes her an amazing early & mid game unit as well combined with her personal ability. Then in part 2 finish the game with either Bow knight (Darting blow+Defiant speed) or Falcon Knight builds. To top it off she gets pass super easily to help in LTC runs Dedue: One of the most reliable protection tanks next to balthus and edelguard. He’s one of the few units who can take hits in early game maddening. On top of that he gets battalion wrath too kill enemies while tanking on enemy phase. He can also run vengeance and wrath in the same build so he just becomes a reliable unit throughout blue lions Ingrid & Petra: These are weird cuz they both benefit a lot from out of house stat increases. •Petra is a great unit in part 2 and is one of the best dodge tanks in the game. She can grab defiant Crit & defiant avoid to become a psudo Dimitri in any house with some setup. She has acess to tempest Lance and curved shot early, and Peg knight/Wyvern rider+darting blow for mid game to where she is decent at every point in the game •Ingrid-Battalion desperation+Darting blow makes her a great player phase unit. Sure you have to invest in her strength & speed with stat boosters but if you use gardening correctly & recruit some ooh units you can reach her thresholds in house with speedwings and energy drops. Putting her in wyvern rider for the stat increases also helps. But recruiting her ooh makes hitting thresholds easier. She also has good resistance vs early game mages and has no banes either which is nice for getting what she wants.
Yeah Bernie is great bc her personal means she effectively has the highest strength tied with the Byleth and Edelgard. She can get Tempest Lance by chapter two which is something you’d want bc then she out damages everyone using a Steel Lance, on top of 2-3 range chip with a Steel Bow. I also think that Petra’s early game is not to be underestimated since with a Mini Bow, at base she doesn’t get doubled by chapter 3 myrms and her boons are insane. Ingrid is pretty bad in house, but OOH she’s good for killing mages with her pretty above average res. Also Alois and Gilbert should move to Decent bc they are no investment tanks with Battalion Wrath who can both slot into a master class easily.
@@thescarredraven2634 Agreed. Bernie is just so helpful in black eagles since most of the units in that house don’t get good until after chapter 7 or so. She really helps makes the early game for that house more manageable Alois & Gilbert are always underrated since people don’t like them as a character. They are good out of the box if you put them in the correct classes. Only flaw is they miss like half the game lol I don’t think Ingrid is THAT awful in house. She just requires more work. Having 8 res to deal with early mages is nice for blue lions, she has tempest Lance, no banes and a crest, and she helps late game as well in Falcon knight. But yes the stat buffs from OOH recruitments make her a more reliable character for sure
For me, Bernadetta belongs in the top tier, mostly because of my experience with her. Hunters Volley, Encloser, and Vengeance put together absolutely demolished my playthroughs where I used her. I know she's not perfect, but in my many playthroughs, she was consistently the highest performer.
Raph and Petra are both really good for me all the time. Raph gets high hp, str, and def. You go war master with him and he gets incredible damage output and can tank with his high def and quick riposte. Petra makes a great dodge tank sure but in addition she gets high crit rates and has battalion wrath which is nuts. Haven’t used Caspar much but he likely makes a great war master.
Everyone is great if you get to war master for the last few chapters of the game. Maybe Raph is one of the better warmasters, but before then, aka most of the game, he's worse than everybody else who wants to go warmaster. There's that one guy who 1 shot maddening Nemesis with Hanneman warmaster because he felt like it. Doesn't make Hanneman is a good war master. Dodge tanking, as fun as it is, is way more effort than the reward in this game. You can't put a not super tank in the middle of the map against like 40% or even 30% hits and just a more tanky + more damage unit tanks one or two units much better for less effort. Even if you do manage to fully commit to the insane amount of effort required to get to single digit hits, you still won't 1 round the enemy because of how much less resources you had to spend on giving her damage. Or you'll just get gambited and die anyway. Similar story with crit. Spending that much resources for a 70% crit aka not something you can rely on and will just boost your action economy occasionally.
@@DoggyP00 Raphael literally has the highest HP in the game, and his strength and defense are up there, as well as having both Axe and Brawling proficiency, how tf does that make him one of the worst War Master candidates?
Leonie hits PBV at the same rank as Sylvain, I enjoy the massive chapter 5 power spike she enables, deploying her with PBV, sylvain with swift strikes, early recruit Catherine, and then the lad, the legend, Cyril with PBV
@@idkdk569 solo rush bows, make sure she gets full training every teaching day & also get her the refreshed tag from the sauna (her, sylvain, and FERDINAND VON AEGIR all benefit from this cuz they want to rush A rank stuff, similarly there are some people who get bat wrath at A I think), get the statue bonus when you can, use her to murderize people. Once you have PBV and you're in archer, you can train axes and class into brigand at D+ which isn't THAT hard.
@@IntrusiveThot420 i know about the sauna, which unlocks at ch5, but still getting to A in just 4 chapters of tutoring seems insane even with rigging tutoring sessions
@@idkdk569 it's been a hot minute since I've played 3H, but it's absolutely doable. Just give it a shot and you'll see. You need to set her to Bow/Nothing, which yes you give up on a large amount of XP, but the increased functionality is amazing
Hmm. I would personally bump Bernie up a tier because even though yes it's easier to keep a ranged unit safe (as with lysithea) if you're using Bernie as a vengeance bot she's most likely going to be a peg knight with pass in a game with super canto. If you need someone nuked you can just use stride and send her up and bring her back, or even rescue her. And even then you don't have to take away her bow utility with enclosure so that's just more options available. She's definitely not flawless but she does get the job done and makes the game easy if utilized correctly
All three Vengeance users in Mid-Tier? Bruh, you're gonna need some oven mitts to handle these hots takes of yours. Even when I agree with the tier of some of the units, I don't agree with why you put them there. I don't think you mentioned Ignatz having Rally Speed at D Authority, among other things. About the only time you parted from the meta that I agreed with was Constance. Although I'm not sure I would have put her into S-Tier, I do think she is criminally undervalued. Still you got me to subscribe. Well played.
Okay, just wise-cracking isn't an argument, so here's my comment on those three. Vengeance does fall off, and I think Bernie falling off late game isn't talked about enough. But early game? Bernie is a flying god of death. She can one-shot enemies nobody else can in the early game, and starting at level 10, she can do it while flying. This is absolutely insane. Sure, she's squishy... but so are a lot of units. But as a Pegasus Knight, Bernie has 6 move, flight and canto. It's very easy to keep her safe. And when striking at a high priority target, Stride can increase her attack AND retreat range. Yes, it can be a bit of a pain keeping Bernie safe when she attacks at melee range, but the only other person doing the kind of damage she does is Frozen Lance of Ruin or Sylvain using the Lance of Ruin. And Bernie can use Vengeance in Chapter 4 and 5, two chapters before you get the LoR. And while she does fall off (or rather, other units catch up to her, and do her job with less work) late game... just replace her with a late recruit. Seteth, Alois or Gilbert (you ranked them way too low), or even a low investment utility unit like Lindhardt or Annette. A unit who starts incredible and becomes merely okay is MUCH better than a unit who starts crummy and becomes great (Caspar is this games Villager unit, not Cyril. Fight me.). Likewise, Dedue is awesome even without Vengeance. He has the highest base defense of 8. Throw in his passive, and he gets to 12. Throw in a Leather Shield (he's going to get doubled anyway, so why not) and it's up to 13. Nobody but Balthus tanks as hard as Dedue does. And since he's getting doubled no matter what you do, no harm in handing him the heaviest weapon you can find. His ability to tank in the very difficult early game is incredible, and goes a long way to making Blue Lions have a strong start. What's more, his tanking potential means he doesn't need to set up Vengeance in the same way that Bernie does, wherein you deliberately let Bernie get hit. Dedue charges up Vengeance just by tanking, which is what he normally does. You can speed up the process by letting him PP a bit and get hit in return or not activate his passive, but that's not needed. Cyril is probably the worst user of Vengeance of the three. But he gets Point-Blank Volley very fast. He can have it in time for Chapter 5. Give him a Steel Bow+ and a decent Battalion, and he can actually one round some enemies. Vengeance ends up being more of a utility option for him, allowing him to do massive damage at the cost of setup, but unlike Bernie, PBV allows him to be pretty strong before he's ready to use Vengeance. Even if you don't aim for it at all, Wyvern Lord and Bow Knight both want the Lance rank, so you're barely going out of your way to get it. Oh, and it's also worth mentioning that Vengeance can combo well with the Horseslayer, Spear of Assal, Lance of Ruin, Luin or Blessed Lance to become even more damaging, if you need it. It can reduce setup time, and let you more easily Vengeance Chapter 6 and 8 Death Knight. The Blessed Lance can also make a significant difference when dealing with monsters giant HP bars, though that's more situational. I'd place all of them in high A-Tier. Bernie falls off, but she's the only one who can fly early on. Dedue is an absolute wall, and any damage that seeps through fuels his Vengeance. And Cyril gets PBV, just leave him in range of one enemy to attack him, and he can have Vengeance ready for things PBV can't kill. Both Bow Knight and Wyvern Lord are great for keeping distance on Cyril.
How the hell does Vengeance fall off? It literally gets stronger as your HP increases. Even without excessive grinding you can easily do 80+ damage in a single hit. Both Dedue and Cyril are better because they'll have 10-20 more HP and Strength than Bernadetta by midgame. The only thing she has over them in that regard is she's usable on all routes, and VERY early game she probably does the most damage with it.
I think Lorenz should be in just the flawed tier rather than deeply. I have had good experiences in Maddening by combining lifetaker and frozen lance in either Paladin or Dark Knight. Without investing into his stats at all he has a good player phase one shotting things with frozen lance and healing himself with lifetaker. It’s also kind of an unique setup to him. Early on he does good work with fire and once he gets frozen lance he’s good for the mid game. He’s a great healer with recover too.
He’s super easy to train too with recover and ward spells. He was great as a dark knight for me. He gets free +2 dmg early with his fire spell ranged attacker that you don’t need a bow on is great. Also melts the early armor knights. He makes the hardest part easier and scales. I also dump some magic stat boosters on him and some dex so he stays competitive late game.
After years of the entire community dunking on Dedue for being useless, I'm glad that he's getting some love here. Yeah, he's useless--if you've never been in a situation where you're in need of a tank. And if you've never been in that situation, you've never played maddening.
Gauntlets Dedue is amazing and I’m surprised the community gives him so much hate. He has carried all my Blue Lions Maddening first halves. Yeah him disappearing is bad but Brigand/Brawler -> Grappler combined with his natural defense growth is soooo good.
Felix’s stats don’t quite keep up? He has 55% strength growth (second highest tied with edelgard; admittedly his base is 10 compared to her 13 but still.) He is not a perfect unit because he doesn’t iirc have any unique broken combat arts like ss and his authority bane/personal skill suck but his stats aren’t the problem.
Petra =/= Ingrid, which was the largest disagreement. Petra doesn't have bow weakness and specs into classes with more strength growth, so she'll end up doing more damage, with no magic skills of note. Petra is also a lot more keen on swords with Ingrid on Lance's, Ingrid's best classes are all flyers for mobility, and she also has a lot more resilience so she's less likely to have a chance to Just Die, unless she's in the air.
So it’s been years since I really played 3H and I was never too “in the know” with maddening strategies, but I decided to boot it up last week and play Golden Deer Maddening since I haven’t before. The build I landed on for Hilda was Dancer with Bolting with Seal Speed/Defense. Has this been discussed before? As a dancer, she does typical dancer things, but she can still assist with support bonuses long-distance with Bolting and if she lands bolting on an enemy then she can drop Speed and defense by 6 to help launch an assault on them. Idk, it worked super well for me, but I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere for her as a strategy haha. Was curious to know if people tend to fixate on her physical combat abilities instead
I mean War Cleric Bernadetta does give you Physic and Rescue, but I can't believe that even with Death Blow/Fistfaire/Persecution Complex that she would do enough punching dmg but maybe I am wrong?
I paused the video after you said you don't think Edelgard is as good as Byleth. Also, at the beginning you say only one other character gets Windsweep, when Dimitri and Jeritza both get it. I may come back to the video to hear reasonings on some placements, but this list is kinda painful to look at. lol
No need to apologize! I came off as critical, but I also appreciate continuing 3Houses content. I'll get to watching the rest of the video this weekend. lol
I replaying this game just now, but I remember I could cast rally on a AREA of effect like hit 5-6 units but now is single target, what I am doing wrong?
Bernadetta is literally the only unit in the game that gives you encloser on every route. She's easily "almost perfect tier" just for that. Everybody is always focused on vengeance Edit: Petra>Silvain/Ferdinand
I did Bow Knight into Holy Knight on my last run and she was incredibly versatile once she hit HK. Somewhat high investment, but along with high ground mobility with a guard adjutant, she never ran out of something important to do - erase an enemy, stall out an enemy, chip or maybe even crit from afar, hit an important attack or utility gambit, or could support by healing somebody in a pinch or repositioning somebody with rescue.
@@afgcinc7206 I was tempted to do holy knight Bernie after I got her into bow Knight. Was gonna abuse encloser/physic on her, but she's my best delete button with HV besides war master Felix. Man can tank everything with his personal shield
I’d say don’t do crimson flower simply because like 3 of the post timeskip maps can be hell and expend basically all of your resources if you aren’t well seasoned with maddening but the bl and gd routes are good
I know this is all opinions, but I strongly disagree about Petra. For me she's at the top of almost perfect. Her crit rate is absolutely ridiculous, and her speed is so high that against a lot of opponents she doubles. Couple that with extremely high avoid rate and you have a really solid unit. She's one of my personal favorites, and always makes the cut in my maddening runs. That's my experience at least. Great video as always!
Yeah I used her as a falcon knight with Wo Dao and she was a 1 man wrecking crew that could dodge tank too. She was probably a top 3 unit for me in more than one playthrough
I have found Caspar and Raphael pretty handy on NG+ Maddening by having obtained Quick Riposte on the previous run and then giving them Chalice of Beginnings, makes them very effective tanks and crucial for early game. But normal Maddening, not so great lol.
I kinda get tired of everyone saying "make them a wyvern rider" for every physical unit in the game. My very first maddening playthrough, I used all Canon classes on Azure Moon and found the game challenging but not incredibly so. Not so much that I'm like, just give me 12 wyvern lords and I will traverse the whole map and fly everywhere. The enemies are pretty easy to isolate and bait with thebdanger area and map, prt tanks like dedue for physical units or res tanks like mercedes, or wrath vantage dimitri, or dodge tank byleth. Granted Ingrid did her fair share of dodge tanking too but really I only needed one unit to bait and all the others could finish off the hoard of enemies before the next hoard aggroed. Everyone go flier just seems so boring and repetitive.
There a couple of charities with combat sets that make them much more powerful, for example, Dadu with vengeance and cruel with vengeance and pint blanc valley, and Marian with frozen lance.
The one thing I will say about Raphiel is that he hp tanks. Assuming you transition to heavy armor late game he will be a 50 hp brick wall even in late act 2. So grapler -> heavy armor is his path. Relatively speaking in maddening anyway.
Also Leoni's average stats in paladin really hurts she's pretty much the only unit in the game that will get one shot in late maddening as hard as a caster.
Aside from the Petra slander this is overall a solid list. Obviously every person is going to make a few small changes here or there based on their experiences and opinions but this is a decent guideline.
I know it's super cheese and pretty frowned upon, but for the sake of just getting through maddening, giving Dimitri the chalice of beginnings makes the game feel like easy mode. Yeah, anyone with the chalice is broken but not to the same extent
Magic Ignatz is one of my favorite units. 1 shotting people from 5 spaces away with a crit blizzard is great. Also in my most recent blue lions playthrough Dedue was doing ~100 damage with vengeance plus an 80% crit chance thanks to defiant crit. Could one shot any boss.
I honestly would put Ignatz higher in general because +20 accuracy is so important earlygame. And yeah magic is probably the way to go with him in Maddening.
Good "final" list. My thoughts after 4 maddening runs: Too high: Catherine, Yuri, Ignatz, Manuela, Caspar. Too low: Alois, Gilbert, Petra, Ingrid, Bernadetta. Since I always recruit, it takes too much away to get BOTH Catherine and Shamir with other recruits, and Shamir gets the nod for staying relevant way later into the game. I know Catherine can make Chapter 5 much easier, but honestly the Tower is just long and a grind, it's not really that impossible. Yuri is my go-to Chapter 2 (since I don't do early Sylvain) because of extra heal spells and later early Windsweep but he falls off after that. I've always struggled with every Ignatz, Manuela, and Caspar I've had. Petra and Ingrid (OOH) are my go-to dodge tanks/bait/pullers and tbf my Petras always have had at least passable strength, and when Ingrid doesn't she has relics - only Leonie can flier dodge tank as they do but she never did as well for me. People pass over Alois and Gilbert but both are very good if you know how to set them up as soon as you get them. And lastly Bernadetta's Vengeance and Encloser always keep her relevant, in a mode where you get swarmed easily, and nobody on your team can reliably one shot until much much later. She ends up being the one unit that can either erase or stall any non-boss/monster unit and that is invaluable on maddening, especially in a high move canto class (Paladin, Bow Knight, Falcon Knight).
Does Caspar not ORKO most enemies with bombard? I've only done one crimson flower run and have not done silver snow yet. I'm doing verdant wind now and raphael is able to ORKO anything except fortress knights with steel gauntlets. Caspar may not have the same strength but he also is getting 6 damage added since the 3 adds to the consecutive hits. Is it as reliable as Hunter's Volley kills?
I found Caspar seems to get more strength screwed compared to Raphael, especially if you make the mistake of making him a Brawler instead of Brigand. His HP and Def also aren't very impressive imp. You can make him semi-competent on Player Phase if you give him Death Blow, a good physical attack boosting Battalion, and make him a War Master. Grappler CAN work if you want Fierce Iron Fist though.
I'd put Jeritza up to the top tier. His Counterattack makes him well-suited to dealing with Bolting mages, and as my best spear user, he's a good choice for taking down Seiros. I'd also put Bernadetta in "almost perfect," since Encloser is a must-have on Maddening.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 Jeritzas only weakness in my opinion is that he is only unlocked in part II in the shortest route, which makes customizing him hard.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 Would be nice if you could recruit him at chapter 5 as a replacement for Catherine in Black Eagles only and have him autopromote to Death Knight after the Timeskip.
I give my flying dodge tanks also defiant crit which allows them to make good damage in late game. So damage was not often an issue for Ingrid and Petra. Also, I would put Edelgard on top. She is has a significantly better early game than the other main characters and has strength, bulk(with resistance) and speed together from early on. And lightning axe allows her to get a decent magic attack on top of it if needed without being a mage which is a nice little bonus.
There is also the fact that Edelgard requires very, very little investment and can get Wyvern Lord, which is the best class in the game, basically for free, as she already has a boon in axes and is neutral on flying, while Dimitri needs to work around his weakness in axes. And she has the highest base str and will on average remain having the highest str until very late game, when Dimitri might outgrow, but even then it doesn't matter because her route doesn't go as far. And her crests proc crazy often as an added bonus, because she has two. In comparison Dimitris crest will be a nuisance more often than being useful. Really the only investment Edelgard really needs is stocking up on material to repair her relic weapon to use Raging Storm more often, which is plain and simple the best weaponart in the game.
@@shizachan8421 Edelgard has a weakness in Lances, which will make it a little more difficult to get her weapon rank high enough than people let on. Dimitri's crest has such a low proc rate that you'd have to actually try to make use of it.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 Yeah, but Dimitri has a weakness in axes, which is even worse. And the issue with Dimitris crest is that it is the only one that isn't only not helpful but will be more often than not be a nuisance, meanwhile Edelgards twin crests mean that she will have a decent proc rate for one of them and she has the best relic in the game. And for the majority of the game, she will have the highest strength stat of any unit. So generally I just would give her the age in most cases. Really, the only missed opportunity for her as a unit is not giving her personal class the ability to cast spells for some reason.
@@shizachan8421 Dimitri has more strength than her. In fact if you were to grind all the way and give him the right abilities and other stat boosting methods he can actually get to 99. The Crest of Flames on Edelgard means using low HP tactics(Vantage, Wrath, Defiant Avoid, Speed, Crit, etc.) are pointless since she'll often heal just out of their activation thresholds and die if the next attack hits. Which sucks because otherwise with the proper set-up, you can get her to 100 crit with Raging Storm to consistently one-shot each of the Immaculate One's Life Meters if a barrier is broken.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 I mean, thats the thing, isn't it, Dimitri has on average more strength than her very late into the game if you grind like crazy. Edelgard starts with more strength than Dimitri and the difference in growth is 5%.
Hewbert is always amazing at killing anything and taking more hits compared to his other mages. Just because he has a slow build on horses does not mean you can’t make him into a horse mage. I would place him 1 step from the top. I also did not understand Alois, he is the best tank in game besides dedue. It really all depends on how you build each character from the start. I always work on Bernie’s axes first. This way she gets more strength and builds to be a sniper then a horse archer and lastly an archer wyvern. She will then one shot anything with great mobility making her a flawless character.
😂 After Engage being my first FE game. I'm currently on my first playthrough of Three houses. Definitely prefer the combat in Engage but the story so far in Three Houses is 1000x better.
@@MoragLadair0 gameplay in general is better in engage. Class balance doesn't exist in three houses and many archetypes don't as well. Engages biggest gameplay problem is locking most skills behind rings - especially since the most essential rings get taken away for a while. Celica and Micah are the only emblems that give tome prof. so if you didn't get those and want to make someone a mage knight, your out of luck - by the point you get them back, they will have abysmal magic.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 that's because you also get skills from your equipped emblem. I imagine the idea was to rely mostly on emblem skills, that's why custom ones are so expensive.
@@ologracz1110 Nope, the skill system exists the way it does because they want to manipulate people into playing Heroes. There's 0 reason whatsoever that it needs to be so tedious
When I watch tier list videos. I regularly fast forward to the end to determine if the video itself is worth watching. I can forgive minor placements that do not make sense to me, such as tiering Ignatz (very middling maddening contributor overall, "decent" at best) a tier over Bernadetta (who has one of the most powerful niches in the game, she deals as much damage as Dimitri in Ch 2 and Venge allows her to one shot anything if used well) or ranking Mercedes (terrible early game healer who cannot ever have Physic in Ch 2, arguably the hardest maddening chapter) as someone who actively makes the game easier (I can understand arguments for "decent" though, especially out of house) over Marianne (gets Ch 2 physic and gets 100% accuracy Silence). However, when I see Petra in the "flawed tier", I question one's actual mastery of the game. With her boons, bases, and growths, she is very easy to build as a player-phase hit and run damage dealer (almost perfect IMO, she lacks any game-breaking endgame combat arts, but she easily gets both tempest lance and curved shot early, and I weight early game more than endgame). Also, her boonset (flying, bow, and sword boons)and skillset (highest base speed + speed growth in the game, battalion wrath) makes her arguably the best dodge tank in the game, and used in this role she makes the game MUCH easier and would be a top tier unit for me.
I kinda disagree with Bernie’s placement. Though I don’t know much about Maddening since I never finished it, on Hard, she’s arguably a better nuke than Lysithea due to her skill preferences and incredible Dex growths. If you build her through Archer and Sniper into Bow Knight with Killer Bow+ and Lance of Ruin, she becomes a highly mobile nuke that’s effective at any range, while also having utility like Encloser and better range than other nukes like Lysithea and better accuracy than long range spells like Meteor. Plus she has incredible synergy with Vantage as long as she can survive one attack, and Vengeance is still an incredible art. She has a lot going for her. and with the sheer volume of bow and flier enemies on many of the late-endgame maps, I find myself getting more use out of her than almost any other unit besides Byleth.
I always loved Mercedes and I gotta be honest, I thought she'd be seen as only "Decent" because I keep hearing Fortify isn't very good and Physic is useful in some situations but on Maddening its unlikely you'd survive anyway if you take too much damage, its been to just kill ASAP. And lack of Warp/Rescue hurts Mercedes' viability. That's usually what I see commented on with her from others. But I still like Mercedes.
This video is really good. I am happy to finally find someone that also thinks like me, I think Petra is really shit. Also this video opened my eyes about ignatz being good. So thank you for that.
Marianne is waaaaay to low. She has the best white magic kit in the game. Psychic for range heal, aura for Holly dmg, silence to click off mages in end turn dmg calculations in maddening, she's essentially a dark mage and white mage in one. She also crits like crazy too which white mages other than her dont do without aura.
So what makes Mercedes special? She can heal? Every mage can heal. Other mages can heal, do good damage and have other utilities. Mercy heals and really only heals. And not to be that guy but you kinda flip flopped halfway through the tier list about stats mattering or not.
Marianne can heal and is potentially one of the best Dark Knights in the entire game while doing it, especially when you give her both Blutgang and Arrow of Indra.
I think Constance is a tier too high, yes she's excellent, but she has a decidedly worse spelllist than the other casters in her tier and save for her nuking potential, her stats are middling enough to the point where she can have an accuracy issue landing her boltings which is the main thing she brings to the table. I think Felix is too high. Yes he's good, but on maddening using Felix is basically an arms race. He boils down to a player phase melee kill machine in most circumstances (unless you're going like sniper Felix) and if you keep his level of investment up, he can maintain his ability to one-round however maddening unit quality makes him tricky to use on later maps because he winds up being a little frail to frontline. He's still good... but I'd put him like top of decent. Mercie is honestly too high. I think Marianne basically does everything she does and more. Her passive doesn't provide anything really, she's just a good mage. Dedue should be in almost perfect if not better. The ability to just eat hits in early maddening is a huge boon, he can nuke with vengeance and post timeskip you can relegate him to adjutant duty for Dimitri, a thing he does better than any other unit in the game. Save for the two maps he's missing, he always can fill a role. I think you're a little rough on Hilda too, but I don't really have a solid refutation. Hanneman's quite a bit better than Hubert, despite their similarities. Hubert basically has to go Dark Knight to augment his dark magic where Hanneman has more options. Hubert's personal skill is nothing special either. Hubert also basically doesn't have a faith list. He can nuke, but not better than a lot of units and that's basically it. I'd move Hubert down and keep Hanneman where he is. Bernie needs more respect. She's high investment - high versatility. There's a lot of things you can make her do beyond encloser and she's pretty good at all of them if you put in the work. I'm a fan of Dark/Holy knight personally. Honestly, I think Ingrid's better than Petra on maddening, though I'm not sure I'd bump her up a tier. In-house I'd argue you build her as a mage because her spelllist is pretty cool and she gets both frozen lance and hexblade. You have her run around supporting Syvain's swift strikes adventures to proc his personal and provide their special support mod. Out of house, she gets those sweet maddening pegasi growths giving her statistical bonuses over Petra. (And she can again do the Sylvain thing, due to his ease of recruitment if you choose to pick her up.) I used Ingrid pretty extensively on a NG maddening run mostly as a meme and was pretty satisfied with her. Raph is fine where he is, just move Caspar down a tier. Realistically, the way you're going to field both units is exactly the same and in that role, Raph is just better. Better bulk, better attack. He's the better choice for armor and the better choice for gauntlets. Lorenz to bottom of decent. He's not deadweight. He's a decent caster who really REALLY wants to be a dark knight. He has high mt spells and strengths in everything he needs to get there too, plus frozen lance. Is he the worst dedicated mage? Yes, to the point that some people argue not having him invest in magic (a mistake) but he's not two tiers below the other "average" casters. His personal skill is really good too. Ashe below the flawed adults but above Anna. Gilbert and Alois both have special supports and come as free guard adjutants at least. They also have better combat arts iirc. Ashe just has nothing. You do his part 1 paralogue for shoes then bench him because any further investment is a waste of resources. I also feel pretty strongly about Catherine being worse than Shamir, because she's basically a Jagen (albeit a good one that comes free with a relic brave weapon) who you need to fix to avoid that pre-promote stagnation. If you do take the investment to fix her, she does stay good though. Shamir is good out of the box and stays good as a sniper. That's my two cents....
Really good list. The only changes I would really make would be bumping hapi over lysithea and putting dedue in almost perfect. I understand your reasoning for dedue. however I think how useful he is early at setting up kills for your other units is outstanding and by the time he leaves he does fall off anyway. But for those early chapters where every unit is made of paper dedue is the only thing that can get your units more xp than they should in a chapter. I'm also glad that you see Yuri is not bad like some people think he is.
Bad tier criteria. You can't justify putting Ashe, one of the worst units in the game by normal standards, below decent by your criteria because anybody who can just go sniper with zero effort is at least decent in maddening. Meanwhile, Catherine is a very flawed character in that she kinda sucks end game. Neither of these examples has anything to do with why the criteria is bad though.
have you seen my ashe's crit rate... he doubled edelgard, got two crits with claudes bow (cant ttype lmao) his dex growth is astounding, lemme say that. having him in speed and dex is amazing, and with this personal, just wipes chest keys.
huh, always thought ignatz was garbage b/c his damage and speed were both crap early on; only played the game on hard so I haven't had problems with speed or hitrate on non ignatz units
maddening lets ignatz shines since the extra accuracy from his personal, and his rallies/auth/utility (like break shot and seal strength) matter a ton vs the tougher enemies
In lower difficulties Ignatz isn't very useful, but in higher difficulties having consistent accuracy with Steel weapons is actually kinda insane and makes him seriously strong earlygame where enemies are actually most difficult to handle. If anything I'd actually rank Ignatz higher.
-Good of you to give Constance the credit she deserves. A lot of people say she's "worse Lysithea kekw," but this is such a bad take. The combination of high Mag + Bolting single-handedly cuts the difficulty of certain lategame maps by half. -IMO Dorothea IS the best dancer in the game. What you want from your dancer is the ability to help the team passively while dancing every turn, and she has two very useful abilities that do not require an action: long-range gambit support with Meteor and her personal which really does add up if you play around it. -I'm a bit puzzled about Bernadetta's placement. You even make the enlightened argument that her true value lies with Encloser, not Vengeance. I'd argue that Encloser single handedly puts her in A tier because it does make Maddening noticeably easier in a way you can actively plan around. -Dedue should move up a tier, if not two. He's THE lynchpin of Blue Lions early game. Having this unbreakable wall lets you play at your pace and micromanage who gets experience. This has a huge effect on hitting the optimal class promotion times and massively snowball into midgame. Rather than having 2-3 standout units who got all the exp and have to do the heavy lifting for the 10 others who can barely do chip damage, you can end up with a full roster of viable units. He's not just a tactical asset, he's a strategic one. -And finally, IMO Ingrid is the most underrated unit in the game. Yes, she sucks as a general combat unit, but there's something she does better than anyone else: dealing with mages. The combination of her high Res, Spd, the ability to match 1-2 range with a javelin while doing enough physical damage to 1 round enemy mages makes her probably the only unit you can reliably send into a group of enemy mages. This makes some of the lategame maps just so much easier.
38:20 I hate to crash the Lysithea train but I do need to reign in your statements about her. First very minor point but she doesn't have the highest magic base, that award goes to Hubert with 12 base magic(Let him have this one). Secondly her spell list is "good" for magic but unfortunately magic in three houses is not that amazing. Spells like swarm do provide valuable utility with reductions to speed in the early game but unfortunately combined with its low base hit of 70 and Lysithea's terrible luck it makes most hit rats dubious at best in the early game, consistency being the name of the game in maddening early game as you acknowledged with Ignatz with hit plus 20. Late game swarm becomes a bit redundant since chip is less valuable and outright killing an enemy is far more valuable, so let's look at her damage potential. Her damaging spells that have the best chance of killing are Luna, Hades, Seraphim, Abraxas and Death Spikes. Hades is probably the worst out of these three since statistically in Lysithea's best damaging class (Gremory) at 30th level it only has 1 more potential damage on average than a level 30 Paladin Lorenz using Frozen Lance with a Silver Lance +, and in fact it gets out damaged if Lorenz uses any lance that has more than 15might i.e. the Lance of Ruin. (These stat averages are assuming you are going, monk (lvl5) -> mage (lvl10)-> warlock (lvl20) for both Lysithea and Lorenz. Reclassing Lorenz into paladin at level 20 after classing him into Warlock to bump up his base magic, and reclassing Lysithea into Gemory at level 30.) Abraxas is just a more consistent Hades with its amazing 90 hit, unfortunately it's mt is only 14 so Lorenz again out damages it. Luna is an interesting spell since it technically scales damage off how much Res the enemy has, making it theoretically good against Pegasus Knights and other units with high Res, but again there is a catch, it only has 65 hit. Pegsus knights generally have very high avoid, making spells like Luna incredibly hard to hit without external support such as supports, battalions and skills like hit plus 20. Even if you do hit it is even rarer for it to one shot since most enemies in maddening have incredibly inflated HP stats, something Lysithea's base magic growth can't keep up with. Death Spikes is clearly her best damaging spell, and can pretty consistently kill horse units with it's effective mt of 39 and its relatively high hit rate of 80. On average using the same stat assumptions as before she can easily do 90 damage to a horse unit at level 30. Lorenz at level 30 with a horse slayer can only do 78 which is 12 less than Lysithea, but mind you this isn't even comparing Lysithea's damage to one of the best combat units in the game such as Ferdiand, who with a horse slayer and swift strikes can do 142 damage to a horse unit, beating her damage by a staggering 52 damage. Yes, Ferdiand does hit on protection which is generally higher than Res but in maddening horse unit stat blocks are generally pretty balanced in the defence department, having a relatively equal amount of def and res. Holy Knights and Dark Knights in fact have more Res than defence which only further widens the gap between Lysithea's damage against any decent physical unit. Seraphim is another effective spell but I also don't think it is that great. It has the same might as a blessed lance(which anyone can use), and it can be used to do more damage to monsters. It is good to remove shields from monsters, but gambits can do that and more, and you won't be getting one shots on monsters with it unless you're getting lucky low percent crits. Kinda a whatever spell. So damage wise Lysithea is pretty limp, in the early game she can only provide inconsistent chip damage with the occasional stat debuf, mid game she can kill a couple of mounted units that other units can just do better with twice the movement and half the risk due to their better defensive stats, and late game she will probably perform much the same as she did in the mid game. The fact is that it is not damage that makes her good, it's her utility with the spell Warp. Not only does she get it a whole rank before Linhardt but her insane magic growth allows her to trivialise maps by warping much better combat units to destroy the map. The optimal way and easiest way to use her does require her to just sit in the backlines and be a warp bot, which means that not having physic does hurt her a lot since she will need to go into the fray to actually heal people, which for Lysithea's terrible bulk, is quite dangerous. I will say that her magic growth of 60 which is only further buffed by the classes she is in does do a lot to prevent her from being stat screwed and only increases her chances to be stat blessed, which in some instances throughout a maddening playthrough will probably allow her to do better and more consistent damage than her physical peers. I'd say she belongs in the same tier with Linhardt, warp is just too good, chip damage is never bad and she can murder a horse every once in a while. If you desperately want to make Lysithea a combat unit Dark Flier is her best option, even though it's average damage is worse than Gemory it's high movement, flying and having Thyrsus will allow her to chip and dip as much as she wants.
Few units early game are doing more than chipping. In fact no ones OKing without a crit, at least til you get like Catherine or Vengeance. Lysithea’s spells are still better than using Frozen Lance bc Lorenz is pretty bad and he gets it at C+ which is realistically chapter 5 with lots of effort, on a unit with mediocre combat. Lysithea also has an Authority Boon which is pretty uncommon for non lords allowing her to reasonably reach A rank for the Macuil Evil Repelling Co which solves her accuracy issues forever. Speaking of which, with DLC, she can go Valkyrie while Hubert, Lorenz, and Linhardt cannot. On top of all that she also has Mastermind, so faster mastery and ranks than anyone. Lysithea is mostly praised for her versatility, and her range with Thyrsus/Valkyrie adds to that. She has options against Monsters, Cavalry, Mages(Luna), and other solid spells, on top of being able to assist other units. One more thing, she also gets Soulblade which can be useful against Tomebreaker enemies for example
@@thescarredraven2634 I never said Lysithea is bad early game because she only chips, I said she was bad early game because her chip was inconsistent, and I doubt even with mastermind you'll be able to get her authority rank to A in the early game without some serious grinding to forever fix her accuracy issues. Also you misunderstand my Lorenz point, I am not comparing her to Lorenz to show how good Lorenz's damage is, I am comparing them to show how mediocre Lysithea's damage is that she can barely out pace and can even been out done by Lorenz in damage which highlights her lack of killing potential. The only edge she has is range which I would argue only really become a sizeable benefit once you get Thyrsus or the Caduceus Staff if you don't have Lorenz which you don't get till chapter 12 or you reclass into Valkyrie (I still think dark flier is better but whatever). Also having a lot of "options" isn't really inherently good if all those options kinda suck. Yeah she can use Seraphim, but instead of what, a gambit which is objectively better, or just fielding a unit with a blessed lance which does the exact same thing as Seraphim but can actually be better if the unit has swift strikes or vengeance. Yeah you can use Luna on mages but again their HP will be too high for her to one shot on average, might as well use a different spell since all you're doing is chipping. imgur.com/a/nGbreCl This is a link that shows the stats of end game enemies on the Golden Deer Route, and even a LEVEL 50 Lysithea (which is being especially generous) with an average 47 magic cannot one shot a holy knight with death spikes nor a mage with Luna. (this assuming the build is what you're recommending, Valkyrie, with Macuil Evil Repelling Co, with fiendish blow, with magic plus 2) Also why would you ever use soulblade on Lysithea? So you can run in at melee range of a grappler/War Master, fail to oneshot even with the blutgang and then die on retaliation? Why don't you just use ranged magic, again more options isn't inherently good. I will concede that mastermind is very helpful and I failed to mention it. It does allow her to get fiendish blow much earlier than most mages which means she will have a significant damage spike in early mid game but all it will really amount to is more chip damage, a dead horse, maybe a cheeky Death Knight kill. I don't really think she needs any other mastery ability though, will she really need Uncanny blow when you have a Battalion attached to her that gives her 30 plus hit, but that can be debated. I still think Gemory is her best class. Can occasionally chip from range and has 2 uses of warp, and thats a big difference from 1, but you can reclass her depending on the situation. I still think Lysithea is an amazing unit, she just has a shocking early game and often her damage is over exaggerated.
"See guys Lysithea is actually comparable to Lorenz, all he has to do is use a legendary relic to out damage her innate spells that she can use from 4 range"
@@DoTtA1123 lysithea needs a legendary relic to do that as well, also Lorenz can still out damage her with a Lance of Zoltan. Also the Lance of Ruin is probably easier to get than the Thyrsus since Sylvain is a free recruit.
I played the game on Maddening twice and I have to say that Ashe was one of my most reliable units both times. Meanwhile seeing so many units that actively sabotaged me in both runs in S tier is comical, really. I mean, Hapi has a good spell list, and her growths are okay, but in each playthrough I've used her, I played that game literally for more than 850 hours, she was comically slow. OMG she gets doubled by literally everything, even fortress knights! Also I wouldn't be me without some Sylvain Slander and I've got to say that in every playthrough he was incredibly mediocre. In my extreme runs, I couldn't even get him his heroes relic because the dude kept dieing as soon as any random enemy reached him as he only had 10-ish speed, 10-ish defense, and horrible overall stats, his might was under 100... on Level 26. Even Constance, who has the lowest growths in the game, had more might than him at the same level. I know, in theory, his growth rates are the best non-lord growths in the game, but I've never seen any of that. In my tier list he'd be in F Tier - Actively Sabotaging the Game.
Like... that may be because growth rates are percentages. Yes you can have those really bad runs but that doesn't make the unit any worse, just that you were really unlucky that run. Ashe genuinely has nothing to offer he is worse in everything than everyone(ok His boons are fine but like no one cares). Sylvain has fine combat stats with good boons and swift strikes(!) plus extremely early recruit as female Byleth and a free hero's relic. Super sad for you to never have experienced a good Sylvain but he absolutely is on of the best characters in the game. Funnily enough if I recall correctly Sylvain is one of the best units in 0% growths so that's very funny. Check out rengor if you wanna learn more (He also has a better tierlist then this one. Like without Bernie in fcking C tier xD)
@@lysander4406 I was also confused with that. Also, Balthus should have been higher up. I mean, his stats aren't that great and his list of combat arts and abilities also could be better, but the dude is the only properly functioning tank in the whole game and does a damn good job at it. +6 on Defense AND Strength is insane in earlygame. Even with only
@@nick3805 ok let's talk about average stats first. Your Sylvain sounds incredibly unlucky, like holy shit that's kind of crazy. That can break a unit for a run which is very unfortunate. Second thing to consider is that combat arts actually make or break a character but only(!) on maddening. Since enemys are super tanky and speedy it's incredibly important to one shot them with individual units in the mid and lategame. Most units are either good player phase, good enemy phase (a unit can have access to both just usually not on the same run[except Bernadetta, and even dedue, this broken abomination of a unit]) or good utility. Player phase means to oneshot an enemy in your turn. Enemy phase are mostly a combination of the wrath ventage skills or protection stacking or in niche cases dodge tanking. Support are mostly magic and rally users who support your combat units and who can be lower in level and stats. In the early game all those roles and way softer because chip damage is so important to at all kill enemys. To come back around to Ashe, what can he do or is good at exactly. Ashe has chapter 2 and 3 free curved shot. His personal is useless he doesn't learn any good combat arts nor has any good skills, his (average) stats are mediocre at best. He caaaan go into wrath ventage but other units are far better in that(especially Dimitri in ashes own house). Bows are a very good weapon type because of sniper and it's combat art but all other sniper units are way better then an even above average Ashe. Ashe is like fine to use but does get outclassed super hard in everything he can do, like I think there is not one thing he is the best at in the whole cast. Sylvain on the other hand(to keep on with my example) has a few nice things too him and one that makes him really fucking good. He ist great out of house because he has super easy recruitment as female Byleth and thus a level lead on prbly all of your cast but your lord and Byleth. He has a axe boon and so can go brigand (if you don't master brigand on every physical player phase character) really easy. He struggles a little with archer I think but that's like fine. He on average as like fine stats and better ones then Ferdinand von Aery plus he does have a nice crest and can use his hero relic really good. But most importantly he has swift strikes on A Lances. Swift strike let's you do 2 hits on the enemy before they can counterattack+ it gives a power boost. This means that Sylvain is one of the strongest player phase users in the game, also because his combat art isn't class locked so he can go Wyvern. If you want to learn more check out both Rengors yt channel or Mekkahs 3h tierlist review and the guides on fe3h.com most of which rengor wrote. Also a great resource I found is JonoabboFE who has very impressive character guides and a very good tierlist and also wrote something in this comment section. Have fun exploring the depths of 3 houses meta
The thing is "if built properly" and that's the overall issue. A excellent unit thrives regardless of of the build properly notion. Look at it this way what units can u use and turn off brain: Byleth, Dimitri, Edelgard, Claude, Sylvain, Leonie, Ferdinand, Felix, Cyrillic, Catherine and Lysinthea. Those are basically "turn off brain" characters with little to no special investment. Bernie needs special treatment to be on their level of greatness.
@@christianacosta4013 At least he is, idk about the rest its been a while since i watch a 3h video so i am not up to date with the current opinions in the game. But she is there for sure, she does insane damage early on and one shot very consistenly. She makes a lot of maps way easier. The only reason to say that she is not that good, it's the same reason you would use to downplay a dancer xD.
@@magegeneral6988 She is super easy to "build" though, almost no investment too xD. Also, in maddening i don't think any unit is "turn of brain" just saying.
Going to disagree with MByleth's placement. Picking MByleth means you are not picking the superior FByleth. By definition, that is making Maddening Harder. MByleth; therefor; should be in the bottom teir.
MByleth is specifically optimal in Golden Deer route tho where you have a lot of units that very specifically benefit from being adjacent to male units. Earlygame is very significantly harder in that route with FByleth, and no earlier access to flying doesn't really outweigh more consistent KO thresholds earlygame where enemies probably are at their most deadly overall.
Gauntles are absolutely NOT Flelix's thing, wtf x,D dude is ABSOLUTELY a Mortal Savant, guantets are a good side tool for him but no Normalally im not the type to say this, but in general you opinions here are just wrong, factually and statistically This teir list, is in fact, just wrong
Mortal Savant is stupid for Felix, it gives him a speed debuff and Felix has a mid magic list anyway. Warmaster guarantees Felix gets plus 5 from his personal skill. Honestly Swordmaster is better than Mortal Savant too.
Well, factually and statistically, gauntlets are a better weapon for Felix than swords and magic ever will. I have my fair share of disagreements with this tier list, but this take is absolutely correct
5 minutes in and this guy is talking like white avo+20 is the best thing ever? byleth has heal, nos, and recover, equipping heal and dodging everything doesnt do jackshit, you need to kill after dodging
I don't see the point in iron manning that game, when basically everything about its design makes iron manning the game a terrible experience. Maybe Adam is doing it out of spite or as a meme at this point.
Mistakes:
Windsweep can be gotten by Yuri, Byleth, Dimitri, and Jeritza. (I forgot the two latter characters in the list)
I said that Petra's damage output was bad, but some of you correctly pointed out that she has similar strength to someone like Sylvain or Leonie. What I didn't get across well is that her lack of damage stems from a lack of other factors that increase damage output. Her combat arts are lacking compared to those two and her personal skill doesn't buff her damage at all either.
I also forgot to mention that, yeah, every unit in the game can be great. This list is focused on making the game as easy as possible. Those in higher tiers require a lot less investment than a character in a lower tier on maddening to be good.
whats the name of the website you used to see skills, abilities of characters and so on?
fe3h.com
absolute delusion with Petra. she will end up with around the same strength with the mightier killer axes (even more when you realize crits do x3 damage) you are comparing 3 player phase units with an enemy phase unit. you over evaluate the use of player phase combat arts- you don’t need one if you have batt wrath. reminding you how garbage of a take was a year ago
Petra synthesizes with Hit +20 gained by mastering the archer class and Lancebreaker to easily land hits with Wild Abandon and Diamond Axe, she can negate the hit penalies of those combat arts with the abilities mentioned, including hit bonuses from Axe Prowess, gambits and supports.
Dedue has the highest Def growth of 65% as a Fortress Knight, giving many Giant Shells and Ambrosias will make him easier to tank even the powerful hitting physical enemies such as War Masters and increase the damage he deals with Armored Strike. His Defense cap is 75, and it can be increased further by the Fortress Knight modifiers, his personal ability, Rally Defense. Shields and Gambits increase his protection further.
Ingrid makes a good choice as a Dancer, since her amazing speed growths will help avoiding hits thanks to Sword Avo +20, Axebreaker, Alert Stance+ and Defiant Avo. Her Charm growth is good too, she can use Sword Dance effectively, since its power can be increased thanks to her crest. Pro tip: use dancer when it's really needed, becuase the class growths aren't impressive.
Spells like Bolting/Meteor are very good because they can increase the hit rate of all teammates with support with that character if they are in range. That alone is amazing in Maddening. That makes Dorothea even better as a Dancer cuz all she needs to do is have it equipped, focus on dancing while passively increasing everyone's hit rate
Another nice thing about bolting/Meteor is that it makes dealing with annoying sniper placements and siege weapons in part 2 much easier
@@someonespc269 yah, sniping ballista archers is nuts, especially if you employ lots of fliers or vantage wrath tanks. It’s why I think Constance and Dorothea have legitimate niche use for Bowbreaker.
Maddening is a $hit difficulty
Yeah but Constance > Dorothea in that role 💯 .
Bolting is as good as meteor for linked attacks/gambit boosts specifically; but Constance can make use of the sword avoid with Soulblade if she’s stuck frontlining
you’re actually so smart
I don't understand the logic or math behind some of the points here.
If Petra's strength is so bad to the point where she is hitting 2x2 or 0x2, then units like Ferdinand, Sylvain, or Leonie would have to be 20 or 30 points of strength higher than her to be able to oneshot a 40-60 hp enemy - which would mean they need to have a 50-66% *higher* strength growth than her even if we only look at the last couple of chapters. Anything earlier and it would have to be a lot more than that.
But that isn't the case. Sylvain has a 5% higher growth than Petra, for example, with the same base. Ferdinand has 1 less strength at base, and a 5% higher growth, meaning that at level 41 he will average 1 point of strength more than petra, assuming they go through the same class pathing - however Ferdie is locked to Lances for Swift Strikes whilst Petra can make use of the higher might Axes, and higher strength classes such as Wyvern Lord whilst still getting a Faire skill. Yet Ferdinand "Really Shines as a combatant" whilst Petra's damage is "Not even worth mentioning"
If Petra is hitting 2x2, then for a unit to oneshot that same enemy - which is more than possible, any enemy can be oneshot on the player phase, then a unit must be 20-30 strength higher than Petra, which just doesn't happen. Not to mention she makes use of axes, the highest might weapon types, before factoring in things like crits which she can hit extremely reliably. All of this is just on the Player Phase, not even mentioning her BatWrath fuelled EP crits which can - like any wrath unit - take out basically any non-monster.
Edit: Just ran some numbers - if Petra *does not gain a single point of strength throughout the entire game from her level ups or stat boosters*, she still hits AM22 War Masters (35 Defence) for 18x2 even if she doesnt naturally double, whilst using a Brave Axe.
18 (WL/WR Base Str) + 4 (WL Class Mod) + 13 (Brave Axe +) + 5 (Class Axefaire) + 6 (Death Blow) + 7 (Cichol Wyvern Co). = 53
53-35 = 18
This is still leaving out things like a higher might axe (Silver Axe +) should she naturally double (expected), Strength +2, temporary buffs such as cooking, and of course, gaining strength on her levelups throughout the game.
Giving her a relatively conservative Level 41, Petra would be expected to be at 33 strength. If we factor that in, along with the higher might Silver Axe + and the Strength +2 ability, we get
33 (Expected Str) + 4 (WL Class Mod) + 17 (Silver Axe +) + 5 (Class Axefaire) + 6 (Death Blow) + 7 (Cichol Wyvern Co) +2 (Strength +2). = 74
74 - 35 = 39, 39*2 = 78
More than enough to see off some of the tankiest enemies the game has to offer - and there are still a lot of things you can do to amp her PP damage up past this, and again, her PP isn't her strongest use-case, her EP Batwrath usage is.
In any SS run I've done my Petra tends to have good strength, I think she's at least A/A+ tier. Also has absurd speed growth so generally doubles consistently.
Petra has always ended up with excellent strength for me as well. 40% growth is not bad at all. And due to her boons, she is able to get in all the best classes for mastery skills. Easily gets death blow, darting blow, and hit +20
I was not expecting to see this but I should have expected it I remember the love you have for Petra good on you homie got the maths for his girl and everything 😭
You can do all of that work for any unit in the game to make them good. I get where you are coming from, but this misses the point of the list. The big thing separating Petra from Sylvain, Ferdinand, Leonie, and others is the lack of a solid combat art. You can go to all the trouble of giving similar treatment to so many other units and they will out preform Petra.
@@AdamWithFED
>You can go to all the trouble of giving similar treatment to so many other units and they will out preform Petra.
How do you out-perform killing the strongest enemies in front of you, whilst in an eight move flying class with Canto for great mobility? Like what performance is surpassing that? You could look at other stages of the game, but Petra has one of the strongest midgames amongst physical units, with great speed, solid strength, Battalion Wrath, incredible boons and easy access to the most desirable classes (Armor Knight, Pegasus Knight, Brigand, Archer).
If anything, Ferdinand is the one requiring more work here.
Also again her PP isn't her biggest boon, her EP is. With her dodgetanking, easy access to Wyvern Lord, Hit +20, Alert Stance, Axe Prowess, and also getting Battalion Wrath. She also has boons to access both Vantage and Wrath.
I am pretty shocked to see Petra so low. I think you make valid points, but Wyvern Knight Petra has been a HUGE carry for me personally in most of my playthroughs. It might just be that I got lucky with Strength growths, but I’ve played through Maddening enough that I would think I would get stinker luck on her eventually.
No, he just made her suck by making her a Falcon knight, which is probably the worst master class
Plus the master classes (for the most art) are kinda just worthless
@@AceoftheVoid what do u mean Wyvern Lord is like the best class in the game
@@AceoftheVoid falcom knight together with wyvern lord are the only worth it master classes, and they do reward
This was, in fact, *_NOT_* the final tierlist.
LMFAOOO
With Bat Wrath, Petra makes an insane dodgetank. Her low strength doesn’t matter when she’s critting all the time.
You still need a modicum of strength for crits to matter. Arguably, she gets a bit more strength than Ingrid from her base and growths, but more often than not her crits will deal less damage to tankyish units than a normal attack from your heavy hitters.
@@jierdareisa4313In my experience, I’ve never had Petra’s crits fail to kill regular enemies (not bosses or armoured enemies) once she’s on a wyvern. The class bases and growth rates are enough to patch up her lower innate growths. I could see that not being the case in her canon assassin class, which in an of itself could be a reason for ranking her lower. A new player may not know how to make her into a dodgetank with bat wrath in wyvern lord. That’s fair. I still think it would have been helpful to mention this potential in the video.
@@OperaQueen85 After working out the maths, I realised I was wrong in the previous message: her crits are usually more powerful than normal attacks, even from stronger units with a Hero's Relic.
Overall I also do agree Adam should have ranked her higher than he did: Wyvern Lord Petra's crits get the job done on a lot of enemies.
However I still have a few issues with this strat':
- it runs into the issue of choosing between Silver Axes + and Killer Axes +, the formers being just enough to kill non-armoured units on crits but being unreliable, whilst the latters crit more reliably but are often too weak to seal the deal
- most importantly, the strategy fully comes online fairly late: it can be used with Wyvern Rider but she really wants the +6(x3) damage and the Alert Stance + for offensive and defensive reliability
I'm not spitting on the strat': it's still solid, but I don't think it's always the best late-game enemy phase option. Other units can make better enemy phase swipers, especially if we're venturing into (battalion) vantage-wrath territory.
Yeah, no, due is just generally wrong with half of his opinions on this tier list
I'm doing a skip only maddening run and have done Rest/Seminar only runs on different routes and every unit is viable. In house ingrid can be fixed with REST ONLY RUN by getting her STR+2, deathblow, and classing her into either Wyvern Rider to fix her strength or Paladin to go Wyvern Rider -> Lord or Paladin -> Falcon Knight.
Ingrid can be fixed on a chill maddening run with purple flowers. Petra is a fantastic unit not sure why she's in makes maddening harder. Generally has good STR growth and can be fixed with Wyvern route, purple flowers, or Paladin thing similar to Ingrid.
Caspar gets a lot of flak but he's a solid unit. He has a passive that gives himself and other units ACCURACY RING, make him a Wyvern and how is he bad?
I hear a lot of bad things about Caspar, but he's always been one of my solid front runners especially when in a Brawling Class such as War Master or Grappler. I personally prefer Grappler over the former because of "Fierce Iron Fists" Combat Art which allows x3 consecutive attacks (Gets better use and full value on Maddening). Also have to mention he has early/earlier access to the Combat Art "Bombard" which gives a guaranteed double against even the fastest Maddening Units such as Swordmasters, Assassins, Pegasus/Falcon Knights (whether it hits or not is another story, but it's still a Brave Attack Combat Art).
@@Bigsby_Wolf Caspar’s only weak point is his low defense. He has a very high HP growth, but it doesn’t matter if it drains fast.
Caspar really isn't bad once you get him to higher level, but getting him out of the early levels in Maddening is physically painful. I had to drag him kicking and screaming up to level 10, and him getting killed was the cause of over half of my divine pulses. At late game, he is a great crit machine, and as a War Master he can be one of the best dual-phase characters in the entire game, but I just wish his early game wasn't such hot garbage.
@@jamesoakes4842 agreed. Caspar is hard to rate, because he ends up great but starts off garbage. Also nobody mentioned Wild Abandon and it’s insane damage. The hit penalty is fully negated by hit +20 and his personal, so you can use linked attack, a battalion, and maybe an accuracy ring to still have a 100 hit chance with it. Once he’s in Warmaster, getting to 100 crit chance isn’t unreasonable either.
No unit in 3 houses is bad. There's just no reason to field Caspar over any other unit in the game. Everything he does other people do better
Some of these takes are WILD, but very enjoyable list.
I’ll admit I might underestimate early white magic avoid on Byleth, but lategame? Seriously?
I don't personally go the white magic avoid route but in all seriousness it is very good late game. You can just send byleth off into a forest with the entire maps worth of maddening enemies, slap nosferatu on to them and their damn near impossible to kill. It's pretty slick.
One thing I’ll say for Ingrid is that she has a might support with Felix and Sylvain so she’s prime adjutant material and she gives the Galatea Pegasus Co. and Luin from her paralogue. She’s worth getting into PK and like you mention her spell list is pretty wild so I really want to try her out in Dark Flier or Valkyrie and see how she’ll perform.
seeing Petra in the same tier as caspar hurt my soul
Frfr
Petra’s strength growth is 5% lower than sylvains so you don’t really notice it. Plus she’s easily one of the best out of house recruits as she levels in enemy thief which boosts her strength up to 50% and speed up to 75%!!!
You didn't mention Huberts spells utility, lowering enemies defense and movement is nothing to sneeze at
Give Dimitri the Chalice of beginnings (DLC) and you don't even need to train him in bows. He just gets dc.
One thing to note about Bernadetta: putting her into an Assassin is one of her best choices. She can use her personal skill and even vengeance without having to worry much because of stealth
I think she can work well in a lot of classes honestly
Petra's damage output is way better than you are giving her credit for. Petra and Leonie have the same growth and base. And Ingrid makes an excellent dark flier, perhaps the best. The lower magic growth doesn't matter much when you can double basically everything. And frozen lance makes up for the lowish magic uses. Both Petra and Ingrid are definitely too low. Petra is at least bottom of almost perfect, Ingrid is top of decent. Spot on list overall, besides those two.
I've found that Petra and Ingrid, are really temperamental. Either they're fantastic, or I really gotta tailor them to be good. If they can get good growths in strength early on, speed and dex take care of themselves.
reason dorothea is considered the best dancer is high charm and her passive healing that she can use while still dancing and for some maps being able to hide away and rebuild hp can help a ton and then meteor makes her a great support.
Good list! but I’d move these units up:
Bernadetta: One of the most reliable player phase units in the game. Her boons makes it where she can get every good tool she wants without much investment (vengeance, Hit+20, Tempest Lance, curved shot, pass, Peg knight, Rider etc). Peg knight with vengeance by chap 5 is ridiculous especially in black eagles early game. It makes her an amazing early & mid game unit as well combined with her personal ability. Then in part 2 finish the game with either Bow knight (Darting blow+Defiant speed) or Falcon Knight builds. To top it off she gets pass super easily to help in LTC runs
Dedue: One of the most reliable protection tanks next to balthus and edelguard. He’s one of the few units who can take hits in early game maddening. On top of that he gets battalion wrath too kill enemies while tanking on enemy phase. He can also run vengeance and wrath in the same build so he just becomes a reliable unit throughout blue lions
Ingrid & Petra: These are weird cuz they both benefit a lot from out of house stat increases.
•Petra is a great unit in part 2 and is one of the best dodge tanks in the game. She can grab defiant Crit & defiant avoid to become a psudo Dimitri in any house with some setup. She has acess to tempest Lance and curved shot early, and Peg knight/Wyvern rider+darting blow for mid game to where she is decent at every point in the game
•Ingrid-Battalion desperation+Darting blow makes her a great player phase unit. Sure you have to invest in her strength & speed with stat boosters but if you use gardening correctly & recruit some ooh units you can reach her thresholds in house with speedwings and energy drops. Putting her in wyvern rider for the stat increases also helps. But recruiting her ooh makes hitting thresholds easier. She also has good resistance vs early game mages and has no banes either which is nice for getting what she wants.
Yeah Bernie is great bc her personal means she effectively has the highest strength tied with the Byleth and Edelgard. She can get Tempest Lance by chapter two which is something you’d want bc then she out damages everyone using a Steel Lance, on top of 2-3 range chip with a Steel Bow. I also think that Petra’s early game is not to be underestimated since with a Mini Bow, at base she doesn’t get doubled by chapter 3 myrms and her boons are insane. Ingrid is pretty bad in house, but OOH she’s good for killing mages with her pretty above average res. Also Alois and Gilbert should move to Decent bc they are no investment tanks with Battalion Wrath who can both slot into a master class easily.
@@thescarredraven2634
Agreed. Bernie is just so helpful in black eagles since most of the units in that house don’t get good until after chapter 7 or so. She really helps makes the early game for that house more manageable
Alois & Gilbert are always underrated since people don’t like them as a character. They are good out of the box if you put them in the correct classes. Only flaw is they miss like half the game lol
I don’t think Ingrid is THAT awful in house. She just requires more work. Having 8 res to deal with early mages is nice for blue lions, she has tempest Lance, no banes and a crest, and she helps late game as well in Falcon knight. But yes the stat buffs from OOH recruitments make her a more reliable character for sure
I think it speaks volumes about Anna's value as a unit that you entirely forgot to include her on the list.
Oh, didn't forget after all.
For me, Bernadetta belongs in the top tier, mostly because of my experience with her. Hunters Volley, Encloser, and Vengeance put together absolutely demolished my playthroughs where I used her. I know she's not perfect, but in my many playthroughs, she was consistently the highest performer.
But where does Gatekeeper go?
Raph and Petra are both really good for me all the time. Raph gets high hp, str, and def. You go war master with him and he gets incredible damage output and can tank with his high def and quick riposte. Petra makes a great dodge tank sure but in addition she gets high crit rates and has battalion wrath which is nuts. Haven’t used Caspar much but he likely makes a great war master.
Everyone is great if you get to war master for the last few chapters of the game. Maybe Raph is one of the better warmasters, but before then, aka most of the game, he's worse than everybody else who wants to go warmaster. There's that one guy who 1 shot maddening Nemesis with Hanneman warmaster because he felt like it. Doesn't make Hanneman is a good war master.
Dodge tanking, as fun as it is, is way more effort than the reward in this game. You can't put a not super tank in the middle of the map against like 40% or even 30% hits and just a more tanky + more damage unit tanks one or two units much better for less effort. Even if you do manage to fully commit to the insane amount of effort required to get to single digit hits, you still won't 1 round the enemy because of how much less resources you had to spend on giving her damage. Or you'll just get gambited and die anyway. Similar story with crit. Spending that much resources for a 70% crit aka not something you can rely on and will just boost your action economy occasionally.
@@DoggyP00 Raphael literally has the highest HP in the game, and his strength and defense are up there, as well as having both Axe and Brawling proficiency, how tf does that make him one of the worst War Master candidates?
Leonie hits PBV at the same rank as Sylvain, I enjoy the massive chapter 5 power spike she enables, deploying her with PBV, sylvain with swift strikes, early recruit Catherine, and then the lad, the legend, Cyril with PBV
PBV is at A-rank, how are you ggetting that by chapter 5 on leonie?
@@idkdk569 solo rush bows, make sure she gets full training every teaching day & also get her the refreshed tag from the sauna (her, sylvain, and FERDINAND VON AEGIR all benefit from this cuz they want to rush A rank stuff, similarly there are some people who get bat wrath at A I think), get the statue bonus when you can, use her to murderize people. Once you have PBV and you're in archer, you can train axes and class into brigand at D+ which isn't THAT hard.
@@IntrusiveThot420 i know about the sauna, which unlocks at ch5, but still getting to A in just 4 chapters of tutoring seems insane even with rigging tutoring sessions
@@idkdk569 it's been a hot minute since I've played 3H, but it's absolutely doable. Just give it a shot and you'll see. You need to set her to Bow/Nothing, which yes you give up on a large amount of XP, but the increased functionality is amazing
Hmm. I would personally bump Bernie up a tier because even though yes it's easier to keep a ranged unit safe (as with lysithea) if you're using Bernie as a vengeance bot she's most likely going to be a peg knight with pass in a game with super canto. If you need someone nuked you can just use stride and send her up and bring her back, or even rescue her. And even then you don't have to take away her bow utility with enclosure so that's just more options available. She's definitely not flawless but she does get the job done and makes the game easy if utilized correctly
Finally! I’ve debated with so many people that dimitri is the strongest and best character in this game. One of my favorite lords of the series.
On my first playthrough now. Dimitri is an absolute BEAST lol
He is the worst written Lord in the game tbh.
All three Vengeance users in Mid-Tier? Bruh, you're gonna need some oven mitts to handle these hots takes of yours. Even when I agree with the tier of some of the units, I don't agree with why you put them there. I don't think you mentioned Ignatz having Rally Speed at D Authority, among other things. About the only time you parted from the meta that I agreed with was Constance. Although I'm not sure I would have put her into S-Tier, I do think she is criminally undervalued.
Still you got me to subscribe. Well played.
Okay, just wise-cracking isn't an argument, so here's my comment on those three.
Vengeance does fall off, and I think Bernie falling off late game isn't talked about enough. But early game? Bernie is a flying god of death. She can one-shot enemies nobody else can in the early game, and starting at level 10, she can do it while flying. This is absolutely insane. Sure, she's squishy... but so are a lot of units. But as a Pegasus Knight, Bernie has 6 move, flight and canto. It's very easy to keep her safe. And when striking at a high priority target, Stride can increase her attack AND retreat range. Yes, it can be a bit of a pain keeping Bernie safe when she attacks at melee range, but the only other person doing the kind of damage she does is Frozen Lance of Ruin or Sylvain using the Lance of Ruin. And Bernie can use Vengeance in Chapter 4 and 5, two chapters before you get the LoR.
And while she does fall off (or rather, other units catch up to her, and do her job with less work) late game... just replace her with a late recruit. Seteth, Alois or Gilbert (you ranked them way too low), or even a low investment utility unit like Lindhardt or Annette. A unit who starts incredible and becomes merely okay is MUCH better than a unit who starts crummy and becomes great (Caspar is this games Villager unit, not Cyril. Fight me.).
Likewise, Dedue is awesome even without Vengeance. He has the highest base defense of 8. Throw in his passive, and he gets to 12. Throw in a Leather Shield (he's going to get doubled anyway, so why not) and it's up to 13. Nobody but Balthus tanks as hard as Dedue does. And since he's getting doubled no matter what you do, no harm in handing him the heaviest weapon you can find. His ability to tank in the very difficult early game is incredible, and goes a long way to making Blue Lions have a strong start. What's more, his tanking potential means he doesn't need to set up Vengeance in the same way that Bernie does, wherein you deliberately let Bernie get hit. Dedue charges up Vengeance just by tanking, which is what he normally does. You can speed up the process by letting him PP a bit and get hit in return or not activate his passive, but that's not needed.
Cyril is probably the worst user of Vengeance of the three. But he gets Point-Blank Volley very fast. He can have it in time for Chapter 5. Give him a Steel Bow+ and a decent Battalion, and he can actually one round some enemies. Vengeance ends up being more of a utility option for him, allowing him to do massive damage at the cost of setup, but unlike Bernie, PBV allows him to be pretty strong before he's ready to use Vengeance. Even if you don't aim for it at all, Wyvern Lord and Bow Knight both want the Lance rank, so you're barely going out of your way to get it.
Oh, and it's also worth mentioning that Vengeance can combo well with the Horseslayer, Spear of Assal, Lance of Ruin, Luin or Blessed Lance to become even more damaging, if you need it. It can reduce setup time, and let you more easily Vengeance Chapter 6 and 8 Death Knight. The Blessed Lance can also make a significant difference when dealing with monsters giant HP bars, though that's more situational.
I'd place all of them in high A-Tier. Bernie falls off, but she's the only one who can fly early on. Dedue is an absolute wall, and any damage that seeps through fuels his Vengeance. And Cyril gets PBV, just leave him in range of one enemy to attack him, and he can have Vengeance ready for things PBV can't kill. Both Bow Knight and Wyvern Lord are great for keeping distance on Cyril.
How the hell does Vengeance fall off? It literally gets stronger as your HP increases. Even without excessive grinding you can easily do 80+ damage in a single hit. Both Dedue and Cyril are better because they'll have 10-20 more HP and Strength than Bernadetta by midgame. The only thing she has over them in that regard is she's usable on all routes, and VERY early game she probably does the most damage with it.
I think Lorenz should be in just the flawed tier rather than deeply. I have had good experiences in Maddening by combining lifetaker and frozen lance in either Paladin or Dark Knight. Without investing into his stats at all he has a good player phase one shotting things with frozen lance and healing himself with lifetaker. It’s also kind of an unique setup to him. Early on he does good work with fire and once he gets frozen lance he’s good for the mid game. He’s a great healer with recover too.
He’s super easy to train too with recover and ward spells. He was great as a dark knight for me. He gets free +2 dmg early with his fire spell ranged attacker that you don’t need a bow on is great. Also melts the early armor knights. He makes the hardest part easier and scales. I also dump some magic stat boosters on him and some dex so he stays competitive late game.
After years of the entire community dunking on Dedue for being useless, I'm glad that he's getting some love here.
Yeah, he's useless--if you've never been in a situation where you're in need of a tank. And if you've never been in that situation, you've never played maddening.
Gauntlets Dedue is amazing and I’m surprised the community gives him so much hate. He has carried all my Blue Lions Maddening first halves. Yeah him disappearing is bad but Brigand/Brawler -> Grappler combined with his natural defense growth is soooo good.
I was waiting for this!
Felix’s stats don’t quite keep up? He has 55% strength growth (second highest tied with edelgard; admittedly his base is 10 compared to her 13 but still.)
He is not a perfect unit because he doesn’t iirc have any unique broken combat arts like ss and his authority bane/personal skill suck but his stats aren’t the problem.
At the very least Lorenz is one of the best characters in 3Hopes (which is also why I probably play 3Hopes more lol)
Petra =/= Ingrid, which was the largest disagreement.
Petra doesn't have bow weakness and specs into classes with more strength growth, so she'll end up doing more damage, with no magic skills of note.
Petra is also a lot more keen on swords with Ingrid on Lance's,
Ingrid's best classes are all flyers for mobility, and she also has a lot more resilience so she's less likely to have a chance to Just Die, unless she's in the air.
Also she has Battalion Wrath
ingrid is fantastic out of house. i think its fair to group them similar
Hey new maddening player here. Thanks for the guide!
What website are you using to look at the character profiles?
So it’s been years since I really played 3H and I was never too “in the know” with maddening strategies, but I decided to boot it up last week and play Golden Deer Maddening since I haven’t before.
The build I landed on for Hilda was Dancer with Bolting with Seal Speed/Defense. Has this been discussed before? As a dancer, she does typical dancer things, but she can still assist with support bonuses long-distance with Bolting and if she lands bolting on an enemy then she can drop Speed and defense by 6 to help launch an assault on them. Idk, it worked super well for me, but I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere for her as a strategy haha. Was curious to know if people tend to fixate on her physical combat abilities instead
I really like sniper hanneman. A magic bow + hunter's volley and he kills pretty much everything
Bernadetta: good archer, glass cannon spearman, also can punch with persecution complex?
I mean War Cleric Bernadetta does give you Physic and Rescue, but I can't believe that even with Death Blow/Fistfaire/Persecution Complex that she would do enough punching dmg but maybe I am wrong?
I paused the video after you said you don't think Edelgard is as good as Byleth. Also, at the beginning you say only one other character gets Windsweep, when Dimitri and Jeritza both get it. I may come back to the video to hear reasonings on some placements, but this list is kinda painful to look at. lol
Whoops. I always forget other character get windsweep besides Byleth and Yuri. Sorry my tier list caused you pain lol
No need to apologize! I came off as critical, but I also appreciate continuing 3Houses content. I'll get to watching the rest of the video this weekend. lol
I replaying this game just now, but I remember I could cast rally on a AREA of effect like hit 5-6 units but now is single target, what I am doing wrong?
in previous titles, rallies were an aoe action. But three houses has always been single target.
I agree with Iggy’s place. I think a lot of people under rate him but in Maddening accuracy is so important.
Bernadetta is literally the only unit in the game that gives you encloser on every route. She's easily "almost perfect tier" just for that. Everybody is always focused on vengeance
Edit: Petra>Silvain/Ferdinand
I did Bow Knight into Holy Knight on my last run and she was incredibly versatile once she hit HK. Somewhat high investment, but along with high ground mobility with a guard adjutant, she never ran out of something important to do - erase an enemy, stall out an enemy, chip or maybe even crit from afar, hit an important attack or utility gambit, or could support by healing somebody in a pinch or repositioning somebody with rescue.
@@afgcinc7206 I was tempted to do holy knight Bernie after I got her into bow Knight. Was gonna abuse encloser/physic on her, but she's my best delete button with HV besides war master Felix. Man can tank everything with his personal shield
I’m scared to try maddening but I think this list should help. Advice on the easiest route for maddening?
Golden deer has the strongest starting team imo, but I think you can make a case for any of the routes outside of Silver Snow.
I’d say don’t do crimson flower simply because like 3 of the post timeskip maps can be hell and expend basically all of your resources if you aren’t well seasoned with maddening but the bl and gd routes are good
I know this is all opinions, but I strongly disagree about Petra. For me she's at the top of almost perfect. Her crit rate is absolutely ridiculous, and her speed is so high that against a lot of opponents she doubles. Couple that with extremely high avoid rate and you have a really solid unit. She's one of my personal favorites, and always makes the cut in my maddening runs. That's my experience at least.
Great video as always!
Yeah I used her as a falcon knight with Wo Dao and she was a 1 man wrecking crew that could dodge tank too. She was probably a top 3 unit for me in more than one playthrough
I have found Caspar and Raphael pretty handy on NG+ Maddening by having obtained Quick Riposte on the previous run and then giving them Chalice of Beginnings, makes them very effective tanks and crucial for early game. But normal Maddening, not so great lol.
I kinda get tired of everyone saying "make them a wyvern rider" for every physical unit in the game. My very first maddening playthrough, I used all Canon classes on Azure Moon and found the game challenging but not incredibly so. Not so much that I'm like, just give me 12 wyvern lords and I will traverse the whole map and fly everywhere. The enemies are pretty easy to isolate and bait with thebdanger area and map, prt tanks like dedue for physical units or res tanks like mercedes, or wrath vantage dimitri, or dodge tank byleth. Granted Ingrid did her fair share of dodge tanking too but really I only needed one unit to bait and all the others could finish off the hoard of enemies before the next hoard aggroed. Everyone go flier just seems so boring and repetitive.
Proud of my girl Shamir
There a couple of charities with combat sets that make them much more powerful, for example, Dadu with vengeance and cruel with vengeance and pint blanc valley, and Marian with frozen lance.
The one thing I will say about Raphiel is that he hp tanks. Assuming you transition to heavy armor late game he will be a 50 hp brick wall even in late act 2. So grapler -> heavy armor is his path. Relatively speaking in maddening anyway.
Also Leoni's average stats in paladin really hurts she's pretty much the only unit in the game that will get one shot in late maddening as hard as a caster.
What's that website that was being used to look at stat growths and spell lists?
Aside from the Petra slander this is overall a solid list. Obviously every person is going to make a few small changes here or there based on their experiences and opinions but this is a decent guideline.
I know it's super cheese and pretty frowned upon, but for the sake of just getting through maddening, giving Dimitri the chalice of beginnings makes the game feel like easy mode. Yeah, anyone with the chalice is broken but not to the same extent
don't even need it. Dimitri is just cheese in general
@@christianacosta4013 Assuming you're smart with Retribution uses you don't need it
Can’t wait to see Cyril is SS+
what page do you use to see the characters information
I'm just starting this game. What website are you using to look up the characters? TIA
fe3h.com
Magic Ignatz is one of my favorite units. 1 shotting people from 5 spaces away with a crit blizzard is great.
Also in my most recent blue lions playthrough Dedue was doing ~100 damage with vengeance plus an 80% crit chance thanks to defiant crit. Could one shot any boss.
I honestly would put Ignatz higher in general because +20 accuracy is so important earlygame. And yeah magic is probably the way to go with him in Maddening.
Adam’s Lysithea opinions have always been very correct.
Good "final" list. My thoughts after 4 maddening runs: Too high: Catherine, Yuri, Ignatz, Manuela, Caspar. Too low: Alois, Gilbert, Petra, Ingrid, Bernadetta. Since I always recruit, it takes too much away to get BOTH Catherine and Shamir with other recruits, and Shamir gets the nod for staying relevant way later into the game. I know Catherine can make Chapter 5 much easier, but honestly the Tower is just long and a grind, it's not really that impossible. Yuri is my go-to Chapter 2 (since I don't do early Sylvain) because of extra heal spells and later early Windsweep but he falls off after that. I've always struggled with every Ignatz, Manuela, and Caspar I've had. Petra and Ingrid (OOH) are my go-to dodge tanks/bait/pullers and tbf my Petras always have had at least passable strength, and when Ingrid doesn't she has relics - only Leonie can flier dodge tank as they do but she never did as well for me. People pass over Alois and Gilbert but both are very good if you know how to set them up as soon as you get them. And lastly Bernadetta's Vengeance and Encloser always keep her relevant, in a mode where you get swarmed easily, and nobody on your team can reliably one shot until much much later. She ends up being the one unit that can either erase or stall any non-boss/monster unit and that is invaluable on maddening, especially in a high move canto class (Paladin, Bow Knight, Falcon Knight).
Does Caspar not ORKO most enemies with bombard? I've only done one crimson flower run and have not done silver snow yet. I'm doing verdant wind now and raphael is able to ORKO anything except fortress knights with steel gauntlets. Caspar may not have the same strength but he also is getting 6 damage added since the 3 adds to the consecutive hits. Is it as reliable as Hunter's Volley kills?
I found Caspar seems to get more strength screwed compared to Raphael, especially if you make the mistake of making him a Brawler instead of Brigand. His HP and Def also aren't very impressive imp.
You can make him semi-competent on Player Phase if you give him Death Blow, a good physical attack boosting Battalion, and make him a War Master. Grappler CAN work if you want Fierce Iron Fist though.
I had no idea what to do with Lorenz, so I made him my dancer 😂
You could've left him on the bench after you got the Thyrsus. He already contributed plenty to the playthrough with that.
I'd put Jeritza up to the top tier. His Counterattack makes him well-suited to dealing with Bolting mages, and as my best spear user, he's a good choice for taking down Seiros.
I'd also put Bernadetta in "almost perfect," since Encloser is a must-have on Maddening.
He's better than Edelgard, and I'll die on that hill
@@AkameGaKillfan777 Jeritzas only weakness in my opinion is that he is only unlocked in part II in the shortest route, which makes customizing him hard.
@@shizachan8421 "Find me someone who might defeat me."
@@AkameGaKillfan777 Would be nice if you could recruit him at chapter 5 as a replacement for Catherine in Black Eagles only and have him autopromote to Death Knight after the Timeskip.
I give my flying dodge tanks also defiant crit which allows them to make good damage in late game. So damage was not often an issue for Ingrid and Petra.
Also, I would put Edelgard on top. She is has a significantly better early game than the other main characters and has strength, bulk(with resistance) and speed together from early on.
And lightning axe allows her to get a decent magic attack on top of it if needed without being a mage which is a nice little bonus.
There is also the fact that Edelgard requires very, very little investment and can get Wyvern Lord, which is the best class in the game, basically for free, as she already has a boon in axes and is neutral on flying, while Dimitri needs to work around his weakness in axes. And she has the highest base str and will on average remain having the highest str until very late game, when Dimitri might outgrow, but even then it doesn't matter because her route doesn't go as far. And her crests proc crazy often as an added bonus, because she has two. In comparison Dimitris crest will be a nuisance more often than being useful. Really the only investment Edelgard really needs is stocking up on material to repair her relic weapon to use Raging Storm more often, which is plain and simple the best weaponart in the game.
@@shizachan8421 Edelgard has a weakness in Lances, which will make it a little more difficult to get her weapon rank high enough than people let on.
Dimitri's crest has such a low proc rate that you'd have to actually try to make use of it.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 Yeah, but Dimitri has a weakness in axes, which is even worse. And the issue with Dimitris crest is that it is the only one that isn't only not helpful but will be more often than not be a nuisance, meanwhile Edelgards twin crests mean that she will have a decent proc rate for one of them and she has the best relic in the game. And for the majority of the game, she will have the highest strength stat of any unit. So generally I just would give her the age in most cases. Really, the only missed opportunity for her as a unit is not giving her personal class the ability to cast spells for some reason.
@@shizachan8421 Dimitri has more strength than her. In fact if you were to grind all the way and give him the right abilities and other stat boosting methods he can actually get to 99.
The Crest of Flames on Edelgard means using low HP tactics(Vantage, Wrath, Defiant Avoid, Speed, Crit, etc.) are pointless since she'll often heal just out of their activation thresholds and die if the next attack hits. Which sucks because otherwise with the proper set-up, you can get her to 100 crit with Raging Storm to consistently one-shot each of the Immaculate One's Life Meters if a barrier is broken.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 I mean, thats the thing, isn't it, Dimitri has on average more strength than her very late into the game if you grind like crazy. Edelgard starts with more strength than Dimitri and the difference in growth is 5%.
Hewbert is always amazing at killing anything and taking more hits compared to his other mages. Just because he has a slow build on horses does not mean you can’t make him into a horse mage. I would place him 1 step from the top. I also did not understand Alois, he is the best tank in game besides dedue. It really all depends on how you build each character from the start. I always work on Bernie’s axes first. This way she gets more strength and builds to be a sniper then a horse archer and lastly an archer wyvern. She will then one shot anything with great mobility making her a flawless character.
I really hope Engage treats Anna better. Petra and Sylvain should switch places.
What's the best class for Flayn?
Dark flyer?
Guard Adjutant to Byleth
Can i get a link to the character data website used in this vid?
fe3h.com
I love my boy Ashe, it hurts me seeing in a low tier, but in every Azure Moon route i can get, he is and will always be MY Sniper. Sorry, Shamir.
😂 After Engage being my first FE game. I'm currently on my first playthrough of Three houses. Definitely prefer the combat in Engage but the story so far in Three Houses is 1000x better.
idk man engage really misses out with a lack of battalions and most of the skills being locked behind the rings
@@MoragLadair0 gameplay in general is better in engage. Class balance doesn't exist in three houses and many archetypes don't as well.
Engages biggest gameplay problem is locking most skills behind rings - especially since the most essential rings get taken away for a while. Celica and Micah are the only emblems that give tome prof. so if you didn't get those and want to make someone a mage knight, your out of luck - by the point you get them back, they will have abysmal magic.
@@ologracz1110 You can only equip 2 skills instead of 5 like in Awakening, which Engage's class system is a weaker version of
@@AkameGaKillfan777 that's because you also get skills from your equipped emblem. I imagine the idea was to rely mostly on emblem skills, that's why custom ones are so expensive.
@@ologracz1110 Nope, the skill system exists the way it does because they want to manipulate people into playing Heroes. There's 0 reason whatsoever that it needs to be so tedious
When I watch tier list videos. I regularly fast forward to the end to determine if the video itself is worth watching. I can forgive minor placements that do not make sense to me, such as tiering Ignatz (very middling maddening contributor overall, "decent" at best) a tier over Bernadetta (who has one of the most powerful niches in the game, she deals as much damage as Dimitri in Ch 2 and Venge allows her to one shot anything if used well) or ranking Mercedes (terrible early game healer who cannot ever have Physic in Ch 2, arguably the hardest maddening chapter) as someone who actively makes the game easier (I can understand arguments for "decent" though, especially out of house) over Marianne (gets Ch 2 physic and gets 100% accuracy Silence).
However, when I see Petra in the "flawed tier", I question one's actual mastery of the game. With her boons, bases, and growths, she is very easy to build as a player-phase hit and run damage dealer (almost perfect IMO, she lacks any game-breaking endgame combat arts, but she easily gets both tempest lance and curved shot early, and I weight early game more than endgame). Also, her boonset (flying, bow, and sword boons)and skillset (highest base speed + speed growth in the game, battalion wrath) makes her arguably the best dodge tank in the game, and used in this role she makes the game MUCH easier and would be a top tier unit for me.
Sorry to disappoint
I think you should have swapped Ignatz with Petra, other than that I agree with everything
I kinda disagree with Bernie’s placement. Though I don’t know much about Maddening since I never finished it, on Hard, she’s arguably a better nuke than Lysithea due to her skill preferences and incredible Dex growths. If you build her through Archer and Sniper into Bow Knight with Killer Bow+ and Lance of Ruin, she becomes a highly mobile nuke that’s effective at any range, while also having utility like Encloser and better range than other nukes like Lysithea and better accuracy than long range spells like Meteor. Plus she has incredible synergy with Vantage as long as she can survive one attack, and Vengeance is still an incredible art. She has a lot going for her. and with the sheer volume of bow and flier enemies on many of the late-endgame maps, I find myself getting more use out of her than almost any other unit besides Byleth.
is this a joke or like serious
Too many reasonable takes. If it's a troll, it's a convincing one.
But seriously, B-tier for all three Vengeance users?
What is the website he is using to check stats and such?
Could be serenes forest
Could also be fe3h.com
fe3h.com
@@AdamWithFED thanks for the response :) just rebought 3 houses thanks to watching your streams after selling my copy a while back.
Mercedes good enough with physic, heal, restore, and three range magic bow
but she doesnt have warp. and in a game you can one turn most chapters healing doesnt matter.
@ I said” good enough” not amazing unit
I always loved Mercedes and I gotta be honest, I thought she'd be seen as only "Decent" because I keep hearing Fortify isn't very good and Physic is useful in some situations but on Maddening its unlikely you'd survive anyway if you take too much damage, its been to just kill ASAP. And lack of Warp/Rescue hurts Mercedes' viability. That's usually what I see commented on with her from others. But I still like Mercedes.
I made Mercedes Holy Knight on my first run. I never tried doing Cindered Shadows and post-DLC. I really want to try Mercedes as Valkyrie.
This video is really good. I am happy to finally find someone that also thinks like me, I think Petra is really shit. Also this video opened my eyes about ignatz being good. So thank you for that.
Seeing you almost put Ingrid as a worse unit than Ashe made me gasp haha.
Send me your playlist please I know it's all fire emblem but it's all the calm stuff
ruclips.net/video/-C3XLn4omZQ/видео.html
@@AdamWithFED rock on!
What database is that he's using?
FE3h.com
@@AdamWithFED Thanks a million! You're the best!
Ingrid is pretty great as a magical unit because she can double, unlike Constance. Actually I’d prefer her as a dark flier.
Except Constance can actually do damage
Marianne is waaaaay to low. She has the best white magic kit in the game. Psychic for range heal, aura for Holly dmg, silence to click off mages in end turn dmg calculations in maddening, she's essentially a dark mage and white mage in one. She also crits like crazy too which white mages other than her dont do without aura.
So what makes Mercedes special? She can heal? Every mage can heal. Other mages can heal, do good damage and have other utilities. Mercy heals and really only heals.
And not to be that guy but you kinda flip flopped halfway through the tier list about stats mattering or not.
Marianne can heal and is potentially one of the best Dark Knights in the entire game while doing it, especially when you give her both Blutgang and Arrow of Indra.
Rock solid list
I think Constance is a tier too high, yes she's excellent, but she has a decidedly worse spelllist than the other casters in her tier and save for her nuking potential, her stats are middling enough to the point where she can have an accuracy issue landing her boltings which is the main thing she brings to the table.
I think Felix is too high. Yes he's good, but on maddening using Felix is basically an arms race. He boils down to a player phase melee kill machine in most circumstances (unless you're going like sniper Felix) and if you keep his level of investment up, he can maintain his ability to one-round however maddening unit quality makes him tricky to use on later maps because he winds up being a little frail to frontline. He's still good... but I'd put him like top of decent.
Mercie is honestly too high. I think Marianne basically does everything she does and more. Her passive doesn't provide anything really, she's just a good mage.
Dedue should be in almost perfect if not better. The ability to just eat hits in early maddening is a huge boon, he can nuke with vengeance and post timeskip you can relegate him to adjutant duty for Dimitri, a thing he does better than any other unit in the game. Save for the two maps he's missing, he always can fill a role.
I think you're a little rough on Hilda too, but I don't really have a solid refutation.
Hanneman's quite a bit better than Hubert, despite their similarities. Hubert basically has to go Dark Knight to augment his dark magic where Hanneman has more options. Hubert's personal skill is nothing special either. Hubert also basically doesn't have a faith list. He can nuke, but not better than a lot of units and that's basically it. I'd move Hubert down and keep Hanneman where he is.
Bernie needs more respect. She's high investment - high versatility. There's a lot of things you can make her do beyond encloser and she's pretty good at all of them if you put in the work. I'm a fan of Dark/Holy knight personally.
Honestly, I think Ingrid's better than Petra on maddening, though I'm not sure I'd bump her up a tier. In-house I'd argue you build her as a mage because her spelllist is pretty cool and she gets both frozen lance and hexblade. You have her run around supporting Syvain's swift strikes adventures to proc his personal and provide their special support mod. Out of house, she gets those sweet maddening pegasi growths giving her statistical bonuses over Petra. (And she can again do the Sylvain thing, due to his ease of recruitment if you choose to pick her up.) I used Ingrid pretty extensively on a NG maddening run mostly as a meme and was pretty satisfied with her.
Raph is fine where he is, just move Caspar down a tier. Realistically, the way you're going to field both units is exactly the same and in that role, Raph is just better. Better bulk, better attack. He's the better choice for armor and the better choice for gauntlets.
Lorenz to bottom of decent. He's not deadweight. He's a decent caster who really REALLY wants to be a dark knight. He has high mt spells and strengths in everything he needs to get there too, plus frozen lance. Is he the worst dedicated mage? Yes, to the point that some people argue not having him invest in magic (a mistake) but he's not two tiers below the other "average" casters. His personal skill is really good too.
Ashe below the flawed adults but above Anna. Gilbert and Alois both have special supports and come as free guard adjutants at least. They also have better combat arts iirc. Ashe just has nothing. You do his part 1 paralogue for shoes then bench him because any further investment is a waste of resources.
I also feel pretty strongly about Catherine being worse than Shamir, because she's basically a Jagen (albeit a good one that comes free with a relic brave weapon) who you need to fix to avoid that pre-promote stagnation. If you do take the investment to fix her, she does stay good though. Shamir is good out of the box and stays good as a sniper.
That's my two cents....
Really good list. The only changes I would really make would be bumping hapi over lysithea and putting dedue in almost perfect. I understand your reasoning for dedue. however I think how useful he is early at setting up kills for your other units is outstanding and by the time he leaves he does fall off anyway. But for those early chapters where every unit is made of paper dedue is the only thing that can get your units more xp than they should in a chapter. I'm also glad that you see Yuri is not bad like some people think he is.
Bad tier criteria.
You can't justify putting Ashe, one of the worst units in the game by normal standards, below decent by your criteria because anybody who can just go sniper with zero effort is at least decent in maddening. Meanwhile, Catherine is a very flawed character in that she kinda sucks end game. Neither of these examples has anything to do with why the criteria is bad though.
have you seen my ashe's crit rate... he doubled edelgard, got two crits with claudes bow (cant ttype lmao) his dex growth is astounding, lemme say that. having him in speed and dex is amazing, and with this personal, just wipes chest keys.
You could tell me Ignatz is the best character in the game and I'd still let him die the first chance I get, every time 😂
anette bernie and petra move up
Tbh all of the student archers were mediocre for me outside of Claude on hard mode
my hard mode tier list criteria is who is best at becoming an unkillable death god and natural bow users definitely don't fit that criteria
huh, always thought ignatz was garbage b/c his damage and speed were both crap early on; only played the game on hard so I haven't had problems with speed or hitrate on non ignatz units
maddening lets ignatz shines since the extra accuracy from his personal, and his rallies/auth/utility (like break shot and seal strength) matter a ton vs the tougher enemies
@@idkdk569I'd play maddening, but at my current rate of progress, I'll finish the run I'm in sometime in the next 3-5 business years
@@meeperdudeify fair, depends on how fast you play, ive played maddening multiple types and finish the run in under a week
@@idkdk569...it has been 130 hours and nearly 6 months. I am not very good at fire emblem
In lower difficulties Ignatz isn't very useful, but in higher difficulties having consistent accuracy with Steel weapons is actually kinda insane and makes him seriously strong earlygame where enemies are actually most difficult to handle. If anything I'd actually rank Ignatz higher.
-Good of you to give Constance the credit she deserves. A lot of people say she's "worse Lysithea kekw," but this is such a bad take. The combination of high Mag + Bolting single-handedly cuts the difficulty of certain lategame maps by half.
-IMO Dorothea IS the best dancer in the game. What you want from your dancer is the ability to help the team passively while dancing every turn, and she has two very useful abilities that do not require an action: long-range gambit support with Meteor and her personal which really does add up if you play around it.
-I'm a bit puzzled about Bernadetta's placement. You even make the enlightened argument that her true value lies with Encloser, not Vengeance. I'd argue that Encloser single handedly puts her in A tier because it does make Maddening noticeably easier in a way you can actively plan around.
-Dedue should move up a tier, if not two. He's THE lynchpin of Blue Lions early game. Having this unbreakable wall lets you play at your pace and micromanage who gets experience. This has a huge effect on hitting the optimal class promotion times and massively snowball into midgame. Rather than having 2-3 standout units who got all the exp and have to do the heavy lifting for the 10 others who can barely do chip damage, you can end up with a full roster of viable units. He's not just a tactical asset, he's a strategic one.
-And finally, IMO Ingrid is the most underrated unit in the game. Yes, she sucks as a general combat unit, but there's something she does better than anyone else: dealing with mages. The combination of her high Res, Spd, the ability to match 1-2 range with a javelin while doing enough physical damage to 1 round enemy mages makes her probably the only unit you can reliably send into a group of enemy mages. This makes some of the lategame maps just so much easier.
38:20
I hate to crash the Lysithea train but I do need to reign in your statements about her. First very minor point but she doesn't have the highest magic base, that award goes to Hubert with 12 base magic(Let him have this one). Secondly her spell list is "good" for magic but unfortunately magic in three houses is not that amazing. Spells like swarm do provide valuable utility with reductions to speed in the early game but unfortunately combined with its low base hit of 70 and Lysithea's terrible luck it makes most hit rats dubious at best in the early game, consistency being the name of the game in maddening early game as you acknowledged with Ignatz with hit plus 20. Late game swarm becomes a bit redundant since chip is less valuable and outright killing an enemy is far more valuable, so let's look at her damage potential. Her damaging spells that have the best chance of killing are Luna, Hades, Seraphim, Abraxas and Death Spikes. Hades is probably the worst out of these three since statistically in Lysithea's best damaging class (Gremory) at 30th level it only has 1 more potential damage on average than a level 30 Paladin Lorenz using Frozen Lance with a Silver Lance +, and in fact it gets out damaged if Lorenz uses any lance that has more than 15might i.e. the Lance of Ruin. (These stat averages are assuming you are going, monk (lvl5) -> mage (lvl10)-> warlock (lvl20) for both Lysithea and Lorenz. Reclassing Lorenz into paladin at level 20 after classing him into Warlock to bump up his base magic, and reclassing Lysithea into Gemory at level 30.) Abraxas is just a more consistent Hades with its amazing 90 hit, unfortunately it's mt is only 14 so Lorenz again out damages it. Luna is an interesting spell since it technically scales damage off how much Res the enemy has, making it theoretically good against Pegasus Knights and other units with high Res, but again there is a catch, it only has 65 hit. Pegsus knights generally have very high avoid, making spells like Luna incredibly hard to hit without external support such as supports, battalions and skills like hit plus 20. Even if you do hit it is even rarer for it to one shot since most enemies in maddening have incredibly inflated HP stats, something Lysithea's base magic growth can't keep up with. Death Spikes is clearly her best damaging spell, and can pretty consistently kill horse units with it's effective mt of 39 and its relatively high hit rate of 80. On average using the same stat assumptions as before she can easily do 90 damage to a horse unit at level 30. Lorenz at level 30 with a horse slayer can only do 78 which is 12 less than Lysithea, but mind you this isn't even comparing Lysithea's damage to one of the best combat units in the game such as Ferdiand, who with a horse slayer and swift strikes can do 142 damage to a horse unit, beating her damage by a staggering 52 damage. Yes, Ferdiand does hit on protection which is generally higher than Res but in maddening horse unit stat blocks are generally pretty balanced in the defence department, having a relatively equal amount of def and res. Holy Knights and Dark Knights in fact have more Res than defence which only further widens the gap between Lysithea's damage against any decent physical unit. Seraphim is another effective spell but I also don't think it is that great. It has the same might as a blessed lance(which anyone can use), and it can be used to do more damage to monsters. It is good to remove shields from monsters, but gambits can do that and more, and you won't be getting one shots on monsters with it unless you're getting lucky low percent crits. Kinda a whatever spell.
So damage wise Lysithea is pretty limp, in the early game she can only provide inconsistent chip damage with the occasional stat debuf, mid game she can kill a couple of mounted units that other units can just do better with twice the movement and half the risk due to their better defensive stats, and late game she will probably perform much the same as she did in the mid game. The fact is that it is not damage that makes her good, it's her utility with the spell Warp. Not only does she get it a whole rank before Linhardt but her insane magic growth allows her to trivialise maps by warping much better combat units to destroy the map. The optimal way and easiest way to use her does require her to just sit in the backlines and be a warp bot, which means that not having physic does hurt her a lot since she will need to go into the fray to actually heal people, which for Lysithea's terrible bulk, is quite dangerous. I will say that her magic growth of 60 which is only further buffed by the classes she is in does do a lot to prevent her from being stat screwed and only increases her chances to be stat blessed, which in some instances throughout a maddening playthrough will probably allow her to do better and more consistent damage than her physical peers. I'd say she belongs in the same tier with Linhardt, warp is just too good, chip damage is never bad and she can murder a horse every once in a while. If you desperately want to make Lysithea a combat unit Dark Flier is her best option, even though it's average damage is worse than Gemory it's high movement, flying and having Thyrsus will allow her to chip and dip as much as she wants.
Few units early game are doing more than chipping. In fact no ones OKing without a crit, at least til you get like Catherine or Vengeance. Lysithea’s spells are still better than using Frozen Lance bc Lorenz is pretty bad and he gets it at C+ which is realistically chapter 5 with lots of effort, on a unit with mediocre combat. Lysithea also has an Authority Boon which is pretty uncommon for non lords allowing her to reasonably reach A rank for the Macuil Evil Repelling Co which solves her accuracy issues forever. Speaking of which, with DLC, she can go Valkyrie while Hubert, Lorenz, and Linhardt cannot. On top of all that she also has Mastermind, so faster mastery and ranks than anyone. Lysithea is mostly praised for her versatility, and her range with Thyrsus/Valkyrie adds to that. She has options against Monsters, Cavalry, Mages(Luna), and other solid spells, on top of being able to assist other units. One more thing, she also gets Soulblade which can be useful against Tomebreaker enemies for example
@@thescarredraven2634 I never said Lysithea is bad early game because she only chips, I said she was bad early game because her chip was inconsistent, and I doubt even with mastermind you'll be able to get her authority rank to A in the early game without some serious grinding to forever fix her accuracy issues. Also you misunderstand my Lorenz point, I am not comparing her to Lorenz to show how good Lorenz's damage is, I am comparing them to show how mediocre Lysithea's damage is that she can barely out pace and can even been out done by Lorenz in damage which highlights her lack of killing potential. The only edge she has is range which I would argue only really become a sizeable benefit once you get Thyrsus or the Caduceus Staff if you don't have Lorenz which you don't get till chapter 12 or you reclass into Valkyrie (I still think dark flier is better but whatever). Also having a lot of "options" isn't really inherently good if all those options kinda suck. Yeah she can use Seraphim, but instead of what, a gambit which is objectively better, or just fielding a unit with a blessed lance which does the exact same thing as Seraphim but can actually be better if the unit has swift strikes or vengeance. Yeah you can use Luna on mages but again their HP will be too high for her to one shot on average, might as well use a different spell since all you're doing is chipping.
imgur.com/a/nGbreCl This is a link that shows the stats of end game enemies on the Golden Deer Route, and even a LEVEL 50 Lysithea (which is being especially generous) with an average 47 magic cannot one shot a holy knight with death spikes nor a mage with Luna. (this assuming the build is what you're recommending, Valkyrie, with Macuil Evil Repelling Co, with fiendish blow, with magic plus 2) Also why would you ever use soulblade on Lysithea? So you can run in at melee range of a grappler/War Master, fail to oneshot even with the blutgang and then die on retaliation? Why don't you just use ranged magic, again more options isn't inherently good.
I will concede that mastermind is very helpful and I failed to mention it. It does allow her to get fiendish blow much earlier than most mages which means she will have a significant damage spike in early mid game but all it will really amount to is more chip damage, a dead horse, maybe a cheeky Death Knight kill. I don't really think she needs any other mastery ability though, will she really need Uncanny blow when you have a Battalion attached to her that gives her 30 plus hit, but that can be debated. I still think Gemory is her best class. Can occasionally chip from range and has 2 uses of warp, and thats a big difference from 1, but you can reclass her depending on the situation. I still think Lysithea is an amazing unit, she just has a shocking early game and often her damage is over exaggerated.
Please stop comparing Lorenz with Lysithea, it makes me uncomfortable.
"See guys Lysithea is actually comparable to Lorenz, all he has to do is use a legendary relic to out damage her innate spells that she can use from 4 range"
@@DoTtA1123 lysithea needs a legendary relic to do that as well, also Lorenz can still out damage her with a Lance of Zoltan. Also the Lance of Ruin is probably easier to get than the Thyrsus since Sylvain is a free recruit.
I played the game on Maddening twice and I have to say that Ashe was one of my most reliable units both times. Meanwhile seeing so many units that actively sabotaged me in both runs in S tier is comical, really. I mean, Hapi has a good spell list, and her growths are okay, but in each playthrough I've used her, I played that game literally for more than 850 hours, she was comically slow. OMG she gets doubled by literally everything, even fortress knights! Also I wouldn't be me without some Sylvain Slander and I've got to say that in every playthrough he was incredibly mediocre. In my extreme runs, I couldn't even get him his heroes relic because the dude kept dieing as soon as any random enemy reached him as he only had 10-ish speed, 10-ish defense, and horrible overall stats, his might was under 100... on Level 26. Even Constance, who has the lowest growths in the game, had more might than him at the same level. I know, in theory, his growth rates are the best non-lord growths in the game, but I've never seen any of that. In my tier list he'd be in F Tier - Actively Sabotaging the Game.
Like... that may be because growth rates are percentages. Yes you can have those really bad runs but that doesn't make the unit any worse, just that you were really unlucky that run.
Ashe genuinely has nothing to offer he is worse in everything than everyone(ok His boons are fine but like no one cares).
Sylvain has fine combat stats with good boons and swift strikes(!) plus extremely early recruit as female Byleth and a free hero's relic.
Super sad for you to never have experienced a good Sylvain but he absolutely is on of the best characters in the game.
Funnily enough if I recall correctly Sylvain is one of the best units in 0% growths so that's very funny. Check out rengor if you wanna learn more
(He also has a better tierlist then this one. Like without Bernie in fcking C tier xD)
@@lysander4406 I was also confused with that. Also, Balthus should have been higher up. I mean, his stats aren't that great and his list of combat arts and abilities also could be better, but the dude is the only properly functioning tank in the whole game and does a damn good job at it. +6 on Defense AND Strength is insane in earlygame. Even with only
@@nick3805 ok let's talk about average stats first. Your Sylvain sounds incredibly unlucky, like holy shit that's kind of crazy. That can break a unit for a run which is very unfortunate.
Second thing to consider is that combat arts actually make or break a character but only(!) on maddening. Since enemys are super tanky and speedy it's incredibly important to one shot them with individual units in the mid and lategame. Most units are either good player phase, good enemy phase (a unit can have access to both just usually not on the same run[except Bernadetta, and even dedue, this broken abomination of a unit]) or good utility. Player phase means to oneshot an enemy in your turn. Enemy phase are mostly a combination of the wrath ventage skills or protection stacking or in niche cases dodge tanking. Support are mostly magic and rally users who support your combat units and who can be lower in level and stats. In the early game all those roles and way softer because chip damage is so important to at all kill enemys.
To come back around to Ashe, what can he do or is good at exactly. Ashe has chapter 2 and 3 free curved shot. His personal is useless he doesn't learn any good combat arts nor has any good skills, his (average) stats are mediocre at best. He caaaan go into wrath ventage but other units are far better in that(especially Dimitri in ashes own house). Bows are a very good weapon type because of sniper and it's combat art but all other sniper units are way better then an even above average Ashe. Ashe is like fine to use but does get outclassed super hard in everything he can do, like I think there is not one thing he is the best at in the whole cast.
Sylvain on the other hand(to keep on with my example) has a few nice things too him and one that makes him really fucking good. He ist great out of house because he has super easy recruitment as female Byleth and thus a level lead on prbly all of your cast but your lord and Byleth. He has a axe boon and so can go brigand (if you don't master brigand on every physical player phase character) really easy. He struggles a little with archer I think but that's like fine. He on average as like fine stats and better ones then Ferdinand von Aery plus he does have a nice crest and can use his hero relic really good. But most importantly he has swift strikes on A Lances. Swift strike let's you do 2 hits on the enemy before they can counterattack+ it gives a power boost. This means that Sylvain is one of the strongest player phase users in the game, also because his combat art isn't class locked so he can go Wyvern.
If you want to learn more check out both Rengors yt channel or Mekkahs 3h tierlist review and the guides on fe3h.com most of which rengor wrote. Also a great resource I found is JonoabboFE who has very impressive character guides and a very good tierlist and also wrote something in this comment section. Have fun exploring the depths of 3 houses meta
Still downplaying Bernie? 🥺🥺, izzi top tier.
The rest seems about right or i don''t disagree enough xD
Idk why alot of people still downplay Bernie. If built correctly, she's up there with Lythisea as a must have recruit
The thing is "if built properly" and that's the overall issue. A excellent unit thrives regardless of of the build properly notion. Look at it this way what units can u use and turn off brain: Byleth, Dimitri, Edelgard, Claude, Sylvain, Leonie, Ferdinand, Felix, Cyrillic, Catherine and Lysinthea. Those are basically "turn off brain" characters with little to no special investment. Bernie needs special treatment to be on their level of greatness.
@@christianacosta4013 At least he is, idk about the rest its been a while since i watch a 3h video so i am not up to date with the current opinions in the game.
But she is there for sure, she does insane damage early on and one shot very consistenly. She makes a lot of maps way easier. The only reason to say that she is not that good, it's the same reason you would use to downplay a dancer xD.
@@magegeneral6988 She is super easy to "build" though, almost no investment too xD. Also, in maddening i don't think any unit is "turn of brain" just saying.
@@zilord3264 except dimitri
Going to disagree with MByleth's placement. Picking MByleth means you are not picking the superior FByleth. By definition, that is making Maddening Harder. MByleth; therefor; should be in the bottom teir.
MByleth is specifically optimal in Golden Deer route tho where you have a lot of units that very specifically benefit from being adjacent to male units. Earlygame is very significantly harder in that route with FByleth, and no earlier access to flying doesn't really outweigh more consistent KO thresholds earlygame where enemies probably are at their most deadly overall.
Petra is kind of an L take ngl.
Gauntles are absolutely NOT Flelix's thing, wtf x,D dude is ABSOLUTELY a Mortal Savant, guantets are a good side tool for him but no
Normalally im not the type to say this, but in general you opinions here are just wrong, factually and statistically
This teir list, is in fact, just wrong
Mortal Savant is stupid for Felix, it gives him a speed debuff and Felix has a mid magic list anyway. Warmaster guarantees Felix gets plus 5 from his personal skill. Honestly Swordmaster is better than Mortal Savant too.
Well, factually and statistically, gauntlets are a better weapon for Felix than swords and magic ever will. I have my fair share of disagreements with this tier list, but this take is absolutely correct
The Savant drip is the absolute best on him I’ll give you that but Savant really sucks lmao
5 minutes in and this guy is talking like white avo+20 is the best thing ever? byleth has heal, nos, and recover, equipping heal and dodging everything doesnt do jackshit, you need to kill after dodging
I don't have anything against him, but he did say in a previous video that White Magic is better at attacking than Swords
OK cool now finish a fe3h ironman 🥸
I don't see the point in iron manning that game, when basically everything about its design makes iron manning the game a terrible experience. Maybe Adam is doing it out of spite or as a meme at this point.
You know he has kids right, he can’t stream every day, also he’s reset like 4 times
@Crazy Blt I think it's more of a pride thing over a fun thing but I respect him for never giving up even three years after the games release
@@IsiahValle yeah I don't see how it can be fun lol.